February 19, 2023 • 51 mins
Had an exciting conversation with Beau about WEB 3 and understanding business terms. This was a fun and educational recording and I hope you all enjoy it. Beau's BIO is below.
Beau Button has been actively involved with software development since he was 11 years old. He got his start learning about computers around age 9, digging into the hardware side of things first, and eventually picked up software development at age 11.
Having spent the majority of his career as a serial entrepreneur working in the government space Beau has now transitioned into the mobile gaming space through his company Atlas Reality, Inc.
Beau has become a technology & automation enthusiast, even in his personal life. He spends a majority of his time outside of work building through 3d printing, and is very passionate about hunger/food scarcity, education and veganism.
Speakeasy Tattoo Co.If your looking for a quality custom tattoo or piercings please head on over to their website today!
Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
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Dustin Steffey (00:00):
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Dustin Steffey (01:37):
Hello, and welcome to an episode of
chopping wood fire you arejoined with your host, Dustin
Steffey I wanted to briefly goover a few things before we
introduce our special guests.
First and foremost, thank you toeverybody who has subscribed to
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and donate today. That iseverything that I have for you
all again, huge thank you toeveryone that supports us as we
continue to grow. And wecontinue to provide you with
more content. I will be excitedto communicate with you guys. If
there's a topic that you guyswant to hear. If there's a guest
you want us to bring back if youwant to talk to any of our
(04:20):
guests, make sure to head onover to our website because all
of their contact information isthere. That being said, let's
dive into a fun, fun, fun guestinterview today. Today I have Bo
button. He is the President andCTO of Atlas reality. He is also
a serial entrepreneur. I'mexcited to have him on and he is
(04:45):
definitely a down to earth. Funperson. So this this gonna be a
fun topic today. So Bo, let uslet us dive in.
Beau Button (04:53):
Yes, sir. Let's do it. Pleased to be here.
Dustin Steffey (04:56):
Thank you for coming on, I guess. First and
foremost So I, I don't want tolet the cat out of the bag or
anything along those lines, butnobody knows you. So I think I
guess we can do the traditional.
Who are
Beau Button (05:09):
you? Yeah, I mean, I'm a technologist at heart. I
started really young, dabblingwith hardware at the age of
nine. This is available in mybio, it's kind of like a played
out story. But I got deep intosoftware and kind of just my
internal inquisitiveinquisitiveness took over around
the age of 11, started writingsoftware, started working
(05:30):
professionally as a softwareengineer at 16, while I was
enrolled in high school, dabbledwith college realized college
wasn't for me, decided to starta business with a high school
friend doing custom softwaredevelopment. And then quite
frankly, I've been doing thatever since that was around, you
know, probably 9099 2000, youknow, 23 years. That's
frightening, actually. Now, Ilook at the year 23 years, but
(05:53):
yeah, I mean, I've had a heavyfocus on software development,
but everything electronic likeanything that's electrical now
I'm not talking like I won'twire your house for light
switches, but anything, youknow, just embedded electronics,
3d printing, remote control,airplanes, quad copters. Like
that's, that's my life. I loveall of that. But yeah, I'm a
technologist. And like, rightnow, my primary job is kind of
(06:17):
more architectural. I'm at thepoint now with the business that
I started with a friend, a verylongtime friend, you know, where
I just kind of offer guidance.
I'm not in the trenches writingsoftware every day, thankfully.
Dustin Steffey (06:27):
So people that know me, know me is someone that
loves technology, I have to havethe latest and greatest or I
love playing with technology. Igrew up similar to you where I
was tearing apart my mom's likeold gateway computer at the age
of eight, and pulling all theinternals apart, and upgrading
(06:51):
them. Or in my mind, I thought Iwas upgrading them. I kind of
ruined
Beau Button (06:58):
grades that resulted in flop fire and smoke.
It's like, that's not good.
Dustin Steffey (07:02):
Yeah. But over time, I mean, I built my first
big computer that was fast andnice. I learned a lot about the
internals, and I kind of neverlooked back. I do love
technology. I like howeverything works. I hate that
the shelf life of technology isliterally like, once you buy it,
it depreciates to nothing withina year. But you know, whatever,
(07:23):
like technology is and foreverwill keep growing faster than
me. So with that being said, youare definitely a pseudo badass
starting at nine, you open upyour own company with your buddy
while you're in high schoolstill, that's that's
entrepreneurship at its finest.
I'm sure there were a lot ofmoments where you were like, Oh,
crap, I don't know what I'mdoing, or whatever the case may
(07:46):
be. Walk me through, like howyou kind of fine tuned your
entrepreneurship journey to getto where you are today.
Beau Button (07:56):
Yeah, I'm fortunate a lot of folks when they think
software engineers, they thinklike, the stereotypical nerd
that doesn't like, you know,speaking to people and doesn't
know how to communicate. I don'tknow why genetically why I'm
predisposition, like I can doboth. So and I'm not a
salesperson. I do not likesales. I don't like that whole
(08:18):
process. It's not something butI do find myself or when I was
in high school, because I waswell versed with technology. I
was in the field, I was workingprofessionally, I always found
myself if I was in a group ofpeople, you know, talking about
it. And a lot of people likecaught on to that and said,
Well, he knows what he's doing.
He's a technologist. He's asoftware engineer, but he also
knows how to understand what myneeds are. So, you know, for me,
(08:39):
I've never really been afraid totry anything. Now. I'm not an
athletic person. I know what Ican't do. I can't play football.
I can't play any sports to bequite frank. So it was very
clear that I really didn't needit. I needed to take advantage
of this, this knowledge, thisexperience. And for me, it was
you know, I needed money. We alllike as a teenager you know, I
didn't I came from very humblebeginnings like I didn't have a
(09:01):
lot of I didn't have access tolike an allowance. Like if I
wanted something I needed towork for it. And before the
software thing I was grindingaround the neighborhood would a
good friend Cory cutting grasswith his dad, like we were
hustling, making good money, butit was manual labor. It was hot
as hell in New Orleans,Louisiana. And I'm like, there
has to be a better way for me tomake money. And that's what kind
of inspired me to in essencebecome an independent contractor
(09:24):
and start helping people withwebsites. This is way before
mobile phones and mobile appsand all that this was you know,
mostly businesses trying toestablish their presence online.
This is before like the Facebookwave and all of these
advertisement like justmonstrosities. But yeah, I mean,
look, it was just a need, whichwas I wanted the cash. Not that
I wanted to buy a Ferrari I justwanted to be independent because
(09:47):
I couldn't go home and you know,ask my parents for money. But I
was also I had this insatiableappetite for knowledge and those
two things when they kind ofclicked were a perfect recipe
for me just being persistent andstarting to build business. to
business, and here I am today.
Dustin Steffey (10:02):
You know a couple of things that came out
of that, that made me think backto my childhood. Me too. I
didn't come from very much. Andif I wanted something because my
dad was working two jobs, my momwas doing what my mom does as
well. I needed to earn money. SoI started working when I was
(10:23):
about 12 under the table to makemoney, right.
Beau Button (10:28):
And in those days, I'm not gonna lie Dustin, like
cutting grass under the tableand getting a stack of even if
it was $5 bills, and nobody knewabout it, I was like,
Dustin Steffey (10:37):
I was working at a pizza place under the table, I
got to I got it. I hung out withthe owners kids, and I really
liked him a lot. And I kind ofgrew to be a part of the family.
So I helped out got paid for itand eventually got a real
paycheck from them as well too,as I got older where they could
pay me on the payroll. So it wasfun. It was different. I think,
(11:02):
my my grown up, I was taughtkind of the hardcore, like you
work for what you need. I playedsports as well, I went to
school. So multitasking wasrather simple for me. So I, I
can I can relate with you on afew things. The only thing I
can't relate with you with is Iplayed football, love football
(11:22):
was good at it.
Beau Button (11:25):
I'm missing all I had to build for it. But I don't
like competitive sports. Andwhat ultimately was my demise in
sports or football in middleschool was I didn't know
anything about football. And Ithought just being big, and
being on the field would beenough. But they were rattling
things off. And I'm like, Hey,Coach, I don't know anything
about this. But I'm glad Ididn't because I did double down
(11:46):
on the tech side of things. Butthere are days where I'm like, I
probably wouldn't be in theshape. And I'm in now if I would
have played some football, Ihave a better a greater
appreciation for physicalactivity. But today, it's not
the case.
Dustin Steffey (11:58):
I think the reason I liked it so much is my
childhood growing up my dad wasold school. So a lot of I don't
know, rougher on the edgesupbringing. So my anger got
taken out on the field. And Ijust loved it and people,
Beau Button (12:15):
I had an outlet.
And thankfully, I didn't have awhole lot of anger, there was
confusion, you know, you've gotthe haves and the have nots,
you've got people you know, thathave a lot and you'd like as a
child, you're trying toreconcile, like, why am I here?
Like, why? How did I get here?
Why don't I have that. But forme, it was it was less about
anger. And just like I needed anoutlet to focus and try to
better my situation. But no, Ihave a lot of friends that had
(12:38):
the same thing where footballwas like that was their outlet.
And honestly, if they weren'tplaying football, they were
playing another sport becausethey just needed 365. Like they
needed something to do to likephysically exhausted themselves.
So they weren't always pissedoff. So I can relate. But I was
in the computer, and you wereout there grinding on the field,
Dustin Steffey (12:55):
I had a little bit of both. The problem is is I
didn't double down like you didif I would have I probably would
have would be in a differentposition. But I definitely I was
the same as your friends. Right?
I played sports 24/7 to get awayfrom home life. Right. And that.
That was that was who I was. Butyou know, again, I mean, I'm
(13:16):
here today. And I think I'mpretty successful, given the
circumstances. So it is what itis. I do want to shift gears. So
there's a term that's beenthrown around a lot lately. And
I don't think people truly havea big grasp of it. And I know
you do. So we're gonna we'regonna try to define it today to
(13:38):
help people out. And that's theterm web three. And I think that
we have to kind of dive back alittle bit to explain how it
evolved to web three. Before wecan kind of define the term you
want to help me out with that?
Beau Button (13:56):
Absolutely. No, I'm your guy. So part of this, this
web three name, I mean, insoftware, we like to as a
technologist, we'd like toversion things because it's an
explicit way to kind of indicatean improvement or not always,
one could say that, you know,going from Windows 95 to Windows
(14:18):
98 was an improvement 98 toWindows Vista or me was not an
improvement. So it doesn'talways indicate that things are
getting better. With with webthree, I think part of it is the
non technologists they latch onto these kinds of technical
versions. Like you know, whenthe internet was invented, no
one said this is version 1.0 ofthe internet. We just called it
(14:38):
universally it was the internetWell, the World Wide Web. And
you know the way that we like todescribe it and this is
influenced by my partner, Samiwho's the CEO of Atlas reality.
He kind of distilled it to theoriginal Internet was access to
information so the World WideWeb originated and you could
access content knowledge And youcan learn more it said your web
(15:02):
two, again, not a lot of peopleare familiar with the term web
two. But as a technologist, youknow, it's kind of hard not to
have, you know, come across theterm web two, but it didn't have
as much a lore and marketingdollars push behind it because
there weren't crypto currenciesand billionaires. But web two
was access to people. So wethink about like, the web two is
the social internet, the socialweb, this is where your social
(15:24):
media started to become prolificFacebook, MySpace, and fill in
the blank, et cetera. And whatthe industry of what the media
wants web three to be. They kindof throw it into this
cryptocurrencies blockchain andmetaverse. And like, well, a lot
of people don't know what eitherof those, those three things
are. And the easiest way to kindof describe this without having
(15:47):
to have web one, web two, webthree is is just naturally the
Evolve evolution of theInternet. So how we access it,
why we're accessing it and whatit means to us as a consumer. So
web one was knowledge. Web twowas people, well, what's web
three? I believe, and my partnerbelieves, and that was reality
believes that the web three isequity. And what I mean by that
(16:08):
is you're producing content,you're generating data, and all
of these big platforms areleveraging that to serve you ads
so they can generate revenue.
Are you being paid? Are yougetting anything out of it, one
could argue yet, dude, scrollingon tick tock, I'm getting
something out of it. But inreality, you're really not
improving your situation. It'sgood entertainment. But when
those companies are generatingbillions of dollars, they're not
(16:30):
sharing any of that with you,when you think about what
blockchain is, and we can godeep into what that is. But
blockchain is really just, it'sa way to prove transparently to
the public, that someone owns adigital asset. And that doesn't
just mean from pictures ofGorilla pictures, it could be
anything that could be codifiedelectronically, it could be a
(16:52):
contract between seller and abuyer of any kind of asset, and
it doesn't need to be just adigital asset. So blockchain is
confusing. It's a reallytechnical concept, but it serves
a very real purpose. But when wetalk about ownership, it's like,
I think of the web three asequity. I want people game
players who play games, socialmedia users who post on social
(17:14):
media or generate content, Iwant them to have some equity in
that now, does that mean thatyou're gonna get a paycheck from
Facebook? Because you're usingFacebook, it's highly unlikely,
but as a society, we need tokind of flip it. I'm not saying
100% We just we need thesecompanies. And I want these
companies to be more friendlyand more, I guess, you know,
have more favorable terms fortheir end users. So when when
(17:36):
you hear with three it's moreoften talking about
cryptocurrencies, I do not I donot consider the web three
evolution built on top ofblockchain. It does not require
cryptocurrencies or any of thatit those are components of the
evolution because theyfacilitate that equity. Yes, you
can earn a cryptocurrency in agame. That means you now have
(17:56):
something that potentially hasvalue that you can trade for
something that you can use topay your car note with. That's a
good thing. Do you need acryptocurrency to do that? No, I
can pay you in cash. And I cango straight to the dealership
and buy a car. It's just anotheroption. But yeah, I mean, in its
most simple form, it's justnothing more than the evolution
of the Internet. There's newtechnology in play. But what it
really means is, I think theconsumer is going to have more
(18:18):
equity in what they're doing onthe internet, so they can
benefit from an other thanliterally just getting videos
force fed to a one media orsocial media.
Dustin Steffey (18:27):
So you bring up a good topic that we haven't
talked about in a little bit.
Cryptocurrency has been all overthe place. I know that it's
gonna be an it is the future ofhow we make money and pay and
all that stuff. What's your takeon cryptocurrency right now? Are
you invested in it? Like what'syour what's your thought
(18:47):
process?
Beau Button (18:49):
No, no, no. So when you think about payment
infrastructure coming from myperspective, we refer to them as
rails like the rails for train,how do things move between A and
B? So right now, the rails thatwe use for credit cards are
owned by Visa, MasterCard,American Express, Discover, they
(19:10):
all kind of dictate what theirrates are there, for the most
part inefficient, thosecompanies are slow to innovate.
And then if you take a step backand look at like how we move
from checking accounts, like theACH automated clearing house,
this technology is so old andjust antiquated. You know, it's
it's exciting to see somethinglike the blockchain. So one
(19:32):
needs to understand thatcryptocurrencies sit on top of
the blockchain, you know,cryptocurrencies are not
necessary for the blockchainnecessarily to operate. I don't
disagree that the future ofpayments will more than likely
be powered by blockchaintechnologies. But I do disagree
that the future of payments isgoing to involve a bunch of
these shit coins or any of theseI mean, Bitcoin or eath. So
(19:56):
those are the two primary likecryptocurrencies that I've ever
expressed into Then becausethere's at least a story. You
know, Bitcoin was an academicexercise, it kind of brought the
blockchain into the forefront ofmost people's minds. But a lot
of it's speculative. I don'tfuck with speculative, I just
don't. I'm a data person. And Iknow a lot of people that have
(20:16):
lost and a lot of people thatget the opposite hand motion, if
they've gained a lot, they'velost a lot of money, but they've
got an appetite for that. I'dmuch rather look at this as a
long term play and see what'sAetherium going to be doing?
What can be built on top ofAetherium? What's Bitcoin going
to be doing? I don't I don'tdabble with the speculative side
of this, though. But I do agreethat the future of payment
(20:39):
technology is more than likelygoing to be powered by the
blockchain. Now, is that goingto be Bitcoin? Is that going to
be Aetherium? Who knows? Butthat is a very solid
technological advancement fromwhat we're seeing now. And it's
open source, it can be, youknow, scrutinized by the
community, there's a lot ofpeople who are way more
intelligent than the employeesthat are worth forgetting.
(21:00):
That's a shit way of describingit. There's just more eyeballs
on it than the people that areworking at DISA. It's not that
the people are these aren'tintelligent. Obviously, as a
part of these, I just wanted tomake sure that was clear. I'm
not calling BS a bunch ofidiots. But you're right, the
future is more than likely goingto be blockchain based. But I've
yet to see any clear evidencethat it's going to be Bitcoin.
(21:21):
I've seen the ATMs come I'veseen the ATMs go, none of my
friends understand really whatBitcoin is, none of none of my
friends really understand theEthereum virtual machine, which
is the EVM, which is really themost impressive piece about like
Aetherium, but nobody reallyunderstands what it is and how
you can leverage it. But yeah, Imean, that's my take on it.
Again, I Don't dabble withspeculative stuff.
Dustin Steffey (21:44):
Yeah, I try not to either. I mean, I definitely
am invested in the big three. SoBitcoin Aetherium Litecoin.
However, it's been a rollercoaster, to say the least as
figured out.
Beau Button (21:58):
Like you don't control the odds, there's some
things that you can, you know,keep in tune with, like, if
let's say you are invested inDoge? Well, you would follow
Elon Musk, because in Tesla,because those two people were
that person in that companyinfluenced the value of Doge. I
don't particularly care forthat. Like, if you go to like
Las Vegas, you might know how toplay back blackjack. So you
(22:22):
think you have better odds, butat the end of the day, it's
stacked against you. And it'snot that dissimilar with the
stock market. And for the samereason, I don't invest in stocks
that I don't, I don't understandintimately. If I'm not using a
product, if I don't know thebusiness, I'm not investing in
it just because I need to feelcomfortable with it. I need to
know the ins and out and I havea lot of friends that do that
(22:42):
day trading where they log in,and they just look at trends and
they start moving money. Andyeah, they do make money. But
that's not my brain doesn'toperate that way, unfortunately,
well, time
Dustin Steffey (22:52):
is the biggest currency in my opinion that you
can't buy. And I don't have thetime to sit in front of a
computer screen. And day trade.
Beau Button (23:00):
No, I don't either.
And I don't trust theseautomated broker, like there's
Robo trades, like at that point,it's like, if it was that easy,
everybody would just take theirentire paycheck, give it to some
company and get 25% returns andpay a fee. It's not that easy.
Like they don't know they havegood runs, like we use
internally, I've looked at somefunds that have really good
runs, at some point, they'regonna have a really bad run. So
(23:22):
it's, it's just not from me, I'drather build things and invest
my time, like you said, Time isprecious, as a parent, you know,
I just don't have the time tosit in front of, you know, a
Fidelity screen and say, Okay,where am I going to move money
today, what I'm going to sellthere, what triggers I'm going
to use to make the decisions.
That doesn't
Dustin Steffey (23:39):
even sound fun to me anyway, like to be honest
with you. It's not fun sittingin front of a computer screen
all day. I mean, I there arecertain things that I like to
do. So obviously, with apodcast, I am in front of a
computer screen doing videoedits, audio edits, all that
stuff. But that stuff that Ilike to do, I definitely do not
(23:59):
like to sit there and watchnumbers change and fluctuate,
and I can't control them.
Beau Button (24:06):
If I were I don't have screen time enabled on my
PC, which is a feature I couldenable I I don't have it
enabled, because I think itwould make me sick. I've been in
front of a computer screen,literally. I mean, I'm 39. So if
I started 30 years, when I wasreally young, it wouldn't be
uncommon for me to sit in frontof that machine for 1415 hours,
(24:29):
get five hours of sleep, walk tothe bus stop catch the bus to
get to school. Now I probablyaveraged nine to 10 hours. If
it's not on the desktop, it'sgoing to be on my mobile phone.
But I don't play games despitebeing in the video game
industry. I'm either reading orwatching videos about things
that are you know, knowledgeoriented, like new technologies,
et cetera. But yeah, I can'tescape the machine. And I don't
(24:51):
mind it quite frankly, I kind offeel out of place. If I'm in
somewhere I don't have access toa screen because it's just it's
just second nature.
Dustin Steffey (24:59):
I mean, that's the The biggest issue with this
day and age, if we have anoutage of some sort where we
can't be connected, we'rescrewed.
Beau Button (25:10):
No, it's slow. We had an outage, we had a winter
storm in Austin, Texas, we hadno electricity, the cell phones
were working, I got a lot done,I'm not gonna lie around the
house. So if we could schedulelike an outage, maybe every
quarter for a week, maybe notwithout the electricity, maybe
just the internet, because likenot having electricity makes
things a little bit barbaric.
But I did get a lot done when Icouldn't come sit here and go
(25:32):
look and read like, you know,you've got things around the
house that you're like, oh, Ishould get to that this week.
And then you find something todo on the computer. And it's
like, Oh, I'll get to it nextweek. And then four years go by
and you're looking at thegutter, you're like, that still
hasn't been fixed. I'd like
Dustin Steffey (25:47):
to schedule an outage for my daughter every day
because she's attached to herphone.
Beau Button (25:53):
Yeah, no, look, I have three kids. And I use the
parents or controls on Androidand iOS. My 15 year old son has
a lot more breathing roombecause we've established this
trust relationship where it'slike, as long as you're getting
good grades, I'm okay withwhatever the hell you're doing.
Because quite frankly, that'show I was raised. My mom and dad
weren't really hard on me. I didlock myself in the room. And I'm
(26:15):
well aware that my mom was verysuspicious of what I was doing.
But where I'm at now, she has nocomplaints. But what my two
daughters knowing what I knowson the internet, and it's kind
of unfair, it's based on theirsex, but like, I do feel more
inclined to protect them fromwhat's potentially going to
influence their life. And yeah,look, it's it's sad. But I'd
(26:36):
love to have a way to just and Ithink there's some routers out
there that Google makes whereyou can actually hit the button,
and it turns it off for specificdevices. I haven't gone that
far. But I know it's possible.
Dustin Steffey (26:46):
Yeah, me too.
It's a matter of finding thetime to actually,
Beau Button (26:50):
I know, man, apps and so many things to dabble
with. It's like, I'd rather justhave the trust but like, what my
daughter's it's not that I don'ttrust them. I don't trust the
internet.
Dustin Steffey (26:59):
I don't trust people. If you want me to be
honest with you, I don't trustthe influence that people have
on our children. I don't I don'ttrust any of that. But that's a
topic for another discussion. Iactually want to dive in you did
bring up something that isimportant. You develop mobile
games. Let's talk about that.
Beau Button (27:20):
Yeah, so about, I think it was six years ago, I'm
terrible at dates. In my es sixyears ago, we my partner, Sami
Khan. We've been longtimefriends, I was good friends with
his older brothers, we founded acompany called Cerberus
interactive, we were buildingmobile games for other brands. I
spent most of my career buildingsoftware for other companies, I
(27:43):
wasn't building my own productslike software as a service. Like
I didn't have some, you know,extreme success with like an
online platform that everybodyknew, I've always kind of helped
other businesses build their ownsoftware or to improve their
efficiencies through software.
So we started service buildingsoftware, building games, mobile
games, only for otherbusinesses. And after about a
(28:03):
year of doing that, we bothlooked at each other and said,
This is no more fun thanbuilding accounting systems. You
would think that building gamesand sounds and visual effects
and like two little charactersis more entertaining. But in
reality, what's not fun is justdealing with other people's
requirements. Like they all theydon't understand the process.
They think they know what'sbest. And this is kind of true
(28:26):
for any client. And sometimesthey do and they should
influence but a lot of times,that's not the case. So we
pivoted and we started buildingour own games. And we made the
conscious decision to buildlocation based games. I have a
lot of experience in geospatialtech so mapping cartography, you
know, digitizing maps, and usinggeospatial data to you know,
(28:46):
solve problems. So we said look,Pokemon Go had just launched its
their IP is massive, we can'tcompete with Pokemon. Everybody
in their grandma knows whoPokemon is. But we can take
that, that same concept and takesome other genres of games and
kind of bring them to thelocation space. And we did that
our first game Atlas empires,it's still available today on
(29:07):
Google and Apple. You could goto either one of the app stores
and Titan Atlas empires. It's alocation based strategy game
that's very similar to clash ofclans, but it has a Pokemon Go
element where you walk around onthe map and you can interact
with things and it's we call itkind of like what a Pokemon GO
and Clash of Clans had a baby.
(29:28):
It was empires. We launched thatgame, I think four years ago,
again, terrible updates. And weevolved it and we started
working on a new game that wasinspired by this web three
virtual real estate movement.
When I read about virtual realestate, my brain was like, What
the hell? What is this? Like? Idon't understand, like I
understand real estate. But Idon't understand virtual real
(29:51):
estate like what are you goingto use it for? What's its
utility? So we made the decisionto not build it on top of the
blockchain. because two yearsago, and it's still evident
today that getting users andeducating them on in web three
in the crypto space or theblockchain space is hard.
There's just too many new terms.
There's too many things that theuser needs to know. So we took a
(30:14):
more traditional web 2.0approach, letting people log in
with Facebook, you're notsetting up a wallet, and we
build a game called Atlas Earth.
It's a virtual real estateplatform that actually pays the
players virtual rent that youcan cash out in USD so you can
cash out to PayPal and use thatmoney to do whatever the hell
you want. There's nocryptocurrency involved at all.
(30:35):
But yeah, those are the twogames that we built. And right
now we're still focusing almostexclusively on improving Atlas
are an evolving that platform.
Dustin Steffey (30:45):
It sounds like there's a lot that goes in to
develop in a game. It isn't justyou're sitting on a Sunday
afternoon, and you put togethersomething and then release it
like not to devalue podcasting,right. But podcasting is pretty
A to B to C, right? I do arecording, and or a Live
(31:07):
episode, I do the video edits, Ido the audio edits, and then I
post it. But with making a game,and this is Mobile or not.
There's a lot of coding, there'sa lot of things that go into it.
I, I almost think that you youhave a project, right? And it
takes years before it's likeready to be out to the public.
(31:30):
Am I wrong?
Beau Button (31:32):
So you're not wrong. The question is, what
does ready need. Now, this isone thing that I learned really
young, I am I have obsessivecompulsive tendencies. And as an
engineer, and even if I'm doingthings around the house, my
brain inherently wants to dothings, right, I have a vision
(31:54):
in my head of what somethingshould look like and how
something should be done. Likeif you're doing something around
the house, and I've watched abunch of videos, I use those
videos as a frame of reference,it says is what I just did on
the same level is what I've beenlike learning from, I try to get
as close as I can, if it's cheaprock, I can't do it. In the
software development space.
There are a lot of companies anda lot of entrepreneurs who
(32:15):
aren't technical, who are OCD,and are stuck on it needs to be
perfect before you launch. AndI've always kind of lived this
life on the edge. It's likebuilding software in my world,
and in my opinion is simple.
What's not is shipping aproduct. So I've always had an
(32:36):
affinity towards shipping beforeI think the market and the
consumer would consider itready. You need to get people
you know, involved with theproduct, you need to get
customers to give you feedback.
And if you spend three yearsbuilding something that you
think is perfect, and you'lllaunch it just to find out that
nobody or their grandma is givetwo shits about it, then what
did you do, you've done nothingbut waste time and money. So
(32:58):
look, it's not for the faint ofheart. We're experiencing this
at Atlas reality. But it's aproven way to get a product out
the door. And you know, it cantake years but for us we built
that was Earth and five months,and we had a team of six people.
So and that's a small team inthis space. So we built it, we
got out the door, we had tons ofproblems. The key is don't give
(33:19):
up continuous improvement,listen to the community, test
the shit out of it, fix it andcontinuously improve it. So
there's there's severaldifferent approaches my
approach, like I said, it's notfor the faint of heart. It's not
if Netflix would have done whatwe did, I think they would have
gone bankrupt. But they also nowthey started with DVDs. So they
already had a working businessmodel. If they would have
(33:42):
skipped the DVDs and wentstraight to a streaming service
that crashed every 10 secondsthey would have gone bankrupt.
So it is what it is.
Dustin Steffey (33:50):
I think in general entrepreneurship isn't
for the faint of heart. However,I think in order to get better,
you you fall and you get back upand I mean that's that's
something that I've preached thewhole entire time. Yeah,
speaking of entrepreneurshipbetween you and I, it didn't
just click overnight for you. Imean, you weren't nine when you
(34:13):
started doing some of thesethings, but the entrepreneurship
journey to me started when youwere in high school. What were
some things now that you'reolder and you look back and
reflect that you wish you wouldhave known then that would have
set you up better now?
Beau Button (34:29):
It's a double edged sword. There's there's only one
thing that I do that I teetertotter on considering
regrettable, and that's notusing the money I made more
wisely. You know, I love realestate like physical real estate
and I see a lot of people whomay not be technically inclined
(34:51):
may not be considered overlyintelligent or wealthy do
extremely well with a wellthought out real estate stretch
investment strategy. And in thereason I say I teeter totter on
that regret ability kind ofcomponent is, I love to learn,
but learning can be expensive.
And in the high tech space, andI'm not talking about college
(35:12):
degrees, like if I have a hobby,and I want to get into it, I'm
into it 1,000% I'm buying thetools, I'm buying whatever the
hell I need. And I've alwaysbeen like that, like with remote
control airplanes, helicopters,like that was a hobby, I wanted
to know how, as I was learningabout aerodynamics, I didn't
want to go buy an airplane, Ididn't want to crash and die. So
(35:32):
like, I got really deep intothat. But I've spent a lot of
money and you can look behindme, there's probably 50,000 That
was where the video gameconsoles just sitting there on
the shelf. Now, this is acollection, I don't play with
these very often. But, you know,I would, I would have probably
put a little bit more moneyaside to grow in parallel with
what I was doing in my hyperaggressive like, I consider
(35:54):
learning and investment. So whenpeople like, where are your
investments on my fuckinginvestment, I don't have this
massive $20 million portfolio.
But I I guarantee you, if Iwouldn't have spent all of that
money as a child as a teenagerand put it into something that
would have grown, I would havebeen sitting on probably 20 $30
(36:15):
million of money. I'm not there,I'm still working, I have to
basically work and you know, anexit is something I'm planning
for in the next five years. Butlike what your money a little
bit, but put put money aside, Iwish I would have respected that
more. Again, I don't know if itwould have changed a whole lot,
because I'm very happy with whatI know and how I learned what I
but there have been some momentsin my life, I've gone through a
(36:36):
divorce where I've looked backand said God dammit, if I would
have had a nest egg, a nice nestegg, this would have been a bit
easier. But I didn't. So I hadto continuously grind and I
didn't give up. But that'sbasically it. Honestly, as a
young entrepreneur, I wish Iwould have been a little bit
more smart with my money andmaybe bought some fourplexes you
know, something,
Dustin Steffey (36:55):
I mean, I have the same kind of looking back,
if I would have been smarterwith my money invested more into
the business, which I preach itnow. Because I've made that
mistake, when you make money,you have to reinvest in the
business to grow it even more toget even more of a income coming
in. I just, yeah, I'm the sameas you, right. If I would have
(37:19):
invested a little bit more, orif I would have started
podcasting instead of last year,like 10 years ago, I think that
I would be in a better placethan the grind that I'm in now.
But I kind of like the grind,right? I think I'm a pseudo
sadist, right? Like
Beau Button (37:37):
I love what I do. I don't wake up and despise my,
my, my responsibilities. I lovethat. But they're like when you
hit those kind of like low spotslike divorce moving and like all
of that, you kind of look backand you reflect, but like I
said, I don't regret it. Youknow, when people ask me like,
Oh, do you have any regrets? Ireally don't. I'm happy with
(37:59):
where I am. And I know what myfuture holds. And that's
exciting.
Dustin Steffey (38:02):
Listen, man, life, life fucking happens,
right? Life just happens. Andthere's no instruction manual.
It isn't like this movie, themovie, click, where you can fast
forward and see what your futureis. Or you can rewind or
whatever the case may be, youkind of roll with the punches.
And sometimes you get knockedout like Mike Tyson used to do
(38:24):
to people, or you get back andwhen you get knocked out, you
get back up, or you just kind ofroll with it and you figure it
out. And that's kind of wherewe're at, right? Like
entrepreneurship, isn't thiscookie cutter cut and dry. Like,
if you do this, you're gonnamake a shit ton of money.
There's a lot of differenttrials and tribulations that
(38:47):
people go through, depending onthe business for you. I mean,
you've gone through your fairshare for me, I go through my
fair share and still do. I canread as many books as I want to
be ahead of it. But still, Imake mistakes.
Beau Button (39:02):
Yep, no. And that's you have to accept it. That's
it. Like, you know, the analogyI like to use is you have to
move like water. Like somepeople are super rigid. They
live life like a giant fuckingseamen cube. And when a little
thing presents itself like that,they just hit it and they don't
know how to maneuver around it.
But I've always thought ofmyself as a very fluid person.
Now I've evolved as a teenager,you know, we go through phases,
(39:23):
but as life progressed, and asmy life experiences, you know,
increased and I learned a lotlike, I kind of just be easy. I
like to be easygoing. Now, I dohave a temper. I know a lot. I
hate people who are superopinionated about certain
topics, but just never give up.
And you know, it's what'shappening right now. And there's
(39:44):
a book that I can send you thelink. I can't remember the name
but like one of the coretakeaways is, whatever happens
to you is the best thing thatcan happen to you. It's the way
you receive it the way youreact. It's like getting in an
automotive accident. Onehesitates to believe that's the
best thing that could happen tome today. But at the end of the
day, it's going to unlocksomething how you receive it, if
(40:04):
you're, I don't, again, I don'twant to drive around and get hit
25 fucking times. But when thathappens, instead of getting out
of the car become an explosiveand beating the shit out of
people, you just look and say Ihave insurance, this is not
going to stop me, I understandwe make mistakes, let's move on,
I'll give you my insurance. AndI've kind of applied that to
almost every and it unblocks youit gives your brain your your
(40:26):
computer, your centralprocessing unit, more free time
to do shit, like learn and becreative and produce things
rather than just getting caughtup on dumb shit.
Dustin Steffey (40:36):
I think that's the part that I dislike about a
lot of people is a lot of peopledo not like change, I kind of
love change, because the minuteyou stop changing is the minute
you're six feet under, in myopinion, I think change is good.
I think that these people thatlive under a rock, or don't want
(40:57):
to do very much or just sit athome, or whatever the case may
be, they're like killingthemselves. There's so much of a
world out there to learn thingsand to do things. And I don't
care if you're eight, or you're75 years old. You can you can do
this, you can do something. Imean, the whole point of my
(41:20):
podcast is for people to just, Imean, learn, you know, learn.
That's it?
Beau Button (41:29):
No, look, I love to talk about how I, you know, my
journey, how I learned, youknow, with the internet, you've
got almost everything at yourfingertips. It's accessible, you
know, there's paywalls forcertain things. But, you know,
look, if anybody has questionsabout how I learned and what
sources they can find me onLinkedIn, I love to talk,
(41:50):
obviously. But no, you'reabsolutely right, eight or 80.
Dustin Steffey (41:55):
I think, to be honest with you that this
conversation has been awesome.
It's it's given a take on whatreally the journey to
entrepreneurship is, I mean,I've had many guests on, and
I've had many people describetheir journey. But the biggest
thing to reinforce is, maybemaybe some people can relate
with you, as opposed to some ofthe other guests that I've had
(42:16):
the biggest thing and thebiggest theme here. And pattern
with all the other guests thatI've had is the willingness to
keep going
Beau Button (42:27):
100% Yeah, it's, you have to approach every
problem as if, if there is aroadblock, I'll work around it,
you do need to there's a musclememory that's established, like
you can't just think that I'mgoing to start one business and
be wildly successful, somepeople do, and that's brilliant.
But where I'm at, I've gonethrough probably a dozen
(42:48):
different businesses, either asa founder or as an advisor. And
I've learned a lot from thefailures, quite frankly, I've
learned the most from thosefailures. And it like again,
it's like if you're a musician,and you play piano, you could
stop playing for 10 years, andthen sit in front of a piano but
your brain, your muscles,everything kind of so you kind
of establish you become in tunewith like, what's a good
decision? What's a bad decision?
But yeah, Persistence is key.
(43:11):
You just have to be persistentand be respectful and understand
that you do stand on theshoulders of giants like I
cannot stand a single memberLLC, a founder, who advertises
himself as the chief executiveofficer of a fucking company,
okay? It's one of those thingslike you can advertise it that
can be your title, like the goalof a CEO is to lead, who are you
(43:34):
leading, be humble, establishyourself, get some traction,
grow your team, grow yourproduct, and then you can start
to grow into that role. It'sabout being humble. Honestly,
there's a lot of people thatjust aren't humble, and I've
seen them rise to the top andalmost as quick fall to the
bottom.
Dustin Steffey (43:51):
I kind of agree with you, I hate the people like
I walk around, I get businesscards, I kind of mark it right?
I have two that I see on thebusiness card that are CEO. I'm
like, Cool. Do you haveshareholders? Do you have people
that you answer to you're not afucking CEO, okay. Your owner is
(44:13):
your owner of a business. Ifyou're a CEO, you have
shareholders, you have stocks,you have all of that stuff,
people. People are ignorantstill in terminology. And I
don't mean that natively. So ifany of my listeners alike are
going to hate on me for thecomment I just made go for it.
But you have to be smart abouthow you brand yourself. I can't
(44:37):
say I'm the CEO of shopping,entertainment, right? We don't
have shareholders. What I cansay is I'm the owner of
shopping, entertainment, I ownshopping, entertainment. I own
the business, ideal witheverything that comes with
respect to the business right?
To be a CEO is a different kindof story. You have shareholders
(44:58):
Are you partners or you havewhatever the case may be. So I
guess the one thing that I wantto leave some of my listeners
with and even you can reinforceit with me is the fact to
understand what business is andunderstand really the
terminology. So you don't lookstupid. I don't like looking
(45:18):
dumb. And listen, there's a lotof things that I still don't
know, where I learn every day.
But the fact of the matter is,is if you're going to be an
entrepreneur, and if you'regoing to go into business, at
least frickin understand thedifferent like terminology and
stuff like that, right?
Beau Button (45:39):
I've got one suggestion, and I do this on a
daily basis. It's hard forpeople to learn everything and
speak about something that theyrecently learned with
conviction, because you're notcertain like the internet. You
know, there's misinformation,you might read one definition of
what this means in business, andyou might read another one, and
they conflict with one another.
But a guaranteed way to not comeacross as looking like a fucking
(46:02):
idiot, is if you don't knowsomething, simply say, forgive
my ignorance. Can you help meunderstand what that means? I
don't know something. If I'm ona zoom call, I'm like, I don't
know what that acronyms forgivean acronym means forgive my
ignorance. Can you help me?
Don't make some bullshit up.
I've interviewed probably 2000people for hiring in the last.
(46:22):
And I've got four interviewstoday that I'm gonna be on phone
calls, and the people that makeshit up, especially in tech,
because they're like, Oh, thisguy's an interviewee, or
interviewer. He doesn't knowwhat this means I'm gonna rattle
off some bullshit response. AndI'm like, wow, you should have
just said, I don't know, likethat. The interview is over now,
because that's nowhere near whatthis is I need honestly. But
(46:43):
that's the sheer shot away tonot come across as looking like
an idiot. Just tell people youdon't know. And if the person is
respectable, he'll explain it toyou. And now you'll know.
Dustin Steffey (46:53):
Yeah, I definitely agree. I think if you
don't know something, justblatantly say, I don't know.
That's it. So last thing, youobviously run your own business,
you don't work for free. I mean,if you do damned dude, you've
done really well working forfree. If people want to kind of
(47:15):
get involved, like how could oneget involved with your business?
Beau Button (47:20):
I mean, the easiest way to get involved in what I'm
doing, rather playing the gameor learning about Atlas reality
on any front, you know, we haveinvestors, we have, you know,
our shareholders, which are alsoour employees, we're hiring, you
can go to if you're interestedin getting into this space, we
have a dedicated job hiringwebsite, which is www dot Atlas,
reality jobs.com. We have a fewpositions open. Now, if you want
(47:44):
to just learn more, I said, Ilove to talk. Now, like you
said, I don't have 50 hours aweek where I can dedicate to
just checking, but don'thesitate to add me on LinkedIn.
And in the message, just say,look, I heard John so and so's
podcast, there's a few of themthat I've been on, I will always
accept those and guide you inthe right direction. Just you
know, be respectful of my time.
And I'll be respectful of yourquestions and try to answer them
(48:05):
as best I can. But that's thebest way to get involved in what
I'm doing. Again, my name is Bobutton. There's only two of us.
And one of them's my 15 year oldson, and he's not on LinkedIn
yet. And it's B E AU, bu TT O Non LinkedIn.
Dustin Steffey (48:19):
And bow. I want to have fun real quick. If I
know there's a lot of key themesthat came out of this interview,
one very important one, if youhad to identify just for people
to kind of learn and understandyou leave them with one key gold
nugget, what would that be? You
Beau Button (48:39):
have to start like so many people are afraid to
start like, it doesn't matter ifyou have fear. If you have
ignorance about a subject, youjust have to start. You can't
fail if you haven't like andthat's where people I think,
feel comfortable. Well, I don'thave to deal with failure. If I
don't start. It's like no, youhave to start because you will
learn a lot from those failures.
But you just have to get theball moving. And you'd be I
think most people if noteverybody will be pleasantly
(49:02):
surprised how successful theycan be in their own right doing
if they've got a skill set or aproduct or service. You just
need to start it be veryreceptive of feedback somes not
going to be constructive.
Hopefully, you get someconstructive feedback, but don't
approach it. arrogantly, youknow, just write it all down, go
(49:22):
home, read through it and try tolike formulate Well, what's my
next step? That's it, you justyou have to start, you have to
just do it, get up and do it,register your business, even if
it's just getting the domainname, getting the LLC putting
together your business plan. Youdon't need to go to a bank, you
don't need to raise a bunch ofmoney, you need to do something
on your own, and there's scrappyways to do it. And there's all
kinds of resources and ifanything, that's where I can
(49:44):
probably help a lot of peoplethe most is explaining how they
can save money and not come outof pocket for building certain
things to at least get theirbusiness off the ground. That
would be my advice is just don'tbe afraid to start started. And
if you fail, don't give up startsomething else. Do it again.
Eventually it's gonna stick.
Dustin Steffey (50:02):
That's some great advice, ladies and
gentlemen, again, this is Bobutton. I had the distinct
pleasure of interviewing him, Ilove him. This is very real. So
Bo, thank you very much forcoming on. I know time is
valuable, and you have your pickof the litter and you chose to
come on with us. So I appreciatethat.
Beau Button (50:21):
Thank you for having me. No, this has been
fun. In the last year I've donea few podcasts. And the energy
here is good. Sometimes theyfeel very mechanical. Like I'm
talking to the Chucky Cheeseanimatronic and well with that,
but like I love where I'm not inperson. And this is a new thing
for me. I'm very I use my hands.
I use the environment. I readpeople. It's hard to do that
over zoom. But I can just likewe evolve as species, I'm
(50:42):
evolving to be able to do thatthrough the screen. I didn't
used to have that I didn't needto have it because I was always
in front of people. But now theenergy between the two of us is
great. I love what you're doingand obviously helping other
people become more successful intheir own right is a good thing
to be doing for humanity. Sothank you for your contributions
and like I said, don't be shy ifyou will have questions. I'm on
LinkedIn.
Dustin Steffey (51:04):
Listen, if I were rich buddy, I would more
than definitely be in personwith you. That's for damn sure.
Beau Button (51:10):
Ya know, it's tough to fly anywhere nowadays, but at
some point we'll probably haveto get together I'm sure there's
a conference we'll findourselves both attended.
Dustin Steffey (51:18):
Oh, definitely for sure. I like to be a part of
a lot of things. So we willdefinitely thank you again all
the links for bow will be in theepisode description bow and I
will make sure to put thattogether all nicely so people
can easily get a hold of him. Soagain, thank you bow and this is
a another episode of choppingwood fire
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Without further ado, welcome tochopping wood fire ladies and
gentlemen, let's chop it up.
Dustin Steffey (01:37):
Hello, and welcome to an episode of
chopping wood fire you arejoined with your host, Dustin
Steffey I wanted to briefly goover a few things before we
introduce our special guests.
First and foremost, thank you toeverybody who has subscribed to
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(02:01):
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to the website, whatever thecase may be, please head on over
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(02:26):
feiyr.com. That's our website.
It houses everything. And it'skind of a good benchmark to
start to go to the differentsocial media platforms and to
keep updated. Secondly, socialmedia wise we do have everything
under the sun. I know we're in aday and age where there's 500
(02:49):
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choose one you like, subscribeto it and you are in the know at
that point because we do post onall of them. Lastly, for our
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having a straw in your lungs andtrying to breathe out of it. It
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and donate today. That iseverything that I have for you
all again, huge thank you toeveryone that supports us as we
continue to grow. And wecontinue to provide you with
more content. I will be excitedto communicate with you guys. If
there's a topic that you guyswant to hear. If there's a guest
you want us to bring back if youwant to talk to any of our
(04:20):
guests, make sure to head onover to our website because all
of their contact information isthere. That being said, let's
dive into a fun, fun, fun guestinterview today. Today I have Bo
button. He is the President andCTO of Atlas reality. He is also
a serial entrepreneur. I'mexcited to have him on and he is
(04:45):
definitely a down to earth. Funperson. So this this gonna be a
fun topic today. So Bo, let uslet us dive in.
Beau Button (04:53):
Yes, sir. Let's do it. Pleased to be here.
Dustin Steffey (04:56):
Thank you for coming on, I guess. First and
foremost So I, I don't want tolet the cat out of the bag or
anything along those lines, butnobody knows you. So I think I
guess we can do the traditional.
Who are
Beau Button (05:09):
you? Yeah, I mean, I'm a technologist at heart. I
started really young, dabblingwith hardware at the age of
nine. This is available in mybio, it's kind of like a played
out story. But I got deep intosoftware and kind of just my
internal inquisitiveinquisitiveness took over around
the age of 11, started writingsoftware, started working
(05:30):
professionally as a softwareengineer at 16, while I was
enrolled in high school, dabbledwith college realized college
wasn't for me, decided to starta business with a high school
friend doing custom softwaredevelopment. And then quite
frankly, I've been doing thatever since that was around, you
know, probably 9099 2000, youknow, 23 years. That's
frightening, actually. Now, Ilook at the year 23 years, but
(05:53):
yeah, I mean, I've had a heavyfocus on software development,
but everything electronic likeanything that's electrical now
I'm not talking like I won'twire your house for light
switches, but anything, youknow, just embedded electronics,
3d printing, remote control,airplanes, quad copters. Like
that's, that's my life. I loveall of that. But yeah, I'm a
technologist. And like, rightnow, my primary job is kind of
(06:17):
more architectural. I'm at thepoint now with the business that
I started with a friend, a verylongtime friend, you know, where
I just kind of offer guidance.
I'm not in the trenches writingsoftware every day, thankfully.
Dustin Steffey (06:27):
So people that know me, know me is someone that
loves technology, I have to havethe latest and greatest or I
love playing with technology. Igrew up similar to you where I
was tearing apart my mom's likeold gateway computer at the age
of eight, and pulling all theinternals apart, and upgrading
(06:51):
them. Or in my mind, I thought Iwas upgrading them. I kind of
ruined
Beau Button (06:58):
grades that resulted in flop fire and smoke.
It's like, that's not good.
Dustin Steffey (07:02):
Yeah. But over time, I mean, I built my first
big computer that was fast andnice. I learned a lot about the
internals, and I kind of neverlooked back. I do love
technology. I like howeverything works. I hate that
the shelf life of technology isliterally like, once you buy it,
it depreciates to nothing withina year. But you know, whatever,
(07:23):
like technology is and foreverwill keep growing faster than
me. So with that being said, youare definitely a pseudo badass
starting at nine, you open upyour own company with your buddy
while you're in high schoolstill, that's that's
entrepreneurship at its finest.
I'm sure there were a lot ofmoments where you were like, Oh,
crap, I don't know what I'mdoing, or whatever the case may
(07:46):
be. Walk me through, like howyou kind of fine tuned your
entrepreneurship journey to getto where you are today.
Beau Button (07:56):
Yeah, I'm fortunate a lot of folks when they think
software engineers, they thinklike, the stereotypical nerd
that doesn't like, you know,speaking to people and doesn't
know how to communicate. I don'tknow why genetically why I'm
predisposition, like I can doboth. So and I'm not a
salesperson. I do not likesales. I don't like that whole
(08:18):
process. It's not something butI do find myself or when I was
in high school, because I waswell versed with technology. I
was in the field, I was workingprofessionally, I always found
myself if I was in a group ofpeople, you know, talking about
it. And a lot of people likecaught on to that and said,
Well, he knows what he's doing.
He's a technologist. He's asoftware engineer, but he also
knows how to understand what myneeds are. So, you know, for me,
(08:39):
I've never really been afraid totry anything. Now. I'm not an
athletic person. I know what Ican't do. I can't play football.
I can't play any sports to bequite frank. So it was very
clear that I really didn't needit. I needed to take advantage
of this, this knowledge, thisexperience. And for me, it was
you know, I needed money. We alllike as a teenager you know, I
didn't I came from very humblebeginnings like I didn't have a
(09:01):
lot of I didn't have access tolike an allowance. Like if I
wanted something I needed towork for it. And before the
software thing I was grindingaround the neighborhood would a
good friend Cory cutting grasswith his dad, like we were
hustling, making good money, butit was manual labor. It was hot
as hell in New Orleans,Louisiana. And I'm like, there
has to be a better way for me tomake money. And that's what kind
of inspired me to in essencebecome an independent contractor
(09:24):
and start helping people withwebsites. This is way before
mobile phones and mobile appsand all that this was you know,
mostly businesses trying toestablish their presence online.
This is before like the Facebookwave and all of these
advertisement like justmonstrosities. But yeah, I mean,
look, it was just a need, whichwas I wanted the cash. Not that
I wanted to buy a Ferrari I justwanted to be independent because
(09:47):
I couldn't go home and you know,ask my parents for money. But I
was also I had this insatiableappetite for knowledge and those
two things when they kind ofclicked were a perfect recipe
for me just being persistent andstarting to build business. to
business, and here I am today.
Dustin Steffey (10:02):
You know a couple of things that came out
of that, that made me think backto my childhood. Me too. I
didn't come from very much. Andif I wanted something because my
dad was working two jobs, my momwas doing what my mom does as
well. I needed to earn money. SoI started working when I was
(10:23):
about 12 under the table to makemoney, right.
Beau Button (10:28):
And in those days, I'm not gonna lie Dustin, like
cutting grass under the tableand getting a stack of even if
it was $5 bills, and nobody knewabout it, I was like,
Dustin Steffey (10:37):
I was working at a pizza place under the table, I
got to I got it. I hung out withthe owners kids, and I really
liked him a lot. And I kind ofgrew to be a part of the family.
So I helped out got paid for itand eventually got a real
paycheck from them as well too,as I got older where they could
pay me on the payroll. So it wasfun. It was different. I think,
(11:02):
my my grown up, I was taughtkind of the hardcore, like you
work for what you need. I playedsports as well, I went to
school. So multitasking wasrather simple for me. So I, I
can I can relate with you on afew things. The only thing I
can't relate with you with is Iplayed football, love football
(11:22):
was good at it.
Beau Button (11:25):
I'm missing all I had to build for it. But I don't
like competitive sports. Andwhat ultimately was my demise in
sports or football in middleschool was I didn't know
anything about football. And Ithought just being big, and
being on the field would beenough. But they were rattling
things off. And I'm like, Hey,Coach, I don't know anything
about this. But I'm glad Ididn't because I did double down
(11:46):
on the tech side of things. Butthere are days where I'm like, I
probably wouldn't be in theshape. And I'm in now if I would
have played some football, Ihave a better a greater
appreciation for physicalactivity. But today, it's not
the case.
Dustin Steffey (11:58):
I think the reason I liked it so much is my
childhood growing up my dad wasold school. So a lot of I don't
know, rougher on the edgesupbringing. So my anger got
taken out on the field. And Ijust loved it and people,
Beau Button (12:15):
I had an outlet.
And thankfully, I didn't have awhole lot of anger, there was
confusion, you know, you've gotthe haves and the have nots,
you've got people you know, thathave a lot and you'd like as a
child, you're trying toreconcile, like, why am I here?
Like, why? How did I get here?
Why don't I have that. But forme, it was it was less about
anger. And just like I needed anoutlet to focus and try to
better my situation. But no, Ihave a lot of friends that had
(12:38):
the same thing where footballwas like that was their outlet.
And honestly, if they weren'tplaying football, they were
playing another sport becausethey just needed 365. Like they
needed something to do to likephysically exhausted themselves.
So they weren't always pissedoff. So I can relate. But I was
in the computer, and you wereout there grinding on the field,
Dustin Steffey (12:55):
I had a little bit of both. The problem is is I
didn't double down like you didif I would have I probably would
have would be in a differentposition. But I definitely I was
the same as your friends. Right?
I played sports 24/7 to get awayfrom home life. Right. And that.
That was that was who I was. Butyou know, again, I mean, I'm
(13:16):
here today. And I think I'mpretty successful, given the
circumstances. So it is what itis. I do want to shift gears. So
there's a term that's beenthrown around a lot lately. And
I don't think people truly havea big grasp of it. And I know
you do. So we're gonna we'regonna try to define it today to
(13:38):
help people out. And that's theterm web three. And I think that
we have to kind of dive back alittle bit to explain how it
evolved to web three. Before wecan kind of define the term you
want to help me out with that?
Beau Button (13:56):
Absolutely. No, I'm your guy. So part of this, this
web three name, I mean, insoftware, we like to as a
technologist, we'd like toversion things because it's an
explicit way to kind of indicatean improvement or not always,
one could say that, you know,going from Windows 95 to Windows
(14:18):
98 was an improvement 98 toWindows Vista or me was not an
improvement. So it doesn'talways indicate that things are
getting better. With with webthree, I think part of it is the
non technologists they latch onto these kinds of technical
versions. Like you know, whenthe internet was invented, no
one said this is version 1.0 ofthe internet. We just called it
(14:38):
universally it was the internetWell, the World Wide Web. And
you know the way that we like todescribe it and this is
influenced by my partner, Samiwho's the CEO of Atlas reality.
He kind of distilled it to theoriginal Internet was access to
information so the World WideWeb originated and you could
access content knowledge And youcan learn more it said your web
(15:02):
two, again, not a lot of peopleare familiar with the term web
two. But as a technologist, youknow, it's kind of hard not to
have, you know, come across theterm web two, but it didn't have
as much a lore and marketingdollars push behind it because
there weren't crypto currenciesand billionaires. But web two
was access to people. So wethink about like, the web two is
the social internet, the socialweb, this is where your social
(15:24):
media started to become prolificFacebook, MySpace, and fill in
the blank, et cetera. And whatthe industry of what the media
wants web three to be. They kindof throw it into this
cryptocurrencies blockchain andmetaverse. And like, well, a lot
of people don't know what eitherof those, those three things
are. And the easiest way to kindof describe this without having
(15:47):
to have web one, web two, webthree is is just naturally the
Evolve evolution of theInternet. So how we access it,
why we're accessing it and whatit means to us as a consumer. So
web one was knowledge. Web twowas people, well, what's web
three? I believe, and my partnerbelieves, and that was reality
believes that the web three isequity. And what I mean by that
(16:08):
is you're producing content,you're generating data, and all
of these big platforms areleveraging that to serve you ads
so they can generate revenue.
Are you being paid? Are yougetting anything out of it, one
could argue yet, dude, scrollingon tick tock, I'm getting
something out of it. But inreality, you're really not
improving your situation. It'sgood entertainment. But when
those companies are generatingbillions of dollars, they're not
(16:30):
sharing any of that with you,when you think about what
blockchain is, and we can godeep into what that is. But
blockchain is really just, it'sa way to prove transparently to
the public, that someone owns adigital asset. And that doesn't
just mean from pictures ofGorilla pictures, it could be
anything that could be codifiedelectronically, it could be a
(16:52):
contract between seller and abuyer of any kind of asset, and
it doesn't need to be just adigital asset. So blockchain is
confusing. It's a reallytechnical concept, but it serves
a very real purpose. But when wetalk about ownership, it's like,
I think of the web three asequity. I want people game
players who play games, socialmedia users who post on social
(17:14):
media or generate content, Iwant them to have some equity in
that now, does that mean thatyou're gonna get a paycheck from
Facebook? Because you're usingFacebook, it's highly unlikely,
but as a society, we need tokind of flip it. I'm not saying
100% We just we need thesecompanies. And I want these
companies to be more friendlyand more, I guess, you know,
have more favorable terms fortheir end users. So when when
(17:36):
you hear with three it's moreoften talking about
cryptocurrencies, I do not I donot consider the web three
evolution built on top ofblockchain. It does not require
cryptocurrencies or any of thatit those are components of the
evolution because theyfacilitate that equity. Yes, you
can earn a cryptocurrency in agame. That means you now have
(17:56):
something that potentially hasvalue that you can trade for
something that you can use topay your car note with. That's a
good thing. Do you need acryptocurrency to do that? No, I
can pay you in cash. And I cango straight to the dealership
and buy a car. It's just anotheroption. But yeah, I mean, in its
most simple form, it's justnothing more than the evolution
of the Internet. There's newtechnology in play. But what it
really means is, I think theconsumer is going to have more
(18:18):
equity in what they're doing onthe internet, so they can
benefit from an other thanliterally just getting videos
force fed to a one media orsocial media.
Dustin Steffey (18:27):
So you bring up a good topic that we haven't
talked about in a little bit.
Cryptocurrency has been all overthe place. I know that it's
gonna be an it is the future ofhow we make money and pay and
all that stuff. What's your takeon cryptocurrency right now? Are
you invested in it? Like what'syour what's your thought
(18:47):
process?
Beau Button (18:49):
No, no, no. So when you think about payment
infrastructure coming from myperspective, we refer to them as
rails like the rails for train,how do things move between A and
B? So right now, the rails thatwe use for credit cards are
owned by Visa, MasterCard,American Express, Discover, they
(19:10):
all kind of dictate what theirrates are there, for the most
part inefficient, thosecompanies are slow to innovate.
And then if you take a step backand look at like how we move
from checking accounts, like theACH automated clearing house,
this technology is so old andjust antiquated. You know, it's
it's exciting to see somethinglike the blockchain. So one
(19:32):
needs to understand thatcryptocurrencies sit on top of
the blockchain, you know,cryptocurrencies are not
necessary for the blockchainnecessarily to operate. I don't
disagree that the future ofpayments will more than likely
be powered by blockchaintechnologies. But I do disagree
that the future of payments isgoing to involve a bunch of
these shit coins or any of theseI mean, Bitcoin or eath. So
(19:56):
those are the two primary likecryptocurrencies that I've ever
expressed into Then becausethere's at least a story. You
know, Bitcoin was an academicexercise, it kind of brought the
blockchain into the forefront ofmost people's minds. But a lot
of it's speculative. I don'tfuck with speculative, I just
don't. I'm a data person. And Iknow a lot of people that have
(20:16):
lost and a lot of people thatget the opposite hand motion, if
they've gained a lot, they'velost a lot of money, but they've
got an appetite for that. I'dmuch rather look at this as a
long term play and see what'sAetherium going to be doing?
What can be built on top ofAetherium? What's Bitcoin going
to be doing? I don't I don'tdabble with the speculative side
of this, though. But I do agreethat the future of payment
(20:39):
technology is more than likelygoing to be powered by the
blockchain. Now, is that goingto be Bitcoin? Is that going to
be Aetherium? Who knows? Butthat is a very solid
technological advancement fromwhat we're seeing now. And it's
open source, it can be, youknow, scrutinized by the
community, there's a lot ofpeople who are way more
intelligent than the employeesthat are worth forgetting.
(21:00):
That's a shit way of describingit. There's just more eyeballs
on it than the people that areworking at DISA. It's not that
the people are these aren'tintelligent. Obviously, as a
part of these, I just wanted tomake sure that was clear. I'm
not calling BS a bunch ofidiots. But you're right, the
future is more than likely goingto be blockchain based. But I've
yet to see any clear evidencethat it's going to be Bitcoin.
(21:21):
I've seen the ATMs come I'veseen the ATMs go, none of my
friends understand really whatBitcoin is, none of none of my
friends really understand theEthereum virtual machine, which
is the EVM, which is really themost impressive piece about like
Aetherium, but nobody reallyunderstands what it is and how
you can leverage it. But yeah, Imean, that's my take on it.
Again, I Don't dabble withspeculative stuff.
Dustin Steffey (21:44):
Yeah, I try not to either. I mean, I definitely
am invested in the big three. SoBitcoin Aetherium Litecoin.
However, it's been a rollercoaster, to say the least as
figured out.
Beau Button (21:58):
Like you don't control the odds, there's some
things that you can, you know,keep in tune with, like, if
let's say you are invested inDoge? Well, you would follow
Elon Musk, because in Tesla,because those two people were
that person in that companyinfluenced the value of Doge. I
don't particularly care forthat. Like, if you go to like
Las Vegas, you might know how toplay back blackjack. So you
(22:22):
think you have better odds, butat the end of the day, it's
stacked against you. And it'snot that dissimilar with the
stock market. And for the samereason, I don't invest in stocks
that I don't, I don't understandintimately. If I'm not using a
product, if I don't know thebusiness, I'm not investing in
it just because I need to feelcomfortable with it. I need to
know the ins and out and I havea lot of friends that do that
(22:42):
day trading where they log in,and they just look at trends and
they start moving money. Andyeah, they do make money. But
that's not my brain doesn'toperate that way, unfortunately,
well, time
Dustin Steffey (22:52):
is the biggest currency in my opinion that you
can't buy. And I don't have thetime to sit in front of a
computer screen. And day trade.
Beau Button (23:00):
No, I don't either.
And I don't trust theseautomated broker, like there's
Robo trades, like at that point,it's like, if it was that easy,
everybody would just take theirentire paycheck, give it to some
company and get 25% returns andpay a fee. It's not that easy.
Like they don't know they havegood runs, like we use
internally, I've looked at somefunds that have really good
runs, at some point, they'regonna have a really bad run. So
(23:22):
it's, it's just not from me, I'drather build things and invest
my time, like you said, Time isprecious, as a parent, you know,
I just don't have the time tosit in front of, you know, a
Fidelity screen and say, Okay,where am I going to move money
today, what I'm going to sellthere, what triggers I'm going
to use to make the decisions.
That doesn't
Dustin Steffey (23:39):
even sound fun to me anyway, like to be honest
with you. It's not fun sittingin front of a computer screen
all day. I mean, I there arecertain things that I like to
do. So obviously, with apodcast, I am in front of a
computer screen doing videoedits, audio edits, all that
stuff. But that stuff that Ilike to do, I definitely do not
(23:59):
like to sit there and watchnumbers change and fluctuate,
and I can't control them.
Beau Button (24:06):
If I were I don't have screen time enabled on my
PC, which is a feature I couldenable I I don't have it
enabled, because I think itwould make me sick. I've been in
front of a computer screen,literally. I mean, I'm 39. So if
I started 30 years, when I wasreally young, it wouldn't be
uncommon for me to sit in frontof that machine for 1415 hours,
(24:29):
get five hours of sleep, walk tothe bus stop catch the bus to
get to school. Now I probablyaveraged nine to 10 hours. If
it's not on the desktop, it'sgoing to be on my mobile phone.
But I don't play games despitebeing in the video game
industry. I'm either reading orwatching videos about things
that are you know, knowledgeoriented, like new technologies,
et cetera. But yeah, I can'tescape the machine. And I don't
(24:51):
mind it quite frankly, I kind offeel out of place. If I'm in
somewhere I don't have access toa screen because it's just it's
just second nature.
Dustin Steffey (24:59):
I mean, that's the The biggest issue with this
day and age, if we have anoutage of some sort where we
can't be connected, we'rescrewed.
Beau Button (25:10):
No, it's slow. We had an outage, we had a winter
storm in Austin, Texas, we hadno electricity, the cell phones
were working, I got a lot done,I'm not gonna lie around the
house. So if we could schedulelike an outage, maybe every
quarter for a week, maybe notwithout the electricity, maybe
just the internet, because likenot having electricity makes
things a little bit barbaric.
But I did get a lot done when Icouldn't come sit here and go
(25:32):
look and read like, you know,you've got things around the
house that you're like, oh, Ishould get to that this week.
And then you find something todo on the computer. And it's
like, Oh, I'll get to it nextweek. And then four years go by
and you're looking at thegutter, you're like, that still
hasn't been fixed. I'd like
Dustin Steffey (25:47):
to schedule an outage for my daughter every day
because she's attached to herphone.
Beau Button (25:53):
Yeah, no, look, I have three kids. And I use the
parents or controls on Androidand iOS. My 15 year old son has
a lot more breathing roombecause we've established this
trust relationship where it'slike, as long as you're getting
good grades, I'm okay withwhatever the hell you're doing.
Because quite frankly, that'show I was raised. My mom and dad
weren't really hard on me. I didlock myself in the room. And I'm
(26:15):
well aware that my mom was verysuspicious of what I was doing.
But where I'm at now, she has nocomplaints. But what my two
daughters knowing what I knowson the internet, and it's kind
of unfair, it's based on theirsex, but like, I do feel more
inclined to protect them fromwhat's potentially going to
influence their life. And yeah,look, it's it's sad. But I'd
(26:36):
love to have a way to just and Ithink there's some routers out
there that Google makes whereyou can actually hit the button,
and it turns it off for specificdevices. I haven't gone that
far. But I know it's possible.
Dustin Steffey (26:46):
Yeah, me too.
It's a matter of finding thetime to actually,
Beau Button (26:50):
I know, man, apps and so many things to dabble
with. It's like, I'd rather justhave the trust but like, what my
daughter's it's not that I don'ttrust them. I don't trust the
internet.
Dustin Steffey (26:59):
I don't trust people. If you want me to be
honest with you, I don't trustthe influence that people have
on our children. I don't I don'ttrust any of that. But that's a
topic for another discussion. Iactually want to dive in you did
bring up something that isimportant. You develop mobile
games. Let's talk about that.
Beau Button (27:20):
Yeah, so about, I think it was six years ago, I'm
terrible at dates. In my es sixyears ago, we my partner, Sami
Khan. We've been longtimefriends, I was good friends with
his older brothers, we founded acompany called Cerberus
interactive, we were buildingmobile games for other brands. I
spent most of my career buildingsoftware for other companies, I
(27:43):
wasn't building my own productslike software as a service. Like
I didn't have some, you know,extreme success with like an
online platform that everybodyknew, I've always kind of helped
other businesses build their ownsoftware or to improve their
efficiencies through software.
So we started service buildingsoftware, building games, mobile
games, only for otherbusinesses. And after about a
(28:03):
year of doing that, we bothlooked at each other and said,
This is no more fun thanbuilding accounting systems. You
would think that building gamesand sounds and visual effects
and like two little charactersis more entertaining. But in
reality, what's not fun is justdealing with other people's
requirements. Like they all theydon't understand the process.
They think they know what'sbest. And this is kind of true
(28:26):
for any client. And sometimesthey do and they should
influence but a lot of times,that's not the case. So we
pivoted and we started buildingour own games. And we made the
conscious decision to buildlocation based games. I have a
lot of experience in geospatialtech so mapping cartography, you
know, digitizing maps, and usinggeospatial data to you know,
(28:46):
solve problems. So we said look,Pokemon Go had just launched its
their IP is massive, we can'tcompete with Pokemon. Everybody
in their grandma knows whoPokemon is. But we can take
that, that same concept and takesome other genres of games and
kind of bring them to thelocation space. And we did that
our first game Atlas empires,it's still available today on
(29:07):
Google and Apple. You could goto either one of the app stores
and Titan Atlas empires. It's alocation based strategy game
that's very similar to clash ofclans, but it has a Pokemon Go
element where you walk around onthe map and you can interact
with things and it's we call itkind of like what a Pokemon GO
and Clash of Clans had a baby.
(29:28):
It was empires. We launched thatgame, I think four years ago,
again, terrible updates. And weevolved it and we started
working on a new game that wasinspired by this web three
virtual real estate movement.
When I read about virtual realestate, my brain was like, What
the hell? What is this? Like? Idon't understand, like I
understand real estate. But Idon't understand virtual real
(29:51):
estate like what are you goingto use it for? What's its
utility? So we made the decisionto not build it on top of the
blockchain. because two yearsago, and it's still evident
today that getting users andeducating them on in web three
in the crypto space or theblockchain space is hard.
There's just too many new terms.
There's too many things that theuser needs to know. So we took a
(30:14):
more traditional web 2.0approach, letting people log in
with Facebook, you're notsetting up a wallet, and we
build a game called Atlas Earth.
It's a virtual real estateplatform that actually pays the
players virtual rent that youcan cash out in USD so you can
cash out to PayPal and use thatmoney to do whatever the hell
you want. There's nocryptocurrency involved at all.
(30:35):
But yeah, those are the twogames that we built. And right
now we're still focusing almostexclusively on improving Atlas
are an evolving that platform.
Dustin Steffey (30:45):
It sounds like there's a lot that goes in to
develop in a game. It isn't justyou're sitting on a Sunday
afternoon, and you put togethersomething and then release it
like not to devalue podcasting,right. But podcasting is pretty
A to B to C, right? I do arecording, and or a Live
(31:07):
episode, I do the video edits, Ido the audio edits, and then I
post it. But with making a game,and this is Mobile or not.
There's a lot of coding, there'sa lot of things that go into it.
I, I almost think that you youhave a project, right? And it
takes years before it's likeready to be out to the public.
(31:30):
Am I wrong?
Beau Button (31:32):
So you're not wrong. The question is, what
does ready need. Now, this isone thing that I learned really
young, I am I have obsessivecompulsive tendencies. And as an
engineer, and even if I'm doingthings around the house, my
brain inherently wants to dothings, right, I have a vision
(31:54):
in my head of what somethingshould look like and how
something should be done. Likeif you're doing something around
the house, and I've watched abunch of videos, I use those
videos as a frame of reference,it says is what I just did on
the same level is what I've beenlike learning from, I try to get
as close as I can, if it's cheaprock, I can't do it. In the
software development space.
There are a lot of companies anda lot of entrepreneurs who
(32:15):
aren't technical, who are OCD,and are stuck on it needs to be
perfect before you launch. AndI've always kind of lived this
life on the edge. It's likebuilding software in my world,
and in my opinion is simple.
What's not is shipping aproduct. So I've always had an
(32:36):
affinity towards shipping beforeI think the market and the
consumer would consider itready. You need to get people
you know, involved with theproduct, you need to get
customers to give you feedback.
And if you spend three yearsbuilding something that you
think is perfect, and you'lllaunch it just to find out that
nobody or their grandma is givetwo shits about it, then what
did you do, you've done nothingbut waste time and money. So
(32:58):
look, it's not for the faint ofheart. We're experiencing this
at Atlas reality. But it's aproven way to get a product out
the door. And you know, it cantake years but for us we built
that was Earth and five months,and we had a team of six people.
So and that's a small team inthis space. So we built it, we
got out the door, we had tons ofproblems. The key is don't give
(33:19):
up continuous improvement,listen to the community, test
the shit out of it, fix it andcontinuously improve it. So
there's there's severaldifferent approaches my
approach, like I said, it's notfor the faint of heart. It's not
if Netflix would have done whatwe did, I think they would have
gone bankrupt. But they also nowthey started with DVDs. So they
already had a working businessmodel. If they would have
(33:42):
skipped the DVDs and wentstraight to a streaming service
that crashed every 10 secondsthey would have gone bankrupt.
So it is what it is.
Dustin Steffey (33:50):
I think in general entrepreneurship isn't
for the faint of heart. However,I think in order to get better,
you you fall and you get back upand I mean that's that's
something that I've preached thewhole entire time. Yeah,
speaking of entrepreneurshipbetween you and I, it didn't
just click overnight for you. Imean, you weren't nine when you
(34:13):
started doing some of thesethings, but the entrepreneurship
journey to me started when youwere in high school. What were
some things now that you'reolder and you look back and
reflect that you wish you wouldhave known then that would have
set you up better now?
Beau Button (34:29):
It's a double edged sword. There's there's only one
thing that I do that I teetertotter on considering
regrettable, and that's notusing the money I made more
wisely. You know, I love realestate like physical real estate
and I see a lot of people whomay not be technically inclined
(34:51):
may not be considered overlyintelligent or wealthy do
extremely well with a wellthought out real estate stretch
investment strategy. And in thereason I say I teeter totter on
that regret ability kind ofcomponent is, I love to learn,
but learning can be expensive.
And in the high tech space, andI'm not talking about college
(35:12):
degrees, like if I have a hobby,and I want to get into it, I'm
into it 1,000% I'm buying thetools, I'm buying whatever the
hell I need. And I've alwaysbeen like that, like with remote
control airplanes, helicopters,like that was a hobby, I wanted
to know how, as I was learningabout aerodynamics, I didn't
want to go buy an airplane, Ididn't want to crash and die. So
(35:32):
like, I got really deep intothat. But I've spent a lot of
money and you can look behindme, there's probably 50,000 That
was where the video gameconsoles just sitting there on
the shelf. Now, this is acollection, I don't play with
these very often. But, you know,I would, I would have probably
put a little bit more moneyaside to grow in parallel with
what I was doing in my hyperaggressive like, I consider
(35:54):
learning and investment. So whenpeople like, where are your
investments on my fuckinginvestment, I don't have this
massive $20 million portfolio.
But I I guarantee you, if Iwouldn't have spent all of that
money as a child as a teenagerand put it into something that
would have grown, I would havebeen sitting on probably 20 $30
(36:15):
million of money. I'm not there,I'm still working, I have to
basically work and you know, anexit is something I'm planning
for in the next five years. Butlike what your money a little
bit, but put put money aside, Iwish I would have respected that
more. Again, I don't know if itwould have changed a whole lot,
because I'm very happy with whatI know and how I learned what I
but there have been some momentsin my life, I've gone through a
(36:36):
divorce where I've looked backand said God dammit, if I would
have had a nest egg, a nice nestegg, this would have been a bit
easier. But I didn't. So I hadto continuously grind and I
didn't give up. But that'sbasically it. Honestly, as a
young entrepreneur, I wish Iwould have been a little bit
more smart with my money andmaybe bought some fourplexes you
know, something,
Dustin Steffey (36:55):
I mean, I have the same kind of looking back,
if I would have been smarterwith my money invested more into
the business, which I preach itnow. Because I've made that
mistake, when you make money,you have to reinvest in the
business to grow it even more toget even more of a income coming
in. I just, yeah, I'm the sameas you, right. If I would have
(37:19):
invested a little bit more, orif I would have started
podcasting instead of last year,like 10 years ago, I think that
I would be in a better placethan the grind that I'm in now.
But I kind of like the grind,right? I think I'm a pseudo
sadist, right? Like
Beau Button (37:37):
I love what I do. I don't wake up and despise my,
my, my responsibilities. I lovethat. But they're like when you
hit those kind of like low spotslike divorce moving and like all
of that, you kind of look backand you reflect, but like I
said, I don't regret it. Youknow, when people ask me like,
Oh, do you have any regrets? Ireally don't. I'm happy with
(37:59):
where I am. And I know what myfuture holds. And that's
exciting.
Dustin Steffey (38:02):
Listen, man, life, life fucking happens,
right? Life just happens. Andthere's no instruction manual.
It isn't like this movie, themovie, click, where you can fast
forward and see what your futureis. Or you can rewind or
whatever the case may be, youkind of roll with the punches.
And sometimes you get knockedout like Mike Tyson used to do
(38:24):
to people, or you get back andwhen you get knocked out, you
get back up, or you just kind ofroll with it and you figure it
out. And that's kind of wherewe're at, right? Like
entrepreneurship, isn't thiscookie cutter cut and dry. Like,
if you do this, you're gonnamake a shit ton of money.
There's a lot of differenttrials and tribulations that
(38:47):
people go through, depending onthe business for you. I mean,
you've gone through your fairshare for me, I go through my
fair share and still do. I canread as many books as I want to
be ahead of it. But still, Imake mistakes.
Beau Button (39:02):
Yep, no. And that's you have to accept it. That's
it. Like, you know, the analogyI like to use is you have to
move like water. Like somepeople are super rigid. They
live life like a giant fuckingseamen cube. And when a little
thing presents itself like that,they just hit it and they don't
know how to maneuver around it.
But I've always thought ofmyself as a very fluid person.
Now I've evolved as a teenager,you know, we go through phases,
(39:23):
but as life progressed, and asmy life experiences, you know,
increased and I learned a lotlike, I kind of just be easy. I
like to be easygoing. Now, I dohave a temper. I know a lot. I
hate people who are superopinionated about certain
topics, but just never give up.
And you know, it's what'shappening right now. And there's
(39:44):
a book that I can send you thelink. I can't remember the name
but like one of the coretakeaways is, whatever happens
to you is the best thing thatcan happen to you. It's the way
you receive it the way youreact. It's like getting in an
automotive accident. Onehesitates to believe that's the
best thing that could happen tome today. But at the end of the
day, it's going to unlocksomething how you receive it, if
(40:04):
you're, I don't, again, I don'twant to drive around and get hit
25 fucking times. But when thathappens, instead of getting out
of the car become an explosiveand beating the shit out of
people, you just look and say Ihave insurance, this is not
going to stop me, I understandwe make mistakes, let's move on,
I'll give you my insurance. AndI've kind of applied that to
almost every and it unblocks youit gives your brain your your
(40:26):
computer, your centralprocessing unit, more free time
to do shit, like learn and becreative and produce things
rather than just getting caughtup on dumb shit.
Dustin Steffey (40:36):
I think that's the part that I dislike about a
lot of people is a lot of peopledo not like change, I kind of
love change, because the minuteyou stop changing is the minute
you're six feet under, in myopinion, I think change is good.
I think that these people thatlive under a rock, or don't want
(40:57):
to do very much or just sit athome, or whatever the case may
be, they're like killingthemselves. There's so much of a
world out there to learn thingsand to do things. And I don't
care if you're eight, or you're75 years old. You can you can do
this, you can do something. Imean, the whole point of my
(41:20):
podcast is for people to just, Imean, learn, you know, learn.
That's it?
Beau Button (41:29):
No, look, I love to talk about how I, you know, my
journey, how I learned, youknow, with the internet, you've
got almost everything at yourfingertips. It's accessible, you
know, there's paywalls forcertain things. But, you know,
look, if anybody has questionsabout how I learned and what
sources they can find me onLinkedIn, I love to talk,
(41:50):
obviously. But no, you'reabsolutely right, eight or 80.
Dustin Steffey (41:55):
I think, to be honest with you that this
conversation has been awesome.
It's it's given a take on whatreally the journey to
entrepreneurship is, I mean,I've had many guests on, and
I've had many people describetheir journey. But the biggest
thing to reinforce is, maybemaybe some people can relate
with you, as opposed to some ofthe other guests that I've had
(42:16):
the biggest thing and thebiggest theme here. And pattern
with all the other guests thatI've had is the willingness to
keep going
Beau Button (42:27):
100% Yeah, it's, you have to approach every
problem as if, if there is aroadblock, I'll work around it,
you do need to there's a musclememory that's established, like
you can't just think that I'mgoing to start one business and
be wildly successful, somepeople do, and that's brilliant.
But where I'm at, I've gonethrough probably a dozen
(42:48):
different businesses, either asa founder or as an advisor. And
I've learned a lot from thefailures, quite frankly, I've
learned the most from thosefailures. And it like again,
it's like if you're a musician,and you play piano, you could
stop playing for 10 years, andthen sit in front of a piano but
your brain, your muscles,everything kind of so you kind
of establish you become in tunewith like, what's a good
decision? What's a bad decision?
But yeah, Persistence is key.
(43:11):
You just have to be persistentand be respectful and understand
that you do stand on theshoulders of giants like I
cannot stand a single memberLLC, a founder, who advertises
himself as the chief executiveofficer of a fucking company,
okay? It's one of those thingslike you can advertise it that
can be your title, like the goalof a CEO is to lead, who are you
(43:34):
leading, be humble, establishyourself, get some traction,
grow your team, grow yourproduct, and then you can start
to grow into that role. It'sabout being humble. Honestly,
there's a lot of people thatjust aren't humble, and I've
seen them rise to the top andalmost as quick fall to the
bottom.
Dustin Steffey (43:51):
I kind of agree with you, I hate the people like
I walk around, I get businesscards, I kind of mark it right?
I have two that I see on thebusiness card that are CEO. I'm
like, Cool. Do you haveshareholders? Do you have people
that you answer to you're not afucking CEO, okay. Your owner is
(44:13):
your owner of a business. Ifyou're a CEO, you have
shareholders, you have stocks,you have all of that stuff,
people. People are ignorantstill in terminology. And I
don't mean that natively. So ifany of my listeners alike are
going to hate on me for thecomment I just made go for it.
But you have to be smart abouthow you brand yourself. I can't
(44:37):
say I'm the CEO of shopping,entertainment, right? We don't
have shareholders. What I cansay is I'm the owner of
shopping, entertainment, I ownshopping, entertainment. I own
the business, ideal witheverything that comes with
respect to the business right?
To be a CEO is a different kindof story. You have shareholders
(44:58):
Are you partners or you havewhatever the case may be. So I
guess the one thing that I wantto leave some of my listeners
with and even you can reinforceit with me is the fact to
understand what business is andunderstand really the
terminology. So you don't lookstupid. I don't like looking
(45:18):
dumb. And listen, there's a lotof things that I still don't
know, where I learn every day.
But the fact of the matter is,is if you're going to be an
entrepreneur, and if you'regoing to go into business, at
least frickin understand thedifferent like terminology and
stuff like that, right?
Beau Button (45:39):
I've got one suggestion, and I do this on a
daily basis. It's hard forpeople to learn everything and
speak about something that theyrecently learned with
conviction, because you're notcertain like the internet. You
know, there's misinformation,you might read one definition of
what this means in business, andyou might read another one, and
they conflict with one another.
But a guaranteed way to not comeacross as looking like a fucking
(46:02):
idiot, is if you don't knowsomething, simply say, forgive
my ignorance. Can you help meunderstand what that means? I
don't know something. If I'm ona zoom call, I'm like, I don't
know what that acronyms forgivean acronym means forgive my
ignorance. Can you help me?
Don't make some bullshit up.
I've interviewed probably 2000people for hiring in the last.
(46:22):
And I've got four interviewstoday that I'm gonna be on phone
calls, and the people that makeshit up, especially in tech,
because they're like, Oh, thisguy's an interviewee, or
interviewer. He doesn't knowwhat this means I'm gonna rattle
off some bullshit response. AndI'm like, wow, you should have
just said, I don't know, likethat. The interview is over now,
because that's nowhere near whatthis is I need honestly. But
(46:43):
that's the sheer shot away tonot come across as looking like
an idiot. Just tell people youdon't know. And if the person is
respectable, he'll explain it toyou. And now you'll know.
Dustin Steffey (46:53):
Yeah, I definitely agree. I think if you
don't know something, justblatantly say, I don't know.
That's it. So last thing, youobviously run your own business,
you don't work for free. I mean,if you do damned dude, you've
done really well working forfree. If people want to kind of
(47:15):
get involved, like how could oneget involved with your business?
Beau Button (47:20):
I mean, the easiest way to get involved in what I'm
doing, rather playing the gameor learning about Atlas reality
on any front, you know, we haveinvestors, we have, you know,
our shareholders, which are alsoour employees, we're hiring, you
can go to if you're interestedin getting into this space, we
have a dedicated job hiringwebsite, which is www dot Atlas,
reality jobs.com. We have a fewpositions open. Now, if you want
(47:44):
to just learn more, I said, Ilove to talk. Now, like you
said, I don't have 50 hours aweek where I can dedicate to
just checking, but don'thesitate to add me on LinkedIn.
And in the message, just say,look, I heard John so and so's
podcast, there's a few of themthat I've been on, I will always
accept those and guide you inthe right direction. Just you
know, be respectful of my time.
And I'll be respectful of yourquestions and try to answer them
(48:05):
as best I can. But that's thebest way to get involved in what
I'm doing. Again, my name is Bobutton. There's only two of us.
And one of them's my 15 year oldson, and he's not on LinkedIn
yet. And it's B E AU, bu TT O Non LinkedIn.
Dustin Steffey (48:19):
And bow. I want to have fun real quick. If I
know there's a lot of key themesthat came out of this interview,
one very important one, if youhad to identify just for people
to kind of learn and understandyou leave them with one key gold
nugget, what would that be? You
Beau Button (48:39):
have to start like so many people are afraid to
start like, it doesn't matter ifyou have fear. If you have
ignorance about a subject, youjust have to start. You can't
fail if you haven't like andthat's where people I think,
feel comfortable. Well, I don'thave to deal with failure. If I
don't start. It's like no, youhave to start because you will
learn a lot from those failures.
But you just have to get theball moving. And you'd be I
think most people if noteverybody will be pleasantly
(49:02):
surprised how successful theycan be in their own right doing
if they've got a skill set or aproduct or service. You just
need to start it be veryreceptive of feedback somes not
going to be constructive.
Hopefully, you get someconstructive feedback, but don't
approach it. arrogantly, youknow, just write it all down, go
(49:22):
home, read through it and try tolike formulate Well, what's my
next step? That's it, you justyou have to start, you have to
just do it, get up and do it,register your business, even if
it's just getting the domainname, getting the LLC putting
together your business plan. Youdon't need to go to a bank, you
don't need to raise a bunch ofmoney, you need to do something
on your own, and there's scrappyways to do it. And there's all
kinds of resources and ifanything, that's where I can
(49:44):
probably help a lot of peoplethe most is explaining how they
can save money and not come outof pocket for building certain
things to at least get theirbusiness off the ground. That
would be my advice is just don'tbe afraid to start started. And
if you fail, don't give up startsomething else. Do it again.
Eventually it's gonna stick.
Dustin Steffey (50:02):
That's some great advice, ladies and
gentlemen, again, this is Bobutton. I had the distinct
pleasure of interviewing him, Ilove him. This is very real. So
Bo, thank you very much forcoming on. I know time is
valuable, and you have your pickof the litter and you chose to
come on with us. So I appreciatethat.
Beau Button (50:21):
Thank you for having me. No, this has been
fun. In the last year I've donea few podcasts. And the energy
here is good. Sometimes theyfeel very mechanical. Like I'm
talking to the Chucky Cheeseanimatronic and well with that,
but like I love where I'm not inperson. And this is a new thing
for me. I'm very I use my hands.
I use the environment. I readpeople. It's hard to do that
over zoom. But I can just likewe evolve as species, I'm
(50:42):
evolving to be able to do thatthrough the screen. I didn't
used to have that I didn't needto have it because I was always
in front of people. But now theenergy between the two of us is
great. I love what you're doingand obviously helping other
people become more successful intheir own right is a good thing
to be doing for humanity. Sothank you for your contributions
and like I said, don't be shy ifyou will have questions. I'm on
LinkedIn.
Dustin Steffey (51:04):
Listen, if I were rich buddy, I would more
than definitely be in personwith you. That's for damn sure.
Beau Button (51:10):
Ya know, it's tough to fly anywhere nowadays, but at
some point we'll probably haveto get together I'm sure there's
a conference we'll findourselves both attended.
Dustin Steffey (51:18):
Oh, definitely for sure. I like to be a part of
a lot of things. So we willdefinitely thank you again all
the links for bow will be in theepisode description bow and I
will make sure to put thattogether all nicely so people
can easily get a hold of him. Soagain, thank you bow and this is
a another episode of choppingwood fire
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