The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Fashion Brand Founder Overcomes Legal Challenges and Ensures Compliance

Episode Date: July 25, 2024

Fashion Brand Founder Overcomes Legal Challenges and Ensures Compliance Michellemaewholesale.com Ellalane.com About the Guest(s): Ashley Lacer is the founder of Fashion Brands Ella Lane and Michelle May. With a background in real estate, wedding coordinating, and entrepreneurship, Ashley has grown her business in the fashion industry to offer size-inclusive apparel and emphasize accessibility and quality in her brands. Episode Summary: In this engaging episode of The Chris Voss Show, Ashley Lacer discusses her entrepreneurial journey and the legal challenges she faced while running her fashion brands. From dealing with copyright infringement lawsuits to making tough decisions to protect her business, Ashley shares valuable insights on resilience and business integrity. Listeners will learn about the importance of due diligence, turning crises into opportunities, and how to navigate legal pitfalls in entrepreneurship. Key Takeaways: Ashley Lacer emphasizes the significance of having a great attorney on retainer and seeking legal advice before making business decisions. The impact of setbacks can serve as a setup for comebacks, highlighting the resilience and growth potential in facing challenges. Delegating tasks and building a reliable team can help entrepreneurs focus on solutions rather than problems. Entrepreneurs are urged to trust their instincts, make proactive changes, and embrace challenges with a positive mindset. Learning from past experiences, implementing preventive measures, and adapting to new business practices can lead to long-term success. Notable Quotes: "Fighting wasn't a combative thing. Fighting was just an internal battle with myself to make me, my brand, and my team better." "The reality is, as a business owner, you have a responsibility to know you have the rights to sell what you're selling." "Every setback is a set up for a comeback." "It's whack-a-mole. You're just like problem, bang, problem, bang. You're just like this all the time." "I'd rather invest in those partnerships for my company than pay an attorney on a settlement again."

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast. The hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show. The preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready. Get ready. Strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. This is Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com.

There you go, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the big show. We certainly appreciate it. As always, the Chris Voss Show is a family that loves you but doesn't judge you, at least not as harshly as your family, because we love you more than your family. No, we don't. We kind of do. We kind of do, actually, because we don't judge you.

And your family does give you that side eye. We all know what you're talking about, right? But just remember, even though we love you as a family, you can't borrow money from us. So please stop asking and sending my email. But you can send us money if you want. Go to buymeacoffee.com for just chris boss wow shameless plug there youtube.com for just christmas linkedin.com for just christmas christmas one of the tiktokity and what is it goodreads forward slash for calm an amazing young lady is the show we as always we talk with ceos billionaires all these smart people on how to run a business, how to build a business, how to keep a business running, and all that good

stuff. We're going to be talking to her about the businesses that she's run in the fashion brands world. Because if there's anything people have said or watching this show for 16 years is Chris Voss has some awful fashion. And so she's going to give us advice as to how to dress better and be better and probably just keep looking awful. But, you know, at least I bathe daily. That's the thing we've achieved this year. Anyway, guys, we have Ashley Lacer on the show with us today. She's the founder of fashion brands Ella Lane and Michelle May. And she's going to be sharing her powerful story of navigating significant legal challenges and emerging stronger while building a business and becoming successful.

It's hard to be an entrepreneur out there. And the one thing you don't think about is, I might get sued or I might have some legal issues. And boy, when you get successful, do they come. I learned that the hard way. In this episode episode we're going to be talking with her about how she faced a copyright infringement lawsuit that nearly destroyed her business and the tough decisions she had to make including settling a claim

and overhauling her processes to ensure compliance she'll share invaluable lessons on how small business owners can protect themselves from legal pitfalls, the importance of due diligence, and how to turn crises into opportunities for growth. Her journey offers practical insights to maintaining business integrity, resilience, and thus a must-listen for any entrepreneur looking to learn from real-world experiences. And when you're successful, folks, I guarantee you the lawsuits will come. And people are always like, you just have to be really a good business person, Chris. I'm like, no, they shake down lawsuits. They will come.

Welcome to the show. It's great to have you, Ashley. How are you? Thanks, Chris. Thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here. Thanks for coming. We're going to be sitting and talking all about all our lawsuit stories.

But give us your dot coms. Where can people find you on the interwebs? We have a retail site front, which is ellalane.com, where consumers can buy our product. And then our michellemaywholesale.com website is for retailers that want to sell our brand to their consumers. There you go. Tell us about, give us an overview of your journey of what these, we'll get into the lawsuit stuff in a bit, but give us an overview of what Ella Lane and Michelle May do and how they do it. Sure. So about seven years ago, I started Ella Lane as an online women's boutique to kind

of connect with women, both online and a local community to try to find confidence in what they wear. I'm a big proponent of clothes that are easy to wear. I'm a mom of three kids, so I don't have time for fuss. And then through that journey, I kind of discovered that the apparel brand industry was lacking in size inclusivity, as well as apparel that actually lasted. So I decided to start my own wholesale company, which is Michelle May, and make it myself. There you go. And how long ago did you start it? Michelle May was started five years ago.

There you go. So give us a little bit of your upbringing. What made you, was this your first entrepreneurial foray? What made you want to be entrepreneurial? How did you grow up? Maybe was there some influence in your life that made you want to become an entrepreneur? Yeah, so my grandparents ran their own business for decades. He was a land surveyor and civil engineer.

And they kind of always raised me to dream big, chase it, don't have fear. And if you don't see an opportunity you like to create one for yourself. And so I kind of just decided to, in every aspect of my life, do that. I've been a real estate broker and appraiser. I had a wedding coordinating company that I sold and a slew of other things, but definitely honed in on some passions of mine now and excited to take it to the next level. There you go. There you go. What made you pick fashion?

It's something that people deal with every single day. I mean, whether you're working or not working, kind of what you wear and how comfortable you are speaks a lot about how you want to live your life. And so. There you go. That's what a lot of people throw rocks at me about is my the intense fashion i wear on the show black is always classic you're good especially when you're fat black is my color plus it helps me blend in if any if i need to escape i don't know

prosecution or police or i don't know what this joke is going towards. But I believe I'm wearing Kmart today. So that's the designer I chose. Is there a Kmart even around anymore? I think they've all closed down around us. So I don't know. I'm going to answer that one. It was either that or Sears. So I had to choose between the two high-class designers there. I think those have also shut down too.

Wow. Sounds like the rest of my life. Sounds like you might need to go to girl brands to get used to more. Sounds like the rest of my life. Sounds like you might need some apparel brands to get used to more. Sounds like my wardrobe. We haven't started a men's line yet, but when we do, I'll help you out. There you go. I was checking out the lovely dresses you have on the websites for your thing. And I don't know, maybe some of them would work for me. I don't know. It looks like you might have a big and tall, maybe? Yeah. So one of the big reasons we started Michelle May was that size inclusivity. And I think over 80 percent of brands that create apparel for women don't go beyond a size larger

xl so we actually offer sizes extra small through 4x and xl and 1xl so i'm glad for that because i'll have to try on some of the dresses i guess but you know a lot of for a long time i couldn't get like the 3x 4x and 5xl in men's stuff yeah and oh yeah i mean blue jeans hate fat people just i don't know about for women because i've never shot for women's blue jeans but for men it's like everything stops at i don't know 26 year old waistlines and i I'm just like, what the hell do I have to be anemic to or bulimic? Or do I have to just, I don't know, be a skeleton to wear these jeans. Yeah.

We're part of our whole brand mission is really just helping women love and accept who they are, how they are and creating a clothing line that fits their bodies. Great. It makes them feel great. And it's easy to wash and wear. Yeah. I wear clothes that make me, makes them feel great, and it's easy to wash and wear. Yeah. I wear clothes that make me look awful and feel awful, but it's kind of, I need therapy.

Anyway, enough therapy jokes. So tell us about your journey. You start your company. What leads up to this sort of legal sort of story? You're starting your company. You've got that fire in your eyes. You're like going forward with that entrepreneurial spirit what's that like yeah so we we started like any company did dreams aspirations and then sometimes all of a sudden you don't know how to scale so we were very blessed with a somewhat quick and rapid growth and part of that which led to my my copyright situation was we were we were basically going too fast we were trying to produce too many things too quickly and weren't taking the necessary steps to check the prints before going into production so that's kind of what happened there we had a overseas manufacturer we assumed like lots of small businesses do you assume when you're doing business with someone that it's okay and it's safe to do and then end of last year attorney comes knocking ah now i imagine that's a bit of you know between copyright wars and fashion wars and stuff like that that's all that's all that's all kind of how the business

kind of runs doesn't it isn't isn't fashion pretty cutthroat to be be honest, if it is, I try to stay away from it. I really try to just stay in my own lane. And that's part of what this whole copyright issue has kind of taught me. And so when we found out that one of the prints we had used way back in 2022 was an alleged copyright, we decided I was very pregnant at the time and it was a whole new legal battle. So I decided just to settle that one. But with that process, I got legal counseling. I got some advice on what to do, what not to do.

And we basically changed the entire structure of how we do business so this would not happen again. There you go, preventative changes. So tell us about, kind of walk us through the journey of the story. What's it like when you first start getting these notices or CNDs or whatever? And I'm sure that they come as a shock because you're running your business. You're not really trying to run a courtroom. No. And I think as all business owners, we get kind of laser focused with what we're trying to accomplish that day, that week, that month, that year. What's the next style? What's the next print? What's the next sale? What's the next plan? What's the next launch? And all of a sudden, something comes and sidelines you and it kind of gets the whole production cycle off kilter.

And so we kind of took this as an opportunity to pretty much just pause everything, really evaluate the process that we were doing. And we kind of had to start over our entire fall print launch for this year. So that was a big undertaking. Yeah. And it's expensive too. I mean, it's not cheap to have to hire an attorney to defend yourself against illegal things. Yeah. It's not even the attorney costs that kind of really added up for us. It was kind of the big part that was devastating is we had a lot of prints and product that was already in production or in our warehouse that we elected proactively to not sell. So we have thousands of units in my warehouse right now that I can't verify a copyright status on. So they're all a loss because I refuse to expose the company to more risk and sell something I can't verify. Wow.

Is there any way you can like dump them at Goodwill for right off of a donation or is that still bad? Yeah, you can, you can donate. I'm going to work with my, my PR company to kind of figure out the best place to, to place these products just because I think they can have still have some good in the community so yeah maybe maybe homeless

shelters or something maybe i don't know there's a lot of women homeless shelters yeah so we'll turn the loss into some good the best we can there you go and i think you can write some of that off maybe but yeah it's hard because you know in the cost production, you've shipped overseas, if that's where your vending comes from. You put all this work and you're ready to put it on the shelves and get that return on investment that you took and do. And so you not only lose the profit, you lose the hard cost. Correct.

So another thing we've done as far as our overall production is we've increased our USA production a lot in light of that. So our USA manufacturer that we work with only uses vetted prints. And if they Michelle May brand, we can basically guarantee that what we're selling you is safe. Wow. Because we either only buy licensed prints or we actually are working with a luxury brand designer to create our own prints. We're going to copyright ourselves. Wow. You really have to play that game and copyright your own stuff now, huh? Yes. That is crazy, man. But I imagine, you know, in the world of prints and prints,

there's all sorts of, I imagine that sometimes there can be some overlap or something. And it was really overwhelming because you think about simple things like flowers, right? This fashion has a lot of floral-type things. How can you copyright a floral print? But you can. And the reality is that that you know artistic creativity deserves protection and i very much respect that part about the industry and now i'm i'm happy i'm on the other side of it and i can be a proponent for how to do it the right way and a lot of a lot

of business owners won't survive something like this like i've had i've had people that have gotten cnds and they've had to shut down their whole company and lose everything. Yeah. This, this was a huge financial hit to us between the settlement and all the lost products and hard costs. And the same attorney is actually back again. I think that sometimes it's hard when you settle, they sometimes they might want to come back again. And so we were with our legal counsel right now, working on trying to navigate that one. But again, nothing was ever done intentionally. It was just,

you know, we were sold something that is alleged to have a copyright. It's not proven to have it, but I don't, I don't want to take that risk moving forward. So we're taking control of our company. There you go. You know,

it's, I forget what it's called, but sometimes there's these, I call them shakedown lawsuits because that's what we would get. In fact, company there you go you know it's i forget what it's called but sometimes there's these i call them shakedown lawsuits because that's what we would get in fact there's a interview someone did on the stand like why did you sue chris fosston's companies because he's rich they literally said that on the stand i was like wow that's that's nice thanks man thanks i'm not that rich but you know we have you have a a company, but you can have companies that are multi-millionaire companies, and you're making minimum wage the first couple of years.

But by then, we were very successful. But thank God they were C-Corps, so they couldn't get to my private money. And that's kind of a thing, too. Did you do any changes to your corporate structure? Not yet, just because I'm also not trying to hide anything. I am a corporation, and so I did that separation from my individual assets. You know, part of this new shift of our company culture here is we're trying to be advocates for truth and change and aligning for other business owners versus trying to change my structure and try to hide, know make sure they can't get to me I'd rather run my business in the sense of you know if you come in you know vet me out you're gonna see that we're doing everything the right way so you kind of can't the exposure has been it's been scary right because it's a whole new process legal battlefield I guess you could say but I connect with a really good attorney and this is her specialty and I'm'm confident that with our changes, we'll minimize our risk moving forward.

There you go. I mean, if you could show a court that you took the right steps, you know, like I was told that in the 90s with the sexual harassment complaints, the state told us when we got our first one, the state said, you have to fire the person with, if they get two warnings instead of three, you would normally fire people with three warnings at a company. And they have to, they're like, you have to do as two, because if you do as three, it looks like you're encouraging it maybe or something. There's some sort of implication to that effect. Yeah. Okay. We'll do that then. That's fine. Yeah. And I think for me, just who I am and how I was raised, I always want to do stuff right the

first time, best as I can. So the first time this guy came knocking, I made the changes then. And now that he's come back a second time for another alleged copyright issue, we've already made all the changes. And this is something you sold way back in 2022. So I would just encourage people before you produce make manufacture print any product that you want to sell make sure you have the legal rights to do definitely legal rights are important make sure copyright's important you know when i went to with when as a youtube content promoter i went to youtube studios one time and they taught us it was like a whole day of copyright law it was

like crazy to go through and learn about all this stuff about copyright law and parody, of course. And it was crazy. But you realize why it's important, trademarks and copyrights and all that sort of good stuff. Yeah, anything you do to prevent it. I think there's, I mean, I think there's some of these attorneys that are out there, attorney firms that are out there that are predatory in this sort of field, aren't there? I want to speak to that. I can let you know that this particular individual sent out many notices, not just to my company, but to other companies

that I know, boutique owners. We're talking small boutique owners that maybe sold three or four of a particular top, and they're still getting threatened with a lawsuit. So it is a larger overreaching problem. And I think that as technology increases with AI and photo recognition, et cetera, I think it's going to get worse before it gets better because the ability to scan the internet for possible copyright infringements, I think is going to be increasing here rapidly. I got better things to do during the day.

I mean, you know, I guess everyone's got to make a buck somehow. But it's smart that you're doing this, taking the steps that you're taking and advising people on doing it. I imagine it was really hard to make the decision to settle the first claim, right? Instead of finding it? Because a lot of times the attorney's fees can eat you alive. Yeah. and make the point. And just because of how I was raised, I've always been a proponent for just truth,

what's right, and like a very high ethical moral standard. And so it was hard for me to settle, but I didn't do anything wrong at the moment. Settlement was a way for me to move on with my life. I was very pregnant. I knew the steps I needed to take to make it right. So I thought it was in the past.

But with copyright stuff, there's years of time that they can still come back at you. So even if you're okay, they can still come knocking. They tend to go after people that are very successful, too. You know, the one thing I've learned is how to get rid of an attorney who's suing you is you tell them that you have no assets. I just thought my attorneys have all those conversations for me now there you go there you go there you go i i i've spent enough time in court suing people and collecting money from people who owe us money and and then getting shakedown lawsuits from employees and stuff and other people i mean i've told some of the stories in my book beacons of leadership I spent enough time doing that to where I don't even have to have attorneys anymore.

It's pretty funny. Yeah, and it's definitely not cheap to do things the right way. You know, I now hired a brand designer, a PR company. I have my attorney. I didn't have any of those things before the situation came. But I can tell you those things are worth the investment. And I'd rather invest in those partnerships for my company than pay an attorney on a settlement again.

There you go. I mean, what I look at it is, if you can survive these lessons that you have to survive as an entrepreneur, there's always stuff coming at you that's endangering you, your company threatening to bankrupt it. Sometimes it's a slow bleed.

Sometimes it's an immediate threat. And, you know, there's always these things that you, you know, you're constantly problem solving. You know, it's like whack-a-mole 24-7 all the time. You're like, problem, bang, problem, bang, problem, bang. You know, you're just like, does this ever stop? No. In fact, the more successful you get, the bigger the problems get usually.

One of the biggest lessons I had was the whole I just didn't know any better is not an excuse and is not going to get you out of trouble. As a business owner, whether you're selling a few tops per month to your local friends or you're a multimillion dollar boutique selling, you know, to people across the nation and internationally. The reality is, is you as a business owner have a responsibility to know you have the rights to sell what you're selling. And so now in Michelle May on our wholesale side, we're assuring that we can do that to protect retailers that partner with us.

There you go. What are some other lessons that you learned from the experience? Take a deep breath sometimes. Spend more energy on a solution versus the problem. When I first got the cease and desist and the lawsuit paperwork, I wasted too much time stressing about the situation versus just shifting gears, finding solutions, and building my business faster. That's a really good lesson.

And probably it sounds like you maybe did some distribution of duties to attorneys and other places. Yeah. So delegate. Yep, delegate as much as you can to the people you trust and that have the right skill set to accomplish what you need. There you go. That's important too because you've got to be able to, you know, you can't get off your ball. You can't go spend all your time trying to deal with the legal part.

Your business goes to hell. With any crisis, it's a defining moment for any business. Do you fold or do you fight? And how you fight, I think, speaks to character. And for me, fighting wasn't a combative thing. Fighting was just an internal battle with myself to make me better, my brand and my team better. There you go.

So retailers can have a better product to sell to their clients. There you go. I like that. I like that. Instead of getting drawn into the fight, into the battle with somebody else, make the battle internal just to build a better, build a better machine, build a better kingdom, build a better brand and all that good stuff. And you can't control anybody else. You can only control yourself. So why fight somebody you can't control? That's true. That's true. Although I do love war, but that's one of those

things, but that's another matter. Can you share some practical tips for other entrepreneurs on how to avoid legal pitfalls like yours? Have a great attorney on retainer. Run things by them before you make decisions. That's been the biggest lesson for me is before I produce anything at this point, whether it's a style or a print or a combination of the two, I run it by my attorney

just to make sure that there's no issues. And I think that's a good first fail safe to running a safe business. Have a good attorney. Yeah. Because they keep you out of trouble. Sometimes they can be troublesome because they see everything as a problem.

It's kind of like they're basically a hammer. So they see everything as a nail. And my other advice would just be to not get discouraged when the problems do come because you're never going to own any kind of business in any industry that's not going to throw stuff at your face you're going to have to deal with. Just get ready for it to come. That is really good advice because I think the mindset of how you approach that makes all the difference in how you respond. Yeah.

So if you have the mindset that problems are gonna come I'm gonna solve them I mean I think I've joked about how being entrepreneurs is basically a problem-solving that's really all it is it's just problem solving you're not selling really widgets or anything you're just just playing a game to props exactly and kind of my passion for why I do this is kind of why I have that mindset. So we're not just creating an apparel brand, but we're creating a product that other entrepreneurs can sell and provide for their families. And I don't take that responsibility lightly. owners can buy from me, resell in the open market, and provide for themselves, their team, their staff, their families, that has meaning to me in a lot of ways.

There you go. So anything more you want to talk about on these challenges you face and everything else? I want to get into a little bit about your companies and sort of the offering you have there to entrepreneurs in the wholesale side, retail side, et cetera, et cetera. No, I would just be, don't be afraid to go with your gut. If something feels off, lean into that, and don't be afraid to change. There you go. I like one of these sound bites they sent over. I think they said, every setback is a setup for comeback?

Absolutely. There you go. I like that. I'm going to put that on a coffee cup. Yeah, so we haven't seen here with our team yet that we've been through a lot of challenges. Our local community had a fire. We got kicked out of our warehouse. We built a new warehouse.

So kind of our mindset moving forward is this is going to be our best year yet. We have learned a lot of the hard lessons. We know what not to do. Are we going to mess up again? Yes, absolutely, because that's what entrepreneurs do. They find some way to mess it up. But we're going with a positive mindset that we're going to make this the best year we can.

Yeah, there's always going to be new challenges. I mean, the bigger you get, the more successful you get, the higher the wire goes, the higher wire that you have to walk on as an entrepreneur. And the further way down it goes, you're just like, you're just like, that's a long way down from where we're at right now.

The higher you rise, the higher you have to fall. That is correct. And boy, looking down from those plants, getting wild. So let's talk about your brands again. Now, let's start with the one that's the wholesale one. And what opportunities do people out there, if they might be listening, that might want to get involved with you, what do they have? Sure. So Michelle May is a wholesale retail brand, meaning consumers cannot buy it directly.

They have to buy it from one of our retail partners, which would be other boutiques. And so if somebody out there is an entrepreneur that owns a boutique that would like to carry our brand, they can just email us at accounts at michellemaywholesale.com. We do have an application process because we want to make sure we're pairing with the right retail partners. But yeah, part of this is trying to raise more awareness of our brand and our size inclusivity

and make it more available. And I believe it's all USA made, is that correct? It's not all USA made. We have three different manufacturers. Our USA-based line, we are more than doubling this year It's all USA made. Is that correct? It's not all USA made. We have three different manufacturers. Our USA based line, we are more than doubling this year for a variety of reasons. One being the print issue that they already sell us copyrighted or licensed prints. So we have some, we have USA made, we have some made over in China and we have some assembled in other countries like Mexico as well. There you go.

And then let's get into Ella Lane. Sure. So Ella Lane is essentially our own retail partner for ourself. It's an online boutique where any consumer can go. It's just ellalane.com. And so the majority of what we sell in there is Michelle May just because we believe in the brand that we create ourselves. And so that's where the consumer can find the brand.

There you go. So there's an entrepreneurial opportunity for people if you're out there trying to start your own brand. How do people that start their own brand with your other company, how do they usually retail that? If I'm a young lady out in the world there thinking about maybe starting up with you guys doing some of this wholesaling, retailing, what do they normally do? Do they usually do an online thing or do they do a local shop? We do. We have a variety. So we're in a couple thousand stores nationally.

We have a mix of online only retailers, brick and mortar stores, meaning you can walk into their physical location and shop and try on. We have some that do both online and brick and mortar. And then mobile boutiques is definitely something that's starting to kind of pop up more intended. So they'll have a trailer. I actually used to own a trolley that I used to do shows with with my local community. So essentially, if you're if you're a vetted boutique owner that sells women's apparel and you kind of jive with the vibe of what we have to sell, there's an opportunity to add our brand to your lineup. There you go. Maybe we'll sell clothes on the Chris Voss show. Should we add that to our wholesale lineup, folks? I would even be the men's line first.

You know what? There's this one gal that I'm friends with on, I'm not like close friends with her, but she's on Instagram. And she was a single mother who built a clothing line brand. And she just basically started modeling the clothes she was buying on. And she would make like outfits, you know, like hand and her hat and shoes. And she'd make like the outfit really cute that people like and so then she modeled it in her home and she built like this huge brand selling clothes and i was like that's brilliant i've tried that but no one wants to buy a shirt black and i i started in my living room seven years ago it's just kind of gradually grown and now my husband and i just finished building our first warehouse that we own ourselves so that's awesome congratulations thank you i love seeing entrepreneurs succeed it's it's such a tough business and and i know how tough this one this legal shit goes down man it's something else but you know it's kind of it's kind of like what we always say about the internet once you once you have the trolls coming after you and you got people throwing slinging stuff at you probably means you made it so there's something there's something

comforting that i don't know why like yeah it's it's just all part of yeah we're doing business no one cares about you if you're unsuccessful basically is what it means so there you go thank you very much ashley for for coming to the show. We really appreciate it. Give us your dot coms as we go out. Yep. So ellalane.com if you're a consumer wanting to buy the products for yourselves. And then michellemaywholesale.com if you're an entrepreneur wanting to sell our brand in your store.

There you go. Thanks, Ron, for tuning in. Go to goodreads.com, FortressCrispFoss, linkedin.com, FortressCrispFoss. CrispFoss won the TikTokity. If you want to buy me a coffee, you can go to buymeacoffee.com, Fortress Chris Voss. Or, you know, you can just buy a retail shirt off of her website and send it to me. But it's going to be female clothes. But, you know, maybe I should do that because, you know, I can model the clothes on the show.

And if you want to buy this great outfit that I'm wearing today, there you go. Thanks for tuning in, everyone. Be good to each other. Stay safe. We'll see you next time. That should have a sound.