None of that happens without money and time, and if you're going to spend all this time and money, it's worth it to make sure you have a return at the end of it all waiting for you.

If you're gonna onshore, you have to first understand why you're onshoring.

You have to understand your competitive spectrum.

So when we decided to onshore, we said to ourselves, "All right.

People are gonna buy our stuff if, uh, if we're 20% or more, like within 20% of the pricing from our Chinese competitors." We just made that a hard rule.

We said, "If we're more than 20% more expensive, nobody will pay the domestic premium." And we started with that, and then we looked at how to onshore, 'cause you can't just copy what other people are doing.

You have to do it new.

This is where our story gets interesting.

[laughs]

Yeah, I mean, we are, uh ...

No, we're hiring like crazy.

A lot of people in our industry actually ha- say workforce is the number one problem.

We have a great relationship with Valencia Trade School, which is like four miles from our office.

People come out and know how to solder, wanna work in the industry.

Uh, we're probably, like, the largest recruiter there now.

Hey.

help my audience understand why is it the county funds lots and lots of groups that don't have a track record but won't fund the one that does have a track record? Can you help us make sense of that?

Yeah, the housing first policy didn't allow us to do our job the way we were doing our job.

So you couldn't provide, compassion and accountability.

You could only provide compassion.

And so, you know, fitting into that box was really difficult for us because we provide compassion and accountability.

We have an expectation with people when they come into our facilities.

And so that was the rub.

Well, because, and will you describe for my audience what it is that Helping Hands Reentry Center, I'm talking to Alan Evans, who's the founder and president, that you've been able to raise the money privately even when Multnomah County will not give you the money to actually do the job,