On this week’s podcast, Marcus sits down with Chris Cockrell with Third Realm Creations. We could try and explain everything Chris dips his toes in but we think you should listen to find out! (Hint, hint: he’s developing things of the future!) Tune in and listen or read on MobileAL.com, Spotify, or iTunes.
Transcript:
Chris: I'm Chris Cockrell, and I am co-founder of 3rd Realm Creations.
Marcus: Awesome dude. Well, it is great to have you on the podcast today. I am super excited about what you all are bringing to Mobile, so it's awesome to have you here.
Chris: Awesome, thanks for having me. I really appreciate it.
Marcus: Well, before we get into what the Realm is, let's talk a little bit about you. Tell us the story of Chris, where you from? Where'd you go to high school? College if you went? If you graduated, married? Any of that back story that you [crosstalk 00:00:31].
Chris: Okay, gotcha. The life story of me.
Marcus: Yes.
Chris: I grew up in a small town in Mississippi, called Mount Olive, Mississippi. Most people don't know where that is, but-
Marcus: I don't.
Chris: You wouldn't unless you stopped to take a piss stop in my hometown on the way, on South 49 or North 49. It was a small town, our claim to fame is that's where Steve McNair, the former Hall of Fame quarterback is ... that's his hometown as well. I went to, again, small town, I went to a high school there called Magee High School, and after high school, went to Millsaps college which is in Jackson Mississippi, actually played football there and had a great time there. After college, I met my wife, Lindsey, and we moved to Memphis, Tennessee and we got married and have two kids now, Luke and Blakeney, my son Luke is five, and Blakeney is three. Luke just started kindergarten on Monday, it was his first day at Mary B. Austin, so time flies man, time absolutely flies. I guess my first ... I mean, I've been working since I was 12. I grew up in a small town, so a small town means, it's child labor.
Marcus: Yeah, small town, yeah.
Chris: That was just pretty much it. 12 years old, you're out working on a farm or picking vegetables or whatever the case may be.
Marcus: Cutting grass.
Chris: Exactly, but my first real job was as a human resources representative for a long term health care company, and that's pretty much been my entire career up until we started 3rd Realm Creations.
Marcus: Well, pause there, because actually I do want ... When we talk to people on this podcast, often times we talk about the first job that they had. What I mean by that is not necessarily the child labor job, but the first job like flipping burgers or scrubbing toilets, or that kind of thing. Did you have-
Chris: I did. My first, I guess my first paycheck from a reputable source would have been Dairy Queen. I actually worked at Dairy Queen for ... I mean it was in the summer job, I guess for three summers. I did pretty much everything. I was actually assistant manager at 16 years old.
Marcus: 16 years old.
Chris: Yeah, 16 years old.
Marcus: The reason why we ask about that, because I often times find that people have lessons that they learned at a very early stage of their working life. Are there any lessons that you can remember from looking back at that? If there's something that sticks out? Like the example I always give and people are probably tired of me saying this, is that there's a proper way to mop a floor, and I've learned that working in a bagel shop, so.
Chris: That's right. I think the lessons I learned there, your job and your career are going to be what you make it. Whenever you go to work every day, like you said, if your job is to mop floors, mop them the best way that you can. There is a right way to do things and there is a wrong way to do things, and if you do the right things, typically you're rewarded for those things, especially in a professional environment. That doesn't matter if you own your own business or if you work for someone else, it doesn't matter. That's probably the biggest lesson I learned. If you make the best of your situation and the best of your opportunities, and do things the right way, things are going to pay off for you. You're going to advance, you're going to get better, you're going to have those intangible things-
Marcus: You're going to see the success then warranted.
Chris: Yeah, you're going to see the success. Exactly. You're going to have the success at the end of the road. It's all about your perspective.
Marcus: Right.
Chris: That wasn't the most glamorous job and there weren't a lot of jobs where I grew up, so I was actually lucky to get that job-
Marcus: And the fact that you made assistant manager by age 16 is saying something. I don't know how old you are, but that's not something that you typically would be handed at 16 years old, because there's a lot of responsibility that goes along with that at a fast food place.
Chris: There was. I was actually assistant manager over a lot of people that were way older than me at the time, which has its own interesting dynamics, but yeah, I think that's the biggest thing, work hard, understand that there's a right way and a wrong way to do things, do it the right way and stick to it.
Marcus: Were you a good student?
Chris: I was a good student.
Marcus: Good grades and studied hard and did well in math and science and all that stuff?
Chris: I don't know about math so much. I thought I was really good in math until I went to college. Actually I made very good grades in high school. Millsaps College is a really tough school to get into. I was very fortunate to get into that school. I played football and that's how I got-
Marcus: What position did you play?
Chris: I played middle linebacker.
Marcus: I did too.
Chris: Oh, awesome.
Marcus: Yeah, very cool. I didn't go past ... Honestly I think I stopped after my freshman year of high school, because I hurt my knee and I was like, "Man, this isn't for me," but I switched to lacrosse.
Chris: It's tough man. Oh that's ... Yeah, I wish ... I've never even ... We never had that option.
Marcus: I grew up in the Northeast, so it was more popular up there.
Chris: More common.
Marcus: Yeah.
Chris: We had no lacrosse and no soccer where I grew up. It was kind of weird. It was a very small town man, very small.
Marcus: Well, yeah it's when you have to make a choice, football wins.
Chris: Yeah.
Marcus: Now, 3rd Realm. Why don't you kind of describe to people what you're doing, because when we've had discussions in the past, what you guys are doing absolutely just kind of blows me away. I see what you're doing as the future of where things are going, so I'm super stoked about the fact that you exist here in Mobile, so go ahead and tell us a little bit about 3rd Realm.
Chris: Sure, thanks number one. The kind of "elevator speech" or us in a capsule is that we're a software and development company, and that we specialize in virtual and augmented reality content. Most of the time when we tell people that, their first question is, "What the heck is virtual and augmented reality content and how do you develop it?" We've kind of ... You're right, it's a ... We've only seen the tip of the iceberg, but we're involved in an industry that we fill will revolutionize the way that we-
Marcus: It will change everything.
Chris: It'll change everything. It will be as common place as your iPhone or you iPad.
Marcus: I'm actually having a little bit of jealousy here, because ... no, seriously. A number of years ago I went to [inaudible 00:07:07] and god, I wish I could remember the ... What was ... Robert Scoble who is a prevalent blogger out of Silicon Valley, so he was there to explain to the audience what he saw coming. I left that conference just absolutely blown away by what he was saying, that people like you are going to actually bring to the rest of the world. Not to take away from what you're saying, but I mean like seriously, it's just really exciting stuff.
Chris: It really is. When you see the utilization or I guess I should say the multitude of applications that you can do with this technology, it really starts to ... it make your mind race and then you start to get overwhelmed at all the things that you can do. You think about advertising, marketing, education, just the number of ways this can impact our every day life is, it's really endless, honestly.
Marcus: Then the lest new listener think that this is all stuff of video games, and geeks sitting in their basement nerding out. The example that Robert gave was imagine that you go into Home Depot, and you are trying to pick out cabinets for your home, and you're having a hard time visualizing what that looks like. Well, Home Depot will come out to your house, they will scan your house, they'll set up a camera, it'll take a scan and then you will go to Home Depot and you will put on a set of goggles and you'll be able to choose the different textures and finishes and stuff like that and actually experience first hand in a virtual world, what that looks like. That's virtual reality. Augmented reality would be like if you are an aircraft mechanic and you are needing to have something in your peripheral view that allows you to see what the socket size is that you need or whatever, that will be right there at your ready and your peripheral vision, and glasses, so you'll actually be able to see the real world in front of you, the engine, and you'll see the augmented world, whatever information it is that you need. These are the kinds of things that, I mean it is really we're on the [inaudible 00:09:26] of changing everything that we understand about how to interact with these spaces. Yes, video games are a large part of that right now, because it's nerds. You know what I mean?
Chris: You're right, and a lot of times, a lot of people that we approach, that's their view of augmented, or that's their view of virtual reality specifically,-
Marcus: Right.
Chris: Is video games. The fact is that 80% of the people that do what we do, are focused on video games, this low hanging fruit, right?
Marcus: Right.
Chris: You build a game, you put it out for consumer use.
Marcus: It's pretty quick.
Chris: It's pretty quick. People buy it or they don't buy it. You know pretty quickly how marketable or how well your product is based on who buys it. How we set ourselves apart is that we focus on the business application, the business use of this technology. Everything you just said is absolutely true. Actually, one of ... I think he was our first client here in Mobile, Frank [Lot 00:10:21] with Heritage Homes. He has that app-
Marcus: I know Frank.
Chris: ... we built that app for him. Or you can go and pick out your siding, your roof-
Marcus: You guys showed me that app. I didn't realize it was for Frank, but yeah, that's cool.
Chris: Yeah, it was for Frank. He was our first ... You know, it takes people that have that vision to see kind of how to utilize it, but that was one of the first applications that we did, was exactly what you just said. Pick out your paint, pick out your color, pick out your siding, pick out your door, and then you can go in and pick out your other finishes. A lot of the other industries that we worked in are gaming, healthcare, medical device, education.
Marcus: You're working at a national level now. I don't want you to say who, but you just went to New York and had some ... closed a deal.
Chris: That's right. We've actually we were in San Francisco last week and closed a deal with a fortune 100 company. We've been to ... We've been a lot, we've been to a lot of places. We've been to New York twice already, we've been to Las Angeles, San Francisco, these are the places, kind of the hot beds where this stuff is really, really happening right now and there's a big need, a big demand for it, for especially for businesses that want to engage with their consumers on a new exciting level, but also just a ... It's just a more, it's like a target missile for marketing. This is a way that you can get in front of that consumer at the point of the sale, or before they make that decision, there's a new interactive way that you can advertise to your target market that makes this a very, very valuable commodity.
Marcus: How did you guys get started? Because I mean, I didn't hear anything in your background about software development.
Chris: Yeah. You won't find any that other than me playing video games and just kind of [crosstalk 00:12:23].
Marcus: I'm guessing you're the business guy behind the company name.
Chris: I am. I do the business part, but I also come up with different ideas. One of the reasons I ... I left my job that I had, I was a healthcare executive for 12 years, and there was an opportunity that came to me and my family to either stay here in Mobile, try something new, or to move to Denver and keep doing what I've been doing. I didn't want to uproot my family, I have two small kids. We love Mobile, we love the community, we absolutely just fell in love with the place when we moved here, so I decided to take the leap and do something new, and this all kind of came to be around the same time that I met Nathaniel, and Charles and those guys through a mutual friend, actually at happy hour at Beer Garden. We sat down and we started talking about this. I've always kept up, I've always been a tech kind of-
Marcus: Yeah, plugged in.
Chris: Yeah, I've always been plugged in, not really a professional at it or anything, but I've always kept up with the technology part of the industry. I've always had my eye on virtual and augmented reality ever since Google Glass. The first kind of version of Google Glass, I saw that and when I saw that, I was like, that will change everything. That will change everything that we know about technology and how we interact with other people.
Marcus: The world.
Chris: The world, absolutely. I always kept up with it and read articles and when I saw the development of the Oculus and the basically new hardware that made it a lot easier for this to be more common place, I started to research and I found ... or when I met Nathaniel, we started discussing the business applications he was working on and he showed me a hologram that he had built on a computer, on his iPhone, I'm sorry. He pulled up his phone and he clicked the screen and a hologram stood on the table, and my first ... my mind just, it just took off. I started thinking about business cards. Business cards with holograms on them. You can stand on your business card and you can actually interact with the person you just met with. It's just a whole new level of business opportunity. We started to discuss that and we found that there was a lot of opportunities that we could pursue. We put a business plan together and we started to come up with just a handful of products that we could show for demo purposes and we just took off from then. We started that ... We opened our doors, the exchange on May 1st, 2017 and it has been drinking.
Marcus: Has it really just been that long?
Chris: It's just been that long, and it has been drinking from a fire hose, ever since the day I started.
Marcus: Wow dude, that's really cool.
Chris: Yeah. It was shocking-
Marcus: It was [inaudible 00:15:16], I hope you take that the right way, but that's just really impressive. That's like insane.
Chris: I do. Well, we tapped a vein that we're one of the only, besides Orlando, maybe a couple of companies in Nashville, and Atlanta, we're the only company in the Southeast that does what we do, so it's been, like I said, drinking out of a fire hose since the day we've been opened.
Marcus: Well, and there's probably only a handful of companies, not handful, there's probably 100 or less in the country?
Chris: Yeah, you're right. There's really, in terms of what we do, we do everything in house. We do our own video production, we do our own animation, we do our own graphics, we do all of those things. A lot of companies that do what we do, they just do the apps. They build the apps, then you have to give them content separately. We do all of that on our own. From my research, we are the only company that I can find in the country that does everything. We do everything from ... We can do commercials for you, we can shoot the commercial for you, then we can put it on a billboard for you in augmented reality. I mean, there aren't a lot of companies that do the full gamut, the full scope of what is included in the virtual and augmented reality development.
Marcus: Yeah. It's really cool. Now, I've normally asked, do you remember the first time that you made some product or something where you thought there might be something to this, but the truth is, when you've only existed really for a little over a year, this is all still very new to-
Chris: It is. It is very new. Pretty much we think all of our ideas are awesome ideas, but we found that some of the ideas are not great ideas for a myriad of reasons. Mostly its finances, I mean there are some industries that would love to take advantage of this, but the method by which they have resources to pay for this type of technology is just not available, but there are some game changers. There are some real game changers we feel like ... the one app we worked on with Nanny Connie, who is a celebrity Nanny, that lives here in Mobile, she's from Mobile, we work with them on augmenting, doing an augmented reality kind of reader guide, or reader supplement to the book that she just published through Simon & Schuster. She was on Good Morning America. We were fortunate to go up there with her to Good Morning America to promote this book. As we were building that, we were like, "Wow." The possibilities of incorporating augmented reality into books, whether it be this instructional book that the Nanny Connie book represents, just kind of teaches new parents how to be parents for the first four months of parenthood, but then you go to the fiction. When I read a book that's fiction and they reference a place I've never seen, and I automatically go to Google-
Marcus: How cool would that be.
Chris: ... so just have a logo there and just open your phone and bam, you get that reference. Or children's books. When you're reading, fill in the blank, children's book, what if that character was able to stand on that page and talk with you? That's a big idea that we've been working on and we hope to continue to develop.
Marcus: That's cool. If you were talking to someone who wanted to get started in running their own business, what's the one bit of wisdom that you would impart to them?
Chris: Be careful what you wish for. I mean, it's a big adjustment even though ... it sounds, when you say entrepreneur and you say you own your own business and all these other things, it sounds really awesome, it sounds really cool, but there's a lot of it that's not. It's not for the faint of heart.
Marcus: Nope.
Chris: One of the biggest adjustments I think that I've had to make is the value of a Saturday. I'm going to explain that to you in a second. In my old job, my old world, Saturdays were no ... everybody else was off, so even if you were ... there was nobody at the office to send you an email or to call you because everybody's off on Saturdays. There lies the value of a Saturday, like, you're off, you're disconnected from work and you really if you wanted to, you can just do whatever you want to do without worrying about it. When you're an entrepreneur, when you're owning your own business, there's no Saturday. There's no Monday, there's no Tuesday, everyday is work. Now, if you love what you're doing and you do it-
Marcus: Every minute is work.
Chris: every minute is work, but if you really are passionate and love what you do, it doesn't feel like work.
Marcus: Right.
Chris: It just feels like life.
Marcus: I mean, there are some, yes, it doesn't feel like work, but it's also ... I can't shy away from this idea that at some level, disconnecting is something that is healthy and that entrepreneur's do need to do occasionally-
Chris: Absolutely.
Marcus: ... and you need to figure out ways to do that and it's really, really hard.
Chris: It's a work, life, balance thing.
Marcus: There is no such thing.
Chris: Well, I think you can ... There is no such thing, but there are ways that you can reset your mind, like you were talking about.
Marcus: Right, so going to the beach and spending the day-
Chris: Absolutely.
Marcus: Like at the water, for me, because that's how I kind of rejuvenate myself I guess, is to just go there and just sit with my feet in the sand. That is my way, but I'm mincing words here, but the truth is, you go to the grocery store and people recognize you if you're doing things correctly.
Chris: That's right.
Marcus: Or if you go to a chamber event, you're there and you're on, right?
Chris: Yeah, that's right.
Marcus: You're always in, at least in my situation, because we put so much out. It's you're always under the microscope in a sense.
Chris: True.
Marcus: I'm not complaining because that is necessary for a business.
Chris: That's right.
Marcus: It is the fuel that drives lead generation and sales and stuff like that, but at the same time, it's nice and like this past weekend I spent Saturday and Sunday working eight hour days at the new building, and this coming Saturday and Sunday, my wife had said, "We're going to the beach," because I think she realizes that I've gotten a lot more gray hair in the last month. [inaudible 00:21:34] and this is being recorded in the past, so hopefully by the time you listen to this, I will be back and be rested.
Chris: Well, I think that what a lot of people ... It sounds really exciting to do that.
Marcus: It's sexy.
Chris: It is, it's sexy.
Marcus: It's sexy, yeah.
Chris: I think the degree to which you will last, you'll find out pretty soon, kind of the gauge I use is I feel more of my work days feels like Fridays than they do Mondays. Does that make sense?
Marcus: True. No, absolutely.
Chris: Like Mondays are typically, generally speaking-
Marcus: I look forward to Mondays.
Chris: I do too. I look forward to getting back in the office and getting [crosstalk 00:22:12].
Marcus: No slight to my family if you're listening to this. They don't listen to the podcast, but if they do listen to this in the future, it's no slight to my family, I love my family, I love my time at the house and stuff, but there's just something about ... I mean, this is like the oxygen for-
Chris: It is.
Marcus: ... an entrepreneur is to be able to work on your business and see it grow and take care of it and all that stuff.
Chris: Yeah, that kind of becomes almost like when you're excited about doing what you're doing, that's invaluable, it really is. A trick that I do is whenever I'm ... When I go to the beach and I have those moments, turn off your device-
Marcus: What?
Chris: ... leave them home.
Marcus: Sacrilege. I can't do it.
Chris: I'm telling you. My wife and I, again, this is back in my old life when I was working 10 hours a day, we went to Costa Rica for a vacation and I did not know. I didn't even check, I didn't even research it. You don't have-
Marcus: No cell service.
Chris: You have no cell service, there is no Wi-Fi,-
Marcus: No Wi-Fi.
Chris: There's nothing. I didn't know this.
Marcus: Did you have a panic attack?
Chris: I almost did. The first day, I went to the office and like, "Do you have a computer?" And [inaudible 00:23:23], no, no computer. No, they did everything by like a cell-
Marcus: Silly American.
Chris: Yeah. I was like ... I started to, I really started to-
Marcus: No, I feel you man, because yeah.-
Chris: ... but, the flip side of that, when I left, we were there for eight days. When I left, I have never felt more rejuvenated ever in my life. That's something that has always stuck with me, because I was forced to put this down and turn it off. It made me feel ... Its like a feeling that I highly recommend to anyone. Now I try to ... I can't do it eight days in a row anymore, it's just impossible, but I try to find those opportunities and those times where I can absolutely unplug.
Marcus: The interesting thing that I find is when you do get a chance to unplug, that's when the vision comes.
Chris: Absolutely. Yes.
Marcus: I have three boys, so I don't get to do it much anymore, it's weird because I actually say, I don't get to do it, but mowing the grass. Mowing our yard is a good two hour affair or something like that, because I don't have a riding mower, I'm old school, I got the old self-propelled, but it's a push mower, but spending that time just wish some music on or something along those lines, maybe listen to a podcast, those are the times when I'm not ... I don't know, there's just something in that time, but also going to the beach, it's nice because you don't have those pressures, so it's that time where sometimes I get the clarity that I need on decisions that I'm trying to make or things like that.
Chris: That's right.
Marcus: It was kind of funny, because yesterday, I had a block of time set in my schedule and it literally just said meeting and I don't think anybody here ... I'm just going to have to start doing that more, because I need those times to just go and be at a coffee shop or some place and just figure some shit out.
Chris: Absolutely.
Marcus: I know this is a ... We try to keep her somewhat clean, but at some level, you just got to figure it out. You know, I mean, sometimes that's not easy in an office where there are a lot of ... It's a good thing, questions are being asked and decisions are being made, and conversations are being had and stuff like that, but sometimes you just need an extended period of time to get away and think.
Chris: I think also the [manoosha 00:25:51], scheduling time away from ... I try to corner and isolate manoosha. Email, voicemail, those types of things that I believe, I'm a strong believer, this goes back to Franklin Covey kind of principles, like manoosha.
Marcus: I'm old school like that too.
Chris: Yeah. That manoosha will absolutely kill a business. It'll absolutely, it'll drive a person insane. If you're always answering your emails and doing those things, you don't really have time to step back, look at the big picture and start to realize the opportunities or the ideas that might be coming at you, because you're focused on something that at the end of the day, it's important, yeah, and everything is in its-
Marcus: Also, in the industry that we work in, there are very complex problems that are being worked on, and even for the staff, we're trying to look for ways that we can bring in that time where they can unpack those problems and really dive into them, because when there's a lot of little things coming your way, sometimes it's difficult to get to the point where, okay, now I know all the things that I'm dealing with and I can start to solve those problems, so we're being diligent about that. If you look to the business world, what's one person that motivates you?
Chris: One person that motivates me. Jimmy Buffett. I'm a [inaudible 00:27:24] and I as you know, people can't see on the podcast, but I wear shorts and flip-flops and usually T-shirts pretty much every day.
Marcus: Yeah, you dressed up a little bit today for us.
Chris: I did. I put on an actual button-
Marcus: It's not a white collared shirt, but it's almost.
Chris: No collars.
Marcus: Yeah, exactly.
Chris: To follow a passion relentlessly, and I don't know if you ever read his book, his plural books, but to follow his passion relentlessly for the amount of time he did and to have it pay off, and then to take that success that he had and not sit on it, but to continue to build his brand, continue to build casinos, hotels, now-
Marcus: Restaurants.
Chris: ... retirement centers.
Marcus: A brilliant idea.
Chris: Yeah. He has Margaritaville Assisted Living facilities out.
Marcus: Wow.
Chris: Restaurants, he writes books. Everything that he's been passionate about, he's just followed throughout his life. From right here in Mobile, Alabama as well.
Marcus: He could have very easily have just rested on his laurels and lived the good life on the beach with the royalties-
Chris: Royalties from Margaritaville.
Marcus: Exactly.
Chris: Yeah, because he makes ton of money from that, but I just think that his is not ... He wasn't a Steve Jobs, he wasn't Bill Gates that had this crazy technical knowledge and this genius mind, he's just passionate, that's it. He took a passion, he followed it, and he worked on that and then he took that passion and transformed that into a multi-million dollar business.
Marcus: I won't unpack this right now, but it's interesting that you talk about Margaritaville and how he's using that as his brand to go into some other things. There's probably a marketing man in this video in there somewhere, so to be continued. Are there any books, podcasts, people or organizations that have been really helpful in moving you forward in the last year?
Chris: I would say, yeah, there definitely been some people here in my building that have really helped us. Todd Greer has been-
Marcus: Don't say that.
Chris: Oh, don't say that?
Marcus: No.
Chris: I'm sorry.
Marcus: Of all people, Todd's [inaudible 00:29:38].
Chris: Do we need to hit pause on that? No, I mean, from the day we moved into the exchange, he was extraordinarily helpful. Always available, you know? It was one of those guys that no matter ... He's always got time for you, he's always got time to talk to you, he's always got time to help you out, especially for a new business like ours when we were trying to do things that no one had heard of, and how do we explain that to people. Hayley Van Antwerp and Corey James at the Innovation Portal, very helpful to us. Scott Tendall, a good friend of mine, he always opened to have lunch and tell me, being a very straight shooter, this is a stupid idea or this is a good idea, this will work, this will not work, let me tell you why.
Marcus: We all need those people in our lives.
Chris: You got to have those people, you got to have those people. I think that the Mobile community has been incredible with helping us try to find our place and giving us advice when we need it. They give you tons of advice too. Some of it you can say, "Wow, we can't do that, we don't have time to do ... we don't have time to do all the advice, but you through all the advice, because of people that are genuinely trying to help you, you find some gems, and you stick with those and they've helped us tremendously.
Marcus: That's really cool. All stellar people and it's very cool that you mentioned the people instead of ... Not to take anything away from books, podcast, or organizations, but the more I am in business, the more I understand that it's really the people that you lean on that make that difference.
Chris: Absolutely. We can get into the Franklin Covey stuff and the Stephen Covey books and all those things, and all those things are tremendously helpful, but I agree with you. I think the most important thing are the relationship with people that we met.
Marcus: What's the most important thing that you've learned about running a business?
Chris: I think that it's important to understand that the highs are never that high, and the lows are never that low. I think that's an old sales adage or something but, I heard that a long time ago and it's kind of stuck with me, but it's never meant as much to me as it does now. You celebrate the successes when you have those successes, and you celebrate them as wins, knowing that tomorrow, you may take a loss. If you can kind of stay in the middle, if you can always just stay right in the middle of being too high and too low, you'll do fine. Again, it takes a ... This is not for everyone. Running your own business is not for everyone. I find it's the people that can stay calm in a crisis and also to stay calm in the success and not say, "Oh, we're going to be billionaires," and the next day think, "Oh we're going to be poor,"-
Marcus: We're going out of business tomorrow.
Chris: That's right. Yeah, if you can just kind of live in the middle.
Marcus: Such is the life of an entrepreneur.
Chris: Exactly, because it is. It is a rollercoaster ride as you well know. It is. Every day brings new challenges, every day brings new successes, and just enjoy the ride, because you don't how long you're going to be able to do it, and just living right there in the middle.
Marcus: That's cool. Tell people where they can find out more information about what you all are doing and stuff like that.
Chris: Well, we are at the exchange, at 202 Government Street, that's where our offices are. We have our most active page is our Facebook page, we post a lot of things on Facebook and we have a website that's still under construction, it's always been under construction, because we keep changing.
Marcus: [crosstalk 00:33:22] issues.
Chris: Yeah, well we just ... Our business keeps changing, that's the thing.
Marcus: Right.
Chris: We started out as being one thing, and now we have morphed over the last year, in a handful of months into coming out with more specific things, so every time we think we're ready to finalize the website, we need to add something or we need to take something away.
Marcus: Pivot.
Chris: Yeah, that's right, pivot. Come see us at the exchange, we always have some cool toys, we're always the people with the goggles on, so you may have to knock on the door, because we may not see you, but our doors are always open and we love to show people new things and show them new toys.
Marcus: You guys have open houses as well sometimes too, which is always really fun, so.
Chris: Yeah, we do, we set up V-arcades at the exchange where you actually do get to play games, and we're always more than happy to show people the business applications that we've put together for other companies, but yeah, we do a lot of those things, where a lot of fun stuff at the exchange. It's a cool place to be and yeah, come see us.
Marcus: Well, I want to thank you again for coming on the podcast to wrap up any final thoughts or comments you'd like to share?
Chris: No, thanks for having us. We're really excited about being here in Mobile and being a part of the business community. We would love to have, for anybody listening, we would love to have more business in Mobile. It's really nice to wrack up frequent flyer miles, however, it would be nice to do some business in town and walk down the street and go to lunch at Dauphin Street or somewhere like that, so yeah, it's been a whirlwind and for anybody that's looking to do a ... to start their own business or be an entrepreneur, jump both feet in, but realize you got to swim when you jump in.
Marcus: There is no other way. Again, I'm just excited that you all exist here in Mobile, because-
Chris: Thanks, thank you very much.
Marcus: ... normally you only here about this stuff in far off places, so I know you guys are going to be successful, so I don't need to say that, but I appreciate your willingness to sit with me and share your journey as a business owner and entrepreneur, it's been great talking with you Chris.
Chris: Thanks a lot.
Marcus: Yeah.
