The Way to College Podcast - Ep 184 - Carlos Cardenas

Hi, this is Dr. Ossis. I'll leave it with another episode, The Way to College podcast. And one of the amazing things about the podcast is the opportunity to, I think, to share space with folks who have amazing stories. When I set out to do this, I wanted to share these stories with my students because I think a lot of them, one had a very narrow view about what they could do with their lives and the paths they could take. And I think a lot of my students felt like there was one path. And that was it. And I wanted to share the stories because I wanted them to see that there are multiple paths and multiple pathways to success. And so I'm excited about today because today is another story in this collection of amazing stories. And so I'm excited about hearing this gentleman's story. But what I'm going to do is I'm going to let him introduce himself to our listeners and viewers out there. So Carlos, would you mind introducing yourself to our listeners out there? Yeah, thanks, Dr. Saldivar. My name is Carlos Cardenas, born and raised in Chicago. Full time job. I'm a senior director of IT for a national credentialing organization. We certify and recertify nurse anesthetists, a proud Marine Corps veteran. You know, served four years, got out right before 9-11. And then after 9-11, raised my hand to go in another year. And I'd like to volunteer. So I serve on various committees also helped co-found or found nonprofit organizations. And so give a quick shout out to Association Latinos. Mission is to elevate, you know, Latino leadership in the association profession. So I could go on and on, but that's a quick introduction. Thanks for having me, Dr. Saldivar. No, thank you, Carlos. And I'm excited, as I said, I'm excited to hear more about your story. And we'll get it. We'll get to sort of that that ethic, that volunteerism and that service. So I'm excited to get into it. But before we do that, Carlos, I start every interview, every conversation with the same question. And that question is, if you had to identify a starting point for your educational journey, what would that starting point be for you? You know, if I look back, I would say there are probably multiple starting points, right? And I would probably call it an awakening of sorts, right? And so, you know, even going through high school, I'm not sure if I was probably the most astute student, maybe not the most involved student, but kind of where it all kind of came together in terms of thinking about maybe the future and where education plays a role. You know, I would say that is enlisting in the Marine Corps, right? And so coming from Chicago's little village neighborhood, not many opportunities. You know, I saw military service as an escape, but you're on your own. You're in this new world. For me, it was, you know, Okinawa, Japan. That was my first duty station. My family wasn't around. My friends were not around. You know, I had to kind of stand up for myself. I had to compete. So I think at that point, I realized kind of the power of people coming together. And then I at that point, I also could see like a future in terms of where education, you know, was important. So fast forward a little bit, kind of getting out of the Marine Corps and rolling in, you know, community college courses. I always had a passion for mathematics. And so I felt like that opened up another world for me in terms of how to like look at things and perspective and the analytics of things. And I think that is where that first awakening happened in terms of education. Education for me was not a straight line. You know, it took it. It took its turns and we'll get to that. But I would say that was the first awakening in terms of like, ah, this is what. This is what education can unlock for you in terms of controlling my own destiny. I'm in charge of my future. Like that was the first awakening. I love that. I appreciate that Carlos, because I think I'm thinking about what you said about enlisting in the Marines. When I talk to young people and it's a it's a really powerful narrative that we tell young people and kind of like frame life in these like stages, right? High school and this is this critical stage. And I think a lot of students feel like, oh, if I miss it, if I miss this, then this doesn't happen and this doesn't happen. And so I appreciate you talking about like, so I, you know, I didn't enroll in college right after high school, right? I enlisted. That was a different decision. Nonetheless, it still led me to, right? Again, these different pathways that you talk about, that was, let me ask you, what was it? You talked about the freedom you saw the military and the Marines as there was a freedom associated with it. But what else was it about enlisting that appealed to you? You know, I consider myself privileged in terms of, you know, being able to experience an enlistment and the Marine Corps to enlistments in the Marine Corps. I feel like it exposed me to the broader America, right? Folks that I normally would not be able to like, you know, insert your analogy, right? Being a foxhole with rub elbows with or even just be, you'll have a relationship with from all parts of the United States, even some immigrants. Right? That was my first exposure to saying like some people actually enlist. And give, you know, four years or X number of years of their lives for a path to citizenship. So just kind of being exposed to that. And, you know, I'll say most people that enlist in the Marine Corps probably don't have or maybe underprivileged in terms of their normal. There are some that you'll have some privilege. And when I say privilege, I mean, maybe access to resources, access to education. Maybe they want to challenge. But I think for the most part, from what I've seen, I think that's what I'm what the story that I was able to gather is that, you know, people don't have a shot, maybe they don't have the funds for college. Maybe they're a single parent, maybe they're going away from a not an abusive father, but a strict father, right? Follow my rules. This is what I want for you, right? And teenagers tend to rebel and maybe the Marine Corps is an outlet or any military service. So I think that is why I say I'm privileged in terms of being exposed to that. And I think that has carried forward probably throughout my entire life and where I'm at now. That's there's some formative things that happen in your life. That is definitely one of those formative experiences. It shapes the way that I see the world today. I love that. And I appreciate that. Thank you, Carlos. You then led us to enrolling in a community college. Why was that important for you? You know, again, I feel like once you getting out of the Marine Corps, you maybe you see yourself at a different tier, excuse me. Maybe you see yourself at a different tier in life. And so kind of having challenged yourself against other Marines, you kind of see where you stand, right? Where you measure up. And we talked about the importance of education and that awakening. And so, you know, I knew that I wanted to explore engineering. Again, I was not the strongest in school. So I feel like there were some topics and mathematics that I had to brush up on. And so that was my path. That was the beginning of my journey. That was my path to to an engineering degree. So community college, take some sort of, you know, self assessment, you can call it probably some mathematics to see if you need to take algebra, geometry, trigonometry. And so enrolled in some courses and kind of trying to get back into trying to react to civilian life. And so it took a couple courses and then that, you know, transformed into a couple semesters and then 9-11 happened. And so, you know, I can I can recall exactly when that particular that when that happened, I think I had a class that morning. I think it was a trigonometry class. But, you know, seeing that on live TV, seeing it unfold, I made the decision right there and then didn't know exactly how. But I was going to drop community college and I was going to try to find a way to get back into the Marine Corps. So that was my first thing, right, in terms of education. It was it was disrupted for important reasons. But that was my first thing that that was the reason why I went to community college. You know, on the path to becoming an engineer, but it was it was disrupted for good for good purposes. No, absolutely. One, thank you. Thank you for your service to, you know, we. We so often were quick to to to frame right educational experiences around a classroom around an institution. And yet. For all of the veterans that I've spoken to, it sounds like the military experience itself is an incredible education. And as you said, right, you know, a lot of people go to college and in college, that's where their first they first meet people that are different from them. And you talked about how that was your experience in the Marines and meeting people from, you know, all over the world, different, you know, religions, races, right, immigrants. And so, you know, why was it? Why was it just as I'd asked you, why was it important or what was it that attracted you to the Marines? And maybe this is a no brainer, but I feel like I've got to ask why reenlist? Why was that significant? Why was that important for you? You know, I felt I was I had just separated from active duty in in August 2000. And so I was still my proximity to service was was still there. The second part was the last place that I served was in Arlington, Virginia. And I believe the plane that flew into the Pentagon, you know, went directly over the building where I used to serve Navy annex. It's no longer there. I think there's a memorial. And so the Marines that I served with, they were still there, right? And so some part of me just compelled me to say, you know, again, I'm not an infantryman, I was not going to pick up a rifle rounds were not going to go down range. I have my background. My MOS was in comms. I just had to get back into it. However, I could help for the Marines that I served with. That was my the purest reason in terms of why I had to go back. Why I dropped everything without hesitation and some hesitation. But mostly without hesitation. That was what compelled me to go back into active duty service. You did this for a year. I did this for a year. You know, so you're from September, I think October, actually. So maybe maybe a month later, I was already, you know, in the going through the process of reenlisting. So going back and reactivated, you could say into active duty service. When that year was up. Was it was it an easy transition? Was it just let me pick up, let me get back into the classroom? What was the next step for you? And what was that transition like? You know, after that year, you know, I had the choice of staying in longer. I probably could have made a career out of it. But I think family brought me back to Chicago. And still, it took me a while to kind of readjust. You know, sometimes when you transition away from the Marine Corps, you kind of feel like an outsider. Your family sometimes can be like strangers, right? Because now you've had this experience, you've made these connections. And now you go back to being a civilian and just something doesn't. Something is different about you. Something is different about them. Not sure if I can fully articulate that. But it took me a while. Had my battles. It took me a while to readjust into, we say, the civilian life, right? And I think after that happened, you know, I was just as determined to get back into that educational journey. You know, and at that point, I finished my associate's degree, so went through all of the requisite classes, prerequisite classes. And I was still deficient in terms of enrolling into an engineering program. We have UIC, University of Illinois at Chicago. And so, you know, Physics One, Calculus One, Two, Three. I had to go to different community colleges after the associate's degree you're to earn those those credits and basically meet the requirements. Some two, maybe three years later, I had those prerequisites. I applied for the College of Engineering at UIC was accepted. You know, at that point, it was like, wow. I'm in the thick of it, right? And a whole nother set of challenges kind of presented themselves. Carlos, thank you. Thank you for that. Let me ask you. You talked about that transition. And it was a difficult transition. You talked about going through your battles. You know, and one of the beautiful things about the podcast and engaging in hearing people's stories is I love the advice that people offer and I'll often ask my guests to offer some advice because we, you know, I never know who's listening, right? We don't know who's listening. And if they're a student, if they're maybe a veteran transitioning, you know, into civilian life, but for somebody who is a veteran and who finds themselves in the midst of that transition, what advice would you give them? You know, I'll say that, you know, exiting or transitioning from military service. You probably think you can figure out things yourself and you probably can, right, to a certain extent. But I hear from so many veterans on how hard it is adjusting back to normal life for all of the reasons that I mentioned and probably more, you know, depending on their experience, don't try to figure it out all by yourself. I think this is where, you know, you probably seek groups. Others have walked in your shoes before you even, you know, set foot, right, down that path. So try to learn from them, right? Try to seek them out. There are probably many groups that talk about this very challenge. And for the reasons that you just mentioned, you know, maybe there's something that you hear that resonates with you where it might save you X number of months or X number of years. Just to say like, oh, I understand what this with this guy or girl is telling you're saying, right? And so, you know, maybe your path to reacclimating can be that much faster. If you try to figure it out on your own, you'll probably still get there. Maybe you won't. But I feel like seek seek out the advice of others who have been there, who have done that, who have faced challenges. But at the end, right, they've they've they've come out. And they've readjusted and, you know, maybe that just hearing that story can help your journey. Thank you. And I think it's important, right? I think I don't know if it was in our conversation in the lead up to this, right, in that pre call that we had. But there are always these themes that emerge from these conversations. And one of the one of the themes, one of the reoccurring themes is my guests often encourage the listeners and people out there to develop these help seeking behaviors, right, to be comfortable asking for help and that it's not, you know, it's not a sign of weakness or beneath you to ask somebody, you know, especially people that whose job, right, is to provide help and support for us. So thank you. Thank you for for kind of for talking about that and sharing your own experience with that. You, you know, you readjust, you, you know, you get into this program. And well, I often ask guests like looking down the road, what is it that you were seeing for yourself? What is it that you wanted to achieve? You have this this career in the Marines or time in the Marines, you go back to school. And what was it that you were working towards? You know, I call this kind of the second awakening, right, in terms of the educational journey. And so, you know, getting accepted into the College of Engineering, part of that is you carry. There's these expectations, right, that you maybe your family brings them upon you, maybe society, maybe the, you know, the Marine Corps brings them on you, but there's these expectations. And so, you know, based on my MOS, based on those expectations, based on the expectations that I've placed on myself, you know, I was on the path to becoming an engineer. So I saw myself, right. And so not not an easy path. Not at all. Right. So again, these concepts were mathematics and physics come together. And again, just just whole new world that opens up. I'm not sure if I was ready for it, to be honest. But but I did see kind of, you know, the importance, you know, of this educational journey, simultaneously, right, trying to earn a living, trying to pay the bills, trying to grow a life outside of that. I didn't have the luxury. I mean, I had the GI Bill, but some of it, you know, had had run its course. And so some of it was like, how do I pay for this? So I had to put food on the table. You know, I had to have, you know, a place to stay. And so these extra, these extra burdens, right. And so, you know, at some point they weigh on you. And you may have, and in my story, right, had a few years under my belt in terms of, you know, on the path to becoming an engineer. I like to say kind of life got in the way. And so I had to step away from that. Came back a few times, took a few classes, got to a senior standing. Um, life happened again. And so, you know, had the benefit of my employer, helping subsidize some of those educational expenses, but then that option was no longer there and left to my own, right? Devices in terms of trying to figure out how do I pay for this? Just didn't have the money. So I had to step away from that, from that dream. Still saw, saw myself in terms of, I guess I saw the world differently again. Right. In terms of these two, these two disciplines and the way that I look at systems. So in terms of where did I see myself? I guess to answer your question directly, I did see myself as an engineer. I did maybe did not see in hindsight all of the challenges that what I, that I would encounter that would get in the way of me becoming an engineer. So long story short, senior standing had to step away, had to get back into the workforce. And my, my educational journey did not, did not finish, but my story hasn't, hasn't been completed yet. Absolutely. Absolutely. And, and, you know, that's one of the reasons why I do this because, because again, right, we, we, we operate. I think when we're young operating around these, these models and these ideas about this happens to here and this has to happen here. And, and here you are, you know, you're navigating life. You're navigating the challenges and, and as you said, right, life happens. Yet you continue to persist. You continue to come, you know, come back, go to school, take a couple of classes, all the while navigating life. And I imagine. Throughout this process, did you get discouraged? Absolutely. I mean, part of it is, you know, you know, did I not finish because of, because of me, you go through that, am I not good enough type of thing? Am I not smart enough? Do I not have what it takes to be an engineer? So I think, you know, if you don't meet your, your goals, that self doubt starts to creep in. I don't know if you overcome it, but you kind of, you have to kind of fight it off. Right. It's always there. Yeah. And so you have to figure out a way to say, like, I didn't get it done, but, but I'm not done. So I think you have to reframe your failure and reframe it into how am I going to, not necessarily how am I going to convert this into a success story, but how am I going to overcome this challenge? Yeah. So that's how I, and that's how I look at it. And so how did you reframe? So I had to keep you. I entered the workforce. You know, I did have background. I like, again, I like to experiment. I like to tinker. So information technology just revolved around technology, right? So now introducing some of these concepts that I had learned in terms of signals and signals, I think, is that I'm going to be able to do that.哎哎哎哎哎哎哎哎哎哎哎哎哎哎哎哎哎哎哎哎哎 And I just felt like I had, even though I could say that I served in a globally leading Marines, even though I could say that I was an IT professional and I wasn't too bad. Even though I could say that I was leading volunteer teams, founding nonprofits, always in the back of my mind is that, man, I did not finish. There's still some, there's still unfinished business. And so, at that point, it's always there. It's always there. It's always nagging at you. And thankfully, it didn't go away completely. And so I felt like, man, I've got to be, I like to talk the talk. I've got to get back in that classroom and I've got to finish what I started. Maybe not necessarily the same educational goals that I had before. And on the other side, not saying like, I'll take any degree, but I had to kind of say like, well, what am I doing now? What makes more sense for me right now? Because an electrical engineer, at that point in time, no longer made sense. So I had to kind of adjust and pivot. I appreciate you saying that. Because I think what you said was really important because you said, right, what made sense at that point? So where you were kind of assessing the situation, assessing where you're at and figuring out, okay, does it make sense to do this if I want to continue in this field? And I, it's incredibly timely. I had a conversation last night. A friend of mine calls me and is like, should I do a doctoral in this field? But he wants to do this. Like, well, do the other thing. You don't need the doctor for that to do that work, right? So what do you need for that work? So here you are. You have this realization. You decide you're going to pivot. And so what came next for you? Cuddles. Yeah. So I just, I had to figure out again, as an adult learner, you know, somebody who probably put in 50 hours of, you know, time in terms of my work week, normal job, and then my volunteer extracurriculars. You know, what was that educational institution that made sense for me? You know, after some digging, after some conversations, after some recommendations, you know, Purdue Global kind of emerged as, wow, this, this is a good opportunity for me to take night classes on my time, right? And thankfully, a lot of the, a lot of my educational experience, a lot of the courses that I took transferred over. So I didn't have to start from zero. I didn't even have to start from the halfway point. So a lot of them, you know, transferred over and I was able to finish the degree. I don't know, I'm skipping a lot, but I could see the light at the, at the end of that educational tunnel. And I think my journey from start to this is the third time I'm going back. I think it was about 15 months. And so as much as it, I don't want to use the word sucked as many challenges as there were in terms of, you know, again, putting in sacrificing those weekends, sacrificing, you know, the night, sacrificing time, you know, with my family, missed a lot of events, missed a lot of different, you know, experiences, I would say, but I would say I was, I was, I was focused. And in 15 months, you know, I was able to finally walk that stage at Purdue Global, which is here in Indiana, I'm in Chicago. And this was in May of 2024. So it's almost been a year. Wow. Wow. Congratulations. No, thank you. I appreciate that. What did that feel like to walk across that stage? You know, part of me was like, you know, had myself on the back. Part of me was like, I did it. But, you know, the other part, I felt like I was like an out of body experience if I can call it that, right? So now I'm in, and not for me personally, right? I'm in this auditorium. And there are probably about 500 other people, probably more, who have a similar story to mine, and just kind of talking and hearing their stories. Again, I felt like that out of body experience was like maybe hovering over the auditorium and like listening to other people and their journeys, which, you know, again, if I had to like describe it, some of them had even, you know, more challenges, more obstacles in their life than I did, right? So I had a deeper sense of appreciation that, you know, I'm not the only one doing this. There are others that are still made the decision wherever they're at in their life, whatever economic opportunities they have or they don't have. However many, you know, members of their family that they have, obviously raising a family, there's a story here as well. Why do people do this, right? So I took myself out of that. I'm just like, why do people do this? Why do people sacrifice the nights and the weekends to get this degree, right? Yeah, obviously some things are pretty straightforward and you know why, but there's other things in terms of, man, I said I was going to do something 20 years ago, 15 years ago, 10 years ago, and here I am, I finally did it, right? So I feel like you have to give yourself some grace. Yeah, not the best thing in the world, obviously, right? I mean, to some people, yeah. I mean, to some extent, yes, it was for me, but more so that, you know, I set out to do something, I did it. I can, there's always that self-doubt that you carried with you because you don't have that degree. Some of that was gone, some of that still remained, but you know, finally able to kind of, you know, be done with it. And again, education is a lifelong pursuit, but in terms of that particular chapter, I was able to turn the page. Yeah. Well, again, congratulations on that journey and completing the task, right? You set this out for yourself. They set this, this was a goal for you, you know, like you said 20 years ago and then to see that through. Congratulations, I know. Thank you. There are, it sounds like in hearing your story, there were a lot of moments where you could have stepped away and you could have said, you know what, this isn't for me or whatever. How do I afford it? Right? You talked about that, but you persisted, you continued, you saw it through. So again, congratulations. One thing that I wanted to ask, hearing your story, hearing what you've shared so far, you kind of glossed over, you talked about leading, right, leading teams as a Marine, but you kind of glossed over these nonprofits. And I want to go back to that because I want to ask about, you know, work. I feel like we work a lot of times because bills have to be paid, right? I've got to provide. If I've got a family, I've got to provide for the family. I've got to put food on the table. I've got to feed myself, right? But when we choose to get involved in a nonprofit and even to start a nonprofit, those are choices. Those are things we don't have to do. Why has that been, because it sounds like service has been a part of your life. Why has that been so important to you? You know, service does not end when the uniform comes off, right? Service continues. And, you know, I like to say that. And maybe it's true for any, you know, somebody who has served, you know, you find your new mission, you find your new purpose. And so I've always thought it was a privilege to lead Marines, you know, to help people on their journey, right? And sometimes you're that junior Marine, you need help. And sometimes you're that, you know, senior Marine where you can help others. So so founding a nonprofit, you basically recognize an opportunity. There's something that's, there's a gap somewhere. And so, you know, a privilege to be able to come together with, you know, four other Latinos, five, including myself. I guess here's the here's the the background story, the context behind that. You know, Hispanic Heritage Month, we were asked, hey, five Latinos, right? Come together. Let's talk about Hispanic Heritage Month. Let's also tie that to nonprofit association membership in terms of one to 2% representation. So I was in privy to that research before those statistics, but right then and there, right, you could kind of see people's expressions and reactions. Like if it's only one to 2%, you've got to do something about this. So a little bit fast forward on in terms of that conversation, you know, but right then and there, I think the five of us came together and said, let's meet every week, right? Let's have these conversations. Let's see, you know, there's something here. Maybe we weren't exactly sure what that something was. But the more that we talked, the more that, you know, the opportunities and the challenges started to kind of uncover themselves. And so took us a little bit. We created a community on LinkedIn, gathered a little bit of a following, tried to kind of bring other Latinos together. We knew that we're out there. We were just not kind of talking to each other. We were not aware. And so create the space for the community, create the space for people to kind of have conversations with each other. And then at some point it started to migrate into how do we elevate the Latino? How do we put them in roles from a professional development perspective as subject matter boards? Because for leadership, we were just not there. We were not represented in nonprofit boards. We were just not there. We were not represented. You know, sometimes you have your token Latinos. We'd like to say, right, you get in there and you're comfortable. You're comfortable being the only Latino. You might not help others come along. And so that was the opportunity, the challenge. And that's where we kind of refocused our mission. We incorporated as a nonprofit in 2000, I think it's 2021. And ever since then, we've started to gain some traction. Other affinity groups started to gravitate towards and say, like, hey, what are you guys, we like what you're doing here. Can we have a conversation? There are other groups where we want to kind of replicate this. And then we had 10 volunteers. The first year we had that double to 20. This year it's double to a 40, almost 50. If you think about the board and committee members. So there's something here. People want to be heard. People want to network. People want opportunity. They want to learn from people who have been there. I talked about people having different on ramps in terms of their career. People want that opportunity. And if given that opportunity, I think as Latinos, it's in our culture, it's the way that we were brought up. It's in our family, right? The immigrant mentality, working two jobs, doing whatever it takes to put your kids through school to put food on the table. That's our frame of reference, right? So give me a shot. Give me a shot. Put me in coach and I can do the rest type, the rest of it. So that's where we are. That's association Latinos. Wow. Well, I am. Yeah. And I know in our conversation, right? And and even this is partly how we met, right? Was through these associations. And so I wanted to make sure we gave that the attention and that it deserved because, again, it sounded like such a significant part, but also it kind of alluded to this larger commitment to service throughout your your story. Carlos, tell us about the work that you're doing now. So the work that I do now, you know, on a sad note, this is the last year for I am the immediate past chair of the ASAE, American Society of Association Executives Tech Council. So we've got 25 volunteers, data scientists, IT directors, you know, sometimes in the legal profession, sometimes executive directors. So we come together with liaisons, you could say, right, of the association profession in general. So we tried to solve association nonprofit challenges. What are the things that they should be focused on? Everybody talks about the importance of data and leveraging that, but nobody really talks about the ugly truth in terms of data's messy. You have to have a process to make sure that you you validate it. You have to get to a point where it's trustworthy. Now you can start to get insights. Now you can start to do predictive analytics. Now you can feed into machine learning models. And that basically leaves you at the doorstep of generative AI and where we are today. In terms of frameworks, selection, selecting CRM's. In terms of technology leadership, these that's the spectrum of topics that we tackle as a tech council. But but not only that, and it's not just isolated, right? This organization, ASAE has research foundations. They have foresight committees. They have membership committees. They have marketing committees. And so one of the things that, you know, I'm I'm very proud of is the same mentality in terms of building teams and bringing people together, bringing these various committees because you can talk about a particular organizational challenge, but from the perspective of just technology, I think is a misrepresentation. It's a missed opportunity. So having representation from membership, because guess what? We're data, you know, aligns with membership, retention and renewal. Having conversations with marketing, because guess what? That's an important part of retaining members. Foresight, that's an important part of leadership research. That's an important part in terms of making decisions, right? So, you know, I felt like I was privileged to be able to bring these people, these professionals together to have much more rich conversations that go beyond just technology, they transcend it. So again, I think in every walk of life and every opportunity, I tried to follow that same, same blueprint. I don't like to necessarily stay in my lane. And sometimes I get my hands lapped for that. Sometimes it's a lesson I have to learn hard way, but that's OK, right? You live and you learn, but as long as we're able to kind of enrich the conversation, advance the profession, to me, that's a success. So that's where I kind of am right now. Also, I'm privileged to be a founding board member for a veterans chamber of commerce. You've got your veteran entrepreneurs, right, who have their own challenges. We talked about separating from the military. But in terms of starting a business, right, maybe you start a business and you have an idea, but maybe you don't have access to capital. And there's advocacy components to that. There's fundraising components to that. And there's networking components to that as well. So as a chamber, we just incorporated last year, you know, we're going about the business of strategic planning, trying to put our finger on the pulse of veteran entrepreneurs, even going to to advocate in terms of veteran legislation here in Springfield, in terms of that's our capital. But you're again, just trying to continue our service and help our fellow our fellow veterans. Wow. You sound busy. It's pretty busy. You know, sometimes my wife's like, hey, dude, what about me? Yeah. So again, I have to find a balance. I'm not the best at it. Yeah. You know, it's something that I constantly work on it. Yeah. Yeah. Well, again, yes, you sound busy, but it also sounds like you're doing, you know, important work, right? Just as you said, you know, you're developing teams, but it also sounds like you're developing leaders and supporting leaders. And so congratulations on the work that you're doing and that your continued service to your community and to the larger community. God bless as we transition out. Right. I always ask my guests to give us leave us with one piece of advice. What's one last piece of advice you'd like to offer our listeners and viewers out there? You know, I would my piece of advice would be to to join a team. You know, again, it's easy to try to navigate life. And we touched on that before. It's easy to try to navigate life by yourself and think you have all the answers. But I think it's much more rewarding and enriching of life in general. If you join a team, you join a team and, you know, you have these conversations. You know, there's a healthy friction that happens, right? Exchanging of ideas. Not every idea is a good idea. Not every idea wins. But I feel like it basically holds up a mirror to yourself and say, like, well, what are the gaps in my my personal self and my professional self? And you don't get the benefit of that if you don't join a team. If you also join a team, again, now you have the capability and the privilege, right, to be able to maybe influence others to help bring others along. And so the concept of teamwork is probably integrated throughout my entire life. And, you know, that's my advice. Join a team. It's you probably get more than you give easily. You get more than you give if you join a team and you volunteer. That looks like couldn't agree more. I I I've I don't I my life and work experience, personal experiences have been enriched because of teams and my involvement in teams and in organizations. And so I appreciate the advice. I know I'm going to I'm going to reference it when working with students, because any time I still teach part time and any time I have a class and I've got to get students together and in groups or in teams, you know, here comes the size, here comes the I hate working into it. And I and I and I tell them, like, you know, this is important. This is valuable work. And this is largely what you're going to be doing as a professional. You've got to work with other people. You're going to work in teams and trust me, you'll be enriched by it. And so I again, one of the perks of these conversations is, you know, to know, right, these lessons, these are lessons that that continue to persist and that are shared and there's value in them across all of my guests. So thank you. Thank you very much, couples. Yeah, I know, you know, that's something else, right? So to consider exploring in terms of what's that trepidation in terms of joining a team and you expose yourself, right? And so your shortcomings are exposed to that team. And you have these team dynamics and it goes through various stages before you start to like click and jive. But, you know, what are some of those hesitations? Why are people are, why are they scared of joining a team? Given that everybody talks about the benefits of it and you know that up front, why do you still fear joining a team? That's an interesting conversation, I think, to explore. I appreciate that and I will. I'll ask my students that next time, next time we're going to get together and do some group work. Patelos, thank you. Juan, thank you for your story. Thank you for sharing your story. Yeah, I appreciate it. I know when we open up like this and sort of revisit our paths, I know it's not always easy. And so I appreciate that. And then congratulations. Congratulations on the work that you're doing. Congratulations on your persistence. And again, not staying in your lane, not adhering to these like this happens at this point, this happens at this point. But for you, right, you said the education, learning is the continued process. Always learning, always striving, always, you know, setting goals for yourself. So congratulations on all of the work that you've done for yourself. Yeah, thank you, Dr. I really appreciate the opportunity to share my story with your audience. And I'm a fan. I'm a listener of your podcast as well. So again, hopefully we can collaborate together in the future. I'm counting on it, Patelos. All right. Well, Patelos, thank you again. This concludes another episode of the Way to College podcast. Thank you to my guests. Thank you to our listeners and viewers out there. Don't forget to subscribe, rate, follow, and as always, please share the podcast with one other person. I know I'd appreciate it. Thank you, and we'll talk again soon. Bye-bye.