From Early Web to AI Strategy: Tyler Norris on Building, Failing & Staying Curious | Ep 21

Well, thanks for making the journey over here, Tyler. Hey, thanks. It was a long one. Man. Woo. Woo. Made it though. Two blocks? You're pretty lazy. I can't believe you drive to work every day. No joke. I should not leave. The traffic's terrible. And then between here and there, Jesse was in my way, and it took forever to get around him. Stinking Jesse. Life in a small town. You just get really mad when you just hit one stop light. You're like, God. Oh, my gosh. Yeah. What is happening to my life? I used to have the office in our building where we live, you know, down on the first floor. So it used to be a commute right down the stairs. Yeah. For years. To the office. Yeah. For several years. Yeah. You hadn't driven for how many years, probably? I know. Quite a while. Yeah. Isn't that wild? Yeah. That is crazy. Several years. Yeah. Yeah. All right. What's up, guys? I'm Samuel McVeigh with the Killer Growth Podcast. And today, my guest is the Killer Growth Podcast producer, Tyler Norris. Hey, guys. Chief operating officer of Killer Growth. Does that work? Yeah. I was thinking about it the other day. Yeah. Operating officer. That's cool, too. I was like, I don't know. I ran across that one the other day. Strategy officer. Chief growth strategy. I don't know. You could make all sorts of letters and things. CSO. CSO. CSO. WXYZ. Yeah. Sounds like a TV show. CSO. Yeah. I like it. Well, you can be whatever you want to be. Hey, thanks. That's awfully nice of you. Yeah. I don't like putting a label on things. I'm going to stop there. That's a rabbit hole. Yes. But, yeah. Thanks for hanging out. Yeah. This is fun. This has been fun. It has been fun. This is interesting. Yeah. 20 episodes in. I'll be 21. We're officially legal after today. 21. 21. Yeah. So, some different beverages. Different. Yeah. Form Energy are going to be on the podcast soon. Yeah. Yeah. There you go, Brad. Thanks for the sign. Yeah. Thank you. This is awesome. Man. It was on the podcast. Great guest. Mm-hmm. And has been furnishing us with some great drinks. Energy drinks. From Form Energy. Yeah. And I'm not usually an energy drink guy, but those are good. Those are dangerously good. Yeah. I'm rocking the grape today. He loaded us up with a grape. Nice. You like it? Is that a good one? I do like it. Yeah. That would be good. I'm going to try that one next. I just don't understand how it doesn't taste like an energy drink. Yeah. It kind of tastes like juice. Yeah, exactly. That's the dangerous part. Yeah. Yeah. It's like, how is there 200 milligrams in here? Yeah. I don't know. They're good, though. Ooh. Yeah. And it says 0% juice. Yeah. So, what does that mean? How are they doing that? Brad, we have questions. Yeah. Here we go. You know the drill. Do I need to ask the first question? I don't think you do. Close off. Oh, no, wait. Not that. No, no, no. No, no, no, no, no. That's Killer Girls After Dark. Right. That's right. It's a different podcast we haven't released yet. I do. Yeah. So, let's hear the story from the beginning, wherever you want to start, all the way to you here today. Yeah. Thanks. Yeah. So, that's a good question. I guess back in high school. I went to Eldorado. Graduated in 2000. People always talk about their college experience, right, when they went to college. I did do college, which was a little surprising. I didn't like school very much. I just didn't like it. And I had a good experience with school and had good friends and all of that stuff. But, like, I didn't want to be there. I always wanted to do, like, I wanted to build something. I always wanted to build things. I just grew up around that environment, I think. My dad was always, he owned his own business. Both of my grandfathers owned their own business. Oh, both sides. And so, I was just around that. Both sides. Yeah, did. And so, I just grew up around that. And I wanted to, I saw them building things, and I wanted to build things instead of helping somebody else manage something they built. So, even back then, I saw that. And I felt like being stuck in high school, you learn good things. And I see that now. But it was hard to want to be stuck inside that, those confines when I knew that wasn't going to probably benefit me a ton going forward in life. And I can appreciate that more now. But it was tough back then. Yeah. And so, out of high school, going to college, it was tricky to also want to do that. But I knew I wanted an associate's degree because that seemed like a wise thing to have. And my parents wanted me to have that. And so, I wanted to honor that. So, you did more than six hours, or sorry. Yes. Two out of six weeks. Yes. At Tyler Brickley's college. The other Tyler. The other Tyler. You went to college for six weeks, but only attended two of those six weeks. Yes. Which, when you know Tyler Brickley, it's like, oh, that checks out. Yeah. Yes. I went over the course of three years because I was busy doing other things in the midst of it. But started out going down a networking path, like doing networking. IT. IT stuff. Yeah. So, I was like, I don't think this is going to go away anytime soon. This seems like a pretty solid career path if I do this. But yeah, my first class around that was routers. And not like the little ones in your house, but like the big ones that are in data centers. And I don't know if it's still the case today, but back then, you entered it all by text. Like, you configured them all with text. And a few weeks of that, and I was like, this is terrible. Yeah. I've made a bad decision. What am I doing with my life? But in that class, I met somebody else who also liked to build things. And he ended up being my first business partner. His name was Andrew McCloud. Super sharp guy. Met him there, and we both started talking about just our desire for business and the desire to build something. And talking about websites. And that, again, that didn't seem like it was going to go away anytime soon. And there was a demand for that. So, he and I started kicking around the idea of doing a business around doing websites for clients and for companies. And what year was this? This would have been 2000. Fall of 2000. Yeah. So, building websites then was very different than it is today. Yeah. Very different. Still a very new thing. And a lot of people were still skeptical of the Internet, obviously, with the bubble and everything. But, yeah, we felt like there was something there. So, at the end of 2000 into 2001, he went back to D.C. because his mom and stepdad lived in Virginia out there around the D.C. area. But we stayed connected, kept talking about it. And then I was trying to think of the order of events. But at one point in 2001, early on, I think, he gave me a call and said, hey, I've got a client who wants a website. Do you want to go ahead and try to do this thing? And I was like, yeah, let's give it a shot. Let's see what happens. And that's kind of what kicked it all off. I was trying to remember which client was the original one. I know that there was one early on that started it that was for a housing, like a gated housing community. This wasn't like a small one, but like a like celebrities had homes in this. Yeah, I remember you showed me. I think you were like looking that up one time when you were talking to me about it. Yeah, yeah. I was trying to remember like how far back that was. It's all 25 years ago. It's all so muddy in my mind. But I remember that was one of the first ones. And his mom had a house in this housing community. So that's how he made the connection, I think, and got into it. But, yeah, that job, it was for a website we were going to do for them. It was for a Flash website. I remember. I remember Flash, like Adobe Flash and all the cool. It had all the movement and everything, and that was such a big deal back then. And so we were going to build it in Flash. And I was trying to remember the number. I think that it was like the number that's been on my mind for years was $16,800 is what we quoted on this job. And we got it. This was one of the early ones. Yeah, this was 26 years ago. Yeah, yeah, which was great. I mean, that's still a chunk for a website today. But that, especially back then, was a big number. And I remember. I think that was the number. But the point of it was we were both like, oh, this could maybe work. This could maybe be a living. We could maybe actually make this thing work. And so, yeah, we did. Did for a while. Did for. I was trying. All of this is so muddy. But I think, like, for a good three years or so, we worked on websites together and building brands and kind of had an agency and that sort of thing. And I got to travel out to the East Coast to work with some clients up and down the East Coast. And we ended up doing an office in Kansas City. Also, we had a couple of sales guys in Kansas City at that office. I had a couple of good friends down here who did graphic design and programming for us for a little while. And, yeah, it was it was it was a lot of fun. I was trying to remember some stories from that. I remember one of them was the first time I went. Probably the first time I went out east was later in 2001. And I was like a Midwestern kid, 18 years old. Yeah. Yeah. Nineteen, I guess, at that time. And it never never traveled beyond, like, Denver, Colorado. Looking up the whole time. Yeah. Oh, yeah. It's like, wow, what did you know? I've never been never met people that far out on the coast. And we got to go to a gosh, Washington Redskins, who they were back then. Washington Redskins program game with the Philadelphia Eagles. We've been allowed to say there. I know that's what I'm like. I have to think about who they used to be. I have to censor this episode now. Yeah. It's like the Redskins. Yeah, I went to this game, spent the first quarter outside super cold. But Drew knew somebody who got us into a box seat. Oh, no. So we got to go spend the rest of the box seat. After that, the same guy got us into this VIP after party at the stadium. All right. Which was like 19. I know. I'm sure the minimum age is 21. And I drew was probably 20. And like it was it was crazy. It was so eye opening. I mean, all the there was a ton of fans, obviously, there afterwards. Several of the players were there afterwards. I remember the cheerleaders like did a big intro thing with all the players coming. I was like, what is this? Yeah. And we didn't go home till like one or two in the morning. And it's just eyes were opened and like, my goodness, this is a town of 12,000. I know. And Eldorado, Kansas to doing stuff like this. It was it was a wild experience and an intimidating experience. You know, just a whole different world that I'd never been never been around before. And how often did you go to the D.C. business partners? Usually every few months I would go out there. Yeah. Yeah. I would fly out there and spend some time spend some time working with him. But yeah. Yeah. And then I remembered we won a Microsoft small business contest at one point in time. Drew was it probably still is was an amazing salesman and could spin and pitch things really well. And I still don't know what he said to get us into this contest. But we won in this contest. It was like one hundred thousand dollars of equipment in consulting from Microsoft. Like they came to our Kansas City office film for the whole day. Wow. And I remember thinking, oh, gosh, they think we're much bigger than what we actually are. We had a handful of employees. I was like, what did he tell them to make this happen? And so we went there. Yeah. Yeah. And there's still I bet there's still a video floating around somewhere on the Internet of that whole experience that because Microsoft put together the whole video to try to promote like their small business suite and all the stuff they had. And yeah. Yeah. But there's a lot of wild, just wild experiences with that whole thing. But it eventually I think I think it was in 0 4. I got a call from Drew one evening and he said, hey, I've got somebody who's interested in buying the company. It's like, OK, cool. He's like, can you come out and meet them in a couple of days? Yeah, sure. I'll fly out there. And so I fly out, Drew and this other guy, which I won't say his name because it was not a good experience. I meet meet this guy and I just don't like him. I mean, he's a pretty prideful dude. It's yeah. And he pretty quickly tells that I don't like him. He doesn't like me. It's just it's not good. I remember he had Nokia. I know I'm such a horrible person. I mean, you don't you struggle with me most days. So I totally get it. But but I remember he had Nokia had this phone at the time. There was no iPhone yet. Nokia had this weird wide phone that opened up and had like a keyboard. Anyway, super expensive phone that he had that he was trying to show off. And I remember before even seeing it, I was like, this is kind of a stupid phone. I don't know why people have this thing. And I think it's just like a bragging thing. That's exactly what it was for him. Just the whole experience was bad. The whole trip out there was not good. I did not like the dude at all. And over the next few months, it just didn't go well. But I did go out there a couple more times and I got to visit because this guy owned a hosting company. And so his thought was, bring us in to be like a design web development arm for his hosting company, which would have added back. It'd be weird today to do that, but it was some value back then. Yeah. So I got to go and see actually be in data centers for the first time when this happened. And it was amazing. Yeah. I was like real new in 2004. Oh, yeah. And they were blowing up then, you know, and especially in Virginia. Virginia is still like the hub for a ton of data centers in that area because of all the fiber they had installed back in the 90s. I think that they were able to use. But anyway, it was eye opening to go into these data centers like back then. Google and Amazon didn't necessarily have their own at that point. So you would walk through these data centers and they had cages is what they called them. And we he had a cage in one of these where we had some servers. We probably got from that Microsoft small business most likely running in it. But you'd walk through and be like, OK, there's Amazon's cage. There's a ton of their servers. There's Google's cage. There's a bunch of their servers. It was just wild. And the HVAC, like for these places, you could drive cars through the ductwork. They were so huge up in the ceiling. Just an absolutely mind boggling experience. And it was like, I, I really this guy owned that. He didn't own that. He had space leased in there. For his hosting company that he was running his servers off of. Yes. And here in a few minutes, it'll make more sense why the data center part is fine. But I was eye opening and I was like, I've I really want to be a part or do something with one of these someday. Anyway. Yeah. Fast forward several months. I ended up walking away from the deal. Just told Drew and this other guy was that guy. I'm not a good fit. This doesn't work. He was already driving a wedge between Drew and I. The guy was sharp, very, very sharp. And he knew exactly what he was doing. And so, yeah, I broke ties with Drew at that point. About probably nine months later or so, I ended up getting an email or a phone call. One of the two from Drew and saying that he had cut ties with this guy. He was manipulating and doing a bunch of stuff. And yeah, it wasn't good. And he saw it. Yeah. And he and I did Drew and I did a couple more projects after that. But, yeah, I had always lived here, spent time out east. But I wanted to I saw the need for good Web development and design in this area also because there wasn't a lot of it. There were definitely some marketing agencies overall. But I remember I can't remember the name of the company. There was one Web company in Wichita that had a reputation for being one of the only ones there, but also not great customer service, not good output. And at the time I had two good friends here in Eldorado, Spencer Stewart, Garrett Clawson, who I'd done some ministry stuff. We were in a band like everybody was in a band back then, you know, did a band and was I don't remember what started it. But Spencer and I started talking about, well, we should do this here. And so the three of us started something here in 05. And what was that called? Remind me. PH Design House, which everybody was like, what's the PH stand for? Worst decision ever. Naming the company that because the PH stood for Pro Hosters, which was the name of the hosting company that our original company, which was called Pigeon Internet, delivering your message. It was bought out. And so I was thinking at the time it was going to be Pro Hosters Design House, PH Design House under that thing out east when that didn't happen. Gotcha. We just all thought the name was cool sounding, which was terrible because everybody, everybody asked. And you had to always give that whole backstory of what the PH stood for. So, yeah. Yeah. Called it PH Design House. Did that for probably a year or a year and a half. And we're getting some good traction. Like we had a great employee, Steven Jenner. I think he's still in the area. Really talented 3D artist. And we were starting to integrate that in with some motion graphics stuff. And, you know, the web was getting to the point where there was people were having cable connections and you could throw more on the Internet. Right. It didn't have to just be a static image. You could have some cool graphics and videos and stuff on the Internet back then. So we were starting to get some traction with that, like, notability and notoriety, I guess, in the Wichita area. And we were starting to gain gain some momentum when I got a phone call. And I just told you about this the other day. Yeah. When I got a phone call one evening, I remember sitting in our office above Jacob's Well. We had an office in downtown El Dorado. And Chris Weipa called me. And a lot of people know Chris. He's a mortgage punk over in Wichita. Great guy. He was living out in Denver at the time. And he called and said, dude, my computer's hard drive just crashed. I lost all of my files. You're in tech. Is there something? Why isn't there something where I can back all my stuff up online? This should be a thing. Why is this like personal documents? Yeah. Yeah. Somewhere you just put it online. So if that happens, that you're OK. You don't have to worry about losing everything. And I was like, yeah, it's a great question. I don't think much exists out there. And it didn't back then. This would have been 05, I think. Dropbox. It wasn't Dropbox. Box.net. Google Drive. No. Google Drive was several years away from happening at that point, I think. Yeah. And Dropbox might have been in its genesis, like really early phases, but not publicly known at all. And so I remember sitting there that night because P.H. Design House was doing well. And I was like, do I tell Garrett and Spencer? Because they're going to grab onto this and be like, here's something we can pursue. Right. Because everybody, even back then, people wanted to do it. It wasn't called SAS. There was no SAS word, I think, back then. It was just people wanted to do some type of a service like that. And we'd always talked about it. We'd always talked about doing a data center. And there was the opportunity. And so the next day, I told them. And that led us down a rabbit hole for a year and a half of planning an underground data center located in West Eldorado, Kansas. And we went after it. We got after it. I mean, we went. Iron Blue. Iron Blue Corporation was the name. Yep. We did. Is Jesse still in here? Should we have him come do the commercial? Oh, man. That was P.H. Design House. Oh, that was P.H. The difference is quality. Yeah. He like whispers it, my little brother. The difference is quality. Oh, the little thing we did. Oh, I forgot about that. That's great. Right above Jake as well. Yeah, it was. Yep. Uh-huh. So, yeah, we went full bore. We did a friends and family round of fundraising. I don't know. Raised probably $100,000. Hired Gravity Works Architecture here in town. Got all of the engineers together. They helped us do that. It was wild. I remember one of the most intimidating meetings I've ever sat on, sat in on, or really ran was one with all of these different engineers. Like way smart. By far the dumbest person in the room. And I was there to tell them the different tasks that we needed them to do to help put all this information together. Because we were just planning a business plan. Because here's the mistake that we made at the end of the day. We should have, like all the others, just leased some server space, written some code, got something out there. Built the software first. Yeah, started to build it. And then done. But what we thought at the time, this was such a new concept, is that people weren't going to trust the software if they didn't know where their data was being kept. Which you could argue makes some sense. Yeah, so you need to have the full stack, full control of it. So you've got to build the data center where this stuff is stored so they know, your end user, your customers know that it's all secure. Doesn't really matter. Then comes AWS, who does the opposite, right? Essentially. Yeah, essentially. They build it and then lease it. Right, exactly. And at the end of the day, somebody can hack into something from anywhere in the world. There's no, the physical location really didn't matter that much to people. And that's the big mistake we made. We just, our reach far exceeded our grasp. We just, we went after it. We built out. It was a legit, full business plan. The margins were fantastic. I mean, it all made sense. There wasn't a co-location. It was another big thing. And still is probably in data centers where, like I said, cages, you can bring your servers in. But there was no good place to do that here in the Midwest at all at that point. The Internet Exchange Point going into Wichita. There was nothing like that. We wanted to be carrier neutral where we could kind of have our own IXP in this data center where any carrier can come in and interconnect with one another. Like, we had a lot of vision for it and spent a lot of time on it. Even had a couple of angels who were pretty interested in the concept. But twofold, two things happened. One, we wrapped up this business plan in 2008, which is when everything just went down the pooper. It was bad in 2008. So any kind of money that might have been there was not interested really. And then the second half is, which is just funny to say in this world today where data centers are multibillion-dollar builds. But this thing grew to over $50 million to do. I mean, imagine that in an underground data center in Eldorado. It's going to be an expensive endeavor. And why underground? Tornadoes. We were trying to mitigate the one risk. We didn't have earthquakes at that point. So we were trying to mitigate the one risk that a tornado could just run over this thing and your data. Everything would be fine. Nothing would affect it. Nothing would happen. So, yeah, between those two things, it just didn't work. We had to shut it down. We had to walk away from it. And that was our thing to do. That was that. I mean, especially when it's friends and family. And it was all non-recourse. And so they understood, but we also told them all we want to help repay this if we can. And so some just forgave it. Some we tried to repay. Some we exchanged services for work because we ended up starting up another agency again called Resurgent Media. That's right. Okay, that was the one. Yeah, that was the one, yep, and did that for probably another year, year and a half. And at that point, Spencer was really big into ministry stuff. He was just tired and wanted to fulfill, pursue ministry stuff full time. And he just got his doctorate. He's doing great. Garrett was just tired of entrepreneurship and not knowing where your next paycheck was coming from and totally got that. And he went on to LSI, which was bought out by NetApp. And he's doing great over at NetApp now as a support account manager over there for NVIDIA. So he's doing great. And so that left me at the end of the day, a little old me all by myself. What am I going to do with my life now? So I freelanced for a little while and then became the creative director at New Mana for about a year and a half, two years, something like that. And that was a fun job. Really loved everybody I worked with there. Rick McNary, who was the CEO, he treated me almost like a partner where he would bring me in on meetings because he knew I just loved that kind of stuff. It was that same thing, wanted to build something and not maintain something for somebody else. But still only lasted like a year and a half there because I wanted to get back out and do something and build something myself. And yeah, after that, freelanced for several years. You and I did some things together. Yeah. Tried a few different things. And yeah, until a couple of years ago when we said, hey, let's actually do something together intentionally and make a run at it. And so that's where I'm at today. Yeah. So, yeah, it's kind of fun. Those first 10 years were packed with a lot of stuff. The next 10 years were me freelancing. And here we are. It's cool. The theme. You've always been around web development, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Even if it's a product design, you're still so in tune with the website. Yeah. Yeah, that's true. Technology side. So you've always been. Yeah. Like on the. You haven't really ever been away from that. All of this was still. Yeah. Technology. Kind of all around that. What was that early spark for you? Your love for technology, just online, like when computers came out. Probably. Yeah. So my parents. Gosh, it was 1990. I think my parents got us our first computer. OK. Was in 1990. And that's what started it for me. I think just the technology side of it. So fascinating. I remember the first day I messed it up. We just we messed up the computer. You had to take it back to Radio Shack to have her fix it for Debbie over Radio Shack here in town. And that's what I would do. I would mess it up and I would have to figure out how to fix it. That also, by the way, is a good way to get your own computer real quick because my parents got frustrated. They mess it up. There's all the time. So it didn't take long before I had my own. Right. But I was able to mess up. But I just the technology was so, so fascinating. And it's funny. You can tell. What have you been? Yeah, that's I would have been eight. OK, I think it might. Nineteen ninety or ninety two. Somewhere in there. Eight or ten years old. But you can tell in the family albums like before pre-computer tan kid running around with no shirt on in the pictures, family albums after that, like pasty white kid. Obviously, I've been sitting in front of a computer instead of outside anymore. You know, the moment that transition a great video. Yes. The moment I became a nerd. Yes, exactly. It was right there. You can clearly see it. Yeah. But yeah, that was just it. It's the technology side was just so fascinating to me. And you just I kind of knew it was like this has got to be this is going to be something, you know, and I was on Vince Haynes the other day. If there's any solace of the whole data center thing not working, it's like at least we can point to it now and go, hey, we were right. Right. We were right. Cloud data center all this or that can make you feel worse. You know, it depends on how you look at it. Tyler, that way. No, I get that. Yeah. So that's at least there's something there. We were we were on to something just did not execute it properly. Right. Yeah. I mean, yeah. What a tall order. Oh, my God. In the Midwest. No connection. No. Yeah. It was limited resources. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Kudos. You guys taking a swing at it, though. Yeah. Thanks. It was a fun thing and learned a ton going through the process. Yeah. I remember seeing the renderings and stuff. Oh, yeah. We said Stephen working with us. And yeah, we were doing it. All right, man. Yeah. That's cool. So then between all your little startups. So you did the D.C. thing. Mm hmm. Yeah. Obviously, data center agency. You've been involved in some product startups that you've. Yeah. Yeah. Helped that we've worked on together. Yeah. Doing llamas. Oh, yeah. Design that game for Stephanie Boswell. Yeah. Who created it. The box and again, the Web site. And you always fell on that side of like people have ideas, but then some people have to like draw out the idea. Right. Yes. Illustrate the idea. Yes. Yeah. And I what was the first time you realized you were good at illustrating ideas? It's design is the word. But I think. Right. It's bigger than that, because you're taking a concept or, you know, someone's verbally saying something and then you have to go make it. Yeah. You're not like an art guy. No, I'm not. I can't draw anything on a piece of paper. Right. No, no. It's like, yeah. Where did the design thing start for you? It's a really good question. That's a really good question. Yeah. Probably in the late 90s. Yeah. Messing around on computers. So you're doing websites. Like there were a couple of people I did websites for is my little web design business I had in high school. I had a little brochure called Norse Web Design. I still got that brochure somewhere. Yeah. I don't I don't know what clicked in me, but I just I remember starting to play with the software in the 90s and was like, oh, this is kind of fun. And I just had a knack for it. Yes. My sister is a great artist. She can sit down and draw amazing things. And so where we got it from, I know neither of my parents can sit down and draw anything. I guess my mom's a good like has an interior design. I guess some of that came from there. But but yeah, probably in the late 90s is when it started to spark that there was something and in just like caring enough, like I've built websites. But, you know, I'm if I'm building a website, I'm building it real fast. Yeah. So I'm really quickly. Yeah. You also have that like not OCD completely. No, but it's you've got to you've got to smidge that there. Absolutely. Yeah. A little bit. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Of like really caring. So that'd be interesting building in high school and gosh, late 90s, late 90s, building websites would be. Oh, so we. Oh, my gosh. Yes. So different. Like how did you build a website in the late 90s in high school? Yeah. There was software. I mean, you could just do it all by code, which you were still doing some of that. But Microsoft had a piece of software called FrontPage. It was kind of one of the first they called the WYSIWYG editors, which is still a thing today, that terminology. But you could actually kind of draw it out and also work with the code through this WYSIWYG editor and FrontPage. And that's what initially got me into it. Yeah. And what I mean, anybody lived back in the 90s in this era remembers GeoCities and all of the websites that existed. I mean, it was like a website builder. Essentially, everybody and their dog had a GeoCities website. I'm sure that's probably where it started with a bunch of little animated GIFs and a counter down at the bottom of how many people visited. And, you know, it's all. Yeah, it's just in its infancy. Yeah. Just all of the slop that existed. You know, you've seen the same thing with AI today. It's the Internet went through that same slop era. Yeah. They got it to where it is today. Yeah. Yeah. Now you've got Wix. And I mean. Oh, yeah. It's so different. It's so different. Yeah. And it's changed back to your price point. That's a really interesting. Yeah. Conversation that you build 16 grand for a essentially a I mean, they were a the housing company. They were. It was a service company. It was just a community they wanted for. Yeah. Yeah. And now, I mean, yeah, now people can get websites under 10 grand. Oh, yeah. Or DIY it with, you know, a graphic designer. Yep. Help. Yeah. I mean, it's a conversation with freelancers. But yeah, it's interesting. All that world. The price points have actually come down. There's not a lot of things. And not for certain sectors. But, you know, most things I feel like inflate and get more expensive. Yeah, that's true. It's more expensive to get your car repaired. Yeah. But the graphic world got diluted in a sense because online brokers freelance like Fiverr. Oh, my gosh. That completely changed it several years ago. Right. Yes. And it wasn't near the quality. But, you know, I have lots of conversations. Oh, yeah. Yeah. People just don't need that quality out of the gate. Yeah. Five thousand dollar logos or just that's a different conversation. Yeah. Completely. Oh, they do. And there's a place for them. If you're just doing this, if you're just starting out, don't spend that kind of money. Just go to Fiverr. That will work for you for now. Yeah. That's what we tell people all the time. They come to us. And it's like, where are you at in the process? If you're not there yet, please don't spend that money with us. Invest that somewhere else. Yeah. And especially depending on what you're in and what you're doing. And then you've got the A.I. We just saw a client I was talking to who's had the whole brain kit. Everything generated by A.I. looks pretty good. Yeah. Still have to, like, actually build the brain kit. Right. Yeah. Format it. Like, they kind of get stuck there. Not for long, probably. No, yeah. I bet brain kits, logo kits are going to be auto-generated. Oh, yeah. It's amazing. And I've seen some services doing that already. Yeah. Yeah. But it is pretty amazing, the Internet, what it did to reduce the cost for these things. Across the board, just what it's done for a lot of things is pretty interesting. Yeah. You can hire someone from anywhere around the world if it's a digital service. Sure can. Yeah. You don't have to go local. No. And those guys are still making great money. They are. For the market that they're in. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. The global economy. A lot of people don't realize that. They think you're just shortchanging these guys, and you're not. They're doing really well. Yeah. I mean, there's a minimum wage in the Philippines is $1 an hour, I think. Gosh, yeah. Something crazy. Yeah. So anything over $1, they're doing well. Yep. It's a lot of traveling just to find work. Yeah. And proximity, not having to travel to work, being able to work from home. Oh, yeah. You can live in another country and not have a laptop and make really good money. Yeah. Yeah. And there's a lot of education now. I've seen some of the programs we've been through. Yep. There's a lot of attendees that are all over the world that have broken English, but good for them. Oh, my gosh, yeah. They're being an entrepreneur. They're figuring out how to take money from people. Yeah, sure. And provide good services in exchange for it. Yeah. That didn't exist 30 years ago. No, for sure. That's amazing. So yeah, through the product development, you've been on the e-commerce side. So now you've been on the agency side, did the big startup idea. Oh, yeah. And actually went pretty far into it. Yeah, we did. Yeah. And stayed in that agency model, went back to the freelance model, joined a couple different startups that couldn't put food on the table, but gave them a shot. Right. Yeah. And then you started partnering. So you kind of started partnering with different entities via your skill sets and looking for partnership over just income. Yes. Stock, I should say. Yeah. Yeah. And I noticed that transition in you the last four or five years. Yeah. That's what you were looking for. Yeah. Yeah. Is, hey, no, yeah, I could help you with this, but I'd like to partner with this. Yes, exactly. Especially on the startup side, because that's, right, sweat equity is a great way to get in on a deal at the beginning. So then fast forward, my memory of killer growth starting, and I tell everybody this, I don't know if you remember how killer growth, that first conversation that really started. Maybe. Let's see if it lines up. Well, what I remember is it was you. Like the whole thing was you. Yeah. Because you were doing freelance. I started freelancing for the first time. Yeah. And I had some clients on retainer. Yeah, that's right. And I was doing some consulting and media buying. Yep. And you and I were just talking, and we were in the middle of these other deals, and I just remember you going, hey, I'm tired of this freelance thing. Yeah. And he's like, if you would want to do an agency, like if you'd want to build an agency, I'm in. Yeah. Like, I'm in. I like the customer side of it, and I'd been in the service industry building the turnkey stuff. Exactly. Yes. And so that kind of lined up, and that's kind of what my vision was for it. And you're like, yep, that's what I want. I want to build. I want to have an actual team. Yes. I want to build a business. Yeah, exactly. That can function without me. Yes. Yes. You know, and then still work on the business. Yep. But yeah, that was, like, to me, the genesis of Phil Groth was you basically saying, like, hey. Yeah, I do remember that vaguely. Yeah. If you, and then fast forward lots of conversations, and that was on Phil's podcast. Yeah. Then it all worked out great. I brought clients over, you brought clients over, Phil brought clients over. So it was kind of like three freelance guys. Yeah, exactly. Decided to build an industry, which is a little bit different than your other agency models, which is interesting. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. You kind of just jumped straight into the agency. Right. Yes. And then started to where we kind of all came from three really unique backgrounds. Yeah. Yeah. Kind of doing our own thing to then build a system. Yep. Exactly, which is nice. There was a level of maturity there that I had not gotten to experience in the past before with other partners. Yeah. And I, ah, man, I loved, yeah, my first business partner. I love my other business partners. They were all great. And I honestly never thought that I would probably try another agency again. Yeah. But you said that all the time. I know I did, but after you freelance for a while, you know the deal. When you're covering the whole gamut of things, it's hard to go sell something when you know you're going to have to also perform all of the work afterwards, and you're the whole deal. And so, yeah, when you said that, I do remember that. When you said that, you love the customer side of it. You're really good at the sales side. Yeah. Talking with, yeah. I was like, there could be a cool partnership here. And then Phil obviously brought a lot to the table on his side, too. Yeah. It was the perfect fit. It was great. Yeah. That timing all within 30 days was crazy. It was crazy. Because Phil, I remember, came into town. We talked with him a little bit, and he left, and we both went, I think we need him. You said that. On the team. Yeah. That was me. That was you, too. You're like, we need to partner with Phil. Yeah. Like, you just looked at me, and I'm like, yeah, I think you're right. Yeah. He's the missing piece, yeah. Yeah. But it is cool, because I think the big benefit for, I think all three of us benefit each other a lot, and now we have Tyler Brickley, so now we kind of have this quad four-part leadership. Yeah. That's really powerful. Yes, it is. And I'm very thankful for. But, yeah, you're 20-some years of experience taking it into the agency model and building an agency like a business, not just a freelance. And that's the hardest part to break out of in digital marketing is to break out of the freelance mindset. Another part I really appreciated about you that really sold me on the agency idea, because I said I would never do it for years. Yeah. So everybody says that they'll do a restaurant or that they won't or whatever. Well, I also said I would never do that unless I own the company. I won't do the digital marketing. Well, then I took on a few clients and just had a blast. And I remember telling you, I just want to be essentially like an extension of these businesses. I don't want to do a traditional agency. I want to somehow build something that we become an integrated part of their team. Yes, exactly. We become their fractional CMO. Yes. Like a business partner. Exactly, like a business partner. And that was the part I remember you got really excited. Yeah. You're like, if you want to do that, I'm in. Yeah, because that was always the missing element for me. It's just you touch and go with these clients. You do a project and then you're gone again and you may or may not come back and circle around to them. But that's the fun part. That's why from day one I've always had business partners because it's just more enjoyable. Yeah. Because it's the machine, right? It's like all the parts that make the machine run. Yeah. Because nobody can be everything. No, no. And so when you get all the pieces in alignment and you hear that engine purring. It's so much fun that way. It is. Yeah. And being able to do that with our clients, that's what's a lot of fun. Actually, you feel like you're a business partner with them to help them grow. And we still have all the same pain points any other agency has. Oh, yeah. We've had clients fall off. We've messed up. We've had clients go really well and clients' partnerships go bad already. Yeah. And that's just the nature of the business. Anybody in service, you're just not for everybody. No, no. We're figuring that part out. That's probably the hardest part for you and I, I think. Because you never did high-volume agency. Phil did. I've never done the agency model. I've been around this stuff, obviously, a long time, but never done that model. Yeah. But the churn sucks. Yeah. Especially when you feel like you didn't achieve what you were hoping to achieve for a client. Yes. And I know that will always stay at our core. Yeah. And I know that's at your core. Oh, yeah. So, yeah, that's the part about this business that is challenging, but it's also the, as long as you, and I think that's what's going to happen and I'm thankful for you in that is that I know you have that conviction that that will always be at our core. Yes. As our COO and strategy guy, CTO, the technology, CSO. Yeah. You're really all three of those. But, yeah, if we build something, you think about how it feels on the client side so deeply. Mm-hmm. And you care about that so much. Yes. So whenever we're building, and now you're actually getting to build and work on a business. You're still doing web stuff and get pulled in. Right. And now we have Brickley. But talk about that. What's it like to actually work on, like you have a business, it's running, it's making money, you have employees now. Yeah. Oh, yeah. You have a team. You have partners and you're in a position where you get to spend a chunk of your time just working on the business. Yes. Thinking about the business itself. In the system. Yeah. I love that part. You're right. Because from early on with PH Design House, the slogan or whatever you want to call it for us was the difference is quality. And that's kind of always been my MO for a long, long time. And I think I just grew up with that. My parents just instilled that in me to do a quality job over quantity. And being able to focus on the business, I feel like I get to do that more. Right. Because we've talked about that some. Marketing is an interesting thing. I thought about this the other day and I said it to you and it resonated. Marketing has always been a quantity over quality game to an extent. And it's really become that over the past few years because you have to. There's so much output out there in order to get noticed. You have to also have a lot of output. And quantity is going to get affected in the midst of that. But if you can take quantity and get the customer to a quality experience, then you still get to have both, I think, in the midst of that. And so instead of me having my hands on quantity things all the time, which I still do touch and still do try to put quality into those things, being able to focus more on the business overall lets me think about that whole process of how our customers, our clients are interacting with us and that whole experience and how even us as a team on a project management site, all of that, how we're interacting and working together and providing a quality experience for our clients at the end of the day. So yeah, I love that part. Yeah, and I think the quality of the business unit, that's perfect. You get to focus on the business unit, the delivery methods, the communication methods. I mean, you've built out our project management system and multiple back-end things and support all the team on that. That's a part that's been really fun, especially since Brickley came on board, our weekly meeting with leadership that you run for all of us. And that's been really unique for me because I'm kind of on the backseat on a lot of things, like killer growth. Which is fun for you. That's different for you, right? It's awesome, and there's so much talent here within our group. And sorry, this is turning into a sales pitch. This is about you. This doesn't mean to be a sales pitch. But it's where you're at now, and it's a lot of what you're building. But I think anybody, if you see killer growth stuff, you see output, you see the quality of this podcast. That's Tyler. So that's where you're at, and where you're at your best is when you are focused on quality and systems. We get so many compliments on the quality of this podcast. We do. It's awesome, man. Thanks to Tyler, and then Brickley jumped in, too, and helped you. Oh, yeah, put polishing touches on it. Oh, my gosh, yeah. Yeah, the production level, everything. If you're touching it, it's going to be really good. And what a great skill set to be in a position to work on a business and building systems and operations. And I remember that conversation with you because you were more in the weeds of just website stuff. And it was just like, you need to be working on stuff for us. You need to be taking as much away from me to make it a better system as possible. And then I don't touch it until you make the system. And that's kind of been our partnership-wise. It has been. It's been good and hard. We've learned how our communication is different on that. Hard for you to take something from me, and hard for me to remember to tell you I want you to take it. Exactly. Yeah, you're right. Because, yeah, pride gets in the way. So talk about moving into now. Your focus is killer growth and then voice grid. And then we have another outbound system that Brickley's been leading the charge on and you've been assisting on. I've been doing a great job on that. So, yeah, now moving forward, you're zoned in on this. What does this look like for you? Are you glad you're just in the digital space from the software side to the agency service side? Yeah. What does that look like for you next? Yeah, definitely glad I'm there. You know, we've done the physical product stuff in the past, and we've both kind of written that off now. Don't want to do physical products. That's just a hard thing to do. And so the digital side. Until the right idea. No, I'm kidding. Oh, man, don't say that. It's true. We love physical products and e-commerce. Oh, yeah. The right idea could walk through the door and we would still both probably get hooked. And it's hard when you know how to take something all the way. I know. And we've done it a few times. Yeah, we have. What Tyler's referring to is that we've made a promise to each other that we will not go into any other ventures or startup ideas that aren't digital products. Yes, because we have ADD when it comes to startups. It's just we love them. Yep, yep. So that's our handshake deal. It is. Back to what we're focused on, which is building digital products to help businesses and digital services to help people grow. It's pretty simplified. That's what we're doing. Solve problems. Help people grow. Yep, yep. But on that side, going forward, talk about because you've never been in SAS. I guess that database was. Data center would have kind of been. Yeah, it would have been the start of something like that. So talk about VoiceGrid and that experience so far. I mean, you've been a part of that for, gosh, what is it, a year and a half now? Probably since we started that. Yeah. Yeah. Your first SAS product. Really? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And that's been a lot of fun. Software as a service. Yes. There we go. Yep. Yeah. That's been a fun experience, too. And it's been fun watching that one evolve over time because we had one idea of what it was going to be when it started. And it's kind of evolved into a completely different thing of what it is today, narrowing in on a niche for these service businesses or specifically these appliance repair businesses that we're trying to narrow in. So it's been, it just feels, it's still that startup process. You know, there's not been that one thing that's clicked where we've been like, oh, here it is. We're about to take off and run. It's still been a grind and a hard process to figure out how to get there. But I wouldn't trade that for anything, I don't think. I really, that process is frustrating as it can be at times. You know, it really can be. It's a hard process. I don't think I would trade it. I really enjoy doing that. I don't, I've had opportunities at other nine to five jobs to go do and just don't want to, don't want to pursue that side of it. I want to, I want to build something. I want to build something. You don't want that glass ceiling in our way. And it's not from a money perspective. Like I want as much money as we can make. It's, it's from a perspective of the sky's the limit for what you're building, for what you can create. And the fulfillment of building something. Yeah. That you get from that. Yeah. And we get to do that with our clients too. With both the voice grid. Sorry, I'm going off the rails on your question. I think both, both voice grid side, we've gotten that to be able to do that. But on the killer growth side, we get to do that with our clients and help them do that. Strategize about ways to make their businesses better and to help them grow because they're in that same position. They don't have that ceiling either. If they can figure out the right strategy and unlock the right thing, whatever the thing is, there's not a silver bullet, but boy, there's a couple of different things that they could probably do that would help them grow. That's cool. If we can figure that out for them. What a deal. You won't find the silver bullet till you empty the magazine. I don't, I feel like there should be an analogy there somewhere. Yeah. Okay. I thought maybe you had some profound thing you're about to unload on us. I feel like I should. I'm just sitting here trying to think of one. Yeah. Nope. Yeah. Nothing's coming to me. No, there's no silver bullet. There isn't in anything I don't think, but it's fun to try to help them unlock those couple different things that could help them grow. And that's. And, and they are, you know, the business itself, right? We've realized the business itself is usually why they're successful. Like the business owner and the team. Yeah. And the services, the quality of services they provide. Yeah. That's what's going to really set them up. And then we're just, we exist to exemplify that. Hold them accountable. Yeah. Help them improve on things they could do internally and the things we can do. Yeah. Outsource to, to help them be more visible. Yeah. Ultimately. Right. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that's one of Mona says product people and process are the three key pieces to that and identifying what's right and what's not quite right with those processes is a lot of fun to do. That's the strategy side that both you and I love sinking our teeth into. Yep. Yep. And yeah, I just think it's, it's interesting as many startups and things that we've both been a part of over the last 20 years that we've kind of arrived to the same destination of not, not just consulting. Also marketing, but essentially being a strategy partner for other businesses. Exactly. Yeah. Providing services while creating an atmosphere to build digital products to solve problems for people. Yes. Yes. But so, so talk about now in your world three, let's talk about AI a little bit. Hmm. Hmm. AI has obviously changed design, graphics, website, building, video. In a short amount of time. Yes. All of that. But yeah, what, what's that going to look like? I mean, what does it look like today that it didn't look like just two years ago? Let's do that. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. The content and coding side have been the most profound for me probably. You know, if you wanted to write a little like on our killer growth webpage down at the bottom of it, it has these little falling knives. Oh yeah. In the background. I would have had to written that myself at one point. I don't know. You know, I'm good enough to be dangerous writing code of any sort really. Yeah. But with AI, it was able to use, I think that was the first time I used Claude code, I think, was to write that little JavaScript that made those knives fall in a matter of minutes. Yeah. It's wild. And that did not exist. And on the content side, content used to be the hardest part when working with clients because clients are just as stumped as everybody else is on wanting to write content for things. And chat GPT has revolutionized that. And I get it. You can say, oh, it's just AI written content. Okay. But then again, if we're talking quantity to get you to the quality products or this person, whatever it is that I don't think that's a bad thing. We're using AI to help us craft content that's SEO rich. They can lead those customers to our clients. Yeah. So I think that's an okay thing. And before AI, you had to hire a content writer. You had to, I mean, I would usually put it on the client themselves, say, here's the outline, give me your content. And six months later, you might have half of the, you know, it would drag on and on and on. Yeah. And I totally get it from the client side. That's not a fun thing to do either. They're busy. It's hard to write out what you do. That's just a difficult task to do for anybody. And so AI has just transformed both of those things in a short amount of time. Another one would probably be stock images, how fast you can generate stock images. Now they're not stock images anymore. You can just generate images with AI. Whereas before you had to go out and find the stock image, you had to license it. And that's refined a lot just even in the past six months. You know, you go back a year or so ago when we started, a year and a half ago when we started with AI, it wasn't very good, the images that it would create. Well, when did you make the Shaw's Pest Control website? That was one of our early ones. And those images still turned out. You have a bunch of AI generated. It's true in there. That's right. And those came out pretty well. And those came out pretty well. And that was a long time ago. That's true. Yeah. And that was ChatGPT, I think, working with those. And that took a little bit of work to get those refined. They're less work these days. Right. Yeah, you're right. I forgot about those images. That was kind of the first time I remember you showing me an image that went on a website. And you're like, yeah, this is just AI generated. Yeah. We didn't have to buy any stock images. No, and before, and you want, because on a website or anything, you want your images to look consistent. Yeah. And that was what was always difficult, especially with licensing images, is to try to find, because those, I think they were like bug icons, right? Right. As symbols for bugs. They were all like the different types of bugs. Exactly. Yeah. And you didn't want, if you go stock, it's hard to find like a series of 10 that all look the same. Right. But with AI, you can just tell it that you want it to do that. Yeah. And you get to look all the same. Yeah. Just with your prompting. It's wild how much it's changed things. And now, using different software to build the websites using AI. Now, quickly. Yeah. It's a wild, it's a wild thing. The AI slop, I've thought about this a lot. I hate that phrase, AI slop, because everybody acts like that just dismisses it all, right? It's just all a mess. Forget about AI. It's just a bunch of slop. But again, that's how iterations with humans work. It's a funnel, right? It starts as slop at the top, and it narrows its way down through iteration and innovation and working on it to something that's refined. I mean, that was the internet. Back in the 90s, literally everybody had a stupid GeoCities website, and it was a bunch of slop back in the 90s. Right. Nobody needed all that, but it was just refining itself down to what it is today. And there's still a lot of slop with the internet. I get that. But wow, it is a part of our lives, period. And in the same respect to the whole bubble talk. Yeah, there might be an AI bubble there, but there was also one with the internet. That's the investor's problem. Right, it is. Not the user's problem. No. And I mean, the internet, people's memories are so short. The internet had a bubble too, and then after that popped, that was the last we ever heard of the internet. No. Right. It refined itself. I wish I would have bought Microsoft in the 90s or Apple. My gosh, everybody's acting like, oh gosh, don't touch any of these AI stocks right now. I get it. And there may be a bubble that occurs, but it's going to refine itself and going to come out on the backside stronger than ever, just like the internet did. Probably multitudes stronger on the backside of it. This is becoming something we're using every day as an agency. Every day we use AI. Every day. Yeah. I think the only reason why it's not in people's lives outside of this, and it is in a lot of people's lives outside of this. Dude, it's crazy. It's just intimidating, and they don't really know how to get into it. But once you show somebody how to interact with something as simple as chat GPT, it's almost life-changing for them. Just to see in their mind, they click, and they're like, oh my gosh, I can just ask it these things, and it produces this, and it'll do this and this. Yeah. Second brain. It is a second brain, yeah. Once more people step into that, the adoption rate is just going to continue to go nuts, I think. One thing you guys are working on is you and Brickley, a website solution that's highly customizable but affordable. Yes. Oh, yeah. Talk about the biggest issue you just see in websites, besides them not having one. That's a big one. Oh, yeah. Not having one, or it's just terrible. Because they tend to leave it. Okay, someone builds it, and then nothing happens. Oh, yeah. We'll never touch it again after that. Yeah. Yeah. And so they're usually terrible. They're built on a bad platform, which we've all done that in the past, or a slow platform. They're not SEO optimized. You're right. They don't have blog posts on them, so the content's not continually being updated, which is bad for SEO on that side of things. A lot of different things. And in the past, even recently, I mean, to do a website, we were still manually doing WordPress websites. We would go find a theme, obviously, that looked nice that we would then customize, but we'd still have to build out that whole website, which is a long process to do. But now, through the use of these other AI tools that we're finding, you still need to understand how to prompt it. You can't just type in, build me a great website, period. It's going to look terrible. You've got to understand how to prompt it, how to ask it the right things, which is why I think positions like ours will always exist, because there's always going to be that middleman who understands. Our positions will just be prompt engineers. Right. I think that's what it's going to be. Yeah, you've got to understand. And the guy running his pest control company doesn't want to stop and figure that out. He's going to want to hire somebody. And you still need to have some basic understanding of how it should be formatted. How it should be. Yeah, exactly. Visually, the experience, the UI side. Yeah, all the experience that we bring from all these years that we can use to build out those prompts. But yeah, it's pretty amazing. We're building landing pages now, right? Yeah. With AI for clients. And we've got a great employee who's just jumped into that, and she's immediately picking it up and building these great landing pages with just a little bit of coaching from Tyler Brickley. Yeah. It's wild. Yeah. Yeah. And I think the real estate analogy, we talked about that. Websites, it's a piece of property. It's your digital property, your digital place of business. Yeah, yeah. And if you have a physical property, you know you have to paint sometimes. Oh, yeah. And you have to fix leaks in the roof, and there's ongoing maintenance. And that's the same thing with websites. It's just keeping them refreshed. Yes. Literally just updating the copyright thing on the bottom of the page. My gosh, yeah. You know how many websites you see that, like, it's eight years ago. Oh, yeah. Copyright 2019. It's like, where have you been? But yeah, you and Brickley are working on a solution that is just constantly updated, taken care of. It's like a maintenance program, if you will, but it's also a brand new build that's pretty amazing. Exactly. It really is. Yeah. Where it's going. And yeah, you're exactly right. We're able to funnel our experience and our background of knowing what it needs to be into these prompts to build these sites. And if you have that combination with the people that do your media buying, the people that do your SEO, and they also maintain your website, make sure your website can convert, capture information properly. Yes. Offer quoting solutions, you know. Yeah. Just that custom app development. Do you think, what do you think agencies like us will look like in 10 years? Boy, that's a great question. We can go not that far. We can go like five years. Even five years. That's still in this world, day and age. Two years. It's going to be like next week. No, that's too close. What's next week going to be like? Five years is the shortest time frame. Five years is the short time. Yeah. Yeah. You know, there will always, I think, agents, there will be, who's a BBDNO is a huge marketing agent. You know, there are these names that have been around for decades that will always exist serving multi-million dollar clients. I don't think that will ever change. Apple isn't going to utilize AI to rebuild their website anytime soon. Probably ever. They're always going to have an agency that's not going to utilize AI to build a Super Bowl commercial for them. You know, that's not going to exist, or that's not going to happen. So, the bigger companies will always be there to serve those large clients. But, for agencies of our size, I think you're right. I think we're going to, we've got the experience and the know-how to bring the right pieces together to make all this work. Because it's across multiple channels. You can't just have a website anymore. It's social media. It's media buying. You've got to have all these channels, and they've got to be working in concert together. And business owners don't have time to deal with that. No matter how much AI you interject into it, I don't think they have. Maybe 20, 30 years down the road. Maybe that's a different story. AI can tell them how to do it. Right. But they still have to execute it and implement it. Exactly. Right. And maybe that'll be different someday. But, even then, I don't think that business owners want to deal with that. Just like a business owner, like a good-to-be-clean. Right. Nick probably doesn't change his own oil in his truck. Probably. I mean, Nick might. He's a pretty unique guy. He might. No, but changing your oil in a vehicle is not that difficult. But business owners aren't doing that on their vehicles. They're still taking it to a mechanic to do it. I think it's the same kind of a thing. You could make the argument someday that it's not that difficult to maintain all of these channels. But it still just makes more sense for the business owner to hire somebody like us to help them do that. Because we know how to do it, and we've got the experience on how to make it all work in concert well together. Yep. So I think we'll still exist. I think agencies will still exist. Yeah. Our jobs are safe. For now. For now. He did not answer the tenure question. No. Yeah. The man, all these others. It's going to touch so many different industries, and they're all going to change, and some are going to go away, I think, or drastically change. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I agree. Yep. It's good stuff. So let's end with this. Yeah. Legacy and learning. What are you most proud of over the last 20-some years? And then what's your hope to pass on in the next 20 years to the community and businesses? Yeah. Yeah, that's a deep one. It is a deep one. Yeah. I'm probably most proud of, I guess, just sticking with it, I suppose. Yeah, it's – this is a hard journey, and that's – I mean, just about everybody we've had on, if we haven't point-blank asked them that question, they would have told us, yeah, it's hard. This is difficult to do. Yeah, I probably just – proud is not the right word. I don't like proud stuff, but glad that I have stuck with it. Yeah. Yeah. I wouldn't want to do anything differently, and again, I think that rolls into legacy of I think we'll still – we'll figure it out. We'll figure it out. We're making something work, I think, and we are making something work right now, but even with things like VoiceGrid or another SaaS that comes down the road, I think we'll eventually figure it out. Product-based companies. Yeah, product-based. Yeah, I think we'll eventually make it work, but – and even if we don't, I just want my kids to be able to grow up seeing that we just kept pushing, just kept pushing, kept trying, felt like this is what the Lord has built me to do and haven't deviated from that. There's been times I've definitely wanted to, times you don't want to keep doing this thing, but ultimately I think this is what I was built to do. I think this is what you were built to do, and I want my kids to be able to see that, yeah, you pursue what you feel like God has put in your heart to pursue, put your hands to. I think that's probably the legacy side of it. Yeah. And the thing he's talking about that's really hard, ladies and gentlemen, is entrepreneurship. Oh, my goodness, yeah. Gosh, that's almost a bad word, isn't it? It is. It's a scary word. We try not to say the E-word around here. Don't say the E-word. Yeah, we're just running a business. Keep it simple. We just sell something people want. Exactly, yeah. Knock them out all the time. Entrepreneur, don't worry about it. Yep. Oh, man. Yeah. Well, appreciate you. Yeah, appreciate you. Yeah. Man, I didn't do my – I know you didn't, yeah. I was going to save that until the end, but thank you for the time. Absolutely. Awesome story. I know so many people are going to love to hear it. Thank you. Thanks for having me on. This is crazy. Dude, it's crazy. This is wild. I know. I'm looking at the time. I'm like, oh, we hit the – This is great because I told you before and I was like, you and I both hate talking about ourselves. Oh, I know. This is not going to be fun. It's the right format. This is good. This is the right format. This is the right format. Yeah, yeah. Love you, man. Appreciate you.