#238 - David Milly

0:04 Hello and thanks for joining me today on Geeses of Gear Episode #238. Today's podcast is brought to you by Main Light, a national dry hire. Sorry I'm having things going crazy on my screen here. Something is happening weird. I apologize for this. So today's podcast is brought to you by Main Light, a national dry hire rental provider specializing in supplying the latest lighting and stage equipment technology.

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2:32 Fast 360° movement on both axes, CMY Color Mix, Gobos, Prisms and Frost allow designers to create an array of stunning aerial effects. Check out the Proteus Radius today at elationlighting.com. Well, I'm back episode #238 and so it's bizarre that I'm having tech problems this morning because yesterday I recorded episode #237 with Glenn, CEO and founder of AED in Europe. And it's weird we got to the end or we were getting near the end. I should say probably 10-15 minutes to go. And I noticed that my recording software was basically failing and so it showed the the little live or recording light is red and it's got a timer inside it and it was frozen at an hour and 50 seconds, an hour, one hour

4:02 and 50 seconds and entirely frozen. So I have a Mac. If you put your mouse over it, you get the little spinning beach ball, meaning that that application is just completely frozen. So at this point, I'm still recording. I'm still talking or I think I'm recording. I'm talking with Glenn and trying not to panic. While I'm realizing that it's entirely possible that I'm no longer recording. It's also entirely possible that I lose the entire podcast that we've just recorded, which happened to be a really good one. And so we finally got to the end of our communication and I said thanks and couldn't stop the software, couldn't do anything, couldn't hang up on the call. And so I just had to hold down the power button on my Mac and shut everything down.

4:52 And so I've contacted the company, the software company who who I used to record our podcasts and have submitted some files to them and stuff. So we're going to hopefully be able to recover this and hopefully by the time people hear the live or not live, but the recorded episode #238, you will have already heard 237 because 237 was a really good conversation and I'd love to. I'd love to. I'd hope that everyone has the opportunity to hear it. And so if you know Glenn, very interesting guy, very colorful guy, very smart person, you know, smart outside of business and outside of our industry, he's he's a pilot, he's he's just got all of this other knowledge involved.

5:47 And you know, he also owns a a film studio, film and television studio. And so of course, one of my favorite topics lately has been AI and I talk with smart people and get their take on it and try to understand more about what people are thinking about its impact on our industry, etcetera. And so Glenn and I had this really cool conversation and again, I hope you get to hear it because it was fun. It took a very different approach or a new concept where we looked at it as instead of AI replacing humans, AI was augmenting or supporting humans, especially in our industry, and so we used a couple of examples.

6:31 We both agreed that we want AI and robots to handle things like life saving surgery. So, you know, if you're if you've got, God forbid, cancer or any sort of heart surgery or whatever, that AI and robots would be able to manage that surgery because #1, they'd have more information than any surgeon possibly could to. They wouldn't make mistakes, they wouldn't slip or miss or accidentally cut the wrong thing or something. Not that surgeons do that very often, but you would take out that whole human mistake side of things. And unless of course, their computer software failed like mine did for that episode, you know, you're you're looking pretty good.

7:19 So surgery was one. It was funny because Glenn said I want AI and robots cooking my food. And then we got into a discussion about that and what we finally agreed. Both of us agreed on the fact that it would be great to have robots and AI basically prepping the food, so doing all the cutting and and portioning and whatever you want to call it. But all the preparation and then the actual art or the artistry of actually cooking and combining ingredients and creating flavor would come from a knowledgeable and experienced chef. And it's it's funny because that carries over to our industry as well. You know, you're getting the nuance and and art from the artist and you're getting sort of the tedious repeated labor side of the project from AI and from robots. And you know, I think the same goes in our industry. You know, the simple and mundane repetitive tasks, the coding side of things where a, a programmer is sitting at a desk putting in the same lines of code that he's had to do for every show that he does or she, you know, but at the end, the artist is the one creating the art. It's not AI creating the art.

8:36 AI is just supporting the art. And so that's hopefully the direction that common sense takes us. And in all things, you know that that AI supports humans, it doesn't make an effort to replace humans. But you know, there's some fear involved in all of this as well. I'm, I'm a realist and I'm listening to all sides of this. I spend a lot of time listening to guests on Joe Rogan because Joe Rogan gets really smart guests. On the topic of AI, he's had you know the founder or the CEO of ChatGPT has or open AI has been on multiple times or at least once. I heard him once. Anyways he gets Elon Musk on quite often.

9:19 He had Kurzweil, Ray Kurzweil on and you know they talk a lot about as AI becomes sentient and and more human like it is going to sort of leapfrog jump over humans because it's just going to be smarter than humans. And I just, I don't know and none of us really know. Maybe some people sitting at the top of Google or open AI or or maybe Elon Musk knows. But Elon Musk seems to be more more respectful, fearful, careful with this technology than most really smart people are. And you know, he, he has rang the the sort of emergency bell a few times on this.

10:03 So we'll see. I I do think that this is probably 1 area where God forbid we get the government involved. And hopefully without any incentives to, you know, build their stock portfolios or whatever, they're going to make good decisions for the American people and for the people of the world on, you know, just some legislation that that stops AI from from controlling the world. But anyways, so that that was an interesting conversation. And again, I apologize, Anytime our tech fails, it's only happened I think three times in the entire history of the podcast, three or four times maybe. And so I I hope that we were able to recover this podcast. If not, I might even ask Glenn to do it again because it was such a great conversation.

10:52 And I also want to help promote the amazing companies and brands that Glenn is building at AED. So today we have one of my favorite people, another one. I say this about so many people, but I love this guy, David Miley. We had back on the podcast or we had on the podcast episode 14 in 2019 and he's back on again today. I had to peel him away from his incredibly busy schedule of retirement. So you may or may not know David sold his lighting business. If you're younger and and new to this industry or maybe you're in Europe or something.

11:32 So David Miley had a company called TLS Inc and it was based in Alabama. He sold that business to Four Wall back in 2012, stayed on to work with the company for a few years before kind of taking a a different turn in life. And David is now retired. He manages some real estate, spends time renovating his his house that he lives in with his wife Deanne. And they both do some some community theater work. David's consulted on a few lighting projects I think, and he and Deanne went through some boats. They had that sort of two foot itis where they bought a small one and got a little bit bigger a few times I think. And they traveled a whole bunch.

12:18 And then I think what happened is the hurricane hit. He can tell us a little more about this. But I think the hurricane hit and scared the hell out of him. And they moved back in land, sold their boats and and they've become land lovers again. But David tells me that now his main source of income is basically winning money from his buddies at golf. And so that doesn't surprise me. He was a an avid golfer the last time I saw him. I think the last time I played, the last time I saw him, was probably the last time I played golf with with him at at one of the LDI events and that had to be more than 10 years ago probably. Oh my God, time moves so fast. It's probably 15 years ago, I don't know.

13:00 But anyways, I would love to welcome back David Miley. Hello, David. Hello, Marcel. Good morning. You too. So where are you in the world now? I don't know. Like, I know you were on the water. I'm in Huntsville, AL. Oh, you're back in Huntsville? I. Spent back in Huntsville 2 1/2 years ago. We got hit by a hurricane called Sally in Orange Beach. And you know, my house was tore up, my cars were flooded, rental properties were demolished. It was it was a mess. So rather than go through that again, we put Humpty Dumpty back together and and move back up north where we only have tornadoes and flooding. So it's.

13:47 A little bit different. But that hurricane, that's scary stuff. You being in Florida? You probably. Know what I mean? I do. You know, and here's the This is going to sound really terrible. So I'm putting a a disclaimer on what I'm about to say. But you know Florida has escaped a lot of hurricanes recently. Just we've it's been actually really quiet since like maybe 2000 and 5-6 something like that is the last one that really I think caused a massive impact in South Florida where I live. And so meanwhile we've had this COVID thing and property values are going through the roof because people are selling you know two and a half million dollar condos that are like 1000 square feet in New York, bringing that cash down here, buying a house on the waterfront, going man, why did I wait so long to do this And they haven't seen a storm yet, so you know.

14:45 Wait till they get the property tax bill and their insurance bill. Good grief that well-being on the water where I was in Orange Beach, we were two miles from Florida line. Yeah, Florida line. And and I I. Paid more for insurance there than I paid for. You know, insurance, property tax, all my utilities, everything. HOA. Just my insurance down there was. Crazy. Well yeah. I mean like the Keys for example, like the to insure a house and the Keys a lot of people just self insure because it's so expensive to get insurance if you're because you're basically below sea level at a lot of places in the Keys and so you're going to flood like you are going to get some water and so insurance is just crazy in in some parts of the Keys, in some houses and it depends on your your survey or whatever it is.

15:41 But but yeah, I mean typically what used to happen, I've been here since 1991 and what used to happen. So my first year here was Hurricane Andrew and so we were sort of welcome to Florida properly, you know the worst storm I think that it was. Yeah, and I remember we actually had police knock on our door, 'cause we lived on the Intercoastal and in an apartment. And they knocked on our door and said, I'm sorry you have to evacuate. And we were like, what the hell does that mean? You know, we didn't know what was going on. Like we were land lubbers moving down here to Florida and but what would happen is every time there was a storm there was this exodus of all these northerners, New Yorkers and people from the north somewhere would just be like hell with this shit. I'm out of here, you know I ain't putting up with this stuff.

16:32 No way. And. We we, our house was on stilt, so they knew that it was going to have storm surge. Yeah, but we sat in the stairway for, you know, like 10 hours. The water was coming up the stairs and the roof was going off on top. I mean, it was it was pretty scary. Never would I stay in a hurricane again. I would evacuate. We just didn't have a chance to do this. When nobody in our neighborhood did, everybody thought it was going through Biloxi and it just did a 90° turn and then just sat on us it. Was it was? Like it was punishing Orange Beach or something. You know, you know Jim Fuller, right? Oh yeah, yeah.

17:14 So, so Jim Fuller, before he came to work for us at Martin, Jim Fuller was our customer. He was at UF and we did the Gator growl and we were doing some other stuff with him. But so anyways, Hurricane Andrew, Jim calls me up. He lives in Gainesville and he calls me up and he says, hey, I'm coming down for the hurricane and I'm like, what? And he goes, yeah, you know, my parents aren't, aren't in their house. They have a house in. I can't remember if it was Homestead or Cutler Ridge where his parents had a house. And I'm like, what the hell are you doing coming down here? Like we're being told to go that way. So I'm going to Orlando and and he's like, Nah, it's not gonna be that bad.

17:57 And you know, I don't think it was Andrew, though. It had to be a different storm because it wasn't in 1992. This was a bit later. So anyways, whatever storm it was. So he, he comes down and the storm turned sort of at the last minute and he was basically in it, you know, in a big way. And it was him and his, his wife and I think his new baby. And they ended up in a closet because the roof blew off. And, you know, they were huddled up in a closet in this house. And they left a nice safe place that everybody was evacuating to and came right into sort of the eye of the storm. And it was just lunacy.

18:39 But I think, you know, sometimes in Florida that happens. We get this. We get this complacency where people have hurricane parties and they're like, it's no big deal. I've been through ten of these, you know. Maybe the 11th 1 gets you real good, you know? It's well, you. You've been lucky. I'll tell you, what we went through was not fun. So. Yeah, it was. A. Yes, yeah, yeah. We had a little we had a little technical glitch with David's headphones there. So David's new to the Apple Airpods. Welcome to the to the clan, David. I actually just had to get a new I I just had to get a new pair. If if someone would have told me that $200 freaking earphones were disposable, like you basically just had to throw them away every few years and get a new pair, I'd be like, you got to be out of your mind. But that's exactly what you have to do. They just, they wear out and get lousy. And mine were making weird noises and stuff. So yeah, I wonder.

19:40 Apple is a $2 trillion company. I think we got it figured out. I've pushed enough buttons here, so. Anyway, that's good. Well, tell me how your son's doing. You you you sent him to England to race cars and I haven't, I haven't seen many updates lately. Well, cuz he came back, He's been back here since, I think, November, end of November, he came back. And he's been doing a bunch of coaching, coaching drivers at different tracks and and on different series and stuff. He's been even coaching SIM SIM drivers. So if you ever want to become a race car driver, you could just get one of those simulator setups and and Jeremy will come and coach you, but, but he actually just got back to England today.

20:21 He's racing the first race of the the brand new 2024 season that starts this weekend at Silverstone and so he just landed this morning and he's he's at the race shop with the team right now getting the car prepped and he's on track tomorrow for testing. Excuse me. Yeah. So I'll probably end up posting the link on on Facebook or something to watch the races this weekend. They're they tend to be pretty early because it's it's in England right. So it's five hours later there but but I appreciate you asking he's he's doing well we're we're somewhere between all the way in and and all the way out. You know it's it's it's his dream and it's all he ever wants to do.

21:07 But unfortunately it's a big money game these days. So you know it's it's as you step up the ladder the money just gets more and more ridiculous and it didn't used to be that way. It's just that now there's so many billionaires in the world that they jump the queue and and say I'll give you $5,000,000 instead of, you know, you having to pay my driver, I'll pay you. And so that eliminates opportunities for for for drivers, whether they're better or not, it doesn't even matter. So it's unfortunate, but it is what it is. So yeah, we we already got into the Hurricanes, which I expected we'd be talking about because you were one of those guys like the the New Yorkers and stuff that I was just talking about who who ran back in land.

21:50 And I don't blame you. I mean, I don't live on the coast. I live 1/2 hour inland. Well, I I have some property down there. And. What we did, you know as part of buying it was to make sure we were out of the wind and flood zone insurance wise. So there's a road, one side of the road is in the flood zone, the other side of the road is not and bought bought a rental property there. So it it and it made a big difference insurance wise and it's just right across the street from each other. Oh really? Well, and and and you know you. Add that up over 10 years, it's a lot of money difference that goes in your pocket instead of the insurance company. Yeah. So is that a rental property or or do you actually go there and spend time?

22:34 No, it's it's a it's a triple net. It's a paint store and we're just a landlord in it. Oh, OK. It's a building. It's not a not a house. I just assumed it was residential. Oh, OK. Commercial building. Oh cool. Put my money that four wall gave me when they bought me out and you know, have some income. Yeah. Good for you. Good for you. You're welcome. Four walls doing great guns these days. They are yeah four Wall the the big keep getting bigger that's for sure. And and Canon again is doing really really well with Main Light who actually Main Light. Remarkably, Main Light and Mike Cannon are the sponsor for today's podcast.

23:14 So yeah, yeah, yeah, no, he's doing really well. We do a lot of business together and I, he's one of the guys that I I appreciate a lot in this industry and have a lot of respect for. I have a lot of time for that guy. He's a smart dude. He's he's got those Canon, the Canon jeans. Yes, he does. He does, yeah. His son, I think is going to Purdue, but just played, played UConn. He's a big basketball fan. Yeah, yeah, that's funny. That's that's interesting. I didn't know that. I'm pretty sure he goes to Purdue. I mean, that's something I could ask you, but I see we're Facebook friends.

24:00 That's how I stay in touch with most people these days. And yeah, he's at all the basketball games and he's always doing Purdue basketball. So like I said, they did. They did pretty good against UConn. Alabama did a little bit better, I think. One point better. Yeah. Interesting UConn. What an awesome team. Good grief. I can't say I follow it. I know nothing about it whatsoever, David. We've given up on hearing your microphone out of your headphones because it's gone again. So don't worry about it. We can hear you just fine through the phone. So let's let's not stress about that one. OK, it's no big help. I don't know. So for those of you who have no idea or just entered the industry or whatever, just to to kind of reiterate here, you sold your business back in in 2012 what we were just talking about to Four Wall and sadly your wife passed away shortly after in 2014.

24:59 You you kind of changed directions after that and Cannon let you let you retire and and not too long after that then you you met your your current wife Deanne who I've unfortunately not been able to meet and and I I feel like I know her because I've been following all of your posts and hers on on Facebook and stuff but it looks like you guys have built a pretty cool life together and and you know you. I got real luck in them. Yeah, yeah, well, you know, it's incredible when you life is short when it comes to those types of long term relationships and the fact that you can find, you know, 2 great ones like that is is pretty cool.

25:45 So congratulations and. Well, thank you. I like I said, I do feel very lucky and fortunate that that we ran into each other at the time. It's a timing thing in in a in a life and you put 2 people together and the timing's right. I mean it's worked out. It worked out very well for both of us. We're we're real happy and we've done done a lot of travelling together and you know if you can travel with somebody in an RV for you know a month and then you know you have compatibility and we did we. Well, and you did the land and water RV's right, like you did the. Well, you know when when like I said my previous wife passed away, I didn't want to bring the new woman in my life into that situation.

26:29 So I said well look, let's let's let's sell this house and let's go to the beach. And that's what we did and we went and got a big boat and we travelled around the the Gulf, went to New Orleans and Tampa and and you know just played around. We actually came from Orange Beach all the way up to Tennessee Tom Bigby to Huntsville. It was a eight day trip up to Tennessee. Tom Bigby, which is amazing that you can go from there, you know, 400 miles inland. It it is. And we were, you know, we were in a pretty big boat, but there's barges all over the place and there's a lot of books that tell you what to look for and how to be what, how to navigate it.

27:11 We went to boating school and navigation school. So I mean did it properly and safely. 8 days here Spent about a week, two weeks here and then like 8 days back went through 17 locks up up 600 feet. So the first lock was tested because Deanna had never done it and you know I'm I'm driving. She's got a hook us to about a bollard, throw the rope around it and and tie us off to the side and the the bollard floats. The first one was testy, but we watched it on on YouTube several times on what she's supposed to do and she pulled it off and yay, that was our big panic attack that didn't turn into a panic. Yeah.

27:56 Well, and your relationship somehow survived that because I I remember even just docking incidents where it's like just throw them the line or you know, one of the funniest ones with my ex-wife was we had run into a pretty significant situation. So we were we were, I was pulling up into onto a sandbar in I think it was in Miami somewhere and it was just a sandbar where we would always go up and just, you know, stick the anchor in the ground and sit there in three or four feet of water, have a couple beers, put some rafts out or whatever. It was nice and but the current was really nasty. It was quite windy and it was crowded and so it was pretty stressful and and I'm dealing with all of this stuff, you know, I'm going against the current try not to run over anybody who's already in the water with their beers or hit any boats. And my my ex-wife Barb her her parents decide at some point because Barb tells them OK you guys can go ahead and jump off now we're in Shell and I'm I'm still my engines are running and I'm still moving and so they jump off the boat and immediately get caught up in the current. And so now it's it's a situation like we've got a real situation. And I'm like, she goes, what do I do? What do I do?

29:17 And I said throw them a, a throw cushion. So line wrapped around it and everything, she throws the whole throw cushion. And I just looked at her and I'm like, do you not see anything wrong with this? And she goes, what? I threw it to them. And I said, but where's the rope, Barb? Where's the other end of the line? How are we gonna pull them back to the boat? You've thrown the entire line to them and she's like, oh, do you have another one? And I said, no, I only have one throw cushion. So now I had to jump off the boat and well, I think I dropped anchor wherever I was, jumped off the boat, swam to them, 'cause I'm a good swimmer, and brought them back to the boat. And I was just furious.

29:58 I mean, that was probably the beginning of the end for us. If. If you have a boat, you have those situations, just it's just part of part of boating. You just gotta be as careful as you can be, that's for sure. I take it really seriously, as I'm sure you do. You know, I take it, really. Seriously, your lives are. In my hand. You know, I've I've had my nephews and nieces and stuff and they want to carry on and get drunk and stupid and they said you can do all that, but only when I allow it. You know you got to sit down and you can't walk around you you can't bother. We have we communicate and they say, well I want to help, I want to help. Your help is to sit there and get out of the way and when, when it's time, we'll let you know and it and the captain's got to be the captain.

30:42 You know. Because at the end of the day, the buck stops there, right? And if there's damage done, then that he's the one responsible and you can't take some stuff back, ever. It's. Just what? And and you see it. You see it so often here where you know just friends are out for a nice weekend boat ride in Fort Lauderdale on their their brand new $1,000,000, you know, 5 Yamaha 3 hundreds or Merck 3 hundreds on the back of it or whatever. You know, guy doesn't know what he's doing. He's takes him out on the ocean going 70 miles an hour on a fishing boat or something and bad things happen and people die. And it it's really, really sad to see that every time I see it it's like, you know, boats don't have brakes like cars do. So.

31:25 No, they do not. No, they do not. Yeah well we like, like I I I mentioned early we took we together we took three boating classes, navigation, safety you know just all all the how to park a boat and then we went out and practiced all this stuff before we went out anywhere. And you know, I've I've been in boats all my life, but not a big boat. Boats different. Than a boat. And you know it it's kind of I messed up a few times and I I I still. I could write them down on a piece of paper. What I did wrong and what I would do in the future differently. Mostly navigation. Things going on the wrong side of a buoy.

32:07 I've done well, how about, how about, you know, running a, you know, a 36 foot cabin cruiser running at a ground in the Keys, you know, even though, you know, you're not supposed to be outside the channel. But it was like, oh, there's a pot of dolphins over there. We had to go see them, you know, and I'm outside the Channel and run the boat into the, you know, the ground, right? I tore a transmission up in one of my engines. It's about a $50,000. Kit. Ouch. Well, luckily insurance paid for some of it. But you know the same thing that was not intended. The current got me, pushed me where I wasn't supposed to be trying to pull into a Marina. I was in Tampa Bay and just made a mistake. Yeah, so.

32:51 Looking back, it was it was the captain's problem. It was my my mistake. Speaking of marina's, you know one of my other situations involving my ex-wife, we were in the Keys and we were pulling up. I had a a slip booked at at I forget which Marina in the Keys, but oh, it was the the island Mirada Marina with the tiki bar and stuff. I don't know if you've spent any time down in the Keys, but it was a great Marina and you know, but it had like 7580 foot boats there and I had a 36 foot boat and so I'm pulling it in. It's probably about 7:00 at night. So all the old captains are all standing out on the on the dock drinking their their wine or whatever with their their wives and their friends or whatever. And so now I've got a bunch of geniuses telling me what I'm doing wrong, and I've got this tall boat, a cabin cruise or tall boat, you know the problem here? So the tide is coming in and the wind is blowing out and and I've got to go into the dock.

33:55 I think I was against the wind but with the current or something. And it was, it was the hardest docking I've ever done. And I've got three people on the boat telling me what I'm doing wrong. And I've got 20 people on the dock telling me what to do and what I'm doing wrong. And finally I said, everyone just shut the F up and let me dock this boat. And I got it docked and I just, I tied it, jumped off the boat, walked straight up to the Tiki bar and did like a double shot or something and just said, enough, man, I've had enough. You know who else is doing it right now? David. His. Do you know Matt Klauser? Matt Klaus.

34:37 He had a nice little company in Atlanta called Active Lighting. Active Lighting and design seems. Like I've heard that name. I I don't know. He was a high, he was a, he was always a high end dealer in in Atlanta and he would have been a real small company as you were a pretty big company. And anyways I helped him sell his company a couple years ago and his life, you know, goal or plan or dream or whatever was to go out and buy a sailboat and sail around the world. And so he bought like AI think it's like a 50 foot cat. And him and his very young wife who he had just married, remarried, I think she's from Guatemala or Nicaragua or something, but beautiful young lady. So they decide they're going to sail around the world. They buy this boat.

35:35 They come to Fort Lauderdale and close on the boat. They took all the captain, you know, classes and stuff that they possibly could. They went to the Bahamas from Fort Lauderdale and they sailed around the Bahamas a little bit. It really tested their relationship, you know, as it can. But you're running into things that didn't teach you in boating class. And now you're in real life and you're in. You're on the Atlantic Ocean or in the Caribbean. Bad things can happen very quickly and it's all different than what you expected. And so, I mean they spent about, I don't know, probably 3 weeks, three or four weeks of what was supposed to be like a a 12 month journey or something.

36:19 They spent three or four weeks in the Bahamas and then docked. I think they brought the boat back to Fort Lauderdale and and flew back home. And there's they're back at their house in Costa Rica, or wherever it is that they live now. They sell the boat. No, no, I I don't know that whether or not they're still going to go ahead and try and do their plans. But you know, he had it all planned out. He was he was going to do this. And I'm not putting him down. I always said that's a pretty momentous plan that you've got there, you know, but he was, you know, he he had it all planned out. He was going to book. He was going to hire captains for the the long trips and you know, I just think the reality is so much more challenging and we're back again. These retired people, you know, it's retired people and their electronics, like they don't have the big computer screens and stuff anymore.

37:16 I I don't have people to set it up for me and stand there and make sure I don't screw it up. So. Well, you know, if if you ever, if you ever invite me to come over and visit, I'll come over and visit and I'll help you set up your your stuff and we can do a proper podcast. That'd be fun. Me and you and Jonathan get Jonathan back on. What You know that you funny you say that he is in Nashville today? Oh, is he really? We we were thinking about when he lands the run up there, maybe have dinner with him tonight, so. Oh, that's fun. Well, he hadn't. He hadn't updated his arrival stuff, but either Thursday or Friday he'd be there and today's the day. So anyway, I don't know what he came over for, but I think they're working on his boat and pulling it out of the water and repainting it and stuff.

38:04 So he said it's time to travel while I got while the boats being worked on. That's another thing that we boating people know all about is, you know, boats need work, unfortunately. I tell you what, it was too expensive for me. I gave up on it. So it's something cheaper. RV is is a lot cheaper by the way. Yeah. So do you still do that? Do you guys still travel around a bunch? Well we've we've taken RV to California or Nevada like 4-4 times and my my brother just borrowed my RV to go to Illinois for the the eclipse.

38:44 So yeah we we we use it quite a lot. I we go to Orange Beach and it a lot own some RV lots down there that we rent out most of the time. It's it's very convenient very economical and you know we know it's when it's there and we can always book it when we need it and it's close to all the restaurants that we really enjoy. So yeah, we do. We do use it. Well, if you want to get adventurous, drive on up to Western Canada this summer and you can. You can park it in my driveway and I'll show you around. Is that where you are now? No, I'm in. I'm in Florida, but I spend the summers now in up near Banff in Canada. Too hot, Too hot in Fort Lauderdale.

39:27 No, it's it's great here, but it's just that, you know, once my son was old enough and didn't need me around 24/7, it was like, what am I doing sitting here in South Florida when I could be at my house in the mountains in Canada, You know, enjoying. I love it up there. Like I love the mountains. I love the view, I love the people. I love, you know, hiking and biking and just all that that offers, right. So it's sort of the best of both worlds. You know you get you get beautiful weather here in the winter in Florida and very unknown or or you know adventurous weather in Canada in the summer like you could get snow in June. You just don't know.

40:10 But well, you, you got the best of both worlds there, Marcel. Yes, Sir. So. And with all this technology that that works, you can do what you do just about anywhere. Yeah, Speaking of technology. So you know in my little intro that I did, I was, I was talking about the podcast that I recorded yesterday with you probably don't know him, but Glenn Rogeman owns a company in Europe called AED. And over the past 1215 years, AED has really grown to be they're sort of part main light, part ACT entertainment or ACT lighting, part like they're part distributor, part cross rental company.

40:57 They they do leasing for their customers like they're just they're a big conglomerate of businesses really. And Glenn's just a really smart business guy that's very well funded. He's got a helicopter company, he's got a big Ferrari collection, he's just a neat guy and he's really smart. But we had a conversation about AI and or IE as he calls it, which is kind of funny because he's he's from Belgium and it's pronounced IE in Belgium because A is I and I is E So it's IE. He kept talking about IE and I'm like what the hell is this guy talking about? But it was it was AI. But one of the things that we discussed, and I mentioned this I think in my intro as well is you know, our industry's pretty freaked out about obviously for for good reason being replaced by by AI.

41:52 You know, lighting designers, lighting programmers being replaced by AI. And so the conversation we had is that One Direction I see this all going is that common sense prevails and AI remains an augmentation to humans, not a replacement for humans, a support to humans, not a replacement for humans. So a few examples, like if you were going in today or tomorrow or next week and God forbid I shouldn't even bring this up, but let's say you had to go in for life saving surgery. Would you rather that be done by an AI robot or by a human? You're asking me?

42:41 Yeah, right now a human, but probably in the future, like these autonomous driving cars are probably safer than humans because they pay attention better in the future and test them on other people before you come see me to chop me up. But I I would say the AI would definitely be better. Yeah, well. Wouldn't you? No, yes. No. Absolutely no. No. I would say that if AI was available next week for me to go have surgery by robot, I would rather have a robot than a human. Because if you think about it on the surface, a human and I'm not putting down surgeons, they're incredible. You know, I've had a couple surgeries and and thank God for surgeons, but a human has experience of however many books he's read and however many surgeries he's done. So let's call it 500 surgeries or 1000 surgeries. Let's put a nice round Number on it. The surgeon that's working on you to save your life has done 1000 surgeries.

43:53 He's got that information all in his brain. Along with the books that he learned in school. AI has a million or 10 million or 100 million surgeries and every book on earth on that topic in its brain and it doesn't have shaky hands. You know it. It hasn't had a an argument with his wife an hour ago on the phone because he couldn't talk to her because he had to go into a surgery or he hasn't got a hangover from getting drunk at his brother's birthday party last night or whatever, right? AIAI to me is is much more stable and predictable in that role and so. I just, I just agreed with you on that, but but I don't think I'm ready tomorrow to do that.

44:40 Let AI, you know, you surgery on like a couple 100 people and I say OK now I think I'm ready. Yeah, if this is all happening really, really fast. You know John Wiseman, right? Oh, sure. So a couple of years ago, John, and I'm sure you wouldn't mind me talking about it, but John was diagnosed with a type of cancer and I don't remember if it was prostate or or but something bad. And you know, he was a little bit freaked out and and went to some really smart people and was referred to someone who actually happened to be very close to him, very close to where he lived. And I believe the doctor was in Reno or something and it was this cutting edge new robotic surgery and it had, you know, very good track record so far.

45:35 Long story short, he did it. It was incredible. The time to heal was incredible and he's completely free of cancer and recommends it highly. He said I would do it again in a minute if if I had the same problem or a similar problem and that were presented to me. So, So that's part one. Part 2 we started talking about because Glenn said so surgery, if I had to go for surgery, I want a robot and AI performing my surgery. Number two, he said I want AI cooking my food at a restaurant. And I said no, no, no, no, no, hold on a second because you know I should back up a bit.

46:15 He's got this interesting approach in that he owns a a television and movie studio film studio in over there. AED Studios is is quite beautiful. He bought it in 2012 and has turned it. I think it's a half a million square feet or something and it's it's a beautiful studio. And so he said you can't take away the art from movies, otherwise all movies, basically, it's going to go like this. AI will make movies get so good so that everything's as good as I think, he said Top Gun Maverick, You know, everything's that good and but then it'll just stay flat forever because it's all perfect, everything's perfect and it's pretty much vanilla, you know, it's become vanilla. So he brought up food and I said the same thing would happen with food.

47:03 It would be exactly the same every time you eat it. Just like a Big Mac from McDonald's. You expect that from McDonald's. But if I'm ordering a a $75 entree at a restaurant, I want nuance. I want the chef's attitude and and passion in that food. I don't want it made by a machine so that it's exactly the same every time, right? I want little differences, little uniqueness to it or whatever, right? And so we finally came to the conclusion that AI should do the prep on food, but the actual combining of ingredients and the chef part should be done by a chef.

47:45 So the artist does the art and AI does the the grunt work basically Does that ring A. Bell does make sense, yeah, Yeah, that does make sense. Have you paid any attention to this whole AI topic? Well, you you see all this stuff going on in Nashville and Tennessee where songwriters do not want AI U's for writing songs. And it takes, it takes what they do away and you know that's how they make their money. And you know, I I just, I'm on Chrome or Microsoft something and it's what do they call it? Copilot and and I can ask it all these questions it's like a souped up Siri and and to write a paragraph about whatever and it's it's just amazing. Tell me a joke that that lighting people would laugh at and it it does a light bulb joke or something. How does it know all this stuff?

48:41 I I I see most of what I've seen so far is silliness that I can do. But I see how the application for you know, business acumen and and how to be efficient and how to analyze costs and things like that. It's staggering what it could do. Well, David, your your rental business, your your real estate rental business or whatever, you don't have to. I hope your lawyer ain't listening. But you don't got to pay your lawyer to write a a simple rental agreement. AI can write that rental agreement very quickly, very efficiently, very effectively, with loads and loads of information behind it. Granted, it's not a IT. AI isn't a lawyer, and it'll tell you somewhere, some sort of a disclaimer.

49:26 You might want to have your lawyer look over this or whatever, but AI knows that it's way better than any agreement your lawyer is going to draw for you. Well, the lawyer is going to youknowlawyer.com forms and printing out the form and editing 2 paragraphs and and it said here I worked on this hard. You know what I mean. Two hours at $300.00 an hour. Exactly. No, exactly. The form. It's copy and. Pasted. Yeah. But I've had some really good luck with with that, with things like legal agreements or business plans. Like I'm thinking about this idea because now you can there's AI tools now that are very simple already to use as as a human.

50:07 So I can talk to it just like I'm talking to you right now. And I, I can say, here's what I'm thinking about putting together, and I want you to tell me if that's a, if that's a good idea. Do you think I could be successful with it if I do it? What color should the logo be? How should I set up the business? How many employees should I have? Should I hire a marketing person first or a salesperson? You can just sit there and talk to it for 30 minutes just like that, and then it'll think for about two minutes and it'll spit out this unbelievable business plan for you and you'll read it going. Wow, which service are you using? Well, that's just ChatGPT, but it's the paid 1. So if you use it's only 20 bucks a month. But if you use the paid ChatGPT, it's a lot more powerful. And it like there's something called Dolly DALLE and that actually does graphics.

51:02 And so, you know, my girlfriend was asking me one day, well, why are you always talking to that ChatGPT thing? You know, what does it actually do? What can it do? I can't believe it does all that stuff. And I said, so let me show you something. And I just in my head, I said, OK, make me a picture of and I want it animated. Make me an animated picture. And you could say an animated picture in the style of Walt Disney or in the style of whatever, but make me an animated picture of a cow riding a bicycle with a frying pan in one hand and a Bunny rabbit on his head. And there was something else. I I just put a bunch of stuff together in this ridiculous picture and within a minute or two I had a picture of a cow riding a bicycle with a Bunny rabbit on his head and a or her head. No, it was 100 year old woman riding a bicycle. That's what it was.

51:53 It wasn't a cow. It was 100 year old woman with a hat and A and a Bunny on top of the hat and a frying pan in one hand and riding the bicycle with the other hand. It was crazy. It was just insane. And she looked at it and she goes where did it get that image? And I said it created it. And you know, it's just, it's hard to fathom like it's hard to just build this all in your head and go, what's going on here, you know? It's it's amazing. You know what little I've I've seen it do. But you know, if you watch any of these finance things programs on TV like CNBC, that's just it's it's what's dominating all their discussions right now. Yeah, picking, picking your stocks and stuff. Oh well there was a company and I can't remember the name of the guy, but his.

52:43 His. They ask you like 10 questions and and you you tell him the answer to your 10 questions and they design AI, designs your portfolio for you and tells you when to get in and get out or just does it for you. Yeah, based on, you know, your risk, you know the risk that you want to take in certain. Things well in your age and what your net. Worth. Is and all of those things, yeah. And but guess what I mean, could you imagine being an analyst right now like an analyst is just going to go, you know, look at the company, review the company, if they're high end enough, they might have a conversation with the C-Suite at that company or whatever. But you know to me AI is just going to run over you. It's got access to so much more information so quickly. Speed is the other thing that.

53:34 AI just went if you're talking about lighting designers, I mean, if you're given a package, here's here's the bill of materials. Put a lighting show together, cabling's no issue, Trussing's no issue, and it'll come up with an amazing thing. And then program it to go with this song and do it quickly because I don't have a lot of time to mess around you. Know that's that's the slippery. Slope hundreds and hundreds of hours programming, yeah. And and and and then they would do the song a different way that night. Yeah, you know, I talked to, I talked to, obviously lots and lots of lighting people, lighting designers, programmers, just incredible and talented artists, right? And that's sort of where it crosses into the slippery slope area.

54:20 You know, everyone wants AI to like design your your to lay out your cable. You know your. I don't know what all the different functions are because I've never actually done it. But the tedious work, the lines of code in your programming where you're just doing stuff over and over again that you have to do every time. But it's got nothing to do with the art, right? You know, to to support you to to act as an assistant to you, but not to just take over your job. Like that's that's where everyone wants it to go. What I don't agree with is like you were saying, writers are losing their minds in Nashville. Guess what I mean, you know the you can't put the genie back in the bottle.

55:07 It ain't going to happen. So you got to find a way to to either you get on the bus and and find a good seat or you're going to get run over by the bus because the bus is coming. You know you can't stop the bus. So I do think there needs to be legislation. I do think that there needs to be. We don't want these AI things to becoming smarter than us too quickly and to to like, you know, you can get into some real voodoo kind of woo stuff where it's like, you know who's the boss, right? Is the human the boss or is the computer the boss?

55:49 And as these things become more and more sentient and smarter, and the models get bigger and they have more information stored, it gets scary. Well, it means you think about a songwriter. You you you tell it to write me a country song with a pickup truck, an ex-girlfriend, a boot. A. Guitar, a dog, sunshine, shooting a rabbit. And it'll come back with an amazing song. And that's how that's how the songwriters of the past used to do it. They just put a bunch of topics together, but it'll do it in, you know, a couple of minutes where they spent maybe, you know, 2 bottles of Jack, a six pack of beer in a month to do it. Yeah, so.

56:35 What a what a difference. Here's the question though. Who gets the publishing rights? I don't know, but there's a bunch of this discussion going on in the Tennessee legislature right now trying to sort this stuff out. I think CMT country radio, I mean country museum. People are working on how, how to what do you do it? Yeah, you know, just like, I don't know if you remember the whole Napster thing, but do you, do you remember Napster? That was the song program. Yeah, it was the first. It was the first like real streaming thing where you could go get music from and it was basically stealing music, you know, because it was, it was taking copies of these songs and making them available to everyone.

57:22 And you know, led by by Lars from Metallica, there was this big push to pretty much throw people in jail and find people and sue people and all this stuff to just block. You can't stream music. Streaming is illegal. We're blocking it. And you know time went on to to to prove that you can't stop technology. You just can't. That can't be the solution, stopping it. What you need to do is harness it. You need to apply some some rules and legislature and safety protocol to it. And that's what happened with streaming music. You know, along came Apple and said we're just going to charge people. And we think that because we're giving them this great device that they can put those songs onto, we're going to create a market to be able to charge people for the music. And then we're going to share that revenue obviously, with the artists.

58:18 And that was such a better model. And artists would tell you if they could, they'd go back to CDs because they made a lot more money selling CDs than they do streaming songs. But you can't, you know, again, it's we've moved past that. It's different. Well, it used to be the the record companies drove the production industry. I mean the touring was was run by the record companies to sell records and and then they've evaporated. They don't, you know, they don't have control of any of that. Anymore. No, no, it's. The artist and and selling tickets and and you know doing it that way, it's well, because. The money dropped out of everything.

58:59 And there was, that's right. And there was a there was a period of time. It's like we don't know what the next steps going to be. And I think investment in live events suffered from it for a while while we were trying to figure out what was the next step. Yeah, it was sell tickets that's that's where you know it. It's come back to SO. In a big way like. Right now. Right now the are are you paying attention to what's going on in the touring world now compared to where it was when when you were in it? Well, I mean, I hear all about Taylor Swift. That's amazing. That's and it seems like concert business. We we did.

59:42 We had her as a opening act for Brad Paisley. She had, we were the first time I saw her was in Chattanooga. We rented the Civic Center up there to do rehearsals. So it was Kelly Pickler. It was Taylor Swift opening for Brad Paisley. The Pickler got up by herself, did her few songs, and then Taylor came on with her with her boots, her little parachute dress and a guitar by herself in a empty room, you know, a 10,000 seat room, empty. And she owned the building. I mean she had something and you know what? That's something I'm talking about that that you just, you don't see very often.

1:00:23 I I look in my past like Johnny Cash would walk in the room. We did the same kind of charisma and it was it was not long when people were coming to see Taylor Swift, not Brad. Yeah, yeah, well that seems to have worked out OK. And you, you remember, you spoke of Jonathan Jonathan's meeting. Was he did the design for Taylor's first solo tour, headline tour and did the lighting design and the video content. And then, you know, Jonathan tells a story. He only wants to do it once with somebody he wants. He wanted to move on and you know, gosh, what an amazing thing to follow. But I don't know if he could have kept up with it.

1:01:04 Well, he also, and I don't know that he'd love me sharing this, but he told me that she was tough, she was difficult. And he, he said Madonna got nothing on her. You know, she was tough. And I don't know if it was because of her mom or what, but apparently it wasn't the easiest situation to to work in. So I I saw yesterday, today for she's the first entertainer to become a billionaire by entertainment alone. Not investing money that they made in the entertainment, but by just entertainment alone. Damn, that's incredible. And.

1:01:45 Not that many years, really. No kid. No, kid. That's wild. And you know, that's a phenomenon. Like she's gone beyond being a performing artist or whatever. It's a phenomenon. It's like that Justin Bieber thing that happened for a while and except way bigger, you know, Michael Jackson. Yeah, it's it's, you know, it's that phenom sort of area and it'll burn out. I mean, at some point I'm guessing that that her massive, you know, whatever they call them, Swifties will either move on to the next thing or or something. Like I just can't imagine she's going to be this big forever. Maybe she is, maybe I'm wrong, but it's pretty cool.

1:02:27 It's pretty cool to see, you know, and just the numbers that are being generated out there, not just by her, but in general by touring, is just crazy mind blowing. Touring you know tickets I I pulled up a a flyer the other day and it was Atlanta Rhythm Section. It was 50 year anniversary of the the Von Braun Civic Center here in Huntsville and the first rock concert I was involved in and the tickets were $4.00 five at the door and and there was 5000 people at that show I remember that was part of the settlement so 5000 * 5 dollars $25,000 there was 4 bands sound, lighting staging rental of the building $25,000 was the was the total. Ticket.

1:03:16 Get in and in that. How? How did that happen? My buddy was in Memphis for The Beatles when they played played there years ago. What about 50 years ago? And his ticket was $6 to see the beat. Jesus, isn't that incredible? Can you imagine what a Beatles ticket would be today if if, like, even if it was just, you know, well, I don't know that you could even do do a Beatles reunion with two of them anymore. But you know, if they were alive and they were to come back together and do one show or 10 shows or whatever, I can't even imagine what that number would look like. No, no. Unbelievable. People would pay any amount of money. You know, 'cause their fans are all 60 year old rich people now, or 70 year old rich people.

1:04:05 Well, you, you know some of the numbers you're hearing from Taylor Swift $5000 Tickets, VIP here. I mean crazy. Crazy. Incredible. Incredible. Well, and any and even just somebody. It ain't even just her, you know. It's like I had Dan Brown from Metallica on the podcast last week. Well, actually, I think it launched today. I think it comes out today. You know, Metallica, if you would have told me in the 70s that Metallica would still be playing in 2024 and one of the biggest bands in the world, if not the biggest band in the world, I would have been like, you're crazy, you're out of your mind. I didn't see, like, longevity to me was not something that, you know, went along with Metallica and it's just unbelievable. They are a machine that is a massive business, The Metallica machine, you know, it's incredible and you know they're going.

1:05:01 They're doing stadiums for two nights. They'll do two nights at the same stadium and sell it out both nights, big time. And they do two different sets on the two different nights so that they're enticing the crazy fans to go to both of them, you know, and I don't know how much the tickets cost, but probably on the secondary market, the, the scalpers or whatever, they're probably 1000 bucks or more to see Metallica and good seats. That's crazy. The money's insane right now. It's so big. And you know, if you, if you listen to Live Nation, it's just going to get bigger. Like they think that for the entertainment value that is being given, they're leaving money on the table.

1:05:44 The price is too low for concert tickets right now. And I'm like, what? You got to be kidding me. But, you know, they look at the average sticker price on a ticket and when you talk about average, you're talking, you know, a lot of those are below average. They're in nightclubs or very small theaters or small venues or whatever. And then you've got, you know the Taylor Swift's and and Bruce Springsteen's who are $5000 tickets or whatever, but they're saying the average is I think like $65 or something for a concert ticket. I haven't seen any shows that I would like to see that are $65. They're they're all $100 or more. Everything, everything. There is no cheap seats anymore.

1:06:27 No, not really. Not really. You know, another one that surprised the hell out of me, and I talk about it often, is Mötley Crüe doing stadiums and getting $400.00 for tickets? Again, that just wasn't one that I would have said I saw coming. No way. But hey, God bless, good luck, Good on them. You know that they're still able to pull that kind of money. No kidding. Times have changed. And and and that's that doesn't matter. It doesn't matter if they sell music anymore as long as they sell tickets for people to come to the show and give them an experience. Yeah, it seems like, I mean, I've been out of this for for a few years now, but it seems like all the equipment suppliers, they're doing very well.

1:07:09 You know, the rental houses, putting the gear out there, like you just talked about Mike Kean's new company. It sounds like everybody's busy. They're all scurrying around looking for more gear right now. Not as much now. Like, it's pretty much since COVID. Like you went through these waves after COVID. You know, the first wave was things started trickling out and opening up in early 21 pretty much. And those people were able to get gear because there was a lot of sellers out there who were willing to like even manufacturers had stagnant inventory that they've been sitting on since early 2020. So they were happy to cut deals to get that stuff out of their warehouse rental companies.

1:07:58 A lot of them were broken behind with their bank payments and getting hit over the head by the banker and they couldn't pay their rent and all that stuff. So they were happy to sell off some of their used stuff So early. It was it was pretty easy and like the prices on used gear was were pretty low. But then it started to just get wild and by the time you got late 21, early 22, it was just gangbusters. It was like, you know, what do you got sitting still? I'll buy them all. You know how many of those can I get? I'll take them all. And people were just hoarding gear, like just getting whatever they possibly could. And one of the examples I use often is the price of a used grand. MA Two was during COVID in 2020, was about between 12 and 15,000 depending on where it came from and what kind of condition it was in and stuff. 12 to 15 grand for a a old beat up MA 2. Those went during 22 and 23 as high as like 35 grand for a used MA two.

1:09:09 And today, they're hovering around 2020 grand. Well, see that? That's that's the neat thing about Gear Source. You have that data. Yeah, what? What that gear turns out and what you know what you can sell it for. What the average price is? I mean, that's some valuable data right there, Marcel. Yeah. If you can figure out how to get the value out of that, let me know because I've always wondered, you know, because we have 20 years of that. By the way, we know all the different trends for all the different like if you asked me, you know an Intellibeam, what was pricing like or a Cyber Light, what was pricing like on a Cyber Light? I could tell you when I started the business just shortly after because I wasn't collecting much data in the beginning.

1:09:53 But I could tell you how much it was then and what it went down to and how much they are today. And I could show you the line that that trend looked like. And but yeah, so, you know, so gear by 22 and 23 what was happening is now you had sort of a clashing of all kinds of problems, supply chain problems, just capacity problems like build capacity. You know, companies just couldn't build enough gear to hit this demand that the market suddenly had. And so everybody was trying to ramp up their, their capabilities to produce product, to build product. But you couldn't be crazy about it because everyone knew that this wasn't a permanent growth spurt in the market.

1:10:40 Like it wasn't going to go up by 3X and then stay there. It was going to go up by 3X and then drop back down to maybe 1.21 point 5X, right. So you didn't want to just go build bigger factories and and lots of buildings and all this stuff and invest huge money into it, but but then what's happened? So now things like the MA3 console has like a year back order on it for the most part. Digico consoles, like a lot of the newer digital consoles, a lot of the big D&B or L acoustic sound systems, line array systems, there's just all kinds of crazy delays, like a year, a year and a half delays on a lot of things.

1:11:25 And think of running your company, you know, and you've got to now make a decision, first of all that I'm going to go spend $2,000,000 on this new speaker system that I got to have. And then they tell you that you got to wait a year and a half to get it. So now what do I do? You know, how do you plan for that? How do you work around that kind of stuff? It's really hard. It ain't easy. Man, Oh, sure. Yeah, that's that's the thing about business. You're always trying to right size your business people you know equipment the size of infrastructure training everything is you're always right sizing. You're always, you know, trying to look around that corner and see what's next and and making sure that when you get around the corner you're prepared. Business is, is test.

1:12:09 Well, that's what all this data that AI is giving you getting back to that give me that information to make some of those decisions that you know, we used to do it, you know spreadsheet back when it was a piece of paper and a pencil. Yeah, Yeah. No, you're right. You're right. It's it's, it's incredible stuff. But you know, one of the things like you were always sort of, you know, in line with like a, a Bobby Cannon where you just knew how to buy product, you knew how to rent product and you knew how to sell it and you knew when to sell it. And you and Bobby Cannon I think were two of the guys who were who were really good at that.

1:12:51 And I think it, it probably helped to enable you to you know to build a really great business that ultimately attracted the likes of of A4 Wall who I'm sure overpaid for your company because knowing you you you figured that one out too. But, but have you ever thought about what that process like that you used to do so well with with like high end in particular, you were one of the better high end guys out there who just knew what to buy, when to buy, how much to buy and when to sell it and and get top dollar for it and all that kind of stuff. Have you ever thought about what that looks like today 'cause like Cyberlight, buy it for 5000, rent it for 250 a week and sell it for 4500 or whatever right today? You know, fixture A, fixture X, whatever it is, it doesn't even matter is $12,000.

1:13:51 You rent it for 150 or $200.00 and you sell it for $5000. It's just a whole different thing. And you need, by the way, you used to need 24 of those to put out a country act. Now you need 400 or 600 of them. That's right. It it, you know the relationship I had with high end I couldn't duplicate with other manufacturers. They needed, they needed me, us and and we needed them it was it was a very good relationship. So you know trying to to to make use all the angles you had depreciation, you had you know the rental income and you had selling used equipment. There's a fine line between when to do that and when not to do that.

1:14:42 If you do it too soon you lose income. I tried to be cutting edge with a lot of that stuff and because of that I'd get a special deal after high end kind of lost their their their way there for a while. It was hard to get that relationship with any other manufacturer. Verilight wouldn't play that way. Some of the European companies wouldn't play that way. So it was you had to reinvent it and and then you had to make it just on on rentals and depreciation that would you know sell it for a little bit more than what your book value is and move on. And if you hold a piece of gear too long you throw it in that dumpster. I mean we also cyberlize people were just throwing them in the dumpster.

1:15:25 It wasn't even worth taking them out of the road boxes, throw them in the dumpster, in the road box, what do you do with them They won't rent. So it was it's a it's a fine line which is where you know people like your company came out and and got rid of some of that stuff. I don't know where it all goes. You know you you probably have a better idea where where gear is it? Does the United States used gear go to South America or? It's not like that really. Yeah. You know, I think it used to be a little bit like that where you just dumped your garbage into Mexico or South America. But they're very savvy markets now. You know, they're buying cutting edge latest stuff too. And so they're not just dumping India, same thing.

1:16:08 You know, they've even created laws in some of these countries where you can't dump your used junk into those countries. And so everyone is is a lot more cutting edge now. Like, you know, occasionally we'll get somebody who will put 100 Mac 2000s up on the site or whatever. And you know, if they're 200 bucks each, eventually you're going to find somebody who just goes, yeah, you know what? I can put these things to work in my crappy little market here I'm in or whatever. But for the most part, you know, it's newer gear is what people are looking for. They're not looking for old cyber lights or old Mac 2000s or old Vera lights or whatever. That stuff just gets devalued to a point where it's almost not even worth shipping, You know, because sometimes the shipping is more than the two VL three thousands in a flight case or whatever, you know?

1:16:57 You you pay 300 for the for the fixture and the light bulbs 350. Yeah, yeah, that happens too. Yeah, well, and that happened for a long time with like studio colors. Use studio colors the the motherboard. You know, if the motherboard went the second week that you had these used studio colors, it was like, I don't know what it was 1200 bucks or something until Mercury started the light parts thing and and got the cheaper versions of them. But you know it it's it's an interesting market and anytime I see like people enter the used gear market and this is by no means patting my own back or anything, but they think it's easy and they don't pay any attention to all that data that goes into it and all that history and experience and knowledge and everything else. You know, we know where all the bodies are buried because we've been doing this over 20 years now and we've got the we've got the data on it.

1:17:52 And besides that, if you want to be really successful with used gear, and I tell people this all day, every day because people now have just gotten lazy and they'll pop it up on Facebook Marketplace or something. And the the challenge with that is you're going to sell it to someone who can drive over to your shop and pick it up. If that's what you're aiming to do, then do that, You know, go ahead, put it on Facebook Marketplace. I'm not adding much value. If you're going to sell it to the guy down the street unless he hates you and he wants to buy it through a third party, great, I can help you with that. But which I used to always do by the way in Vegas when Four Wall and PRG wouldn't do business together. So Canon would come to me and buy 100 lights from PRG and it was the craziest thing, you know, like they wouldn't sell them to to Canon, but they'd sell them through me to Canon, OK?

1:18:45 Isn't that something? Yeah. So you know it's it's like the the magic now is having lots of markets. We do business in over 100 countries today and so in in all kinds of different currencies as well and and we know the taxation laws in all of these different places and we manage all of that craziness. And so, you know, if you want to be able to sell that gear most effectively or efficiently and get the highest cost, it's good to go to a global market 'cause sometimes like, I don't know if you remember, but like back probably 20 years ago now, 15 years ago, VL, three thousands were the hottest thing on the used market. They were selling like if you were a good dealer, you could buy them use them for six months and then sell them for more than you paid for them still or use them for a year and sell them for more than you paid for them, especially into Europe. And and it was because of the dollar exchange with the euro and and because it was AUS made product and blah blah, blah. Similar thing right now with MA consoles, we we get people buying MA threes in Europe, using them for six months, putting them on the used market and getting what they paid for them, if not a little bit more, selling them into the US you know that happens quite often right now. That's what we used to do with the whole hogs. You know, they would bring them over high. This was before high end took over. I think it was still when Bobby

1:20:16 Gordon was. Was. Yeah, by the way, Bob, Bob, if you're listening, Dave's really sorry for doing that. Doing what? Gray market consoles, bringing in consoles from Europe. He's really sorry, honestly. No, I mean we would we would buy from Bobby that's the point I'm making and and and and use them for six months and sell them for a little bit more than he was buying them for. Yeah, we were buying them for them. It it it just, it just wasn't enough product at that point because that was a revolution. The whole hog changed everything. Sure did and. And I it's we have a bunch of them in rental. Yeah, well, it changed more than just the technology side of it. It created a market for programmers, you know, prior to that, like prior to the whole hog, you didn't really see moving like programmers getting 200 and 5300 bucks a day like that didn't really happen.

1:21:16 Certainly some, some very specific ones. Virtuoso or was it virtuoso? Yeah, or artisan. Or whatever icon, whatever, whatever barrel I had. Yeah, some of those specialty guys and stuff. But it created this whole market for whole Hog programmers. And I know, you know, ten of these guys, 1520 of these guys who created really great careers just from going, hey, I can figure this thing out and learn how to do it. And they were nightclub guys or whatever, and suddenly they were moving like programmers and made careers from that. So yeah, that was, that was a cool moment. But I guess the question I was asking like, could you imagine the differences in running your Business Today with the economy of the Business Today? And so, you know, more income on the income side because it's so batshit crazy busy out there and stuff, but a hell of a lot more resources to commit on the other end as well. Like, I mean, is it a business that it'd still make a lot of sense to jump into today?

1:22:24 I don't know. Well, I I used to tell people we weren't, we weren't in the lighting business, we were in the asset management business and banking. I mean if I didn't have a a good relationship with with my bank and call them up and say look I need 100 grand, I'm going to buy some lights for XYZ tour and he would say OK come get the money. If I had to go through Mother may I financial statements the whole bit. Every single time I did that, I I couldn't move as fast as I needed. You. Know and some of these deals they say well what if what if the tour flops. I said well then they'll chop it up and rent it to other people. You know it it it took a while to train the bank to understand the business and and you know if they didn't get beat and we we both did what we agreed to do. It was a good relationship and and had to work with some of these manufacturers.

1:23:16 Look I I can't pay you in 30 days but I'm pretty sure I can pay you in 90 days. Yeah they would work with you. Yeah. I I don't know if those same relationships are are going on now, but I would think. So they are. Yeah, they are you. Know it kind of has to be. Yeah, no, but I mean that number has just the, the, the baseline has shifted so much now 'cause that 100 grand is now maybe 2,000,000, you know or or or whatever that number is today. So it's it's a lot more information they're going to want from Mr. Millie to hand you the 2 million that you need to go buy that gear than it was for the 100,000. Yeah we we would do a obviously didn't have that turned off we technology I don't know what to turn on and turn off man I got it's all good buttons here it's all good but the but the relationship with with banking I mean it it's they they say well I'm going to give credit to to you David Miley but who the hell is Brad Paisley and does he pay his bills. I said well you know I signed a contract with him saying he will and I said what if his record stinks and it doesn't do any good.

1:24:31 Well, you know there's there's a risk thing all the way up and down that food chain. We're all in this together or not and you know it it, it took a minute to get those relationships. But I I would think that was one of the things that that made us strong was banking relationships and that we treated it as a a a real business, not a lighting company. We could have been it could have been scaffolding. It could have been you know wheelbarrows we were renting like a you know an Ace Hardware kind of rental store and and approached it the same way. They seem to make better money return than some of the lighting product. I think some people put lighting or or dead in the in the old days they would they would put it out there just so they could say they did.

1:25:20 Brad Paisley's lighting Not making money Doing it. That helped them with other customers, that was. That was extremely common and it still happens today like especially you know some of the larger companies occasionally will will say we got to have this deal, you know at all costs or whatever. And you know, that's really hurt some companies along the way too, you know, going after a deal that they probably shouldn't have taken and and it cost them millions of dollars and and hurt them bad, but. Well there's ways to get in there and then and then fill out your contract in detail and then say well if you want to make changes this is what happens and and it's it's kind of don't get caught more than a couple of times or or you will be out of this. Yeah.

1:26:03 There's education on the whole thing, yeah. But we, we, like I said, we, we weren't really a lighting company at some point. We didn't do designs. We were just a asset manager. Yeah, that's what we did, yeah. But move a year round. Do you think though, like knowing what you know and you, you ran your business for a number of years, but today do you think you could compete as like a quote mom and pop or would you have to be a private equity backed business that has access to quick and relatively painless capital or flexible capital or whatever you want to call it? I don't think, I don't mom and pop thing could do local business, little regional business, but I don't think you could do global business without doing the way you just described.

1:26:56 Yeah, I mean I I missed the opportunities to take Nashville bit acts to to Europe or something and I couldn't pull that off because I didn't have an office over there and those that did could pull that off. And and if you did not have that kind of relationship or knowledge or understanding or or reach, I didn't have the reach. I think people that are in the the top echelon of the entertainment business, they need that reach and without it, you can't do it. I mean, PRG was kind of the first really global equipment person. Yeah, they were everywhere and and because of that they got that business that nobody else could touch. So but but I mean you know I guess the question answers itself because if you look at all the biggest companies, PRG 4, Wall, Solo Tech Christie, you know basically all of them and solo tech.

1:27:55 I had Mickey Kurbishly on a couple weeks ago and he said no we're not private equity backed. But you know in a sense I guess he's right because it's a private individual bronfman. But to me that's private equity backed. You know you're backed by a very deep pocket investor is is your main owner or whatever And but if you're not private equity backed, I think you're really going to struggle to get some of these big national or like you said international touring acts. And you know there's some exceptions like bandit, upstaging, premier, global. You know, there are still some really large touring companies and you know, upstaging obviously being the standout that they are, they're, they're just an incredible company, still one of the best lighting companies in the world probably and somehow managed to like you.

1:28:52 But then they scaled a lot bigger I guess, but they managed to build a very competitive lighting company without having to bring in money from private equity. And so, yeah, it's it's interesting because. Well, the upstaging is an example. Did trucking build lighting? Or did lighting build trucking? It's a great example. Yeah. It's a good question. Yeah, that's a good question. They're both. Pretty successful. They're both of them are really successful. Yeah, yeah. But, you know, talk about assets, like, OK, we need some new trucks. How much is a truck and how long does it take to get one and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right?

1:29:33 Like, these are such big businesses now with such big numbers that you got to write checks for and stuff. It's scary. You know, it's a wacky business now. Like you got to you know it's it's definitely beyond my financial skills to think like some of these you know Robert Carone or or you know just any of these these big time guys who are sitting in those positions going OK, we need $100 million in CapEx over the next two years or whatever. How are we going to manage that? And it's like, whoa. There. I'm back. Cool. We're charging. Cool. So you've been fixing up your house?

1:30:14 Well, we we moved into a fixer upper and spent like 2 years painting and scraping and you know making it ours and we're we're we're pretty much done now. I got some landscaping to do. You did it yourself. You always have something in the house. You did it all yourself or? Oh, no, no, no, no. We hired contractors. So did you have to move out every time they were doing big stuff or? Well, when we first bought it, we lived in our RV for like 3 months and then we did 1-1, the master bedroom area and then we moved into it while they were doing the rest of the house. Then you'd wake up, there'd be eight people walking around, painting and scraping, putting up gutters and that kind of thing. And that went on for almost 2 years. It was like I said, it was a real fixer upper, but it's turned out nice.

1:31:04 You need to come visit. I'd love to, yeah. I don't. You know what I'm I'm in the middle of trying to make a life, big life decision on whether I should drive up to my house in Canada this year or fly like I normally do. And last year I sort of did a hybrid. I I shipped my car to Chicago and then drove from Chicago. I went and visited some friends along the way, but drove from Chicago up to to my house in Alberta and that worked out really well, You know, because it's about a 2020 hour drive or 22 hour drive or something from from Chicago, which you know that's a couple of long days but not that terrible and it was OK. But we're thinking about doing the whole drive this year, like driving all the way from here up to Alberta, which is around 40 hours of driving.

1:31:58 And if we do, I'll definitely plan to come through Alabama. So that'd be the beginning of June. Well, Nashville's right. We're we're 90 miles from Nashville. Yeah, yeah. Real close. But I'd figure out how to map it so I could come by and and sit down and have a couple of beverages and some barbecue and then get the hell back on the road. There we go That. 'D be fun. Yeah. You playing a bunch of golf still? I I play two or three times a week if the weather permits. You know, I I don't seem to be getting any better and I don't seem to be getting much worse. So I I do enjoy.

1:32:41 I do enjoy it. Yeah, I was mentioned in the in the intro that your new occupation is stealing money from your golf buddies in in bets. So. Yeah, that's my part time job right now. Yeah, playing golf. Yeah, you know, I remember you used to be a big runner, right? I did. I have a knee problem now, so I don't do very much of that. I do bike riding some, but I ran a few marathons and when I lived in Nashville, I ran the Nashville Half Marathon, which was a fun event. They had a band about every mile set up on a little stage. So as you ran with, you know, 5000 people, they had entertainment through the whole city.

1:33:24 It was fun. A lot of fun. Yeah, you know, the reason I remember you're a runner is the weirdest reason. And and you're going to laugh when I tell you this story, but you and I ended up on the same golf for some at an LDI event or one of an industry event, call it. And I think it might have been LDI and it might have been the Alice Cooper one even. And there was a sponsor or something like a whole sponsor there or something, who was selling technical socks and I didn't. Even know there. Was I didn't even know there was such a thing. And I ended up in the golf cart with you for, I don't know three holes. Probably getting a full on education on technical socks for running and how people get injuries because of the socks they wear and stuff.

1:34:10 And I I don't know why I never forgot that conversation. But every time I try to go run and I'm like, oh, gotta get some good socks, you know I gotta get the right socks. David told me so. Well, I I remember a little bit more about that but, but I didn't think it was, it was they were stagehand socks and I ordered some and put my the name of the company on them and and gave socks to people. It's almost cheaper than a than a golf shirt or something and people wanted them. I mean they were just competent at the bits to get you know two or three pairs of socks because everybody needed them, right. And and I remember they were made very, very well. They supported them, yeah, or whatever. So.

1:34:53 Yeah, one there was a left and a right. Like, I never even saw socks that had a left and a right, and I think those ones had a left and right. They did. They did. They sure did. Yeah, and I just. I got a full on education on socks though on the golf course which was fun and I don't, you won't remember this but I remember because it haunted me for probably it's probably why I quit playing golf altogether. Not to mention my terrible swing and bad attitude. But we were on the 18th green and of course everyone's there, right? And I got to hit the putt to, I don't know, win the hole or win a bet or something. I don't remember what it was.

1:35:35 And all the upstaging guys were standing right there and they were like, Marcel, I'll bet you 50 bucks you can't hit this. And like, everybody's throwing money at me to hit this putt and I probably missed it by like frigging 2 feet or something. Like it was just, it was so bad. The putt was so bad. I was so nervous and probably half drunk by then too. But I remember that last. I remember that last, that last putt. It was just brutal and I missed it so. I missed those golf tournaments. That was always fun. At LDI, it was fun. Why don't you go into an LDI and play in the golf tournament? Just, well, I've been. I've been to a couple of them. I had the, you know, one of the things I did in in Anaheim, I guess that was not that would have been my LDI.

1:36:20 It was what's the other one? Nam. Nam. Yeah. I went to the Nam, went in and presented Jonathan with his. Oh. His Parnelli award? Yeah, that was fun. Yeah. Hung out and saw a bunch of people. Same faces. A lot of the same faces, yeah. Yeah. I guess once you get in this industry, you you can't get out. It's it's a disease. You get stuck with it for sure. Yeah, I know it's that that I actually missed LDI last year. I think it was either the first or second one since the very beginning of LDI that I missed. And I thought, ah, it's no big deal. I don't need to be at it. And I was knee deep in in fixing a couple of big problems and I was just dying the whole time because everybody was putting on social media that this is the best show ever. And what a great show and all this killer new technology. And everybody was just so pumped about it and I was like, damn it.

1:37:17 And so I'm definitely going this year, but you should go, you should go and just play in the golf tournament and just say hi to people. I'll do it. Yeah, that'd be fun. So what is this Repo Man's story? I'm sure I've heard it. Repo man. Yeah. So I I don't know where that came from, but somebody said that it's it's his. Some TLS lore. Jessica Laney that used to work for me, now works for for a while in Nashville, tells it, tells a story, which means it keeps on coming up. Years ago we did a a comedy club in Birmingham, AL and put a dimming Demian control system and lighting package and they let's say it's 20 grand.

1:38:09 I'm trying to, I can't remember all the details about it. So they they give us $5000 and we get all the stuff order, we get it installed and and they owe us 15 grand. They said well we don't have the money but we got a bunch of shows coming up that will pay you. So you know, two months later we haven't got any more money. It's Christmas. I know that they're selling tickets because they have an online site where you can see what how many seats are sold and that kind of thing. So I called him up. I said, well, I need, I need some money. He says, oh, well, we're going to sell all these shows out. We've got like three or four shows in a row sold out. So anyway, they're just, they're just playing me along. So I get in the car, I drive to Birmingham, it's about 100 miles and I get there at like 9:00 in the morning and I knock on the the the door, the, the people, the clean up crews, they're cleaning up.

1:38:59 I said oh, I'm with with TLS. I'm here to work on that lighting console. That's that thing broke last night and they wanted me to come in here early. So I'm talking to the the clean up crew. So they let me in, take me to the the control room and I I take the Control Board. I open the dimmer rack and I pull a fuse or two out, close it all back up. And I I walk out, said, yeah, I'm going to run this over to my shop and work on it and I'll be back in about an hour. So I put it in my car, I drive it to the shopping center about a half a mile away and then I walk back. I said, gentlemen, call, call the police. Your console just got stolen and you're not going to have a show tonight because you don't have any lighting in the whole auditorium. I got your control console.

1:39:45 So they said, well, you can't do that. I said we'll call your attorney, call the police. I said I don't have any money to pay my my employees Christmas bonuses or year end bonuses, so I might as well spend it in jail. And about two hours later all the all the owners were there, their lawyer was there, the police was sitting in the car out front. Nobody did anything and they said, well how much do you need? I said, well I you know, you owe me 15 grand. How about half of it? So I I counted out $7500. I wanted cash. They gave me 7500. I went over, walked back to my car, drove it over, put their console back in. And then drove home. I never saw the other 7500, but I did get that much.

1:40:28 And Oh my God, when? It went into bankruptcy about nine months later. That same lawyer that was their lawyer was representing him in the bankruptcy made sure that nobody else bid on the gear. I bought my own gear back and I think ended up selling it for like the Tupelo little. Theatre or something. Oh my God, that's a crazy story. That's not the way you collect on unpaid bills though. Yeah, I could have really gone to jail for that. But, you know, it worked. Well, you also could have, you also could have you know things could go bad like you never know who these owners are sometimes you know and sometimes they're sketchy characters and and you know you put them out of. Business pretty locked me in a room and started torturing me.

1:41:11 Correct. Yeah. Bad things could happen. So it's probably. I know people who have done that many, many times. You know, we used to, when I did club installs and stuff, we used to make it real easy for us to go in and shut off the system. This was before you could actually remotely log into a system or anything. But we made it real easy so that we could shut them down if we needed to, to get paid. And but this was in Canada, like in Canada, most people paid you. You didn't have a real problem getting paid, usually. Well, this you have to do a equipment lean and all this and it would take months and months. It still took months to get the remainder of the money and and they did come out.

1:41:52 I had a little bit at the end, but it took, you know, a year or so, year and a half to make it all happen. Yeah, I try not to get in a situation like that, but you know, it's, it's business. You can't help. You know what one of the one of the weirdest deals you and I ever did was? You sold a lighting package to the Grand Biloxi Casino and it got swamped and flooded in one of the Hurricanes. That's right. And completely destroyed. And so it was going through legal stuff and eventually the insurance company hired a a salver to get rid of so that they could tear the building down basically. And so the salver got in touch with me somehow and I had a company with in partnership with a local production company here where we would buy inventory from like somebody going out of business or whatever like like that deal that you did when you bought your own gear back.

1:42:51 We'd buy stuff like that and then clean it up and and put it for sale on Gearsource. And we don't do it anymore, but I did this in the past. And so the salver said, hey, you know, we need you to come in and take a look and and just make us an offer and we'll give you, we'll give you one day of daylight to get everything you can out of the building. And so we sent a crew up there to, well, actually my partner went first and just took a look to see how difficult it was going to be and how much stuff he felt like could be pulled out of there. And him and I talked a lot while he was there and he's like, well, I could take this, but it's going to take two hours probably to just get it disconnected or whatever. Or I could take this in 5 minutes and it's not worth as much money, but let's maybe.

1:43:36 So we started looking at the whole thing saying we'll start here, we'll take this, this, this, this, this, this, this and if we've still got time, we'll take this right. Well anyways one of the things we got was like I think it was 36 VL, three thousands washes and and spots and and remember this place not only had it the back wall been blown out and it it was now water coming in and rain and storm and everything else. But it had sat there for a few months since the hurricane while insurance companies and stuff fought with lawyers. And so we didn't know how good or bad the stuff was. We we basically had all these Vera lights sitting on the floor of the shop.

1:44:22 We hadn't had time to look at them yet and you made me an offer to buy them all. And so just guessing on the math, you probably sold them to them for 75108 thousand dollars. You bought them from me I think for two grand each or something, for the whole lot you used. I remember you telling me you sent me a message or something and you said, hey, thanks for that deal. I used all but like four of them on a show this weekend, like three days after they arrived at your shop or whatever, you were able to put them all out on a show. Long story short, you came back to me, I don't know, a year later or whatever and we resold those lights and I think you got like 35104 grand each forum, so that probably worked out to be a pretty good deal for you.

1:45:08 It it was actually the Beau Rivage and the whole back wall of the stage was blown out. I think that was Katrina. And yeah, I think that's just hung hung in there for almost a a year or six months anyway before the stuff was taken down. Some of it was pretty rough. The salt air and copper don't like each other and the salt air starts to corrode on it but we we took every single one of them apart, cleaned them up all the all the time the control boards and stuff. Some of them were were rusted or corroded and but you know that's the business we were in is is is you know keeping moving lights working and I had the people, the trained people, the parks it was and it was the product that we had a bunch of already.

1:45:55 So it. Yeah, no that that was a that was an interesting deal and you know there was AV Dosk sound system in there and L Acoustics V Dosk sound system that I sold to to Greg at Clearwing. Like I don't know a week after this whole deal went down and you know it ended up being a pretty good deal for us. But it was also a really good deal for all of the people that we we sold all of the Big Lots of stuff to right in the beginning because they all did really well on it. I think I actually resold that sound system for Greg as well, so. Well, there you go. You sell something two or three times, you got to make money on it. It all totally worked too, like even all the amprax all the amps were good and like the stuff was only as I recall it was only like 6 months old or something when the when the hurricane hit that place. They had a whole bunch of LED battens and I don't remember the the brand or whose they were, but but I I promise you they weren't.

1:46:52 They weren't three months old. He had like 20 of them. LED battens about 3 foot long. I I don't remember those. Borrowing from Fred Mckeesy. Yeah, I can't remember his. Company. Yeah. Theatrical something. I know who you I. Think I got his last name right, Fred Mckeesy. Oh no, I know who you're talking about. Yeah. Anyways, move on. 2 old guys trying to remember somebody's company. Name I remember, I know. Yeah, but you know that that was just a wacky, interesting deal. And and again, where everyone won like it. You know, I like deals where everybody wins. I guess the insurance company didn't win, but everybody else won.

1:47:38 So yeah, but it was just nutty because literally we got like about 12 hours of daylight to rip out everything we could. And it was a nasty environment because you know, again it was there was you know mold and and. Where did you get the crew to, to go in there and get the stuff out from? Down here, my partner through my partner down here, we we sent a crew up from down here so they they drove a truck up there and it might have even been two trucks if I remember. Yeah, I remember I flew into Miami and rented the rider. A little cube truck went to your place, I guess in Fort. Lauderdale, Yeah. His place?

1:48:19 Yeah. His place, that's where I looked it over and said I'll take that, that, that, that. Let's go. Yeah, yeah. No, it was it was great. It was fun. Well, I don't know. You got anything else? Did I miss anything? Did we forget to talk about anything? That that we can say publicly probably not. I think we've talked through it well, you know for inviting me and and I just wanted to say one thing that that that you doing these these webinars with all these different people has put the history of our industry so that people can see what it what it took to to get where we are. And I I I do respect you greatly for having taken the time and vision to put it all together. Thank you so much.

1:49:05 Thank you so much for saying that because that really is what it's about, you know? It's about recording all of these amazing, wonderful, incredible people. So that you know, they're not forgotten and and so that there is some history and there is a A record, you know, including myself, like I'm not going to be here forever. So, you know, at some point, you know, my grandkids or something are going to be listening to all this stuff going. Our granddad was such an idiot, you know, and you know what? To them right now. Here's one of these. Here you go for calling your granddad an idiot. But no, I appreciate you saying that. I I got to tell you, I'm a fan as much as I'm a part of it.

1:49:46 So I love the stories. Like, I got to tell you. Still, probably my number one favorite story ever was when Jonathan told me they the smoke on the water story. Like, still, when I tell people that story, I get goosebumps, 'cause that's how I felt right at that moment when he told me. And it started hitting me going, wait a SEC, where are you going with this? And then, boom, he comes out and and says it. And I was like, you got to be kidding me. You were there, you know, for that song, for what that song was written about. That's the first song I ever played on a guitar, along with 99% of other musicians out there, right?

1:50:26 Wow. So, yeah, stories like that and and you know, your story and and just how businesses were built out of nothing in this industry without a bunch of cash, without a great plan, necessarily. It was just out of passion. It was like, hey, I I love, you know, live music or I love live events or I love lighting or I love, you know, the artistry of all of this. And I just want to be a part of it. And and that turned into a business. And it's not for money usually. It's it's usually for other reasons. And so, yeah, I appreciate you saying that, 'cause it really is what this is all about. I'm certainly not getting rich off of it, so 230 something episodes now and I've enjoyed almost. All that blew me away when when your new lady told me that that was 230 something episodes.

1:51:20 That's amazing, Marcel. Yeah, I didn't know there was that many people in our industry. It's true. Your original one was number. I think 14 is what I said. Earlier 14 or 15, yeah, Yeah. It was episode 14, and that was. I think Henry was still with me at that point. And so, yeah, no, it's fine. I'm glad you took the time to do it. Maybe when Jonathan's back staying with you, we'll do another one with the three of us or something all. Right. Sounds good. Looking forward to it. Thank you. Good job. Thank you so much. All right, buddy. Have a great day. Bye, yeah.