Chocolate, Magic, And A Cottage Factory

A cottage at the edge of a national park. A clock that dispenses chocolate. A host who can pivot from crystal structures in tempering to a groan-worthy deer joke in one beat. Meet Bryan Davis of Dotty Wampus Magical Chocolate Factory, where culinary craft collides with whimsical theater and visitors leave with a story worth retelling.

We dig into how a two-person team built an immersive experience without the baggage of big-company overhead. Bryan explains why he and Joanne chose Montezuma County, Colorado—one of the rare places where creative builds don’t drown in permits—so they could ship fast, prototype freely, and keep their hands on every part of the guest journey. From distilling patents and Vegas-scale shows to bonbons and animatronics, his path is a masterclass in multidisciplinary entrepreneurship.

If you care about experiential marketing, brand storytelling, and small business growth, this conversation delivers field-tested insights. You’ll hear how they tailor tours for kids and serious foodies, use tiny design details to shift reality (yes, even the bathroom is part of the show), and manage unglamorous logistics like sourcing from top chocolate co-ops without breaking the magic. We also explore the creative calculus behind growth: a bigger kitchen only makes sense if it adds to the narrative—perhaps via a cheeky submarine ride to an “underwater” production room.

Expect practical takeaways on staying small to move fast, choosing the right constraints, and building recurring delight so locals bring their families back year after year. Plus, exploding bonbons featuring pear blossom honey, animated paintings that react to guests, and why understanding the “why” beats any checklist.

Enjoy the episode, share it with someone who loves immersive experiences, and leave a review to tell us which moment you’d steal for your dream venue.

Be sure to follow or subscribe!  And, if you're a local business owner who'd like to be featured - or know someone whose story should be told - get in touch at Ken@StrategicHorizonsConsulting.com

This show is brought to you by Strategic Horizons Consulting (a division of Ken Collins Marketing).

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 1:05

I'm here with Brian Davis, the co-owner, right? Co-owner? Yeah, yeah, that works. Of uh Dottie Wampus Magical Chocolate Factory.

SPEAKER_00 1:14

Yep. That's us.

Meet Brian And The Magical Factory

SPEAKER_01 1:16

So tell us a little about yourself.

SPEAKER_00 1:19

Um, well, uh gosh, uh, my name's Brian. Yeah, I guess we already covered that. Uh so we make chocolate. Um we're uh we're actually just moved here a little over a year ago. Uh and we're out here in the middle of nowhere at the base of the national park in this little cottage. And uh we make about, oh, I don't know, one to two thousand truffles and bonbons a week out here. Uh and we have a bunch of guests that come through on the weekends and we do a tour through the space and teach people all about chocolate and uh and I do some really bad magic tricks. Yeah. Uh and we have a bunch of cool, fun animatronics and you know, uh neat amusement parky elements sort of wired into the house. Yeah. And so it's uh it's a fun time, I think, for everybody. Um, but yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:07

That's yeah, I just went through the tour.

SPEAKER_00 2:10

Yeah, did we do okay?

SPEAKER_01 2:11

Yeah, did I botch it too bad? Um everybody, I was I was watching the guests as much as I could just to get their reaction, see how people are reacting to you. And uh ever everybody was having a good time.

SPEAKER_00 2:24

So um, yeah, it's it's a lot of fun, uh honestly. You know, I mean I don't know that anyone's ever really done anything quite like it. I mean, it's such a we have such a strange background that it kind of creates this ability to do uh to mash things together in ways that other people just don't think to. Yeah. So you get this sort of like, you know, really wild, you know, culinary experience and also weird things from my background doing amusement parks and Vegas shows and you know all kinds of strange things kind of glued into the the whole structure.

SPEAKER_01 2:58

This reminded me of um not any per one particular thing, right? A little bit a haunted house, um, but then like old-fashioned, old-fashioned maybe as an like old-timey, like traditional magic show X. And and that sort of thing. That's what it kind of reminds me of.

Fusing Culinary Craft With Showmanship

SPEAKER_00 3:22

I love the early 19th century or late 19th century, I should say early 20th century, like era of how you know, sort of magic was done then. Right. Like I just I find that stuff so much fun.

SPEAKER_01 3:33

It does have that vibe.

SPEAKER_00 3:35

You know, yeah, and it's not like, oh wow, this is the greatest trick I've ever seen. No, it's more like you know, you it's all the setup and the jokes and you know, all that stuff.

SPEAKER_01 3:43

It's whimsy, whimsical, often whimsy.

SPEAKER_00 3:45

And a way of conjuring chocolate, right? Because I mean that's kind of that's sort of how it all started was okay, we're gonna take people through this tour and you're gonna do these different, you know, fancy culinary chocolates for people, but you have to get the chocolate somehow to the person. Sure. And so it became this fun game of trying to think up like every way you could think of of how can we magically deliver chocolate in a different way than we just did it last time.

SPEAKER_01 4:07

I think that's brilliant. I tr I work with a lot of business owners and I try to explain to them the importance of experience. It's not just about your product and it's not about the price of that product. You give the customer an experience and they will tell other people about that experience and they'll come back for that experience.

SPEAKER_00 4:25

Oh, for sure.

SPEAKER_01 4:26

I mean So you could set up a stand selling chocolate. I mean, you could. But uh it would be nothing like what you have going on.

SPEAKER_00 4:33

Yeah. I mean, honestly, you know, I think we learned this like uh, you know, in the older businesses like you know that we used to run decades ago, uh, that you know, it was sort of like, wow, I really enjoy the experience side of this with the guests so much that I I mean, you know, yes, you want to pay really close attention to your product and obviously you want to take your product seriously. Absolutely. But at the same time, you know, being able to have the fun and the showmanship and the and the you know, in our case, we often tend to take it to the level of absurdity. Uh, but that that just sort of completely absurd experience is so much fun. Um, so yeah, I mean, at some point it's like, you know, you start like we used to be a distill, we ran a distillery for many years.

SPEAKER_02 5:15

Right.

Entertainment Or Factory? Blurring The Line

SPEAKER_00 5:15

And we would run into these funny moments as we went from, you know, being uh we were doing a 10,000 case a year distillery, um, which is actually pretty large for a craft distillery. But at the same time, we were also hosting quite literally like 50,000 guests a year on these elaborate crazy tours with boat rides and you know uh carousels and all the rest of it built into the distillery tour. And one day we're just sort of going, like, I don't know if we're technically a distillery or an entertainment company at this point. Like, yeah. Yeah, I think this place is kind of the same. Like, I don't know if we're a chocolate factory or an entertainment company.

SPEAKER_02 5:53

Right.

SPEAKER_00 5:53

Uh, you know, even though we take both really seriously, you know, it's like uh you you walk that line between the two.

SPEAKER_01 5:59

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:00

You know.

SPEAKER_01 6:00

That's brilliant. When you can mesh them, then you're both.

SPEAKER_00 6:04

That's what you are. Well, and it just makes life exciting.

SPEAKER_01 6:07

And your product can be entertaining instead of just a product.

SPEAKER_00 6:11

Right. Yeah.

Why Montezuma County Made It Possible

SPEAKER_01 6:12

So um so you you're basically you're without going in because you have a crazy background. We were discussing some of that before we started here. Yeah. So with with without going too much into detail about all of your background, basically you're you're uh a California guy that ended up in Vegas that is now in outside of Cortez, Colorado. Yes. Mesa Verde. So how how did you get started here in this?

SPEAKER_00 6:43

Oh, well, so this county is extremely special. Yeah. Uh so Montezuma County is one of the last seven counties in the United States that doesn't have a building and safety department.

SPEAKER_02 6:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:53

Um, which means that you can do immersive entertainment stuff without spending unbelievable amounts of money building it. It also means you can build your own house. It also means, you know, all kinds of things. And so as a person who's very handy with building things, I used to work in the amusement park industry building stuff. Uh, you know, this was sort of like if we were gonna do something small and we weren't gonna do something with a ton of money, you know, we want, and it was just gonna be Joanne and I, uh, it was like, okay, we need to go to some place that doesn't have a super restrictive um uh you know government permit process because we can't afford to pay for the super expensive permitting process unless we go raising money and then we have to hire a bunch of employees and then we have to make the whole thing bigger.

SPEAKER_02 7:35

Right.

SPEAKER_00 7:35

And you know, the thing about my old company and the or our old company in the last phase of it, you know, it got so big uh that it was to the point where I was dealing with legal HR management all day long, and I was no longer interacting with guests at all.

SPEAKER_01 7:52

Right.

SPEAKER_00 7:52

Uh you know, and we got to the point where we're at 100 employees plus, right? And so you're just no longer interacting with your customers. And I really miss that.

SPEAKER_01 8:00

Yeah.

Escaping Scale To Reconnect With Guests

SPEAKER_00 8:01

You know, I miss doing magic tricks in front of customers. Yeah. That's fun. Yeah. You know, it's evident by my experience here today. Yeah. Yeah, like I mean, that's great and fun and amazing. And you learn about your own product, you learn about how people are interacting with it, you learn about your customers, you learn about their stories and experiences. Like, it's just it's great all around. Managing HR is not really right, like at all. It's awful. Uh, I mean, sorry to HR managers out there who probably love their job, but I am not one. Right. Uh, you know, and so it's like, okay, if we want to interact with the customers, we wanted to go to one of these places where we weren't gonna have to spend a gazillion dollars to get through the permitting process. Um, and so we pulled a list of every county in the US that doesn't have a building and safety department. And we got in the car and we drove from county to county to county. Uh, and we got to this one and went, wow, this place is great. Like, there's amazing views, there's national parks, there's restaurants, there's people. Yeah, right. Some of these counties, there's no people around. Right. Uh, yeah, I was like, this like this place is amazing. Um, you know, I just hope that the uh the last time they tried to pass a building and safety code here, the public rebelled and they impeached the uh commissioner who tried to do it. So I hope that mentality stays and this place remains you know, the the this last sliver of like a free country, like the 80s.

SPEAKER_01 9:25

Yeah. This is the Wild West. They set a precedent for any politician that might want to turn it.

SPEAKER_00 9:32

I don't know if it's really the wild, it's it's not exactly the Wild West. It's kind of like the 80s, actually, from a legal point of view. Yeah, yeah. It's not like it's actually dangerous, but um, but it's you know, you have so much more freedom as a business person, right, or as an entrepreneur or a person who wants to build something to actually go in and and you know, break out the screw guns and the boards and use your own hands. And do it and make something, you know, and and make something hopefully great.

SPEAKER_01 9:59

Without going through the permitting and the inspector and the inspector and the thing. Just not the cost. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:04

Uh, you know, I mean, it would, you know, the the minute you need millions of dollars to do anything is the minute that it's only really, really, really wealthy people who can do anything. Sure. And you know, now you're stuck having to go raise money to then do that, and then now you have to make it bigger because you have to make a return for those investors. Yeah. And now you're very quickly you're no longer interacting with the customers and doing magic tricks and having fun with HR and lawyers, and yeah. Back in the HR world. Yeah, you know, it's just like before you know it, it's like, okay, all the fun is gone again.

SPEAKER_01 10:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:34

Uh you know.

SPEAKER_01 10:35

Yeah. I don't want to glaze over that part because um you were willing to find a physical location that would fit you and how you wanted to run your business. Yeah. Instead of trying to uh contort your business into a version that would work for where you were.

SPEAKER_00 10:57

Right. Right? Yeah, I'm a really stubborn person. Like, I mean, really stubborn. Uh and you know, I don't want to change things to meet someone else. I mean, unless it's like a really important, very real safety concern or something, right? I mean, you know, obviously you don't want to hurt anyone, but I mean, like, unless it's something that's really, really like super serious, I do not want to change what I want to do for anybody.

SPEAKER_02 11:21

Right.

SPEAKER_00 11:21

You know, I want to do what I want to do. Yeah. You know, yeah. Um, and you know, because you want the freedom to dream up something new, like, you know, if that makes sense.

SPEAKER_01 11:30

I I I uh been watching you and listen to you and going through the tour and things like that, and then listen to some of your experience, and you have got this uh this kid that's running around in your head, like, dude, that would be so cool. Let's try this, and you just do it.

Chocolate As A New Discipline

SPEAKER_00 11:51

Yeah, it's like having that like that little kid that wants to dream up all the different things you want to do, and then also knowing how to do like you know, engineering, Python programming, you know, like all the rest of it. And then like layer it all together, and it's like, you know, this is what being a kid is about. You just need to make sure that you have like an extra 30 years to learn it. Exactly. Yeah. I think I took that Toys R Us song too seriously. Uh but yeah.

SPEAKER_01 12:18

So what made you choose this kind of work?

SPEAKER_00 12:21

You know, I don't know. I mean, honestly, it we kind of fell into all of these things by one thing leading to the next. I mean, how long-winded of an answer do you want? Uh so so, okay, for someone listening to the podcast, so before this, to gloss it in three seconds, um uh I was the first person to ever invent a process to figure out how to age spirits in a laboratory back in 2015. Yeah, and figured out the chemical engineering and mapped all of the chemistry that happens to booze in a barrel and how that works for the first time. And we figured out how to age spirits in a laboratory. And then from that, we got into hardware and software to do that at scale safely. Um, and then from that, we ended up taking this distillery in Los Angeles and making it into like a homemade amusement park where all the engineers and I just sat around dreaming up crazy stuff to build on the weekends, and then that got a life of its own. And then COVID shut that down, but it was sold out for years in advance before that. And and then somehow we ended up in Las Vegas with a thousand-person a night circus show built inside a distillery with a 16-course fine dining restaurant in it. Don't ask. It's a long story.

SPEAKER_01 13:34

It is. I heard part of it.

SPEAKER_00 13:37

So, you know, when when we when that kind of project, um, some complicated stuff happened with some of the other business people involved, and we ended up getting kind of kicked out of it. And so when we got re-fired, uh, we were like, all right, let's do something different-ish. Let's go somewhere where it's just us, where we can interact with the customers one-on-one. Um, and then what do we want to make? You know? And uh we were like, you know, we got really into some of the RD stuff with the restaurant um back in Vegas. And uh, and I actually kind of really had been thinking through at the time when we were there, you know, to myself, just in my back of my head, like it'd be fun to do something with chocolate. You know, and so we're like, well, okay, we never really made any real plans for this, but what do we want to do? You know, if we're gonna do something new, why don't we go learn a new discipline? Let's go, let's go really do like chocolate for real.

SPEAKER_02 14:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:37

Um, and we did it solidly in the restaurant there. Uh we were like, okay, let's go take this to the next level and figure out how to really do this like serious professionals. Um and uh, you know, go source some really great chocolate to make you know all the truffles and bonbons out of. And uh yeah, let's let's just start there. Something to do, something new.

SPEAKER_02 14:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:58

I want to change the scenery. I don't want to do boo. I mean, you know, I I've got a long history and career doing uh whiskey and rum and brandy. Um, but it'd be fun to do something completely different.

SPEAKER_01 15:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:09

And I don't really know how to do the experience without the culinary product.

SPEAKER_01 15:13

Right.

SPEAKER_00 15:13

Like weirdly. Sure. It's not that I mean I can't probably think of how it works, but we've never done it. We've always had the the extremely over-the-top immersive experience tied to the distillery. Right. So what happens if we go do an extremely over-the-top immersive experience and we tie it to chocolate? That sounds fun. Sure. You know, and it's a family it's family-friendly, and you have lots of kids who are, you know, coming with their families out here. So, you know, it's still very adult-oriented, but now people can bring their kids. Sure. Uh, you know, and so you kind of solve that problem.

Tailoring Tours For Kids And Foodies

SPEAKER_01 15:43

Yeah, you gave a lot of information, some some really cool, like educational, but presented in a cool way, where I know I had pieces of information, I'm like, I wonder if he's gonna cover this, and you did, and there was another guest there that had information, and and uh and you covered that as well. So a kid's not gonna get all that, but you you uh massage your version of how you present this tour based on your audience.

SPEAKER_00 16:10

Yeah, and I definitely tweaked the tour for the audience each time, right? Yeah, so you happen to just, I mean, when we booked you out for this, we had no idea who the guests were that were gonna be on the tour with you. You just so happened to get an all-adult tour, yeah, right, which about half of them are all adult typically. Yeah, and about half of them have kids. Okay. Um, and so you just so happened to get an all-adult tour, and you got one with some foodie people on it, yeah, who had a fair amount of knowledge that they also brought with them.

SPEAKER_02 16:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:38

Uh, and that made it a really fun tour. You you kind of got a really good group. Yeah, I gotta say. Um, you know, I mean, they vary. When I have a lot of kids on there, I'll do I'll go more quickly. I'll obviously skip some of the like, you know, the science and engineering of how chocolate crystallization happens. Right. And we'll leave that part out. Uh, you know, or we'll gloss it more quickly. Yeah. Um, and spend more time on, you know, talking deer heads on the wall, telling deer jokes. Um and uh and let the kids tell a few of their own, you know, and that kind of thing. So I changed it up a bit.

SPEAKER_01 17:13

Um I I do have to say though, even though you were going kind of geek level knowledge on on the process of making chocolate, it was it was done in a fun way. So you've you've massaged this thing. Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:25

I mean, well no one wants to sit there through like you know a 45-minute PowerPoint on chocolate crystallization, right? Right, right. I mean, you can do it, but I mean, good god. But what? Yeah, you know. Um yeah. I mean, I I used to do that. It's funny because I learned this the in the old days when we had a really small distillery um and it was very nerd-focused.

SPEAKER_02 17:49

Yeah.

The Power Of Whimsy And Visual Details

SPEAKER_00 17:50

Uh we had people who would fly in from all over the world for it at that time. And uh, and so those people wanted that. Uh you know, they were like these people ate, drank, and slept, you know, yeah, all of what's happening in whiskey, and they wanted to hear some they're hoping that you say something they don't already know. Well, and in depending on my audience, I would again gauge it when I would interact with the people and see who I'm talking with. But yeah, but if you got the sense that that's really what they wanted, I actually had a PowerPoint and a I would we we used to we jokingly called it the projector tree. And so it was a tropical, a fake tropical tree in an island jungle tasting room, and a projector screen would drop out of the tree, and then it was literally a 45-minute chemistry lecture that was you know where you could actually map all of the different molecules responsible for the flavors in whiskey. Uh and for a certain audience, this is like, oh my god, yes.

SPEAKER_01 18:40

You know, in a chemistry lecture, you cannot just do it normal.

SPEAKER_00 18:49

That's amazing. There was actually, I don't even remember how it worked in there, but there was a joke in the chemistry lecture that played the coconut tapping scene from Monty Python's holy grail. And uh and there was something, and I don't remember what that came out now. This is years and years ago. But there, but I had two mechanical birds on a little motor that would come out carrying a coconut.

SPEAKER_02 19:15

I love it.

SPEAKER_00 19:18

I don't even remember how that joke worked, but it was a joke in the chemistry powerpoint.

SPEAKER_01 19:22

Yeah. Oh, it's awesome. So I would normally ask you two different questions. What's it like in the early days? And then how's it changed or evolved? But you've only hit been here uh under two years.

SPEAKER_00 19:38

Yeah, no, that we just finished our first year being open. So this is the early days still, right? Yeah. Um, I mean, you know, it's not our first rodeo, so I kind I kind of know how things change over time and how much I do or don't want to change over time, right?

SPEAKER_01 19:53

And so what's kind of um been the the process, your the thought process at least over the past year on on any changes that have that have been going on? You know, I mean we haven't changed a ton in the first year.

SPEAKER_00 20:07

Um, I mean, we got rid of the exploding toffee and replaced it with exploding bonbons. Yeah. Um, we uh we got I mean, so we made some changes like that. Okay. Right. Um, you know, the uh we upgraded the bathroom to have it, you know, play chocolate advertising jingles uh and to make myself into a radio announcer for the uh for the voice of bathroom radio. That's awesome.

SPEAKER_01 20:30

Several people went to the bathroom and they all commented it. Yeah, dude, you have to go to the bathroom.

SPEAKER_00 20:34

It's hard not to come out of the bathroom laughing. We we have this thing for elaborate bathrooms. Like, I don't think anyone else actually does this. It's like I think it's uniquely our thing. So over the years and everything we've built, we've always had these extraordinary elaborate toilets. And uh this one has uh an old timey radio in it with an old timey radio broadcast that has like you know the voice of bathrooms of the American Southwest as the as the radio show. Uh in uh we did one in Vegas where right when ChatGBT came out, it was brand new, right? So it was like the thing that and no one had heard of this thing yet, or it was just heard of it and no one had played with it yet. Yeah. And we're like, wow, look at this thing, it's so cool. You know, I mean it's not great, but it can pass off having a conversation with you. You know, I was like, it we it needs to be a talking toilet. Like this is this is what this was made for. It was born to be a toilet.

SPEAKER_01 21:23

This is the reason it exists, right?

Old-School Disney And Magic Influences

SPEAKER_00 21:25

And so we um we took we wrote this little script. Uh it was mostly actually this brilliant engineer who worked for us, uh, mostly did the work on this one. Um, but yeah, we created this little, it was my uh kind of germ of an idea, and then he just ran with it. And so we we banged out this little script, and it would take um uh it would use the uh accessibility feature for blind people on the computer um to take audio from you and turn it into text. Right. And so it would take your audio if you were to talk in the bathroom, for example, and it would make that into text, and then it would load that text into Chat GBT and preload a prompt in it that would tell Chat GBT, you know, I want you to respond in the voice of Douglas Adams combined with Nietzsche, and everybody poops. Um then I want you to respond to whatever this was, and then we wrote some prompts for some questions that it would ask. Yeah, and then we used the accessibility feature on the computer to give Chat GBT a real voice, right? Right? I mean, uh albeit a robotic one, right? You know, so you walk into the bathroom and and it would and then we took a bone speaker and attached it to the toilet, which is that's for anyone who doesn't have this kind of weird entertainment engineering background. Yeah, it's a speaker that vibrates a physical object to make it make sound, right? So you can make a you could hook a bone speaker onto a pot and then the pot will talk. Yeah. Right? Yeah. So you hook that onto the toilet, and now the toilet can talk with vibrations in the water, it's a little ripple. Right. And so you walk into the bathroom and the toilet's like, Hi, I'm the toilet. What's your name? And then of course no one responds, right? Because you're like, I don't know, I don't know what to say what's going on in here. Uh and so then it would be prompted to keep pestering you, right? And so it would be like, you know, really, I'm I'm I'm waiting. I'm interested. Yeah, no, tell me, tell me about yourself. What's what's your name? You know, and after like the third or fourth pester, the the guest would typically very timidly, I guess, I don't know what their tones sounded like because no one could hear them. It deleted all the audio immediately. But it would um, but they would interact with it, right? And so uh and and I know I did go in there and have fun with it. You're just like, hi, I'm Brian, and it's like, hi Brian. You know. Um, you know, how are you enjoying your stay here so far? You know? And you're like, oh, it's it's great. How are you enjoying your stay here? It's like, well, I don't know what anything else looks like. I've never been out of the bathroom.

unknown 23:53

Right.

SPEAKER_00 23:54

Oh but I have so many questions about the outside world. And that was the other thing in the prompt is we told it that we the toilet really wanted to be free. And it wanted to see the world and travel, but it couldn't because it couldn't leave the bathroom. And so it wanted to do that through you and live vicariously through the guests who use the bathroom. And every once in a while, a guest would go in and not come out for 30 minutes. Well, you're having a philosophical conversation with the toilet.

SPEAKER_01 24:25

Most meaningful bathroom experience they've ever had.

SPEAKER_00 24:29

Well, the Nietzsche bit was so fun because it would pop up every once in a while where you'd be sitting in the bathroom and it would ask a question like, you know, have you ever pondered how deep the water goes? Or if you stare into the toilet too long, does it stare back into you?

SPEAKER_01 24:47

I love it. Oh my God. Uh so I I mean for other people, this question's not so obvious, but for you it kind of is. I mean, we already know what makes you special in this community. So everything about you. So um what are you most proud of when it comes to what you have going on here? Or even your customers.

SPEAKER_00 25:12

What am I most proud of? Um I I am oh boy, that's fun. That's tricky.

SPEAKER_02 25:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 25:19

You know, because I mean I actually really love all of it.

SPEAKER_02 25:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 25:22

Uh and so like each one of the different rooms is like a different way of dispensing chocolate. And I'm really proud of kind of all of them. Um you know, the clock is new. Yeah. Right? So the that didn't draw on anything I've ever done before. So maybe that's the thing I'm most proud of. I don't know how proud of. Ooh. Uh, it's definitely not my dear jokes. I know what it's not. You know, I'm really proud to have pulled this together as just Joanne and I as a two-man show.

SPEAKER_02 25:54

Yeah. Right?

Logistics Behind The Curtain

SPEAKER_00 25:55

Because you know, the the thing about this place is that in order for it to work, you have to kind of do a lot of things pretty well. You know, and they're and they're it's very cross-disciplinary, right? Because you're figuring out how to both one, okay, we're we're dealing with serious, you know, some of our customers are serious foodies that are serious about the chocolate. Um, and so you have to do that at like a you know, very, very high level. Uh otherwise, you know, that then the whole thing breaks down if that you don't do that really well. So we had to learn a new discipline at a really high level. Kind of new-ish discipline. I mean, we had done certain stuff with chocolate before, but okay, so so that I'm really proud of. And because that was something new, right? Right. But then you also have to be able to do, you know, like the software engineering to make all of the different parts of this place do all the different things they need to do when they need to do them well. And you also have to do all the visual arts well, otherwise it's not fun. You know, this place wouldn't be magical at all if it wasn't for the artwork, right? Right. Did you notice the floor, by the way? Um, I didn't. Did you catch it?

SPEAKER_01 26:54

Yeah, I did, um, but it was it was there that I first saw.

SPEAKER_00 26:58

Uh right, the the stones, yeah. Yeah. That are painted like a cartoon. Yeah. So you know, like the like painting the floor instead of putting it a real floor, like going like, okay, I'm gonna I'm gonna paint the floor like a cartoon of a hardwood floor. Yeah. Uh and it's it's discrete enough that people don't necessarily notice it.

SPEAKER_01 27:12

You don't really pay attention, it's just a wood floor, but until it suddenly isn't.

SPEAKER_00 27:16

It's painted. You know. And so it's all those little moments like that for the customer that add all of that layering and texturing that make going into an immersive experience truly immersive, right? That's that that's the hard uh hardest part of doing it. And so I guess I'm really proud that I think we've pulled that off at at least a reasonable enough level.

SPEAKER_02 27:38

Sure.

SPEAKER_00 27:38

Uh, you know, with just the two of us in an under two years to get it to where it's like, okay, I I'm I'm comfortable having customers walk in here, uh, you know.

SPEAKER_01 27:49

Right.

SPEAKER_00 27:50

You know, and and not and I can be proud of it.

SPEAKER_01 27:53

It's amazing what happens when you start layering details.

SPEAKER_00 27:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 27:57

I mean, a small detail seems like a small detail, but when you have 50 small details, that's no longer a small detail. Right, it starts to become a thing. That's a yeah.

SPEAKER_00 28:05

Yeah, it's well, and here you're trying to take people out of the outside world, right? Yeah. And you're you're not, I mean, it's chocolate, you know, and so you're not taking them. And it's also like, you know, you can't scare the kids. Sure. Right? Because if you took some of the stuff we built before, like things in Los Angeles and stuff, and if you put kids into that, it's like they'd freak.

SPEAKER_02 28:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 28:24

You know, like the adults have enough of a filter built up over the years to go, okay, I I get what's going on here, but you know, if you put kids in there, it's not that that's not gonna work. So you had to keep it light, but you want to take them a little out of the real world. Right.

SPEAKER_02 28:38

Not a ton.

SPEAKER_00 28:39

Right. You know, just like like just the this this isn't quite real life. A peek behind the veil. Yeah, but it is, yeah, but it isn't, but it is, but it isn't, you know. And that's kind of the the trick, I think, to pulling that off.

SPEAKER_01 28:53

I like it. Um and yeah, I mean it is. You don't have a team, you don't have other employees. It's it's just us. It's just you have so everything that you've done here has been just the two of you.

SPEAKER_00 29:05

Yep. Yeah, all of it.

SPEAKER_01 29:07

So it can be done. Oh yeah. Right? You don't have to have four, five, six employees to do it.

SPEAKER_00 29:14

Multidisciplinary experience, a hunger to learn new things. Sure. Yeah, you know, a love of YouTube. Right. Right. Uh, you know, uh a willingness to to, you know, if you don't know how to do something, you can Google how to do it. Yeah. Somewhere out there, there's, you know, I need a Python script to control a Samsung TV. You know, and someone's got some of it out there, right? You know, and it probably might fry your TV. But it probably won't.

Small Teams, Big Flexibility

SPEAKER_01 29:45

You and I have have been chatting for a lot longer than I thought we would um before we started this actual interview. And part of it was because um I'm relating to you on a on a on a on a certain level. So I I have a wide, like an extremely wide range of of interests, and and I do that. So I I have to be careful with that because it can get dangerous. What not physically dangerous, but dangerous in that I've just run your interests. I just spent two years doing that when I should have been doing something. So anyway, um, I I get involved in the thing, something interests me, and I dive into that. I have to know how does that work? And I just focus so intently on it until I know how that works. And then I have to rip myself back out of it so I'm not just in that world now, and I go to another thing and figure out how that works. And it seems like you've done that as you were moving, just as a thing presented, you a light bulb came on your head and were like, I should be able to do that, and then you found out how to do it.

SPEAKER_00 30:55

Yeah, I mean, I think it's one of those things where um you know the the magic is in keeping your interest. Interest focused in a way where where they're they're all over the place, but they're all over the place in the in the sense that they still can relate to each other. Right? Yeah. So, you know, like I uh for many years the thing I'm probably still most well known for in the world is the chemical engineering patents related to distilled spirits. Yeah. And you know, I never had a background in chemistry. I had a uh I actually had an art degree originally, but when we were running the distillery, that was a necessary thing we needed to know. Yeah. Right. So it was like, okay, if we're making this type of product, we need to know this. The like all these flavors come from chemistry. We need to understand how these are forming. So then it became like, okay, I want to I want to figure this out. And actually, I literally did my TED talk on this point, which is when you get to the the point where you're like, okay, I've now found the point where all of the information I'm getting back from Google is conflicted. Right? Right. Like uh one person saying one thing, the other person's saying something completely different.

SPEAKER_02 32:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 32:03

That's kind of when you find the outside edge of human knowledge and you reach the point where you really found a spot where where we don't know the answer to something. Right. Uh and then you can actually do real science.

SPEAKER_02 32:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 32:12

And then they did.

unknown 32:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 32:15

And so, you know, it's one of those things where but it was all related to the need for figuring out how to do what I need to do at the distillery. Uh, right. Whereas, like, I never really understood chocolate tempering as crystal growth in chocolate.

SPEAKER_01 32:29

Right.

SPEAKER_00 32:30

Until all of a sudden I'm like, okay, what's going on here? Because I can get it chocolate to temper following the instructions, but what happens if something goes wrong? Or why does it go wrong? Or how do you know when it went wrong, or how do you know how to troubleshoot it?

SPEAKER_02 32:43

Right.

SPEAKER_00 32:43

Right. And so for that, you need to understand what's actually happening. And so, in order to understand what's actually happening, well, all of a sudden, guess what? It turns out it's material science. And so you're gonna need to go read up on the material science, at least to the degree at which it's relevant to chocolate tempering.

SPEAKER_01 32:57

Right.

SPEAKER_00 32:57

And then now, okay, I can I can now do this consistently, right?

SPEAKER_01 33:01

Right. You know, I I love that again, that relation that relation thing. So uh I I I'm I've never been a checklist guy. I you cannot hand me a checklist and say, this is how you do this stuff, and expect me to follow the checklist because I will ask why every single one of those checklists, and I need an answer to the why I'm not just gonna do the checklist. And it's you it uh you've made a couple of since I've been here today, you've made a couple of those references where you're not that guy, you're not the checklist guy either.

SPEAKER_00 33:36

No, I mean we gotta understand why something works in order to be able to do it. Exactly. It's a little, I mean, sometimes I will cut corners in a sense, like if I'm programming something, for example, right, and I'm like, okay, I need to figure out how to hack this. So because most of the stuff in here that you're looking at are all hacked consumer goods. Sure. Right, right. Yeah. Because I'm like, okay, the the real thing is like thousands and thousands of dollars, but that's okay. We're gonna go buy the toy, and then we're gonna take the toy apart and we're gonna rewire the toy, and we're gonna figure out how to make the toy do what we want. Which by the way, if anyone out there is looking for a great way to introduce your kids to hacking, you can make a Teddy Ruxpin say anything.

SPEAKER_01 34:11

Right.

Working In vs Working On The Business

SPEAKER_00 34:13

Really easily. So uh so well, we're you know, well, you know, sometimes you can do a search for okay, I wonder if there's already code out there for this. Sure. And then you can just drop it into your existing shell and and right uh and voila, off you go. Um but yeah, in general, I like to really understand the the ins and outs of everything to be able to figure out how to use it in new ways, too.

SPEAKER_01 34:39

Right. I find having that top-level knowledge um helps so much. If any one thing goes wrong on a checklist and you don't have the knowledge outside of the checklist, everything is wrong and you don't know how to fix it. So when you have that top-level knowledge, it doesn't matter what the checklist is, you know how the whole process works. So if something goes wrong, you know exactly why it went wrong and what has to be done to fix it. Right, or if you can. With chocolate, you sometimes can't. Yeah, yeah. You're able to fix it.

SPEAKER_00 35:09

Yeah. It's the catch of chocolate. If it goes wrong, it's just just done. There's no hope. It's epically.

SPEAKER_01 35:19

So if someone's never been here before, um, what's one thing you'd want them to experience?

SPEAKER_00 35:28

If they've never been here before, what's one thing I want them to experience? Yeah. So like like uh like what's the hook to get them to go buy a ticket? Um I suppose is what you're asking. Um so it's a little bit of a magic show, and it's a little bit of an animatronics show, and it's a little bit of a giant art project. Um and I think it's a whole lot of I would hope inspiration for for people, um, especially kids, uh, but adults too. Uh, you know, because I think we all need that sometimes to see something where you're just like, okay, this is something fresh and new.

SPEAKER_01 36:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 36:02

You know, and I think that's really kind of what we tried to do here in a lot of ways. Yeah. Along with some really goofy magic tricks. And and a lot of corny.

SPEAKER_01 36:13

And I'm a fan of magic. I and and uh so anyway, uh parts of my experience here today reminded me of things that happened to me when I was a kid. Um like old style Disney World stuff, like the old the good stuff. Like before it all became digital and electronic and robotic and that kind of thing, and then and then magic, and a lot of magicians call back to the old masters, and there was just an atmosphere around that, and that is evident. Just if you know that at all, it's evident when you walk in the door here. That like that traditional old world magic kind of feeling.

SPEAKER_00 36:56

Yeah, I love the old world magic-y stuff, I love the old Disney stuff so much, yeah. You know, like I I mean, just the the new stuff is occasionally brilliant. Um, but the old stuff is just like, oh, this is this is art, not you know, right, not whatever this other thing is that I can't quite put my finger on. Uh, you know, that this takes me to uh I'm I'm in an art project. I can see the brush strokes, I can see the thinking, I can see where the animators were were telling stories on the walls and the paintings. Yeah. You know, like I think my favorite moment, maybe on Earth, uh, is um there's a ride at Disneyland in Los Angeles called Mr. Toad's Wild Ride.

SPEAKER_01 37:37

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 37:37

Uh or Anaheim, I should say. And uh and Mr. Toad's Wild Ride, the the it's not the ride itself, it's the line to get on the ride. Okay. Is my favorite moment in in the world that I can think of, or one of them, at least for sure. And it's because this just it's super subtle, but now you will not unsee it if you go. Yeah. You walk into the line, and when you enter into the line, everything is physically real. It's wood sculpted columns, it's wooden trim on the cottage that is like Mr. Toad's house.

SPEAKER_02 38:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 38:09

Um, the the painting is a real frame on the wall with the painting in it. Everything's real.

SPEAKER_01 38:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 38:16

And every 30 feet through the line or 40 feet through the line, something that used to be real is now a painted-on part, like a cartoon. And so with a wooden column that was a wooden sculpted column at the entrance, that same, like the wooden column repeats throughout the building, right? But now it's a painting of the column instead of the column. Right. But the column next to it or the trim next to it is still real wood. Right? It's like at every 30 feet or so, more cartoon takes over and less real world is there. And by the time you get all the way to where you're going to board the ride, it's all cartoon.

SPEAKER_02 38:51

Right.

SPEAKER_00 38:52

Everything's just a blank wall painted like a canvas. Right. And I just like it's I'm just like, I want so much like more of this. Yeah. Like this is so cool.

SPEAKER_01 39:02

That's a brilliant effect because you understand when something is real most of the time, unless someone's purposefully trying to trick you, and then they're not doing that yet.

SPEAKER_00 39:12

Right.

SPEAKER_01 39:12

So it's real until it becomes background for you. You've seen it. Real column, real column, real column. Yeah, I don't need to study the columns anymore.

SPEAKER_00 39:22

And then suddenly you're like, wait a minute, that's a cartoon.

SPEAKER_01 39:24

Right. Yeah. Like, what's going on here? You just assume that's a real column, but something is a little off. So you may not know what's off because you're not still studying the why study more columns? There's been 20, they were all real. So I I love that. Yeah. It just suddenly catches you. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 39:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 39:44

I love that. So um what's pe what's something that people don't see? Of course, you're doing magic here, so it it's obviously that, but but outside of the magic, what's something that people don't see that's crucial to keeping your business running smoothly?

SPEAKER_00 40:02

Well, I mean, anytime you're running a business and you're trying to keep it going smoothly, you're always dealing with things like logistics and you're always dealing with uh, you know, the unglamorous, not fun to talk about, you know, part is always there, right? Because somehow, like when those guests arrive today, there had to be correctly made chocolate in front of them. Right. You can't like, oh gee, we forgot the chocolate.

unknown 40:28

Right.

SPEAKER_00 40:29

I mean, so you kind of have to always pay attention to logistics and you have to always pay attention to making sure that you have all of the things that are necessary to keep it all running, done, you know, and that's that's just life. Yeah, you know, there's no way around it. And it's all it's it's never the thing you want to show off because it's not fun.

SPEAKER_01 40:47

Right. You know, I mean And people don't come for that. No, I mean I don't come for the end of it that you've worked backwards from to start a week ago or whatever it is that you know.

Winter Plans And The Submarine Kitchen

SPEAKER_00 40:58

Yeah, that the panicked moment when you suddenly realize that the co-op in Ecuador that supplies you with one of the two chocolates that you need is sold out. Oh yeah, that that's the oh boy, oh no, no, but how's this gonna work? Oh my god. You stay, it's like and then you realize it's sold out when you go to put in the order and there's like no inventory available. And that was on their website, and it's Sunday night. Yeah, and you stay up all Sunday trying to figure out if there's another top 10 chocolate producing co-op in the world, or maybe you'll even take top 20 that you can get a resupply from somehow. You know, in the end, actually, the the beauty of it was the co-op was like, no, no, no, no. When I called them on Monday, they're like, no, we we keep several thousand pounds for people like you will fill in and get you resupplied until there's stock back available. Like, oh thank god. So your pluck started pumping again. Like, oh, oh thank God. You know. Um, but yeah. So I mean I think logistics is probably the biggest part of that. But yeah, it's that's just life.

SPEAKER_01 42:04

So in that arena, what's a uh uh small but mighty system or process that you put in place that makes a a big difference?

SPEAKER_00 42:14

You know, we're so small, we don't have a lot of processes in place yet. I I mean I think we just pay have to pay attention and you kind of just have to remember to keep an eye on what you're doing.

SPEAKER_02 42:23

Sure.

SPEAKER_00 42:23

Uh you know, make sure you're taking account of different things and keeping track of it so that you know when you need to reorder and all the rest of that stuff.

SPEAKER_02 42:30

Right.

SPEAKER_00 42:30

Um the uh in the old days, obviously, we had lots and lots of systems and processes for everything, but we were running 100 people.

SPEAKER_02 42:37

Right.

SPEAKER_00 42:37

Um, you know, here it's it's nice not needing that.

SPEAKER_01 42:42

Right. It's it's amazing how flexible you can be the smaller you get.

SPEAKER_00 42:47

Right. Right? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 42:48

You can move.

SPEAKER_00 42:49

Well, you can also you can move mountains when you're small. Uh, you know, I mean it's always like one of the this is sort of uh in the old days of studying business-y stuff, but it's like you know, the the number of people that built Google is so infinitesimally small compared to the number of people that are needed to maintain it.

SPEAKER_01 43:06

Yeah, exactly. Right.

SPEAKER_00 43:09

You know, it's like when you have really small teams and you're really working together and you're really using all of your skills, because I mean, you know, you're you're interviewing me on this and not Joanne, but it's like Joanne has this incredibly diverse, every bit equally rich background that's just as vital to all of these different things and just as developed because she ran a whole giant division of that same company.

SPEAKER_02 43:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 43:34

And so, you know, the it it takes like after enough years, you sort of just have that stuff down to where you can kind of operate and run with it.

SPEAKER_01 43:44

And that is that's amazing that both of you have that background so that you you can bounce things off of each other.

SPEAKER_00 43:52

You know, well, and we also grew up together as uh as people running companies, and so consequently, I'm not even sure we can function without each other. Uh, you know, because it's just like there's whole sections of my brain that are fundamentally underdeveloped. Sure. Because it was unnecessary because there was someone else who had developed this. Uh and so that whole section, we could just like reallocate that gray matter to like, you know, uh, I don't know, fresco painting.

SPEAKER_02 44:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 44:20

You know, um something else. Yeah. Um it's kind of a joke. I don't really know how to paint frescoes. But anyway.

SPEAKER_01 44:31

Um so this is this is this is things that hopefully help other people realize maybe they're not the only one going through this, or maybe you will spout out the solution that they haven't thought of. But what's something that you wish ran a little smoother behind the scenes?

SPEAKER_00 44:54

Something I wish ran a little bit smoother behind the scenes. I wish there was a place you could put money where it would earn lots of interest so that you didn't have to think about money anymore. Yeah. Oh, what's something that I wish would run behind the scenes smoother? Oh, I mean it's just not the way the world works. Yeah. Nothing ever runs perfectly smoothly behind the scenes. Right.

unknown 45:18

You know.

SPEAKER_00 45:19

Um I I mean there are things that run smoothly behind the scenes because someone else is doing the work.

SPEAKER_01 45:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 45:25

Uh so that you don't have to.

SPEAKER_01 45:26

Right.

SPEAKER_00 45:27

Right. I mean, that happens. That's a thing. Right. Right. Um, so uh, you know, maybe you need a person that does that.

SPEAKER_02 45:35

Yeah.

Animatronic Art, Holiday Tours, And Growth

SPEAKER_00 45:35

If that's the thing that you wish ran smoother. Um, you know, and there's also something to be said for, you know, when you do eventually start to make your business successful enough to where you can hire people or, you know, contractors to do specific things, you can also think about what are the things that you really wish ran smoother and you didn't have to deal with. And maybe that's the thing to allocate that resource to if you're gonna do that so that you don't have to think about it anymore. Right. Right. Because the last thing you want to do is be spending your time thinking about things you really wish you weren't thinking about rather than spending your time trying to think about how do I make something cooler, better, more awesome, more amazing for my customers. Yeah, right. Yeah. Um, and so, you know, if you're spending all of your time on HR and legal instead of spending your time on show production, you know, you're not really doing your customer service, right? Because you're like they're coming to see the show production you're putting on, right? Right. And so you want to be making something better for them, right? Not necessarily dealing with some miserable mundane thing. Yeah. Of course, at the same time, life doesn't always work that way, and you know, this is a balancing act, right? Right.

SPEAKER_01 46:55

Um, so it is a balancing act, and then I unfortunately the thing that keeps popping into my head because it's related, is that really I just hate this saying, but you know, you need time to work on your business, not in your business. And that's Yeah, I kind of hear that. I so a lot of people get stuck working in the business and they don't really have any time.

SPEAKER_00 47:17

Well to Okay, so back to the balancing act, right? So I mean, because if you're because I'm I'm gathering from that your podcast is targeted at a business community to some degree here. To some, and and customers that love those businesses, yeah. Right. So for that part, um, you know, if you spend all of your time working, you want to spend your time working on your business, but you also want to spend your time working in your business. Yeah, you need to know what's going on. You want to do both. You one, you need to know what's going on, and two, working in your business can be parts of it, at least, are going to be extremely fun. Yeah. Right? It should be. So, like, you know, you like for example, the last thing in the world I want to give up in in this in the course of like, let's say I wanted to scale this place, which I which I mean, you know, maybe we'll add a few cool things here and there, and I want to add new cool stuff. So we're like, okay, you know, winter is slow. January, February, March, April is slow in this area. So we're gonna be closed January, February, March, April. So every year we have these four months where we can go, okay, what's the next cool thing we can add into this? What do we want to build onto it? What do we wish it had that it doesn't have now?

SPEAKER_01 48:26

Right.

SPEAKER_00 48:26

And you almost need the whole year working in the business to understand at the end of that year when you're like, okay, now I've got this four-month window, what do I want to do? Right. Right. So like I know right now, I know what my customers really want me to do, right? Which is, I mean, well, at least one of the things they really want me to do. They want a website where they can go buy chocolate and have it shipped to them. Sure. I know they want it. Of course, right? Because they ask all the time.

SPEAKER_01 48:48

Right.

SPEAKER_00 48:48

Um, and right now, one, we so the 2,000-ish or so bonbons and truffles that we make a week is just what we get through in a weekend in the gift shop.

SPEAKER_01 48:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 48:58

Uh we don't there, there's none to ship to anyone, right? Like not a single week goes by that we're not like, okay, we're out of a coffee, we're out of a raspberry, we're out of this one. But if anybody would like these other three, we have these.

SPEAKER_02 49:09

Right.

SPEAKER_00 49:09

But I mean, that always happens. And so, you know, we know a new kitchen would be cool, right? A bigger kitchen. Yeah. Because if we had a bigger kitchen, we could hire a person, and that person could make chocolate in that bigger kitchen. Right. Well, we're out here with guests, and you could potentially have another person, maybe have two people, and then all of a sudden you can ship it online and stock your gift shop shelves. But guess what? That also means you could be out here with guests four days a week instead of two days a week, maybe.

SPEAKER_01 49:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 49:37

Right? Yeah. And being out here with guests would be really fun, right? So I love the RD on the chocolate. I love developing new chocolate flavors.

SPEAKER_02 49:44

Right.

SPEAKER_00 49:45

Um, I think Joanne does too, actually. Um, I think that's a really fun one for both of us. Uh and I love being in front of guests, making chocolate appear absolutely absurd and ridiculous ways. Clocks dispensing chocolate and like, you know, thunder and lightning and talking birds, right?

SPEAKER_02 50:04

Yeah.

Shoutouts, Community, And Closing

SPEAKER_00 50:04

Um, and so that stuff's fun, you know. And so it's like, okay, we could maybe we spend the four months building a new bigger kitchen. But then these other thoughts start to creep in, right? Because like, okay, well, if we're gonna do that, that sounds a little bit like business not fun. That sounds like the business brain might have taken over. So if we are gonna let the business brain take over that much, okay, and I don't know if we are, then what's the fun part? Well, okay, maybe the guests get to see that kitchen, and maybe that kitchen is themed underwater. And so now, okay, well, now if we have a themed underwater kitchen, well, you have to have a way to get there, right? And so that immediately says, all right, when now we need a submarine, right? And now we're building like a submarine to get us to an underwater kitchen. Like, okay, I mean, obviously, for what I'm talking about an above-ground plywood submarine and themed theatrics. I'm not this is mostly for the would-be people who would vote for a building and safety code. I am not actually going to build a submarine. Um probably could, but I'm not going to. But you know, like, okay, now that starts to be fun. And so then you're like, all right, maybe that's the four-month project. And then it's like, okay, well, maybe I'm biting off more than I can chew here. And then we'll dial this back a little and think it through. Uh, and so that that's kind of the logic chain of why I think you need to be both in and out.

SPEAKER_01 51:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 51:28

Yeah. Right. Like, uh, even when I was running the much, much bigger operation, you know, I would go as a guest or with guests that I was with, um, as a customer, uh, at least two to three times a week into the show.

SPEAKER_02 51:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 51:42

Um, to see it, to see what's happening, to see what's operating. And I also would go in as a manager and do things like relieve, you know, like some kind of a emergency whatever happened in some area. Right. An employee needs to be relieved. Okay, well, that like person has to go home and they've got to go deal with a family emergency or something. I'm gonna periodically volunteer to go take that job because I want to go be on the ground in that spot. I want to see how it's running, I want to see what's working, what's not, what could be tweaked, what couldn't be. Right. You know, it just turns out that stupid spotlight that I put in there for theatrical lighting blinds the employee. Right. Right. And they just never complained about it.

unknown 52:19

Right.

SPEAKER_00 52:21

You know, and so it's like, you know, you want to be in it and you want to be working on it. Right both. Right. If you're only working in your business, you're not building anything new. Right. That's true. And if you're not building anything new, you're not giving your customers a reason to come back. Right. Uh right, because you want new all the time, right? Yeah. Uh and so if you're but if you're only working outside of it, you don't even understand it anymore. You know, then at some point you just become like one of those finance people that sits in an office and plays games with spreadsheets all day. You know, I mean, but but then how are you gonna try to run a business that way? Like you need to be passionate about something.

SPEAKER_02 52:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 52:59

Uh right, it can't just be nothing but numbers on a spreadsheet, right? Or I guess it's like, well, I guess it can, it's Enron or something.

unknown 53:05

But you know.

SPEAKER_01 53:07

Um I think the longer you spend, not uh without a personal connection to how the business is actually running, outside of spreadsheets and numbers that are being reported to you, longer you spend outside of that personal hands-on touch, um the more out of out of touch you'd be you come with the business. So it becomes more and more just about the bottom line. You're the guy at the top running a team of 500 people, and it's all about the bottom line. And it's just no fun. Yeah, it just doesn't.

SPEAKER_00 53:41

But on on the other side, becoming too successful actually sucks. Yeah. Like I mean, it's a really weird thing to say, but like it uh, you know, like the the fast cars are not worth it. Right. Like it's just not. It's only fun for like a week.

unknown 53:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 53:59

Yeah, you know you know, and then it's just a car. Um I I mean, you know, like what's fun, you know, what do you want to do where that that makes you smile?

SPEAKER_01 54:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 54:10

You know, and laugh.

SPEAKER_01 54:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 54:12

Right.

SPEAKER_01 54:12

But on the other hand, you've got, you know, the the solopreneur or the the couple that's doing the whole thing by themselves and they're wearing 50 hats and they're regularly dropping at least five of those hats. You know, and it's true. That's a that's a point in time to look at that and say, okay, maybe I need some help so that I can give these five hats to that guy.

SPEAKER_00 54:38

Or girls. Yeah, well, or whatever. And and there the question that you're asking yourself is just like this is funny because I haven't thought about these things since the days of running a bigger business. Right. But that's that's where you start asking or thinking about things like, okay, can I simplify this and get rid of the problem? Sure. Right. Um, and if not, what's the part of it that you like the least? And then take the part that you like the least and get someone else to do that part, yeah. And keep the part that you like the most, or keep the part that you know, maybe you have a superhuman skill at.

SPEAKER_02 55:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 55:11

Right.

SPEAKER_02 55:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 55:12

Um, you know, like uh yeah. I mean that's good advice. Yeah, you know, because you want to get rid of the parts that are dragging you that are sucking up your time so you can't use them on the fun stuff.

SPEAKER_01 55:22

Right.

SPEAKER_00 55:23

Right?

SPEAKER_01 55:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 55:23

Um because the things that make you smile.

SPEAKER_01 55:25

Some of that stuff is easy. You don't have to hire somebody necessarily hire as an employee, high, but maybe you don't like doing the books. So push off to a bookkeeper and then you don't have to do the books anymore.

SPEAKER_00 55:36

Yeah, as long as you don't get so disconnected from your books that you don't know if you have any money in the bank.

SPEAKER_01 55:41

Because that could be a really bad situation.

SPEAKER_00 55:44

I've seen that a few times with people. Like, wait, wait, wait, wait. Yeah, and that and uh you know, do your own social media so you can interact with your own customers. That's another one.

SPEAKER_01 55:55

Um, what are you most excited about for the future of your business?

SPEAKER_00 56:04

Well, right now I'm working on more of the magically animated paintings.

SPEAKER_01 56:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 56:07

So the paintings that come to life, that's gonna be fun. Um, right now I have the woman who lobbied the Cottage Food Act in Colorado as one. Yeah. And she waves and interacts with the guests and stuff and face palms at bad deer jokes. And uh yeah, the uh I want to add some more of those. Um there's this guy, I think I mentioned the guy who tried to pass a building and safety code for Montezuma County. So I want to make him into an oil painting and put him above the toilet, and then when you flush it, it dunks him. Well, you know, you remember the carnival when you throw the ball and you'd hit the thing and then it would drop the clown in the water? I think it'd be so funny if every time you flush the toilet, this painting goes, ah, and falls in the water and splash. Um I just think that would be so priceless. Um you know, uh I'm definitely excited about that in the very near term. Um I'm excited about what I'm gonna build on this place for the for the winter. Yeah. That's gonna be really fun. I'm really looking forward to that. Yeah. Um, also, I'm really looking forward to all the holiday tours because that's all the people who come back and bring all their family back that are visiting from out of town. Because it turns into an all-locals business when you get to the winter.

SPEAKER_01 57:23

Sure.

SPEAKER_00 57:23

Uh, or the end of the tour season.

SPEAKER_01 57:25

Right.

SPEAKER_00 57:25

Um, and so it's gonna be really fun going through the holiday season and seeing all these familiar faces of customers you've interacted with before that are now all coming back and and watch and they're watching their family have the same experience they did. That's really fun.

SPEAKER_01 57:38

Watch this, watch this.

SPEAKER_00 57:40

That's super fun.

SPEAKER_01 57:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 57:41

Um so I'm looking forward to that and then immediate near term. Um yeah, I mean that's to start with. Cool. I just got a new animatronic parrot. Yeah. I'm looking forward to what I'm gonna do with that. I don't know what to do with it yet.

SPEAKER_01 57:56

Um if time and money weren't an issue, what's something new that you'd want to try? It's the submarine, isn't it? Oh, I was gonna go for space travel. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 58:11

Giant saltwater lake.

SPEAKER_00 58:13

I was gonna know, no, no. Let's think bigger. No, uh if uh if time and money were not an option, uh okay, uh I'm gonna give you a funny answer. This is probably a good one. I'm guessing this is one of the probably your last questions, or one of them. So it's a good one to get near ending on, anyway, if not ending. Uh okay, so uh approximately four years ago, a research team at Tel Aviv University figured out for the first time that if you put people in hyperbaric oxygen chambers, um, pressurized with air instead of oxygen, and then you gave them 95% or no, 99% pure oxygen to breathe through a mask at the same pressure level, and have them go five minutes on and five minutes off and five minutes on and five minutes off for an hour a day. Yeah, their telomere lengths and their cells reversed in age at least temporarily.

SPEAKER_01 59:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 59:09

Um so I would I want to I want one. And I want to set up a biolab and use myself as a guinea pig and see if I can find the fountain of youth, hopefully without killing myself in the process. Yeah, there's there's your answer. And that's actually not a funny uh of a uh I'm actually not being glib. That that is really what I would do.

SPEAKER_01 59:39

If time and money weren't an issue, we would be doing it right now.

SPEAKER_00 59:42

Yes. Yeah, no, I want one. Um, and if I get lazy enough and I have or uh no, wrong term. If I get impatient enough and I don't have the money or time, I might just build my own.

SPEAKER_01 59:53

Yeah, figure out how to do it yourself. You're the guy that would do that.

SPEAKER_00 59:57

Oh, yeah. Although that one I might start violating more safety codes at a state and federal level.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:03

But it's just me, it's no one else. It's not my customers.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:06

Yeah, no, I mean actually, you know, I wonder if that would work.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:12

What I do in my own super lab is my own business.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:18

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:21

Oh man. Well, this is brilliant. I until very recently I didn't know you guys were here.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:27

Well, a lot of people don't, right? I mean, we've only been here a year.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:31

Yeah, I mean, you're new, and you're you're up here in Cortez, I'm down to Farmington. So I don't get this way very often. I get to Durango area more often than this direction, but now I know you're here, so I have to come back.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:44

Yeah, and special shout out to uh Nikki Habers and the amazing Pear Blossom honey that we use in those exploding bonbons.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:52

Um that told me about that. Yeah, she introduced us. So a giant shout out to her. And what I can say uh in with absolutely honestly, that that is the best honey I've ever had.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:05

Period.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:07

That's amazing.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:08

And you're putting it in your chocolate in one version of it.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:10

Yeah, well, and it's also it is the most popular chocolate, too. Nice. That is the we we actually have to make two of those for every one of everything else we make. Yeah. Or not for everyone, but like it's two to one. Uh how many more of those we have to make compared to all the other chocolates we make because it's so popular. And part of it is her honey.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:29

Yeah. So yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:31

Awesome.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:31

So giant shout out to Nikki.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:33

Very cool.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:34

Well, I've uh thoroughly enjoyed my visit here and um thanks for taking the tour and seeing what you do, and then talking about how you do what you do, and getting actually so much background that is not on this interview. Maybe you have to come back and like back up in time and cover some of that stuff.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:54

It's an insane story. I mean, it takes a couple hours to do like the real story, like blow by blow. But I mean, yeah, it was what a ride.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:02

Yeah. I tell people all the time that you're not gonna find somebody that has the breadth of experience as I do, um, but you can say the exact same thing. You're not gonna find somebody very easily that has the same level of experience that you do.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:24

It takes so many weird, the stars aligned just right over and over and over and over and over and over again. I mean, you know, it's just to go on this crazy wild roller coaster. Yeah, yeah. I love it.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:38

You know, you pulled it all together brilliantly, and I can't see I can't wait to see how you evolve over time.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:44

Oh, it's gonna be fun.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:45

So, yeah, because you were still brand new.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:47

Yeah, yeah. I mean, we got a long ways to go with to where we have no idea. Yeah. Space travel.

unknown 1:02:54

Space travel.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:55

Awesome. Well, thank you so much.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:57

Yeah, it was a pleasure.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:58

Okay.