Beau Button Helps us Understand WEB3

Dustin Steffey: 0:00

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Jaden Norvell: 0:54

welcome to your top rated business entrepreneurship self development in smart investment podcast. This podcast is hosted by creator and founder Dr. Dustin Steffey and also hosted by coach, music producer and influencer yours truly Jaden rush nor Bell we are blessed for many accolades such as being nominated for the People's Choice Award for Best Business podcasts, as well as raising over $5,000 last year for the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation as well as for the Boys and Girls Club, spending a global reach or podcasts in the top four downloads in four countries. Without further ado, welcome to chopping wood fire ladies and gentlemen, let's chop it up.

Dustin Steffey: 1:37

Hello, and welcome to an episode of chopping wood fire you are joined with your host, Dustin Steffey I wanted to briefly go over a few things before we introduce our special guests. First and foremost, thank you to everybody who has subscribed to our social media, who's followed us on our tic tock on our YouTube on anything really social media related, I'm excited to announce that we are growing and we're continuing to grow globally. So I just wanted to give a big big shout out to all my listeners and just thank them for being proactive. For those of you that haven't joined any of the social media has gone to the website, whatever the case may be, please head on over to www dot shopping with feiyr.com that ch o p p i n with feiyr.com. That's our website. It houses everything. And it's kind of a good benchmark to start to go to the different social media platforms and to keep updated. Secondly, social media wise we do have everything under the sun. I know we're in a day and age where there's 500 million different options. So the best that I can say is choose one you like, subscribe to it and you are in the know at that point because we do post on all of them. Lastly, for our philanthropy and for our charities, we do support cystic fibrosis and the Boys and Girls Club. Cystic fibrosis is like having a straw in your lungs and trying to breathe out of it. It is not fun. It's not it's not the best in the world. There are people that are going around live right now that have this rare lung disease and your help is much appreciated. If you would like to donate please head on over to C F F dot o RG forward slash donate and donate any denomination that you can afford. If you do put a donate donation through, please drop us a line on one of our social media so we can thank you personally. Also, we do support the Boys and Girls Club. So please head on over to b g, b c dot o RG forward slash donate and donate today. That is everything that I have for you all again, huge thank you to everyone that supports us as we continue to grow. And we continue to provide you with more content. I will be excited to communicate with you guys. If there's a topic that you guys want to hear. If there's a guest you want us to bring back if you want to talk to any of our guests, make sure to head on over to our website because all of their contact information is there. That being said, let's dive into a fun, fun, fun guest interview today. Today I have Bo button. He is the President and CTO of Atlas reality. He is also a serial entrepreneur. I'm excited to have him on and he is definitely a down to earth. Fun person. So this this gonna be a fun topic today. So Bo, let us let us dive in.

Beau Button: 4:53

Yes, sir. Let's do it. Pleased to be here.

Dustin Steffey: 4:56

Thank you for coming on, I guess. First and foremost So I, I don't want to let the cat out of the bag or anything along those lines, but nobody knows you. So I think I guess we can do the traditional. Who are

Beau Button: 5:09

you? Yeah, I mean, I'm a technologist at heart. I started really young, dabbling with hardware at the age of nine. This is available in my bio, it's kind of like a played out story. But I got deep into software and kind of just my internal inquisitive inquisitiveness took over around the age of 11, started writing software, started working professionally as a software engineer at 16, while I was enrolled in high school, dabbled with college realized college wasn't for me, decided to start a business with a high school friend doing custom software development. And then quite frankly, I've been doing that ever since that was around, you know, probably 9099 2000, you know, 23 years. That's frightening, actually. Now, I look at the year 23 years, but yeah, I mean, I've had a heavy focus on software development, but everything electronic like anything that's electrical now I'm not talking like I won't wire your house for light switches, but anything, you know, just embedded electronics, 3d printing, remote control, airplanes, quad copters. Like that's, that's my life. I love all of that. But yeah, I'm a technologist. And like, right now, my primary job is kind of more architectural. I'm at the point now with the business that I started with a friend, a very longtime friend, you know, where I just kind of offer guidance. I'm not in the trenches writing software every day, thankfully.

Dustin Steffey: 6:27

So people that know me, know me is someone that loves technology, I have to have the latest and greatest or I love playing with technology. I grew up similar to you where I was tearing apart my mom's like old gateway computer at the age of eight, and pulling all the internals apart, and upgrading them. Or in my mind, I thought I was upgrading them. I kind of ruined

Beau Button: 6:58

grades that resulted in flop fire and smoke. It's like, that's not good.

Dustin Steffey: 7:02

Yeah. But over time, I mean, I built my first big computer that was fast and nice. I learned a lot about the internals, and I kind of never looked back. I do love technology. I like how everything works. I hate that the shelf life of technology is literally like, once you buy it, it depreciates to nothing within a year. But you know, whatever, like technology is and forever will keep growing faster than me. So with that being said, you are definitely a pseudo badass starting at nine, you open up your own company with your buddy while you're in high school still, that's that's entrepreneurship at its finest. I'm sure there were a lot of moments where you were like, Oh, crap, I don't know what I'm doing, or whatever the case may be. Walk me through, like how you kind of fine tuned your entrepreneurship journey to get to where you are today.

Beau Button: 7:56

Yeah, I'm fortunate a lot of folks when they think software engineers, they think like, the stereotypical nerd that doesn't like, you know, speaking to people and doesn't know how to communicate. I don't know why genetically why I'm predisposition, like I can do both. So and I'm not a salesperson. I do not like sales. I don't like that whole process. It's not something but I do find myself or when I was in high school, because I was well versed with technology. I was in the field, I was working professionally, I always found myself if I was in a group of people, you know, talking about it. And a lot of people like caught on to that and said, Well, he knows what he's doing. He's a technologist. He's a software engineer, but he also knows how to understand what my needs are. So, you know, for me, I've never really been afraid to try anything. Now. I'm not an athletic person. I know what I can't do. I can't play football. I can't play any sports to be quite frank. So it was very clear that I really didn't need it. I needed to take advantage of this, this knowledge, this experience. And for me, it was you know, I needed money. We all like as a teenager you know, I didn't I came from very humble beginnings like I didn't have a lot of I didn't have access to like an allowance. Like if I wanted something I needed to work for it. And before the software thing I was grinding around the neighborhood would a good friend Cory cutting grass with his dad, like we were hustling, making good money, but it 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 to make money. And that's what kind of inspired me to in essence become an independent contractor and start helping people with websites. This is way before mobile phones and mobile apps and all that this was you know, mostly businesses trying to establish their presence online. This is before like the Facebook wave and all of these advertisement like just monstrosities. But yeah, I mean, look, it was just a need, which was I wanted the cash. Not that I wanted to buy a Ferrari I just wanted to be independent because I couldn't go home and you know, ask my parents for money. But I was also I had this insatiable appetite for knowledge and those two things when they kind of clicked were a perfect recipe for me just being persistent and starting 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 back to my childhood. Me too. I didn't come from very much. And if I wanted something because my dad was working two jobs, my mom was doing what my mom does as well. I needed to earn money. So I started working when I was about 12 under the table to make money, right.

Beau Button: 10:28

And in those days, I'm not gonna lie Dustin, like cutting grass under the table and getting a stack of even if it was $5 bills, and nobody knew about 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 with the owners kids, and I really liked him a lot. And I kind of grew to be a part of the family. So I helped out got paid for it and eventually got a real paycheck from them as well too, as I got older where they could pay me on the payroll. So it was fun. It was different. I think, my my grown up, I was taught kind of the hardcore, like you work for what you need. I played sports as well, I went to school. So multitasking was rather simple for me. So I, I can I can relate with you on a few things. The only thing I can't relate with you with is I played football, love football 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. And what ultimately was my demise in sports or football in middle school was I didn't know anything about football. And I thought just being big, and being on the field would be enough. But they were rattling things off. And I'm like, Hey, Coach, I don't know anything about this. But I'm glad I didn't because I did double down on the tech side of things. But there are days where I'm like, I probably wouldn't be in the shape. And I'm in now if I would have played some football, I have a better a greater appreciation for physical activity. 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 was old school. So a lot of I don't know, rougher on the edges upbringing. So my anger got taken out on the field. And I just loved it and people,

Beau Button: 12:15

I had an outlet. And thankfully, I didn't have a whole lot of anger, there was confusion, you know, you've got the haves and the have nots, you've got people you know, that have a lot and you'd like as a child, you're trying to reconcile, like, why am I here? Like, why? How did I get here? Why don't I have that. But for me, it was it was less about anger. And just like I needed an outlet to focus and try to better my situation. But no, I have a lot of friends that had the same thing where football was like that was their outlet. And honestly, if they weren't playing football, they were playing another sport because they just needed 365. Like they needed something to do to like physically exhausted themselves. So they weren't always pissed off. So I can relate. But I was in the computer, and you were out 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 did if I would have I probably would have would be in a different position. But I definitely I was the same as your friends. Right? I played sports 24/7 to get away from home life. Right. And that. That was that was who I was. But you know, again, I mean, I'm here today. And I think I'm pretty successful, given the circumstances. So it is what it is. I do want to shift gears. So there's a term that's been thrown around a lot lately. And I don't think people truly have a big grasp of it. And I know you do. So we're gonna we're gonna try to define it today to help people out. And that's the term web three. And I think that we have to kind of dive back a little bit to explain how it evolved to web three. Before we can 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, in software, we like to as a technologist, we'd like to version things because it's an explicit way to kind of indicate an improvement or not always, one could say that, you know, going from Windows 95 to Windows 98 was an improvement 98 to Windows Vista or me was not an improvement. So it doesn't always indicate that things are getting better. With with web three, I think part of it is the non technologists they latch on to these kinds of technical versions. Like you know, when the internet was invented, no one said this is version 1.0 of the internet. We just called it universally it was the internet Well, the World Wide Web. And you know the way that we like to describe it and this is influenced by my partner, Sami who's the CEO of Atlas reality. He kind of distilled it to the original Internet was access to information so the World Wide Web originated and you could access content knowledge And you can learn more it said your web two, again, not a lot of people are familiar with the term web two. But as a technologist, you know, it's kind of hard not to have, you know, come across the term web two, but it didn't have as much a lore and marketing dollars push behind it because there weren't crypto currencies and billionaires. But web two was access to people. So we think about like, the web two is the social internet, the social web, this is where your social media started to become prolific Facebook, MySpace, and fill in the blank, et cetera. And what the industry of what the media wants web three to be. They kind of throw it into this cryptocurrencies blockchain and metaverse. And like, well, a lot of people don't know what either of those, those three things are. And the easiest way to kind of describe this without having to have web one, web two, web three is is just naturally the Evolve evolution of the Internet. So how we access it, why we're accessing it and what it means to us as a consumer. So web one was knowledge. Web two was people, well, what's web three? I believe, and my partner believes, and that was reality believes that the web three is equity. And what I mean by that is you're producing content, you're generating data, and all of these big platforms are leveraging that to serve you ads so they can generate revenue. Are you being paid? Are you getting anything out of it, one could argue yet, dude, scrolling on tick tock, I'm getting something out of it. But in reality, you're really not improving your situation. It's good entertainment. But when those companies are generating billions of dollars, they're not sharing any of that with you, when you think about what blockchain is, and we can go deep into what that is. But blockchain is really just, it's a way to prove transparently to the public, that someone owns a digital asset. And that doesn't just mean from pictures of Gorilla pictures, it could be anything that could be codified electronically, it could be a contract between seller and a buyer of any kind of asset, and it doesn't need to be just a digital asset. So blockchain is confusing. It's a really technical concept, but it serves a very real purpose. But when we talk about ownership, it's like, I think of the web three as equity. I want people game players who play games, social media users who post on social media or generate content, I want them to have some equity in that now, does that mean that you're gonna get a paycheck from Facebook? Because you're using Facebook, it's highly unlikely, but as a society, we need to kind of flip it. I'm not saying 100% We just we need these companies. And I want these companies to be more friendly and more, I guess, you know, have more favorable terms for their end users. So when when you hear with three it's more often talking about cryptocurrencies, I do not I do not consider the web three evolution built on top of blockchain. It does not require cryptocurrencies or any of that it those are components of the evolution because they facilitate that equity. Yes, you can earn a cryptocurrency in a game. That means you now have something that potentially has value that you can trade for something that you can use to pay your car note with. That's a good thing. Do you need a cryptocurrency to do that? No, I can pay you in cash. And I can go straight to the dealership and buy a car. It's just another option. But yeah, I mean, in its most simple form, it's just nothing more than the evolution of the Internet. There's new technology in play. But what it really means is, I think the consumer is going to have more equity in what they're doing on the internet, so they can benefit from an other than literally just getting videos force fed to a one media or social 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 over the place. I know that it's gonna be an it is the future of how we make money and pay and all that stuff. What's your take on cryptocurrency right now? Are you invested in it? Like what's your what's your thought process?

Beau Button: 18:49

No, no, no. So when you think about payment infrastructure coming from my perspective, we refer to them as rails like the rails for train, how do things move between A and B? So right now, the rails that we use for credit cards are owned by Visa, MasterCard, American Express, Discover, they all kind of dictate what their rates are there, for the most part inefficient, those companies are slow to innovate. And then if you take a step back and look at like how we move from checking accounts, like the ACH automated clearing house, this technology is so old and just antiquated. You know, it's it's exciting to see something like the blockchain. So one needs to understand that cryptocurrencies sit on top of the blockchain, you know, cryptocurrencies are not necessary for the blockchain necessarily to operate. I don't disagree that the future of payments will more than likely be powered by blockchain technologies. But I do disagree that the future of payments is going to involve a bunch of these shit coins or any of these I mean, Bitcoin or eath. So those are the two primary like cryptocurrencies that I've ever expressed into Then because there's at least a story. You know, Bitcoin was an academic exercise, it kind of brought the blockchain into the forefront of most people's minds. But a lot of it's speculative. I don't fuck with speculative, I just don't. I'm a data person. And I know a lot of people that have lost and a lot of people that get the opposite hand motion, if they've gained a lot, they've lost a lot of money, but they've got an appetite for that. I'd much rather look at this as a long term play and see what's Aetherium going to be doing? What can be built on top of Aetherium? What's Bitcoin going to be doing? I don't I don't dabble with the speculative side of this, though. But I do agree that the future of payment technology is more than likely going to be powered by the blockchain. Now, is that going to be Bitcoin? Is that going to be Aetherium? Who knows? But that is a very solid technological advancement from what we're seeing now. And it's open source, it can be, you know, scrutinized by the community, there's a lot of people who are way more intelligent than the employees that are worth forgetting. That's a shit way of describing it. There's just more eyeballs on it than the people that are working at DISA. It's not that the people are these aren't intelligent. Obviously, as a part of these, I just wanted to make sure that was clear. I'm not calling BS a bunch of idiots. But you're right, the future is more than likely going to be blockchain based. But I've yet to see any clear evidence that it's going to be Bitcoin. I've seen the ATMs come I've seen the ATMs go, none of my friends understand really what Bitcoin is, none of none of my friends really understand the Ethereum virtual machine, which is the EVM, which is really the most impressive piece about like Aetherium, but nobody really understands what it is and how you can leverage it. But yeah, I mean, that's my take on it. Again, I Don't dabble with speculative stuff.

Dustin Steffey: 21:44

Yeah, I try not to either. I mean, I definitely am invested in the big three. So Bitcoin Aetherium Litecoin. However, it's been a roller coaster, 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 in Doge? Well, you would follow Elon Musk, because in Tesla, because those two people were that person in that company influenced the value of Doge. I don't particularly care for that. Like, if you go to like Las Vegas, you might know how to play back blackjack. So you think you have better odds, but at the end of the day, it's stacked against you. And it's not that dissimilar with the stock market. And for the same reason, I don't invest in stocks that I don't, I don't understand intimately. If I'm not using a product, if I don't know the business, I'm not investing in it just because I need to feel comfortable with it. I need to know the ins and out and I have a lot of friends that do that day trading where they log in, and they just look at trends and they start moving money. And yeah, they do make money. But that's not my brain doesn't operate 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 the time 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 these automated broker, like there's Robo trades, like at that point, it's like, if it was that easy, everybody would just take their entire paycheck, give it to some company and get 25% returns and pay a fee. It's not that easy. Like they don't know they have good runs, like we use internally, I've looked at some funds that have really good runs, at some point, they're gonna have a really bad run. So it's, it's just not from me, I'd rather build things and invest my time, like you said, Time is precious, as a parent, you know, I just don't have the time to sit in front of, you know, a Fidelity screen and say, Okay, where am I going to move money today, what I'm going to sell there, 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 sitting in front of a computer screen all day. I mean, I there are certain things that I like to do. So obviously, with a podcast, I am in front of a computer screen doing video edits, audio edits, all that stuff. But that stuff that I like to do, I definitely do not like to sit there and watch numbers 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 could enable I I don't have it enabled, because I think it would 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 was really young, it wouldn't be uncommon for me to sit in front of that machine for 1415 hours, get five hours of sleep, walk to the bus stop catch the bus to get to school. Now I probably averaged nine to 10 hours. If it's not on the desktop, it's going to be on my mobile phone. But I don't play games despite being in the video game industry. I'm either reading or watching videos about things that are you know, knowledge oriented, like new technologies, et cetera. But yeah, I can't escape the machine. And I don't mind it quite frankly, I kind of feel out of place. If I'm in somewhere I don't have access to a 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 an outage of some sort where we can't be connected, we're screwed.

Beau Button: 25:10

No, it's slow. We had an outage, we had a winter storm in Austin, Texas, we had no electricity, the cell phones were working, I got a lot done, I'm not gonna lie around the house. So if we could schedule like an outage, maybe every quarter for a week, maybe not without the electricity, maybe just the internet, because like not having electricity makes things a little bit barbaric. But I did get a lot done when I couldn't come sit here and go look and read like, you know, you've got things around the house that you're like, oh, I should get to that this week. And then you find something to do on the computer. And it's like, Oh, I'll get to it next week. And then four years go by and you're looking at the gutter, 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 her phone.

Beau Button: 25:53

Yeah, no, look, I have three kids. And I use the parents or controls on Android and iOS. My 15 year old son has a lot more breathing room because we've established this trust relationship where it's like, as long as you're getting good grades, I'm okay with whatever the hell you're doing. Because quite frankly, that's how I was raised. My mom and dad weren't really hard on me. I did lock myself in the room. And I'm well aware that my mom was very suspicious of what I was doing. But where I'm at now, she has no complaints. But what my two daughters knowing what I knows on the internet, and it's kind of unfair, it's based on their sex, but like, I do feel more inclined to protect them from what's potentially going to influence their life. And yeah, look, it's it's sad. But I'd love to have a way to just and I think there's some routers out there that Google makes where you can actually hit the button, and it turns it off for specific devices. 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 the time to actually,

Beau Button: 26:50

I know, man, apps and so many things to dabble with. It's like, I'd rather just have the trust but like, what my daughter's it's not that I don't trust 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 trust the influence that people have on our children. I don't I don't trust any of that. But that's a topic for another discussion. I actually want to dive in you did bring up something that is important. 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 six years ago, we my partner, Sami Khan. We've been longtime friends, I was good friends with his older brothers, we founded a company called Cerberus interactive, we were building mobile games for other brands. I spent most of my career building software for other companies, I wasn't building my own products like software as a service. Like I didn't have some, you know, extreme success with like an online platform that everybody knew, I've always kind of helped other businesses build their own software or to improve their efficiencies through software. So we started service building software, building games, mobile games, only for other businesses. And after about a year of doing that, we both looked at each other and said, This is no more fun than building accounting systems. You would think that building games and sounds and visual effects and like two little characters is more entertaining. But in reality, what's not fun is just dealing with other people's requirements. Like they all they don't understand the process. They think they know what's best. And this is kind of true for any client. And sometimes they do and they should influence but a lot of times, that's not the case. So we pivoted and we started building our own games. And we made the conscious decision to build location based games. I have a lot of experience in geospatial tech so mapping cartography, you know, digitizing maps, and using geospatial data to you know, solve problems. So we said look, Pokemon Go had just launched its their IP is massive, we can't compete with Pokemon. Everybody in their grandma knows who Pokemon is. But we can take that, that same concept and take some other genres of games and kind of bring them to the location space. And we did that our first game Atlas empires, it's still available today on Google and Apple. You could go to either one of the app stores and Titan Atlas empires. It's a location based strategy game that's very similar to clash of clans, but it has a Pokemon Go element where you walk around on the map and you can interact with things and it's we call it kind of like what a Pokemon GO and Clash of Clans had a baby. It was empires. We launched that game, I think four years ago, again, terrible updates. And we evolved it and we started working on a new game that was inspired by this web three virtual real estate movement. When I read about virtual real estate, my brain was like, What the hell? What is this? Like? I don't understand, like I understand real estate. But I don't understand virtual real estate like what are you going to use it for? What's its utility? So we made the decision to not build it on top of the blockchain. because two years ago, and it's still evident today that getting users and educating them on in web three in the crypto space or the blockchain space is hard. There's just too many new terms. There's too many things that the user needs to know. So we took a more traditional web 2.0 approach, letting people log in with Facebook, you're not setting up a wallet, and we build a game called Atlas Earth. It's a virtual real estate platform that actually pays the players virtual rent that you can cash out in USD so you can cash out to PayPal and use that money to do whatever the hell you want. There's no cryptocurrency involved at all. But yeah, those are the two games that we built. And right now we're still focusing almost exclusively 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 just you're sitting on a Sunday afternoon, and you put together something and then release it like not to devalue podcasting, right. But podcasting is pretty A to B to C, right? I do a recording, and or a Live episode, I do the video edits, I do 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's a lot of things that go into it. I, I almost think that you you have a project, right? And it takes years before it's like ready to be out to the public. Am I wrong?

Beau Button: 31:32

So you're not wrong. The question is, what does ready need. Now, this is one thing that I learned really young, I am I have obsessive compulsive tendencies. And as an engineer, and even if I'm doing things around the house, my brain inherently wants to do things, right, I have a vision in my head of what something should look like and how something should be done. Like if you're doing something around the house, and I've watched a bunch 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 been like learning from, I try to get as close as I can, if it's cheap rock, I can't do it. In the software development space. There are a lot of companies and a lot of entrepreneurs who aren't technical, who are OCD, and are stuck on it needs to be perfect before you launch. And I've always kind of lived this life on the edge. It's like building software in my world, and in my opinion is simple. What's not is shipping a product. So I've always had an affinity towards shipping before I think the market and the consumer would consider it ready. You need to get people you know, involved with the product, you need to get customers to give you feedback. And if you spend three years building something that you think is perfect, and you'll launch it just to find out that nobody or their grandma is give two shits about it, then what did you do, you've done nothing but waste time and money. So look, it's not for the faint of heart. We're experiencing this at Atlas reality. But it's a proven way to get a product out the door. And you know, it can take 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 in this space. So we built it, we got out the door, we had tons of problems. The key is don't give up continuous improvement, listen to the community, test the shit out of it, fix it and continuously improve it. So there's there's several different approaches my approach, like I said, it's not for the faint of heart. It's not if Netflix would have done what we did, I think they would have gone bankrupt. But they also now they started with DVDs. So they already had a working business model. If they would have skipped the DVDs and went straight to a streaming service that crashed every 10 seconds they 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 up and I mean that's that's something that I've preached the whole entire time. Yeah, speaking of entrepreneurship between you and I, it didn't just click overnight for you. I mean, you weren't nine when you started doing some of these things, but the entrepreneurship journey to me started when you were in high school. What were some things now that you're older and you look back and reflect that you wish you would have 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 teeter totter on considering regrettable, and that's not using the money I made more wisely. You know, I love real estate like physical real estate and I see a lot of people who may not be technically inclined may not be considered overly intelligent or wealthy do extremely well with a well thought out real estate stretch investment strategy. And in the reason I say I teeter totter on that regret ability kind of component is, I love to learn, but learning can be expensive. And in the high tech space, and I'm not talking about college degrees, like if I have a hobby, and I want to get into it, I'm into it 1,000% I'm buying the tools, I'm buying whatever the hell I need. And I've always been like that, like with remote control airplanes, helicopters, like that was a hobby, I wanted to know how, as I was learning about aerodynamics, I didn't want to go buy an airplane, I didn't want to crash and die. So like, I got really deep into that. But I've spent a lot of money and you can look behind me, there's probably 50,000 That was where the video game consoles just sitting there on the shelf. Now, this is a collection, I don't play with these very often. But, you know, I would, I would have probably put a little bit more money aside to grow in parallel with what I was doing in my hyper aggressive like, I consider learning and investment. So when people like, where are your investments on my fucking investment, I don't have this massive $20 million portfolio. But I I guarantee you, if I wouldn't have spent all of that money as a child as a teenager and put it into something that would have grown, I would have been sitting on probably 20 $30 million of money. I'm not there, I'm still working, I have to basically work and you know, an exit is something I'm planning for in the next five years. But like what your money a little bit, but put put money aside, I wish I would have respected that more. Again, I don't know if it would have changed a whole lot, because I'm very happy with what I know and how I learned what I but there have been some moments in my life, I've gone through a divorce where I've looked back and said God dammit, if I would have had a nest egg, a nice nest egg, this would have been a bit easier. But I didn't. So I had to continuously grind and I didn't give up. But that's basically it. Honestly, as a young entrepreneur, I wish I would have been a little bit more smart with my money and maybe 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 smarter with my money invested more into the business, which I preach it now. Because I've made that mistake, when you make money, you have to reinvest in the business to grow it even more to get even more of a income coming in. I just, yeah, I'm the same as you, right. If I would have invested a little bit more, or if I would have started podcasting instead of last year, like 10 years ago, I think that I would be in a better place than 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 love that. But they're like when you hit those kind of like low spots like divorce moving and like all of that, you kind of look back and you reflect, but like I said, I don't regret it. You know, when people ask me like, Oh, do you have any regrets? I really don't. I'm happy with where I am. And I know what my future holds. And that's exciting.

Dustin Steffey: 38:02

Listen, man, life, life fucking happens, right? Life just happens. And there's no instruction manual. It isn't like this movie, the movie, click, where you can fast forward and see what your future is. Or you can rewind or whatever the case may be, you kind of roll with the punches. And sometimes you get knocked out like Mike Tyson used to do to people, or you get back and when you get knocked out, you get back up, or you just kind of roll with it and you figure it out. And that's kind of where we're at, right? Like entrepreneurship, isn't this cookie cutter cut and dry. Like, if you do this, you're gonna make a shit ton of money. There's a lot of different trials and tribulations that people go through, depending on the business for you. I mean, you've gone through your fair share for me, I go through my fair share and still do. I can read as many books as I want to be ahead of it. But still, I make mistakes.

Beau Button: 39:02

Yep, no. And that's you have to accept it. That's it. Like, you know, the analogy I like to use is you have to move like water. Like some people are super rigid. They live life like a giant fucking seamen 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 of myself as a very fluid person. Now I've evolved as a teenager, you know, we go through phases, but as life progressed, and as my life experiences, you know, increased and I learned a lot like, I kind of just be easy. I like to be easygoing. Now, I do have a temper. I know a lot. I hate people who are super opinionated about certain topics, but just never give up. And you know, it's what's happening right now. And there's a book that I can send you the link. I can't remember the name but like one of the core takeaways is, whatever happens to you is the best thing that can happen to you. It's the way you receive it the way you react. It's like getting in an automotive accident. One hesitates to believe that's the best thing that could happen to me today. But at the end of the day, it's going to unlock something how you receive it, if you're, I don't, again, I don't want to drive around and get hit 25 fucking times. But when that happens, instead of getting out of the car become an explosive and beating the shit out of people, you just look and say I have insurance, this is not going to stop me, I understand we make mistakes, let's move on, I'll give you my insurance. And I've kind of applied that to almost every and it unblocks you it gives your brain your your computer, your central processing unit, more free time to do shit, like learn and be creative and produce things rather than just getting caught up 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 people do not like change, I kind of love change, because the minute you stop changing is the minute you're six feet under, in my opinion, I think change is good. I think that these people that live under a rock, or don't want to do very much or just sit at home, or whatever the case may be, they're like killing themselves. There's so much of a world out there to learn things and to do things. And I don't care if you're eight, or you're 75 years old. You can you can do this, you can do something. I mean, the whole point of my podcast is for people to just, I mean, 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, you know, with the internet, you've got almost everything at your fingertips. It's accessible, you know, there's paywalls for certain things. But, you know, look, if anybody has questions about how I learned and what sources they can find me on LinkedIn, I love to talk, obviously. But no, you're absolutely 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 what really the journey to entrepreneurship is, I mean, I've had many guests on, and I've had many people describe their journey. But the biggest thing to reinforce is, maybe maybe some people can relate with you, as opposed to some of the other guests that I've had the biggest thing and the biggest theme here. And pattern with all the other guests that I'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 a roadblock, I'll work around it, you do need to there's a muscle memory that's established, like you can't just think that I'm going to start one business and be wildly successful, some people do, and that's brilliant. But where I'm at, I've gone through probably a dozen different businesses, either as a founder or as an advisor. And I've learned a lot from the failures, quite frankly, I've learned the most from those failures. And it like again, it's like if you're a musician, and you play piano, you could stop playing for 10 years, and then sit in front of a piano but your brain, your muscles, everything kind of so you kind of establish you become in tune with like, what's a good decision? What's a bad decision? But yeah, Persistence is key. You just have to be persistent and be respectful and understand that you do stand on the shoulders of giants like I cannot stand a single member LLC, a founder, who advertises himself as the chief executive officer of a fucking company, okay? It's one of those things like you can advertise it that can be your title, like the goal of a CEO is to lead, who are you leading, be humble, establish yourself, get some traction, grow your team, grow your product, and then you can start to grow into that role. It's about being humble. Honestly, there's a lot of people that just aren't humble, and I've seen them rise to the top and almost 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 business cards, I kind of mark it right? I have two that I see on the business card that are CEO. I'm like, Cool. Do you have shareholders? Do you have people that you answer to you're not a fucking CEO, okay. Your owner is your owner of a business. If you're a CEO, you have shareholders, you have stocks, you have all of that stuff, people. People are ignorant still in terminology. And I don't mean that natively. So if any of my listeners alike are going to hate on me for the comment I just made go for it. But you have to be smart about how you brand yourself. I can't say I'm the CEO of shopping, entertainment, right? We don't have shareholders. What I can say is I'm the owner of shopping, entertainment, I own shopping, entertainment. I own the business, ideal with everything that comes with respect to the business right? To be a CEO is a different kind of story. You have shareholders Are you partners or you have whatever the case may be. So I guess the one thing that I want to leave some of my listeners with and even you can reinforce it with me is the fact to understand what business is and understand really the terminology. So you don't look stupid. I don't like looking dumb. And listen, there's a lot of 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're going to go into business, at least frickin understand the different 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 for people to learn everything and speak about something that they recently learned with conviction, because you're not certain like the internet. You know, there's misinformation, you might read one definition of what this means in business, and you might read another one, and they conflict with one another. But a guaranteed way to not come across as looking like a fucking idiot, is if you don't know something, simply say, forgive my ignorance. Can you help me understand what that means? I don't know something. If I'm on a zoom call, I'm like, I don't know what that acronyms forgive an acronym means forgive my ignorance. Can you help me? Don't make some bullshit up. I've interviewed probably 2000 people for hiring in the last. And I've got four interviews today that I'm gonna be on phone calls, and the people that make shit up, especially in tech, because they're like, Oh, this guy's an interviewee, or interviewer. He doesn't know what this means I'm gonna rattle off some bullshit response. And I'm like, wow, you should have just said, I don't know, like that. The interview is over now, because that's nowhere near what this is I need honestly. But that's the sheer shot away to not come across as looking like an idiot. Just tell people you don't know. And if the person is respectable, he'll explain it to you. And now you'll know.

Dustin Steffey: 46:53

Yeah, I definitely agree. I think if you don't know something, just blatantly say, I don't know. That's it. So last thing, you obviously run your own business, you don't work for free. I mean, if you do damned dude, you've done really well working for free. If people want to kind of get involved, like how could one get involved with your business?

Beau Button: 47:20

I mean, the easiest way to get involved in what I'm doing, rather playing the game or learning about Atlas reality on any front, you know, we have investors, we have, you know, our shareholders, which are also our employees, we're hiring, you can go to if you're interested in getting into this space, we have a dedicated job hiring website, which is www dot Atlas, reality jobs.com. We have a few positions open. Now, if you want to just learn more, I said, I love to talk. Now, like you said, I don't have 50 hours a week where I can dedicate to just checking, but don't hesitate 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 them that I've been on, I will always accept those and guide you in the right direction. Just you know, be respectful of my time. And I'll be respectful of your questions and try to answer them as best I can. But that's the best way to get involved in what I'm doing. Again, my name is Bo button. There's only two of us. And one of them's my 15 year old son, and he's not on LinkedIn yet. And it's B E AU, bu TT O N on LinkedIn.

Dustin Steffey: 48:19

And bow. I want to have fun real quick. If I know there's a lot of key themes that came out of this interview, one very important one, if you had to identify just for people to kind of learn and understand you 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 if you have fear. If you have ignorance about a subject, you just have to start. You can't fail if you haven't like and that's where people I think, feel comfortable. Well, I don't have to deal with failure. If I don't start. It's like no, you have to start because you will learn a lot from those failures. But you just have to get the ball moving. And you'd be I think most people if not everybody will be pleasantly surprised how successful they can be in their own right doing if they've got a skill set or a product or service. You just need to start it be very receptive of feedback somes not going to be constructive. Hopefully, you get some constructive feedback, but don't approach it. arrogantly, you know, just write it all down, go home, read through it and try to like formulate Well, what's my next step? That's it, you just you have to start, you have to just do it, get up and do it, register your business, even if it's just getting the domain name, getting the LLC putting together your business plan. You don't need to go to a bank, you don't need to raise a bunch of money, you need to do something on your own, and there's scrappy ways to do it. And there's all kinds of resources and if anything, that's where I can probably help a lot of people the most is explaining how they can save money and not come out of pocket for building certain things to at least get their business off the ground. That would be my advice is just don't be afraid to start started. And if you fail, don't give up start something else. Do it again. Eventually it's gonna stick.

Dustin Steffey: 50:02

That's some great advice, ladies and gentlemen, again, this is Bo button. I had the distinct pleasure of interviewing him, I love him. This is very real. So Bo, thank you very much for coming on. I know time is valuable, and you have your pick of the litter and you chose to come on with us. So I appreciate that.

Beau Button: 50:21

Thank you for having me. No, this has been fun. In the last year I've done a few podcasts. And the energy here is good. Sometimes they feel very mechanical. Like I'm talking to the Chucky Cheese animatronic and well with that, but like I love where I'm not in person. And this is a new thing for me. I'm very I use my hands. I use the environment. I read people. It's hard to do that over zoom. But I can just like we evolve as species, I'm evolving to be able to do that through the screen. I didn't used to have that I didn't need to have it because I was always in front of people. But now the energy between the two of us is great. I love what you're doing and obviously helping other people become more successful in their own right is a good thing to be doing for humanity. So thank you for your contributions and like I said, don't be shy if you will have questions. I'm on LinkedIn.

Dustin Steffey: 51:04

Listen, if I were rich buddy, I would more than definitely be in person with 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 have to get together I'm sure there's a conference we'll find ourselves both attended.

Dustin Steffey: 51:18

Oh, definitely for sure. I like to be a part of a lot of things. So we will definitely thank you again all the links for bow will be in the episode description bow and I will make sure to put that together all nicely so people can easily get a hold of him. So again, thank you bow and this is a another episode of chopping wood fire