Camo Blindness | Small Busness Ep. 1

00:12

Hey guys, good to see you, good to have you here. I'm Mike Landlot. I'm the owner of more than 216 local businesses across the Quad County Shelf and I've been the executive co-scribe of the Skatchenash Valley Chamber of Commerce for the last six years. Now you're listening to Small Business, a podcast where we talk about all the ins and outs and ups and downs of being a small business owner.

00:44

There's a train passing. I don't know if I should wait for it or...

00:55

Google here. My Google's not working.

01:06

In any case, you're listening to Small Business and it's a podcast where we talk about all the things that go into being a small business owner. But that's just a jumping off point. We can talk about whatever. As long as we're having fun, talk about the latest and greatest in scientific inventions. We can talk about how we're feeling, what's going on in the world, what's going on in our communities.

01:40

Something funny, like about breakfast cereals or whatever. As long as we're having fun. You'd show up at a basketball court without a ball. That's not fun unless someone else brings it.

01:58

You have to have a ball in order to have fun on the basketball court, just in terms of playing basketball. We got to have some fun. For my part, I just spent a weekend up with the fam.

02:15

I went up north and saw my nephews and nieces over the holiday, which was great. It was relaxing. It was not relaxing. It was intense. It was fun. It was exciting. I took the little ones sledding.

02:38

Oh boy, it's been a couple years since I've gone out. I did something to my knee. I don't know what it is, but it is screaming something awful. Anyway, but the kids loved it. The kids, oh boy, they were going so fast. I told them they were going fast. They were not going fast. It's my sister's kids.

03:08

She's got a lot of them, two girls and three boys. We had a good time other than me feeling my age as it were out there on the sled slopes. It was great.

03:28

We played Boggle. We saw the second Avatar movie, the newer one, The Way of Water. I thought it was amazing. I hadn't seen it.

03:44

They really took the, everybody loved the first one. It was just, you're just rooting for the cat people. They look like blue cats. I don't remember, I think they're called the Ravi, Ravi, Ravine, Ravell. I don't remember what they're called, but they, I think it begins with a K actually. The blue cat people, it's their bows and arrows up against the giants of the humanity.

04:24

Anyway, but this one is different. They're showing that they can't, it's not just only that they can climb floating mountains and stuff like that to like honor and cherish their ancestral lineage and their customs as a people, but they can go underwater. They can hold their breath for a very long time and they're swimming with whales, not normal whales, but whales that are normal for their planet, they're swimming with them. They're doing all kinds of incredible feats. Starts to make you wonder, like what is it that we're not getting into as people? Makes you want to get out there and experience more stuff on our planet. At least that's how it made me feel.

05:17

But then again, I'm a sentimental type. Yeah, so we saw Avatar: Way of Water and my, well, my nephew fell asleep. He'd taken some of those marijuana gummies and he was done. He was just done.

05:36

My God, he leaned back in his chair and his just, it was, his mouth was wide open pointed straight at the ceiling. You could have dropped, you could have put a live fish in there. He wouldn't have, he would have, he wouldn't have moved. For a while, I thought he was dead.

05:52

I kept putting my hand over his mouth, you know, to make sure he was breathing. And meanwhile there's, you know, this glorious spectacle of, of movie magic happening on the screen. He's missing the whole thing, you know, but, you know, hey, James Cameron has really built quite a brand over there at his, at his studio. Um, you know, the, the, the rav, the ravi, the ravellin people are just beloved. Um, you're just rooting for them even though, you know, you are a human, you're sitting there going, God, you know, kill those people, kill them all, you know, get them out of, get them out of here.

06:35

You know, that's, that's at least that's the way I see it. What else? What else? Oh yeah, we went down to the supper club. That was good.

06:44

That was real good. They, it's a, I hadn't been there in, in several years. They replaced all the old wood paneling. So it looks nice and fresh inside. They, they brought in all new wood paneling. Um, I mean, it's virtually identical to the, uh, wood paneling they had in there before, but, uh, it's brand new. It just looks fresh.

07:08

It smells good. Um, of course, they still have all the taxidermies on the wall, all the, you know, the, oh, look, there's a 10 point buck, you know, um, elk, you know, uh, moose, uh, uh, beaver, uh, deer.

07:28

Uh, yeah, just kind of everything you can imagine. I mean, they had, for some reason, they have a stuffed alligator, um, which I thought, I've always thought was pretty cool. I used to see it back there when I was a kid and I'd say, oh, look at this.

07:42

Look at, look at this guy. You know, where, and I'd say to my, my grandpa, you know, hey, Pop-Pop, where, you know, where'd they, you know, I'd go down the line. And you know, I wonder who shot this one. And he'd say, oh, that was, that was, uh, you know, uh, Jim Callahan. And, oh, what, what about, what about this one Pop-Pop and, you know, go down the line and I got to the, get to the alligator and say, oh, well, you know, uh, well, because he was telling me where each one was shot, you know, and I'd say, oh, was this, was this in the, in the, over in the, in the meadow as well. You know, and he was, he was, he yelled at me. What are you an idiot?

08:19

There's no alligators up here. I believe he spanked me after that. If a kid asked me, a four-year old asked me if this alligator was killed out, you know, outside, I, I wouldn't, you know, call him an idiot, but it, uh, it developed me into who I am today. So, uh, you know, God bless him.

08:43

God rest his soul. It's just, you know, I'm, I'm more progressive, you know, and that's how it goes. You get more progressive each generation, but yeah, they were all still there at the supper club. And, uh, you know, it's a warm place and, and it's, it's just nice to get everyone together.

09:02

The hot dishes were, you know, chef's kiss. Incredible. Mwah. You know, uh, loved it. Loved, had some interesting conversation. So, oh, my nephew also had taken a lot of those weed gummies again that night. And he was, um, he, he cornered, uh, uh, an Iraq war veteran and was.... I overheard a bit of their conversation. And, uh, it was, it was, it was not going well, but, uh, you know, the, it was, you know, not my problem.

09:36

Heh. I do not have any children. I am a bachelor. Once again, I am divorced.

09:44

Um, uh, but, uh, you know what? It was a joy to see all of them just to spend time with everybody. And, uh, to be back in the old supper club, that was a treat, you know, um, a lot of camo there, which actually, um, you know, interesting bit of trivia about me. I cannot see camo. Not, I, I, I truly cannot see it.

10:13

Now it, it depends. If I'm feeling, if I'm feeling relaxed, I can generally sort of, uh, make out what it is I'm looking at, you know. But you start getting a lot of people in one place wearing camo, uh, or, you know, I'm, I, it's just, I'm having a particular day. I can have these episodes where, you know, just boom, the camo disappears. And I don't mean like what an octopus would do when they camouflage themselves or something like that.

10:43

But literally the camo print, particularly the green, uh, GI Joe kind, uh, you wear it, you wear pants like that, I can't see your legs. I just, I see nothing behind there. It's just this like haze you disappeared from the waist down. I start sweating and, uh, you know, freaking out. You know, it's, uh, it's not good.

11:11

You know, somebody comes in and, uh, they're, you know, a customer say and they're, you know, I'd say it's a, the flooring store and they're asking about a certain type of lacquer. And, uh, you know, but they're wearing a camo jacket. Yeah. It, it takes everything in me to not freak out. Cause you know, he's like, Oh, hey, yeah, I was just thinking about, you know, you know, uh, wondering about the sandalwood and meanwhile I'm looking at a floating head with these hands that are flopping around and then a lower body just walking around my store. I don't know where the hands are going next.

11:52

I just, it's like some kind of Alice in Wonderland thing. At one time I did an actually some guy snuck up on me and said, excuse me, sir. I turn around and I screamed. I screamed, uh, cause it just, he's an apparition as far as I can tell in my store. And, uh, you know, there I am. The guy, poor guy is just trying to get help.

12:17

And there I am screaming in his face. I'm the owner of the, but not ideal. That is not going to be in Zig Ziglar's book of sales. But yeah, you know, it got me wondering what other, what other, what sort of strange challenges do you have, you know, as a small business owner, you know, not the run of the mill ones, but you know, the ones that are really out there or just different, different from the mainstream, you know, maybe you're missing a limb, you know, or maybe you just have a, you have it, you're afraid of the parking lot. I knew a guy who was, who was deathly afraid of parking lots. Um, and it, it, you know, turns out it's because his mother was killed in one. Um, but yeah, it, uh, it, it, it got me thinking about these different challenges and also got me wondering, you know, what it, where does this come from? Well, you know, where am I getting this camo thing?

13:16

I started reading about it and it said that, you know, people who are color blind actually are more likely to see camo, um, because they're not getting confused by the, the, the colors, which, you know, led me to believe that perhaps I have a condition, um, where I, I can see color too well, you know, and I talked to my doctor about it. He said, you know, he had no idea. He had, he looked at me like I was nuts, which, you know, you know, perhaps I am a little nuts. You know, you gotta be, but you know, he, uh, yeah, he had no idea, but, uh, I, I was googling and that's, that's what I found. And so, you know, I'm thinking maybe I always used to think of myself as being color blind a la the great Dr. Martin King.

14:05

I see myself as a color blind person, but perhaps I'm, I'm color, I'm, I'm blind to non-color blindness in, in terms of inner reflection because it's, it appears that maybe I see color too well because I'm seeing camouflage just clothes disappear off people's bodies. You know, this is, this is my, this is my cross to bear. And, uh, you know, I feel as though I'm privileged in many ways, but you know, this has been a hardship for me. So, you know, tell me about yours. You know, why don't you leave me a comment, get in touch with me. Uh, you can hit me up on Twitter.

14:45

At why not landlot? And, uh, you know, give me some, uh, something about, uh, what goes on for you? What makes it hard for you as a small business owner? Maybe you're, you're prone to, to, to leaving your, your keys somewhere. I don't know. Maybe you've, you've got, uh, you know, something traumatical that keeps you from moving on. Maybe it's about, maybe it's about, you know, counting product.

15:17

Maybe somebody beats you up when you were trying to do inventory. I don't know. The, I just, uh, far be it for me to try to imagine what challenges you have out there. But, uh, well, let's talk about it.

15:28

Let's get into the weeds here. Anything, you know, we can do to support each other, uh, is important. It's important work.

15:37

And, uh, you know, I want to be there for you. Just to be supporting small business. Cause we really are the lifeblood that's keeping this economy moving and keeping America, you know, American as it were, just, you know, all of us could do a better job of supporting small business. Anything we can do to do so would be, uh, would be critical. So, uh, uh, keep that in mind.

15:59

We're going to take a quick commercial break and we'll be right back. Do you have dry skin? You find yourself itching and scratching because winter's got you all itchy and scratchy. And you try to find something around the house, someone in the bathroom to, to, to, and your, your fresh out of lotion. Trust me, I've been there. You know what I do in that case? I go to Walgreens, just drive right down the street and I grab my, and I look, I go to the aisle and it's all perfectly laid out.

16:26

It's very clean on the store shelves. You find your lotions, you find your moisturizers, cocoa butter, uh, whatever it is that you use that, that, that you prefer. I mean, they've got a little bit everything there. And that's not all I'm feeling thirsty. I'm feeling a little dehydrated.

16:40

I swing in, I grab a Gatorade for the ladies. You find makeup products, uh, for the, for the elderly. They've got canes. They've got adult diapers. They've got magazines.

16:51

It, well, most of them still have magazines. They've got a great gift card aisle. You know, I go in there and you open one. It's got a banana on it and it says, you know, I find you appealing.

17:01

Just it's silly, but it's, you know, I get a little laugh out of it. Uh, but yeah, Walgreens is your one-stop shop for finding all the things you need when you need to go out and, and, and get something. There's usually no one in there. Uh, you know, a lot of hours of the day than other times it's really crowded. There's always someone working just out of sight and you can, you can sorta, you push a button because everything's locked up nowadays and someone appears from around the corner and you're like, Oh, hello. And they're like, what do you need? And you're like, I just, I just need a, I just need an, an attachment for my razor.

17:37

And they're like, okay, let me get the, let me get the keys. Walgreens has, has been a trusted source of, uh, American products. Uh, and all the products that you need for, for decades and decades.

17:52

It's the, they also have a pharmacy. Walgreens. Come on by.

17:58

All right. Full disclosure, that was not a real ad for Walgreens. I don't have any sponsors seeing as this is my first episode, but that was just sort of, that was me auditioning, you know, sort of show advertisers what it is I can do.

18:16

Just, you know, testimonial off the cuff. But yeah, you know, I've, you know, if you live anywhere in the Quad County Shelf area, you know, you know, I've been doing advertisements for years for all of my different businesses. I'm what you'd call a student of advertising. I pay attention to the ins and outs and the various dynamics of what makes an ad good versus bad. And, you know, anything that gets people talking obviously is good.

18:55

I've noticed some new trends recently in the ad space, particularly when it comes to mobile gaming. I don't know if any of you have ever seen like a mobile gaming ad, but I've really started to notice the trend lately. It's kind of about seeing somebody completely just failing at what it is they're supposed to be doing in a way that makes you mad.

19:26

I can illustrate sort of what I'm talking about. So there's this one in particular where, you know, it's these cartoon people and you see this little cartoon play out where it's this woman who catches her boyfriend or her husband or whatever, cheating on her. And then suddenly she's out on the streets and she's got like an orphan with her for some reason and like a puppy and it's winter time and it's all, it's freezing. They're in the middle of a blizzard and, you know, they find some abandoned house to go in and you're like, what kind of game is this?

20:09

You know, I'm supposed to play something. This is devastating. I'm supposed to play this? And but then they get into the house and there's like no windows and the, you know, it's all gross inside there like some sort of a meth house or something that's been abandoned and there's a blizzard coming through the window. It's freezing cold.

20:34

The woman's holding a baby and the dog is like laying there. It looks like it's going to die. And then you've got like a choice. You can either, you know, fix the broken window or try to start a fire in the fireplace or you can like, you can clean up the trash and, you know, then like a hand appears on screen. You know, I'm sitting there. Obviously, what are we going to do? We're going to fix the window, right?

21:01

Because there's a freaking storm of the century coming in. The woman's got an infant, you know, like a papoose all wrapped up and the child looks like it's dead. And, you know, the orphan is like, just standing there wearing a nightgown, just shivering. And, you know, it's like, oh my god, lady, fix the window.

21:25

What are you doing? You know, and instead the little hand appears on screen sort of to select something. What's it select? It selects to clean up the trash. Like, are you kidding me?

21:38

I don't care if there's some Cheetos wrappers on the floor. We're dying here. We're dying.

21:45

And it's no joke. In those temperatures, you know, you can, you could, you could get frostbite and hypothermia in like under 20 minutes. You could die. A baby....

21:58

Geez. Anyway, so they, and then it like goes, oh, and it cleans up all the trash and throws it in a trash can. Then for like a brief moment, the lady and the baby and the orphan and the dog are like, they give a little smile, but then it just starts snowing harder on them.

22:15

And then the hand appears again. It's like, what do you want to do? I'm like, fix the window.

22:20

Are you crazy? And then instead they do a thing where they, it goes over and taps the fireplace. I'm like, why are you bothering to make a fire, close the window, get the storm out of the house. And it's, it starts a fire in the fireplace. Guess what? Big surprise. The blizzard blows out the fire and they're all freezing still.

22:43

Okay. So the next one you're like, okay, finally you're going to fix the durn window. But you know what? It chooses something that wasn't even there.

22:51

It's, it chooses to paint the walls and it paints all the walls real bright and pretty. I'm losing my mind at this point. I'm watching thinking, what are you doing?

23:02

And you'd think one of them would die or scream out in pain, but they just keep looking at you like, are you, what are you going to do? What are you going to do? We're turning blue. What are you going to do? And I, I'm at this point, I've, I am done.

23:16

I am just, I have no patience left. And then at the last second, it's like, oh, do you want to fix the window? And the hand, the little cartoon hand hovers like it's supposed to be your hand, hovers over the thing to like the menu to like, to match some things in order to fix the window. And it skips over the one that makes a new window and instead it makes a roll of tape like yellow tape and it go, oh, good job. And, and then it try and puts it at an X over the window to try to, uh, out of tape to try to tape it together and hold it shut. Guess what? It blows the window open and then everyone's freezing even worse.

24:02

And then it says fail, a big red fail button. Oh boy, my blood was boiling. I was watching this.

24:09

Now I've seen it several times since then. And I just go nuts. It makes me so mad. Why can't the little floating hand person who does this game figure out how to fix it, how to save their lives?

24:25

It's crazy. Then I realized that's exactly why they want me to think, right? So I download the game and I'm like, yo, yo, give me this scene, you know, let me, let me fix it.

24:40

I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to save the baby and are in the orphan of the dog and just by fixing a window for, for goodness sake, what are we doing? And anyway, it's like, welcome to like Sunny Shores. And I, I'm like, okay, well, just guess they're doing some setup here. And then it's like, you bought a new cafe.

25:00

I, I, I felt swindled. You know, I started making coffee in the cafe and combining beans with, with bags and trying to turn them into coffee machines and people were coming by and saying, oh, this place is a mess. And I, I, I just, you know, I started Googling, when do I get to save the, the, the family? They just won't let me. And they, they start having me combining things and groceries to try to make something.

25:30

Anyway, I don't know. And then it was trying to get me to buy some, some gems to, to, I didn't buy any, but man, it's, you know, it sucked me in for a few days. I worked on it. Ultimately, I started trying to solve the mystery of how my, why my husband left me. And, you know, but I never saw a baby or an orphan. I apparently had a daughter who's following me around, you know, drawing pictures while I'm trying to fix my cafe.

26:06

It wasn't even wintertime, you know, what is, you know, what are you sucking me into here? But it works, you know, people download this stuff and they use it. And, you know, got me thinking about sort of the old tricks that they use in advertising and maybe how could use this one, this idea of making people so mad because you don't know what you're doing because you're just making mistakes and being an idiot.

26:33

You know, and, you know, I think it could, I think it could work, you know. I remember the old ads where you'd have, there was a guy, it's a furniture store or something. I used to watch the ads growing up and he'd say, you know, if you can't get financing with us, I'll chop off my head. I was watching this as a kid and I was horrified. I didn't know what financing was, but I just, oh my gosh, I hope everybody can get financing because otherwise, this guy's, he's going to chop off his head. I was traumatized and then it just went back to the show, you know, DuckTales or whatever.

27:09

I was, I was losing it. And then, you know, they actually, they had an ad later on where they, where, you know, he kept promising every different ad, you know, sometimes he's a ghostbuster. Sometimes he's a, he's like a turkey for Thanksgiving or whatever.

27:25

And anyway, he, one of the times he kept promising, I'll chop off my head. I didn't understand it. I still don't understand it, but it, you know, to this day, why you would make children watch that. But yeah, eventually I guess there was so much public demand to actually see him do it, even though I guess he gives everybody financing regardless of whether or not they're just complete crooks or they just don't have the means.

27:55

And anyway, he goes, well, you know, I know what everyone's gotten financing, but since you wanted to see it, here I go. And I was frozen. I couldn't move. And this man, it was, you know, obviously a trick of the camera or whatever, but he got out a giant pair of scissors and he went snip. And as far as I could tell as a kid, you know, I know it's just a trick now, but his head goes flying through the air, like end over end, flying across the thing and just like, and smashes into something that explodes.

28:29

And then there's just like, it's, it says like free financing. And I was like, this man is dead. He's dead. You know, I was, that was Rogers furniture.

28:40

And I can't, you know, I, it worked. I was thinking about Rogers furniture every night. I couldn't sleep just up all night, just wondering about this. I pictured myself being in a Rogers furniture, the giant scissors getting my head chopped off.

28:56

It was awful. But you know, it really, it really secured the brand in my mind, as I'm sure it did for, for, you know, so many of us. But it got me thinking about, you know, how this, this new idea of just frustrating people with incompetence would work in an ad.

29:14

And so I was thinking about, you know, maybe, you know, you've got, you know, come on down to my gas station, where we take care of all your needs, you know, say, you can buy snacks, you can buy this and then, you know, and of course always fill up the tank and then just show the guy trying to stick the nozzle into the gas tank. And he just keeps missing and he just keeps smiling at camera, looking, not even looking at what he's doing, trying to stick it in there going, oh, oh, oh, oops, I can't, oops, I'm... just pump the gas.

29:50

It's that easy. And then he starts spraying the gas all over his car on himself, you know, is that the kind of thing that translates out of the mobile gaming world? And if someone's going to see an ad like that and go, oh, come on, buddy, I know how to do that.

30:04

Just stick the nozzle in the tank. What are you nuts? What, are you? Do you need to be committed to a mental institution? Yeah. You know, and I don't, I realize that that's not, that could be, I do apologize for anyone who may have been institutionalized or a loved one. I shouldn't have said that.

30:25 I shouldn't have used that ableism language. You know, because I've seen One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. I know it's not a joke. It's not good. You know, it's not okay for that to happen.

30:39

We just have to support mental health as much as we can, you know, it's an important issue. Yeah. But anyway, the, I was wondering, you know, does it work?

30:55

Does it work? You know, if somebody go show up and go, I'm going to pump, I'll show this idiot, I'm going to pump my gas. And then the owner's going, yeah, you just filled up your tank. My advertising worked. Whoo. I don't know. Let me know your thoughts in the comments, you know, you know, I don't know if, I don't even know what platforms I'm putting this podcast on. I don't know anything about that.

31:21

But if there's comments, you know, put the, please comment, let me know what you think about my idea, whether or not does this translate for us small business owners over into the real world? I don't know. I don't know.

31:37

Leave me your ideas @whynotlandlot. W-H-Y-N-O-T-L-A-N-D-L-O-T. That's on Twitter X. Let me know your thoughts, you know. Let's take a quick break. Is there anything better than a trip to McDonald's?

32:00

For me, the answer's no. I've been going to McDonald's since I was a little kid. I started with Happy Meals, get the little toy, you know, eat your little hamburger, your french fries. Oh, look, I can make something out of the box. It's got special games on the outside. Hey, there's the play place.

32:19

Hey, mom, can I go on down the slide? No, not today. We don't have time. We've gotta, we've got to get, we've got to get up to Target to get some stuff. Oh, please, mom.

32:31

No, not today. McDonald's has been providing family atmosphere that is second to none from its inception. You know that you need to go there late night when you've got the munchies and you're out with your friends. Swing by on through the drive-thru.

32:47

Come on, we're open late. Some of the locations are. Some of them are not. Maybe the one by you is. Swing by McDonald's and find out. There's really nothing more iconic than the Big Mac. It's, it's, they've got a special recipe that no one can figure out exactly, but it is well regarded around the world. Over 99 billion served, which is amazing because there's only like six billion people in the world. Hey, McDonald's is doing something, right?

32:21

You know that much. It's part of the fabric of our American dream. It's part of the fabric of our American fun. Being young or, hey, maybe when you're old, you go out and have a coffee with the, with your friends in the morning and you say, how you been? You know, just, it's great to just be sitting here at McDonald's where it's warm and cozy. And now the coffee's better than Starbucks, which is huge. You just can't even imagine. It'd be like if Starbucks started making burgers better than McDonald's, like, you know, what? That's, that'd be wild. McDonald's.

34:02

That's the way we do it. Have you tried a big Mac yet? All right, guys. Yep.

34:09

Yeah. Once again, that, that's not a real ad. That was just me sort of auditioning, feel, feeling it out. You know, the, it's this new sort of podcasting. You just sort of talk off the cuff, kind of like they do on radio about, you know, just what you like about a brand, what you don't. I follow McDonald's on Twitter. And I do, actually, I follow kind of all the business greats there or I try to and I, I at-mention them in posts and sort of start conversations with, I've started conversations with like Warren Buffett, Elon Musk.

34:52

You know, I just across the spectrum, Kanye West, you know, Katy Perry, various greats from, from, from different endeavors, human endeavors, you know, and I, I at-mention them, I sort of throw out my ideas and, you know, none of them have responded yet. I think probably they're looking at follower counts and like thinking, you know, who's this guy? And it's like, well, you know, in a certain place offline, this guy actually knows a thing or two about business.

35:24

But you know, it's, you got to be willing to be ignored or told no enough times, which, you know, as small business owners, we all know this. But yeah, you know, just I like to post articles or links to articles that are interesting in the business space. And, you know, I'd love it if you followed me there @whynotlandlot. And you send me your questions about small business, about, about life, about how you're doing, and about the show. If you got any questions or ideas or thoughts, you know, just send them my way.

36:04

So yeah, I'm going to have to jet here. This has been small business with Mike Landlot. That's me. Be safe out there, everyone. And remember to think global and dream local. Watch out for deer.