BIZ/DEV

The Great Re-Balancing? | Episode 19

• Big Pixel • Season 1 • Episode 19

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This week Gary and David talk about The Great Scamming and The Great Sabbatical, and then they finish it up with The Great Balancing Act. It is a Great episode.

In all seriousness, this week is all about finding balance when leading a startup and what that actually means. Plus, the guys wax poetic about an RGB punch bowl.

Here are the links to all mentioned articles/videos in this episode:

TechCrunch: FTC: US consumers lost $770 million in social media scams in 2021, up 18x from 2017 – TechCrunch
Fast Company: The Great Resignation has morphed into the Great Sabbatical
PR Newswire: Captain Morgan, the First-Ever Official Spiced Rum Sponsor of the NFL, Brings the Spice to Super Bowl LVI with the Most Unnecessary, Necessary Invention in the History of Sports…Maybe the World
Joseph Lalonde: Zig Ziglar And The Healthy Leader: How Looking At The Wheel Of Life Can

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David Baxter - CEO of Big Pixel

Gary Voigt - Creative Director at Big Pixel


The Podcast


David Baxter has been designing, building, and advising startups and businesses for over ten years. His passion, knowledge, and brutal honesty have helped dozens of companies get their start.


In Biz/Dev, David and award-winning Creative Director Gary Voigt talk about current events and how they affect the world of startups, entrepreneurship, software development, and culture.


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David:

He doesn't like I think specifically reads titles because

Gary:

no one likes reads reads titles are

David:

like just marketing to the throw up and no one likes that

Gary:

so yeah read is like a living Terms of Service

David:

read EULA Milner

Gary:

we should leave this in just oh,

David:

if for all you who don't know that reed is our marketing guy, and just circuits but he's gonna get you hyped about whatever you're talking everyone, welcome to the biz dev Podcast, the podcast about developing your business. I'm David Baxter, your host, and I'm joined as always by Gary Voight. CO Hey, what's up? co host Mr. extraordinare I'm feeling feeling punchy. Hey, did you get what I did there?

Gary:

Alright. Oh, yeah. Foreshadowing

David:

Foreshadowing for our for our goofy article. Okay, so how was your week man?

Gary:

So far so good. It's it's looking up and well, I gotta pause there cuz I

David:

don't. Wow. Totally threw you off. And yeah, it is. Okay. We'll start. I don't know where we start. But we'll pick up from

Gary:

you said how's your week, man? So then I can go from there.

David:

You're gonna lie now because you're really answer was was offensive.

Gary:

No, I just got lost reading. Now my weeks going good. Yeah, no, I got that we got this podcast.

David:

Oh my gosh. Okay. Am I I'm not going to ask you any more questions.

Gary:

You can ask questions. You just don't ask about my week, because

David:

you don't know what happened to you this week. All right. We're gonna just jump into it then. All right. Did you read anything interesting this week? Mr. Gear?

Gary:

Yes, I did. I found an article about the scams that people fall for on social media. And you know, they're around, you know, you always get those texts always. You always get some, you know, weird leftover voicemails and stuff like that all these emails trying to fish for you. But I found the article, I guess it's from TechCrunch. They're saying that the FTC says that out of the United States consumers lost$770 million in social media scams in 2021. And that's 18 times more than the last time they looked at the number is in 2017. So this is not going away. This is just getting bigger and bigger.

David:

I mean, I've been around long enough. I know the phishing scams, I remember the viruses that came with Anna Kournikova picks back in the early 2000s. That was like one of the first big ones that attacked everybody's email. I know about the Nigerian prince, right. Yeah. When they've been around. I've gotten a dozens of those two. I mean, that's legit. The new one I had heard was or I've even gotten a few of these. And I don't even know how they're scams, but the the Car Warranty phone calls.

Gary:

Yeah, the Car Warranty, the Google business account, the IRS coming to look for you. Like all of those are kind of newer, but they're all doing the same exact thing.

David:

I you know, the first time I had one of those IRS ones, it hit me It scared me. Yeah. Cuz as a business owner, the thing I'm scared of almost more than anything, is an audit. Oh, yeah. Because I know a lot of people been through them. And they're not a big deal. But it's kind of a beasting. Until you go through one. It's the scariest thing you can imagine. And so I have this thing, right? I'm always nervous about an IRS communication. And so the first time they called me, I was like, Oh, my goodness. So I called them back. And then I talked to some guy. And he was like referring me, again, I was ignorant.

Gary:

Did he tell you how to create a PayPal account and then give your bank information to him and give no,

David:

it's no, I was trying to remember what happened a few years ago, he answered, and he didn't sound American, which already, I mean, not the same old IRS. People don't have accents. Right? That's, of course not true. But that automatically makes

Gary:

me it's a big red flag for us. It's

David:

a yellow flag that something weird is happening. And then they wanted me to call someone else and then at that point, I was like, what's this about? Right? And they couldn't answer that and that's how I was like, Okay, this is stupid. And then I get I get them pretty regularly now. But the easiest way to remember that one in particular is the government will only contact you through mail.

Gary:

Yeah. And they had to come out and do like public service announcements about these scams, even like down here in Florida are like telephone provider, at&t and our internet provider spectrum. They even sent out like newsletter information to their customers saying like, do not fall for this do not fall for that. Because there were also scams that piggyback the IRS ones with a power company. But you had to pay some weird kind of like, from pole to house surge protection every year. And if you didn't bend, you're liable for like, there's been a lot of scams just locally, that we've been warned about through our utilities providers, including like the IRS one from a few years ago. But

David:

yeah, these are these scams that we're talking about here is that wood, are there different ones, it doesn't

Gary:

take them out and label them individually just kind of group them together as a big number, but they're saying the the newest, I guess huge contributor to these are cryptocurrency scams online shopping and cryptocurrency, the online shopping there. There's tons of like the fake coupons.

David:

Those phishing emails are so good now. Yeah, I mean, I can't say that I've been even even in my I'm a pretty technically savvy dude. Right, by by definition, I should be. But I have clicked on more than one phishing email at a few times. The only way that saves me is I always look at the address bar.

Gary:

Yeah, you got to look at either the address bar or even deeper into the actual head of the email, but like the ones coming from like Amazon and UPS and FedEx, and they look sheer that yeah, like, they make you second guess at every single time.

David:

It is really I mean, it's it's, it's amazing. And I mean, so don't feel bad. Don't feel like you're some loser because you clicked on it. But I will say if you just clicking on a generally won't do anything, if you but check the address bar, because that's guaranteed if it doesn't like pay pal.com or amazon.com in the address bar, they can't fake that. So that's your key. That's when you're on some weird thing.

Gary:

One of the newest ones that they're talking about is investment scams for crypto and how there's a new cryptocurrency there's a new coin, there's a new blockchain and get in on the ground floor and it's only going up. And that's basically being pushed through in social media is not emails or phone calls or anything like that. You're just gonna find it in your feeds. And that's like 54 point, or Yeah, 54% of investment scams in 2021 beginning social media,

David:

according man, I don't want to go off into the tangent on this, but I tell you cryptocurrency is FOMO. On crack,

Gary:

dude, it's a volcano. It is crazy to me

David:

how many people are frothy about it? And I'm not saying it's good or bad or anything but

Gary:

didn't just last week, like everybody lost so much like, dudes were losing their whole paychecks because they decided to get paid in Bitcoin instead of actual money.

David:

Yeah, well, those people those were mostly like football players and stuff, right? Man, those guys are? Hopefully they realize I don't need I'm already stupid, Rich. What's the harm and losing some money in eventually? You know, I own the asset. So maybe it'll appreciate later. Yeah, but I hope there's not normal human beings immediately cashing out their regular paychecks for crypto. I hope that's not true. Because that is just moronic.

Gary:

It's such a gamble that it seems like the only sensitive or sensible way to go about it is like what you did if you had a little bit of a chunk of extra money, you just wanted to kind of play the game, put it in there and see what happens. Of course, assuming the risk that you're going to just lose it and never see it again.

David:

I put $1,000 in when I bought Aetherium. And at its height in my I bought it. It was I don't remember what number to 2800. I don't remember exactly. It went up to $1,600. And it is currently worth 650 bucks. So yeah, it is not doing great. It's not doing great. But you know, to me, it was a toy. I wanted to see what would happen.

Gary:

The good news, the one silver lining to this article that I thought was a good comfort was seeing that your bank accounts and your online like bill paying and stuff like that have gotten so smart lately and so much more secure, that they can detect these frauds and these scams pretty early on. And if you're with a good bank, and they're going to cover it most of the time, or they're going to at least alert you and let you know, before any of these payments are made. And then if there is any damages loss, if it's you know, not huge, they're probably going to be able to stop payment cover and get you you know, get some of your money back at least so

David:

I'm wandering outside of my lane here but I'm curious so if you're with one of these big banks, you know Bank of America that's who we use, but you know there's there's five of them are so that big humongo banks. Yeah. They can afford to do all this kind on AI, crazy fraud protection stuff, right?

Gary:

It's not so much the banks, but it's it's a combination of the bank and the lenders like Visa, MasterCard, American Express, those are the ones really behind it because issuing the insurance on the cards, whether it's debit or credit,

David:

if I have bank at a tiny federal credit union or not federal just a tiny credit, local bank, do I get those protections? I'm ignorant?

Gary:

If if they're backed by like Visa and MasterCard and American Express, Discover stuff like that, then yeah, okay.

David:

Okay. But anyway, not to say you shouldn't bank at a small bank. I've always heard you should, but I've always been with Bank of America. Anyway. I want to change gears completely. Just by article, I want to talk about me, because why not? No, I did have just speaking to me, my currently I'm going through a water heater explosion. So that's

Gary:

fun. And they're done that it's that but we're not going

David:

to talk about that because that's super boring. That's like read boring. Oh, sorry. Oh, do dig dig. The guy's not even here. That's not fair. I want to talk about my article of the week was on this thing. I found it Fast Company. And I thought it was really a great article. It was called The Great resignation has morphed into the great sabbatical. And the premise of the article is, you know, a lot of people have quit their jobs. And people who have the means I wouldn't say rich people, just people who have been planning or have prepared they've, they're not living paycheck to paycheck, they are deciding to take a break, instead of immediately jumping back into a job. They're taking six months off, or whatever to go and find themselves. And I find that interesting. I've heard of other companies for years and years. I can't remember which one it was. It's one of the big tech companies. I thought that after 10 years or eight years or something they required you take a three month sabbatical. It's paid to by the way, which is one of their crazy perks.

Gary:

I thought that was a I thought that was something Richard Branson did for like Virgin. It could

David:

have been, it could have been just there was that was a thing that was one of their super perks is after X years, you, you are required to take a three month sabbatical to revisit three

Gary:

months. Yeah, that does sound familiar. Yeah,

David:

I knew a guy who in my line of work, who did it, he decided to quit the job. And he I don't know if he actually quit quit. But he told the company he was leaving. I think he took six months. And he went and lived in like Costa Rica. That sounds awesome. So I mean, sabbaticals, right, that's for just for those who don't know that term, it means you're taking a long term off of work. And usually, it's a spiritual experience, but not always, sometimes it's just you're going to go hiking, or you're just not working, you're going to live off of savings, you're going to go travel around Europe, or, you know, some people go to India or whatever, to go and follow some spiritual path. But it's a long time off of work. It's a long vacation. Is that something that interests you? Is that something you would ever?

Gary:

In theory, I love the concept of it, if someone's presented with a situation in their life, where they're in a job that they, you know, might not be as interested in as they were when they started. And they do want to kind of reevaluate their life choices. And they have the means to take the time off and kind of realize what's important to them or see what's going to interest them further, kind of get that spark back going. I love the idea that they would have the ability to do that. And I'm sure in today's world, like with everything that we're going through on a global scale, whether it's you know, health or whatever, everybody I think has that looming thought in the back of their mind like is, is this really what I want to be spending my time doing? Or is this worth it? Am I happy? Do I want to be happy? I want to be happier, how do I get to be happier? Like, what do I need to do? So I like that concept. But for me personally, I've kind of always been that guy that if I'm not happy doing something, it reads on my face immediately. And everybody can tell around me and I don't last doing that. So I'm only doing kind of the stuff that still interests me. Like,

David:

to me, I think it's I don't know if it's a fear thing. I am obviously not averse to risk, right. Starting your own business is always risky. However, the idea of just stopping and not bringing in money not preparing for retirement not

Gary:

so it's a security thing for you

David:

that would Yeah, I don't Well, I just don't think I would ever be I'm always and I'm sure we will talk about this in the in future podcasts. Because to me retirement and planning for retirement and stuff. It's something that young people and in our entrepreneurs, stuff like that, they just they don't think about enough and I probably think about it too much. But that lot

Gary:

of PTO might have the mindset of like, yeah, I understand. planning for retirement is great. But what if I don't make it to retirement? Yeah. And enjoy the life that I have. Now to the fullest that I can I have that's

David:

what the sabbatical was about. That was a big part of people were saying, Why am I waiting until I'm 65 to enjoy my life, when I might not make it to 65.

Gary:

Say, if you've been working in a tech job, and you've saved up a bunch of money and say, you know, you look at your, your means and you have$20,000 that you could either heavily invest in, put that into your retirement non touch, or take it out and do whatever you want for six months, like, obviously, you're not going to buy a yacht or something like that. But you can travel around the world, you can experience things you never thought you would have the chance to, like when you said go into Costa Rica, the first thing I thought of was surfing in Costa Rica is something I've always wanted to do. I had an opportunity to go once when I was probably about like, 24. Yeah, about 24. But the other two people that were going to go with me because it was like kind of a surf trip. They bailed last minute, and I didn't go and I've kind of always regretted that. So yeah, I still have that spark in the back of my mind where it's like, you know what? They have internet in Costa Rica, I can still technically do a job, you know, and get paid for it. But I mean, am I willing to live the rest of my life without experiencing that? So you know, it's just in the back of your head.

David:

I understand the poll. But I think the fear of that$20,000 If I invested it by the time I'm ready to retire, is like 300,000 bucks. And I'm like, am I going to really have that vacation for that?

Gary:

Or, or you get COVID things go south, and it's all gone. And you've never experienced what you want it to experience and actually had the means to do

David:

this fair. Yeah, it's man. What a balance. What a balance. Well, speaking of balance, oh, did you see what I did there? Come on. That was good.

Gary:

That was a good segue. That was Thank you. That was there was Conan O'Brien. Late Night level segues.

David:

Oh, really? That's that's the height. Okay. Dude,

Gary:

Conan, it's the best you can. Oh, there's no challenge

David:

there. I'm iffy on the Conan. Anyway. So what I want to talk about for the main chat, I don't mean potatoes of the podcasts is balanced. And this was complete coincidence that I found this article and then this was the topic I decided to talk about balance well, before I found that article, but boy did that dovetail nicely. What I wonder about in terms of business ownership, entrepreneurs, right, go, go, go, go go. That's that's the mentality and often has to be to make a business work. But one of the things that I have been trying to do myself, I will say I am very hit or miss very clearly. But there's this concept. There's a few different ways of naming it. Zig Ziglar, if you've ever heard of him, he is a

Gary:

Yeah, he's like a motivational sales kind of coach guy. Kinda like a Tony Robbins, but more specific to like corporations. I think

David:

it's like Tony Robbins mentor. I mean, like he's going way back, right. Tony Robbins is, is an older guy now who's been who kind of the big motivational speaker Zig Ziglar was like the next generation. Yeah, he he is? Or was he died several years ago, I believe. But he had a concept called the wheel of life. And my see 12 group that I've talked about the best, they have a concept they called the balance wheel. Same concept. I'm sure there are other versions of this. But it's when you think of balance before I get into it, what do you think of you personally?

Gary:

For me, it's a mental thing. Like balance, obviously, there's a physical aspect to it. But for me, a mental thing meaning day to day in my life, what is consuming the most amount of my time, brain activity, focus and stress like, and if I look at that day to day in that extrapolates into the week to the month to the past three months than six months, and I look back, do I feel as though I've paid enough attention to the things that are important to me in my life. So balance, when it comes to like work life balance, when I get invested into a project and my minds in it, like working from home, let's be kind of focus a lot on that work, and still have the balance of being around my family where I don't feel like I'm missing too much, you know, because I could always kind of press the pause button on that. Hang out with them do something, take my daughter to her practices at school, you know, help them with homework, stuff like that, do stuff with my wife, and then come back and keep working on it. So I actively have like a almost like a scale that's in the back of my mind to try to keep that even. So I'm glad

David:

you said that. Because most people when they think of balance, they think of a scale. It's a two sided thing. It's work on one side and life on the other. And that's where I think the wheel is so helpful, because it forces you to think about a lot more aspects a lot more dimensions of balance than just work and life because one, life is a very large bucket, there's a lot in there, right? So what the what the wheel does the wheel life does. And again, there's lots of versions of this, but there's career, which is the work part. And then there's like personal finance, there's a spiritual side to it, whatever that means to you, a physical side to like working out nutrition, that sorts of thing. Intellectual which in C 12, they call, rest and retreat, making sure that you're giving yourself time to, to focus on yourself in that regard, a family, children and family. And then social aspects. That's the wheel of life. The I was trying to find the C 12 version of it, cuz they do it a little different. Um,

Gary:

that seemed to cover pretty much on the basis though, it covers

David:

the same thing. Yeah, the way that C 12 does is you have your spiritual get Christy 12, as a Christian organization, you have your family, which is you know, kids and marriage, right marriage and family. And I think they split that specifically. Because sometimes your marriage is great, your family is bad, right? Then your personal finance, biblical community, which was a spiritual side, fun, recreation, fitness, and nutrition, rest and retreat, and discipling others walking with God, again, that's more of a, the spiritual side of it. But it's important, I think, to say these are all equal, all of these things are equal, and all need to be balanced to some degree. Now, some are going to have now some was, Dave Ramsey, I think was said, You're not going to get them all perfect all the time. Some of you're gonna have a heavy work period, and some you're going to have a heavy, I'm focusing on my fitness period, right? You have,

Gary:

yeah, it's never gonna be a straight line. It used to be a balance

David:

across, you know, maybe a year or five years that you're giving everything it's due. And I think that a lot of times startups and business owners, and they neglect a lot of these things. And my challenge would be is to recognize the fact that you will be your best self and your business will be its best self. When you do spend time to try to balance these things. Yeah, because I think the reason why I think in American culture in particular,

Gary:

it is definitely an American ideal, that the Hustle Hustle harder, you know, it's definitely an it's far more American, in, in the fact that people are getting burnt out and stressed out real quick and not even trying to achieve this balance than it isn't, you know, other European countries or other, I guess you could say, more advanced cultures.

David:

I wouldn't know if I'd call them advanced. But they definitely they have different products. We have a client who's in Belgium, he lives in Belgium. And, man when that dude vacations, he vacations I'm guessing I've never really totaled up but he just got back from a month off at Christmas. And that he took a month off. Basically, it was mid December to mid December to mid January. But he took I think, three or four weeks off at other points in the year. Yeah. And I'm like, Man, that's amazing. I'm jealous of that. That's certainly not, but that is so anti American, and specially anti startup, right? Startup is Go Go, go go. And everything else doesn't matter. It's hustle, hustle, hustle. And I appreciate that. But at the same time, and the quickest way you're gonna burn yourself out is to never take a break. And to not allow the other parts.

Gary:

Just there's a weird concept where parts of the world work is how you sustain life. And then in other parts of the world, life is how you maintain work.

David:

Mm hmm. And that's very American. I think it's unique to our culture, because everyone else is I work enough to live and I think there's something cool about that. But at the same time, it's like, like I was saying my fears earlier about the sabbatical. I am constantly worried if I take a break now if I'd let off the gas, that I'm going to end up destitute when I'm 70. That's, there's a lot of personal baggage there for me. And that is a fear, right? And so I'm like, What do I have to do to make sure that I am not a burden on my children when I'm 70 years old, when I am not a burden on those around me that I have done my part so that I am not going to impact my children's lives where they're, you know, they're 35 years old. And they've got a young family and all this and they dad's destitute,

Gary:

and they need to take care of you as well. No, no.

David:

I mean, I'm all for family stepping up and helping each other but I don't want to be a burden. That's that is deep in my core.

Gary:

Now that's the only reason we had kids. Now

David:

Oh, that's intriguing. I had, I had children to do the chores. So that's just a chore. It's just, yeah, there's mowing dishes take care of that. I get it. Perfect. Um, but I think I mean, so there's a lot of personal stuff for everybody, everyone's gonna come at this. It's

Gary:

understandable baggage, too. It's not, it's not an irrational fear. So it is something you have to plan for. But it's just a matter of, like you said, finding that balance between planning for that, or just non stop working for that. Yeah.

David:

Well, the other side of that is I don't want to be a millionaire business owner with three failed marriages. Yeah. Right. I mean, that's, that's the classic story of American business owners is, when you see these titans of industry go look at their family life. It's usually not always, but usually in shambles. And I mean, Bill Gates just got divorced in the last six months, or whatever. And that was sad, cuz they'd been married for a very long time. But then you find out what they've been doing as a married couple, that stuff starts coming out in the divorce documents. And you're like, What are you talking about? Like, he had an agreement with his wife that he got to see his ex girlfriend once a year, for a weekend, what? And that's beside the point completely, but I refuse to be that guy. So that means I have to say, hey, it's, you know, there are days I work late. But there are days, I'm like, Guys, I'm out. Right? I'm, I'm going home, and I'm going to go see my wife, I'm going to go hang out with my kids, I'm going to go and pick them up from school because my wife can't do it. And I'm not gonna make apologies about that. And I expect my team is the same way. Like, hey, you need to take care your family family's always first. And I think as a business owner, that's something you can do for your employees. That's a challenge I would give to all business owners with employees, is to say, Let put your money where your mouth is, and let them put their family first.

Gary:

And I can attest to that. And you definitely pushing for that kind of culture, that mindset, and I've used it, and I'm thankful that you're, you know, so Well, I appreciate that, but easy to understand that kind of stuff. And I think it is a perk of itself. It's not, you know, like a benefit or a perk that you would normally see. But a lot of companies and small business will use, I guess, the moniker of oh, we're a family owned business. So we're gonna treat you like family. That is just garbage. Because they don't treat you like family, they treat you like a underpaid. You're

David:

a number a yes. And I think you should challenge yourself as a business owner, to have that sort of culture, because I promise you, your employees will do better when their family is happy at home. Absolutely. I mean, you want to talk about investing in your company. Imagine how say, just imagine you have a fictional, very important project manager, just a, you know, a critical cog in the machine. They've got a team underneath them doing whatever it is you do. Now, imagine how good that person is guy or girl? And they're going through a divorce? How does that affect their productivity throughout the day? Right? I'll answer that a lot. Right? It's going to touch every part of their being. And I'm not saying you can prevent divorce. But if you create an environment that allows him to go home or her to go home, and be with the kids and take time off, and all of that, you're going to be investing in your business in a way you don't even realize, and that's what the balance is all about to me.

Gary:

Yeah, that touches on a topic that there's that you heard of Dan price, the guy who started with the online payment company, I'm not going to go into it to it anyways,

David:

he's real popular. Dan Brown, the guy who wrote The Da Vinci Code that is not the same guy,

Gary:

he's a proponent for treating your employees is not like the term human capital has been tossed around, as you know, another corporate, etc. I said, Yeah, it's horrible. But his whole thing is treating your employees with respect. And instead of figuring out ways to, you know, pay them less for the CEO to earn more, it's figure out ways for the CEO to put more money into their pockets and increase, you know, the company's value in their life instead of just their value to the company. And it's been paying off for him. So online, he puts, you know, a lot of these little insights and, and things out there and what you just said about investing in the people in your company, is basically his mantra, and it seems to be working. Its total opposite of what corporate America has been doing for many, many years. But it seems to be a definite step in a more positive direction.

David:

Why definitely think that there's a future podcast for us to talk about. CEO salary caps, not draining the company to make yourself personally

Gary:

Well, geeky. Listen.

David:

I think there's a there is definitely a thing that's near and dear to my heart, but I want to make sure that the challenge is going out to both the business as owners and the employees to balance yourself, you can't balance other people, as as an as a owner, you have a unique place where you can affect other people's balance, right? If you're a jerk, you can make that much harder. And you're probably going to lose that person. But if you're just an employee, though, it's still important to keep that balance. Because if you don't, and you lean too hard for too long on one aspect, the whole thing is going to come crumbling. I don't see a way around that. Eventually you burn out. And I think that's one of the reasons why we're seeing in America this whole resignation, slash sabbatical slash great, whatever. It's like there's a competition going on. On Who can name something. The great point, yeah, the

Gary:

biggest buzzword competition.

David:

It's like, do they win money? Is there a prize for that? Anyway?

Gary:

Yeah, it's eyeballs on websites clickbait. But

David:

I guess, I suppose, um, well, I think that's tapping into the fact that America for a very long time, has never really done this. Right.

Gary:

Yeah. It seems like everybody's taking a deep breath, a pause and going. Yeah, I don't know if I'm really cool with this anymore.

David:

What's interesting to me, though, I think there's gonna be a backlash for this is a lot of people are saying, Well, I'm just not going to work at all. And I want X government or something to take care of me. Because I don't want to work like that. You're seeing a rumble of that way, especially among

Gary:

young, I wouldn't say that's a backlash, I would say that's kind of like, you know, in any situation, there's going to be a person for IT person against it. And then there's going to be kind of more extreme views on both sides. So yeah, if you're talking about like the Reddit, anti work, subreddit, where people are, there was that

David:

guy that China? Oh, got really big, and there was a name for it. But he basically was getting in trouble by the Chinese government, because the Chinese culture was very pro work. You're you as a Chinese citizen, you are you have a duty to go and help society by working hard, right? That's a big part of their culture. As I've read about it, obviously, I've never been to China, but that's what I've read about in this one guy. He's just a dude. He's like, 25 years old. And during the pandemic, he's like, Nope, I'm not gonna do anything I refuse. And he started getting censored by the government, because he was going against the country line, really wild stuff. He's just like, No, I'm just gonna lay around, do nothing. And people started saying, Yeah, that's a great idea.

Gary:

I know, he was censored because there was traction to his little, you know, movement or whatever. Just his idea caught fire. So crazy. That's, that sounds good.

David:

So that the government would get involved. Like, I can't imagine the American gun, they got scared. Well, so many lazy people around, we really got to get on that. Maybe they thought

Gary:

maybe if there's enough people that stopped working their whole, you know, economy would crumble.

David:

Well, I mean, that's true for any country. Right? And but yeah, but I mean, you know, it's weird, because it's like, I feel like I'm almost talking both sides of my mouth. Because I still again, those fears I was talking about of work, work, work, make sure your retirement is settled, etc, etc.

Gary:

So you're basically trying to find a balance in this? Oh,

David:

I guess that's right. But I'm, it is it is hard. It is. And I will say that, from my perspective, that is hard. There's all those things every month, we do that the balance will exceed 12. And usually where I fall flat, like I work hard to make time for my family. I work hard at work. I fall flat on the rest side. I do not rest enough. I very rarely rest. My work, half of the weekends, right? I take time off to go and be with the kids and stuff. But when they're settled or they're on their screens, or they don't need anything. My wife is watching the show. I go to work and that's where usually I fail. And I imagine that's not an uncommon problem.

Gary:

No, it's not uncommon. It's

David:

alright, this is getting too heavy for me, man. I'm ready to move on. Do you have anything goofy? You want to talk about?

Gary:

Captain Morgan, baby?

David:

You want you want to get drunk here right on the podcast? No,

Gary:

I want to talk about the beer 30 The incredibly, I guess you could say thought out insane, weird and cool. People PR campaign that they're pushing forward for the Super Bowl, the Captain Morgan Super Bowl, like it's actually it's a punch bowl. But it's a high bowl. It's a high tech punch bowl.

David:

And it's a picture of it looks like razor made it. Yeah, cuz it's got the RGB light. It's got the RGB lights, but as they have a cool video and we'll link it does it's got a speaker in

Gary:

it. Okay. It features stadium inspired lights and sound Bluetooth speakers. subwoofers led graphic equalizers. Real Time NFL game data through the speakers powered by genius sports, which is the NFL is like official data tech partner. So everything that's happening in the game is being broadcast through your Punchbowl.

David:

But I saw it all look I had a score. What does that mean? That yeah,

Gary:

he's got like a score. It'll give you like audio for, I guess if there's any, like big plays or something like that that happens. It'll give you what they call crowd, and stadium style, music and lights. So it's going to react in a way that like the stands are reacting to a certain. So

David:

this is like the centerpiece of your Super Bowl display, right? You've got the TV on, but you've got this like in front of everybody so they can hear the crowds and stuff.

Gary:

Yeah, it's saying that, okay, this is obviously lost is it's a PR stunt. And it's their Superbowl ad. But you know, Superbowl ads now are far more effective online catching some viral flair than they are just being a commercial on TV. So I'm sure this is supposed to have a lot of traction now then they're not making these bowls to sell. I don't think they made one or maybe two. Who knows. But it's gonna be a contest where you get to enter to win. I already entered. Yeah, well.

David:

I don't even drink but I absolutely do.

Gary:

You probably didn't subscribe to the newsletters where you know, probably 90% of the people that entered probably did. So yeah, there was no increase their target audience as well, too. But yeah, they're marketing. This is a game changing innovation first time marvel of its kind. If

David:

Razer can make an RGB coaster. There's got to be a market for this. And some frat house. In some guys, man cave.

Gary:

Oh, god. Yeah, for sure. Man.

David:

There's

Gary:

definitely when I saw this commercial, there's two people that came to my head. Like there's a guy I know that has his own man cave that he's got stuff like the the roller, the roller grill for like hotdogs, like you would find it 711 He's got like the pizza spinner, you know, that has like the hot lamp. And the thing. That Uh huh. This would fit perfectly in his little Mo Yeah. Would he's created. But yes, yeah. Does

David:

he have a neon beer signs? No, yeah, he's

Gary:

got three or four of them. Yeah. But um, I'm assuming if this goes over, like, Who knows if it even works. You know what I mean? It kind of brings back that Coolest Cooler vibe in my head. But

David:

I would be very upset if I win the competition. And I get this thing and it doesn't do

Gary:

anything. But I mean, you have to have it before the Super Bowl for it.

David:

Well, that's the other thing. Is it coming? I saw that they would announce it. February 9. When is the

Gary:

new? I guess they're taking entries through February 6. And then? Yeah,

David:

I don't know. I'm sad. superveloce towards the

Gary:

late end of February. I don't know the exact date, I think 16th or 19, something like that.

David:

There might be time to get your bowl shipped to you, by the

Gary:

way. But I guess if it goes over well, I'm sure they might start making them. And then maybe every year for the Superbowl. There'll be like version two version three. But I man, I can't imagine it being cheap. You know what I mean?

David:

No, definitely not. I would guess that's out. Three to$400 punch bowl.

Unknown:

Oh, yeah. Sure.

David:

Well, that's going out on the high note. I think right there. I love it. I want one. I don't know what I would do with it. I could have a big pixel punch bowl. I don't know what I would do with it because I work alone in an office. But

Gary:

you can just make a hasty put some limited places. I put

David:

my little coffee drinks in there. There you go.

Gary:

Yeah, that's right. The high tech lead perfectly tallies

David:

are we do not have questions this week. We are collecting some though. We're gonna do another round where we have a couple of questions in the next week or two. Because we have gotten a few, mainly from our team, of course, but we're still hoping that someone will write us a question. I'm hoping Can I beg? Is it too early to beg No.

Gary:

Hello at the big pixel dotnet.

David:

There you go. That's how you send it to us. And we will get back on the bandwagon with YouTube. Our editor has been slacking on the pushing of Z buttons.

Gary:

We have to realign we have to realign his work life balance.

David:

Right his work life balance is not great. He needs to focus more on work. More more work. Alright guys. Well, thank you so much. And thanks for coming this week. We will be back next week.

Gary:

Yeah, see you next week guys. Thanks so much.

People on this episode

Contributor

David Baxter

Host
Contributor

Gary Voigt

Co-host