Josh Terry - Selling Digital Art on TikTok with NFTs

JohnPaul: [00:00:00] Hey everyone, welcome to the podcast. I’m your host JohnPaul and this is Digital Gold. Known to many as the Bitcoin Kid, I started my own cryptocurrency out of my parents’ basement back in 2013. The goal of this show is to simplify the crypto world and explore how it changes the way the world thinks about money through conversations with thought leaders [00:00:16] in this space.

[00:00:17] JohnPaul is the founder and CEO of Orm Capital Ventures. All opinions expressed by JP and podcast guests are solely their own and do not reflect the opinions of Orm Capital Ventures. This podcast is intended for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon for investment decisions.

JohnPaul: [00:00:43] Welcome to the Digital Gold Podcast. Today I’m here with Josh Terry, who is a writer and content creator who explores learning theory, crypto, self-improvement and the future. His

Josh: [00:00:52] main goal in working with clients is that they both come away from the experience better than they were. He helps people solve problems with a holistic approach, understanding how the individual parts all fit together. I’m looking forward to discussing his thoughts in the future of cryptocurrency and learning some self-improvement tools.

JohnPaul: [00:01:06] So Josh, welcome to the show.

Josh: [00:01:08] Josh Terry, good to be here. Josh Terry, I want to touch on how the first time I came about your content and just what your unique content style on TikTok. I would say most people, when they think about creating a TikTok video, they think about all this creative work that has to go into it. And your creative [00:01:24] work starts more with the script. So can you start by explaining to the listeners how you got into TikTok and what your content looks like? A friend of mine got me onto TikTok and you got to get on here. You got to do something. He knew that I’m creatively oriented and I was of course, oh god, another social media

Josh: [00:01:43] platform, really? And then he tried to convince me for two or three months, I think. And finally, I downloaded it, I got it and like maybe 10 p.m., 11 p.m., and I messaged him at 3 a.m. in the morning and I was like, oh shit. Because it’s the most mind-blowing platform. It’s a wildly addictive and fascinating. I started just by making random stuff and the way I [00:02:10] ended up succeeding was by giving up. I gave up on my typical approaches and I ended up doing things simply that I could. So I stopped trying to do things that I envisioned and I switched to doing things that I could. I found in the content creation game, the first thing you do when you go to create content is you look at what everybody else has done, which is an obvious

Josh: [00:02:32] first step because people learn by imitating, right? So I did that for years. So I imitated other people badly and that was how I did it for a long time. And then I gave up and I realized, okay, this isn’t working. I’m just going to try something that is my own. And pretty much as soon as that happened, stuff started taking off. And so when you’re referring to your own,

JohnPaul: [00:02:55] can you explain to a listener what that looks like and what that style ended up becoming?

Josh: [00:02:59] Yeah, a big part of this was what were my weaknesses and inefficiencies. So I was afraid of the camera. I still am. I still have trouble with cameras. And a lot of us assume that means we need to get over camera shyness. That’s our job. But sometimes you want to ask the question like, how enlightened should you get? Like how much work do you want to go into figuring out how to [00:03:23] fix all of your weaknesses? So what I did was I asked myself the question, what does content made by a camera shy person look like? Another factor was I couldn’t remember words very well when I was in front of a camera because of that camera, because of that camera shyness. So I would come up with something to say and then I’d turn the camera on and I’d blank out. And that’s just a waste of

Josh: [00:03:46] time. Because once again, how enlightened do you want to get? I can’t fix everything about me. What I ended up doing was just one day in frustration, I pulled up just notepad on windows, on a desktop computer, and just wrote out what I wanted to say. Because I was like, I’m sick of this. And in my annoyance, like I looked at the camera like twice and that went viral. So I now basically, [00:04:13] most of my videos are made in that structure because both I like it and its low effort in terms of the structure of what I’m doing. I still put a lot of effort into what I’m creating, but the basic structure of it is easy to set up. And what I do is I just I write my scripts and I set up a camera and I read them off. Occasionally I look at the camera if I feel like it’ll be fun.

Josh: [00:04:35] I like it. Slowly taking the steps towards the edge there, looking at the camera, making the content. Now Josh, you mentioned your scripts and that’s where you put a majority of your effort.

JohnPaul: [00:04:43] Can you talk through your writing process and a little bit more about how you dedicate time to

Josh: [00:04:48] create those scripts? And then also the type of scripts you’re creating. So I would like to say about your content is that it really comes off as someone who is trying to show people that there’s another opportunity out there that they can believe in themselves and that if they take this holistic approach to life, to creating content and just through approaching problems in general, [00:05:05] they’ll have a much better time than if they’re overwhelmed by all the self-help books that you get thrown at during your day to day. When I go into process stuff, I always feel the need established context of what my personality is. Because I think that a lot of us try to imitate other people without factoring in that different personalities work different ways. So I’m an

Josh: [00:05:26] extremely open personality. I’m extremely creatively oriented. My brain bounces back and forth all the time and I have a tendency to look like really far into the future like automatically. Like I love to extrapolate ideas. So that’s my natural instinct, which means I need to take into account that instinct and maybe temper it a little bit in order to function. Some people have [00:05:50] the totally opposite of that sort of personality. But for me, what has ended up working is I spent a long time working on the strength of trying to explore ideas as far as I can go and planning a lot and doing all these things that were future oriented. And the result of that was I stopped living in the moment and I got stuck in the future and my present self became less and

Josh: [00:06:15] less productive. One of the things that really blows people away whenever I mention it, it seems, is I have mostly succeeded by burning to-do lists and getting rid of my idealists. So most of the time for the past several months, if I come up with an idea for a script, if I can’t sit down and do it right then, I will force myself to forget about it. Not necessarily force myself to forget [00:06:39] about it. I won’t let myself get committed to it by writing it down on an idealist. And the reason why is super specific. It’s if you’re a creative type, one of the joys of life is that act of creation. And it’s one of the things that fuels you and gets you excited. And if you write down idealists and you get a spark in your mind and you write down an idea and you do this all throughout the

Josh: [00:07:03] day and you have 20 ideas and then you have time blocked out to get something done, when you go sit down to get those things done, now you’re a slave to your past. Now you have to follow the instructions of your past self. And if you’re a creative type, you want to create something. That’s what you want to do. So what I found was in that system of coming up with ideas early and then jotting them down, [00:07:27] as good of a system as that is, which it is a good system, I would get less dopamine from the process when I went to actually create. So it would make me less likely to create because I wouldn’t be as excited about it. Even though writing lists is highly effective in terms of like strategy, it wasn’t effective in terms of my psychology. So I stopped keeping idealists and most of the

Josh: [00:07:51] past months of content creation have all come from me taking a walk in the morning and coming up with what I wanted to do on my walk and then getting back from my walk sitting down on the computer and writing the script so that I do it right then. And that has been one of the more rewarding processes I’ve had in the last year or so. And as I’ve done it, it’s given me this [00:08:13] sort of a psychological encouragement to say, no, you’re in control of what you’re doing. And the more I believe that, actually, the more willing I am to write it down on a list. So now, occasionally, I will come up with five ideas at once and I’ll be like, oh crap, I don’t have time for all of that right now. And I’ll jot them down quickly and I’ll get them done within the day.

Josh: [00:08:32] But what I’ve done for me to get to success in terms of like productivity and just flow has been to shorten my time scale. I’ve been shortening my time scale to the day or half a day or the hour to say, what can you get done right now and think practically instead of in a visionary manner? I definitely see that in my own content creation premise. It’s like, it’s important when you’re [00:08:57] making content that you can ship regularly, ship every day, ship every week and you keep that steady schedule. I think as a visionary and I feel the same way, Josh, is it’s very easy to get caught up and what’s the future going to look like? Let’s extrapolate this idea. Let’s understand where this content could go, how we’re going to make it hit a million views. But the end of the day,

Josh: [00:09:16] the way you start to build any type of traction on a platform is by simply setting time aside and saying, I’m going to focus on creating content that I know is going to be good enough for myself to ship it out to the community. And it’s going to be concise. And like you mentioned, I’m not going to think about it all day long. I’m just going to set set 30 minutes or an hour of my time to do [00:09:36] it. And everyone can find 30 minutes or an hour of their day if they prioritize content creation. Another element of this I’ve found is if somebody is creative, there’s a like this constant concern of, is it going to be good? And because somebody that’s creative who has been working on their creativity, like it could be anything art, music, whatever, they set higher and higher bars for

Josh: [00:09:58] themselves, their imagination of what they should create is the best possible thing they could create. And that’s basically soul draining. So I’ve tried to switch over to what’s practical. And as I’ve switched over to what’s practical, instead of what could I create, I think what can I create. And as I switch to that, I start to create things that I would have never imagined, [00:10:22] because I become more capable. And I think that’s the route to get to those amazing things that you envision. I like that. What is feasibly possible for me to do today, tomorrow or in the next week, versus what could I do in the next year? Because the small wins compounding are what’s going to build real value and real wealth over time. Warren Buffett says it perfectly. It’s like you want to

Josh: [00:10:44] focus on those compounding things in business and businesses that have compounding processes are going to provide exponential returns. Now, talking about when will you first made aware

JohnPaul: [00:10:53] of Bitcoin and how did you extrapolate that idea into the future? And where do you currently sit now

Josh: [00:10:58] in your Bitcoin beliefs or what you think about Bitcoin and Bitcoin mining? I found out about Bitcoin, maybe 2015-16, something like that. I know it was enough before the Russian crash of 1718 that it wasn’t big anywhere. It was just, oh, there’s this thing that geeks, that kind of a thing. And I had to explain to me, and one of my first thoughts was, oh my god, [00:11:26] what happens when the stock market is inside of it, instead of outside of it? That one thought, okay, that’s an interesting thought. Yeah, it just blew my mind. And it still looks like we’re headed in that direction. But yeah, that was my initial reaction to it. What does that even mean? The simplest version is what happens when a stock is traded on the blockchain instead of

Josh: [00:11:50] through the New York Stock Exchange. And then you have access to it 24 hours a day. And there’s far less control over that, far less oversight. But the rules of the game are actually more clear and more fully understood, because anybody can look up how the blockchain functions. To me, that is just fascinating. Yeah, it is. To me, it’s fascinating as well, being able to scale trust, [00:12:14] change the game. And it’s interesting hearing people talk about the financial markets and about crypto. It’s, oh, it’s not on an exchange. That’s why you can’t invest it in your 401k or, oh, people don’t want to custody and take the risks of Bitcoin and all these other cryptos. They’re still naive and new. And this actually someone sent me a video of this yesterday talking

Josh: [00:12:31] about their 401k with the work plan. And I’m like, wow, the education of what Bitcoin is and what blockchain is from people who are 30 or 40 years old, it’s atrocious. It’s so sad to see that message is being pushed by anyone. And the versus the reality that we’ll see with blockchains and bitcoins, just like eating everything to software eats the world. [00:12:51] Yeah, the arguments against that type of thing happening to me are absurd. The people are still arguing that the New York Stock Exchange needs to trade in the standard hours that it does, because that’s the time that most people are awake and working. And maybe people would be more prone to stay up all night because of the odd hours of the stock exchange.

Josh: [00:13:16] Like I’m here in arguments like that. It’s like nobody cares in terms of the people that drive the world forward. The world is driven forward by the people that are going towards something. And moving the stocks exchanges onto blockchain to me is inevitable because it gives more people that are trying to drive towards something and opportunity to do that. [00:13:40] We’re going to switch over to a topic that I want to give you the opportunity to touch on, which is something where you have put that focus in creative energy, Josh. And that’s in this new

JohnPaul: [00:13:51] book that you’re planning on, either self publishing or working with a publisher. Can you talk through

Josh: [00:13:56] your ideation process for the book, maybe some of the structures on what’s talked about in there, and where the highlights that you want to share with the community, and then when that book’s planning on being out, so people will be able to check it out. Yeah, so I’ve taught music for about 10 years. And through that practice, one of the things that’s always been in my mind is [00:14:16] how do you learn better? So learning theory has always been a bit of an obsession of mine. And this book is about an element of learning theory that I’ve come up with. And it’s a pretty simple concept that is we all have a line between boredom and anxiety where we’re comfortable. And boredom is not enough. It’s the boring stuff, the things that we’ve already seen. It’s too easy.

Josh: [00:14:38] All that anxiety is too much. It’s new. It’s beyond my capability, that kind of a thing. And this line is where we try to sit, which is in between those two things. If things get too easy, it’s intolerable. If it didn’t get too hard, it’s intolerable. So that’s our line of comfort. And my argument is that anxiety is addictive. And we default pushing towards it. Even though anxiety [00:15:02] is the thing that we know of as the problem in our current culture, I think it’s the thing that we chase because boredom is what we consider truly intolerable because boredom creates pain. And it doesn’t create pain. It makes you notice pain. And the reason why is because anxiety is awful as it is, you get dopamine hits from chasing anxiety because you get dopamine from exploring new things.

Josh: [00:15:27] And new things are found inside of anxiety. Pushing into boredom, you don’t get any dopamine. In fact, your dopamine levels have to drop if you’re pushing into boredom. And my argument is that if you really want to level up, the way to do it is to push into boredom. Most of us try to level up by doing something harder, learning a harder skill, a more complex skill, and then leveling [00:15:49] up to that new position. But the weird thing about that is it doesn’t increase your quality of life because when you level up by pushing into anxiety, your tolerance for boredom reduces. So your overall tolerance for what you can experience in life stays the same. But if you instead push down into boredom, then your tolerance for boredom increases. Your tolerance for anxiety usually either stays

Josh: [00:16:12] the same or increases. You might tolerate it less in the sense of thinking, oh, this is bullshit. But you’ll be able to tolerate it more in the sense of being a more capable person. So if you push into boredom to explore skills that you already know, fundamentals, when music this is playing with a song that you already know, or instead of learning a new song at a more difficult [00:16:34] level, you’ll learn 20 new songs at the same level in a movement practice. It’s sitting with a particular physical movement more times than you think you need to. And what this does, it gives you a more intimate knowledge of your fundamentals. And it’s also less work on it’s less wear and tear on the human mind and body, which allows you to rest and build strength. And then you can leap

Josh: [00:16:57] into anxiety to gain something new. So my argument is that learning is not a process of this linear push into anxiety, but instead a sort of falling into boredom and sitting with the fundamentals, building strength and understanding and then leaping into anxiety much farther than you ever would have pushed, and then fall to learn something new, and then falling back into that boredom [00:17:22] to explore again. And that’s the process that I was describing with the 12 year old artist, right? The 12 year old artist that can draw what they can draw. I really like that idea of, and I can see myself in my life, that I’ve pushed more towards anxiety and almost like keeping myself busy trying to do a lot of things. But I think where I get the most growth, as you mentioned, is when you

Josh: [00:17:46] do spend time in refining what you’re good at in those boredom moments, in those moments of silence and meditation, and being able to focus on where do I see the world? Where do I see myself? How do I feel? And there is advantages to pushing that boundary, to showing that you can fail, that you can be successful even if you fail, it’s not the end of the world. But at the same time, having [00:18:10] that comfort is really the base you need to be able to, I would say, excel. And once you do find the things that you’re good at or you want to continue to build at. So that’s an amazing explanation. I’m super excited to read the book, Josh. On the publishing side, have you thought any more about self publishing versus using someone else to publish? And when do you expect the book to be out?

Josh: [00:18:31] I’m probably going to self publish. If a publisher wants to, so far as I’ve found, I just haven’t found publishers that have much to offer. If a publisher wants to call me up and prove me wrong, I’m open to it. But I just, I haven’t seen a lot of what they have to offer in the way their business is structured these days. So I’m leaning towards self publishing. [00:18:51] And I have no clue when it will be out. I’ve decided to wait a little bit. It’s already written. The structure is already there. I’ve written the first draft. I know who I would work with. It’s on its trajectory. It’s ready to go. But currently, I’ve decided to make some courses and stuff to be better set up to support it on the back end. So once I’ve finished exploring that a

Josh: [00:19:15] little bit, then I will pull the trigger and we’ll see what happens. Obviously, it’ll be a run away success because it’s a book about boredom. Aorem provides a bridge to the digital currency mining world for individual investors, financial institutions, and energy companies. By combining over seven years of mining experience, 24-7 [00:19:35] management, and directly aligned incentives, Aorem’s managed mining program is the simplest way to enter the digital currency mining market. To learn more, please visit www.AoremCapitalFentures.com. So there’s a lot of conversation about NFTs as an evolution of fine art collecting, but with digital art. And I know that you’re releasing 100 copies of TikTok videos you made

Josh: [00:19:56] about choice entitled Anything the Genesis Block TikTok. How’s that going? Can you give us some more detail on the process and what are your plans to release these NFTs? Yes, that was super cool. Now, people who don’t know what NFTs are non-fungible tokens, guys. Yes, non-fungible token. It’s a way to create one of something in the digital world. And it’s [00:20:17] a game changer, I think, in a lot of ways. I did that initial thing because one, because I went and looked around and nobody had released a TikTok as an NFT. So I wanted to be the first person. Of course, Dogface got to make the news for it, but that’s fine. I’m still proud. I got to it. I got to release the first one. But no, I did that because I wanted to get involved in the

Josh: [00:20:38] space because this space is interesting for a bunch of reasons. One is like all the different applications, real estate. If you can create one of something, then you can create a title for a car. You can create a title for a piece of fine art in the real world, or you can just create a piece of digital art that is unique. There’s all sorts of different applications. So one is just the [00:21:04] possibilities. I’m very attracted to possibilities. But another one that I find interesting is the type of people that it’s going to attract in the long run. I’ve been thinking about this quite a bit. And the crypto markets are money, right? This is finance. And people that are interested in finance are trying to make money. That’s just the basic thing. But what happens when people have

Josh: [00:21:28] made money? Where did they go? In the past, you went to the art gallery and the wine tasting. And that was where you went when you collected some money. And then after you collected some money, you went there because you wanted to broaden your understanding of the world and meet new people and explore the world. That was a thing that would happen for a lot of people. [00:21:48] And what happens with the new rich of the crypto markets? Because there’s an immense amount of people that are going to come into money from all of this. A bunch of people are going to lose money too, part of the game. But there’s going to be a bunch of people that have worked really hard to achieve and they’re going to succeed. And it’s a really interesting question to think

Josh: [00:22:09] where are they going to go? And I think the most obvious answer is they’re going to go to the place that is the most connected to the current industry that is a place designed for fun and exploration. And the NFT fine art market is precisely that NFTs are created on the blockchain. They’re created with the same technology that the crypto markets are. And I think this is where all the new [00:22:34] hyper successful people and ultimately, I think most of the hyper successful are going to find themselves exploring NFT markets in some ways, whether that’s going to a modern holographic NFT gallery and the real world. Or if that’s just in online forms, I think that a lot of really high performing people are going to be in this space in the long run.

Josh: [00:22:56] And what was the process like making, I guess you have two NFTs, I was just checking out your wearable account. Looks like you’ve sold 72 of the 100 NFTs, which is a TikTok video. It seems like that is that its own TikTok video? Was that live on TikTok or is that original that wasn’t posted on TikTok? I made that one on TikTok and posted on TikTok. And then I uploaded it as [00:23:17] a limited edition on Rareville. And so how did that process work? Yeah, it was incredibly easy. I had somebody walk me through it. But once I was walked through it, I was like, oh, anybody can do this. This is astonishingly easy. The only reason why I didn’t do it on my own was I was scared. I was like, ah, it’s scary crypto stuff. Let me get some help. But essentially, the process was you had to

Josh: [00:23:40] have a wallet and you had to connect it to whatever platform you’re using. And from there, it was a process like on any other modern website for selling something where it just walks you right through the process. You just upload the file, update your descriptions, information about it, what percentages you want to receive on the resale and what price you want to sell it for, [00:24:04] and how many editions you want. I think in particular, the part that blew me away was as a musician to see what percentage do you want in perpetuity. To see that option is astonishing. Because one of the great tragedies in the world, I think, are artists create something in their 30s and they’ve got to feed a baby and pay for an apartment. So they sell all the rights to what they have,

Josh: [00:24:28] and then they live poor until they’re 60. And then their art finally takes off and they get no benefit from it. And I think NFTs have the possibility of changing that game. That’s huge. And I’m actually based on this conversation, I’m going to create my own TikTok NFT challenge. I think it is the future. I think there’s a huge opportunity there. And there’s a platform [00:24:46] called charge.fi that I’ve been looking at. It’s about called charge particles. It allows you to do more with your NFTs. So you basically can transform your NFT into a basket holding other ERC 20 tokens. You can configure the principal. You can program interest to be paid out on it. And basically, it allows you to add assets underlying ERC 20 assets into NFTs. So trying to connect

Josh: [00:25:08] those two with TikTok, maybe even like their ad flow from it or a brand deal and be able to put the actual brand deal of money into the NFT. But seriously, you sold 72 of these at $50 a piece. You almost have and you have up to $5,000 you can sell with this one NFT. As a TikTok creator, I don’t think you probably haven’t made more than $5,000 from TikTok ads. Like it’s ridiculous. [00:25:31] It’s astonishing. I think you’re reading the number flipped. Oh, okay. But I still have made an astonishing amount of money for what the effort was. You have a hundred NFTs at $50 a piece, right?

Josh: [00:25:42] It was $150 a piece. Oh, yeah, there’s 72 left. So I sold 28, which is still astonishing, right? Like it’s mind boggling. And I did it initially as an experiment because I was trying to plan a big release or anything. It was because I wanted to be involved in the space. And over time, I’m going to be doing more. I really am excited about the idea of collaborating [00:26:03] with some artists. I think that some of the stuff that I create could be turned into really cool digital art. And I’d love to collaborate with digital art artists that are playing in this space already. If anybody wants to reach out to me, do so on my Instagram. Because it’s a place where all of the options haven’t been invented yet. And that’s a great place to be for any creative.

Josh: [00:26:26] Because like going back to what I was saying with how I got to success with TikTok is I started doing what I could, right? I started just doing practical things. What can I do? And in the NFT space, right now, you can ask that question of yourself. And nine times out of the 10, I think you’ll probably end up doing something that’s never been done before. That’s not the case [00:26:46] in normal content creation. Because what’s going on is it’s just a new place to explore. And yeah, it’s a bubble. And yeah, the bubble’s going to pop. But it doesn’t matter if you’re playing in that space for the next 10 to 15 years. I think you can mess up and win. I think you can mess up terribly and still be a winner. Well, talking about messing up. Can you share some

Josh: [00:27:06] examples in your own life of how limitations or roadblocks have made you more creative? And you’ve talked to a little bit on that process, but I want to hear if there’s anything particular stories that you have in mind. Most of the things that have made life work for me have ended up being some form of limitation. And I think that’s partially the personality that I have a tendency to go in [00:27:27] the opposite direction. So I get a lot of benefit from limiting myself. Somebody that’s naturally doesn’t think of all the options. Maybe they need to jump into the deep end and go try something new. But I want to try something new all the time. That’s my instinct. From like diet limitations to scheduling limitations to social limitations, like limiting my social activities, limiting

Josh: [00:27:52] my spending, and then setting limits on my art creation have all paid dividends and had compound benefits. Which one of those should I dive into? I could dive into any of those.

JohnPaul: [00:28:04] I like the compounding benefits. Let’s dive into that. I think that’s super important that people

Josh: [00:28:07] understand it’s about your intention. If you can focus on one thing and do it consistently, you’re able to build these massive compounding effects. I’m a musician. I grew up in music. I majored in music. And I always struggled with music. It wasn’t that I was like naturally gifted at it. Maybe I had some strength there. But I had to really work to keep up in the music world. [00:28:31] And one of the reasons it’s easier to see in hindsight, one of the reasons was I would try to do everything. I would try to do everything in music. I tried to get the best I could at performance and the best I could at composition. And just those two things are more than enough to flatten somebody because generally speaking, we achieve excellence through specialization.

Josh: [00:28:52] It’s a balance between the two. I am still a generalist. And I don’t think I’ll ever not be a general. But specialization, the process of honing into one thing, even if it’s for a limited amount of time, is what builds up your capabilities. And I wouldn’t do that at the beginning. At the beginning, I would be a generalist in the sense of I have to be good at everything. I have to try everything. [00:29:16] And that made me fail at everything. And that sucked. I didn’t like it. And I was educated in the classical world. And I never really wanted to make classical music. I was more interested in more mainstream music. That’s what I’ve always enjoyed. But it was just my background. It was my past. It was the thing I was told to learn. So I just kept learning it. And then when I went

Josh: [00:29:36] into more mainstream music, I would do the same thing. I tried to learn every aspect of music. And I would get zero results. Over time, I’ve started to go, okay, I could make music with these three instruments. I can produce in this particular style, I can create this sort of lyric format. And I would start to limit what I was doing, not in the sense of, I know you want [00:30:01] to do all these things, but you have to do these three things. I would limit myself in the sense of I’d start to notice, Hey, I’m not that capable. I can only do so much. I would more just notice my actual capabilities and be more realistic about it. And I started to limit from that perspective, where I would do less and less. And I’d say, no, this is enough. It’s enough to take on like this

Josh: [00:30:24] one or two styles of production. And as soon as I started to do that, I started to get reps, because I would make more than one song in the same style of production. And once I started getting reps, things started improving. And what’s wild is you do this for a while. And pretty soon you have enough capability to try things outside of your skill set that you’re exploring. But [00:30:47] honing in on something and just going, I can’t do all the things, but I could do this for a while, and just try to find some enjoyment in this simple little thing. It builds your skill level in a way that nothing else does. And it seems to be, for me, one of the keys to making everything else possible. The keys to making everything else possible. I love it. What are those keys? And do

Josh: [00:31:10] you have five things you do that maintain your personal self-improvement practices or this like overall growth work that you’ve been doing? The biggest ones are just finances, diet, and physical activity. I’d say those are the top three. I tend to tell people these days, if you can spend less than you make, if you can eat food that works for your body, it’s different [00:31:35] for different people, but you can eat some healthy food and you can exercise regularly, you’re actually in the top 1% of Earth. People, they talk about 1%ers as if they’re like this mysterious, I don’t know, evil oppressors that are like some ultra wealthy folk. Top 1% is one of 100. We have billions of people on Earth. If you can do those three things, you’re in the top

Josh: [00:31:57] 1% because the vast majority of humanity can’t manage to do those three things. So that’s where I start is just that. Beyond that, some of the most helpful things I’ve explored are breathing exercises. I’m practically religious about my morning walks at this point and limiting how much I take on any given day, week, or month. So limiting what you do, and then you mentioned

JohnPaul: [00:32:20] breathing exercises for those people who aren’t familiar, can you talk a little bit more about

Josh: [00:32:23] what that breathing exercise looks like? And then also is that, is that flow into your kind of content creation flow or is that something you utilize to get to those creative spaces? Yeah, it’s the cheapest way to get high. Meditation is something that is pretty well known at this point. And meditation is generally the practice. A lot of the way people learn it at the beginning [00:32:45] is to simply focus on your breath. And the idea is to just focus on your breath so that you notice everything else. You’re focusing on one thing so you can notice everything else and that kind of calms you down. Breathing exercises are a little bit different because you’re generally doing a breathing technique that is getting more oxygen and your bloodstream than it would

Josh: [00:33:04] normally have. And this changes your physiology a little bit. And what I’ve found is that these breathing exercises tend to relax the body enough for you to heal faster. It tends to get your brain and body connected a little bit more like you tend to notice your body a little bit more through doing breathing exercises. And I think that’s very important in our modern world because [00:33:29] most of us are overwhelmed day to day and that’s an emotional experience. And emotions aren’t processed very well inside of the mind. It’s very difficult to process emotions in the mind because the mind uses logic to process things. To connect back to your physical body is highly valuable in processing emotions because then you can actually feel them. You can feel the physical

Josh: [00:33:50] sensation of the emotion that you have and breathing exercises allow you to tap into that. I definitely the couple of different things resonated with me there with you mentioned how people feel like they’re always running always don’t have enough time in their day and it comes down to doing too much. Comes down to focusing on just the few things that matter. And I think [00:34:09] you mentioned that with content it’s like doing what you do well is a huge portion of the content creation process and not doing too much. So when you’re looking for creative inspiration

JohnPaul: [00:34:21] and you found that through the breathing and through meditation what advice would you give

Josh: [00:34:25] to other creators that are trying to produce daily content. Because I think that’s one of the things that I admire about you, Jocelyn most is that you create content consistently every day. Not every day but every day is it every day. I always see the videos coming out so it’s very consistent. Yes it’s pretty damn close to every day. I post every day unless I’m not posting on purpose because [00:34:45] I’m doing an experiment. Occasionally I want to see what’s happening with TikTok if I don’t post but other than that no I’ve been posting every day. So yeah that’s an important point and I have been so inconsistent in my past. Like I want to be clear I’ve been so bad at this consistency has probably been one of my biggest downfalls in the past and most of the reason why is because I

Josh: [00:35:08] would pick something that was too visionary. It was too big and then I would feel bad because I wasn’t achieving it and then when I did it would take too long so I would feel sad and I wouldn’t get a dopamine hit from it. I’ve been flipping that and I’ve been switching to okay let’s do something kind of small and a little bit pathetic because you’re small and a little bit pathetic [00:35:34] and then from that frame anything you do is exciting. So I do something small and pathetic and I get it done and I’m like oh my god look at that. I did something amazing and then I feel excited to do it again. So I’m basically trying to hack my brain chemistry because discipline’s great and yes we need it but for a lot of people with dreams and ambitions they have an overabundance of discipline.

Josh: [00:36:01] They will tear themselves apart to get to what they want to get to and what happens is as they push to get where they want to get they don’t do things that works with their mind and their physiology and they slowly break down and get weaker and less effective. So I’m trying to work now from the premise of okay I do have ambition I do have work ethic I do have discipline. [00:36:29] Let’s call those things a given. Let’s even say it’s a given that I have some skill that I have some intelligence. These are like let’s make these baseline assumptions and with that now let’s do something small and simple and assume that because I have a work ethic because I am fairly intelligent because I have practiced things and I have skills that fairly simple thing will be pretty awesome

Josh: [00:36:55] and that turns out to be true a lot of the time. Do you think people just build up this almost like this fear or this expectation of what the content could become in their heads and that what prevents them from actually getting it out effectively or creating it effectively? I think there’s a misunderstanding of how effective your content can be at any level and I don’t even want [00:37:18] to use the word level because I’m not trying to imply like skill levels. It’s more a sideways thing where it’s like you can create this is the analogy I always use. A six-year-old can create a beautiful drawing if the six-year-old isn’t trying to draw like the 12-year-old. A 12-year-old can create a beautiful drawing if the 12-year-old isn’t trying to draw like a 16-year-old because

Josh: [00:37:43] if they try to draw like the 16-year-old if the 12-year-old tries to draw like the 16-year-old then what it’s going to look like is a poor imitation of a 16-year-old’s drawing but if the 12-year-old simply tries to express what the 12-year-old wants to express with the 12-year-old’s skills it can be an awesome thing and it’s the same at 16 and 20 and 25 and 30 and it’s okay so you [00:38:07] turn 16 now you should probably take a class and draw so what you want to do is you want to take two classes like two short classes on YouTube and learn some of the fundamentals of drawing and then draw your angsty little 16-year-old heart out. The problem is if the 16-year-old takes a couple classes and then sees what could be sees all the Michelangelo’s and the Monet’s and

Josh: [00:38:32] everything in between and goes oh man I’m not going to be complete until I can match their skill level and if they do that they will suck ass forever because they will never match that skill level because the thing that gets you to match that skill level is engagement in your current activity and trying to match the Michelangelo trying to match the dream takes you away from [00:38:58] your current moment so if instead the 16-year-old trying to learn to draw just takes a couple classes learns a couple things and then explores and tries to create with those skill sets that 16-year-old has doesn’t worry about trying to get new skill sets and the child does that for a year or two they will create amazing things and then maybe at 18 they take another class and then they

Josh: [00:39:24] do it for another two years and obviously this is an example you can vary this but this concept of learning to absorb a small amount of new material like lessons etc and then iterate on it and explore it and create what you can instead of trying to level up again it’s I think it’s one of the most compounding elements of skill building that exists because the reality is we have artists that [00:39:50] we adore that can paint and photorealistic style right where it’s so flawless that you can’t even tell that it’s a painting and we pay them thousands millions of dollars and we have people that draw things that look like finger painting that we pay them millions of dollars for their paintings they both succeed and if you were to put them on a scale of skill level it would be very misleading

Josh: [00:40:16] as to what’s actually creating the value because artists at the beginning try to learn skills so they get distracted by the skill sets and they assume that’s what creates their value but it’s something much more nuanced than that what is it what is the value where does the value come from in this NFT world that we’re about to enter into where anyone can create artwork that [00:40:39] can be bought and sold live and they can earn royalties on it is it all come down to the the story the personal brand behind the meaning behind them art piece if you were to ask that question to a professor in an art school right now I think the answer would be expression I think they’re wrong and I think the answer is communication the best answer that I’ve seen for the definition of

Josh: [00:41:04] art is the expression of what it feels like to be alive and I like that expression but for me I’m not sure if that is as much value as you could create I for me my my personal definition of art is the expression and the communication of what it feels like to be a lot so art is language art is symbology it’s a bunch of things that mean stuff we look at art and we feel things we look at [00:41:34] art and we intuit messages from it we come up with ideas based on art and it might not be the idea that the original artist intended but it does spark an idea so I’m not saying that to create art you have to communicate the idea that’s inside of your head because that’s implying that somebody else can’t come up with one that’s better and have it even more amazing experience with that one but

Josh: [00:41:59] you do have to have this sort of creation where you have a spark in your mind and you create something that causes a spark in another mind and I think that is where the value lies because what did Nian cat sell for no idea half a million damn I think yeah the gift of the the little cat with the rainbows and everything like it wasn’t because of technical expertise it was because of [00:42:26] a spark that there was a spark in there that that ignited something in another human and it maybe was delight maybe it was meaning it could have been any number of things but I think it’s lighting that spark and that’s why I say a 12 year old can create an amazing piece of artwork because a 12 year old can create something that has a message that you can read like a 12 year old can create

Josh: [00:42:52] something that that is symbolic that you can register what that symbol is and it means something to you just a 15 year old can or a 30 year old can and what that means is that it’s not exactly skill level that defines this thing that we value it’s something more nuanced which is can you create that spark and I think the only way to get to that spark is by limiting what you do so that you’re [00:43:19] not oppressed by how good you should be and then you can explore and say something that you want

JohnPaul: [00:43:27] to can you talk a little bit more about the flow of how you’re trying to create value either in

Josh: [00:43:32] art Bitcoin NFTs and what that looks like for you yeah so right now I’m just finishing up a course on Bitcoin and it’s super basic on purpose because I think there’s a sort of a divide between the folks who have fallen down the Bitcoin rabbit hole and the folks who have a no idea what this strange digital crypto what in mohooza is I’m trying to bridge the gap a little bit and it’s just a [00:43:57] simple course on understanding what it is and how to buy and hodl some after that is finished I’m going to be working on a course on learning theory and I think the other one is going to be something like either productivity or mental performance one or the other productivity or mental performance and how would how are you currently looking at doing the Bitcoin course

Josh: [00:44:20] what is that how is that gonna be structured in your eyes that a video is that a weekly email a hundred emails yeah so it’s almost done it’s it’s about 30 videos in tick-tock format I’m actually pretty happy about it I decided to not go with the standard course format of like landscape style video really long form I’m actually it’s short and sweet and it’s 30 videos that are one [00:44:43] minute long give or take just like I would make on tick-tock so it’s a format that a lot of people are familiar with it’s super mobile friendly I was just checking it out on mobile last night with a friend and he’s oh this makes total sense on a cell phone it’s intended to fit our new world I like it I like it the vertical format is taking over I know there’s been tons of startups that

Josh: [00:45:04] have been trying to film and trying to capture content in that way Josh we’re coming up to the end of questions that I have for you do you have anything that you want to talk about with me specifically or anything as you also wanted to touch on but yeah I’m curious what your thoughts are on this idea I have of limitation and how it regards to crypto because what I’ve seen is that [00:45:28] limitation enables creativity and that’s essentially been a part of everything that we’ve talked about I think in this conversation where it’s like it’s what’s happening when the 12 year old creates what the 12 year old can is they’re putting a boundary on it and they’re not trying to reach out into this impossible thing that they’re not ready for yet and one of the amazing things about Bitcoin

Josh: [00:45:49] is that it’s limited at almost every point except for the human right the human is the variable it seems like inside of Bitcoin we’ve made it so that it’s a structure that people can bounce off of so like in a painting in the world of fine art we still use the canvas and a canvas is actually the limitation that the reason why people can create great art in a big way I think is because [00:46:17] of the canvas because it’s a structure that says all right you have this space now you can do whatever you want and it’s a lie right you can’t do whatever you want you can paint on this canvas that’s what you can do but you are free to do whatever you want within that limitation and the limitations of Bitcoin there will never be more than 21 million right 21 million Bitcoin

Josh: [00:46:39] right and the way Bitcoin function is functions is structured in code and it takes a massive amount of social pressure to create any sort of change there and these are I think elements of creating an economic canvas that allows society to experiment with money and I think it will spark innovations that have never been seen before because of them no I would agree with you and I like the idea of a [00:47:10] canvas and money because Bitcoin does create a virtual canvas of only 21 million pieces of Bitcoin land that can be purchased by people compared to the current financial market and system we have where the system is grown is to these derivatives and these contracts that are hope that help hedge risk for companies that do trade across the world the problem that we are experiencing today is when

Josh: [00:47:35] that financial industry becomes disconnected from the physical realities the physical world in the movement of trade on the ground and that there’s more numbers moving in computers than there is actually value being transferred to the worker to the bottom line of a business moving raw goods and I think what we’ve seen with without the accountability without the the constraint that [00:47:58] you’re referring to the comfort the boredom of money we are set in stone with this place where we move to an area where money is created in an in a limited form like the fiat currency we have today of the dollar there is no repercussions for politicians to say we want to spend more money to get really elected we want to spend more money on these projects we want to put more

Josh: [00:48:22] money towards green energy because it’s makes us feel good and because it’ll help push the conversation forward not necessarily we want to spend money on making energy free for everyone and we want to spend money on actually solving these problems there’s a lot of I think issues when it comes to having not having a cap on this monetary supply that we’re working on we’re working [00:48:43] with every single every 20 years the dollar loses an estimated 20 30 something in that line and the problem there is that people are set in jobs and they very rarely see that salary increase with inflation especially with the amount of money that’s been printed with covid and so I agree with you that bitcoin created a digital canvas almost that allowed us to have scarcity built into it that

Josh: [00:49:07] allowed us to be bored almost be bored with money and money that’s just like simple it even though it seems like very complex it’s money that’s simple money that can only be extracted from this digital land via the mining process through miners like myself that are going in and buying millions of dollars worth of computers and using real world energy that costs actually has cost for [00:49:28] everyone knowing can cheat that system because we haven’t figured out a create energy for free yet and I think that is one of the biggest features in in bitcoin but I think it as you mentioned the anxiety portion of bitcoin and blockchains not bitcoin particularly but the thousands of other currencies out there that are building around it that are trying to smoke in mirrors some of them

Josh: [00:49:48] have real values some of them are just marketing scams and trying to get people’s money to get more bitcoin so I think that overall joss the more we can focus on the amazing opportunity we have which is just bitcoin itself and understanding that bitcoin will become this world currency with stocks trading on it and envy type of financial transaction floating through the network and the [00:50:13] less we can focus on all the noise and all of the other conversations they are cool to play with and don’t get me wrong i’m a big component of other coins doing cool tech working on cool technologies but it’s hard to distinguish between the ones that are here to stay and the ones and in the currencies that are really going to scale and work well and the stories even looking at a

Josh: [00:50:35] theorem now and looking at buying your nft it was an 80 dollar transaction fee i’m like if they only cost $150 i’m spending half my money on a transaction fee yeah i think with bitcoin with layer 2 it will help us scale much faster and there are already people building outside channels where you don’t have those issues and so the more i love the other current the more i go love the [00:50:57] other currencies and love looking at them the more i realize how much i actually need to spend my time focusing just on bitcoin and building out really building out ways to hold your wealth in bitcoin easily education showing people that this isn’t something that should be scary this isn’t something that should be hard to understand but it’s something that should be easy to use you

Josh: [00:51:16] should be able to generate interest on your bitcoins through the mining process you should be able to generate interest on your dollars through lending out stable coins in the decentralized marketplaces and you should be able to acquire bitcoin on a daily basis and people like cash happen other people are working on building that bitcoin bank account and i think that’s the future [00:51:34] is having an account that allows you to access this digital world of the blockchain technology in bitcoin specifically yes i like i’m more and more i’m getting to this point where i’m like i like bitcoin because it’s a board it’s a feature not a buck and the yeah the other cryptos that are being built out and i’m invested in some i think some of them are great and it’s a great thing to

Josh: [00:51:56] explore like you said but a lot of them what they’re trying to do is they’re trying to transcend the limitations of bitcoin not realizing that the limitations of bitcoin are actually the features of bitcoin and it’s not only is it the limitation of the supply it’s the limitation of how it functions and there’s this weird thing where it’s if you have i don’t know if you have a ski [00:52:17] slope on a cliff and you have a net right off of the cliff so that skier can try that cliff 500 times without injury that enables the skier to become far more advanced than he ever would otherwise and that net is a limitation it’s saying you can’t go past here and somebody that’s an adrenaline junkie is going to look at that net and be like ah this isn’t as exciting i want the full risk of

Josh: [00:52:44] i could go over the edge at any moment but in some ways that person’s not going to develop the capabilities that they could with the net because the net allows for the iteration and i feel like there’s limitations in the speed of bitcoin isn’t the fastest who cares we already know it’s thousands of times faster than gold so who who cares but also even that i think is a structural limitation [00:53:09] that allows people to go okay this is predictable it’s going to be this way now i can experiment based on that premise i like it i like it being able to set those the limitations in life are healthy and especially in finance honestly because the current financial system doesn’t have limitations so financially engineered mess with very little limitations people who understand how to play in

Josh: [00:53:32] that mess of contracts what problems do you face every day that nobody has solved yet josh i face a lot of problems that everybody’s struggling with i face a lot of those the main one at this point for me is learning how to continue doing the thing that worked which is another limitation right it’s i i have to learn how to not take on opportunities when i want and that enables me to do way more [00:54:00] things that i would otherwise what what am i working on that other people aren’t i i think that there is a gap in learning theory actually i i think that’s not talked about enough to me that’s the thing that should be taught in grade school every year i i think that learning how to learn is far more important than learning any one particular thing so to me there should be a class

Josh: [00:54:27] on learning theory in every grade and if that’s not the case for the love of god we should do it when people are in college but but preferably much sooner so i’m very passionate about learning theory or meta learning the idea of learning how to learn and i think that there’s not enough people exploring that space so yeah i’d say that’s probably the main one and i just i want to explore the fundamental

JohnPaul: [00:54:50] concepts of it and how it applies to all the other things i love it where can people connect to these josh you mentioned instagram can you talk through a little bit about your social medias

Josh: [00:54:59] and then where’s the best place to reach out when people have questions or want to collaborate yeah so i’m mostly on tick tock instagram twitter and linkedin so you can you find me on any of those i’m josh terry plays on all of them and i’m very proud of my brand continuity man it managed to get the same handle and i i post the most content on tick tock but i’m i’m exploring [00:55:22] creating on all the platforms i have a lot of articles that i’m starting to write i’m going to start making longer form youtube stuff but yeah find me on tick tock twitter instagram or linkedin

JohnPaul: [00:55:32] that’s the place for me awesome josh i appreciate the time today this is great i love talking about

Josh: [00:55:36] learning theory going over the nft hearing more about the book and then talking about the overall

JohnPaul: [00:55:41] production process of videos so thanks again for jumping on the digital gold podcast and if you

Josh: [00:55:46] guys don’t follow josh check him out he makes some great tick tock content it’s best place to connect with him if you want to see his daily videos and see his beautiful face and mind go to work

JohnPaul: [00:55:55] every day thanks again josh for coming on yeah man thanks for having me

[00:56:00] i hope you enjoyed today’s episode of digital gold be sure to subscribe so you’re notified when the new episode drops don’t forget to leave us a five star review to support our journey to

Josh: [00:56:10] become the number one crypto podcast thanks so much for listening and until next time mind off yeah