Welcome to Start Up The Storefront, presented by Aurobora. All right, welcome to the podcast. On today's show, we have Chuck Harrington and Michael Lange just released a new movie, Cowboy Drifter. It's been out for a little while, I guess, before we begin. Let's tell people where they can find it. We usually end with this, but just for people to get a sense of where the movie actually is, where is it? Okay. Because it's not quite out yet. We're in the process of releasing it to streaming services. We're going to have it on Amazon. We're going to have it on Peacock and we're going to have it on Tubi in the next month. None of those platforms give us an exact date, but we are coming soon. Yeah, it's coming soon. Actually, if you go on Amazon now and you type in Cowboy Drifter, you'll get the one sheet for the film, you'll get the cast list, and you'll get the trailer for the film, which is fabulous, the fabulous trailer. So if you really want to check it out now, go at least look at the trailer right now on Amazon. All right. So the reason I want to have you guys on several. One, as an entrepreneur, it's similar. I'm a real estate developer entrepreneurship all around, have an idea, create an idea, bring the right people together. There's money involved and then there's execution. I've been always so curious about the movie making business, TV making business. And so we're going to get into it with you guys today. And so the first step, writing it, the idea of it. What was the idea, the inspiration? People haven't seen the movie. It's amazing. It's a really well done movie. Shot super, I think like it's, I'm not a big movie guy, TV guy, but I like the way this thing was shot, the cinematography of it. But what was the idea of to give people a window into what is Cowboy Drifter? It's a great question because when I, when I first had an idea to write the script, I had nothing to do with what you actually see in the film. And you're not a writer. Just, you're just, I'm a writer actor. Yeah. I've written several scripts and we can talk about that. Excellent writer. Thank you very much. I appreciate that. Originally, I wanted to write something for myself. So I wasn't going to give this script to Tom Cruise or, you know, Matthew McConaughey or any of those folks. If he did, it would be out in the movie theaters already, by the way. Just that's the part we're going to edit out right now. Actually, Paul Wagner, Tom Cruise's producer, did read the script. One of the early iterations. But I wanted to write something for myself and, you know, I grew up in the South, so I'm attached to Southern themes. I love the idea of redemption. And I figured I'd write about an old Cowboy type character who played guitar and sang on stage and something happened to him that he had to redeem himself for it. That was the original idea. And there was a Hank Williams senior sort of theme floating around in my head. I'm a big Hank Williams senior fan. And follow his story. It's pretty amazing. And then I realized I can't play guitar and I really can't sing. So let's figure this out. So I had to, I had to go back to square one. And I just came up. That's actually funny knowing that I've seen the movie. Yeah, exactly. It makes sense. Okay. And the irony is that my father in the film, the character, he actually, he does all the singing and guitar playing. And he's the white buffalo in the film. By the way, he's fantastic. He's amazing. Fantastic. He's amazing. So we accomplished at least some of my original idea. Yeah. So then I sat down and write a story about redemption and any good piece of art has to do with conflict. And in this story, it's a conflict between a father and a son, even though the father's not there, that sort of fleshed that out and really dig into that. And I mean, you realize I don't want to give anything away in the film, but it becomes not about father and son. Certain events happen and it becomes about this man. Caskey Jones is my character, having to, to figure things out for himself, having to change his life, not for just for himself, but for other people. And that's the redemption that comes in. And when you started writing this concept, how much time do you give yourself or you like some writers, you know, we have some friends that are writers, they'll sit with it for a while, years, they hold on to it. They say it's not the right time. It's not the right time in history or culture or whatever it might be. Do you give yourself like a set timeline of saying, OK, I'm going to spend a year writing this and then I'll try to find a Michael. How long did you play with that? I wrote it in spurts. So I would write pieces of it and then I would put it down because I didn't have to finish time because I knew I was going to do this all on my own. You talk about entrepreneurship. This is what Cowboy Drifter is. I mean, it's starting from scratch and, you know, getting the pieces together as you go. So I had time to tell the story. So some days I'd literally be driving down the road and a scene would come into my head, the dialogue, and I would go home and I'd find the script and I'd sit back down and I'd start writing again. I mean, I can't tell you how long it took me to write this script, but it took several years. And I wouldn't call it a passion project. You hear that word a lot in Hollywood. You know, so-and-so has a passion project. To me, a passion project is, you know, someone sits down to write, but it's not really, you know, he may or may not get it done, finish the project. And I knew we were going to shoot this film. I knew I was going to get it done. I knew I was going to raise the money. I knew I was going to finish the script and get people attached that would help me see it through. And then at what point do you go, all right, I think it's ready.  Like, how does that work? The whole money side of it? Well, to the first part of the question, the script is never ready. Right. Right. There's a lot of notes that go back. I mean, it's just never ready until you shoot. And then sometimes you shoot and people add lib and there's no ad lib in my script on this. And this Michael saw that no one ad lib. But, you know, it's never ready until, until the day comes and you put it on film and then you can't go back. The raising the money was the was the hardest part for me. How do you figure out how much money you have to raise? How does that work? You know, you raise as much money as you can. And then if you find out you don't have enough, you try to go back and raise more. I assume you never have enough. You never have enough. Yeah. An independent film is just that. It's just no one knows.  And we use every nickel of it. Yeah. Otherwise you don't know this. Yeah, absolutely. And at some point you guys have to figure out like how many people to hire the set.  Yeah, you want to definitely answer that. I mean, the money, basically, I mean, what he said is totally true. You'd ever have enough money. However, I must say that I think some of the best work I've ever done in my career is when someone said you can't have that. And then I have to figure out what's a creative way of getting the same thing that I wanted, but without the money or the piece of equipment that I needed to get what I wanted. I'll give you one example in the movie. It opens on a closeup of Kasky, of course. And it's, he's looking, tell me if I'm misremembering this, but I think it opens on a closeup of you and there's a perfect in his face. Yeah. And then you cut her out to the other side and his house is on fire. So obviously we did not have enough money to burn down a house. OK. I don't know if you ever know. Oh, I mean, big movies they do. Sure. So I had to figure how do we make it look like the house is burning down? How'd you do that? Never mind. Movie magic. No, movie magic.  We did. And then you light that off fire. Is it CGI? We did. Actually, this is where my mind goes. I'm just curious. I don't want to give everything away. But later we did do a little house. OK. Because he burns down another thing. Yeah. Anyway, so Kasky's a bit of a pyromaniac in the film. He's a pyromaniac. Yeah, yeah, which we never really explained in the movie, which is fine. You don't have to. We didn't have to. But it's symbolic. I think the yeah, it's more of a symbolism than anything else in the movie. That's what I'm going to go with in our next festival. As a writer, that's what I'm going with, too. Yeah, that's what I saw. That was my take. Absolutely.  And I used a very long lens so that compresses the image. Yeah. So I had him at a certain distance away from the fire bars and then the house behind that. So everything looks like it's way closer. It really is. That's pretty smart. So the fire bars are filling the frame with fire. Yeah. And our brains assume that the house must be on fire because what else would be burning? Yeah. So he's in the foreground, big close up. And the idea is, you know, you're looking at him, really. But I mean, the shot that tied everything together was when you were driving away. Right. Let's do this. Give people a window into the amount of things you've been involved in. Professionally. Yeah. Oh, boy. Give some quick names. Quick names.  A successful New Yorker in L.A. Exactly. Here you are. It's hard not to be successful here when you're from New York. That's right. Because you get there. Massachusetts people here are just, you know, slower. It's not that they're slower. They're laid back. They're laid back. Just like in a Woody Allen movie. If we went to Jamaica, it'd be the same thing. Be the same thing. I've been I've shot in Jamaica. That was a nightmare. OK, so when I think about having watched the movie, all the people that you guys were able to ensemble as part of the cast, I mean, tremendous, tremendous, tremendous musical talent. That was all tremendous musical talent. And so like the movie for my perspective can be entertaining purely on the music front. Right. And then there's the other side of it of like the storytelling. Both great. So you got all those people involved prior to Michael getting on board or how does that operate?  And you continue to stir it in however direction you can. And are you selling them a dream? Or are you? Because with a small budget, it's also difficult, I imagine. All the music drops came through a music supervisor. And I would OK them or not, basically in charge of the music. And I said, yes, I like this song. Does this person, does this artist, Shaky Greys, for example, he has a song in the film. He's fantastic. The song was presented to me. I didn't love as much as the one I clicked on next. And I said, this is the one we need to put in the film. We need to go get this. And we had a budget for music. And we were very lucky. We got the revivalists for goodness sake. I mean, one of the hottest bands around. The music's fantastic. The music's fantastic. Really fantastic. And it really, I think it helps to tell the story of the movie, too, is not just music for the sake of music. And then what's the woman's name, the singer, like the main singer? Aubrey Peebles. She's great. She's fantastic. Yeah, Aubrey. Yeah, she was in Nashville. She did the show Nashville, 65 episodes. Unbelievable voice. She was amazing. She had such an amazing voice on that TV show that they had to stop letting her sing because she wasn't one of the main principles. She was her current character. But when she came to us and she sang these songs, and I got to listen to her in the recording studio in New Mexico, I mean, I had tears in my eyes. She didn't have to act that part. She's incredible. I mean, she is amazing. She was amazing. It's funny. I think when I think about myself as a business mind entrepreneur, I have friends of mine who are musicians. And some of them, when they do sing, I'll find myself going to this deeply emotional place. And I'm like, why am I like, I'm in conflict with myself.   Yeah, as the entrepreneur, I mean, I need things to go right. I need to assemble a cast, a group of people who are going to make this task work. And listening to her sing as a producer, not just the actor, but as the producer, I say, this is gold. This is money. We're going to put her on camera, singing as much as possible. Smart. And actually co-wrote one of the songs for her that she sings in the film. Look at you. Musical credit. Already gone. That's the song that she sings that I said, we need a song for her. No one has the right song for her. This is what we need to write for Aubrey. She's a teenager. She's living in New Mexico in a crappy part of town. She's older than her years. She wants to sing. She wants to get out and fly. And she can't do it because she's under the control of her mother. And she wants to leave. So she's basically already gone in her mind. Interesting. And I sent this email to my music supervisor. And he took that. And we basically wrote the song Already Gone based on that conversation, that email. How many things do you have to do when it comes to getting things ready before you hit the start date on, OK, we're starting to shoot? Like, what is that? Is that just a simple version of you guys set a date? We set the date. And then you work sort of. You assemble the project as best you can. And then you hope that Monday morning, you're going to be ready to go. Our problem was Monday morning, we didn't have an actor to play the mortician. And here it was Saturday in New Mexico. You got a good one. We're sitting in an office. And Chelsea Ross is presented to me. And I say, this is great. And one of our producers, who's no longer with us, he said, well, he wants. He's not dead. He wants to be with us. He was not excommunicated. Chelsea wants a first class flight from Chicago to New Mexico. By the way, there's no direct route to get to New Mexico. So I was going to say, how do you do that?  Yeah, so I said, how much is he? He said $1,700. We don't have $1,700. So it took me about 30 seconds. I paced up and down the hall. And I say, we have to have Chelsea Ross. He's one of the greatest character actors. I don't know him from Hoosiers, but all kinds of films. Major League. Rudy, you name it. Major League, he's phenomenal. So I said, we have to have Chelsea Ross to do this role, because he's perfect for it. So I came back to the producer and I said, well, I'll pay for it. Just take it out of my check. I didn't have a great check to begin with. It didn't matter. We had Chelsea. So he shows up Sunday. Monday morning, he nails every shot he's in. He works for two days. He's fantastic. There's no film if there's no Chelsea Ross in my mind. How many people do you guys have as a whole team, like on set? You're filming in New Mexico. How many people are there? At least 50. I mean, it depends on the day. But people are running about in every direction. I'm the actor, but I'm also the producer. So I'm trying to juggle things. As I'm acting, as I'm coming off camera, I'm getting told certain things that we don't have or certain things we need, getting questions that I'm trying to prepare for the next shot, but yet I put on my producer. It's tough, but I was prepared. Yeah, I love that. When it comes to real estate development, it's actually very similar. It's like you never really have anything. And you're always missing things or in search of something. It probably is similar. You live in that balance. And money can save you for sure. But I think sometimes what you said before, like getting scrappy about solving problems actually leads to a better product for you. So you come from the television world. One, what was attractive to this project for you? And then what made you want to do a movie? Well, I mean, I think TV directors, until they get further along in their career, always want to do. It seems like TV is sort of the second choice. You really want to do features because in a feature film, the director has a lot more creative control, theoretically. I've now come to the conclusion that TV was perfect for me because it has the infrastructure already there and all you have to do as a director is direct, which is what I love to do the most. I don't like, like I would be a horrible entrepreneur because I don't have the patience to fail. I think that means you're smarter than us. Not necessarily, but I mean, I think when you're an entrepreneur, you have to have the patience to continue to fail until you succeed. Yeah, it's awful. Whereas I like to go in, everything's there. I say action, something happens. In an independent movie, that is not the case. I say action, but no one else is there. But what attracted you? I have to do it. What attracted you to this? What attracted me to this was it's really about the script. So I get a call from my agent. There's this indie movie and they would like to talk to you. So I said, okay, I'll read the script. I loved the script. So it's really, for me, it's about, it's either if it's a gigantic check and the script sucks, I'll do it. But if it's a great script, I don't care about the check. I didn't care. Which is good, because we didn't really give them a check. They didn't really have a big check. You know, the script was amazing. And I just, I totally, I mean, I didn't identify because I'm nothing like Kasky Jones and I've never been like Kasky Jones. But I just loved, you know, everything about the script. The dialogue was fantastic. The characters were rich, developed and interesting. And the situation was it was, it had a nice drive to the story, but it wasn't like stoop insane. You know, it wasn't like just for the sake of driving. It had a meaning to it. Something that I've always thought about is obviously you guys have to go through proper channels. The agents go back and forth. At what point do you two actually chat? Like when do the agents finally allow the creators to actually have a discussion? Well, early on. Yeah, it was okay. Basically, Also, there was a timeframe on this that was pretty tight. Yeah. They were already committed to start.  And we didn't have a choice because we were coming up against holidays and things like that. We had a finite amount of time. We had to hit that amount of time. But his agent got in touch with our producer and he said, yes, Michael wants to meet with you. So I met with the producer, with Michael and two other qualified candidates to direct the film. And I looked up Michael's credits ahead of time, of course. And when I looked on IMDB and the page kept scrolling and scrolling and scrolling and you see 260 plus episodes of television and you look at all the television shows he's done that he named off of just phenomenal shows.  And he came in and we sat down and he's, I mean, it was phenomenal. It was easy right from the get-go. And Michael, how many scripts do you see, would you say, over the course of like, yeah, over the course, or how many things is your agent send you that you have to rifle through on either a daily or monthly basis? During the heyday. During the heyday? Oh my God, I've had a heyday now. It sounds so old. You know, probably thousands. When you never stopped working for years. You never stopped working. Yeah. I mean, TV scripts, you know, hundreds and hundreds.  But here's the thing. So for you to be inspired by it or see something. I think he brings his DP that he's used in a lot of shows. And DP, as you said, the cinematography is phenomenal. It's phenomenal. It's phenomenal. Can I just go back though? I appreciate what he said about a coup. However, I think what I heard from my friend who recommended me, he said, I gave them three names. I gave them two young, up-and-coming film directors. And then I gave them your name. And what I told them was, if you want someone who's gonna do the best possible, he's gonna make the best possible movie out of your material, then go with Michael. Cause he's a TV director, that's what he's used to. A TV director doesn't a huge amount of say on the material. That's interesting.  And it definitely won't be done on time and on budget. So Michael would be, he'll make the best possible product out of what you wrote. Stay in the box, so to speak. And I think that's true. Cause I had one kind of semi-big note about what I felt just in terms of the script needed to start off with, which he liked, fortunately. That's what happens.  You just start talking about the script. What do you think of the script? I mean, I'm completely open to creative suggestions.  So he had a huge note for me that I had rejected on many, many drafts. And that was putting Caskey's father in the film at the beginning so that we know who this person is. And that makes the story so much better.  So that note, if it wasn't sealed the deal, you know, had been sealed before with Michael. That note, I literally went home and couldn't wait to get on the computer and start writing. And then I, and then two days later, I said, can we have lunch? And I took him the pages. I took like six pages that I'd written in half an hour because I knew what I had to write. And I gave it to him, we're ordering sandwiches and he's going over these six pages of the script. And, you know, he really, I think he was impressed that I took the note, but he's also impressed with the pages that I gave him. Yeah, no, that's what I mean. He made it a million times better than my note, which is of course a nice part of the process. I like that. And what land did you guys in New Mexico with all the, like how does that in that process start? Okay. Tax incentive, that's a great question. Yeah, you can't shoot things in California because it's just too expensive. That's why Boston is attractive now. I guess Massachusetts has a good tax incentive. Yeah, it's 25 cents on the dollar. So every dollar we spend, we get 25 cents back. So that's in New Mexico, it's huge. And it still exists. It's literally, they give you a quarter. It's weird. That's incredible. It's why so many projects are filmed there. Breaking Bad was filmed there, is that right? Breaking Bad, I mean, the scenery in New Mexico plays a role as well. The music, the scenery in the background, it adds to it. You get the desolation of this place. And is the expensive part like housing people or is it RVs at hotels? How do you do that? I think the expensive part is, the cast requires, no one's gonna do it for free and there's always a haggling about that. And there's just a large amount of people that you have to. You're the one negotiating it or is it agents? I'm ultimately the one that has a final say. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, if Michael's agent comes back and says, he needs more money, I can say this is what we have. Right. Or if an actor comes back and says, she needs more money to play the role. It's like, well, we're gonna have to get someone else because this is all we can afford. Oh, did you lose anybody because of that? We didn't lose anyone. Okay. We didn't lose anyone. I think because here's the thing, it's the material. The script is so good that for creative people, I'm gonna include myself in that list, it's really about the, that's the part that turns us on. Yeah, Chelsea Ross literally said, I mean, I asked him, I said, why did you do this film? It's only two days, there's no money in it. He said it was the script. He said, even my agent told me not to do this film because there's no money in it. But he said, I like the script so much that I wanted to do it. And I hug him every time I see him. See, what I love about that in entrepreneurship, it's like, at least for me, so I get the question a lot when I talk to new entrepreneurs around, when they go raise money, why do people give you money? How do you do it? And I always say, for you as a new entrant into the business you're about to go and whether it's like CPG, whatever they're trying to do, let's say the sparkling water.   And so it means you have to put all your energy into the product. And that's what people ultimately will invest in. It's in this setting when you're new, the you piece, like you in the sense of, I know he's new to it, but I think, or he or she, but I think he's gonna, I think they're gonna break down every wall to figure out every single problem. They seem committed. And then the product being it's gotta taste good it's gotta, it has to be solving some problem that is simple to identify. Those are the two things that I think. And so it seems like obviously here you have the product, right, the script, the story, it's sold. The difference in our business is most people you're trying to get money from independently at least they don't know anything about making films. They might, they would know a good script from a lousy script. So what are they asking you? Are they like, how am I gonna make money? What are the questions that people are asking you in the while you're raising? Like you said, it's the you part for me. This is, we call it lawyers in Dennis. I mean, you're literally asking money from family friends, from your own friends, from people that you've met, that they have friends that might invest. You're doing a lot of digging to try to find the money. But I found it at least for this project that they believed in me. They believe I could get this done. They could see it in my eyes when I sat down with them. And I couldn't present them with a plan that I was gonna say, hey, this is gonna make you X, Y amount of money. And in fact, you might lose money. In fact, you probably will lose money because it's an independent film and it's a hard day to make money from through this process. But they believed in me, they believed in the vision that I had and I was able to sell. That's so cool. And so for them, they just wanna see it come to life.  I guess this is the payoff. And there's a mystique about being involved in a movie. Some of them came to the set. There's a social capital component to it. They get to eventually get on, they'll get to have viewing parties with their friends and say, hey, I was an exec producer on that movie or I put money into it. That's amazing. That's a kick, that's good. It is. The social capital piece is real. Okay, and so then you guys wrap the movie. Marketing, how do you get the word out about the movie? How do you do that? That's probably the hardest part. That's the hardest part. Because there's so much content. After raising the money, which is the hardest part. There's no blueprint script. There's no blueprint. Okay. You hire a sales agent and you try to get them to try to sell the movie on its own merits. So before I can even try to get it on social media and try to talk to anyone about publicizing it on behalf of the two of us or the Cowboy Drifter team, we have to find a sales group that'll try to get out there and hoof it and try to get this in front of as many distribution companies as possible. Okay. And luckily we've come to the point where we've gotten in front of three and they've all said yes and getting it on Amazon is fantastic. And Peacock is great and there's thousands of movies on Tubi, everybody goes to Tubi to look for films they can't see on other streaming services. So the platforms themselves are, you know, we're pretty lucky. And are you always selling in a sense?  Or is it just based on? They have their own metrics. So it's up to them. You show them your product, they may or may not have a need for it. This is a serious drama. It's pretty heavy. Do they have too many dramas already? Are they looking for more romantic companies or what? So it's a miserable process trying to sell it. When you know you have a good product, you should be buying this product. I mean, it's not like if I wanted to make like a soft drink and if it tasted good and if the packaging was kind of cool and if I had the right marketing, it works. But a movie, you don't really know. I mean, we could have the right marketing. It could be a great movie, which, you know, let's say this one is for sake of argument and you still, it may not work. In the world you live in, so in like the retailer space. And no, I just mean like in the TV world. In the retail space, retailers look at the data and they say it looks like people are looking for a better for you ice cream based on what we know. And so a retailer may approach entrepreneur or a company to make that product. Is that how, is the TV world like that? Where they go, okay, we have a sense that people like crime, I don't know. Right. I mean, there are certain genres that always sell. Crime is one, I think medical shows go in and out but they're pretty. Legal shows. Vampire, things usually go in and out. So yes, yes that is. Because in my head I went to, what about Yellowstone? Yellowstone is such a banger of a hit, right? It's got some cowboy element to it. Is this a world where plug and play? It seems like an easy sell. That's just me, thinking about it right now. I think that's quite possible. I mean Yellowstone has brought the cowboy back, the cowboy, you know, the dramas. So perhaps, you know, on the other side of the table they're going, yeah, we need more films like Yellowstone. Yeah, because there's data now to suggest that there's a lot more data. Crushing. But then on the other side of that, some people are like, oh it's just a copy of Yellowstone. And then that's a negative. All of the truth of the matter is, Cowboy Drifter, you know, Caskey Jones is neither a cowboy nor is he a drifter. Yeah, can you talk about other names that you considered for the movie? I've found, at least for me, when I write a script either the title comes right away, you know, exactly what it's gonna be. Or you write the script and it'll come at some point. So Cowboy Drifter, the film comes into the latter category. It came at some point. And that's when, you know, I said, I mentioned Hank Williams Sr. I was a fan of his music and his story, his life. The name of Hank Williams Sr.'s backup band was called the Cowboy Drifting Band. And once I read that, I said, this is it. I'm just gonna make it concise, Cowboy Drifter. And at first I had the Cowboy Drifter and I gave the script to a friend. It was much like Facebook. You know, when Zuckerberg first came out with Facebook it was the Facebook. I gave it to a friend of mine. His only note was, take out the the. Just make it Cowboy Drifter. And it's just, it's a great title. And I actually make fun of that he's a Cowboy in the film. The person he meets along his journey, she keeps calling him Cowboy. And he keeps saying, I'm not a Cowboy. Don't call me that. That's right. Yeah, so. Do you guys have a favorite scene? Favorite scene. I'm not ever good on the favorite thing. Like favorite color, favorite scene. Or how about where there's a story? Like something stands out, something didn't go right, something went wrong, you had to figure it out. The fire one's interesting, right? This is a five hour podcast. I can easily talk about what went wrong every single day. Give people a small window into things that aren't going smoothly. It's tough. Let's just say that things went wrong every day and we solve them. Every day's an adventure. Actually the best, kind of the best, the one we can talk about the most is on day five at lunch there was the crew went out on strike. Cause they had signed up, they had all, it was originally a non-union show.  He was given misinformation about a right to work state and the crew, the union came to try to, what's it called?  Oh my God. And which I kept saying, this is not a good idea because the IA, which is a big, you know, it's a big international or a big union and you really should make a deal with them. It's, you're not gonna win a war with them. So on day five at lunch, we had 18 days, which is why I say we had 17 and a half because on day five at lunch, the crew left on strike. Someone from the union literally comes to the set and whistles and ushers everyone off the set. So we're having lunch with the cinematographer Jules Abarth. He's literally sitting across where you are now and he saw and he heard the whistle and he put his tray down and he got up and he walked out. Not a word spoken. What? So we had to negotiate. Not only did we have to negotiate, but we also had to load all the equipment into the back end of the trucks because they literally walked off without, yeah. Day five, Jules was about to fly back to LA. So what is this negotiation like? It's pretty short. Yeah.  And what's on it? Give people a window onto things on this list. Is it like bathroom breaks? It's a short window with only a dollar sign on it. And they said they take the money and put it in their pension fund, which is fantastic. I hope they use it well. So you have to do it. In New Mexico, we did. So part of our budget was spent on. You're being shaken. Getting the crew back. Shaken down, as they say. Yeah. Depending on who you talk to. Depends on who you talk to. And then everyone, okay.  I would take that personally. The union, that's what they have to do. Then they come back. Right. And it's all kumbaya? Absolutely. And they were so happy.  To come back and also to be in the union. But the New Yorker and you wants to kill them. Come on. The upside was correct. The upside, I think in the end, some of the non-union people that worked in our crew became union. Yeah. And they have some really great career. Better benefits. Got it, got it. So it worked out for the best. And it worked out. So it was for the best. I did have to rewrite part of the script based on losing that half a day. But you know, that's part of the job. We took out one thing which wasn't really in it. We made it work. That's insane. We made it work. That sounds so crazy. It was crazy. From an entrepreneur perspective. It was crazy. Can I talk about the, it wasn't quite as easy as that. There was a meeting on Saturday. This was on a Friday. So then Saturday we had a meeting at the production office. And the producer, it was an 11 o'clock meeting. I came into the office at 10.30 because I always get there half hour early. Yeah, humble brain. And then 11.05, I look at my watch and no one's called me into the meeting. So I go to the production coordinator. I say, is the meeting started? Oh yeah, they started at 11. I went, hmm. Okay. So I think they didn't want me in the meeting. You know, the producer didn't want me. This was a different producer entirely. I just wanted that. No, not Chuck. What's called the line producer. The line producer. Wow.  So I just go and sit down. What's going on? So we've decided we're gonna, this is the producer, the other producer, not the Chuck. Chuck was sort of observing. And I think I know where he would have eventually come down because he did eventually. So he says, we've decided we're gonna go non-union. Screw the union.  So I said, I don't think that's a very good idea because already the crew is not very good. And now we're gonna get worse people and we're gonna be picketed and we're gonna not get permits and the police are gonna, the teams through, you know, the drivers are gonna pick at us. And then he said, well, we'll just keep the call sheet secret. He literally said that. I went, I laughed because, you know, right, we're gonna keep the call sheet secret. So I said, well, here's the thing. I did this because it's an amazing script and I think we can have a beautiful movie out of it. Obviously I didn't do it for the money because what I make in two days shooting is what I'm making on this. I'm exaggerating somewhat, but, well, when you count residuals, bro. Anyway, so I said, so I am not interested. So not only are you gonna have to find a new crew, you're gonna probably have to find a new director. So then I asked what was the amount of money that was gonna take to make it work with the union. And they told me, and I said, so for that amount of money, like we're gonna shut down for two weeks in order to find a whole new crew, a significantly worse movie. Got it, got it. And I think just pay the money. Got it. And when that happens, do you have to pay it immediately or how does that work? Yeah, you pay it immediately. We were lucky it was a Friday, not a Tuesday. That's right. Because we didn't have the weekend to at least discuss amongst ourselves. So that was nice. But it was, it was literally, it was every day something came up, but you know, you're used to it. Your working day never starts and it never ends. It's a normal process. And when you build a house, isn't it the same thing? Every day something goes wrong? Yeah, so in development, in real estate development, yeah, for sure, when things go wrong. I mean, when you don't get a call, something is not working well, you're worried. Right. I'll put it to you like that. And so problems become opportunities that you expect them. Same thing with us. That problem though of someone shut, like people walking off. I don't think I'll ever deal with that. Right. Hope not. Yeah, I hope not either. That's pretty well. I think to be like, I think Chuck would probably agree with this too. There's a part of me, anyway, I'm not gonna speak for Chuck, that when things go that wrong, I like it. Because it forces me to really come up with my problem solving. It like makes me notch my problem solving up to 12. Totally, totally. I don't like it because I'm in charge of the whole process and like it. Yeah, if it could go wrong to the point where we're gonna get shut down completely, it's obviously I'm the one who loses the most. That's a great story though. I appreciate you sharing that. When it comes to film festivals, awards, how does that whole game work? Yeah, we've done a few film festivals. It's great. We did a couple in New Mexico, we went to Chicago, we did one in Marina del Rey. It's just nice for the exposure to get the film out, get the people to. And do you have to pay to be at those? No. No, no, no. You get invited? You get invited. Yeah, they have to screen the film and decide whether or not they want us. We've been pretty lucky. There's one in Park City, you talk, right? I've heard about the one in Park City. That's where they shoot Yellowstone also. What's that called? All these sundowns, sundowns, sun, wait, no, the dance, dancing in the sun. Sundowns is kind of going in different direction in terms of what they want for films and Cowboy Drifter, redemption piece. I thought that would have been perfect. You would think it would have been like 15 years ago. Probably not now. That's a bummer. I asked initially, how do you determine when you make a film, for what audience you make a film, that sort of thing. I didn't exactly make this film at the right time in history. There's so many, there's a wider array of films being made now than there used to be. And this kind of redemption piece film used to fit into a little box and people really loved the box, what was inside the box. And then things sort of changed and there was, for a good way. You could see whatever you want now. But to your point, I think when Yellowstone came back, people realized that, oh yeah, these kind of Western guy trying to do the best he can for his family sort of thing. These films, let's not forget about these because there's a reason people enjoy them in the first place. And for me, my hero is Paul Newman. Every Paul Newman film more or less was about redemption. It was about, can this guy overcome these obstacles in order to get his character or to get to a certain place in his life. And those were the films that inspired me. So I wanted to, at Cowboy Drifter, sort of as a throwback film to some of the old Paul Newman films. And we discussed that when we were prepping the movie. That was sort of the feel that we wanted to go for. It was certainly a part of my writing. I felt that way. It hits, always the back of my head. What are your greatest desires for this? Like what do you want people to take away from both this interview but also from what you guys created? I want people to see it, first of all. You talk about startup to storefront. We're at the point now, we're at storefront with this project. And for the amount of money, the little amount of money we spent, what we were able to do with this film, who we were able to, luckily to get, to be in the film, to be working on the film, we couldn't be more proud. So first and foremost, we want eyeballs on the film. And if they like the film, they don't like the films totally up to them. I mean, our job is done. So you want people to watch and we like the greatest, widest audience possible. And I've been, we did these film festivals, like you mentioned, and I had women from France come up to me and want to talk to me about the film. I had young kids, I had older adults. I was amazed that it sort of struck people differently but all walks of life. And that really made me happy. As we embark on the social media campaign for this, I'm excited to see what that does because it's been able to change businesses. It's been able to change people's lives. We've had a number of these people on our podcast with TikTok and the Instagram. So it'll be really interesting to see what happens. This is a very niche kind of film too. So it's not easy to market. It's almost a good thing though. It's like own your niche, plant your flag. And I think the film makes it easy in terms of owning the niche. Yeah, because there's nothing people could say, oh, this is just like per se, right? Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it's not today, not on TikTok. If the film does really well, I might grow the beard out again. Just in a month. How long did it take you to grow? Six months. Six months. He didn't shave for six months. He didn't shave one time. I scared more people walking around the streets of Hollywood than you could ever imagine.  Yeah. They're not scared of you. They're like, sign this check. Yeah. I felt powerless, but we did what we had to do. And they did too. Yeah. It is where it is. Yeah. When did you finish shooting the movie? We finished before COVID. Yeah, before COVID. Yeah, a year before COVID. We kept it on the shelf for a while too. Yeah. I mean, we had to. Go check out the trailer on Amazon. Yeah, check out the trailer. Absolutely. It's a great film. It's a great film. Believe me, I have a good perspective on my work. I've done a bunch of stuff that's not so great. I'm so proud of this movie. I can't say enough how proud of it I am. Every aspect. It's a great movie. I love the cinematography. The story's amazing. The music's amazing. It checks a lot of boxes. Kudos to you guys for putting this together. Kudos to you, Chuck. Thanks for coming on. Appreciate it. Appreciate you. Thank you for tuning in. If you enjoyed this episode, share with your friends, your family, or anyone you might think might benefit from the conversation we've had today. And if you haven't already, please take a moment to leave a review on your favorite podcast platform. We'd greatly appreciate it. Your feedback helps us improve and reach more people who can benefit from our discussions. The best way to stay connected with us and get the latest updates on future episodes is through our social media channels. You can find us at Startup & Storefront. We'll be back next Tuesday with another great episode. See you then.


After long years of brutal war in Europe, June 6th, 1944 proved to be the tipping point in World War II, when the Allied forces landed in Normandy to liberate France from Nazi occupation. Although the coronavirus pandemic has severely reduced our ability to commemorate D-Day together in person, it is imperative we honor all the Allied forces who stood to fight on land in the air and at sea. In the face of tyranny, 76 years ago on D-Day, as well as reflect on the heroes who made the ultimate sacrifice that grueling day. Overall, D-Day is about bravery, strength of alliance, love of freedom, and unrelenting commitment. Today, we continue to stand with our European allies and partners in maintaining a continent at peace. Although we may be a part because of COVID-19, the most disruptive global crisis since World War II, together we honor the past as we secure the future, together we remember it.


The topic I want to talk about today is Bitcoin neutrality Bitcoin neutrality. What does Bitcoin neutrality mean? Neutrality in Bitcoin means being able to adopt Bitcoin in any culture any language any religion any geography but also any political or economic system So Bitcoin neutrality is about making Bitcoin a standard that is independent of your desires and expectations This isn't a Libertarian currency any more than it's a communist currency It's a currency and it can be applied to any political system Whether it is The political system you like or not It's a neutral currency So what does neutrality mean? Neutrality doesn't mean no principles Neutrality is a principle in itself and in fact What I'm here to talk to you about today is the neutrality is the most important principle in Bitcoin and most of the other great things Derived from that if you want to really understand how neutrality will affect Bitcoin in the future We need to look at what has happened with the internet and TCP IP in terms of neutrality on the internet anyone can publish With the same voice that time water and CBS and ABC and CNN have So neutrality is about being able to balance things so that it doesn't matter who the sender is or the recipient is How big the transaction is what type of transaction it is whether it's buying gold camels or drugs Neutrality means that the network will process your transaction and will charge you Based on how big that transaction is in the blockchain Great, we all understand we have that principle today What I want to talk about is how important that principle is how fragile that principle is and how quickly people are going to try to co-opt and pervert that principle and We've traveled this journey already on the internet. We started out with a completely neutral IP protocol that allowed us to have that equality of voice across any channel and in comparison to any other website and Then the internet got popular and the first thing that people started attacking was the concept of neutrality Right because if you're already at the top of the ladder The first thing you do is pull up the ladder behind you You sure don't want the little people down there climbing it too Neutrality as a principle is built into Bitcoin today But it will only survive if it is vigorously defended and there will be plenty opportunities to defend it because it will be attacked So let's talk a bit about the specifics What is neutrality how it applies in different contexts? Let's talk about how neutrality will be attacked and then finally I'll wrap it up by talking about Why neutrality is important if we want to see adoption of Bitcoin rapid adoption of Bitcoin? Again, the slides will be available as part of the video. So feel free to pick those up after the presentation I'm not going to torment you with PowerPoint So first neutrality, what does that mean? we tend to think of Bitcoin in the terms of our own personal experience and As far as I can tell most of people here come from a first-walled economy probably this first-walled economy and They have a certain experience with currency and that experience is not normative That is not the experience of the world Everyone in this room uses the world's reserve currency. No one else gets to use the world's reserve currency right so We need to understand that adoption of Bitcoin won't necessarily happen here and my argument is in Fact here is the last place where Bitcoin will broadly be adopted And that's why neutrality is important because if you are living and breathing a first world structured rule of law easily Negotiated contractual obligations and resolutions for a justice system that actually works sometimes But certainly works better than most countries a country where cross-border transactions are handled in an Regularly efficient way where you can move currency around and you can interact with the rest of the world Bitcoin may not be that big a deal for you If you live within a hundred miles of the border between Kenny and Tanzania You regularly transact in four currencies the Kenyan currency the Tanzanian currency the euro and the US dollar You're used to not having a bank account. You're used to carrying sacks of money You're used to having floating exchange rates Governments that prey on your currency and dilute it so your expectations are very different My argument today is the neutrality boosts adoption because it allows Everyone in the world to quickly and rapidly adopt Bitcoin Let's give you some examples Classic example you can look up is the Islamic Bank of Bitcoin Islamic Bank of Bitcoin was created to enable the use of Bitcoin within the Sharia law finance system and under Sharia law Interest payments are considered usury or usury. I'm not sure how to pronounce that, but you know what I mean It's exploitation to charge interest. It's forbidden in the Quran So banks in the Islamic world do not charge interest what they do instead and This is a bit kind of a Semantic thing, but they enter into joint ventures with companies that they're offering loans to and then they collect Dividends back and those dividends have a specific dividend schedule, which might be say a 3% every year dividend Smells like interest walks like interests But the important thing is that there are certain rules and regulations is how to use currency in an Islamic system And that's not the only culture out there that has its own particular perspective on how money should be used. I worked for many years in New York and A good number of my colleagues were Orthodox Jewish and They observed the Sabbath So I knew very well there were not going to be any conference calls on a Saturday because they don't use electronic and electrical equipment on the Sabbath Can Bitcoin be adopted today in a culture where the Sabbath is followed religiously That may have been a unintended pun Can it be adopted in that environment only if you have a means of exchange? It doesn't depend on electricity and we need to think about that And if the Sabbath is a bit of a problem think about sub-Saharan Africa where you don't have electricity We're not having electricity is the norm if the lights went out right now Everyone would get up and head for the exits. I was doing a presentation in Bangalore. I was on stage the lights went out The fire alarm started ringing. No one got up. I was ready to organize and massive evacuation They knew that this was just Tuesday Because that's what happens in Bangalore power goes out it Tuesday and it's a perfectly normal thing So in some cultures you have Expectations we have expectations in this culture We assume that our money will have a certain value that it will be the world reserve that we can do interbank transfers And these assumptions are very very rare Neutrality in Bitcoin means being able to address the rest of the world Because at the end of the day, it's not about us. It's about the other six billion So can we create a currency that is neutral towards religion and can be readily adopted in Any religious system can we create a currency that is neutral towards geography? Towards language and even towards connectivity whether you have it or not Electricity whether you have it or not So these are the core concepts that leads to greater adoption, but they're also the things that spur innovation because if you make it easily easy for People to adopt the currency and they look at the currency and see it as a neutral Technocratic Scientifically based currency It doesn't offend their religion. It doesn't offend their culture. It's not contradictory to their values It is compatible with their language. They can readily adopt it Now why do I care about ready adoption of Bitcoin in other countries? Because that's where it's gonna happen We get caught up in understanding Bitcoin in reference to our currency Which is the US dollar here and in most of Western Europe two currencies that are relatively stable So if you had a hierarchy of currency, here's the US dollar the world reserve currency relatively stable over decades or even longer, right? and Here's the Zimbabwe dollar. I Have a beautiful picture in the presentation which shows is in Bob a 100 trillion dollar bill and You can go online and search and see people buying coffee with a stack of money this tall so if you're American and you ask yourself is Bitcoin better than the dollar 99% of people are gonna answer no If you're Zimbabwean and you ask is Bitcoin better than the Zimbabwe dollar Goat poo is better than the Zimbabwe dollar as a trading mechanism as a transaction Even as a store value at least you can burn it and make fire right So we really have to understand that there's a completely different level of comparison in Within our context and within the global context So if you think of that hierarchy of currencies, where does Bitcoin fall? Probably in terms of utility, it's better than 20 currencies in the world right now Maybe 30 currencies in the world. It's bigger than than about 15 world economies country economies already 1.7 billion and It's better than a lot of world currencies currencies that are crazy volatile. You think Bitcoin is volatile Not even close most of sub Saharan Africa would love to have the stability of Bitcoin So we need to understand that the comparison is different now Why is this topic really important because I see adoption happening in the form of punctuated equilibrium? We assume the Bitcoin is going to gradually get broader and broader and broader and broader over time until eventually It's toppled various currencies and becomes the world currency. That's not how it's going to happen Instead what you're going to see is a crisis perhaps something like Cyprus and You're going to see a massive conversion in a very limited geography Whole countries whole cities converting What are the requirements to massively convert to Bitcoin? There are four fundamental requirements The first one is relative utility or relative value. Is Bitcoin better than the piece of paper? My government makes and the answer for the US will be yes last It's the last currency where you can say that thing is yes Bitcoin will be better But every other currency is going to happen first, right? So utility is it better than what I currently have in my pocket to Will I get jailed or shot for holding Bitcoin? We don't think about that. There are plenty of countries in the world where if you do not have the currency You are a smuggler and there is no due process, right? So you get shot for holding Bitcoin. That's a bit of an impediment. We don't need to worry about that You know someone issues a suspicious activity report on us at least we can argue about it There's no suspicious activity report in Zimbabwe they shoot you right or maybe not Zimbabwe Maybe some other country these things happen. So can you safely hold Bitcoin? Is it worth more than the currency you currently have in your pocket? Do you have the technology within your country to adopt it? That's very critical, right? We all have smartphones. We have internet connectivity. We have always on internet connectivity. That is not the case. So I don't expect Bitcoin to be adopted in Zimbabwe not because it's not more valuable But simply because they don't have the means to be on the blockchain even occasionally Or even be with electricity occasionally in order to take advantage of Bitcoin at that level So utility or value Fear or lack of fear in the adoption of the currency and Technology do you have the necessary technology and the fourth one is neutrality Can I adopt that currency without violating some? Expectations of my culture some cultural norms some religious norms. Does it work with my language? Etc. Etc. Now we all focus on the features of Bitcoin making it easy to use that's really important But we have to think of these barriers because what they do is they provide that sweet spot Where all of these three things converge or these four things converge and suddenly? Bitcoin is a much better choice and when you reach tipping points in technology What happens is massive viral adoption? We've seen this with currencies like and Pesa which is essentially a transactional currency based on cell phone minutes Was it built as a transactional currency based on cell phone minutes? No It was for carriers to be able to sell cell phone minutes and people to move them between their family But it's convenient It maintains its value better than many currencies in sub-Saharan Africa So it became rapidly adopted because you could use it with simple non-smart cell phones Can we create the necessary conditions within Bitcoin so that when people are willing? unafraid Able through technology Bitcoin is the natural neutral global choice that they can put their trust in and If we create those conditions, then we can address the real potential of Bitcoin So let's look at what the real potential of Bitcoin is within that scenario Anybody want to hazard a guess as to how many people in the US do not have a bank account? 60 million yep It's somewhere between 15 and 20 percent depending on how its count is the fully unbanked population of this country That's an enormous number. Now. Do you think that's because these people don't have money? No Usually there's ten other reasons why people are unbanked it has to do with Regulatory issues, right? They don't have sufficient proof of identity. They don't have legal status in this country They don't have enough documentation They don't have enough money or enough cash flow through that bank account to make it worthwhile And so you have this completely parallel banking system, which in the US consists of payday loans short-term loans and Various other very exploitative vulture like capitalism systems that exploit the poor if You grasp for a moment that in the US 60 million people live under that banking regime Make the leap and realize six and a half billion people elsewhere Have never known anything, but that regime and that's Where Bitcoin wins? It's not about us Because the relative utility of Bitcoin to someone who's already banked who has a stable reserve currency is relatively small But once you start thinking about the great unbanked masses the question is How do we make it possible for them to adopt Bitcoin as quickly as possible? What are the preconditions? Let me suggest some of the answers One we need to be able to make Bitcoin usable Without constant access to the blockchain This is already possible in a number of ways You can do islands of Bitcoin that enable transactional Bitcoin within that island and occasionally sink back only the inflows and outflows into the blockchain This is already happening When you go on mount cox and you buy Bitcoin and you sell Bitcoin and you buy Bitcoin and you sell Bitcoin you buy Bitcoin Do you think they actually have that Bitcoin? Possibly, but they really only account for the Bitcoin you withdraw Right only that hits the blockchain. The rest of it is completely off blockchain transactions So can we do that on a more systematic basis for those countries and those environments where you don't have always on? Connections where you can transfer seven gigabytes over your internet connection in less than six months and Where if you start the download the problem isn't that your connection will flicker out The problem is that your city will flicker out as it does every afternoon at 2 p.m Because everyone turned on the air conditioning. This is a fact of life throughout the world Can we use Bitcoin in a non electricity environment even without cell phones? Yes, we can We can embed the value of Bitcoin in paper wallets and If those paper wallets are made tamper proof and are used as a means of exchange The paper wallets acquire face value that is related to the underlying value of Bitcoin essentially Bitcoin becomes The reserve currency of these paper wallets So you can actually build a full paper system of currency that is backed not by gold not by Floating exchange rates, but actually backed by proof-of-stake in Bitcoin and Enables you then to trade these bits of paper at a premium over face value. Who here has Cassatius coins anyone? Yeah Did you pay face value for them or did you pay a premium? You paid a premium They're worth more than the Bitcoin that's on them because they're pretty shiny objects and even more so now That Mike has stopped selling the coins to the public. They're pretty shiny objects. You can't buy anywhere except on eBay right Supply goes down price goes up And so by creating artificial scarcity Through proof-of-stake of Bitcoin you can make paper currencies that can be exchanged that a premium over face value and work as a Perfectly usable currency with a couple of really interesting exceptions. I Can't make backups of my money. I Can make backups of paper wallets Right No one can inflate my paper wallet money Like they can fiat money Right, so you can do a lot of interesting things with this while still maintaining the basic transactional capability We need to start thinking about using Bitcoin without electricity using Bitcoin over SMS Using Bitcoin by exchanging short phrases that are codes that unlock Bitcoin wallets by reference and So that kind of thinking leads us to create The exact right conditions so that when a country suffers a currency crisis The answer is not to put all of grandpa's money in a suitcase and head for the nearest border You see my name It's long and unpronounceable. It's Greek. I Know all about suitcases of money leaving a border My parents spent nine months Standing in line at a bank Transferring the maximum ten thousand euros a day Every single day with five thousand other people standing in line to do the same thing It's a can you imagine a bank run a run on the banks that last nine months like slow motion You saw this down, but we're sure as we're not leaving our money with you. We're gonna take it out slowly sure fine So you have every single family having Nikos standing in line in the morning Maria switches in the afternoon and So Costa's manages to get into the bank grab the ten thousand and wire it out of the country. I now run an Investment fund which is my parents retirement. I didn't want to do that, but we're not keeping it in euros in Greece People are accustomed to Conditions of extreme difficulty in the world and if we think about Bitcoin in the terms of a first world country We're missing this tremendous opportunity that exists around the world to elevate the other six and a half billion the great unbanked masses and To them this is a very compelling proposition because they're comfortable with extreme volatility They're comfortable with suitcases of money crossing the border they're comfortable with law that applies according to what the police person said And how much you bribed them? We're getting comfortable with that concept too But for most countries that's the reality So in summary Neutrality which is an underlying principle here is one of the four necessary conditions That are required in order to see worldwide rapid burst the adoption of the currency It's not about whether Bitcoin will be adopted or where it will be adopted or when it will be adopted The only question is will we be ready as the Bitcoin community for the influx of millions of people? For the use of Bitcoin in new scenarios at completely different transactional rates If you were here a couple of days ago at the giga on session a gentleman from India stood up and said hey I like your 0.001 transaction fee, but your micro transaction is sending a dollar my micro transaction is sending 10 rupees That's point one of a cent right whole different perspective Our micro transaction is a transaction in India their micro transaction doesn't have a word So we need to start thinking of scaling from femto transaction to giga transaction and a whole different concept of what pocket change means We need to be able to develop technology around Bitcoin that enables electricity less communication less transfer of value and Finally, we need to make sure that as we go forward and very many forces that are not Supporting Bitcoin because it's not in their interest as they try to pervert the core neutrality in the protocol We work hard to preserve those principles. So any time you see a change That is suggested in the Bitcoin code and the Bitcoin protocol in the Bitcoin payment systems Ask yourself this how does this change affect the core principle of neutrality? How do we make sure The neutrality as a principle is adopted so broadly that it can't easily be attacked in 1992 the internet had its AOL moment Those of us who are on the internet before call that Black Monday It was the day that AOL dumped 11 million noobs onto the internet And of course everyone who was already on the internet was absolutely horrified Because noobs didn't know about spam if they didn't know about net tickets and they did well, you know how it goes But that was an inevitable situation. It was an absolutely necessary thing in order to get the internet to mainstream What we managed to do on the internet was maintain the principle of neutrality long enough That it got as broadly distributed as it is today and now neutrality is baked into the system to a level where even if It's attacked the attacks fail and why do they fail? Because when you compare the value of a decentralized system to the value of a centralized system the decentralized system always wins It always delivers better value and better efficiency To everyone right centralized systems only benefit those who are at the center If we take the internet and make it broad Neutral as we did great by the time The carriers tried to make it unneutral by the time they tried to buy Priority access on the internet it was too late because it's distributed broadly enough that the endpoints resist centralization Who are the endpoints? We are right. We resist centralization And we resist centralization whether we know it or not because we see the value of neutrality as expressed through the ability To blog as loudly as CBS to share our opinion and create grassroots revolutions on Facebook Right those principles of neutrality translate into power and we're not about to let go of that power Even if we don't know how it relates to neutrality Bitcoin is neutral today It will be neutral for as long as we fight to keep Bitcoin neutral as long as we resist attempts to centralization and Cooption if you see people trying to make sure that transactions on Bitcoin can be prioritized in a way not Per the size of the transaction But based on who the sender is or who the recipient is scream because that violates the principle of neutrality and that principle of neutrality is the most important and valuable characteristic of Bitcoin so To wrap up Neutrality will lead to adoption. It's one of the four preconditions to adoption. We need to address the other three We need to make sure that we can easily demonstrate the value of Bitcoin over national currencies where that value is clearly Identifiable we need to make sure that Bitcoin can be accepted because it is able to work in an environment without electricity without communications, etc We need to make sure that people can use Bitcoin without getting jailed or shot One of the great reason ways to do that support Bitcoin charities Beyond enterprise really really Cherish the gift economy we've created with Bitcoin and support Bitcoin charities When a legislator runs out against the campaign that says if you kill Bitcoin these kids starve This puppy goes to a kill shelter and this bear in China doesn't have a future and goes extinct That's a much better message than Bob the speculator won't make enough money invest in charities because that Enhances the concept of neutrality and makes it concrete finally When these changes happen and when you see this massive adoption You're going to see again attempts to violate the neutrality and we need to resist those Ask yourself if a change is happening. Does it give me enough utility to be worth giving up this principle of neutrality? If you enjoyed this video, please subscribe like and share All my work is shared for free. So if you want to support it join me on patreon


Hello and welcome to the Fort Report, I'm Chris Connolly and I'm Alicia Woodruff. College football season is here and that means it's time to show your purple pride. Fridays before TCU home football games will again be Go Purple Fridays in Fort Worth. City staff will be sporting prominent purple to show their support for the horned frogs. I expect y'all to do the same. To help celebrate the opening of the season, the Avenue of Light on Lancaster Avenue will go purple along with many of our downtown buildings. It's going to be beautiful. It's time to practice your overhand serve because Adult Volleyball Registration opens up on September 19th at 7 a.m. I worked on my game all summer. Here's a clip. Oh, Iceman, will you ever learn? Visit the city's website and get signed up. Okay, are you ready for some fall family fun in the Fort Worth Stockyards? There's some crazy animal activity happening Saturday, September 17th at Stockyard Station. It's called Animals Alive. Those aren't stuffed animals, they are alive. The event is free and you'll learn about and pet some unique Texas animals, ride a pony and see the only twice daily cattle drive in the world. For more information go to www.stockyardstation.com Celebrating our heritage is so important to who we are as a city. After all, this country was founded by immigrants. Fort Worth is an amazing melting pot of diversity and that's what makes us special.  Yes, I wish on my father's side and Jedi on my mother's side. Fort Worth City Employees' 10th Annual Hispanic Heritage Celebration will be 11 a.m. to 1.30 p.m. September 16th outside of City Hall. Singers, dancers and food vendors, Chris, will be celebrating on 10th Street all morning long. Fort Worth PD will provide identification kits for children too. For more information call<PHONE_NUMBER>.


I'm Deborah Borchart and this is your marijuana money minute. So I just found out that one of the sponsors at next week's Green Market Summit is going to be announcing a new product at the conference. This is going to be huge news and we still have some room left but there is limited seating so you want to get your tickets now before it's too late. Cura Leaf announced this week that it was acquiring Cura Partners known for their select brand in an all stock deal valued at $948 million. Now selects THC products are sold in more than 900 retailers and it is the leading cannabis brand in Key Western states. The combination of these two companies is going to help Cura Leaf get a leg up on the West Coast due to selects brand strength out there. Canopy Growth had another busy week. It acquired the German synthetic cannabis company called C3 for $250 million. Now I know this sounds a little odd for a company that prides itself on its cannabis plants to buy a synthetic company but really it's buying an entry into the German market in getting that distribution. Canopy also gave an update on its New York state hemp plans in which the company plans to begin hiring later this year. CanTrust priced its previously announced public offering of 36 million shares at $550 per share. The company though is only selling 30 million shares for a total gross proceeds of about $170 million. Ianthus raised 25 million selling convertible notes. Kush co-holdings announced that it entered into an agreement with an institutional investor for a private placement of $21.3 million and we have a lot of earnings to go over this week so we're just going to skim through them pretty quickly. Suniva reported its 2018 results and the company had $18.8 million in revenue versus 2017's $16.1 million. Goldenleaf reported that in 2018 their full year revenue was $16.5 million. That was up 43% from 11.5% in 2017. Plus products reported that its 2018 revenue went to $8.4 million. That was an increase of 681%. Indus Holdings began trading on the Canadian Securities Exchange this week using the symbol INDS. And finally the root of its all products have hit the shelves in Colorado's native roots dispensaries. That's it for this week. I'm Deborah Porchart reporting for the Green Market Report.


American Indian activist Dennis Banks has died at the age of 80. Banks's family says he developed pneumonia after undergoing heart surgery earlier this month and didn't want to be put on life support. Daughter Tashina Banks-Rama says the family plans to hold wakes in Minneapolis and on the Leech Lake Indian Reservation. She says details are still being worked out but the wakes will be held Wednesday evening at the Minneapolis American Indian Center and Thursday and Friday on the reservation. Banks will be buried there Saturday. Ramis says her father was in good spirits until his pneumonia took a turn for the worse on Friday. She says about 30 people were in the room when he died including siblings, children, and grandchildren. If you've enjoyed this segment of Lakeland News, please consider making a tax-deductible contribution to Lakeland Public Television.


So let's get started. My name is Dushanth. Like most of the Indian name, it's a super complicated name. JDA is my last name, and Dushanth is my first name. I've been in Bangalore for almost 18 years. I did my graduation here. And then I've been working in a few companies, did something on my own, then work out, and then kind of a joint corporate went back. And then finally I ended up with my current job here. Throughout my career I had, I was fortunate enough to have an experience in engineering, design, product management, business management. And currently I would say I'm kind of back to square one and learning something new here. So what's UX and why does it matter? I know it's a pretty broad question. I'm not trying to kind of prove that I know more or kind of know you guys know, but just trying to understand what is your perspective about UX here. Correct? If you have an answer, great. If you don't have an answer, it's fine. But I'm just going to show it from my point of view that what do I mean by UX? Like a pretty simple thing, correct? What do you think about it? It's nice UI, correct? But it doesn't really kind of tell you what's called to action. All the information that represented the same level. It's kind of a little confusing language as well, correct? Well, and this one kind of becomes a little bit more clear in terms of what an interface is trying to communicate to a user out there, correct? Pretty simple. So making things obvious is a key part of UX. If you're solving a problem, you have a solution. But if the solution is not obvious, you may not kind of know really solve the problem or kind of know that you're trying to address that. Let's take a second one. This is one of my favorite one. What's wrong here? Everything? Any one thing that you have in mind? The state is not clear, correct? It's not clear for what switches for what particular appliance, correct? So ideal solution is what? Something like this. But how often do we use it, correct? So the thing what I'm trying to say is that there's some sort of an cognitive overload or cognitive decision that a user try to makes it. When we were a kid, we have learned that, you know, switches are supposed to be like this, correct? Though it's wrong, correct? But trying to change that behavior and make it something right cannot be right. So it's extremely important to realize solve it the way user want to solve it. Not the way you would want to solve it. Another, you know, interesting example here. I'm sure all of you have taken a flight and have a boarding pass. There are times when you are, if you look at this particular boarding pass, all the information at the same level, correct? There's no clarity of, you know, what is more important, what is not. And if you're trying to find an information, correct?  What should I process here? So in a very simple term, you access something which makes things really, really obvious. And at Google, we try to kind of, you know, really hard in most of our products. Sometimes we successful, sometimes we haven't. But that's our kind of, you know, philosophy of what we can try to implement in our products there. So I'm going to talk about the challenges in, you know, UX or validation, what we have seen throughout working with different teams at Google. Some of the case studies, maybe I'll go through one particular process in deep and how we are doing it at Google. And then kind of share some of the resources. I want to be kind of, you know, careful and make a disclaimer here is that there's a no one process that entire company follows. Each different team has its own freedom and flexibility that kind of works for them. The reason for it is that, you know, each team is solving a different problem. Because each team has a different set of users in mind of it. So there's no one process we can solve this. What I'm going to talk about is specifically from an Android point of view, you know, that our team kind of does it, but can be applied to other teams as well. So what are the challenges in UX testing? Most of the time when I talk about UX, you know, people think like this, anybody knows what is it? It's a Japanese tea ceremony. And if you've ever been to one of the Japanese tea ceremony, it's painfully long, correct? To make a one cup of tea, correct? It takes five hours, correct? Similarly, when I talk about UX or user research, UX research or UX validation, people say that it's a lot of time that I have to invest into it. Maybe I need to do primary research first, then I need to do secondary research first. I need to get it inside, then give it to somebody else. I have interfaces, put it into product, and then you do validation, correct? And now, but your typical development schedules, the run and sprints, correct? Every two weeks, you want to launch something out there. Now, how do you marry both of them, correct? So I'm just trying to overlap on one side, you have a development cycle and your traditional UX research sector, correct? So there's clearly some sort of a gap there. Something what we have tried, and we have taken a liberty of moving away from some of the core principles. The reason for it, because it works for our product development lifecycle. So what do teams want? They want feedback before people start coding, correct? They'd, hey, I'm doing the right thing before I invest my time, energy, money, resources. I want to know that, okay, this is gonna be really, really, but the chances of failure kind of thing, you wanna minimize that. You wanna feedback now, and you don't have time for everything. So this is an example of how we do a validation of ideas. This is a Google Glass. All of you, at least hopefully have heard about it, about the product, really great product, but kind of didn't do that well in terms of what was intended to do it. But how do we start validating that? So the first thing was that, we kind of slap a phone on us, on us practicals. You say, hey, does it do that functionality, correct? And then over a period of time, we iterate that. Couple of weeks down the line is what kind of know what Sergey was holding on his hand that was a prototype would kind of only got out of it. And I'll kind of talk about some of the processes that we have used to kind of go through this validation case there. So what we want is something like this espresso shot, not the Japanese tea ceremony, which takes a lot of time, but espresso shots are kind of really easy to make, packs a punch and still kind of gives you at least a good enough insight into what your solution you should be building there. So the way how I kind of know, decide that if you want to do kind of understand goals and attitudes, you kind of look at on the left-hand side of this particular diagram, say, okay, maybe I want to do in-depth interviews, I want to do focus group. If you really want to understand kind of what behavior aspects of it, you kind of go ahead and say, okay, let me do usability study, let me do an A-B testing and stuff like that. And then there's another tangent, which is a qualitative and quantitative algorithm. Again, this is not a standard one. This is something you'll find everywhere. You could customize it based on your needs. So let's take some of those methods that I talk about, correct, we'll be focusing mostly on the top right-hand side tangent there and see how it kind of, helps you do validation and feel really easy and short a period of time. So the first is the heuristic evolution. I'm sure all of you are aware about it, correct? Nothing, I'll not spend much time. But here what happens is that, if you really want to identify, let me give you an example. We launched an Android tablet, sometime five, six years back. And one of the feedback what we got from a team saying that, hey, the time to set up a tablet is like really, really long, compared to the other standard tablet available in the market. So I said, okay, let's figure out and how do we kind of quantify that? So we put both tablets inside by side, kind of loaded there and look at, okay, choose heuristics. So one of the heuristics what we chose here was a speed, number of seconds or number of minutes it takes for us to kind of, you know, set up a tablet, we measure it, kind of summarize in terms of, you know, what could, what is taking more, what is taking less, send a report to our team, got a feedback in within a week, we had a new build, kind of tested again on the new device and kind of we were on kind of little better place there. Of course, it took a time for us to load or roll out this feature completely around the six months, but it is good to know that, okay, you know, we are going to write track out there. So this is a very easy way. So if you want to kind of look at quantified evidence, heuristics is a great example for it, doesn't take too much time, maybe three hours, four hours, depending on the kind of problem you're trying to solve and the heuristic that you have selected, you could do that. Write system with prototypes, anybody have heard of write? It's basically rapid iterative and testing. So we have launched, you could use it with, you know, multiple scenario here. Let's take an example of, I'm just taking an example of Google search and you would want to kind of, you know, try to get a feedback from users on a new design of Google search. So what you do is in this particular thing is that, you know, you schedule interviews in the morning till afternoon and you have a designer and the team standby. So let's say I have a first interview at 10 o'clock, I basically present a design saying that, hey, what do you think about it? And then I kind of push back and kind of listen to users, try to understand what kind of feedback I'm giving. Now I've got all this feedback and I will prioritize that out of this feedback and look what I'll take one of them and give it to my designer or interface designer. Hey, you know what? Can you create a quick mock up of this before the next interview comes in? And I've kind of now taken our gap before the next interviewer comes there. And then I kind of again verify that. So by the time if I do it, you know, over a period of time, I've kind of now gotten to a stage where I was in into a little bit of better stage there. We have done this multiple times. One of the things that we have used it is again, take a same example of an Android tablet. People were not able to detect the same slot of an Android tablet. Correct? Hey, where do I basically put in? Because if you look at the design had some sort of, you know, kind of, you know, camouflaging the entire SIM slot there. And we kind of looked at it and then see what we could do there. Of course, it was difficult for us to 3D print the new model of tablet there, but we had a bunch of other tablets, models we were ready. Hey, what do you think about this? So it was interesting study there. Right works extremely well when you kind of now have a focus change you would want to drive in your product and your solutions there. Correct? You could do it on one day or two day, depending on the kind of time flexibility you have. And it can be done with, you know, one designer, one researcher, and you know, five users there. Caffe study, this is one of the very popular UX validation methods at Google. We have kind of, you know, many employees were working at Google. They're supposed to also have a good advocate of products. Now, if you really want to get a quick feedback of one thing, correct, you know, it's again a good method to explore and kind of like, hey, what do you think about it? So we, it kind of, you know, get a fresh perspective on whether what you're doing it.  So this one, we have done it.   And when you lock a screen, what happens that, you know, sometimes the widget comes on top of it. So the user were not really sure whether they're unlocking a phone or tapping on a widget or, you know, things that's a bad interface design that we had. And we want to kind of, you know, see that how many users are falling to the trap?  So we have a cafe study there, you know, kind of what good feedback some of our assumptions got validated there. And then we can work on it and kind of move it to a different sections there. Again, super, super interesting method if you really want a good decisions there. Deep into Pulse Study there, which is kind of matches with your sprint cadence here. Correct? So what happens is that on first couple of days of a week, you kind of, you know, sit together and understand, you know, what you want to try to validate. And then you screen the users, write a script, schedule a bunch of things, and also have your developer team kind of in a part of it. Correct? So that kind of, you know, both of them are working together in terms of, you know, building that solution there. It's flexible in terms of, you know, sometimes, you know, depending on your sprint cycle, you may want to do a one week or two weeks. It gives you flexibility. It's not disconnected completely since teams are co-located doing together. It kind of results are much, much more faster there. So how do we typically start there? We try to understand what are we testing, correct? What do we want to validate? What do we want to measure here? Either it's a kind of a software interface that we're trying to get some more information. Is it a hardware product? It's just a concept that we have. Who are we inviting? Correct? So who is the user? Correct? Extremely important for type of a product that you're trying to solve. It's an early stage of a product that you cannot really afford to have somebody else coming and giving you feedback because you are not sure whether something may get leaked out. So in that case, you know, we kind of have an internal users, so maybe a Googler, or it could be external user where the product is already in the market and you're trying to validate some of the new feature that you integrate in the new upcoming release or maybe a target profile. Can I get up to you in terms of what it is? So identify what you want to solve or what you want to validate. Second thing, who do you want to invite? Who is the target persona there? And then, who is doing what?  Now, what happens at times? The user kind of forgets, it's psychological as well, correct? I mean, you don't really kind of scare individual saying, okay, no, no, this is right, this is wrong out of it. So having the clear rules and responsibility is very important. Most of the time, we kind of ensure that there's only one person at max, two person kind of part of that entire discussion so that it doesn't become a little overwhelming for somebody who is taking the time out and giving us a feedback there. So we kind of define clear rules and responsibility. Who is the researcher? Who is an observer? You need somebody who's kind of taking the notes. You need somebody who's kind of looking at non-verbal signals, correct? Because human beings are like super complex. We think something different, we say something different, we do something different, correct? So we try to pay attention to all three aspects of it and see how you want to kind of include in your feedback there. Once you have all those things decide, then you say, okay, where are we testing it, correct? The environment also makes a really, really huge difference there. So we have a kind of multiple preferences there. We have a UX lab, correct? Which is kind of as similar as a typical home. We understand not everybody could have this kind of facility, but if you try to get an environment which is as close where a user is gonna use a particular thing. So for example, if you are hypothetically validating and solution which is like a Google Maps, I would be in your place, I would go to a bus station or bus station and then try to say, what do you think about it? Or maybe on a local train or things where environment is kind of very similar where user is gonna use the particular solutions there. We also have at Google, we also have a kind of an observer room. So there are a bunch of cameras where actual studies are done and the other people who could not be part of the research or kind of face to face discussion can sit back and kind of observe body language and answers and maybe some of the things that a researcher or an observer or not ticker is mystic. They could kind of take down and give it to a team there. If you can't really do all those things and which most of the cases is not, even we didn't have the lab for quite a long period of time, the easy is to kind of maybe do online meeting. If user is not there, as long as you are focusing, you're asking the right questions, as long as user is comfortable, you're walking to the entire activity that you're doing, it doesn't matter. And then you could kind of look at the environment aspects completely separately there. The first step is go and execute the study, correct? A bunch of things I wanna highlight here is that do's and don'ts when you do a user research is that you wanna be kind of really, really nice and thankful because somebody's taking time, thank them, try to understand what they're doing. They're coming for the first time, hey, how was your ride? Did you had a good time? Very good time? You had lunch? Whatever, correct? Just make them feel comfortable before they can go and do actual study there. Tell them that if something goes wrong, it's not about them, it's about the product, correct? Almost every point of time, user is right and the product is wrong. Don't tell them, hey, no, no, try this, try another thing that doesn't really work out most of the time. By doing that, even the user gets a little bit uncomfortable. So basic things, nothing kind of rocket science here. But not to do is that no matter who you are or what company you represent, never kind of try to talk about a product itself, correct? Try to talk about problem. If I give them a scenario, I'll see how things can work out. Don't assume that the user would know what they're doing. Correct? So standard checklist, nothing much. If you've done user research, you know what I'm talking about. Checkboxes, correct? This is one thing we found it really, really helpful is that it's extremely difficult and it's very interesting to kind of listen to user, correct? You're almost every time lost in that conversation, you're kind of not be in the same frame of mind and understand what user is thinking and at times you forget taking notes or you kind of miss out some of those things. But having checkboxes, they do pre-anticipate. I mean anticipate what users might be gonna say that, okay, check, click the box or maybe the body language was something like this, correct? That helps you kind of do a lot of writing, I mean, avoids, that makes you not write a lot of things and also kind of makes you be involved in that moment and you know, kind of understand what that is. Step four is kind of, once everything is done, debrief with them, tell them what we can do about it. Usually that means going back to drawing board, list out priorities, another thing that we do at Google in terms of priority, we put a dollar value of each inside what we got, saying that, okay, if this is the feedback I got, correct, how much dollar value we should be putting there, correct? Let's say the $5, $50, $100 out of it, correct? Obviously $100 will get a priority in terms of no, a $5 there that helps us kind of prioritize which feature we need to focus on. And then we kind of send an email and then focus on to next user research and validation of that. I just wanna, anybody know about this equation? Very quick, there was research done at IBM that if you invest a $1 in research or validation, you will save $10 in your development time. And that $10 will hopefully help you basically have revenue of $100 there. So extremely important to kind of know, I know it, sometime it can be boring and you're starting initially, it is time consuming, but trust me, once you get a hang of it, if it becomes in a second nature of what you're doing, it helps a long way in your product development life cycle. With that, I have like at least three, four minutes to take your question. If you like this talk, give your feedback, something that didn't work out, we'll try to improve. And in the meantime, if you have a question, I'm happy to take some of that. We do, we do. So it depends on what are we trying to solder, what are we trying to get insight into it. So many times what happens, I'm just trying to give an example of, so Google search is a public product, correct? And whenever we want to kind of test and validate it, many times we invite users who are not Googlers, correct? And kind of get a fresh perspective or open perspective of what we could do it. But sometimes when you're building a product which is not launched, correct? You don't really want to kind of go ahead and do it. So either we kind of, you know, either we kind of have to do it, we don't tell what the product is, but sometimes when you kind of hide a lot of information, you don't get the right insight out of it, correct?  But we don't, so whatever we do, user is at center of everything and we do a lot of external user research studies. To answer your question in demographic, we have a team spread across, thankfully, we have a team spread across, you know, multiple geographies, countries and regions and we take their help. Somebody who is building in US, you know, they kind of reach out to us and India saying, hey guys, I need your help doing this, you know, quick, we can study, can you go ahead and do that? And all of us kind of, you know, put our hands in their ears to do that. So it is, there is an incentive as well, correct? I think most of the time it's an interest. If you're an engineer, you have never done a user research, so kind of the people joining, but there is an incentive as well. Okay, so it's a good thing. I forgot to mention about the incentive, but the incentive is part of the entire process. We usually, you know, kind of look at either giving vouchers or maybe if it's a product, depending on, you know, what kind of mindset you are getting. If the, if the insight is very large, you want to thankful and kind of ensure that, you know, the feedback you get, ensure that incentive is that large as well. Sure, so I'll just take a step back and maybe this last question I'll take, this next speaker is already here. So I would look at in terms of, you know, I have a less user, but is my solution is being, what is the engagement level on my solution? Let's say I'm just giving example. Again, I'm taking example of Google search. Assume that the people are spending, you know, more time on search, but there's not many users out there. So there could be two things wrong here. Either the results what we're showing is not really kind of, you know, helpful and that's why people are spending more time or people are coming back and they're finding something around it. So, so there are two person as I have, correct? So then I try to find more into in one of those directions or kind of I'll take lead in both directions then try and more find information out of it. So it's important to kind of, you know, take a hook or take a lead in terms of, you know, what's wrong with the current approach and then go a little deep into it. Like it's almost an iterative process. At one time we had a roadblock and you know, maybe this way is what we need to do. So I don't know if it helps, but try to understand in terms of, you know, what's wrong with this? Why there are not many people and what is currently happening with your solution there? I'm very happy to kind of, you know, maybe chat offline as the next speaker is here, but let's chat more and see how it goes. Thank you.