0469 | David Packouz

David.

I'm David Packhouse and I'm the CEO of Singular Sound. And you are listening to EA Interviews.

EA interviews, episode 469 inspiration, transformation, success stories and the imperfect action round. Seven days a week, join Mario Ficcini for today's expert Authority effect interview. Overcoming adversity, creating products, creating a new business, redefining your life. There are so many aspects to entrepreneurial, spiritual, to creating a business, to entrepreneurial ism. Whatever you want, want to call it. How do you overcome these? How do you say, you know what, I had this bad business deal, I want to start this new product, no one believes in me, I need to fundraise money, I need to do all this stuff. I know I've encountered it and I'm sure you have too, but probably not on the level that David Packhouse has. You may have seen him in the movie War Dogs. Miles Teller's character was based off of him real life story. And I think it's fascinating what he has done to the highest levels before, during and after everything he's done. And I really want to unpack. How do you go from this to that? Because I know people that well, I had this background in college, but I'm an engineer and now I can't be creative or I was a creative and I can't be an engineer. And it's like you can reinvent and reframe at any point in time. And that's why I'm excited to have him on the show today. And we're going to dive into this and more right after we thank our sponsor. Every business needs a book, including yours. And that's why I'm launching my new book to help you regardless of where you think your current writing abilities are. Visit eapublishingmethodbook.com today to learn the seven steps to publish and promote your nonfiction, lead and profit generating business book in eight weeks. Once again, that's EA publishingmethodbook.com Here he is, ladies and gentlemen, David Packhouse. David, how are you feeling today?

I'm doing great, thank you.

You have such.

Illustrious background. I want to know how did you go from international arms dealer to creating your singular sound?

So it has been quite a varied career path, I guess you could say the way I went from, from being an international arms dealer to creating my current company, Singular Sound, which we make equipment for musicians, innovative tech products for musicians.

The beatbody, right?

Yes, correct, the beat buddy. Which is uh, which you had the idea of. Yes, I had the idea of it while I was under house arrest for the fallout of the arms dealing.

Situation. Yes, exactly. So at the end of. So for those who've seen the movie War Dogs, at the end of the movie, I get in a little bit of legal trouble. I got very lucky in the sense that I avoided prison. So that was a huge. A huge relief in my life. But I did get sentenced to seven months of house arrest, which, you know, compared to prison is. Is nothing. But I was stuck at home. And I've always been a guitar player. I've played guitar since I was 15. And so, yeah, so I was using, you know, guitar to pass the time and playing a lot of guitar. And of course, I missed playing with other musicians, especially drummers, because the drums gives the music the energy that you dance to the music. So of course, no drummer is going to bring his whole drum set over my house. And even if he did, I was living in an apartment. It would have woken up the entire apartment building. So. And I couldn't leave my house to go to the studio. So I bought a drum machine, which, for those who don't know is an electronic device, goes on your table, has a lot of buttons on it. Each button makes a different drum sound. You can make beats on it, and then it plays it back in a loop. And so I bought that so I could. Could make some beats and play along to the beats on the drum machine. And of course, every time we wanted the beat to change because the beat doesn't do the same thing throughout the whole song. You know, it might be softer on the verse, harder on the chorus. I'd have to stop playing my guitar, press a button on the machine and on the drum machine and to change the beat and then go back to playing my guitar. And it interrupted the flow of the music. And I thought, this is creative noises. Exactly. And. And so I wanted a drum machine that I could operate hands free, something that I didn't have to press a button on it. So there's these things called guitar pedals that are mainly used as. As sound effects to change the sound of your guitar. So I realized if I could put a drum machine inside a guitar pedal, it'd be something that I could operate hands free. So that was the initial idea. It's called the beat, buddy. Got it right here for the people who are watching the video version of this podcast. And. Yeah, there we go. And it's got, like, a pedal that you could press with your foot, and it's got a screen that could show. Shows you what part of the song you're in. And when you tap the pedal, it does a drum fill.

And when you hold the pedal down, it'll do a transition. So it goes from like part one to part two. So you can go back and forth between verse and chorus as well as some additional features. I mean, I'm not going to get into every single feature, but you can make your own beats, put it on there, make your own drum sets. You can change the drum set so you could play like, like a heavy metal beat on like hand drums or jazz and then switch it on an electronic drum set.

So, so when I was in, I was in band choir, drama.

Really creative with, with that I was.

In band choir and drama and jazz was definitely different than, you know, marching season. You know, we always love the drum line coming out, you know, setting the tone for the show and everything. But there's so many different types of music. And I actually, I got back into it recently.

I play sax, piano. I got this and I was like, you know, I don't want, just.

Be.

Able to play, I want to be able to hit the drum pads too. Because it's like, you know, that sets the tone for everything. But you, you can be standing there and just tap it with your foot, you're saying. And it switches it.

Exactly, exactly. So the idea is that you're playing your guitar, you're singing. I'm a singer songwriter, so I do like little shows, you know, little coffee house shows. And it's just me. And it's very, as any musician knows, very difficult to get other musicians to play with on a consistent, regular basis, particularly drummers, because they have much equipment that they have to lug around. And a lot of places like coffee shops, small places, you might do a single one man show, they, they don't even have space for a drum set. So having the ability, having the beat buddy, which is your little hands free drum machine to accompany you and to be able to control it live. And that's the key because some people just play like a backing track of drums and play along to it and that works. But then you're locked into the pattern of, of the backing track that you're playing. So if the, if the, if the, if the crowd is really feeling your song and you want to extend like the solo section or, or you know, do another repeat of the chorus or something. You can't do that if you're playing to a backing track. But with the beat buddy you can because it's. You have live control, hands free. So you have that flexibility to Improvise on the fly.

And correct me if I'm wrong, but you didn't just start this cool company. You have seven or eight different products. This is one of them, right?

Yes, yes. Correct. Yes. So this was the first product and we came out with six additional products after this one. All music related.

And they, they came out from different needs in, in the space.

The simplest product we had was I was playing a show where I had like seven because I use a lot of effects and I, I'm a singer and I have effects on my guitar and my voice. And so I had like seven different cables and so it was taking me fore wrap up all these cables and so I created a product called Cablee. It's like C, A, B, L, I and where it's just a wheel and you just wind up your cables on it and it's makes putting your cables away a cinch. Takes like five seconds instead of two minutes.

So you've never been short of creativity. It sounds like whether it's business A or your new business. You had mentioned. Yeah, you started playing guitar when you were 15. How did you. What, what inspired you to start at that time in your life?

I started playing guitar when I was 15.

Actually. What inspired me to, to really play guitar was Nirvana's song.

Smells Like Teen Spirit. Yes, it was. Got that like that guitar riff in the beginning and then like, you know, the, the drums come in and then the guitar gets all distorted and it gets super intense. And as a 15 year old boy, you know that, that just like it just got me so riled up and I just thought that was like the coolest sounding thing ever and I just had to learn how to play that and so I actually had a good time. Bulls on parade but balls on. Bulls on parade.

Bulls on parade. Rage against the Machine.

Yeah, they're. They're very good. I never got into Rage. I mean I like Rage against the Machine and a lot of my friends, it's like their fav. I personally never got into them because it's more of a rap thing and I'm more of a singer than a rapper.

Okay, so there's that riff though in the song.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, they're super intense. I mean Rage against the Machine doesn't. Doesn't get more intense than Rage. For sure. Yeah, they're amazing. Yeah.

Wow. Yeah. Early to mid-90s. Good times. Like when music was.

Yeah, still music.

I love when people say that.

I'm like, should I behave? I'm like, well, yeah, it's my Show. So.

No, yeah, you could say whatever you.

Want and as can you.

Yeah, well, thank you. I appreciate that.

Yeah, we're. We're not on anyone's playground here except our own.

Yeah.

So what I'm hearing a lot of, you know, obviously we touched on the movie and that was so completely different. Let's go back to that for a second. How did you go. How. How the heck did you get into that? Like, you, you were into. So you were 15, you like the music, singer, songwriter you're playing. And if I recall, because I pay attention to the details, the movie said you're the same age, but you weren't. You're four years older.

Correct. That's true.

19 to 22.

So at. When I started, when I got into the arms dealing. Dealing business, I was actually 23 and Ephraim was 19 when. When we started working.

So this was so a good portion after the music and everything.

Yeah, well, when we started, I was in college, I was studying chemistry and just because, you know, I've always been good at math and science and I was told that getting a science degree is a Rock Sol thing for your career prospects. So studying chemistry and.

Doing music on the side, because that's what I love to do. And I also had a few other side businesses because I've always been a hustler, you know, ever since I was a kid, always been hustling to do various businesses. And.

Then when we bumped into each other, hadn't seen him in a few years. He had gone off to his uncle when he had been kicked out of high school for smoking weed. And so they sent him off to. To his uncle in LA to work for his uncle. And his uncle taught him the government contracting business and the gun business. And so that's how he got into it. And then they had a falling out. And he came back to Miami when he was 18, started his own business. And about a little bit less than a year after he had been back in Miami is when we bumped into each other. I hadn't seen him in a few years and he asked me, you know, what I was doing, and I told him about my various side hustle businesses. I was importing towels and, and bed sheets from Pakistan and selling them to. To nursing homes and to hospitals, which. That makes it into the movie. Of course. They changed. They changed it.

They changed when you're on the phone and.

Yeah, and.

And she's going. I thought you meant bed pillowcases or something.

Yeah, exact bed sheets, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. So that part is true. I was selling bed sheets and. And towels.

And not in the same way they portray in the movie. I was doing just selling wholesale to distributors and to large hospital chains.

Anything on Amazon at that time?

Fba, not on Amazon, but I was selling SD cards on. On ebay. So that was. Yeah, that was a good business. I bought them in bulk in China and was selling them in on, you know, by ones and twosies on ebay. And that was a great business because it was super easy to ship. SD cards are tiny. Yeah. So. Yeah, exactly. But valuable.

Don't need to repack anything.

Exactly. Just send it in a letter. So very easy to ship. So, yes, I had that as an additional side business. And so I told him about these businesses, and he was like, oh, you know, that's similar kind of work to what I'm doing. I, you know, look overseas for suppliers. I, you know, find the best price. I try to arrange the best shipping logistics, work with, you know, figure out what the import and export restrictions are and, you know, get licensing and all that. And, you know, so it's like we're more or less doing the same work. But I bet I'm making way more money than you, so you should come and work with me. I need a guy who I can trust, who's smart, who's motivated. So why don't you come work with me, and we'll make a lot more money together. So I asked him. I'm like, well, how much money have you made? And he goes to me. He's like, well, I'm gonna tell you, but know to inspire you, not. Not because I'm showing off or anything. And he's like, well, you know, he opened up his. His computer and he showed me. He logged into his bank account, and he had $1.8 million in his bank account in cash. And he was 18 years old at the time. So I was like, wow, this guy.

It's like a hundred grand a year.

Yeah, well, yeah, for his life. Yeah. But he had only started working about a year before this, so I knew he had made that money in the last year or so. And he, you know, his parents didn't give him that money. I knew that. I knew his family, so.

So I knew that he had made that money himself. And so I realized, well, you know, he knows this business really well, and I could learn a lot. And he's doing a lot better in business than I am, that's for sure. Not that I was doing badly, but nothing to this level. And so I Was like, yeah, I'm in. And in my mind, I. You know, it wasn't something that I was planning on doing as a career. It was something that I figured was an opportunity to make a decent amount of money relatively quickly to compare to my other opportunities. And my dream was always to be able to fund my own music career. To. I've always, I think, as every. Every young man wants to be a rock star. So that was the. That was the dream that I was going to make, you know, a decent amount of money and then use that to what was a music career.

What was a decent amount to you at that age?

At that age, I was thinking 5, 10 million dollars, and I'd be set. 5 million. I'd probably quit and start, you know, put like 1 million into promotion of my music business and invest the rest of it in. In some.

You know, safe kind of way. So that was. That was my plan. I figured with a million dollars behind you, you could give the music career a real shot. It's a decent amount of promo you could buy for that.

So. Have you always been good with math numbers? Was it something you noticed early on, or is it just something that was like a high school thing?

I've always been good at math, relatively. I mean, obviously I'm terrible at math compared to some people, but compared to the rest of my class, I've always been decent at math and science. Something that's always interested me. I've always been kind of a nerd.

When. When I was a kid and all, you know, during recess time, all the other kids would, like, play sports, play basketball, and I would always be reading on the playground, on the side of the playground. My sci fi book. I loved sci fi as a kid, so I was always reading that. And so I guess it just kind of appealed to me more.

I can totally relate to that. This is actually my calculator from 8th grade that I learned to program.

Wow. Amazing.

I've liked reading so much, I actually wrote my own book and started publishing company. So.

Amazing. Yeah.

I even now I throw trash in the basket and it might hit one out of ten times, so.

Right. Yeah. So you made the right career choice.

Yeah, for me. And when I was in high school, it was. I knew, I loved. I guess I could just say this, and I was like, I'm either going to have a real expensive hobby or a successful company, and I chose the latter. I knew I wasn't going to stop, though. And I'm hearing a lot of similarities here, because.

You'Re in two different fields. Sometimes people go from engineering to aerospace engineering. And you clearly have done a 180 successfully. Congrats on that.

Well, thank you. Thank you. I appreciate it.

But I am hearing a lot of parallels. And when you said 15, I was like, well, this took place here and then after. And you went right back to, you know, music and everything. And I can see why. Like I said, band, choir, drama, sax, piano. It's fun, right?

Yeah.

That's why I got this recently. I'm like, what more could I be doing? And I go, what do I really like? And I'm just doubling and tripling down on all the stuff that I've always loved. Music's one of them. Videos, another talking. Yeah, that was always fun in third grade. But yeah, so you're, You're. You get into this and.

I just want everyone to know I'm hearing the parallels of. You were creative hustler. I sold VHS tapes out of my locker. I would get Blockbuster gift cards for birthdays, Christmas, all the occasions. And you want to talk about profit margin. No money up front. Buy them and watch them. They're already used. And then resell them for twice as much as they were.

Amazing. Yeah. Great business. Great business.

So I never got into, like, I'm gonna buy stuff from China and this and that, but I was always finding stuff locally. How did you find stuff from China at that age and time frame when. I mean, we're talking a while ago and there wasn't. I don't think AliExpress existed.

No, there. I don't believe it did. But there were other similar things to it. There's, I think, a website called madeinchina.com or something.

No kidding.

Yeah. And that was kind of like the pre. Like the before Ali. Alibaba.

Website. And so it's just really Google, you know, like. Like, Just Google where, you know, SD cards in bulk, SD card manufacturer. And then you just go down the list of results and go down the rabbit holes. You go down while doing web searches and.

You just open up new tabs. I don't even think they had tabs back then, but browsers. Exactly. New windows. And create a spreadsheet of. Of the various suppliers and you know what. What the prices they're offering and. And you find your best suppliers that way.

And we're still talking about the SD cards.

Yes, Well, I mean, that works for any. Any search of suppliers. So you could. It works for SD cards, it works for bed sheets, it works for arms dealing. It's more or less the same Process.

And I'm teasing a little bit here because I'm like, I'm literally thinking of a dozen people that we talk spreadsheets and metrics and all this in business. It doesn't really matter if you're talking food, cars, products, services, or bullets. And it sounds very similar. So you never had a penchant for. I don't want to look up spreadsheets. I don't want to do the details because some people have a real apprehension about like, just numbers and data and stuff. So whether it's actual numbers and profit margins and bookkeeping, you just have no problem searching stuff out, it sounds like.

Yeah, I mean, I think it's all a matter of motivation. If you think that there's, there's a real opportunity there, then you'll go through the slog and, and do the, the. Not the. The stuff that is not so fun to do. And because the, the. The opportunity is what drives you. So I never had a problem doing it. Obviously it's not my most favorite thing in the world to do. I don't think it's. I'm not one of those people who lives off of spreadsheets, who finds joy in spreadsheets. I just find it useful. But I find the music job. Exactly. Exactly. I guess you're exactly like me then. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

It's there. There's so many ways I could take this. So what. Here's what I want to do. Just so we're on the same page too. I want to keep talking about the story and the parallels of both in the timelines, but I want to jump in with. For everyone listening, regardless of what business they get into in spreadsheets and the details, what would you say you have to have if you want a business to succeed? Because again, I'm seeing so many parallels with both your businesses. What do you really think made you so successful with A and B?

I think it's mainly the ability to look at.

What is real, not to trick yourself and not to have wishful thinking. So you have to think, well, okay, I think that there's an opportunity here. What's. How do I distinguish whether it's a real opportunity versus something that I just kind of hope it's true? So you try to verify as much of your. Your theories and ideas as possible. So, for example, when.

And when I thought of the bebody, I thought, man, this is going to be such a great product. If I manage to pull this off and make it in a. In a economical, in a way that could be afforded to, by people to buy. But you know, I thought it was a brilliant idea, but I didn't know if, if anyone else thought so. So I started asking my friends, you know, do you if, well, first of all, have you seen anything like this? And they're like, I've never seen anything like that, but that sounds really cool. I would get one for myself and then I asked literally, would you pay for it? Yeah. And, and I'd ask them like, well, how much would you be willing to pay for something like this? And I got a huge range of responses. Some people said, oh, I wouldn't pay more than 99 bucks. And another, some other people said, oh, I think that's definitely worth at least a thousand. So it was just an enormous range. And so I asked to, I made sure to ask quite a few people to get a lot more data points. And I realized with enough data you can kind of see clusters. And that's what really, that's how the world is. Because the world isn't defined by a single person's opinion. It's defined by the aggregate of the crowd, by the aggregate of the market. And so. And you only get that information by getting a lot of data points. So I realized after I asked like 20, 30 people about what they would be willing to pay, that, that they were willing, that they all kind of clustered in the several hundred dollars range, which I thought was probably doable, but I didn't know for sure. So I had to hire an electrical engineering firm to do an analysis on the idea and tell me what they think they could build it for what it would cost to manufacture. And then they came back, said, yeah, you know, we could probably make it so you could sell it at this price point. And then.

You know, I was willing to, to pretty much bet my life savings at the time on it, which is what I did to have it built. So it was only after I got as much information outside of my own head that I could, that I felt comfortable that I was basing my decisions on some, some real world data, some real evidence, rather than just, you know, I think I have a very strong opinion about this thing. So I think that that's critical because the, you know, the, the reality of it is that your business is gonna succeed or fail based on the facts on the ground. Right? Not. Doesn't matter how much of a, you know, Steve Jobs is famous for his reality distortion field. And that may work in a marketing sense, but only to a certain degree. Right? I mean, he.

I was actually just thinking of when they built the first prototype, and he's like, we need a fan to be quiet, like silent. And he's like, they take up space and all that. And I was gonna ask you, when you hired this electric electrical engineering firm, did you have any like, did you have to give them any pushback where they go, well, we can do this, this, this and this. And you're like, but I want that too, or was everything actually pretty good doable?

Oh, I mean, there was a huge amount of back and forth in the whole design process at first, actually, they thought it was going to cost a lot more to build than it ended up costing. I was very lucky because at first they thought it was going to be so expensive that, that I probably wouldn't have sold many of them.

But then I guess wholesale695, you're not going to be selling them for less.

Yeah, exactly. So there's definitely a limit in the market for how much people are willing to spend on a product. Product, even if it's really good. I mean, if something's really good, if it's very expensive, there will be always be some people who buy it, but not necessarily enough to support it. So it really depends on, on how many you need to sell and what kind of profits you need to. To make back the, the engineering costs.

But I think a lot of people, they see these examples of like Starbucks or Rolls Royce or whoever, and they go, oh, mine is so unique and all of this that they, they treat it like a veblen good, but don't realize that it's still really 80, 90% on the utility of it and if it's not there.

Right, right, exactly.

You know, you know, all my stuff is special too, but yeah, that's to me, you know.

Right, right. Yeah, there's. It's always a mixture of those things because there's some people who are going to buy it for the brand, for the image, you know, like a luxury good item. And people are just spending money on the. On.

But for something that is generally they're higher quality. Yeah, exactly. But not, I don't know, 15 times more. But exactly that's what I was going to say. Not necessarily the amount of times more that the price would indicate, but I knew that for this product, for the Beat Buddy, it was all in the, in the functionality. It either functioned well or it didn't. So now, because it. There was nothing else like it on the market, it's still a question of what the price point should be. Because yes, there are drum machines and yes, there are guitar pedals, but there are no guitar pedal drum machine hybrids out there. So what are people willing to pay for it? And there was a huge range, as I mentioned before, and that's why I had to ask so many people in order to come to the right price point. But, but to go back to what we were talking about before, even the experts just don't necessarily get things right. Because my engineering team gave me an estimate that was quite high. And then when I went to the manufacturer, they were like, oh, yeah, we could save money here, here and here and here. We just need to redesign these, these aspects and we could, you know, not. We can get the price down. They got the price down to like almost 50%, which was incredible. And it usually, it goes the other way, I'll say. And that's what I've noticed with my other, the other products that I've developed since then.

Instead of floss, you said.

Yeah, so that's, so that's one of what, that's. Our newest product is Instafloss, which is our, our first product, actually have it right here.

This is the world's first flossing water flossing device that will floss all of your teeth for you in 10 seconds. You can check it out@instafloss.com like Instagram, but flossing and the way it works.

Is all of them in 10.

Yes, I'm sorry, you said all of.

Them in 10 seconds.

In 10 seconds. All of your teeth in 10 seconds. And the way it works is it has 12 water jets.

Configured in this H shape manifold and you just stick the thing, you bite onto it and, and it twists so you could just sweep it across your teeth so you can go like that.

Wow.

And that's it. And it gets both the top and bottom rows of teeth, both the outside and the inside, because. So it shoots water from, from both directions. So that is waste.

So you just, you love inventing stuff.

Yes, I, I do love inventing stuff. Yes.

This looks phenomenal. And I'm actually thinking of someone right now that I'm going to tell about it.

Oh, please do.

Actually, a few of them. That dental industry.

Amazing people. Anyway, yeah, so this is my newest baby. Yeah. So I created this with my brother Ellie. And this is our latest product, our first non musical product. So that's very exciting because the music industry, though, it is a passion industry and a lot of fun and I get to meet super cool people and a lot of fun to build it, but it is a niche industry. There's only like maybe 1% of the population who would actually be interested in buying a hands free drum machine.

So 1% of 7 billion is still quite a bit.

Oh yes, I'm not complaining. We've done very, very well with singular sound and we've sold many, many beat buddies and as well as our other products. But to think of an idea that is applicable to everyone is a much more exciting thing because then it's 100 of the population instead of 1. So everyone has teeth by and large and everyone should be flossing. So. And almost everyone hates flossing. So that is why we're, we got really excited when we came up with the idea for the instafloss because it takes the pain points away from flossing quite literally. It's makes it non painful so it's, it doesn't hurt your gums like with string, especially if you haven't flossed in a while. And it's also way faster. It's like 10 seconds instead of two minutes. Yeah.

When you said 10 seconds I was like, it sounded cool and I wanted to ask you about it, saving it for the show. But yeah, I just, just pull it up here and it's impressive. Very impressive. So let me ask you from an inventor standpoint.

Yes.

You got arms dealing, you got music, you have dental.

Yeah.

What do you feel is the common thread of going.

I can tackle all these industries and I know there's even more. What do you feel your common thread is? Because this isn't necessarily just numbers and you know, you're playing to your strength. But the inventing, you know, you have the people who see the vision and don't. And that's why I was asking about the electrical. Because it's like, right, there's that quote. It's not possible until it is. And so many people.

Yeah.

Are going, well, you can't run the mile in under four minutes. You know, who is it? Roger Bannister. And there's scientists and doctors going, you'll literally tear the muscles, your heart will explode. And all this stuff until he did. And now it's like totally out the door. I love that. So tell me what you feel your core contributes to all of this. Because most people give up. Most. I mean there's 58 different ways that you could say, well, you could have stopped here, here, here, gave up, went up to this or just stopped inventing stuff. Why do you still keep doing it?

Well, I, I truly love the creative process of it. It and I love solving problems. So I have, you know, when I, when I come across something that annoys me, I just start imagining what could fix this.

And I think that like current albums that people are dropping.

I don't, I don't criticize people's art. That's, that's, that's something that is, if you make your art, that is your art and you know, not something that I'm going to fix now. I may remix the art and make something different and whether it's better or, or worse is, is someone else's opinion. Right. That's, that's a matter of taste. But as far as I love how.

Tactful you are, you're calling it art, but.

Please continue. Well, this is, this is your show. You could be non tactful, but no, I, I, I do have, I have a respect for anyone who actually makes art, even if I don't like it because a lot of people don't make anything. And. Yeah. So, you know, just the fact that you make anything, even if it's not necessarily good, you know, I think is something to be commended. And, and also most artists, most great artists of all types, you know, they don't start making masterpieces, right. You start making stuff that's kind of mediocre and derivative and then you work on your own, own particular brand. And so I would never criticize, you know, someone's art, at least, at least not publicly. Right.

I'm teasing to an extent. But the reality is you're absolutely right. Most people never do anything. And I think it's why I like talking about this because so many people are like, wow, look at them, look at her, look at him and all this. And when you break it down, it's like you did the same thing here. You did the same thing here, here, here, here. Oh, did you fail at any point in this process? Yeah, hundreds of times. And then you, you know that overnight success, it just takes that 20 years.

Exactly. Famous saying, it took 20 years to be an overnight success. Yeah. So, yeah, I would say that the common thread would be for me would be in an annoyance set problems and a.

I would say it's more of a faith that there can be solutions. And, and maybe I don't like, maybe it comes from, you know, my childhood love of sci fi, which is always trying to imagine what's coming next and what's, you know, would be an amazing thing to build and, and different ways of doing things. And I'm sure that has a lot to do with it, but I think it is also a huge element is that I'm an eternal optimist. Like even when things are going really, really bad and I've gone through some really bad times in my life, you know, even when I was looking at possibly spending the rest of my life in prison, I was still an optimist. I thought, well, you know, it's gonna work out one way or another.

What were you thinking about at that point? I mean, thinking, well, I still have my health, you know, what did you focus on as that, okay, here's why.

It'S still good, right? Well, I mean, at the time I was most stressed out because my daughter had just been born. She was actually about a year old and, and I was looking at decades in prison possibly. And I was thinking to myself, man, I'm gon like, miss my daughter growing up. And you know, I mean, I'm gonna miss my, I'm gonna miss not only my life, but also her life. And that's gonna, you know, that was one of the most painful things that I could think of.

But my dad used to love saying he, my dad was also a, a huge optimist. And, and I think that, you know, that rubbed off on me. He liked to say that and, and.

And such a him thing kind of thing to say. But he said that worry is interest paid on a debt that often never comes due.

So it's like if the bad thing is going to happen, it's going to happen. Right? Worrying about it is just adding additional suffering on top. So it's not to say you should stick your head in the sand and ignore bad possibilities and pretend like it's not there, but like beating yourself up over it and stressing yourself constantly is not helping you solve that problem. So now of course that's easier said than done. Much easier to say, ah, don't worry about it when you know your life's on the line or your business is on the line or something. So it's not like, it's not like it's easy, but I think the most important thing is to take out the stressful emotion from it. Like you have to acknowledge, acknowledge that the, that the negative possibilities are there. But, but acknowledge that being emotionally incapacitated from it is also not helpful in addressing that negative possibility. So being able to separate those things out from yourself is a process and it's a skill that you need to work on and it's something that nobody does perfectly. And it's just like any emotional regulation. You have days that you're like, oh crap, I'm feeling, feeling Depressed, I'm feeling angry, I'm feeling, you know, hopeless. You know, you have to acknowledge that and think, well, how can I turn this around?

Yeah, how can you still move through it? Because.

Exactly.

I feel some people, they get so stressed out once they feel calm, they think they solved the problem. I love that you said that. Address that. It's still there because you still like if you have to fulfill on something, you still owe that. You committed to it. You promised on it. Okay, good. You're not upset, but you still have to deliver.

And then on the flip side, there's people who are just so carefree.

Worry'S not their problem. But I think reality is.

I don't know how else to say. And honestly I think I lean towards it. You made the comment about Steve Jobs and I'm like, yeah, I actually wrote a poem called welcome to my Delusion. I mean that's pretty apparent whether you know it or not. But it's like, yeah, you can get so like okay.

Out there on both ends of the spectrum and finding that center ground, at least temporarily because maybe it's not where you live, maybe it's not where you play all the time, but you can't go through life constantly stressed and just worrying all the time.

Time. Yeah, it's the best, I think the best results come from being able to balance all these things. And you know, life is all about balance. You need to be motivated, but you also can't be overwhelmed with negative emotions and negative possibilities. You need to have optimism, but you can't stick your head in the sand. So it's finding these, this balance which is I think the biggest challenge for, for just people in general, not necessarily just in business, but in life in general. Being able find that healthy balance is something that is, and it's, it's not something that you achieve, it's something that you work on day to day. And I think it takes a lot of. Exactly. It's, it is a habit. It is, that's exactly what it is. It's a habit. And it's something that you constantly have to calibrate and you have to be very self reflective upon because if you don't reflect upon, you know, your own behavior and your own thought processes, then you're not going to notice when you are going out of balance. And so I think the, just the habit of being self reflective and trying to balance is the most important skill that you could develop because everything else will come from that.

What do you do? Whether it's daily basis, weekly basis, do you have any routines or rituals where you're like, okay, whether you said, you're naturally optimistic, same as me. However.

I can also get creative. Opposite of that.

Sure.

How do you reframe all of that in the moment? And is there anything you do on a regular basis to just go, okay, I'm at 92%, not 100. How do you pull yourself out of it?

I think that the first thing is to acknowledge that nobody is at a hundred percent all, you know, all the time or even for most of the time. And so it's okay not to be at 100 all the time. You know, it's not, it's not something, you know, something we can strive for, but not something that you necessarily achieve. I think we all have peaks of greatness.

Where you're like, you're really kicking ass in this one thing or another for this period of time. But then, you know, nobody's. You usually don't stay there. Right. But I think the, the important thing is, is that, yeah, you try to think, well, what were the factors that made it awesome? You know, that made me awesome in this particular situation? And how do I repeat that? How do I develop that? How do I strengthen that? And again, that goes to the self reflection. And I'm always trying to learn. I think having a habit of lifelong learning and being humble in, in, in your assessment of yourself is one of the most important things. Because people think that they're very smart and they're very knowledgeable and very. And they're. And that, you know, when they think that they're very smart, usually that outlook tends to close them off from new information because they will be like, oh, well, you know, I'm so smart, I don't need to learn anything else. Or, you know, so, like. But I think having the humility to know that, you know, even if you're the smartest guy in the world, there's a billion things you don't know. You know, like Einstein didn't know anything about, you know, know, playing basketball at a high level or, or, you know, or, you know, 10,000 languages and cultures and, or, or even, or even other areas of science he had no idea about. So, you know, he made huge mistakes when it came to quantum physics. He, he let his own ego get in the way of, you know, historically. Right. So even the greatest and smartest people, people make mistakes.

They're still human.

Exactly. We're all human and we're all limited. And there's only certain amount of information that you can, that you can process and retain. And I think that you have to. You have to acknowledge that one thing that really hit me is years ago, I remember reading that something like. Like every minute, I forgot the exact numbers here, but something like every minute there's like a hundred thousand hours of YouTube videos, like, uploaded or something like that, you know, and it's physically impossible to. To watch them all. Right? To listen to every podcast, to read every book, to read, you know, read every scientific paper that comes out. It's physically impossible. You will never do it. Even if you spend your entire life dedicated to studying this one narrow thing, that one narrow thing usually is more than you could handle. So.

I think just acknowledging how little you know, it keeps your mind open and. And it also allows you to be easier on yourself. Because if you. If you think you're such a genius and you're so talented, then why didn't you do this, that, and the other, and succeed with in all these other ways? Well, you know, you have to just cut yourself some slack and realize, hey, you know, you're human. You've got limitations, and that's okay. And that's okay. You do the best.

And it might not be intellectual, it might be emotional.

Because there's a difference from emotional intelligence to intellectual intelligence. And for sure, I think a lot of people are still.

Starting to believe that. I don't want to say buying into, but I feel like there's a lot of people who just are pushing the book smart side of stuff and just totally devoid of personal relationship, just what I call common sense. And it's like.

I'll behave. There's a lot of people, all of us are striving to improve every day.

Sure, sure. As we should.

As we should. So let's go back to when you were younger, because.

I think you're fascinating and very down to earth. And I could even tell it with the info prior to this.

Thank you.

Have you. You're welcome. And have you always been that way or.

To a degree or with everything that happened with aei, do you feel like that just strengthened? Okay, I'm. I really, really am thankful for this even more now because you. You do not strike me one bit as.

Well, you. You were like Ephraim at any point.

I mean. Right.

Know how else to say it, but yeah.

Well, thank you for that as well. I. I make a great effort not to be like him, but I never was. I. I've always been more.

I guess even how it was portrayed, you were. There was points where you're like, hey, we need to talk. We probably shouldn't be doing this.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, he, he had, he's a very special person, to put it nicely. And he's definitely got, he's not a usual person and that gives him great strengths and, and as well as great weaknesses and.

And I think his strengths and weaknesses are intertwined. So.

He, he had, I would say, if I had to put, you know, a. Encapsulate his personality. Not that I am any psy, you know, psychiatric or psychologist, you know, professional or anything like that. I'm not a mental health professional. But his.

Haven't played one on tv.

I have not. Not yet. Right. But.

If.

I would say that he doesn't. He never really had empathy for anyone, Anybody.

So that emotional intelligence.

Yes, exactly. He was just, I mean, he had zero, zero empathy for anyone, even some, even his own family members. And it really seemed like it was like he, you know, like, I don't know if you're born like this or you develop into it. I'm not gonna have an opinion on that. But it was definitely nature versus nurtured environment. Exactly, exactly. But it was definitely a, an extreme, extreme form of lack of empathy towards anyone. So, you know, when, like I've, for example, like I've, I've seen him do some sneaky business moves and destroy somebody's business just to increase his Profit margin by 2% on this one deal. And he knew like the person he did that to, like he'd done business with him for a long time. He knew the guy personally, he knew the guy's family. You know, he knew the damage that it was going to do to him and into his family. And it was just really, really ugly and sad. And I told him, yeah, it was extremely. And I told him like, how, you know, like, why would you do that? And he's like, ah, you know, this is just business. It's not personal. I'm like, but, you know, it's just 2%, you know, why are you going to destroy this guy for next. You're not going to feel that 2%. That's not going to help you. You know, it's not going to make any difference in your life. And he's like, every bit counts. Right? And he just, he just didn't care.

Except emotional intelligence.

Yeah, exactly.

So.

I, I would say I learned a lot from him, but I also learned a lot of what not to do. So I learned both the positive and negative aspects. I mean, to say one positive thing about him is that he was in a workaholic to, to an extreme I would say then beyond where it was positive. But he was, I'd never seen anybody work harder than he did. I mean he was just absolutely obsessed.

Yeah, because business, you can't be lazy.

Yeah, exactly. And, and that's a.

Now you can work smart versus hard or build the team or you know, do put systems and leverage in place, but you still need to, I would have to say it's more even an intellectual game. You have to really be on the top of it in any business, any endeavor to just same thing with sports or music or any of it. It's like the people that make it aren't the ones kicking it with a stick.

Yeah, exactly. And people I think underestimate how much work most businesses take to build or how much work most things take to do. And a lot of people tend to give up when they face the first real resistance and the first real obstacles. So I think that's, you know, for example with the Beat Buddy, I can't tell you how many times this happened that I've bumped into people like musicians who told me hey, you made the Beat Buddy. I gotta tell you, I thought of that idea like 10, 15 years ago. You know, I thought of that exact, that exact idea. I thought of it 10 years before you did. But you know what, you actually did it. So congratulations. I've had, I've heard that at least 10, 15 times from different people and some people even in the industry, in the music products industry and they just never actually went ahead and did it. And I read somewhere that on average any new idea just because they're skilled, 7, 8 billion people in the world now on average any new idea gets thought of about two to 300 times into, you know, completely individually because of the, the, the factors that cause that idea to come into existence gets repeated at least 2, 300 times around the world. And yet there's always someone who does it first, right?

Or does it better.

Or does it better? That's true. And that's a.

Improving on something that existed. I ha. I have a list too creating stuff and there's ever since probably grade school, there's stuff I've written down on line paper and there's other stuff in digital documents. When I was got a HP compact in friggin 6th or 7th grade or something nice. That I'll say I bought with my own lawn money because I started my first business at 12. But it's like I've always had ideas in one of them was shrinking the PlayStation down.

No nice.

And then three years later the PSP comes out. I'm like, well, I'm sure it would have taken a lot of capital, but at the same time, you've got to be kidding me. Because I love that. And that's what I think is so cool about what you're doing now. And truthfully, since what, 2011 when you started Singular Sound.

So I had the idea in 2011. It took me three years to actually get it on the market. So 2014 is when we actually got it into customers hands.

So I mean, I mean you've been, it's, it's well over a decade at this point. And yeah, you can have these creative ideas at any point in time. That's what's so fun about it.

Yeah.

So for someone. Let me ask you this. For someone who wants to execute on it. Okay. They have a creative idea because I get it all the time with books. Oh, I've always wanted to write a book and I heard this 11 years ago when I did my first one. Oh, I've always wanted to do it. Well, I did. It's, you know what I mean? How can we get people off the fence and going, okay, you've done it here, I've done it here. What would you say if you have this idea and you want to execute on it and I know, go for it. Give it your best. All of this.

Right.

It's great. But what would you really say? What's your take on it? What would you tell them?

I think that there is a huge power in making lists and okay, check, you know, checklists and. Because it organizes you and it gives you a plan, like a, a plan of action. And of course it depends. There's a huge difference between writing a book and developing an electronic product or something. So there's, so the list will be different. But for example, I mean, in the, I mean you. I haven't written a book, so I'm sure you would know this much better than I. But like you haven't written one yet. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's right. That's right.

There was a book written about the War Dog story. There's, that's the, that the movie was based on. If, if people want to know the non Hollywood version. It's also called War Dogs. It's on Amazon. But yeah, but I didn't write it.

Let me just ask you real quick about that. Did you. How did you sign off permission and stuff like that? Because I noticed it was, wasn't yours or Ephraim's to begin with. Did they just approach you, say, we'll give you X amount if we can use the material.

So the way it works in the United States is that anyone could make a movie about you and not give you a penny. Wow. Yeah.

Really?

Yeah. Well, as long as. With the caveat that if you, you have, your name has to be in the public record. Right. So if your name appears in, in, in a newspaper article, some.

Somewhere that's considered officially the public record, they can use your name. Right. Because it's in the public record and write any story they want about you and not give you a penny. And they could make up everything that they want because it's considered free speech. The UK is different. They have much stronger libel laws, but that's how it works in the United States. So the New York Times. Well, we first got into the public record, so to speak, when the New York Times published a front page article about us. It was not a flattering article. And that became like a huge scandal.

You know, huge political scandal. And that got the interest of Rolling Stone, who thought it was a super cool story. And so they assigned one of their writers, Guy Lawson, who ended up writing the book. He. They assigned him to write our story. And so Guy contacted me and Ephraim and asked to interview us. And after he gave our lawyers assurances that he wouldn't publish anything until all our legal issues were over, they signed off on it and allowed us to be interviewed with him. And so he interviewed us for, for a while and it actually took three years for the whole legal process to. To complete. So he had to wait three years to publish his article, which the whole story kind of. The New York Times article came out in beginning of 2008 and the Rolling Stone article came out in 2011 three years later. Because he had to wait for the legal things to, to pass. And once the Rolling Stone article came out, that got the attention of Todd Phillips, who's the director of the, who was director of the Hangover movies. And after War Dogs, he made Joker. That's what he's known for now. So. So he wanted to go from comedy to drama. He wanted to go from, you know, the Hangover movies and eventually do something like Joker, which is a, you know, dark drama. And he's. I think he saw War Dogs as kind of his transition movie. War Dogs is like a, they call it a dramedy.

Y.

Hilarious parts.

Yeah, yeah, there's fun funny parts, but there's also plenty of drama in it as well. So.

But when it's, when it's on true. Like it's a be great movie no matter what, but when it's like inspired by true events, it's like, oh, wow, this isn't like, should I laugh? Because that's kind of crazy.

Exactly. So yeah. So he didn't technically have to get our permission to, to make this movie, but he wanted, he wanted, he want my cooperation.

I was just gonna say you would probably want to make sure it's the best it can be.

Exactly. And when they're spending, you know, like tens and tens of millions of dollars of making a movie, you know, buying someone's. They call it the life rights. That's what they, they call it. They buy your life rights. The rights to make a story about this particular aspect of your life. And of course you have no control over the story. They did not give me any sort of.

Really?

Yeah, yeah. They give me any, any power to change the story whatsoever. They did give me like previews of the script and asked my opinion and asked for, you know, corrections to make things, you know, more accurate and things like that. So I did read different versions of the script before it was filmed, before it was made into a movie.

But did you ever consider countering with like we can co produce it or anything?

It was. So I would have done that if there was, if there was more than one offer on the table. You know, if there like every major director in Hollywood wanted to make this movie, then I would have played them off against each other and you know, gotten them into a bidding war, you know, to get to increase the, the buy price as well as give me more power to. For more veto power over the script, so to speak. But unfortunately for me, there was only Todd Phillips. He was the only one who was, who was taking a bite at it.

But not even unfortunate. And I, I can appreciate that. But if my timeline's cor year you started this in 2011, this would have been 14 and 15. You were probably kind of just done and over with it and really wanted to focus on this, weren't you?

Yeah, no, I was. Don't get me wrong, I am thrilled that Todd Phillips made the movie. I was actually very happy with how the movie came out. I thought he did a great job. Yeah, I thought everyone on the movie did a really good job of the movie. It came out way better than I thought it was going to. So I'm really, really happy. I thought it was going to be like another hangover movie where it was, was just like silly and ridiculous and, and I mean, I love the Hangover movies, but I didn't want to be a character in the Hangover movies, so, so I thought that's what it was going to be, but I thought he did a really good job.

So it sounds like at least 80% was accurate.

I would give it 70% accurate. Yeah, yeah, it was mostly accurate, but good chunks of it weren't.

As I said before, if you want the real story, I would read, read the book by Guy Lawson, which is also titled War Dogs, available on Amazon.

And anywhere else books are sold. But, and that's, that's a, that's a very accurate version of the story. He, he did a lot of, he actually found things out on the government side that I had no idea about. He did a bunch of investigative reporting and he, he interviewed some of the government officials who were, you know, involved in this whole thing. And so he got like some, you know, some behind the scenes look at the, at the government side of things, which was very interesting for me because I didn't know that at the time.

Yeah, so when you're doing the business that might not be under your, what you're focused on and people say, oh, I know you better than you know yourself. And it's like, it's true because like, right now this is the only thing I'm focused on and there's all other aspects of my business going on. Like, I don't know what's going on. Sign up off here.

Like.

Yeah, exactly. So, yeah, it was really cool to read his, his book because, you know, he's an, a professional investigative journalist and he did a lot of investigating for the story and got, you know, he went through the court records and all the, he did like Freedom of Information act requests, FOIA requests to get all these documents that the government was holding back. And so he got a lot of interesting stuff and, and put it all into this, this book. And so if people want to know the real story, I would point them at the book. The, the movie is, I would say, mostly true, but it's a Hollywood movie.

Which always has at least 10 or 30% enhancements on it.

At least if you're lucky. It's only 30%. Yeah, yeah, for sure.

So it sounds like you're very happy with Singular Sound. Now you're saying, you know, if you're serious about starting a business and doing it the right, right way, do the lists. Is there even a second thing you'd say, you know, here's a key to success?

Yeah, I, I mean, there's so many keys to success. I, I wouldn't say, first of all, don't think that there is one key to success. Right. You know, people say, oh, if you only have this one weird trick, you.

Know, get the key master from the Matrix.

Exactly. I, I think it's a, it's, it's more of a mindset than anything you, you want to. If you have to be committed to what you're doing and you have to believe in it. Right. I think that's the most important thing is, is belief. Right. Because.

If you think that what you're doing is going to be successful, then you are going to have a lot more motivation to go through the rough patches, to go through the challenges and, and you know, to face the challenges that are inevitably going to come up. There's not, nothing ever goes smoothly and most things don't go smoothly. So.

You have to really believe that it's going to be successful. I mean, with the Beat Buddy, I was working on it for about a, like a year. I hired some engineers and they did a terrible job. They pretty much just took my money and almost did nothing. And then.

So you would invest before you were even selling it?

Oh, I mean, yeah, you have to.

Without even knowing if it was going to take off or not.

Correct. So, I mean, there's no other way to do it. You have to build the thing before you could sell it. So.

Which I just want everyone to hear when you're complaining, you gave it a shot for 30 seconds and it didn't make you a million dollars a month overnight.

Right? Right. I mean, there's always some level of investment in any business, whether it's money or time and effort that you put in. And oftentimes most people don't have the money required and so they need to find an investment investor to put the, the money that they don't have in it. So of course, finding an investor is quite a lot of effort in, of itself. So you're just trading one investment for another. You're investing your time into trying to find investments of money.

So yeah. So I mean, with the Beat Buddy, I, I had hired an engineer. I, I, you know, I didn't, I'm not an engineer. I mean, I did study two years of engineering, but, but not enough to actually.

Do anything useful in this project. But so I was looking for an engineer and I hired someone, made the mistake of hiring the cheapest one I could find. Right. That's just classic mistake. And turns out that there was a reason he was the cheapest and he didn't really do much of anything. And after like nine months, I had to fire him because I realized the project wasn't going as. As we were expecting it to. He wasn't meeting the, the, you know, the go.

Milestones. And then I was so, like, kind of like, depressed about having failed at this. And I was like, how am I ever gonna find someone? And I didn't even work on it for like another year. I just kind of went and did other things. And then I, you know, started talking.

With scratching back and just kind of like, I got.

Yeah, because, like, I was like, talking to some of my musician friends and I kind of like, oh, you know, I thought of this cool idea for like a pedal and. And they were like, whoa, that's super cool. I would totally buy that. You just blew my mind. That's an amazing idea. And it's. I was like, yeah, it is an amazing idea. Why the. Did I stop working on it? You know.

Let me find those CAD.

Files and engineering blueprints, pull those back up.

Exactly. I got to find someone who could actually finish this thing. And I was like, you know what? I, you know, why did I stop? This really is a good idea. I do believe in it. That's, that's, that's the key. And it was just that interaction with those musicians who brought my belief back in the program project. And that's why I say that belief is one of the most important things that you could have in a business. Now, it could. That being said, it could work in against you as well, because you have to have a belief that is based on reality and not just on your internal, you know, ego, so to speak. Because if you believe the wrong thing, then you're going to be, yeah, gravity.

Is always a prime example. You know, I don't believe in this, this, or this. It's like, well, you cannot believe in gravity, but I wouldn't suggest jump off a building.

Exactly.

Still.

So it's truth to someone still die. Yeah, exactly. There is a reality out there that, that supersedes your beliefs. And it's obviously critical to make sure that your beliefs align with the reality. And that's why I would go back to what I said before about getting a lot of data points. Right? So if only one musician had told me that the Beat buddy was a great idea idea, then I would have been like, okay, that's probably a good idea, but like, I don't know for sure, right? But if, you know, 20 musicians all tell me it's a great idea, now you're onto something. Yeah, Now I think now I have real reason to truly believe that this is a real thing. And it will.

Have you ever seen the show Numbers?

I've heard of it, but I have not seen.

Oh, you would really like it. There's one episode where they're, I think they're trying triangulating a shooter or something and they're like, oh, let's get rid. You know, most people think let's get rid of as much as we can to just focus. But like, you're saying the more data you have, you'll see the correlations of it and the, where the clusters form. And it's like, no. And I think they did something in the show. They're like, oh, it was the lottery one. They were trying to pinpoint something in the lottery. He's like, can I have all the lottery ticket numbers from across the US or the state, State of California. It was some obnoxious number instead of the 11 local gas stations. And it was just like. And he found it nearly instantly once he 100 times or a thousand times the data set. And it's like, you know, that's the way to do it in certain instances. So, so let me ask you, where do you see this going.

Five, ten years from now? Because you're ten years into this. It's going, well, not now. Where do you see it in the future?

So Singular Sound, I, I've got quite a few other products that I am working on, some really, really cool stuff that I'm excited about that I can't talk about publicly right now, but. All right, I'll ask you when we.

Get off the air.

Yeah, that's fine. I could tell you.

But yeah, working on some really cool stuff for, from, for Singular Sound. But I have to say, from a, from a business perspective, I mean, that's, you know, Singular Sound is my passion project. I'm a music position. I, I pretty much build the toys that I want to play with. So it's really awesome. It's like I build my own toys. But from a business perspective, I, I would have to say that I'm much more excited about Insta Floss just because it's a, a mass market product, something that anyone can use. And that is a, a huge improvement in, in, in almost anyone's life. Because now I, I, I went, I started working on this with my brother about five years ago. So we're five years into the Instafloss project. Okay. And we are literally about to. My brother just moved to Mexico because that's where we're doing our final assembly and we are about to deliver our first production units hopefully within the next month or two.

Nice.

If everything goes well. Thank you. Yeah, it's a huge one for us. Yeah, it's huge. It's. Yeah. Because we've been working on this for.

It's fun to create stuff, but it's even more fun again with books or any product when you're going, okay, it's an idea, I see it on the screen. And now you can hold it in your hands. To have the actual product, I created a, developed a Software to build WordPress websites automatically also over a decade ago. So I like inventing and creating as much as you. I keep it all in business, but I think it's a joy that not everyone gets to experience because it's emails, phone calls. Emails, phone calls. I mean, even the shop show, not everyone does that either. And it's like you get to meet great people and ask questions and have killer conversations versus like, did you get my carbon copy reply? Blank carbon, for the love of God.

Yeah.

What are you doing with your life? So, yeah, I appreciate everything you've been sharing. I have a couple more questions and then we're going to thank the sponsor. But yellow or black?

You mean, is, is the product yellow or black? Black. Is that what you're asking?

Or which one do you want?

Oh, I see. You're. You're. You're asking me to choose yellow. Okay, okay, I'll go yellow.

All right.

Where'S yellow? Make it stop.

Here we go.

Bending the rules here. So this is the wheel of whatever. I do this for everyone. And I basically created a. Again, I like to create my own toys.

Okay.

Basically, it gives me carte blanche to ask any of the VIP guest whatever the hell I want.

Nice.

So at any point in your life, is there anything you would do over again or is there anything like you wouldn't change a thing? Everything's brought you to this point.

Oh man, that is such a. Such a hard question because, you know, the butterfly for everyone.

And I was like, I want to hear your answer on this.

Right, Right. So there are many things that I wish I had done differently. Of course, I don't know what the long term implic of having done those things differently would be. So if I actually had the power of going back in time and changing something, I probably wouldn't because I am very happy with where I am now and I would rather, you know, have my. My life is, is so great right now that, that the. I have a Lot more to lose than I think than I would have to get gain by changing, by going back in time and changing something. That, that being said, I can think of many things that I wish I had done differently and I think everyone has that.

But it's like, would you really.

Yeah. Would you really do it if you.

Could be 18 again and start life?

I'm like, nah, I wouldn't, I wouldn't.

Because who's to say you're not going to make the similar, same mistakes anyhow?

Exactly. Yeah. I mean, the second you change one thing, you have 10 other choices that you haven't made before that you could mess with up on. So there's so many other ways that things could go wrong. Even if you do that one thing you know how to do right.

So great answer. I got one bonus one here because.

So my director of photography, I put out a question. What would you ask someone who had a movie made about their life?

And he said, how would you get someone to fund his movie?

Movie?

He's great videographer, I've known him for 15 plus years. He does all our filming for our author clients and. But I know he's working on his own movies. What? Steve, this one's for you. You heard me mention them when I was doing everything prior.

Tell Steve, man. Well, first of all, I will say yes, I had a movie made about me, but I am not in the Hollywood business by any means. I kind of, you know, just skimmed the surface. So I interacted with the screenplay writer, I interacted a little bit with the, with the director and some of the actors and I went to the, to the premiere, which was super cool, but I was not, you know, part of the movie making process other than that. I mean the screenwriter did, you know, go through interview me quite extensively and, and send me revisions of the script.

From my understanding, there's, there's different funding mechanisms in Hollywood and I'm by no means an expert. There's the, there's the large studios, but they tend to be, to try to go for very generic things because that is what is, you know, they have a formula. Yeah, they, exactly. It's safe. And when you're putting a lot of money into something, you want it to be a safe return on your investment.

So.

So if you want to have a big budget movie, probably the more generic you can make it, the better. If you can make it something when with an established.

With an established like intellectual property behind it, that's like a, like a natural win. Like. So if there's a Popular comic book, you could base a movie off that and that'll get funding because people know it's got a built in audience. If you have anything with a built in audience that's a YouTube, a huge plus.

You know, so I mean if you could build the audience beforehand and show investors that you already have this ready to go audience who loves it, then that takes a lot of the guesswork out of it for them because they know that at least this segment of the population would be interested in seeing a movie about it.

It's less risky.

Exactly. So you minimize the risk on there. And so if you have, you know, there's like these, all these fan, like fan fiction sites and, and where people who, who in fact. The Martian was made like this. The Martian by Andy Weir. He wrote, yeah, he, he wrote that book. I think he was writing it as like, just as like a free online thing because he had, I think he's from NASA or he spent time in NASA. So he had all these, this technical knowledge and he decided to write a book using his technical knowledge. College and of course that got all the other technical nerds really into the book. And so they, you know, they kind of jumped in and corrected him where he was wrong. And so he kind of built this fan base up and he, he released it a chapter at a time. So his fan base got built up as he was releasing this book and by the time he was finished with the book he had a significant fan base. And so the hot. So Hollywood looked at that and they're like, wow, there's all these people who really love this story and also movie. It is a good movie. It was really well done. So that's what I would say. You know, funding investors and people who fund movies want to see, want their risk minimized and therefore they want to see as big of a, a built in audience as they can for the proposed movie. That, that if, if I'm gonna say one thing.

Yeah, excellent.

Well I, or, or you can say, or you can get just one, one crazy super rich investor and just convince him.

And you could do it that way. So that's.

Well, I appreciate the feedback on it and Steve, hope that helped. We're going to thank our sponsor and come back.

Is there one thing I can say before we, before we end it? So just one last thing.

Yeah, I'm actually going to come back, I'm going to thank the sponsor and I got a couple more short questions.

Okay, go ahead, go ahead.

Go ahead and ask it now.

Oh, okay. I thought you wanted me to wait until afterwards. That's fine. So I just wanted to mention, because I didn't mention before that that we are currently in the process of raising money for Instafloss. So if anyone wants to join us on the business adventure side of things, they should contact us through our email@instaflas.com and, and we're going to be launching a crowdfunding, an equity crowd.

I almost asked you about that because.

Yeah.

When you, when you were mentioned those fan sites and everything, it's like yeah, you could, maybe you don't have a big venture capital company or a person or a chain company or whatever, but you get enough individuals saying I'll give you 20, 50, 100. A thousand bucks.

Bucks. Yeah, exactly.

That's.

And that's how actually we've been, that's how we've been funding it so far. We did a Kickstarter campaign for Instafloss that raised well with the Kickstarter as well as Indiegogo raised about $2 million.

So that went very well. And that's how we've been funding the project so far. So we are looking to expand manufacturing and we have some additional dental hygiene products in development right now. So it's not just Instafloss. But I can't wait.

Dental friends about about it and you because.

It'S exciting. I'll mention things but congrats on it and I'm glad it's going so well. We're going to thank the sponsor and come back for the imperfect action round. You've heard me say every business needs a book, including yours and it's true. And that's why I'm launching my new book@eapublishingmethodbook.com so you can learn the seven steps to publish and promote your nonfiction literacy and profit generating business book in eight weeks. But you know what, don't take my word for it. Take it from a few of my authors like Lori, I went from having.

An idea and a possibility to actually getting my book published.

Or Katherine, thank you for making my.

Mom number one best selling author.

Or Mary Alice. What he got done for me in three days regarding my book launch.

Unmanageable. John Cody. I've worked with Mario over the phone and online and he's been very helpful in getting me where I needed to go with promoting my books.

Rocio, there's no way in the world I would have been able to do this with somebody else again. I've attempted it in the past. It didn't serve me As a matter of fact, I ended up more frustrated than anything. So this has been a very seamless process. Adele, if you're looking for an amazing business coach, I highly recommend recommend Mario.

Ficcini or Bill Benner.

I can't make a higher recommendation than to work with Mario Ficcini.

He has been great for me and.

Right now I won't work with anybody else except for Mario.

Hey, their words, not mine. Visit eapublishingmethodbook.com to get your copy and I look forward to hearing your transformation as our next video success story. Once again, that's EA publishing method method book.com.

And we are back with the Imperfect action round. Are you ready to take imperfect action?

I am.

I got three quick questions for you. 60 second or less answers. One is what is the fastest path to the profits?

Fastest path to the profits is.

Providing a service or product that people actually want want at a price that that supports the business.

Excellent. Number two, the biggest problem you see your prospects making and the fastest way for them to fix it.

The biggest. I'm sorry, what did you say?

The biggest problem you see your prospects making and the fastest way for them to fix it.

The biggest problem I would say is not listening to your customers having preconceived notions. And the fastest way to fix it is talk people and accept what they say and talk to a lot of people.

Excellent. Best way to maximize customer lifetime value.

Provide something that they want and think of new things that they will continue to want and new ways of improving the service and product that you already make.

I think a lot of people forget that it's. It's always about the customer client experience, not anything else.

Yeah, that's really all it is.

What books would you recommend to Expert Authority World?

My favorite book I have to say if I had to pick one would be. It's a famous book Sapiens by Yuval Harari.

And it just is such a great overview of humanity and society and. And why society is structured the way it is. I think it gives you a tremendous amount of insight into. Into people and into societies at large and. And shows where we could be heading. So I think it's. It's something that everybody should read.

It sounds interesting. I have not heard of it before so thank you.

I highly recommend it. Yes.

Where would you like people to learn learn more.

You can go to instafloss.com like Instagram but flossing instafloss.com to check out our Instafloss product and for the music related products you can go to singularsound.com Singular Sound.

I love that name, by the way.

Thank you. It was inspired by Ray Kurzweil's book the Singular Priority is is Near.

No kidding.

Yeah. I was reading it at the time when I was starting this company and it blew my mind. As I said, I'm a huge sci fi nerd and, and I realized that the Beat Buddy was a product that a solo musician would use. So your singular self creating your singular sound. And. And it's a technology product so with reference to the Singularity. So that that was where I came up.

I always loved hearing and being a publisher. I love origin stories and just I think it's my natural curiosity to learn. It reminds me of the movie Lucy. It's one of my favorites too. And it's just like what if, you know, what if.

I'll behave people.

Anyway, it's been an absolute pleasure. Thank you for everything you've shared and I really appreciate your time.

My, my pleasure. Likewise.

All right, Expert Authority World. We have another great episode here today. I'll see you on the next one.

Have a great day and God bless.

You're already the expert, but have you transformed your expertise into a tangible asset that will generate qualified leads while increasing profit for you 247 and if so, how well are you promoting it? With my new book, the Expert Authority Effect Publishing Method, I take you through my process process step by step. Visit eapublishingmethodbook.com today to learn the seven steps to publish and promote your nonfiction, lead and profit generating business book in eight weeks. Visit eapublishingmethodbook.com to get started now. Once again, that's eapublishingmethodbook.Com thanks for listening to today's episode. I would love to know what you enjoyed most from it. If you haven't done so already. I invite you to connect with me on my new LinkedIn. You can go to it directly at eainterviews.com LinkedIn Once again, that's eainterviews.com LinkedIn lastly, check out the full eainterviews.com site for complete show notes, the full interview video experience, links to the resources we mentioned, and more. Have a blessed day and I'll see you on the next one. Thanks.