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Right About Now - Legendary Business Advice
The Shift in Digital Ownership: Exploring NFTs and Brand Therapy with Jamie Schwarz
00:39:11
In this episode of Right About Now, host Ryan Alford, joined by Chris Hansen, welcomes Jamie Schwarz—an innovative entrepreneur and co-founder of Team Flow Institute and Parallel Worlds US. As the holder of the world’s oldest NFT patent, Jamie shares his journey from advertising to founding Brand Therapy. The discussion explores the evolving world of branding, marketing, and NFTs, with a strong focus on authenticity and community-driven engagement. Chris provides insights into the communal aspects of NFTs, while Jamie delves into co-creation and the intersection of digital and physical assets, highlighting the transformative potential of NFTs in redefining digital ownership.
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- [00:00]
Jamie Schwartz
Gen Z Onward spends more on their digital clothing than they do on their physical clothing. I'm not saying we're all going to be wearing just digital clothing in 10 years. I am saying they're going to be the same thing.
- [00:12]
Ryan Alford
This is Right about now with Ryan Alford, a Radcast Network production. We are the number one business show on the planet with over 1 million downloads a month, taking the BS out of business for over 6 years in over 400 episodes. You ready to start snapping next and cashing checks? Well, it starts right about now.
- [00:35]
Chris
What's up guys? Welcome to Right about now. Or should I say right about now and Vibe Science. We, you know, this is the great thing. You know, the platform is radical. The Radcast Network, we just do radical. We're just. You're two in one. Especially here's. This is how good we're getting when the. They. The. The talent level that is coming to our front door is this solid. We're going to put him on both shows and I. And when you. When I go down this list and when he starts talking, you're going to know what I'm talking about. We're talking about. He is and holds the world's oldest NFT patent. He's the co founder of Team Flow Institute, the co founder of Parallel Worlds us, the founder of Marked Art and dj and the founder of one of my favorite names for a branding company, Brand Therapy. He is Jamie Schwartz. What's up, Jamie?
- [01:26]
Jamie Schwartz
I guess I should also reveal that I'm a Gemini. Makes a little more sense though. Hey guys.
- [01:34]
Chris
Yeah, he is a Gemini. I like the word Gemini. Why is that word fun to say.
- [01:42]
Jamie Schwartz
I wonder? We can go down a brand naming exercise if we want.
- [01:47]
Chris
Yeah, exactly. In New York today. Is it New York, New York?
- [01:51]
Jamie Schwartz
Jamie Hastings on Hudson, New York. We are the first small town north of New York City. So I can get there in 12 minutes flat. But there's only 8, 000 people in my town.
- [02:00]
Chris
Oh, man, that's nice. I didn't know I lived in Manhattan for five years. I didn't even know that existed. It's a great place.
- [02:08]
Jamie Schwartz
I grew up in Westchester.
- [02:09]
Chris
They didn't let the.
- [02:10]
Jamie Schwartz
It's. Hey, okay, come on, back up. We got Sleepy Hollow. We got the old mansions.
- [02:15]
Chris
We.
- [02:15]
Jamie Schwartz
It's so much fun up here, man.
- [02:17]
Chris
Jamie, I mean, I want to set the table. I want. You know, we've tried to get out of the business. You know, a lot of people's stories are out there. I'm sure you do podcasts and stuff. So, you know, we could do a 40 minute episode about every, you know, the history of Jamie Schwartz. But you're doing a lot of cool. But let's do set the table for our audience and, you know, give them a little bit of the theater of the mind, of, of your background, Jamie.
- [02:46]
Jamie Schwartz
Okay. Geez. I was the son of a clinical psychologist and a fundraising activist. I ended up trying to be a clinical psychologist like my dad before me. And the siren song of advertising came calling and said, you know, just wake up at 10 o'clock in the morning and wear a T shirt and make shit up. And so I went to SVA and then Chicago portfolio school, then Miami ad school, which took me to San Francisco and London and Amsterdam and then internships in New York. And that's where I finally landed. Started junior copywriting all the way up to creative director across a dozen plus agencies with over 100 brands before I said, what the hell am I doing? And it just felt like marketing was not the answer. It was just breeding hypocrisy. If you're just telling a story, you're not telling authenticity and then the market forces aren't letting you. So how did I figure my way out of that? I discovered product market fit and that became my new philosophy and I fell into the startup world and started servicing clients directly. As you know, ad agencies, there's like a, what, six degrees of separation between you and the decision maker. I was finally having conversations with the founders and having longer and deeper meaning, purposeful conversations. And then one of them said to me, this feels like therapy. I said, it's not therapy for you, it's therapy for the brand. What the hell is brand therapy? It couldn't even finish the sentence. I was just like, light bulb, I've got to figure this out. And built the discipline from scratch. And it took a couple years of just figuring out what the hell does brand have to do with product market fit? Well, what if it's the go between of product and market? What if it actually sits as a voice that can have two ears and one mouth listening to both sides and speaking to both as one. It can be a chief purpose officer, the employee that can never be fired and never leave, which actually makes it the real boss, even of the CEO. So psychological trick. Longer conversations led to, let's get that brand voice in the back of your head. Usually you want to get voices out of people's heads in therapy. In this case, we're putting one in. We want the brand voice to be the voice of Conscience back there. So when you run with scissors, you know, you hear your mom's voice still. When you're running a company, of course you're running with scissors 24 7. Whose voice should be in the back of your head? The brand voice. Whoa, hey. Stop looking myopically from your limited perspective. Step back, think long term. And you do that with all the stakeholders. You get stakeholder alignment automatically because they're all answering to the real boss, the loudest, strongest ego in the room, the brand. So that's I guess the journey that got me to before web3 came knocking and turned everything upside down. That's where I got to from there.
- [05:25]
Chris
I love it, man. I love the name the brand therapist. And I, I have this vision of CEOs on leather couches and you talking them talking all the problems out.
- [05:37]
Jamie Schwartz
That's still a human affair.
- [05:39]
Chris
Yeah. And they need somebody to counsel them. Right. Or, or oh my God, to both counsel them and to hear them a little bit. Right? Isn't it both.
- [05:48]
Jamie Schwartz
You can't talk to somebody until you've spent the time to listen to them. Nobody will tell you the truth until you've given them the psychological safety, which is space. And you can't do that until you just give it to them.
- [06:04]
Chris
That's what a lot of people of agencies didn't realize. They just want to talk over it, you know? Right. They want to.
- [06:09]
Jamie Schwartz
Well, if you don't have a direct connection, you're just talking past each other to the person you think is right ahead of you.
- [06:15]
Chris
Yes, I know. Let me ask you this one question. Just marketing guy to marketing guy. You've. You and I have come up through it and I hear there's a lot of, I don't know, people that love brand and people that detract brand that say, you know, they don't get it because they think brands like to ethereal to out there versus the outcomes. We've moved into this performance marketing world. Right. And I've living through it and the art, you know, I have a mentor, Chris Griffer Lockhead, who says, you know, brandings for, you know, you know what? And because he just believes, you know, if marketing isn't driven driving the bottom line and most brand isn't in a lot of times because you know.
- [07:03]
Jamie Schwartz
Oh, I could argue with that.
- [07:04]
Chris
Yeah. I'd actually love to see the two of you. I might have the two of you on the show one time. It would be awesome. I'd be right there in the middle of Chris is on the screen like you know, playing both sides because I think there's truth on both sides though I've lean more towards where you are, Jamie and. But how do you, how do you respond to what's happened the last 10 years? Again, entertain me just for a minute here on, on this being marketing, you know, with the performance marketing versus branding and the role of each and how it's really, I don't know, clouded a lot of people's minds, I think.
- [07:36]
Jamie Schwartz
Yeah, well, I mean remember what I just said before about thinking myopically just from your own perspective. Everybody's in their own little industry. There's so many damn silos in marketing that we're really only concentrated on what we're incentivized to be concentrated on. And performance marketing came out of analytics, where the analytics come from social media. So you have to go back to that moment that we all went, what's Friendster? What's this thing? What do I put on MySpace? The first campaign I ever did for social was a MySpace page for a fake band for re bringing back LA gear in like 2005 or something. And we were like just discovering this out and it was all good while we just, you know, had a feed. But as soon as the algorithm came in, as soon as we really understood data and everybody became their own Persona 1 of 1. Here's this hyper targeted list. Oh my God. The list of variables that you are defined by so much so that you can click three things on a webpage. They know who you are just based on that. Well, okay, now we've got data. Now we've got hard data versus soft creativity. And there's that famous line, I'm spending twice the amount of money I should be on advertising. The problem is I don't know which half. Yeah, you know, like I get that with the soft advertising because it was TV and it was one way. But what did social media create? As soon as the brave, the, the brands that were brave enough started it and the brands that had to afterwards followed turned on the comment section became a two way street, asynchronous. But it was still, you know, customer service became Twitter. Yeah, like we don't even think about that for a while. Like, yeah, that means the companies gave up on customer service. They stopped giving us phone numbers. You can't call Netflix, you can't call Google, but you can yell at them on Twitter until they pay attention. So everything came down to social media value. We created influencers. And there's a value in how much cred you have across all these Platforms that you don't own, the credit's owned by those platforms. So you're at their mercy still.
- [09:32]
Chris
Yeah.
- [09:32]
Jamie Schwartz
So all that being said, I know that's a little bit of a rabbit hole. Everybody's building that up where they're doing KYC and they've got proof. And what's the other line? You only get paid for what you can measure.
- [09:45]
Chris
Yeah.
- [09:46]
Jamie Schwartz
So the guys who could get measured were the ones who were getting paid more. And the advertising industry had already stupidly, in my opinion, separated the creative from the Media Buy. So creative had to sit on its own for how it's going to make money. And it just turned into, you know, bill, bill, bill for hours and hours and hours. And that obviously was going to blow up in everybody's faces. But once that happened, the Media Buy was over there. That analytics went that way. You just take your eye off the ball of creativity, and once you take your eye off the ball of creativity, you take your eye off the ball of humanity, which is what you're actually doing, connecting with humans. And then it's just, you're arguing over tweaking about a color or a font size or where the logo goes because it moves the needle this much. And when you're looking here, you're moving this. Wow. Huge moves. You forget about this. The whole shebang. That's like everybody's actually looking at the meaning behind it. The relationship between, between the consumer and the brand. There's a relationship there and, you know, and then it's too late.
- [10:47]
Chris
Yeah, good explanation. And it's been a race to the bottom and I hate it. That's the one thing, you know, I, I got out of the rat race. I mean, I own an agency, but got out of the rat race of, you know, New York agency life. But the one thing I do still champion is creativity and I don't know, the art that, that is. I. That's the one thing I hate. That's kind of taking the nose dive with the race to the bottom of, you know, outcomes today versus outcomes over time. Not everyone's buying today. If you are building that resonance and, you know, top of mind awareness and intent, it's not to definitively trigger sale today, right?
- [11:31]
Jamie Schwartz
Not at all. It really is a matter of are you building a relationship of transaction or are you building a relationship with meaning? And both are fine. Just recognize what you are. One of the things I had to build in brand therapy was a relationship spectrum and for brands to admit where they actually are on there. Are you product focused? Are you commodity focused? Are you brand focused? Are you purpose focused? Are you tribal? Letting the community tell you where you have to go? Just be honest about where you are on there and then act accordingly.
- [12:01]
Chris
Yeah, you're doing a lot of cool shit, Jamie. Chris, this guy's got the first patent, the world's oldest patent on NFTs. I mean, Chris, did you. You got into NFTs, right?
- [12:13]
Yeah, I'm sitting on a good amount of them. Yeah. I'm waiting on the prices to go up.
- [12:19]
Jamie Schwartz
And that's what you were doing. Chris, tell me what you knew about NFTs when you said, this is going to make me some money. What did you think they were?
- [12:27]
Chris
Collectible digital items? Right. I just looked at it as a way to make money. However, on the flip side, I have seen the community aspect of it, you know, at the bitcoin conferences and whatnot. I've been to some NFT parties and it's like. I mean, it's a real deal culture. Like, it's. Even with the prices being down, there are still strong communities of NFT holders. I look at just like the playing card community. I mean, rein. Were talking about that earlier with baseball cards, but I know there's more utility than that, you know, when it comes to music and stuff. But I'm interested to hear more about it and kind of what got you into that, because it's been rather mainstream.
- [13:13]
Media this cycle, sharing our cards. Yours are a little.
- [13:16]
Jamie Schwartz
That's right. And I both hold up. Well. My older. I have a much older brother who had. Who collected back in the 60s, so we got the benefit of his. But I also ended up marrying the granddaughter of the art director of Tops, who actually was one of the inventors of Kazuka. Joe didn't know it at the time, but, you know, hey, I need some attraction.
- [13:31]
Chris
I need some top 10 introductions, because I'm gonna. I'm doing a series on sports cards.
- [13:36]
Jamie Schwartz
Fanatics bought them. So it's a whole ball game.
- [13:39]
Chris
Fleischman or whoever. Yeah.
- [13:42]
Jamie Schwartz
But for. Yeah, the whole thing with NFTs, I totally agree with you. Like, first of all, it's not art. And people are saying, like, you know, here's a whole bunch of algorithmically created characters. You're kind of hurting the art space by just claiming this because that's where your value is coming from. And you're very right. You are claiming creative community space. I love the Bill Murray one. That's a great NFT group where they're just like, everybody gets a Mitamoto golf course. Once because they had an NFT of them. But that's like, so what? That's a membership card. What are you actually getting with this nft? Where's the value? The thing that it actually did was allow us to own digital media. It's not a you can always right click something, but now you could actually say, no, no, this is mine. People can still steal stuff, but this is mine. This says so. That was humongous. There's a reason why all the nerds behind it were like, this is game changing. This is huge. We just went through the digital revolution and at the other end of that camera, what, Napster, that destroyed the music industry, everybody's right, clicks, everything, everything lost value. And we had this horrible, you know, race to the bottom where if media can't hold value because it used to be based on scarcity, we had to pay for the package that would hold the media. And now we don't. And now NFTs were the promise to bring it back. My God, I get royalties every time I resell this. Yeah, that sticks on chain. So before all of that happened, 2017 was like the ICO craze and blockchain was still just like bitcoin. And I think cryptokitties had just launched at East Denver. Like nobody knew where any of this was going yet. I was still fascinated with Pokemon Go and just saying, but I don't own anything in there. It's the same thing all over again. We've got centralized platforms that tell you you're owning things, but all you're doing is licensing a use of it. The guy that owned at Music, at Twitter, Musk, just took it away because it's mine. They're all his. Of course they are. This is a centralized platform. Where's the ownership? That was the idea behind the patent. I was stuck in the brand space. I was really living inside of there, really living in the hypocrisy of marketing doesn't work on its own. How do we get back to ownership? I lived through that entire decade of social media going from this cute little thing where we were coming together and meeting people and it was just a lovely little web 1.0 world into this centralized behemoth of oligarchies that controlled everything and controlled your oxygen because products couldn't have object permanence without the platform. So that's what NFTs were going to do. Give us an open web again with true ownership. So when I filed, I was really just focused on how do we get that mark of authenticity if we have logos and we have digital products. Why can't we make the logos interactive and smart and give them responsibility so that they can make sure that the object is saying, yeah, this is the authentic one. I don't have to go to, you know, Chinatown and buy the thing that almost works. In a digital copy and paste world, everything's one for one. You can't tell the difference. The NFT does that. But then you also have all these problems with. A blockchain by itself is only a. It's an arrow, it's a receipt that points to a file and that's it. The only thing that came after that was smart contracts which had royalties, which had like a little bit of rules. What I created was a grouped asset nft. I said, what if this is a master NFT that holds all the assets it needs across formats, across digital rights management, across provenance value, adding provenance, adding utility and sentimental value, like social value, so that it by itself has that same object permanence that all physical goods did, but with all those benefits of digital. And then I had to wait and sit for five years because it was pending for that long.
- [17:35]
Chris
Wow, Jamie, you did some explaining there. That's probably helped me wrap my head around the space of entities better than anyone that I've ever heard it from. And. But it brought me to a question to see if I'm. I know it's not just what I'm going to say, but I want to give you like a comparison to see if I'm tracking. It almost felt like, you know, an NFT being a logo much like, you know, like the Nike swoosh that you license to use, you know, now, anywhere and all that. In a way I'm hearing the same type of thing with this, that it's Almost like immediate 1 of 1 licensing of whatever that is created to be used and tracked anywhere it gets used. Am I tracking?
- [18:32]
Jamie Schwartz
Yeah, that's the promise that I was reaching for, that NFTs just weren't delivering on their own. NFTs really are story baskets. What story is that object holding? And if you look behind me, this is a right there, that's a sketch of Albert Einstein that was done on the boat from London to England in 1942 as a refugee. It was passed down from my great aunt to my mother to. Sorry, to my grandmother to my mother to me. And we all have these in our houses where we have this story. It's an oral tradition that goes with the object and it adds so much value, but it's just you know, us having to hold that. Now the object can hold it. That's why marked is starting in the art space. That's why I've been building in art, because provenance is key. But apply that to a Nike sneaker. We have the sneaker heads. You buy a sneaker not to wear it, but to gain value from it. Enjoy while you have it and then sell it on. You're not a consumer, you're a prosumer. Somebody who consumes and then produces, adds value and passes it on. That's the supply chain not ending. That's the assembly line of value add continuing on. You put the NFTs in there. StockX is doing this. It's not like I'm inventing anything here, but you're enabling everybody with a transaction to be somebody who adds value. So these products get more and more valuable over time. Not like a circular economy where it's like, can we just survive it and get it to the next person? But actually a never ending assembly line of value. That's where we can.
- [19:59]
Chris
But is it a physical object or a digital object? Is it disposable or consumable?
- [20:05]
Jamie Schwartz
It is a real world asset. As a digital twin, buy that physical good, but make sure you have the digital twin of it that you're also going to be wearing in Fortnite or Roblox or whatever. Gen Z Onward spends more on their digital clothing than they do on their physical clothing. I'm not saying we're all going to be wearing just digital clothing in 10 years. I am saying they're going to be the same thing.
- [20:27]
Chris
Yeah, well, when you live in both places, right?
- [20:30]
Jamie Schwartz
Yeah. So you want the value of both places. I want the provenance of, you know, me going wearing an awesome something to a red carpet thing. And then, you know, there's a PO app that says I was there. But more and more there are these awesome events online that I want to bring the same story baskets to and gain providence there. And that's what centralized platforms should be focused on, being amazing hosts that have great stories for us to add to our products. There's a lot of money to be made in there, but not through control.
- [21:00]
Chris
It's fascinating because, you know, you think of, I think of these spaces as sandboxes where you build what you want and there's no real cost other than your time. What you're introducing is actually the opposite in a way. Not that you can't build it, but it's the value that it has and carries forward. Like the transaction of Digital things passing one to another. So there's scarcity versus unlimited creation. Right.
- [21:30]
Jamie Schwartz
Scarcity through the unlimited potential of bespoke customization. So if you have this, you know the world where you go into where you know you're, you're doing building something for free. You're not building something for free. That's a freemium model where they're getting you hooked and the value is you're going to pay eventually.
- [21:48]
Chris
Yeah.
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Jamie Schwartz
Or you are the product because there's advertising involved and that centralized platform is using your attention in the attention economy to hold you. Just look at the invisible hands of the market. Google really meant it when they said don't be evil, but the invisible hand of the market sent them the other way. It doesn't matter what you say, it matters where the market's going to send you is that's where the incentives are. So how can we change the incentives? You got to move off a KYC economy where we know people to a KYP economy where the main characters are the products that keep going on. Then your marketing is all about making an awesome product that's a canvas for everybody to keep reusing a story that everyone wants to be a part of. I really, really want to get a stormtrooper with no background and build an amazing background backstory for my stormtrooper and then meet up with other stormtroopers and create some sort of, you know, reality show or whatever online. That would be amazing, but that would be value I added.
- [22:44]
Chris
Yeah, it's interesting. It's like a, a book with revisions at all times. Right. I mean it's never done. It's a little book.
- [22:52]
Jamie Schwartz
Yeah.
- [22:52]
Chris
It's a living book. It's a living because it's part of me goes down this content. Right. We're creating content you and I like right now. We're creating some evergreen marketing business vibey, whatever you want to call it, content that lives on forever but it won't change. But you necessarily. So I think what we're talking about, that is a world that does evolve.
- [23:14]
Jamie Schwartz
Well, it's another one of those things where we've been seeing it coming in terms of like if you look at stories, it's something successful, it gets sequels, it's more successful, it becomes a world building thing. You get books, you get the movies, you get the comics. It's all different mediums and it's a world building and you get a fan fiction, non sanctioned stories that everybody's doing and they allow it to happen, but not on an IP level. Right now I'M working with amazing author Yani Payne in his book series in the Shadow of a king. It's like 24 meets Star Wars. It's all on Earth, but it's just like post apocalypse, everybody trying to work together against the big bad guys. And we're taking that story and recognizing with a. With the world building. This isn't just about saying we want fans. This is about how the fans engage in the story. So what we're building is a co creation model there. Yanni and I connected over that term, co creation, where he said, I want my fans to be a part of the story. I'm just making the seeds, the beginning points. I've got so many characters across so many different parts around the world that I'm living out in all of my different storylines. Once again, think 24. It's just, oh my God, who's doing what? That we're building the system. Where you read the book, it comes with a bookmark. The bookmark is your access to the AI so you can have a conversation with the book. The book determines if you're a fan enough or not to get into the discord. The discord. You're now with other fans. The fans will determine if you are worthy of writing your own fanfic that they will then upvote. And if it's upvoted enough, your fanfic gains access to a fourth level character. And the way I would say that is look at Star Wars. You had a lot of people died to get the plans for this Death Star. What do they do? They made Rogue One. Then you saw the story of Rogue One. There's that guy who was running the Rebellion. What do they do? Made andor a story off a story off a story. There's fourth level characters sitting in there that Disney should have no problem giving away access to superfans for. So there's a bridge that can be actually made between fanfic and ip and that's what Yanni's building. He's the first author slash. He also has a first look with Warner Television and movie he's been writing. It all goes together where he's saying, I don't want fans. I want co creators become a part of my world. And that's now possible.
- [25:34]
Chris
Yeah. And unique because you know, the world used to be creators that didn't really want anyone to create with them. Right. It's like, get out of my sandbox.
- [25:43]
Jamie Schwartz
Yeah. And There is a 9010 rule about like, you know, user generated content. Usually everybody's Consuming and there's a few people who make. But when you're incentivized to make, when we're actually growing up in a world where creativity is probably the only thing left that AI won't take. Where's the economy? We, we need a co creator economy because there's nothing else left.
- [26:04]
Chris
Yes, point. Point made and already observed. Talking with Jamie Schwartz. He is the founder of Brand Therapy, co founder of Team Flow Institute and a lot of other cool that we mentioned at the beginning. But Jamie, how do all these companies blend together? I know there's, you know, brand therapy might sit over here a little bit. I know it's probably related but, but I can I see just by naming alone the Team Flow parallel marked art like how, how all these universes working together.
- [26:37]
Jamie Schwartz
I basically am trying to force everything under a madeup industry I call company betterment. So we are all familiar with the betterment industry and how that works for us. But you as you heard from Brand Therapy, this is about the personification of the brand. So what can you do on a company level for betterment? And the big access point is adaptability. So most companies statistically pay for digital transformation and then 70 to 80% of them don't implement it. The average age of a company has gone from over 61 years to under 18 years in less than half a century. Because change is happening faster and faster and companies are getting worse and worse at it. We're all Kodak, we just don't know it yet. That's scary. Well that's exactly. So that becomes a thing where we can talk about saying okay, your company needs to become mindful. Brand Therapy is there to not just help you find product market fit, but to recognize product market fits a moment it's always lost. We have product shift, we have market shift as disciplines. Where the hell is product market shift? That's what Brand Therapy really offers. That ability to have a mindful company. And then thanks to my co founder Chris Hjor myself creating the Team Flow Institute with an amazing research team. Too many people to name actually, but check them all out at teamflow.instu. we worked with Dr. Yef Vanenhout who built the team science of in person Team Flow over the last decade he was on part of the Solar sail team that went through the desert. How the hell do you keep that team together? And then he started building teamflow from there we're focused on decentralized team flow. So a mindful company that's now able to work with its employees to Restructure around support instead of oversight on progressivity, not productivity. The consistent betterment of the team around taking AI not to just do automate away their work, but to create a collective intelligence that a retrained manager as a flow facilitator has access to. Not to just say hey, what's the input output that we can do faster? But to find all the human hidden frictions. Because work is still for humans and there are a collective amount of human frictions across. And this is Dr. Vandenhout's work. Collective ambition, audacious team goals, aligning personal goals, open communication, high skill integration and psychological safety. If you have those and you have them in a good enough way, you'll feel four different senses in your team. Unity, progress, trust and focus. And if those actually come up to the fore, enough team flow emerges. That's his model and that's what we've applied into a decentralized way. So you're more purposeful about your on like in person time, your, your live time on video with a lot of body language. Like 7% of our communication is words, the rest is tone and body language. That means we have to record this and get sentiment analysis out of this. Not just the AI otter talking. And then when you go from there, you have a company that's capable of changing, capable of absorbing digital transformation. And so as the co founder of Parallel Worlds, as a cso, I have positioned that company as the world's first spatial transformation company. So a company that's now mindful enough to be able to understand how to change the platform, to be able to do the adaptability and then finally the change. So that's how those three companies come together. And frankly Marked is just I'm a guy with a patent, I'm not Nike, I'm not Apple. I have to build, I've got to get stuff in market. So Marked and Mark DJ are there to get really stuff in market and to get the first use cases out there. Parallel Worlds is doing it too, and so are others. But it's like I can't rely on any one company. I've got to keep building until there's real traction there.
- [30:21]
Chris
What I don't know why when I go to decentralization, like my mind goes back to the metaverse. I mean I know that's not necessary, that's not exactly it or the only place. But Jamie, what happened was it just that, you know, with NFTs and the metaverse and a lot of this sort of digitization of assets and a lot of stuff you're talking about did it just get escalated too quickly by the pandemic? People were home and able to think about this shit too much and it went so fast, but we weren't quite ready for it.
- [31:02]
Jamie Schwartz
I don't think I could say it better than that honestly. Except for the one added proof that how much money went into NFTs and out in 1 year? 2 trillion with a T dollars went in and out of the art market or the NFT market, whatever you want to call it. That's a lot of people sitting at home with nothing to spend their money on. A lot of government money being handed out and it just went into NFTs along with a lot of other things I built a lot of. I co founded seven startups before all these other ones and one of them was in a gratitude tokenization for essential workers. That's how I ended up working with Chris because we're taking gratitude tokenization and using it for building the Team Flow Institute. Everybody was trying something. We are, we are a nation of entrepreneurs. And it's amazing to watch how many people just said this is my time. And now past 2023, it's now more stable to be an entrepreneur than to work for somebody else.
- [31:57]
Chris
I, I never thought I'd see that day. I mean I've been an entrepreneur for eight years but I think you're right. I mean I, it's, I, I, I hadn't thought about it that direct before and I haven't had to because I've just been the entrepreneur. But Chris and I both are but it's, it's, that's an interesting thought.
- [32:14]
I, I agree that's a powerful, it's a, that hit hard when I really think about it of when I think of a lot of my friends in corporate, they, they have zero control and there's a lot of going down right now.
- [32:25]
Yeah.
- [32:26]
Jamie Schwartz
Oh yeah. And there's a lot that awakening, that's a lot of just shared inertia that we had from the time when all you had was maybe two or three jobs in your life and we're at the point where it's six or seven careers in our life now. Of course that's, that's true. We just don't want to think about it that way because we need stability. It's in us, it's human in us. Answer the human needs and you'll find all the answers you need in any product development.
- [32:49]
Chris
What gets you most excited, Jamie, about all the stuff you're working on? I mean you Know, we're talking about a lot of height, high level that I think you're simplifying, which we need, like telling it in ways that people understand it. But of all the stuff you're working on and the human application of it, what gets you the most excited?
- [33:12]
Jamie Schwartz
So I've been on this journey for a while of not knowing where the hell all this was going, but saying yes and just know no is the enemy. Just say yes and we'll see where this goes.
- [33:21]
Chris
Yeah.
- [33:21]
Jamie Schwartz
And only in the end of last year did I realize what all of this could be working towards. And that was a legitimately, a legitimate way out of late stage consumerism. In this environment, we define ourselves by the brands that we surround ourselves with. We've already passed luxury on from like gold and diamonds to brand. It's just what am I surrounding myself with? And there's your social cred and then you just consume more things and that's who you are. With what I've been building and I know there's like there's other people out here. I've been trying to find them everywhere. In a co creation marketplace, the invisible hand of the market changes. It uses a different human need. It's consumerism, it's greed. It's about yourself and showing that off. And that's a very American thing. I'm not saying this is everywhere, but in a co creation environment where you're doing this, adding value things and products keep living beyond you. We're in a different place. We're in a power of legacy where you no longer value yourself by the brands you surround yourself with, but by the legacy you leave behind in the objects that live beyond you.
- [34:37]
Chris
Yeah, part of me believes that, Jamie. And then part of me is like, are we really that altruistic? I don't know. I'm a cynic. You know, I'm a legacy is pretty.
- [34:47]
Jamie Schwartz
Damn selfish, I have to say. It's just one of those things that only kicks in as we retire.
- [34:52]
Chris
Yeah, it's true. I've definitely gotten more that way. I mean, as I've gotten older, I guess I'm always just a little now.
- [35:00]
Jamie Schwartz
Imagine you're getting paid for a lifetime worth of legacy building that.
- [35:05]
Chris
That's the Holy Grail, right?
- [35:07]
Jamie Schwartz
That's what I've been building.
- [35:10]
Chris
Raiders of the Lost Ark.
- [35:12]
Jamie Schwartz
Jamie Short, no Face melting, please.
- [35:17]
Chris
The Holy Grail. Damn. Chris, any questions or thoughts with Jamie as we wrapping up here?
- [35:24]
A little bit just from a 30, 000 foot view. I love, I love what you're doing. I love the idea of it. I think, I think this is a natural shift happening. Like there's a, like technology is advancing, but I feel like people are collectively changing too consciously and they're.
- [35:45]
Jamie Schwartz
There's a little bit of a cycle. You're grabbing onto a little bit of a cycle. The tech enables a culture to change, but the culture determines where it goes. And then that culture affects our strategists because culture each strategy for breakfast. But at least we can take that information and then go back to product development again and then that new tech will change more culture. And we're in that.
- [36:06]
Chris
Yeah. And I think it's exciting to watch. I think thankfully we have, you know, people like you that I think have good motives. Right. And it's more about let's bring people together because you could use this tech to just be greedier. Right. And perpetuate more consumerism and stuff like that. So as a whole, I just think it's, it's a good feeling to know that collaboration essentially is the goal here. Right. To, to get everybody working and everybody building in their own way, giving not.
- [36:39]
Jamie Schwartz
Only collaboration, but my co founder Chris's favorite word, co elevation.
- [36:44]
Chris
I love that.
- [36:45]
Jamie Schwartz
Don't co legacy what you're doing.
- [36:46]
Chris
Co legacy building. Right?
- [36:48]
Jamie Schwartz
Co legacy building. Yeah, everything.
- [36:50]
Chris
I like the word co legacy.
- [36:52]
Yeah, I do too.
- [36:55]
That's, yeah, I'm, I, I'm deep in thought. I, Jamie, I, I, you know, like a lot of times I've guests on and I like what they're talking about, but I don't get as deep in my head, so that's a compliment.
- [37:07]
Jamie Schwartz
Same, I'll take it very much. As an old philosophy major, I am giddy inside.
- [37:13]
Chris
Jamie. Where can everybody keep up with all the projects, everything you're doing, and learn more about a little bit of everything then get some therapy.
- [37:20]
Jamie Schwartz
Best place, best place to find these on LinkedIn. Jamie Schwarz, you'll see a smiling bearded man looking at you and you'll see on my banner, team flow and brand therapy and marked all just flying across the banner there. So I'll see you all on LinkedIn. And if you're curious about brand therapy. Brandtherapy coach, dot coach.
- [37:38]
Chris
We'll have links to all of Jeremy's. Excuse me, Jamie's companies in the show notes and all online at each of our websites. Probably throw this on both platforms at least right about now. Probably Vibe science too. I think there's crossover here with mindset and just, I don't know, the, the co creation, co legacy building and all. That. So I think there's a lot of synergy here. Jamie, really respect what you're doing.
- [38:02]
Jamie Schwartz
Thank you very much. And I'm happy to come back anytime and dive deep into those mindfulness exercises.
- [38:06]
Chris
Yeah. Jamie, I'd like to have you on, man. I think you could be a really great, you know, semi regular guest or something. Don't do that a lot, but I think you have a lot to offer.
- [38:16]
Jamie Schwartz
I appreciate that. Thank you.
- [38:17]
Chris
Hey, guys. You're going to find us ryanisright.com and vibescience.com you can find all the links, highlight clips, all of Jamie's information, where to find Chris and I on social media. We're hanging out on the old IGs. You can get all up in those DMS at any time you want. We love you, baby. We'll see you next time.
- [38:36]
Ryan Alford
Right about now, this has been Right about now with Ryan Alford, a Radcast network production. Visit ryanisright.com for full audio and video versions of the show or to inquire about sponsorship opportunities. Thanks for listening.
- [39:02]
Chris
Sa.