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So I was thinking about this whole idea of, like, how people say, like, never quit, and all this kind of shit. And
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you probably have seen that, that little meme illustration of
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this dude that's like, digging a tunnel
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and and he's walking away from the tunnel, like he's he just gave up on on digging, and there's, like, diamonds, just like, a few inches away.
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And,
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you know, obviously the the
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the message is like, had you kept going, you know, you would have hit the diamonds, you know, and you would have got everything you ever wanted, or
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whatever. And
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so I think about that because I'm like, I'm I'm the type of person that generally doesn't give up on things, even when it's hard and,
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and I hear a lot of times, people will say stuff like, you know, when times are really hard, you know, as this is business wise, and I'm sure you
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can apply this to other stuff, but they say like, When things are really hard and you're really struggling and all this kind of stuff. A lot of times
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that's that's what it's like right before,
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right before the good shit happens, you know. So like, if you're trying to grow your business or something like that, and you're just really pushing
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and struggling and stressed and all this kind of stuff,
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they'll say, you know, that's, that's what it's like, right before, you know,
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before you hit, you hit, I don't know, right before the good, I guess is only way to really put it,
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until, like, I know, my last few recordings, I've talked about I was stressed out and all that kind of stuff. And,
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like, again, I'm not really the type of person to give up. And
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I also, you know, I have a team, and I have people relying on me to keep going, so
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it's not really an option to stop
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but, like, at the stress levels that I've reached,
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I could, I could see a lot of people quitting, and this has happened a couple times in my life where I could see, like, this is, this is probably where
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a lot of people would quit and just be like, Fuck this. I'm gonna do something else.
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And
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but I, but I keep going, you know, and I think about it, I think it's kind of like
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that,
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similar to what that, that image is. You know, it's like, if I stop now, it's probably, I'm probably stopping right before the good shit happens, or if I
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quit now, it's right before the good shit happens.
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And I can't stress enough that not I'm not thinking about closing my business. It's not, it's not something that I'm thinking about doing. I was just
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thinking about like this level of difficulty is probably where a lot of people decide to do that
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and so. But I keep pushing because I feel like there's something on the other side, shit, there's a fucking I
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think I'm stuck behind a train track. Maybe that'll work out. So anyway,
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this time that I'm in right now has been really stressful, and it's been like that for a while, like most of this year, or probably all, well, yeah, almost
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most of this year, first first month or so, was good. And it's mainly like trying to get trying to get the marketing spend down and the sales up, which is
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counterproductive. If you, if you, if you turn down your marketing spend, obviously your sales are likely going to go down, because that's what the
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whole point of marketing is.
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But it's something I need to do. And I won't really get too far into why I need to do that, but so we've been experiencing these like slower than usual sales,
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and
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it's been really stressing me out a lot. And so,
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so anyway, I've been just kind of pushing and trying to get more content out there and get more
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more organic sales going, and all this kind of stuff. And
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you know, it was, I remember thinking,
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you know this, this is, this is
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close to more stress than I feel like I can handle. But that's probably not true, but that's just what it felt like.
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And then
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it was, it was like, last week,
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about seven days ago or eight days ago. I was
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like, I'm going to try something with this, this thing, put this
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stuff in this marketing campaign and see,
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oh shit, there's a coroner right here. I think
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somebody must have died. That's crazy. I'm gonna put this I'm gonna do this test, like some advertising shit. I won't get into what it is, but
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so I did that, and I'll.
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And and then the that day, you know, the ad goes in, or that it's like a series of ads, a bunch of different creatives and copy and all this kind of shit.
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And so I put it in.
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I think it was last Thursday,
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and
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sorry, I'm losing my train of thought. So I put the, put the stuff together, and I launched the campaign, while I put it into an existing campaign. It's
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not important. And so on Thursday, I was like, All right, cool. Let's, let's just see what happens. Hopefully that you know, kind of does something,
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and a lot of times like it'll do pretty well, nothing too crazy. But long story short, on Friday, I wake up and I see there's some good sales. I'm like, All right,
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cool. And I look at the I look at everything, and
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it turns out that the ad that I the sort of ad sets that I created, were actually starting to hit. And so now,
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after seven days, if I, if I run a report of those seven days, we're up 90%
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from where we were this time last year in that same time period. And so, like, the sales are crazy. So we went from like being slow to being super busy.
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So now I'm on my way to the shop just to kind of check in to see how everybody's doing.
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But
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this, this could be, and this is too soon to really say, like, anything concrete, but all the signs are pointing that this is gonna probably work for a little
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while. And so
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like, like, imagine if I had stopped, like, what if this is the, what if this is, like, a turning point in our business. Like, we've had big growth
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periods before, but then you you grow, and then you hit a plateau, and then you got to figure out how to get to that next level of growth. And then,
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you know, it's kind of like it doesn't, least in my business, it doesn't seem like it's a it's a smooth, you know, path upward, you know, it go it goes up, but
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it's like, it goes up and, you know, it's like a mountain kind of thing, goes down, goes up, goes down, goes up, and then overall, you're winning. But
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like, you have to go through these tough periods.
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And so I'm wondering, like, what if this was one of those times where
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I was right before the good shit was about to happen. And I, you know, not, not saying that I would have, but like, what if I did give up right before it? You
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know, that would totally suck. And there was another time, some years back, when
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this was, like nine, nine years ago or something, or, I don't know, eight years ago,
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I was
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the motion graphics industry had gotten really tough, because all of my customers were in the cable networks, and they
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they were all struggling because The streaming services really started to pick up, and people were canceling cable for streaming services instead. So
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all of my customers started losing all this work. So then I started losing all this work, and there was a period of time where I was like, I don't
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remember if it was like, two months behind or three months behind, whatever it is to where, like,
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if I was any later, I would have got, like, they would have foreclosed on my house because, like, my mortgage was so late. So I was getting calls every
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single day, like, Hey, you got to pay this. And I'm like, I don't have the money. And so I would, I would manage to scrape up enough money to pay and I
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feel like I was like, right before, you know, when legal action was about to get taken. So I was like, it was a real struggle.
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And so at that point, like, I could have said, Fuck it and gave up and done something drastic. I mean, I don't know what I would have done, but,
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but I didn't, because I was like, man, you know, with this motion graphics stuff like, at any point, some big job can come and everything, everything will
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be fine. And
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that's what ended up happening. I got this one big project came in, and I made a whole bunch of money, and then I was good for quite a while.
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And there's, you know, there was some times during the the 2020, shit that was happening. There was like,
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you know, they shut they shut the retail business down, and I couldn't have employees there. So there was all these like struggles then,
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and we didn't, we didn't give up then. And then there was riots and all this shit. Like riots all around, like, so we had boarded up all of our shit, and,
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like, we were kind of
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having people order pickup and coming around the back. And,
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you know, I don't know if I would have given up over something like that, but I don't know. Maybe some people do.
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But anyway, so that's the whole idea of like.
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Uh, giving up right before you, you know, you hit the goal, or whatever. The fuck
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that little image of the of the guy digging, and he's like, Ah, fuck it. I'm done with this. And then there's diamonds, like, right there. But
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then I was singing, there's a flip side to it, like, there's another drawing that somebody could make where the guy keeps going, but there's never any
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diamonds, so he's just gonna be sitting there digging for the rest of his life because he's taking this never give up shit. Like, super literally. Like, if
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you say never, ever give up, and the guy's like, yeah, all right, fine. I'm never gonna give up. I'm just gonna keep digging and digging until I hit these
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diamonds. But what if there's no diamonds and you dig for the rest of your life and there's no fucking there's no reward, like, what's the value of never giving
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up then?
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And so I kind of wonder about like, how do you know? I mean, obviously there's, like, some stuff, there's some indicators, usually that let you know
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that you should keep going. And I feel like I have those indicators, and like with the motion graphics stuff, I ended up, sort of like, transitioning
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away from that business. And not because I don't think I could have succeeded there, but because I grew to, I grew to to actually hate that business and
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hate the type of people that I was working with, not hate them, but, you know, I didn't enjoy working with the type of people that I was working with.
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And so I decided to put my focus into what I'm doing now, which is the graph shop and the stickers and all that stuff. And so,
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you know, on paper, I did give up on this business, this motion graphics business, but I don't know if it counts. And I don't know if it's like,
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maybe, I don't know if you think about it on the level of what I was talking about before, like, maybe I stopped that business because it was a struggle, and
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there was a lot of tough things going on in the industry. Change. There was all this disruption that happened because of the
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the streaming services. But let's say, what if I had stuck it out and and
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then all of a sudden, landed a contract with like Netflix or something, they start producing all of their,
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you know, their own content. You know, their own. I don't know movies and shows, or I don't know if they buy them, or what the how that works, but they
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have, like, Netflix Original shit, like, what if? What if I had stuck it out,
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and I would have
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gotten into that and started getting customers that way, and then, you know, maybe that shit would have taken off had I not given up.
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But with that being said, like I didn't like the the business, I like the business that I'm in now better. So I don't regret moving away from that, but that
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could have been, could have been an example of, like, diamonds being like inches away, and I pivoted away from that business and into this business,
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but I feel like I'm more happy with this business, but I'm I'm just curious about that idea. It's like, How many times do you see people that are like, I
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refuse to give up, but it's like, they're digging, they're digging in the wrong place, and they're never going to hit anything, because there's a
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story in the
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the Think and Grow Rich that's very similar to that. It's like, I might have the details not completely accurate, but the message should be the same. It's
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like this, these people were digging for gold, and they found this like mine, and
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it was producing all this gold, and they were making all this money, and then all of a sudden the they just stopped hitting gold, and it's almost like they
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ran out. So they kept, like, digging in different places and trying to find it again, and they couldn't find it. So the guy ended up giving up, and he
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sold all of his equipment to like a scrap guy, or something like that.
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The scrap guy had all this equipment and and he said, Well, I'm gonna hire an expert and have him tell me where's most, the most likely place I should,
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I should dig for this stuff, because he's got all this equipment. He got it at a discount because the guy was sort of liquidating and all this
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kind of shit. And so he took that guy's advice, and he went and he dug, and,
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you know, in the same area where they the other guy gave up, and he found gold and made a shit ton of money and so,
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but, I mean, I feel like the same could be said, like the guy could have spent the rest of his life
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trying to find gold, and there wouldn't, there just wasn't gold there. Like, how would you know
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if you're if you're making the right choice? So it's kind of an interesting thing to think about. I mean, I still lean on the whole idea of or.
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Lean towards the idea of of just not giving up, but I have to believe in it. So like with Machin I mean, I'm never going to give up on it
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as as of now, that's my mindset that's been that way for many years. I'm not going to give up on it because I believe in it, but it does get really hard
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sometimes, and
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I could see a lot of people giving up where I was a week ago. And I'm not like, I'm not like, completely void of stress now, but I'm a lot less stressed
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than I was because,
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you know, the
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lost my train of thought
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because the sales are up. That was my main concern. I was concerned about sales so
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I don't know. So it's never give up the answer. I don't know,
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not sure.
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I kind of think it is, but like, You got to be strategic. So anyway, hope that's helpful. I will see you next time.
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All right,
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appreciate each and every one of you guys who are supporting the cause and continue to spread the love and
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yeah, stay up.