In this episode, I interview Casey Pehrson who dubs himself a “Serial microtasker”. He's the Founder and President of Sound Helm which produces audio headphone systems for recreational sports (near-ear audio) that changes your audio world when you put on a helmet. He's an entrepreneur with a space engineering background. Enjoy the episode!
In this episode, I interview Casey Pehrson who dubs himself a “Serial microtasker”. He's the Founder and President of Sound Helm which produces audio headphone systems for recreational sports (near-ear audio) that changes your audio world when you put on a helmet. He's an entrepreneur with a space engineering background. Enjoy the episode!
In today's interview, I talk with Casey Pehrson. And I really enjoyed this conversation, especially just learning about the journey of an entrepreneur and some of the different surprises that he had. As he built his company Sound Helm Audio, his engineering background, and his, he's actually a self labeled serial microtasker. Instead of an extreme multitasker, which I thought was kind of cool. I met Casey months ago on a hike up to Flag Rock. It's it's the one of the main mountain vistas that we have here in Farmington, Utah. And I just really loved meeting Casey and hearing about his journey. So I'm excited to share that with you today on the podcast. So without further ado, we will roll the interview.
VA Intro:Welcome to the venture anyway, build your podcast insights from the trenches by those who are busy building. When I finally embraced what I was really good at, it kind of felt like an adventure. Yeah, I really would have done a lot differently.
Dale Majors:Hello, hello, Dale Majors here. And welcome to another episode of the Venture Anyway, Builder Podcast today we have Casey Pehrson with Sound Helm Audio, and they make headphones systems audio for recreational sports. And where I really got interested in this was, I'm a mountain biker rollerblader. You know, I enjoy being outside and listening to things and I've had an air pod get run over by a car. So I'm interested in this space. And I'm really excited to have you on the on the podcast today. So thank you, let's, let's get rolling by maybe just given us a quick overview of what you do, Casey.
Casey Pehrson:Great. Thanks for the introduction, Dale, great to be on here as well. So I'm working on a startup company, entrepreneur space. I came from an engineering background working in manufacturing and equipment development for many years. And one thing that kind of got me to where I'm at now, is I never quite felt like I was fulfilling my dreams. And one of those that I had on my first line of my resume actually, I was just thinking about a minute ago was I had on there, you know, I want to use my skills and my knowledge to better society. And I always felt like I fell short of that. In the engineering space. As always trying to like, extrapolate, well, I'm working on this really cool piece of equipment that's engraving these parts, it's going to make something that goes into a piece of equipment that makes it run good. I'm like, Okay, I'm, I'm satisfying my goal. But come down to it really, that's kind of not really the case, you know, I get a lot of joy out of seeing my creation, or what I'm working on being used or enjoyed directly by the person at the end. And that's where I feel like I can have an impact on society at large by creating something that makes things better for people.
Dale Majors:Yeah, I love it. Well, and in this product, specifically, the difference of wearing air pods with noise cancelling you, you can still hear everything that's going around that's going on around you, right?
Casey Pehrson:Yeah. Yeah. So the goal here is to basically add music, to whatever you're doing. And when you're out recreating, you're going out there for enjoyment. You're, you're recreating by choice, you know, I could drive a car somewhere, I could ride a bike, riding a bike is definitely a choice. And it's not the norm, but it is something that we do. Also, you know, I get on my mountain biking go out, I go out a far away from the city, out into nature, because I want to be away from the noise. But also, like, you know, having a little bit of music with what you're doing always seems to make everything just a little bit better. And so, our mission is to really incorporate those two things together, without interfering with each other. You know, like you said, with your air pod, it's like, I don't want anybody to ever have to deal with that, you know, dropping a piece of equipment and getting run over or and having your ear blocked off because you're trading listening to your surroundings to listening for music. It's like, why not have both? Yeah, and you can.
Dale Majors:I love it and very so goal to make a difference and really make you know, make an impact. I remember feeling similar feelings when I was selling bike parts online at Bike Wagon, and I justified it oh, I'm hiring people and building teams and helping people build their careers and that was really where I got a lot of my enjoyment. But I knew that If I disappeared, someone else would sell bike parts. So I've really enjoyed doing what I'm doing now with coaching and having a more direct impact in the way that I want to make it. Very simply, you you currently have your main product is a bluetooth headphone that attaches to a helmet and provide sound. The price point is $180.
Casey Pehrson:Yeah.
Dale Majors:Okay. Awesome. Very cool. So you started this three years ago, if you could go back and give yourself some advice to the Casey from three years ago, when you started? What would you tell yourself?
Casey Pehrson:I tell myself, this is gonna be a long journey. be mentally prepared for that. Yeah, it's definitely been a lot longer than I anticipated, you know, you go in so eager to do things. And it's like, I felt like man, I finally got this opportunity where I can, like, do something with a little more passion. And let's just make this thing go. And, you know, making this thing go is not like stepping on the accelerator pedal and turning a steering wheel. You know, there's, there's a rollercoaster involved, there's not even sure which road you're going to be going down. You know, you've got an idea of where you want to get, but how to get there is kind of like, yeah, there's not a roadmap. And so I would tell that to myself, you know, that's, that's cool, that you're eager. Love your passion, Just, you know, be aware of timelines that are going to be longer than you expect.
Dale Majors:So would you have done it still? Had you known that?
Casey Pehrson:Yeah, I would have, I probably would have, maybe I would have paced myself a little slower on some of the decisions I made early on.
Dale Majors:Okay.
Casey Pehrson:Because some of those decisions, you know, some decisions you make, kind of set in and you build around them. And then if you need to change those later, it's a lot of work to dig up and to make changes from the past like that. So if he, if I would have known, my timeframe was much longer, maybe I would have put a little more time and energy into making those decisions. And, you know, really checking out is this the right path to do? Rather than just like, hey, this, this feels great. Let's do it and go. And I was certainly a lot more eager at the beginning than I am now. Not saying that's bad. But that would have been information that would have been nice to know now, or know, back then.
Dale Majors:So maybe maybe pacing yourself a bit more? Yeah. Do you? Do you have? Do you have an example of one of those choices that you made earlier on that? Maybe you say, you know, yeah, maybe I maybe I'd be a little more deliberate about that.
Casey Pehrson:Yeah, well, like so going into this field of entrepreneurship involves this whole huge other aspect that I was not really knowledgeable about. You know, like, the business side of things. It's like, you know, I've worked in businesses, but that does not mean I ran businesses. Yeah. So as far as like, you know, strategy, and partnerships, and who you hire, who you, you know, share equity with? And what equity sharing even really looks like, you know, there's so many different ways to do that, that, like, even this last month, I'm still learning new ways. And it's like, well, this, I'm three years into this, and I thought I had a pretty good dig in at the beginning on it, and no, I did not. So that would that would be
Dale Majors:Yeah, it is. It is, I found that it's really easy to good to know. divvy up. Equity, that's not worth anything.
Casey Pehrson:Yeah.
Dale Majors:You know, just based on the dream and the, this, you know, oh, it could be good. But yeah, let's partner together this way, we'll give you X percent or whatever. But especially when things are going and are worth things, you're going to be a lot more critical of that. So I yeah, I think you're right.
Casey Pehrson:Yeah, at the beginning, I was like, you know, it's, it's a big pie, you know, just cut out a big piece of it, you know, let's take thirds or court and you're talking in like quarter and thirds, and 10s of percents and stuff like that. And now that I've gotten going, it's like, you know, what, actually, this company has a lot of potential. So really, you know, you should only do that kind of trade with somebody that's, you know, been around for a while. It's not like an offer upfront, to come join the company, I'll give you a huge share of equity. I feel like now that's something that's like, you know, if I'm working with somebody for a while we can work into that. And what does that look like and taking that a lot slower than at the beginning?
Dale Majors:Yeah, I love that. Yeah, I've been learning more about phantom equity and that idea of you know, we're equities more or less Like a more like a glorified comp plan but but it's really equity as well. But there you know it basically best sir. You know, you commit to it later. And I'm I'm no expert on this, but the more people I've talked to that have done a lot of these deals, they're not just straight up, you know, writing equity over. But it's yeah, there are a lot of more sophisticated ways to do that. That's cool. So going into, well actually, so what what has been maybe harder than you thought it would be?
Casey Pehrson:Pretty much everything. Okay. Oh, seriously, one of the one of the fun things, I call it that, but taking and having conversations with people, you know, even your close friends, you know, when they find out you're doing a business, they're gonna love helping you write. And that, that love and passion for your business that comes through your personal relationships often comes in the form of it's not the best way to say it, but unsolicited advice. You know, it's not a it's not entirely bad thing. But it's certainly a challenge point of like, having so many people like inundate me with ideas of, you know, market segments you could do, you could change the product to do this, have you thought about this, you know, there's so many things to think about. And here I am, like, thinking, Man, this is amazing, it can go everywhere. And then you get back to your your office, and you're like, trying to figure out how to do one teeny small thing of what you're working on, it ends up taking a full day, you're like, there's, that's it, that's, it feels impossible. So I started telling my, my friends, I was like, you know, I love your passion for this. But I want you to see, like, the challenge it is from like, cutting out an adhesive strip in a certain shape. Like, the process I've went through to get to that point. Is is huge. So like, all your ideas to me, feels like, you know, I'm being attacked, it's like poison. It's like, and they start to click a little bit is like, Oh, well, then what can I do? You know, how can I talk and then and then it changes a little the dynamic a little bit to be more, you know, truly supportive, rather than, you know, because your friends want to support you. But sometimes like giving you new ideas and new areas to branch your company out into is is not really supportive of you know, building a company, you really have to find a focus. Yeah. And branching out is not that growth is something that kills companies all the time.
Dale Majors:Yeah, that is, that's really interesting that, you know, a couple of seconds before you said, focus, I was thinking to myself, focus, focus, focus, because it is, it's hard, there are so many things that you could execute on. And that's where the word decision comes up a lot in the coaching that I do. And learning to be decisive, and focusing, deciding where you're going to focus and where you're not going to focus. So you can plow through things. And a book that I really like called the, well,"Scrum" by Peter Sutherland, I believe, and you know, agile development, you know, it's a project management methodology. And he talks, and they talk about that, and you probably know more about me, but they talk about how Scrum, where it's the simple, choose three weeks worth of work, or whatever write out on post it notes, what are you going to do what's going to be done? What's the main thing that you're going to accomplish is going to outperform, you know, these comprehensive project man, you know, very comprehensive projects that are built out all day long, right, that's felicity. And I think a lot of it comes from just focus on a problem, stop trying to change the whole world, just try to fix like, go and remodel the bathroom or go fix something. And it's this small thing, where I think the difference there is, is the hyperfocus. And I really, I try to actually read. I've read Scrum a few times, because of that Scrum, and then another book called "The One Thing," the whole thing talks about focusing more, and trying to do less, but doing those things well.
Casey Pehrson:Yeah, less is good. And that that kind of goes along with our brand to is like, we want to provide simple solutions. We don't want we don't want people's life to become more complicated. And that can be shown by, you know, in to what you're saying is to you know, execution is where the actual, you know, stuff happens. And planning can be quite a burden. And really, because planning involves contingencies to sometimes those contingencies that you spend all time planning on don't happen. And not that you can know ahead of time where things are going to go and just hey, we're not going to plan on this contingency, because we know it's not going to happen. Wouldn't that be great? But those small executions of getting closer to where that decision point is, is how you actually find out, you know, where do I invest my resources? Where do I spend my time?
Dale Majors:Yeah. Yeah, working? Yeah, working in those smaller blocks. I like that. It sounds like Casey, it sounds like you do a great job of doing things deliberately, you know, you want to make an impact, you want to make the world better, you want to create a simple solution. It sounds like your foundation for starting a business is pretty well thought out. And that actually kind of segways well into the maybe just your motivation for doing this in the first place. Right? And you've talked about a little bit, you know, why are you doing this at all? Like, why Sound Helm? Why why being an entrepreneur? What's your main driver behind doing this?
Casey Pehrson:Well, that's gonna be a little bit of a long answer, but it's a good one. So again, you know, my you mentioned that my main drivers is to, you know, make society a better place, I really do want to have an impact that when I'm gone, like, there's still some echo, or footprint or fingerprint of things that I've worked on. To achieve that and to help this, everybody, honestly.
Dale Majors:Awesome.
Casey Pehrson:And so when I, when I decided to do Sound Helm, I have a list of all these ideas I want to work on, you know. And it's a quite quite a varied list. And I remember sitting down one day, and I'm like, I want to, like do one of these things, I've had these ideas forever, never really executed on them. And so I looked through them, and I'm like, Well, this one seems like, you know, it's not that big of a package. It's reasonably, you know, reasonable to attain. And it's an area that I like, so I was like, let's do this one. And then I looked around, I noticed that, you know, my, my dad was kind of had the same kind of mindset of inventing things. And he was always dinking around with stuff. And I found this old bike speaker box, really cool, funky speaker box, he's trying to build to make speaker sound better. He's like, trying to take this piece of junk Radio Shack speaker and build a custom enclosure on it looked really wild. It didn't work at all. But just the fact that like, he had spent so much time like cutting out these little plastic pieces and gluing them together. And trying all these different things was like, I don't know, it just kind of inspired me in a way to go off to the audio field, to kind of following in his footsteps in that way, at least in the inventive way. You know, he didn't work in that area, but that was definitely one of his passions. So, so doing that, and then, you know, the thing that's kind of kept me going, really has been, you know, the look on people's faces, when they try on our unit. And listen to like, the differences that makes by having like, A, we call it a near-ear audio system, having audio just near your ears, so you can still hear everything around you still, it's like they don't you know, if you put on headphones, like he leaves the room for a minute, mentally, they put ours on, it's just adding and making it it's just elevating it one level up. And when I see that look on people's faces, that pure like wow, you know, the eyebrows up and just that that wow factor. It's like, it's so like, beautifully, eloquently simple, that I'm like, I've got to see somebody else do this, I got to find another person that has no idea what this is. And have them try it out. Because that like that really gets me it makes me like I'm making it I'm making somebody moment better look at the smile. And I love that that keeps me going.
Dale Majors:That is awesome. Cool thing, I need to try them Casey where we live so close, I need to I need to get a pair. So we'll have to coordinate that after this call. Cool. So going into like, some things come very naturally to people, right? Like there are certain things that come very naturally to me that don't others and that and I see certain people doing things and think Man, I really wish man, what would it be like to be so good at that thing, right? So think when thinking about your superpower, or something that you naturally do quite well as an entrepreneur or in your business, whether it's developing product or coming up with new ideas or you know, or making the prototypes, managing planning whatever that is. What is your superpower and how are you kind of leveraging that in your business?
Casey Pehrson:I would say my superpower and I know it doesn't really exist is multitasking. Okay, I would call it more like serial microtasking, where I'm able to keep a bunch of things up in the air and moving at the same time that aren't really related to each other. I utilize that all the time. And even in even to this aspect of you know, having a home office is definitely a challenge. You know, I've got to give up some of my own personal space for workspace and then there's always it always encroaches on each other. You know, I've got personal stuff in my office, and I've got office stuff in my personal space. But that superpower for me allows that to happen. It doesn't really mess me up. Yeah, other one that is that I consider myself a social social butterfly. That's not typical for engineers. There's an old joke for engineers, it says, which, how do you tell if an engineer is an introvert or an extrovert? And it's the the extrovert will be looking at your shoes.
Dale Majors:Oh, that's awesome.
Casey Pehrson:I've always been like, a little bit I never really fit in, in the engineering realm with that I've always been way too social of a person. So that's another one of my premises helps out a lot with networking. Yeah. And that's a crucial part of the entrepreneurial space is really, you know, making yourself uncomfortable in public situations. I'm fine with that. That's great. I'm all like, can I make myself a little more uncomfortable? I mean, I do have a mullet now so...
Dale Majors:Yeah, I wish that I could have a mullet. That's awesome. Love it. So what is your so as you think about your superpower, and it sounds like you know you're putting yourself out there you're going to networking events and and using that, you know, your networking skills. The microtasking, I'd never heard - serial microtasking. I had never heard of that before. That is an interesting concept or idea.
Casey Pehrson:Well, I just made it up.
Dale Majors:I love it. No, I think that's...
Casey Pehrson:I was trying to think of awake. So, you know, you always hear that like, nobody really multitask. Your brain can't do that. I'm like, that's, that's true. But what do you how do you do a bunch of things at one time, and I'm like, thinking about the other day is like, I was trying to organize, I'm trying to reorganize, like how I think of things rather than like having a to do list. I'm coming up with like, a to have list, like what things do I need to have done to help me feel complete in life, not what things are, in my way stopping me. But I come up with these huge long lists of things. And it's just like, I go around, I just hit them out just one after another bang, bang, bang, bang, bang. And all sudden, they're all dumb. It's like, well, that's not really multitasking. But it has the same kind of effect, because they're so diverse. But they're all just these small, little tasks. So.
Dale Majors:Yeah, well, it sounds it sounds like going back to our conversation earlier, or just focusing earlier in the conversation, your ability to focus on individual things at a time, because I think what they talk, I think the knock on multitasking is that we can't, you know, just be in a lot of places at once. And the the power of being present doing one thing at a time, is there's a lot of power in that. And so when you say serial microtasking you say, you know, here's this long list of things, and I'm going to pound them out and focus on each of them individually.
Casey Pehrson:Yep. It works for me.
Dale Majors:Yeah. No, I love it. Good stuff. Yeah. And there's a Yeah, and I'm curious, too. I'll have to think more about that. But I do know that you know, The One Thing by Gary Keller, there's a there's a TED talk that we that I have the people that go through one of my time management cohorts listen to that talks about mind wandering. And it says that when you you're less happy when your mind wandering. That's the main thing. They did a study, they said, Hey, what are you doing? And what are you thinking about? And how happy are you? And they found that the people that were where they were focused on what they were actually doing, in general, were happier than those that were doing something other than not other than what they were doing.
Casey Pehrson:I like that.
Dale Majors:Yeah, really good. I forget the name of the TED Talk. But if you look up mind wandering happiness, TED talk, I'm sure that will show you on YouTube. Awesome. So you've got your superpower. Maybe let's talk a bit about you know, how do you how do you begin to leverage other people you know, what is your next perfect hire look like, if you had a problem on your plate and you know if you could solve one problem that you have today, just magically by snapping your fingers, right, like, what would that problem be? I'd love to talk a little bit about that. Because I think that's one real issue for entrepreneurs is moving beyond themselves.
Casey Pehrson:Yeah, yeah, for sure. Mine that immediately comes to mind would be a person to help out with the business development side. And I'm not saying just run the business, you know, because obviously, I'm doing that I'm an entrepreneur. But what I'm talking about is more of the, the business side of operations where, you know, there is that strategy and planning, you know, I've, I've got my, I've commercialized my product, it's for sale, you can buy it, I've demonstrated that, you know, we make a product that people want, we sell it for a price point that people buy it for. And that's, that's what we need. And we know, and the market is there, like there's market space. But, okay, so that's, that's one thing, you know, that's, that's just one tiny aspect of this, you know, there's a whole side of like the business and sales structure, that is a huge thing that needs to be taken on on a, in a manner that is not a microtasking kind of thing. You know, that's, that's a little bit more of that long term strategy that needs to kind of be the, you know, the structure that the company can grow with him. And, you know, as a solo entrepreneur, it feels a little scatterbrained. Yeah, I've got an idea about it, you know, I, I've obviously done enough. Well, I shouldn't say have obviously done enough work, but I have done enough work to show to demonstrate to myself that there is, you know, enough resources available in here that, you know, one I can manufacture locally. And two, I can make enough money from that, to, you know, have enough profit to put back into the business to help the business grow and sustain itself. And, you know, even your monthly operating costs have to be taken care of. Yeah. But as far as you know, we're talking back to, you know, equity sharing stuff like that, or what if what if we want to take on some investment in the future, it's like, I feel I'm so unprepared as a company for those types of ventures. But those need to be in place for any company to really grow and scale. You can't just grow and scale by finding out how much your customers willing to pay, you have to get out there and have channels for your customers to buy it through and discover through and and, you know, have the supporting backbone to do that. I mean, we have to file taxes every year that doesn't go away. So that would be that's my that's my looming on the horizon thing that I've got going on right now.
Dale Majors:Yeah. Strategy, business development, planning. And as you're talking through that, yeah, honestly, all of these small business owners are serial microtasks. Because when you have to wear so many hats, you cannot, you wouldn't, you wouldn't get to where you were at this point, if you couldn't manage a lot of different priorities. So it is interesting, but yes, as you keep going, that's, that's where a lot of times, you hear the issues of yeah, that great, that person was amazing at starting the business, but they didn't have the mindset or skills or interest in running, you know, in running the business when it was, you know, $20 million. Yeah, they loved building it, and micro tasking all the way up to, you know, to 510, whatever. But at a certain point, there's more structure that needs to be put in place, and it's a different skill set.
Casey Pehrson:Right.
Dale Majors:That's awesome. Thinking about? So So you also mentioned before a conversation that you were thinking about, there is like brand, some branding considerations as well. How you tell your story from you know, how you how you brand yourself and more of the story. Do you want to talk a little bit about that?
Casey Pehrson:Yeah, thanks. Yeah. So lately, I've been really thinking about this more. Like, what what are we actually doing as a company? You know, we sell a good, it's not a service, we sell a hardware, a hardware good, which has its own unique challenges for sure. And one of those is kind of stepping back from that a little bit. And instead of saying, you know, I'm selling audio systems for recreational sports. I've been thinking more like, well, what does that do for people? Like, what am I really doing for people? And what I've thought of is, you know, it kind of ties into that, you know, making society better. So one of the things we do is we make trails, a safer place. That's one thing we're selling is not putting in earbuds so that you can hear other people on the trail. I know there's a, there's a pretty big Well, there is a rift between hiking and biking on the same trail,
Dale Majors:Absolutely.
Casey Pehrson:hikers are terrified, they're gonna get run over by bikers. And if a biker put if one out of every 50 Bikers puts in earbuds and zips by hikers, all of a sudden, all bikers are dangerous, because, you know, if if one out of every 50 cars on the road was a threat to me, I'd be terrified to drive. So we want to, you know, make that space better. But not only that, like, that's not it, that's not all of it. You know, safety is certainly a thing. But that's not, there's not a whole lot of fun and safety.
Dale Majors:Yeah.
Casey Pehrson:I mean, you can have fun, because you're safe, you know, there's freedom in that. But also like getting into a flow state. And I don't know, if everybody knows what a flow state means maybe a focus state is better, is getting to that sweet spot where it's like, where you're not thinking about the things you don't want to think about in life. You know, like we mentioned before the call, like, when I'm on my bike up on the trails, hopefully, I'm not thinking about, you know, what bills are due coming up in the next week, you know, I don't want that would in that would interfere with my enjoyment. And so that one energy interfere with my, my focus, or my flow, and this flow state is like, it's a beautiful place where, you know, things just kind of just go. And that's what we found, where, that's what I found, when I first embarked on this, because I got onto it, because I used to go to the gym. And I was like, I can't be on a treadmill or exercise bike just staring at us TV screens, like I don't, I don't really enjoy this. So I got outside got on my bike, and I took all my stuff that I had used in the gym with me, you know, because I you listen to music in the gym, and just didn't work. It was it was cumbersome. And I couldn't get into that groove, you know. And so that's kind of what got me on the start, and I came up with a solution for it. But really, what I want is to have that solution for other people to have, you know, just the right gear, with music. So you can just go and just really like be in the moment, and not have to sit there and futz with your equipment, or think about the things that you want to be thinking about, like, that's what we're really after. And it doesn't apply just to biking, you know, that's, that's where we are launching our space, you know, but that's not where we're ending. So it's been really easy to have that conversation now about, you know, we're recreational audio equipment, and we, you know, our product is for half-shell helmets we mount on we have an audio system, it's sits by your ear, it's like, that's so many words. And so I've been trying to like refigure with the branding is like, how do I approach this where it's like, our mountain biking product is a subset of our company, not defining our company. And that's what I'm talking about this rebranding. And it's a challenge, because I've been talking about this for so long, I'm so used to talking about mountain biking, that, you know, so easy, because I got a product there. But I really want to start talking about the other conversation about you know, that enjoyment of life. And, but how do you, you know, it's, for me, the challenge is like, how do you how do you get in between there and you know, I just can't say, we so we are a company that makes your life better? It's like, well, that's way too broad of a stroke. And saying that we're, you know, an audio system for recreational sports is, you know, way to fine of a pen. So that's why I'm talking about the rebranding is like, how do we find a space in there? And it's funny, because I'm having to go through that whole awkward phase again, about having, introducing subjects in the company in ways that like I'm practicing, if people know it, you can see it on their face. It's pretty fun.
Dale Majors:Yeah. I love that. Yeah, I'm thinking that that'd be a fun thing to brainstorm more, you know, because when you are out and about riding your bike without earbuds in and more space than you're hearing more of, you know, you're hearing the birds and you're hearing more of the environmental noises and that's a lot. You know, that's, that's a more enjoyable thing. And there's this carefree element of not having a care not having a an air pod that needs to be fussed with, or that could fall out. So yeah, I love that. I think you're on the I think you're on the right track there to come up with what is that benefit that your selling people?
Casey Pehrson:Yeah.
Dale Majors:and and it's not the safety, you know, is one of them. I think that can be part of your mission, but from a marketing fun perspective, I like how you worded that. What are you selling people? You know, people, people don't go to the gym because they want a place to hang out for an hour a day. They want a gym body.
Casey Pehrson:Yeah.
Dale Majors:They want the satisfied and maybe they don't even want a gym body they want they want the status, or the the looks and the respect of having a gym body. Right. But it's a lot deeper than I bought a gym membership, because I would like to hang out with all those sweaty people for one hour a day. You know, from 5-6am Absolutely not. Right?
Casey Pehrson:Well, that's that's probably what they're putting up with, you know, to get that those are, those are the things they're, you know, what they're buying.
Dale Majors:So they should go out on... And they should do it on their bikes. Anyways. I love it. Okay, so what a to wrap up? When will you have like, what's, what's one of your next milestones where you have kind of arrived in your business, and maybe you'll never arrive arrive, right? Because it's a journey and you want to continue to create value. But what what needs to happen in your business for you to say, you know, to be able to step back and look and say, wow, you know, we've done it, we've gotten to this milestone.
Casey Pehrson:Well, I kind of heard two questions in there. And I'm gonna, I'm gonna switch on you on there. Yeah, what the next milestone we're actually working on and I say we, it's not just me, I'm not a total solopreneur. I've got a working on another partner that I'm partnering up with. But you know, he's not an official employee or anything like that. That's why I keep saying we,
Dale Majors:Okay.
Casey Pehrson:Anyway, we've got a Kickstarter that we're working on. And we're going to be launching a product that's expanding our product diversity, that we'll be able to hit a couple more recreational sports with that. And I'm going to leave it at that. But that's our next milestone coming up early next year. But to answer, you know, how will I know when I've succeeded or when, when we've arrived? And, you know, I think it's one when will we know we're on the journey? I don't know if we'll ever arrive. But it's going to be I've thought of it for a while. And it's going to be when I hear somebody say, you know, that's like, The Sound Helm System, then I'll know, then I will know. Because right now, there's no you know, our competition, you know, we're so niche that like, we don't have a lot of competition. So there's, people are often kind of like, is it a headphone? Is it it's kind of like earbuds, but it's not, you know, there's a lot of these kind of likes, but when I hear somebody else, you know, when when the when the market space, I know the market is there. I know the desires that I know the people that like myself and the countless other people I've talked to want this to exist when it when it exists to the point where there's competition out there. That's people are exploring. And they're like, oh, that's like the Sound Health System. I'll be like, That's it.
Dale Majors:We have arrived. I love it. Awesome. Well, how can people connect with you, Casey?
Casey Pehrson:LinkedIn is a great place. I'm on there. It's Casey Pehrson, C-A-S-E-Y P-E-H-R-S-O-N. Remember the H in the correct place. That's a great way there's contact form on our website, www.soundhelmaudio.com. And just so it's clear that it is the word Helm, like the helm of a ship. And that's intentional. You know, it's a little bit of play on words with the helmet, and also taking control, you know, at the helm of the ship, that you're taking control of your world and having it the way you want it and going the direction you want to. So both of those are great, great ways. There's, like I said, there's contact form on there, those emails, end up in my email inbox.
Dale Majors:Love it. Awesome. I do love the Sound Helm. I think the brand and the sentiment that it inspires is really awesome. So good job on that.
Casey Pehrson:Thank you very much.
Dale Majors:Cool. Well, hey, it's been great to talk to Casey, thanks for being on the podcast.
Casey Pehrson:I've been. It's been great to be on the show. Dale, thanks a lot for the invite.
Dale Majors:Awesome. Okay. We will see you later.
Casey Pehrson:Okay.