Built for Service, how our commitment to public procurement has kept us strong for 15 years. This week in October of 2010, I started Civic with a mass outbound email telling people I was doing so, with absolutely no pipeline, no employees, and no true understanding for how hard it really was to try to make a company. I was, however, very inspired and motivated by the mission of public procurement that I'd come to learn about at the end of my government career. I'm particularly stubborn and managed to keep things together to take advantage of some opportunities that presented themselves that fell our way and made all the difference. As we grew by adding people that I knew and trusted, we were able to extend into multiple states and figure out how to make a foothold. So there's a few practical lessons that I've taken from how we survived and thrived and how we plan to keep growing. So first, the simple Ikigai equation, whether you're an individual or a small bootstrapping firm, there's really no better way to put it. It's the Japanese concept of finding what you're good at, what you love, what the world needs, and what people will pay for. If you are in a business or an organization, does it allow you to meet and express those goals? So I suppose part of my stubbornness is knowing that this is what I'm good at and this is where I can make a difference. And fortunate to assemble a great team of people who feel the same way and have had the opportunity to be able to build and grow through the years. Secondly, speaking of my team, why hiring public procurement professionals makes a difference? So from day one, I was insistent that the people delivering our services need to have lived the procurement experience. Whether we're doing staff extension, running assessments, or driving complex transformation projects, that domain expertise matters. And we're trying to build a story about the difference between purchasing and procurement, you have to have lived it to be able to explain it and give it life. So this experience reduces the cultural resistance for procurement shops to receive help and ensures that we have the actual experience to make a difference. I'd rather hire a procurement person and teach them consulting than hire a new consultant and teach them procurement. How we handle things when they don't go perfectly. So we don't always get it right. You can't run as many projects as we've been fortunate enough to have and hit a home run every time at bat. So when things don't go right, I'm personally involved. I think that's an important opportunity to show your character, to be clear that you'll fix what's fixable, and keep the long view that we are a good partner and that we will solve the problem. Public procurement offices are a small community. People talk and your reputation precedes you for good or bad. So doing a great job is obviously the best choice. Fixing things when they don't go well shows that you should be in the room. So looking ahead, what's our next chapter? We've been reawarded the NASPO procurement contract, which is the basis for most of our statewide contracts. It has expanded scope and a long time horizon out as far as 2032. So this new lens supports our creation and implementation of new services, ranging from expanding advisory offerings, which I'm rolling imminently, to truly supporting AI access, blending with our team expertise, which is another new thing that we are constantly working on. So our focus will be on extending the practitioner capacity while preserving a bias to action and procurement as a steward of the public trust. So finally, my gratitude. I'm deeply grateful to my team that has stayed committed through all of this time and the clients who entrust us with meaningful work, and to our partners like NASPO and EI and TechShare for their support and our ability to have contracting methods that allow us to serve. I've said very often in my life that it's hard to be truly successful unless a lot of other people want you to be. And so I am very appreciative to be able to wake up and work on a mission that I've chosen and allow others to do the same. So thank you for your support through the time since that very first evening of me sitting on the bed and sending an email to 500 people saying that it was time for a new challenge.