Man, I'm doing good, but I figured I just started a little bit quicker since the music probably didn't play so of course
I'm sending this link around right now
So the paisin ramrod kadana's on here
Got some wolfies in the house
Yeah, we'll just hang tight for a few minutes let everybody kind of get here
Yeah, I'm just dishing out these invites. Sorry for the for the silence
No, that's fine. I know not everybody wants to hear me. Yep
Yes, one of those days man now just constantly like we have four solid days 80 90 percent rain it just sucks
And of course when you work outside for a living that doesn't help
We've had some really cold weather around here recently up here in West Virginia and
For some reason this week, it's just heating up like tomorrow. It's supposed to have like a high of 65 would be cloudy
It's weird. It's all gray and like once to rain, but it's also not cold
Yeah, we run into that. It's really bad in the south just
You know last week. It was
You know lows in the teens
35 you know 30 30 there was we went for about three or four days it never
Freezing during the daytime and you know, of course in the south that's kind of it freaks everybody here
You know, they can't hell they can't drive on a pretty day jeez let let some bad weather
Then all of a sudden, you know three days later 65 70 degrees and it's just miserable
Yeah, we get just about every four seasons within a week
Yeah, man, it's ridiculous
It's up with us. Oh, what's up, Hank?
Was sitting there looking to invite you up to speak but I'm maybe right there for idea
What's your weather like Hank sunny and pretty and 80 yep 80 man, I'm already starting to get swamp ice
It's like yeah, man, I know y'all deal with a different kind of weather heat
Yeah, yeah, eighty ninety hundred percent amenity
It's a different world and the the only thing when I get home from the beach or from Florida
The only thing I do not miss is saying
Caught I feel like sand is in everything. It's in our clothes. It's in the vehicle
You know a year later, you're still digging sand out
You're like hell, I've got rid of the same last year much less, you know, we're about to go back or something
Yeah, that beach stands not a joke man, it's not it's crazy
Don't know we've been the boy my boys have got it more than even to go to the beach
They would rather go, you know to the mountains or go
It's so hot and then if I do go to the beach and I enjoy
Sit on the beach in the lawn chair with the cooler sitting beside me and I do nothing all day
Yeah, that's that's usually how I do it, but you're a local here
You get on a boat and you go out to the islands and then you party at the islands, yeah
That would be my thing is it's different when you're local there
I've had several people that I know that smooth from there here and they're like a it's cool for a couple years and then
you get tired of the hurricanes and you get tired of all the leaving and
Stopping and boarding stuff up was just easier just to get the hell out
Then my wife is like, you know, I could move down here and I'm like, yeah, that sounds fun when you're on vacation
But if you live here, like you don't get to just hang out at the beach all day. Like you've got to go to work
Yeah, like yeah, you gotta go to work
And then you have to put up with people like us the tourists exactly in your way and you're you know
We booked my headache for the locals
Yep, the tourists come down here and they're disrespectful to the place and everything else and trashes everything again
a lot of boxes noisy bastards and whatever else
Running away from their snowstorm, so they come down here
You know, I see them because they like I 65 is a major, you know, it's a major run from up north to this to the beach
live not far off a 65 and do you know the weekends Friday Saturday Sunday, whatever dude, it's like a parking lot like yeah
For us locals, I can't even like if I need to go to Lowe's are all deep up
You can't you can't get through all the beach traffic, you know, and it's a snowbird season because all the tags are changing colors
What's the Canadian tag I see I'll go back go back
They do you'll see their their RVs. Yep, and I when I was down there
When they lead to come down there
And it's legit like it's like that much I don't even know what it was
but anyway that month do they
That's that's it every bit like you're right come back a ton of people from come back come down there. Oh, yeah
And then all the camping camping grounds will start filling up and then like the RVs camping grounds and stuff
Like people are planning like a year or two out, dude
Pulling our camper down there was gonna go state parks. I think right there off of 30 yay and
We called and I was like, yeah, I want to get it, you know, make a presentation for a week and they're like a what year
Boy here and I was like next year and they were like owning it up like we're booked for two years out
I'm like, you're kidding me. Nope
So then it wasn't even trying to go camp and
Don't know if I could we know my wife and I are always talking about retie
You know when we retire the day we retire where do we want to go? Do we want to go south?
Do we want to go north? Do you know?
And I don't know where the hell I wonder where I don't know where I want to be
Like ultimately I want to like buy a hundred acres or something and build a
Kind of disappear on it. Wow, man. Pardon the mediums are fucking awesome. Dude. They're bad
Like I'm on Facebook and I'm on one of those groups that are like, you know bar those under a hunter girl
Dude, they're bad ass. I'm looking at my life. Hell we could just sell this and pay cash and like
just buy by the land and have a part of any I'm built and
I was like, I don't roll up doors with a fire pit
Oh, yeah, yeah another kick ass
Showing a shop off the back and put the side-by-side the tractor, you know all the toys
With so much stuff you can do with it. I know I love it. I
Love just all the windows. We're about windows. I
Love I don't want to be like cramped up or what even at home
Like we open our block like we just love the light to come in. So I'm all about that stuff
We got some wrong wolf in that
You got wrong wolf in the house white kid crypto Jimmy
I'm showing this link around but doesn't seem like
Yeah, I dm'd a ton of people
I'd try to get the Dow in here as well. Yeah, I sent it to Ryan also
I was I think I forgot to send it to Mike. I
Sent it to Mike. Did you good? Yeah, I try to get a mirror in here
It's like basically every telegram group. I'm in so it's circulating
Yeah, that's cool we can chitchat for a couple of minutes and then
Maybe we got to start doing giveaways or something to get people in their cup. Do that might would work and then Hank would win them all
Yeah, I've been uh, I've been known to win a few things myself
Especially if they say hey come up and speak and you ask a question and like Ron you're the first one on there
It's gonna question. Oh, yeah, I got my name all over it
Ronald knows that Ronald will sometimes send me spaces and be like hey Ron
They're doing speak like people who ask questions to get a giveaway and it's worked before bro. I got um, well, what is it?
What is it that that B project B AI B NFT or whatever I was on that space
That's the one I was referring to be a yep. Yep
Yeah, I've also pulled that off with the lunar dolls on Solana before too. Yeah
You kind of got them intrigued about Kadena too, of course
Well, I've been killing it at lunar dolls with the rumbles
Yeah, I got into that one like it there's a lot like the stone sauce, you know
That's a good one, too. Yeah
See we got action in the house
Mr. Mr. Adrian's in the house from echo Dow we actually later on we have it written down
We're gonna just try to discuss a little bit of echo gov during my space
So it'd be cool if he could jump up here. Yeah, we do that
Yeah, Ron Wolf was the one that brought that one up in the dowel like the lunar doll and
The stones floss and I got into those they were running some really good bogeys
Kind of like starting to hit them up for stuff and they were upgrading and you know a few of those actually got up to
Man, I was I'm like god. I'm state drawn a good bit of coins every month. So I'm kind of excited. I
Mean, yeah, you got a love passive income stick to earn and whatnot Adrian says he's driving right now. So
Adrian I call BS. Is that all you do is drive it?
It's probably just a time of day
Like if I didn't get off at 330 y'all wouldn't be talking to me right now
I've had a few people ask if we can move back now or but no well
You're talking about it's like 330
Yeah, well you're on Central Time. So yeah, 330 430 my time
You could I just couldn't be here
Could probably jump on it. I could probably get on this for
So, you know pushing it just have to find a capable host
Yeah, Hank you could host for us
Yeah, just the fans if I knew if I was getting had to pick up my daughter or not that's my thing
Reason they gave him the mod roll and Wizards because every time I fall asleep and miss the tournament he will like start the live
Yeah, that's uh, I usually get off the school bus about
But that gives me a few minutes to get off get stuff taken care of and get home
You know so I can get set up so 430 was comfortable
But I know that's probably harder for some people
Yeah, I mean, I guess if we see like a like a bunch of people would like to move it to a different time
We can do that, but I think it's been it's been fine so far. Yeah
I mean, I guess there's people in different time zones to that. I'm not sure
How many people there are what time zones they'd be in but that's another thing that sucks, too
Yeah, that is true. Like what is it for action? What is it?
247 there. Yeah a couple hours behind us
But then there's other people it's 3 a.m. Well, we're almost in Hawaii
Yeah, she's probably like noon 11 o'clock
I'm gonna be like her when I grow up
Does sound like a good life just being a being a farmer in Hawaii and just earning a bunch of NFTs
And having animals to farm of course. I
Want some baby fainting goats? That's what I'm getting
What whenever can a pumps it's gonna be your one of your purchases it is
When I get back out in the country in my barn to me heard acres. I'm gonna go
I'm getting my chickens back and I'm gonna have probably some baby goats
Know telling what else I'll have but
I'm gonna I'm gonna get some honeybees. That's a good one, too
I'm gonna get into it. I studied them for a while and I've got I've got some contacts here that you know, they raised them and grow
things set up and get you started in going so
And I sometimes watch videos about that stuff. It's cool
Yeah, if you ever study the honeybee, you know, the way they produce and the way they you know, their whole lifestyle. It's a
really really interesting
Yeah, it's got out the swarms. Yeah, absolutely
Good bit what we wanted to do everyone is
We kind of had different formats every week
We've been just kind of figured we've been trying to figure out like how we want to do this
We did have a poll last week and people voted that they wanted to mainly do like a chill and chill
Is that the one that one Kevin? I think it was that came in first
Yeah, chill and chill and then second one was like more of like a structured talks. What we're gonna do is
We've gone for 20 minutes maybe for like the next 30 minutes 45 minutes
We'll do like a structured discussion where we have a few things that have happened in Kadena throughout the week
And then after that it'll turn into more of a chill and like hang out session and anyone can come up and talk about whatever
And obviously anyone's welcome on the stage as well
But for the next like 30 minutes, we're gonna just talk about some Kadena stuff that's happened in the past week. So
We're hoping that that's the format that people will like because we're trying to make this, you know
Best for the viewers. So with that being said Kev, what do you want to talk about first?
Man, I don't know. I mean we can not
We could talk about some echoes. Well, I don't know if he can get up and speak right now
He's driving. I was gonna say since Adrian was here. He might want to talk a little bit about an update, but
We kind of what I kind of want to touch on some
Just some Kadena stuff too because we had a couple of new people in the audience. So we wanted to
Kind of discuss some of that stuff
Well, here we go. I'll pull up something
we can also talk about the Marm engine G and or the you know V2 kind of what everybody's liking and
So I think what we're gonna do is we're gonna save the echo gov stuff for now Adrian says he's dropping his car off to
Get service, but if when he gets back home, at least the last time he'll jump on
So we'll save that for later and see if he's back in time
And then now I gotta pull up our DMS and see what we had written out
All right, so I guess we'll talk about the marmalade stuff
That's exciting if for anyone who hasn't heard marmalade ng has officially launched their live on mainnet
I'm gonna go ahead and pin the tweet here in the space appear on the banner. So you guys can see it
There it is should be up there
Yeah, and so for anyone who doesn't know Kadena doesn't really have like a go-to
NFT standard kind of like how?
So it's been kind of a big thing where we needed to have a standard now
There's multiple standards, but marmalade mg kind of seems to be the one that
It seems to be the breadwinner have the most robust features. It's made for the community by the community
multiple community devs came together to make it
I think it seems to be a really cool product. It just builds on top of
Kadena's version of marmalade but adds in some more features
So I know there's a few projects who are building on it including Kadena bet
We see we have skellies in the audience. They'll be building on it
I believe we're on what will be building her project on marmalade ng as well
Kevin what about you? Have you guys talked about this at all?
Yeah, we've gone back and forth about it, you know, we've had a lot of meetings with Ahsoka and
We were all in a position where we really didn't know what Kadena was gonna do
We didn't know if how they were gonna do me be too and
Everybody was sitting there waiting now. I think we all got tired
Pick something to continue building and took off and we decided to go be
Hoping that you know in time when v2 came out we could just
go to v2 since we were going to the marmalade stand on chain 8 and
They still think long-term that's still the direction to go
so we're gonna just hold on v1 see how that plays out because
You know financially we can't afford to build one way
We should build back this way and then oh never mind. Let's jump back over here
It costs too much. So we're just gonna hold tight on v1 and see I guess who the winner is and then we'll adjust accordingly
Yeah, I think that's what a lot of people have been doing is kind of just sitting back and
Waiting to see where they'll build it. I know
the miners of Kadena has been
Dealing with a little bit of that
I think they've built a lot of stuff before marmalade and then they said they had to rebuild as marmalade and whatnot
It does seem like a lot of people are headed that way
Like I said skellies Ron wolf
Kana bet that's Amir. He's one of the people who helped build NG itself
And marmalade is really cool standard. By the way, I believe isn't it like the only
NFT standard that has royalties built in at the token level rather than
Marketplace having to enforce the royalties
And I'm hoping now that NG is out and v2 are both out
We can kind of just have one standard just like other chains do
We've had several meetings
You know Steven and Amir, you know, I've talked about several times, you know, they're really really strong
He naturally because their projects are in it and they're part of kind of help built the NG part so
You know, there could be some adjustments, but we didn't want to run into what mock run into
Spend a lot of money in time build them out and then I could you know
Her thought reverse back up spends more money. So we're just trying to be as cost efficient as possible
Of course, you know, that's always something that
Should be kept in mind too. Is that people are out here spending money building on these things, you know
Yeah, I mean it's it's so
It's definitely a challenge to when you're trying to decide, you know
Like for us whether we're gonna sit v1 and wait a few to be finished out or you're looking at the obstacles with v2
you know, you hear all the
Conversations about it and then you got you know, NG, you know done and like I said, it's just
You're kind of waiting, you know, if we decided to leave we'd be
Again G and then all of a sudden something happens with v2 and then you're trying to shift back
It's just a lot of headache. I'd rather be patient and just let it let it play out and see
Who you know, not necessarily who's gonna win at the same time
You know, and I know some people are saying even in the chat that, you know, NG is already
I hate to pick winners and losers at this point in the game. We're still new. There's still a lot going on a lot still can happen
So we're figure guard is gonna just give it a little bit more time and see how it plays out
We're pretty much in the same boat
I mean we've talked about it before but we're not even on Marv related all we're on the butter standard which was
just kind of is another standard before marmalade and
we've just been kind of playing it patient to sticking with what we have now and
Kind of what we know and you know, once we have like a clear sense of direction then we'll move on it. Yeah
By the way, my action said hello
Yeah, I just saw that in the comments
Yeah, I think there's a lot of people building that are
You know, I mean if people are still building they're just building on the things that they you know
Like we're still working on the game and trying to get beta. There's still a lot of things for us that we can work on
that buys some time for us, but
You know when me and my brother discuss what kind of you know, we think we're in the start of the bowl
You know, it's about to start taking off
We're looking at a couple of months away from the having with Bitcoin and you've got the whole ETF thing. So
Things are starting to kind of get a little spicy and they're kind of heating up and there's some excitement in the market
We want to be ready and prepared with the game ready to run
You know when everything gets hot and we don't want to be caught in a well, where do we program? You know, of course
We're calling to catch 22. So we need to be ahead of the game
Profit make money. We need some of these things established and laid out for us first so we know their direction
Hey, speaking of catch 22, I've been trying to read a lot more this year. I'm in the middle of reading catch 22 right now
No, I haven't how do you like it? Um, I'm not that far into it
But it's kind of based around World War two and I always like books like that. So cool so far
It's interesting. I'm gonna have to check it out too. Yeah, I loved her
But uh, I am trying to read two books a month, so I want to read another 24 books this year and
We'll see how that's a pretty good goal as you probably said something like that myself actually I've been meaning to reach out to you
I'll do that soon with some recommendations. Yeah, absolutely like last year. I made
Is 12 books I thought well, I'll just if I can do one book a month, I'll be good think I had read
12 books by April and I thought shit I better rethink this like, you know, but
But I say read I mean mine is off because I'm able to listen a lot during the day
I can't so much just sit there with the book
But I've read just you know, lots and lots of books
So I've actually gotten to enjoy it. But yeah, I can definitely recommend some stuff
What kind of books do you read like classics like stuff about money like stuff about life
Yeah, I will rotate through them, you know
It's called a compound effect
Sometimes they're financial sometimes their motivational books
Sometimes and a lot of times I'll get on YouTube that just you know, Google some books like
Mindset, you know just how to do different things like that and and I just study on self-growth
You know how to eliminate obstacles
You know just in general, so I'll rotate through and it's a lot of times it is about money
But you know you get tired of the same. I
Got you kind of the same style. So eventually I get tired of listening about money
So, you know something else it kind of makes you feel like like a distinguished gentleman to you know, like I read books. Oh
Absolutely, yeah 100% well anyway before we get too off track
Do you have anything else to say about Marmalade I
I don't think so. I mean I'm gonna do some more reading on it
You know unless somebody has you know, some more knowledge about it that wants to come up and speak on it
I'll add I think there's a few things I forgot to mention
The high percent NFT marketplace announced that they would be building on Marmalade NG and
The very first limited NFT collection on Kadena announced that they would be building on NG I believe as well
Nice. Yes, I think kitty cats going in G
So it seems like a lot of big projects are choosing that one
They are Kadena, yeah, yeah
Yeah, I'm yours I'm yours just insane I think I mean I think he he helped build it and G
Yeah, I believe so. I know it solved a lot of problems, you know, and so that you know, like I said
I don't know that not saying that V2 won't
You know eventually get there and I don't know, you know, it'll surpass it or
Will kind of become the standard
Well, that'll really be interesting to see once we get a little bit more traffic and more builders coming here and you know
I think by that point though a mural have some nice tools for minting stuff and you know, it will all be
self-explanatory and you know, I just hope we get to the point where
user doesn't even have to think about things like Marmalade V2 or NG or
Yeah, and that a little bit of what Kadena
Yeah, pretty much. I believe
Mir's building a bunch of tools
Because I think he kind of wants to eventually get it to where you don't really know like you won't you won't have a clue
You'll just be able to go in and do your thing and it'll automatically just do it. Yep
I'm kind of excited to see what he's gonna come out with me too. I've been so excited. I've been I've been
Waiting for him to put some wizards on his marketplace because that marketplace he built meant the I
Dropped my phone like an idiot and I dropped something else too
That marketplace he built the Kadena marketplace is awesome. Oh
It is. Yeah, and I'd love to see some other stuff on there like some gnomes and some wizards
Absolutely. I've even thought about doing like my own collection, you know, I want to be able to get on
Stuff and create some really cool stuff and I'd like to have a collection myself. I thought about the same
Actually, the GPU dial is gonna be using a mirrors tools to help with our NFTs that we're gonna be sending out
GPU Dow and round out would do the same will help like member NFTs for all the Dow members
Just to show that you own a share of the Dow
Yeah, I'm excited about that
Yeah, me too. I can't wait to get this
Have it have it start pan
Yeah, I know we were having some of those conversations. You start looking at
you know difficulty going up and
That's kind of it's good the network
And so I just hope at the end of the day, you know, it's positive for the holders the miners, of course
There's something I wanted to do I wanted to check out this Kadena roadmap they just recently released no we got Mike in the audience
Have you checked that out Kev I know they said they it's like
Module I guess so I can open this figma file and maybe customize it. Have you played around with that? Which one is that?
It's their new roadmap on Twitter. You'll see Oh
Customize it. They said it was modular
Actually have not I'm loading it up right now. I'm seeing what it's about
I'll actually go ahead and pin that so people can see what we're talking about
Yeah, I haven't put up on the laptop right now, okay, so it's just like a
There it's up there all top top on the banner. So
It's not like a traditional roadmap like it doesn't really have dates on it
But I guess there's just different cards. You can put in different places. Can you make your own cards?
Interesting you point it up I
Have no idea how to work figma. I don't think I've ever used figma
I've used it a couple of times
All right, well I'm sitting here trying to play with this and I'm not really sure if to do I think I have to sign up
Yeah, create an account to edit and collaborate on this file
We're gonna continue with Google here and see what the whole happens. All right
Yeah, Mike's gonna jump on and help us out here. Hey, buddy
And I decided I would type out a message in this tweet that I'm like screw it I'll just talk
First of all, awesome. Good to hear everybody
So yeah, so so roadmap. There's two different versions
There's the there's the static roadmap that we've been posting right that I think I posted a couple of times today
It's basically just one big sort of in file with a bunch of information on it
Then I know that a lot of people in the community
Will take and modify roadmaps just sort of for their own needs of what they're trying to sort of piece together
So the idea there is really like we want to give you know
You we want to give you guys access to our Figma file for complete transparency, right?
So the idea there is that you can grab those and drag them and move them around and build your own roadmap for your own
Needs so if there's different modules that need to be made you can ping us and we'll make them for you
Right. So some people understand for my some people don't it's basically
But yeah, so you so basically you've got a couple options. You can either take the one we've already built and use that or you can
Also in that Figma file or all of the brand assets the backgrounds the graphics the fonts all of that and we'll keep updating
So the idea there was to give it to you in two forms
There's the one full version or you can make your own just like on the media kit
You can download the individual files or you can pull them out of
Yeah, see I'm playing around with it now
Well, it's cool to finally see like I always used to have trouble finding a link to
Media relations press kit. Yeah, I think and I now I got everything right here
Yeah, and that was that was sort of the whole that was sort of the whole point of it
So, I mean the beautiful thing is I can actually see you in there
Again, so if you come down
You know, so again say for example, you want to grab this and you're gonna drag it
You're gonna move it here and you're gonna pull this right? You can take these assets and export them into your own file
You know, we did try to make some of them transparent or we will be making them some more of them transparent
So you actually can go in and you know, like if somebody wants to put a rocket emoji in the background, right?
But you can go through and build whatever you want
So all of these are modular right so you can come in here and grab this and drag it out
And you can drag this one in right to here
But for people that know figma this is just a different level of interactivity if you
Oh, this is awesome. I can like I was watching everything you're doing right there also
K PKM is on the audience. I see their mouse in here
It's like so again if you just want this file, right this big one right here
All you have to do is click on that come down here to export and click export
2024 about us which is in that white bar on the right and you can export it at whatever size you want
You know what it is a ping file great you want it as a PDF great you want us to try to
You know vectorize it and save it as an SVG file. That's infinitely scalable. You can do that, too
So the ideas is we wanted to give people the opportunity to do it on their own and we'll build more stuff out over time
If people want it or ask for it
Because again, it's right sometimes you want it because you're you know
Trying to talk to somebody about scalability and you don't care about
Marmalade or you don't care about you know the human layer, right? So you just pull it out and add what you want
so if you guys are interested more in this right like I can have one of my designers do a
Little session to teach you guys more about Figma and how to utilize this
We just figured it was just a fun little interactive thing that you know if it took off
You know great if it doesn't I mean we built this in Figma anyway, so it was literally just opening the files up to you
But then again if you look on the left-hand side right under pages
You'll see logo lockups, right? So those are the all the approved lockups can be exported the same way
Here's the brand style guide so you guys can see it, right?
So if somebody's out there building something and they want to learn more about our colors all the hex codes are in there
There's a ton more coming
And then again, then if you click there, there's our official backgrounds that we've been using and then the roadmap
So again this whole sort of you know
Transparency piece is we're not even gonna talk. We're not just gonna talk about it
I'm gonna give you guys the damn figma files, so you've got access to do the same type of stuff we do
Wait, I mean hell yeah, and it sounds it looks like it's pretty self-explanatory to I'm already in yeah
Yeah, so be the one thing we didn't the one thing we wanted to make sure right?
There's two things we wanted to make sure that you know the individual cards
Hopefully they were smart enough to do this, but we didn't want you guys to be able to go in and change the text
Right. We didn't want you guys to be able to go in and change the colors
So we'd lock we should have locked all that down
Just so we keep it on brand right that brand always we've talked about is so important to remain consistent
So this just gives you the opportunity to build your own official approved blah blah blah blah blah and do whatever the hell you want
So if you just want one of these cards for something, then you just grab it and you export it the same way
Beautiful I was actually whenever you started talking about this I was
Whenever it was first announced, I was wondering what the hell of modular mean you know like what's the point of this?
but actually that's really smart because
It does have a lot of customization, and you know you just can do really whatever the hell they yeah, and it's you know
It's something fun. You know it's something that I've never seen anybody else do before so you know
It's cool right if you know figma
It's really really simple if you want to build stuff with it
You can build stuff with it, and if you just want to grab an individual little piece here and there you can do that too
It doesn't really matter because we had to build it anyways
And if you guys need something else right if somebody is like oh, yeah
We want you know instead of just backed by the brightest minds in blockchain
We want to take and pull the visuals from the website and put advisors on there right I can do that in 30 seconds
I mean, I can't I don't do anything, but someone I'm
Right yeah, it's just it's just a different different level of interactivity
Yeah, 100% no, it's pretty neat
And I mean like you said I've never seen a roadmap done like that before so it's kind of unique as well
Dates you mentioned you mentioned dates
I will make my I will make my official statement on dates if if you're cool with it
What I've full transparency right we're transparent to a fault. It's sort of my trademark
The two things that have happened in the past with dates and the reason why we didn't put dates on anything
Is is simply the fact that in software development as you guys know right like if I were to say
You've got to have this update done by Tuesday, and it's not done and ready by Tuesday right your your ass is in a sling
Cuz it's not done for Tuesday, so now you've got to go into the community
You've got to explain all the nuances what happened which is fine
But sometimes right people push things out early because they need to try to hit a deadline
And then when you push those things out early you might not have them fully flushed out so as opposed to talking about deadlines
Right we want to make sure that when we announce a deadline. It's rock-solid
You know in the past we used to announce deadlines when it went into audit
But then what happened is things were found in the audit, and you missed that deadline, so
We just want to do it very
Thoughtfully and make sure we're not
Getting people excited about things
So that's the reason why we're not doing dates, but what I'll tell you is everything we have on that roadmap is planned for this year
Would tell you that everything on that roadmap is planned for the first half of this year
But if I've learned anything in my first four and a half five months here at Kadena is to take
To take that with a grain of salt, so I'm
Backing and giving a half of your buffer
You know the truth is is that
There might be a million reasons why something on there or a couple of things on there
We don't end up doing and that's part of transparency matters too is explaining to you guys
Why like business reasons might have changed priorities change every day like there are four things on there
I could tell you that the priorities on them changed this afternoon
So we want to make sure that we're giving you guys the best information we have
But we also want to make sure that we're setting ourselves and more importantly
We're setting the community up for success
Well, I mean good, I mean that's I'm I think that's what you should have in mind, you know
It's really good here. We're trying and of course like you know
It was when when when we launched when we launched the website and the brand which we told everybody and we gave ourselves a deadline of
1 3 January 3rd, excuse me from our international friends
Right, like people were shocked. It's like holy shit. You guys actually did what you said. It's a yes, of course we did
Right. This is how we should not
Yeah, we're gonna keep hitting those deadlines
And I want you guys to be able to know that when we do give you a deadline when I give you a date
Right. I'm not putting out there and putting my name on it if I'm not a hundred percent positive
We're gonna make it because I don't know that I don't want the wrath of the community on my ass
You know, I mean we go good. No, it's fine
I was just gonna say I think most people who are either heavily in Kadena or a part of a project or involved in a project
completely understands that because
We're in the same boat. I'm not gonna give a hard date. But anything. Yes
You don't know what can happen and obstacles do pop up every day. So you're constantly
Gotta be honest. No doubt. I mean perfect example is we had
I'm not gonna say what it is because I don't want to call anybody out but like we
we have a product that's done and
We sent it to audit and the audit came back with there's a potential fatal flaw in the partner
Which is a very well-known
Right entity and it's like, okay
We didn't put that date out because now we'd have to be explaining and throwing our partner under the bus on why this isn't done
so, you know, it's you're sort of damned if you do and damned if you don't so my philosophy is just
Be really transparent and let you guys know what we're working on and when I'm confident on it
I'll give it to you and then again same thing, right? We're human beings human layer
We make mistakes if we screw up I owe you guys an explanation on what happened. So
One way or the other that's gonna get done
And it's gonna get done right. Hopefully I don't want to half-ass stuff anymore
These are all good things to hear yeah, totally a hundred percent agree with that you guys know me
No, I think I think we all feel that and it's it's us
We can all have a little bit of impatience, you know a lot of us
especially who's been in here since the beginning of overcome a lot of
We're cautious and we're protective and we don't want to move too quick
And so just the fact of you coming in doing what you're doing hitting those deadlines that you say and kind of proving to us
That you're doing your thing. It gives us more confidence and what we're doing instead in our days
You know in that's new Kadena
Right. It's it's we're humans. We're people we make mistakes
Sometimes you make great decisions and sometimes we can fall on our sword and that's okay
So, you know, I told you guys since day one you're gonna hear me say a lot of things and that's great
But you're gonna see us do a lot of things as well. So
You know, I mean not getting into specifics like the teams internally are really gelling
The rest of you know, the executive team and myself, right? We've got a lot of trust in one another, you know and trust takes time
You know, it's not just like, you know, okay Mike went through seven interviews
We're gonna bring him in and hand him the keys to the castle, right? Like trust has to be earned and
You know, we're earning it
you know, I've got the I've got the leadership team really sold into
You know my strategic framework that you know, I introduced and we're focusing on
Writing goals down and objectives and more important, right?
What are the strategies that are gonna drive that and how are we going to measure success?
You know, you guys have heard me say I built my career on asking two questions
What does success look like and why are we doing this?
And that's starting to take shape internally and people are outside of me and my team are starting to ask that so
Again, it's I'm cautiously optimistic, right? I don't want to like
Get too excited. But like I'm very confident and I'm very comfortable
With the changes that I've seen in the five months that I've been here. It's there's no pushback, right?
It's not that anybody's like, oh, no, this is wrong. We don't like change
It's just we have to get out of our own way sometimes
But and I'm super proud of I'm super proud of the work we've done internally
I'm proud of you guys as the community, right?
Like think about this you guys have all been online this last week where the whole entire market is like bed-blown to shit
Right. We're not fighting with each other. We're not, you know, flooding. We're not doing this like we all understand
So like I'm just I'm just proud of that, you know
Like we can see this little downtick and everybody understands yet socks, right?
Like we all lost we all lost a lot of money last week, right totally get that
But right we're coming together and that's what a community is, right?
Like if you look up the word community like this is what we're supposed to be so, you know, it's it's good times, you know
Again, I started shit. My day started at 6 30 this morning and it's 5 30 now, right?
Doesn't feel like 11 hours didn't feel like 13 almost 14 hours yesterday. So we're just we're all in it together
So I'm just I'm I'm I'm confident like I see the work we're putting in
And it's exciting. I think if we can well it on I understand too
It takes a little bit of time for that to trip down. You know, you're you're sitting on the inside
It's slowly coming out to us. Yeah, but I really love the fact that
You guys are focused on the jelling of the team
That is huge to me because if you have internal fighting or you have a bad apple or tea
It can really create a problem and you know, you're a sports guy
But you can take a team you take two teams that's going for the national championship
One may be more athletic and better
Informers, but you've got one team. It's like a family. They love each other and they play well and they can beat the other team
So the jelling is huge to me of seeing that come together
And that's one of the reasons why I fell in love with Kadena because I've been in other chains
They fight they bigger they cut each other down. They're cussing each other out. I didn't feel that in Kadena at all
I've never felt that everybody's always been a year. So I love team
I mean, it's definitely a sports guy right played basketball in high school and college, you know, it's team is everything
Right. So like we're focused a lot on right trying to find, you know, who are our starters?
Right who are our bench players, right? Who is you know, you know
My friend Eudonis has them from the heat right like he's the coach on the bench
He's the coach on the floor, right? So everybody's got to fit into their roles
You know, and it's it's good, right?
They're there definitely are times where you know
There are people on other teams that I don't necessarily agree with and the fact that we can have hard conversations
Amazing, right? Like there's a team internally that thinks I'm the biggest asshole on the face of the earth
And that's totally fine and I'm not doing it to be vindictive
But I'm asking hard questions where hard questions might not have been asked before and it's not out of a place of you know
Malice or hinger or anything. It's just like this is how the world works guys
So, you know, my team is trying to lead by example, right? We're putting our heads down. We're doing the work
We're hitting deadlines. We're putting great stuff together
You know, like I've got a I've got a leader on my team that's fantastic, right?
But I need to get you know him out of the weeds
I need him to be thinking more about strategy
So we just send an offer out to a guy today. That's gonna join the team. Hopefully on the fifth
It's gonna hope it take a lot of that out
right like people have to understand that there are people that push buttons and there are people that use their brains and
Some people are better at one than the other
So we're trying to figure that out too, right? Like we've made some hard decisions on our team
We've got some new roles coming in and we're trying to fill some gaps
But it's just it's all falling into place. I didn't think it would fall into place this quick, right?
There were frustrations when I got here
There was second-guessing when I got here of what the hell that I just get a hold of
But it's all coming together. Like there's no pushback
Everybody's starting to swim in the same direction, which to me is the most important part
so you're dead, right Kev like that in fighting is a huge deal and
We just we've had bits and pieces of it not gonna lie
it's awesome because you have that in fighting right and you have those hard conversations and you don't agree and you butt heads and
Then I get up the next morning and I hop into slack and it's like nothing happened and everybody's moved on
Which is how a business should operate it? Absolutely. So
Yeah, I agree. I mean, it's the gelling has to happen
There is gonna be some conversations as long as the team understands that it's just you know
You know, I mean to produce diamonds it takes pressure so
When you start having those things and everybody has a mindset of yes, we're gonna fight
Yes, we're gonna butt heads. But at the end of the day, we're producing something phenomenal
You just get into is the glass half empty or half full and you got to make sure that the team is
They're all focused to make it in there some people I've realized in my long long time on this earth
That just don't have a glass yet
Right, they're still looking for their glass and right like those are the people that don't make it. So
Everybody on our team is glass half full
Right now are there like any just solid positions that you're trying to get filled?
I mean that's really gonna help y'all have like two or three positions left that you've really got to get done pretty much
Yeah, I mean so, you know, we we've obviously we're made we've made some changes in the community team
We're changing up that strategy
Robin on my team who has stepped up like I can't even tell you
Is just taking charge of all of that. So, you know, there's there's a handful of things that that haven't been
Formally announced yet that they'll be hiring for one of them is
Another community manager type role that I'm almost considering sort of a hybrid of
technical support around packed marmalade technical type stuff
And then also sort of almost BD where this role can go out into other ecosystems and find
Different projects that might be a better fit for Kadena
Find, you know struggles that are happening in other coding languages and then bring more people to packed
So we've had some conversations about that. I've actually talked to
Handful of people just sort of on the side about it from the community
Because because that is an option for this role bringing somebody from the community in and traditionally I don't like to do that
But I think this one it would be appropriate
but really sort of owning technical support and
Routing things and making sure that you know when you know
Poor Steven at KDA bat is trying to learn packed and he's struggling and you know
Amir and Pascal and all those amazing community members are in there trying to help them
Right, like we need to make sure that those channels are supported and we need to make sure that we're routing it to people
We're getting them the information they need
So you're gonna see a lot more focus around that like that's gonna be a really big role for us
You know, we've got another animator and another visual designer and graphics person that's joining the team
I had a role briefly out there for a social media manager position that I quickly took back for a number of reasons that
We won't get into on a recorded space
You know really there's gonna be a digital component to some of the stuff that's coming out that we potentially would be looking for
Right somebody that can you know, get into analytics and dive into some deep data
We're relying a lot on our agency
So if you guys watched, you know, if you guys watched me and John on beyond the block, right?
like his his group is really really solid and
You know, I I successfully pitched a multi-year
Corporate strategy not just a marketing strategy
That has had everybody's heads nodding and they're gonna be picking a lot of that up for us
So there might be some other stuff coming through the pipeline. I do need I do need somebody that can come in and
Just sort of day-to-day pressure off of my head. I want to start doing more podcasts
I want to start working more with Will and Stewart and get out them out there more
So Ryan and I filmed a podcast earlier this week
And I think I've got another one scheduled for next week
So, you know somebody that can come in potentially take some of the just sort of day-to-day stuff off of my plate
But I mean the good part is that you guys helped me a lot too though, right?
Like, you know, it's not always me battling fud, right?
Like you guys are stepping up and doing a lot of it and that helps me out a lot too
You know when I when I know that I can trust you guys to you know, sort of stand up for us
that's it's another big piece that that makes my day-to-day easier, but
Excuse me. I have so many opportunities. I can't get to
Yeah, and I think a lot of that that helps the more, you know
When you come into the spaces and you talk to us
It's easier for us to have the ammunition to fight those battles of the fud because we do have some answers
It was there for before you. We didn't have any information like we were trying to fight the fud
We we didn't have anything so when you get into talking about, you know your marketing campaign
In the sports teams and there's a lot of things
Do you have anything you can kind of tell us as far as are we gonna start seeing some things in the next few months?
Are we gonna see ads or advertisements or some sponsors or something like that that we're gonna get? Yeah
They're upstairs. Sorry. My wife just got home
the one the one partnership that I was hoping to have announced already is the biggest one and we are struggling with a
Existing partner in the space that is not wanting to play nice in the sandbox
So like it's already it's gone to the board of this massive sports
Organization and there's some higher level conversations happening
I mean, my hope was that I'd have it that one done and announced in January
So I've got a meeting tomorrow to sort of figure out where the board is at
I'm still cautiously optimistic. We'll get that done
there's another one that is large more on like the Olympic level than the
You know more think not the Olympics but think of more of like the global level as opposed to the national level
Right that we're working through
It's the issue you always have with these is that you get a bunch of people in a room and they start nodding their heads
And they all agree about all the cool stuff you can do
And then what happens is when you start to put pen to paper and the contract actually starts to be drafted
It's like, okay. Well, who's gonna take care of this now you have to go back and it's another negotiation
So you talk about IP rights you talk about IP rights in different, you know places in the world
You talk about content in multiple languages you talk about, you know, all of these things
Especially when you're talking about something that's global, right?
You're talking, you know, you might have to you might have to translate things into 15 different languages
Which means you have to build assets in 15 languages and landing pages in 15 languages. So a lot of that comes up
And then there's another one that I just sent off a really nicely done deck today of a little capabilities pitch
We did in the sports world and hopefully that one will come through. I mean hyper lane is cruising through
if you know, we if we do if we do finalize this
Multi-year strategy. I almost said what it was if we almost do this multi-year strategy, right?
Like you guys will find out about that probably in the next month
So yeah, it's just there's so much it's just you just got to get one to hit
And again, I thought this one was the one and it still might be but it's just it just takes a little bit longer
Pushing these things through is it's so hard because you've got multiple parties. You've got legal IP rights
You've got government bodies involved in some of it. So it's a lot a
Lot of moving parts, yeah
One of the one of the other things I wanted to ask about also was you know
We're kind of hearing in the circle that you know, you guys are really pushing towards some gaming stuff
You know for those of us who have game in the space of game
Can you tell us a little bit maybe about what your focus is going to be towards the gaming sector or potential stuff coming to?
Yeah, I mean, you know, we're we're we're definitely working with some new grantees and some current grantees
You know trying to you know roll out a couple of different possibilities, right?
We've been you know, we've been very open and honest about you know
working through the whole concept of layer 2
Not saying that you know layer 2 is coming and we've got this sort of program that we're working through on the ZK side
That might negate that to increase speed
But yeah, but there's a lot coming there
So, you know, it's we have the ability we have the ability to speed the network up
I think you guys mentioned that a while back that, you know, we'll had talked about that on a
You know on a campfire back in the day
It's hard because you've got to do things in order right in the EVM bridge brings so many opportunities to us that were
We're just trying to figure out the right path to take but you know, we're we're we're gonna try to we're gonna try to push
The envelope on things right? We're gonna try to bring more games into the ecosystem, you know, Dan Wiggins
Who's our VP of business development? I mean came from that world
So if we can get that right it opens up a ton of opportunities
I mean, he was at some huge gaming company before he came to us. I don't remember the name of it
But I mean the opportunities are there if we can if we can just get the pieces together
So I think I said before right like when I got here
It was like we had all of the pieces of the puzzle laid out
But I couldn't see what the cover of the box looked like so I couldn't put the puzzle together
now I'm starting to see the puzzle and
We're starting to get that stuff prepared to put it in place
But it's like do you start in the middle or do you start on the edge and there's pros and cons of each?
Yeah, I'm really hoping the more that we can get Cadena there, I mean even like our projects and arguments
There's a lot of moving pieces
There's a lot of teas being minted it when you start looking at gas fees and what people are actually able to play our games
And the prices and how much cheaper it's gonna be okay
I just I think it could ain't it could be a huge a huge player in the game
I I do too and we are working on
And I don't even know what timing looks like but we haven't we have been talking about this like gas tool
Right like something where we can put it out into the space and you know, you can enter different
You know different tokens and different types of transactions that it'll show you
Cadena gas versus aetherium gas or Cadena gas versus Bitcoin gas
And it's more complicated that I'm making it sound but we want to find tools like that
It's hard because I want I want to put out ads
I want to shop from the rooftops all of this stuff and
I have a problem with being patient as well. So so it's just like when do you do it?
You know, when do you have the right message and I think that
With some of the things we're talking through right with this gas thing with
Hyperlane and the EVM piece right with the ZK stuff
We're gonna have I think I don't even know if I said it the next um, the next Beyond the Block comes out on the
And it is with John Wiggly our CTO and John and I don't remember his last name
He's the CEO of lurk labs and lurk labs is like the ZK player in the space
They've built basically every ZK technology there is
ZK and there are a couple of little pieces of alpha in there that if you read between the lines for me
We're pretty mind-blowing. You guys know I'm not the technical guy
But like they explain it in such easy to understand terms
And then they go down a path where like my face melted off because it was so technical and complicated
but like there are opportunities there and
We might not always be first and that's okay, right? Apple wasn't the first manufacturer to build a smartphone
Right. It's they they clearly did it, you know the best or one or two best
depending on which side of that argument you land on but
We're we're thoughtful on purpose and we want to make sure that it's done the right way
So there's just there's so many possibilities. There's so many things coming. I mean literally there are 90 projects on our internal roadmap
Now I'm trying to condense a lot of those and trying to help that team sort through what is real and what isn't
We're hiring and we're trying to do it faster and we're bringing agencies in and we're hiring freelancers
And like we know our faults. We know what's holding us back
We just have to have the time to scale it up. I mean the rebrand happened 22 days ago
So, I mean that press release reached four point two billion people
Yeah, that's super exciting I mean it's
I've got the mentality kind of thinking that you know, it's it's it seems a little slow
All of us. I'm an impatient. I'm an impatient person myself and I'm and I'm I'm always anxious, you know
I'm really ready to pull the trigger. Let's go and
I'm the same way. I'm not a super technical guy. I'm not a developer
I don't really quite understand how some of that works. So I work with people who are smarter than me with that stuff
The exciting part is to know that all these moving pieces are happening behind the scene
And like you said when the when the pieces of the puzzle come together, I
Think Cadena is just gonna take off
I think it's gonna I hope so in the hard part is right is like
You guys as the community and me have to have this layer of trust where you guys take what I'm saying as right like me
Not trying to get people excited me not trying to pump anything up, right? Like I'm
genuinely excited and it's like I wish I could just pull the curtain down and be like
This is all the stuff we're doing and watch people's minds below
The reality is is that we won't launch every single thing we're working on and that's okay, right?
But the idea is is that I really do truly believe this is a story of the tortoise and the hare
Right, like slow and steady is gonna win this race, right?
we're we're gonna do things the right way because our plans are a hundred years out not two weeks and
That's our call. I mean, that's our culture and it drives
I'm 52 so I don't need you to wait. No, I need a little bit before that, you know, you know, I
Just turned 47 so I I don't want to do this a hell of a lot longer but I wait
Yeah, I would I would like it at least by the next bull run, you know by 2030
You know, man, I thought we were there a couple weeks ago. I woke up one morning. It was like Christmas on Christmas
Well, I like the fact that you're saying
We're not we don't have to be first and I agree with that, you know over my years
I've seen several companies that I was waiting on something
That you know several companies were coming out things and I thought man
I wish this company would make it and they did three years later
But I learned that they let those companies come out and leave
When they did come out with it two or three years later
Theirs was the best product and did so much better quality wise than the first two or three
well, I'm not sure we're that smart but
That is a definite strategy
You know, it takes time, you know, I keep saying that and and hopefully right the things that I'm showing you guys, right?
You know, it's the fact that I'm still doing the tweet every day with what I'm working on
I'm trying to be more transparent. I'm hopping on these right like
You know, it's I want to show you guys that I mean what we say and I you notice I didn't say mean what I say
Right. We I mean what we say and we as a company right in my my
Livelihood of my reputation is staked on this
So it's like I can't I can't let you guys down. I can't let the company down. I can't let myself down
I sure as shit won't let my family down
So we're gonna get there you guys have been more than supportive and I can't thank you guys all enough for you know
The support I mean, there's a freakin Mike Heron parody account that my buddies found and have been running wild with today
Whoever whoever that is I'm gonna end up in prison over his ass. So yeah
Actually, yeah was gonna tell you your your twin was all my my my group of marketers that are in my that are in my
My phone on our group chat. Let me know that earlier today. So yeah, y'all both have the same haircut
It looks like man, it's a damn good haircut, too
In it though. I love my hair
My starts with shaving cream. Yeah, no
Can we talk about the pitbull
No, we talked about you got to get the pitbull it's now that I've said it you'll get targeted with it on Instagram
It's this name head shaver. You'll freaking love it. It's awesome. Oh, is that like the podcast thing with the four edible?
Now we're going into bald head the haircare me I
Love it. I want I need to be I need to be the influencer for pitbull
So people from the Chinese pitbull hair shaving company are on this. Let me know. I
Will yeah, absolutely because they need you know, they need to like sponsor cadet, you know
I mean my head is shinier than ever. I don't yeah, it's great. No shaving cream. Yeah
I think what Ron Ron was about to say is like mine is intentional. I don't even have a receding hairline or a bald spot
I just hate hair. So he's bald by choice. I am I started balding when I was 15
Dude, like oh it was I still at my age
I still have the fullest thickest head of hair and I just I hate it. I do not like getting haircuts
I don't like having to go. I just I don't like having shampoo and condition
shaving cream and a razor
That's sad, but it's true
Hey, uh, was it weird the first time Kevin? Oh, go ahead. Did Mike just drop? Oh, no, Mike just drop
What a bummer I wanted to ask him a question. I got a space that I get I know I was trying to get you up here
Cuz I figured you I was I was in a meeting dude. I was in a meeting most of the space
I had one year in here and one year somewhere else talking about AI and partnership stuff
I'll I'll I'll leak it later to you guys. Don't worry
But yeah, Oh Mike is back. He's he's back. Yeah, he's back
Welcome back Mike. That's fine. I actually had a question. I have lots. I have lots of questions Mike
Don't don't just not was just one but I'll keep it short
Here's something that you said you mentioned that you know that Cadena has a lot of flaws
Not only yourself but also the community to fight off FUD and do all these things
What do you think is one of your personal flaws that maybe the community might be able to help you with?
I take things very very personally. I
Have a tendency to be very defensive
So I try to not have it come off that way
But I'm very very passionate person and when somebody calls the baby ugly, I have a tendency to fight back
And so I've told my team internally, right?
Like if somebody posts something and you don't want me to comment on it
Tell me not to comment on it or comment on it first
So, you know, I I'm a firm believer in if you want to change the conversation you have to participate in it
And sometimes I'd let that get to me personally
That's not a flaw that that just means you care dude, like I posted something about like
You know KDA being sold and being transferred and all this stuff and you replied like yeah, this has been on the map
This is exactly what's happening
What I reply to you was you actually have the balls to be out there and say what it actually is when people are usually hiding
I appreciate that more than most people are willing to admit like that
That's what we want to see like I don't care if tokens are being sold if there's a schedule for it
Things are set up. You gotta pay people. Yes, do it. Yeah, like I hate it when people lie about it and pretend something's not happening
Yeah, just being up front and honest earns you so much credit. Well, I try
I torched some poor guy in the Twitter comment earlier today and I didn't really mean to and then I read it afterwards
I'm like god. I'm an asshole. Why did I do that?
Didn't even mean to it was like first thing this morning. I'm sitting here the kids are running around
I'm drinking my cup of coffee. I'm like I'll respond to this
So yeah, did you reply then block him or how did I go? Oh, no, I've blocked very few people
Oh, I feel special then. Oh, did I block you?
It's been a while yeah, it's all thanks to Ryan down there
I was trying to defend him and you took it personally. I don't care like
Honestly, I really know that's funny because I know it's hilarious how I have to apologize
I've you called me out and I called myself out. So that's perfect
Yeah, no, there's nothing apologize about like people like we're gonna say something. I don't care. You are I did block you
I'm on right now. I don't know why I don't know why you definitely blocked them
Were you the guy that kept bringing Casper up in my market research group because I thought that was the only person I blocked
No, but that sounds funny. Oh my god
Alright, so here's the thing like I know how I know how to upset people without being aggressive like I would never take that route like
Shoving up Casper like that. That's just that's a rookie move
Oh, you know I was we were talking about there was it was a focus group and we were talking about like the new logo
And he's like well, it looks like Casper and I'm like who is it Casper?
You don't know Cass and he was all excited
I don't want to talk about Casper we got work to do and he kept bringing it up and I got mad and kicked him
Out of the chat. So it's okay. You're unblocked. I don't know why are you saying you don't know about Casper? I didn't at the time
Like I had never even heard of them during our process and it wasn't until now
Plenty plenty of opportunity for all of us. I I I respect anybody that sure get in this space. So yeah
It's not gonna change anything that I do. I wish them all the best. I
Got this one guy on Twitter blocked his name's Casper cunt. His name's really accurate
My kids just walked in I'm putting my earbuds in
It's alright my team does it all the time too
Mike your house sounds like my hat now all the kids got home the wife's home
She's mad because the kid went to the friend's house
Dinner's not on the table for I'm not rubbing her feet. You guys know how this goes
Absolutely one person but if somebody rings the door
Action I'm just I'm shocked
I'm trying I'm gonna have to go back and figure out what you did to make me block you because that's very unlike me
Oh, I think I probably poked you somehow did and now I remember that was defending Ryan
Like you were going off that he was the guy like trap, you know
Fudding today and I'm like, no Ryan doesn't do that. He just asked questions
Ryan Rhino on my team. No, no, no, no, no, not not that Ryan DeFi right. He's he's listening right now. Oh, I love DeFi right. Oh
I thought you were talking about
See I probably got up my wife was mad at me
I had to kick the dog the coffee wasn't right
Right, and somebody said something and I took it the wrong way because I take things personally. So I apologize
No, no, no need to apologize. Like I said it like I'm wrong all the time
Well, I'm saying here and that's why I'm like, there's no need to apologize for anything
It's I find it quite funny to be honest with you
Do you want a hard question that will probably send sent you off so you can practice being calm and collected? Oh god
I don't know if I want that
You can ask it to me. I'm not guaranteeing. I'm gonna answer it. All right. Well, I have a few oh boy
No, I don't want to get this started one only one Ron. I got I got to go do spaces with all coin in a minute
Hold on, I'll give you the mic in just a second. Hold on just a second
I'll give you the mic. I just want to make sure that you knew that I wish you a happy birthday. Oh
Thank you, I appreciate that
It's actually my 7 millionth birthday. Thanks to Canadian birthday last it was his actual birthday last week
Yeah, he's had 12 since last week though
All right, hard question me hard question
So if we look at your work history
It seems like you haven't been able to stick around in place for more than two years
Most of them being just over a year or under a year and a half
When are you planning on leaving Kadena? Are you just trying to you know, drum up some hype and then you're gone
Like when can we expect you to exit? Oh
Actually the spicy question. Oh
So so let's get let me let me I'm gonna pull my LinkedIn right now
He said he fixes everything and the shit's done. So he has no reason to stay
Giving him talking points Kevin
Hold on one second. How do I work this? So yeah, so so
Easy easy answers, right? I'm very impatient. I think we've probably covered that
So right so when I started my career, right?
I was in sports and my whole world got turned upside down when the housing bubble burst
I got laid off the day I got back from my honeymoon and I needed to pivot into a different space
So I was at the solo cup company for three years two years nine months something like that
That was during the whole Toby Keith red solo cup debacle, which turned my world upside down
And I left that I left that job because we were bought by the dark container corporation
And the dark container corporation in my opinion didn't have a really clear view on the consumer product space
So when I was in a meeting with my new CEO and he asked me how I was planning on tracking
Out of home billboards how I was gonna track out of home billboards versus how many packages of cups were sold in the store
I knew that wasn't necessarily the place for me
During that whole entire time period I was a partner in a regional mixed martial arts organization that I sold my equity out to the
IP rights and video rights for our video footage library
Then I went to US cellular where I was there for almost five years
I left that company because like everybody else
I thought I knew how to do everything better and I wanted to be an entrepreneur and then realized that it was
Terrible and I hated it and all I was doing was
So then at the age of 40 I decided that I did
a change and I was gonna get back into the real world and I had
reflected back on my career in I
Realized that I wanted to learn how marketing agencies worked creative agencies
I had worked with these ridiculous global brands right Leo Burnett and Starcon media vest and Mullen low
And I worked with them forever, right? I'm like, oh my god. This is where the greatest
Marketing in the world is coming from and I'm like, I need to figure this out
So at 40 years old, I called the buddy of mine John Galecca
And I said John John was running a digital agency called fusion ID 2. I said hey look
I want to come in I can give you a year or so and I want you to teach me the ropes
I want to do every single job inside an agency and I want to learn how the sausage is made
Worked on some crazy accounts AT&T
H&R block we did all of their sort of like, you know
I mean that was really more like retail because it was their retail product like when you walk into Walmart or Target you buy your H&R block
Software piece I was a professional hand model for a day during a budding meat shoot
so yeah, so that was always sort of the plan was to be there for a year or so and one of my
little startup called Luca and Luca was and is a
Blockchain data company and I built their first brand at the agency and
Since Galecca knew that I was planning on leaving. He's like hey, you know, these Luca guys really like you
You should talk to them long story short. They hired me
I was there for just about two years
Grew that when I got there, I was employee 33
When I left so I was employee 33 and we had a 12 million dollar valuation and when I left two years later
We were about 200 people and we were at a 1.35 billion dollar valuation
and when I realized at that time that my CEO and I weren't seeing eye-to-eye on
The strategic direction of the business and I was going to have to spend more time not marketing and
Really like more boardroom stuff more bigger picture strategic stuff with our partners
Like S&P and State Street and Soros and all of those
Said I'm gonna quit my job. I don't want to do this anymore
I took Enzi who's my creative director with me and
I said I'm gonna take the summer off and I'm gonna spend time with my kids and that lasted about 48 hours
Because I was bored and I was impatient
Closed deals with Red Bull Racing and Formula One Miami Heat New England Patriots
Launched all of their products built their brand
Worked with an amazing human being named Deepak Thapley. All who is Deepak dot-eth on Twitter
He is the purchaser of the most expensive crypto punk ever purchased. I think it like something stupid like 26 million dollars
He basically shut that company down
So we were sort of in limbo
He paid me a ridiculous sum of money to go away
And then again, I said, alright, I'm gonna take some time off and spend time with my family
And then a friend of mine Getty Hill reached out from GFX labs
Who's a company here in Chicago and I launched as a contractor?
With NZ in my team from chain ironically enough. I launched
their oku dot trade DeFi product
And that was always a contract term. I was hoping it might have turned into something full-time
But didn't work out. So yeah now I'm here
Is that a deep enough dive for you? Well, Mike, you've got my vote and you're hired I
Went through seven damn rounds of interviews
The best part of the best part of my background though make it eight now
Yeah, my my the best part of my background the part that I always
strive to find if you guys ever look in one of like the
Podcasts or recordings that I do if you look over my right hand shoulder. There's a gold plaque on the wall and
When I got out of college, I had no idea what the hell I wanted to do. I actually turned professional in golf at the age of 18
And I worked in the golf space for a long time and I wanted to be a professional golfer teaching kids
And people how to play love golf
Ironically enough I was playing basketball in college as an amateur and I was a professional golfer, which doesn't happen very often, but
three martini lunch with a customer of mine I
Invented a product that I took global and
Has become sort of an icon in the golfing space and that gold plaque that's on the wall is the trademark
Application that I got for that product and that really sort of like spark that really kicked off my career, right?
Coming up with ideas seeing them fruition explaining to people the process
So I always go back to I always go back to that job and
Give it all the credit in the world. It's also where I met my wife
so I was a minority owner in that company and sold my stake to date my wife because she
was in the company and on my team and I didn't want to get my other co-partners in trouble, so
We've been married 15 years this June this July
One follow-up. What's it gonna take for you to leave Cadena?
Like what are you not gonna see eye to eye that's my force you out or what?
What's the the straw that might break the camel's back, you know, well, I was gonna think I was gonna say
Is it gonna take Cadena shutting down or asking you to track billboards? No, I mean I
Tracking billboards would be a really inappropriate question now, but no, I mean, it's a great question
You know and in I don't I don't think about that sort of stuff a lot just because I'm usually heads down in work
I think there's two things. I think there's two things that would
Make me want to leave Cadena
One of them is retirement
Right wherever whenever that comes
Even if I retire someday, which I hope to do before I die
I would last which history has proven probably 48 hours in retirement and that I want to do something else
So I would probably not retire. I would just stay here and keep doing what I'm doing
You know, the only other thing that you know would potentially force me out of here is
You know if somebody you know, if somebody came to me with another opportunity, I wouldn't take it
If there was an opportunity to
See somebody move up from my team into this position and I thought they could do it better
I'd be more than happy to step aside, but I would still want to be involved in the company
So whether that was an advisor whether that was a board seat
Anything like that I would definitely potentially look at because at the end of the day
I don't care how Cadena succeeds. I don't care if it's me at the helm when it succeeds or somebody else. I
Don't think there's really a heck of a lot to be quite honest. I would push me out of here
I think I'd always have some sort of one foot in this place just because the human beings are amazing
The technology is second to none and just I love the vibe. I love the community, right?
Like some of you guys, you know
We've had conversations right like Ron and I spent an hour on the phone last week, right?
Like we saw each other's faces and we spoke to each other and you know
He was in my kitchen with me even only via computer. So yeah
I don't think there's much that would drive me out of here
No, there might be reasons why people want to drive me out of here, which is a whole different conversation
But if I don't think I can do the job, I'm not gonna stick around
But I'm confident I can do the job
Okay time for my hard question are you working with any of the any team in the big four leagues in the United States
I can't answer that question
It's so vague. Come on. It's the heart is a hard question
All right, I got you if he wasn't he could answer it, right
That's that that's actually a really good point genre. All right. We'll take it as the yes
Thanks. I can I can't confirm or deny. I'm a politician was it plausible deniability
I mean, I mean here's the thing right like even if even if I could tell you that I am working with one of the big
Four leagues, right? There is absolutely no guarantee until that docu sign is sent back that it's gonna be a done deal
Like Brooke Ricketts whose family owns the Chicago Cubs as an advisor to us, right?
There's always that opportunity
But again, if it's not up to the right opportunity for them, it's not the right opportunity for us, right?
Like it doesn't make sense
So I might be working on one in each and none of them might come to fruition
So I never I was taught by an old sales guy years ago
You know, he's saying deals not a deal till it deals a deal and I've always sort of lived by that
So I also have a household believe in bad juju, so I don't want to like jinx things
Well, it's also kind of like when the fat lady saying, you know, yeah
I mean to two of the two of the three of these deals
You will know exactly who they are. There will be no doubt in anyone's mind
The third is a little bit. The third is a little bit different
Very very very much in the sports world. It's not an organization
I think that people will recognize but I think the opportunity
Mean this one's a mess like to be quite honest, right?
But like if we can get that one cross the finish line
Like if we can sort out the who's doing what and all agree to it
Everything else is determined like that one will be that one could potentially be a game changer
But I'm I'm still probably 50-50 that we get it done
Well, yeah, of course no promises, you know
And we kind of do the same thing in Wizards
We don't really announce anything until it's like confirmed that we're doing it
But like that last one the one I'm talking about that could be a game changer
Mean like we might have to acquire a company or bring in a considerable amount of people to manage that project
It could be right like the first phase of it is the first phase of it would be a test
Right and the deal would be done and we would test it and if that was successful then that test would grow exponentially
You know and yeah would be global and massive and yeah
All right, well Kevin do you have any hard questions I
Kev wants to know how am I so damn attractive?
Arithmetic is in humble and humble. I
Love it with the bald hair. Yeah, I got the salt and pepper going and I just trimmed the beard the other day
You guys can't see it. So I love these covers like you have any hard hard questions for us. Yeah
What are we doing that we should be that you guys think we're not?
Know recently I've been trying to learn packed and it's hard because like it's just all over the place
Yeah, and I saw it recently you said something that you had something to come and I was wondering if you could talk about that at
All I love how you answered my question with a statement and then another question
Right. There's no other way to put it
We've known that you know Randy came in and right one of his first things was try to sort out the documentation and
Right. Well, I think it might have made more sense at the time
It doesn't necessarily make sense today and we've recognized that and we've hired this amazing technical writer named Lisa
And I don't remember Lisa's last name. She's not on my team. I don't engage with her very much, but
She's sort of she's she's she's got some experience, right?
She's more in line with you know, like Kevin and I from a 10-year perspective. She knows her shit
It's really impressive to we saw her present
We do this thing internally like sort of call it Ted talks with a K instead of a T for Ted
And she did this sort of whole philosophy
You know documentation and you know
Again, it doesn't need to be fancy. It just needs to work. It doesn't need to have crazy UX UI. It just needs to work
So yeah, so so we had that conversation
So I'm really excited to see what she comes up with right, but there's two other pieces of this that you know
We as a business have missed and we've always known they were there one of them. I mentioned earlier, right was like
Online support right when you know when Steven is you know working on you know a packed smart contract, right?
Like you can't wait 24 hours or 48 hours for somebody to get back to him
And we can't rely on the Amir's in the past gals of the world to jump in and save us
You know, we don't have a ton of pack developers internally either
We obviously invented the language and we manage it, but we need more pack developers
So how are we gonna do that? We have to train them. So we have a we have a
Subdomain it's academy dot Cadena dot il and we had these grandiose ideas
The year or two years ago or wherever it was and right we were gonna build this Academy page
and then we realized holy cow content is hard and
We didn't really do anything with it. So
Part of this multi-year strategy is a
reinvigorated focus around teaching people packed and making the documentation
Making different courses that can be taken online and incentivizing people for taking those courses
And giving it giving the training to people in ways that they want to consume it
I'm not a big reader right Kevin said he's trying to read two books a month
I haven't read two books in my life, right? I want to watch a video
I want to see somebody telling me and showing me on screen how to do it
So we're gonna produce that content, right? I want that
Translated into different languages. So, you know, you know action speaks
3,000 year old Aramaic language, right? That's cool. We're gonna put it in that 3,000 year old Aramaic language
You know, we're gonna have transcripts if you want to read through the transcripts if you want it read to you as a podcast
There's gonna be a lot of stuff coming there and that's just one tiny little portion of this multi-year strategy
But we recognize that that is a hurdle and it's something we have to get past so
We are bringing in some external partners that are gonna help us with that
And I hope to I hope to kick that project off within the next couple of weeks and
At least a portion of that rolled out somewhere around
I'm looking forward to that a huge getting it done in August is gonna be another one of these sort of like
Monumental tasks where I don't sleep for weeks at a time, but it's got to be done
Well, I'll tell you something to add to that maybe I'll take it to September
But um, I think a really big thing would be if like any kind of AI new packed
I know a lot of people use AI for coding. I mean I personally I'm like a very beginner website developer
But I built it from scratch. I can go into chat CPT and be like hey use HTML and
Make a website do this and look like this and I use it as a base and I customize it and make it
And I think if an AI new pack that would really help a lot. So you could ask questions blah blah blah
I made a comment the other day somebody posted some of them
I said there hasn't been one suggestion or
Comment that somebody's made since I've been here that we haven't talked about or thought about internally. That might be the first
Think that would be yeah, and I think it'd be really helpful to a lot of people
I mean, I know personally I
Find myself asking chappy cheap chat GPT more stuff than I do like Google. Yes
There there are other parts of this multi-year strategy that
Fit into that narrative but aren't the same
But there's a lot that's gonna be coming and again
This is like like this is such alpha that like the contracts haven't been signed
This hasn't been communicated with many team members yet
This is just sort of a passion piece for me where you know, I will give Steven the credit, right?
Like he struggled through the KDA bets stuff, right?
And you know, we tried to get him the support he needed and that was really sort of a light bulb moment when I saw
Him make a comment of how terrible the experience was to learn packed
But how amazing the technology was and he doesn't want to code in anything else
Right, like that was the light bulb moment for me of like, okay
We need to we need to shit or get off the toilet here
We need to figure out what we're gonna do with packed or we need to stop thinking it's a tool in our toolbox
Everybody's heads are nodding in the right direction inside but like we're gonna attempt to do that
I don't know if it's gonna work
Right. It could be a colossal failure in a massive waste of spend
But it might be a home run and we're willing to take that risk
So we'll see well, I'm super excited I know you guys are locked in man
It's it's it's been a it's been a long time coming. I've been thinking and working on this for a good 30 days now and
I was nervous when I pitched it to be quite honest because again, this is I'm a marketer
pitching a business strategy that impacts other departments and
You know the best the best part about Randy is that you know
He and I had this great relationship right and go to him and he's like, yes
This is what we've been trying to do with Academy. Take it take it over
Bring Gilecka in and have his team build this out
So, you know, so he he's he's behind this and again, honestly, like I thought there could be pushback
He'd be like why are you in my swim lane?
But again, it just goes to what we talked about earlier with Kevin around like we're all in the same team
Like we're we're not fighting internal
Might be people that want to fight me internally. But right like we're all moving in the same direction, which is great
So it could be big all right could be nothing it could be huge we don't know
Well, I'm super excited and like
One thing I thought about doing is I've been wanting to learn packed ever since I found today
and I just never really got around to it and I'm kind of looking at it now what I want to do is maybe kind of
Bring the community in with me right like as I learned stuff and how there's like fall moments kind of like seated it and share stuff with
People I'd like all the people to join the journey with me and see as I progress and learn things. So Ron I
Might have an opportunity for you. I might have something very similar to what you're talking about already in the works with Amir
So you might be seeing something coming about this
Very soon including video content and potentially a product
Well, there we go, let's go and for more products built in the community together with the community and our team
All recorded for posterity and live stream so everybody can learn packed and how to piece all this together
Well, I look forward to seeing that I've jumped on Amir's live streams that he does doing pack all the time Amir is
We're very very lucky to have Amir. He has become a dear friend. He lives 20 minutes from me
It's like I keep him that I'm gonna take him out for dinner and drinks one night
But yeah, no Amir has Amir goes above and beyond
Personally love engaging with him and he is one of the smartest human beings I've ever met
sometimes his brain and his mouth aren't always on the same wavelength, but I
Mean, yeah, sometimes he says stuff. I'm like English
Oh, yes, but we do have we do have this concept that you know
He and I have been working on and we've been we're actually executing in the background
we've been recording it and
Right. We we wanted to do it as a test to make sure that you know one. It was plausible
Both sides would work well together
And I'm I'm happy to say that it went off without a hitch and Amir and squeegee and their team
Built something that's really cool
It's not I don't think it's a game changer, right?
Like it's not press release worthy, but it's a good solid product and it leads us down a path of building more things together
Where everyone will have the opportunity to participate and learn and have an input on what
Different types of things we're building with the community. So I'm really excited about it
we actually just wrapped it up the other day and
My creative team internally has it on their list to to edit
But yeah, it's gonna be it's gonna be fun. I'm really excited. I wasn't supposed to say that but
I know it's just us girls. So I figured it was safe to share but it's gonna be fun
I'm really excited about that
No, I think we're all excited new
Yeah, I think I think one of the one of the questions I was actually thinking about earlier
Already was you know, you were talking about there wasn't any doubt
Is there going to be some type of training program or something like you're talking about
Building something out that may be already in the yeah
But when these when these people get in and they reach a certain level up
We think they kind of got an idea and they can kind of take the ball and run with it
Will there be a directory or something put out where projects can actually reach out and find developers to to?
Because we needed that a while back and we just couldn't get get that but
We really just couldn't find a path
Now we're looking at trying to build something bigger to help new projects coming into Canada and help
To connect the dots we wanted to kind of be the middle people in there
Yeah, you guys are you guys are unrolling your unrolling little bits and pieces of my strategy, but the answer is yes, right?
We we need to incentivize people to come in and take these training courses, right?
but more importantly than that initial, you know incentive is we need to give them a reason to stay and
You know there are different paths that people are gonna take right?
Some people might come into the ecosystem and already have an understanding of solidity
So how do we build a track that teaches a solidity developer how to translate solidity into pact?
We're gonna have people that come in that are used to JavaScript or used to rust or used to nothing and one learned from scratch
So these are all different tracks that have to be built that have to be edited that have to be recorded that have to be
Translated that have to be color corrected. But yes, and then the key to this is now we start to build up this little army
Right. This is our pack developer army and right when when we have overflow which happens and we need pack
Developers to build code for us. We have a repository of people we can go to that
We know are trained and trusted when you guys have issues and you need a pack developer that you know
You want to hire out to do different pieces of the work that you're doing. You've got a repository to go to
We talk more about needing
Live interaction in our support communities to provide that support
Those are our future moderators and our future tech support staff
So not only would we want to incentivize them to learn the language?
We want to incentivize them incentivize them to stick around and help bring that knowledge to the community
Like Amir and Pascal have done for you know a year or two
But then there's even more to it
You know, and I don't want to go too much further down that path
But you know this sort of sets up pack developers on a track that you know
they can actually sustain but think about bringing a solidity developer into the space and
Teaching them how to code packed now, they become a certified Kadena pack developer, right?
Let's give them a grant to turn the products that they've built on solidity and have launched in the ethereum platform
And let's move have a move it to Kadena
Like that seems like a really easy use of some grant funds right there
We already know the TVL and the value it's gonna bring to the ecosystem. All we have to do is get them to rewrite it
so there's millions of opportunities like I sort of
Again, I'm old like I sort of view. This is like sort of the Chicago Bulls
1990s early 2000s like triangle offense that seems really simple but has all of these little spikes that can come off of it
You can run all these different plays
but like once we build this up like
That becomes a huge asset and whether it's bigger
It's small whether it's a thousand developers or it's ten developers, right?
Those ten developers will help and they will build cool shit and they will bring, you know more
Attraction to the ecosystem and that's a small part of what this strategy is
But I mean, this is a big this is a big pillar of one side of it for sure
I'm giving you guys way too much information
Can Anna sends anybody we need to be Mike so I had a conversation with Dan from flux today. We might have talked about that. I
Did see that you had a meeting with mr. Daniel Keller did I did I did wonderful man?
I met him and a woman on his team. I believe her name was Bonnie
Very nice folks. We we didn't talk for an incredibly long amount of time
We both had some ideas that we wanted to bring to the others
But you know, I told them I'm like we're we're here. We're on the same team
Like let's work together and figure out a way to do more
You'll see you'll see someone from flux on beyond the block sometime soon
You know Dan and I talked about doing a Twitter spaces together and sort of trying to bring the communities together
But yeah, I mean the sky's the limit. We've got a lot of things in the works
Well, one thing I have noticed ever since I've been in the Canadian ecosystem
Is I used to ask myself what like what the hell is flux and why does all these people own it?
Cadena and flux go hand-in-hand. It's almost like anyone who holds flux holds Cadena and vice versa. Yeah. Yeah
You know, I I was I was I wasn't joking earlier when I said that like I wish everybody in this space lock
Like you know if if Casper a hundred X's again and becomes the new staple
Fantastic, it's just good for our it's good for our space, right?
it's good for the world like whether we're the top dog or flux is the top dog or
Keisha vu or whatever the hell that dog coin that we apparently have is right like
It all it all helps right? It's it's it's bigger than us. This is the human layer, right?
It's not about us as 33 humans on this call
It's about all of the humans on the planet and however we can get to that spot
It's what I'm that's what I'm interested. I'm I hope it's Cadena and I hope my ass is involved
But if it's not it helps then I'm all for it
Another early partner of Cadena's was coin Metro who listed Cadena quite yeah, we have anything cooking with them
Um, I know there are some conversations. I've heard that name popping up
Really honestly don't know in what context but I have seen that being tossed around for different things
And I just don't know what those are
So like I want to revisit all those past partnerships
Right, like it's one of the reasons why I reached out to that George guy, right?
Like I've said it many times you can't you can't live in the past
But you sure as hell can learn from it and I want to learn everything I can around why people liked us and why people didn't
When well, I agree and I think some of those previous relationships need to be retouched and
When you can actually pitch them the new Cadena because I think there were some players on the old team that
rubbed rubbed people wrong
You know people kind of get footed on there and I think that's kind of what happened
But I you know, I feel confident that maybe you can build that relationship back. Yeah, I'm hoping I
Mean that that's the plan. I mean
I mean if you remember I'm the one that came on a
Campfire and said we were gonna let anybody that wanted back in telegram and discord that got banned to come on back
You know, so like we got to have those conversations, you know
If if we screwed up and if we screwed up and we rubbed somebody the wrong way, I will apologize to them
No problem, and I will work to fix whatever damage was caused
We just gotta we gotta be we've got to be I was gonna say man enough
But that's not appropriate that we have to be human enough right to admit when we were wrong and yeah
I mean, I'm more than happy to have a conversation with anyone. I invited the MW to have drinks with me
So I got I don't care let's have a conversation we're both people both human beings
You don't have to like me. I don't have to like you. We can work together. That's fine. It's people in this company
I'm not a huge fan of right. I work great with them doesn't matter
It's just about what yeah, you should be you should do business
Of course at the end of the day and again my opinion of people doesn't matter
Right. My opinion on marketing doesn't matter
Results matter and if you can help me I will be the nicest person you ever need
So that's sort of where we're at yep, no, I absolutely respect that I agree, you know when I was younger I didn't I
Was younger. I didn't really understand it now that I'm older
Understand how things work
Yeah, it's it's interesting right because
Like I don't know I would I would I would say I would say Kevin
I was probably the same way like I held grudges
Right. Like if you like if you did me wrong, you know, we're you were dead to me and
You know like I don't know I've just learned as I've gotten older right and had kids and everything else
It's like people make mistakes, right and mistakes don't define who you are. It was just a moment in time
Again, you know, I I talked earlier. I was I was I was big into mixed martial arts
I owned this organization here in the Midwest and I sold it to the UFC and I got to know a lot of those guys
Right and it's like you can see two people right jawing and talking and saying all these
terrible things to one another and then they fight and you get him in the cage and what's the first thing they do after the
Fight's over stay hug and they apologize to one another
Right, like I believe that you know
So sometimes you have to kick the hell out of each other before you can do that
But like at the end of the day, it's just business, right? They're trying to sell fights. I'm trying to
Sell fight club, right like whatever we can't talk about right like I get it
So yeah, it's like however I can accomplish my goal. I'm not gonna rest on my morals, right?
Like I'm not gonna be a bad person and I'm not going to you know
Be overly negative to people and stab them in the back
But we'll hug it out at the end of the day one one will be a winner one will be a loser
but we'll both be better people for it and again if I can do that and help this community out and
You know create some generational wealth if that's what people are here for I'm more than happy to try to do it
I'm gonna I'm gonna do it my way no matter what
No, I absolutely respect that it yeah you do
When you're running a business everybody's got their own
Just in their own business trying to take care of and most of the time it's not personal people are
They're trying to defend what they built and sometimes it works out and like you said when I was younger
Also, I would take things personally and I might would hold a grudge and as I've gotten older. I've learned that
Everybody I don't think anybody wakes up in the morning and rolls up the bed get some a cup of coffee and says
Let's see who I could go screw. Yeah. Yeah
Most people have the heart to go do the right thing. They want to do what's right
but I think we're we've gotten to a society of we take everything personal and
We shouldn't we've got to learn
The same kind of destination we need to help each other get there, you know
Try to not cut each other down
I mean, I'll tell you I'll tell you a quick story and then I do need to I do need to go spend some time with
My family, but when I was when I was a younger man
I was working for a telecom company called the US cellular right fortune 500 company
I was leading up digital and social and was really
turning the marketing department on its head and
We found we did a bunch of work
we found this amazing statistic from the National Highway Traffic Safety Council and I
Convinced right I convinced my CMO and I convinced my CEO that I was gonna get a million dollar budget
And I was gonna go build this campaign around
Distracted driving right because everybody in the telecom space whether it's AT&T Verizon, right?
They all have their sort of, you know, this is their plan and they're gonna you know convince you to not
you know drink and you know, not excuse me not drink and drive, but
You know text and drive and the statistic was is that?
I'm not probably quoting right but you're six times more likely to get into an automobile accident
Texting and driving than you are drinking and driving and that was an official statistic. So long story short. I
planned this thing for like six months and
It comes shoot week, right and we've hired this
Massive crew in New York City and we've bought three
New York City cabs and we've rigged them with hidden cameras and microphones and all this crap
so I get on my flight I head to New York and
stopped and doesn't land at LaGuardia and they send me into Pittsburgh and
I'm thinking how the hell am I gonna get there? I'm gonna miss this shoot
We're spending a million dollars on this project
so I meet up with these people and
I'm saying look I'm renting a car. We're gonna drive in this snowstorm from Pittsburgh to New York
It's gonna I'm gonna drive all night. It's gonna I'm gonna have to do it
I have to get there for this shoot. So I drive there get to this shoot. We pull the shoot off
It's incredible, right? We're piecing this thing together
ecstatic right this is a career defining piece of content and
Everything's set up. Everything's ready to go the night beforehand
It's probably 10 o'clock everything scheduled to go out at like 10 the next morning
It's my CMO and he's like you got to kill the project
Like what do you mean? I got to kill the project. I'm like, what are you talking about?
He's like, I talked to the CEO. There's a bunch of stuff going on in Congress, right?
Like we're doing some lobbying work. Like this is completely this is completely wrong for us right now
it can't go out and I was pissed and I was
Furious like six months worth of work a million dollar budget
Right, and I was furious. I was ready to quit. I was ready to walk out the door and
Called my agency. We pulled the plug right? Everybody's freaking out
That piece of video content that we spent it wasn't a million dollars to produce that included the paid media out
But we probably spent three hundred and fifty thousand dollars to build
Was donated to the National Highway Traffic Safety Council
For tax benefits and they launched it in partnership with our creative agency and it was shortlisted for a can lion
Which in the world of creative and video production around marketing is like the Academy Awards and
To be nominated for that and to be listed for that was amazing and I almost I almost quit over it
And like I'm thinking like this is like my defining moment
And it just sort of led me to believe and as I started doing more research and I still worked there for a long time
Afterwards right and I learned more and this is what brought me to the why right?
And that's the piece of why I asked why are we doing this? Why did we have to make that decision?
It's not to be a jerk. It's to understand
So what was happening was was on Congress was pushing telecom companies
To put tracking devices in all cars sold in the United States
So if a car was moving it would disable all
Of your phone systems so you couldn't listen to Spotify the passenger couldn't
surf on their phone in reality
The bill would have taken in eliminated like Google Maps where you couldn't use GPS on your phone
It'd have to be a standalone old-fashioned Garmin device
Long story short longer story short, right? I was pissed. I took it personally, right? I almost quit and
Once I sat back and I learned right and I started to understand everything happens for a reason and
That's I guess the biggest thing that you know, I took away from that is right
Like I just sort of it just sort of is right. It wasn't the greatest thing in the world
I remember like coming home and telling my wife and like being almost in tears because like this was something I was so dedicated to
But everything happens for a reason we might not understand it today
We might not understand it tomorrow, but right we did a lot of good for the National Highway Safety Traffic Commission
I got the opportunity to put a can lion on my resume, which is massive and
You know, I learned a lot about myself too. So
Everything happens for a reason
We're in this spot all of us together
Right and there's a reason for it and we don't know it today
We might not know it tomorrow
But I damn sure will promise you that we will understand why someday and all of the stuff
We're doing is gonna make a difference and I really believe that so I just wanted to share that with you guys
No, and I appreciate it and I agree 100% I think
we are all here for a reason and
it's it's kind of divine for me, especially when we went to the flocks and
Conference and we were in for a lot of help
Those of us that made it there
Really bought it and it was huge and it just made it that much more power, but you are right
I mean it's you're here for a reason and you know, I tell people all the time the business that I run
You know, I did other things and been in electronics and robotics and worked in the automotive industry
The only reason why I can do what I'm doing is because I've spent 25 years
Growing and building to get to the point where yeah, of course, it's a it's a it's a process that we're all
Walking out and we're all where we're at. Yes, and we've all got a place to go
so every day we learn like you said whether we're making mistakes or
We we do something wrong. It's okay. It's okay. Like that's how you learn
I've had great bosses and I've had horrible losses and I will tell you I learned equally as much from
It's not like I only learned from the good bosses. I learned from the from the ones that weren't so great. So
We it's just a process that we're all working through. Well, I I did drop I dropped the old YouTube link
In this and this so take a look, you know, I'm really proud of it. That's not the final cut
But I think it's pretty impactful and it's just one of those things that you know
I'm just really proud of so I took a lot from it right and it was a bad situation
And man, I learned more from that than any of the other campaigns I put out there that you know
Did go the way I wanted so
It'll all work out in the end
Or we're not going anywhere and kind of talked back earlier
You know community might not be huge right now, but it is very strong and we're very
Interwoven and when the time is right everybody will pounce and the community will scale up again and we'll accomplish all of our goals or
There you go, I don't have much time left
Like action said, you know if there's a two-year window
No, I overshared a lot I appreciate you guys having me on and let me talk you through this stuff so
No, and you don't understand
How much it means for us to come into space and talk?
I know a lot of people the main reason that we started this space Ron and I was for this reason
We wanted to get the work
We wanted a place for us to come hang and chill and chill
we wanted you guys to be able to jump in here and drop some out and
It kind of keeps us all motivated. I think there's not a person in this space. It's not gonna end this feeling good about
I'm glad man. It's genuine
So we we just really appreciate you join
You know our power and share I never mean to take over like the whole thing and talk the whole time
My wife yells at me every time I do that
Yeah, I mean I appreciate the opportunity to chat and you know again, we don't always have to agree
Right, like, you know, we don't always have to be and that's okay
You know the marmalade NG v2 conversations a perfect example earlier like I don't care which one does better
I just want the community to have what they need and that's all that we care about
Might not always come on that way. It's all that we care about
No, and I agree and I think it yeah, I mean I I try not you know
Like you said I get frustrated about my own things because we're building our
We have our obstacles and we're waiting on things at the same time
There's a lot of inside things that go on that we
We just sit back and hope
You guys are making the right decisions shit. So am I
Right, yeah, you know it's hard right because again we it's this fine line
We are a we are a privately owned company with a ton of
that aren't traditional shareholders and have an ownership stake in this right whether it's
Perceived whether it's real right like I don't want to argue any of that
But you guys are just as passionate if not more passionate sometimes than we are and we do recognize that and I know that
You know, I know that we've been blasted in the past right probably some truth to it of you know
not listening to the community and
There's a difference I said this I'm trying to think of who I said this to the other day
Like there's an old there's an old movie from the 90s called white men can't jump and there's a line in the movie where
Woody Harrelson's character and Wesley Snipes character are talking about Jimi Hendrix and Wesley Snipes says, you know
You're you're white you you can you can listen to Jimmy, but you can't hear
right, and I think there's a big difference between listening and hearing and
Listening is the response
Right. So so we we've always listened
Right. I think the disconnect is sometimes you guys might not have heard you guys might not have felt you were heard
But I want to change that right? So again, you know, I'm sometimes it takes two steps forward
So you can take three steps back, but you know, hopefully, you know, I'm proving
With actions and not words that we are hearing you
We are listening and now we're now we're conversing
So this is the reason why I got rid of campfire because we didn't need it
I'm here you have a question you asked me might be to you know
This event I will come here and I will answer every question. Honestly, so there's no reason to make it over complicated
Right waste time producing something when you've got access to us anytime you want. So I'm just really grateful
Yeah, no, absolutely and I agree and I you know, I don't and I may speak for a good bit of people
But there were times where I
Now I didn't leave because we knew the tech we knew
There we knew there was some internal struggles going on and we were getting frustrated because it was affecting our building
We weren't going anywhere. We just wanted to fix that's why
the fresh air for a lot of
Projects, I mean I will give I will give a lot of credit to Stewart and will
And this is not bullshit, right? Like this is from the bottom of my heart like it's hard being a founder
Right and building something as successful as this and putting your blood sweat and tears into it and saying at the end of the day
Don't know that aspect of my business and I need to bring somebody in that is better at that than I am
And I've worked for a lot of people that that never would have been a possibility. So the fact that they've
The fact that they've brought me in and let me do the things they've let me do and given me the ball
not only in my team, but from a business perspective standpoint and listened and let me have hard conversations and
Yeah, there's pushback and yeah, both sides get defensive
But we're all making the what we think is the best decision for the business
So I do have to give them props and I would say this even if it wasn't recorded, right?
They they recognized that they they tried the marketing thing for a while and they weren't very good at it
And I've told them that and they've told me that and I'll continue to tell them that right
But they had the balls to say that they had the balls to be like look we can't keep going this way
So I appreciate that right like that's a trait that not many founders have
Are you gonna say where you gonna say something wrong?
Mike I want to say I appreciate you for coming out tonight and getting up here and
Chat down with all of us. It's a big thing
Hank I appreciate that dude. You've you've been very supportive all you guys have so it's it's the least I can do
So I just I just want to keep telling everybody right like we are going to make it things are going to turn around
right whether the market turns around or not and
Yeah, I mean just give me a little bit of time and keep the faith
And I think the joke I made a while back was trust the process
and hopefully a little bit of that process has shown itself and I've tried to been really open and honest about it, so
again, I'm the first to say I don't always know what the right answer is but
We're gonna try stuff some of its work some of it hasn't my community strategy did not work
Right, so I'm pivoting. I'll take full responsibility for that. So
You know more than anything else. I just want you guys to know that I'm here
Right, like Ron, you know Ron and I are talking about stuff. That's not even Kadena related
So yeah, whatever you guys need like I care about human beings
But yeah, I just just want to be a part, right?
I want I want to be viewed just like you guys grinding in this community trying to do what's best for everybody else
Well, and you guys might hear this train in the background of the train going by the house right now, but like Kevin was saying earlier
Hold on now I'm having a brain fart and I have no idea what Kevin was saying earlier or without us
Don't know I'm giving up it's all good. Oh
Oh, oh, oh I got you. That's the reason why we're here to answer what you're saying
It's the reason why we're here. It's the reason why we started this thing, right?
We're not trying to have some official Kadena thing where we have to make announcements every week
And we have to you know, maybe kick people off you or maybe saying a little bit of fun
No, we're here to hang out and talk about the week up
We appreciate you jumping on here and you know kind of being the CMO sometimes, you know making you know
Answering some formal questions and whatnot
But at the same time just being here and being a guy in bullshit
You know, I mean I I look forward to it every Thursday night
So I can drink some beers and sit back and have you guys make fun of me and make me laugh
You know, they're going to so so we're gonna have some beers in person though
Right, cuz that's the human layer, too
Oh, yeah, we we definitely right we definitely want to start getting out to where everybody's at, right?
I want to start, you know doing this whole, you know, like in-person meetup in different places
So, you know that'll be coming too. So maybe maybe flux, you know
Maybe that event later this year is a good opportunity for us
So if you guys are gonna be there and I'm still welcome at that time
Then I will do my best to get there and drinks will be on me
There we go last this past year they had free drinks and I took advantage that's exactly why I offered Ron
Anyway boys, I appreciate your time as always the fact that there are 27 or 30 people still listening to me ramble for this
amount of time still blows my mind so
We are small but we are mighty and I always have your back so whatever I can do to help support the community
Hopefully you guys realize that I mean that and I'm always here. So just let me know
Maybe we appreciate it. Yeah, but we appreciate your time and you come in and spend it with us. No worries
I'm gonna go eat dinner and get these kids situated. So have a great night boys
Thanks, Mike. Thanks Mike. Good night
All right. Well, Kevin Hank
John pitbull Bushito might as well wrap it up. We've been on here for coming up on two and a half hours
I've had a good time. I need to get some dinner as well. My girlfriend also just got home
So I'm gonna have to do that, you know
Yeah, no, let's do with me I just pitbull Bushito, I didn't know if they wanted to say anything
Oh, of course, uh, you know, I just wanted to drop in and say hey, I've been super busy
Yeah, Adrian if you couldn't maybe set some time aside next week, I see you emoting down there
We'll get you up next week. We'll talk about some echo gov stuff
Yeah, we've got I've been I don't know if you can hear me or not
But I've been having to go over to I've been having to go over to Lahaina
We may have to do the same thing if we can't speak we may have to get him up next week also
Pitbull Bushito, do you guys have plans to build on marmalade ng?
No, I think he is I can I can hear you no, you're good, right
Hey, am I am I here though or not there?
Yeah, just dropping in to say hey been kind of the last one. I want to try to wrap it up, Ron
We'll go ahead and maybe we can get back next week and
I think some of us could hear him. It's about I don't think Kevin can hear him
Yeah, actually I think you're like that. I think he's like the only one that can't hear me. That's okay
He got a sword out of it. I
Hear you pitbull. I hear everybody. That's just funny part
Okay, we'll give him a second to talk and y'all let me know
I'm just dropping in to say hey, I was just listening in
Life's been kind of busy lately because I've been having to go over to Lahaina to help with the fire stuff
That happened a few months ago. So
Just have one day off here in the middle doing some errands and stuff and just wanted to say hello
Well, we appreciate you dropping in we appreciate anybody from Kadena any projects and holders and community members at all
We appreciate the support. So thank you for that
Well, it's good to see you guys and I'll try to see if I can make it better on time next week
All good up to you if you can we look forward to seeing you if you can't no worries
we'll try to get maybe Mike back in the house next week and
We'll definitely have Adrian in the house next week if he can get some time for us and we'll talk about some echo
Gov stuff, which is actually exciting. It's um, I believe it's like a new downmaker kind of like swarms
So he actually showed us some early access down in Fort Lauderdale
Kevin if you remember that it was some pretty cool stuff
All right. Well, I guess we'll go ahead and wrap it up. I
Appreciate talking to all you guys, you know, if you haven't follow me follow Kev follow anybody who spoke
If you don't know about Kadena check it out. I check out our projects mine
You can find it wizard arena net or on Twitter at Wizards arena Kevin. You can do your plugs if you'd like
Yeah, come figure us out at sgk gaming calm and check us out some of our NFTs on a soco dot XYZ
There you go check this out take care. Thanks Kevin. Thanks Ron for hosting. Have a good Friday everybody. Yeah
Thanks John here for coming up speaking. Yeah. Thanks John. Thanks Hank. Thanks people Bushito Mike action all you guys action
Yeah, Katie a to the moon to the moon, baby. Y'all have a great night
Take care. See you in a week