Jackie Ferguson: Hello, and welcome to the Diversity Beyond the Checkbox Podcast. I’m your host. Jackie Ferguson Certified Diversity Executive, writer, and multicultural marketing consultant. On this podcast, we share diverse perspectives from leaders in their industries, explore diversity, equity and inclusion concepts, and challenge our own assumptions and perspectives to take diversity beyond the checkbox.

Before we introduce today’s guest, for more insights and resources related to diversity and inclusion, including our course, also titled Diversity Beyond the Checkbox, visit TheDiversityMovement.com.

Jackie Ferguson: Please welcome our guest Raven Solomon.

Raven is a national keynote speaker, author and multigenerational leadership expert. She is the president and founder of the center for next generation leadership and professional development. As one of the youngest Fortune 50 executives during her decade long corporate career, Raven cracked the code early on leading intergenerational teams in the workplace and is now on a mission to help others do the same.

Her book, “Leading Your Parents: 25 Rules to Effective Multigenerational Leadership from Millennials and Gen Z” was written to help young professionals entering the workforce, prepare to lead cross-generational teams from Generation Z to Baby Boomers. Raven, you so much for being on the podcast today.

Raven Solomon: Thank you for having me. I’m super excited to be here.

Jackie Ferguson: Awesome. Your story is so inspiring. Can we start by telling our listeners a little about your background and how you got to this point in your career?

Raven Solomon: Yeah, absolutely. So I was born in this city called Charlotte, North Carolina. So not too far from where you all are in the RDU area.

I was born unto two college graduates. So my mother and my father both went to Fayetteville State, which is an HBCU. And so I was a second generation college student. They were both first generation and my father was a businessman. My mother was an educator and growing up, we encounter some tough times.

Unfortunately, my father began using drugs when we were really young. And so that led to us being raised by a single parent in essence, but my mother and my grandmother just were phenomenal women. They really showed me what servant leadership was. And they sent me off to college, really with all the soft skills I needed to be successful.

We didn’t have all the tangible things, but the intangibles they gave me. And so I left Charlotte and went up to the RDU area to go to NC State and I decided to major in business because I really saw business as one of those transferable degrees that you could leverage anywhere in any industry.

And so I majored in business, minored in Spanish. And just got the opportunity to really transcend the poverty that I grew up in and find my way to at least options, and creating a new reality for myself. And so just NC State was just phenomenal. Studying abroad was, it was excellent. Learning a second language and all of that jazz, it was just phenomenal. And then one day I found out that I was ranked number one in my class at that time. I really worked hard to maintain that and ended up graduating as valedictorian from NC State, which is something I’m super proud of. Thank you. Thank you. It’s something I work hard for, but left, NC state and went to this company called Frito Lay which is a subsidiary of Pepsico. And the moment I stepped out of NC State, I went into what was soon to be a managerial role  at Frito Lay. But I knew that I needed to run a route for about a year in order to get to that managerial role. And so I did. So after graduating valedictorian,  I tell everybody that I ended up running the chip route on my hands and knees for a year – simply because I mentioned servant leadership earlier, but this was really that personified, you know, I had to really learn the job and serve the folks that I would one day be leading and gain their respect by working from the ground up. And so that’s really what attracted me to the job in and of itself.

So I took the role. And after that year of training, I was handed my first team of 16 men who were old enough to be my parents, quite literally some of them, even my grandparents. To say we had some obstacles to overcome would be an understatement, but we did, but I needed to in essence, learn how to manage people older than me.

I needed to learn how I gain their respect. How do I show them that I’m consistently confident and capable of being here? How do I earn their trust? All of these things were not written anywhere. It’s just something that you had to figure out. And what I noticed after hitting the fast track at Frito lay is that a lot of my peers didn’t quite crack that code and so once I unfortunately needed to part ways with Frito-Lay due to an illness I left the organization, really not knowing what I would do. I thought back to the times where I was able to separate myself from my peers and what was it that led one to success and one not, and all it was soft skills and the ability to, to lead across generations effectively. So when I left Frito-Lay I decided to write the book for the next me, right ,the next person coming out of college and being given a team of folks old enough to be their parents and struggling  to really navigate that. And so then that’s why I wrote my book Leading Your Parents, and also why I started my company, The Center for Next Generation Leadership and Professional Development, because it’s all about developing soft skills in the future of our workforce, millennials and generation Z.

Jackie Ferguson: And Raven, can you tell us a little about what those soft skills are that you need to be successful?

Raven Solomon: Absolutely. I think arguably the most important skill in today’s workforce, to me is emotional intelligence and there’s so many things packed into emotional intelligence.

You can really take, you know, probably six to eight different sub-skills that need to be developed within emotional intelligence. But I think by far EQ is vital, especially if you want to lead in any regard. EQ it is networking. It’s the social skill component. It is self awareness. It’s self regulation.

It’s also social management, right? How do you manage relationships, diplomatically and how do you navigate corporate environment that could be political? And those things are always taught in college and certainly not high school. It comes by time and it comes by my practice and study.

Jackie Ferguson: Absolutely. And Raven, you’ve had some early adversity in life. Can you talk to us a little about that? And then what advice do you give to people facing adversity and what kept you motivated through everything?

Raven Solomon: Yeah. So some of the things that I’ve been through in my life, it just seems like there’s obstacle after obstacle after obstacle, the moment I feel like I’m getting my feet under me, there comes another obstacle that just kind of knocks me off. You know, growing up in a tough environment as it related to just poverty and such, and then, you know, going to high school and unfortunately being diagnosed with Alopecia and losing my hair as a, you know, a budding young woman, that was a huge obstacle at that time. And honestly it would be today if it were to happen, and overcoming that, and then getting ready to go to college and losing my grandmother, who was really my second parent, that was another obstacle. And then finding the strength to get through those things, really came from both my mother and my grandmother.

The strength that they displayed and thus instilled in me was just, it was evident. It wasn’t an option for me, really, to kind of crawl in a corner and weep. And so learning that strength from them and going to NC State and then graduating and getting my first job and getting my first promotion and my second promotion.

And then, you know, I think two days after my second promotion, I got a call that my mother had passed away unexpectedly just out of nowhere. And then 28 days later, my father passed away. And so we, those two obstacles back to back had just knocked me off my feet, but my remedy was work.

So I just threw myself into work. It was my outlet. It was the thing that would keep my mind off of all of the hard stuff. And the trauma and the things that I just didn’t work through, but didn’t know at that time. So just being able to plow through that, although I made it through and made it through quote unquote successfully, I still think I didn’t quite manage it well, and I didn’t process during the process.

And so getting, you know, at the peak of my career at that executive level role that you talked about and really thinking that I’m okay. And then all of a sudden being diagnosed with epilepsy and having seizures just kind of threw me off, so that was the pinnacle of obstacles, I think. And that’s where I really began to, to reflect and see that while I had been able to make it through all of that stuff that I just described to you, I didn’t quite heal from it well, so after being diagnosed with epilepsy and literally needing to sit down for months, that really helped me see that I hadn’t really dealt with the trauma from losing my parents and losing my grandmother and losing my new reality.

And so then going to therapy, working through that and now realizing that everything is a process and being kind to myself and being gentle with myself, giving myself grace to really experience things, the emotional side of it. And getting help. Getting help. And I think if there’s anything I learned from all of that, it’s that, you know, you, you have to go through things, you can’t just go over them or around them, and I learned that the hard way.

Jackie Ferguson: Yeah. Wow, so inspiring. Thank you for sharing that with us. So transitioning into generational diversity. Before we get into a discussion about that, let’s get some definitions out of the way. What makes a generation a generation?

Raven Solomon: So it’s a really good question. A generation is really the group of people. So it’s an aggregate of people that are born within a span of about 20 years. And so these people really share phases of life together. And so if you think about your generation, my generation, we experienced certain things throughout our phases of life that then make us a generation, they meld us together.  And so there are really three criteria that generations have in common. The first is they share an age location in history. So all that means is that, as you go through these phases of life, you encounter certain historical events. Certain things happen that really shift what is deemed to be normal for us.

And so, for example, for my generation, the millennial generation, 9/11 is absolutely one of those, you know, locations in history that really shaped who we are, what we call normal. What normal is to us and what we then experience as we walk through the world, some of the choices that we made, the tendencies, we have the behaviors that we demonstrate.

One thing that generation has in common is that they occupy the same phase of life when those traumatic events or those dramatic events happen in history. So I venture to say that COVID-19 is absolutely that event for generation Z. Absolutely will be the event that now shapes a new normal for them.

And it will be also the event that distinguishes generation Z from what is now being called generation Alpha. So generation Alpha is the generation younger behind generation Z. So first criteria is they share an age location in history. The second criteria is that they tend to share common beliefs and behaviors around certain things, right. And that, it’s determined by what we just described, that new normal that’s created after certain events that happen that separate one generation from another. So for instance, if you were to ask your grandparents, what gender roles in the home are, they would probably have a different perspective than I would, or maybe even you would, or certainly than your daughter would. And so these things happen and they shape the way we tend to believe and behave as it relates to culture and our environment. And then the last thing that generations have in common is they have this sense of perceived membership. So every generation has these experiences and they think that they are unique in they’re special, and they’re, they’re proud to have those experiences together. And so whenever I do any of my keynotes or workshops, I always share songs that bring back memories. I share images as it relates to work in culture and music that brings back memories for folks, and you always hear people say, Oh, your generation doesn’t know real music or yours generation doesn’t know – yeah I feel sorry for y’all, y’all don’t have real television. Especially this generation, I feel bad. They have no real shows. I mean, we grew up with Family Matters and the Fresh Prince, the Brandy Show, it was just everything. And so we have this sense of perceived membership. We get nostalgic when we think about the things we used to do and the things we experienced together.

So those are the three things that generations share in common. And well, what really differentiates one generation from another typically if it’s not a 20 year span, it’s usually this monumental event in history that then separates one from another.

Jackie Ferguson: Thank you for sharing that. That’s important to know. Within diversity, what is the definition of generational diversity and inclusion, and what role does it play in the workforce?

Raven Solomon: Yeah, I think, you know generational diversity and inclusion is literally just like any other diversity and inclusion. It literally is just about the presence of difference and the appreciation and leveraging of that difference, which is where the inclusion component comes in.  So it’s one thing for us to have that generational diversity at the table, meaning that we have all generations represented, all generations within the workforce that is represented at the table if you will, or in our office. And we’re being intentional about providing opportunity for those voices to be heard.

And that’s where the inclusion comes in. And so we have talked to companies all the time about the fact that there’s a kudos, right? You get a hand clap for having, you know, millennial leadership or having gen Z team members around and you’re hiring early talent and you’ve got these developmental programs and all that stuff, which is phenomenal, but I think true generational inclusion is when we have folks at the table who are able to contribute to the decision making process. And that is, I think, where diversity and inclusion separate themselves.  It’s really about empowerment. It’s about having a seat at the table, but also having a voice at the table.

So I love the way that Verna Myers talks about just the difference between diversity and inclusion. So she says that diversity is being invited to the party. Inclusion is being asked to dance. And so it’s one thing for us to be there. It’s another thing for us to be really engaged and involved in the overall decision making process.

And there, there are studies all, you know, I have one in particular that I share in one of my keynotes that just talks about the power of generational diversity as it relates to decision making. And ultimately it just proves that the more diverse, generational diversity that is that you have at the table, the better decisions you make and those decisions drive performance.

So I think it’s, it’s vital that we have generational diversity and inclusion within our organizations and the reality is Jackie, none of us are getting any younger. And so we have to accept that reality.

Jackie Ferguson: Unfortunately.

Raven Solomon: Yeah. It’s just not happening. I wish I wish, but I don’t have the secret sauce to get us to age backwards.

And so the reality is if we don’t begin to bring in early talent into the fold, then we’ll end up having all of this institutional knowledge wrapped up in our old brains and nobody can access it. So what good is it? If the organization doesn’t benefit from it after you? What’s the legacy that you’re leaving?

And so I know we’re getting off on a tangent, but I just talked to folks a lot where we’re struggling to let go of the power and the positions and the titles and the knowledge and the relationships. We have to stretch beyond that because if we’re doing that, we’ve got to question why we’re there then if we’re, if we’re really not there to move the organization forward, then we really need to question our motives.

Jackie Ferguson: Absolutely. Raven, what do you think are the major differences between each of the generations in the workplace? If you could name one or two characteristics.

Raven Solomon: Whoo man. It would be hard to name one or two. There’s so many differences, but what I talk about in one of my keynotes is this idea, this trademark concept of a Led language. And so if you’re familiar with the love language, then you know, that love language is nothing, but the way in which you best receive love or give love. It just kind of depends. Some people have a love language that’s different than the way that they receive and give.

I totally get it. Well, as I’m thinking about leadership, one day. I’m like, well, the same way that people have love languages, people probably have Led languages as well. So for love languages, the way that you best receive love, a Led language  is nothing but the way in which you best receive leadership.

And so I’m beginning to think about, okay, if I’m writing a book right now about the Led languages, and I wanted to take that concept and kind of juxtapose that against generations. So what I’ve done is just taken a look at all that I know about generations and taking a stab at giving each generation a primary Led language, the way in which they best receive leadership.

I think as we talk about differences, this may be a good way to just give you one or two differences across generations, but for a Baby Boomer. Baby Boomers grew up in a time where authority was based on tenure and seniority. So it’s really about earning your keep. It’s about putting in the work and you want to get that title.

I know you deserve that title because you’ve put in the work. And so you get a certain level of respect from me. You know what I mean? If you’re in the organization. And so for a Baby Boomer, their Led language, the primary Led language is really respect. If you want to get the best out of a Baby Boomer, just because of how they’ve kind of experienced work and life, then you have to show them respect, respect of their time, respect of their tenure, their seniority, what they bring to the table, respect for the relationships they’ve cultivated over the last several decades that they’ve been in the workforce.

So, especially as a younger leader, If you’re leading Baby Boomers, it’s important that you show them that respect and they appreciate it. And that’s the way in which you best get results of performance out of Baby Boomers. It also goes back to their childhood, right? With the Baby Boomer growing up, kids were seen and not heard you didn’t really talk back.

That’s right.

What was said was said, and it was meant. And so you just had to kind of deal with it now when that, when they come into the workforce, that tends to still show up as an expectation. Those in authority are there for a reason. And if they make a decision or speak then that’s generally the final word. And so that respect component, extremely important for Baby Boomers. When it comes to generation X, are you an X-er by the way?

Jackie Ferguson: I am

Raven Solomon: Awesome. So with generation X, their primary Led language, the way which they best receive leadership is really trust. And that goes back to the times where generation X grew up as latchkey kids, many of them. So in my research, we’ve seen like 65% of gen X actually grew up as a latchkey kid.

So what that bred in generation X is this ultra self reliance and this ultra independence. And I’ve talked to audiences where gen X-ers were as young as six and they were getting off the bus by themselves with a key around their neck, letting themselves in and having to stay there and do everything they needed to do for at least three or four hours.

And so generation X is really independent. So it’s why you hear a lot of them talking about now in the COVID environment that I don’t know what y’all’s problem is, I’m totally fine being here being by myself, being in my room, you know, all of these things. So they’re super independent. So what that did, how that translates into the workforce is when they show up in the workforce, they kind of need that elbow room.

They need that space. They need that independence. They need the trust that they can take care of what’s been given. So micromanaging doesn’t really work well for it for generation X. So it’s really all about trust. Now for millennials, their primary Led language is attention. And that goes back to how we were raised as well.

So we were the first generation to grow up in child centric homes, where it was really all about us. You know, the schedules revolved around – the family schedule revolved around the kids’ schedule. So it was all about, Oh, and Johnny needs to go to soccer practice. And Sarah needs to go to choir practice, and Keisha needs to go to basketball practice.

You know, all of these things, were all built around millennials in the home as children. So we’re sitting at the dinner table and we’re asked about our day and how we feel. And, you know, we’re told that the family is, is a unit and not just dictatorship and all of these things. And so when you come into the workforce as a millennial, you’re used to this certain level of care from leadership. You’re used to a certain level of concern. And inquisitiveness about what you want, you need, you desire. And so the best way to get performance out of a millennial as a leader is really by showing them attention. And it’s not the type of attention most people are probably thinking. It’s really more about understanding what their goals are, taking the time to really help them see where they are as it relates to performance against achieving those goals, giving them consistent feedback, making sure you’re meeting with them on a regular basis so that they understand, A, what you want, what you need and where they’re measuring up against providing that,  giving them the opportunity to contribute to the work and the conversation. So all of that, that’s what I mean by attention. It’s literally the care and concern of what they want. And then for gen Z, we don’t fully know what their Led language is, there’s not enough of them really in the workforce to assess that appropriately. But my guess is that it’ll have something to do with rewards.

And that really goes back to gen Z really being financially, I would say they seek financial security more than millennials did by far. And so a lot of that comes back, again we talk about how you grow up and really how those events that we talked about. Those historical events shape your beliefs, your tendencies, et cetera, typically in adolescence.

And so for gen Z, having watched their gen X-er parents go through the Great Recession and then lose jobs and lose stock options and lose homes, they are very hypersensitive to financial security and wanting to be. Yeah, absolutely. And they see millennials too. They see their older millennial cousins and stuff living with mom and dad.

And they’re like, I don’t want to do that. So they’re really course correcting too based on what they see from millenneals. So I think it’s going to really have something to do with rewards by way of, of tangible, you know, compensation. It’s really about things and financial security for them, as opposed to a millennial, it’s really more about experiences and the process more than it is the actual tangible thing.

Jackie Ferguson: Wow, that is a lot of great information and definitely something to think about as you lead through different generations. Raven, tell us about the Center for Next Generation Leadership and Professional Development. What’s your mission and what are you doing there?

Raven Solomon: Yeah. So our mission is quite simple. It is to literally help companies and organizations develop, attract and retain the future of their workforce, which is millennials and gen Z. And we start with development. You think we’d start with attraction, but we really start with development first because that’s what ultimately attracts and retains the talent.

And so in today’s society, there is so much hyper-connectivity in there so much collaboration. There’s so much insight and information where young talent, emerging talent they already know, whether you invest in the development of your employees or not. And that development is vital. That’s what ultimately attracts them and it’s certainly what retainsthem. And so our job is to really help organizations invest in the development of their early talent by way of soft skill training.

So we provide soft skill training on just about anything. So it’s about networking. We have networking training, we have emotional intelligence training. We have, you know, interview training. We have accountability training and diversity and inclusion training. So we have all of these soft skill development workshops that just help organizations invest in their early talent.

Jackie Ferguson: That’s amazing. What do you think are the most important characteristics of a leader no matter what the generation?

Raven Solomon: That’s a good question. One of the key characteristics that any leader needs to have is empathy. In my opinion, you have to be able to put yourself in the position of those that you lead and make informed decisions from that perspective, not just from your seat.

You’ve gotta be able to take off your leader hat and put on your servant hat and really understand the intracacies of what your team is experiencing. And that’s really the only way that you can truly support them, you can best support them, I should say. So I think empathy is, is absolutely vital, absolutely necessary.

I think humility is important because it’s really about being trust and your team has to trust you, and if you are humble enough to say, you know what? I am open to feedback. I know I’m not perfect. I am open to your contributions, to my leadership and our leadership and us achieving our goals.

And I think that’s vital. And then the last thing we talked about it a little earlier is emotional intelligence, which is really all encompassing, but you just have to have that in order to be successful as a leader.

Jackie Ferguson: Awesome. Share a little about your book, Leading Your Parents. I have it. It’s an amazing read.

I bought a copy actually for my daughter as well. Talk a little about your book and what listeners can expect when they pick it up.

Raven Solomon: Absolutely. So Leading Your Parents, it’s a how to guide to step from collegiate life or individual contributing life in an organization to leadership at a young age.

Most people think it’s about direct management. And leadership is not always about direct management. It can absolutely be about influential leadership as well. Maybe you don’t manage a team, but you do work amongst a lot of other generations. This book is going to help you understand them and then give you very tangible rules to follow and tips and tricks to actually influence them in a positive way.  So influence them towards the achievement of the goal of the team. So within it, I break it down from rules that you need to follow and do before you get on the job, rules that you need to follow and do on the job and then rules that you need to follow and do around the job.

And so that revelation, if you will, in and of itself for a young professional is absolutely vital. We oftentimes think, because we don’t know any better that performance  is directly related and only related to our performance on the job.

And that is not the case. Around the job, managing the relationships and managing the political environment, managing your brand, being aware. All of those things are just as important to your promotability as your on the job tangible metric performance.

Jackie Ferguson: Got it. It’s a great read it’s so informative and gives you those step by step tips to be able to lead other generations in the workplace for young folks. I love it.

Raven Solomon: Thank you. I wanted to just create something that was very straight to the point and just, Hey, how do I earn respect? How do I gain trust? And how do I consistently display confidence so that I’m seen as capable? And it’s straight to the point.

Jackie Ferguson: Yes. And it does an amazing job of that. So it was a fantastic read.

Raven Solomon: Thank you.

Jackie Ferguson: Raven, as a gen X parent of a gen Z-er, I’m always looking for good advice as to how to motivate and support and lead my daughter. What advice do you give parents for relating to and motivating their children?

Raven Solomon: Yeah. Wow. That’s a good question.  For gen Z, just like many generations, I think the one bit of advice is just know that they’re not as different than you were at their age, right? What’s different is what’s around them. And that is social media. It’s technology.

It’s an overload of information. There are studies that show that gen Z is literally bombarded with 10,000 messages per day. 10,000 messages per day. And what does that mean Raven? Messages are text messages. They are advertisements. They are ads on social media. They’re images. They’re captions. They’re – I mean, you just scroll through social media for 30 minutes, which we know they do literally two hours a day. If you literally just scroll through that for 30 minutes, you’ve already been bombarded with at least a thousand messages. You think about the captions and the images and everything else that you’re seeing.

So I would just say you’re not much different than them, but you have to consider all the things that are around them and help them manage the anxiety that they feel. Okay. And part of that anxiety really stems from the bombarding of information. You always feel like you’re either missing out on something or you are constantly consuming something.

And so with that, you either feel inadequate. You feel like you’re subpar or maybe you’re on par or maybe up. You know, it’s just such a volatile life. Helping them manage those emotions by sometimes turning that thing off. Sometimes you just have to coach them to, Hey, you need at least five hours a day where you are not on that phone at all.

And they may hate that at a moment. But I think it’s for their good, ultimately. So they’re going to be the first generation we really see the impacts of just astronomical screen time from. We don’t know what that looks like. We don’t know the impacts of growing up in social media is going to be, cause we just haven’t seen it yet.

So those two things I would absolutely say. As it relates to motivating, them I think the more you communicate and talk to gen Z, the better you are in terms of getting things through to them. And so by talking to them, I mean, it’s really important that they understand the why. So the big picture. Okay. Yeah, you’re saying I can’t do this, but help me understand why I can’t do this.

Jackie Ferguson: Yes, I get that question a lot.

Raven Solomon: Yes. So explaining that and breaking that down. And then the last thing is really about purpose. So helping them really see how. And that can come into to just everyday actions, but helping them see how, what they’re doing contributes to the whole.

That can be in the home, right? So, Hey, if I ask you to, to clean the dishes, It’s not just because I don’t want to clean the dishes. It’s actually, because I don’t have time to clean the dishes cause I have X, Y, and Z going on, but here’s how you cleaning the dishes contributes to the household and how we all feel and function in the same space.

That’s a very small minuscule example of what I share with organizations on how to really lead and motivate gen Z. It’s really about helping them understand the instrumentality component of motivation. And that is how instrumental am I in you achieving your goals as a whole, right? So just a couple of random things that I would just throw out there as it relates to gen Z.

Jackie Ferguson: That’s great advice. Thank you for sharing that. Raven, as we start to wrap up, what would you like to leave our listeners with today?

Raven Solomon: Hmm.  I would like to leave you with the fact that the only thing that really separates one generation from another is our experiences in the past and the current phase of life that we’re in.

That’s really it and those experiences in the past, as I mentioned, those are the things that shape the new normal for us. Those are the things that shape our behaviors and tendencies and choices, et cetera. And that’s what informs our decisions. So if you think about it, as people we’re really the same, it really is just about what we’ve experienced in our environment and where we currently are in life.

So if I’m talking to a leader, I would just say, consider the generational aspects and characteristics of your team. They are not the end all be all by far, but I think there are contextual things that can help you just better understand them. And maybe just provide some rationale to why they do what they do.

And so I would encourage you to just look into some of the differences in the generations. And that could be through my book that could be through, through some of my blog posts, but it can also just be blog posts across the internet in general. But I think it’s important that we know why those differences are as they are so that we can appreciate them and begin to leverage them within our teams.

Jackie Ferguson: Awesome. Raven, thank you so much for sharing your story and your insights with us. You can learn more about Raven by visiting RavenSolomon.com and NextGenLPD.com and pick up her book, Leading Your Parents on her website at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or wherever you buy your books. Raven, thank you again so much for being on the show.

Raven Solomon: Thank you so much for having me.