DAVID PACKOUZ: The ‘War Dogs’ Story, The Entrepreneurial Mindset, and Bouncing Back from Failure

Speaker 1 (00:00:00):

Welcome to the Unstoppable Recording Machine Podcast. And now your host, Eyal Levi. Welcome to the URM podcast. Thank you so much for being here. It's crazy to think that we are now on our seventh year. Don't ask me how that all just flew by, but it did. Man, time moves fast and it's only because of you, the listeners, if you'd like us to stick around another seven years and there's a few simple things you can do that would really, really help us out, I would endlessly appreciate if you would, number one, share our episodes with your friends. Number two, post our episodes on your Facebook and Instagram and tag me at al Levi URM audio and at URM Academy and of course our guest. And number three, leave us reviews and five star reviews wherever you can. We especially love iTunes reviews. Once again, thank you for all the years and years of loyalty.

(00:01:01):

I just want you to know that we will never charge you for this podcast, and I will always work as hard as possible to improve the episodes in every single way. All we ask in return is a share a post and tag us. Oh, and one last thing. Do you have a question you would like me to answer on an episode? I don't mean for a guest. I mean for me, it can be about anything. Email it to [email protected]. That's EYAL at urm dot A-C-D-E-M-Y. There's no.com on that. It's exactly the way I spelled it. And use the subject line. Answer me Eyal. Alright, let's get on with it. Hello everybody. Welcome to the URM podcast. My guest today is David Packouz, who is the CEO of singular sound, but in a former life, he was an arms dealer in a really, really interesting story you may have heard about because a movie was made about it called War Dogs. If the name sounds familiar, you've probably either seen that movie or you've seen David on some of the really, really awesome podcasts that are out and available in the world right now. He's been doing the rounds. Anyhow, very excited for this one. Let's get into it. David Packouz, welcome to the URM Podcast.

Speaker 2 (00:02:14):

Thank you.

Speaker 1 (00:02:15):

Thanks for being here. Obviously I know about you and I know some of your story, and when your publicist got in touch with me, I was surprised because mainly speak to music people, mostly producers, some musicians, some entrepreneurs, but anytime. I've only veered outside of that a couple times, so I was just surprised. Do you have the right podcast? And I started thinking that it was maybe someone just spamming people on LinkedIn or something. You get tons of those and people just recommending really inappropriate guests. But since I knew your name, I read up on you and was like, oh wow, okay. I was not expecting you to be a music person and actually well into your music career and didn't realize that that was what you wanted to do all along. I remember hearing on concrete podcast that you said that your whole plan was to basically become financially independent so that you could fund a music career, which is what a lot of people told me growing up I should do and is kind of the dream. So

Speaker 2 (00:03:39):

Absolutely.

Speaker 1 (00:03:39):

At what point did you get into music and at what point did you divert or were you doing music the whole time?

Speaker 2 (00:03:45):

Well, I've been a singer ever since I was a little kid, so that's something that I was just a gifted to mean naturally by my mother because she's an amazing singer and my dad can't sing a note to save his life. So I definitely got lucky there in the genetics lottery. I remember when I was a little kid, like four or five years old, my dad would put me to bed and he would have me sing the lullaby. He couldn't sing so he would know when I was asleep because my voice would trail off from singing to lullaby. That's one of my earliest memories of singing. My Mother's, as I said, has always been an incredible singer and she also plays rhythm guitar to accompany her voice. She's a singer songwriter. She's written some original songs, and so when I was 15, I asked her to teach me how to play guitar.

(00:04:37):

She grew up on Bob Dylan and the Carpenters and those sixties era, 60 seventies era music groups. And so I learned folks stuff from her open note chords. Of course, I was 15 years old in the nineties, so I got really into Nirvana and wanted to learn how to play power chords and distorted guitars and all that stuff, which was not something she was a specialist in. So I got on the brand new thing called the internet back then and learned how to play the music that I wanted to play more hard rock run that way. And so growing up in my teen years, that was always a thing for me. I always had terrible stage fright, couldn't really speak in front of a crowd or do anything. And I got over that eventually by playing music on the beach with my friends. I grew up in Miami Beach, so I used to hang out on the beach at night with my friends and play guitar, and I'm Jewish, so we'd steal wine from our synagogue and drink as good upstanding teenagers do on the beach, and I'd be playing my guitar and closing my eyes and singing my heart out.

(00:05:50):

And then there started to be people gathering around on the beach first it was just a few, and then eventually there started being crowds of 20, 30 people just all gathering around singing along to these songs. And I just kept my eyes closed the whole time. I was too nervous to look at anybody, and eventually I managed to open my eyes and that's how I got over my stage fright. So that was, and now I, I've played shows here and there, but it used to be debilitating stage fright. So music got me over my stage fright. It made me a much more social person is always a huge part of my life. And obviously as every male musician knows, the girls like it too. So that's a huge motivator for any teenage boy. So I always had the dream of being as I think most guys do, of being the rockstar playing the stadium.

(00:06:43):

And that was always something that I had the dream for, but I always also had a bit of a realistic kind of bent to me as well, the thought that like, oh, don't put all your eggs in this one basket. You always have to do something else just in case, or you can't rely on the dream of music. So I've always had these kind of side hustles to go along with it. And I guess you could say even going to college was kind of a bit of a side hustle or a backup plan. I went to college to study chemistry because everyone said, oh, if you have a hard science degree, you're never going to lack employment because there aren't that many people with hard science degrees. And I've always been decent at math, so I thought it was something I could do. But I've also always been very entrepreneurial.

(00:07:32):

My first business was when I was six years old with my dad, recommended that my sister and I, she was seven or eight at the time, we started a garbage collection business in our apartment building. And so we were collecting the neighbor's garbage, taking it to the dumpster as six seven year olds. I spent it all on ice cream as a 6-year-old. So I've always had a bit of an entrepreneurial bent as well. So I've always had these side hustles. I was buying in my early twenties while I was going to through studying chemistry and playing music with my friends, I also started buying SD cards from China and selling them on eBay. I got into buying bedsheets and towels and selling them to nursing homes and to hospitals in the United States importing them. So always had a few different side hustles, and that's kind of what led me into the story that I'm most known for, which is what the movie war dogs was based on in the whole arms dealing career.

Speaker 1 (00:08:36):

It seems like that was just a natural progression though, I think with music and being entrepreneurial. And tell me if you think differently, and this is something I'm saying for the benefit of the listeners, it's not something you have to necessarily try to do. I mean, you have to try when it comes to doing the work itself,

Speaker 2 (00:08:58):

Getting

Speaker 1 (00:08:59):

Good at it, but the entrepreneurial streak or the desire to make music, whatever it is that you want to do, what I've noticed is what the people who have actually done something, they don't have to try to be that way. They just are that way. I get asked from so many people, how do you stay motivated to do all the things you do or how do you know what you want to do? How? And I've always thought, I don't just do it just in me. The part that's difficult is actually doing the work, making right decisions, all that stuff. But the drive to be a certain way, I feel like that's innate because it sounds to me like the music thing and the entrepreneurial thing was just hardwired. It's just who you are and what you do.

Speaker 2 (00:09:50):

Yeah, I agree with that. It's hard to artificially create motivation, I guess.

Speaker 1 (00:09:55):

I don't know how, man, I have this other podcast, riff hard podcast. It's for guitar players. We have some of the best guitar players in the world on there. Again, we'll ask questions from the listeners, and one of the questions often it's how do you get motivated to practice? And without fail, the answer is, I don't have to get motivated to practice. The idea of having to get motivated is really, really foreign, I think, to high achievers. So is there anything in your career that you had to get motivated for? You seem like you have a ton of energy and a ton of focus just naturally, but is that an accurate assessment?

Speaker 2 (00:10:34):

Yeah, absolutely. I've always had a lot of motivation and a lot of, I guess strong dreams you could say, and I think that's where it comes from. I've always been a dreamer. I wish this, that or the other. I just want it so bad that I focus on doing it, but there's definitely things that I had to psych myself up or force myself to do things that I didn't necessarily enjoy doing. And that has to do, at least in business with the more grinding aspects of the business.

(00:11:07):

So for example, I mean there's plenty of, I love my business now, I create products for musicians. It brings me lots of joy. I create the toys I want to play with as a musician. So it's a really awesome career and I love my business, but there's plenty aspects of it that are not that fun particularly, I would say at least for me, would be the legal aspects and the accounting aspects. So if I need to, we've got lots of patents from our company, we have a lot of innovative products, and as all companies that develop these kind of products, do we have a lot of patents, but lawyers tend to, at least in my experience, take my brilliant beautiful idea that I could describe in one sentence and turn it into 70 pages of legal gobble that I barely understand myself and it was my idea in the first place. So reading that and going through it and not falling asleep and not getting distracted by reading 70 pages of legalese that pretty much are just trying to say the same thing in 50 different ways to cover every corner. For me, that's a bit of a grind and a bit tiring. And I have to really kind get myself into a mindset, drink lots of coffee. For me, it works that I actually have to, I know it's kind of stupid, but I have to print out those papers and physical paper

Speaker 1 (00:12:37):

Interesting

Speaker 2 (00:12:38):

And sit at my table so I'm not looking at a screen with a pen and just being able to underline and circle things because if I'm on a screen, it's just too many distractions, just doesn't, I think I'm just used to clicking away to the next tab.

Speaker 1 (00:12:53):

Well, there's a lot of studies about the link between physically doing something while learning it versus reading it on a screen. If you're writing, taking notes, just marking up a paper, you're going to retain it way better because you're engaging more of your senses. That's apparently what the thinking is. But I guess I didn't mean that every single aspect is fun when it comes to anything, because anything worth doing is going to be a combination of a dream that you're passionate about and then real life. Very true. Which involves a lot of, like you said, accounting, lawyers, all of that.

Speaker 2 (00:13:33):

Absolutely.

Speaker 1 (00:13:33):

I've noticed that the difference between a lot of people who end up doing things versus those who don't, if we're talking about dreamers, is the dreamers who actually manifest things. Either they figure out a way to psych themselves up for doing the part they don't want to do, or they partner with someone who is good at that. So you'll see a lot of songwriting duos or production duos. You'll have the one person who is super good at editing all the mechanical tasks and someone else who's good at the art or someone who runs the business side, someone who runs the production side in businesses too. You'll have a founder who is more like an artist often, and then the operations person who is typically not always, but typically not as creative, but much less a DD.

Speaker 2 (00:14:26):

Yeah, that actually is the exact dynamic in my company. I built my company along with one of my brothers, Ellie. He's like a extremely meticulous person. He's the kind of guy who builds huge spreadsheets and gets joy out of that. God

Speaker 1 (00:14:43):

Bless him,

Speaker 2 (00:14:44):

He's not a musician himself. So I'm like the idea guy. I dream up of the products and because of in my experience as a musician, what I want, what I think would be awesome. And then I work with him to actually build a plan to make this thing real and a way to a schedule and everything, and he helps me build it all out. So we've had an amazing partnership and I think it's a huge element of the success of our company was because we have that partnership and we each compliment each other in that way, just as you were saying.

Speaker 1 (00:15:21):

Well, I mean, that's how it is for me too and my company, my partners, and especially my director of operations, my director of operations, a dude named Finn McKenty, he's just a human computer. He says he doesn't enjoy it, but I don't believe him because he's so good at making spreadsheets and at operations and those types of things that I know that left to my own devices. URM would not be anywhere near what it is today. And regardless of how good my ideas are, I love my ideas, but actually making them happen in real life for almost a decade is not, not enough ideas, alone are not enough. And I know my personality type is not the type to be able to handle all the operations. I'm just not that person. So I think it's important to realize that about yourself and then partner with a person who does understand how you think and can compliment it and handle that side that you're not quite as good with because not everybody has the gift of dreams or realistic dreams. I guess

Speaker 2 (00:16:30):

That's very true too. Yeah, that is true.

Speaker 1 (00:16:33):

So question about your dreams. And again, I'm just wondering if it's at all the way I think. So the way I see the dreams of mine that have made it to reality, it's like I liken it to you're driving on a road at night. You can only see as far as the lights in front of you, and as you go further, you can see further down that road. But I guess that my high beams are super powerful and I can see way further down the road than a lot of people. And when I have that clear vision of what's down the road, it's like this very logical thing that all we have to do is go down this path and we're going to get there. This is not some the secret kind of stuff. There's a very logical way to get to where we're going. You might not see it, but

(00:17:26):

You got to trust that I see that. And then with the things that I've done that have kind of failed or knock off the ground, that vision has been kind of fuzzy. So I haven't been able to articulate it to the team well enough to really get everyone firing on all cylinders. So I'm wondering, when you have a vision for something, like you said you like to think of the coolest thing or the biggest thing, or what if we could do this or what if it could be that? How do you describe the way that you see it and I guess a difference between your ideas that have worked versus the ones that haven't, the difference in how you're imagining it happening?

Speaker 2 (00:18:03):

That's a great question. So I think that all ideas evolve. As you said, you only know what's down the road when you get down there. And obviously the further down you see, the better you can plan and the better, the shorter the timeframe is you can get there because you can plan better and develop things more efficiently. But even things that were super simple that I thought would, I could knock out real quick, always turn out to be a lot more complicated when you actually get down to it. And there's always the things you don't know that you don't know. And there are always things, I've never done a single project ever where I was like, oh, that turned out exactly how I thought it would. And exactly on time, it is just never happened. So such a great example was when we developed our simplest product, the Caly, which is pretty much just a cable winding device. Yeah, it's so cool. Thank you. Yeah,

Speaker 1 (00:19:16):

I saw a video of it and it was like, what a great idea.

Speaker 2 (00:19:18):

Yeah, thank you. And it is just so simple. It's literally a plastic wheel that you put your audio cable on and you can dry out as much cable out of it as you want in order to keep the rest of the cable nice and neat and plug in your amp and your pedals and everything. And when you're done, you just wind it up and your cable is nice and put away in a few seconds rather than you put a lot of interns out of jobs or at least get them to do more productive work.

Speaker 1 (00:19:46):

Yeah, exactly. No, that's great.

Speaker 2 (00:19:47):

I love that thing. So yeah, so I had the idea for this. I was doing a show myself, and because I have the other products, I use the Beat Buddy and the arrows and my guitar effects, my vocal effects. I had seven, eight cables that I was using just to set up my gear. And at the end of the show, it's just taken me forever to put all these cables away, and some of 'em get tangled, some of them get, people step on it, beer gets spilled, it just becomes a huge mess. And so the way I had the idea was my mom actually, she loves gardening, and she had this big garden hose on a wheel. And so I thought, well, I just need one of those wheels for my cables. And so I thought, this is going to be super easy. I mean, it's literally just a piece of plastic in a wheel and it can knock this out in a couple of months.

(00:20:35):

And there were just so many iterations things that went wrong when you're dealing with plastic because all our other products are made out of metal. So I didn't know that when you're dealing with plastic, there's a certain amount of warping that comes out depending on the type of mold you use and that can mess up the alignment of things. And so there was just a lot of back and forth that I was not expecting at all for this project. You just kind of got to roll with it and realize that you just have to take that into account. And no matter how far down the road you think you can see, you just have to accept that you can't see all the way to the end. There's just no way. You will never see all the way to the end. And even if you think you see the end, you don't.

(00:21:21):

You don't. And when you come closer, you'll realize that's not the end. So I think you just have to accept that and learn to live with it and try to build in some additional leeway in order to allow yourself to address the things that you don't know that you're going to discover that you don't know later. But I find that even with the leeway, it's always longer than that. So there's a famous amongst computer programmers, there's a famous thing called Hofstadter's Law. Hofstadter's Law is a task will take you longer to do than you initially planned, even if you take into account Hofstadter's Law. So it's like a self recursive thing. So yeah, even when you try to put in the leeway, it's still longer than that.

Speaker 1 (00:22:07):

I guess that would be a cousin of the idea that work always expands to the amount of time you give for a project somehow.

Speaker 2 (00:22:16):

Yeah, exactly. But beyond, I would say it's worse.

Speaker 1 (00:22:22):

I think it's the same when budgeting things like a studio build or how much a project is going to be add 30%, but in reality, 30% is the a hundred percent.

Speaker 2 (00:22:33):

Yeah, exactly. And then you need another 30%, but don't add that additional 30%. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (00:22:38):

Then it

Speaker 2 (00:22:38):

Becomes the hundred. Exactly.

Speaker 1 (00:22:40):

Yeah. Well, the whole idea about rolling with the punches and being flexible, actually I talk about this with my partners a lot. Whenever we get to one of those moments where things are not the way we thought they were going to be, whether it's good or bad, sometimes it's bad. Sometimes things go real wrong with somebody or a product just nobody cares. Or same with my band and stuff or bands I produced. You think something's going to do great and then nobody cares, or this thing that you didn't try on very hard. People love it, and there's just no way to predict all the things that are going to happen. And one of the things that we talk about a lot is that when that happens, one of the ways that we keep our head in the game and keep our attitude good is by telling ourselves, and I think this is the truth, it's not just BS positive is that this kind of shit is what makes the difference. Because how many people do we know that would get broken or discouraged or quit because of these things not turning out the way they wanted? This is exactly our moment to become stronger and greater and win harder. So

Speaker 2 (00:24:00):

True.

Speaker 1 (00:24:00):

And it's because those moments, yeah, I know so many people who quit at those moments.

Speaker 2 (00:24:07):

There's a lot of drop off every time there's a challenge or something unexpected happens in a project that's a chance for you to quit. And I think most people do. And I mean, it's not to say that you should always chase every project till the end of the earth and become obsessed.

Speaker 1 (00:24:26):

Sometimes quitting is the right move. You got to know when,

Speaker 2 (00:24:29):

And that's the key. And that's the hard part, is knowing when it's the right time to quit and knowing when it's the right time to push ahead. And that's tough because every project is completely unique and you just have to make the best decision you have. You can with the information that you have. And I mean, it reminds me what you said. It reminds me of how the initial development for my first product went. The Beat Buddy, which is for those who don't know, it's a drum machine that's in the form of a guitar pedal. So it allows you play to control the drum beat, hold it up to the camera for those who are watching this on video. So you can tap the pedal and do a drum fill. If you hold it down, it does a transition, it goes to the next beat. So you can go from verse to chorus and could do many other things as well. So I developed this because as a solo musician, I had a real hard time finding drummers, and I just wanted to play with drums. And of course, a drum machine, you have to operate with your hands. So I couldn't do that while I was playing my guitar. So that's how I had the idea for the beat Buddy. But I worked, so I initially, because I'm not an engineer, so I hired an engineer to build this for me. And he

Speaker 1 (00:25:47):

You mean like an engineer? Engineer, not an audio engineer? Yeah,

Speaker 2 (00:25:50):

Yeah, yeah. No, a real engineer. I wouldn't say that you said that. Not me.

Speaker 1 (00:25:56):

I did say that. I did say that for all of my listeners, a real engineer.

Speaker 2 (00:26:00):

There's many different types of engineers. Yeah, I'm just talking For this particular product, I needed an electrical engineer to design the circuits and a mechanical engineer to design the housing and a software engineer to create the firmware and the software for the PC and Mac that in order so you can put your beats and your drum sets onto the beat buddy. And so I needed many different types of engineers, and I hired one guy. I made the classic mistake early on of just going with the cheapest guy and that didn't turn out too well as you can got what you paid for. Yeah, totally got what I paid for, which was not much. And I did eventually at least get a refund, which was difficult, but at least I got my money back. But it did waste about a year of my time initially where he kept on leading me on saying, yes, I'm doing it.

(00:26:54):

He'd show me some pretty low quality renders. You see, I'm working on it. And then eventually I realized this guy's never going to finish the project. He has no capacity to finish this project, and so I need to fire him and hire someone who can do this. And after I fired him, I was just so let down and disappointed that I wasted a year of my time that I didn't actually even work on the project for another year. I was just so, and I just went on to other things. I was like, ah, fuck, this is a lot harder than I thought. So I didn't even work on it. I got discouraged. And then about a year after that, I was just talking about this idea to one of my musician friends and he got super excited about it and he's like, yeah, that sounds super cool. I would love to have one of those things. And I thought to myself, yeah, it does sound pretty cool. Why am I not working on this? And so that got me fired up and motivated to dust off all the other quotes that I got from the other engineering firms and pick someone. And this time I picked someone who looked like they knew what they were doing rather than was just the cheapest price. So they gave me the most detailed proposal, and that's what I went and by, and they did a great job.

Speaker 1 (00:28:15):

Interesting. So I think that putting something down though is sometimes the right move, especially if you're in a super negative headspace about it because you've put in a lot of opportunity costs, right?

Speaker 2 (00:28:30):

That's true.

Speaker 1 (00:28:31):

A lot of emotional energy, a lot of just frustration, just all gone, not getting that back. And I feel like sometimes when that happens for long enough, it's hard to think about a project in a constructive way. It's, it's hard to get out of that headspace. And the only thing that you really can do is take some time to reset and approach it the way you did when you first got into it before things went shitty with that person or that iteration.

Speaker 2 (00:29:10):

That's true. And I guess each situation is unique and each person is unique. So I guess some people need to step away for a year. Some people need to step away for a week. Some people could just plow right through it without a hitch. So there definitely is, as you said, a lot to be said for taking a step back and taking a break from something that doesn't seem to be working well and trying to reset yourself and clear your head and look at it from a more high level thing. Because when you're really grinding on something, you get really close to it and you kind of get stuck on the nitty gritty details and you stop often considering the overall picture, which is sometimes the most important thing to focus on, especially in the beginning of a project and especially when it's not going well. So I agree with that.

Speaker 1 (00:30:06):

So how long did it take once you came back to it? So two years have elapsed at this point or longer because probably there was time leading up to getting the first engineer.

Speaker 2 (00:30:17):

So I had the idea, the initial idea in early 2011 that it took me pretty much the rest of 2011 with this guy who didn't really do a great job. And then I got back onto it about a year later, did a whole bunch of research on, because I didn't want to make the same mistake twice. So I did a whole bunch of research on many different options as far as engineering firms, people who I thought could build this. And so it took me a few months to decide who to go with next. So by the time that I actually signed the contract and made the deposit and got the thing officially kicked off, it was actually, I still remember the date, it was June 1st, 2013, so almost a year and a half after the initial idea and a bit less. And it took them, the engineering company, about six months, six to seven months to actually build me a functional prototype.

(00:31:21):

It wasn't a perfect prototype by any means, but it worked. The basic functions work. I didn't have the money to actually build this. So I got really lucky with this company because the lead engineer of this company happened to be a drummer. And he told me that he was constantly being asked by his musician friends to jam with them, and he never had time to jam with them because he's busy running this engineering firm. And so he knew that the beat buddy would be perfect for all his friends because they can just jam with a beat buddy. I mean, obviously it's not the same as jamming with a real live drummer, but it's a lot better than playing along to a backing track because you have that live interaction, hands-free, live interaction. It's a lot more fun, a lot more dynamic. So he knew that the product would be a success, and his firm also wanted to get into the consumer product space.

(00:32:16):

So until then, they'd only done stuff for large corporations, B2B, large governments, utility companies. They were an electrical engineering firm, but they hadn't done anything in the consumer space, so they wanted to break into that, so they saw it as an opportunity as well. So they made me a very special deal, which nobody ever makes, which was I put down a relatively small deposit and they built me the functional prototype, and they said, you can take this prototype, because I was planning on doing a crowdfunding campaign to raise the money for the manufacturing. And they're like, you can take the prototype, shoot the videos for the crowdfunding campaign and then pay us the remaining of the engineering fee once you do have a successful crowdfunding campaign. And if you don't, then we will get into the manufacturing with you and we will get a cut of the sales until we're paid back. And I was like, well, that's an amazing deal. That's

Speaker 1 (00:33:13):

Kind of cool. Yeah,

Speaker 2 (00:33:14):

Because that's relatively low risk for me.

Speaker 1 (00:33:17):

Yeah, it was the catch.

Speaker 2 (00:33:18):

Yeah, well, I mean, the catch was I had to put down my life savings at the time as a deposit, so I pretty much put down practically every penny I had to my name, which was only about 20% of what they were asking for. So we were kind of both had lots of skin in the game, so to speak. I had every penny I had in it, and they were waiting on 80% of the payment. So I knew that they were going to do their best to make this thing function properly because if they don't, they're not getting paid. So I felt comfortable putting every penny I had into it because of that, because I knew that they had a lot of skin in the game. So I mean, of course I've never heard of any other company doing this kind of deal with anyone else.

(00:34:00):

I think it was a really unique set of circumstances, and I got really, really lucky, and I still give them work I've given them, I've still working with them 10 years later, and so they've gotten quite a lot of money out of me. So it really paid off for them from a business perspective and as well for me too, of course they got me started. Without them I wouldn't be here. So it really worked out for everybody. But once they got me the functional prototype, about six, seven months later, it got me to the crowdfunding campaign then it still was not by any means something I could actually come on. The market still had a whole bunch of glitches and bugs, and it took about another nine, 10 months after that for them to work it out to the point where I could actually deliver, which worked out perfectly because that's how long it took for the factory to make the molds and to do the whole physical manufacturing aspect of it too.

(00:35:01):

So I had both the factory making the physical product as well as the software team fixing all the software bugs in parallel. And we ended up delivering the first product, the first units to the crowdfunding supporters in September of 2014. So about nine months later, eight, nine months after the end of the crowdfunding campaign, we delivered to our crowdfunding supporters. And of course, once we delivered, the customers found a whole bunch of new bugs that we didn't find, but luckily the beat buddy, you could update the firmware. So we fixed those and we've been continually coming out with new updates and new capabilities, and not just fixing bugs, but people ask for new features. They want to have, for example, to do double time or halftime. And so we built that feature in to be able to control the tempo with a expression pedal so you can do a slow speed up or a slow down live that sounds super cool in a live situation.

(00:36:01):

So we built a whole, whole bunch of new features. Now we're on firmware version 4.1, so it's gone through many, many iterations. And that's kind of what we've done with all of our products with the product we came out after the Beat Buddy, is we make them updateable. Because what I've realized is that there's so many musicians out there who all play in different ways and they all have different gear setups and different issues that they're dealing with and different things they want to do, and there's no one size fits all. So we have very active user [email protected] and very passionate people on our forum, and they're constantly making requests or telling us about this doesn't work or I wish it would work this way. And so we use that in our development cycle, are constantly updating and improving our products in that way.

Speaker 1 (00:36:55):

So sounds to me like you are not very risk averse, but also not into dumb risks.

(00:37:05):

So I'm wondering how you work that out because just listening to the story right here of putting up all your money and then the amount of time it took, because once it's to market and people like it, and obviously there's challenges there, but you're out of that really risky phase also. And I'm thinking of the war dog story, I'm thinking of everything I know about you. You're a risk taker, which I think is actually really important if you're going to be an entrepreneur. And also for music, it's very, very tough to survive music if you're super risk averse because

Speaker 2 (00:37:51):

That's true.

Speaker 1 (00:37:52):

It's so unpredictable, and I'm sure that actually what happened with the war dog story probably got you ready for music. It's far lower stakes, but I'm just wondering how do you calculate risk and how do you justify it? How do you decide I'll risk everything on this? That's fine.

Speaker 2 (00:38:17):

Well, I mean I would definitely say that I think most people and me specifically, I think generally as you get older, you become slightly less tolerant for risk. And if you have any sort of success, you don't need to take as many risks, right? Because once you have something established, you probably shouldn't be risking at all. If you want to build something right, when you don't have that much to lose, then it makes a bit more sense to take larger risks. Well, because you don't have as much to lose, but there's always, I think the important thing is to always think about what's the unacceptable level of risk and make sure that you're not taking that. So one very hard lesson I learned with the whole war dog story is that there are some risks that you really shouldn't take. And those risks include spending the rest of your life in prison. That's not a risk you want to take because even if it's a small risk, which it not necessarily is, but even if it's a small risk, the downsides are so great that you really shouldn't be taking that risk. It's not a smart thing to do

Speaker 1 (00:39:30):

Or getting killed.

Speaker 2 (00:39:31):

Yeah, that too, or getting seriously injured or having one of your loved ones get seriously harmed. There are certain risks that are not worth taking, and I think it's very important to be clear-eyed about what those risks are and whether or not you are taking those risks. That being said, I think there is a lot of people who don't take enough risks, who are scared of everything and like, oh, well, what if this doesn't work out perfectly the way I want? Then that would suck. And like, yes, it would suck, but if you don't try, then nothing good's going to come of it either. So it's all a balancing act, and I think everyone has their own internal judgment of where that balance lies. And you can't say that this is the right balance or that is the right balance. I think it's different with every person, and not only with every person, but every situation.

(00:40:27):

So what may have been an acceptable level of risk for me in my early twenties is not necessarily an acceptable risk for me in my early forties. And you just have to make that calculation for yourself. And there's nobody who can tell you, oh, you're making this calculation wrong. I mean, I think it's important to get other people's opinions because we get wrapped up in our own heads and you may put too much weight or emphasis on one thing rather than in the other. For example, as we were saying, some people naturally tend to be very risk averse, and maybe you talk to your friend and he's like, okay, if this thing goes wrong, is that so bad? Maybe you are putting too much weight on the downside, or maybe you're not putting enough weight on the downside. So it's important to get other people's opinions, people who you respect and who you think have a good judgment of situations and of you and who know you well. To answer your question, I think that the best risks that are taken are the ones where you have as much information about the actual risk that you're taking and you try to be as

Speaker 1 (00:41:42):

Real versus perceived.

Speaker 2 (00:41:43):

Yes, exactly. You want to take the risks based on reality because then you can make the best decisions about what risks are worth taking rather than what might be scaring you off unnecessarily or what should be scaring you more, but you're not being scared enough. So I think just having a honest assessment of your situation, and one part of that is getting other people that you respect to get their feedback off is a great way to get that honest assessment so you can make the best decision for yourself and your situation about what's in a tolerable level of risk.

Speaker 1 (00:42:24):

Hey, everybody, if you're enjoying this podcast and you should know that it's brought to you by URM Academy, URM Academy's mission is to create the next generation of audio professionals by giving them the inspiration and information to hone their craft and build a career doing what they love. You've probably heard me talk about Nail the Mix before, and if you're a member, you already know how amazing it is. The beginning of the month, nail the mix members, get the raw multi-tracks to a new song by artists like Lama, God Angels and Airwaves. Knock loose OPEC shuga, bring me the Horizon. Go Jira, asking Alexandria Machine Head and Papa Roach among many, many others over 60 at this point. Then at the end of the month, the producer who mixed it comes on and does a live streaming walkthrough of exactly how they mix the song on the album and takes your questions live on air.

(00:43:16):

And these are guys like TLA Will Putney, Jens Borin, Dan Lancaster to I Madson, Andrew Wade, and many, many more. You'll also get access to Mix Lab, which is our collection of dozens of bite-sized mixing tutorials that cover all the basics as well as Portfolio Builder, which is a library of pro quality multi-tracks cleared for use in your portfolio. So your career will never again be held back by the quality of your source material. And for those of you who really want to step up their game, we have another membership tier called URM Enhance, which includes everything I already told you about, and access to our massive library of fast tracks, which are deep, super detailed courses on intermediate and advanced topics against staging, mastering low end and so forth. It's over 500 hours of content. And man, let me tell you, this stuff is just insanely detailed.

(00:44:10):

Enhanced members also get access to one-on-ones, which are basically office hour sessions with us and Mix Rescue, which is where we open up one of your mixes and fix it up and talk you through exactly what we're doing at every step. So if any of that sounds interesting to you, if you're ready to level up your mixing skills in your audio career, head over to URM Academy to find out more. What I've noticed is that emotions can really cloud this, especially when you're dealing with perceived risk, you can really amplify the fuck out of something that if you really think about it. How many things have you been through that seem really bad that at the end of the day aren't that bad? I'm sure some are, but in my experience most things, and I've never gone to prison, but still most things that have gone wrong for me at the end of the day, yeah, they sucked some I'd prefer not to repeat, but I mean still here and got through it, and most people I know do get through almost everything. So I'm wondering for things that have gone wrong for you at the end of the day, how bad do you consider them? And I mean everything from the way the war dog story ended to a business idea not working out the engineer, those are two very different types of outcomes. But at the end of the day now in hindsight and having moved on at the, how bad was it really in how much do those affect you to this day?

Speaker 2 (00:45:47):

Right? So there's definitely different levels of things going bad. I was extremely lucky. I feel very grateful that I ended up not going to prison for the whole war Dogs story. I could have gone, there was definitely the potential for a life ruining event there. So I feel very grateful and very lucky that I did not do any prison time for that. And so I may feel differently if I had, at the time I was looking at possibly spending the rest of my life in prison, the way the prosecutors were trying to swing things. And of course they do that on purpose because they want to scare you into pleading guilty as 98 point something percent of people do, which is why they do that.

Speaker 1 (00:46:35):

I guess that would've been actually bad.

Speaker 2 (00:46:37):

That would've been very bad. But I do do strongly believe that most people can survive most things and move on, even going to prison for long periods of time, even worse than that. And I remember reading a study actually that was very interesting where they did these, they asked people to rate their own personal level of happiness and satisfaction with their lives before and after a major event, both good and bad. So they asked people who had been in terrible car crashes and had been badly, permanently injured, like lost a limb or an eye or something really, really bad. And they've also asked people who won the lottery and had these incredible good fortune, or at least what you would think would be good fortune occur to them. And it turns out that there is a measurable effect, but that effect tends to, from what I recall correctly, tends to only last between one to three years.

(00:47:45):

So after three years, people tend to go back to their baseline as if that huge event had never happened. So even if something terrible happens to you, like you become paralyzed, I mean, God forbid, I mean, it's a terrible thing, but even something as completely life altering as that with enough time you could adjust your new situation and you could make the best with your life with what you have. And I think that that's something that I've always held on to internally, especially when going through bad times. I know it's cliche to say, but as the famous saying goes, this too shall pass. And it's something that can give you strength to get you through bad times. And as well as temper your excesses when you're having good times to not let yourself go too crazy is that no matter what happens, there's always going to be next year and the year after that, and the year after that, if you're lucky and things will normalize no matter how good or how bad they are, they will become normal to you because that's what the human mind does is we adjust the situations and we, no matter what the situation is, if we're healthy, we adjust to it and it becomes normal.

(00:49:06):

And then we figure out, well, where do I go from here? How do I make a good situation even better? How do I make a bad situation slightly less worse? So I think having that internal acceptance, I think of the knowledge that things will move on, things will get better, things will get worse, and don't think that the way things are now will be this way forever. It can give you a certain level of strength and peace to get you through whatever it is that you're going through.

Speaker 1 (00:49:38):

Yeah, tell me if you share this, but having concentration camp victim family really instilled that in me. That was basically, it was grinded into me as a kid, basically never getting too down about anything because really anything that happens to us is nothing compared to that. There's literally nothing that could happen short of that, that would even hold a candle to it.

Speaker 2 (00:50:08):

Absolutely.

Speaker 1 (00:50:09):

And so kind of being around my grandparents and then my parents and both those generations, whenever something bad would happen, they would give me that perspective on, you think that's shitty? They weren't sarcastic. I'll tell you what shitty is. But they did help me with that perspective. And then even as a teenager, that was already built in, and I noticed when things would go wrong, big or small, people around me would freak out, and I wouldn't just because it's not that bad. It's usually not that bad. It just seems bad, but it's not a permanent situation,

Speaker 2 (00:50:56):

But everything is relative compared to how bad it could be. It's not that bad. I love the saying, this is life's blessing and this is life's curse. Nothing is so bad that it couldn't get worse.

Speaker 1 (00:51:10):

Yeah, it's true. And I think that when going down entrepreneurial pathways and with whatever ventures, that type of thinking can save your ass basically.

Speaker 2 (00:51:24):

Absolutely.

Speaker 1 (00:51:24):

But I actually think something you just said, I want to talk about that too, the opposite of that, of learning how to keep yourself in check when things are going well, because that's also the story of so many people, especially in music, that they think it's going to last forever. I remember, so when my band got signed to Roadrunner in 2006, they put us on Oz Fest pretty quickly thereafter. It was very quick going from unsigned to this huge festival tour type of situation. And what was really interesting about that for me was, okay, so here I am surrounded by these career bands, sharing a bus with them around all these people who are doing this, and shocked because almost none of 'em have anything else going on. And I was just thinking, God, you have such an incredible platform and you're not doing anything with it. What are you going to do if you singer dies or one of you gets arrested or you get dropped by your label and no one cares about your band anymore, or you injure yourself and you can't play anymore, or you just age out, it can't headbang anymore, whatever. So many different things, benign or malign that could end the career of a band. And I remember on that whole tour, what it was like 20 bands, five people per band on average. I remember three people who had other shit going on.

(00:53:09):

And it shocked me that I was able to, on my own, do financially better from just different things than dudes in these big bands. And then as time went by, very few of 'em are still in the game. And I think a lot of it does have to do with thinking shit's going to last forever. Things are good now, why wouldn't it just last?

Speaker 2 (00:53:35):

Right? Yeah. I mean, I think it's a natural human psychological fallacy that you tend to think whatever it is is happening both good and bad. Whatever it is now is how it always will be.

Speaker 1 (00:53:49):

This is life.

Speaker 2 (00:53:50):

Yeah, exactly. And I think that's just how we're built. So developing that mindset of not getting too stuck in the moment, I think is enjoying the moment when it's good. I think is also a super, that's the opposite side of that coin. Some people have the opposite problem is that they're never focused on the current moment and they're always thinking about something else or wishing it was something else, or being afraid that something's going to go bad. And so it's such a balancing act because you want to enjoy where you are right now. You want to appreciate all the things that you have right now, but you also don't want to assume that it's going to all last forever and do nothing else as if it will last forever. So it's a balance. Everything in life, just calculating levels of risk and things like that is a balancing act. Taking too much risk, not taking too much risk, but taking enough risk. It's the same thing. You have to think about enjoying the moment now, but also realizing that it's not going to last forever. So I think that it's a deeper aspect of life in general, that you have to balance these things off each other.

Speaker 1 (00:55:07):

How long are you able to enjoy something cool that happens? And I mean, has that changed over the course of your life? Say something awesome is going to happen, that could mean a lot of money or the product is done and it's out to market and people love it or whatever it could be. How long does that last for you in your head?

Speaker 2 (00:55:31):

I try to make it as last as long as possible, and I do that consciously. How Please share the secret. Yeah. Well, the simplest example I could think of, I remember when my company first started doing well, and for the first time in my life I was able to afford a nice car. And so I got myself a Tesla because that was my dream to have a Tesla. I know nowadays people are thinking Teslas aren't as cool as they used to be, but this is back in 2015 when almost nobody had a Tesla. And I was like, that's the coolest car ever. And I was finally able to afford it. And just so you see, I went from a old Nissan Altima and I'm talking about an old beat up one to a brand new model S, and I don't splurge, but I was like, if I'm going to get one thing nice for myself, I'll get this.

(00:56:37):

It was a way. This is it. Yeah, exactly. And every time I get in the car, I mean, it doesn't happen every time, but I try to tell myself, I'm like, this is a fucking nice car. And I'm so lucky to be driving it. And I remember the car that I used to drive, and this is so much nicer, and I really love this car, and I just get so much pleasure at it. And then I usually, the way my mind works anyway is I think well think about how many people can't even afford a car in the first place. Any car is an amazing car at that point, if you can't afford to have a car. So even that, my old beat up Nissan Altima is an amazing car to have, so I should just be so grateful and appreciative that I could have a car in the first place.

(00:57:26):

And I think developing the habit of having gratitude for what you have in life, it's so important to long-term happiness. Because if you are not grateful for what you have, then you take it for granted. And if you take it for granted, then you don't enjoy it. And it just becomes background noise. And if you set yourself into the mindset of always trying to think about the things in your life that you should be grateful for, and think about all the people out there who don't have these things, and that makes you even more grateful for having them, then those things that bring you joy will continue to bring you joy because you realize that you should be grateful for them. And that's something that is a practice. It's not something that you either are or you're not. It's like exercise, right? If you want to be a great runner, then you need to do the running.

(00:58:27):

You got to run. Exactly. You got to run. And the more you run, the better of a runner you'll be. And if you stop running and then you'll get worse. And it's the same exact thing with something like gratitude. And I have some friends of mine who there's, I think in, I don't know how widespread this is, but I know in Miami there is a program, they call it gratitude training. I never did it myself because I felt I didn't really need it. I guess it is just something I've always done. But I had a friend of mine who was very depressed, and he also runs a very successful business. He had no reason to be depressed. I mean, everything from the outside looked like he was doing great, and for some reason he just couldn't get over his depression. And he took this course called, I think it's Gratitude Training.

(00:59:12):

I forgot the exact name of it, but it was specifically a way to develop habits of gratitude to look at the things in your life, things that you should be grateful for, to look at people in the news and around the world and people that don't have the things that you have and think how lucky you are that you have them and developing that habit. It's really a habit, just like running is just anything else. Developing that habit and that practice is what gives you the mindset of gratitude. And I think the mindset of gratitude is what helps you hang on to those good things in life and to appreciate them and most people because the human brain, the human mind is just naturally a stasis seeking machine. It's just trying to get balance. So no matter how, if you win the lottery and you buy the huge mansion and you get the nice yacht, it's

Speaker 1 (01:00:10):

Your house now.

Speaker 2 (01:00:11):

It's your house now and now it's a pain in the ass. You have to have people come over and clean it and the electrician, one of the many lights and systems needs to be fixed. The lawn needs to be mowed. It is got its own set of problems. And then you start complaining about how high the property taxes are because your house is so big, there's always something to complain about. There's always something to see badly about it. No matter how good in life you have it, there's always something that you could see going wrong. And no matter how bad things are in life, there's always some things that you could see going, and it's really what you focus on, which is what becomes your life. Our lives are the things that our minds focus on, and so developing habits of focusing on things in your life that will bring you the most joy, the most fulfillment, I think is one of the most critical things that we can do for ourselves.

Speaker 1 (01:01:11):

Yeah, I've noticed that if I'm not consciously doing it, basically I'll get over something fast, meaning within a few minutes I'm like, okay, it's like this weird empty feeling. I've been spending all this time building towards this thing and now I have it, and now what?

Speaker 2 (01:01:31):

And done onto the next thing, right?

Speaker 1 (01:01:33):

Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:01:34):

So that's very natural and I think everybody does that, and I think it makes sense for your brain to do that because your brain, the whole point it, it's trying to plan for the next thing I think, excuse me, an evolutionary biologist will tell you that brains, they're pattern seeking machines because they are taking in information and trying to make predictions. And if you get stuck on any one thing, then you're kind of defeating the purpose because it's always trying to get you, it's not trying to keep you where you are. It's trying to help you avoid bad things and help you get good things. And so naturally your brain is always seeking stasis and having a healthy dose of paranoia and a healthy dose of fantasy in order to avoid the bad things and get the good things. So it's not natural to be like, oh man, I achieved this amazing thing. I think I'm going to just bask in this glory for the next 10 years. People don't do that because then your brain will stop, doesn't have the motivation to achieve even greater things.

Speaker 1 (01:02:54):

I'm sure people who have done that doesn't go well.

Speaker 2 (01:02:59):

Yeah, exactly. And that's

Speaker 1 (01:03:01):

Not a good idea.

Speaker 2 (01:03:02):

And that's the point is that because that's actually not a good thing. So there we go with the balance again, right? Because you do want to appreciate the good things that you have in your life, but you also don't want to be resting on your laurels and stopping to work for more good things. So it's a balancing act and everybody has to find where on that spectrum, they fall in the balance of how much time and effort you could spend appreciating what you have versus how much time and effort you spend wanting more or wanting greater things. And I think fulfillment and happiness comes from the healthy balancing of the two is being able to appreciate what you have, enjoying it, but also not letting it stop you from striving for more and from wanting more.

Speaker 1 (01:03:54):

Yeah, I think that the people I know who are very good at that balance are very rare, very, very rare. There's some people who are just wired, but they're like, they're an anomaly.

Speaker 2 (01:04:10):

I think that the important thing to realize is that because it's a balancing act, it doesn't mean that you are perfectly above the tightrope at all times. And maybe some people are really good at that, but most people sway side to side first you go a little bit too much on this end, and then you're like you have to overcorrect, and then you're a little bit too much on that and then you overcorrect back, and it's kind of more of a zigzag pattern over the general path that you want to take rather than a straight, oh, I'm perfectly balanced all the way through. And I find that's the similar thing with other aspects in life, like exercise. Sometimes you'll have really good month where you're working out really consistently and you're seeing results, and then you have a few weeks where you kind of lose it and you start kind of decaying, so to speak. You start losing some of your gains and then you have to get back on it. And very few people are super consistent in that way. Most people have more of a meandering path. And I think the important thing is to acknowledge that the path is going to be meandering. And when you acknowledge that, then you realize that you can bring yourself back to the general path when you meander too far off it.

Speaker 1 (01:05:29):

Yeah, with guitar, I have developed methods for exactly that because I could theoretically do the same technical practice every single day for the rest of my life. And barring injury, that would be amazing, but that's not going to happen. That's not going to happen for several reasons. It could be my schedule. It could be that I sit down and my brain just does not engaged. It is just not happening. Or there's a different priority with music at that time right now at the tail end of writing a record. And so I don't have as much time for technical practice between that and the companies and stuff. And so what I've figured out is there's a base level that can keep me maintaining, at least now, even if I veer off of that, I have a certain way of getting myself back very quickly. But I had to consciously think and put that together.

(01:06:29):

And I think that by doing what you just said of acknowledging that the path is going to be a zigzag and then creating systems for yourself to get you back on track once you veer off, number one, to recognize when you're off track. So I think part of a problem is also when people get off track, it's not usually you just fell off a cliff. It's like a gradual slope, and then before you know it, it's been weeks or months and your physical condition has deteriorated, or your ability to play has deteriorated. Or these projects that you remain a work on are that much further in the rear view mirror, whatever it is. If you acknowledge in advance that that's going to happen, then you can also do the work to figure out when that does happen, what are the things that I can do to get myself back there? So with guitar for instance, I have this routine that kind of covers all the bases that I know that if I do it for two or three, maybe four days after, suddenly I'm going to be back. It'll just be back. And when I do veer off, I employ that routine and it works every time.

(01:07:50):

But I had to sit there and put it together. That's the thing. I had to acknowledge that it's easy to tell yourself, I'm never going to veer off. I'm just going to be good forever look kind of like a New Year's resolution. I'm just going to be good from this point forward. And then you're not, I think to acknowledge that you're not a machine, you're not a machine, accept it and build safeguards for yourself to so that you don't become your own enemy basically.

Speaker 2 (01:08:19):

Yeah, it's a strange way to put it, but having empathy for yourself is a very important thing to develop.

Speaker 1 (01:08:27):

Yeah, that's what my shrink told me, and I wish she says it. I'm like, that makes me sound uncomfortable. But you're right.

Speaker 2 (01:08:33):

Yeah. I mean, if you think about, let's say you have your best friend and he's going through trying to learn guitar, and he's like, I'm going to practice eight hours a day, and then he gets really depressed. I was only able to practice four hours today and I didn't even practice at all the day before. And you'll be like, come on, man. You're not a machine. You'll be empathetic to him. You'll try to cheer him up. So I think that we tend to be our own worst critics, and being able to develop a sense of empathy for ourselves, just like we would have for our best friends is a very useful skill to have and will go a long way towards getting yourself back on track when things inevitably don't go the way that you initially planned.

Speaker 1 (01:09:23):

So this exact thing we're talking about, when you do find yourself getting off track, what's the process for recognizing and getting back? Is this something like, oh shit, I'm fucking up, or what's the self-talk? And then what's the actual thing you do to put yourself back and not just back working out, but back to that momentum where you don't have to think about it, you just do it?

Speaker 2 (01:09:51):

Right. So I think that one, I mean, there's several different techniques that people in general use, and I think one of the best things is, well, one issue that a lot of people have is they get overwhelmed. They'll be like, I'm so out of shape, or I'm so far behind on this project. There's just so much work to do. It's overwhelming. There's no way I'm ever going to catch up. And I think one of the best things to do there is to just try to think, okay, well what's the first thing I have to do? And just think about that. So it's not like, man, I need to work out every day for the next month in order to lose all this weight I gained. It's like, what do I just need to do today? And you could even break that down into smaller steps.

(01:10:43):

I need to do a full hour workout at the gym, and that sounds overwhelming, but why don't I just get myself to the gym first? Why don't I just start on this one exercise and if I quit after that one exercise, at least I did something. It's better than nothing, but I'll just think about focusing on this one little thing to start me off and go from there. And that becomes a lot less overwhelming, a lot less intimidating than thinking about the overall picture of all the things you need to do and all the way you're super behind or not where you want to be. You just think about that first step, one step at a time, one day at a time, and that as the famous Chinese saying, journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. And you just do the first thing and just think about that.

(01:11:41):

Don't stress about anything else. Block everything else out of your mind and just concentrate on that first thing. And I will say that, I mean that's a more of a tactical thing when you're in the moment of what to do. But from a strategic perspective, if you're going to take a more higher level look at it, most people only tend to do things consistently that they enjoy. So if you want to accomplish something, try to think about a strategy to do all the things that you need to do to accomplish it in a way that you might enjoy. So for example, with exercise, a lot of people, I personally, I hate running on a treadmill. It's just something that I don't enjoy doing. To me it's repetitive, it's boring. So I thought, well, I mean the goal here isn't to run on the treadmill. The goal here is to get into good aerobic shape.

(01:12:43):

So what are other things I could do that I might enjoy more that would achieve the same purpose? So I found a dance class that I actually liked going to and that gave me the same aerobic exercise, but it was fun and enjoyable, and I actually learned a different skill that I would not have learned if I had been running on the treadmill. So that was something that was a way I kind of tricked myself into doing something I wanted to do in the first place because I figured out a fun way to do it. So that is a very powerful thing to get yourself on track is to figure out enjoyable ways of doing it and then just focus on the first step of doing it and just focus on that.

Speaker 1 (01:13:27):

Yeah, man, that's what I tell people with music all the time because really to get great at it, you have to put in a hell of a lot of time.

Speaker 2 (01:13:36):

Absolutely.

Speaker 1 (01:13:37):

And whether the idea of competition, some people believe there is no competition. Some people think there is, it's both exist, but there's still a standard you're still going to be compared to whatever the standard of your day is. And you have to find a way to keep up with that quality wise and ability wise. And so a lot of people psych themselves out because they'll go on Instagram and start scrolling and see all these 17-year-old guitar players that are just, they're like Olympic athletes and they'll think they have to learn everything and they have to do all this stuff that somebody else told them they have to do. And when they do that, they just shut down as opposed to, in my opinion, if you are an academic type of person, you're into that, you can go to school and you can take in all this stuff and do it like homework.

(01:14:37):

If that's you, cool. However, if that's not you, that's okay too. What's the thing that will actually make you sit down and do it? That's what matters. What will put you on the instrument 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 hours a day most days, maybe not every day, but what is the thing that will bring you back to that? So if it's playing death metal and you don't give a shit about anything else, then do that. And yes, you can tell yourself I should be well-rounded, but if being well-rounded is causing you to not sit down and do it, then fuck being well-rounded, do the thing that will actually make you do it because you are up against 19 year olds that are incredible and they are spending 8, 9, 10, 12 hours a day on it. And yeah, maybe you don't need to be as good as them. Everybody has their own voice, but they're out there and that's the world.

(01:15:41):

That's the world you live in. So I think that there's a lot of wisdom in finding a way to do things that will actually, it's not this hippie shit, it's actually getting yourself to do the work and basically tricking yourself into doing this thing that you might not want to do. So one more thing I want to talk about, because we're starting to run out of time. This kind of involves the war dog story, but there's also bigger picture than that. But I'm bringing this up because when I was watching some other podcast you've done and learning about that, and I've seen the movie and all the cool shit aside from it, the thing that impressed me about it was being able to handle the amount of pressure involved and the amount of little details. I remember you were saying that you guys would sit there and would read these contracts all day, and then you had to coordinate all these logistics. There's quality control, there's so many people, you're dealing with shady people, which is very common in music actually you're dealing with, I mean, you're not going to get shot in the head in music, but hopefully, depending

Speaker 2 (01:16:59):

Which genre

Speaker 1 (01:17:00):

I was about to say, depends on the genre, but you're not dealing with governments, you're not dealing with war, but you are dealing with a lot of people where you don't know what their intention is. And between keeping up with all these details, all these logistics, maybe some bad actors, managing other people, and then also a ton of pressure going on at the same time, how do you deal with that and keep your eye on the ball and keep things moving? Did you have to learn that? That's not normal, but I think it's essential,

Speaker 2 (01:17:41):

Right? There's definitely different levels of pressure and work and details that each person can handle. And I think the most important skill that you could develop is just being self-aware and knowing what you can handle and realizing when you're not handling it. And that's one I would say one of the biggest challenges is being having that level of self-awareness because most people are just focused on the external and they're focused and rightly so on all these very pressing details. And they forget to spare at least a bit of their mental energy for self-reflection. And so remembering to have that self-reflection is super important in order to realize when you might be getting burnt out on anything. Because when you start getting burnt out, then you don't function as well, and then you won't be making as good decisions as you should be. And possibly that was some of the cause of some of the less than optimal decisions that I made during the time.

(01:18:52):

I'll be the first to say that we didn't do everything the way it could have been done. We could have had a better outcome from that story than what ended up happening. And possibly it was some of the pressure that got to us. So I'm by no means a shining perfect example by any means. But I will say there are certain things that do help to alleviate, especially when you have a lot of things going on. I know it sounds super simple and kind of basic, but making lists is a very powerful thing that sure is a lot of people kind of overlook and don't do because they think, oh, there's five things, I'll just have it in my head. And then when you actually get down to it and the pressure mounts and the stress mounts and it's easy for one or two things to slip your mind.

(01:19:41):

So having checklists is super important. And a great example of the power of checklists is, the story is a little bit off topic, but of aviation safety. There used to be be a lot more plane crashes and accidents, but when they started instituting mandatory checklists, pre-flight checklists that the pilots had to go through and they had to check it off, literally check it off, the accidents went, they cratered because they started. They've made it the whole safety check, methodical. That's what the power of a list is. It makes things methodical and it keeps things from falling in between the cracks. So making lists for yourself in order to deal with overwhelming situations are very powerful. It's a great tool that I think is just so people overlook it because it's so simple and so basic, but super important. And for me, I found at least, I mean I'm sure everyone is different, but I found that just writing things down on, as I said before, a physical piece of paper works better for me than having a digital list.

(01:20:51):

I've used software programs and apps to keep track of my tasks digitally, and that does work. But for some reason, having a paper on your desk where every time you look at that part of your desk, you always see that list of to-do items just seems to work better psychologically for me. So you have to find out what works for you, of course. And of course with the self-reflection aspect of it, being able to know when you should take a break and recharge the batteries, when you should stop working through the night and actually go to sleep, get some rest, is a very important thing because people tend to push themselves sometimes to the breaking point and burn themselves out and then they guilty. Exactly. And sometimes that's good. It's good to really push it hard, but there is always a physical human limit of what you can handle and what you can do.

(01:21:51):

So the self-reflection is a critical aspect of knowing when you're approaching that limit. And you'll never know when you reach it, but you'll know when you're in the general ballpark, right? Because everything is a range with human beings. There's no hard line generally, it's just like there's a fuzzy area. Sometime between hour nine and 10, I'm going to pass out. I don't know if it's going to be eight hours and 34 minutes on the dot, but I know it's going to be sometime between this and this time. So the human body and brain are complicated things and we can't pin things down exactly on this. So just realizing during the process of self-reflection that you're never going to have a solid exact answer, you're just going to have general ballpark answers as far as how well you're doing is also an important thing to keep in mind.

Speaker 1 (01:22:41):

Yeah. It's interesting that you said that sometimes it is good to push it. It's funny, I remember growing up mostly through also my twenties, and people stopped saying it so much in my thirties maybe because by the time I got to my thirties, people around me were more serious. But I remember in teenage years and in my twenties, people telling me to not think about my goals so much. You don't have to work on it so much. You don't have to just chill out. Just why do you need all that? Just like all these types of, I don't know, self-defeating and just shortsighted ideas. And I really do think that in order to do anything great, you have to have a time period where you going for it. At some point, you got to know you're redlining. You can't redline forever. And as you get older, I think that having that schedule and making yourself go to sleep, it gives you the energy for the times when you do need to redline.

Speaker 2 (01:23:58):

Absolutely.

Speaker 1 (01:23:58):

Because it's going to come up again and you want to have full resources for when it happens.

Speaker 2 (01:24:05):

Absolutely, absolutely. As seems to be the theme of our conversation today, it's all about balance.

Speaker 1 (01:24:12):

Yeah, I was just thinking, man, balance is such a nice idea.

Speaker 2 (01:24:17):

Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 1 (01:24:18):

It's really tough. But David, thank you so much for coming on. It's been a pleasure talking to you. I appreciate you taking the time.

Speaker 2 (01:24:25):

My pleasure as well. Thank you for having me.

Speaker 1 (01:24:27):

Alright, then another URM podcast episode in the bag. Please remember to share our episodes with your friends as well as post some of your Facebook and Instagram or any social media you use. Please tag me at al Levi URM audio at URM Academy. And of course tag our guests as well. I mean, they really do appreciate it. In addition, do you have any questions for me about anything? Email them to me at al at M Academy. That's EYAL at M dot aca, DEMY. And use the subject line answer me Eyal. Alright then. Till next time, happy mixing. You've been listening to the Unstoppable Recording Machine Podcast. To ask us questions, make suggestions and interact, visit URM Academy and press the podcast link today.