David Carpenter - Tilted Windmills and Gamiotics Founder

Well, now is not the time to want to be in the live theater business. Or is it?

Yeah, well, it could be, you know, like we've talked about a couple times recently that, you know, in addition to this chaos that the current situation is bringing in businesses and especially theater and. And large crowds, you know, there's going to be all kinds of opportunities, right?

There is. And we've spent the last, I want to say, four episodes of our. I do a podcast for working musicians called Giggab. As you can imagine, the focus is now very different right now, and a lot of it has been on exactly that opportunity. What does exist right now and what can you be doing to prepare for later? And that's what our guest today is kind of doing.

Yeah, he's. That's right.

Yeah.

Yeah, we're going to have. I mean, it's great. We're going to learn a lot about a business that I know nothing about, and we're also going to see some real creativity in action. Action about how to adapt and how to tap into a market that, you know, used to come to you and now you may have to come to them. So it's going to be a great show. I'm looking forward to it.

Yeah, for sure. Hey, I want to talk about our first sponsor, which is textexpander. Man, Shannon, I don't know about you. In fact, I do know about you. I know that you're like me and you couldn't live without textexpander.

That's right.

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Yeah, I agree, man. Couldn't live without it.

Couldn't live without it. All right, well, he is Shannon Jean. I am Dave Hamilton, and this is episode 271 of the Small Business Show.

When consumers saw Enron in London, they were looking at the play and saying, look at those Americans and how they destroyed the world. When Americans saw New York, they said, I don't want to see this right now. It hits too close to home. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's. A lot of it has to do with timing, right? Sure. You know, in. Are you. You know, because you're asking people to pay a lot of money for their time and you want to say something.

That they care about.

Sure.

Yeah. That totally makes sense.

So from a creative sense, like on a physical production side, you know, the industry works the way it does. Right. There isn't like, we built an industry around how we produce these plays, and there is a certain amount of, like, they cost, what they cost. Costs are always escalating. This is just what this foreign.

Hey, Dave. You know, we're in the middle of this big disruption here, and everything has changed in every aspect of our lives, especially related to business. And one of the things that I've read about lately is, you know, how automation and AI changes. Everything is going to change. You know, virtually every business. But one area that I've been reading about that often, authors will say, well, this area is kind of protected, is creatives, artists, content producers that need that human touch. And so I had, you know, a question about how do you go about creating a successful business built around creativity, things like theatrical experiences, great content? And I'm really happy to have David Carpenter here with us today. He's the founder of Tilted Windmills Theatricals and his new business, gameiotics. And he's to share his experience as a producer of traditional theater as well as some new stuff that he's working on and we're also going to talk about, you know, audience participation, how we kind of get back there. So thanks so much for joining us today, David. We really appreciate it.

Thanks for having me on, guys.

Yeah, it's awesome. I'm really interested. I know nothing about your business other than from a spectator, and I love that kind of stuff. So it's great. I'm excited to learn. So along that lines, I want to learn about both of your companies today. Let's start with Tilted Windmills. Tell us what your business does and a bit of history, if you will.

Sure thing. So Tilted Windmills was founded about a little over five years ago as founded between me and my former business partner, John Pinkard. And we basically set out to start a theatrical production company. And, you know, our eye and our relationship with the industry, by that point, we'd been kind of it for about 15 years. We wanted to see what we could develop and do together and try and, you know, like every new startup in any industry is trying to be disruptive and try to, you know, change the game a little bit in what it is that we were doing. And so we just kind of boldly in January of 2015 said, all right, well, let's give it a shot. And we found some startup capital and just started, you know, optioning works and moving things forward. We failed miserably for 18 months at everything we touched. Several product projects during that time period just absolutely imploded. And the original seed capital that we'd found, who had agreed to fund us for a year after about eight months, kind of got bored and wandered off. And I, as, as sometimes it does is you can have an investor who's all gung ho and then they hit the middle of the summer and say, well, I want to go do something else, you know, sue me for it.

Right?

And that's basically what happened. So. So that was our year one, right. And so we were, we had a real. We had a really long serious talk at that point about trying to figure out what we're going to do. We sat down and we decided that we needed to recapitalize the company. And so we went through that kind of three month period where, you know, we couldn't pay ourselves. We didn't, you know, you know, bills started stacking up and we just kind of forged ahead as best we could and during that time period, found a property in December 2015 called Puffs. What Puffs is, is that it's a original comedy that takes place in a world that is similar to A world, you know, but it's not that world. And basically, it's a parody of the seven Harry Potter books from the theatrical stage, right? And effectively, it's absolutely, legally, 100% classified as a parody. No question about that. And it takes the point of view of these three kids who are in mag, right? It's called a certain school of Magic. And Magic, right, is the name of the school. And these three friends who meet in their first year of Magic School come together to fight evil. And it turns out they're all just terrible wizards, right? And during the course of these seven years that they're in Magic School, there's this other kid who wanders in and out of the story who is very popular, and he is the hero of the school. And kind of the point of that show was that you need to learn how to be the hero of your own story, right? Stop. Yeah, we say that all the time here.

Yeah, we love that here. Yeah.

So we found in. My former business partner John had found Pops, and he invited me down to see it, and I took a look at it, and I was like, yeah, we should option this. We have $5,000 in our bank account right now. Now, we knew at that moment in time that more capital was coming in very shortly. But literally our net assets at that point was $5,000, right? And so we decided to take a break. Huge risk. And we got a first run of refusal on that script. And we went to the authors and the team who'd done it. It was done. Done down at the People's Improv Theater. And we said, look, we want to try and figure out how to transfer to Off Broadway. We want to take. We want to take the script. And we optioned it the day before its New York Times review came out, which was a rave. So that works. And so then we spent the next eight months trying to figure out how to get it up on Broadway. So we had our. We had some new run, investment capital, and we worked through it the rest of the year and pulled that show together while a couple of other shows still fell apart during that same time period. And By October of 16, we launched the show, and it was a hit.

Out of the gate.

And it ran for three years in New York, played two different theaters, and it's turned into this international hit show. It's one of the top licensing titles in Sam French right now, or was. And I produced it in Australia. I produced it. I produced a film of it. We filmed the stage show, and I owned the movie. I own the Filming rights to it. So that is available on itunes and Amazon, and that's its own revenue generator. I am the publisher of the script, so I sell the script. And so. And so we built this little business around puffs, and in doing so, kind of reinvented the approach to Off Broadway because it was a play that had 11 people in the cast.

Right.

Which was an enormous thing. And everyone told us there was no way we were going to be able to do it. We ended up doing it very successfully. So part of what the company was built on was, was this reinvention in doing that show and then our subsequent continuing producing of that show.

That's for you.

So.

Yeah, no, that's.

That's.

I mean, start. It is. Well, and what an. What an example for any small business owner. You know, as soon as you're going to start any venture, you will have people, especially if you're doing something that's a little bit different, which is what most small business owners do, is find a different way of getting the same thing done. And that's where your. That's where your profits exist. That's where your niche is. And you'll have a million people telling you you can't do it. And the reminder that we always try and reinforce here is, no, they're telling you they can't do it, not that you can't do it. Right, Right. So just go do it.

Yeah, yeah. And I also. And I also think that your first venture like that is basically your. Can be your grad school education. It can be, you know, probably not nearly as good as an mba, right? But, but, but it can really. It teaches a lot of things. And one of the things that I learned throughout the. Throughout the three, four years that I was the lead producer, I still am the producer of the show because I still retain the rights right now. But, but here is that I learned a lot about. A lot about copyright and international copyright and trademark and IP law, because from day one, I was under constant, constant legal threat. Angry, nasty, mean legal threat on a constant basis.

Right?

But the US Laws are very well defined. They've been adjudicated in the courts many times when it comes to parody, when it comes to transformative work. And we were. We had a show, right, that took place, that was original comedy that took place in its own little world, right? But it was parodying this world that for certain points of view, is parroting another world that's about being bullied, right? And it's about being bullied in school. And I spent three years being bullied. And the one thing that you do when you're bullied, which we. Which we, me and my phenomenal attorney and I did, was every time they hit us, we would just hit back. And that was that.

Right.

And so, you know, there are restrictions to what I can do with it on a global basis, and I don't really have to kind of get into all of it right now, but within the U.S. you know, we played by the rules.

Right, sure.

And. And what I always say to any entrepreneur, anyone working in, does any theater is all about ip.

Right.

And intellectual property is don't break the rules. Like, don't do it. You want to play, you want to start playing around with ip, do it the right way. Get it, set it up correctly from day one. And I got lucky in doing that.

Yeah. And let me ask you, when you describe, you know, bringing these things, you know, from a concept or licensing and getting and everything going, it seems to me like you're almost starting a new business every single time. I mean, is that a good description?

So every. Every Broadway show, every off Broadway show. And I'm not talking about nonprofits. Right. I'm talking about. I'm talking about the commercial world. Sure. Every single one of those shows is a venture that requires you to sell equity in it to groups of investors, and your return is based on box office sales and simply that. And it's a slightly ridiculous model in this day and age, but it still works and it's still holding up to a degree.

Right.

But every single one of those shows is a company unto itself that has its own management structure, that has its own contractors and employees and its own set of investors.

Right.

So every time you produce a show, you launch a new venture. Now, the difference in our world versus the difference in, you know, in Silicon Valley and tech startups is that scalability is a very different concept for us.

Right.

For theater people. And that you are. There are no. There are unicorns.

Right.

And our unicorns are Hamilton or Book of Mormon or, you know, Cats or Phantom.

Right.

Those are theatrical, but they play out very slowly over time as opposed to something that blows up within three to five years.

Right.

Hey, that's a good way to look at it. That's right. Yeah. Because it does. Yeah. A successful theater show, it takes time in order to actually realize that success. That's interesting.

Yeah, yeah. It's because we're tied to real estate as a business, because you can't have a show without being in a piece of real estate. And that real Estate has to be available. It has to be appropriate. It has to be.

And you have.

You'll be in the right markets, limited.

Inventory that you can sell any given day. And so you have to just extend it out. Time is your friend. In. In as long as people still want to come, time is your friend, right?

So, yeah, so if you look at something like Hamilton, which sells, and I'm making this up, I don't actually know the right number because it's not sitting in front of you, but it's like they can sell 1200 seats a night, right? So times eight. That's their. That's their weekly. That's it. That's all they can do in a week. You know, there's a billion people on Facebook right now. So like, that's where our scalability is really different, right? In that we are closer to the airline industries, although they have way more inventory than we do. But we're close to the airline industry in the regard of, like, once the performance has happened and the seat has been unsold, you can never get that piece of inventory.

It's expiring inventory. And you were close. The Richard Rogers theater is 1319. So.

Wow. Well done. Well done. So, but like, but, but an expiring inventory industry is, is. Is specific, right? Like, it's a.

Well, we're, we're in that. We're in that business here because once this episode goes, I guess we could in theory come back and like re. Ad or something, but, you know, in general, the ad business is also expiring inventory in that sense.

Yeah, yeah. Right.

Right.

So let, let me ask you this. I mean, when you're putting together these productions and you have to get investors and do all this kind of stuff, you know, are you solving the. The same types of problems over and over or, you know, is. Is it. Each production has its own unique set of barriers that you have to, you.

Know, power through art is subjective, right? So I mean, part of the, part of the problems with selling commercial art is that you have to be saying the right thing at the right time to the right people in order to make a sale, right? So like, like, you are so like one of my favorite examples, right, of how you can do everything right and it can go right and wrong within the same season was a play that happened a number of years ago called Enron, Right? And Enron was a play that I believe Lucy Preble Prebble wrote. It was about. It was. She wrote a play that took all of the public information about the fall of Enron Right. That you could get off of any news item or any website or anywhere. And she created a narrative around it and kind of documented this fall of Enron and how Enron, you know, IN08 destroyed the world, basically. They were there, right. And so the play premiered in London and it was a massive hit, right? Just massive, massive, massive hit. And, you know, we sold out one. Olivier's, I think. I don't know. But anyway, they transferred it into Broadway and it closed after two weeks.

Right.

And normally within, within our worlds, right, you know, you can predict success. Like Les Mis was a hit in London, it can. Will be a hit in New York. Right. Like, that is not a hard, that's not a stretch. And we, because those are the two major markets, you see a lot of things cross back and forth. The interesting thing about Enron that, that makes this such a high risk category of investment and what we do is that when consumers saw Enron in London, they were looking at the play and saying, look at those Americans and how they destroyed the world. When Americans saw it in New York, they said, I don't want to see this right now. It hits too close to home.

Oh, too soon.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's a lot of. It has to do with timing, right?

Sure.

You know, in. Are you, you know, because you're asking people to pay a lot of money for their time and you want to say something that they care about.

Sure, yeah, that totally makes sense.

So from a creative sense. So like on a physical production side, you know, the industry works the way it does. Right. There isn't like we built an industry around how we produce these plays and there is a certain amount of, like, they cost, what they cost. Costs are always escalating. This is just what this industry is. So you can solve a lot of problems technically, but at the end of the day, it's, you know, will people like this enough to buy tickets and tell their friends to go buy tickets?

Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah. I think that's great. I think that, you know, especially right now, you know, everything's changed, right? Everything's so different and not like normally I would be asking you, oh, yeah, trends, things change. How do you adapt? You know, that kind of stuff. But, you know, the big thing I think about now is how, you know, does your industry and your business. And maybe this leads us into talking about, you know, gameotics and, and how you're, you're setting up new things. How are, you know, you're. What are you planning on doing to adapt you know, as a business that brings large groups of people together, you know, how is. What's the, the narrative and the framing going on in, within your industry of how, how we're going to, going to recover and come back from this?

Well, unfortunately, right now there isn't one.

Right.

Like there is. There is always a lot of hopeful optimism about, about how theater can perform.

Right.

And what theater can do. And I worked on Shrek the musical in 08. My office looked at Lehman Brothers. I kid you not. Like, I still to this day remember standing at my window watching people walking out of Lehman Brothers with boxes in their hands and all of us sitting the DreamWorks office at that point saying, well, this is going to be a problem.

Right? Right.

But what we learned is that, you know, Broadway is a luxury. Is a luxury good.

Right?

But it's a luxury good that people feel they can't be without. The same thing goes for Off Broadway. It's like people need live inter entertainment in their lives in order to feel human. It is a necessary part of what they need. They might buy less.

Right.

Which is what we experienced.

Right.

Than they did. But they won't stop buying.

Right.

So I don't think that any of us are worried that Broadway is not going to come back. I think the challenge right now is how. Because after September 11th, Broadway reopened in two days, okay? And, and there was a big national commercial about everybody go to New York, right? And it was all about, go to New York, go to New York, support New York.

Right.

They built the entire World Trade Center Memorial around the idea of people, around this whole idea. And it kept New York in the zeitgeist and as a place to go. So when the collapse for us happened, the biggest warning sign was the week before because like most people don't know that they publish our grosses on a weekly basis publicly. You can see how each show on Broadway is doing every week.

Right.

And the canary in the coal mine that week was Lion King and Phantom had some of their worst weeks that any of us could remember seeing.

Right?

And Lion King and Phantom are two shows that rely tremendously on out of town audiences coming in to see it.

Right.

Oh, okay, so if we lee the statistics are something like 70% of the audience for Broadway shows comes from outside of New York. Right. So it's a mix of international tourism and domestic tourism.

Right.

Who are coming to see the shows. A lot of it is domestic tourism. And in this particular instance, so we shut down on the 15th of March and all travel to New York has been canceled. It takes months and months to rebuild back people's schedules to plan a trip to New York. So there were people who've been planning for a long time to come to New York in March who canceled. So when will they come back? Will it be next March?

Right.

Like, will it be fall? And that's the thing that we don't know, which is. So that is the big unknown right now, which is like, I have no doubt that Broadway's gonna come back, and I have no doubt that they're gonna after as much local audience as they can. But it's a question of when are we allowed to gather as groups like that?

Right.

And when is the state going to allow us to gather as groups like that? And then how do we build an audience that is had. That has to look different than the audience we had on March 14th?

Yeah. And are those discussions going on, like, you know, among you and your peers and connections that, you know, or is that kind of the. Okay, how are we going to do this?

Yeah, yeah. I mean, that's all the discussions, but it's. But you don't know. I mean, the big unknown is, is there when and if they're an audience, an audience will be back.

Yeah, I, I think it's. It's very smart to think of it along the lines of, we gotta tune this to local first to start this, and, and then, you know, slowly as we ramp back up.

Yeah. I think the thing also that, that, that is like all businesses, but. But Broadway is particularly cash sensitive.

Right.

They don't keep a. And so, you know, our running costs, the difference between our weekly running costs and our. And our profit, our profitability can, you know, can be anywhere from $100,000 to $500,000.

Right.

It just kind of depends on how the running expenses of a show is set up.

Right, sure.

So you can only run a show at a loss for so long before you've evaporated any cash you have sitting there. And that's, I think, a big question of saying, all right, we can come back. But if the audience takes a month to come back right after we start, like, if it takes that long, will I have enough cash if it takes three months to make sure? Yeah, I mean, that's. And so a lot of those discussions are happening. So I think that there's a lot of, you know, hopefully, and I don't know this to be certain, but I would hope that the leaders in our industry are looking at the government saying, you've got to put some sort of fund together. It doesn't even, you know, in order to allow us to continue as an industry or, you know, we're. We're a multi billion dollar industry supporting the arts.

Of course. Yeah, yeah, that totally makes sense. Yeah, yeah, I totally agree. So, ok. I also want to talk about this new venture now that we've got some background, kind of your traditional business and stuff, which is. Which is fascinating and sounds like a complete nightmare to me. But I'm so glad people like you figured it out because I love to go to shows. Let's talk about game otics and how that came about, where it's at in development right now and what is it and what does the future hold.

Sure. So a few years ago we had found a show that the audience would walk in, they would be handed handheld remotes, right. And during the course of the show. And the show was this rom com, right. About a guy going out on a.

Date with a girl, right.

But the audience got to make the decisions on his date at 15 various points during the show. That led to eight or ten different endings. Right. And so all the decisions were rated on a point system. It was a fairly simple game gaming idea built into it where if they voted really well for the guy, if he said every right thing throughout the course of the show, then he slept with the girl at the end, and if he said every bad thing, then he threw himself off a bridge because she rejected him. Right. And everything in between. And it was a really life. Right, exactly.

Right.

It was a really interesting concept. Right. Now we optioned the show, but we couldn't really make the show itself work for a variety of reasons. It just wasn't. It wasn't a good enough show at that point, which is ironic. Remind me to come back to this at the end of the conversation.

Right.

When I took a look at it, the audience got really excited about the idea that they had agency in theater. And so it was this way to do a new take on immersive theater. And so I got really excited about it. And through a series of interesting events, we met these guys out in San Diego, one of whom is a guy named Dave Keane, who at one point in his career was a senior architect of the PlayStation Gaming Network. And the timing was fortunate because we were trying to figure out a way to create technology that was on your phone, right. So that we didn't have to hand anything to the audience when they walked in the door. Because when you are having to provide things to audience, when they walk in, you immediately cut off Your scalability, right? Because burden you've added to your expense, and now you just have this thing that the audience.

Right.

And so my first instinct was, let's put this on the cell phone and let's figure out a way to do it. Everyone's got a cell phone, right? The second thing, I created a series of rules around this. And I said, look, the second thing is it cannot be an app. You can never ask a consumer, a theater consumer, to download an app to enjoy a theatrical experience. And I call it the 802 rule. The 02 rule was, if it's raining and it's 8:02 and you arrive to the theater and you're late and you're angry and pissed off, if an usher stops you and says, download this app to enjoy the show, you've lost the consumer. From moment one.

I love the 8:2 rule. I'm going to apply that to so many. I'm a drummer in theater at times. And that 802 rule solve so many problems. When you just point it to someone like that and say, look, here's the thing. Perspective matters. You can't do this. That's right. I love it.

And that's the thing. And I said, and for this, for working on your cell phone, I said, it's got to be two clicks and in. I think it now probably has to be three clicks, but it's gonna be two clicks in, meaning, like, go to this website, enter this code, boom, and then you're ready to go. And so what the software ended up being developed into was this ability to talk with consumers in real time throughout the course of the show. And it started as this AB choice module, right in that in order. And we developed it along these lines in that the actors, the script would be a adventure where the audience can decide things throughout the course of the show in order to impact the narrative and the outcome, right? And so you would reach a decision point in the show. Does the character do A or does the character do B? And the audience then would vote, right? And the way that it worked is that the question was projected on stage, what do you want to do? The answer were immediately served up your phone. So it was just pushed right up to your phone. They voted. The votes tallied in real time. So, like 300 people sitting in a room, we're making a choice between A and B, and they're watching a bar graph go up in real time. And we call them elections. Right? The choice sequences in Election happen within eight seconds, so it's happening really fast. As the audience is voting. And then by the end of the election, whatever got the most votes, that's what the actors do and they just go. And it became just. We made it seamless into the integration of the. Of the. Of the experience.

Right.

So over the course of time, that business. I'm getting to how GAMIAC started that business was the original plan for us within Tilted was that. Was that. That business that we were going to develop a show that used this technology and that we owned this technology kind of outside the business, but the show then uses technology. We're going to produce that show because that was our approach. Right, sure. Last year, the show didn't get there. And it's not the show's fault. I have firsthand knowledge now of how hard it is to create this type of narrative.

Right.

It's really, really hard. It's like especially when you're looking in a live theatrical environment.

Right? Yeah.

It has to be entertaining. Yeah.

You've got to have so many different story angles that are all entertaining. Each entertaining. Really.

We are going to get there. We are going to get there. One second.

Right.

But when we were developing that show, because we did a series of seven readings over nine weeks just to try. Because the other thing too is if your story is branching or different things happen depending on the audience reaction, you can't develop it in a vacuum. Your audience has to tell you what's working and what's not working. Right, right, right. The traditional theatrical development process of we do a reading and then maybe we do a workshop and then we put. And then there's a pre. It doesn't work for this. It's a way different, much more intensive way of developing the product. Right, sure. Anyway, so we did these readings and the show didn't quite get there. The technology took a massive leap forward because for whatever reason, our Dave Keane just had a lot more time on his hands during that time period. And so he developed all these other functions for the technology that moved from ab choicing to multi click elections to the Simon says, where the audience has to remember the sequence that we've given you to a tug of war sequence. And then we created this thing called a voter isolation, where if someone makes a choice at one moment in the show, we can actually say there was a choice, saying, do you want to do yes or no? The 50 people who chose? Yes. We can isolate a single user out of those 50 people and then they get to make the next choice by themselves. So, like all of this.

That's cool.

Really. Cool stuff started happening.

Right.

So that was at the beginning of the summer, and we realized that we were working on a platform, and we started trying to figure out how we put the venture together as a platform. Now, a couple other things happened over the course of summer. We had a workshop that kind of fell apart on us, which really changed the dynamics of our business. And then we produced our first Broadway show as a lead producer on Slava Snow show this past Christmas, which is a great success. But during that time period, John and I decided to part ways. And all fine, but we just decided we're going to go in different directions. And one of the things is this technology has been something that I've been really driving at, and I never really had the time because I was doing so many other projects and running Puff Sync and all this, that I was like, look, I'm going to take the company, but really all I'm going to do is do gameotics. And the result of John and I's breakup freed me from the Tilted operating agreement. Now, Tilted still exists as a company, but it allowed me to basically form another company because I couldn't form a technology platform company inside Tilted Windmills. There was just no way I could finance it. Like.

Yeah. And it sounds like going forward, that that's really where your. Your future efforts are going to be focused on this gameotics platform. Is that right?

Yeah. I mean, I'm still running Puffs. I got a Slavis tour to put out at some point. Like, I got. I got other theatrical projects too, but that. But I. At the top of the year. And when I went to the reorg of the company and John's withdrawal, I then sat down and wrote an entire new business plan for Game Otics.

Right.

And so. So I February put the business plan together, vetted it through the investors, and started getting commitments. I started getting a lot more commitments starting in March. And what the plan was is that I was going to continue developing the technology, but really put a play together that showcased the technology plus the content and premiere at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival this summer. And I had commissioned it, it was starting work on it, and it was all going forward until March 14th.

Yeah.

And now here we are. That's right.

Yeah.

Yeah. So I say March 14, because March 15, March, the evening of March 14, is when they announced that Broadway theaters would shutter for at least a month. And now that's going to. I don't think we're going to see Broadway reopen until the summer at this point.

If that wouldn't surprise me if it was next summer when we can get thousands of people together again. Although I guess Broadway could open, open, end theaters could be half full or a third.

Yeah, I think that's what there's going to be some sort of phased in at least. I hope that that's kind of the, the, the methodology that there's some kind of phased in thing. Because back to your original point, you know, David, is, you know, we, we humans, we want to get together, we want to experience shared things and theaters are, you know, really important part of it and those kinds of experiences. So I hope that's the way we go.

So, so my. So here's what happened on March 17, right? In that capital markets collapsed, right? No one's out there. If anyone who is able to secure financing right now, right. We're probably far enough along with solid enough people that keep going. Everybody else like me who was just launching and doing my pre seed round, stop, just full stopped, right? Like, no, there's no. Because I was. And look, I was doing a pre seed round. It was like my company's investors, investors and other shows, members of the community, everybody thrown in, you know, $10,000, $25,000, whatever it is to get me to a little over a half million dollars, right? To get me through this year. Because I'm really in proof of concept mode right now, right? The March 17, it's like, okay, there's no money coming, right? I am recapitalizing my business at the worst possible moment in time. My writers, who I were no longer writing because they weren't getting paid, right? So I sat there for a week, like I think a lot of people did, and panic isn't the right word because that really wasn't a week of panic. It was a week of you wake up every day thinking you had a plan and then by the end of the day you're like, well, that didn't happen, right? To the basics of like, I didn't shower today. Like, just nothing happened the way you wanted to plan it that week, right? But what I recognized at that moment in time was that to your point, we have a human need to get together and we're going to be robbed of it for quite some time. And I have this technology that allows people to come together to do an immersive experience, right? I needed to start building content. And so what I've. And then the second part of it is like, the only thing that's going to get me through this is to keep working because I have to Come. Because if I can produce something reasonably smart and good on the other side of this, then it should, logically speaking, lead me back on my path of finding and solidifying investment into this technology company. Because the idea is that I'm creating an immersive experience for Live Stage in a scalable model that anyone can do these shows if they license the content and the tech.

Right.

And it can be done anywhere. And that was building a content library in order to put this idea in the world and put this technology out in the world of saying, here's a really simple, straightforward way for your consumers to have real time interaction with you, the stage or the. Or the show or the event.

Right.

Without it costing the consumers anything and costing the licensor very little to execute.

Right.

Because like, you want to. I want to put a product that everybody would use.

Right.

Makes sense.

And so now what we're doing.

After.

That week of that, I sat down and I turned to my husband. I said, well, we have no money or we have enough money to get through this time period, but I can't hire writers. We're going to write the first one and see what happens. And so we called our friends together and said, let's just start doing this and I'll pay you as much as I can afford and let's see what this thing is. And so for the last two weeks, Jacob and I have just been killing ourselves every day, turning ourselves into writers, which we are avid consumers of entertainment and we could take anyone down about structure. Right. But having to do it ourselves is.

A whole new world.

And we're now starting to put these together. And so what's really the interesting thing as I'm coming into this week is we had another read through today and like, kind of figured out one of the. Some of the big problems with the script that we're going back, but recreating and creating an environment for consumers to come in and enjoy this experience.

Right.

Through Zoom, which is what everybody is using right now, right?

About remotely.

Yeah. I mean, like, it blows your mind. Well, Zoom. The reason why Zoom works is it allows me to control a lot of variables for the consumer experience. And that's what you need.

Right.

So you think about going into a theater, you don't think about all the variables that are in control around you, but like all the signage to the ushers, handing a program to direct you to the seat, to tell you to be quiet, telling you to turn on your phone. Like, those are all variables of the theater controls I have to create from Scratch a series of variables to create a consumer experience that's never quite been done like this before. And it's similar to the webinar feature of what Zoom does. Does. And that's as far as we've kind of gotten close enough. That's cool.

Yeah.

At least that's a great idea. Yeah, I love that.

Right.

And you could do something fun, right? Yeah.

And, and I think it could be something that leads people back into the theater as well as you start connecting and they get exposure and they see the concept. I think it's a, It's a, It's a great idea. So, I mean, I love the, the deep dive. I think it's great. I, I. You know, we're working on a small business pocket guide right about right now. I'm sure you could tell us a lot about that as well. It's always interesting stories, but, But I do want to ask you one of our questions that we ask every guest that comes on the show. You know, we're really big fans of mistakes here. You know, we kind of consider them the foundation of, of our businesses as we, as we learn and they teach us so much. And looking back, you know, what would you say is one of the best. And I say that in quotes. Mistakes, the one that stuck with you and taught you the most as you built your business over the years.

Years. This is a rough one.

Right?

Because this is, this is, this is.

How we ask it.

Right.

This is a rough one. You can't have your head in the sand about everything, about things that are happening in your business. Meaning, like, you can trust and love your partners, but you have to keep your eyes open. And this is true in anything. You have to keep your eyes open and make sure that everybody's doing their job. Job.

Right.

And there's nothing you. And then you have to take emotion and you have to take stress and have to take everything out of it to say, hey, this job. This job needs to get done. And that same thing. The same thing is true for me, which I think one of the failings in my previous partnership was that I don't think that. I think that he and I were not honest with. Well, we were. We were certainly honest with each other, but it's like, it's like that honest enough standpoint of, of, you know, did we truly hold the other person accountable?

Right.

Throughout. Throughout the course of the partnership? And I would say we probably didn't enough.

And so, and is that harder with creative types, or do you think that's just.

Yeah, Yeah. I mean, you, like, there is a part like you just, you. You have enough on your plate. You want to believe and you want to know that you're the other. The other. That everybody else is doing what they need to be doing.

Right? Right.

And, you know, but that's also, you know, we. Five years, right? It's a good, good length of time to happen.

Right?

And so, you know, after five years in any relationship, you wake up one day and you're like, oh, this isn't working. And, like. And it hasn't been working. And John and I both had that same realization of saying, oh, this hasn't been working at all this year, right? Like, oh, forget it. Like, we need to stop doing it.

You came to the realization kind of together, and, you know, that at least it, you know, comes up, you know, that way. So I think that's cool. So I also want to ask you, you know, I know there's a lot of aspiring people out there that would love to be in a business that, such as yours, that's involved in theater and creatives. And, you know, it's got to be extremely fulfilling. I think it's got to be extremely frustrating as well. But that's the, you know, the beauty of small business. If there's, you know, somebody listening out there, that's really just a God, I want to be in this business. What advice would you give them. Them that, you know, to kind of make. To get themselves going.

So I'm going to come to come at that question from a. From a slightly different angle, right? Which is. Which is one of the things I despise about my business, right, Is that we are very bad about selling the success of our business to the outside world, right. And we live in a bubble, right? We like Broadway, off Broadway theater. It is a bubble in New York, right. And so the communication to the other, other worlds, even in the city of New York, is really limited, right? And. And you constantly hear repeated, well, don't go into theater if you don't want to make any money.

Right.

And the truth is, that's simply not true. I mean, it is a perception of actors, not of the business. People are working in the business, right? You can actually make a very good living in commercial theater and even in nonprofit theater at certain levels of it, which is like, the talent that exists in our business is huge, but there's this perception that we're all poor and broke, which isn't true. That kind of robs us of a number of other talent that could come in. So you know, I think that starting salaries within our business are way lower than they'd be anywhere else, just as a function of it. But as you start climbing up the ladder, it gets better and better and better at a faster rate.

Right.

And so I really say to people coming in, because like, ignore that you have to pay your dues really hard in your 20s, like a really hard paid dues paying in your 20s. But if you're good and you're competent and you're nice and you're trustworthy, the opportunities open up. But you just have to barrel through that time period. That's what I think. It makes it hard, which is like the cost of entry to our business is high because you're, you have to figure out in a different way than you would if you were, you know, starting at JP Morgan Chase. You know, sure. In their investment.

Right.

Coming out, coming out of college, a.

Lot of that's the same. You're right. It is fundamentally different. But there are similar functions that need to happen, right? You need to, you need to learn how to network with people. You need to learn how to work together with people and not have people think you're a jerk. And you know, like, you need, like you said, you need to be trustworthy and you need to prove that you are all these things. And the way that you do that is by showing up and, and being that person and doing all those, all of those things long enough that now you can actually start to leverage your name for yourself. And in that sense, I think it is similar to, you know, other businesses. But you're right, the starting salaries here are the key that, the key differentiator for sure.

Yeah, yeah, it makes it, it makes it tough to start out, right. But like, there's lots of opportunity. I think the, I think the other hard thing to like for me at this point in my life, which is we train artists and we train how to think an artist, how to interact artists. We're really bad about training business people, right. And there are, there aren't that many people in our industry who get that good on the job. Training, training, you know, and so for, as an entrepreneur, as a producer and entrepreneur and I came up in sales and marketing and I worked all over the place. Like the hardest thing for me in the last five years is like learning how to build a business. And we didn't unfortunately do it successfully, but we did it pretty well for a while. But it was, you know, what is our first venture out of the gate, you know, as entrepreneurs in this regard. It's like, gosh, we sure made a lot of mistakes, and there was just a lack of preparation and education. Our students. Like, there were mistakes that should have been wholly avoided that we just blundered into.

We all have that experience. I mean, that's great. Well, you know, it's fascinating, and I really appreciate you coming on the show, sharing your story. I really look forward to connecting with you down the road, seeing how things are going with your new venture. What's the best way for our listeners to connect with you and to learn more about gameotics?

Tilted Windmills, my website for the time being. Tilted windmills.net gamiotics.com you can get to me there. The brand name of the experience I'm building, the radio plays I'm definitely doing right now. They're called Seize the Choice, and that will probably continue into live theatrical. So if you want to be an audience member as we keep doing these things, go to seize the choice.com and you can sign up to be in our test audiences and people. I launched it today, so people are starting to sign up now.

Wow.

I cannot promise that any of these shows that we are running right now are any good. I can't.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, that's great. Yeah. There's no. There's no promises. It's a. You know, it's.

It's a.

It's a journey.

Right.

So. And then we'll also put a link to your LinkedIn profile in the. In the show notes. You know, it's. It's. It's fascinating. And again, I. You know, we really appreciate it. I've learned a lot. I'm sure Dave has. It's a totally different kind of business that we've, you know, been involved in here on the show, and I look forward to keeping up to date with you and seeing how things are going. And thank you again, David.

Thank you, guys. Thank you so much.

You bet.

That was awesome, man. You know?

Yeah.

That whole thing, we sort of glossed over it because we got into so many other things. But at the beginning of the episode, he talked about all the different facets of all of his different revenue stacks, we'll call them. Yeah, right.

I love that. Yeah.

And that's how you make money, right?

You.

You find a core business, and then what can you do this to? Surround it. And with him, it's rights. And, you know, he's producing it this way and that way, and he's got it on itunes, and he's got it here and there, and you got to.

Pay for the script and do this and do that. I mean, it's. It's phenomenal. Yeah. The licensing stuff and, you know, we talk about that a lot on the show. Different ways, different revenue streams. But, you know, my naivete, Tay, and not knowing anything about that theatrical, you know, business, then listening to that, I'm just like, oh, it works there, too.

Yeah, of course. Of course. It's the same. Yeah. Fantastic. Yep. It's great. It's good stuff.

So it's cool.

I'm.

I. I learned a lot. Yeah, it's great. You know, it's. It's going to be interesting to see where they go with gameotics, and I think it's going to be great. Hey, before we go, I do want to thank everybody for posting the reviews. We talk about them a lot on the show and how they're so important for the. Our success. If you want to hear us each week, you know, and we've posted some other ones up there on Facebook recently that just came in. We really appreciate it. You can leave one for us at businessshow Co Reviews or wherever you listen to the show. Yeah. Awesome. And then lastly, again, some great support. Thank you for purchasing our Small Business Pocket Guide, the first one that we've released. This guide is all about mistakes and why we think they're the foundation of your small business. And we released the paperback version later or, yeah. Late last week, and that's selling as well now, so it's great. You can learn more at BusinessShow Co Guides.

It's fun stuff. I'm really excited about these guides. Yeah. And I'm like, I'm excited about the one that we've got out, and I'm also excited about the next one that we're doing. So. Yep.

Yeah, we're making great progress and we're going to announce that here in the next couple of weeks.

I think so. I think so. Cool. All right, folks, thank you so much for listening. Thanks for your reviews. Thanks for checking out our Pocket Guides and keep living that charmed life. See you next week.