Susan Stone [00:00:00]:

I think maybe more important as a new manager is don't be afraid to raise your hand and ask your manager questions. And I think that's another trap that people can fall into is just, I'm supposed to know how to do this.

Matt Gjertsen [00:00:18]:

You're trying to prove yourself.

Susan Stone [00:00:19]:

Yeah, trying to prove yourself.

Matt Gjertsen [00:00:21]:

And in my opinion, the way to prove yourself is to be open and curious, Hello and welcome to the Leadership Launchpad, where we help technical managers improve themselves, their teams, and their organizations. If you are a technical leader, an engineer or technician looking to become a leader, or someone who supports technical leaders, this is the show to get actionable insights from people who have been in the trenches to help improve your own performance and the performance of those around you. Our guest today is Susan Stone, the CEO of Blue Current, a startup designing high-performance forming solid-state batteries that safely and sustainably power the EV and mobile industries. As an award-winning entrepreneurial leader herself, she specializes in growing companies with disruptive technologies to commercial scale to transform industries they serve. That transition from disruptive technology to commercial scale is exactly what I want to talk about today. What are the leadership and cultural challenges of making that shift. Why do so many companies fail at that point? What do frontline leaders need to do differently when that change happens? There is a lot here, so let's dive right in. Susan, welcome to the Leadership Launchpad.

Susan Stone [00:01:43]:

Thanks, Matt. I'm really excited to be here, and I love your mission, so I couldn't wait to record this podcast with you.

Matt Gjertsen [00:01:50]:

Yeah, well, I, I'll be honest, I love your mission as well. So thank you so much for being here. You know, the energy storage, so much of the amazing future that we're trying to build right now honestly relies on figuring out better energy storage. It's a problem that we've been working on for a really long time. So I wanted to start there, bring us up to speed. Where is Blue Current at? What are you doing? I know you, you know, it's been about a year since you closed your last, your last funding round. So where are you at on that pathway to commercialization? Yeah.

Susan Stone [00:02:21]:

And I, I also love energy storage. No surprise. I think, I happen to think energy storage is like magic. There's nothing more interesting to me than storing electrons over space and time, which is basically what we do with batteries. BlueCurrent, we're, we're part of that evolution and we really are bringing a transformational battery technology to market. I think there's been a lot of talk about solid-state batteries for decades. I think, you know, you can look back in news articles and they've been right around the corner now for at least 10 years, probably longer. And I think that really just speaks to how much excitement there is and need there is in the market for next-generation battery technologies.

Susan Stone [00:03:05]:

So we feel a little bit like we're part of the space race and there are a lot of really smart people working on this in the industry. You know, I'll say at Blue Current, our approach is a little bit different and I, That's something that really appealed to me when I joined the company. I've only been at the company for 2 years, despite the fact that it's been around for, for more like 12. So, I'm still new here, but part of what attracted me is that as a team, as an investor base, and with this technology, Blue Current really zigged when other people were zagging. And I, I will, I'll get a tiny bit technical for a second, which is to say that Most solid-state batteries, when you just hear about the industry in general, are using a material called lithium metal, and it is truly lithium in its like purest metal form. So you can imagine that stores a ton of energy. What we've done is we're not using that material for all kinds of reasons. We instead replace that with silicon.

Susan Stone [00:04:08]:

So we, we love that it's sustainable and earth-abundant. It is safe. It also at least in our chemistry and in our formulation, is relatively easy to manufacture and gives us a pretty durable battery profile. So there's a lot to love for us about silicon. What we have is a silicon-based solid-state battery. So also of note is that it is a fully dry battery. There's been a lot of progress in making what people will call like a semi-solid battery, which is uses like a gel electrolyte or adds some liquid back into the system. And, and we don't do that.

Susan Stone [00:04:47]:

Ours is a fully dry battery. So you get all the benefits of a solid-state safety profile, and you also get high energy density, and in our case, a really durable battery that'll last for many, many cycles. So we're really excited about the battery. You mentioned our last capital raise, which you're 100% right, it was almost exactly a year ago. And I am so proud of our team because, uh, I would say we are well ahead of schedule on the deliverables that we wanted to achieve with this capital raise, which, uh, I think is rare in my experience. Um, usually we hit timelines and then, you know, we hit, we make, uh, deadlines and we try our best. Um, and we just, I just don't have enough good things to say about this team. They just, um, They've done an incredible job.

Susan Stone [00:05:42]:

So we're, we're, uh, we are ahead of schedule.

Matt Gjertsen [00:05:45]:

I gotta, I gotta stop you right there then on that point. Like, what do you think? Because you're right, the norm is, is not that. The norm is, is the opposite, which is understandable. These are hard, these are hard problems. What do you, is it, do you think it's just you got lucky with some of the things you were doing with some of the, the chemistry formulations, or was there, was there something that you think you've seen over the last couple of years that like, enabled the team to execute faster?

Susan Stone [00:06:12]:

Luck never hurts. So I will say yes to luck. And I think, I would say the luck aspect is when we first started developing this battery in R&D, and I'll back up and say that we tend to be on a one release a year cadence out of R&D and into cell scale-up. We originally developed this battery to be used for EVs, just, just like everyone else in the market. And eventually we would love our batteries to be in EVs. It's a huge part of the market and I drive an EV. We love EVs. What we found is because this, this system that we've developed, our chemistry system, it, it means that the battery is very, very stable and can offer very long cycle life.

Susan Stone [00:07:03]:

So the luck bit is that When we were bringing out our next generation of our battery at the end of 2025, it graduated from R&D and we started looking at the performance metrics and we had been driving to increase energy density, which we did. Team met the goal on energy density. We're now at 750 watt-hours per liter. It also happened to be showing extraordinarily long cycle life for the type of battery that we're making, for a battery with an NMC cathode. So, That, you know, I hate to say that the cycle life was a byproduct of just all of the other work that the team was doing, but it really was. It wasn't a, it wasn't a big focus. We just, we needed acceptable cycle life and we got extraordinary cycle life. So since then, you know, that really opened up the, the best data center and grid storage market for us because that cycle life is a real driver of the economics in that market.

Susan Stone [00:08:03]:

And I think, so that's the lock point that, you know, kind of accelerated. We, we determined that we didn't need to do more development on that battery and we really have something special for the market today.

Matt Gjertsen [00:08:13]:

That was your exit to commercialization.

Susan Stone [00:08:15]:

Yeah, we, now look, could we, now through that lens, could we go back to the generation before and say we probably could have done it? Maybe. But we, we believe that that gen, the 2025 generation is, is the go-to-market generation and we're excited about that. The rest of it truly is this extraordinary team doing extraordinary things together. And I think the together part is the piece that's so important.

Matt Gjertsen [00:08:45]:

Mm-hmm.

Susan Stone [00:08:45]:

I think particularly when you're scaling technologies from lab to pilot, you know, ultimately to commercialization, you tend to go from you know, a generalist employee population that's very R&D focused to, you know, you hire more specialists, the, the risk is getting siloed. Um, and I think there's this, and we even had that idea, like this elusive idea of there was gonna be a handoff between R&D to advanced manufacturing.

Matt Gjertsen [00:09:19]:

Interesting.

Susan Stone [00:09:19]:

Yeah. Um, and what we quickly came to realize, and I think I, I give a ton of credit to Kevin, our CTO here, was that It's, there's no handoff here. This was, for us, scaling this battery to our pilot line was an all hands on deck, take advantage of all of the learnings out of R&D, of our cell scale-up team and cell engineering, apply those all to our pilot manufacturing line, and then get our feedback loop going. So whatever we're learning in advanced manufacturing is, is coming all the way back to— R&D and to our next-gen batteries. And so that flywheel, we got it going pretty quickly. It's worked incredibly well for us. And look, we spent time in R&D designing for manufacture. So there was a lot of thought going into how are we gonna manufacture, how are we gonna scale this process all along the way? So we had the right people working on scaling up that battery across, I would say, all of our teams, right? It was R&D, the way we're organized, it's R&D, cell engineering and advanced manufacturing.

Susan Stone [00:10:30]:

And probably at this point, we're equal weight across those 3 teams of, you know, people who are working on scaling up those cells and getting yield up and all that good stuff.

Matt Gjertsen [00:10:42]:

Well, it's great that you, even though early on that you were envisioning kind of that handoff, there was still that focus on manufacturability. That's the one thing that I always hear When you talk to production engineers versus the engineer engineers, it's just like, but how are we going to build this thing? And that's where, at least in the space industry, the phrase I always hear is the responsible engineer, where the idea is that like you become responsible for a part or a system's entire lifecycle. It's not just here, I got to design it and then hand it to somebody else. It's like, no, if it breaks or can't get manufactured or whatever, it's still your responsibility. So it makes sense that that's kind of the, the flow that, that's working for you.

Susan Stone [00:11:24]:

Yeah, I really like that. We don't use that language, but I might borrow it, um, 'cause I love that. And some of it, you know, it, it's not a one-to-one mapping, right? You have our tools in R&D that are different than our tools in manufacturing, but the learnings, the process, um, that information flywheel has been incredible for us. Um, and then I'll just add one other note that, you know, really, um, was sparked by our newer board member from Amazon. So, we— Amazon was the anchor in our last round. Um, we had a, a truly incredible individual, James Hamilton, joined our board. Um, he is one of the most brilliant mentors I think that we could have. He's been very engaged with us and very helpful.

Susan Stone [00:12:10]:

And one of his most actionable pieces of advice was, how to increase our cycle times. And there's a difference between just saying to each other, we wanna go faster, we wanna go as fast as we can. That's great. That's a, that's a nice goal. And he really helped us break it down into how do you go from idea to implementation as quickly as possible? Where are your bottlenecks? How do you make it, how do you make that all go faster? And so, a real intense focus on cycle times has been a big part of our 2026.

Matt Gjertsen [00:12:43]:

Awesome.

Susan Stone [00:12:44]:

also infused in the whole organization. So that's part of why we're able to go so fast.

Matt Gjertsen [00:12:50]:

Yeah, that's awesome. Just a quick interjection. I wanted to remind you that I run a company called Built, where we train the next generation of hard tech leaders how to build teams capable of solving the world's hardest problems. If you are an aspiring technical leader, an existing leader, or responsible for training leaders in your organization, please check out builtleaders.com. to see if we can support you and your team. I want to start by going back in time a little bit to understand a little bit more of your journey as a leader, because this show, we're talking a lot to people who are maybe, you know, brand new in their leadership journey, or they're getting ready to enter into their leadership journey. So, I always like to talk, you know, to people like yourself and ask, think back to like maybe your first people leadership position or your, or the first major one that you remember and just some of those What were some of those early challenges or unexpected things that happened when you, when you made that transition?

Susan Stone [00:13:44]:

Oh man, it's been a long time. Um, so I, I guess I'll give you a, a 2-part answer, 'cause my, the first time I was really leading people, um, I was way back in the day and I was an investment banker. And so, um, you know, you kind of graduate as an investment banker from being The, the person who truly stays up all night doing all the work to the person who stays up most of the night doing half of the work and directing the person who does the rest. And then you finally get to the place where you're, you know, maybe leaving the office at 10:00 PM. I think the, the lucky thing about those roles is that it, it's generally structured on deal teams. And so, I had an opportunity, even as a new people leader, to try that in a really dynamic environment, right? Where we, it would be project-based. So, I would have a team where I had a, I had a leader, um, or 2, and then I had people who worked for me. And even in real time, I could calibrate, what do I see that's working? What do I see that's not working? Um, and so, I got really lucky in that sense.

Susan Stone [00:14:53]:

It wasn't just one static, this is, this is my first shot at this, my first example. You know, I think the thing I learned, and I learned this by the way from my, you know, you look at good bosses and kind of try to model what's working. Um, and I, I, this is still important to me today, so this is probably a good example, um, is to get truly the best work out of your team and to, to get the best results, you need to put things in context and really help folks understand the why are we doing this and put it in as context as best as you possibly can. Because, um, I would say early mistakes that I made were asking, as an example, asking someone to complete a task without context. It's a little bit like programming a computer. Like—

Matt Gjertsen [00:15:48]:

It's 100% like programming a computer.

Susan Stone [00:15:50]:

You're gonna get what you asked for. Maybe not what you wanted, but what you asked for.

Matt Gjertsen [00:15:54]:

Yes.

Susan Stone [00:15:54]:

Um, and so, I've found putting things in context, explaining the why really empowers really smart people to give you maybe not even what you thought you wanted, but what you really needed, um, to solve the problem versus just telling 'em, go do X, and then you get X, whether it's the right answer or not.

Matt Gjertsen [00:16:16]:

I, I love that, 'cause I couldn't agree with you more of how important that context is. Do you have any particular techniques or just things you think about? Because especially for high performers who are getting promoted, I feel like the context piece can be really difficult because it's this very standard, you know, like great players don't make great coaches kind of situation. Because very often high performers, they might not even know why they're a high performer. They might not even know why things click for them or why they get the situation that other people don't, you know, did you ever have, did you have to spend some time thinking through like making sure, what do I need to explain to make sure they get the context or how do you, how do you think through that process?

Susan Stone [00:17:02]:

Oh, such a good question. 'Cause I like, no, I don't. That's, that's not one of the things that I feel like, um, I'm just trying to rewind the clock and, and by the way, I, when I finally got to like a technical, like a hard tech leadership position, the context thing, you know, was even more important. Um, I would say I probably err on the side of just overcommunicating. Like, that's probably—

Matt Gjertsen [00:17:29]:

Just say, just say as much as possible.

Susan Stone [00:17:30]:

Yeah. Yeah. And I, I just, I don't think I've been terribly thoughtful about how to put things in context. Um, and you know, I, I will back up and say again that I'm, um, I really like people. And so, I think for me, context also tends to include things like, who's our audience for this? Like, who's gonna care about—

Matt Gjertsen [00:17:54]:

Interesting. Yeah.

Susan Stone [00:17:55]:

The result that we're getting for it. So, and, you know, to kind of bring that to Blue Current, we try to communicate with the team as much as we can. And when we get an opportunity to talk to the team as a whole, We, we try to link what are you doing in the lab and on the pilot line to what is our customer gonna do with this? Like, why do they care? Why should we care? And we should care 'cause the customer cares. Um, so trying to just go as far downstream in the chain as possible, as far as like, why, why do you care about this thing? Um, has been helpful for me, but I wish I had put more thought into the how. But I think it's just communicate as much as possible.

Matt Gjertsen [00:18:41]:

Yeah. I mean, I think generally that overcommunication, if you think you're overcommunicating, then you might just be scratching the surface of communicating enough in my experience. Like, I just, I think since we live in our own heads so often, we think, oh, I've said this a million times. Everybody's heard it. It's like, no, no, no, they, they haven't heard it a million times. Everybody's busy. Everybody's busy. We're in this like really loud and noisy world.

Matt Gjertsen [00:19:07]:

And so, sometimes it can just be as simple as, look, I'm just going to overcommunicate. Actually, it reminds me, there was a great leadership course that I was in years ago where they had a phrase, managers are not communicated to, they're communicated through, right? And that, like, your job as a, like, a huge portion of your job as a leader is just communicating as much information as possible, both directions. And so I think in general, that's a— if your default is to overcommunicate, I don't think you're going to go wrong. So that makes a lot of sense.

Susan Stone [00:19:42]:

Yeah.

Matt Gjertsen [00:19:43]:

Well, I mean, that context setting. So correct me, I believe a big reason you mentioned you came into Blue Current 2 years ago, I believe a big reason you were brought in was for this transition that you're going through right now, was for going from the R&D side to the commercialization side. I'm sure things like context are incredibly important from a leadership perspective, whether that's you as a CEO or the organization as a whole, or then even, you know, more of the managers out, out, out more towards the front lines. What are some of the major challenges about making that switch? Because it, a lot of companies don't make it successfully.

Susan Stone [00:20:25]:

Yeah. And it's really hard. And I'll, you know, I will start out by saying we don't have any illusions at Blue Current that we're getting it right or that what we're doing today is going to be the strategy that works for us forever. Um, absolutely a work in process.

Matt Gjertsen [00:20:43]:

Yeah.

Susan Stone [00:20:43]:

And it is every day. We get up every day and, you know, try to figure out how to do it a little bit better. Um, you know, I think what you hit on is the biggest challenge in scaling companies. Um, and I think figuring out how to get information flowing throughout the organization is really hard.

Matt Gjertsen [00:21:02]:

Yeah.

Susan Stone [00:21:02]:

Um, it's something as a leadership team at Blue Current, we talk about constantly. Um, I think, you know, as you scale, you, you, you go from a company where everyone is like eating lunch together and, you know, kind of has the same set of information at any given moment. To a reality where that just isn't true. And so, I think a lot of it, at least what we're trying to do, a lot of it is relying on our, my leadership team that works with, with, you know, with me and Kevin, and then the line managers that, you know, report directly to them, really trying to, one, encourage them to communicate as much as possible. Trying to be as clear as we can about what information we would like to be communicated. And then something else that's really important to us is, you know, we sit on really valuable IP and a lot of trade secrets. And so, that's also a work in process for us is helping the team understand what is totally okay to talk about internally amongst your colleagues, what is not okay to talk about externally.

Matt Gjertsen [00:22:19]:

Yeah.

Susan Stone [00:22:19]:

And so, you know, we don't want that line to go too far in any direction, right? We obviously don't wanna overshare, but we don't, we don't want the team to feel hamstrung and under, you know, undershare as well. So, that was a long, we're still working on it. Um, but the focus on communication right now is, is a big deal to us, um, as we scale up.

Matt Gjertsen [00:22:41]:

Is there anything in particular? I know I, I can be annoying 'cause I'm just always like, but what are you doing? But what's the behavior? What's the action? 'Cause one of the things I'm always interested in is, 'cause I think this communication piece is one of the key challenges. And you always hear different ways that people deal with it, like, you know, different scale from you, but like Nvidia famously, Jensen Huang has 50 direct reports or something. And like, that's one of the ways that he makes sure everybody has information is he just, he never has one-on-ones and just always talking to everybody all the time. I know other companies that they have weekly all-hands where they lay out like what's going on and other companies, they bring engineers into the executive team meeting to talk about priorities or blockers or whatever. Are there any particular strategies? And yeah, 100%, it's probably a work in progress and you're always changing things, but anything that comes to mind is how are you thinking about, what are you actually doing to try to make sure there's as open and as much communication as possible? Yeah.

Susan Stone [00:23:38]:

Yeah. Um, we, our executive team is, is relatively big. I was trying to count in my head how many we are. Um, we're, we're still only a 60-person organization and I want to say on any given day, there 8 of us on the exec team, give or take, and exec teaming.

Matt Gjertsen [00:23:52]:

Yeah.

Susan Stone [00:23:54]:

We meet weekly to talk about strategy and priorities. And so, we think that cadence, and look, one of the other hallmarks of companies at our size and scale is things change day by day, week by week. So, you know, that making sure that information is delivered to the, our executive team, literally in real time is very important. We, we do all-hands as frequently as, certainly not weekly, but as frequently as we have information that is kind of worthy. We're not afraid to schedule an all-hands. We do love to get a chance to talk to the team as a group. Kevin also has made, I think, really good use of Just, we call 'em technical all-hands, particularly when slight strategy shifts impact how we're allocating resources. And again, he, on the theme of, let's put this stuff in context because, you know, we may have, and I have a particular project at Blue Current in mind right now where we, we had intense focus on it for good reason.

Susan Stone [00:25:07]:

we're gonna slow it down, and that the resource allocation for that team is, is gonna go down a little bit, and people will be redeployed. And that can be a scary thing. It can also be a sad thing when you've put a lot of, of effort in. And so, I, I give a lot of credit to Kevin for communicating messages like that, either in an all-hands or in a technical all-hands, so that everyone understands why we're we're doing what we're doing, and in that case, why we are slowing that project down a little bit and, and what it means. Um, and just really trying to keep, keep information like that circulating, um, so that people don't, don't have to fill in the blanks. So those are some of the ways we do it. We also do talk a lot in those weekly exec team meetings about, you know, please communicate this. We'd like our, we'd like the managers to deliver these messages, um, and, and just intentionally.

Susan Stone [00:26:05]:

try to tag the things we think are really important to make sure we tell the team.

Matt Gjertsen [00:26:10]:

Yeah. Setting those expectations. I love that you, I love how you talked about having those all-hands and whether they're all-company or the technical ones kind of on an as-needed basis, because I do think so many meetings just get locked into some kind of calendar schedule for no reason, whether it's weekly or monthly or quarterly. And I, will never forget, there's a book called Team of Teams, which is by General Stanley McChrystal. And one of my key takeaways from that book was he was talking about meeting cadence and how you need to set your meeting cadence at the pace at which the situation is changing, right? Because if the situation doesn't change between meetings, then what are you doing? Like, why are you meeting? There's nothing to talk about. But conversely, what I think is often more the case, especially for companies that maybe get locked into like a quarterly all-hands schedule, If things are changing multiple times between meetings, again, what do you do? What's the point of the meeting? Because everything that needed to be communicated had to be communicated between the meetings, you know, because things, things were changing. And so now you're not doing anything in that big meeting. So I love kind of just being more willing, this idea of being more willing to just have like trigger points of just like, oh no, this is, this is a big enough change.

Matt Gjertsen [00:27:27]:

We changed resources. This, this team is going to feel this change. And so we need to tell them why.

Susan Stone [00:27:33]:

Um, and we need to tell everyone why. I think that's the other, right? Is like, we're not just gonna tell them, we wanna tell everyone why.

Matt Gjertsen [00:27:40]:

Yeah.

Susan Stone [00:27:41]:

Yeah.

Matt Gjertsen [00:27:41]:

Yeah. I like that.

Susan Stone [00:27:42]:

And look, those all-hands are really expensive. And I remember telling our team that at one point, um, 'cause, right, uh, startups are all about opportunity costs, right? We're allocating, no matter how well-funded you are, you're allocating scarce resources. Opportunity cost is a big deal. And, uh, it's pretty expensive to take the whole team offline, even if it's for half an hour. Those are the most expensive meetings we do.

Matt Gjertsen [00:28:03]:

I'll never forget, I was, when I was at SpaceX, we were having an all-hands and there was an engineer who had done the work of like, he had figured out number of employees and the average hourly wage of, of all the employees. And he just had a timer running that was counting how much this all-hands was costing.

Susan Stone [00:28:22]:

In dollars.

Matt Gjertsen [00:28:22]:

This all-hands went coming in dollars. I was like, okay. Yeah.

Susan Stone [00:28:25]:

So make good use of that.

Matt Gjertsen [00:28:28]:

Yeah. And I think that, but that's exactly right. It's just really doing, it's, it's, it's Having that understanding of, which it sounds like, you know, you totally agree with this, of just like, because context is so important, if you're doing it at the right times, that whether it's a big change in context or even a subtle change in context, it can matter a lot. And if it means, especially when you're an 80-person team, like you need every person aligned, right, with what you're trying to do, or it can be a major drag on the whole organization.

Susan Stone [00:29:00]:

For sure. For sure. And the market is just changing. Everything's changing around us constantly. And, uh, yeah, just, I completely agree with your point that locked-in meeting schedules can have kind of weird externalities. So, um, yeah, we're more, we're more of an ad hoc cadence, at least for our, for our all-hands.

Matt Gjertsen [00:29:22]:

Yeah. Well, the, well, the final question I'll ask you, kind of going all the way to the front line, from your perspective as, As CEO, you mentioned, you, you, sounds like you have probably about 3 layers of, of leadership. When you think about those like frontline leaders in your kind of situation, what's say the number one thing that you are looking for from those, those frontline leaders to help make sure the team is successful? Yeah.

Susan Stone [00:29:48]:

You know, I will say, um, just before we talk about this, it's really important to me That we have opportunities for people to grow at BlueCurrent and be individual contributors. And I think, and I just, I wanna say that, acknowledge that out loud, because I think what I don't wanna have happen is for people to fall into the trap of thinking that the only way to succeed in the organization is to manage people. And that may take you away from your personal goals, from your strengths, from all these. So, That's something that also we're working on, but is really important to us, that, you know, you can be a high-valued individual contributor. For people who are managing teams, I think, look, I think it's a really hard transition. And going from that, the, I was wholly responsible for my own success, to now, I have to figure out how to help my team succeed, and each of these individuals succeed, is Is, uh, that's no small thing. Um, so my, my, my best advice to them, it always comes back to communication, but it, you know, I think the, it, this one is a little bit different. You know, yes, to everything we've already said about communication and context and, you know, talk to your team.

Susan Stone [00:31:07]:

I think maybe more important as a new manager is don't be afraid to raise your hand and ask your manager questions. And I think that's another trap that people can fall into is just, I'm supposed to know how to do this.

Matt Gjertsen [00:31:25]:

You're trying to prove yourself.

Susan Stone [00:31:26]:

Yeah, trying to prove yourself. And in my opinion, the way to prove yourself is to be open and curious, not just admit, but like raise your hand and flag where you don't know and you wanna learn and you wanna get advice. And I think that'll take you a really, really long way, especially as a new people manager, is to say, I haven't encountered this situation before. Who can help me? Can my manager help me? Can HR leadership help me? Can, you know, one of my colleagues help me? I think that's the only way to learn and grow and succeed in that, because if you close yourself off and try to just I don't know what you would be doing, reading books and just, you know, trying to solve all the problems yourself. It's gonna be slow and you're gonna do yourself a disservice.

Matt Gjertsen [00:32:17]:

It's one of those double-edged swords that I always say in, in, in the tech industry in particular is, you know, we, we hire all these smart, amazing people who love to solve problems, and that means they want to, they, they love to solve problems, and sometimes they'll be solving problems that they don't need to solve 'cause somebody else can, has already solved it, you know, this is, you know, and so it's that, it, it is that balance, but I, I think I think that is such fantastic advice because I think you're 100% right, is that fear of asking the question or desire to prove yourself can get in a lot of people's way. This has been a fantastic discussion, Susan. I'm so excited you were on, so excited to learn more about Blue Current, so excited to learn about— because you're in this really unique position that is really, really difficult. So it's great to hear kind of that story. Maybe we can have you on in a few years to check back in and, and see how, how the technology is progressing.

Susan Stone [00:33:12]:

Love that. Yeah. Thank you for having me. This has been really fun.

Matt Gjertsen [00:33:14]:

Excellent. Have a great day.