Kenneth Kelly serves as Chairman and CEO of First Independence Bank, a minority depository institution based in Detroit, Michigan.

He is a respected leader in the banking community. Kelly serves on the Board of Directors of the American Bankers Association, is the voice of the nation’s $20.3 trillion banking industry. The American Bankers Association is composed of small, regional and large banks that together employ more than 2 million people, safeguard $15.8 trillion in deposits and extend nearly $11 trillion in loans. He served as chairman of the National Bankers Association 2018-2020.

Checkout our book - https://www.phoenixperform.com/book

Know more about Tom - https://www.linkedin.com/in/thomasawillis/

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YouTube Transcript

Mr. kelly thanks for joining us on the podcast today it's great to meet you and uh great to have you on great to be with you. You've got quite the interesting background you grew up down south and we're in the utility business you're now the CEO of a one of the largest African American owned banks in the country probably the world for that matter. You're an author you're a parent you've got you know a lot going on um so give us a little bit about your leadership journey you know how did you get to become a CEO.

Well I would tell you as you know leadership is really a life journey story and uh for me. It really started home all of the qualities that I have basically are qualities that were infused in me if I could use that term loosely by my parents. You learn from them you learn how they manage things you learn how they you know react to things and part of that demeanor becomes part of your account DNA. So to speak as a leader and over the years what I could tell you is what I've always focused on is thinking about others probably more than I thought about myself um understanding that giving is a part of living those are all have been I would call it core ethos of the way that I've tried to live my life and so that has been.

I would tell you the foundation of when you think about you know someone says Kenneth Kelly who is he uh that's kind of part of who i am and so i translate that into of course how do you acquire a skill set and the ability to learn and demonstrate that you can add value in into a society and i did that by attending auburn university and uh becoming an electrical engineer worked for the utilities we talked about and the beauty of that in that company was i had a chance to really work across many different aspects of the business from engineering to marketing and corporate finance to human resources supply chain management business development all the way up and into mergers and acquisitions.

I'm making is back to leadership style and attributes all of those kind of move and evolve along the way uh to help you become the person that you you end up becoming yeah and i i hear a lot in that you know i hear obviously uh it sounds like a very solid upbringing with some probably some pretty amazing parents i would guess um and also this desire to keep trying new things to keep ex you know taking on new responsibilities not not just sticking with engineering for instance that was my my degree from the university of michigan by the way was engineering um right and clearly i'm not doing any engineering today um but to take on new opportunities to take on new possibilities and to see where those take you so maybe talk a little bit about that and your philosophy when it comes to taking on a new challenge.

I would tell you fundamentally I believe if you're not growing you're dying and part of the getting back to my ethos of trying to learn new things understanding how to stretch yourself came from my upbringing of learning and acquiring the desire to read uh i was certainly not one who you would probably say just love to read as i was growing up but as i became a little bit older i had a a more of a fun desire to read and understand one from a historical perspective but also from a learning perspective because we know history has a tendency to repeat itself but the point I'm making is that in a lot of that reading you read of different individuals and you will see many of those who have had if you want to call it successful lives have demonstrated this ability to learn and grow and to in some cases reinvent themselves.

If you look at my career path it has been um a lot of reinvention or at least trying things that that would be of novel to me at some point in time in my life and so it's part of kind of that that track record that i have that you just made reference to i love it i love it the power of of reading i am i i can appreciate that even at this age in my life i remember a few years ago i was talking to my wife and i said you know what'd be great is if we could get one of those you know like really cool reading chairs you know like the comfortable almost like cigar chairs and a reading light you know where you could read at night by the fire maybe and uh because i had tons of books i was really good at buying books from amazon you know with my amazon's prime subscription and she looked at me and she said well you know you could try time you could try reading and it was really an eye-opening eye-opening moment for me of like oh yeah it's not about all the other things it's about the discipline of reading and so i went from reading about two or three books a year to now i probably read about 20 books a year just from that simple you know that simple advice of like taking it seriously and it doesn't take a lot of time you could you know i i figured out it would take me about 20 minutes a day that's about it um to take that grammatic dramatic growth in my life um so for all of you listeners out there it's not a it's not a time excuse don't use the time excuse like i used to it's it's a matter of the the intentionality in them and the discipline of it and that you know you can tell out by a person by how much they they read and how much they enjoy that that growing and learning like you said um and you you're you obviously took that sort of mindset right of if you're not growing you're dying um all the way to the to the ceo chair so what's it like to to become a ceo and to to be a ceo in in this day and age you know when we've got still got the pandemic going on it's 2022. you know the world doesn't seem to be slowing down what's it like to be a ceo what advice would you have for for young leaders out there yeah i i would tell you like a lot of things in life you know titles have their place but when i think about what i do every day it's not because of i sit there with a title so to speak you know with the responsibility of sitting in the seat comes exactly that responsibility and i have to think about the people who really are in my care or in my stead and try to do the things that would most importantly be helpful to them in helping to remove barriers for them so that they can do and grow the way they would want to grow all in line with the mission of the institution that we're helping to run and so that's the way that i i think about it and so to be candid you know getting back to some basic let's call it personal development or human resources characteristics all of us are a ceo right you're kind of your own chief executive officer whether you go and decide to become an engineer or human resources person or an accounting person you know you have a responsibility for getting yourself prepared to bring a skill set that others would acquire from you and then most importantly in a lot of cases being the ceo of your home meaning leading your family whether that's a male or female and so so i think all of us have that skill set in us and we demonstrate in different ways the question becomes to your broader topic you know how do i apply that across an organization all those life skills in such a way that hopefully helps the organization grow and develop and reach a vision and so you have to be very um i would say intentional about that and looking at you know where are you right now where do you want to go and then try to figure out what are those steps to help you get there

yeah i love that idea of ceo of your your life you know i mentioned before we started that my business partner are going to be writing a book this year and addressed that ceos but we really want it to be practical down to that that level too where anybody that wants to become a ceo or that maybe doesn't want to but they want to be the sea of their own life can can use to as a platform for growth um and i think a lot of folks haven't even been exposed to this idea you know we're too we're too quick maybe as a society to look outwardly you know and to blame others for our lack of whatever um so what would you say to those folks who don't even don't even really get this idea of being the ceo of their own life well i i will tell you you're getting to one of those foundational principles of self-development is uh self-realization right you know kind of understanding what you bring to the table and and have we all been there i'll raise my hand absolutely have i blame people for things that i probably should have been responsible for whether that's competing head-to-head on a job or you know i didn't get that job and are there excuses for that and so in reality there are a lot of things that could contribute to contribute to that and sometimes as humans we take shortcuts for whatever that may mean for us well maybe i'm not the son of such and such so i didn't get the job or maybe that person did because of that and in some cases those things may be true but in a lot of cases they may not be true and so what i would say is always be willing to take feedback um be willing to accept feedback because even when it hurts it helps you and so i have had that to happen on a lot of occasions and and sometimes you know depending on our own level of maturity you know we can be resentful because of someone giving us feedback but at the end of the day those who we see who excel and whatever they do they have had at some point in time someone who was probably pretty hard on them about issues that maybe they just couldn't see those blind spots and they help you to overcome some of those barriers yeah so just be be open to it even if it may hurt a little bit because you can always extract some nugget of gold from the input from some other from other people's feedback which you know i think people can get intellectually right we can all say yeah that's a good idea but how do you actually do that especially if you're sort of emotionally upset you know that you didn't get the promotion or whatever yeah and that's again back to that self-realization you have to figure out your own level of self-awareness and and decide you know what is important to me how do i go about you know course correcting if i'm here and i want to go there what are the things that that are going to prevent me from from getting there and and there is a book this title what got you here won't get you there i believe was something of the title this particular book and the point is that well while you've been successful in getting to this point um that will not necessarily translate to success to get you to your next peak or plateau and so you have to be willing to listen you have to be willing to figure out what does it mean to get the feedback that you need sometimes that may be from external sources who you think may not have a dog in the hunt sometimes it may be from a competitor or a peer who might be willing to share with you what others may see that you can't see but the bottom line is none of us are perfect and i think all of us can agree to that principle uh again i'll raise my hand to that but it it is difficult to hear that that you know your your your own baby is ugly so to speak and whatever that means to you from a professional uh perspective but you have to realize it is bigger than just about you and think through how does it help me become who i want to become and reach that next plateau yeah yeah it's um and it's proven out it's sort of a timeless advice in many ways you know you look at um the gulag acapella go about someone's experience in these horrific you know concentration camps um or the various books from obviously the the nazis and and the horrific things they were doing with those concentration camps if the folks that um sort of were able to take the current reality able to say it and say like this is this is not good but instead of getting spending all my energy sort of wasting it on getting upset with other people what can i do how can i control my own destiny in a way and those are those extreme examples obviously but they they tend to uh be be helpful even when it comes to that day-to-day interaction you know when you have a a difficult conversation with someone at work you can either take that as a negative and sort of ruminant on it and have it ruin your week or you can stop and sort of say okay what can i learn from that how do i grow out of this experience and the folks at least that i've found that are able to do that more effectively no one's perfect to your point but the more you can do of that the more you know success you can bring into your own life so so um you said something earlier that uh i wanted to come back to but i forget what it was um that's what happens when i when i start talking too much um so maybe go back to the to being the ceo and i love that for you it's clearly not about the title you know it's about this opportunity i think what i hear you saying it to be of service and to to try to put others first where does where does that come from well you know again it goes back to my upbringing right you know here's my reality i know that um i will not sit in this seat forever uh i won't be here on this earth forever so we know those are things that are very true and so um the point i'm making is you have to think about what is it that you know you want your lasting impact to be and and for me it has been about being of service i mean it's one of those that's a foundational principle that is very true that dr king has talked about it's in the bible etc so i i have tried to live by that and and be sure that my actions align with that as much as possible there are times it does not um that's the human experience i think that all of us have and share is that we're not going to be perfect on that but that is kind of the destination and so when i think about you know when i will not be here it has been in terms of what's the legacy what are the stories that individuals will talk about and and will think about and so when i think about the impact to myself it's always about who was always helpful who was always of service who was willing to listen on on an issue that maybe you know you needed some help in in getting some guidance on so that those have been i would say guiding principles of of mine that i think have become a part of who i am and personally i ascribe and i i um infallibly attempt to do the same in my life but why why is it important to you specifically what is it that has that be such a focus for you i think it's just dna a little bit of wiring um you know i started from a very humble beginning and so to speak you know i've got four generations of ancestors all buried inside of the same county in alabama going all the way back to slavery and so you know understanding and recognize that just becomes a part of you know who you are so to speak um and and you know as we've seen sometimes those things are controllable and it can be tweaked sometimes they're just part of your dna you know we've seen stories where someone who becomes a murderer and goes to prison can grow up in the same household where someone becomes a minister and a preacher so the point i'm making is that i think all of us have choices to make we have kind of that foundational dna and what happens to us and the environment and the things the environmental factors but at the end of the day you get to a point where you start making choices and then for me those choices have all started to just align with what we just talked about yeah yeah which is like it gives you some of the context it's sort of a historical perspective of who who you are but i'm there's also this aspirational component of like when you're not on earth there's sort of this future that you're talking about what is it that motivates you there well you know that that has evolved over time right and and let me go back to it and i probably talked about it a little bit i remember when i was in college one of the the dreams and asperations i had was for my great-grandmother to live long enough to see me graduate from college because i knew that you know it was a place that she would have been forbidden to even attend um unless she was in some some form of a janitorial possibly uh custodian position and uh it was my dream you know through college was to ask the lord to allow her to live to see me graduate from college you know when i think about today back to the evolution it is now not about me or not about my ancestors it's about you know my kids now and and how do i lay enough groundwork for them to be successful i will share with you just as i've shared with them my goal in life now is to prepare them to live without me because the intent is you know if there's a natural order of life you know i will be i won't be among them at some point in time and so my goal is focused on being sure they have the skill set and the wherewithal to be successful that when their father is not here again hoping that the natural order of life happens that they have this the ability to be successful and to proceed with their own lives and whatever that is that they want to do and to pursue so i will tell you tom it's evolved over time but you know there are different stages of life where we where our outlook really changes based on you know what's going on and what's important to us um that's such a such a powerful story this is your great grandmother yes and you actually said i asked the lord so there's a faith element yeah absolutely and the irony is my grandmother had already passed uh her daughter and so she was one to see unfortunately the unfortunate order of life changed for her and ironically that my mother did live to see me um graduate from college but my mother ended up passing before my great-grandmother passed too so we've seen kind of the the order of life get out of a kilter in our family but but um yeah that was something that was very important to me at that point in time wow wow that's amazing and um so as you think about you know this mindset for leadership and and you've got obviously a wonderful team and a growing team as i understand i think you guys are growing outside of michigan now which is wonderful um talk a little bit about that and and in the context of you know how do you create a culture a high-performing culture where people can show up and and be their best well i i i'm still working on that tom i can't tell you i know the answer to that to be candid with you but it goes back to principles of trying to treat people with respect it goes back to identifying you know what is it that's the aspiration of the team and hopefully have individuals to buy into the vision of the team uh you have to try to be consistent with what you say and what you do am i successful at that every single day absolutely not um do we veer off the track some left and right probably so but hopefully the true north stays kind of true north in that regard and so we've been working on this now for about four years um the idea of of even thinking about now what where we are which is now we are going to have uh say territory beyond the state's line which means we are somewhat going national if you want to use that very loosely is a really big deal for us for a bank that has a history that has been around for 50 plus years and so you know the the intent is there to try to again uh be a servant be be available to try to break down barriers again i can't tell you i have the secret point of success in this but i've tried to emulate things that i have seen work for others and try to learn from those and try to incorporate those in what our true north is well i think in a way you actually do have the secrets uh you may not realize it but you know and the work that we do with clients all across the country and we've worked with now probably 10 000 plus executives obviously many ceos we always talk a lot about it's not so much what you're doing it's who you're being and what i get from our short time together is that you are very candid very very open you're very honest you're you're not pretending like you've got it all figured out um and you're built on the foundation of principles and values and in a way that's that's 90 of the work i think what do you think well i i agree with you that gets back to the point i mentioned earlier trying to be consistent you know we have talked about um things in a way that hopefully has been consistent we focused on two values of of teamwork and communication and in some cases we've had to you know not have individuals work anymore with us who don't you know kind of demonstrate those behaviors um and so yeah that is a part of it but it is not kind of the if you do these one two three four five things then it's perfect is is what i was trying to articulate uh so again that's a little bit moving left and right but trying to stay on a true north yeah yeah there's no there is no secret formula for the the work of leadership but the never-ending journey and so long as you keep growing you'll you'll keep getting better exactly yeah um so what what excites you about the the future i know you know your your work just uh wrote a book so maybe you can talk a little bit about that but then also talk to us about what's got you excited for the future well i i will tell you part of what we are writing about or we have written about in the book has me quite excited uh when you think about the challenges that we face as a country one of them has dealt with or is dealing with this whole idea of the wealth gap and particularly along the lines of race caucasian versus african-american and you know we have been thinking about that now for a few years and really been working on this book for over two writing about some of the areas we believe we can certainly try to shore up on this effort will it close the gap absolutely not but we believe it's fundamental to have people understand the importance of having a will a health care directive and a power of attorney and so our story is really about that for some people they may call it estate planning we try to focus it on on it as being part of your legacy planning because what we believe is that many individuals regardless of if you're rich or if you're poor many people don't think that this applies to them and so what we're trying to do with the book is say hey it does apply to you and guess why it applies to you because i know you care about those loved ones who will be left behind when you leave this earth and so many of us spend most of our working hours acquiring things that we want to be sure that they pass in a manner that's efficient with less friction meaning without loss of value and so that's what the book is all about and we're very excited about that because we believe we can change a lot of lives of families um mitigate some of the acrimony that happens when things aren't taken care of when someone leaves a family in a manner that creates you know uh friction and relationships also so we're very excited about that and we've written about that in the book and time i'll tell you we also created a technology platform that will allow individuals for very very low cost at the retail level for 49.95 a year you can basically upload your will healthcare directive and power of attorney all of it can be uploaded you can have the individual that you want to have access to it have it today or they can get it later upon your demise all email so they don't have to go to your house and search through your papers and figure out where things are all of that can be stored electronically for very low and affordable costs so we've not only talked about this is something we're excited about we brought a solution to the table that individuals can use and now implement going forward that's really neat what's the name of the book the name of the book is prepared before i let go prepared before i let go okay yes and did you write it with someone else or yes i i did i had someone to help me with the writing on that and um a gentleman by the name of anthony needley was part of that process okay so they could find it under your names great yes you know what i when i just just this just making this thought up as we're speaking here but it seems brilliant in many ways because you know you i would never have taught tied the wealth gap to those concepts but what you're really think pointing to is that we have to change people's mindsets you know if we try to go to work on fixing the wealth gap we're going to have all sorts of frankly band-aid solutions that have horrible unintended consequences you know yes um whereas if we can help people have a different mindset whether it's like you said with the rich or poor you know to think about what's your legacy what's your legacy planning and that no matter how much money you have just thinking that way can actually change your decisions that you make over the course of a lifetime exactly that's exactly right that's exactly right and it's fundamental things um tom and i didn't document some of these in the book but you know the ideal of someone working all their life and having a pension uh being sure that their um you know beneficiaries are properly listed on that we have seen cases where that's not the case and it especially impacts when there are second marriages and and you you may be giving up what you worked all your life for because that wasn't taken care of going through this type of process and what we put together in my legacy items which is the name of the platform allows for you to account for that in such a manner that guess what you met you remarried and upon your demise you know your new spouse now have access to um this pension fund or the pension that you have that will remain you know with them until they their demise and so you know those are simple things you don't think about but you know if you add let's just say someone's getting whatever 20 000 a year in a pension multiply that across the life of the the uh remaining spouse and that's husband and or white just to be clear uh the remaining spouse who may live for another 10 or 15 years you multiply that number it's a pretty big number so that's the kind of thinking to your point that we are trying to engage in with bringing up the dialogue so that these things aren't taboo and individuals are willing to speak about them the other item i would tell you that i learned about in this process of the writing and research is the fact that when our kids turn 18 they are truly legal adults which means that upon if they're incapacitated whether that's through a car accident or an illness and somehow find themselves in a hospital where they can't speak for themselves the hospital might have to end up going to court to get an order to determine what needs to be done that's compliant with law just because they are still dependent upon you meaning that maybe are you taking care of them financially and they're in college doesn't necessarily give you the right to make a decision whether they should be resuscitated or not or who they want to have make that decision on being resuscitated so those are things that we don't think about as parents because they're our kids and we still treat them like kids sometimes even until they're 40 and 50 years old but the reality is you know that is a demarcation point where we really start talking about this issue because we need to be sure families are protected and are never in the position where they have to have someone else you know intervene in making a decision on behalf of their child or on behalf of the family wow that is fascinating i i didn't know that um i'm gonna go talk to jessica about that as soon as we hang up here yeah it's a real issue so i'm raising my hand i have one of my kids have have completed hers and i've talked to my son about it and my point is this is not natural right you don't just wake up one day and say hey you're 17 or 18 years old guess what one day you might have to have a living will which means you know you might die on a table you may not be incapacitated do you want to have them resuscitate you i mean those are topics that that's just not common for us to have even around the dinner table and to your point that you mentioned earlier part of this whole legacy discussion is to change our mindsets around it because it's no different than a business decision right it's back to being the ceo of yourself um how do you how do you want to quote run the business so to speak do you want it hanging out there so someone has to intercede or the law has to intercede and make that decision or do you want to be willing to go ahead and face that and button it up in such a manner that you don't have to deal with that complicated issue and now what i want to be clear about is the law is different in all 50 states of what and what can and cannot be done so i'm not making a blanket statement across all 50 states but the point is you know the way our software is driven it really applies to the state's um compliance for each of the of the 50 states and and what i'm trying to say here is most importantly there are things like that that are underlying in state law um that many of us are not even aware of and then we find out when we're in that position and then it's entirely too late to deal with it yeah yeah yeah exactly and it's it's like you said it's not a very commonplace discussion but boy oh boy it's uh be really important if it comes into your life and absolutely thoughtful and proactive absolutely absolutely that's like one of the examples of things that we have to think about well and it also shifts you know people's mindsets around savings you know in this country we we're not very good at that in general we need to have a we we tend to spend more than we make and so you're now you're talking about if i'm thinking about the legacy of my life and being able to pass on wealth no matter how much money i make to have a more of a savers mindset um in day-to-day weekly decisions is a life changer it literally changes the trajectory of your life and so so let me give you an example of a part of my book that i write about it's one of the greatest stories to be candid with you in the book it's about a lady named osciela mccarthy she lived to be maybe in her 90s or 80s or so from mississippi her occupation was identified as washerwoman meaning she basically washed individuals clothing for a living and at um late in her life she basically decided she wanted to have an impact and she made a donation to the university of southern mississippi around the dollar amount of about a hundred and fifty thousand dollars um and it was one of the largest individual type contributions to the university and in fact it inspired so many people i think they ended up could others contributed to that endowment to make it 500 000 i believe was a final number at that point in time so that students could really start to live off of the scholarships associated with her endowment she was able to live to see some of the individuals who um who were recipients and scholarship um reward award winners of her scholarship what her em the impact she had was so impactful that the president of the united states acknowledged her for what she did she was interviewed nationally um again here's a lady who was identified as a washerwoman so we probably can only imagine what her salary was probably meager would be an understatement but the point i'm making is she became exactly what you said she was a saver she was a legacy creator and so if you go to the university of southern mississippi now and you say the name osceola mccarthy it is as highly regarded as any other name in and around that university and one of the most telling components of this i'll tell this part of the story in the book was that she when she was being interviewed nationally someone said to her or ask her the question didn't you want to do something for yourself with all of that money and she looked at them and smiled and she said i just did you know the giving of that sky and the endowment of that scholarship for minority students there at the university of southern mississippi was kind of this this this gift to herself even though it was done in a very uh a selfless manner so uh it's a great story but it's one of those that we wrote about because to your point is thinking about legacy is thinking about impact uh which you can't get that if you buy a corvette right it just over time that that shine fades in the car whether it's a collectible or not just will not shine the same as it is new but there are lives every day now that she is no longer with us being impacted economically and and in a lot of ways i would say spiritually because of what she represented and those kids kind of going through that university and living up to her expectations of being successful in our society wow that's really a powerful story it's uh and it speaks again to mindset you know that here is a washerwoman who's able to save money so that mindset i don't have money i can't save is is is debunked right there that's correct that's correct yeah that's correct it reminds me i read the millionaire next door when i was in when in high school um book and it said similar stories you know how most people who are millionaires are not the ones you expect it's not the person in the family that's correct that's right it's the person driving the 20 year old car that that saved a million dollars not the not the person in the bentley or the exactly that that's exactly right and that was one of my favorites by charles gibbons so i think i read that one back in the probably early 90s and ironically over the holidays i saw it on my son's desk upstairs and he's reading it himself well he has been had been reading it previously but i saw it was freshly placed on his desk so it tells me he picked it up and he's been looking at it also yeah well that's great it's no wonder you and for the listeners out there we uh we met through my wife jessica um jessica's company pocket nest is a is a financial platform you know it's looking to help people to get their financial house in order you know using an app and trying to simplify things for people that this is not something you need to pay millions of dollars for this is not out of reach anybody can do this it just creates it just takes a little bit of effort you know a little bit of energy and a little bit of help which is what the the app is for so it's so wonder you guys hit it off so well um so uh time flies by as it as it always does um maybe just close us out with a book recommendation beside your own you gave us that one but what what book sort of helped help shape your life or maybe still is shaping your life that you would recommend to the listeners wow that's a a pretty good one there's one that i think all people should read and it's one of those that um just teaches a little bit about principles it's a it's a book by the name of influence um i think that the author's name is robert caldini i believe is his name but he talks about the how we how do we influence others and how we are influenced and there are roughly six principles of that and i won't get into all of those but the point i'm going to make is he used a lot of stories like i just shared with you to help prove a point you know and so is something as simple of of social proof or reciprocity and how or liking how do how do we use those principles to be able to effectively communicate and build influence and how in some cases it helps us be easily influenced um you know the the ideal that we typically uh will respond in a consistent manner you know if someone says you know what i'm a man about town i do this and i do that and i do this so to speak whether that's going to the theater or to plays or other things and then someone sets you up by saying you know what i have two tickets to sell to go to a play you're not going to say you know what i don't want to buy those tickets you normally it is used on us in a way to sell to us and so my point is i found that book to be very um inspiring to read because it tells of a lot of cases where not only was this used for good but in some cases it was used for for the negative and one other final story from that book it talks about watergate and how the watergate took place almost a consistency principle right which is that uh you know individuals had asked originally four million dollars to do what they were trying to do with watergate and everybody said it was a dumb idea individuals again asked for like five hundred thousand dollars and they said this is a dumb idea we're not going to do this but because they kept coming back and asking this last time they asked for 250 000 i believe was the number to be able to do this you know it was one of those where individuals looked away and say you know what that that's just you know they just kind of wanted to get the the the noise out of the room and acquiesced to the ideal thinking it was not going to be damaging and this was something that was small and it's just you know not a big deal well it turns out to be a historic moment in our country um but the point i'm making is that the principle of what took place there and how they got to that decision is discussed in this book and it goes to show how even us you know individuals as humans can have the greatest of intentions but sometimes we can fall short by having a negative impact just because of the way things happen to us and so i've i've enjoyed that book and just thought it was one that i think is one that fits your readers um in a way that hopefully they can find some good out of it i love it i love it fantastic well thank you it's been wonderful wonderful talking to you kenneth i appreciate your time today and for all the wonderful nuggets you've shared with us well thank you tom it's been great being with you [Music] you