Follow The Brand Podcast with Host Grant McGaugh

Healing Through Health: Monique Allen's Mission in Native American Healthcare

• Grant McGaugh CEO 5 STAR BDM • Season 2 • Episode 31

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The transformative power of lived experience drives Monique Allen's mission to revolutionize healthcare access for Native American communities. As a woman who defied doctors' predictions that she wouldn't survive past age 12, Monique has channeled her personal health journey into founding Ma'at Enterprises, a tribally-owned healthcare staffing company serving Indian Health Service facilities nationwide.

Named after the Egyptian concept representing truth, balance, and justice, Ma'at embodies Monique's servant leadership philosophy. Her connection to this work deepened upon discovering her own Native American heritage through her mother's tribal connections in Oklahoma, bridging her healthcare expertise with a profound understanding of tribal communities' needs and historical challenges.

What sets Ma'at Enterprises apart is Monique's nuanced approach to partnership. Rather than imposing solutions, she builds trust by respecting tribal sovereignty and ensuring communities maintain ownership of their healthcare journey. This stands in stark contrast to broken promises that have characterized much of the historical relationship between government agencies and Native Nations. As Monique powerfully states, "We are not just trying to colonize your data... we want to partner with you."

The innovative services Ma'at provides extend beyond traditional staffing to include partnerships with Hospitals Without Borders for rapidly deployable modular clinics, telehealth solutions for remote communities, and connections to cutting-edge diagnostic technologies. These approaches address the stark reality that in 2025, many tribal reservations still lack basic infrastructure like clean water and reliable internet access.

Guided by her faith and commitment to authentic service, Monique carefully vets potential collaborations to ensure alignment with Ma'at's mission. Her goal is clear: to become a trusted resource for Native American communities by proving reliability through demonstrated action rather than empty promises. Through this work, she's not just delivering healthcare services – she's helping to heal historical wounds while building pathways to a healthier future for Indigenous communities across America.

Thanks for tuning in to this episode of Follow The Brand! We hope you enjoyed learning about the latest marketing trends and strategies in Personal Branding, Business and Career Development, Financial Empowerment, Technology Innovation, and Executive Presence. To keep up with the latest insights and updates from us, be sure to follow us at 5starbdm.com. See you next time on Follow The Brand!

Speaker 1:

Welcome everybody to the Foul Brand Podcast. This is Grant McGaugh. This time I'm going to take it all the way for myself and my family in the Midwest. I'm going to dedicate this show to the Santee Sioux Tribe of Nebraska, the Dakota Nation. This is my family. A lot of people don't know that my ex-wife actually is a tribal member from the Santee Sioux tribe. Out there, just a little bit north of Omaha, nebraska, a little bit to the south in the Minnesota South Dakota area, a little bitty corner of that Nebraska world is where the Nakota Nation is. I have three children. They're all tribally enrolled. And I bring that up because we're going to be talking about some business and technology in the Native American world that a lot of people are not aware of and I want to bring light to, especially when I have somebody so articulate and really lives in this world. And I want to bring to the mic right now Ms Monique Allen, because she has been working tirelessly to bring this story to light. So, monique, would you like to introduce yourself?

Speaker 2:

Yes, thank you so much again for having me on the show. My name is Monique Allen. I am the CEO and founder of a company called Maat Enterprises prizes. We are a woman-owned, tribally-owned business that specializes on making our mission to improve the lives of Native Americans, and we are currently staffing Indian hospitals across the nation and doing some other amazing things with some alliances that we formed.

Speaker 1:

Well, thank you again for being on the show and I'm sure a lot of people my audience right now are wondering Maat M-A-A-T. That's the name of your company and it represents truth, balance, justice in ancient Egyptian culture. I want to know, and we would like to know, how do these values shape your leadership and company mission today?

Speaker 2:

to know, how do these values shape your leadership and company mission today?

Speaker 2:

Well, when I was looking for a business name, you know I think it's most people typically name their companies either after themselves or they try to, you know, make some type of connection. From a personal standpoint, when I started studying the concepts and the 42 principles of Ma'at, it really resonated with me. As a person, I view myself as more of a servant leader, so it's not so much a dictatorship what my goal is to be just a light in this world. Like I want my energy to be reflective of someone who made a positive impact. None of us are perfect, but I think that as we try to strive and live our best lives every day and showing up and trying to be the best person, those 42 principles resonated very closely to my heart. The whole concept of Ma'at and the Egyptian God is. I've always viewed myself as a child of God, and you know what better name than to encompass something that I've already viewed myself as? And then I want to share that concept and those principles with others in the world.

Speaker 1:

Now you're also of Native American background. You share the story with me a little bit about. You know part of the Cherokee Nation with me a little bit about. You know part of the Cherokee Nation, people from Oklahoma. How do you bring all of that together to now to be a service leader? I'll say service and or servant leader in the space that you are in now?

Speaker 2:

Well, it's kind of an interesting but long story. I'll get into some of it in an abbreviated fashion. But the part that I didn't share with you is that I actually had a kidney disease when I was born with one and I only have one kidney. So just to kind of contextualize this story, it started with my life. Pretty much I lived my life, my childhood, in a hospital. So growing up, my mom was always being told that I was not going to make it past the age of 12. So here I am, at the age of 53, you know it's like neener, neener, neener. Whatever death the physicians had on the calendar for me, you know God said otherwise, right.

Speaker 2:

So initially what ended up happening is when I was at UC Davis I wanted to be a doctor. So by the time, you know, I start having these aspirations of because I had a kidney disease, I wanted to be a pediatrician. I was just familiar that that world was a comfortable world for me. So I decided in my studies to try to pursue being a doctor until I nearly blew up the lab at UC Davis. So that did work out and I was like OK, little girl, I think you need to go into administration, we're going to go into a different aspect of health care. I don't think, you know, being a pediatrician is really the road for you, and in going down that route I was looking for my roots because I wanted to work on a tribal reservation, give back, set up my own clinics out there and then, you know, make an impact that way and then go out into, like you know, the regular commercial space and be able to help communities from that standpoint. Well, in the search for who we were as a family, it came out that my mom, who initially did not know her biological father, we realized that my mom, she was born, like, in a home in Muskogee, oklahoma tribal area and she's part of two tribes. So I'm sitting here thinking that it's my father's side of the family. You know, I knew that there was, there was something going on there, but in hindsight we realized that it was my mom. My mom is now the matriarch of our family and she's getting to know her people from that side of the tribe and all of these contacts, and so we were able to take that information and with it, you know, I had.

Speaker 2:

I had been working at various hospitals all over the Bay Area, so I've worked at UC Davis Medical Center, stanford. I was part of the team that implemented the first physician order entry system. So I've always had a mindset to be in the health care field. And then, by the time, I decided to go into health care technology. I'm a tech girl at heart. Now go into healthcare technology. I'm a tech girl at heart. Now I decided to step out on faith and start my own company because I did some research and found out that there's a lot of economic Indian opportunities out there where they are trying to get us to come to the table with businesses and entrepreneurship opportunities. So it's amazing to start this story off with. I didn't even know that I was going to make it past the age of 12, wanted to be a doctor and now I'm staffing hospitals with nurses, you know, looking at bringing in physicians and other pieces of technology to make an impact in Indian country to make an impact in Indian country.

Speaker 1:

And now we've got a juicy story right. This is a great story, as you have had to overcome challenges just having a life on this planet and then getting into healthcare, then understanding your Native American roots, then having philosophies embedded in ancient Egyptian culture and now you've noticed that, yes, there is a opportunity to help out in a lot of these tribal reservations. A lot of them are remote. A lot of them definitely are in need of healthcare and healthcare type applications. Now we also know that, being a woman-owned business, we know there's unique challenges with that.

Speaker 2:

So when you're building out my enterprise and when you're engaging with these communities. How did you overcome the challenges? We're still trying to make an impact on tribal reservations, and for good reason. So for every treaty that's been established with Native Americans, we know that it's been broken right. So if I'm trying to go in and say to them listen, we can offer you remote patient monitoring services. We can offer you, you know, a mental health application that would allow you to be anonymous, to start treating the addictions that we see on the tribal reservations, they don't want to hear about that, you know it's.

Speaker 2:

It's a situation where not only had did I have to, you know, everybody always wants to say, you know, they want a seat at the table. I built my own table because nobody was going to give me a seat. So instead of crying about it, I just built my own table and decided, ok, I'm going to have to overcome these challenges, and I'm doing that by first proving, you know, to be a leading service provider to Indian health services. So under the government contracting space, you know, I feel like, if we can get, be trusted there, because a lot of Native Americans are coming to IHS that's the acronym for Indian health services. They are coming to IHS for their care. So if they start hearing about Ma'at as a preferred vendor there, then we can use that as our track record and past performance to say, hey, let us come in. We're not just trying to colonize your data. We are not just trying to colonize anything that you have going on on the reservation. What we want to do is really make an impact. But let's work together and make you the owner of all of this and your journey.

Speaker 2:

And I think that as we start to get this message out, that Ma'at wants to be a partner, we don't want to necessarily just lead you to water. We want to partner with you and figure out is the water source best for your tribe or do we take a different avenue? So, when you say what you know, how are we overcoming those challenges? I think that we are still working that out. I think that God is going to provide the right alignments.

Speaker 2:

I feel like I am definitely living a life of answered prayers right now. I thought about this stuff, manifested it years ago and here we are. So this is just yet another challenge that God is saying to me hey, we know that we have these opportunities, as long as you're bringing it to them with a pure heart and the agenda is really just to make a positive impact. I think we'll get there. And it's okay. If every tribe doesn't want to embrace that, that's OK. But at least I can say that I gave it the good old college try and said hey, we have these resources, we want to share them with you, and it's not just because we're trying to hustle and make a dollar off of you as well.

Speaker 1:

I'm glad you said that it's so important to understand the context of where you're operating. In A lot of people, you know, they love Native American culture. They see it mainly, you know, from a stereotypical, I'd say, lens of what they see on television, what they may have read in a book or not a book. And because this is a lived experience for me and it took a while for me to really understand, let's say, my wife's perspective, when people are looking at you as, like you're some mythical creature from the past or something to that effect, like no, we are a consistent lived experience and our lived experience has been. You know, the interaction with what you call modern culture today has not been great. It's not been great. You got to remember, 150 years ago the Dakota Nation was living as an independent tribe of people and the way that the American government, the BIA Bureau of Indian Affairs, they look at each individual tribe as a separate sovereign nation which in of itself, especially in today's world, has its complications with it and how you get services like you're describing, because each tribe is individual in its own aspects, right, and they have their own history and their own cultural aspects. This is a nation of people who were, you know, rudely interrupted by a different culture, was then, as you said, colonized in a very rude and inhumane manner, taught to not speak your language, to not participate really in your culture at all, to adopt my language, to adopt my culture and adopt how I view you, which was not very good, and then send you back to this, what we call a reservation, which really is a POW camp. You were put out there in the middle of nothing, to really be depended completely upon government handouts for your survival, because your way of life was no longer in effect. You had no other choice but to live in this manner and a lot of the treaties for your land per se. It's not like the tribes had something of value. They definitely had something of value that they extracted from them and in return they gave them very, very little. So there's a lot of distrust in these tribal nations when it comes to interaction, because every single treaty, as you stated earlier, has been broken.

Speaker 1:

Everything that this culture has stated that they're going to do for you, they have gone back on. So every time they came to the table, as you said, you know, with an agreement that was honored on one side but not on the other. So now, when you come to the table and say, hey, I am Mahat and here I come to the table, I am O'Newt Allen. I'm here to help you, of course they're going to look at you. They're going to look at what's behind you, like, oh okay, you know, I don't know how, I think you come in in good spirit, but really, is this going to do you going to get the backing? Is this going to really come to you? Trish and you talked about even some different contracts recently about broadband. Bring broadband out to these communities through the government, through grants that we're still looking for today. Can you talk about that just a little bit?

Speaker 2:

Absolutely so. Under the Biden administration and I think this was going through a couple of administrations there has been an effort, a concerted effort, to improve life on the reservations. So there was, I believe, a $900 million contract out there with the Department of Commerce where they were supposed to be partnering with tribes and bringing basic broadband services to the reservations, and One of the requirements is that you had to partner with a tribe to do this correct and doing that, they never received the services. But you can best believe that the consulting companies you know they're still working with the dollars that were given to them. We don't know where a lot of these projects are in terms of you know, their advancement, but what I'm what my point in all of this is, it's 2025. Why are we still needing to spend 900, that type of money, just to bring basic services? You're talking about some tribes who don't even have clean water. You're talking about, you know, basic living necessities that a lot of tribal members you know they're suffering. And then you've got some of the richest tribes in the Midwest, like Minnesota. They have, you know, a very wealthy tribe out there and they're using, utilizing their resources very well.

Speaker 2:

So when somebody like me comes to the table, the first thing they're going to say well, are you working with Cherokee Nation? Are they picking up, you know, any of these resources? Are they working with you? And they're looking at it from the standpoint well, if your own tribe isn't really picking this up, why should we work with you? Or you know they feel like they have to to. They can't just trust anybody coming in, and I understand that. But I think, from the standpoint of what the government is trying to do, I think that you know eventually there's going to have to be some type of trust established to get things done, because we can talk a good game. But if we're not really coming to the powwow with tree resources and we're just saying, you know, bringing a chair to the table and saying, oh, I really want to help, you then get the money and you never provide the help. It's just this competitive, repetitive cycle and I appreciate the fact that you're bringing up this conversation. It's a very sensitive one. The fact that you're bringing up this conversation is a very sensitive one, but I think too it's almost like the tribal leaders. You know they're coming together to fight some inherent discriminatory things that are going on in Native country right now, but I think overall it's still just. It surprises me that we are in this shape, given the fact that United States considers itself to be one of the greatest nations in the world, right, and we've got tribal reservations that don't even have broadband and clean water.

Speaker 2:

You know that are trying to figure out how to fight addictions. I mean, we're trying to figure that out outside of the community. It impacts all Americans. You know, when you start getting into the issues of addiction and drugs which reminds me I kind of want to touch on one of the alliances is, like you know, there's so many resources out there where we can do testing with like genomics and you're very aware of what they're doing with frenetic right. I had a conversation with a tribe that was based out of Nevada to try to get them to pilot some of these opportunities. They don't want to hear it because the first question they have is okay, you want our DNA, you want to provide all of this testing. You want to. You know, look at our gene pool. What are you going to do with that after you're done? Jean Poole, what are you going to do with that after you're done? Do we own the data?

Speaker 2:

I was just at HIMSS last week and we were showcasing MAAT for the first time and I typically have attended that more as an attendee and not as a business owner, but that was one of the first conversations we had at the Native American workshops. Everybody was up in arms trying to figure out well, even if you decide, you determine that they're not trying to colonize the data, who's in charge of their health record? Is it the individual or is it the tribe? Does the chief get to decide they're going to share everyone's data or is it that individual person? And I stood up at that session and I said, when I worked with the government that was one of the things that we looked into the privacy rules.

Speaker 2:

When it comes to how your health information is shared, it comes at the individual level. You have to empower people. You cannot make them feel like you are taking control of them and they have no power over the information that's being shared. So how do we get them to embrace the idea of having you know their genes tested so we could tell them? Well, we can tell by this that you know your family is prone to diabetes or you know somebody like me who has a kidney disease.

Speaker 2:

I had a baby cousin who it happened to her. Everyone in the family was trying to figure out where did this come from and nobody had talked to me initially and when I found out she was in the hospital. She was probably about four or five years old at the time. I said I had a very similar kidney disease and it's on our father's side, because that was the connection between me and the baby cousin. And I said you know it had nothing to do with like my mom's side, but had we been able to embrace something like, you know, genomic testing or getting out there and bringing in these technologies that can help us prevent these type of illnesses, I think we can make some headway. So it's a deeper conversation. There's so many different problems to be solved in Native Country that we have to prioritize it. But just to have basic clean water, food, jobs so you can look for the job transportation, housing when you can solve those problems, then they'll probably start looking at embracing, you know, modern day technology to solve some of the other problems.

Speaker 1:

You have unpacked it. I mean, that is the issue and the problem and understanding a people you know, a people in their own country. It's not like there are people in someone else's country. They are in their own country, have been a sovereign, independent people for a long time. There's a lot of pride there, right? So just like a lot for my own African know, african American heritage. You don't really want a handout, you want a hand you know, understand.

Speaker 1:

First, how did I get in this situation and what was the root cause of that, and has that truly been ever really addressed? I didn't just fall into this situation. I was pretty much forced into this situation and then trying to now navigate this situation and each time you know who I feel was at fault would try to, you know, rectify the situation. They failed miserably and probably because they just don't have the right intentions at heart. Let's just call it what it is. It shouldn't take to your point. This is 2025. We're talking about something that happened in the early 1900s, so why is it taking 125 years to first of all acknowledge why do I have a poor living situation? How did this happen? Because what people fantasize about Native American life when you look at it prior to European content. They weren't poor.

Speaker 2:

No.

Speaker 1:

They weren't impoverished, they weren't sick, they didn't have disease and they didn't have alcohol, you know. So now you're like, hmm, maybe it's me, you know, and maybe, if that was acknowledged at first and I always start at the very root of that Did you even apologize for this behavior? You say you know what. I see where you're at. I see that I am definitely a cause of that and the things that I've done to try to help you along that path really have been bad and I haven't done a good job.

Speaker 1:

I want to do better, I want to show you, I want to do better, but I want to allow you, the sovereign nation, to tell me how do you feel we should help you, instead of me telling you what I think you should do. Why don't you? I listen for once. Listen and let you explain and tell me your story and let's just see if we can be of some help. Explain and tell me your story and let's just see if we can be of some help. So, with that said, tell us about what Maha actually does and how you can be of service.

Speaker 2:

Well, thank you for asking that question, because that's one of the things that I'm most proud of. Where we are right now, we are providing staffing. So we do a lot of healthcare staffing at the Indian hospitals across the nation. I mentioned that earlier, but one of the things that we're most proud of is to be able to provide staffing specifically for those locations. Our biggest client is Phoenix Indian Medical Center and also out in Bemidji the other alliances that we formed that I'm so super excited about. It goes back to that story of wanting to work on the reservation as a doctor and everything else.

Speaker 2:

I was selected and asked to be an advisory board member to an organization, an amazing organization called Hospitals Without Borders. Hospitals Without Borders has the ability to stand up modular clinics in a matter of days, not years. We've got tribes out there that are currently building medical centers that are going to take millions of dollars to build a little couple of years. We are modeling a concept where you can order a modular clinic and it can be stood up in a matter of three to four days. So think in terms of like I'm aging myself when I say this, but, like you know, the old school TV show mash. So if you've got situations like what happened with the fires out in, in out, here in California, we could have stood up a modular clinic for them, a fully functioning surgery center, a pediatric clinic. They just worked to provide the Vatican with a pediatric clinic as well. So one of the things that we're doing with Ma'at is providing that as an opportunity, you know, for the tribes and IHS. We want all organizations to come to us and have a conversation about how can we best serve those needs, because if you don't have health, you don't have wealth. Right, that's the most outside of time. I always tell this to people the most priceless commodity that we own is what Time, and then, second after that is our health. So we know that healthcare is a multi-billion dollar business. Illnesses and things like that are not going anywhere. But if we can position ourselves to be a leader in being the most responsive company out there in areas of staffing, and then we can now stand up a clinic for you, hey, you know, I would consider my work done if we can make an impact in that area.

Speaker 2:

Additionally, one of the things that we're looking at is telehealth. I have an alliance with a company called COMSIS where we can provide a lot of virtual diagnostic testing and opportunities. A lot of times it's hard for us to get staffing out there in the remote areas. So, for example, like the contracts in Montana that we have in these remote areas right now, there's areas in Arizona where they are calling for a nurse to take a helicopter and use a donkey to get up a road and provide staffing. So imagine if we could just get, you know, some of these folks to embrace the idea of telehealth where, if nothing else, they can use the broadband that they need access to, you know, to dial in and at least get an initial screening, and then we can figure out how do we get them in for services.

Speaker 2:

There's a company called Resonance where they built an app. You can cough into that app and it can give you a cursory screening of do you have COVID, do you have TB, do you have RSV? Have COVID, do you have TB, do you have RSV? And you know, for FDA purposes they can't diagnose you, you know, with the app, but at least a clinician can get a reading of that. It's then sent over and the doctor can say okay, I need you to head to the ER right now because, based on how you sound. You know you sound like you might have something pretty serious that needs to be treated at a medical center.

Speaker 2:

So when you look at Ma'at sort of being, you know the triangle and the connector to all of these different opportunities. That's the goal in terms of the services and the provisions that we're trying to make for the community. My goal is to be one of the most responsive companies out there, not just to Native Americans, but to anybody that's in an underserved situation. I want to be there, I want to be able to help, because I've been on the other end of that. You know, nobody is really promised tomorrow, but when they tell you that you're not going to make it past a certain marker in your life, things become a little bit urgent. And so that's that. Urgency for me is like, ok, yeah, I got past the age of 12. But what can we do to make an impact on the community? How can we really help and not just come in with an agenda and say, oh well, let me just, you know, sell you these clinics. Are these clinics, excuse me, are these clinics going to be viable? Are they going to really help the community and at what cost? So I'm really excited and happy to be working with these organizations.

Speaker 2:

I don't often I always say, you know, I prefer to walk alone, so to speak. I don't do a lot of partnerships because, one thing, I'm very careful about the people that you know I form these alliances with, but I understand that I also can't do it alone. With that in mind, I have to make sure that the partnerships that we establish as a company, that they align with not only the mission, the value and the purpose of my aunt, but just with me as who I am, as a person and as a leader, because I don't want you, I'm not going to let people do what I wouldn't have them do to me and my community, me and my family. I'm very protective of that. So I feel, like any organization that we're working with and serving, I want to make sure that I'm protecting them as well 100% on that.

Speaker 1:

You have to have positive alliances. A lot of times we talked about that circle, that wheel of life, that circle of life time, right, and in that circle you've got health, you've got wealth and you also have relationships Very important. So when you look at the body of work of an alliance that you may have, it tells the story. It leaves the breadcrumbs right. The path that you've already been walking on, is this a path that is going to coincide with what you're doing to be of assistance? And you're right, there's so many rural communities throughout America that just don't have the resources when it comes to health care, right From a technological plane. And when you look at technology, it actually works in two areas People really think about. It is time, the collapsing of the window of time, speed to market, and then communication, very, very good at different modalities of communication. So when you marry those two together to enhance health care, to enhance wealth, to enhance relationships, you can do certain things, but you have to have basic infrastructure, as you just said. That's really at a point and I want to talk to my you know the we call it the majority population, and they tune into my show and try to put yourself in the shoes of our Native American people is that we are in what we call a first world environment. Right, we're a $30 trillion economy. We're the largest economy on earth Yet the indigenous population here lives in third world poverty. And you wonder why? Why is that? How come 360 million people can't be operating in the $30 trillion economy at scale? Why is that? What are we doing? Is it because we've just left them behind and we only look in the past, at different history books, and not want to go outside your own door, go, drive out to a reservation and actually see what this looks like? And this is the result of ancestral challenges in the past that are still present today.

Speaker 1:

I want people to truly understand the impact and the implications of all these different things that have happened over time, that are still prevalent today, and that we have people like Monique Allen who say, hey, I see the situation. It's not going to just get solved in a boardroom. We've got to get out in the trenches. We've got to get out and we're going to talk to people and find out what's on their agenda. What do you feel that we can do? And then, oh, by the way, this is something I can do for you. You're like, okay, and it's going to come down to that one thing.

Speaker 1:

Well, what does it cost me? And now we're not talking about money. It's in who I am as a person, my own heritage, how I am Because this is the only thing that has allowed people of Native American descent to survive throughout this time period is their own particular form of faith and heritage, and they're not going to sacrifice that for anybody. So it has to be an alignment in that world and then a healing can take place. I'm so happy that you're sharing exactly what you're doing from a Mahat perspective and, before you know, we conclude this conversation as we bridge a lot about innovation and culture and then the impact on tribal communities, and you've talked a lot about your project things that you're doing. I want to know about your particular leadership style and how you're going to bring a new future forth for your particular business.

Speaker 2:

Well, my strategy at this point, it's been working quite well for me in terms of you know the contracts that we have right now. You know the contracts that we have right now, right? One of the things that I'm very proud of is because I lead by these 42 principles. It's really all relationship-based, so my goal is to forge and align myself with energies that kind of match mine, where we all want to make a difference, we all want to be, we all understand our part in the story and that there's no competition, so to speak. You know, in trying to build this out, whenever I've been interviewed for like past stories and press releases and things like that One of the things that I always like to talk about is, sometimes you have to build and be your own Mount Rushmore, and that's what I'm looking at this as I am trying to build our own Mount Rushmore, and from the standpoint of bringing together the right people, I think that is the core of the strategy. It's like, okay, monique, you know that you cannot do this by yourself, and it's almost like, you know, when you form these partnerships, it's like a marriage. You have to make sure that those are the right people that you're bringing to the table to help advance this, because we become a family, you know, you become your own village, right? So I have to make sure that these tribes not only trust me, but that they also trust every partner that I'm bringing to the table. So in order for that to happen you know there's a vetting there's, you know, for that to happen you know there's a vetting there's, you know interviewing and understanding, like who they are at their core. And it's not just about oh, you know, I had a company approach me when I first got into this, just providing the staffing, and they wanted to partner with me, but it was because they had got removed from the contract and they were trying to do a set aside for Indian enterprises. Right, there's not enough Native American companies out there that are doing this, and that's okay that we're part of a small group. I am proud to be part of that small group, but I'm also not going to turn around and let another company come back in and colonize my odd for money, and it's really based on the value, the value add that we're bringing to the table.

Speaker 2:

So when you ask me that question, you know it's a lot of thought that I have to put into? What are the relationships that I want? Who are the people that I want around me? One of my daily prayers and I have no shame in saying this I'm always asking God to keep me invisible to the people that don't mean this company and anything that I'm doing any good. Make me visible to those that I'm supposed to be in alliance with, and as long as I keep trusting him, I think that's going to happen, and I think that's the core of my strategy is my faith and understanding that, no, you're not superwoman. You can't do this by yourself. Eventually, you have to forge those relationships, but make sure they're the right ones so that we can really make an advancement in the community and work together.

Speaker 2:

So I want to be, you know, a trusted source for the Native American community, and that's my goal. I feel like if I can be the trusted source, then you know, brick by brick as everybody likes to say social media I'm building my for you page in my life around this whole concept.

Speaker 1:

That is beautiful. That is so aptly stated. That brings us to our conclusion. I couldn't ask you to say that any differently, and before I let you go, I always ask this of my guests. Now you're toward the end of the podcast. How do you feel about this interview?

Speaker 2:

I feel amazing about this interview it's you have really given me a platform to tell the entire story. I usually leave bits and pieces out and I feel like I finally was able to share the entire story. I usually leave bits and pieces out and I feel like I finally was able to share the entire message. And it's like you know, I don't want to be a misery merchant and live in the past, but I understand the past and how it got me here and I understand the reason why God saved my life past the age of 12, because I was sent here to be a generational blessing. So I appreciate the fact that you gave me this platform to be able to tell the entire story.

Speaker 1:

Thank you. That's a blessing for both of us. That is awesome. Thank you for sharing your story. I'm sure the entire Santee Nation out there in Nebraska thanks you for sharing the story. Nation out there in Nebraska thanks you for sharing this story. Tell them how to contact you what is the best possible way.

Speaker 2:

We have our website, or you can send me an email at info at maat M-A-A-T. Hyphen enterprises dot com. We would love to hear from you. I would love to hear some feedback. If you've worked with our company before and you have some feedback on how we can do certain things better, I'm very much open to that. My goal in life is to make sure that you know we can't please everybody we're not tequila but at the end of the day at least if we can do, you know, a semi good job in listening to who's out there. That's how you can get to us.

Speaker 1:

Excellent, excellent, and I want to encourage your entire network to tune into all the episodes of Follow the Brand. You can do so at the number five. That's star S-T-A-R, b-d-m that's B for brand, d for development and for masterscom. I want to thank you again so much for sharing your story on the Follow the Brand podcast and TV series.

Speaker 2:

Thank you for having me.

Speaker 1:

You're welcome.