Sophie Watts - Executive Chairperson at Metacurio | Creating an Ecosystem for Fans

Welcome to success story, the most useful podcast in the world. I'm your host, Scott D. Clary. The success story podcast is part of the blue wire podcast network as well as the HubSpot podcast network. HubSpot podcast network has other great podcasts like marketing made simple hosted by Dr. J.J. Peterson. Now marketing made simple brings you practical tips to make your marketing easy and more importantly make it work. If you like any of these topics, you definitely want to go check out the show how to write and deliver a captivating speech, how to market yourself into a new job, how design can help and also hurt your revenue, creating a social media ad strategy that actually works. If these topics resonate with you, go check out marketing made simple wherever you get your podcasts. Today my guest is Sophie Watts. Sophie is a global media executive with a focus on venture creation for a list stars including Mike Tyson's Legends Only League. The sports enterprise which in November of 2020 staged the Tyson Jones fight, the eighth most profitable pay-per-view event of all time. Previously Watts served as the president of STX Entertainment, playing an instrumental role in the company's formation and growth including the establishment of the fully-fledged movie studio and both reality and scripted TV studios. During her tenure, STX grew from a startup to a multi-billion dollar media company that included several studios and secured capital from investors including private equity firms TPG and China-based Hony Capital, Tencent, the Chinese internet giant Liberty Global, the media conglomerate and PCCW, the global telecommunications provider. Earlier in her career, she worked in music, film, videos and programming in London. She moved to Los Angeles in 2007 where she was a producer and financier on film projects including the award-winning documentary bully and the NBC show State of Affairs. Watts has been named one of Hollywood's top dealmakers by Variety listed in Fortune magazines 40 under 40 and featured in Variety's Power of Women Report. Hollywood reporters, women and entertainment power 100 and in L magazine's Power List. She is currently the co-founder and executive chairperson at Metacurio, a leading creative studio for Web 3, built and deployed an NFT Web 3.0 strategy creative and distribution services for a list talent in corporate brands. Within a year of launch, she positioned Metacurio into a fully-fledged studio carrying world class brands into the next generation of fandom, entertainment and experiences. So we spoke about her come-up story. We spoke about how she grew STX entertainment from a startup into a multi-billion dollar media organization. We spoke about financing, investing. We spoke about why she is so keen on NFTs and why they're going to go mainstream and how blockchain can realign how artists are protected and get paid. We spoke about fundraising in a variety of different markets for traditional media for a list talent like she did with Legends Only League and also for the NFT company Metacurio that she's built right now. We spoke about the actual Mike Tyson's Legends Only League, what she did to create fandom and community around somebody like Mike Tyson, building an ecosystem and ownership around the artist's voice. Basically what she's done for Mike Tyson, what she's done for Dennis Rodman, what she's done to create this ecosystem and this fandom. She does it at an incredibly high level with a list talent, but she's going to unpack the strategy that she uses to build these communities, to build these campaigns and the marketing, the sales and the approach that she uses to get people excited and fired up about what that artist is doing. What I hope you can take away from this particular podcast is that if you are a content creator, you can look at the strategy she deployed for Mike Tyson for example and you will unpack the lessons that she's learned, the strategy that she deploys and you can use it for building out your own community and your own fandom in a very niche or microwave, but still the levers that you pull in the steps that you take to create these communities are basically the same, whether or not you do it at a Mike Tyson level or you do it at a micro influencer or micro content creator level and I'm hoping that's what you get out of it. So let's jump right into what this is. Sophie Watts, she is the founder, CEO and executive chairperson of Metacurio. Probably the most defining moment of my career was back in London in the early 2000s and I was working with Madonna live from Coco which is a quite famed music venue in London and we were filming Madonna live on stage and at this point Facebook had just emerged, I just got this Facebook account and I typed into Facebook a post that said oh you know we're filming Madonna live from Coco in London tonight and the evening came around and I got a call from a friend of mine in New York and he said I'm in Times Square Sophie and there are these big screens that are showing Madonna live from Coco and I just read your social media this this Facebook of you it's you're on this thing called Facebook where you're talking about is this you is this I'm confused and it was absolutely a moment for me as a producer and as an executive and as someone who had started as a runner in music film at PA it was that moment of streaming will change everything social media will change everything and star power which in that instance for me was the power of Madonna to truly reach audiences globally would change the landscape completely and that is what really kicked off the next almost 20 years of my career working with a list talent and Browns to protect those voices and find new systems to to monetize them and and help me understand so STX that was the company that you started correct or you were you were an executive at STX and you grew that over the course the last 20 years to multi billion dollars in revenue valuation and that was that brand was focused on working with these a lists correct yeah so my half right yes STX is a I try I try and be half right at least no no I love it it is better than a quarter right which is which is usually me STX is a movie and television studio that focuses on working with a list stars to produce premium content around their voices I was president of that that company for a nearly a decade about eight years from inception of of just two employees to what later became a company with a several hundred several billion dollar valuation with investors including TPG, honeycafterl in China, Liberty Global, PCCW but prior to that that company that star driven studio vehicle I had walked in music film back in in London and these were the days when people bought DVDs in their local store and you could buy Beyonce live at Wembley as a DVD in a store and I did many hundreds of those live music film projects back in in London and started as I as I've I've mentioned when Napster came along and iTunes came along it was a true moment that you realized oh the DVD is dead this is all about how the star connects with their audience and the way audiences want to connect is in the most seamless way possible and so I took all of those a list musicians I'd been working with in London beyond say M&M, Madonna, Elgón where I carry and started saying if these a list stars are being caught in a system where the record label at the time had not embraced streaming what would it look like if you were to build a movie and a television studio that did embrace global relationships and did embrace streaming and almost realigned the models so that you were building with and around that celebrity talent instead of building around the value of the brand of Disney or the brand of a fair amount. So this was the year that this was 2007, Pacta Suitcase moved to Los Angeles, you know one here and that started the next 15 or so years of my career nearly a decade of that at STX and that kind of led to my career now which is very much about how do you embrace web 3 decentralized models again working with a list stars or a list brands to empower their voices. So I love it and like that that thread that you that thread that you discovered when you went on social and you saw that and then your friends saw that billboard and timescaring like oh my god social and streaming that thread of creating venture and creating value and augmenting the talents voice versus the brand's voice that's something that you've doubled downed on again and again and again and that's what you're doing now. That's right and for me it's a there is a reason if you're Jennifer Lopez that you're Jennifer Lopez I don't believe on a core level that you've lucked into decades of global success it comes from a true idiosyncratic voice in the marketplace an understanding of your audience obviously you know gifts and talent that that have very few matches in in terms of what you're doing but intriguingly media systems aren't necessarily built to empower those star driven voices. I look at that and say why is a movie studio really not built around the voices of these talents that reach their audiences that speak a certain voice that has no rival in the marketplace why would you try to build a company that has a brand that can rival that of an a-list celebrity why would you not simply back that piece of talent and protect those voices and build systems and infrastructure to empower and better monetize those voices. I grew up in a world in which you know I was watching movies in in the 90s it was the era of Tom Cruise and Julia Roberts and true star driven eras of of movies to me all social media's done is heightened the power of those artists but how do you financially align yourself to help support the artist in building that brand. And as this has evolved you see that artists now take more more power over their own careers and I guess they're less reliant on these third parties because you found ways to create value and you probably better serve and you can tell me this but I feel that I know the answer you better serve the fans because it's now you're creating things that the artist believes and backs and wants it and wants to create in the world but also this is stuff that is hyper targeted for the fans it's not it's not from like a publicly traded entity that has to keep their investors in their shareholders happy that you would have to you know maybe it's conflicting goals if it's a studio or an agency versus versus the actual creator or the talent but now the the talents creating things that their fans want directly is that more or less the benefit and this is what you're enabling right. Yeah it's exactly that and it's you nailed the question perfectly which is as a fan myself it doesn't really matter to me if I'm watching a concert live or if I'm seeing it streamed or if I can buy merchandise for it or if I can engage with that artist on Instagram I'd like to see a music film I'd like to see the documentary I'd like to see the live action movie for me there's there's less of a distinction in between is this a movie or is this a live show than it is to say this is about fandom and culturally building systems around the voices of those artists this is only possible because of the of technology the fact that a Ronaldo can excuse my slightly yappy dog no fact that a Ronaldo has 400 million followers on Instagram and can directly communicate with 400 million fans which to contextualize is more fans and more social media followers than any Premier League soccer team in Europe in fact more than any of the British soccer teams in the Premier League combined in one individual is wild so I look at that and say is the value here the league or is the value here the player and if it's the player why does the player not have their own premium content arm and merchandise arm and digital content arm and branding arm because that individual has stronger or more engaged fans than any large-scale entity in the world for me how do you support that and and after after STX so you as you this is a focus of yours and it's it's continued through your career now after STX were you working with people individually because I know that you also founded Metacurio but I know that's that's probably later on in your career so I want to understand like when you work with like when you work with Mike Tyson for example I want to understand the place so you work with a creator and and where do you take them given examples of people can sort of quantify it you work with somebody and you create this and you create that and do you find investors into that project I want to understand the deal flow because you can take somebody like Mike like Mike Tyson that's the one name that is like very a huge name that you've worked with on I think one of his in 2020 was like one of the most profitable pay-per-view events of all time you worked with him on but when you take that how do you decide where to take that and how do you facilitate taking that person and creating this this community and this content and all these projects around that person so I'm a big believer in taking the voice of an artist and not trying to reshape that voice and not trying to give notes on that voice but taking the clear branded relationship of fandom and building a world around it with Mike I was introduced to him in early 2020 there were rumblings of COVID happening I had just left Nasty Axe and as those rumblings of you know what's happening in the world I went on Mike's podcast purely because I thought what a what a global brand an icon in his own right it's kind of fun story to tell my family that I've been on a podcast as as you know this this woman from England I'm on a podcast with Mike Tyson this is a cool story and I sat with him and realized very very quickly that Mike is or certainly was in a quite unique situation in which as a traditional movie or TV play he's a boxer so as someone who ran and built a movie and TV studio how do you engage with someone like Mike because he's not an actor he's not a producer what do you do with him and on the flip side if you're on the sports side of the world you look at Mike and go well he's one of the greats if not the greatest boxer of all time but I can't hire Mike as boxer because he's retired what do I do with this he doesn't fit in my model as a sports league or as an agency or as a promoter and as I was talking to him on this podcast it became very clear that he was a prime example of a global voice a global brand who could be really effectively monetized and empowered if you built a system that was outside of these legacy traditional media plays and for him what that meant was what if you're not sports and you're not entertainment but your sports entertainment what would that look like and we started having a discussion of well what if we started not a boxing league not a media league but what if we started a sports entertainment league with you Mike where it was about engaging as many fans as possible reaching as many people as possible making it fun and watchable and a family-oriented event but sports is at the core of that what would that look like and it was kind of amazing for him to say well what you're really talking about is an exhibition fight doesn't go on my record I'd like to do that but let's program as part of that live event let's program Jake Paul because a much younger demographics come and love that let's program Jake Paul as a boxer and let's program Snoop Dogg as a commentator because it's fun and it's entertaining and it'll make people laugh and let's program Snoop to perform because you'll get that kind of 90s group of women not a traditional boxing audience showing up to relive and have fun listening to music and a live show of entertainment so we programmed really a night that was filled with music with sports with exhibition fights in November and that live event which had no audience because COVID had kicked in at that point no audience live from what was then the staple center now crypto.com was a pay-per-view event that stream globally broke all records for an exhibition event but it also reached younger demos female demos and hold a generation of boxing fanatics who are seeing this icon like Tyson but as part of that we had a docu series that talked about the live show we had merchandise that built this sports league for him and so what you end up with is not a one-off media play but almost venture value of a sports entertainment league that is repeatable. I am a huge believer that stars should own equity you should have upside in their own voices and their own success so whichever artist I'm working with this is not about a one-off movie check or a one-off live event check this is about owning half of the business that owns all of the IP associated with that brand it would be like giving an actor to equity through shares and Netflix that becomes a game changer for you financially and puts you in control of your own fandom and your own relationships as you should be when you're an icon of that statue. I just want to take a second and thank the sponsor of today's episode HubSpot now baking a pie taking candy from babies both things that are theoretically easy but anyone who's ever made a pie from scratch or attempted to pry a lollipop from a screaming toddler knows that these things are in fact very difficult but you know what is easy integrating automating and scaling your business with HubSpot the HubSpot CRM platform seamlessly transforms customer data into usable insights like what's the average time it takes us to respond to a customer service request and how can we get better at it the HubSpot service hub brings all your data and support channels into one place so your team can spend less time hunting for information and more time-delighting customers plus seamless connectivity with marketing and sales hubs means every person on your team has a crystal clear picture of your customer easy as HubSpot learn how HubSpot can make it easier for your business to grow better at HubSpot.com incredible now that's quite that's quite a a thing to orchestrate and obviously that's going to be a ton of resources and just thinking through it from a business perspective I don't know this world but it seems like what you're doing that has translated into the largest pay-per-view event of all time is not something that has been done many times before the way that you think about creator only equity in their own success and then I can I can definitely see how this is going to dovetail into web3 but when you create this you're creating this and this concept and this model of fandom virtually from scratch like it's it's it's probably not something that is replicated many times over so when you try and build this out and I'm assuming you try and raise money for it right how does that process look how do you quantify the ROI on investment to something like this it's a brilliant question that each artist whatever their venture may be has a different business model clearly the most efficient way to build the company is and I'm always a builder of disruptive companies were and I want to be clear here on some on some hands it's wildly innovative and forward-thinking to build a company around a piece of talent on the flip side this is what Disney does for any media property that they have you would never make a stars movie if you want also making a stars theme park ride and stars tours and at toys and the Mandalorian as a TV show there is a world almost an atomic community whether it's Pixar or it's Star Wars or it's a tunnels or it's Marvel Disney does this better than anyone else in the world under that Disney banner so these micro ecosystems are not a new thought it's that we're replacing the IP a Star Wars with a living breathing moving idiosyncratic voice in a star a Mike Tyson and when it comes to building it from scratch whilst you're building the company from nothing you are leveraging in Mike's instance 80 million people on Instagram alone you're leveraging a global fan base that is lived with this voice and this icon for decades you're simply taking that voice and monetizing it more efficiently so in that instance would you fund the company or would you be deeply conservative as I always am with with investors money and fund a live event and then have that event roll back as revenue into the company of course because you're diluting yourself less you're maximizing your reach and you're putting yourself much as you would if you were a startup with VC banking you're putting yourself in a position where your ROI is pretty extraordinary for no risk so that is how we traditionally build all of our joint ventures with talent and certainly when it's come to web 3 the basic technology of decentralization automatically reframes how to reach and monetize those audiences initially through one at ease but in a way in which you can truly segment audiences and community and fuel that community consistently and so let's let's talk about let's because as you're building this out so when you were building this out for Mike Tyson you did not use NFTs this was something that was probably evolving as you were building out this entire this entire campaign for him but now I don't know where it stands now I don't know if it's it's completed or if it's ongoing but as you created a medicurio this is going to facilitate exactly what you're doing for for Mike but probably at a much larger and more scalable model right is that sort of the goal with this it's exactly right medicurio was designed you know there's a really interesting black hole in web 3 right now where I will never pretend to be someone who understands the deep a tech plays of blockchain or how protocol functions I'm not a technologist in that sense and on the flip side I go well historically I've taken traditional Hollywood models and and invited them so that they better protect and support the artist upon whose name you're really green lighting a movie or building a company so I started looking at web 3 and really it was it was a slew of phone calls that I started receiving from different pieces of celebrity talent calling saying you know so you've made us lots of money over the last 15 20 years but hold on I'm reading the New York Times and there's some guy called people is that what it is but there's something million dollar transaction and I really don't know what it is Sophie but why someone making 69 million dollars and I'm not and that for me was a real wake up call of oh who can provide solutions for celebrities in this space and as you look at the Hollywood appropriately at the Hollywood studios and the Hollywood talent agencies who are traditionally a kind of gatekeeper for for working with and engaging with that talent those studios and agencies correctly are not built to understand web 3 they don't need to be built to understand it they want to take the check from it but you're a centralized business model you're never going to live in breathe blockchain like a web 3 open sea or a ripple or a finance is going to do on the flip side these web 3 companies have never walked with a global multi-billion dollar walking talking brand you don't understand necessarily creative or how to build marketing campaigns you probably shouldn't have to so the theory of medicurio was what if you built a platform agnostic sits in between Hollywood and traditional decentralized marketplaces and what if it was a web 3 studio that exclusively signed the biggest pieces of talent in the world and handled everything about pulling that talent from traditional Hollywood into a web 3 space bless you oh thank you I got that you got that now let's translate it about a year since inception we have over 70 client relationships including Mike Tyson we've done three NFT drops with Tyson and he's a perfect example of how as a company medicurio educates artists in the space but handles the creation the production the marketing the community management and ultimately brokers the distribution for NFTs and anything associated with web with web 3 for those clients but Mike went from a fairly reasonable sized drop with Corey Vanloo who's a prodigal ditched artist in the space to six months later that sold out in a week six months later Mike sold his finance group of NFTs about two weeks ago in early April he had 24,000 people show up on Twitter spaces within a minute that NFT collection sold out within 84 seconds he truly has a community that for the first time ever he can clearly segment and clearly reward his community his fans in a way that's appropriate that's a big future for celebrities what do you think traditional institutions are going to do when they realize that the stars don't need them to make money anymore it's a really interesting question because and I am asked this all the time what happens to the agent what happens to the manager and I am a deep believer that an agent who has a world class piece of talent is the best at anyone in the world at maximizing how much their client is going to make and I'm a big believer that a big piece of talent has a manager to help shape decisions in their career I don't think those teams of people around the talent are going anywhere I think truly they're the best in the world at protecting their talent and we want them to be their protecting talent the shift will be less so with talent teams and talent partners than what we've seen in the broader media landscape which is mass consolidation of media giants we've seen Netflix's stock plummet given its numbers and its subscriber base dropping we've seen discovery in massive massive consolidation we've seen a very small handful of streaming giants emerge as dominant players in the market what that's left is the behemoths and the behemoths are going nowhere but the behemoths are not incentivised to drive technological change you are rewarded by being bigger and spending more money and being a volume play that has no competition and I'm excited that those buyers exist and dominate the landscape but what it has meant is that there's an extraordinary space for forward thinking disruptors to enter the space and build aggressively because those independent players are disappearing on a daily basis that is and I'm an optimist that is a real opportunity for new disruptive thinkers to step into the space and build aggressively with forward thinking technologies like blockchain I do not believe that will come from these monolithic giants it will not and I think you actually touched on an interesting point even the the behemoths who are doing well you look at Netflix that is a behemoth that did disrupt the blockbuster and they hit a ceiling on their cam they hit a ceiling on their cam they didn't diversify their revenue streams in regardless of whether or not you diversify the tech that you introduce into your organization to your customers or you diversify just your thoughts about marketing sales anything like that Netflix went down 30 points and lost 200 million dollars because they didn't they weren't forward thinking enough even though they're considered a forward thinking company so you have to move and iterate quickly and even even medicureo the the version you have of it today you have to be cognizant that it I think it has to always evolve and take on new things and figure out how new technologies can serve existing communities and I think that because you're doing it now you just can't lose sight of that in 10 years because then there'll be somebody else that will displace you so it's what you're saying is not wrong but it's smart what you're doing now it's all it's all I think that I think you can never let it's like a startup thing you can never let the drive any ambition and the way that you look at the world and solve problems as a startup you can never let that leave you can never forget that and think like that it's always I can't remember who said this it's like always think like it's you know day zero or day one I think it's probably baseless actually you said that like you always have to think like that you have to think like you are thinking day one even when it's day 5,000 but I'm very interested. Exactly right you have to certainly in you know and I hear this all the time NFTs are so far along it's to evolve to space for me to understand I can't stress enough this is the beginning of Web 3 and right now it's almost designed for people unless you live and breathe in this protocol space it's so complicated to understand I have to say on the flip side I walk down the street outside my house and I asked any person how does the internet work I would highly doubt that they can answer that I could not say that but they would understand how to use Google and how to type something in and to have something pop back at them that will be the transition point for for Web 3 and for blockchain as a broader concept less so how the technology works but how is a mass consumer can it work for me in a way that is palatable and not scary and digestible and is consumer friendly we are not there yet we were in the very very early days of what this is which is exciting but as a result you have to be ready to pivot on a daily basis to not only capture those opportunities but to protect people in the space do you find that you know you mentioned a point before that which I also thought was interesting you've been in the space for so long so I thought it would be notable to touch on you mentioned agents always protect artists and they're the best people to protect them but but does do they really all the time do they really always have the best interest or will platform like yours actually create a safer space for some people that may not have the best people around them it's a brilliant debate it depends how you define protecting the artist you know inherent in an agency model is that you're taking a percentage of what your client is earning so if you define protecting talent as protecting the amount of money they make of course an agency and an agent is going to do that better than anyone else because your job and the way you earn money is to get the maximum amount of money for your client is maximum guarantees for your client always the best thing maybe maybe not I certainly know pieces of talent big pieces of talent in the web 3 NFT space who have taken minimum guarantees for an NFT drop and have had no upside in the long-term value of that NFT is that a good thing for the talent you've certainly made much less money than you would have if you'd back the long tail of an NFT strategy but your money is in your pocket so who's right my answer is always what does the celebrity what does the piece of talent care about what do they want my job here is not to convince a piece of talent to go one way or another because back to our earlier point there's probably a reason you're a piece of talent of that stature and that caliber and that reach you probably know your brand and your team better than anyone else so let me empower that and protect that and some of these pieces of talent no longer have talent agents I would support that as well it's whatever works for that piece of talent and just want to take a second to thank the sponsor of today's episode swag.com now you know if you've ever received a corporate gift or swag in the past how many of those gifts did you actually keep probably not many which is probably because the stuff that you got was not so great I've gotten like a lot of stuff from great shows and from companies in the past that I've just thrown out the second I get it so this is why you need check out swag.com I've been on the receiving end of getting garbage gifts I've also worked in companies where I only had access to a really really small inventory of stuff that I wanted to give my customers and my employees and I knew that it wasn't going to resonate I knew that was going to suck so what is swag.com well it's like swag upgraded it's the best place to buy custom gifts and swag the people will actually want to keep so they sent me a box because obviously they're sponsoring the show and I wanted to see what it's all about you know I've worked in businesses I want to make sure that the quality of their stuff actually was up to my standards because I can tell you right now that when I get garbage it goes right into the trash it like it really goes right into the trash the second I get back from the trade show or the conference or whatever so I received one of the custom swag boxes from swag.com I loved the unique packaging so it was a beautiful unboxing experience I love the actual products they sent me and there's a whole bunch more that obviously they didn't send me but the stuff that they did send was absolutely beautiful it was very high quality and I can only imagine that if I actually got this when I was working for companies I probably would have actually used it and to be honest I'm gonna start using them for people that work on my show and in my company as well because I know this isn't just a novelty gift that somebody's gonna throw out it's stuff that they can actually use they have so many 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for the perfect swag and custom gifts right now they're giving everybody who's a success story podcast listener special offer it's 10% off your entire order but only when you go to swag.com slash success and enter promo code success 10 remember for 10% off go to swag.com slash success and use promo code success 10 and when you launch one of these projects I'm curious about the strategy that you use to market it and to gain attention obviously you have the reach of the initial individual and talent but what are the strategies you deploy to make sure this is a winning campaign or a winning launch that may be different from any traditional campaigns that you would have run to promote a movie for example what what avenues what mediums that you have to sort of target and focus on that that's kind of interesting actually because I've always marveled at how a traditional movie studio spends tens of millions of dollars annually if not more on a billboard on sunset boulevard about the shanta mama and I truly look at that and go how could you spend a hundred thousand dollars a week for a billboard that maybe ten people see maybe ten thousand people see but you have no understanding of whether they see the movie care about the movie engage in the movie in a landscape in which you can so hyper target audiences traditional studios aren't built to do that and traditional marketing campaigns are built to be efficient you rewarded an incentivized for doing things the same way that's the great joy of this space you take a Tyson or a Dennis Rodman in our instance we took Robin who's a client of ours who again this is not about my feeling of what audiences would connect with or what I feel would be good for him we on a very granular basis say what is his audience based statistically analytically what do they care about what comes back is well they really care about the bulls and they really care about his fashion they really care about his hat and they really care about his clothing at which point you say well let's revolve our engineering to their audience what if we were to do an NFT collection that's about what he's wearing what his hair looks like how he's engaging as a fashion icon let's respect what his target audience cares about and deliver what they care about so the creative is very much in respect of and deliberately targeted to to market to and engage with what his fans want and care about so we're instantly entering the space with something creatively that won't disappoint his audience and that's really important to us we're not going off brand here we're respecting and elongating the brand and then true to this space community arenas whether it's Twitter spaces or discord are enormous market murders for NFT buyers we we curate those communities we have specialists come up to talk to those communities and marketing is done as native social advertising all organically we don't pay for any advertising so you're really honoring and respecting his inbuilt fanbase which is the entire purpose of what web3daz is building atomic networks that you can scale as a whole that is radically different to I mean the quarter of a billion dollars of marketing spend that I've overseen at movie studios it is almost the exact opposite but it's it's funny because it's actually what good marketing looks like even if we took the the the web3 component out of it the fact that you want to understand and to communicate with an audience in the way that is authentic and is and is exactly the way that they expect you to communicate with them I don't it's funny how that doesn't seem to it's not common sense that's the way everybody should market even if you had quarter of a billion dollars that's the way you should still market it's exactly right but if you're big executive but a studio you want it to be your taste and your vision and your mind and your marketing because that's how you justify your big outsized page I just want to take a second and thank the 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preserver which is a deodorant and the crop reviver which is a spray on toner remember get 20% off and free shipping with the success story podcast code rcode 20 success at manscape.com remember that's 20% off with free shipping at manscape.com and use our code 20 success it's time to level up your grooming game with the ultimate hair and grooming tools from manscape yeah you know listen there's a lot of it's a lot of people that are going to be pissed off with with what you're doing and a good and a good very good way I think you're you know you're using tech but the way that you the way that you the way that you market the way that you build this business and this business model and all the forward thinking ideas that you incorporate there's a lot of people that you could put out of work and out of business if if you do this that scale I guess that's the goal that's always the goal well Scott I will tell you when I showed up in my mid 20s and said I'm going to build a movie studio in Hollywood I cannot tell you the number of people who thought I was a complete lunatic that's a good sign historically you have to you have to respect existing legacy systems but common sense is undervalued in this space and I'm a big believer in common sense I love that and and give me just give me some examples of this of the things that creators and talent can do when you think of a new campaign for them one of the different things that you could do for somebody because I want to take the things that you're doing with talent with a list talent and I want a smaller creator to also think through different ways that they can try different things with their community because of course if obviously not at the same scale but still there's different ways to replicate at a smaller level that I think you could leverage Web 3 NFTs for to give certain access to do certain drops of certain things so what are all the scope of things that you've tried to do or that you think you would ever want to do with an a list talent in Web 3 so look right now we're certainly feeling the transition from static NFTs even with iconic photographers there's the great debate of if there's no utility built into this NFT why am I buying it and I inherently believe that to be true when you're as an emerging creator as a creator who's understanding the space as big celebrity in the space it's always to me about authenticity of your voice and brand and respecting that authenticity and I do believe that's undervalued as a whole we're in a landscape in which certainly with decentralization truth and honesty is critical to what you're doing and that is sustainable and self syndicating as a brand because people know what they're showing up for if it's authentic at Medicurio when you're buying an NFT you should be unlocking and certainly are even in the Tyson or Robin instances you're unlocking physical utility so we sold a one-of-one where you can go and spar with my Tyson that sold for about 400 grand we have a partnership with a company called Render which is a physical object that is basically a printout of your NFT so you have physical merchandise that can be a physical key to unlock a physical space that you can visit whether it's an artist studio or it's their creative workspace you're then interacting with that star maybe you can use that physical key which is also a digital asset to attend a concert maybe that live concert is an excuse to get a free hot dog from the venue maybe that free hot dog also unlocks a VIP experience to me building utility on top of entities to build true fandom is the ultimate win in this space whether you're a multi multi multi billion dollar walking brand or you're an emerging creator that ability to truly understand and build fandom and reward your loyal fans with experience and engagement that is just a game changer on almost every level and it's exciting for everyone it's exciting for the fan but it's certainly exciting for the creator as well I love that and and I guess last question before we do I want to do a couple rapid fire to close this out what impact do you see yourself having what impact do you want to have it could be at a micro level in your category and industry or at a macro level what's at this point in your career your vision and your passion I'm probably still too English to think that I could you know it's that that English humility where you're kind of embarrassed to talk about having any impact or meaning I've spent my entire career wanting to and believing that art is one of the most powerful mediums in the world I think that ability to shape the way people feel the way people engage is is critically important certainly in a time right now that's a really complicated moment in history everything I do is designed to try and empower and build a and respect that art whether it's NFTs or its movies whether it's book publishing or it's live music film my hope would be that any of my JV's any of my companies any of my talent relationships medicurio are our infrastructures that help artists speak to their audiences and engage with their walls make people feel good ultimately if it can help people feel happy or excited or laugh or cry or build a sense of community that's what I hope to do in my life and correct incredible um okay where should people reach out to you if they want to connect is socials website all of that they should ping us on twitter at medicurio and ft okay perfect do you have your own socials you want to send people to as well or just is that the main one that's the main one because it's never about me it's always about all right I'm okay with that that's no problem okay um let's go through a couple rapid you don't have to rapid fire through them but the point is there's a few of them okay um what keeps you up at night now well keeps me up is the pace in which the world is moving and there are such tremendous opportunities in front of us in media blockchain and web 3 and I'm conscious that I've built a system that's designed to protect the artist I want to ensure that we're moving fast enough that that art is always protected good very good biggest challenge you've overcome in your personal life what was it had you overcome it what you learned from it uh it's a macabre answer actually which is uh that I have put less focus on my family and relationships um then I should have in a pursuit uh for for walk and ultimately have learned that I've missed some great and critical moments in my life as a as a result of that yeah it's that is that's tough that's a tough thing to come to realize but I think it's an important lesson because you're you're still very young in the grand scheme of things you can definitely uh fix things and and do things differently but it's a thing that's always I think that's the first victim of success in any field it's friends family relationships children's spouse it's those are the things that you don't spend as much time on so I think it's a good note for people that are trying to build something or to create something uh you have to pay attention to that and I do ultimately think you know it it's frances for a copulous statement where he's said in loose terms you know I when I'm on my deathbed I want to say that I said yes to loving everything and engaging with everything and feeling good about everything and I'm not gonna sit there thinking about how much money I made I'm gonna sit there thinking about my grandchildren and my family and my wife and my home and my beautiful view and be grateful for it um if you had to choose one person who's had a major impact in your life who is that person what did they teach you my mother was a deeply entrepreneurial record executive she was the first employee at Virgin records back in the day in London she taught me to protect art she taught me that it doesn't matter how successful you are kindness is more important than anything and she taught me to be good to people and I I will forever think of that if you had to pick one source it could be a book a podcast it could be anything that's had an impact on your life that you'd recommend people go check out look I'm a I'm a music I'm a music fanatic and a movie junkie I consume almost any form of art on a really rapid basis so it would be tough for me to pick one thing but I will also say uh that I am a trained classical pianist um you throw a piece of music at me and I I find it quite moving so I would say the piano changed my life in lots of ways if you could tell your 20 year old self one thing what would it be go for it stop worrying good advice always good advice timeless um and if you could uh last question excuse me and if you had to define success what does success mean to you that's a big one because it has changed over the years and at its root I think success is happiness and I think happiness is wanting what you have and when you've when you found that you should hold onto it