Podcast Transcript

[00:00:15] Sean: G’day everyone and welcome to the ScaleUps Podcast, where we help first time Founders learn the secrets of scaling so they can fulfill the potential of their businesses, maximise the impact that they can create in the world and make bigger decisions with greater confidence. I am your host, Sean Steele. And today I have a very special guest for you, Barry O'Reilly Co-Founder of Nobody Studios, Founder of Barry O'Reilly LLC, your consulting business. And of course, it has a whole bunch of things that happened under there and host of the Unlearned Podcast. How are you today, Barry?

[00:00:48] Barry: Great, Sean. Thanks for having me on. 

[00:00:49] Sean: It's a pleasure to have you here. Maybe Barry, I just might kick off with a bit of background on you to save you talking about yourself. After several start-ups, you've kind of shifted towards company creation and you've been working on this intersection between, business model innovation and product development, and I guess all design and cultural transformation. And through this process, you've authored a couple of best sellers, Lean Enterprise, which is, How High Performance Organisations Innovate at Scale, and then  Unlearn: Let Go of Past Success to Achieve Extraordinary Results. And you write a lot, you contribute to the economist and strategy and business and MIT Sloan, which actually I think it might've been MIT Sloan, where I first came across to you because I do get amongst the MIT Sloan. You’re a faculty at Singularity University, which a bunch of my friends have been to and said was just absolutely transformational, in terms of their thinking. And you've, Co-Founded Nobody Studios with a mission to create a hundred compelling companies over the first five years. How many years into Nobody are you?

[00:01:54] Barry: Yeah, we're sort of 18 months in. So, we got three companies moving last year. Got currently 8 in production, hopefully have 14 by the end of this year. So, a lot going on. 

[00:02:05] Sean: I love the concept of having 8 in production, from a factory it's like; Hey, if we can get a hundred, has to be a system. That's very cool. Well, I guess a bit of context for our conversation to set us up for today, Barry, we've got an audience here of first time Founders running services, businesses, particularly, usually 2 to 20 million in revenue, but often in very traditional areas.
So, they're very successful, they've run good profitable businesses, they got cashflow, they got resources. They're often in things like recruitment or accounting or education or IT services or something like that. They often see, because they're so embedded in their businesses, you know, they often see trends and patterns starting to emerge and they know something is happening, but they're so focused on their business, sometimes they miss that opportunity and they often end up, they don't get on the front of it. They're often waiting to get sort of impacted by it and end up sort of playing catch up, which I think can be a bit of a missed window. So, for example, they might see a client opportunity where there's a technology solution to that, but they don't activate it because they don't have any tech background, they never built something like that before and so they sort of stall before they even have a go. Well, they might see this sort of shift that you have been talking about a lot this shift towards in the labour market, towards greater independence entrepreneurial-ism, portfolio style careers, which changes the way people engage in work, coupled with this trend towards community-led companies and even have seen different ways of raising capital, like equity crowdfunding, but can't really make sense of these things together, or not sure how to take advantage of them. And I was just having a conversation with a mate this morning who runs a business in that 2 to 10 million range about Web 3. And he was like, well, what's Web 3. And I was like, well, you've heard of cryptocurrency. Yes. Have you heard of NFTs? No, no idea what they are. And you know, they might think that they are for 22-year-old, you know, that the metaverse is just a place where 22-year-olds want to get involved in dance parties in the metaverse. And so, I'm really keen to chat to you about these three concepts that I think could really positively impact this community. So, understanding how the ownership economy works, and how they might take advantage of that, exploring fear, which really held us back a lot on how do we recognize it and move through it. And then Web 3, you know, what's coming, how can they leverage some of these technologies? I know there's a fair bit to try to capture in the time that we've got, but I think you are the man in the right space to have a go at it. So, does that sound right to you? 

[00:04:25] Barry: It sounds of like a lot of fun. Delighted to talk about it. 

[00:04:27] Sean: Well, let's start with the ownership economy, because you've really coined this phrase. I'm interested to talk about, maybe you can unpack the themes and the frameworks that sit behind the ownership economy as a starting point.

[00:04:38] Barry: Yeah. Well, I think when the people who inspired me around this was Jen Lynn actually, but there's sort of a number of elements that comprise of this notion of an ownership economy, which is really a movement creating a vast array of really amazing opportunities where people will actually get to own more of the items that they create and that they distribute and other people use. And this is probably actually one of the big shifts from maybe you might think of a Web 1 to Web 2 to Web 3, and I'll talk a little bit about those transitions as well. But the sort of mega trends that people probably want to be thinking and aware of is this notion of the explosion of entrepreneurs. So, the ability now for people to build and launch businesses, the cost actually I think Wells Fargo did a study in the US, that the costs now to launch a company has gone down from, I used to be in the hundreds of thousands. It's now down to $10,000 where anybody can sort of bring a company to market, whether that's, you might have an idea for a kombucha company that you want to start, you can literally go online, set up a Squarespace website, plug-in Shopify or an e-commerce platform, set up a Stripe account and then suddenly you could be selling kombucha to the world, right? Like that's literally as quickly as these businesses can happen and are happening.

[00:06:06] Sean: Actually, as a greatest example of that, Barry, I had a friend in the last 18 months who with less than $10,000 built a two-sided marketplace for very niche, high value birding tours around the world. And so built a two-sided marketplace on a no-code platform, pretty much himself with a bit of help from one engineer. And again, less than $10,000 had a fully operating two-sided marketplace that's now producing good revenues and sort of taking off. Yeah, it’s amazing.

[00:06:34] Barry: It is amazing. And this is the thing that's very interesting for like talent is when they can identify a niche that they're really passionate about to your example, like I know nothing about birds and two-sided marketplaces, but here suddenly this person is up and running. And that's what's exciting about this explosion of entrepreneurship, right? If you have interest in a domain, it's actually the lift to sort of start sharing that content or that product that you're creating with the world, it very quickly you can do it at a relatively low cost compared to a previous worlds. So, that's just fascinating. Even, what I would say is more of a Web 2 world, right? Like basic e-commerce. But you're still sort of creating products and selling those products on or services to people. And they're paying you for those services and that's fun. But it sort of ties into a little bit to this rise of community that business... 

[00:07:33] Sean: Yeah. What do you mean by that?

[00:07:34] Barry: Yeah. So, your friend who might have a passion for birding, suddenly like the internet has allowed that person to share that with the world and draw in more people who are passionate about that space. Whether, for me, it might've been the kombucha company, but for your friend, it's the birding company where certainly your communities or as you start to build these tools. which are reliant on the community using the tools to make the product stronger, they start to actually become, rather than thinking of customers, you start thinking them of collaborators. And Shopify is probably a good example of this, where it's an e-commerce platform, but what it allows is for people who use the platform to give feedback and guide about how the platform should be improved, or that they can create modules that other people can reuse on the platform to make the platform better. So, at some stage just sort of line that starts to get blurred between the company is really deciding what should be built, where the community is actually building tools to make the platform better. And that's a really fascinating way of to shift away from, I'm thinking of the people outside your company is just customers and you sort of dictating what you think the market wants to actually building systems where the market is self-organising and they go to places where their voices can be heard, where they can contribute to the notion of that company like Shopify, and it sort of improve, right? Like the platform improves, they can do more commerce there. It makes it better. 

[00:09:21] Sean: So, if we took it an example of that say in a traditional sector like education, and I work with a bunch of education clients. So, they might be doing delivery of their own IP to customers, but actually students could be trading, creating their own content that they think would be valuable for other students or trainers could be creating their own content or other companies could be trading because you'll bringing the value of, you know, you already attracting customers, you better at sales and marketing. So, maybe you focus on that and other people helping create value for the community.

[00:09:50] Barry: Right. That's it. You know, and this is sort of then where it becomes really fascinating in what is notionally being called Web 3, or if you talk about this notion of the ownership economy. So even in those examples, you were giving where somebody has created a platform and other people are creating content and delivering it on their platform. So, if I'm an educator, I might make a course on mathematics and I'm going to host it on education.com because that's where the community resides. And actually, me making that sort of online course or whatever it might be, you know, it might charge us a small fee for it, but it's really the platform that makes the most money out of these things. The creators are building the content to get exposure and they might see a small amount of revenue from it, but the line share of the revenue goes to the platform. And other simple examples are Facebook where people are creating all the content to run on that platform. And the creators are actually seeing very little revenue from creating the content that the platform is reliant on because they, they say that they have the customers there. So that doesn't really sound that fair if you're the creator, right? If you're the person sort of building this, and I think that's where you start to see this shift in the ownership economy is that people want to have more ownership of the content or the IP that they're creating, and they want it to be rewarded more for creating that actual content.

[00:11:31] And if that content is redistributed or re-used, you would like to see some payback for that or recognition or ownership and reward. So, this is where it starts to get like really, really fascinating is like, who is to creativity of this? Is it the platform it's just as like sort of rent seeking from creators, who are getting a raw deal and probably the best example of this, the most people might be familiar with is maybe something like the Spotify, where you have… Yeah. So, Musicians are a great example. Like, if you can imagine, and this also ties into this sort of democratisation of funding things. So, if you can imagine this an artist, you know, your dream is to sort of get a record deal with a big label. And for artists, that’s their dream, because the label holds a lot of the power to take your music and productionise it and distributed to the world. And in many ways, it's like a start-up and venture capitalists, right? Like you need people to sort of give you the capital to spread your creativity in the world. But so, artists generally are previously would have to sign these, would probably often be tough deals because the artist just wants their music. The label would have a lot of the sort of power in that relationship and they could sign people for long-term deals on, you know, not great opportunities. And then that was sort of like, if you think of that as like Web 1 and then Web 2 was this idea that actually the labels were so poor at distributing digital content, we needed platforms that could sort of rise up in the middle.

[00:13:18] Sean: Do a better job.

[00:13:18] Barry: And essentially, do a better job, right? And that's where you had all these platforms, whether it's a Facebook or it's a Spotify, whether whoever you can think of where they were really great at these legacy companies, like the record labels, digitising their content and distributing it to the world at a fraction of the cost. And so, that was a great sort of situation for the labels to do deals with Spotify or as example. But the arts is still was, again, probably the most creative in that process, but sort of marginalised in terms of the reward that they though would see from that. And it's a centralised system, right? All of the music is going on to one platform, it's going on to Spotify as platform. All the music is central. And now what I think you see is with this rise of Web 3 is you are starting to see artists say, well, hang on a sec. And you know, why do I have to rely on either of these record labels or these platforms to distribute my content? Why don't I look at ways that I can actually own more of my IP and maybe fund a project that I want to do, which could be, create a new album and then give an opportunity for people who support my work to sort of fund it and maybe even own a part of and that sort of project for helping me play that role. And this is what we're starting to see now is that artists are actually launching projects, and it could be a new album where they offer ownership of the product to fans or a community that believe in their music. And you can sort of fund that project by buying or investing in like tokens, if you will, or shares or what people call non fungible tokens - NFTs. So, an artist can say, I'm going to offer 10,000 tokens my fans to help fund this album. And as part of funding, this album, I'll distribute 10% of the royalties may be of this album back to the people who help fund it. So now you've got this sort of direct connection between a community that might really like an artist and want to fund their new album and sort of be co-owners of both; the creation of, or like they become like a venture capitalist in a way, like they're funding the artists to build this album or project, and then should that project be successful because there's now platforms in way that an artist could distribute the product themselves, and loads of different ways that any upside that might result from that album can be redistributed back to the people that funded it. But you can also think of that token or that NFT as like a membership, right? It's a sort of secret access, all areas tickets that anyone who has that ticket could be invited to like a private concert, and if they wanted to resell that ticket to that private concert, because it's digital it and it could be a contract, it can have policies written into it. So, if I had to NFT token for my favourite artist, and the show is on Wednesday and I can't go, you know, I could sell that ticket, like a usage of that ticket to somebody else to go to the concert. And if I did that and it was written into the contract if I ever did that 50% of that money would go back to the artists for any extra capital I raised from it. It's all codified. So, you start getting to these like really interesting ways of interaction and ownership, and because it's all digitised, it's really efficient for those transactions to happen. And in the technology world really quickly, right? Like I just say I'm offering the ticket for a hundred bucks and so someone buys it and suddenly 50 bucks goes into my account and 50 bucks goes into the artist account, almost instantaneously because it's, codified in a contract somewhere that's associated to the token that I held. So, this stuff is where it starts to get really, really fascinating about what the future of entrepreneurship looks like; both from this explosion of entrepreneurial-ism, how communities can actually like fund and create and drive businesses. And the way that you can fund now is becoming more and more sort of democratised and easier that you don't necessarily have to go down the route of speaking to the bank manager and the good old days, or maybe speaking to VCs, who said, well, banks don't understand entrepreneurship, we’re entrepreneurs who we’re successful and will fund other entrepreneurs. And now you had to transition to sort of this crowd world, where previously with crowdfunding, you could buy the product, but you could never own the company. So, and now we're in this world and this is what we're doing at Nobody Studios, we are going to be the first venture studio to ever offer equity crowdfunding to retail investors, which means, anyone…. 

[00:18:59] Sean: Is it equity crowdfunding each project that you do in Nobody?

[00:19:04] Barry: It is, equity crowdfunding the studio. So, people will own a stake in the studio, and that means that they would see our potential upside from every company we create forever. So, they can buy into the factory, if you will. And the factory is going to make products, which are companies. And that's a really fascinating way where we will bring a health community to our studio to help us build companies. And they'll also own a piece of it, which is again, a total shift in the way that previously entrepreneurship has been done. 

[00:19:42] Sean: It's a fascinating, geez, there is so much to unpack here, Barry and I've wished we had a seven hour podcast for this one because, I've been, since starting to learn about some of these shifts, it's been really interesting to me. So, if I just draw this back for some of our business owners who might be in a B2B environment, you know, you've probably noticing more and more people are freelancing more and more people are happy to work for multiple employers or to drop part-time for this one, more and more people want to have more control over their time, number one, so you're getting this shift towards entrepreneurial-ism and people wanting to have a bit more control over their future, you've got this drive towards no longer just community participation and collaboration, like we've seen on the Salesforce app exchange as an example, you know, you've got lots of other people creating apps that sit on the app exchange and make the whole community richer. And they obviously get some, some benefit from that. But a shift towards people actually wanting to have a greater sense of ownership. And I couldn't agree with you more, this whole world of Web 3, NFTs and smart contracts, which is what you've been talking about before. But again, for those people who haven't understood NFTs or smart contracts, we can't do a full episode on those. And I would strongly encourage you actually to listen to some of Barry's back catalogue on the Unlearned podcasts, because he interviewed lots of people that unpack a lot of these concepts, but it really started to excite me when I started to think about the possibilities for those who are likely to transact with customers or have stakeholders involved where they actually end up with a fair bit of loyalty, because to your point, you can create attachments in a digital sort of format, two people having a completely different way of interacting with you from the why that they express that loyalty. So, to your point, you know, I've watched Gary V for those who know Gary Vaynerchuk, you know, big sort of marketing guru and a few years back, he got into NFTs and I've watched some of Gary's NFTs where he selling access to premium experiences. Okay. So, he has this digital artwork that you can buy and NFT too. But if you buy that artwork, you then to your point, you get an access to his conference, which I think is happening in the last couple of days, actually his first big sort of V-con, so a live conference, or you can buy an NFT that gives you a premium access to him. So, you can work out with Gary V and his personal trainer for an hour, or you can go with Gary V to a basketball game and he's actually a codified that in a digital format. And to your point, if you resell that, he's going to get a royalty from that. One of the things that interests me is I think then about the equity crowdfunding side, and I speak to a lot of people in education, so, I take a typical business in say, international education, they have students who have parents who have a very strong vested interest in the success of that student in your organisation. Those parents could make very interesting potential equity investors, because they want to see you succeed. Then you have international education agents who are guiding the students, who also have a vested interest in the education providers in which they work. You could create access to both of those people. You could create access to equity in the organisation through an equity crowdfunding rise. Now you're going to have not just customers or suppliers or partners, but because they've got a vested interest, their desire to become advocates for you and to refer people to you and really get behind you and help you develop your business, not in a transactional way, but in like, “we want to see you succeed. We succeed if you succeed. So, let's do it together. Let's figure out how we can help you shape your strategy.” Like it's such an interesting way to sort of level up the engagement beyond a collaboration and to create incentives. One of the things that I've been thinking about is where in other sort of B2B environments, this might apply. Because I like I think about, last week, we had on the show, I'm Brad Beer, Brad Beer is the CEO of BMT Tax Depreciation. You probably won't know that brand, but it's the market leader by probably 10 or 15 times the next closest competitor. So, they've done 700,000 tax depreciation schedules for investors. Now, they would have 2 million, there's probably about 2 million property investors in Australia. And the vast majority who've done the tax depreciation schedule have done it with BMT, and they have this check transacting every now and again. But for those investors who know they're going to be going back to BMT and maybe want to see some improvements in service and so on. If BMT was looking to raise some capital that wasn't their own cash, they've got at least minimum 700,000 customers that they can actually go to. They've already got a big following and the way that they can engage those individuals from an equity crowdfunding part becomes interesting, to engage in through NFTs, and correct me if I'm wrong, Barry, but my understanding of the smart contracts is then any behaviour that's theoretically captured, that can be captured digitally, can form part of a smart contract. So, if you said; Hey, we're going to make 10,000 tokens available for our audience, you’re Brad from BMT. We want to make 10,000 tokens available.
But actually, part of that retaining the token or having the token retained for X number of years might require you to do certain things. Like, I don't know, watch certain videos or complete a course on their learning management system or something like that. Is that the kind of stuff that you can do with Smart contracts? You're actually sort of able to manage behaviour that can be recorded digitally?

[00:25:08] Barry: Yeah. So, like that's the power of the observability piece, of what we're doing with this type of technology. The examples you give are really interesting. So, if you think of just to, analogies are always a little bit dangerous, but they're helpful as we sort of go through them and like what you're describing there, this notion of almost like a certification in a way to sort of say to people, if you're going to own or be part of this community, there's sort of expectations to go along with that. And this is very natural and communities, as you described, like a YPO or EO, like you've got to attend 6 out of 10 sessions that are available or you need to do this modules or some exam every six months to show that you're active. 

[00:26:04] Sean: Like every professional accreditation, like you're an accountant or you're a company director, and you've got to retain you a professional development. You have to log in, you got to do 70 points, blah, blah, blah.

[00:26:13] Barry: Yeah. Like all of these things though, they are ways to sort of recognise contribution that you are active, and if you are inactive and terms of your contract, whatever the contract might be, are not held up, sure, you could be penalised for that, right? And like you say, because these things are codified digitally and that you could monitor has somebody logged on to the application and completed the four modules. Like that starts to bring the efficiency into this world, right? Is that you don't have someone with a clipboard ringing, like 10,000 members to say; Hey, Barry, you know, have you done your four modules this year? Now have you really come on; I've looked at the website. I can't see you've logged in. So, that's where you start to get some of these real efficiencies about how you can orchestrate large amounts of people and to be governed in a way that they have agreed to in a digital way. Like that is super, super fascinating. And it doesn't sort of end there, because the whole notion about what's most fascinating in many ways, for me, you've talked about people having a portfolio career, I'm a huge believer in that this is the future that rarely will people just work for one company, a hundred percent of their time, and most people are already doing side hustles. It's sort of like our natural, especially entrepreneurs, right? Like, the thought of committing to one thing for like 25 years to try and turn it into a unicorn, it's like, forget it. Like that's why so many of them invest in start-ups once they get their business up and running because they want to have fun. They want to explore intellectual curiosity. So, it's a innate in us as humans. So, I think you'll see more and more people want to contribute to lots of projects. And in the Web 3 world, you can think of it almost like a company, it's a construct where people come together to work on an area that they're interested in, whether it's kombucha making, bird making. I think, one of the most exciting fun sort of Web 3 projects is one called pizza dough, which is all people who love pizza in the world, and on Saturday is like their official annual party where people are going to create pizzas like a global community pizza creators. So just like there's fun stuff happening. But the thing is, once you start to be part of these communities or these groups, is that there's ways to end that you sort of earned or you recognise you're recognised for your contributions. And most of us in the world are sort of familiar with this sort of work to earn model, which is like your standard full-time work, you show up, you get a salary, you get paid, right? Like it's pretty straightforward transaction. Then other things I contribute to earn is probably a little bit different, right? It's a bit like a bounty, and maybe people might be familiar with open source where people are contributing their time to work on a bounty for something. Or maybe there's a price that is offered by the company or community to solve a problem. But you do this part-time and you could be doing this multiple ways and there's some sort of reward offered for that,
maybe it's financial. But what gets really interesting in this sort of Web 3 world is the reward is that they give you more tokens, or shares or ownership of the entity for contributing to things. And so, there's loads of ways you can earn, like you could invest to earn. Some people might just buy tokens and sit on them because they want to be part of the community. Some people might buy in, but then they want to, like, they love pizza dough. So, they're offering like five new pizza recipes a week. And for contributing those new pizzas offering to get a token for every time they offer a new pizza recipe. So, it's like a game, it's starting to start leveling this stuff up. Or maybe you could be creating to earn, like building a whole new set of assets or a part of the organisation, or building something even more in the community where you start to actually own more and more of this. What you're seeing in the gaming world, it's people get paid to play. If you play the game, your people are getting points or tokens or shares, 

[00:31:05] Sean: This ties in my two teenage boys. I can tell you. Barry, I'm thinking. 

[00:31:09] Barry: It's fascinating. 

[00:31:11] Sean: I’m thinking straight out, I'm just thinking of practical examples in the world of people who might be accountants or service providers or someone, let's take a service provider that do IT services. They see a project that they say a customer with a problem and they don't have all the time in the world to solve. Maybe they don't have the cashflow to solve it. They don't have all the skills to solve it. I can imagine this is an opportunity to essentially create a new entity. So, it doesn't mean that everybody's getting a stake in the full business, but those people who are going to contribute to the stake of the project, you might contain that in its own company, so it's building its own IP. You've got, somebody might be providing capital. Somebody might be providing development skills. Somebody might be really good at working with customers and they come in and kind of really seek to understand the customer needs and products getting created, but you've got those contributors with the opportunity to get sort of ongoing benefit from their creation. And again, they might all be doing it in sort of part time. It's not like, ‘oh, we have to go and find a VC to capitalise a new company or find some investment from somewhere or take on some additional debt, capitalise new company, get a bunch of the full-timers and then get going and maybe we'll give them some kind of incentive.’ It's like; no, no, like allow them to create, allow them to create with you, but make sure they get the benefit of doing so

[00:32:20] Barry: Yeah. And again, it's not a conventional model because the way we've been conditioned is that, companies create and they have customers that they sell to, and maybe they have a good relationship with the customer and they give them some feedback. But still all of the wealth is ultimately concentrated around the company. And then even in the company, the wealth is generally concentrated around the senior leadership team and especially the ownership of the company, right? Like, if there's sort of like this sort of people aren't inspired by that anymore, they want to be recognised for their contributions or work on things. And this is like the great resignation sort of thread, like people want to work on things that they're passionate about and that they have ownership in that they're creating. Way more ownership than typically has been offered. So, cash is not that exciting and this is probably for some people listening to the show are probably sitting there going we're; like, what? But cash is not exciting for most of the up and coming generations. They don't crave items. They don't crave having the dream sports car or the beautiful house. That is not necessarily what people crave, they crave meaning, they crave contribution, community. These generations favour collaboration so much and great collaboration. So it's a whole different ball game, right? And the systems that we're now starting to see emerging are much more around recognising people's contributions to projects that they're passionate about. And collaborating with great people. You go onto some of these Discord channels where collaborate on projects that they're working on into Web 3 world, like you have tens of thousands of peoples on these servers, like chatting about ideas. It's a social meeting place.  

[00:34:33] Sean: Barry, for those who haven't heard of Discord, this is going to be a terrible explanation. But as you said, the knowledge is a dangerous, but you know, for the old ones of us, we might see Discord as basically slack that looks a bit different and a bit cool, but it's bringing people together in around chats and channels and so on where they're essentially just filming themselves around a community that's interesting to them. So, I've recently joined a few Discord channels around, NFT's, around the Metaverse, around stuff around blockchain and cryptocurrencies because I'm trying to get as much insight into all of the technologies that sit inside this concept of sort of Web 3 technologies, how they interact, how they operate, what the rules of the game are, who is influential in it because I don't want to be the last one to know about this, because I know that the opportunities form in the early stages, and the reality is there's a lot of stuff that is very early, when you look at… 

[00:35:27] Barry: It’s extremely early.

[00:35:28] Sean: You get into the Metaverse, and whilst I haven't actually even bought my, you know, I haven't bought a VR headset, so I haven't even been in any of the worlds, but I've watched plenty of videos and stuff of other people who spent 180 days with a VR headset on and so on exploring different worlds. But I can see where some of the applications around, particularly things like smart contracts and NFTs will come into play for businesses who are willing to invest the time in thinking about it, whether it's through a decentralised autonomous organisation, which you've even alluded to prior around, you know, it's not the pizza Dough. So, a Dough we went through a full unpacking of Dough, but to your point, that's that autonomous organisation where the contributions by the individual to a part of that community that getting recognised to your point through tokens or shares or some sense of ownership, because they're contributing to the way it runs, and it's not run by a management team where everybody else is, you know, it's not run by three people who are making all the decisions. It's actually fundamentally run by the community in the way that it sort of evolves. So, there's all these different elements. And I'm wondering from your perspective, let's say I'm running a, I've got a 20 person accounting firm, or I've got a 20 person recruitment firm or a professional service firm or legal firm or a financial planning firm, where do you think in those sorts of situations, they're in pretty typical industries, relatively traditional and they're thinking, how do I leverage this stuff out of NFT's, which obviously relate to the blockchain in terms of the way that the transactions and everything is stored and the smart contracts that support them, the Metaverse, decentralised autonomous organisations. Out of all of these different kinds of Web 3 technologies or out of this sort of rise towards community led organisation portfolio careers, and I guess equity crowdfunding, or your changes to the way that people can raise capital and fund projects. Where do you think the more interesting opportunities are in say the next 18 to 24 months? But if you were one of those people, you'd be starting to invest your time in some learning. Maybe deal point, unlearning some things before you get there and recognising there's going to be a whole bunch of stuff, you have no idea, and you have to do a lot of digging to get there, but where would you start and where do you think some of those opportunities are in those traditional sectors?

[00:37:51] Barry: Yeah, so I can really only share my own story, but on my own intuition is that, you have to start somewhere and start small. And you even been describing this yourself, like the way you are learning is by joining a Discord channel and see what people talk about on there. If you want to understand what a cryptocurrency is and how you can use it, or what's involved and even purchasing or getting access to cryptocurrency. The only way you can do that is you have to start, right? You have to start. And it's really important to say like, because the problem at the moment, and it's really important like none of what we're sharing is investment advice, first of all. This is just an, and a lot of the narrative is around that. And that's not really the point. That's actually the least interesting part of all the things.

[00:38:48] Sean: I'm with you.

[00:38:49] Barry: And the price goes up, the price goes down like hurrah, you know, like great. What you want to start understanding is the capabilities that these technologies offer and then how you could leverage those capabilities in your business. And what's interesting about again, cryptocurrencies, is that it's a store of value that you can ship instantaneously anywhere in the world from one person's wallet to another. So, if for instance, international transactions is a pain point in your product or your business, that could be interesting for some people, is it it’s only use case? Is it's its best use case? Maybe not. But it's an example of how you can start to understand about how you can move capital around the world instantaneously, like within seven seconds with very, very low transaction costs. So, that's kind of interesting for some people. But to understand that, there's a lot of barriers and this is what will help people understand like how early we are on this journey. To get access to a cryptocurrency, you've got to go on to some exchange, validate yourself, go through ream of identification questions and bureaucracy. Then if you get onto an exchange, you can purchase a cryptocurrency, but also then you've got to connect more bank accounts and send small amounts of fiat currency, and then you can own, now you've got it. And you're like, well, what the hell do I do with it? Now you've got to put it in your own wallet. And then you've got to set up a wallet. Like it is painful as hell. It is not a perfectly designed experience that you're used to from maybe a Web 2 world, because we've been working on Web 2 since like the 90’s. So, we've had three decades to create user experiences that make it very easy to interact. 

[00:40:49] Sean: Think about how clunky it was at the start. Yeah. 

[00:40:52] Barry: That's what you, you've got to go back to like, remember the first thing you bought on the internet and how the hell did you do that? And this is the sort of learning and learning piece again. That now it's a new sort of set of simultaneously arriving paradigm shifts. The internet was a paradigm shift that we've had 30 years to sort of get to grips with. And if we even have got to grips with it yet, I'm still not even sure. But now we've got multiple of these transformational technologies arriving simultaneously, AI, cloud infrastructure, crypto currency. Like these are just a couple of them, like biotech, like all of these things are arriving at the same time simultaneously under converging. So like, it's so hard for us as individuals to even fathom how this stuff is all going to work together. So, it's early, but the only way you're going to understand this is by being active participant. And so, it's not like I've got the answer how it's going to change your business. I have no idea, but you'll have the best answer if you start to understand what these capabilities offer. So, that's where I always encourage people to start. Just like you have is, join a few communities, like see what they're talking about it. Try and buy a bit of cryptocurrency and put it in a wallet, like see how painful that is. 

[00:42:26] Sean: Yeah. And then use your wallet to buy an NFT on Open Sea r whatever other particular exchange, you could do some Googling and YouTube videos on smart contracts. Try to understand what the hell is a smart contract and what are some examples of how it works. It's only when you go in, and to your point, start doing that. You can do it in very small amounts. Like, you know, you can buy 10 bucks or 50 bucks or a 100 bucks of Bitcoin, but it forces you through the process in which you actually have to learn. That's excellent. Buy your first NFT that forces you to go and actually have a look at NFTs and understand how the platforms work and understand all the different currencies that are being used, and what's the difference between WETH and ETH, when you're looking at a cryptocurrency, you know, all of these things you're not going to learn just by passively watching something and doing nothing with it. Like anything, you actually just have to get involved in it. And I think it's actually a really interesting segue to, I wanted to make sure that we've got a bit of time to talk about fear because as Founders, particularly, you know, we have a lot of Founders that are probably maybe 45 to 55 and they can kind of see end of the road sounds terrible and daunting, but they don't feel like they've got all the time in the world. They might go, you know what? I've got 10 years left or 5 years left or 15 years left of sort of energy from my business and so on. And I want to understand how to do these things, but I don't have all the time in the world. And I'm really stuck in my business, and therefore, but deep down, there's probably a fear about, I'm not going to understand it more quickly enough. I've got no one else around to help me, et cetera, et cetera. There's all these fears that constantly get in the way of us achieving our dreams, fundamentally, you know, getting all the things that we want from our life and from our business. How do you think about fear a fear? Barry, I know you spent a lot of time thinking about this in your own business. I'd love to know what kinds of specific fears have held you back from what kinds of specific things and what did you do to get past them and what was on the other side of that?

[00:44:28] Barry: Yeah. I think fears are normal. We're hard wired for fear and every day, our nervous system is just like scanning, uh, any threat to our life. So, it's sort of ingrained into us and we're not even conscious of it all the time. And I think, especially for entrepreneurship or like, there's just these like shared experiences that people fear. Like starting a business or going out on your own is a classic one. What if it fails, what if I look silly, what if it doesn't work out? And I feel those all the time. When I started like helped start Nobody Studios, like for me, I had built a successful services, advisory business, like flying along, couldn't be happier with it. Like it runs itself now. Great team there. Brilliant. But I have two fears. I had the fear of, I might really do in like all the things I want to do in my life is one fear. And then I was like; well, what if I start something new and it doesn't work out? As like, sort of different types of fears there. And like, I got to the conclusion for myself is that what I really missed was building, I really missed like taking a company from pebbles and dirt and turning it into something, like literally like going from zero to one. And I really miss that. And so, for me, I sort of was drawn back to this idea of; well, I want to be building companies that's actually what I want to do. And the notion of a Nobody Studio, which is a company that a start-up that basically builds other start-ups, was super fascinating for me to bring all my skills there. But I constantly was sitting there going, what if it didn't work? I built up this brand, this persona, this reputation, and this is all in my head of, why would I risk all of that? And what if it doesn't work out? And like every day, I'm faced with this sort of fear of how are we going to raise capital for this business? How are we going to find the talent that we need to work on this? What if this, you know, a tough day where it's not working out and I'm like, did I make the wrong decision? Like, what I have learned is, and it was actually through some great conversations. One of them was with a lady called Anna Weinberg who wrote this great book called Culture of Safety. And she was talking to me about this idea that you, once you recognise is there and it's like a muscle that you have to sort of develop, like understanding, like how much is where it's too much fear that I'm way outside my comfort zone and paralyses me, versus recognising that I'll always feel a little bit of it. And in many ways, if I'm not feeling some of it, something's not right, that I may be being too lackadaisical about it. And it's like this muscle or a threshold that you can keep practicing and exercising and moving further and further out. So, your tolerance for fear gets a higher or you're more comfortable with the notion of fear. And we use these words like stress or pressure or overwhelmed or anxiety when we're really afraid and maybe that's what stops us from actually tackling the problem.
So that's really what I've got into the practice of journaling more and recognising like what fears I have calling them out to myself then thinking about; well, the only way to reduce fear or reduce uncertainty is to do something, is to take action, to try and address that fear or that uncertainty. And what's a small step that I can do each day to try and test if that fear is real, or remove the anxiety, the fear I have from that problem. You know, like all these sorts of things, like fear about creating talent to come work in the studio. Well, if I fear that, the only way is I can talk to people about what we're doing in the studio and asked them, does this sound compelling to you, does this feels like something you would want to be part of. And for some people they'll say; no, it's not for me, but they'll tell you two people that it is for. And like, so then it reduces that fear. And then I'm like; well, what I need to do is take action on each one of these fears, not all at the same time, but actually start thinking a little bit about what are some of these steps or how do I prioritise the fears I have and what are some of these…and we say a lot in Unlearn, “think big, but start small.” So, I can learn fast if that's a real fear or not. And every day I feel fear starting a business and is it going to work? And what if it fails? But it's kind of funny, the most inspirational and highly engaged blogs I ever write or shows I ever do is where I just tell people like how I'm getting on trying to start this business; the successes and the failures. And I guarantee you, my inbox is full the next day going; good on ya, keep going, I know I've been there. It's just all encouragement. And that again, reduces fear because you're like, wow, maybe I'm not the only one feeling this, it's other people. And I think that's really important.

[00:50:03] Sean: I love that. It's a big reframe frame, isn't it, really to say your job is not to eradicate fear and actually you're not going to do so. So, give up that sentence, but in the absence of actually, and I find myself in this situation, like you all the time where I'm wondering about, to your point, you built up a successful career, people have a certain perspective of you, and then you're going, geez, what if I tackle this and I screw it up? Or what if it's not good enough? And no matter how successful, no matter what things you've created in the past, it doesn't take away the fear about screw. It probably makes it worse in terms of screwing up in the future. Because you feel like you've got more to lose. But what I find is you can end up getting so busy in the doing because you kind of distracting yourself from actually really stepping back. And if you need to someone about it than you should, and if you a better reflecting on your own, then do that. But somehow, you've got to find a space where you can reflect on that and really pull it out and stick it down in front of you so that you can see it and go; okay, I'm calling it out for what it is, that's what's actually going on. That's actually how I feel right now. So, to your point, there's always going to be some steps you can take without taking the major risk that you are worried that is going to blow up in your face. There's always a lot of steps before you get to that stage. So, what are the two or three things that I could do that actually don't increase that risk whatsoever, but may actually reduce my fear about that risk because I'm going to get a bit more feedback, and okay, maybe I've made the wrong decision and maybe I’m going in the wrong course, but I'm not going to know that unless I actually take some actions towards it and increase my capacity to be okay with feeling that fear and actually still move forward. Yeah, that's really interesting. Thank you for sharing that, Barry, and geez, I'd love to chat to you all day. I think we'll probably have to get you back on the podcast so we can sort of follow the journey of some of these companies and spend more time, particularly as Web 3 evolves and we see more use cases in business and in sort of the traditional B2B sectors as well as those who might have big influence and they've got big sort of B2C audiences, whether they're artists or musers, or celebrities or influences. But I think that will be a super fascinating space to watch. And I love the concept of, I love your whole sort of modus operandi of unlearning and actually being willing to step into that fear because that's what everyone on this podcast is having to do every day in the way they build their business. So, thank you very much from me, I'm sure the folks you would have had a great time listening to Barry today. If you enjoyed the podcast, please write us some feedback. Send us an email to [email protected]. Tell us what you like. Tell us what you'd love to see in the future in terms of new topics or new guests, please subscribe on Apple Podcasts or whatever your favourite poison is there. You can find us on all the socials. And Barry, how would you suggest people follow along with what you're doing in Nobody Studios or other ones? 

[00:52:47] Barry: Yeah, well, like I would say, just follow Nobody studios, you know, go check us out on all the various different platforms. And we're on the cusp of doing some really interesting things and companies in a cryptocurrency space as well. So yeah, say hello, give us a shout. And if you want to help build some companies, we’d love to have you. 

[00:53:06] Sean: Beautiful. Well, thanks for sharing your time with us today, Barry, you've been listening to the ScaleUps Podcast. I'm Sean Steele, and I look forward to speaking to you all again next week. Thanks so much, Barry. 

[00:53:16] Barry: Pleasure.