Episode 65 : Power Leveling in Life with Frictionless Friendship - Dave Perry

David Perry is a Northern Irish video game developer and programmer. He became prominent for programming platform games for 16-bit home consoles in the early to mid 1990s, including Disney's Aladdin, Cool Spot, and Earthworm Jim. He founded Shiny Entertainment, where he worked from 1993 to 2006. Perry created games for companies such as Disney, 7Up, McDonald's, Orion Pictures, and Warner Bros.

In 2008 he was presented with an honorary doctorate from Queen's University Belfast for his services to computer gaming.He was the co-founder & CEO of cloud-based games service Gaikai, which was acquired by Sony Computer Entertainment. In 2017 Perry became the co-founder & CEO of a customer intelligence startup called GoVYRL, Inc. developing a new advanced brand dashboard called Carro.

Audio Title: Ep65 - Dave Perry
Audio Duration: 01:37:44
Number of Speakers: 2

[00:00:00] Intro: Welcome to the Heroes of Reality Podcast, a podcast about the game of life and the hero's journey we all experience. Let's jump in with our host, Dylan Watkins, as he introduces today's guest.

[00:00:21] Dylan Watkins: Welcome, young adventures, Dylan here. And on today's podcast, I have a very special guest, Dave Perry. He is known as the tallest guy in the video game industry. He has decades of experience, working on all levels of gaming. He made one of my personal favorite games as a kid, Earthworm Jim, and, plus many other things like founding Gaikai. And now, he's moved on to new games, into the digital space with a company known as viral, go viral with a product called Carro, which evolved as an influencer platform, which we're going to dive more into, but I'm excited to talk about him, his journey and where he is at today. So, without any further ado, I'd like to welcome my friend, Dave Perry.

[00:01:00] Dave Perry: Hey, Dylan, how are you? Nice to see you. And thanks for inviting me.

[00:01:03] Dylan Watkins: Absolutely brother. It's great to see you as well, man. It's good to connect in the post-apocalyptic ecosystem.

[00:01:10] Dave Perry: Yeah, I'm a little jealous. I have this boring chair and you have this cool gamer chair. I need to invest in a cool gamer chair.

[00:01:20] Dylan Watkins: It was borne at a necessity, man.

[00:01:22] Dave Perry: Yeah, you look like you're on a ship flying somewhere, like some – it looks like a Tesla seat, you know, like one of the ones for the moon for SpaceX, I mean, SpaceX seat. It's funny because the gamer stuff is just something I've grown up with my whole life.

And so I love to see this, I really do, so cool.

[00:01:44] Dylan Watkins: Lots of time spent in this chair. I didn't realize after a while I was like, why am I uncomfortable? I'm like, oh, how much time am I now clocking? So I've upgraded and, yeah, I'm technically in space. I'm the new, you know, Elon Musk space Starlink program. I'm just up here with all these screens architect style. But, yeah, no man, it's great to connect, man. And you've had like, I know with your journey, I mean, you've had quite a roller coaster, experience, especially in the – I mean, we talked a little bit about the games in your – to say that you have, gaming experience is an understatement.

I know you've done – well, first of all, let's unpack this, because there's so many things that you've done in the gaming spaces. From the beginning, what was the Genesis for you to fall in love with the gaming space? What was your like, oh my God, I love this area, and had you dive into it?

[00:02:38] Dave Perry: I think it might have been because I was told I couldn't do it, so I heard there was computers at my school and I asked to use them and they said, you know, kids can't use the computers, like that's – like, you're too young, go away. And at the time, I was like, that wasn't what I wanted to hear. And so I sort of found my way into the computer room and I found the people really nice and they would show you, you know, what was there, what equipment they had, and how it worked. And I started playing with these very basic black and white computers, but I realize that, you know, very quickly, you can take control and make it do whatever you want to do. And so of course that meant games.

And so I started making these terrible games, because the computers were so basic, they didn't even have music or anything. You just make beeps. But, what happened was, I wrote some games, and I sent them off to a magazine, and the magazine printed the games. And it's hard to explain it when you're a kid, how exciting that is that, you know, look here I am in a magazine, I’ve actually accomplished something.

And I didn't know, but I was being paid for that. So, a check arrived in the mail and I didn't even invoice. So, I didn't have a bank account to put the check into, so, I had to solve all these problems, which of course are quite solvable, but suddenly, I have unlimited candy. That's what that meant. And I'm like, you could have unlimited candy. That's the thing.

So, if you're wondering what got me into gaming, that's what got the whole thing started. And from that point forward, the industry started to evolve. There were a lot of magazines where you would type code in, you would see a cool game or some picture of a game, and you would type it in and play but very quickly, the games became too big to type in. And so that's when they started – they started to do books. And so I ended up publishing some books, and this was in high school, but that then, I realized, this is a thing, this is not going away. This is something I want to do. And so I ended up getting a job offer to leave Ireland, because there was nothing – there was no real game industry in Ireland. But there was in England. So I moved to near London and then I started making games professionally, and that was – then you can't look back, that's – I'm now, you know, all in.

[00:05:05] Dylan Watkins: Yeah, yeah. It's really cool. There's something in London, it's got a really strong gaming culture and companies and studios out there. There's a lot of triple A, action going on in London and the gaming culture, and yeah, it's very interesting to have an industry where the verb is, to play, you know, and so, once you're like, I can make money to make and play games, it’s –

[00:05:29] Dave Perry: No add more. I’d charge them to your taxes. Yeah. Yeah, you can.

[00:05:38] Dylan Watkins: Wow.

[00:05:39] Dave Perry: One of the best job in the world is the sound effects for the game industry, because you get to go to the super bowl and charge it to your taxes. You get to go to every football game, or you want to shoot guns, charge it to your taxes, because it's all – you're just collecting sound. It's the best job ever. But, no, in reality, the game industry in England was where it was happening as far as I understood, coming from Ireland. but in reality it was really America. And so it ended up being more of a pit stop. I obviously, I had to learn a lot, but once I did, then I realized that the real future was to come and live in California.

[00:06:21] Dylan Watkins: Wow. Well, it's – I mean, I know Sony's out there. I mean, there's a bunch of great triple A studios out there. What do you – along your lessons of becoming a professional game developer, like, what were some of those, like, moments that reflect you back that kind of created cornerstone values for you? Were there experiences, or were there situations that basically imprinted on you, as you're becoming a professional game developer on like something that you would take with you, on your journey for the rest of life?

[00:06:50] Dave Perry: Yeah, I, sometimes you don't challenge yourself enough. I remember the guy that sort of ran the office in England said to me, once, you do realize you can learn a programming language in a day. And I was like, that's absurd. That's just not possible. And he is like, pretty much, you're a complete loser if you can't., and by having people believe so strongly something, you start to believe it too. And so, you know, he said to me, like, here's a game on this machine. I want you to put it on that machine, and I want you to do it today.

And so, it's a completely different programming language, but don't worry, it'll be fine. And because you enter with that attitude of, well, I guess it's possible, then you start doing it, right, because you're not sitting there finding all the – I think where this has evolved, and I did it by the way, and the game was published, and I did learn in one day, so it is absolutely possible.

But what I realized is, something that I talk about quite a lot to my employees is, I don't like people, to keep pointing to problems and telling me why you can't do something. That doesn't help, right? You know, you have somebody going, problem, problem, problem, problem, problem, problem, problem, instead of solution, solution, solution, they're always just pointing to the problems. I call them hurdle pointers. They point at hurdles professionally, you know, like they can't stop themselves. And because of that, they don't move forward, because they're continually pointing at the problems.

And then the second kind, I call, hurdle jumpers, who are the ones that, there was a problem there, you never heard about it, because they didn't sit there and point at it. They just solved the problem. And so, now that I say this, you can imagine anyone listening to this is going to be like, oh I know some of those people, like you've all – everyone's been in meetings where you have hurdle pointers, but now, you'll be able to, in your mind, look at the person, and just go, hurdle pointer. That's what you do, that’s what you're going to do, they just point at hurdles, frustrating.

And so, our company culture is, what we say is kicking over the hurdles. So, sometimes you'll see a hurdle and, you know, it's there and everyone knows it there, and it is a problem, but they kick it over and, and they get on with it. And so, when you have that sort of mentality, it changes sort of how you – how much you can get done. And, I think – I remember back to that day going, this guy is nuts, right? But in reality, he wasn't nuts. It's more of just an attitude and just getting on with things, and you can accomplish a lot.

[00:09:28] Dylan Watkins: It's ridiculous, like, it's expanding the possibility of what's capable. and that's really what that – what I love about that is that you create this like identity shift with somebody around like, hey, anything's possible. This is just a problem, so expect it, and we're going to expect to jump over it and that's what you do.

I think I know – John Carmack was told one time that this one thing, was unsolvable and then someone solved it and he goes, well, if he solved it, I can solve it too. So we went in his corner, he went to like a hotel for a week, solved, came back out. And the guy says like, oh, actually I didn't solve it, I was wrong. And he goes, John Carmack was, well, I solved it. It was all because you believed you could.

[00:10:05] Dave Perry: That's right. So it's one of the best things to do is if you ever want to – if you have a programmer that get stuck, show him it being done by another programmer.  And, suddenly you'll see them, you know – I've seen programmers say to me, you can't do that.

Then I've shown that somebody else did it, and I'll show it to them, and then they go, oh, they didn't do a really good job. I can do it better, right?

And you're like, wait, did you forget the conversation we just had like 10 minutes ago? That happens. And so, I think it's really exciting when you unlock people's potential because they really can do a lot and achieve a lot, but they sometimes just get a little stuck, and if you could just free them up, then it's unbelievable, you know, what people are able to do. And I've been very fortunate to work with some great people over the years. I call them 10, 10Xers. So yeah, if you're able to kick over hurdles, you're usually operating at about 10 times the speed of somebody else that's getting all caught up and everything.

And I've seen all kinds of fascinating versions of that. I once saw, one of my engineers got a manual to something, and he was reading through the manual like this. He took the page and he just turned it like this. And I'm like, what are you doing? like, he was going through the whole book, just one page at a time, you know, not even taking a second to page, and I'm like, what are you doing? And he's like, well, I'm just getting – I'm looking at the manual so I understand where everything is in it. So when I need something, I can immediately, I know it's like around here, or I know it does that, because I've read all the sort of the titles, and I know what features it has.

And it's just like, how many people operate like that? That's just a different way of thinking and approaching things, because most people look at the manual and then just don't read it, right? And I found out with Photoshop, you'll find the vast majority of people learn the three tools. Like you've got this – this tool can do anything. And they've learned the three icons that they use, and nothing else. And they don't understand really the full potential. And then you see somebody working at incredible speed within a tool. And it's just, you know, amazing what the output and the speed in which they're able to do things because they take the time to learn it.

So I'd say that's another key piece of thing, is just learning. And sort of, if this tool is going to be a key part of your life, you really need to spend some time and get to know it, and master it. And there's always – what's happened with the internet is, now, there's all these people that want to help you, they really want to help you learn this thing. So, you really should.

[00:12:45] Dylan Watkins: That's beautiful. And I mean, there's a couple things that you touched on about, company culture, team formations, being able to actually triumph over situations, because, I mean, that's what really a company is, it's being of service to some community or individual, and then your willingness to solve as many problems along that value chain, as possible, to be of service. And there's some people that can do it at a rate, that's just, it seems super human, like I can't – like you tell me to read a book, I'm like, do you have an audio book? I'd like to really, you know, is there an easy way to digest this information?

You're talking about a couple of pieces; one, the ability to learn and solve problems as being the critical piece and be able to expand the potential of what's possible with the tools that you work with, because a human with a tool like mastering Photoshop is infinitely more valuable than a human without the Photoshop skills.

What pieces besides that, do you feel are critical is the learning to learn, the – the belief that you can kick down hurdles and solve new ways to get things done? What are the – are there any other cornerstones of company culture, team culture that you think is critical for success?

[00:13:51] Dave Perry: Yeah, this one I learned from years ago, we got to work with the directors of the Matrix, on the Matrix video games. And I was very impressed that they showed up at our office, you know, they took the time to drive and visit and meet us. And at the time I was like, wow, this is kind of unexpected. And I was talking to them about it and the attitude was generally, well, of course you do that, are you kidding me? You're going to – anyone you're going to work with, you're going to spend time and really get to know them and understand them and all the rest of it.

And it was something that, I'm like, I don't know if everybody really does do that. If you really take the time to really learn things. And I'll give you an example. I have lots of hobbies and I can explain later why I have so many hobbies, but, I'll decide I'm going to learn woodworking. I think what I've realized is, what you don't do, is, you don't sit at home and look at a bunch of wood and say, God, I want to be a woodworker, but, you know, I don't know if that's the fast track way to be a woodworker.

What I do is, I go, who is amazing at woodworking, that's willing to show me how to do it? And there's a guy in Ohio, I'm on a plane on my way to Ohio, and I'll rent a truck and I'll drive out to his wood shop and I'll spend a week there, and I'll come leveled up, you know, think of it like a video game and a video game, you level up each time, you know, like you play more and more and more. It's a bit like that. So, I'm like, every time I learn something I'm plus one on that, plus one on this, as I level up my skills. But if you want to – what I found is, there's always people willing to share and willing to help and willing to tell you how they do things.

Some of them love it, like they love telling you how they do things. And so I, not so long ago, I got into photography as a hobby, and I realized that there's all of these different people that have incredible skills in photography, but each one usually has one thing to tell you that's their secret, the thing that's taken them 20 years to work it out. And so, if I can get in a room with that person, I'll drive anywhere, I'll go wherever I need to go, I'll fly, I'll go to Cannon's headquarters, wherever I got to go, if I can get in a room with that person, and hear that one thing that took 20 years to learn, that's what I want to know, because your skill level goes up extraordinarily quickly, because you're saving a lot of time that they've invested.

I remember once I was in a woodworking class and a guy was like, this is the best varnish. And I said to him, look, I know you think that's the best varnish, but what's happened is, that's taken you 20 years to work that out. The fact that you just told us that, is such a gift, like I know you don't appreciate that, you're just thinking no, no, no, that's the best varnish. And by the way, it turns out it's incredible, it was an amazing recommendation, but it's the kind of thing where that's in – in life, that's in every dimension.

So, every subject you can imagine, there's people out there trying to help, wanting to help you, but you sometimes have to get in your car, and that's what I learned from the Wachowski brothers, was, get in your car, don't be lazy, you know, don't just sign the contract, go get in your car and go meet some people. And you'll learn a lot more really quickly. And there's no subject that you can't absorb, if you do that.

[00:17:26] Dylan Watkins: What I love about that is a couple things; is, one, I mean, it sounds like one of your superpowers is like power leveling yourself, through, you know, being able to go and meet people on their level of what they're passionate about. And you can say, hey, you're amazing, can you power level me? And let's go through this dungeon together, the dungeon of woodwork. Let's go. And then they take you, and so your first thing, when you go to tackle and jump a hurdle, you're all, who's the best in the world at this? Let me go find, let me ask them, how do they jump this hurdle? Can you show me how you jump the hurdle? And then you're using that and leverage and almost kind of like in a very pleasant and loving way of Highlander, instead of cutting off their head, you buying them dinner.

[00:18:07] Dave Perry: If you're, if you're super respectful, that's what gets things done, if they can feel that you're authentically really in, then it's really, really the way to go. And I'll quickly get to that, because I think that's been a life lesson for me, is, learning that the more that you appreciate what people do, so, let me touch on that really quick.

In the game industry, I'm a programmer, so I should be programming, and I should stay in my programming lane and just stay out of all the other lanes, right? But in reality, if you actually take some of your time, and sit with the animators, just listen to them, what they're into, what they would like to, you know, what they wish could happen, or what would make the animation better, you start to understand their space and what matters to them. And you go, I think I can help you with that. And then you go and you do that. And then they're like, wow, thank you so much for listening. You can do it with the audio guy. Like I really care about the music. Really, no one ever cares about my music, you know, they just put it in. Yeah, no, I really care. Let's make it sound good.

And, so, what it does is, when you start opening your mind to, actually, I'm interested in what you do. Like I could quiz you, I would love to quiz you on how to run podcasts well, right? The software and the tools and the tricks to it, because it's interesting to me to learn that, and what will happen, and this is why I'm sort of talking about this is because this has helped me immensely in life, is by learning different things, whenever you get into a new environment and meeting somebody new, that you know, you don't really know, what happens is, whatever they do, you might find out they're into woodworking or photography, or they fly helicopters or whatever it is they do, you have rapport because you not just appreciate what they do, but you’ve put some time and energy and thought into it, and you've got stories to tell in that space, and you'll find the rapport you can create with a myriad of people, goes up exponentially.

If you're just like, I'm an engineer and I don't care about anything else, I just – just stay away from me, all I want to do is talk to engineers, it's not going to work, it doesn't – the world doesn't open up to you the way you would think. And so, I've found that that has been unbelievable. And I have one good example, where I was sitting on a flight once to New York and there's this guy beside me, and I looked at him, and he's some older dude. And I thought to myself, I'm going to try this now, just to see what's the rapport, it's there I just don’t know what it is.

So, I said to the guy, you know, hi, what, you know, what is it you do? And he said, I ship ore into the United States. And I'm like, ore shipping, like metals and stuff like that? I've got nothing. I'm like, okay, you got me, I got nothing, I was like – because I was caught up with, I'm going to get this guy, right? And I'm like, no, I don't have anything. And then, I noticed that he was, he had a PSP at the time, which was the Sony handheld, and he was playing, Virtua Tennis. And I said, you know, oh, I know the guys that made that game. And he goes, I invested in that company. And I go, oh really?

And so, we start talking and that's my point, is, something will open, and we end up having a nice chat. And then he says to me, look, I'm going to go and see U2 tonight at the Madison Square Gardens, would you like to join me? And I'm like, sure. So, suddenly I'm being invited to watch U2 at Madison Square Gardens, turns out the ore industry is a big money industry, they bought the whole row. So, we had a row of seats over the states that were all his, and we ended up – it was just one of those, like if I hadn't have said hello, I wouldn't be sitting here in this unbelievable, you know, in these great seats at a U2 concert. And so, how many opportunities like that are you missing all the time, right?

[00:22:24] Dylan Watkins: That is so beautiful.

[00:22:25] Dave Perry: It's kind of like, what – they're all out there, but a lot of people just never are going to make the connections, and that's the problem.

[00:22:35] Dylan Watkins: What I love about that, there's several things. I mean, what's amazing about that is, one, like the game you play is you – you have all these hobbies, which is just kind of like the Venn diagram of your passion for learning, and just gunning that, and then your passion for building rapport, which is having uncommon commonalities, idiosyncrasies, you use both those passions to both learn and enhance that skillset for you to play the game of lack of better term. I heard it in this one literal RPG book, forced friendship, where you can – you can build rapport with people but it's in a genuine curiosity and loving and connected kind of way, but it's also a game to you, which is a fun game to play, which is, can I make anybody my friend and how can I find a way to care about you and how can we find things we can care about together, which is pretty cool.

[00:23:22] Dave Perry: Yeah. And it's – there's a downside to it, which is that it means you won't be the master at any of these things, because I can't dedicate my life to golf, or I can't dedicate my life to just watching basketball. you have to – you have to be open to learning as many things about as many things as you can. And honestly, I think it gets fascinating the more because then things start linking like, you know, something about this and something about that and they actually end up linking.

So, for me, that means that there's a very interesting life decision here. If somebody says to you, you want to try this or do you want, you know, hey, would you like to go here or do you want to, you know, experience such and such? And then, if you buy into this concept, you have to say, yes. So, when someone says you want to go and do a parachute jump, you're like, oh, uh, yes, and then you go and experience a parachute jump, right? Which means when you're on that plane and you're talking and someone says, oh, I do a lot of parachuting, I had a guy once, he was reading, sitting beside me on a plane, he was reading a magazine on water skiing and I'm like, I water ski, I've water skied at one of the biggest race places in the United Kingdom. I have crazy stories to tell because it's not as easy as it seems, and the water is like, it's like, I mean, it's basically ice around the edges, so it's crazy. But he starts telling me about how he's fallen in the water and had, you know, alligators right beside him in Florida. and you just suddenly have a conversation about a subject again, that's just something that is, you didn't – how could you have known going in, that, that was his thing.

This guy is all in on water skiing, but can you carry a conversation on it? And so, the day you get a chance to water ski, do it.

[00:25:18] Dylan Watkins: That's beautiful. So, say, yeah, when all things being equal, say yes to the adventure, because it's going to expand who you are, which will allow you then connect and make more expansions, and you're basically growing your, human influential network. So, you're able to expand out and by more connections, grow more, expand, and then you can be able to actually step into any situation and make friends.

Do you – is there just, out of curiosity, is there a favorite things that you say when it's – when there's a situation where you feel intimidated or you feel like you, or it's difficult to do? I mean, you talked a little bit about the ore guy, is there any other situations or any tactics that you use to open up a conversation if you're in that stage where you still haven't hooked them, is there stuff that you do in that situation to continue to hook, to see what you can find that resonates with people? Is there any structures or frameworks you could give to people that might have – because making friends out of strangers is amazing and terrifying. Incredibly – so what kind of frameworks could you empower with people, to be able to kind of stick in there, and not just go, oh my God, ore, I got to go, and then run off.

[00:26:25] Dave Perry: Yeah, no, the trick is to not be intense and weird, like just be kind of fun, like joke around, look for a joke. is there anything I can say that's kind of a bit funny. So, humor is a great icebreaker, but, no, the one that I think is most interesting is when you start to ask them about what they love to do. I don't really want to talk about their job, I don't really want to, to ask them sort of more generic questions, it's, you want to dig into, what do they love, what are they about, what is it that drives them? Like what's their passion, and you find that they're into mountain climbing or something. And it's like, you know, you can't even tell from the surface. Sometimes, the things that people are actually into, and those are the things they want to talk about. They don't really want to talk about their job that much, you know, unless that's all they've got going on, but usually, people have something they're into.

And I think that's the way, is think about how are you going to work out what that is, and how can you get to that, because once they start talking about the thing that they're really passionate about, then you've effectively unlocked them. You get to hear who they really are, and it's kind of fun.

[00:27:39] Dylan Watkins: That’s awesome, and so true. I mean, sometimes we get stuck in the work mode, and that's all you have, you have this like one lens to look through everything, but if we – father, brother, sister, mother, whatever the things, like, there's so many things that you’re not just a working machine. Is that like – you talk a little bit, then, why you do photography, we had a talk about this in person, and I thought it was beautiful and it stuck with me, but I'd love to hear you talk to me a little bit about why you do photography, and what's the real passion and interest behind that.

[00:28:16] Dave Perry: What happened was, my father, was a photographer through his whole life. And I honestly felt a bit ashamed that I never really had him teach me how to do photography. Like, it's kind of an absurdity that you have this guy who's, you know, who's out there doing photography. and you know, I could have just, said, you know, just show me how to do it or explain it to me. I don't know what an F stop is. Can you explain it to me? I never did that. And so, I felt like, so once I – I mean, sadly, as he was passing away, he ended up, passing away due to cancer, but while he was going through that phase, I was constantly trying to cheer him up. And I said to him, I'm going to get into photography and can you recommend my first camera? And he said to me, well, that would be a Hasselblad, and I go, you know, like Hasselblad, what's that? He goes, when they flew to the moon, they took a Hasselblad, right? So, if you're trying to decide which camera, you know, when it's absolutely critical that that camera works and does a good job, they take a Hasselblad. And so I went down and I bought a Hasselblad.

What I didn't realize was that if you have a good camera, it actually makes your pictures better. I mean, photographers will all go, oh no, that's not the case. It's skill and all the rest of it. Honestly, getting a really good camera, your pictures level up immediately, versus your cell phone pictures.

And then you just have to learn how to use it, and boom, there's classes everywhere. Everyone wants to teach you how to use your camera. And then after taking lots of classes, I'll give you one thing, which I think is funny, is, I was one of those stupid people that thought it was a data problem, so, being an engineer, I'm like, if I just knew all their settings, I could do this too, right?

So, I'm sitting there with some master photographer, who's teaching a class and I'm trying to see what number he has on the back of his light so I can write it down. And I have pages and pages of all the notes that I took, you know, what angle I think this light’s at, and all this kind of nonsense, and at one point, there's a photographer from New York that I really like, and he said – it was Peter Hurley, and Peter Hurley said, look, it's not about the settings, it's about the relationship between you and the person taking the picture. In fact, the camera shouldn't be involved, so you don't need – and this is going to sound crazy, but what it means is, you're talking to the person, you don't look at the camera, so you don't know what the settings numbers are, your hands just change dials, because you know what the dials do, and the numbers change on the back, but a good photographer doesn't need to know the numbers. And that's like, what? Nobody told me that. I've been doing this – I've got so many pages of numbers.

And I'm trying to – I'm taking pictures of setups and everything. It's not about that, it's about learning, your hands on a camera, you should be adjusting the dials naturally, going, I need it brighter, I need it darker, I want to, you know, make the shallower depth of field, whatever, that all just happens. The numbers don't matter. You're pulling the shot out that you're looking for, based upon what's in front of you. And that situation's never going to be the same again, because it's – everything is changing all the time and these are different people and the lighting's different, so you've just got to be able to deal with it. But what actually matters, is, can you get the person engaged?

And so, one of the big tips I have, which will save you a lot of photography lessons, is, to try to get an authentic picture of somebody. And what does that mean? There's probably a picture you've seen of yourself at some point, and you're like, wow, that's a really good picture of me, but most of them aren't. And the reason is, is because most of them, aren't the authentic you. And when you see the picture of you where you're not posing in any way, it's just you being you, and you're alive and you're laughing, those are the pictures that people invariably go, oh my God, I love this picture. And it ends up being in their social media, it ends up being used everywhere because you captured the real version of them. And so, the really, really, really good photographers are the ones that are able to get people to be authentically there, either in mind or, an example that Peter Hurley teaches, if you can get them to laugh, there's a moment after a laugh when all the teeth disappear, but the eyes are lit up and their engagement on the camera is 110%. So, what he'll do is, he'll take a bunch of pictures. He'll make them laugh and he'll take these pictures. Then he shows a classroom of students, the pictures one by one, and he says, you know, when you see the picture, that's really good, I want you all to say, shebang, and so, he starts flipping through the pictures and you hear the whole room go shebang. And it's because there's a certain picture where the person is just, 100% engaged in the shot, and you only need to get a few of those pictures and you tend to blow away the subjects, you know, that are getting shot because they see themselves the way others see them for real, it's a really interesting thing.

And so he wins lots of awards for his work, but, I think that, when you open up a subject like photography, you're thinking it's all about settings. It's got nothing to do with settings. Then you realize it's all about light. There's people who will tell you nothing, but, it's all about the light, it’s all about the light, and it is, until it's about the person. And the end of the path is, can you take a really good picture of somebody?

And then the lighting and the settings are not the problem, it's getting that individual to get a real picture. So my point is, it's really fun. And I say that, but that's just one subject, that's photography. Then you get into cinematography. Now, you're learning about how to shoot video. That's a whole different subject. So, what I do is, I love when I'm like, say I'm somewhere, maybe I'm at a conference and I'm talking on stage, I'm the one guy that's really interested in which microphones they're connecting to me, and how this all works, right, instead of, you know, just saying, let's go, let's get this over with.

I'm like, you know, this is – I'm fascinated to see how the production is put together. So, that's something I think – I don't know. I think it's something that people, the more that they realize that these aren't dark arts in any way. I think they would, the more that they consider all options on the table as things to learn. I think the more they will start to enjoy all the people that they interface with.

[00:35:33] Dylan Watkins: Well, what's beautiful about that is, a bunch of things, but one is this kind of insatiable curiosity you have to learn and understand your environment, understand how you're connecting, understanding. Not only like – you're optimizing the connection point and helping people express their most authentic form at that pinnacle point of them being completely unconscious of their existence in the most flow state possible. What's amazing is, like, yeah, the camera matters, the lighting matters, all those things matter, but it's to get to that top point of that, of showing someone who they are, their best version of themselves, where they can see that, and they could feel that, and they look at themselves in that way and go, man, that's me, and that's an amazing gift to give someone in a conversation, in gift form, in picture form, to be able to show people their authentic self, to where it starts to even shift their own belief in who they are, by being able to now take that most excellent moment of them, and then show the world on their social media and everywhere else.

And I mean, I remember, a friend of mine took a photo of me while I was just laughing and back when I had luscious hair and I was rubbing it and I was just like, oh my God, that's the greatest photo ever. And I used it all over the place. I was like, I was like, wow. And it's a true gift to give to people is for them to be able to see themselves in a new light.

[00:37:00] Dave Perry: Yeah. And it's, I've had kids come in, like, you'll get a young, like some dad will bring his daughter to get her picture taken and the daughter is all like clammed up and she's really shy. And I start off and I take some pictures and I love it because I know those first pictures I took are going to be so phenomenal to show her later when we're done.

When do you see the person that leaves here, confidence wise, versus the person that arrived here, we are going to go through the world's biggest confidence rise on this individual. And, you can see it, but it's going to change them for their lives because now they're going to, when someone points a camera at them, instead of closing down, they now know how to be confident and stand and look into a camera. And each step of it. you can sort of help. It's so funny to see, you know, it's funny because Peter Hurley has this story about that, where he had some mother, kept insulting the daughter, like you'll never be good at this, or, you know, just insulting her right in front of the camera, until the girl starts crying.

And he's trying to take a picture of her, and she's crying because her mother won't stop railing on her. I mean, he's like, could you please get out of my studio? And he sat the girl down, and that's one thing that photography can do, is, you can't actually really pick the people's confidence up, and make them realize, no, you are actually really attractive. And, you know, whenever you take a picture, there's just some tricks to it, and some methods which will make the pictures a lot better, when they start to see that, you see them fully engaged, it's a very interesting, subject overall. But I do agree. It's definitely one of the best gifts you can give to people. And that's why I think I really enjoy doing it.

[00:38:47] Dylan Watkins: And what's really cool about that is, I mean, you're giving someone a gift of a belief in themselves, that's very much how your, last boss was like, hey, you're going to go learn this thing, this language and put this thing in one day. And then you're like, that's not possible. And at the end, you had that experience that now had you look and you’re like, of not only is that possible, I can do more, you expand the potential of what's possible with them.

And it sounds like a lot of things like what's coming to my mind, just the two words that's just coming top of my mind in terms of that camera, is like frictionless friendship, is this like, kind of way to kind of bring someone into your world, work with them in a loving and caring way, help, them to see the best in themselves, and hopefully both trade knowledge and become a little better for that experience, in whatever capacity that is.

What is – so you've taken this, I imagine this is one of, many of your superpowers as you've gone through this, just this journey of, self-growth and evolution. Have you had to do any type of like inner work or things to overcome on your own inner journey as you've gone along this path, like besides the ability to, can you actually code this thing amount of time, what inner work have you had to be able to do to become better at connecting with people and seeing their potential and, you know, is there any type of stuff that you've done on yourself internally to become – to increase the frictionless friendship?

[00:40:18] Dave Perry: Yeah, I'm actually an incredibly shy person. That's the real truth, is, I'm internally very shy. And I was once invited to a –. it's hard to explain it was like a summit for art or something, in Bev, and I went there, and they had all these really cool art exhibits. And one of them was, imagine there's a tabletop, but there's a projector projecting down on it.

And it looks as if it was like a woman in a bathtub. And if anyone touches the woman, she would move, and you would hear the sounds of all the water moving and see the water moving. And so it's effectively interactive moving art, right? And I'm like, oh, this is very cool, because it's like a dark room and you, you know, you go in and you know, you see people interacting with this thing, and it turns out that it was actually a study to see – to test personalities. So, there was a camera watching us from above to see where you stand in a circle of closeness to the interaction, so there are some people go up and just start, you know, putting their hands all over it, and there's other people who stand way back, the sort of more timid, and shy people, which would be me.

I would just be there observing and watching, but I'm not the guy that runs up and starts putting my hands, into the thing. And so, I think that's the point, is that there's – if anything, it's been helpful, sometimes to put yourself into situations. I used to find, when I was asked to speak at conferences, it kind of stressed me out, and I realized that it was actually stressing me out. So, I, in a way, forced myself to do it. I'm apologizing for my dog’s barking, but we have an air conditioning guy here.

[00:42:21] Dylan Watkins: They’re great protector.

[00:42:23] Dave Perry: Yeah, exactly. Sorry, I forgot what I was saying there. What was I saying?

[00:42:26] Dylan Watkins: Incredibly shy person, stressed out, and you recognize that you were stressed out from being on a stage. So, and that's where –

[00:42:32] Dave Perry: Yes. So, then I started to actually accept more speaking appointments, which is counter to that, like what are you doing? I'm like, I'm going to speak as much as I possibly can anywhere when anyone will let me on a stage, I'm going to do it, because I want to overcome this. And in the end I traveled to go and see the Ted conference, not the TEDx, but the real Ted conference. And I saw the guy in charge of the Ted conference at the, you know, one of the food lines where he was getting lunch, and I just went up to him and I pitched him on the spot, like I would like to speak at the conference, and he agreed to do it.

And so, suddenly I'm going to speak at Ted, and that was pretty stressful. And it's a whole long story, but it turns out I was really ill the day I had to speak at Ted, like I was, I had stomach flu, so I was incredibly sick. and I still went ahead and give the talk because you only get one Ted talk chance. They weren't going to invite me back again if I skipped. So, I went ahead and did the talk, but it was, it's those moments where you're realizing. there's something blocking you, so you have to overcome it.

I can't spend the rest of my life afraid to get in front of an audience. And so now, at this point, I've given speeches to thousands of people. and I kind of enjoy it. I think it's now – what you don't know is when you're going to speak to an audience is quite often, if it's a big event, there's so much light being cast at, you can't even see the audience, because you're on a stage, which is all lit so aggressively.

And so I find that, you know, you can see a few rows of people, but you generally can't see everybody unless it's like some, you know, convention, but in general, I really enjoy it now and I'm more than happy to do it. So, I guess the point is that, you just have to jump in and go for it.

[00:44:35] Dylan Watkins: Yeah. what's interesting – what's making me think about is a couple things; one, it's like, you're jumping over the hurdle of you, right? You're like, oh, oh, this is my problem. And then you go and you just crush that problem until it doesn't exist anymore. And I think if you combine that personality trait with the curiosity and all the other things, it can stack to be a really, I mean, really powerful combo of just being able to evolve yourself, evolve your friendship, your network, your friends, your learning, which is super cool. On that note, I know we have the dog in the background –

[00:45:10] Dave Perry: Do you want me to quickly solve the dog problem?

[00:45:13] Dylan Watkins: Sure. Yeah, go for it. I'm going to talk – I'm just going to talk to the camera a little bit while you go and do that. So, what I find really fascinating about this, and he's going to go fix this real quick, is that if you look at the mindset and the skillsets, the skillsets are all – they're all achievable, but the mindset, the willingness, the curiosity to learn anything, the game of friendship, the building, the social networks with people that can actually power level, you like no other, and actually having the diverse network to where any person that you need, you can actually step into and level your skills up, is extraordinary.

The one thing I would be very curious to see how this applies is, you've been, I would say, fairly successful at building companies and you've done it again and again and again, and in multiple different ways. So how does – what is your mindset around customer feedback? What is your mindset around building products and companies? If you're someone who's shy, who doesn't normally engage with people, and it's something that you've gotten better over time with, how have you taken all these natural, or learned skill sets and mindset and applied it into the area of choosing companies to work on, and also refining those with, with customer feedback?

[00:46:25] Dave Perry: Yeah. I tend to get attracted to things that you're going to do that won't feel like washing the dishes, right? So what do you do? Are you inventing something or are you just washing the dishes? And so, that's the thing I tend to, I talk quite a lot about, but it's really just a concept is, if you sort of, I call it thinking down the track, so you know, in any industry, if you can imagine it as a train track, there's a train on the track and everyone's on the train and there's some people miss the train and they're a bit late and they're trying to copy and trying to catch up with the train, you definitely don't want to be there. Being on the train is cool because you're on the train, but the question is, where is the train going?

And so, there's a certain amount of people trying to work out where the next station is, and they're trying to get that one station ahead, but what I'm always trying to think about is, okay, after you've thought of that, what's the one ahead of that, and what's the one ahead of that? And just trying to think forward, as far as you possibly can, down the track. And at some point, you are not going to be able to think any farther, but then, now you've identified that point to start working towards that. Because when you do, it's going to be fun, because you're inventing at that point, everything you do is inventing, and you're going to be going in a direction that most people aren't, like, especially the people chasing the train. So, people are going to find that probably quite interesting, whatever you're doing.

My last company, the concept was, getting people to play video games, where is that going? Well, games were starting to go online, but it's quite hard to get them to engage at scale where they're all having to download and install the game, and this was something that I was seeing in the PC market. And so, you know, we're thinking what would be the best possible version of experiencing a game? And the answer would be, playing it instantly, and then instantly where, well, instantly everywhere.

And, okay. what games? Just the current games or all games? Well, I'd like all games, so all games everywhere, instantly. That sounds cool. What is that? How does that work? How could you make all games everywhere instantly? And you start going, well, we can't run the game locally, because it can't be instant, so there's no choice, you're going to have to run the game in the cloud. So, how do you do that? I don't know. I know nothing about the cloud.

So, I go on Wikipedia, and I type in like big networking companies and it listed them, and I started calling them one by one and just started asking them about, you know, how does it work? Like what do they offer? And I ended up talking to a company called Savvis. The salesman was on the phone with me from Savvis, which is a great big network, or it was, at the time. And I said to him, look, if I had a game running in a certain data center, somewhere on your network, how fast will the connection be from different places? So, could you draw me a map of the speed of your network, so I can see, because I know it's not a circle, like if there's one in Los Angeles, I know it's not a circle. What shape is that?

And he goes, dude, if I had that, that would be incredible. I would love that chart. I could sell the heck out of that. And I go. Well, we could help you make that if you want. And he goes, would you be willing to talk to my CEO about that? And I go, sure, next minute, I'm in St. Louis sitting with the CEO of Savvis, pitching him this idea, why don't we help you make a map of the speed of your network, because it's going to help us too. And he said, done, you can have access to all of our data centers for free.

And suddenly, I mean talk about an unfair competition, like anyone that competes against us has to pay for all the data centers across the country. So, what is that? What is that? That's not planned. That's just – that's the thing I always failed to understand is what is that, but somehow that happens. And so, the challenge, I once gave a commencement speech, at a university and I talked about these weird opportunities just surface, and it's up to you to take them. And, you know, in a way, your path in life is going to be based, to some extent on luck, and how things occur, and they really hated my commencement speech, like the faculty was just, that was terrible. It's not about luck, it’s about education. What are you talking about?

And I'm like, no, that's actually not the way it works. The way it really works, is, these opportunities just pop up randomly, and you need to be ready to grab them.

[00:51:19] Dylan Watkins: Oh, man, that gives me a real – just a quick, side note on that, I remember getting an argument with my teacher and she's like, is it what you know, or is it who you know? I'm like, it's who you know. And she goes, what about getting to college? I'm like, well, do you know the dean? And we just kept going – we kept playing this game and she got to mad, and I'm like –

[00:51:37] Dave Perry: Yeah, exactly, do you know the dean, like is the dean a family member, does that help, right? That might help.

[00:51:43] Dylan Watkins: Yeah. It might open some doors. So, I love the cold calling, Savvis Network, but you're basically scratching lotto tickets by making these cold calls and then those things open up and then you're like, I mean, it's, Joseph Campbell, like, when you're on the path, doors, open up to you that aren't – that to other people that aren't on the path, and I don't know what that is. I don't know if we live in one big Elon Musk, like simulation type of thing or not, but I would love – please.

[00:52:11] Dave Perry: You see you, you’re a gamer, so you get this. I'm not sure if it's that obvious to people why it's fun, but if I'm in LinkedIn, right, I have now, I don’t know how many is the limit, I think I'm like 29,000 connections or something, they've warned me that I'm about to run out of connections, but the reality is, if I want to send a message to someone on LinkedIn, what I do, is, I sit there and go, this is a game, game on, I'm going to write something, not because that's the thing that needs to be written, I'm going to write something that's going to engage the person at the other end and get them to reply to me.

And it's just a game, right? I can't tell you how many people spam me, and just, you know, obviously they just copy-paste, copy-paste, they're using some tool to just dump the same garbage, and it’s just wasting everybody's time, but if you can write something that's very engaging to somebody, it becomes a game and it's a bit of a thrill when the response comes back. And so, I think that's another interesting point. It's just to have fun with it. It's not, you know, it is really a game and done, right, when that response comes back, it's really enjoyable. And you should get – you should enjoy that because you deserve it, because you sat there and thought it through. But, if that's the truth, then who can't you connect with, right?

Because LinkedIn will give you the capability of sending a message to a lot of people, but can you get them to respond? Did you just write something really boring, or did you write something that's all about you, like what you want from them? And, so that's a – it's a kind of a, there's a book. you know, I'm sure you've heard of Gary Vaynerchuk, who’s this dude who gives a lot of advice on social media and stuff, but he's kind of fascinating because he talks about, you know, like in boxing, you have the jab jab hook, and so, you have to give a little before you ask for the – you put the ask in there. And so what are you doing?

So, there's great books, there's one called the Irresistible Offer, is a good one.

[00:54:30] Dylan Watkins: Irresistible Offer.

[00:54:31] Dave Perry: Yeah. I hate the fact that you have to read a book to get an idea. It's so annoying to me like you have to read through a whole book and there's this one idea. I wish they would just admit it that there's an idea, which is a good idea, but let's just get to the point.

[00:54:44] Dylan Watkins: Yeah, but also, the emotion creates the story and the context to be able to retain that idea. I know you're saying don't give me any foreplay, but the way that humans learn is in story formats, so the more engaging and compelling the story that the better the lesson sticks because I could jump a billion ideas, but one well executed story that makes you remember a lesson forever is – and that's why you need the book. Right?

[00:55:06] Dave Perry: That’s fair, however, you see – people very, very commonly kill the story the way they can't quite remember it and they tell it all wrong and then it's annoying. But anyway, I think that's important. There are definitely some key ideas out there that can help focus.

[00:55:26] Dylan Watkins: I want to touch on something real quick; 29,000 LinkedIn friends, right?

[00:55:32] Dave Perry: Yeah.

[00:55:33] Dylan Watkins: How? How did you get 29,000?

[00:55:36] Dave Perry: Well, it's actually, being an engineer, LinkedIn launched this new service, I don't know what LinkedIn is or what it's going to be, and it sounded to me like some kind of network that was going to be where you would connect to other business people. And then it's like, do you want to connect to this person? Or do you want to block them? And I'm like, why would I block anyone? That's stupid, right, because they might know somebody who knows somebody who gets me to that person. I can't understand why you would block out a graph. I don't need something to help me know who I know, so I don't need something to keep track of my friends for me. I need something to help me reach anybody I want to reach.

So, how does LinkedIn help you do that? And the answer is, connect to everybody. So, when people – I did that until I hit the limit. And then I, now I've actually had to unfollow, to try to keep it under control. But, so now, I don't – what I do is, I'll connect to everybody that wants to connect to me, but if they spam me, I unfollow them. That's my new rule. And then you end up with this really good, you know, really incredible network for reaching people. So it's got – so, I'm thinking as an engineer, it's just solving an actual technical problem, which is connections. I don't need it as a social network.

So, people are like what, you accept someone you don't know? Yes, who cares? It’s data. It’s just data.

[00:57:04] Dylan Watkins: But it's interesting to see, you focus on the game of friendship so much that you broke LinkedIn. Like, you broke the game. And so that leads me into what you're currently working on now with Go Viral and kind of looking at the history of how you play the game of life, and how you level up and how you power up and what skills to focus on. You've stepped into a new space, not in games. And why aren't you making games? No, no, the question is not that, it's, you stepped into a new space, can you talk to me just a little bit about Go Viral? What's the Genesis of that company? And then, how has it evolved since then?

[00:57:47] Dave Perry: Well, just to finish up gaming before I do that, I am sort of, for now, I'm sort of done with gaming, but then I couldn't help myself because a friend of mine, said he wanted to make a new console that would be for families. And I did, I have to admit, I got excited about the idea, the idea of couch play, where people play together again, the way they used to, meaning that two kids are playing something and somebody else walks in the room and they're like, do you want to join us, and they're like, sure, and they can just jump in and join. And the instructions can be no longer than a sentence.

So, you can't say, here's a manual, or it's going to take you a week to learn how to play this thing. It's like, you know, the big fish eat the smaller fish, don't get eaten. That's the instructions. Go. And then everyone plays, but then mom can sit down and mom can join in as well, and she can have fun with the kids. And the games are designed and balanced so that mom can actually win, even if she's never played before, and that creates this, everyone starts, you know, gets competitive, and mom's really in for the win and she's serious, and, you know, grandpa could actually get this point on pong.

Well, what's happening is grandpa's bat is getting bigger every time grandpa loses, until it starts to get fair, right? So grandpa's now, there's a five-year-old and grandpa, and now it's a fair game again. I'm kind of enamored by the concept and that's – the device is called the Television of Meco, and I'm kind of fascinated to see how that works out because that could become a really interesting thing that helps bring the couch and the real play together feeling of gaming back. There's a lot of people today retreating to play by themselves. They're on their phone, playing the game. They want to play and it's not really multiplayer, or they're in their room playing Fortnite or whatever. And they may be playing other people in other places, but they're not playing with their family and they're not playing with the friends that are in their house.

And, so, it's not designed as a replacement for a PlayStation or anything like that. It's just a different device designed for when you get into that setting, you have some friends over and you just want to play something where you don't want to have to try to explain complicated rules to them. Even board games, the rules get too complicated, it's just too much bother to explain it all to them. So, the idea of having something simple is good. So that's really my last thing, for the game industry right now is to focus. I'm on the board and I'm trying to give some guidance, because I'm excited about that platform.

Then, I decided after my last company was bought by Sony, and so this time I've decided to try something different. A bit like I talked about before where you're sort of looking at a different space and saying, can I even – can I operate in that space? Is there anything – can I learn this space fast enough to not screw up? And the space that I chose was Influencers. It seemed really interesting to me. I was taking their pictures and realizing that they weren't happy with the way they operated, they didn't get to work with brands they wanted to work with, they were always being asked to work with brands they didn't want to work with. And so I got interested in that space, and that sort of led me down this path, you know, which was a lot of time, and a lot of work, our team has worked so hard trying to really understand the problems and what we can do to help.

And where it ended up is, we've now created the lowest cost way to interact with social media influencers because of the authenticity of the relationship, meaning that we're connecting influencers to the brands they actually want to meet, the ones they love, the ones that they buy their products and the ones that they would love to have a real relationship with. That's what we do, and we do it for free. and we have over 35,000 brands have joined our platform, now, to do that.

By doing that and getting so many brands, and we've connected them to over 7 million influencers now, but as that happens, what we've realized is that the power of the network is kind of fascinating. So, when you get brands to work together, then new things become possible. So, initially, brands were joining just to find out their influencers. But now we're realizing that if the brands actually collaborate, they become, it's like one plus one equals three, and as that keeps going, the power of the network is really quite immense. There's 340 million visitors a month.

So, is there any way this brand can share in some of that traffic, like, can they push their products to the edge of the network? So, we started to talk about commerce to the edge, which means pushing your products to the edge of a preexisting network, to get the traffic and awareness for free. And why would they do that? Because they can all do that together, as long as they all agree to do that together. And so that's what Carro has developed into, and our tagline is, sell more together.

And the concept now is of course, we still do the influencer piece, but there's this second piece which allows brands to collaborate and take a product that they sell and put it into another store. So, let's say there's a bicycle store that doesn't sell helmets, which is crazy, if you have a bicycle store that doesn't sell helmets, what are you thinking? Because you need helmets, because they're going to buy them somewhere else, and if they buy them from you, they actually want your recommendation because they like your bike company.

And then when you sell the helmet, your average order value goes up, and so now you've got, you know, you're getting to increase the value of each customer, so, now you can spend more money on marketing. So, it just makes sense. What else? They want gloves? Well, why don't you have gloves too? And so, our technology takes the gloves from the glove company and just places them into the bike store, without having to buy any inventory and without having to store all these helmets in your warehouse.

So, once you start thinking about that, it's kind of fun, because now, a brand will go, huh, well, I guess we'll take these two helmets, and it's like, no, there's no cost. You can have unlimited inventory that you can try different things, learn who your audience is, and what they want. You sell makeup, but you don't have brushes? You sell nail polish, but you don't have nail polys remover? You need to start thinking about what – if you take away all the constraints on money and warehousing, what would you be, and who would you be? And it's like, wait, what? This is not a question anyone's asking now, right? Who do you – what is your end game vision for your brand? And let us help you get there today.

And that's something that you can imagine, it's rather exciting to brands when they actually understand it. And so we're building all the technologies around making that possible at a global scale.

[01:05:08] Dylan Watkins: That's awesome. And when you said it was like 340 million visitors, is that to your platform or through your platform via the –

[01:05:13] Dave Perry: So, the way we think of it is, it's like a federation of brands. If you take all the brands together, they create a new network, and they're all interconnected. So, we have this amazing graphics, if I get the screen sharing, I could show you, but, the idea is that, you can see how all of the brands are connecting to each other on our platform. And it's a data set that I don't know where I could even buy it. Can I buy a data set of all the brands that love each other and want to work together? Like who's got that.

[01:05:46] Dylan Watkins: You made a new map.

[01:05:47] Dave Perry: Yeah, we do. And so, it's kind of fascinating to watch that grow every day. And so, this is my point, I don't really know what's going on, but somehow I'm in eCommerce now, and I'm in social media now. And guess what? Social media influencers don't know who they influence. This is like, wait, what? They don't know who they influence. They send their clicks to Amazon and they get 2% or 3% from Amazon and no idea who bought. So, they've been doing it for years, which means that, as an influencer, they don't know who they influence, and they can't market to the next brand deal who they, who they've influenced, because they don't know.

So, if influencers create their own store and they use our technology, then now, they can actually sell the products they love in their store, they become the retailer, so they get 30% of the sale, not 2% or 3%, so, it's 10 times the revenue, and you keep all the customers, they're all yours, which means that now, you can remarket your next brand deal with all the customers that have ever bought from you. It's shocking, but only I would say 99% of influencers in the world today don't do this. They don't know who they influence. They're making a few percent, if anything, and – or their moms sign some deal with a t-shirt company, that's going to give them 10% of a t-shirt sale. And that t-shirt company keeps your customers.

It's like, these are terrible ideas.

So, what we're doing is, we're saying to influencers, look, your brands too, you should be the one getting the retailer cut, and you should be the one owning the audience, and as you grow over years, as you grow and you're able to remarket and so I already have 150,000 people that have bought based upon my, you know, my choices or my suggestions, then, that's an incredibly valuable thing to that next deal.

So, why does this matter? Well, if you look at platforms like Shopify, they have about a million stores, over a million stores, but we estimate there's about 60 million influencers in the world right now. especially when you get the TikToks, and things like that just grow, you know, growing more really rapidly. And so, the opportunity space is many millions of stores. And the one problem that most stores have on the internet, is they have no attention, no one's coming to the store, and they have to pay Google or Facebook to get some traffic. Influencers have the exact opposite problem, they have an abundance of attention, but they don't really have a way to focus it, they don't have somewhere to focus it. and so, by doing it this way, finally, all their social media can point to their store.

And that means, if any social media network ever goes away, it doesn't really matter to them because all the people who actually, you know, want to follow them, or that want to buy anything, they recommend, those are all backed up in their own store.

[01:08:49] Dylan Watkins: When you’re saying store, so, let's just say there's different types of influencers. I mean, what about, so Instagram, sounds like TikTok, they can do influencers. What other influencer channels? What about like Facebook or what other, what, like, at what point –can you talk to me if like, does it matter what platform you're on? Are you a LinkedIn influencer, or how do you – what is your definition of someone that you can service, that’s an influencer, and what social media channels are they influencing?

[01:09:16] Dave Perry: Yeah. If you take an influencer that is across multiple channels, they've got a YouTube channel, they've got an Instagram account, maybe they do something on TikTok, whatever combination doesn't matter. Maybe they write books, maybe they do podcasts, right? Whatever space they're operating in is fine. but what it does is, it gives – what I find very commonly is, Instagram points to their podcast, but not to their store where they sell their presets, you know? And it's like, what are you doing? You know, you need to put them all together and have this central place that is you, online.

And so social media should really just be a source of more traffic and reach, and they should embrace as many as they can because you know, that fit within the thing that they do. But ultimately, the really high end influencers of course are already doing this. So the 1% have this down. They have multiple different brands. They know all the customers, they get it. They got it. They're locked in, but it's the 99% that's missing this, which is kind of interesting right now.

[01:10:21] Dylan Watkins: Well, it's really cool because I mean, if you look at like, so the online game is this, it's, you know, how big is your list and what kind of offers can you make? And then once they go through the funnel, you're really looking at how much can you optimize the cart value to basically decrease the cost per click spend? So, if you can increase the cart value of your customer and you don't need to actually offload the cost, you don't actually have to absorb the infrastructure damage that it takes to actually be able to increase your cart value, you can drive more, ad dollars to people going through your thing, and that then helps you build your own list, build your own customers, get them off those channels and allows you to basically service more people.

And so, the online game is, can I spend a dollar and make $2? Or even better, can I turn on the ad machine and drive more people by increasing my cart value, I can have a bigger reach. And so you're basically empowering people to increase the size of their cart value by finding lookalike people that their group is already targeted. So, my customer loves these hats and these jeans, so then, you can bulk that together, increase that cart value, and then they can get a bigger throughput and empower them with basically what the 1% can do, but to the 99% of the population that can't do it.

[01:11:38] Dave Perry: That's exactly right. And to make it as effortless as we possibly can.

So, adding products from brands, is literally one click. So, you just click to add the products you want in your store. if it's a big brand, then you send a request and then they give you permission or not.

So, it's a very interesting, space, but see what I'm talking about, where it’s sort of almost the wild west because we get to invent every day, every day we're solving new, oh, how are we going to handle that, right? And there's no one to copy. We're just like, well, I guess we're going to do it this way, or we're going to, you know, we've been working out our pricing for subscriptions for this system, and then a brand just said to us, what if I was to give you 300,000 a month, what can you do for me?

And it caused us just to look at each other going, you know, I think we've missed – we've missed out on something here, we definitely – we didn't have the discussion about what we're going to do for 300,000 a month, right? Why didn't we have that discussion? And it's something that I think about in the game industry.

Oscar

[01:12:26] Dave Perry: And it caused us just to look at each other going, you know, I think we've missed out on something here. We didn't have the discussion about what we're going to do for 300,000 a month, right? Um, why didn't we have that discussion?

[01:12:41] Dylan Watkins: There we go.

[01:12:41] Dave Perry: And it's something that I think about in the game industry. When the game industry learned this lesson, it took us a long time.

[01:12:48] Dylan Watkins: Mm-hmm.

[01:12:49] Dave Perry: But we create this artificial money wall, which is a $60 price for video game. And if you don't have it, you can't play my game. That's a terrible idea. And over time we started to realize that's not a great idea.

And the game's on mobile, where the companies are worth billions of dollars, they solve that problem, which is they can accept any amount of money. So if somebody wants to put $10,000 into Clash Royale, they can. The game will absolutely allow you to do that. And so you end up with this curve of people who can't afford to put money in and people who can't afford to put a lot of money in and you accept all, I call it just accepting all the money on the table.

[01:13:28] Dylan Watkins: Mm-hmm.

[01:13:28] Dave Perry: So it's stunning how many businesses – and I'm guilty of this too. So I just did that phone call today and it's very frustrating for me is we've gone and designed a structure where we're not accepting all the money on the table. How many businesses do that? It's a bit like, um, you know, if you think about any industry there's cars for everyone, every price point.

So if you want to spend the money and buy a Porsche, the system's designed to accept that money. And you know, at the end of the day, it just gets you around, but people want to spend the money. Golf clubs, you can get your – borrow old golf clubs, or you can spend $5,000 on your golf clubs. No problem. The industry has found a way to accept it.

And so I think it's just an interesting business question. Are you accepting all the money on the table? Because you know, here I go, I've gone and, you know, not found a way to do that. So I need to solve that. And that's what I mean. So now then literally I'm going to be tonight brainstorming with my co-founder and trying to think how the heck are we going to open the door to more money?

[01:14:35] Dylan Watkins: Well, it's going up the value ladder, right? And you're understanding that there's low level value and then going up the chain, but you didn't realize there was another step on that value ladder of possibility, which you're like, oh, oh, I'm getting some feedback here, which is what could we do with that? What is that?

[01:14:52] Dave Perry: Yeah.

[01:14:52] Dylan Watkins: You know? Okay. What's a five-star experience? What's a six-star experience? What's a 10-star experience? You know, that's incredible. Have you heard – one thing I want to touch on is, have you heard of the conversion formula? Are you familiar with that? I was talking with someone about you being on the podcast and one of the lessons you told me a long time ago is about frictionless, make everything frictionless as possible.

And there's a formula I don't know if you heard of, which is, C equals 4M plus 3V plus 2 parenthesis I minus F. I don't know if you've ever – have you heard about that formula?

[01:15:35] Dave Perry: I haven't come across that, but it sounds interesting.

[01:15:38] Dylan Watkins: I'll tell you what it is and I'd love to talk to you about this as another online marketer person that I – a gentleman told me about this. I thought this is interesting. So C is the probability of conversion and then 4M equals the level of motivation of the user. Plus three times the value of the proposition. And then it's basically, you're looking at two in the parentheses of the incentive to take action minus the friction of the users.

So as it works out in the moment, how motivated is the person is the four times motivation plus what's the clarity of the value prop. And then what is the incentive to take action in that moment minus the friction in that moment. And that equals the probability of the conversion. So if you decrease the friction and then that allows that formula to work, or you can increase the motivation or the clarity of the offer or the initial incentivization.

And that is what's that some, you know, geeky people online, who I appreciate, created this formula for how do you predict the probability of a conversion on an ad spend, so.

[01:16:48] Dave Perry: Right. Yeah, I actually really like the idea. And the math, if you think about it, it sort of makes sense. There's always other variables to consider, but I think the way I've always described it is if you want to beat somebody else just have less friction. It's actually quite easy. You can disrupt industries.

The thing that sort of led me down that path was many years ago, I read a book by Bill Gates, of all people, that was called Business at the Speed of Thought. And I really like that idea. Just forget about the book. I just like that idea of business at the speed of thought. That's about as close as I can get to frictionless. So I actually, now, when I'm in meetings, I had a call – we're thinking of adding a third piece to our new company. So we have all this stuff you do with influencers, that gets you attention. All this stuff you do collaborating with other brands, that gets you sales.

The third thing I want to solve is funding. So we're going to create Carro capital. And so when I'm talking to various entities that could help make that happen, what I'm saying to them is we start with zero clicks because the current systems are complicated, so let's start at zero because that would be business at the speed of thought. Like I think I want something and I'm getting it.

So for that first click, what are we getting for that? Like what do we have to do to get that first click in? I kid you not, currently we have shopping for your shop. So you actually shop to find products and we got it down to one click to adding the product to your store. But we're actually working right now on auto approval, which means that we're trying to find ways to get to zero clicks. Like the path literally is – the discussion is continuous, is that click necessary?

I mean they want the control of the click. If you ask them, do they want the click? Oh yes, they want the click until they realize they cannot have to do the click and their business will grow faster. So if we have more information than they do about whether the click is a good idea or not, wouldn't they rather let us make the determination versus them? So maybe it'll take time to get them there, but you can see why the constant question of, can it be less friction? Can it be less friction? It's something I can never stop. I have to do it.

And I think it's a secret sauce. You know, I was talking earlier about your point and you say, look, that's a hurdle pointer, right? Yeah. There's another one. I bought a car from BMW when I was sitting in the dealership. And they have all this paperwork and like pages after pages to be signed, and I'm looking at awe, and I just think to myself, friction, it's just friction, right?

[01:19:44] Dylan Watkins: Yeah.

[01:19:46] Dave Perry: Why doesn't somebody solve this? This is all friction. And it's done because that's the way it's always being done, but what actually happens is someone always thinks of another piece of paper to add to the stack, right? There's some new waiver or some new thing, so they proceed and have you sign that too. And so it gets worse and worse as a problem, not better and better. And so I think every industry can be disrupted if you approach from that vector.

[01:20:14] Dylan Watkins: I love that frictionless mindset, and get it down to zero. You want to talk about expanding because my brain was trying to like process when you're saying that, you're like, get to zero. I'm like, eh, because I'm trying to like – I'm like how? And I started like, how could you do it? I'm like, well, if you upsold three items and then you assume the sale on the second or third, I mean, you could reduce a click of that assumed sale. Maybe there's package deals where it says, "Hey, we've already prepackaged what you need." Do you want to minus out what you don't, if you're following the value letter of what they need, right? They need a store to be able to host it. They need to be able to drive traffic to it. And then they need to be able to be something that's desired.

Like understanding that value journey of that person and then how to service them right at the point where they need it towards like, "Hey, if you solve this problem, here's your next pain." Man, I'm just trying to like – I'm trying to figure out how to get to zero. And like, besides Elon Musk, neurolinking your brain or like the smart swipe with your hand or – I don't know, gaze tracking. I'm trying to like get down to zero in my mind and that's a thought challenge for myself.

[01:21:10] Dave Perry: Yeah, choose any industry and have a think about that.

[01:21:16] Dylan Watkins: Yeah.

[01:21:16] Dave Perry: So is there any way to make it just that one little bit easier? Because you don't have to radically change it. You just have to make it better and better and better. If you think about the iPhone, and just watch what that did, sometimes you're like, that'll never work. Like that's the dumbest idea, like because they're taking away something you're used to and they change it. But sometimes that path makes things easier and easier and easier as they go down. It's just interesting to watch different entrepreneurs on how they approach these things and how they go about it all, it's fascinating. But it's just a theme I see. I'm attracted to it. I think when you have kids, you realize that attention spans are actually getting less and less, and not more and more.

If you watch a TikTok video and it doesn't get to the point within about five seconds, it drives you mad, right? You're like, let's go, let's go, let's go. And you watch kids interacting with it, they have no patience. It's almost training them to – it's literally training them to be impatient because they're automatically drawn towards the things that give immediate gratification. So this is the world. Welcome to the world. And it's only going to get more and more this direction.

[01:22:36] Dylan Watkins: I love that. You're totally right. And it's great because you're making something of service to them, but at the same time, learning that complete opposite, that skillset is so critical. You've been incredibly generous with your time. And I want to be respectful of it. What are some like last thoughts or advice that you want to give any would be either game developers or product designers or people looking to make a mark in this world? What advice would you give to them before you let people know how they can get ahold of you and find out more about what you do?

[01:23:18] Dave Perry: Gaming, let's talk about gaming for a minute.

[01:23:24] Dylan Watkins: Sure.

[01:23:25] Dave Perry: If you want to make a video game, there's actually nothing stopping you. So there's actually lots of people want to make games too, and it turns out that they do different things. So some of those people are great at music. Some people are good at writing. Some are good at programming, they're all out there on the internet. Hundreds of thousands of them that are like you, wish they had some people to work with, wish they could find a team that they could make this cool game together with. And so that's step one is you have an internet. Don't forget that. I didn't have an internet. Those people are out there and you can form a team, find some like-minded people and build something. And that ability to sort of design and make games is there's engines out there at every price level. So from free to stupidly expensive, whatever you want is out there. There's lots of demo code. There's lots of books that will teach you everything that you could possibly want to know.

So the only reason you're not making games is because you've chosen not to. You don't have the time, you don't have the money or whatever, and you've talked yourself out of it. The hurdles of men is to hold it back. But if you're passionate about it and you decide actually I'm going to do it, then you can do it. My recommendation would be from my career after making many, many games is humor is the secret. There are so few funny games that if you make a funny game, you will immediately stand out from the – it's very easy to make a game where you shoot things.

In fact, you can download the source code and the engine and have it up and running today. But running around and shooting things while that is fun in certain games, it's going to be hard to get attention. If you make something that's actually funny, and it doesn't have to be laugh out loud. I'm not saying some like comedy. Just something that's humorous – we used to watch a lot of Tex Avery cartoons and Tex Avery, we had them playing in our office 24/7, and the idea was to inspire people because they would see in a Tex Avery cartoon, when someone gets punched, the punch goes right through them and out the other side, like you know, their face distorts and the fist keeps going, and then it comes back and you sort of realize that you can play with all these ideas and rules and try to make something that's funny to play. And that kids will laugh out loud when they actually start playing the game. If you do that, you'll fast track, like crazy compared to everybody else.

And so that would be my advice is find some like-minded people that, you know, use the technologies and all the stuff that's out there. But if you can create something that's amusing, it'll be so much, so much more successful for you to cut through all the noise that's out there.

[01:26:35] Dylan Watkins: Yeah. That's great. No, it's really right. I often wonder where you got the whole Earthworm Jim. How do you make an earthworm cool and funny? And it was one of the games, like, again, I had a special, soft spot in my heart. My brother gave it to me as a Christmas present, wrapped in an entire full spool of duct tape. And so I could hear him playing beforehand and then I just, I hear the duct tape and then just I'm like, no, but it was one of the greatest games, but like, how do you – like that approach to something funny? Like how do you make it funny?

[01:27:17] Dave Perry: Well, there's two things. You don't plan. So we didn't make design documents and design it all out because that's hard. What you do is you play it, whatever works, and then you riff off that idea. So you keep riffing off whatever is actually working. So if it's fun to jump around, then have more jumping around. If it's fun to fly, then fly, right? And just sort of play around and build on whatever's working. And while that's occurring – you'd see the team get all excited about something because they would be playing it over and over because it was a good challenge or something like that.

And so in a way you can just sort of take the pulse of other people and see, is this something that's working? There's also very interesting game mechanics that I think are tried and tested. One that was in Earthworm Jim is what I call payback time. And payback time is when you make the player weak and then you make the player strong and they get to do payback time because they'd be getting pummeled while they were weak, but now they're strong and a gamer loves that. They're like, you know, everything was a nightmare, but not now. Now, now it's payback time.

And so if you think about an emotional curve, it's kind of fun to put the gamer through different emotions and different situations. Something we learned with Earthworm Jim was you couldn't predict what the next level would be. It was literally impossible. You couldn't tell what we were going to do next. And I think that was, I don't know, it wasn't planned. It's just how it evolved. But in reality, that kind of keeps it interesting. The next level, it could be anything. I mean, it really could be. Yet that makes you want to see the next level. All right, I want to see what's next. What haven't I seen yet in this thing? And it kept it interesting for the development because we were constantly coming up with, well, what should we do for the next level? I don't know. And then we would just start experimenting with something or someone would come up with some crazy idea. And then we would just try to implement it. So that's the secret.

One other thing we did with Earthworm Jim was we had a rule that everyone had to submit their designs. And that was pretty funny. So we had this rule that you had to draw your idea. So I want to say this to anybody that wants to do that little indie team thing and wants to make a funny game, when you have a meeting, force everybody to draw their ideas, they're not allowed to just tell you their ideas.

Why does that matter? Well, because some of them are going to be horrible artists and when they try to draw their idea, everyone's going to have fun looking at these horrible drawings and it breaks the ice in the room when people come in and submit their ideas, you're all kind of joking, what is this? Like, I don't understand, you know. And you're having a – I don't know, it sort of puts you in that mind state of this is fun. We're all having fun here. And what we saw is someone would misunderstand a drawing and actually have another idea like, oh, you know, I think what you mean is this. And no, that's not what I meant, but that's a great idea.

But that means that now you're getting much, much – it's the high frame, which is why you end up with all kinds of ideas that an individual who is trying to design an entire game on a piece of paper before anyone starts typing, I just didn't think that's the right way to do it.

[01:30:53] Dylan Watkins: Yeah, no, that's beautiful. And a much more organic and yeah, and I couldn't, yeah, it made me giggle thinking of trying to draw some of these concepts and just being like, I can't –  uh, it's fun and it's fun. And that's the thing, it's like, it's born of the essence of the thing, which is really cool, which is really fun.

[01:31:17] Dave Perry: Someone would just draw a pair of eyes and say, there is no level. You're just a pair of eyes and we'd be like, how would that work, right? What? That's crazy. And then someone would go, well, I guess you could do it, right? We could technically do it. So you've got to find your way around in the dark. And you've just got these like cartoon eyes. Let's do it. And then we would then code it up. If it wasn't fun, we'd stop. But if we liked it, it would stay in.

[01:31:43] Dylan Watkins: I mean, with that freestyle, how do you tell when something's done? How do you budget for time? I assume there's no Gantt chart or anything. How do you know when something's – how do you know when the baby's done or is this just, you know, you keep going and going and going?

[01:31:59] Dave Perry: No, you do. You need to have a point at which you stop. You just have to because you could go on forever. I think you know when you're close and then you go into a testing and cleanup mode and I think it's important to get people to play. And, you know, I did the Aladdin video game a long time ago, and I remember Disney being obsessed about the Aladdin story, like the story of Aladdin. And they made us put the story in the game and the story had to be displayed at a certain speed so that kids of a certain age could read at that speed and this all mattered greatly to them. So we had to do all of that. Then we went to test it with actual, you know, those rooms where you have the mirror.

[01:32:42] Dylan Watkins: Yep.

[01:32:43] Dave Perry: The one-way mirror and you're watching the kids play. And so we see this room full of kids and they're told, okay, you can play Aladdin now. And all we see is the thumbs just doing this, like the whole room, just all the thumbs doing this and all the texts. They're just trying to get through it as fast as they can. They don't want to read any of it. Right? And there was one girl in the room sitting there reading the story and so we pulled her out of the room and we're like, you know, we noticed that you read the story and she goes, I was so annoyed because I thought it would say something important, but it didn't.

The executives are like, "Hmm, this isn't good," right? They think the story is everything where it's not, it's a game. We're not here for the story. We're here for the game.

[01:33:31] Dylan Watkins: We're here for the game, man.

[01:33:32] Dave Perry: We didn't come here to read. They came here to play. And so once you start to understand that, that's what games are really all about.

[01:33:40] Dylan Watkins: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Don't make me read. Don't give me homework while I'm trying to play.

[01:33:45] Dave Perry: No, they want to play.

[01:33:46] Dylan Watkins: Yeah. That's awesome. Unless there's something secretly important embedded in there. It's like your book, your whole book thing. You're like don't make me do this whole thing for a nugget of an idea. Just tell me the nugget, let me go play with it.

[01:33:58] Dave Perry: Yeah. Let's move on. That's the best thing ever. So no, that would be my advice. And, you know, also just that whatever you want to do, honestly, you can do it. My daughter is learning Chinese and it sounds like, whoa, Chinese, that's so hard. Yeah. Until you actually do it. And then you actually, you know – I said to her, do you realize you're speaking Chinese now? And it's something that she's just in school, you go to class and they teach you Chinese. And it's just another class. You're learning math, you're learning English. And at some point you come out and you can speak Chinese.

And I wanted her to do it because I knew that it would prove to her she could do anything, right? Because when you look at writing – imagine you're about to start a class in Chinese, and you're looking at the text going, I'm going to be able to read and write this by the end of it, I'm going to be able to speak the language. She sings in Chinese now. And she's able to read and write this language and you know, what a great life lesson, that's such a great life lesson because you can hear me now in the future, but you learned Chinese, right? You know, oh this is really hard. I don't know how to do this, but you learned Chinese, right? You know that's coming, you know. And that's, that's the truth. If you put the time in, you will learn it.

[01:35:22] Dylan Watkins: Yeah. Yeah. That's beautiful. If you can get that belief that you can learn anything, if you're just given the time and you have some authoritative person saying do it and you're like, I don't want to, but then they're like, oh wow, I did it. It is possible. It literally opens up worlds. And learning a whole new language expands your whole world as well. I mean, once you learn the language, you're officially on the inside of the crowd, so that's impressive and beautiful. That's wonderful. So that's the lessons, make it fun, have fun with it. Find ways for people to do it in a hive-mindy kind of way, and give people challenges that allows them to kind of rise, allows them to see their own potential or, you know, see who they currently are and embrace it. I love that.

Dave, thank you so much for your time. If people want to find out more about Go Viral and more about you, how do they find out more?

[01:36:22] Dave Perry: So the product we're making is called Carro, C-A-R-R-O, and the website is getcarro. So get C-A-R-R-O dot com. The website is something we've built internally, but pretty soon it's going to hopefully tell the story and then you'll be able to see what this is all about, but that's what I'm doing now.

The second thing is Intellivision Amico, which is my one game thing. So if you go to intellivisionamico.com, A-M-I-C-O, then you'll be able to see that family console idea. And I think that's fun, too.

[01:37:01] Dylan Watkins: Beautiful. Dave, you are a gem. I really appreciate your time, brother. This was wonderful. You know, keep doing what you're doing, brother. And I just appreciate all you do. So thank you so much for your time, Dave, and I'll see you soon.

[01:37:14] Dave Perry: Thanks for inviting me. It's great to catch up. I've enjoyed the conversation.

[01:37:18] Dylan Watkins: Yeah, absolutely, brother, I'll talk to you soon. All right, take care.

[01:37:21] Dave Perry: Talk to you later. Bye-bye.

[01:37:26] Outro: Thank you for listening to the Heroes of Reality Podcast. Check out HeroesofReality.com for more episodes. While you're there, you can also take the hero's quiz to find out what kind of hero you are, or if you have a great story and want to be on the podcast, tell us why your hero's journey will inspire others.