Mediator Podcast .com - Mediation, Negotiation & Collaboration
Mediator Podcast .com - Mediation, Negotiation & Collaboration
The Rapid Rise of Mediation: Creating Efficient Dispute Resolutions
Hi, welcome to MediatorPodcast.com, a podcast and video series about mediation, negotiation and collaboration. My name is Melissa Gragg, and I'm a valuation expert and divorce mediator in St. Louis Missouri – specializing in divorce and partner disputes.
Today we are with Joseph Panetta from Immediation: a holistic legal dispute resolution platform that combines multiple processes and apps into one customizable interface. We are going to talk about The Rapid Rise of Mediation: Creating Efficient Dispute Resolutions.
Hi, welcome to mediator podcast.com, a podcast and video series about mediation, negotiation, and collaboration. My name is Melissa Greg , and I'm a valuation expert and financial mediator in St. Louis, Missouri. Today we're gonna talk about mediation with Joseph Panetta from in Mediation. It's a holistic legal dispute resolution platform that kind of puts a lot of things together, processes, apps into one interface. And today we're actually gonna talk about the rapid rise of mediation and how we create an efficient dispute resolution system. Um, and welcome. How are you?
Speaker 2:It's so great to be here, Melissa. Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1:So we might have some comical relief during this process because you know, it , it is late on an afternoon and, you know, we're, we're fun individuals, but this is a topic that is a little near and dear to my heart, and obviously to yours. Um, but most people don't. Totally. They're like, are you talking about mediation or meditation or what is this? So maybe we should just start off with explaining to people why we are passionate about this and why the majority of businesses and individuals and such will likely be using mediation , um, when they have some issues with other people and other entities. But tell us about how people are using medi meditation. No mediation worldwide <laugh>.
Speaker 2:Exactly. And you know, we're, this is an exciting time to be in mediation because it is growing globally at a very fast pace. And, you know, we can talk about that sort of locally and globally. So let's, let's sort of unpack it a bit. The European Union mediation is now required in all intellectual property disputes. The Dutch courts are looking at off shouldering court cases into mediation first as a means of increasing their disposal rate in Dubai, all disputes that is both corporate and personal must go through mediation first. That's a recent law. Egypt, all of , uh, the family and economic cases have to go through mediation first, prove that they have made a valiant attempt at mediation before it actually gets in front of the bench. The law in New Zealand forbids banks from foreclosing on small farm loans, so they can't litigate them into foreclosure. They must mediate them as a form of dispute resolution if the farm is , uh, delinquent on its loan payments. And then finally, you look at something like equine, which is a new mediation client. It's a French institution that's , uh, that's comprised of former c-suite officers. And these gentlemen and ladies step into complex cross-border disputes, where the value of the relationship between the parties over the long term is actually greater than the issue at hand. Now, that gives you a sense of sort of like the broad scope global uptick in the use of mediation as a dispute resolution mechanism. Let's take a look at the US for a second. New York is focused on what , what they call presumptive ADR. This has been floating around now for several months, and there is pretty much widespread understanding it's going to pass. That means every single dispute must go to mediation before it gets to a bench. Every , there are no, there's no sort of threshold for that, which is very interesting. And as you and I can both appreciate when you are a large state with a large court system like New York, when it happens there, it sort of sends a, a ripple through the , the other 49 states , Florida, California, Texas, all very large states with very large court systems. They all have some form of ADR workflow, right? So there's this workflow that's, that is disburdening the court system of these initial hearings and cases through mediation. So our message to mediators is, get ready, because with this increased push to mediation, your skills are going to be needed and required. So you need, if you're not ready, you need to get ready to get ready.
Speaker 1:I think that's a great point, Joseph. Part of it is also from a business standpoint, what we have been finding is contractually, you know, just think of any time you sign an agreement to do something with another company, there's usually an arbitration clause that says at least you need to go outside of the court. But for the most part, arbitration is very similar to court. So people are actually going to mediation to kind of do an alternate dispute resolution option, but not be in that more formalized , um, arbitration. So I think that there's, it's sort of like mediation might be an option for really, and , and what you have talked about in a lot of contexts previously to this is that it's a relationship. So if a company's fighting another company and they have a longstanding relationship going into court for one little issue, when they're gonna continue, that relationship is actually counterproductive. But there's a lot of other indicators of like, that mediation is gaining a foothold. Maybe you can tell us a little bit more, because again, I think that this is a very exciting space for all financial people, not just evaluators, but anybody with finance in their background or law in their background. Right?
Speaker 2:100%. And I think, you know, what, what we're talking about now is the relationship that people have when they go into a dispute, particularly a corporate dispute or a personal dispute. One where there's, you know, whether it's a low value or high values in material is about the relationship. And now it has hit a dispute moment. The issue with arbitration, much like court, is that it sets up an adversarial process. Mediation by its very nature is a collaborative process. And so I think that differentiator right there, it's, it's an assisted collaborative process, but that makes it a very different approach from arbitration. And, you know, from when you consider some of the other indicators that are pushing mediation forward, there's the Singapore Convention, which is for mediation, what the New York Convention was for arbitration, which you mentioned earlier. The New York Convention, I believe was signed in 1950, and it was ratified by countries all over the world. And it ensured enforcement of arbitral awards. Well , the Singapore Convention does the same thing for mediated settlements. And there are now more than 55 countries that have signed the Singapore Convention, the latest of which was the uk. And what that means is if you have a settlement agreement between two companies, that might , one might be in , uh, you know, Egypt and the other one might be in France, but your agreement can be enforced in the uk, it can be enforced in Singapore, it can be enforced in any of the 55 countries that have signed that agreement. And what it does, I think for the listeners, your listeners specifically this audience, is that it gives them peace of mind that the negotiated settlement that they've helped to arrive to will be upheld in all of these jurisdictions.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I I think that some of the, you know, dispute resolution in a mediation or an arbitration has been around for a significant amount of time. So this isn't a new concept, but quite frankly, it has been underutilized. And so I think that a lot of people have kind of waited around wells tell me how to deal with this in my own space. Right? And what I'm seeing is that you really have to be kind of a pioneer in this space and say, okay, because I do mediation more specifically for divorce and partner disputes, right? They're very different than corporate disputes, you know. So is there more a driving push for mediation in the, the more private sector or the public sector? Or does it even matter?
Speaker 2:I don't think there's a different , a line of differentiation between the two. I think historically, you're right, mediation in the United States was looked at as the domain of like family court, divorce, court settlements, those kinds of things. And, you know, historically, for good reason, it was about a relationship that needed the two people to come together. And it doesn't, it , it's not a win-lose scenario. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> , right? It's more of a how do we get to a comfortable conclusion for everyone. But there was a , an interesting article that ran in the Guardian , uh, last October, and it said that the pandemic added six years to the backlog. Mm-Hmm . Of courts six years. That is a very long time to wait to get in front of a neutral. Most parties, it doesn't matter what kind of dispute you're in a good 90 plus percent of the time. One thing that both parties in the dispute have in common is they want to get it over with sooner rather than later, right? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> , sometimes they want other things more than they want to get it over with, which stands in the way of the speed. But at a minimum, getting the process started is what we think of it , of ADR as appropriate dispute resolution. So you have mediation, you have arbitration, you have litigation, of course you have negotiation, but in there you have a Penelope of opportunity to arrive at a conclusion. The problem is you can't get started as fast in arbitration or in litigation as you can with mediation. Mm-Hmm.
Speaker 1:<affirmative> . And it's, it's also about having a process and having, you know, like it's, it , it's a classic situation, but we, we had that in litigation that if you become an expert, it's like, how do you get your first case? Well, you need to testify to get your first case. And you're like, well, I need to testify to get, you know, like it's a chicken and the egg. But it's the same with mediation, you know? So there, there are opportunities that you can get in groups and, and get trained and, you know, partner with different types of people. But realistically, you still gotta figure out like where you fit and, and what your process is and how you are going to utilize structures. 'cause it , in a lot of mediation, you are the one, right? Like, there's not somebody else to look over and be like, Hey, what would you,
Speaker 2:Oh,
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm the person. But a lot of times when people are coming into meeting , 'cause we, we can get into the back end of what mediation looks like, but for people, right. What is appealing about mediation in general? Like, why would somebody choose to go this route when it's a little bit of an unknown or you don't know the players, you know, like, why do we care?
Speaker 2:I would sum up the most appealing factors for mediation in sort of four big buckets. And the first is creativity. Um, Recently I wrote an article for , uh, Bloomberg Law about how AI may be helping the legal profession in a lot of ways, but it could never replace the human element of mediation ever. Mm-Hmm . <affirmative> . And here's, here's a great story that I heard recently. Mediator recounted this , uh, mediation. She was holding between , uh, co-leaders of a company. It got to a point where they needed to separate. And it was a years long mediation. It took a very, very long time. It was a lot to unpack. And they finally get down to the very last point. And the amount of money is negligible in the scope of the much larger, you know, funds that they were dealing with. But they would not budge. Neither party would finally gotten to the point where it was basta we're done. And so the mediator very cleverly, creatively came up with this solution. It's a nominal amount of money. Why don't each of you split the money in half and donate to charity in the name of the other party? Boom, it was done because now it was no longer a payment to the other side. It was a charitable contribution and it got over that last hump. And that is the kind of thing for me, where arbitration and litigation have very black and white outcomes. It's very win-lose, as you mentioned earlier, mediation can be creative in its outcomes. Like they don't have to be so black and white. And that's one of the things I love the most. And the second would be nuance. You know, just mentioning ai, how many different ways can you say the words? Oh, really? Oh, really? Oh really? Oh, really? There is disbelief. There's, in incredulity there's, you know, new awareness and AI can only understand one version. The written version, the tone with which you say it conveys everything. That's why the human element cannot, that nuance right there, that understanding of the, the ethical and canon components, you can't remove that. Probably the third biggest tent pole in one of the ones that your clients I think would really appreciate and that corporations really go for is confidentiality. Why do you think the Fox News Dominion voting machine scandal on the steps of the courtroom was mediated into a settlement? Because, probably because Rupert Murdoch didn't want all of those text messages floating around in the public eye. Because once it's public in a litigation form , it is public, public, then you can see all of the dirty laundry from both sides. And so mediation offered them a chance to do this confidentially. What's great about that, if you're a corporation, a mediated terms of a mediated settlement don't have to be disclosed or actually cannot be disclosed in any shareholder filings or SEC filings or anything like that. Merely the fact that there is a settlement may not even be reportable. So confidentiality range supreme, this is why mediation and corporate disputes is getting larger and larger. And finally, it's what we said earlier, speed. It's about, it's about getting to the process so that you can move on from it. So it's creativity, nuance, confidentiality, and speed.
Speaker 1:So I wanna go back to creativity because I really like this one and I think that it's a little bit lost because we're legal people, we're financial people and you know , um, we do things like specifically right by the numbers, by check the boxes and do all that. I've seen some of the best mediators have experience or you know , like the level of experience is of course important. But if you know the area that you are mediating in immaculately, right? You have seen so many combinations of how a deal has been structured or settled that you sort of have this entire bank of ideas, right? But that is an active process of collecting how you can be creative. And it just, a lot of it's , um, you know, 'cause the, the story that you gave, basically the, the remaining financial issue wasn't a financial issue. It was a personal issue. And people are, you know, like financial people and , um, lawyers don't always wanna get in the mud when it has to do with an interpersonal relationship issue. Right? So talk more about like, how we come in. 'cause a little bit of the ai, 'cause we had talked about ai, right? And we had talked about mediation is a very interesting space because you still have to show up and you have to like, actively coordinate a settlement of an unknown. It's literally an unknown. Like you don't know how it's gonna end and you hope it ends well, but you don't know. Talk more a little bit about, you know, what goes into some of that creativity. Is that just some of the resources that you're using? You know, 'cause we're gonna shortly get into kind of what you do and how we combine all of this. But, you know, start to talk how you build a practice in this space.
Speaker 2:I think it boils down to you , you know what, you know, so you become a bit of a subject matter expert to , to your point earlier, like you , you need to have a grounding in one or more particular areas. They're in areas that you studied, areas that , that are interesting to you. But you need to have some understanding to understand the jargon, to understand sort of like where, where people are coming from. There's an enormous psychological piece to this in the, in the story that I related earlier. You're absolutely right, the mediator discovered that the issue was not a financial issue. It was a financial issue masquerading , um, over a personal, sort of stuck in the crawl , right? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, it's a psychological question. It's what's as the French say? What's <inaudible> What's, what's the ulterior reason that's driving you to this sticky point? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> . In other words, what's really going on here? Like, is this really about the money? Because if it's really about the money, then this seems like the most logical solution. It's the cool, calm voice. It is the logic, right? And you really can't combat an emotional argument with logic, but you can use logic to fuel and redirect emotionality. And I think that's what media skilled mediators do very well. They diffuse the emotionality by, by directing it in a different way, in a different direction. And I think that's, that's a true skill in terms of building you need, you need testimonials, but it's hard to do because you've done settlements for people that are confidential. Mm . But you can use stats, facts and figures. You can use genres and buckets. Um, you can actually use testimonials from people that are just a party that aren't, they're not named, they're not identifiable. The testimonial can't be this person conducted an X for me. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> , it has , I went through the process with, and this is what I felt about it. Those kinds of things. And I think those are people in a business context specifically recommendations from people like me, other executives, people in my genre, people in my cohort. Those recommendations go much further. I don't even need to do that much vetting to pick up the phone and say, so-and-so told me I should call you.
Speaker 1:Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>
Speaker 2:Those referrals and recommendations I think about word of mouth is that it's hard to control. So we , we'll get into it in a moment. Um, how mediators can better prepare, you know, for, for this kind of like increase and how they can ready themselves. But I think that's part of the conversation we want to conclude with, is to leave the audience with some tips.
Speaker 1:Well, and I think that that is one of the, the bigger issues is like, you know, we're professionals that have been doing this work for a long time, doing this work in a mediation setting because there's benefits to having skilled financial people in the mediation setting, right? There's actually so many skills you need to be a successful mediator. It's kind of ridiculous. Um, and a lot of them are not necessarily hard education, right? It's interpersonal skills. It's being able to sense when somebody is not speaking. It's, you know, I love Chris Voss and his negotiation. He's AFBI negotiator because I was like, oh my gosh, you know, and , and he even said something, it's like every day there are these nuances of what you can say. You know, somebody says, oh, I really hate that person. You're like, you know, you must have a really good reason for that. And then they start, I do, let me tell you what the reason is. It's very simple communication things that you can do to manage the room. But if you don't even know where to get started, I would say if you have a knowledge base, you probably have the capability of being a mediator. If you wanna deal with people, if you don't wanna deal with people, it's online. So, I mean, you know, for the most part, but let's talk a little bit about how you can get prepared. Because if you're still doing tax returns or if you're still doing, you know , traditional financial and accounting work, this is an opportunity to get ahead of the game, in my opinion.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. Absolutely. Especially if you have that kind of financial education and underpinning , um, to get into the corporate dispute arena makes a hell of a lot of sense because you already have, what, what is, what is an organization going to need to mediate as a corporation? It's almost always gonna come down to money. Some form , whether it's accounting or a financial transaction or a vendor relationship or something like that. But from a, from a preparation standpoint, if you are a sole mediator or you belong in the , in the dispute resolution center, you have to increase awareness. Not just, this goes back to what you were saying earlier, not just about you as a mediator, but what mediation can do for you. Fill in the blank audience, right? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> it . You have to also rely on some feeders. And that can be local courts or law firms that can provide you with , uh, you know, passive revenue streams. Active revenue comes from driving awareness about how mediation can be effective to the various audiences you wish to serve. And then you have to differentiate yourself because you are not alone, even though you will be a rare bird in the , um, you know, coming weeks and months as all of this sort of mediation, froth begins to steam up. Most of the solo practitioners who sign up for a mediation want to give themselves a competitive advantage. They're looking for something that po that positions them as ahead of the pack or at the forefront of the technological innovation so that it ticks a box in many of their clients' minds that, okay, this person's on the cutting edge. Then I think, you know, to your point about it's online, you have to be able to do both remote and hybrid. Um, and I went to the International Mediation Summit in Salzburg, Austria earlier this year. And one of the mediators there is a former gc. She mediates , um, complex , uh, workplace disputes. And she hated the pandemic 'cause she hated doing these things on Zoom. But if you are a mediator and you're doing a corporate dispute and the corporation happens to be in another state and the CEO or the CFO or the COO needs to be present, pulling them out of their role for a few days or a week or whatever is actually more deleterious to the business than them joining this mediation, offering them the option to connect in a remote but secure way that maintains the confidentiality, that maintains the privilege, right? That actually adds to your differentiation. I can do this with you in a hybrid way. That is a huge plus. And finally, it's about security. Because if the confidentiality is in any way, shape, or form breached, you're sunk. So you need to choose a tech partner that has best in class security. Our system has 43 different modules and they can be custom configured in any way. You need choose two, choose three, choose 20, whatever it is, and then it's white labeled so that it looks and feels like your brand. And that's how your clients interface and interact with you. And I think what what's important about that is when you have a system that has unparalleled security that was built from the ground up specifically for mediation, literally like it was created , it wasn't technology that's being retrofitted for this use, it was built specifically for you. So bespoke built , purpose built in legal, that's hard to find. Mm-Hmm, <affirmative> . Mm-Hmm <affirmative> . It's easy to find a lot of technology that Oh yeah, we can do that too. No, no, you can't.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And I, I posted the website below, but why don't we talk a little bit about that? Because I think that mediation is a little bit of the wild west right now. And I think that if you need an anchor or you need a guidepost, right, you need to start reaching out that things, not just training, but like technologically how you're going to stay up on things. Because for the most part, if, if it, if you're mediating between more than two people, you, you, you now have to have the space. You have to have multiple conference rooms to separate people out in you. 'cause you might caucus, you know, you need , uh, snacks, you need drinks, you need parking, you need , um, staff to help. If I have a mediation with six people and I do it online, for the most part, I'm handling that internally in some capacity. Right? But tell us more about the resource that you actually have that could really help us and tell people if you're gonna give them like a , a , a tutorial or something if they call you <laugh>
Speaker 2:Always. We , we , we have a white glove service and we have sort of 24 7 customer support. So that's, that's not even a question , but the truth is, our goal is not to redesign a mediator's process, right? Not by any stretch of the imagination. Our goal is to digitize the process they already use. So we are happy to API into your accounting system, your case management, whatever it is, to offer you a single pane of glass to do exactly what you do with paper and 12 different apps between WhatsApp and, you know, other , other video platforms and whatnot. We collapse all of that into one screen so that from, from literally inception to settlement, you can see every stage in between templated , um, you know, letters and , and outbound emails, what you just described, having six people in separate rooms and all that. You actually can do every single one of those things on one screen, on the screen in front of you with the six people. You can mute people, you can turn off their camera, you can let them go off into their party rooms by themselves. You can knock on the door and ask them if they're ready to come back in to caucus. So there's even the ability to upload settlement agreements and have a pass the pen function so everyone can feel like they get a chance to weigh in they off , they have some kind of , um, um, control over the outcome, which is, you know, in a mediation scenario, very important that people feel that they got to put their thumbprint on that settlement agreement in a real way. Mm-Hmm . <affirmative> when they can see their words being typed on in the agreement and they kind of go back and forth, there's a whole sense of participation. And then finally we have a DocuSign integration. So by the time people leave this platform, they can have signed the settlement agreement and it's done. There's no more banting back and forth after you've left the room. It's done while you're on the screen.
Speaker 1:And like literally if people don't know this, it could take forever to just, if you leave that room and you don't have anything signed, that could take just as long that you got to that agreement, right? Because everybody's going back and re-trading and renegotiating and things like that in the background. Um, what you said was really interesting because I think that for a lot of mediators, when they get involved with mediation, they're like, zoom becomes their best friend. And even the court system has realized, you know, the , um, I guess the, the security issues with some of the online platforms and have created their own platforms. Now, mediation is a way that you can do the same work that you would do in litigation but not have to testify, which is also super cool. But if you think that you're going to start mediating with like an Apple or a Southwest Airlines or some large company and not have a, and be like, Hey, join my Zoom meeting,
Speaker 2:Their gen , their general counsel is going to scream bloody murder, don't do it. And it's actually already happening. Baker McKenzie's an enormous, it's one of the world's largest law firms, one of their three main practice areas is dispute resolution. Their GC has been screaming at the entire team globally, stop uploading documents into Zoom. It's not safe. Understand that Zoom recently put out , um, an update to its terms of service, which says if your face appears on Zoom, it goes to train RAI . If you upload a document into Zoom, it goes to train our ai . If you record a transcript on Zoom, it goes to train our AI without user consent. And we are sitting on the other side of it going, okay, I understand why you might want to train your ai, but without user consent and in a legal text , uh, legal context, could that potentially mean there's a third party in the room? Like what ? So that, and we've asked that question and the standard response is , that's a good question. Which of course means they don't have an answer.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So that's, that's a little bit jarring for us. That's why we're, we, were very happy to have literally built our video platform from the ground up. It is neither Zoom nor teams. It is altogether something that's bespoke built it . One of the most interesting reactions we get from mediators and, and uh , folks in , on the legal side when they see the platform is they constantly talk about how well thought through it is because it was created by a mediator, an arbitrator, and a litigator. It was created by somebody who sits in that seat and understands those challenges. So you cannot accidentally put someone in the wrong breakout room. A person cannot see something that they're not meant to see a photograph, a piece of evidence, whatever. It's not possible on our platform. And I say that hand on heart because I, I do know, I've , I've spoken with judges and they use share file and Dropbox links and things like that. And yes, they've had the Alex Jones moment where they've accidentally given the wrong link to one side and those are all actually potentially appealable issues.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. Well, and I think that part of what you're also talking about is even being connected to you or utilizing, you know, your platform, it , you're kind of keeping people in compliance, right? Like you're kind of doing the research of what you need to be doing and make sure you check that box and what about this and did you finish the , you know, so I mean that's a lot of compliance to make sure you know, that getting to the settlement is a hard process, but then finalizing it
Speaker 2:Can even be harder . And you mentioned something earlier that um, actually there's a stat for , uh, Bloomberg did a stu a survey at the end of last year and published it in January that showed that lawyers are using more tech than ever before, but understanding it less than they ever did. And there's, it's, it's an interesting paradox because they're , they keep pulling in new systems, but they profess we don't know how to use them. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> , right? And that's, that's interesting because we need to make , we as technology providers to legal services need to make it easy and easy to understand. And trying to redesign workflow doesn't help taking their workflow and digitizing it so that it looks and feels exactly like what they do on their desk, but it's now on a screen and it's connected and you have all the data on the back end of it. Wow. Right? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> that is very appealing. The notion one , one of the mediators I spoke with recently, she said, my , uh, I need to get my ducks in a row. My stuff is all over the place. Can you help me? And she took one look at our system and said , oh my God, everything can just fit right in here and I can have one screen to go to to see the status of everything. I know what my filing dates are, I know what, which letter went out when I know what my upcoming sessions are all gonna be about in one place. Mm-Hmm . And so for her , this was like, I don't have to ask three people and go to three different apps. I can go to one URL one interface and boom, it's there.
Speaker 1:Well, I mean I , I , I think that that is altogether amazing because, you know, yesterday I sat on Zoom and I'm on Zoom all day for the most part, and I could not find something like I couldn't find something. I was like, oh my god. And you know, I'm , you know, you're , you're looking around, let me find this, lemme find this. And it's seconds, you know, maybe it was five seconds, maybe it's 10 seconds. And you know, having done a lot of trials by Zoom or some sort of web related , uh, concept five seconds is like an hour.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So everybody's just sitting there and I think that a more u you know, like a more easy interface is way better. Way better. Okay. So how do people , uh, we've given some information of how they can reach out to you. Should they make like an appointment to see this? Um, should they already be heavily into mediation before they talk to you? Or what do
Speaker 2:Think, you know, what they're , they're best bet , bet would be to visit the website and click on the free trial button. Um , and they'll be contacted by someone from a mediation. We'll walk them through what that looks like. Um, they can see very easily , uh, you know, how it can add value to their practice.
Speaker 1:Well this is great. I think it's really helpful and I think that it, it needs to have a process if you're gonna be in mediation. Um, I really kind of wanna get into the bigger mediation. I don't know, you're kind of getting me interested so I might have to take a look at this too. But
Speaker 2:Yeah , the financial piece, all you need now are the clients and all of them will have financial issues.
Speaker 1:There you go. Well thank you Joseph. We appreciate you and we'll probably have you back 'cause maybe we do need to talk about ai. Everybody loves it, right?
Speaker 2:Well let's put it this way, it's being talked about to death <laugh> .
Speaker 1:That's true. <laugh> , maybe we could just figure out how to use it for good.
Speaker 2:Well that would be helpful because Elon Musk and the creator of chat GPT are warning us even building warning us . So I kind of feel like, you know, let's all take another look at , uh, Terminator just once again, just, you know, for and giggles.
Speaker 1:Well, we appreciate you and uh , hopefully we will see you again soon.
Speaker 2:I look forward to it . Thanks for having me.