Solving Food Waste in Supply Chains

Transcript

• Steve Statler 00:00

  Welcome to the Mr. Beacon podcast. Thanks so much for listening in to us. Today's show is about food waste. I have Katherine Sizov, who's the CEO of Strella, who are a biotech company that are engaged in some fascinating work that instruments the supply chain to cut the massive problem of food waste, and they're in, there's an opportunity to help save the planet, increased profits, and for all of us who consume food to give us better food. I recommend you this interview because a Katherine is super smart, and just just very inspiring person to hear talk. As an entrepreneur. She's working on a really important problem she and her team. I think this is a really interesting case study for entrepreneurs, because there's really central technology. But you can see some of the challenges that await any of us that look to commercialize technology in terms of the ecosystem, the supply chain, the integrations that need to get done, and her firm has done an amazing job. They've got some really cool investors. And for that reason, I encourage courage you to listen to this conversation with Katherine. The Mr. Beacon podcast is sponsored by Wiliot, Intelligence for Everyday Things, powered by IoT pixels. Katherine, welcome to the Mr. Beacon podcast.

  
  

  Katherine Sizov 01:42

  Thank you so much for having me.

  
  

  Steve Statler 01:45

  I am really looking forward to our chat. You've been doing some super interesting work on food and reducing food wastes, with your company Strella. And first of all, congratulations on coming up with a great company name. I googled it and found the the company straightaway there are no collisions. It's novel, but I feel like I've been hearing the name of your company all my life. Where did you come up with? How did you come up with Strella?

  
  

  Katherine Sizov 02:16

  Yes, Strella is actually a Russian word are derived from Russia words did a lot. So if you look at a lot of the technological Russian innovations, they kind of have a similar nomenclature. So like, for example, the first dog that made it back from space in one piece was thrilled gut. And so I think there's a lot of really good luck associated with in my head with with Russian words that are kind of have a similar Lilt, it means arrow in Russian. So it has a really straightforward connotation in my head, a little bit of that feminine sound in English. And so I think that kind of encapsulates a lot of a lot of the company itself. Yeah.

  
  

  Steve Statler 03:01

  Yeah. Well, it seems to be as a talisman, or good luck charm, it seems to be working for you. Or maybe you're just very talented, driven and smart in terms of what you're, you're you're doing. But you guys are doing really well. And maybe we should get to the point and I share that allow you to share with us a bit about what Strehler does.

  
  

  Katherine Sizov 03:24

  Yeah, so at Strella, what we do is we build technologies that can predict how ripe produce is. So if you know what the actual shelf life of something that's perishable is, then you can do a better job organizing it within the supply chain. The ultimate goal is to reduce food waste, and supply the customer which is us with a better tasting fruit or vegetable.

  
  

  Steve Statler 03:48

  And how do you figure out whether something's ripe or not?

  
  

  Katherine Sizov 03:52

  Here we have a lot of at this point, we're building out a couple of different technologies. So the core of it was a sensor that can basically intercept communications between fruits as they're ripening. So if you've ever put an unripe banana next door, right one, you'll see their ribbons a lot faster than if it was by itself. And this is because routes communicate with each other using gases. And what we've done is we've created a sensor that can intercept these communications and basically hear what the fruit is telling us in terms of its maturity. We're also now applying some more fancy stuff like machine learning models and just straight up math to interpret signals coming from fruits and vegetables. And then basically turn that into an approximation of what their shelf life is. So where along their maturity they're located, and then using that information, we can kind of triage if you will, what's going on in supply chain so if you have an apple that's going to go bad sooner than another one, you can kind of prioritize it in the queue of the supply chain to get it The consumer first,

  
  

  Steve Statler 05:01

  you're just blowing my mind, I thought we kind of jokingly talk about what if your products could talk and you're saying they actually fruit is actually talking and they're not talking to us, they're talking to each other? Is that like a figure of speech? Or are they is there, you know, a Darwinistic evolutionary advantage for one pair talking to another pair saying, I'm ripening buddy.

  
  

  Katherine Sizov 05:29

  Yeah, so we don't know the exact evolutionary mechanisms of what goes on. But we do suspect that all of the fruit on a tree ripening at the same time, it's beneficial to it. So for example, perhaps all of the apples falling from a tree at the same time, make it more appealing to the deer to come and eat the seeds. And then, you know, spread the spread them around geographically than if you just dropping one apple at a time. But for whatever reason, fruits and vegetables do communicate with each other. And they like to signal how ripe they are.

  
  

  Steve Statler 06:02

  And so you're listening into that conversation, and what are the signs that you pick up? The ripening is happening?

  
  

  Katherine Sizov 06:10

  Yeah, so the main thing that we look at is a gas called ethylene. And ethylene emissions vary based on where the fruit is in its ripening stage. And that's called a climacteric curve. So if you can basically map this curve of ethylene production very accurately, then you can tell where in the lifecycle a fruit or vegetable is.

  
  

  Steve Statler 06:36

  And that's pretty amazing. How did you figure this out?

  
  

  Katherine Sizov 06:42

  Um, I think so my background is in molecular biology, actually. And I started reading about food supply chains. And the kind of the main thing that stood out was that were produce and a lot of perishables are biological organisms, and they react as such, but the way that the food supply change treats them as kind of like a static commodity object rather than a biological organism. And so I thought, What if we put on the lens of thinking about all of this produce as a biological organism and trying to understand how it was reacting to its environment based off of that kind of core intrinsic principle. And so that's kind of read a lot of papers did a lot of market research, and then ended up on on this particular solution.

  
  

  Steve Statler 07:31

  And you decided to start a company to commercialize some of the solutions that you you started designing, I'm sure, as you looked around for funding, you had to answer the question, how big is the problem I'm solving and how big is that problem?

  
  

  Katherine Sizov 07:52

  I would say, for so 30% of the food waste is generated by 10 commodities that we're currently targeting. And if we can challenge a lot of the kind of core processes in the three major points of the supply chain, which are the supplier level, the retailer level, and the importer distributor level, than our market in the United States is about $6.8 billion annually.

  
  

  Steve Statler 08:17

  And how much food waste is the generally,

  
  

  Katherine Sizov 08:22

  the carbon emissions on food waste are greater than that of all US transportation combined. It accounts for 7% of the global freshwater supply 3% of all US energy. So 40% of all food is wasted before it's consumed. There's a lot of really crazy stats or horrible stats, honestly, around food waste. Another one is, if food waste was a country, it'd be the third largest GHG emitter after the United States and China. So massive problem, and it doesn't really benefit anybody. You know, if you think about transportation, you know, there's pros and cons to driving a car somewhere. But food waste doesn't really help anybody at all. And so that's one of those problems. That I think is why I'm really passionate about it. Because ultimately, it's kind of a net loss for everybody. And it also impacts p&l and our customers in a really negative way for profitability. And so if you can marry both sustainability with profitability, I think that's when you can really make a huge impact.

  
  

  Steve Statler 09:29

  It seems amazing. So first of all, it's like enormously heartening that there's a big problem that seems like it might have some solutions that would be actionable, because everyone wins. You know, people planet profit. They're all going to benefit if we address this. Given that given that, you know, we're supposed to be this amazing capitalist country. Why are we sort of why have we accepted is the level of food waste that exists? Do you think?

  
  

  Katherine Sizov 10:05

  I don't think we have accepted it? You know, I feel like that misconception happens a lot when people are like, well, you know, why don't farmers do better? And the reality is a farmer does everything they absolutely can, right? They've spent their blood, sweat and tears growing a crop. And it is an incredibly difficult job. And they're not looking to waste that and neither is anybody else along the supply chain, because again, it shrink equals losses to your bottom line, right? I think the problem is that, right now, our supply chain is really segregated. And each person is kind of acting like an individual actor, if you will. And there needs to be system wide optimization in order for us to actually eliminate a lot of these issues.

  
  

  Steve Statler 10:48

  And what does system wide optimization look like?

  
  

  Katherine Sizov 10:52

  Well, it kind of looks like what we're trying to do, which is to have a guardian, if you will, of produce as it plays this gigantic game of hot potato, and passes from hand to hand to hand along the supply chain. And the way that that would look is collecting information, data, understanding what this produce item is doing. And then helping each person along the supply chain make the best decision for that produce item so that by the time it gets to the consumer, it's as good as it possibly can be.

  
  

  Steve Statler 11:23

  And how, how's that going?

  
  

  Katherine Sizov 11:27

  You know, it's really hard for me to have any metrics of internal success, because I feel like I live under a rock. But I, I would say that we're working with a number of suppliers and retailers now to to optimize their food supply chains, we've seen a huge amount of improvements. So at the retailer level, we see about a 50% reduction in store level food waste, which is huge. We see a five times improvement in quality on the store shelf when we use our technology to make a smarter supply chain. And on the supplier side, we've been working for about five years with some of the largest apple and pear growers actually in the United States. And we've monitored over 2 billion pieces of fruit.

  
  

  Steve Statler 12:13

  That's incredibly impressive. How have things going at the corporate development level, you're CEO of a startup funding, who are your backers?

  
  

  Katherine Sizov 12:30

  Yeah. So we closed, we've raised about 11 and a half million dollars of institutional capital to date. Our last round was a Series A that we closed a couple of months ago, our investors included Yamaha Google Ventures, Rich's products, ventures, Millennium tech ventures, and a lot of other folks that, you know, had supported us through our seed round.

  
  

  Steve Statler 12:59

  When so let's talk a bit more about the focus you I think you mentioned that you can focus on a relatively small set of products and make a big difference. What are the products that you're focusing on?

  
  

  Katherine Sizov 13:14

  Yeah, so I, the way that I would look at it is when you go to the grocery store works you the most. So you've got your avocados, that's usually a big one, bananas, kiwis, apples, pears, mangoes. So all of those kind of higher margin items that really, you know, tend to be a little bit volatile are the ones that we're targeting tomatoes is another one.

  
  

  Steve Statler 13:38

  What about strawberries and bananas. Bananas is a low margin, aren't they?

  
  

  Katherine Sizov 13:44

  Yes, but they're a very important driver, because bananas are kind of the first thing that you pick up when you go to the produce section. And a lot of shoppers when the bananas aren't good, tend to be discouraged. Shopping, other produce is a huge driver of sales, even outside of the produce category itself. If you don't have good bananas, people aren't doing their, you know, weekly milk run, if you will, to your grocery store. So they're very, very important commodity berries, I like to call them the weird ont of the produce family, if you will they they operate an entirely different way. They don't emit ethylene. And so a lot of our kind of core technology doesn't apply to that. But our r&d team is busy building solutions for those guys as well.

  
  

  Steve Statler 14:30

  And how big is your company?

  
  

  Katherine Sizov 14:34

  That 18 full time now.

  
  

  Steve Statler 14:36

  Awesome. And tell us a bit about more about the way you implement your systems. How do you measure the ethylene? How does that get communicated to systems? How do the systems get used? And we should talk about who your customers are as well, but that's, I've thrown it up to you It's easy to tell it. Tell us a bit about that.

  
  

  Katherine Sizov 15:03

  Yeah, absolutely. So we have a sensor technology that measures the ethylene. And then we use an IoT network to essentially communicate all of that data and information wirelessly into the cloud, then we go ahead and interpret and analyze that data. And then we either just output it onto like a standalone dashboard for some customers in a way that's actionable to them. Or we integrate directly into an existing process if it's a larger customer, like a retailer. So one of the kind of core use cases is an apples. So an apple can be stored for up to a year by the time it gets to a grocery store. And it's not done in any super crazy way. It's just that if you take oxygen, if you put it through in a deoxygenated cold environment, it can last for a year, at least an apple or a pear can. And so the thing is that a person who does this is called a packer, they put millions of apples in storage and dozens of storage rooms. And they typically use a combination of some historical data and limited sampling to determine which apples can make it that year, and which ones will turn into applesauce, because not all apples can make it for that long. And the problem is that because you have such crazy seasonal variability, it's not always easy to predict what's going to happen. And so instead of relying on kind of limited datasets, what we do is we listen to the fruit talk. And then based on that we can tell a packer, hey, this room is going to be fully mature and starting to kind of decrease in quality in the next two months. And so that room should be prioritized over other rooms, that still might have that shelf life and keep going.

  
  

  Steve Statler 16:46

  So you're working at the room level, in the case of apples. And so that sounds like it would be a solution that's just used by growers, but it sounds I'm thinking that you have other customers other than growers.

  
  

  Katherine Sizov 17:04

  Yeah, so for apples, what we can then do is say, Okay, well, we've sat with these apples for six to eight months, by the time they've reached a Kroger or an Albertsons. And so we can say, Look, we have 16 months of maturity data, what if we take this a step further and help the retailer make a decision on what they're doing with that apple. So a retailer is not a supplier, they have very limited information. They're not experts in apples, they're managing hundreds of 1000s of different skews of inventory. And so oftentimes, a lot of the decisions they make are pretty rudimentary and not really, based on the perishability of the product. And so what we do is we take that data that we've collected, and we help the retailer also make sure that they're sending the right fruit at the right time to the right store.

  
  

  Steve Statler 17:51

  So I'm just trying to picture in mind my mind how this works, because it's that, you know, we're a show about IoT. And sometimes the best ideas proved to be super difficult because of the structure of the ecosystem and the way it operates. Technically, you've got a solution, but can it actually fit the market? So I kind of get if I'm an apple grind, it sounds like that's where you started. I can sequence when I open up these big storage rooms. And if I'm at a Kroger, how, who's making the decisions about this? And I think, part of what was really intriguing to me, which kind of resonates with my own experience, where I work is this idea of rapist first. And how do you? How do you change a supply chain that's just kind of been at best working with first in first out? Often it isn't first in first out, but how do you get the right information in front of the right people? It's not just send a report to some person in headquarters is

  
  

  Katherine Sizov 19:05

  no, so you're totally right. So the way that retailers currently operate is they'll go first in first out. So the first truck of avocados into their distribution centers, the one that gets sent to the grocery store first. What we do instead is when that truck gets accepted into that distribution center, we assign it a dynamic expiration date, if you will. And that way, all of their warehouse management software, everything that they use to basically organize inventory. Now orders that produce based on expiration date, instead of first in first out. And that way, you're sending the most mature produce to the grocery store shelf first, depending on what the retailer gives us. We can take it a step further. So for example, if we knew the routes, if we know logistics routes, we can send fruit with shorter expiration dates to shorter hauls. We're also working on potentially integrate any store level data. So for example, if you have, you know, maybe a lower income neighborhood that is really price sensitive, then you can send certain produce there, save money on waste, etc. Give it to a community that wants it and needs it, and then maybe reserve your higher margin crops and commodities for places that care about it. I mean, I've always wondered, who needs that perfect red apple? Honestly, you know, like, that's something that some people really need. Other people are very price sensitive. And so if we have that level of data, store by store, then we can do a better job, not only, you know, reducing food waste, but also addressing different types of consumer needs.

  
  

  Steve Statler 20:47

  Yeah, I think American consumers are very used to a kind of a perfect, polished apple and in other countries, then that's, you know, not the case. We're willing to accept the ugly fruit because we think it's authentic and so forth. are you operating? I mean, is that your experience? And are you operating mainly in the States?

  
  

  Katherine Sizov 21:10

  Yeah, we made mostly work in the United States. And our major crops are apples, pears and bananas right now.

  
  

  Steve Statler 21:19

  Very cool. So going back to the integration, because that's, again, what really is one of the things that really influenced me as a show that focuses on IoT entrepreneurs. It sounds like the warehouse management system, the WMS. Is, is that the system that you when you when you went beyond the grower? That was the integration point? How do you integrate with the WMS? What does it what languages to the WMS is talk?

  
  

  Katherine Sizov 21:50

  Oh, my goodness, there's a whole lot of them. Most of them are very ancient languages. That's already, frankly speaking. Not a good question for me to answer. I have a team of developers that are far more articulate in this particular in this particular area, but it's stuff like COBOL, and Fortran and things like that.

  
  

  Steve Statler 22:17

  Stuff that I learned when I was in college, so maybe there's a future for me and development. So you're actually writing API tight integrations to these warehouse management systems, which may not be the newest warehouse management systems, but they're kind of well, well established? And then what are the other systems? So if you want to get Are you are you doing? How far have you got in terms of freshest first in terms of the actual retail stores? What what are the systems you integrate that with?

  
  

  Katherine Sizov 22:57

  So currently, the the two major things that we do in retail is, when supply is coming in to the retailer, we ensure that that product has the appropriate shelf life to make it through the supply chain. So we'll do a map for example of a retailer and say, you know, the average time it takes for it to actually get to the store shelf and sold is 20 days. And then we work with the supplier to make sure that they're sending apples or whatever, that can make it all the way to the store shelf without compromising quality. So that's the first step. And then the second step is organizing and prioritizing inventory within the retailer supply chain, mainly using dynamic expiration date in their warehouse management software.

  
  

  Steve Statler 23:44

  And how far is the industry got to dynamic routing of deliveries because to me, this is one of the things we've got to move to if we're going to save the planet, we can't have massive trucks filled with, you know, 10 times as much of everything is is needed going to every location, we need small trucks with less stuff going to half the places only going to where it needs to get to and that's you know, true whether you're doing real time inventory, or freshers first. Are you Is anyone doing that? Or are you having to wait for Dynamic Delivery to be implemented? Is that one of the things that holds back your expansion?

  
  

  Katherine Sizov 24:29

  Um, we try to look for ways to work around that and ways to kind of work within a very static supply chain, like you said, in flexible supply chain. The only one that I know that is capable of doing what you're talking about is Amazon's supply chain. But other than that most traditional groceries absolutely do not have the capabilities, but we do different things. So like one one problem that we face, is that let's say you have more ripe avocado and a less ripe avocado. and you want to basically organize them within a distribution center so that you have a stack of more ripe avocados in stock of less ripe avocados. All right now, the only way to really do that is to create two separate skews for those avocados. So you have like one SKU of ripe avocado and one SKU of unripe avocado. And so that's how we we work. It's not depending on the retailer, it can be a pretty different implementation. And the decision making points can be different. So another example of what we do with retailers is, there are some retailers that send product overseas, or even just to Puerto Rico or Hawaii. And so those hauls in transit times are significantly longer. And that's really easy to predict. And so what we do is we just make sure that any pallets of produce that are said to those longer hauls have a longer shelf life, and we know what they're designated for a certain region or location, and so we can make that decision up front.

  
  

  Steve Statler 26:01

  Pretty cool. What about partners? I when I was reading about you, a while back, I noticed you were featured on IBM's. website. So congratulations on that. What can you say anything? I assume you have a partnership with them? Or do they just like what you're doing. And so to cover you.

  
  

  Katherine Sizov 26:22

  I'm still a little befuddled. As to our relationship with IBM, because we currently don't really worked with IBM in any capacity. I think they were just pretty interested in our story. And they wanted to feature us as new creators on their website. So awesome.

  
  

  Steve Statler 26:43

  Yeah, that is great. And good on them for doing it. I mean, they've got this food trust thing. I was wondering whether you are integrating with Blockchain systems and all that sort of fancy stuff.

  
  

  Katherine Sizov 26:54

  Currently, we don't. But I would love to work with them in the future. I think so far we've been. We've been advertising but

  
  

  Steve Statler 27:04

  and what are the key dependencies on growth for you? Where do you want to take the company in the next couple of years?

  
  

  Katherine Sizov 27:11

  So obviously, moving across different commodities. So providing solutions for multiple different types of crops, and then figuring out what sorts of additional data we can use. So to your earlier point, what else can we do? Okay, let's say logistics and dynamic. Shipping isn't something that's readily available to us. There are other things that we can do, we can start integrating into demand planning. We're kind of more on the supply planning side, if you will. But what happens if we integrate market data and customer decisions and what's happening on the store shelf in terms of inventory into our decision making?

  
  

  Steve Statler 27:48

  Can you say a bit more about that. So demand planning, who's the customer that will be using demand planning.

  
  

  Katherine Sizov 27:54

  So both the retailer and the supplier typically use demand planning, it's just it's just on the other side. So we're dealing, what we do is we deal with a variable supply, if you will. So we're helping a retailer and a supplier understand what their supply actually looks like. And then the both the retailer and the supplier use demand planning to forecast how much they think they will need to sell or to buy. So if a retailer doesn't do demand planning correctly, then they'll have either overstock shelves, which will mean more food waste, or under stocked shelves, which means less sales. And so figuring out how much consumers want and being able to adequately supply that is super important. And so what could we do with that additional data set if we linked both the supply to demand planning?

  
  

  Steve Statler 28:45

  Very cool. Well, this has been really interesting. Catherine, is there anything I should have asked you to give listeners a better picture of what you're doing?

  
  

  Katherine Sizov 28:56

  I think the easiest way to think about the supply chain is by who owns the product, because then then it becomes pretty easy to see who cares about food waste and quality improvements. So once it's been handed off from the supplier, it gets to the retailer and the retailer now owns the fruit. And so if anything happens to it, then they have an impact on their p&l. And so that's how we basically segment the supply chain is who is currently the steward if you will, of of this produce item and who is it going to hurt if you if you don't end up selling it or we're moving it along the chain. I think the last piece is also to the earlier point that food waste is not something that any individual company or institution can really address by themselves. It does kind of require a little bit of a concerted effort on behalf of the entire system in order to make an improvement which is oftentimes very challenging when you have you know buyer In a buyer supplier relationship, or a chain that just typically doesn't communicate with one another, but absolutely is is where we need to be going in the future.

  
  

  Steve Statler 30:10

  So it's funny, we have this tradition of asking I guess about the first three, favorite three songs. And I try and give people warning. But for better or worse, sometimes the message doesn't get through. So I know you've had no time to think about this. But Katherine, what would you say your three favorite songs I wanted his time and I like to ask people why because otherwise, it's like, I'm not doing this because I don't have enough things to listen to it. So it's an exercise to get to know you a little better.

  
  

  Katherine Sizov 30:47

  Fair enough. I would say my, one of my favorite songs is While My Guitar Gently Weeps by the Beatles. I think one of the reasons why I like it is that the lyrics are something that I can return to many different parts of my life, and I feel like they have relevance. I also, if you've ever seen prints playing that song, it's incredible. It's an goosebumps, Dawn, my shivers down my spine when I had first seen it. And I also just love songs that feature like some pretty strong guitar in them.

  
  

  Steve Statler 31:24

  Any musical instruments yourself?

  
  

  Katherine Sizov 31:27

  Not really, I don't really have talent for it. I tried piano for a long time, but it's just not unfortunately not as not as talented as like my brother. Other people. So but, but I do I do enjoy. I do enjoy strong guitar focused music. Another one kind of in that similar vein would be Mary Jane's last dance, Tom Petty song, which I know is a classic for a lot of people, but I actually only heard of Tom Petty a couple years ago. I did not grow up with a lot of American music, actually. And I love it. I love that kind of classic rock sound.

  
  

  Steve Statler 32:05

  And what sort of music did you grow up with?

  
  

  Katherine Sizov 32:09

  Um, I would say a lot of like Pink Floyd. Kind of more experimental music.

  
  

  Steve Statler 32:18

  So so English music or just

  
  

  Katherine Sizov 32:22

  yeah, some some English music, like you said, some kind of progressive acid rock. My dad was a big fan of like Madonna. And so I listened to a lot of what my dad liked. And he's a big audio file. So I remember one of the most kind of one of the most interesting moments of my life with my father was, you know, I asked him why do you have these humongous speakers? He had like these floor to ceiling monoplane holes. The speakers are in our living room and I'm like, these are huge and ugly, why do you have them and he sat me down in the middle of the, in the middle of our living room and played time by Pink Floyd. And the sound of all of those clocks at the beginning was so you could hear like every little tiny like tick of all these different clocks. And it was so unique and that he proceeded to play an album of just sounds like the sound of a train going by. And it was so transformative. So yeah, big thanks to my father for introducing me to to high quality music

  
  

  Steve Statler 33:32

  Yeah, I'm I wouldn't say I'm an audiophile but I do like dabbling in that space. I've got a tube amp you know, it's got these valves that looks very retro but it takes about a minute to actually turn on but for some reason, it makes me enjoy listening to the music. I'm not sure I could tell the difference but between that and a conventional amplifier, but anyway, okay, well that's super interesting. A number three, what's your third choice?

  
  

  Katherine Sizov 34:00

  I would just to be a little different I would put like from the other ones I would put right here right now by Fatboy Slim I would say that's the most hype song for me you know I can get into a very like I can get into a mood with that song whether it's working out or if I need to get some stuff done. If I listen to that song I'm like totally motivated to keep going.

  
  

  Steve Statler 34:24

  I love that. That that song and I love the album that it's off of I heard him being interviewed by what's his name is the one of the founding members of the Sex Pistols. It now lives in LA and he was talking to Fatboy Slim, and it was great to actually hear about his creative process, which apparently consists of taking a lot of drugs. And he's, I think, you know, a success in rock music is either being able to resist taking a lot of drugs or being able to function highly whilst taking a lot of drugs. And in his case, it seems to be the latter. So

  
  

  Katherine Sizov 35:06

  it seems like you can get to enlightenment in a couple of different ways.

  
  

  Steve Statler 35:11

  Indeed. Well, that was wonderful. Thanks very much for for sharing that, Katherine. Of course. Very good. Well, once again, thanks for talking with us. super interesting. Congratulations on your success. I hope you continue in that direction. Really appreciate it.

  
  

  Katherine Sizov 35:32

  Thank you so much.

  
  

  Steve Statler 35:34

  Well, I hope you enjoyed that. I certainly did. It was. It was awesome. And I love it when younger people appreciate older people's music, and I also enjoy learning stuff. And there's a lot I learned from that. If you enjoy learning, and you feel like it helps your entrepreneurial skills, your solution design skills, then please do continue to listen to our show. Tell your friends about it and tell the world about it via whatever podcasting social platforms you use. We really appreciate your listening most of all, that's the most important thing from so thank you for that, and we'll see you next time.