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Mika Salmi on The Future of creativeLIVE

We are sitting here with our current CEO Mika Salmi, current CEO. Middle joke about it before we started and I kind of wish that I have been able to watch the upcoming how to ask a question before this interview would have been, Really? But we're gonna way we're gonna do a good job here. Question for you. Who are you? Who is making up for people who don't know you? It was a little bit of your background in your back. Let's talk. Let's talk about that. Sure. Ah, what's kind of interesting is there's actually a bunch of music people here today. We had ah, Dave Goldberg. Hey, started music business. Ah, and I have known him for 20 years and the guy before me sitting here is guys Steve ready? I knew him from the music business. And so the interesting connection there. So that is a huge apartment background. So I'm I was born in Finland Ah, and grew up kind of as a person that went back and forth to fill in the U. S. Through my teenage years. So I went I went to high school in the US and Ge...

neral in the U. S. But I was a lot of time in Finland, and I'm currently a dual citizen. And finish this and end a U S citizen. Um and ah, but I was a massive music fan growing up and, ah, I saw my first part of my career was in the music industry. I worked for some small record labels. I was a deejay. I signed some band. There were big record labels. Um, but I also had a really strong tech background. I, uh, was a computer science major. First, my first major. I switched at one point, but I started computer science. So my first job at a record label was actually as a database programmer and a sales person. So I actually was in the record industry. But I didn't actually do a whole lot with the music industry there, but I I've always been attracted to kind of transformational things, and we're like the you know, what's what's the new kind of you know we're things moving towards. And so, in 1995 I saw the Internet. I saw the Internet 94. Actually, I had a mosaic browser in my office at Sony and Sony Music. And I was like, This is it the Internet I got I've got to go after this. And so a computer back on everything else I went into Ah ah, the Internet industry. I worked for a company called Real Networks. On their early start up was a very early employees like complain number 30 or 31 or something. I was the only non engineer employees. I did all their deals with the music industry and with the film industry. If a man I started my own company Adam Films Eso atomfilms started I actually going back to in high school and through college, I always had a little business or always did something entrepreneurial. I was always had entrepreneur bent, and I was waiting to start my own company, and I was really afraid to start my own company. But then when I was in Seattle working for real networks, I had a bunch of friends starting companies, and I saw how they got the legal stuff done. The banking, how they hired people are they even got offices. I saw how they did it. I'm like, Oh, this isn't so scary. I could do this. And so that's when I started Adam Films. That was that was a passion of mine was a short form content. And I was convinced at the time that that, um, people would be shooting times of short videos. Um, back in 98. Actually, it was actually harder than it was. It was no more smartphones. Um, you still did a lot of things on tape, and but, you know, I was just convinced. And so it was kind of a YouTube idea at the time, but because it was very expensive, actually, to shoot the video, to digitize it, to even put on the Internet, we had to curate it so we would pick the best of the best in there. Um, and I think this also points in the thing that I'm passionate about, which is, I like finding talent. So I found talent in the music industry. And then at Adam Films, we would find new talent. Um uh, visit film talent and later game gaming town. We merged the company called Shockwave in 2001 but even the Phillips I wear the were the first contract to a company called jib jab, which people know pretty well. I think we, uh we had the first three short films first commercial products from guiding Jason Reitman, who did up in the air and Juno. And he's, you know, he's Academy Award nominee. I think eso way literally find these talent, and we would give a platform, which I think is relevant to today's is what we do. A creative live. We find talent. We give him a platform to do what they do best. Um, so that's fantastic. And eso after Adam film. So you started that ran that for a while. Would you do next? Um, so we merged with Shockwave moved to San Francisco, CA Shockley was based in San Francisco. I think the most interesting story of that whole thing was that in 2001 we had 335 employees. Um, we're making a lot of money in the 2001 entire Internet business collapsed. That's how we describe it. We were all advertising based on Marva advertising 80% of our attention from other Internet companies, and so when they all went on a business, we had no more revenue, so I basically, ah had the layoff. I basically fired everybody in the entire company, including myself. And then I said, There are 32 jobs left to run this company. Have you figured out they were good enough money to basically have 32 people in the company? So that was incredibly painful. But it was We did it a very fair way. We basically said everyone who got fired, everyone felt the same. But we like we all got fired. Room said, Hey, we're all out of a job, including me. You have two choices. You can either a plot. You could either leave 2082 months. Severance were very generous or you can fly for these 32 jobs, and if you are accepted, you will get three months of double pay. Because we were, we were worried that people would want to take a job. Why we want to work at a company with 32 people. After they heard and 35 people. It was just a big mess. You know, we'll pay double for three months. That was the most interesting story from that period, and we managed it strike you went back to two from being a full fledged company back to a start up. Yeah, we actually ended up taking office not far from your town, sin. And, uh, seventh, we have got a free office from one of our investors, Macromedia, which is now Adobe. And we worked in the basement in a windowless office for 2.5 years. Have you seen this office here? Which is a beautiful, light filled office. It was completely the opposite of that. We worked in the basement, used to call it Las Vegas because we couldn't tell what time of day it was or the weather was like Like, we're going to work in Vegas. You know, we've been this dungeon basically, and I was still impressed. The people impressed with everybody was there, like, I can't believe we did that. I mean, like, that was just But, you know, back in that day, it was actually kind of depressing. The the Internet businesses were going down and 1 psi, where it was kind of a dead time. Even here in San Francisco, not until about 2000 for the things things are taking off again. In that sense, they're taking off for us. And then we sold the company in 2006 to Viacom, and, um, when we sold the company Ah, we sold it for $200 million. The I had to stay for one year. I was given this bogus job for one year was it was a great deals, like OK, I could just kick back and do nothing. But within a couple months they said, Hey, we would like you to actually run all of the digital operations for Why come with me to be the president of that? So I was like, Wow, that's that's a massive job and always thought to myself, If I can say that I've been the president of Viacom, no matter what happens to me, I could be like destitute on the curb. It would give me a job. I told my wife that I'm like, Look, this is obvious set for life. I could always say I was president of Viacom. No matter what happens and you got being the CEO of some Podunk, a little Internet company, no one really cared, right? But President Viacom's I was like, OK, I'll take the job there was one huge catch. It was based in New York City, and so I But I refuse to move there. So I basically commuted there every week. I would take a red eye on Sunday night and I would work there there in a week. And my family was here in San Francisco. So that was three years of literally back and forth, incredibly high status on the airlines, of course, but that was that was the catch to do this job. But I'm not complaining too much. It paid Well, they treated me well. It was It was It was a fantastic job. Um, but I knew I had to go back to being entrepreneur again. So I left there in 2009. And then I spent a couple of years. I started a small little company was an app company called Mad Races That did nothing. But I sold it off to basic for the assets of something. And I was basically I was dabbling and I was interviewing with companies. I was looking for something, and, um, Creativelive came on my doorstep, and I was like, Look at this and it really like, blew me away I was just like, Wow, I heard this story from Chasing Craig and Jon Cunning. Any other person was involved. I heard what they were doing was I couldn't believe the size of the audience, the revenue, the kind of positive impact they were having on the world. I saw the place in the website, says What is creativelive mean to you? People were just raving about how it's changed your life. Are they change their job or they've improved something and they can't believe it's free over. And so for me it was just like I was. I was like, Wow, is that this hit so many buttons One was that it's ah, it's a cross of media and tech and that's definitely my sweet spot. I don't meet intact, um, and to was that it's Ah, it's in a disruptive industry. Education's being disruptive, and I really like that. And then third is the most important one is doing, giving a positive impact to the world. It's actually doing something that's positive. It's not making another little app like I did which you know who does in the wrap. So I was just like Okay, well, this this really, uh, makes it work for me. So I was, um you know, I was just eager to get the job as CEO, I think, as they were to get me as CEO. So I mean, you're a perfect fit because of all that that background. So with your background in the media and, uh, and tech, what do you think is kind of the current status of television? And where do you see television going in the future? That's a heavy question. So I think that, um, what I like about what we do in this relates to your question, though, is that we are basically says live. This is a live TV. It's on the Internet. But it's live TV, and it's actually not that much live TV optimizes. There's the news, their sports. There's kind of breaking things, but is not that much live TV. There's most things are actually pre recorded. It was cool about live TV is that there's, you know, that our case thousands, sometimes tens of thousands of people watching all at one time Were you watching a sporting event? There's hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of people watching one time, so I was having the same experience in live TV. It's not time shifted. I mean, the thing about Internet people say Wait of interest about getting it when you want it, How you want it, where you want it, right? That's about the Internet, right? So it's all about on demand. But live TV actually forces everyone to be all part of the same thing. And so so if you layer in like we do, we have a chat room Twitter, Facebook later on with social stuff. People are now kind of part of an event, and they can actually contribute to it. So they like most of our classes, people actually asking questions and they're part of something. So that whole live thing is very, very unique. And so I think, when it comes to broadcast TV, um, you know, I think the interesting thing about television is that it's, um, people is being disrupted by Internet has been for a while, but the video is that it was really gone through the roof in terms of you know what it be people using YouTube. But there's always like to call the multi channel networks. There's a machinima and full screen all this content being created that's actually incredibly compelling. So people are getting pulled away from watching TV. Having said that, though, people are still seeing watching game of Thrones. Everything else, um, but it's just becoming much more scattered. So and I have a supposition that, like I think, TV should think about being mawr live, or at least allowing social interaction. So there's a reason people want to watch it when it's actually broadcast the first time, as opposed to watching it on demand. Some potentially. I think there's been some tests with ESPN is done, and so on The whole company, MTV did something recently. They're trying to do like what if you do make a live stream on the Internet, How engaging is after the audience? And so I've been thinking about like, Whoa, more broadcast TV should go live on the Internet. But layer in all the kind of cool interactivity that the Internet offers the challenges most you know, Discovery networks or, you know, USA or any or are these companies they rely on subscriber revenue advertising? It's It's a innovator's dilemma they might see like Oh, wow, that would be awesome for us to have this live stream over in the Internet and have all that great engagement and have a global audience. We have. I saw. Today we have 127 countries have been watching today. So that way 100.7 country watches how globalize. It's huge. But the move over there, they have to forego their current business or at least potentially suffer there and have this huge infrastructure that is really, really hard to do. So that's the problem is that there is clearly an opportunity to do live, broadcast on the Internet and potentially make a big business out of it. If you have a resource like these, bigger companies do. But to move over there is almost impossible in some ways goes animators. So they're doing baby steps it in little experiments here and there, and maybe at some point you will wake up. Five years from now, it will be a melding. We even notice what the difference between broadcast TV Internet is. It's all gonna be on the screen here anyway, but I think that that process is gonna be very painful for them. So is that what attracts you? to the entrepreneurial environment is that ability to just really quickly try something new and not be kind of burdened by the organization that's been created? Absolutely. But even so, it is an entrepreneur environment. It's hard. I'll give you a great example. So, um, when we were Adam films and shock Wave, uh, in 2000 for we saw that there was this new technology flash video, actually, that you can easily upload videos, um, and be we shared an investor. So I So I met with the YouTube guys early aren't like literally within a month of them starting their company. And I was just like, holy cow, Look at these guys are doing They're just letting it. And that was like a dream of mine. Early on, without of films was we used to catalog everything we saw. We could only post so many of them. It was expensive, so we would have. We have We have a closet full of tapes. We had, like, 100,000 tapes in a closet tapes way. Only had that housing online. But there was a classic that here. So here are a small company. I think we're 70 people I think, and we saw the opportunity. But all our money was being made from these games. Everything else to actually to actually go after it and build a YouTube competitors, uh, was a daunting thing. It took us forever, and it drove me nuts like, This is it. We got to go here. It took us forever to get it done here. We were a small copy, so I can imagine a big company. We have a small company. We couldn't innovate fast enough. The things innovate so quickly. So I think, I think was interesting about creative lives that were kind of painting on road. Nobody else is doing live. No one houses social. No else's free. There's lots of educational content on the Internet. That's great stuff. But no one is doing how we're doing so so far. I think we're really driving our own bus, and it's kind of it's kind of fun. Um, and I think that's you know, that's what's fun about being a kind of business. You can innovate and hopefully we will continue to innovate in what we're doing. Absolutely so before we talk about the future and how we're gonna innovate innovate. What's the kind of current state of affairs here? Creativelive? What's what's the viewership? We talked about viewership a little bit. What's the state of affairs here? Great about So, um, we have had 265 turned 70 workshops since we started three years ago. The average length of them is around 11 hours, so ah, some are sort of six hours, like one day. Some are. We've had Ah, Sal cicadas. Wading boot camp was five days. That was 30 hours of ah of, ah, teaching, learning. And um so that's eso That's kind of side of the average size if you take all of our class the average size of the class, about 30,000 unique people watching these things. The largest we had was we had photos Shop week. Over five days, we had 100 50,000 people tune in to watch that, um, the average length people watch of a class is 3.9 hours. So if a class averages 11 hours and watch 3.9 so some people watch for five minutes or two minutes, they walk the jumpy like, Oh, I don't care about Photoshopped. I'm out of here, right? Other people will watch the whole damn thing. They'll watch all for free, though. Watch for 18 hours, six hours a day for three hours. I watch 18 hours or so. The averages 3.9 hours, which is a lot of three point hours. I forget what the average people watched television today, but it's not much off of that, right, so we have a pretty engaged people and they're watching it for free, and we're actually incredibly happy to have it. Watch it for free. You know, our business model is free when it's live. If you want to watch it again or if you miss it, then you can buy it on and we want maple. Washing free is probably possible because it makes the content in the class that much more engaging with Mawr people walking because they're engaging with it. They're telling their friends. So we try to make it is biggest possible in some ways, you know, this stage in our business we want is a larger, free, honest as possible and you know we want to make money, but that's not our main consideration. What is? I'm in consideration right now, then greater audience we want and we go on topics that we have a business class is now we're looking having other topics. We've kind of dabbled in filmmaking in the design and Seymour in those kind of areas. And so we're looking at going to more, more topic areas that will interest our audience. We did a health classes. Kelly start that a class. We have a yoga class, both, which completely surprised us. We thought, You know what? Most of our classes of more professionals or people who are aspiring to be professional in a certain topic area that not to say for a consumer thing like fitness but the fitness classes did really well. So there's actually probably some legs for us to dio Mork Ivory consumer retyped classes. Fantastic. I know that that was ah, very interesting thing for me personally to watch because especially Kelly started. He presented it in a way that was very accessible to me, who has no background in health or fitness. What do you ever amazing? Yeah, did a really great job, really engaging. He's actually a San Francisco guy who teaches in the Presidio. Uh, so that's kind of the current state. Where we going? You know, you talked about different areas that we're moving into. What's what's the future of great of life? So I think there's a few things. One is more more topic areas. So, ideally, that today we have to live streams tomorrow left. Three were have ah photography class from Seattle tomorrow, plus two. Here's who have three live streams so ideally will have multiple topic areas live, and the condition of that will probably have some REBROADCASTING. So one of our challenges, because we're live, we have a huge international audience. I mentioned before that we've had 100 27 countries tune in. Today. A lot of the West Coast is a terrible time zone for international. I'm a big international business person. I always think about like how bad it is. I think Hawaii would be only thing worse. I mean, it's just when it's it's prime time here. It's night in Europe and it's the middle of the night in Asia. It's really bad. So we do rebroadcast to traffic caps, reversal, market. So as we have more live streams, we also want to make sure that we serve the world in some way. So looking at things like whether be subtitling some kind of time shifting people, people watch. But we want to find a way to have people internationally watch and be able to interact with some kind of social element needs to be built in there. So our kind of technical platform and product needs to be. You know, we need to build a lot more social cues a lot more ways for people to actually not only interact with the instructor, but with each other, so you'll see because a much more robust in terms. Right now we have this pop up chat box, which is called IRC chat box. It's pretty basic, used it, but it works. Ah, and you'll see we're building stuff. It's gonna make it that much more integrated, and we're gonna make ways for instructors to be connected with the audience after the classes done to is right now, it's kind of like people are alumni. You guys are all alumni of this thing. So how would be nice available? Continue to learn or interact with what these classes you did, so we want We want to find a way for people to feel like they were part of something because the learning shouldn't end when the video as it should be, should be some more learning that was on its another knowledge. It's being shared. And speaking of that was interesting is lifetimes. Our audience knows just as much or interesting angles on a topic that the instructor might not know. So I need to bring that Ford and actually use that knowledge. We're building common knowledge based around topics so that it becomes kind of more of a collaborative learning environment, almost virtual where everyone is around the world. Doing it exactly that much a bunch better state than me. So you marketing guys, you know, maybe a little thing has been fantastic. Do we have any questions from anyone in the audience? Any chance you This is Maggie. And, um, as you were considering taking this this role as the CEO. I mean, if something went wrong, you're the person on the front page of the newspaper. What were some considerations you had about live TV and live presentation that that crossed your mind? That's a great question. Um, I've actually had people from the media industry asked me, like, Are we crazy for doing live TV? Live is risky, you know? Stuff happens. We've had instructor have laryngitis. He couldn't teach. We had a we had a baby pee and poop on an instructor. Uh, we've had people dropped the f bomb, but I think I think Steve sitting here just a moment ago, but, you know, so it's definitely a wrist to it, but, um e I wasn't that concerned about I thought myself. You know what? I like this risk about it. It's, you know, I think the more scary thing for me is. And as people work here, No, I worry about to make sure that the's this stuff works. The camera works the band with works. I feel like if we could just get it out to the world and people are watching it. The mawr um you know, uh, risky it is. And we're more excited, like reality TV. In a way, it's not not only you learning, but you feel like you're just like it's that much more realist, not highly produced, like it's all makes a mistake. We're not getting it out. You're not getting this kind of clean view you're getting the I think that is also for a learning environment. So when we've seen instructors say, Hey, cold, this camera like this when people are trying to do it themselves and they're failing the audience out the Internet in the studio to like, Wow, that person also fumbling just like I fumbled at that are we had raw meat safety dio you know how to get out of your debt. And you had people calling credit card companies and then telling you how it went and people are, you know, you learn by other people doing it. Who are your peers? If REM eats or ah are Kelly Brown and they tell you how to do it exactly Yeah, you might. You might understand if it's even better if you see your peer someone like you, so that in the live aspect to me is so exciting that you really don't get another thing. So, um so I guess the honest answer was like it didn't really definitely phase me. I don't know, You know. I definitely didn't see whether, like other legal risks and, you know, FCC and these kind of things, it's pretty pretty minimal. I think we're in pretty good shape. Um, I think, you know, we have our heart in the right place to Is an education company? Absolutely. And I agree that I know that some of the most educational moments that I've seen in been involved in a lot of workshops and is when the instructor is having a hard time with something, is when they mess up and they make a mistake and they get to see and everyone gets to see Oh, how did they solve that problem? I mean, that was won the big things for me as a viewer was, I remember seeing two different workshops where the instructors gave 100% opposite answers to the same questions. And to me, it was really interesting toe watch, uh, and and learn not what the answers are. But how did you arrive at that answer? Because then you can kind of take your own look at it and make the choices for yourself to figure out how that's correct for you. So, yeah, I love life. Any other questions of them? Okay, so, um, so we talked with a little bit with Craig about the culture here on creativelive. Uh, what kind of culture you trying to build? What? What do you think is important about the culture that we have here? Well, I think eating challenge was that there was, um you know, two founders and ah, previous CEO is not CEO. The pretty strong culture. Even though when I joined, I think we're six people, but it was a pretty strong culture, and it was very much ah, culture that identified with. So I feel that that was an important consideration for me, that I didn't come in here to change the culture at all. I think I'm or was a amplifying the culture that was already here. I think that was That's why I was a good fit to be the current CEO, the next the next CEO. Uh, but I thought it was a good cultural fix. I think culture is incredibly important. Um, I think I made a couple changes you might remember. I I actually made us mawr transparent. Did I was one of my was my one of the most important things. I wanted the company everyone to know how things are going, and I want to deal with much more transparent and would probably not transparent. It just wasn't just wasn't part of what they were, how it was being treated. It was the one supposed purposely not being transparent was, but I was more like I would be aggressively transparent. Yes, so we'll have our monthly meetings as a company. And Mika and the other executives will share the numbers of how we're doing as a company. And so everyone is an employee is very invested and knows exactly what's going on. And as an employee, it's very helpful as an odor, too. Everyone has stock in the companies that was an owner. So it's true. Ah, yeah, I love I love the culture. And that was I remember one of things that when those people who have been here for a long time, we're told, Hey, we've got a new CEO coming in and we're We've got all this growth coming. That was a big fear for a lot of us was, Are we gonna lose the creative life that we knew? And that hasn't happened at all. Yeah, it has gotten even bigger. Kudos to you for that. Yeah, I know, it's it's challenging were growing We have a lot of people and it's Ah, it could be scary. But same time it's, you know, we made a conscious decision a year ago that we saw a very large opportunity to do what we're doing in a much larger scale and ah, and you know, we probably could have stayed as a small photography workshop company. And then okay, But we said, You know what? It's really go forward and and you know, it can be scary or just like you know, But once you're on that road, you got to keep going. In some ways, it's hard to pull back. So what are the biggest challenges when you're trying to grow a company like this where we did have that solid, successful business going on and we want to expand? What are the big challenges to growth? I think it's prioritizing, making sure everyone knows you know what the most important things get done. I think similar that is execution. Just make sure we actually get stuff done. We don't get bogged down in things that are not important. Um, and I think the I spent 8% my time on management stuff. Basically, people just making sure everyone knows they're doing and making sure that we're doing the right things and making good decisions and, uh, moving things forward. So I think that's Ah, that's you know, it's it's it's, You know, most companies are people, issues, people, businesses. And what are you looking for in the people that come into creativelive people looking for people that really believe in the mission, which is we're providing education to the world. And you know that I think they should really I'll get example into somebody. And he was taking a live video video. This he was like everything was about video. He didn't talk all about the education side of it. I thought not a good fit because were are were actually or teaching people. We really believe in that that's attracted to me. I was like, You know, I'm actually on the board. Directors of my graduate school, I've been involved educational, long time. And so the whole education side is incredibly important. If I don't hear that from a candidate at least a little bit of time talking about that, that we're providing this positive impact, we're teaching people. Um then then I was like, Well, maybe not really thinking about the right way. Do you think that it's hard working in a startup? We have a lot of hard times that satisfaction of knowing we're doing things positive, get you through those hard times, and I think finding employees of believing that is important. I totally agree. And that was another thing that I remember when when you came on was in those monthly meetings we always talked about. What is the mission? What are we doing? And how does that influence our daily job is? What are we doing? So when you came on and did you feel like you needed Teoh established that that mission? Did you feel like that was something that already existed? And you were just codifying what was your approach to publishing? It already existed. I just amplified it. I just kind of just codified it and made it into a nice package. But it was definitely here. So I early employees of creative live work for free, right? So they have the older volunteers. Creativelive had a almost like a nonprofit NPR feel to it. Um, I think we've lost a little bit of that But I think we still have people who would would volunteer for free. They would be like they would do it happily work for free for for And that was kind of early, kind of, ah, aspect of the company. That that was great. Absolutely. So in the last couple of minutes here, what advice would you give to entrepreneurs who are just starting out? You've done it so many times. What is the thing? That is the best piece of advice you can give to a new entrepreneur, Someone who is starting to leave their their established a job and want to just strike out? Well, generally, I just met someone today who was thinking about striking out on their own. Is an entrepreneur. I just I should just go do it. Like what? What My idea. I just I just go do it. Just just try it and you'll learn so much. Just trying. Um I mean, you know, I think Nierob and Sarah giving a class on assessing an idea, and I think obviously I think you probably should go through a process and assess the idea and all that kind of. But in general, if you're feeling like it's just just go do it. I mean, I think it's it's risky, It's expensive. It's gonna be, uh it could be very, very scary all those things. But if you really, if you're really feeling it was like I've actually had many employees of mind leave and I've encouraged I said, Look, if you want to be an entrepreneur, you should go do it. I think it's a It's a great journey, but ah, you know, I think there's, you know, I'm looking forward here with me. Rob and Sarah have to say about it because the whole process of actually assessing ideas, everything else. But I think if you beyond that you're thinking about it, just go. So we you are exposed. Teoh. A huge number of instructors, huge number of speakers and educators entrepreneurs, many of whom have written various books on business. What's the best business book you've ever read? I'm not a big business book reader, really. I'm a skimmer. I seemed every one of our in service. Yeah, I'm read fiction, hurried novels. What I am reading a really difficult what it is. I sure about, like 10 years ago. But I'm reading? Um um Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace Right now and that is ex log on my IPad. It's 3000 pages on my IPad, I think. Paperback. It's it's amazing your written book. But, um anyway, a man may. I started it and gave up. I want to try it again, but it's good. So the best book ever this year is Ah, George Saunders, 10th of December. Okay, my short story, the might of the short story fan normally, but this book is just unreal. It takes place just the near future. Just just relate to it. But it's just something a little bit off in all the stories started business book, I've actually, actually, I would be very lots of business books, and I still skim them. I can't say anything like Oh, wow, that would just influence me Crossing the chasm by Jeffrey Moore or something. I don't know. I've read all these books, but to me it's just, you know, if you look at my my CV Mike, my career path, it's kind of a random walk, and that's so I've kind of follow my own path, and so, like I have a hard time taking a book and applying it. Sorry, that's fantastic. I love I love honesty. I mean, that's what that's what happens when you're live. Folks would be like nobody asked you reading that book the other day. When you talk about that, I like I have a stack next to my bed of all these books. So we've got about a minute left here. What is kind of the big What's the big message of Creative live? What is it that you want people to know about us that they may not know or just for people who are new. We've got a lot of new people watching. What is the most important thing that you think they can take away about creative life? I want people to really, um, participate and be part of it. So it might be something like they see an instructor coming up. They see that, um, Pam Slim will give a class this morning. She's teaching next month like, Wow, I loved Pam. They should feel like they could be part of us. They could be part of the audience that they could actually apply to be there if not that they should least participate online. I really want their barriers between the instructor, the audience and even the employees to be broken. Now we're all part of the same community. We're all trying to learn something from these great people. Well, chilling from each other. I'm looking for my employees from the people in the audience. And so if I could find a way to keep breaking those walls down. And so if so, I feel like that to me is if someone gets see something coming up on creative life or for that matter, they have suggestion. Like he get this person that teach be awesome to have this person teach. Um, I think that would to me Ah, that message that we want it, you know, the people that the for part of it not not just passively sitting back there part of something. So you heard it. Folks, Get involved. Get out there, Do it. And I want to thank you. Make up so much for taking this time to sit down and talk to everyone out there