#44 Thomas Bouvier Rediscovering Play WithThomas Bouvier
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[00:00:00]
Thomas: It seems kinda crazy. Like, who spends all their time working on a card game? And really what comes back to is my why. As we get older, we play less and less. And that makes sense because we have responsibilities.
Thomas: We have other things we should be doing. The first thing that gets left behind is playing because it's easy to eliminate from your life. I believe, and it's not just my belief. ~It's there's, ~there's a lot of studies that show that play is extremely beneficial to your health, your wellbeing, your creativity, your success in life.
Thomas: And at a certain point in our life, we just decide we don't play anymore.
Claire: [00:01:00] Hello, everyone. Welcome back to another episode of the small town entrepreneur podcast. I got a little surprise for you. Maybe it's more of a surprise for you than me, but fun fact, I am one of eight children and I have a little brother and actually have three and one of them is on the call today. I thought it'd be really fun to have a conversation with my brother, Thomas Bouvier.
Claire: And we're going to kick it off by welcoming Thomas and letting everyone know that he has five older sisters. That's right. All one family. People always ask, is this a blended family? Nope. My parents, there's eight of us. And Thomas, you are one of eight and you have five older sisters. Number seven to the show.
Thomas: Happy to be here.
Claire: It's funny
Thomas: to be here. Actually, we
Claire: usually do this without an audience. So this is kind of fun. Thomas [00:02:00] is 100 percent my go to guy in anything tech. He's always ahead, always just a little bit ahead of me and it's fun to chat with him, but we're going to talk about you, Thomas. And first we're going to kick it off by asking how has Five older sisters influenced in any capacity, your career, your entrepreneurial decisions, your life's choices.
Claire: How has that been an impact for you?
Thomas: That's funny. I see the thing. I've never thought about that before. Usually people ask me about how that's affected me with like my dating life or something.
Claire: ~Well, you can talk about it also, ~
Thomas: but having five older sisters, It's sort of like having five cooks in the kitchen at all times, maybe.
Thomas: So ~I'm,~ I'm pretty used to getting feedback and lots of times pretty harsh feedback depending on who the sister is or depending on what they're commenting on. You also get a lot of, Like feedback's always good. ~And, and yeah, I, ~having five sisters growing up is a [00:03:00] funny, it's not a lot of other people really have five sisters.
Thomas: I haven't met anybody with five sisters. But it's, it's been,
Claire: yeah,
Thomas: all older. Yeah. I always kind of wanted to have a little sister. Cause I thought that would be fun to like, be the,~ be the, be the ~older brother in one case. No, just have a little brother. But no, I think ~just ~you just get a lot of feedback.
Thomas: I mean, from a pretty young age on pretty much anything you're doing or working on. And I think that's good. Because ~you ~the sooner you can get harsh feedback from somebody, the better. I guess maybe have a thick skin, Would be the best answer I could
Claire: give, or you question every decision you make.
Claire: Well, for the listeners yes. You know, lots of cooks, so to speak in the kitchen. But as much as I will say, Thomas is our younger brother. He plays the older brother in a lot of ways. We go to Thomas for all things to do under entrepreneurial marketing, you know, Productivity. And so I [00:04:00] think we're going to look at that and kind of dive into the Thomas Bouvier world of when you left college, you had this completely open ended world.
Claire: Why did you choose a very difficult path of entrepreneurship? Why that role?
Thomas: I mean, it sounds cliche, but like, I just didn't want to do it. I just couldn't say I couldn't, I tried to, to do everything else, but that, I worked in tech for a while after I graduated from, St. Lawrence college, actually Kingston shout out St.
Thomas: Lawrence. Great school. I liked it cause we had a co op program, but after graduating, all I wanted to do was my dream job was Silicon Valley, especially growing up in the East Coast, I guess, Kingston's not really East Coast, but on the Eastern side of Canada, you hear about Silicon Valley as like this place where everything's happening.
Thomas: You know, that's where the tech companies are. I had this image in my head that I was going to be the CMO [00:05:00] chief marketing officer of some awesome, cool tech company somewhere in San Francisco. At some point in time. And that was kind of, my North star for a while where that's all I wanted to do.
Thomas: And so my first job coming out of school was. I was actually working for this small company called Spivo, and we sold selfie sticks. And
Claire: I remember that. Yeah.
Thomas: And when I was working there, I felt really, embarrassed because selfie sticks was this, I mean, they're selfie sticks. When I look back now, and when I talk about it now.
Thomas: I learned a ton working there. It was this selfie stick that when you click a button, the camera would flip 360 degrees. It was by the fed, the founding team were these two engineers and they just love tinkering with things. So it was this insanely complicated system that they, patented and they had the whole system.
Thomas: So I learned a ton and I'm still friends with those guys. Actually, they're fantastic. Andre or Mark. And. I worked there for, I think about a year and a half or something, and then I got an opportunity to come out to [00:06:00] Vancouver the, the girl I was dating, still am dating was out here. And so I came out for a month long trip and that was six, seven years, maybe eight years ago actually.
Claire: That's what happens when you love a human and love a new location.
Thomas: Yeah. Vancouver is fantastic. And the interesting thing about Vancouver is its proximity to Silicon Valley or San Francisco. So there's, in Vancouver, there's a lot of satellite offices for all these companies I had dreamed of working for as I was in school and graduating from school.
Thomas: So then I had my first opportunity to work. So I got this job at, at a company where every quarter I'd be flying down there for a few weeks and I got to, you know, walk to work every day, I was living in unions when I would work there, I was staying at hotels in union square and I'd walk to the financial district and walk into my office.
Thomas: But then every day that I was there, I kind of hated it. And. it was [00:07:00] this flash.
Claire: Yeah,
Thomas: it sucked a lot because not just because I didn't like the job, but I didn't like anybody else's job either. So I looked at my boss and I was like, can I see myself doing her job? And I thought, Not really, that doesn't seem that fun, that doesn't, that, like, I don't like her life, and then I looked at her boss, and then her boss bought, and then I kept going all the way up, up to the CMO position, which was like, this coveted role that I always thought I wanted, and I didn't want his job, either.
Thomas: And so that was a real, pardon my French, but, yeah, kind of a shitty moment, because it's like, What do I do now? Cause here I am, I've achieved the thing that I thought that was my North star, or I thought I was on the path to doing that thing. And now I realized that wasn't for me. And then I thought maybe it's the company.
Thomas: And so then I jumped around, I worked at. Three different tech companies, same thing at all of them. And then I even tried working for a [00:08:00] moving company. That was the last job I had before. So it was a moving franchise. I
Claire: did not know this. So this is just as exciting for me, maybe as you.
Thomas: Yeah. There's a moving franchise that had franchises all across the United States and Canada.
Thomas: I was working for head office and I thought, Oh, maybe if I have from Kingston, Claire and I grew up in a blue collar area. Where we worked our summer jobs are a lot of like working on farms or landscaping, you know, working at local markets, that kind of thing.
Claire: Until you get fired.
Thomas: Yeah, until you get fired.
Claire: Another story, another time.
Thomas: And so I thought maybe if I work At a company like that where I'm on the tech side, but I'm mostly working with a different group of people, not just like your Silicon Valley VCs, that might be a little bit more in my speed. I didn't love that either. So through trial and error, I realized the only thing I really enjoyed doing was working for myself, working on products, making [00:09:00] things that I dreamed up in my, my own home.
Thomas: And then I. Could see through from ideation all the way to fulfilling whatever that product was. So that's a long way of saying I was a bad employee and I had no other options.
Claire: Well, you know what I think for. The listeners and, you know, everyone can give you all the rule book, like, don't do this, try this, but really at the end of the day, as you know, try as many things as possible, fail fast, get out of there, move on.
Claire: You did that. Now, before we jump to what you're doing right now, which is super cool. And I'm excited to dive deep into that. there was the next transition. The hype worlds of, you know, I know you were working in not to full details, but you were working both in the crowdsourcing space and then in the web three space, do you want to comment on, we moved from being an employee to be [00:10:00] kind of entrepreneurial, but you're still on what we call web two, working with other third parties and leveraging your skill sets to build your own products, services, or buy them.
Claire: Yeah.
Thomas: I guess the first thing was I tried making a YouTube channel when I was still working at these companies and which actually ties closer to what I'm doing now than what I did next. But so I started with little things here, like little weekend projects where it's like, Oh, I'm gonna make a video about doing something I've never done before.
Thomas: So I made a series of videos. It's called adult recess, where I would just go and do the things that I always wanted to do as a kid, because as a kid, when you ask someone, what's your favorite subject, 90 percent of them will say recess. And then if you tell them you can't say recess, they'll say gym or they'll say art class, they'll say anything, but like math, science, or history or whatever.
Thomas: And so I kind of was like, well, I'm not feeling super fulfilled in my work. I'm going to go and do something else for the first time. And, and I'm going to hold myself [00:11:00] accountable by making it into a YouTube channel series. The videos are not very good. That didn't matter. The whole point was just making them and holding myself accountable to doing something I hadn't done before.
Thomas: And that was really fun. I really liked doing that. But that, that I kind of saw as my first foray into entrepreneurship is the first time I did something, put it out into the world there was no financial incentive to do it. I mean, I made no money off it. I continue to make no money off that. but it was the first time publishing something.
Thomas: That wasn't within the confines of my job. what that ended up turning into though, was why I quit my final job, which was at that moving company. I was working with a friend of mine, Oscar on this project called ology and ology was all based around this idea of one day you're going to die.
Thomas: Oscar and I bonded over, I was doing this adult recess project. Oscar really came from Kickstarter background.
Thomas: He's raised millions of dollars on Kickstarter doing product design. I've learned pretty much everything I know about product design and [00:12:00] manufacturing from Oscar. And, pretty much what I was bringing to the table was the fact that I was willing to do random stuff and go along with whatever we were going to do.
Thomas: I'm just being open minded was my main unique value proposition, really. And so I learned a ton from that experience. And really what I was focused on is this element of play. And then what Oscar was most focused on was this, this theory of like. Not theory, but this thought of like, one day you're going to die and use that as a daily reminder.
Thomas: Sort of this memento mori. One day you're going to die sort of ideas. And that's, that's something that's actually really stayed with me even till today, constantly think about that. I have one of the posters that we've made right there and it shows a hundred year life. in weeks. So each circle is one week of your life. That's if you live 100 years, the average American lives to be about 78. So you probably won't get that full 100.
Thomas: And it's just a good reminder to be doing what you want to be doing.
Thomas: it's just a good reminder. And that's really like that [00:13:00] idea of like one day you're going to die sometimes for a lot of people, what they need to, to work on something that they might think is embarrassing or is below them, or to quit the job that they gives them status or.
Thomas: Or allows them to, to live a, a life that might be above their means or whatever it happens to be. But constantly being aware of the fact that you're not going to be here forever is a pretty good reminder that you may as well just do the thing you want to do now because there's not going to be a later.
Thomas: But yeah, that, that was the first project that we did after that. We launched a Kickstarter. It was pretty good. Ultimately we, decided that we were, better off working on our own individual projects. But it was really fun while we were doing it. And now we're, Oscar's continued to create these fantastic products that I think he's releasing a massage tool in the next couple of weeks that looks really cool.
Thomas: So check Kickstarter uh, origin design company.
Claire: Okay.
Thomas: But yeah, I've done a lot of random things. Since then [00:14:00] I've designed a journal for folks with ADHD. You mentioned the web three thing. I'd spent two years, like most of my day working on web three products.
Thomas: So trying to make genuinely useful products within web three. I think most people, their idea of Web3 or crypto is kind of around this idea of like the 99 percent of it that is gambling or scams or some other.
Claire: Useless NFTs.
Thomas: Nefarious or yeah, or like just useless crap. And I was really trying to build things that I found had a lot of value and a lot of use.
Thomas: I think where I come in is too early. And I heard Jeff Bezos talk about this on Lex Friedman's podcast, where he benefited a ton from the infrastructure that came before him. So the internet as an infrastructure, Amazon doesn't exist without the internet, Amazon doesn't exist without.
Thomas: The original, like the first iteration of Amazon [00:15:00] didn't exist without the postal service. It didn't exist without the interstate highway system. So all the, there's all this infrastructure that went into making Amazon to, you know, one of the world's most valuable companies. And the reason he was talking about that, he's talking about how now with Blue Origin, they're building the infrastructure in space.
Thomas: And that sounds crazy, but what he's doing. I mean, He has the money to do it. So whatever, go crazy. My thought on that is that within crypto web3, blockchain has been around for a long time, but the infrastructure really hasn't been built. To be really useful for a lot of people and really people are going to continue to think of crypto and blockchain and web3 is mostly a scam and mostly stupid stuff.
Thomas: Until that infrastructure is really built out and then you start to see people build really, really, really useful and cool and creative things on top of that infrastructure. Who knows how long that'll be, but I'm really [00:16:00] optimistic about it. And yeah, in the meantime, you just kind of have to deal with the fact that there's going to be a lot of crap and a lot of stuff that is not good.
Claire: Well, this is the conversation we have. We think about the early iterations of the internet. Everything went, if someone said, Oh, I, I read it on the internet, you'd laugh. And I know my dear Thomas, this is where I age my sibling ranking here, but I am the second oldest, he's the seventh and We didn't have internet, but when it did come out, it was this hilarity of where you're like, no, you got it from a book.
Claire: The internet's just a big lie. So I think kind of that's, I feel like I'm seeing the second, you know, iteration of that, but now web three where, you know, it still has that, like you said, that scammy, you know, it's not super legitimate yet until it is, like you said, the infrastructure strengthened. So that's really cool.
Claire: So here we are. We've gone down this path, Thomas, this is [00:17:00] like, first of all, you can reiterate for our audience, but I think everyone listening, and I remember hearing someone say, or Shania Twain said, Oh, your overnight success. And she said, wait, you mean my 10 year overnight success.
Claire: And I think I've said this before, but I, it really resonates because it's not linear. Like, you don't know when that moment. If you're keep sticking to it, you keep hustling, what's keeping you motivated to keep failing?
Thomas: No, it's a good question. I mean, one of them is the thing I said at the very beginning is. I don't have any other options, you know, I don't really see working anywhere as an option anymore. So there's that. And then there's just if you really believe in whatever it is you're making, Simon Sinek has his TED talk on start with why he I mean, he wrote a whole book about it.
Thomas: And if you have a why that you're doing something, you'll, do unrealistic things are on [00:18:00] kind of. It doesn't make sense to anybody else why you're doing it or why you continue to do it. And that's really it is. you just have a reason why you're doing it. And I mean, you, that's really, that's really all it is.
Thomas: Like it's not any more complicated than that is. I just believe in what I'm doing.
Thomas: And I'll talk about what I'm doing in a moment.
Claire: I like this hype though. We're really leaving the audience to not get excited.
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Thomas: Yeah. So I'll just get right into it. -I make games, and I'm focused on one game in particular right
Claire: now.
Claire: We gotta clarify for the audience, because we're thinking video games.
Thomas: Could be anything. It is board games. It's more specifically, it's a card game. The game is called Alphabeto. I actually have a box here right now of the first version of it. So, The version that you'll Alphabeto. So ~this'll be,~ this is already being, in the process of being phased out making a new version of the game that will be getting released in the next few months here.
Thomas: That's really what I'm spending most of my time doing. And, yeah, it seems kinda crazy. Like, who spends all their time working on a card game?
Claire: [00:20:00] Yeah. Why? I do. I do. I do want to know why ~I haven't. Yeah. But~ we haven't gone there. I will just sneak in a little like I'm all about hyping people and being really honest and I bring people on that I do believe in Thomas, you are my brother, but I believe in you.
Claire: But I can say I have played so many board games or card games and you know what kills me is the bloody instructions. When someone sits down and they're going, I'm off and yes, ADHD. But ~I, ~I find. A lot of people are like that. I feel like they just to know, but this board game within 15 seconds, not even I understood it.
Claire: And you and me played on a rooftop in Vancouver for three hours. And I like pulled away. It was awesome. So there's the little like shout out to the game because it's simple, but it's good. And you can take it anywhere. So. Yeah. ~Why, ~why a board game after all the tech, all the resources, all the knowledge, everything you've worked in Silicon Valley startups to building in web [00:21:00] three.
Claire: And now here we are, sorry, but I call it just, you know, a simple little rinky dink Transcribed card game.
Thomas: Super simple. Yeah. And really what comes back to is my why, ~which is~ that I've been tinkering with as long as I've been working. Is ~this,~ this idea of play as we get older, we play less and less. And that makes sense because we have responsibilities.
Thomas: We have other things we should be doing. The first thing that gets left behind is playing because it's easy to eliminate from your life. I believe, and it's not just my belief. ~It's there's, ~there's a lot of studies that show that play is extremely beneficial to your health, your wellbeing, your creativity, your success in life.
Thomas: Your ability to, ~to, to change. ~ Perform at your highest level. And at a certain point in our life, we just decide we don't play anymore. And~ I,~ it's funny, ~I,~ during this project, I've thought a lot about [00:22:00] when I stopped playing and I can pinpoint the first time I stopped playing. ~And that's,~ it was about ~a week and a half,~ a week to a week and a half before my ninth birthday.
Claire: Oh, it was,
Thomas: it's not that I stopped playing. It's just the first time I made a decision. That I wasn't going to play.
Claire: Oh, okay. I thought you meant just like you never. No. Okay.
Thomas: I definitely played after that. But it was the first time I thought, Oh, maybe I'm not going to play. And here's what happened. Someone came to me, one of our siblings came and said, Hey, what do you want for your birthday?
Thomas: And I thought about it for a moment. And my 10th birthday ~in our, ~in the Bouvier household was an important birthday. It was kind of like ~a,~ a coming of age moment for some reason you got to have like a pocket knife and a slingshot and a bow and arrow. I was going to say, should
Claire: we share that?
Thomas: ~It was like, ~it was like a weapons birthday or something like that.
Thomas: Yeah, I grew up in the
Claire: country. You got to whittle on wood and not about killing. It was literally, You could whittle. Yeah. In the backyard. ~Yeah. I don't, I truly, that's another discussion. We won't dive into family. ~
Thomas: ~Yeah. I mean, it was, it was, it was, but~ I think what that birthday [00:23:00] kind of represented was, Oh, we're going to trust you now with these tools that are dangerous.
Thomas: And I thought of like my ninth birthday as like, Oh, ~I need to be,~ I need to become this new person by the time my 10th birthday comes around. And so I said, I want tools. I want a crescent wrench. I want screwdrivers. All this stuff. And I was like, no toys for me this year. ~I don't,~ I shouldn't have toys. I still got toys.
Thomas: ~And I,~ for that birthday, I think I may have gotten a wrench or something. ~Like a,~ like a adjustable crescent wrench or something from somebody. Probably. For them as a joke. But I remember looking at being like, nice, like, okay, sick. I have like, that's my first tool in my tool belt kind of thing. What's really interesting about it is like, you keep doing those little things throughout your life.
Thomas: I remember in grade seven our older, my oldest sister, your younger sister had a birthday party. ~And~ she's only one year older than me. So the kids at her birthday ~were,~ we're all there and I [00:24:00] knew them. And I was like, I'm going to race you back to the house. We were like back in the fields or something.
Thomas: And they're like, Oh.~ We don't, ~we don't do that. ~You're ~when you're in grade eight, you don't do races like that anymore. And I remember, ~I remember ~thinking like, Oh man, I'm so glad they told me ~I would have, ~I would have been racing people all the time and I wanted to. And so there's ~like those, there's ~these little things that happen over time that stop you from playing.
Thomas: And it's so sad, like. But like, because I still,
Claire: I still raise people
Thomas: totally. I mean,~ there's, there's,~ I can't remember ~who,~ who was that was talking about this, but I think it's like 80 percent of people after the age of 30, never sprint again in their life, like a flat out sprint. That's a crazy fact.
Claire: So I don't know where you got that, but I'm now very curious and I'm going to start asking people now.
Claire: I'm going to ask them opening up the podcast. When was the last time you sprinted? I'll be yeah. Okay.
Thomas: You're gonna ask them when's the last time you were in a treehouse? When's the last time you jump like ~skipping, like ~use the skipping rope or [00:25:00] outside of like~ a,~ a hit exercise class, you know, ~there's,~ there's all these things that you just stop doing at some point in time.
Thomas: But I can tell you, like, most people could tell you the last time they,~ you know,~ did something responsible last time they went grocery shopping the last time they made a meal, you know, ~all these,~ all these things that you do start doing. And the reality is there's just, there's less and less. Ways to play as you get older because we don't have tools to play when you're a kid.
Thomas: Even if you ask for tools for your birthday, you still get toys because that's just what you give nine year olds because ~that's,~ those are the products that are available to nine year olds. I think board games and card games specifically are one of the last acceptable things as you get older ~as a,~ as a tool to give somebody to play.
Thomas: And granted, most of the people that have bought these and will. Probably will buy this alpha game. Alphabeto are still probably going to be kids in that age range, but ideally some adults will be playing with them and they'll get some of that, ~some of that~ benefit. And so really what Alphabeto is, it's a tool [00:26:00] for play.
Thomas: You know, when you're a kid, you've got a playground that you can just go and there's already kids there. ~And, ~and so ~that,~ that comes to the second point of like, why I made alphabet so you can learn so quickly when a kid goes to a playground, they don't sit there reading a bunch of rules on how to play tag or how to play all these games.
Thomas: ~They can. ~In fact, even in games that there's more nuance to them one kid can just look at what the other kids are doing. And jump right into the game without really having been told too much. They basically just have to be told who's it right now. Who's the bad guy, who the good guys, who's on my team, who's on the other team.
Thomas: And then ~they're good.~ They're good to go. And that's really what I wanted to get across with Alphabeto. So Alphabeto, the way it works is dead simple. ~We'll,~ we'll learn it right now.~ Can you think of a,~
Thomas: okay, here's a card. Okay. I don't know if you can read it.
Claire: A vegetable. Yep.
Thomas: It starts with the letter A.
Claire: Asparagus.
Thomas: Asparagus. Avocado. Artichoke. ~There's a, ~there's a few of them, right? Oh,
Claire: wow. [00:27:00] Okay. ~I, I,~ I just, asparagus came to me, but I, I love this. It's
Thomas: interesting because avocado ~was avocado~ and artichoke were the ones that came to me.
Thomas: So this is, it is funny the way people's brains work differently. I always find that interesting. But that's, ~That's~ the game. So I'm holding the game up right now if you're just listening to the audio version. So it comes with three decks of cards. There's the ~red card, there's ~letter cards, which is just 60 letter cards.
Thomas: They're A through Z. And then you've got two decks of category cards. And those categories could be a vegetable. It could be things that are soft. It could be pasta shapes, ice cream flavors things in this room, things you take camping. ~You know, all,~ all kinds of different categories and topics for you to,~ to, to ~riff off of
Claire: it.
Claire: Get your heart rate up. I will say that because you are like, Oh my gosh,~ it's,~ I remember in school, like things that rhyme with this, like, I don't care how old you are.
Thomas: Yeah.
Claire: Games are fine. Can I jump in quickly?
Thomas: Yeah.
Claire: Okay. So I think this is really cool because I just don't want us to forget about this important part was the important of play.
Claire: I think we can all agree, but [00:28:00] again, it's never a sense of urgency because the repercussions take a lot longer to kick in, which I want to address is like, what are some of those repercussions and what are the positives? What do we see as benefits? Like, how does it come across something I think is really interesting.
Claire: And I know this because you're my brother and I've, we've talked about this, but for the listeners, I think it's really important to notice that Because the game is so simple, it allows someone, like you said, to have a lot of interpretation to it and And make it malleable based on the time of day, who's playing it, how many is involved.
Claire: And I think our nieces and nephews were all playing and you were watching them playing. Can you comment on how that was like interesting because again, part of building this, like any prototype, ~it's,~ it's testing and getting feedback.
Thomas: Yeah. ~So yeah, again, this,~ the game that I just showed you is prototype number.
Thomas: Probably 18 or 19 at this point. Then [00:29:00] the next one is probably going to be the final one for the first classic version, but knowing me, I'll probably make 30 more versions of it. Yeah. Like you said,~ the,~ the play testing and the prototyping is the most important part about designing a board game or a card game, and it's really interesting.
Thomas: ~One of the,~ one of the things I really wanted to do was make sure that. Really anybody could play this game. And so you can scale alphabet or down to kids that are just learning to read. So however, three to four years old, and you can play with just the letter cards. And so you can hold up the letter a and say, can you think of any word that starts with the letter a?
Thomas: And then a kid will sit there
Claire: thinking,
Thomas: yeah, or what letter this is, you know, so they might say apple. And then you're like, great. You hold up the letter B and they're like, hell yeah, I know how this goes, banana. Then you hold up the letter C and they're like, oh dear, I don't know any fruits that are, you know, yeah, exactly.
Thomas: So they may say carrot. Carrot. And that works really [00:30:00] well for kids about 3, 4 to 6, 7 ish. And then 6, 7 to 9 ish, you can then scale up a little further and use just the category card. So it's a little bit more difficult, not the, I guess, the most difficult version. And you hold up a category and you say, can you think of any ice cream flavor?
Thomas: Can you think of anything that's red? Can you think of, you know, any vegetable? And then ~they,~ they play that way. ~And then, ~and then once they are playing the way that the game was initially designed to be played, which is a category. That starts with a particular letter, then you can play that way as well.
Thomas: And like you said, the game can be adapted to play in a lot of different ways. So there's actually a site that~ I've,~ I've been making, it's called more ways to play. And it's right now, I think there's 11 different ways that you can use the deck of cards to play lots of different games. So if you're more of a visual person, you can kind of play this sort of like [00:31:00] Pictionary.
Thomas: Alphabeto hybrid, where you can go off into teams and you flip up one category card and one letter card. So ~you might,~ it might be, let's we'll just go with the ice cream flavors thing, ice cream flavors that start with the letter M. And so now you might have two, three, four or five teams or whatever. And the artist, we'll call them, on each team is drawing whatever they're thinking about.
Thomas: And the goal is to try and think of whatever word they're drawing before any of the other teams do. And you can play it where it's whoever gets the most or whoever does it first, whatever. That's a really fun way of playing. And ~then you can,~ then you can mix that out for like a charade style. Where instead of being a drawer, you're acting out whatever it happens to be.
Claire: So on the box, I'm jumping in on the box. You know how it says best for three plus or 10 plus, are you writing like zero to 1000 years of age?
Thomas: Yeah, I mean, I should do that. ~The issue,~ the only issue with doing [00:32:00] that is
Claire: categories for selling what
Thomas: you can get into trouble with if you have products that are not made for kids.
Thomas: So, because as soon as you started saying, Oh, a three year old can use this and you put it on the packaging. Now you're running into an issue of like, Oh, well you need special certification to say that. Cause then they have to test the dyes, they have to test the materials, they have to test all these things.
Claire: Wow. I did not know that, but that is really amazing. Okay. You're sharing all this information. What if, let's say, Jeff Bezos, hey Jeff, listening in on this, what if he tomorrow wants to, like, just rip your idea, because I know this took a lot of time to come to something so simple but powerful, is that the reality?
Thomas: Yeah, I mean, that's true of anything really ~I, I personally, ~I used to be very protective over ideas and products or whatnot, but it's so hard to make products. It's so hard to make things [00:33:00] that the, like, ~if you're,~ if you're listening to the same thing, you like~ you're being, you're,~ you're protective over your idea or you're like getting people to sign NDAs, unless you have like the cure to cancer or some like highly, highly specialized.
Thomas: Yeah. Thing and there, or like this really specific software that does something incredibly specific. It just doesn't matter that much your idea a, if it's a good idea, it's probably already been done by somebody. I mean, the concept of. Think of a category and a word that fits the category that starts with a specific letter.
Thomas: You could say categories did that ages ago, but they haven't really iterated on that original idea at all. ~They, you know,~ and so this is really just like a card. ~You could, ~you could call this categories with more steps or categories in a box, but the card game version of categories is kind of the way ~I,~ I pitch it to people cause they know what categories are.
Thomas: And then, ~and then you can,~ it makes it a lot easier. So it's like, Scattergories could be watching this and be thinking, Oh, we could have done that. You know? And it's like, I'm really [00:34:00] just iterating on somebody else's idea. ~And that's a lot like, yeah, like I'm,~ if somebody else wants to do the exact same thing, go crazy.
Thomas: Good luck. But
Claire: I like that. And I think that's where I was kind of hoping you would say, because you talked about This is a thing, why people don't create a lot of products. ~Can we,~ I know we're jumping around. This is us, but can we go back a bit ~and,~ and talk about though, like, yeah, staying motivated because~ you,~ I think you've really determined your why, and that's powerful.
Claire: And I, now after this, I'm going to think about, okay, what am I going to do to play today? Cause I know there's psychological, tons of psychological benefits and we'll look at. But with product packaging and the manufacturing side. What are the biggest things that you've taken away knowing that there's just so much that most people don't know about because we don't go through that journey?
Claire: What are the things that you really had to do that you've been really powerful lessons that you've learned in the manufacturing space?
Thomas: I have a simple one and it's [00:35:00] simplify.~ You,~ it's easy to get caught up in your first idea and think, ~No, that's what I,~ it needs to have all this stuff. The reality is it probably doesn't.
Thomas: You probably only have, if you think your thing's a good idea, there's probably only one part of it. That's a good idea. And the rest of it is just extra. So it's like, you have to constantly keep thinking like, okay, what else can I take away without removing the soul of whatever the product is? And you can convince yourself you need all this extra stuff or this, these extra like angles to it.
Thomas: You're a going to make it really difficult to manufacture that thing. And B you're going to make it really difficult to sell that thing. Cause you're going to be selling it and trying to talk about all the different angles to it. You're like, Oh, and it does this and it does that. And it does this other thing.
Thomas: An interesting story about that is when James Dyson first came up with the Dyson vacuum cleaner. It also made a really good [00:36:00] dry cleaning tool, but he never pitched it.~ He never dry. He never pitched it~ as that because. People can't handle more than one big idea at a time. And that is literally a quote from David Olivier is people can't handle more than one great idea at a time.
Thomas: And that's an important thing to remember is just focus on one idea and just hammer that thing home because people, especially nowadays ~we have, we're, ~we're getting exposed to so much stuff all the time that if you do have a good idea, just focus on that. Just don't think about any of the other stuff because A, you're probably just going to be hurting yourself.
Thomas: And then to go back to the manufacturing side of things of like how difficult it actually is to manufacture something, ~every do~ every little change you make is exponentially more difficult
Claire: and more expensive.
Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Which translates into expensive. And so if you're going to manufacture your first thing.
Thomas: And you've never manufactured anything before. Manufacture something [00:37:00] that already exists.
Claire: Yeah.
Thomas: That's why my first product was a journal. Meaning that there's a
Claire: mold or something. They have the product line. Someone else has done the molds. And you're just leveraging. You're almost decorating an existing product.
Thomas: Essentially, yeah. And when you realize how difficult that is. ~And how, that ~even though that is dead simple. It's still not gonna be right. It's still not gonna go the way you think it's gonna go. The first product I ever manufactured on my own, without anybody's help, was a journal, and it still was not the right product.
Thomas: Thing like it still had issues with it. Like I wanted all the pages to be perforated and the perforations on the first version were not deep enough. So I paid for the perforations.~ It,~ the pages didn't rip out and the next version. It was perforated too much. And so the pages came right out. And so like,
Claire: yeah, it was just a little, yeah.
Claire: We don't think of little things like that.
Thomas: And that's really frustrating as a user or [00:38:00] choosing paper like the cardstock thickness. I went with 70 grams per square meter, probably should have gone for 75, which is like, or 80, because you can't really get 75, but I should have gone probably for 80.
Thomas: But I went with 70 because that's what the manufacturer kind of recommended. But then I didn't realize that people that I was selling to were using fountain pens and fountain pens use a lot more ink. And so you have more bleed through. So there's like, even something as simple as just a journal can then all of a sudden have these like degrees of, ~of ~complications or complexities that you end up, yeah, like making something that people don't want.
Thomas: I spent a ton of time making a journal that. I spent so much time on the look and the feel of the journal, ~how it was like a, it was a, it was a, ~it has like this fabric outer shell and a deboss logo and all this stuff. So it looks really cool. But I put all of the good content every 14 pages. ~So with,~ so like 80 percent of the book or 85 percent of the journal is really just blank [00:39:00] pages.
Thomas: And then all the content that really beneficial helpful content is on like only like every 14 pages where I should have just every page should have had one piece, one thing to focus on one specific thing ~for that ~for that day. ~So you really,~ again, to go back to the beginning, simplify, right? Just remove everything ~you ~You think you need?
Thomas: Like, it'll be more complicated. Oh, it's gonna be way more complicated than you think. Right. That's really
Claire: interesting. And even just~ the~ talking about the journal, 'cause those are the details. People have no idea when they purchase something at the store. They don't know the iterations and behind the scenes and ~it's.~
Claire: It's really interesting because I'm going to share with the audience. ~I've had this,~ maybe this is a Bouvier trait, but you know, trying lots of things. And I have with my ADHD, my personality is I have a really hard time staying motivated if I can't ship something immediate, the immediacy of rewards.
Claire: For me need to happen. And it's as simple as [00:40:00] we're doing this episode. Well, I know. It's going to be packaged and shipped out into the world within a couple of weeks. I can handle that. I have a really tough time and that's where I learned, you know, even being a high school teacher, I would spend. Three, four months with students and they didn't write their exam to the way at the end.
Claire: And even that, ~that wasn't,~ I wanted to see successes from them faster.~ I, I,~ and maybe that's something I need to work on. But I recognize where I thrive is a little bit of spontaneity and shipping the product service, whatever I'm doing. This is why this model of podcasting, I love talking to people. I love getting, as I'm learning about this, I get to ship it and share it with the world.
Claire: Thomas because I'm always inspired by people that can sit on these slow sail cycles and, you know, iteration 10, like~ I would.~ I would lose it. I would stop. Like, how do you keep building? And I know this as you go back to your why, and I get that. Has there been any point where you've recognized the sweet spot for [00:41:00] you?
Claire: Like, where's the reward or where's the motivation kicking in when you're slowly building something and it comes back to you and you're waiting, like, what are you doing in the interim? How, how do you manage that from a mindset perspective?
Thomas: Yeah, that's a good question. Cause ~I. ~This is something it's a learned behavior for me.
Thomas: ~It's definitely not, it's, it's,~ it's definitely learned because, ~but~ it's learned by force almost. And I guess you could say it's like, burn the boats. So for me, I'll just say, okay, this is what I'm doing. And I make it impossible to do anything else. So, I make sure that everything in my life relies on me completing that thing.
Thomas: ~And so, I'm, I'm,~ I'm motivated by fear, I think. Which sounds kind of crazy, but like,
Claire: This reminds me not to go back, but I think there's a lot of studies, even your godfather early introduced that into our family, where scaring yourself, your memory increases.
Thomas: Yeah. ~I mean, there's,~ I can't remember~ what, who, who this, who group, ~what [00:42:00] group of people is, but I think it's like ~an,~ a Nordic country.
Thomas: One of the things they would do is when they were teaching the kids really important lessons, especially like safety or like life saving lessons, they would teach them the lesson and then immediately throw them in an ice cold lake or an ice cold river and the adrenaline spike. That they would have, they would learn super, super quickly, which is like, obviously like that sounds crazy.
Thomas: I should look that up and find out exactly who that was. Cause I remember again, a lot of my facts and figures come from podcasts. I realized, so take all this with a grain of salt, but~ the~ going back to like how I think about it is I have my why, which is nicely packaged for the world version of how I focus on things and how I get things done, which is true, but there's the inverse side of like a sort of like the why not, I guess.
Thomas: And [00:43:00] there's always things that you can be doing instead. I, I feel the same way as you, Claire's there's all the time I have other ideas of like, Oh man, that would be so sick. Like that's such a good idea. I should drop everything and work on that. ~But ~but if you've already made your whole life dependent on that one thing, it's really hard to then work on something else and you make
Claire: it dependent though.
Claire: That's what I'm at. But that's what I'm curious. I'm curious.
Thomas: You create financial incentives for it. You make it. So it's like, okay, I have to make my rent by doing this thing. Or I have to,
Claire: or just tell people, or
Thomas: just tell people, say, Hey, I'm doing this thing. Like ~I'm,~ I'm in the process of doing that right now by telling everyone that listens to your podcast, that I make games, I'm making alphabeto.
Thomas: And it's funny how little people remember about you in the future. They'll remember one or two things. [00:44:00] And so probably the people that listen to this, the only thing they'll remember is that, Oh, Claire's brother was on the podcast and he's the guy that makes games. And so if now I've branded myself as this person that does this thing.
Thomas: ~It ~every time I meet somebody that only knows me from this to be like, Oh, you're the guy that makes games. So like further reinforce that idea of who I am and what I do. And so, ~so then~ it makes it even more painful to be like, actually, I don't do that. ~I'm the guy,~ I'm the guy that does this other thing.
Thomas: And that's super uncomfortable. Well, I'm going to tell people that. The reason
Claire: why I'm laughing, ~I've,~ I've kind of done that. That's where I've recognized. ~I don't want to like,~ As you get older and you get really invested, I always write down like my focus for this year is this one thing because I don't want to be the person was like, funny story changed my bio again.
Claire: And I'm now working in blank. Yeah.
Thomas: Yeah. I, I mean,
Claire: I like that you really pigeonhole [00:45:00] yourself in a good way.
Thomas: Yeah. And so it's like the fear of, you know, embarrassment is a good one. Like that's another way you can, I guess, burn the boats in a sense. And at the beginning of the year, my partner, Andrea and I, we have a meeting where we talk about what we're going to do that year, what our goals are, what our focuses are.
Thomas: And one of the things that we did this year was what's the theme for your year. ~And And,~ and you talked about that. I remember you talking about that. And so my theme for this year is just commitment. And so it says anything I've been holding off on committing to, whether it's business, whatever it is, it's like, if I say I'm going to do something, I'm going to go all in on that thing.
Thomas: And so it really makes you think twice about like, do I really want to do this thing? Cause if I do this thing, I have to go all in on this thing. ~And so I, yeah, it, it's everything. Right down to, like,~ I took up running this year. ~I,~ I don't like running, but
Claire: also we're, we're not good runners. We're not good runners.
Claire: Why are you running
Thomas: running? Okay. Because it's difficult.~ , I,~ I'm doing it [00:46:00] because it's difficult and because it's so easy to do, it's so easy to do quickly. ~It's not,~ it's not easy to run. It's easy to just walk outside and start running. Yeah.
Claire: Low barrier, low entrance, low barrier, low entrance barrier. Yeah.
Thomas: ~So there's that.~ And then ~the other,~ the other part of it is that~ I'm doing, I~ had my side sort of fun thing that I do for myself is I love reading biographies of the world's greatest founders and
Claire: great podcast founders.
Thomas: Exactly. And it's all started because of the founder's podcast, David Senra.
Thomas: If you haven't listened to that podcast, go and listen to just scroll down until you find a company ~that you're,~ you've heard of, and you potentially could be interested in the most recent one I was reading and listened to with Sam Walton. So the founding ~of, ~of Walmart, and I love reading about these founders.
Thomas: And what I notice is. ~So, like,~ so many of them have like run first off there, a lot of them are runners for some reason, ~or,~ or they just ~do, they~ have ~a~ an exercise that they do very regularly. And so they get out of the house, ~they,~ they [00:47:00] exercise regularly and like a
Claire: uniform, Steve jobs uniform. That's how I think about exercise.
Claire: Just do it.
Thomas: Yeah. You just get out and do it. So I was like, okay, I'm just going to do it for this year. At least. So I went out and bought running shoes and actually, thanks to Kevin. Your husband, I got running tips from him because I'd always, this is super quick, but like I used to run and like heel strike all the time and it would kill my lower back.
Thomas: He taught me how to shift my weight forward and go more for like the midfoot to the front of the foot kind of thing. Anyway, that helped my
Claire: runner.
Thomas: Yeah. So ~he's a,~ he's a running coach. And so if you're looking for a running coach, he's the guy he's going to
Claire: hype everyone in our family between we've all turned to entrepreneurs, little slip here.
Claire: Hey, check out this person. Okay. Now, cause I live in a world of running and sorry to our listeners, but this is welcome to the bouvet chatting. It goes in all different directions, but what kind of shoe did you get?
Thomas: I got the Pegasus because ~that's,~ that's what Kevin recommended. I just did
Claire: pair right now.
Claire: This [00:48:00] is hilarious.
Thomas: ~I just,~ when it comes to~ that,~ that kind of stuff, I just listened to the experts. Kevin's an expert. That's what he runs in. That's what I run in. So I don't think about it any more than that.~ It's,~ and that's the other thing. It's like, Coming to this year, ~I'm actually,~ I'm just focusing on going back to this, but the biographies and like ~what I, like~ why I got into running or why I do things ~that are,~ that are difficult or why I ~get into what I'm doing,~ have this theme of commitment.
Thomas: And the other common trait about~ these, ~these biographies and autobiographies of these incredible individuals is ~they,~ they have this. Super human levels of commitment to the things that they're doing. I talked about Dyson earlier.~ He, ~his first product that he built on his own, where he had a patent for and everything was a wheelbarrow.
Thomas: And sounds kind of great. It was actually called a ball. Yeah. So it was a ball barrel and. Throughout he, when he was learning how to manufacture it, one of the things was powder coating and the powder would go all in the workshop and then you'd have to collect it out of the air. Otherwise people would be choking on paint dust.
Thomas: And so then they were using this filter, [00:49:00] the filter sucked. And so he discovered the cyclonic vacuum. It was a 10 meters tall, big stainless steel thing. And it would pull the powder out of the air. And he always thought, how cool would it be to make a miniaturized version of that And having your home and a vacuum cleaner that didn't require a bag, didn't require a filter the same way, like the Hoover vacuum at the time, use a bag, a filter, whatever.
Thomas: Anyway, he's been 14 years. Making the first vacuum cleaner because he got kicked out of his first wheelbarrow company. It did okay. Did pretty well. He sold a lot of them ended up being kind of a bad company, but he lost his patent. He lost everything. And he spent 14 years working on this vacuum cleaner each day.
Thomas: He would do one new iteration to the vacuum. It took him five, four and a half years. To make the first prototype. And then ~there was, and then~ he was trying to find people to license it too. And then people would say, yes, like Amway was an example. They said, yes, they're like, we'll do a licensing deal.
Thomas: After they did the deal, they went back on the deal. They sent up suing him. That was like a five year [00:50:00] issue. He had to deal with a company in Japan that were giving him like no money to manufacture it. But so it was 14 years from the day he started working on it to the day he sold his first vacuum. So it's like this, level of commitment to a product or an idea.
Thomas: Any other person on earth would be like, you're Like you've lost your mind if you're doing that thing and you continue to do it. And so that's really like, when I tell people I'm working on a board game and it's the only thing that I'm thinking about in my, in my world, it's like the only, it's, I burned all the other boats.
Thomas: Like this is all I'm focused on. I get similar types of looks, but imagine doing this for another 14 years and never selling a single game. Then people would be like, You've completely lost your mind. So it's like, you can, ~you can~ learn so much from biographies. So the goal here is like, this is my education.
Thomas: I'm thinking about, ~I, ~my goal for this year is to read 25, minimum 25 of these biographies [00:51:00] or autobiographies. And I'm thinking of it as like an MBA. One of the reasons. When this actually goes right back to the very beginning. One of the reasons I wanted to work in Silicon Valley is I wanted a mentor.
Thomas: ~And I, ~cause I found it very difficult to find a good mentor. There was a couple teachers I had that were as close as you get to a mentor, but I wanted to work with the best and get mentored by the best.
Claire: And
Thomas: when I got out there, I realized it's not that simple to find. Mentors at the top level that are willing to work with you, they're willing to talk with you.
Thomas: And even harder ~it's,~ it's also hard to find those people that even exist, let alone if you do happen to find someone like that, that exists, get them to then be your mentor. So really what these books are is a mentorship. So I get to now get mentored by Sam Walton. I get to get mentored by James Dyson, by David Ogilvy, by Napoleon, you know.
Thomas: I'm just looking around for some
Claire: women there, Thomas, just for our listeners, you know,
Thomas: recommend some women to me. ~I, there's a lot of, there's a, ~[00:52:00] there's a lot of them that I actually have on my list, but those are the, just the books I have right now, but I
Claire: agree. You know what? This is the thing ~I,~ and I'm not trying to call you out on that, but it's interesting because yeah, I work in tech and there is a lack of women.
Claire: Yeah. Tech founders and leaders. And we could go on and on, but well,
Thomas: you know what~ I think,~ I think in 25 years, there's going to be lots of books about women founders, all of the books that I've ~recommended that I ~referred to today, with the exception of James Dyson, all those people are dead. Sam Walton died in 92 David Ovie died in, I don't know when that was the other one, Ben Franklin, he died in years ago, these people are all dead.
Claire: Now, how we're going to wrap today is. It's interesting and I read again, like you, sometimes you forget where the source was. It was a combination of a podcast or a medium article I was reading and it was talking about, you know, the future of now, the one man, one [00:53:00] woman, one person show making a billion dollars being able to now with the rise of all the technologies from AI to web three to all the things that are now at our fingertips, we can build.
Claire: You have intentionally over time built. The one person show. You do everything.
Claire: Is this realistic for most people or is this just a Thomas Bouvier wanting to like, where are we heading? Because we're seeing now an individual can make a lot of money on their own and they don't have to have a hundred employees to be successful.
Thomas: Both yes and no to your question ~that I'll,~ the first thing is I don't believe it.
Thomas: There exists a one person show anywhere, because ~we're,~ no matter what you're building, even if you don't talk to a single other individual and you do every single thing completely on your own, you're still working on the infrastructure that someone built before you, and you're benefiting hugely from [00:54:00] whatever they did, because if you decide to go be a one person show and say, you're going to build the infrastructure of space,~ you're It would not,~ it simply would not be possible.
Thomas: You just couldn't do it. ~Like it, it's, ~there's ~not,~ no chance.
Claire: It's nothing there before it.
Thomas: ~So,~ but the thing is, as~ infa, like as~ our infrastructure for,~ or for ~products continues to grow and grow and you have more tools and resources that you can rely on. Yeah, you can be one person working on your little corner ~of~ of a product that then leverages all that ~that ~infrastructure.
Thomas: And I know you talk about it a lot, like some of these new AI applications that there's a lot of ways you can use that to help you being a one person. I mean,~ I use ~Really the thing I use AI for today is like as a personal assistant, it just schedules my days and tells me what I'm doing and everything.
Thomas: But is it realistic for everybody? I mean, as much as your tolerance to risk is, I guess, because when you're working at a really big company. You are basically just taking the total risk of the business and [00:55:00] dividing it across how many people work there.
Claire: Sure.
Thomas: Which is cool. Cause it means that means any individual is not actually taking on that much risk.
Thomas: And so if you're a person that doesn't like taking on risk, that's probably the right person. Call. That's probably the right move for you. If you're a person that you think you handle risk better than the average person, and you're okay with that and you enjoy that, then yeah, probably a one person show ~is,~ is great.
Thomas: But I also think that over time, the level of risk. The surrounding infrastructure is getting so good.
Claire: That
Thomas: the, the risk involved with being a one person show
Claire: is
Thomas: lowering, lowering, lowering. Even if you had gone back 10 years ago, getting in touch with manufacturers to make even a paper product card game would have been very difficult today.
Thomas: Very easy.~ There's lots of different,~ Alibaba is a great place to start to get in touch with a lot of these manufacturers around the world. And ~you like,~ I can make millions of units of this card game every [00:56:00] month and I'm a nobody. But back in the day, you had to go fly to these places and meet and build trust ~and, and, and,~ and you had to show them you had this big team ~that that, and~ to support that level of now you can just be like, yeah, I'll pay it.
Thomas: I'll just pay you the money. It's going to go in escrow and then you're just going to make it. And then you're going to get your money and I'm going to get my game or my product. And so over time, like that level of risk is going to come down to a point where~ it's, yeah, it's,~ it's going to be really achievable for anybody ~to,~ as long as they have an idea ~and, and,~ and have the follow through to see it through, then I think one person operations or small teams will be.
Thomas: And you know what, I
Claire: think that's that's, it's re reiterating what I'm starting to see a lot of people taking that, you know, we're moving more to that because the risk, I love that the risk is lowering. Okay. We're going to end the session, our episode today. We're going to break this up. Well, as you know, this is the second half, so I hope you're enjoying it.
Claire: And we're going to wrap up our Thomas Bouvier episode with asking the guy that [00:57:00] makes games. What are ways our listeners today. If playing, let's say it is so foreign, the idea of being thinking, you know, when was the last time you played? Like, how do we define that? Leave the listener today. What can they start doing?
Claire: Might be uncomfortable, but it's a start in the right direction to building in it. And tell us why it's so important that we do incorporate play into our, Weekly lives.
Thomas: The reality is you're probably not going to be that good at playing because you haven't done it in so long. So go for a walk. Don't bring headphones.
Thomas: Don't listen to a podcast. Don't listen to music. Just go for a walk and notice the things that are around you. ~Just if,~ I mean, we're coming into spring shortly here. So you're going to start to see some of the tulips. You're going to start to see some of the buds on the trees. You're just starting to smell new things.
Thomas: You're going to see that some of the animals are going to be out and about. And ~that,~ that's playing, you know, just anything that's just for pure enjoyment of something is playing. You don't need to join some league. You don't need to [00:58:00] spend money. You don't need to have a playground that's built for adults.
Thomas: You can just go out and go for a walk and do nothing but notice the things that are around you. And voila, you've successfully played for the first time in maybe a long time. I don't know. Okay.
Claire: I like that. So let's say you've graduated, ~you know, you've graduated~ that level. What would be phase two of playing?
Thomas: Phase two of playing would be do it more, find other people to play with, you know, ~like, I,~ I think the biggest thing about playing is. With the same thing with everything people are always looking for, like, how do you do it? Give us the the thing to do it or however do it and that's why I made alphabeto ~as like a~ as like a catalyst Or a tool to help you play
Claire: ~So ~
Thomas: ~so so if~ if alphabetos your thing, I mean you can look up alphabeto games We're we mean at putting out two YouTube videos a day of my partner, Andrea and I playing the game, usually one to two videos every single day.
Thomas: You can go watch those videos. They've actually been doing way better than I ever thought. I didn't think people were going to care at [00:59:00] all about us buying in the last two weeks, we've gotten like 120, 000 views or something like that on just us playing the game. So I'm
Claire: glad you're telling me because I haven't even seen these.
Claire: ~So ~
Thomas: ~I usually,~ I usually don't tell people until the algorithm recommends it to I saw you today on this. Thingamabob or whatever. Okay. Okay, well now it's meant for you because the algorithm has decided you should see it. So maybe
Claire: play could be watching someone else play.
Thomas: It could be watching somebody else play.
Thomas: But yeah, I've got a Kickstarter for Alphabetto coming out in probably about two to two and a half months from now, so you can check that out. And so if you want Alphabetto in your home, or if you want a tool to help you play a little more, a little better, feel free to pick that up and~ support the ~support an idea really.
Thomas: Support the adults.
Claire: Finding our play, ~I will for,~ for those listeners I will be sharing that if you subscribe to my, I say weekly, bi weekly, it's when the email comes~ you'll,~ you'll hear from me [01:00:00] Thomas, this is fine. I love that we have to record something for me to get an update on your life, but I don't know if anyone else is listening and has brothers.
Claire: And this is the way to do it, ~get them,~ get them recorded. You find out all the things. So Thomas, thank you for joining the small town entrepreneur podcast to our listeners. Again, thank you for staying with us and we'll see you next week.
Thomas: Thanks so much.
Claire: Cheers.
