Tell me a little bit about what happened next, you know, after your time with the Coast Guard.

Sure.

So I did eight years.

And for a lot of people, you know, listening or some people think, you know, you can do 20 years and you can 20, 30 years.

Lots of my friends did that.

Some people do four and out.

Eight felt good to me.

How many years has it been going? What can people expect to see and do there? And just fill us in a little bit on the details.

So what are some of the success stories you've seen from companies joining up with the VMA, for example?

Yeah, great.

So it's probably best to start with just level setting in case people are listening along and they're like, what the heck is a trade association? That's right.

That's a good question.

What does a chamber of commerce really do? And the way I like to phrase it is you think of it's a collection of businesses when you think about your local chamber of commerce, whether it's in a regional or geographic area.

or in our case, in a certain industry that collectively work together for the common good where they're not competitors when they're in this situation and they're talking best practices, they're lobbying their government for rules and regulations or favorable conditions for their industry, and they're acting as that collective voice.

right? So as a company, when you're joining one of these associations, you are joining an entity and being able to take part of their established credibility, their established expertise, and be part of the louder voice of advocacy and learning instead of just doing it on your own, right? So We like to say at the VMA that our members are better by being in an association.

What are you most excited to see for this year's VMA? Besides me, obviously.

Right.

And that's a great point and something that we've we've come to see.

So I've been with this association since 2018.

I came on initially to do their industry and government affairs work.

My background, I've been in the maritime industry my whole career.

So out of college, I joined the US Coast Guard, did a lot of regulatory compliance work on vessels and terminals.

So everything regulatory and making sure things are safe and secure.

of representing the entire industry without really calling out specific members and having that view overall of looking at the overall industry instead of one particular company and how it's going to impact the whole industry, which is so important because many in government, whether it be federal or state or local, don't really sometimes take that strategic look and say, oh, I didn't think about how broad the impact of this proposed change legislation policy was going to have.