Why Small Communities is a Fun Place To Be

[00:00:00] Welcome to Elements of Community Podcast about discovering and exploring the Elements of Community. I am Lucas Root. And each week we talk with a community leader about what makes their communities thrive and bring value to both the leaders and the members join me as we unpack the magic of the Elements of Community.

[00:00:22] Nedra, thank you so much for joining me. Would you like to tell us a little bit about yourself?

[00:00:43] Oh, I'd love to, Lucas and thanks for having me on your show. This is really exciting. I started off in the insurance business when I was 16 years old and I'm still today in the insurance business.

[00:00:54] Is that even legal?

[00:00:55] No. It really wasn't. I don't think you know, it's funny cause that little man had a little insurance office in Fort Scott, my hometown and he needed some help. And so he called the high school office and the secretary said, yeah, here's somebody and that's how I got the job. And I went down there and I started running his business and I learned that I really liked it.

[00:01:15] And so I was working at this little insurance office in a small town. And that really kind of figured that I'm going to buy this business. I love this so much, I'm going to get licensed when I'm 18 and I'm going to buy this business. And I went and got licensed when I was 18.

[00:01:30] I got licensed when I was 17. And the state said, no, you can't have your licenses until you're 18. And then he sold the office though, at the time, between the time I turned 17 and 18, so, you know, which he needed to, it was fine. And I went across the street and then quickly became the number one agent for many companies down there and then moved to Kansas City and continue that.

[00:01:52] And here now, today I have stayed in the insurance business all these years. And today I'm the CEO and founder of a company, a software company called Spyder who serves the insurance and the financial services markets. Pretty fun.

[00:02:06] That's very cool.

[00:02:07] Yeah.

[00:02:08] Wow. You know, I thought I knew what we were going to talk about and probably we still will, but it really does go to show that that being a member of a community has perks, has benefits. Cause there he was a member of the community. He called up the local high school, somebody, he knew somebody who trusted him and said, you know what I need some help. And can you help out?

[00:02:33] I think sometimes those are the values of smaller communities and just communities in general, Fort Scott, Kansas is where I grew up and it's where my businesses, I live in Kansas City, but I also live in Fort Scott and Fort Scott's an hour south of Kansas City.

[00:02:47] So it's an easy little drive to go down there. And it's fun. And you know what I love about Fort Scott's about 16,000 people in the community, and everybody knows everybody. And growing up down there, you know, everybody knew everyone. So if you did something bad, somebody called your parents and told them, if you wanted to go to the pharmacy downtown, you could go in there and get a candy bar and charge it to your parents' accounts. And that was okay too.

[00:03:12] So having that strong sense of community and having the community kind of look after all these kids as we're growing up and even help with us, like interns, like that job that I took at 16, that was really kind of an interim position. We didn't call it that at the time, but having that ability for a small town for them to call the high school and say, hey, I need some help.

[00:03:33] That was pretty cool. And we're still doing that today. That's still goes on down there today. It's really fun.

[00:03:38] It's great. I Love it, you know, I talk about my experience of community when I was growing up from time to time and have mentioned it on the show. The idea that somebody might show up at my door that knows me, that knows my family that knows my parents and say you know, Lucas did this great thing today and I just wanted to stop by on my way home and let you know, or, you know, maybe your son is heading down a path that you don't want them to go dawn. And I just wanted to stop in on my way home and let you know.

[00:04:08] That's right. Well, community though helps build and helps kids grow up. They always say it takes a village to raise kids. I think it takes a community really. I do. We would get on our bikes and ride downtown and right all over that town from one end to the other, which you could easily do.

[00:04:26] And as long as you were home, by the time the street lights came on and dinner time, you were fine. And everybody looked after us. So it was just a great place to grow up. And that's why I wanted to put my business down there because there's great people down there who own small businesses today, they need the help, but business works in smaller communities, a little different than it works in some of the larger communities. I think it's kind of fun how it works.

[00:04:50] Yeah, that's awesome. Tell me more about that.

[00:04:54] Yeah. So I've put the business down in Fort Scott because Fort Scott is such a great town, but about five, six years ago they lost their hospital. They're not unlike many other small communities where hospitals just didn't have the money to stay and so Forth Scott's been trying really hard to get a hospital back in there and then they will sometimes.

[00:05:14] But what they really need is employers to pay, to hire good people, good salaries, pay good wages that have benefits so that those hospitals services can be used with paid for. And I think, if one person like me can come down and put a company down there that can grow and we may grow slowly, we may have five and then 10 and 15 and 20 and maybe 300 employees at some point.

[00:05:38] Right. And the impact of having good jobs with good benefits in a community is tremendous. So we're on a mission. Well, we do good for our industry and for our insurance and financial services community. We're on a mission to do good for our local community, our county and our City as well.

[00:05:58] I love that. So you're looking to do well by doing good.

[00:06:02] That's right. Yeah. Or do good by doing well or however that term is. But yes, we believe that kindness is great and to be used a little bit more in business and that we want to do good while we're doing well. And we want to really help support the community and the people that help support me when I was growing up. It's so fun to now go and give back to the community.

[00:06:25] Yeah. You know, hire a 16 year old and watch them grow into one of your star employees.

[00:06:32] Yeah. So it's good Fort Scott is a great place to grow up and you know, they still have brick streets, the church bells ring at 8:00 AM and at noon and 5:00 PM. And it's just kind of an amazing little place.

[00:06:44] It's like a little bit growing up in a Norman Rockwell painting, I would say.

[00:06:50] Oh, fun.

[00:06:51] Yeah. Pretty fun. Pretty cool.

[00:06:54] So how else does a small community impact your business and vice versa?

[00:07:00] Oh, there's so many ways. One of the things was they have a local economic development team down in Fort Scott a group and working with them, we were able to get some offices lined up there within the county.

[00:07:13] And so we've got some really nice offices that the county is able to kind of help us slide right in and get us going. That's one area. That's only one thing, but we attend some of the local chamber meetings when we can, and we participate in some of the local rotary meetings.

[00:07:29] We've been to a couple of those and it's just fun to see and hear what all the business leaders around the community do. And the business leaders in this community down here are tremendous. I mean, it's amazing what they do. They have built bike gut trails, and at the parks, they have built all sorts of fun activities for people to go do.

[00:07:51] They have activities and events. They're constantly putting on bands down in the park and having people come down and just listen to music and have fun. And I think the events and the activities of how people are starting to grow that pretty cool. You know, people were buying some of the old buildings downtown and refurbishing them, putting new businesses in there, building apartments in them, you know, it's just kind of a resurgence of a community.

[00:08:16] And when you think about, well, how's that happening? It's happening by the business leaders. They're the ones doing it. Right. And I find that amazing. I find that so good. There've been groups, I've got some friends down there that have been so good about organizing like community cleanups, you know, where they go in and they help clean up neighborhoods and they clean up areas that may be a little bit distressed.

[00:08:38] Maybe the folks who are older, Fort Scott is an older community. So there's a lot of older folks that maybe they can't get out there and trim their trees or trim their bushes. And so there's been some really great volunteer groups that have gotten out and helped folks in the community.

[00:08:53] I love that. And I think that right there gives such a strong sense of who Fort Scott and who that community is. And it kind of is the whole reason why I like to be a part of it. I just love it.

[00:09:06] Yeah. So they, they,

[00:09:07] they create and facilitate projects in town?

[00:09:11] Yes. Yeah. Like we have a thing getting ready to come up. We have, it's called the good old days and they have it every year.

[00:09:18] It's the first weekend in June and it's just a celebration of the town, but the planning for it and kind of what people volunteer their time and the donations to it are amazing to really make that work. And it's a pretty big event. A lot of folks from the area come down and enjoy it.

[00:09:35] So that's one event that they hold. They have some pioneer harvest Fiesta at a parades and different grades, and they do things. Small communities do things that maybe some large communities just don't do anymore right? And so like parades and local town celebrations and chili cook-offs and pancake beans when families are distressed and different things.

[00:09:58] So it really does give people a great opportunity to really get involved, big time with and help out. And I like that.

[00:10:06] It's amazing. I love it. So these are projects like the business leaders put together a project. They host an event, which is a project. They do a cleanup, which is a project. These are all projects for the community. Right?

[00:10:22] That's right.

[00:10:23] And what kind of businesses are these?

[00:10:26] Well, we're a software company and there's another software company that's popped up down there. But I think we're the only software companies down there. There's a funeral home, couple of funeral homes.

[00:10:36] There's antique stores. There are boutique shops. There's liquor stores. There's an urgent care. There's a fast food, there's restaurants, you name it, a jewelry stores, any kind of business down there. Any kind of business leader, they love to get involved with the community and the community is just very open to allowing people to come in and help. And that's just great, you know, even planning flowers.

[00:11:03] Are there big chain stores in the area too?

[00:11:06] No. We do have a Walmart and Walmart, in fact I hope I get the story, right, but in 1969, I think I'm going to get it right. We were either the first or the second Walmart that Sam Walton built and Sam Walton used to come up to Fort Scott and hunt in the land around that area.

[00:11:23] And some of it was even some of my family land that they would hunt on. And they hunt quail and we don't really have pheasants, but they'd hunt deer and stuff like that. And so he put a store down there and that was 69. And they've had three subsequent stores down there.

[00:11:40] They just keep building a bigger store and a bigger store and a bigger store and a bigger store. And, you know, while Walmart, of course is certainly a treasured thing in a community. You do see the impact that a bigger store has on the community. And the local pharmacies are now pretty much all gone.

[00:11:58] And the grocery stores have really thinned out, now there's only one. So you start to see the impact of big box stores coming in. And Fort Scott has done a really good job at not letting big box stores come in. We're just an hour south of Kansas city and Joplin, Missouri, 60 miles down the road.

[00:12:17] So Fort Scott kind of sets between some larger communities that have those services. So there's really no need to put them in.

[00:12:26] So, what I'm hearing is that the business leaders are working hard to support the community and the community in turn is supporting the businesses.

[00:12:35] That's exactly right. I think Fort Scott does a really good job of supporting their business owners. They really do. People try to do business locally. They've really tried. And there's sometimes that you can't, and that's true for all of us. right? So we have to go use a big box store or go to Kansas City or Joplin and shop outside of a community, that's okay. We all understand that. But I think the first, you know, Fort Scott probably gets the first look at a lot of people's first dollar to spend.

[00:13:04] Yeah. That's amazing.

[00:13:07] Yeah.

[00:13:08] So there's benefits in both directions to building that community.

[00:13:13] It really does. You know what's interesting to me about Fort Scott. I find this amazingly interesting. There are quite a few, I've got some itch sorry here. Okay. Got that over with. Okay. Fort Scott has quite a few women CEOs that are millionaires.

[00:13:30] They have quite a few million dollar businesses that women have started down there. And it's true not only for women, there's some great businesses down there, but it's just kind of not lost on me that here it seems like over the last few years there've been some women that have started business down there that are really doing well.

[00:13:48] And some of them are online businesses. Some of them are Amazon, Etsy type thing, Shopify, e-commerce type businesses, but they're all doing well. And I find that amazing Fort Scott is a great town to be kind of what I would call one of the zoo towns. Where you can live and work wherever you want to anymore.

[00:14:09] Well, a lot of people moved down to Fort Scott during the pandemic. And they saw a real increase at their lake at Fort Scott lake. And so a lot of those lake houses just got bought up like crazy and people want a nice, more comfortable style of life or standard of living. And it's just, you go down there and it's just nice and slow.

[00:14:31] People are very kind. People take the time to stop and talk to you and to visit with you and ask you how you're doing. And that just doesn't happen. You know, when all my years of officing in the cities and being around New York and spending a lot of time in New York, but nobody ever stopped and asked me how I was doing or how my business is doing.

[00:14:49] So it's just really nice to have people stop you and say, hey, how you doing? You know, it's a nice thing.

[00:14:57] I grew up in Northern Vermont and that's the first time I brought my wife to visit the city of Montpelier, which is the capital of Vermont near where I grew up. We're walking down the street. I was excited about this moment.

[00:15:09] Something was about to happen that is unique to very small communities and she had never experienced it. We're walking down the street on the sidewalk and we get to an intersection and there's traffic. There's not a lot of traffic in Montpelier, but there's traffic and the cars stopped in both directions.

[00:15:29] As we got to the intersection and my wife looks around and she goes, what are they doing? I said, they're waiting for you to decide which way you're going so that you can cross the street. And you know, this is a woman from New York. She looked at me like her glass broke. She was like people actually care about other people?

[00:15:52] You mean they're not going to run over me. They're going to give me a chance to cross the street. Yeah. I love that too. That's really fun. But you're right. It's just these smaller communities. I think they're golden gems. I really do. I mean, this is kind of a throwback to how we all used to live and how we used to act and behave and people were kind, and I just love that kindness.

[00:16:14] And you do know everybody, you know most everybody. And if you don't know them, you probably know their brother, cousin, uncle, aunt, friend, nephew, somebody, you know somebody that knows them. Yeah. So.

[00:16:25] Cool. So there are benefits and we talked about those benefits a little bit. Can we dive in a little bit more on what those benefits are?

[00:16:33] Because in order for people to enroll themselves into a community, like really show up and decide, you know what I'm going to be here, I'm going to be focused on being a member of this community. I'm going to shop local. What is it that the community members expect to receive by enrolling, by showing up by engaging?

[00:16:59] That is a really good question. I think the community members expect to see. Well they like their style of life. You know, people live in smaller communities because they typically like a certain style of life. So they expect it. They expect kind of live in that way that they want to live.

[00:17:18] And what I mean by that is you're not fighting traffic. You know, you've got one main street down the road. You're not fighting traffic. Like you're fighting in a City. You could go from end to end of town and it takes 10 minutes. So there's not going to be any 30 minutes sitting in traffic anywhere in Fort Scott.

[00:17:34] Or if it took an hour, it's because you stopped to roll down your window a bunch of times and wave.

[00:17:39] It's exactly right. And even an hour, that would be a long time. But I think people expect privacy, they expect good police and to be treated kind of very fairly and kind of left alone, you know?

[00:17:52] I think they expect friendliness and they expect that their neighbors are going to get to know them and their neighbors are I sit on one hand, I say privacy, but then on the other hand, people want people to get to know them. You know, I'll give you an example. People in the morning, a lot of the folks, they love to go to a certain diner down there.

[00:18:11] It'a a new grill. It's just awesome. And there's a coffee shop too common grounds and people love to go there and there are different prouds, but they collect, they kind of gravitate to those places in the morning, you know, for community to sit down and see who else is getting coffee and who can I sit down and talk to for a little bit?

[00:18:27] And people will go in there and sit down and have coffee. They'll have breakfast. They'll talk about what they're doing during the day that talk about what's going on and I think people love that. And that is an expectation. You know, because in a small town you want to go in and it's like, cheers, you want to go to someplace where everybody knows your name.

[00:18:44] You just want to do that. And you want people to talk back to you and Alex's over there flipping a hamburger, but he's talking to you and the folks that are making your coffee for you, they're talking to you. And then you're seeing somebody walk in the door that you want to sit down and talk to you for five minutes or so.

[00:19:01] And I think I'm not sure that's an expectation, but I think it is because I think people love to go do that. When they want to socialize. They know where to go to socialize and you can see people that you just love to sit down and have a nice conversation with.

[00:19:18] Yeah. So what I'm hearing is comradery, social support.

[00:19:23] Yes.

[00:19:25] And I think that there's discernment in those, right?

[00:19:29] Well, I think there is.

[00:19:30] Because you have the element of privacy and the element of social support and comradery.

[00:19:38] Yeah. Well, and you know, another thing about small towns that I think Ford Scott's great at, you know, you get somebody that maybe hurts their knee and has to have knee surgery and is out for a couple of weeks.

[00:19:48] And they're not at the local coffee shop for a couple weeks. Well, people know about that and they'll take them food and they'll call him and make sure they're okay. They'll take them a cup of coffee, you know they're kind, they'll reach out to them. So that person doesn't just sit there isolated for a couple of weeks.

[00:20:04] I'm not saying it doesn't happen, but people think differently about how they interact with people. And I think that community it's a little unique, but I sure think it's really good and how they handle themselves down there.

[00:20:18] Yeah.

[00:20:19] I like that.

[00:20:20] Yeah. So that's like level two social support for lack of a better description.

[00:20:27] Maybe level four I don't know, it could be level four, but yeah, but I do think that kindness down there is really good, you know, they have all the holiday drives, toy drives for kids. They have so many things that they do to try and, give back and be helpful. And that is just the right way to, in my opinion, to live your life is to be helpful to other people and kind and do what you can to make a difference.

[00:20:54] And that to me is a good thing.

[00:20:56] I agree.

[00:20:57] So I love it down there.

[00:20:58] And so as that comes to the involvement of the citizens and the businesses is there an expectation on the citizen's side that by shopping locally, they're going to get additional value? It sounds like they are, but is the expectation there?

[00:21:15] Yeah. I think so. I think sometimes that expectation is in a job, right? If I shop locally and I live here locally. I need to be, I want to work locally.

[00:21:24] And they're aware of it, like your community is cognizant of this. That's front of mind.

[00:21:29] Yeah, and I think they are, they are cognizant, I mean, that's trying to do anything they can to get additional employers in there.

[00:21:38] Cause any additional employers that are paying good jobs, good wages, good benefits that helps the community, helps them get a hospital back, helps people have the money to take care of their lawns and their houses. You know, it's just a good thing. Right.

[00:21:51] Yeah.

[00:21:51] So I do think that when people shop local, then they kind of think, well, I want to help support these businesses because my friends work here and maybe I'll work here one day too, or maybe my son will, or my daughter will, or my friend will, or somebody will.

[00:22:04] Yeah.

[00:22:05] So we do try, I think, as hard as we can to shop local where we can.

[00:22:11] And then on the flip side, how do the business owners field that expectation and what are their expectations?

[00:22:17] Well, I think that's a little tougher sometimes, maybe on the business side, because when you have a small community and everyone knows everybody and you have one job open.

[00:22:28] You know, you're going to get a lot of applicants and you can't hire everybody and so you have to manage those expectations pretty well, I think. But yeah, but I do, I think people, consumers and community members do have expectations of the community and they just want to see the community to continue to thrive.

[00:22:51] You know, they want to see good communities street repair, you know, the park system in good shape, you know, the recreation systems working well for the kids, the schools doing good. I'd say community expectations around are around a lot of those types. Also, you know what, in a small town, Friday night lights so much fun, it just is, you kind of came from a small town.

[00:23:14] So you may, I dunno if you had that too, but you know, we love our football. So high school football, high school basketball, anything that the high school does, the whole town supports the town also has Fort Scott Community College. And they used to have a football team, for years, they've had a football team and now they just could did away with that program sadly.

[00:23:36] But it's funny because a few years ago, when the chiefs were in the super bowl, there was four or five people that were playing in the super bowl that had come through Fort Scott Community College. So that's kinda fun little statistic there. So just interesting stuff.

[00:23:52] So people support the recreation, they love the activities, the events, it's more kind of good wholesome family type of fun and activities. That's what they've done, it's all about community.

[00:24:03] Amazing. Very cool. And then, now back to you in Spyder Loop, how do you have expectations around that community and how is that creating value for you and how are you creating value for them?

[00:24:18] Yeah, well, we're creating value for the community and that we're getting ourselves going here. We're just a year old.

[00:24:26] Congratulations, by the way.

[00:24:27] Thank you. Thank you. We've survived the first year we're selling our product.

[00:24:32] It is a big milestone.

[00:24:32] Yeah, that's a huge milestone. A lot of companies don't right. The second year milestone is another big one, but we're selling our products now and we're starting to get some good reviews.

[00:24:42] Now we're getting ready to build our second set of products. And so what Fort Scott is doing to help us is really providing us some great offices and a place to be. And the ability to hire some folks in the community is we're ready for them. And that's kind of what they're giving us right now.

[00:24:58] Now we will be giving back to them big time because we're going to be hiring folks and paying good wages. And sometimes in communities, wages are a little bit less than there in the cities. We're going to be paying good wages with good benefits and that will really help a community, and we're also bringing something to a community that they don't have, you know, small towns and small communities typically don't have software.

[00:25:22] They just don't have software development companies. And I know that right. I mean, they just don't have it. So we're bringing that to Fort Scott and we think that's neat because a lot of these kids. You know that they graduated the high school. They go to college, maybe Fort Scott Community College, maybe they go to Pittsburgh State University, 30 miles down the road, or they go to KU or K State. Somewhere, you know.

[00:25:43] And they want to come home and maybe they go get a computer degree, a computer science degree or a business degree. And they want to come home, but to Fort Scott to live, but there's just not the great jobs. The professional jobs, like software stuff that is there. And so we're trying to bring something new and different that maybe will attract somebody to come back and stay in and give them a place to work.

[00:26:09] Yeah, we'll have some great marketing roles and client support and service roles and development, all sorts of things that are aligned to software. And that it's not down there right now. So anything that we can do to bring additional jobs, additional skills and things to a community, we think that's going to be super valuable too.

[00:26:30] I got it.

[00:26:31] Down the road we would really even like to help incubate some of these, if somebody brings us a software company or a little software idea and says, you know, a local person that says I'd like to write this and do this, we'd even help incubate it. As we get down a little bit further down the road.

[00:26:48] A little brain space.

[00:26:49] Yeah. A little bit more brain space, but we do, we want to be helpful and we may be the first ones down there in software, but we're not going to be the last. And so we want to be helpful and kind to any company that wants to come in here and kind of see that as a path for them. So, yeah. Interesting.

[00:27:07] So it's almost like you're building a separate community, right? There's the Fort Scott Community. You're building a local software development community.

[00:27:17] Starting, I wouldn't say have done it, but just starting.

[00:27:21] Maybe championing

[00:27:23] Yeah championing it, I think is a good word to say at this point and down the road, as we get a little bit deeper into our company, we get a little bit further down the road, you know, then I think we'll have a lot more free time and a lot more interest in doing that.

[00:27:36] But we just want to help people because these are good jobs and these are, you know, if you think about where the world is going and technologies that if we're going to have to interact with technology in every aspect of our lives. And a lot of these kids, they're going to go get technology degrees.

[00:27:53] They're going to get computer science degrees. They're going to get business degrees and marketing degrees, and they're going to have to have somewhere to use those. And we want them to be able to come home, come back to the community that they love, where they grew up and have a place to work. That's why I'm trying to help him provide here.

[00:28:09] Yeah. I love it. I mean, we talked about it. You and I both share small town growing up, small town living the experience and what we loved about it.

[00:28:19] That's right. And there's a lot of good things to love about it. There really is. So I like to go shopping in the city and I love all that too, but I sure love my small community. It's a lot of fun.

[00:28:30] Yeah. Amazing. Thank you. In addition to jobs and maybe tax dollars, right. Which are the obvious things, how else do you expect that you're going to provide for the community and that they're going to provide back?

[00:28:41] Yeah. Changing mindsets. You know, we haven't really talked about that a lot. Smaller communities are they're less more how do I want to say this? They haven't really adopted technology. You know, maybe as fluently as some of the cities have. Right?

[00:28:57] Sure.

[00:28:58] And you know, they do business kind of their way. Right. And they haven't really seen a need to change. And yet here we are living in today's world with cyber ransom attacks and all these bad things happening.

[00:29:09] And people really do need to change their ways a little bit. So we're hoping to also educate a little bit and we're going to start, we haven't done this yet, but I'd like to start some training classes that we can just do in our offices. We've got some beautiful offices with a big conference room and I like to have some folks in, and maybe we can just start to teach them a little bit about technology and about why you should be saving your documents in a good storage solution.

[00:29:34] And why, how do you keep yourself safe from getting ransomed or hacked and or how do you do the best job that you can to try and keep yourself safe? You know, and how do you get on Instagram? I've had that question to ask. I've had people down there say, gosh, I'd just love to get on Instagram, but I just don't know how well, maybe I should have a training class for that, providing things around technology that people want to know, but they just don't and there's nowhere to go get the help.

[00:30:00] So I might do that too, and just offer an hour of free training classes and just come in if you want to learn more about social media, you want to learn more about, you know, kind of handling your electric clock, your electronic life.

[00:30:12] I think that''s a good idea.

[00:30:13] You know, and how to protect yourself. So I'm going to start some things like that. I haven't done it yet, but I've been thinking about it. I've got it scoped out and I'll probably start that in the next month, so.

[00:30:24] Oh, that's fantastic. Thank you. Nedra, for people who want to learn more about you, where do they find you?

[00:30:30] Oh, they find me at www.SpyderLoop.com and that's S P Y D E R L O O P.com. And my phone number is on there too. So if you go to our website, you can hunt me down and find me. I'd love to talk to you. You know, we've got a really cool multicloud documents story system. That it helps companies not get ransomed, not have to pay ransoms. You know, you get a backup copies, you get all your electronic document storage and we give you a backup it's included as part of your deal.

[00:31:01] So that's why people are loving us. We're out there, we can help you. It's part of our mantra being helpful. Yeah.

[00:31:11] I'm a fan let's, let's not pay rent or something. Let's. Yup.

[00:31:15] Thanks. Well, I just appreciate you taking time and letting me be on your show today. It's just fun to talk about our community and all the things that we're doing and you know why Fort Scott is a fun little place to be.

[00:31:27] Why small communities are a fun little place to be? Curve ball question. What have I not asked you that I should have?

[00:31:34] Oh boy. Wow. Well, you've asked a lot maybe. Well gosh, that's a great question. What should you have asked me that you didn't? What's my future plans? You know.

[00:31:50] Oh, yes I should have.

[00:31:52] Yeah. That's a good one. Well, you know, I'm an author and I do write some books and I've got one that I contributed to a book that when bestseller and I'm getting ready to write another one.

[00:32:06] Oh, congrats.

[00:32:06] Thank you. And so my CTO, Mike Upright, and I are writing a book for cybersecurity for small businesses, almost like cyber for dummies, right? Just something that's very small. And a short read that that small businesses can just pick up and say, okay, finally, somebody is telling me, what do I need to do?

[00:32:24] Right. Cause a lot of people, that's what they say. I don't know what to do. I have no clue what to do. Can you help me and tell me what to do? How do I protect my business? I have not the first idea where to start. So we want to help people do that. So that's something that'll be coming out in the next 60 to 90 days on Amazon.

[00:32:40] And we'll be doing that.

[00:32:41] That's amazing.

[00:32:41] And thank you. Thank you. You know, we got to educate, we've got to help. We gotta be helpful. Right. And that's part of our mantra. So that's who we are, but otherwise down the road, we're writing two new modules for our product, you know, we're putting in a big plant vault here coming up in the next probably six months or so.

[00:33:00] And so we've met a lot of big plans as far as what Spyder turning into and what it's becoming and what it is. And we're just so excited to help our industry and to be good stewards of it. Good stewards of our industry. It's stewards of our town and our community and good stewards of our company and to our employees. So that's who we are. That's who we're gonna be.

[00:33:19] Thank you so much. You heard it find by Nedra on Spyder:oop.com, S P Y D E R L O O P.com. And Nedra, thank you so much for joining me.

[00:33:31] Thank you.

[00:33:35] Thank you for joining us this week on Elements of Community. Make sure to visit our website ElementsOfCommunity.us or you can subscribe to the show on iTunes, Stitcher, Spotify, or via RSS so you'll never miss a show. If you found value in the show, we'd appreciate a rating on iTunes or if you'd simply tell a friend about the show that would help us out too.

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