The Pinball Network is online. Launching. Pinball Party. Ah, isn't this nice? Beautiful day at the park. You having fun? Yeah. Good. Sorry it's been so hectic and busy with music and work and the podcast and everything. It's nice to just get away. Whoa, man. You're going high. You like that swing, huh? Man. Yeah, this is great. Thanks, Dad Don't call me Dad Eat shit Oh, Meth, look I think you made a friend Hi, Beth Hi How are you? Not too shabby Wow, you're really good at swinging Thanks What's your name? Meth Meth? Yeah That's a weird name Fuck you, kid Yeah, fuck you, kid Get the fuck out of here What the... Yeah Your kid sucks shit Jeez, I'm sorry, Meth That girl was a bitch Oh Um Oh Yeah, uh Oh, hello It's a horse Whoa Not a big deal Nice Horse Don't, don't do it Look at the name We're in a park Oh, yeah Put your hand back No Hey Yeah You can't You can't fucking do that in a park, man Yeah, yeah, yeah I'm going to Jesus Christ Yeah, cops are coming. Let's go. I'm spanked. I bet. Welcome to episode 35 of the Pinball Party Podcast. I'm your host, Jason, and I'm going to say something clever like smash my like button. I don't fucking know. If I have to hear another YouTube video start with, what's up, guys. I'm going to fucking move my shit. That's enough of the what's up, guys. I get it. We've tickled your like button. We've listened to you tell us about the newest monitor from Asus. Here's my opinion. Look at my lighting and my... Yeah, I get it. The internet gets to you after a while. Anyway, speaking of getting to you, David Dennis, you bitch. Fucking guy in TPN. Heard of him? David Dennis? One of the hosts of the fantastic podcast Silver Ball Chronicles. He sends me a message on the TPN Discord. What's your address? You know. Okay. No idea. I thought maybe it was, I don't know, a Pinball Network hat or a sticker. No. Let's, yeah. Here, David, let's just do it. I hope I don't gag. I hope I don't joke. I hope I don't puke in the pinball pantry. All right, so he sends me some chips. I don't want to eat these. They're Canadian chips on top of that, so you know they're terrible, right? Anyway, all right, we got two things here quick. Mabel and I are going to try them. We got Lay's ketchup. Probably not bad. And then Lay's all dressed. I don't know. Half of it's in French. What the fuck? Here we go. I got the Mabel mic set up. Let me try. You can try the ketchup ones first, Mabel. What do you think? To be honest, she doesn't look super pleased. But she wants to try it again. What do you think? Ah, her tail's wagging. Medium wag. Let's see. Oh, there it is. Ah, you know, not bad. Not bad, man. They kind of just taste like... Actually, pretty good. Holy shit, man. These are Lay's ketchup. You know what it reminds me of? At like a picnic. Hot dogs, you got plain Lay's potato chips out of the, you know, the white bag that the cheap parents buy. And then it like falls into the ketchup that's on your plate from like dipping your hot dog or hamburger. Not bad, man. Not bad at all. Thank you. Those will actually be used. Not a waste of money, but I assume they are expired, so I will get sick. All right, Lay's all dressed. Here we go. Pop them shits open. It's got a picture of a tomato and a fucking onion. Okay, maybe it's just like a... Mabel, you want to go first? That's a big fucking shit. What do you think? Okay, that's a big wag. You just got yourself a big wag on that one. so let me try, Mabel, and then you can come up, okay, okay, um, I don't know, it just tastes like a salty chip, no, it's fine, what the fuck, these are good, man, I've gave him a bunch of shit, like, I'm gonna throw up with whatever, Mabel, here you go, aw thanks Mabel alright top tier man thanks for sending those in pretty great also pretty great is Pinsomniacs Pinball I mentioned him last week and had Nick on a few weeks ago anyone in the Florida area go check out pinsomniacspinball.com you'd be doing a disservice if you play pinball in the Florida Jacksonville area and don't check out pinsomniaxpinball.com. You can go on their website, Twitch, Facebook, go follow them. They have machines around the state setting up tournaments. They have machines for rentals, special occasions, upcoming events. Really just a fantastic group to work with in Florida and really bringing pinball to the forefront. So in the Florida area, Jacksonville, southern United States, Pinsomniax Pinball. Another fantastic sponsor of this week's show is Marco's Specialties. We talked about them last time when we went on a deep dive in tools and the extra things that you can do for your pinball machine to make it easier, things to have on hand. But when you want to get those extra things, get them at Marco's Specialties. Top-tier customer support, all the parts you need for a pinball machine. You need a weird screw size? They got it. You need a weird nut size? They got it. You need one of the tools we talked about in last week's episode, episode 34, Tool Talk with Rachel and Cale? They got it. Any sort of pinball accessory or additional little thing you need for a pinball machine, marcospecialties.com. They got what you need, including an awesome knowledge center. You can shop by category. You can shop by game. Oh, does anyone have this weird part in stock? You know, Marco probably does. Oh, you're quite the bully when you want to be, aren't you, Parker? Problem is, Eddie Brock isn't the same guy he once was. why don't we introduce you to our better hand? We call our friend Venom. Holy shit, no one saw that coming. Venom by Stern Pinball. Officially announced via a small little teaser trailer showing some flashes of Zombie Yeti's cabinet art and a few more details have been trickling in along the way. Big thanks to Jason Knapp for getting some of that stuff out on his website, KnappArcade.com. Go check that shit out. and Flip N Out Pinball with Friends just last night, yesterday, had a lot more info. You know, I don't even want to tell you because it's actually pretty cool, except for one thing. I'll tell you one thing, and then everything else, go check out Flip N Out Pinball with Friends on the Flip N Out Pinball YouTube channel. Go check it out. I don't want to spoil a lot of that. It's a fantastic show, by the way. Flip N Out Pinball with Friends every week. I've been on it in the past. Thank you very much. Go check it out. It's one of my favorites of the week. also release that shit in podcast form you sons of bitches but the little news nugget I want to say that's awesome too quote me if you want Jason from the pinball party says that's awesome is that Ray Day is part of the coding team for this game I'm going to leave it at that all the other little nuggets again go check out Flip N Out Pinball with Friends on the Flip N Out Pinball YouTube channel but we do know the reveal will be next Tuesday the 18th? Let me pull up the calendar while I'm just casually saying this. Like, oh, yeah, okay, Tuesday, July 18th, we're going to see the game, and then it'll be at Comic-Con, we all believe. If somehow this is not the game at Comic-Con, I will shit my pants on air. And I guess it means that Reddit guy was fucking wrong. Hey, I don't think it was some troll saying it, but teeth, shit, I don't know. We'll have to speculate some more. Maybe it's that empty November spot in Stern's production schedule. Only supposed to be two Cornerstone games this year, Foo Fighters and Venom, and then in November it's blank. Hmm. Is there going to be a vault? Is there going to be a lot of teeth? We don't know. We'll have to Craig Bobby that shit and wait and see. But I do know, when Venom comes out, and you bet your fucking panties, I already have my name on the list, I'm gonna buy that motherfucker from Flip N Out Pinball. Hey. Math. What? The fuck? What? That's your cue. Get on the mic. Oh, shit. Ah. Meh. Oh, meh. When I buy my pinball shit, I buy from Flip N Out Pinball. From Topper's Art Blade Premiums. I've got it. Dig it out. Flip N Out Pinball. Meh. Dig it out. Oh, meh. When I think of pinball, I think of flipping out. Flipping out. Flipping out. When I buy, buy, buy, I buy from flipping out. I can't blame him. He's probably still spent, as he says. Oh, yeah. Jesus. But, yeah, flipping out pinball. Go buy your new games from there and even used games. They take in used games for trade and sell them later at fantastic prices. I don't know how the fuck he does it. his used prices are better than most bottom-of-the-barrel used prices, and I buy and sell a lot of used games. Not to flip them. Again, fuck those people. But really, I don't know how you do it. Zach at FlippinOutPinball.com. Send my text at like 2 a.m. That's when he prefers. Or Facebook. Greg, fantastic support. Nicole, super responsive. Every time I have a question, it's answered within seconds, if not minutes. And I can't say the same for other distributors. FlippinOutPinball. Go get you some Venom. I spent some time at Lit Pinball yesterday and played some pinball machines. And believe it or not, that's somewhat rare for me recently because I live in a ghost town of pinball unless I buy them or play them at a friend's house. But I played Bond 60th for the first time and I was very excited because I've heard nothing but great things. I stepped up. I played. by ball two, I was bored as shit. Yeah. Uh, yeah, that, that was kind of my like, well, okay. Um, I was expecting to be wowed by it, not necessarily because of the price, which is insane, but Keith Elwin, nothing against that or anyone. It's just kind of not my thing. Um, I, I didn't really jive with it. Yeah. And, uh, so I didn't force myself like, well, I'm not going to just, just because it's so expensive and it's supposed to be, and just, that's it. After one game, I was kind of done. Yeah, and I played a little bit of Stranger Things Premium just for the shits, because that's what you do. Still a great game. Hope they vault that. Hope that's the November thing. Teeth? Eh? Maybe? Eh? Hmm. Played some more Godzilla Premium. Heard of Godzilla, anyone? Guess what? Godzilla's great. Played it, so that game lasted about six hours. By the done with it, I, like meth, was spent and didn't really feel the need to go back to it. But the reason I kind of bring this up is for me personally, in that like hour and a half, two hours that I spent going from game to game to game, the star of the show was Turtles? Yeah, it was Turtles, Stern's TMNT, LE specifically, I guess. I don't know how much of a difference that made. I owned a Pro in the past, and it was the fastest game out of my fucking house. I, fuck, I did not like it, uh, I love Turtles, again, born in 82, reference, yep, Turtles, love it, Leo, get, get rekt, ref, I mean, anyway, Leo, Leo's my guy, but I had it at home, and the thing that made me get rid of it so fast was not the art, because the art is fantastic, was not the lights, because blinded by the lights. Fantastic light show. Sound? Great. Animation? Great. I think either one. The cartoon assets? Fine. Or the CG stuff? Fine. Nothing. But that fucking inner ramp, I cannot get the timing of it. I could not and I cannot like I can on the Warp Ramp or Keith Elwin's Third Flipper Games or most Third Flipper Games. You find it after a little bit. I can't for the life of me find the spot on the flipper for this game. And if it were not as important as it absolutely is in this game, it's so crucial to be able to hit that shot. I wouldn't be so frustrated with it. So maybe it was because I didn't have to own it, so playing it on location was a little less like owner's guilt of having it, not a $6,000 to $10,000 thing sitting there that you don't enjoy much. So it was only 50 cents to play it. And I kept playing it. I don't know, I probably played 10 games just there, and going from Bond 60th to Godzilla to Stranger Things, the Addams Family, Lit Pinball Bar, LIIT in Minneapolis, fantastic place to go, also previously known as Tilt Pinball. But for all the games, TMNT is what I went back to over and over. Someone, if you can see the writing on the wall, someone's got to talk me out of getting the turtles in the house again. I don't think I need to get a premium or an LE. but shit. So please write in to pinballpartypodcasts at gmail.com and talk me out of this stupid decision that I might make before you can even reach me. But I'm a way out. Right before I was leaving, I looked to the left and said, hello, hello, Foo Fighters. Hello there. Nice little Ellie sitting there with the expression lights, which is the first time I've played Foo Fighters with the expression lights. That game is still so fucking good. And I miss it immediately. As soon as I started playing it, I, yep, okay, need that back. I think I'll wait until the expression lights come in, just for a change of pace. But the expression lights make a world of difference. A world of difference. The game is still just as good, if not better. God damn it. I shouldn't have sold it. But that's the way of things, and the way I do it. I'll get one again, for sure, premium, if not an LE, if I can't wait for the expression lights to come out. I can't say enough good things about Foo Fighters. Nothing has changed. It's still amazing. One of the things that got to me immediately was I felt the bass. All right. So an LE has upgraded speakers right to five, five and a quarter inch in the backbox and the cabinet. I don't, I don't think so, but it says on the feature matrix that includes upgraded audio and a three channel amplifier. So in my head, as someone who knows audio very well, both from how it works hardware-wise, how it works software-wise, how it works compression, EQ, mixing, mastering. I know it very well. I'm like, oh, what does that mean? Three-channel amplifier. Three separate channels amplifier with active crossovers. They have the little crossovers in the software, but are you measuring them shits? Before I go on, please, I would love to talk to whoever at Stern handles the hardware and the audio there. Let's talk about it. Let's deep dive. I would really like to get to know your balls and your audible balls. Stern, please. I say this is Stern because Jersey Jack, they have that shit figured out for audio. They figured it out. Stern is great. But again, the point is on the LE, I noticed the bass a lot more. And I'm not saying, oh, yeah, just add a woofer. Yeah, I know. I know how subwoofers work. I get it. But I was hearing the bass from the backbox, the mid-bass. Now, what do you mean by mid-bass? What I'm specifically talking about is about 80 to 120 hertz. 80 hertz to 120 hertz, for those who want to know, is where you kind of feel the bass drum or the kind of kick in something. So for me, as a drummer and hearing bass drum hits in songs that I know very well, a.k.a. Monkey Wrench, the one I almost always pick on Foo Fighters, I'm hearing the bass drum a lot more. So I actually went to the backbox and felt like, is that where I'm feeling the bass or is it the cabinet? It was the backbox. Bigger 5 1⁄4-inch woofers, yes, will give you more bass. But to drive that bass, you need a little more juice. So I quickly, you know, discorded a couple of TPM people like, hey, is this feature matrix thing about the 3-channel amplifier bullshit or not? Is there actually a different amplifier in the LEs to drive these speakers better? The consensus is no, there's not. It's a clever quote, deceptive quote, marketing on CERN's behalf to say there is a 3-channel amplifier when I think there always is an amplifier, and they're just stating it in the LE. Again, let's talk about, please, Stern, I would love to pick your brain about the actual, factual audio bits of Pro versus Premium versus LE, and how you're measuring them, how you're setting them up, and all that kind of stuff. But hearing it with the bass up, could have just been turned up at the place, seeing the expression lights, all that really made me miss Foo Fighters and want that baby back in the house. when I came home immediately and told Zach, Neon Dale Zach, bass player in the band, also a sound engineer, told him the same thing. He's like, oh, yeah, okay, well, then we should buy one, right? And I'm like, yeah, dude, but his idea is like, all right, we'll buy one, and then we're going to set up some Genelec 8050s. We're going to get the audio into those. For those who want to know what those are, those are about $1,500 a piece reference monitors that Genelecs are often used in studios across the world. It's one of the industry standards. I mean, he's just like, yeah, let's throw like 10 grand in audio in one of these and just see what happens. But if the audio output of it is shit, it won't matter. Garbage in, garbage out. I'll digress here. Hopefully we can talk more about Stern Audio in the future. But until then, I think you guys kind of got to figure it out. Figure it out. On the marketing of said audio. And speaking of marketing, I'm very honored, humbled, happy to have on our next guest, Thomas Dodson, who is a fantastic resource when you want to know about marketing things, social media, getting your business or name off the ground. And Cale was nice enough to bring him on board to kind of do a deep dive and honestly let me ask him some stuff. So I do actually, unfortunately, talk about myself a little bit here a lot because I was just so giddy having this resource and talking to him. But we wanted to bring him on to help any of those looking to build your brand, whether it's a pinball arcade, a pinball podcast, a pinball streaming, anything. How do you do that in this day and age? How do you market it? How does social media play a part? And we often use myself and my want to succeed in the music industry with Neon Dale as kind of an example of how to do some of that. And even further, in the show notes, we are going to put a link to the company that he works at, Brand Builders, and you can click it and get a free one-hour call to kind of just start figuring this stuff out. I think you're going to see what I mean soon when you hear what I'm asking him and the information that they can provide, which is pretty, I'll say, priceless to me or someone in that state looking to grow. But, yeah, so check the show notes for the free brand call link. Call them. Talk to them. See if it's worth your time. Spoiler, it is. And I'm going to be using this going forward as well. So I'm not going to edit this because we kind of go all over the place. Yes, there is pinball talk. He's a pinball fan himself. But we go all from marketing electric bat, marketing neon tail, to advice for all of you out there listening. So without further ado, I'm just going to jam the conversation right in the middle of it, and let's get going. So Cale and Thomas, so what are you doing in Nashville? Born and raised or just? No, I actually grew up with Cale in South Carolina. So I've bounced around quite a bit. So I was in television news for about a decade. And it's a migratory business. You work your way up in market size. And so I got out of South Carolina, hit the West Coast, Seattle, California, and came here in 2019 to be closer to family and closer to work. And what is work technically? I am the data director for Brand Builders Group. We are a personal branding strategy firm. You're exactly the guy I need to talk to and not even about everything that we're here to talk about. Everything we're not here to talk about. Let me just tell you. So I just came from, so I'm a musician, long-time musician, sound engineer, all that kind of shit. And I work at a software company. I'm a sales engineer, manager, whatever. Tech sales pays really good, golden handcuffs, if you will. I'm 40. I'm way better at music and audio than I am at, well, I fake my way through my job very well. And I'm very tenured, so it's so fucking hard to get fired or anything. but I'm over the last five years, not two years, finally like, all right, I got to get out of this. I can't do this anymore. I can, but I don't want to. I'd rather make a third of what I make now and do what I like. So when you're like, Oh, I'm a national studio. Like you can see my basement is similar. Just not to the, um, of like, I, I went to not to make this about me, but I want your, uh, all of your advice and your opinion and all of all sorts of shit. Uh, two years ago, I was like, I want to record an album, but without any influence of the rest of the band. Because, you know, the early, late teens, early 20s thing for me was, you know, you play in a band, it's like three girlfriends. It's all like making other people happy. I've always been a songwriter at heart. I'm very good at it. And when I don't have influence of others and that bullshit, I excel at it. Or like either with like-minded ilk or people who take it seriously. But, you know, so I do this just for my own thing. I want to go to a studio and pay thousands and thousands of dollars to make it sound great and all that. And it was a two-week, 11-hour-a-day recording thing. Turned out great. It's awesome. It's out there. And then started accidentally forming a band out of it because people started hearing and saying, I want to be a part of this. And when I posted something on Upwork, someone from Nashville reached out like, what the fuck? What's your band touring and all this? What's the name? Like, there's no band. It's just me. and enough objective feedback that I was like, I got to fucking do this. So the last year has been these people like, oh, cool, we're in a band, but like you're doing everything, you write all the songs, you pay for everything, you do everything. And like, yeah, we love it. Like, of course you fucking do, you know? And so the last six months I started this podcast out of boredom of like, fuck it, I'm just going to start this podcast. And then I started like, I'll just use my own audio and I'll use our own music to fill it with shit, and I'll write jingles here, and I'll write all this catchy stuff, and then, you know, started meeting crazy shit in the pinball industry, and then got on the pinball network, met Cale. This is the only people in the pinball industry, by the way, just so we're clear. Yes. Okay. So the moral of the story is two weeks ago, I had kind of like a come-to-Jesus moment with the band of like, yo, I don't know how to do things like half-assed, so kind of like put up or shut up. We need to either take this seriously because this is what I'm doing. I possibly going to take a sabbatical from work to constantly give me six months or even like with my wife because she a lover to death full support of like what if I just quit like you know you have enough money to do that stupid kind of thing and take the safety net out from under me and like I know if I have the pressure I can do it and stuff like that so I've been like just branching out into all these audio things and doing things and we're now at the point of like these people trying to you know in a band like oh let's do this let's do a little there let's do this take it half serious like we need to start like paying people that know what the fuck they're doing to help. You know, not that we need to pay everyone to be a brand manager. The art itself is not the problem. It's the, like, the industry and doing the right things. Like, all right, well, no one wants to do social media. Like, well, guess what? We fucking have to every day, and we have to take it seriously. Okay, well, then you do it. Like, God damn it. So when Cale's like, I'm bringing on my buddy Thomas. He's like, go check out his shit. I'm like, what the fuck? yeah he knows all this stuff and and i want to talk about your ted talk that he sent me a totally random different subject but sure man uh such a so many fucking questions i have to like what the fuck should i do and i should probably pay you money to answer that question you know that's where i'm at uh that's awesome man it's it's a big stuff you know it's scary to take that lead you know it's really scary if you've got security and you've got a good paying job and And if you're not working your fingers to the bone, that's pretty comfortable. You know, it's tough to get out of that comfort spot. So kudos to you for even thinking, well, it pays the bills. You can sleep at night. Something to be said for that. But then you die. And it's like, oh, cool. I paid my bills. I bought pinball machines. I made a pinball podcast. Who gives a shit? And I'm dead. Not to be morbid, but, you know, I want to kind of look back and be like, Like, I actually, the thing that failed, I mean, like, give it 100% and 200% and do all the right things and fail versus, like, well, half-ass it. You know what I mean? Absolutely, man. Well, let's get into it. I mean, I want to dissect this. Put this frog up on the table like we did in middle school. Let's get into a little history of, like, how you ended up here. Thomas and I grew up together. We went to high school together. We used to play pinball all the time At a Substation Substation 2 was where There were some pinball machines And that's where we'd play all the time Adam's Family, Twilight Zone, that era Then after that We had to get into the real world And We both Around the same time Really got into social media You know We used to You know, we were like some of the first people on Twitter. We would, hey, this is how you use this. We would bounce ideas off of each other. We learned little tricks on Instagram that you can't use anymore to really build accounts, and that was a lot of fun. Like I remember Thomas would, oh, I just learned this new trick. You have to call me right now, you know, using hashtags to kind of hack things. But I thought it would be cool to bring him on Because a lot of people ask me For social media tricks Or just how to run it Because they've seen the electric bat Social media And my stuff is so gorilla and renegade I think you need to hear from the professionals But that is your brand Is renegade and gorilla That is the electric bat brand And that is the pinball brand in a lot of ways So it just comes natural to you be that person. And when you've got that content and you've got that audience, the technical side of it really is inconsequential. You're just so pure at what you do that it works. Thank you. Because you're so knowledgeable in this field, and before we go down that rabbit hole, let's actually talk about pinball for a second and something that Cale and I, I think more so Cale, want to get to know your balls. we're getting to know your balls let's talk about pinball so getting to know your balls is asking you various questions about your preferences in balls silver balls if you will sometimes we divulge into the other ones but do you have a favorite pinball game? Yeah I do and it's Twilight Zone and it's the OG like Cale was saying And that era of the OG Star Wars, the Twilight Zone, Adam's family, that's what got me into pinball. Before that, I remember going to the convenience store up on the corner where my dad would sit in the back and play video poker. And they had those old kind of pinball-y games. I don't even know if you call those pinball, Cale, but you kind of gambled on them, right? I think those were bingo machines. Is that what it was? But it looked like a pinball machine. Yeah, it looked like old wood rail. Yeah, exactly. And so, I mean, that's kind of what I thought of as a pinball machine until, you know, late 80s, early 90s rolled around. You started seeing these new machines come online and it was cool. So definitely. So do you have a preference of location, play or home play? I don't see any pinball machines behind you. Actually, let me ask you that question. I've never actually asked this question. Do you own any pinball machines? I do not. Am I your first guest who does not? I don't know. No, you're not. Yeah, surprisingly, you're not. I know myself, and I have addictive percent. So if I had a game at home, I would just be doing that all the time. That would be my thing. It would annoy the dogs, the neighbors, my wife. I've been trying to talk Thomas and his wife into getting a machine for years. They won't bite. It takes up too much room. but they do like to go out and play. Good. It's a good time. I commend you for not having any machines. I actually don't either. I sometimes find it an addiction, not the actual playing of it, but the kind of like buying, selling market. It's a whole can of worms. What is your biggest fear in life? Not pinball related. The one that actually scares me, the one that actually affects my body is turbulence. and I just can't stand it, man. I've read so many books and I've listened to so many podcasts and it's an irrational fear. When you can rationalize something and you know you're okay and it still scares you, that is by definition irrational. So I get through it the best I can. And what it is, though, is worse when it's clear air and everything is just great and you're just cruising along and then all of a sudden you just hit those bumps. And it's like, in my mind, if you're going through a storm, if you're going through clouds, like, yeah, that's reasonable. That's rational. Of course, there's going to be bumps. But I just hate it when you're just like cruising along. You're watching, you know, Crazy Rich Asians for the 17th time. And then, boom, something hits. And you're just like, ah, shit. That's the one that gets me going. Are you a Xanax guy for the time? I am. I am. I am. It does help. It takes the edge off. I will say that. Yeah. And about six vodkas. Oh, shit. I can just do half a Xanax. I don't even necessarily need to if I'm flexing, but, I mean, I don't like turbulence either. Those ones where, like, you drop, like, 30 feet and, like, boom. Yeah, man. I've had a couple of really bad ones. I'll tell you my worst story ever, and I'll make it as quick, but my wife and I were flying from Vancouver back into Seattle probably three or four years ago, and it was a massive, massive wind storm, a wind event happening up in the Pacific Northwest, and they were about to ground all the flights out of Vancouver, and they let one flight go last. Us. Should not have happened. It's not a very far flight. I don't know off the top of my head. It's what, maybe 90 minutes? If that, probably shorter. Just a blender the whole time. I mean, just up and down and drop in the whole thing. And we start descending into Seattle. And I've never felt, I've felt a lot of bumps and jarring and stuff, but the plane felt like it was actually going to flip backwards. It was doing this weird thing. And so people were crying, and I don't know what it was. Maybe it was because I just knew we were going to die, and I'm the guy who's scared of turbulence. I just started laughing because it was like beyond comprehension, right? It's like you can't even wrap your mind around how bad the situation is. And we come into land, and we're about to hit, and you hear the engines rev back up and we take back off and the pilot comes on and says sorry, we're going to have to circle around and we missed it, we got blown off course and so again, you're sitting there for another 20 minutes just doing that thing and we were supposed to fly home to Sacramento from there, we had a connection through Seattle, we weren't going to get on another plane we didn't do it, no we just rented a car and drove home, took us two days we were like, I'm not getting on the plane right now it was that bad I would have done the same thing. Fuck that. No way. Obviously, flown since then thousands of times, but that was a bad one. That was a really bad one. The more you do it, the easier does it get or no? You'd think, right? It just doesn't. I wish I've been to a therapist to talk about it. I ended up getting Xanax from him. He's like, here's what you need. Yeah. Is it a prescription or just on the side? Right. I met him out back. He popped his trunk and was like, yeah, here you go. It's a big bag. He's just like, here you go. His name's Spike. I remember when I had an MRI for something in my head, I don't know, brain, something. And they're like, oh, I'm very claustrophobic. And I'm like, I can't fucking do this. They're like, oh, no, we'll hook you up. I'm like, all right. You know, I didn't know, like, what are you going to inject me with? I'm going to be like, Xanax. And I'm like, nah, you're going to have to give me more than Xanax. Like, how about three Xanax? Like, okay. and then be like the third one like fuck yeah let's go in that tunnel what's in that tunnel you know that's just powerful other than that one time though I'll say one last thing about I do you know courage isn't the absence of fear courage is recognizing the fear and doing the thing anyway so other than that one time I told you I never let it stop me and even though I know I'm going to have this experience I can always saw myself as short-lived you know I'm gonna be fine I know statistically I'm going to be fine I know everything is going to be okay and I know that where I'm going to is going to be awesome because I have awesome friends and families and adventures and so you just gotta get through it you know that's the thing I will next time I'm gonna fight I always get a little bit I'll be like well I could be Thomas could be worse so now I got that thank you you know how many people say It could be worse. It could be Thomas. That's like, you know, helps people get through the day all over the world. Thank you. Appreciate it. Cale, did you slide this in here? Is this a leftover from Canada's? Because the next question I have on here that says, why are you an asshole? This is, that's leftover from Canada. Because I was wondering, when I saw the list, I was like, where did that come from? Yeah, that was, never mind. That's a deep, we don't even need to get into that. All right. Do you, I think I know this answer. Do you like, love, or hate fixing pinball machines or never have had to? I've never had the pleasure, so I will say I love it. Why not? Yeah. Thomas loves it. Hates turbulence, loves fixing it. Ramps or spinners when you're playing a pinball machine? What do you like hitting? All day, ramps, man. What's something you want in life? Wow, what's something that I want? Or not being afraid of turbines, because that's your thing. Yeah, yeah. You know, I got asked what I wanted for my birthday the other day, and I drew a blank as well. So I'm pretty happy. I know that's a shitty answer, but I'm pretty happy with everything. Well, you wanted to continue. There you go. Nice. Just keep doing this. How about that? That's what I want. I want to have that feeling. What's your favorite game moment? and that Wizard of Oz pinball game play that one when everything just goes freaking crazy on the game you know and the house is spinning and flying everywhere it's like oh yeah I'm in a twister baby or old school Bababushka oh yeah god I wonder how much I guess we classify you as a casual which is not a negative connotation. I wonder what, I'm actually most curious what you think here. Do you think the gameplay is more important or the theme of the game? Like if there's a Star Wars game and the game sucks, which is the case, or you've never heard of it and the game's awesome. It's got to be the gameplay. A thousand percent. Cause I was so excited to play the game of Thrones game as a huge fan. And I think it just sucks ass. So yeah. Huh? I've actually never played it. I've wanted to. It's too dark. I don't know. You've never played Game of Thrones? No. Unbelievable. It sucks, man. I should send you one. I think we have a couple of them. Yeah, toss me one. You have the Pro, right, without the upper play field? Yeah, the Pro. Yeah, and kind of like Black Knight, it's just a better game, especially for tournament play. That's what I've heard. Do you like Game of Thrones, Kale? No. No, I don't. But I have to practice it because you do end up getting it in tournaments. But no, it's not. I wouldn't own it. Yeah. Correct me if I'm wrong, as someone who's never played it, it's very much like the shots are satisfying, but it's all points and multipliers. Is that right? Yeah. Yeah. Well, it has so much promise, so much potential, you know, because there's a fan of Game of Thrones, and you're so excited about getting to pick your house and all the things. It's such a letdown. It was such a letdown. So, yeah, what is it a letdown to you, Thomas, aside from you mentioned Dark just didn't draw you? Yeah, it just wasn't fun. The digital display is, like, hella old school, too, right? Kind of like dot matrix stuff. It just does not. There's so many cool new things happening with Pinball. You guys know this better than I do, for sure, but it just seemed antiquated. It seemed like this game came out 15 years before it actually did. Huh. So does that still affect your willingness to go up to a game? Aside from, like, the ones you know, Adam's Family, Twilight Zone, the old school. Like, if it's that older school DMD look, or how you call it, like, you're more interested in, like, the newer, flashy big screen? I just asked Cale which one I should play. I'll just send him a video from arcade. He'll be like, hey, man, check this out. Which one? He's like, go, Foo Fighters. On it. Now. It's like, all right. Yeah. Recently, he was sending me video from Pins Mechanical in Nashville. He's like, what should I play? Is there a Foo Fighters? Because you probably haven't played that one yet. You need to check that one out. What did you think about Foo Fighters? That's pretty rad, dude. I liked it a lot. I've gotten into them recently on my running playlist, so it was a good connection. Do you have a favorite song or two of Foo Fighters that you toss on your running list? Uh, Hero always gets me going. Ah. Yeah. That's a good one. It's got a good driving beat. Yeah. Once Monkey Wrench hits, I can, I can do another five minutes on the treadmill or another few reps. Nice. Or I need DMX to dig deep and no one's like that, so. I've recently been back into Tupac for that. Like when I need like, or Eminem, just get angry or whatever, just get through it. Yeah. I slept like three hours last night, literally. And I've been doing two-a-days the last few weeks. Gym twice a day, weightlifting both times, just because I, whatever. Sometimes I do it for a while. And so today I had to struggle just to go. It was a pull-a-day, so rows and pull-ups and stuff. And the only way I got through it was, yeah, just tons of pre-workout, stim-free, and just a lot of 90s rap really loud in my ears and being angry. There you go. I did. It works. It works. Yeah. It's powerful. Music can fucking I think it's Pantera. Like Cowboys from Hell or whatever. Vulgar display of power. Oh, man. It's because you're in that power train, Kale. You're up there doing the monster lifts. You got the chain around your neck. You're doing the semi-tire. There's no lifting. Yeah. I'm just grappling. Grappling to weights. You're lifting on top of that, aren't you? Not as much as I was man Because I'm just grappling so much Like every day If I put lifting on top of it at my age I'm just going to break myself down Just like ligaments and healing And all that or Yeah yeah just I'll start getting sick and shit Oh like you'll Like over training sick Yeah When you did do weights Are you a weight guy Thomas or a runner or fitness or what's your all of your both yeah okay i've been you know i wax and wane on the like my preferable workout is like a push-pull legs three days on one day off three days i'm gonna and then i'll slip into these things where like it's usually when it's like all right probably gotta take a week off or deal a little bit we're like i have to just drag myself there and the weight goes down the reps go down whatever and like i'll just go in and i'll do like three sets of three heavy ass shit and i think that's actually what would work for me but i you know when you get used to the lifestyle of working out, like when I don't go, I don't know, like I'm, I'm not depressed, but like, I'm not nearly myself if I don't go to the gym anymore where it used to be cigarettes and, and all that, that would do it for 20 years. Yeah. Now, now it's, do you feel that like you don't go? Yeah, totally, man. You feel like you're missing something. It's mental, it's physical, it's emotional. Yeah, it's all of it. And when you get so used to it and then you see other people that could actually benefit from it, but it's so hard, like you have to want to do it and like change that lifestyle. But when you know, like that answer, it works a hundred percent of the time, all the time. But like, it's a bitch. You got to go in. When you don't want to, when you do want to. Yep. Um, all right. Do you have a least favorite pinball machine game that you've played? I mean, I'll just go back to game of Thrones. What the hell? Let's burn that thing down. Fuck that game. In particular Thomas probably doesn't know this But you know that designer Steve Ritchie Was Toward the end of his You know stern run was kind of known for just like Phoning shit in You know especially with like Led Zeppelin right I mean you can even go back to like Roller Games I mean he admitted to Roller Games is right here next to me I mean he admitted that they just kind of lost Interest and stopped designing on that So I think it's It's kind of like his thing, his M.O. Well, that bodes well for the next game from J.J.P. then. Yeah. Maybe he'll give a shit. Right? Is there – my personal favorite Steve Ritchie game is Star Trek. Is there a better one? Which one? Oh, yeah. The Sternsnewer. Yeah. That's an awesome game. Yeah. And it kind of sucks right now because we're having some issues with ours, so we had to take it out of the arcade and I'm missing it. That is a banger. Pro? Pro, yeah. Yeah. I think my close second is Black Knight Sword of Rage, probably. Yeah, that's a fun one. Son of a bitch. Not Star Wars. Damn. No, and that sucks, man. Yeah, man. Which Star Wars? There's a bunch of them out there, aren't there? So he did the Stern one, which is the most recent one. I mean I'm sure you've seen it That pin's mechanical And then there's a comic book version Which is the coolest looking one But same gameplay It's fun I fell in love with it Because for a while it was the only game We had in the lobby at Marco's Specialties And so We used to play the shit out of it But I wouldn't want to own it I did Yeah Don't last question is there a game that you played that you were surprised you liked yeah I mean back to the Wizard of Oz and to your question of theme and gameplay Wizard of Oz come on it's going to be a silly game right it's like Dorothy and shit you know Dorothy and shit oh I want to call the episode Dorothy and shit yeah is that good for my brand let me ask brand guy I think so. I think so. As long as you're genuine. It's very genuine. Dorothy and shit. Okay. Yeah. There you go. And it turned out to be fun. I enjoyed it. Probably a lot of purists don't go for that kind of thing, but I just thought it was a good time. Dorothy. I'm not texting someone. I'm writing down Dorothy and shit. Any problems, Cale, with that as the episode title? No, not at all. Let's run with it. Dorothy and shit. Well, thanks for letting us get to know your balls. Sure. Very interesting balls. a little different. Yeah. Different. They're clean. That's a good way to put it. The reason Kale wanted to bring you on, and I love the idea of that there's so many people, I mean, myself included, either breaking into the, what do you even fucking call this world nowadays? It's just the online mess of what the fuck is happening. That's exactly the title of my TED Talk. so yeah. Yeah, oh shit. The online guess of what the fuck is this. Can we talk about your TED Talk? I don't know if you have more than one but the one that Cale sent me, this is a whiplash conversation. Absolutely. Back and forth. Okay, I think it was like five to seven minutes long, right? Somewhat shorter for a TED Talk. TEDx, that's what they call it. TEDx Talk. Oh, is that what the X means, shorter? Yeah. He's going to give it to you. Fuck. I like that. It hit home. I listened to it, was it yesterday or when I texted Kale back because he sent it and I was like, oh shit a guy who did a TED talk, fucking hey, I mean props nice flex and all that and that's awesome and then when I watched it and listened to it at the gym, I was like shit because for anyone, what's the title of it? Well I have a program called Above the Thread that I've transitioned into the online parent but that's really what it's all about is just trying to get parents engaged with their kids' digital lives and I don't think my daughter would she would let me share this um she's 20 in 10 days everything you've talked about uh lived it of the like how important it is i don't want to say especially for girls but if it equal if fuck the pressure they go through it destroyed her life for like five years social media um to the point where you know i'll just she had to be hospitalized for certain things and then when you go there the social workers and the doctors are like oh yeah no it's it's a hundred percent the phones and social media it's not a guess it's it is and like you know it as a parent and you do what you can to mitigate it you do what you can to but you have no like the point you made in the TED Talk of like, remember what it was like for, I'm 40, I think you're a little older, of like in the, you know, 80s, 90s to grow up without this or, and then you merged into, the internet became part of your life and you kind of subconsciously, responsibly knew the difference. They don't, they don't have that benefit of knowing like, this is not real per se, this isn't, you don't have to. The pressures that they have of physical, emotional, the likes, the... I remember that it's just so impossible without that of just like does she like me Is he my friend Is he going to stab me in the back Is he going to stab me in the back Do they like me Am I ugly Am I fat It insane Adding that where what they see is this surface level like everything is perfect for everyone else but me. Of course depression is on the rise. Of course suicide is on the rise. Of course. What the fuck? We're not evolved to handle that. Hearing that talk, I was hoping it was like five times the length. I wish it was longer because I was captivated. I was like, Fuck, man, this is... I'll keep it in the trenches, man. You get it. Thank you. You understand. And it took this long. It wasn't until just a couple of months ago that the Surgeon General raised a red flag about what's happening. It wasn't until this year. So right now there are several bills that are working their way through Congress where they're trying to get the social media companies to take some culpability for some of the stuff that's going on. And California, always progressive California, they're suing the shit out of social media platforms for a lot of different things. It's happening all over Europe. It's happening all over the country here on a state level. You've got states that are moving to keep kids off of social media until a certain age. I think Utah was the first one that passed that. I mean, you have to be 13 period. And that's always been kind of the unwritten rule. But now you've got to be 13 period to be on any of the platforms. And so it finally feels like people are paying attention and taking this stuff seriously after years and years and years of people like me just screaming into the void about all of this stuff. And it's been so frustrating because, like you said, it's so friggin' obvious. So friggin' obvious. And it was just so easy not to pay attention to it. And I'm glad that it's finally getting some attention. We're not there yet, but it's starting to. So hopefully in the next year or so, we're going to see some real action happen. And it's not just about keeping kids off of social media. It's about understanding the parent's role in the whole thing. And we weren't taught that. We don't know what the hell we're doing either. So helping parents parent online just like you parent offline. You have all these things that you do for your kids to keep them safe in the physical world. All these things, every day, we just want to keep them fed. We want to keep a roof over their head. We want to keep them safe. and for some reason when they pick up these freaking devices, we just don't give a shit. And we need to have that same level of responsibility to parent our kids in front of these devices as they're at the mall. You know where your kids are. You know whose car they're getting into. You know where they're spending the night. You know who their friends are. That's like a thing that all of our parents knew. Why don't we know that about what's happening when our kids are online? Where's the disconnect? I could do hours on this but you can we can park that one but it's it's a lot man it's a lot I spent years studying it I've spent years talking to experts up and down and it's as bad as you can imagine and I've been all over the country and I've spoken at schools and churches and community groups and everywhere I go I hear these freaking horror stories man and they're all unique and they're all the same Yeah, every single day I am thankful that, I mean, definitely Thomas and I, I mean, we were adults when there was no Internet and cell phone. I mean, so, you know, we got to see these drastic changes and changes in people and everything. And I'm so thankful I did not grow up with the Internet and phones. I don't think I'd be here. I really don't. I mean, I think I would have been one of the people that succumbed to the pressures, and I felt it at a lot of what we call teenage angst. A lot of things have happened. But all of the things that happened to me and to you, Cale, when we were growing up, they played out in the safe space. They played out in our homes and our schools and our neighborhoods and our church and around where people typically cared for us. People typically wanted us to succeed and support us. And so everything that happened, good or bad, we still were surrounded by some sort of a support network. And all of those things still happen to kids today. And they play out on this global stage where people don't give a shit. And I am just so thankful that I didn't have that experience because I can't imagine what it would be like. I really can't. Right, right. And I guess, you know, something that really always bugs me because I am sensitive to how dangerous this stuff is and how much information we're pushing out there. But we both use it for business, right? We both use it to promote what we do. And do you ever feel like, I don't know, sometimes I'm like, oh, I'm doing too much of this. It really doesn't matter. All I'm doing is pushing out this funny meme that brings people to like the account for an arcade. There's an end goal there. There's an end goal with all of that. You've got to think about what's your business model. Your business model. You own an arcade and you're trying to get people to come in and put quarters in machines. That's your business model. How do you do that? You raise awareness. You increase visibility. see? I mean, there's all of those things that go into it. So you're doing your job by posting funny memes and people respond to that. Yeah, man, I wish it was that simple for, I mean, I guess it is right. It's just putting in the work and doing it and doing it and doing it and doing it. Well, so here's, here's the difference, you know, and what, what my company does, what we do all day, every day is we are a personal branding firm. So we work with people, not companies, not businesses. And there are Zac Stark differences between working with a business or working with an individual. So working with an individual really starts with the fundamentals, breaking it down to its core, who you are, what your message is, who your audience is, all the other stuff, other stuff being social media, the other stuff being building an email list, starting a podcast, creating a keynote. All of those things are kind of secondary, tertiary to the primary. And that is figuring out who you are, what your personal brand is all about. It sounds very simple on the surface, but... I was going to say, that sounds hard as shit. For real. Well, there's a thing, right? We all have this FOMO. We all feel like we're missing out because we're seeing other people do this. And they've got all these followers and they got all this engagement. And we all want to rush in and start immediately posting. And we get these ideas and it's like, oh, I'm going to do this. and the first thing we think of is, oh, I need to go create an Instagram account or I need to go create a Facebook page. And there's so many things that need to happen in order for you to need those things that you really got to get straight with who you are and what your brand is. I remember when earlier this year, so the music, I say the band I'm in is Neon Dale. I always like, I hesitate to say it because I don't know if it's the band or if it's me. Anyway, I'm just going to – why I struggle with what you're saying of like identifying the core, like what is it? I remember talking to Cale on the phone a few months ago. I was like, yo, man, I'm – you probably remember this. Like I'm willing to pay someone. I don't know what the fuck to do. I don't – you know, whatever. And he didn't have time. He was like, hey, you know, it was respectful. Like I probably can't do you justice even if you pay me right now. I'm so busy. So I paid someone locally and someone who does marketing at a tech company. So it was really a square pick in a round hole, but it was at least enough someone who knew, like, well, I do this professionally for the company. Let's see what I can do for my knowledge for you. And that was the first thing. Okay, what's your brand? What's what? I was like, fuck. Well, like, who's you? Like asking the questions because I'm a humble person. I guess just to say it, even though that sounds like I'm not like I am. So what's your message? Like, well, I don't fucking have a message. You do. You do. You do. So check this out for a second. Yeah. Everybody that we work with, and we work with a lot of people. We have, I think, just saw on the call, we have 695 active clients on our roster right now. These are people from all different walks of life all around the world who are, we call them mission-driven messengers. They have a calling on their heart to share a message with the world. And whatever that message is, we try to help them define it and amplify it. And the person that you are typically, and this isn't always true, but the person you're typically most best positioned to help is your former self. Typically, the person that you know you can reach is your former self. Who used to be. Oh, right. Who used to be, who you were. Okay. So what can Jason from 2023 learn or what could Jason of 1993 learn from Jason of 2023? So we look back and we see the missteps that we made, and we don't want other people to make those missteps. A lot of our clients are coaches and consultants and people that are trying to change the world one person at a time because they went through a traumatic experience. They had something that they dealt with that they had to overcome, and they did it. and now I go, I had this breakthrough because of whatever the thing was, and I want to go share this message with the world. And so, I mean, that's just a calling on someone's heart to get out there and help. And it's not the financial first. It's not I need to go make money, so I want to build a personal brand. The money comes, and there's nothing to be embarrassed about by saying I want to make money doing it. But it typically comes from just a place of, hey, I need to get this out. yeah i know that feeling uh shit but it's just like you mentioned it's a scary thing to like one admit that i'll just say like i don't know for me i'll just i'll use me because i'm the only example i have i'm not here to talk about me i'm just uh you know it's first a scary part of like i need help i don't have all the answers uh and like what the fuck is that even like even i was calling kale like to be honest like i was kind of like i don't want i don't want to sound stupid like i don't know how to do social media i don't know how to do this i don't know what i'm doing it but i didn't um and that was you know for me a first step like i don't i don't fucking know um and i can see the like what you're up against like the the world is just like this overwhelming like oh my god where do you even start there's i don't know i mean that's like a such a broad question do you get that a lot of like hey i want i have this you put it you know the mission in my heart or something. Yeah. Where the fuck do you start? Yeah. I mean, I, we get people all the time. I've written three quarters of a book and I don't know what to do. You know what I mean? It's just a constant thing where people have, uh, they have an established brand and they're doing the thing, but it's just not working. Right. The dominoes aren't quite falling. And so some people are starting at zero and some people are starting at seven and that's okay. It really is. And so wherever you come in on the chart, it will all work. And there are just core fundamentals that we run people through and help them determine. They call it the brand DNA. What is your brand DNA? Break it down into the smallest form possible, bite by bite by bite, and build you back up that way. And once you get through that, then you can start getting to creating content. You can do books and podcasts, social, email, all that stuff. all that is the, I mean, you mentioned the brand or the mission statement kind of, I mean, so many words. Is that? Yeah. We call it brand positioning statement. Your one word problem. Like, okay, let's just put you on the freaking table. What would you say your one word problem that you help solve is? What's the one word, if you had to put it into a word, what problem can you solve for the world? I'm not, I guess I, yeah, it's like, I don't know. I don't have like a product. It's weird. Like it is a product. Is it? Maybe you can help me. You are the products. Okay. Help me with this word of, of what I like. My knee. Writing catchy songs is kind of intuitive to me, but why? Like, that doesn't mean like, well, like I can jump rope. That doesn't mean I just want to jump rope as a professional, like whatever. It's just something I'm good at. But for me, like, you know, some to your talk, that age, 13 to 15 is so like music was so powerful and it remains to me, you know, we talk about working out how powerful it can be, how like it can change your mental state. It helped me through a lot of shit like a lot of people at that age and realizing like, oh, I can do that, too. And you hear some of the music industry or some of it like it's bullshit music. It's just like whatever. It's manufacturers, whatever. But like there is that subset of music that actually helps people. And I'm not trying to, like, help people with my music, but, you know. Why not? Like, because then it's, like, I'm not a doctor. I'm not, like, you know, like, oh, my music will help you save, you know. But that's why my humbleness, whatever you want to call it, like, I don't, it doesn't feel genuine. Because I'm not really, like, if I'm playing a show or if I'm writing a song, I'm not thinking, all right, at the end of the day, I'm going to help some kid who's going through some tough shit. Usually, lyrically, it's about struggles or things like that. But a lot of times, the lyrics are. I don't know how to, yeah, just. Well, you're kind of helping people sell their products. I mean, those jingles you make are like second to none. Thank you. You know? But it's the thing. I'm not doing it specifically for them because I care that their business gets better. Well, are you solely focused on becoming a musician in the traditional sense? I mean, is that what you want to do is just be a musician? And I don't mean just be a musician because that's an amazing endeavor, but is that the sole focus is I want to be a musician. I want to get paid to make music and all that good stuff. That's the closest I can say is paid to make music. Is it do I have to be the front man on Madison Square Garden? No, that'd be cool. I don't have to be. Would I be, like to your point, very wealthy? As in just like good, like I'm happy, money isn't a problem. Writing music for someone else. They can take, sure. If my nine to five is I get up, I work out, but then when I come back, I'm creating stuff. That's it. You know, I don't have to be the person in front. I can be. All right. Well, let's look at it a little differently then. Who are you creating it for? Hmm. It's me and other people at the same time. Sure. and the trap is that you know there's not one book that everybody should read or one album everyone should listen to this it's you can't just say oh everyone's my audience you know one of the one of the exercises that we go through and brand dna is identifying your ideal avatar and breaking it down to a very granular level of who is the person that i am trying to reach and we can go as far as to naming that person. We can go as far as getting into the psychographic and demographic characteristics of that person. Not to interrupt, but that's exactly what I'm thinking about, even though I'm not trying to help someone, but if I'm thinking about how is this kind of song, like I always have some sort of vision or a tone or something, it is to that impressionable, not just age, that mindset of like, I need to know I'm not the only one out there dealing with whatever this is. That's kind of what I'm writing it for. I love it, man. That's awesome. I'll give you an example of one of the TV stations that I used to work at. This was way before I got into any of this stuff, but one of the TV stations that I worked at was really into the Nielsen data. If it was in the Nielsen data, then that's what we did. What people want and what we're going to give them, basically that's what television is anyway. But this one was just so rigid. And so we figured out that the viewer, we knew who our viewer was. And we had a life-size cardboard cutout of a Hispanic woman in this corner of the newsroom. And everything that we did, we thought about her. Would she want to know this story? How would she want to see this story presented? What words would she be responding to in this story? And so not to get, like, super militant with it or anything, but that's just a lens that helps you look through things. And, you know, if you're targeting adolescence, I would not encourage you to put a cardboard cutout of a 15-year-old boy. I'm not necessarily targeting adolescence. I guess what I was – okay, here's a better way to put it. You know when you hear a song for the first time – pick something catchy. Ah, fuck, name a catchy song. Help from Gingham style. Okay, shit, that's a bad example. Chocolate rain. Chocolate. I mean, we talk about Tool a lot. I think here or there, but that's kind of, are you a Tool, familiar with Tool? I'm familiar with Tool, yes. I'm a Sandwich fan, but I'm familiar with Tool. Okay. It's like you hear a song, and there's a song on the radio or something, like, oh, I like that, right? But my goal is the type of song where, like, then you hear it a few times, like, oh, this is one of my favorite songs. So then at that point, you start actively listening to the song. You listen to all the parts. You listen to the lyrics, and then you're like, oh, this is one of, you know, my songs. It becomes a personal thing. Um, and I'm more in that vein, as opposed to here's this one little fluffy song. It doesn't mean shit. The lyrics are about nothing. It's, it's nothing. The music is just there. It doesn't mean anything. It's just this thing that's gone. I'm more than like, I want it to mean something to someone. Not that I have to be the one to do it, but for me, movies or listening to songs helped me, my mind slow down from just being always just fucking on it. So it's like an audible story or something that someone can really get invested in. For an adolescent, yeah. So how do I get that into one word? There's no wrong answer here. You mentioned someone's going through something, they're struggling with something, whatever that is. It could be mental, emotional. I mean, that's what comes to mind for me is that you're in that space of wanting to move people to action, whether that's, you know, make them feel a certain way, make them do a certain thing. There's all kinds of ways to dissect that. And I don't think we're going to solve that Rubik's Cube in the next few minutes. But that's just one exercise that, you know, that we go through when we talk about how to build a personal brand is the word you solve, the one word problem you solve. And it can take a long time. You know, a long, long time. And it can change over time as well to come up with that. So for those out there trying to start a pinball podcast or a pinball arcade or a pinball company. Don't do that. Okay, yeah, don't do that. Like you get a word. I guess a lot of businesses, I'm not trying to cheat, but like money. Yeah. Primary business model. That's a big component of it. How are you going to monetize this bitch? We're not doing this for free. It's not through altruism. People deserve to get paid for their hard work. So what is your monetization plan? For an arcade, pretty clear. People come in, buy drinks, they put money in machines, they buy a T-shirt. For others, it's different ways. It's endorsements, sponsorships. You want to go out and win tournaments. There's all kinds of different ways that people monetize that brand. You know what's funny? Clowns? Because you're like, you're pinball adjacent. And I've found Stern's mission statement slash branding recently, what they talk about, interesting. What do you think Stern's, like, you know, one word or mission, whatever, brand, I forget what you call it. What do you think it is? I don't have a clue. I mean, I guess they serve the pinball community. They create the machines, the portals to which people play. I don't know. They position themselves as a lifestyle brand. Yeah. I don't see how that connects. Oh, you don't think this is freaking Kale's lifestyle? Hmm. I mean, pinball's the man's life, so I'd say it's a lifestyle. I've seen the people who come into the arcade. Yeah. It's a lot of his lifestyle. Kale, do you know what I mean? Do you think that's what they're meaning? When I first heard that, it was like a few years back, and they started coming out with all of the apparel and cool art and hiring artists, hiring cool artists that were not actually doing stuff on the pinball machines, just creating marketing materials for them. Yeah, at first I was like, whoa, you know, what is this? You know, because it seems weird. It seems like Ford trying to become a lifestyle brand. Which, I mean, they very much are. They kind of are. Very much. But it works. And I think because you're kind of in a pinball location desert somewhat, you don't see it. I mean, we see it, you know, every day, people coming in with all their stern swag. Really? Yeah. Well, let's say they win it at your tournaments. They do. We do give away that good Stern swag, and I appreciate Stern for hooking us up with all that stuff. Every time you say swag, I think of swag in high school. Yeah, the dirt weed. Seeds, the popcorn in the bowl, tastes like shit. I don't care if I'm smoking it anyway because that's all I got. Yeah. Keep going. South Carolina's finest. Yeah. Yeah. And they also like to represent tournaments they've played. Do you see a lot of in-disc T-shirts and other stuff? I mean, it might be something District A too, but, yeah, people, it can very much be a lifestyle. I mean, this is, I mean, people wake up and look at Pinside. What are the latest rumors? What's the news? What's coming out? Yeah. Yeah, but I know it sounds weird at first, but it very much is. I mean, have you been to a tournament, Jason, like a big tournament? No. No, I don't know. Yeah Okay, what's that one in California that we went to a couple times? California Extreme I took Thomas and his friends Was Isla with us? One time, she did it one time She didn't come back That's Thomas' wife Oh, okay Yeah, man, if you see that thing, that's a huge show Yeah, I blew their minds I think you were in Sacramento at the time, right? And I'm like, look, I'm at San Jose. I've got passes for you. You have to come see. This is the most amazing thing. If you have never been to a pinball and arcade convention, bring a newbie there if you want to blow their minds. Because Thomas and his whole crew was like, I cannot believe this is something we've been missing. It was awesome. It was fantastic. We had a blast. Absolute blast. We lost a few friends along the way, but it was fun. You know, we'll find them. We'll find them again one day. They're still, like, bouncing around the conference room at the Sheraton, but we'll get them. Yep. That was a good time. To the point, lifestyle. You know, the people that were there, a lot of them traveled many, many, many miles and hours to get there. And you can tell they're excited to be amongst their community. People vibe with their tribe, you know. For pinball people, a lot of them, that's their tribe. So it is a lifestyle. I applaud Stern. I mean, there's other pinball companies, not to discount their success, but they're aiming high, at least. And I guess if they were to say, oh, we just want to make – because to me I don see not that they wrong I don see the lifestyle brand I see a company that makes the best pinball machines I would have assumed that that their goal to make the best pinball machines I feel like the lifestyle is just a result of everything that's happening anyways. I don't know. Maybe they can take credit for it. Maybe they can't. I get it. I get what they're trying to do. Does Electric Bat have a single word branding? you guys have your own like mission state to you rachel like revolve everything around your compass i i don't uh i mean we haven't thought about it but i think it just naturally happened it's all about fun you know it was never about money it it really wasn't uh we we love doing this and we think it's fun as shit and we want to turn other people on to it and i mean you can come to arcade with a $10 bill and buy a beer and play a bunch of games. We still have a bunch of games that are 50 cents. You know, so it really never has been about money. It has been about entertainment and fun. And on the social media side, just being funny, being comedic, giving you enough information like you know when we're open, and you know we have food and drink, and you know we have pinball machines, and the rest is just to show our personality and how fun we are, you know? And we're usually there, you know? So, yeah, I think the mission statement was fun, like serving fun to the public. You did a great job. Yeah. You did a great job. And it didn't hurt that your social media prowess was top tier starting this? Or was Rachel, like, when Rachel kind of started this? So Rachel started this, and if you do a deep dive into the Electric Bat Instagram, you can see when I took over. She doesn't – she's not into social media. She doesn't like – she would rather stay home, you know, but I'm out there. I want to talk. I want to meet as many people as I can, and that's what – when Thomas and I first got into social media and realized that we could make money running this for companies, Like people would pay us to do this. We just, we are very natural at it, both Thomas and I. I've learned a lot from him, and he's probably learned a little bit from me. Sure. But it's kind of like music with you. I mean, I would love to be able to sit down and play guitar like you do. You know, you're just very good at it. You have this natural thing. You write jingles and commercials that blow me away, and I'm a musician, right? Yeah, we had this thing that comes natural to us And at first, when I started running the Electric Bat Social At first, Rachel was like, hold up, what the fuck are you doing? This is not my style And I said, over for months, I said, trust me This will get eyeballs This will get people talking What was it, her style? Because you guys seem like the same humor, the same everything Yeah, we are I've taught her a lot I've taught her how to let loose a little bit But Originally it was A very horror Driven Thing that she wanted She's talking about you Speaking of horror look at that Creepy Yeah and like creepy art Creepy feel creepy sounds And I was like Just let me do this I'm going to bring attention to this thing, you know, with comedy and fun and cool art and all that good stuff. And it worked. And she was like, you know what, I really had to warm up to it. But you were right. This is how you get attention. If there's one thing you know how to do is get attention. And I think that's what social media is all about. Because, I mean, there's so many people out there doing this. You have to be able to stand out, you know. One thing I love, and I knew they were killing it, but this is the kind of stuff I'm talking about. If you follow Wendy's, like follow Wendy's on threads, they obviously hired a writer or a comedian because this shit is just not about hamburgers. But you want to follow them to go, what is this person going to say next? Absolutely. They do a great job. Yeah. On thread. I've been following them on Threads. I'm loving Threads. Threads, and I forgot that that's a thing. Yeah, that's a thing. That's a hot thing now. What do you think about Threads, Thomas? Should arcades be using it? Wow, that's a great question. Depends on how the whole platform goes, I say. I mean, grab your handles now, lock it in, but I'm still kind of figuring it out myself. And they've got to fix a few things, right? They've got to fix the feeds where you can follow who you want to follow and all the things still. But it'll get there. It'll get there. I think you guys are just doing a bang-up job. And there's another thing we talk about when we talk about social media. Platforms matter because content matters, and not all content translates to all platforms. If you're going to open a women's clothing boutique, you've got to be on Instagram. It's a visual thing that you're showing every day. Does Twitter matter? Not as much. But if you're an accountant, what are you doing on Instagram? What are you showing? Are you showing a calculator all day? You need to be over on LinkedIn. So that's where your people are. So that's an exercise as well. One of the things that Cale learned and I learned really early on was that, again, struggling with that FOMO is I need to be everywhere. I need to be on all these platforms. I've got to be on Facebook and Twitter and Instagram and NowThreads and Pinterest and Tumblr and all these places that we were trying to post and conquer, and it just doesn't work. You can't. We're not an army. We're people. the messages are different the content is different on each one of those platforms so back in the day when people were trying to post to Facebook and have it shoot out this thing and that thing and this thing and that thing it just was like no come on that's not how it works either so it's a really long answer to your question Cale but I think time will tell for threads and who's going to rise to the surface on that one so I'd just wait and see if I was in Arcade because you guys are visual you know you're going to kill it on Instagram you just are So this is Tell me your opinion on this This is what I tell people Who ask me You know they're starting an arcade Or they have an arcade and they want a social media presence I tell them Facebook Instagram YouTube That's the things you want to focus on You know for Obviously I mean Facebook You know I know people are like It's just the olds, but hey, that's where your old school pinball fans are going to be. That's like a directory. Always post. Have an audience there. Instagram for the obvious reasons. It's popular. It's fun. And then YouTube is super important for pinball because if you're doing pinball, you should be streaming, even though we don't do as much as we used to. And then put your old streams on there. and then YouTube Shorts are very important right now because unlike TikTok, YouTube Shorts are searchable. They're indexable by Google, right? Right. Are they? Yeah. So let me ask you selfishly from my perspective then. Again, like if the shotgun approach is not the way to do it these days, music, what are the main platforms? I'll let Cale answer that one. I mean, I have a couple of ideas, but what would you say first, Kel? Well, obviously Instagram. I think you just kind of have to be on Instagram, you know. But I would do YouTube because another thing, the videos and the shorts are searchable. They're indexable. You know, they're indexed by Google. Super important. I mean, shit, they're owned by Google, right? Or ABC or whatever they're calling themselves these days. Alphabet. Yeah, Alphabet. They have these cars driving around my neighborhood with no drivers. Do you have that problem? Not yet. Man, they look weird. Yeah. Every day, anyway, rat hole. Yeah, for music, I definitely think YouTube. Concentrate on YouTube and use YouTube shorts like people are using TikTok. What's really cool since you are a, you're, you're an engineer, you're a producer, you're, you're good at what you do. Um, people like to hear, uh, they want to know how the sausage is made. How did you get this certain guitar sound? And that's what's perfect for the YouTube shorts. Put your videos and your music on, on YouTube, the YouTube we know and love with the, you know, the long, uh, aspect ratio, whatever. Long balls. Yeah. Very good Balls Larry So But like in the YouTube shorts I would do like hey I found this new way to get this really Killer sound whether it's Vocals you know keyboards I'm using this new distortion That's where I would do the shorts And those things seem to really take Off on TikTok Like producers Showing how they Were able to pull off a certain effect it's funny on youtube to make a short you just have to put hashtags short in the description isn't that right there's not like a or it was like a month ago i'm not really sure i would i haven't done any yet but i would do it through the app yeah oh like on the on the phone yeah yeah on the on the youtube app on the phone can you just you know hit it and you create a short it's so lame that like the instagram the the the fractured like usage of the platforms online versus phone, like sharing to stories and stuff like that. Like you can't do it on certain platforms, which is quite lame. Yeah, I agree. I agree. I don't know why they do it that way. Yeah, you can do like the hacky inspect method and try to turn it into an iPhone, but it still doesn't show up because I think they're getting smart. I thought you were going to mention SoundCloud, Cale. You don't want to be the next SoundCloud rapper? I've never messed with SoundCloud. Well, you also have to think when I was a musician, when I was a touring musician, We didn't have any of this stuff. We didn't have Facebook. We didn't even have MySpace. I mean, we had a joke of a website, and it was actually, for the time, it was very nice. We had a friend design it for us, and this was back when you just had to do raw HTML. It looked really cool, and it had the scariest thing in the world that nobody would do today. It had a completely anonymous message board. you didn't have to you just you just write stuff in and man we we had the like yeah yeah you can still go back and see it in the way back machine but uh yeah so i mean it was it was basically like fortune um those good old days were like when the internet was first blooming and the irc channels or the natural world or or people weren't like just pure cunts yet they were like weird and you could you could get in some weird stuff but they weren't just like oh hey i want to see you die and be sad like where they are now like oh your opinion is wrong and i want you to know it and i want you to feel sad it seems like people are really interested in getting to know each other and connect from from these long distances yeah it's turned into something really screwed up that's what they're hoping threads will be again right isn't that whatever we keep saying is that we're the softer side we're not endorsed by the taliban like twitter is, so... What is Twitter these days? I've never been a user of it. I don't follow shit on Folsom. But it just seems like celebrities and politics. It's a troll farm. I've been off of it for over a year. Yeah, I don't mess with Twitter. Once Elon got involved, I was like, no, I don't want to watch this shit burn, so I just got off of it. Do you ever struggle with, not to put a struggle in your head, of like the TED Talk stuff that you talk about? But at the same time, social media is so important these days for success to a certain extent. Not if you're a doctor, per se, but... A lot of doctors are killing it on social media. No shit? Yeah. Yeah, you got to follow the Dick Doc on TikTok. Of course, that's great. That sounds great. If you guys are on TikTok, follow the Dick Doc on TikTok. He talks about dicks. Right. It's very interesting. Absolutely. I do recognize that. I mean, it's an oxymoron in some ways, but you have to be there. I mean, you have to have a presence these days. It just, like Kales took Kales for earlier about putting your music on YouTube. I mean, how many stories have we heard about artists that we know now as household names that got discovered off of YouTube? I mean, there's so many people that somebody saw a song and sent it to Usher, and, oh, now we know Justin Bieber. because of a YouTube song or something like that. And you can't not have that presence to some degree. I mean, you can, but you can't. Yeah. I probably shouldn't be posting a bunch of little shorts on LinkedIn, like, look at this. Look at this fucking shit. CEO of Napster, or I mean of Nabisco. Project managing. Yeah. There's also a difference between producing the content and consuming the content. You know, it's really easy to get sucked into the abyss of consuming the content and let it consume you. You know, doom scrolling, whatever you want to call it, where you just sit there and read all the bullshit. And then you start to feel it in your psyche, man. You can start to feel like, I don't like this. I don't like this. But if your job is to get in, post, get out, then that's something completely different. I'm going to say you're elevated in any way, shape, or form, better than anyone else. But, you know, if you can separate those two a little bit, you're giving yourself a fighting chance. So between your two brain trustees, let's say the people out there pinball again, starting an arcade, starting a YouTube pinball channel, starting a podcast, any sort of media-ish or any sort of pinball realm. Is there a kind of general, I know it's not, again, it's not everything fits in this mold, but a general amount that a person, a company, someone trying to market their shit should post. Let's just use Instagram. I don't care. Is it daily? Weekly? Three times a day? Is there a general rule of thumb? From what I found, and Thomas might have a different answer, it varies depending on you, depending on your personality. One of our friends, City Limits Barbecue, Robbie, he posts an obscene amount. I can't keep up with him. But he's killing it. He has more followers than I do, more engagement. I am on the school of – I don't post more than once a day unless I just start feeling a little froggy. I'll do a couple more. But I basically do like post, you know, one good post a day. Sometimes I take a break. Sometimes I'm like, you know what, I just want to back off a little bit. People know what we're doing at this point, and I can take two days off, you know. But I'll always keep like interesting shit, and I'm just talking about Instagram. I'll always keep interesting stuff in the story just to keep people, you know. Walk me through that. You wake up. You have a protein shake. Well, AG1. AG1. pre-workout grapple some dudes accidentally touch your dick yep you know i say that but he's touching it uh then you get on your phone you make your post hey what's up electric bat we're weird lol right and then there's your post then what you're going through i'm trying to find five that i go to share post the story or do you have x amount what are you doing no so i i any social media expert will tell you not to do it the way I'm doing it. They will say you need to have a plan. I have zero plan. I think that's why it works, man. Yeah, I agree. That's the brand. Totally. The only thing I need to worry about, okay, so I need to let people know there's a tournament on Tuesday and then we have the last Sunday of each month we have a tournament. So that's really the only thing I'm worried about. Okay. Remind now I'm not even like really worried about that. Cause we're having over a hundred people show up for tournaments. You know, I could like cut off Instagram right now and we'd still be crushing it, but because I put in that work, right. Um, but I, you know, I kind of wake up and go, Oh, what can I do? But a lot of it is I'm just like surfing different social media accounts and I find something funny and I go, how can I make this relatable to pinball? And then I'll do a screen grab and then maybe put something in my notes and then go, okay, so tomorrow I'll set this up. If it's really funny and I can't – like Rachel's like, why can't you breathe right now? Like I'll be like really tripping out. Thomas just sent me something. Yeah, Thomas. I get a lot of my remixes from Thomas. And if you see any AI pinball art, I get it all from Thomas. He has really gotten into making AI art. Is that where your art of your fucking is coming from? Yeah, he makes all the AI stuff of me. Isn't that from him? It's fun, dude. Oh, dude, he looks so fly. I hate to cut this short, guys. I've got to get across town for a board meeting. I'm the board of a nonprofit, so I'm going to have to bring it out of here in about three minutes. Is there any kind of wrap up I need to do? Well, could you briefly, since we have friends that listen to this that have podcasts, could you briefly talk about your podcast program? Absolutely. One of the one of the core pieces of our content is called Podcast Power. It's one of our courses and we figured out over years of how to create a podcast and not just how to create a podcast, how to monetize it, what to do with it. There's so much when you talk about content creation, Jason, and how frequently people should post, whether it's blogs, podcasts, social media. It really does depend, but there are so many ways to leverage that content in so many different ways that you're not even thinking about. I'll just give you a low-hanging fruit. This is like super, super, super, super granular stuff, but it works. So we've done a podcast now. We've been talking for a while. We've been shooting the shit. There's some nuggets in here somewhere, sure. I know we've had some good back and forth. Somebody said something. I mean you, not Cale, but I think we got that. Right, sure. Someone said something along the way that was halfway intelligent. There's an opportunity to grab that, and what we'll do is we'll coach people to grab a little piece of that and then pull it out as a snippet, and you're playing that little snippet on Instagram in your story. It's just like, hey, here's a highlight from the podcast, or you've got a little recap, 30-second, one-minute greatest hits that you're using to suck people in. And then you take that and you transcribe it. And then, boom, you've got all this text. Well, now you can start maybe massaging it into a blog post, a mini blog post. You've got to drop it into Canva. And, boom, now you've got a cool piece of art that you can share on Instagram that's, you know, a funny quip from the podcast. There's so many different ways. And people don't see your content. They just don't. I mean, we've said this for years and years and years that the belief is that about 12% of your followers see your piece of content at first. And then we're so hesitant to share something again because it's like, oh, I already shared that. Well, you shared that to 12% of the people, but 88% didn't see it. So repackage it, repurpose it, hell, share it as is again. So the struggle is I've got to keep creating this content. You've got to keep creating this content on and on and on, but you've already done a lot of the work, and it's there for you. So it's little things like that. Yeah. All right, bitches, you're going to see a lot of short, weird shit coming out of the pinball party. Get wrecked. Thomas, thank you. I know you're going to get cross-found. Man, some of this is just invaluable. Keep up the awesome nonprofit work. That shit is more important, I think, than anything. And it was great talking to you. Please come on again sometime. I'm sure people have plenty of questions for you. Again, go check out Brand Builders. There's a link in the show notes to get some more amazing marketing and social media advice from Thomas Dodson and the company. Thanks again for joining the show. Thanks, Cale, for bringing them on. For Jason, Cale, and Thomas, this has been The Pinball Party. And this will be the song Lost Forever by Neon Dale. See you later. I know things aren't getting better for you. And I know you've been getting letters from me too. Why are you waiting? Who are you waiting for today? Nobody's waiting. Why are you waiting? We'll be watching everyone together, standing on our side Watching everyone in the summer, who covers their eyes Why, oh, why are you still bothering me? Time goes on without you, better for me Why are you waiting? Who are you waiting for today? Nobody's waiting Why are you waiting? We could be lost forever, lost together, standing at our cross Lost forever in this utter use of our goodbyes We could be lost together, but forever giving out our lives. Lost together in this place under the covers of my shoes. My, oh, my, oh, you should know how we I'm so proud My trusty is now in my feet Why are you waiting? Boy, you're waiting for today No one is waiting Why are you waiting? We could be a lot forever Long together Spitting out of time Long forever In this other universe of mine Wait to be born again in a world together We will never find What do you believe in? Dive into the universe of mine Wait to be born again in a world In this other universe of mine What do you believe in? Dive into the universe of mine Why are you still bothering me?