Digging Deep: Why Core Values Matter to Startups | Episode 18

This week Gary and David dive into defining your business's Core Values. What are they? Are they really that important (spoiler alert: Yes).

The duo also dives into all the crazy news of the past week, including Microsoft buying Activision, Google jumping into the AR race, and more.

Enjoy!



Here are the links to all mentioned articles/videos in this episode:

Ars Technica: First details leak on Project Iris, Google’s next AR headset
Business Insider: Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick set to receive almost $400 million windfall payout from Microsoft sale after taking a massive pay cut last year amid company scandal
Engadget: German Bionic's connected exoskeleton helps workers lift smarter
Engadget: Intel is spending $20 billion to build a massive chip-making facility in Ohio
TechCrunch: The first big tech antitrust bill lumbers toward reality

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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

Gary: 0:00

You're sleeping on an air mattress?

David: 0:02

That yes, I am currently quarantined in my home office. I got exposed or potentially exposed to the fabulous COVID at a business meeting Omicron Yeah, I got a official espresso I am quarantining myself in my home office for the next couple of days. Sleeping on an air mattress, and my blankets too small.

Gary: 0:27

Now that's the worst. Either toes freezing or face freezing.

David: 0:33

Yeah, or a coat up. My My shoulders are my toes. Can't have both now I'm gonna I have a solve for that. I'm going to wear socks to bed tomorrow. Yeah, definitely. And and that will that will help with my blanket woes, but I think we're gonna muscle will be okay. Hi, everyone. Welcome to the biz dev Podcast, the podcast about developing your business. I'm David Baxter, your host today. And I'm joined as always by Gary Voight, my co host. How you doing, man? Hey, how's it going? So today, we're going to do some newsy news stuff, we have a couple of Lightning Rounds has been pretty busy news week, actually. And then we're going to talk about some core values, which is something that a lot of startups kind of gloss over. And I'm going to encourage that they don't.

Gary: 1:28

Yeah, we've touched on them before. And you've made mention that like we could do more content about them, or just explain a little bit more what they mean to our company. So we'll get into that.

David: 1:38

Yeah, so we're gonna go a little deeper into into some core values. But I want to start off with the big news of the week was, Activision being well, potentially, but I guess I shouldn't say has been because it's not gonna happen for like a year, but they're potentially bought by Microsoft, which for and I'm sure anyone who listens to podcasts has heard this news. It's a big huge deal. For a Few Dollars. They found in the couch cushions $70 billion. And they're buying Activision and Activision, for those who don't know, is one of the largest game video game producers, they do call of duty, which is a perennial massive hit. They do what you might have seen some ads on, I'm trying to think the big ones that might have broken in the mainstream World of Warcraft has been around for almost 20 years. That's a huge game. They also they own king, which does Candy Crush, which a lot of people have heard of. So a lot, I mean, big, big, big names. And they've been having Activision has been having a lot of problems because they've gotten scandal scandal after scandal, just scandal with sexual harassment and stuff like that. And it's just really beat up the company, Blizzard in particular has gotten beat up pretty bad in the news in the last few months. And I think that's kind of what set this up is Bobby Kotick. I think that's how you say his name. He's the CEO of Activision. And he's kind of rules that but at least the impression as he rolls it was kind of like this iron fist. But because of all the scandals and stuff, he didn't have the backing to fight off this huge purchase. So he lost in Microsoft is coming in. And why does that matter? Well, it matters because Microsoft is doing this as a Metaverse play, okay, that they're gonna they're buying all of this video games? No, of course, it's successful, even in its own right, right. They're gonna make a bazillion dollars because they own a bunch of video games. But outside of that they are playing this is we're going to use this the talent that's involved, and the tech that's involved. And we're going to put this into our version of the metaverse, whatever that means. I don't even know what that means.

Gary: 3:40

Well, we talked about them coming up with their own virtual, like Office experience, you know, similar to the metaverse, but there's seemed a little bit more businessy when they were

David: 3:49

that's the mic. Maybe this is yeah, I think Well, I think I think there's a there's like Microsoft's almost schizophrenic. They have two personalities there. They have the business side, which is what you're talking about, right? That's yeah, that's what everyone knows about it. But this is whole other side, which is their gaming side x box. Okay. I mean, they're one of the largest gaming companies before this.

Gary: 4:08

So you think this is going to be lean more leaning more towards like the metaphors of gaming?

David: 4:13

Yeah, I think they're going to have two or they'll merge them together. However, that works. But I believe that they're going to, because obviously, the big money and all of this for the metaverse release for the foreseeable future is games, right? Just like Apple, Apple has the App Store. And something like 80 plus percent of all the money the billions of dollars they make every year off the App Store is games. It's hands down

Gary: 4:37

$3 games $5 games, so it's

David: 4:39

the in app purchases, the thing that kills you is in and as a gamer, it drives me nuts. I'm still an old guy who wants to pay X dollars for a game and I get all the content that that game has to offer. That's that's how I grew up. That's how I believe games should be now it's here's a free game. You can, I'm gonna now pressure you. Yeah, like a crack dealer to buy all the stuff.

Gary: 5:07

Here's your avatar. But if you want hair, it's $5. Oh, we want to cool sneakers. And it's an extra two bucks.

David: 5:13

It was one thing for like fortnight, Tanja time, but it's one thing for fortnight to say, hey, here's the entire game, do you want to look cool pay us money, I don't really have a problem with that what you see in mobile land is, here's part of the game. And if you want to succeed in the game, we're gonna it's pay to win, they're all pay to win. And you have to pay $5 so that you can unlock the superduper hero that will allow you to win for the next 10 minutes until that guy gets too weak. And then you have to pay another 20 bucks for next year. I can't stand that stuff. But I believe that will be the backbone of the metaverse because there's just with it, but what game developers have learned is, instead of spending 50 bucks on a game one time, I can charge you nothing. And I'll find 1% of my players who will pay me $300 To play this game over a year. Right. And it makes them so much more money. It's an infinite trough. Yeah,

Gary: 6:03

I mean, it's obviously working there.

David: 6:05

Very clearly wrong. Very, very successful. But, and so well, and that's what King basically has built itself off of. Um, and I think I think that's really interesting. From the perspective. I was listening to a podcast, it was the daily, New York Times, which a great podcast, they were talking about this specifically. And what I like about them is they're they're the Everyman. They're not technical at all. But they're talking about the metaverse. And so they're explaining it to their audience. And the big, big answer is, what are the metaphors? No one knows. Right? No, no one, no one has a clue what it is even the people who say they know, kind of guessing

Gary: 6:37

it's a promise of a future that might happen. But yeah, not sure yet.

David: 6:42

Yeah, it's and there's lots of views of it. Good and bad. But I think there's very little doubt that it's going to be laden with microtransactions. I'm afraid that web three of which we talked about yesterday, last week, yesterday, last week, was is going to basically break that microtransactions stuff that we just described that I can't stand, it's going to break it into the every day. Yeah. And and everything's gonna have it.

Gary: 7:09

I saw rumors that Google are going to start putting crypto payments available in their Google Wallet and Google Pay coming out.

David: 7:17

And Twitter now is doing NFT profile pictures, which is,

Gary: 7:22

yeah, the NFT thing is getting a little out of hand.

David: 7:26

Well, speaking of Google, they're coming out they're jumping on the bandwagon. They're rumored to be coming out with an AR headset.

Gary: 7:32

Well, back to Activision just for a second. Because yeah, I was looking through the article. We changed it a bit. But uh, so looks like Bobby boys going to jump ship for a cool 400 million

David: 7:43

know that. That is, man, I tell you and your fake news. That is not what any of those articles are saying. They like to say that's what all

Gary: 7:50

the headlines say. That's past the headlines. Oh, you kidding watch.

David: 7:54

If you actually read those articles, what they're saying is he owns like four and a half million shares of Activision. Yeah,

Gary: 8:00

is his stock valuation, which is worth $400

David: 8:03

million. It's not a golden parachute. Not in the traditional sense. I don't like Bobby Kotick. It is a golden parachute. But it's not because like the worst things I hate when a CEO leaves, you've done a bad job. Get out. Here's the one email. Yes, yeah, I hate that. But Bobby Kotick, he's just got a lot of stock that he's collected over being CEO for bazillion years. So that's his money. If that's not because of the Microsoft deal. It's just he could do that right now before Microsoft ever did. He could cash that out anytime you want. And it's worth 400. He looks

Gary: 8:35

in these articles, the photos that they're using. He looks like the guy playing piano and taking requests at any rundown casino in Atlantic City.

David: 8:43

I have always talked about a tangent. I've always found it very interesting when you can tell if a news organization likes or hates the subject based on the photo that they choose. That's not like well job. That's all yeah, like I don't like you'll see like, you know, anti Joe Biden site. Every picture of Joe Biden looks

Gary: 9:04

like he's happy on or half Boy Yeah, half dead. And then

David: 9:08

if you look at sites like Joe Biden, he's smiling. He's looking at control. It is amazing. And the same thing with Baba Codex, you'll see those

Gary: 9:17

that's not that's what everybody especially everything like celebrity tabloids and all that stuff. Like yeah, I think if your job is going through hundreds of photos of find the right cringe one for a negative article or the right happy one for a positive article, like might be fun at first, but after a while, like what are you doing? I just got to reevaluate your life choices at that point.

David: 9:38

I just think to me, if you're gonna put a photo every everyone wants to look good and photos, I would make me so upset if someone catches me, you know, yawning with my belly hanging out, and that's the photo they put up on a news article.

Gary: 9:54

And then it's a clickbait world. It used to it just

David: 9:57

we I'm never gonna have to worry about that. No one's paying anywhere, but anyway, I just I find that Bobby Kotick, I think is the last guy because some of those he looks like he just woke up after a bender. And then other ones he looks like he's it's his LinkedIn profile pic. So it's funny. Okay, so tangent, we're gonna wrap it back around Google, this real quick lightning round kind of stuff. Google is jumping into the AR headset world. I think they've been here. They just got links of their first ones called Project Iris. They're saying it's gonna look like ski goggles. Now. I don't understand that. I'm doing ski goggle things over my face wretched, which only Gary can see which it looks fabulous. Who wears these? Who would in their right mind wear something?

Gary: 10:41

Like this is glass hole part two? I mean, they've got a weird mesh thing on the side. They look?

David: 10:48

No, no, no, no, you're right there. That's glass. That's not the new. That's the Google Glass wearable. That's the Google Glass, the old one. And they had the little much they don't have any picture in

Gary: 10:56

the news, they said to resemble more of a ski goggle thing. Okay, so then I didn't want you to

David: 11:00

see that. It'll look like snowboarders going around. And I can understand why you'd want that from a practical perspective. Because it's going to cover your whole frame of vision. And you'll be able to, you have lots of room to put little doodads and stuff around your face. But who wants to walk around with it?

Gary: 11:14

That giant band also there's probably room between, you know, where finishes covering your eyes and goes over past your ear. There's probably room in there to not have a band yet but have like, you know, you can put some tech inside of wearable like that, like they would for a watch band or something.

David: 11:31

At all of these. I had this epiphany the other day. Why is it that all of these glasses, VR? Oculus quest, all the ones that are out now. And the ones that are in the in the pipeline, right? Why are they all trying to minimize all the tech, battery and all of that while you have do some battery? But with all the processing power? Why are they doing that when you have everyone has a pretty beefy computer in their pocket? Why are we not creating a better connection between phone and Gizmo in your face, so that the phone has got a great battery in it already, or decent battery. It's already got a beefy processor, especially like on Apple. But as opposed to having to put the processors in the gizmo to add weight to them, right? You could free up all that room for a battery.

Gary: 12:23

They weren't the most minimal, like the smallest wearable, you know what I mean? Like something that looks like everyday normal glasses eventually is probably the goal.

David: 12:31

Well, but if you didn't have to put the processor in there, it would make it even smaller.

Gary: 12:36

And I think they're just obsessed with the whole. I mean, all of these ideas are coming from sci fi stuff with like, your ear and the glasses appear you get the heads up display.

David: 12:45

But to be fair, though, I I think one of the greatest things sci fi as a genre has ever done is it gives people something to aim at. There is a reason why a lot of the original NASA rockets and stuff were called the Enterprise. No, yeah, it goes all those nerds watch Star Trek, and it gave them something to aim at. If you look at it.

Gary: 13:05

Overall, there's tons and tons of hits that came from sci fi. But there are a lot of misses as well. And I just for some reason, like maybe it's just me, the whole glasses wearable with a camera or whatever. Like, it just misses the mark. For me. The watch, I thought was super cool. Yeah, but

David: 13:23

at some point, you got to put the screen on your face.

Gary: 13:25

Cell phones, obviously are awesome. But yeah, the watches I thought were super cool. But for some reason, the glasses just seem kind of cringy to me.

David: 13:33

Well, but you wear glasses naturally.

Gary: 13:35

I'm looking Yeah, but I wouldn't want to big gaki pair of weird low res video recordings.

David: 13:42

No, but if they look just like your glasses now, but you had a screen in front of you that showed you whatever you wanted to see. That would be pretty amazing. That's where they're aiming at. They're not there yet, but that's what they're going for. Now, what's interesting is in like 10 years, everyone's gonna look like they're working optometrist office and everyone wears glasses whether they need them or not.

Gary: 14:01

We're rolling around on hovered chairs like in the movie Wally.

David: 14:06

We're all going there. I just have no doubt that we're all aiming for Wally, I think Wally at some point is going to be realized as like the crystal ball of all movies and if 50 years or whatever. Okay, so moving on. Next goodie, that I think is worth talking about newswise Intel has just chosen to build a new plant fabrication plant. So everyone's heard about the chip shortage, right

Gary: 14:34

in the United States though, in the United States. You know, it's

David: 14:38

gonna be huge. It's gonna be in Ohio. And but what's important here is this is supposed to solve the chips or at least help solve the chip shortage. The everyone knows that right now if you buy a computer I just bought one of my guys a computer and it it won't be here for a month because Apple cannot get cannot get cheap. Even if

Gary: 15:01

that's not even the slowest thing, like even things like, what was it canon is having a problem with their ink cartridges. Now the little chips that go into ink cartridges that read, you know, to the printer, they're actually sending out their customers ways to avoid the identification thing. Like basically just kind of, I guess you could say hacking your printers, so you can use ink that's not going to be certified as canon ink through the processor. Yeah,

David: 15:30

yeah. I mean, cars, everybody is Yeah, is hurt in here. And so Intel saying, Okay, for the first time, we're gonna build other people's stuff, again, until that's a big deal until has always only built their own stuff. And now they're saying, hey, we'll build other people's stuff. There's a pile of money to make here. But it's not a quick fix. This thing will not be operational. Until 2025.

Gary: 15:52

Yeah, and it's gonna cost billions of dollars to get running. Yeah,

David: 15:55

well, they'll make billions from it. I mean, this, this is a sure bet. If you can make chips Well, of various sizes, you can print money. It's so it's a great bet. But I'm excited about that, because it's bringing some of the chip manufacturing here. Right now most chips are made in China and Taiwan and Korea. And I, we don't hardly make any of them here. And so I'm very excited about that. That it's coming somewhat. Not all of it, of course, but some chip manufacturing is here. Because I think, just geopolitically, it's smart to make your own stuff.

Gary: 16:29

Yeah. And it's encouraging that some of these companies are willing to take that chance and kind of bring stuff back to the United States for manufacturing. Yeah.

David: 16:40

Love it. Love it. Okay, last one for the news round. We've got the tech anti trust bill is slowly marching its way through Congress. That's a big deal. It got through the committee, and it's going to the big boy, Congress soon. That's a big step. This one is mainly around preventing, I'm actually a huge fan of this. It prevents big, the big tech guys from preferring their own products. A classic example of this Amazon, I search for a, this happened to me a few months ago, I searched for a dumbbell, right? Just a simple iron dumbbell. And the first two were Amazon products.

Gary: 17:27

You couldn't see any other brands until you go deeper, right? Yeah, until you

David: 17:31

scroll past them. Google does it all the time with their stuff on search. Apple does it with their own stuff in the App Store, i this will change that if it passes. Of course, it's got a long way to go. But it made a big step. And I think that's a huge deal. But the lobbyists are out in force, this is not going to go they're not going quietly, because it can also open up the app store for allowing other having third party app stores, which Apple has been, you know, fight to the death against. It might remove their ability to control all payments. It's a huge deal. It doesn't break any of them up, which is what there was rumors of this one doesn't break any of them up. It just prevents them from being jerks which yay. Yeah, it's called bro anti jerk.

Gary: 18:13

It's called the American innovation and choice online act.

David: 18:17

Is that a fun acronym? No, no. Some of those bills you can tell they were named just for the acronym. I was wondering, oh,

Gary: 18:24

this was for sure. This was now.

David: 18:28

But I think I mean, there's no the news here is that they moved past the committee. But it's still it's not going to pass this year. I would be shocked. It's an election year. This this No way. But we'll see. Hopefully it does. Because I'm big fan.

Gary: 18:42

And I guess there's a there's like a sister piece of legislation that they want to go along with it called the open app markets Act, which that is something that will force companies that control operating systems allowed third party apps similar to the Apple thing. It's just Yes, banded though.

David: 18:59

Now that has not. That's still trolling around the committee's right. That's not right forward. Right. Yeah. That one's further away. Well, it'd be phase two. Good luck with Phase One first guys, come on. But I mean, that's a big, big news week. So that's a lot. Normally, we don't cover that much news. But I think all of that will impact small businesses in the next few years. I mean, I don't, whatever spectrum you're on, these articles are going to hit you in some capacity in the next few years. it right

Gary: 19:27

away. It just gives you a better chance of visibility, especially if you have digital products.

David: 19:31

Yeah, let's see what's coming. Okay, cool. So this week, we were talking we mentioned this earlier with, we want to talk about core values, which is something that we've touched on in the past but we want to dive deeper because it's really important and core values

Gary: 19:54

for your business. It goes along with your like mission statement. Your goal Yeah,

David: 19:58

but here here's something interesting A challenge that my business group actually posed, or one of the guys did. And I'm not going to go into this, but I just want to pose the question. What if you have core values for your family? Really interesting, thought provoking. Nugget, I'll just leave that right there. Because that's not that's outside of our scope. But when you start thinking about it, man, that that's MIDI, that's MIDI, anyway, so a core value. So for those who don't know, and I'll back up, I joined a business group there called C 12. Great guys, and gals. And what I joined them for this was years ago, was because I was good at my job, but I was a horrible businessman. I've said that before, I will continue to say that I'm working very hard to become a better businessman, better leader. But I knew that was a weakness of mine. So I wanted to solve that as I was hiring up. This was five years ago or something. And one of the first things that they instilled upon me, which I still believe is one of the most important things they instilled upon me, was core values. Mission Statement is equally as important, but it's different. And I can cover that real briefly. mission statement is, what are you doing? And then your why, right? It's why do you do what you do? What is your your core being of your business, and that's important to kind of as a North Star. And it should be generic. It shouldn't be? I build skateboards, right? Because you might not always build skateboards, it should be generic enough. What are you trying to solve? I am trying to serve the skater community by producing amazing products, blah, blah, blah. And because you might end up building lots of stuff. as just an example, obviously, I don't like skateboards. But

Gary: 21:42

I like that you referenced skateboards. Now that was for you.

David: 21:45

Yeah. But the that. So we're putting that aside for a moment. And if anybody's interested, we can dive deeper into the mission statement. But that's a that's a single singular statement, that that is just a North Star, not just a North Star that's kind of selling that short. It is your north star as a business, it's your y. But core values are who your company is. What do you stand for the thought provoking thing that C 12 has told me over the over the years is, your core values should be the backbone of any firing that you do. If you fire someone, it's because they broke a core value. Because if you're firing someone for something that isn't a core value, then you might have something wrong there. Does that make sense? Because you're firing them for something that's unimportant is what that basically is saying, that could be a petty reason. And even if you want to get really technical, the legal stuff in wrongful termination suits this, that and the other, when they're backed, if you're firing someone by something that's backed by a corporate core identity, you're kind of protected. So that's worth thinking about all by itself. Because you can't you know, if you fire someone in a fit of passion, because you're just mad and angry, and you don't like them for because they were funny shoes, you're gonna get yourself in trouble, right? But if you have it documented that this is who we are, this is what we stand for. And you broke that ma'am, or Sir, you have to leave, then then wrongful termination kind of goes away. I'm not a legal expert. But that's that kind of I mean, that's what's been explained to me.

Gary: 23:20

And coming from the employee side, if you tell them that, then it kind of, you know, puts them in a situation where they're not going to feel like they're walking on thin ice every time they make a minor mistake, as long as there's, you know, keeping true to the core values of the company. And they, you know, take ownership of that, and then learn from it and move on. It's, you know, they don't have to stress coming in every Monday if they're going to have a job for the week.

David: 23:44

Yeah, I think, especially in the hiring process, core values are super important because it allows you to know what kind of company you're about to work for every single person you talk to an interviewer should know, your core values should be explained your core values early on in the process.

Gary: 24:00

And if they have a problem with any of them, then it's me then your flag. Yeah,

David: 24:04

yeah, then then they're out. They're not a good fit. You mean, you're always hiring people for alignment, right? Everyone should be agreeing that this is the company and this is how we do business. If they're not aligned. There's nothing wrong with that. They just shouldn't work for you. Right if they don't believe what you believe, fine partway just friends, but they shouldn't work for you. And they and it's not fair to hire someone unless they know the the guardrails right as it right. So what makes a good core value? Well, it's, you dive into it again, why are you in business? What is important to you and this can only be done, this is important. This is not something that should be done in committee. This is not something that should be done with a leadership team. This is the owner, the owner has to set now they can be influenced, that's fine. But before they ever talk to anyone about core values, they need to write down the first draft all about themselves in a moment of reflection, and they really are think about these are things you just jot down, and you're not gonna get them right the first time. And that's fine. I think we've had three rounds that we've been refining ours over the years. But once you have that first draft down and said, This is my core, it's really time to be vulnerable here, right? This is a speaker directly to the business owners, this is a time to be vulnerable. Who are you? And what are you doing business for? What's important to you as a business? Is it the environment? Is it integrity, and don't be vague, specific, right, write down a bigger paragraph under each one to explain the why the what this really means to you. It could be anything, it could be, I want to help a certain group of people, this is why I'm in business is what we do, everything we do is around helping X population, it doesn't have to be the cheesy stuff.

Gary: 25:52

Sounds sounds like it's more of like a self exploration and figuring out kind of who you are, as the business moving forward, not just, you know, the salesy what you want to do like you were correct. It also seems like you're kind of digging deeper into yourself, and finding out why you're doing this, not just for your core values, but maybe just to make sure you're going in the right direction, you're making the right, you know, decisions here.

David: 26:21

If you do it, right, it's kind of like, and I will say, it's only been the last couple few years that I feel like we've really gotten ours down, and it becomes kind of bumper pool, if you remember that old game. Yeah, I haven't seen that forever. Anyway, it's kind of bumper pool where you hit the ball, and it's gonna bounce off of these things to get to where it's going. And if you don't have these guardrails, and you're gonna flop all over the place, and you're not gonna stand for anything, and these things keep you going in the right direction. And if they're not just words, they're real beliefs. And that's important. I mean, I'm not trying to get spiritual here. But they're the beliefs, they're who you are. And that could be all sorts of different things. Our big one is transparency. That's the one I beat that drum all day, because that is what big pixel as a company is built upon, we are transparent, we are honest. And we are upfront in all of our dealings with clients internally, externally, etc. So when it's feel comfortable, it especially when it's uncomfortable, that's what his character is, what, what you are when no one is watching, right, that and so integrity and, and transparency is when it's hard, anybody can be transparent. When it's, everything's going well, it's when you're being called to the mat, that it the core values actually matter. I will say, and this was told to me by as much smarter people than I am, you should always have respect as a core value. And that is because you're dealing with humans. And respect has to be maintained. Otherwise, you're well, again, back to the legal side, it's really hard to fire someone. B if

Gary: 28:05

you if you don't like them.

David: 28:07

Yeah, but you can easily fire someone because they're not being respectful to you and your team. Right? Years ago, I had a project manager, who was literally going around talking to our clients that she was managing, and telling them that we were not any good. Now this is before our core values,

Gary: 28:27

but and this was just an act of like vengeance, right? She was

David: 28:31

my very angry at me, I'd still really don't know why that doesn't really matter. But she would go around and tell people that we were no good and you need to, you need to go find someone else. And now the the fun part of this. I mean, most of our clients, we build real relationships, so they would call me and go, What is going on, dude? That's how I found out. But that that's that disrespect thing. You can't disrespect someone. That's not just me. It could be anybody. Except Gary. You can always disrespect, Gary, that's totally fine with me.

Gary: 29:02

thrive off of disrespect.

David: 29:04

You did your best work when you were feel like garbage anyway. So I that's just an example that happened to us. That's a personal one for us. And we had to let her go. And so respect is a big deal. If you don't have that in there. Again, you got to be able to point that back to it's a guidepost. So

Gary: 29:22

yeah, and I'm sure everybody listening to this, like probably has a situation like that that's happened to them or close enough to them to like a one off person away. Where? Yeah,

David: 29:32

I mean, human stuff real. Yeah. Humans, you're hiring humans. Humans are funky creatures, right? And some of them are good. Some of them are bad. Some of them want to be good, but they are bad, right? It's there's all sorts of weird ways and you've got to be able to protect yourself as a business owner but so I mean, that's that's core values in a nutshell, I think. I don't want to belabor the point but I do want to drive it home. I don't think any business who is actively doing their business as it were, should every one of them should have core values period? There's no reason not to.

Gary: 30:09

How often do you think these core values need to be reiterated to the team? And kinda like a little refresher, just to make sure everybody still remembers exactly what you kind of carved out as a guideline? Because I'm sure employees are gonna be like, yeah, yeah, quarter of it. That's great. Yeah, I'm totally gonna be honest and transparent. And then six months goes by, and they're like, core values. Yeah, it was we make software.

David: 30:32

Yeah. So this is one of those things where I, I'll be transparent, I have been horribly bad at explaining my core values to my team, we are actually going to be doing that in a week from now was one of the reasons this came up as a topic. But because I realized, man, I did an informal poll and on slack as a, hey, who knows our core values? Don't look them up, because they're on our website. But don't don't look them up. And no one knew them, not a soul. And that is, and I'm like, Oh, I have failed. So ideally, I think everyone when they're hired should be handed the core values before they're hired, right? I mentioned. Yeah. And I believe it should be in the employee handbook, whatever that looks like to you, if that's a website or an actual printout, I believe it should be on your website, so that everyone who ever engages with you knows who you are, as a company. And I believe you should mention them. Like if you have a physical office, which we don't, but if you have a physical object, as it should be printed up and framed and put on, you know, in the break room, so that they're seeing it when they walk by. I also think that annual meetings, it should be in the materials.

Gary: 31:42

Yeah, I was gonna say meetings or any type of review, performance review evaluations, they should come up there to

David: 31:47

some of the better business people that I know. And I say better because I don't do it. But some of the better business people, it's when they do their annual review, they actually go, oh, here are our core values. And I'm reviewing you based on these. That's powerful. Right, here are five core values and your salary review, your performance review is going to be judged by those. I don't do that. I think I should do that in some part. But I think that's probably the most powerful way of pushing that alignment. Hey, are you being transparent with what happens when the cards were down? And you were in a bad situation? What did you do? Did you hide some stuff? Or did you go forth? And were you honest and humble to the client? You know, that kind of stuff? Were you respectful to your people? Do your your team, your direct reports? Do they respect you? Are they treating respect and vice versa? Are you a jerk to them? Right, when you tell your devs what to do? Are you a jerk to them? Or do they know who you are as a person that those kinds of things that should be part of a performance review.

Gary: 32:48

And core value is going to be different for different businesses, obviously 100%. But like for what we do the the transparency and honesty, I think are super important. Because not everybody knows coder can read code. And there's a lot of devs and contractors out there that can do the work. They might not do it. I guess, all the same way. Sure. But it seems like if you're not absolutely sure on how they're doing it, there's a lot of stuff that can be kind of duct taped together and hidden behind the scenes that are not what you're looking for. But enough for them to get away with and just be like, yep, Okay, moving on.

David: 33:27

Well, I will say the reason I chose that I mean, that that's a big part of me as an individual being being really known to be very bluntly honest, I think that's probably come come through during these podcasts. But But aside from that, I've worked for a lot of DEV companies, and I've worked with other dev companies, there are a lot of skills because balls out there, right? I've taken over code from a lot of development companies that have just absolutely lied and told you it's one thing, and I think I've told the story. We were working with a guy and he was like, Hey, I just need a developer. We're like, 90% there. But my developer is is not as communicative. Like I just like you to finish it up. This 100% True story. These guys like to meet at the airport. They had so weird years ago, these guys like to meet at the you know, there's a place in every airport where you can watch the private jets land. It's it's a whole place. There's a restaurant there. There's

Gary: 34:24

no Windows Active lounge or whatever.

David: 34:26

Yeah, and it's and you can get in there even after 911 You can get in there without a plane ticket. You can just watch the planes lands very cool place. They love to meet there anyway. So I'm sure he's like, Hey, we just need you over the finish line. Okay, cool. Let's take a look. So we're getting in and I was telling him it was built in in a version of PHP at the time that I had not yet used before. And I told them that's okay. I don't know this language, but I'm having to take a look. So I pulled up a tutorial. I can't remember what it was called something with a why was one of the variants of PHP but anyway, I pulled up a tutorial so I'm learning it right and I've got their code up on the right my tutorial On the left, I'm like, Okay, I'm looking through, I got it, I see this tutorial, go look at their code, it's literally the same code as the tutorial I'm looking at on the left, copied and pasted, copied and pasted. It literally they had added, like, copies of it inside of it, right? Because each page had its own tutorial. So you'd see the page tutorial eight times because I had eight pages. Well, it has like do is

Gary: 35:24

they didn't know the code at all. They were just hoping that within that mess of letters and symbols that something was going to work for that project on that page.

David: 35:33

Well, that the developer had showed them links and they said, hey, the menu system doesn't work. Which man what a weird red flag. So you have to go to each individual page through the address bar. And then you can do what you need to do inside of each page. And they were like, yeah, it's all working seem to be. So we're like, dude, I'm sorry, this whole thing's built on the tutorial, it's gonna fall over and die as soon as you go up. That's the worst news you can give it. But that guy had told them this thing was almost done with their countless stories like that.

Gary: 36:00

That's exactly the point I was making with if you don't understand development, and software and the languages or whatever, he not even that far, just if you don't know what's going on behind the scenes. And if you're a business owner, and you're using a contractor or some other dev team, and they're not upfront and transparent with you, it's gonna hurt you in the long run, especially if, again, you have to lose that team and try to find a better team to take over. And that's the cost money where cost has to be done.

David: 36:29

Yep. So anyway, again, I don't want to belabor the point, I just want to make sure that everyone understands this is really critical to every business. And it should be done as soon as you can. I don't know how to say.

Gary: 36:48

Alright, so to wrap it up, we're gonna do one more article. And typically, we do something that's a little bit more fun, a little goofy. And right now I'm looking at an article about German bionics creating exoskeletons. And you would think, cool, do we have Robocop coming? Are we going to be able to put on some robot suit and be able to do like parkour all over the city that no, I'm thinking is gonna help you lift luggage?

David: 37:16

What, but that's important, right? Because people do that they hurt their backs.

Gary: 37:19

No, it's It's important. The whole idea of the exoskeleton and helping people do stuff is a great idea. I just thought it was kind of funny that the, the article is based on how it's going to help workers lift smarter, use your back, use

David: 37:33

your legs. Well, one of the thing I thought was using exoskeleton is the exoskeleton is smart enough that it tells you it's time to take a break. It recognizes that you've done it long enough that you could hurt yourself. I think that's really wild.

Gary: 37:48

It applies pressure in the exact right spots on your body, between your legs, find back hips, or whatever that needs that pressure for lifting stuff safely. Like it's incredibly intuitive. It seems really cool. It's just, you'd think there'd be some, like an application that would be cooler to debut it then lifting boxes, but

David: 38:12

I love these. I mean, they've been having exoskeletons for a while. And I love the idea of it's mainly they've been focusing on the people who can't walk, they have different diseases. And it allows I saw one just the other day, a little video of a guy who was in a wheelchair, he's got a disease. I don't know which one. But it prevented him from walking at all. And they have him in an exoskeleton and he stands up, walks over and shoots a basketball. That's life changing stuff there. Now he's not playing he's no Lebron James. But the fact that he gets up and shoots a basketball at all is huge. And I I love that now I know those things cost like$200,000 or something crazy right now. So they're not for the every man. But eventually, they will be right I eventually, I think we will we will be able to change our world with that. And then I don't soldiers use them now.

Gary: 39:04

Yes, there are some exoskeletons for using military a lot of it, they won't tell you exactly what they do. But you can kind of guess

David: 39:12

I've heard the one I heard about was it helped them run

Gary: 39:16

the let's just say physical performance is definitely the key.

David: 39:20

Because like it allowed them to run for a long period of time without getting winded or at a slightly faster

Gary: 39:24

jumping, climbing stuff like that. Pretty crazy.

David: 39:27

I mean that now you're getting iron Manny. I mean, it's not gonna look as cool as that.

Gary: 39:31

So the exoskeleton in this article, I'm just kind of looking through it as we speak. And it's basically just really high tech actuators connected to like carbon fiber materials and soft sound so simple. It's so easy. Why didn't it doesn't sound simple, but it does add together. Point being it's, it doesn't sound extremely futuristic in the build of it. But combining those things together to combine intelligence software is incredible what it can do.

David: 39:59

So I want to end on a tangent for you. One of the things I thought was so funny when I was seemed like behind the scenes of Marvel movies, speaking of exoskeletons, right. One of the things that they find really, when you put on a helmet, a real life helmet, it's bigger than your head. By default, it has to be right. Yes. So you kind of get the big bubble head look. That's astronauts, everybody with this. And so I didn't know this, but it now makes perfect sense. In Marvel movies. Whenever anybody puts on a helmet. They use CG to then shrink it. So it's the size of a head, so he doesn't normal

Gary: 40:36

human proportion. Yep. Yeah, so

David: 40:38

the hell so like, Iron Man's head would actually be like this little, tiny little, little shrunken head to fit in that helmet. Same with a man and man was the first one that was right, because he literally like Iron Man does a little button and it kind of folds around his face, but the Ant Man puts on a helmet

Gary: 40:55

Plus it's got like that the chin area looks like an ant extrudes out. So yeah,

David: 41:01

so they shrink it all down. I just I had no idea. I mean, I'd watch Marvel movies for a decade before I even knew that I'm like,

Gary: 41:08

and another thing is, a lot of times there's not even really a physical helmet on their head. There's just like the side pieces that go over their ears. And the whole face is cut out but with motion capture dots so that they could just in CG put the helmet back over their face that way you can cut the camera in and out what would seem to be a camera in and out between in front of the mask or or their face like all the scenes with Iron Man and a heads up display cut in and he would ask Jarvis at museum like there was never any real physical mask on his face. During those scenes. It was just all put in with CG. CG on the motion capture dots.

David: 41:45

And in this so my family and I were watching Smallville, and we're on the last season and boy that jumped the shark so bad. Once you get towards the end, but we're muscling through we're muscling through I'm a big fan of Tom Welling. But anyway. So they have Dr. Fate in one of the episodes, which is a guy doesn't matter about that, but he wears a big gold helmet. And obviously Smallville one, it's older, and two, it's low budget. So it's literally a dude with a helmet on. And it is funny because wow, that doesn't make a difference. He's got a big old helmet. He's got the bobble head look. So

Gary: 42:19

when you mentioned small, low budget, I just remember every explosion scene just look like some flame clip art that they found an After Effects tutorials.

David: 42:27

Oh, man, it was really bad. It gets it's so bad. But we're trying. We're

Gary: 42:33

getting my dad used to watch it when it was out. Like it was some kind of we talked about. And we were like season six. Do you think he'll learn to fly? No, not yet.

David: 42:42

No, they actually said at the beginning of that show when it was being made. He would never fly. And I knew he would never put on the cape. And you're like, yeah, it gets kind of silly because like all the other Kryptonians but he

Gary: 42:52

does wear red, blue and yellow just about every outfit. Oh, yeah,

David: 42:57

every boy the boy has two jackets in his pocket. But I got to meet the jumping of the shark was all the other Kryptonians are flying around him. And I'm like, Dude, come on. Just hop a little bit. Just give it give it a shot.

Gary: 43:11

It was interesting to see what the the Kryptonian rock in the town would produce as far as weird side villains.

David: 43:19

Oh my god. Yeah. The monsters the weak people. Yeah, yeah, those the first couple of seasons was a monster of the week. They went away from that. And then it got weirder and weirder. They skipped college completely. I guess they got tired of school. Anyway, we have diverted? Yeah, I apologize for stealing that. But I just wanted to talk about the helmets anyway.

Gary: 43:36

So we didn't have any questions this week, because not this week prior. But we still want to encourage you to send in any questions or comments or, like David said snide remarks. You can email us or snide remarks. Email us at Hello at the big pixel dotnet or you can leave comments on our YouTube channel.

David: 43:52

All right. Well, thank you guys so much for joining us and we will be back next week. Thank you guys so much.

Gary: 43:58

See you next time.