AI-Powered Merch: Transform Your Business in 2023 | Curtis Blackmore DSH #563

You know what I mean?

I watch it every couple years and I'm like, wow, this is actually starting to happen.

Yeah, it's happening fast.

It's moving way faster than I thought it would, right?

Once it started with GPT 3.5, I think where things really took off.

And then obviously there's generative AI models around image generation.

Now video generation is getting really big.

It's exciting and it's moving unbelievably fast.

It's hard to even keep up.

Yeah, for real.

It's cool to see you embrace AI because a lot of business owners are scared of it and not using it or avoiding it.

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And here's the episode.

All right, guys, here with Curtis Blackmore.

We met through basketball.

Now we've become friends and diving into business together.

Good to have you, man.

Yeah, thanks for having me on.

I sure appreciate it.

Absolutely.

Yeah, we met through basketball.

You lit me up that first game and I was like, who is this dude?

Then we started talking, becoming friends, and it's been cool to see you start my designs and really grow that brand, man.

Yeah, I appreciate that.

You know, it's been a lot of work getting to that point with this and getting it finally launched, doing that startup route, but it's going well.

So I'm really excited to be here and talk about that a little bit if we can.

Yeah, so My Designs is basically a merch POD company, right?

Yep.

It's a merch on demand, or it's a print-on-demand platform for creators to basically take all their designs, their assets, and turn it into merch products.

You put on Etsy, Shopify, and Sunday Amazon.

Nice.

We're going to expand TikTok shops and additional marketplaces too.

Basically, we automate everything from order fulfillment to making it easy to bulk publish your products.

It's one thing that we do really well.

And bulk generate mock-ups and all the assets you need to basically create a really high-quality product listing, including listing data too now.

So titles, descriptions, tags, all you need is designs, hundreds of them.

We can write your listing data in a few seconds.

Nice.

Optimize for every platform you're selling on.

Super cool.

Yeah.

And I was on your YouTube.

It seems like you've been doing merch for years, man.

So what brought you to the merch game?

Yeah.

So I actually, if you go back far enough, I started a clothing brand called Captain Athletics.

And we were doing Shopify at the time.

What we were doing is sourcing locally.

And then it got to a point where we needed more products.

So we started sourcing from China.

And now you have all this excess inventory, sizes, colors, variants, variants, right?

I've been there.

So kind of that naturally led me towards print-on-demand.

I started first hearing about it through Printful using Shopify.

So we kind of switched our model at that point, did pretty well with it, really liked it.

Because now I'm not holding inventory.

You can have as many colors, as many products, different sizes, and only pay for something when someone purchases it.

Nice.

So it was a really nice model and a good change for us.

And then eventually that led to figuring out about merch by Amazon, which is Amazon's, you know, entrance into the print-on-demand game.

Yeah.

And it's built directly into Amazon and they just do the fulfillment yourself.

So again, just needed a graphic, graphic, put it on products.

So now it's on Amazon with Prime Shipping.

And that was really cool.

So I started Merch Titans, building a product and keyword research tool around that particular market and just spun off into eventually building automation software and got really obsessed with automation.

So from design scaling automation to publishing automation, and all that eventually led to my designs, which kind of brings it all into one hub.

Yeah, I like the print-on-demand model because, dude, I've been nightmares of inventory still because I used to sell jerseys and I would have sometimes 100K plus in in inventory just sitting there knowing it probably won't sell.

But with POD, you don't need to have money tied up in inventory.

Nope, not at all.

You only pay for something when someone purchases it.

Yeah.

That's the beauty of it.

And then it routes too, right?

You can automate the entire order fulfillment and tap into a global fulfillment network.

There's so many benefits to it.

The only downside is you're not going to have as high profit margins, but at the end of the day, you can scale a lot quicker and a lot faster.

You won't have as high, but you're actually going to make more, to be honest, because you want a money tied in inventory because not everything sells out.

Yeah, exactly.

It nailed it.

Like you you could order thousands of things thinking it'll sell out and then you're just stuck with all that inventory yep and it's a mess yeah it's a huge mess because you're donating at the end of the day right yeah have you been using any ai with the companies yeah i'm i've been obsessed with ai with my designs in particular like i say and writing your product listings for you in bulk you just use an open ai and um what they're building there with chat or chat gpt but really gpt4

it's it's insane and vision ai where we can just drop designs and basically write your entire product listing wow no matter what product you're selling that's incredible we're doing that but also generative ai because this is really important in the field we're in because everything's around the graphics.

So Midjourney has been phenomenal, especially version 6.

And then you got Stable Diffusion.

STXL is their newest model.

They have a few more coming.

Those are awesome because they're open source.

And we kind of tap into that and can kind of do a lot of our own training and different things with it.

But yeah, we have that built right into My Design.

So essentially by the end of this year, you'll just be able to voice an idea into our app.

So hey, My Design's, you know, generate a Cocker Spaniel portrait wearing sunglasses and sell it on a t-shirt on my answer shop.

That's so cool.

So you just say that and boom, you know, I have multiple variations.

Just select the ones you like and hit publish.

That's so cool.

That's how easy I want to make it.

Yeah, because right now designing merch is an annoying process.

You got to hire a designer.

They got to format it right.

Then you got to order it.

But with that, you can just make it yourself without any graphic design experience.

Exactly.

And we can already do that right now with text prompts.

We have everything else done.

But now we'll get to the point where you can just voice it and then simplify and streamline that whole process.

I think that's the next evolution of shopping right there.

Yeah.

And that leads me to the next part because once you have a lot of people doing that, right?

You start saturating marketplaces, et cetera.

It's like, what is the thing that you're thinking about, the future of e-commerce and print on demand?

It's like, so we started kind of building this internally.

We're going to release a tool pretty soon to test this, but basically it's a generative AI marketplace, all powered by print-on-demand.

So you run a search, product doesn't exist, we'll create it for you.

You know, all the mock-ups, everything, print files, everything's perfect for the printers.

You just purchase it, it shows up at your doorstep.

Wow.

So you're just going to be printing money off designs you haven't even made.

Yeah, it's what a customer wants, right?

They're searching for a particular product.

We'll just create it in near real time.

Dude, that is dope.

Yeah, I could see that.

I just watched Ready Player One again last night.

That's such a good movie, but we're getting closer and closer.

You know what what i mean i watch it every couple years and i'm like wow this is actually starting to happen yeah it's happening fast it's moving way faster than i thought it would right

once it started with uh gpt 3.5 is think where things really took off and then obviously these generative ai models around image generation now video generation is getting really big it's yeah it's exciting and it's moving unbelievably fast it's hard to even keep up yeah for real it's cool to see you embrace ai because a lot of business owners are scared of it and not using it or avoiding it yeah we're really excited about it because our vision's always been what i said about being able to voice something and eventually have that but ai just sped that up because i thought that was gonna take six years to get there.

We'll be there this year.

Absolutely.

Dude.

It's been amazing.

You follow NBA at all?

Yeah.

Who's your team?

Utah Jazz.

Okay.

You got them winning this year?

I don't know about winning this year, but you know, they've struggled on early, and they came around and had really good spurts there.

They kind of up and down.

We're still in a rebuilding mode, but I wouldn't be surprised if we make the playoffs.

And if we do, I think it could be an interesting run.

Okay, okay.

I'm a Lakers fan, but I don't have too much hope this year for them.

Actually, they did just pick up Dinwiddie, which I think is a solid pickup, but I don't know if that'll be enough.

The West is stacked.

It is completely stacked and has been for years.

Yeah, it's so much better than the East.

It's not even close.

The East has like maybe two, three teams, but the West, seed one through 10, is like

it's so tough.

If you can get into that play-in tournament, it's going to be tough.

I know, right?

It's nuts.

Growing up in Utah, what was that like?

No, I liked it.

I actually grew up in northern Arizona.

Colorado City is the name of the town, but it's right on the border of Utah.

So it's a border town.

And then the other side of the city is Hilldale, Utah.

So it's a small polygamous community.

Well, probably fairly big.

It's like, I say small, but there's actually around 10,000 people

part of that community.

So it's pretty big for a polygamous community.

Yeah, for a polygamous community.

So every family there was basically polygamous?

Yeah, for the most part.

Wow.

It was really tight-knit, Yale community.

Grew up in that.

It's different, completely different.

Like, for instance, my family, right?

I have 36 brothers and sisters.

My dad had three wives.

Jeez.

And all the women had a lot of kids, you know, 10 plus usually.

Wow.

Not in every family, but that was pretty common.

Damn.

So they really, yeah, had a lot of kids.

And it's an interesting experience.

Yeah, so growing up in that environment, you probably thought that was normal at the time.

Yeah, exactly.

I grew up in.

That's what I knew.

Right.

Very disciplined, you know, very community-oriented.

There's a lot of really great things about it.

They teach you like hard work ethic and all that.

But at the end of the day, it was a healthy experience.

That is interesting.

Did you gravitate towards one mother or did you treat all of them equally?

I gravitated towards my mom, obviously.

Okay.

I think that's pretty common for most kids in polygamous families.

Yeah.

But there's also your favorites, right?

Certain moms you love.

So you call them mother, like all three of them?

Yep.

Wow.

That is interesting, man.

And you said 36 siblings?

Yeah, 36 siblings.

And you know all their names?

Yeah.

That is impressive, dude.

Absolutely.

I'm close with quite a few of them.

Like, that's a lot of people, you know, kind of scattered in different places, but you know, close with quite a few of them, but definitely not all of them.

How many were in your actual house growing up?

So at the peak, because it get to a point where the older ones move out.

Yeah.

But I would say probably 20, 24, 25.

Oh my gosh.

And do you think with that many siblings, you are getting the attention that you wanted as a kid?

So it's different, right?

You're not going to get as much attention from your dad.

Dad was always, he's an entrepreneur.

He's always on the road.

So he was gone a lot, but he's also there as much as he could be.

But so you get the attention elsewhere, right?

You have that family.

You have really like a lot of socializing going on.

There's so much going on at all times.

And it's not just your family, right?

There's, you know, like I said, hundreds of families.

So it's a big, big community.

So you get out and get attention elsewhere if like friends, family members, the moms for sure.

Got it.

They really took care of the household.

Yeah.

And things like that.

So not necessarily from my dad, but from my moms for sure.

That is so fascinating.

And when did you learn that that wasn't like the traditional family?

How old were you?

Probably five, six.

Oh, so you knew early.

Yeah, you started to figure it out, right?

That's super early.

Okay.

Yeah, it's definitely not the traditional family.

Yeah.

And did you want that or were you cool with where you were at?

No, I was really happy with, like I said, I don't have really any negative experiences growing up the way I did till like later on in life.

There's just a lot of things that happened that split, the community split.

People took over and really caused a lot of heartache and split a lot of families apart.

And it was just, it was bad.

But outside of that, I really liked growing up with a big family, my brothers and sisters and a big community like that.

It was awesome.

Nice.

And you mentioned earlier you left around 14.

So my dad and my mom did, yeah.

Okay.

And our family kind of split off too because some of them already left earlier and moved to Salt Lake City, took their kids with them.

One of the moms, one of them stayed in the religion.

And my dad and my mom, you know, they got kicked out essentially.

They got kicked out?

Yeah, because that's what was happening.

So it goes back.

if you go back far enough, to keep it short, Warren Jeffs, his dad died, Warren Jeffs.

And his is like the prophet, right?

Got it.

So he took over and right away started just splitting families.

Started remarrying the women to other dads.

And it's just a complete mess.

And my dad's like, right away, this is not right.

So it's things like, that's when things got really bad.

Why was he remarrying families, though?

No idea.

It doesn't make any sense whatsoever.

Yeah, why would you break up the family unit?

That doesn't make sense to me.

I don't know if it's intentional, but they completely destroyed the entire community.

Wow.

It happened fast.

So you look into it.

There's all kinds of documentaries.

Yeah, I I got to look into that.

So it no longer exists out there?

No, it does.

And it's all fragmented.

There's all these different little subgroups, right?

But the main thing's really completely broken out.

Got it.

So how long after that did you get into business?

So I actually started in, really when I was a kid, growing up in that, I started like with snow cone shacks, right?

Like on the side of the road, just selling that.

Other things you would sell, like yard selling, buy and selling.

And then really got into computers at a young age.

So working for my dad, because he owned the hardware store, the grocery store, the radio shack.

Dad.

Your dad was a baller.

Yeah, he had a battery at one point.

So he built a lot of the kind of infrastructure there in that community.

But I was working for him one summer.

They had a computer singing in an office they're going to throw away.

I'm like, hey, can I buy this?

So I worked the summer, bought it from him for $150.

It didn't work, obviously.

So, but I knew that.

So, like, basically, I had to figure out how to rebuild that.

Started buying parts, saving up, and got in a hardware side of computers that way.

Then, obviously, got really obsessed with the internet.

It's like the dial-up internet in those days.

The modus, the dial-up motors,

so slow, man.

Yeah, you got it good because I grew up right into that.

It changed pretty quickly.

but yeah so kind of that whole process got really obsessed with the internet and then eventually kind of skipping ahead obviously there's a lot that happens but uh got to my freshman year of high school that summer i was really bored i'm like what am i going to do and i was playing world of warcraft at the time i'm like hey classic heard about you know world warcraft private servers so i'm going to see if i could figure out how to kind of reverse engineer and create my own

and now it took me a couple weeks and i had one up on my computer at home again a terrible computer but i i got it up got everything working i had to literally learn a little bit of database work networking, port forwarding from your router, getting a website up so you register with the database and then connect that to the server, which is running on your local computer.

Just the whole process that taught me a lot of what I do to these days now.

Yeah.

We got that all set up and went and did a little bit of marketing within literally less than an hour.

I had like 40 players on my server.

I'm at a computer.

Obviously, crashed my computer.

So I had to eventually get to where you can buy a dedicated host and so on.

And I took it big.

And by my senior year, we were having days where people were donating $800 days.

Holy crap.

How many people were playing?

At the peak, I had over 2,000 players.

Dude, that's incredible.

That was one of the biggest ones.

That was active.

I'm talking to people at the peak, 2,000 players online.

Yeah, that's super cool.

I used to play RuneScape Private Servers, Maple Story, a couple other games.

Private servers were fun because you could experience what it was like being high-level.

Because to get to that level in the normal game takes, what, 10,000 hours?

Yeah, it takes forever.

Yeah, and it's like, dude, you're never going to get there.

Yeah, but I see that 100%.

And like World of Warcraft, for instance, being a game master and then, yeah, getting anything you want, like all the items you say, just experiencing a lot of different things.

What I did is kind of gamified it.

So you could donate for points on the website and use the points to buy in-game items.

They were custom, right?

Smart.

You obviously had an advantage.

You know, it was a PvP-based environment.

So it went down well.

What other games did you play?

So World of Warcraft, I really played Final Fantasy XI online.

Okay.

And I played all the Final Fantasy series before that.

I've never played that game.

Any of the Final Fantasy series?

No, I've heard about them.

Final Fantasy VII is by far my favorite.

Really?

Okay.

Phenomenal game, the storyline, but all those Final Fantasy games, the storylines are just incredible.

I got to check it out.

I really like them.

Is it a shooter or is it a...

No, it's a role-playing game.

Okay.

Yeah, it's fun.

And then MMOs came with Final Fantasy XI.

So later on, they actually built their own MMO, and I became obsessed with that, man.

Yeah.

That's when about the same time I started playing World of Warcraft too.

Yeah, I've actually spent tens of thousands of hours on video games growing up, and they get a lot of hate online, but I learned some really good skills from them, to be honest.

Absolutely.

I think, like I said, my skill set to this day, the fundamental things that I do or understand now, it's all started from World of Warcraft.

Same.

Building those private servers.

That was it.

And then the socializing, the community, right?

That's, it's just, it was a lot of fun.

Yeah, you learn social skills, you learn teamwork.

Your words per minute, when you type now, it's probably 100, which comes in handy for business these days because everyone uses a computer.

I mean, dude, I type, I think I did the tests, type race or whatever.

I got like 110 words per minute.

That's crazy.

It's insane, dude.

Gonna take that back to gaming.

Yeah.

Gotta be fast.

I don't even do the, whatever it's called, PEMDAS that they teach in school.

I remember kind of doing it, but no, I have my own little.

Yeah, I use like maybe four fingers but it's like wrapping i do that's funny i don't like the pam das dude when you type with your pinky it feels so awkward it is it's just weird i never use that

um i want to talk about your trip in europe backpacking for a month yeah so i so what i did is i was working a corporate job in mortgages got to where i was doing that for four years in fact that's what brought me to vegas coming to salt lake city they moved here they moved headquarters here so i moved with them um and about you know four years into that job i was like just done with it right just corporate like grindy like i didn't feel like there was much higher I could go.

Yeah.

So got really sick of that, started reading and studying.

I came across Tim Ferriss's four-hour work week.

Plus, it led me to vagabonding, like the book, Raoul Potts, I think is his name.

Really good book.

But I kind of got obsessed with the idea of like going to Europe, backpacking, and quit my job after I saved up enough money.

And I went and did that.

So I did 30 days to try it.

And it was a phenomenal experience, man.

Staying in hostels, obviously.

So you're staying in rooms with multiple people.

That's part of it.

You're just trying to push you out of your comfort zone.

You weren't sketched out?

Oh, yeah.

It was very uncomfortable.

I just,

each place i went to is different it always took one or two days to kind of like settle in but then i'd move to another city so it was just enough to keep me wow comfortable and i moved to another city and just started all over again how many cities did you hit so i started in amsterdam okay uh then worked my way down to paris and then to madrid and then from madrid flew up to cologne germany and spent i think about five six days there and then went over to prague the czech republic so eastern europe wow which is phenomenal Every time I've been to Eastern Europe, now it's my favorite place in Europe.

I got to check it out.

Prague all the way down through Budapest and go down to Croatia.

Wow, so those were your favorite.

Usually people say Italy, Greece.

Italy's amazing.

Okay.

And I haven't been to Greece yet, but I mean, I just like, I just like Eastern Europe.

I love Europe, man.

The people are different.

They actually don't care too much.

I haven't been in like 10 years, but they didn't care too much about social media or anything when I went.

It seemed just like genuine.

Yeah, it's different.

Yeah.

When I went to Amsterdam, people were very just upfront, you know, and that's my type of style.

I come from the East Coast.

Yeah, it's not my type of style at all.

It's like the exact opposite.

But, you know, I have a team in Serbia, nobody saw it.

There's seven software engineers that work over there.

And I love the Serbians, man.

I love their culture.

But like you said, they're just very upfront.

That's how they grew up, right?

Just everything they think of, it's just right to your face.

Absolutely.

Kind of appreciate that.

Yeah.

Were you solo the whole trip?

So I had my buddy Philip, who actually, it's funny, I met him building World of Warcraft power series, right?

So my first one, when I got to point, I needed a web developer to take over that whole process.

Someone introduced me to him, and he was 12, 13 years old at the time, and I was 16.

So just a young Serbian kid, and he was really good.

So I met with him because we built multiple projects along that journey and sold some of them and met with him in Amsterdam.

He was with me until Cologne when I went to Prague and he headed home.

But yeah, so I was with him and then one of my buddies on the trip, but most of it was solo too.

Nice.

Which was the funnest part of it.

Yeah, I've actually, I've done a few solo trips.

It's different.

I like to be able to share the experience usually, but I think sometimes a solo trip is needed.

Yeah, I agree.

That's what I recommend everybody to do.

Yeah.

It is.

It's incredible.

I mean, if you want to start with somebody, then eventually end up solo for at least a couple cities,

you'll learn so much from that experience.

That's cool.

You went with someone you met online.

I'm trying to think if I ever met up with someone that I met purely online, and I don't think I have.

Yeah,

he's my CTO at My Designs.

Wow.

And you met him on World of Warcraft?

Yep.

Started back when he was 12, you know, 12 or 13 years old, and I was 16.

We worked on so many projects since.

He ended up at Microsoft for a while.

Nice.

But then he eventually quit when I just, I brought him over to build this project with me.

Super cool.

Now, I know a big part of Mormonism was no drugs, no alcohol, right?

Yeah.

Are you still not doing that?

So I drink alcohol, but I didn't drink till I was almost 21.

Okay.

Like it was pretty common in my family.

As we got out of the religion, a lot of people were drinking.

It's actually really common in that community.

A lot of people drink and they drink a lot.

Really?

Yeah.

I mean, not the Mormonism side.

I'm saying what's like the people that get out.

I get out.

Okay.

Kind of like trying to find their purpose and what they're doing, right?

But no, I didn't drink till I was 21.

Damn.

And never done drugs, really.

Wow.

Smoked weed once or twice.

More than that, but.

Tried it, and that's pretty much it.

Wow.

So no cravings to do mushrooms or anything?

No, I actually have.

i've actually micro dose getting the truth out so yeah i completely spaced that part but i microdose mushrooms and i wouldn't even count that as as taking drugs yeah that's probably why i didn't say it because i haven't been at that level what everybody experiences and talks about but at some point absolutely i'm a fan of microdosing dude i think psychedelics there's a lot of a lot of power yeah I've split tested days where I micro micro dose and then days I don't and productivity is higher every time.

Yeah, and what's the creativity like?

That's the part I noticed the most with me.

For sure.

Yeah, you think outside the box because you get so locked in sometimes when you're grinding.

And that's why I take vacations now, actually, because I used to not.

And I realized you need time to reset.

It's interesting what happens subconsciously.

Like you said, you're locked in a box and it does feel like that.

You're grinding, it's the same thing every day.

And also time speeds up because your brain starts a shortcut kind of routine.

So like with getting out and traveling, we can kind of break those routines and break things up.

Time slows down.

Yeah, dude, time flies when you're in that grind mode like you are right now with the startup.

I'm sure you're working 15 hours a day.

Yeah, absolutely.

Pretty much every day, 6 a.m.

till about 11 at night.

Jeez.

I mean, there's breaks and stuff in between, right?

If you have basketball and things like that,

that's pretty much it.

Dude, it's actually funny how much I look forward to basketball because it just clears your head.

Like the whole week you're grinding, you're like, oh, I got a game today, thank God.

Yep, it makes a big difference.

Huge difference.

I missed.

I can't wait to be back.

Yeah.

You've been out for what?

A couple weeks now?

In four weeks now.

I've taken another two, maybe three weeks off, just letting my shoulder get healed up.

And

I broke that rib, so that's feeling a lot.

Oh, you broke it?

Yeah, I broke it right before the championship.

I didn't even know that.

Yeah, top left rib.

How'd that happen?

Just in one of our games, the semifinals, a guy just spun around his elbows out.

Just hit me right perfectly.

Bruh.

And it hurt like hell when it happened.

I'm like, what is that?

We had the adrenaline finished the game.

And then the next day, it really hurt.

Oh, gosh.

And you played the finals?

Yeah,

I played Wednesday the next day, too.

It's just stupid.

And then I played the finals.

But the finals, I was, that was a whole week later, but it hurt even worse.

Oh, my gosh.

So I don't know what happened there, but now it's finally starting to feel pretty good.

Did it heal on its own?

Yeah.

I think with ribs for the most part, I haven't even got ejected,

but it was definitely broke.

I could feel it moving around and all that.

Jesus.

But yeah, most time ribs will just heal on their own.

I feel that.

Did you play anything else other than basketball?

Played a little bit of football.

Mostly basketball.

Did track and field.

I'm mostly a wide receiver, but I didn't play it competitively in high school.

Okay.

Just like with friends and family.

But my brother did.

He's an athlete.

You'll have to meet him someday.

He's a hell of an athlete.

I'm game, dude.

Football, I just never got into it.

I was too skinny growing up, honestly.

Yeah.

I was getting recruited when I went to, because I went from like the small school, my hometown.

yeah i was trying to play college basketball and ended up going up to salt lake city and played at a high school up there my senior year and i made it you know starting five on that team did really well nice just wasn't enough time to get around scouts and whatnot yeah because i feel like they start recruiting you sophomore junior year right yeah and they're like we're looking at some of those kids out of eighth grade yeah all the way up these days like yeah like seventh grade like It's crazy with social media, what it's done.

I feel like back then, it was way harder to get recruited.

100%.

And you had to make your own mixtape.

And it was just like, how do you even do that?

It's a whole different skill set on its own.

Yeah.

I remember signing up for that website.

I forget what it was, but you upload your mixtape and then recruiters were on there.

But I wasn't good enough.

I did track.

What was your event in track?

So I did the 400-meter dash.

Okay.

That's terrible, man.

Rough.

You tried it?

My best time was 54, and I felt maybe 56.

Either way, I felt like I was dying the whole time.

Yeah, yeah, the entire time, and it happens fast.

I think I got 49.

Holy crap.

We had a guy on our team that was 47 seconds.

It was just ridiculous 49 in high school 49 or 50 yeah it's my senior year and that's the only time i ever played track and field but also did pole ball team bro so you were a speedster back in the day kind of yeah because i i gotta admit in basketball i don't see that in you no i'm i'm slowed down man after like going to like utah valley university i was kind of like playing with the team there yeah i was gonna walk on as they did but I was competing with those guys when you're right out of high school and I get a very high level.

Yeah, I mean I wasn't playing with any of them, but then I ended up fracturing my ankle, torn a few of the ligaments.

Since then, I came back way too early, and that messed up a lot.

I feel that, dude.

Because, dude, with your skill set, and I'm picturing you with speed with that skill set.

Oh, my gosh, you'd be the best player in the league.

And one of my favorite things, like, back then was like starting to get to that point because I played center in high school, right?

Because that's what we needed.

And then I started to extend my game after high school, playing more on the wing as a slasher more like a sword.

Yeah, you can shoot now.

Yeah.

And that's like slashing down the middle and just throwing down dunks and things like that.

I was like, what I was doing until I ended up messing my ankle up pretty bad.

Damn, you were yamming?

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

I'm still trying to get my first dunk in the league.

I got one on Tuesdays, but I want to get one on Wednesday league.

Nice.

You know?

Yeah, you'll get it.

I'm on BT now, so we'll see.

Oh, you're on BT?

Yeah.

We lost, though, week one, man.

There's some good teams.

Yeah, I'm excited to get our team back in there at some point.

I know we're getting so specific to the audience.

It's probably like, what are they talking about?

I love basketball, though, man.

Me too.

It's awesome.

What are you excited about this year and where can people find you, man?

Mostly excited about continue to build my designs.

We're probably going to do another capital race.

Probably at a $10, $12 plus million dollar valuation.

Nice.

See where things go with that and continue to build that startup.

And then raise my family.

I have a little baby girl now.

She's been so fun.

It's so fun.

Thank you.

It's been awesome.

Lacey's taking care of her and doing such a great job.

You want 10 kids?

Probably not 10,

but I do want at least three.

Okay.

And we do have a stepson, Kyler.

Nice.

So him and then my little baby.

And now hopefully I have three more.

Love it.

Yeah.

Three is a good number.

I'm aiming for a three, too.

That's awesome.

Love it, man.

Where can people find you?

Go to curtisblackmore.com.

You can find all my socials and whatnot from there.

Perfect.

All right, guys.

Thanks for watching, as always, and I will see you tomorrow.