← The Digital Executive
The Digital Executive
Jared Navarre: Building Immersive Brands That Blend Music, Tech, and Storytelling | Ep 1084
00:14:38
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Welcome to Coruscant Technologies, home of the Digital Executive Podcast. Welcome to the Digital Executive. Today's guest is Jared Navarre. Jared Navarre is a multidisciplinary founder and creative strategist with a proven track record in launching, scaling and exiting ventures across it, logistics and entertainment and service industries. He has consulted with over 250 businesses specializing in building operational systems, designing resilient technology infrastructure and developing multi platform brand ecosystems that resonate with niche and mainstream audiences alike. He is the creator of Zilion, an immersive music project that blends narrative, multimedia and live performance into a cohesive storytelling experience. With a unique ability to translate artistic concepts into monetizable intellectual property, Jared is positioning Zilion as a breakout multiplatform brand with potential applications across music, animation, comics and ar. Well, good afternoon Jared. Welcome to the show.
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Thank you, thank you. Happy to be here.
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Absolutely, my friend. I appreciate it. Traversing the globe sometimes gets a little difficult, but we love doing that. 54 countries now and counting in the last four and a half years of the podcast. So I appreciate you being one of our awesome guests. And Jared, if I could, I'm going to jump into your first question. You've built and exited ventures across it, logistics, entertainment and more. What core principles guide you when launching a new business, no matter the industry?
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A
Well, first of all, I'm in Alaska for this podcast. Does that count as an additional country? Because I think it should should a frontier. Anyway, yep, onto your question. So I stopped counting a few years ago when I passed having consulted or worked with over 250 businesses, probably getting close to 300 at this point. So some of the core principles, you know, obviously having a good model, a good product or solving a problem are kind of key foundational principles to me. Jumping in in any capacity, even on the consulting side, being part of a business. I also think that the true intention behind the founders, if it's not myself, is really, really difficult and important for me to vet and figure out. I used to for, you know, quite a few years get tens of decks that would come across my desk or into my inbox. And most of the time people were searching for hope in the form of funding, security in the form of partnership. And so it's really finding partners and or ideas that are founded upon true faith and passion. And again, on the partnership level, trying to gauge somebody's risk tolerance. Again, people seeking money, I would say it's upwards in the 90 percentile that are that are, again, they're searching for security and comfort Rather than searching for something that's going to solve an actual cash flow problem. And so for those people, I usually bluntly tell them, you're not a founder, you're not a entrepreneur, go get a day job, move on. But yeah, at the end of the day, to succinctly answer what you're saying, it has to be solving a real problem. The business does has to be a product or a service that I believe in and it has to have some sort of exit potential. And when I say exit potential, that means it can take a chunk of my time, my money, the founder's time and money, and so on and so forth. But are we giving ourselves a full time job or is this an actual venture that's going to produce cash flow and again, a product or service that has some sort of trajectory that we all believe in?
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B
Thank you, I appreciate that. And you do have a lot of experience. You'd mentioned nearly 300 businesses over the years that you've consulted with and I think that's impressive. But a few takeaways here. Having a good product, solving a problem is always been key to you, especially as consulting with these businesses. But finding out that true intention of the leaders, leadership, business owners, whoever it is, is really important to you. And those ideals founded in trust and partnership are also important. And I like how you vet whether it's a job versus a venture and I think that's important. And you're willing to cut those two different people apart, essentially separating those based on where you find that they're at. So Jared Zilion is described as an immersive music project that blends narrative, multimedia and live performance. What inspired the concept and how did you bring it to life?
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Yeah, so this is the other, I'll call it the other half of my life. So this is the passion project, love. I've been part of music since I was a child in many different capacities. But I've been writing and singing and playing instruments basically since birth. And Zillion was founded, it's about five years ago. I was actually at a hard rock show. Three Days Grace and Disturbed, two incredible bands were playing at the T Mobile arena in Las Vegas. And the guitarist for Three Days Grace is a friend of mine. And I'd had a prior touring band at that point and I watched them go on stage and play in front of tens of thousands of Hidori fans. And we had had some conversations after. And long story short, from there I realized that the hard rock genre in particular, it wasn't fusing any of the current technologies and any of the theatrical elements that I saw at that time budding in technology, even in performances like the Cirque du Soleil performances, you know, that tour the world and are wonderful. So I started to dig in and started to create an ideate around some sort of full immersive project that could fuse these two worlds of both. I now describe it as Broadway meets Cirque du Soleil meets a hard rock show. And so the, the full performances, it's unlike anything I think that exists on the planet. We pump scent in the building. When we drop snow on the audience, it push and pulls and blends the lines between theater and music and two worlds that have coexisted. But oddly, as I built this project, I found that some of the, even the unions, the producers, the creators, the writers, almost, if there was a line in the sand between the commercial music business that we know it's pop and country and rock and hip hop versus this theatrical world that is Broadway and the Cirque shows and stuff like that. And so as I had conversations and started to build the project, I was communicating almost. It felt like both two sides of different armies. And so that's how it was birthed. And still to this day, it's evolving every day as technology does. But yeah, it's. That's the love project side of me.
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B
I really love that. I think like a lot of people just like me, music is my passion. If the day is not going great is throw on some music and the day is all better. And I truly mean that. That's how much music means to me. But I really like that you found something, as you call your passion project, the love of your life. And coordinating with some of some folks, you know, in the music industry, three days embraced, you found that they're really. The hard rock genre wasn't really adopting some of the newer technology. I see a lot of that. People are scared to get out of their comfort zones and maybe experiment or do something different. And you're seeing other genres or other shows, live shows, adopting it. Why can't we come together? And I think that's amazing. It's going to make the world a better place, in my opinion. Jared, what excites you most about the future of immersive entertainment? And where do you see Zilion fitting into the next wave of media experiences?
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Well, great question. So at its inception, I knew that I wanted to try and blend these different worlds. And coincidentally, that has now started to intersect with artificial intelligence. Right. AI is, I don't know if there's a hotter topic on the planet right now, and that's infiltrating itself into music creation in ways that are still predictable and unpredictable. But we don't know what the future of that looks like, right? It's infringing upon copyrights, so on and so forth. And so as I built Zillion, each one of the characters has. The project itself has other amazing writers that I brought in because I don't want to pretend myself that I am simultaneously a singer and a writer and also can craft all these stories on my own. So there's a team behind this, and we built some really incredible and intriguing stories that coincide with each album, that coincide with each show, and with that, we have comics that are attached to that. And we've been experimenting with different AR technologies to try and bring these different levels of immersion into the live show. And there's a fork in the road we're kind of facing right now of whether or not this eventually becomes some sort of residency or whether it continues to be some sort of touring show. If we can find the right partners and the right location, be it Nashville and we can have a residency there, you can put down some tent pole technologies that allow us to bring an even greater level of immersion. But no joke, every day I'm battling back and forth with tech versus art and trying to figure out how that fuses back into zilion. So it's a beautiful push and pull. And I don't know what tomorrow looks like, but I know that going to stay on what we call the bleeding edge. And some of that comes with some wounds and scars and some high expenses. But that's what this project is for me, is to push the limits and see how far we can take it and blaze something, whether it's. Whether it's us or somebody else that comes after us, that can bring infuse, you said yourself, the power of music into these other art forms and into our other senses in person. Right. Exploring how that all happens is, again, we're doing it every day. We have a version of the show today. It'll change tomorrow, but there's nothing more exciting about it. I could talk for hours on it. That's amazing.
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B
I have so many awesome people like yourself, guests on the show, creators, and remind me maybe after we get done here, is make an introduction for you, someone that's kind of in your space, totally different, but might be able to help you or spark some ideas. They're. He's an illusionist, actually. And anyway, that's Another story. So I like what you said. Obviously AI is creeping into that music creation and obviously we're seeing some copyright issues going across the spectrum of the world right now, but we weren't sure what the future will bring. But people like you who are experimenting with AR technology and other technologies in this immersion process is only going to make it better in the future. So I appreciate that. Jared, last question of the day. What excites you most about the future of immersive entertainment? And where do you see Zilion fitting into the next wave of media experiences?
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I will say that we are in the middle of witnessing the collapse of the fourth wall and I see it deteriorating quickly and I don't know how exactly yet the audience is going to fully become part of the show and the experience, but that's what I envision and that's what I'm watching happen. We can go back to seven, eight years ago. This is prior to me even fully understanding where Zilion would be headed. And we were experimenting with at that time, some smart devices and having metrics on stage where we could actually monitor in real time the vitals of people in the crowd right now, fast forward today and imagine this would take the buy in of the audience obviously as well. But if you could cater to not just sonically, but if you could cater all of the different senses and all of the different deliverables from stage to the individuals themselves in real time in a responsive way, I think it's limitless from there. And that also terrifies me, right, because I think a lot of the beauty of art itself is birthed from human trauma, from human experience, and so on and so forth. So this reactive side that technology is fueling, again, I think it's really, really exciting. But there's a downside to it, right? We can't lose humanity as we blaze these paths forward. They're inevitable. But yet, you know, imagine you turn on music and you're having a rough day as you described earlier, and it's just not your favorite song anymore. Imagine that it's a responsive sonic piece that is tracking every one of your vitals and controlling your mood towards whatever you've requested that it dict, hate you too. Those are some of the beautiful and terrifying potentials we have as, as music blends together with technology. So I'm privileged, terrified, honored. And I also think it's a big responsibility to be part of that that I don't take lightly. And all the other artists I know that that are part of this movement, they don't take it lightly either, because there's a real risk that the voice of art can be smothered and suffocated and maybe even extinguished if we're not careful. And that's not a doomsday speech. I think that's genuinely the reality that we face. It's a real possibility.
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Absolutely. It's interesting and I just love having these conversations. But if you go back to the 60s, when the star Trek first came out, right, we're seeing the technology that was imagined back then starting to come about. And so you're absolutely right. There's so many pros and cons with AI, we could make the world a better place. But of course, you know, we can't lose humanity in it. We got to keep the ethics in it. As we see, and we see music like the Matrix, we know that this is a possibility. And you're absolutely right. I like to accentuate the positive and if we can, eliminate the negative. But we just got to make sure those ethics are involved because people have biases and ulterior motives and we just need to stay on top of it. But I am really excited for the future. Jared. It was such a pleasure having you on today, and I look forward to speaking with you real soon.
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A
Hey, thank you, man. Really appreciate what you do, what you do for art, technology, business, all the topics you've covered. I am a fan of yours and I appreciate what you do.
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Thanks, brother. Bye for now.