Sky King on Growing up in Hawaii, Quitting to Work At a Smoothie Bar & Building The Future of Podcasts (The Pathless Path Podcast)

[01:44] Paul: Without further ado, let's dive in. This episode is sponsored by CrowdHealth. Stop supporting the broken health insurance system with your hard-earned dollars. Go to joincrowdhealth.com now and experience freedom from health insurance. Right now you can get your first 3 months for just $99 per month. That's almost 50% off the normal price and a lot less than a high deductible healthcare plan.

Just go to joincrowdhealth.com and use promo code Boundless at signup. That's joincrowdhealth.com, promo code Boundless. Mandatory disclaimer: CrowdHealth is not health insurance. It's a totally different way of paying for healthcare. Terms and conditions may apply. Welcome to The Pathless Path.

I'm Paul Millerd, and in this podcast, we examine the invisible scripts that run our lives and dare to imagine new stories for work and life. Already live from Austin. I am talking with Sky King today.

[02:44] Sky King: Welcome.

[02:45] Paul: Welcome to The Pathless Path podcast.

[02:47] Sky King: Excited to be here.

[02:48] Paul: I want to introduce you. You have done a lot of things. I'm really interested in your path, the journey you've taken from being raised in Hawaii to going to Indiana to the middle of Connecticut to Austin and the journey you've taken with work. Done a number of things. You are the founder of a company, Modern Stoa, which I think the coolest way to describe it is you're trying to rethink how we do media advertising and communicate in the world.

[03:20] Sky King: For sure.

[03:22] Paul: Really just inspired by you as a friend. Thank you. I think as someone who is really channeling a very pure optimism into the world and want to explore that as well. But welcome to the podcast.

[03:36] Sky King: Thanks, bro. I'm inspired by you as well. It's been phenomenal getting to know you.

[03:40] Paul: I wanted to start with your name.

[03:42] Sky King: Okay.

[03:43] Paul: So when did you start being known or calling yourself Sky?

[03:48] Sky King: So my parents named me that. So, like, from birth.

[03:55] Paul: I thought you referred to yourself as some another name.

[03:59] Sky King: Okay. Sky is my middle name, right? Andrew is my first name, but my parents have never called me Andrew before. Once, not even a single time.

[04:07] Paul: Yeah. Okay, so I was right. It was Andrew.

[04:10] Sky King: Yeah, but literally never said that word to me. My mom has never looked at me and said Andrew before my entire existence.

[04:15] Paul: Do you know why they decided to call you that?

[04:18] Sky King: So, yeah, Sky King was— why Sky? Okay, so Sky King was a famous pilot TV show. My dad grew up in the '40s, and so he was alive before TV, which is crazy. And so on the radio, they listened to this Sky King the Pilot, and the first radio show that became a TV show was Sky King the Pilot. Both my parents are pilots. My dad was obsessed with flying.

He was colorblind, so he couldn't be in the Air Force. Shout out to Top Gun. But he was obsessed with the name, so he wanted to keep it, and the last name's King. And the reason they did Andrew in front was because my mom, who comes from the East Coast, was a little bit more concerned that I'd get made fun of or something. So she wanted me to have a backup plan. So Andrew was my backup plan.

[05:03] Paul: When you entered the corporate world, did you stick with Sky or did you go to Andrew?

[05:08] Sky King: 100% stick with Sky. But I couldn't get my security badge to switch, my freaking super nerdy badge. And I remember there was two very distinct instances that were pretty funny. So one, At orientation, when I was sitting there, this kid next to me kept going, Andrew, Andrew, Andrew. And I literally, because I've never been called that in my entire life, didn't respond. And then he tapped me on the shoulder.

He's like, Andrew. And I'm like, are you talking to me? He was like, yeah, that's your name, right? And I'd already introduced myself to him as Sky, but he honestly just probably read my badge and was like, I can't remember his name, blah, blah, blah. And I was like, oh yeah, but no. And then the other time I was sitting with this lady, And she was like, I'm so sorry.

And I was like, what do you mean? She's like, I'm so sorry about your name. Like, that must have been really embarrassing for you growing up. I was like, wow, what? That was tight. Like, what are you talking about?

[06:01] Paul: Tell me a little bit more about your parents. So I heard this story on another podcast you did with Eric Jorgensen. You're talking about the influence your grandfather had on your parents or your father. Amazing story about returning from a sleepaway camp, I believe. I'd love to hear more there and maybe there's more about your grandfather.

[06:27] Sky King: [Speaker:ROBERT_LEONARD] For sure. So my dad and my grandfather's relationship was super complex. He was a really good person, but also kind of a bad person. But the story you're referring to is my dad grew up incredibly poor. So, so poor. So poor that if he went and made 50 cents when he was out doing his stuff, just around the neighborhood kind of thing in LA, he would— and he came home with that 50 cents, his parents would take it from him.

So he got this pattern of, "Hey, you have to spend everything," which we can talk about that later too. But so essentially incredibly poor. They're going on their first vacation of his entire life. Never been on a vacation before. It was a family reunion about 5-hour drive away, 5-hour with 5 kids in the car. They drive up to this place in Big Bear and it says whites only.

And this is in the early '50s. And they drive, they'd never even stop. They just drive in, drive out because my grandfather wouldn't put up with that kind of stuff. He just thought it was It was wrong. Humans are humans. And so, but that was my dad didn't understand at the time because it was like he's never been on a vacation before.

All these other people around him get to go on it. And it was a really important lesson, but it was also sucked for him.

[07:46] Paul: I'm sure as a kid that's annoying, but something that probably sticks with you.

[07:50] Sky King: I mean, that's the one positive story I have for my grandfather coming down.

[07:54] Paul: Yeah. And how did your dad take that spirit injected or even pass it on to you?

[08:00] Sky King: Yeah. So what was interesting is how he passed it forward into society. So he was married to a famous tennis player named Billie Jean King, and he went to her when she was the greatest tennis player in the world and was like, "You're being treated like a second-class citizen. You have to stand up. You're more valuable than this." And so he helped her and convinced her to build women's tennis, help work on Title IX, that women should be paid for their sports. It's not just amateur athletics, all of this stuff.

So that's been super influential. My dad my whole life was basically like, he would've been happy with me being like a barista or being like a CEO of some like big corporation as long as I was happy and a good person. The only rule I had as a kid was be a good person. Like my dad never said no to me my entire life. I could do whatever I wanted, but just be a good person.

[08:46] Paul: Bring that alive. Like what does that actually mean? Like what did it mean to you? What does it mean to you now?

[08:52] Sky King: It was honestly when at the time when like obviously when I was living with them in high school, it was a little bit harder because it's pretty ambiguous. You know what I mean? Like, what does that mean? Uh, and it felt like a lot of pressure, to be honest. And now it's just like, when I simplify it down, like, what does it mean to be a good person? I think it really just means to be honest.

Like, you don't have to be a martyr, you don't have to be incredibly sacrificial. Like, you just have to be honest. And that's also, like, I think, a pathway to heaven over hell, uh, because I believe heaven and hell actually are an earth-based thing. Like, you experience it. Like, if you see somebody struggling with schizophrenia and alcoholism on the street, freaking out in the middle of the day, that's hell. And they experienced it.

And I think that what the Bible and what all of what the Western canon is, is just the West's attempt to understand how to live a good life. So it's almost like a Stoic philosophy applied to all religion is how I think about it.

[09:46] Paul: Robert Leonard You've talked to me a bit about growing up with your father. He was sort of retired. I when he had you growing up. Talk to me about that and kind of what you saw as like what were the proper paths in life you thought about taking.

[10:02] Sky King: Yeah. So when, when I was like 4, so we were back and forth between Hawaii and California until I was 4. And then when I started school, went full-time in Hawaii, I went to kindergarten. I started kindergarten early in California at 4. And then first grade onward in Hawaii. And then basically by the time we went to Hawaii, my dad was kind of just cruising.

It was funny because I was just with him last weekend and he technically became a real estate agent during that time because most of our money was in real estate at the time. We had numerous houses across the country and then a bunch in Hawaii as well. And then I was making a joke to him last weekend and I was like, did you ever sell a single house in your 5 years as a real estate agent? He's like, I think I did. I mostly played bridge on the computer. I was like, I know, because I'd come over, I'd walk from school over to hang out.

He'd just be playing bridge. So then I'd set up my computer game on like my computer and just be like cruising. So it's good. He did, I think, sell at least a house, which is hilarious. But it was like he always walked. I never took the bus.

He always picked me up, dropped me off at school. My dad's whole goal in life was to have kids. That was all he cared about. Which like his first wife, like they had an abortion and that like fucked him up. And he actually, he would talk to Time Magazine about it, which is not a good moment in their relationship, but he was so distraught by it because his whole thing was, "I just want to be a father." And so then he also had a rule, he'll never say no to me. And he told me that.

And it was really strange moral hazard that really worked out because I never asked for anything because I knew he wouldn't say no. And so I just didn't ask for stuff. I can think of the 5 things I asked for. It was like, we saw Elton John on TV. I was like, "I want to go tell Elton John." We got to go hang out with him backstage. It was sick.

I was like, "I want to go to China. Send me to China." In 4th grade. Same thing in 7th grade. I only asked for very big things, but never was little stuff. So I don't know. I'm kind of getting tangential here, I guess.

No.

[11:59] Paul: Well, it kind of helped you internalize a sense of agency.

[12:03] Sky King: For sure.

[12:04] Paul: And responsibility. I actually grew up somewhat similar with— I think my parents had an intuitive sense that I could kind of self-manage. And so there weren't many rules.

[12:14] Sky King: Yep.

[12:14] Paul: So I sort of just self-regulated. And then when I wanted stuff, they would move the world to make it happen.

[12:21] Sky King: Yeah. No, 100%. I think that's probably why being in a corporate situation is so bad because there's so many rules, dude.

[12:29] Paul: You know what I mean?

[12:30] Sky King: Yeah.

[12:31] Paul: Yeah. So you're raised with this autonomy, agency, seeing a father taking a different path, and then you disappoint them in the worst way by getting an impressive, stable corporate job.

[12:43] Sky King: They were so confused. They're so confused. Like, what are you doing? Like, especially because, like, not only is it, like, a boring corporate job, but also, like, I don't take pharmaceutical drugs. Like, I never have. Like, I've taken Advil sub-5 times.

Like, any NSAIDs, like, nonsteroidal anti-inflammatories, like, I've taken maybe 5 times. So I just don't take pharmaceuticals. Like, what am I doing?

[13:07] Paul: Yeah, how did you— well, we can backtrack a little because you Ended up in Indiana going to university. And it seems like you had the sense that you needed to kind of experience a different environment, go to the middle of the country, get a different perspective. And maybe this was an extension of that?

[13:28] Sky King: No, for sure it was. So my senior year in high school, I was like captain of the tennis team, president of student body, and I got in trouble for, uh, I got in trouble for hooking up with my president, my, uh, secretary and treasurer of the student body. And we had like a Kahlua milkshake. And when you like are in student government and tennis at my high school, you sign this thing that says like you cannot have like a sip of alcohol. Like, you sign that. And so we did.

And the reason why, like, the hooking up's important is because it spread around the whole fucking school. It was really annoying. And then I basically had to step down. And in that moment when I was like 17, I was kind of like, okay, I need to find a new path. And so Wabash, literally I was looking at Columbia and Tufts and Wabash just showed up at my house and I wanted to slow down time. I felt like things were getting really chaotic energetically for me.

And so I went to, I went and visited and it was like this all-male school in the middle of nowhere where I felt like I could become the best version of myself. And I was like, let's go.

[14:33] Paul: What was that sense though? Like you had this inner like drive. I sense this deeply in you. Like you have this drive, like I have this energy inside me I need to express. I have this like higher purpose. Where does that come from?

[14:49] Sky King: I do at some level think it's genetic, like, because that's the thing that like when I was growing up, the thing that I wanted to be, even when I was like 10 years old, 8 years old, When people ask, like, do you want to be an astronaut? Do you want to— I was like, no, I want to be an entrepreneur. Because, like, I saw the way that my dad used business to change the world. Like, to literally— like, the money was just a second thing, but capitalism is this, like, beautiful mechanism to create value and to, like, influence society. And, you know, like, when— like, people in our generation don't know this, but women in my dad's generation are literally treated as, like, lesser than men. Like, it's complete second class.

Yeah, full second class. And what they did is they realized that it was more popular and the markets enjoyed women's tennis more, so they were able to make more money and got paid really, really well for it. And it was this whole crazy women's lib movement and it was sick and it was cool that you can actually build a better world through capitalism.

[15:48] Paul: You find yourself in the corporate world. You're in the middle of Connecticut, I think.

[15:55] Sky King: Yeah, Indiana, Connecticut, back and forth.

[15:57] Paul: So you're helping sell oncology drugs, which is definitely worthwhile, but you had a sense that, okay, this is not my path.

[16:07] Sky King: Yeah. No, it was definitely not my path. And yeah, the oncology stuff was really interesting. So I worked for two different companies during that time. Technically only worked for one, but they shipped me out to the other one in Danbury, Connecticut. But I learned a lot about So I was doing global pricing and global branding.

So it was cool because I got to look at the entire healthcare systems across the world and start to see which ones work, which ones don't work. If you're curious, I think Japan and Germany are probably two of the best as far as single-payer healthcare, but also private insurance markets. They can pay for innovation, but everybody has healthcare. So there are models that we could do. The United States is pretty wonky about how we think about it. Out there and I'm just like, I took the Connecticut gig just so I could get out of Indiana and so I could spend 3 days a week in New York, which is where I lived after high school with my godmother.

And I was just like, I can't be in Indiana anymore. I was over it at that point. So I took it just to escape. But in the transit back and forth, I got really into podcasts. And it was weird because this is right during 2015, before the 2016 election. And it was like I was listening, living this dichotomy of East Coast establishment, Trump could never win, but talking about him 100% of the time, to Midwest, Trump flags everywhere, Trump could win, nobody's talking about him.

It's a very interesting dichotomy. The left-leaning establishment just loves to talk about Trump. Loves it.

[17:36] Paul: [Speaker:TREY_LOCKERBIE] So true.

[17:37] Sky King: [Speaker:ROBERT_LEONARD] It's so true. They love it. They got him elected, which is hilarious, which goes into the advertising model and whatnot. So I'm listening to all these different podcasts, everybody from Last podcast on the left to Joe Rogan, just like, what is going on? And I felt like the podcasts were actually telling me things that were way more accurate than what I was seeing in the media. And the biggest one being that Trump could win the election.

And then when he won, I was like, whoa. And that just sparked this curiosity in me. I was like, how could they have been so wrong? And then I started to read, I talked to Ryan Holiday, I emailed him. I was like, how did this happen? I want to understand media more.

I want to build a company in media. That helps solve this problem. And he sent me a book list. The first book was The Brass Check.

[18:21] Paul: Listening to podcasts to emailing Ryan Holiday. That's a pretty big leap. I mean, it was just a cold email. He has the experience of hacking media from American Apparel and stuff. But why? How do you— What goes through your mind that's like, "I'm going to send Ryan an email?" I'd been reading Ryan's stuff at that point for 3 years.

[18:43] Sky King: He had been I fundamentally believe, and Jack Butcher talks a lot about this, but mentorships are all out there. They're all in the books that you have the opportunity to read. And Ryan had been a very impactful author to me. It's funny because now we're kind of associates, which is hilarious, but we went to rival high schools. Oh, wow. Yeah.

So I was a pretty big fan.

[19:03] Paul: In Hawaii?

[19:04] Sky King: No. So I went to high school in California. Oh, you went— Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And so he went to Granite Bay and I went to Nevada Union High School. But I just, in college, I really enjoyed his stuff.

A big reason Caroline and I are dating is because he wrote an article about 20 things you should do in your 20s. And one of them was being in a relationship that's serious and all of the benefits you can have from that. And that was when I decided, I was like, oh, I guess I should probably consider that. And then I met Caroline and now we're getting married. So weirdly owe a lot to Ryan. He also was the reason I started working for Aubrey.

He—

[19:37] Paul: So back up.

[19:38] Sky King: Okay.

[19:38] Paul: First email to Ryan. When's the first time you emailed Ryan and what was going through your mind when It was like 2016, I think. Were you emailing other people at the time?

[19:47] Sky King: No, just Ryan. Well, here's the thing about Ryan though, he will respond to every person's email he gets.

[19:51] Paul: I think I've gotten a reply from him.

[19:53] Sky King: Yeah, he responds to everyone's. Yeah. Yeah. So it's not like I did anything special to get that response, but I was just like, okay, this guy has been impactful in his writing and I just needed like an answer because I was just like so fed up at my work and I saw this like contradiction in the universe. And there's like Adam Robinson quote, and it's basically like, um, there's nothing wrong in the world, it's your model that's wrong with the world. Like, everything in the world makes sense.

When something doesn't make sense, it's not the world not making sense, it's your model. And it just— I had this like, like kind of like aha moment where I was like, oh shit, like all of this comes down to the monetization system of media and this is the outcome. That we got because the customers are not the people receiving it. The customers are the brands and the advertisers.

[20:39] Paul: So in 2016, you sort of had this idea like this needs to be changed, but it seems like you felt that with the force of God.

[20:49] Sky King: It was the quake moment for me. It was like, I've always known I want to be an entrepreneur. I always want to do something that could add value. And it finally felt like I was at a place where like, oh, this is the thing I can do. It was something that nobody else is saying or seeing and it was so clear to me.

[21:04] Paul: Well, and I think this is powerful too because I get emails from people sometimes and they ask you questions like, can you do this for me? I imagine what Ryan saw in that email was like, oh, wow, this person's engaged, connected to this vision and he's going somewhere. So it's like those people are so much fun to help.

[21:26] Sky King: Yeah. And he continued to help me in weird ways. So then 2 years later when I was really ready to leave, I emailed him again. And I was basically like, I'm in a pharma company. I know media is the path. Like I went through this whole book thing, obsessed with the brass check, like totally media pilled now, advertising pilled.

And I'm just like, what's going on? And he was like, you should go work for Gary Vee. And I just, it was right when Conspiracy was coming out, which is one of my favorite books of his. And my friend Aristo, he did the research for it and it was sick. But I was like, "Gary Vee's the worst. What are you talking about?

I just watched you interview— I literally just watched him interview you by talking the entire time when I wanted to hear from you about conspiracy. It was an awful interview." And he was basically like, "Check him out." And then that next podcast was Aubrey on doing his book. And then Aubrey basically said on that podcast, "My mom lost to Billie Jean King at Wimbledon in the semifinals." And I was like, oh, fuck.

[22:29] Paul: Like a sign from heaven.

[22:31] Sky King: Yeah, for sure. I literally called Billy immediately. Do you know who this woman is? She's like, oh yeah, have you met her? Is she doing okay? I was like, I think I want to go work for your son.

Can you call her? She's like, find her number. I'm like, okay. So I just literally go on Google, reverse, do all those sketchy number searches to find her. She's had two last names and she was that. Go back, find 7 numbers.

My dad being the saint he is, calls all 7 of them because I wasn't going to make Billy until he finds the right one. And him and Kathy were friends back in the '70s, like we're homies. So he's like, "Kathy, it's Larry King. Billy would love to talk to you. Is that cool?" Because it was going to have a lot more clout coming from her. And then I finally find the right number.

My dad and her catch up, send it to Billy. They catch up. And then that gets me an interview with Aubrey. And I'm staying in this apartment complex.

[23:20] Paul: Oh, no way.

[23:20] Sky King: Yeah, yeah, yeah. With one of my best friends, Dan, who you should meet next week. He's coming into town for Consensus. He's a sick dude. As I'm coming down to interview, I still technically work the big pharma job, but you'll love this. So 2.5 years into the big pharma job, I was trying to figure out how to leave.

Dan had just gotten furloughed essentially. So then he left to go, he was going to go get his MBA at Cornell, but he's doing crypto stuff in between. And I was like, but he got 6 months severance. And I was like, how do I do that? So I found, I knew that it was kind of like an age time period where we were trying to get rid of a lot of older people. So I put myself into a position that was exclusively middle management old people because I knew that they would across the board fire all those people.

And so that happened in February of 2018. And I'm like, yes, I'm about to get like 7 months severance. I can go like be a podcaster.

[24:17] Paul: Bet your pay was too low to get laid off, right?

[24:20] Sky King: Dude, They basically looked at it and they're like, "Look, you are young. We want you to stay. Just find a job within the company. No pressure. We won't technically fire you to start that time period. You have as much time as you want.

Just find a new job in the company." You're like, "No, lay me off." I was like, "No." And my boss at the time was technically in Austria. So then I said, "Fuck it." And I became Big Head from Silicon Valley. I literally was traveling everywhere, hanging out, having a great time. I had no responsibility or job from February. And then And during this time, I'm talking to my boss's boss and I'm like, "Hey, could I work remotely potentially? My girlfriend just moved to Nashville.

Can I just work remotely?" She's like, "No, you have to be here." And I would barely be in the office. I go in the office 2 days a week. I was like, "Okay, whatever. This is ridiculous." And I just had nothing to do. And my boss at the time, or the person who was my boss before the whole firing thing went down, she started to take focus on me again, have me do stuff. And I was like, "Oh, this is a problem." I was like, Monica, I'm looking for other stuff.

I think I'm— I tried to become a Schwarzman Fellow in China, didn't get in. And then the Aubrey thing happened. And so I'm like, I'm here during the work week interviewing with Aubrey and I'm getting emails from my boss like, hey Scott, can we meet? We should probably connect. And I knew what was going to happen. And they literally actually let me go.

And I'm so grateful for my boss's boss for this, but she literally, knowing I had another job with Aubrey, she knew that completely on the table. "Let me go." She did it. She intensely canceled our meeting on July 6th so that we could meet on July 7th, which means I was there for 3 years on the day, which added another month of severance. So I ended up getting 7 months severance.

[26:00] Paul: That's my biggest regret from the corporate world. I never got laid off.

[26:03] Sky King: You got to find a way, bro.

[26:05] Paul: I was too skilled.

[26:06] Sky King: You got to find a way, bro.

[26:07] Paul: I was too good at my job.

[26:08] Sky King: It's funny because when I tell my friends that I was fired, they're like, "Yeah, but you weren't. You literally chose to slowly—" I was like, "No, but I technically was." I got paid severance. It was sick.

[26:17] Paul: You get a job with Aubrey. Aubrey Marcus, a podcaster, has done a bunch of stuff. He started Onnit, I think, with Joe Rogan.

[26:27] Sky King: Yeah, they co-founded Onnit together. Sold it by now though.

[26:31] Paul: But they had a presence down here in Austin. You came and were pretty much just willing to do anything.

[26:37] Sky King: Yes. Yeah.

[26:38] Paul: You just like, what was your goal? Like, you just, I want to get somewhere in the podcast world. I don't care. I'm just like, It's all about learning at this point.

[26:47] Sky King: Like the upstream actual goal and how I felt emotionally about it was I wanted to live an intentional life that felt like an adventure. So like a part of that was like, I'm going to quit my big boy job, be fired, but like very intentionally. And I'm going to go send it on whatever I can find. Like I know there's these moments and Seth Godin calls it salto mortale, the leap of faith, leap of death. You just have to go. You get to that point where you're like, I'm going for it.

I'm done. And that's what that moment was for me. And so I meet with him and I'm like, yo dude, you could do so much better marketing-wise. You don't have anybody doing this, this, this, this, and this. And he was like, you'd be interested in that? I'm like, yeah, 100%.

I could crush that. And he's like, well, I don't have a job for you right now. You can go work the front desk at the Onnit Gym. And I was like— And he's like, maybe it'll work out. And I was like, Cool. So yeah, I went from like super travel, you know, big company to making smoothies at a gym.

But finally your parents are probably—

[27:48] Paul: My parents totally made sense.

[27:49] Sky King: They had no curio— they were like, okay, this one makes sense.

[27:52] Paul: So you have the opposite challenge a lot of people have, which is that like when most people are taking that leap, their parents like, what are you doing? How can you give up the benefits?

[28:01] Sky King: That's what Caroline's parents are like. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, my parents are like, this one finally makes sense. Finally, Sky is, uh— And there was— when they came and visited me, they're so happy. They're happy to see me happy. Like, even again, I was making $13 an hour and they were just like stoked.

They just loved Austin. They saw the energy, they saw the people, they saw the environment. Like, we had the shitty apartment and like, but they loved Austin and they hated Indiana. They're like, what are you doing? So it was, and honestly it was all, it had nothing to do with the set or the setting. They could just tell based off of how I was being in it and it just felt way better.

Yeah.

[28:34] Paul: And In part of that time, you had this idea that you wanted to build this different way of monetizing podcasts.

[28:40] Sky King: That's from 2016. I wrote the idea in an email, and this is using Web3, using crypto. This is from 2016. This is 2016, 2017.

[28:49] Paul: And we're sitting here in 2022 and you've sort of done this. Yeah, for sure. You said in another podcast, it was kind of shocking to realize you actually did it. Yeah. And I think this is an interesting thing about paths. We don't realize we're really on our way in the midst of it until we're actually looking back.

[29:11] Sky King: Yeah. This is potentially controversial, but there's one thing, I have this consistent thing where I get so zoned in on what I'm doing that I'm not appreciating everything that's going around me. And I will say marijuana is a powerful tool to make you realize, oh wait, This all just happened, like to feel gratitude. Yeah. Like it, you have, and it's just like an, you can also use like a sauna or an ice bath, but you need something that'll change your state to foster awareness to be like, oh, I was on autopilot for a second. I wasn't aware because like we just have as humans like this ability to just like go deep and focus on very specific things.

And that's kind of, it can be a tragedy if you aren't like constantly being grateful for it, constantly coming back to the awareness of it.

[29:53] Paul: Yeah. Have you gotten better at that now?

[29:55] Sky King: Way better. Like 1,000 times better. Yeah. Yeah. It's been fantastic, to be honest.

[30:01] Paul: Yeah. We don't have to go too deep into the story, but basically, like, you worked with Aubrey, you helped him scale his podcast, you slowly just started helping other people. I think the interesting thing there is you were sort of just being yourself. I think, like, you're very natural when you're helping people and, like, excited about other people who are doing cool stuff. Have you been aware of like, "Oh, that's how I like to show up. Here's how I can actually inject that with what I'm building." No.

[30:30] Sky King: You just saying that just now, honestly, it all just made sense to me completely. So it was a revelation for me, but no, it's totally— It literally was just like, "Oh, how can I be helpful?" And I enjoy that. You add value when you're helpful and these people had big audiences and big missions and they weren't making any money. And it was like, "I could probably figure that out." I mean, this has been a realization for me, like on my path.

[30:51] Paul: I only realize now looking back at my previous path, I wasn't able to do those things. I get so pumped when I'm able to like help people and engage with people and like help them navigate their paths or make sense of what they're good at. Um, and it just like wasn't that valued in my previous environments, and now I can just spend a lot more of my like personal time doing that for fun.

[31:13] Sky King: Yeah, dude, I think that's like why I would never be good politically in any way, because when I'm helping people, like, I have no concept of retribution. And the idea that like it would ever be like a quid pro quo, like, sulleys it for me, like, completely. Yeah, you know what I mean? It's like, it makes it gross. So like, there are people out there who think about it that way, who like, it's not just about like the joy of helping It's like, okay, cool, now you owe me something, which is like crazy.

[31:42] Paul: Where does that come from in you? Like, you have this deep desire to like help people who are excited and passionate. Like, where does that come from?

[31:49] Sky King: I think it— I think it's from my dad for sure, because like, again, be a good person. I think honesty is huge, but I think helping people is a part of that as well. Yeah. And he was someone who always had time to help anybody that asked. Like, always had time, whether it was, you know, his crazy brother who's like really schizophrenic, or someone who had wronged him multiple times, like he always had time to help them. Yeah.

[32:11] Paul: Is there a sense of like helping underdogs?

[32:14] Sky King: Um, I definitely am a big fan of underdogs, for sure, 100%.

[32:20] Paul: When you think of like people you've helped, is there any one person that stands out, or someone you're just like super excited about?

[32:30] Sky King: To be honest, like, my initial reaction to that is I'm not done yet. Yeah, you know what I mean? Like, I have, uh, I have my eyes set on some, let's say that. But no one, no one currently stands out. I don't— again, I haven't reflected on this too often. When I was, uh, in 8th grade, I got this award, and the only reason I can bring this up is because it's an award that's not often given out, uh, at my school.

It was like, weirdly, for some reason, only when like somebody demands it, like, they give it out. And it was called the Peace Prize, and I got it because there is a mentally handicapped student on campus who for some reason, like, just kept attacking me, like physically attacking me. And I, instead of like being offended or hurt by it, decided like, okay, cool, like tried to basically like help him through that experience as he was literally hitting me. And that was probably one that stands out a lot. Because, you know, I had nothing to gain in any way from that. But it was something that when it was then recognized, I kind of like became aware of like, oh, that was probably not normal behavior from someone being attacked.

[33:39] Paul: Let's, let's go into childhood more. You said this a few times about like you didn't know like what normal was. Yeah. Um, what was it like to like grow up as Sky?

[33:52] Sky King: It was pretty sick. Like, being in Hawaii was so fun. Like, super tight crew of friends, uh, adventure often. Like, always in the ocean, always in the jungle, always skateboarding. Didn't wear shoes. Like, legitimately didn't wear shoes until I moved to California, unless I was skateboarding at a skate park.

Like, I would skateboard without shoes around my house, but only at a skate park. Every time I went to a movie theater, which was an hour away, my dad had to stop by Walmart and buy new shoes because I didn't have them. Like, in my school you weren't allowed to wear shoes, so it was like a weird thing. But, but yeah, it was super fun. You know, there's, there's like little interjections of tragedy as, as life happens. Uh, one of my closest friends OD'd on OxyContin when we were 13.

That was a huge bummer. Um, I think that's probably why I don't take pharmaceutical drugs, to be honest, very often. And but no, I grew up in a family that was very active. My dad really didn't work the majority of my life. I went to every single state in the United States by the time I was like 13. At 13, we did a 3-month Alaskan road trip.

Yeah, it was so sick. We just took a motorhome all the way up to the Dark Horse, Alaska. Jumped in the freezing water. My mom and I stayed in for 10 minutes, joined the Polar Bear Club, saw so many moose and bears and just crazy things and wolves. And I had luckily grew up very blessed that my parents had the ability to do that. And really my whole childhood focus was just spending time in a high-quality environment with my family doing fun stuff.

[35:33] Paul: You had a lot of Asian influences.

[35:36] Sky King: Definitely. And this is one thing that's really strange as I've thought about this more because my sister, is not like that. She currently now just moved to Thailand 2 days ago, but she's not like that at all. So I do wonder how much of this is genetic versus nature-nurture. But growing up in Hawaii, all of my teachers were Japanese. I became like— just mentors were Chinese.

I just got really into all things from food to art to history to weapons, anything that was some sort of Chinese descendant, which is super fascinating to me, absolutely obsessed. And it felt very natural for me as well. And then when we were moving from Hawaii back to California, I was pretty distraught. I was super bummed. And so during that, I think my parents wanted to make me feel better. I was like, I really want to go to China.

I want to go to China so bad. And I am 10 years old. And then they're like, where did that idea come from? I think it was because that was what I was gravitating towards. And my mom, who at the time when we were in Hawaii, she got very stir crazy. And so she became a nurse.

She was like, "I need something to do." And so she went to nursing school. And so during her nursing school program, she had to seek after these different patients. It was kind of something you do in the community. And one of them was this old Chinese dude who he and I became super close. And he got me subscriptions to Science Magazine and we would just hang out and talk. And eat food and eat lychee and all this stuff.

And he would just describe all. And I just was like, "That sounds so cool." And all I could think about was just imagining myself as a little boy in China running around. That was just this thing I was obsessed with. And so I was like, "Can we do this?" My dad's really good bridge friend was going to be leading a tour.

[37:22] Paul: [Speaker:TREY_LOCKERBIE] This is 10 years old? [Speaker:ELLIOT_BISNOW] 10 years old.

[37:24] Sky King: Was going to be leading a 28-day tour in China. And I was like, "Can we go?" So we took the whole family, all 4 of us went. And the first night we got there, we hadn't slept the entire time. And I'm like, Dad, let's go walk around. It's like 3 in the morning. It's in Beijing, just completely dark.

And he was like, okay. And so we walked around until the sun rose. Just, I want to see the city. I want to experience it. And what was crazy was at the time, it was a little bit— this is 2001, so it's like pre-2008 Olympics, which for China was huge. Still coming up pretty aggressively.

People were sleeping on the streets, not homeless people, people who were in nice clothes and they're sleeping on bikes. And I remember that morning seeing somebody who's asleep on his bike and the bike was standing up. And I was like, that is impressive because every time you put a bike in, somebody else could just take it at that time. So there wasn't a pure ownership of— the private property stuff hadn't come as far along.

[38:24] Paul: Yeah. And you had a sense of sort of being at home then. At home.

[38:31] Sky King: I was so bummed when we were leaving versus the rest of my family who are good sports, love to travel, but 10 days in, they're like, get me the fuck out of this place.

[38:39] Paul: Typical Westerner looking for McDonald's. Literally to a T.

[38:44] Sky King: There was one dinner that was a super sick hot pot dinner that I was so into. My sister who had only eaten white rice for 10 days is like, I need something else. My dad's like, okay, we'll go find you McDonald's or it was KFC. There's a KFC in this city we heard. We'll go find you. I don't even remember the city.

It wasn't a major city though. It was kind of like a second-tier city. And they're like, we'll go find you KFC. And they get on this rickshaw and the rickshaw driver turns around and he has no teeth. And my sister starts crying and freaking out. And meanwhile, I'm sitting there enjoying the most delicious hot pot.

And then my mom and I got massages after. It was such a sick day. And they're on this hour-long journey that was traumatic for Katie to find KFC, which I would never eat anyway. Yeah. Obsessed. That was so good.

It just felt— Yeah. I just— Everything about it, whether— There were definitely a little bit of hard stuff. So when we are into more rural areas, there were a lot of little boys who had been maimed, either limbs cut off or eyesight taken. And our Chinese tour guide told us that Sometimes in the families there, they do that because tourists will give them more money if they're maimed. And that was a brutal thing to experience because there's kids my own age being in that state. And that gave me a huge gratitude for the West and for what I grew up in.

But outside of literally that specific moment, it was just nothing but ecstasy and excitement for me. We went down the Yangtze River, one of the last people going down before it was dammed and flooded. And we watched these, we did like a 3-day boat tour down it and we watched these old women moving their houses brick by brick because their housing area was going to be flooded. Like an 80-year-old woman just passing bricks down into a wheelbarrow to move her house into a higher location. Wow. Like the resiliency of that culture is next level.

[40:32] Paul: You've seen everything anywhere all at once. Everything everywhere all at once. It screwed up everything. The title's hard. You've seen it 3 times. 3 times, yeah.

Um, what does that movie mean to you?

[40:43] Sky King: Yeah, so we— right now there's a really big trend in media, and I think trends in media are— it's the artist trying to explain subconsciously, consciously the, the perils of the culture now? What is going on under the hood now? And one trend that's been very prevalent in media, popular media today is schizophrenia and multiverse. And my theory, my prevailing theory on why that's been really popular is because never before— People talk a lot about technology, technology, technology, technology. We now have all this stuff going on. We are evolving at a very fast pace.

But one of the things that we don't talk about right now is there are unlimited options for every single person now who has a smartphone. You can swipe right, swipe left for who you want to have sex with, for what you want to eat. We're right now in the center of Texas and we're above a yakitori place, like a Japanese— skewer spot and sushi spot. That has never existed before 8 years ago. We can get Korean food, we can get Indian food, we can get unlimited options to anything we want right now. And that's created a sickness because when you live in a place of unlimited options, the two prevalent emotions are anxiety and regret.

FOMO. Again, super popular in our culture, this idea that everyone's FOMOing because all they're seeing is all the Lives they could have lived and they chose the wrong path. And so what this movie to me was just like put that concept on steroids and just exploded it in an absurdist manner. But it also had a very powerful moral lesson to it. And I think that lesson is that the only antidote to that sickness, to that optionality, to that schizophrenia, to that being in multiple places at multiple times is commitment to the moment.

And it was just like this beautiful realization that, you know, like through her husband, through her daughter, that like there's a scene, uh, with her husband— spoiler alert for sure— when he— when they ended up not dating and she becomes the famous actress, and he's like, they're out there smoking a cigarette, and she just like kissed him again, and he was like heartbroken over that. And he basically says like, in another world, I would have loved to be fixing a laundromat and doing taxes with you. And just like his ability to commit to every version of them, like, literally made me cry. Because like, in my mind, I can get caught up in all the things I should be doing. And Caroline, to me, is very much a balancing act of this like fostering presence, like this like purity of just like being committed to the moment. And yeah, so that movie like definitely sent me down the loop.

[43:44] Paul: Yeah, in some ways it's one of the bravest things you can do in today's world.

[43:48] Sky King: It's 100% the bravest thing.

[43:49] Paul: Yeah, I think I experienced this by getting married and committed, um, to someone. It just— like, you're just in a direction, you're picking a path, and by picking a path, you're choosing not to pick the other path. Yes. Um, which is incredibly hard, and I think a lot of what I talk about in the podcast is really I think the default script is basically leading people to be unhappy. And media is playing a role in this. It does drive this sort of schizophrenia where you're playing all these identities.

Even work is like this. We go to work and we're following rules and order, and then we do all this fun and entertainment and leisure and explore your own life in your own time. And managing those two identities causes it caused me a lot of anxiety. For sure. And now, like, I don't have the clear path, I don't have the clear title to tell anyone, but I'm able to actually just show up as myself in a way that is a lot easier to be. Yeah.

Um, and is really hard to explain to other people. And it seems like you've sort of done a similar thing with, like, your path where it's— you've just sort of became more of yourself over time. It is.

[45:07] Sky King: I think it is the thing that makes life kind of worth living though, like self-realization. It's something that philosophers have been debating forever. And we just built a strange system that didn't really work for that, but I think it's super human. So I love what you're doing. And I think it could be viewed as reactionary to the default path, but actually I think that you're uncovering the true default path. This is what we were meant to be.

[45:33] Paul: [Speaker:TIM_FERRISS] Yeah. I mean, my path is basically a reaction at the beginning. And then I realized I was naive and cynical. I was rejecting the path by doing an anti-path. But then it was really just a way for me to get space and then transcend that and actually be like, "Oh, I can show up as myself in the world." And I'm actually like, I think being in Austin now has been really unique for me in that I'm giving myself permission. Oh, I can be ambitious as long as it's aligned with the things I actually care about.

And as I lean into that, I'm sort of just realizing, oh, I still feel okay. Even doing this podcast, this would've been so scary for me a year ago because I was so afraid of ending up in a suit again in an office building. It takes you a while to realize, oh, I'm going to be okay. I've been doing this for 5 years. I'm safe. Yeah, I can actually just make decisions.

So learning that agency is like so hard.

[46:37] Sky King: It's so hard, dude. Like when I— like one of my good friends from college, he would always give me shit because he's like, what are you doing working at that company? He's like, you need to be like, you're going to go live in a suburb in Carmel, Indiana for the rest of your life and kill yourself. He would tell me that all the time and I started to believe it. Like, oh my God, like I'm going to get in the trap. You know what I mean?

And then it took a long— even after 2 years of working with Aubrey and then when I started my own company, it literally took until probably this year where like, yeah, oh wait, I'm not going to— that's not going to be my path. I'm good. I'm just going to do what I want and what I want will be— I will work 80 hours a week again at some point, guaranteed. And it's going to be sick though. It'll be a very healthy way just because I am on a mission to do something. Sometimes you got to grind it out a bit, but it's going to be 100% in alignment.

Austin is such a great place to realize that because there's so many people here who are living the lives they want to live.

[47:32] Paul: Well, I think just being physically around ambitious people who also just seem to be showing up as themselves. I love the challenge you have is one of the greatest things you can do as an American citizen is basically establish an LLC. Yeah. I love that because I've just been seeing in my own catching up with how I'm actually showing up in the world, it's self-employed. I can make all these decisions and just having this ownership mindset is so powerful.

[48:05] Sky King: Yeah. And even just technically from a tax perspective, it puts you in the game. We're a part of a game. Everything's a game. And you're actually not even a player in the game until you get that 15 to 30% back because you can't use those resources as you want.

[48:22] Paul: Yeah. And I also like, I think I've been influenced by you. You've said like hiring somebody is like a great responsibility. And I think you went through your own journey of figuring out, oh, I have people that work for me. I need to actually make money to pay them. Yeah.

That's something I've been thinking a lot about. I've done 5 years extremely solo. And I think there is an upside of like, oh, I'm going to pay some money. That's just going to make me more responsible and commit and be bolder.

[48:54] Sky King: It definitely can. And it creates like, not to Spider-Man it, but great power comes great responsibility. And that's what it felt like when I started building out a large team. We got up to 7 people last year and I was just, okay, cool. How do we leverage this groupthink to make this a reality? You know what I mean?

It puts the pressure on for sure. And pressure is a privilege, I think, for sure.

[49:19] Paul: So what is the thing you are uniquely positioned to serve people with or offer? I know this is a question you think a lot about. You've been influenced by people like Bucky Fuller. Um, is that a question you think about a lot? Yeah, 100%.

[49:40] Sky King: And it's because, like, taking Modern Stoic into what I want Stoic to become has been a very ambiguous process, and it's like has not moved as fast as I've wanted it to. So I've always had to be reminded by— and I just see it in the world so much, and it is back to the aha moment we were talking about earlier. It's like It is so clear to me that the business model of media is not serving us and has actually created a lot of the tension and issues that we have today. And it's because it's very clear, it's just an inefficient business model. It's just actually wrong. There's some arbitrary rules, right?

[50:21] Paul: The tax incentives from way back when just basically create it as a You just, they just subsidize.

[50:27] Sky King: Like, if, yeah, if you start to think about it, like, yeah, so this guy Henry Luce, the founder of Time, Fortune, and Life magazine, he went to FDR and basically got advertising and marketing to be something that was pre-tax instead of post-tax revenue. So subsidized the entire industry. And then if you think about that from an environmental perspective, we could have lived in the world with 10,000, 100,000 less things because there's so many things that just use funding externally to then just pump advertising to become something in the world. Uber. But that's a very common playbook historically. We would just have 10,000 less things like plastic, chemicals, all this stuff because they just made their way through having a ton of money to be able to advertise and then create false demand.

Yeah, it's pretty crazy.

[51:28] Paul: I think Uber's lost something like an insane tens or hundreds of billions of dollars and still has not made a profit.

[51:36] Sky King: Yeah, it just bleeds, bro.

[51:39] Paul: And have you looked into what happens in China with media? Because they have some interesting models around serialization of content and other things because they they don't have as much advertising. [Speaker:ROBERT_LEONARD] Yeah.

[51:51] Sky King: So China actually was the proof of concept for me that made me realize with Himalaya, I think that's how you pronounce it, X-I-Malaya. But it made me realize like, oh shit. Because in 2019, the podcasting market in the US did $700 million in revenue. So not even a billion dollars. In 2019, the podcasting market in China did $5.2 billion. No advertisements.

It was all through this like Twitch-style gamification. Yeah. And that's when I was like, oh wow, there's a completely different model that'll work better. Like, I'm not— this, like, I always find like the beauty of capitalism is when you can do something that's morally, ethically good for the world you want to see and make money, because it just makes more sense. Like, advertising is literally inefficient because They're basically like, even with the highest CPMs, which podcasting has the highest CPM, so cost per 1,000 views, they value your attention for a minute at 0.02 cents. Like, your most valuable asset, your sacred resource of attention is being given up for less than a penny, for a fifth of a penny.

And it's because we don't want to pay $5.90 a month for a subscription. Because we think we're getting it for free, but really we are not. We're giving away our most valuable resource, focus time.

[53:16] Paul: What's your roadmap for working on this? I know you've sort of built a podcast advertising company, right? And this is because you want to serve podcasters first and you can collect the data to figure out what works. But this is sort of Step 1 of a longer-term plan of getting us off this system?

[53:40] Sky King: [Speaker:ROBERT_LEONARD] So yeah, I called it steps in my master plan. It's step 0.0. So build an agency that helps podcasters monetize their platform. I focus on podcasters because most people focus on the advertiser as the client. I think of myself as the moat between the podcaster and the brand. If the brand tries to influence the content of the podcast, which happens constantly.

I don't even tell the podcaster, I just tell them to fuck off and find a new brand. This is one thing that people need to realize. All of the media you consume is influenced by the customers, always. Products are always influenced by the customers. The thing is, you are not the consumer, is not the customer of the media, the brands are. That's who pays for it.

But they're the people who have say and influence into it. I went into podcasting because the reason it was more accurate in the Trump election was because there's less influence of advertising. Because Joe Rogan, who gets the same amount of views as CNN, has 3 people working for him. CNN has hundreds of people, thousands of people. Washington Post loses a title sponsor, Bezos can probably fund it for a bit, but they have to fire thousands of people. Podcasts have high leverage.

It's just us here, right here. And this could go to just as many people as whatever your mom's watching on TV. The same amount of people could get hit. And they'd actually be paying more attention probably. It's insane.

[54:58] Paul: And there's just more space for nuance. And so, I mean, people are actually craving this. If you look at the subscriber numbers of New York Times and Washington Post, it's kind of bizarre. The average subscriber is over 65. That's crazy. But we sort of just see the fact that these are more important because historically they have been.

More important. Um, but the reality on the ground is totally different.

[55:26] Sky King: It's crazy because The New York Times did a whole campaign like calling themselves truth. Like, you can go Google it and look like New York Times truth campaign. They just did like associated with truth, and they built this identity as if this like institutional thing that must be here that's so important, that's associated with truth. And dude, like, there's a book called The Gray Lady Winked. It's insane. Have you, have you heard of it or read it?

I haven't heard of it, bro. It just goes through all the horrible things The New York Times has done, starting with backing Hitler. Yeah. Like saying that Poland invaded Germany, even though it was like well known it didn't. But they literally wrote that to justify Hitler like going in. Like, it's nuts.

And like, we think of this thing as this beacon of light when really it's just consistently been a private corporation that the Sulzbergers like use to their own benefit. Like, I think people see the TV show Succession and they think Fox, but no, it's about The New York Times.

[56:17] Paul: Like, yeah. Well, it's all the media institutions. I mean, if you go back at yellow journalism, William Randolph Hearst, it wasn't this noble highbrow stuff. I think William Randolph Hearst literally started a war with a paper.

[56:33] Sky King: He tried to start a war with Mexico. Yeah. He literally, he had 50 different newspapers across the country. He had a bunch of land on the California-Mexico border on the Mexico side and said, let me see if I can get that to become California. And he wrote in every single one of his newspapers at the front page, US, and then tiny font, might be, and then big font, at war with Mexico. So when you see it from a stand, it just says US at war with Mexico.

And he put the— It's insane just because he wanted to have his land be worth more money maybe. And that's somewhat, again, he built that at least. I think it's worse with the ad. Again, a lot of this, my knowledge from this comes from a book called The Brass Check that Ryan had recommended I read. His marketing agency was called The Brass Check. And then when he released his most recent book 2 years ago, so he's had 3 more books since then, but I had him sign my The Brass Check and he just wrote, "Use this book for good." I was like, "Let's go." [Speaker:TREY_LOCKERBIE] That's awesome.

[57:29] Paul: Yeah. And so what's the next step for you in what you're building? [Speaker:ELLIOT_BISNOW] Yeah. So, okay.

[57:36] Sky King: Yeah, yeah. So with Stoa now, so I did a proof of concept for Stoa in November. Essentially, I had this idea. So there's ways we can monetize similar to how Himalaya does it, this like Twitch-style monetization. But I want to really make content a skill game. So if the first business model of media was state-run/church, second was subscription, third was advertising, I think there's a gamified model that actually rewards people who consume content for their time.

So you actually start to make it more synergistic with the consumer and the creator, both being kind of like using their time to get a reward financially. So I built this concept I call meme farming. And essentially imagine if you— let's just use Joe Rogan because people know him whether you like him or not. But there's this famous moment where Elon Musk spoke up on Joe Rogan's podcast. So if you were— and that was during when it was livestreamed. So if you were actually there and you could have clipped that moment and bid on it and then minted it as an NFT and actually owned that moment of content, that would be worth so much money today.

And there are moments that happen on every podcast that that does. And so I did that for my own podcast, 50 listeners, and I meme farmed it myself. I had an artist create unique art for every single clip within it. And then we launched that as the first ever Web3 native podcast where it was actually on the blockchain. Full-on 100% minted. I minted over a gigabyte of data onto it and it worked.

The response was great. It was crazy. It just absolutely crushed. And so that was kind of a proof of concept. So what we're building with Stoa, first iteration MVP, is basically a platform that allows podcasters to just go live and allows fans just to go in and mint the content as NFTs paying a fee. And what this really does that's super important is it takes a prostititional business model and turns it completely synergistic.

So where the podcaster and the creator both are looking the same way, they both want the podcast to grow. And this comes from deep market research in podcasting and realizing that one of the biggest issues for podcasters is no native discoverability feature. And so we're going to use these memes to actually help the medium become more shareable. Because right now, in order to grow a podcast, you just have to go off platform. And so we're going to build a platform. So like we're hitting it from a bunch of different angles of like what podcasters need monetarily and growth-wise.

[01:00:06] Paul: So what do podcasts look like in 10 years?

[01:00:11] Sky King: Okay, uh, podcasts in 10 years are conversations in the metaverse, bro. Like it's all— I think it's going to be in VR like 100%. I've started like in, in like a decentralized monetization aspect where like you are almost playing a game. Instead of us speaking here, we're going to be sitting at the edge of the universe and we just finished a quest together and we are reflecting on that moment. And that content can then get broadcasted to anybody who's listening and they can be there while we're doing it. We won't see them, but they're actually be in the room in VR.

They're like NPCs kind of around us, but they can be viewers and they can literally start to purchase, re-segment, curate the important conversations that happen to us as we're living life in a metaverse. That's what podcasting will be. I like it.

[01:00:58] Paul: 10 years, we'll be here. Dude, I—

[01:01:00] Sky King: so I was on a podcast on Friday and I knew he had a kid and he started talking to me about VR and I was like, whoa, like the current generation of children grew up on YouTube, right? The next generation are going to grow up building castles in the sky. Like they're going to have the idea of like, oh, they're at 5, they build this crazy Pokémon world and then they run data through it, they're going to be so much more systems built and creative than us because what the tools that— Have you spent any time in Rec Room or in these VRs?

[01:01:35] Paul: Not Rec Room, but I've used Oculus a few times.

[01:01:38] Sky King: The tools that they give you to create from the get, you don't have to worry about physics anymore. You don't have to worry about having an engineering degree, a ton of money. You can just go out and create and having 5-year-olds start in that versus just a flat screen YouTube, like, advertised-based, like, algorithm, like, designing their brain in the way they think. It's gonna be insane.

[01:01:58] Paul: Yeah, I, I played original Nintendo as my first, uh, heck yeah, yeah, yeah, same.

[01:02:03] Sky King: Yeah, I'm still in like the single screen world.

[01:02:06] Paul: Yeah, flat.

[01:02:08] Sky King: Um, I'm like committing right now to start to be in VR like at least 10 hours a week. Wow. Like, I think, I think it's so important I think it's so important.

[01:02:20] Paul: Yeah. Awesome. One thing I wanted to close with, so you did this amazing podcast on Bucky Fuller. What does he mean to you and what can he teach us about this moment?

[01:02:32] Sky King: So one thing that we've been doing a lot as a species is going towards hyper-specialization. And one thing Bucky really pushes against and coming from a liberal arts education tend to push against is And I've always loved this idea, even when I was a little kid, very drawn to it. Similar to China was this idea of the Renaissance man, of actually being able to build a pencil, being able to do all the things. And you've been solo for 5 years without hiring other people really. So you've done that, right? You've had to wear all of the hats.

But I think there's something really important to that. Nassim Taleb talks about it. He's like, never get an assistant. Hire people for specific jobs, but never get an assistant. The super rich famous people I know, there's a very, very, very, very different type of person between someone who has an assistant and who doesn't. And like, I don't know why we talked about a lot, but Rogan, for example, doesn't.

Like, my friends who've gone on his podcast, like, he's had to take bank calls to like get stuff figured out for his wife like there. Well, I think once you hire—

[01:03:33] Paul: and this is something, um, I've been thinking about. And you start abstracting away the work you're doing.

[01:03:42] Sky King: 100%.

[01:03:43] Paul: 100%. It's just like the specialization, the problem with jobs, like you're in this very hyper-specific thing and you start abstracting away these tasks and then you start pushing stuff off you wouldn't normally do to an assistant. And that's where you sort of lose yourself and then you just become an object in this larger game. Yeah.

[01:04:03] Sky King: And you don't understand that friction still exists in the universe because things became frictionless for you.

[01:04:08] Paul: You start doing more than a human can do.

[01:04:11] Sky King: Yeah. And leisuring way harder. And then, yeah. And I'm not saying getting a virtual assistant to help you with your job isn't— that's totally good. It's more like the people who pick up your food, book your flights, take your dog out, that kind of shit. Oh, wait, can I answer the Bucky thing?

Sorry. So to come back to that. So Bucky's whole thing is— the reason why that's important is because his whole thing is like, You should try to learn as much as possible. So he has this letter to— 10-year-old wrote him a letter and they said, "What should I do with my life?" And he basically said two rules. The first rule was, every time you see a new word, write it 5 times in a sentence. And the reason is because words are the fundamental tools of humans.

And once you learn how to use something, you won't forget it. And the second thing he says is like, find a problem in the universe that nobody else is working and you are uniquely positioned to solve and spend all of your time trying to solve it. Do those two things and you'll live a good life. I love that second part.

[01:05:11] Paul: And I think you're uniquely positioned to channel your optimism and energy into this advertising media problem. So I'm rooting for you. Thank you, man. Where can people learn more about what you're working on, if you want people to find you or not?