Jake Van Ness (00:01.838)
Hey everyone, welcome to Creavo Cast. My name is Jake Van Ness and I'm here with Carl. And today we got a lot to talk about. It's been a while. How you doing, Carl?

Carl Grivakis (00:10.877)
I'm doing pretty good. It's been yeah, it's been a few weeks, hasn't it?

Jake Van Ness (00:15.18)
Yeah, yeah it has. I know we're both super busy. I've been traveling a bunch and and doing some business summits and and some other stuff. what have you been up to?

Carl Grivakis (00:26.483)
I've had some projects come in. I've actually had someone reach out and asked to be an intern for me this summer and I I I took her on and we've got some great projects we're working on and I'm getting a a feel of what it's like to have an employee.

Jake Van Ness (00:44.492)
That's pretty cool. So how did that come about? Did they reach out to you or did you seek that out? How did that come about?

Carl Grivakis (00:51.933)
Yeah, so my intern found me I through a through a Google search, which is shown that my website is getting me results. My Google business page is getting me results. I'm getting found by a variety of people now. And she looked through my site, saw some of the brands I've worked on, and just put out a message, said, Do I need interns? And I've never taken on an intern. I don't know anything about the process, so we

We did some fact finding on that, figured out that I do qualify as a a business that can help supporter and we went through the whole initiation process and now we're in week two. Week two of twelve weeks.

Jake Van Ness (01:36.792)
Very cool. So is this helping her with some school credits as well? Okay.

Carl Grivakis (01:40.445)
Yes. Yep. So she gets three full credits. I believe they require an internship each year. so we set up four four learning goals that we're gonna measure against at the end of it. we track hours on a weekly basis and we actually do a standing meeting every week where we kind of talk about I I cover stuff related to the industry, I show her some professional practice 'cause

God knows people in college need that. and then I kind of go through my list of projects. I'm not I'm not trying to voice the worst of the worst projects on there. I really want I wanted to have some great experiences and some good portfolio pieces. Those are part of some of our learning measure measurements and goals as well. and then I get to talk shop and have s another creative that I can bounce ideas off of.

Jake Van Ness (02:37.846)
Yeah, it sounds like not only are you providing her work experience, but you're kind of mentoring her in the industry and what it's like to be a designer and a marketing person. That's really cool. it's funny because you were talking about you were taking on an intern when we were chatting before, and I totally forgot that I had an intern at one point. several years ago I had a gentleman who was kind of a family friend. Somehow I think our parents knew each other or something.

And he reached out to me and said, Hey, I'm just looking to get some experience in the print side of things. He had a lot of web and digital experience and he wanted some print experience. And so I had him come in like one, two days a week and help me with some projects. And it wasn't a a long period of time and it was just kind of a complement to what he was already doing on his own. And so it was a really good experience. But it sounds to me like you're dealing with someone who is a bit younger. You said that

me earlier that she's in her second year of college, correct? Yeah, and so that that's a great opportunity for you to be able to mentor somebody, like you said, teach them all the things that we really wish that college would teach our designers that are coming out and teach them how to do things correctly, especially on the print side. But yeah that's awesome that you you're getting that opportunity to work with somebody and yeah it's always good to have another person to bounce ideas off of which is why

Carl Grivakis (03:40.67)
That's right.

Jake Van Ness (04:05.483)
You and I have so many conversations and why we've worked together for so many years on things is it's great to have that person. But I bet it feels really good to be able to share all those years of experience with somebody and mentor somebody and and I commend you on that because that is a a thing to take on, especially as a a solopreneur. Now you're like you said, you're learning what is it like to have somebody work.

for you and almost have like an employee which could open up the door for that in the future.

Carl Grivakis (04:36.722)
Yes, absolutely. one thing that I'm I'm finding a few things for myself as I guess as the lead, I need to know when to coach and when to teach. and those are two very different things we've learned in the training world. Teaching is very instructional. Like we just when we were going over this logo project, w I was showing her some techniques in Illustrator as I was basically having her look over my shoulder and zoom.

as I was builting out a concept. And then I would I would pause at moments and ask her opinion on a particular piece. Like, what do you think of this? What do you think of that? Even if you already know the answer, when you're coaching someone, you don't you gotta have them reach those conclusions themselves. So we looked at a project that she's working on for one of my clients as well and we I kind of talked her through a few things. I sent her

It's a brochure, and I actually sent her examples of brochures I've done in the past so that she can kind of measure up and see see what some of my techniques are, like specifically typographic layout, how to make it visually exciting, how to make it accessible because it's for an older audience. And we we talk through those those things. and as we go throughout the internship, I'm gonna show her what how what how you contract with people.

both verbally, how what you need written down, why we use email, why we use maybe we use text at some point, but to build agreements and, you know, stick to to them.

Jake Van Ness (06:15.049)
So it must be interesting to work with somebody and kind of like you said, show them your style. But obviously you don't want her to mimic you too much. You want her to really build her own style and her own way of doing things. So it it has to be interesting to say, okay, this is how I think of it and this is how I picture it coming out, and then kind of standing back and saying, Okay, show me what you can do.

And then maybe we'll either compromise or maybe you'll come out with something that's totally different and better than what I was thinking about. But it it it's a tough thing to do, and I agree. It's a really the difference between training somebody and coaching somebody. Training somebody, you're kind of like making them learn the skills on how to do something. Coaching is kind of like, let's work together on this, let's kind of get an idea of what you want to do, and really like

Let them go at times and give them kind of a a longer leash, as you would say, to kind of do their own thing. So it's gotta be interesting to work with somebody and be like, okay, I have to trust that they're going to do something that is gonna fit into the scope of what I feel is really good work. But again, that's why they're an intern. It's a way for you to say, Okay, maybe that didn't step up as h as to the level that I want. Well, here's how I can help you get better at that.

So that that's awesome that you're getting a chance to do that. And I I know at times you you felt like your workload has been crazy, so I'm sure it's helpful to have somebody else there to take some of those projects and be like, hey, go work on this so I can focus on some other stuff. But also the stuff you're talking about with contracting with people is super important. Whether she ends up going and working for an agency or whether she ends up working for herself, those are important things to to know about. And God knows you and I

didn't know that stuff when we started. And we kinda had to figure it out on our own. Now we had people we could talk to and and some mentors that could help us, but boy is that something that's super important to do.

Carl Grivakis (08:20.262)
Yeah, and it is nice getting the perspective of a designer that's more fresh too. like they're talking about AI in the workplace within the school environment, and the influences it has on creatives and pretty much everyone. Like we're all seeing the influence of AI everywhere. but it's it it'll make for good conversations. She's working on certifications within

ethical use of AI and that kind of thing. And I'm talking to her about how AI has influenced our my own work. and, you know, how we can protect ourselves as designers. so good conversations had there as well.

Jake Van Ness (09:03.691)
Yeah, and and like we talked about in the last episode, which will kind of feed into the topic that we're gonna really hone in on today, the fact that you had a client that was kind of using AI to compare your work to it, I'm sure that's where some of the ethics of making sure that they're not stealing ideas or they're not just using AI. And I'm glad to hear that schools are talking about that because I'm sure there are a lot of

guys and girls that have come out of college in the last two, three, four years that didn't have those conversations because of this huge explosion of AI onto the marketplace. So what's been going on with you with AI lately?

Carl Grivakis (09:47.967)
Funny you ask. I've actually got I think about four AI rescue projects. And I think that we need a better name for this, but it's like those projects that would come your way maybe ten years ago where someone paid a fiber designer for a project and it got them a result, but it wasn't necessarily the result that they wanted. So they ended up being pennywise pound foolish.

and they come back to you and they end up spending more money anyway. AI borrows ideas from across the whole web. And when you are generating a logo, it's gonna look like someone else's logo. Maybe it's infringing on someone else's copyright just by existing because AI pulled from something. So I've had people approach me because

They don't like AI in general, but one of their employees has generated a concept and they want actual hands on it, an actual design process. I've had someone generate a full brochure in AI that it it basically put an icon for every bullet point. And this the target audience for this was elderly home health care. So all of those icons just add confusion.

The text was all over the place. It looked real pretty, but it really wouldn't resonate because it wasn't accessible design. and another person said, you know, I've I had AI generate a logo of my dog into this this cute little logo, and now everyone's yelling at me because it looks AI generated. So consumers are beginning to reject AI, at least on the creative side of things. and I don't

This is just a sentiment that's grown, I think, more recently. AI's been out for years, but people are beginning to really have a visceral reaction to it. Look at all the AI data data center controversies coming up too. People are saying, not in my backyard. Or it's generating way too much heat, using too much water. There's there's politics all over that. But I know that.

Jake Van Ness (11:53.695)
Yeah. Yeah.

Carl Grivakis (12:05.704)
The end consumers also not liking the the outputs.

Jake Van Ness (12:11.541)
Yeah, it's interesting 'cause we have heard the term AI slop, which is basically just things that are generated that don't look great, like you end up generating something that looks too cartoonish or too many fingers, too many thumbs, which I was joking with you about, something that I had generated, and I could not get it to get rid of the third thumb in another image I was working on. I finally just took it into Photoshop and used Adobe's basically their AI to

Helped me do generative fill. And I got rid of it in seconds. And I'm like, what was so hard about that? But it's AI and sometimes it has issues with things. so I think that the term that you use, AI rescue, is really interesting. And I think that's a great term. I'm like, I know we should come up with something fancier or something more fun, but that is basically what you're doing is you're taking something that exists that was generated, and you're rescuing it from being.

mundane or being AI generated and turning it into something that is more design focused, creative focused, and client focused or consumer focused. Like you're you're thinking about the things that they didn't input into the AI. Now we all know that garbage in, garbage out with anything, with design, with marketing, with AI, I think that's where people fall short is they're not good at prompting well.

And so what they get as results from AI is that lower level of design. And that's where the human thinking that you and I do as graphic designers and marketers, we think about that end user. We think about the accessibility, which that's interesting. And I wonder how we could fix some of that using AI. Meaning, can we prompt it better to say, hey, this needs to be accessible for a client? But the problem is the general public doesn't do that well.

And so the results they get does look more AI generated. It does look like slop. And then you do have to rescue it. So I think that's really interesting that you use that term. And before we got on, it was funny because I was like, where's all this AI rescue work coming from? And you were like, I have no idea. I don't know why I'm I'm the one that everybody's coming to. Because I was like, I haven't run into this. I've talked to some of my clients who have used AI, but I've never had a project where they're like

Jake Van Ness (14:35.647)
serving me something on a platter that's like, hey, can you take this pile of BS and turn it into something that's actually a good design? But I think it's funny that that's become almost a market for you at this point.

Carl Grivakis (14:50.62)
Yes, and I think that I should talk about it more so that AI Search will find me and say, this is the designer that's countering AI. it's it's interesting, it's it's welcome. a the AI influence on the project going in though, is giving us a bit of pressure because AI has a good minimum standard. It's outputting something that looks all right.

a little bit polished. So we as designers need to deconstruct it a little bit, take the good elements of design there, and think about it and and how to integrate those good elements. But we need to bring in the the client empathy. We need to bring in the requirements for, you know, the accessible accessible elements if they're influences we need there. We we know color theory. AI is not really good at

colors sometimes and also we create the vector graphics which AI still has not fully solved yet.

Jake Van Ness (15:55.406)
No, I I find it hilarious when I am working with it and trying to generate ideas. Because again, that's what I I want to emphasize is the use of AI is not bad. It's a tool. And as designers, we can't dismiss it. We can't like get angry about it. We have to understand that it's there and it's a tool and that it's going to be used and we should be using it too for

idea generation and like you said, it comes up with good elements. So why not use it to make our our jobs a little bit easier and make them a little bit quicker? But we can't rely on it to design everything. And I think that's where a lot of people think they can and that's where they're running into trouble. But what you said about Vector cracks me up because I was playing around with something for a podcast I'll talk about in a little bit. But

I it came up with something I was happy with and I was like, hey, can you generate the SVG file for this? And when it did, I swear there was a kindergartner on the back end of that that just drew that for me and gave it to me. It was awful. Like the the if the icon that was there became like this boxy thing, and I'm like, What happened? But again, that's because some of these tools are not designed to do that stuff well. Now

Things are getting better. I mean, there's things like Claude Design and there's a bunch of other tools out there that are doing some impressive things. But again, people are recognizing that AI more and more. I I had a friend who's also he's a web designer and he posted something on Facebook that cracked me up. He he posted a flyer that had like all this stuff going on in it, and it basically was like, your AI flyer looks like everybody else's.

Carl Grivakis (17:33.256)
Mm-hmm.

Jake Van Ness (17:47.872)
And it's so true because the number of restaurants I've seen, especially pizza places and Italian restaurants, that I swear to God they all use the same flyer. And then some of the comments that were going on in that Facebook post were like, Hey, can we actually see what your real food looks like? Instead of that AI generated lasagna or that AI generated steak? Like, we know that's not what your stuff looks like, but it was just a it he's a

Carl Grivakis (17:48.052)
Mm-hmm.

Jake Van Ness (18:16.321)
He's somebody who loves to kind of stir the pot sometimes. And so when he put that post up, obviously people were like, Well, it's the easy way to do it. And obviously he's talking about it because it's taking business away from him. But I just love the fact that he used AI to generate the parody of all of the flyers that we're seeing out there and all of the social media posts that we're seeing out there that are way overgenerated. Now, I will be honest, I do use it. And I use it.

Carl Grivakis (18:19.635)
Mm-hmm.

Jake Van Ness (18:44.479)
On a podcast that I do, I I started a golf podcast a couple months ago and I use it to generate our thumbnails. If you look at this podcast, I use it to generate our thumbnails on here too. Now, do they look AI ish? Yeah, obviously they do because they are. But I don't have the time nor the the real desire to sit there and build a YouTube thumbnail for our podcast, either one of them.

So I use AI to kind of generate that. But again, on that golf podcast, which by the way is called Divots and Skins, there'll be a link to that in the description if you're interested in golf and want to hear what we have going on. But the last one I generated, I told you we had three thumbs on my co-host. And I'm like, what is going on with this? Why can't we get rid of that third thumb? I finally, as a designer, said, okay, I'm taking this into Photoshop and I'm getting rid of that thumb.

And I did it in seconds where I was having an argument with AI where I could have done it like a minute or two faster if I just done it myself. So there are times that things like that happen, but again, it's a tool. It's not a replacement, it's a tool. It's no different than Photoshop. It's no different than InDesign for us. It's no different than Canva. It's a tool. And people need to realize that tools one.

People learn how to use those tools well. And I could give Canva to five different people and I'd have five different results on a project. But if I give Canva to a professional designer, the results are gonna be very different. And it's the same thing with AI. If you take AI and you give it to the general public, they're gonna come out with slop. You give it to a designer that can then prompt it in ways

That are much more in the marketing and design and creative space, the results are going to be very different. But that's not the results that we give our clients. And I think that's where designers need to be careful. You can't take what you have in AI and give it to a client and expect them to be happy with that, especially with what we talked about last time, where the Supreme Court said that that's not something you can copyright. So we need to remember that when we are working with AI.

Carl Grivakis (21:07.335)
Yeah. It is interesting too. Like we are building you gotta be careful building your foundation solely on AI, especially if you're just starting out. we don't know how prices could go up at the drop of a hat overnight. And I've I've seen talk about how a lot of these companies are dumping bodies and investing in a AI and suddenly the AI is more expensive than the people they

Had. So

Jake Van Ness (21:39.544)
That that's really interesting that you say that because I think there's so much out there right now about running a business with one person and acting like you have five employees. But you still have to manage that. And I think that's the thing that always find I find interesting is yeah, you could do it. You could use AI to do these things for you. But one, you gotta learn it. You you gotta really invest the time to learn it. And two, you gotta manage it.

I mean it's it's changing so rapidly right now that it's really hard to keep up. I mean I I I I myself will get into things where I will spend like a full day working with AI and playing around with tools and figuring out what it does, and then I'll take a couple days off and I'll go back in, I'll be like, That's not how it worked last time. It's changing so rapidly, and I think that's something that we really do need to concern ourselves with is

What you do today may not work tomorrow, but you're right, replacing employees with AI right now, I get it. I understand people are trying to save money, but again, it's moving so quickly. Unless you're a huge company that can afford to have somebody that's fully invested in learning that stuff, that that's tough. And a perfect example is people who are replacing a front desk person.

or a executive assistant who answers the phone with AI, you're gonna lose customers because we know when it's AI and we find it annoying. Now the tools that I've heard that are interesting are the AI starts the conversation, but once it gets to a certain point, it then points it to a human to finish that conversation. I don't know that that's great either.

But I agree with you. It's funny how we're finding out that some of this stuff is more expensive than having an employee. But companies are still going to go that route. They're still going to do that. I don't think it's going to happen as rapidly for the design and marketing space. Not in a sense of real true good design and good marketing. Yes, the slop is going to be out there. Yes, you're going to have to do, and hopefully I do too, some AI rescue.

Jake Van Ness (23:59.416)
But I don't think that it's at the point now where we can just be like, all right, my job's gone. My business is over. I gotta walk away and do something else, even though I would love to walk away and own a golf course, but that's just me. but I just don't think we're at that point. I just think we have to be smart about what we're doing. So I think it's really interesting and almost hopeful that you're seeing that kind of work.

Carl Grivakis (24:23.848)
Yeah. I do want to ask anyone that's listening to this, what do they think of AI from a business side? Like do they use it? Are they do they care about the ethics of how they use it, that kind of thing? And then what how differently, how do they think of it as a consumer? If I get an AI call, I'm gone. Or if I call into a company and it's an AI receptionist, I'm also it immediately a negative.

feeling for me. so it's it's interesting to think of it as a business and as a consumer.

Jake Van Ness (25:01.035)
Yeah, and it's it's funny because there are people that I know, especially with what you talk about the political side of things, with the big data centers and the energy consumption and things like that, that are like, I'm not using AI because I don't agree with these data centers. It's using all of this energy and it's gonna cause a problem. And my feeling on that is you were the same people that said the internet's a fad. So please realize that.

Just like the internet is not a fad and it is still here and it is still a big deal, AI is not going anywhere. But we do need to be conscious of these things and have those conversations. But to stick your head in the sand and be like, no, not me. I'm never using it. I'm not gonna have anything to do with it, I think it's very, very naive. And I laugh because some of those people that I've had those conversations with will turn around

A week later and be like, my God, ChatGPT is the best thing in the world. And you're like, wait a minute, what happened to this high horse you were standing on? Did it run off into the distance and now you're using it? Like I I just find it interesting how that happens. But I think it's the same thing with the internet. People that had their high horse are like, the internet's dumb, it's not gonna stay around, it's a fad, and then their horse runs off into the woods and they're standing there going, I now have a website.

And I do e-commerce and I buy all my groceries through the internet. Like it's just funny how people can switch so quickly when it comes to that kind of stuff. But I I agree. I want to hear from people that are listening to us. Well, what are your thoughts on AI, not just as a marketing and design thing, but are you using it day to day? How are you using it day to day? And are you using it in your business? And again, how are you using it your business? And what are your feelings about?

dealing with other businesses that are using it more exclusively for certain things. Let us know in the comments.

Jake Van Ness (27:01.879)
So what else is going on with you? What else you've been up to?

Carl Grivakis (27:02.14)
Yeah.

Carl Grivakis (27:07.199)
I those have been my main things. things have been pretty good for the business. That's that's been you know one of the pressing things we always think about. working on Google pages for my clients and, you know, just having to adapt because Google's now changed their search function so it's AI exclusive and

Again, people are now leaving Google and going to DuckDuckGo or Brave or some other browser just because AI is inserting itself. so, you know, having to adapt is constant. otherwise not much. How about you?

Jake Van Ness (27:50.092)
Well, it's funny you're talking about Google business profiles. I had a gentleman that I'm friends with who moved from New York to North Carolina and we spent a good bit of time yesterday getting his stuff set up for his new location. And it it's tough when he's a he's a contractor. It's tough when you go into a new area and you don't really know anybody and you don't really have any like contacts and stuff. So I feel like after listening to what's happened for you.

And the fact that people are finding you and that's been a big tool for that. I said to him, We need to get your Facebook page set up, we need to get your Google business pro profile set up, and then I need to get you at least a single page landing page for a website so that people can find you. Because once we get those tools working, just like you, hopefully he starts getting phone calls and he starts getting inquiries about work, because obviously he needs to survive somehow.

So it it was really interesting to walk through with somebody from the ground up because he didn't have anything to claim. I literally had to walk through with him and set everything up from the ground up. And I'm now a manager on that account so I can help him with things and and really build it out. he had to do his video for verification yesterday. So that that was a big deal because he was like, I don't like being on video. Why do I have to do this? I don't want to have to do this. And I'm like, Don't worry.

Nobody else is gonna see it other than Google. It doesn't go out to the public. It's just a verification thing. But it was just so funny because he's like, I don't know how you podcast. I I could never be on video. I could never talk to his I'm like, calm down, you're okay. But so yeah, so I what's that?

Carl Grivakis (29:29.427)
Just wait till go.

I was gonna say wait till Google denies them on the first verification attempt. If you if you miss one step, you know, they'll tell you sometimes they'll tell you what you miss, but you really need everything that they ask for in that video.

Jake Van Ness (29:38.315)
Well I I I warned him about that.

Jake Van Ness (29:49.742)
I told him to stand in front of his logo on his truck. I told him to wear a shirt with his logo. And I told him to dance. I don't think that third one was important, but I just want to see if I could see that video later of him dancing. No, I I I told him already that there is a chance it'll get denied and we'll just have to figure out why and go through it. But yeah, it was just so funny because he was like, I don't want to have to do this. And I'm like, relax, it's okay.

And then the other thing I I mentioned it earlier, I started a new podcast. It is golf season for me. So I am on the golf course two to three times a week if I can help it. so I really enjoy golf. I've I joined a different US Amtour this this year, so we're kind of helping promote that because it's a new region for the Albany, New York region. And so again, that's divotsandskins.com is the website for that. I actually just released the

The third episode. So I've been doing editing on that. we record in Riverside when we do these podcasts, and so it's been really interesting to do an in-person podcast. So that's been really interesting for me to have somebody right next to me and not have it be virtual like we've always done it. it really makes me wish I had the space to set up like a podcast studio so I wouldn't have to keep setting up and tearing down. But

Carl Grivakis (31:09.929)
Yeah.

Jake Van Ness (31:12.449)
The cool thing is like I do a lot of my editing in Premiere for that on the full version, but then I take the two two versions of us, kind of like we have with this, and I upload them to Riverside and I use the AI, the tool, to help me create the shorts that we use for Reels and YouTube Shorts and other places. And it's great because it saves me a ton of time because I don't have to try to do that manually in

premiere, I can do it here on Riverside. So it's interesting to learn how to edit from external video and external recordings into Riverside that we use to do this podcast. So that's been fun. I've been doing a lot with that. weather finally turned decent. It it was a a pretty rough spring for us. A lot of rain, a lot of cold, kind of miserable weather. But another project I had recently was I had a golf tournament that I help a client put on.

every year. my client, the Conklin Center, I've been working with them since 2014, 2015, when they hired me to rebrand the organization. my job with them during the golf tournament is to put together the program, create all the T signs, make sure all the printing gets done, and deliver all those things to them so that they can be put out on the golf course for the day of the event. And then the nice thing is I get to play in that tournament as well. So that's always fun.

And the cool thing is this year we came in second. So we were pretty happy about that. And we won all the skins. So we walked away with a good amount of money too. So it was a good day. So that was a good project too. but I I love having that relationship with them and being their marketing person and being able to take not only my passion for print design and being a creative, but also my passion for golf. and that's the other reason I do the the podcast is it takes my passion for content creation and

And my passion for golf and kind of puts it together. And that's why we do this podcast because we enjoy doing podcasts and it takes that that conversation that we always have anyway and allows us to share it with other people. So with that, let's move on to our pod decks question of the episode. I was gonna say the week, but we're not weekly and we know better. what are you most excited about right now?

Carl Grivakis (33:34.452)
We we might be relocating to the central mass area, so I'm I'm quietly excited about the opportunity for that. it's not a guarantee, but we're we're looking at opportunities and are very hopeful about that.

Jake Van Ness (33:54.038)
That's awesome. And the great thing about what you do is you can do it from anywhere. Now granted, it might change who some of your clientele is locally, but it's great to be able to have a business like we do and and have an opportunity to move to a different location. That's awesome. Congratulations and keep me up to date on that. I'm curious now. I I'm just gonna go right back to golf. I'm super excited that I'm on this new USAM tour. Yes, I talk about golf a lot. I play a lot of golf too, so and

Ironically, as soon as we're done with this, about an af hour after we're done, yes, I'm going to play golf. So I play a lot of golf. so I'm super excited to be on that tour this year, to play a couple of new courses. we have one coming up that's actually going to be in Western Mass in the beginning of June. And then we have a coup I think one or two other ones later in the season that will be in Massachusetts as well. So that's kind of exciting. Most of them are in the New York area or in the

northern New York area like Albany and and North. Some of are a little bit south of Albany. But it's always fun because it's it's competitive golf, but it's with people that are at my what they call handicap level. And so I'm always excited about that because it there's an opportunity to win. I have a good friend of mine whose wife has won twice already on the tour and she competes with the guys at at her handicap level. So it's pretty cool to see her and it was back to back too, which was kinda cool.

So it's cool to see that. And I'm I'm super excited to be on the tour and do that stuff. But also I'm excited to continue to grow my design business and continue to to do the virtual stuff as well. Like I just landed another gig for next week with the Harvard class of nineteen seventy seven. I'm doing another virtual session with them, which is awesome. So a lot of really good stuff going on. I'm I'm excited, it's summertime.

The weather finally turned decent. like I said, we had a miserable spring, but it seemed like Memorial Day weekend, while that was kind of a washout for us, Tuesday after Memorial Day, it's like Mother Nature went, okay, now I could turn the heat up a little bit. So at least it's decent now. But I I'm I'm definitely excited to hear more about what opportunities you have coming up and we'll have to talk about that some more.

Carl Grivakis (36:15.014)
Absolutely.

Jake Van Ness (36:16.309)
All right. And with that I think we're gonna end the episode there. It was great talking to you. Really good episode on AI and what's going on with that in your business. And I think we just came up with a new term, AI rescue.

Carl Grivakis (36:29.682)
Yeah.

Jake Van Ness (36:30.893)
Alright, take care man.

Carl Grivakis (36:32.574)
Take care. Bye.