1 Image. 45 Mediums. 10% More Every Year. This Is What Print On Demand Can Do To An Art Business

0:00Coming up on today's edition of the Art Marketing Podcast, one image, 45 mediums, 10% more every year. This is what print-on-demand can do for an art business. Specifically, we are continuing on with the classics, which is a series I started last week. And today we are going to cover POD. POD stands for print-on-demand, the deep dive. And I'm gonna start with some established masters, which I think will be really interesting.

0:30It's not something I've done. And then ideally, end with you.

0:40Now in 2018, a guy you probably never heard of, in a Texas town of 87 people, sold a single painting for $141,500. The most interesting part is what he did with the same image after that. And we're gonna get there, so stick with me. I used to say this all the time on my webinars, why part and partial of why I'm going back to the classics is because I realized I never really released some of this stuff on the podcast, and it's good and it's important.

1:11And so let me ask you a question. If I hired you, a hypothetical if you like, if I hired you to sell knives for me, door to door, this was your new job, when you went knocking on those doors, what would you have in your hands? What would you actually take with you to knock on the door to try and sell knives? You'd have the knives, right? Because if you didn't, you would have to be a pretty doggone extraordinary salesperson

1:43to be able to sell those from a catalog, to be able to sell those off of a photo of the knives, or look at this pretty picture. And most of us are just not that good at persuasion, okay? We are just not. So today's episode in one line, print on demand, and samples are not two topics, they're one engine. And the artists and photographers that understand this, that are doing this the best, are running it all the same way,

2:13whether they sell APs for $25 or $317,000. And this is what you need to be doing too. This is what you need to be doing too. And I figured I would start this one out with a bit of a question, a bit of an observation, okay?

2:34You're either a hobbyist or you have a business and you have to pick one. That's it. That's really it. You know, there are artists and photographers creating art and photography, beautiful art, beautiful photography as hobbyists, and that is awesome and that is all good. And there are artists and there are photographers that are running art businesses and photography businesses. If you fancy yourself in the latter group, it makes sense to study those who are doing it extremely well and have huge businesses that are making a ton of money to do it.

3:06And it doesn't, like it doesn't mean that there is any one path that works for every single solitary created business. You know, quite to the contrary, everyone has the ability to do them, to do that way that they want to do it. But if you're trying to make a living for your craft, okay, from your God-given talent to create and what you're capable of creating, you got to keep listening to this, okay? You got to keep listening to this. And I used to, another used to used concept was like the drain, right?

3:37And I found throughout my career and all these conversations I've had with artists and photographers that your drains end up getting clogged with what I believe to be nonsense, okay? These stupid notions, they get clogged in the drain and then no water can escape when the drain starts working. And how these things get stuck in the drain is a myriad of reasons, okay? But my job is to help you unclog that drain. So everything can just be flowing nice and smoothly, right?

4:07And the examples in this case of things that get stuck in the drain that as an artist or a photographer, you can't or shouldn't run a business, that as an artist or a photographer, somehow the rules don't apply and you don't have to run sales or marketing campaigns, that as an artist or a photographer, you don't need to do active marketing, that somehow you will just be magically discovered for being an incredible creator, right? That as artists and photographers, you can't be perceived a certain way, right? You know, there's like this fear of looking like a salesperson or a tchotchke shop or whatever.

4:38This notion that you can't ever discount your work, which is the biggest bunch of BS in the history of mankind. More artwork is sold at a discount in the gallery world than anywhere else, right? And it's not even to say you have to discount your work. It's just, you know, these are the things that get stuck in the drain. And all of these nonsensical things that we've heard in this industry for time immemorial get stuck in the drain and it prevents the aforementioned hobbyists from ever turning their creations into a business. And pretty much everyone that listens to this

5:09wants to have a business. Pretty much everyone that signs up at Art Storefronts wants to have a business. Pretty much just about every artist I've talked to, aside from the offhanded social media comment here or there. I'm not selling anybody in my art. I'm just creating it for the world, right? Pretty much everyone does. You all do, right? And when I think back to like, you know, the whole art school, art history classes, MFA classes, photography classes, take your pick, right? Like, you know, when you're studying or learning art history, you're gonna study Van Gogh and Renoir

5:40and Cezanne and Kandinsky, et cetera. You're learning photography. It's gonna be Ansel Adams and Louis Hine and Henri Gattebresson or Stieglitz or Richard Avedon, right? You learn from the masters. And that's how every art class on earth works. You got the periods, you got the masters, what sets them apart, what makes them interesting, what makes them amazing, right? And I totally agree with studying the history and I love the history. I took a ton of those classes in college myself. I've read a ton of books on them because I find it fascinating. Everyone that's had an education, okay,

6:12in art, in photography, in creativity, always learns from the masters, right? So why wouldn't we study the masters in business as it applies to art? Why wouldn't we understand the masters in business as it applies to photography, right? We're trying to have a business and we're trying to get the paid the most that we can for our creations to live the lives that we want to live. Why does no one ever study the masters of business, right? Why do we never do that? And there's a reason, by the way,

6:42that your art or your photography school never taught that, but I will come back to that in a second. So I cherry-picked two masters today, okay? And if there can be masters that are appreciated for their craft, the history, the era, my premise is really that there can be masters that we can appreciate for their business acumen, their gumption, their ability to buck the norm, treat the creative, get these, it's an opportunity to fund their lives and have art careers while they are still alive, okay? That's like one of the other things in the drain. Oh, another artist that only got famous after they died.

7:14Such BS, right? So I cherry-picked two, two that I've talked about on the pod before. And I kind of did some deep dives. I've got books on some of them and some of them I had to read a bunch of articles. And I did some in-depth dives on their websites, okay? And I picked a photographer, I picked an artist. And for the photographer, I picked Gray Malin, okay? And my wife loves Gray Malin. We have a Gray Malin print in our house. She's been a fan of them forever and ever. And I think most people would probably know him as he's like popularized,

7:45what sort of look like drone shots at beaches. You know, people sitting on the beach with the umbrellas, sometimes swimming pools. And while I'm sure he uses a drone to achieve all of those incredible images in today's day and age, I think when he did it, he actually started out in helicopters primarily to get all of them. And his story is really, really interesting. So he started in 2009, in the middle of a recession, the single, solitary, hardest time to start a business. And the first thing he did trying to sell his prints

8:16were selling at a flea market in Melrose, in West Hollywood, right? But he just, he did the road and show thing, started out tiny little booth, tiny little table, his prints, and saw how he could go. And, you know, his story goes on that he cold emailed 1,000 print buyers from a beach trip, one of which was King's Lane or One King's Lane. And that is a huge breakthrough when he got into that store. And in the 16 years he's been in it, you know, he's got a New York Times bestselling book

8:46called Beaches that he released in 2016. He, you know, they don't publish data when you have a private company, but I believe most people think his business does anywhere from like 25 to 35, $45 million a year. It could be more than that. Usually those estimates are significantly under what the artist is actually doing. But I took the time to go ahead and check out his site, right? And I used all my fancy little AI tools so I was able to scan his entire site map, look at all of his unique products, see how many collections he has, right?

9:18And how he is running his business. Presumably a guy that has been this successful, okay? In the, what did I say it was? What do I know? I'd say 16 years that he's been in it, okay? And if we go back to last week's episode, 16 years left was at like the bottom of what most of you guys have. For most of you guys have 20, 30, 40, 50 years or 60 years left to keep cranking on this business. And in Gray Malin's catalog, okay, on his website, which you can see, I'll have links

9:49to all this stuff in the show notes. He has 4,156 unique products housed in 632 collections, okay? 93% of the catalog is photography and just about every photo he does, it comes in 221 different variants. Size, frame, glass, color, various different items, various different things. It is so totally worth checking out a site

10:20of an individual photographer that has grown just a massive, massive business. And you look at his price, like what do I always say? You have to have a range of prices, right? And on his site, he's got everything from $20 puzzles, okay, at the very, very floor, I think, of the business. I think $20 was the cheapest that we found, up to $199 and you can get a print, $4,000 in the middle range, $8,000 up to $12,000 triptychs, right? So he goes, you know, $25 puzzle, $4,000 print,

10:53$8,000 up at the higher end, $12,000 triptychs, and they can all be the same image, multiple different price points, right? The bottom rung of the ladder is the typical merch, what you guys hear me talk about all the time. The bottom rung of the ladder are the simple, cheap and easy, you know, dopamine hit, buy it on a whim, don't have to talk to my significant other, non-wall art related things. And then he goes all the way up to super high end triptychs. I'm not sure if he's got originals in a different way that he does it. I'm sure he probably does for limited editions, but this is just what my scan returned.

11:24That's a photographer. Let's talk about an artist, okay? And an artist I love to talk about too, which is Weiland, right? The Marine Michelangelo. And Weiland's like 30 plus years in. And, you know, for those that don't know Weiland, he's usually called the whale guy, right? The Marine Michelangelo. I think the New York Times or one of those papers magazines called him that. But he's, I think, at 100 plus life-size whale murals, what he calls a whaling walls, that are, you know, just essentially public art billboards that are all over the place. I think he's got 10 galleries.

11:56Laguna Beach, just down the road from me, one of his first. Lake Tahoe, Key West, which is his flagship. He's got one in Lahaina, Haleuva, Waikiki, Vegas, Epcot. I think he's got one in Hilton, Orlando, and Key West, Sarasota, so all over Florida. His sitemap, I found 972 products. Okay, 972 products, 65 different categories, 45 different mediums. There's 45 different formats per image. G-Clay canvas, G-Clay paper, original oil,

12:27Ron sculpture, Lucite, Sumi cert boards, aluminum prints. And, you know, he's got an originals pricing ladder from $7,500 for an original, which is like the floor. Then he goes up to $20,590, $39,000, $74,000, and then his ceiling is at like $317,000, I believe, for his originals, at least what's on the site. And, you know, Weiland's got like a really, really interesting story too, because from his own book in 2021, he's pretty much states that Weiland's galleries have increased the price of originals 10%

13:00the first day of every year. And the only time he didn't do that was in like the peak of the recession. I can't, I don't know if that was like a year, two years or what, but he's pretty much been on a self-documented 10%, okay, per year escalator for 30 years. And, you know, that's not luck, right? That's just an absolute discipline too. This is what I'm going to do. I'm going to continue raising the price of my originals, which is going to continue to sell everything downstream. So you have two of the most successful artists, and I think Weiland does even better than Graham Ealing by some margin.

13:31And you have so much that you can learn, right, by looking at either one of those two businesses. And one is only 16 years in, and the other is 30 plus. One launched in a recession. One holds prices through a recession. Different mediums, but it's the same machine. It is the same machine. The two of these masters right now, anyway, are running. It's the same image at every price point. The same image at every price point on a number of different mediums,

14:02including non-wall art-related mediums. Here are two of the best-selling artists, an artist and a photographer in the United States that are taking a number of originals that many of you have already created, okay? And they are now having 972 different products and 4,156 unique products with the same amount of images that you yourself have currently. And all of that is something that you can do instantaneously with print on demand. It's that simple.

14:33It's like, it's literally that simple. Here you have two extremely mature businesses from two world-famous artists that are leveraging POD to go from small, tiny little offerings to full-blown gallery-esque shops where the entire shop, all the rows, all the lanes are filled with their products based on the same amount of original work that you guys have already created. That is the unlock of POD. That is how tremendous POD is, right?

15:07I mean, it's just, it's massive. It is just an absolutely massive point. And I think like, I've gone over this a ton and I've talked about it a ton, but I haven't necessarily tied it down to some of the biggest and most mature art and photography business that exists in the United States today, right? And for that matter, you could likely say it exists all over the world. And it is these fundamental things where you start with your artwork and you go from having seven to 10 to 15 to 20 pieces,

15:3830 pieces, maybe some of you have 50, maybe some of you have 200 and you can turn it into 2000 overnight. And you look at the two ways that these two masters do it. And I mean, it's simple. It's exactly, it's exactly what I've been teaching on here and exactly what I say. Like, you know, the bottom of the price ladder is that simple sample. It's that $25 puzzle, right? It's Weiland's entry-level G. Clay or one of his books or his greeting cards or all the millions of things that he's got in there. And he goes all the way up to the 317,930 original, right?

16:10It's the same image, every price point. That's the engine. That's the engine, right? Like most artists and photographers are failing to grasp that their catalog is just basically number of images that they have, right? Masters know that their catalog is N, the number of images, times M, the mediums, times P sizes. And then you get an actual SKU count, which just gets absolutely crazy, right? And, you know, like in Malin's case,

16:41like I think 20 of his most famous photos times 221 variants equals the 4,000 SKUs, right? And Weiland, like, you know, a limited image set times 45 mediums times all the multiples is his 972 SKUs. And without POD, this would have been impossible. Without POD, this is impossible. With print-on-demand, you are capable of unlocking,

17:11without coming out of your pocket, a dime, a similar lineup, okay, that the greatest selling art businesses in the United States have, right? And that's insane. Like, that's absolutely amazing. And one of the common misconceptions, and I'll harp on the whole, if you sell knives for me door to door, like, you guys do not sell JPEGs. You do not sell JPEGs, okay? That you really have to come to terms with that. Non-creative types, i.e. me,

17:46i.e. who you are trying to sell to, do not have your visual ability to perceive value based on a JPEG. It just doesn't work. What is a JPEG? It's the image format, the digital image format in which you're showing your work everywhere when you're not doing it in person. Websites, socials, emails, anywhere that has been seen on a computer or a screen, right? Like, human beings need to see that you have real physical products

18:18in various different sizes, various different shapes, various different textures, various different frames, different lighting, different angles. We buy things based on visualization, okay? POD unlocks a level of visualization that you otherwise would have never been able to have, right? Just absolutely never. And I want to come back to the samples in a second. But the important thing here, and I realize, right? Like, while it always makes sense

18:51to study the masters in any business, there's always a ton that we can glean from them. Obviously, I'm making a huge point about POD. I could make huge points about the other aspects of their business, but we'll save some of those for future topics. But I get the pushback that I'm going to get from so many of you, which is like, okay, great, Patrick. You just cherry-picked two of the superstars that are in industry. How do you expect me to get there? I'm just starting out. I don't have the time to spend that they did. I have a day job. I have a significant other. Kids have got a mortgage, da-da-da-da-da.

19:21And I totally get that. So what's awesome, okay, is I look back in my archive, and I realize I interviewed an artist not too long ago that is on this exact same path, right? And the loyal listeners will remember this podcast has had a few different chapters, vintages, if you like, to tie back to the last one. You know, we started out hardcore tactical marketing. Then during COVID, the playbook went out the window, and it was like a bunch of live broadcasts that Nick and I did. Then it was back to tactical again.

19:51Then it was on to artist interviews, and we did a huge artist interview series, right? A ton of different series, right, over the years. But I started this episode out with, remember, the $141,500 painting in a Texas town of 87 people that I teased at the top. So a few episodes back, I did an interview with John Lowry. He calls himself Humble Donkey Studio. Okay? He has a gallery, and I'm going to put this in the show notes. You all have to watch it. Hopefully, I'll pique your interest enough now to actually go back and watch it. It was a Zoom

20:22in which he was in his gallery. His gallery, okay, Humble Donkey Studios, is in Round Top Texas population 87. It's one square mile. It sits between Austin and Houston. It's a little bit of like a road trip, touristy kind of a destination, right? And so I sat down with him in that gallery. I think this was July of 2024, when I was doing the artist episodes, and he tells his story, right? And I realized, here's a guy that's completely on the path from both of those legendary masters in Gray Malin and in Waylon,

20:53in Weiland, rather. And he's totally on the path. John started his story about how he started out in a 400-square-foot log cabin, $750 a month, right? You know, he started with just a shoestring budget, and he just hoped people would like it. And eight years later for him, do you see how small these time trends that I keep referencing? Eight years later, right? It's never three months or six months or nine months, right? It's 30 years in Weiland's case. It's 16 years in Gray Malin's case. It's eight years in John Larry and Humble Donkey Studios' case.

21:23Not six months, not a year, not three years, not four years, right? It takes a couple of years to get the business humming, but they all start with the same humble, simple beginning, right? You know, eight years later, John's well over a million in lifetime sales. He's already put $100,000 more than that now because it's well passed through his art storefront store. And he's running the exact same machine that Weiland is. He's running the exact same machine that Gray Malin is in a one-square-mile town population, 87, right?

21:56And, you know, you listen to that interview with John and all of the themes, all of the things that those two guys have that print-on-demand has and unlocks, he's doing the same thing, right? Like, here's my $5,000 original. I know you can't afford this one, but don't worry. Here in this shop, I have an identical version of it framed for a fraction of the cost, right? And throughout this entire episode with John, he is showing all of these various different examples of all the things that he has in his gallery

22:26and how he prices them and where he houses the originals and where he houses the prints and the greeting cards and the clothing and everything that he's expanded to. And all of that is possible for just hanging a shingle in the first place and going for it and getting started, right? No different than it was where Weiland launching his gallery. No different than it was when Gray Malin going and selling in the farmer's market and then eventually launching his site. And the takeaway in all of this is like, there is a playbook here, okay? You can have a physical gallery, you can not have a physical gallery.

22:57You can go and do in-person fairs and shows, you can not go do in-person fairs and shows. But one thing that you cannot ignore that you need to stop ignoring at your peril is not leveraging print-on-demand to give yourself this width and breadth in your lining and in your pricing line-up. When I talked to John, he talked about this painting, like the original that he sold for $141,000. And I think since then, or during the time of the interview, he said he sold $60,000 in reproductions for that same image

23:27that he sold the original for $141,000. And there's just nothing better than that. That's the dream, right? That is what is possible. You know, same image, sold the original, sold reproductions, still selling reproductions. That's Gray Malin's 221 variants and Weiland's 45 mediums playing out at a studio scale in a much smaller studio gallery in Round Top, Texas. Same image, every price point, right? Same image, every price point.

23:58And I think in John's case, you know, the year where I interviewed him, so this would have been, again, was it 2024? Yeah. 2024, he did 100,000 in originals and probably another 200,000 in his reproductions, not counting his merch, right? And it's everything that I talk about that can come in play. You don't care where they come in on the range, right? You don't care if they come in at the low end or the high end. You'd prefer they come in at the high end, but you just want them to come in and leave with something, right? Leave with something and then off you go.

24:29And, you know, as I was deep diving Gray Malin's story, Gray Malin's story, and, you know, John's are similar, right? By just putting themselves out there, by having their lineup completely dialed in with POD, the opportunities start coming to him. In John's case, you know, which was great from the episode, he had somebody come through his gallery, and who knows if they bought something or didn't buy something, but they found him. They found him and it was a representative from Bucky's. And Bucky's is like this cult classic roadhouse Texas gas station

25:00that's like an institution. It's like a meme on the internet. People absolutely love it. I've been into a couple of them. It's really just a giant convenience store gas station. I don't really quite get it. Actually, I do because I think it's hilarious, but he got into a bunch of Bucky's, right? What else about POD? John had a hotel column. He talks about this in the interview too. And they wanted to, it was Texas A&M, right? That's what it was. It was Texas A&M and they wanted to put a bunch of his art in a hotel and they wanted originals, but his originals didn't fit. And he's like, don't worry about it. I can hit all of those sizes.

25:30Here we go. POD took care of that order. It was a $20,000 sale. The range, a fact that he could offer in these different sizes, boom, he unlocked the deal, right? So you have to have POD. All of the best-selling artists are leveraging, are using POD. You need to be using POD. The fact that you can open up this much merchandise, like literally, even in just an instant, is just absolutely staggering, right? You know,

26:01I think about like, where were these classes? Where were these classes? Why were these things never taught, right? And I'll tell you what the reason is. The reason it was never taught in art school, that you didn't just need to study the masters for the history of the craft, but you should have studied the masters for the business side of the craft. And the only thing that I'm left with is that nobody ever taught the teachers. Very few of the teachers ever sold art themselves. What is that line? If you can't do, teach. I think there's a lot of truth to that. And I know it's not the case

26:31with every art professor or every photography school professor. And I think like art and photography schools and business success have just never been all that aligned. You know, it's a shame. It's why this podcast exists. You know, I remember when Brooks, the Brooks Institute closed, which was like a really famous high-end photography school here in California. Had a couple of buddies that went to it. I think it was in Santa Barbara somewhere, somewhere around there. One of the most famous photography schools in America, for sure. And, you know, generations went there. Learned light, composition, exposure,

27:02medium format, framing, the history, the classics. I have to imagine zero. Not a single solitary learned how to deconstruct a $25 million art business. Now, Brooks went out of business in 2016. And you can argue that was completely down to the fact that film was transitioning to digital and digital as a kill shot. But I bet you a ton of the reason that that school closed is because no one was ever taught that you have to study the masters in business, right? You have to study. Where was the art 401? Deconstructing a living $25 million artist

27:33named Gray Malin, named Weiland, right? Or a much smaller one named John Lowry. That's a class that should have existed. You know, here's the syllabus. Pull up their sitemap, count their SKUs. See what language they use. SKUs are just like the numbers that you use on a e-commerce site. Map their price ladder from floor to ceiling and see what their range is. What are the breakpoints? Inventory their gallery footprint and their public art footprint. Read their story. What can you learn about them?

28:04How are they visualizing their art on their website? Order one of their cheapest items and see what your customer should see. Get on their email list and see about their emailing frequency. That will blow some of your minds if you do that. Follow them on their socials and look at their posting volume. See what kind of engagement they're getting. Like where the heck was that class? How valuable that class could have been for some of those best-selling artists you know, back in the day. But what we just did right there, like if that was the syllabus for Art 401, deconstructing a living $25 million artist,

28:35like anyone can do that today right now. You can go and do everything that I just say in there and see all of that and you'll be like, okay, okay. I totally, totally get this, right? I totally understand that there are some ways that I am approaching my business that is keeping me in the hobbyist lane. And there are some ways that I should be approaching my business that will have me in the art business, photography business lane. I cannot afford to ignore these things that are so critically important about the way that the masters do it.

29:05I do not have to copy or completely mimic everything that they do, but I should steal the best of what they're doing and bolt it into my business because that seems to be what's working out there. And you wonder, you guys wonder why like at Art Storefronts, we take our print on demand so seriously and make it so easy because we know how important it is to an art business. You need to be able to hit the ground running the minute you upload your images. You go from having just an original to having a veritable cornucopia of SKUs for your artistic creations, right?

29:38None of which you have to keep in inventory. None. Yes, all the prints imaginable, but yes, also a bevy of different merch items depending on what you pick and all of that is done in a matter of hours and that is like such like an insane, insane takeaway and I was like thinking visually in my mind as I was like preparing for this that imagine you had one of those retail stores, John's retail store. If you go back and look at that episode, it's really cool. It's like this in barn. John's or one of Wyland's galleries or I don't think

30:09Gray-Meland does. I think Gray-Meland is just all online but imagine you had one of those stores and it was like, okay, fill it. Get all the racks, get all the knick-knacks, get all the brick-a-brack, get all the displays and the end caps, however you're going to do it, however you're going to light it, however you're going to hang it. Like the thought of all of that and how daunting that is, is like terrifying in and of its own, let alone like how much money that would all cost, right? And the brilliance, you know, the brilliance of POD is that you snap your fingers

30:41and it's like the entire store, that entire gallery is instantaneously populated with your creations and various different price points and various different sizes and it made me think back to like there was this clothing brand and I had to go Google whether it was still around and it turns out it is but it was called Bonobos, okay? And they sort of like came to, came to, or burst onto the scene by like apparently like the designers just spent an inordinate amount of times making a pant fit and they had a better pant fit than anything else

31:12and I don't know if that was all marketing but for me, I've got a skinny frame with big legs and those pants just fit me like a glove. I don't know what it was so I ended up buying a bunch of them back today and the brand kept growing and growing and growing and they did, they did this really cool model which I thought was really, really interesting wherein they started getting, you know, they expanded into all men's where they weren't just doing pants in the end but they expanded into retail, okay? And they did retail in like a really interesting way. They would have a retail store and inside of the retail store

31:43all of the clothes would be in there that you could try on in the various different sizes but you would go in there, you would try everything on, look in the mirror that the normal clothing store buying experience and then the salesperson would just be taking your order on an iPad through their website and so you would check out, you'd hand them a credit card, no cash register, none of that, they would email you the receipt kind of like they do at the Apple store, right? And that's it, you'd leave and it was annoying that you didn't get to leave with your clothes

32:14but it was awesome because, well it was awesome for them because it was basically like you knew it to be an e-commerce brand but it was an e-commerce brand that was able to keep their costs down in retail by just showing you the clothes and then shipping you the central after the fact. It's like essentially the clothing version of print-on-demand. They didn't have to warehouse it, you know, they didn't have it right there. It was like you order, it's going to get shipped, you know, a different way. It's totally the clothing version of POD. Anyway, they sold to Walmart, Walmart sold them

32:44to another person, the founders left and I think the brand is like maybe in and out of bankruptcy. Doesn't matter. It's another fantastic use case where like this notion of POD can be so incredibly strong and one of the things that I used to do all the time and one of the things