TrueLife - Creative Convergence: Navigating Tech, Design, and Art with Charles Ponti

Episode Date: October 26, 2023

One on One Video Call W/George https://tidycal.com/georgepmonty/60-minute-meetingSupport the show:https://www.paypal.me/Truelifepodcast?locale.x=en_US🚨🚨Curious about the future of psychedelics? Imagine if Alan Watts started a secret society with Ram Dass and Hunter S. Thompson… now open the door. Use Promocode TRUELIFE for Get 25% off monthly or 30% off the annual plan For the first yearhttps://www.district216.com/Introducing Charles Ponti, a visionary multidisciplinary creative with a profound impact on the realms of software, design, product management, and content creation. With a distinguished career characterized by a relentless commitment to innovation, Charles has left an indelible mark in multiple industries, including finance, healthcare, content creation, and social networking, by crafting products that resonate with millions of individuals worldwide.Beyond his remarkable work in product development, Charles is a thought leader and commentator in the ever-evolving digital and media landscape. He shares his insights through compelling writings, guiding us through the intricacies of our tech-centric world. His passion for meaningful conversations extends to the realm of podcasting, where he hosts engaging discussions on a wide array of topics. Furthermore, Charles’s creative spirit transcends boundaries as he curates mood-enhancing playlists that speak to the heart and soul.In addition to his digital pursuits, Charles Ponti is a dynamic artist, producing contemporary works that challenge conventions and provoke thought. His multifaceted contributions are a testament to his dedication to pushing boundaries, inspiring creativity, and fostering positive change in our interconnected world.http://linkedin.com/in/thecharlesponti One on One Video call W/George https://tidycal.com/georgepmonty/60-minute-meetingSupport the show:https://www.paypal.me/Truelifepodcast?locale.x=en_USCheck out our YouTube:https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLPzfOaFtA1hF8UhnuvOQnTgKcIYPI9Ni9&si=Jgg9ATGwzhzdmjkg

Darkness struck, a gut-punched theft, Sun ripped away, her health bereft. I roar at the void. This ain't just fate, a cosmic scam I spit my hate. The games rigged tight, shadows deal, blood on their hands, I'll never kneel. Yet in the rage, a crack ignites, occulted sparks cut through the nights. The scars my key, hermetic and stark. To see, to rise, I hunt in the dark. fumbling, furious through ruins maze,

lights my war cry, born from the blaze. The poem is Angels with Rifles. The track, I Am Sorrow, I Am Lust by Codex Serafini. Check out the entire song at the end of the cast. Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen. I hope your day is going beautiful. I hope that you found a way to solve that problem

that's been bothering you. I hope the sun is sure. shining down. I hope that you realize you're so much more than a race from the hospital to the graveyard. Your life is about to get so amazing. I know it. Trust me. I don't care if you're having a bad day right now. It's about to get awesome. True Life podcast. And I have for you today something incredible. I would love to introduce to not only those that are watching, but those that may be listening. I would like to introduce Charles Ponti, a visionary, multi-disciplinary, creative with a profound impact on the realms of software, design, product management, and content

creation. With a distinguished career characterized by a relentless commitment to innovation, Charles has left an indelible mark in multiple industries, including finance, health care, content creation, and social networking by crafting products that resonate with millions of individuals worldwide. Beyond his remarkable work in product development, He's a thought leader and a commentator in the ever-evolving digital and media landscape. He shares his insights through compelling writings, guiding us through the intricacies of our tech-centric world. His passion for meaningful conversations extends into the realm of podcasting, where he hosts engaging discussions on a wide array of topics. Furthermore, Charles' creative spirit transcends boundaries as he curates mood-enhancing playlist that speaks to the heart of the soul.

In addition to his digital pursuits, Charles Ponty's a dynamic, Artists producing contemporary works that challenge conventions and provoke thought. His multiplied facet, contributions are a testament to his dedication to pushing boundaries, inspiring creativity, and fostering positive, positive, positive change in our interconnected world. Charles, thanks for being here today, my friend. How are you? My pleasure, my pleasure. I'm doing great, doing great, happy to be here. I'm here in London, here in London, away from home, traveling, creating, working with new teams. amazing

so before we start digging into some of these intricacies maybe you can give us a little bit of a background like what what got you to be where you are man like who inspired you were the guy that grew up and you were drawn on the wall and your mom was like hey man don't be drawn on the wall like what was it man what got you to be where you are today

yeah I think like as a kid man what was I like as a kid I was a terror It was an absolute absolute terror. Yeah, it's unsurprising, unsurprising. Most people who see me and talk to me for like five minutes can surmise that was probably the unruly, uh, canned youngest, youngest child, you know, grown up to a single mom who didn't have like the time to kind of deal with my antics.

But yeah, I think I was just always my, you know, it was a stark contrast because like my sister's like, kind of makes sense, you know, she's the older child had to look after me. You know, she's a very, like, classic Leo, you know, plays by the rules. Very button up. And I'm, I'm like a classic Ares, like rules. I want to know the rules so that I can deliberately break them as soon as I hear them. Like, when I hear rules, it's like a checklist of things for me to do to break. Love it. Yeah, just always, always doing something new. I think that was from the beginning.

I have like, I'm either, I'm super interested with everything and then immediately bored once I've gotten very good at it. And like, okay, on to the next thing. What can I learn? What can I do? What can I put out there? Yeah, just keep moving, I think. There was a movie called Meet the Robinson's animated movie.

I think it was Pixar or Dreamworks, one of those. And the quote, the whole like quote, the like moral of the story was keep moving forward. And I think that's kind of always been my thing. Keep moving forward, do it creatively, do it happily. Yeah. Yeah, that's awesome. I love to get a little bit of background. And I think it helps build out the framework for the individual with whom we're kind of investigating today.

And yeah, you know, when I think of moving forward, I think of Dory, just keep swimming. Just keep swimming. You know what I mean? Like it's such good advice. Exactly. Exactly. It's great about Dory is that she does she has this like, there's a whole conspiracy theory. Okay.

About Dory where like, you know, she's forgetful, you know, five second memory or whatever it is. But there's a whole conspiracy theory that Dory actually doesn't have short term memory. She actually remembers everything, but she just doesn't want to worry about the past. she's so like I'm going to be super focused on the future and be super positive and and overfocusing on the past forces you to like stay stuck and become negative and pessimistic. So that's like the whole conspiracy theory around Dory. And I feel like it makes sense. I feel like it makes sense to some degree.

Do you feel that way? Do you feel like resonating on the past kind of keeps you stuck sometimes or no? First of all, I've never heard that conspiracy theory. But now that you say, Yeah, I love it, man. I can't wait to dig into a little more. But I agree. And in some ways, if I pull back the framework a little bit,

I think that the world speaks to us through us, whether you're watching a movie or whether you're talking to the person that may be the thought leader that put that little piece out there for people to do. I see us moving into a world where obviously depression is being trapped in the past, anxiety is being trapped in the future. And if you look at the way in which the world is emerging, we're really trying to focus on the now because that's all there really is. And I think that we're coming to this idea. And I love bringing it up through Dori and Pixar and all the artwork moving forward.

Like, yeah, you only have right now. That's it. And it's gone. Where's it? Now that's it. And if you can think like that, you think beyond good and evil. You think beyond time. You think like, okay, this is the moment.

This is life. This is living. But it's a mindset, right? And it's kind of hard to stay in the moment. Is it, have you found that? Or what are some tricks you used to stay in the moment? Yeah. It's definitely hard to stay in the moment.

I think like, because I think you need some form of like looking at the, I think it's like methodical. Okay. Right. Like you have to like, what I tried to do is what can I do right now? What's an action that I can take right now? and thoughts of the past or the future are tools, right? Like, what is memory? Why do we have memory?

Like, why do we have the ability to construct concepts, predictions for the future? I think it's just tools. They're tools for you to use in the present, right? Like a hammer is only useful to you if you're using it right now to hit and now. I think that's kind of the thing. Like I look at the past to kind of think about, okay, what lessons have I learned in the past? And how can I use that to what I want to do right now in this moment? And looking to the future, I try not to do it very much at all.

I think my only desire to look into the future is just as a way of figuring out what direction I'm trying to head in. you know where it's like you know if i'm on like a cutting regime if i'm trying to like you know lose weight for for something then it's like okay i'll use that as a tool to you know choose the salad over the you know bowl of ice cream but otherwise i don't really see what benefit thinking about the future holds i just don't like i'm sure other people like have reasons why looking into the future is very useful for them, but for me personally, I just don't find much use in it. It's a fascinating concept to think of.

You know, when you look at the way in which people have been conditioned their whole life, a lot of people use, like, a journal to write down these goals, or they write down these, you know, if you read like Steve Jobs' biography, or it seems to me a lot of the boomers' biographies, which it makes sense because those people are writing biographies because they're at that age. But in some ways, you can see. see the tools that they've used.

And if we look at thought patterns like tools, be it the past or the future, you know, maybe what we're seeing is that some of these tools are obsolete and looking to the future and creating these goals of like, you sure you want to limit yourself like that? What do you mean I'm limiting myself with a goal? You know what I mean? But in some ways, like that could be, that could be there, right? Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, like goals, even goals, like it's, it's so. tricky. Like, like, I think about it as like directions. Okay. I think to some degree. Like, it's a given example. Like, right now, you know, I'm building a product, collab, you know, to help bring collaborators together. But, you know, you could, I could have a goal of like, okay, I want to, I want the product to get to a million users. Right. That could be a goal. But like, the goal is, what is the value of it? Is the specificity of a million users? And, you know, users, is that a valuable goal?

I don't really think so. I think it's more like, because if you focus on the goal, like one thing I've found, especially with like building content or like building products is like if you focus too much on the goal, you will kind of do whatever it takes to hit that goal. But if you don't ascribe meaning, if you don't focus on the meaning behind the goal, then you're, you're unlikely to hit it or hit it in a good way. Does that make sense? Like you'll cut corners, you'll screw people over.

You see this with a lot of products, you know? People complain about a lot of social networks because they, they focus too much on a goal, on a very specific goal, and they'll do whatever it takes to hit that goal. But it's like, if you focus on that, like, why? Like, for me, it's like, I want to help as many people as possible. Will that be a million people in 12 months? Maybe, maybe not.

Like maybe it'll be less people, but I'll maximize on the true intent, which is to help as many people as possible. If that makes sense. It makes total sense. I think numbers and goals like that, especially when we start looking at revenue or users or comment, you know, a lot of these metrics that we use for success are actually symptoms of the process. Like, yeah, those are great things. but those are because of it's meaningful. Like the meaning, the meaning is something that creates those other things.

Like those are byproducts of a successful organism. And I look at as an organism because you're feeding off of each other and it's symbiotic instead of parasitic. You know, parasitic, yeah, you can become parasitic and extract, extract like we extract oil out of the ground. Or you can be symbiotic, like a person on psychedelic mushrooms, having a different kind of look at the world. Like there's a symbiotic relationship happening.

And it's different than a parasitic relationship. So yeah, I love that, man. And I'm so stoked to talk to you because I think you are one of the people that are helping us move the ball forward and creating a future that is more symbiotic. When there's someone in a position of authority creating, they are the people that are paving the pathway for that kind of relationship. Is that maybe you can speak to that a little bit more. Like we've kind of plushed out a little bit. But what does it mean to be building something like that? What are some metrics you focus on?

What is your process like? How do you create something that's symbiotic? I think it's a lot about creating a community. You know, like I was kind of talking about it last week with someone. I was like, you know, when I first entered the world of the creator economy, I had a lot of thoughts in my mind about what, what that looked like, what the creator economy

look like, what participants in the creator economy look like, like influencers and YouTubers and, you know, live streamers and like, what are these people? What are their motivations? I had ideas in my head of kind of what that was. And they weren't great ideas.

You know, I think it's largely driven by popular culture, or like, you know, what is discussed in like the media, you know, if you Google, if you Google the word influencer, the top articles are all going to be kind of negative, you know, and I think a lot of people kind of see it that way. And I think it's because we high, the stories that are highlighted are parasocial. They're parasitic. They're kind of this. You have this one person who is like an idol, you know, the golden calf. Yes. And that's the type of relationship. that they've garnered with their community, you know, whether intentionally or unintentionally, just based on like whatever metric they were chasing, you know, if you're chasing views, you're more likely to end up with this parisocial relationship

because you're basically extracting value from your users, you know, from your viewers, from your community, as the kind of creator. So that was my thinking, kind of before I got into it. And then once I started working in this industry, I was like, yes, those people absolutely exist. You know, I'm not going to lie and say it's not true. There are a lot of people, a lot of the big names that you hear. They are big because that is the kind of community that they've built around themselves.

But then I learned about loads of other people like yourself who, are not trying to do that. They're trying to foster a completely different type of community. It's not one way where I am here creating content, kind of just to kind of gardener views. I'm trying to create a community. I'm trying to create a space. And when you do that, you likely you don't get as much press, you know, because it isn't as salacious. You know, you're not going to be drawn from making the type of content that gets you you know, written on this person did this crazy, horrible thing or whatever. But you end up with a community kind of love, you know, and I saw the power of that.

And I saw the power especially when creators like that collaborate with each other, you know, because there are so many people. I think it's one of the most undervalued part of the creator economy is that people create these communities that are adjacent to each other and they could deliver so much value to their community if they work together as opposed to trying to compete with each other. I think there's so much more power in collaboration and people working together as opposed to people seeing each other as as competitors. Like, oh, this person has this man. many, you know, this person has a community where I'm going to figure out how to steal their

community. Why? There's like enough room, I think, for everyone. I don't think it's really necessary. So that was kind of the inspiration, you know, behind the product that that I'm building now. And it works. You know, early signs. You know, people are excited. They kind of see the value proposition. You know, there's, there are a lot of hurdles, I think, to get over still. But, but I think there's a lot of power. I think it's loads, loads of power in collaboration. And you see it. You see it yourself, you know, with the type of show that you do and all of the people that

you talk to. I mean, it's refreshing and it's empowering both to yourself and to your audience and to that person and to their audience as well. Yeah. I love collab. I love Streamyard. I use it all the time. And I've met some really cool people.

I've worked with other podcasters that I've never would have met in my life. yourself included. And I think it's on some level, collaboration is beginning to eclipse competition, just very subtly at first. Like you can just see the moon just starting to move in front of the sun a little bit. You know, we have this old machinery of competition,

and it's like a lot of the legacy influences, you know, they're still part of the legacy media. And the legacy media tried to do this thing. We've got a brand new machine. It's pink. instead of blue now. It's not really a new machine. You know what I mean?

It still does the same stuff, man. You know, but we're seeing people move, like, there's this new term like build online. And it's products like the ones that you're building that allow people to build online. Like you can build an audience. You can build a community. You can build a framework to build a whole new structure. You know, when you build a new foundation, you can build a new building. You don't need to.

keep up two walls to get permits and all that kind of stuff. You can really begin to build something new and we're seeing it happen. We're seeing people that used to be truck drivers, myself included. Hey, I can move into this space and I can create value for people. I can bring together someone who may be studying at Maastriac University and put them in contact with a historian in Canada. And I get to feel like not necessarily a large check or a piece of what comes together, but I get to be cited in the work that they do when they publish a paper.

And that lasts forever. Now I can use that as, hey, here's George, someone who's cited in this study. Here's a bestselling author. And it's all because I got to build with people. And it's so much more rewarding.

And I really see what you guys are doing here as not only building out products, but building out a future framework for people to solve problems. And that's what we need right now more than anything. Have you noticed that this is something that moves, not only in the United States, but obviously you're in London. Is this something that is burgeoning throughout the world? Oh, absolutely. Absolutely.

I think there's some cultures that are kind of more into it than others. Yeah. But are kind of more open to collaboration and helping each other out than others. But, you know, it was another thing kind of going back to what I was saying before about, like, kind of what I thought. And it's, you know, we're all very. limited, I think, to some degree with the types of content that we consume. And that's, you know, to be, to be expected. I never really like the term kind of like filter bubble, you know, whether it's, you know, in reference to like the content you consume or your interests or whatever,

you know, it's like, all of these, you know, things you're stuck in a filter bubble. I think people have interests and people should be allowed their interests and people should pursue their interests and people should be within the communities that, you know, wrap around their interests. But there is so much more. And you don't really see that until you enter a new space. You know, as I was saying, like from growing up, because I like to keep it moving, because I like to try new things and enter new industries, oh, it forces me to see what other people are working on, what other countries are doing, what other cultures are doing.

So when I first started in the creator space, I was very kind of Western. focused like okay the u.s maybe you know the UK when i first started i was living in london at the time so you know there's so much creativity here like i'm in shortage right now and i mean you can't like you trip over creators of some degree whether it's you know like online creators or artists painters musicians you know i got a haircut yesterday and i was talking to him and i was like know, how did you get into being a barber? And he was like, oh, you know, when I first started, I was, you know, in high school, I was doing graphic design.

And then I decided I wanted to do landscaping. So I, like, flew to Australia and started to do landscaping. And then I didn't want to do that anymore. So I, like, moved to the Netherlands and learn how to cut hair. And now he's a music producer. You know, it's like, it's like, but that's everyone, I feel like in, you know, many neighborhoods of London. So it is global. It's totally global. Everyone's collaborating. I think it's becoming more and more. As you see more industries, you know, sadly, you know, to some to some degrees, many industries kind of dry up, whether it's like automation, you know, AI, globalization, whatever the case is. But the online space is infinite. There is no there is no end.

to the online space. It just keeps going. As soon as one space gets crowded, there's another space that's open to you. And the only reason you wouldn't see it as open, I think that's one thing that I think your content does for a lot of people is see the possibilities. You may think the doors are closing or closed for you,

but no, they're open. That door is closed. there's like 500 doors right over here that are completely open. You just got to like turn around, look at them and walk through them. So I think hopefully our product kind of does that for people. You meet new people. You learn new things and you put yourself out there. Yeah, I agree.

I think, you know, I'm a huge fan of music and language. And there's a famous quote. I think it's from Bob who says, when one door is closed, many more open. Like all you have to do is look. But we're so tunnel. vision sometime. Like, I've got to do this one thing. I've got to go to college. I've got to get this degree and I take this class and then maybe I'll get this job and then my mom will love me.

I'll get this girl. Like I have this kid. Like it's so linear. Like that's not the way the world has to be. I understand that that can be welcoming. That might feel as if it's rewarding. But if you just take some time to sit quietly and try to figure out who you are and what you're doing, and ask, ask some deep questions, I think that you'll see the world unfold in front of you in ways you can't quite yet imagine. And it's, let me ask you this,

the product you're building. Maybe you could speak to that a little bit. Is it, would you, is it a verb? Is it an adjective? Is it both of those things? It is a,

is it a manifestation of imagination? Like, what is this thing you're building? It's a verb. It's absolutely, it's absolutely a verb. You know, I don't want it to be,

you know, there are a lot of platforms that, are nouns that are absolutely nouns and they want to be nouns because they want to keep you there right like Facebook it's a book it's a noun they want you to look at the book don't take eyes off the book you know like YouTube and these are all things that I love by the way sure I'm discouraging them you know in a I'll help you're in a joking way, you know, but like these are things that you look at. Yeah.

And I love those things because that's how I learn. I meet a lot of people through Facebook still. You know, people make fun of it. But I think Facebook to me is one of the kind of friendliest platform, especially because of how many Facebook groups there are. I think, you know, you take the word groups, you know, Facebook is a noun. If you just treat it as the Facebook and the feed, it's a noun. You just look at it.

But then you look at Facebook groups, groups. That's a verb, you know, a grouping of people, people coming together. And for us, we're a verb. You know, we don't want people to, we're not trying to, you know, kind of what you were getting at earlier about like kind of what we're kind of aiming for. Yeah. Of all of our metrics, of all of our North Star metrics, things that we're aiming for, none of them are kind of like how much time people spend on the product, right? We don't want people coming every single day, spending all their time, you know,

spending an hour on there. It's a verb. We want to help you take action, right? You come here, you meet people in the community, and you've, work together. It's all about finding the right people to make beautiful things with and put that out into the world.

So we want to be a tool. You want to be a tool for people to help you do things. I love it. See, I'm not sure people spend enough time on language. If you're going to build something, a name is important. What does it do?

Because what it does is going to on some level, translate to the person partaking in it. If it is a Facebook, what does it mean? If I say it's a book, I'm going to read it. I'm going to spend some time looking at it and checking it out. But I'm not really, I could use it to smash something or I could use it as a sunblock. There's ways I can use it, but it's limited. And so too is the actual platform. And it's built right into the language. When we start talking about what we're going to do, we should be very cautious and energetic and excited, but very precise in the language we use. Because

We're describing what we are. We're describing what we're going to do. We're giving ourselves limitations by using language that is limiting. And I wish more people would be conscious of that in their daily discussions. And in a weird sort of way, we can see language changing. Like people are talking about different pronouns and this and stuff. It's fascinating. It's beautiful.

And it changes the way we model reality. And what you guys are doing, collabing. Like, here we have this not only verb, but we have a unique ID in which we can experience the world. There's a lot of stuff you can do with that. That's powerful, man. I love it. Yeah.

Yeah, there's so many ways for people to work together, I think. That's like there's so much power and people working together. And you see that, you know, with what you're saying, with people changing language. Yep. Like language itself is a tool, you know, like you use. it as a tool to kind of communicate with yourself, you know, to kind of ruminate on your ideas, work through your ideas. But what is the primary function of language, just to communicate with other people, to get your point across to another person, you know, without, would, if there

was only ever one human being on earth and no other human beings had ever come about, would that one person had ever developed a whole system of language and multiple ways of saying different things and, you know, nicknames and, you know, all the different pronouns for, for, you know, a tree and a dog and everything else. I don't think so. So there's a community. What I say is like, there's a community aspect. It's a language and the way you kind of form language and you challenge language. And if you want to change language, you have to do it with other people and you have to do it like this. Yeah. You know, by, by, by, talking and working through things. That's one of my favorite things about content where it's people

speaking, you know, where it's two people or a group of people and they're all talking, is that you could, you know, watch it or listen to it and just kind of see it as like them kind of communicating with each other or trying to communicate something to the person that's, that's not part of the conversation and it's just kind of consuming it. But if you kind of take a step back and you kind of really look at the language that they're using and the tones of their voices throughout the conversation what you realize is that they're using language to work through things with each other there's a negotiation and exchange and a really great piece of content whether it's a podcast episode or a live stream or a YouTube video whatever the case is

where there's multiple people is like you have all these different forms of language, people saying the same thing or different things in different or the same ways. And at the end of it, you have, you know, 10 different sentences that now gets distilled down into one sentence that kind of captures every single idea. And it's something that didn't exist before. So there's a lot of power. There's a lot of power in that. Spoken like a true artist. It's this tapestry. We're weaving. You know what I mean? Like it's It speaks volumes of I can see why you are leading the, I can see why you're leading the charge in so many ways. You need someone who understands that in order to have a tapestry woven in a way in which the image can be in the middle and the colors are right and the fabric is good.

And there's a lot there, but it takes thoroughly understanding not just words, which are a fragment of language, but the cadence in which one person decides to talk to another, the hand. the eyebrow flash, all of that is imperative in finding meaning in something. And it's it's wonderful to me. If we continue down this wonderful path of linguistics and symbolism and how, where does imagery fit into this? Like on some level, I think we're almost beginning to see imagery introduced into the human language in a way in which has never been done before. It's almost like language.

our words are nouns, but now we have this phenomenal imagery, which can be an adverb. And now we can really begin to understand each other. If I can show you this image, back it up with the prose of poetry and use my hands, wow, you may, and I maybe even do a little dance about it, you know what I mean? But we really begin to communicate in a way that is meaningful, that we haven't done for so long. What about all these new integrations we have? Yeah, I mean, imagery is interesting, especially in the creation. space.

Yeah, I think what you were saying, you mentioned earlier about like kind of media, kind of media as it has existed. I think when you have any type of tool and you have it in the hands of

a limited set of people, they tend to kind of form a standard. Yeah, exactly. You know, if you put three people in a room and you, you know, give them something, they tend to find one way of doing it. One way that kind of benefits all three of them, right? And I'm using like three, number three kind of for a reason.

Right, right. If you look at, you know, any type of media landscape. It's kind of always like three kind of in that space. But then once you get into the creator economy where I can't stop, no one can stop someone from, you know, opening a TikTok account or opening a YouTube account and, you know, making something, recording something, dropping it into Premiere Pro or, you know, some other piece of software, you know, booting up Stream Yard and creating something there. Like, no one can stop you. And because of that, we have way more forms of imagery. of communicating things in a visual manner, I think, than ever before. And there's a lot of pushback, I think, from people who see things a certain way.

Like, I live in Los Angeles, you know, home of the Hollywood studio. And they have a certain idea about the way things should look, you know, and the way a story should be told. And I, as a rule breaker, I just fundamentally disagree. fundamentally disagree with that. And if we take like an example, you know, the kind of birth of the short form video and what people have done.

You know, you look at a TikTok video from 2020 and you look at TikTok videos now. They're very different. You know, they may seem the same, but they're very different. The innovations of the way that people are trying to, it's like, well, how can I communicate my idea a little better. It's like, okay, well, let's shift the camera angle down, let's speed up the frame rate

every so slightly. You know, when you talk to these creators, I think a lot of people, they don't give credit to how much thought is put into every tenth of a second of these creations. And it's for a purpose. You know, they have an idea. They have a message. They have something they want to do. They want to make you laugh. They want to make you cry. They want to make you feel something. They want to you know, help explain a cause to you, show you what something is like on the opposite side of the world, you know, which is very important now. So I think imagery is extremely important. And the more we can get these tools to be very powerful, I think number one, to be very, very powerful, to be very accessible, you know, to anyone on any platform, whether you're using it on, you know,

an expensive MacBook or you're using it on a, you know, a budget, an Android phone and another country, you know, that doesn't have gray internet, you should have the power to make any image you want, I think. I think that's, I think that's extremely, extremely important. I love all of it. You know, I think it speaks to the idea of when information can flow freely, innovation moves at a pace that hasn't been seen since in my lifetime. The innovation that's happening. Like when I start looking at people, myself included that try to create, you know, content specifically for a phone screen.

Like all of a sudden you can have four different pictures and you can have some, some interesting pictures and like a different design and like, you know, like, if you were to see that, why is there, why is it, There's three pictures like that. I don't get it. It's kind of cool looking, but the only reason you have that is because I'm trying to create specifically for this one type of phone. Sometimes I look back at other people's stuff and I'm like, that is so freaking cool, man. I love the way they did.

How do they even think about that? Oh, that gives me an idea. And it's like when we don't restrict ideas, when we don't restrict a certain type of person, be it a gender, a color, a class, you know, when we don't restrict. people from creating, innovation creates a wealth that has been unseen in humanity since probably the Luddites on some level, but it's, you know what I mean?

It's like true artisans. Like the most creative people in the world now have an outlet where they can compete with somebody that maybe went to the London School of Economics or something like that. And they can compete on a level where it's like, I'm not sure which one I like better. And that's where power comes from.

That's where innovation comes from. These tools are allowing that to happen, not only in Los Angeles or London, but throughout the world on a level. Are there people that come to you and say, hey, Charles, this is dangerous, man. You shouldn't be doing this. It's only for a certain set of people that understand programming and have an understanding of how to control people. People try to set you back like that? Yeah, I think I have met quite a number of people. Like I said, like being in Los Angeles, there are a lot of.

of people who would like things to stay a certain way. You know, they don't like the idea of everyone having a camera and everyone having the ability to record their own story and to put their own story on there and for that story to get, you know, a million views or whatever it is. They don't like that. You know, I don't put it against anyone. You know, I think, I always try to. think about everyone like everyone has the same goal you know everyone wants the same set of goals i

think you know everyone wants to be loved everyone wants to be accepted everyone wants to get their story heard um and understood um and everyone wants security to some degree you know resource security community security um and when things change when information gets out there and industries change it's frightening, you know, because you're used to things a certain way. You know, I've been, I, when I started, you know, if you wanted to create content, you know, like when I was in college, you know, not that long ago, like 15, 12, almost 20 years ago, I guess, like when I was in college, if you wanted to create content, well, it's like, okay, well, I need to like study film, study writing and then hopefully, you know,

get good enough to like write a screenplay you know enter the lottery that is hollywood and someone will care about me and maybe i can get my show uh aired at 6 p.m on Thursday night on fox you know one of the 10 channels you know that people watch and now you could be 12 years old and have a story to tell and you pick up your phone and you record it and you put it out there and you know within 24 hours a million or more people have seen it. So a lot of people don't like that. They're very afraid. And I think that's fine.

I think that's fine. I think their story deserves empathy as well. I never try to think about it as like a competition. And I always try to explain that to people. It isn't a competition. There's a balance. People want the one thing that the creator economy allows is, a personal relationship that you never that you cannot get from very polished high-end work

that you get in a movie theater you're never going to feel like someone's talking directly to you or you're hearing really about someone's life story even if it's like a documentary or something it's dramatized there's a lot of you know cooks in the kitchen making that so it's a very kind of polished view of the world. So it's understandable. So yeah, long story short, yes, there are a lot of people that don't want these types of things to exist. But I understand. And they'll come around at some point.

Yeah, so that makes me think, you know, I just finished a parent teacher conference with my daughter, who's nine years old. And we sat down and we spoke just about the way in which social media is influencing the classroom. and, you know, we were going to meet on, we had the option of meeting on Zoom, but we wanted to get down there. And the teacher was like, oh, I'm so thankful you guys came down. So many who were meeting on Zoom,

and I don't really like it. She had all these reasons why she didn't like it. And whether you have children, whether you're a teenager, whether you're in your 20s, 30s, 40s or 50s, we all know that on some level, at least in the past, when content creation was somewhat restricted,

we saw this polished view. Maybe you grew up in the times of Hollywood and you saw the actors and actresses, and you grew up in the, in the time of the top hat and the feather and stuff like this. Or maybe you grew up in the time of Madonna and you saw the material girl. And when Facebook came out, there's a lot of people that say, you know, social media is really horrible for people because it gives a

inauthentic view of what life is. People are only posting their beautiful French cuisine. No one's posting their hot dog. You know, however, might it be possible that the answer to the social, social media inadequacies is more creators. And let me try to flesh this out a little bit. There's a concept in this book I read called, it speaks of the term wabi-sabi.

And this is this Japanese term for coaxing the beauty out of the ugly. And an example is like a really old antique pot has this giant crack in it, but that's what makes it beautiful. It's not the pristine craftsmanship, which is great. But it's the fact that somewhere along the line, this beautiful, magnificent piece of pottery was dropped somewhere. And that story behind it. Oh, that was when Uncle Ronnie was coming down the stairs. And let me tell you what Grandma did.

Grandma came over and pinched his butt and he slipped and fell with the footage he's never seen in my life. It's like, you know, it's the story. It's that coaxing. What is this scar right here? So maybe what's happening is that this idea of polished social media is moving away. and now you can see a guy riding a motorcycle naked or you can see a girl that's seven reciting a poem that brings tears to your eyes

and you're like, that's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. Let's watch it again. You know, and like maybe the answer to the polished idea of what life can't be is a million more people showing you what life really is.

And I think that that's kind of what your product is doing. It's providing that platform for people to understand on some level we're all creators, whether you're putting it out there or whether you're going to work, whether you're making breakfast or whether you're mowing your yard. Like you're creating something. And if you begin to see yourself that way, you change the way you model reality, right?

What do you think about that? Is it possible that the answer to the polished world of Hollywood could be more creators showing what life is? Yeah, yeah, I think absolutely. You know, part of it I would say is, I understand, you know, that kind of there is a pull to polish. There's an absolute pull to polish. Kind of we all have it.

You know, when I'm producing something, I create it. You know, so it's so strange because, like, you know, I'm like going off on a slight tangent, but like when I create something, some of my favorite stuff that I've ever made, probably the my favorite stuff that I've ever made, was a piece of art or recording or a, whatever the music, whatever the case was, you know, it was something that I had no concept of.

And I just kind of made it in like 20 minutes and was done with it. And I just never touched it again. I just did it. Was like, that's pretty cool. And then I was done with it. You know, a lot of the art that I made that I have hanging in my house, it was that. I just made it randomly. I was bored for a second.

I just made it. It was, you know, unpolished. But there's a pull to polish. You know, other times if I have more time on my hands, like I made a video last week. I recorded it on Tuesday. And it took me five, six days to edit that thing. I was on the plane for 10 hours and just going over and over and over again.

Like, oh, change this graphic. I don't really like that. What is this? And by the end, I was like, this is all right. heavily polished loads of animations and transitions and background music and all these things and in the end I was like eh that's fine um so I understand people's pull to polish and at the same time you know I'm a lover of magazines I absolutely love magazines I've loved magazines my entire life just the photography and all of the work that goes into it and all the different things I have

to do for lighting to get the moment exactly right. right you know they take 500 photographs of someone jumping in an air to get that exact perfect moment when the you know the one hair is just perfectly resting on the eyebrow and like all of these things so it's like there is a place for that

there's absolutely a price of that because polish as good as things not being polished is I think there's a balance right polish content is very important because it gives you something to aspire to. I like it. I think you can't really live a fulfilling life if you're not aspiring. If you're not trying to move forward, if you don't see a North Star that you're walking in the desert towards, if a North Star isn't there, then you're just walking in the desert. You're not heading anywhere. And there's a place for unpolished content. That unpolished content, I think,

it helps you build a community. I don't think you can build a community. around unpolished around, I don't think you can build a community around polished content. You can only build a community around unpolished content because it's real. People can relate to it. It's what makes people feel comfortable with who they are.

You should aspire to be more. I think everyone should aspire to be more, but that doesn't mean that you shouldn't feel happy and secure with where you are right now. now and who you are right now. And in terms of media, you're only going to get that from people being real and not being polished. So, yeah, I think you need a balance.

Okay, what do you think is the relationship between authenticity, and polished? Um, I think that's a hard question. It is. I think that's a very hard question to answer because it really depends. It really depends on the person, kind of in how they view themselves. You know, I think the conversation around looking at certain creators, you know, for instance, like if we just, you know, take a look at like one platform.

If we look at creators on Instagram, for instance, you know, there are a lot of people doing great things. You know, there are a lot of creators that, you know, they get attacked because people don't think they're being. authentic. You know, it's like you're too polished. You're not being authentic. You're not being real. And again, like, you know, I'm the type of person. I like to see all sides of the story. And I think, you know, I don't want to psychologically diagnose anyone. No, but I think a lot of times that comes from if I speak personally, you know, I've, I have felt that myself. You know, I've looked at certain certain, certain creators that I feel are too polished and are not being authentic. And a lot of the times that comes from a, an insecurity within myself. You know, as I was saying, in order for you to feel comfortable in yourself, you need to see something that's kind of real, something that has mistakes in it. You know, when you look in the mirror, your face isn't completely perfect without any lines

or blemishes or whatever. So if you see that in a person, you're like, well, that's not like what I see in the mirror when I look at myself there for this person is not being authentic. but that person is being authentic to what they want to be. Right. Like you have to, when you look at other people being creators, you can't look at it through your lens. Right.

You have to look at every piece of, you know, media and creation through the lens of the person that made it and see things through their eyes. You know, where are they coming from? What's their story? What story are they trying to tell? why are they trying to tell that story and not trying to don't try to force yourself on the story. If it's a story that you don't want to hear, then that's completely fine.

And that's not for you. But I think everyone is being authentic. I don't think there is a way to be inauthentic. I don't think our brains allow us to be inauthentic, even when we're escaping our insecurities. We're still being authentic in that. Yeah, I admire that point of view. It's, I think it speaks volumes of someone who is probably sat alone and for long periods of time wondering why shit is the way it is, man. I love that, dude.

You know what I mean? Like, yeah. It's volumes that they're like, what about the way they think? They're probably looking like that. Jesus Christ. I mean, how do you, how do you feel, you know, when you're, when you're creating content, you know, you're a very positive person? And I think you have a great, great message. Thank you.

How do you feel, are there times where you feel you struggle with, with authenticity, you know, after you've created something, do you kind of look back and feel like, was I being my true self or not? Do you ever struggle with that? Yeah, I do. And I would echo your sentiments about they're not being a true, inauthentic person from the point of view of another person. Like, who am I to say you're not on it?

I don't know what you're thinking. Like maybe you wanted that, maybe you wanted that piece like, I don't, I don't know. But when you look at yourself, I think you have the ability to understand if you gave it, you know, if you're being truly authentic. I heard a story one time that was along the lines of, I think it was John Wooden. He wrote this book and told this story about winning and losing in life. And he would get his kids together on the basketball. court and say something along the lines of, you know, at the end of the game, only you will truly know whether you won or lost out there. And it won't be based on the points on the board

because you can go out there and you can crush the other team and you can have more points on the board and still lose the game. Or you could go out there and you could lose the game, but you get more out of yourself. But if you go out there and you get more points on the board and you suck at it, well, you know, you're kind of a loser because you didn't do your best, man. you could have done better. The points don't matter because someone else could have had a good game and you suck.

That doesn't matter. On the flip side, if you go out there and you give everything that you have and the other team wins, where you get to walk away the winner because you got more out of yourself. And I think that comes down

whether you're playing sports or whether you're in a relationship or whether you're creating something. You know if, like, God, damn, and I should have put that color yellow in. You know why I didn't do it? Because my dog was barking, the kid.

And I was like, I just leave like that. That's fine. But now it bothers me every time I look at it. And someone was like, I think it looks good. And you're like, no, it's not. Like, you know, like that's the, that in some level is the inauthenticity. Or you're like, I think this will get more views. You know, and it gets back to the first part of our conversation where like, if you're doing,

if you're creating something for anything other than a true expression of what you're trying to create, like if you're trying to breathe life into something, that's probably going to foster authenticity. If you're doing something because you have to or you're under a contract, hopefully you can breathe life into it in the way a great sculptor could bring to life a piece of marble that has something beautiful in it. But if you're just creating for comments, if you're creating for views, if you're creating for likes, it's easier to be inauthentic. And that's just speaking for myself because I find myself in that trap sometimes like, how come this one didn't get as much?

And I'm like, okay, who cares? Who cares why I didn't get that much? It's not why I'm doing it. I'm doing it for this. And then it's like, everything's kind of lifted off of me. And I feel like my creative spirit gets kind of clamped down when it's shoved into a corner and do this now.

You know what I mean? I guess that that's the way I look at inauthentic behavior, an authentic behavior. And sometimes the way I speak, if I'm pulling my punches a little bit and I'm not being me, I'm like, I can get way more out of this interview. But I'm too scared to ask this person a question. And that's not fair to them.

It's not fair to me. It's not front of the audience. I should just try to be mean. So on some level, I think we all battle with this idea of authenticity. And I'm glad that we do because I think it makes us better. I think that it challenges us to create better things. And yeah, but I've been hearing that term quite a bit, authenticity. So I think it's a beautiful term and more people should be figuring out what that word means to them.

Right. It's like it's up to them to define that. Is that a good answer? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I think it makes a lot of sense. Yeah, but piggybacking off of that, like I think as well, you,

everything is, is kind of an endless. I don't want to use the word game, but I can't think of another word. It's like, yeah. Everything is endless in life, you know, like I think, you know, when we're talking about goals, you know, one reason I don't like goals is because honestly, you never get there. Yeah, it's true. You know, like, and if you did, if you did make a goal,

goal that you reached, I don't think it's probably a good goal. You didn't go far enough. Like, you have to choose. So like authenticity, you're, no one's ever going to be authentic in their own eyes. Right. Or in the eyes of another person. Right. Like, when you look in the mirror, you're always going to feel like you should be

something more. You should be a little bit more real to yourself. Other people are going to think you should be a little bit more real along their lines about how they have defined the game. And that's good. I think that's good is what keeps things fresh. Every day, I'm the type of person that I wear kind of the same thing all the time. I like to pick a uniform and then I kind of rock with it.

You know, kind of like a cartoon character. But it's that allows me to struggle with authenticity. Because it's like, well, is this authentic? maybe it is maybe it's not well maybe I need to find a new way to be authentic if I can't do it in my dress maybe I need to find a new form of authenticity maybe I have to do it with my language yeah maybe I need to do it with my with my actions maybe I need to do it the way with the way I show up in a relationship maybe I need to show my authenticity and how I'm compassionate to another person um

There's so many different layers of authenticity. So yeah, like you're never going to feel completely authentic. You're always going to feel a little bit inauthentic. But you shouldn't see that as a negative. You should see that as a positive and as a sign that there's more room to grow. And life isn't over. There's a lot more lane left on this highway. I love that analogy.

And I want to add to it. I want to say, if you find yourself creating stuff and you, bump up against the word authenticity, congratulations, whether it's someone saying you're inauthentic or someone says, that's not. Hey, welcome, man. Come here to give you a hug, man. You're here with us. You know what I mean? Like, you're there. Like, you see that sign. Oh, I got what they're talking about, man, I made it. You know, on some level, like you made it right there. When you started thinking at that level, it's like, oh, yeah, okay. Now turn around and help the next person up. Help them understand what that is, right? Now we're back to this idea of collabing and stuff like

that. Not a whole lot of people thoroughly understand what the creator economy is. Maybe you could give us your definition of it. And where do you see the creator economy in looking forward? What does that look like to you? The creator economy, how would I describe it? I mean, I think the creator, the creator economy definitely is nothing new. I think we, we, it's kind of come back around, I think, to some degree. Like, the creator economy has always existed. Like what did humanity do in the beginning? There were no jobs. You had to create.

You had to figure something out. You know, you think of like the, you know, hundreds, thousands of years ago, the idea of the bizarre, you know, people going into the center of town. And every single person in the town had a stall. And it was like, okay, well, that person, they're selling, you know, prunes. Well, I'm not going to sell prunes. I think I have some wood in the back of my house. I'm going to whittle that. into like little sculptures of something,

into little elephants, and maybe that will be my thing, and that's what I'll create and I'll bring it to the pizar. And I'll see if anyone likes it. And if no one likes it, well then maybe next week I'll whittle it into monkeys. And I'll see if people like that. You never know.

So I think that's the kind of original creator economy. And then, you know, as society changed, we had jobs and that's kind of the structure of how people saw the world i think there was a kind of collapse or a concentration of resources um into kind of centralized hands you know for good and and for bad i think there's two sides of it where there is a lot of positive and there is a lot and there is some negative to that and for that when you get that kind of accumulation of capital and resources and centralized hands? Well, what do humans do? What do all animals do? They flock to wherever the resources are and those resources. We're in companies and corporations and certain modes

of working. So there wasn't a lot of creatorness. There wasn't a lot of need for creators, I think, during the Industrial Revolution, you know, and up to like the 1950s, there wasn't a a lot of need for it because humanity had other problems that they needed to, that didn't, that they needed to worry about. And being a creator was, was quite challenging. But now, you know, with the birth of the internet, you know, and how, you know, a high speed internet and and access to platforms like Facebook and YouTube and TikTok and, you know, like the ease of of selling products you know i think shopify and and and amazon you know like they're you know amazon is billified this to to a big degree but like there are so many people who have created

their business like they would have never gone out on their own and created products to sell on their own if it wasn't for the existence of a platform like that that allowed people to be like okay well i'm going to set up an instagram account you know to show show pictures of the artwork that I'm making and then I'm going to set up a free Shopify account to sell the products and then I'm going to set up a stream yard account and I'm going to live stream to different to multiple platforms so that more and more people can see the thing that I'm making. So like with all of these platforms getting into more and more people's hands around the world,

well, what happens when you what happens when you give humans? tools, well, they use those tools and they find ways to create. You know, so that's what I think the creator economy is. I think it's everything. I think we put a lot of emphasis on the, on the kind of entertainment and, and kind of media portion of the creator economy because that's kind of what the majority of what we see. But the creator economy is everything, you know, like this ring. I got it from this couple that started a store and started making these rings by hand.

I think it's in Lake Tahoe. Small store, I would have never seen it. I would have never been there. Would have never heard about it. But I learned about it through the creator economy. And I was able to find it and like it and buy it. And, you know, so the creator economy, I think, is everywhere. In terms of the future of the creator economy, I don't know.

I think it's so hard to guess. I think it's going to be more of the same, not in a sense of like repetitiveness. I think it's going to be more of the same in terms of it's going to continue to grow. I think the great thing about the creator economy is that we don't, we have no idea what it's going to be. As more people enter, it changes. You know, there's this concept of metas where it's like, what is the current meta of the time, you know? And I think the meta keeps changing. And as more people enter, the meta will change.

And I'm very excited. One thing I'm extremely excited about is for kind of developing economies and other countries that we don't get to hear about what they're. doing so much for them to take control of the narratives a bit and to get their voice heard because they're doing amazing things you know like what creators are doing in africa you know what they're doing with in fashion in technology in entertainment you know across the board you know what they're doing with different forms of governing structures you know there's this there's so much creativity out there and that's going to change the creator economy and we're going to see things that we never that we never thought of before and that's going to give more people opportunities that's going to

spread the wealth that's going to allow more people to collaborate so I'm excited for the future of the creator the creator economy yeah you should be you know when I was little it's probably dating myself but the way in which you saw the world from a classroom was like through like a national geographic magazine my little this picture but this girl's got beautiful eyes you know I'm like, you know, but now my daughter will have the opportunity to have someone, maybe from Kenya, come on her podcast and she can, this is what I'm doing over here, is what I'm doing over here. You know, and we break away, you know, as Francis Fukuyama that wrote this thing,

the end of history. It was all wrong, but there is an end of history that was written and given to us. And in some ways, I think what the creator economy is, the product like Streamyard is doing and other people in the space are doing, is that they are, beginning to give us a lens into the a new dimension of reality like if you can I don't need my great-grandfather's world war two story to know what happened in europe I can talk to somebody over there you know before you had to go over there you had to have a lot of money to get on a plane to go there and you might only catch a slice of it now but now you can see yeah I kind of like this person over there

I like what they're doing what are they talking about and you get to learn in a way in which you've never learned before. I think that what is going, I think that this seed of new learning will in some ways produce a tasty fruit that we've never had before. Like, wow, that was delicious. You know, like it's going to be ways to collaborate with people you didn't even know we're alive and have an ancestry, in a culture and an understanding of the world that you never had. In some way, it's almost like like our brain connecting itself on some level.

Like, hey, this helps this moves my arm. You know, and you know, hey, I didn't know that. That did that. You know, it's so exciting. The first time we're coming together, man. And I hope people see that. Do you think people are seeing that, like what's going on is a coming together? I think so to some degree.

You know, one thing that I've noticed both kind of. of like within the creator economy and just kind of in humanity yeah in general like every everything that i see kind of on the news and you know talking to people traveling around talking to different people like people respond to incentives yes you know like if i put you in a room all by yourself with nothing in it you're going to behave a certain way you know but if i put 10 other people in that room and I start playing, you know, some like techno music, you're going to behave a different way. And if I put two of you in the room

and I put a chainsaw in the middle of there and I starved you, you're going to behave a different way. Yeah. Yeah, so like I think people behave in different ways depending on what the situation is. So what I've kind of seen is because the world is so big and there are so many different situations

that people are in, certain people see the value and other people don't because it's not really in their incentive to kind of see it that way and to take part in things that way. And I think for a large part, a lot of people won't feel the need

to kind of hear other people's stories and to take other people seriously and to collaborate with other people until they're forced to. I think or until they're inspired to. I think that's another thing. I think that's one thing that we're missing so heavily is inspiration is people having. Yeah, I forget who said it the other week, but they were like, you know, one thing that we're missing kind of in the kind of pantheon of kind of loud voices is, you know, if someone.

asked you, like, who is of all the, like, mega popular people that most people know about, who is the person that every time they speak, they talk about hope and they talk about, you know, how things are going to be positive and about how people are going to come together. I don't think there's a lot of voices kind of out there doing that. And that's why I think, you know, things like what you're doing and what other creators are doing is kind of incredibly, is incredibly powerful because people aren't going to come around. until they're shown that it's possible, that it's real, that there are other people doing it. You know, why should I collaborate if no one else's?

Well, I got to show you that. Other people are collaborating. Me and you, we are here. You and other people, me and other people. We're collaborating. We're doing it. We're getting a lot of benefit. Everyone is benefiting.

So now people are like, oh, that's, oh, okay, that's curious. Like, I was closed off before, but I kind of see, I see what the value proposition. is. And I think that's part of the thing with collab. You know, a big part of our job is, you know, we're a tool where we're a tool to help people collaborate. But the other, the other goal for us is to inspire people to collaborate, people that don't think, oh, it's not worth it for me to kind of take the time. You know, how long does it take to, you know, come on here and have a great conversation with another person on the opposite side of the world, 30 minutes, an hour. You know, in our conversation, I'm going to carry this with me. Me too. For the rest of the day, for the rest of the week, you know, a year from now, I'm probably going to think about this conversation that we've had. And that's powerful.

And the more we kind of get that out there, the more people, I think, will come around to this and to many other positive things. Yeah. I once heard someone say people change two ways. One is through inspiration and one is through desperation. Oh, wow. Yeah. It's good.

Yeah. Unfortunately, people, desperation tends to be the one that most people wait for. And maybe you have to become desperate before you can get inspired. Maybe it's a hand-holding relationship on some level. But, you know, when I get to collab with people yourself or other podcasts out there or get to talk to different people in the world, you really begin to understand how powerful a conversation is. You know, you can change, like this conversation changes the whole way my day is going. It changes the way I'm going to interact with my daughter. I'm going to change what I'm going to have for lunch.

It changes the conversation. And we're doing that from across the pond, from across the ocean. And those small changes, it's like the pebble in the pond. You throw that pebble in the pond and it radiates outward. So you can. If you're willing to take a chance and collaborate in something as simple as a conversation, you could change the world on some level. On some level, you may not be changing the leaders out there,

but you can influence somebody in a way. And I'm hopeful that collab and other things like this, they begin to change the nature of what people think an influencer is. Because an influencer is far greater than someone that gets you to like yellow shoes. An influencer is someone who gets to go, hey, I like the way you think. Can you explain that to me? And then you influence one another to live a better life with your language. That is influence.

That is making change. And that is something every one of us can do if we're willing to have the courage to go out there and try to do it. A smile, a little eyebrow flash, tilting your head one way. You know what I mean? All these things can change the world around you. And they're so simple. And the tools you're providing for that are there. You know, I got this cool little list of,

like potential imaginative things. And I'm going to throw them out there. And I was hopeful if you could just say what you think about them. Can we go for that? Let's do. Okay. Let's do it. Okay.

Techno sensory artistry, exploring digital mediums that go beyond visuals and sound, allowing audiences to experience art through the senses of touch, smell, and taste. I love it. I think it's great. I don't know if you've heard of this thing that they've opened recently. called the sphere. It's in Las Vegas.

Okay. So it's just like massive dome for anyone that doesn't notice is massive dome, huge, absolutely enormous dome. It's covered in LED panels, right? So it's a massive screen. The whole exterior is a massive screen. And the interior as well is lined with LED panels, LCD panels. I was saying LED, LCD panels. It's a massive screen. on the inside as well. And they did their first kind of opening show, I think it was last weekend or two weekends ago,

and they had you two perform. So you're kind of sitting in this theater. You know, usually you go to a concert. There's a stadium, everyone's sitting around, then you're kind of staring at the performer. But in this situation, you're sitting inside of this theater, but the show is all around you.

Like, yeah, you two is performing. down there on a stage, but there are like visuals happening. I mean, it is insane. It's absolutely insane. It was started by one of the co-founders is the son of the person who started Madison Square Garden in New York. And his plan is to open up, you know, seven or eight of these spheres all around the world. He wants them in every major city and to keep experience.

and developing the technology more and more. Because what he saw was people are not going to the movie theater anymore. You know, why should I go and lug my butt all the way to this building to stare at a screen when I could stare at a screen at home? You know, so people are like, oh, nobody wants to go out anymore. But that's not true. What he saw was that people do want to go out, but they want a full-on experience. They don't want to stare at a screen. they want to feel the they want to see the sights all around them like going out into you know

a field at night and seeing the stars all around you they want to feel the wind you know so in the sphere they have like wind wow comes through and like it it goes with the music you know and they want to do like vibrations you know and like as they develop the technology you know they'll probably incorporate things like scent and other things and you're with loads of other people so it's community. So it's multi-sensory, but you need the technology, right? You need the technology kind of all around you. So I think it's great. I think it's a great idea. That's fascinating. I can't, I can't, I've seen pictures of it. And, you know, it reminds me of reading some old textbooks where when people first went to the movies and they first had this moving picture,

they saw this train coming. And the whole audience got up and like ran away because I thought the trains would come right to the screen at him. And we'd laugh at that, but like, why wouldn't you think that? I think you've never seen that. before and in some ways it's exciting like maybe the sphere presents us with this this novelty that we haven't had in so long and like when it's novel you're living and yeah thanks for it okay so digital echo chambers of emotion how digital media combined with AI creates personalized emotional feedback loops revolutionizing how we experience and express feelings echo chambers of emotion i think it's good i can see it in two ways i can see that in two ways i think

to some degree you already have it okay right like whatever you're feeling uh you tend to feel for an extended period of time uh you know when people talk about filter bubbles a lot of what's really happening is that your emotion dictates how you interact with things on the internet and the algorithms learn to show you things based on how you interact with things on the internet right so like the algorithms what they're doing is they're responding to your emotion you know if i am angry you know or let's say you know i'm working at a job and i'm i'm concerned i have a lot of anxiety for for whatever reason yeah maybe i'm yeah have anxiety about the economy you know like recently you know me and my my partner were

thinking about you know buying a house you know and i have anxiety around that you know so i've kind of been sucked down into a bit of digital echo chamber of you know anxiety about the economy and kind of everything that i've seen and there's a whole kind of echo chamber around around that you know but if my emotion changes like it has this week my emotion is at change and I've completely kind of changed over the past three days of how I'm interacting with certain things and what I'm searching for and what I'm looking at. And now I'm in a completely different echo chamber of emotion. You know, right now I'm surrounded by an echo chamber of creativity and hopefulness and things like that. So I think that there's a definite positive,

but there's also, you know, the potential negative that people get trapped because they think that that's all that exists. So as long as you walk into that echo chamber, knowing that there's a door for you to walk out of, I think it's fine because then you can sit with it and you can learn about it and you can respond to it better than X-Eye. Yeah, I love it. Just on a related side note, do you see your environment as a container?

In what way? In what way do you mean? In that, like I speak to a lot of people in the world of well-being and sometimes they look at you're in this container when you go to get help like you're in this medical container or sometimes you're in this work container but they add the word container and as I began pondering that and thinking about that

I'm like that's a pretty good word because in some level when you're around somebody be it an echo chamber as sort of a container like you are subject to the thoughts and feelings of the people in this space so these spaces can be containers I wonder if you've ever given that any thought yeah yeah

you know, I could give an example from today. So like because I'm, you know, here in London, I don't live in London. I don't work in in London. I had to rent space for my team to work together. So we rented space and a we work here in Shortage. And it's a container. It is absolutely, it is absolutely containing it. While we were leaving today, you know, we're in the elevator going downstairs.

And I was like, man, I love this building. I don't know what like, you know, I feel I'm a relatively creative person. You know, and I try to keep that energy with me. But like, man, being in that building with all of those different people, you know, walking past, you know, 20 different people to, you know, fill up my coffee cup. And each one of those 20 different people, they're all working on different companies that are solving different problems in the world. That's a completely different. different container than a completely different space, you know, and how you're going to respond and how you're going to feel the ideas you're going to come up with. Like the ideas my team came up

with today. I, like, I was journaling before that before we met. And I was like, I wrote down, like, I am impressed, beyond impressed with what my team was able to come up with. Because we were in that container, I don't think we would have been able to do it. Honestly, we're all very talented but I think you need to find the right container to achieve certain to to achieve certain goals I think that's very important yeah me too I I like my containers to have lots of psychedelics in them think that that's a pretty awesome absolutely yes yes please yeah what maybe I can get like I I've been a big fan of finding ways to express myself and heightened states of awareness and I think there's something that you can really get in touch with at these heightened states. You know, for me,

I've been a big fan of LSD and magic mushrooms and, you know, cannabis at times, but more of the magic mushrooms. And I found that it helps me see the world in a third person point of view, which is great for trauma. Like, if you get into an event that is overwhelming and you can step outside of it for a minute, like, oh, it's not my fault. Oh, that person was an asshole. I get it. It was me too, but, you know, what? Maybe you could speak to the idea of how, heightened states of awareness have a relationship to creativity in your opinion? Yeah, I think you can't be creative unless you're aware of more things, right? Like when I create, you know, something I noticed, and this is something that I've seen a lot of

people push. And I think to some degree, it's kind of helpful. You know, I think creativity, someone wrote art is a sport, which I think was quite, which was quite interesting. What they meant was that when you think of a sport, when you think of someone who's an athlete, you know, LeBron James, you know, playing basketball or, you know, messy playing football, they can't perform unless they're performing every day, right? They got to go to the gym, they got to work out, they got to practice, all those things. At the same time, you can't learn if messy, one thing that makes a great athlete is that they don't just show up to the gym and run the same drills over and over. They will get better at those drills.

But what happens is that their opponents learn the drills that that athlete is very good at. So the other part of being a great athlete is watching video. of what other people are doing, opening your awareness and then using that to expand what you're doing. They're doing like, okay, they're doing like that. Okay, how can I change my drill slightly to kind of incorporate what these other two people are doing? And that kind of helps you grow. So I think awareness, creativity, I don't think you could be creative without being aware of more things. I don't think it's possible. Yeah.

I'm always reminded of the language when people talk about, you know, ever since a kid, I remember being young and like, oh, we're going to get high. Well, what happens when you get high? You have a different perspective. Like, you're looking down at things. People talk about going on a trip. In a lot of ways, a psychedelic journey is a trip. Like, you're seeing a different landscape, even though it's the, maybe you're noticing something for the first time. And anybody who's been fortunate enough to travel, when you go somewhere else, like everything is a new.

You're like, oh, that's what their fire hydrant looks like. That's weird. What is that over here? That's a stall for the bathroom right there, right there? You know, like, what? They go on a boat under that bridge? That's a small bridge. How come people are not so fat over here?

You know, like, you just see everything is new. And sometimes on a psychedelic journey or on a different diet, breath work, there's all these ways we can find in order to see things differently. They really create the ability for us to see something that we see every day in a new way. And I think that that is a really big, a great jump off point for creativity. Because when you can see something mundane

as something unique, then now you almost have not only a, you almost have a, it's almost a necessity that you show it to somebody else. Like, hey, look at this thing. And they're like, I've seen it a million times. You have, but have you seen this? You know, that's creativity, right?

Like, and that's simple shift in focus. can fundamentally change someone's point of view with something. I think that's one reason why art is so important. It gives us that ability to shift perspective. Is that maybe let's talk a little bit more about your ideas about art. Like who are some of your best greatest influences? For art, I think my greatest influence is so cliche, but Andy Warhol. Andy Warhol is probably one of my greatest influences.

And of course, Duchamp is amazing. Like putting a signature on a toilet and calling it art. I think he questioned everything. You know, I like artists. I like the type of artists where a lot of people look at them and they're like, that's not art. Because they changed the conversation. Okay.

You know, like, what is art? You know, Douchamp looking at, because Douchamp was a great artist. He was extremely talented. You know, people look back and they think about the toilet. But he was an amazingly skilled painter. You know, he had a lot of technical ability. but he was able to challenge things. He's like, yes, I can do this and this is traditional.

And if anyone looked at it and I pointed at it, they would say, yes, that is art. But I just put my signature on the toilet. Why isn't that art? Like, why can't that be art? So I think that's really a lot of my influences come from those types of, those types of artists. One artist I also like that a lot of people don't like, he's done some questions. questionable things, but like Jeff Coons. I've always found his work very interesting because he came to art.

He was an investment banker. He was working on Wall Street and he saw the kind of financial thing of art. And to some degree, of course, he got into art to make money. But I got to talk to him once and he saw art in a much more complex way. like the interplay of there was an artwork in how art is monetized like how the language of money and the language of art came together to form a conversation there was a whole questioning around around that um so yeah i think those are those are some there's a small small collection i think of my top kind of inspirations okay so when i think about the the balloon dog that was that was that was was his piece, right? Wasn't it? Yeah. Isn't it fat? Like, one of the reasons why I think that's so popular is that people can see

themselves in that artwork. Like, they look down and they see this reflection. It's all smooth and, like, there's no real, there's no real jagged edges. And like, I can see the beauty of it in a way. But in my opinion, and I'm just a podcaster, in some ways it's cheating to me. Like, you're just getting people to like, look at themselves. And I don't know. I guess maybe that's why it's so awesome, you know, but for me, it brings up like this little bit of like, I'd see what you're doing here. But maybe that's just me. What, like, maybe you can speak to what you see in some, and maybe that sculpture and, like, the toilet. Are these messages that you, like, what are some of the messages in the art that resonate with you from some of their pieces?

So the balloon dog there, so there's a concept that's quite popular. Well, there's a thing in copyright law. If you are able to change 40% of a piece of work, and that 40% is somewhat subjective. But if I take Mickey Mouse, there's a copyright on Mickey Mouse, I can't do anything with Mickey Mouse. But if I'm able to change it, 40%, then I'm able to use it. It's fair use.

I can say that this version of this slightly modified version of Bicky Mouse is mine. Now, one powerful thing about that is that people like, you can't change. If you show someone something that has absolutely no relation to anything they've ever seen, they're not going to respond well to it. Because there's no frame of reference. Right. Right. That's a big thing with building products. If you build a product, well, I need to be able to message it to you in a way that you're going to be able to understand. Yeah.

You know, like, this is what the product is for. So, like, with art, it's kind of the same way. I think you have someone like Jeff Coons or you take like Damien Hearst with spots. Everyone has seen a circle. Right. But if you take a whole bunch of things. of circles and you put them all together and you paint them all different colors and different combinations. And you have all those different combinations on a massive wall, a 20-foot wall with all of these different circles. Everyone has seen circles. Everyone has seen colors. Everyone has seen circles of different colors. But if you kind of do it in that way, it completely changes, it changes your perspective and it kind of forces you to see things in a different way.

With Trump and the toilet, everyone has seen the toilet. Everyone's seen a urinal. We all know what it looks like. But if I take it off the wall and I put it on a table and I put it in the middle of an art gallery, there's another artist I like quite a bit who passed away recently, Virgil Ablo. And he said that the most important part of art is not the art itself, but the environment around the artwork, right? Like, I don't know if you've ever been to the Louvre,

but if you, the Mona Lisa, everyone knows kind of what the Mona Lisa is and what it looks like. If you go to the room where the Mona Lisa is, it's, first of all, the Mona Lisa is a lot smaller than you think. But it's in this room. It's quite small. But in the room, there are massive, right across, the wall on the opposite wall of the mona lisa there is a 20 foot tall painting it's 20 foot by like 40 foot it's a massive massive painting um but it's out there it's in the open it's on the wall

you know it has some that the very large painting has has a gloss on it you know to protect the paint but the mona lisa it's set back so you can't get very close to it it's like shielded by you know bulletproof fireproof bomb-proof glass so it could creates a certain environment. So how you look at it is different from how you're going to look at something else. So you look at the balloon dog, everyone has seen a balloon dog. You know, clowns make it at birthday parties. And it's made of, you know, rubber.

It's made of a balloon. But what if I made it out of metal and I made it 30 feet tall and I put it in a building? Then what are you going to think about it? Well, now I can't look at it the way I look at a balloon dog at a kids party. I have to look at it completely differently. Completely changes my frame of reference. So that's kind of what I like about art, like certain types of art. It has to be big, bold, but it has to have that kind of just 40% change where it's recognizable,

but it's different enough that it forces you to see what you thought you knew differently. Thank you for that. It gives me a different perspective, man. And I appreciate, now I got some people to look into, man. That's super cool. You know, there's another aspect of art that I have encountered. I got to go and see the here in Hawaii. I think it's a traveling event.

They have like a starring night. They have like a Van Gogh Museum. But they shoot it onto the wall now. And in some ways, you get to walk and see these painting. It's pretty cool to go and get to see it. And I really like the way in which it seems that as we're moving forward into the multimedia space, art is transforming with us. Like in some ways, we're getting to be part of the artwork in a little bit. You know what it's like?

It's almost like a real life, choose your own adventure book. You get to walk through there. You know what I mean? You're like, I think I'm going to go this way. No, we're actually getting to be the characters in the novel now. And in some ways, that's what collab is in a way, right? Like, I think you're the perfect person to be leading this place, man. Because I can see that.

I can see the love of the artwork and I can see the way in which the user interface is a window in which I can collaborate with another artist. But maybe there's other ways. Is there other ways we can be moving forward in this world of art and collaboration? man so many ways anyway any way that you could work with another person i think you should take the opportunity you know whether it's you know being on another person show like this or yeah helping someone out you know with something that that they're working on i think everyone's collaborating to some degree i think you should find any way i think first off you know i think the first off thing i would say for a lot of people is that everyone is collaborating.

Yeah. You should look at kind of what you're doing in the world, what you're currently working on, whatever job that it is. And you should have a deep respect for the people that you impact every day and how you impact them because that's a form of collaboration. You know, whether you're, you know, Amazon delivery driver delivering packages, that's a form of collaboration. You're collaborating with, you know, a seller.

you know, 10 countries away and you're collaborating with the person that needs the package deliver to them. I think there's so many different ways to collaborate and people should find every opportunity as possible because what, at least from my perspective, what else is there? You know, I don't see my purpose on this planet to be here for myself and to make myself happy and to do things for myself. If I'm not helping someone else every single day do something, I don't really know what I don't really know how I spent the day. You know, so I think you should find as many opportunities to collaborate as possible.

And I think having conversations is an important one because so many people benefit from it. Yeah. And I do too. I think that we're moving into a world that's much more meaningful. and I love that. Like I really hope people, I think it's missing in a lot of people's life. I know it's missing in mine at times

and I'm constantly searching for it, but this idea of meaning. And it comes from getting to talk to people that you didn't even know are super awesome and they're all around us and they're mirrors of you and they bring out everything. And so, Charles, this exceeded my expectations today.

This is really, really cool, man. And I really appreciate the time and getting to learn and talk and make a new friend and see things differently. And you know what? Same. Yeah.

Is there anything else that you would like to cover before we start winding up? Everyone go to streamyard.com slash collab. Go sign up. Go find interesting people. Be on someone's show. Start a show yourself. Start putting yourself out there. One thing I tell everyone is that if you are a person on this earth and you have lived

even an hour, you have something to share. You have a story that should be told. You have something to say that can inspire someone that was in your shoes a day ago, a week ago, a month ago, a year ago. Tell your story. To anyone that will listen, you are of value no matter who you are. And people will love you. You are loved. So get out there and start collaborating with people.

Yeah. And I use, you know, what I really like about streaming. There's a lot of things I like about it. But I love the idea of streaming. And I think it harkens back to this idea of authenticity. I think it harkens back to this idea of artistry. And I think it's something that AI is going to help us be able to do in a way. And it helps people see that these are all tools around us.

And it combines with the idea of the present moment. You know, yesterday was the past. Tomorrow's the future. Today's a gift. That's why they call it the present. And you can be in the present when you're streaming. You have an opportunity to talk. to people and stream your ideas out there.

So I think that streaming for people that are getting into multimedia is the next, it's the next space race because you're in the now, you're in the present and you can communicate at the time. Everyone should go to Stream Yard and check everything out. It's a great product of it. Is there any little teasers you can give us with what might be coming out on Stream Yard soon? Oh, there's so much. There's so much. I don't know how much I'm allowed to say.

Okay, I know. It's kept on the wraps. But the product is getting better every single day. We have a lot of features coming out that's going to help make creating content, getting started a lot easier. You know, that's been a big hurdle. For a lot of people, there are many people that are, you know, easily motivated and they come up with loads of ideas, you know, for a lot of a struggle to come up with really good ideas. And even when we do come up with good ideas and actually create something, I think the post-production process, you know, editing videos. and getting the audio right and chopping it up and repurposing it and getting it onto other platforms

so that our message can grow and be seen by more people. I think that's a struggle that many people, that's something that a lot of people I've been struggling with. So we have a lot of features coming out to help with the post-production flow and collab as well. We have a lot of new, innovative ways that we're going to be changing the product to help make it easier. Help make it easier for you to find the right people. You know, everyone is super dynamic.

has so many different interests. That's something that we're learning every day and improving the product and improving how we recommend people to each other and making it easier for you to reach out to that person, to have a valuable conversation. You don't want to waste your time so to have really valuable conversations

as quickly as possible and to get on screen, to get on screen looking in another person's eyes and having that conversation as quickly as possible. So yeah, go sign up. Go sign up now. We're releasing stuff every single. single week. So you don't want to miss it.

Yeah, get out there. Ladies and gentlemen, if you're listening, if you're watching this, I use streaming out all the time. It's a great product. It's changed my life in some way. Streaming, becoming a podcaster, getting to meet fascinating from around the world has changed my life, my relationships, and the way I see the world. So I would encourage everyone get out there and start playing around and becoming the best

version of yourself. Well, Charles, hang on in one momentarily afterwards. I want to talk to you briefly afterwards. But ladies and gentlemen, so stoked you guys. here today. And like I said in the beginning of the podcast, you may not know it yet, but there's a small miracle waiting to happen to you today. It's all we got, ladies and gentlemen. Aloha. There. All right.