Payments Challenges for Creative Professionals

In this episode, co-hosts Douglas Duvall of Motif Media and Eric Wing of Darby Digital dive into the complex world of creative professional billing, payment strategies, and client relationship management. They share personal experiences, insights, and practical advice on handling invoicing, dealing with late payments, and maintaining professional boundaries in creative service industries.

Invoicing and Payment Processes (0:00)
Handling Delinquent Payments (4:47)
Milestone Invoicing and Client Relationships (8:12)
Watermarking and Client Respect (8:50)
Contracts and Legal Considerations (25:16)
Final Thoughts on Payment and Client Relations (26:49)
AI and SEO Impact on Branding (34:08)
Closing Remarks and Future Focus (36:39)

📌 Topics Covered:
Invoicing processes, payment tracking, milestone billing, client communication, contract enforcement, creative professional challenges, payment follow-up strategies, budget discussions, mental health in business,

📢 Key Takeaways:
Upfront budgeting, clear communication, milestone payments, maintaining leverage, respecting creative work, mental health priority, proactive invoicing, client relationship management, setting expectations, professional boundaries

🚀 Don’t forget to like, subscribe, and hit the notification bell for more insights into the world of creative professionals and those who work with them!

🔗 Connect with Us:

Douglas Duvall

motifmedia.com for high-end video production.

Eric Wing

withdarby.com for digital marketing and web development services.

Transcript

0:00

Don't be scared to say, This is what my dollar is. Yeah, like at the top of the conversation, it could end the conversation, which is saving you time and them time, or it could be like, Okay, if that's what we're working in, then it kind of changes the whole dynamic, and all the save people time and energy and less headache and heartache. I Welcome to Creative context. We're having conversations about professionals who work with creatives. Today we're going to talk a little bit about payment, you know, scheduled payments, retainers, and maybe even tracking down someone who's been ducking your phone calls and emails with a late payment. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna kick this right to you, Eric, walk me through your kind of process if someone hasn't paid you promptly, and then there's probably a nice little buffer zone of like, hey, stuff happens. Walk me through that kind of situation. Yeah, yeah. We have two different ways that we invoice. There's just your standard one off. Here's your one time invoice. We use a tool that will allow us to see when the invoice has been looked at. So I do recommend that if anyone is is shopping for an accounting tool, we use Wave apps, which is, it's been around for quite a while now, but it has some some built in features that allow you to to, sort of like, have a mind to the etiquette of invoicing. And so yeah, one of them is you can see when it's been opened, or if it's just never been opened, and then you can, you can kind of take your next step according to that information. So yeah, we have one time, one time invoices, and then we have recurring invoices. Those recurring invoices could be monthly, quarterly, somewhere, annually, and for for the majority of them, there's a credit card on file, because I've learned the hard way of not having credit cards on file, and what that looks like. But periodically, you know, we'll have, we'll have someone that, you know, we currently have a marketing services client that also we do a lot of high end development work for them as well. And we were tagging that credit card for both the marketing and the dev work monthly, as you know, on schedule. And then we received a phone call or an email asking that we not use the credit card on file for the development work, but it was okay for the marketing work. And and then they, we were told that, you know, oh, we'll be on a net 30 so you can expect to be paid in the 30 days after receiving the invoice. And that was all fine, you know? But we're currently on a 90 day with them. An extra 60 days have gone in there, and so, so generally, you know what we would do? I just have an honest, honest conversation, like, are you disputing this invoice, or can you give me an update, right? Those, those are, like, they're tepid, right? They're not, it's not like a warm it's not like you're coming in hot, or you're being kind of a pushover. But it's acknowledging, I think that's the big thing, is just acknowledging the fact that, like, there was an agreement in place, and that agreement has been broken. And, you know, the subcontractor has been paid out of no budget because we, we fronted the sub to get them paid. And so we, we basically are in the hole for that particular month and and we are in the midst of another big development push for them, which means another invoice is going to be coming, and they it's when they start piling up that makes me nervous, you know, yeah, so. So I think just with you know, you learn over the years what, what tact to take, how forceful to be. I'm curious, before I get into, like, the delinquents we've got, we've got a lot of delinquents in our accounting software. But I'm curious what it might look like, you know, on on your side, like I am. I actually don't know how invoicing works in, like, the photo, video world, so I'm curious about that. Yeah, it works a lot of different ways, but I'll only speak to how we do it, and I think we are kind of shifting. Currently, we don't invoice until everything's done, a couple clients now have sort of shifted to as soon as we've done a shoot. I. We invoice even before we do that, it like we invoice for the shoot time, which I'm thinking is kind of more the route we're gonna go, Yeah, but generally speaking, we've just invoice for shoot edit, kind of you've got the deliverables night pay us sort of thing. And, you know, knock on wood, we've been incredibly fortunate. There's very, very few instances and nothing a phone call or text message like, hey, sorry, you know, I opened it, I was in the car, you know, whatever. And they usually turn around right after that phone call and pay it Yeah, the only times I've ever had issues when I was freelancing and very early on, yeah. And there's only one instance I can think of where it was like, you know, I kind of had a conversation. Like, you just said, like, you know, are you disputing this? Like, what's what are we doing? Like, you have the video, you have everything. Like, it's been a couple months, and they're like, Oh, well, we just, we don't think we're gonna post the video, you know, or whatever, you know. We just, we're not thrilled with anything. And it's like, well, we could have had this conversation two months ago, that could have made it right, and now you've kind of intentionally dragged this out. And this was, again, this is probably 10 years ago. I think they did eventually pay it. It was probably another few months of back and forth, but, and I actually worked with them again, and I just charged him up front, yeah, but So thankfully, I've really haven't had too much issue with any of that, and it's usually like a quick phone call or conversation like QuickBooks. I don't know if you've any experience with QuickBooks, it's a wonky software as big of a company as into it, and QuickBooks is it's wonky, like, sometimes things get sent, sometimes they don't. There is, there's a similar functionality to what you're talking about, where you can see, if someone's opened it, how many times they've opened it, all that. And like the dates, literally, the dates and times. But you know, like, if they update the email for who it's being sent to. Sometimes it reverts back and it gets sent to the old email. So it's just like hanging out in the ether, and it never went, you know, I mean, like, I don't know if anyone else has had this experience with QuickBooks, but it just seems to not operate super cleanly. But, yeah, so we so I think we are transitioning more to, like, once the shoots done, we're gonna kind of bill segmented when the shoots done, invoice, when the edits done, invoice, and it makes it so it's not such a large invoice when it comes time for everything to be due, and then we are in a couple retainers for podcasting, because it's like, we know what we're going to do that month. Yeah, I was going to ask you about the sort of milestone invoicing that's something that we do on web development projects. You know, we'll have maybe three payments or four payments depending on the complexity and how big the project is. And the reason I started doing that is because it's twofold. The on our side, there's, there's a bit of a when you, when you reach a milestone, and you, you earn the opportunity to invoice again, there's a real sort of forward momentum energy that happens there, right? Like, okay, all right, we just completed that section on time. We invoiced. We're moving on to the next one. We're chasing another invoice. We're chasing another invoice. It's good motivator. We've had clients pay us in full upfront, and we still do the work, and we still do a good job, but it's not as motivating, because you've already gotten the prize, right? You know? And so, wow, yeah, we'll take the 10 grand up front or whatever that's that's a nice crash infusion. But guess what? We're gonna still be working on this project four or five months from now. We won't be seeing any more, you know, little carrots dangling from the string there. So, so, yeah, that we try to stay away from that. But we, you know, we want the money. So if you're willing to give it all up front, we'll take it, you know, then we'll, we'll deal with that on our end. But the the other side of the milestone payments that I, that I find good, is that you maintain a level of leverage. That's the part that I learned the hard way. When we launch a website and we're not hosting it and we've not received final payment yet, there's no leverage zero, yeah, it's like, oh, we'll pay when we're ready. Or, you know. Yeah, we'll get around to it. But when we say, Okay, here's the final invoice. Once this is paid, we'll be moving into the launch process, and you can expect the site to be launched this time tomorrow, if you paid today, that type of thing. Now the the carrots on the other stick, it's on the it's on the client side, where, like, Okay, well, that's we really want our site to be live, so let's just take care of this final payment, and that, that tends to work pretty well for us. Now, if we're hosting the website, we maintain leverage, right? So we, we will launch the site ahead of that final payment, but then we can say, you know, oh, you know, it's been X number of weeks, months, whatever. You know, we won't be able to keep your website live without that final payment, or we're happy to revert it to your previous website. And then we essentially keep those files until they're ready to make that final payment. So it's we, I think, as to stay out of like a legitimate litigious, litigious, you know, state of mind, I think maintaining, maintaining leverage of some kind, is really, as a pre, as a creative Pro, from a freelancing standpoint, or whatever. It's really, I wish someone had told me that early on, yeah, yeah. I used to, I really haven't done this in a while, but back when I was on my own, I used to watermark my videos, yeah, with, like, you know, in the literally in the middle, like a 20% opacity. And then once everything went through File Export, I wouldn't do that with someone like, I, you know, you know no have a working relationship with but it does give you that like, hey, there's not much you could do with that video, yeah, yeah, yeah. Now with AI, though they could probably just remove watermark from video, yep, no. In fact, I was just reading an article about that. It's happening with like Getty Images. People are able to remove that Getty watermark. People have been able to do that for a long time. Yeah, Getty Images thing, yeah, if you're a talented photoshopper, it's, yeah, not that big of a challenge. But yeah, AI is definitely taking a stab at that stuff. Yeah, I'm curious if we don't, if you don't mind going back to what you had said about, you know, if you deliver a I'm trying to think of this has happened to us, maybe on the logo design, maybe on, like, design work, where, you deliver the final product that's to spec, it's to scope, and they decide they don't want to use it, and therefore they don't feel they have to pay for it, that that just seems wrong on a lot of levels. And I think it comes back to, I think we were talking before the call, sort of this lack of respect sometimes, that that people have for the work that we do, like, irregardless of it being used. You know, the hours were still you like, we can't, we can't get our hours back working on whatever we delivered. Does that happen to you often? Or maybe the way that you've structured the business now, it's not so frequent. Yeah, that was, yeah, that was a long time. It really has not happened since then. Yeah, in this particular individual I, I like the person, like, on a personal level, I, from a business perspective, obviously, we didn't see eye to eye, even though I worked with him again. But yeah, it was definitely a lack of respect. I think he felt like he shouldn't have to pay for what we were doing, even if he liked it. Or I think he did end up posting that thing he said he didn't like he was just kind of drawn at straws to get me off his back or something. And I know he's since sort of made a deal with a, kind of a bigger company that sort of does the media for free, and they kind of use him as, like, talent in a way, yeah, which is strong word, capital, lowercase t on that. But like I said, I don't wish anything ill will to him. He just didn't want to pay for what we did. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which I get fine, and he's found his way to get it without paying for it at whatever cost that comes out of him. I don't, I don't know. Yeah, it's, it's, I think it's something I can kind of weed out kind of early on. I don't know. It just hasn't, hasn't come across me since then, yeah, yeah. It's, I think some of the stuff has handled in, in, in, how, how well we handle our contracts. And I think we may have touched on that in a different episode, but, you know, from my perspective, it's like, yeah, we can put all. Us in a contract or a scope of work that's signed off on and whatnot, but the contract's only good as is it's enforceable. So if someone owes us $2,500 they know how. People know how much it costs to to sue someone, right to go to go to small claims court or whatever, and so it's like, I made the mistake. I made the fatal error one time this guy owed me, and we were friendly, like, actually, I think I met him, kind of borrowing from our recent, recent podcast episode about about referral marketing and B and I met this guy at BNI, and we did a lot of work together. He had multiple brands. His family owned a hotel in Belize, and we're doing some work on that and their branding. And then he had a construction business, and we were doing a ton of work for him there as well. And then he just stopped paying. One day, he just stopped paying, and we continued to do the work, which was a lesson learned. The invoices stacked up. And then finally, he was in my office one day, and I was like, I still don't know why I said this. I said, I said, so what about, you know, what about the money that you owe? Like, how do you want to handle that? We could barter? I was this was, like, I was super young in my career at this point, so I'm like, throwing ideas out there. Like, you know, we could barter, maybe do some things for me to make up the difference, or whatever. And then we were, like, chatting, and I eventually said, you know, I guess technically, if you're not going to pay, there's literally nothing I can do. As soon as I said, saw that. You know, when sometimes you see, when you say something to somebody, you see in their eye, like, like you gave them an idea? Yeah, he never did. And, like, it was, it was correct. Like, what am I going to what am I going to do? Yeah, we can. I did hire a there is, you may already know this, but there are companies out there that will do that. Like, hard call for you. Like, though they'll call up and they'll just hound the person, email, phone call, they'll ask for the money, then they take a cut. They take a percentage of however much they can recover for you, the guy would not budge. And, in fact, nobody on that list budged. There were like five people that she was calling, and none of them budged. And so yeah, this this idea of like, we feel protected by a contract, but we have to be ready to execute that con. We have to be ready to, like, hold that contract, follow through with the contract, or hire an attorney to help us do that work. And I don't know if it's just out of intimidation or or what it is. But I've never gone that route, and we've eaten 10s of 1000s of dollars over 17 years of people doing this type of stuff to us. So have you ever needed to deal with that? Like, get a, get something like a, like a, like a bill collector involved, or attorney or anything? No, no. There was this past year. Over this past year we were, there was one thing we were kind of concerned. There was a veiled threat, kind of made. It never resulted in anything. Everybody made good on what, you know, payment, us fulfilling what we were going to do. But there was a bit of a, yeah, I read between the lines. And it wasn't an amount of money or anything. I think it would have come to a legal thing. To your point, like, I mean, the time and investment in a lawyer would have 10x what this amount was so but there were, that's the only recent thing, and in the past, never gotten to that point. There's a handful of things that were under a couple$100 when I was early on that I just sort of let go. And I didn't, I didn't push for whatever reason. And it goes back to a similar theme with referral marketing. There is when there's skin in the game for others that are involved, right? Like reputation is usually that skin that what you just said, brings that to mind. So yeah, a lot of it is just in that initial, you know, we sometimes, as just humans, sometimes we allow our brain to overrule our intuition, and sometimes our intuition is correct about an account that may have the potential to go sideways. And we kind of see that that like Amber ish, reddish flag. But we think that the work is going to be really fun and interesting, so we take it anyway, and then we we find ourselves maybe a month or so later, like, Ah, okay, here's that gut feeling that I had, you know. So I think, I think just being present with that is helpful sometimes in these situations. And I think it just really comes. Down to communication, you know, yeah, I just wanted a thought on that. I think we were I've gotten to the point now where, you know, money is just awkward to talk about. I don't know if it's a cultural thing, if it's what it is, but nobody likes to talk about like what they earn, nobody wants to talk about what they charge. Nobody wants to talk about what their budget is. But yet, all this money is being exchanged somehow still and right. So I've gotten to the point, and I did it. I had a call on Monday with someone who's considering having us come in to replace their current marketing firm, and we were going, we're going around in circles with the money. And I finally said, you know, listen, are you comfortable to sharing what your budget is, because that will make this conversation a lot easier right now. And he he shared his budget, and then we had this. It just opened up this, this like opportunity to be really transparent with each other. And I think the same thing can apply on the back end. Hey, listen, we have an agreement. You know, we delivered on that. Curious about when you're going to be making that payment, you know, being having that confidence, because, listen, you earned the right to follow up on that invoice like you did the work they didn't pay. It's the transaction is not complete. And I think sometimes I still feel intimidated to well, give them another week. I'll give them another week, you know, in meanwhile, they're gonna just take advantage of those, take advantage of those, and then they're gonna add their own weeks onto okay, I mean, I'm gonna pay but, you know, I'm not gonna pay today. I'll pay the next week, like, he'll just be happy to get the money whenever he gets it, that type of thing, right? But I think just holding your ground and and asking when you can expect it. Can I expect it today? Yeah, right, okay, or not. Instead of saying, like, Oh, can you pay soon? Would you go to pay by the end of the month? No, can you pay today? You know, yeah, that type of, you know, language, the community, yeah, the communication, definitely, and I've definitely been in, you know, situations where, you know, flip the flip, this a little bit like, where you know someone that a subcontractor I work with, you know, like I was telling you about QuickBooks being wonky, like, we We got, like, I don't know, several weeks, several invoices got, like, lost in the ether, and like, they piled up. And I once, I once, I he literally, like, called me, like, Hey, what's up? Man, like, I know you're, you're busy blah, blah, blah. I'm like, I am sorry. Man, like, I did not know this was happening. And, like, we, we got on top of it, and whatever, and we had a conversation, and, you know, it's rolling again, but like, thankfully, you know, he unders, because we always paid, like, the second, basically the second he sends it, yeah, and then when it the problem happened, he was like, just like, hey, I just want to know, like, and I was quickly to be like, yeah, we're It is top of mind. It's all I'm thinking about until we get this kind of sorted out. Yeah, and, you know, I feel like I had some sleepless nights there. Like, can't believe that happened. Like, I feel sick. And you know, for someone to intentionally do that to someone is I don't have the stomach for it. Yeah, I don't know. And it sucks, you know, there's definitely been times where, like, something like that happens and cash flow is tight. And then, you know, I try to always, if that happens, I try to skip my payroll, you know, and help whatever's going on. And it sucks, you know, I try to avoid that at all costs, and it really bothers me when it has to happen. But of course, I just want to get everybody paid what they're supposed to be paid for, what they've done for me, right? Yeah, and you know, when someone intentionally kind of betrays that like happens, but I'll believe that stuff happens, and I'm totally aware of that, because it's happened to me. It's definitely a tough thing. Like you said, nobody wants to talk about money, but it's what makes everything go around, yeah? If almost keep those cards real close to the chest, yeah, yeah. You know in I know we're we're close to time here, but I want to share one other example, for anyone that's finding this conversation interesting, which is, you know, sometimes you just have to be willing to cut bait leave that money on the table. Because last year, we left about$7,400 on the table. I decided that my mental health was more, was worth more than $7,000 and this family business, I still feel the temperature rising up into my head when I just think about them. So clearly it's the wound is a little fresh still, but they. This is the this is the warning that I'm giving anyone that's out there, especially with family. Found family, family run businesses that suck you into their family drama, and then they they see you as someone that can be taken advantage of, similar to like, how they may take advantage of their daughter who's the manager or their other daughter who's like the designer for the work that they do right, and unrealistic demands on the hoops to jump through in order to get paid was their stick, and I have a hunch they do this with all their vendors. The mom was the purse holder, and you she did not accept emails, she didn't accept phone calls, and she did not accept text messages. She only would meet in person to review the reports that she had no idea what she was looking at, and at that time, if I'm lucky, I would leave with a check. Now you can imagine, with that such a stringent process of getting paid, how many invoices stack up. Oh, I'm in Florida this week. Sorry, I can't meet I'll be back in three weeks. Oh, I'm back, but I don't feel well. I'm having surgery like this stuff would go on and on and on and to the point where, like I said, we were, you know, always two, three months behind with them and and then finally, it just got to the point where I just walked away and we just, you know, there's a lot of details about sharing here, but you know, the amount of stress of trying to appeal to their antiquated ways of getting paid, which was clearly set up in a way to it worked exactly the way that they were hoping it would work. I mean, they lost our services, which were helped them grow their business quite significantly over a five year period, you know, but, you know, it worked. The this crazy, convoluted process. Eventually I gave up and, you know, and she was super litigious. She this was a red flag I ignored, because I was young in my I was young like they were a long, time client, and so they were one of our first 10 clients probably ever. And I remember her saying how she sued the previous vendor that I was taking over for, and I didn't see that as a red flag. I was like, okay, too bad for them. Now I get the account, you know. But no, I'll never be sued or, like, I'll never deal with any of this. And here we are, like, I should have been suing her, you know? And it's just that's not why I'm in business, to be chasing and losing sleep and having stress and anxiety because people don't want to pay it just doesn't, you know, that's not why we're here, at least not I'm here, right? So there probably are firms out there like mine that chase people for seven, $8,000 or$1,500 and I just, I'm just hopeful that that doesn't have to enter into the into the business flow for us. Yeah, what an interesting dynamic, only in person, meetings, yep, yep. Like, how do you even set that up? Through the daughter, because she doesn't take phone calls, texts, emails, and the daughter would only text. It's like, written a letter and, like, the dad was the coolest one in the group, but he didn't. He had the the parents were divorced, but they co ran this business. You can only imagine, like, the, like, the levels of drama that I treachery, you know, and then, yeah, so I'll tell you more about that one over coffee or tea sometime, but, but, yeah, it's a these are, I'm hopeful that that people are finding some value in the things that like, kind of like the bumps that we've taken over the years. If, if I could have listened to some of these stories early on, maybe I could have avoided some of these situations. So, right? Yeah, I think it's worth saying, like, 95% of the time everybody's like, pays on times, you know, yeah, you know, I mean, like, it's, we're talking about a very small percentage, yeah, you know, instances here, but part of, part of the equation, yeah, sure, yeah, if you like, it is definitely part of the grind. It's like, the grind to get the job, grind to complete the job, and then grind to get paid for the job. It's like, you know, if you don't like the grind, maybe, maybe you want to think twice before you hang up your own shingle. Sorry, yeah, you know, yeah, it is. That's true, definitely true, as we sort of. To come to a close here you have any final, final thought on the matter? Yeah, I think, I think whether it's through sort of like mock conversations internally with your team or with yourself, or you take some sort of training or something, but become comfortable talking about money on both ends. Be comfortable discussing, asking the client what your budget is. I have, like, there we both have contemporaries that won't, that won't work with someone who doesn't come with a budget, like, if you're just coming with like, Well, I think I can afford then that means you don't really have a budget, and that means that you're maybe not that sophisticated in your management of your business, right? So I think I'm not, I'm not advocating for people to be like, Hey, what's your budget? Oh, you'd have a budget. All right. Well, I'm not going to work with you, but I think it is one of the considerations. When you're trying to rule out a prospect, right? You want to work with sophisticated clients, then you need to work with clients that have someone that oversees a budget, and there's a line item for the work that you are looking to perform. And if that's the case, then money really should be an easy, a quick checkbox on the questions, because they're like, Yeah, I've got a $10,000 budget, and I can allocate 3000 of this for work, the work that we're looking to hire for. Imagine that. Imagine every conversation went that easy, and then you can say, yeah, we can do that for $3,000 or, in fact, we could do more than I thought we could do for that. If that's a larger budget than I thought you would may have right, like it just, you know, but if you can't have that conversation, you're discussing, you're creating a proposal based off historical information. You're researching the company to figure out what their revenue might be and what they might be able to afford comp companies. It's just so my thought is, become comfortable talking about money, asking what budgets, and then be comfortable with, with following up with, hey, when can I expect that final payment, or that next payment? Can I? Can I receive it today? Yeah, yeah. If you're, if you're someone calling, you know, looking to work with a creative Don't, don't be scared to say, This is what my dollar is, yeah, like at the top of the conversation, because that that could, either it could end the conversation, which is saving you time and them time, or it could be like, Okay, if that's what we're working in, then it kind of changes the whole dynamic, and all the save people time and energy and less headache and heartache. Yes, yeah, yeah. Thanks for, thanks for sometimes I go down the track of just focusing on the creative professionals. But of course, yeah, the business owners, listening, people looking to do work with creative professionals. Yeah, do a little bit of pre work to figure out what you can afford and what you're in, what you want to or, yeah, yeah, exactly. Like, yeah. And what the, I think, how stretchy is that, you know, like, Yeah, can you, can you flex it by $500 to get the full package right? And that type of thing, having a ballpark, everyone asks us, like, what's, what's a ballpark? You know, like, we, we have the just the same right to ask, Hey, what's your ballpark budget? And why don't we ask that question more often? You know? Yeah, it really, it kind of does stem from the client. I think because, like, they can ask us for a ballpark, and it's like, we're basing it off big assumptions. Yeah, right, not. And, like, if you say, Oh, I have a $500 budget versus 5000 and you have two very different goals for those two different budgets. Like, it's two very different conversations, or, versus maybe a 50,000 right? Yeah. Like, those are, those are all very, very different things. But so yeah, food, food for thought, anything. And to you guys, it's been a week, but to Eric and I, it's only been a day. Anything, anything interesting you've observed in the last 24 hours from a content perspective, yeah, we're learning about AI, and it's in its impact on SEO, like SEO plus AI, we're calling it and this, there's this concept of the known brand that everyone that's your logo, your website, your colors, Your voice, like, that's the known brand. But AI also is seeing three other levels of your brand. It's called, there's your late, latent brand, Shadow brand, and I forgot the first one. There's another one down there. It's fresh information, but the latent. Brand is fascinating. Just think about all those like terms and conditions that nobody reads that, that AI reads about your brand. So everything that's being said in there, it's it's everything people are talking about on Reddit, YouTube, all the YouTube comments, all that stuff is your latent brand. And you might be surprised if, if search results within an AI tool don't deliver the deliver the result that you would expect, because it's also considering this latent brand in this other thing called Shadow brand, which is the scary one. That's the that's the leaked IP, it's the leaked internal documents. It's all that stuff that's on the internet that AI can find as well. So, so yeah, we're, we're gearing up to enter this new world of of AI SEO, and we're already starting to sell the service to to new SEO clients. So that's been a big focus, big these last few weeks. Yeah. What about you that's super interesting. Like I said, I picked back up Tom's book, my big toe, yeah, and I'm finally into the second book, where things have gotten interesting very quickly. The first book was sort of a slog, but just it's kind of his backstory or whatever. So yeah, diving into that. Yeah, more deeply. So I'm Doug Duvall. I am one of the CO owners of motif media. We do high end video production in the Boston, Greater Boston area. We do travel for the right clients, and we do some podcast production as well. Yep, I'm Eric wing. I own Darby digital since 2008 and we were basically a technology company with we specialize in web development, marketing services, AI consulting. And, yeah, we have clients kind of spread around the country, most of them in the Boston area, and looking for currently booking speaking engagements for AI so and willing to travel to that awesome. Yeah, all right, well, we will catch you all next week. You the supervisor.