Apple Vision Pro and a Down Year

Business Brain, episode 456 for Casual Friday, June 9, 2023. Greetings, folks, and welcome to Business Brain, the show where we take all kinds of things in our lives and we funnel them through the filter that we call our Business Brain to give us maybe a different, better perspective that allows to keep living our charmed lives. Sponsors that can help you keep living your charmed lives include notion.combusinessbrain, where you can try Notion projects for free, and checker.com businessbrain, where you get 40 bucks off your first background check. We'll talk more in depth about those in a minute. For now on Casual Friday here in Durham, New Hampshire, I'm Dave Hamilton.

And I'm Shannon Jean. Still out here in Lafayette, California. La, living the dream. Living the dream life that we always talk about.

Absolutely. Hey, so on Monday of this week, you know, the other half of my life, or, I don't know, another portion of my life has been following and working with people using Apple computer devices and iPhones and such for decades. And on Monday, Apple announced all kinds of stuff. As we referenced in the last show, they released a new MacBook Air, and that might be the one that a winner gets for emailing feedbackusbrain show. But they also announced this headset called.

The Apple Vision Pro Spatial Computer.

Well, that's the term and I like I what I noticed was, and I could be wrong about this, but certainly they did not lean in at all to the term the word reality. There was no augmented reality, no virtual reality. The first time I heard reality mentioned by someone from Apple on Monday was in what I call the second keynote, which is the Apple State of the Union, which is the platform State of the Union. This is like the keynote for developers. They talk all about the nerdy stuff, you know, and okay, yeah, yeah, like how do you program for this thing or what? How do you make your new widgets and iOS, you know, responsive and interactive? Because you've got to code that up. That doesn't just happen magically. And so they show you all this stuff in the State of the Union, in the platform State of the Union. And when they were talking about Vision os, which is the operating system that this new headset runs, they mentioned Reality Kit, which is a framework that Apple has built that has been in use for a while, but now it can be adapted to this thing. But that, to me, that was the first time they really talked about the word reality. And I liked that because to me, what is that sound, Shannon? Shannon?

I don't know. It's a good question. Oh, there we go. Got it.

That coming from your end track?

Yeah, it was. It was from my end. Okay, Sorry.

Just checking.

Apologies. Yeah, yeah.

All right. You know, the first time it happened, I just figured, I'll let that go. And then when it became a habitual, I figured we needed. Is there something we need to talk about?

We needed to have a talk.

But, you know, they talked about spatial computing and certainly the way they discussed it and the way the, the presentation went and even the demos that folks who were out there got to, you know, got to have some hands on or eyes on heads on time shared is that it really becomes the best way I can convey this. And for 3500 bucks or 3600 bucks, this is. This is not the right way to communicate this. But this is your external monitor, right. You put this headset on and now not only can you have one external monitor, you can have six external monitors. Right. You can see all kinds of things going on. But think about this in your home office, or think about this in your. Not even cubicle in. In your, you know, open floor plan office environment where you want to have, you know, three or four screens, sometimes at your desk or in a hotel room. You're traveling, but you want to. I've talked about how valuable it is to me to bring a, you know, a portable screen with me. Now, granted, that portable screen costs about 100 bucks, but, you know, yeah, like. Like the idea of having this workspace available, I really, I see that as a huge percentage of the focus and target for this thing. And the way they did it, the way they showed it to us, that, like, that's the thing I took away is like, oh, wait a minute, you know, you could have. At the moment, you would have your laptop or your iPad or something, maybe even a keyboard with it. Right. Because typing is a thing and a mouse. And they said it works with a keyboard mouse and it also works with game controllers. So I get that too. But again, the same thing with games. Imagine having a huge screen that you can travel with and use on an airplane. Right?

That's right. There's a lot of really interesting things. And from a business owner perspective, one of the things that were constrained with on, like our website and like, we have all this product information and then we have reviews and we have tutorials and, and demonstrations and this kind of thing. But think about losing the barriers of that 2D environment.

Yeah.

To where someone could go into a product you're selling or a service that you're offering and all of a sudden multiple screens can pop up where they can just, you know, by having their eyes tracked, look and see. Let me see the reviews, let me read about the product description, let me see the tutorial. And I mean, everything is presented in a very much, you know, less linear fashion where they're having to scroll up and down a webpage. It's presented to you because there is no limit to how the screen works.

And right now what you and I are doing is what, what classically happens. We are taking our current environments and adapting them, adapting them into this world that, that a headset like this could offer. What we know from, you know, being too old and following technology for a very long time is that so many of the things that people will be able to do with this thing are things you and I have yet to conceive because we don't have this thing. My favorite example is remember the day that the first person who came to you and said, hey, you need a cable modem. You had your dial up to aol. It did everything you needed, right? You got your email, you could check your, you know, the buy sell stuff on the AOL message boards or whatever it was. You could join the chat rooms and everything that you needed to do, you could do over dial up. And there was no reason in your current world that you needed a broadband connection, right? You did not need this huge step up in speed. It was like, ah, it seems crazy. Imagine going back to dial up today. Think about all the things that you currently do that you could not do with dial up. Now I'm not saying you specifically out there are the one that said, I would, you know, resist broadband, but think about all the things that broadband opened up that we didn't even think about. Like probably if you were forward thinking, you would have thought, wow, well I could do video conferencing, you know, that would be amazing. You know, and now we do it just like willy nilly, it's no big deal. But did you think, oh, I can replace my, you know, cable TV with just streaming services? I didn't think of that. You might have, but you probably didn't, you know, and if you did, you were in the minority. So there's all kinds of use cases for a thing like this that works well and that, that's an important distinction because there are things like this and Apple's thing is probably going to be one that works well because they wouldn't release a product that didn't. It's just the way Apple is they kind of wait, they aren't the first to market with something, but they often are the best to market or the first best. You know, think about the smartphone, right? They certainly weren't the first with a smartphone, but the iPhone redefined what a smartphone was and now everybody copies.

Yeah. With just a few key things, even though underpowered and limited. But over time, as that evolved, it changed our entire world. And I do think this type of device, as it evolves, it will dramatically change and bring new opportunities for people like us, entrepreneurs, you know, that kind of thing. I think it's going to be terrific.

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Yes.

This is gonna, this is gonna be a down year.

You think so?

Well, for my businesses, yes. And I was driving in the car the other day and you know, I'm an optimist. I always want to look for the good in things. I always want to spin things to being positive. Right. You know.

Oh, yeah, same way.

Right. Because that's, I, I think that is one of the more common traits of entrepreneurs is like just refusing to see negatives, you know, or resisting the negatives. I don't want to say refusing to see, but resisting the negative, resisting them.

But you, yeah, but you can't ignore reality. Right?

Correct. And. And I was driving in the car the other day and it hit me, I said it out loud. I'm like, this is going to be a down year. And as soon as I said it, I felt this weight lift off me because it was obvious that this is what's going to happen. Like, you know, with. And I meant it specifically about backbeat media. We are an ad fueled, you know, consumer advertising fueled business. The economy is down. The last few years have seen what I call the silver lining of COVID where because everyone was at home and not traveling online. And it's weird, in our industry, podcasts are considered offline advertising. I know it seems crazy. Yeah, yeah, whatever. But podcast advertising, online advertising saw huge budgets being thrown at it because it was the only place you could throw A budget. Right. And there was a lot of money flowing into the economy, too. Right. And we were able to capture a lot of that. This is not that year. There's not a lot of money being thrown into the economy, and there are lots of other places to get people's attention. So this year is. I agree this year is already a down year. It is a fact. Things may change. But what I noticed in saying this is going to be a down year, like I said that that weight lifted off of me, and then it was like, okay, great, now that I said this, now I am willing to look that in the face as opposed to resisting looking at it. And instantly I started thinking about, well, if that's going to be the case, everybody else in the industry knows this too. Like, this isn't our. I mean, there are things we can do to mitigate this, but the, the reason for the down year is not unique to our business. It's not, quote, unquote, our fault in that sense. We didn't cause it. Right. We can do things to, you know, hopefully mitigate or maybe even avoid it. But that was the thing is, as soon as I said that, I had this freedom to start thinking about, well, okay, if it's going to be a down year, how do we do this, how do we do that, what do we change? What can we do to sort of adapt to the market? And that's where all of that inspiration comes from, is being free to do it as opposed to ignoring it or resisting looking at it. And. Yeah, same word. Yeah, yeah.

Your comment about fault is really important.

That's it. Yeah.

Is that I do the same thing. And I think that, you know, know I have this philosophy that I've stole from somebody. You know, when you want to compliment, look out the window. When you want to criticize, look in the mirror. Right. And I always internalize this when I have down, you know, things are slower or whatever. And, and I would agree with you, all indicators in, in my businesses are it's going to be a down year as well. And one of the things that has helped me overcome this fault is I've always, at one some level or another, because I'm a product guy and I've always sold things. I've always been on other marketplaces in addition to my own business, my own website.

Sure.

So when you could look for trends, I was able to look across different platforms and see is this trending this way across these other marketplaces and not just with my business. And I can tell you.

Yeah, yeah.

Not Just me. And I can tell you for sure that all these other marketplaces are being impacted as well, and people are holding onto money, not as frivolous, you know, with buying luxury items. And so, yeah, I think you're right. And I think it is. It is really important to. To recognize that it's okay to start talking about that because it does open up opportunities and it becomes part of the discussion. Hey, we're just adapting to what's happening with. Within the economy. You haven't made a mistake that has caused your business to slow down.

Right. It's not. It's not me. And even if it was, even if I had made some. Or we, as a business had made some critical mistake that caused that, I think that's also important to acknowledge so that you can get past it, you know, But I plan on sharing this with the staff, too. Like, hey, it's. Yeah, you know, I think you already know this, so let's say it out loud. And that's one of my favorite phrases. We're just doing this to say it out loud so that we can get past it, but let's say it out loud. It's going to be a down year. Okay, great. Now we're all coming at this from the same angle. What can we do? Let's be scrappy. Let's be like, let's do something crazy. We have some freedom. If we say we know there's going to be less, you know, dollars coming in this year versus last year. All right, great. Now let's have some fun with that. Like, opportunity is on the table. Let's. Let's take advantage of it. Yeah, yeah.

Changing the way you're looking at it to where everybody isn't stressed for the next six months.

Right.

About making numbers that are perhaps impossible.

Yeah.

Impossible.

Yeah. I don't want to say that's impossible, but, you know, that's right. It's casual Friday. Yeah. Yeah, that's it. That's it.

But, yeah, I like that. And getting it out there and having that discussion is okay. How do we change? How do we adapt instead of just chasing the same thing that we know we're not.

If we do the same thing we did last year, it will remain a down year. And it. And there might be no world where it doesn't remain a down year, but here's the one great thing. One of. It's not the only. But one of the great things about admitting this to your team is, is you give them the freedom to share ideas that they might already have. Knowing that it's going to be a down year. But since you haven't said it, they don't want to be the ones to say look, because I know it's going to be down. What do you think about changing the way we offer this? Maybe we're not lowering our prices, but you know, we've always bundled these three things together. What if we take the most valuable of those three things out of that and sell it on its own? Maybe that's a terrible idea, but. Yeah, but you have that discussion, have the conversation. Yeah, yeah.

Maybe you as recognizing it. Maybe you could, you know, your team write up a program, a course, a tutorial for how your customers can get maximize their ad revenue.

Right.

We all know this is at times are tough. Or what. Or what have you giving them some something that doesn't cost anything. But you're adding value. I mean, I can't think of a better time to, to focus on loyalty.

Right.

Is when people are worried about, boy, we've we had X last year to spend and now we only have Y. Where do we cut? You don't want it to be your no business. Right.

That's right.

So adding value in other ways could really endear you to some of these, you know, companies that are going through the same things you are. So that's really, it's a good point. I'm glad you mentioned it.

Yeah. It's hard to say out loud. Like, even as I was prepping to say it, it's like, well, I've said it to myself, like that's fine. And I said it to, to Siri because I put the reminder on my phone. That's one of my tricks. Right. When I'm driving, if I have an idea for the show or anything else, I say, siri, tell, remind me either today or tomorrow. Doesn't matter. It just puts it on my reminders list. Remind me tomorrow. It's okay to say this is going to be a down year. Really? What I said. Yeah. Is remind me tomorrow about the freedom of the optimist saying this is going to be a down year. Those are the words I said to Siri in that moment. So. Yeah, man. Smart.

Yeah, it's good. So how are you, you know, if your business, if you're expecting a down year, like many in the economy, you know, out in the business world are. How are you responding to this feedbackusbrain show? We would love to hear from you.

Yeah, that's feedbackusinessbrain show. And of course, if we involve your email on the show in any way, you get added to the list for that MacBook Air. We're not going to buy you an Apple Vision Pro. Why? Because that's not coming out this year. Maybe next year. Maybe that's what we do for next year. I don't know. Maybe you'll have to just keep listening. Because listening gets you a lot of things. One of the things that gets you is more tools to keep living that charmed life. And that's what we want you to do. Have a good weekend, folks. We'll see you next week.