Entrepreneurial Appetite

Charting the Future of Publishing: Kaliyah Martin, The Kingdom Press, and PubTech

Kaliyah Martin Season 5 Episode 2

Discover the story of Kaliyah Martin, the pioneering product manager behind Kingdom Press, as she unveils her extraordinary entrepreneurial journey. From a high school initiative to a bold switch from pre-med to business, Kaliyah's narrative is marked by her family’s entrepreneurial legacy and her enduring faith. Our conversation traverses her early steps and the defining moments that steered her into the heart of the publishing revolution.

This episode isn't just Kaliyah's tale; it's a discussion about the profound role of family and faith, especially within the black community, as it relates to business and innovation. We share personal experiences that underscore the bravado necessary to pursue dreams and the profound influence a gap year can have on personal development. Together, we examine 'Pub Tech', the transformative potential of blockchain, and how Web 3 is poised to overhaul the publishing realm, affirming Kalea's vision for Kingdom Press as a vanguard in this new era.

Delving into the nuances of pitching and authorship, Kaliyah imparts her wisdom on navigating the complexities of the book industry, from marrying NFTs with physical copies to striking a balance between self-publishing and traditional methods. Her journey not only highlights the challenges faced by black authors and entrepreneurs but also celebrates their triumphs, providing aspiring minds at institutions like the Fearless Leadership Institute with invaluable insights. Join us as we peer into the innovative future of publishing with one of its most influential voices.

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Langston Clark:

What's up everybody? Once again, it's me, langston Clark, the founder and organizer of entrepreneurial appetite, a series of events dedicated to building community, promoting intellectualism and supporting black businesses. Today, we have Kalea Martin, who is the founding product manager at the Kingdom Press. There's an interesting story about how you get connected with people and how you meet people. So, not 2023, but 2022. Afro Tech took place in Austin, texas, and my wife was there and she's going around all these different sessions and she went to this one pitch session and she saw this young lady, kalea, who was up there pitching her business to Kingdom Press and what's interesting and we'll get into the details about her business later she's the perfect guest for this podcast because those of you who listen, you know our origins and our roots are in and being a book club and Kalea she's an author, but also she works in this interest innovative tech business that is trying to transform or rethink how we do authorship and publishing. I'm grateful to have you here and really, as we always begin, just tell us your hero's journey.

Kaliyah Martin :

Yeah, thanks, langston, for having me. My hero's journey really begins probably in childhood. I've always been the type of person to have a bunch of different ideas and just try them, and the first it wasn't really a business. But the first time I really tried something was starting an organization in my public high school and that was a two-year process, really challenging got a co-founder and had to go through a lot of bureaucratic processes because it was actually a Christian organization in a public school. That was really fun to unpack and once I did that, I think that was the first time that I really figured out okay, I can start something, it can make an impact and I can bring a whole lot of people with me on this journey and it's not too hard.

Kaliyah Martin :

I originally went into college thinking that I wanted to be a doctor, but I had this passion for entrepreneurship and starting things that I honestly think I inherited on both sides of my family. But after my first semester of college and those weed out pre-med classes, I was like this is not for me. I had such a existential crisis of like a lot of, I think, college students do when they think they're going to be a doctor and they decide not to be, and that's what really took me down the path. That made me think like, okay, you're about to go down the journey that you don't have a roadmap for, but you should do it anyway. So I ended up getting into the business school and that's a whole nother story for a whole nother time of just the journey. It was to even be able to do that, because transferring into the business school at the time was a no-go. At the time that I did it Like by the grace of God was able to do it, and from there that entrepreneur bug just started going again. So I started a business with my sister it was a little custom gift business and then I started another business with the intent, honestly, just to make enough money to go visit my friend in Spain, and from there I kind of just ran it every year.

Kaliyah Martin :

And then by the time I graduated from college I had another existential crisis about what I was going to do post grad. A lot of my mentors were really trying to push me to consulting, because that was everything I was primed to do for my business background and I knew deep in my soul and my heart that I just could not go into consulting at least not right now and I had been working on a book at the time and I just felt really called to write this book. And my senior year spring semester I just had this epiphany. You know what this is probably what you were afraid of all along was going down this unknown journey, do it anyway, just do it again.

Kaliyah Martin :

Take a gap year, figure out what you want to do, write this book and see what comes of it. And that was really what catapulted me into the world of traditional publishing and learning about the publishing space. So after that gap year, actually, I ended up getting a job as a product manager and that was really what taught me what it took to start a business and build a product within a business, fundamentally and at a startup level scale, and it made me really think that publishing and product management were very, very similar. Books are products and the fact that traditional publishing takes so long to put out a book was a problem, and a problem that I could solve. So once again ended up betting on myself and that's how TKP was born.

Langston Clark:

So let me, let me. You said some really interesting things. The first is you talked about your family having entrepreneurship on both sides of your family. Yeah, we also talked about faith, right, and so the first time you founded something was a club in high school. So can you talk about, in your heroes journey, the influence of your family and your faith in allowing you or supporting you, nudging you, encouraging you to be a founder in this way?

Kaliyah Martin :

Absolutely yeah. So my family, on both ends, I would say, really were the type of people that started things at least and I'm talking not like my immediate parents, but like their parents. They started things because they had to, couldn't really get jobs anywhere back then, black people who had a whole bunch of kids who had to make ends meet. So both of my grandmas, at separate times one of them still has a hair salon to this day, the other one, she, had a wedding boutique and that's what they did to make ends meet, whole bunch of kids feed. They had to do that.

Kaliyah Martin :

So for me, my dad always had this entrepreneurial itch. My uncle has his own business and I think, because I was coming from an environment where there were so many people who did it, my family was like you know what? We've seen it done before. Is it the easiest path? No, but if this is what she thinks she can do, then we're going to let her do it, and so that's like the family side.

Kaliyah Martin :

From a faith perspective, I feel like the people whether you're looking at it from like a biblical text perspective or just in the world that really really make it by today's terms, they never play it safe. So I feel like everything that you do that is really going to make an impact with the gifts inside of you is a step of faith, and it's interesting that I can take this uncertain path and I might not be able to save myself, but I have to trust that there are gifts inside of me that the creator put inside of me and if I'm feeling this nudge that I can't shake to do it, then ultimately, like I'm going to presuppose that it's going to be for my good and I'm going to just take this leap.

Langston Clark:

You said something else that was interesting and I'm going to connect this to my own life. So last year last academic year because I work in higher ed I was fortunate enough to receive the Ford Foundation Fellowship. Congrats, that's awesome, it was so awesome. And let me tell you essentially what the Ford does is it gives a scholar a gap year to just work on their scholarship. Right, love that. So just like you took the gap year to write your book, I essentially got a gap year to work towards my book, collect some more data and do some writing Nice About. And since I've gotten it right, what I tell people is that, no matter what profession you're in, everybody needs you need a gap year, you need a fellowship year. It's allowed you to work on a project you want to work on. That's going to allow you to relax and reset and not do all the meetings so that you can you can catapult forward and be more innovative. So talk more about the value that you got from the gap year that you gave yourself.

Kaliyah Martin :

Yeah, honestly, a gap year for me was something I knew I had to do to silence out the voices of other people and focus in on the vision I wanted for myself. I think a lot of times, especially in that young adult phase of life, you're just doing and you're not really actually making progress towards any set vision. So that was a time for me to take a step back and say like, okay, you have this book that you've been working on since you were pretty much going into your sophomore year of college. Take a step back, write down your vision of what you see for this book, what you see for your life, and go do it. Go meet people in the publishing space, go meet people who you think might need to hear this book, and sit down, figure out what you want to do and then go do it. I think the more busy you keep yourself, the less impactful and productive your life actually is sometimes, and it gave me a space to actually at least hit a target for one of my goals.

Langston Clark:

Let's talk about the Kingdom Press. What is it? What makes it innovative?

Kaliyah Martin :

So the Kingdom Press originally started as a publishing tech company, so we called it Pub Tech and when we started like that was in a term, but I think now it's kind of catching ground in different spaces Independent, I think, of me. I think it's just one of those things where like more innovative. Hashtag I should, I should go play it.

Langston Clark:

You could go on the hashtag.

Kaliyah Martin :

Yeah, yeah, pub Tech. So it was basically an all-in-one platform that was set to eliminate as many inefficiencies and middlemen on the operational side of publishing and then, on the readership side of publishing, create an experience that really brings books to life. And I was looking at how blockchain and Web 3 really provides a unique and secure experience for people to own their data for life, and so we really wanted to make it Web3 integrated as well. As I went through this journey from a product manager standpoint, I realized that that's very much a pie in the sky later version of what TKP will become and could become, but as of right now, we're very much in our first version and it just is an e-commerce enabled publishing company that still creates community experiences for readers. The Web3 innovation is in beta.

Langston Clark:

Talk about what it means for you to have a disruptor's mindset, because this isn't our first kind of conversation about the Kingdom Press, and I talked to you about any academy. Depending on what your discipline is, you either have to publish articles or you have to publish a book. For me, we have to publish articles that aren't accessible to the general public, and there's very little room for us to have ownership of that knowledge that we created once it's been taken by Routledge or Epsco hosts or whoever has it. It's done. So talk about the ways that you're imagining disrupting publishing through pub tech could actually empower the author in ways that they haven't been empowered before.

Kaliyah Martin :

Right. So I think one of the biggest things with books in and of itself is it's a quantity-based model, like business model. So if you're looking at books as businesses, it doesn't necessarily have the highest profit margin. So you really really need to maximize the amount of times you can sell a book and in today's world you can really only get profit off of one sale. So you sell your book once but the money honestly really is in used book sales, which is probably why Amazon got into it.

Kaliyah Martin :

Yeah, because used books are kind of like used cars, whereas, like, it loses the bulk of its value once it's no longer a brand new book, right, and bookstores will traditionally like half price books.

Kaliyah Martin :

Well, take those used books, buy them for like pennies on the dollar and then sell them for insane profit margins, and so there's that aspect. And then there's also the aspect of if you are trying to make decent profit margins for books, then you have to produce them at large quantities, and I saw that as very inefficient and very bad for the environment, very wasteful. So I really wanted to establish something. Okay, there's print on demand technology and I also know that in order for people to be able to make the most money, make the most profit, make the most impact on their book. They need to be able to own that book for perpetuity of the lifecycle of a single book and the only thing that really guarantees that right now is the NFT blockchain technology. That exists, and it's still in its infancy stages and, with all of the scammy things going on right now, people are a little wary of it. But that's where the disruptor ideology came from with publishing and TKP.

Langston Clark:

We talked about the start of your hero's journey and I think, for anybody who's on a journey, anybody who's taking a look 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 55 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.

Langston Clark:

Leave into entrepreneurship, taking a leap into innovation. You always reach a point where things are difficult and things are hard, and you talked about, you know, your grandmothers needing to be entrepreneurial as a point of survival. As black women with children having to do their responsibilities as mothers, can you talk about how you've been able to find a supportive community in a city Austin that doesn't have a large concentration of black folks? Yet there's a lot. The black folks who are there are like trying to get it. You know what I mean, and Austin, it seems to me, is a place where, if you're trying to do something innovative, that, regardless of what your ethnicity is or what your race is, at some point people are trying to collaborate and get things done. I'm not saying it's perfect, but it still seems like a great place to do business.

Kaliyah Martin :

Yeah, austin is really interesting. I actually was raised in Austin my whole life, so I got to see the entire metamorphosis of it becoming the like silicon hills that it is today. It still kind of blows my mind that it is what it is. From a community standpoint, because I was raised here, I have a very different perspective and where I can go to get the community Downtown Austin at least is nothing like it was when I grew up, and I have definitely had to do both refocus and renew my mind on what Austin is today to be able to tap into those new communities.

Kaliyah Martin :

So like South by Southwest has been going on forever, but now it's bringing in a whole bunch of new people at events that I probably wouldn't have gotten to see in old Austin.

Kaliyah Martin :

So I go a lot to like those South by Southwest events because you're bound to find a lot of founders.

Kaliyah Martin :

Maybe not a lot of black founders I'm gonna be honest in the masses, but you're gonna at least find a lot of women founders. One of my favorite events to go to that I've been going for the past I want to say five years is something called create and cultivate and that really brings in a lot of women, at least small business owners. Thinking outside of the box for me, like there aren't a lot of black people in tech, they do exist but there are a lot of black people that start businesses and that have small businesses and finding, like those overlaps, you don't necessarily have to be a tech founder to understand the struggles of starting a business. And so from the black community side, like I very much lean into just black business owners and finding camaraderie there, and then from, like tech founders, startup life, I just go where Austin has different hubs and that's where I can kind of find community and understanding that there's wisdom to be gained from both.

Langston Clark:

Yeah. So for those of you who are listening, you don't know this, but clear is a unicorn, because Austin, as innovative and as collaborative Austin is right now, austin has a very sad history when it comes to gentrification and pushing black folks out, and so what you see now is, I think years ago maybe, when you were growing up, at one point, Austin's black population was like I think someone said 30%, but has since gone down significantly, and so you might be one of very few people black folks in Austin who was actually from Austin, and I think that's an amazing story in and of itself. So thank you for sharing.

Langston Clark:

I want to go back to this point about finding community, and so for the past two years 2023 and 2022, afro Tech decided to make Austin the place that they would settle, and it was really interesting because, you know, I used to live in Austin, you live there, you grew up there. All these black folks in Austin was like a great experience, fantastic these past two years and, as I mentioned earlier, my wife got to see you pitch and one of the things I'm interested to see if you could share was how did you get yourself in a position to pitch at Afro Tech? What's the anatomy of finding where you can pitch your business, but then also what's the process for preparing for the pitch once you've been selected as one of the people who could be pitching on the pitch stage.

Kaliyah Martin :

Yeah, that's such a good question, so fun fact, and it'll actually tie into the Create and Cultivate event that I mentioned before.

Kaliyah Martin :

I met Morgan at Create and Cultivate like five years ago.

Kaliyah Martin :

Morgan DeBron like in person oh my God, yes, five years ago, 2018, she had just started Blavity like maybe not just started, but she was only a couple years in and that was the first time I heard her speak and I remember just like looking at her and all here's this black woman who went to university in the Midwest who's just speaking with such poise and she's ambitious and I just saw so much of myself and her and I think that was the connecting point for me to actually even finding out about Afro Tech, because I had heard of another conference for black people in tech but it wasn't Afro Tech.

Kaliyah Martin :

So it was almost a happenstance thing where I had heard from somebody that Afro Tech was going to be in Austin and I don't even know how it came across my feed. But I saw that they had an opportunity specifically for Web 3 founders in 2022. And I'd actually pitched earlier in the year at a different conference and it wasn't as geared towards innovation and tech and Web 3. So the panel was definitely like, biased towards the more traditional mainstream stuff. So when I saw that there was an opportunity for me to actually be able to pitch in the Web 3 space, I was like bet, like.

Kaliyah Martin :

I got to do this, so I had already actually had the material from the last time I pitched and I just freshened up the deck. When you pitch, you really have to make sure it's very, very clear what your value proposition is, and they always say if you can not explain it to your grandma, then you probably need to do some tweaking. And with a concept like Web 3, it is pretty challenging and funny enough. That year I'd actually spent a month with my grandma, so I had a lot of time to be able to get it to be very audience friendly. So I took that pitch, submitted it and then the rest is history. Like I got accepted and was able to speak and it was just such an amazing opportunity. So grateful for it.

Langston Clark:

So a lot of serendipity there. But then also it's like you submitted right and sometimes you have to get over the fear of actually just doing a thing. Let's talk about you being at the intersection of author and entrepreneur. Can you talk a little bit about the book and books that you've written as part of your process and your journey working in this, in this tech space? But then also, you really are who you're trying to serve, so talk about what that means.

Kaliyah Martin :

Yeah. So from an author standpoint, I think it was really easy for me to build in this space because I was in it. My whole gap year was a lot of me doing the discovery work that you have to do in order to build a product. So, from an author standpoint, there's so many paths to authorship. Now, at a macro level, there's still two main paths you either self publish or traditionally publish, and I really wanted to build something that could rest in the middle of both of those things, and it took me actually writing a book and self publishing it to learn that there needed to be something that could exist in the middle, because the alternative was waiting two plus years to get a book out that's already written because of the middleman and the inefficiencies and just the staffing issues with traditional publishing.

Kaliyah Martin :

So I think unpacking that and really being as close to that problem space was easy for me because I was going through it myself. So I had one book that was like, honestly, it wrote it in a month, got an editor and had it up on Amazon. And another month, like maybe less than a month, maybe it was in two weeks. And then I had this book that I had been working on for years upon years that an agent had finally said that she wanted it, and that's a whole other journey of querying and getting a traditional publisher path to even solidify for yourself as an author, as a black author, not to bring race into it, but it matters and it's relevant, but that is a whole other journey.

Kaliyah Martin :

So having that experience was really what birthed the specific thing I wanted to solve for TKP. And if I wasn't an author and going through it, then I wouldn't have been able to ideate, I think, the way that I have been able to. Eventually, once I had the idea for TKP, I ended up withdrawing my manuscript from my agent and saying I'm pursuing a different path. I think I can get this book out quicker than you can and, in all fairness, it was COVID. So she told me, like there's going to be delays, like your book could come out in 2025. Wow In 2024.

Langston Clark:

Oh my gosh, yeah. So we talked about your process of being an author. Tell us the name of the books you've written, and then tell us some books that you've read that have inspired your journey as an entrepreneur.

Kaliyah Martin :

Yeah, yeah, no, I love that. So I've wrote. Actually, I've been here bucket list and this is actually an edition of the book that does not exist anymore as a limited edition copy, and it even has the beta NFT integration. Oh, wow, from this code. Yeah, like the certificate to validate that this book is authentic. That is an NFT and it's tied to this unique code right here.

Langston Clark:

Only this edition has it Okay, before you talk about the book, talk more about the integration of the NFT into the special edition of book, because I'm really interested in this.

Kaliyah Martin :

Yeah, so this is what's in beta right now. But when we decided to do like the Web three integration and test it and create a community around it, I really wanted to start with a very small subset of people who were just willing to buy the book, no strings attached, just like they wanted the book, and that for me, as a product manager told me, these are your super fans.

Langston Clark:

Right.

Kaliyah Martin :

And they're probably more willing to come along on this beta testing journey with you because just because they're super fans and they got this first edition. So when we were putting together the book and going through the production process, I wanted to kind of real scrappy like, put together a very, very simple integration that could lead to the rest of the versions of what we wanted to build. And for me I was like okay, nfts don't exactly exist for real, for physical products, but there's a way to connect an NFT to a physical product through a certificate of authenticity and that's already being done in the fashion industry. So I really got a lot of inspiration from how fashion was integrating NFTs in order to bring it into publishing, and so that's how we did it for this version, like the other versions aren't doing that. That's more of a traditional publishing, print on demand kind of thing. But I am still very interested in creating a fandom and beta testing and iterating on that Web. Three aspect, because there's a lot of potential there. That is still in its nascent stage.

Langston Clark:

I'm going to connect you with the Fearless Leadership Institute and it's a support group for black women at UT Austin.

Kaliyah Martin :

Is that SoFly yeah?

Langston Clark:

I think I don't know if it's SoFly, that might even be what they call it. You know, they have events, development, spiritual, professional, social development stuff, and the two women who are the directors of it I'm fairly close to and I think that book is a book that they'd be interested in sharing with the women.

Kaliyah Martin :

What's her name? Are you allowed to share it?

Langston Clark:

Yeah, there's, one is Tiffany Tillis-Lewis and the other one is Taice Bassman.

Kaliyah Martin :

Taice, yes, I know her.

Langston Clark:

Taice's husband is one of my mentors.

Kaliyah Martin :

I've met them a couple of times. And it's funny I met her before the book came out and she was talking about her organization. I do need to connect, because somebody that works with her bought my book, or like who knows her, and she's like, oh my gosh, like I love your book, so I do.

Langston Clark:

This is like full circle and a reminder that I Listen, this is going to be like an authentic moment in the podcast because I'm going to keep this in here. I wish I remembered that you wrote that book because you shared it with me before. I'm sure of it, and Taice wrote a similar book about black women navigating the struggles of being a college student, so it would have been great to have two of you together in conversation. I'll still connect to you because I think y'all will vibe. Y'all are on the same wavelength.

Kaliyah Martin :

Yes, yes, I need to Like. She's someone that, like I met early on in my book writing. I think I met her during my gap year. I have not talked to her since.

Langston Clark:

I'll shoot the email. Ok, let's get into the books that you've read that have inspired your journey, or maybe a book or two that you're reading right now.

Kaliyah Martin :

Yes, OK, so I'll give you all of them. So a book that I think really resonated with me when I was growing up it's this book called the Possibilities of St Hood, and I'm mentioning this one. There's so many books. I was such a little reading nerd growing up, and I still am, and it's about this girl who just decides that she wants to be the first ever living saint. She's like I don't know, 12, 13, 14.

Kaliyah Martin :

I read it when I was in middle school and so she petitions the Vatican time and time again and it's like I could be the patron saint of figs. I could be the patron saint of the first kiss. I could be the patron saint Like she writes letters to the Vatican, and it's just her story of that and I think her boldness and the authenticity of being that age just really spoke to my soul as a middle schooler. So that still to this day, is probably like my favorite middle grade book. And I mentioned that one because during my gap year I actually realized that the author of that book was at my former university while I was there and I never got a chance to meet her, but I sent her an email just to have a whole little fan girl moment. It was like, oh my gosh, your book was my favorite book growing up and it inspired me to write a book. And so Possibilities of St Hood.

Kaliyah Martin :

I would say that the book that really impacted me on my founder's journey and just being bold is a book called Give and Take by Adam Grant, and it's basically about the anatomy of building connections and he unpacks the two personas, those givers in this world and takers, and how people who have a pure heart to really give and be a little bit more altruistic in life tend to get burned so as people who are takers, who just are out for themselves, tend to go higher in life because they've navigated how to be selfish, and not in necessarily a negative term. So it unpacks how you can still be that person who wants to give back without forsaking yourself and burning out. And that was just such an impactful book for me, especially because TKP I didn't mention this before, but we have a 10% give back policy, so 10% of our proceeds go to different causes and we're actually in the middle of that give back right now and it's my favorite thing about the business. And then a book that I'm reading right now.

Kaliyah Martin :

I have one and it's called Focus and it was written in 2012. And it's basically unpacking how, in today's society well, back then, like 2012, social media was just starting there is a decline in being able to actually focus your mind on what you're doing right now and how to combat that. I'm going to be honest it's a very research-heavy book, so it's taking me a little longer to get through it than normal, but I'm really inspired by it and it's holding me accountable. That's good.

Langston Clark:

Thank you for sharing. So that's give and take focus, and the first one is the possibility of saying that seems like a really interesting story. I'm most interested in that the boldness of a child asking to be a saint. That must be a super inspirational book.

Kaliyah Martin :

Yeah, just like petitioning the Vatican. I love stories of people who are bold enough to bet on themselves and do things that no one else dares to do.

Langston Clark:

Kalia, thank you for daring to do things that other people maybe at some point discourage you from doing. On your journey, people might have wanted you to be a consultant, but you decided to take the entrepreneurs path Because if you hadn't, we wouldn't be here today talking about the Kingdom Press. So, before we wrap up, can you tell us how we can support the Kingdom Press, where people can go to follow up on your productivity? Maybe they want to partner, learn more about what you do. How could they learn more about the Kingdom Press?

Kaliyah Martin :

Yeah. So the best way to support the Kingdom Press right now is through Freshmanier Bucket List. That is our flagship beta testing everything through that book right now. Next year we're hoping to launch a couple more authors, but right now our focus is Freshmanier Bucket List. So you can follow Freshmanier Bucket List on Instagram or FYBL on TikTok, and then you can follow me at Kalia Nicole on Instagram and at Kalia Nicole on TikTok. Or you can just reach out, if it's more professional, on LinkedIn. I'm Kalia Martin on LinkedIn and if you want to buy Freshmanier Bucket List, the best way to do it is through the e-commerce site we have set up for it and that's FreshmanierBucketListcom.

Langston Clark:

All right, Kalia, thank you for joining us. We appreciate your time.

Kaliyah Martin :

Thank you for having me and setting up this platform. This is a really fun conversation.

Langston Clark:

Thank you for joining this edition of Entrepreneurial Appetite. If you like the episode, you can support the show by becoming one of our founding 55 patrons, which gives you access to our live discussions and bonus materials, or you can subscribe to the show, get us five stars and leave a comment called También Hiyo.