Two Peas in a Podcast

Episode 104 - Alex Carravetta

Alex Carravetta is an aspiring content creator. He is working on the Libertalia Game Supply project - an intersection between running an educational series on Pokemon, Yu-Gi-Oh!, and Magic: The Gathering cards and building a card trading business.

To connect with Alex check out his channel at:

https://www.youtube.com/@libertaliagamesupply762

Duration:: 36m
Broadcast on:: 13 Sep 2024
Audio Format:: mp3

All right, we're live. Alex, thanks for being here first and foremost. No, we had like with this guest on the last podcast. His name is Ian Smith and he is just an awesome dude. But part of the reason for why he became famous is that he during the pandemic was fighting against the state of New Jersey about the lockdowns. And I mean his videos did not get any traction even though he has, I mean, 400,000 Instagram followers and there's people just like always watching his stuff. So to me it was like super super weird to see these videos go up and whatever the shadow banning is definitely felt real in that moment because there's like nobody's getting, you know, 500 or 1000 plays. And then this dude who's actually relatively famous like getting 10 plays on some of his videos. Yeah, I think sometimes it's just the game of the algorithm like how you make a thumbnail and how you choose to title it so I mean it's possible you might might need to work on that you know that's worth looking into because that's like most of the game like if you ever listened to Mr Beast talk about thumbnails and titling so much of it is just about playing the game. So he's kind of in some hot water itself right now. Oh for sure. And I've like I've checked out some of those videos and I did like a little bit of digging into making sure that, you know, in the beginning it's you take these missteps where you title videos something long where you like give way too long of a description and you just go hey that was actually a pretty cool video why the hell did it not stick with anyone and I don't know, I don't know about you but I was just so frustrated over some of these things not working out and it feels like you're climbing a mountain one step at a time and every single step you're like this is the one that's going to work and then it doesn't and it's just a hell of a lot of disappointment. Oh, you can never predict when the mountain climb is going to go the way you want it. It's always, you know, like I said, right before we hop down, you know, the ones that are most worried about doing terrible tend to be the ones that end up doing the best and people really like and the ones I'm not worried about always kind of eat shit so it's kind of take what they give you. How, you know, the videos that have done the best for you and the ones where you gained a lot of subscribers. First and foremost, congrats on the channel actually doing awesome things because as you said one of the things was like it took you, what was it two or three years to grab the first 300 people's attention. Is that right? I think it was about two years to get 300 subscribers in. That sounds crazy to me like it sounds crazy that, you know, you kept doing stuff seeing the bigger picture at the same time when it wasn't resonating with anyone and even after you weren't getting any subscribers we're still sticking with it. How often were you posting? The first year was not super consistent like it might have been every couple of weeks just because I wasn't really sure that I was even going to try to do it. I just wanted to like, I don't know, try it to see what all these people seem to like about doing it. When I started consistently posting, initially the target was once a week and the stuff I was making at the time was pretty low, like time and effort commitment. And so then I bumped it up to like two or three times a week. I think I had like one month in there that the views shot really high, but the subscribers didn't at all. And then I changed over to a different type of content. And that had a lot more stick with like gaining subscribers and having people come back to watch multiple videos on the channel. And that was once a week up until now. It was about once a week and then just with everything going out the wedding and everything, I kind of just like, I just need a minute, you know, slow it down. I'll probably get one more good one in before we head out to the island there. And then once I get back, just rip back at it, give us a pedal. You know what's crazy is like right, the last time that we were talking, we talked about how crazy it is to have a thousand subscribers. Like you grew by 50% and a period of two months. Do you change anything that you were doing or is it just like whatever is in the algorithm stuck with more people in the audience and got you more subscriptions. I think I did change some stuff I started using. I don't know if you know what TubeBuddy is. It's kind of like an, so you can attach it to your channel and then it'll pop up like on your, on your end, like a little window around all of your videos and it can show you analytics for each video. I don't like analyze your thumbnails, analyze your title and like your tags and hashtags and all that kind of stuff and it'll show you like, Hey, these are the hashtags and the tags that will give you the most. You know, these are the ones that are getting the most return right now. These are, you know, your thumbnail, it shows you like a heat map because I'm sure you've noticed like a lot of thumbnails will use like a red arrow or a red circle or like warm colors to focus attention on a certain thing. And it'll show you a heat map of like this is where the attention would be drawn on this particular thumbnail. And so all that kind of stuff I tried to like focus on hitting just whatever that template wanted me to hit. And it does work like it increased CTR retention then just becomes whether or not you do a good job of telling whatever story it is you're trying to tell. And I think I got better at that just because like I'll sit and write for like hours and focus on, you know, how, how do I want the story laid out, how do I want to say this thing. And so I think just like general improvement with reps probably made a big difference in retention, just like figuring out what people are interested in hearing about. Yeah, did how good does it feel when you actually, you know, do something and it's resonating with people and people are watching it knowing that, hey, I ran the analytics behind it. I like did this specific thing and it totally changed, even though the content might not be that much different, but it definitely changed, you know, the approach and the number of people actually visiting your channel. Oh, I feel super good. It doesn't ever feel like, at least to me, like, I'm the shit now, like, people love me. It's just like this feeling of gratefulness that anybody's even there. And so like when I'll get people in that they've been commenting on videos since I've had, you know, a couple hundred subscribers, I just feel so like, I'm just so happy that I could keep making something that made them want to stick around. It just feels incredible. To me, like, this has been one of the most rewarding things that I ever never actually knew existed and it's this, like, feeling of creating something that somebody is watching. And then on the back end going, hey, because most of the content that we're putting out is about growth, is about success stories, is about wellness. It's just like the comments of, hey, that helped me or I got something out of that. It just makes me feel like whatever I'm doing, even if it's to a small audience is actually providing value to people in a weird way that I never actually knew. And I always thought about the internet connections, the as not real connections. And it's kind of changing the outlook that I have on the interactions that you have with the audience and the way that people actually become friends today. Because what I'm starting to see is like, there are people who are super, super supportive. There are people who, you know, go out of their way to comment on your stuff, trying to start some type of friendship with you. And it's like a totally different approach to social media that I did not even know that existed until I was on this side of creating content. Is that weird? Did that happen to you? Yeah, I mean, I guess I didn't, I never really thought of it in that same, like, because like we are people on the other end of it. I would say the majority of the time, like, I consume a lot more content that I make. And I'm not really wanting to comment. I don't really do that, but like there have been videos or, you know, podcasts or whatever where I watch them like, you know, that is an interesting take. That's an interesting lens to view whatever situation through. And it helps me a lot. And so I could absolutely see there being people that just hear you. Maybe you just have something that you say it in a certain way. And it's not like anything groundbreaking, but it just resonates because it's easier to attach someone else's own situation on whatever you just said and the way you said it. Yeah, I just, I've always been, I don't know, I've never really thought of it as fake or, or, you know, what is, I don't know another word to use there, but, you know, there's other people, there's other people on the other end of it. I'm sure I keep that much for sure. And the fake is probably a bad term. It's more like the quality of those relationships is just as real as the friendships and some of the support that you get in real life. And I always viewed it as like, hey, there's just so much garbage on the other side that I didn't even think about the positive kind of resonating with you and going like, hey, maybe whatever I'm doing isn't like total garbage because as a creator as someone who's like puts out media out there, I feel like there is just a lot of self doubt. There's a lot of like mental games where you're just going like, dude, I spent all this time trying to create this thing. Nobody's watching it. What am I even doing? Am I wasting my time? Do you have that now that the audience has grown, or was that like the same type of fears that you had when you were starting out? Like a fear that I'm wasting my time? Yeah. I think I tried to judge just the entire concept of it through the idea of like, this is something that most people aren't going to try to do. And so at the very least, even if I never succeed at it, I can still say that I've done it. I know how to edit a video. I can use, you know, Photoshop, the video editing software I use is also an Adobe, you know, so now I have that skill set. I know I have a skill set of being able to write a script. You know, I'm pretty much writing an essay every week, which is absurd because I never would have done anything like that when I was younger. Even like with this stuff, even if I never made any money doing it, you know, I've devised my own very simple yet effective organization system, you know, the way I, you know, fold the order slips, pack the envelopes, all of it. It's all just skills that I've built up. And so then if it does work, that's just icing on the cake. You know, I got to learn all this stuff and people are actually making use of the effort that I put into it. Yeah. Did you ever think about like back to your education and how it almost feels like a joke now where I was like sitting in class and doing the things that we did to like study the background and some of the like stupid college classes where you were just kind of wasting your time. There's no better way to say that because I feel like a lot of them did not teach us the life skills that like trying something on your own does, because as you know, like you have to be so, so dedicated, you have to be so on top of the thing that you're doing to make sure it's successful. And at the same time, just like you said, you are like developing all of these skills that you didn't necessarily have before and trying to. I talk about it as like build your own journey, build your own adventure, going like hey, there is no one right way to do this. I just have to figure out a way that works for me. Yeah, I think for sure thinking back on, I think I always did the worst in classes where the scope was super narrow. So like, you're going to write a paper and it's going to be exactly about this. So you can write it however you want, but that's what it's going to be about. But I did some like, like look creative writing classes. And even I might like when I finished up my degree, I had to take like advertising classes and stuff and they'd let you make like, like PowerPoint presentations on, you know, you're going to advertise this product, show us how you would do it. And when they would say like, do whatever you want, that the only point of performance here is that's the product advertising. Go nuts. I always had a ton of fun. Like I'd get like there was a difference between when I was assigned something that was very narrow. Like, I guess I just got to get it done. Like I just got to get through it versus something that was really broad where I'd do it. And then I'd go, I had another idea. Let me go back. Let me change that. Oh, but what if this would work better? Let me try that. And I would get like lost in doing the assignment because it was, it was all about whatever I could find within me. It wasn't out about just following a rubric. And so yeah, I think there is a disservice a lot of times in a shackling students a little too much to what you want. Yeah. And I love exactly what you just talked about because that's how I refer to creativity. Like it's within all of us. And it's just this thing that's kind of trapped in there. And until you find something that you're passionate about, you don't even know how to explore it, how to bring it out. Now, when you were younger, did people tell you that you're actually a super creative guy? I have not really, I guess, to answer the question upfront. I mean, my mom always did. Like, I think that kind of that kind of speaks to what you're saying about the relationship with the people that comment on your videos. At some points, it's almost not more valuable, but like it's more of a pure reaction because my mom's always going to tell me she's proud of me and that I'm doing an awesome job, but some random dude that doesn't know me absolutely could leave a comment saying I suck and I'm a piece of shit. And so when they don't, you know, that means a lot, but I had one teacher in high school. She was an art teacher. And my freshman year, I thought she absolutely hated me because I was, I mean, never like a bad kid, but I didn't really turn shit in on time very often. And she would always have to give me extent or she didn't have to, but she would always give me extensions to like, hey, you got two days just, it was due three days ago. Can you just get it done? And not the ideal student. Yeah. And so my freshman year, I thought she hated me, but I kept signing up for classes. I was with her all four years. And by the end of it, it was kind of the same thing that like I was talking about with all the other classes where she's kind of like, hey, whatever you want to do, the only thing is you're working with this medium, go nuts. And she did an incredible job of just being supportive of just like who I am as a person. Like at a certain point, she kind of gave up on the timeliness of assignments and she figured like, hey, just have it done by the end of the semester, you know, get it turned in. And she's probably one of my favorite like thinking back. She is my favorite teacher just because she she just gave me the space to be the person that I was accepted all the things that are wrong with me in terms of like the school setting. I just was super supportive of like just whatever I made, you know, I love that story. I love that story so much because of this particular reason of like, I always wonder and question why is it that we remember the teachers that we remember. And a lot of the time, like the question that, or the answer that I come to in my mind is as simple as they're the people who just accepted us. They went, hey, you are this person who is either not super involved in my class, but I still believe in your intelligence and I still believe in the things that you're going to accomplish. Or you are such a superstar and so in love with whatever subject that they were teaching that it resonated with you and you were, even if you weren't the best kid in class, you were at least passionate and it came through in the work that you did. And sometimes I wonder like, what is the best way to foster that passion while still keeping you within the bounds of like, hey, you're missing skills, BC and D, but you're so good at any that if we can just teach you some of these things that will be so valid and making you better. Hopefully, hopefully that gets you to the next level. And I always wonder like, did you have these experiences growing up where you thought that you might be doing something for living or thought that, you know, there is a career path here. And you just weren't guided to the right approach to stick with it. Yeah, I don't know that I don't know that I did. I think the only job I've done, or I thought like I could do this forever was coach and crossfit and it was a lot of it was the essence of it was kind of the same as like this like making content for people, which I mean I guess I literally did because I wrote a lot of programming it pretty much every gym I was at so I think that outside of that and now like I never really like when I went to college initially I was going to be a political science major and which is stupid now like looking at it like why did I want to do that and I think it was because well because this would be a you know I could get a job in politics and that would be a respectable job and people would be proud of me or envious or whatever it was and like that's not really the right way to guide your your path. You just got to do stuff that you enjoy and then hope that you do it well enough to make some money at it. I think that the biggest issue was the like having to go to college. It was never really the idea that well you don't have to like you could you could do something else if you want to go get a job doing something else go do that if you want to try something else. Try it you know even if you just put the like my parents never kicked me out of the house but they could have just said hey do whatever you want but you got to have a job if you're going to live here and now that's kind of the same thing like it's very broad like go figure it out. If you don't figure it out then you're going to go figure it out somewhere else you know yeah and I love that message so much too because like for whatever reason. People just get trapped in this mindset of like I have to do a B and C like you known me for a long time and you know that about me where I was always like this finance person but part of me was always like. I think I'm creative I think there's like more to life than the thing that I'm doing now and there's always this you know disconnect between the happiness that you think is out there and whatever it is that you're doing in an office job. And even as I was doing it and like we would talk about it I just go man like I just don't think like that this is the thing that I would be doing five years from now. And it feels so weird being on the other side of it being like hey I'm going through this process of trying to figure it out because it feels like I'm watching myself grow in a weird way that people don't necessarily get a chance to often. And at the same time being comfortable enough for like hey I have an amazing partner and Megan we built a beautiful family so like things at home aren't just great. And I don't know if a lot of people have like that's happiness that I've watched you live with I mean even in Kenosha even in a place that you didn't like fully love. You were just always so happy. What is the, like this is a weird weird question but what is the key to happiness for how happy you have been, you know, doing some of the things that are not normally as accepted as a full time job or career. There are, there are many parts to that. I don't know that I think I'm baseline happy but I also have a little bit of a reputation for having a real short temper so I think like people that are really close to me probably wouldn't agree with that statement. I would probably say that I'm the opposite of that. But I don't think that's true I think I just kind of all that like thoughts about myself or the things other people say about me kind of run me down sometimes but I think generally all of it's kind of like my view on like a career. I've always been kind of opposed to doing like something like you did even if I could do it who knows you know but assume I could. The idea that I've just essentially signed my soul over to a company and they can at any point say hey we need you to stay late tonight I need you to come in on Saturday. Like I don't know that I really agree with that like I just need to pay the bills. I'll do the best job I can do for you while I'm here for my eight hours or whatever it is but beyond that I don't care about your company, you know. Whether you win or lose succeed or fail as long as you're signing my paychecks. That's really all I'm here for. And I just have a generally I think a pretty good work ethic so I'll just try to do a good job. The idea of being able to do something that's just for me and make money at it is kind of I think what makes me happy to do this kind of stuff even if I don't make very much money at it. Like creating videos or even coaching I think brought the same kind of happiness so much of it was rooted in somebody you know hitting a big PR or leaving a really cool comment about how much they loved whatever that last video was. And just having like that sense of pride in myself like hey man I don't think that just anybody could do this. You know I had to put a lot of effort and time and work into to being able to produce something at all and experience in any way that made a difference to somebody even if it's just for 10 minutes or for that hour long class or whatever. It's just a kind of pride in that and so it makes me that makes me really happy. Yeah I think it's just such a healthy approach. It's such a healthy approach and it's such a healthy attitude to have about the thing that you're doing because like when you work in an officer just so many strings that come attached with it. Weirdness around having your name attached to every single thing that you do outside of work as like a person who is like related to this. Every single time you're in office there is this like weird dynamic where there is an entire department which is a human resources department that is set to almost try to convince you that everyone is a part of a family. Like we are a work family but then in the back of your mind or at least for me in the back of my mind the entire time that I was like hearing all of these slogans and all of these like team spirited things I went like. You guys don't really care about me like I'm just a replaceable person in this cog of a giant system where if it's not me in the seat somebody else will be in the seat and at the same time happiness was always fleeing. So it's so interesting sitting on the other side of this and hearing you talk about you know gratification and finding this mental really really good like spirit of just doing your best work knowing that somebody benefits from it. Because I don't know if sitting in an office and doing office work like I ever was in tune with that. Is that weird for you to hear. No I feel the exact same way because I've worked at you know a lot of those those bigger companies where they'll tell you all that they have the raw raw speech about how we're all family and a team and we work together and the problem is it's very rarely actually demonstrated. I think I've read something before like you know if you died today they'd have your job listed before your obituary was on the paper tomorrow. That's exactly the way that I see it like I'm I'm only here because you need something from me. And if I couldn't give it to you I wouldn't be here and that's not really a family. Yeah. It's business so don't lie to me we can all just treat it the way it is. So don't ask me for more than what I agree to and I'll give you everything I agreed to give you. Yeah that's powerful that's a really really powerful quote to thinking about some of the best leaders and some of the best small business owners that you have dealt with. Like what are the characteristics that set them apart from some of the people that you worked with in an office setting where you go hey this person is actually just genuinely inspirational or a leader in a way that I admire and I might not have seen before. I think yeah I guess it's kind of cliché but the way my dad talked about running his his business always really stuck with me just because I have a particular relationship with him. He's kind of a hard dude you know but he the amount of like care and love that he had for the people that worked for him was immense and you would never know it and they probably never knew it. But he would be up like when I was young he would work you get up go to work at five in the morning he'd come home at six and then he'd go downstairs and keep working. And you know I was really young so I don't understand that's just what that is that's just how work is you know and as I got older and we kind of had conversations about it. He's like well you know look if I don't if I don't win these jobs I don't have money to pay these guys and I got to lay them off. And if I lay them off and they can't get another job they got families they got kids they got wives you know and it's my responsibility to provide for them the work that I told them I could give them when I hired them. There are plenty of instances where they had you know personal issues that they needed help with and he would help him and he would go so far out of his way to try to make sure that these guys would have what they what they needed to just be able to keep showing up. And so many of them were not like they didn't recognize it as that it's like they thought that it was owed to them or something which maybe it was you know but on a human level. They just didn't they didn't have a whole lot of gratitude for just how much she cared and how much she was willing to help. I don't know that I've had a boss that would lend me money if I couldn't make my house payment this month. And you know he was he was always on top of that kind of thing he didn't want to see people suffer like that. Yeah and Vince is a super super special human being and it's so awesome hearing you talk about like this pressure that he must have felt. I've never felt pressure like that in my life have you. I mean not to that degree no I mean now you got a wife I'm about to have a wife so there is a bit of inherent pressure with that. But it's never to the degree of like like if you worked for me it's now it's like I have a wife and a husband and another wife. And the more employees you got that just grows and it's not reciprocated at all so it's like I have you know another husband and wife but you just have boss. Yeah and so you're dealing with people that have my mind so or hey I don't give a shit whether your company succeeds or fails. I'm showing up to do the job I told you I would do the rest of that's on you. And it's harsh but I think most people with a job that don't own the company are going to have that kind of a feeling even if it's not quite as destructive as the way I laid it out. Oh for sure and I think the like super healthy part about not feeling that type of pressure is that you feel small wins as like things that are in your own personal journey and you just go hey here are the things I'm doing for myself and not necessarily for other people. Have you thought about hiring your own team and at some point thinking about expanding to the point where you would be somebody's boss. I've thought about it I guess I'm I have a lack of confidence in that I would make a really good boss because I think that. You know kind of like you had brought up earlier at the beginning you know you're really you have this one skill that you're really good at but you're missing BC and D. At a certain point I think the really great bosses can identify that they have that really good skill and rather than taking away from that by focusing on learning the other ones. I say all right this is what I do and I'm hiring somebody to do BC and D and that's my team and you just get really good at finding those people. But I've definitely thought about doing that at some point for like like there are aspects of this and with the video production that I don't like doing it's just you know a part of it. And so I think at a certain point if I had the ability I would absolutely pass it on to somebody else and just hope that I can be a good enough boss. Part of it too is hiring a good team and surrounding yourself with people who are able to identify those flaws for you could like make you so much better in the long run and it's always been weird to me. Did you play team sports by the way? Oh yeah yeah I played football. Yeah because people who are like good teammates just in general are people who fill in your gaps. There are the people who fill in the gaps. No goals. Exactly. But they are the people who fill in the gaps at the same time where you know you might be you might have a blind spot to something that you're doing and they just come in and they go oh I see that a totally different way. And I always wondered what it's like when you're actually making content have a big enough following. Have you ever considered partnering up with someone have you ever considered like sharing ideas with the people in the card community on some of the content that you're creating. 100% of I've wanted to find some type of collaboration with somebody. I think for me the issue with it is 100% personal like well if I don't feel like I have anything to offer you I'm just asking you to do something for me. And that's been the biggest roadblock and actually like trying to find somebody to do that with because it's hard to find somebody that's like exactly at your spot that's doing the stuff you're doing or has like a style that you like. Even find them would be hard and then define them and then try to ask them for their time. I don't know I just don't think I have the confidence in doing that at this point. At least not yet. Now yeah every single time that we talk I always like leading you down this path of hey. Last time we talked you kind of talked about this big dream of expanding the channel now you grew it in by 50% subscription base in the last. Whatever two months. When you think about a year out when you think about three years out what are some of the things that you want to make sure that you keep doing. To continue growing this thing at the pace that it's been expanding and making sure that you're able to reach more people and continue providing good content. I think for me the biggest thing is is discipline like it's just like everything else like there's going to be days where you don't feel like doing it and you just got to sit down and do it anyway. And it's almost harder for me to do that with this because it is just it's just like pure love for doing it at this point. It's not like a regular job and it also feels like sometimes if I do that then the output might not be that good because I'm not I'm not approaching it with like a lot of love and freedom at that point. It is a job. I think I can get over that. And I think that's going to be the biggest hurdle to jump if I'm ever going to hit any type of, you know, relevant numbers to where I don't have to do something else and I could just do this, but I just got to stay on it. I think I got to pick a schedule rather than just trying to hammer away whenever I got free time. And then just when it's time for that schedule you treat it like a shift at work and you just go. I love that. I love that doing the thing that you actually have to do and making sure that you're sticking with the process. And then let me hit you with the final question that's probably the hardest one. Where do the ideas for some of the content that you're coming up with come from. Also, a lot of time, like reading about the news around the game, you know, whatever new sets are coming out, read into like the design, like they'll release like sketches of like concept art for the card artwork. They'll release little like paragraphs or even just one sentence about like a little story attached to whatever they made because it's kind of like an anime or a manga like they'll write out a story but they won't write it in words. It'll be depicted in pictures and so I'll kind of go through all that stuff. And eventually I'll come across them or like, you know, that's really cool. I would like to know more about that. So then I'll start pulling up like Wikipedia pages or Google searches and reading about history that is connected to whatever the story is because a lot of them will be based on like folklore like Japanese, you know, cryptids and stuff like that. And I'll start reading about it. And I know I found something that's going to make a fun video to produce if I'm reading about it and like, all right, what else is there like I got to know more. As soon as I have that feeling like, Oh, this is this is a good one. Let's start writing a script. Let's see what we can find here. Tell me tell me about the script that you write because I'm so so curious. You keep referring back to the actual full script of the story you're trying to tell. I know that the production behind it, even for, and this sounds crazy because even for a five to seven minute video is like a full on pages long essay of a story. Tell me about that process for you. Yeah, so like if I have a five page script, it's probably about two, maybe 2,500 words or something like that. And that usually gets you like eight to 10 minutes depending on how you how you produce the video. It's pretty much just an essay like I don't, I've never looked up how you should write a script. I just. Basically, I'll make a long list of bullet points breakdown like by card, what things I found about it, what about the artwork is interesting to me, what is the story just pertaining to that piece of art. And I'll have it all laid out in like a list, and then I'll kind of read through the list like, all right, what order do I want to deliver this in, what's going to grab your attention in that first 10 seconds so that you want to hear whatever is coming next. And then what would make a really good ending because I try to have like a cool sentence like a outro sense and then just cut it off like that's the end of it. And then how do I want to fill in the gaps in the middle and then I just write it out like you would write a paper for English class in high school like, you know, there's your opening paragraph and then all your body and then there's your closing paragraph. And then I'll read through it. Usually I'll print it out here and, you know, mark it up with a red pen go through make those edits. I'll copy and paste it into a like one of those AI like it'll read the ship back to you. And so I'll listen to it just so that because sometimes in my own head it sounds good but then when I hear it and like that sounds like shit. So then I'll rework it. And eventually I'll have, you know, my five or six pages of like, this is good, this is good stuff. And then, you know, you record it on the mic I gotta go through and edit it all together. And then you got to figure out how you're going to attach visuals to it so that it's not boring like it's not static and it's a whole, it's a whole thing. It takes a long time. And I love that there is this process and one of the most rewarding things to me is watching you figure it out in a way that's actually fully resonating because I just have so much appreciation for the hard work that you're doing. Alex, we are so, so excited that you are doing really, really well and I am so happy that every single time we talk. I mean your channel is just doing way better than you could expect. So that just gives me a lot of happiness and I'm so, so proud of you. Thank you again for taking the time and sharing your time with our audience. Hey, thanks for having me on again. I think I'm pretty sure I got the record for most appearances at this point. So we'll keep that up. Can't let that go. It's always, it's always cool to get to talk about this kind of stuff. So I appreciate you asking about it. Yes, sir. And thank you guys for listening. We'll see you next time. [BLANK_AUDIO]