Building Skills with College Works Painting's Sean Phelps

Music Hi, this is Dr. Osses Al-Ligur with another episode, The Way to College Podcast. And, you know, I never anticipated where this podcast journey would take me, but it's been an incredible experience connecting with folks and listening to the stories of people, people's stories about how they've navigated college and schooling in general and where that has taken them. Today I've got a new guest. This is somebody who I've, this is the first time we're meeting. And so we spoke for a little bit just before we started recording. But what I'm going to do is with all my guests, I'm going to allow him to introduce himself. So, Sean, would you mind introducing yourself to our listeners and viewers out there? Sure. Yes, I'm Sean Thalbs. I'm the current president at College Works Painting. And I found a passion in my career for working with college students. I grew up in Illinois, went to college in St. Louis and eventually landed in Kansas City. So I spend most of my days not mentoring and training and helping college students and trying to be on the frontier of that, whether it's working with new AI projects in the college training space to teaching and mentoring one-on-one. It's just something I've developed a big passion for. Excellent. Awesome. Sean, I'm eager to get into your story. And so I always ask my guest, if you had to identify a starting point for your own educational journey, what would that starting point be for you? Starting point for me, definitely high school. My parents put me in a Catholic high school. And I remember at one point, we didn't have the money to pay tuition and they didn't really tell me. And they kind of worked out a side deal to like pay it back later. And what they told me, why they put me in that school was, you know, they wanted me to have a bright future and a lot of opportunities. And they felt like some of the career choices that they made were the choices of what they had to do and not necessarily what they wanted to do or something they were passionate about. So they told me, you know, we want you to get as educated as possible so that you can do what you want to do. If you want to be, you know, a McDonald's manager, and that's what you love and you're passionate about it. Go get so educated that you could also do anything else, but that you choose to do that and not fall into careers that you have to take because you don't have an option. So that was kind of an instilled lesson in me. Not pointing me in one direction, but just that I needed to kind of aim for the top of the mountain so that I could, and then I could choose where on the mountain I wanted to camp out. One, that's awesome that they would give you that freedom, but also that expectation that they wanted you to get educated. Sean, I've got to know what is it that your parents did for a living? Yeah, so my mother was a nurse and back when she went into nursing, you could have an associate's degree to do it. So she went going through nursing school and there's pictures of me at her nursing school graduation. So I was alive. She was working other jobs, you know, while raising me and grandparents were helpful in that process. And then my dad had multiple different jobs, eventually ended up in car sales. And then that was his longest, most stable career for a while, but it didn't require any kind of college degree. He jokes that he barely survived high school. And eventually he opened up his own car dealership. And that was when I was probably in high school or late middle school and he's built it to be a pretty successful business now. And growing up, we started with very humble beginnings. Humble beginnings, but it sounds like both of your parents, one, he had drive. Yeah. Right. I mean, to be a nurse, I mean, becoming a nurse, whether it's the associate's or a bachelor's degree, right, that takes work, that takes commitment, doing it with a young child, obviously. And then for your father to start as a car salesman and then to open up his own dealership. I mean, that's a lot of work. That's a lot of commitment. What is it that, you know, young Sean, right, you're going to this Catholic school, what is it that you wanted to do? I jumped around a lot. At first I wanted to be an architect. And did some school projects on architecture and took a couple classes with like AutoCAD. And figured out that wasn't exactly what I wanted to do. For a little while, I wanted to be a sports broadcaster. I helped actually bring my school, we were the first school in Illinois to live broadcast our sporting events on the internet, which at the time was kind of a big deal. And thought I was going to be on ESPN someday. And then shifted towards business. Because business gave me flexibility to be interested in a lot of things. Like I could be in a business role with an architecture firm or with a sports enterprise of some kind. So I thought, you know, business would drive me the most flexibility. And that's why I wound up focusing on in college. Wow. And you said, you know, your father didn't go to college. Mom earned an associates. They put you in this school because they wanted you to have more opportunities. Did you get any help navigating the college application process because I mean, you look at the landscape today and it is, you know, I think there's more information out there. I don't know that that's made it any more helpful. Right. Did you get any help? Yeah, so yeah, but I still chose to do it on my own and I was a pretty independent kid. So I remember being on a college visit somewhere and getting a call from my mom and she's like, Hey, are you going to be home for dinner or something like that? And I was like, no, I'm actually out of town on a college visit. So I was a kid who, you know, I bought a car when I was 16. I got my own cell phone. I always had jobs throughout high school, worked at a restaurant, a department store, landscaping mowing lawns in the neighborhood, like whatever I could do. So I wanted to be financially independent as much as I could. I've lived in their house and they, you know, provided meals and utilities and a roof. But if I wanted new clothes or, you know, something will fancier. That was up to me to go to go do. So I kind of took the initiative with college visits. They told me, you know, hey, this isn't a path that we went down. So, you know, the school had some guidance counselors. They weren't the most helpful. They were, you know, they tried to help and they were friendly, but they didn't know where to point what direction to point me in. Don, you, it sounds like whatever you were going to do, you were going to be successful. It sounds like, you know, here you are very opportunistic, maybe entrepreneurial, maybe. Where did that come from? That came from your dad? Where do you think that came from? Both. I mean, both my parents are really hardworking and they did instill, you know, tremendous values and provide a really loving support system. It just wasn't something the college experience and career stuff wasn't stuff that they had a ton of exposure to. Some of that was the community I grew up in. I mean, I grew up in Rockford, Illinois, which a lot of family and friends there still and I love Rockford, but it's not known as being a like beacon of capitalism. It's kind of a, it's on the Forbes list of worst cities in America pretty consistently. So, but there's great people there. So I didn't really know what direction to go in and, you know, I just started visiting schools. So I would go out and visit friends at older upperclassmen that I graduated and gone to Northern Illinois University and I'd say, can I come visit? Sometimes it wasn't even an actual campus tour and, you know, frankly, sometimes it was for the social aspects of I wanted to go be out of college campus with older kids. But while I was there, I would, you know, walk the campus or check out the business school or the engineering school or whatever I was interested in. And the actually my number one school was where I really wanted to go was the University of Miami. And I wasn't able to visit there because of, you know, the transportation. Yeah, get there. Sean. So you've got something that I think and I'm eager to get to the work that you're doing now because so in my role, I was in higher ed full time for about 20 years. I still teach part time, but I work with first year students, a lot of first generation college students. And, you know, I'm, I'm, I don't know if I should be surprised anymore. I think I'm more surprised that it feels like fewer students have work experience. Yeah, I run into a lot of students that are like, well, my mom and dad don't want me to work. And, you know, I started working at an early age. My father made me my father did auto body. And so from an early age, he took me out there and got me working with him. And that was a great experience for me. It sounds like for you, you know, you're approaching college but you've already got all of these experiences to kind of decide. I like this I don't like this. Maybe I'm interested in this I could see myself going down this path. And so I'm eager to get into the work that you're doing now and and in sort of helping students, right, giving them that that critical experience. Where did you decide to go to college after. And so, I decided on St. Louis University. They gave me the best scholarship. It was close enough to home that I could drive and I liked the idea of being a cool city. So those are the deciding factors. And what was that transition like Rockford to St. Louis. It's about a four hour, four and a half hour, five hour drive so it's not terrible. And when I got down there. So I always had work we mentioned that as a and I really liked working. My mom joke with me in high school of like, or I joke with her she asked you know why aren't you focused more on your report card and your grades and I said we can't spend a report card. You know, if I want to, I love the car, you know, I can't deposit this into my bank account and, you know, get a house someday. So I really was, you know, definitely money motivated and it wasn't just entrepreneurial, I, you know, even if it was a minimum wage job making five bucks an hour at the time, I would want to work as many hours as possible. So, and get to college right away I got some jobs so I got a job as a pizza delivery driver, and then I got a job at Hard Rock Cafe at the restaurant just as a host. I really wanted to be a server or a bartender because those got tips and paid a lot better but they told me, you know, you just got to start out as a host. I was to went through my university for a on campus internship so they had what they called an internship was called tech interns, but it was really just sitting in the computer lab and monitoring the computer lab. Really boring. Yeah, very no skills really being acquired there. And what was nice is it was like a paid study hall. I mean I could sit in the computer, nobody else came into the computer labs so I could just sit there, take out the trash, wipe down the counter, put some paper in the printer and then and then do my homework for the rest of my three hour shift so. So I was doing those and then looked into internships so because so I took out a lot of student loans. And one of my things I talked to college students about frequently is that I don't think student loans are always bad. I think they're great if they if you have a plan. If it's the only option and if you have if you understand, you know what you're what debt you're getting into and what income you need to generate to sustain it. And I've seen some really talented people that I think under, they were shot what they could in their career because they were afraid of a student loan and they didn't understand that like it could really help you so. So I did take out a lot of student loans but that also meant I had to make sure that I was going to pay him back. So I wanted to get internships right away my freshman year interviewed for a bunch. I'm curious I can tell you about those but eventually landed on college works painting where I got to run a house painting business as a freshman in college so they funded it. I get to go through training and mentorship and my hometown was my area so in the spring I started commuting home on the weekends to get clients. I've knocked on doors and put out signs and flyers and find people that wanted their house painted over the summer and then in the summer I got to manage crews so as my first real experience kind of running a business with actual payroll and taxes and you know the full full experience. Wow. Sean, we I want to take a step back because I really want to get your thoughts on this. I mean for the young people out there and maybe they're not in college yet maybe they're in high school but mom and dad don't want them working. Tell us about for you. What were the benefits of working. The yeah the independence I mean there's so many things that you learn in those roles of like just simply how to show up on time. Right and in your family. Everybody loves you. Hopefully unconditionally maybe not. Maybe not all the time, but in in a work environment. People want to be around somebody who contributes and somebody who you know holds up there under the bargain so if you're working at the restaurant and every time you leave. The host stand is a mess and it's disorganized and the restaurants running poorly. Your coworkers are going to let you know and they're going to say hey we need to do a better job. You left this really disorganized or you know the customers really upset we got worse tips and so I think that accountability of being part of a team. It's sort of like a team sport. But then also on the outside of that you get the experience of having a bank account and a credit score and a bill and being able to budget and handle personal finances and you get a head start on that. I can be tremendously valuable and make adulthood a lot easier. You. Thank you. Thank you for that. I appreciate that because I don't think I've had enough guests speak to that and to the benefit of working. And, you know, with some of the things that they learned early on. The, what I didn't want to ask though is, I guess we shouldn't be surprised that immediately you get to college you pick up a job or two. You seek out internships. You didn't have a lot of guidance. How did you know to do that particularly the internships. So there are a little bit of guidance I had a couple older cousins who were a lot older so I didn't really view them as peers they were 10 or 15 years older than me and then through college one was a partner at an accounting firm. And the other was she probably wasn't a partner yet, but she was at an accounting firm and the other was at a bank. And I wanted to go into business so I talked to them briefly, you know, wasn't really long conversations but you know what where should I start and they said, you know, maybe start with an internship. But one of the accounting firm referred me to their, you know, HR and said, Well, here's who you go talk to I don't hire interns but you know here's who you can go talk to you. And they really quickly said, we don't hire freshmen so you know, don't. We love you and we you know in three or four years come back and we'll talk to you but we're not going to talk to you yet. So that was a dead end but I had the idea of, I need to get an internship. I wanted to learn I mean I felt like, because I'd had the work experience in high school of, you know, retail and food and some of those standard jobs. And I mean, doing those jobs again or more of those jobs wasn't teaching me anything new and so in order to learn I needed to find an internship that would give me some kind of new experience. I am. You know, one of the common things that I see, at least yet in my university is most of our first year students. Won't visit the career center won't ask about internships until they're getting ready to graduate. And it sounds like one you had a head start. Right, he started to think about these things, whether it was through the advice of family or just your own kind of eagerness to learn and to work. What advice would you give a first year student that is maybe lost, maybe trying to find their way maybe hasn't settled on a major. Because it sounds like work gave you a lot of direction also. Yeah. What advice would you give to a first year student who's kind of maybe sitting back and is thinking about well I'll start doing that stuff later. How do we convince them to get involved sooner. Yeah, I think you have to jump in and realize like, what am I doing all this education for. Why am I paying, you know, thousands of dollars and putting all this time into this process of getting an education like what's that going to what's the end result and the end results probably something of a career that you're excited about you know whether it's because it's helps you support your family and achieve other goals or because you love the work you do. So why wait to get that process started. The sooner you find out I mean part of the reason I wanted to do these things was, what if I don't like them. What if I stink at them. I kind of want to know so I can change gears. There's still time right I thought there was more importance for me to do an internship my freshman year, because I didn't know and maybe if I had been more part of that educational bubble of everybody around me is going to. Already done all these things, and they all told me you know, have fun your freshman year. Join some clubs and organizations and you know Greek life your sophomore year junior year doing internship that they had laid that path out I might have just followed it, but nobody had so I just thought, well I have to get the experience now. So I can change if I don't like it if I go doing accounting internship my freshman year and I hate it well then I have time to still switch to finance I don't want to be three months away from graduation finding out that I don't like accounting. That would really stink. So to me it seemed like the experience should come as early as possible. So that I can make sure I'm doing the right thing. And so this leads you your your first year to to college works. Yeah. All right, tell us about that experience. Well it was it was a grind so I still think back. I give some time management trainings now and throughout our company I do a lot of training on time management and I think of how crazy that semester was so I was a freshman. The way St. Louis did credits you got if you were on the full time tuition you could take 12 to 18 credits and your tuition didn't go up so if you want to take more than 18 year to pay more so you know the advisors typically signed people up for 15 hours. I signed up for 18 because I thought you know it's basically three free credits like why wouldn't I get the free credits. And even if I you know fail or have to withdraw and I only for the drop date or whatever it doesn't hurt my transcript. I might as well try 18 hours and see and then if I. So I got 18 credit hours. I'm still working at pizza hut and hard rock cafe and the tech internship thing. So I had three part time jobs. Some of them were I was working like 10 hours a week but doing that and then on the weekends I would drive home. So about a five hour 300 miles on the dot from St. Louis to my hometown and I would spend Saturday and Sunday selling on improvement services house painting jobs and then come back Sunday night and go to school. So I had to do that for about seven weeks. Now at the time I went to college in 2004. So there was a lot of people my age that were over in Iraq. And so my rationalization to myself was my friends are over in Iraq. Their jobs 24 hours a day 365 and they could die. My work is delivering pizzas and knocking on doors and then go into class. And it's going to be really really busy for seven weeks. And then I'll get to the summer and it'll be okay. So it was crazy to think of like having two internships two part time jobs 18 credits and 300 mile commute back and forth between them. But you can do just about anything for seven weeks. Yeah. So I got through that summer went great. You know and I stayed with the company and then I've had some cool fun experiences throughout my career when I got to Kansas City I was still with college works training and mentoring college students and decided to get an MBA and while doing that joined a start up and I got the cool experience of being able to be part of a venture capital backed startup and I love that I thought I was going to leave and go do that permanently. And it was kind of my dream job and through that experience I discovered that I really was passionate about helping college students. And I remember the reason I jumped to that story is at a conversation with my dad where I couldn't pick between two jobs I was running this college painting business for I was mentoring hundreds of students a year to do what I had done when I was in college and I loved it. And it supported my family and it, you know, was fulfilling it was great. And then on the other hand I had this venture capital backed company I joined you're the fastest robo advisor to a billion dollars in assets under management. Getting that job was also really cool experience because it wasn't just applying and sending a resume. And we had grown we'd raised a bunch of venture capital, and they wanted me to be the director of finance and that was going to come with stock options and, you know, all this cool stuff and it also supported my family. So there's about three months where I was kind of handling juggling both full time jobs with my first kid and my wife and she was working and you're just, you know, really busy. I figured out that's kind of how we live life. So, any who I couldn't pick between these two roles. And after about two months of arguing with my dad about it he said, you know, you need to shut up and I don't want to talk to you about this anymore. He's like, well, because most people don't have one career they love, and you're, you know, sitting here with two and you can't pick between them. Why don't you just pick and move on. And I thought about that a lot and then he said, you know, the reason you're in this position of being able to choose between these two experiences is because of what you did, you know, in college then there all the experience you got and all the skills and resume and stuff. So it's a good thing all that paid off. And what he was trying to tell me was, hey, all that's the reason you went to go do the college works painting stuff was so that you could have this opportunity now. But what I heard was, gosh, you know, if I keep doing this and help more people. Kids out there like me that want that experience and want that training and help and it'd be a lot more fun to help them than it would to just help people with 401k maximize their returns. They already have jobs they already have careers, they're already contributing. Yeah, we're going to help them but like they don't need to help as much. And so that drove me back in and that's really what I spent the last decade, you know, continue and try to do is help motivate more college students to follow that path. Well, well, that's off to you because I think I think I don't know. I think a lot of people would have chosen the other path. For sure. Almost didn't. Yeah. You say you continue with college works all through throughout your undergrad. Yeah, I helped train I became basically a trainer so we call it a district manager but I got to help train and supervise other students going to the experience. Tell us about college works. What's your role in and and I guess because it's it's a big operation tell us about it. Yeah, we operate from Texas, all the way up through Minnesota and North Dakota, so Iowa Nebraska. So that's kind of our Western boundary we're looking to expand to Colorado in the next year or two. And then on the east it's Ohio, Indiana, Michigan. So kind of that wedge in the middle of the country, primarily in the Midwest. And we're going to expand into more markets in the next few years but we teach college students how to run a house painting business. Think of it sort of like a franchise that you don't buy or venture capital investor that you know funds you and helps you so students go through the interview process. Several steps throughout the fall and the spring they go through about seven steps in the interview process and if they're selected they go to a training event in the spring when they launch. And they're going to learn how to run a business so they do everything from knock on doors to hire employees train employees, did the jobs talk to the customers, a little bit of marketing sales management, kind of the whole nine yards, they're doing it with the security blanket of they're really just an employee of college works, they're not truly their own business they don't have to set up their own bank account or get an EI and or anything like that so they're operating under our business as a W to employee, using our credit line to buy employees and so we're providing the cash flow for the business. And then we also provide them with a guaranteed base pay so they get a base of six grand for the summer is kind of their minimum earnings. If they perform really well, do lots of projects have a high margin they can earn quite a bit more money we've had students that have earned up over $50,000 in the summer, while the unit in school so Wow. So it's a really fun experience because they learn a lot. You're kind of preparing them for the pros. The way I explain it is it's like a college sport. If you want to be a basketball player, you don't just take classes about basketball, right you've got to go play basketball. And most other parts of education you know a lot about more about this than I do is a but have kind of a some sort of work study right it's like doctors go through residencies teachers go through student teaching engineers tend to do some kind of co op or whatever business is the one where it's less common like there's internships but you're kind of on your own to figure it out it's not part of your educational curriculum usually I know there's a couple universities that do do that but a lot of business students just take classes and then go graduate. So, I think you know playing the sport, getting to actually talk to real customers real employees deal with real budgets is the way to truly get skilled at something, and then translate that from I was in house painting to now I'm going to go into software sales or accounting or whatever it might be consulting whatever career path they're interested in. Yeah, it sounds it sounds like you're giving them, like you said, other than having them, you know, create a bank account, you know, apply for an EI and it sounds like everything else right they've got to do this they're running this the show and and and so, you know, selling their services, communicating with clients, doing the work right, follow through like there are so many skills. I'm already I'm just hearing so many skills that they're learning that are transferable to almost any field. So regardless of what they do. They've got all of these skills that they've masked and that they've been working on, you know, over the course of potentially. I mean they can start as soon as what freshman year. Yeah, yeah, we don't hire a ton of freshmen but some do get selected so some of them continue with us, you know, all throughout college. You know, some use this as kind of a stepping stone where they build a really solid resume, and then sophomore junior year they're getting, you know, more internships in their field that maybe they would have had a hard time getting without enough work experience so either way. But again, I think the point is, regardless of what internship you focus on, getting experience early is so critical because you got to figure out if you're heading in the right direction. Is there. You've worked with. I mean, you probably lost count number of students that you work with. Yeah, I think I probably interviewed 10,000 students individually like for multiple hour interviews in my career but worked with probably a few thousand. Wow. Is there is there a type that you find that typically applies for this kind of work in this opportunity. So yeah, it's not what everyone would automatically think right the the gut would be okay outgoing extroverted person is going to go do sales management. We've had some highly successful introverts in fact some of our top performers have been really introverted people. But I think they're problem solvers and hard workers. They want to learn they want to grow. They respond really well to failure because you're going to fail a lot. Right. There's no way every door you knock on is going to say I want my house painted, and there's no way every person you go do a pitch with is going to buy a paint shop. So, even every day on the job, just managing a crew and figuring out, and here's what we want to get done today. You know, we're going to try and get these two sides of this house painted today. And then you get to the end of day and you're like, oh, we only got one and a half sides painted and oh no we're behind schedule. So there's so many failures we need people that are really tough and we find actually work experience is a big correlator for us so we did a study. We asked 1000 questions basically to our new hires. Are you on student organizations, leadership roles, high school GPA college GPA, everything you could you could think of. And then we looked at, you know, who were the most successful and who succeeded not everybody succeeds either our students, you know, drop out after two or three weeks. And who were successful and who are the most successful. We found work experience to be very correlated to having three years of work experience. Even if that was, you know, a part time job. Now over the summers we also found people that had worked over 30 hours a week prior. Really we want full time but we didn't really not everybody gets full time hours as a young person from an employer, or maybe they have two part time jobs that add up to over 30 hours a week. So, well we found that students that are really successful aren't just outgoing or natural leaders but their people are just hard working and they played varsity sports, they had a 3.0 GPA. They have worked 30 hours a week over the summer before they've worked for three years. And those are some of the big leading indicators and also qualifications that we look for. Wow. Wow. How many students do you all employ today. Today we have about 300 students that are in our management roles. So those are the branch managers that run a business and then we also painters over the summer so painters this summer I want to say there's about 2000 total painters company wide so so total 2000 2500 employees. Now that's for about 12 weeks. And then it's, then we're down to, you know, less than 100. Wow. Oh my gosh. But, I mean you're creating opportunities for these students every summer. Potentially 2500 students every summer. Wow. Yeah. Sean, what does this work taught you. A lot. Gosh, it's affected me a lot as a parent. So I've got three kids. I've got three sons that are once going into eighth grade. Now there's going into sixth and the other's going into second grade in the fall. And how I parents give you an example my oldest he's in eighth grade now so he's been in boy scouts I didn't do boy scouts but when he expressed an interest in boy scouts I said yeah let's do it because if you're interested in something and you want to put time into it and it's going to give you life skills, you know I want you to be a part of it. But through that experience like he's been able to go out and do merit badge colleges is what the boy scouts have where they go to the University of Missouri on a Saturday to get a merit badge, and they go to the University of Kansas, you know in the spring for a weekend to get a merit badge. So he's already been to like four or five colleges. I had never stepped foot on a college campus, you know, probably junior senior high school. So I'm definitely more forward thinking and that stuff. In terms of like management. I mean so many lessons about customer service and safety and employees and responsibility and time management and I mean I could go on and on about all that stuff I think most of the skills it takes to be successful in today's kind of economy are pretty universal. And to make somebody maybe a great lawyer is the same kind of skills that would make them a great banker, or a great doctor, right there. They all have to be really curious and constantly learning. They also work really hard. They'll have to have great relationship building skills with coworkers and customers or clients patients whoever they're working with on a day to day basis. They'll be able to care about people and make a difference in people's lives and be responsible fiscally and so I think all those skills are pretty universal. And these are, you know, because I remind students that a lot of the skills that they'll need moving forward, regardless of what they do, are skills like that skills that they may not necessarily learn in the classroom but will definitely learn hands on in a job right where folks are counting on them and performing and their expectations placed on them. So thank you. Thank you for the work that you're doing. You know, Sean, as with all of my guests, as we transition out, what last piece of advice would you like to leave for the college student out there? I would encourage them to get involved early, whether it's a part time job, a micro internship, a summer internship, just finding something to do besides school. I think it'll help keep you busy. It'll help create positive experiences. I think it leads to good mental health. You'll learn about budgeting financials, like creating your own, you know, personal financial goals. So there's so many skills that can be learned from that. I would encourage them to get out early and I would encourage, you know, any parents listening to consider that, yes, we need students to be focused in school, but they need to do more than that, you know, they need. And work's going to take the time allotted. I think that's Parkinson's Law work absorbs or whatever the time that's allotted. So if you give somebody all day to go to two college classes, they'll take all day to do that. But if you give them half a day, because half the day they got to go work at the restaurant or do something else, they can still get it done and they can still be effective. But that pressure to perform the time management skills learned, I think it's just critical. So I would encourage everybody to get involved as early as possible. Thank you. That's wonderful advice. Now for college students that want to get involved with college works is college works sort of affiliated with universities like do you have partnerships with universities? Yeah, yeah, so you can certainly just go to collegeworks.com and apply or follow our socials and kind of see what we're up to. Most universities we connect with through handshake that's that's primarily the career services platform that a lot of them use. But that changes all the time and some of them have custom ones. So, you know, go through there. But yeah, LinkedIn and just our website. Okay, okay. Do me a favor. Once we're done, send me those links and I can share them in the show notes for our listeners and viewers out there. Absolutely. Sean, one thank you. Thank you for joining me today. Thank you for sharing your story. And congratulations on the work that you're doing. I know, speaking for myself, I, and I was telling my wife this the other day. I said, I think whatever success I have, right, however you want to define it but what I'm most proud of I think in my accomplishments that I've, I've achieved, I think a lot of that has to do with my work experience. And whether it was learning to show up every day, learning to meet my boss in this case my father's expectations, right. But, you know, and being accountable. Work ethic, all of that everything I owe not to school but to the education I got on the job. And so, yeah, I'm so excited to see that you're doing this for thousands of students every summer. Because I know they're better for it. I feel blessed to be a part of it and found, you know, my calling so I love that what I did, I get to do what I get to do and then thanks for having me on to share. Sean, thank you. This concludes another episode of the way to college podcast. Thank you to my guests. Thank you to our listeners and viewers out there. Remember to share the podcast with one other person. Don't forget to subscribe rate, all of that good stuff. And we'll see you again next time. Thank you and bye bye. Thanks, Azar.