Hi. This is Paul Zellizer, and welcome to the Awarepreneurs podcast. On this show, we dive deep into wisdom from some of the leading social entrepreneur. Our goal is to help you increase your positive impact, your profitability, and your quality of life. Before we get into today's topic, I have one request. If you could hit subscribe and do a rating and review on your favorite podcast app, It helps more people learn how to have positive impact through values based business. Thank you so much for considering it. And today I am thrilled to introduce you to Sherry Lassiter.

And our topic is a global distributed network of social impact leaders. Sherry is the president and CEO of the FAB Foundation, a network of over 2,000 digital fabrication facilities in over a 100 countries. The goal of a fab lab is to provide access to the tools, the knowledge, and the financial means to allow anyone to build almost anything, thereby creating opportunities to improve lives and livelihoods around the world. Sherry, welcome to the show.

Thank you so much, Paul. It's a honor and a pleasure to be here today.

You're doing some cool stuff at scale that I can't wait to help our listeners learn from before we do that, Sherry. If somebody didn't know who you were and just needed a little bit of sense of your backstory, what would they need to know to understand where you're coming from and what you bring to this work that you do now?

Oh, how interesting. Well, I started out in television in documentary science television, oddly enough. And I got I worked for public television. I did all sorts of PBS type documentaries and worked for NHK and, you know, some of those are BBC around the world. And I got to the point that it was right around the time that we were all converting to cable television that I realized that all all people were really interested in was faster, better, cheaper, more eye candy, and I decided I wanted to become a part of the story rather than telling the story of science and technology. And so that's when I joined MIT and started this help started to help build this global network of 27 100 labs in about a 100 and 50 countries. So we've grown from a tiny little proto lab in rural India in 2002 to now this global network, which has been quite an honor and a pleasure to be a part of, I have to say.

That's amazing. So 2002, you start building this network and, and give us a sense, like what was the original concept behind the labs and what were gonna happen in the labs?

So the labs were really the brainchild of a large National Science Foundation grant that we got at MIT to do research at the boundary of bits and atoms. So what happens when the digital bits of the world merge with the physical atoms? So you build a smart environment or you are building. And at we were doing this research at MIT at the Center For Bits and Adams and we decided that we wanted to do outreach, right, to the community. What we did is we pulled together a kind of a small and affordable or more affordable subset of what of our big facility, our digital fabrication facility at MIT, and we said what if we put these into communities around the world? What would they do with this? You know, what would, if they had the ability to make almost anything that they could imagine, you know, would this stimulate new business, new entrepreneurship? Would it stimulate education? Would it Didn't know what would happen. And so the National Science Foundation, to their credit, was very willing to let us experiment. And so we we put, you know, the first proto proto lab in rural India and the next one in rural Norway and the next one in rural Africa, and it took off. Everywhere we put a fab lab, like 3 other fab labs sprouted. Right? And so it really was to ask the question, if you could, if you had the technical capability of making almost anything, what would you do with that? And this this global network, which has grown since that time, is continuing to answer that question.

And in my opinion, it's around the dotedu, the.org, and the.com. So, it's education, you know, bringing economic opportunity through innovation and entrepreneurship and also social impact. How do we produce and consume in a in a sustainable world? And so that's that's really kind of the origin.

Beautiful. And and we'll get into what it looks like now. But go back a little bit, Sherry. I always like to help, newer social entrepreneurs, like, help realize that what you see on the ground now may or may not have been quite what it looked like in 2002. So if we could step back in a time machine, 2002, 2003, 2004, and you have these first fab labs, rural India, rural nor Norway, rural Africa. What what did it look like? And what kind of things were people building in the early days?

That's a really good question. What we, what, what it, what we learned is that people really wanted to measure and modify the world around them in their own context. So, for example, in rural India, you know, the problem was there were problems like, can I get clean water? Can I get good milk? You know, the milk is very, you know, critical to the community's diet, and milk is delivered in trucks. And most of the time when they deliver milk that's, you know, been, you know, driven over roads for a long time, it's not good milk. It's sour milk. And so, you know, they wanted to figure out how to, you know, measure whether milk was good or not. Right? Whether it was fresh milk or sour milk, and be able to take action to make it good milk or to not buy that milk and buy other milk. Right? And so, I mean, that's just one example.

I think in Northern Norway, they were interested in following their sheep. Sheep are very valuable there, and so when the sheep go up into the Alps for the summer, they lose a lot of sheeps to predation, right, to predators. And so they wanted to put, like, collars on their sheep that would call home and and tell, you know, tell the owner I'm healthy, and this is where I am so that so they wouldn't lose track of them. And if they did start to lose them, if they fell off of the sort of, you know, network map, then they wouldn't know they have to go up into the mountains and reach in and figure out what was going on and protect the other sheep. So, you know, it was really interesting things like that. They really wanted to be able to sense the world and then take action in that regard.

Very cool. So real like basic survival and around water and nutrition and basic economics. And it was very place driven, and that was something I was really impressed with. With in Norway, it had to do with sheep, And in rural India, it had to do with getting good milk and figuring out which milk was usable and which had spoiled. How does that work? Like, how did you create leadership that was able to take in data? And, you know, the community in India said, what we need is to figure out whether milk is safe to use or it's spoiled. Or and in Norway, they said, we need sheep. And somebody else said, we need clean water. How do you create leadership that's able to hear these requests and work with them when they might be different in different communities? But they were coming from the communities, not from your leadership.

Is that fair

to say? That's correct. That is I mean, it is the pull and not the pish push. Right? That's one of our strategies is you have to listen to the pull. Right? And we had leaders from communities come to us and say, we need this. And so we have the resources and we have community behind us that can make this work. And so that's what we did is we followed the leaders. They didn't follow us, we followed them. What we provided, of course, was the technical know how and of course the the technology itself, but it was the it it, you know, you you don't do this in a vacuum.

You don't just drop technology somewhere and then say, okay, you know, good luck. You know, you really have to work with a champion, a local champion that really drop

technology into it. It doesn't go very well. It doesn't lead to a lot of people who just dropped technology into it. It doesn't go very well. It doesn't lead to very good results, but I, we have a lot of data that that experiment has been tried. I wouldn't recommend it.

Right. I think that's right. You know, I would say whenever we have made the mistake of dropping technology, we fail, right? But they they almost always succeed.

Yeah. Beautiful. So it starts to grow and you get these templates going rural India, Norway, Africa, and like like, give us a sense. What did it look like? I don't know. 10 years in, let's call it, 2012 or 2014. You're 10 years in. Sounds like maybe a couple hundred labs. Like how did you start to build out a network, not just one lab at a time?

Well, actually the network built itself, really. I mean, see how can I describe this? As I said earlier, every lab that was established, there was so much interest in the community and in others that were nearby that the the network would kind of naturally grow. Right? And what we found after about 10 years is that some of these organizations were were turning into anchor organizations in their communities. So they instead of just being kind of like a shop or a makerspace or whatever, they were becoming, you know, community center away and and from those community centers, we realized that we needed to provide some glue, some networking glue, and that's really where kind of education came in. We started to provide educational resources because people wanted to go much further and much the technology. And, you know, there's a lot that you can do by just Nutanix, but if you really, really want to do deep, impactful work, you have to know a lot more about the technology. And so so we engaged in global edu global and distributed education programs, which really ended up being a big part of the glue that connected and bound this community together. I mean, these are all champions.

They are all leaders for the most part. You know, they are and they happen to also be people who want to use knowledge platform for change. And so these people together an educational umbrella was actually brilliant, and that was professor Gershenfeld's idea. And and it has continued to, I don't know, cultivate a community of practice, a really strong community of practice. They share knowledge, but they also share ideas. They collaborate. They they innovate, and they, emulate one another. And it's truly extraordinary.

And I had never expected that education would be that pathway, but education has been that pathway.

Cool. And and you talk about on the website, Cherry, and you just mentioned it now, these kind of 3 buckets, the the knowledge or the education, the tools, the technology itself, and the financial means. And one of the things I'm known for is like, well, okay. Let's get a little granular folks. Like, help us understand each of those buckets. When you say education, are you talking about, like, formal classes, like in a classroom setting? Are you talking about mentorship? Same thing with like, what

are the,

yeah, the tools, like, are we pocket 3 d printers? Like give us a little more data here.

Yeah. So the education really started around online I guess you would call online courses. They're really hybrid courses, and they were hybrid courses long before we had hybrid, courses. Right? We would offer sort of a technology innovation, a technology survey would online that would allow people to explore all of these sorts of new technologies and capabilities. And, you know, at the end of approximately a semester worth of courses, you would do a capstone project which would often turn out to be a product that you ended up selling or starting a new business around. But that one course which we which is called Fab Academy, that course spawned a whole portfolio of courses that are similarly posed. So it's sort of a survey course that, each course is kind of a survey course that exposes the student to the new technologies in this particular field. And then, you know, each week, they document their progress through, you know, building a portfolio, an online portfolio that shows their what they're learning and their mastery, and then you end with a capstone project that's something that you curate.

And it can be a product that you're developing, or it can be something that's a personal expression or artistic. But at any rate, it works so well that there's now a whole portfolio of them and a growing community around it. And then, of course, once you do that with adults, you know, there's a lot of interest in getting young people involved, you know, k 12, so and STEM because this is really, you know, technology and engineering. And so we started k 12 programs, and really what those are about are giving educators the resources and the tools that they need to teach it in their own fab labs or in their own classrooms. Right? And sharing and providing, you know, content for free online such that this can develop its own community of practice, right, around how you do this in education. And so that was that's kind of the education approach. And so, you know, as our sustainability part, we do charge tuition, you know, for the adult courses, and then for the k 12 programs, we do professional development for educators. So, you know, that's how we sustain the operation.

But that's kind of the way the education community works, and it really is building these beautiful communities of practice within the larger network. And then on the social impact side, there are the, as I said, the network polls for what it wants. It's very, very independent. Let's put it a lot of independent thinkers and so you can't tell them what what they're interested in and and so what happens is projects emerge from the network. Like we have a really big one called Fab City and it's about how do you make a city sustainable in terms of production and consumption, you know, in its in its lifetime. And so the community really thought that was interesting, and now we've got like 50 cities that have public private partnerships, you know, meaning people that make or fabricate, people who private, you know, private enterprise or private interests and government, you know, government entities that all combine together to sort of build their sustainable strategy and using digital fabrication and manufacturing as a part of that strategy. So that's like one really big one. There's also a a project in the Amazon, you know, to bring digital fabrication and education to villages that are along the Amazon River in order to help them, a, educate, you know, educate their their their communities, but also to help them technically solve some of the challenges that they face or augment some of the work that they do, whether it's in crafts or in agriculture, etc.

There are many many things that you can do with technology that will help you along along your path to success, and so you know projects like that, the community gathers around itself and those projects come to the surface. And so, you know, at the foundation, what we do is we try to help those projects find their potential. So we might match make them with, you know, with funders or we might, you know, support particular parts of the projects we feel are scalable and, you know, useful. And then there's the dotcom, and the dotcom is, you know, all over the place. It's how do you it's it's economic opportunity. It's economic and so specifically, the education programs, the adult education programs are one way, you know, that we stimulate entrepreneurship in the network. But also, you know, we are working on bringing together venture capitalists who are very successful to mentor and, fund new innovations coming out of the network. So that's another way that we kind of support .com.

And then there are and then there's just sort of the job market. You know, how do we match make companies that need people with these amazing technical skills, you know, with the people who actually have these technical skills? And so there are many ways to think about about the economic impact, but that's sort of the direction that we've been most successful with so far.

Very cool. And before we hit record button, Sherry, you were telling me I asked the question, like, if somebody wanted to kind of get a sense of what a FABA looks like now we're recording this in March of 2024. You said Pueblo, Mexico. There's some really cool things happening. So, like, if somebody wanted to imagine what's happening in a very dynamic example of a fab lab right here in 2020 4, what would they see on the ground? What kind of projects are happening in Pueblo?

Oh my goodness. Well, Pueblo, Mexico. So they started out as a, at a university there. It's a, I think it's a, it's Ibero. It's one of the Catholic universities in Mexico and they, they set up a fab lab and they, you know, they started with their students at the university, you know, their engineering and technical students, but they also realized that, that there were many other ways that they could reach into their community and and bring really good economic impact. So one way they did that, they built a super lab, number 1, is a and a super lab is like a $1,000,000 lab. So if you got a regular fab lab, you know, it could be anywhere from $10,000 to $100,000, you know, to to have some of these capabilities. But they built a super fab lab, which is, you know, has got like big things like, you know, 5 axis, milling machines and, you know, things that you would see in industry really.

And so they were, they started to support their local industry in terms of prototyping, in terms of training, and all that sort of thing, but they realized that they could also use these same tools to help locally. So they put together a project, a 2 year project, whereby they targeted the the most demographically challenged parts of their community, and these are usually the small, small enterprises or family local enterprises, right? Micro enterprises and they brought them into their fab lab and they taught them very basic, very basic digital fabrication skills, like how do you design a box? You know, so if I'm a chocolate maker and I'd sell my chocolates out on the street, you know, nobody can see any difference between my chocolates and the chocolates that are at the at the kiosk right next next to me. And so how do I differentiate and how do I market differently? And so they brought people into the lab to teach them basic design skills and fabrication skills. And, you know, one family who had been barely able to support itself after doing packaging within 7 months was able to support 8 people in their business and so this particular project incubated 300, almost 300. It's like 275 or 280 family micro enterprises over 2 years by just teaching those basic skills. Of course, they also did some support in terms of, you know, teaching them how to market and, you know, helping them find the any any sort of legal or or other resources that they needed to get started. But it was a tremendously successful program, and and that's the kind of impact that we see, that we like to see, and that we see more and more around the world.

So listeners, you know me, I will do some homework and put some links where you can go check out what's on the ground in Pablo, as well as some of the other resources that we have already mentioned. So let's do this. In a minute, I wanna come back, Sherry, and ask you what you've learned about building and running such a distributed network and suggestions you have for our listeners who'd like to build other networks of impact. But before we do that, I just wanna take a quick break and hear a word from our sponsor. Are you facing 1 or more important decisions in your impact business? And you'd like an experienced thought partner to develop a plan about how to proceed in the complex times we're living, But you don't feel the need for an extended coaching or consulting contract that's gonna cost you many 1,000 of dollars. You're looking for an affordable, targeted, and time efficient type of support. Through paulzelloser.com, I offer a strategy session package. These packages are ideal for entrepreneurs who are facing 1 to 3 immediate decisions, like how to increase your positive impact, fine tune your marketing strategies to get more results for less effort, launch a new product or service successfully, or refine your pricing structure so it's both inclusive and provides you with a great quality of life.

You can find out more by clicking below, and thank you so much for listening to this podcast. So welcome back, everybody. We are here with Sherry Lassiter. We are talking about a global distributed network of social impact leaders, Sherry from the FAP Foundation. And it is so wonderful to have you here, Sherry. And so I think in the first part of the show, we help people understand what your particular network is, what the fab foundation does, and the impact that you're having. And certainly we'll get a little more of that. But what I'd like to do is widen back just a little bit and say, you've learned a lot.

Not everybody can say they're running a global network of 27 100 site locations and, you know, having impact at the scale that you are. It's awesome. What have you learned about creating and helping to sustain a network at this scale?

A lot.

You can tell him all the things not to do. Right? You made all the mistakes already. Right?

Yeah. We have. We've made a lot of mistakes. You know, in our first two I think it was, like, our first two or 3 years, we failed, like, at least 2 or 3 times. Right? And so in a big way. And so we we had to learn the hard way, but we learned. I I I'll go back to one of my first points, which is follow the pull, not don't push. Right? So always go with the pull because you have to listen.

You have to have to open your ears and listen and not assume that what, you know, what you have in mind is what the community has in mind. So that's number 1, I would say. Number 2, I would say distributed and decentralized is is is is the way we've approached it. Right? Great ideas, you know, come from everywhere and you know you've got how many, I don't know how many billions of people we have on the planet right now, but you know, there are there are ideas everywhere.

Over 8,000,000,000.

Yes, exactly. There are ideas everywhere and so you really have to listen and and you and you really have to, you know, follow follow some of those great ideas, right, and and and really really develop them. So the the the network is is really a democracy. Right? And the ideas come out of that network, and they really make the decision as to where to go and where to invest, and we kind of follow them. Right? So that's that's one one piece of advice I would say. I would say consensus is never possible. Right? So we what we do is we follow more or most, but we can't make everyone happy. And so situations come up like wars that really, you know, put part of the network against the other part of the network.

And we've had, you know, we've had many other, you know, different kinds of issues. But what what what you have to understand is consensus is not possible. So you have to be bold and brave and go where you think more or most want to go. Right? And and and follow that follow that path. I would say that the glue that binds us, you have to figure out what is the glue that binds you. And for us, the glue is the technical community, right? It's the technology, but it really is creating the space for the social part of that community, right? It's it's not just the machines, it's the people. And so it's really about how do you support that social interaction and that social network. It's so important, the social part, the network effect, right? We, we, from a very early stage, you know, we're with, without meaning to, we were an example of the network effect.

So every time we established 1 fab lab, you know, 3 more would pop up. Right? And anyway, we experienced our own version of Moore's law, which basically double said that the number of parts that you could put on an integrated circuit would double in amount or in quantity every 18 months. Well, it was the same for us. We every time we put the FabLab somewhere, at least 2 more would pop up. And so, you know, take advantage of that and embrace that, the network effect. It works for you. And then I would also say there's a tension between vision and democratization and, you know, while you want to be as democratic as possible, leadership and vision is absolutely critical. And so you need to keep infecting the network with new vision, with leadership, with new ideas.

So democratization might be the goal, but the knowledge and the information of the new ideas is what leads, and so that kind of strong guidance and leadership is is critical to invest in. And then I would also say sometimes you just have to throw it at the wall and see what, see if it sticks. Right? Sometimes you just don't know and there are lots and lots of new ideas and you just have to go and and and and experiment. And so don't be afraid to experiment, but don't lose trust by over experimenting. So I guess those are those are set kind of the lessons we've learned at any rate.

Great strategies. Thanks for sharing those with us, Sherry. So help us understand, like, as we're recording this in 2024, how does leadership work? Like, how much does Pueblo Mexico or rural, you know, the fab lab in rural India? How much are they making decisions independent of the network? And how much are you all making decisions together? That balance of local versus global network. And how do you navigate those different layers of leadership?

Well, so the network is works very independently, so they make their own decisions. It's only when there are and they share and collaborate in beautiful ways. And so it's only when, you know, when we need to provide a resource or support the network, you know, in ways that help it, that that we need to make that we need to make more, you know, more consensus like decisions. And and the the the leadership steps up to the plate. I mean, they they they seem to understand. You can't underestimate, you know, what they know and, what they contribute. Right? And many times, if you if you involve them, not only in the decision making process, but in the implementation of that, that is a beautiful way to to to to to help them help make them a part of the solution. Right? I guess I guess that's how I would describe it.

You know, if if they become a part of the work or a part of the solution, then it's usually much easier and they have much more of a window into why we're making decisions the way we are.

Beautiful. And if you started to sort of compile or add up the impact, Right? Here we are. It's 2024. You tossed out 2,002. So about 22 years, if my math is anywhere near in the ballpark Yep. Of being on this journey. And it sounds like it's been an amazing journey. Congratulations.

Thank you.

If you started to add up 27 100 labs over 22 years, obviously, not all 27100 for all 22, but you you see where I'm going. It have do you have any data about, like, what the collected impact in terms of economic or jobs created or new products brought to market? Like what is the collective impact here? Do you have any idea?

We think that if you just sort of on average, if you if you kind of sort of thought about the investment, let's say the investment you know, you know, $500,000,000 500, or even a $1,000,000,000 worth of investment globally to build all these labs and to and to network them. And if you think about if each lab, you know, if each lab served, you know, at a minimum a 100 people, you're talking about 100 of 1,000. I mean, really millions of people that that we're touching and that we're affecting through this network. Right? And if you think about and and it's hard to, you know, hard to think about the economic opportunity or or or economic development, but we do have countries that are coming to us now and investing in FabLab. So the economic impact of that is, of course, yet to be seen, but the potential is enormous. So I guess is that the kind of data you're talking about?

Yeah. Yeah. Like, I live in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and, for instance, we have a very rapidly growing space sector. There are 3 different companies that are very active in the space, you know, sector, and Albuquerque has been put on the map. And and I personally know entrepreneurs who are creating things. One of the technologies I don't know if they're a fab lab or not, but I, you know, I know that they're using what's called a clean room to make certain things. It has to be, you know, a dust particle could, like, be a catastrophic problem with some of the things they're making. That's how Yeah.

Close the tolerances are. And I'm thinking of this entrepreneur who I spoke with. He's like, there's no way I can afford a clean room at this phase of my start up, you know, journey, but I have access to one because of this, you know, makerspace here, that space related, you know Right. Lab here. And and I'm just thinking of multiplying that by 100 of thousands of stories. It it just mind boggling. Right? Mind boggling.

It is. And is it you know, in another way, you know, I I'm gonna bring this up because I just feel like it's so interesting. You know, during COVID, I feel like these labs, makerspaces and fab labs around the world, really proved their worth to communities and how they could help communities with, sustainability and resilience. I mean, I would say that in the 1st year of COVID, many, many, many of these labs stepped up to the plate and they were making PPE, right, for their communities, whether they be shields or masks or, you know, things to open doors, you know, there or whether they were, you know, more sophisticated things like ventilators and respirators and things like that. Right? And I think in the 1st year, the statistics from, from open source medical supply was that Fab Labs and Makerspaces had, had produced more than 40,000,000 PPE articles for their communities. And most of that was done just, you know, as a donation to their community. And so that's tremendous. Yeah, that's a tremendous amount of production.

It shows that decentralized manufacturing is possible. It also shows that what, what, what, what these kinds of, these kinds of interventions can bring to a community in terms of education and resilience. It was really, really quite extraordinary.

It sounds completely extraordinary. Good good work, and thank you for everybody in your network.

Thank you. And just just as a note, we're celebrating Fab Foundation is celebrating its 15th year in business. So Congratulations. We're very excited.

So Sherry, look ahead a little bit. So 15 years in business, 22 years of, you know, experimenting. Look ahead. Where do you see the FAP Foundation growing in the next 5 to 10 years? What are some of your goals, and what are some of the things you're working towards now that won't really see expression for 5 or 10 years?

Oh, we're we're pretty small aspirations. So one of, you know, one of the things that we state in our mission is we're trying to democratize access to these tools and to the knowledge, right, for a technical innovation. And FabLab probably costs about $100,000. We're working on versions of FabLabs that cost $5,000 or $10,000 on a fab in a box. And so letting people, have access to this technology and learn, you know, learn the skills that you'll need to be a part of the 21st century, you know, or, you know, a public library for, like, $5,000, that's, like, great. Right? That's, we want everybody to have access both to the tools and the knowledge. So that's one way. Another thing we're thinking about is how can we support distributed manufacturing.

Right? It's been sort of like everybody's dream for a long time, but now it's becoming possible and a reality. And, you know, the the network is getting big enough and the support

system is getting big enough

and professional and, you know, critically professional enough that important in the future. You know, when during COVID, we all saw the supply chains, you know, fall you know, completely fall apart. You know, can we now rebuild a world in which, you know, in which all of this happens locally and it's much better for our planet, in addition? And we're also looking at helping support building libraries of materials where people sustainable materials that are, you know, that are made and sourced locally, you know, for manufacturing. That's a huge project that many people are working on, but very, very exciting, you know, for our future, right, for the future. And then, also, you know, idea of manufacturing right now is very tied to machines that exist and we're investing both intellectually and financially in how do you You know, can make machines to do exactly what they want to do at a You know, can make machines to do exactly what they want to do at a local scale and manufacture new new things in new ways. Right. And, you know, certainly new technologies like artificial intelligence, etcetera, you know, play into that. But, you know, how do you how do you imagine manufacturing of the future? And then, of course, it's just the whole idea of sustainability.

We want to really make this world sustainable and we want to distribute the, the opportunity, the economic opportunity that comes with with, creating technology. Right. And so figuring out how to do that is also on our agenda.

I love that language, distributing the economic opportunity that comes with creating this awesome tech. I I just I love that language and that intention. Thank you for that. Yeah. So, Jerry, I could hang out with you all day. You're amazing things, but you're super busy, so are our listeners. As we start to wind down, if there was something that you were hoping we were gonna get to and highlight about the FAP Foundation's work, and we haven't touched on it yet, or is there something you wanna leave our listeners with as we start to say goodbye? What would that be?

Well, I there's one thing I I think that's important, and this would be this would be advice as well as a question. Right? You know, it's it's kind of, you know, to be an organization that supports, you know, social impact is hard to fund. Right? You know, corporations wanna fund a very certain, you know, certain kind of kind of impact that reflects on them. You know, government, you know, has very specific and narrow interests, you know, and individuals have, you know, our philanthropy is not doing as well right now as it used to be. Right. And so figuring out funding that is outside, how you fund yourself outside of, you know, sort of the investment branded kind of, you know, portfolio is really, really important. And that's certainly something that I feel like, you know, we started very late in that regard. And I would advise and ask others, you know, you know, how did you do it? And how would you, you know, how can you find that? It allows you to fly, that allows you to vision and your vision, you know, being an aligned agenda, you know, how do you how do you fund yourself in ways that really allow you to grow? It's something that I would, I would recommend that you think about earlier rather than later.

Wouldn't agree more. Sure. If there's somebody who's listening and they want to find out more about the fab foundation, or they'd like to speak with you about getting involved in their community, getting their community involved, what would be the best way to somebody connect with you?

Well, there's a, there are several ways you could visit our web site, which is fabfoundation.orgorwriteus@info@fabfoundation.org or write me directly, sherry dotlassiter@fabfoundation. Thank you for that.

You're welcome. And I'll put those links in the show notes. Sherry, thank you so much for the amazing work you're doing, and thanks for being on this podcast and sharing your wisdom with our listeners.

Thank you so much, Paul, and good luck to all of you out there. You're all doing amazing things.

So, you know, what we do here on this podcast listeners, please go tell your friends, go share on social media. Fab Foundation's doing amazing. I might even say fabulous work. So please go tell your friends. Before we go, I just wanna remind you that we love listeners suggested topics and guests. So if you have an idea for a show or a guest for a show, please go to the AwarePreneur's website, go to our contact page, and we have three simple guidelines of what we look for and wanna be transparent about how we make the choices of who's on Awarepreneur. So go check that out, and if it feels like a fit, please send in your ideas. For now, I just wanna say thank you so much for listening.

Please take really good care in these intense times, and thank you for all the positive impact that you're working for in our world.