Smart Buildings, AI, and the Future of Infrastructure

AI and automation are revolutionizing real estate and infrastructure, making smart buildings more efficient, cost-effective, and adaptable. In this episode, Clayton Mitchell, Principal at Mitchell White Advisors, shares insights on how technology is transforming real estate, healthcare infrastructure, and large-scale facility management.

Key Highlights:

Smart Buildings Are Necessary – Why AI and automation are critical for efficiency and sustainability.

Integrating AI in Real Estate – How digital transformation is reshaping infrastructure.

Reducing Costs Through Technology – The role of automation in streamlining operations.

Bridging the Digital Gap – Common obstacles in technology adoption and how to overcome them.

Culture and Leadership in Innovation – How governance and workforce development drive success.

Key Takeaways:

AI and automation enhance operational efficiency in real estate and healthcare facilities.

Smart buildings optimize resources, reduce costs, and improve sustainability.

Strong leadership and structured governance are essential for digital transformation.

Organizations must align technology roadmaps with overall business strategies.

Connect with Clayton Mitchell:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/clayton-mitchell/

Learn more about Ben Johnson at Particle41.com

Subscribe for more discussions on technology, smart infrastructure, and digital transformation

#ai  #smartbuildings  #digitaltransformation  #infrastructure  #leadership  #ParticleAcceleratorPodcast, #podcast, #particle41,

Transcript

Episode 43

Ben

[00.00.00]

 Hey, everybody, welcome back to the Particle Accelerator Podcast, where we talk to future thinking business leaders about how to accelerate their business and grow their team. I'm here today with Clayton Mitchell. Clayton, why don't you introduce yourself? 

Clayton

[00.00.11]

 Clayton Mitchell I'm the principal with Mitchell White Advisors, a small boutique strategic capital program development and execution advisory services. We also provide advisory services in real estate and develop the competencies for venture. Through 25 years as a Navy Civil Engineer Corps officer, retired seven and a half years with Kaiser Permanente Large Health System based on the West Coast and most recently senior vice president of real estate facilities for Thomas Jefferson University in Jacksonville. 18 hospital, 18,000,000 square foot health system in the Philadelphia South, new Jersey. 

Ben

[00.00.44]

 Awesome. Thank you for your service. Sounds like there was some service in there. And even though you're in a small boutique, small things come in or. Yeah, great things come in. Small 

Clayton

[00.00.53]

 packages. Absolutely. What tech trends significantly impacted your industry and how has your company responded or how have you responded? Yeah, I believe that the biggest tech going back to my roots in real estate and facilities and this concept of smart buildings. A lot of times we think of smart buildings. It's just a nice attribute to have getting all the bells and whistles on a car. But I believe if we progress, the more we begin to understand that smart buildings are going to be necessary for a variety of reasons to help promote sustainability. Look at this force multiplier for staff which which are increasingly more difficult to recruit. And I'm I'm been in an industry long enough to, for example in HVAC controls went from pneumatics where we were using air to push controls to analog to now digital and and so that that transformation we see there the move from buying applications and working to integrate those yourselves to software as a service. Those are things that I think are going to continue to revolutionize my industry and make it more efficient. I talked about real estate facilities. My focus really over the last 15 to 20 years has been in health care. And as we know, health care is an incredibly expensive endeavor. And so everything that we can do to begin to reduce the operating expense of delivery of services can have a material impact on the way forward, and so on. The real estate of suicide, it's really how do we extract those costs out of the the overall expense of health care from a real estate and facility standpoint? And I think technology is the key answer. What are 

Ben

[00.02.27]

 three technology innovations you guys are betting on to drive your business growth? 

Clayton

[00.02.34]

 It might sound strange, but I is. Is definitely at the top of the list in the movement into the use of technology to help us manage the data and the tremendous amount of data that's generated, and just even your most basic health systems, relying on staff to sort through that and troubleshoot and become more predictive is a significant challenge. And then moving from I of packaged technology under the hubris of smart buildings. So as we begin to look at things like climate change, so we look at things like market, competition and brand and maintain those over time, it's incredibly important to layer technologies into your buildings. They actually, in a sense, become self-aware. They actually don't need human interaction to react to situations. Maybe maybe climate. They may be occupancy, they may be productivity. It may be sensing when a person that is on the spectrum of autism needs certain type of lighting, needs certain types of colors to help put them at ease, and so that the building can recognize who's coming in and what the needs of that person are. Or wayfinding standpoint, productivity standpoint. And a light, yeah, that's really 

Ben

[00.03.46]

 cool. We've been implementing a lot of AI solutions for clients. I'm just interested in a particular use case that has changed the way that you do something. 

Clayton

[00.03.56]

 The. I think I've been really focused on building systems integration, moving from managing buildings as nodes and for larger systems, having a more integrated approach to that. And so that requires the establishment of what we call military network operation centers. You can leverage a small cadre of talented people to have one site over the entire portfolio operations. If you visit the network operation center of a Microsoft or some of the larger global firms, they have a room where there's a bunch of really smart people sitting there monitoring what's going on across the entire enterprise. Companies like Walmart can tell you when a freezer door is open in one of the stores. And so I think that level of line of sight, and I believe the technologies are here to do that. I think the bigger challenge is, is the integration of those technologies. I just see a greater proliferation of systems and integrated approach to layering technology to better understand how your organization or your business is operating going into the future. 

Ben

[00.04.58]

 It's a great transition to my next question, which what are some of the more significant gaps between your digital ambitions and the realities today? 

Clayton

[00.05.07]

 I think the biggest gap is as leaders, we're often want to jump right to the solution from what we think may be the cause or the enabler of that solution, and not understand that to deploy technology and to deploy innovation requires a great depth of planning. Our advising services practice under NWA really focuses on how do we fill that gap. And we think about it in terms of a center of excellence. In any complex system or organization, you need strong governance. First of all, what's the vision and what's the strategy to achieve the vision? What are the guiding principles that are going to inform our decisions? How do we make those decisions? How do we structure and organize ourselves to do that? If you don't understand those, I think you're going to be handicapped in trying to deploy technology to to solve your problems. And from there there's process, standardized processes. We have variable processes throughout ecosystem. You're going to run into challenges and and deploying a technology to solve that problem, and I'm really a good example of that. I think the third pillar would be workforce development. Oftentimes, we're attempting to deploy technology within a workforce that just hasn't been prepared for the base preparation and standardized processes. But there are also different thought processes you have to have for the people that are actually going to utilize that technology, which means as you hire going forward, you may need to think about those attributes to better operate your plan and framework that may not be there today. For example, I employed a lot of building technicians. They were really strong with the wrenches mechanically strong. But tomorrow I may need them to be more data savvy. They certainly can't be afraid of a computer, and they have to think more system in a more system approach rather than a point approach. I think that the other three pillars that we focus on are digital transformation and the core of the answers. How do you affect a digital transformation into A to B model, a future centric model of how you want to operate as a business. The pillar for us is strategic sourcing. Maybe we don't need to do everything right from a technology standpoint. If we don't need to do everything and we're outsourcing elements of it. How well are those strategic partners integrated with access to the systems that we use? I think the final pillar is more about culture. We oftentimes try to attack culture directly from our standpoint. If you hit those first five pillars, you got a good chance of shifting or influence in the culture. Ultimately, culture is dependent in my mind on the leaders. Organizations take on the attributes of the leader. I think two attributes that are very key in shifting culture are curiosity and empathy taken altogether. That's the framework that we use to help entities establish centers of excellence. A subset of the establishment of those centers of excellence is creating an environment that facilitates the deployment of technologies that can bring even greater efficiencies. 

Ben

[00.08.03]

 What's the biggest challenge to maintaining a competitive edge in your 

Clayton

[00.08.07]

 industry? I just think it's just infusing as a key attribute, not only on the readers, but in the people that you place around you. I talked about that framework structure and strong governance and strong processes. When you talk about those people who are limiting our ability to be creative. You know, creating more time for you to be creative. Those pillars and attributes are about the standard operating framework that allows us to get our day to day business like this, 50 to 80% of things that we just got to do. I've got that 20% left to think creatively. I think one of the biggest hurdles that we have is if our leadership doesn't have they may have a vision, but if they don't understand the steps necessary to implement that vision at scale, then we have a challenge. Yeah, I totally agree. You've given me a lot to dig in on, but I'm going to wait two questions from now to dig in. How do you approach risk when you're implementing something new? 

Ben

[00.09.07]

 I think, first off, you have to have a really good understanding of 

Clayton

[00.09.16]

 what are catastrophic risk and what are what I call tolerable risk. Yeah, I 

Ben

[00.09.23]

 know in running we call it niggles. When you run and something hurts a little bit, it's a little uncomfortable. Yeah I've started to adopt this term like oh yeah I have a niggle in my Achilles. It's not ruptured, it's not gone, it's not torn. It's I just have a niggle and yeah you got to know what's a niggle. What's it's change is uncomfortable. Are we talking about risks that are just something to keep an eye on. Or these risks that we need to try to prevent that those, those negative outcomes love it. 

Clayton

[00.09.48]

 And again I'm coming from a lot of my perspective in the military a plan is only a point of departure, right. That no very few clients survived first contact. And so they also survived first contact. I believe that was the leader. And this is where experience comes into play. You have to understand what are those catastrophic failures? Hey, is it a legal issue? Is it a, you know, compliance issue or regulatory issue? It's something that can get somebody put in jail or get somebody hurt, somebody kill or make us lose a lot of money. As the leader, I have to be aware of where those risks are. I don't know that you want to take every risk. Of the equation because you want to. You want a workforce that takes prudent risks. Prudent and calculated risk requires a lot of interaction with you to understand the various capabilities. One of the most powerful lessons I've been able to learn and benefit from or were created by. And just real quick story there we were building a patch for a radar tracking station and on a remote island in the middle of the Indian Ocean supply chain, it was we were at the very end of the supply chain. So we broke something. We weren't going to get that replacement part for weeks, if not months. My team installed this pipe acting as a culvert. Basically, a truck drives over it to get to the pad to service the pad and things of that sort. And I looked at and it's like, I don't know that pipes deep enough, this deep enough. So it did a calculation. Yeah, we did the calculations that it was really arguing that this is this thing's going to work. So got to the point. I was like, I don't know, I'm going to win this argument with these guys. So activity and said, hey, let me ask you this. Do you have another pipe just like that? If that pipe got crushed, is there another pipe that we can just bring in? Yeah, right over there. And I put eyes on it. Okay. Drive the truck across it and then the truck across crush it fit that failure. And I was a 26 year old Lieutenant JG at the time with a bunch of old guys, uh, with me and you guys. That failure gave me so much credibility. Sometimes there are places where you can take there and leverage it as a teachable moment. We have to be cognizant of those teachable moments where the real learning and workforce occur. Tolerance for failure perspective does not facilitate learning as much as we might. A lot of 

Ben

[00.12.04]

 my IT friends will be warning folks about security vulnerabilities or things that need to be cleaned up. 

Clayton

[00.12.12]

 What gives us a lot of leverage is the outages or the security incidents they become. Like, yeah, that's why we have this list of stuff that we just haven't been able to budget in. Security budgets tend to go up right after the security incident. Yeah, right. Yeah. So totally agree with that. That's great. This is where I want to dig in a little bit. You've mentioned operating frameworks and I really like your approach there. What advice can we discuss in terms of connecting your technology roadmap with your overall business strategy? This is where I like to see how people plan. 

Ben

[00.12.43]

 We've talked a lot about it. Yeah. What what advice can you share about connecting your roadmap? I don't most of the time it's not just a technology roadmap. Technology is just a specific kind of changes that you're making. But you have a set of changes or things you want to implement, and then you have to plan that out. What's your approach to 

Clayton

[00.13.01]

 that? Yeah, I'm going to use an architect anecdote. Uh, form follows function when we really haven't thought deeply about the function. It's difficult to build form around it, whether you're talking about physical form from real estate facility standpoint, where you're talking about a technological form, or you're trying to layer technology to to better enable operations. If leadership hasn't solidified their vision and codified that vision and a strategy or a set of strategies to enable it, and then really begin to lay out the framework for how that occurs, then there are challenges for me. And again, a lot of my advisory services work lies in the area of strategic capital program development, which is really all about the vision of your organization. What are the strategies or guiding principles that you feel you need to enable that vision? Let's solve as many of those upfront in concept development. Right. And then we can develop standards and guidelines that can inform all of the key stakeholders as they're putting their projects together. They understand upfront what elements is it ESG? Are we worried? Are we looking to decarbonize whatever those guiding principles might be that can be incorporated into the Workstreams and the work plans necessary to execute from a strategic execution standpoint? The gap that I see is it's easy to sit in the boardroom or C-suite to come up with the idea, but you haven't built. Infrastructure of people. Talented people to help you with that. With the or the evolution of those strategies and to. Actionable projects. And so what we tend to do is try to dual habits. We've got people with day jobs and we pull them out of their day jobs, put them on special projects, and we're having them put together the requirements. How are they putting together requirements based on how they're doing things today? But you really need people. Now I'm going to shift into a health care model. I want people putting those on project requirements and those project requirements together, based on how we think we're going to be delivering in 5 to 10 years, not how we're delivering to that, how we're delivering today, and in many cases may be obsolete. And so we constantly there's a saying, if you only do what you've always done, you only get what you've always got. You're using people. Plan your requirements for strategic deployment of whatever strategy may be, whatever the project may be. But they're today centric people, not future centric people. Then you're going to get more of the same. As we're thinking about the future and nobody has a crystal ball for sure. But you're building and flexibility. You're building a resilience. You're building those things that allow you to flex as the project goes forward. And CBS, maybe CBS. And I'm pleased to say adapt, improvise and overcome. That's what you've got to do. You're never going to get to that 100% plan. That's going to solve every problem in the ten year time frame, but you can get to a 70% if you can get comfortable making 70 to 75% decisions that allow you the flexibility to pivot. I think we got a really good shot at building organizations that can evolve, and they're resilient enough to to survive. Black swan events like the pandemic, like Katrina, I've seen organizations do that, but it takes some deep planning. 

Ben

[00.16.15]

 Is there a particular framework or methodology that you use when you walk into the proverbial disorganized, no vision. We're falling all over ourselves. There's a lot of passion and machismo for hitting a certain objective, but is there a framework you use or how do you like to rein that in? You. 

Clayton

[00.16.34]

 I love that question. I get call typically when someone is concerned about their ability to deliver a major capital project. 2.531 billion whatever. That's been my M.O. over the past 13, 14 years. One of my employers said, hey, look, you need to put a secret sauce around that so we can deploy it everywhere. That's where we came up with the five, sometimes six pillar framework. Let's come in and really assess the governance, our decisions being made. How did you decide that you needed to do this, and how does that align with the strategy that you're trying to implement in the future, as well as at scale? What are your standardized processes? What are the processes that everybody understands in terms of how to deliver that vision? Let's take let's do an assessment of your workforce. And in that sense I have a here are the today's attributes. Here's tomorrow's attributes. And so I'm looking at hey where is that workforce in general. Maybe there's a couple of people in it tomorrow. But I can guarantee you in a lot of places I'm looking they're all in a today model. What technologies have you already invested in? Are they integrated? You have in the source of truth data. And if you do, where is that data stored? How do you access it? How did of the police. The fifth pillar. We look at strategic sourcing. How are you selecting your strategic partners? Are you being clear? Are you giving them great clarity? And what you actually need? Because I believe that's that becomes a huge opportunity with a lot of organizations. They think they're asking for something, but their contracts and the guidance that they're given to their their strategic partner doesn't align with what they think they want. And then we look at culture, but we're actually just looking for markers in the culture. Our focus is really on those first five pillars. Our premise is that if we can bring greater structure there, then there's a chance to influence some of that culture. To the extent that the leaders are aligned with the type of culture they want. So a lot of times we don't get the culture that we desire, because we've not even taken any time to think about it. And so back to your point. When there is that churn, there's usually some cultural issue at the core of why that churn is occurring. But you have to go through, I would say, some more objective assessments before you can really address some of the truly subjective issues that organization may have. How do you cultivate a culture of innovation and fluency in an organization? Man, that's a great question. Then I think for me. Think of it as you've got a coloring book. Remember we used to color the dots, right? So as the leader, as you're drawing a picture with the dots, right. You got a general idea of where you want to go. I don't put all the dots in place. I have enough dots that it generally looks like, okay, that's where I want to go. And then I allow my team to contribute and filling in some of those dots and some of the colors we were. One of the things I'm proudest of is I went to an organization or six vice presidents there. We went to a complete transformation. You asked about this, do these guys do business? Do you work close to the way they started? They were like, no. And it's it is much better. The thing I'm most proud of are there's the six that were there when I got there were six that were there when I left. So sometimes we think we have to clean house, but if you let them color it in a little bit and take the perspective. And another example I'll use is I'm big on PMS, right? Because I think most organizations are set up to operate tactically. And so they're in the silos as they're operating tactically, and you don't want to go through an overarching reorganization and then really trying to analyze roles, responsibilities and things of that sort. The quickest way to get movement is to establish a PMO that acts as an integrator and begins to bring those silos together. I'm talking to one of the VP's I thought would be really good to lead the PMO, and he heard what we wanted to do is I touched that with a ten foot pole. Okay, I get it, but. Could I use some of your brainpower to at least let me use you to put together the position description for this piano? Could you do that? And because. Yeah, I'll do that. So we have a series of meetings about the third meeting that worked on the space mesh, this PML. This is actually going to be the quarterback for this course. Too bad you weren't interested in it because I think I am interested in him. And we made him the picking him up. Right. So that's taking somebody who was totally obstinate about that, that, that function and thought, okay, I get it. So let me, let you help me think through this. And that's cool. 

Ben

[00.21.08]

 What a great story. Can you share some experience or advice with peers who are just beginning their their career journey or their digital transformation journey? 

Clayton

[00.21.19]

 Yeah, I have a couple of things that I did when I was about 25 years old that really helped me out right now. I was before I decided I was going to get 25 years old. I'm thinking about my 50 year old self and what type of leader I want to be wanting to be. And I decided to pick three words to describe that I love teachers, and so my parents and teachers, a lot of teachers in my family. So I patterned off the best teachers I had learned from as the framework for what type of leader I wanted to be. And so first thing was visionary. I loved visionary teachers. I love teachers that could help help me understand where its future. With that as an attribute, I wanted to be a visionary. I love teachers that were just great communicators and had great stories. And so I said, yeah, I want you to. I want to be a great communicator. That's the second attribute. And people that go to the military tend to come back and see stories like their kids and see stories. The four years started at 25, but is what it is. And then the last thing was about character. When I coach, I also I also am working towards an executive coaching certification in my mentoring practice and first coaching. I usually ask people to sit down and define how you do your future self, how you want to view and and what type of leader do you want to be? Don't make it complicated initially, just boil it down to three attributes. I was thinking I was going to take those three attributes. I perfect them and I pick three other attributes and perfect them. And here we are, 30 some odd years later, and I'm still working on vision communication. Character and coaching people, particularly who want to go to the executive level. You need to define yourself and who you want to be and what you want to represent before you allow other people to define yourself. That was great advice I was given early, having those three things that define you, that you've defined yourself, I think helped you in that, in that down at street. 

Ben

[00.23.10]

 Yeah, I totally agree. Mine are loving, disciplined and powerful. Those are my three. I want to be a lover of people. I want people to see that. I want to be a giver, not a taker. Discipline is the man you have to pay every day. And then powerful used to interrupt my sentences. I would think of being powerful. I wouldn't be able to finish my sentence because it used to just mess me up. What it means to be a powerful person, and I'm still working on all three of those things. I love that, and I think at the root of that is this idea of being versus doing. We're human beings, not human doings, and many people are doing like doing success. So I'm going to do all these things so that I will have success. So eventually I will be successful rather than a mental shift to 

Clayton

[00.23.56]

 I am successful, 

Ben

[00.23.58]

 therefore I'm going to do successful things and then I will have success because you're not chasing it, you are it. And so now you're going to be in that state of being and then execute accordingly. What a more satisfying way to live, rather than chasing it and allowing the world to let you know whether you are it or not? I don't want to give anybody else that much control over myself. I want to decide who I am on my own, which is what you said. I think that's 

Clayton

[00.24.25]

 that's brilliant. Then I'm to blame because you talked about we're human beings, not human doings. I'm looking at a book right now in front of me. It's called a shit and being. It's about practicing coaching called ontological coaching, and it's about transformational coaching. Sometimes we can coach people through an issue, like I can coach my kid and throwing a baseball, for example, right? That's an appropriate transactional form of coaching. But transform as transformational is, is not about solving that problem as much as it is about helping that person understand how to solve that problem themselves as they start to encounter these things. The example I used about taking that VP and allowing that VP to craft the PD was using a transactional activity to effect a transformational change in that individual's perspective, because that's what we were talking about before. You have to be curious about to understand what's that button that I can push. I'm less about wanting to direct people to do things, and more about wanting to inspire them to do it. We talk a lot about the difference between coaching, mentorship, and consulting. A mentor really only shares their their personal experiences. A coach 

Ben

[00.25.39]

 asks questions to guide people to their own answers, and then a consultant provides solutions. Yeah, I'm finding as I work more with CEOs that they really don't want consultants because they don't like being told what to do. So they don't really want the solution. And maybe in some edges of their they say, okay, yep, that's what I want. Go attack it. They may want a little bit of Intel about the solution, but for most for the most part they want you to talk to them in results language not solution language not the the flux capacitor needs to be flexible. They don't want to hear about that. They just want to know when am I going to be able to travel back in 

Clayton

[00.26.13]

 time? So, Ben, you just hit on the point that I think has helped me both in C-suite and boardrooms. I don't go into a c suite report. I'm trying to speak engineer, architect or whatever. I'm trying to speak the language of the business. That's why I use that framework of governance processes and workforce. Because as I'm talking in those environments, I'm linking them to issues that they're there much more where I can talk about a building reform or a requirement in those terms without getting into the discussion of Dexter. The coaching I do with a lot of engineers is like, nobody really wants to know what a flux capacitor is. And if you bring that subject up and there's somebody in there that is deeply interested, all of a sudden you're meeting and your subject just got hijacked. Just be very intentional about the communications and how you want to communicate. I think the other thing that really helps is just being solid, concise, and what you're trying to articulate give the executive what they mean. Not anymore. And give them the gift of time back. Yeah. That's great. Yeah. 

Ben

[00.27.15]

 Yeah. Brief and brilliant is what we started to coined. What was your first job? So for me it was a paper out. That's how I made my first buck. What was it for? You 

Clayton

[00.27.25]

 had a paper out it through the Santa Clara Times. I think I started it when I was probably 11 years old. I graduated to the San Francisco Chronicle and a Sunday newspaper while delivering Sunday newspapers. Yep, yep. 

Ben

[00.27.38]

 All loaded with all the advertisements for the folks who've never done it before. Yeah, that is that. We were doing rucking before. Rucking was a thing. 

Clayton

[00.27.46]

 Absolutely. What toy or 

Ben

[00.27.47]

 hobby did you have as a child that inspired what you do career wise today? 

Clayton

[00.27.51]

 If I was. If you were to spring down on me. When I was a little kid, I was probably playing with Lego blocks. They'd just been a minute, then Lincoln Logs and the whole thing. Conversation with my dad. I must've been about 6 or 7. That's what I wanted to do when I grew up. And I still wanted to build stuff. Yes. What do you want? To build? Buildings. I think you want to be an architect. That pretty much became the theme of my early childhood. From playing with blocks and things. My art project in sixth grade was a mixed use development. How many sixth graders do that? I didn't even understand that was a thing. But. But eventually I found some mentors and great coaches. I shifted from being wanting to be an architect and engineer. It's supposed to be more stable, more financially stable. But I think on the way I just made a great choice because I think the biggest, the best career decision or academic decision I made was to always transition from architecture to civil engineering, but then ultimately to transfer into industrial engineering, because I believe that a lot of the issues that we face in corporate globally really deal with systems and how systems come together to deliver good product and services. 

Ben

[00.28.54]

 Cool. What was your favorite and least favorite course in school? 

Clayton

[00.28.58]

 Probably the most important course was creative writing. I was a senior in high school. Realized that I completed all of my English requirements to get into a university, but I'd accidentally taken a creative writing course and the teacher would not let me drop the course. Probably my least fun course, but the most impactful for me right now. I enjoyed math, I wasn't super good at it, and I had to work to get good at it. But there was just something about math that that got my juices flowing. What quote from a famous person lives in your mind rent free? Oh my gosh. There are a lot of quotes I'm thinking of one by Winston Churchill. It essentially goes the pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity. The optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty. It's something that keeps me grounded when I run into challenging situations. Am I coming at it as a pessimist or an optimist? Particularly if you're reading takes? You almost have to be an optimist. You have to give the team hope. Customer sees the difficulty in every opportunity and an opportunity to seize the opportunity in every difficulty. Love that. What do you think the greatest invention or discovery was in the past 300 years? The past 300 years, moving into its most no specific invention, with an industrial revolution moving you to a place where we could produce products at scale. And there's there's a book by Jared Diamond called guns, Germs and steel. And it really chronicles the evolution of society and civilization from the early times. When you get to the Industrial Revolution. It was the place where we could actually create a truly vibrant middle class. I believe that the advent of folks like Henry Ford being able to make products seemingly were out of reach for the common man, affordable for the common man enabled the economic vitality that we have in the United States. To that, and the global leadership that we have as an economy to. If 

Ben

[00.30.57]

 people like what you've shared today, how should they connect with you? 

Clayton

[00.31.02]

 They can go to my LinkedIn profile, and if they go to my LinkedIn profile, they'll see a tremendous volume of content posted on leadership development and organizational development. I think the three pillars I really focus on are health care and infrastructure in general, more broadly, and sustainability. But my core passion helping people achieve their dreams and their aspirations. So a lot of leadership development, coaching, a lot of the things that we were talking about today, you'll find those closest there. If you need a coach. I'm not looking to do coaching as a full time type of gig, but it's just something that sort of ignites me. It's just something that I'd rather build people and buildings. Awesome. Yeah, it was 

Ben

[00.31.44]

 great having you. My grandfather was a CB. My dad was in the Navy. He was a he was on the ground crew for the Blue Angels for quite some time. So it was great to speak to. Great to speak to you. And I really enjoyed the conversation. Thanks for being with me today. 

Clayton

[00.31.59]

 Thanks so much, Ben.