Full Transcript for Carl Cleanthes

of being boring and normal, right? Like, that's like in my soul. So I mean, like, I wear shoes, like, maybe 30 hours a year, like, I'm mostly barefoot. I grow most of my food in my backyard. I try to upcycle or recycle everything and build all my stuff, like my desk. I built the bar back there. I built and redid the roof of my house. Like, I love to make things. Like, on my business card, it says, Createaholic, right? So I'm just trying to be in touch with everything around me. Like, I do a lot of yoga. I love just kind of, like zenness -- and like, I kind of have to balance that out, because I'm I am so extroverted and crazy. Like, I also need those moments of just, like deep, like internal work, right? But, yeah, I find that like walking in the woods, I do a lot of barefoot walks in the woods. Skipper Chong Warson Okay. Carl Cleanthes And that's probably my thing. And I wear exclusively toe shoes like I don't have, I don't have normal shoes anymore -- Skipper Chong Warson And those are so when you say you walk barefoot -- toe shoes, my understanding is that they're shoes, instead of having a solid front, they actually have space for all five of your toes. (Pause) I love it. You're demoing it. Carl Cleanthes This is what a toe shoe looks like. Vibram actually sent these to me, and I did a custom art piece. So the other shoe's with them right now. Skipper Chong Warson Okay. Carl Cleanthes It's really cool, I look but no one else can see that. But, yeah, each one of your toes fits into a pocket. No, I consider that to be still wearing foot prisons. Skipper Chong Warson I see. Carl Cleanthes So when I'm actually barefoot, I am 100% toes in the mud and the dirt and the sticks and the thorns, and I just, I don't know, something about it feels very natural to me, it's very calming and resetting because you can't run through the forest real fast, like, you have to go slow and pay attention like, so otherwise you are going to stop on a thorn. Skipper Chong Warson Sure. Carl Cleanthes Yeah. Anyways. Skipper Chong Warson Be really deliberate. That's really interesting. I know that there are some other philosophies around this, things like earthing and the way that I usually describe it to people, I'm not as much of a barefoot person. However, I do think there's something to -- if you go to a park and you're having a picnic, or you're outside and you take your shoes off, and there is something that feels very freeing about that. Carl Cleanthes Yeah. Skipper Chong Warson The instant you put your feet in the grass, put your feet in the ground, in the dirt. And, you know, I think there is something about that's a more natural state than putting on these toe prisons, as you say. Carl Cleanthes Yeah. I mean, there's like, I don't know the number, because I'm not, you know, deep into anatomy and physiology, yeah, but a metric shit ton of nerve endings in your feet that you are designed to feel the world around you and like that all stimulates your nervous system. And there's all sorts of, you know, research and science behind that. But I grew up in, you know, in rural Virginia, on 3 and a half acres, so that I didn't know any different. I just don't wear shoes. I say, we go, we go down to the beach. Don't wear shoes. Skipper Chong Warson Right. Carl Cleanthes And my feet are really tough. I can walk on rocks, hot asphalt, like, doesn't matter. Skipper Chong Warson Got it. Carl Cleanthes So there's a weird little note about me, and there you go. Skipper Chong Warson So let's get into the guts of the show, and let's just dive in. So you gave a little bit of it away in your introduction. I gave it a little bit away in the show's intro. What are the subjects that we're going to talk about today, in which you are an expert? Carl Cleanthes I would consider myself to be an expert in, you know, visual communication, strategic marketing and some regards, right, I feel like marketing's such a broad concept, but like, there are lanes in there where I would consider myself an expert. Skipper Chong Warson Okay. Carl Cleanthes I absolutely love web3, NFTs, all that sort of stuff. Expert is such a weird word, because I'll never be so arrogant to think that there isn't so much more for me to learn in those subjects. But I would say the things that I'm deeply passionate about are art, creativity, marketing, visual identities, web3, that sort of stuff. Skipper Chong Warson Yeah, and I want to bounce that back to you, it is totally fair. The word expert has become really loaded in a lot of different ways, and we can have a whole sidebar conversation about this. But part of the reason why I asked that question, and in the way that I do, is because I feel like, for the most part, people don't take ownership of the things that they know, right? And that's something that I discovered doing this podcast, that's something I discovered before, and so I have a subversive goal of helping people to understand that they know more than they think they know -- just through their own conversation. So I absolutely agree with that if someone asked me that question, I would rebound it very similarly I don't know very much. About this, but let's go ahead and have a 15-20 minute discussion about it, right? Carl Cleanthes Yeah, exactly. Skipper Chong Warson Yeah. Carl Cleanthes I didn't used to think that I knew a lot about web3 until I started talking to people that don't know anything, right? And then it's like, oh, because sometimes you get in these bubbles, right? That like everyone you talk to on the regular knows this baseline of things, but it's because they have that interest and have spent a lot of time there themselves. Skipper Chong Warson Yeah. So you talked a little bit about how growing up, you were surrounded by art. Your dad did art. Had a lot of art, lots of creative artifacts, and visualizations. Is that how you first became interested in creative and visual work in this way? Carl Cleanthes Yeah, so I think it,

I never became interested in it. I think everyone is interested in that. I think you're hard-pressed to find a child who isn't excited about colors and excitement and creating art and doing things. I think what happened in my house was that it was never told to me that you need to grow up and be an adult and do something productive that isn't colorful and wonderful and art and exuberant. My dad, my dad was like me, but like, 20% more crazy, more energetic, more like, you know what I mean? Like he was just on the functional side of crazy is actually how I describe him. But he was a wonderful, wonderful soul. But, you know, RIP his birthday was on the 11th. Skipper Chong Warson Oh, happy belated birthday. Carl Cleanthes I think he'd have been 82, 81. Skipper Chong Warson Okay. Carl Cleanthes But, um, yeah, so I say that that was never stripped out of me. It was never devalued, so only amplified through my father, who was like just he stood out in a crowd no matter where he went, just because of the nature of who he was. I think the flip side of that, the part of me that, like, got inspired to do this type of work, this, like, visual storytelling, super creative type of stuff. Because if you look at my agency, we're not, like, making Apple logos with lots of white space. Like we don't do any of that stuff, that doesn't excite me. Like it's got to have details and colors and ideas and creativity and just like, really be rich and inspiring. It's sort of, we call it maximalist versus minimalist. You know, that kind of thing at least leaning towards that direction. So, the things that inspired me were absolutely video games, fantasy, storytelling, Lord of the Rings, playing Everquest, and reading The Fires of Merlin -- it was the only book I ever got through as a kid. It was so cool. They had this magic antler you could crush up into a powder and, like, would turn you into a deer. And they could run for a while and other really cool shit, right? And like, I never could read books, because I'm too ADD so I'd always do, like, Cliff Notes, or whatever I wear. I could, like, kind of hack the system so that I could still make the honor roll. I went to, like, a math/science accelerated high school. And like, really did well in school, but had to learn early how to adapt to the way my brain works. And, like, there was just no way I was ever gonna pre-plan my time for months at a time to sit down and read this book that I didn't really like. But the one time I got to pick the book I really liked I crushed it. And then, honestly, I don't think I've read an entire book back to front, like with paper. I do audio books because I can go for a run or something. Skipper Chong Warson Sure. Carl Cleanthes Um, yeah. Skipper Chong Warson So -- and plus one to that idea of there is something about being a kid that should be about that native creativity. And to your point, there should be something about being an adult that is still about that creativity. I can't tell you

how many times I run into people, especially if I'm standing up a workshop or, you know, some kind of activity or something has to be drawn, like even something very simple, like a technical drawing, you know, on a whiteboard, or a big fat black marker on a post-it note. And the first thing I will hear from people, they will say something around the idea that they can't draw, which I think is bullshit unless you have a physical impediment, everyone can draw now, whether or not you can draw to the level you want to, or you like to draw, or any of those things, everyone is able to draw. Carl Cleanthes 1,000% agree with that. And the physical impediment thing is probably just an excuse, unless you're a complete vegetable in a coma, right? Because I've seen people do masterful paintings with a paintbrush in their mouth. They're quadriplegic. I saw a lady do drawings with both hands and both feet at the same time on their end of the spectrum, so four simultaneous drawings. But it really is a matter of learning from the masters, the gurus in the space that can teach you how to translate what you see to the paper, and that's a lot of what you do in art school, right? Yeah, and then practice, yeah, and that's it, yeah. There's no magic formula. Skipper Chong Warson Yeah. So, you mentioned going to ODU. And is that Old Dominion University? Is that it? Carl Cleanthes Old dirty. Skipper Chong Warson Okay? Yeah, okay. Is that another nickname for it? Yeah? Carl Cleanthes It's what we called it back then. Skipper Chong Warson Nice. Carl Cleanthes And then we all laugh like that, right? Skipper Chong Warson Of course, it's part of the line, right? So take me back to when you started to get more I don't know if serious is the word, but you wanted more than just what was happening in your home life. You wanted to be more informed about other things. Take me back to where you started in, how you began to cultivate this for yourself, not just be surrounded by it. Carl Cleanthes Which part of this? Skipper Chong Warson Sorry, yep, great distinction. So let's start with your creative work. Like, how did you begin to create -- how did you devise your own creative form, personality, etc? Carl Cleanthes Yeah. So I guess, you know, early on, I liked art. I used to draw a lot as a kid and all these weird little monsters and all kinds of stuff. And like, you know, go, my parents got a divorce, an ugly divorce if I can say that when I was a kid. Now they were both in our life, and like, they did the best co-parenting they could do, and did well. But, you know, the best thing they ever did was get a divorce, right? Like, that was the best thing they ever did for us, like, because it was pretty toxic. So I say all that to say, like, I kind of used to lose myself in my art as a kid, all up to, like, you know, sixth grade, around, like, 12 or so, then I applied to be in the ODC art school, which is, like, this real cool, like, school that you can go to. And I've dumped all these hours into making my, you know, little application, right? I get accepted to, like, go there for the day of -- so this is like, step two, where, like, you go test it out. They, you know, blah, blah. And I was so excited. And, like, all the things they assigned me to do while I was there, I just completely bopped, like I just wasn't inspired, garbage stuff. Skipper Chong Warson Okay. Carl Cleanthes They didn't let me into the program. I never did art again. Skipper Chong Warson Oh. Carl Cleanthes I didn't do art from sixth grade till senior year, till after I graduated high school, right? So I just went all math and science, right? So I started taking algebra and, like, trigonometry and geometry. I mean, I they ran out of math classes for me to take. By the time I was a junior in high school, I'd already taken AP Calc. There was nothing else. Skipper Chong Warson Okay. Carl Cleanthes Senior year, I just took another computer programming thing, right? So fast forward, I go to ODU. I get into there. I'm doing high school, I'm doing preview day, when my dad comes with me, walking around like, alright, well, we need to set up your schedule for next, you know, semester. And I didn't know what I wanted to study. I had no ideas. It's like, I was just like, I'm gonna go to college because I think I should. Maybe my parents never told me I was the first one in my generation to go. And it was like, Okay, let's, let's go to college. So I'm there, and they're like, Well, what do you want to do? I was like, Well, I love video games. Like, I forgot to mention this earlier. Blizzard and Chris Metzen, are actually, oh my god, massive inspirations. You know, during that time before I quit doing art, I used to draw all kinds of stuff from like Mortal Kombat and all the Blizzard games like Ghoul Den, and all the cool stuff from like Diablo and Warcraft and all that. And that was huge until I stopped doing art entirely in middle school. It fizzled out right after I got out, I got rejected from ODC anyway, long-winded. That's where I ended up. My dad just cut the lady off because I was like, I want to make video games because I'd already done computer programming, and I was really deep into the weeds and that. And I love that too. And he's like, the lady asked me, Well, do you want to do art? Or do you want to do the programming? And my dad cuts the lady off and goes, no, no. He wants to do the art. I was like, let's do the art, literally. But my dad knew me. Skipper Chong Warson Right. Carl Cleanthes And he'd seen me and seen me grow up, but and, and, like, I didn't. I don't think I would have had me. I don't. I would have been like, I don't know. I don't know what would have happened if he had said nothing, or if I had picked computer, if he would have picked -- Skipper Chong Warson If you would've picked computer, yeah. Carl Cleanthes Yeah, yeah. I might be sitting here with like, a comb over and like, a button up and, like, you know, still, Skipper

Chong Warson Still in that -- Carl Cleanthes Clean cut, like, Skipper Chong Warson Exactly, still in that tech support job -- Carl Cleanthes Yeah, 245 pounds. So, dude, that's where I was going. I was getting so fat and so miserable and I hated anyway. So yeah, that was, like, the pinnacle moment. So then I went into the art department, and then, like, every single class, I fell in love with the medium. It didn't matter if I was making stuff out of paper, if we're doing figure drawing, if we're doing like, you know, woodworking, or doing, like, any kind of like, I did blacksmithing and I made these knives. I'm like, it was just like, fucking cool. Skipper Chong Warson You did everything. You're like, yes, and -- Carl Cleanthes Yes, let me make shit like, get out of the way and give me tools to make cool things. Skipper Chong Warson Okay. Carl Cleanthes And it was so empowering. And I remember early on, one of my professors that passed away, now, Victor Pickett he, I was like, I was trying to cut this piece of paper in half. And like, he's like, I was like, Man, I need a ruler and blah, blah. And I like, my whole, you know, science brain. And he's like, it's like, what are you talking about? Like, you're an artist. Skipper Chong Warson Right. Carl Cleanthes He's like, you know, well, eyeball it, make sure it's about how to get it right in the head. Like artists can do anything, or you don't need a ruler. I was like, Oh, cool. So then grab the thing. I touched it and folded it, made a little crease, boom, cut it perfectly in half with the big cutter. But it was like, the first time someone in my life outside of my crazy father, who, you know, is discountable in some ways, in terms of, like, you know, he's my dad, he loves me, and he's clearly an artist. But this guy's like, artists are the most powerful people in the world. Was the message he delivered me, you know, in that moment. So anyways, that all kind of sent me on this trajectory that just, I've never looked back. It's been full speed ahead. Skipper Chong Warson Okay, so you're at university, you're basically taking everything they're giving you, and you're saying yes, and you're like, I'm going to try this. I'm going to try this. And then you said something in your intro about how at some point you started shifting, not, I think you said away from the doing and more towards, like, the positioning, and maybe some of that EverQuest, selling, bartering, trading. What was happening there, like, fill out that side of the painting for me? Carl Cleanthes Yeah -- so I, I started like, I'm always talking and networking and communicating. And I started my first business at 19. Skipper Chong Warson Okay. Carl Cleanthes Right out of high school. So, you know, the first year in college, and we were doing like, website as a software as a service before, everyone before there was SaaS, no one knew what SaaS was. Back in 2003, right? So I was doing that and selling websites, and we started to get more into what people needed, branding and graphic design things. But like, I'm still a freshman in college, so I hadn't even taken any design courses. I don't know how to do any of this shit. So like, I just started going over to, like, the juniors and seniors, like, Hey, man, I got a thing. And like, they, you know, want to buy this. And, like, I need some help with that. So I started just, like, immediately delegating, and going, all right, well, how much you want to do that? Okay, cool. And then I'd like, 2x or 3x that and sell it to this other person, right? And that's like, where the real spirit of what I'm doing now was born. That business only lasted about nine months. My partner and I had totally different values and different ethos about everything, and so we split up, closed that business down, and then just started learning stuff myself for a while, until I'd say, like, my junior/senior year, and I was there for five years because I had a terrible knee injury, had to get my knee rebuilt. And, like, I just took my classes way down to part-time for like, two semesters. But I say that to say, fast forward to once I knew how to do this stuff. Then I started, up my own little business with my wife's business partner who was really into -- my wife's cousin, he became my business partner, and he really, was really great at programming, and had a deep love for that. So he was building websites, and I was doing all the branding and designing and all that sort of stuff. And I was getting my teacher actually to go I say, Hey, look, you know, I got this website for my friend's restaurant that he just opened. Skipper Chong Warson Okay. Carl Cleanthes Can I do this for this project? You just assigned us a website. But it's very arbitrary. You need to build a website, pick a subject matter, pitch it to me. So then, then it really, this actual business was born from that, fast forward to 2006 I'm building this business, and my first clients, I'm bringing on are actually me getting paid to do my schoolwork, which was like -- Skipper Chong Warson Double duty. Carl Cleanthes -- the real hustle. But I love that, like, oh, how do I double down? Now I'm not getting an A, and I'm doing client work and I'm getting paid. And I was like, Oh, my God. It's like, it felt so good. So that's, that's where the business This was actually born. Skipper Chong Warson Okay. Carl Cleanthes And I've never stopped since, like, I've been doing, you know, I had a full-time job, as I said at that time, I started working on the help desk, doing tech support shit, okay, which was just like, rudimentary, but it made me miserable, and I hated it. Like, I literally had a pit in my stomach every Sunday, like when I woke up, you know, about noon, and be like, I gotta go to work tomorrow. I gotta do school. I do school from nine to three, and then I'd be 3:30 to midnight at this job. Fucking hated it. Hated it. And I had to be away from my fiance at the time. And like all of it was

just it was really miserable for me. Skipper Chong Warson Got it, you previewed a little bit of that flip out of the thing that you described with your wife's cousin, was that what you were doing during school, is that what became Epic Made made or -- Carl Cleanthes Yes, so that's actually the business at the time, was called Creative Art and Design Studios, okay, which is still the legal name of the business. I just rebranded and got a DBA, but yeah, that that is the genesis, like, we started, me as an art student in 2006 at ODU, kind of getting paid to do work, which is funny, because the building now that is that where that the art studio used to be is now the Strome Entrepreneur Center at ODU where, like, they, they help launch businesses post-college. And I was like, Yo, I'm the first business that launched out of here. So I love to tell that story. Skipper Chong Warson Nice. Carl Cleanthes Yeah. Skipper Chong Warson Nice. Okay, so then you decide to go pro. You leave behind your tech support job and like, what are the changes or shifts that you made in taking, you know, Creative Art and Design Studios into "this is my job, this is my focus." Carl Cleanthes I did the really methodical, strategic operation of... just quit your job, figure the fuck out. Skipper Chong Warson Step one. Step two. Carl Cleanthes Step two, create panic. So, look, there is no innovator like necessity, right? Like, Skipper Chong Warson Right. Carl Cleanthes You know. And look, I'm not saying that's a great idea for people that have, like, a mortgage and three kids and a wife and, like, whatever, but it was me and my wife and we lived in the garage that we converted into apartment at her mom and brother's house. Skipper Chong Warson Okay. Carl Cleanthes I had very little risk at the time, you know, I had a Land Rover, which was stupid, that I bought when I was working that tech support job. And I was making great money there, and I saved up a little money, but not like, maybe a couple grand, right? And we were spending a lot of money. We were like, we had just had a 200-person fully catered wedding on a farm on the eastern shore, like we were blowing money. Skipper Chong Warson Yeah. Carl Cleanthes So yeah. But for me, it was the realization that, like I was going every day I stayed at this job, I was going to go deeper into depression. Skipper Chong Warson Sure. Carl Cleanthes I was going to get sadder and more upset and more anxious and more overweight, and I'm eating more bullshit food because we only have a 30-minute lunch break when I got to run down the street, and the only thing you really do is fast food or I got a pack of lunch, but I had to go to school, so I had to pack a lunch at eight in the morning that I'm gonna eat at, like, not it's really a dinner that I'm gonna eat at nine, right? And I was like, this is like, what are we doing? So then it's like, microwavable bullshit. It's like the whole lifestyle. I was like, there's no amount of money that I'm gonna trade for my life and my happiness and my well-being. So I quit the job, and I just literally figured it out. And to be honest, the first, I'd say, from 2007 to 2011 I was not doing what I needed to be doing. I was barely scraping by. I had the support system of, you know, my family and my wife's family, and my wife at the time, right? Oh, she's my we got married. So, yeah, anyways, we're still -- been together 20 years. Love my wife. That all sounded stupid, but it was the support system I had that allowed me to slowly build and get clients. But, I mean, we're talking like I was doing like, 11 grand, 15 grand, 25 grand, the whole year, right? Like, you can't, no one's living off that. So I had to have a support system, and that was more money, you know, pre-COVID, than it is post-COVID by a long shot, but even still. But what happened in those times is it allowed me to set a mindset of, like, I don't spend money on anything that isn't a necessity or has an opportunity to have an ROI, right? So, like, I'm not buying a flashy car. I'm not buying I don't go spend a bunch of money on clothes. Like, even now, like, this is a really nice black t-shirt, like, but I got it at TJ Maxx for $7 on the clearance rack, right, right? Because why am I going to spend $60 on a really nice t-shirt? Like, when there are places to do that, right? So every piece along the way, I've started to like, how do I how am I less and less dependent on giant corporations that probably don't care about me and my family? And how do I spend more of my time making sure that, like, my money goes as far as possible, as I grow most, I grow a lot of my own food, both for health reasons, and it just saves money. Like, one green pepper is $3, an organic green pepper. I've got 75 of them just chilling on the vine out there, and I'll pick them all I want, you know. So that kind of stuff is all built into that mindset. And that's what I learned in that gap from 2007 to 2011 when I was trying to get my ass together, but I couldn't, and I was playing too many video games. And like, Oh, I'm a business guy. Skipper Chong Warson Right. Carl Cleanthes But then my wife got pregnant in 2011. Skipper Chong Warson And then it gets serious. Carl Cleanthes All of a sudden, I was like, Oh snap. So then I just joined a bunch of networking groups, and just the hustle was on full throttle ever since. Skipper Chong Warson Yeah, okay, so that totally tracks that. That all makes a lot of sense. So take us into, you know, there's sort of the world pre-pandemic and the world post-pandemic, right? So starting in 2011 like you're really getting your hustle on, getting out there, working those extroverted muscles that you have, when does your interest in things like web3 and NFT start? When do you -- so I'm gonna ask two questions, and you can piece it apart. And then, when do you start doing in addition to the hustle around building your business, when do you also do your creative work? Like, has

that been going the whole time? Is that something that's churning for you? Carl Cleanthes Yeah, those are both great questions, and it's funny because they coincide exactly so I -- in the hustle, right? 2011 hits. I start really like pushing, networking, and going hard. I quickly need employees, right? I quickly need people to help me out. And it quickly becomes clear to me that nobody can sell this shit like I can sell it, right? So I try to get some salespeople to help me. I've had probably a decent handful of them. None of them have ever been able to move the needle in a meaningful way, right? Which means I can't delegate that, which also means I need to delegate the creative part, which was crazy, right? Skipper Chong Warson So can't do both. Carl Cleanthes Yeah, right. So I delegate the creative part, right? And the old mentality, like, if you're not working on the if you're working in the business, you're not working on the business. It's so true, I couldn't be doing all the things. So I started to bring on some of my first graphic designers, and then illustrators, and then I found out some of my illustrators were animators, and then we started offering animation. So we started pivoting the whole business and growing. And like a huge pinnacle moment was when I hired Ross Ciuppa, who's still my creative director, like, 11 years later, out of Art Institute, I think like 2012 so maybe it's like 13 years now, 20 I don't know, 12 years. He is amazing at illustration and animation, and I taught him graphic design. So as I'm doing all that, we're evolving the business 2020, hits like we just started getting. So from 2011, it took nine years for us to get a really big household name. We landed a project with SyFy, and then we started getting projects from there. And then that whole list I rattled off earlier has evolved. But like that first one was like, Hey, we did it for SyFy, and then we won a gold Addy and Best in Show. And like, this is really amazing. Skipper Chong Warson And we could do it for you. Carl Cleanthes And then I was able to build this big lever off of that, where I'm just like, I can do more, right? So, and then, you know, then all the doors open, right? Because if you get one household name in your portfolio, now you can do you're not like some shop that isn't tested, right? Fast forward, to the economy crashes. Your shit goes crazy. And, you know, we're like, oh, wow, this is gonna be great. And then I lose like, $70,000 of work in like, a week, right? And we're still really small, so that hurt. That was huge. It was painful. You know, I went into survival mode, kind of batten down the hatches. Good thing. I already knew how to live lean, right? Like I was going, I got my expenses down to, like, 2500 bucks a month. Okay, it was super lean during that time, maybe even less than that. So during that time, my buddy came to me, and, you know, my dad actually had passed away in 2016 and I, you know, I went on that whole journey of losing my dad, and he was my best friend. And like, all this inspiration of my whole life, and like, I never got to, like, you know, I, like, I said, I didn't really hit it big till 2019 so, like, he never even got to see that, which, like, really, like, broke me up a lot. And like, so I've been on this whole journey. I've been documenting that and creating stories and putting that out on my social media. Skipper Chong Warson Yeah. Carl Cleanthes So 2021 hits, and the NFT craze starts to come out, right? Like, and I've got a bunch of buddies, a bunch of buddies in the, you know, entrepreneur space, and my buddy Chris comes up to me. He's like, man, have you really looked at these NFTs yet? And I've been following crypto, but, you know, I'm not one of those guys that bought Bitcoin in 2012 probably be sitting on a beach somewhere right now. Skipper Chong Warson (Laughs) Carl Cleanthes (Laughs) But he comes to me like, Dude, you got to do something with this. And he started breaking down NFTs for me and how that, you know, it can create two things, a digital ownership economy that allows for certificates of authenticity of tangible, real things, as well as, you know, creating a situation of scarcity and actual tangible ownership over a digital good, right? So, even though there are thousands of copies, you can prove you own the one, right? And that may or may not make sense to some of the people, but when you start late thinking about like, how digital our lives are now, and especially the next generation, and how much like even in in Fortnite, how much skins mean to kids. And what that is, those could easily be digital assets that and they are digital assets. They're just not NFTs, and that's, you know, their decision as a company. But they could, in a different perspective, make those so that they're interchangeable, and the people who own them could buy trail trade and sell them outside of the network through the blockchain, adding more value to the consumer. I digress a little there. So the NFT space is what revitalized my creativity, right? So I started building this business up, and started hiring artists. You know, lost my dad in 2016 and really had, like, an emotional breakdown about like, I never really took the time and energy and effort to do collaborative art with my dad, right? So I started doing some of that after he died, taking some of his pictures of -- so he died in 2016 and June, 25 so I think August or September, you know, a few months later, after I'm done, like just sitting around crying, being stoned for weeks at a time, my team was running my company, and I just, like, broke right, like, and they kept it running too, which was, Oh, God. They love me that much. Like, I just disappeared, like, and they just like, Dude, we got you. And it was like, that was the first time I really knew, like, I have a company, and it's people that really care about me. So humbling. So anyway, I'm doing the art with my dad's art, posthumous

collaboration. The first one, I'm drawing these things, and like, like, I just something lights up in me that I was long dormant, right? That creativity of Carl from sixth grade, excited to send in his portfolio to this thing. Like, on a level. Like, I, you know, I got some of that again in college, obviously. And I was kind of going in every direction, but, like, this was the first time, like, I found my art. Skipper Chong Warson Yeah. Carl Cleanthes And it was through my dad, right? So he had these, like, crazy sketches. And if you go to my website, you can, you can, you know, see some of this stuff, but like, simple little line art sketches, and I'll just take it and I put it in a light box and made a copy of it, because I couldn't even bring myself to deface his little sketch that he probably spent five minutes on while he was on the phone. Doesn't even remember doing it right? Like and like some, some of these are from like, 1970 right? He didn't even want kids. Like, I was born in '85, right? So, like, I have stacks of his notebooks of art that, like, he didn't make in a time when he didn't even know he would ever be married or have kids, or anything, and, like, I found them, like, in my mom's shed, all decrepit and moldy and shit. I saved them, right, and now I'm turning them into new art at like, 2020 like, I started it in 2021. Skipper Chong Warson Yeah. Carl Cleanthes So I literally, and I started doing that. It was just felt amazing, yeah. So the first piece I did 2016 did it with colored pencils. Did another one. I did, like, four or five of them. Skipper Chong Warson Okay. Carl Cleanthes So fast forward now, back to 2021 when Chris hits me up, and tells me I should do all of my dad's art as a NFT collection because I have 700 pieces of his art. He's like, So dude, let's take them, make digital copies of them. If you buy the NFT, you get the art as well, right? Because the art, I have 45 of these up on my ceiling and my walls. Every room of the house is, like, covered in colorful craziness, and it's beautiful, and I love it, but, like, I still have, you know, another 660 amazing pieces of art that need to be in the world, right? So I said, All right, let me mint this collection. Let me understand about NFTs. And as the more he explained it to me, I just dove head first into this, like, Oh, my God. This is amazing. I love this stuff. So started seeing how, like, I could make my father into a famous artist using web3 and NFT to create a permanent archive of his creative works and his legacy in the blockchain, right? So you know, when he was dying, I was taking care of him for like, three months, okay? And he got really upset one day because he said he, you know, he felt like he knows his art never got its due, and like, my father was a genius with color and just expressiveness through his artwork. And it basically did, like crazy faces that are abstract coming out of these, like ethereal watercolor puddles of madness. And then he just

had the ones that were just puddles of madness. But also they're like, beautiful, too. I don't mean to make a negative spin on it. Some of them were like, so you look at some of me like, this person is deeply fucked up inside (laughs) and he would say the same thing. Skipper Chong Warson Right. Carl Cleanthes And he's like, and some of them are just like, the opposite, the yin to that Yang, right? Like, so I say all that to say, like, this stuff all inspired me, and I took it, and I took 72 pieces of one of his styles, the faces, and I made faces of a mad artist, right? And that's an NFT art memoir, which, to this day, and I think is still the only NFT art memoir ever made that I'm aware of, and like little stories in each one in the metadata, like, of descriptions, of like, what I think about the art, what I think about this, and what this reminds me of my father and this one story, and blah, blah, blah, and like, all that put into these pieces of art, minted on the blockchain forever there now so that it can be discovered, even if I fail at making him a famous artist, this art is there on the internet, on blockchain right, recorded in an immutable record, as long as, like, r-weave never goes down, and, like all these other things, and Ethereum still around, and Google doesn't go, you know, back. So basically, pending, like a solar flare, this stuff will be here forever, which, you know, it's pretty cool. So, and then my work kind of spun up out of promoting that collection. So after I'd done those four or five pieces, Chris was like, well, could you do stuff like this? How long does it take you to make one of these? I don't know, like, two hours, right? Like, three hours, maybe especially because I did one digital and that's the one we were really referencing. He's like, Well, what if we did one every week, like, on a live stream, and you could promote the collection for, like, the next, you know, four months, right? And then get people excited about the drop. And then we did a show in New York City where I had, like, printed one of one originals of all the pieces I had made promoting the drop of the collection, so that, that's where it started, right? Like that, like, got me back engaged in my art. I hadn't, like, I said I hadn't really been doing art for the business in years, because I just was focused on the business. So basically, art school, built the business up for a few years, I'd say about 2012-2013 I'm no longer doing art in the business. Skipper Chong Warson Okay. Carl Cleanthes 2013 to like, you know, when my dad died, I started doing a few pieces, but I hadn't done any art, like tangible colored pencils or painting, because I did some watercolors and colored pencils at that time, four pieces. Skipper Chong Warson Okay. Carl Cleanthes And then I took him digital so kind of the rest is history. I've been live-streaming every Wednesday night for almost three years now, making new pieces of art. So I start with something -- either a

photograph of mine or some sort of piece. But every piece is layered in with my dad's art as textures and colors. Sometimes I'll take his faces I've done like probably 20-30 new faces that start with, like, a line art sketch of his, and I just go freaking crazy on it, collaborate with the live audience. And it's like, so like, healing. It's really been healing. Skipper Chong Warson Yeah. Carl Cleanthes Yeah. Because I'm like, I'm honoring his creative legacy and keeping the idea of all that of his creativity alive in me, using and collaborating with his art, right? Like this feels fucking awesome... Skipper Chong Warson Well, and I can hear the joy and the enthusiasm that you're communicating when you're talking about this, but I can also see how there's something cathartic about working through this, working in this way, that detail that you shared about your father lamenting that he wasn't as well known as he would want to be as a creative, as an artist, really struck a chord. And then that idea where art is a place where you can almost roleplay a little bit and present things that may not be the version of yourself that everyone sees on a daily basis or on a regular basis, so you can express things that you might not be able to express in other ways, even if you're very outgoing. So it feels like there's a lot of layers to this as you're working through this with your father's work and your own work in tandem. Carl Cleanthes Yeah, it's so true, pure art, right? Like, it's just deeply emotionally meaningful to me. And I'll tell you, like, leading up to my father dying, like, whenever you lose somebody really foundational in your life, right, whether that's your best friend or your spouse or your kid or there's different levels -- I'm not trying to equate or higher level, lower level -- Skipper Chong Warson Can't compare. Carl Cleanthes -- to anybody's grief. But like, someone that's deeply meaningful to you, yeah, it changes you, right? And, you know, I spent hours just like, What am I like, just thinking about life and like, now my dad is just this idea, right? Like, he's just these memories and this legacy and this artwork, but like the ideas of how I live and how I value life, and like what I find important are still deeply resonating in me, and I put that out into the world through my live stream, through things like this podcast, right, like and then building on top of that with his art also. So now there's this tangible medium where I get to do that, right? And my dad was, he used to say all the time, he's an entrepreneur, like, he did have a whole bunch of shit, right? Like, so that's exactly what he'd say. But like, he was an amazing musician. He played acoustic music and could sing, and he could do all sorts of like, he had restaurants. I mean, amazing chef. Like, could make just, like, mouth-watering you would like, it blows your mind, right? But, like, there's three of us. I have two brothers, right? Okay, and we've all kind of picked up some of his talents and run with them. Like, I'm deeply in the creative space, deeply in the visual space. One of my brothers, like, like, plays a lot of music, and the other one actually plays the bongos. One of them plays acoustic guitar, and they both love to sing. And they're both chefs, and they've been on TV shows and run restaurants. So like, we've kind of, like, all took parts of it that inspired us and kind of run with it, right? So it's just it feels really good. It really does. And one last part on that catharticness, right? Like, I'm so 2016 -- I think it was early 2017 and I'm working on one of these pieces of art. I forget that we don't have a visual here, but -- Skipper Chong Warson By the way, just a visual for the listeners, and we'll take a screenshot of this when we're done. I want you to point out, I want you to show the toe shoe and then point out some other artwork, and you can absolutely see this during your live stream, but the room that you're sitting in, your office is covered in art, your ceiling is covered. You've got one of your brick walls that, yeah, absolutely there is wall space, but there isn't a whole lot. Like, you've got a lot packed in there, yeah, for sure, Carl Cleanthes it's as much as possible, right? Like, maximalist. How do we -- Skipper Chong Warson Maximalist. Carl Cleanthes -- transform these, you know, people, some people get excited about a brick wall. Like, that's a good start. Yeah. So, here's like, so my spirituality kind of, like, I kind of left organized religion a long time ago. I grew up, like many people in this country, very Christian, and I'm not knocking that. And, like, I'm all for anything that makes you a better person, right? It makes you feel better. It makes you treat other people better. But for me, I kind of stepped away from all that. I was just sort of in the rat race of life, right? And when my dad died, I started having all these, like, really profound experiences that I have no way to differentiate or say anything it could be anything other than what it appeared to be. Skipper Chong Warson Can you give us an example of, do you mind sharing an example of, like, one thing that happened? Carl Cleanthes I'd love to, I'm trying to compose myself, because I've never been able to tell this story without crying. So okay, it's okay. Like, I love it. It's part of the journey of life. Skipper Chong Warson Yeah. Carl Cleanthes So look, I'm doing this piece of art. It's like, two in the morning. It's the second or third, one of those little collaborative faces I've ever done, right? And it's, I'm doing the thing and I'm drawing, I'm like, deep in it, I just start losing it, like I feel him with me every time I'm doing one of these. Like he's an energy. It's, it's hard to explain if you haven't ever felt something like that, but like, I'm deep in thought about him, I'm doing this art on top of his art, and just crying and losing my shit, and I get a phone call at two in the

morning on a Saturday from this, from this woman that, like, I don't know at all, we're friends on Facebook, but she used to date my father. She lived in Florida. My dad was in Florida for a while. They had a really awesome relationship, from what I can tell. And so she speaks, I can't not do this, but I think she's Ukrainian or Russian, or somewhere in that area, deep, heavy accent, you know. And she calls me up, and I pick up the phone and I see that I was like, I know who she is, right? So I answer the call, and I'm just like, This is bizarre, but like, I'm losing my shit, like I'm stoned, I'm crying, I'm snotting and I'm like, I'm a best, like, whatever. Let's take this fucking phone call. It's gonna be fun, right? Skipper Chong Warson Yes, and... Carl Cleanthes Yeah, just layer some more shit under this experience. Skipper Chong Warson Maximalist. Carl Cleanthes So glad, so glad I did. She goes, Carl, I promise you, I'm not crazy. First words I've ever heard from this woman in my entire life, right? You -- your father and I were your father was magical and so special. I never I've never met anyone like him, and our bond was so deep. And I don't know how to say this, but I was just asleep and dreaming about him, and he came to me and told me that I had to wake up right now. This is crazy, right? I have to wake up right now and call you and tell you that he's proud of you. The shit's so fucked up I can't even say it. Yeah, yeah. So it's like, holy shit. Like, what was that? Right? Like -- Skipper Chong Warson How is that even possible? Carl Cleanthes How is it possible, right? Like, that's not Christianity or Judaism or Islam or whatever your book you're into, like, that's just like my dad's on the other side and communicated somehow through a person at the exact right time. No. Skipper Chong Warson That's not like, that's not stuff you can plan. That's not something that you can expect that's not something. And I think also you have to receive it for the gift that it is, whatever your philosophy is, whatever your foundational belief system is -- Carl Cleanthes Yeah. Skipper Chong Warson Just lean into it. Carl Cleanthes Yeah, dude, it's so crazy, so but yeah, he's just like, I'm so proud of you, and you're building, you're greater than what I could have ever imagined, like, all this shit, I can't even say it back, because it's just, it's just too emotionally overwhelming, but so inspiring, right? So that just catapulted me right? Like, oh my god, I gotta keep doing art. So it took me a while to get into a rhythm and figure that out. But like, man, here we are now. Like, 2024, again, I livestream every Wednesday night, every piece I do has my dad's stuff in it, and it just feels like a million bucks. The whole thing is just deeply, deeply moving. So, yeah, there's that. Skipper Chong Warson Yeah, thank you for sharing that is such. I mean, just hearing you tell that story moved me. I don't know all of the particulars, but from what you shared, I mean, I can't imagine someone not being shook in some way, if they had a similar situation happen to them. Carl Cleanthes Yeah, it's, it's so uh... Skipper Chong Warson And talk about validation? Carl Cleanthes Yeah. Wow, exactly. Skipper Chong Warson Yeah, that's crazy. Carl Cleanthes It's funny I told that story. I do that every time I tell the story. I try so hard not to -- like I got it this time, like I'm psyching myself up. Never happens. It's too visceral. It's too deep. It was too moving. So I got up and I told this at Boston Blockchain last year on the stage, same thing, crying, my face off, right? And people code up to me afterward, like, dude, dude, I didn't know I was gonna be crying at a blockchain convention. Like -- Skipper Chong Warson Right, right. Carl Cleanthes So it's just cool, man. I love it. You know, it's like, and I love that I was raised by a man that, like, taught me, like, the real parts about being a man of integrity and character and standing up for people, it has nothing to do with whether or not you fucking cry about something that's crazy, deeply moving and emotional, right? Skipper Chong Warson Yeah. Carl Cleanthes And it's like, it's, it's pretty, I just am grateful for that, right? Like that, I don't -- I have no reservations about crying in front of anybody. Actually have this weird thing. Maybe I should have said this earlier, like, I don't get embarrassed. Like I've only been embarrassed maybe a handful of times in my life, and it was like, for the most part, like things that are like society norms, like a man crying, or like, you know, maybe, like I don't know anything you can think of, like I just I don't care. Like I'm living my life so intentionally that, like other people, having a negative opinion about the choices I make just doesn't bother me at all. Skipper Chong Warson Right, feelings are feelings, and I don't, I don't, I don't, personally believe that you can argue with people's feelings, and I also think that it's okay if they spill out in a way that you don't expect it. And I think that's when you know your friends, that's when you know the people who support you. And I think that's authentic. And there's a lot of this myth of authenticity, and this myth of actually, a couple of things that you talked about, like, what it means to be an entrepreneur, like, it doesn't look the same for everyone. It can't. Carl Cleanthes No, it can't, yeah, because the journey's inside, right? Like, what? Like, everybody's totally different, right, right, on the grand spectrum, right? Like, we all have similarities, and there are archetypes, whatever. But like, the individual configuration of you is you, even my identical twin brothers, are very different, right? Skipper Chong Warson Yeah. Carl Cleanthes So, like, you know, it's, it's interesting. So the journey you go on is all about, like, your strengths, your weaknesses, your experiences, and then how you react to those things, Skipper Chong

Warson Right. Carl Cleanthes So, yeah, the journey's always different. Like, I mean, it took me, took me 10 years to get, like, anywhere worth talking about. Like, most people, reasonable human beings, have quit and moved on to two or three careers by the like, you know, I'm just like, I'm gonna figure it out, right? Like, it's like, you need that though, I think. Skipper Chong Warson Yeah, I think so. So I want to go back into two different areas, and the voiceover that you gave for NFTs, which stands for non-fungible tokens, is one of the better ones that I've heard, maybe even the best one that I've heard. But can you explain to people in the audience who may not understand what NFTs are, and some of the conventions of web3, you have a physical piece of artwork that your father did, yes, and then you add to it sort of almost improvisationally in some way. So yes, and we've talked about that a couple of times already in the conversation. And then how do you assign a digital token, this NFT, to the artwork itself? Carl Cleanthes Sure. So there are a couple of different methodologies for that. You know. The one is just like, I'm a person, I'm, you know, a business, and I'm selling a thing and like, so, no different than when you buy an online. When I buy this t-shirt online, what I'm buying is a transaction for this little JPEG on the screen that I decided means something that this person has an agreement that they're going to ship me a t-shirt, right? Like the representation of I didn't walk into a store and hand them cash and they handed me a shirt. So that transactionally is the same kind of way that you can do NFTs, right? The NFT part of it has value because what you can do is say, All right, the person who bought this physical piece of art gets this NFT that's in a record that's permanent and unchangeable, right? So while the record is unchangeable, right? That's like layers inside of blockchain, there are NFTs where you can adapt them as they change time or hands or values. There's a lot -- anything you can program can go into an NFT. Let's take a big step back about, talk about, like, just high level. So NFT stands for non-fungible token, right? So a non-fungible token, it means that it is a unique asset. So we don't, I never heard about fungibility prior to working in web3, but fungibility is essentially a financial term that says, like, if you have a US dollar bill and I have a US dollar bill and we swapped them, no one had a value exchange. We have, like, yours has a different serial number on it or whatever, but it's the same thing as mine. Like there's no change in value. So that's fungibility. So if I wanted to create an NFT, let's say if I wanted to, if I wanted to make this dollar bill non-fungible. We're not talking about the technology side. We're just talking about nomenclature. I could take this dollar bill and draw a piece of art on it. Okay, if I'm Picasso, this is now worth a whole lot more than a $1 bill, and it's not the

same as your dollar bill anymore, because I've modified it, right? It's now not fungible, right? So that's just a high-level kind of, what's the word I'm looking for here? Skipper Chong Warson Just a high-level understanding, a high-level explanation. Carl Cleanthes There's a term -- Skipper Chong Warson Example, metaphor? Carl Cleanthes Metaphor. There it is. That's what I was thinking. I think it's a metaphor, whatever. Anyways, so, like, so that's the idea behind the so. And also, on the flip side of that, if I'm a terrible artist and no one likes my work and I'm not known this probably dollar bill might not be worth anything anymore, right? Like, now it's also non-fungible. It's not even currency, right? It has no value. So that happens in blockchain. So what's blockchain? It's basically a record, right? So it's, there's a piece of cryptocurrency that starts in this wallet. So visualize a spreadsheet, right? And the spreadsheet, every cell represents a transaction, and it's either, it's either a currency or a wallet address. So if you think about from a physical aspect, basically, if we, if I, if I created all of the Carl money and it was in my wallet, let's call it my mailbox at my house, right? Skipper Chong Warson Okay. Carl Cleanthes Let's say there are 10 of them. Well, I can rip I can take one out and give it to you, right? So now I have nine here, and there's a record that there was 10 originally, and I've given one to you and that that you accept that, and now that is recorded into the record. So now there's a record that I used to have 10, and I have nine now, and one went to you. And so that's how blockchain works. Every time something moves, a record is created, right? The power of it is that the people that hold everyone holds a ledger, a copy of this record, okay? And in order for any transactions to happen, everyone has to -- the records have to be checked that everyone who supports one of these copies of this record has the same base record as you, right? That keeps people from adding or subtracting money that doesn't exist, right? Skipper Chong Warson Right. Carl Cleanthes So that's high-level blockchain, right? So just recording where things started and where they went in perpetuity, so it creates a chain of events. It started here, went to Fred, went to John, went to John, went to Timmy, went back to Fred, went boom. And it could be broken into fractions, or it could be like the whole thing tracks every aspect of it, right? These are just text records. They're not huge things, but they are becoming bigger and bigger, but the long story and people are developing ways to manage all that and more succinct methods. But that's the idea behind it, and the power is the people that have these ledgers. Let's call them nodes, which is how it's referred to on some blockchains. So each node is on a different computer, on a different server in a different country, all across the world. So there's no one governing authority or governing

group of people. It's decentralized. That's the power, right? So in order for you to sabotage this record, you'd have to hack 51% of the computers simultaneously to change the ledger so that the ledger now reads something else that isn't the case. Does that make sense? Skipper Chong Warson Yeah. Carl Cleanthes Because it reconciles with everyone immediately for every transaction -- Skipper Chong Warson so it flows all the way through. There's some level of transparency, you can understand where these individual pieces went, from here to here to here. Carl Cleanthes Pure transparency. Actually, the only thing is, who owns that wallet. Skipper Chong Warson I see. Carl Cleanthes So that's the pseudonymous nature, right? Like, I don't know whose wallet this is, but there are. You can make the wallets public, and you can put so anyway. So the pseudonymous nature is that, like, you don't have to make your wallet publicly known that it's yours, and you can make a million wallets right now and all that sort of stuff. So we have that base understanding of how blockchain works. Now, let's get back to NFTs and fungibility, right? Cryptocurrencies are fungible. If you get a Bitcoin, I have a Bitcoin, we swap them. They're fungible. Same thing with Ethereum. Ethereum is like the NFTs are on a whole lot of different blockchains, but the first thing that came big on was Ethereum. Okay, so let's say in Ethereum, right? I have a piece of Ethereum and I want to create an NFT. So what happens is a smart contract is written, and there's something called pinning that basically says this piece of cryptocurrency is permanently associated with this file, right? And it's just like linking on the internet, right? So that's now you have an NFT. So you go from Ethereum, which is fungible, to a non-fungible version of Ethereum that's permanently connected to this piece of artwork or this whatever. And the magic of the smart contract that connects those things, and the simplest version, it connects there, right this, NFT is connected to this file. And the more complicated versions, there can be any sort of if-then statements and variables programmed into that. So like you can say, you and I can create a smart contract that says this, NFT will move to the wallet of whoever bet the proper whoever bet on this game, the winner of the bet on this game. So you can bet, we can bet on Team A, and I'll bet on Team B, and we can put in what's called an oracle, meaning like a reference point of Fox News or ESPN or blah, blah. And then at the end of the game, set in whatever. You could program all this into a smart contract, which is wild, right? Skipper Chong Warson Wow. Carl Cleanthes So we could say, All right, so we're gonna bet that at the end of this game, if my team wins, I get the NFT, and if your team wins, you get the NFT at a certain time frame. So we say the game will be over at the latest by this date. So then it'll check these websites right at this date, and whichever one comes back as the reconciled winner, the action is then taken, and the NFT then moves to your wallet, right? Like that can be done. So it removes the need for trust at all, right? Because you and I make a bet on a game, and I'll give you this baseball card if the Bulls win, and you give me this. Thing If they lose, and then I go, I don't like that. That was bullshit. There were some bad calls on the ref or blah, blah, blah, like I could, I could renege on that. That's not okay, right? So that's the power of blockchain. Now there are also things called what I got excited about is that there are royalties in the blockchain, right? So we can make a smart contract that says every time that this NFT is sold on a marketplace and there's a transactional value, X percent of that value goes back to the original minting wallet, which is always in the record because it's on the blockchain, right? This asset started here at this wallet because it was, that's what it was recorded in the ledger. So let's say I sell it for 100 bucks. To you, great, I get my 100 bucks right now, let's say you sell it for someone else for 1000 bucks. Because, look, you're an art dealer. You knew you had a guy that would buy this, so you got this steal, and that's how the art world works right now, I bust my balls and I do this painting for, you know, $2,000, and this guy's like, Oh, I got a guy over here that'll pay 24 that guy made 18,000 bucks, and I made two grand, and I did the hard work, right, right? Like, so, and look, that's never gonna go away. Sales is the, you know, the foundation of capitalism, right? Like, if you don't have some a buyer and a seller, like, you know -- Skipper Chong Warson Right. Carl Cleanthes That's the big thing. But the cool thing is, you can program into that any level of royalty. So as this transacts, the second time you sell it for 20k I can put 50% of that as mine. I get half that. Or, you know, the standard is usually 10, but like so 10% so I would get, you know, 2000 bucks off of that again. Or back to my thing, right? That's amazing, right? And that's automated, right? Those transactions are automated. And the really, really powerful part is that that wallet lives in perpetuity. Skipper Chong Warson I see. Carl Cleanthes Right? That contract lives in perpetuity. So I can give my kid the keys to this wallet, and that can be a family heirloom, that can be an asset that generates money in perpetuity, like that's wild, right? So anyways -- Skipper Chong Warson So -- Carl Cleanthes Does that answer your question? Skipper Chong Warson 100%. Absolutely. And I think you hit all the points that I was curious about, it sounds like this decentralized nature of the network, and the NFT in the currency is, I didn't realize that repeating, that potential, repeating value of it, so it can be something that just because an artist sells something at, you know, whether a visual artist or a musician, or whatever your trade is, if you have a token

attached to that, then you can also reap some of those benefits 2, 3, 4, 100 people down the line. Carl Cleanthes Yeah, for forever, right? Like, that's the thing, right? Skipper Chong Warson Forever. Carl Cleanthes So, so that's that was -- Skipper Chong Warson As long as the technology doesn't -- because you said something earlier about, like, some of the technology pieces that connect it, Carl Cleanthes Yeah, well, it's this, you know, if we still have the internet right, and people still have believed that crypto has value, then they'll still be trades and transactions. These blockchains will still exist. And, yeah, so I don't see a world where that happens, that isn't pure apocalypse, right? Like everything else with the shit at the same time. That makes sense, fine at all. For the record, that's viable in my head. Like I'm also just, like, sort of a prepper on the on the side. So don't, don't worry about me. I got this. I'll be doing art with sticks and mud in the backyard. I don't care. I think there was one other thing that I wanted to mention about what you said, Connecting an NFT to an asset. And I didn't really answer that question. I answered it with, like, the simplest form of like, you bought a thing for me, and I told you, it comes with the painting, so I'm going to send you that. But you can have an encrypted QR code on the back of a painting that's programmed into the smart contract that doesn't allow the NFT to be moved until you scan that encrypted QR code that is part of the programming of how that NFT moves. So the royalties activate. So the if-then statements say, like, you know, if money is agreed to on this thing, and if this is scanned, then transfer the NFT, right? So it can really be a digital certificate of authenticity. I see all luxury brands going this way. I also see deeds to houses and things of that nature, where the systems are so stupid and so archaic. Skipper Chong Warson Really -- Carl Cleanthes Like you need title insurance, just in case someone sold you some property they didn't even own, because four generations ago, somebody fucked something up at some clerk thing, and put it the wrong, you know, like, it gets crazy, right? But, but if we run all that through a system, and now it's all on the blockchain, right? Like, there is no need for that, because the records are permanent and immutable, right? Like, you know what was, where this was, there's no it's all clarity there, right? So as the governments and local governments and federal governments start to adapt these systems, I think there's going to be a lot of amazing stuff in that space, and it's getting easier and easier to use. Like when I first got into this, just getting cryptocurrency at all wasn't insane. Getting it off of, like Coinbase, was insane. Setting up a wallet was insane. Integrating with the whole process of actually minting NFTs was that you used to have to be a super tech guru on some levels. And I spent, I mean, probably 100 plus

hours reading and researching learning just because I was obsessed with it, because I thought it was so powerful. But now it's like PayPal. You can put crypto in your PayPal account and like, it's getting easier to have NFTs, and there's more and more accessibility as the banks bring into it because the banks aren't going to ignore industries that are generating billions of dollars of revenue for but so long before like if they need their slice of pie. Yeah. Skipper Chong Warson Yeah, I even think that I saw down the street at the grocery store, there was one of those coin changer machines, and I think you can coin change into Bitcoin. Carl Cleanthes Yeah, I'm not surprised. Yeah, it's coming. Skipper Chong Warson Yeah, it's coming. Well, we've talked about a lot of different things in a lot of different places, and we'll include links at the end of the show. But Carl, is there something that we haven't talked about yet that you wanted to get into? Carl Cleanthes Man, I don't know. I feel like I've done a lot of talking -- Skipper Chong Warson We've covered a lot of ground. Carl Cleanthes Yeah, we hit all the major food groups of my life, for sure. I mean, if you want to get into like, a little bit of like, you know, self-reliance, and like, you know, backyard growing, and I've got 12-year organic heirloom tomatoes that I've been growing from seed every year, cross hybridizing them with other types of tomatoes that I like, and then artificially selecting. And by that, I mean, I pick the ones I like to take to seed next year and eat all the rest of them. Yeah, we can talk about all that. I love growing food and experimenting with just the natural world and all that, like, inspires my creativity. And like, I take pictures of stuff and then photo bash them into Photoshop, and -- Skipper Chong Warson Nice. Carl Cleanthes I don't know that's my whole jam, man, I'm out here. Just live my life. Skipper Chong Warson Yeah, I have to say we have some friends who have a backyard garden, and they have this demarcated area. They also have chickens, and they have lots of different things. They have about, I think, a half acre of land not a lot, but, you know, enough. And the other day, they had this basket of little, tiny yellow tomatoes that they had just picked. And I thought I might be having some kind of out-of-body experience, because I've tasted garden tomatoes before, and I've tasted supermarket tomatoes, more supermarket tomatoes than garden tomatoes. But I didn't understand what I was tasting, because it almost tasted like I'd just eaten a grape. It was so sweet and bright, in a way, that a supermarket or even a farmer's market, for that matter, farmers market comes closer, but you know, when you're closer to the source, and I was just, I had to stop for a second, and my friend Tricia, was like, Have you never had one of our and I don't remember what they're called, the yellow little, tiny tomatoes. Have you never had one of our yellow tomatoes before? And I said, No, I've never had one of these. And she's like, it's clear from your face that you're having an experience. And so yeah, plus one to that idea, we don't garden in our family, but there's something categorically different about tasting something from someone's home garden that's different than even if you buy it from a really good farmer's market. I don't care what the stamping is on there -- organic, you know, sustainable, blah, blah, blah, all of the catchwords definitely different from what you would get in sort of a run-of-the-mill supermarket. Carl Cleanthes 100% I think what people don't understand is that nature comes in infinite varieties. Every part of nature comes in infinite varieties, what we know as a tomato, right? Like you say tomato, and someone's like, oh, this little red thing here. And I thought tomatoes come in every color. My tomatoes are green, purple, and red striped, and the inside is fully ripe they're green, right? But I've seen yellow, I've seen deep purple, I've seen black, I've seen everything in the world. It reminds me of this photograph that I saw that this amazing photographer did all these figure art nudes of a bunch of Olympic athletes. So you have, like, this tiny little ripped Russian lady, that's like, four foot, nothing, super pale, and then like, this huge Samoan guy, right? Like, genetically, we are all human beings, but the range of skin tone, size, variation, everything you could think of is like, like, they don't look like the same. They look like different creatures entirely. Like, from the tiny little gymnast lady all the way up to, like, the 500 pound, like, Samoan sumo wrestler, or the Hawaiin, you know, what like, what the whole range like? So that, you know, really hit me one time. And then I was listening to Charles Darwin's book On the Origin of Species, when I really started to get into nature. So I'm just out in the garden listening to this book. And just like, really, I like to immerse myself in the shit -- Skipper Chong Warson Sure. Carl Cleanthes If you can't tell, right? And I was talking, you know, just in the state of New York, right? So apples are huge in New York, the Apple state, right, or whatever, right? There are 10s of 1000s of types of apples in New York. And, in fact, apple trees have indeterminate seeds, I believe, is the term. It's called, you know, there's some botanist out there that's going to. Butcher me on that, but they don't generate a clone of their offspring, meaning, like every time they roll the dice, the apples are so wildly different that they're not the same flavor, they're not the same texture. Some might be poisonous. They might be a crab apple. It might be a Fuji apple. Could all come from the same parent, right? Because the level of genetic variation in their offspring. So like what you know as a Fuji apple and what you know as a gala apple, these are all clones of a parent plant, right? So what they do is they grow, they'll graph,

they'll they'll cut the the bark on a branch, okay? And they'll pack it with dirt, and then then roots will grow right there. It's called layering, and they cut it off right there. Boom. You got a new tree. So you're talking about genetically identical stuff, so that you get what you're expecting. That's why, if you buy a gala apple anywhere in the world, they're all going to taste pretty much the same. Now, you'll notice some of that backyard variety of like, oh well, this one grew in my backyard. And I, I have really I live next to a water basin, next to a watershed, and is really good soil, really good nutrients. That'll up the flavor profile, which is part of what you were experiencing with your friends' backyard tomatoes. But the genetic information expression in this is going to be the same because it's a clone. Now, if you plant what they'll do to start new variations is they'll plant 1000s of seeds. Skipper Chong Warson Okay. Carl Cleanthes And they'll go through and try and sample and check them all out, and they'll kill all but, like, four of them, right? They don't make the cut. They don't make the cut, and then they clone those trees out into a whole orchard. So that's not how, like, tomatoes work. Tomatoes, they do cloning and stuff so that you get your types of tomatoes to keep the genetic information the same, because every time there's an offspring, there's an offspring, there's variation. But like in something like an apple tree, the variation is insane, whereas, like my tomatoes, the variation is enough to where, like, oh, like, one year they all double load, right? Like, they can't be like Siamese twins, and I love that. And it was only like 20% of the crop did that, so I started picking those. So now, my tomatoes are all bigger every year, because I pick those and then, so you pick the traits you want and get the seed from those right. So it's just, it's really exciting. Skipper Chong Warson No, for sure. And it's almost like we need a whole other episode to talk about some of these other parts. Carl Cleanthes Happy to. Skipper Chong Warson Actually, one thing that I wanted to get into, just really briefly, is this notion of entrepreneurship. I think there's a lot that's being made right now about the romance and the idea of standing up your own business. It's the American way, or, you know, the way in which things are invented. I think sometimes people who have started businesses are glorified in a way. But can you say a little bit about how entrepreneurship has played into the work that you do? I know we've already hinted at it, but if someone came to you today who, let's say they're a designer, maybe they're an illustrator, like, they work something in the creative arts. They're like, Hey, Carl, I really want to stand up my own business. What advice would you give them? Carl Cleanthes Yeah, I mean, the best advice is to take some time and really look at, there's so many nuances in this space, right? Like how do I like to do graphic design or illustration, well, what kind and for who and why, right? Like, so getting into the weeds, of, like, when you're working on a project, so this is how I got to where I'm at. Like, I found the things that I did, I did everything for anybody that they would pay me to do in Photoshop and Illustrator, right? Like, if it needed some graphic work, like I'm at it. Let's go. I need money. I got a kid coming, right? Like, so in that process, I found out that, like, not all money's the same, right? Not all clients are the same. So figuring out, like, I really love doing maximalist type of stuff, and I really hated doing the dance on overly simplified stuff that didn't feel valuable at the end, and then the client always had some sort of, like, underlying value, where I wasn't dealing with the right people at the time, obviously, but didn't appreciate it, like the magic in the simplicity, right? Like, but it's easier to see the magic in a well-balanced insanity -- organized chaos, right? Like, so I say. Like, find what compels you, like, what's the stuff that puts you in your flow state, right? Is that t-shirt illustration? Is that some sort of photo manipulation? Is that 2D animation? Is that 3D animation? Is that graphic design? Is that logo design is that? Is that website design? Like, whatever thing was that photography? Is that a combination of all those in a way that nobody else does, right? Like, find your creative expression, build a brand around that, then you can actually really have value, right? Because if you're trying to compete for the lowest common denominator right now, if I can do it faster or cheaper than somebody else, you're gonna lose, right? AI is moving into those spaces. I don't know how the Fiverr community is going to survive in this space. Skipper Chong Warson Right. Carl Cleanthes It's making pretty noise that doesn't have a lot of strategy behind it, that isn't, isn't uniquely an expression of you for a specific thing, like, that's easier than it's ever been, and it's only going to get easier. So my advice would be to figure out what really excites you, what really is your special sauce? Are you like me, and you have, like, a deep love of nerd culture, and you really love illustration and animation. You surround yourself with this whole company, and you're into technology, so maybe you want to do NFTs for gaming and entertainment brands, but you know, so you see how that all works, and now my passion lines up with my values. That also lines up with the things that I'm excited about in my normal daily life, right? So like when that all comes together, the value I can charge for that is so much higher, and I can actually live a nice life, right? I'm not saying you should take advantage of people, but I'm saying, you know, you should get as much value as you can, especially when you're dealing with bigger and bigger companies, like they're getting millions of dollars out of your thing working right? So charge

them as much money as you possibly can get, right? Skipper Chong Warson What the market will be. Carl Cleanthes Yeah, Skipper Chong Warson Yeah, there's that area in which, like, what are you good at? What do you love doing? There's a third area that's often talked about. And I can't remember what the third area is, but -- Carl Cleanthes It's ikigai. It's a Japanese thing. Skipper Chong Warson There it is. Carl Cleanthes And it's, what are you good at, what do you love -- Skipper Chong Warson Yep. Carl Cleanthes What is there a market value for and what can you get paid for, right? Like, no -- Skipper Chong Warson That's what it is -- Carl Cleanthes What are you good at, what do you love, what the world needs, and what you can be paid for. Skipper Chong Warson There it is, there it is. That's exactly what it is. Carl Cleanthes I like to pair that with wabi-sabi, which is also a -- Skipper Chong Warson Japanese concept. Carl Cleanthes The idea of, like, there's beauty in the imperfection and seeing the process and the tool marks on the thing, if you will. So finding that should be really rough and tumble, and you should get some bumps and scrapes and scratches along the way that remind you that this is where you're supposed to be and not over there, right? Skipper Chong Warson So, yeah, it's funny that we've talked a lot about these concepts, but like in NFTs, like, how do you know something's authentic? How do you know it's the real thing? We talked a little bit about growing apples. Like, there are lots of overlapping themes, I think, in what we've been talking about in terms of, how do you find that source of strength, that spring from which you're inspired, that you can, you know, your work is replenishing to you and doesn't deplete you. It's so, so important. Carl Cleanthes Agreed, agreed, yeah, Skipper Chong Warson Well, let's get into -- Carl Cleanthes Yeah -- Skipper Chong Warson I love it too. So let's get into some of the closing questions. We have a rapid-fire set that we ask everyone. Carl Cleanthes Okay. Skipper Chong Warson So, Carl, is there a lesson that you've learned in your life or your work that you wish you would have figured out earlier? Carl Cleanthes Love the process. Skipper Chong Warson Say more, Carl Cleanthes Yeah, love the process. Look, when I first started my first business, I was all this, like, you know, charge testosterone, 19-year-old. Like, I want to be on Forbes by the time I'm 30 and millions of dollars and blah, blah, and, like, at some point I felt like a failure in my 30s because I hadn't quite got I'm 39 now. I'll be 40 soon, but like in my early 30s, especially, like after my dad died, and my deep evaluation, and talking to my wife and talking through it, and just like love the process, like she's, like, you might get hit by a bus tomorrow, Carl, and you have an amazing life, like I wasn't -- you know, I'm still not rich. Like, I still don't, you know, I still have money problems, like anybody else

that you know isn't stacking up hundreds of 1000s of dollars, but I have a beautiful life, and I love it. And if this doesn't, it doesn't equate to some sort of internal, measurable value of success that I live on my own terms, and I work for myself since 2006 then, like, what is success, right? Like, if that's not success, what is right? So like, yeah, love the journey, right? Skipper Chong Warson Yeah. Plus one to that, I think that we don't sometimes realize the things that we have until they're reflected back to us, right? When people ask us questions, or they talk to us, and we reveal a little bit of that backstage. Because there are lots of things that we assume about people. So, yeah, I think trust the process. That's a really great lesson. Thank Carl Cleanthes Thank you. Skipper Chong Warson So Carl, what are you excited about right now? I mean, you're excited about a lot, but what are you listening to? Is it a book? Are you watching a show? Are you listening to a podcast? You know, TV, movie, what do you want to say to the audience in that they have to experience or go find this thing? Carl Cleanthes Well, that's a loaded question to ask an excitable human being like myself -- Skipper Chong Warson A maximalist. Carl Cleanthes Look, I'm not recommending this for anybody, but to be truthful and answer your question, what I'm excited about right now is the good side of AI generation. So I've been using large language learning models, stuff with like ChatGPT and stuff like that, to help facilitate all kinds of shit in the writing and replying to emails and legal advice and everything I could, like the best assistant that knows all the shit about life. Like, that's what I've been using that side of AI for in terms of, you know, the chat side, but on the creation side, like I've just learned how to create my own Lora models, which is a local model on my computer based on my data set. So what I'm really excited about right now is taking all of my dad's art and all of my art, and building local models, right and then taking that and keeping, literally, having a system that can generate art based off of a prompt from me that my dad would do based on all of his art. So, like, literally, like, like, how fucking cool is that? Skipper Chong Warson That's amazing. Carl Cleanthes Well, this is where I'm at. So you put, I'm gonna put all the faces into one model, right? All the weird little ad faces of art like that. Like my faces of a mad artist that. Skipper Chong Warson Yeah. Carl Cleanthes I start like that, just my dad's ones, not even mine, in this set. And then I was thinking I'd take each one of them, put that into ChatGPT, the individual image, and ask it to describe this as a prompt. So the ChatGPT is going to describe it as a prompt. And actually, in my ChatGPT, I've taught it how to talk like me, so it will describe it in a way that I would describe it, which is also a cool other layer. And then put that back into my local AI, it's a stable diffusion model with a comfy UI, and have that generate a new face based on the description of the old face in my dad's style, using just my dad's artwork, right? So, like, like, so is my dad's creativity literally, is sort of still alive at that point, like, fucking mind-blowing, right? And then I also want to take that dump all of my hundreds of pieces that I've been working on into some other models as well, so that I can go, All right, well, I've got someone that came in that wants a piece of art they don't maybe have a budget that's like, my time is getting more and more valuable. But I also like, love to collaborate with people, and I'm doing some stuff with the yoga studio right now, but so like, I want to be able to take photographs. I take them, throw them into my AI Art Generator based off of my art output, something that's like 80% of the way there, and then Photoshop it. So save myself three, four, or five hours of time not stealing from other artists, right, using a tool to expedite my skills based on my data set, right? Like, so that's what I'm fucking crazy excited about right now. Skipper Chong Warson There are two parts of me in response, like, I don't know what to make of it. What you're describing feels fictional. Like, there's no way that actually exists, but I do know they exist. Carl Cleanthes That's 100% real. Skipper Chong Warson Wow. Carl Cleanthes And you can even do it with video, which is, like, that's a whole lot like, so can I take, Can I record myself doing like, a, like, a vinyasa yoga flow, and then overlay my artwork style and crazy stuff that's also got my dad stuff incorporated into it already, like, manually, like, and turn that into a moving animation of me doing yoga in my art style, like, that's going to be the precipice. I'm hoping to have that fully fleshed out in the next month or so. Skipper Chong Warson Wow, I can't wait to see your -- are you documenting this process anywhere? Or -- Carl Cleanthes Yeah, so I have, I have all I record everything I do. Okay? Like, you know, yes. Skipper Chong Warson Okay, cool. All right. Next. Closing question, Carl, you unexpectedly had a day off and you had unlimited resources in the ability to defy the constraints of space and time. What would you do? Carl Cleanthes Space and time? Skipper Chong Warson That's the monkey wrench like usually, that's the part of the question that people are like -- Carl Cleanthes Whoa, I mean, like, it's really easy for me. Like, I just go back and like, hang out with my dad. Skipper Chong Warson Oh. Carl Cleanthes I probably meet my granddad too, maybe some of my my ancestors and lineage on that front. But, like, yeah, like, yeah, go see my mother in law. Like, go hang out with my people that have passed on. Skipper Chong Warson Yeah. Carl Cleanthes Like, what could be more profound than that? I don't need money, I don't need time, I don't need like, what? I can go see dead people that I love, then I'm in for that. Like,

it's a no-brainer. I'll come back here. You know, you could offer me unlimited resources, whatever. Like, that's more meaningful than anything. Skipper Chong Warson Yeah. Carl Cleanthes I don't know what that says about me. Skipper Chong Warson But I think it values those connections -- I was thinking of a movie called About Time. Came out about 10 years ago, was unfortunately billed as a romantic comedy, but I suppose it does involve quite a lot of romance and feelings and introspection in general. Anyway. Domhnall Gleeson, Rachel McAdams, Bill Nighy. The men in this one family can travel back and forth in time. The main character tries all sorts of things, to fix his sister's tumultuous life, to play table tennis after his father's diagnosed with cancer, but once you have a kid you can't go back and forth in time, because then it changes the kid. Even disappearing them, one of the main themes is to be present. And live life to the fullest, that sort of thing. And yeah, sure it's a romantic comedy, whatever, ultimately, this message of the movie was just so powerful. So yeah. Carl Cleanthes I love that. That's super cool. And I had a thought... It'll come back to me. Skipper Chong Warson Yeah, all right. Carl, what do you think will be true in a year from now? Carl Cleanthes That isn't true now? Skipper Chong Warson Like, what's a prediction that you think will be true in a year? Carl Cleanthes Oh, I don't know. It's a crazy year, man. Like, I know, got a big election coming up. Like, World War III is on the brink. You know, Terminator might pop up. I mean, you know, it's like, are we going I, Robot or, you know, is there? Like, God, I say, NFTs are going to make a comeback in the next year. I think web3 is actually gonna be part of what helps save us from the indistinguishable insanity of AI like, again, if you have something that's validating the authenticity and origination of a piece of content from a legitimate source of content creation, be that, like this C-SPAN camera that's watching Congress like, I think there's going to be some use cases there. It might take more than a year, but that's the thing I think I'm most excited about, predictability. I'd say for myself, I'm going to be a healthier, stronger, better version of myself by making better choices, with the business and better choices of my life, and embracing this journey I'm on. Skipper Chong Warson Awesome. So, Carl, they're gonna be notes throughout the show as people can as people are listening, but where can they find out more information about you if they want to learn more about you? Carl Cleanthes Yeah. So my informational hub is colorfulcarl.com, there'll be links there to my podcast called Pixel Retentive, which is on the art of business and the business of art, kind of how all that intersects. We're about a year and a half in on that. You can find links to my live stream, which is For the Love of Creativity with Colorful Carl. I live stream every Wednesday night, 8pm ET on pretty much every social media platform, but I try to push everyone to YouTube and Twitch, but I'm on Facebook, X, Instagram, Tiktok, all where all the cool kids are, you know. Skipper Chong Warson That's right. Carl Cleanthes And then there's links to Epic Made. You can see some of the amazing work we're doing over there with my agency. And, yeah, reach out. Say hi. I love talking to people. Don't be shy. You know, I'm not too good to talk to anybody, especially if you're a struggling entrepreneur or artist or someone where, you know, I can really relate, like happy to give you any advice that I can and help you not suffer some of the pains that I suffered on my journey so... Skipper Chong Warson Well, thank you, Carl, for taking the time to chat today. This has been sort of a tennis ball match of a conversation just bouncing all over the place, but it's been quite replenishing for me, and thank you so much for sharing. Carl Cleanthes Oh, I love that. Thank you for the kind words. Glad to be here, and maybe we'll do it again sometime. Skipper Chong Warson Yeah, for sure. Let's figure out another reason to get together. Carl Cleanthes Yeah, of course. Skipper Chong Warson And that's it for this episode of the How This Works show. Thanks for joining us, we appreciate your support. We're looking to really grow our community this second season, sharing the show with just one other person would be so helpful. Subscribe and leave a review wherever you get your podcasts. You can find us online at howthisworks.show, that's four words with no dashes. Again, that's howthisworks.show. We're also active on a variety of social media platforms. I appreciate you tuning into the conversation. I hope you got something out of it, I know I did. Until next time, remain ever curious and we’ll talk again soon. [Outro music] Carl Cleanthes I don't get embarrassed, like I don't I don't give a fuck like I'm gonna die one day, and I don't care about anyone else's opinion about how I live, because I love my life and I love what I'm doing and I love who I am. Skipper Chong Warson Hold on. Can you hear me? Carl Cleanthes I can. Can you hear me? Skipper Chong Warson I can't hear you for some reason. Hold on. I don't know what just happened. Oh, I see. Technology. Carl Cleanthes I don't know. Did that fix it? No? Skipper Chong Warson Yep, I got it now. I just couldn't hear you back. So could you repeat the last part of that? My wife, actually, I think she just plugged in her headphones and my computer tried to connect to it. So -- Carl Cleanthes No worries. Skipper Chong Warson Yeah. Carl Cleanthes No, I just said that, like, maybe there's something I should have mentioned earlier on, but I literally just, I don't get embarrassed. Like -- Skipper Chong Warson Oh, yeah.