The Changing Landscape of Media and Brand Deals

Hello. Welcome to Tuesday's Morsky. I'm Adam Moore, so today I'm thrilled to be joined by my good friend, Chris Poutine. Chris is a digital media agent at CAA and has been named among the top agents for YouTube influencers and represents many of the world's leading content creators and pro gamers, including lele Pawns, doctor disrespect, and ninja, I'm excited to have a conversation today about the changing landscape of media and brand deals. Thanks for coming on the show today, Chris. Thanks for having me, Adam. Good to see you, buddy. Yeah, absolutely, man. Chris, you were like LeBron James just to get from Cleveland. When I think about careers, I I think a major thing in deciding on a career is exposure. Given that there isn't much exposure to the entertainment industry in Ohio, how do you make your way into the industry? Yeah. That was that was the big thing for me. I grew up playing, and I used playing very liberally here, music. For a punk rock band in high school. And so I'll end that story quickly by saying it didn't work out. And the thing that did work out was, I really loved the experience what little experience I got in Cleveland in the entertainment business and sort of just seeing how people react with art, culture, music, film, television, the whole sort of medium. And so when we met at Miami University, I had no idea what I wanted to do, went through that program, which was an absolute blast, maybe could've put some more effort towards my, you know, scholastic activities, and found out what I should be doing. And so I graduated from the university with no direction whatsoever, And so after a little bit of soul searching and maybe too many episodes of entourage, I got the idea that Hollywood was an opportunity. And so I started just by trying to get introduced to people that are in the business, because to your point, the way that it's an industry town in Los Angeles is like the way that Pittsburgh was a steel town. It's not thought of as something that is glamorous or aspirational, it's like endemic to that space, to that part of the world, the way that those industries sort of stood up based on things from resources to regulation to incentives, that's where entertainment found its roots basically in Los Angeles and New York. So after Miami and spending some time speaking with folks who were kind enough to give me time, I sort of found myself being pulled towards the representation tract, I was always interested in practicing law, I was always interested in sort of deal making. And so discovering that talent agents was a real bona fide practice and career, a discipline that is, you know, sometimes similar to what you saw on the HBO show, but oftentimes, far less entertaining. I kind of took that energy momentum and found a program they ultimately graduated with the Masters in, that was effectively like an NBA tailored for the entertainment business. But the Big Hook, for me at least was that it brought you out to Los Angeles. And so I knew that no matter what my path would be, if I wanted to give this a shot, the biggest thing I had to solve for was to be in the cultural center of it and build relationships so that I could even understand if I did wanna follow that passion, if those jobs were what I thought they were from the outside looking in. So that was my entry point to to get there. And discover sort of the lineage it took me to where I am today, it's funny because when you're from Ohio or you're from the Midwest and you're not exposed to this sort of world, everything from the outside feels so glamorous, feels so kind of magical to a sense, and then you get in and you start rubbing elbows with people that, you know, grew up next to these creatives, that knew someone that wrote for television that was on their block, that all their friends that went to USC, the majority of them had tried out for shows at pilot season. So it was a bit of a cultural gap that I had to close, to even be in the space, to then start tasting things and identify, do my passions align with my experiences, is there opportunity to actually pursue, the thing that I thought I wanted. Excellent. Yeah. I definitely resonate for my time in Dallas and Dallas, and I I always thought it was fun. To be in the regionally relevant industry. You know, in Dallas, it was real estate, and and Austin, it's been technology startup. So it it was cool to hear you make that comparison between entertainment in Los Angeles and Steel and Pittsburgh. I don't think a lot of people make those comparisons. And you've spent some time in both those places. The story of your firm CAA, particularly the book powerhouse, helped me leave my stable career in consulting to join the unknowns of entrepreneurship and startups. I was just so pumped up about reading about these five young guys led by Michael Obitz, who went on their own against established powers and made it happen. And they did it boldly. One story I read, they they spent their first earned commission checks at their new firm. I think this is right. On matching jaguars, because at that time driving around town was everything. So they they had these jaguars like CA one, CA two, CA three, And before computers, that was the way they could create buzz around town. Was there anything in particular that attracted you to CIA? Yeah. It's interesting because, you know, at the end of the day, you know, my field sort of sits on the emerging side of the business, but there is definitely a bit of like the Hollywood glitter that sort of surrounds that business, which is like the fake it till you make it, type mentality or sort of virtue signaling that when you bring clients into a building, you want to have it feel like they're a part of something, that there's something bigger here. Even when the job itself is very person to person relationship based business that is really all about networking and solving for problems that your partners on the other end of the phone are needing essentially to run their businesses. And so there's certainly a little bit of that that persists today. I think the great unlock is that with the internet, certainly with the business that I run that doesn't have borders or territories for the most part. I'm taking this call from Nashville, Tennessee where I live now, just certainly in an entertainment town, it is music city. But even five years ago, it was all really just based on touring and live and acoustic sets to showcase your music. We're now I look at our clients and what the agency has done. It's truly global from the presence of the offices that we have, but also certainly in the creator space, you really just need to have that incredible motivation to stay connected with those that are in those hubs, but even greater still to kind of build your own surrounding walls of the elements that are gonna bring your brand, bring your talent forward into the eyes of those that are the tastemakers and makers in what once was all centered in Hollywood, but now it's sort of been decentralized across the world. So I think a little bit of that old school mentality persists, but so much has changed now that some of the biggest talent in my space are truly we represent clients in New Zealand and Australia and the UK, yes, some are based in Los Angeles, for sure, but it's absolutely spread out everywhere. So when I started in the agency and it hasn't been that long in perspective, I was wearing a suit every day. And now I think some of my clients, if I showed up with the suit jacket on in my tie, my half winds are pulled tight, it might be a little alarming to see your representative, so corporate looking. We're back in the day, that's how you identified the agents and lawyers of Los Angeles, they were the ones in suits. You mentioned the ships in the industry. Yeah. If you showed up in a suit, they might think you're a special agent and not a talent agent. Right. Not confused CA was c I I very good. Very good. Yeah. You mentioned the shifts in the industry. Obviously, timing plays a factor And what it's been interesting for me to, you know, watch your career as, you know, being a pretty young guy, but also a leading authority in this space of YouTubers and gamers that really hasn't been around that long. Right. So how how how do you think about like the way your career is unfolding, and the idea would be not the right place at the right time. So I started my career at WME, which is now under the Endeavor Company, a now publicly listed company, graduating from my grad program at Carnegie Mellon, which was shocking to find out in my first job, real job in the industry, that the mail room still existed? In fact, how much mail still existed even then? Literally pulling around carts through the hallways and handing mail out to people. And so I got my first taste of agency life suited up very early kind of doing the analog system. When I started to identify where I thought my place was and where the opportunity was, actually left the agency world to work for a company that was under the Warner Brothers Umbrella or Warner Media as it is today. And that was all digital media base. And so a little bit of another round of culture shock from working with folks that were Oscar winners, and, you know, on mainstream sort of linear media to them working with people that start every video with, hey, what's up guys? It was a bit of a surprise onto itself. But as I learned that business and learned what I thought was the value add to those creators and to those artists in that space, I realized that I needed to make a move started exploring my opportunities, CA, I had done some business with those folks, thought very highly of the team, I was lucky enough to have them approach me for a position and the thing that made me jump back in that I thought was unique to CA was a cultural perspective on where this business was going, strictly on the digital media side but broadly applicable, which is they're all artists at the end of the day. And so There's been a stigma. I think it still persists. There was certainly one five, seven years ago that it was sort of a lesser medium. And that, you know, talent in that space wasn't equivalent around the same sort of pecking order as your actors or musicians or athletes, CA always took the perspective that it was talent, it was artistry in its own right, it just appeared somewhere else and the business model was to treat those individuals and those businesses the way that they had historically built careers and empires around the actors, the athletes, the more linear type talent. So that kind of cultural note was really aligned with how I saw it. And it's funny as you dive into the talent agency space, you see all these like three letter acronym companies similar to sort of the big accounting firms and financial firms. And so on paper, they all look very similar, but in practice what I was exposed to at CA, were people that genuinely were acting as fiduciaries for their clients trying to do the best for them and trying to think long term, which as you look at the digital media space, the critique, which is sometimes true because of the speed of internet and media I would argue more often, it's not true, which is that there's the overnight success. People all of a sudden are these big names, relevant, millions of followers, millions of views, and was it one piece of viral content that set them on this path? Or was it years of working and perfecting a craft? To build for the moment where the actual media could take them to where they were destined to go all along. And so the perspective of how we sort of to even this day, treat clients and use our history and lineage of working with artists. That was the thing that brought me in and I thought, hey, in this emerging space, if you can put those sort of time tested, true tactics at play, I think the yields and results for the new medium, the sky's the limit. Yeah. You know, a lot of people probably don't even know what an agent does. They might think they do. You know, one of the things I found interesting from conversations like like Wepad or, you know, others in my network in Los Angeles and the entertainment industry. It's just a mix of activities. That an agent can get tapped into. You know, sure they negotiate brand deals, you know, I I've even heard, you know, advising on boards of companies on behalf of their clients, how do you describe what exactly it is you do? And is there a particular story that stands out to you that highlights both the diversity and ambiguity of what an agent can get into? I always thought it was funny, sort of as a student when you're looking at career paths and you're talking to people and the adage of like, oh, every day is different. No two days are the same. I don't believe that because we all know plenty of people, professionals are employed you know, there's there's varying levels of passion for what they do and that's cool. You know, it's it's a job at the end of the day for a lot of folks. But I will say like the agent space, at least in our medium, every day truly is different, and it's different by the environment and the sort of service area we occupy. Meaning that, you know, you mentioned brand deals. So our department, as a group, which is about, I think today around sixty five people dedicated the business. It's working with brands and advertisers, it's working with media, it's working with business development, to create consumer products to create enterprise value for clients. It's working in the what I call premium content space. That's your cable television, film, TV, OTT, sort of model. It's immersive media, you know, eighteen months ago. Web3, NFTs, Metiverse, all that stuff was top of mind, today that's AI. New platform surface all the time with varying business models. As we have this conversation, I think threads, the new meta product is that, I think I heard seventy million signed up It's about thirty yesterday, so it's probably seventy today. Right. Right. And insane. So those dynamics really do make it different almost every day, and the client needs are so tailored and unique to who they are and who their businesses are sort of servicing. So some folks, it is mature and they have like a standpoint of it's about revenue coming in the door, it's about sort of franchise management, it's about sustaining what they've already built. Other folks wanna be entrepreneurial and they wanna stop renting land from partnerships and sort of build their own equity and stake in things. Some want to be forward leaning and on the cusp of technology. We sort of think about it as like, hey, you may have started a career on YouTube, but if you were born twenty, thirty years earlier, maybe that would have been radio, or maybe that would have been some other medium. And so, I think those dynamics truly do make it different every day. Simply put the role of the agent is to be an advisor, a protector over the business, and secure and bring in revenue and put that artist or business in a position for a long term success. So that is the shift of the model that impacts with what is happening in technology and media at that time. And where it's going down the road. I do a lot of work in the gaming and youth sports space. That space has been explosive with growth and interests. Crazy to think that video games as a business is as big as television and music combined. And yet from the consumer standpoint, at least for our age group, there's still so much focus on what's on Netflix. Right? What's the film that's coming out? But then you look at sort of where audiences going and what people are young people are consuming and you have these behemoths that sort of appear overnight, and now there's not a firm in Hollywood that doesn't have a digital strategy, or doesn't have staff that's dedicated to figuring out how they take those historical companies and put them in context for the new audience. So your agent in certain that ecosystem is supposed to be there to help be that steward and guide the client so that they can have the most options available to themselves, have the information to make the best decisions possible, and then support those decisions as they move through their career cycle. You've been in this space for a while and you mentioned some of the platforms like Instagram, to TikTok, and and they've grown alongside their influencers, you know, and then there's other Twitch probably. But how have you seen the role of influencers and the way they interact with companies change over time. You mentioned a little bit about how the agency perspective differs from place to place and has changed over time, but how do you see it from a company perspective? Yeah, I think simply put the credibility of this space has now sort of reached its pinnacle moment. It's undeniable. It's not you know, is this gonna be part of the strategy if you're a major brand or you're a major media company? It's what is your strategy now? So that's great because it puts the power in the hands of the creatives to a point. You know, you say the word influencer and, like, that is the vernacular that that most CMOs are thinking of and most people on the outside, right? You look at sort of the surveys now that are passed around for professional development career development for young people, it's a box now. It's a vocation that you can aspire to go after. Personally, I hate the word influencer. I just think it's got for our generation, it was like, you know, say no to drugs, right? And it's like don't be influenced. By those that are around you. I don't know that I'm in love with the content creator either, it sounds a little omnipotent for what it is, but I think at the end of the day, like the fact is the audience is the jury on quality. And so when Hollywood came into YouTube and sort of the digital space, the adage was, okay, we're gonna make premium content. That would be just as good if it premiered on HBO or if it premiered on, you know, Fox or ABC, and we're gonna program it for digital space, the new frontier. The lesson learned quickly and harshly was that's not the rules in which they play by, and that's not the definition of what is good or what the audience wants, so you see like the YouTube environment, yes, there are a ton of people doing incredibly creative things on there, but what's not talked about enough is that that's also the second biggest search engine in the world. With the first being Google and this being the second, And so the art of SEO, metadata, learning how an algorithm works to channel distribution equally into what content is providing the audience, that's where everything's going now too. And you'll see content that is shot off an iPhone that gets multimillion views compared to something that is done by a traditional studio or production company that gets a fraction of that viewership, which is better, we look to the audience, let them decide. There's been some interesting case studies. I remember, a friend was telling me that Verizon for a period of time was gonna get into streaming. Yeah. And their their platform for it, I believe, was called Go ninety. That's right. If you remember this, so just turn your phone ninety degrees and watch like a premium content. And obviously, it didn't work. You know, when you were sharing a moment ago, I was thinking there's a a a wise man in Northeast, Ohio that's I think it's been over seventy countries. And he would say, he he told me once, getting old as choice. And I think it's very and that he was talking about it in personal life, and that that was that your father Eric. But he it's I think the same thing is true from a a company perspective. So in your in your experience, have you seen, like, as you've interacted and negotiated brand deals on behalf of talent, organizations changing their org structures, changing their budgets to position themselves differently to work with these these type of talent and creators? Yeah. Short answer is absolutely. I think Yeah. So a much wiser man than I, my father I think was absolutely right in that, which is sort of, as an agent, particularly, and I think like as a consumer if you're looking at the space or you want to study it, you have to take yourself outside of it a little bit, regarding like, just because the content may not be for you personally, Adam or Chris. Doesn't mean that it's not good and doesn't mean they won't find audience. Right? So, you've got to sort of take your preferences off the table a little bit. It's lovely when those do align and you're as excited about something as someone else. But the fact is, like, people will spend or people vote in two ways. This is certainly not my quote, but I believe it is with their time or with their money. So if you follow where they're casting those votes, that'll lead you to sort of the relevance and what pop culture is favoring and what is good, right? So I think that's the choice on the aging spectrum here is once you sort of lose the way to appreciate whether or not you're the personal consumer of it, that's when you start to get disconnected from what's really happening. And so now you take that in the context of, traditional corporations, whether they're on the advertising side, they're on the content side, or now in the consumer product space, there's a big movement going there to embrace this type of talent, you gotta be able to find that connective tissue between what's relevant and what your business is. And so when you look at what these organizations have done, to staff for that, you see places like Procter and Gamble that have dedicated teams that are working in house or with ad agencies to put a specific budget strategy, KPIs up against measuring, engaging and executing within the space, you see the crossover with traditional storytelling and embracing these new age content creators to build stuff for audiences that it's hard to be the decision maker, if you're so far removed from what people are actually seeing, then you're going to be at a disconnective programming to those audience. So those teams are built up. A lot of them have been established. There have been a lot of organizations who've had meteoric rises by just sort of wrapping their arms around that space to be the conduits and Translators for what's happening in pop culture and putting that into organizational structure, so that they can have the expertise to execute against those ideas. Yeah, it's interesting when you're sharing that. I was thinking about companies that were established for a long time and some of the some of the companies that have been in industries that have been disrupted in since a lot of the rest of these platforms, and I I think a lot about beverage industries even take water. Now, you you can't liquid death is everywhere. And like before, everyone is just drinking bottled water, No one no big deal, but now it's all all aluminum or all all glass. And that was basically, as it would be seen as grassroots. Are are there companies that you feel are playing the I'm gonna use the term, influencer marketing game particularly well? So interesting in like the brand product side of the business or you know CPG. So we have all these sort of historic brands that you and I grew up with, like, you know, you think about like, what is missus Butterworth's connection to a gen z today. Right? Like, it was probably It's a very important question. It was a stretch for us, right? It was just sort of like, this is how syrup is made, like this, obviously, this is why this characters here to tell us the story of it or you look at all the cereal brands and all the animation and and sort of storytelling that went into those, you get far enough away from that pop culture element to it, you lose meaning. And so you look at who's doing it extremely well today, brands from Celsius to liquid death have done this extremely effectively where it's called what it is. Water itself has not innovated much, right? I'm sure there are some people on more of the science side that could take me to school for that, but I'd argue to you like, that's just effective branding. It's a new packaging, it's a new way of telling, story, telling, and trust that you're building with the audience. But I think the other side of that company's particular success is there's a movement away from alcoholic beverages. Consumption patterns in that space today, a lot of age drinking, millennials, and younger, they're not going out and ordering eight-ten beverages in a session. They're doing like two-three. You see the rise of all these other supplemental products that being one of them that are taking up the market share that once was there because they're connecting story with that product, not because I think the water is great, but I don't think there's any sort of breakthrough in the product itself, it's more about the positioning and how it's been roll out to market than the product. Yeah. And it does seem like there's more like direct access between the storytellers and the audience now than ever. Well, that's the big thing. It's it's the it's the concurrent dialogue that happens alongside content. Right? Where you had a phenomenon like Game of Thrones come out, you don't get to have a conversation with those storytellers in real time. You're just it's a one way play of communication. You're just absorbing it, where you look at, for example, like the live streaming market, particularly in the video game space, and there's tons of other genres there too. You know, the chat, the community is having a real time conversation, they're affecting the outcome of the content as it's being produced. Which inherently makes a stronger tie between the content creators, the publishers, the distributors of it and those that are consuming it. Yeah. Danny Meyer, the restaurant or he has a number of New York, like, institutions, but got most famous for Shake Shack in his book. Setting the table, he talked about this concept of shared ownership. And he was talking about specifically in restaurants for this idea. You know, people are talking about their your restaurants, as if they're theirs. And that's happening a lot more with brands and created content. You know, you mentioned a stat that I didn't know about and correct me if I'm wrong. So it's gaming is a bigger market than movie film and music put together. Is that right? Well, I I said TV and music, but I think TV and music is also Okay. That's also true. Okay. Cool. What have you learned, you know, in your time in this space? What have you learned about Gen z during your time working with clients who are in that. And generations are I'm not that married to, like, these defined populations, but that's what generally people call that group. In that age range, like, what have you learned from either clients or the the gen z audiences that might be their target markets? Yeah. I think it's that access is is a big through line, where kind of the historic model for even companies like selves, you could only engage with that movie star through their film. You had to either go to the premier or see it, maybe you could catch entertainment tonight or sort of the circuits PR stops along the way, but the real way to experience and connect to that artist or art was through buying a ticket for admission. Now today with that wall sort of coming down, the benefit and the challenge, it's it's a two sided coin, is that twenty four hour access. Something happens, positive, negative, or the community has got a question, there is no sort of vehicle you need to capture or attend to have that conversation or to get your answer, you go right to the source. And so I think that the Gen Z crowd really gets that and is also easy to sort of spot an outsider, meaning that particularly brands have to fight this battle, which is, hey, Adam, we love your voice We love what you're doing. You're incredible at it. We wanna work with you. What you do is fantastic. Please help us get our messaging out. And by the way we wrote this script and we like you to read it exactly verbatim, this is the messaging, and it sort of absolutely blows up that concept which is if you're looking for me to sort of take the best parts of you and share with my audience here, then I need to be someone in control of that voice. You gotta be able to let go a little bit of kind of the brand, I don't want to say brand guidelines, but sort of the constrictive controls over messaging to put something out there that's actually real. The thing that I also, going back to kind of words and marketing speech, authentic, it's thrown around so much. I tell people when I can, I'm like, hey, if it was really authentic, we wouldn't need to say that. It's just real. Right? If we weren't trying to convince or sell, we would just be real. We let the conversation goes, the conversation goes, and if the right sort of raw materials are there, the consumer, the fan, they'll come to the conclusion you want them to because those pieces already exist versus trying to really sort of construct and editorialize a message just because you want to connect with those consumers. So some do it obviously better than others, you know, the one that was like a really classic example, and it's timely today because now with threads being unveiled to the market, and a real competitor and kind of what I call the microblogging space that is Twitter. Wendy's came out on their fast food space early on with language that I think most CMOs would sort of shriek at. But they realized that the audience wanted something that wasn't so sterilized and artificial, they wanted a conversation that felt real, that wasn't perfect. Are you referring to their Twitter? Refering to Which was excellent. Yeah. It's great. Yeah. I really appreciate what you're saying. I I had I attended a workshop led by a guy named Andrew Horn, a couple ago, and he was talking about conscious communication, you know, terms are tough. But basically, what what it boils down is, hey, when you speak from the heart people can't look away. Mhmm. And I think that's what audiences are really looking for, and it sounds like companies are understanding more too. You know, Chris, if you if you had a Chris cabal, obviously, the last ten years has been crazy in this space with the rise of technology. I mean, take fifteen, sixteen years ago with the release of an iPhone been crazy. If you had a crystal ball, what do you think the landscape will look like in ten years? And if for the record, if in ten years from now, if you nailed it, we'll leak it, and if you didn't, we'll bury it. Yeah. I appreciate that. Yeah, it's hard to predict, but I would say if you're basing it on trends and people far smarter than I, The content creator space, user generated content is here to stay, and I think it will continue to become the overwhelming majority of what we consume. The access and direct dialogue to consumers is only going to get bigger as more middlemen get sort of squeezed out of the system. Shopify has had this explosive business over years that sort of put and demystified the art of e commerce in the hands of businesses of all size. So when you look at it like from a technology annaling standpoint, I think we're gonna see more platforms that are trying to be sort of an all in one solution. For the consumer, so you see what YouTube has done, there's live content, there's VOD content, short form, there's now podcasting that's on it, Right? It's sort of a hub for all in one. And then on the other side of it, when you look at sort of brand and storytelling, it's how are we making those stories connected for the new audience. So you're gonna see I'm sure you've seen what Mr. Beast has done. We've got several clients that are in Space two, brands at the highest level are rethinking their strategy to build a layer in there for communicators and talent. And then on, like, kind of the innovation side of it, look, I I work a lot in gaming. I would argue too that the meta versus Ben here for a while, and it is Fortnite is Roblox. It is games that can become a platform in their own right, the way that you and I would race off the school bus, get on the family computer and log on to AOL. Most of the time, at least in my experience, There weren't even materially different conversations happening there that you didn't have on the school bus ten minutes before, but it was about being present and being in that ecosystem. I think that connectivity only scales. And you look at developing countries or countries that have arguably skipped a couple of steps, go to like a place like India, you're gonna find far more people that have top end connected smartphones that skipped buying the desktop computer, that skipped doing the wired in DSL, landline internet style, and went to something that's truly global. The Web III movement which I am totally supportive of the tech and think that it'll be more so like we look at WiFi today. Devices are just enabled. It's on it. It runs because it's a superior technology. I'm less bullish on people buying JPEG's that are millions of dollars, but the fact is, like, that's gonna take out a lot of the gatekeepers and middleman steps along the way and provide a little more unfettered access to things. And that is, from currency to content to communications. So I think the big thing that people are talking about today is sort of like the headset space the ARVR technology. I think some of that is going to have some really strong applications. I think that the sort of compass here is what enables the least amount of friction between person to person communication. Because even now, some folks argue they're on their device the whole time. It's totally creating a wall between two different parties. But when you look at sort of the communication styles that are coming from it and the content, you could find thirteen year olds will read a message with an emoji and get a totally different meaning out of it than someone that doesn't use that in their grammar punctuation, And so those tool sets I think just amplify. The one element of COVID that I would say is beneficial that we all went through is that it sort of took the trend that was happening and accelerated it ten years over two years. It kind of cemented that as being just the way. Now, at the same kind of breath, I would also argue that we're seeing a resurgence of antelope, We're seeing sales go up of mechanical watches. You're seeing a desire in the market and hardware manufacturers of phones that are building stuff that is, you know, like our first cell phones, keypad enabled feature less because they want to also create at the same time when you're more connected than ever, spaces where you are using tools that are a little segmented that have a singular purpose versus being the hardware destination for all. Yeah. There there's definitely a lot in there from the RISE platforms, and then in some regards, you know, people and trends going the other direction. So I think it's a a really exciting time and an unparalleled ability to go direct to your creators or the source or your your audiences. Any any reading materials or content you'd recommend to listeners interested in keeping up in this space? I should read more. The truth is You you're breathing it though, man. The truth is, I think I think audio is underrated today. I think that the magic behind that medium podcasting like this connected voice enabled technology, certainly the stuff that's gonna be powered by AI, the stuff that lives in your Alexa or Siri today, We're gonna see a massive rise in all of that. I think there's a little bit of cultural stigma still today to speak into your phone. Right, or to, you know, yell commands around the household, I think that gets normalized pretty quick because it you know, it's like the shortest distance or the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. Right? It's like, how do we create more straight lines? And the hope is that this isn't a technology movement that replaces things, but unlocks time to be allocated elsewhere. Yeah. How how can people keep up with the work you're doing? Is it true you're going to VidCon? VidCon just happened. Vicom was a couple weeks ago in NIM, California. So so, actually, a great example. Right? So you're talking about a fan base and a set of artists that are endemic to digital culture. So they're communicating that one on one dialogue in real time with fans, most of them are on a daily basis, but there's still this human longing for connection for, you know, sensory touch, voice, to see things in real life. I don't think that goes anywhere. We just enable those experiences. To be more frictionless through the technology. Concers are selling out now as big as they've ever been. In fact, you're seeing the almost I would argue overstocking and superfluous inventory of festivals. Right? Yeah. Sure. I don't wanna just go see that one band. I wanna go see twenty five all weekend long, immersed with my community and my group to have the shared experience in real time, that then will also live digital because you can't not put the flash up on your phone when the lights go down or you can't help but record that set that sort of took you to another place. Question is do you ever rewatch that video? I would think most people would say no and a lot of artists would say put the phone down, but the fact is like it's an and, not an or. So those two things sort of run-in parallel. Well, I really appreciate the time. Appreciate coming on the show. I think this was an awesome conversation. Learn a lot. And I think there's a lot to exciting about. So kudos to you for being at the right place and the right time, and appreciate the time. Yeah, dude. Happy to be here. Love what you're doing. Thanks, Chris.