I'll answer this briefly as briefly as I can. I grew up in a really small town in northern Michigan where e maybe 5000 people in my community. So it's a really small world view and this waas pre Internet. So I didn't really know what the bigger world look like. But I was a reader, and that gave me a glimpse that my parents bought, you know, Encyclopedia Britannica at the time. So I knew that there was something out there and I just came to the conclusion that I wanted Thio, you know, go to a large university. Just kind of experience difference. I went to the University of Michigan while there, my dad really encouraged me to go into the ROTC program, which is the military training. He just thought that I was an athlete, that I might like thinking about the military after after I get done with college, just to have a life experience outside of what I was accustomed to. So I enrolled in the program and signed up to be a Marine, and it was just a wonderful journey becoming a Marine Corps officer, and that when I graduated, I spent four years in the Marine Corps, which really taught me this fundamental leadership development, you know, curriculum. And when I started working in the private sector right after 9 11 I just really became clear to me that, um, how we talking business about leadership was very different than how I talked about leadership in the Marine Corps. And that was a conversation that I had with a woman, Kourtney Lynch, that I served with in the Marine Corps. So in 2004 we decided to start a company lead star, and we wrote a book called Leading From the Front, and that was our first book. And we just wanted to share with business professionals military leadership, best practices. And since then, we've worked with amazing businesses, large businesses like Google and Facebook and Walmart, ESPN, two smaller, lesser known businesses that you know are kind of the economic engine in our country, and we design training programs, we deliver coaching programs, and right now we're currently writing our third book. That's my story.

Yeah, well, so we've been writing our first two books. Leading from the front was really Marine Corps leadership principles specifically for women professionals, mostly because women are least likely to turn to the Marine Corps or go into the Marine Corps. So they kind of missed this education. Our second book was called Spark and Tow Us. We wanted to help demystify what leadership actually is. It's not about job title. It's about behavior. So a leader, someone who influences and inspires third book. We're going a little bit deeper on a topic that we feel really differentiates. You know, people on their journey, and it's is risk, You know, throughout our lives, we're told that a good education, a good network, a good, um, work ethic is gonna get you far in life, and that's absolutely true. But there's a missing ingredient in that formula for success, and it's risk on DWI often think about risk differently. Um, then what risk actually is, I think in our society we think about risk as theon pa's it side of reward when in reality, risk is just a choice and it's not one choice, and it's, you know, the result is either successful or fatal. It's a serious of choices that leads you towards the path that helps you realize your goals and ambitions. So we want to really demystify risk with our book. And the audience in mind is for anyone who has a great vision for themselves, whether it's clear or whether it's even a little fuzzy and just wants either the courage or the confidence to go after it or who wants a process, Um, toe, understand how to an actress to go from here to the desired on state.

okay for Courtney, and I think it was reflecting on our lives. Um, you know, we weren't really born into privilege. We weren't born with silver spoons in our mouths. We went to public school. We, um, went to public universities, for that matter. We had military. So, like, when we think about, like, our journey and what's led us to hear, you know, it wasn't anything that we were born with that was extraordinary or anything, you know, from, ah, career journey. That was extra special. But what's allowed us to, I think, achieve at this level was our ability to take a chance on us, take a chance on ourselves personally, and then together, keep pushing each other to get what we want. Um, I've been honored with just some amazing privileges and opportunities in my in my life. I mean, the privilege to write a third book, um Thio to run a business to network with some impressive people who I'm just honored or willing you to even talk to me to be quite frank. And it's it's all because I was willing to take a chance, you know, toe, have the conversation to make the ask to put myself out there. So it's just this risk quality that we both just really felt that's been a huge difference maker in our lives and in our careers.Yeah. So, like the topics, um, whenever we go, like when we decided what to write about our process for discovering the topics is just through research. We like to think about what's been written on the topic of risk. Um, and then we go try to attempt to find stories of people who are enacting risk. We love to understand kind of the that process behind their decisions And what research goes to support the thought process. We like to understand. Like what? Hold us back. You know, for example, one of the pieces of research that we're really interested in right now is you know, why don't we take risks often Because we have a fear of failure. Well, where do our fears come from? Where does this fear of failure come from? Um, is it is it something we're born with? Or is that something that's nurtured throughout our life? And what was interesting for us in this journey was that we discovered that we, um, learn our fear failure primarily from our parental figures, with a specific emphasis emphasis on our moms. So we learned a lot about our risk in relationship from how our moms you know, think about about risk. I'll give you a simple example. Like my mom was afraid of snakes like they like. I live in Northern Michigan. We don't have poisonous snakes here on fun. Fact, um, eso I'm definitely afraid of snakes, but then I have friends who, like don't care about snakes at all like they would be the ones to pick him up. And it's like, So where do we get this fear from? I got it from I've got it from my mom and it's It's interesting about this fear failure to is that if it's something that's learned is something that can be unlearned, or you can develop a new kind of perspective or lens to see your fears through. So that's kind of where we are when we think about deciding on the topics and what we want to cover. A lot of it is very much anecdotal, but also very much research back to. And as far as the scope goes, yeah, we have. We have an agent and then we work with our publisher, so it's a very collaborative process. We you know, when you when you write a book, you don't write for nonfiction fiction is completely different. Genre. When you write a nonfiction book, you write a proposal, you write an introduction. Ah, sample chapter. And then, um, kind of an outline of the chapters that will follow for us. We give it to our agent. They shop it around a different publishers. But once the publisher purchases your book, then it's a collaboration process because it's their property now. And they have a definite I'm kind of opinion about how they want to help shape and direct your work. So the scope is really defined. You know, we might be the the the authors of the thought, but the result is really a collaborative effort.