#269 - Donny Lodico

0:01 Here we are episode #269 with Donnie Ledico from Video W. Great company, great guy, long history in our industry. He's been on the podcast before. I think it was episode #172 you can check that out as well. On this particular podcast, we spent way too much time talking about racing like we always do. So if you love racing, you'll enjoy this. If you don't love racing, hopefully you'll still enjoy it. We spent a lot of time talking about lighting as well, so please enjoy this podcast. Geez of Gear episode #269 with Donnie Lodico from Video West. Hello and thank you for coming today to Geysers of Gear episode #269.

1:15 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. Their extensive rental inventory includes moving lights, trust solutions, control consoles, LE DS and an array of weather resistant IP65 rated fixtures. Perfect for outdoor venues. Whether for theater productions, outdoor stadium events or TV film broadcast, Main Light is the party you trust with the gear you want. Committed to quality and reliability, they also provide a robust selection of used sales for their clients. Each item is meticulously maintained, owned by Main Light and comes with a 60 day depot warranty providing you with confidence in your purchase.

2:03 They are strategically located across the US with four locations including Teterboro, New Jersey, Wilmington DE, Nashville, TN, and Las Vegas, NV. They combine the vast resources of a national company with the attentive, personalized service of a local provider. Discover how Main Light can equip your next event by visiting Main light.com today and get a direct quote through their comprehensive online ordering platform. Inspire your audience's imagination with Elation's Pulse Strobe series. Designed to bolster creativity and deliver breathtaking kinetic intensity, the Pulse series empowers designers to create dynamic lighting experiences that captivate any audience. The Pulse series synthesizes mesmerizing lighting experiences with power and precision, allowing designers to create rhythmic, heart pounding lighting effects with effortless control.

3:07 Elation's Pulse series. There you go. We thought we'd try something new today with a video from one of our oldest, greatest, most awesome sponsors, Elation. I hope you enjoyed it. For those of you listening, it probably wasn't that exciting, but for those of you watching, what a great video. So hats off to Elation. Thank you for providing us with that content.

3:48 We enjoy the partnership and we're we're happy to see you moving forward with some really great marketing. And so it is interesting that today's sponsor is Main Light owned by Mike Cannon, who was also the founder of Four Wall. And by the time you hear this, I'm guessing the Four Wall sale will have been announced. I've got really good information and I don't want to leak it in case the transaction hasn't happened yet, but I'm confident I know what's going down, who it's going down with, etcetera. And you know, when you've been around the business as long as I have and some of you have, certainly you find out things you hear through the back channels or you're involved in the back channels or whatever.

4:33 So you know, again, I've always said it's good for the industry, it's good for everyone at 4 Wall. It's certainly going to be good for Mike Cannon because he still owns a piece of that company and you know, we got to move forward. So while that company has been in flux and they are a huge part of our industry, obviously 4 Wall has become a a massive entity and a big part of our industry. We need them to to get this deal done and to be a healthy company. So there you go. And it is time to clean your warehouses. So globally incoming gear is becoming quite plentiful. We're getting a lot of lot of really amazing listings. So you know, I know this sounds like an ad. It's not.

5:18 It is just that time of year, summer is basically over and it's been an incredible, massive, super busy rental season, especially festivals and summer shows and all kinds of summer touring, etcetera. But mostly in Europe, but also Asia, North America, we're just seeing a massive influx of new listings. So what I would say is if you are looking to sell some stuff, move quickly. Get the stuff listed. You don't want to list it later if you don't have to, You know, don't sit on your thumbs. Get to work and get that stuff listed. And remember, we've got this new tool which is called Gear Sync, which allows you to do bulk uploads, bulk management.

6:04 You can list up to 400 items at once using a spreadsheet, very simple. Our team can help you get started on that if if you have any trouble with it. But yeah, get moving. And I don't have much on AI today. I just sat through a webinar on AI which just completely blew my mind. I, I in fact, haven't been able to think about anything else today other than this. I saw some tools that are available now that were just shocking to me. You know, everything from spreadsheet creating spreadsheets, using some AI technology to just all kinds of stuff. I mean, just incredible data management, just lots of really, really cool stuff that's coming on board by now. But one of the news things that I saw on AI is Gavin Newsom in California is blocking deep fakes. He's been in a fairly vocal, fairly, you know, out there fight with Elon Musk.

7:10 And he's blocking deep fakes with this new bill, SB-981, which is aimed at reporting basically anyone putting deep fakes on socials. So if you are creating a video of someone doing something that they didn't actually do, this bill is aimed at putting you in jail. And also there's another second bill which he's pushing, which is SB 942, which is meant to require disclosure of any AI generated content. So if you're putting out AI generated content to your clients or on socials or whatever, you have to say that this is generated by AI.

7:52 That one I'm not so big on because, you know, we use other tools. So if I'm using Excel to come up with a solution, do I have to say this was created using Excel? If I'm using whatever it is, whether it's an art program or an image, you know, some sort of if I'm using Photoshop, this image was created using Photoshop. Do I have to say that from now on. So to me that's going a little bit too far. The deep fake one I would tend to agree with, even though it's typically used for humor and I find most of them very funny and I like the content. Not everyone does and I understand that some of it has has probably become quite problematic, so I get it.

8:36 So there you go. And lastly, by the time you hear this, my, my good buddy Eric Loader, who heads up sales at Adelation is going to be visiting me here in the Canadian Rocky Mountains. He's actually, I believe he's in Vancouver today playing golf with a client or something, but he'll be here for the weekend this week. Looking forward to it, both from a business chat standpoint and also just hanging out with my buddy in the mountains. So I'm very much looking forward to that. So today's guest has been on the podcast before. I believe he was on episode #172 I think it was about exactly 2 years ago. Donnie Ledico is a highly experienced professional with over 30 years work experience in the field of lighting, video, and event management.

9:27 He's got a strong background in corporate events, lighting design, and video production. Currently, Donnie is the Director of Lighting and senior account executive at Video W here in the United States. An incredible moment last year when Video West and Light Switch were honored to help deliver the Virgin Galactic event to the public via a live stream. This might be old. I think that might have been two or three years ago actually. But maybe it was last year. I don't think so. Donnie has toured with some of the biggest names in live event entertainment including George Strait, Goo Goo Dolls, Rush, Peter Gabriel and many more.

10:07 Donnie leveraged this skill set to become an industry leader in creating unique live experiences with his particular talent of protecting the creative vision while still making sure a project is on time and on budget in his spare time. This is unusual, isn't it? He has a passion for Motorsports, including building his son's Kart racing team, LNL Racing. Last on the podcast. As I said two years ago in on episode #172. So please welcome Donnie Ladico back to Geezers of Gear. Donnie Ladico. Hello.

10:49 How are? You. I'm good. How you been, Marcel? I've been really good, Really, really good. I'm I'm still up in the mountains in Canada, enjoying life. It's starting to get a little bitter cold though. It actually, yeah, the mountains are like right around me, above me, beside me, whatever. And they're all getting snow on them. And I'm going, God, that's getting closer. It's getting closer to us. So here in lovely Arizona we had a dip last week and we were actually in the 90s. Oh geez. All this week now we are hitting records from today all the way through next Tuesday. They're they're forecasting we're going to hit records like 100 and 500 and 811 and I'm like, it's supposed to be over. Yeah, it's supposed. To be over, Summer's gone.

11:31 We want to be cool now. In Arizona, is it ever really over, though? Yeah, I mean, you know, it gets cold here in the winter and by cold, nothing like Buffalo where I grew up. But you know, I, I will say, you know, we, we'll wake up to 39° mornings sometimes frost on the pumpkin. Yeah, Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, that's been virtually every morning here is 30 something degrees and, you know, we've been starting fires and stuff, but then in the afternoon it's like 80 or 78 or something like that. So, yeah, I love the weather here. I really do. Like it's, it's absolutely beautiful. I like it a lot. But yeah, it's getting to the point where I'm going, OK, Florida's starting to look good again, you know? Yeah.

12:17 Where do you go? Where do you go that way? Do you do a couple of weeks? A couple of weeks, Yeah, mid-october we're leaving to go back to Florida and then yeah, I mean, we're full on snowbirds now. We come here and that's awesome and and go back in October. So works out great. Nice. Get out of the cold. It's pretty cool. It it well and you know, I love the mountains like I really love I figured it out and and it only took me 50 years or something to really figure it out, but you know, I had it growing up and didn't really care and when I got. To be like. Right when I, when I around 40 is when I was like, I really miss the mountains, you know, and I bought a little condo and then I really loved it and then bought a house, built a house and I just really, really enjoy being up here, especially when it's warm.

13:04 I'm not so big on it when it's cold because I like to do a lot of walking and stuff, but I don't really love being freezing so. Yeah, there is. You don't want to be. Yeah, you don't. You don't want to be walking when it's terribly hot, and you don't want to be walking when it's terribly. Cold. Yeah, exactly, Exactly. So we're going to have to get it out of our system. So we better have quickly the racing talk before we get it much further. So I see, I see your boys logo on your hat. If you put your hair down a little. There it is. So LNL is is obviously. It's Luca Nicholas Lodico. OK, there you go. And how's he doing? He's doing pretty well. We just finished our Junior one summer series, his last race in the summer series.

13:52 He has to move to junior 2 now because he's 13. So he's hit the he's hit the mark where he's forced to go. Yeah, and it's good. He had one full year of racing as a junior one, so he learned a lot. Yeah, we finished six out of a class of 22, which I think is pretty respectful for his first full year. Yeah, real good. And now we're going to go get beat up in junior too because he'll be racing 13 to 16 year. Olds, I believe. There you go. Yeah, that's that's where it gets really, really fun, though the racing gets more aggressive and I don't know Lucas personality because I've never met him, but it it changes the kid. I'm telling you, I remember when, Jeremy, when that switch flipped from, you know, let's just go out and race nicely with everyone to get out of my way.

14:42 You. Know, Yeah, well, yeah. And it's a little bit of me because he's, he's kind of passive, you know, he's like one of the reasons he didn't want to play football, he didn't want to play soccer, you know, just wasn't, wasn't that kid wasn't that aggressive? And then when he started driving, I was like, Luca, you got to get in there and you could have to learn that. Yeah, it's your job. Yeah. To move ahead, right. Yeah. So that was the first, you know, 6-8 months because he raced for about 8 months before we even put him on in an actual race. Yeah, yeah, yeah, We were the same. We were the same. Actually, I was every bit as, call it, naive as you were, you know, when we started, it was just, hey, this is something fun for him to do on the weekends.

15:28 Go out and drive a few laps and keep set of tires, will last set of tires will last us a month. It's not a very expensive sport. It'll be good, you know? Yeah. And then and then it. Yeah, then it changes. Yeah. And eventually somebody somewhere talks you into doing a race and then another one, and then a bigger one and then a bigger one. And next thing you know, you're racing in Europe, you know? There you go. Yeah. But, you know, it is such like, I'll tell you, you know, in racing, all the things that me and my son have done, we really miss those days of karting, especially the early days when everybody was friendly and everybody, hey, you know, your cart doesn't start, let me run my starter over there and help you or whatever. Yeah, I don't know where the starter is. And they're throwing it behind the fence so that you know they don't have to use their starter to help you. Or whatever.

16:20 It was a pretty interesting weekend. Like I said, he ran his last junior one race and the kid Luca has never held first position for as long as he did. He held first position for the whole first half of the race pretty much, you know, really and and ended up dipping down. You know, I think he ended up finishing eighth on that race. Yeah. But the two of the dads came over and they were like, is Luca here? You know, they came over to our pit. Is Luca here? Yeah. Let me go get Luca for you. Go get Luca. And, you know, they came out and they just congratulated and, like, wow, dude. Like you were, you were running it, you know, So I, for me, that camaraderie and then, you know, the boys coming over and that camaraderie was so great, you know, I. Love it so much.

17:08 I love it so much. Well, and there's two things there like 1 is that, you know, again, I went through all these same learning progressions as a dad, but first they have to learn to drive fast by themselves. Well, first they have to learn to drive and they have to learn lines and all the fundamentals and all that stuff. Where to break, where not to break, how to enter a turn, how to exit a turn, all good. And then and then they have to learn to to race up front. And that's a totally different experience racing up front, not only first but even second or third or whatever, where you're the target, you know, Cuz in the 8th or 7th or 6th, you're not so much the target, right? You're just driving around. With a bunch of other things going, yeah. Yeah, but when you're first, second, third, people are fighting target on your back.

17:51 You got a target on your front, on your back, you got targets all over. Do I watch up there or do I watch behind me? And and so secondly, that camaraderie thing. So, you know, my kid grew up racing in South Florida and so the same thing would happen. And I remember a particular time we were in Ocala and Jeremy was probably 8 years old or something, and we grew up racing with Sebastian Montoya, Juan Pablo Montoya's son, along with a lot of other famous people and stuff. But so Juan Pablo Montoya and Sebastian come walking over to our tent. We had just beaten them. I think we finished second and he finished fifth or something because he made a mistake. But they battled pretty hard for a while. And he comes over and he goes, hello, Mr. Fairbairn, Is Jeremy here?

18:39 And I said yeah. And he said, OK, did he have a GoPro in that, in that race? And I said, yeah, he did. And he said, would you mind if Sebastian and I watched his video with him? And I said no, that would be fine. And I grabbed Jeremy. I grabbed a few chairs, put them in front of a computer and they put the video on. And Juan Pablo's telling him, you know, at that tree turn, if you enter a little earlier, you're going to come out a bit faster. And what that's going to do is that's going to carry all the way through to turn 3:00 and you're going to enter turn 3 probably two or three mph faster than if you had, you know, and he's going through this whole thing. I just got goosebumps telling you the story. So he walks away after probably 1/2 hour sitting there talking to the boys and, and telling his son what he did wrong and stuff.

19:27 He walks away and I go, Jeremy, do you realize what just happened? And he goes, yeah, just watch some video and got some coaching from Juan Pablo Montoya. And I said, that's it. And he goes, yeah, I'm going to skateboard or something, right? And he takes off. I'm like, holy shit, the guy's a Formula One freaking champion, you know? And you just, you know, you just got lessons from him and that doesn't mean anything. What the hell is going on here? So. They don't realize. Yeah, they don't realize. When they're there, you're stacking up all of these like lessons and moments and just father, son, family things, you know, like, yeah, it's an. Experience. I really enjoy the evertrade. I really enjoy the time with the track with him. I really do.

20:10 It's it's amazing. I know when I leave work at, you know, 4:00 or 5:00 every day and we're going to the track on a Wednesday night or something, it's like I can't wait. I can't wait to get home and grab the trailer. Let's go, you know. That's, that's awesome. That is so awesome. Well, and it gets even more fun like if you're, if you've got either A-Team or you're at a track where they've, they store your cart for you or whatever. Because there's a lot of that now, because then you don't have to do as much work. So you can go straight from your office to the track to the. Track. Yeah, like that's, that's what we did when he was growing up. But that stuff is that stuff is so awesome. And then wait until you start doing travel stuff, like when you start traveling to races. So many of my memories come from like the Holiday Inn in Ocala, FL or the the Holiday Inn in Indianapolis or, you know, whatever.

20:58 Like all these weird little towns out in the middle of nowhere where you're staying at these hotels and getting to the track at 6:30 in the morning and stuff like. Yeah. I have so many positive memories of all of that stuff, like people thought I was nuts wasting my weekends away in these weird places in the middle of nowhere, but such a cool experience. With your yeah, we're hoping we're hoping maybe next year will be the the year he starts traveling. Who knows, maybe this year, maybe 2025, yeah. We'll see what happens. We'll see how his how junior two goes. He's got a lot of a lot of learning to do with the new cart. Yeah. Well, if and when you're ready, let me know. And you know we can, we can probably set you up with a team in Florida and and for very little cost. Have you come in and do?

21:43 One come down in races in Florida. Oh that'd be great. Yeah, we just. Have fun with that fly in. Fly in, grab the cart and go. Go and and you know, of course, Jeremy's there. He'll he'll, if, if he brings you into his team that he does a lot of work for great people and, and you know, I'm sure they'll do it for peanuts and it'll be awesome. It'll be a cool experience. And pick one of the Florida tracks. You know, well, actually, there's less and less Florida tracks these days because they closed Ocala and they closed. There was one in West Palm Beach that they closed just recently. So it's basically homestead Orlando are the two big ones right now. There's one in Tampa that's OK and there's a few other ones.

22:26 But anyways, anyways, it's all fun. Well, let's talk about that, shall we? We'll give that a buzz. Yeah, yeah, yeah, we'll. Chat later and so Eric Loader, we're getting off of racing now. So now you can start to listen again, because Eric. Sorry, sorry, Eric. Talk about racing. So, you know, if people want to hear your bio, they can go back to the previous episode, I think it was 172, and hear how you started and everything. But I was reminded, actually last week, I was talking with Craig Caserta and I was reminded that you worked at C Factor. I forgot about that. And it seems to be one of those places that was just a really great breeding ground for people who got stuck their tentacles out into other parts of the industry.

23:15 Yeah, it was the definitely the school, as I like to call it, the school of, I don't want to call it Hard Knocks, but it was Hard Knocks. You know, you're, you're working in New York City a lot. You're working at the garden, you're working at Radio City. You know, whatever you're doing out there, it's always high profile, high stress. And you, you, you, you learn very quickly to, to work within your means, if you will. You know, it's like you have the union and it teaches you how to work with the union at a very young age. I mean I was, I think I was like 22 when I walked into C Factor. Yeah, that's why, right. Yeah, and, and had no idea. I mean, had an idea, but I was like, oh, look what I stumbled upon.

23:59 This is great, you know. You know, it's, it's the Sinatra song, right? Like, you know, you can make it there. You can make it anywhere, Yeah. I, I, I reflect on my time at C Factor often. Yeah. You know, I met a lot of great people there, did a lot of great shows while I was there. And even when I went freelance, I went back and worked with Bob. Yeah, well, I mean, Bob was, was an industry icon, you know, like he, he was one of the godfathers of this industry of rock'n'roll lighting and, you know, but was he? I don't want to talk shit about him since he's he's sadly gone, but I was very good friends with with Bob C.

24:42 Yep. On the good and the bad side, you know, like I, I definitely got the wrath of Bob often being one of his suppliers. And if something didn't go exactly perfectly, it was like, hey, you know, like he let me hear it for sure. I, it wasn't sugar coated in any way, but like working there for him, you know, do you remember him as a really nice boss or a really tough boss? A bit of both. Yeah. A bit of both, you know, he could be very stern and, and difficult at times, you know, and then other times I, I remember coming back after the birth of my oldest, Christina.

25:28 He, I had been gone forever. So I went home and he called me right back. He said I got a gig for you, so I, I need you back on a train. You know, I was living in Buffalo at times, so I would come home from the gig and I'd usually train home or fly home or whatever. So I remember being home for 12 hours, and he's like, I need you to come back. And I'm like, she's the back. Yeah. Just got home. But you're young and you're very hungry. Yeah. And you want your career to go well, So what do you do? You go back. Yeah, Right. And I just remember we were still drawing on vellum. Oh really? Jesus. So we had drafting tables on the 3rd floor, you know, electric erasers, you know, and we had the stencils and blah, blah, blah.

26:14 Yeah. And, and this particular job that I was doing, I think I had drawn it, I don't know, 8-9, twelve times. And he, I, I draw it. I'd go get him. He'd come look at it. I don't like it. Start over he or move this over there and move that over there. Very particular in what he wanted and how he wanted to do it. Somebody had a picture on Facebook the other day of an SOB. Small orange box, right? Yeah, I saw that. You know, and and the SOB has stood the test of time. I mean forgot, sorry, shaking the table. Yeah, keep your arms off the table if you can, because that thing's moving a lot and I'm getting like, you know, what was that movie?

27:00 Blair Witch? I'm going. Whoa, sorry, I'll. Keep talking this off the table. Yeah, there you go. The SOB stood the test of time, right? I mean, for God's sake, it I'll let Bob. But Bob was great. He was, he always gave, if he saw a promise in you, you know, and he he knew that you were one of the guys that are going to stick around and, and do good for his company and make some couple bucks off you at the same time. Yeah. Then then he would make sure that he nurtured you. And. Yeah, at least that's, that's my experience. Others may not have that experience. I don't know. I, I don't really have a bad word to say about the man. Yeah.

27:42 You know, he gave me, I think the reason I'm where I'm at today, Vinny W there it is. Sorry. Hit the table again. We'll get there, we'll get there, we'll get there. But the reason I'm where I'm at today is partially because of Bob and of course a lot of hard work for me, but. Well, in my own career, like I learned most of what I learned from the hardest boss I had. Like you don't necessarily learn the most. Like you might learn some character things and stuff like that from some of the softer bosses. But you know, I think from the toughest boss you've got is where you really learn how not to do things and how to do a lot of things. And sometimes it takes you some years, you know, like sometimes while you're in it, while you're in that cyclone of somebody yelling at you and calling you an idiot every day and stuff like that, while you're in that, you're going, this is the worst thing ever.

28:35 But a few years later, you start looking back and going, like, that's what built my character. Like, that's what turned me into who I am and made me tough, you know, was, was that type of a upbringing in business? Sure. Yeah, so you speak the truth. You know, one of the things I used to love dining with Bob, which a lot of people would, would probably cringe at, but you know, it was always funny, you know, not even funny. I don't know if that's the right word, but I just always remember him ordering the most massive plate of food and a Diet Coke, you know, and I'm like, Bob, what are you trying to do here? You know, like you've obviously made some mistakes in your life and the, the Diet Coke, you think that's going to save you. So, but I miss that guy.

29:21 I loved him. I, I really, I enjoyed the hell out of Bob C and I, he and I, like, I had relationships with a few people in our industry at a very different level. And he was one of these guys that once every couple weeks on a Friday night with a glass of wine, I'd sit and talk to him for two hours. And we would talk about how Jerry Harris is screwing up the industry or how, you know, this is going wrong or this is going right or, you know, like, I remember when, when was it 911 or was it maybe the 2008 market crash? He lost like a lot of his wealth. And, you know, he was literally pretty much in tears on the phone with me telling me how, you know, I was just ready to check out.

30:11 And now I have to go back to work and I'm going to have to work until I die now. And he literally did. But you know, we had hoped it was going to be a little longer than it was, but. Fast forward the pandemic and how many of us cashed in, how much to live off, you know, to continue living, right? I know so many people. I had planned to retire when I was 65 as well. But you know, I'm going to be 60 this year and I don't think 65 is going to quite happen. Well, I just turned 60 and I've been having the same thoughts. Like, you know, if you would have asked me when I was 40, I thought retirement by 55, when I turned 55, there's no way you could have convinced me to retire. I was having way too much fun still. And I still am today, believe it or not. But now I'm working because I have to work. I'm not working because I want to work right at this very moment.

31:01 I'm working literally because I got to build it back because the last, you know, between divorce and, and you know, all the stuff and all the bad things and you know, there's a story I don't really talk about too much, but I sued one of the largest companies in the world. My first ever time suing someone had to be the biggest company in the world. And I was right and they were wrong and that was acknowledged. But it cost me $1,000,000 and I got nothing out of it. I had to eventually sign a document basically saying you were wrong, I was right, but I'm not going to come after you again because otherwise it was getting to a point where I could have been bankrupted by them because they were just using such heavy artillery on me. Yeah, you know, like I spent $1,000,000 on, on legal fees they spent, they spent an estimated 13 or $14 million to to crush me.

31:55 Right, it didn't blink an eye on it. And didn't blink an eye. It did. And, you know, so, I mean, it's, it's The thing is, I, I, I love our industry. I love where we're at right now in a lot of ways. I love where my business is at right way it right now in a lot of ways. Certainly there are more frustrating days than others, but you know, I want to keep working right now. It's just, I don't want to be working because I need the money. You know, I want to be working because I love what I'm doing and. I like to say, you know, it's it's still fun, you know, 42 years later, it's still, it's still fun. You know, like you do. I do I want to have to be working because I have to work? No, but but at the end of the day, the reality is, you know, I have a kid that that has a very expensive hobby and I have another daughter that has a very expensive dance career and then going to be a grandfather.

32:52 That's that's new too. Oh Jesus, I have AI have a daughter that's got a granddad. You know, they've got a daughter out of the way. So it's like. Oh wow. Well. Congratulations on that. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Spilled that right here. Yeah. Yeah. That's Grandpa Don. That's pretty exciting. Yeah. Grandpa Don. Well, Don. You know, I mean, I may be 1. I don't know. Like, I have no idea what my entire history left out there. You know, I was a traveling musician for a while and and probably did some bad things in my life. But yeah, knock on my wooden head. My my son has no intention of having kids anytime soon, but I'm sure he will at some point. So I hope so anyways.

33:32 I hope so. Not not enough. Like this is one of the things with people call it maybe under 40 don't seem to want to have kids anymore. Yeah, I know. It's a weird thing, you know, and this isn't political, by the way, no politics, but, but no, it's just like, like my, my girlfriend has two sons in that range and they're both traveling the world. One of them's married, has no intention whatsoever of, of having babies and the other one's single and just having a great time. And I don't think she's going to get any grandkids. And she's got three sons, you know, And two of them are like, one's married and one's certainly old enough to be married.

34:16 And it's just that mentality now. I don't know what it is. Is it selfish? So damn. Expensive, right? I mean, is that what it is? Yeah, this is what I think. It is so damn expensive and I'm not going to talk about how screwed up everything is in the world, but that might have something to do with it too, you know? Yeah, that's true. That's true. But guess what? It only gets worse if we stop populating. You know, that's that's the crazy thing. Like I think a lot of people think the world is overpopulated. But if you listen to guys like Elon Musk, who who I tend to think is pretty smart, the world is actually underpopulated and that's going to cause us more problems than than overpopulation. So, but yeah, I don't know how we got into that so quickly. I don't know.

34:59 We just railroaded right down the track. One, one minute we're talking about Bob C, and the next minute we're talking about the, you know, shrinking population. Shrinking population like that, yeah. You know, you mentioned the the state of the industry earlier. I I like you. I think it's pretty strong. Yeah. You know, I think 2024 is a lot of lot of companies, the industry as a whole is hitting its stride post COVID because I think I'm a firm believer that 22 and 23 were so off the charts crazy that there's the metric was just so skewed right. I mean this. Year. Couldn't use it.

35:40 But this year, for the first year since the pandemic, we actually had our, you know, one or two weeks of downtime in August, you know, and everyone was like vacation, yes, everybody ran away. But, you know, here we are, September, and it's just walls again. Walls again. Really nuts again. Yeah. Well, that's good. I'll tell you what I hear a lot, especially from some of the larger companies is that this year was a lot more smaller shows. And so you were working twice as hard to make like a 10% increase or a 7% increase on your revenue. So it wasn't like last year where you were just like gangbusters and doubling your revenue or whatever. Like this year was a, an incremental increase and you had to work twice as hard to get it cuz they were smaller shows. Like so for example, a, a major account executive in our industry said to me that the last the last six months has been the hardest he's ever worked for no more money. And the next 18 months is the biggest pipeline he's ever had in his career.

36:50 And I was like, that's interesting, so. I I don't see those metrics over here. No, no, no. Well, I think those change at. Scale, you know, like if you're a $5,000,000 rental company, you're gonna have one set of data, and if you're 15, another set. And if you're 100 million or 200 or 500 million, you're gonna have a completely different outlook. The overhead all grows. That's true, right? It does, but does it does the like the overhead technically in a company shouldn't grow at the same pace as the income. In other words, as you scale the business, there should become an there should become an economy of scale that says for every $1,000,000 in additional revenue, we're only going up. Yeah, we've, we've not flatlined our expenses, but the expenses don't go up at the same rate as the revenue is what I'm trying to say.

37:44 So if expenses go up by if revenue goes up by 10%, expenses should only go up by 5%, for example. Yeah, I mean it. Doesn't always. It doesn't because, you know, I find the busier we get, the more staff we have to hire, whether it's over hire, you know, freelance labor or whatever it might be, right? So you know when you when you've hit your, your end stop and you're still cramming it through the machine, right? Yeah, we can still do more. What? Yeah. Well, the other, the other I guess anomaly or or you know, tough part in our industry is CapEx requirements. You know, the capital requirements are unlike any other industry that I'm aware of. I'm sure there are some like maybe SpaceX being a rocket company might have really, really high CapEx costs or whatever.

38:37 But our industry just seems to be if you want to play, you know, if you want to play in the big pond, you have to have very deep pockets to be able to buy just enormous amounts of equipment. And the equipment ain't getting any cheaper. And some of that equipment, the returns are getting a lot worse, you know, and the one that I like to pick on a lot is, is LED screens. You know, LED screens went from being an incredible investment 5-6 years ago and I you would have incredible insight on this. But as I recall, like they used to be, you know, $400.00 a tile to rent and now they're 40, you know, and so yeah, yeah, they got cheaper. I guess the initial cost drop happened and then they kind of got a little more expensive because they just kept tightening up the pixel pitch and all that stuff, right, Getting better.

39:29 But but yeah, that just seems, it's like the example I like to use a lot is, is you used to buy an Intelibeam for, you know, call it $2700. I think they were 2750 for a long time. And so you'd buy an Intelibeam for 2750, you'd rent it out for 200 bucks a week and you kept them for 10 years and kept renting them out for 250 or 275 bucks a week. And that was a very profitable product. Now you buy AABC light, yeah, an ABC light for 10 grand. You rent it out for 150 a week. And in, you know, 3648, sixty weeks, it's no longer the, the soup du jour. And, you know, now you got to buy another $10,000 light because that's the one that the designers want this week, right. And so now, by the way, I didn't finish that in Tela Beam. You would sell it used for two grand after renting it for three years or four years or something, you'd sell it used for two grand, buy another new one. The math was very good on that.

40:35 Now the $10,000 light. You rent it for a year, you want to buy the new version of it. You sell it used for five grand. You know the math just isn't so good anymore. It's. Hard. Yeah, Yeah, we, we're, of course, you know, we're, we're selling off a bunch of like old, you know, Vipers, performances, air effects, Unicodes, just trying to get rid of them. They have lamps in them. We don't want them, right. But you know, I will say we got a good six years out of them and you know, they for the most part paid for themselves and, you know, maybe and and it's just time to move on because they're it cost me more to keep them on the shelf.

41:19 That's the problem. Warehouse space, you know, that's the problem. Warehouse space so. Yeah, we talk often about like the Christie model was to keep things until they absolutely were gone, dead, you know, and they kept, you know, Martin Pals and and intellibeams longer than anybody else on earth did. And Huntley's answer to that was always, well, we still rent them. You know, we still rent them and we still get return on them. But The thing is like at some point it, it's just a diminishing value. Like it's like the amount of money to just store these things and to keep replacing the parts. And, you know, right, a motherboard goes and it's 1500 bucks or something. Like it just becomes silly at some point. So yeah, I mean, it's, it's a, it's a brutal business. It's a Hard Rock life.

42:10 Yeah, it's a Hard Rock life. The money, you know, just the money and you know, the fact that like I, I love companies like yours because not that I have anything against private equity backed businesses or anything like that, but the private owned companies in our industry and you know, on the biggest scale, I guess that's like upstaging and bandit. And you know, there's less and less of them all the time. But, you know, I love that you're able to continue to compete when these companies are able to buy these products and amortize them over so many years and, you know, like, they just get to do funny stuff with the books that smaller privately owned companies don't. You know, I mean, we've always had a plan. I mean, our our plan and our process is good. Yeah, You know what I mean?

43:01 Yeah. And it, it we, we generate some good revenue. Yeah. We don't have it, you know, 90% of what we buy, we buy for cash. Yeah, Yeah. To be quite honest, you know, it's like, don't want the big bank note, don't want any of that. Yeah. And and it, it helps us be more competitive that way. Yeah. Well, that's a well managed company. I mean, that's, that's like the the old Dave Miley model, the old Terry Kane model, you know, a lot of the, the Bob C model most of the time. Bob C model. Yeah. And you know what? It's so easy for me to go talk to the owner. Yeah. Yeah, I mean. That's true.

43:42 That's great. Yeah, You don't have to go to Wall Street to talk to the owner and make an appointment and stuff. But again, I'm not really bagging on the private or the private equity held companies or whatever, but it's it's definitely made things a little bit harder. I think it's made things harder for everyone. And you know where like I always talk about, you know, the whole 4 wall deal, where they're at right now. And I think it's like I'm hearing that a deal is imminent, probably announced next week. And I mentioned that on the intro to this podcast, but I think that that's been bad for the industry as far as just them being on hold for so long. Like, you know, fighting through this process that they've been going through where there's buyers at the table and then gone, and then buyers at the table and then gone. And like, they've been really close to announcing deals multiple times and then they went away. You know, that kind of stuff.

44:41 Like it hurts the suppliers, I think it hurts the competitors, it hurts the employees. It hurts, it's just bad. Like, it, it, it's a funk that that needs to go away. So it's. It's difficult, you know, I mean, the one thing I could say being a smaller company is it's, I feel a lot easier to pay good attention to detail, right? Yeah. What does the job need? What does the client need? You know what, how can we help you? You know, it's like I would say, you know, 80% of my clients is it's more of a partnership than than a Joe blow off the street coming to yeah, I I need some lights and I need some video and I need some audio, right, You know. Well, the fact that you do so much work with with, with John Featherstone and, and light switch says that, you know, it says that that's who you are, because I know they, they as as nice of people as they are, and they're some of my favorite people in the industry.

45:43 It's they're tough projects. You know, those are projects that are very particular. They they have to be done properly. It has to be the right product. It has to be perfect, you know, so the fact that you do so many of them says a lot. I think about the type of business that you and and Video West are able. To, yeah. I mean, yeah, we definitely try. We work hard to keep everything on the rails, you know? And then, you know, we got George Strait a couple years ago. I mean, that was a whole another thing, you know, Video W hadn't done much touring before I got here. Yeah. And. That's a big one, like way to start out, you know? I know. Just kick it, kick it right out of the park, right? And, and it's, it's a blast because I'd honestly forgotten how much I missed touring, you know, and I'm not out there, you know, I go, I go out there, you know, I don't know, couple shows a leg or something. And it's just so great to see it all up and, and the process of getting it through the shop, you know, and oh, hey, we got a new look for this year's tour.

46:45 Now we got to figure out how to put it together and what's the engineering behind it, you know, and, and to me, I was like, wow, that was missing for so long in my life and it's back now. So I kind of like that. That's really cool. Hopefully maybe some more touring from Video W down the road, you know? Well, didn't. Didn't that George Strait show or tour break some? Records for tickets. That was our yeah, we did a one off and in the middle of the summer tour, OK, we went and we did a one off at College Station, TX A&M and set set the record. I think it was 109,000 change or something like that. That's crazy. And it was crazy because we didn't use the tour rig.

47:27 We used parts of the tour rig. Stacy and Skyler, they wanted to redesign the whole thing. It was in the round. The tour was not in the round. So we built this whole thing and integrated some of the tour with, you know, that that stadium show. But it was it was one for the ages. It was. That's really cool. Very, very fun to be part of that. So it's still Stacy La Barbara is still. The Stacy La Barbara Skyler, his son. He runs a lot of it. Wow, that's so cool. Yeah, I remember. Family affair out there. Yeah, I, I remember Stacy from years and years and years ago. What, what was the shop that husband and wife? No, husband and wife before that, from like the early 90s. Oh my God, I'm looking at them right now. They were such nice people, man.

48:23 Somewhere somebody's yelling at going. It's so and so. Yeah, well, I cuz I remember the very first time I went in there, I was really green working for Martin and I went in and and Stacy was so kind and, and, you know, walked me through the shop and showed me everything. And what were the two people who owned that company? Oh my God. Husband and wife anyways. Can't remember. Can't remember the name of the company. Draw it a blank. Yeah, it's all good. But so you and I have talked about this off the air and you're gonna hate that I'm bringing it up on on a podcast, but. Go ahead. The name video W Yep, so you guys are so much more than video and true.

49:05 And so that probably is hard, right? Like that probably makes it so that some clients maybe don't think of you as a lighting company or don't think of you as a full. Service company audio company exactly yeah, yeah, so yeah. And we're, it's funny, we're going through some marketing changes here to try and clear some of the confusion up, I guess. But you know, Jack Wake has founded Video West. Yeah, 40 plus years ago, right? Yeah. And he is a video company. Yeah. And you know that that's the brand. Yeah. And now it's a. I'm not, I'm not dumping on the brand or anything by any means, but it's just like, you know, I remember when when you started at video West and I was like, that's interesting that he's going to a video company and but it's not a video company, you know, and, and it's actually. In fact, full, full production house. Yeah, yeah, full production house, rental house. Yeah.

50:06 You know, we do all of it. And then, you know, Jack brought me over here 8 years ago. He's like, I watched it help build a lighting division. Yeah. I was like, oh, that's fun. Yeah, let me go do that. Let's let's go buy some gear and do some things. And that's always. Amazing when you get to be at the. Front end, what it yeah, it says what I always wanted to do right, you know, is like be able to get a bunch of people together, build a product that's awesome, refine the product, you know, keep refining the product because we're always screwing around things out over here, right Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I mean similar to what what Cosmo did with with the guys in Saint Louis, you know, when he got to go in there and hire all the people and and order all the gear, you know, like I and I went in there shortly after they they weren't even, they were in their temporary shop and and all of that stuff.

50:57 I went in there and every single lighting fixture brand new, half of them didn't even have plugs on them yet. Every Rd. case new, every cable was new, every single product in there was brand new. It was like, whoa, I don't know that I've ever seen something like this, so. And then, and then you got to try and keep it nice and new and shiny. Yeah. All that, right. And make all the processes to keep all the stuff nice and shiny and teched and QC and all that. Yeah. So I, I, I geek on that quite a bit. You know, that's amazing process, yeah. But you know, that makes a difference. Like, you know, being in the used gear business, we tend to know whose equipment is in what condition and based on the complaints that we get from buyers on the other end, right?

51:40 And we've done very well with your gear. I mean, customers are very happy with your gear all the time. And so thank you. But you know, like, especially over the past couple of years when people have just been batshit nuts, it's it's been hard to make sure that product is properly teched going out the door and cleaned and looks nice when it gets to the customer. So it doesn't have 10 years of dust on it. Yeah. So today I'm, I'm sitting at our our new prep facility that we just that's why I got the white walls. We haven't we barely moved in haven't been here that long, but a brand new prep facility. It's gorgeous 30,000 square feet of open wide open space. It's got pre vis up front kitchen, private offices which wow, I probably should put.

52:32 I probably should put some artwork on the walls or. Something that would be good. Yeah, that'd be good. Hang up some, hang up some laminates or some show photos or something. Yeah, get somebody to do something over. Here and get somebody in there. But it's nice we we really want to be under one warehouse, one roof. But you know, with the big boom that's happened in in Phoenix warehouse spaces just through the Yeah. Trying to get like 75,000 square feet or 100,000 square feet is not that easy. And the one warehouse that we own, that's what is it 45 or 50? That's all mezzanined out three, you know, and Jack owns that building. Yeah.

53:14 So it's it's kind of like, well, what are we going to do? We going to build another one, you know, so we're just kind of for now, we put prep nice. They it's a purpose built building. We didn't build it. We got lucky. This guy built a 60,000 square foot building, put a wall up and said and and rented it. And I was like, look at this place. It's just gorgeous. You know, that's got 35 foot ceilings in it. Oh wow. So you're not gonna, it's not gonna be rehearsal space. It's just prep. It can be we're we can we can do some pre production here. We can do whatever we want to do here. That's why I like the space. So it's got 8 docks. Yeah, it's got three St. level. Roll right into the place if you want, you know.

53:56 Nice. So it's it's, it's that's a big commitment. It is. Yeah, it is. That's cool. So what else is new at Video West? So like is it spending season, are you getting rid of all that extra CapEx money laying around and buying a bunch of new gear or? Yeah, we're putting the wish list together right for LDI there. You go, there you go. So you know, so listening Donnie and team are going to LDI with pockets. Full. Of cash might spend some money stuff. Yeah, So book dinners and breakfasts now with Donnie, right? Yeah, no, that's cool, that's fun. I mean, when you can go to LDI ready to, to make purchases.

54:38 Yeah. The the thing about our industry though, it's all changed like it used to, you had to go to LDI cuz that's where all the new stuff was released, right, Right. It ain't like that anymore. Like it's, it's released throughout the year and they bring it around to your shop and show it to you cuz everybody has sales reps in the region and all that kind of stuff. So it it's, it's not as much timed around LDI anymore, Yeah. I honestly transparency, I like to have lights come to the shop. I'll go to LDI to see, look at the fancy shiny stuff, but then to actually look at it. Yeah, bring it to the shop. Let me put it, put it in here. Let's play with it for a while, you know? Well, no matter how big a company you are, it's hard to get the time with the person at LDI for a long period of time because you're standing there talking to them and suddenly, you know some big designer or somebody is standing behind you and they're like 01 second and they go to that guy. And like we said earlier, lights aren't $2000 anymore, they're 8010 thousand.

55:42 These are real. I might want to take the lid off the 8 or $10,000 car. Yeah. Get under the hood, have a look at it. Yeah. What you know what are use it? Have you seen any new stuff that you're really liking right now or have you guys recently bought into any of the the new product launches this year? We bought some more. We bought the I Forte bought a bunch of those. Nice. We bought a bunch of the the Martin XIPS. Oh, OK, those quite a bit. Because the aura or the OR the the aura, the Martin XIP aura. Is there a small form factor? We need something to replace our old aging auras. I mean, we still have, believe it or not, believe it or not, I still have like 48 auras left that are, you know, as they die, we throw them, we recycle them.

56:33 Yeah. People still buy auras. People still buy original auras. Like we sold thousands of those for for Christy and for others. People still buy them. They're still a decent fixture for certain things like remember. For the small, yeah. For the small ballrooms are fine. Not everyone's at the level that your clients are. You know, there's these guys down here too. Right. And we service all types. I mean, you know, that we have some of these, you know, small ballroom shows that they're, you know, 12 fixtures and they, yeah, they don't want a $250 or $300.00 light, right? Yeah. Yeah, you know, have you seen the Viper X IP yet? I have. Yeah, there's that's a crowded area.

57:14 You know, that part of the market is really crowded. There's so much really great stuff. You know, Elation has come out with some really cool stuff. Elation's coming out with some nice stuff. Actually, right now, yeah. I've got some of their stuff that I'm looking at actually in the shop now. Yeah. Have you seen the pulse? Did you get the pulse? The pulse strobe. Is that the bar? No, Yes I do. I have the pulse strobe at my shop right now. So at the front end of this podcast, because elation is sponsoring this podcast, there's a a video on the pulse, a new video that they did with this drummer and stuff. And it's it's really, really good. It's a great looking fixture. You know, I'm a I'm a big fan of the the Ericsson Rivali and it's Big Brother, which is called God. What is it called?

58:03 I can't. Remember, they got some weird names over there, but they've got some nice stuff too though. But you and I should know the names because they're all race cars and race tracks and Velaci Veloci, I don't know how you say it, but Veloci, Veloci. But that's that's coming out, you know. So Elation Martin with their stuff, Airton with their stuff. I mean, Clay Paki seems to be a little lost right now, but they've got some really nice stuff coming out too. Everyone. I mean, that's the, that's the cool thing about this moment in our industry is everything's nice, everything's good.

58:43 Everything's pretty good. Everything's pretty good as far as like, you know, new fixtures and and technology I think is, you know, seems to be like we're going in the right direction, I guess. Yeah, Yeah, Yeah. I mean, I guess the frustrating part is, is still you're, you're always going to have 100 of the thing that this particular designer doesn't want and you're going to not have any of the ones that this particular designer does want. And as much as I think our industry has become somewhat homogenized on the product side, like everybody's got to wash a beam a spot of this so that a shutter fixture, you know, and but there's still like that one thing that I gotta have that I need that fixture or whatever, right.

59:27 So, you know, you guys are always having to go out and spend money. Yeah, yeah. It's part of the, it's part of the plan, I guess, part of the part of the everyday plan. Keep everybody happy. Yeah. You know, So what about what about from a video standpoint like is, is there a lot of really cool technology happening on the video side right now or is it where, where are we at in that cycle? You know, I tried I tried to leave it back to the video experts, but I know that we're, you know, we're always, you know, new LED tiles. I look at this, you know, 2.2 mil or whatever it is, you know that's we're. Down to like .9, now we're down to .9.

1:00:09 It's just gotten crazy. You know, and, and I see that stuff mostly uninstalls, you know, but like the, the corporate stuff and the concerts, you know, 4K cameras, you know, all that, right? Yeah. And then you got to buy the 4K stuff to support it, right. And that shit's, I don't know how they keep up. I don't know how, I don't know how they keep up. Like I look at my guy Sean Fitzgerald and Geisman who run video and I'm like, my stuff is OK over here. Like we got some lights, you know, some cool technology. You guys have all this stuff that they keep changing and and redoing and how do you how do you keep up?

1:00:50 You know well. I mean, just getting like 4K switchers and 4K, you know, all of this different stuff on the video side is so expensive and now people are already pushing for 8K and it's like, come on, man, Jesus. Like it's just a it's a money pit that you just have to keep investing massive dollars into. So the. Production industry as a whole is a money pit, which is crazy why venture capital wants to be involved but. Well, I think any, I guess, I think any industry that is really capital needy is going to find their way to marrying private equity because private equity loves to engage capital where it's needed. And, you know, the, in our industry, like the way the progression constantly goes is these guys buy like $20 million companies and they want to get them up to 50. And then they sell it to a private equity group who's got a, a sweet spot of 50 million to $100 million. And then they grow it to 100.

1:01:51 And then they sell it to the next guy, to the next guy to the next guy until, you know, you're you're you've got a PRG and VER together, you know, that are, you know, a billion dollar enterprise or whatever. But yeah, I mean, they exist for a reason, I guess. Sure. And it just complicates things a little bit at times. Yeah. So you mentioned touring, which obviously you have a passion towards, but what kind of business does video W like? What's your what's your sweet spot as a company or or are there? Many as a company, you know, corporate and trade show, Yeah, yeah, corporate and trade show is what the company was built on. And you know, quite honestly, you know, and when you get off the road and when you're like 45 or whatever the hell, I was 40 when I got off the road.

1:02:44 Corporate and trade show were the way to go. Yeah, you get to stay home. Yeah. So, you know, I, I love it and I've learned that over the over the seasons. I'm sorry, I've learned that there's seasons like there's the trade show season, if you will, right. You know, that in January through, you know, March, April. It's just insane in the trade shows, you know? Yeah, but the company was built on on corporate. Yeah, you know, yeah. And so corporate touring, touring, I would guess is a really small percentage of what you're doing right now.

1:03:25 Yeah, still. Yeah, You know, it's maybe a 1/4. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, in trade shows again, I mean, it's it's a whole new gear requirement. Like they need different stuff obviously than touring. Touring you can get away with throwing a bunch of Vipers up and and making people happy. Maybe in a corporate show they need to be different. Well, yeah, I mean, you know, trade shows, I find there's a lot of crossover. There's, you know, the same shutter light that you use at at a corporate business meeting to to frame a screen or to cut a stage in or something is the same light that you're going to use at the trade show to get the guys sign header or something. You know, of course.

1:04:07 And, and you know, like we did a, a show, a trade show last year that had this cool anamorphic wall that was on a corner and it looked like things were coming out of the wall. This content was built. So like some of the some of the trade shows, like the higher end trade shows, some of the technology is. Unbelievable. Yeah, Yeah. So I've heard mixed opinions, I guess on whether corporate shows are completely back or whether like 25 is going to be the big year of the return of massive corporates. I think they've been strong. Yeah. I think there may have been a little bit of AI don't want to say it's a bubble, but maybe a burp in, in early part of 24 when everybody was talking, you know, late 23, early 24 or a recession.

1:04:59 You know, you might have seen some of the the larger companies pull back some of the range a little bit over, you know, instead of spending, you know, half a million, we're only going to spend 300 this year. Yeah, keeps. What potentially the craziest election cycle ever and correct and monkey pox and all of these other terrorism and all these threats World War three, you know, so maybe all of that combined just made everyone sort of, like you said, a burp. Yeah, I think, I think, you know, I mean, 25 is looking strong for us already. I mean, there's already a lot of stuff on the books in 25, which is great.

1:05:40 So, you know, it's like, again, I don't think we're ever going to see the growth that we did in 22 and 23 again like anything. Like that that. 'D be hard to replicate, but you know, I was talking to a guy this morning and I said I said my my goal is to grow the company at a comfortable rate, right, keep everybody employed and just keep pushing on Yeah, you know, and and again, that's the nice be nice thing about being a mid sized company. Yeah, yeah, you're, you're 100% right. I mean it, you know, you don't have to have 17% year over year growth or 36% euro.

1:06:25 You grow as you grow. Like, you know, we're just going to try and keep growing and being successful and keeping the company healthy and nice and clean and, and the books clean and everything else and and you grow when you grow. Yeah. You know, you get so Uber focused on growth when you have private equity or, or you're a public company, even worse, obviously, because then shareholders expect, you know, constant growth every quarterly that you're putting out and stuff. Yeah, I mean, it's, it's, it's, it's a weird business right now. What about Speaking of weird business? Right before I got on this podcast, I did this crazy AI webinar. And if you've listened to any podcast I've done over the last year, I'm fairly addicted to the topic of AI and specifically AI as it relates to our industry.

1:07:17 You know, because the easy sort of statement to make is AI is going to destroy our industry and people are going to lose their jobs and, you know, consoles that program themselves, you won't need lighting designers anymore or, or, you know, video directors or anything. I don't believe that. You know, I tend to think that AI is going to support people's roles, not replace them. Do you even think about it? I try not to do ya. I mean, I, I know that it's like there, you know, I know it's there and I see it, you know, I see it on Facebook. You see it everywhere, right? But I don't, it's not like in the forefront of my mind on a daily basis, right?

1:08:05 It's like I, I just don't, I, I'm not that interested in it. There's, there's, there's, there's some really like, I don't know how much time you spend in spreadsheets, but there are AI apps that are incredible at looking at spreadsheets, analyzing them very quickly and telling you what you need to know and, or helping you or, you know, helping you, supporting you by building formulas in those. Like basically looking at this three column spreadsheet and going, what I really need to know is this and this and this, but I don't know how to build that. And that could take me 3 days to build it.

1:08:45 AI can do that in a few seconds. For you a few seconds. Yeah, and you just the, the biggest thing, similar to employees with AI, it's learning how to communicate with it. So employees, if you say it one way, you might get a certain result. If you say it this way, you might get a much better result. Right. And so learning how to communicate with AI is where the trick is. But you know, again, I'm not suggesting that every person in our industry should be using AI, controlled lighting consoles or something. But AI, when you're going through massive lists of inventory and you need something to help you figure something out, there are some incredible tools. Like even just on this webinar this morning, I learned of two or three new apps out there that that I hadn't even heard of.

1:09:31 And I went and looked at them and just went, you know, like, wow, you know it. Might be able to help me a little bit. I certainly could, yeah. And I'd be happy to actually. That's what I should do. Is like an AI for dummies, AI for Dummies webinar one day. Like me by the way, I'm calling myself a dummy, so if. I yeah, I mean. Take a look at this. You can do this, right? Yeah. But here's another great example. Like, you know, if like me, you have to look at dashboards full of data that say, here's how your business is doing this week or whatever, this month, this year, and you're looking at going, what am I looking at? Like this is so much information. Holy shit. What's it all mean? Like what's an APCK?

1:10:13 What's that mean? What's a GB RZ, you know, what's that mean? And so you could be looking at this dashboard just dumbfounded. Take a screenshot of this dashboard. There's this app that I've just learned about and you you load it in there and say explain this, like explain this to me like I'm a 14 year old and it will, it'll tell you what every single box means, what you should be looking to do because you've got a problem here. This one over here looks really good. Like it's basically having an analyst review that data for you and reading it back to you like you're a child. And you know, I'm not saying most business owners are children, but we can't know everything about everything, so I should. Probably use this for my kids track data sheet. 100 percent, 100%.

1:11:02 Right. That'd be a great use for. It what gear should we put on the cart today with this air quality? Right. Hell, yeah. I mean, or jet, you know, what jet do we need or what gear do we need or whatever? Yeah. I mean, those things were always a bit of a crapshoot because we'd have engineers and mechanics who'd been to that track 100 times and even they couldn't make the decision. They're like, well, it's this temperature, it's this, this, we're starting in 7th. So that plays a role in what gear you're going to want because you want to jump ahead of some people quickly if you need to. I mean it's. It's always a crapshoot. Like, even if you have all the data and you understand it perfectly, it's still like, what's the driver feel like today?

1:11:45 Yeah. Like, are you gonna keep your foot on the gas pedal or No, Like, so. Yeah, you. Know yeah, but we're not we're not using any AI automation at all here yet that I'm aware of you know again, maybe I'm sure it's. Maybe not even the big stuff, like maybe little stuff like helping on spreadsheets, you know, Yeah. Sure, or I could see it helping on some spreadsheets writing times. I'm I have a scratch of my head going, how the hell am I going to figure this out? Yeah, yeah. Well, if you ever want to spend 15 minutes on a screen share, I'm happy to show you a couple things. Sure, sure. You know, again, I'm just a geek for it. Like I was saying to my girlfriend this morning after I got off this webinar, I was like, I wish I was 20 years younger. And she goes, oh, don't we all?

1:12:27 And I go, no, just because I want to be an expert in every one of these things. And I'm not going to have time, like I'm just going to run out of time to be an expert in all these things. But they're all so cool. Like I'm so excited. I'm like a child right now with some of these apps because it's just like, it makes me better at my job, you know? And, and I'll tell you Gear Source in over 20 years has collected a huge amount of data on the used equipment market. I have that data. I have over 20 years of data on every sound product, lighting product, video product out there, what its sales trends have been over the past 22 years or whatever. Like I've just got a huge amount of data that right I can now shove into an AI app and have it spit out some relevant information. Right.

1:13:16 It's cool. This is my most profitable resale product. Right. Yeah, exactly. Well, or by the way, being the capitalist that I am, I go to Clay Paki and I say, you know, here's where you are on the scale of automated lighting companies. You know, you trend at a higher price and you hold your price 26% longer than this company or this company. And you know where you can start packaging that data and, and repurposing it or using it for your own gain or for someone else's gain or whatever? Yeah. So yeah, that's that's it can be very it can be. Helpful. Obviously, Yeah. Yeah, well, the.

1:13:57 Other I think people are very scared, afraid of of the whole AI thing. There's a lot of people who are 100, their take over, 100% are going to take over. That's been the general sort of viewpoint of our industry. And you know, last year at LDII, don't know you were there, right? I wasn't. I first show at midday. Yeah, well, there was a stand that had some lighting control software and they had a sign up on their booth. Something like, you know, you don't need a designer anymore or something, right? Big mistake. Cuz I think everyone lost their minds. Like, while it may have been true in a particular small scale application or whatever, it was the wrong way to go about it, you know?

1:14:40 People were on the floor with pitchforks and torches. Yeah, yeah, There were angry people, like I think it was Rob Koenig who told me he went into their booth and just ripped on him for like 30 minutes and. Yes, he should. Yeah, yeah. I mean. Yes, he should. Again, it's the wrong way to go about it. Saying I'm coming for your job lighting people is the wrong way to go about it. How about saying, Tired of writing lines of JavaScript? Let me help you, you know, or things like that, like finding the part of your job that Donnie Ladico does not need to be doing that. Maybe you know how to do it, but you shouldn't be spending your time on that because your time would be much better spent over here doing this other thing that only you can do. And that's the purpose of AI.

1:15:27 That's what I use AI for, is, is to keep me focused on the things that I should be focused on, not on the things that I I do because nobody else in my company knows how to do it or, or, or I just geek out on it because it's fun or whatever. But so we talked forever about your son, but we forgot about your daughter, Taylor. So what's she up to? So your other daughter is the one that's having the baby, Taylor. Yeah. So I have, I have, we have 4. I have Taylor and Luca, Yeah. And then I have Olivia and Christina from my previous marriage. Right. OK, yeah, yes. So, so you have Taylor, three daughters and a son. Yeah, three daughters and a son again, never retiring. So what's easier, daughters or sons? I think sons.

1:16:14 Yeah, sons. You just leave enough. Sons are like cats. You leave some food in the fridge and you can leave for a week. And I hope they don't burn the house down, but they'll survive somehow. I could grab my son by his ear or his arm and say. Come on, let's go. Yeah, yeah. But no. So Taylor is she's starting another year in competition dance. So that actually I think their first, their first event is in November somewhere Omaha or someplace like that. So what kind of dance? Was she supposed she like jazz? And whatever. Right. Yeah. Nice. And then of course, she's on the pom team and that's a traveling pom team. They go to nationals. So there's, you know, there's all kinds of traveling going on everywhere, all the time in my house. Right.

1:17:02 Yeah. And that's. Fun. Olivia is my call. Her with my middle daughter. She's 22. She's the one having the baby. Yeah. Very nice. Excited about grass When when she did December, no, January, January 16th. And then there's my oldest, Christina, and and we're, you know, she's what, 32 now? I can't believe I have a 32 year old daughter. And that's wild, isn't it? That is wild, but it's it's great, you know to watch kids grow up. The two oldest, unfortunately, I was touring for much of their it happens is their their, their younger life. But we're getting it back together now that, you know, everybody's getting older, getting family, Yeah, Family time, right?

1:17:51 Do you still have time to do your RV trips or has that one gone by the way? So the the RV goes to the track a lot because it's very hot here in the summer. Yeah, and you need something with some air conditioning. So it's at the track a lot. And of course we get up to San Diego 3-4 times a year or we go up into the mountains. So I still, you know, it's a use it or lose it situation like if you're not using it, we're going to sell it, right? So I choose to use it. That was me with boats, like the last boat I had. I had boats the entire time I was in South Florida and until about probably 12 years ago, 10 years ago, I don't know. But I had realized that I was paying $700.00 a month for, for the last six months and hadn't touched this boat, you know, for 700 a month for the, for the Marina where it was being stored for the parking spot, right.

1:18:43 And I was like, this is ridiculous. I'm an idiot. And so I sold it. And you know, I was so busy with Jeremy, with his racing at that point that it was just pointless having it so. I mean, the hope is is that when the kids are out of the house in about three to four years that you know, my well, I shouldn't say out of the house when the kids are old enough to be on their own when they're. 18 I was thinking you're kicking Luke out of the house pretty early. There aren't. You and the kids are old enough to stay home and responsible. You know, Mom and dad will probably. I'll probably work from the road a lot more. Yeah. Good for you. Who knows where Luca will be in his race career? Maybe we'll, I have no idea. You know, that wouldn't be a bad idea for me to work from the road like to to have an RV and and because you can have Starlink on on your RV now yes and I can work from anywhere literally like.

1:19:38 Even now, even now, Marcel, it's like I'll go out maybe up to flag or something on a Thursday and you know, I've, I've got my mobile hotspot with me. So I'm sitting in the RV, maybe boondocking, maybe at an Rd. park somewhere. That's awesome. Gigging and then, you know, OK, it's 5:00. All right, let's go out and do something, you know, I don't know. It's it gets, it gets me the freedom that I want, basically. Well, there's a lot to be said for for what that different scenery does for mental health, you know, like, I mean, for me being up here in Canada in the summers, just being around nature and walking in the mountains every day.

1:20:19 And when you're living flat land in Florida and I'm not on the ocean, so I don't have this incredible view or anything. I see palm trees and stuff, that's about it. But you know, to be up here in any window of my house that you look out of, you see beautiful mountains and trees and elk and the occasional bear and whatever it's, it's just a whole different vibe. It puts me in a different spirit, you know? Yeah. So it's great. Yeah. And for me, I think it's the freedom of being able to just get in and go. Yeah, right. Yeah, It's like, all right, pack it up, pack it up, but let's go for the weekend. Let's go to Utah for the weekend or something, you know? Yeah, I mean, obviously with us racing as much as we did, so many of my friends had them.

1:21:03 And I always thought I wanted one, but I wanted to use one for those weekends, but I didn't want to deal with it. And because of the business that I'm in, it's not like I have a warehouse and staff who I can say, hey, do me a favor, go ahead and take care of the RV. I'll throw you a couple hundred extra bucks this week or whatever. I don't I didn't have any of those types of employees. So I would have had to store it at a facility and then have somebody else who preps it and then somebody else who cleans it and somebody else who does this or that it it just didn't make any sense. I mean my. Wife Tara will tell you she's like, every time we take it out, something breaks. Not true. Yeah, not true. But, you know, it's like, there is, there's maintenance. It's like having another house, right? There's maintenance on it, you know, I mean, this weekend it was like.

1:21:51 That's what boats were always like. Like I wouldn't use it for three months. And then I'd have some friends come in from out of town and they're like, hey, we want to go out boating somewhere. We'd go get it taken down in the Marina, put in the water, prepped fuel in it, the whole thing. And you go to leave and one of the engines is dead or, or the air conditioning doesn't work in the cabin or something else. You know, it was always something. It's always. Something. It's always something. You just got to keep your head up and you know, if you like it, if you like it, then you learn to love it. Yeah, You know what I would say? Again, having it at the race track is cool, but there's also something for me about being able to kind of pack up at the end of a bad day and get the hell away from the race track and go to your hotel, have a glass of wine or a beer and chill. And just get out of that atmosphere for a bit. You know, so that people aren't knocking on your door going, hey, you want to have a beer, you know, or whatever right at the track because it's a party after the end of the day, which is fun if you want.

1:22:48 But if if you crashed on lap one and and finished 37th or something. It it can be a little brutal. Not so fun. Yeah, I just want to leave. Yeah, not so fun, Not so fun. Especially like you know, those races where you qualify pole and then there's like it depends on the format. So sometimes it's qualifying pre, final, final. And so if you qualify pole, you start the pre final looking pretty darn good. I'm on pole, sure, And somebody dive bombs you on lap one and takes you out, and now you're starting this, the final in 37th. And yeah, exactly, by no fault of your own, you didn't do anything wrong.

1:23:28 Cart was fast, everything was right. Hate that shit. Sorry, do your do your do your daughters or did they? I guess they're old enough where it probably wasn't a problem. But I always see kids that are relatively close together where like the boy is racing and the girl isn't and she's just like a an accessory at the track all the time and stuff. Is there any animosity, like where people think you're spending too much time or money on Luca and not on them or something? No, no, I don't think so. Cuz, you know, I mean, they, everybody gets their lick, right? Everybody gets their thing right. So it's, you know, Taylor, Taylor, she knows that what she does isn't, you know, isn't that inexpensive either.

1:24:14 You know, there's always a flight, you know? No matter what it is, yeah, no matter what it is, if, if a kid is doing, you know, whether it's any cheerleading or dance or racing or. Even, you know, I got some friends who play, who play, I guess it's league soccer, right. And they're our traveling team, you know, and they're traveling everywhere every weekend too. So there's hotels. Yeah. It's not like when we were kids and it was like, go to the Little League field and and go hit the baseball with little Johnny. Yeah. You know, it's like the, you know, and I'm sure there's there's some of that, but like when you get your kids into competitive sports, it's just it's a whole another animal. And you have to fit that in with your work schedule and your family schedule and you're same time. Yeah, like I'm going to lose my mind because I, you know. Well, you know, again, sorry to go back to racing, but money in racing has has become sort of the penultimate decider of who goes on and who doesn't.

1:25:20 And it's depressing to me because like our kids, mine sort of at the tail end of it, yours is at the front end of it. But our kids have invested so much time. We've invested money at a different scale. You know, like, granted, we're not billionaires, so we're not investing the same way some of these people are, but we're investing, you know, if you compare it, we're probably investing more than they are, you know, on a per dollar sort of scenario, per capita, whatever you call it, but they're billionaires. So $100 to me is, is, you know, pennies to them. But we're investing all this time and energy and, and you know, sometimes it ends up going absolutely nowhere more often than not.

1:26:05 And so a flip side of that is my, my girlfriend is British and her, her brother is a he's got a soccer Academy in England, a very good one. And a lot of his young players end up going into junior academies for a lot of the big teams and stuff. But his own son is 15 now and was like the hottest prospect in in England and just got signed yesterday by Arsenal. And so this kid from the time he was like 11 years old, he was signed by Nike where they were giving him like 1000 lbs a month in shoes and and jerseys and shirts and clothes and whatever he wanted. Teams are providing you training for free.

1:26:47 Like you can take a kid from beginning of soccer to being signed by Arsenal and eventually making £40 million a year or whatever. You can take them from here to here with very little money. Whereas in our industry like that, I somebody did research a few years ago and this is depressing, but he said to get a kid from karting to Formula One. I think the number, this was maybe 6-7 years ago. The number at that time was estimated to be around $100 million, $100 million to get a kid from start to Formula One, and that number has only gone up.

1:27:28 I better go find a another few side jobs and a sponsor or three. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yeah. So anything else that we didn't talk about that we needed to I. Don't know. I know you mentioned Craig Caserta last week. He did a podcast. Yeah, he did. Yeah. Yeah. You should listen to it. It was. Well, I mean we got way too far into his kids like we just did today. Again. Well, we all do. We're old and that's what we want to talk about. I love talking about kids, I love hearing what other people's kids are doing. And I love dads like you and me who are not only willing and able, but but passionate about pushing our children in whatever direction they want to go, you know, and helping them, assisting them go that direction. And you're, you're an extreme like me. I just had to earn enough money to make sure I could keep paying for it cuz I'm not a mechanical guy. So I nobody wanted me wrenching on a go Kart. Wrenching on a cart.

1:28:29 Nobody wanted me doing that. So from day one we always had to have our own mechanic. We always wish, pretty much. I'm enjoying the process of learning how to wrench on it and taking it all apart, replacing the clutch and all that. Here we are talking about racing again. Sorry, sorry, Eric Loader. But yeah, I know. I mean, it's it's it's you have to have an outlet besides your gig. I agree. And and I will tell you for years as an adult, I did not have an outlet. And it wasn't until my son said he wanted to start racing. And I was like, scared out of my pants because I had no idea. I remember calling you up and going, Marcel, he wants to race. What am I going to do, you know?

1:29:15 And I said run away, tell him no. Yeah, so, so for me, you know, it's it's I now have something outside of a job that I love. Yeah, right. And I also have something with my son that I love and you know, it's awesome. So it's great. It's great. And and it makes the family life better. You know, we can rag on him. Yeah. Luca gas pedal. No, I mean Jeremy. Got his ass kicked emotionally every single weekend he raced because you know, like he had nicknames from like Jennifer. One of his teams called him Jennifer because he was too scared to pass a particular driver when he was younger. And but, you know, seeing him evolve not only as a driver, but as a human through all of that.

1:30:06 Like, to me, I learned through adversity and through getting yelled at and put up my ass and all that stuff. Yeah, I'm not into the soft training approach. You know, like I, I think, I think it's character building to throw a kid to a bunch of crazy adults and tell him to survive. You got to figure this out, kid. I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna hug you every time. Yet like whenever my son put his visor down on his helmet after a race, I knew he was crying inside the helmet. And I said, Jeremy, number one, you got, you're gonna take your helmet off. So everyone's gonna see you crying. And I mean, I know this is brutal. This is probably emotional warfare or something, but but #2 you don't cry over racing, buddy.

1:30:49 You brush yourself off and you get back in the cart next. Try again. Differently, Yeah, do it right. And it's try again. That adversity, I think has helped him. And we'll help Luca and we'll help you, and it's great to go through. It is. Yeah, it is. Well, thanks for doing this again. I appreciate it so much and I love video W. You're a great company and obviously your leadership there has built a beautiful lighting business. And yeah, I look forward to seeing you at LDI. I'm doing something funny at LDI this year. We're doing something called Dining with Dinosaurs where it's, it's a luncheon thing and it's, it's basically like a round table luncheon where people come in and have lunch.

1:31:37 And at every table, there's like anywhere from 2:00 to 4:00, what we're calling dinosaurs, which will be like the Bob Sees of the world, you know, like basically people who were the godfathers of our industry. Do we have to register for this? How do we get a seat at the table? On ldishow.com, you can register for it Dining, Dining with dinosaurs. It's. Dining with dinosaurs, and there is going. To be a limit to how many people they let in and it's going crazy. Like I was talking to Ellen from LDIA couple days ago and she said it's already 40% booked. And I said, how's that possible when we've hardly even announced it yet? Like, you know, it's, it's crazy. But I mean, some of the people that we're bringing in are going to surprise people.

1:32:22 Like some of them have been have been retired for 10 years. You know, some of them literally were the beginning of that particular part of the market or whatever. So yeah, it's, it's going to be fun. I'm really looking forward to it. I got myself a note dining with dinosaurs ldi perfectly making that happen. You're not old enough to call you a dinosaur that. I'm not a dinosaur, but I want to go have some lunch with some. So we've set the criteria for geezers. Actually Eric Loader set this criteria at 50. And so I've had a lot of people on geezer gear that are below 50. But for dining with dinosaurs, we said 60 is is the bar.

1:33:04 You got to be over 60 and then we'll officially be able to call you a dinosaur. And you know, we thought about you. Got to be in the industry. At least 40 years or all of these things, but as long as you're over 60 and and we think that you were part of the foundation of the business, we're good. That's awesome. It'll be fun. Hi, buddy. Well, I'll see you soon. Alright, buddy. Yeah, Yeah. Peace. Good luck, have a good one.

1:33:56 None.