How to Take Your Power Back with Social Media and Cutting-Edge Tech with Taryn Southern

Welcome to Make More Marbles. My name is Brad Hart and we're here to interview the game changers, the future makers, the co collaborators and creators who are here to collaborate with one another towards a better future for all of us. Enjoy the show. We've got a great guest coming up for you right now. Welcome to Make More Marbles. My name is Brad Hart and today I have Taryn Southern on the show. What's going on, Taryn?

Hi, Brad from Brooklyn. Where? Brooklyn. At Brooklyn Williamsburg.

I got my, my hats to spell it out. I got I am New York. And then I got my over there for the greatness Foundation.

Look at you. You're ready to go, ready to rock.

Right, Taryn? So take two on the podcast. We got to chat last time but we couldn't make the Internet. So that was fun.

That happens.

But you have an interesting life and I don't think I'll be able to tell your story as well as you will. So why don't we get people caught up on the things that you are doing in the world that make you so interesting and you know, talk about some of the failures too, because I feel like everybody can relate to failure, but not everybody can relate to success.

Yeah, I mean, well, most of the interesting stuff is failures. Right? Yeah. Where do you start? I mean, with my own personal story. It's, it's one of those things where I have no idea what's interesting to your listeners. So do I start with the most massive failure of all time?

Yes, please.

How about that?

OK, let's go.

So 17 years old, Wichita, Kansas, born and raised. Drove across the US to Los Angeles to audition for American Idol. This was my first, this was really my first foray into entertainment. And I was on the show for a couple of months, competed in the finals and forgot all of my lyrics on national television.

Oh, you poor thing.

Yeah. Yep. Cried in Ryan Seacrest arms. Determined that I was destined to never be on camera or perform ever again. Went to college and studied anthropology instead of performing arts. And that was my, that was my first entry point into the dark world of entertainment.

You had the shame spiral and the sea cresting all in one day.

Hard to recover from that. Fortunately, it was before YouTube days, so I was not forced to rewatch that clip in perpetuity. Who were watching that?

I don't even know.

It was the original judges, Simon, Paula and Randy, season three.

Were they mean or were they nice?

Well, I think they felt so bad for me because I was a little 17 year old that was just petrified I'd never performed live in front of anyone outside of my high school theater. So national television was. It was a thing. But no, they were actually pretty nice. Paula had said something like, oh, sweetheart, you've got a voice of an angel, but you just need to get out to some karaoke bars, work out the nerves. But that was pretty soul crushing. That was my. That was my first big. That was my first big failure. That was, that was a big door that closed.

Really funny.

Like I had a dream.

I'm remembering something I haven't thought of in a long time. When I was in college, I actually had a acting class that I studied. Like, you know, you do the lines, you're on the scene a million, million times. And we had it down, my partner and I. And I blanked during the performance for no reason. I just, you know, just whatever nerves. And the girl I was with, I'll never forget, she started bawling on stage.

Cause you, you screwed up her line.

She's so upset that I screwed up, but she starts crying. So I immediately, of course, made a very healthy association with that.

Oh no. Bless her heart.

But here's the craziest part, is that somehow we still got an A in the class because she's, you know, the teacher even knew that we had put in the work. It wasn't that, you know, it's just a little foible on the day of. So she graded us on our performance in training for the event, not just the event itself. And that was nice of her. So we got an A anyway. And I learned that even when you fail miserably in front of everybody, you, you can still get it in, you can still win.

Things can still turn out okay.

You can still turn out okay. So, all right, so now this is the first foreign of the entertainment industry. Now you are an entertainment industry wizard guru. You know, million things going on, cool projects, something you can talk about, some you can't talk about. What I really want to dig into today is some of the stuff we talked about last time. And I just want to be sensitive to the things that are still impending flux and still able to be talked about and more often, like the way that society is shifting and how you see that. And being a female in the entertainment industry, some of the things that you feel are shifting and in a positive direction. Some things that you feel still need work. And what are the best ways to move forward with that? Not that all men are terrible and not that all women need to feel afraid in that industry, certainly, but there are certainly bad actors, and they're being brought to light in rapid succession. I went away from Facebook or from new media, really for like, 30 days. I came back and I'm like, aw, really? Hit two. It was kind of crazy. So I'd love to hear your insider's take on this and what you think can be done about it.

Goodness. Well, okay. That's a. There's a lot here to unpack, so maybe it's helpful to just give a bit more frame to your audience as to my background, because I think that informs some of my opinions on this matter, which, if anyone is uncertain, we are referring to the MeToo movement, just in case that wasn't obvious. So I've been in the entertainment industry now for, gosh, 12 years. I did go to school. I studied anthropology. I ended up moving back to LA to host a pilot for Discovery Channel. And that led me to. To pursue a myriad of jobs in the entertainment industry. And I've been very fortunate in that I have never had to get a day job, which is awesome. I've worked as an actress for television and film sitcoms, as a television host for shows on Discovery Channel and MTV and VH1, and a bunch of random stuff that some of you might have seen. Also as a writer and producer and later digital media personality slash YouTuber. So done a myriad of things. And the last two years, I really sort of jumped ship, so to speak, into telling stories that revolve around transformative tech, AR, VR, AI, all the crypto, all the buzzwords. And so I've really kind of found my place doing something I'm super passionate about. That's a little bit avant garde and out there, but I've had the. I think both. I've had both the wonderful pleasure and also some of the terrifying situations occur from being part of every facet of the entertainment industry. So I've pretty much seen it all. But fortunately, not as bad as I think some other women have had it. You know, I think when. When you enter an industry where you've got every prom king and queen in America packing their bags and suitcases, driving their cars across the US to pursue this crazy dream in which there is no obvious. There's no obvious path to success, it's a lot of who, you know, it's a lot of connections, it's a lot of who you're dating, it's a lot of all the things that you would expect and you're going to, of course, like you said, a lot of bad actors who take advantage of that ecosystem. So I was lucky in a sense in that most of my career I've been pretty active in setting up my own work as a producer, as a writer, as a creator. And that shifts the balance of power a bit. When you're not just the one showing up to auditions, hoping to get a job, when you're the one actually writing the material, producing the material, finding the financing, it just changes things. So I guess before we jump into that conversation, I just felt it was important to preface that that while I have. While I have seen a lot, I've also been pretty protected in many ways from a lot of the things that some of my other female peers have been through. And I also feel like I've just been as savvy as I could be about sidestepping, shall we say, the slime balls. So anyway, you know, the movement that has now taken over Hollywood and other industries is. It's an incredibly powerful one. It needed to happen. I'm so grateful that it's happened. I think had I been a 20, 21, 22 year old woman entering this world and been privy to these powerful voices speaking out, it would have been a very different. I think I would have had a very different perception as to how to go about this industry and perceiving my own power. Because you really do sort of feel powerless in a lot of ways in a number of situations. So I'm a huge supporter of everything that's happening. I also think that it's really complicated and it's becoming more and more complicated as time goes on. And now I can't say much about it, but I've had a project that is very near and dear to my heart be affected by, by this movement. And fortunately I'm in a situation where we're able to see it past the finish line. But the reality is there have been a ton of television and film projects and other businesses that have been impacted by this. And sometimes the biggest victims of these situations and the allegations that have come out have actually ironically been women who've been working on these projects and then no longer get to see them to fruition or keep their jobs because networks and studios are very quick to sort of place the ax on these projects and maybe rightfully so, but it's been, I think, a tough time for everyone in the industry, men included, who are living in, you know, a state of a lot of unknowns.

Yeah, you got hundreds of people working on a project and all of a sudden, you know, done. Yeah, it's just out like there's no replacing, there's no changing. It's just, let's completely shut down production, put all these people out of work. Now everybody's got to scramble to find new jobs.

Yeah. And it's kind of funny because some of these larger companies that are having these knee jerk reactions, let's be honest, there were a number of them that were very aware of things that were going on either under their. And the second that it becomes this very public thing, everyone's scared of being sued, everyone's scared of the negative press. And so the quickest thing for people to do is to immediately, like I said, just hands, throw up their hands, be done with the project, not have any, sever all ties. But there are more people involved than just the accused. And so I don't know what the right answer to all of this is, but you hate to see people punished who didn't do anything wrong.

Yeah, we're definitely in the breaking eggs to make an omelette phase. Right. It's definitely been tumultuous time in the industry in a lot of industries. The whole world is changing so rapidly.

Yeah. And by the way, we haven't even seen. I think we're just seeing this the beginning. There are so many industry. I'm like waiting like, where's the sports industry and all this? Let's, let's be real. Those athletes aren't just going home and making themselves omelets, as you just said, after their games. Like there's a lot of, there's a lot of stuff, I think that. But like on a completely different note, I think that there's also something to be said about people being real about what's actually going on in the world and not hiding from, not hiding from the truth of who we are. And like humans are all complicated and a lot of us have, have made mistakes and a lot of us have skeletons in the closet. And we've got to figure out how to I think, move through these situations and come out being more transparent and being more accepted, accepting and open minded so that we don't lead to more things happening in the darkness. Because that's where.

Right. That needed to be met and killed the monster when it's small instead of waiting until it's hurting other people. Yeah, exactly.

That's a great way of putting it. Yeah.

Because everybody has similar needs and we go about meeting those needs in very different ways. And I think the last generation especially was the first generation to have a lot of power and autonomy to meet those needs. But also that veil of Secrecy, because this has been going on since time immemorial for sure.

Yeah.

Type of behavior. It's just now able to be broadcast to everybody from everybody in such a way that there's no gatekeepers anymore. Anybody can go out and share their story, and it'll either pick up traction or it won't. It's just an interesting time to see. And, you know, one of my missions is to be a catalyst for human connection. And I feel like the more of this happens, we come out and we say, hey, wait a second. You know, even the people aren't speed. It's kind of the conversations that aren't happening publicly that are even more interesting. It's like people are seeing what's happening. They're seeing, oh, my God, all of these people that I look up to as being the ideal or the perfect, you know, and just have problems like everybody else. And it kind of lowers the action threshold for people. Yeah, don't take action on their dreams because they put other people on a pedestal who are achieving their dreams. And by seeing how screwed up people are, it gives people to human and own that and just be like, oh, I'm screwed up. But I'm gonna take action anyway. Because that kept me for so long from just taking action, thinking everybody up here, and I was down here where I was broken or I was messed up for feeling the way I felt or thinking the way I thought. But at the end of the day, when I studied human psychology, I realized that everybody has the same needs. And we go about meeting those needs in very different ways, and we value those needs in very different ways. We have the same needs. We're all human. So I guess the way I'm saying, I think this is a good thing. It's going to be really painful right now, but all growth is to get all these stories out there and everybody to share their stories and just everybody to be like, all right, we're going to throw all this stuff in a pile and start sorting it out with the intention of understanding each other on a new level and hoping it never happens again. Creating space for all of this to be okay. And, you know, if you go by the numbers, the world's getting safer. You know, people are in better and better states of wealth and happiness and health than they've ever been. I think that's a positive trend. I want to see it continue. And I think this is a part of that. It really is. You can zoom out and see the forest for the trees. I think that'll ultimately win the day that that message is like, the world is getting better despite its fits and starts. But guess what? These bad actors can't hide behind their bullshit anymore. They gotta really sort these problems out. And it's making people step up and own their shit in a way that's never happened before. But it's just. It's so crazy to see how Voltaire was right. Or Lord Acton. I forget which one it was that said absolute power corrupts absolutely. It's really true. Right. People in powerful positions abuse other people.

Mm.

So what if we spread the power?

Been that way for a long time.

You just spread the power around and give individuals more power. I think the world gets safer. Right. If you have Superman and he's the only Superman, he's got the personality of Hitler, that's a fucking problem. But if everybody's Superman 1 Hitler, Superman is not a big deal.

Yeah, absolutely.

Taren, let's talk a little bit about some of your YouTube stuff and some of the things you've been doing. I mean, you've had incredible success using social media to increase viewership and awareness for different things. You know, you've worked in the traditional entertainment industry, but also on the cutting edge. So let's kind of move forward to some of these projects that you worked on and what you are most proud of or some of the big takeaways there.

Sure. I uploaded my first YouTube video in 2007, so it was relatively soon after the site had launched. And I was immediately struck by the power of. The power of the Internet and being able to share video content. It was still the wild, wild west. And I couldn't even get an audition to save my life in front of a casting director and two people. So uploading a video and having it seen by, I think it was 1.5 million people saw my first video on YouTube was. Was a big. Yeah, I mean, it was a big win, right? It was like, wow, that I don't necessarily have to wait for those gatekeepers to say, yes, I can just do it on my own. And so that was really empowering. And while I was working in television and film, and it took years. It took, I think, literally four years to book my first television job. But I started making more and more YouTube videos. And it was around 2012 that it became clear I could actually make a living doing that. So I quit in 2013, 2014, I quit everything I was doing in television and film, started my YouTube channel and was uploading a video a week for two years. Also worked with a lot of other Companies to produce digital content for them, help them with their digital media strategy, get influencers into their videos, just sort of run comprehensive media strategy. And it was really, it was really interesting and it was really fun. And then I realized around 2016 that I was burned out. I had produced so much content. I think was over a thousand videos at this point in time, over, you know, a handful of years. And I. The landscape had also changed so drastically in the sense that it was no LONGER Just about YouTube. It was about YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, live video streaming every single one of these social media stars in order to maintain their audience and to diversify so they weren't completely dependent on one platform. They were forced to make content for all of them and not just one video a week. We're talking about three videos a week, five videos a week, plus all the other content. So it just.

Or if you're a maniac, video a day like Casey Neistat for however many.

Yeah, Casey. I mean, man, what an incredible. I mean, and he rocked it. I still don't know how he maintains his sanity, but he's not, he's not human. He sleeps like four hours a day. He's an unbelievable superhuman person and incredibly talented, but you know, even he gets burned out. And I just thought, this is not self sustainable, nor do I feel creative anymore. I feel like I jumped on a different kind of hamster wheel, even though I have all the power, so to speak. Actually, I'm actually disempowered by algorithms. So before, my boss in film and television were the casting directors and the studios and I had to like, hope to get work from them. And now I was at the mercy of algorithms determining whether or not they would bury my content because if I didn't post every day, I'd get punished.

Algorithms are the new gatekeepers and slave drivers of the modern age.

That's right.

Content or die.

That's right. And that's a. That's a terribly disempowering state to be in. So I. Yeah, kind of. You're right. I went from one, one quote unquote, slave driver to another.

You think your boss is an asshole, right?

Yeah, exactly. At least your boss gives you maternity leave for Christmas vacation, right? Algorithms don't give a. Shh. I don't know if I will swear on here. So I won't. But it was true. I was just exhausted, so I took time off and I thought, I will just wait until something interesting comes along. And I was just so lucky to be able to Afford that time. Thank you, YouTube and I started getting really excited about the AR VR communities. They felt very much like the YouTube community circa 2006, 2007, a lot of collaboration and learning going on. So I learned how to make VR content360 and animated VR content, got a grant from Google to produce some really experimental VR videos. So I've actually just started releasing those on my channel. Yeah, you can see the first one as of last week. If you have a headset, you have to watch it in the headset. It's a totally different experience. But if you don't have a headset, I mean, watch it. But I'll be uploading a 2D version of it this week, which will be more, I think, fun for people. Not that don't have headsets, but it's just been really, really interesting. I dove into AR VR, I started playing around with AI, released a couple of singles that I composed using AI programs. I've since partnered with IBM, Watson and Amper and Google Magenta and another company called IVA to create an entire album composing.

I saw that actually on the verge. That's really cool. Question for you. Yeah, what is. Okay, so what does the AI do exactly? Walk us through it. You know, traditional. I've actually produced an album myself. I. Six tracks, awesome. 2011, which, whatever, it's not going to, it's not going to make 1.5 million views on YouTube. But I did it, it was pretty traditional, you know, did a lot of the instruments ourselves and all that. So I'm understanding the process. But how does AI change the process and augment the process and ultimately make it easier to produce music?

Well, of course it depends on the AI platform and what it's been built to do by the different software engineers. But the process really isn't that different from working with a human collaborator. It just depends on the skill sets that your your other collaborators coming to the table with. So with a platform like Watson, I am choosing to feed Watson a set of data. And that data is essentially music. And I can pick music in certain genres or from certain artists in the hopes that that algorithm will then learn certain sets of rules governed by that data. And then from there I can set parameters around the types of music I want it to make. So for instance, I can say, Watson, here are 150 songs from the 1820s. I want you to learn from this classical music and then I want you to fit your learnings into a pop song parameter with a BPM of 92 using the instrumentation of drums Piano, violin and a synth and have the structure of verse, chorus, verse, chorus. I'm trying to think of other parameters that I can put into place, but then it like pops out. Music. And from don't mess up.

No pressure.

Yeah, but from those renders, you can take those renders and you can change as little or as much as you like. You can then import those into daws, much like you would if you were writing an album and have a lot of autonomy over how you shift that song. So I like to think of a lot of these AI platforms as incredibly generous sources of inspiration. It's like if you're an editor of a film and someone gives you a ton of raw footage and they're like, alright, have fun. And now it's your job to create something beautiful out of that. And if you give it to 10 different editors, they're gonna create 10 completely different stories out of that footage. Same with the AI. It's going to give you something really interesting. And now it's your job as a creative person, as a songwriter, to turn it into something that is compelling to you. So, I mean, I do not, do not make any mistake. These AI composers are not doing everything from start to finish perfectly well. Yet it still takes a lot of.

Auto tun after all. I mean, you know, you still gotta do some work.

What's that?

Not auto tune. After all, you still gotta do some.

Of the work you do. You do. There is still a lot of work. But what is exciting about it is someone like myself who has to work with a human producer every time I make music because I don't have a traditional music production background. I can use these AI platforms to produce from start to finish without having to work with someone. Which is really empowering as a creative person. Because if you don't know anyone who's talented in that space, or you lack the resources to pay a producer to record, or whatever the case may be, this is a way for you to actually make music from scratch and make it your own, which I think is really cool.

And I just flash forward into my mind to that movie with Joaquin Phoenix.

Walk the Line.

Yeah, no, her where AI bots essentially that he was conversing with. And I could see in the future, like, you know, collaborating with AI as if you were working with other people and being able to create in this amazing space where you're, you feel fully supported and there's no limits, you know, it's. It's whatever you can bring to the table, they can catch up and then some.

That's Right. And I know that there's a lot of dystopian. There are probably more dystopian views of AI than optimistic ones, certainly in the realm of creativity. But I actually see the capabilities of AI as being massive box openers because, like I said, I can work with AI that have analyzed every piece of piano sheet music from the Baroque period, from Beethoven to Mozart. I can have them look at jazz music or samba or types of music that I would never integrate into pop electronic sounds, which is what I like. And now I have the opportunity to do that. So I think it actually just widens the scope of influence that you have as an artist.

That's badass. Yeah. We've had Kevin Kelly on the show and Chris Nicholson and a couple other really big AI folks, and I'm just space. And they made a really great point, is that AI only does what we do faster. Right. It only has intelligence right now, which is logical, linear problem solving. But it's just a lot faster and can compute a lot more data and pull from a lot more data sets at once. But there are so many different ways to approach problems. And to think that we haven't really even tapped into the potential that. In that. Which is really. I'm excited to see what new approaches through new sensory inputs that we haven't really even thought of yet. You know, because the way humans think about the world is only one way. There might be tens of thousands of ways to think about the world.

We are so biased and so myopic in our thinking. And in some ways, I think AI is going to be a big eye opener for us. Exciting life.

Could be. That's awesome, Taryn. So, okay. I know you had a project that was sadly upturned by this last latest event.

It was. But it's still moving forward. So I'm.

You're still working.

I'm excited. Yeah. I've sort of taken over the ship, so to speak, on this project, and we've got an amazing team of women who've all come together to get it over the finish line. And it's a feature documentary on the future of human intelligence. And we explore what it means to be human by following the scientists, pioneers, and patients at the front lines of discovery around the brain.

Can you share one story from that?

Sure. Let me see. What would be the best story? I mean, I think the most fun story, of course, is when we. The more fun stories are the ones that explore the idea of enhancement. Right. So we've got a patient that we followed who's been blind for over 12 years from a congenital disease. And he received a special retinal surgery using deep brain, deep brain stimulation electrodes implanted in the brain which then process moving pictures through a chip that's implanted in the eye which allow him to see again. What's really cool though is that this technology also, not only does it give you, you know, it can give you quite honestly better vision than you would have normally. But I think what's maybe more interesting is the fact that you can also have things, infrared capabilities. So imagine being a human walking around and seeing other human bodies and being able to sense heat. But of course, because this is a computer chip, right? So it's able to do things in the retina that other humans can't do. And this, this brings up a lot of questions. Like everyone seems to be fine when the blind guy can see again, but all of a sudden the blind guy can sense heat. And it's like everybody's scared, right?

Because they saw predator. They see how this is going.

Yeah. But at the same time it's also, I mean, this is why this documentary is so important to me because I think we are moving into this era of self directed evolution where we can basically, with synthetic biology and with AI, we can create anything we want outside of ourselves. So what happens when we can start doing that inside of ourselves? What does that mean for the human race? Does it still make us human? And I'm not here to say how people should think. I just want people to think about this stuff.

Yeah. And I've certainly, you know, human moments. I've seen some of my really beautiful, chiseled, you know, ruggedly featured, eight packed friends running around here in San Diego. And I'm like. But then I think, like, well, eventually we'll be able. I'll look at that if we want to. It'll get boring and commonplace. Right. Beauty is common now. You know, it's getting more common all the time. If you've ever lived in a place like San Diego or New York or la, you know, the beautiful people, they're like buses, they go by every five minutes. But in the future we'll all have that capability if we want.

I mean, we already. Humans readily accept all kinds of forms of enhancement. Back in the middle ages, glasses were considered an abomination created by the devil. And I mean, now, I don't know if you'd say that to anyone who wears glasses, but I mean, if you even sunglasses, right. They allow us to be able to look directly at the sun.

I just want night vision.

That's not a normal human capability.

Yeah, I just want night vision. That's all I want.

Yeah, I know. Night vision is pretty cool.

So I can finally sneak up on the cat.

So funny. I kind of want night vision too. So we explore things like that.

That's rad.

Yeah.

When will we see it? When's live?

Well, we're working on it now. We've got another couple months of production and post production, and then hopefully, I don't know, cross your fingers that we'll be out in theaters early next year. Fantastic.

Can't wait. Hey, what are your favorite movies right now that you've seen in the last maybe six months?

Oh, that's. I. This question is always so hard because I feel like I can never remember what I've enjoyed. But, I mean, I'm a big doc buff, so I like banking on bitcoin. For anyone who's just interested in crypto, it's. It's fun piece. Oh, my goodness. I'm just at a loss. I don't. I know. I've seen really great.

Bitcoin is actually solid one. I recommend it on my little cheat sheet there. You know, we're big in the crypto space.

Yeah, of course. It's a good 101 for. For people interested.

Good job with visuals. Can we talk about crypto? Let's pivot a little bit.

Yeah, let's talk about crypto, what you're.

Doing in crypto, what you're excited about in the blockchain space. You know, I've got my thoughts and my listeners are probably tired of hearing.

Them, but it's such a cool space.

What you're excited about.

Sure. I started a group with two other girlfriends of mine called Ladies of Crypto. We've got a Facebook group space for women to come together and ask questions and talk about their latest investments and give advice, and it's just. It's really fun. So if you're a lady listening to this, feel free to look us up and. And join the group. I also released a token last fall that was a fun creative experiment for my album. I gave away free tokens, the Terran Token, which would allow anyone who was a. Who is a holder of that token to not only collaborate with me on a song, but also to receive backend royalties on that piece of. Yeah, the whole point of that was to just demonstrate that there are new ways to bring people together, collaborate and incentivize people towards creative collaboration.

That's brilliant. Is that on the ERC20 token. Is that on the Ethereum blockchain?

It's on the Ethereum blockchain ERC20.

And then did you code it yourself on solidity?

I teamed up with a team called Trust Token so you can look them up. They're awesome. They can pretty much tokenize any kind of asset and then through the tokenization of that asset split back into whether it's royalties or ownership of that asset. Using a trust system and then running that through Ethereum smart contracts.

Well, I just found a new funding model. I'm making marbles.

That's what I'm great. Yeah. And so I mean mine. I didn't even raise money. I just wanted to encourage creative participation and see what happens. But I think at some point it could certainly be used for artists looking to independently finance things and give up backend in their projects. Much like the old school patronage models back in the day.

Except crypto. Because everything now is like it's the Uber of this became. Now it's this plus crypto or this blockchain.

Exactly. That's how it's all moving. But yeah, I mean I love the space I'm in. Like I'm invested in the space. I hope I don't lose all my money like everybody else. It's just, it's a fun, really fun time, but it's a crazy time. And to be honest, I've been so underwater the last two months of my projects. I haven't been as on top of. As on top of it. I also noticed over Christmas break that I was. I was noticeably more anxious than usual because I was watching my trades all day long. I was like, I gotta stop this. This is not healthy.

Now you're coming into my world where I used to run a hedge fund and. Yeah, that's right.

Yeah, the blood pressure goes up for sure.

Self mastery is market mastery. It is. You have to be able to handle your emotions no matter what's going on. And everybody's wired for the exact opposite of what works in the markets. And you have to yourself to get to a place where you can just be detached from whatever is going on.

What are you excited about right now in the space?

Oh, lots. I mean we've got our course that's going on in the trading bot talking to. I feel like I have a lot of pieces of puzzle I haven't quite fit together yet. Like I just, I talk to so many people. I do so many presentations. And another one on Thursday. I probably do two, three presentations on blockchain a week.

I Tried to Download your Blockchain 101 and I gave you my email and then it went to Facebook and I was like, no, but I want it. I want to read it.

I'll send you a link. I'll send it in the chat right now. Yeah, no, it's free. It's free for anybody to download.

Yeah, it seems like it's got good tips.

And we're gonna do mmm crypto. And anybody listening to the podcast can go to mmm.makemoremarbles.com crypto. That's MMM as a makemoremarbles.makemoremarbles.com Crypto. That's where you can get it. And if you don't mind going through Facebook, that's how you, that's how you obtain it. So there's a thing, I've gone down.

A black hole recently about Facebook. So it's not you, it's just. It's Facebook.

No, no, I get it. And there's, there's a thing in marketing called the trifecta.

Right.

I have your email, so that's cool. And then I have your Facebook messenger, so that's cool. And then I ask later for your phone number because it's the hardest one to get. And after you've built trust and added value that people will give you your phone number. But if I can have all three, then I have everywhere you're looking at all times. I've been able to do that. You know, we get 16% open rates on email, 25% click throughs, 50% registration on the webinar. On the last launch, we made $94 per attendee, which is pretty cool. So, yeah, we're helping a lot of people, making a lot of money, having a lot of fun. And the reviews on the course have been insane. So yeah, just using cutting edge marketing marbles to market more marbles. Pretty good stuff.

That's good.

I'm gonna go to trust token and make actual frickin marbles and go out and give people a piece of this thing. Because that sounds like a business model.

It is.

Can't wait. Done. And where do the securities laws look like on that? Did you run any flack on that?

Because we didn't, we didn't charge any money for the token. So it's not a security token. It's not even a. What's the. There's security tokens and then there are the other type of tokens. Utility. So it was neither security or utility because you weren't really trading for. There was no money involved. No exchange of cash. So if anything, I just gave away money. Like the people that have the token will make at least $2 on the zone. That's cool.

And then you sell through the normal channels or how does it track everything?

Yep, sell through the normal channel. So just email. I think that was pretty much the only thing. Email. And I don't know if we. I can't remember if we collect. Name naming. We kept it very simple for people, but we also have like a separate Slack system set up for everyone that's an owner of the owner of the token. I mean, I'm not doing this in any sort of smart business savvy way. I'm doing.

I'm just curious how the whole ecosystem looks. So, like, I'm thinking, like, how do people get paid? I'm just putting my systems out.

Oh yeah. No, for how they get paid. That one's actually quite simple. We just used their open Ethereum wallet address that they sent and they'll automatically receive payments on a quarterly basis for the song sales.

I see that becoming everything, by the way. Just like.

I agree, I agree. I mean, imagine if you could buy a tiny percent, like stake in every artist that you love. You're going to be more apt to champion them to want to. You know, it's like. It's like owning stock in a company. You want to see them do well. So I think that could actually be the, the beginning of the end of advertisers, which quite honestly I would like to see because right now artists are supported through advertisers and I think it's destroying art. And, you know, I would love to just be able to sustain my art based on my own merch and sales or the support of my fans. When you kind of like figured that out, right? Like that's the business model you essentially run on.

That's the problem is, like, I have to charge a premium to a few people. I don't want to work with everybody. And they need to. And people pay attention to what they pay for. So that's one. And then even then after they pay all the money, they don't always get the results because I can't be around them 247 making sure they take action.

Right.

I can tell. I can give you the best strategy in the world from whatever company you want. Studied a thousand business models. I know how to make successful businesses. It's just, you know, at the end of the day, who has to take action? Not me.

Yeah.

So it's an interesting dichotomy and I'VE thought a lot about this. There's a lot of perverse incentives in society to keep people selling and marketing and advertising, and it's just exhausting. I feel like we can move to a model like you were just describing where the perverse incentives fall away. And it's just I want to invest my resources where I feel like I'm actually gaining a lot of value and providing a lot of value for the people without all these middlemen, in a way, you know, without all these governmental agencies who, you know, have laws from 1938 that have no relevance to 2018 that are still sticking their nose in how we invest in things. Like, we all have the Internet, we have more information. The average citizen has more access to information than the president did in the 90s. By far.

Exactly, by far.

So are you telling me that we can't make our own sophisticated choices at this point? If we choose to, I believe that we can. So that's kind of my soapbox on that. And I would really love for this accredited investor crap to just fall by the wayside and open it up, but not, you know, I think they should be spending the time and the resources not punishing people who want to invest, but going after the bad actors.

Mm.

That's it. That's it. Most people don't even like. Yeah, they don't even realize that accredited investorships a thing, but now crypto is exciting, so they're going after it anyway. So off on that little tangent.

Fun one, though.

Yeah, it's good. And I can't wait to see your project evolve and see how it goes. What do you. What's the most exciting thing you've learned in the last year?

The most exciting thing I've learned? I mean, I guess I would just say that I can't believe how fast everything is moving with technology. It's at a point where I feel almost like I'm getting whiplashed every single week with everything that I'm learning. The amount of access I have to information, as you were just saying, is very high. And then I think the implications of all of this in our society are so huge. I'm mostly really excited by everything. In fact, I kind of feel like I was meant to live in the future and I'm now stuck in this weird existence that kind of. I don't know, it's not there yet. I look around sometimes and I feel like everything is just a bit like we all need an upgrade. And I'm seeing kind of like the brutishness of our Society. And I don't know if that's just a phase, but for right now, I'm just really excited to see how things pan out in 40 years, if we can make it. If we can make it past ourselves. I think we're in a really challenging time. And I don't know. I don't know how humans will come out the other side, but if we do, then I'm pretty jazzed about. About what we've got ahead of ourselves.

You just gave the monkeys machine guns and they haven't figured out how to use them yet.

There you go.

Average person is scary.

Yeah, the average person is kind of scary. Or it's just. It's just, you know, you just don't ever know you like, you. You think that everything is moving in the right direction, as you said. Right. You've got health care and longevity and lifespan. Sorry. And general health is like, better than ever. But then you've got these, like, massacres occurring every other week and you've got just like crazy lack of diplomacy happening everywhere. And just like no one. I don't know, I just. I can't make sense of the world. It really does feel like I just. I'm stunned.

Here's a theory. The world, that the world has changed. I just think that the microscopes that we have are much more powerful and much more present.

And the lid and the lens of which we look through the world, it changes based on where we're basically where we're giving influence. Right. And if you look at 15 years ago, influence was given to institutions, media organizations, government celebrities that were sort of untouchable. And you cut to today and you're talking about all the influence in the world going to Kylie Jenner, Kim Kardashian, and, you know, Donald Trump. And it's just. It's a very different. It's a very different lens that we're looking through is all I'm saying. And so you're just seeing very different. Very different things than very different power structures.

Yeah, I think those are like the first flashes in the pan for the next wave of influence, which is like entered heart centered influence. People that are, like, willing to play the long game and not sell out their values, which are higher ideal values, which we've always been there, but they're not exciting and don't hit.

They're not flashy. Yeah, flashy, but they're not a good Facebook headline.

They're growing your influence slowly and pretty soon, you know, I live in a community of influencers. San Diego is just like that, like you have people down the street that have millions of views and this and that. It's like everybody the person you meet. So we're on this kind of playing field where it's like, all right, this is interesting. But I think that's more of the new normal happening now. We're seeing younger and younger kids do that. I actually had a conversation with the guy yesterday. He's like, yeah, the 14 year olds watch them because they've never not lived in a world with the Internet, so they know how to navigate it in ways that we don't even consider. Yeah, like for example, gamer groups. He was talking about this one strategy where they do these lives where they talk about gaming and then they share them to multiple groups as like a daisy chain effect. So you get all this extra eyeballs and you share all these views. And they're very collaborative and they're very quick and they're building these communities. They're like 50, 100,000 people, exceptionally fast. And then monetizing them with very small amounts of money to just make shit, tons. It's insane to watch making 50k, 100k a month.

Yeah. But I wouldn't say that that's the beginning of like heart centered influence.

Right, right. I agree. But it's just the new tools that exist and when people start to catch on that, hey, there are different models here that we haven't even considered before. Like your trust tokens.

Yeah.

That's going to really change things.

For sure.

I'm excited for it. For sure. Okay, Terrence, so if you had a microphone that can reach every ear in the world, what would you wish everybody knew?

I wish everyone knew that there is a no. 1 path to success. That being curious and being flexible in your thinking and way of being is probably, I think, one of the. One of the greatest tools that you can have in your toolkit right now as a young person or really anyone. And that there is no. I mean, this is like, it's such a cliche thing to say, but you don't ever make it. The game doesn't ever stop. It doesn't stop until you actually die. So even then, who knows? Right? Right. Even then we don't know. So I think you've got to treasure every single moment. And I mean cliche, but it's just so true. There's no getting to the next point. Things get better. Getting to the next point. I will be happier. It doesn't ever happen.

So that's the reason cliches are cliches. Because they're true.

Because they're true. Not all of them, actually. That one, I think is a true one. If you can be. If you can be happy, that is.

A 100% incontrovertible, real true fact. Hashtag, hashtag.

So I think that was like five pieces of advice. But those would be my. Those would be my thoughts that I would amplify with a megaphone.

I knew I was old when I heard a kid try to key in the code on the gate for house and say, where's the hash? Like, where's the hashtag button? It's hashtag, blah, blah, blah. And I was like, what are you talking about? The hashtag button? You mean pound? I was like, you kidding me right now? You've never heard that?

That's really, really funny. That's so cute.

That's how you know you're old.

That's true. That's true.

Enter your Social Security number followed by the hashtag.

Oh, yeah, that and like, privacy's over with. Right?

That's stupid. Yeah, my, my data got hacked on the Equifax or whatever breach and I'm.

Just along with all 65 million.

Americans.

Guys, we need insane. I didn't really do that many.

Wow. It's just silly that people can use that data the way that they you should. The data should be unabusable.

Yeah.

You know, it doesn't matter. You can put it on your frickin, you know, your forehead and just tell everybody, it wouldn't matter. Right. That's what we live in. That's why I'm so excited about Blockchain, because we can essentially create a time machine for finance where fraud becomes not a thing. It's just, you know, you just roll it back to where it wasn't fraud. It'll get there. It's got a few fits and starts to go, but it'll get there.

One of these days.

One of these days. One of these days we'll make all the marbles. All right, Taren, well, this is the Make More Marbles podcast. And since we're all about collaborating to win more than we could ever do, so by competing, we do that by connecting resources, opportunity, people and systems together. What's a way that we can help you to move your mission forward faster?

Oh, that's very kind. My goodness. I suppose I just really like to. I like to build a community of like minded people who care about the world, who are excited to see it move forward in interesting ways. And so if you are like me and you're curious and you enjoy futuristic technology. Subscribe to my YouTube channel, YouTube.com Taryn I don't even post that regularly anymore because I'm trying to avoid the social media wormhole. But I do post things that I care about deeply. And you can also keep in touch on Twitter, Instagram, just. It's my name, Taryn Southern. And I promise not to spam you because I'm kind of out of that whole world. I just like to share things I love, so I'd love to see more people like that.

Thank you, Taryn.

In my ecosystem. Yeah, thanks so much for having me.

Enjoy my city. Don't get too cold. It's pretty freezing.

Well, I got my hat on. I'm good.

All set. It'll be good. What does your shirt say, by the way? Attack it hard.

Attack it hard.

I love it.

Attack it hard. These are shirts, actually, I made. But yeah, I wear it a little too often, which maybe means that I need to attack it harder in terms of showering more often, wearing clean clothes.

Fair enough. Hey, whatever works. My friend Kirsten Asher is a huge fan of Ladies and Crypto, so I told her about your group if she's gonna check out. So keep an eye out for her. I think she's amazing.

Perfect.

Shout out to Kirsten.

Hi, Kirsten.

Taryn, thank you so much for being on the show.

Thank you.

Brad, you are awesome. Rock star. You're fighting the good fight and we love you dearly and we'll hopefully have you on again sometime soon.

Awesome. Thank you so much. Glad it worked out.

Thanks so much for listening to the Make More Marbles podcast. For more tips, hacks and strategies to create an amazing, abundant life in your health, wealth, relationships, whatever that means to you. Head on over to makemoremarbles.com check out our cool explainer video about what we're about and join our community of entrepreneurial game changers. We want to help you level up your life in every possible way. And don't forget to subscribe to us on itunes, Stitcher, or Google Play, wherever you're listening to your podcast. And please do leave a review. Thank you so much and we'll see you on the next podcast.