February 25, 2025 • 51 mins
Ever wondered what it takes to build a tech company from scratch in Southern Utah? Meet Blake Kvarfordt, the local genius behind Blake Technologies who's shaking things up in St. George. From his early days studying business at UVU to diving headfirst into coding at Dev Mountain, Blake's story is anything but ordinary. After cutting his teeth at tech giants like T-Mobile and Nike's innovation team, he came back home with a mission: to create STGZ, a game-changing app that helps local businesses attract customers without the usual hefty fees. But here's where it gets really interesting - Blake drops some serious knowledge about how AI is transforming the way we build software, while keeping it real about why the human touch still matters. We get into the nitty-gritty of startup life and why face-to-face connections are more important than ever in our screen-obsessed world. Want to know what the future looks like? Blake's got some wild ideas about AR and VR that'll blow your mind, especially when it comes to education and everyday life. He's cooking up something big - think Groupon, but way better and focused right here in our community. Plus, if you're into real estate, stick around for his take on investment strategies and what's happening with manufactured homes. Trust me, you don't want to miss this one.
Guest - Blake Kvarfordt
Website - https://www.blaketechnologies.com/
Looking for a Real Estate expert? Find us here!
https://realestate435.kw.com/
www.wealth435.com
https://linktr.ee/wealth435
Below are our wonderful friends!
Find FS Coffee here:
https://fscoffeecompany.com/
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https://www.tuacahn.org/
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https://www.blueformmedia.com/
#southernutah #435podcast #stgeorgeutah #ai #technology #aitechnology
[00:00:00] Intro.
[00:01:38] Local Entrepreneur's Coupon App Journey.
[00:11:07] Tech Stack and Remote Work Trends.
[00:14:15] Remote Work Challenges and Community Benefits.
[00:25:42] Virtual Reality and Future Education Trends.
[00:30:14] Local Events Integration for Business Coupons.
[00:36:07] Real Estate and Investment Strategies.
[00:39:42] Manufactured Homes and Lending Laws
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
We're targeting St George, the Southern Utah area.
It's called St Jeezy.
Okay, the point of this is it'sa coupon app similar to what
you've already seen, like withDixie Direct, I think it's
called.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Dixie.
Speaker 1 (00:12):
Direct Starving student cards Starving student
cards Stuff like that.
However, we're not chargingbusinesses.
Okay, this is one of the fewmodels that you can still remain
profitable and, you know,maintain or grow the company
without having to chargebusinesses, which is very rare.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
From the Blueform Media Studios.
This is the 435 Podcast thepulse of Southern Utah.
Hey everybody, welcome back toanother episode of the 435
Podcast.
Today I have Blake Carver withme.
He is the Blake from BlakeTechnologies, a local tech
entrepreneur here in SouthernUtah, and we talk about a lot of
different things his historywith T-Mobile, with Nike and his
(00:56):
latest edition of his app.
That's a local based app.
It's STGZ ST space GZ on theApple iTunes app store.
You'll want to download it.
It's going to have coupons andpromoting local businesses here
in town, but we're on the huntfor unique ways People are
making money in Southern Utah.
We want to focus on the smallbusinesses and Blake has a great
story.
We hope you enjoy this episode.
(01:17):
We'll see you out there.
You know this might sound crazy, but I hate real estate agents
and after being with myself forthe last 10 years, I know the
good ones from the bad ones.
If you're thinking about buying, selling or investing in real
estate here in Southern Utah, wewant you to interview us for
the job.
Go to realestate435.com andgive us a call.
We promise you're going to loveus.
(01:37):
Blake, what's your last name?
It's Carford, carford.
Yeah, carford.
Is that a German Swedish?
Yeah, carford, Is that German?
Speaker 1 (01:44):
Swedish.
Yeah, If you look at thespelling there's a V and a T in
there, okay, but yeah, it'spronounced Carford Carford.
And where are you from?
I grew up in Las Vegas and thenmoved here, actually just
before high school, okay, so Iwent to high school at Desert
Hills in St George here, desertHills in St George, here, uh,
(02:06):
and then, uh, just you know,after I went to college at Utah
Valley university, um, anddropped out when I discovered my
passion for software, yeah, uh,and then, yeah, started started
my career there.
So that didn't start in highschool that you you went to Utah
Valley and started doingclasses and yeah, I was actually
studying business and then,yeah, part of the part of the
major was just one, uh, computerscience class, which is like
(02:29):
building websites.
Yeah, uh, and I really reallyliked that.
I ended up building like wewere supposed to build one
website and I built like five.
I built one for my dad'smedical practice and then, uh,
you know other just littlebusiness websites that I wanted
to build to learn it and yeahlike after, after that class.
You know, we just kept going toclasses, you know, like business
(02:51):
, and I hated it.
And so one day my wife was justlike stop complaining, like go
do it.
You liked that one class, likejust go do that.
Speaker 2 (02:58):
Yeah, Uh, I ended up just yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
So when I decided I want to do like technology,
realized that the colleges don'treally teach the latest and
greatest stuff.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
The iteration of it is just so quick, right.
Speaker 1 (03:10):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2 (03:11):
So did you go work for somebody first?
Speaker 1 (03:13):
Yeah, I went to Dev Mountain up in Northern Utah.
That's kind of where I went.
It was like a three-month bootcamp and then from there my like
job job was a senior levelengineering position at t-mobile
okay um where we worked on alot of really cool stuff.
(03:34):
So I was I was the in charge ofa project where we rebuilt the
payments infrastructure for allthe retail stores in the country
.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
Crazy, yeah, it was really crazy, and I worked for
Verizon for like 10 months.
My wife got pregnant and, likethe as soon as we found out she
was pregnant, I was like I gottago get a job because I was
studying to get my real estatelicense and I was like I need
health insurance.
So I went and worked forVerizon the day that she had my
son.
I was like this and I quit, andthey didn't think.
I was going to actually quit thesystem.
(04:03):
That was probably the mostfrustrating thing.
Working at Verizon is likeeverybody's got these tablets
and you're having to restartthem over and over and there's
like 50 different ways of howyou know getting into it.
It was so confusing and sodifficult.
I was like how is it a companylike Verizon horrible at this
part of it?
Speaker 1 (04:21):
So I can imagine T-Mobile had to go through some
upgrades.
Yeah, same deal.
I mean, it's not really atechnology company, so the apps
that they have on the iPads forall the workers not necessarily
the best, and same with thepayments, the security and the
payments and stuff.
So we really helped, we rebuiltthat, launched it.
(04:43):
So far I haven't heard anyproblems with what we've built
in the past few years.
Speaker 2 (04:47):
Which is always nerve-wracking for an
application, especially whenit's rolled out, is those bugs.
You don't know the bugs untilyou're going at scale, yeah
exactly, so that seems to begoing really well.
Speaker 1 (04:58):
When was that?
That was 2021.
So it was only three or fouryears ago.
Yeah, when I left.
Speaker 2 (05:06):
Uh-huh.
Speaker 1 (05:07):
That was a little over four years ago actually,
but yeah, since from T-Mobile.
When I left T-Mobile I went towork for Nike as a contractor in
their innovation department andthat's kind of where this kind
of kicked off this whole likeentrepreneurial spirit back in
me, because I grew up and I wasalways doing businesses in my
(05:28):
youth and so that kind of intheir innovation department our
job, like my team was in incharge of like we would build a
new business every six months,like a new tech product, oh cool
, and then if it worked out,like if it tested well with the
few hundred thousand users, thenit would be incorporated into
(05:50):
the Nike ecosystem.
Speaker 2 (05:53):
This sounds so ridiculous.
Have you ever seen Cloudy witha Chance of Meatballs?
Yes, you know how he goes andworks for the pseudo-Apple and
he has to come up with as manyideas as he can just to get his
gold jacket.
I just think of that as like.
This is literally how corporateAmerica runs their tech stuff.
Speaker 1 (06:08):
Totally, and it's exactly how it works and there's
many teams doing the same thingall the time and you know it's
been really cool.
Yeah, Like great experienceCause I get to work, like you
know, on a on a big, scalableteam and uh, kind of learn how
to build a business also, and Ithought that's like really the
benefit to working in a positionlike that.
Speaker 2 (06:29):
So on those teams, were they giving you, like,
parameters of, like what typesof things that you could do?
Or was it kind of this you comeup with a good idea and you run
with it and present it, or like, especially for Nike?
Speaker 1 (06:41):
I'm trying to think, yeah, well, they have an entire
vetting process before it evencomes across.
Like our team, They've they'vevetted out the idea with focus
groups and all sorts ofdifferent process to get to that
point.
They come to us with what needsto be built and then we decide
what technologies go into it andwhich ones are the best.
So a large part of our job isjust R and D, researching what's
(07:01):
what's out there, what's newwas just R and D, researching
what's what's out there, what'snew, and if it's new and works
for our project we willdetermine whether or not it's uh
viable enough for.
Speaker 2 (07:09):
Did you ever get one where you're like?
This is a stupid idea.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
No really.
They're all really cool ideas.
Speaker 2 (07:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (07:15):
What was it?
What was one of the coolestones?
Um, I would say I can't reallygive exact details.
Speaker 2 (07:21):
Oh, I think you can.
Speaker 1 (07:24):
I can give, I can tell you what we used and you
can use your imagination so likeaugmented reality.
Nike is a clothing company andmainly shoes, so we were working
on a few, and who knows thatthey're still in development in
certain stages, probably, yeah,I would say so.
But being able to like seeshoes, um, without being in the
(07:47):
store, yeah.
Being able to like try on shoes, yes, I think technology I
think that's a.
Speaker 2 (07:52):
It's a cool technology, but then it's
applying it to say is there areturn?
Like having somebody do this,is that going to lead them to a
sale?
Right, it's like crossing overthe chasm of like does, is this
actually going to increase thenumber of our sales to to be
able to have augmented reality?
And then you're relying on theconsumer to have the technology
to be able to actually see it invirtual reality.
(08:13):
Right, they got to have thegoggles or they got to have some
type of way of viewing it.
Speaker 1 (08:17):
Yeah, or with your phone, whatever you know.
Whatever technology seems islike the best as that vetting
process that we go to before, orwe go through that before we
write code yeah, and they don't.
They don't give us anything tobuild unless it has a minimum of
a billion dollar.
Speaker 2 (08:35):
Like revenue option or like it's going to make them
money Right.
There's going to be revenuecoming in from this idea.
Speaker 1 (08:41):
Yeah, wow, a billion dollars, holy cow.
Yeah, and so I mean yeah.
So every single project that ateam of 10 people is responsible
for building has has thatpotential on paper.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
That's crazy, yeah, that's crazy.
So then you did that for just acouple of years.
Speaker 1 (08:57):
Yeah, I mean I still, I still do consulting for them,
you do.
Speaker 2 (09:04):
Oh, you do.
Okay, that's why you can't sayanything.
Okay, that makes sense, thatmakes more sense.
That's pretty cool.
I was, um, uh, one of the ideas.
I'm sure somebody's working onit and they're probably way far
down the road.
That's why I'm not doing it.
But, uh, buying new homes,cause I'm a real estate agent.
So it's like you go in, you wantto build a house.
You could put it on a piece ofpaper all day long, but you know
the difference between I want ahallway that's 12 feet wide
(09:27):
versus a 10 foot wide, or youknow like how, how big is that
hallway?
Or you know, you can kind ofspatially understand okay, this
is probably like 10, 10 by 10room.
But when you go to like thedifference between a 12 foot
room it's 12 by nine versus afully different floor plan where
you know the the feet is alittle bit different.
When you walk into the room,how it feels is such a big chasm
(09:49):
that people have to jumpthrough.
And I was like virtual realitycould really change the way home
builders build houses and thenarchitects when they design them
.
So that was one of the ideas.
I was like somebody'ssomebody's got to come up with
that one pretty quick.
Speaker 1 (10:02):
Yeah Well, a big reason why I'd say things like
that will probably come aboutmore often is because of AI.
The amount of data that isavailable in our lives that is
not being collected isastounding.
The amount of data that iscurrently being collected by
companies and researched andthings is astounding, but
(10:23):
there's still a huge gap.
Yeah, Sifting through it andthen being able to astounding
but it's there's still a hugegap.
Speaker 2 (10:26):
Yeah, it's sifting through it and then being able
to.
How do you use it?
Speaker 1 (10:29):
Yeah, and that's what AI is going to really help with
and that ultimately willdetermine what products to build
next or how to make you knowcurrent products better, and I
think I think over the next 10years we're going to see some
pretty wild steps in tech.
Speaker 2 (10:50):
So you're using, you're using LLMs and AI at some
capacity, I'm sure alreadyRight.
So so 20, 2020, I think it waslike March 2020, maybe 2021.
Was it when open AI, open sort,let, let out their platform for
everybody to play with?
Right?
It was 21, 22.
Speaker 1 (11:00):
Yeah, I don't know, I don't know for sure, but chat
GDP yeah.
Speaker 2 (11:03):
Yeah, Chat GPT came out and then we've had just so
many different models come out.
What, which ones do you use?
As, as somebody that's workingon application software, what,
what are you using?
Cause everybody uses.
You know a couple of differentversions of a couple of
different things, but I'mcurious like, what's your tech
stack?
Speaker 1 (11:19):
My well, my day to day is I'll use chat TTP for uh
like day to day problem solving.
Um, I, I don't.
Yeah, that's pretty much all Iuse.
Um, there's other ones outthere that integrate with you
know, like code.
There's some good code basedstuff.
Yeah, there's so some that areknown for helping out developers
, uh, but in my opinion, like,if you go any further than what
(11:44):
ChatGTP has given you, thenyou're probably relying on it
too much, in my opinion, justbecause there's too many
problems that you need toactually solve out in a chat.
These AIs just simply don'tknow how to architect very well
is what I'm trying to get tohere.
They don't think aboutscalability.
When you're, when you're givingin these, these, these prompts,
(12:07):
you know they can't really takeinto these, these complex
factors of, like, our humanelement and what the end user is
going to experience when we'reworking with it.
So really, I I try to keep my,my human human code, yeah, my
human self, as part of theproject so that way it ends up
that the end user can experiencethis, so you're not necessarily
(12:30):
using any AI coding supplementto write code in any way.
Speaker 2 (12:37):
No, I do.
Speaker 1 (12:39):
For coding problems, individual problems.
If I need to write a solutionfor whatever thing honestly, I
can refer to ChatGTP.
See what it comes out.
Problems like individualproblems.
If I need to write a you know asolution for for whatever thing
honestly, I can refer to chatgtp.
See what it comes out with,determine you know and then make
a determination of what I cantake from it or use and modify
and modify yeah yeah, uh, but asfar as like doing creating
experiences for the user, uh, Ican't.
(13:00):
There's no I can, can get, I can, you know, often put in prompts
and get ideas or whatever, butit never really quite gets the
whole.
How do you feel when youinteract with this product?
Yeah, so I think it's still gota long ways to go to get to
where it can like createexperiences that we interpret as
human to human experiences.
Speaker 2 (13:21):
Yeah, yeah, that makes sense.
Yeah, so, uh, working at Nike,still consulting for them a
little bit, and then now it'shave you always kind of stayed
local?
You've always kind of workedremote.
Speaker 1 (13:32):
Uh yeah, ever since COVID.
Yeah, I mean, I was atheadquarters for T T mobile.
Uh yeah, remote since then?
Speaker 2 (13:40):
Yeah, that's one of the things I think is so
fascinating about Southern Utahis that we have we have a an
economy that's so much morediverse now than it was even
five years ago because of thisremote work environment, and,
even though a lot of it'sgetting pulled back, there's
still a massive portion of themarket to where it just makes
more sense, especially fortechnology and coding and things
(14:02):
like that.
Speaker 1 (14:02):
Yeah, for sure.
However, especially fortechnology and coding and things
like that yeah, for sure.
However, since now that I'vegot like Blake Technologies, I
have an office and I've foundthat that's very, very useful
when you're either startingbusinesses or your business is
just small.
In what way?
Just being able to lean overyour shoulder and like interact
with another person, rather thanscheduling a call, because
(14:25):
oftentimes when we're working onthese startup projects, it
moves fast and what comes intomy mind right now is not going
to be there in an hour.
Speaker 2 (14:35):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (14:36):
Or not even in the same way.
Speaker 2 (14:37):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (14:38):
And so being able to like interact.
I mean it's fast.
I mean we use Slack, yeah, onour remote teams, it's, it's
fast.
I mean we use slack like, yeah,on our remote teams, it's
pretty.
Yeah, you know it's, it'sefficient, but it's not as cool
as uh like.
You can't really get the sameeffect.
I guess you can say like uh ina, that you can in an office,
and plus, if you have, you know,maybe lesser uh, not lesser uh,
(15:00):
but less experienced umengineers, it really helps them
to be able to interact and seehow maybe a senior engineer does
their work or thinks through aprocess, cause I'm not going to
be on a call when I'm on mywhiteboard in my office at home,
right?
Speaker 2 (15:14):
Right, you know solving a problem, and then
you've done it and then it you.
You can just poke your head andbe like here, come check this
out, watch as I go through this.
Yes, it's not like you gothrough it and you're like let's
have a call later and thenwe'll review what I just went
over Exactly.
Speaker 1 (15:33):
That doesn't happen.
So for, like for my, for thesenior teams be remote, I don't
care, Cause everybody kind of Ican, I can look at another
engineer's code and kind of seeinto their mind a little bit, Um
, but that's, that's a skill Ithink that you develop over time
more than more than justsomething that you're, you have
going into it.
Speaker 2 (15:47):
So Nike can do it, but the smaller startup
businesses there's probablygoing to be some challenges with
being just fully remote, butteam sizes have gotten a lot
smaller too.
Speaker 1 (15:56):
Yeah, If there's less experienced engineers on a team
like I think that you know youcan get any rag tag team of
experienced people and you youknow they all live in different
states and it can make somethingbeautiful.
Yeah, totally uh, because youdon't need as much communication
.
It's almost like those like Imean it's a crazy analogy but
like those navy seals that theytrain in silence because they're
(16:19):
all so trained in what they doalready individually that when
they get together they don'treally have to communicate in
order to get the job done, yeahUm, whereas you know new people
kind of have to.
You have to speak out loud andand uh there's a lot of learning
that goes along.
Speaker 2 (16:37):
That needs that interaction.
What do you think about, like,just the social interaction?
Do you feel like as an engineer?
Um, I was listening to uh, Imentioned it before on the
podcast.
I was listening to Lex Friedman.
I don't know if you know LexFriedman.
Um, he was, he was interviewingthis, uh, engineer that did 60
startups.
He did 60 startups in 60 days,okay, and he's just, he was just
(16:57):
programming websites and likecoming up with ideas and just
pushing himself to like how manydifferent businesses can I get
people to subscribe for?
Like, even if it's a dollar,right, and um, he's ended up
making millions of dollars off,you know, catching a couple that
have just really done well andbeen able to scale out.
But what he was finding, whichhe caught on to, right around
(17:17):
the time, kiln started buildingout their business model for
basically this, this, uh, um,community workspace environment
to where an engineer, it's onething to just want to be a
keyboard warrior and and just,you know, get in and do the
engineering stuff on your own,even if you're an expert, but
it's the social interaction thatyou come into.
(17:38):
You just just got your officeover at kiln.
Is there that that communityfeel there Does that?
Is there some value to that?
Got your office over at kiln.
Speaker 1 (17:45):
Is there that that community feel there does that?
Is there some value to that?
Absolutely yeah.
Um, I gotta give myself somecredit because I've kind of I
feel like I've been the one thatgoing out and to the
everybody's desks and likeintroducing myself and seeing
what they're up to, yeah, butalready I can see that there's.
There's lots of value, yeah, uh, even in fields like people
that are working just simplyremotely or something from for
their company.
I've had conversations alreadyin the first, in the first few
weeks, with people that areworking just simply remotely or
something from for their company.
(18:05):
I've had conversations alreadyin the first, in the first few
weeks, with people that have.
That has, like, helped me withthe way I think about my end
users for my products.
Yeah, cause I just don't know,you know how people think until
I, until I interact with them.
That's quite simple.
That's a simple reality.
But my nature is I'm veryintroverted, I don't like to
(18:27):
talk to people.
It drains my energy but it's so.
Speaker 2 (18:31):
you decided to come on a podcast and just suck all
your energy right out.
This is what you do.
Speaker 1 (18:34):
This is how you overcome these kind of
challenges and get better at it?
Yeah, because I think.
I mean.
Who knows if one day I'll beable to.
How life is you know?
Speaker 2 (18:49):
yeah, everybody's experiences are gonna be
differently and so you know.
You have this bell curve of itand you're.
You want to hit the margins asmuch as you can to try to
capture the biggest user base.
So what?
What product?
Uh, blake technology, as yousaid.
What kinds of projects are youworking on right now?
Is that multiple applicationsor a?
Speaker 1 (19:06):
bunch of stuff, but right now I've got a startup
that's based out of it's.
We're targeting st george, thest southern utah area.
It's called st gz.
Okay, um, and the the point ofthis is it's a coupon app
similar to what you've alreadyseen like with dixie direct I.
I think it's called startingreceiving cards starting stuff
(19:26):
like that um, uh, however, we'renot charging.
Uh, this is one of the fewmodels that you could.
You can still remain profitableand, and you know, maintain or
grow the company without havingto charge businesses, which is
very rare.
Yeah, I, it's.
There's very there's rare caseswhere, in a marketing platform,
(19:49):
you don't have to charge formarketing.
Yeah, and this is one of thosecases, because you're prep,
you're providing enough value tothe user where they're willing
to pay a little bit to get morevalue out of it.
But businesses, um, and this iskind of a problem with a lot of
marketing platforms is they'rethey're so expensive to do
marketing, uh, that smallerbusinesses can't really compete
(20:10):
with the, with these, like chainrestaurants or you know, larger
franchise companies.
Speaker 2 (20:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (20:15):
And so you know, as far as the numbers go, it's
going to on paper, it's going towork out.
We'll find out how it goes, butas of right now, you can go on
the app, start on your phone andand search for St GZ and
download it.
And is it STGZ?
Speaker 2 (20:31):
Yep ST space GZ.
I'm going to look it up rightnow as we're chatting about it.
So, as far as like getting thebusinesses to it, is it
basically just like you apply tohave your business on there?
Do you have like a cap as tothe number of businesses?
Speaker 1 (20:47):
Where it's different from, like Dixie Direct or
Starving Student Card, is thebusiness just creates their
profile all inside the app.
So everybody that downloads theapp can see a button in their
profile screen that's like hey,if you have a business promoted
here for free, and if you have abusiness, then go ahead and do
that.
You create your profile inthere, you manage your profile
(21:07):
in there, you manage the offersthat you have.
Uh, it's all on you as thebusiness owner.
At the beginning, when youfirst create your profile, we do
a verification process, butthat's it.
You get to determine, like, allthe deals that you want to put
on there on your own time.
Got it, and that's really coolbecause that makes it scalable.
Yeah, and I think that's thebig, that's a huge problem that
(21:28):
these other companies probablyhaven't quite figured out is,
you know, once you have acertain number of businesses on
there, uh, um, it's very hard tomanage these relationships like
person to person.
Yeah, they don't havetechnology, that's that's like
doing this for them, right, andso I think that's where we're
going to hopefully be able toscale much faster.
Um, and the fact that we're notcharging businesses like they
(21:52):
do.
Speaker 2 (21:52):
Then I think so the user pays.
So yeah, what's?
Speaker 1 (21:57):
the Eventually.
I mean, we just got started, soit's free for everybody until
we figure out what this thing is, but the businesses will never
pay to have their profiles onthe app.
Eventually there might beservices like analytics and like
data driven softwares that theycan subscribe to.
Perhaps, to you know, help outtheir business, okay, but to
(22:20):
have to do the marketing wherethat's going to be free for
businesses, always Interesting,and once there's enough users
and there's enough value onthere, then we'll determine what
users can pay.
Speaker 2 (22:29):
So the user, like the , let's say the user the idea
would be the user pays, like youknow, $10 a year or something
like that, and they get thecoupons that come up.
Or is that the subscriptionmodel?
It would be something like that.
Speaker 1 (22:44):
Yeah, some sort of subscription.
And then businesses, like Isaid, they determine which
offers are available, which day,so like, for example, today is
Valentine's Day.
Yeah, they determine whichoffers are available, which day,
so like, for example, today'sValentine's Day.
Yeah, businesses would put onmaybe a week before Valentine's
Day they can put on their offersfor Valentine's.
Speaker 2 (22:58):
Day.
Yeah, it's like on Veterans Day.
It's like there's certainbusinesses that will like free
food for veterans.
You know what I mean?
Yeah, how do you go find that?
Exactly when do you go to knowwhat restaurants are giving you
know veterans free?
Free meals on veterans day andthings like that and they don't
need my permission.
Speaker 1 (23:14):
They don't have to come to me and say, can I put
this deal on your app?
They just do it.
They're already approved, putthe deals on there.
And I just tell businesses like, put deals on there, put good
ones on there.
I'm not charging you for thisreason.
So give some value to the users.
Speaker 2 (23:28):
Yeah, that makes sense.
Yeah, that's pretty cool man.
Yeah, that makes sense.
Yeah, that's pretty cool man.
So, um, aside from that, whatother kind of business ideas or
what else are you working on?
Speaker 1 (23:37):
Oh, uh, uh, ever since the vision pro came out,
I've been dabbling a lot withthis VR stuff.
Yeah, um, I've built a coupleof games, uh, one of which you
can download.
Cool.
It's called, uh, obstacleavoidance Nice, yeah, it's just.
You just try to dodge all thesecubes that come at you.
Yeah, and it's kind of fun.
(23:57):
But, yeah, I work withaugmented reality as a big thing
.
I truly believe that that'sgoing to be a huge part of our
lives in the next 10, 20 years,once these headsets kind of get
smaller and, you know, lighter,yeah, so people are more willing
to use them out in public.
Speaker 2 (24:13):
Yeah, but adoption just gets a little bit more
ubiquitous yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:18):
I don't think Apple, I think these big companies kind
of came out pretty early withthese products.
But it's, you know, it's with apurpose.
Speaker 2 (24:25):
Yeah, testing stuff out.
Speaker 1 (24:27):
Yeah, we're getting used to it and eventually
they'll get to a point whereit's just a huge adoption.
Speaker 2 (24:31):
I mean, meta's glasses are pretty incredible
already, as they are.
Speaker 1 (24:35):
Yeah, great example.
Yeah, I think the capabilitieswith these things are going to
be outrageous.
They're going to be crazy.
Yeah, so trying to get on thecutting edge of that kind of
augmented reality stuff, yes,absolutely, Because whatever
engineers or teams out therethat are doing this now, they
will be the the you name, yourprice type people.
So, um, I encourage everybodythat works for me or with me to
(24:59):
like do this stuff on the side.
Even though maybe our businessprojects are not involving that
right now.
Uh, do it because it's going tobenefit us on my company.
If you guys are still workingfor me, at very minimum it'll
benefit you in your career.
So, yeah, Cause, yeah for sure,Augmented reality will be
pretty crazy.
Speaker 2 (25:20):
What do you see is?
Is gaming going to be kind ofthe?
It seems like the obviousheadwater is going towards like
gaming.
But what do you think realworld applications Like?
Do you do you see like certainsegments of the businesses that
would benefit the most?
Maybe that you know peopledon't really think about?
Speaker 1 (25:38):
Oh for sure, I mean well, I mean marketing in
general would be pretty crazy,because you can.
You'll be able to.
If you have your glasses onwhile you're in your car, you'll
be able to see going into acity, Like if you're driving
down the hill to go into Vegas.
You'll see these floating youknow, these floating logos or
whatever for the businesses.
You'll, um, you'll be able toexperience things like if you
(26:02):
imagine driving down the stripin Vegas and you'll be able to
like play a game in augmentedreality, like doing a tour of
Vegas.
Yeah, yeah, Uh, you'll be ableto.
You know, uh, yeah, just likekind of get almost like how, on
the app store when you see apreview of the app that you're
about to download, you'll beable to like experience previews
of experiences in life.
Yeah, that makes sense.
Which is pretty wild, yeah, Ifyou think about that and then
(26:24):
you know, once you know theseheadsets are going to interact
with our, like our, you knowthings, so, like you could I
don't know, I mean use yourimagination right, Like whatever
you can think of, it's actuallygoing to be possible.
Pretty much anything is alreadypossible, but now it's going to
, it's getting to the pointwhere anything is possible, yeah
(26:46):
.
Speaker 2 (26:47):
One of the things I was thinking about was like the,
the food and stuff that we eat.
My son has type one diabetes.
Okay, I was like the food andstuff that we eat.
My son has type one diabetes,okay, and so I look at nutrition
facts every time, like you justcan't help but do it Right,
because that's what you'relooking at all the time.
But being able to like,understand and analyze you know
what is this based on?
This can right, the servingsize is 355 milliliters.
(27:09):
It's percent of daily value hasit on there, and then
milligrams per serving size, butyou get a loaf of bread and my
wife we're always doing likecalculations and stuff like that
and so I can't help but thinklike there's just going to be
these like daily tasks that canreally help aid in in the way
that we function, you know, onour day-to-day life.
Speaker 1 (27:28):
You know on on how, how it can add totally it's
gonna, and it's gonna start withour kids, like our.
The education, education ingeneral, is about to see a huge,
like a huge leap in in how it'sdone.
Yeah, uh, like I often thinkabout the in star trek with like
spock's world, and there's a.
There's a scene in there wherethere's a bunch of kids in
(27:50):
school and their own like theirown little cubicles and it's
just a giant screen around themand that's how they're learning
and AIs just teach themeverything about the world and
they're super smart.
That's pretty much how Iimagine education is going in
that way already, where kids arekind of I mean, it's not good
to be on the screen all day, butif you're going to be on the
screen all day, if you'relearning something, that's well,
(28:12):
I think it's a balance toobetween the screen and real life
, right.
Speaker 2 (28:15):
I think that virtually virtual reality is a
is a a bridge between that youknow that screen and what's
going on in real life, rightit's it's this integration of
the two things.
Speaker 1 (28:25):
School will start to be one hour a day, two hours a
day, yeah, you know, becauselet's be honest, they probably
only do one or two hours ofactual work in their classes
anyway, that's like the, that'sthe how people work anyway, in
the in the real world, exactly.
Speaker 2 (28:40):
That's pretty interesting.
Um so, so, uh, virtual realityis something that you're looking
, looking at.
You have this uh, st Jeezy appis local, and then you're doing
the side stuff for Nike.
Yeah, I've got a few.
Speaker 1 (28:53):
I mean, I've got a few apps on the App Store that I
just haven't put my fundingbehind yet.
But yeah, st Jeezy is kind ofmy focus right now, just because
I find it to be scalable.
It's already proven.
These other companies are doingthe same thing.
I'm just making it better.
I have the better software andbetter experience companies not
(29:15):
to pay have you heard of thatcompany?
uh, while you were here yes Ithought that was a pretty
interesting, pretty interestingidea trying to attract, you know
, the tourism port, you know,element to it is like, while you
were here, don't forget aboutthese different things, like uh,
yeah, you know, eventuallywe'll think eventually we'll
have a, we'll have these, youknow, geo fence, this geo fence
functionality where, like, ifyou're, uh, let's say, you're in
(29:37):
Northern Utah and you're comingdown here to visit, and if you
have the app already, uh, thenyou'll, you'll get, like these
notifications for, like you know, personalized notifications
from our AI that tells you like,here's what you've experienced
last time and here's this newthing that you experience.
Speaker 2 (29:53):
Yeah, that's, that's another thing too to the, to the
.
The adaptability of this is isreally nimble, right, cause you
get the Dixie direct and thenit's, you have this book and
you're like, okay, well, whatare the deals?
And I get, get to the book andI'm looking through the book and
you can download the app.
They do have an app, but it'sthe, the agileness of being able
to have it at your fingertipsand have notifications.
(30:13):
You're like you're getting intoWashington County.
You're like, hey, you knowthese things are going on.
I can't help but think, youknow, integrating just the
business coupons with events.
I was thinking about this as Iwas driving down here.
I was like, why is there somuch traffic?
Everybody knows why.
There's all the traffic right,with the parade homes, but
there's also a massive soccertournament, there's baseball
(30:34):
tournaments, Like every place Isee, you know, kids in baseball
gear, right?
And so it's what are the eventsgoing on in town that I might
want to take advantage of?
Right, because there's justthis gap and silo.
We used to have a newspaperthat said, hey, here's all the
events, you know, you couldeasily go and look at it, and
there's not really a singleplace to go find it, even
Facebook.
You know you'd have to scour 50different groups on Facebook
(30:57):
just to find all the differentevents that are going on in town
, so totally having like a onestop place to say this event's
going on and here are thebusinesses that are
participating in that event.
Speaker 1 (31:07):
Yeah, and here's a deal.
Speaker 2 (31:08):
And here's a deal.
And here's a deal.
Speaker 1 (31:10):
Yeah, exactly, Totally.
That's on our list of to-dosSweet.
You know doing this wholeevents thing.
So we'll be working with localinfluencers here in town as well
(31:30):
as different, because there areFacebook groups and pages that
where somebody is like postingthese events.
But we're going to be workingwith these people and
integrating with these platformsto be able to make it easy to
show all that on our app.
Speaker 2 (31:37):
If you're looking for a nice cup of coffee and you're
in downtown St George, fsCoffee Co, that's where you're
going to want to stop.
It's right there on the cornerof Tabernacle and Main Street in
downtown St George.
So if you've got a bicycle,ride it on down there and grab a
drip coffee and tell them the435 guys sent you.
Is it easy to scrub?
(32:00):
If I was to design a software,is it easy to scrub Facebook,
for example, I want to find allthe posts about events on
Facebook.
Is there a way to like, havelike a crawler that goes through
it and like scrubs, like what'sgetting posted, or is is there
like blocks to that withFacebook?
Speaker 1 (32:19):
Well, it can be done.
Yes, it can be done.
Yeah, Uh for sure, Just uh.
As far as how complex that is,I don't know, I'd have to do
some research, but it cantotally be done.
Speaker 2 (32:28):
Yeah, yeah, um, cause I was thinking where we were
talking about, like, all thedata.
There's so much data alreadygetting collected that isn't
getting utilized, and thenthere's all this data that isn't
even getting collected Exactly.
Speaker 1 (32:39):
And I would put that in the data that's not collected
, because I think, within a townor a region like the southern
Utah area, yeah, just having thedata on what people are
spending money on, where theyare at, you know, at a during a
certain time of the day, what,how much time they're looking at
a specific event, like you, candetermine a lot of data for a
(33:03):
person just based off of whatthey're looking at on the screen
.
You know, yeah, and it's pretty, it's pretty incredible, and
that's the kind of data thatwe're we're hoping to like be
able to utilize to just betterthe experience of people that
are coming into Southern Utah.
But this is not even inSouthern Utah.
I don't really view this as aSouthern Utah based and only
(33:24):
exist in Southern Utah company.
Speaker 2 (33:26):
Yeah, it can be replicated everywhere.
Speaker 1 (33:28):
Yeah, we're just we'll, we'll scale out to the
whole country, to the wholeworld.
Yeah, we're just we'll, we'llscale out to the whole country,
to the whole world.
Yeah, whatever you know,because, um, that's the way
we've designed the software andthat's the whole point of it.
Yeah, uh, cause I, I personallyI don't like to see companies
like Groupon uh, charging somuch to these businesses to just
(33:58):
to be great, because it seemedlike you got great deals.
Speaker 2 (34:00):
But yeah, it doesn't seem like they're as good of
deals as they used to be.
Speaker 1 (34:04):
Yeah, they just charge so much that I think that
if you give a, if they give a10 of a sorry, if a company
gives a 10 discount, discount onsomething, the remaining 90%
Groupon charges 50% of that.
Whoa, yeah, that's crazy.
Speaker 2 (34:18):
So these businesses are maybe breaking, even, if not
losing, a little bit of moneyon every single time we purchase
a Groupon, yeah, so it's prettywild, yeah, they just see that
the cost of marketing is likeyou have a budget for this and I
want to take every penny ofthat budget, if I can take it.
Speaker 1 (34:33):
So their model is the business pays every cent of the
deal, we just get the discountand that's about it.
Yeah, dixie Direct, and theytake for both.
Yeah, they take for both.
Yeah, which is crazy to me.
Speaker 2 (34:50):
And it's crazy, it makes I mean if you're.
It's a win-win.
If it's a win-win, you knowpeople are willing to do it.
Speaker 1 (34:56):
Yeah, it's just.
I mean, if you look on thoseplatforms, it's only these big
companies that are on there.
Speaker 2 (35:00):
You know, yeah, like the.
Speaker 1 (35:01):
McDonald's and, yeah, you know.
So, yeah, we's going to be freefor you, but you're going to
have to rank.
You know that's a cool idea.
You're going to have to, youknow, provide good deals lots of
deals and the users need to beusing your deals in order for
(35:21):
you to rank higher on the listin the app.
Speaker 2 (35:23):
Yeah, like user, you almost have like a user ranking
for the if, the, if the usergives, let's say they give them
kind of like what a Facebookdoes with like tokens, like if
you it's almost like you'repromoting, you promote them that
kind of factors into thealgorithm.
You know as to how it placesand exactly Facebook, like meta,
does that to us.
Speaker 1 (35:43):
We are because we are the value to these businesses.
Right, so they put they do.
Their algorithm is applied tous.
We're going to do that back tobusinesses.
Speaker 2 (35:52):
Yeah, that makes sense.
Speaker 1 (35:53):
We're going to give the best thing to the user.
Speaker 2 (35:55):
That's unique.
Yeah, I like that.
That's pretty interesting.
That's a great idea.
How'd you come up with that?
Just laying in bed one day?
Speaker 1 (36:01):
Lots of thinking.
I've been thinking about thisfor a long time.
Yeah yeah, that's prettyinteresting.
Build it, though, to build it.
Speaker 2 (36:09):
Yeah, yeah, I got ideas.
I got a ton of ideas.
I can have ideas all day long,but it's actually like when you
go put the work in to actuallydo it, that's where the rubber
meets the road.
Speaker 1 (36:17):
Yeah, so, like, uh, like all of my experiences it's
it's been kind of sort of partof a plan.
I've been really payingattention at these experiences,
at these larger companies andlearning exactly what I wanted
to learn to be able to pullstuff like this off.
Speaker 2 (36:31):
Yeah, and we're going to make it happen.
That's awesome, man.
Yeah, well, I think you'regoing to do it.
Speaker 1 (36:36):
I know you're going to do it.
Yeah, we're totally going to doit.
You're going to crush it, crushit.
Speaker 2 (36:40):
Yeah.
What else should we talk about,man?
Speaker 1 (36:43):
We could talk about real estate.
Yeah, I do a Uh.
Yeah, we've got some propertyin in Vegas and outside of Vegas
.
There We've got some land Nice.
Um, yeah, we, we got some landright, right beneath the, the
old gold mine.
Oh, really yeah.
So, uh, who knows, maybe oneday, who knows, got about 10
(37:03):
acres out there.
That's, who knows.
Speaker 2 (37:04):
They'll kick that mine back up.
Speaker 1 (37:06):
Right, something, yeah, then it's like all right,
well, I'll lease the land to you, you know, for how did you
start getting into that.
Just.
Speaker 2 (37:13):
Looking for opportunities.
Speaker 1 (37:14):
Honestly, it's just, you know, like you know, find
myself with some extra cash andI try to figure out what's going
to either be a value to me inthe future or buy something that
I can leverage now perhaps intosome other better deal.
Speaker 2 (37:28):
Yeah, it's a long game.
Real estate's always a longgame.
Speaker 1 (37:32):
Yeah, yeah, um, it's a long game.
Real estate's always a longgame.
Yeah, yeah.
Or I just um like, early on inour, in my marriage with my wife
, we were just like, let's, youknow, let's try and find a place
that we can buy, fix up, livein, and then when we move again,
we'll just rent it out.
Yeah, uh, so we did.
We were doing that until we hadour third kid, yeah, and at
that point it's just like, yeah,no, we'll just let's settle
down and St George, yeah.
Speaker 2 (37:53):
It can be exhausting.
Man Right the buy, rehab,refinance and rent.
Right the BRRRR method.
Right Exactly.
Speaker 1 (38:02):
Yeah, yeah, the what is that Pockets oh?
Speaker 2 (38:06):
bigger pockets, bigger pockets.
Yeah, they kind of theysensationalized it, but yeah,
that method has been going on along time, right, and it just
makes sense.
Speaker 1 (38:14):
Yeah, it does.
It's an efficient way to get itdone.
Speaker 2 (38:17):
Those guys have some weird obsession about mobile
homes.
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (38:20):
I don't understand it .
They have, like this, mobilehome parks.
Speaker 2 (38:22):
And then they pump it .
It's like this amazing, likejust it prints money, and I'm
like this is not what everybodythinks it is.
It is.
So there are opportunities.
In every business there'sopportunities, but buying a
mobile home park and becoming aslum lord is not what we need
more of.
Speaker 1 (38:41):
Let's, let's, let's get that straight yeah, and if
like and it seems like they didthat based off some sort of
federal regulation thing wherethere's not very many of them,
so they're gonna buy them allup- yeah, because cities don't
don't don't zone for thatanymore.
Speaker 2 (38:53):
I mean they'll let like in washington county that
there's no option.
You, you can't have a mobilehome.
I mean, you could barely get anrv.
These days Now, we've seen alot of RV parks pop up in
Washington County, especiallysince 2020, but we've gotten to
a high water mark where it'slike it, the profitability
doesn't even make sense.
But you're, it's a transient,specific type of business model.
There's no expectation thatsomebody's going to park there
(39:15):
and live there full time andrent out the land underneath
them, and anybody who's doingthat is burning up money.
Speaker 1 (39:22):
Yeah, what I've been looking into is this, this kind
of newer concept that's liketiny home, the tiny homes that
are built with traditionalconstruction.
Yeah, you know, I like thatidea.
Have you heard of box house?
Yes, I have so.
Speaker 2 (39:34):
I.
We had the CEO, jeremy Johnson.
He was the one founder and cameup with the idea.
We had him on the podcasttalking about what he's done,
and it's great, great idea.
It's a great idea.
There's a lot of hurdles,though, that come along with it,
because cities zoning the rulesaround it.
What the neighbors think of,that right as soon as you say
manufactured home.
Right, because the differencebetween mobile and manufactured
(39:54):
is one's got a tongue and comesin on it, you know comes in on
wheels, and the other is comesin on a, in pieces, on a truck.
You know, yeah, well what.
Yeah, well what.
Speaker 1 (40:03):
I'm talking about is is one they're building it.
They're they're building it onsite and it's not.
It's, it's a, but they'reprefabbed as a, as a home,
though.
Speaker 2 (40:10):
Yeah, but they're prefabbed in some kind of way.
Right, and then they're put,put on a slab, but yeah, the
smaller homes.
Speaker 1 (40:17):
Yeah, appraised as a, as a single family home, then
which is so.
Speaker 2 (40:22):
You, the you know where that comes from.
That comes from lending lawsfrom the 40s.
I'm not even kidding you,that's wild.
They came up with these lendinglaws in the 40s and
specifically, um, they werecompletely racist.
That like, truthfully, thesewere like completely racist uh,
laws, starting back down intothe south, is that they made it
(40:44):
basically impossible for you ifyou didn't have these specific
rules, this they, they set upthese criteria for the standard
building you know code and theycopied and pasted this code
across the entire country,because the individual cities
could just develop their owncode for building codes.
But the lenders wrote the rules, the banks wrote the rules and
(41:05):
then the cities just adoptedthis like blanket zoning across
the country for what theirbuilding requirements would be,
and they set it to this bar towhere, if you wanted to do a
manufactured home, you basicallycouldn't do it, or if you did
do it, you had to meet all thesecriteria and then for a bank to
lend on that, you had to havethis certain credit score and
(41:28):
you had to have all thesedifferent line items.
But we just carried thatthrough all the way till today.
Speaker 1 (41:33):
It's ridiculous.
I wonder when that's going tochange, because they're going to
probably end up changing itsometime.
Speaker 2 (41:38):
I mean it would require the banks to be okay
with changing the rules on howthey can control new
construction.
Speaker 1 (41:43):
It's difficult because the banks kind of.
Speaker 2 (41:45):
Yeah, they don't want to make less money, right, like
if the cost to build homes goesdown, that doesn't mean they're
making more money, right, andthey're okay with it coming down
a little bit.
But if you look at over time,if you look over the last 50 to
100 years of building realestate only goes up.
I mean there's a hundred yearsof of building real estate only
goes up.
I mean there's there's a fewtimes where it's gone down, but
it goes back up and it exceedsthat.
(42:06):
In Washington County we're up65% in the last five years,
which is absurd.
That's wild.
Speaker 1 (42:11):
Absurd it's wild and we're maintaining it somehow.
I don't know how we'remaintaining it.
Well, who knows what's going tohappen in the next five years,
but we're doing it there nextfive years.
Speaker 2 (42:20):
but yeah, I mean there was some benefits to the
lending laws tightening up toyou know the qualified buyers
right, there was a lot of youknow the quality of the lender,
the person buying the home, butit's it's not even as stringent
as it was back in the sixtiesand seventies.
Back in the sixties andseventies you had to have 20 to
30% down to buy the house.
Now, the house value was somuch less but also the income
(42:41):
was less and all these otherthings.
But, um, I mean you can getinto a house from $0 down now,
right, and that's only been,that's only been true since the
nineties, yeah, which is scaryto think about.
Speaker 1 (42:51):
I mean, yeah, me as a person, if I'm going to buy a
house I got, I'm dedicating.
In most cases, I'm dedicating30 years you know, uh, cause you
know most people aren'tthinking about the value they're
thinking about.
I want a home.
Speaker 2 (43:05):
You want a home and you want a stable mortgage,
right, you want to know that alandlord is not going to raise
the cost of your living expense,which is 30% to 40% of your
income.
You don't want that to getdisrupted on an annual basis.
It's that stability piece Ithink most people are wanting
Totally.
Speaker 1 (43:23):
Yeah.
Stability in an in an unstableworld?
Yeah, and the banks are makingmoney off of it.
Speaker 2 (43:28):
They're making so much money off of it, yeah, and
they can give you zero downloans on it, because then they
carry the note on it and thenthey roll it into a fund and
then they sell it on the stockmarket.
Right, subprime loans, likethat, subprime loans isn't gone,
like it.
We think that in 2008 is like,oh, subprime lending doesn't
happen anymore.
It's like, no, no, it happensit happens if you go zero down
(43:49):
on a house, you buy a house.
This is a subprime loan, likethere's no equity in that house.
Speaker 1 (43:53):
Yeah, that's wild to think about, because, yeah, I
mean, the old practices don'treally die that hard.
Do that now, do they?
No, they just change the names.
Right, it's pretty crazy andmaybe make do it a little bit
less to get away with it now,but yeah yeah, so this guy up in
central.
Speaker 2 (44:06):
I was talking to him, uh, we were listening, we
listed a house across the streetfrom him and, uh, it was like
the day that they brought the,the manufactured home, on,
because it was built off-site,and then he put it on the site
which he was.
They were zoned to do it up incentral.
Yeah, but I was looking and hehas all these anchors to the
concrete.
He had to pour a regularconcrete slab and then he had to
(44:27):
have concrete extend across theentire bottom of the
manufactured house but it'sdesigned to where it only needs
footing on the outside of thehome.
So you would like the?
Speaker 1 (44:42):
subfloor.
You only need concrete aroundthe home, then yeah, you only
need the footings and then theframe is set up.
Speaker 2 (44:51):
Because it's a manufactured house, it's set up
to where it can sustain its ownlevel, and so he could do a
footing.
That was like if he wanted to,or if the lender it was actually
the zone the zone and thebuilding code required that he
pour a complete concrete padunderneath of this manufactured
house when he's only tied into,like you know, 12 different
(45:11):
spots, cause that's all he needsbecause of the framework of the
house.
Yeah, but he had to end up.
It was like he told me it waslike 25 grand.
Speaker 1 (45:19):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (45:19):
Just to put all this concrete that he's not using.
Speaker 1 (45:21):
Yeah, which ultimately you pay.
You know, if it's all financedyou're going to pay $60,000,
$70,000.
Speaker 2 (45:25):
Yeah, and he paid cash for the whole thing.
But because of the code and thezone and the city requirement
to like, oh no, you needconcrete underneath the whole
house.
It's crazy, but why?
It doesn't make any sense.
Speaker 1 (45:36):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (45:37):
So it's like, these little tiny costs, they all add
up, they all add up Totally.
Speaker 1 (45:41):
Yeah, and when you're done with the house that's a
few hundred thousand most likely, you know?
Speaker 2 (45:45):
Yep, exactly.
Yeah, that blows my mind.
It makes me angry a little bit.
Yeah, it was.
It was upsetting me because I'mlike, I mean, this is, it's in
a rural area, you know, it's.
It's him just trying to make dowith what he's got, right.
He's.
He's an older guy, he's, youknow, clearly, a fixed income.
He had cash, um, and wanted tomove out here, not have to have
(46:06):
a loan, right and so.
But the cost he was telling mea couple other things like
requirements that he was havingto do that were unnecessary, but
it was like 25 to 30 grandworth of stuff that he was
required to do just because ofthe code in the zoning that made
him do that.
It had nothing to do withanything else, not because it's
makes sense, but it's because,oh well, that's how it's written
down on this piece of paperthat was designed, you know, 40
(46:28):
years ago.
It's crazy.
It's messed up.
It is messed up.
That's where I'm like.
I hope.
I hope AI and technology canhelp us with some of these crazy
things.
I don't.
Speaker 1 (46:49):
I.
That's the human error.
There is power to knowledge,right?
So if you get enough peoplethat understand it well enough,
and that's what AI, I think, canhelp out with.
I mean, everybody's learning sofast these days and you know
you have to pick and choose.
What's true.
That's the first thing isyou're going to figure out
what's actual, like what's real,which is getting harder.
I feel like, yeah, it is.
But I mean, with things likelaw, like, yeah, understanding
the law, and with the likeregulate regulations and
policies that you know, likethese lending laws and stuff, uh
(47:12):
, it's going to start becomingcommonplace to understand and
learn that, learn those thingschallenge people, yeah, and
challenge, and that's whatthat's what that turns into is,
once people figure out like howdumb it all is, then there's
enough people to kind ofoverthrow this, this current
state of things, and they'reforced to change it.
Yeah, but it takes a lot.
It takes a lot and it's sad.
It's sad that it takes a lot.
Speaker 2 (47:32):
Yeah, it is frustrating, yeah.
But yeah, real estate's aninteresting topic.
There's so many differentangles to it and I think
technology is going to help in alot of ways.
But yeah, I'm interested to seehow the next 10 to 15 years
goes.
It's going to be a crazy world.
Speaker 1 (47:47):
Yeah, everything medicine, construction, you know
, education, these major aspectsof our lives.
It's going to be prettybeautiful.
Yeah, maybe we'll see some goodlike.
Maybe we'll see custom homesbecome a regular thing again
than track homes, you know,because it's kind of a shame to
see like something that's goingto last 100 years.
(48:09):
Just look so ugly, yeah.
Or look so copy and paste, youknow.
Speaker 2 (48:14):
Yeah, it'd be pretty sweet to see like beautiful
architecture once again, yeah,and it's a tough thing to do
because it's so cost, costintensive, right, it's like
coming up with a design andgetting it through an architect
and an engineer and all thesethings.
But I think technology is goingto help us streamline those
things totally.
I think architecture I'm I'mpretty, I'm pretty convinced
(48:37):
that architecture if you're anarchitect, ai, if you're not
learning ai and how to leverageAI, ai, that's that's a job
where I'm like, dude, a computeris probably going to be able to
do all of that, yeah, and it'sgoing to sync up with the code,
right, the city code and be likethis is what you can do and
this is what you can't do.
Speaker 1 (48:57):
You're not having to cross-reference, and then city
inspectors are like, I thinkwhen it comes to architecture,
it'll be those 10% of architectsthat go that route that end up
doing all the work and makingall the money.
Speaker 2 (49:09):
Yeah, and so this could be a big disruption too,
for sure.
Speaker 1 (49:12):
Yeah, so if anybody listening is in an industry
where you can use AI, like JadjiGP for example, just start
there.
If you can use that to makeyourself more efficient in what
you do, or do more in what youdo, then you will be way less
likely to be the person thatgets dropped off yeah.
(49:33):
Um, because, no matter what,there's always going to be a
need for people to like makesure that things are working the
way it is that it needs to.
Um cause an AI is not going togive itself commands to run your
business.
It's going to.
It's going to, you know, stillneed a prompt.
Yeah, still needs somebody totell it what to do and,
oftentimes, how to, maybe how todo it or give it some guidance.
(49:54):
Yeah, I don't think that's evergoing to go away.
Speaker 2 (49:56):
So, yeah, definitely got to learn that yeah.
Speaker 1 (49:58):
Okay, man.
Speaker 2 (49:59):
Well, you got to learn that.
Yeah, okay, man.
Well, thanks for coming on theshow, man, I wish you the best
of luck.
Speaker 1 (50:02):
It's been a pleasure.
Thanks for having me, stgz onthe app store Yep.
Speaker 2 (50:05):
Download it, start getting with it.
If you're a business, localbusiness download it.
Create a profile, get verified,start putting deals on it.
Speaker 1 (50:12):
Absolutely.
It takes like five minutes tocreate an account and post your.
Speaker 2 (50:18):
You have to have the latest updated phone.
I'm like if I update my phone,my battery is going to suck.
Speaker 1 (50:22):
Oh yeah, but oh well, I just need to do phone.
Yeah, you got to update yourphone.
Speaker 2 (50:26):
You got to update your phone.
Download the app S-T space G-Zon the App Store Apple, google,
apple.
Speaker 1 (50:34):
Just Apple, apple.
Yeah, we're still working onthe Android version, okay.
Speaker 2 (50:38):
Well, that takes.
There's a lot of hoops for bothstores right.
Speaker 1 (50:41):
Yeah, it's quite the process to get your stuff
approved.
Speaker 2 (50:48):
But yeah, most people hopefully have iPhones.
So, yeah, I'm part of the ganggang, the Apple gang.
There you go.
Awesome, I was ridiculed intothat.
So, james, if you're listening,thanks a lot for ridiculing me
into that.
My Pixel worked great, I lovedmy Pixel.
Speaker 1 (51:02):
But now I got an apple.
Speaker 2 (51:03):
Okay, guys, thanks for tuning in.
Hope you enjoyed the episode.
More businesses coming to yousmall businesses in Southern
Utah.
We want to feature them as muchas we can.
Thanks for listening.
We'll see you out there, guys.
Thanks for listening in.
If you enjoyed this episode,please like and subscribe.
Make sure you're following uson all the social media websites
.
We love your support.
(51:27):
We love the dialogue.
We want to continue that going.
Find us at realestate435.com.
We'd love to help you find ahouse here in town or help you
get wherever you're going.
We're targeting St George, the Southern Utah area.
It's called St Jeezy.
Okay, the point of this is it'sa coupon app similar to what
you've already seen, like withDixie Direct, I think it's
called.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Dixie.
Speaker 1 (00:12):
Direct Starving student cards Starving student
cards Stuff like that.
However, we're not chargingbusinesses.
Okay, this is one of the fewmodels that you can still remain
profitable and, you know,maintain or grow the company
without having to chargebusinesses, which is very rare.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
From the Blueform Media Studios.
This is the 435 Podcast thepulse of Southern Utah.
Hey everybody, welcome back toanother episode of the 435
Podcast.
Today I have Blake Carver withme.
He is the Blake from BlakeTechnologies, a local tech
entrepreneur here in SouthernUtah, and we talk about a lot of
different things his historywith T-Mobile, with Nike and his
(00:56):
latest edition of his app.
That's a local based app.
It's STGZ ST space GZ on theApple iTunes app store.
You'll want to download it.
It's going to have coupons andpromoting local businesses here
in town, but we're on the huntfor unique ways People are
making money in Southern Utah.
We want to focus on the smallbusinesses and Blake has a great
story.
We hope you enjoy this episode.
(01:17):
We'll see you out there.
You know this might sound crazy, but I hate real estate agents
and after being with myself forthe last 10 years, I know the
good ones from the bad ones.
If you're thinking about buying, selling or investing in real
estate here in Southern Utah, wewant you to interview us for
the job.
Go to realestate435.com andgive us a call.
We promise you're going to loveus.
(01:37):
Blake, what's your last name?
It's Carford, carford.
Yeah, carford.
Is that a German Swedish?
Yeah, carford, Is that German?
Speaker 1 (01:44):
Swedish.
Yeah, If you look at thespelling there's a V and a T in
there, okay, but yeah, it'spronounced Carford Carford.
And where are you from?
I grew up in Las Vegas and thenmoved here, actually just
before high school, okay, so Iwent to high school at Desert
Hills in St George here, desertHills in St George, here, uh,
(02:06):
and then, uh, just you know,after I went to college at Utah
Valley university, um, anddropped out when I discovered my
passion for software, yeah, uh,and then, yeah, started started
my career there.
So that didn't start in highschool that you you went to Utah
Valley and started doingclasses and yeah, I was actually
studying business and then,yeah, part of the part of the
major was just one, uh, computerscience class, which is like
(02:29):
building websites.
Yeah, uh, and I really reallyliked that.
I ended up building like wewere supposed to build one
website and I built like five.
I built one for my dad'smedical practice and then, uh,
you know other just littlebusiness websites that I wanted
to build to learn it and yeahlike after, after that class.
You know, we just kept going toclasses, you know, like business
(02:51):
, and I hated it.
And so one day my wife was justlike stop complaining, like go
do it.
You liked that one class, likejust go do that.
Speaker 2 (02:58):
Yeah, Uh, I ended up just yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
So when I decided I want to do like technology,
realized that the colleges don'treally teach the latest and
greatest stuff.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
The iteration of it is just so quick, right.
Speaker 1 (03:10):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2 (03:11):
So did you go work for somebody first?
Speaker 1 (03:13):
Yeah, I went to Dev Mountain up in Northern Utah.
That's kind of where I went.
It was like a three-month bootcamp and then from there my like
job job was a senior levelengineering position at t-mobile
okay um where we worked on alot of really cool stuff.
(03:34):
So I was I was the in charge ofa project where we rebuilt the
payments infrastructure for allthe retail stores in the country
.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
Crazy, yeah, it was really crazy, and I worked for
Verizon for like 10 months.
My wife got pregnant and, likethe as soon as we found out she
was pregnant, I was like I gottago get a job because I was
studying to get my real estatelicense and I was like I need
health insurance.
So I went and worked forVerizon the day that she had my
son.
I was like this and I quit, andthey didn't think.
I was going to actually quit thesystem.
(04:03):
That was probably the mostfrustrating thing.
Working at Verizon is likeeverybody's got these tablets
and you're having to restartthem over and over and there's
like 50 different ways of howyou know getting into it.
It was so confusing and sodifficult.
I was like how is it a companylike Verizon horrible at this
part of it?
Speaker 1 (04:21):
So I can imagine T-Mobile had to go through some
upgrades.
Yeah, same deal.
I mean, it's not really atechnology company, so the apps
that they have on the iPads forall the workers not necessarily
the best, and same with thepayments, the security and the
payments and stuff.
So we really helped, we rebuiltthat, launched it.
(04:43):
So far I haven't heard anyproblems with what we've built
in the past few years.
Speaker 2 (04:47):
Which is always nerve-wracking for an
application, especially whenit's rolled out, is those bugs.
You don't know the bugs untilyou're going at scale, yeah
exactly, so that seems to begoing really well.
Speaker 1 (04:58):
When was that?
That was 2021.
So it was only three or fouryears ago.
Yeah, when I left.
Speaker 2 (05:06):
Uh-huh.
Speaker 1 (05:07):
That was a little over four years ago actually,
but yeah, since from T-Mobile.
When I left T-Mobile I went towork for Nike as a contractor in
their innovation department andthat's kind of where this kind
of kicked off this whole likeentrepreneurial spirit back in
me, because I grew up and I wasalways doing businesses in my
(05:28):
youth and so that kind of intheir innovation department our
job, like my team was in incharge of like we would build a
new business every six months,like a new tech product, oh cool
, and then if it worked out,like if it tested well with the
few hundred thousand users, thenit would be incorporated into
(05:50):
the Nike ecosystem.
Speaker 2 (05:53):
This sounds so ridiculous.
Have you ever seen Cloudy witha Chance of Meatballs?
Yes, you know how he goes andworks for the pseudo-Apple and
he has to come up with as manyideas as he can just to get his
gold jacket.
I just think of that as like.
This is literally how corporateAmerica runs their tech stuff.
Speaker 1 (06:08):
Totally, and it's exactly how it works and there's
many teams doing the same thingall the time and you know it's
been really cool.
Yeah, Like great experienceCause I get to work, like you
know, on a on a big, scalableteam and uh, kind of learn how
to build a business also, and Ithought that's like really the
benefit to working in a positionlike that.
Speaker 2 (06:29):
So on those teams, were they giving you, like,
parameters of, like what typesof things that you could do?
Or was it kind of this you comeup with a good idea and you run
with it and present it, or like, especially for Nike?
Speaker 1 (06:41):
I'm trying to think, yeah, well, they have an entire
vetting process before it evencomes across.
Like our team, They've they'vevetted out the idea with focus
groups and all sorts ofdifferent process to get to that
point.
They come to us with what needsto be built and then we decide
what technologies go into it andwhich ones are the best.
So a large part of our job isjust R and D, researching what's
(07:01):
what's out there, what's newwas just R and D, researching
what's what's out there, what'snew, and if it's new and works
for our project we willdetermine whether or not it's uh
viable enough for.
Speaker 2 (07:09):
Did you ever get one where you're like?
This is a stupid idea.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
No really.
They're all really cool ideas.
Speaker 2 (07:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (07:15):
What was it?
What was one of the coolestones?
Um, I would say I can't reallygive exact details.
Speaker 2 (07:21):
Oh, I think you can.
Speaker 1 (07:24):
I can give, I can tell you what we used and you
can use your imagination so likeaugmented reality.
Nike is a clothing company andmainly shoes, so we were working
on a few, and who knows thatthey're still in development in
certain stages, probably, yeah,I would say so.
But being able to like seeshoes, um, without being in the
(07:47):
store, yeah.
Being able to like try on shoes, yes, I think technology I
think that's a.
Speaker 2 (07:52):
It's a cool technology, but then it's
applying it to say is there areturn?
Like having somebody do this,is that going to lead them to a
sale?
Right, it's like crossing overthe chasm of like does, is this
actually going to increase thenumber of our sales to to be
able to have augmented reality?
And then you're relying on theconsumer to have the technology
to be able to actually see it invirtual reality.
(08:13):
Right, they got to have thegoggles or they got to have some
type of way of viewing it.
Speaker 1 (08:17):
Yeah, or with your phone, whatever you know.
Whatever technology seems islike the best as that vetting
process that we go to before, orwe go through that before we
write code yeah, and they don't.
They don't give us anything tobuild unless it has a minimum of
a billion dollar.
Speaker 2 (08:35):
Like revenue option or like it's going to make them
money Right.
There's going to be revenuecoming in from this idea.
Speaker 1 (08:41):
Yeah, wow, a billion dollars, holy cow.
Yeah, and so I mean yeah.
So every single project that ateam of 10 people is responsible
for building has has thatpotential on paper.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
That's crazy, yeah, that's crazy.
So then you did that for just acouple of years.
Speaker 1 (08:57):
Yeah, I mean I still, I still do consulting for them,
you do.
Speaker 2 (09:04):
Oh, you do.
Okay, that's why you can't sayanything.
Okay, that makes sense, thatmakes more sense.
That's pretty cool.
I was, um, uh, one of the ideas.
I'm sure somebody's working onit and they're probably way far
down the road.
That's why I'm not doing it.
But, uh, buying new homes,cause I'm a real estate agent.
So it's like you go in, you wantto build a house.
You could put it on a piece ofpaper all day long, but you know
the difference between I want ahallway that's 12 feet wide
(09:27):
versus a 10 foot wide, or youknow like how, how big is that
hallway?
Or you know, you can kind ofspatially understand okay, this
is probably like 10, 10 by 10room.
But when you go to like thedifference between a 12 foot
room it's 12 by nine versus afully different floor plan where
you know the the feet is alittle bit different.
When you walk into the room,how it feels is such a big chasm
(09:49):
that people have to jumpthrough.
And I was like virtual realitycould really change the way home
builders build houses and thenarchitects when they design them
.
So that was one of the ideas.
I was like somebody'ssomebody's got to come up with
that one pretty quick.
Speaker 1 (10:02):
Yeah Well, a big reason why I'd say things like
that will probably come aboutmore often is because of AI.
The amount of data that isavailable in our lives that is
not being collected isastounding.
The amount of data that iscurrently being collected by
companies and researched andthings is astounding, but
(10:23):
there's still a huge gap.
Yeah, Sifting through it andthen being able to astounding
but it's there's still a hugegap.
Speaker 2 (10:26):
Yeah, it's sifting through it and then being able
to.
How do you use it?
Speaker 1 (10:29):
Yeah, and that's what AI is going to really help with
and that ultimately willdetermine what products to build
next or how to make you knowcurrent products better, and I
think I think over the next 10years we're going to see some
pretty wild steps in tech.
Speaker 2 (10:50):
So you're using, you're using LLMs and AI at some
capacity, I'm sure alreadyRight.
So so 20, 2020, I think it waslike March 2020, maybe 2021.
Was it when open AI, open sort,let, let out their platform for
everybody to play with?
Right?
It was 21, 22.
Speaker 1 (11:00):
Yeah, I don't know, I don't know for sure, but chat
GDP yeah.
Speaker 2 (11:03):
Yeah, Chat GPT came out and then we've had just so
many different models come out.
What, which ones do you use?
As, as somebody that's workingon application software, what,
what are you using?
Cause everybody uses.
You know a couple of differentversions of a couple of
different things, but I'mcurious like, what's your tech
stack?
Speaker 1 (11:19):
My well, my day to day is I'll use chat TTP for uh
like day to day problem solving.
Um, I, I don't.
Yeah, that's pretty much all Iuse.
Um, there's other ones outthere that integrate with you
know, like code.
There's some good code basedstuff.
Yeah, there's so some that areknown for helping out developers
, uh, but in my opinion, like,if you go any further than what
(11:44):
ChatGTP has given you, thenyou're probably relying on it
too much, in my opinion, justbecause there's too many
problems that you need toactually solve out in a chat.
These AIs just simply don'tknow how to architect very well
is what I'm trying to get tohere.
They don't think aboutscalability.
When you're, when you're givingin these, these, these prompts,
(12:07):
you know they can't really takeinto these, these complex
factors of, like, our humanelement and what the end user is
going to experience when we'reworking with it.
So really, I I try to keep my,my human human code, yeah, my
human self, as part of theproject so that way it ends up
that the end user can experiencethis, so you're not necessarily
(12:30):
using any AI coding supplementto write code in any way.
Speaker 2 (12:37):
No, I do.
Speaker 1 (12:39):
For coding problems, individual problems.
If I need to write a solutionfor whatever thing honestly, I
can refer to ChatGTP.
See what it comes out.
Problems like individualproblems.
If I need to write a you know asolution for for whatever thing
honestly, I can refer to chatgtp.
See what it comes out with,determine you know and then make
a determination of what I cantake from it or use and modify
and modify yeah yeah, uh, but asfar as like doing creating
experiences for the user, uh, Ican't.
(13:00):
There's no I can, can get, I can, you know, often put in prompts
and get ideas or whatever, butit never really quite gets the
whole.
How do you feel when youinteract with this product?
Yeah, so I think it's still gota long ways to go to get to
where it can like createexperiences that we interpret as
human to human experiences.
Speaker 2 (13:21):
Yeah, yeah, that makes sense.
Yeah, so, uh, working at Nike,still consulting for them a
little bit, and then now it'shave you always kind of stayed
local?
You've always kind of workedremote.
Speaker 1 (13:32):
Uh yeah, ever since COVID.
Yeah, I mean, I was atheadquarters for T T mobile.
Uh yeah, remote since then?
Speaker 2 (13:40):
Yeah, that's one of the things I think is so
fascinating about Southern Utahis that we have we have a an
economy that's so much morediverse now than it was even
five years ago because of thisremote work environment, and,
even though a lot of it'sgetting pulled back, there's
still a massive portion of themarket to where it just makes
more sense, especially fortechnology and coding and things
(14:02):
like that.
Speaker 1 (14:02):
Yeah, for sure.
However, especially fortechnology and coding and things
like that yeah, for sure.
However, since now that I'vegot like Blake Technologies, I
have an office and I've foundthat that's very, very useful
when you're either startingbusinesses or your business is
just small.
In what way?
Just being able to lean overyour shoulder and like interact
with another person, rather thanscheduling a call, because
(14:25):
oftentimes when we're working onthese startup projects, it
moves fast and what comes intomy mind right now is not going
to be there in an hour.
Speaker 2 (14:35):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (14:36):
Or not even in the same way.
Speaker 2 (14:37):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (14:38):
And so being able to like interact.
I mean it's fast.
I mean we use Slack, yeah, onour remote teams, it's, it's
fast.
I mean we use slack like, yeah,on our remote teams, it's
pretty.
Yeah, you know it's, it'sefficient, but it's not as cool
as uh like.
You can't really get the sameeffect.
I guess you can say like uh ina, that you can in an office,
and plus, if you have, you know,maybe lesser uh, not lesser uh,
(15:00):
but less experienced umengineers, it really helps them
to be able to interact and seehow maybe a senior engineer does
their work or thinks through aprocess, cause I'm not going to
be on a call when I'm on mywhiteboard in my office at home,
right?
Speaker 2 (15:14):
Right, you know solving a problem, and then
you've done it and then it you.
You can just poke your head andbe like here, come check this
out, watch as I go through this.
Yes, it's not like you gothrough it and you're like let's
have a call later and thenwe'll review what I just went
over Exactly.
Speaker 1 (15:33):
That doesn't happen.
So for, like for my, for thesenior teams be remote, I don't
care, Cause everybody kind of Ican, I can look at another
engineer's code and kind of seeinto their mind a little bit, Um
, but that's, that's a skill Ithink that you develop over time
more than more than justsomething that you're, you have
going into it.
Speaker 2 (15:47):
So Nike can do it, but the smaller startup
businesses there's probablygoing to be some challenges with
being just fully remote, butteam sizes have gotten a lot
smaller too.
Speaker 1 (15:56):
Yeah, If there's less experienced engineers on a team
like I think that you know youcan get any rag tag team of
experienced people and you youknow they all live in different
states and it can make somethingbeautiful.
Yeah, totally uh, because youdon't need as much communication
.
It's almost like those like Imean it's a crazy analogy but
like those navy seals that theytrain in silence because they're
(16:19):
all so trained in what they doalready individually that when
they get together they don'treally have to communicate in
order to get the job done, yeahUm, whereas you know new people
kind of have to.
You have to speak out loud andand uh there's a lot of learning
that goes along.
Speaker 2 (16:37):
That needs that interaction.
What do you think about, like,just the social interaction?
Do you feel like as an engineer?
Um, I was listening to uh, Imentioned it before on the
podcast.
I was listening to Lex Friedman.
I don't know if you know LexFriedman.
Um, he was, he was interviewingthis, uh, engineer that did 60
startups.
He did 60 startups in 60 days,okay, and he's just, he was just
(16:57):
programming websites and likecoming up with ideas and just
pushing himself to like how manydifferent businesses can I get
people to subscribe for?
Like, even if it's a dollar,right, and um, he's ended up
making millions of dollars off,you know, catching a couple that
have just really done well andbeen able to scale out.
But what he was finding, whichhe caught on to, right around
(17:17):
the time, kiln started buildingout their business model for
basically this, this, uh, um,community workspace environment
to where an engineer, it's onething to just want to be a
keyboard warrior and and just,you know, get in and do the
engineering stuff on your own,even if you're an expert, but
it's the social interaction thatyou come into.
(17:38):
You just just got your officeover at kiln.
Is there that that communityfeel there Does that?
Is there some value to that?
Got your office over at kiln.
Speaker 1 (17:45):
Is there that that community feel there does that?
Is there some value to that?
Absolutely yeah.
Um, I gotta give myself somecredit because I've kind of I
feel like I've been the one thatgoing out and to the
everybody's desks and likeintroducing myself and seeing
what they're up to, yeah, butalready I can see that there's.
There's lots of value, yeah, uh, even in fields like people
that are working just simplyremotely or something from for
their company.
I've had conversations alreadyin the first, in the first few
weeks, with people that areworking just simply remotely or
something from for their company.
(18:05):
I've had conversations alreadyin the first, in the first few
weeks, with people that have.
That has, like, helped me withthe way I think about my end
users for my products.
Yeah, cause I just don't know,you know how people think until
I, until I interact with them.
That's quite simple.
That's a simple reality.
But my nature is I'm veryintroverted, I don't like to
(18:27):
talk to people.
It drains my energy but it's so.
Speaker 2 (18:31):
you decided to come on a podcast and just suck all
your energy right out.
This is what you do.
Speaker 1 (18:34):
This is how you overcome these kind of
challenges and get better at it?
Yeah, because I think.
I mean.
Who knows if one day I'll beable to.
How life is you know?
Speaker 2 (18:49):
yeah, everybody's experiences are gonna be
differently and so you know.
You have this bell curve of itand you're.
You want to hit the margins asmuch as you can to try to
capture the biggest user base.
So what?
What product?
Uh, blake technology, as yousaid.
What kinds of projects are youworking on right now?
Is that multiple applicationsor a?
Speaker 1 (19:06):
bunch of stuff, but right now I've got a startup
that's based out of it's.
We're targeting st george, thest southern utah area.
It's called st gz.
Okay, um, and the the point ofthis is it's a coupon app
similar to what you've alreadyseen like with dixie direct I.
I think it's called startingreceiving cards starting stuff
(19:26):
like that um, uh, however, we'renot charging.
Uh, this is one of the fewmodels that you could.
You can still remain profitableand, and you know, maintain or
grow the company without havingto charge businesses, which is
very rare.
Yeah, I, it's.
There's very there's rare caseswhere, in a marketing platform,
(19:49):
you don't have to charge formarketing.
Yeah, and this is one of thosecases, because you're prep,
you're providing enough value tothe user where they're willing
to pay a little bit to get morevalue out of it.
But businesses, um, and this iskind of a problem with a lot of
marketing platforms is they'rethey're so expensive to do
marketing, uh, that smallerbusinesses can't really compete
(20:10):
with the, with these, like chainrestaurants or you know, larger
franchise companies.
Speaker 2 (20:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (20:15):
And so you know, as far as the numbers go, it's
going to on paper, it's going towork out.
We'll find out how it goes, butas of right now, you can go on
the app, start on your phone andand search for St GZ and
download it.
And is it STGZ?
Speaker 2 (20:31):
Yep ST space GZ.
I'm going to look it up rightnow as we're chatting about it.
So, as far as like getting thebusinesses to it, is it
basically just like you apply tohave your business on there?
Do you have like a cap as tothe number of businesses?
Speaker 1 (20:47):
Where it's different from, like Dixie Direct or
Starving Student Card, is thebusiness just creates their
profile all inside the app.
So everybody that downloads theapp can see a button in their
profile screen that's like hey,if you have a business promoted
here for free, and if you have abusiness, then go ahead and do
that.
You create your profile inthere, you manage your profile
(21:07):
in there, you manage the offersthat you have.
Uh, it's all on you as thebusiness owner.
At the beginning, when youfirst create your profile, we do
a verification process, butthat's it.
You get to determine, like, allthe deals that you want to put
on there on your own time.
Got it, and that's really coolbecause that makes it scalable.
Yeah, and I think that's thebig, that's a huge problem that
(21:28):
these other companies probablyhaven't quite figured out is,
you know, once you have acertain number of businesses on
there, uh, um, it's very hard tomanage these relationships like
person to person.
Yeah, they don't havetechnology, that's that's like
doing this for them, right, andso I think that's where we're
going to hopefully be able toscale much faster.
Um, and the fact that we're notcharging businesses like they
(21:52):
do.
Speaker 2 (21:52):
Then I think so the user pays.
So yeah, what's?
Speaker 1 (21:57):
the Eventually.
I mean, we just got started, soit's free for everybody until
we figure out what this thing is, but the businesses will never
pay to have their profiles onthe app.
Eventually there might beservices like analytics and like
data driven softwares that theycan subscribe to.
Perhaps, to you know, help outtheir business, okay, but to
(22:20):
have to do the marketing wherethat's going to be free for
businesses, always Interesting,and once there's enough users
and there's enough value onthere, then we'll determine what
users can pay.
Speaker 2 (22:29):
So the user, like the , let's say the user the idea
would be the user pays, like youknow, $10 a year or something
like that, and they get thecoupons that come up.
Or is that the subscriptionmodel?
It would be something like that.
Speaker 1 (22:44):
Yeah, some sort of subscription.
And then businesses, like Isaid, they determine which
offers are available, which day,so like, for example, today is
Valentine's Day.
Yeah, they determine whichoffers are available, which day,
so like, for example, today'sValentine's Day.
Yeah, businesses would put onmaybe a week before Valentine's
Day they can put on their offersfor Valentine's.
Speaker 2 (22:58):
Day.
Yeah, it's like on Veterans Day.
It's like there's certainbusinesses that will like free
food for veterans.
You know what I mean?
Yeah, how do you go find that?
Exactly when do you go to knowwhat restaurants are giving you
know veterans free?
Free meals on veterans day andthings like that and they don't
need my permission.
Speaker 1 (23:14):
They don't have to come to me and say, can I put
this deal on your app?
They just do it.
They're already approved, putthe deals on there.
And I just tell businesses like, put deals on there, put good
ones on there.
I'm not charging you for thisreason.
So give some value to the users.
Speaker 2 (23:28):
Yeah, that makes sense.
Yeah, that's pretty cool man.
Yeah, that makes sense.
Yeah, that's pretty cool man.
So, um, aside from that, whatother kind of business ideas or
what else are you working on?
Speaker 1 (23:37):
Oh, uh, uh, ever since the vision pro came out,
I've been dabbling a lot withthis VR stuff.
Yeah, um, I've built a coupleof games, uh, one of which you
can download.
Cool.
It's called, uh, obstacleavoidance Nice, yeah, it's just.
You just try to dodge all thesecubes that come at you.
Yeah, and it's kind of fun.
(23:57):
But, yeah, I work withaugmented reality as a big thing
.
I truly believe that that'sgoing to be a huge part of our
lives in the next 10, 20 years,once these headsets kind of get
smaller and, you know, lighter,yeah, so people are more willing
to use them out in public.
Speaker 2 (24:13):
Yeah, but adoption just gets a little bit more
ubiquitous yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:18):
I don't think Apple, I think these big companies kind
of came out pretty early withthese products.
But it's, you know, it's with apurpose.
Speaker 2 (24:25):
Yeah, testing stuff out.
Speaker 1 (24:27):
Yeah, we're getting used to it and eventually
they'll get to a point whereit's just a huge adoption.
Speaker 2 (24:31):
I mean, meta's glasses are pretty incredible
already, as they are.
Speaker 1 (24:35):
Yeah, great example.
Yeah, I think the capabilitieswith these things are going to
be outrageous.
They're going to be crazy.
Yeah, so trying to get on thecutting edge of that kind of
augmented reality stuff, yes,absolutely, Because whatever
engineers or teams out therethat are doing this now, they
will be the the you name, yourprice type people.
So, um, I encourage everybodythat works for me or with me to
(24:59):
like do this stuff on the side.
Even though maybe our businessprojects are not involving that
right now.
Uh, do it because it's going tobenefit us on my company.
If you guys are still workingfor me, at very minimum it'll
benefit you in your career.
So, yeah, Cause, yeah for sure,Augmented reality will be
pretty crazy.
Speaker 2 (25:20):
What do you see is?
Is gaming going to be kind ofthe?
It seems like the obviousheadwater is going towards like
gaming.
But what do you think realworld applications Like?
Do you do you see like certainsegments of the businesses that
would benefit the most?
Maybe that you know peopledon't really think about?
Speaker 1 (25:38):
Oh for sure, I mean well, I mean marketing in
general would be pretty crazy,because you can.
You'll be able to.
If you have your glasses onwhile you're in your car, you'll
be able to see going into acity, Like if you're driving
down the hill to go into Vegas.
You'll see these floating youknow, these floating logos or
whatever for the businesses.
You'll, um, you'll be able toexperience things like if you
(26:02):
imagine driving down the stripin Vegas and you'll be able to
like play a game in augmentedreality, like doing a tour of
Vegas.
Yeah, yeah, Uh, you'll be ableto.
You know, uh, yeah, just likekind of get almost like how, on
the app store when you see apreview of the app that you're
about to download, you'll beable to like experience previews
of experiences in life.
Yeah, that makes sense.
Which is pretty wild, yeah, Ifyou think about that and then
(26:24):
you know, once you know theseheadsets are going to interact
with our, like our, you knowthings, so, like you could I
don't know, I mean use yourimagination right, Like whatever
you can think of, it's actuallygoing to be possible.
Pretty much anything is alreadypossible, but now it's going to
, it's getting to the pointwhere anything is possible, yeah
(26:46):
.
Speaker 2 (26:47):
One of the things I was thinking about was like the,
the food and stuff that we eat.
My son has type one diabetes.
Okay, I was like the food andstuff that we eat.
My son has type one diabetes,okay, and so I look at nutrition
facts every time, like you justcan't help but do it Right,
because that's what you'relooking at all the time.
But being able to like,understand and analyze you know
what is this based on?
This can right, the servingsize is 355 milliliters.
(27:09):
It's percent of daily value hasit on there, and then
milligrams per serving size, butyou get a loaf of bread and my
wife we're always doing likecalculations and stuff like that
and so I can't help but thinklike there's just going to be
these like daily tasks that canreally help aid in in the way
that we function, you know, onour day-to-day life.
Speaker 1 (27:28):
You know on on how, how it can add totally it's
gonna, and it's gonna start withour kids, like our.
The education, education ingeneral, is about to see a huge,
like a huge leap in in how it'sdone.
Yeah, uh, like I often thinkabout the in star trek with like
spock's world, and there's a.
There's a scene in there wherethere's a bunch of kids in
(27:50):
school and their own like theirown little cubicles and it's
just a giant screen around themand that's how they're learning
and AIs just teach themeverything about the world and
they're super smart.
That's pretty much how Iimagine education is going in
that way already, where kids arekind of I mean, it's not good
to be on the screen all day, butif you're going to be on the
screen all day, if you'relearning something, that's well,
(28:12):
I think it's a balance toobetween the screen and real life
, right.
Speaker 2 (28:15):
I think that virtually virtual reality is a
is a a bridge between that youknow that screen and what's
going on in real life, rightit's it's this integration of
the two things.
Speaker 1 (28:25):
School will start to be one hour a day, two hours a
day, yeah, you know, becauselet's be honest, they probably
only do one or two hours ofactual work in their classes
anyway, that's like the, that'sthe how people work anyway, in
the in the real world, exactly.
Speaker 2 (28:40):
That's pretty interesting.
Um so, so, uh, virtual realityis something that you're looking
, looking at.
You have this uh, st Jeezy appis local, and then you're doing
the side stuff for Nike.
Yeah, I've got a few.
Speaker 1 (28:53):
I mean, I've got a few apps on the App Store that I
just haven't put my fundingbehind yet.
But yeah, st Jeezy is kind ofmy focus right now, just because
I find it to be scalable.
It's already proven.
These other companies are doingthe same thing.
I'm just making it better.
I have the better software andbetter experience companies not
(29:15):
to pay have you heard of thatcompany?
uh, while you were here yes Ithought that was a pretty
interesting, pretty interestingidea trying to attract, you know
, the tourism port, you know,element to it is like, while you
were here, don't forget aboutthese different things, like uh,
yeah, you know, eventuallywe'll think eventually we'll
have a, we'll have these, youknow, geo fence, this geo fence
functionality where, like, ifyou're, uh, let's say, you're in
(29:37):
Northern Utah and you're comingdown here to visit, and if you
have the app already, uh, thenyou'll, you'll get, like these
notifications for, like you know, personalized notifications
from our AI that tells you like,here's what you've experienced
last time and here's this newthing that you experience.
Speaker 2 (29:53):
Yeah, that's, that's another thing too to the, to the
.
The adaptability of this is isreally nimble, right, cause you
get the Dixie direct and thenit's, you have this book and
you're like, okay, well, whatare the deals?
And I get, get to the book andI'm looking through the book and
you can download the app.
They do have an app, but it'sthe, the agileness of being able
to have it at your fingertipsand have notifications.
(30:13):
You're like you're getting intoWashington County.
You're like, hey, you knowthese things are going on.
I can't help but think, youknow, integrating just the
business coupons with events.
I was thinking about this as Iwas driving down here.
I was like, why is there somuch traffic?
Everybody knows why.
There's all the traffic right,with the parade homes, but
there's also a massive soccertournament, there's baseball
(30:34):
tournaments, Like every place Isee, you know, kids in baseball
gear, right?
And so it's what are the eventsgoing on in town that I might
want to take advantage of?
Right, because there's justthis gap and silo.
We used to have a newspaperthat said, hey, here's all the
events, you know, you couldeasily go and look at it, and
there's not really a singleplace to go find it, even
Facebook.
You know you'd have to scour 50different groups on Facebook
(30:57):
just to find all the differentevents that are going on in town
, so totally having like a onestop place to say this event's
going on and here are thebusinesses that are
participating in that event.
Speaker 1 (31:07):
Yeah, and here's a deal.
Speaker 2 (31:08):
And here's a deal.
And here's a deal.
Speaker 1 (31:10):
Yeah, exactly, Totally.
That's on our list of to-dosSweet.
You know doing this wholeevents thing.
So we'll be working with localinfluencers here in town as well
(31:30):
as different, because there areFacebook groups and pages that
where somebody is like postingthese events.
But we're going to be workingwith these people and
integrating with these platformsto be able to make it easy to
show all that on our app.
Speaker 2 (31:37):
If you're looking for a nice cup of coffee and you're
in downtown St George, fsCoffee Co, that's where you're
going to want to stop.
It's right there on the cornerof Tabernacle and Main Street in
downtown St George.
So if you've got a bicycle,ride it on down there and grab a
drip coffee and tell them the435 guys sent you.
Is it easy to scrub?
(32:00):
If I was to design a software,is it easy to scrub Facebook,
for example, I want to find allthe posts about events on
Facebook.
Is there a way to like, havelike a crawler that goes through
it and like scrubs, like what'sgetting posted, or is is there
like blocks to that withFacebook?
Speaker 1 (32:19):
Well, it can be done.
Yes, it can be done.
Yeah, Uh for sure, Just uh.
As far as how complex that is,I don't know, I'd have to do
some research, but it cantotally be done.
Speaker 2 (32:28):
Yeah, yeah, um, cause I was thinking where we were
talking about, like, all thedata.
There's so much data alreadygetting collected that isn't
getting utilized, and thenthere's all this data that isn't
even getting collected Exactly.
Speaker 1 (32:39):
And I would put that in the data that's not collected
, because I think, within a townor a region like the southern
Utah area, yeah, just having thedata on what people are
spending money on, where theyare at, you know, at a during a
certain time of the day, what,how much time they're looking at
a specific event, like you, candetermine a lot of data for a
(33:03):
person just based off of whatthey're looking at on the screen
.
You know, yeah, and it's pretty, it's pretty incredible, and
that's the kind of data thatwe're we're hoping to like be
able to utilize to just betterthe experience of people that
are coming into Southern Utah.
But this is not even inSouthern Utah.
I don't really view this as aSouthern Utah based and only
(33:24):
exist in Southern Utah company.
Speaker 2 (33:26):
Yeah, it can be replicated everywhere.
Speaker 1 (33:28):
Yeah, we're just we'll, we'll scale out to the
whole country, to the wholeworld.
Yeah, we're just we'll, we'llscale out to the whole country,
to the whole world.
Yeah, whatever you know,because, um, that's the way
we've designed the software andthat's the whole point of it.
Yeah, uh, cause I, I personallyI don't like to see companies
like Groupon uh, charging somuch to these businesses to just
(33:58):
to be great, because it seemedlike you got great deals.
Speaker 2 (34:00):
But yeah, it doesn't seem like they're as good of
deals as they used to be.
Speaker 1 (34:04):
Yeah, they just charge so much that I think that
if you give a, if they give a10 of a sorry, if a company
gives a 10 discount, discount onsomething, the remaining 90%
Groupon charges 50% of that.
Whoa, yeah, that's crazy.
Speaker 2 (34:18):
So these businesses are maybe breaking, even, if not
losing, a little bit of moneyon every single time we purchase
a Groupon, yeah, so it's prettywild, yeah, they just see that
the cost of marketing is likeyou have a budget for this and I
want to take every penny ofthat budget, if I can take it.
Speaker 1 (34:33):
So their model is the business pays every cent of the
deal, we just get the discountand that's about it.
Yeah, dixie Direct, and theytake for both.
Yeah, they take for both.
Yeah, which is crazy to me.
Speaker 2 (34:50):
And it's crazy, it makes I mean if you're.
It's a win-win.
If it's a win-win, you knowpeople are willing to do it.
Speaker 1 (34:56):
Yeah, it's just.
I mean, if you look on thoseplatforms, it's only these big
companies that are on there.
Speaker 2 (35:00):
You know, yeah, like the.
Speaker 1 (35:01):
McDonald's and, yeah, you know.
So, yeah, we's going to be freefor you, but you're going to
have to rank.
You know that's a cool idea.
You're going to have to, youknow, provide good deals lots of
deals and the users need to beusing your deals in order for
(35:21):
you to rank higher on the listin the app.
Speaker 2 (35:23):
Yeah, like user, you almost have like a user ranking
for the if, the, if the usergives, let's say they give them
kind of like what a Facebookdoes with like tokens, like if
you it's almost like you'repromoting, you promote them that
kind of factors into thealgorithm.
You know as to how it placesand exactly Facebook, like meta,
does that to us.
Speaker 1 (35:43):
We are because we are the value to these businesses.
Right, so they put they do.
Their algorithm is applied tous.
We're going to do that back tobusinesses.
Speaker 2 (35:52):
Yeah, that makes sense.
Speaker 1 (35:53):
We're going to give the best thing to the user.
Speaker 2 (35:55):
That's unique.
Yeah, I like that.
That's pretty interesting.
That's a great idea.
How'd you come up with that?
Just laying in bed one day?
Speaker 1 (36:01):
Lots of thinking.
I've been thinking about thisfor a long time.
Yeah yeah, that's prettyinteresting.
Build it, though, to build it.
Speaker 2 (36:09):
Yeah, yeah, I got ideas.
I got a ton of ideas.
I can have ideas all day long,but it's actually like when you
go put the work in to actuallydo it, that's where the rubber
meets the road.
Speaker 1 (36:17):
Yeah, so, like, uh, like all of my experiences it's
it's been kind of sort of partof a plan.
I've been really payingattention at these experiences,
at these larger companies andlearning exactly what I wanted
to learn to be able to pullstuff like this off.
Speaker 2 (36:31):
Yeah, and we're going to make it happen.
That's awesome, man.
Yeah, well, I think you'regoing to do it.
Speaker 1 (36:36):
I know you're going to do it.
Yeah, we're totally going to doit.
You're going to crush it, crushit.
Speaker 2 (36:40):
Yeah.
What else should we talk about,man?
Speaker 1 (36:43):
We could talk about real estate.
Yeah, I do a Uh.
Yeah, we've got some propertyin in Vegas and outside of Vegas
.
There We've got some land Nice.
Um, yeah, we, we got some landright, right beneath the, the
old gold mine.
Oh, really yeah.
So, uh, who knows, maybe oneday, who knows, got about 10
(37:03):
acres out there.
That's, who knows.
Speaker 2 (37:04):
They'll kick that mine back up.
Speaker 1 (37:06):
Right, something, yeah, then it's like all right,
well, I'll lease the land to you, you know, for how did you
start getting into that.
Just.
Speaker 2 (37:13):
Looking for opportunities.
Speaker 1 (37:14):
Honestly, it's just, you know, like you know, find
myself with some extra cash andI try to figure out what's going
to either be a value to me inthe future or buy something that
I can leverage now perhaps intosome other better deal.
Speaker 2 (37:28):
Yeah, it's a long game.
Real estate's always a longgame.
Speaker 1 (37:32):
Yeah, yeah, um, it's a long game.
Real estate's always a longgame.
Yeah, yeah.
Or I just um like, early on inour, in my marriage with my wife
, we were just like, let's, youknow, let's try and find a place
that we can buy, fix up, livein, and then when we move again,
we'll just rent it out.
Yeah, uh, so we did.
We were doing that until we hadour third kid, yeah, and at
that point it's just like, yeah,no, we'll just let's settle
down and St George, yeah.
Speaker 2 (37:53):
It can be exhausting.
Man Right the buy, rehab,refinance and rent.
Right the BRRRR method.
Right Exactly.
Speaker 1 (38:02):
Yeah, yeah, the what is that Pockets oh?
Speaker 2 (38:06):
bigger pockets, bigger pockets.
Yeah, they kind of theysensationalized it, but yeah,
that method has been going on along time, right, and it just
makes sense.
Speaker 1 (38:14):
Yeah, it does.
It's an efficient way to get itdone.
Speaker 2 (38:17):
Those guys have some weird obsession about mobile
homes.
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (38:20):
I don't understand it .
They have, like this, mobilehome parks.
Speaker 2 (38:22):
And then they pump it .
It's like this amazing, likejust it prints money, and I'm
like this is not what everybodythinks it is.
It is.
So there are opportunities.
In every business there'sopportunities, but buying a
mobile home park and becoming aslum lord is not what we need
more of.
Speaker 1 (38:41):
Let's, let's, let's get that straight yeah, and if
like and it seems like they didthat based off some sort of
federal regulation thing wherethere's not very many of them,
so they're gonna buy them allup- yeah, because cities don't
don't don't zone for thatanymore.
Speaker 2 (38:53):
I mean they'll let like in washington county that
there's no option.
You, you can't have a mobilehome.
I mean, you could barely get anrv.
These days Now, we've seen alot of RV parks pop up in
Washington County, especiallysince 2020, but we've gotten to
a high water mark where it'slike it, the profitability
doesn't even make sense.
But you're, it's a transient,specific type of business model.
There's no expectation thatsomebody's going to park there
(39:15):
and live there full time andrent out the land underneath
them, and anybody who's doingthat is burning up money.
Speaker 1 (39:22):
Yeah, what I've been looking into is this, this kind
of newer concept that's liketiny home, the tiny homes that
are built with traditionalconstruction.
Yeah, you know, I like thatidea.
Have you heard of box house?
Yes, I have so.
Speaker 2 (39:34):
I.
We had the CEO, jeremy Johnson.
He was the one founder and cameup with the idea.
We had him on the podcasttalking about what he's done,
and it's great, great idea.
It's a great idea.
There's a lot of hurdles,though, that come along with it,
because cities zoning the rulesaround it.
What the neighbors think of,that right as soon as you say
manufactured home.
Right, because the differencebetween mobile and manufactured
(39:54):
is one's got a tongue and comesin on it, you know comes in on
wheels, and the other is comesin on a, in pieces, on a truck.
You know, yeah, well what.
Yeah, well what.
Speaker 1 (40:03):
I'm talking about is is one they're building it.
They're they're building it onsite and it's not.
It's, it's a, but they'reprefabbed as a, as a home,
though.
Speaker 2 (40:10):
Yeah, but they're prefabbed in some kind of way.
Right, and then they're put,put on a slab, but yeah, the
smaller homes.
Speaker 1 (40:17):
Yeah, appraised as a, as a single family home, then
which is so.
Speaker 2 (40:22):
You, the you know where that comes from.
That comes from lending lawsfrom the 40s.
I'm not even kidding you,that's wild.
They came up with these lendinglaws in the 40s and
specifically, um, they werecompletely racist.
That like, truthfully, thesewere like completely racist uh,
laws, starting back down intothe south, is that they made it
(40:44):
basically impossible for you ifyou didn't have these specific
rules, this they, they set upthese criteria for the standard
building you know code and theycopied and pasted this code
across the entire country,because the individual cities
could just develop their owncode for building codes.
But the lenders wrote the rules, the banks wrote the rules and
(41:05):
then the cities just adoptedthis like blanket zoning across
the country for what theirbuilding requirements would be,
and they set it to this bar towhere, if you wanted to do a
manufactured home, you basicallycouldn't do it, or if you did
do it, you had to meet all thesecriteria and then for a bank to
lend on that, you had to havethis certain credit score and
(41:28):
you had to have all thesedifferent line items.
But we just carried thatthrough all the way till today.
Speaker 1 (41:33):
It's ridiculous.
I wonder when that's going tochange, because they're going to
probably end up changing itsometime.
Speaker 2 (41:38):
I mean it would require the banks to be okay
with changing the rules on howthey can control new
construction.
Speaker 1 (41:43):
It's difficult because the banks kind of.
Speaker 2 (41:45):
Yeah, they don't want to make less money, right, like
if the cost to build homes goesdown, that doesn't mean they're
making more money, right, andthey're okay with it coming down
a little bit.
But if you look at over time,if you look over the last 50 to
100 years of building realestate only goes up.
I mean there's a hundred yearsof of building real estate only
goes up.
I mean there's there's a fewtimes where it's gone down, but
it goes back up and it exceedsthat.
(42:06):
In Washington County we're up65% in the last five years,
which is absurd.
That's wild.
Speaker 1 (42:11):
Absurd it's wild and we're maintaining it somehow.
I don't know how we'remaintaining it.
Well, who knows what's going tohappen in the next five years,
but we're doing it there nextfive years.
Speaker 2 (42:20):
but yeah, I mean there was some benefits to the
lending laws tightening up toyou know the qualified buyers
right, there was a lot of youknow the quality of the lender,
the person buying the home, butit's it's not even as stringent
as it was back in the sixtiesand seventies.
Back in the sixties andseventies you had to have 20 to
30% down to buy the house.
Now, the house value was somuch less but also the income
(42:41):
was less and all these otherthings.
But, um, I mean you can getinto a house from $0 down now,
right, and that's only been,that's only been true since the
nineties, yeah, which is scaryto think about.
Speaker 1 (42:51):
I mean, yeah, me as a person, if I'm going to buy a
house I got, I'm dedicating.
In most cases, I'm dedicating30 years you know, uh, cause you
know most people aren'tthinking about the value they're
thinking about.
I want a home.
Speaker 2 (43:05):
You want a home and you want a stable mortgage,
right, you want to know that alandlord is not going to raise
the cost of your living expense,which is 30% to 40% of your
income.
You don't want that to getdisrupted on an annual basis.
It's that stability piece Ithink most people are wanting
Totally.
Speaker 1 (43:23):
Yeah.
Stability in an in an unstableworld?
Yeah, and the banks are makingmoney off of it.
Speaker 2 (43:28):
They're making so much money off of it, yeah, and
they can give you zero downloans on it, because then they
carry the note on it and thenthey roll it into a fund and
then they sell it on the stockmarket.
Right, subprime loans, likethat, subprime loans isn't gone,
like it.
We think that in 2008 is like,oh, subprime lending doesn't
happen anymore.
It's like, no, no, it happensit happens if you go zero down
(43:49):
on a house, you buy a house.
This is a subprime loan, likethere's no equity in that house.
Speaker 1 (43:53):
Yeah, that's wild to think about, because, yeah, I
mean, the old practices don'treally die that hard.
Do that now, do they?
No, they just change the names.
Right, it's pretty crazy andmaybe make do it a little bit
less to get away with it now,but yeah yeah, so this guy up in
central.
Speaker 2 (44:06):
I was talking to him, uh, we were listening, we
listed a house across the streetfrom him and, uh, it was like
the day that they brought the,the manufactured home, on,
because it was built off-site,and then he put it on the site
which he was.
They were zoned to do it up incentral.
Yeah, but I was looking and hehas all these anchors to the
concrete.
He had to pour a regularconcrete slab and then he had to
(44:27):
have concrete extend across theentire bottom of the
manufactured house but it'sdesigned to where it only needs
footing on the outside of thehome.
So you would like the?
Speaker 1 (44:42):
subfloor.
You only need concrete aroundthe home, then yeah, you only
need the footings and then theframe is set up.
Speaker 2 (44:51):
Because it's a manufactured house, it's set up
to where it can sustain its ownlevel, and so he could do a
footing.
That was like if he wanted to,or if the lender it was actually
the zone the zone and thebuilding code required that he
pour a complete concrete padunderneath of this manufactured
house when he's only tied into,like you know, 12 different
(45:11):
spots, cause that's all he needsbecause of the framework of the
house.
Yeah, but he had to end up.
It was like he told me it waslike 25 grand.
Speaker 1 (45:19):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (45:19):
Just to put all this concrete that he's not using.
Speaker 1 (45:21):
Yeah, which ultimately you pay.
You know, if it's all financedyou're going to pay $60,000,
$70,000.
Speaker 2 (45:25):
Yeah, and he paid cash for the whole thing.
But because of the code and thezone and the city requirement
to like, oh no, you needconcrete underneath the whole
house.
It's crazy, but why?
It doesn't make any sense.
Speaker 1 (45:36):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (45:37):
So it's like, these little tiny costs, they all add
up, they all add up Totally.
Speaker 1 (45:41):
Yeah, and when you're done with the house that's a
few hundred thousand most likely, you know?
Speaker 2 (45:45):
Yep, exactly.
Yeah, that blows my mind.
It makes me angry a little bit.
Yeah, it was.
It was upsetting me because I'mlike, I mean, this is, it's in
a rural area, you know, it's.
It's him just trying to make dowith what he's got, right.
He's.
He's an older guy, he's, youknow, clearly, a fixed income.
He had cash, um, and wanted tomove out here, not have to have
(46:06):
a loan, right and so.
But the cost he was telling mea couple other things like
requirements that he was havingto do that were unnecessary, but
it was like 25 to 30 grandworth of stuff that he was
required to do just because ofthe code in the zoning that made
him do that.
It had nothing to do withanything else, not because it's
makes sense, but it's because,oh well, that's how it's written
down on this piece of paperthat was designed, you know, 40
(46:28):
years ago.
It's crazy.
It's messed up.
It is messed up.
That's where I'm like.
I hope.
I hope AI and technology canhelp us with some of these crazy
things.
I don't.
Speaker 1 (46:49):
I.
That's the human error.
There is power to knowledge,right?
So if you get enough peoplethat understand it well enough,
and that's what AI, I think, canhelp out with.
I mean, everybody's learning sofast these days and you know
you have to pick and choose.
What's true.
That's the first thing isyou're going to figure out
what's actual, like what's real,which is getting harder.
I feel like, yeah, it is.
But I mean, with things likelaw, like, yeah, understanding
the law, and with the likeregulate regulations and
policies that you know, likethese lending laws and stuff, uh
(47:12):
, it's going to start becomingcommonplace to understand and
learn that, learn those thingschallenge people, yeah, and
challenge, and that's whatthat's what that turns into is,
once people figure out like howdumb it all is, then there's
enough people to kind ofoverthrow this, this current
state of things, and they'reforced to change it.
Yeah, but it takes a lot.
It takes a lot and it's sad.
It's sad that it takes a lot.
Speaker 2 (47:32):
Yeah, it is frustrating, yeah.
But yeah, real estate's aninteresting topic.
There's so many differentangles to it and I think
technology is going to help in alot of ways.
But yeah, I'm interested to seehow the next 10 to 15 years
goes.
It's going to be a crazy world.
Speaker 1 (47:47):
Yeah, everything medicine, construction, you know
, education, these major aspectsof our lives.
It's going to be prettybeautiful.
Yeah, maybe we'll see some goodlike.
Maybe we'll see custom homesbecome a regular thing again
than track homes, you know,because it's kind of a shame to
see like something that's goingto last 100 years.
(48:09):
Just look so ugly, yeah.
Or look so copy and paste, youknow.
Speaker 2 (48:14):
Yeah, it'd be pretty sweet to see like beautiful
architecture once again, yeah,and it's a tough thing to do
because it's so cost, costintensive, right, it's like
coming up with a design andgetting it through an architect
and an engineer and all thesethings.
But I think technology is goingto help us streamline those
things totally.
I think architecture I'm I'mpretty, I'm pretty convinced
(48:37):
that architecture if you're anarchitect, ai, if you're not
learning ai and how to leverageAI, ai, that's that's a job
where I'm like, dude, a computeris probably going to be able to
do all of that, yeah, and it'sgoing to sync up with the code,
right, the city code and be likethis is what you can do and
this is what you can't do.
Speaker 1 (48:57):
You're not having to cross-reference, and then city
inspectors are like, I thinkwhen it comes to architecture,
it'll be those 10% of architectsthat go that route that end up
doing all the work and makingall the money.
Speaker 2 (49:09):
Yeah, and so this could be a big disruption too,
for sure.
Speaker 1 (49:12):
Yeah, so if anybody listening is in an industry
where you can use AI, like JadjiGP for example, just start
there.
If you can use that to makeyourself more efficient in what
you do, or do more in what youdo, then you will be way less
likely to be the person thatgets dropped off yeah.
(49:33):
Um, because, no matter what,there's always going to be a
need for people to like makesure that things are working the
way it is that it needs to.
Um cause an AI is not going togive itself commands to run your
business.
It's going to.
It's going to, you know, stillneed a prompt.
Yeah, still needs somebody totell it what to do and,
oftentimes, how to, maybe how todo it or give it some guidance.
(49:54):
Yeah, I don't think that's evergoing to go away.
Speaker 2 (49:56):
So, yeah, definitely got to learn that yeah.
Speaker 1 (49:58):
Okay, man.
Speaker 2 (49:59):
Well, you got to learn that.
Yeah, okay, man.
Well, thanks for coming on theshow, man, I wish you the best
of luck.
Speaker 1 (50:02):
It's been a pleasure.
Thanks for having me, stgz onthe app store Yep.
Speaker 2 (50:05):
Download it, start getting with it.
If you're a business, localbusiness download it.
Create a profile, get verified,start putting deals on it.
Speaker 1 (50:12):
Absolutely.
It takes like five minutes tocreate an account and post your.
Speaker 2 (50:18):
You have to have the latest updated phone.
I'm like if I update my phone,my battery is going to suck.
Speaker 1 (50:22):
Oh yeah, but oh well, I just need to do phone.
Yeah, you got to update yourphone.
Speaker 2 (50:26):
You got to update your phone.
Download the app S-T space G-Zon the App Store Apple, google,
apple.
Speaker 1 (50:34):
Just Apple, apple.
Yeah, we're still working onthe Android version, okay.
Speaker 2 (50:38):
Well, that takes.
There's a lot of hoops for bothstores right.
Speaker 1 (50:41):
Yeah, it's quite the process to get your stuff
approved.
Speaker 2 (50:48):
But yeah, most people hopefully have iPhones.
So, yeah, I'm part of the ganggang, the Apple gang.
There you go.
Awesome, I was ridiculed intothat.
So, james, if you're listening,thanks a lot for ridiculing me
into that.
My Pixel worked great, I lovedmy Pixel.
Speaker 1 (51:02):
But now I got an apple.
Speaker 2 (51:03):
Okay, guys, thanks for tuning in.
Hope you enjoyed the episode.
More businesses coming to yousmall businesses in Southern
Utah.
We want to feature them as muchas we can.
Thanks for listening.
We'll see you out there, guys.
Thanks for listening in.
If you enjoyed this episode,please like and subscribe.
Make sure you're following uson all the social media websites
.
We love your support.
(51:27):
We love the dialogue.
We want to continue that going.
Find us at realestate435.com.
We'd love to help you find ahouse here in town or help you
get wherever you're going.
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