Good Life Project - Micah Johnson | How a Pro Athlete Launched a Digital Art Revolution

Episode Date: December 6, 2021

From the age of 3, Micah Johnson knew what he wanted to be when he grew up - a professional baseball player. From that moment on, he lived baseball, and in 2012, his dreams came true when the Chicago White Sox drafted him. But, what Micah didn’t know was that his true calling in life was just getting started.Traded to the LA Dodgers a few years later, Micah, almost on a lark, discovered painting, something that had never been a part of his. And it called to him in a way he never saw coming. Now, while his full-time job was pro baseball, drawing, painting and creating art became a new, increasingly consuming passion. But, it was a single moment, when his young nephew came and asked him whether Black people could be astronauts, that changed everything. Micah painted this moving depiction of a young, confident, Black boy in an oversized astronaut helmet, ready for adventure, as a way to not just answer yes, but create a powerful visual depiction of courage and possibility. At the same time, Micah was feeling called to bring his baseball career to a close and go all-in on art. But, no longer a novelty as a pro-athlete painter, he found his art hard to sell. Until everything came together when the character he’d painted for his nephew met the emerging world of NFTs, crypto-art, Web3, and the power of digital aspiration movements. He turned that painting into a character named Aku, then began to build a world, a community, an enterprise and a movement around it. Micah’s work has centered around empowering young African-American kids to see the possible & dream without limitations. Micah began releasing NFTs in January of 2020 & in February of 2021, and Aku’s message became a viral sensation and the first NFT ever optioned to become a major feature film. As we air this conversation, Micah is just coming off of helming a 15,000 square-foot, immersive, multidisciplinary experience in Miami’s Art Basel called Aku’s world.We dive into all of this in today’s conversation, along with a bit of a mini-primer on these mysterious things called NFTs, which has been creating quite a stir these days and become a growing fascination of mine. You can find Micah at: Website | InstagramIf you LOVED this episode:You’ll also love the conversations we had with Lisa Congdon about coming to art later in life.My new book Sparked.-------------Have you discovered your Sparketype yet? Take the Sparketype Assessment™ now. IT’S FREE (https://sparketype.com/) and takes about 7-minutes to complete. At a minimum, it’ll open your eyes in a big way. It also just might change your life.If you enjoyed the show, please share it with a friend. Thank you to our super cool brand partners. If you like the show, please support them - they help make the podcast possible. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Looking back on everything, I think the most promising or fulfilling or successful things happen from just an authentic place without some grand vision or some like grand aspiration of becoming something massive. I just wanted to show my nephew that astronauts could be black. And the only way I could do that was on a canvas. So from the age of three, my guest today, Micah Johnson, he knew that he wanted to be a professional baseball player when he grew up. And from that moment, he literally lived baseball 24-7, every moment of his waking hours. And in 2012, as a young adult, his dreams came true when the Chicago White Sox drafted him. But what Micah didn't know was that a truer calling in life was just getting started.

A couple years later, he was traded to the LA Dodgers. And Micah, almost on a lark, discovered painting, something that had never been any part of his life. Art was just not a part of his world. He was all baseball all the time. But something about it, it called to him in a way he never saw coming. And now, while his full-time job was pro baseball, drawing and painting and creating art, it became a new, increasingly consuming passion. But it was a single moment when his young nephew came to him

and asked him whether black people could be astronauts that changed everything. In response, Micah painted this moving depiction of a young, confident black boy in an oversized astronaut helmet, ready for adventure as a way to not just answer yes, but create a powerful visual depiction of courage and possibility. At around the same time, Micah was feeling called to bring his baseball career to a close and go all in on this new passion around art. But no longer a novelty as a pro athlete slash painter, he found his art hard to sell. He was really struggling until everything came together when that character he'd painted for his nephew met this emerging world of NFTs, crypto art, Web3, and the power of digital aspirational movements. And he turned that painting into a character named Anku that then began to build a world

and a community and an enterprise and a movement around it. And Micah's work has centered now around empowering young African-American kids to see the possible and dream without limitations. Micah began releasing NFTs in January of 2020. And by the way, we're going to talk about what that thing NFT is. So you can actually understand it. You've probably heard it floating around in the ether a lot lately. And in February, 2021, Aku's message became a viral sensation and the first NFT ever optioned to become a major motion picture film. As we air this conversation, Micah is just coming off helming a 15,000 square

foot immersive multidisciplinary experience in Miami's Art Basel called Aku's World. We dive into all of this in today's conversation, along with a bit of a mini primer on these mysterious things called NFTs and crypto art and web three, which has been creating quite a stir these days and becoming a growing fascination of mine as well. So excited to share this conversation with you. And a quick note before we dive in. So at the end of every episode, I don't know if you've ever heard this, but we actually recommend a similar episode. So if you love this episode, at the end, we're going to share another one that we're pretty sure you're going to love too. So be sure to listen for that. Okay, on to today's conversation. I'm Jonathan Fields, and this is Good Life Project. wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you eight hours of charge in just

15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series X, available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone Xs are later required. Charge time and actual results will vary. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were going to be fun. On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. I was trying to think of where I actually first heard about you and your work,

because it was not in the context of baseball. And I think that's always good. Yeah. I think you and I were actually on a clubhouse room in the early days of clubhouse when you were launching a chapter and I wandered into that room and I was just kind of like a fly on the wall in that room. I was like, huh, this is really fascinating. And you were in an interesting way sort of like my gateway drug to the world of nfts and art and community and web 3.0 and uh so it's kind of like a a fun full circle moment just to be able to hang out and have this conversation you know what's

really cool about that is a aku from what i've you know gathered from a lot of people that have talked to me about it is was like their first foray into nfts too like that clubhouse room i've heard that so by a lot of people who have built massive audiences and identities in their in the nft space since then so it's super cool to see that yeah it's pretty neat especially considering i don't spend a whole lot of time there anymore but that just happened to be this one moment in time um i want to take a step back in time though. And because the vast majority of your life was not spent doing what you've been doing for the last five years or so. You were the kid who it sounds like from the earliest days caught the baseball bug and like became utterly obsessive

about it. Yeah, a hundred percent. Don't know where it came from. Don't know, you know, when I first picked up a baseball bat or a ball or anything like that. I just know that at an early age, all I watched was baseball on TV. All I wanted to do was play baseball. I played in the snow. It's hard to explain, but I was absolutely obsessed with baseball my entire life. So it's kind of wild to see where I'm at now. Were you in a family where they looked at this obsession and created a sense of possibility around it and said, well, yeah, like this could happen? Yeah, there was never a moment where it was a doubt.

Of course, now externally, outside and in school, you know, they're always like, you got to have a plan B and do all this. No, there was never a doubt. I would come home from school and my friends tell the story all the time, but I would always come home. And even if they were with me, my parents would always hit me ground balls in the front yard pretty much like every day probably. And so it was never a doubt in my mind I was going to play Major League Baseball. Like not a day went by and I was like, oh, maybe I didn't play well today. So maybe or, you know, I'm sitting on the bench and like, I don't know. It was never a doubt. Yeah.

Tell me about your folks because I'm always fascinated by the family dynamic, especially when you've got a kid who's just so drawn to something at such a young age, where from the outside looking in, from a parent looking at that kid very often, you're like, oh, how awesome is it that they've found this thing and it's all they want to do? But at the same time, it happens to be a thing where if you kind of plot it out and you look at like, well, what are the quote chances of making it? It's slim to none. So tell me more about your folks. I'd love to know sort of like about their lens and like, you know, where they came from. Yeah. I mean, Indiana folks, man, Midwest folks showed up to work every single day. You know, my dad works every single day, bank. And my mom, she was a nanny for most of our early life

and watched over. I have two sisters and she watched over two other kids. So it was like five kids she was watching every day. And she was hands on every single day, playing baseball, anything. And then she became a teacher and showed up to work every single day to teach. And what's cool about them both were no matter what, whenever I wanted to work or go to practice and I was practicing all the time, you got to the level where I have to drive hours to go to practice to play. They always made it work. Or, you know, I used to work on a farm in high school and my mom would take me, you know, five in the morning, come back, pick me up, take me to a baseball game, sit there, watch my baseball game, come home, cook, you know, do the whole thing. And what I learned, I think subconsciously, because it's something you don't see, you don't like notice as a kid.

It's just like how much energy and work they put into like us. And it was just it was just the same thing every day. And so that work ethic kind of got instilled in me where it's just you show up every day. Like whatever it is you're doing, you just show up and you don't think anything about it. And so I would say it's a blessing and a curse because all I know how to do is work. So I don't really know how to relax. Yeah, I guess it is really interesting, right? Because on the one hand, if you're somebody who figures out how to turn that thing we

call work into something, which is like an outgrowth of something you're truly passionate about, like something deeper inside of you, it can be really powerful. You get to spend your waking hours doing this thing. But at the same time, that same drive can lead to a level of obsessive, which literally rises to a level of compulsion, which makes it hard to pull out of that, that exact same thing. So even if you love it, it's like, but, but you probably also love life outside of that and friends and family, and that can take a hit. You know, I was looking at, we got married recently and I was looking at the, like the

wedding list and I was like, Oh, I don't have too many friends. Um, because I think, you know, it was so hyper-focused on baseball for so long. And so those parties in high school or the things in high school that other kids and normal kids were doing, I wasn't doing. And then in college, I was just so hyper-focused. And then when I got into art and what I'm doing now, that work ethic carried over. There wasn't really a transition period where I got to say, okay, let's go to a bar tonight or let's all go hang out at this house. I never, like that didn't exist for me. It doesn't exist for me because I jumped right into something that was full throttle again, that required full attention. And so I think it's very important, like when, in order to be

successful, there's sacrifices. In order to reach the top, there's all, there's major sacrifices. And what I'm learning now, like literally in the last couple of weeks is, you know, I'm tired and I've been going at this, I was calculating like 20 months straight, pretty much seven days a week, no days off, no vacation, like working on what I'm doing now. And I started thinking, I was like, okay, that, that wasn't just 20 months of my life. I did this for like 20 years before this. And so I kind of like the last couple of weeks was thinking about like trying to figure out how to get out of it.

Because once I'm in it, I'm in it. Like I'm up at, today I was in the studio at five in the morning. I'm trying to figure out that better balance. Yeah. It's so interesting, right? Especially because I know that, you know, you're a dad now to a young kid. And, you know, so I think you start to think that changes the way you think about these things also, right?

Because it's not just about the decisions that you're making and how it's affecting your life, but now it's affecting like your partner's life. It's affecting your kid's life. And it's also once your kids start to get a little bit older and they're looking to you to model the way to be in the world, it's like, huh, it doesn't matter what I say. They're going to watch the choices that I'm making. And I think it really starts to make you re-examine, like are the choices that I'm making and the way that I'm modeling my life,

like is that the message that I want to send to my kid? I was literally just thinking about this. There's got to be an end goal. There's got to be some kind of number or metric or something that I can say, okay, I'm done, right? Otherwise, I'm not going to get pulled out of this. But, you know, I look back and my daughter's two, most of her life, she's seen me working and it's been, you know, come back home and probably still working or you know very brief moments here and there and it sucks because like you to your point like you know you don't get these moments

back and these are very formative years in her life and it's kind of about a battle because i'm like okay i want her to see her i want her to see me working at this rate because this is what it takes to like be successful. But at the same time, I think it's okay. Not everybody should have that pressure, but like you got to go build an empire. You got to go do the, be a small percentage of person that does something. Right. And so it's very important as I think about it to start trying to understand ways to like

show her other things, other sides of life. And it's not all about working to get to this level. That's for me. I love it, but I don't want her to feel like she has to love it as well. Yeah. It's, it's such a fine line because you want to show that, you know, you can devote yourself to a passion or something that gives you a deep sense of purpose. And at the same time, not lose yourself to it. And that, that is such a dance to do. I think so many of purpose, then at the same time, not lose yourself to it. And that is such a dance to do. I think so many of us are doing that on a regular basis. And to try and model that and translate that to somebody who's looking to you to decide how to live in the world is like a whole nother

layer. So, I mean, for you, this level of devotion, this almost obsessive immersion in something, in the early part of your life, it takes you deep into the world of baseball. You end up being one of those few people who actually realizes the dream. You end up getting drafted. You end up actually playing pro. And for those who don't know the way that pro baseball works also, it's not like all of a sudden you get drafted and immediately you're out on the field with the official team. This is a years-long process of working your way up through all the different layers of teams that would eventually lead you to the main pro team. So for you, even when you get the nod, this is still years of you grinding just to show that you're worth it. I think that's a great point. When I look back, there was never a metric in baseball. I reached

major leagues and it was like, okay, like you get drafted and it's like, great, you know, big party and all that. Then you're back on the grind trying to get to this next level. You get to the major leagues, you think you make it, but then it's like, no, you have to stay here. And there's always like this hill to climb. And so I kind of just carried that over into my life now. I think baseball is a sport that really prepares you. If you really, you know, post baseball and you really want to go do something, it prepares you for life to really try to go for something again, that's kind of like, doesn't seem really possible because A, we're not afraid to fail. I think we all, every day we wake up as a baseball player and you fail. There's very few days where we go four for four. And so not only do we learn how to fail,

but we learn how to like, just show up every day and grind. There's 162 games in 180 some days, like you show up. And so part of me thinks that like baseball was a really just a segue into the longer part of my life, kind of like the foundational building block. I was obsessed with it, loved it, of course. But I feel like, you know, the second part of my life is a lot more fulfilling and honestly has a lot more potential. And baseball is just kind of setting me up for that. Yeah, that's so interesting.

And your point about sort of it trained you to sort of like iterate and fail. It's really interesting. Cause if you think about the sport itself, right. And I'm not a hardcore athlete or a hardcore sports fan, but like, I certainly grew up around baseball, um, Long Island, by the way, back in the day when they were like, you know, like incredible. Um, but, um, you, you literally like like it's a really stats heavy pursuit. So like you take the average, like a batting average and like a really, really, really, really good hitter is failing like 60 to 70% of their time. And yet that's considered like you're at the top of the game.

And it's such a fascinating way to look at it. Yeah, a thousand percent. I used to sit in the middle of the field and literally throughout the whole season, didn't matter if we were, I had 500 a bat. I was doing math in my head constantly, like figuring out what my batting average is. And I got to get a hit this a bat and my average will jump up here. It's constantly says stat heavy, a game for a hundred percent. But I mean, nowadays, if you, you know, you're going to

fail 75%, you know, percent of the time, you still have a hall of fame career. And so it's a game of failure. Yeah. It's, it's pretty interesting, right? Cause if you take that into almost any other domain, like if you take into the world of business, you're like, Hey, you're going to work in a big corporation and you're going to fail 75% of the time. And that would put you literally at the top of the industry. People kind of, their heads spin if you sort of try and transpose that into other domains. And yet that's exactly what allows you to feel like nobody just, it's just that nobody measures it in all these other domains. Nobody says, okay, like I actually tried 500 times and I completely failed 350 to 400 of those. And that's what let me get to the 50 to 100 that let me rise to the top of an industry. We don't measure that. Like there's no sort of objective at bats in all these other domains in a way that there is in sport, which is kind of fascinating. Yeah. I think that's kind of like the hardest thing for me is when I talk, people ask me, you know, you have, you had an amazing life. You've, you know, did this and

now you're doing this and you're doing that. Like, do you have any advice on like, and I don't ever feel adequate enough to like offer advice because how can I tell somebody who didn't have, you know, 20 years of training and how to fail or how to risk something, you know, not be afraid to risk something. I don't, I don't, I don't have that kind of experience. So a lot of times, like I get kind of like embarrassed a little bit because I don't, I grew up failing, like literally since I was a kid, you know, I made myself susceptible to failing every single day. And so like when I go and do something now and do something that seems you kind of, you know, might be ridiculous or like, no way.

And that's not possible or, or let's do something big now, you know, and we'll see what happens. Forget the models, forget the metrics. Like, let's just go try this. I have my guts telling me that's something I've had 20 years of training. Yeah. I mean, that's so interesting also, right? Because so many people talk about this phenomenon of perfectionism these days and how much then like the weight of perfectionism and the impossibility of ever attaining this standard yet so many people try and live into it and the level of anxiety and obsession and

depression and literally rising to level of mental illness that leads to and it's sort of like you had this model that said like, that's not actually in the equation. It's more about craft. Like I'm just going to keep stepping up and knowing that a whole bunch of times it's not going to work, but it's the process over time that gets you to just, it's more about process than it is sort of like this perfect outcome. You have to love the process. I think the most successful people in this world, and it doesn't have to be monetary success, but just are obsessed with the process. But the results never matter. You could have the biggest win and it's just, that's cool. Or the biggest loss and it's like,

that's cool. You got to be so hyper obsessed with literally the process because I think the results are fleeting. In the world I'm in the results are fleeting, you know, like in the world I'm in now, you know, releasing NFTs, for example, you could have something not go your way and it's out of your control. Like, and a big win, like, you know, people could, there could be a power outage or there could be the internet goes down or credit cards fail or crypto doesn't get like, there's so many things are out of your control so like the process is always you know really the most enjoyable part for everything I've done I've always enjoyed practice in baseball I've always I always enjoyed practice more and it's kind of like what kind of got me into painting

and really like obsessed with painting was painting was a tangible thing that really you could really measure the process I could teach you to you know you never painted before you'll be able to see yourself get better over a period of time and that's you to, you know, you never painted before. You'll be able to see yourself get better over a period of time. And that's kind of like, you know, the thing, things I kind of gravitate towards is just seeing things that can, you really can measure progress. Yeah, no, I love that. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist,

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Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were going to be fun. On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die. Don't shoot him, we need him.

Y'all need a pilot. Flight risk. So let's fill a little bit of gaps here. You end up playing for the White Sox. A little bit into that, you end up getting traded over to the Dodgers, which is a very different culture. It's a team where they're sort of like expected, okay, like, you know, like everyone in there is like, we're going to win. And shortly, like after arriving there, you know, it seems like this, the seed for you starting to paint, it's not like you close the door on baseball and you're like, then

what am I going to do with my life? Let me try painting. The seed for painting for you literally gets planted while you're playing pro ball. So walk me through that story a little bit. Yeah. I mean, when I got drafted, I got drafted by the White Sox in 2012 and made my debut with them at 15. So that was the only organization I knew, you know, I came up a pretty highly touted prospect and that whole thing. So I had a close knit community family there and they called me over the winter and they say, you got traded. And I was kind of devastated. Although, you know,

going to LA, I was like, this is great great but you're right at the time LA was loaded with superstars and and it was superstars that I looked up to growing up like I watched playing and I was like wow you know and so I was excited about it and I got to LA in spring training I just looking all the names in on the in the locker room like this is absolutely mind-blowing I probably don't belong here. Like, I wonder how long I'll be here, but I'm going to enjoy this while I am. And Dave Roberts was also the new manager at the time. And he's a player's, you know, first manager.

And he always did this thing where he brought the new guys up to introduce themselves. And he called me up towards the end of this. And so I got to get the kind of gist of what was going on. And these guys would introduce themselves. And he called me up towards the end of this. And so I got to get the kind of gist of what was going on. And these guys would introduce themselves, most of them pretty nervous, you know, looking at Clayton Kershaw and Karl Crawford and Chase Utley. And everybody was pretty nervous. And he would ask them what they like to do. And they would say maybe like fishing. And so he'd pair them with one of these superstars and go fishing and kind of do create some team bonding. Well, he finally calls me up and I played piano growing up and I didn't want to say piano because I had a feeling this dude would wheel a

piano in there or something. I knew actually there was, I think there was a piano in there. And so I, right before spring training, I did a paint and sip class. And first thing that popped in my head was like, I like to paint. I'm like, this is a safe bet. Like there's maybe he'll ask me to show him a picture and I'll just show him that or something like that. He's like, great. You got to do a painting of Maury Wills and present it to the team by spring, by the end of spring training. And so I'd go to Walmart and get like the, the Walt, you know, watercolor painting stuff and spend, spend the rest of the spring training working on that i practice play go home paint i presented it to the team at the end of spring training it was not good and um a couple of guys came up to me some of these guys i was telling you about like you know

i really idolized and they were like hey man like you got a lot of talent like this is really impressive and like that just stuck with me and that kind of lit the fire and i was like okay like i guess i i'm good at painting so i'm to try painting and just kept painting the rest of the year, taking campuses on the road with me and just became obsessed with it. And it was really looking back on it. That was like the pivotal moment in my life. Like those guys had, you know, two options. They could have just gone out to practice, kept it moving, put the painting back in and no harm, no foul. Like it wasn't a a good painting but like for them to come up to you know me and show you know You know verbal support of you know something that they could clearly saw that I put a lot of work in

That meant the world to me And just like stuck with me the power of encouragement and words, both positive and negative. Yeah. It's funny. I'm kind of fascinated with this notion of sliding doors and also mentors, or like the mentor who appears out of nowhere, but not necessarily the mentor, also sometimes the champion who just acknowledges you. Do you ever wonder what would have happened if in that moment you'd showed the painting

and they're like, you know, like took the opposite approach and they're like, ah, funny, like you think you're an artist, like, but this is terrible. Well, that's probably the, that's the comfortable route for a lot of people is you see, you know, and I think that's what you see a lot on social media where a lot of people get, you know, social media is great, but also very, very harmful for kids and even adults like you who are trying something and getting their, you know, their passion down to the world, they could have easily said you're trash and I'm, I'm trash. I will never paint again. And, and that's,

and my life would look completely different than it does now. Yeah. No chance I would have kept painting. Yeah. It's, it's wild. I'm so fascinated by the moments like those. So this becomes a new obsession for you. Not at the cost of baseball, but like a dual obsession. I'm wondering also, you know, from the outside looking in, as much as you love this sport that you've literally been training for since, you know, like your earliest memories, when you get to the level that you were playing at,

at the team that you were playing at, I would have to imagine there's also a certain amount of stress and expectation that gets built into that. How is your state of mind during that window of time? And do you feel like if you were feeling the pressure, the stress, the anxiety in any way, do you feel like painting in some way helped you through that? Yeah. So I think God has some obviously different plans for my life because right when I discovered painting and really got into painting, my career was on the other end, which takes a toll on you

mentally because you're used to playing every day and being, you know, paraded around as this guy who's here, he's going to use the next, you know, future second baseman at the White Sox. Now you're back to, well, I'm about to go back to AAA. I'm back in AAA, up and down. And so that takes a toll on you mentally. And a lot of time i just spent painting and so i think you know by discovering that it was like really my transition out you know out of baseball preparing for what was to come and i remember like in 2018 when i retired that spring training i was like i think you know i don't know if this is facts or science or anything like that but i've heard that men like in their later 20s, that's when like some kind of mental

health issues might arise. And so that year I was really, you know, depressed, but also going through these different phases where I would never sleep, but I had a full energy and just like constantly going or then I'd be you know it was constantly influxes and so I saw a doctor um and and put me on on medicine and that was like that was the end of it once I got on the medicine I was off I was done with baseball and really just painting was the only thing that like I could do at that point because it was just me like I'd have to like talk to anybody there was no pressure of like selling paintings there was no pressure of like performing well getting worried about like

if i'm getting i was just i would just paint my garage yeah i mean when you say like you you once you're on medicine you realize you were done with baseball um like what what was it i mean what because this is literally something where it wasn't just something you did it was an identity level thing for you for your entire life up until that moment. And yes, you were like, you know, from, you could say you were struggling or, but for you to walk away from that, you know, it's not just you walking away from something that you quote do. It's you walking away from something that you quote are. Yeah.

So like, I'm curious what happens, you know, was it just a gradual evolution? Was it, was there a moment where you're just like, I'm curious what happens, you know, was it just a gradual evolution? Was it, was there a moment where you're just like, I am done? Was it some something? Yeah. I mean, they put me on lithium and I don't, lithium has these awful side effects where like, you just kind of like, I was just numb to the world. I was just walking around a world when there was nothing was nothing mattered to me.

And so when I decided to, I didn't decide really to walk away from baseball. Like I was just on this medicine and baseball season ended. I never called anybody back. Like that was it. Like, it was just like, there was no like, Hey, I'm done. Or I called my agent. I said, I'm done. Just never called anybody back. Never showed up the next, you know, the whole routine I had of like, here, I'm going to spring training, picking my house. Like I just didn't do it. Didn't work out. Like it was just done.

And so for a lot of years after that, I just kept working on other things, painting to keep my mind off of it. So I never, like I should kind of like bury those emotions of like, you know, baseball is no longer, or even thinking about like getting angry that I was put on this medicine. And, you know, I was still young, had a great career ahead of me, still played incredibly well. And so I kind of buried those emotions behind work and focus on other things and never really dealt with that aspect of like baseball's gone now. Yeah. Do you feel like there was a moment where it did come back to the surface and you kind of said okay it's it's time to actually deal with this or do you feel like you just sort of like you went headlong into this next pursuit and that became the consuming thing for you i think i bury i bury a lot of this

a lot of my emotion honestly um and i think there hasn't been a moment where i've thought about it i don't watch baseball games. I don't know anything about baseball anymore. I don't know who's doing well, nothing. And so I just work and focus on that and just keep burying it. And I know that probably I should address it at some point, but becoming more aware that I am suppressing a lot of those feelings of resentment for even being put on

that medicine and resentment for a promising career I thought I still had just kind of like being done. Yeah. And at the same time, you channeled all this energy into something which has become this incredibly powerful channel of expression for you. So what starts as this thing that you're doing on the side while you're playing and then becomes the thing that you step into as you close the door on baseball, that same deep, deep level of just like, I am 100% all in on this, takes you from being somebody who had never painted, not identified as an artist, to in an astonishingly fast period of time, going through that same process you described in baseball, which is like, I'm just going to, how many, how many, like instead of at bats, it's like at

canvases, how many had canvases can I like put down like over and over and over and over and over obsessively developing the craft in a ridiculously short period of time, you start to produce work that is really stunning. But I guess there was a moment where you realize, okay, so people, when you were a baseball player who was painting, there's a bit of a novelty around that. And people are like, yes, I'm into this work. But when you're now, quote, just an artist, your ability to then actually gain traction and potentially turn this into a living or sell it it's a whole different equation at that point super easy to sell art as a or you know as a the baseball player who paints you know but once that jersey came off there was

nobody was knocking on the door and and there was really nothing from 2018 to 2000 and early 2020 so from september 2018 to early 2020 i was in my garage painting not selling anything going from like you know i did a solo show i mean a solo show in atlanta and then a show at dodger stadium with shelby and sandy and um going from that to literally nobody buying anything. And there were some hard moments there because, like, you know, I again, I left baseball, didn't have a chance to get a job anywhere. I never had a job. Art was what I was doing. I was dedicated to that. And so I just kept painting every day and practicing and waiting for that. My, you know, me to discover my style, me to discover what I wanted to convey to the world. It all works out in the end, I believe, where like you'll have that moment.

You can't force it. But the one, the most, the most frustrating thing for me this whole, that whole time was not being able to ever come up with like a cohesive style or a cohesive message. Because I think to be a successful artist or creative, you need to have a body that like people like, okay, that's so-and-so's work. Or, you know, I just was just painting random things. And that was incredibly frustrating, you know? And then 2020, that's when everything took off. Yeah. So what happens?

Well, what happened was, I really think God got these crazy plans for my life. I don't know what's gonna happen. But early 2020, I discovered, Yeah. So what happens? And at the same time that was happening, my nephew asked if astronauts could be black. And so all those three things happened. I was like, okay, I'm going to paint my nephew. I built these canvases, started painting him in astronaut helmets and just showing him on these large scale canvases. And I was like, this is really cool. And I was able to see his reaction and it was really inspiring. I felt incredibly fulfilled by just seeing his reaction and discovered digital art and nfts because i knew i you know i didn't have any galleries i didn't have anybody buy my art so

what if i could maybe you know animate some of these paintings and sell them as nfts and kind of like leverage that you know that i was a professional baseball player now i'm doing nfts which at that time was like nobody heard about like it was very few articles about it and so i did that and had incredible collectors you know buy them i think for first like 900 bucks and 900 bucks and like this is incredible i was so happy because like there's money i hadn't made in over a year and a half and so all those things just hit at once and when they all hit i just i didn't stop like this is it like i'm gonna i'm just gonna go and really dug into nfts really dug into the art reached out to gallery i just went all in yeah i mean it's so interesting right because it's the confluence of these things you know you've got

your nephew basically asking you this this question which on the surface is like a simple question but underneath it it's got layers and layers and layers to deconstruct. And like, in, you know, in order to essentially show him that, well, yeah, like this is, you can dream, this is possible. You create, like you basically take him and you create, you know, this image of an astronaut. And it's not just, you know, this is not just a piece of art. This is a manifesto effectively. You know, this is something which is designed to say like, this is possible, you know, like just because you haven't seen this before, you know, like this is possible. And it's interesting because I thought about sort of like you and the work in that moment and, you know, had you painted anything else or like done

a charcoal illustration of anything else and then offered it up in the, in the digital world, you know, probably it would have been a very different reaction, but there was something so powerful about the fact that this wasn't just you, a former baseball player, who's been hiding away in the garage for two years, like deepening into the craft and then saying, look at my work. It was that the work was representing something so much bigger on so many different levels. I mean, from the outside looking in, that's what it feels like. Do you feel like from the inside looking out, that was like what you were experiencing? I think looking back on everything, I think the most promising or fulfilling or successful,

you know, things happen from just authentic place without some grand vision or some like grand aspiration of becoming something massive. I just wanted to show my nephew that, you know, astronauts could be black. And the only way I could do that was on a canvas. There was nothing beyond that. Like there was no, like, I'm going to paint this i'm gonna you know i'm gonna take this painting go take it to a gallery go create aku go create this iconic ip none nothing none of that it was just literally like focused on the moment this is an audience of one releasing it as the nft was just i knew i didn't couldn't sell a painting i needed to make

money because i had you know my daughter was at like almost you know she was born that same year earlier that year so i needed to make money and so just you know sold it as an nft right to an audience where there's no permission there's no gate gatekeepers, I had freedom to do that. I didn't have to ask permission. And that was it. And then like, kind of just like, over time, like just focusing on that, you know, no bigger vision on that, just intentionality on the mission, you know, empowering my nephew. Okay, cool. Like making money to buy diapers. Okay, cool. Okay. Then that summer, 2020, reached out to a gallery that had called me years ago when they saw me in LA, asked if I had works, reached out to them, cold called them, email. Hey, I got some cool works I'm working on, but they're really impactful. I really care about these. I'm not the best painter. I'm not going to argue that.

And I'm still learning. But like the message behind these, like they really kind of resonating and they loved it. And they gave me a solo show shortly after that. Did incredible. Like sold out really quickly. And I just kept going. I just kept building on those, building on those and thinking of new ways to build the audience around his message, like pure and simple. Yeah. And I want to talk about what that's built into now, because it's pretty stunning. But

I think we probably have to spend a couple of minutes defining something and that's a NFT. So you have been deep, deep, deep into this world. I'm stepping deeper into this world. I'm fascinated by it. But for those who have no idea what we're talking about, I'm sure you've been asked so many times at this point, sort of like, what are you actually talking about when you're talking about NFT? How do you describe it for folks? NFT, so non-fungible token, is a token on the blockchain that proves authenticity and ownership over a digital asset. And what this token contains is information that points to a digital asset. And what we're talking

about in this instance is digital art or an image. Prior to NFTs, there was no way to really prove ownership over an image or prove authenticity over a digital image. It just wasn't possible. And so come along and now NFTs allow digital items and digital assets to have not only ownership and authenticity, but value because of that authenticity and be able to prove ownership. And so at a high level, that's what an NFT is. At a really more granular level, what NFTs really unlock is the potential for creators to distribute their IP or creations or messages or stories to a permissionless infrastructure that has an audience base. And because that audience base, when they buy a NFT, are almost in the way investing in that artist because they can now share a common interest in the value of that asset going up, right? Because there's secondary market. You can now trade these digital assets for money. And so

you create this collective alignment with early supporters and creators that in a way never existed before. Because also a thing to note about NFTs is there's secondary royalties that go to the creator. So every time it resells, royalties that go to the creator. So every time it resells, 10% go back to the creator. So if you think about like my paintings, for instance, you know, have a solo exhibition and it sells out. Well, if those go to sell and I continue to produce good work and they go sell at auction or something like that, I don't get any, you know, there's no benefit to me. But nfts really do is create this alignment with audience and creator that really allows a much more rapid audience base to grow

around an idea or a creation yeah no i love that and i'm fascinated by this concept on so many levels like i look at it my brain translates it you know, I think a lot of people can wrap their head around, okay, so let's say an illustrator creates or like an original illustration, and then they decide to issue a series of like 500 signed limited editions of that. And they get printed by a printer, but they've got the little like, you know, like one out of 500 in the signature on the bottom. I think everyone can kind of wrap their head around that and see, well, there's value in having like number five out of 500, right? But when, and what we're talking about effectively,

it's like the digital version of that. It's being able to release those instead of digitally printed versions of the original that are signed in hand letter. It's 100% digital. Like these exist in the digital domain, but you have that same pedigree, that same prominence that you would have with a signed limited edition. But what you're talking about, which I think is where things get really fascinating for me,

is this notion that once the artist issues the 500 limited edition copies, if those get resold a hundred times in the market over the next 10 years, the artist doesn't participate in any of that as the value of the work goes up. But with the NFTs, with the smart contracts and the way it exists in the digital world, every time this thing gets resold, you get a percentage in perpetuity. So if 10 years later, you're super famous and your body of work has gone up in value dramatically, as a creator, you keep participating in that. And that is a mind-blowing change in the equation of how artists can very rare moment in history where creators can really build enterprise value around the things that they're creating. If you think back on history, very few people were able to accomplish that. Walt Disney, George Lucas, Robert Kirkman, those Kirkman, like those type of people, every time something like that happens, the door closes behind them. And so, you know, thinking about how can a creator build enterprise value in a traditional sense is very difficult because every

time, you know, a creator produces work, whether you're a writer or an illustrator or a 3D artist, you are basically working for a fee because you need the audience base. You need the distributors. And those distributors are the gatekeepers to building that audience space. And so you're constantly working for a fee. It's very difficult to retain ownership over your IP if you want to reach a larger audience. Now, art is obviously different, but thinking about like creators in general, IP creators and, you know, things like that, if you, you know, a Mickey Mouse type, it's very difficult to retain ownership anymore in today's society. Web3 kind of like flips it on its head and says, well, you know, we are the audience. You have a direct line with the audience. But also like the most

powerful thing about that is because these NFTs are digital assets that can be traded and can accrue value, the value is shared between the creator and the audience and both are aligned to drive the value of the thing they believe in up. And so you not only have an audience, but you are building an audience that is motivated to go to tell someone else to buy the thing that they bought because they want to continue to drive value to that. And so it's a really powerful moment in history for creators to really, really retain the ownership over their, their IP.

Yeah. I mean, if you really think it through, right, you can, there's this potential to completely disrupt the way that art media content is created, is distributed, is purchased, is evangelized. And like you said, the notion of actually being able to create something on the level of an enterprise is pretty powerful and unique in this moment in time. And you referenced this notion of the community being a part of it. And it feels like that's the key. You are going direct to the people who would love your work. Like you're bypassing the studio system. You're bypassing the recording industry. You're bypassing the gallery system.

And it essentially becomes this direct relationship. And like you said, there are markets where these things, you can easily trade back and forth. A thousand percent. Another important part of this too is it doesn't require money. It doesn't require, if you're a designer right and you don't have the money for the infrastructure or the fulfillment or the product like it costs money to like get your designs out into the world but if you think about like video games and digital wearables like anybody with you

know an ipad can create a design for a wearable, right? Web3 really enables, empowers small creators to really like get their work out into the world and it's like it's because there's not much capital needed to get started. And you just need one person to believe in you to buy that thing, to go tell someone else, you know, to go buy your thing. And I've seen that so many times. I think one of the first people to buy my work is an incredible person in the in the crypto space and nft space one of the bought my first nft well then he told him you know go he told his friends and his friends and his his colleagues and other people in this space and kind of just kept growing and growing and growing and that's what's really you know the unlock of of this whole movement that's happening movement is happening. Whether you're in your running era, Pilates era, or yoga era, dive into Peloton workouts that work with you.

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The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were going to be fun. On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die. Don't shoot him, we need him.

Y'all need a pilot. Flight risk. So let's actually use what you've been doing as an example. So if our listeners are kind of like following along but let's give them something concrete because i think what you're building right now is just a really powerful clean example of what we're talking about like you start out with literally a painting to show your four-year-old nephew that like this thing is possible it's really powerful on the one, you bring it to traditional galleries and like people saying yes to it,

but then you create a digital version of it. You offer it as an NFT and this seeds an ecosystem. From that moment, you then begin to build something astonishing. So walk me through what you've been building from that initial seed, because it's pretty incredible. Yeah. So the initial seed, obviously, the first painting of my nephew. Took that to the galleries, traditional route, got traction.

But what I wanted to really do was reach a broader audience. One of one paintings on a collector's wall, kind of like that's where my paintings just went. There was no other way to reach a broader audience. And so I came up with a character I named Aku, which is a digital character, a black astronaut kid who's also a digital explorer, oversized helmet, very confident kid though, very confident. And what I realized was I didn't know anything about TV or film. I didn't know anything about comic books and how to get it distributed.

I did know that I could release it as an NFT. And so that's the one distribution outlet. I knew that I could release it, be able to see if people even liked it without any capital needed, and to see if it could even, know if it had anything to it there was anything to it before taking it to somewhere else i didn't have a backstory to aku i didn't you know come up with a big script or a book or it's just this is a character and came up with this idea to release 10 chapters like 10 episodes of aku's origin story over time And the reason for 10 was I figured 10 would be able to tell me, you know, or tell the world if it was good or not, or if it generated revenue, and then I can go maybe take it to make a TV series or something.

And so I had this character, incredibly cool, incredibly confident, you know, really never seen anything like this ever. You know, a black astronaut kid who, you know, wears cool clothes, but just has a big helmet and just confident and released him on February 21st of 2021. No expectations whatsoever, like didn't think, okay, this is gonna be massive, or just here it is, tell me what you think. And in the first minute, we released it, we did it in a time window, you had seven minutes to buy chapter one of Aku. Here it is in the world. First time everybody's ever seen this guy.

First minute, did over a million dollars in sales of the first chapter. And I think end of the day, it was a seven-minute window. I think it got close to $2 million that day. And it was like, you know, obviously incredible. And I proved it like on day one. But the coolest part about that whole, you know, moment was being able to see in real time people engaging with your IP, your character, your story, people on Twitter DMing me or commenting and seeing the impact that people had on seeing this one character with no story was incredible. You know, nobody talked about the money. Nobody talked about,

it was a time when everybody's talking about the sales prices and things were kind of like heating up, not about the money. It was all about, I really resonate with this character. I really like, you know, connected with Aku. Like I see myself in Aku and, and I felt I felt like you know connected with aku like i see myself in aku and and i felt i said you know messages like i felt like i had limits to my dreams and and it was really inspiring and so after chapter one we optioned aku for to become the first nft to become a tv and film but in that you know option i was able to retain to retain ownership over everything else, books, video games, merchandise, everything. And I believe that's because of the leverage that was created using Web3. And that's when the unlock happens for building enterprise value around creators is having that leverage.

Proved out after one of 10 chapters, there's real revenue generating potential here. I don't need to go give it all away now. And so we did that, kept releasing these chapters and just the kind of momentum just kind of kept building and building. And a couple of weeks ago, we released chapter five. And now we're nine months, eight months into this. And in five minutes, surpassed chapter one and did $1.9 million in five minutes. And the coolest part about this is the secondary market and the value of these chapters are just continuing to rise. And so when people are buying in for $1,000 on primary, when the drop happens, some of these chapters are selling for $25,000 now, $30,000. And so that's the

unlock. Now we have an audience base. We have revenue. We're generating revenue. We have leverage because now the audience is going to tell, is going to keep spreading on top of it. You're like, Hey man, like you got to check this out. Like not only is this amazing character, but like chapter I bought is now worth this amount. And so we just kind of build this kind of audience and leverage and we haven't done anything wild. Like we haven't, you don't see Aku in a TV series. There's no, the backstory is still being told. Like there's not,

you don't see Aku in, you know, a video game. It's just, you know, slow organic audience building. Yeah. I mean, it's so powerful. It's like you, you do that first chapter and each one of these chapters, by the way, is a short animation. It's sort of like, which tells a little bit more of that origin story and you release a certain number of them. And then it's like that for the very first one is proof of concept. And after that, sort of like it's game over. Now, everybody else is sort of like, oh, I want to be, it's not even that I want to participate

in the investment. It's I want to participate in this story and not just the story of Aku, but the story of what's happening around this. That's exactly right. I want in on that. So yes, it's, it could be really cool and interesting and valuable investment, but even bigger, like I just, there's something happening here and I want to be a part of it. It's calling me on a deeper level. The coolest part about it. And the coolest part about this whole thing is there's a discord group of people who own the Aku chapters and every morning we're in there. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. You know,

and just hanging out and you build a real kind of like family in there with them. And we're all a part of this together. That's really the coolest part, being able to engage with them about the story, be able to talk about different ideas we have, to really bring them along and get their input and share my thoughts. And that's really, I think, a massive piece of this is being able to get real-time feedback from these people who just want to be a part of this. And really the reward for them for being a part of this is endless because these are held on Ethereum, right? Crypto wallets.

What that means is these wallets are public. They have public addresses that we see that you can reward them. I can send them an NFT right now that says you have access to the movie premiere, or this is only you can watch this TV series. You can constantly reward them over time. And that's one thing that some of these, you know, the biggest media companies or Disney or whoever don't have, they don't have that direct connection to their audience base to maybe say, hey, you watched the Frozen movie tonight. Now I'm going to airdrop you a free Frozen t-shirt, right?

Like that doesn't exist. And so a lot of people are, they understand that. They understand like, you know, this is a long process, but we can always communicate with them throughout this process. Yeah. I mean, it's also to a certain extent, they're saying yes to a piece of art that really resonates in a powerful way with them. They're saying yes to an investment, but they're also saying yes to a token that gives them access to a community that includes you. So they become effectively, you know, like co-creators along with you. But, but I wonder, you know, which is really powerful

because there's a sense of belonging to something bigger too and access to you. I wonder if, do you ever feel a tension between the vision that you have in your head about where you want this thing to go and how much of a part the community plays or gets to play in determining the direction of that vision? Because I know a lot of times there can be this creative tension between what you feel like needs to happen to stay authentic to what you're thinking about and what the community that feels empowered because they've made this possible wants to see happen. Yeah, it's a good question. I think when you're doing something creative and

something that's really from the heart, there's really very few people that can steer that in the way that you really want it to go. More is not always better in a creative sense. But what we do have is that relationship and then other things that come along with beyond just creative. It's like, hey, what do you guys think about doing this kind of mechanic or what do you think about us doing uh what's the name of this world right there's things that you can you know get real-time feedback like you know when we were building these chapters out we were all sitting around and building them and i was able to hop in the discord and just like ask questions and things to get their thoughts and just like just engaging in a natural way it doesn't need to be you know right where does aku go next and type of thing it's just like just engaging in real way in an authentic way that like is very helpful

to kind of like get feedback from the from the audience it's invaluable no that makes a lot of sense to me um for those who don't know what discord is, by the way, it's simply, it's a digital platform for community where you can really just host really robust conversations. You know, as we start to zoom the lens out a little bit and start to come full circle in our conversation, like I wonder also part of what you think about when you're doing this in the larger context of artists of color and history around people of color, around black people, so much and so often there's this phenomenon of erasure. Like it gets left out of the history. And part of what you're doing, the way that you're

doing it, especially sort of like in the digital domain, it's like you have a sense of agency over the way that history is written. And there is this permanent record that you're creating. Do you think about it on sort of like that level in that context? Yeah. I mean, because the truth of the matter is put it real bluntly. I got to do things 10 times bigger and 10 times faster and 10 times more grandiose than anybody else does. That's the nature of it. And so I look at it like, okay, I was put in this position in a new market that is generating billions of dollars per month with very few

black faces in the crowd, right? And so that's why I, you know, when I think about Aku and I think about the bigger vision, the bigger vision is not Aku becoming, you know, Mickey Mouse, because I truly believe Aku will become Mickey Mouse, regardless of what I put behind it or anything like that. The bigger picture is Aku is now Mickey Mouse, but then he has other IP and other creators that you can then empower or finance or get their story told or bring those creators into the audience. That's the bigger picture because if I don't do it and it's, I recognize the potential in Aku. If I just said, okay, I'm just going to focus on Aku and let's just go and we'll do some cool things. And you know, TV series film comes out and I'm set,

then that's a waste. That, then that's a wasted opportunity that I don't think will ever come around again for other creators behind me. And so the vision of this is, Aku is Mickey Mouse, but from the success of Aku, we can bring that back and redistribute and help the other creators.

Just because of the nature of this market is hot. All the money is flooding in and i don't want the black community to be the last ones at the party right or black creators be the last ones in in on this and and it's it's too hard just it's an uphill battle now to capture the value that's happening now and so yeah i mean that's why a lot of the stuff we do i think is incredible and far beyond what we probably have to do or some other people are doing in the space who are generating a bunch of money and all that. But as a distant future, you're also, you're sort of like, you're bringing this back out into the physical domain, um, in art Basel. Oh yeah. Describe this installation that, that you're creating. Cause it sounds kind of mind blowing. That's another example. Like we, you know, we had to do art. If we're going to do art, we do an art Basel,

a big, a big event, but you know, most people see Aqua'sft project and aku's nft and like well we're going to throw the biggest party and the biggest event we can at art basil and so yeah we we have a 30,000 square foot space in winwood that we turned into aku world a massive interactive exhibit ftx is the official sponsor of this and it's absolutely incredible to see because it's hard to describe where there's a massive aku helmet that you could walk into and experience what it's like to travel like Aku. You have massive 200-foot-long walls, 50-feet-high walls that are projection maps of 3D environments that are constantly changing. You have a merch room where the merch is holographic floating around you have a room where you can mint yourself you can create your own avatar that is placed into aku's world and mint that as an nft we have kalani performing on december 2nd being opened by with

aj mitchell opening like mal opening we have merch collaborators with Pusha T, Jerome Lamar, Alaylee May. So like we said, if we're going to do this, we got to do it a whole nother level. Yeah. I mean, that's the enterprise you were describing, right? And it's still just the very beginning. This is still so early in this journey. I cannot wait to see like what this universe looks like five years from now. You know, it's going to be unreal.

Good time, I think, for us to come full circle in our conversation. So having this conversation about the evolution of work and art and impact and representation in this container of a good life project. If I offer up the phrase to live a good life, what comes up? Define the balance, to be quite honest with you, to find the balance, to be able to build something really special and that you're passionate about, but also still have time to enjoy life, enjoy the wind. Thank you.

Hey, before you leave, if you love this episode, say that you'll also love the conversation we had with Lisa Congdon about how she stepped into a career as an artist later in life. You'll find a link to Lisa's episode in the show notes. And of course, if you haven't already done so, go ahead and follow Good Life Project in your favorite listening app. And if you appreciate the work that we've been doing here on Good Life Project, go check out my new book, Sparked. It will reveal some incredibly eye-opening things about maybe one of your favorite subjects, you, and then show you how to tap these insights to reimagine and reinvent work as a source of meaning, purpose, and joy. You'll find a link in the show notes, or you can also find it at your favorite bookseller now. Until next time, I'm Jonathan Fields, signing off for Good Life Project. The Apple Watch Series 10, available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum.

Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required, charge time and actual results will vary. Mayday, mayday, we've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were going to be fun. On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is?

You're gonna die. Don't shoot him, we need him! Y'all need a pilot. Flight Risk.