Funding Innovation with Netcapital
Tips for entrepreneurs and founders for raising capital. Whether you are interested in raising funds through equity crowdfunding, angel investors, or VC's, we'll share our best practices for list building and customizing your pitch for each audience.
Funding Innovation with Netcapital
From $0 to $150K: How to Raise Your First Startup Funds
Securing the initial funding for a startup can be a daunting task. How do you raise your first $50,000? And what steps should you take to reach $150,000?
In this episode, John Beresford and Gal Benron of BrandPilot AI provide invaluable insights and practical tips for founders starting their fundraising journey.
With their expertise in influencer marketing for enterprises, they offer strategies to navigate the complexities of early-stage fundraising.
Plus, our listeners can access a free trial of their cutting-edge social listening tool at BrandPilot AI
If you want to raise capital for your business visit us at https://netcapital.com/
Hello everyone and welcome to Funding Innovation with NetCapital. I'm Kathy Krasler, the Director of Marketing at NetCapital, and today I'm speaking with Brandpilot AI, a company that specializes in influencer marketing for enterprise. They recently presented a webinar to our issuers at NetCapital about how to raise your first $50,000 to $150,000 for your startup, and we're going to cover some of that today. I'm joined by John Beresford, the CRO of Brandpilot AI, and Gal Benron, the Marketing and Business Development Manager, so let's start by getting to know our guests a little better. Gal, could you please introduce yourself and tell us a bit about your role at Brandpilot AI?
Speaker 2:Sure, I'll be happy to. So, hi everyone, I'm Gal. I'm a multi-passionate mover, which means I have a background of science, marketing, business, entrepreneurship and dancing. I use social media very personally and authentically and this is what I hope to present here as founders just to help you really express your voice naturally in order to find the people who are a good match for your company as investors, and my role at Brandpilot AI is marketing and business development manager. So I do exactly this I do our marketing, I do our social media, I do partnerships and I create human to human connection.
Speaker 1:Excellent. Thank you so much, and, john, could you tell us about your role?
Speaker 3:Sure, john Beresford. I got my start in technology with BlackBerry, so I helped BlackBerry launch the smartphone revolution, where I was there for over a decade, and then from there, I became a tech entrepreneur. So I started a social media influencer company in 2014 with the Property Brothers, a couple of celebrities from television. It was actually their idea, but we were some of the first. We were one of the first influencer marketing tech companies in the space. I've been doing it ever since and, as the chief revenue officer at Brandpilot, I'm here to make sure that the world is getting the right information they need about influencer marketing and how best to leverage it.
Speaker 1:That is so cool. You know the Property Brothers. Wow, okay, I didn't know that about you, but anyway, thank you both for those introductions and now that we have a better understanding of your roles, let's dive into the topic of fundraising. Gal, you had some insightful advice for our issuers about that first bootstrapping phase, how to go from zero to 50,000. And, specifically, you have three pillars of fundraising, which were one, face-to-face contact, two, video rules and three, the network effect. So let's talk about each of those, starting with face-to-face contact. What does that mean and why is it important?
Speaker 2:I love this question. What does that mean and why is it important? I love this question. What does it mean and why is it important? Because, when we come to fundraising, there happens a slight subconscious process of separating our humanity from the process, and it's inevitable, and I want to shine light on it and remind you that the people who want to help you and invest in your company are people who already know you, and so what we really want to focus on when we start raising money for our amazing new startup is to remember that people want to help us, and so what you want to do is to rely on your connections first, not on the tech platform you're using for the fundraising.
Speaker 2:It can be very it can be a confusing state, and so what I really would love to share with you are the three tips that I find work really well. First, organize yourself. Ok, so these are all tips into the formulation of your face-to-face outreach. So use a simple CRM, or even just use a Google Sheet, excel Sheet, and create a simple tracking system Name, email, phone, where do you know them, date of reaching out, comments, what was their response, etc. Cetera. Whatever supports you.
Speaker 2:Two individually list all of the people who could potentially support you. And this is. It sounds obvious, but this is where most people get stuck with oh, I know this, this and that, and then they don't actually list out. When you start listing out, it becomes really tangible, could also become overwhelming, but it becomes an action you can actually take, rather than oh yeah, I have to talk to my family members at Thanksgiving.
Speaker 2:It becomes one single person and then three practice your outreach muscle daily. This is a skill you build over time, just like you go to the gym. If you go to the gym or do your physical activity, you're not going to expect results in the first two days, right? You're going to build a muscle, build a habit and see results after some time. So, really shifting the way you approach outreach to your first and second circle from sporadic to a muscle, you train every day and every day you're going to have a different capacity. So maybe one day you send a blast email or you personally call 15 people and maybe the other day you just call one person or you send one message. But treat this really as a devotion to your business and your mission and see how you can shift it from something I have to do to this is something I get to do.
Speaker 1:I love that, and so the second rule. You have this. The second pillar was about video rules. So why is creating a pitch video important and what specific tips do you have for creating an effective pitch video?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so video rules over anything else. Instagram started as an image picture platform and it is mostly a video platform now. Video is engaging. Video captures your essence, it captures who you are, it captures what you do and it is the most cost and time effective way for you to communicate your value and your company's value to the other person through the screen. And also, look at what I'm doing. I'm using my hands, I'm looking directly at the camera. I don't know if you're seeing this or watching this. When you do that, you create a connection with a person, and it won't happen from a static product, right? So think of video again as something you get to do to truly express your passion, your mission, your values, your story, your excitement, your nervousness, your hopes, bring your humanity and your emotions. Three tips Okay.
Speaker 2:So when you finally sit down to take the video actually, I'm going to reverse, if that's okay. Yeah, when you plan out your video, I want you to invest one or two days. That's all you need. What you want is good enough. You don't want it perfect, because then it could spiral into never doing it. So you want to invest one or two days. It doesn't need to be professional, but it just has to be right. Once you block out your one or two days, spend one day organizing everything that you need to be organizing, so maybe background props, script or bullet points. If you work better riffing from bullet points versus memorizing a script and then, on the day of filming, a lot about three hours to do the same, take over and over again, or 20 takes. Really give yourself permission to do this multiple times, because the more you do this, the more your body relaxes and gets into the flow and then your actual personality gets to come out. If you try to do this within three takes, you're going to be so nervous.
Speaker 1:That's so interesting. It's like taking three deep breaths at the beginning of a meditation. It just relaxes you. I love that idea.
Speaker 2:Exactly, exactly. I work with a body, I'm a dancer, I'm a somatic coach. Your nervous system controls you, whether you like that or not. So giving repetition to your nervous system makes it feel safe and also you'll have some tricks to choose from, sorry, that's one of the best tips I've ever heard.
Speaker 1:I love this idea. Thank you for saying that.
Speaker 2:It's a pleasure, because it's really important to me to bring the body on and the human on and not just be. This is business. We are professional. Please invest in my company. It's also that it's both.
Speaker 2:Number two do it yourself or pay someone. If you're a startup and you're just starting out, don't spend your money on this. If you have a thousand dollars, find a new person, a novice or an apprentice that is looking for experience, and have them use their equipment and edit it for you. If not, you can definitely do it with your smartphone, which brings us to number three smartphone using natural lighting. If not, you can definitely do it with your smartphone, which brings us to number three smartphone using natural lighting. So I recommend being indoors so that you can control the sound. Right now, for example, I'm with my window closed, door closed, and I'm facing a window facing natural light. That's all you need. And then, if you really want to feel confident in the sound of the video, then buy a simple microphone for $100 that connects to an iPhone not a camera or a smartphone and use that those are great tips.
Speaker 1:And you know what? Our CEO, rob Burnett, is a huge advocate of just shooting a video on your cell phone. He tells our issuers that all the time. He says it's just supernatural and people love it and it sort of ties in with today's you know social media trends. So thank you for those tips. And so your third pillar around fundraising was what you call the network effect. So what do you mean by that and how can our listeners use that to their advantage?
Speaker 2:Well, john shared with me a beautiful quote when we were creating this webinar turned podcast, and that is if you need money, ask for advice. If you need advice, ask for money. People love to help and they want to feel important. If you can work with those natural inclinations of the community around you your friends and family and their friends and family you can amplify your message in a way that is authentic, grounded and not salesy at the end of the day.
Speaker 3:So, when it comes to I think, john, maybe you want to speak to it before I go into the three practical tips about asking for help before you ask for money- yeah, I mean it goes back to something I'd love to talk about a little bit later on in the podcast as well, which is, for startups, market validation is actually the most important thing, and I'll talk about it again. And no one this is sort of the. This is the message I'm trying to bring to the startup community every single day. I'm a professor of entrepreneurship at Wilfrid Laurier University. I just say this over and over again for an entire term is that market validation is key, and market validation comes not from what you build and what you plan, but who you talk to and how you validate your idea, and so that's where a lot of what gal is saying is going to come from is from engaging and interacting with the people who are eventually going to want to buy your product exactly.
Speaker 2:Thank you for that. So, when it comes to um practical tips of utilizing the network effect, you want to start by sharing your pitch video anywhere. You can think of your website, your LinkedIn, your Instagram, your TikTok, your work, your friend's work, your wife's work, your husband's work anywhere and start training yourself and your body to ask people for help by asking them to repost. Hi everyone, I'm so excited to share a pitch video. The reason this is important for me is because this solves this problem, which I personally have history with. I would love for your support if you could post it with anyone. You can send it to anyone you think is relevant for or post it on your own socials. That's number one. Two, if you know people in your network that might actually invest, instead of directly asking them for money, ask them directly hey, could you share my pitch video? So, first of all, it means that you're not coming in with a bigger ask of please believe in my story and give me your money and show me that you trust me. You're asking, you're starting with a smaller ask. You're building that relationship. You're furthering that relationship that you already have with that person with a smaller ask. When they share your video. They've already committed to you, and so a nice thank you. I really appreciate that is always in place and then, once they show interest in helping you, you can then come in and ask them to invest.
Speaker 2:And number three just go back to your Excel or Google Sheet and track your progress. This is a muscle and a muscle requires discipline. And, again, the compassion you can have for yourself for the days that you have less capacity for it is crucial. Do the tiniest action you can every day and if you can do more than that, then that's great, but keep doing it on a daily basis and track your progress so that you know where you are so much, gal, and so let's next talk about the next stage, beyond friends and family, that 50 to 150K stage where you're reaching beyond your immediate network to venture stage companies or other strangers.
Speaker 1:And, john, here you emphasize the importance of building presence and credibility, specifically through social media, evangelists and early influencers. So let's break that down. How do you recommend our listeners get started in building a social presence for their companies?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean social is where we just get information. Now, before it was a novelty and now it's just a part of everyday life. And so, yeah, I mean, start with your social profiles. You know, that's sort of the digital representation of your company, your brand, your personality. The website is where we go for information and social is where people go, where they believe they're going to have a relationship with the people at that company, and that's pretty important for fundraising. So start building your own social profiles.
Speaker 3:Some best advice, which I borrowed from Gal, is really focus on maybe two to three social platforms. It's not, you know, know, pick on the ones that are probably most relevant to your market, the ones you're most comfortable producing in. Uh, the one piece of advice we would suggest is, at this stage, when you're looking for fundraising, make sure you have a linkedin presence, because that's where you would believe most investors would have some sort of presence and profile. And so those are, uh, those are sort of. The main was focus on the channel.
Speaker 3:Now, what you tell the of the best piece of advice I can give any entrepreneur is always create from a place of passion, which means you're really, really passionate about what you're doing. But, more importantly, you've got to fall in love with the problem you're solving, not the company you're building. Investors don't want to hear that. Entrepreneurs want to talk about the product and how it's so good and look how we did this and look how we did that, and they want to talk about themselves. And it's such a natural instinct that you've got to fight so hard to break through, because that's not what people care about. People want to hear as an investor. They want to hear you're solving a problem that's really meaningful to the people you're solving and that's where you want to. All your content should be focused on the passion you have for solving that problem, not the passion you have for the product or service you're creating. So that's probably some advice I'd give people to start.
Speaker 1:Excellent, and yes, and our CEO, rob, is a huge evangelist for that. And speaking of evangelists, you recommend finding evangelists for your company, and evangelists aren't the same as influencers, so can you explain the difference?
Speaker 3:Well, I mean, the dictionary definition of an evangelist is a person who seeks to convert someone to their ideas. So an evangelist is a very personal, intimate relationship. It's someone who doesn't just understand your business and know you personally, it's someone who actively wants to tell others about it, and that usually comes because you're focused on a problem, right? Evangelists maybe care a little bit less about you and what you're doing and more about hey, you're here to try and help people like me solve this problem, and so that's where I would maybe put a line in the sand. For what's the difference between an evangelist and an influencer? It's about the. Probably. The level of intimacy within the relationship versus influencers are great and they certainly can become evangelists, but we tend to think of influencers as a medium through which we can tell our story and reach our market. So that's sort of how I define those two.
Speaker 1:So let's break that down a bit and talk about what tips you have for finding evangelists and how can founders leverage them to spread the word.
Speaker 3:Right. So this is where I'll just take a quick step back to that topic I talked about before, which is product market fit, and it's the number one problem in tech entrepreneurship by a country mile. It's the thing all of us should be spending 90% of our effort on in our early days, but we get distracted with building websites, creating content, building a product, and so I'm going to go back to that as just the best practice for everybody listening. It's never too late to make sure you have product market fit. As a person who worked at BlackBerry, speaking to an audience of people that definitely do not own blackberries, I would say it's never, never stopped looking for product market fit. That's probably a best practice from my career. But so and the reason I'm going on and on about this is that product market fit comes from interviews you do with the market, reaching out, talking to the people that have the problem. That's where this comes from, and we don't do it enough. People think I interviewed a few people, I got some answers. I'm off to the people that have the problem. That's where this comes from and we don't do it enough. People think, oh, I interviewed a few people, I got some answers, I'm off to the races.
Speaker 3:We want to just lock ourselves in our office and just work on our company instead of putting ourselves out there and really treating market validation is a long, painful, intimate journey. The reason I say that is it's been my experience from my own companies, the hundreds of startup companies I've mentored in the past. Your evangelists come from that product market journey, that market validation journey. That's when you'll meet the people that will become your evangelist. If you talk to enough people about the problem you're trying to solve, you're going to pick up some evangelist along the way who will become part of that intimate community for you. So that's the number one way to sort of find those people who can reach out to you. But you've got to be proactive. Gal said it best You've got to treat it as an exercise, you've got to treat it as a discipline. You need to tell yourself, hey, I'm going to this month, I'm going to have 10 market interviews with people who are in the space, have that problem, and so that's the number one area I would say you go to find evangelists.
Speaker 2:I want to jump in and add these. Yes, I want to describe exactly the same thing that John described in startup terminology, business terminology, from the somatic experience of your body. Our nervous system loves proof. Our nervous system loves seeing proof that we are capable of doing something. And so when you're a kid and you're just learning how to play a sport, you don't start by playing a full game, right. The coach teaches you the drills, you drill them 20, 30 times and then you come in the next week and you increase the level of difficulty of the drill.
Speaker 2:When you launch a business, it is like teaching your body, and it gets easier the more businesses you launch.
Speaker 2:But each business has its own trajectory to map out, its own pathway to follow. What you're looking to do is to build proof for your nervous system, for your body, that your can I say shit, sure, okay, that your shit has value. This is what we're trying to do, and I am doing this right now with my side business, which is somatic coaching, and the way I approach it is not only to talk and interview people, but to create experiences for them. Whatever your business is, you can create experiences of a demo, a free one-to-one, a master class. The more you pour yourself into this from a place of serving the problem, serving the people experiencing the problem, the more you build proof that your shit works, it has value and people are going to pay for it. And it's going to be a natural by-product of finding those evangelists, of actually building a product that has product market fit Like this is what we want. So, yeah, I'm just very passionate about it. Your body needs to be on board with this.
Speaker 3:I love that this podcast now is going to come with the explicit lyrics or explicit language thing on Spotify. This is great. It's going to be edgy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, wow, we're going to trouble our listener base. Okay, perfect. So thank you for that, gal. Very interesting, and so then let's switch to influencers. Then, john, I guess I'll address this question to you.
Speaker 3:How do?
Speaker 1:entrepreneurs go about finding influencers, and how much should they pay them?
Speaker 3:OK, so I'll start first part first. So, once again, evangelists and influencers are really just people who can tell your story on your behalf in a passionate way. Right, and that's so it's. It's a. It's a gray area as to who's who. I think those first market interviews you do, those people could become your first evangelist slash influencers, right, those.
Speaker 3:If you're in the medical community working on a specific problem, you know you're going to want to talk to experts in that area, the first ones that understand you're solving a problem, see the value in what you do, and they'll become your first influencers. Let's leverage them. And Gal talks a lot about is how do you help them create content on your behalf that tells your story? Because, if you're an investor, help them create content on your behalf that tells your story. Because, if you're an investor, honestly, in some cases, the last person you should trust is the CEO. Of course they're going to say it's a good idea. Of course they're going to say you should invest in this. What's way more important is the people who don't work at the company and actually say yeah, no, these folks are working on a really important problem and this is a really good investment, because this is a real problem and there's a huge market for it. So that's one of the areas. It's those interviews Start intimately and that's the number one way to get your first influencers. And then the second way is that there are digital communities for every topic now. So, whether it's a Reddit chat or a LinkedIn group, joining those groups, becoming an active participant, becoming once again someone who's not necessarily in love with your business even though you are but but sort of positioning yourself as someone who's in love with solving this problem that this community might have. So that's the second way. And then the third way are tools like Brandpilot has a tool called Spectrum. Your listeners can get a free trial of it, but we design tools, a tool that allows you to go out and search 300 million social media profiles to try and find people that could be interested in your topic, your target market, the problem you're solving. You can do social listening, which is a term I'm sure your listeners are familiar with, where you're listening to the topics. You're listening to the hashtags and keywords that people are using on social media to talk about the market. You're trying to go after the problem you're trying to solve are using on social media to talk about the market. You're trying to go after the problem you're trying to solve. We've even got ways of searching these profiles by topic of interest, and then we've got ai tools that will actually help you find people. So so tools like spectrum are really designed for you to start to build that list of potential influencers that you can then reach out to and engage.
Speaker 3:Now the second part of your question was a little bit more complicated, which is how much do you pay a creator? And this there is no right answer. There's probably lots of wrong answers. So some of the best practices or just my experience in it that I would give people is that there's two variables for how much people are going to want for them to work for you. The first one's an obvious one how big is their following? So if you've got 100 million followers on Instagram, that has media value. That's worth a lot, right Versus, you know, I've got 10,000 followers on Twitter or Instagram. I mean that person is going to cost a lot less. So that's one variable. The other variable that you should think about is what's the complexity of the content I'm asking them to produce for me? So is it a quick, you know? Are they reposting an image that I gave them to do? Or am I asking them to sit down and create an eight minute long piece of video content that they need to edit? So the complexity and value of that content has a value. So you're sort of you know. I always show people this graph where it's how big is the influencer you have and how complex is the content you're asking them to produce.
Speaker 3:And what we find works best is, from an ROI perspective, is finding people who might have a bit of a smaller following, but they're producing really good content. So if we had a choice between having a big person produce short content or a smaller person produce long-form content, we'd choose the latter. Right, we think you get a better ROI from that. So that's our advice on it. And then the final piece is that cash is always an element in this usually right of people creating content. It's their time. But then there are other things you can do with them, which in some cases it could be, you know, shares in your company. If you're doing fundraising, it could be free access to your product If it's a really important thing that solves a problem they have. Exposure is also helpful for that. So those are some of the elements that go into how an influencer decides to work with a company or not.
Speaker 1:The elements that go into how an influencer decides to work with a company or not. So you can get a little scrappy to pay your influencers.
Speaker 3:I love that, yes, but don't be disappointed if, at the end of all those great things, they still lean ahead and say and it's $800. So expect that they can say hey, we're going to give you all this cool stuff and we want to do all the cool stuff for you. You're going to get exposure. And then they also go and, by the way, I still want $800. So don't be disappointed, should that happen.
Speaker 1:Okay, good advice, great advice, and so actually, let's wrap this up. I'd love to ask each of you a final question, john. I'll start with you. I'll ask the same thing to each of you what's the best piece of advice you could give aspiring entrepreneurs trying to raise capital right now?
Speaker 3:And what are some key takeaways for our listeners? Yeah, I mean, I'm a broken record on this. So product market fit is the number one thing and even if you've got a product and you're in market and you're launching, you know, if you don't have customers coming in and paying for it on a regular basis or signing up on a regular basis is coming in and paying for it on a regular basis or signing up on a regular basis. I'm imploring you to be self-conscious that you might not have product market fit yet and to go out and constantly strive for it and do those interviews and validate it. That's my number one piece of advice, and the reason I'm harping on it again is because when the markets are tight and when there's less capital out there to deploy, it means investments are. You know, logically, there's less people spending less money and so the investor is going to be less likely to fund a hunch that you have or a really good idea. Right, the person who's got the most market validation to back it up in front of an investor is probably the person who, in a tight market, is going to get the most funding. So that's my best piece of, my most important piece of advice for everybody.
Speaker 3:The two other ones I would say along the way is revenue is the number one sign of market validation. Now, I know we can't always do that You've got to build a product but it is the number one sign If someone's willing to pay for something that solves a problem they think they have. Any way, you can strive for that along this journey. I would implore you to do which is impossible for everyone. But where this goes is, you know, trying to monetize your MVP instead of waiting for a final product, doing things like non-reoccurring engineering fees and all that's a fancy way to just say, hey, I'm solving a problem for you. It doesn't exist yet and we don't have it, all the kinks worked out, but we're going to give you a contract to build a product or a service that doesn't exist yet.
Speaker 3:And I know that sounds crazy and silly, but we did it four different times at my companies one with Twitter and the other one with the Property Brothers. Right, they said, hey, we're looking for this thing that solves this problem. We have around finding these influential people and we said to them yeah, we want to help you too, but we need to validate this idea, and would you be open to buying a lifetime license to a piece of software that doesn't exist yet, and they could have said no, but the problem we were solving was really meaningful to them and they were interested and they did, and so you're not going to get rich from this, that's not the point. But any kind of market traction you have at all is going to impress an investor, and that's going to be key in a tight market like we're in now.
Speaker 1:Wow, perfect. Thank you. And, by the way, before I switch over to you, gal, I just wanted to emphasize that importance of product market fit. I've worked at 10 different startups and that has been a problem at most of them. So thank you for saying that. But, gal, let's switch over to you now. What's your best piece of advice for aspiring entrepreneurs and what are some key takeaways for our listeners?
Speaker 2:I'm so excited about this, what John said. And when you train your body to experience rejection on a daily basis, when you train your body to fail publicly again and again and again and again in other areas in your life, you expand your capacity to go out there and fail publicly again and again and again and ask exactly what John said, exactly Ask those clients hey, do you want to buy a license for something that doesn't exist? You don't get there without training your body, and examples for that are going to be unique to you. But I want to give some examples to make this pretty conceptual thing really real. Take on a new sport that is really scary.
Speaker 2:I jumped off a cliff for the first time in my life a really a really scary cliff last year. Wow, and I do rock climbing and I, every time I have an opportunity to jump into water which is something I am terrified of I do that, and I do that to determine my body that I can take the jump and I will survive. I can experience the hardship. And so when you find a way to physically train your body to do the things that you're scared of and see that you're okay, you're going to approach doing the same thing in your business, in your startup, with so much groundedness and so much more of a higher frequency, because you're like, oh yeah, I just did, I just ran a marathon for the first time or I just did a bungee jump or whatever it is. For you, it can be something as simple as learning how to cook, right. Whatever it is for you, do that on a physical body level. Something else that's not your business, because you need it, and then bring that capacity into your business.
Speaker 1:Wow, this just became a therapy session like a really valuable one, Thank you.
Speaker 2:I'm a coach, you're welcome.
Speaker 1:That's awesome. And so, finally, one last question for either of you, which is how can our listeners get in touch with you?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so I know we talked about a tool that we've built. That's, you know, massively important for anyone looking to either find evangelists or find influencers or do social media research. I can't tell you enough, the social listening piece of it just listening to your market's really important. So we have a free tool or a tool people can try for free. It's brand pilots product called spectrum, so you can sign up for that to leverage this tool right away and then to get a hold of us. Our website is brandpilotai and, by all means, please. We're active on LinkedIn, so reach out to us on LinkedIn as well. It'd be amazing to have a dialogue there.
Speaker 1:Excellent. Thank you so much and Gal any last words.
Speaker 2:I just echo what John said yeah, awesome.
Speaker 1:And thank you, and yes, thank you for saying that, and I will put the link to your site in our comments and, uh, in our description on youtube. So thank you so much for joining us. This has been really insightful, incredibly valuable. Thank you again, thank you so much.
Speaker 3:Thank you, kathy, and good luck to everybody. It's hard out there, so good luck.