From Poetry to Publishing: Le'Marqunita Lowe's Journey with LDL Magazine

Episode Description:

In this episode of Entrepreneurial Appetite, we sit down with Le'Marqunita De'Sharay Lowe, the visionary founder and CEO of LDL Magazine. Le'Marqunita's journey began in high school with the publication of her first poetry book, igniting her passion for the publishing industry. She further honed her editorial skills as a columnist for her college newspaper, BG News. With a rich background that includes roles as a learning specialist and early intervention therapist, Le'Marqunita is also a PhD candidate in Leadership and Change at Antioch University, bringing a wealth of experience to her multifaceted career.

LDL Magazine, both a print and digital publication, celebrates community organizations, educators, entrepreneurs, philanthropists, and creative artists. Since its inception, the magazine has expanded its reach to domestic and international libraries, organically growing its subscriber base. Notably, in 2024, LDL Magazine contracted with an ed-tech company to distribute its content to African schools and universities, furthering its global impact.

Join us as we delve into Le'Marqunita's inspiring journey, exploring the challenges and triumphs of launching and growing LDL Magazine, her strategies for adapting to the digital landscape, and her vision for the future of publishing. This conversation offers valuable insights for aspiring publishers and entrepreneurs alike.

Transcript

Good job. Hey, everyone. Thank you again for your support of Entrepreneurial Appetite. Beginning this season, we are inviting our listeners to support the show through our Patreon website. The founding fifty-five patrons will get live access to our monthly discussions for only $5 a month. Your support will help us hire an intern or freelancer to help with the production of the show. Of course, you can also support us by giving us five stars, leaving a positive comment, or sharing the show with a few friends. Thank you for your continued support. What's up, everybody? Once again, this is Langston Clark, the founder and organizer of Entrepreneurial Appetite, a series of events dedicated to building community, promoting intellectualism, and supporting Black businesses. And today, I'm very excited to bring you a conversation with Lamarcknita Lowe. The founder of LDL magazine. So Lamar Nita, I'm going to start just by mentioning how I found about your magazine. I'm hearing it. As you know, we mentioned this before we started recording and even in the way I reached out to you, and the audience knows that I got a homeboy named Leroy Adams who started this magazine that was originally called The Buddy Pass. Is now transformed into culture travels, which is basically a magazine, a brand travel brand that highlights the experiences of African-Americans, the people across the African diaspora and travel. I'm a reader and I'm, I'm, I guess I'm a reader and a listener, right? I listen to books now too more than I ever have. And so I was on the Libby app. And for those of you in the audience who don't know, Libby app is amazing, right? So it's probably the best hack to get audio books because you've got a library card. Libby is like audible for the library. So you can download a book for twenty-one days. It's like you check it out the library or whatever. So you know what I'm like? I'm scrolling through Libby one day. I'm like, Libby has magazines. So I'm only looking at it from the audio books But they also have print media and they're digitized. So I'm looking at magazines. So I'm like, you know what? Let me see if they got any black entrepreneurship magazines. So I'm looking, I think I put in black entrepreneurship, entrepreneurship, different combinations of words in the search. And lo and behold, LDL magazine shows up. And I'm like, what? And so I was excited because one, I had never heard of LDL magazine until And was really impressed with the fact that your magazine is a startup, still relatively new, but somehow, some way, You got on Olivia. And so I just I thought that was like really, really inventive and a really unique way to get people access to your product without having to necessarily go to the store to buy it or get some other type of subscription because they're already subscribed. I didn't know how you found it. Yeah. Yeah. So I, I just, I was amazed and I, I, I'm like, even like, I'm going to share that information with Leroy about culture travels because I think That's a great way to get people exposure to the content that you're picking up and for them is free, but I'm sure you get some type of residual from the libraries having it posted or whatever. So I thought that was really impressive. And so I'm really excited to be here. I'm having this conversation with And so before we get started, before we get into LDL magazine and all that, tell us a little bit about yourself because you're a busy woman. You do a lot. What's your, your hero's story and how did you become a An author, a publisher, an entrepreneur. Yes, um, thank you Langston. So I always describe it as like a triangle and I feel that triangle of my journey is still connected. So, um, as far as my entrepreneurial journey, I always tell people it's I started in high school because I was a writer. Specifically, I was a poet, so I wrote a lot of poetry. Even in class, I wrote a lot of poetry. Um, I officially became a self-published author My senior year of high school, graduation gift to myself was to publish a book before I walked the stage. So I published my first book right before I graduated. So that was like my first entry, not only into entrepreneurship, but my first entry into publishing. And then when I went to my undergrad college, that's when I officially signed with like a traditional publishing company. So I always feel my first entrepreneurial journey started with Publishing and it kind of circled back, you know, where I met with audio magazine like twenty years later. As far as my professional background, it has always been in education. Majority of my background has been working with the little toddlers and preschoolers as a kindergarten teacher and Early intervention therapist. And then the third sector is where you're in is my PhD research. So I'm really, really passionate about research. I try to integrate a lot of my research into my entrepreneurship because I feel they're actually very Policly correlated. So as far as the journey, it's kind of been a very sync journey between education and Publishing and entrepreneurship because they all connect together. You know, it's interesting. I think sometimes we have an imagination about what entrepreneurship is. And don't think that self-publishing your book is an act of entrepreneurship, right? And it's really interesting how you started off, you self-published in high school, and I clearly see that there's Likely some connection to you now publishing this magazine. Before we talk about that, tell us about the book you wrote. What was the book that you wrote in high school and talk a little bit about your poetry and the Even going back to high school, what was the inspiration for you to publish a book before you walked across the stage? Yeah, so my book that I published in high school was called A Heart of White. It was all poetry. I officially started the actual plums in middle school. So like middle and high schoolers, that's like your moment where you're experiencing what we call it. Growing up crisis. Like, if you read it, you know, there were very deep poems, you know, topics or things about, you know, like, for example, dealing with depression, feeling like you're not good enough, feeling like you always have to be on a pedestal, you know, things like Family issues and so it was kind of like a collection of I would probably say three years of poems that I just had as far as my inspiration for saying I'm going to put this in a book. It actually came from my literature teachers who I still communicate with now. They were very like, when I would write class papers, your writing is phenomenal. You have to do something with this. What at the time I didn't know? And so when I realized that I have a natural gift, you know, because poetry is like lyrics, you know, they're like songs. Yeah. Getting out those lyrics and those songs, I was like, wow, I can compile everything that I've written for the past few years into one book. I think at the time I wasn't necessarily, like you said, thinking entrepreneurship. It was more so How can I get everything I wrote into something that people can physically see? So for me, it was more so how can people see this in the world? And as far as How it came to be, my high school was actually the first people that I guess you can say motivated me. They told me if I get published, they would display it in like a little hallway and they did. You know, they have my book, they displayed it. So that was kind of my entry into it. So it was very random, but as far as the passion for writing, it was a collective story. Thing that kind of accumulated over the years. Now that you've told us a little bit about your first foray into publishing and, you know, how you got started writing and things like that and having educators like really Tell us the story of LDL magazine. So what was the impetus or the inspiration for that? What's the story? Yes, so it is kind of like a two-part journey. Prior to LDO Magazine, I still have one of these businesses now. I had a business called Mercury three which was a vegan cosmetic business. And I also currently have a sustainable fashion boutique. And so these two businesses, when I launched, it got a lot of PR, you know, so typically I was featured in British Vogue. I'm not sure if you remember the first African issue that they had was, like, all the African models on the... Yeah, and so that was kind of, like, I guess you can say, like, my big break into people saying, like, oh, this is who she is. You know, they just randomly contacted me, and that was in... 2000, I think, twenty-one or twenty-two And that one moment, like, my business just went off. You know, everything just, you would think that one moment was British Bulls. So after that, a lot of just specifically Black entrepreneurs started reaching out to me. How did you get featured in British Vogue? And I started getting a lot of, you know, just interviews from other magazines after the British Vogue and I tried my best to connect them with, you know, the big magazines, but they just weren't having a success. And so that's when I realized Despite how many magazines exist, there really isn't a niche for people that are at the local level. So whether it's like your artists, your educators, your authors, they really are seeking inspiration. Not only the PR opportunities, but the print and publishing and for them to reach, you know, the bigger magazines, it's kind of like you have to go to kind of like a stepladder. Oh, really? Yeah, step ladder, you know, they want to see where are you locally first before we get you nationally and I didn't realize that until my own journey so when I realized that niche was not Really there yet, you know, there's definitely a lot of indie magazines, but It's still a need for it. I'm like, whoa, this would be a good chance to take my publishing experience, my own direct experience between featured in these magazines. I was saving everything, you know, templates, how they communicated, how they recruited, Or LDO Magazine came. As far as, I think the thing with magazines, like you said, with your friends, it's a travel. As far as like the niche of choosing where I realized I wanted to focus, I realized There wasn't really a magazine that focused on us, you know, educators, scholars, people that are putting out research. So LDO Magazine focuses on three sectors. It focuses on scholarship and education. They focus on the creative art, which is anything music, dance, sports, art. And it also focuses on philanthropy, which is like your community service and nonprofit. And so I feel that covers like a variety of people at the local and those are like the markets I felt like were really seeking those like. You know, it's interesting. I didn't I never understood. I had no awareness of the politics of being, getting in a magazine and that there was, there's different levels to becoming, getting into like a national magazine and things like that. But now that I think about it, This makes me think about being forty under forty locally and that that's part of what people are doing to get to a broader audience to be, you know, Forbes forty under forty or whatever, like there's a step ladder. And I had no clue. So I thank you for sharing that. It's like a PR resume. That's essentially what it is. There's, there's a PR resume behind the work, the work that you're doing. You're a busy woman. And I want to get into LDL magazine a little bit more. But I also I also want to talk about how you're able to juggle all of the different things that you're doing, because, you know, you work in higher education. You are a doctoral student and you have businesses. How are you able to manage and do all of these different things and still stay sane? Yes, I would tell you what it looks like now, but it's probably going to shift in 2025 because it's a New Year's resolution. I think for me, as far as like my higher education, I'm like a person that sets the schedule for everything. So, meaning- I have a set time for study time, like hours, 182 hours a day. Of course, you know, my work schedule is very consistent. And then as far as my business, One thing I do love about business when you are your own CEO, it's flexible, you know, so whether you want to do it on the weekends, whether you want to do it late at night. So I think for me, I've always been Knew my workload and I always knew how to like balance that workload with alarms. However, where I am shifting towards is more so If it doesn't need to be done, then it's not going to be done for 2025 Because I think sometimes as like, not just scholars, but even entrepreneurs, We always feel we have to do, do, do, or say yes, yes, yes. Now I'm more so heading to the direction of How can I be more productive without necessarily doing too much? So definitely alarm scheduling and balancing, but now realizing that I have to not overcompensate. To be able to provide like the best for people and be more balanced. Yeah, you know, it's interesting as someone who works in higher education and someone Who is a scholar? We get taught or we get socialized to be narrow. Your research focus has to be narrow. You need to do these many publications. You get tenure, this, that, and a third. The more and more that I'm in it, the more and more I realize just how dynamic people are. Most people who have their doctorates are and that in a lot of ways they're much more than Dr. So-and-so. So I think about the dean that I have where I work and he has a position of tremendous. Also musician. So he goes and he plays in a band. And so I think you telling your story about. Being in a dissertation process and getting your doctorate and things like that is really inspirational for people who may be. Being socialized to think narrow and do only one thing. But what I'm finding is that more and more often people have hobbies or interests beyond just being, you know, an academic or a scholar. Yes, that's, yes. Yes, and even with what you're doing now with your podcast, I love it. Yeah, it's, it's been a great opportunity to get to meet, meet cool people such as yourself and so. To take it back to LDL Magazine, who have been some of the more interesting people who you would say that you will have featured in the magazine? At the same time, really understanding that your approach is really to be localized, but there are some really interesting people who aren't on the front cover of, you know, Time Magazine or whatever, but locally who are doing some interesting work. So who are some of the more interesting people? Yes, it's interesting you ask that because I literally remember every single person, you know, because there's been like almost 200 people so far, but I remember like every single person. The first person that comes to mind, she's actually a doctor and scholar, is Dr. Tomasina Chupko. Specifically, she focuses on indigenous activism and she also has this healing herbal company. What I love about her is very similar to what we do. She uses her activism and her entrepreneurship to make people aware about what's still happening in indigenous communities. Also, I think one of the reasons she stands out is because when I interviewed her and also other Indigenous features that were specifically in LDL's magazine, Indigenous Culture Celebration magazine, I learned a lot, you know, just to give you an example, you know. How do you use certain hashtags? You know, how do you reclaim certain territories when you post up certain words with captions? So she taught me a lot from like a holistic perspective of What is that intersection between being African-American and also indigenous? Because you have a lot of African-Americans that have, you know, that Native background. So I think not just knowing her personal story, but I just learned a lot just Educationally from her. Another person I would say that Dance Alchemy actually is our current cover, which is our September and October is Tia Liu. She is an Asian American feature. Specifically, she has a film company in LA and in Florida. And she also integrates a lot of activism like with her film. So like you said, it's not just like Separate. It's not like creative arts. It's not just, it's she integrated together in her film. She recruits very diverse people for her films. You know, she's a boss. And then as far as the men, I gotta mention the men, the director of the program, Mr. and Mrs. Mentoring is Derek Collins. Specifically, he mentors at-risk youth. So just seeing how he uses his nonprofit to influence people really, really young really inspired me. So his nonprofit is something I currently want to support also for the future. So those are three people that really stand up. I really like that almost everyone that you have has a philanthropic bend and so I can see how that is really infused throughout who you feature in the magazine and all of that. I'm wondering, take us from the origins of LDL magazine. When was it founded? What were the circumstances? And what has your evolution been to this point? Yes, so it's been a beautiful evolution. So specifically it was founded in November 2022 I had no idea how I was going to get my first features, you know, because when people don't know you, you're like, Are they going to say yes? Are they going to say no? As far as my first cover, I, LDO Magazine still does this is what I call grassroots recruiting, meaning specifically I just jump into people's DMs. I send them emails like, hey, I researched you. I love you. I love your platform. Would you like to be featured in our magazine? Usually it's opposite. People will just reach out to you, but I feel we've been able to get good people because I've got records. So that's what I did for the first magazine. My, I would say 50% of it was people I already knew, you know, so whether it's a college, high school, people I've worked with. First cover was actually my pageant sister that I competed with. You know, she said yes. So I would probably say the first Three months of LDL magazine was really just hard for me jumping in people's DMs like, hey, this is what I'm trying to do. This is what I'm trying to build. I would say I got 50% no's, but I also got a lot of 50% yes's. So that was 2022 to early 2023. As far as the evolution, I would probably say after three months because now we have something visual to show. So we have the covers, we got the website. We weren't quite distracted. Distributed yet, like you said, to apps like Libby or magazines or universities. So everything was still internal to our main website. After the third month, that's when more so distributors started reaching out to me like, hey, you know. We see your magazine. You know, we know like you're small, but we think what you're doing is really cool. You know, hey, we can build you a digital newsstand. We can build you your own digital library. We can distribute you to this country. So I will probably say after that fourth month, it went really fast. I started getting like distribution contracts for libraries, universities. And then I think once that distribution came, because people were able to see it on a global scale, that's when people started reaching out like, hey, can I be featured? And then pretty much from there, It grew really fast. I'm still trying to catch up as far as, you know, like the distribution grew very fast. Now I feel we're in a space Where LDO Magazine has more features than what we can have for magazines. So a lot of it, which is great. And at the same time, it's like, oh, you know, I have to waitlist you for six months, you know. So now it's definitely still small and niche, but as far as the scale of reach, it has grown tremendously. So. Yeah, that's, it kind of grew fast, I would say, after the fourth month. That's really interesting. In all honesty, even though, you know, Leroy is my homeboy, I don't, I don't know magazine business. I don't know about distributors. I didn't even know the dynamics between the magazine reaches out to you or people reach out to the magazine to be featured in all of that. I'm thinking about two things. And so one thing is we talk about local print media has been something that has been discussed Um, I think in, in the, in the broader media about the death of local media and its importance, because, you know, you find information about your community, whereas the national media has sort of just absorbed everything. And so can you talk. Just a little bit more about why you think it's important to focus these people who are having local impact and then talk about why was this a good moment in time for you to actually start a magazine when we see print media on the decline. Yes. To answer your first question, as far as focusing on local, I think the biggest thing is a lot of the people that we see nationally, you know, like what some people would call role models or even maybe heroes. A lot of people don't realize that's at the local level and it's mainly because they just don't have, they have the platform, they just don't have the reach or the magnitude. So I feel when you focus on the local, you can actually, in fact, Inspire people more because it's like whether you see someone that looks like you, you see someone that's maybe a block over that wants to do something that like you want to do in the future as far as career education. So Focusing on the local, I think, helps people to realize that you can achieve something with someone that's like writing your own community, you know, you don't necessarily have to look to these bigger news platforms. As far as doing it right now, I actually think it's really, really important. And I'm not sure if you know what's going on, not just with the magazine, but even like a lot of things in the news industry, there's either a lot of magazines that are being closed down, whatever those reasons are. There's a lot of, you know, this has been common with the news in general, but a lot of news stations that are Merging. And so I feel specifically with the indie niche because a lot of it usually is independent. We're not affected by that. You know what I mean? That's actually, I think that's a huge thing now. So we're still able to navigate who our audience is and what our narrative is going to be. So I think that is important now because Not only is magazine shifting, but news is shifting, centralized anymore. So, yes, I think now for anybody, it's the perfect time to do it. You know, it's interesting that you say that because With President Trump being re-elected, I'm hearing about the fallout between who Kamala went to go do her interviews with Versus who Trump wanted to go do his interviews with. Trump did both mainstream big media, but he also did small independent media as well. And so. It's very interesting that you make that point that now actually might be the time for niche startups that are very targeted to specific groups and have a following to actually start your own news media company. Okay, so let me, let me ask this question. Where are you in your doctoral journey? Oh, yes. To be honest with you, I've been so stoked to have my dissertation submitted this month. Okay. So I, I got the first round submitted. All right. All right. So clearly to answer your question, my second round of revisions was supposed to be submitted this month, but I'm sure you know the scholars were like, once we get those revisions, we gotta be perfect now. Yeah. Yeah. So clearly I am finalizing the final chapter to submit the second round. My goal, and I think even my chair's goal, To have me defend in January, 2025 If not January, definitely February. And then after that is graduation in July. Listen, so I got to give you extra thanks because I, I, when I was dissertation, I wasn't doing no interviews. So I thank you for giving me this time. I wouldn't give anybody no extra time. The reason why I bring that up is because I think there are some parallels between being an entrepreneur and a scholar and in particular when you're working on your dissertation it can be a lonely experience. Because it's just you and the specific niche area that you're supposed to be becoming an expert in. There's not all these outside voices. Now you have outside criticism from Your committee, because their job is to critique and make your stuff better, but it's not really like a community type of thing. It's very difficult to find community in that space where you're writing your dissertation. And so I think sometimes entrepreneurs experience that as well. So question I have is, is have you been able to find a support system, not just monetarily people investing in what you're doing, but people. Giving you maybe third spaces or places to go, other entrepreneurs that you've connected with in your journey and how has that sort of manifested for you and been beneficial if it has? Yes, to be honest, it honestly has came from Specifically, the scholar features in LDL magazine. And not intentionally, you know, most of the time I've actually reached out to educators and I didn't know they were doctors. You know, it was more so, oh, okay, not everyone always puts their title. That's right, yeah. Even with you, I didn't know until I saw your LinkedIn, but. Naturally, I was like, wow, I'm connecting with these people. They're communicating with me about their journey. As I'm interviewing them, I'm learning about how their doctorate experience was and how they balance both of themselves. I think, ironically, The educators that have been in LDL magazine, majority of them have been doctors. And so I've been able to connect with them, not just during the interview, but even a lot of them I still communicate with now. So it formed like a nightmare. I guess you could say friendship. So yeah, I would definitely say that that has been a support. And then like you said, it's really lonely in that aspect of Of course you have, you know, like family or friends there, but I think, you know, if they're not interested in your topic, they don't want to hear you talk about it. So I would say I definitely have found it more so in like the educator community because we're all in the same. Yeah. Together. We've talked about where you are now. We've talked about the evolution of LGL Magazine to where it is in this place. What do you see in terms of the future of the magazine and, and where it's going and any maybe innovations without sharing any trade secrets? Like what do you, what do you see as the evolution of the magazine? Yes, I can answer that and it is something I'm working on really hard. Now, several things, the main thing for me, even though I'm definitely very thankful, you know, for like the distribution contracts I have, I'm thankful for You know, the companies that help that help help to build the tech for LDO magazine, ultimately coming from a sustainable operational and even financial perspective to grow as a company majority of that needs to be internalized so. I'm using what I call a lot of middleman now, which is okay. Um, my goal, just to give you an example, is to get my distribution internalized meaning Versus having to have a contract with someone, I can directly present myself to universities, directly present myself to libraries and say this is what I can offer Would you like to have my magazine there? So I would say getting my operations and distribution internalized. The second main thing is something huge because it will pretty much Create a foundation for everything else. And it's something I want to work on for 2025 is building a classified department. So your classified department does like all of your outreach, your recruiting, you know, does your, your advertisement, your sales, That is the foundation of the financial building of the magazine to where you will be able to hire like a full-time team for the future. So classified departments. Build everything else within a magazine. So those are my two biggest goals. Okay. So you talked about the classified department and all that. This actually gets into a question I was wondering about as well. Hiring people, getting the help. And let's talk about writers like who, who, who do you get to write the articles, do the interviews, present the work and all of that. And if someone were interested in being a writer for the magazine, what's that process like? Yes, so before what it looked like was people, and actually obviously even now, people would just email or DM like, hey, I want to write for your magazine. And they would usually send who they've written for in the past. I would say we read, we actually received a lot of requests for writers. So typically we'll hire them on as freelance. However, I'm not sure if, you know, specifically for California, they're becoming a little bit more strict on freelancing with two riders because there's been a lot of exploitation with it. So this year was the first year I actually started. Stop hiring freelance writers. So pretty much going forward, I always tell people if they want to write, it can be on a temporary basis, but I would like LDO Magazine to be in a position to where we can hire Part-time writers because that will, you know, of course, handle the legal requirements. Yeah, so I would say as far as writers, if they do want to write, LDO Magazine is by theme. So we come out bimonthly. Every few months, there's a certain theme for each magazine. And so when people reach out to us to write, we let them know these are our themes for the whole year. Can you see yourself specifically writing for a category? So for example... January and February, our theme is a letter to Black women. So, of course, we want a lot of Black women featured in this matter. So, if it's someone that's probably not a Black woman, we're probably going to be like, hey, you'll be a better fit for, like, this future issue. So, Presenting the themes and seeing if they can write to those themes. So yeah, that is the process. I would say it's not very structured. It's a little fluid. Yeah. You, you mentioned these themes in, in a letter to black women, January, February, what have been some of the other themes that you've, you've featured in the magazine in the past? Yes, so I would say I'm lucky to say our things have not repeated yet. I would think of the ones that stand out the most. To me, I mentioned the Indigenous Culture magazine that was October of last year, specifically featuring all Indigenous feature. A huge one that stood out to me is our Juneteenth magazine because, you know, recently Juneteenth became A holiday and so specifically featured a lot of Black entrepreneurs, Black CEOs, Black philanthropists. I felt that represented what it means to be Black. I would say another, it's probably the cultural issues that stand out to me the most is what we did our all Asian American magazine. So Pacific Asian Americans that were in the media and In therapy, they spoke a lot on the stigmas of, you know, what people think it means to be Asian American. So I think those, the cultural ones stood out to me because like not only my culture, but I was able to Learn about other cultures and also learn as an editor how do I step back so they can present themselves the way that they do. And I think that's the hard thing, you know, if you're not within a culture, it's like you, you're responsible for the publication, but you still have to make sure people present themselves how they want to be presented. So that was a balance I had to learn. So tell the audience where they can learn more about LDL magazine. How can they subscribe? Do you have subscription model? How does it work? I know we talked about the Libby app. It's on Libby. So just, just tell us where we can get more information about you and get access to the magazine. Yes, so there are several ways I would say the first one is through our main website and you'll pretty much be able to access everything from here. Um, it's So if you type it like in Google, it should pop up. Specifically on our main website, there's several things you'll see access to. Subscription model. So how you can purchase a subscription and whether it's a digital subscription, a print subscription, you'll also be able to access if you want it individually. So there's some people that just like, Hey, I just love the physical print. I just want the print. And some people that's like, I love my mobile tablet. From there, you will also be able to access some of like what we call this neat preview of the features. And we have all of their features. So let's just say Langston, if you were there, you will be able to type in your name, go to your website, go to all of you. So I kind of call it like a yellow pages where you can just type. And something and it will populate. We also have our own, um, what we call digital newsstand and library, I believe, and I'll send this to you at LDO Magazine Mobile. Specifically to get access to this, it will, it's free, it would require you like to enter your name and email, but it's pretty much our arches of every single magazine that we have to work. And it's a full magazine. You don't have to download anything. You can just enter and everything will populate. And then as far as the people wanted to access it in universities or libraries, Access to universities and libraries are digital. You said, for example, through the Libby app. I would say the best way, because we're in almost like 8,000 digital libraries now, so you just type in your local libraries. Yeah. Palo Alto City Library, LDO Magazine, it should populate to how you can access that digital for that library. And so we talked about at the very beginning how this podcast has origins as a book club. And so I know that you're, you're definitely an author, you're definitely a scholar, and you're likely also a reader. So I always ask this question at, at What is a book or maybe a series of books that has inspired your journey as an entrepreneur? Yes, I would say I'm going to speak to two books and it's two books. Particularly that I started reading for my dissertation until I realized that these are actually just books I need to read as a Black woman. The first book I'm reading, I'll actually just finish it, is Angela Davis, Women, Race, and Class. And the second book is Sojourner Truth, her biography. But typically what stands out to me about both books is You know, when people think of black feminism, they often don't think of Angela Davis or Sojourner Truth because I think we tend to think of black feminism as like post Maybe 1960s. But what I love about reading both of their books is that you actually see that the modern day definition of Black feminism is not what they use. Mm, yeah. I'm sure you know, as a scholar, you know, she's a professor, so she... She really breaks down in Women, Race and Class the historical evolution, not only of like Black feminism, but of what Black women have went through throughout America. Sojourner I'm sure you know hers is more of her biography of slavery. So I think reading both of these at the same time, even though they were different time periods, you start to see like this Inner connection and intersection of how black women have evolved like throughout America. So it was very enlightening. Lamarck Nita, Future Dark Below. Thank you for joining us on this episode of Entrepreneur Appetite and I wish you much success. As you dissertate, Thank you for joining this edition of Entrepreneurial Appetite. If you liked the episode, you can support the show by becoming one of our founding fifty-five patrons, which gives you access to our live discussions and bonus materials. Or you can subscribe to the show, give us five stars, and leave a comment.