Jay: 0:28

Hi everyone, welcome to First Customer Podcast. My name is Jay Aigner. Today I'm lucky enough to be joined by Bo Motlagh of, CEO and founder of United Effects. Bo, what's up buddy? How are you?

Bo: 0:37

Hey, it's great to be here. Thanks doing well.

Jay: 0:39

I was saying how much I love your sun room before this. It's such a nice space. do you get to get some work done in there? Is that your normal office?

Bo: 0:46

This is my office. Yeah, that's,

Jay: 0:48

I love it.

Bo: 0:48

is where I've been working from home for the last three years

Jay: 0:51

There you go.

Bo: 0:52

Yeah.

Jay: 0:52

took advantage of the pandemic, work from home policy. I see.

Bo: 0:56

Yep.

Jay: 0:57

all right. So can you briefly just walk me through, where you grew up, where you came from, and then maybe how that tied in at all to your entrepreneurial, journey?

Bo: 1:04

Yeah. it's a longer story than probably most, but I'll do

Jay: 1:08

Sure. Go for it.

Bo: 1:09

so I was actually born in Iran, in Tehran, Iran. my parents were. Part of that movement during the revolution. I was born like right around there actually, in 81. and yeah, we, so when we were, a lot of stuff happened, with my family, but when I was, I guess around three or four years old, my family left Iran, we ended up living a little bit in. Europe, I think Germany, Switzerland, Germany for a little while, and then eventually settled down in, the States. my entire mother's side of the family lives sort of in the northern section, of the East Coast, and my entire father's side lives down, in the, Atlanta, Georgia area, actually. So, I spent most of my childhood actually going up and down. I grew up right outside of Philadelphia, in, Habertown, if anybody's familiar with the suburbs out there and, basically just, most of the usual American kid things, and, entrepreneurship, I think. It was part of, just part of my upbringing, my, my father and my stepmother, they both have their own businesses, have had their own businesses their whole lives. And, it was just something I was exposed to very early on. and when I graduated college, it's a funny story in that, I had no idea where I was going to go or what I was going to do in terms of my first job. And so having no idea. How to run a business or really even how to approach, like real software development outside of school and academia and things like that. I started a software company and got somebody to agree to a contract for me to write a tax solution for them. Don't know anything about tax either. And, and so this seemed like a good way to go and it didn't work out as I probably would have guessed is my first failure. And it's a good one. And it blew up in my face. But you know what, it earned me a little bit of money, a lot of experience and, and got me my first job, real job after that, to, they loved that I did that and had the gumption, I guess is the word.

Jay: 3:01

I love that. I love, and I have, there's the parental, entrepreneurship story is one that definitely crops up now and again. was that something, and if, I mean, I don't know how much you want to go into, but what, what type of businesses did your parents have? And like, how do you, how did you experience that as a kid? Right.

Bo: 3:19

Yeah. I mean, I think. part of just culturally the way we grew up, people in our family had their own businesses, or you could see that they had their own things going on. my, my mother, worked a lot of jobs, from, my sister and I growing up. So she didn't really have time to do something like that. my parents obviously, were separated, by this point in my life. and so I learned a lot of like, just. work ethic, just watching her, like seeing, a lot of it was just like, yeah, you got to go out and you got to do your thing.

Jay: 3:46

Right, right. Yeah, that's very.

Bo: 3:47

so I grew up not, I remember I was, I must've been like 13 or 14, I think at one point I guess my mom got tired of me asking for like candy money or something. Cause she literally took me at my hand and said, all right, we're going for a walk. And walked me down to a 7 Eleven a few, a few blocks away and introduced me to the owner. She must have like, had a conversation with him earlier, I don't know. cause I, I can't imagine this just happens. but she's like, you're going to work here now. And so I like, that was my first job is stocking shelves at a 7 Eleven. And, And I earned money, and so there was a, an ethic from that, but then, yeah, with my father, he had his own, he's had his own business importing, Persian rugs for most of my life, and then antiques, he's done many other things in the States, and my stepmother was, has an architectural firm in the Atlanta, Georgia area that's done very well. and so, yeah, it's just, Building something on your own never seemed like a weird thing to me. It just seemed like that's what people do, right? and so that was just the way,

Jay: 4:47

That's very interesting. so, what was your career field before you started United Effects? I mean, I say this in a lot of podcasts and people get tired of me saying the same things, but I do about, as much homework as I did in high school, just enough to pass. So I got a sense of your background. You've done a lot of different things. You've been, architect and you've been every, the range of, software development, roles. what was the one that kind of led you into, starting your own business?

Bo: 5:10

so I guess the f It's funny, what there, there was a role that sort of led to me starting this business for sure. and I think that was the first time I saw a spark of there's something here in this field of integrations and platforms and things like that. And that was, at Under Armour actually. And I wasn't even there that long. I contracted there for about a year and then I was employed there for about, six months. I was commuting from Philadelphia to Baltimore. And, it was a really cool job, but that commute was going to kill me. And I was, things were starting to get serious with my now wife. And so it was like, all right, well, I have to make a decision here. great people, amazing, really intelligent people there though. But they were building a platform and it was sort of my first. Introduction to, to that concept of, these common elements, these, the technology that goes into that, I'll spare the details of that, but, I thought it was interesting and it actually ended up getting, helping me get the next position, which was much closer to home. and because they were also doing this and I was like, this is weird. It was completely different fields. One was, e commerce. The other is, FinTech at a company called Frontline Education, another amazing company. And then later on at Vertex, and then as I started talking to more people, I started, it was the same thing, everybody's building platforms, it's what you do. and that really was like the, okay, there's something here, we can figure this out, let's build a product around that. But I guess, to like go back, I mean my, that first job after the weird epic failure of trying to start my first company was, and a good, I think epic failures are actually super important in life. and that was a great one. and that first job was with a small boutique company called, QA associates. So my first gig, in, in, in 2005 is when I got that job. and really what started everything was with that company QA associates. And, my job became building quality assurance programs and then technologies. and I travel, I must've traveled like 75% of the time. It was insane. but like in your twenties, that's fun,

Jay: 7:03

right,

Bo: 7:03

so basically fly out to the West Coast on a Monday morning, fly home Thursday night and do that again every week for six months at a time. and yeah, it was, and it was what's, and I think what's important, what was important about that job. One, it was just, I must've worked at a hundred different companies. I was a consultant. and two. Interacting with every level of a company from like people on the ground and just in front of their computers to executives trying to figure out strategy and trying to interface with them all. and I was young and cocky and so I, I could, I would try to show off and do things and yeah, sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't. but I remember, but even then I had the bug, right? Like, and I would every once in a while, I'd have like a cool idea. And, we'd start an LLC and so I tell people I'm a first time founder now, because this is the first time that I took it, like I ran with it and I just decided to dedicate my all to it. but I think I'd started like, I don't know, five or six different things before that, throughout the career. I had a manager during this first few years who we used to, he's a good friend now as well. And he used to joke, I need to make sure I'm giving you enough to do because if I leave you alone too long, you start a new company. And it happened enough that it became a pattern.

Jay: 8:17

Right, right, well, there's worse things, there's worse things to be known for.

Bo: 8:21

yeah, exactly.

Jay: 8:23

so, Tell me a little bit about taking the leap, starting your own platform, and, how you got that first customer. Because we talked about this, I think, briefly, the other day when we caught up. But I want to, tell me about, the actual moment you said, Alright, not, I see the pieces to this brewing on these different, Under Armour and these different companies I'm working for. I'm going to take it and run with it. and how that led to your first customer.

Bo: 8:46

Yeah. Well, what's funny is that the first customer was there first, so, so we, there was a lot sort of, of these pieces floating around in my head. and. One of the things that I knew early on that I was going to need to understand was, the identity and access piece of this, and I knew that there were vendors out there. Now, this was back probably in, I want to say 2014. so, Auth0 was out there and Okta was out there. Okta was more sort of big industry. Auth0 was sort of the new kid on the block, but like they didn't do a lot of the things I thought I needed. and, But you could do login with them and that was fine. And also at the time I had, I didn't have any like funds or anything. These were just ideas I was brewing around with. So I knew I needed a different approach to that tech, and how that would work. and then an opportunity sort of popped into my lab to help somebody, a friend who, their, his company now is, Jasmine Mobility and Logistics International. It used to be called the Jasmine Effect. and no relation to the uni United effects, but I liked that he did that. and, it's founded by, and run by a man named, James Latta. He's a really cool guy and a good friend of mine, at this point. But back in 2014, we were just being introduced through a mutual friend and, he had an idea for a business. He had a, and he wanted to, build out some tech and some stuff. And as he described his, what he wanted to do it. It overlapped some of what I wanted to build in terms of security. and so without, it wasn't my company. We didn't, United Effects didn't exist yet, but myself and my now CTO, Chris Betts, we partnered up and we, built. The tech for, for JMLI and, it became an opportunity to prototype, our approach to identity and logins and security and things. And so that was really cool. And he ran with that. I mean, he, he's still running that, what I would call prototech from us. and they, we've, we're working with him to upgrade things and design something pretty cool right now, but. he built a business or with that niche, they, they do, expat, and, and workforce relocation for projects abroad, which is really a very niche business, but something he excels at. so that became, a really nice relationship. And then as that, we built that out, we're helping him with that. and I began to see that there's other pieces to this sort of lining up. in 2019, we started United Effects. We incorporated United Effects. We still didn't really understand, like, how this puzzle was all gonna fit together. we just knew. I remember writing the words United Effects on a notebook, and then quickly going to my computer and going, there's no way this domain name's available. But there it was and I was like, Oh, that's cool. All right, let's buy that immediately. turns out that it had like very recently become available. There's a whole other business, that, that had it. And there's some places in social media where there's still, I probably need to do something about that. But anyway, So, we started UnitedFacts and we started trying to like brainstorm. What are we doing? What are we doing? what are the ideas? And we started coming up with like, And it still wasn't like a full product vision. at this point it was myself, Chris, and we brought on a third co founder at the time, Jason Cook, to help us with infrastructure and all of that. And, we were coming up with stuff and playing around and we were doing well with it. And we adopted Jasmine or Jamali, as our first customer. So, and he's been our first, he's been our customer since, and then. Things really took off, in 2020, I want to say, when we brought on our fourth co founder, Josh Smith, who's this brilliant designer. And, I think you met Josh.

Jay: 12:25

I think so. I was going to say it

Bo: 12:26

yeah. And, he helped us really. and that's when things started to really take off for us and in a different direction and when I went full time and so did Josh actually back in 2021, it's

Jay: 12:43

So how did you handle pricing for that original customer? And is it the same, I mean, it's probably a different bit of a morphed product at this point or a more mature product, but like how did you handle the initial pricing for that engagement? And then how do you handle it today if it's different at all?

Bo: 12:59

very different. Yeah. So like I said, we sort of inherited our first customer, and pricing at the time was, friend pricing, basically like, it, it was we did bill obviously. And we tried to do something that would be equitable and reasonable, for the time. but I never looked at that as like, this is how I'm making money. It was. and I'm to this day, I'm very grateful because it was more about this is how I'm building some reputation and that, that's the way I looked at it. and today, we're in a very different business we don't do bespoke development anymore. that's not really what we do. and we do consulting and we do some design and we're doing some of that with JMLI today. but our business is really SaaS and recurring revenue through, through our product. So. our first customer for that was different. That was, a cool story as well, which I'm happy to tell in a second if you're interested. But, but in general, very different model. So, didn't really apply. and to this day, I'm not, as we begin to move him, move their business into our SaaS business because we're, the new upgrades we're doing would move them into our platform, eventually. I. assuming they want to Jim, if you're listening, so at that point, obviously they would join our current pricing model. maybe, so, our current pricing model, am I allowed to do a quick plug?

Jay: 14:12

Yeah, go for

Bo: 14:13

Yeah, so,

Jay: 14:14

you're here for.

Bo: 14:15

so our current pricing, is something that we've just put out there in the last, honestly, in the last 30 days and it's, and. People seem to like it. So I'll tell the audience here is if you're a startup with less than a million in funding, less than 500, 000 in revenue, and less than 10, 000 users, we're giving you. Everything you could need from an auth perspective, absolutely free. So it's your full like multi factor authentication, your login screens for your product, your API security stuff, the, all that stuff, your tech people are telling you and your product people are telling you, you need this. And you're looking at the price tags and it's going, it's a lot per user. We're giving it to you for free. and. That's, so that's, from a startup perspective, that's a, that's how we're doing it. and then our pricing basically moves up per, your standard SaaS billing kind of thing as you go past that tier because you're successful, hopefully. then we begin to charge per user and things like that.

Jay: 15:05

Right. Okay. so yeah, I mean, that is it. You did pique my interest. the first customer on your kind of more matured SAS model of the product, it does tie into my other question, which was going to be, how did you make that original first customer into something that was a repeatable, revenue stream for you guys? So it's not like you made some shifts, you put some stuff together. So how did that first customer of the SaaS model come about?

Bo: 15:26

Yeah, network and people, same as, I think everybody's first customer. we, when I left, So my last gig, full time gig before I decided to do the, to do this full time, I was head of architecture at a company called Vertex, Inc., which is this very big and very successful and really full of amazing people, SaaS tax comp, SaaS and on premise, tax compliance, software company. And. And I was lucky enough to land on the radar of some of their executives who, happened to also be sort of exiting. A lot of the people at Vertex when I got there had been there for like 25 years. So they were sort of going through a refresh, as people's careers were sort of coming to a transition point as it does after a quarter century, and, so some of them, A lot. A few of them actually ended up becoming advisors to United effects down the line and helping us. And one of them, his son was a, John Viglione. he's, he started an entire startup advisory practice called Quantum Reg. And, and he's been helping us for the entire duration, since I've been doing this full time, his son's actually has a startup as well called , Enigma Networks, and Enigma does, cybersecurity anomaly detection. And so he introduced us and, Mark, Viglione is the CEO of Enigma and he. He was interested in trying out our software. And so we did a quick pilot and we helped them integrate our authentication system. and I showed him what, where we were going with the data streaming. and he, so he became our very first adopter early adopter, way back in 2022, early 2022. And, and that's how that came about. And it was great because, it's that getting over that first hump of, all right, we have an MVP. We think. And we think we know how people are going to use this too. How did that work? Mark was, and his company were really helpful in helping us figure that out and jumping in there and, putting our tech in front of their users, really. So it's a lot of trust,

Jay: 17:21

And so, and how has that changed since then? How's your change? How's your approach to, getting customers changed since second, customer for you guys?

Bo: 17:30

A lot of it, a lot of it is, well, one was finishing the MVP. We didn't actually finish our full platform until the last day of 2022. So it was December 31st. we'd like hit launch, on the button to deploy our, to production. What is now our true MVP. and so that, that was, we were doing like little bit of marketing throughout 2022 and finding opportunities for early adopters, but we weren't. We weren't like getting out there saying get on our tech because, we, we didn't want to, we wanted to finish it, but, Once we did that, I think the main thing was understanding who we want to sell to and why, which I think is the common story. so we did a good amount of, interview based research. I think we, we must've spoken to about a hundred companies over about a six month period. basically all of Q, Q4 of 2022. And then Most of the first quarter of this year and really zeroed in on, the two pieces of this puzzle that, that we thought we could do something about because our tech is our tech is enterprise authentication, MFA passwordless, SSO and customer and product access management combined with a data streaming infrastructure play. it's a SAS solution that lets you define data streams and, Create federated connections to those data streams from any technology anywhere. So that sounds really cool until somebody asks, well, what do you do with that? It's a great

Jay: 18:49

Right.

Bo: 18:49

and the issue we ran into early was like, well, you can do a lot with that. What do you want to do with that? Nobody wants to hear that. Right. So where we decided to sort of dig in and the research began to point to was startups were a natural fit for us. especially for the security stuff, cause one of the patterns we see as startups will often, like, I'll ask this question, so are you B2B or B2C? And it's my favorite question to ask because the answer a lot of times will be, well, we're B2C today, but we really want to be B2B. Why are you B2C today? Well, because... there's a lot of stuff that goes with that and we haven't built that yet and we're working our way to it and we're bootstrapped and all of those really great reasons and, and, and the thing about that is I spent a career building identity systems for people. So I, I know. That is a really hard lever to pull, especially if you have traction. so my favorite response to that as well, I built this for you, which is true, because the whole point with a startup is that you can tell them, like, why don't you just skip ahead about a year? And just install this, and so that's a big part of that. And so I think that we're getting a lot of traction. Actually, we had like 25 signups this month, but obviously because it's free, but also because I think we're investing in that and it's something that they need. so I think that's a piece of it. The other side of this that we identified, that was a surprise to me. I had no idea this was an issue we brought on in, early of this, in January of this year, we brought on a sales and go to market person. Jim Bork, and he's just been opening up doors for us and introducing us to a lot of people. Jim really helped us break into and have conversations with people in industries that are not traditionally the ones I might have gone after just because my career hadn't brought me to them. like supply chain and, some niche sort of health tech companies and things like that. Supply chain being a big one. And one of the things we began to learn is that in. In the mid market in this sort of SMB space, companies are just not really well represented, in terms of data integration there, that they can, if you're a midsize SMB company, you can, yeah, you can connect your Amazon account to your Shopify and to your NetSuite or to whatever, your QuickBooks and you can do that, but who, how easy is it for your customer to connect their account to your data? it's not like nobody's representing you, and you're not out there. And so. This is a gap and it's one that we used, my, my co founders and I used to build these connector systems for these large midsize companies. It would be. 10 to 20 million a year for two to five years, and these companies don't have those kinds of funds. It's a very small segment that can do that, that can afford to do that. And so there's this huge opportunity to make that easier for them somehow. and so our, how's the strategy changed? Is that what we're targeting startups directly now? and that's easier because you don't have to be industry specific, but then with, then that's for security, but with data integration and data streaming, we're beginning to move up market into these sort of industries where we see this gap, like supply chain, like some health tech companies, and we're beginning to have some really good conversations and how we sell is changing. Quick has changed quite dramatically as a result of that.

Jay: 22:00

Love it. so much. There's so many good pieces in there for anybody, who is just, the iteration and the. the networking approach and all the different ways that you guys have started to fine tune this thing is impressive. So, let's switch gears. are three, health... Related things for yourself as an entrepreneur that you aspire to do that are goals of yours that are to, to increase your longevity. I'm a big on longevity lately. I've got five kids and, I'd like to be around for them as long as possible. what are, three things that you were using to try to increase your longevity?

Bo: 22:36

That's crazy that you're asking me that now. because like I just went on this crazy health kick cause you're right. for most of my career, I was really into being fit. I got far away from me for the last few years. and I mean, I learned early on that if you're feeling good, if you're healthy, if you're strong, even just physically, it makes you sharper. I think, made me sharper and, And yeah, and so this is in the last few months, I've sort of been coming to the moment of like, all right, we've gotten, we're pretty far off course here physically. and you're exactly right. Like, I need to be here for my family. I need to be able to continue to lead this company. So how are we going to do that? So, I think the first step for me was, you would just for three things. I mean, I think, getting help if you need it is probably an important one. Like, I'm a big fan of, knowing how you're investing time in Headspace. So I can think about and probably solve most problems, in my life, right? I can sit down and I think this is just the whole leadership thing. And you've probably been through this, right? It's just about delegation. Like at some point I can go, all right, I have X amount of time in a week. I'm spending like 80 hours on this business, little things like figuring out what I'm going to eat for the next month. That's hard to do because that's going to take a couple hours. And when you're in this mode that I've been in for the last two years. Hopefully you're not still in this mode, but like other founders are I'm sure it's like you're almost measuring your life minute by minute I've got five minutes right now. What's going on like, and so it's a weird way to live and a lot of people don't understand that unless they're going through it because Time just becomes this insane resource that you have that you like covet. So I think it's really important to, if you can't do it, find somebody who can help you do it and take on that headspace. Even if all they're doing is just thinking about you. So that like, they have some answers when you ask a question, when you chat with them like once a week or whatever. So, so I'm working, so, and this is recent, it's not like some secret to my success. Like in the last two weeks, I started working with a nutritionist. it's something I never thought I would do. Yeah,

Jay: 24:46

I like that.

Bo: 24:47

but it works, it's somebody that can like, I love thinking about like, how does metabolism work? What's going on with my blood sugar? What's the, I'm a data guy. So I love that stuff. But doing that does take mental space. and it's cool to have somebody who, is doing it so that you can be like, Hey, what do you think of this? And, they'll save you three hours of Googling.

Jay: 25:03

No, I do. I like that. I like that a lot.

Bo: 25:05

So, that's a big one. moving. Just, I'd love to be able to say, I'm the guy that gets up and runs five miles in the morning. I'm not. maybe one day I can be again, but I'm not right now. So, a big part of it, I think, is just get, like, I, I schedule, these 90 minute blocks through, like, three days a week for myself on my calendar, blocks my calendar from meetings or everything, where I just go for a walk, go for a 45 minute walk and then spend, like, 30 minutes just getting your head straight afterwards,

Jay: 25:35

Right.

Bo: 25:36

I think that's been the hardest thing is making time to, to just go, to breathe basically. so the walking I think is going to be important. And if, and yeah, if I have time or the motivation, going to the gym, doing actual workouts is probably an important thing too. So I'm hearing myself and I'm like, I sound like I'm a 60 year old man. I'm not, but you got to make do. and then the other thing is like. I don't know if this is for everybody, but like I said, I like data. So, and that's why it was crazy that you asked, cause I just invested in one of these, That's a continuous glucose monitor.

Jay: 26:05

Oh, wow.

Bo: 26:06

I'm not diabetic or anything like that. but I keep, I kept seeing these things out there about like, try this. And I thought, first I thought gimmicky, but then I thought about it. I'm like, well, I wear an app, I watch an Apple watch. So I basically have a continuous heart rate monitor, like strapped to my wrist at all times. how different is this really? So I went in and got one and you know what, it's crazy. if you're somebody who likes making data driven decisions and. Wants to understand, why did I feel terrible this morning when I woke up? this tech can start to answer some of those questions. So,

Jay: 26:39

What brand is that one? That one's

Bo: 26:41

This is Sig Signos. it's, this is the patch over it, but

Jay: 26:45

Okay. Wow. I mean that's cool. I mean, yeah, no I did the I my one of my old bosses like showed me that film. it's called that sugar film

Bo: 26:55

oh yeah.

Jay: 26:56

it's like a great like Kind of wake up call to like, I mean everybody knows there's sugar and stuff, but like it's in Everything and just the amount that we eat all day every day So it's a very topical for me, too And I try to you know, I'd be maybe interested in something like that myself. So very cool. I might check that out

Bo: 27:13

You should, it's cool. I'll say this, like, I, with the sugar, like, and I told my nutritionist this, is like, I, cause I did, I've done the keto thing for years actually and things like that. I, I. I'm not interested in living a life without sugar. Like, I'm doing that now to lose weight and to, like, get fit. But, and this was the part of it, is like, and this is why I like this, the tech, because it's like, there's got to be a middle road here, right? How do I find that middle road so I don't, like, fall off the cliff as I do it? and so that's a big part of it.

Jay: 27:41

I like that. I love all of those. They're all great and new ones for me that I don't get to hear very often.

Bo: 27:47

Oh, that's good.

Jay: 27:47

alright, so last question, the mystery question. and I'm going to make this one non business related. So what are, what is one thing that you would do if you knew you couldn't fail?

Bo: 28:02

One thing that I would do that if I knew I couldn't fail. That's it.

Jay: 28:11

The pause after this question is my favorite part. I guess it's a good, it does make you think of the things that you've put off because you think that maybe you would fail at them or you couldn't do it.

Bo: 28:23

I guess I don't know. I honestly, I'm having trouble because I feel like I would probably still be doing what I'm doing. and I'd be honestly, I'd be surprised if you don't get that answer from founders

Jay: 28:32

I get it every now and again and I usually don't let people weasel their way out of the question with that answer. So, I don't know if I'm gonna let you weasel out, but either, any bucket list items that, that, you would attempt or you would go do if you knew the risk of failure wasn't an option.

Bo: 28:48

So yeah, let me, I'm going to tweak your question and answer that instead.

Jay: 28:53

all right. Typical founder, response.

Bo: 28:55

yeah, probably fair. Let's say everything that I'm doing now has succeeded and I never have to worry about failure again. That kind of thing. Yeah. So, I think what I'd probably want to do is travel more. I think, especially after the last couple of few years, my, my wife's name is Jackie. Jackie and I used to, take like one big trip every year, 18 months or so. and it was sort of the highlight. and I remember thinking, I want to do this a lot more like, like for a month or two at a time, and we know people, retired couples who, for example, like we'll do house swaps and just live in other countries for years or not years, months at a time and things like that. I think I'd want to do that for a while. and I think the reason I would want to do that, one is to be able to, like, explore and stuff. But, it also just lets me do the thing that I really want to do, which is just fiddle around and, like, build things on my computer now and again. So...

Jay: 29:50

Alright, that's fair. I'll let you, escape with that answer. That's good enough. a digital nomad esque, answer to that. That's fine. Well, this was, go ahead.

Bo: 29:59

I feel like, what would you do?

Jay: 30:02

That's not a fair question. You can't interview the interviewer. what would I do? I think I would skydive.

Bo: 30:07

Oh yeah?

Jay: 30:08

yeah, I'm, yeah, I just, Look, I like, I'm a student pilot, and I like flying stuff, and like all these other things, but like, I'm terrified of jumping out of a perfectly good airplane. So I think if I knew I couldn't

Bo: 30:20

story if you're interested.

Jay: 30:21

go ahead and let's hear it while we were here, we were all on the call together. Let's hear the skydiving story.

Bo: 30:27

so have you never jumped out at all then?

Jay: 30:29

No, for the aforementioned, aforementioned death part that I'm afraid of. So, no, I have

Bo: 30:34

it's a very valid fear. I mean, you are, you're plummeting to your death.

Jay: 30:37

Yes.

Bo: 30:39

Yeah. So I went, I went with a group of people. We went sky. I'll try to make it quick. We went skydiving. and it was one of those like tandem ones because,

Jay: 30:47

Yeah. Yeah.

Bo: 30:48

And, I remember it was so I was on the heavy side again. And I remember, We were in this, we were sort of in this room getting ready and they'd like given us some equipment and they're like, your guides will be with you momentarily and people's guides started coming in and it was like this hippie guy came in for my buddy and this other guy, it was these characters and I guess they have to be characters. They spend their lives jumping out of perfectly good airplanes. and then this Australian guy comes in and he looks at the board and he's, and I'm going to do a bad Australian accent. He's like, or who's, nut lag. That's what he says. I'm like, I think you mean me. And he looks at me, he goes, Oh, no. And he sort of shakes that off. we skipped to the plane. We're at 13, 000 feet. He, he puts, he's like getting everything right. And we're ready to go. And then right before we jump out. Again, I'm going to do the bad Australian accent because I think it's funny. And he points to what I then learn as an altimeter and he goes, Alright Bobo, this here, this is your altimeter. When that hits 5, you pull this cord right here, or you die. That's just like, what? And then we jumped out of the plane, just like that. And then he,

Jay: 31:58

made it. You made it. You didn't die.

Bo: 32:01

We, but I, what was funny is we did a, like a slide landing where we slid in and basically like on my butt

Jay: 32:10

yeah.

Bo: 32:11

and he looks at me and he's like, well, do you know why that happened, bro? And I was like, no, he's like, well, what do you weigh? Like 300 pounds? I was just like, thank you. All right. I'm going to unbuckle now. So that's my,

Jay: 32:22

I'm gonna go straight to the gym from here. thank you very much. Well, no, this was great, man. I love your stories. I love your company story, how can people find you if they're looking for you or United Effects?

Bo: 32:33

Just go to United Effects. com, and you will find everything you need and reach out. we'd love to chat with you. I love hearing other people's stories. I'm happy to share mine and, let's see what we can do to get people up and running on our tech.

Jay: 32:44

That's right, you own that domain. The very unique United Effects. It sounds like a, I mean, I could, was it a, a software company that owned it before you?

Bo: 32:51

No, it was, somewhat, foreshadowing. I think it was a design studio of some sort, like a visual effects design studio. I think,

Jay: 32:58

I just, yeah, I was thinking like a movie studio or something may have owned it before you, so. Okay. Alright. Well, it's been great, man. thank you so much. enjoy the rest of your week. And, I hope people check you out, man. Alright?

Bo: 33:08

Thanks Jay, it was great

Jay: 33:09

ya, bro.

Bo: 33:10

Thanks. Yeah.

Jay: 33:11

See ya.