Case Study: The Solo Freelancer Earning $1 Million Per Year

. [00:00:00] Welcome back to another episode of the six figure creative podcast. I'm your host Brian Hood. And if this is your first time listening, welcome to the six figure creative podcast. We talk all about how to earn more as a creative, without selling your soul. And without doing something you don't necessarily love to do we're here to inspire you to bring you new ideas from outside sources that you may have never had been exposed to.

And that's actually kind of the theme of the episode today. So before we actually get in the topic, I've got my cos for the day, mark Eckert say, Hey, every.

what's up, everybody. How's it.

glad to have you back here. My dude, I'm always thankful when you, when you show up here today. And I, I wanted to ask you something before we even get into the episode, you recently had a uh, a kerfuffle , that's a good

Oh yeah. I called you up crying basically.

you literally called me up not crying, but you were like, lemme just back up really quick. Mark has multiple businesses. We'll we'll probably talk about some of those today because they're relevant to what we're gonna talk about today as creatives and, and inspiring you to grow a bigger, better business.

we have at least one shortcoming with that. And that is your major source of client acquisition or customer acquisition was tied to a single source. You had a single point of failure and that single point of failure [00:01:00] failed on you talk about what it was that happened when you called me that I had to talk you off the ledge.

just briefly go over that, cuz this is relevant to people that are doing what you're trying to.

Yeah, so uh, I'm a producer ultimately help producers. Yep. Music producer. I have a bunch of businesses that help producers and artists and music licensing companies and all that stuff. So I have a Facebook ads account where we run all of our Instagram ads. And I ran an ad for one of my businesses thatpitch.com I ran it to our customers and it was for a referral system and it just said, Hey, you can sign up for this. If you do this I'll pay you $30, but I worded it as, get paid $30 just hook up your friends and Facebook. I literally like pressed publish and I just, my face was paused, whole thing refreshed. I was blocked out Facebook thought I was soliciting s3ggs because I said get paid and hook up friends. So it thought I was

paying people to hook up. And yeah, I got [00:02:00] completely kicked off overnight. I lost probably about 80% of our daily traffic.

it wasn't a complete single point of failure, but it was like a three legged stool and one leg had just got knocked out from

I, no, I I'd say one and a half legs, so I was kind of just diagonal.

it wasn't great, man. Like it was, it was a mess, so yeah, I

called you

that that was like month or more ago. And just fast forwarding through it. Like you just got your account back, like this week.

Yeah. Literally a couple days ago and uh, I'm like on cloud nine, baby.

Yeah, but in the meantime, this is, and this was the advice I gave you, which is good for listeners to hear just in the future. As, our audience grows, becomes more successful, expands, what they're doing with their businesses and starts digging to paid advertising. My advice to you was while this is down and you're figuring out, go learn a new ads platform.

And you did, you learned

well, yeah, so, so I started running YouTube ads and also we built out this really badass content engine. So we post reels every single day, started a [00:03:00] podcast, built out like a. New email funnel and all this stuff and like, again, I feel like a huge weight was lifted off my

shoulders, but a lot of it stem from our

So, I forget the name of the concept, but like basically when we were restrained by something, like we have restraints borders around us It forces us into new areas. We wouldn't otherwise think about because like you were reliant on Facebook ads, it was doing the job of sending as much traffic and leads and clients and customers to your businesses as you needed.

And and once that was removed from you, you actually built a better, healthier business. So it was like that dependency removed you having a better business.

yeah. Creativity spawns from constraints, always, for my career, all innovation was from a problem. Like if you look. The history of the world, all of the huge innovations that happened were during war. big things happen when you're under a lot of stress and have to figure stuff out.

if you are backed into a corner, you figure it out. You'd be surprised what you're made of.

let's jump forward into the topic for today's uh, discussion. Cuz when we were outlining this, we talked for way too long. We, we started talking an hour and a half ago when we were just talking about so much stuff and, and outlining this episode took forever [00:04:00] because we just kept going off and tangents about like things we're excited about or talking about or wondering about or whatever.

So I'm excited for this episode today, this episode kind of spurred the idea spurred while I was going through Some common threads about things and just seeing people's reactions to something that doesn't seem relevant to them. So I'm hoping I was smart enough to write a good enough hook for this episode, entitle for this episode and description for this episode where you thought it was relevant enough for you and you didn't have the response, oh, this isn't relevant to me.

This isn't gonna help my business. I'm too much of a snowflake for this to apply to me. I'm hoping that wasn't the response. And if you are listening, in fact, you aren't that person. So that's great. Which sucks. Cuz I think the person who most needs this episode is the person that would never listen to this episode, cuz there's nothing I can do to hook that person in.

So maybe I'll just say listen to this episode and I'll give you a million dollars in cash guaranteed. I won't it's a lie, but I'm just saying maybe I have to say that anyways. This podcast was rebranded. From something called the six figure home studio podcast, which was all a podcast about recording studios and home recording studios and music production to the six figure creative probably like 70 episodes [00:05:00] ago and a huge chunk of people stayed on from that audience and, continued to listen week to week, which I love you if you were that person and continued to be inspired by all these amazing guests that we have.

Come on the show and the entire thought process behind that rebrand was. I get so much inspiration from other people on the outside of the music industry that I need. To talk two of those people more. And so this, we rebranded, we've gotta talk to so many amazing guests already. And this is just the beginning of the six figure creative podcast.

We've only had 60, 70 episodes of this podcast since we rebranded, but I saw some conversations happening in a, in a thread where people were saying, oh, I just haven't really listened since the rebrand. It's not relevant to me anymore. And I, I hate to see. And I know that person's not listening or those people are not listening to this episode right now, but I just want to say for anyone that's new, that's giving this episode a chance or may not really have any understanding that like you can learn from people outside of the industry, but.

gut response, that I'm a special snowflake and that this episode, or this topic is not relevant for me because they're in a [00:06:00] completely different industry, is the antithesis of why this podcast exists. This podcast exists to bring together all these amazing outside ideas from creatives and not creatives to help you and your creative business.

when we were outlined this episode, You said a quote that I freaking love, dude. And I'm just gonna say it here. This is a quote by mark Eckert. my wonderful cohost for the day. He says, if you're studying anything that's already been done, you're already late. we're all like copying something somewhere.

Like, in both of our businesses, mark we've kind of like taken inspiration from all these different areas, but almost none of that inspiration is. Businesses in our industry, like, would you ever study what your competitor down the road is doing?

I, I Don. I look at my entire life as I don't have a competitor at all. Actually my competition is my prospect not doing anything. That's my

biggest competitor.

Yeah. Yeah. When you're first coming up as a creative, you mostly learn some sort of creative skill you got a, a camera and you're like, I love photography. Or you got An interface in a da, a [00:07:00] DAW. And he said, I wanna learn music production, or you got, a video camera and you're like, I wanna be a filmmaker or something like you, you had that inspiration when you came in.

And so you start to look to how to master that craft. And so you're surrounded by people who are amazing at that craft, but there comes a time when you, set in your head, I wanna make this a business. You either set it. Automatically, like you knew this ahead of time, or it just happened to you.

Somebody asked you for money to do the thing that you're offering. what happens though, is you stay in that mindset of I'm gonna learn from all the other people in this creative field, all the other videographers in my area, I'm gonna look at their pricing, their website, how they do their things.

This is something that I'm gonna call. An inbred business. This is where the genetic pool is not diverse enough to have a healthy, happy business.

And I'm sorry for I'm from Alabama. I can talk about this, right? Like

I can say this this is where it's like the genetic pool of like your outside influences, just aren't healthy. Like it's you have an inbred business. If all you're looking to is other people in your exact industry. [00:08:00] to mimic things after. And I, I see this so much, in my background, which is music production in the audio world.

Audio people are the worst at this. I'm sorry if I'm throwing so many people listening this under the bus, you look to your competitor down the street and you, launch a website, just like them. I'm gonna put my gear list on my website as if my clients give a s**t about that. I'm gonna put photos of me next to my gear and, and my whole rack of gear.

I'm gonna put all my rates on my website because everyone else does. And then I'm going to charge the. same $200 $200 a song or $80 a song or whatever as everyone else. then I'm gonna wonder why no, one's coming to me cuz you're a commodity, you're an inbred business and, no one wants that. So this episode is kind of like just one of those reminders.

And we've got a lot more content than just like us shaking our finger at you today. But like we've got some stuff we wanna talk about a case study and example of someone bringing in a million a year because I took outside inspiration. Like maybe I should have led with that. maybe that's a better hook than whatever I use at the beginning of this, just note.

the healthiest businesses I've ever seen have a vast DNA pool They are the beautiful non inbred [00:09:00] businesses out there. And I, and I wanna talk about one today, but I I've been talking about so much.

Do you have anything to add to what I've said so far, mark?

Yeah. I mean, if you look at like the most badass businesses in the world that always stand the test of time, they're the best at taking inspiration from everybody that's not in their business. This could be creative. I mean, it could even be in like real estate or like anything.

I mean, there's, there's countless stories, but yeah, you need to

be studying everybody else because nobody around you is actually creative. You're just gonna be copying them.

Yeah, but which is funny, cuz like as creatives, we should be the ones to look for outside sources of inspiration. Like can you imagine the painter who only has been inside of a black box, his entire life? What are his paintings gonna look like? He has no outside inspiration. Like so as creatives, like we crave that inspiration when we're creating art, right. We listen to other genres of music for a producer.

We look at films and we look at commercials and we look at things if we're doing video well, like we get all this outside inspiration for our art. But when it comes to businesses, we are the most creatively stagnant inbred people [00:10:00] there are. And it just goes against everything that I believe is creative.

So you, you said another thing, another quote I'll I'll attribute to you, mark if you are an inbred business, the best you can ever hope to be is number two. Like that's the best you can be, cuz you're just copying number one and everything.

Number one does. So the best you'll be is a water down copy Of that. And you could maybe be worse version. Number two, like I don't wanna be that I wanna be the best at what I do, and it, it takes outside inspiration to do that. So I wanna move into uh, You can call this a case study a really good example somebody who's looked to outside inspiration. And created a wildly successful seven figure business as a single person It's a freelancer called design joy.

So, if you're watching on YouTube right now, I've, I've actually pulled up their website. I'm gonna kind of go along with this, but if you look at design Joy's website, he has taken a ton of inspiration from the startup community specifically like the SAS community software as a service.

And he's turned his entire business model on its head because. The way he does things I'm just kind of scrolling around is he has, this looks like a software company. If you're looking at the screen share right now, he has literally pricing plans[00:11:00] where he has monthly payment, quarterly payment. You're Liping, he has three different plans to choose from, and it's in a recurring service and he charges really high rates.

If you're looking on, YouTube right now, or watch in video, this it's very high rates, like higher than most designers, but it's a flat monthly fee for unlimited design He has taken this business model from the software as a service community, which for those who don't know what that is, to me, it's one of the best, Industries to take business advice from because they have quantified so much of what a service based business does.

And then they are obviously replicating it with software. So like the business model is actually nearly the same. If you can make it work as someone like the freelancer, but they have just turning us on its head. And, that's how you've built these billion dollar unicorns, because they've, they've got such great business models.

So, I, I know you mark, you kind of did the same thing whenever you were in full-time music production, you looked to the outside sources of this, like these companies doing recurring revenue, and you did the same thing in music and you were the, you actually, the first time you were on the show

on episode 60. Which was in 2019, like beginning of 2019, you were on the show because you had built a recurring revenue [00:12:00] business as a music producer, which is way outside the norm. So talk about that transition and where you got inspiration for that.

Yeah. So just like most freelancers, you know, you get a client and they pay you a flat rate, then you do that work and then you might hear from them like a year or two later. When I was just producing full time independent artists, that's kind of what they're used to. In fact, a lot of times they're used to paying half up front and then. The work gets done. And then the producer says, Hey, when you pay me, you can, you can have the finished everything, you know, everything's gonna be done for you. And I was like, I just want consistent revenue.

I just wanna make sure my rent's cool.

because every freelancer knows the fester famine, cycle that most freelancers go through at least once in their life I remember, like one month I made 20 grand into January and then February I made $1,200.

Yeah.

that's like really common. So I decided like, okay, how much do I charge for a song at the time I charged, I think it was 1200 a song. And it [00:13:00] took me, I think on average about. Five days to complete it with revisions and everything. so what I did is I divided that by five, 1200 divided by five, what is that like 200 something dollars or whatever. And I just made it a point where I'm gonna give them six days. It's gonna be better. And I'm just going to charge a monthly rate over three. months So it was $400 a month. The production was going to be completed. At month three we had stages of production and they got more time.

It was a better product and we could like release the track and then they could just stay. So we got the track done month, one month, two, and then by month three, we were promoting it in month four, which started like the new three month period.

we'd start another.

every quarter they're putting out a new single, which is like the better business model clients as well. it was a win-win.

my whole strategy was basically marketing. Like in today's day on Spotify, [00:14:00] you have to put out an album, people listen to singles, you get on a playlist, so you should just be consistently putting out singles. So let's make a plan that works for you that can put out singles and you don't have to save up a huge chunk of cash. It's just, Hey, I'm a bill. I'm just like a really expensive electric bill

You know, you know where my mind goes. When you say that

I'm just a bill sit in Capitol

hill.

that's right, dude. That was me. yeah, that was, that was great. And I completely got that from subscription models and

then every single business I currently have is a subscription model that replaced something that was not a subscription model.

was that after you read the book automatic customer

I never even read automatic customer, which is

hilarious. I had a bunch of friends send it over, but then I started like picking it up and I was like, this is what I'm already doing. So

And so like, okay. Going back to design joy, like he has automatic customers. If someone signs up on a monthly or quarterly or yearly plan with him, He has that customer until they cancel. So he doesn't have to go out and [00:15:00] constantly get customers. So it's, it's wonderful. If you take the SAS philosophy software as a service philosophy of the recurring revenue customers and bring it to the freelance world.

And not every business model can make that happen. Honestly, if you're a, if you're a wedding photographer, this is probably not the business model for you, but there are plenty of other industries to learn from. You know what my favorite business book is. I know you already know this, cuz I said it to you before we actually did this show.

But pretend like you don't know mark, do you know what my favorite business book is from the past two years?

What is it Bri?

you don't wanna say it like that, but it's fine. What is it? It's a book called Jim launch secrets and it has nothing to do with the creative. I have no plans to launch a gym, but it is one of the best business books I've read in the last two years.

It is incredible. I've recommended it to so many people. And this is the, the perfect example of what I'm talking about. When I look to outside industries for inspiration on what I'm going to do in my business or in my businesses, in my case I love seeing these other things. Alex Ram mosey in that book has built an incredible business model for the gym industry.

He turned that into [00:16:00] a 7, 8, 9 figure coaching business. And then he turned that into a massive portfolio empire that he's now at a hundred million a year or something ridiculous. So like, I would love to learn from those people as a creative, because I'm a creative entrepreneur. There's so much to be gained from these outside sources.

And instead of saying Jim launch secrets, I'm not gonna read that book. I don't wanna launch a Jim. I said, you know what? I like, Alex's other book, hundred million dollar offers. I really love that book. He only has one other book out right now. I'm just gonna read that too. because I love the author and I like, was way better than a hundred million offers in my opinion.

So a really cool example. I'm just gonna bring up another book, but then I'm gonna state an example that was stated in that book that completely resonates with this whole topic. So there's a book called blue ocean strategy, and it's one of my favorite books of all time. I've approached basically my entire career with blue blueish and

That might be the most reference book that I constantly talk about that I've never read

I just love the idea of the blue ocean

Well you,

sum up the blue ocean strategy really quick for [00:17:00] anyone not listening

so here's the idea of the blue ocean strategy. If you're near the shore, right? There's a bunch of fish, there's more sharks. They're all fighting over the same food. that's the red ocean, you know, people are, or not people, fish are all fighting over the

same

blood. it depends on where you're at maybe Australians where they have shark

right, right. but.

if you go way. it's desolate. There's like barely any fish, like way out there. There's nothing out there, but you're the only thing, so there's not as much activity, but if you're there, you're gonna land it. Like it's, all yours.

and I'll actually say in our world, in the creative world, sometimes it's not a blue ocean. It's just a blue pond. It's a small little niche. That's not being served. There's nothing in it. We have it to ourselves and we can set up shop there without any competition. So sometimes it doesn't have to be some

I mean, when I was only producing full-time Firstly, I was the producer for indie pop artists. I didn't work with any other artists. I

only

you're I used, I used to reference your headline on your website so often it was literally just said, all I give a f**k about is producing [00:18:00] indie pop

producing indie pop artists.

I had it down to a science. I was really f**king good at this. Like one thing it's all I listened to is so easy for me. But then I went even deeper. I kind of realized that the majority of people who really want to hire a producer are ones that are not in huge music scenes. you know, I was kind of like just researching and I was like, wow wow The majority of people making this style of music don't live in LA New York or Nashville or London, they're actually all over the world. So. anytime I would post something back in the day, like I would do geo locations and then run like random cities and stuff. But I also, when I would run ads, I basically had every English speaking country, but I excluded major music cities. cuz I'm in Charlotte, North Carolina, I'm the guy who understands your music scene. I'm independent, you're independent. You make this kind of music.

I specialize in that and I only do. that that took me very far, but [00:19:00] a really cool example from blue ocean strategy, there's a wine company called yellow tail wines. If you're in the us, any groceries store you go to with the kangaroo on it, that's yellow tail wines and it's a massive section. Well, they were the Australian wine company and at the time there was no famous Australian wine at the time.

It. California, France, Italy, all the super, super fancy stuff. And the team at yellow tail wines were like, we're never going to be able to compete with, this super sommelier, fancy, fancy, wine brands. And so they realized a lot of people liked the taste of. But they felt so intimidated shopping for it.

They felt so scared ordering it cuz they thought people were condescending to them

Or they would say it wrong because wines choose the most pretentious French words

right. so Yellowtail was like, okay, we're gonna be the wine company for beer drinkers. [00:20:00] We're gonna be the wine company for soda drinkers. And within a couple years they dominated the market and it's because they were just looking. people that weren't being served and they just studied what was being done in other markets. And they just did very well for themselves.

Yeah. And, and that's kind of the whole point of this episode. I mean, this may not be a long episode, which is fine, but I, if it changes one mind out there that like outside inspiration is, the way of growth and being an inbred business is the way of death. It's stagnation. it's unhealth all I want is to, to get that message across.

And this is kind of for our, our entrepreneurial listeners. Like, it's like a spectrum, like there's the creative side of. There's the entrepreneurial side of us. If you're listening to this podcast, you likely have some entrepreneurial side for some people. That's the dominant side.

Like for me, I'm actually more entrepreneur than I am creative. learned this over time, but the creativity was actually a means. To be entrepreneurial, I couldn't create a product.

I didn't know how to launch a real business, but I knew how to, to offer a service and over time, as I've had all these new [00:21:00] ideas from outside sources and other industries that have influenced me, I've been able to launch bigger and better business models. I have two software companies. It is a way better business model than freelancing.

I. Right up, say that as someone who has an audience is almost all freelancers. It should sound SAC religious, but it's a better business model. the only way you're ever gonna get to that point, if you wanna graduate from freelancers, I call it and build some bigger, better business model, especially one that allows you to travel to Bali on a one way ticket in a couple weeks where I have no return date planned, I'm just gonna be gone for the fall.

You can't do that. If you're an inbred business, that's

I just love that. that's the term we've landed

Brian. I'm also like not kissing ass here, but I wanna push back on you saying that you're more like business than creative at this point in my life. I actually don't even think it's a spectrum. I think it's all the same thing. I think people just have the wrong idea of business versus creativity

Andy Warhol, Forget everybody listening to this podcast, Andy Warhol is more important than all of us in the art world. Okay. So if you can't get behind [00:22:00] what Andy said, then you're a poser He said being good in business is the most fascinating kind of art. And he also said, I sent this quote to my buddy earlier today.

Cause he was dealing with the same exact thing.

making money is art and working is art and good business is the best art.

so maybe it's not a spectrum for me. Maybe I am creative and I've just moved my creativity over to the entrepreneurial side.

I think you're honestly one of the most creative dudes. I know this is just the avenue that you're putting a lot of your energy in. It just so happens to include transactions, but you're extremely creative. I honestly think if people, all they're doing is just making. art and they don't have a means of monetizing it.

Well, what happens? You end up not doing it as often, because you have to pay your rent and what's gonna happen. You get stuck in a s**ty nine to five and that's gonna be your life, your whole life. Do you really think that you're going to be more of a true artist than somebody who's doing it full time? No, you're insane if [00:23:00] you think that. So honestly, I think the most, talented, most hardworking, most skillful artists there are. So happen to be in business for themselves and they're damn good at it.

Yep. So if you're listing this podcast and you're like, okay, what do I do now? go be inspired by other books. Go look through our backlog of episodes, even the episodes from 150 and before when we were the six figure home studio and we were talking predominantly to music, producers and home studios.

There's tons of great content in those episodes that is directly applicable to any creative freelancer out there and frankly, many other business types as well. But Don't fall into this trap that I see so many people falling into and I'm wagging my finger at some of our list.

maybe not listeners now, but definitely past listeners who stop listening when we, transitioned, stop being the person that looks at something and says, oh, that's not for me. It's the same type of person that says, ah, I can't do that instead of, how can I do that? I think that's, the difference between the unsuccessful.

Say I can't do that. I could never do that. And the successful just say. I can't do it yet, but I would love to, what can I do to get that done? Or how can I accomplish that [00:24:00] thing

and here's another thing is if you're only studying in your industry, realistically, you're only gonna get so far into truly learning how something is working, because the majority of the people that you would learn from have a vested interest in you not being as good. Because they're going to look at you as a competitor, unfortunately, because so many people in the creative industry think there isn't much money to go around.

When in fact there is a lot of money to go around. But if you learn from other industries, like if you meet somebody who owns a restaurant and it's just, awesome, like it's amazing food, they're packed. you can tell they're doing really, really well. You talk to the owner of that. Oh, my God.

They're gonna tell you everything they do. They're gonna tell you their profit margins, how they've, you know, made sure that the environment's great for everybody. Well, if you're, let's say an artist and you have a Facebook community, you can learn from that. Okay. How did this person make sure everyone was comfortable?

Like how did they do the seating arrangement? How did they make sure everybody was taken care of? Can I bring that into [00:25:00] my Facebook community? Okay. Well maybe what I can do is I can. little groups within it where people talk to each other and it's like almost sitting at a table, that's just one example.

But like, there's so many ways that you can take somebody else's insight that has nothing to do with your industry and bring it back to your own.

here's the other thing as well. Cuz like sometimes there are no specific takeaways. Sometimes it is merely inspirational and I'll, tell a quick story

Yeah.

this is actually what sparked my entrepreneur flame. Everyone has that moment where like something finally sparks inside of them where like, oh, I see, see the big picture now as an entrepreneur.

everyone has a different story around them. Mine was involved playing around a golf for those who don't know I'm a closet golfer. Like I, play golf

it's really embarrassing.

Stop talking about it, Brian.

yeah, yeah. Like I I've got my, my handicap down to like a six, which if you are a golfer, you know, that's not, that's not bad.

I can putt putt with the best of them, baby.

so like I was playing golf one day and it was just a, it's a walk on course. It's just right down the road from my house here. so meaning you don't have to have like a, a tee time or anything, you just walk on the golf course. And so when you do that, you end up just meeting up with random [00:26:00] people so that you can kind of group up and play together.

And I played golf with this, guy one day and we were just talking, it was just me and him. And we were talking and walking. You always talk about business or whatever. And he had told me that he was up in Nashville, scouting a new location for his restaurant. And I was like, interesting. So I'm asking a bunch of questions about it.

And long story short, I won't name his business cuz it's still around and it's still doing great. But he, he had told me everything about the business, the business model, how much they were making. They were like profiting like 30 grand per week. he had systemized the entire restaurant and hired a manager out and everything and had cameras like watching over employees and stuff.

And he was able to do. Without working at all, he had completely systemized the process where he was simply the business owner. And that was the first time I'd ever heard of anyone doing that or met somebody who had really done that. I had heard of it before, but never met someone doing it. And there wasn't anything as a music producer, there was nothing that I could really directly take away from that and say, I'm going to apply that my business, I did systemize some things.

So there maybe was a little bit there, more than anything. It was inspiration from that story of this guy up in Nashville, just playing golf. [00:27:00] We ended up playing 18 holes together. So it took like four hours. We were just walking and talking it changed my trajectory. Cause that was like 2014.

That was the first six figure year I had. That was the first year I really started taking my business. Seriously. That was the first year I started listening to podcasts. I started binging podcasts. Typed in business podcasts into all the podcast feeds that was the start of my entrepreneur journey.

And so like, anyone listening right now, maybe this is your start of your entrepreneur journey where you're realizing that there is creativity in being a business owner. There is creativity and entrepreneurism, but it takes. The outside perspective from all the successful other industries brought back into your industry.

So that you're not an inbred business owner, which sounds harsh if you haven't listened this, the rest of this episode, but again, we need that diversity in our DNA of our business in order to, make this work.