Finding The Right Dev Shop | Episode 29

In this episode, Gary and David discuss how to find the right dev team and what to look for when it is time to start automating tasks. They also discuss social media as a whole when it comes to teens and ending with David's continued obsession with Dungeons and Dragons.

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David Baxter - CEO of Big Pixel

Gary Voigt - Creative Director at Big Pixel

The Podcast

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

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

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Transcript

Unknown: 0:08

Hi, everyone, welcome to the biz dev Podcast, the podcast about developing your business. I'm David Baxter, I am back. Yay. I know you all miss me. I'm joined by Gary, who stepped in last week to be the host. I'm sure that went horribly. Yeah, I'm sure it did, I'm sure. Perfect. Okay, so I have, I want to start strong here, I'm going to read you a quote, it's a long quote. But I want to read the whole thing. And I will then put it in context. All right, here's a quote. Okay. First of all, social media isn't social full stop, it is not. And if you need proof of that just go into a room of teenagers who are together, but not together, because they're all on their individual devices. And let's not blame it on teenagers. But let's go into a room of adults, or walk down a city block, and see how many people are buried in their phones, myself included in nature, a web is a trap, you get stuck in it, and then you get killed. Throughout history, it is not uncommon to spread lies, but the pace it multiplies as an exponentially greater on the web. There is an old dictum that a lie goes around the world three times before the truth gets started. So on the face of it, what do you think? I love that quote, just because it can mean anything to anybody who's reading it about their own, you know, opinions or biases about social media, and, you know, misinformation and lies online or whatever. But it sums it up extremely well. And especially the part about looking at a roomful of teenagers are on their phones individually. But then same thing happens to adults. Yeah, I mean, I live with two teenage daughters. And it's, it's been crazy to try to keep them off their phones every now and then just to do stuff. In fact, just a couple of weeks ago, one of my daughters forgot to connect to the Wi Fi in the house. And she was using so much data burning through videos and stuff on YouTube that she used 78% of our data, like in the first two days, and we all share the same data. So then we all had to kind of cap our usage to only Wi Fi when it was available and just not like be on our phones and random situations. And wow, that was a very stressful week for us are actually two weeks for us to try to not go over the data limit. It was it was a weird experiment. But yeah, we made it through but at the same time this this quote kind of brings it right back home to like, yeah, the the idea of social media being social is a complete farce. It's a way for you to project, whatever you're feeling in any way you want to a world of people who are ready to feast on it or fight back. The whole idea of everybody says online what they would never say to someone's face is so true. Yeah, I took this as a hot take. I love the idea of in nature. A web is a trap. Yes, that's good old. That's a great thing. So let me put this in context. So this is Ken Burns, who is a documentarian, world famous documentarian, and photographer. He is so he is a well known person, at least in his world, probably the average Joe doesn't know that name. But he has been around and he's very well known. He's currently marketing are out publicizing his new documentary about Benjamin Franklin, who I'm very intrigued with, because I think he's a very interesting historian. There's, I think a lot of our founding fathers are really interesting people. Yeah, it's cool to listen to. But it's cool to find out the difference between what you perceive to them based on what you were taught as a kid versus what they were in real life. Well, they store amazing people even real, yeah, but yeah, there's the fun little insight information that you find out later. That kind of humanizes them a little bit more. It's like, oh, okay, that makes sense. They're just regular dudes. Or when there's another regular beer. I'll do the I'm doing this on the fly, because I just read it. And I think it's amazing. Quote, The problem with Kancil culture is that it leaves us feeling lonely. We feel bereft of ideals and heroes, but we have to remember that a hero was never perfect. The Greeks were telling us that there are imperfect that here are these imperfect people. Achilles had his heel in his hubris to match great powers. It's so easy to dispense with someone when you discover Aha, you did this. It is much more difficult to sit with those contradictions and not to accept them, but to try as Benjamin Franklin would say to improve on them. And this guy's just a walking quote wishing I love ya. He's good, dude. That's the canceled culture thing is weird. Cuz it's used as like a buzzword in the media for like people jumping on to would like immediately disagree with someone or tell you not to, you know, do business with that company because they did this this one time. And like a flame if flickers and burns out pretty quick. And it goes back and forth to everybody. Anybody who says, like, canceled culture is a joke, still participate in the canceled culture in one way or another? So it's funny because both sides do it. Right. I mean, typically, right now, it's considered a liberal tool. But it's framed as a liberal tool. But I mean, the conservatives do it just as much. I mean, here in Florida, the Conservatives are, quote, unquote, canceled culturing Disney. Well, that said, but you know what they call that when we were kids boycotts. Remember that? That was like the big thing. It's the same concept. Yeah, it's just, it's just the social media buzzword to go back to Ken Burns. His first quote, like, this is just that web that people get stuck in that eventually can kill you. Now, I'm gonna bring this back to what our core function is on this podcast, and that is business owners. And I think I will say, as a as my, and me, as a business owner, I have, as my family will, will attest. I have no filter. And it's it serves me well, in some ways, and it gets me in a lot of trouble another, I was gonna go in the direction of social media being a double edged sword for small businesses starting up as well, they can be an extremely useful marketing tool. And at the same time, if something goes wrong, it could put you on can blow up canceled culture. Yeah, it's so to me, though, as a business owner, I am nervous, often putting almost anything on the web. Because I and then when I do, I have to make sure it gets edited many times so that my filterless being does not get out too easily. Because I can say something on accident and be upsetting to people. I don't want my business to be hurt because I say something that was taken out of context, or I didn't mean it that way. Or I'll use an old idiom that I knew as a kid, that now means something totally different. And I don't realize that, right? That happens to me a lot. Like I'll use an old idiom that my dad taught me, which when I think about it now, objectively, it's probably horrible. But I don't think anything of it, because to me, that doesn't have that context. But I'll say it, and then my daughter will say it to somebody. And then she gets upset, because someone gets on her. Right. This is the world. Yes. This is the generational thing that's been going on forever, as well. Oh, for sure, for sure. But now when it's on social media, it just it's amplified. And it multiplies, as Canberra says exponentially. And it's, yeah, it could be harming. Which is why you'll see a lot of small businesses that probably have the same mindset as you do, like afraid to do something wrong or social media. But every single holiday, they'll put up that same post that everybody else is putting up, for sure. Yeah, I mean, every one, you'll see that now it's like, if you because now you get in trouble. If you don't post something, it means you support the opposite is what is become, even though if I am not a political organization that's not big pixel in particular, is not a political organization. We accept all types, all kinds of people, that's fine. It's just not a thing. Our workforce is extremely diverse. But if you Well, I mean, we're small. So extreme is, if we don't have like, tons of money, that's my point we try, which was small and diverse at the same time. Um, but we tried to do that because I hire good people. And they just happened to be all over the map. But what is is interesting is that if I don't post a pro Ukrainian thing right now, just as an example, some people might assume I'm anti, or I'm pro Russia or anti Ukrainian, like, No, I'm just not involved. I just, it's just not in place for big pixel who builds websites and mobile apps to get involved. So biggest stay out of it. But then if you're big enough, that doesn't happen to us, because we're totally but if you're Coca Cola, and you don't stop selling coke to Russia, maybe that's a bad example. Because maybe that's why you don't put a Ukrainian flag on your social media. Like I get probably you shouldn't support the Russians by get taking their money. Okay, fine. But yeah, so now social trends and social media are being like if you're part of the marketing and PR firm of giant corporations or even larger companies, and you're not participating in the predominantly most current popular social trend, people wonder what's going on. So yeah, they assume things about you, which used to be that Coca Cola sold, sold drinks, and now they sell culture, which is their choice. And to be fair, maybe that's a bad example because they are Our cultural warrior, they want to be ok, apples the same way. I want us to sell computers. Now they sell a lifestyle. And that comes with a cultural bent. Okay? But if I sell, packaging, I sell plastic bottles, blank plastic bottles, I'm just doing this to make a product. I'm not involved in a culture war. Now you're expected to be, which is really interesting to me as a business owner. That is, it's scary, because if you do it wrong, or you're not paying attention, or they're just gonna know what the trend is, yeah, the feeling of the expectation can be stressful too, because you might not like people might not expect but you feel like Oh, what am I doing if I'm not participating? Is anybody even seeing you know what I am or am not saying. So that's an added part of that. It's just interesting stress as the younger people get older, so my son is a Zoomer, which I love that name. That's Gen Z, which I think is so especially with COVID is so perfect. But Zoomers, as millennial went daughter, two years of her school was basically over zoom. So that generation Zoom Zoom, zoom wants. I gotta hand it off to ever branded that. Yeah, whoever branded, that's pretty, pretty brilliant. But they are getting older, right? Like Millennials now are up to 40 years old. 20 to 40. I think that's right. Yeah, they're old. They're old and then the Zoomers are now in college. And so they now have their own money, and they're now doing things. And as a business owner that matters because they buy they buy things based on their beliefs and their culture, which is the first time right, it used to be I bought meat or clothes or shoes, because I liked your product. Now, it's if your product is fine, it's as good as everybody else's product. But I believe in what yeah, what does your company stand for? What do you stand for? Are you saving the planet with your shoes? No, then I'm not buying those shoes. That is a whole new world that is coming about which people our age Gen X and older. Have no idea what we're talking about. What's wrong Gen X? Don't try to paint me No, no, I'm not saying you. I'm just saying, if you're a boomer right now, you are completely confused. Because I was just gonna say if you're a boomer right now, and I'm referring to my parents, you have no idea what's going on. I mean, unless you're really actively trying to be, but that mean, so Gen X officially goes all the way up to about 60 years old right now. So that if you're a boomer at this point, I mean, you're and I didn't mean any derogatory way, I just meant, the way that business and Tech Trends now, based on purchasing power and the consumers mindset, completely foreign to that generation. It would just be like, what, what do I need? What can I afford? Who's got the cheapest? What's the value, that's what I'll get, I don't care about anything else. And now it's I'm willing to pay $300 for these shoes, because they're made of, you know, they're fair trade stainable they're, they're sustainable products, you know, they're made of bamboo, and, and cork, or whatever. And they're made in a I know, because I've got now I can trace where this came from and who sewed these stitches that they were earned a fair wage and all that I mean, these are all good things don't get me wrong, because before business would just sell you whatever they were making, and they were making as cheap as possible, and sweatshops and etc. I mean, I'm not saying any of this is bad, but boy from a business perspective, it does change things, it changes, but then at the same time maybe the younger generation who are starting like their own little ventures, entrepreneurs starting their own little thing, they this is ingrained in them already from the start. So that kind of directs their their motion forward. So it doesn't seem as foreign you know what I mean? It's just something that like you said, maybe the older generations have to retro fit back into their consciousness when they're trying to you know, market their product and sell their product. Yeah, yeah. So I'm keeping mine I know that we kind of derailed from the Ken Burns but I thought that that's a pretty good tangent right there sparking interesting conversation so we're gonna continue our series, backdoor series. So for those who have not paid attention to our other episodes, shame on you, you should go listen to all of them. What are you doing? How are you missing these? How Yeah, how are you living your life? Anyway, die are the important. So we are making a series of how to build a start up from scratch in the cheapest, most effective way. Is that the right way you say? I wouldn't say cheapest, I would say we're giving Insights from the perspective of a company that's built startups multiple times, what might be the the safest value effective way to spend your money, maybe that's why we're making up our marketing spiel, we're not going for cheap, I can't stand all the articles and Reddit posts and stuff that talk about how to do your startup for no money, that's we're middle roading it like middle lane, but also the the one that has like the, you know, your GPS is warning you of all the traffic jams and everything ahead, so we're kind of guiding you and through the middle lane, that's gonna get you there the most effective way without the extremes of either, you know, so cheap, our Series products are way overpriced. Our series moves forward of our first step was to validate your idea using traffic and SEO, that's two episodes that we talked about. Once you've got your idea validated, you know that there's a market out there, you know, people are willing to pay for it or sign up or show interest, you can move on to the next stage, which is building a very good looking but very non functional website. concepts. So it's very manual looks really professional. So people sign up and stuff like that. But on the back end is very manual. So it takes a lot of time on your part as the business owner to fulfill an orders because it's not automated at all. That's the next step. And so now we're saying, Okay, what's after that? How do you go from that really great website that's very manual intensive to investing in a real app. And that is obviously our bread and butter, because this is where most people come to us. And so we can explain the how, what the next steps are. So first, I want to put in context, when you should do this. Yeah. And this essential, is pretty common sense, really, we're not yet at this point, when you're ready to build an app, you should be making some money, not a ton, it shouldn't be making millions of dollars that you're weighted, well, you probably can't sustain that, because your element of time, but it should be, you should now know that your idea is legit, it's worth investing in, etc. And you're now the manual stuff, you're getting overloaded with orders, you know, doing all of this manually, checking the spreadsheets, moving things around, calling people all the manual steps you're having to do to fulfill an order, where it's, you're now overloaded, you, maybe you've hired some people, because you're making some money. But it's a very manual thing. And you want to automate. That's really what an app and a good web portal, whatever you want to call it can do for you. It automates things and makes your life easier for your customers as well as you on the backend. And so that is really where you start to look at a real app developer, whether it's big pixel, or any of the other shops that are good. But what I want to make sure of is how do you do that? How do you know you've got a good, good team that you're working with? Well, first, you should just hire us. No, I'm just kidding. There's lots of great teams out there. But there's also a lot of bad teams. And that's really what I want to make sure that I arm you guys with the knowledge of how to find a good team. One of the reasons that we wanted to do this series from the beginning, was because we did see a lot of these quote unquote, incubators, that were basically just marketing tools for some of these. Not so great. Deaf companies. Yeah, there was a lot of promises being made. Without sustainable results shown. Yeah, and they weren't. There was no way that they were doing what they were saying they were doing unless there was some shenanigans going on. And that's what really bothered me, is I didn't want to I just that just really bothered me, I feel transparency is so big. And what we do is, is so unknown by most people, that it's so easy to trick people that just always comes to the back of my head. So that's where the series came from. Yeah, so communicating the value in what we do, not only us as big pixel, but, you know, Dev companies seeing the value between a good versus not so great dev company, and what are the pitfalls, this these are the things that you have to look out for. So one of the things that comes into play is when I'm hiring a developer, especially if I'm young, and I say that because young people, no other young people and they're all fired up, and I love that, but you'll get the concept of sweat equity, right? That is something that comes up a lot when you're starting to find a dev team and you don't have a lot of money but I want to just throw down that I have never seen that work. Never. I've seen a lot of people try. It just doesn't work. And so we could dive into that deeper if you want in the future, but that is should be very Be very careful. All of that. So how do you find the right dev team? And I would say, the key is because you're not technical. I'm though the assumption here is you are not technical, you do not have a technical co founder. So now you are talking to dev companies that are doing black magic that you don't understand. And you're very nervous about hiring the wrong one. Right? That's, that's the the assumptions that I'm putting forth, right? No, no. And that same common place, the super common as most of our clients, the vast majority of our clients are exactly that boat. And the number one thing I believe you should look for in a dev team is transparency and passion. Those are the two things, those will get you pretty far. Because you can tell if someone, if you're talking to the right person on the team, like not just a sales guy, who's there to sell you something whether or not the dev team can do it or not. I'll tell you a story. When I was a consultant many years ago, I was on a big old team. We were working on a government project, there were 17 of us on this one project. And they use Crystal Reports pretty heavily on on this project, which is a way of making you know, PDFs and stuff like that. Okay, I was gonna ask what that was. It they've been around forever Crystal Reports. And so the sales guy, you're like, oh, yeah, we've got tons of Crystal Report experts. We'll bring one in, we'll fly one in four years on big company, a fly whenever you you'll be good to go. Okay, the declines like cool, that sounds great. So they bring in this guy who might have been 25 work fine. So But I say that only to say he was early in his career. He comes in, he had never seen Crystal Reports in his life. But the sales guy was touting him as this major expert. So the first day this guy got here, he went in with the architect. And they both were learning Crystal Reports enough so that they could make it appear to the client that they knew what they were talking about. That is why I don't typically like working directly with salespeople, because though they just want to close the deal from maybe that's horribly by design perspective and a design background. Yeah, salespeople, promising the world, promising things that are not even in this scope or range of the designers in house on a timeline and deadline, that's not even, like, feasible, happened all the time. So yeah, going past the sales guy and talking to someone on the team that actually knows what they're talking about is essential. There should be if you're talking to a small enough dev firm, not a big boy, if you got a big boy, there's gonna be a salesperson, but a big boy team. Well, I'm talking the team with 20 Plus developers, 30. Plus developers, a larger company dev company will have what's called a sales engineer, that is often a developer who helps with sales, they are the guys who are going to make it happen behind the scenes. If you can find one of those, that's wonderful. You can Hey, I'd like to, you know, let's talk to the salesman engineer, I'd like to move to the get to the nuts and bolts of it faster. That's one way you can get closer to the deputy smaller dev teams, you're probably talking to the founder. And they most likely were a dev. And so with a small dev team, it comes across real fast, because that founders usually extremely passionate about what they're doing. And they obviously are very knowledgeable. And so that, but that's step one is transparency, making sure that you are talking to the people who really know what they're talking about. Because if you're stuck with a sales guy to get sales guys are great. Don't get me wrong. I we've had sales guys in the past, I don't have a problem with them. But in my world where, where we talk about transparency, their job is to get them to me as fast as possible. Not to try to close the whole deal. I won't let a sales guy close the deal. Because they can be the one step in between the transparency that we want to use so much with a little bit of a let's just say they might not defer to the transparency immediately if it means they can't close the sale. Yeah. So. So that's step one is to get to the people who have that passion, that really love what they're doing. You You can you can feel that you can talk about past projects, like, again, you don't have to be technical. You don't have to understand the mumbo jumbo coming out of their mouth. That is fine. You just need to be able to read whether or not they love what they're doing. And that they've done it a lot. Right? Get them talking about their prior projects, things that they've done that you should see them light up like a candle. If they're really into this and you want that you want that passion to come through. You should ask for to be very clear on the proposals. Everything should be transparent. Everything should be very clear. This is what I'm going to do. This is what it's going to cost. Now you're going to get there's a podcast upon podcast about this a fixed fee versus hourly, that kind of stuff that's probably worth diving into a little deeper when we're talking about hiring, right separately. But you should know what it's going to cost, you should know exactly what is being built. Now, they're made you talk about one of the crux of projects, the reason projects are going to go sideways, is because the spec is too vague. And there's not enough trust in the relationship, that you're going to take care of one another that's on both sides. And so you have this kind of a fork in the road, you could spend a lot of time and you're gonna have to start paying them at some point, to really dive deep and spec it out and build this really, really detailed spec, you probably don't want to do that, as the owner, and the dev team probably doesn't want to either. So there has to be a level of trust, because you can't get down well, there's buttons gonna be here, and it's gonna be three pixels to the left. And when it clicks here, it's going to do this, this and this, that you got to do up front, you have to go in with the understanding that these are problems being solved. Up front, we have an idea, but there's always going to be problems that come up during the development and creation that need to be solved as well. And so like you said, with that trust. A lot of times there might be some what's the word I'm looking for here readjustments of timeframes based on new things that have to be built in order for like, Step A can't be completed unless Step B is done along the same path. So there might have to be some wiggle room in there that you didn't account for in the spec at the very beginning. So that trust we usually like to do if it's a larger project, is we will ask them to hire us to build the design. And we will ask them to build and with that design it not only is it the pretty stuff, but it's also the flow. And you start to see your screens come to life in terms of just what they look like. And you'll see some high fidelity, some low fidelity, but it allows you to then say this is exactly what this app does. That's very powerful. And it's worth its weight in gold, because then I know exactly what I'm building are pretty darn close. And then I can build you a real spec based off of that design. Some of our clients balk at that, because they they don't want, they want to hire you and hire you. They don't want to say, well, I hired you to do this design and find out you're 10 times more expensive than I thought you would be right. So that's always a dance you have to do but But bottom line is your dev company should be able to use a Dave Ramsey phrase, they should have a heart of a teacher where they understand that you don't know what they know. And that's not they're not put off by that you will find a lot of devs are kind of snooty about it. Though you should run from that guy, because it's not your fault, you have not failed because you don't know dev stuff. I don't know Doctor stuff. That doesn't mean I have failed, right? So and you probably shouldn't pretend that you do if you don't. The consequences are much higher. If I fake doctor stuff, he reminds me of a story I read. There was this guy, one of the actors on Grey's Anatomy, I can't remember which one it doesn't matter, one of the clunky doctors. He was on a plane, and he's up in first class and he's just minding his own business. Someone in the economy starts having chest pains. And he said everyone, including the stewardesses started looking at him. And he's like, What are you looking at me for? I have no idea what I'm doing. I play a doctor, I'm not actually a doctor. But it's your perceptions reality, I guess. The person was fine. That was an actual doctor on the planet. But that was fun. Okay, I don't want to beat the dead horse. But I think that's that's, that's the bad part of a teacher. A design first strategy is really great. But you will have to pay for that no one's doing a full design for free. So if you can afford that several $1,000 is what you should expect from a good design good def company doing a good design. But that's usually it's worth its weight in gold. Because if you don't do that, not to belabor the point, but if you don't do that, what happens is we build a spec, and we do our best guess as to what we're building. And there's assumptions made on both sides. And somehow, you know, inadvertently something got missed either the client missed something, but forgot to tell us about it. Or the developer assumed something that was wrong. And now we're we're who pays for that? Right that that money and yeah, probably gets really expensive. So that invest in your design. First, and that shouldn't be the same company, you shouldn't have to hire a design company. Because, gosh, that's a whole nother podcast, sorry, you need to be careful with that, because a designer can make things pretty, but they don't necessarily know tech stuff. And so they might design you something that's technically very hard to build and cost you a lot more money. That's where the the marriage of the two is important. And when you're saying design, I want to expand on that a little bit. design isn't always just the final end result, look out pretty. Like I saw something on dribble, that looks amazing. I want my app to look like that. A lot of times in the real world when you're building a product that's might not, you know, achieve those dribble fantasies. But the design process in itself, when you're bringing something like this to a dev company should always start with at least just like a wireframe or sketch or something to just start putting your ideas down into a concept that's actually creatable. And just form and flow. Like you were saying, Can you imagine getting halfway through an app? And then you're like, wait, no, how? Why doesn't this part connect with that part? And then you both stuck, like, What do you mean? Of course, it should, we just didn't think about that in the spec. So even just a low fidelity wireframe can get you, you know, those puzzle pieces put together before, a mid or a high fidelity design even happens, which of course should happen because that is the blueprint for the developers to create. I wanted to ask and probe about this weird new obsession you have with Dungeons and Dragons. Oh, you hooked one into it. And I'm seeing you guys talk on Slack. And it's just, we have I don't exist in that world. But man, do I want to make fun of it? We have seen he is now just this is just I'm just, I just I'm actually we moved our Nerd attitude into our own channel so as to not bother the rest of you non nerds. Oh, I'm lurking don't know, I will be. I have been an old school role player for in my heart since I was in high school. But I was to quote unquote, cool, right? I didn't want to portray non coolness that I'd never allowed myself to play. So you were a closet Dungeon Master. I was a closet. Dungeon Master and magic nerd. Right. I always watched and lit those cards. Oh, but I never played because I was too. too proud. And in college, I dove really deep into that world actually wrote my own self published it the whole bit. I mean, I have gone way competitive Rubik's Cube. No, I would have been the trifecta. That would have been the trick. I am not smart enough to be one of those. But so but then I had kids and all of that and never touched it for 20 years now. Yeah, what I was bringing this up for is because one night spoke about the nostalgia. Oh, yeah, back and getting back into like, you know, hobbies or passions you had, you know, as a way of just kind of using it as a like a therapeutic way to make yourself happy. That's aside from anything else in your life. It's just one personal, small thing that you're doing for exactly yourself that makes you happy, and you don't care what anybody else thinks about it. And it's usually something that's nostalgic back from Utah, my family absolutely just rides me as being super nerd, which is totally fine. But I will say I was telling the wrong one. The other day that I had this one of those moments, you know, when you're a kid and you say I'm going to do this when I get older. Exactly. And so when I was a kid, you know the books and stuff of d&d, it's they're expensive. They just are they know that can they know their niche, and they get pricing? I was always impressed with the amazing artwork in those books, man. Oh, yeah, dude, yeah, that's always a 14 or the like just scenes that were just inspired. He was so so as a kid, though you can't afford them, I get one guy who had a book. And we all talked to him or you go to the comic book stores back then. And you look through them because you couldn't afford them. And now as an adult, it's like, I can nerd out and go a whole different way because now I have some discretionary income, which I didn't have as a kid. So buying the books into that big of a deal. And so I've got like, now I've got metal dice that are you know, things that as a kid I would have just loved but it could never afford it. And I've got a dice tray now. I mean, all the things I wanted as a kid, I now can have so it's almost like this. And I will say there's a whole nother level. I'll stop after this. You can now buy dice as for example, that are made of prisms. They're$80 For dice. And I'm like man that's on a whole nother level. But they're really pretty. And I'm curious. Does the 3d printing model come into d&d dice at all like RP We're making their own, like 3d printed custom weird dice. The reason why I think, no, I don't think 3d printers can do them with a roll randomly enough. Does that make sense? Yeah, perfect. Wait. Okay. Yeah. So like the 3d printer still kind of the rough edges and things so they could think and make them as display pieces. But yeah, but not real dice. Because it's funny though, there are some people who are really into that, and they build them. You know, have you ever seen a casino dice? And they're super sharp edge? Yes. That's because of accuracy. They want them to bounce. That's the whole reason why they're sharp edged. And you can if you're really into accuracy, there are a whole lines of dice that are super sharp, like they'll almost cut your hand because they're made to be like that. And then there are the rounded corners which are more comfy, but they're not as accurate but for the we're not wagering $10,000 here right we're playing the game amongst friends. So it's not that big of a deal but but I don't think I've ever seen 3d printed dice. I'm sure they're out there somewhere. But I have seen some that are made of semi precious stones. I had a vision in my head now of you know, some people that gamble with dice or whatever, practice nonstop and they know all the possible scenarios. So I imagined someone with a 20 sided d&d dice rolling it randomly for like days and counting all the results and then seeing no no mathematically this is imbalanced because the more randomization like the obsession can go that deep you can know for sure there are company there's a different movie playing in my head about Dungeons and Dragons right now. There's lots of different levels of nerd man, and there are some whose like, it's all about accuracy of the roles and they will spend 50 bucks on dice that were cut and weighted at a you know, molecular level practically. I'm not one of those people, like the poker scene from hangover was Zach Galifianakis with other equations floating around in his head when he's rolling his d&d dice. Nice. All right. Have you made fun of me enough? Did you scratch the itch? Oh, I'm sure I'm just saving saving some for next week. Fair, fair. No, it's good. And I'm glad to be back patient. We will be speaking to be back. We will come back next week. Alrighty, everybody, thank you for listening to us. Spread the word. Get some subscriptions going on. And we'll talk to you next week. See you guys