Podcasts about comicons

Welcome to a brand new look at Paper Lab Studios and what we do.

En el episodio de hoy de cómo intentar evitar un problema que nos ha afectado o nos afectara a todos a lo largo de nuestra vida laboral, que es el síndrome de burnout.⏩Notas de este episodio https://ppccast.com/podcast/como-evitar-el-burnout-en-el-sector-del-ppcWeb: ppccast.comPPCFest: ppcfest.comPPCCast+: academia.ppccast.comIcons made by Freepik from www.flaticon.com0:00 Intro0:09 Miscelánea4:49 Nuestra Semana13:38 Networking en eventos de la industria del PPC14:21 PPCCast+ 15:57 PPCFest21:04 Noticias de la Semana25:58 Recursos para aprender sobre estrategias de Google Ads29:55 Tema Principal30:03 El síndrome de burnout en el marketing digital36:09 La presión por obtener resultados constantemente39:26 Estar al día en el campo del marketing digital43:14 Meditación y atención plena para gestionar el estrés49:15 Evaluar la situación en una agencia de marketing51:39 Cómo evitar el burnout y mantener la productividad como freelancer52:08 La importancia de la desconexión digital y establecer límites55:26 Selección de clientes adecuados y aprender a decir no56:23 Establecer metas realistas y dividir proyectos grandes 01:08:45 Herramientas y recursos útiles para freelancers1:08:10 Recomendaciones1:11:24 Canción PPCCast

Explicamos nuestro proceso de Onboarding con nuevos clientes, que es lo que viene después de firmar a un cliente y antes de empezar la auditoría o setup. Enlace al episodio: https://ppccast.com/podcast/190-onboarding-de-clientesWeb: ppccast.comPPCFest: ppcfest.comPPCCast+: academia.ppccast.comIcons made by Freepik from www.flaticon.com

Con Alberto Esteves, tratamos de hacer un episodio donde te demostramos la que no hay que tener miedo a utilizar scripts en Google Ads y que no son tan difícil de utilizar como parecen.Web: ppccast.comPPCFest: ppcfest.comPPCCast+: academia.ppccast.comIcons made by Freepik from www.flaticon.com

Que los anuncios tienen muchísimo peso hoy en día no es ninguna sorpresa, por eso lo que hemos querido explicar hoy es lo que tiene que contener un buen anuncio, tanto en el apartado técnico, como en el apartado creativo. También os daremos ejemplos de anuncios.Link del episodio: https://ppccast.com/podcast/184-que-tiene-un-buen-anuncioWeb: ppccast.comPPCFest: ppcfest.comPPCCast+: academia.ppccast.comIcons made by Freepik from www.flaticon.com

Las cosas van muy deprisa y hace casi dos años no actualizábamos el listado de herramientas que usamos en nuestro día a día cómo media buyers. Aquí está la nueva lista.0:00:00 Intro0:00:10 Miscelánea0:01:57 Nuestra Semana0:08:37 PPCCast+0:12:42 Noticias de la Semana0:27:38 Tema Principal1:04:09 Recomendaciones1:07:20 Canción PPCCastWeb: ppccast.comPPCFest: ppcfest.comPPCCast+: academia.ppccast.comIcons made by Freepik from www.flaticon.com

Hoy os traemos un recopilatorio de libros que hemos leído, que nos han gustado y de los cuales hemos aprendido lecciones que ahora aplicamos en nuestro día a día0:00:00 Intro0:00:09 Miscelánea0:01:00 Nuestra Semana0:06:20 PPCCast+0:10:33 Noticias de la Semana0:19:01 Tema Principal1:00:27 Recomendaciones1:04:40 Canción PPCCastNotas del episodio: https://ppccast.com/podcast/175-libros-que-hemos-leido-y-que-mas-nos-han-impactadoWeb: ppccast.comPPCFest: ppcfest.comPPCCast+: academia.ppccast.comIcons made by Freepik from www.flaticon.com

Hemos entrado un año muy importante con el tema de las cookies y el consent mode, por lo que hemos traído a la persona que nos podía ayudar: Juan Carlos de Convertiam.Este episodio del podcast discutimos el Consent Mode de Google y cómo afecta a los media buyers. También hablamos sobre los CMP y el final de las cookies. Hablamos sobre las actualizaciones en las políticas de privacidad de Google y cómo afectan a herramientas como GA4 y Signals. Discutimos los desafíos y costos asociados con la implementación y el cumplimiento de estas políticas. Además, mencionamos la importancia de adaptarse a estos cambios y utilizar estrategias alternativas para obtener datos y mejorar la eficacia de las campañas publicitarias.Episodio: https://ppccast.com/podcast/173-consent-mode-y-otros-temas-de-cookies-con-juan-carlos-de-convertiamWeb: ppccast.comPPCFest: ppcfest.comPPCCast+: academia.ppccast.comIcons made by Freepik from www.flaticon.com

Episode 102: Star Trek Las Vegas: 57-Year Mission Convention Stories! Welcome to the SciFi Pubcast! Come for a drink but stay for the speculation. Last week, Keri and Joel attended Star Trek Las Vegas, the big unofficial Star Trek convention. And they have stories to tell. You better grab some Klingon blood wine or Andorian ale for this one. It was an amazing time. This is the SciFi Pubcast. On this episode: Keri, Derek and Joel.  Episode recorded and released on August 12, 2023, as a podcast and on YouTube.   Show website: www.scifipubcast.space. Find us on Twitter at @ScifiPubcast or send us an email at management@scifipubcast.space. Follow our staff's personal Twitter/X accounts at: Keri Simpson Derek Beebe Randal Graham Joel Welch Here's the link to Derek Beebe's website.  Here's the link to Randal Graham's website, and links to his novels, Beforelife, Afterlife Crisis, and the third book of the trilogy, Nether Regions, published by ECW Press.  Music provided courtesy of Logan Rathbone. The SciFi Pubcast logo is by Jea Rhee. Widescreen photograph (iss065e001065) used for the header on our social meda used courtesy of NASA and the ISS. Listen Responsibly. Copyright 2023 Joel Welch. All rights reserved.

Existen momentos en la vida del media buyer en los que debes dejar de ofrecer tus servicios a algunos clientes. Hoy os contamos las mejores formas de hacerlo y comunicarlo. Link del episodio: https://ppccast.com/podcast/155-como-decimos-adios-a-clientesÚnete a nuestro Telegram: https://t.me/joinchat/AqQnCBJgzLXsVxmvwqlA5Q Propón tu idea para nuevos episodios: https://ppccast.com/proponer-idea/ Envíanos tus preguntas a: https://ppccast.com/preguntas/ Web: ppccast.comIcons made by Freepik from www.flaticon.com

Hoy tenemos a María Márquez, con la que hablaremos de copywriting especializado en Mail Marketing, donde nos dará consejos tanto de cómo empezar a consejos de cómo podemos hacer para mejorar. Por último también hablaremos de anuncios de vídeo. Link del episodio: https://ppccast.com/podcast/154-mail-marketing-y-copywriting-con-maria-marquezÚnete a nuestro Telegram: https://t.me/joinchat/AqQnCBJgzLXsVxmvwqlA5Q Propón tu idea para nuevos episodios: https://ppccast.com/proponer-idea/ Envíanos tus preguntas a: https://ppccast.com/preguntas/ Web: ppccast.comIcons made by Freepik from www.flaticon.com

Qué mejor momento que este, ahora que "baja el ritmo de trabajo", para ponernos al día del PPC. Aquí os dejamos las diferentes fuentes que consultamos.00:00:00 Intro00:00:13 Miscelánea 00:01:50 Nuestra Semana00:10:15 PPCFest00:14:33 PPCCast+00:17:10 Noticias de la Semana00:26:57 Tema Principal01:03:11 RecomendacionesLink del episodio: https://ppccast.com/podcast/153-como-nos-mantenemos-al-dia-del-ppc-edicion-2023Entradas PPCFest: https://ppcfest.com/Únete a nuestro Telegram: https://t.me/joinchat/AqQnCBJgzLXsVxmvwqlA5Q Propón tu idea para nuevos episodios: https://ppccast.com/proponer-idea/ Envíanos tus preguntas a: https://ppccast.com/preguntas/ Web: ppccast.comIcons made by Freepik from www.flaticon.com

Los colegios ya han acabado el curso, por lo que vamos a hacer un resumen de lo más importante de este curso en el PPC.Link del episodio: https://ppccast.com/podcast/152-lo-que-mas-no-ha-cambiado-en-este-cursoVotación sexto ponente: https://forms.gle/GUF7Cm7bXtfzq4XY6Entradas PPCFest: https://ppcfest.com/Únete a nuestro Telegram: https://t.me/joinchat/AqQnCBJgzLXsVxmvwqlA5Q Propón tu idea para nuevos episodios: https://ppccast.com/proponer-idea/ Envíanos tus preguntas a: https://ppccast.com/preguntas/ Web: ppccast.comIcons made by Freepik from www.flaticon.com

Si hay alguien que nos puede hablar de landing pages, es Bego Romero y hoy la hemos traído para que nos hable de los puntos clave de estas, qué errores no debemos hacer y nos explicará algunos trucos que tiene ella para mejorar las tasas de conversiones. Link del episodio: https://ppccast.com/podcast/151-landing-pages-con-bego-romeroÚnete a nuestro Telegram: https://t.me/joinchat/AqQnCBJgzLXsVxmvwqlA5Q Propón tu idea para nuevos episodios: https://ppccast.com/proponer-idea/ Envíanos tus preguntas a: https://ppccast.com/preguntas/ Web: ppccast.comIcons made by Freepik from www.flaticon.com

Hoy realizamos un brainstorming de cómo debería ser la estrategia de paid del PPCFestLink del episodio: https://ppccast.com/podcast/149-creacion-estrategia-ppc-para-ppcfestPPCFest: ppcfest.comPPCCast+: academia.ppccast.comÚnete a nuestro Telegram: https://t.me/joinchat/AqQnCBJgzLXsVxmvwqlA5Q Propón tu idea para nuevos episodios: https://ppccast.com/proponer-idea/ Envíanos tus preguntas a: https://ppccast.com/preguntas/ Web: ppccast.comIcons made by Freepik from www.flaticon.com

Raquel Sempere nos explica cómo es trabajar in-house en una multinacional, como llevan el PPC y en que se fijan a la hora de trabajar.Link del episodio: https://ppccast.com/podcast/148-in-house-en-grandes-empresas-con-raquel-sempereEntradas PPCFest: ppcfest.comPPCCast+: academia.ppccast.comÚnete a nuestro Telegram: https://t.me/joinchat/AqQnCBJgzLXsVxmvwqlA5Q Propón tu idea para nuevos episodios: https://ppccast.com/proponer-idea/ Envíanos tus preguntas a: https://ppccast.com/preguntas/ Web: ppccast.comIcons made by Freepik from www.flaticon.com

Hoy os presentamos la segunda edición del PPCFest, el evento para la gente amante del PPC.Link del episodio: https://ppccast.com/podcast/147-ppcfest-2023Únete a nuestro Telegram: https://t.me/joinchat/AqQnCBJgzLXsVxmvwqlA5Q Propón tu idea para nuevos episodios: https://ppccast.com/proponer-idea/ Envíanos tus preguntas a: https://ppccast.com/preguntas/ Web: ppccast.comPPCcast+: academia.ppccast.comIcons made by Freepik from www.flaticon.com

Link del episodio: https://ppccast.com/podcast/146-google-marketing-live-2023-global-keynoteÚnete a nuestro Telegram: https://t.me/joinchat/AqQnCBJgzLXsVxmvwqlA5Q Propón tu idea para nuevos episodios: https://ppccast.com/proponer-idea/ Envíanos tus preguntas a: https://ppccast.com/preguntas/ Web: ppccast.comPPCCast+: academia.ppccast.comIcons made by Freepik from www.flaticon.com

Bistra Ivanova nos ha venido a hablar de los pros y contra de ser freelance y de crear una agencia, ya que ella ha vivido las dos caras. Link del episodio: https://ppccast.com/podcast/145-entrevista-a-bistra-ivanova-de-freelance-a-agenciaÚnete a nuestro Telegram: https://t.me/joinchat/AqQnCBJgzLXsVxmvwqlA5Q Propón tu idea para nuevos episodios: https://ppccast.com/proponer-idea/ Envíanos tus preguntas a: https://ppccast.com/preguntas/ Web: ppccast.comIcons made by Freepik from www.flaticon.com

Hoy toca hablar de un apartado muy importante en las campañas, que es el psicológico. ¿Como nos afecta las malas rachas en las cuentas, como podemos hacer para poder superar estos baches?Link del episodio: https://ppccast.com/podcast/144-como-superamos-malas-rachasPPCast+: https://academia.ppccast.comÚnete a nuestro Telegram: https://t.me/joinchat/AqQnCBJgzLXsVxmvwqlA5Q Propón tu idea para nuevos episodios: https://ppccast.com/proponer-idea/ Envíanos tus preguntas a: https://ppccast.com/preguntas/ Web: ppccast.comIcons made by Freepik from www.flaticon.com

Hay varios perfilesque pueden servir de ayuda a un Media Buyer. Hoy contamos con Irene Toledano para ver el de Project Manager y Asistente virtual. Link del episodio: https://ppccast.com/podcast/ayudando-a-media-buyers-con-irene-toledanoÚnete a nuestro Telegram: https://t.me/joinchat/AqQnCBJgzLXsVxmvwqlA5Q Propón tu idea para nuevos episodios: https://ppccast.com/proponer-idea/ Envíanos tus preguntas a: https://ppccast.com/preguntas/ Web: ppccast.comIcons made by Freepik from www.flaticon.com

Hay muchas estrategias de puja en Google Ads, ¿sabes cuál es la correcta a usar? Intentamos explicarlo en este episodio. Link del episodio: https://ppccast.com/podcast/142-estrategias-de-puja-en-google-adsÚnete a nuestro Telegram: https://t.me/joinchat/AqQnCBJgzLXsVxmvwqlA5Q Propón tu idea para nuevos episodios: https://ppccast.com/proponer-idea/ Envíanos tus preguntas a: https://ppccast.com/preguntas/ Web: ppccast.comIcons made by Freepik from www.flaticon.com

Las extensiones de anuncios, ahora renombrados recursos, en google ads, muchas veces quedan infravaloradas. Esta semana os explicamos los tipos que hay y para que las podrías usar. Link del episodio: https://ppccast.com/podcast/141-extensiones-de-anuncios-en-google-adsÚnete a nuestro Telegram: https://t.me/joinchat/AqQnCBJgzLXsVxmvwqlA5Q Propón tu idea para nuevos episodios: https://ppccast.com/proponer-idea/ Envíanos tus preguntas a: https://ppccast.com/preguntas/ Web: ppccast.comPPCcast+: academia.ppccast.comIcons made by Freepik from www.flaticon.com

Los embudos de venta son una parte esencial en muchas de nuestras campañas. Hoy ha venido Rubén Máñez a explicarnos cómo podemos mejorar esta parte de nuestras campañas. Link del episodio: https://ppccast.com/podcast/140-embudos-de-venta-con-ruben-manezÚnete a nuestro Telegram: https://t.me/joinchat/AqQnCBJgzLXsVxmvwqlA5Q Propón tu idea para nuevos episodios: https://ppccast.com/proponer-idea/ Envíanos tus preguntas a: https://ppccast.com/preguntas/ PPCCast+: academia.ppccast.comWeb: ppccast.comIcons made by Freepik from www.flaticon.com

Todos hemos tenido diferente tipos de clientes, todos con sus pros y sus contras. Hoy intentamos dar la vuelta a contras que podamos tener con clientes.Link del episodio: https://ppccast.com/podcast/139-tipo-de-clientesÚnete a nuestro Telegram: https://t.me/joinchat/AqQnCBJgzLXsVxmvwqlA5Q Propón tu idea para nuevos episodios: https://ppccast.com/proponer-idea/ Envíanos tus preguntas a: https://ppccast.com/preguntas/ PPCCast+: academia.ppccast.comWeb: ppccast.comIcons made by Freepik from www.flaticon.com

Welcome to the Official Lilac City Comicon Podcast produced by Spokast! On Issue #3, Brennon & Nathan invite special guest Burr Martin to be on the pod. Best known for being the #selfiedad, Burr shares his love and history of attending Comicons & talks about how he became the MC of the Lilac City Comicon—all that and more on this Official Lilac City Comicon Podcast episode.  Follow Burr Martin on Instagram at @therealburrmartin https://www.instagram.com/therealburrmartin/ To learn more about Lilac City Comicon, visit ⁠www.lilaccitycon.com⁠ Get your tickets to the 2023 Lilac City Comicon ⁠by clicking right here.⁠ Produced locally in Spokane, Washington, by ⁠@spokast.co

GA4, queramos o no, ya está aquí con nosotros y si todavía no nos hemos puesto con ella, vamos un poco tarde. Kiko Luque, nos ayuda a entender todo lo importante que debemos saber.Link del episodio: https://ppccast.com/podcast/138-ga4-con-kiko-luqueÚnete a nuestro Telegram: https://t.me/joinchat/AqQnCBJgzLXsVxmvwqlA5Q Propón tu idea para nuevos episodios: https://ppccast.com/proponer-idea/ Envíanos tus preguntas a: https://ppccast.com/preguntas/ PPCCast+: academia.ppccast.comWeb: ppccast.comIcons made by Freepik from www.flaticon.com

Rebels! Bear Sailor Moon and I are back for this week's Cutting Room Floor; listen as we dig deep into Bear's history with Comicons, Sailormoon, and letting your Star Seed shine, always!A lot of hours go into a recording session. Sometimes, things don't make it into the main episode but are too good to leave out so welcome to Rebel without a Closet: The Cutting Room Floor!Support the showSubscribe to hear our entire library now!Follow the Rebels: Stefan: @sjmaroni Bear SailorMoon: @bearsailormooon Carlotta Carlisle: @carlottacarlisle Chad: @cski01 / @dressedasaChad (IG/Tiktok) Julia: @julialynched PJ: @xndra_design Stu: @janikon_ Facebook: /groups/rwacpod Instagram @RWACpodFind us at linktr.ee/RWAC

NEWS! The Club talks about their time at Planet Comicon Kansas City. The shining highs and the devastating lows. Much like all Comicons; it was a roller coaster of emotions. We hit all the breaking news points of the week and review a HEFTY amount of new comic books. This one is a real thicc episode, folks, and we couldn't be happier. Also, Vargas has a huge announcement in the episode.  OTHER TOPICS! Patreon. Haunted Bed. Slice of Life. The Neighbors. Torrent. Dr Strange. Dead Romans. Spider-Man. Comicon. Thirty dollar pretzel. Kevin Eastman. Last Ronin. TMNT. Maria Wolf. Sketches. Comic books. Jason Aaron. Valiant comics.  For more First Issue Club goodness: Follow us on Twitter: twitter.com/firstissueclub Join us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/FirstIssueClub  firstissueclub.com  

Os explicamos cómo trabajamos cuando tenemos que lanzar una nueva cuenta de Facebook y Google Ads, y no tenemos histórico. También lanzamos la encuesta salarial de 2023 Link del episodio: https://ppccast.com/podcast/137-lanzamiento-de-cuentas-sin-historicoEncuesta Salarial: https://forms.gle/QgYEUSxr7Zm1byeb7PPCCast+: academia.ppccast.comWeb: ppccast.comIcons made by Freepik from www.flaticon.com

En este episodio, hablamos sobre cómo hacer propuestas comerciales efectivas y cómo diferenciarse de la competencia. Aprende a investigar a tu cliente potencial y demostrar cómo tu solución puede ayudarles a alcanzar sus objetivos.Link del episodio: https://ppccast.com/podcast/136-como-hacer-las-propuestas-comerciales-y-como-diferenciarse-de-la-competenciaÚnete a nuestro Telegram: https://t.me/joinchat/AqQnCBJgzLXsVxmvwqlA5Q Propón tu idea para nuevos episodios: https://ppccast.com/proponer-idea/ Envíanos tus preguntas a: https://ppccast.com/preguntas/ Web: ppccast.comPPCCast+: academia.ppccast.comIcons made by Freepik from www.flaticon.com

Hemos pedido a 4 expertos en la materia que nos digan cómo está Facebook ahora mismo y que podemos hacer para trabajar mejor tal como está la plataforma hoy en día. Link del episodio: https://ppccast.com/podcast/135-mesa-redonda-estado-de-facebook-adsÚnete a nuestro Telegram: https://t.me/joinchat/AqQnCBJgzLXsVxmvwqlA5Q Propón tu idea para nuevos episodios: https://ppccast.com/proponer-idea/ Envíanos tus preguntas a: https://ppccast.com/preguntas/ Web: ppccast.comIcons made by Freepik from www.flaticon.com

En este capítulo hablaremos de cómo usar Chat Gpt con nuestras plataforma digitales favoritas Link del episodio: https://ppccast.com/podcast/134-chatgpt-para-publicidad-digitalÚnete a nuestro Telegram: https://t.me/joinchat/AqQnCBJgzLXsVxmvwqlA5Q Propón tu idea para nuevos episodios: https://ppccast.com/proponer-idea/ Envíanos tus preguntas a: https://ppccast.com/preguntas/ ppccast+: academia.ppccast.comWeb: ppccast.comIcons made by Freepik from www.flaticon.com

En este capítulo hablaremos de las campañas de discovery, de nuestra experiencia y de como las vemos. Link del episodio: https://ppccast.com/podcast/133-campanas-discoveryÚnete a nuestro Telegram: https://t.me/joinchat/AqQnCBJgzLXsVxmvwqlA5Q Propón tu idea para nuevos episodios: https://ppccast.com/proponer-idea/ Envíanos tus preguntas a: https://ppccast.com/preguntas/ ppccast+: academia.ppccast.comWeb: ppccast.comIcons made by Freepik from www.flaticon.com

En el capítulo de hoy tenemos con nosotros a Álvaro Fontela, de Raiola Networks. Hablaremos de qué factores pueden afectar a la publicidad a nivel web. Caídas de la web, Hackeos, plugins inseguros... Todo esto y más en el segundo capítulo especial.Link del episodio: https://ppccast.com/podcast/especial-2-importancia-del-hosting-para-tu-web-con-alvaro-fontela-de-raiola-networksÚnete a nuestro Telegram: https://t.me/joinchat/AqQnCBJgzLXsVxmvwqlA5QPropón tu idea para nuevos episodios: https://ppccast.com/proponer-idea/Envíanos tus preguntas a: https://ppccast.com/preguntas/Web: ppccast.comPPCcast+: academia.ppccast.comIcons made by Freepik from www.flaticon.com

Hoy nos visita la referencia del mundo de los scripts en el PPC, Nils Rooijmans. Hablaremos de scripts recomendados, de cómo empezar a usarlos, cómo les ayuda a escalar su agencia. Link del episodio: https://ppccast.com/podcast/132-scripts-con-nils-rooijmansÚnete a nuestro Telegram: https://t.me/joinchat/AqQnCBJgzLXsVxmvwqlA5Q Propón tu idea para nuevos episodios: https://ppccast.com/proponer-idea/ Envíanos tus preguntas a: https://ppccast.com/preguntas/ Web: ppccast.comPPCcast+: academia.ppccast.comIcons made by Freepik from www.flaticon.com

Las etiquetas de google ads pueden tener muchos usos, y en este episodio los repasamos. Link del episodio: https://ppccast.com/podcast/131-uso-de-etiquetas-en-google-adsÚnete a nuestro Telegram: https://t.me/joinchat/AqQnCBJgzLXsVxmvwqlA5Q Propón tu idea para nuevos episodios: https://ppccast.com/proponer-idea/ Envíanos tus preguntas a: https://ppccast.com/preguntas/ Web: ppccast.comPPCCast+: academia.ppccast.comIcons made by Freepik from www.flaticon.com

Si quieres saber cómo hacemos cuando nos viene un nuevo cliente que quiera pasar su negocio al mundo online, este es el capítulo. Link del episodio: https://ppccast.com/podcast/130-clientes-sin-presencia-onlineÚnete a nuestro Telegram: https://t.me/joinchat/AqQnCBJgzLXsVxmvwqlA5Q Propón tu idea para nuevos episodios: https://ppccast.com/proponer-idea/ PPCast+: academia.ppccast.com Web: ppccast.comIcons made by Freepik from www.flaticon.com

Un episodio que da para mucho, ya que los RSA (Responsive serach ads) tienen mucha más miga de la que te puedes imaginar ¿La métrica de eficiencia de anuncio afecta?¿Es mejor anclar que no anclar los headlines? Todo esto lo vemos en el episodio de hoyLink del episodio: https://ppccast.com/podcast/128-como-trabajamos-los-rsaÚnete a nuestro Telegram: https://t.me/joinchat/AqQnCBJgzLXsVxmvwqlA5Q Propón tu idea para nuevos episodios: https://ppccast.com/proponer-idea/ Envíanos tus preguntas a: https://ppccast.com/preguntas/ Web: ppccast.comIcons made by Freepik from www.flaticon.com

Hoy viene Rodrigo de Clever ads, para hablar de la herramienta que tienen y para hablar como este tipo de herramientas nos ayudan a poder quitarnos de encima esas cosas en las que no aportamos valor, por el simple hecho de hacerlas, sino que lo aportamos por lo que hacemos con el resultado, por ejemplo, los informes. Link del episodio: https://ppccast.com/podcast/127-automatizacion-del-ppc-con-rodrigo-de-clever-adsÚnete a nuestro Telegram: https://t.me/joinchat/AqQnCBJgzLXsVxmvwqlA5Q Propón tu idea para nuevos episodios: https://ppccast.com/proponer-idea/ Envíanos tus preguntas a: https://ppccast.com/preguntas/ Web: ppccast.comIcons made by Freepik from www.flaticon.com

Para cerrar este año, hemos pedido a la comunidad de PPCCast y también a tres invitados internacionales, que nos expliquen que destacan del 2022 y que pasará en el 2023 en el mundo del PPC. Link del episodio: https://ppccast.com/podcast/126-repasamos-2022-y-pensamos-en-2023-con-la-comunidadÚnete a nuestro Telegram: https://t.me/joinchat/AqQnCBJgzLXsVxmvwqlA5Q Propón tu idea para nuevos episodios: https://ppccast.com/proponer-idea/ Envíanos tus preguntas a: https://ppccast.com/preguntas/ Web: ppccast.comRepetición del evento: ppcfest.comIcons made by Freepik from www.flaticon.com

A note from Talking Taiwan host Felicia Lin:   In this episode of Talking Taiwan, we share the second half of my interview with illustrator and cartoonist Guy Gilchrist, picking up after part one in episode 207. In the second half of my interview with Guy, he talked about how Dr. Seuss has been an influence in his life. Guy also talked about how he had to deal with chronic pain and back surgery.   These days Guy can be seen on social media and at Comicons around the country doing what he loves most drawing cartoon character live for his fans. Guy is best known as the cartoonist of Jim Henson and The Muppets. He's also had his hand in notable cartoons such as The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Looney Tunes, Tom & Jerry, Tiny Toons, Pink Panther, and Disney, among others. He was declared a national treasure by former First Lady, Nancy Reagan and his artwork has been enshrined in the Smithsonian.   Since one thing we can't do on this podcast is to show the magic of Guy's cartooning, we decided to host a LIVE online event where you can meet Guy this Saturday, November 5th at 6:30pm EST.   At the event you'll have a chance to see him drawing live. Guy will also show you how to draw cartoon characters yourself. The best part of all this is that Guy has generously offered to donate all of the drawings he does that night and you can enter to win them by simply making a donation of $25 or more to Talking Taiwan's GoFundMe page: http://gofundme.com/building-talking-taiwans-legacy   If you'd like to attend the event just Register at: https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZ0qcuippj0oGNFuyKrRnUTpoPMCFSBcWEqP#/registration   This episode of Talking Taiwan has been sponsored by NATWA, the North America Taiwanese Women's Association.   NATWA was founded in 1988, and its mission is:   to evoke a sense of self-esteem and enhance women's dignity, to oppose gender discrimination and promote gender equality, to fully develop women's potential and encourage their participation in public affairs, to contribute to the advancement of human rights and democratic development in Taiwan, to reach out and work with women's organizations worldwide to promote peace for all.   To learn more about NATWA visit their website: www.natwa.com   Here's a little preview of what we talked about in this podcast episode:   How hearing Dr. Seuss speak when Guy was in grade school left a lasting impression on him How Guy went from being a bad student to realizing that he could actually do something with his talents How Guy wrote to Dr. Seuss when he was struggling to get a children's book published Guy's encouragement not to give up on your dreams especially if you are in the arts How Guy's children's book about the character Mudpie had been rejected by a dozen publishers The story of how Dr. Seuss' first book I Saw It On Mulberry Street got published Guy's Mudpie character and the book series he's created about Mudpie How Guy has dealt with arm and back issues, and chronic pain How Guy first had back surgery at the age of 29 and has gotten cortisone shots to deal with pain for years How Guy started having trouble walking about six years ago Guy's recovery from the back surgery he had about six years ago after his muscles atrophied from not being active for a year How Guy now deals with pain Guy's advice to love ourselves and take care of ourselves first Guy's music and songwriting   Related Links: To view all related links for this article, click link below: https://talkingtaiwan.com/guy-gilchrist-on-dealing-with-setbacks-and-how-dr-seuss-influenced-his-life-ep-211/

Had the immense pleasure of sitting down with the Founder of Faith & Fandom. Faith & Fandom is a book series of devotional essays on Faith & Geek Culture. Bible studies on Video Games, Comic Books, Anime, Manga, Superheroes, TV, Movies, & Pop Culture at large. There is also the Faith & Fandom podcast and comicon appearances. ​Now with 7 volumes and children's edition out, the series covers a vast array of geek/nerdy/pop culture areas. Each essay strives to be inspirational and true to scripture and at the same time capture the essence of the character the story is about. The books are in no sequential order and can be jumped into at any point depending on topic interest. The books are available in Paperback and Kindle formats, and are able to be purchased at Comicons, on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books-A-Million, Wal-Mart Online, some local comic book shops, and more. There is also the Faith & Fandom Podcast Channel, which features the F&F podcast, The Pull List from Love Thy Nerd, Faith & Fandom 180 ( short, 3 minute, weekly devotionals), Artist's Alley Aftermath, Audio Chapters, & More. If you enjoyed this episode and want to learn more, please check out: https://www.faithandfandom.org/ If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe to the podcast and consider following me here for all sorts of D&D content: https://linktr.ee/thebeardednerd Keep Gaming! --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/thebeardednerd/support

In this episode, We have news from San Diego Comicon that sets up the MCU for years, News of an unusual crossover of Trek, A little DC, A Little Marvel and a whole lot of remembernces including Pat Carroll, Mary Alice, Jered Barclay, David Warner, Benard Cribbins, Tony Dow and Nichelle Nichols. All that and more on this edition of Multiverse Tonight!Support the show

In this episode of The Long Run Show, we chat with Matt Gaser, Chief Executive Officer at Fabricated Madness about the future of NFTs. "I think the creative side of NFTs is just a small portion of the kind of utilities that NFTs will bring" "Your medical records will be an NFT, your mortgage is going to be an NFT because it's totally encrypted." "I think NFTs are going to be an integral part in the sale of goods, the transfer of  funds" Matt's impressive resume includes well-known projects such as CG animated TV series Star Wars: The Clone Wars. Matt recently left his career of 20 years to start his own business in the NFT world working on many projects, one of which is The Chronicles of Dr.Zammys where a fantasy doctor in a whimsical universe called Gallagan, fights a virus coming from another dimension.Dr.Zammys is also planned to be an animated TV series.Guest:Matt Gaser LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mattgaser/Project Website: https://www.drzammsy.com/FAQ: https://www.drzammsy.com/faq/Links to purchasing our NFTs: https://www.drzammsy.com/get-nfts/Personal Artist site: https://www.mattgaser.com/Wax Blockchain: https://twitter.com/WAX_ioFAQs: https://www.drzammsy.com/faq/https://wax.atomichub.io/Hosted By:Austin WillsonMichael O'ConnorTranscript:So welcome back to another episode of The Long Run Show. This is Austin Willson, along with my cohost, Michael O'Connor.Matt: Good to be here.Q: We actually have our first guest today. We're gonna be talking about NFTs over the long run and our guest is actually deep in the space right now, creating NFTs is he's got quite the resume to back it up too. He's not just a guy in Microsoft paint, making pictures. He's got quite the artistic portfolio.  I'd like to introduce Matt Gaser. He is a part of the project of The Chronicles of Dr.Zammsy.So Matt, welcome to The Long Run Show.Matt:Hey guys. Great to be here. Thank you. Appreciate it.Q:Our first guest on this is wild, right?Matt:Hey there's always a first, I'm happy to be be here and talk everything about NFTs, the future of NFTs and yeah, it's an exciting time.Totally amazing time for this kind of thing.Q:Yeah. It's wild. It's bubbled to the surface over what really the last two years here. So you're in a very exciting space right now. What's it? What's it like finding your way Matt: Very adventurous. I quit my job, doing what I did for 20 years to jump full steam into this. My partner convinced me about this time last year, Ralph. He helped found fabricated madness with me. And last April, we launched our first real NFT project that I incorporated trading cards as NFTs. And we sold. In April, our first set within an hour made 200,000 and we were like, oh, okay. This is real what's. Wow. What? But but it was a fascinating year last year. We learned a lot about the space. We learned a lot about what collectors are looking for. And it's changed drastically since that launch in April. And it's just insanely challenging. And the growth is exponential, but it doesn't come without its challenges. And yeah first time business owner out of this  I've got a staff now it's, we're partnered with a bunch of people and venture capital is involved. It's just a crazy time. And  we've got multiple projects in the works right now.Q:Wow. That's fantastic. Yeah. So it's like you said, 2021 we're in 2022 now. So 2021, I know that flew by quick, but it was a wild year for NFTs. And you said your first sale was, it was 200,000 for how many NFTs were included in that dropMatt: 5 different unique trading cards, but there was sketch cards, animation cards. Variants like epic, common, uncommon, legendary, and mythic all those kinds of things. And the collectors really grabbed on that, on the Wax Blockchain, by the way, we were on the wax blockchain. Okay. I think it's @WAXP if you're looking for investing into that crypto, but  yeah it's a specific. Blockchain, that's really geared towards gaming and FTS and no gas fees.And it's carbon footprints pretty low in fact almost non-existent.  It's but beyond all that, it's just like a fascinating place to sell NFTs and create games that are relating to the play to earn model. Yeah. So it sounds like there was a bit of a concept behind it, as far as like playing cards, Q:Pokemon Mike, I think you might've had experience with Pokemon growing up.I have always been a I've been a trading card guy, my whole life. I love the Pokemon cards and then did a little, a Hearthstone in my teenage years.Matt: I'm an artist from that I've actually painted illustrations for Hearthstone. Imagine.  It's been a, it's been a really weird twist to be on the production side instead of just being a hired artist for those kinds of things and hiring other artists to do art as well. I just never thought that would ever happen. I thought I'd just be painting stuff for people and their movies and things like that forever. But yeah, it's been a really cool experience actually hiring other artists and getting them work colleagues of mine that I've known for 20 years and some new guys as well.  And employing them. It's just such a weird concept, but yeah, that's, what's going on.Q: it seems like really from the story that you've already had from the founding of fabricated madness and the trading card collection, everything, that's just, I love that you immediately jumped and you're like low carbon. No gas fees, everything. It really feels like you guys are already, you've already taken the long run approach to you want this to be a trading card game that is around for years. It's not just a pump and dump NFT thing. It's not just a short-term thing. How did all that come about? What was the process for you of creating that, I guess a plan Matt: it came out of survival. The moment we launched our packs in April and sold out the first thing, all the collectors said was like, where are you going to be able to, what am I going to be able to stake your name? Where's your game, where's your white paper. Where's your game design doc. And we're like we don't have any of that. I thought we could just sell stuff and you'd collect it. And so we had to radically change our business model and it totally, re-invest almost everything we made back into production for two different games. So we're making a 3d adventure game. We're going to be releasing videos of that production here at https://www.drzammsy.com/And then we partnered with some good long-term friends longtime friends of mine that have a gaming studio called robot Cmonster games. And we asked them to take our trading card line and convert that into Flash Royal style video game. And so you're going to be able to collect our NFTs. I won't get into the whole details unless you want me to about the game, but it's just, you essentially play your cards in on this cool table. And they convert to actual 3d characters and they battle each other. And yeah.  The idea for the game came from Ralph and I but the actual implementation of the whole production of the game is through our partnership with robot Cmonster games. But we have an entire team of 3d modelers, character artists animators that are helping us as well. So it's a really cool collaborate.But the 3d adventure game. We hired a tech guy right out of school, out of Scotland.  Our 3d team is working on Dr. Zammsy laboratory and you get to shrink down to the micro realm.Dr. Zammsy is basically a fantasy doctor in a whimsical universe called Gallagan, and he's fighting a virus coming from another dimension. So he goes down into the microscopic level and fights these weird internet soldiers that are attacking his world, spreading this virus. So it's really timely the concept because it has to do with COVID in a way, but it's told in a fantasy star wars, Indiana Jones kind of setting Harry Potter kind of thing.On top of all of that, we partnered also real quick with a friend of our ours called his name is Matt Lyon. He's a creative director in the Hollywood world. And we're, we've actually structured a 10 episode treatment and a pilot episode, a script for this to actually be an animated series.Q: Wow. So yeah, very long run approach. You've got a lot of a lot of moving parts and it, I appreciate, especially in the NFT space, I appreciate something. That's a project unto its own and has things that, that can branch off of it rather than just. A collectible item. That seems to be where it seems to be, where everything's moving. There was obviously the big craze at the beginning of 2021. Everybody was like, oh, look at these collectibles. Just sell it for millions of dollars. Yeah. And I'm sure there's a space for that. But. I took some, I didn't buy an NFT until last fall. And it took some very heavy convincing by my co-host Michael to actually buy NFT Matt: It comes down to utility. That's a big word in the NFT space now. And know a lot of people don't just want to collect art. They want it to work for them. And have some kind of value. So  real quick, you can actually stake our NFTs on the site called whenstaking.com. And by staking our NFTs onto that system, you can actually earn void and you can go to our FAQ on our website to learn more about that. But but it's so bizarre how you can actually. Purchase an NFT and then make money by just putting it somewhere. But the benefit of that is a utility, like I said, and that's why we're making two games and wanna wrap NFTs around our animated series. Our concept is that once each episode airs you'd be able to collect limited NFTs from the show after each episode. And then those would also be playable within our two games. So it's this like circular. Ecosystem that's involving our project in, in, on different platforms andQ: something that just jumped out when you were talking about staking, these NFTs specifically with trading cards is a mind boggling proposition. Cause if you're talking like Pokemon cards or anything, like those have gone up so much in value, and if you're in house able to provide the means. Like renting those cards out to other players or selling them in your own ecosystem. That's huge. That's insane. Matt: That's yeah. All ownership is a big deal. If you think about it, like Fortnite, you put in hundreds of dollars as a player and you don't actually own those skins or guns that you're buying in this ecosystem in this space for at least for wax regarding NFTs and gaming. And you can either sell that on the secondary market, if you've grinded and beefed up that item or you can keep it for yourself or whatever, but you actually, there's true ownership in that. And a lot of games they're really, they can be really popular. You can shell out hundreds of dollars being up your character's assets, and then maybe the game goes away or you just. Have any interest in that game anymore? The idea about the metaverse is really interesting too. The long run is that I'm sure there's going to be  partnerships with other projects where  a gun or a car from one project can be shift shifted over to a different game because you own it. And then you're still playing with the same assets in a totally different game. I don't know how cool that would be, but that's the idea is true ownership.Q:Yeah. Yeah. And like you said, the circular nature of your ecosystem seems to be a that right there is interesting because you can not only do the players and the participants and the NFT owners, not only are they able to drive some of the value because they're playing it and it's becoming more popular, they're spreading it, but you also can drive value through creating more common. Based on that same IP to use an old kind of term there. So that's really interesting. What was the impetus to that you said at the beginning, some of this was survival to create the game and all that aspect, but creating this kind of circular. I almost value stream. What was the impetus there? Matt:  For the animated series, that's actually was my original vision 20 years ago for this project. So Dr. Zammsy came out of me, graduating from college at art school and just, I had this cool idea of this world and this universe and this character, it didn't really go anywhere. I just had lots of ideas. Until this NFT thing hit. And Ralph was like, man, we gotta make an animated series. And then our fans were saying make the game first. And  over the course of the year, we made a lot of great connections and really. And Matt lion, when he came on board was just like, look, I got the animated series thing give me all your notes, give me all your bios to the characters. Give me all the art. And we literally just finished the pitch for that  last weekend.  It's looking absolutely freaking beautiful. And we're really hopeful with all our contacts that we can get into a streaming service and get this into production. As far as the game.  We, as a Fabricated Madness is we started the 3d adventure game first, but then it seemed easier to actually accomplish the card game first. That's kinda why we ended up doing two games at the same time because we shifted gears. We're still working on both, but the card game is our highest priority right now, because that actually incorporates  our product that we sell a weekly. We do weekly drops cards, utility cards that are based on the game as well for a limited time each week. And then  it's just Positioned to offer a game that's relating to a direct product to our customers. Yeah. But yeah. Yeah.Q: What a story too. Cause I love, especially in the long run we're talking about long run stuff. You it's a perfect example because you left your job. You said this is your first time starting a business. You obviously believe in this sector in the long run. What are your thoughts on NFTs in the long run? Like the whole thing. What's your, where's your mindset?Matt: I think the creative side of NFTs is just a small portion of what of what the kind of utilities that NFTs will bring. I think when you buy a house, your mortgage is going to be an NFT. Your medical records are going to be an NFT. Things you would even expect are going to be NFT as receipts because it's totally encrypted.  It's on the blockchain, it's there for everyone to see and track. And  I just think it's. Decentralized system for information.   But big talk in terms of the metaverse I think NFTs are going to be a integral part in the sale of goods, the transfer of  funds all kinds of things like that. Crypto's obviously gonna be a massive player in the metaverse as well. I just can't wait. I want. Metaverse of Dr.Zammys and the world that we're creating here. There's giants, crazy vehicles, airships slug pirates. You name it. I just to be around that crazy metropolis cities that are multilayered for different scaled creatures and from three-inch little dudes to 40 foot giants and all living and working in the same space.To actually play a game where you're in that environment and maybe even making money in that environment, it just be Wild. It's basically ready player one. So yeah,Q:we have arrived.Matt: I know. I didn't mean to blow your brain there,Q:but yeah we love getting our brain blown. That is wild.  I've never been that into video games.  The kind of idea of the metaverse is quite enticing.  And also really what to me is most enticing is like what you were talking about, these different worlds that you can go into. I don't think that'll be the initial application. I'm sure it'll be some boring business thing where we have meetings virtually. That'll be the initial one. The businesses will be like, oh, we got free cash to spend. We'll spend it on some virtual headsets and everything. Exactly. But we'll get there. Yeah, exactly. We're in avatars with no legs. Yeah.Matt: But a good example of where this could be applied is actually I don't mean to plug this, but there's like a daydream festival, a huge EDM concerts that I designed their posters and stages for. I'm actually in talks with them about a metaverse concept where if you can't afford to fly over to Europe and see these massive  EDM concerts maybe you can jump into the metaverse and see it live that way either virtually or entirely built out in a whole new way where a avatar. Of DJs that are like, that are playing at the event are in a totally original world spinning live. And you're one of the avatars in this virtual space. So  the ability to engage with the world real time through a virtual experience could be really beneficial.Q:Yeah. Yeah. I've heard some really interesting, that's another very interesting application for this kind of VR slash like metaverse meets universe collide. Those sort of those sorts of solutions are really interesting because there are a lot of people that, where yeah. They might not be able to fly over there, but they could afford a headset and. The ticket price to just get in.Matt: Exactly. Yeah. So there could be very interesting and that event's really interesting because they have actual campgrounds. It's like a two day event and you actually stay there for a weekend. So maybe I can only imagine the eye strain, but maybe you're there for  essentially two days porting in, on and off. Yeah. Pretty wild stuff. Yeah. Yeah.  I do think Ready Player One the movie is a perfect example of where this is all heading.I know it's very SciFi and all that, but the power of gaming, the power of the technology is just getting so good that I think in the next five to 10 years, it really is going to be here easily.Q:Yeah. And that's something that we've seen. The last decade you've seen e-sports. Oh, it's this incredible niche thing to more people watch a specific game, final world championships things on the super bowl.So it's it's more popular than the biggest sports, normal sports events. Yeah.Matt: league of legends. Actually, I worked for them. Like almost 10 years ago, back when it was just a very small game. And then I moved on a bunch of other different things, but Morgan Spurlock on his show had an episode about gaming and he referenced league of legends and they like they full on  have an entire audience in a football state All watching these gamers and it's just huge millions of people pouring in to watch these matches. So yeah, e-sports is massive. It's pretty wild.Q:And I think one thing that, that boggles my mind too sometimes is like you were talking about using NFTs for receipts, for tickets to these types of events. I think probably 99% of people. If they know what an NFT is, they think it's just a piece of art or some image, some JPEG that you can right. Click on whereas it's totally. It's just a method of ownership on the blockchain and that's so powerful. And I think a lot of people just haven't necessarily seen the power of NFTs yet. What do you think? Do you think the timeline on that is it everything's going to start coming together soon. It's okay, shoot. People are going. Seeing what's going on or do you think it's more of an evolution?Matt: I honestly, it's a really tough sort of hurdle to get over. I think the technology has a long way to go to make it easy. You gotta get your crypto and you got to get your wax cloud wallet and you got there's all these different things that got to click into place, move your funds from your bank account and turn them into crypto. And if you're not computer savvy, I can see that hurdle. But when it gets as smooth as Apple Pay and going to whole foods and blame just paying for a a bag of lettuce. But instead it's an NFT somehow. I think that's when everyone's going to jump on board right now it's a very niche market. The people that are involved understand do their, do the due diligence and read the FAQ's on these sites and learn about what they want to collect. A perfect example of the use for an NFT that's different other than just collecting his physical goods. So I did a lot of Comicons for about 10 years, and I have a ton of merchandise that's just stored in my garage because of COVID. I can't get to as many Comicons to sell my goods anymore. So a lot of our fans are interested in. Turning digital NFT into almost like a redeemable receipt where they can then summon the physical good whenever they want. So if they don't want it right now, they can hold onto it. But then I'll get an email that will say, Hey, this fan that bought this NFT wants your toy or whatever. And or a book, and then I can ship it to them. It's like a. A totally new way to look at a, an industry that I've been involved in. That's not accessible anymore, but through NFTs, I can somehow sell goods through NFTs. It's just a, it's a wild experience, but that's what's on the table right now. As well with music too. We partnered with Yoshi drops, Michael blues company. I'm not sure if you've heard of them. They're all music based like MP4s and we're doing a whole other separate project away from Dr.Zammys that involves my world building art with  generative  art that you would see through  board a yacht club.  But it's also done through original EDM music that Michael blue wrote for each piece.   NFTs as music.Q: Yeah. Yeah. I've seen those. I've actually really liked those art pieces where it is some sort of sound and picture in a loop, some sort of animation that's super engaging to me. I'm a musician have been for a while. So the concept of the musician not having to necessarily go to a record. To sell their IP and just being able to release it direct and then own it. That's a wild concept for music because traditionally there's so many gatekeepers in the music industry and yet streaming sort of level the playing field, but then it also just completely wiped out the ability to sell records for any amount of money as  an artist, a single artist, right?So now you have this ability to. I can go create a song right now. You can go create a song. We can all go create songs right now. We have the technology to do that digitally very easily. We don't have the technology to own that. And sell it. So that's a really, that's a very interesting application. I wonder what the world will look like when the big, bigger companies realize they don't, they can't necessarily just buy an artist anymore. The artist can sell themselves direct. Matt: I think. Bigger picture too, is that you have a lot of creatives that are very talented about with storytelling and all that. And if if the sale of their NFT gives them more cash in the pocket, more capital, I think if they play their cards like I'm doing it opens up more doors to actually provide the world with more entertainment, more content. I read an article like streaming services. Basically tasks with creating the same amount of content per year. That would be the equivalent of every movie and TV show created from the eighties and nineties all at once, all in one year annually.   A lot of these studios and also gaming companies too, are just constantly struggling to to fulfill that demand.But I think if NFTs can create a whole. Brand new sector of creatives that are, we're just work for hire that are now creating content and managing it themselves. I think you're going to see an explosion of new TV shows, new games the likes of which we've never seen because that capital is being reinvested in people that really understand that space.Q: So that's actually, that brings up a really interesting question for me is you've been on both sides. Now, you're now owning a business, running a project, you're building it out. You're now hiring people that you might've worked with on past projects. And I also looked through your LinkedIn, you have a very impressive resume. In fact, I got to say, you worked on my favorite star wars movie of all time. I love Clone Wars. It's the best.Q: What would your. Advice, I guess be for people looking to do that who are on the creative side of things and want to make that journey. What does that look like?  Matt: First off you just have to have good high quality art. I think there's not enough. Good high quality art out there. Although the market has proven that high quality art doesn't, it doesn't have to it doesn't have to be amazing art in order for it to sell. It just has to be marketed properly. I think the marketing hurdle on these things is super massive right now.  Factor that has been a struggle of ours all year long, but we've overcome that many times but then gone back to square one. Finding the right marketing team and the right marketing channels we use discord telegram. I didn't even know what these things were before I got into NFTs. And now they're my everyday source for connecting with fans, releasing information  and the fan base. The people that collect these things, they're super passionate about it. So they, they want engagement. They want, there's a lot of our time, isn't just about building new content. It's about engaging with the fans and they have a million questions and you have to just always invest that time every day into that. I'd say I wouldn't have gotten into NFTs if it wasn't for my partner, Ralph, he was collecting NFTs back in 2017. He's super involved in the wax blockchain. He knows all the major players that are getting involved or that, that are running that, that ecosystem. And so it was a natural step for us to go into that blockchain, but there's so many more there's flow. Etherium all these different ones. So pick the one, maybe that you have connections with.  Or it's easier to dive into if you don't know anyone, just do your research, do a lot of reading. Go to Benzinga.  All these different places on the internet have tons of resources to get to the information you need. I'll say if you go to https://www.drzammsy.com/faq/, we have an FAQ and it explains everything on there on how to get a wallet. We're more than happy to share information. That's one thing we learned is that it's a place where everyone's just giving away information. , it's not this secretive world where everyone's like really protective on how they did it. That's how we got into the game is by asking a lot of questions to our competitors. And they turned out to be friends.   It's a pretty cool space. In the past before NFTs, everything's so secretive. If you wanted to learn about a game and production, it was very secretive. Now everyone's releasing the entire Bible on how they're making a game in real time. All they're making it. So it's just so different. It's very transparent, but I think that's  the vision for crypto and the vision of the future is transparency.Q: And that's one thing that I don't know if you've noticed this too, Austin, I'd be interested to hear your thoughts, but. In terms of just crypto in general transparency  the very form of blockchain itself, but then devs like crypto devs are some of the nicest people they'll share the whole code block with. You have to do it. Like it's amazing to see the crypto devs and then the people. Artists in the NFT world. It's incredible. It's like the best people from every industry. Just come to a discount to crypto and blockchain.Matt: Yeah. I've yet to meet a, an evil person or someone that was rude or anything. Everyone's been so nice. I think we're all just so excited. Cause it's totally brand new. You can get really successful. And just sharing information. I think if someone had Dr. X. And instead of a virus, it was something similar. And they wanted to do a project with a character with a top hat. I'd be a little reluctant to help them cause it's directly ripping us off. But but that hasn't happened yet. And. Know, we're just so happy to have everyone get involved in this whole new system.Q:  Yeah. Yeah. That's, I don't know that you'll probably have that cause you've got first mover first mover advantage there, Matt. So you're probably safe if you're listening to this and you're making a doctor. Just don't come and talk to my man. He's about to crush you. So usually what we do at the end here, Matt, is we give a somewhat of a, like a portfolio tip or action item. Again, we don't give investment advice obviously, but we do want to put some meat on the bones. We talk about a lot of use a very good term. Concepts here.  And very very abstract stuff. So when it comes to what somebody listening to this episode, what can they do to get involved? It sounds like buying a, NFT is probably the first place to start just dipping your toe in. But even before that, how can they get comfortable with NFTs? Even with your project how does someone just dip their toe in and figure out this space,Matt: My experience is just directly with wax I would go to again, our website read our FAQ. It explains exactly how to get wow. How to create a wallet, how to put that wax in your wallet. Once you have your wallet in place, you go on to these markets you find the entity you want and you connect your wallet to the purchase and boom, suddenly it's in your wallet and you have an NFT in there. It's a little more complicated than that, but that's in a nutshell what the process is like.And and then if you get lucky, maybe you collect an NFT that goes up in value for whatever reason. And then you go back onto the secondary market and https://wax.atomichub.io/ is really great for that, where you can sell the NFT you bought for maybe a higher price. And then that's where the game changes. You've actually invested in something that's gone up in value and you're making a little money. Plus a wax is so volatile in a good way. And if you, and this goes without saying in terms of just crypto in general, but you always want to sell on a high and a and buy on a low. And th there's there's a great advantage to that.   When it seems almost too good to be true in terms of its value, sell it.Yeah. May go up even another dollar you missed out, but inevitably it always comes back to. There's a massive crash and then it goes back up again. Maybe someday it will never go up. And then that's when entire system just fails, but I hope not, but as it stands right now, I really do think it's the future. And and just to answer your question. Yeah. It's as easy as just doing the research. Our website's great. Benzinga is another good one, honestly for learning all these things. And then there's other ones that I can explain, but I'd rather not because I'm on your show, but if you just do your research, you can find tons of information on all the blockchains that are out there. The ones that are specifically related to NFTs and how to get in.Q: Awesome. Yeah, I think the education component is key. It took a lot of, for me, I'm a very like cynical, kinda old at heart and kind of guy. So it took a lot of convincing for me to even buy my first like NFT art piece. And it was an interesting experience, but it took a while. Like conversations with people reading a lot to understand the process. And so I think you're right, that the education piece is definitely the first component to start.Matt: I was just gonna say there's a lot of scamming out there and I can see why people are fearful. I've had friends that gave away their wallet information in a way where, you know, everything you had was stolen. So you really want to vet people that are trying to poke at you. Double check those emails that come into your inbox that are saying the claiming Hey, if you get, if you do this, we'll give you this. And then it ends up being you're just wiped out  just make sure if you do the right research that won't have. It's just, be really frugal about it just keep your cards tight in terms of your personal information. I think you'll be fine, but people that just think of this as just like a hobby and they're just kinda toying around, they're going to get hurt. You got to take it really seriously.  Q:Essentially it's it seems like it's different folks have. Different ideas and different ability to just jump in. Like for me, it was, I was buying stuff on nifty gateway last April, and telling Austin all about it and all sorts of stuff and constantly, and he's trying to get to do the research.You got to read up on this, I gotta do this. And then so it's definitely. Different strokes for different folks, and it's, it is a, it's an amazing world to be a part of right now. Like we've talked about where the majority of the world doesn't even use crypto yet and we're getting there. It's rapidly increasing. So it just seems like that kind of long run. Wild world to be in right now.  Matt: To your point  it was so bizarre to have contractors that were paying to do specific things for us on our projects. And they're asking to be paid in WAX or get paid an ETH or something like that. And. It's just crazy. Cause you know, we have plenty of that. We have cash too, but it's just so much easier to just to send crypto to someone and  you don't have to pay for a wire transfer fee or something like that.  I'm slowly seeing that at least in my industry more artists are accepting crypto as payment. So it's yeah it's changing fast and it's here. It's literally right now.Q:  Awesome. That's about all the time we have today for this episode, the long run show. Matt Gaser. Thank you so much for coming on our first, our non-real guests and what a guest to have on today.Matt: Very honored. Appreciate it guys. Thank you.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-long-run-show/donations

Listen To This Ep181 - Naked News Host Marina Valmont ComiCons And Cosplay (02 01 22) by Todd Hancock

How To Buy NFTs What is a Non-Fungible Token NFT How To Make Your Own NFT Best NFT InvestmentsEpisode SummaryJoining us today, Mig, artist for SVS, Bored Ape Yacht Club, & Hall of Fame Goat Lodge. and Woof!Follow SVS on Twitter:Mig: https://twitter.com/notthetechguySVS: https://twitter.com/SVSNFTThe Sneaky Vampire Syndicate consists of 8,888 Vampires living their best life in The Lair - away from any burning sunlight or pesky Vampire Hunters.https://opensea.io/collection/sneaky-vampire-syndicateHosts:Chris KatjeMazhttps://bitclout.com/u/mazFollow The Roadmap on Twitter!Disclaimer: All of the information, material, and/or content contained in this program is for informational purposes only. Investing in stocks, options, and futures is risky and not suitable for all investors. Please consult your own independent financial adviser before making any investment decisions.Unedited Transcript:Hey everyone. Welcome to the roadmap. Benzing. As new NFT show, we've had some great teams already interviewed in past episodes.The teams behind pixel vault, art blocks, the Vogel collective robots, that dose pound only force crypto dads, dizzy dragons, sub doc, and more. We've also done an NFT giveaway. Stay tuned for future NFT giveaways coming soon. We've got a great show today. Sneaky vampire syndicate joins us to talk about their project and what's ahead.This is the road. Hey guys. Yeah. As you heard me say, the roadmap Benzing as new NFT show, uh, airing Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays 2:00 PM. Eastern time. We've had some amazing interviews with some big teams and we have another one coming today. Let me bring on my cohost mass mass. It's been a long time, but it's great to see.What's up Chris we're back, man. It's been forever. It's been forever. It has no shows last week, but the big news, of course, we're expanding. We've got three shows this week, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. Um, so we've got some big interviews this week and I mean, man, we we've talked to some great teams, some projects with some big followings.And of course today we have SVS on and they have a huge community, right? I mean, we're talking, uh, 45,000 followers on Twitter, over 38,000 in their discord. Uh, you know, looking forward to, to SBS today as. Exactly. Yeah. I'm a big fan of the project. I know we talked about it. We mentioned it before they meant it out.Um, you know, how big the project could be. So it's great to see it come along in the last couple of weeks or so. Um, but yeah, man, I'm excited for this interview. I'm excited to be back. Let's get empties back and running. Yeah, definitely. I mean, this, this is a big one to talk about, but yeah, we have seen NFTs pull back a little bit, which we'll get into later with our news and headlines.Also. I do see a comment in the chat from Randall about my mic. Thank you. I did just fix it. So I, it should sound better. I switched over to the right mix, so we should be good to go. Uh, before we bring on a team from SVS, I know let's bring on the team. So joining us on the show today, we have Wolf the lead developer, and we have MIG the artists behind SPS and also an artist from boredom yacht club and hall of fame goes welcome to the show guys.What's going on, sir? Thanks for having us. Thank you for having us. It's a great, yeah, of course. I mean, what a cool project we've been talking about this one for a while, we talked about it with our Halloween NFT focused show once before, um, we got vampires now we got bats. So we got a lot to get into and of course get into, you know, what's ahead.Right? We're always looking forward to the roadmap after all. It is the name of our show. But before we get into SVS, just wondering, you know, if a Wolf and Meg, if you guys can give us, you know, your history in the NFT space prior to this project, I'll start with you Wolf. Well, personally, I, um, my introduction and thesis it's been a while actually, but I've never made my.But I've been involved in development of with like a software program and stuff like that too, for a decade now, um, crypto since 2014, but I, uh, I've always had this interest in salute in a decentralized programming because it's like this whole new, all new, um, experience because you have to make sure everything's secure.Everything can be exploited, stuff like that. So, yeah, I've been, um, I've been buying entities like, like for a while now, just, uh, messing around with them. And, uh, personally I think it's more than just art. Um, I've also developed a ticketing system, for example, with NFTs. Um, so I think, and if these can be just more than AR and that's something I really want to go.Perfect and MIG, you know, we know you as an artist for board ape yacht club and hall of fame goat. Can, can you tell us, you know, uh, what was your experience with NFTs before those projects and then talk about creating the art for those projects prior to SVS? Um, so prior to BC, I didn't even know what an NFC was.Um, I've been a freelance illustrator for most of my life. Uh, so almost 20 years now, but, um, yeah, I had no idea what an NFT was. I didn't know, uh, anything about crypto. Uh, so it was only after, um, Basey started really taking off that, uh, I delved into it and, um, started reading up on NFTs and, uh, yeah. You know, uh, it kind of boggles the mind, how quickly things, uh, develop in the NFD space.And, um, yeah, I guess, uh, so creating the artwork, uh it's uh, SVS is pretty much the first project, uh, worked on NFT project. I worked on where I had most, uh, the most control over what's being, uh, presented. Um, I mean the guys came up and I came to me with a list of traits and, uh, and they just, um, told me to do whatever I, you know, uh, just, uh, go wild.Uh, they really didn't want to, um, You know, just, uh, hold me back. They just wanted me to go crazy with my imagination and yeah. Sort of came up with, but with, uh, with goat lodge and, um, Basey, I was on the more direction there. So, uh, yeah. Awesome. So Wolf talk to us, you know, how did the idea of SVS come to be and you know, how were you able to bring a well-known artists like MIG onto the team?Yeah, so, um, initially the idea was to create an empty, uh, well, we didn't have the idea to create an empty, but, uh, the other team members are friends of mine for a couple of years already. And one of them introduced me to me and like the whole group. And then we, uh, cause we were thinking of making something crypto anywhere like a project.And we were, we like building like everyone in my. My friend group is like, they, there, they have already had jobs in different businesses, different niches, stuff like that. Like community management, um, of course development. We have, um, we have two developers and a UX designer, like a full blown team. Like we've known them for years already.And then we got introduced to me. Um, of course he's a great artist with a great track record. So we thought, oh, that that's a perfect combo with the team. We have to create something, something special and what makes it that he had full control over the creative aspect. That's something we really wanted to keep because we didn't want to limit his creative.For example. So, so that was one of our main key points to focus on to just give me every possibility he wants to. And then he gave us like a couple sketches in the beginning and we select the one we all like liked the most. And that's how we started. We see. Perfect. So, Meg, I mean, you touched on the, the artwork a little bit and, you know, having more control versus prior projects, you were on.Talk to us about, you know, the inspiration, the artwork here. Is this something that, you know, came to you immediately was that, you know, a trial and error process, um, how many different, uh, you know, uh, variations of the vampire did you come up with? Okay. Uh, I came up with about 12 different vampires that are presented to the team and, uh, eventually set along the one that you see now, but, uh, the inspiration for it, uh, I guess.Um, Bruce, Tim is a huge inspiration. Uh he's he's the guy who created, uh, the Batman animated series in the nineties. Um, so basically just a goofy looking vampire that you would, uh, that goes well with like a Saturday morning cartoon, uh, yeah. That something goofy, not too serious. And, uh, hopefully something that appeals to a lot of people love that.Um, so there was an SVS and eight, eight collab that launched on Monday for, you know, it at eight holders and SVS holders. Can you guys tell us a little bit more about that? You know, how the project came to be? And I know there's like a staking or burning mechanism behind it as well. Um, so yeah, a today is, um, we've been talking to him for a while and he's invested in our project.Uh, he also has a whole nerd. He's like a good friend of ours. So you can say, um, Yeah. So the PR the idea between the collaboration with eight and eight is that, uh, we've dropped in a unique piece of art by me. And it's basically, uh, the sort of vampire model we use for our, um, profile pictures, but then also with a little bit of eight, eight style with it.So he's like all about this magic stuff. Like, um, like there, the X stuff, like angels, like eight and eight, stuff like that. And then we dry, we basically made it so you can claim one of these per SVS, token, you hold and eight and eight Genesis token. And then we added a game fighting aspect where you basically, you can burn through them to go to next year and then there's rewards for the seven and eight.So, um, so that's the entire collaboration is basically reborn two communities together this way, because they have to work together to get the 120. Love that. And if you get the 128, what is the reward? I think it's a, one of one drawing, if I'm correct. Or can you tell us a little more, more about that and sort of rewards is you, um, you basically have white lists for next generation.Um, also you get access for the first aid to the top tier. I think it's that. And then you get access to the ADA Genesis group, like his inner circle group, where you get always, uh, collaborations. Like you can get them for free. And then also the one of one. Yeah, I think. And did we have some, yeah, I think that, was it the one of one, a white list and access to his gender Genesis inner circle.Yeah. So I'm in the 8, 8, 8, uh, discord. And I saw that a couple of people from the SVS, they collapse, they joined forces to be able to death the 128. So that's cool to see the community come together and, you know, yeah, definitely not something we want to do because community is one of our biggest, uh, key points.Love that. So Halloween just was over. So there was a contest derivative. Right. So can you guys tell us a little bit more about some of your favorite derivative derivatives that you saw of the SVS, uh, uh, drawings, um, made you pick those, right? Uh, yeah, I picked some of them. Uh, this one, we really love this one.Uh, I mean, most of the, um, most of the, uh, competitions we've had have been just drawings, but this was special because it was a 3d sculpture by one of our community members. And we really love the effort that she took to bring this life look great. And the one to the left, uh, it just, I, uh, as an artist, I can see how much time and effort he put into this.And he adds some new references yet. I think about 20 movie references in the. An actual picture. So it had to be in there. It had to be a winner for us. Yeah. That one's sick. Look at that. You got the little clown in the background. That's awesome. How does it feel to see, you know, a lot of, you know, the community drawing, you know, these pieces, uh, to you as an artist makes it's, uh, it's pretty mind blowing sometimes, uh, to think that people are doing all these derivatives of, uh, something I've created, uh, it D you know, always put a smile on my face, no matter how, how little effort went into it, or how much effort, uh, I get a kick out of it this year.That's awesome. Um, so we, I was looking and I saw that you can stake your vampires and then you get the blood token. Can you guys tell us a little bit more about blood token, the utility behind it and how it benefits the SBS. Yeah. So the bot token will be, um, purely used for you to like it's a it's in our ecosystem.Right? So, um, for example, in our next generation, we're going to introduce a breeding aspect. Well, we kind of call it breeding as that's the pros of putting two and two together and then getting something out of it, but it won't be exactly that. So blood will be heavily use there. Um, we'll have like an increasing cost whenever you breed with one, which is already brand, so we'll go up and like use it.And then we also plan to have more, uh, in real life collaborations with blood. So you get access to that item, meaning a physical item with blood. So we have, we have one collaboration running right now, which is in progress. Uh, it takes a while to actually produce, but that's, uh, we've partnered with, uh, One of the biggest champagne creators or like most famous ones, like really good at it and stuff.I am like skilled. Um, and we'll, we'll be giving access to that champagne through blood. So that's one of the things we want to provide. Um, well, it's, we're looking to do like merged for like bloods. You can get so emerged for free, if you could just use the butter into claim it, for example. That's awesome.So I can essentially exchange my blood token from staking to get wine or apparel. Yeah, for example. Yeah. We're looking to do more, uh, fiscal collaborations, right. Ready have some stuff lined up, which will be in the later months. That's okay. Yeah. I love that. That's awesome. Awesome. Well, you know, one of the things that recently launched was you guys also did the bats.So we have sneaky bat. This was a free mint for anyone who owned SVS, a Wolf, I'll start with you. You know, why was it important to do you know, a, a free meant here for holders of SDS? Well, I think we shouldn't charge any holder who is already bought an SVS or invested in the project. I think it's fair to do a free companion drop because that wasn't our roadmap always.And it's a great way to give everyone another rare or not. So rare Coleman piece of art. And it's just fun to do, right, man. Tons of fun. MIG, talk to us about the, the artwork here, right? So not only did you get to develop the vampire, but you also got to develop this bat. Um, walk us through the process here on, you know, this cool free companion drop.Um, I just wanted to create a sort of mini and or side kick for the vampire. Uh, yeah. I went through a few sketches to get it done, but, uh, I already knew in my mind that it was going to be a very, uh, like a mischievous kind of character, um, yeah, similar to, um, Dick dastardly and, uh, muddly, you know, um, Motley is this, this kind of, he's a sidekick to, uh, Dick dastardly, but he's, he's kind of mischievous on his own.He doesn't always. And he's got that constant loft and I wanted to bring that kind of, uh, that kind of spirit, uh, into the bat. So yeah, that's the origin for, I guess. Awesome. Love that. Yeah. The old Hanna-Barbera cartoon reference there. Uh, you know, I remember watching that as a kid, definitely in my kids now are getting into that.So love the reference there. Um, you know, we got into the roadmap a little bit, right? With the staking of the blood token, you know, there's also a call for a gen two breeding, uh, you know, a vampire hunt, a vampire meetup, uh, you know, with, uh, give us the background, you know, what can holders expect, uh, as part of the roadmap, uh, any timeline updates on gen two, maybe for us as well.So of course we're doing the gen two, a mint, which will be. I dunno because of the current state of the market, we don't want to bring in their collection so fast. So we might look to delay that if needed and then we'll just try and create as much value for the Genesis collection. Of course. So we're looking to do gen two, which will then come with breeding, which will be after that.Cause Meg has to draw the R we have to settle on, like while we're going to make as a result. Cause we don't want to do, uh, just a simple like baby vampire, stuff like that. So we want to do something cool. We can eventually do something with which makes, which makes for another grave roadmap item, for example.Um, so. And then we're going to do gen two companions as the same way as our Genesis companions. We're planning to do a in real life meetups. Once you're more established, like the board app yacht club one, that was really cool to see that come into action. Um, and then we're going to do some, uh, of course they're going to keep our community contests running the art derivatives.It's cool to see every what everyone does. And yeah, that's basically what we've planned right now. And obviously there's always stuff going around, which is not on the roadmap. So the champagne wasn't on the roadmap. We have that game in development, which was on the roadmap and yeah, there's more to come.Meg, walk us through, you know, the, the gen two development process and what this means for, for you as an artist to, you know, have to create more artwork. Oh, a whole nother series. Uh, well, I actually can't say much just yet. Uh, uh, right now we're just formulating a lot of ideas, uh, gathering, um, info on what traits we want to do.Uh, but, um, yeah, once, once I get going then perhaps the limo sneak peaks, but until then, I don't really want to say too much. I want to blow the surprise. That's perfect. Yeah. We always try to get stuff out, but we understand if we can't. So, uh, one of the things we, we do like to ask, and this can always be a tough question, right?Cause it's like a, you know, picking your favorite kid is we talk about favorite traits, right? So, uh, going to the vampires, you know, uh, Wolf, I'll start with you, uh, cause it, maybe it's easier for you than the artist himself, uh, share with us, you know, what are some of your favorite traits for the SVS? Uh, So I think my favorite, um, well I have my own, well, I think the shadow skin's one of the coolest we've done, uh, personally, even though it's not the most rare.And then I really liked the whole load glasses and the laser eyes, but, uh, this one doesn't have, you know, the whole low-class. I was one of the, one of the things where we had to move our generation process entirely because they wouldn't, uh, export properly. So now that I think that was like, uh, two days before we, um, revealed or drop the collection.Oh, nice. Oh yeah. I, yeah, those are cool. Yeah. Perfect. And MIG, I mean, this, I don't know if this is a tough question for you. I'm assuming it is. Uh, but any favorite traits to call out, uh, for, for SDS here? Um, uh, I think. Uh, it's really hard to pick. I mean, those glosses that I did big, uh, those triangular glasses, uh, were from an anime called, uh, grew in Lygon, um, and, uh, really like the character to use those glasses.And I love have, uh, being able to add that into SPS. Another cool one was that actually on, on the right there, the laser moth. Um, so one of our guys, uh, 2d van came up with some of the traits and one of them was a giant moth and, uh, so out of the giant moth. And then, um, I thought, you know, why not give it lasers too?And so I put it on there and it, and it workslove that. Um, so one thing I wanted to touch on was community. So I kind of wanted to paraphrase this really quick about your guys's launch. So when you guys launched, people were able to mint three vampires, um, you know, you guys wanted to keep it as organic as possible and have the distribution spread as possible from the beginning.Um, so immediately after you met your unique holder percentage was around 52%, right? So we've seen the community, you know, it's, it's, it's very spread out. There's not just big whales that own the project, you know, there's over 45, count Twitter, over 30 K on discord. Uh, how do you manage the community and what do you love about the community the most?Um, well, we have a bunch of people who actually like active all day in our discord chat, which is amazing to see because people. They've genuinely like they started talking to each other in the DMS actually. So it's great to see people connect with each other, um, community manage wise. We have a team of malts to keep the chat in like intact, like, but the there's not really that much like need to moderate all than like spamming, like invite links, stuff like that.Um, I think the community we have right now is actually really great. And it's one of our main, main success points I think, to have as engaging community. Absolutely. Uh, how active are both of you in the district? Well, personally, I've been really busy myself working on like everything around SVS, getting these partnerships and stuff.But, uh, so I haven't been around this much in this good lately, but I used to be very active, but Meg is around daily to talk to people in the joints, this voice chats. Every, we have a voice chat with, um, with one of our community members who is really good at investing, for example, in play through end games like strategies.And he does a talk every Tuesday to like talk about investment strategies and how it helping people out. So that's something really great, which just came from the community. And we really, uh, really like that because that's how the community is supposed to work. Like they build it, they build each other and help each other.Yeah. Um, if you'll notice in a lot of the, um, NFT projects in the, in the discord, uh, a lot of the time the artist doesn't really interact with the. Uh, community members, you know, and I find that really weird, uh, and it could be a sign of a rug pool who knows, but, uh, yeah, I, I, I don't want to be a person that you can never contact.You can never interact with. I'm just this presence that's there. I just did the artwork and that's it. I want to be a part of the community on a lo I love joking around with the people there love, hanging around, uh, listening to whatever they have to say. Um, and they really, the lifeblood of any project.Uh, it doesn't matter what we do. Um, doesn't matter how many collabs, uh, we bring, uh, how many, how much new utility we bring to the project. If you don't have a strong community, then, uh, it's. Exactly. I love hearing that, man, because I've been in a lot of discourse where the team comes on, just when they want to show stuff to this, to see you guys active day in and day out, embraces the community.And I know you do weekly AMS, which is super important, you know, I've been in cool cats, they do it every week and I see the community rile up from that. So I love to see that. Um, what do you guys think of the current discord hacks? You know, are you guys taking any precautions towards that? You know, we've seen a lot of that in the last week or so.Oh yeah. Uh, from day one we have, um, we've locked. Our are down basically. So, but these hacks. Uh, I feel like they just, uh, they bribe one of, uh, members with some special permission. So a lot of these discords, they forgot, forget, like, um, make it sell malts cannot give people certain roles or announce in these general, like admin channels, like announcements, for example, where it looks really official.Um, and they also forget to disable the create webhook permission, which allows you to send a message through a web hook through these channels as well. So from day one, we've basically locked everything down except for the admin admin members. And we've forced everyone with substantial permissions to enable to have a, so that way in case someone gets hacked by some sort of malware key logger, uh, unless they get bribe, but then they don't have permissions.They can't do anything which will harm the community. Lots of see it, man. Yeah, it's been crazy. Couple of weeks, man. I've seen so many, discords get hacked. It's been crazy. Yeah. Uh, the, these, uh, people getting really sophisticated with the way they work. Uh, we actually will. Some people actually attempted the same thing on me, uh, first by, uh, getting me banned from the Basey discord.Uh, and then, uh, they going to pretend that their staff from the, uh, basically discord and attempt to fix the situation. And, uh, they'll try to get you to go either click on something or, uh, go on a video call. And, uh, once you click on the video, you know, that's when you start getting fished or hacked or whatever.Uh, so just a reminder for everyone to stay vigilant and not click on anything, uh, always use a hardware wallet, uh, yeah, just be cautious. Yeah, the suspicious definitely great warning out there from you guys. It looks like people calling out, uh, Freddy, uh, XXX Al in the chat. Um, so I'm guessing that's a member of the discord as well.There. Uh, want to talk a little, uh, broadly here? Um, you know, you mentioned maybe delaying a gen two, depending on the state of the market. Uh, talk to us a little bit, you know, where do you see the NFT market headed? Right. We saw a huge demand. We saw this big wave and now we're starting to see a little bit of a pull back as you know, the theory and price goes up and the sheer volume of NFT projects increases.So, uh, we'll, I'll, I'll start with you just overall thoughts on the NFT. So I think, um, yeah, of course, what you've noticed that the theorem price is going up as soon, like severely affected like the volume traded at empties as well. Because, uh, if you look at the gas, like constant it's, I haven't seen it drop under a hundred gray in the past week, past two weeks, maybe.So it's really, you lose so much value by just purchasing any theory right now from the like total price. So it has massively like dropped the volume of sales as well, and people are trying to get out of course, because they want to write the w the way for the price increase because they think, oh, it's going to, let's say 10 grand.So they're trying to get out. And then that drops the four pies of maybe like, I think I've seen every project go down so far. But, yeah. So I think the current state of the market, you ever, probably going to see some more downside if it keeps going and Bitcoin, of course, but I think eventually it will settle down and people, uh, reinvest their money in, in NFS because right now a lot of like good projects are like on a discount, definitely.And MIG, any thoughts on the overall NFT market here? Uh, ever every project's flaw has taken a battering? Uh, yeah, like will said, uh, crypto is pumping right now. So, uh, and if these are down, but, uh, what, what you'll see is, um, the, the teams that are really dedicated to delivering on their roadmap and just continuing to push forward, those are the projects that will outlast them.Uh, there's a lot of projects that come out every day and it's sad to say, but, uh, you know, 95, 90 8% of them, aren't going to make it. That's just the way it is. Uh, you need a good strong team to, uh, to just weather the storm and keep going. And that's what we're going to do. Perfect. And, you know, uh, on that note, you know, you mentioned that there are some projects, you know, trading at a discount and some that, you know, maybe you're fans of.So we always like to ask, you know, towards the end of the interview, are there any, you know, NFTs that you own that you want to call out or projects that, you know, you really like, I'll start with you Wolf, um, you know, what NFT projects outside of SVS for you? Um, I don't really own that many other keys sleep is the one that I really like is Kinesis art.It's one of these generative, uh, well, like program the arts. So it's like a. I think it's like our book, but it's a little different because they're all animated and stuff. And another one is EPO name. It's a, I don't know if you heard about that one. It was this, um, project where you put in any worn, for example, and then AI generates an image.I think they used Google, like images, like the 10 search results and then merged them together by day AI. And the results of them are pretty crazy. So that's the two and a few porters. I am, uh, I have some of, and I look forward to seeing what they can do. Awesome. And then MIG, you know, as an artist, you mentioned you, you weren't into NFTs prior to, you know, doing the artwork.Uh, now that you're fully into the space, you know, are there other projects that you, uh, collect or anything you'd like to call out in terms of artwork? Um, Hm. I actually still don't collect many NFTs. I only had, uh, three NFTs that I've purchased. And, um, this week I, I gave them away because, uh, the sheer amount of people getting hacked and scammed, uh, really annoyed me.So, uh, I gave them away to, uh, people from our community just because why not? You know, uh, they lost everything. They, hopefully this little token will help get them back on their feet. Uh, so I don't have any, uh, I don't have any FTEs right now, but, uh, and I don't really pay too much attention to other projects.I like to pay attention to the mistakes of other projects so we know what not to do, but, uh, if I were. To namedrop. Uh, I'd say I really like dead fellows. I'm enjoying artwork there. Um, yeah. So that's something that, that, yeah, it gets my sense. Yeah. No, that's fine. Not everyone, you know, collects all of them.Uh, you're a pretty busy guy, Meg, so we understand it. Uh, yeah, I, I, I don't collect any, I don't even own any vamps. I don't have any bases. I don't have any goats. Uh, and my reasoning for that is, um, if I were to own a vampire, for example, that would, uh, effectively take away, uh, one person away from the community.And I I'd rather have, uh, an active member of the community rather than owning about myself. And, uh, there's so many great people in the community that, uh, you know, who knows maybe that one person that joined the community because of. Um, may not owning a vampire. It turns out to be, uh, a celeb or someone who's really helpful to everyone or, yeah, just the overall good person.Yeah, definitely. All right. Well, masse, I think we've got some, uh, questions here, um, from the chat and some followers of Benzinga. So I'll let you, uh, take it away. Absolutely. First of all, MIG, you are the people's champ, man. That is awesome. Uh, we have a question from Scott here, he's asking. So what are the steps that you guys would recommend to a new project to secure their discord?Um, so first of all, make sure, like, except you like the admin role has permissions to access announcement and stuff like that. So most of you, this Corptax. Go to a moderator. I give them like 10 grand to get access to their account, maybe, or get some permissions to post in those channels. And they'll add everyone with, um, with a fake site to meet that project again, for example.So that's recently what's been going on in a lot of your SIS scores and a lot of people are falling for that. So make sure nobody has access to any like substantial, official channel to post an except like maybe the team or like you only asked the owner of this score and make sure moderators don't have access to create web hooks or manage roles.So that that's one of the, like the most steps you can take. And eventually when you're big enough, you, if you applied to discord as a discord or partner, it will force everyone to, to have a, um, so that that's another great, uh, step you can take eventually. Love that. Do you guys think some projects are taking bribes considering how frequent these are happening or is it just the same thing over and over that people are falling?Well, it seems to be the same person I've been following this personal Twitter. Um, let me find his name. So he's, uh, yeah, his name is NFP herder and he posts these treads on these discord hangs and it seems to be the same person every time who's been fooling off these hacks recently and it's discord. So, so either they're falling for the same bribe, like the moderators or, or they're being hacked.So by the same, like maybe a piece of malware, they click like a link. I don't know what the attack vector is here. Yeah. So, yeah. And it's really bad situation for the product as well because, uh, The the, your, your loose, so much trust in a team. If they, if people lose money to you through like a scam like that, if you don't like take time to properly secure to this cortisol.Exactly. And MIGS, you said that you gave some NFTs away to some of the SVS community. Did some of them get hacked through other projects they were in? Um, I'm not sure. I don't really know the full details of what happened. Uh, I just, uh, I just felt really bad for them. So, uh, yeah, I, I just want to do a little something.I don't have much. I'd just give them something to, uh, get them back on their feet. Yeah. Amazing. All right. Let's see, Chris, I think, is there more questions from the chat here? Yeah. So we've got this question from, uh, de-bone in the chat. Uh, what are some of the other pop culture, Easter eggs we can find in the SVS bat.Um, usually I like to encourage people to just look at the artwork and discover for themselves. Yeah. I mean, when it comes to Easter eggs sometimes yeah. You can't give everything away. So maybe you can share maybe one thing to look for. Uh, one of my favorite traits from the bats was creating, uh, um, a Walkman, uh, that, uh, if you've seen guardians of the galaxy style load has a Walkman, uh, that it's super ancient.And I wanted, I wanted something like that, uh, to be kind of a success of trait to the headphones that we have for the vampires. So I, I created a Walkman pretty much in inspired from stall loads. Walkman, but yeah, I couldn't use, we might get DMC aid by Sony or something, so I couldn't use the exact name.I changed it to SVS walkout wing man instead. Perfect. Well, thanks for sharing that. De-bone, there's your answer. You, you might have to look for the rest, but look for that Walkman. Absolutely. So we have another question here from Scott, who wants to know, uh, for new people coming into the NMT space as investors or collectors, what's the best way for them to, uh, do research and find quality projects versus avoiding scams or quick cash grabs.Um, so there's a couple of red flags of you see. So first of all, if I were to invest in your project, I would look at maybe like, um, like any of their like team members to see if they're well established. Of course. So, and maybe look at their website, maybe. So a lot of these ex like scams recently, um, they, um, they tend to just maintain and run off, for example.So it's really hard in, and if these spaces is not as simple as like a, like, uh, like checking a crypto Rockpool. So for an NFC space, a lot of people jump, try to jump on the hive because it's this one-time event where you can buy in this NFT, like at a really low price. So a lot of people tend to not do like their research because the event is going to happen anyway.And there's so many people getting in and you're trying to flip it. Um, but the thing is with NMT project, you're only gonna see whether it's a rug pool, like most definitely, or like in the future, because it's whether they're going to work on the project in the future or not. So it's, it's a bit harder to do here than in normal token.For example, a token you're buying through. Yeah. And of course settling, it's going to selling, it's going to be harder because you can't just go through union swap incentive there, but you have to actually find a buyer. So that's another factor you can look at. Yeah. And I've seen projects, they sell out and then these devs, they go to another project and they launch it and another one and they repeat the cycle, they just sell out and just kind of leave the community, sell out, leave the community.So it's interesting to see, hopefully we start taking more, you know, doing more research before just jumping onto the hype, you know? Yeah. It's a, it's the wild west out here. And, uh, yeah, I think what was said is, um, you should really, um, do some research on the team. Um, that's exactly what I did before I joined, uh, uh, the team.Um, so before joining SVS, I was, I was screening a lot of, uh, Proposals to me. And, uh, a lot of people wanted me to join their project. And I, uh, one of the deciding factors of joining SVS was, uh, choosing the right team who had, uh, who were well-established, who had a good, uh, Twitter presence. And, um, just the team that could get the job done and I chose correctly and, uh, yeah, so always, uh, do a bit of research on, on the team members.And, um, but other than that, uh, yeah, just always, always be cautious. Perfect. Well guys, you know, thanks so much for, for sharing insights into SVS what's to come and also, you know, just the advice for NFT, uh, people out there, right? That's something we really wanted to do with this show was bringing the interviews to talk about big projects, but also, you know, provide that education segment for people, maybe new to the NFT space.And I definitely think we, we shared some education today via you guys in terms of what to look for in projects and also, you know, managing a discord. So shout out to both of you for that. But, you know, we look forward to following this progress, you know, it's far from over gen two coming, uh, you know, I'm really excited to, to see what that looks like.So Wolf and MIG, thank you so much for taking time out of your busy schedules and joining us today. Thanks guys. It's a, it's been a pleasure to talk with you and, um, just, uh, share our knowledge on everything. We know about crypto and NFTs and, uh, yeah, just, uh, stay vigilant out there. It's the wild west. So keep that in mind.Absolutely. Thank you guys so much for coming on. We appreciate you and the SBS community. You guys are awesome. Yeah. And we will love to have you guys back when, you know, it gets closer to the next event. So, uh, thank you both. It definitely will be back, I think. Yeah. Awesome. Awesome. Shout out to, to MIG and to Wolf for joining us today on the show, and also shout out to the SVS community, showing up in full force mass in the chat, some great questions there.Um, you know, the question from Debo and of course about the Easter egg, um, you know, traits, I, I loved that loved hearing about the, the guardians of the galaxy reference there. Um, you know, I, I loved hearing about the artwork, um, right. So the inspiration, uh, you know, from some different cartoons. So this was a fun interview and a exciting project, uh, with a lot to come back.Absolutely. Yeah. You know, it's great to see these authentic projects that are really here for the community and not just trying to, you know, cash, grab everything. You can see it in the way they represent themselves and make the artists who doesn't own any NFTs. Who'd rather, you know, give his SVS to someone else that can be a part of the community.Um, really great guys, really great community. I'm excited for them. And I cannot wait to see the progression over the next couple of months. Yeah. Definitely. I can't even get all these comments up on the screen cause they're coming in fast. Um, only fangs also got a call out here, mass that we should come join one of the AMA.So, uh, we might have to try to set that up with SBS. So let's mass. Uh, another great interview here. We got more great interviews coming up this week before we leave today. Um, let's get into some news and headlines, right? We didn't do a show last week. So we got a full week, but also we saw, you know, the NFT market, uh, trading a little bit slower.Right? So, uh, we, we still have some big news out there though, but the thing we always like to start with brightest, the top 10 weekly sales volume leaders. So I do this article for Benzinga every Sunday and it's based on data from crypto slam, which tracks NFT sales via. So no surprise mass. I know you're not going to be surprised by this one.Number one in sales volume last week, ACCE infinity, $113.2 million in sales volume, and then followed by crypto punk sport, a yacht club, and then a couple of projects on the wax block chain, which actually was a surprise farming, tales and farming world then followed by art blocks. We of course had, you know, a snow fro from art blacks on the show two weeks ago.And then, uh, the one I want to talk about here though, eighth place last week up 125% in sales volume. Uh she's right. This was the project that launched using dose killer. Um, also known as leash, which is the second coin in the sheet. And ecosystem system, which we've seen, you know, S H I B the coin absolutely ripping.So this was a 10,000 Ft project. It had a sliding scale for the, for the pricing mass. I don't know if you saw that the first 3000 for 0.1, ease the next 5,000 per 0.2 and the last 2000 for 0.3. And if you own the leash, you got early access to this, it sold out pretty fast. We saw high gas. But this was in mid-October and now the floor price on this project has, has ripped.I mean, when I wrote about it, it was 1.7. Then I did an article. It was 1.9. And when I looked today, 2.25 east floor now on , um, and the top sales, we had two 50 east to sales. Um, if we can get those up on screen, the Batman and the iron man based shimbashi there it is right there, mass. Uh, that's pretty cool.Did you know this project mass? And what do you think about a Shabbos she's here? You think? Because it's the first really one tied to, um, you know, the, the ship coin that it's getting all this attention, all of a sudden, you know, it's funny. I heard it. I didn't really look into it till right now. These are pretty cool.And I do like the connection to the Sheba coin. Um, Yeah. I mean, it's holding its price fairly well. And as far as art goes, those are, they're pretty cute. They fit that PFP style. That's a trending right now. Um, I like them. Yeah. I mean, this should have been one where I think everyone could have predicted right.As ship gets hot, it looks like this NFT project is going to follow along. So it's definitely on my watch list, uh, based on the strong community behind the coin. Absolutely. You know, so speaking of community and if T Fest, you know, it starting this week or this weekend it's been going on. So I don't know if you guys saw the board ape yacht club, they had an actual.And, you know, the party looked really awesome. You know, people were partying on the yacht. It's great to see the community come together. Um, there's a couple of videos and pictures on Twitter and man, I have FOMO from it. It just, it just looks like a great time. It does, it looks like a full-on party. Right.And I really, yeah. You know, I, I had some big FOMO mez, uh, you know, not being able to be there and we, we saw it, not just board apes, right. But a bunch of different MFT projects, you know, just really rallying around this, this event. Right. Bringing your community together, bringing your teams there to meet your community.And then, yeah, I mean, who could forget the, the party on the yacht, right board, a yacht club, a full-on party on the yacht. Also, I saw some, uh, billboards, right? We always talk about, you know, the, the times square billboards, right. That costs a lot of money, but get a ton of eyeballs on them. We saw some NFTs featured on those billboards.Um, I know our friends from robotics were actually on those billboards, uh, throughout the event. And I know that they traveled to New York as well. So, uh, there, there it is right there on the billboard, uh, shout out to the robotics. Okay. You know, I wonder if this starts scaling up to like a comic con style, you know, as the years go by, you know, people come with their communities, they represent, you know, the board apes or bottles, cool cats.And it's just a cool time meeting people in real life when we just talk digitally every day. So I love saying it. Yeah. I think it definitely a trend to watch. The, the big question is, you know, will it be, you know, You know, for NFTs all together, will it be for one event at a time where we see some regional events as well?Right. And that's something with Comicons as you kind of see them spread out throughout the country, you know, are the big cities like New York, uh, you know, big meeting places like Las Vegas, are those going to be the places, you know, to host these events, but exciting times, uh, for, for meetups and, and speaking of board eight yacht club mass, I don't know if you saw this, but it, you know, the cover of rolling stone, right?We, we talked recently about cool cats getting a collaboration with time magazine. Now you have board ape yacht club on the cover of rolling stone. I mean, and a full featured article inside the magazine talking about this. If, if you're out there and you didn't think NFTs were mainstream yet, I mean, if you're a musician, you always dream about being on the cover of rolling stone and here you have now an NFTE on it.What do you think is this is a sweet looking cover. I mean, it looks awesome straight up the board API cover, like the rock stars of the NFC world and this, you know, rolling stone cover kind of a embraces that I thought it was really cool. I love the cover. Um, I love seeing more people, you know, by apes, I saw a couple of rappers, you know, they made it their profile picture.Um, so again, we see more and more celebs start buying these profile pictures and making it, you know, their identity. I think it's great. Definitely. So speaking of, you know, we talked a little bit earlier with SBS. Discord hacks. You know, there's been a lot of discord hacks, and I think we should talk about, you know, what to avoid.You know, when these projects do get hacked by, you know, however they're getting hacked, you know, what's happening is they're posting a link and people are minting through a fake website and just sending them Eve and they're just rug polling. So, you know, what are, what are the best tips that we can recommend Chris, for people watching to avoid?You know, these, these scams that are happening consistently now? Yeah. I mean, I really loved hearing from the SVS team, right? Talking about, you know, the, the discord safety. And I think the biggest thing, anyone who's been in discord for a while, you see the sheer volume of messages that you get sometimes, right?And a lot of them are invite link spam, right? Where people need, you know, a certain number of invites to get on the white list of a project. Um, you know, those aren't necessarily a, you know, a. Right at someone, you know, most likely trying to get you to join a discord, but also remember that those links are coming from someone you've never met.Um, so I would always caution that, you know, I would try to join a discord, find a community, and you can talk about upcoming projects there. And, you know, it's a lot safer rather than just clicking on links from people. Then the other big thing, you know, as, uh, Megan Wolf said, right, is that most of these projects, their announcement channel, right?It's the one that's locked just to the admin and pay attention to that. Right. They're going to update and they're going to say, Hey, this is our mint date, right? This is when we're going to mint. If all of a sudden, you know, you're getting messages saying, Hey, minting is live. And it's three days before the project's supposed to mint.That should be an immediate red flag. Right. Unless if it was a now. And you really know that that's true. It's not a stealth drop, right? This is someone looking for you to connect your wallet to that site. And, you know, unfortunately you could be a victim in this way, so I would stay away from the messages you get in discord and make sure you're following and know that it is the admins posting in announcement channels, um, to stay safe.Absolutely. You know, and they try to get you to mint emotionally, right? They create this sort of FOMO of mint now, you know, stealth drop, you know, get right away. So you don't really think about it twice. And I've realized that now, especially since the market has been slower, is we should take our time when we mint.We shouldn't just rush into things just because, you know, you get the sense of FOMO. It's okay to miss things, you know, especially considering the environment we're in, where, you know, there's so many scams going on on day to day basis. Take your time. Do your research. You know, there's always opportunities out there.Don't ever feel like you're missing out because we've seen people. You know, a substantial amounts of Eve coming into the NFT world and imagine if they're new, they're more susceptible to it. And they may just have a bad experience and not come back, you know? Yeah. And that's the unfortunate part. Matt has you, you hit it right on the, on the head there at the end, right?Is the most likely victims of this are the newer people. And with that being said, it could mean two things, either a they're probably don't have a ton of liquidity. Right. So if they mint out on one of these fake projects, they might not have money left to get into other projects. And then on the flip side, it also may turn them away from NFTs completely.Right. I mean, if I got hacked, if I was victim, I mean, I might just not want to pay attention to NFTs anymore. Right. Because it's a, you know, an unsafe market, so it's important. And that's why we try to educate people on the show. Um, so great insights, you know, from us in the education, but also you heard it directly from a team today.Right? So great segment there. Mass. I want to talk a little bit about some of the major brands, right? So we just mentioned, you know, rolling stone of course, having an NFT on their cover. But aside from that, we're seeing major brands actually launch NFTs now, and this is something that we thought was coming, you know, for months, right?Some of these big media companies monetizing their intellectual property. So Disney announced a collaboration with ViiV right. They're going to launch NFTs from star wars, Pixar, Marvel, and Disney characters. Um, you know, on that leading mobile platform, we have Hasbro is launching power ranger at FTS, right?Uh, capitalizing on that brand that they have. Mattel which owns hot wheels. They're launching hot wheels NFTs, right? Similar to Funko where you collect the digital, um, you know, the NFTs. And if you get a certain rarity, you actually get the physical version of the hot wheel as well, which is what Funko did.Right? If you got the chase version, you get mail, they physical Funko that you can only get from the NFT collection. And then mass, we got news this week, that one of the largest companies, most well-known brands in the world. Right. McDonald's McDonald's is getting into the NFT game. There it is the MC rib NFT, and these are limited.You can't just go and buy these. They started a sweepstakes, um, today through November 7th, where you can enter and only 10 people will be awarded this NFT. I'm going to go ahead and drop the article I wrote on this, in the chat. So if you're interested, um, you can see how you can possibly, uh, you know, when one of those NFTs also on screen, you can see right now the rules and how to enter, but mass, those are some big names, right?Disney, Mattel, Hasbro. And now McDonald's, I mean, it looks like we are going to make it right. Absolutely. I love seeing it. And I definitely retweeted that post and shout. You know, if we win, I already told our chick, I'm taking her out to get my grips. So hopefully there you go. There's the cloud right there with the mic rib, NFT.Think of all that you can do with that. I love that. Exactly. Um, so moving on, Chris, I don't know if you saw last week, there was a huge sale for a crypto punk. Um, there was a crypto punk that was purchased for $530 million last Thursday night. So this broke headlines on Twitter, right? So we saw that everyone was like, whoa, freaking out.But crypto Twitter was quick to point out that the sale was from authentic crypto punk, 9, 9, 9, 9, 8. Uh, so yeah, they, they kind of pointed out that it was, they sold it to themselves. They were able to get alone. Uh, they paid it back right after the sale and it just kind of created, it made headlines and it created this new, all time high price for the crypto.Uh, what do we think about that? Yeah, I mean, th this, I think is the unfortunate side of NFTs, right. And, you know, we see it in crypto. We see it in NFTs where there's always going to be talks about, you know, regulation. And I don't love seeing this cause I think it draws more attention to possibly getting regulation involved, which is one of the things that's been nice about, you know, NFTs, you know, being able to, to operate on their own.But I mean, a huge red flag, right? That this was a record price of over 124,000 a theory. Um, when the previous record for crypto punks was 4,200 a theory, I mean, that's a huge jump. We've seen some records this year, but not of this level. Um, but on the flip side, We did see crypto punks trending on Twitter.So we did get some attention to NFTs, but I think unfortunately it was the wrong kind of attention. Um, I just, I didn't love this a headline, a news. Cause again, I think it's a, a bigger negative for the space than I would've liked to see. Absolutely. Yeah. I saw a couple, you know, people on YouTube that don't normally talk about NFTs bringing us up and you know, they don't understand.And if T's, and what they were saying is just kind of looks, it's a bad look, you know, from someone on the outside, looking in, I see it as a publicity stunt, they wanted people to talk about their specific punk. Um, but yeah, it's not a great look overall, but interestingly, the. Yeah. And then I actually see a comment here, uh, on that note from a TEALS peels in the chat, I did actually see this headline as well, mass, that there was a punk listed for 4.4 EAs, um, on a most likely fat finger.Um, but that is another topic too. We saw this with board ape, where there was one sold for a significantly low price. And the question is, you know, is it a fat finger or is it a possible tax wash sale? So there's kind of this debate going on. What do you think of the low prices here? Is that a fat finger or is that a, a tax, uh, benefit here, man?And it's just, it's hard to say, but I can see the benefits of, uh, you know, from a tax perspective, you know, you accidentally fat finger and someone else buys it. You know, we don't know who that someone else is. That's where the mystery lies. Um, I would hate it for it to be a fat finger cause that would really hurt.I'm not sure, but both suck. Definitely. And then maths, uh, another interesting topic and we could probably go on this one for a long time too, but just, uh, for anyone out there who doesn't know, we saw the floor price of an NFT project, uh, get pretty much wiped out over the last 24 to 48 hours. And that is jungle freaks.So this was a highly anticipated project. And one of the big reasons that people were drawn into this was that, uh, a former artist for hustler was behind the artwork for this project. And we also saw a lot of, uh, you know, celebrities and NFT, you know, influencers, let's say right rally behind this project before the mint.So w the floor price went up a ton last night. It actually hits 0.15. Um, it looks like it's recovered a little bit to 0.3. But the reason was because decades ago, the artist who is attached to this project, uh, George, Tracy, , uh, he drew some rather, um, let's call them racist cartoons. Right. And I don't want to get into the debate of, you know, what makes a racist cartoon, but the, the debate I wanted to get into is, you know, how much influence one person can have on a project.Um, you mentioned it a little bit during the interview, Matt, you know, when developers leap from one project to the next, what it can do to a floor price and the community. Right. Well, what about something like this, where now there is just a negative cloud over this project? Can it recover or can one person, you know, ultimately just, just do them an NFT, you know, It's I think we still see volatility in this project.We'll see some highs and lows because there's just so much money to be made. And, you know, people can ski the, the, the, the, the narrative, however, it benefits them monetarily. Right? So I'm sure people holding this project, they're trying their best to, you know, damage control it. As soon as they salad, they may switch sides.But I will say that I don't, you know, anything that's, you know, racist towards anything should be, it's something I don't mess with. So I personally will not, you know, touch that, but I do see, thank people will still, uh, take the opportunity to buy and sell this project. Yeah, that's, that's a great point.Right? And it turns into a moral one. For some people I I'm with you, right. Where I just kind of want to distance myself from this project. I was never in it. Um, but you know, eh, here in the stock market world, we talk about buying the dip, right. And that's a term that passed on to cryptocurrency and now NFTs, and you could have bought the dip yesterday.But again, I just don't know if this project is going to have lasting power now with this negativity and, and a lot of the NFT influencers that were involved with this project, they've also distanced themselves, which, you know, isn't a great look. So, uh, um, we, we wish the best for teams, but, you know, I just don't know if this one is going to have a, as bright of a future as originally predicted exactly.You know, and the big thing with crypto and NFTs decentralized and, you know, kind of against cancel culture. You know, I do think that we all can all make the decision, whether we agree with it or not. I personally don't, I won't buy the project. I won't talk about the project, but you know, people are still free to do what they want, so we will see what happens.But yeah, it's unfortunate. Always do your research is what I'll say. You know, you can figure it out, cause I'm sure if you Google the artists, you know, how quick was it to find that, you know, so people may have not looked because again, monetarily incentivized, I'm not sure, but always do your research. Um, and other news though, Chris, it theory I'm hit an all time high today, man.It just keeps on pushing gas keeps going high. Oh man, what is going on? Yeah, I mean, we, we talked about this weeks ago, right? How a theory I'm hitting all time highs. Great. For anyone who's invested in a theory of bad for the NFT market. Right. And you heard Wolf and Meg talk about that too. Right? How, when the price of a theory goes up, you know, impacts the prices of NFTs, right?Because the majority of them are based in ease. I think until a pullback happens in Eve, I think we're just going to kind of see this current NFTE cycle happening, right. Where people don't necessarily want to mint new projects and sacrifice their. When he could be headed to 5,000 sooner than later, uh, what do you think mass, you know, uh, how close are we to 5,000?You know, and what does a pullback possibly mean for, for NFT? You know, for me personally, eat is eat for me still, you know, unless I plan to take profits Eve one eighth is one eighth. What I think the biggest problem is is the gas, right? The problem with the gas is that anytime you try to mint something, buy something, sell something, you're paying this enormous amount.That's not going to the dev. That's not going to the team. It's just, you know, being paid in gas fees. And I think that's been such a big disruptor in the NFT market so far. I mean, we've seen gas stay at over a hundred for the last week and a half or so. Um, but I do hope that he does stabilize and again, we're seeing what's happening.You know, we've never really been in this situation before. Hopefully eats stabilizes gas comes down a bit. Um, and then we can start seeing the real, you know, market demand for NFTE. Uh, when, when Eve two, man, we've been hearing about this for awhile for a long time, right? Yeah. The actually going to happen.And, you know, with that being said in the high gas prices, mass, I think that's something where, again, some of these other coins and platforms, like if they could really launch a great project that can, you know, eliminate gas fees or lower them, now's the time to take a theory. I'm head-on because I think you could win some fans.Um, you know, I prefer the east based NFTs cause that's where I've always been. But I know some of these other platforms, you know, have lower gas fees. Um, but man gas, gas is brutal out there. It is, man. I do hope that we see Eve too sometime. I mean she in the next hopefully year, um, but Eve is the place to be, you know, the reason we're all still here in the eighth world and that's the dominant factor it's because it's the place to be.It's where the top artists top projects are. So hopefully we do find a solution for this, but congratulations to anybody holding a theory them for the last, I mean, I remember it was $600 last year, you know, about a year ago. So congratulations. It's a great time to be in the crypto space. Great time to be in the NFT space.Uh, I'm excited for 2022, definitely. Well, mass. I love our community and our fans out here. I don't know if you saw this, uh, this comment here. Um, I'll just throw that up there on the screen again, not to start a debate about McDonald's, but a shout out to hacks in the chat for that great comment on the McRib NFT.That's going to do it for today's show. And as I said, we we've got some great interviews lined up and we actually welcome back to Morrow and we're back a team that we've had on before. And I know there's some loyal fans out there. May I ask who's going to be on the roadmap tomorrow, tomorrow. That's a great point.I'm actually not sure I haven't checked it. Who is going to be on, so we are welcoming back crypto dad, right? So the dad team, we saw moms, right. The free mint of moms. So we'll be able to talk about moms and also what's ahead on the roadmap. So a very exciting one looking forward to this one. I own a couple of dads and a couple of moms still.Um, so I'm excited. Um, but I know we will have a lively chat like we did before. Oh, yeah, one of the best communities from the get-go. Um, I'm curious to hear their perspective now that we've been in somewhat of a bearish market for the last couple of weeks. So awesome. Well guys, that is going to do it for us today.Again, we had the team from SV S on shout out to MIG and Wolf for joining us on the show. Great insight into their project, the artwork. I mean, one of the most well-known artists in the NFT space now in MIG, um, we also got to hear their thoughts on the NFT market overall, right. And discord safety. I thought that was very, very important.We don't always get that behind the scenes from the teams. So shout out to them and shout out to all of you in the chat, or if you are listening, this is also available on podcast. Um, so shout out to anyone or, you know, listening to them. As a podcast, if you are, you know, let us know you can reach out at Benzinga.Um, and we would love to hear from you if you are loving the podcast, but that is going to do it for

Aaron Levant is the CEO of NTWRK. He's one of the most exciting builders at the intersection of fashion, culture, events, and media. We discuss launching a profitable car magazine at age 9, pitching Marc Ecko on ComplexCon, raising tens of millions for NTWRK from star investors like Jimmy Iovine and LeBron, being "oppositionally defiant", and how he thinks about his career in thirds.Subscribe to our newsletter. We explore the intersection of media, technology, and commerce: sign-up linkLearn more about our market research and executive advisory: RockWater websiteFollow The Come Up on Twitter: @TCUpodEmail us: tcupod@wearerockwater.com---EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:Chris Erwin:Hi, I'm Chris Erwin. Welcome to The Come Up. A podast that interviews entrerepreneurs and leaders. Aaron Levant:This is a common theme in my career, which some people say ignorance is bliss, I like to say ignorance is rich. What I mean by that is it's like every single thing I've done I don't know anything about. And when you know too much about something, you become institutionalized with fear. It's because I knew nothing about putting on an event or a trade show, I wasn't scared of it. I just did it, and didn't think about it that much. It just happened, and it was luckily successful. Chris Erwin:This week's episode features Aaron Levant, the CEO and founder of NTWRK. Aaron is one of the most exciting builders at the intersection of fashion, culture, events, and media, and he started super early. At just nine years old, Aaron used picture cutouts and a Xerox machine to launch a car mag, and it was profitable. He sold copies to friends at school and advertising to neighbors. Then in his early 20s, Aaron launched a fashion trade show, which he sold to a major exhibition company. There, Aaron had mastered the biggest experiential businesses of the past decade, like when he pitched Marc Ecko on ComplexCon. But Aaron's not just a builder, he's also operationally defiant. He doesn't follow norms and believes that lack of experience is major advantage in launching startups. This mindset fuels Aaron's current business, NTWRK, which powers shopping at the speed of culture. NTWRK is hands down one of the hottest players in content and e-commerce and has attracted backers like Jimmy Iovine, LeBron, Drake, Foot Locker and many more. Now, Aaron's story is remarkable but his character is more impressive. He's unconventional, uplifting, and so grounded. That plus hearing him talk about his future plans for NTWRK and how he thinks about his career in thirds makes for a must-listen. All right, let's get into it. Chris Erwin:Tell me a little bit about growing up in the valley, your household, and what your parents were like. Aaron Levant:Valley here in San Fernando Valley in LA is a nice place to grow up. A little bit of suburbia, very, very close to LA. My parents were amazing people who were very creatively inclined. My dad was in the entertainment business and spent a long time as a writer, television shows, and things like that. So I'd say I grew up in a pretty creative household. My mom actually had a little independent clothing label in the '80s, so I had some adjacency to the apparel business that I properly didn't even realize until years later, but my mom was always involved in that. My parents were very into pop art, into pop culture. My dad's a huge toy collector, he has 50,000 toys. So this affinity for pop culture is something I've been growing up around my whole life. Chris Erwin:Between your father's toy collection and then also being a writer in the entertainment and your mother in commerce, the whole new shoppable entertainment, starting to get where it comes from pretty early for you. When you were growing up, did you think, "oh, yeah, I want to go into Hollywood. I want to be like my dad or I want to do what my mom does." Was that going through your mind at all? Aaron Levant:No, never. I mean, I had no interest in doing anything my dad did. I would say, like most people, probably I wanted to do the opposite of what they did so I never ended... Even though maybe what I'm doing has some connection to the entertainment industry now, I was always going the other way. I would say... I never met him, but my mom's father, my maternal grandfather who I never met, was very entrepreneurial. I felt like I've always had something ingrained in me to be entrepreneurial, which different than what my dad did and being interested in businesses where my dad has no interest in business whatsoever. He almost despises it to a certain extent. So I would say I rebelled against anything my parents did and wanted to do my own thing, for whatever reason. Chris Erwin:What type of businesses was your grandfather building back in the day? Aaron Levant:He was in real estate, which is something I didn't get involved in either. Again, I hear this all by way of my mom and my grandmother, but he was just very entrepreneurial from a young age, always trying stuff, apparently a very, very smart guy. So, I try to think that's where I get some of smarts from, because my dad is just not a business inclined guy. He's all about being creative. Chris Erwin:I think you need both sides of the brain for what you're building right now, so it makes sense. Aaron Levant:Definitely. Chris Erwin:Your entrepreneurial ambitions, my understanding is that they manifested pretty early. I think you put together a car magazine at eight or nine years old, right? And then you were selling that to some of your school friends? Aaron Levant:I still am and was back then interested in cars. Sometime around maybe nine or 10 years old, I had made a car magazine through just, I guess what now be a zine, just cutting up a bunch of other great images of cars from books and going to Kinkos or what was Kinkos now FedEx now, and photocopying it. I went to my next door neighbor who was an Arby's franchisee, and I sold him the back cover advertisement for I don't even remember the price. But I just knew that my magazine wasn't going to be legit unless there was an ad on the back cover. So I guess I tout that as my very first business deal, and then I was selling that magazine at school and at camp. For whatever reason, I just felt like I was always trying to do stuff like that and did various random projects as early on as that all the way till I was 16 when I started doing some form of real business, I guess. Chris Erwin:So it felt like in your pretty early on was that you just wanted to do stuff. You wanted to create, you wanted to try things out. There's just this hustler inside, right? Aaron Levant:Yeah. I'm not even sure where it came, but it just felt natural to me to try to create and try to monetize out those creations. Chris Erwin:I've also heard you describe yourself as you go through your teens years as being, and I think that's persist through today, oppositionally defiant. Is that right? Aaron Levant:Yeah, I think that's an actual word from the DSM, which I think is the book that they use in psychology to define what's wrong with you. It's like the dictionary of mental illnesses. I think my mom pointed that out to me very early, which is I had a tendency to go against authority, for good or bad reason, whether that's kicking the principal in the leg at the first of preschool or doing any number of antics I did through my elementary and short high school years. I always felt the need to go the other direction and go against the grain, against authority. And that was, for some reason, instilled in me, and I think a lot of it had to do with the fact I just wasn't interested in being in school or be at camp or being anywhere there was authority figures trying to tell you what to do and how to dictate what you do with your time. It was all very boring and mundane for me. Chris Erwin:Through that resistance earlier on, did that also attract these types of friends and people that you wanted around you? Were you becoming a leader amongst the peer groups saying, "I'm going to do things differently." And people were like, "Yeah, we're going to follow Aaron?" Aaron Levant:I would say, as you know, depends. As I was younger, no, I think most of the kids I was hanging out with were pretty nice and I was the jerk in the group. As I got older, I probably attracted the wrong people, and then I spun out of that when I was 18 years old. But no, I was just always doing wrong for myself, not necessarily with others or for others. Chris Erwin:My understanding is that in 10th grade you get out of high school and then you start interning at GAT. Tell us what was GAT, and why was that interesting to you at the time? Aaron Levant:Probably one of the second or third business adventures was I was really passionate about design and graffiti art and street art all through the '90s when I was a young teen. And being interested in that design and graffiti art and being interested in business, I was trying to figure out how do you make a living out of doing you're passionate about. And then it dawned on me that all graffiti writers were working at GAT, particularly the main place and many other street wear companies doing the T-shirt designs. If you're a great graffiti artist, you're doing topography, it's a great transition into designing t-shirts and make a living for yourselves, so I said, "Okay." I started to develop an affinity to these companies. Aaron Levant:Randomly, a guy I grew up with, Tal Cooperman, introduced me to the owner of that company. Through meeting him a few times, he ended up offering me an internship, and GAT was the definitive late '80s, mid-90s street wear brand in LA. It was such a great opportunity for me not only get close to this company and learn a trade that I was interested in but also be around some of my favorite artists and learn from them and learn a craft which at the time was graphic design for me in the beginning of my career. Chris Erwin:Going back to that moment, were you like, "Yeah, this is the logical progression for how I get into my career."? Or were you a little bit shocked as, "Oh, I wasn't expecting to go down this path, but... "? Aaron Levant:I don't know if I was thinking in terms of it as a career, I was just so excited. I was such a fan, right? Chris Erwin:Yeah. Aaron Levant:I forget the days when I was legitimately just a fan of things. I was just so excited to be there, and again, it just became a career but I kind of stumbled into it. I was just genuinely happy to be there just to be a fly on the wall and be a fan. And then over a series of years of sticking around there interning, having low level positions, I turned around a few years later and I'd worked my way up to being a partner in the company. And then I was like, "Wow, well, I guess I turned this genuine interest or passion into a job." Chris Erwin:What do you think helped you rise to become partner so quickly? Aaron Levant:I think being willing to do anything, being willing to work for free in the beginning and then almost nothing, minimum wage for years after that. You don't have any baggage, I'm like, "I was this important guy in this company, so I will the trash out, right? I will do literally anything." He's like, "Go drive to Orange County and pick up this sample." I'm like, "Great, I'll great there right now." Whatever I could do. I was waiting for someone to hand me the ball, and I would just run with it. I was so excited. There's a famous Biggie Smalls or Notorious B.I.G line where he's talking about you got to treat every day like you're an intern, like it's your first day on the job, right? Chris Erwin:Yeah. Aaron Levant:I think I genuinely carried that through well beyond the time I was an intern. I think that is what propelled me up, that every time there was an opportunity I raised my hand and ran at it enthusiastically where other people may not have. Chris Erwin:Passion was there and it feels like you were just having fun. You were like, "This is cool. This is where I want to be. I'll work for whatever, but I'm doing this with cool people, and I'm all in." Aaron Levant:At that time, most of my friends were still in high school and then eventually college, and I was well on my way to making my career, doing cool stuff, traveling around the country, so it was exciting. Chris Erwin:Fast forward a bit, and let's talk about the Agenda Show, which was a trade show I think that you were a part of for almost around 15 years. Tell us about what that was and how that came to be. Aaron Levant:Through my job at GAT, the founder of GAT was pretty much my first mentor, and I have a series of mentors in my life that really help shape my career and my life, we would go with Luis to a lot of trade shows with his clothing brand. First it was this big show in Las Vegas called the Magic Show, which is the biggest fashion trade show in the world at the time. It would get over 100,000 attendees. We would go to the show in San Diego called the ASR Show, Action Sports Retail. These were B2B marketplaces in the fashion industry for different segments. We would go out as an attendee, as an exhibitor if you will. We'd buy a booth, and we'd sell our wares to the retailers traveling from all over the world. Aaron Levant:In probably 2001, I had gone to New York to a really small show called To Be Confirmed, which was some guys from London. They had just rented a loft in Soho instead of some huge show at the Javits Center or the Las Vegas Smith Center, they just got a loft and put up some rolling racks and some table and chairs. They had a cool DJ and bar. I said, "This is pretty fucking cool." I looked around, I was thinking, "How hard is this? You rent an empty room and have some people throw ups some rolling racks and you send out a postcard, you invite some buyers and make a cool ambience." I'm like, "I like this." Aaron Levant:That was in the back of my mind. At that time, me and Luis were actually throwing some parties in our warehouse in Downtown LA called Agenda: Art, Music, Beer. It was just something we did as a fun thing to promote our clothing companies. And in 2002, in September, after having a bad experience at the ASR Trade Show, I said to Luis, I said, "Let's turn our Agenda parties into a fashion trade show as a competitor to the BIG Action Sport Show in San Diego." And he said, "Yeah." And in January 2003, a few months later, we rented a Thai restaurant across the street from the BIG Show, invited 30 of our friends. We charged $500 a booth. We weren't really doing it to make money, we just thought we didn't have to pay the other guys $5,000 and we could provide a service to our friends and just do something cool. It just organically just happened. But it was this small little B2B fashion trade show for independent brands that I did when I was 18, 19 years old. Chris Erwin:When you had that bad experience at ASR, you have the conversations and you're like, "All right, we're going to launch the Agenda Trade show," Were you excited, were you nervous, were you scared or was it like, "No, I got this. Of course, we're going to crush this."? What was going through your head? Aaron Levant:This is a common theme in my career, which some people say ignorance is bliss, I like to say ignorance is rich. What I mean by that is it's like every single thing I've done, I don't know anything about. When you know too much about something, you become institutionalized with fear or they say paralysis by analysis, right? Chris Erwin:Yes. Aaron Levant:Because I knew nothing putting on an event or trade show, I wasn't scared of it, and I didn't know to be corky or to be fearful or have any expectation. I just did it and didn't think about it that much. It just happened, and it was luckily successful, but I'm sure it wasn't perfectly executed or anything that way. But I just run into things head first, run into a lot of problems, and don't really do too much research in front end because when you do you seem to scare yourself or psyche yourself out of doing whatever that said thing you're going to do. And I've done that a few times in my career where I don't know anything about it, and I've been successful than sometimes people who do know something about it because they're institutionalized with fear. Chris Erwin:Institutionalized with fear, I really like that. I just wrote down ignorance is rich. I think that's a fantastic phrase. All right, so at Agenda, it seems that you go through a eight to 10 year period of expansion and then realizing, hey, we have to move the venue from San Diego to Long Beach and then into Vegas. You're collaborating but then you're also expanding and some new competition is coming. And there's a lot of details I'll probably skip over here, but along that journey, what are a couple of moments that really stand out to you? Aaron Levant:Three key things. One, I did the business completely independently, first with me and Luis and then later with me and my cousin. I still lived in my parent's house. Any business that people think about now in the world that we operate in, they raise capital, they raise seed money, they raise a Series A, they've got a burn rate. All these businesses have a finite amount of time if they're going to make it or not make it before they basically have to shut down operations or become profitable, right? Chris Erwin:Yeah. Aaron Levant:I didn't have that. I didn't even understand that as a concept, so I just kept going even when it was going good and not going bad. I carried that forward for so many years, so many times we weren't making money because we didn't really have many employees, I lived at home with my parents until I was 23 or something. It allowed us to push past the point where most businesses would have given up and go, "Oh, the margin isn't growing, or revenues aren't growing at the right rate." We had no analysis of the business. It was an overwhelming theme that allowed us to ever keep pushing forward, probably sillily at some points, to get to a point where we got actually really successful to then where we almost had to shut because the competition got so fierce. Aaron Levant:In that moment in 2009 when our business was on the brink of going out of business, I think the defining moment for us was we finally pushed further enough and had this organic growth trajectory over many, many years, almost six years at that point, that I met a guy, Roger Wyett and Paul Gomez from Nike and Hurley, and they offered us an opportunity to stop being the small show across the street from the BIG Show. And this was the big judo business moment for us, which was they said, "Hey, how about you step out of this role you're in as being the parasite... " Or I call it the little sucker fish that swims along on the shark. We're all this little cool thing happening across the street from these big behemoth thing. They said, "Why don't you come with us? You bring Agenda to the US Open of Surfing, which is the biggest action sports consumer event in the world. You should put your trade show in the middle of it, there's a half a million people that will be there." Aaron Levant:That was a big departure for us. We were in the verge of going out of business with this one business model we knew, but we were making money finally. And it was like this jump. It was like we had to take this leap off the cliff, and it was either going to work or we were going to be dead in the water. But we're almost going to be dead in the water anyway. So we made this jump and in one year of doing this our business grew 2,000% and we put ASR out of business, which is the company that been in business for 30-something years before that, owned by Nielsen Business Media. It was a huge company, established, respected company by all means. It was this moment where everything changed in our favor and it was almost unprecedented. Aaron Levant:So I think that was for me the real lesson there is to take those big risks, to do something that literally was going to sink the company or save the company and has inspired me to continue to do things that throughout my career. But without that moment, I wouldn't be sitting here today. I never would have done probably anything I've done after that. Chris Erwin:I think it's a takeaway that I'm definitely hearing, it just goes back to what you said, again, like ignorance is rich, because you weren't looking at the business of saying, "What are the right metrics and all of that?" Where if you were looking at it through lens or had different training up to that point you would have shut it down. But you were building a brand, and you guys were just like, "No, there's something here. There's something here." Sometimes early stage businesses, they just need longevity, like stick around enough because most just shut down within three to five years. But with longevity, other opportunities or other ways of thinking about what you have and how it can work and this duo coming from Nike Hurley and saying, "Hey, guys, here's another approach." And you're like, "That's a great idea, let's do it." And it just happens. Aaron Levant:Yeah, that one moment literally defined everything for me professionally, financially. But if we didn't make that far, we never would have had that chance. Even in that moment it was risky, the best risk I ever take. Chris Erwin:So it continues to grow and then you eventually sell to Reed Exhibitions in 2012. What was the reason for that? Aaron Levant:Up until that point, from 2003 end of 2012, we sold the end of December, the day before Christmas we signed the papers, the businesses was completely built independently, no loans from family, no lines of credit, no investors, no nothing. It was just me and my cousin. We owned 100% of the business. We financed the business. It was starting to get big. We were doing millions and millions of dollars in business, tens of millions and was making real EBITDA, but it was one of those things that it's risky and there's our cashflow that was on the line, right? We had built something that was fairly profitable and weighed the risk of... We had just gotten out of the 2008 financial crisis. We saw a lot of bad stuff happen with that. I lived through seeing what happens during 9/11, right? There's all these things that come in. Aaron Levant:We're on this incredible ride, we're making so much money, and we just did the math and said, "Hey, we can continue to do this on our way and carry the risk and something can happen and we can all the value, or we can extrapolate the value now." And I think we did some quick backing up in that. We figured we'd make more money and a lower tax rate than we could in six years if we sold the businesses today, if we kept operating it, right? Chris Erwin:Yeah. Aaron Levant:And there's lots of unknowns in the next six years. Which I'm actually lucky because the business did down trend in the six years following that. It was a calculated financial risk, and I had a bigger vision for the company than my cousin did. He was very risk adverse, also because we owned it independently and it was all our own money and capital on the line. We were just operating four shows when we sold. I took it, after I sold it, to about 30 shows. He didn't want to go along with those things, so ultimately we sold. He exited the business, and I went with Reed and built a whole portfolio of new products, consumer-facing products, conferences, video products. I had a much bigger vision than what we were doing in this small mom-and-pop shop. So I think it really allowed us to take the financial risk off the table and set us up fairly well, but also allowed me to really chase the bigger vision that I had for the company. Chris Erwin:Speaking of risk appetite, it seems that there's this constant leveling up or laddering up where it's like, 'I'm going to try something, and then have a bigger win and then a bigger win and then next." Aaron Levant:It's called gambling. Chris Erwin:Got it. Aaron Levant:It's not a healthy- Chris Erwin:So yeah, the question is, was your risk appetite growing where you felt like, "Hey, as an entrepreneur, as a business leader, I'm increasingly capable and I want to take bigger bets."? Aaron Levant:Absolutely. In every situation in my career, if I had the opportunity to spend 100 I'd spend 100. My cousin would say, "Spend zero." We end up spending 50. It was a good yin yang balance, right? But at a certain point, when your business is hot and you have that moment, there's a reason they say, "Strike while the iron's hot." Right? Every time we had that, that's when I say, "Let's go. Let's double down. Let's quadruple down." He didn't want to go, and I think I've always been in favor of going. I've lost a lot too, don't get me wrong. I've had plenty of horrible ideas but, true believer, you're not going to get anywhere, you're not going to build anything meaningful, anything big by not doing that fairly often, by putting it on the line and rolling the dice on that. I'm a huge proponent of doing that as much as you can without being completely irresponsible, but you have to be slightly irresponsible. Chris Erwin:And maybe we'll get into this as you describe how you built the NTWRK executive team, but do you like having people around you that actually push you even harder and saying, "Yeah, that's a good idea, but here's even bigger, Aaron." Or do you like people that pull you back and then have debate about what's the best path forward? How do you like to build leadership around you? Aaron Levant:I think you got to mix of both. You've got some really good financial people that are helping me keep an eye on whatever that may be, the margin or the burn rate or things like that to make sure that I'm not completely unchecked and doing completely frivolous things. But, yeah, I mean, I think I love having people around me who are more aggressive, who have bigger goals, who are uninterested in doing small things, especially investors, right? You get that internally from staff, like my partner here Moksha Fitzgibbons who's the president of NTWRK, constantly pushing. I thought I was aggressive, he's more aggressive than I am, constantly pushing the envelope, trying to push us to do bigger, faster, be more aspirational. And then our investors who have done all the billion dollar businesses where they're like, "Yeah, that's cute what you're doing, but this doesn't interest us unless it gets X big." Aaron Levant:I love that kind of challenge because it makes me try to think bigger where what may be relative success to me on a scale of my career, to them is a blip on the radar. It aspires me to want to do bigger or to make a bigger impact and create larger brand awareness and to take that bigger Hail Mary pass if you will. I need those people around me constantly. Chris Erwin:All right, so at Reed, you sell Agenda to them but you continued to run the Agenda Trade Show. But then you're also responsible for... I think you launched 30 different events while you're there, including ComplexCon. I mean, I know you're always a dappler and doing different things, but it seems like you were all in on Agenda and now you've got a lot of different babies and children to take care of. How was that transition? Aaron Levant:Yeah. I mean, look, I had never finished high school, never went to college, getting to Reed was an amazing opportunity for me because I worked inside a publicly-traded company at a very senior level. It was like going to college, really learning to work in a structure. But also to them they're a $7 billion dollar company. It wasn't just interesting to buy this little portfolio for trade shows and sit on it, right? I had bigger aspirations, and we needed to make bigger to move the needle for them at a corporate level, so they encouraged my bold thinking and they had the finances to go after it. Aaron Levant:So we acquired a company called Capsule. We got in a joint venture with Complex on ComplexCon, which is super exciting. I launched a educational conference called the Agenda Emerge, which is like Ted Talks for fashion entrepreneurialism and a media brand around that. So all the above, every single way they could they would encourage me to go bigger, faster, think internationally, and really push my ideas to the brink of where they could go. Chris Erwin:What a great partnership because sometimes joining a bigger corporate, they want to throttle you. Things are more controlled, more measured. But it seems like for the type of leader you are and your ambitions, it was a great partnership that actually propelled you and gave you experience I think that was really setting you up for your next phase, which is taking a digital business which was Complex, which I know did start back in 2003 as a print magazine, but it became a huge digital business and then your role was like, "All right, how do we create an incredible RoL event for it. So talk about how ComplexCon came to be. I'm just curious, what was in that initial pitch? What were you thinking? Aaron Levant:The interesting part about selling my company to Reed is that they own all of the Comicons around the world. They own 500 major events, many of which are consumer facing and they really focus them around passionate fan communities, what they call fandom. So it's like packs for video games, New York Comicon, Star Wars Celebration. I learned about this event format, which is really new to me because I was in B2B, and I said, "I wonder if Agenda could become... " And this is also part of the inspiration for something like the Comicon for sneaker heads. Aaron Levant:But I realized that Agenda been building itself in the industry, we didn't have a consumer affinity. So I struggled to say, "How can Agenda do what Comicon's doing?" This light bulb went on in a conversation I was having with another one of my mentors, which is Marc Ecko the founder of Complex Media. We were at this event in LA, and I just said, "Well, why don't we get together and do ComplexCon." Right? Chris Erwin:Yeah. Aaron Levant:I said it almost in jest, and he's like, "Yeah, I like that. I like that." Funny standing there with him was Moksha Fitzgibbons who's now the president at NTWRK, and came over and Marc said, "Hey, tell Moksha what you just told me." I told him, they said, "We like that." And they generally encouraged. And then a week later I was in New York. I scrambled for a week, I put together this pitch deck. I got in the room with Rich Antoniello who was the CEO of Complex and Noah who was editor in chief, Marc, and Moksha, and I pitched them this deck. Aaron Levant:It was pretty basic. It just basically took the blueprint of Comic-Con and applied it to the brand of Complex. They all loved it. I was surprised because it was just such a bold, ambitious idea. We worked for two years from that point. That was January of 2015 I pitched them, we signed the contract in November of '15, and we launched in November of '16. The funniest part about that conversation which I'll tell you, which is everyone was around the table very engaged. Moksha was sitting on the coach. At very end of the presentation I thought I'd done a great job but he looks over from this Blackberry and says, "How much money are we going to make?" I go like, "Profit? You guys, Complex?" "Yeah." I said, "I don't think, $1 million." And he goes, "Do we really care about making $1 million?" I was so deflated at that point. I thought it wasn't going to happen because he was the Chief Revenue Officer, right? Chris Erwin:Yeah. Aaron Levant:I was like, "If we don't get his buy-in, this thing's never going to happen." But he actually got on board and was the biggest champion of the thing, and it was an amazing experience. But nothing more than saying, "Hey, let's create the Comic-Con, the fan culture, Superbowl, the world's fair for sneaker and street culture." Chris Erwin:The Agenda was a B2B trade show, this was targeting consumers. Where you anxious about, "Oh, wow, how am I going to drive the same type of traffic and hype and momentum around this event?"? Or was it, "No, I can do this. I'll figure it out, I've done it before."? Aaron Levant:Well, I think that's exactly what I was saying, that's why I didn't just end up doing call it AgendaCon, right? Complex had the consumer reach and the social media reach and the affinity with consumers, and I had the relationship with the brands and the exhibitors and the know-how in event production, so the marriage was beautiful in that sense. It was bringing my offline experience with their online marketing reach and bringing that. Of course, we did a lot more things that neither of us would do, market it ourself almost like a concept promoter, which is new to both of us. But it was the perfect marriage of their audience and our event expertize. That's really why it worked. Chris Erwin:Like you said, when you were at Reed, it was like your MBA. You were like the senior executive of a big public company but you were just doing deals, launching new businesses, and learning a lot about business as you went. This was probably a great change to learn of how can you create an event from a digital business but then really market it through all the paid and earned organic channels. Now thinking about where you in your career, that was probably a great learning experience for you. Aaron Levant:Absolutely, right? There's so many learnings in ComplexCon. I think the number one learning for me was as successful as the event was, the digital groundswell that the event created, call it organic customer acquisition, the earned media, that was so big that that was such an eye-opening experience for me, how much the physical world could influence the digital community so much more effectively than just trying to market to people digitally. That was really my big takeaway and a lot of the inspiration for wanting to leave and come join NTWRK. Chris Erwin:I know at ComplexCon now with $100 ticket prices and incredible curation of products, there are attendees who will spend days waiting in line so that they can get early access to the different product vendors, right? Did you guys see lines out the door in your first year of ComplexCon? Aaron Levant:Yeah, there was thousands of kids lined up around the corner at both sides of the convention center. We had a literal, and I mean this in the most literal sense, a stampede of kids pushing past security, knocking down full-grown security guards, extensions, police officers. People literally almost being trampled to death. It was actually scary. The second year we had people who were stowing away, like when people stow away in a ship. Chris Erwin:Yeah. Aaron Levant:We had kids who snuck in days before and were hiding in a broom closet so that they can get early access. The level of pandemonium around ComplexCon year one and two and three was just so insane. It was dangerous. There were actually people injured and it was also so amazing to see. I was almost trampled to death in the crowd were people fighting for Pharell sneakers at the Adidas booth. It was pretty insane the level that people go to but also I understand not only the passion and the fandom, but if you can buy a sneaker for let's say $120 and we sell it for 5,000 the next day, then you might be running full speed as well. Chris Erwin:Yeah. I imagine you seeing that probably flipped a switch inside you being like, "Well, look at this fan energy and the fandom. There has got to different ways that we can build this to be even bigger and then harness it both in online and real world environments." I think that probably leads, I think, in September 2017 you have a conversation with Jimmy Iovine that you're all starting to think through the new NTWRK business plan, so tell me about that moment. Aaron Levant:Jimmy and his son Jamie, who's my partner, had had a previous business in LA called Meltdown, which was a classic comic book stores. Out of this comic book store they were doing a YouTube show that was... call it QVC meets Comic-Con. It actually started to get a little energy and there was an article written in Forbes Magazine saying it was an innovative idea. They had put a little money into it and were trying to launch as a business and had some false starts. But the idea was there. I got interested with Jimmy around this idea that he was working on, which was the Meltdown thing. They said, "What are your thoughts on this?" It was a loose introductory meeting just to talk about this Meltdown concept. Aaron Levant:I saw it and I inherently understood it. I thought it was a great concept, but I had a little bit of a broader vision around what I thought NTWRK could be. We ultimately changed the name of the company and changed the focus to not just be Comic-Con pop culture focused, it will be a broader youth culture, sneakers, street wear, entertainment, gaming, right? Chris Erwin:Yeah. Aaron Levant:This idea of aggregating the most passionate fan audiences into a platform, procuring the most exclusive drops and having the actual talent who created them present it to you on a daily basis, I thought there was huge merit around it. Ultimately, that night I went home, and I wrote a business plan that ultimately ended up being verbatim what we're doing for NTWRK for Meltdown. I was still working at ReedPop at the time. I felt like over the course of the next few months the conversations I had with Jimmy and with Paul Wachter, who's chairman of our board and runs the investment fund, main seed advisors who funded our seed round, I saw one thing clearly. Not only do I think this was a great business idea but I thought for me I'd done a lot of things in my career, and I think ComplexCon was the pinnacle of my career, but I had the opportunity to come and jump on board and work with a group of people who had a bigger creative vision than I had. Aaron Levant:While I was at Reed, I was the crazy, creative one in the room, and in the conversation with Jimmy and these guys I was the one who was thinking small. They're the ones who had the big, crazy, creative vision. I liked that, where it putting me back on my back to level up. They had just sold Beats for three and a half billion or whatever that was, and they really are epitome of people who take passion around creative and brand and push it to that main stream level. I had relative success but not that level, right? I wanted to be in the midst of that type of greatness and learn from that to take my career to the next level. Chris Erwin:So this happens in September 2017 and then you raise seed round. When does that seed round close and when do you start being all in and focus on NTWRK? Aaron Levant:I quit ReedPop in February of 2018 and then worked on refining the business plan on NTWRK for a few months., and then in May of 2018 raised the seed round, and then we launched in beta in October of '18. From May to October built the team, built the kind of MVP product, and just worked on refining what the business was and what the brand was. Chris Erwin:How much did you raise in the seed round. Aaron Levant:15. Chris Erwin:15 million? Aaron Levant:Yeah. Chris Erwin:What type of team did you assembly around you? I think that was different because you're building a digital product, you hadn't done that before, right? Aaron Levant:Yeah, look, there's three things we do at NTWRK that I have almost no experience with, building technology, becoming a media company, and being a retail company in a way, right? I'd been adjacent to a lot of those things. I'd been on the boards of some companies that have done some of those things, but I had never done it. So that's other part of it, it was super exciting for me. Look, we had to hire a whole new team of people who... I prided myself in the event industry, if you want to hire someone, I knew who all the best people were. This was really easy for me. My Rolodex that was really strong. This was like going in unchartered territory so I had to figure out what I was doing and try to find the right people. I think it was a big challenge for me in a good way and challenged me to spend my network, no pun intended, and go out and find new groups of people to talk to. Aaron Levant:I never hire usually recruiters or people like that, I always do it through referrals. So this was a process, it was 24/7 process of trying to find new amazing people who came from other great amazing organizations. Chris Erwin:Who or what most helpful to you during that time? Was it your board, was it Jimmy? As you were being like, "Okay, I need to have a new muscle to hire these new leaders with capabilities that are unfamiliar to me," what was helpful? Aaron Levant:Yeah. I mean, look, everyone was helpful, ultimately just me pounding pavement, picking up the phone, and trying to... Spent a lot of time LinkedIn, just cold hitting people up. Sometimes great people come to you in interesting ways. Our CFO, COO who's still here today, Emerson, came from a referral for Guston who was the original owner of Meltdown, the comic bookstore. You wouldn't think the guy that has comic bookstore's going to find you a CFO, but he actually found us the best guy. Referral and just always going out there and telling everyone you know, whether it's your aunts, uncles, cousins, friends, colleagues what you're looking for and asking who they know and getting people to send you great people is honestly the best way. Aaron Levant:Everyone was helpful, the board, the internal staff, and me just literally going on LinkedIn like a crazy person and finding people who like they're impressive and just dropping them a cold line. And then I'd have to try and explain to them, "Hey, I want you to come to this company that doesn't exist, that I can't tell you a lot about yet, and it doesn't have anyone else working here. Are you interested?" That's always the fun processes, getting people to leave their careers. It isn't like I'm the founder of some billion dollar tech unicorn and this is my second thing, right? There is some selling involved here. Chris Erwin:But I think that you had had an amazing career to date. You had a pretty rockstar board instead of investors, so when most people heard your pitch, where they like, "Yeah, Aaron, this is exciting, I'm in."? If you were to say the biggest trepidation, people who hesitated, what was the number one reason? Aaron Levant:I would say every department but technology has been, I wouldn't say easy, but we could recruit people. Chris Erwin:Okay. Aaron Levant:Technology is by far the hardest thing because if you're an amazing engineer, if you're an amazing CTO, you're an amazing product person, there's nothing but options for you in this world. Everyone has the same pitch, amazing founders with an amazing backstory, who've had success before, amazing board and tons of money in the bank from some of the top VCs and private equity funds. So, in that case, even though we had a lot of those things, we were in no better footing than anyone else. If anything, we were a step backwards. So I feel like that was the hardest thing, and still is. I think we've come over that hump now. We finally recruited an amazing CTO here at NTWRK, which is Marko who previously led engineering at GOAT for the last six years before joining us, which obviously a very impressive business. But that's probably been the thing that took the longest amount of time. Chris Erwin:I just interviewed Christian, the president of Complex, and he said that what's unique about his team is that everyone there is a fan, either they like hip hop, they like street wear culture, they like music. Was there also a through line that you were bringing from like, "Hey, as I've built my career today and for the team that I know that's really going to exceed here, people need to love this intersection of pop culture and commerce entertainment."? Was that important to you? Aaron Levant:It's always been important to me. I would say it's become, depending on the role, some places more important. We need the foremost experts, authorities, thought leaders, test-makers in those field and people who are picking the merchandise, people who are having a consumer front facing role in our business and has an effect on what you see on screen and what our customer are consuming. Sometimes I would, in the past, I think it was an immature part of my leadership style, is that I would dismiss amazing people who could bring such value. They came from greatness, right? Some organizations have a culture of greatness and excellence, and I would dismiss those people because they weren't into what I was into. Aaron Levant:Often in my career until NTWRK I think overlooked some really amazing people that probably could have helped me along the way. So I think that could be a very arrogant thing to dismiss someone if they don't love sneakers. I don't even really love sneakers to be perfectly honest with you. I think it's both, you need a good mix of finding the best people who are the hardest workers, who are the smartest, who are going to challenge you and bring value to the business and finding the people who are going to help you keep on the center of culture, and blend those people together. Chris Erwin:Before moving into some specific work that you're actually doing at NTWRK and some of the partnerships and the launches, what did it feel like to go from a hustler entrepreneur to now a steward of capital? You had raised $15 million in the seed round, it's a big seed. I believe all your other businesses were bootstraps, you weren't representing investors. So what was that shift like for you? Aaron Levant:Everything I'd done until Reed was completely independently financed by me, and I treated those like real scrappy, scrappy, scrappy businesses, right? Chris Erwin:Yeah. Aaron Levant:I was fighting tooth or nail for everything down to what I was paying for an office chair. If someone tried to order a $50 office chair online, I'm like, "You can get it for $38 at Ikea." Those little things, right? Chris Erwin:Yeah. Aaron Levant:My cousin used to call it the million dollar loaf of bread. It's these little things that add up to all of a sudden you've spent a million and you're regretting it. So I was real scrappy in my entrepreneurial days. At Reed, I was scrappy but I definitely learned to be a shepherd of capital in that I was working a publicly-traded company and there's a lot of process there. So I think the two things really set me up well. I understood how to work with large amounts of money at Reed, and I understood how to be a scrappy entrepreneur in my whole previous career. I think I applied both of those things well here. And I went back to trying to be scrappy to the point where even sometimes the board would say, "Aaron, you're being a little too scrappy. You got to spend some money. We gave you all this money, you got to actually buy some Herman Miller chairs." Whatever the analogy is right? It's not all about chairs but I like to use that as the analogy for frivolous spending. Aaron Levant:Look, I feel every day utterly responsible for the investors who gave us money and the LPs for the funds that I need to deliver for them. I put that pressure on myself every day to an extreme extent that I need to return. Like, "Oh, this VCs getting money, whatever, it doesn't work out, one in 10, they'll get their money back." I don't think about it like that, and I hope nobody does who's a CEO. But I feel an absolute personal obligation to deliver minimum tenfold for everybody. Chris Erwin:For the investors who will listen to this, I think they're going to be very happy to hear that sentiment. What also comes out here is that these new investors like Jimmy and Warner Brothers Digital and LeBron also want speed. For a return on capital, it's like "Aaron, yes, being prudent is great, but just move fast. You're on to something and we're betting on you. If you're going to help build this market, and so speed is a major asset." I think that starts to show its face because then you raised pretty quickly after your seed, you then raise a 10 million series A in September of 2019. So that I think that is led by Live Nation and Foot Locker and Drake's also involved. At this point, what are you now building towards, and what are some of the key build highlights that are now setting you up for what we're going to talk about is where NTWRK going in the future? Aaron Levant:What we're really building for is to build the definitive marketplace for youth culture amongst the coolest personalities and pop culture goods, the most sought-after drops and releases across every category that we think is cool, right? Chris Erwin:Yeah. Aaron Levant:And that's a pretty expansive view. I think we aggregating, much like I did at Agenda or ComplexCon, we're finding these passion audiences, we're convincing the most meaningful players in those audiences to create special site specific drops and things for this platform, and now we're just doing in a digital way under much more expansive amount of categories. Aaron Levant:We got the proof of concept in 2018 and '19 and now it's just about now it's just about how do we scale that, how do we get more people on the platform, how do we go from one drop a day to 40 drops a day is what our hope is by the end of next year, 40 unique, specific, custom, exclusive things in one day is a lot, right? Chris Erwin:And to do it over and over again. It's not like you're just building up towards one single day a few months out, it's like this is a daily thing? Aaron Levant:Yeah. And how do we make each one of those not only equal quality, how do we increase the quality over time and how do we take this from a few million people to tens of millions of people, and we become for the overused elevator pitch about our business, the QVC of Gen Z? I think that is exactly what we're trying to do and I don't take objection to that elevator pitch, I actually like it. Chris Erwin:As you think about going from one drop a day to 40 days a day, is there data from the performance of your past drop campaigns of what is selling, what is driving user acquisition that you're using as a data feedback loop and/or is it also a combination of just going gut of like, "This is a cool product, I dig it, we're going to launch with this too."? What is that approach? Aaron Levant:I would say it's 50% gut, 50% data at this point. I think over time it'll become more data. In the beginning it was probably 100% gut because we had no data. Obviously, it's taking learnings from the things that are working, the categories, the personalities. There's a lot of learnings in there around how we scale this business and there's also a lot of surprises, right? I think some of the biggest surprises we learn is just because X celebrity has a big audience, it doesn't mean they sell anything or anyone wants to buy anything from them. There are many personalities that have a much smaller audience, maybe just a few 100,000, that can sell 10X any big celebrity, because they have hyper-engaged audience, an organic audience. Aaron Levant:I think that's been one of the biggest surprises. I think one of our biggest aha moments was in 2018, Ninja was the biggest esport star in the world. He's still a huge star, right? We were like, "Oh my God, if we could just get Ninja to come on NTWRK and sell some stuff," when he was on the Ellen Show and breaking the internet, "we'll get a million downloads in one day, right?" Chris Erwin:Yeah. Aaron Levant:We go, we do this deal with him, we get him on and he's got an exclusive collection for us for holiday and 50 people came. It was nothing, right? Chris Erwin:Yeah. Aaron Levant:New people. It was ridiculously low and it was like, "Wow, it's like sometimes these people that are so big actually don't move culture in a way that you think they do. They're propped up stars for consumption and click-bait but they're not really able to have a meaningful consumer products business." So sometimes you can't just go off the data of how big their social audience is or what their engagement looks like online, things like that, you have to some gut around, do people actually want to buy products from them? I think there's a lot of example of big celebrities who are very much household names but couldn't sell anything. And then there's some people that can create a brand that does billions of dollars, right? Chris Erwin:Wow. Yeah. Aaron Levant:So it's a real hit or miss there and that's really part gut. That almost becomes the more important part. Chris Erwin:It's interesting hearing about that because at my company, RockWater, we are helping different shoppable entertainment companies think about what their go to market launch is. And so we've been reviewing tens of these different live streaming content products. And we're seeing that some of the platforms actually audit the different types of creators or influencers that are onboarding and saying, "Are you a good fit? Are you not a good fit? If we think that you're going to be a premium creator you'll get more customer service resources and we're going to help prop you up." Has your team built any proprietary tech or methods of how you assess the personalities who are going to do a product collaborations with your team? Aaron Levant:I wouldn't say we're assessing them beforehand. We definitely have the post data where we've worked with them. But I would say here's the counterpoint to that even. I'll give you another example, the most successful individual personality on our platform beside Takashi Murakami, is a guy named Ben Baller, who's a celebrity jeweler, podcaster, all around personality. He has a big consumer products business with us. He's been on NTWRK for six months doing multiple things and almost all of them didn't do very well in the beginning. We kept sticking with him against the lack of positive data, right? It wasn't selling through, the audience wasn't engaging. And then eventually we had a breakthrough moment with him. I equate this almost the Agenda thing, you keep pushing forward and we always had a feeling or I had a feeling this guy was working to work and now he's our number two star on the whole platform from a revenue basis. Chris Erwin:What was in your gut that kept you sticking with him, similar to when you were at Agenda? Was it the ignorance is rich, like "No, I believe in this guy, I like him," or was there something else going on? Aaron Levant:Yeah, I believe in him. He was enthusiastic about the partnership, right? Chris Erwin:Yeah. Aaron Levant:Some people, some celebrities they do these things and it's like an obligation. They go, "I got to show up and do this thing and sell this book." They pretend like they're enthusiastic but really they're not. They do the bare minimum. They're like, "oh, I'm obligated to do one social post, I'm going to do just that and then I'm going to take it down." Those people that are going to fight to make their things work. They're going and doing... like GaryVee, great example, that guy is a salesman of salesmen, right? Chris Erwin:Yeah. Aaron Levant:He gets on and he's going to pitch himself like nobody. DJ Khaled, Ben Baller's one of them. They're enthusiastic and they're going to go above and beyond tenfold. And it knew that eventually it would break through, and it did. There were even people inside our own org who tried to kill the partnership, go, "Hey, this guy's not working. We've got all these other products on him, let's put these on the shelf, right?" Chris Erwin:Yeah. Aaron Levant:"Let's not push forward." I'm like, "No, you got to do it." It wasn't anything other than just seeing his level of enthusiasm towards the partnership. I believe that you can bank on that. Chris Erwin:The talent enthusiasm is so key because they have so many opportunities in front of them nowadays of how many different social platforms that they're on, how many different advertisers they can work with, what products can they launch. I remember when I was running Big Frame, the management company under Awesomeness TV, partners would come up to me and ask, "How do I work with your talent? How is this going to be a thriving partnership?" I would always, "You got to sell them on your product and on your vision and not just throw money at them." I would often nix them like, "Hey, if our sales team was pushing too hard," of like this was a big six or seven figure dea where our managers knew that the talent weren't really into it, I'm like, "We shouldn't do this because this is just going to fail and both sides are going to walk away unhappy." Chris Erwin:So I like how you described the enthusiasm is so key. Curious to talk about the future vision for NTWRK and some of the things that you're building towards. I've heard you talk about that you want to festivalize marketing and user acquisition. And I think that there's definitely intent to have many more shopping festivals I think in the new year. Tell us a little bit more about what's your thinking there. Aaron Levant:One of the things that I was obsessed with from day one, even in the original business plan, was looking at things like Alibaba's Singles' Day, which obviously has become since the last three years much more well known thing here in the US, and they made $75 billion this year, I think. They made a week-long event, previous iterations it was a day long event, they made $35 billion. They really took something that was like Black Friday or Cyber Monday here in the US and they made it look like the MTV Music Awards. It was a video first event, it was live stream, and it was crazy, right? And how they entertanmenize shopping, right? Chris Erwin:Yeah. Aaron Levant:I took how you took something like a ComplexCon, something like an Alibaba Singles Day and make a marriage between those two ideas and you launch an online shopping festival. That's really what we're doing with NTWRK. In the coming year we're launching six proprietary shopping festivals, each one around a different audience vertical and two big shopping holidays. These are big ideas for us. We did our first one this year called Transfer in August, which was a design and culture festival in partnership with a creative named Edison Chan from Hong Kong and the artist named Futura 2000, which was an amazing event. We had over two billion media impressions on that event, so we were excited about that. We're launching one just a few weeks here called Beyond the Streets which is an online art fare that's themed around street art and graffiti, which previously was a physical event that now we've brought online. And next year we'll have six. We'll do one called Unboxed in February that's themed around collectables and toys. Aaron Levant:We'll do one in March or April called Off Court which is focused basketball culture. Really about packing two days full of content, meaning dozens or almost 50 to 70 exclusive drops in a two-day period, bringing in the talent who created those drops or musicians, athletes, artists to do panel conversations much like we would at some of my physical conventions or festivals in the past, having live music performances, having a gift shop, having physical takeaways we send the people in the mail beforehand, and really entertainminizing and festivalizing this online shopping experience. It's really about taking hundreds of pieces of content that you can usually absorb over the cause of a month and smashing it into a two-day period and creating sensory overload. We're excited about what that does for the businesses on the go forward and how that draws new customers and how that creates excitement, and also stimulates brands and creators who want to work with us, right? Aaron Levant:If you just called and said, "Hey, you want to do something on a Wednesday because it's Wednesday." They're like, "Ah." You call them and say, "You want to be a part of this festival and all the top brands and creators in the world will be there?" It's much more motivating value proposition. Chris Erwin:Are you building this online experience in tech in-house or you're working with a partner to do it? Aaron Levant:It all lives on networks made of IOS and Android platforms, so it's literally sitting right on top of our day-in and day-out platform. It's not a separate experience. And that's the whole point. The whole purpose of this is to draw people into what we do and to utilize the technology and the proprietary native commerce and video technology we build here. Chris Erwin:You are planning six of those events in 2021. Aaron Levant:Six festivals and two shopping days, which is a one-day festival. For example, 10/10 is NTWRK's birthday, so that our annual celebration where we do a huge promotion. We don't want to be a retail company, I think that's a dead asset class, I think it's a boring idea. I think the number one thing for us to do that is we're creating these moments. We'll do some of the standard retail things like Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Back To School, whatever, but how we create our own moments and we create our own annualized trend. What if we stacked all of our festivals in the first quarter, which is usually the lightest quarter for retail, what if we could buck that trend by doing all this exciting stuff. Aaron Levant:So we're creating our own retail holidays and creating our own trajectory of what we do and when we do it. We don't want to prescribe to what Macy's does per se. Chris Erwin:I was going to ask how you gauge success of that. ComplexCon will talk about, "Hey, we drive 20 to 30 million of merchandise sales in Long Beach and we're the number one contributor to that economy." Are the KPIs for you, it's revenue but also how it fuels the rest of the business or ability to attract different artists and personalities to the platform for the new year? Aaron Levant:It's all the above. Obviously revenue is an important KPI. Transfer for example was our highest two days of revenue ever during our last festival. Obviously we intend to beat that coming up in the new year. User acquisition, earned media. We had, like I said, two billion media impressions on that. It's also about how many new brands we attract to the platform, new talents, because then those people could have an ongoing relationship with us. Even things like Google Trends data, if you look at the dates around Transfer, some of our highest searches were NTWRK, right? So all of the things are extremely important KPIs or metrics we're going to track, but we want them all. I think that's a great thing about a festival, it solves for every meaningful thing we want to track in the business, the businesses just accelerates that. Chris Erwin:Let's also talk about another big initiative for the company which was your April 2020 investment in FaZe Clan, one of the world's largest esports and gaming collectives. If I understand this right, it was a $40 million round for FaZe Clan and you guys were the lead investor, is that accurate? Aaron Levant:Yes. Absolutely. Chris Erwin:What's the strategy where NTWRK is defining shoppable entertainment and shopping at the speed of culture, and now you're also making a really big investment in esports and gaming company? What is the goal of that? Aaron Levant:I think it's a pretty simple idea, which is we want to be at the forefront of what's happening in youth culture. I liken FaZe Clan as the leading brand in what is arguably the fastest growing space in media and entertainment, which is gaming lifestyle, esports, right? The numbers are astronomical, so when we think about attracting new audiences that are passionate about something, to me it's esports is the skateboarding of the day, right? Chris Erwin:Yeah. Aaron Levant:This is the thing that captures the hearts and minds of possibly billions of people, right? Chris Erwin:Yeah. Aaron Levant:Not just millions, it's a much bigger totally addressable audience here and why not partner with the top brand and organization and the largest brand and organization in that space. The analogy I like to use is that Netflix brings disruption to video streaming, Spotify to audio streaming, NTWRK is trying to do for merchandise streaming, right? Chris Erwin:Yeah. Aaron Levant:This is the category that doesn't really exist. So what makes those platforms destinations is the proprietary content that they have. It's not that we make an investment in a great organization, but we also secured a deal to control the global consumer products rights for that company. And so right now if you go on NTWRK and you scroll down through our feed in couple days from now, we're dropping an exclusive FaZe Clan Beats by Dre headphone exclusively on NTWRK. So when you think about us bringing together a collaboration like that, first time Beats has ever been in the gaming space. Obviously, Jimmy, our lead investor was the founder of Beats, bringing together with the top gaming organization in the world and you can only buy that product on NTWRK. Same analogy like you can only watch Game of Thrones on HBO or you can only watch House of Cards on Netflix. Proprietary content drives new audience and drives revenue and