Dave Broome - CEO of Orange Comet: The World’s Premiere Web3 Entertainment Company Driving the Digital Revolution

Full transcript: Dave Broome on London Real

2:45 This is London Real. I am Brian Rose. My guest today is Dave Broome, the former television and film producer, content creator and Web3 entrepreneur.

3:06 You have spent the last 25 years of your life producing award-winning television and documentary shows featuring some of the biggest names in Hollywood. You were the creator and executive producer of NBC’s global hit series The Biggest Loser, and worked alongside Sylvester Stallone to produce the first ever unscripted series on Netflix. More recently, you filmed and produced the Jennifer Lopez documentary Halftime, which premiered at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival and is one of the most successful documentary features in Netflix history.

3:35 Today you’ve taken your many years of experience into the world of Web3 and NFTs as the co-founder and CEO of Orange Comet. Your goal is to build the Disney of Web3 entertainment, educate people about NFTs in the metaverse and onboard millions of new users into this exciting ecosystem. Dave, welcome to London Real. Brian, first of all, thank you. It’s great to be here.

4:00 Several that might be one of the best intros I’ve ever heard on me. I need that. I’m going to take that and rip that off word for word because it’s spot on and I love it. Well, it’s you, so that’s the beautiful thing about it. Look, I’m excited to go deep today.

4:13 I just want to say that we are super excited to have you here, because Orange Comet is also one of our portfolio companies here at London Real Ventures, where our mission is to transform the world by investing in cutting-edge digital asset ecosystem protocols while giving our partners marketing exposure across all of our London Real media platforms and academies. Our aim is to heighten awareness, create customers, build communities by leveraging our global audience and extensive network. Dave, you have no idea how excited we are to be part of this journey with you.

4:44 Orange Comet, all of our members, all of our investment club people, so let’s jump in. That means a lot to me, by the way. Oh, we really are, man. I really appreciate that. We’re all in on you and Orange Comet, and we’re super pumped, so let’s jump in.

4:56 We’ve got so much to talk about. Yeah, guess what, I’m going to start with. How does a successful Hollywood executive? You basically could have done anything you want with your life and career, but you jumped into Web3 blockchain, the metaverse, this crazy new world with all these crazy kids doing crazy things. Yeah, we jumped in a couple years ago.

5:15 Why do that? Because you could have done anything you wanted in Hollywood. Why? It’s a good question. You know, I, because I get asked that a lot, but I looked at Web3 several years ago and it was a head scratcher for me.

5:30 I saw the blockchain technology. I saw how it could be a game changer, but what I started to look around the landscape what I saw was, if I’m politically correct, I would say mediocre content, average, mostly below average, and let me just even be honest, I’ll just say junk. Not from digital artists, because art is art, and you’ve got to put that aside, but when you start looking at intellectual properties in the world of entertainment, TV, film, movies, music and sports, which were making their way into the blockchain and Web3, it was just a regurgitation of it was just like, well, why do you need an NFT of that?

6:13 Why does that need to be on Web3? Why does that have to be on the blockchain? And what I started to realize was, wait a minute, isn’t this world, or shouldn’t this world, also be a content play? Isn’t this about, you know, we know that the cliché’s content is king, right? So why wasn’t that happening in on the blockchain?

6:33 Why wasn’t that happening in Web3? And that’s how I made the transition, where I saw that I’ve been a TV and film producer for nearly 25 years, creating a high-end, I built a 3D digital design studio with our chief creative officer Dante Farini for more than 20 years. How do we move that into Web3? How do we bring excitement and engage a fan through the content play? And so it wasn’t that much of a leap when you think about it.

7:01 It is what most people are doing in Web3, because they’re not thinking content, they’re thinking speculative. They’re thinking about, you know, the utility and community of projects, which are important by the way, but they’re not thinking what’s maybe driving that first and foremost. To me it was, should an NFT or Web3 be any different than a great movie or a great song or a great poem or a great book? No, and that’s how I made the move over. And it shows right away.

7:29 Like when we started seeing the content you produce, and for anybody watching us, just hold on, because we’re going to be showing off some of your work, some cool stuff. You know, right away you’re like, wow, okay, these guys are here to create something amazing, beautiful, that I’m going to want to have for the rest of my life. Like this is something I want to own, I want to collect, I want to watch, I want to re-watch. It wasn’t something that felt like it was being created to sell and then sell more.

7:55 That’s right. And it’s weird, you can feel that within the first five, ten seconds. I appreciate that. And look, not just that, what we want to do is have it be a serve a purpose, so the content is building to something larger, greater, whether it’s a Web3 game. We bought a Web3 gaming company this past year, State Labs, and brought them into Orange Comet.

8:17 We saw this as driving and engaging fans in a different way, and that is the perspective that I believe needs to take over for Web3. So it builds and expands the base beyond the enthusiasts, which are critical. You have to still appeal to the Web3 enthusiasts, but the question is, how do you get an everyday fan of The Walking Dead or an entertainment property to come into this space, because it’s so new, right? We’re in a nascent industry, but the opportunity is so massive.

8:52 But what’s going to drive them, what’s going to excite them? You know, it’s not just going to be about a piece of work that you say, this is a drawing of something, and by the way, now you’re part of the club. I don’t think that’s it. I think it’s more like, unengage in a different way as a fan, and now I can up my fandom in a way and become, get into the world of Web3, which is what we’re looking to do. We’re looking to bridge the gap by taking massive entertainment properties and bring the everyday fan and still appeal to the crypto and core enthusiasts already in this space.

9:25 And you’re doing it fast, because I first saw your NFT pieces and then I kind of blinked my eyes and you had acquired Mint and you’re all of a sudden building metaverses. So these NFTs now plug into these massive metaverses, and I’ve seen them. We’re going to show a few clips later, but you’re already going into that phase in a big way, because the virtual world, you know, this metaverse is an interesting term, because I’m not, I’m not necessarily a big fan of it, because I think it’s a little confusing for the everyday person.

9:52 Like, what’s the metaverse? You know, where does this live? What do I, how do I get there? You know, and so people don’t. I’m trying to dumb it down and say, look, these are virtual environments and we’re living in a digital world, a digital age.

10:06 You know who we are, what we are on social media. Our representation is no different than what we are in real life. You’re a beautifully dressed man wearing a three-piece suit with a gorgeous tie. I’m the guy wearing a John Varvatos, you know, cashmere sweater. This is who we make a statement about ourselves.

10:25 So being in the virtual world also is a statement of ourselves, right? So we want these platforms to basically be easy to get into as a general fan of the space, not feel like “oh my God, I gotta understand what a, you know, what a metaverse is all about.” You know, that’s scary stuff for a lot of people. Yeah, yeah. That word metaverse is not necessarily the bad word.

10:50 Even the word NFT is not the right word to describe what these things are. So no, it’s going to be a different process of communicating, maybe new language you know, moving forward. That’s right. Um, let’s talk about Sir Anthony Hopkins, okay? Because as he is one of you know Britain’s, you know, most incredible actors, and he’s in his abilities, 84.

11:10 I think 84. And yet, for maybe 85, he recently did something that you would expect, you know, kids in their teens to do. That’s right, which is to jump in and really embrace Web3, and he did it with your support. Can you tell me the story of you working with Sir Anthony Hopkins and the drop you did, and all the nuance around it, because this was, it was a real strategy to what you did from an education standpoint, from building audience, but I think it’s a really interesting example and maybe a case study for anybody out there that wants to know the way to do this right and the way to do this wrong.

11:42 Well, yeah, look, he, Anthony Hopkins at 84, 85, is not the poster child of what you would think of in Web3 NFTs. But first and foremost, it’s important to know that he was one of the first, if not the first, to do an NFT movie called Zero Contact. This took place during the pandemic. He was approached with this opportunity, so he was intrigued by the Web3 space. That’s a really important starting point, right?

12:07 Because you think about it, you want your celebrity partner or your IP partner to want to be in the space. You don’t want to drag him into something, then it’s rounds, you know, square peg, round hole. It doesn’t work, and that I found that always to be the case. But besides being this iconic actor and this legendary actor, he’s an artist. He’s a real artist.

12:31 His artwork sells for hundreds of thousands of dollars in some cases, so he’s a guy who’s doing, who’s who’s authentic to the space to begin with, because Web3 and NFTs were created by and first and foremost for art to show off digital art, to show off ours, to give them a new opportunity. So he and Aaron Tucker, who runs his art business, sent his wife Stella, who is amazing in her own right, saw what was going on with Orange Comet and reached out to us and said, look, Tony, which is what he wants to be. He doesn’t.

13:09 You don’t know what to call Sir Anthony Hopkins. Do you call him Sir Anthony? Do you call him Sir Anthony Hopkins? You call him sir? And what he’ll tell you is, no, no, you call me Tony.

13:18 So I said, I might have a tough time with that, Tony, but I’m going to do that. So he wanted to be known as Tony. We call him Tony, so I’m going to reference him that now. Look, he’s, you know, I’ve had the fortunate, in my career, to work with some of the most incredible people, massive celebrities and incredible partnerships. Tony Hopkins is, was, is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

13:43 He’s a visionary, brilliant. He’s got a perspective that’s so unique. You could just sit there, on his, it’s sitting across from him and just not say a word, just listen to him. And so he had a vision of what he wanted to do, and he was inquisitive about this space. That’s fantastic, and so we said, look, you should start by putting it out in the world that you want to learn about Web3 and NFTs in a deeper way.

14:15 You already made a movie, and he did. He went on his socials and said, I want to learn about digital art. I want to learn about NFTs. I want to learn more about Web3, and all of a sudden people, like people and others in this space reached out to him, and they embraced him and basically said, welcome to the world of Web3, brother, come on in. That was the starting point, and while that was happening, what we did was we started to riff with him and say, what do you want to do?

14:47 Well, forget what we would want you to do, because that doesn’t matter. We’ll execute together, but it’s got to come from you. What’s your idea? What are you passionate about? And what we came up with, or what Tony came up with, was we took his art.

15:03 We wanted to take his paintings and find a new way, a new platform to explore on the blockchain. So we broke them down. We digitized them as a starting point, then he was drawn by the kinds of archetypes of the characters that he’s played in his films. Over here, so not Hannibal Lecter in Silence of the Lambs, but the monster behind Hannibal Lecter, and that was a really interesting place to go, and we started looking at all the characters from The Rebel to the Gesture to the Lover, and started putting these archetypes together, and when we started to blend the two, the idea really started to blossom.

15:48 And the concept was to show Tony in a way that no one had ever seen, when if I would say, hey, we’re gonna do an Anthony Hopkins NFT collection, we wanted the opposite of what would come to your mind, and thinking what that would be like, what the, we never would expect this. And that’s the idea. So we started to blend his artwork with these archetypes, and when you see these pieces, which by the way sold out in seven minutes in a bear market, in a crypto winter, which I hate that, but we talk about that, sold out in seven.

16:24 How many pieces? A thousand pieces, and each one was a unique one-of-one. But what people first were blown away by is when they saw them, they thought they were maybe just photographs of Tony’s face, but they weren’t. Dante and our creative team, they’re all digitally created. It’s all sculpted in digital.

16:47 So when you look at Anthony Hopkins, I know you’ll roll tape on this, none of it’s real. It’s not a photo, it’s not a video, and people were just, their jaws dropped on that. And I think that, again, we’re offering something of value to an enthusiast, to a fan, and that’s a critical part of this. And that’s that was the jumping-off point. We called it the Eternal Collection.

17:14 I could tell you, we’re about to now go to the next step with that into The Descendants line, and this project continues to unfold with a lot of interesting surprises. We kind of, almost, we’re building a Marvel Universe around Anthony Hopkins, so to summarize: you had an 84-year-old guy passionate about this space, looking to maybe be immortalized himself on the blockchain, a real artist, got embraced by the community, and then we took it to a whole another level with him, and that’s the formula for success. Wow, and it sold out in seven minutes.

17:51 Seven minutes. And like you said, what was probably, call it, a whatever bear market, crypto winter, and also probably at the same time the worst time for NFTs. On top of that, it was right, and yet you guys sold it out, which shows that if you really cater to what a fan wants and give them something they want to collect, as a piece of art, and gives value to them, then there’s always a demand, always demand, because you know what, I know we’ll talk about the Scottie Pippen project at some point, but when we were doing that tour, like a promotional tour with Scotty, and we, when we were in New York, Scotty, myself, let me play the Hopkins pieces.

18:25 I want to get to Scotty because it’s really good stuff. So we’re gonna roll tape. It’s a minute, and it’s showing a lot of the items in the hospital. That’s right, we can talk over it. Yeah, actually we won’t talk about this, because it’s got, we got audio, talk when it comes back.

18:36 But I, one thing I always show when I show your stuff to all the people that invested, I always say exactly what you said: you guys created these digitally. Yeah, so he didn’t have to sit for all these pictures and poses, no video. You guys did it all, because you have such an incredible background in creating that’s digital art. That’s right. Right.

18:54 So think of that, and again, think in your mind what you thought would be the Anthony Hopkins NFT, and now watch this, because like you said, it’s the last thing you’d expect. So we’re rolling this. This is the Anthony Hopkins collection, all right, foreign. And so this is the first collection. Now this is going to be followed by subsequent, and I’m guessing there’ll be airdrops and access for people that got the first.

20:15 Right, you’re building a whole new universe for him on the blockchain, and he’s 84, and you guys are just getting warmed up. That’s right, and you know, the interesting thing about those pieces is that we purposely want them digitally built, you know, to sculpt. That, by the way, digitally sculpted is a tremendous amount of work. It’s very, very difficult to do this kind of level of work. You would think, oh, let’s just go hire the greatest, you know, 3D animators or designers to put this.

20:41 It’s not easy. This is a team that’s been with me, the core team that’s been with me for more than 20 years, so we built off of that, but you still don’t want to make it look exactly like a photograph. You almost kind of wanted to make it look like a hyper-realistic version, so you know that this is a, you know, a digital asset, but still looks so real that you know it’s almost like some, a great video game. Sometimes you see a character in a great video game, you’re like, how the hell do they do that?

21:14 That’s amazing, and that’s what you kind of want now, and what we’re doing in Web3, creating those environments. So yes, this is the start of the next line, the iteration. We call it a family tree of The Descendants off of this Eternal Collection. So it’s exciting stuff with him, and he’s what’s great about it is he’s so passionate about it, and you can see that, and that’s what you want. You must have that in these projects.

21:45 That’s what, look, I think that’s what you need in life in general. You know, if you’re not passionate about it, don’t do it, man. Get out. Amen, get out. But when you’re entering into partnerships with talent or intellectual properties, you want them to feel the same passion you are feeling about it.

22:03 And that’s the great thing about Tony is, he’s, you know, I don’t even have to ask him. He’ll just post something on his own. He’s feeling it himself, and that’s, I think, what we need in Web3 in general. Yeah, there’s so many things missing in Web3, and you just pinpointed one that I haven’t seen many other people connect with, and it’s probably because of your vast experience in Hollywood. You can’t try to sell someone on it.

22:26 You sure as hell can’t pay them to do it, because you’re just going to get a bad, bad product at the end. Yeah. If they’re not all in and passionate, what do they always say? The customer experience is a lagging indicator of company culture, and that’s the same, you know, it’s a lagging indicator of passion. Absolutely.

22:41 I would have, as a TV and film producer, I would have talent, celebrity talent, you know, A-listers come to me and sit down with me and say they want to get into a reality space, let’s say, or doc space or whatever, and they would ask me for, you know, what do I think about, what about this, or, you know, they would ask me for the ideas basically to pitch them, and I would stop them down. So what was it? This is not about what I want. It’s not about a format that I want to put you into.

23:10 This is not about a show that I want to create around you. You need to tell me what you want. What’s your vision? What do you care about? What are you passionate about?

23:19 I’ll tell you if I think I can make that into a hit television series or a documentary, whatever, but it shouldn’t come from me. It’s got to come from you. I’ll do the execution in a way that you’ve never seen. But if it’s not from your heart, if it’s not something you feel, it’s not something you’re passionate about, and it’s something I’m sticking into, we’re gonna fail. And it’s the same thing in Web3.

23:40 Wow, that’s powerful. All right, let’s talk about that. Scottie Pippen. All right. Now, I moved to Chicago in 1995 to work for the First National Bank of Chicago.

23:48 I didn’t know that. And at the time I got to go to all the Bulls games. What year was it? ’95? I thought they’re like ’95 to ’97, something like that.

23:59 And I was at the game when Jordan came back. I was actually at the Bulls arena, and so I used to see them out at night, and Rodman had just come in, and he was owning this club, and so it was crazy. Good time back then. It was a good time back then, and it was epic. And then of course, with the documentary The Last Dance, yeah, we really got to learn more about who Scotty was as a person.

24:22 Tell me what you’ve done with Scotty, because this is really interesting, because you threw a word at me about a month ago on one of our calls. You said, Brian, digital. Digital, you said. So tell me, what did you do with Scotty and what’s happening? Yeah, well, Scotty’s a good example too.

24:37 He came to us after seeing our work. His agent at WME, William Morris Endeavor, knew of us. I used to be a WME client as a producer, and he wanted to create an NFT sneaker line. Now, where was this coming from? Scotty had his own sneaker deal.

25:03 He was an ambassador for Nike for years. Had all kinds of sneakers that came out with them. And again, we’ve got a lot of calls from talent, IP, wanting to, you know, they see our work and like, I want to partner with you, but if it’s not coming from a place of authenticity, but passion and real genuineness, it’s going to be tough. But because Scott, he knew nothing of Web3. He just knew the world and saw sneakers, and was a sneakerhead, was someone who was, again, a Nike ambassador, so said, what would that be like for me on the blockchain?

25:42 What’s it like? Scottie Pippen doesn’t need it for the money. He makes plenty of money, and he’s made plenty of money. That doesn’t mean he doesn’t want to make more or be successful, but I think a lot of this is about getting into a new area, getting into a new space. So because we knew at Orange Comet that we were going to be getting into the digital, and we can talk about that, the physical and digital world in a big way with our Corrupted, and we’ll talk about that.

26:09 It was something that was interesting to us as well. Now, Scotty had no idea what the sneaker design would look like in the world of Web3. He left that to us, and we then bounced ideas off of him. So we, we thought we had something, and thought we were going to be successful with him. We never thought that we would, you know, after the Tony Hopkins success in seven minutes, we never… we broke a record on OpenSea, the platform where, you know, the leading marketplace, right?

26:46 We sold Scottie Pippen. We sold a thousand sneakers. Every shoe was different. Everyone was a different digital design. No two are alike.

26:57 We dropped him in December again, bear market, crypto winter. We sold them out in 77 seconds. I thought there was a glitch when I was watching it happen unfold in real time. But again, when we went out on the road with Scotty, and Scotty and I started doing some interviews and press, and we went on places like The Complex, which is, you know, an online YouTube channel and sneaker for sneakerheads, he was able to speak from a place of authenticity. The NFT collection became an organic part of the conversation, and that was what’s so critical here.

27:37 So we can talk more about the specifics of the collection itself, because there is a physical product. His number is 33, so the thousand shoes, 33 people randomly are getting a real-world Scottie Pippen sneaker from the NFT itself. And that’s where you’re seeing the world of phygital and fashion go, where they’re blending physical and blending digital, and those worlds are colliding and connecting in wonderful ways, and that’s what we’re able to do with Scotty.

28:09 So in the community, they know if there’s a connection to the creator, and they can tell Scotty is not just creating something to just sell as many as he can and move on. He really is passionate, and in this space that creator-community connection is so crucial. No one wants the money grab. If, if you feel, if they feel like they’re going for a money grab, then they know you’re just in it and you’re out, and which, by the way, there are a lot of people. There are these, you know, day traders and flippers in this space.

28:42 I’m looking to take the speculative play out of NFTs and Web3. I don’t like it. I hate it. In fact, I can’t stand it. I don’t think this is about making money.

28:55 If you want to make money as a day trader, flipper, fine. But my goal, the seal of Orange Comet, is not to try and make you money. Believe it or not, my goal is to create something that blows you away. Apple doesn’t sit there and say, how do we go make our stockholders, our shareholders, money? They say, how do we make a phone that is so amazing that it changes the world, which then in turn makes their shareholders money?

29:26 And that is my goal as CEO of Orange Comet. How do we make you, how do we make a product, how do we put something out that’s so amazing that engages you? And that’s exactly where it was with Scotty. We said, let’s put something out that is so great, so spectacular, so cool, so dynamic in its design and its function. And when I say function, every one of those NFT sneakers is a digital asset that’s game-ready.

29:57 What do I mean by that? You can take a Scottie Pippen sneaker right now and flex your mod in Grand Theft Auto, as an example. You can wear that sneaker in the game, drive around, do whatever you want, and you’re in a Scottie Pippen sneaker that you bought as an NFT from us. That’s what I’m talking about. NFTs are a basement floor to a much bigger play for us.

30:22 Yeah, and I’ve seen those NFTs being worn by somebody in Grand Theft Auto, and I was like, oh my gosh. Yeah, and like you said, you get a physical sneaker. And I think a small percentage of those people actually get to hang out with Scotty. They do. Well, the utility in the community is an exciting part of Web3 and NFTs, and you’re seeing that.

30:43 This is a way of again engaging fans, bringing them into a world where you’re sharing thoughts, ideas, experiences together. So in the Scottie Pippen and in the Anthony Hopkins, by the way, we’re about to get Zoom calls with Anthony. Yeah, you do it with Tony. Yeah, exactly, you’re doing a Zoom call. How amazing is it to buy into an NFT, come into the community, and then do a Zoom call, which I was part of with these fans for the Anthony Hopkins, or in Scottie Pippen’s case, play around the golf with him.

31:16 Dude. These are like, these are things that money can’t buy. Opportunities, and I think that’s the exciting part of NFTs and Web3. You want to try and create those things that are… it’s just, you can’t buy this. You just become part of it and hope that it falls into the larger picture of what the community that you’re building is all about.

31:35 So epic. All right, I’m going to play the video, the mothership one from Scotty. Yeah, and then we’ll play the shoe one again. All in 3D digital design in-house. Okay, so this is all 3D digital design in-house.

31:45 Everything we make is only in-house. We is all an in-house team that we do. All right, here it is. Check it out. Foreign.

32:42 So we saw the mothership. Here, I guess this is kind of the start of what you might be doing with Scotty. Yeah, well, we like to, you know, the, I guess I’m gonna say fascinating, because it’s my TV and film background and approach, right, to Web3, which is, how do we put out a trailer, a teaser, right? How do you get people to get excited about what you’re doing? And because I’m so proud of our work that Dante and our creative team are doing, and what, and the way we approach things, we put a teaser out first, and that mothership is the teaser.

33:19 You know, it’s the shoe being constructed through this, you know, gel and robotic arms, and these beautiful boxes, these shoe boxes, these futuristic boxes that we designed, that take off out of the mothership and through the galaxy, which is, again, telling a story. Our, the way I approach all of our NFT and Web3 projects is, I’m a storyteller. You’re a storyteller. So why should it be any different in NFTs and Web3? We should be telling stories.

33:51 There’s a beginning, middle, and end. There’s a beginning, middle, and end to the NFTs we’re doing. That’s our approach. It’s not like you can’t just do something that’s cool or looks cool. There’s got to be a purpose to it.

34:04 It’s got to fit into something larger. So that Mothership piece is the story in a small little 50-second form. It’s so important. And like, I caught a bunch of cues there. It’s like, oh, and it’s being blasted, often.

34:18 Where is it going? Where is this Mothership? So I’m not… you’re already starting to get me curious about that. I’m guessing you’ll call back to that stuff in the future. That’s right, and future collections, and you’re, yeah, you’re starting to tell a story beyond that, that is, you know, we’re about to do this Corrupted, which we can talk about, which is our own lifestyle brand.

34:37 It’s Orange Comet’s entry into our own original brand, and along with these collaborations, these fashion collaborations we’re going to be doing. But that when that Mothership door opens up, that’s kind of like the Orange Comet factory that we’re building, this futuristic factory. So there’s some hints and real purposes to all these pieces, and it’s fun because we’re able to just explore in our heads. Like, imagine the factory. It’s a meta, this, and you know, it’s the same thing when you’re just sitting there in your craft, in a story you’re writing, your, your your, you’re building pieces to a puzzle, and teasing an audience and you know, and keeping them excited and engaged.

35:21 What’s about to come next? So that’s what we did with Scotty. It’s interesting because the reason we love Scottie Pippen is because we fell in love with his story. Yeah, same with Sir Anthony Hopkins, whether it is an individual story or the story that he’s starred in. And yet, typically in Web3, when they go to create an NFT, they just think, okay, I’m gonna make a digital sneaker, and they forget the story component.

35:43 That’s right, and they probably don’t have a long game or a strategy or something to be a part of something. And so we get these flat things. Yeah, they’re digital goods, right? Maybe you can use them in metaverses, but you always feel, you feel like, uh, you know, there’s something missing. There’s something missing, right?

35:58 In most of the cases, there’s something missing. And look, I’m seeing more creators now trying to find the story and trying to build around story, which I’m, look, I’m incredibly excited about. I want to encourage others. You know, all ships rise. And so, I, the one good thing about a crypto winter is it gets the junk and the crap out.

36:21 The pretenders, the fake people who are in, who are not in this space for the long run, they’re gone. They are the money grabbers, you know, they’re the people who came into the internet in the ’90s, in the early days, made a quick buck, and they’re gone. And what comes out of it, the unicorns, you get the eBays and the Amazons and the Yahoos and whoever else are there that rise off of the technology. And that’s where I think we are in Web3. So bringing story to this, bringing quality to this, bringing great content that has been quality communities and utilities.

36:55 That’s a critical part, and real players. Right now, London Real, real players are doing real great things in the world of Web3. Yeah, people, that’s why people in the space love the winter, because they get to see that. That’s right. Who really is in?

37:11 Greatness comes so often out of adversity. It forces you to either sink or swim, and the ones who sink were never there to begin with, to really be the players, for the most part. Listen, sometimes, you know, good people, good groups, good companies get caught up in bad times, but if you’ve got something of quality, if you’ve got something that is truly a potential game changer in the space, this is the opportunity right now. We got another short video of the Scottie Pippen shoe.

37:45 What are we about to see? You’re about to see one of the sneakers itself. So as I said, every shoe, 1,000 pairs. To do the digital creations, there’s not any that are alike. We spent hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of hours, and more than that, in thousands of dollars to do the digital rendering.

38:06 So the work that is behind this is very, very intricate. So you’re about to see one of the sneakers being made as an NFT, and no two were alike. Here we go. Here it is. It’s still hard to believe that each one of these is unique.

38:49 Nobody is putting that amount of time and effort into those things, because previously people were saying, is this cost-effective? And again, this isn’t right now, because that’s because you have a long-term vision. That’s right. You know, you look, Amazon for years didn’t make money, uh, you know, but for almost a decade. Yeah, yeah, but they were building, and it’s not that Orange Comet, it’s not making money.

39:13 We are, but we’re investing, and that is the important part for us. It’s creating the world, it’s creating the space, it’s doing the quality of work that we’re doing, it’s showing everybody where this could go and what we’re building. And these are, we’re laying the foundation. These are the, this is the basement floor to much bigger plays that we’re building. We are building our metaverse, our virtual world that you’re going to go into, and you’re going to be able to maneuver down a hallway and go into the Scottie Pippen collection.

39:44 Oh, and by the way, now I’m into the Anthony Hopkins. Oh, and not just that, I’m in the NFL Alumni Association’s world that we’re creating. So there’s a whole rhyme and reason to this stuff, but first and foremost, you know, I used to, when I was editing my TV shows and films, it was a little fun thing that we had on the inside, was called, like, the “broom goosebump.” Is what we used to call it. What?

40:09 What does that mean? I would sit in edit bay, you know, editing one of our shows along with our team, and I needed to feel something. I needed goosebumps while I was watching a scene, and it was like, it doesn’t move me. Am I inspired by it? Do I tear up on it?

40:30 Do I laugh? How am I emotionally excited about that? And the same thing I’m applying now into what we’re building in Web3. If I don’t feel it, if I don’t sit there and go, that’s it, man. That is it.

40:48 It’s not walking out the door, it’s not leaving, and it’s a high standard. But again, as a creator, I think that’s what I’m only interested in. I only, if you can’t guarantee success, you cannot guarantee that. The only thing you can guarantee is your work, what you put out. How do you feel about it?

41:15 So if you feel great and you think you’ve done everything you possibly can, then you leave it to the world to determine if it’s going to be successful or not, but you can walk away going, I did it all, I left nothing on the table. And that’s what we’re doing in Web3. The worst feeling in the world, the worst in any space, is to sit there and go, oh man, here’s what we should have done, man. I should have. If we only would have done that.

41:44 Now, don’t get me wrong, we’re making mistakes. We make mistakes every day. Brian, that’s good, because that means we’re pushing it. We need to learn from those mistakes, but the product we put out, at the end of the day, nothing is out the door unless it is chilling to us. And so that’s what we’re building with all these projects.

42:08 That’s entertainment, and that shows where you guys come from. Yeah, you come from the entertainment industry, and I haven’t seen anybody coming through Web3 the way you guys do it, and it shows in the product. We’re told that, and it shows that. And you know, you just had a flashback. I heard an interview with Dana White recently.

42:23 You know, who runs the UFC, and he said, look, I’m gonna put 20,000 people in a stadium. I’m gonna put all the cameras. I’m gonna pay all the fighters. The celebs are going to be front and center, and he said, all I want to give you is two or three holy moments. Yeah, he’s like, that’s my job, to give you that dose of adrenaline and panic and excitement and whatever.

42:44 That, no, you can’t get anywhere else. And again, I gotta compete with all the Netflix, the all of this and this and the theme parks and all the other crazy stuff you do in your life. That’s what I gotta do, and that’s why you keep coming back. He’s so right, he’s so right, you know, and you, you just made me think of that. Yeah, because you’re thinking the same way.

43:00 Same way I was, you know. I was talking last night at dinner to our chief technical officer, Peter Morales, who ran Mid-State Labs, our game company, our Web3 game company, and he said something really interesting to me. I never heard… we just talked about, we were talking about video games in general, and he said, do you know that a game, their goal is to try and deliver seven seconds, seven seconds of the most memorable that you can ever get in a gameplay that keeps bringing you back, seven seconds of a sequence.

43:30 And I just thought about that, and I said, wow, I, you know, that never crossed my mind. It is that holy moment in a project, in a film, in a TV show, in a UFC fight that you want to go back and say, that’s why I’m coming back. And that’s important, but you know what? For Dana, or for us, or for anyone in… and it’s hard to achieve that. You sit there and you say, well, how tough can that be?

43:59 It’s hard. It’s hard. If it was easy, then everybody could do it, everybody would do it. So getting those memorable moments, getting that chilling goosebumpy effect on what you’re doing, is what we all should be striving for, because that’s what you want at the end of the day. You want people to walk away and go, oh my God, this is incredible.

44:21 Yeah, I’ve had sitting in that chair some of the toughest guys in the world. Guys like Nigel Benn, one of the toughest boxers, called the Dark Destroyer. Guys like Eddie Hall, World’s Strongest Man, and people have watched them in the chair break down in tears. Yeah, and Eddie Hall talked about how, on his grandmother’s deathbed, he promised her he would become the World’s Strongest Man, and he put in every single hour for years and years, and he’s breaking down in tears.

44:47 I mean, this is a massive man. Nigel Benn, one of the scariest guys ever. Two hours in, he’s talking about how he found God and it changed his life. He cried so much I had to put my hand on his knee, and people remember those moments because they got to see a character, the real, the realness that they could never see before. They’re like, Brian, how did you get there, and what happened?

45:06 And it was so many components, and the length of the interview. It’s the situation of the planning, but that’s the one thing that’s priceless. And I can, they’re, they’re great, great grandkids will always see a version of them that no one else was maybe able to capture, and that’s, that’s why I’m here to get those, for sure. When, you know, when I did the Jennifer Lopez documentary, it’s amazing, by the way. Thanks, enjoyed that.

45:26 One of the things that was the early concern was you know, Jennifer comes across to the world so perfect in so many ways. It almost, she comes across almost as like it’s easy for her. And I said to her, and to Benny Medina, and you know, who’s her partner? You know, are we going to see the realness here? Because the way that we have to bring it in the documentary space is to show the bumps, show the bruises, show the emotions, show the pain.

46:02 And Jennifer was committed to that, and that’s why you know we went forward with it, and that is so important and that’s so relatable. Anyway, right? You know, you want that, and again, it’s about the authenticity, the realness of everything you’re doing. That’s the starting point. So, and that’s where Web3 is.

46:29 If it’s real and it’s authentic, fans, enthusiasts, recognize that. Yeah, and I want to talk about that. I want to get in to Walking Dead, which we will, but I just thought of something. You spent most of your life creating shows like The Biggest Loser. They’re going to be watched by millions of people in the world.

46:45 Now you get into this space where literally with Sir Anthony Hopkins you have a thousand customers, right? It’s a very, very different scale. It is. And I’m just wondering, what did you learn about that? Do you treat it any differently?

47:01 And yeah, no, you don’t treat anything. I’ll tell you why, okay? Because when you’re creating a television series, let’s say like I did on Biggest Loser, or you know, I’ve made thousands and thousands of hours of TV, or you’re creating a Web3 NFT project, you’re not thinking about the fan, the buyer, the enthusiast. You shouldn’t be. You’re thinking about what you want, what’s the story you want to tell, what do you want the product to look like, feel like?

47:32 And I’m calling that product, you know, what do you want it to ultimately do at the end of the day? And it doesn’t matter if it’s one person, a thousand people, or a million people. You’re still being driven by what your goal is with the project. And so for me, look, I have a goal with Orange Comet. I’m trying to onboard the next million.

47:57 The reason why we’re dealing with The Walking Dead, or Anne Rice’s properties, or all of the movie studios, and I have some big, big announcements coming this year, massive announcements, is because I’m looking to take global fan bases that already have millions of fans attached to them to those properties and bring them into this space. So that’s where Web3 succeeds. We can’t stay in just a crypto enthusiast, we’ve got it. The technology is too great. Blockchain is too amazing of a game changer, so it’s got to grow out.

48:38 So from my perspective, as a creator, whether I’m making a massive television series on Netflix or NBC or CBS or sitting here saying, how do I do something for a thousand pieces? There’s no difference in the mindset. It always goes to, what are we going to do? How excited do we get about what we’re about to create? Such a great feeling, by the way, because you know, your it’s a gut check to you.

49:10 You know it. Yeah, you know it. You know when you’re doing a show or one of your documentaries or a project. You know if you’re feeling it or not. You know if you have something.

49:21 You know if you’re proud of something, or you know if you’ve got work to do, or if it’s a, it’s a turd. You know it. And so do I. And so that’s the approach. I don’t care if it’s one digital picture of something.

49:39 Look, we just did something, that internally, that I knew was not our best work. There’s a little trailer we never put out. I looked at it and turned to Dante, and we both knew it. We said, this isn’t there yet. It’s good, and you know what, most people would probably look at and go, it’s great, but we knew it wasn’t, and I said, we’re not, we got to fix this, and he agreed.

50:11 And so you only have that right. You have the gut. You can’t never cheat that. So true. So the next one million users you want to bring on, and it’s interesting because we spent the last two years in the crypto space and the decentralized planet space and in the metaverse, and almost every crypto enthusiast will agree that the only way to get mainstream adoption is to do it through gaming, NFT and art.

50:37 I agree, and there’s billions of people playing games out there, and people are always surprised when they hear that, and then I get, I take the tube home, and everybody’s playing a damn game on their mobile. It’s bigger than films. Yeah, exactly. The industry itself. And I had, yeah, Superman and Mocha brands in here, and he always reminds me, he’s like, this is bigger than films and sports and music.

50:53 Mind… and I’m always like, really? And so he’s like, there’s three billion people playing gaming right now. This is how you onboard the masses. I mean, great games and great art, and this is what all the crypto people want, need you to do, and everybody loves this ecosystem. Everyone loves the freedom, everyone loves the peer-to-peerness, everyone loves the connection.

51:13 But without you doing what you do, it’s not going to grow the way we need it, because most, not all, and they’re good people, now doing some really good things besides Orange Comet. Most of the, and by the way, I could not agree more. Gaming is a very natural conduit into Web3. The problem is, up to this point, many of the Web3 games have been a play-to-earn concept first and foremost, and a fun-to-play second. An hour approach.

51:48 And others, by the way, don’t, I don’t want to make it seem like Orange Comet is the only company doing this, because I know there’s some good people doing some good things. But for sure, with our fidelity and our storytelling and our background, our approach is, this has to first be the coolest, sickest, most fun game to play, and what, and then, and then why it would live on the blockchain rather than being a triple-A console game. So let’s make a killer game that lives on the blockchain that has a marketplace.

52:18 It brings value, but first and foremost you want to play it, and it looks amazing, and it’s engaging. And then, by the way, then becomes the fact that maybe you can go make money on it in a secondary market through selling assets and stuff like that, but not the flip. Yeah, I was in Dubai in October last year at Jai Texas, like the world’s biggest technology conference, like 50,000 people there, and I was chairing a panel on Web3 gaming. Yeah, and there was one guy in there from Web2 gaming, and he just basically stood up and called everybody out, and he said, your games are all boring.

52:50 Nobody wants to play a game and earn money. He’s like, that’s called a job, right? It was a good point, right? And he’s like, you talk about how I can move my assets between games because they’re NFTs. He’s like, yeah, that’s all great if it’s fun to play.

53:03 Otherwise it’s all lip service, and everybody zip their lips because they didn’t have anything. I mentioned this to Yat when he was here, and yeah, it’s like, I could have been on that panel because I would have given him my opinion, because I think he’s wrong, but what’s his opinion? Yeah, it was no, there are great games. It takes time to develop a great game. He’s right.

53:20 There’s, coming, and they’re coming, and it will make a difference, and we can do it, and we will do it in Web3, but it just takes time. And the original Web3 games were probably riding the blockchain hype for funding, etc., and they still hadn’t delivered the fun. And we got, so, right, and we got Axie, which was great, and it showed a purpose, and it was functional, but that’s not what we could not play you show. Right. Yeah, he’s exactly right.

53:45 We know it. Did we see other companies, that real companies, doing or will be coming out with amazing games, and it takes a while, and they’ve been in development, and he’s absolutely right. It Will it? It will be out, and I do believe it will be, you know, pun intended, a game changer. Yeah.

54:02 Let’s talk about metaverses. Let’s talk about Walking Dead. Yeah, because I originally saw, I think, some NFTs you did for them that were pretty mind-blowing. Yeah, and I saw some trailers that you did for them that were all created in your studio that looked like they were shot with live-action clips from the show. Yeah, that blew me away, but then you showed me later this metaverse, and I was like, wow, I have no idea you guys were working on that.

54:28 Tell me about what you’ve done with The Walking Dead, and then at some point we’re going to walk everybody through this metaverse. The Walking Dead is a good example of the bigger-picture play for us. We knew from day one that we were going to take this iconic global brand, this franchise that’s been on for 11 seasons, there’s a zombie apocalypse, and build a Web3 game around it. And what does that really mean? Well, at first we wanted to create Walker Access Passes, these insane-looking Walkers that get you into the world.

55:01 Then we wanted to start to sell pieces to what the game would be. We created a roadmap, a real roadmap, so we told the audience and fan base, here’s where we’re going. This is a Web3 game. You’re going to need various things to be part of that game: an avatar, tools, weapons, a vehicle, land. So it’s building pieces of the puzzle, and what we were excited about was that we knew that the fidelity, the same kind of high fidelity that we’re doing on our 3D projects, were going to be what we were doing for the Walking Dead lands, that it was going to look and feel like a triple-A console game, that was going to play like something that you felt just in awe of visually, and was fun to play, but that you needed these assets.

55:57 So that’s how the project kicked off. Tremendously successful, and now we’re about to, next month, in March, depending on when people are watching your posted, not the live stream. Here we’ll start to release the beta test. So I gave you a clip of a very early fly- through of what The Walking Dead lands is going to look like and feel like, and the idea again is fun to play, go through this, kill walkers, collect food, survive the zombie apocalypse. But it’s a Web3 experience, and to do that right, you wanted to hold up to the level of the quality that you know you’re known to, or what Orange Comet’s known to build.

56:47 So we’ve been selling the pieces to the puzzle. We’ve been growing the fan base, and I want to tell you something. This is important. I’m going to give you very unscientifically proven numbers right now, but what we found is that roughly 70 to 75 percent of the buyers, collectors in The Walking Dead project, had never seen the show. 70 to 75, but they’re in Web3, and they saw the project and they thought it was super cool and mind-blowing, and they got involved.

57:27 Now, the better stat than that, that’s good for AMC, because that gives them the opportunity to find new fan bases to tune in and watch the series, which is great. But the better stat for us is roughly 25 percent of the people who bought into the project to begin with never bought an NFT before, ever. We onboarded them. They were fans of the show, they saw what we were doing, they were blown away by the work, they knew where we were going with this, and we showed them, and they wanted to get engaged, and that is what I’m talking about for the future.

58:10 25, roughly, of the fans never came into an NFT project before, but did because they were fans of the property and saw the work and said, holy, I want to get involved in this. Right. And that’s what we’re doing now on a macro level. Okay. And if you can do that, that’s how you onboard millions, that’s it, into the space.

58:28 Right. All right, we’re going to play this right now. This is Walking Dead lands, so this is a peek at a version of what the metaverse looks like. So we’ll play it now, and I guess you can probably talk us through. I’ll talk about what we’re seeing.

58:41 There’s no music. We’re playing this now, right? So we’re playing. Go ahead, what are we seeing? So you’re seeing this lush environment, made up again of Walking Dead background, of the topography, and we’re giving examples of a vehicle that you’re going to maneuver and drive through this space.

59:02 And what are you going to do? Well, you’re on a goal. You’re trying to go get your tools. You’re trying to go find some weapons. So as you’re maneuvering through this beautiful environment, which we created in this case in Unreal Engine 5, which is great because it’s not made for mobile with this kind of fidelity, but it is made for PC or your computer.

59:24 We’re giving you a hint of what you’re going to be doing and how you’re going to be maneuvering. There’s even a figure, she’s a blob of a digital asset, just to show the maneuverability of how you’re going to walk or run through this space. What’s coming out in March will be the full fidelity, the full version, where you’re taking weapons and shooting walkers in the head, and the bullets going through one walker’s head into another, and they’re continuing to come after you.

59:55 So again, it’s giving the audience, the fan base, a sense of where the project’s going, how it’s going to look, how it’s going to play, what’s going to be the maneuverability around it, what’s the game cycle around that. And that’s important, you know, because again, you’re wanting to get them excited. You’re wanting to get them invested. You want to get them enthusiastic, and that’s what grows the base. So this piece is just simply that.

1:00:25 But it’s difficult to do. It’s a difficult thing to pull off, at the level that we’re looking to pull off. Yeah, I saw it and I was like, wow, this looks playable, right? I’m like, and I was actually quite intrigued, and I’m not a gamer, and I’m not a Walking Dead fan, and I was like, okay, wow, look, like maybe I could shoot somebody. Yeah, exactly.

1:00:41 It looked pretty cool, and I still knew it was a version, because like you said, there was a blob there, right? So, and I hadn’t seen that in Web3 gaming, not that I played a lot, but I’ve touched a few things in there, and none of them were anywhere near as engaging as this. No, and and next month, again, when we, you know, to anyone who holds a Walker Access Pass, which is the original thing I got in, they’re the ones we’re going to get the beta test of the game itself.

1:01:04 So they’re going to be the first ones to explore it. They’re going to give us great feedback. We’re going to get, you know, interesting responses, which will give us the ability to improve. And we’re almost there, and it looks unbelievable, even well beyond what I, the clip that I’ve given you, but it’s just not ready for prime time yet. Another, another few weeks.

1:01:23 If we were doing this interview in March, uh, for sure. But I’m gonna get you a copy of it, and you’re going to be able to give it to, you know, even as a post follow-up. That’s super fast. And if you can create things like that for Walking Dead, I’m guessing you’re already thinking about what the other metaverses look like. Oh my gosh.

1:01:39 I mean, I looked up the pro… I’m not allowed yet to make these announcements, but you should know that we will be making some announcements in a few weeks, probably from now, from when this is streaming, but it’ll be on the platform with some of the biggest franchise entertainment properties in the world. In the world. I mean, like the biggest things you can ever think of, and they all have this Web3 game component to it, and that’s the exciting part. It’s so fun.

1:02:14 I’m having so much fun, and when you showed me that you were doing that and you made this acquisition, and I started plugging that into the things that I know about. I don’t know everything, but you’ve already mentioned the things, and even the Hopkins and the Pippens and the NFL stuff, I was just like, oh my gosh, these guys might be really ready to scale this in so many different ways. That’s right. We’ve been told from the movie studios to the, in to the Web3 industry itself, that there is no company in the world like Orange Comet now, and that’s not from my mouth, that’s actually, I’ve heard that, and which means the world to me.

1:02:51 I hear it on a weekly basis, Brian, and that’s exciting, because that’s what we set out to do. I wrote down on a piece of paper on day one, you know, my, what’s my goal for the company? And I basically said, you know, we want to be the Disney of Web3. There’s only one Disney in the world, right? So I want to strive for that.

1:03:12 And what does that mean? And, you know, it means a lot of things from a creative standpoint. It means a lot of things from an intellectual property standpoint, and that is what we’re looking to do, and I believe that’s the path that we’re on. If someone goes to your website right now, they’re gonna see it filled with a lot of your partners. Yeah, you know, a lot of big-name investors, advisors, people like William Shatner on your advisory board, and Gloria Estefan is an investor, and people from the NFL, the NHL.

1:03:41 And I’ve spent time with your team. I mean, super professional people. I’ve seen everything behind the scenes as well. I mean, you guys really have structured this company from the ground up, already preparing it for future IPOs and fundings and partnerships. I mean, you guys are doing everything at a high, high level.

1:04:00 We are, you know, you know this. It is, you, if you’ve got the vision and, you know, look, I left. It’s funny, I’ve had somebody, investors come to me and say, you didn’t have to do this. You know, it’s not like I was on the downside of my career. You know, my last project was the Jennifer Lopez documentary.

1:04:22 Why would you want to do a startup? Why would you want to do this? And to me, you know, you don’t get a lot of opportunities in your life to blaze a trail, and I was got to the early days of reality television, and with The Biggest Loser, that was very early on, and I felt like I was part of that. I did Netflix’s first unscripted competition, called Ultimate Beastmaster, with Sylvester Stallone. That was, we blazed the trail there, and now I have that opportunity here through Orange Comet and Web3.

1:04:56 And to do that, though, properly, it’s not a one-man show by any stretch. You know, I’ve always surrounded myself with great people and a great team. I’m a leader, and I’m a passionate, driven, this is no other way of saying it. I just, I will not stop until I ultimately have success, but I’m only as good as the people with me, and we have an amazing team, and everyone has a job and a function and a passion too, and if they’re not passionate, and I mean, this sounds like a bunch of, but if they’re not passionate about what we’re doing in the space, then they’re not in this company.

1:05:42 They just, they will not come in, or if we’ve made a mistake, they will not last. Yeah, and it shows, because that will end up with the customer experience. That’s right. Somehow, somehow if someone’s not all in, it’s, there’s only one way. Yeah, you have to have that.

1:05:56 Yeah. The goal, by the way, the challenging part is to grow and continue to grow and bring on hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of employees, let’s say, and never lose that. Yeah, never lose that focus, never lose that passion. Yeah, that’s where I think Disney, by the way, is the good example, because I, they haven’t, I think if you really dissect Disney as a company and look at what drives them at the end of the day, they have never lost the focus of what they set out to do in their mission statement, in providing entertainment for the world no matter how big they are.

1:06:38 Yeah, you know, and that’s why they are the Disney Channel. There’s one. That’s right. What people on that site, projects coming forward, anything else you can talk about? Why, why have so many different advisors and people?

1:06:51 Do you know that’s how you make something a mess of success? And then what other projects can you talk about? And then I want to play a couple more videos. Look, I want, I do want to talk about Corrupted. Yeah, which is an interesting name in the world of Web3.

1:07:05 Yeah, but there’s a reason behind it. Again, this is the off of the Scottie Pippen, you know, entry point. What we knew we were doing. So Corrupted is our entry into our original lifestyle brand. You can look, you’ll be seeing a Corrupted hoodie with a really sick, sick-looking logo, but what is really Corrupted?

1:07:26 I get one. You’re gonna get one. Okay, you’ll get one. I have to get you a medium or a large. Medium, medium, good.

1:07:32 We get pretty muscular. So Corrupted, we’re going to start off by selling 777 Corrupted Bots. These are sentient, programmable robots. It’s pretty sick. What we did, we spent almost the bad part of a year designing this.

1:07:54 These Bots are all unique, one-of-ones, so it’s all kind of different robots. They all have one thing in common. They’ve got like a monitor, either in their head or on their body, a screen. At the time that you purchase them, you buy them as Corrupted. There is a white noise glitch that animates in their head on that monitor, so it’s Corrupted, and there’s a backstory, of course, of course, to how they became corrupted, and it’s really about an evil force that doesn’t want to see the decentralized world succeed, but these Bots are corrupted when you buy them.

1:08:30 Now, here’s the cool thing: not only is Corrupted its own lifestyle brand, but it’s a conduit into some of the biggest fashion collaborations in the space, in the world. At random, of the 777 Bots that I originally put out many times during the course of the year, about four, all of a sudden, 2,000 of those Bots, randomly, the corruption in the head and the white noise glitch goes away, and what appears across it, let’s say it’s Dior, a Dior code appears, a collaboration code near Bot. If you’re one of the fortunate recipients where the glitch is gone and the collaboration partner’s code appears, you’ve got 48 hours, 72 hours, if you want to act on that code, you can actually mint the digital item with the collaboration partner, so it’s a real-world hoodie of our collab partner, along with a digital NFT, not just of that item but in our, you know, jaw-dropping, breathtaking animation that we do.

1:09:50 So now you’re getting the physical product and the digital, whatever that mint price is. The only way you can ever get that is if you own a Bot, and that Bot comes from the Corrupted state to a code state, and you actually act on it, or someone buys it on the secondary market. Now, after the 40 hours, 72 hours goes away, the corrupted Bot goes back to its glitchy state. This is all programmed by us, and now you’re waiting for the next two, three months, later, with things in between, in a community utility and a creative community, which I won’t get into right now, but all of a sudden now, randomly, again, 1,800 Bots become uncorrupted, and a brand-new fashion collaboration code appears on those screens.

1:10:38 So all of this, by the way, is being put together. This November we’re releasing the Corrupted Catwalk, where you can pick an avatar, pick your music, grab all of your digital wearables that you’ve just now taken outside of the real-world stuff you have, and strut the runway with your goods and show off your, in a cool environment with a lot more to it than that. So again, a lot of pieces of puzzle. So Corrupted is a massive push for us, and I’ll be speaking at NFT Paris.

1:11:10 I’m on a panel on this Saturday about the future of entertainment. We’ll be talking about even that, because you know, I still think that’s a form of entertainment. So that I can tell you, and you’re speaking with some of the all the massive high-end brands. I am about being a part of this. Yes, and they’re interested, because they still don’t know what to do with this space, and they want to collaborate with the right partners.

1:11:34 Well, that’s right. You know, if you look at fashion, the metaverse is a ripe environment for fashion, and you’re seeing the Guccis, the Pradas, the Dolce & Gabbanas, and streetwear brands enter the space in a big, bad way. Yeah, and we’re in conversations with all of these kinds of brands, but because of the level of work that we do, because of our background and our unique ability, we’re able to find these partnerships and take them to a level that they haven’t been taken to yet, and that is the goal, for sure.

1:12:15 So it’s to make the right partnerships and the collaborations, make the ones that are again authentic to the space. You know, but remember something. Let’s just go back to the Dior example as an example. Much like we did with Scottie Pippen, if we end up doing something with Dior, you’ll wear that. Let’s say it’s a Dior hoodie.

1:12:40 The way we’re going to design is you’re going to take that Dior hoodie and you’re going to be able to put that on your avatar in Grand Theft Auto. You want to wear a Dior hoodie while you’re running from the cops in Grand Theft Auto? That’s what you’re going to be able to do with the way we’re designing it. So there’s again purpose and meaning and another form of engagement in this space. If you had to give some advice to some CEOs of luxury brands or high-end streetwear brands that are watching this, and it’s very possible they will, what can you tell them to do and not to do in this space?

1:13:16 Because we’ve already seen brands try to ape into this, and, like, literally, you know, fall on their faces. Yeah, and, like, hurt their brand, hurt their community, and I’ve seen the wrong thing. We’ve seen it happen over and over again, even late in the game with major car players and other things. Yeah, what do they need to do and not do first and foremost? And it, again, this is not going to be an unexpected answer.

1:13:43 It’s the content of what they’re putting out. They’re not expected answer from me. The content answer of what they’re putting out of what is the critical part. Imagine you take a luxury brand that they’ve built up for years and years and years and years as a reputation, you know, in the real world, on their storefront, their brick and mortar, on Rodeo Drive, you know, or, you know, in South Beach, or, you know, here in the UK, in London. They set a prestige, they set a tone, an expectation of what that brand is, of what that storefront looks like.

1:14:23 Well, why would it be any different when you’re taking that and putting it into the metaverse? But yet you’re looking at something that a brand is doing and you’re going, what the f, what is this. This is not what a what looks like in what that store looks like, what their the material, you know, I can spend if I’m going to spend a thousand dollars on a real-world sweatshirt, why wouldn’t I have the same quality perception of what their digital version of what they’re putting out is, or if it’s an automotive, if their cars are selling for a quarter of a million dollars, shouldn’t the, that they’re putting out on in the metaverse not be shed?

1:15:06 Yeah, so it has to blow you away. Number one, number two, there should be a real community built around what they’re doing, and in so many, the community is a very important part of the, of Web3. We know that, but there has to be real substance to it. So what do you get if you’re involved in that? Fashion brands, you know, why would I want this?

1:15:36 What, why do I want to be part of this? Well, maybe in our case with Corrupted, we’re building a creator community around it. We’re building a place where you might be a fashion person yourself, a designer, or even a 3D digital designer, that we want to encourage you to give designs to us, your work that we might take into Corrupted and build a real community, because we’re looking to move that conversation forward. That’s one of the great things about Web3 is the, the injury, the barrier to, you know, to come into this space is so low.

1:16:09 That’s good and bad, because when it’s so low you get a lot of junk, but the good thing about it is it does open up opportunity for a lot of people. So the community part is really important, and then the third part of that, of course, is the other buzzword, in the utility. What does that NFT do for me? What is this Web3 experience actually do for me? Why would I care to buy a Gucci, a Prada, Dolce & Gabbana?

1:16:37 And by the way, we don’t even need to go to luxury. Just, you can go to any brand, you know, Nike or a Puma or Adidas. What am I getting for that? That I feel like there’s a real purpose that I can sink my teeth into from a utility. Does it, does it allow me to go to fashion shows around the world?

1:16:56 Do I have that opportunity? Can I become part of something that you know, I get a sneak peek at a collection that comes out, a real-world collection that comes out? Do I get a Puma shoe? I’m just, I’m just throwing them out, you know, on top of my head. Do I get a Puma’s shoes, being part of this, that no one else can get first?

1:17:15 So it’s all those pieces, right? That these brands should be looking at and then the final piece to that is you’re in or you’re out. If you’re in, come in for the long run and build longevity into this and have a real vision, even if you trip and fall. That’s okay, right? Well, it’s okay to, you don’t, you want to try to avoid the mistakes, but in a nascent place that we’re in, in Web3, if you make the mistake, that’s fine.

1:17:51 Dust yourself off. We’ve made mistakes. Wipe yourself down. Here, let’s get, let’s go. All right, let’s pick ourselves back up and move forward.

1:18:00 So don’t just come in for the quick hit and get out. If you’re a brand, come in, stay in, and build, and build with that long-term vision, because this space really values when what they have has these later add-ons and the airdrops and the other features. I mean, they really appreciate something in this space where there’s some advanced planning. The things lead to this. That’s right, whereas maybe in the past, if you’re just a brand, okay, you bring a sneaker out, but then the next year there’s another sneaker, and maybe you don’t have to think ahead as much.

1:18:31 That’s right. And then I guess to think outside the box into all these metaverses, I think it’s important, but not just important, but isn’t that the fun part of this? Yeah, you know, like you have the opportunity to do something different, cool, fresh, unique, mind-blowing. You know, if you’re not striving for that, what the hell are you doing? Yeah, and why you have to strive for that.

1:19:00 It’s, it’s again, it’s hard to achieve, but if you’re not trying to achieve it, then you’re already doomed, potentially doomed. Maybe you get lucky, but are you gonna feel proud about that? You know, and I think also, look, just to give a hall pass to everybody. We’re all still trying to figure it out, right? But you said, well, who’s the expert in this space?

1:19:30 I don’t know if there is an expert, really, yet. The key, the key to align yourself, the people you should be aligning yourself with are the people that are visionary, in it for the long run, well-funded, striving, because persevering through it, that’s who you should attach your hitch to, right? But, and so that’s your best chance to succeed and to crush so if a brand is making a mistake in Web3 and they’re trying, then you at least have to give them a hall pass, because sometimes they don’t have all the information, or they make a, they’re making the mistake in an, early, in the early days.

1:20:19 We’re still in the early days of this, and that is the exciting part, so if they’re fundamentally in it for the right reason and they’re committed to Web3, and they, and they, you know, give them a break, let them figure it out, and hopefully they make the correction and make the fixes, and I think that’s important. We know when something stinks, like when you can tell when something’s bad, and it looks bad, it smells bad, it is bad, and you also know when somebody just, you know, there was an error, there was a misjudgment, a mistake, but they come out and admit to it, and like, hey man, we messed that up. You know, Porsche is an interesting example.

1:21:06 Yeah, recently, very recently. Yeah, you know, Porsche had a drop and a project, and you know, it wasn’t handled properly out of the gate, but then they came out and said, hey, look, here’s where we’re going, here’s what we’re doing. You know, maybe we did make this mistake, but look at how committed we are to it, and I give him credit for that. Nice. Yeah.

1:21:31 What’s the big things on your horizon? I mean, you mentioned things in passing like NFL. I mean, that’s pretty goddamn massive, you know, what kind of things can you mention, and what kind of places are you going in the next five years with Orange Comet? Well, look, the NFL Alumni, which represents all 15,000, you know, kind of retired players. We have a very unique partnership with them, and it’s great, because again, here’s an opportunity to bring millions and millions and millions of fans into Web3.

1:22:00 But it’s not going to be about just sitting there and taking players and going, here’s an NFT of a player, here’s a picture of them, you know? Um, Top Shot, you know, and Dapper Labs, to give them credit, at first was a company that went to the NBA, saw this as an opportunity, a space, and they were selling and still are highlight clips of NBA games. Now, I looked at them, that was one of my inspirations for wanting to get into Web3, because I said, look, I mean, credit them for creating the market, for sure.

1:22:41 Credit them, but I’m never going to be that. I never want to be that. If I’m sitting here regurgitating a clip of what I just saw on an NBA basketball game, or I can find an ESPN, or I can see on the internet somewhere, and what the, am I doing? That’s not what I’m gonna do. It’s Orange Comet, so with the NFL Alumni Association, we’re building out a metaverse virtual environment with them, and not only the locker room, and not only is that going to house digital content, but it’s going to house a lot more podcasts from their players, content from players, video content, real-world opportunities built into this virtual environment.

1:23:32 That’s what excites me, and again, with a massive you know, with the NFL Alumni Shield, which represents you know, the NFL, and it’s in so many ways the players, the retired players. That’s a big brand and a big opportunity. So we’re going to be doing that, the Entertainment Properties that that we’re going to be building out. Again, you know, we’re with Anne Rice, after the success of The Walking Dead, and I know I’ve given you an Anne Rice interview with a vampire clip, but with Anne Rice, with the success of The Walking Dead, AMC came to us and said, well, we got to keep going, and they took Anne Rice, who only sold 150 million books, and said, and they acquired all the rights, Interview with a Vampire and Mayfair Witches, and on and on and on.

1:24:32 So we built out, we of course jumped on that, and we’re building out the Immortal Universe. What is that? That’s an erotic, After Dark world of vampires, sexiness. A lot of Anne Rice’s, you know, stuff has got that cool, sexy vibe to it, so now we’re bringing that into the world of, you know, the virtual world, the metaverse, and we’re creating those environments that fans. We sold 333 vampire coffins.

1:25:07 All right, we got one actually here. We’re gonna play it. Um, this is one of those coffins. Foreign, each coffin, first of all, is a unique design. Again, a one-of-one.

1:25:31 These aren’t just normal coffins. These are coffins that vampire, not normal. Yeah, of course, these are vampire clothing. Right, now vampires not only sleep in those, but everyone has its own intricate design to it, so everyone is different. Okay, that was our starting point.

1:25:48 Again, this is the pass, the entry into the Immortal Universe. Get you in, you own a vampire coffin, it opens up the doors for you. But we did something pretty cool. We put some tech into these vampire coffins, so here’s what I mean by that. We built code to tap into your time zone on your computer.

1:26:13 Now, what do I mean by that? Well, vampires are known to open up their coffins at night and explore the world at night, because they can’t be in daylight, or otherwise they melt and disintegrate. So we decided that we’re going to build tech into these NFTs. If you’re in the UK and it’s night, that darkness, your vampire coffin automatically opens up. It reads the clock, the internal clock on your computer, at sundown, and opens up.

1:26:50 Now I’m in the United States, in California, it’s still daylight for me, my coffin remains closed until it reads my clock, and then my coffin opens up. So everyone around the world has their coffin opening and closing in different times based on the internal clock in their computer. So we built some really cool tech with that part. It’s cool. The second part of that is, now we’re building, again, you’re going to be buying avatars, characters from the show that look unbelievably lifelike.

1:27:23 You’re going to be killing vampires. You’re going to be exploring this world. You’re going to be engaged in the Anne Rice. Now, the cool thing about that is that’s the vampire stuff we’re about to launch, the Mayfair Witches, which is another Anne Rice property that AMC, she of course wrote books, and AMC has those rights and has a new TV series. We’re going to be selling keys.

1:27:48 These are really the Immortal Keepass, so, and these worlds collide. We’re blending them together, and the same thing with The Walking Dead, and that’s our vision in Orange Comet. How do you take a fan of The Walking Dead, move them into the world of vampires, move them into the world of witches, move them into these other worlds, blending this under one big umbrella, and so we’re doing that with all of our properties, all of these entertainment properties we have.

1:28:19 Again, with announcements that I wish I can tell you today, I can, I’m going to whisper it into your ear when we get off the air here, but I can’t tell the fans yet, because I’m just signed under you know, exclusive NDAs until we make a formal announcement. Big, but I will tell you, you can think of the biggest entertainment film franchises in the world. That’s one. I want to tell you something else, though, kind of an exclusive, in a way, and I didn’t, I didn’t provide you with a clip, but we could maybe for post.

1:28:48 So Fame director Barry Sonnenfeld, who made Men in Black and The Addams Family and amazing man, created a property called Dinosaurs versus Aliens. You probably can understand what that is just off the title alone. He started it 12 years ago as a graphic novel, and it only went as a graphic novel. His hopes were to get it to become a movie franchise. Well, we met with Barry.

1:29:19 We saw what Dinosaurs versus Aliens was. It was an amazing world he created, and together we said, this is the Web3 project if there ever was. All over it, right? It’s just like, come on, Dinosaurs versus boys. My boys love dinosaurs.

1:29:36 So we are about to put a trailer out. The sickest-looking, and these aren’t normal dinosaurs, by the way. This is, there’s a whole world to this. Of course, they’re another orange color. Exactly.

1:29:48 Dinosaurs and Aliens. We’re building it into a Web3 game, which is insane. By the way, I’m telling you that we’re gonna put the trailer out next week, and the hope is finding the global fan base and then marching back onto traditional Hollywood’s doors, knock on the studios and say, we’ve got it, started as a graphic novel, now it’s a Web3, we’ve got a global fan base, let’s make the next Transformers franchise out of this. And is that going to be the future of the entertainment industry?

1:30:24 I think things can go, seemingly, in reverse. Absolutely, right. I think you’re right, absolutely. That’s our goal. So when I got interviewed by several of the the outlets, maybe even the Wall Street Journal, last minute, it’s like, why have you left the entertainment industry, and you even started with this?

1:30:40 I never felt like I’ve left the entertainment industry. Moving to Web3, I feel like I’m one that is trying to redefine it in a way. Yeah, you know, one thing we saw from the Bored Ape franchise, which started as an NFT franchise, they built an incredible community. And by the way, I think people don’t understand what a Web3 community is like, because you go to a Bored Ape party, and you are meeting an incredible group of people that are so much like you that you’re not going to meet at the aerobics class.

1:31:08 You’re not going to meet at the car fair. You’re not going to meet anywhere else. It’s a very weird, nuanced community of very different people that all believe in for example the future of blockchain, Web3, and NFTs. So you get these people in the room. I can’t imagine what the Scottie Pippen people are all like.

1:31:24 These probably really amazing, cool, super Pippen fans that you’d never meet anywhere else, and so what we saw with Bored Ape is they took that community, and then they dropped them a coin, that coin became worth 10x what the NFTs were worth, because now it was a currency, and they apparently went backwards, but that could be the new forwards. For sure. And it looks like you’re doing something similar. Build the community, build the excitement, and then it’ll be so obvious.

1:31:50 That’s right, because you say, look, we already have the fans. Matter of fact, we know exactly who they are, because this is Web3. We’re not going through a television studio or a YouTube platform. We actually have their hot wallet addresses. Absolutely right, which is the hottest connection.

1:32:04 Absolutely right. You know, we do these allowlists for every project, right? And we had for Anthony Hopkins, you’re not going to believe this, for the thousand pieces, we had 73,000 wallets sign up in an allowlist in just a few weeks to try and buy one of the thousand. So we have that, and we, it’s a great database, and we are looking for sure, what again, taking, moving, creating content in Web3 that has a Hollywood-style production and storytelling to it, creating it, and then coming back to traditional Hollywood, and because look, let’s, we have to understand that the entertainment industry, you know, movies are not, they’re always going to be a form of entertainment, television series are always going to be a form of entertainment.

1:33:07 That’s not going away, nor should it, by the way. But much like a podcast, I mean, just think about podcasts years ago. You know, the technology has allowed people like you and me, you know, outside, just if we wanted to start a podcast today, we’ve got something to say, we can build an audience around it. The technologies allowed us to do that. Now, podcasts, traditional Hollywood has looked at, has taken, has looked at podcasts as content opportunities for them: murder mysteries, documentaries, all kinds of series and movies.

1:33:49 By the way, film ideas have come from podcasts. The same thing from video games, of course, and the same thing is going to happen from Web3. It’s already happening. So, uh, I do want to say one other thing about a project, um, and I should have given this to you. We haven’t made the formal announcement, but we got involved in an amazing project with a British boy.

1:34:21 His name is Joe. Well, he’s known as Doodle Boy, and boy does he doodle. He’s got this amazing ability to to sketch and draw, like, and he’s got all kinds of notoriety already at such a young age. In fact, I think he was in a, Nike came to him and put him into a, his work into a commercial. We loved what he was creating, again, an artist at 13.

1:34:51 Excuse me. And we’re building with him these characters that from his creations we’ve taken, we’ve put them into 3D, we’ve embellished them, we’ve built worlds around them. I think I have the opportunity with Joe to make the next Pixar-type movie off of these characters. It’s going to launch as a Web3. Brian, it is so amazing.

1:35:20 We’re going to be making this official announcement in a few weeks. His work is spectacular. What we’ve done with it is incredible. I can see plush toys coming from them, collectibles coming from them, um, and I’m not saying this from a money grab standpoint. It just has got that kind of branding opportunity, and there’s such story opportunity around these characters.

1:35:42 I can’t wait for this to come out. I think it’s going to be one of the biggest projects that we do at Orange Comet, and all off of the mind and the work of a wonderful 13-year-old artist, and that can only be fully realized in a Web3 scenario. Absolutely. He would. I mean, and that’s where Web3, on the last Web2, they changed the message.

1:36:04 It never, he would never be able to, you know, I mean, it’d be so rare for him to get a break. Um, you know, they take full control of the work, you know, uh, that’s the wonderful part of Web3. That’s the wonderful opportunity. Here’s a 13-year-old artist doing amazing work, now coming into this space and basically along with us working in partnership to create something wonderful and have full control of it. Yeah, yeah.

1:36:36 I’ve seen his stuff, and look, it looks incredible, and I know, uh, yeah, you’ve got some drops coming up with him. I’ll show, I’m going to show you some stuff. Yeah, uh, you’re gonna call me back and go, man, you’re right, this is massive. Yeah, and we’re going to be sending out information to our all of our London Realers worldwide. Good.

1:36:55 Uh, some upcoming stuff with Corrupted and with Doodle Boy as well, so anybody on our email list will get access to all that stuff. Um, how do you find the bandwidth to do all these damn projects? Well, look, first and foremost, it goes back to a gut check. And I’m not going to try and sound corny in this. I’m going to be as honest and real as possible, which is the only way I know how to talk.

1:37:23 If we don’t feel it, if we don’t think we could move it forward, move a project forward, if it’s not something that we have a vision for, it doesn’t get on our radar. We just pass on it. And believe me, we had a big, big, big, big film franchise through a studio come to us, and we just couldn’t figure it out. We just didn’t feel it. We just did.

1:37:48 We like, man, it sucks to have to give this opportunity up, but we just didn’t have the idea, and we passed on it. So first and foremost, it’s about feeling it and thinking that we can add to it and bring something new to the world of Web3 into the fan base. Secondly, as a company looking to become the Disney in Web3, you must be able to scale. You have to. So we’re not looking to be a mom and pop.

1:38:21 You know, that’s not, I don’t know if we really even started out that way. Although, you know, of course it was a small group of people, and we grew. We’re almost at 70, something, someone, 75 employees at this point. And our financial raises that we’re doing are really to grow the infrastructure more and and more. So the goal is to take on the bandwidth and continually take on the bandwidth.

1:38:49 It’s not to sit there and say we don’t want to take on the projects, but we want to take them on feeling we can do something great with them and feeling that we’ve got them spaced out properly. It’s like, you know, if you’re a movie studio, or I’ll go back to just being a TV and film producer. I ran an independent production company. I knew how many shows I can do at any given time and be involved. I wasn’t ever the producer who sat there and said, yeah, I’m going to take on that project, and I’m going to pass it off to my team.

1:39:29 Of course I had a team, but I was on the set and in the edit bay, so I can only do so much at one time. And the same thing for Orange Comet is that we want to make sure that we’re taking on and spacing these things out so they each have their own life. But our goal, make no mistake about it, we’re looking to be a multi-billion-dollar publicly traded company. Period. In the story, I want to be the first publicly traded company that originated in this space and now is trading on NASDAQ.

1:40:07 Let’s make that happen. Yeah. I’m just curious, do you ever blink your eyes and wonder, like, what am I doing here? I mean, this kid from New Jersey that went to school in Long Island, and then you did all this crazy stuff in LA, and now you’re in Web3. Like, how does that happen?

1:40:29 It’s maybe my success and my fault at the same time. I rarely look back in a lot of ways. I’m very grateful for my history and my past, and everything I’ve done, from a kid. I was a very, very driven kid. I was the one with a newspaper route and shoveling driveways in the snow in the wintertime and selling at flea markets.

1:41:03 There was just something that drove me, from your parents, to what’s inside of you. You’re probably a little bit my parents, and mainly inside of me. My dad was an only child. Grew up very, very poor. He was an attorney, a lawyer in the banking system, Manufacturers Hanover, remember that bank?

1:41:23 Yeah, of course. Yeah, Manny had him, and my mom had her master’s degree in education and taught special ed. They were both successful. He grew up upper middle class. I’m not wealthy but not poor, but they made me work for everything.

1:41:41 They didn’t hand me and a lot of my friends, by the way, did get handed stuff. So I would, my very best friend in my world, who’s still my very best friend, Bernie Meinerman, he had come from a very successful family that he was the guitarist in our band. He wanted a new guitar, he got a guitar, right? He wanted a car, he got a car, and I didn’t get that, so maybe that was what drove me. And I just had a vision of where I saw myself going, and I was lucky, because I have a unique makeup.

1:42:23 Either you find somebody typically who has a very good business mindset but maybe not such a great creative mindset, or you have somebody with such a great creative mindset but not somebody who has a great business mindset, and somehow I had the ability to have both. So I was a driven business person with a lot of creative. I started to play drums when I was eight. I taught myself how to play piano at 12. I started to write as a kid, and at the same time I wanted to make money and become successful.

1:42:54 So that’s what kind of drove me. I don’t take for granted my success, but, funny enough, I rarely reflect back on my past unless I get asked the question. And I don’t know about you, I mean, I know you’re you have an amazing story, an amazing backstory, an amazing history. If you stop and think about it, we know that our past are really the pieces that made us who we are today. When I went out to Los Angeles, I packed a car the day after I got out of Hofstra.

1:43:30 Had no job, no money, no place to live. I knew nobody in Los Angeles. I just knew that I wanted to get into entertainment, and when I drove out west, I couldn’t get a job. I tried to get a job at MTV. This is back in the heyday of TV, mid-’80s, and so I started working at El Torito as a manager, and I was, I’m not, I was peeling avocados in the kitchen.

1:43:58 But you know, I looked around, and I saw these mainly Mexican immigrant workers busting their ass, like working like you wouldn’t believe, and I learned something from that, and I took an appreciation away from that. And when I couldn’t get my next job in entertainment, I sold telephone systems, business telephone systems, door-to-door in downtown Los Angeles, and I hated it, but I became, like, in a, it was called Harris Lanier. It was a pretty big company, and out of a thousand sales people, I was like 50th in the company.

1:44:45 I was ranked 50th in a job that I couldn’t stand, but I learned from it, and I took something from it, and all of these experiences helped me as a TV and film producer. And so when I talked to my, I have two daughters, they’re 29 and 27 now, and I talked to them, that’s when I have the opportunity to go back and reflect on my past, to try and help them, you know, and say, look, what you’re doing now, or an experience that you’re having now, you might not realize it at the time, but it is going to help define you for the future, and how you deal with these experiences, and how you deal with the adversity, and how you overcome things, and what you do is going to make up who you are, and how you’re going to grow as a person. And that’s the chance that I have when I start to look on my past, when I tell them the stories.

1:45:45 That’s where I do it, but sometimes to a fault. I’m a, I’m constantly looking forward. I’m, I’m, I’m, I’m living in the moment very quickly. By the way, this may be your fault, very quickly, very quickly, because I don’t really stop and smell the roses on successes. Me neither.

1:46:05 You know, I, I get a pat on the back, and, and, and, and, and sometimes I don’t even want, I really don’t want that, because it’s it’s not necessarily like what I’m doing now, that I’m, that I can savor. It’s, it’s about where that leads to the future. And by the way, a lot of people would say that’s a fault, you know, where you gotta enjoy every moment, enjoy your successes, and, and maybe that’s true, but for me, I tell, you know, I tell, I tell young, my, my wife, who’s involved in Orange Comet, she’s our chief operating officer, and is merely my partner in life.

1:46:49 Um, you know, it’s not that I’m not happy. It’s just that I’m not satisfied. I don’t feel like I’ve reached my potential, and that’s what’s driving me. You know, um, I wouldn’t say that I would feel like a failure in my life. I don’t feel that way, but if I stop right now, I would feel that I have not accomplished what I wanted to accomplish.

1:47:16 I understand that, and that’s probably why you are where you are, and that’s probably why Orange Comet is going to go to greatness. Yeah, you know, thank you. Um, and maybe some people will say, and I’m sure you’ve heard this before, Dave, smell the roses, enjoy the moment, pop the bottle. Yeah, let’s at least have a night of celebration for this. Yeah, and you’re already thinking, okay, but what’s the next thing?

1:47:39 That’s it. You know, when I say that, when I say the same music says, you got to stop and smell the roses, I always say, well, I’m gonna stop and smell them, but I’m also going to do some weeding at the time. I’m going to mow the lawn at the time. I’m going to pick this one out. I’m gonna, I’m gonna do a lot more than just stop there and smell him.

1:47:53 I’m going to get a lot of done while I’m smelling that rose. Yeah, you sound just like me on that note. What is your biggest challenge, do you think, going forward, personally or professionally, both? Actually both. You know, you look out of the next 18, 24 months.

1:48:07 I mean, you got big challenges. You have your goals. Yeah, what are those things? What do you have to get through? What are the big barriers to stay there?

1:48:15 It might stop you from doing what you, nothing’s going to stop me. Because I’ve had failures before. I failed, but I’ve never, I’ve failed in the, in the, in the battles but not in the war, and and I’ve almost never accomplished, I’ve almost, let’s see if I can say this properly. I think I’ve accomplished everything that I’ve wanted to accomplish, okay, but have stumbled and had missteps and failures along the way, but in the big picture of schemes, if I’ve set out to do something, if I get it done, I’m not going to fail.

1:48:56 There’s no way I’m gonna fail. That said, it ain’t gonna be easy. Um, and the challenges right now for Orange Comet are really a lot of the challenges of being in a nascent space. First and foremost, we have to educate the general masses to what Web3 is. We have to allow them and make them feel comfortable, secure, and understanding what is behind all of this, and that’s, you know, it’s the same thing as the internet in the ’90s.

1:49:38 It’s like, why do I need to go have a computer to look up information? I’ve got an encyclopedia right here. If I want to know the, you know, the capital of, you know, whatever, I can just open up the page to it. What do I need? Because remember the early days of the internet, grandma said, yeah, it was like it was just a read-only version 1.0.

1:49:57 The internet was Web 1.0. Web 1.0, you know, read it. Well, what do I need to read it? I got it here. Okay, so we’re kind of in that space right now, so that’s, that is challenging.

1:50:08 The second part of the challenge for me is to let everyone understand that a situation that you’re hearing in the news with Sam Bankman-Fried on FTX, and, you know, a crypto exchange, while it could be maybe the ugly stepchild cousin of NFTs or Web3, really has got nothing to do with a Web3 NFT company or blockchain company. That’s a crypto exchange, and what looks to be a good old-fashioned, fraudulent, criminal scam. I wanted item, but certainly smells that way.

1:50:52 Don’t pollute what good people in a good company, and what our company, like Orange Comet, is doing in this space, because they’re completely different. And the general media, it follows a very sexy headline, FTX, and the FTXs of the world, and and in people’s mindset out there, the people who don’t know better, it convolutes the real story of what’s going on in Web3. Oh, it’s all a fraud, it’s all, it’s all this. And I hate that. I hate it, and I tell this to all of the news outlets, because I get interviewed.

1:51:35 One of the good things about my background is I’m the guy who came from traditional Hollywood into Web3, so I’m unique that way, and I have a lot of press opportunity, and I let them know, you’re not telling the story right. You’re this up. You are chasing the clickbait headlines and not understanding the full piece, or are lazy enough to not really tell the full story about the blockchain, crypto, Web3. Let’s get it all right. So that’s a challenge.

1:52:12 Um, another challenge is, I could educate and bring the masses as much as I want, the process still to set up a digital wallet in this space is way too hard. Yeah, now, the good news is that companies like ours are helping change that process, and I have no doubt in a matter of months. I mean, this is not like a whole future down the road that is going to get dramatically improved. It should be as easy for me to buy into an NFT or a Web3 project as it is for me to go to Amazon and go buy a sweater.

1:52:59 Click, done. That has to happen, must happen. And the last part of that challenge is the security issues. You have to feel comfortable as a consumer the same way. If you go back again to the early days of the internet, Web, there was no difference.

1:53:25 People like, well, wait a minute, you want to put my credit card online to buy something? Remember that? Yeah, I was like, who the hell you’re gonna steal my, I’m gonna, and by the way, it happened. So it got better, and it improved, and the process of buying something online, we don’t even think about it today, not even, doesn’t even come across our mind. Check, check.

1:53:48 I’m buying on Amazon, but you know, by the minute, or anywhere else for that matter. We’ve got to try and plug the holes in Web3, because there are bad actors out there. People are taking the same way they did in Web 1.0, and is it going to get better? Yes. Is it getting better now?

1:54:10 Yes, but you know, an umbrella that’s got a bunch of pinholes in it, it’s still going to get you wet. So no matter how much we bring the umbrella, the fact is that you’re never going to plug it all up, and there’s still internet fraud just in general. That’s just the world we’re living in. So those are some of my big challenges, and sometimes those are things that I’m a control freak, in case you probably haven’t figured that out yet, and I get very frustrated when I can’t control something, and some of that is out of my control.

1:54:43 Yeah, and so I, I, I, I, I’m trying the best I can. As a, look, I look at myself as a leader, and Orange Comet is a leader in this space, and so I’m taking it upon us to lead the way in a lot of that stuff, but we can’t do this alone, and we need big companies out there, and they’re great companies you know, are making changes and actually working to fix a lot of the problems I said. So those are professional problems or challenges. Personally, you know, I guess my personal challenge is to grow Orange Comet the way we are growing it, but to not lose the focus of a mom-and-pop mentality in a creative space, so and I think that’s very important.

1:55:40 We’ve talked a lot about this, you know, here today, is that, you know, one of my best friends in the world is Ted Sarandos. He is the CEO of Netflix. Yeah, and in the early days of Netflix, he was, um, passionately and intricately involved in all of the creative stuff, but as his I guess, you know, his, as the company grew and as his responsibilities became bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger, bigger, he found he had to distance himself. He couldn’t be involved in that stuff.

1:56:19 That’s, it’s hard, and I know he, we’ve talked about this before. You know, he’s a passionate entertainment guy. You know, he loves movies, he loves television shows, he loves content that way, and and I understand in my conversations with him that he’s the CEO of a game-changing company, a disrupter. How can he be involved in the nitty-gritty creative? And I’m a little fearful of losing that myself, because that’s a personal challenge.

1:56:58 I’m so into moving an audience emotionally, moving an audience, connecting with a fan again. When I look at an NFT or Web3 project, it has to emote something for you. Otherwise I haven’t done my job, and I don’t want to lose that, and I’m afraid that I might have to as the company continues to explode, and so on a personal level, I’m a little scared about that. But I’ll, you know, I’ll adjust. I don’t want to be I don’t see myself as, you know, like the corporate guy, but I could dress up in a suit very easily too, even though I’m not in one today, and certainly run the board meetings and, you know, stand there on Wall Street, but I don’t want to be so disconnected from my roots, so my creative roots.

1:57:57 So that is a personal challenge for me. Do you look to companies like Disney or maybe a Pixar or something that we’re able to scale and still keep their creative? Yes, at the top. Yes, very, very much so. You have a look at their org structures and even their company ethos, and I don’t know them enough about that.

1:58:16 Yes, there are examples, not a ton. Yes, of where it’s happened in the entertainment world. I think so, and it’s not that it’s impossible to do, but again, you know, I don’t know if Bob Iger, um, I haven’t spent time with Bob, so I don’t know how much he personally wants to be involved in the creative. He, of course, he’s got some great generals underneath him. Um, I do.

1:58:48 I want. Yeah, right. I do, but you know, look, um, ultimately my goal and my responsibility as the CEO of this company is to deliver, um, at the end of the day, uh, value. You know, value to our customers. I don’t like really saying customers, to be quite honest, but fan bases, enthusiasts, collectors.

1:59:14 I’ve got to deliver value to them, and I have to deliver value to our shareholders, and that is what’s going to drive me no matter what. At the end of the day, I’m going to do what I need to do to make sure that this company continues to grow and really leads the way, blazes the trail, blazes the path. And the nice thing is that I’m being told this, you know, like I said earlier, no one’s doing what you guys are doing, and boy does that fire me up. You know, it fires me up.

1:59:51 It’s just, how often do you get… I mean, you did this. Look at you. You know, I guarantee you people say that to you about yourself. And not that we’re looking for that ego stroke.

2:00:06 I’m not, I mean, I’m just fired up that I’m doing it. I don’t, I don’t, I don’t need the ego stroke. By the way, I already know how great I am. I want you to tell me how shitty I am, because I’ll learn from it. Don’t give me the compliment.

2:00:20 Do you hate compliments? I, I don’t hate them, but they don’t, I don’t find value in them. I like them for a second, because we all like to hear something good. It’s a nice, you know, anything nice. Shoes today, Dave, right?

2:00:30 Oh, great. But then you want to hear how you could imagine, yeah, you know, what you should have worn instead of that. Yeah, you know, because if you, that helps you grow. You want to improve. Yeah.

2:00:41 I want to improve. Like, I’m a guy who, you know, as a writer, you know, I’ll turn my… I’ll turn a script into into my writing. My buddies who are writers, great writers, and I’ll say, don’t, don’t tell me what you like about it. I already know what’s good about it.

2:00:58 I promise you, I’m loving it now, otherwise you wouldn’t get it. If I didn’t love it, it wasn’t coming across. You tell me what I’m missing here. What am I not seeing? Where’s this shitty part of this?

2:01:09 What did I mess up on? And, and, and, and, by the way, that is one of my strengths. A lot of people don’t want to hear the negative of anything. I, I only want to live in the negative. I’ll hear your compliment and I’ll appreciate that, Dave.

2:01:27 That’s amazing work, this is fantastic. But what I want to know is, you know, what you should have done there, and if I’m hearing it from somebody I respect, which is the only people that I really, you know, then I have a lot to learn from that. I, I don’t know, I don’t know at all. There are people doing amazing things way better than I am. How can I learn from them?

2:01:52 And that’s how we grow, and that’s how I can improve my work in Orange Comet’s work, or, you know, as a producer, that’s how I improve my work. So don’t tell me what’s good about what I just gave you. Tell me what’s shitty about it. I’ll know that for the future. Yeah.

2:02:06 I’ll take it. I’ll give you feedback on your taxes. I’ll take it. Believe me, I’ll take it. Well, you know, we looked at over 150 deals so far inside London Real Ventures and spoke to so many CEOs and went through the pitch decks, and I spent the last two years in the Web3 space speaking with the best of the best in this business.

2:02:24 I mean, for one, for one three-month stretch, I, I didn’t not talk to a billionaire founder of one of these protocols. That’s crazy, and um, and there’s something special about what you guys are doing. Well, that means, by the way, I mean, you just gave me a chill, because I, uh, it means the world to me. I mean, I’m not, I mean that that means everything to me. Um, there is, and you know, I’ve got a group of 50 people, you know, high net worth, medium net worth, and six continents around the world, all in their own verticals, you know, all the top of their field in medical and legal and real estate and in crypto, and when they heard you come on the call that night, you know, afterwards I was like, what do you think?

2:03:04 I’m not going to tell you, I told you, and they were like, yes, there is something here, and so I’m so glad we could do this, because whenever I talk about Orange Comet to the people, I’m like, you guys really need to get this, and they’re like, well, and then if T’s of this, and I’m like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. And I was like, these are these are former Hollywood, uh, men and women that are now doing what NFT, doing this, doing that in the Web3 NFT space. You’ve got to see what they’re doing, but it takes them a while to really get it.

2:03:32 And so, you know, but once they do, I think they can really see that there is so much more, and you can, you can actually see it in your work. If you really look at it, it feels different. Yeah, I said that. It feels like you’re, I can see your value system in your work. I appreciate it, and then, listen, what you’ve done to help has been fantastic, and you know, we, we don’t take that lightly by any stretch, and I get that it’s, that it takes a little while for people to understand how we’re different.

2:04:06 If you’re not in it, if you’re not in the industry, you know, if you’re if you’re a movie studio and you’ve been talking to you know, dozens of Web3 NFT companies, and I come, you either see our work, or I come calling on you, because you know me as a TV and film guy. They get it within two seconds, by the way, and they tell me, you know what’s interesting? I have to tell you this is a funny story. Uh, I would create a TV show, and then I’d go in and pitch it around town, and in pitching it, I would sit across the table from some of my close friends who were running the networks, the studios, and we know, we of course became very close, but they had their job to do and I had my job to do.

2:04:54 They’re going to buy a project or pass on a project based on not the friendship, that’ll put them out of a job, based on whether or not they think they’ve got, I’ve got a hit that I’m pitching them. But in the world of entertainment, even sitting across from a close friend, he or she would look at me with the straightest face in the world after I’m done with my pitch. Here’s what it is. I would go, you know what, by the way, I was very animated. I would stand up, I walk the room.

2:05:22 I would never pitch like this. I mean, I’d be in your, I mean, I’m literally, I mean, you have your GoPros here, but I’d be like this, but I’m gonna be like this, and I’m like this, and people like, look like I’m a caged animal in a lot of ways. And then it would be done, and be like, okay, Dave, that’s very good. Um, really appreciate it. Uh, we’ll talk about, and let you know, and that would be it. straight-face feedback here and there, but I would have no idea if they’re going to buy that project or pass on that project, and I wouldn’t know for days later.

2:05:55 But here’s something interesting: in Web3, the same studio, the same network, different group of people. We go through our presentation, they don’t hold back. They’re like, I’ve never seen like this anywhere, nowhere. Dave will look, holy, and almost more enthusiastic than I would be, and I love the story a bunch, because it’s, I don’t know what it is. I’m trying to figure out the difference, because these are jaded executives in entertainment, just a different division, but they’re seeing what we’re doing and reacting so overwhelmingly over the top, and I think it’s because we are so different, and we are, I’m not going to say better, because I don’t like that.

2:06:57 It’s not that there are great companies out there, and I do not, I’m on me, you know, I want to make sure I’m not sitting there coming off like the arrogant, egotistical American here. I’m not. Um, I’m very proud of what we’re doing, but I’m getting that immediate feedback that is telling me that when I never got that in in traditional Hollywood, in a way, and it’s very interesting, so um, that was a long-winded story to a question I don’t even remember what you asked me, but the fact is that it’s, it’s exciting, you know, it does fire me up, and again it’s a confirmation of what we’re setting out to do.

2:07:45 Yeah, I can see those reactions, but that’s interesting. You feel that. I think maybe because it’s such a new space and you’re doing something so so, so much better. I think so, and that you’re getting this, oh my God, it’s like a 10x. I think it’s the next reaction.

2:07:58 Yeah, I think, I think that’s what, look, that’s what I’m chalking it up to be as well. I’m very curious what they, um, what they think of you in Paris over this conference tomorrow, for sure. Well, sure, you know, but you do have this weird mix, dude, I must say, of highly accomplished guy who clearly wants great things and knows you can deliver great work, but you have this underlying humility about you as well, which is also super refreshing, and it’s super nice to be around, not what you might expect from, you know, a guy with your LinkedIn profile from Hollywood.

2:08:31 And so I’m sure at first glance, when you meet someone in Paris, they first admit, they’d be like, oh, is he that guy? Yeah, then they’ll quickly realize you’re not, and that’s going to get you far. I think it already has. Yeah, I appreciate it. You know, look, you know, you never want to believe your own press clippings on anything.

2:08:49 You know, you never want to fall victim to that. Young, who again is, you know, my partner in my life, Cambodian refugee. She’s amazing. She’s amazing, and she grounds me like you wouldn’t believe, because you see that she would never let me get away with anyway, bro. But, you know, you you, um, you know, I love, I love learning, you know, I, I love to be surrounded by people who know way more than I do, and most people do.

2:09:30 I know what I’m really good at, and in my business I say my big… I have two big strengths. I I’m driven, passionate, like you wouldn’t believe, but I also know my weaknesses. I’m not a person who’s out of touch there’s heart. No one’s ever said something about the weakness about me where I’ve been like, oh man, I never thought about that before.

2:09:51 I know it, and I embrace the weakness, and I’m not in denial about it, and so I try and surround myself with people who could help me with my weaknesses, and I learn from them, and that’s the great thing about life in general, is that you could hear great stories, great advice from people who know things and are better than you are, or have different experiences than you have, and that is, I’m constantly looking to improve myself, not in a self-improving way. I’m not like one of those, like you know, guys who sit down and just reading motivation books, or, you know, how-to. That’s not me, but I do want to take something away from everybody who I’m in touch with.

2:10:42 Think, oh, you know what, you know, I would spend time with Brian today, and boy, you’re not going to believe it, and I just, it’s, it’s like I’m a sponge that way, and so I think that that keeps me grounded as well, if you know that you’re not the greatest thing to ever walk the face of the Earth, and you should know that, then then you should be open to learning from everybody you meet, because people are pretty fascinating, aren’t they? Yeah, they are. I’m wondering if not everyone’s like that, maybe in Hollywood, but that’s maybe another broadcast.

2:11:18 Uh, they’re not like that in Hollywood. Okay, they’re not like that in Hollywood. Okay, so the stereotypes are true, you know. I think Hollywood, it’s a tough business. It’s a, it’s a brutal business.

2:11:31 I’ve never seen anything like it. I don’t know anything like it, by the way. Uh, how so? I mean, I worked on Wall Street, and I could call that a brutal business, but when I look at, you say it, I feel like it’s more brutal. I’ve, I’ve talked to a lot of Wall Street, because it’s emotional.

2:11:45 Yeah, I think it’s because, you know, there are a lot of interesting, I’ve talked to a lot of Wall Street people about interesting parallels, the grind, and the money, and all that stuff. I think Hollywood is, an industry that, uh, it, there’s a lot of big egos across the board, maybe not unlike Wall Street, but because it’s, you’re taking a piece of clay and shaping it and molding that clay in the creative form. Everybody wants to have input. Everybody wants to have a say until it’s a failure, by the way, because the cliché goes, right?

2:12:32 Right, and then they, I don’t do that, but in the process, it is everybody’s involved in changing and shaping and having input at every level. So you have high stakes, big money, big, big drama, and a creative process, and it’s a grind to, to oversee it, to get it out. Remember, unlike anything, when you’re on Wall Street, you’re selling a product. A company is behind that stock, or whatever it ends up, whatever it is. In Hollywood, we’re selling an idea.

2:13:19 At first it’s, it’s, it’s like I said, it’s thin air. It’s a concept until it becomes something. Now it is either a success or a failure based on a product. But sometimes that even becomes more challenging once you have the success, because now you’re everyone’s piling into this thing, I think. And the other part of Hollywood that I think is brutal is I’ve always loved the creative side, but the business side of Hollywood is very, very, very tough, and I’ve never quite understood that.

2:14:04 Um, studios and networks, as they’ve gotten squeezed over the years with advertising revenue, and ratings condensing and dropping, they’ve had to squeeze everything they possibly can out of creators and producers on the business deal term side, but at the end of the day these are the people that are, you’re cutting off the hand that feeds you. These are the people that you need to create, so why are you crushing them? Why are you trying to make such insane deals?

2:14:40 Sometimes, if something does well, sharing the wealth, give the guys, the people who are making your shows and films, give them the piece of the action, because that is going to incentivize them and motivate them to come back to you for the next one. Don’t you want to feed these people? Why do you want to starve them? The business is banged up in a lot of ways, and I’m not the first person to say that. I know that.

2:15:09 Yeah, yeah. Maybe one, three changes that somehow this intermediates it. I think Web3, it’s a good, that’s a good transition back to that conversation, because I think Web3, that is the exciting part, about, you don’t need an agent in Web3. You don’t need a network or a studio to greenlight your project. You need your belief, your passion, your vision, your drive, and your execution to pull it off.

2:15:40 That’s empowering. Right? That is empowering. And so that is what Web3 has to offer. Look, don’t get me wrong, I mean, I, there’s some great people in Hollywood, and some and people.

2:15:55 Right now, the exciting part about I think where we are in the entertainment industry, and I think maybe because Ted and Netflix started this, but um, certainly HBO, you know, back into the cable days, you know, there’s some amazing content that’s getting made. Uh, you’re in a heyday of television right now, heyday of TV, and you, there’s almost too much to watch and too much really good quality. So that that’s a good thing, but what drove that? Think about what drove that technology.

2:16:30 Yeah, the streaming. You know, first it was networks, then cable, and now streaming, so and Netflix lived that way. They helped drive that, the technology of being able to stream a show, stream a movie, opened up the entire door to create all kinds of amazing content, and it for it to be consumed in all kinds of amazing ways. Is that any different than Web3? No, no, that’s where we are.

2:17:02 That’s what that that is, the exciting part. Again, I, I’m looking at Web3 and drawing, always have looked at the parallels back to the early days of the internet, back to early days of entertainment, back to where we are in entertainment today. What they’re, they’re kind of connected in a lot of ways, but you have to be able to look at it like that. Yeah, I think it was Marshall McLuhan that said the medium is the message. That’s right.

2:17:23 I always think about this. Um, you know, it’s a weird concept when people first hear it, and you think about it, you meditate on it, you get it a little bit more. But you know, when we went from movies to radio, and then we went from radio to TV, and then you went from TV to the internet, people are just thinking, oh, it’s a new tech, it’ll be like the old tech but on demand, and you know, when we first saw YouTube, it was like, well, YouTube is just what was on TV, but now on demand.

2:17:51 And it’s like, no, it’s a brand-new medium with brand-new ramifications, and it creates cultures. It creates feedback loops. It creates something you don’t even know what it’s going to become. It’s on someone’s mobile. It becomes more intimate, and Web3 is going to do that to another order.

2:18:06 Oh yeah, in ways we don’t even understand yet, in a way that the medium really is the message, somehow, of peer-to-peer connection, no middleman, no more digital colonialism, maybe no interference from governments and other other entities. Absolutely right. Um, it’s, it, it’s it’s more than just money, and it’s more than just collecting things. It’s more than just entertainment. So it is, but acceleration of humanity somehow.

2:18:30 Keep your reps. You’re right about that. Keep keep one thing in mind, though, that that’s hard to lose sight up or easy to lose it. I’m sorry, whether it’s YouTube or radio or TV or web or Web3, at the end of the day again, this goes back to my vision on this from Orange Comet at the end of the day. I’ve always said that the technology gets you there, but the content keeps you there.

2:19:07 You’ve never sat in a movie theater before and been in this amazing plush seat, and you’re staring at this massive screen, and you’ve got speakers all around you, and you’re in this beautiful surround, you know, facility, and you’ve sat there and have ever been in a theater saying, God, how the do they do this? That projector is pushing this picture on this screen, and we’re seeing it in this live thing, and I’m feeling my seat’s vibe. We don’t ever think that, we don’t think about the technology.

2:19:44 All we think about in this theater is this movie’s great, where this thing sucks. I can’t believe I just paid 18 bucks for a ticket for this, because at the end of the day, it’s the content that we connect to. We don’t connect to the technology. The tech, we think about it for a second. The technology, just think about it.

2:20:11 Do we think about the technology that this thing is doing? We really don’t. Yeah, we just go like, I got this device. I don’t even know what the is in this thing to do this. Yeah, you just use it.

2:20:23 Not just using it. I’m, I’m, I’m on the, I can connect to the world on this thing, and for a second I may think about it, but at the end of the day, I just want the phone to work. I want a great signal. I want to go online. I want to be able to text somebody.

2:20:38 I want to be able to pull this up. I want to be on my social because that’s what we’re emotionally connected to, and that is what Web3 is going to do as well. The blockchain technology behind it is amazing, game changing. What I wanted to become and what it will become, I believe, is an afterthought. It’s there.

2:21:03 It works behind the scenes. It’s authenticating. It’s delivering me, you know, the authenticity of what my digital asset is, or what my driver’s license is going to be, or my birth certificate, or my mortgage statement, or my title insurance, which is no doubt going on a blockchain. We won’t even think about that. We’ll just know that this is what’s delivering it, and that’s why I looked at Web3 as a content play, because again, at the end of the day, I know, I know that the way you become successful in the creative space, for sure, is to emotionally connect a person to what they’re seeing, watching, or hearing.

2:21:52 It’s not that people don’t get emotionally connected to technology. The engineers do, the technicians do, the geeks do, but at the end of the day, the everyday person sits there and says, this is awesome, man. Like, you just gave me goosebumps. Yeah, they want that feeling. They want that utility.

2:22:12 They want that experience. Yeah, I think I was talking to Robbie from Immutable X, which is one of the great platforms for NFTs, and he said, if you look at our website, we don’t use the word NFT anywhere on our website. He said, because that’s not what you should be thinking. You should just be thinking, wow, I got my stuff over here and I can move it over here, and it’s working, and I’m having a great time. That should be it.

2:22:30 I don’t need to know what the tech is. Just like I don’t need to know that hypertext transfer protocol service on my web, but yeah, it just works. That’s it, right? When you’re doing it right, that’s exactly right. I think, you know, the creative drives technology.

2:22:45 It really does. It’s not, you know, it’s not the opposite. Most people would think that it is the opposite, that you know, hey, when creating all this amazing technology, okay, yeah, but what do you do with it? We wouldn’t be paying attention to it. Right, right.

2:23:00 What was something on there? Exactly. Like, how what is that doing for me in my everyday life? If you think about what Netflix, let’s just take what streamers set out to do. It, the technology behind that and the bandwidth was necessary, and all the kinds of changes on how to take place, so you can watch a movie and stream it, where it’s not like, you know, stopping and starting or sitting down in the lowest kind of grade, you know.

2:23:28 Uh, uh, you know, uh. So it doesn’t look like it’s all pixelated. Yeah, thank you. We don’t think about that. We just, we watch the movie when we want to watch the movie, or the TV show.

2:23:42 When we want to watch a TV show, the technology behind it is pretty spectacular, but, but, as, in our everyday lives, that’s not what we get fired up about. We get fired up about, like, I’m paying 9.99 a month. I want all the I can watch at any given time, whenever I want to watch it, and wherever I want to watch it. And I’m, I’m, I’m now able to watch, you know, Breaking Bad on Netflix. Holy.

2:24:08 I can watch every season there, and watch every episode all at once, if I wanted to sit there and waste my life away for the next, you know, month. But that’s what we care about, the content. Yeah, and that’s why you’re looking at Web3. That’s Web3. I love it.

2:24:22 Um, Dave, I always finish with a couple questions. I’m going to ask you, if you could pick up a phone and call up the 20-year-old Dave Broome, uh, I guess you’re at Hofstra on Long Island at this point, with the picture of LA on your wall, with a big circle of where you’re going to move to in a couple years. Yeah, um, if you could give that young man some advice based on everything you know now, what would you tell them? What do you listen? Oh, wow.

2:24:48 What would I tell that 20-year-old? Um, learn how to eat better. Uh, in the early days, um, I would tell that, uh, let’s see, I don’t want to get emotional. Um, yeah, you know, I, I had a hard time finding balance in my life as a young father. Um, you know, it was very hard for me.

2:25:22 I my girls are, mean everything to me in the world, and my wife was an alcoholic, and I was in a very tough marriage, and she, my wife, passed away. I was married for 20 years. We split before then. Um, and I, I tried to do it all, and it was really hard, and, um, you know, I wanted to give my girls the best upbringing I possibly can. I wanted to build my company as a producer, um, and, you know, I, I was having a really tough time with the balancing of it all.

2:26:02 I, and in some ways I felt like I was, I wasn’t the greatest father, and then sometimes I felt it wasn’t the greatest producer, and other times I felt like, oh, and I didn’t know, you know, I didn’t know how to do it. I think if I had that opportunity to go back and talk to myself, then I think it would be just to try and find a better way of balancing life in general, and I don’t have any regrets. I do not live in regrets, and I haven’t. I, I feel like I’ve done the best job I possibly can under my circumstances.

2:26:33 That doesn’t mean that I couldn’t make them, for them, and so I, I kind of felt like I, I would have given myself a little bit of advice on finding balance in life. Could you have advised him to do anything different? Um, probably. So you know, like, you, it was, it was a really interesting struggle, because I wanted to, I knew that I had to go out and entertain as a producer at night and do kind of meetings, but I knew that my girls were home with my wife, who was probably drunk, and, you know, it was really torn, really torn, because if you don’t go out, then they don’t get to eat, and you’ve worked at El Torito before, you know how that and moving counts.

2:27:28 You know, if you do go out, you don’t know what’s happening there. Yeah, it’s like, I’m, if I’m home, I can’t grow the business. I can’t provide them the life that I needed to provide. If I’m, if I’m, uh, you know, if I’m out, then what’s going on at home? Am I being the father that I need to be for them?

2:27:47 And I don’t, I don’t know. I don’t know if I have the answer to it today, like, I, I’m very close with my daughters, very, very close, and we talk about it a lot. You know, like, was I an absentee father? No. Could I have been there more?

2:28:07 Yes. Uh, was I you know, able to, you know, if I would have, if I would have abandoned them in the house, I probably would have been much further along as a TV and film producer. I’d be like, okay, well, what the, is that but, but, you know, it’s, it’s, um, it was just tough. It was a really hard situation, and I know, and you talked about your addiction, um, in the past, uh, being married to an addict is like being in quicksand, and as a control freak, I thought I could fix that situation, then I realized I couldn’t, because she just was, she didn’t want to fix it herself, and so it was very, very, very difficult.

2:28:57 So I think the older me could have gone back, probably, to a 20-year-old and said, listen, here, you’re not going to be able to change things that are out of your control, and you’re going to just try and have to find the, the best balance in your life. That’s always, it’s always tough. I don’t have that now. Um, I, I now, I, I’m so much more not sure of, because I was always sure of where I wanted to go, but much more mature, and I have different responsibilities.

2:29:28 I don’t have young children, and I don’t have young children, and where I feel like I’ve got to where I’m, um, where I, I would be sacrificing time with them. You know, they’re successful, and I, and I guess, you know, maybe that’s where I feel proud, because both of my girls are massively successful in their own right, so I feel like I’ve done something right, because I could have easily have gone the other way, but, you know, it was, uh, it was very tough. It was a tough 20 years.

2:30:01 20-year challenge. It was not, it was, it was not like nice. You know, I was that stereotypical where you go, well, do I get out of my marriage now and leave, leave my children in the house? Well, how can I do that with a wife who had, you know, was an addict, and and then again, should I be in this house where this marriage is tough? And I was, even after I left my wife, by the way, I was, I took care of her until she died of cancer.

2:30:27 So she didn’t even die of alcoholism, but probably brought on. She had pancreatic cancer, but I remain very close with her and took care of her till the day that she died. Um, I loved her. I just wasn’t in love with her, and I lost all respect for her, so that was, that’s hard to come back. So, you know, it’s, you, I, I, I would have prepared the 20-year-old myself for that a little bit differently.

2:30:52 I think, if that’s even possible. It’s possible. So it’s, it’s so hard. Yeah, and you’re dealing with such a strange situation, because you know, knowing that you don’t know what’s going to happen with her at any moment is, you know, traumatic, and then you’re constantly in this unknown moment. You don’t know what she’s going to do, and you can’t control it.

2:31:11 You can behave however you want to behave, but you don’t know when that’s going to happen. No, I thought, I thought I could. I thought you know what, again, the immature version of myself, I thought, I, as the, hey, I’m like, I could, I, I could do anything. I’m a, I’m a, I’m a control freak. I’m, I’m passionate.

2:31:28 I’m a driven person. I’ve achieved goals. Yeah, I’m gonna get my wife, you know, I’m gonna get her to stop drinking. Um, but I couldn’t at all, and, uh, and she was one of those classic alcoholics, where if she was in a room with you right now, you’d say, like, that’s my best friend in the world, which she was. A great girl.

2:31:50 Your life of the party. You wouldn’t even know she was alcoholic until you saw her passed out on the floor, not at a party or something like that. But um, yeah, it was, it was, it was a very difficult and unsure time, and you know, hard to be in a situation like that and not have I guess, you know, fall short in lots of different areas. That could have been a better moment. I could have been a better dad at that point.

2:32:23 It could have been a better business leader. I could have been a better, maybe, I could have been even a better husband. I don’t know. Yeah. It’s so strange when you’re dealing with substance addiction and abuse.

2:32:33 I mean, you know, um, by the time, in 2001, when I was, you know, multiple heroin overdoses, and just my addiction was spinning out of control. Ultimately, my girlfriend of four years, my best friend from MIT who had hired me, both basically got rid of me in their lives, and um, I didn’t know how to deal with it at the time, but once I look back on it later, I realized that that was the right thing to do, and it’s probably what kept me alive. Yeah, because that’s something that I couldn’t, I couldn’t gloss over, because these are the closest people basically said, you’re so destructive and dangerous, we need to get as far away from you as possible.

2:33:12 Yeah, yeah, and so I always tell people, you can’t love someone who doesn’t love themselves. It’s absolutely true. You know, it’s funny, I, I even learned that. That was one of the things that we first, things that I unexpectedly learned from The Biggest Loser, is when I created the show. I didn’t realize at the time the emotional baggage that every one of the contestants was coming from.

2:33:43 You know, what was going on? And there was a very similar through line that they didn’t prioritize themselves, typically, in their life. Some had very tragic stories that got them to that place, but ultimately the end of the day, they put their husband, wife, children, family, job first, and they didn’t prioritize themselves, and they didn’t love themselves first and foremost. And so their life suffered, and that’s how they stopped. You know, people think, oh, I just become obese because I’m just eating bonbons all day and I don’t exercise.

2:34:28 Well, maybe that’s the end result, but it’s the emotional journey that is causing you to really do that. And and that is an interesting thing that I took away from The Biggest Loser, is that you’ve gotta, you’ve got to put yourself first. People think that’s selfish, but it’s not, it’s not selfish. If you don’t care about yourself, love yourself, put your own happiness first and foremost, there is no way. I’m convinced there is no way you can make anyone else happy, be it a partner in your life, a friend in your life, an employer.

2:35:06 I don’t think you can make anyone happy if you’re not happy with who you are, first and foremost. It’s very true. It’s very, very true. If you don’t love yourself, there’s nothing you can do. You’re a liability to anything you touch if you don’t take care of yourself first.

2:35:23 It’s true. It’s, that’s true. It’s hard, though. It’s, I think, not for me, but it’s hard for people, I think, to understand that. Yeah, you know, but it shouldn’t be.

2:35:32 It’s funny, it’s the old uh, you know, um, mask drops down in the decompressed plane, and you know you’re supposed to put it on you first, and then put it on. That’s correct, and it’s a pretty good metaphor. It’s like, you know what, especially when you’re a parent or a business person and you’re thinking, I have to do this first, but actually no, you’ve got to take care of yourself first, which means saying no to a few things first. Take care of your health, your physicality, your diet, your spirituality, everything you can do, all that, and now you can really give good energy to other people.

2:36:02 If you don’t, you’re going to be giving flawed, absolute negative energy, and you’ll be ultimately a liability in anything you touch. Absolutely. In fact, it’s somebody agreed 100%. On board, it’s a tricky situation. The other thing you’re talking about, Dave, is, you know, every father, yours was magnified, but every father, I think, is always struggling between this balance of, we have this inherent need to provide.

2:36:24 It’s in our DNA, and this inherent need to also connect with our family and be fathers and also connect with our partners too, and it’s this Trifecta of, I don’t know when it’s enough. Yeah, and whenever I talk about this, like I did in my last movie, tons of the fathers come up to me and pull me aside like, how do you get the balance right? No, no, I’m like, I’m still working on it. So yeah, I think it’s the hardest part. It really is, right?

2:36:46 It’s, um, you know, it’s, you end up, you’re trying to serve many masters at one time, and you know, you probably end up falling short on everything across the board. I don’t know, I don’t know, um, I don’t know a way around it. You know, I, I’ve talked about it myself with people. I don’t know how, you know, I don’t know how you pull it all off. I’m not sure you can, but I know you can.

2:37:22 I know I could have been better, you know, probably in all areas, and, you know, I’m, I’m honest about that to myself, my partner, my children, you know, and like, I, I don’t, I don’t, I don’t look at where I got in my career and say I’ve made it and not think that there were, you know, shrapnel that I left behind in areas, and I’ve you know, I, I want, you know, my, I guess at the end, I definitely want to know that my girls are uh, proud of me as much as I am, even more proud of them, and um, as a single father, you know, what, what ended up happening when I left my wife, I bought a home a mile away, and within two weeks, and told my wife, I’m like, look, we’ll figure this out together. Bought that home. My girls came into it.

2:38:38 It was a nice home, and they were 13 and 11, or 14 and 12. I think at the time. I have teenage girls, and they, uh, were arguing, uh, the first day that we were in this house, and I came out, what the hell is going on here? They’re arguing about which bedroom, who’s gonna have what bedroom. I saw the house, is what’s the problem here?

2:39:04 Both bedrooms are great. Well, one of the bedrooms had a bigger closet than the other, and I said, well, what, what are you kidding me? I said, these closets are big enough for both. First of all, for both, in either bedroom, they’re fine, and second of all, only half your shit’s going to be here. The other half is going to be at Mom’s house, a mile away.

2:39:23 You’ll be there, and they look at each other, and they look at me and said, what are you talking about? We’re never sleeping at Mom’s house ever again. And I said, one, they said, we’re never going back into that house, Dad. And it just hit me, and I, and they never did, by the way. Wow.

2:39:49 And I found myself a single father, two teenage daughters, an alcoholic wife, running a company, and I felt the weight of the world on my shoulders, because first and foremost, I was now fully, not that I wasn’t in a ways, but I still had, I had a mom in some way, but now I am. I felt the weight of the world. I’m like, oh my God, like, I’m gonna, this, I’m gonna, these kids up badly. You didn’t, right? I didn’t.

2:40:26 I got, I didn’t, I didn’t, and you look, a lot of credit to them, and, but I was on them, and, young, helped me with them, you know, early on, when we got into a relationship, they were good girls, and they could have easily have gone down a very bad path. Um, and we were living in Calabasas, in the land of the Kardashians, and so um, you know, they were surrounded by that, and so it, it could have gone that way, but I was really scared, didn’t know, you know, again, not, I didn’t really. I’m just trying to figure it out.

2:41:04 Didn’t know what, how to do it, but felt like I would somehow get through it. Yeah, wow, man, that’s powerful, really powerful. Hope your girls are watching this. Um, on that same note, best advice you ever received, if you can think back through your life, did it from someone in Hollywood or a parent or a mentor, or, I don’t know, something you read? But is there, is there any advice that sticks?

2:41:28 I’ve gotten a lot of advice. Um, you know, I, um, I think my mom and dad gave me, the probably the best advice, just about being true to who you are and being morally and ethically good and grounded, and don’t ever lose that, and I think that’s invaluable advice. I mean, I’ve gotten a lot of business advice, but, but more importantly I’m very, very proud that I am. I have a moral and ethical compass. I really do.

2:42:15 I have never, you know, they said, don’t, my dad was like, don’t let any business deal change you. Don’t be persuaded to, uh, you know, make bad decisions against what you know is, you know, morally or ethically right, and I’m never, ever strayed from that, and I, you know, I took that into my both personal and professional world, you know, when, back to the situation with my, with my ex-wife, you know, when I my girls just wanted me to disconnect from her the way they did, and I said, I’m not going to do that. She is the mother of my children.

2:43:14 I’m not going to screw her over. This is not going to be an ugly divorce. I’m not, that’s not who I am. I know, and I’m going to look at myself in the mirror, and you were going to look at me one day, and you’re going to realize that you need to do the right thing always. In life, you have to attempt to do the right thing.

2:43:40 You, you, you have to stay true to who you are and not be persuaded to go a negative way, a dark way, in a moral way. It’s not about God, by the way. For me, it’s more about the picture of that and my mom and dad. I think we’re, are good people, and taught me that, taught my brothers that, and that is, that’s really what makes me up, you know? Like, I I’ve never over anyone in my life, certainly not intentionally.

2:44:21 And I’ve, I’ve done, in fact, the opposite. I’ve, if I don’t think it’s the right move, like, you know, and I always said this in a deal, in making a deal with somebody, like, it is the cliché. It’s about, I don’t want you, you shouldn’t suffer because you make a bad deal with me. I don’t want that. I want a good deal for both of us.

2:44:54 We both should win, in that cliché sense. So, morally and ethically, I’m not looking. I would not want to take advantage of anyone. That to me and I’ve never lost that. For my mom and dad, so that is the best advice, because, because, look, a lot of people have given you great business advice over the years, but I think you get, if you can get, if you can always let’s go cliché for a second, if you can always look at yourself in the mirror and say, hey, I’m not perfect, but, and we shouldn’t be, we’re not going to be, but I’m proud of who I am because I’m proud of what I did and how I handled something.

2:45:39 That’s it. What, that’s the limit test for me. Yeah, that’s the ultimate one. That’s all it matters. It is.

2:45:45 Yeah, it is right. Like, a lot, a lot of great business advice over the years, but then I don’t think it’s, I think it’s more about what makes you who you are. That is the best advice you can get, because, because that carries over into the professional world. Yeah, if you’re morally or ethically broken, it’s going to affect everything you do in your life, personally and professionally. Yeah, yeah.

2:46:15 Solid advice, right? Last part of that is to the 20-year-old that’s watching us or listening to us. You know, you’re gonna make me cry again. I, I, I’m honored. That means I’m doing my job.

2:46:27 To the 20-year-old that’s listening to us out there, watching us, that, you know, grew up in a completely different environment, maybe has different challenges than the 20-year-old you had to deal with. Um, advice for them, you know, negotiating this new space, living in a digital world where their digital identity is sometimes higher stakes than sometimes it feels like a physical identity. All these new tools. I don’t know. Advice, I know your girl’s a little bit older than that.

2:46:51 What would you tell a 20- year-old? Well, I, I tell a 20-year-old today to first and foremost follow what they really care about. Again, I, I know it’s a common theme, but the, the passion for me is just can’t be understated. Now, you could say I’m a passionate video gamer, so I want to, I want to go ahead and try to become a professional Esports player. Okay.

2:47:19 Okay. The, the, that’s fine if that’s what you think you can really do. I think most kids today are, uh, are confused. I think there’s a lot of distractions. I actually think it’s tougher to grow up today than it was for me and you.

2:47:45 I think social media has probably changed that. I think people, kids today are not living out who they really want to be. They’re living out who they might want to pretend that they are, or look to pretend what they’re trying to portray, um, because of the pressures on social media, the pressures of perfection. You know, we, corrupted, by the way, the tagline in our Corrupted is, um, we, the whole mantra is perfection is corrupted. That’s what we’re saying.

2:48:26 Don’t strive to be perfected. Perfection, because it’s, it’s not, it’s not right. It doesn’t exist. It shouldn’t exist. So I tell it when I’m talking.

2:48:36 I do a lot of inspirational speeches and talks, um, especially people, in now in Web3, but in the entertainment industry, and I tell kids and even grad students, I tell them the real deal, but I tell them that they’ve got to find something that they believe in first and foremost. Like, don’t, don’t worry about the money, don’t worry about cashing the check yet. Don’t worry about the material items. If you want, fine. Listen, I had nine cars at one time, all kinds, from Ferraris to Aston Martins to everything.

2:49:15 I was a car buff, I was a car freak, but that’s not, whatever. That’s how I wasn’t thinking about that. I was thinking about, I knew I wanted to be in entertainment. I knew I wanted to produce. I knew I wanted, like, I knew what I wanted, and that’s what I, that’s what I want you know, 20-year-old to think about right now.

2:49:33 What do you want? What do you see yourself doing? What do you care about? What are you passionate about? And most of the time, by the way, they go like this, you know, I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know, but you know what, that’s okay.

2:49:46 Make them understand that that’s okay. You might not know what you want at 20 years of age. There’s nothing wrong with that. Most people, what they do in their first job isn’t what they end up doing three, four, five jobs later. Now, look at you, but one thing leads to the next thing, that leads to the next thing, that leads to the next thing, that leads to the next thing, then ultimately you land in a place that you’re passionate about, that you care about, that you’re enthusiastic about, that you want to wake up to every single day.

2:50:18 So I tell 20-year-olds or grad students, find that, and, and, and, and, and while you might not know it today, you’ve got to, in your life, get to that point. You’ve got to try and find that. You know, this, that it’s like, 95 plus of the people in the world hate doing what they’re doing for a living. That’s a, that’s a statistical fact. 95.

2:50:51 I almost created a television series off of that stat. Is it, isn’t that a horrible way to live life? Now, you said, well, people don’t have a choice, you think that guy wants to be working in the coal mines, or whatever that we get that, but the fact is that if you, if you try and take the steps prior to that, that get you to find what you really do care about, I think ultimately you’re going to be happier in life, and and that’s what I, I want to see people.

2:51:23 You know, people saying, ah, passion’s no, it’s not, it’s not it drives everything. It just does, man. I don’t give a, I’ve heard professionals, I’ve heard people in Web3 talk about but it’s not about passion. You, you don’t know what you’re talking about. It is, it’s always about passion, and if you think it’s not, I’m sorry, you’re wrong.

2:51:46 I’ve heard people talk about, passion, for, but you’re the most passionate passion speaker I’ve ever met, and you live it, so it’s super congruent. It’s just, it just is everything. It really is, like, uh, you know, I, I tell people it should be. There’s only two switches that should happen. You’re either on, and all in.

2:52:12 All in. Or you’re off, and you’re all out. Why are you gonna dabble? And you know, if you want to feel something out for a second to make a decision, great, but once you make that decision to do something and pursue something, and you got a goal, or you got to get out. This doesn’t, there’s no other.

2:52:39 There’s no middle. There’s no middle ground. People think there is, and I, I’m, I don’t agree with that. Again, you want to feel somebody. I wanna, I wanna, I wanna see if I like this.

2:52:49 That’s fine, no problem with that. Now, make a decision. Do you like it or do you not? And if you do like it, then go and never look back, because you’ll reach your, your dreams, your goals. And if you don’t like it, that’s cool too.

2:53:07 Get the out and find something else. Yeah. Life’s too short. Otherwise there’s that expression: it’s either a hell yeah or a no. I, I agree.

2:53:17 Yeah. I agree. In this world, you can find the hell yeah. You can, you can, you can. And you know, it’s again, like, you know, I, I’ve, I’ve lost a lot of friends uh, way too early.

2:53:34 You know, I, I, I don’t know what it is. You know, I’ve, I lost, uh, I hosted a Sports Talk Show on the radio. My partner, my sidekick, was 38 years of age, diagnosed with cancer, and died at 40. Um, you know, I lost my ex-wife, she was 51 years of age. I lost a lot of people, and which shocks me, and, and it is, it does really put a reflection, a mirror in front of you, and in the, again, back to the cliché of life is so short Right, it’s like, it is, it just, it’s so.

2:54:10 You don’t know. You don’t know what tomorrow holds, and so don’t you want to try and live out your potential, find the happiness, you know, pursue what you want to pursue? Not everybody is gonna reach the same goals or the same level, that then they shouldn’t. But we need to find inside of each of us what ultimately is going to make us happy, and try and pursue that. I mean, it’s the saddest thing I saw with my ex-wife was, and you went through this in your addiction, is this self-destruction of a human being.

2:54:56 The self-destruction, to me, is the saddest thing, because you’re seeing the potential of a life taken away by themselves, and, and, and that is horribly sad. And so for me, if I’m not happy with something, I change it. I change it. If I’m not happy with the diet, I change my diet. If I’m not happy with my exercise program, I change the Nexus, bro.

2:55:25 If I’m not happy with a career, I change a career move, and I try and find the happiness, and a lot of like heady kind of stuff, but the truth of the matter is that if you really reflect on it for a second, you know, if you’re feeling it, you know, you know how you feel about life, and, and why, why should you walk around just being unsatisfied? Again, it’s not about material things. It’s not about money. I know, I know a lot of people. You know how many billionaires you know that aren’t thrilled with their life and who they are, or whatever, yet they’ve accomplished an amazing but the question is, are they happy?

2:56:21 You know, we know that cliché again, that money doesn’t mean happiness. It doesn’t, it doesn’t. Yes, it’s good to have, and could open up a lot of other things for you if that’s what you want. That doesn’t mean at the end of the day it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s getting out of bed and going, I’m ready to tackle what I’m tackling today. I know you feel that way about what you’re doing with London Real.

2:56:50 I could see it. Would you do this if you weren’t? Of course not. It doesn’t mean it’s not, because even if you made a ton of money on it, be like, do I really want to do this? So you know, I feel like that’s what a 20-year-old kid has to try and sort through, you know, moving up in the world, and and I do think it’s much harder today.

2:57:24 Don’t you? Yeah, I really do. I do, which is why they need a lot of guidance, and luckily the one good thing about that is that they can get access to a conversation like this and get really some deep knowledge, whereas back when we were young, we might be lucky, maybe, to have a grandfather or bump into someone or hear something, but otherwise it would be hard to get things like, well, let me ask you a question before you wrap. Yeah. Would you rather be growing up when you grow up, or would you rather be growing up today?

2:57:54 You mean, as if I was starting today? If you, if you, if you, right, would you rather be 20 when you were 20, or would you rather be 20 today, in the year 2023? I’d like to think that any challenge would be amazing. I don’t know. I don’t really think that way, you know, because that happened, and so I’m kind of dealing with that scenario.

2:58:13 Um, so I don’t know. I guess I’d like to think I could embrace each one. Um, but yeah, I definitely see these challenges. Like I was used to joke, you know, I’m probably the same with you when I was 16, the thing I wanted so badly was a car, because a car gave me the independence when my stepdaughter turned 16, and the last thing she wanted was a damn car. You know, all she wanted was an internet connection.

2:58:34 You know, and so all these, uh, so much has changed. You know, so much has changed, and again, how did we ever survive without a mobile phone and meet people? But we did. I know. And so I don’t know, maybe we would just be resilient and find you guys.

2:58:49 I’ll tell you one thing that’s an interesting, I saw this on, on The Today Show last week. Do you know that there is a resurgence in flip phones? Flip phone. Now they did a whole piece. I, I was on the bike working out.

2:59:06 I said, flip phones, either the old Motorola kind of flip phones? I said, StarTAC. I had one. I said, why would there be resurgence on this? Then the resurgence is coming from college kids and late high schoolers.

2:59:20 You want to know why? You’re not going to believe this, because they want to go out, and they don’t want to feel the pressure on a phone like the iPhone, where they’re taking pictures, texting, doing all kind of looking online. It’s a distraction from being in the moment, and the flip phone has just enough tech, just enough tech for them to make a call, right, send a text, maybe, maybe shoot a picture, and that’s it, not enough for them to be disconnected from where they are in that moment.

3:00:02 Really interesting. Interesting. Maybe there’s hope for us. Maybe, Dave, uh, you are London Real through and through. All right, I knew I liked you, but I didn’t realize you were one of us.

3:00:11 I appreciate that. So, uh, I really appreciate the time today. Um, I couldn’t be more excited that we’re part of this journey. We’re super pumped. Orange Comet.

3:00:19 And, um, yeah, I just want to thank you for for allowing us to be a part of this. I want to thank you for, first of all, believing in me and in Orange Comet and having everybody who’s with you involved with us. Um, it’s spectacular, and I’m a big fan of, and very appreciative of what you’re doing for us, just doing in general. We’re gonna do so many amazing things together. I love it.

3:00:40 For people that want to learn more, get in on the next drops, etc. Obviously we’re going to be rolling things out, but what else can they do? Is website good? They can go to orangecomet.com for sure. They can, by the way, you can reach me on, even Twitter.

3:00:52 I, I, you know, I’m at, uh, broom88, b-r-o-o-m-e-88. I, I have, I love conversing with people on social, and I try to get to everybody I possibly can. So that’s one way, but they should just go to orangecomet.com, and they’ll see what we’re doing, and see projects where we almost have weekly press releases coming out, so we’re going to be in the news even more, and I’m doing lots of interviews, so just follow us and learn about what we’re doing. And look, we also want to help other people get into this space.

3:01:23 So I’m, if I can be a conduit for somebody, a creator, you don’t have to have a Hollywood background to get into Web3. Um, but I’d love to help as many people as I possibly can. I love it. You guys are super responsive to the community, super active in Discord. Your website is off the chart.

3:01:40 Thank you. Um, you can see all the partners, all the projects. You can see the highlight reels. We’re actually going to finish with a two-minute reel that I love playing from you guys, that just shows a little piece of everything you’re doing, with a really cool soundtrack. Awesome, so that’s happening, and we’ll be sending out via email information on the Corrupted drop, and I think on the Doodle Boy drop.

3:01:58 Awesome. I love that. So London Realers, keys, keep out. We can get you. Yeah, get on that white list.

3:02:03 Potential prior. Yeah, yeah, when it all happens, and, uh, away we go, man. I love it. Crazy adventure. Thank you, brother.

3:02:09 I really appreciate it. Thanks. All right, good times, good time. All right, take care. Thanks, bye.