Marcus Shingles, The Metaverse Disruption. What It Is & How it Will Impact You (#246)

Marcus Shingles is the Co-Founder and CEO of Exponential Destiny, a 501(c)(3) educational non-profit organization that uses new technology and disruptive innovation to provide mentorship, up/re-skilling, and entrepreneurial training to public schools and organizations serving under-resourced communities. Marcus started this volunteer group after “adopting” a South Central Los Angeles public high school in 2015 to build a new curriculum to teach “exponential entrepreneurship,” which is still in use today.

Marcus Shingles was formerly the CEO of the XPRIZE Foundation, a non-profit organization that pioneered reward and crowdsourcing methods for creativity and technological solutions to address humanity’s most pressing problems. Marcus has created and led several programs for cross-functional executive teams to better understand, prepare for, and capitalize on emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, 3D printing, biotech, nanotech, blockchain, VR, AR, and others. Previously in his career, he also served as a Partner (Executive) for another leading global consulting firm, Deloitte, where he oversaw the firm’s technology and innovation practice.

Understanding the Metaverse

Since this episode was first aired, we are all more aware of the metaverse. For starters, Facebook changed its name to Meta (Meta Platforms, Inc.), and it’s not the parent organization of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, among other subsidiaries. We’ve then witnessed the rise of cryptocurrencies and crypto-assets such as NFTs, which are creating a big buzz on the web. All this is taking us closer to the Web3, which will be the newest iteration of the World Wide Web, the internet.

What is the Metaverse?

The Metaverse is a virtual reality world where individuals can interact, play games, and have real-life experiences. This is possible thanks to the use of augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) tech, which allows users to immerse themselves in this world – the metaverse – and interact with overlaying objects and people projected in front of them. This also translates to a digital economy, where users can buy, sell, and create goods (such as NFTs).

Businesses and Metaverse

According to Mark Zuckerburg, CEO of Meta, the Metaverse goes far beyond VR, and by the end of this decade, it dramatically changes businesses as well. We can see this already happening. Here are a few examples:

• Nike is getting ready to to sell products in the Metaverse, and has applied for trademarks in order to have a foothold in the virtual world.
• Some companies are creating a Digital Twin to run rests and scenarios without affecting the physical business.
• NVIDIA has created the Omniverse platform to connect different worlds within the metaverse.

We will for sure see more of the Metaverse in the future, and this episode will help you understand how to get ready for it.

And now here’s Marcus Shingles.

Show Notes

[3:11] How’d it happen for Marcus Shingles?
[16:18] How he mentors young people
[26:12] On seeing his students doing the work
[30:25] Crowdsourcing talents
[36:02] How he adopted a high school
[50:06] Staying ahead of the curve
[54:37] The easiest description of the spatial web
[1:08:44] Outro

Full transcript below

Video With Marcus Shingles on The Metaverse Disruption. What It Is & How it Will Impact You.

Watch the Presentation to the Abundance 360 community (300 Business CEO’s) on the Future of Education & Learning

Visit ExponentialDestiny.com to Learn More About Marcus Shingles’ Educational Non-Profit Organization

Discover the Purpose, History, and Mission of Exponential Destiny

Connect with Marcus Shingles on LinkedIn

Follow Marcus Shingles on Twitter

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Podcast with Marcus Shingles. The Metaverse Disruption. What It Is & How it Will Impact You.

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

business, virtual reality, technology, people, internet, learn, young, years, xprize, coding, teaching, ceo, person, happening, started, environment, mentor, job, big, literally

SPEAKERS

Marcus Shingles, Mike Malatesta

Marcus Shingles  00:02

Reality on my reality so I’m teaching you how to do this and I’m employing them on projects, because they’re the best in the world at ITT tech, a tech school.

00:10

Yeah, okay.

Marcus Shingles  00:11

So it’s I’ll talk a little bit about that because it’s actually a discussion I understand, but there was like, guys. You know, every 20 or 30 years you’ve come across some trend that’s happening where you time it right to really build skills and be the thought leader on that trend for decades to come and that’s that doesn’t happen very often it’s like you mentioned the internet, right or mobile and social media, and currently what’s happening with spatial web with virtual reality on reality and so in eight weeks I’m getting them. A 20 year old from South Central I am giving them the skills, the creative skills, and some more creative and technical

Mike Malatesta  00:47

on how to build out environments and virtual reality and then I’m employing them for 45 grand a year on projects. That’s awesome because, like I feel like so many people feel like the world’s passing them by as opposed to the world’s, you know, creating opportunities for them and they just, they do just.

01:12

Oh yeah,

01:13

Go ahead. Yeah.

02:33

All right. Sorry that won’t happen again. On a house,

02:35

literally as we speak.

Mike Malatesta  02:38

I know how that goes. Yeah because. So are you somewhere close by, are you, or are you,

Marcus Shingles  02:46

Wyoming. I got some acres of land and a nice, beautiful part of Jacksonville with only a second family home and I’m really excited about. Yeah,

Mike Malatesta  02:57

good for you. Good for you. Congratulations.

Marcus Shingles  03:02

My daughter’s living in it right now. Well closing on a cheap rent to get the seller was, I told the seller and rented for a couple months while I was closing and so my daughter’s actually living in it.

Mike Malatesta  03:13

Okay. Nice. I’ve only been there once beautiful place, really, really cool place

Marcus Shingles  03:22

presented just audio or the presented with audio and video. When Yeah,

Mike Malatesta  03:26

I do. So it goes out on audio on the PI class podcast platforms and then YouTube on the video, and on my website on the video as well. So, okay, so I will, we’ll get started. I’ll just count down three to one and then we’ll go. Yeah. I’m gonna, you don’t need to go into any of that so I do that separately on my. So we build that in on the front end and get everything in there and then the podcast just starts and you and I start talking. Yep.

Marcus Shingles  04:16

A little bit of a less business only profile and talks about some stuff I’ve done with the United Nations.

Mike Malatesta  04:21

Yeah. I’ve already read it, it’s very good, by the way.

04:26

Okay.

Mike Malatesta  04:29

All right, here we go. Okay, 321. Hey everybody welcome back to the show and Marcus thank you so much for joining me today. So Marcus and I were acquainted got acquainted at this year’s abundance 360 event which was all virtual, but it was kind of cool that it was virtual, because even though you didn’t get the. Will you all know what it’s like to do something in person versus over zoom or whatever it’s kind of not the same, but there are advantages and one of the advantages are you get to communicate with a lot of people through the platform, through the zoom platform that you wouldn’t ordinarily be able to do so. So I took advantage of that reached out to Marcus because he was explaining, and actually showing us a demonstration of this technology called spatial web which we’ll talk about later which was unbelievably, cool. And I was like, okay, so I got to connect with this guy and we did and then. Fortunately, he was, you know, willing to do the podcast today so Marcus I start every one of my podcasts with the same simple question. How did happen for you.

Marcus Shingles  05:51

summit. Yeah, everybody so we did it in virtual reality, which was.

Mike Malatesta  05:58

Yeah, super, super cool. Like, I’ve been, I’ve been using my. I’ve been used I’ve never used an Oculus before but I’ve been using it ever since I got that for the supernatural app that we think is awesome, man.

Marcus Shingles  06:22

300 person virtual reality session, right, it wouldn’t cost too much the software wasn’t very good The 10 were makes you sick, all these problems but there’s been this inflection point really in the last few months were really accelerated by COVID, quite frankly, where you know these headsets that cost 1000s of dollars a few 100 bucks. The quality was way, way up in the software is basically free software that would have cost, 10s of 1000s of dollars before and now you can get these environments and as we showed at that summit, we were all in, we were all in these environments, not just getting in there just for her fun we went in there to actually have CEOs of companies share with other CEOs, here’s how I use virtual reality for the commercial side of my business.

Mike Malatesta  07:04

It was, it was immersive and super cool I shared it with all my YPO buddies because I’m like this, there’s something to this I thought this, I thought the VR headsets resolve kids stuff you know Marcus I just wasn’t, but that that was the spatial web that experience was, was that the highlight certainly one of the major highlights of the, of the conference for me.

Marcus Shingles  07:32

Yeah, that’s a little bit you know I’m having Board of Directors meetings with CEOs of Fortune 500 companies in these environments now so it’s I mean it’s real. So it’s a little bit to answer the question you asked about how to happen. I mean, where I would like to. It’s kind of an open ended question, and there’s probably a lot of directions I could go but it’s a timely question for me because I, I actually mentor, a group of young people from low income underserved communities I’ve been doing this for years from around 2015, and particularly I took I adopted a high school in South Central Los Angeles. Back in 2015, where I basically went into the high school, the principal in the superintendent, because they were in the LA Times and they were being very innovative in terms of how they were thinking about reinventing the school that was Jefferson High School and South Central la which was really at a point where it was. It was scorched earth. I mean it was, it was not functioning properly at a public as a public school. Right. And so the parents that everyone in the district kind of came together and they adopted the school they tried to really endearing like all the parents and the community came together said how can we reinvent the school. And they got a bunch of bids from a bunch of consulting firms and all this stuff and eventually they gave the bid to the community and the parents, basically say let us reinvent this and they call it National College Prep, and they made it a school where they branded it like college prep they put everybody uniforms, and they put a school within the school so Jefferson High School basically had a sister school called Maverick college prep. And when I read that in the la times I’m like, Wow, that’s so amazing like all the momentum they have I just wonder what they’re teaching in the school. And it’s actually, if that’s changing at all. So I approached the high school principal and the superintendent went out there in places that are, are you teaching people to prepare them for college work to the entrepreneurs if they don’t go to college, around skills like virtual yeah like we were talking about virtual reality or spatial web or blockchain or artificial intelligence or 3d printing or nanotechnology or biotechnology. And they were like, no, we’re not that’s not part of the public school system we’re not teaching any of that. I said what you need to know, because I’m working with. I’m advising top tier MBA programs, I’m advising CEOs of large companies on the type of future of work and the type of talent, they’re going to need, and they’re going to need people with these skills, and they’re not technical skills either I’m not saying they have to learn how to code and artificial intelligence and these other things I’m not a big proponent of coding as a bankable skill set, I think it helps develop the brain a certain way. But I think artificial intelligence is going to do a lot of the coding. And if you’re going to make a career coding you better be an exceptional exceptional coder and that’s just not in the cards for everybody. So I’ve been advocating you know what’s more valuable especially in my roles where I was an executive at Deloitte Consulting. You know, the best talent pool that I could find her entrepreneurial mindsets that understand the toolbox of all these technologies and how to use them to solve business problems or social problems, not the nuts and bolts of how to code at all. That’s actually more valuable skill set in the market so I basically told the analog, the high school like, why don’t we teach them about all these tools that are out there. Ai robotics 3d printing, and this was in 2015, where people weren’t even talking about self driving cars that are blockchain and Bitcoin was just being discussed. If these kids know about this stuff, first of all it’s exciting they want to learn more, because who doesn’t want to learn about 3d printing delivers, what is that science fiction becoming science reality. People get interested in it, same thing I saw with my two. Two kids that are not in college. And so, long story short I got into high school we went to this whole curriculum to teach young people about how to be an entrepreneur and how to use these new capabilities crowdsourcing crowdfunding sharing economy all these innovation capabilities, just so they get excited about learning because it’s kind of fun stuff to learn about when you learn about this new stuff and also, you know, just wow, the college recruiter, or in college isn’t in the cards how you can be self sustainable and self sufficient to actually create your own work as an entrepreneur. So that was in 2015 and now they went from 15 year olds to now they’re like 21 year olds and I still mentor them, and they’re running their own businesses, so it’s awesome. Right. And one of the things that you can kind of response to your question about how did that happen for me, one of the things I was just talking to them about, because I get we get on a call every night now and we’re doing a bunch of projects together. I shared with them that you know what in my, in my 30 years of professional career, you know, when I got out of college. My first job was at the Kellogg company in sales and market. It was around 1992, and it turns out that that’s the year the internet was kind of coming to, you know, the.com boom and then the internet right and and so I I had kind of a baseline technical understanding, because I went you know my mom sent me to computer camp where she was a computer engineer. But, but I wasn’t super technical I just understood it well enough, it didn’t scare me, you know, and I was like one of the first ones at the Kellogg company that really understood this technology, and I’m a young person you know I’m 1920 years old married with a child already. And, you know, so willing and had the appetite to work, and move up in my career, so I’m like, I became instantly valuable because I was on the cusp of understanding a technology, better than anyone else knew that technology, because I was at the right place at the right time, and I was actually using it in the company was trying to do so many things with you know technology that that one move in my whole career has been throwing these young people the other day, that was being at the right place at the right time and that literally has made my entire 2030 year career after that point why because I was always naturally ahead of the curve, you know, and so that’s how everything happened for me, like I don’t think I’m much smarter than other people. I just think that I happen to know a certain technology that only comes around every 20 years, you know, kind of a big thing like the invention of the Internet, and it was right there at the right time to really capitalize on that with having the right skill sets, where the, where the company literally saw me as the go to person in quickly I was moved into the headquarters at Kellogg’s to manage the whole digital transformation of the company and I was traveling all over the world with him to do that for putting this system out in the marketplace, which at the time was like a breakthrough technology was called Siebel systems and it was object oriented going from mainframe to client servers. And I decided that I understood all that like it wasn’t it wasn’t hard to understand it’s no more harder than understanding how to load a video on Tic Tac today for sure. So, what I was sharing with these young people was very something like that happening again right now that you learn the skill set you are, you will be on the forefront for the rest of your career, and they all get it because I know, I’m not employing them all on projects after eight weeks of training they’re often employed on professional consulting projects and I’m putting them on with my clients, not because I’m giving them a handout. They know because they’re from a low income underserved community, let me, you know, let me give you this job. They’re actually the best at it. They’re digitally native, they understand digital technology. It’s more of a creative process now it’s not a technical process to go build out these virtual reality worlds and in VR and augmented reality virtual reality which I’ll describe in a second. But my whole message to them is, this is kind of like the reinvention of the internet, it’s just the spatial web it’s the internet coming out of your computer and coming into a virtual world, or the internet, jumping out into the physical world. So when you look at real physical objects you see digital overlays are those objects, and that’s this neck gesture and generation of the internet it’s happening now, we’ve been talking about it for years but it really is a coming portion now to talk about why that’s the case it’s because Apple and Facebook and Google are all doubling down and you’re going to have a pair of glasses within a year that you can wear that will show you the web, on your physical world. So as all these consumer products come out to support this, the developer community really starts to develop new innovations on teaching these young people how you can create the next generation of websites, but now it’s not an HTML developer coding skilling leap and not everyone can learn, it’s actually more of a creative process to develop this next generation of websites because you’re literally getting into virtual reality with your literally with your hands in VR, you’re decorating stuff. So you’re actually coding, by doing things with creative skills not technical coding skills.

Mike Malatesta  15:49

Okay so yeah so non coding coding.

Marcus Shingles  15:53

That’s the new technical literacy that I’m teaching young people, if you learn this. I’m going to, I myself a better employee right now for a professional job like 40 to 45 grand a year as a 19 year old men have gone to college, and the clients are hiring these young people, because they don’t care what the resume says they have the skills. I tell the way I tell the young people, as I say, adults are finally realized it was like we just said Mike where you said I didn’t realize I was just for games. Yeah, adults, especially in the business world are starting to realize that environment that these kids have been playing all these games and I can do my work in these environments and it’s pretty amazing it’s like really. I have superpowers that I can be more conducive for collaboration and productivity that I can even if I could physically be with someone, but the light bulbs popping in business. I need to use as an economy just mandated it’s like not only do I need and I could use this but I actually have to use this because I think I can’t be in person with people. So we have to be remote. So how can I be remote but not have zoom fatigue can actually be in a virtual reality room like you and I are seeing each other, we’re walking around each other that we’re in a real room with each other, that technology no system is cheap it’s almost free, and it all could happen like overnight so I’m telling young people. This is how it happened for me back in 9293 and I was always ahead of the curve, I was always on the bleeding edge I left Kellogg’s to go run a practice at Ernst and Young. On that same technology. And then I went my own business for seven years on that same technology and that same competency. And then I went to Deloitte as a partner leading innovation, spent most of my time up in NASA at Singulair University, bringing CEOs of big companies around this technology and these innovations, and then I went to be the CEO of XPrize to do big global competitions using these technologies to help solve some of the grandest challenges in the world for social impact versus business impact. And then of course, most recently I was at Bain where I still am an expert advisor to them. I’m also on the board of Stanford’s disruptive tech and digital studies program. All because of what I did in 1982 to get ahead of that curve. And it just, it wired me a certain way and I was always seen as the expert and it just so I so that’s kind of how it happened to me professionally. Right. And it’s been fun for me it’s more in my life has been more interesting because I’ve been learning about some really disruptive progressive innovations yeah

18:11

not just the technical stuff but even

Marcus Shingles  18:13

some of the business model innovation like crowdsourcing and crowd sharing and crowdfunding.

Mike Malatesta  18:19

And before everyone else. Yeah.

Marcus Shingles  18:24

Now I just wired. I’m wired that way I understand all that stuff very well. And now everything is spiking exponentially you know all these technologies are really starting to take off and I’m basically saying to this group of young people that I mentor that era our spatial when staving off. Now’s the time to master this, and you will be the expert you from day one or the expert up and catch up.

Mike Malatesta  18:45

So, so Marcus pretend that I’m one of these students how do you how do you mentor me to to believe. You know that. Or, how do you mentor me to put to believe or to position myself, you know, to take advantage of this, of this opportunity, because I’m

Marcus Shingles  19:12

a commercial venture around really the same thing I do with my two kids my kids, my daughter went to a private college and studied biology, and she was not prepared for the workforce when she got off because they weren’t teaching her biotechnology, so I was saying, Hey Harold know about CRISPR gene editing and CRISPR cast nine these are teachers talking about this stuff. Now they’re not talking about this stuff This was 2014 2020. Well, you’re not. They’re not is a private university, because like they’re not educating you the right way for the right jobs, and that’s a big problem I see in society right now is our education system is not at all preparing people even even like a private school is not preparing people for the types of jobs that they’re going to need AI and robotics are gonna replace most of the blue collar white collar jobs at a pace that we’re not even battling right now, we’re already starting to see that happen. And so if you’re really going to have employable skills. You really have to use a different mindset a different type of thing you need to learn a lot of it is about entrepreneurial ism, not for a company, how do I start to think about leveraging the tools that are out there in this world wide web. And thinking about a way that I can monetize something to give social impact or commercial impact in a way that will help me sustain my livelihood. You don’t have to have employment. It’s a lot different discussion so I talked to the young people about two things I share with them how to do it but then I showed them so many examples their confidence levels like yeah I could actually do this like regardless of my background, there’s just too many examples out there of people doing this right rocket science. You just have to break it down and kind of reverse engineer, how to do this. Now are you going to be a multi million dollar startup person. Probably not, I don’t set expectations that way but can you probably sustain a livelihood of making between, you know, in your 20s, making 250 and $100,000 a year is a really high probability, if not more. Yeah, that’s not that’s not a far fetched notion with if you just understand what you should be looking for in terms of how to leverage technology to do things as an individual that only a big company or big business but afford to do 10 years ago, and all that Tech has been democratized to where we have access to it now so it’s not rocket science to figure out how to monetize that, and more importantly I did their confidence level up because I actually have them on phone calls with me. They literally shadow me on call but I have my CEOs of companies, and I literally introduced to my clients. Now my call here is Pablo or Marco or hires or Samantha, or Sue dasia, they’re part of my exponential destiny team and I mentor them and they’re gonna listen in to this whole conversation over the next few weeks as we do this project. So they sit there and they listen to me consult these executives about these new technologies and they realize. Just the fact that I know what the executives don’t know, I’m valuable to them, because I know this new technology. Sure. Is that new technology. You know, I have a level of expertise where I could get really deep into the weeds on it but you don’t really need to offer that certain level of value. It’s like if I could get a client up and running on a capability to help them cut costs, or grow revenue their business and these young people sit on every column and hear me talking to the CEOs about it. We troubleshoot together with the CEO we figure out how do you put this into your current business or your and we work with a lot of, we’re doing a lot of projects for schools right now 100 transform education as well. So they hear me having discussion with these clients, they sit through the process, they did that the first time around three weeks now they’re all graduates. Now, they’re not even in training, I have them on the calls because they’re actually on paying them to be on the call so these young people. And the CEOs of the companies now refer to them and by first name and ask them questions and when we get in virtual reality they’re the ones teaching the CEO and the executive teams how to use the capability so their confidence level goes up because they realize this is just being in the right place at the right time around having knowledge of something that most people don’t have knowledge of yet, knowing that everyone’s gonna want that knowledge. Sure.

Mike Malatesta  22:59

What. So, what a wonderful opportunity for them to get this real world, you know, real world experience on these calls Okay, it’s one thing to mentor plan, just outside of that but then to introduce them into your actual calls and stuff that’s like that’s. You can’t, can’t put a price on that really it’s like, amazing stuff.

Marcus Shingles  23:28

They say themselves like this is, you know, once, once a Michigan State grant he’s like this is more valuable than anything I’ve learned. You know, like an MBA, because they’re hearing me have a business discussion, and I’m a good I consider myself a very good professional advisor consultants, like meaning I you know sometimes consultants get a bad rap like all these two by twos that we like to use and sound bites and stuff like that. I take that profession very seriously. I’ve been I’ve worked in industry I’ve run my own companies and I just know how to apply technology to business, you know, whether it’s for social impact or commercial impact so I I can really help a company in a matter of weeks do something that might take them a few years to do. And when they see me doing that and they hear those conversations they realize that it’s just a troubleshooting exercise like what are you trying to do in your business. I know a lot about VR and AR and AI and 3d printing and robotics, I don’t know, do I know how to code any of those. I don’t need to. I just know they exist and what they can do for the art of the possible future. So, if you tell me a business problem. Even if I don’t understand your industry that Well, I think you’re here to be one of these technical capabilities is going to be a big. A significant solution for you. You know, we just have to find where, and so they sit in all these calls and they hear me having to so they don’t really do professional advisory consulting work like you know I’m part of the big five, or I’m part of the, you know, from Bain to Deloitte.

Mike Malatesta  24:47

Yeah, right. Yeah, yeah top tier

Marcus Shingles  24:51

valuable in terms of what really good strategic management and technology consulting looks like it’s kind of interesting because the reality is, I wouldn’t even go to my bank, I don’t mean this in a derogatory sense but I wouldn’t even go to the large consulting firms. When I work for a client today, especially as independent, I wouldn’t even suggest that they go to like a Bain or Deloitte or McKinsey, because to do that to do some of the more progressive technology, innovation, thinking why because they don’t really have the technical skills.

Mike Malatesta  25:18

Yeah, they need those kids that you’re mentoring to be working for them.

Marcus Shingles  25:24

Better resources and talent. And you don’t have the, the enormous cost of a big consulting firm which sometimes I think is fair and sometimes I don’t think it’s fair so that’s I think it’s deadweight cost has been added on to a project because now you have to have all this army of consultants that are all grad graduates from Hanford from Harvard MBAs and Stanford so there’s the most premium resource in our economy in these big consulting firm right. That’s an overkill. And you know what, not only is it overkill but they’re not even as talented as some of the young people that I’m mentoring, in terms of their ability to deal with technology and digital and innovation and stuff, they you know they’re almost. It’s almost good to have someone that isn’t framed in their own box of what the way they should think they can really think creatively so it’s an interesting way it’s almost, I feel it’s almost a better skill set, as well, you know, and so it’s, you know, they’re. The way the program started off, it was kind of during COVID whatever whatever was out of school I talked to one of the young people I mentor His name’s Marco he’s valedictorian of the High School in South Central LA. And I’ve been mentoring since he was 15, super impressive individual, and we spoke, when COVID happened he’s like Marcus, all my friends when none of us are going to school it’s like a disaster to herself Central’s like they switched over real quick because a Colgate and people that know how to get on the zoom and then it’s like people are falling away behind it and there’s all these articles from the LA Times and New York Times about like everybody’s AWOL

Mike Malatesta  26:51

1000s of kids I saw that when you yeah

Marcus Shingles  26:56

basically about a year ago now. Let’s create this exponential destiny. Bunch of gift my audience was a bunch of young people from South Central Los Angeles or underserved communities, you know, we ended up in Baltimore in Detroit and reached out to Chicago and stuff. And it was just like, let’s just get him on the line because we knew it was very valuable and rather than me. You know the wealthy white guy, preaching to young people in underserved communities, you can do it. Yeah. It was really more marketable. You know, first generation college students got a full ride scholarship to Dartmouth to who came out of, you know, who lived in poverty. He’s my co host he’s the one he’s really sharing with people. This is how you do this, like, this is not that difficult. You can create a business and serve needs in your community and actually figure out ways to do this because you have access to the tools and technology that only big companies and big government had 10 years ago that was normally unaffordable. So we started to do this daily broadcast and we realized after about two months of that. It was hard to think of things new things to say. And we’re like, you know what I gotta do is I gotta bring you guys on to my life projects that I’m working on with companies yeah we just that should be the that basically became the daily zoom calls was me talking to the CEO of a company soup to nuts when they’re getting on the project to the end of the project. And they sat through and listened to the whole thing. There was no expectations of them like they didn’t have to contribute, you know they were there to learn, I just asked that they don’t come on late and leave early and they try to make every call so it’s not rude to the client. And, you know, what they realized was after eight weeks of that. Now I had other projects and they were ready to actually be staffed on and I was like, great. You can get compensated for this stuff now you know how to do it.

Mike Malatesta  28:38

Yeah. And was it cool to see them over the period become more confident of participating and you know actually contributing to the cause and stuff was because that had to be a tremendous growth experience for them.

Marcus Shingles  28:55

That’s what motivated me was like this. Like there.

Mike Malatesta  28:59

Yeah.

Marcus Shingles  28:59

I wish I would have known I would have had a couple of them on, you know, maybe we do another podcast we interview them. Now, that’d

Mike Malatesta  29:05

be fun.

Marcus Shingles  29:06

Yeah, you can talk to them directly.

29:08

But yeah, I

Marcus Shingles  29:09

mean they’re basically, you know, there’s three factors why I think it started to work one is this was not boring stuff we were talking about like, you know, to get, you know, 20, young people on a call with me at six o’clock pacific time that’s nine o’clock eastern time some of them are on East Coast. And, you know, we kind of laugh about it’s like, why are you guys why you’re 20 years old and you’re on a call with me on a Friday night.

Mike Malatesta  29:37

What’s wrong. Yeah,

29:46

it’s reality so

Marcus Shingles  29:47

first of all, you’re hearing about all this stuff like bitcoins and non fungible tokens and blockchain and virtual reality you don’t really, when I describe to them what it actually is and kind of demystify how complicated it is, and really just understand what it is they start to realize like, it’s kind of fun to learn about this stuff I mean we kind of have a good cause I’m very energetic call it’s fun, because we’re talking about some really unique things that are happening with breakthrough technologies are happening like on a daily basis now so that the, the ability that wanting to learn about it I my theory was that was always going to be interesting, even when I got into high school in 2015 I would go in and talk IP the IP the expert lecture where they come in and just get them all excited about things they never heard about, you know, I brought I brought in a 3d printer in 2015, when people didn’t know what that was and I showed you, anything in your imagination and printed off. And so I took on a tour of a 3d printer with my friend had the right to thongs was the CEO of the largest 3d printing company. Yeah, my point is, like, I knew that was because I did this with my kids I knew that was like the gateway drug to get them excited about learning, like some of these shiny objects. And then once you had him hooked on that. Now they wanted to learn about the stuff, then the thing was I talked to them about my profession, how do you monetize that knowledge to get paid for that knowledge. You know, they didn’t know what a consulting career was in order to consulting for men, they didn’t understand what that term meant so I I basically took him into like knowledge. I told him like you know that your teachers told you knowledge is power. My teachers told me that right but the reality is, knowledge is not power for everyone really know. They remind me mark is knowledge is not power I can know a lot but the bank still turned down my loan because they judge me on my, my race or

31:26

my background.

31:27

My background

31:28

or,

Marcus Shingles  31:29

I don’t get a job at a company, even though I’m the most knowledgeable. So they seem to struggle, so I’m like but guess what knowledge right now really is power you know why because you don’t go to a bank to get a loan but for some of the judges, you can crowd fund. But what’s crowdfunding. I’m going to tell you what that is, that’s going on the internet and asking strangers for money and it works and it’s a model and they don’t they don’t even know what your background is or what your passion is or what your mission is and what your goals are, that will be published on the crowdfunding site.

Mike Malatesta  31:52

Amazing.

Marcus Shingles  31:54

Free to hire people to work for you where people would discriminate like be like why would I work for you to run a business like I don’t trust you because I don’t, I don’t have confidence that you could do the work for you because I’m judging you again, you’re only 19 you’re only 20, or you’re 30 years old, you’re an adult learner. Yeah, based on your background or the neighborhood or the zip code from. When you crowdsource, you don’t have that, when you crowdsource talent to get work done for you you’re not dealing with those traditional blockages and biases. And so part of what I did was I educated them that knowledge really is power. And it’s not just alignment some privileged white person is giving them saying Come on knowledge is power like no I’m like guys we got legitimately, no one is there to tell you know you can actually get access to the world through the internet and bring capabilities to life and you can actually monetize for him for social impact or for commercial impact depending on what your passion is, and all those biases are actually no longer exists in that, in that space.

Mike Malatesta  32:51

So, I want to ask you about crowdsourcing because, so we got like GoFundMe and then we’ve got for. Then we’ve got all the crowdsourcing stuff for businesses and. Do you think that that there was a fundamental shift somewhere in humans that made them like willing to put all this, I don’t even know this person never heard of this person but I’m willing to, you know, back them or do you think it was just that people have always been willing to do that but you had to ask them say in person or you had to know them. And now you can reach them through these platforms, so I’m curious is human behavior change or is it a technology. You know made it accessible and easy.

Marcus Shingles  33:40

dollar to some stranger halfway around

33:42

the world. Right.

Marcus Shingles  33:43

And for me to flip someone $1. I might literally just do that just on the fact that I thought you have an impressive ambition and you seem like an impressive individual I’m rooting for you. So I’ll give you $1, which isn’t a lot, but if there’s, if you do the internet you can scale to a million people seeing that and giving you $1 Next thing you know that turns into something right. So it’s kind of like, you know, it’s, I think it’s the same empathy when you see someone maybe you know, all of us have experienced where you’re walking down the street you see someone homeless or asking for funds or they’re asking for money. You know society has kind of taught us to judge that a little bit like is it good to give someone money or not because they can use that money to get outcome. Yes. But I think there’s I think there’s the, the reality that every person wants to try to support. Someone’s ambition and someone’s dreams, and especially someone that really described their situation that they have need for it, like they’re trying to get out of a situation and they’re, they’re putting their effort into doing something, can you help fund me to do that. And it’s the same thing like okay so you know give $1 $10 $100 like just because I want to see that person to see that sometimes. Sometimes people do crowdfunding because they get a stake in it, like there’s equity crowdfunding where you’re getting money but you’re doing it for some self serving reasons which is fine. But yeah, it’s 100% just the fact that we can do micro transactions, you’re gonna you’re gonna find out soon like crowdsourcing you could get a 10 cents to somebody, you know, used to be, you know, when you and I are growing up to do a 10th, you couldn’t do a 10 cent transaction like, how would you handle another credit card or buy a stick of gum for 10 cents. Another credit, usually usually a minimum that you can charge. Now you got Venmo and everything it’s so easy to move commerce around, around. And you can do that done such a micro transaction level, that becomes interesting because, you know, you know, and I was entertained by your video that was pitching me on something you want me to give you money for for crowdfunding, I might say, just the entertainment value of that last five minute video was worth giving you $1.

Mike Malatesta  35:43

Yeah, sure the app Yeah, the effort that went into

Marcus Shingles  35:49

crowdfunding I think will continue to take more and more permutations in terms of how it’s done how it happens. You know, there’s the ability, you know, that’s where you see cryptocurrency like Bitcoin because this becomes even easier to transfer. You can see someone in a, in a commercial or an, in an interview, I can hold up right now on your camera like a QR code and tell people, please send me, if you like whatever Do you want to sponsor exponential destinies, please send me money here right to this QR. Yeah. And I bet you people have to bring this all the special be like yeah I’m kind of happy and I like to see what Marcus is doing and supporting these groups, I’ll give him $1 $10, so that fluidity of transfer of commerce, and even when you tokenize it with Bitcoin or cryptocurrency that makes it even easier to transfer. And it gets smart contracts, you can actually put conditional conditions around cryptocurrency meaning. I’ll give you five Bitcoin, which is worth friggin a lot of money right now that’s

36:43

actually

Mike Malatesta  36:43

fine Bitcoin is worth what 200,000 Yeah.

Marcus Shingles  36:47

My point is, I’ll give you x fraction of a Bitcoin, but it’s on a smart contract that says, This money will only be released to you if something happens that we can measure off the internet, right. You can put objective criteria in a smart contract that literally says, you know, for example, I could tell you, Mike. If you said if you fund my podcast I’d say you know what, I will create, I will give you a certain amount of Bitcoin that’s worth. $500, but only if the number of lights that I can read off your YouTube video gets to a certain level. So if you can perform and get your YouTube videos to a certain level, my $500 will be released to you and we could negotiate that all on a smart contract without having a bank or notary or brokerage or escrow company between us right that’s so when you start to hear about blockchain as an architecture, not just the back of the powers of cryptocurrency either about smart contracts that’s what all that means that means you can start to put these utilities in place where you and I can actually negotiate something like that but I can give you money only on a condition being met. That, that the smart contract on the blockchain read off the internet, which means none of us can interfere with it’s just code that will execute that promise to you, I promise to pay you 500 and if your number of lights on YouTube video gets above five 5000. As soon as that happens the money gets released to you, otherwise I keep the money so you know what we’re going through right now is almost an example I talked to a client with about smart contracts in the blockchain and their business to do something like that and imagine if you’re a young person listening to this and afterwards I explained everything that you know I get on these calls afterward with young people like Mark received today on the call you talked about cap x versus x

38:21

What did that mean explain that what it meant.

Mike Malatesta  38:25

Yeah, That’s. That is such an awesome opportunity, you know, I wanted to get back to you sort of glossed over the, you know, I adopted a high school, and I want to kind of accept that’s probably not as easy as it sounds, particularly a public high school. So, how do you read the paper you see the article about the school you you reach out to them how do you how do you actually end up adopting the high school and then how do you get curriculum into it, that’s not part of the curriculum.

39:03

Yeah.

Marcus Shingles  39:04

So what I did was I had dealt with some schools before, and realize that dealing with the public school system is really challenging to introduce new ideas. And I think driving through the school system sometimes it’s not anyone’s fault it’s just literally the gravity of the public school system

Mike Malatesta  39:22

inertia. No.

Marcus Shingles  39:24

So, I come from a family of educators I’ve always, you know, my vote my two kids went into the public school system here in California they my daughter went to a private college but they both went to the public school system. I went to the public school systems, my, my mother, my two kids, was a teacher in the public school systems, here in San Bernardino County, so in some underserved communities. My father is a college professor for years at Virginia Tech teaching political science My mother was a college professor math professor. My brother’s a doctor in Michigan State also teaches some part of it, I always like to enjoy being around the school system I probably would do that as a living. If it wasn’t, I don’t know, it’s, it’s, unfortunately, it doesn’t it’s not very lucrative to be in. I try to do that stuff on the side because I really enjoy doing it but but my day job I worked at you know I have my own business or I worked in the loiter vein or whatever. So to answer your question, I, I realized that all of my Silicon Valley buddies, their kids were learning all this stuff. Right. And I saw my own kids coming from the public school system and more importantly, their mom. My ex wife teaching in one of the underserved communities, I realized, they’re not learning any of this stuff and so what what started to concern me was, you think we got an appointment now wait until 10 years when all this AI and robotics stuff that I know a lot about does everything that these kids do without a college education. You know, if you look at the Amazon go store. I was talking about that five years ago that you’re not going to have clerks in the store and retail. Those aren’t getting jobs anymore to get a job at Walmart, like the Amazon goes to work you’re not familiar has all over the country now there’s nobody in those cameras that are on the ceiling that when you walk in you swipe your Amazon Prime membership to get into the gate of the store. Nobody in the store literally working, and you just go pick products put them in your basket, you walk out of the store, and then you get charged whatever you put in your basket, because there’s all these artificial intelligence cameras that can make sense of what you’re picking up and putting your basket so you walk out. My point is, that’s just the way the futures gonna go and now with COVID it got accelerated because, who’s gonna want to hire people back into positions that they just fired people for that now are susceptible to pandemics when we have the next one, then you have to shut down your whole supply chain or set down your whole operation. People don’t want humans in those positions. That’s right, more than ever, I’ve got CEOs calling me up and saying no that AI and robotics that you were telling me about five years ago, and I said I don’t want to be the poster child for firing my workforce and putting an AI in machines, even though I see China already doing that they’re all competing us. Well, Mark is I don’t have to be the poster child for that the poster child for lifting everyone. I didn’t have to fire everyone but I’m sure as heck not gonna hire everybody back as humans into positions that are susceptible to viruses that then shut that down the next time it happens, I got to put in robotics, from a truck driver to a store clerk to even to an accountant. And so, COVID really accelerated that whole process and I even, even not thinking about a pandemic or accelerated, I was worried in 2015 2016 just the fact that like, then you think we got a gap in inequality now with the haves and have nots.

Mike Malatesta  42:38

You know, yeah, it could get could get exponentially bigger, yeah.

Marcus Shingles  42:44

People are not trained at all to train for jobs that are going away. I mean, you know, and so I thought it’s not that hard to become an entrepreneur, to try to figure out how do I kill myself with skills that will let me be self sufficient where I don’t care if my job gets automated away at Walmart, I still have a skill set that I can use because there’s this whole other opportunity, called the Internet, and all these things I can do, because now I can connect everybody on the planet, you know, there’s also the stats that today you know it’s a little, I think it’s like 60% of the planets connected to the internet, even heard about Elon Musk with starlink internet access to everybody for cheap, my home I just got in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, I think, I couldn’t get regular internet there was really poor internet coverage. I just starlink just got me 100 megabytes per second internet for $100 a month. So even rural areas are going to start to get really good access to Wi Fi what does that mean that means we’re going to add, you know, we’re going to take 4 billion people on the planet, we’re going to make that seven to 8 billion people that have access to the internet literally happening right now, like in the next couple years. And that means that hope that whole market that you can be an entrepreneur, using the internet and not going to the internet on your desktop but the internet in virtual reality or augmented reality. If you just know what you’re doing, it’s almost hard not to be able to make a living.

Mike Malatesta  43:58

Yeah, well, plus you’re making, you’re adding billions of consumers to the internet is, is the gateway to consumption,

Marcus Shingles  44:10

figure out some product or service as someone on the planet wants. Yeah, now the whole planet can grab it so you can be point 0000000 1% successful, and you also have a business because there’s so many people, so just a perfect storm or alignment of the stars, whether it’s a half your glass half empty glass half full analogy. If my point is, back to the question about the schools was I approached him and I just basically shared this with the principal, and in he immediately got a meeting with the superintendent, and it was Tommy Welch, and I think was coming Chang and Tommy Welch were the two superintendent and principal, Tommy went on to be the superintendent of the Boston School District, but they were just like, you know, I just sat them down and said look at plan number one is you know their first instinct when we got to, you know, you got to present this to the board and the superintendent of lasd was like,

Mike Malatesta  45:01

absolutely not. That would be a losing strategy I know. Yeah,

Marcus Shingles  45:12

is when this 15 year old that we met are starting to run their own business in a couple of years. It’ll speak for itself and that’s exactly what happened. Marco, one, the one student in the class. He was featured in the LA Times running his own business, it’s the exponential investment.com website shows this whole profile market you literally see the web that the LA Times article about how this young person went to run his own business, where he created a catering business within his own neighborhood to cater I call them honey, but how do you look for opportunities in your own in your own community, to get back to your community, but also to serve the community because others aren’t serving the community. That’s an exercise I taught you don’t keep on Marco said, you know what I see weddings and graduations, and birthdays happening all the time every weekend in my community, what my committee does is we come out celebrate in South Central LA, we have all these weddings and, you know, we don’t go rent a hall, they have a wedding or they have a birthday or have a graduation, with more modest means we just like to have it all of our family friends over to our house and we have to celebrate. Right, right. And so he’s like nobody’s catering any of these arguments. You know, the big catering companies don’t come in and cater Hardee’s ourselves. So the young man, Marco literally created a business called waiters in distress and when he named it and he literally went out created this business where he catered all these parties and weddings and graduations in his own neighborhood and in other adjacent neighborhoods and he created all business, and he literally started hiring, young people to be the, you know, they do all the cleanup they set up all the tables they break down all the booths they prepare food they help cater the whole thing at a price point that’s feasible for that right that’s that. So it’s a win win. Sure. And then you’ll love this. I taught him about how to introduce new technology into those models where the first thing he did was he didn’t even have his driver’s license yet to run this business so we had to get Uber to go to some of his jobs. Nice technology that didn’t exist. That’s what I mean, if you’re not ignore the little things like, you can get from place a to place B, taking it over you just put that overcharge into your the price you charge your client to do the catering, but now we could do something that years ago you couldn’t do because what he’s gonna have his mom drive up or he’s gonna have to carpool or you know it wasn’t feasible, but Uber as well as a technology innovation lead, he learned how to leverage that and then where they pivoted Mike was, they started to realize that the one thing that they were doing it all these parties that everybody loved was bigger take a drone so they wouldn’t get drone certified by watching YouTube videos problem was that as I was another young man I mentor. This he was 17 at the time or 16 at the time, they went and learned how to operate drones on the internet, they went got drones I was teaching about all these emerging technologies a drone technology is something that only a big government had 10 years ago right. Sure. And they’re taking photographs and video from a bird’s eye view of the parties and putting it on social media, and that got to be a thing like people loved it, they’re like, you know, they wanted to hire him because they interviewed, and they also posted all these cool shots from drone footage over the party and social media and everyone likes social media sure your wedding your your your graduation. So they spun up a new business which is currently their business called this on pictures which does that type of promotional video for companies and businesses and things and so he actually figured out a new business to launch after waiters in distress. And it’s such a cool story right so getting back to the, to the high school. I told Tommy and Tommy like they got first of all to their credit they got it right away. They’re like you’re absolutely right, we’re not teaching about any of these things. And remember, like I was like coming to them saying, I’m a technologist or a futurist and these are all the things that are important I was coming to them, saying, I just got done last week taking the school C suite of one of some of the largest companies in the world out to the NASA Singulair university campus, up and up in Silicon Valley the NASA campus where I spent three days with them with a world group with a bunch of experts, basically teaching the CEOs of the largest companies in the world I’m not gonna name drop here but these were the largest companies in the world that I was working with right the CEO of the C suite. This was the work I was also doing here in XPrize and senior University. I just got done spending four days with them, making them aware of the talent that they’re going to need. So they’re going to start talking to the MBA school goals and they get the College of saying that we need people that don’t Yeah, right. They called blockchain. And this was in 2015 2014 people were talking about this yet, so I could see the second noise from corporate america and just from society from businessmen employers from government I was also working with a lot of mayors and governors, this is the this is the staff they needed it no schools were preparing it so my purpose is to go to high school was like, Guys, I’m not saying I think these are cool things that you need to teach, I’m telling you I’m talking to them. This is I’m saying upstream. What business was the higher the skill set, they now need, they’re gonna start talking to the college professors are going to start to recruit this so if you want people out of this high school to get into the college. They should talk about these things in their college interview, and he said they’re not basically teaching the kids how to code, they’re like, I don’t think coding is going to be something they’re going to be able to bank on like AI will do most coding so i i think it’s good to learn your brain like the modern day reading. So I think coding varies and it teaches you deductive reasoning and logic, but I don’t think it’s a skill that 99% of the people that learn how to code will actually be able to develop their career round. I think entrepreneurship technology entrepreneurship is much more valuable that’s what this program was called it’s called exponential entrepreneur. Okay, disaster to the exponential destiny. And so, to their credit, you know, they’re like, and I emphasize to them let’s not go to the broader school board and try to get something approved. I didn’t want to talk to the broader school district at this point because I’ve been there, I know that. I said let’s just think of a creative way to take some electives, where you have options like these electrical was like a business elective

Mike Malatesta  51:09

okay so you yeah okay.

Marcus Shingles  51:13

Luckily Tommy Chang the superintendent was giving us coverage. And then we took the teachers. And these were two award winning teachers they were like Teacher of the Year and teachers. And basically I met with those teachers and they were like, Well, Mark is somewhat nervous about this but we don’t know anything about this, I’m like, you’ll never know anything about this, it changes every day. It’s like super agile database technology it’s always changing. What you need to do is teach your young people how to be resourceful left to go learn about it and then teach come back and teach the rest of the class. So hold on it was, let’s give them, you know, two weeks on artificial intelligence, two weeks on robotics two weeks on 3d printing two weeks on blockchain. I’ll come in and do the first talk or bring some expert in so they get to level set, but then just haven’t got the internet and get articles and come back and groups and teach everybody about it, that would be enough. They’re watching enough to where they start. Once they understand what it is, they’ll want to research it a little bit more on their own because they’re just cool tack. Right, yeah and that’s, that’s how it started and we really we really kept it away from the school board. They did it twice a week you know these students went twice a week in class like 30 or 40, young people, and then shirt off if you go back today the program is still in effect, it hasn’t really atrophied much teachers have moved on to other schools and stuff like that but the young people like Marco graduated from this program and now they’re giving back to those programs.

Mike Malatesta  52:29

Oh, nice. You mentioned too that you’ve sort of always been ahead of the curve and I’m as you. I’ve been thinking about that ever since you said it and I’m like, there was timing, you know with the internet. But how is that something that’s sort of unique to you Do you think or is it something that, how do you how do you how do you be that person who’s always ahead of the curve.

Marcus Shingles  52:57

It’s not hard to be ahead of the curve curve of understanding technology. Okay. I was never afraid of technology, some people get a little freaked out by it because it’s too mysterious and they think there’s something real complicated about it. But, you know, you know, my mom sent me to an IBM computer camp. When I was in high school, which was. That was like das computers, not to date myself but it wasn’t like. It was like the IBM, the first personal computer that you get at your house. Sure. So just having that in the house. Got me around. And I remember building some very simple basic, you know, using basic programming language to build some very. Remember, creating like. Like, I would create Michael Jackson, music tunes to like these animated Michael Jackson fingers around it was it was basically a way to get me to start thinking about coding. Okay, was I going to be a coder where I was going to make a living off coding no but I now knew enough about computers and how they work. Yeah, business, or social impact. And that’s kind of what I think is important is there’s a technical literacy, listen. And I would call it a technology innovation literacy, the kind of combine that with an entrepreneurship, basic literacy, and that combination of things will immediately build your confidence because I give you 1000 examples of how people are actually able to make a living. You know I’m not promising yet and if you want to be really ambitious maybe you’ll go on to startup and be a billionaire who knows but for more pragmatic purposes I don’t think it’s very difficult to show young person or even an adult learner, because I really like to work with adult learners to like someone has 35 that’s struggling with how to make a living company you steal myself. I really don’t think it’s rocket science to take a very base level of entrepreneurship understanding like how do you go figure out where there’s a need like Marco did in his neighborhood with serving his neighborhood around catering. I didn’t go recognize a need, there’s plenty of needs out there, and then how do you figure out how to use technology to be competitive to where you when you can do that, you can fulfill that need better than other people can, because you’re the one that you’re on some on some technology, none of which I tell these young people anything harder than what they’ve mastered with posting videos and tik tok.

Mike Malatesta  55:08

Right. And I love that story too because he, he started with a business that isn’t, you know, sexy right it’s just get in, start a business and then he actually had this strategic byproduct sort of off of it with the drone thing and then, you know, went into wherever that’s going so you don’t have to start with, like, an app, you know, or you just kind of have to get going right

Marcus Shingles  55:34

building apps either. Not everyone can be intimidated someone Think about it. Yeah,

55:37

right. Yeah. Just,

Marcus Shingles  55:39

just connecting. Okay, in my neighborhood, people have a lot of I see a lot of stuff happening and I don’t see it being served. you know weddings anniversaries birthdays. I wonder if I could create a business and people would want to compensate me for coming out and doing a lot of that right, am I gonna be a millionaire doing that business no but I could scale it, so I can do a lot of these where I actually does. I do have an income. Yeah, and I can keep my resource low because all my resource costs low because I’m going to hire people in my neighborhood to do this. And we’re going to be professional, we’re going to be stupider about it we have good work ethics so it’s not you know fat for the light hearted. But, and then that’s going to segue into something else, which is the technology. Right. And I would say that now in morality morality. You can go create all these new worlds as great a person. And that will be a business for you. So, what Marco did was pretty interesting and innovative in his own unique scenario but I think there’s a whole, I think it’s the 1992 and internet coming about. Is there, and I can take

56:47

young people

Marcus Shingles  56:49

with didn’t even know what spatial width was, and within eight weeks. I’m now employing them with a professional salary, not because I’m giving them a handout, it’s I need them because I have to demand

56:59

for it.

Mike Malatesta  57:01

And when you, when you describe spatial web to CEO C suite people what how do you describe it to them what’s, what’s the easiest sort of way to describe it.

57:15

The Internet websites.

57:19

Yeah, yeah,

Marcus Shingles  57:20

the internet is now about to take a giant leap forward into the physical world and onto virtual world, and it’s, it’s going to open up so many more and we’re gonna laugh about the fact that these stickers are internet of a TV screen or phone, you know, and so that’s about as far as I need to get where they kind of realize, and I talk with credibility because I know that I’m not bad I can back those things off with real data and empirical data to show them the trends and everything to say this is a thing. And you can have blind spots to it. Or, and I’m not saying drop everything I’m saying at a minimum, don’t be caught flat footed when this kicks off in your industry and you’re sitting there trying to figure out what it is. Imagine if you at least build some muscle of continuity around the internet before it took off versus just sitting there flat footed when it took off

58:03

playing catch up. Right.

Marcus Shingles  58:05

And it’s almost your fiduciary responsibility as an executive of a company to do something in the space right now to scratch the surface at a minimum, and so when I tell all executives I’ll, I’ll help you in a matter of weeks. Two years ahead so you are fully confident around it and then you can make an informed decision of whether you can put this on a back burner for a little bit or ready you’re ready for whether or not you want to capitalize on it now, but when it does take off and it will take off to the end. I don’t have anyone arguing with me about that. I just obviously look at all the trends in the data. When it does hit your industry hard. You know, you didn’t decide to be a pioneer in pushing yourself at least. Again, you’re not caught flat footed you can you can really get up and running quickly. And so nobody’s arguing with me about that, you know, and it’s it’s understanding. Really the emergence of a lot of different technologies, a lot of blockchain architecture that’s supporting decentralized spatial web capabilities, there’s a lot of the virtual reality, augmented reality. There’s artificial intelligence that you now can get for free off of the cloud and plug into these environments. There’s quite a bit. It’s just like all these technologies are emerging so if you, if you’ve mastered all of that, and you understand it real well. It’s hard not to find opportunities to help companies or not with like I said I work with and working with one of the largest school districts in the United States right now and a big project in and I do that pro bono I know these nonprofits when I work for them, they do finally charge the commercial work, but I’m helping them rethink how they do, almost like I did with the highest school in South Central la in 2015 now I’m just thinking to a whole new level because everything will be in virtual reality.

Mike Malatesta  59:43

It was for anyone who hasn’t done it. This. This. exposure that I got in spatial web, was it was it was just so incredible because the, you know, we’ve been mentioning that you know, like, all the changes that have come from COVID this when I put this up when I put this on I went into these different virtual rooms where entrepreneurs or companies had set up, you know, whether they were one was building a big resort. And, like in the middle of Wyoming or something and hard to get to place you know and and their clientele or their, their prospects or global right so how to their challenge was how do I get people to come and fly to Wyoming so they can visit, you know, and so they can see what they what they’re buying Well, they brought them right into what they were. Everything about it, and it wasn’t like completely built out or anything but it gave you. It certainly gave you the impression that you know trying to get people to come see something that, you know, they would have to tangibly see in order to make an investment in maybe something no longer is going to be necessary for a lot of people.

Marcus Shingles  1:01:01

And the inflection point is the fact that, remember you were in a headset that you’re using today which is finally hit that inflection point.

1:01:07

Yeah, right.

Marcus Shingles  1:01:09

$300 headset. Remember that $300 headset. Five years ago, was a $2 billion acquisition that Facebook paid a 19 year old college dropout for right right Palmer Luckey so that that’s a $2 billion acquisition five years ago, that Facebook paid to a guy in his garage. 90 year old that built it right and now you got a $300 on your on your headset. That thing is, it doesn’t stop here. Now it’s hit that. What is that called inflection point is it’s finally ready for Showtime, you know, because we’ve been talking to VR and AR for a while it’s finally ready for Showtime. Secondly, you know, Apple just announced this last week they didn’t announce it was a leap but it’s it’s strong and that their headset, they’re coming out with next year has 8k resolution. You know how much more advanced that is than the Oculus that you had on your face. No, you have to admit that Oculus was at a resolution where you’re like, wow.

Mike Malatesta  1:02:04

Yeah, I thought it was great. I thought it was

1:02:08

a resolution in the job.

Mike Malatesta  1:02:10

Okay, so four times.

Marcus Shingles  1:02:12

Resolution is coming up next year by Apple and their headset. Were also announced their glasses they’re coming out with a headset they’re gonna eventually have glasses. My point is, like, wake up, like wake up like you’re not in that experience was good, or 100%, higher resolution means it’s crystal clear quality. I kind of want to fly across the world and see something that you can just see a digital twin on the net right exactly the same.

Mike Malatesta  1:02:38

Yeah, and for buying all kinds of buying things you think about how all kinds of especially you know high end things are sold where people get on planes and they go travel somewhere and they go to a meeting and they pull out a slide deck or they do a PowerPoint. Right, you’d like to be home. Yeah.

Marcus Shingles  1:03:04

Tesla and I put it on. I’ve made a small like little matchbox car. Yeah. My superpowers I made it big. And then I put you I put it over your head and now you’re inside the Tesla. Right.

Mike Malatesta  1:03:14

Yeah. Yeah. that was, yeah that was so cool.

Marcus Shingles  1:03:22

See a Tesla. We would probably put headsets on to look at it because I can show you things I can’t show you in real life. Engine and stuff you know so it’s at that inflection point where it’s better to collaborate better in the environment, it’s not like a band aid because we have COVID and I can’t see you in person, it’s actually preferred, even if I could see one person. Others, of course, the ethical dilemma of like, well don’t like the MC meet people in real life and all that and of course I’m not making judgment on that I’m just saying. The reality is, virtual reality is is very close to reality and it’s just going to get better from here on out so we’re gonna find new use cases for. And it’s basically the internet. It’s basically the internet going into three dimensions. Right. And,

Mike Malatesta  1:04:04

yeah, and you’re, you’re not even gonna. So I think you’re not even gonna realize you’re not in a face to face conversation because even like where we were in you could like.

Marcus Shingles  1:04:33

You might not even know that you’re not even talking to a real person that might be customer service. And they look like they’re right there in front of you talking to you but it’s actually an AI, that’s, that’s the next big thing that’s happening with the advancement of AI. And, you know, this is not to get weird but like when you hear there’s some very serious people that I know that are some of the leading people in technology in the world. In some of the discussions behind closed doors that they have which is not a science fiction discussion, it’s not a absurd discussion but some of the discussions is that when you hear people wondering, are we already in a matrix are we in a distant relation. That’s a very kind of hokey thing to talk about what people get all like oh that’s so funny like who thinks that must be real futurist I think that, but all you got to do is put on the headset that you were in and realize if this got 400% better resolution, and you started introduce smell like your oils, as well as tactile feedback like now can get gloves and things where they give you tactile feedback. You can start to imagine that. Sure we fast forward 100 years. Could it be that you don’t even know you’re in those environments and it’s actually a simulation to make around and so that’s that’s kind of interesting to think about like are we are we actually in a more advanced society that’s already in a simulation because our brain. And I never would have, I never would have bought into that notion and I’m not saying I. All I’m saying is that it’s very easy to understand how your brain could get there with how easily it is to fool you with this $300 headset that’s currently at the dot matrix version of the printer not the laser printer version Yeah right. Yeah. We’re like playing, we’re playing Pong and Atari right now with this thing, relative to where this will be probably in 10 years. And so you’d say this, Atari con level graphic is something I’ve been laughing about probably five years now like 40 years like it took us. It’s an exponential curve, it’s not a linear curve, the generation before PlayStation two, it’s happening like in the next 24 to 48 months. And if that happens, it’s not it’s not hard to realize, Wow, it’s gonna be very difficult for your brain to understand if it’s looking at something real or not real because I in the current version of this is that I feel like that’s already starting to

Mike Malatesta  1:06:40

plus when you, when you look at just the things in law enforcement with witness stuff like our brain thinks it sees stuff all the time that it didn’t see that way you know so being able to trick it or.

1:06:54

Yeah.

Marcus Shingles  1:07:00

Virtual Reality learners versus classroom, versus VR was dominating like better in every category of learning. Three to four times more effective than classroom. Right. And that makes perfect sense and because I’ll tell you what, when I’m in these VR meetings with client costs and client calls, some of them we do on zoom. Some of them I mean VR we don’t know which ones I remembered I don’t ever have to write any take any notes, because I lived the experience because you’re in it. I’m in it yeah so

Mike Malatesta  1:07:31

you’re not witness.

Marcus Shingles  1:07:33

You know, we remember we talked about this business requirement we said we needed a, b and c. And I’ll literally go through my memory and think yeah you were standing right in front of me You’re up on the whiteboard you’re, you’re writing it down I totally remember that but it was all virtual reality versus if you sold me on the zoom call, I probably would forget, because I got a bunch of zoom call messages coming at me I’m not you know I have to take notes or something like that so I’m not experiencing and so it’s not immersive or experiential so it’s no surprise to me that the learning effectiveness has already proven it’s better that’s why we have a lot of schools, right, but also what business doesn’t isn’t successful because of how effectively they teach people, if you got to Salesforce and want to train them better. If you’re a financial advisor, you’re basically educating your clients on how to do their wealth management, insurance company eventually educating them on their health benefits it’s all education and learning so if you know that it’s four times better than VR, or anything. It’s missing the boat if you’re not doing this right. That was cool

1:08:27

with the

Mike Malatesta  1:08:30

wealth advisor to he, so he would actually be able to take people into the future. Like they say oh in 20 years I want to have this and I want to be doing this. And he could actually create that stuff so they could actually see what the future would be like if they, you know, start saving or doing whatever the plan is, but that was really cool, really

Marcus Shingles  1:08:50

cool. Yeah. That same thing I tell teachers. You don’t have to think traditional like Obama to create a virtual reality solution and strategy. Mike, and I’m a financial advisor for example, rather than saying, I’m gonna build a virtual my instinct is I’m going to build a virtual office so people can come to my virtual office because they can’t see me because the COVID are they, you know, some of my clients are across the world. Well, wait a second, you’re dealing with virtual reality you’re dealing with virtual real estate not physical real estate, you don’t have to be handcuffed by these friends of thinking that someone has to come in your office. You can build a virtual office for every one of your clients, and you go visit their offices have all

Mike Malatesta  1:09:28

their custom design. Yeah.

Marcus Shingles  1:09:35

I’m taking an extra photo on your iPhone zero. Amazing. Where before it was cutting cost a lot, you know that’s the whole codec. It’s a great hotspot for another piece of the picture. But as soon as that cost was democratized where there is no incremental cost, it’s just the storage space costs which is a fraction of a second. You can take as many photos as you want, you can create the stuff I’m doing with schools is like rather than building a classroom for all the students Why doesn’t each student have their own classroom, and the teachers go visit them in their own classrooms. Would that be a better model, I don’t know, but at least we can think about it, we’re not restricted by that for sure.

Mike Malatesta  1:10:11

Well, Mark is this has been. This has been a fantastic fascinating conversation I’m so glad that we had the opportunity to do this and I, I thank you for all the work that you’re doing, not just you know the cutting edge stuff with businesses and stuff but all the giving back that you’re doing to to schools and to mentoring and to all these other things to, to create future opportunities for so many people that are, that I got to be so different than what they thought their life could or would be, you know, prior to being exposed to this stuff,

Marcus Shingles  1:10:51

which is really cool. But you should have, you should have that amazing discussion. I would

Mike Malatesta  1:10:57

like to do that so I’ll connect with you to get some contact information. All right, well thanks so much. Okay, awesome. Thank you. I was really good. I was getting all jazzed up and 10 things I didn’t even get a chance to talk to you about

1:11:24

how,

Mike Malatesta  1:11:24

if you have another second I’m curious about your experience as the CEO at XPrize because I wanted to get to XPrize but because I don’t think a lot of people know about XPrize, even though, you know, a lot of people don’t. People don’t don’t have any idea what’s going on there. I saw that for the carbon. Yeah, extraction.

Marcus Shingles  1:11:51

Because I was there for two years, the reality I don’t want to go into a lot of it now but the reality was, I wasn’t, you know, I was the perfect fit for what they needed, but I was not the not the best fit for what they needed. Okay, I’m going from a commercial business Deloitte Ernst and Young running my own business. I had nothing else other than that world, and also doing startups right yeah I’m going into a nonprofit environment where I want my ambition was that we can create an instrument here, that can solve big problems. And we can do with much more strategically and I don’t think enterprises were organized very strategically. A real methodical strategy to execute, I think is like we do competitions, we find a problem we put a bunch of money at it and we do prize while, and I was like, there’s a real innovation science here we can build into this thing to make it a real instrument that’s why we had the ambition to take the job. And that’s where that’s how I got the role when the board approved me after doing a nationwide search it was because I was like, I want to make this a much more strategic structured science and method for how we do innovation to solve big problems because I think the right tools are there the brand is there with experts I think we can pull this off. Okay. and it was definitely a culture clash, because I was like an outside corporate person coming into the nonprofit space. I did to someone who played very well into that whole environment I knew some of the XPrize people and staff but like I was used to working with such a different type of workforce. And also, I was grown in the way to get feedback in a consultant firm, like I do with these young people I get them real straight feedback and I try to mentor and I try to, you know, and that’s in that culture, it just didn’t work because there have been people there for like 20 years I would the outsider coming in. Okay, a little bit of unfortunate misalignment of culture, you know. Yeah, okay. It was a big learning experience for me because you know once if what I learned is culture eats strategy, you know, and if the culture of the organization and especially in a small culture I’ve never worked enough, you know in 100 person firm I’ve been in firms that have 50,000 people right in places, but if you don’t cater to some every single person out you have two choices as a CEO I cater to all these personalities, where some people are manipulating me to do things because they know that the backlash from the staff, I don’t do things a little bit manipulated by the same time, there’s stuff that I feel obligated needs to be doing as our fiduciary responsibility and what the way I’m where I want to take the organization. And I was not good at walking that line to get some of the antibodies that want to smother innovation that don’t want to shake things up, or they get to be fair to someone who just got nervous that is Mark is going to work work work here because he’s working with a lot of different people and, and it just got a whole pile in xiety and, you know, and it got it took the fun out of it for me. You know, that’s so

Mike Malatesta  1:14:51

interesting because it’s like the exact opposite of what I imagined it would be like, I imagined it would be these are searching for for answers and get the opportunity to engage with all these people who are trying to solve the problem you know that it’s

Marcus Shingles  1:15:09

a very small handful of innovation people can take can read they want to, in a small culture like that. They can make noise that’s bigger than that or not. Yeah, okay. You can start posting on social media this or bad, like, it just in advance like I don’t want any part with this I don’t want to play. I don’t want to be in this game it’s like it was really just, it was the you know and I talked to Peter about it after two years and said like, you know, I think we should get someone else in here that wants to operate this way because I’m ready to run with this thing, and I can’t, I can’t even I can’t slow myself down to deal with politics or insecurities or it’s also making me. I pride myself on being essentially mentoring these young people, right, like I’m not trying to be here. I’m like very very misunderstood. I see politics some of it’s not that people misunderstand me some of it is that people don’t want to. They don’t want to understand you.

1:16:07

consultant came in and

Marcus Shingles  1:16:09

XPrize Why is it it’s someone who grew up in the nonprofit space. Yeah, okay. So it was a little bit of it was a little more than happy to talk about that because it was actually a very interesting learning experience for me to be, you know, I’m a victim. I’m very clear to say, I will see you there so it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter. Like, it’s my job to fix the culture and also build the business. And if I’m not skillful enough to do both, for whatever reason, even if I’m handicapped in my history that effectively came out of business. Doesn’t matter, someone more skillful maybe could have met and sold the needle on that and figured out how to do both. I pride myself it was one of my slip downs I cried myself any challenge I can take it, whether you’re dealing with personalities or people I’ve done that my whole career, but man I got, I went into a very kind of crazy environment to begin with I will go into all the backstory, but it was a pretty. There’s a lot of toxicity in that environment to begin with. Just because of small business nonprofit that was high profile. Yep. It created an interesting dynamic and no people who made people were in that role when it was nothing got to be where it’s starting to be something and then there’s insecurities like am I would I be getting this job now,

Mike Malatesta  1:17:15

I was coming from the outside. Okay, sure, sure.

Marcus Shingles  1:17:21

Get rid of me and I didn’t portray that message on anyone I actually made the mistake by telling people I’m not gonna let go of anyone because there was other conspiracy theories I was gonna hire a bunch of people in or bring the white people in, because I came from Deloitte, but it’s always like, I’m always a really, I can write a book about kind of strategy, it’s called all the things I learned about being a leader there in terms of how to be a leader, but it was also a job that at the end, it’s unfortunate cuz this job I didn’t want that anymore and I was in love with that job and the mission was like a dream job for me even though I paid less than my. The jobs I had before. Right. But I really love your job it’s it’s kind of unfortunate because I kind of think like you don’t want the body to reject the organ and I think the nonprofit space has to be a little bit more, a little bit more willing to adopt talent from outside their sector that can help move their business otherwise you’re not going to get certain skilled labor to come in like, I don’t have an incentive now to go back into the nonprofit world in any capacity like that that’s why I do this on the side in my own. Yeah, it’s like that was such a different experience than working in a well established professional top tier firm with proper HR practices, proper you know when certain things aren’t tolerant, totally like certain politics and stuff. But people are just people don’t get offended if you give them feedback, because that’s how

Mike Malatesta  1:18:37

that’s how they grow. Yeah.

Marcus Shingles  1:18:49

I literally started to get paranoid because I got to the right, like, who’s trying to sabotage me every day here. Yeah,

Mike Malatesta  1:18:56

so you’re questioning yourself. Yeah.

Marcus Shingles  1:19:05

I like doing this stuff and I like doing this line of work because it was, solving the problems, and I thought I could really bring the skill set and to do it. Some people there that were partners with me and thought partners, and really understood what I was doing. And then there were others that I just don’t think I probably took the time to listen to and get understood. No, because I had to take the rain so quickly that I got it in a precarious situation with funding and this and that, there’s like kind of a mess inside of there and react very quickly. And so I probably needed if I were to go back into it again if I had the patience and I probably should have taken the patience. I should have spent probably my first year rather than trying to build this innovation science instrument that we take the market and bring our game up, and probably if I did it all again I would have spent a year, I wish someone would approached me and said look, you have no idea what you’re walking into in terms of how toxic the culture is. There’s a lot of these cheat stones in here there’s a lot of kind of endemic animosity anxiety hurts a little bit of assessable, okay. By the way, every organization every small organization has that.

1:20:05

Right. Sure.

Marcus Shingles  1:20:08

Everyone there was an amazing talent as a matter of fact, I like working with them more than I like working with anyone because they were social scientists inventors. Right. but, you know, when I got there. I wish someone had told me like just spend a whole day getting to know people and what drives them and getting rapport and let them just do what they were doing, and work on fixing this thing in a year from now because there’s no pressure I didn’t have stock shareholder pressures, like that. I did have quarterly numbers I added it. We could have been okay and just kept things as a middle, you know, kept things on steady for a year and I could just focused on building relationships and been that type of leader, versus what I thought I was being hired to do which was come in and like take this whole game to a new level which the board loved and everyone loved but it was, you know, to have empathy for people that were on my staff, they probably thought like I was coming in here and just yeah like

Mike Malatesta  1:20:58

a wrecking ball right or

Marcus Shingles  1:21:01

the model that we had was that effective of a model I did I don’t think it was, I thought the results. There was a lot of x prizes but you can go back and say, you can go back and find if you went back and said how many exercises were were the result of tensions. You couldn’t find something that was having a lasting impact in a real substantial way. Okay. Yeah, except for the original one that launched the space industry. No, I’m not diminishing the results of any of those experts are extremely valuable they did a lot of good but I didn’t world changing stuff that’s how I started promoting itself is changing the world. I just wanted to live up to that promise. And I thought that that just required some more methodical engineering on how we deliver it a little more strategy. Yeah. Got it. I created a four tiers of like before the XPrize during the XPrize and what we do after the XPrize but before we do anything else, basic strategy and methodology which which the board and some of the staff really loved after people thought I was like, I don’t know, maybe they thought I was too cool for school, being a consultant come in here trying to organize the I don’t know what the perception was but I didn’t for people I didn’t know and they didn’t know me, you know. Yeah, like Peter and others knew my heart was completely in it and people that know me as a person, but some other people might just thought, oh he’s gonna. He’s gonna change us into a consulting firm and hire all the white buddies. That’s good

Mike Malatesta  1:22:19

retrospection, you know, because you think you know if I approached it differently spent a year sort of really just attention to everything but also a year of, you know, without people knowing really moving them towards this being their idea, like it’s really my idea, but I’m not going to tell you it’s my idea I’m gonna just get to know you and on we’re gonna just turn this thing a little bit at a time so in a year you’ll be coming to me saying hey let’s go you know let’s do this. Yeah.

Marcus Shingles  1:22:59

embracement people really liked it. Yeah, they wanted that structure because it was so much non structure. And they could see that I was trying to say that I was trying to get rid of the politics and just get us to work, politics, they’re stuck in the air a little bit. But, so I had momentum for the first couple months but then why think everything’s going great and often people are telling me everything’s going great. In the meantime, I think probably realistic what’s happening is inadvertently I’m railroading people, you know, because they’re just getting like unchanging stuff on the fly. And it never took the courtesy to sit down with them and say well what do you think and how do you think they should look right it was probably where I learned like, you know, in the consulting world, you got to remember I’m also in environments where as a partner and a consultant and your job is to go into these projects where you got a lot of your staff and your whole job is the partner to come in and say like no no guys, we’ve done this before, this is the way you need to do this let’s go this direction will appreciate that mentorship because I want to be successful because we got to get to the end of the project on time and on budget. Find the taffy. The goal, and that’s in that impact in a social impact world and nonprofit. Their job was the goal.

Mike Malatesta  1:24:04

Yeah, you’re right. Yeah.

Marcus Shingles  1:24:06

Their job and their experience was the goal so it was like it was really a lesson to me that, and I must never thought about reading a book on religious environments. Because I had an executive coaches that the XPrize provided me. And some of them I liked that dealt with them some of my thoughts were giving me the wrong message. And the reality is the right executive coach that would come in there and said look, let’s pause for a second. In almost the dialogue that you and I are having there Mike which was, how do you spend this year what would be the worst case if you just didn’t rush to try to fix things, fixing things means you got to say things are broken. Yeah, personally. Yeah.

Mike Malatesta  1:24:44

Right right right right well we don’t

Marcus Shingles  1:24:46

think like that. We want to know when things are broken so we can fix it because all our life has been is undoing good things, we get sued that we believe are broken. Right.

Mike Malatesta  1:24:53

Well, plus is high performer you think well everybody thinks like that right who wants a broken thing right this is broken let’s fix it

Marcus Shingles  1:25:07

lost some people and I let some people know that I thought were toxic so since that point it just got a massive, kind of like a, you know like, it got to a situation where I just don’t like eater. Buddy, you know, And that’s where it didn’t fit. Anyway, she was available back then she should have been in the CEO, and I was credited with a lot of great things I did there and I enjoyed it. But man, it was a lesson in terms of leading different groups,

Mike Malatesta  1:25:35

you know, fascinating. That’s really thanks for sharing that with me, sir.

Marcus Shingles  1:25:42

podcast on there. I think that’s, that’s a very. That’s one thing I can do is try to to try to. For the record, I think those are the most amazing people I worked with I actually. The buck stops with me I wasn’t CEO so it doesn’t matter. These aren’t excuses I bring up this is me just dissecting the human behavior.

Mike Malatesta  1:25:59

I would love to do that that would be a lot of fun to have that discussion. Yeah, that was because that’s what happens to all of us we all do that, you know, all of us.

Marcus Shingles  1:26:18

Because there was also a vibe and energy of they’re like finally someone who’s going to be a hands on CEO, that’s going to actually give us guidance and direction for strategy so we’re not just winning stuff because it’s a high invite environment when you’re sleeping. And you’re hoping things other than some basic project planning, there wasn’t a lot of structure to get things done and we weren’t designing anything. And that’s, that’s what I came in and suddenly I said we’re going to design for impact we’re not going to just design products. People love that. That’s what everyone wanted to do, but I was like off to the races. And I thought I had all the answers because this was to me was just another consultant product

1:26:56

right yeah

Mike Malatesta  1:26:58

yeah yeah yeah, I can think of so many instances when i’ve you know bought a company and talking about, you know, what the future is going to be like and the management team is all like, you know, I’m seeing them as excited about it right and just like what I didn’t see as soon as I leave the room, they’re like, we’re not doing that, you know, it’s like. Yeah.

Marcus Shingles  1:27:31

But I learned from my staff people that want people didn’t perceive me as wanting to hear something known. So, unfortunately I created a environment where people were offended to agree with me where they didn’t necessarily always agree with me and I wish I would have set the stick figure out a way to set the stage where I thought I was doing that because I would say that. Yeah, but I don’t think people, people that know me well enough to know that that’s, you know, maybe because I like to debate stuff so they took that as me getting defensive I just like you know I like to. I like to use deductive reasoning to come up with a conclusion so if you bring me something that you want to do something differently or it’s not aligned with something that I’m thinking as a strategy for how we should do things. I want to have a educated informed discussion about it I just don’t want to say, Well, sure.

1:28:11

Yeah,

Marcus Shingles  1:28:12

right. You’re the executive in charge on my team I will probably defer to them just out of respect say look at your group, you decide what to do but this is my opinion I don’t agree with that because I don’t see this in this happening. I just think that might be a mistake but it’s your decision, am I going to get this as a nonprofit environment too so it’s like I’m not gonna get fired for making you go that route but for one decision will just fail and learn. I had a much more of a appetite for that which I tried to communicate to people but you know some part of it was I was, I was you know you get in there and it’s, you know, there’s, it’s almost like a family that was in there because we’re very touching that small group. And if you if you, if any family member feels an insecurity, and they feel like they’re going to be out of the family. The rest of the family will jump out and I started somehow got into some cycle like that where, you know, people. People broadly spread rumors about me and mo voters are having a conspiracy to get rid of people. It was never going to do that but I just felt like that was almost the toxicity that was growing as people were being suspected was I tried to position them for failure to get them out of the out of the. Right, Right, right,

Mike Malatesta  1:29:15

right, which

Marcus Shingles  1:29:16

was zero was one person that didn’t agree with me to start spreading that rumor and and you know people trust that person. Yeah you

Mike Malatesta  1:29:25

know it’s like Trump telling

Marcus Shingles  1:29:27

you the election is rigged. Right, don’t believe it. What are you gonna do. Yeah,

Mike Malatesta  1:29:32

and in the absence of someone saying that’s horseshit, you, you know, people go up must be there must be some truth to it, at least.

Marcus Shingles  1:29:50

The first time I kind of worked in a small office environment, all staff meetings to kind of clear the air or something but it gets to a point where it’s like digging up or infusing conspiracy theories into the model, right. Forget it. Yeah, so they want to walk on eggshells it’s like I want to speak to people very candidly about what they’re doing, not professional not rule but to speak and people can relate if people are like, no, this is, you know, doesn’t have any consideration for this it’s like, No, I’m just trying to be a good leader I don’t want you to think I want to be around the bush. So just like it just a big mismatch you know. Yeah.

1:30:26

Well, yeah, yeah,

Mike Malatesta  1:30:30

yeah, yeah, I’ll reach out to you about Marco and about this. If you want to do it again. Okay, cool. Thanks so much.

1:30:40

Okay.

1:30:41

All right, reach out. All right, see Marcus.