An Agency Story
An Agency Story
The Ballad of the Reluctant Agency Owner - Musimack Marketing
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Company: Musimack Marketing
Guests: Stacey McCormack
Year Started: 2013
Employees: 1-10
The Ballad of the Reluctant Owner
What if the path to entrepreneurship wasn’t planned, but pushed?
In this episode, Stacey McCormack, founder of Musimack Marketing, shares how a layoff, a government grant, and a deep desire to help others led her from corporate life to agency ownership. If you’ve ever felt uncertain about your journey, Stacey’s story will remind you that reluctance doesn’t mean you're not ready.
Key Takeaways
- Why reluctance might be a sign you’re on the right path
- The underrated power of staying in your lane when working within a partnership
- How AI is reshaping content creation without replacing the human touch
Welcome to An Agency Story podcast where we share real stories of marketing agency owners from around the world. From the excitement of starting up the first big sale, passion, doubt, fear, freedom, and the emotional rollercoaster of growth, hear it all on An Agency Story podcast. An Agency Story podcast is hosted by Russel Dubree, successful agency owner with an eight figure exit turned business coach. Enjoy the next agency story.
Russel:What if an entrepreneur story didn't start with ambition, but with resistance. Welcome to An Agency Story podcast. I'm your host Russel. In this episode, we meet Stacey McCormack, founder of Musimack Marketing, who never planned to run a business until the universe had other ideas. From getting laid off after 20 years in traditional media to becoming an agency owner, pretty much by accident, Stacey shares how fear, grit, and a surprise government grant turned reluctance into a full fledged agency. You'll hear how she and her husband navigate the complexities of their relationship and business, why reluctance can sometimes be the best foundation for leadership, and how clarity and adaptability keeps them ahead in a fast changing landscape. If you've ever felt uncertain about your path or needed permission to start messy, this is the story for you. Enjoy the story. Welcome to the show today everyone. I have Stacey McCormack with Musimack Marketing with us here today. Thank you so much for being on the show today, Stacey.
Stacey:Thanks Russel.
Russel:As I hear it, you're coming from the great city and state of Portland, Oregon. Let's get a hot pro tip for anyone coming to Portland ever best place to eat, where should, where do they have to go if they're coming to Portland?
Stacey:Oh gosh. I like to take visitors to the Portland City Grill. It's up on the 30th floor of a big high rise downtown, and they've got an amazing view, a 360 degree view of the city, all of our, our, uh, rivers that, that we're known for. We're known for the Willamette River, I guess The Bridges is what I should say. We're known for all of our bridges that cross the Willamette River, which divide our city. But the, the view from the Portland City Grill is, uh, pretty unbeatable.
Russel:All right. We're already getting pro tips, um, just a few seconds in today. I don't know if every city,'cause Dallas has a similar thing. They call it Reunion Tower and it's a big ball on top of a big tower and, and it's got the, I think, I think it rotates. I've actually never been. I don't know, does every city have this? Call in, or write. Send me an email, folks. Tell me if your city does or does not have a major city. You don't have to do every small town, but if, uh, if you've got this big 360 tower situation. Let's get to Musimack Marketing. I want to get back into some of your background. Before there, just kick us off, what does Musimack Marketing do and who you do it for?
Stacey:Sure. We're a full service digital marketing agency. We do everything from website design and development, uh, social media marketing, SEO strategy, and digital advertising would be our four core pillars. We primarily work with, uh, small to medium businesses. Typically business is up to about a hundred employees, somewhere in that range. We're expanding all the time, so we're really excited to be working with larger businesses, uh, more high profile businesses. We continue to grow, so been fun for us.
Russel:It's really cool to drive down the highway and see the billboards and or signs of the businesses you work on. I want to hear more about all that amazing work, but let's talk about young Stacey. What were her goals, hopes and dreams? Where was she headed with her life? Take us back as far as would be exciting.
Stacey:Sure. I guess going back to high school, I had decided that I was gonna work in radio and that was going to be my career. I was going to be an on-air personality and I was gonna do the whole radio thing. You start in a small market and you continue to grow into bigger and larger markets.
Russel:I'm just curious, like why was that exciting for you? Was there a moment or something like that or what, what was the appeal for that?
Stacey:That goes back to just being a really big fan of music and I wanted to figure out a way that I could be somehow at least tangent, tangentially related to the music industry. I'm not a performer. I love to sing, but I don't claim any talent. I don't play any instruments. I don't write music, but I am a big fan of music and to me, that was a reasonable path to be connected to the music industry. When I went to college, I worked at the college radio station. I was in the communications program at Oregon State and, uh, got a job at a, a commercial radio station off campus. I thought that would be my career. And I, and I enjoyed it and I was really grateful for that experience. Worked full-time at a radio station while I was going to school full-time, and it was a perfect situation. Never really felt like I had a real job. It was really fun to go to work every day.
Russel:That's the best kind of job to have, right?
Stacey:It really was fantastic. I'm so grateful for that time, but at, at some point I realized, okay, so I'm getting close to graduating, getting my degree and there's probably more to life than just being a radio dj. As much fun as it, as, as it was. From there I started looking at other opportunities, and when I graduated I had the opportunity to move to Nashville and work on Music Row and work on promoting artists. We were a publicity agency and so we were promoting artists.
Russel:Any cool artists you can name drop here?
Stacey:Honestly nobody that you've ever heard of. That was part of the struggle.
Russel:Okay. That can be telling.
Stacey:Moving on from there, I ended up moving back home to the Portland area and, um, ended up in radio and, uh, but not on the air. I'd been on the air through college, but this time around I was in the sales department, the advertising department and working with local businesses about their marketing and helping them to be more strategic, really dialing down their target audience, figuring out what's gonna be their core message, how to create impact, how to be more competitive. All those things. I stayed in traditional media for about 20 years. Started in, in radio advertising, moved into cable TV, moved into broadcast TV, eventually landing at our regional newspaper here, the Oregonian. All along the way, consistently working with local businesses, and that's really all I've ever done in, in some capacity. So About 11 years ago, got laid off from the newspaper. Big shocker.
Russel:I mean, was this,'cause I, if I think about it, I know the news has had struggles for a long time, but you know, the 10, 15 years ago is when the news really started to have its struggles. I'm guessing that was the writing on the wall and you were the early victim of that.
Stacey:We had many, many rounds of layoffs. I was just, happened to be part of one of the rounds of layoffs. About a hundred people got laid off the same day I did. At that point I thought, okay, so I've done everything I can do in traditional media. I know how to work with clients. I know a lot about marketing and advertising, so it just was a reasonable transition to head out on my own. I just thought, okay, the world's moving digital. It's time to move on from the traditional media and really think about digital marketing and, and what's that gonna mean for local clients. I'd had some exposure to it in my media career leading up to that point. I think the, the places I'd been didn't put enough emphasis on online and what that was gonna mean to their business. Really took the focus of, of how do I start helping people in a, in a more digital type of a platform in a more modern way. That was really exciting to me because with digital marketing there, there's a few different benefits from where I had been previously. With digital marketing you can, you can really help people at all different price points in terms of their advertising budget. Even 20 years ago in radio, if you didn't have at least$3,000 a month to invest, we really couldn't help you and we'd send you on your way. That's not true with digital marketing. There's so much you can do at all price points and to actually really help people. The other thing that I was so excited about is that everything is tracked in such detail that you know exactly where every penny of your marketing investment is going. And that was never true in radio and TV and newspaper. The whole sales pitch is basically, trust me, and we're gonna hope for the best with your advertising investment. Where with digital marketing, Google ads, Facebook ads, I can tell you exactly how many people saw your ad, how many conversions you made, what was your return on investment. Very detailed metrics to support what we are doing, what we're recommending, what, why we're making this strategy for you. That was an exciting time for me that this whole new world opened up in digital marketing based on where I'd come from.
Russel:Night and day worlds there. As you're kind of alluding to and as we're ending 2024, early 2025, that this whole, yeah. Trust me, it will work, uh, isn't, isn't the sell that it maybe used to be. I'm curious, I gotta almost think it's, this has gotta be climbing up there as one of the more prominent reasons someone actually jumps off and starts an agency, of getting laid off as being the catalyst for, for someone going and doing their own thing. With that thought in mind, I mean, did you ever think you were gonna end up in owning your own business someday, or was it just getting kicked off the boat?
Stacey:Absolutely not. I was the most reluctant business owner ever. It's a weird thing, and I say that the universe kind of pushed me in this direction to be an entrepreneur, to be a CEO. I never dreamed, uh, anything. I would sit next to people in, in my corporate office, yeah, I'm gonna save up my money and start my own business one day. I had always been a salaried employee. I just wanted that security. That's all I ever asked for in life, and, and to be on my own and to never know exactly where the next penny's gonna come from. That was hard. That was the hardest part of that transition.
Russel:A lot of people will say here too, that like. you know, look, I just don't wanna ever be in that position again, that someone can take that security away from me. But, you know, and obviously, and just hearing how you're talking about it, right? You had a very futuristic approach in, in kind of leaving this old world behind and coming into the world of digital marketing. Why was your core decision like, no, I'm, I'm gonna go do this on my own?
Stacey:I feel like I came into this kicking and screaming. When I first got laid off, it took me several months to figure out, am I applying for a new job? Am I gonna go out on my own? Things just started happening around me that I just couldn't ignore. At one point I, I, having been on unemployment and you get listed on these rosters and then you get invited to do different things and somehow I, I still don't fully understand how it happened. I got selected for a grant from, it was through the Oregon Unemployment Department from having been laid off, and they'd reached out to me and basically said, we think you're a candidate, a good candidate to start your own business. We know you've been looking for jobs, um, but we think, and, and you haven't been very successful in getting a new job, but we do think that you are a good candidate to start your own business for the background that you have and, and your skillset. At first I was kinda like, what are you even talking about?
Russel:Hold on. Now this is really curious stuff. Is this just something they're sending out to a lot of people or, or are they actually doing a process of somehow, weeding people out?
Stacey:That's a really good question and I don't fully know the answer to that. All I know is before I barely even had a chance to think about it, I got selected for a grant. I don't believe it exists anymore, but it was this very special grant that they said, okay, so we want you to focus on building your own business, and this grant is going to pay your mortgage for a year while you start to build your business. At first, I was like, is this really true? What in the heck is happening here?
Russel:What scam is this?
Stacey:But it was, it was legit. That was a really big deal. I just thought, okay, the universe is trying to tell me something here. That's pretty big. And additional things like that just kept happening. Eventually it was like, okay, I, I guess we're doing this.
Russel:I've heard the term reluctant owner before, but you, you might take the cake, right?
Stacey:I'll wear that crown.
Russel:Kicking and screaming, and here you are. But I'm glad you eventually listened to the signs and signals. And then I wanted, I'm very curious, right, in this path of everything you were leaving behind this old world and I'm going to this world of digital. I mean, Do you consider yourself a futurist or just why was that so really just ideas solidified in your mind and important as you branched out?
Stacey:It just comes back to how can I most effectively help people and how can I help people at all different budget levels? How can I educate people about this new, modern digital world that we're entering in for particularly these clients who all they've ever known is to buy newspaper ads and radio ads, and this whole digital world is scary so how do I make that less scary for people? Make people understand this is the way of the future, but all the benefits like we just talked about earlier, of why it's so important to think about moving into the digital world and what that's gonna mean for their business and keeping them moving forward with the times.
Russel:I love it when I hear a, an amazing fundamental because I really think success in business comes back to the fundamentals. Can we get the fundamentals right? And this question that you asked, how can I help people? If you're wanting to grow your business or if you're wanting to probably succeed, that's the first question to ask. It's not, how do I get more sales? How can I better help people? And build and create something that, that gives that. I can see why asking yourself that question created all these other signs for you as you were, in, in the early phase of your business. When you think about, right, I mean, clearly you said 11 years ago, I think is when you said you started your business. The world's catching up to understanding digital. It's getting all the more complicated and crazy, but at the same time, right, I remember in the early days of having our agency, it's like, you need a website, sir. This website is this thing and right., We're way past that. Everybody knows what a website is. So how has that thought process evolved? What is the next future or even to extent of how you can answer that question of how do you help people?
Stacey:I think soon we're gonna be having more and more conversations of how do we use AI effectively, how do we use that strategically in a way that's not, ooh, we're gonna copy and paste a blog for you out of AI? That's not happening, but there are really strategic ways to use it and we're still exploring some of those ways, but I think there's going to be a lot of new ways that we can really start to learn how to use AI in a meaningful way, that's gonna make it more efficient and more cost efficient for us to be able to help more people and, and more affordably. I think that's exciting for our, our clients. Take blogs for example. We've always been in the business of writing blogs for our clients and we've had to hire writers that would write these original blogs, and that's expensive for us to hire people to do that. Now we still, of course, have writers on staff, but AI can help give us really great outlines, let's say. We're not gonna ask ChatGPT to write the blog, but we can have them write a really strong, clear, thorough outline, for example, and that can really speed up the process for us. Instead of someone maybe spending three or four hours on an original blog, maybe they can crank out something really well done in an hour, let's say. That's a cost savings then to the client. There was a lot of transitions in marketing 11 years ago, and now we're starting a whole new wave of new transitions and just holding on for the ride. But yeah, trying to appreciate all the changes that are going on, not be afraid of them but embrace them, is a big part of it.
Russel:AI is certainly the hot topic of agencies today and all the same question. How do we, How do we keep our strength and strategy in the human element of this, but also how do we leverage this as a tool for efficiency and kick-starting, if you will. I'm curious, because I'm not out in the world selling agency services anymore. What is the general consumer client coming to the table with? Are they expecting AI incorporated into the work that's being done? Are they asking a lot of tough questions about this? What does that look like from the, the prospect?
Stacey:They're not yet, honestly. Nobody's really asked me, are you just going to use AI to write my content? It's interesting that you asked that because it really hasn't been a conversation. I think some, a little bit of what's happening is clients will come and say, I've got my content already for you. Let's start building the website and I'm usually like, okay, hold on. Take a deep breath. Let's take a look and see what you've got. A lot of times it's just come straight from ChatGPT, and I'm just like, okay, let us, let's work through that. This is great as an outline, as the bones and the skeleton of, of what you're trying to accomplish here. Let us work with that and make it sound like an actual human wrote it. In some ways, yes, we have some clients that are a little bit over excited about AI, but it's interesting times.
Russel:For as smart as it is a dumb tool too. Just in case anybody hasn't figured this out on their own yet. It gets stuff wrong all the time, by the way. It is funny. Even in a marketing sense, I was collaborating with someone on how do we leverage some AI to, to write some page titles and stuff? It would spit out page titles, but then they'd be like, 300 and 400 characters long. I was like, hey, ChatGPT, don't you think this is long? Oh yeah, it is this long. Let me condense this down. If you didn't know right, you would think, well, that's my page title. I'm gonna throw that in there. Silly ChatGPT.
Stacey:And that's a skill too that, that we're learning. How do you write those prompts? How do you write really effective prompts for ChatGPT so that it can generate the right answers? You said, with page titles, okay, I need you to write me a page title that's about this many characters or this many words, it's gonna be six words, whatever it is. Be very specific. I need an elevator pitch that is 750 characters that's gonna fit on my Google business profile, that kind of thing.
Russel:Maybe that's the when, when folks are gonna come say this, right? It should be cheaper'cause you're using AI. Well, we can give these stories of like, let me tell you all the times AI is wrong and why we still need a lot of human oversight. This is again, another tool to leverage efficiency, but the, the world of strategy's gotten all the more harder so that's where we're gonna put our effort anyway.
Stacey:I will say that the one area where, where AI has been actually really legitimately helpful is in coding websites. We build in WordPress and so we don't have to do a lot of coding day to day, but when we do, because if we have some really complex functionality that we're trying to accomplish, it has been really good to speed up our, our coding for our developers. That's been huge. That's actually been really huge for us.
Russel:I use it for Excel a lot. It's like, all right, I know what I want to create. Can you give me the template formula for this pivot table in Excel and with these variables? Not that I couldn't figure out and sit on down and figure it on my own, but yeah, it just, just makes it go faster and less, less holes in the wall from my head getting beat into it. But, uh, I heard recently that you've got to, or may, maybe not recently even at this point, but, uh, you brought your husband into the business. What was that process like? Was that a goal? Did he come kicking and screaming? Give us the details on that.
Stacey:Yeah, so about, well, okay, so we, we had actually met in radio, in the corporate market, marketing department. We both come from very strong marketing backgrounds and that's something that I think really sets us apart from your typical web design agency is that the owners come from marketing, and I think it's that marketing strategy that really sets us apart. You could be a great web developer and you're the best coder in the world, but if you don't truly understand marketing strategy and SEO, getting the messaging right, understanding usability, there's, there's a whole lot that goes into building a strong and effective website. We have both come from marketing and my side of the marketing was more towards the messaging, getting, getting those headlines right. Being able to speak to that target audience in just the right way. His background was more technical. He's got a long background in web design, in graphic design. so very complimentary skills to what I do. I was about four years into the business, I was primarily doing social media. I'd never been a well, web developer myself, um, but as I was working with clients on their social media and their, their online presence, they would ask, oh, hey, can you build me a website? I thought, well. I can't, but David can on his free time, on evenings and weekends when he is not at his regular day job. Eventually it just got to the point where he's like, I can't have two jobs anymore, and so it just made sense. It was very organic. It's not something that we really ever planned out. I think there was a part of him that secretly was always trying to figure out a way of how he could join the company. It just happened that it, I just ended up really needing him. He brought this whole other element to the business, this whole new skillset. Between the two of us, um, I think we really, I, we're a force of nature based on our complimentary skills and being able to bring all of the most important key elements to a project. Again, all the while, through the lens of marketing, because not all web developers are marketers.
Russel:Isn't that right? I think I've talked about this a lot with folks maybe on the show before of, right, marketing's gotten so more complicated. Just be an expert at marketing is, is probably, or you need a PhD to have that these days that we have got all these mediums and mechanisms and tools that, um, no wonder we're so niche because it's just so hard to be good at all of'em. I could see this one plus one equals three, you know, approach in bringing your husband into being able to help folks. What's it been like? And maybe not on the client side, but, uh, how has that been in your relationship and how do you guys navigate that part of things?
Stacey:Good days and bad days. Ultimately at the end of the day it's been a good thing and we both, I think what, what really keeps us going and always looking forward is we recognize that we each need each other in this business for it to function. I absolutely depend on him for his talents, and he absolutely depends on me for mine. Mine is the messaging, the content strategy and sales. I am the sales director and so that's, that's a big part of it that he wants no part of. Even on the tough days, at the end of the day, we really appreciate and acknowledge what the other one brings to the table. Sure we're gonna have disagreements and not always, um, come up with the same answers to every situation. But, um, ultimately we respect each other's, um, opinions and actually, one thing I learned from another, some colleagues of ours that are another husband and wife agency, and how they really figured out, you know, what's my lane? What are the things that I'm in charge of? And I think we've done a really good job of that. Like in sales, for example. Ultimately I will decide our pricing. Now that doesn't mean I won't have a discussion with him and talk through, okay, we're gonna do this great big new project that we've never done before. You're gonna have to estimate on the production side what that's going to entail, like how many hours, what kinds of other expenses might be involved. I'm gonna need some feedback before I determine our final pricing. But ultimately, at the end of the day, I, I decide the pricing and, and he's totally fine with that. Then likewise, when it comes to the more technical side of things, any sort of software that we're buying, anything, uh, technical equipment, anything like that, I defer to him. I'm like, you know what? That's all you, you, you figure it out. Do what you think is best. We've tried really hard to, to set things up that way where, okay, this is your lane. You get to make that final decision. It gets a little bit tricky, things like hiring and firing, because those are, are, those are 50/50 and we do those together. So far we've, we've mostly been on the same page, but every once in a while there's those few situations that come up that don't really fall in either of our lanes and we just have to figure it out. But yeah, ultimately it's, it's worked out well for us.
Russel:Good. Well, that's always good to hear. It seems like one of those things it can strengthen or it can go the other direction. Glad to hear you're on the, on the positive side. I love that, you know, staying in your lane and right, that can be whether, whether you're married to your business partner or not, just how important it is to really be specific and intentional about what the lane is. When you come together and when you've, when you have your own kind of autonomy and, uh, authority or however you wanna look at that. But having that communication and really, uh, coming to terms on what that looks like, I can see where that has been effective. I'm always curious, do you have like a, it's not, it's not weird if it works like, any hacks that like you've just had to put on place like, we will not talk about business at the dinner table or just anything like that, that's also made this work for you guys?
Stacey:No, I, as, as much as we would like to say that we try to leave work at the office, we've never been able to, to accomplish that. As far as like the secret sauce of how it works, um, I mean, other than, yeah, other than stay in your lane. I'm not sure that I have the, the magical answer for that.
Russel:Yeah, I was just looking for like the little hack or whatever, it sounds like you've just made it work through a great relationship, transparency, communication. and, When you think about the future, what are you, what are you trying to create? Whatcha trying to build here?
Stacey:Continue to grow with innovation and technology, and that is just changing all the time in terms of the specific types of website builders. We build in WordPress, but there's all sorts of different builders that you can, uh, use with that. We're constantly trying out new builders. We're big fans of the Bricks Builder right now in WordPress. We're constantly having to learn new builders and because they're just better and they're more customizable and they run quicker for the end user. They have better security. They, uh, just have better flexibility in what we're able to do. Really staying on top of what are some new options for us? What are some new ways that we can embrace technology and be more efficient with what we do? Just constantly learning all the time. It's like just when we get used to, uh, we had used the Avada builder for a long time in WordPress, and we loved it, and we thought it was the greatest thing. Well, we've had to evolve and it was the best at the time. But we've had several other builders since then. At the moment, Bricks is, seems to be one of the top end solutions and we're all still learning it and we're all teaching each other. Oh, I just learned this today. Oh, I just learned this. There's been a lot of that. Just embracing technology, trying to be more efficient in everything that we do is a big focus for us.
Russel:Especially con, our conversation earlier, AI tools are just moving a mile a minute and, and it's like every day there's a new leader in, in what's the best language processing tool, and then we get all these other kinda sub genres of AI, so that alone could probably be a full-time job of just keeping up what's latest and greatest with AI by itself. What is your favorite AI tool right now?
Stacey:We use ChatGPT, and so I know my husband's a really big fan of Claude that he's just discovered particularly for development, so he's, he's pretty excited about that one. He's really liking it for coding and development and it's helped him be able to create some really complex e-commerce solutions that we're working through. We've actually got a couple of websites right now with, we call'em Build a Bear, um, which is a type of, it's just sort of our internal name that we've given it, which means it's very, uh, very complex e-commerce. So if someone's buying this product, there's a lot of contingencies. First you choose your color, so then based on your color, now you have these options. Okay, so after that, now you have these options and it's, it's very complex.
Russel:Awesome. I'm not a developer, but I'll take his word for it. Last big question for you then, Stacey. Are entrepreneurs born or are they made?
Stacey:I can only speak for myself, and I'll say that I was made, if not forced into it.
Russel:I would agree with that. Maybe that needs to be a third option when I ask this question, are entrepreneurs born, made, or forced?
Stacey:I think it's different for everybody. I do believe there are people that are born to be entrepreneurs. I don't think that was me. I've had to grow into the role, but very happy how it's, how it's ended up.
Russel:If people wanna know more about Musimack Marketing, where can they go?
Stacey:Helpmeshineonline.com.
Russel:Oh, okay. Unexpected URL there. Dropping that little nugget. That is easy. Helpmeshineonline.com. Thank you so much, Stacey, for taking the time to share your journey today. The highs and lows, the, the tips to making it all work with your husband, how we use this crazy thing like AI technology. So many wonderful nuggets to munch on, and again, really appreciate you taking the time to share it.
Stacey:Thanks Russel.
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Stacey:One thing that happened to us very early on, and I'm trying to think back if we even actually had a sales contract at that time, and maybe that was the impetus to even get that going. We had a client who, he was a, he was a young guy trying to start this new business. He hadn't really thought through his business very well. He was a referral and so I, I trusted that, that he was legit. He had us build a website for him and he had a drone business, and this is when drones were still pretty darn new. A lot of people didn't really fully know what they were and why you would need them, so he was doing like drone video kinds of projects was, was his business. It should have been a red flag to us as he was explaining that he had spent like his whole life savings buying this$1,500 drone. And anyway, What ended up happening was we built this website and he loved it. He was super happy with it. As we were getting ready to collect the final payment right before we launched, he's like, yeah, you know, I decided I'm just not gonna do this business anymore. I am like, okay. Obviously we can't launch the site, um, without, you know, the final payment. He's like, oh yeah, yeah, that's fine. Just don't launch the site. He didn't make the final payment. I think what happened was something happened to his drone, it crashed, or it needed a new part, or it needed, or he lost it, or who knows what. I think something happened to that drone and he couldn't afford to replace it, is my best assumption. That he didn't, you know, think all that through. We built this whole website that we didn't get to collect the final payment on. I think we did have some kind of an agreement, probably not the, the level of contracts that we have now. I think we had something in place, but he didn't have any money. It wouldn't have made, like, how are we gonna go after this guy? We just had to eat it and let it go. But that was like a real eye-opener. What in the world just happened here?
Russel:All contracts, all need for contracts and, and probably even rules in the world. It makes me think of, I was in Air Force, air traffic control, and pretty much half the things I had to say as an air traffic controller was because somebody had made a mistake prior to that. To this point, little fun fact in the world of air traffic control, when you're telling a plane to land, you have to say check wheels down. You can imagine why that is now a rule in, uh, air traffic control language, um, to remind an airplane pilot to check that their wheels are down, um, because a plane is in fact landed. Anyway, we can only live and learn. That's all that to say.