hmm.

And calculus has very useful applications for certain fields.

Right.

And so if we if we need us people to be able to do calculus and they have to climb the ladder to calculus.

So some of these topics are there because they're on that calculus ladder.

Right.

But I don't know that it's actually super helpful to categorize the topics in that way.

through the profession

Regulation and some sort of assurance are related but not the same.

Yeah, no, I think there are some regulatory gaps.

And I'm with you.

We don't want to over-regulate.

We don't want regulation to be so burdensome.

that it is impossible for anyone to innovate or navigate.

But there really are some instances where we want to have regulation.

And so once they start throwing that cash around at these maybe reluctant Democrats and the progressives, I think things change, don't you?

Meanwhile, there's like screaming.

Have a great life with a newborn that needs to eat.

And they're telling you the best thing to do is rest your body.

And it's like, how is that possible? our medical system is slowly starting to improve they're now covering a little bit of postpartum care there are benefit companies that employees have through their employers that offer postpartum care but the hoops you have to jump through to get it or be somebody who can provide care within those realms is hard and it's frustrating because you know just like you said for ot or pt you write a script and you're you're having an appointment and it should be easier for people who have babies and especially for who have to go back to work or their partner goes to work like you're kind of fending for yourself you know and i as a professional i've been doing this for around 20 years I have a two-month-old who was adopted, so I didn't go through the whole giving birth and pregnancy and healing and postpartum.

But this has been a really interesting shift of how hard it is at this stage in my life.

My first daughter was born when I was 19.

I didn't know anything else, right? I was young, I was energetic, and I could be up at night and and bounced right back and then, you know, quickly got her into that sleep cycle, figuring out that we had to do this for survival.

And you're

Right.

of a world cruise comparing Regent to Viking, which I think is important for a lot of people, obviously with the world cruise, it's a huge investment for them to make.

And so what I would do for them as their travel professional is I'd say, okay, this is what you're getting with Regent per day.

This is how much you're spending, and this is what you're getting with Viking per day, but this is how much more you will spend on this cruise with Viking.

So let's break that down.

And so when clients see that number and they can almost compare apples to apples, and then at that point it comes to, are you interested more in having that luxury vibe and that feel that Regent provides you? And with Viking you go, you have still an upscale experience.

There's no question about that, but there is a level of luxury that Regent offers.

Kristen, what about some of the practical realities of world cruises that people might often overlook? Things like visas, healthcare, being bored.

Before we get into clarity, I want you to take us back over 10 years and help us understand all the different movements that got us to the point that we're at today.

Yeah, well, maybe I'll get started here.

I got into the crypto advocacy space back in 2017, 2018 was when I first started getting involved.

And if you look back to those days, I don't think there were many people, like you said in your introduction, Amira, that were looking to the government for help on crypto.

But What happened in the 2017-2018 era was that there were a lot of ICOs, these initial coin offerings, and the SEC started to weigh in saying that some of those looked like securities offerings.

And so this is sort of the first time that we started to see a disagreement between the crypto industry's interpretation of the law and uh what what the federal government was was thinking about it so um you know since then there have been a series of bills that have sort of aimed to address the question um you know is a crypto token a security or is it a commodity we saw the token taxonomy act we've seen the digital commodity exchange act the Digital Commodity Consumer Protection Act.

You know, there have been various iterations.

What are sort of like various timelines with which we actually think clarity might get over the line? And how would you think about sort of the possibilities across each of those timelines?

So how did you go from a food truck in a parking lot during the pandemic to having relationships with some of the biggest companies in the city?

Starting at the right time when we had moments we thought it was the wrong time.

When you had a lot of corporations trying to retain their staff, the best thing that they could do, because restaurants were closed or shuttered or shifting their staffing models, was bring a food truck out to the plant or their building and have their staff come out and enjoy a hot, fresh meal.

And so we were able to have our first client, Aetna, and we were serving about 300 people.

This was the largest client we had maybe six months out, and we did that really well, and we understood that that was a model that we could operate.

So advertising saying, "Hey, you worked and partnered with Aetna and Southern University," brought in more clients because once that first client trusts what another corporation did, then it brings in more people.

And right now, most of our business revenue, actually over 50%, are with corporate clients, and we love working with them because, one, they pay on time, and then also you get to, you really get to market beyond just that one single visit because if you have 300 people that have tasted your food, all of those people have private events.

How do you prep- prepare for such large events? Uh, do you increase staffing? The product certainly is two to three times more than you might serve otherwise.

Can you talk about that?

Yeah.

So depression is something that I've lived with for, you know, a, quite a long time in my life.

Um, and the past few years have been particularly difficult.

So I signed up for this race on a whim.

Um, and as I went along, running just got me out of bed every single day.

It was the thing that, you know, I stood up.

Persist, show up, stay disciplined, lean on your community." Where, was there a run where you felt like that metaphor was the most true to you?

Like many people who have abortions, I was already a mom at the time.

I have three kids, and last year in May, I found out that we were pregnant with our fourth.

It was unexpected, but we quickly got excited.

Uh, we found out it was a boy and we named him Kase.

Everything was perfect, um, up until my 20-week ultrasound.

Crying because I was afraid.

I knew in my soul that I couldn't watch Kase be born, to struggle to breathe, to go through any type of pain, to just lay there and watch him die.

I just, I couldn't imagine it.