FOTF - Victoria: 0:00

Welcome to the Startup of Human Potential. We're your co-hosts.

FOTF - Clifton: 0:03

I'm Clifton.

FOTF - Victoria: 0:05

And I'm Victoria.

FOTF - Clifton: 0:06

And together we're Faces of the Future. Faces of the Future is a startup studio with a personal development platform at the intersection of consciousness, connection, innovation and well-being. We're excited to have you join us on our show today.

FOTF - Victoria: 0:22

And today we're excited to be joined by Ely Glassy Beckman. Thank you so much for coming on our show today For our listeners. A little bit of background about Glassy. He goes by Glassy. He comes from a music and architecture background, fashion and digital marketing. He's a visionary serial entrepreneur in web development app development. They've onboarded about 400,000 people into the Web3 space and held the largest NFT-oriented club on Clubhouse. And for the last year and a half he's been focused on building systems to close the funding and resource gap for entrepreneurs very much in alignment with our mission at Faces of the Future as well. And that gap includes mentorship and access to vetted professional resources and more. And we'll talk a bit about his different organizations Glass Haus, the Immersive Agency and Venture Studio. Continuum, which is the private entrepreneur's network focused on blockchain, ai and edutainment, and Moonriser, which is the media arm telling the story of the builders. So thank you so much for joining us. Really excited to have you on.

Ely Beckman (Glassy): 1:27

Yeah, pleasure to be here. Thank you so much for inviting me on. Really love the format that you put together and it was wonderful to meet each other face to face. It's nice to start there. I think so many of our relationships nowadays it's whether it's Twitter or Telegram or whatever it might be, so it's great to have collided. It really felt like that in real time in the real world simulation, and really great to be here Also. What a nice summary. I'm like I'm going to have to go back to the recording and write that down, because, as I've heard, it.

FOTF - Victoria: 1:56

Thank you, Thank you. Yeah. So we met at the Breathe convention in Las Vegas, a convention around emerging tech and how it's disrupting every industry, and Glassy came up to our booth saw our banner said Quantumpreneurs. It was like, yeah, I get that. High performers, entrepreneurs, I'm all about that stuff too. So from there it organically evolved into meeting again in the digital space, continuing the conversation. So I'm excited for what we have in store for our listeners today and, Clipton, if you could kind of steward the rails of the conversation, because there's so many different ways it can go.

FOTF - Clifton: 2:33

So just to present. We just found out that he is a projector as well, so we've got another three projector episode headed your way. So just heads up. This might get into some deep rabbit holes or go deep somewhere and all over the place, but, with that being said, I think it's such a clear alignment on so many levels of what we're doing in our venture studio and what you have put together and really just an ecosystem approach as to how to create the most joyful, high-functioning ecosystem to bring us into this new world. And so we can start chronologically and then see how that opens up. But it's not every day. You wake up and have multiple projects or multiple companies. How did this happen? How did our listeners get up to this point? I mean, you're in a room with incredible creativity behind you, but have you always been creative? Have you always had many? This happen. How our listeners get up to this point. I mean, you're in a room with incredible creativity behind you, but have you always been creative? Have you always had many projects? What's been going on?

Ely Beckman (Glassy): 3:31

I've I've said, I've always had a bit of a crippling ambition, being like I just had this sense, like we can do it all, there's nothing, like we don't have to be held back by anything. So I have a tendency of finding really interesting people and saying yes. After 20 years of being an entrepreneur, the power and value of no and I think even any past co-founders and friends they say that's actually one of my better qualities is my ability to say no. But just in general, I have many passions. This is actually a quote from a friend of mine.

Ely Beckman (Glassy): 4:00

Well, if I had only one interest, my life would be very simple and straightforward. But I have very many interests and so my life is quite complex and that's just kind of my burden to bear. But a lot of that comes just out of ambition and also, I could say partially out of seeing the interconnected nature of things. I don't necessarily draw such a firm division between one and the other. I see very much how they interlink and how one affects and benefits the other, and so I could say too, like part of the discussion could also be like from inward to outward. That might be an interesting direction, the one hand being like the self and the mind, the other kind of next level being like clothes and our identity and how we present ourself, eventually thinking about like architecture and the places and spaces that we inhabit, and then, on a larger scenario, even zooming out.

Ely Beckman (Glassy): 4:50

So you're talking about city planning, zooming out even further, you're talking about what are the interconnected nature of relationships and how people connect, and, when it comes to being an entrepreneur, first of all, how many different things you need to be able to be good at in order to succeed. I think that's a staggering thing. It's like the number is way higher than it really makes it. It just makes it unrealistic, I think, for a lot of people to accomplish all of those different things, and so we need to connect with other humans, and so the need of connecting with other humans then presents the next level of need, things like connecting with the right human, the next level of need, things like connecting with the right human. Where am I going to find them? What am I going to say to them when I find them? To actually start building meaningful relationships, to drive this whatever it is vision into reality.

FOTF - Clifton: 5:36

Wow, that's fascinating. What brought you to observe the interconnectedness of things? Is it a visual, conscious awareness? Is it more?

FOTF - Victoria: 5:46

knowing.

Ely Beckman (Glassy): 5:48

I think it started in architecture school, where they encouraged things like exponential ideation, like this isn't what I was expecting, but they had us oftentimes looking at natural phenomena and natural systems and organization and drawing from that principles that we then would put into our designs and projects and that. So I think it's really started there and then I think it really crystallized in my own uh encountering of tibetan buddhists and from side of engaging, uh, tibetan mantra and practices that kind of cemented, that's like more of a knowing rather than like just a concept, like no, there truly is, like all things really are linked as you're sharing, about observing natural systems and how that flows into architecture.

FOTF - Victoria: 6:34

I was picturing the work of gaudy, barcelonian architect, with the sagrada familia and how everything is nautilus, shaped and following the organizing principles of nature, how it all exists out there and thinking outside the box.

Ely Beckman (Glassy): 6:48

Yeah, they look like they're grown. It's like here's a print, like Brad, just like, oh, here's a box, and then we built this next to it, like his work seemed to have grown, as if it was from nature or like with these kind of fractal patterns. Yeah, exactly.

FOTF - Victoria: 7:00

And I think, that applies like.

Ely Beckman (Glassy): 7:01

From my standpoint, that same concept can be expressed in many ways. I think that's a lot of it too, and part of the interconnected nature of things is it's expression or emanation. It's like one thing may have all kinds of different expressions.

FOTF - Victoria: 7:15

Yeah.

Ely Beckman (Glassy): 7:16

Talking about really high level concepts like sovereignty or equity. The way that can be expressed is so expansive, whether that be in a conversation, whether that be in like branding, collateral, or whether that be in like guiding principles for how people operate, build their businesses, interact with each other, design, governance Like you can start naming almost everything and you get this giant list, but they're all really stemming off a central concept of one sort or another.

FOTF - Clifton: 7:43

Awesome, let's ground that. Let's talk about those central concepts. What are some of those organizing principles that you have observed, either in nature and architecture, and ecosystem design?

Ely Beckman (Glassy): 7:56

One beautiful parallel is like the idea of mycelial networks and the idea that there's an overabundance of all things, but it's not necessarily. There might be clumps of it here, or abundance of certain nutrients in certain parts of the forest and it might be just a little further than the roots could reach of that specific tree that needs that nutrient. So these vast mycelial networks that actually have an intelligence connect to different organisms and transport nutrients accordingly. For me that's like the perfect metaphor for a way to build laterally among different species that each of them may be strong, but by having this kind of interconnected network now you're actually able to do something of a logistic nature of actually transporting. So I think what we're doing in a lot of ways is kind of informed and parallel to that same expression of what we need is certainly here. We just might not know the person that has it or we might not have the relationship, equity or the relationship and trust or way to have the wording to even communicate what our idea is.

FOTF - Victoria: 9:04

Yeah.

Ely Beckman (Glassy): 9:05

A lot of steps to that, but anyway, through that whole process you're actually able to even successfully do the phenomena to communicate.

Ely Beckman (Glassy): 9:13

That means that two different people need to have enough shared experiences so that when you speak, your word is popping in my head and mapping out the same picture that's in your head. That's a phenomenon. We over expect that when we talk, everyone knows exactly what we're saying. It's almost far rarer the case. And when it comes to a business or entrepreneur, that's so critical that your meaning is being expressed clearly and that there is trust that being built over time and that through that process, like the mycelial network, that we can make agreements, that we can have cross organization structures to transport key resources.

Ely Beckman (Glassy): 9:53

Yeah, mentorship, sometimes that's insight and experience. Sometimes you're just in a situation that you're not often in oh, now we have a bigger investor, or now we have to deal with jurisdictions or any number of things. And how are we going to deal with that? Well, if you had access to the right mentors, then they swoop in and, like an adjust in time scenario, they can come in school, you, with their maybe decades of experience to give you that you know, sharpen your pencil on that exact area. So sometimes it's information, sometimes it's resources, like capital. It's things like who am I going to hire? Or that could be vendors or employees or partners. How am I going to get my word out there? How am I going to get exposure?

Ely Beckman (Glassy): 10:34

These are all key things that relate to both communication, shared resources and the logistic of actually accomplishing what I would consider maybe the finest art or the most difficult art, being the art of business.

FOTF - Victoria: 10:47

Yeah, an expansion, as you're talking about, like putting the resources in the mycelial network and having it flow through to where it's supposed to go and permeate throughout the globe, and it's perfect metaphor for what you've built with your different companies.

Ely Beckman (Glassy): 11:01

To have exposure. Even if you have a ton of money and hire expensive marketing firms or whatnot, you still might not get. There's not like an exposure button.

FOTF - Clifton: 11:09

If you could share some of your stories of helping onboard over 250,000 people into Web3, what were some of the lessons?

Ely Beckman (Glassy): 11:18

Curiosity. I think that a lot of it was curiosity among a very diverse group of people that seem to also have a tremendous amount of time on their hands. A lot of it was curiosity among a very diverse group of people that seem to also have a tremendous amount of time on their hands, a lot of time on their hands that are very curious, and maybe a lot of misfits I'd say I'm only saying misfits like, I think, a lot of aliens. We know how to fit in but we don't really feel like we belong, like there's a lot of that feeling with us the perfect storm. There's a lot of that feeling that's the perfect storm. And then, plus a new platform, new-ish platform, which was Clubhouse at the time that was operating on invite only.

Ely Beckman (Glassy): 11:51

So now I'm trying to say relationship equity, that's involved, because you can't even get into the platform if you don't know someone that's there. And then once they bring you into the platform, they're semi-responsible for you, because if you like, misbehave and get kicked out, I think they got kicked out too. Like it was that kind of situation like accountability. There was a social thing of people inviting each other. They also invited niche industries so really strong film presence.

Ely Beckman (Glassy): 12:18

There was a really strong music like, so you could say, the culture makers of the world at a time of pandemic when everyone was essentially grounded and looking for something to do. Now, what is the most fun thing to do as an adult, essentially, is to meet generally meet new people, meet people that have the answer to the to the question that you've been asking a social audio format. People had the opportunity to ask questions and hear the answer, and here, without judgment. On the one hand, it was like the visual judgments that we always have, like oh you're pretty, you're too young, you know, like all these things that we immediately jump to. So you have no visual but just audio. You can hear the authenticity of people's voices.

Ely Beckman (Glassy): 12:59

And somehow, with that plus an algorithm, we were able to essentially have 500 to 1,000 people a day for any session that we were running and a very wide stream of new audience on a regular basis and a very high spring up and like fast motion, like claymation, like you're just fast forwarding the whole thing, and like these rapid communities were able to be grown because and even the build up of it and the kind of the pullback from that platform, in particular as they made certain decisions and opened up the platform, some of the simple changes that they made you could say kind of ruined pullback from that platform, in particular as they made certain decisions and opened up the platform, some of the simple changes that they made you could say kind of ruined the platform.

Ely Beckman (Glassy): 13:50

A lot of people left and so there was a special time that doesn't exist there or maybe many places still, but it just goes to show when you do have that alignment of people people with time on their hands because it wasn't just me that educated 400,000 people there were co-hosts that were running rooms. If I was running them 10 hours a day, someone else was running other rooms five hours other. If I was running the morning room, someone else was running the afternoon. It was a host of people that probably, if they knew each other, or as they got to know each other, they realized like are we really, do we really want to work together? Maybe not, but in this little moment of time where you had no judgment, you had curiosity, you had questions being asked and answered through, that is how we got to those kind of numbers organically yeah, and it was a time when the world became very passionate and tuned into what's going on in web 3 and crypto as well.

FOTF - Clifton: 14:43

2020, 2021, the bull market that's beautiful and and that's actually part of the process we run people with in the foundries. We talk about different levels of manifestation and talking at the highest level, like everyone wants abundance or peace or good health, things like that but the difference is becoming the nuances of grounding it more into the physical 3D realm and, exactly as you said, once you start to interact with people and have conversations, that those more refined levels of distinction, of three-dimensional roles, responsibilities and actually creation, that's when the fragmentation might occur and people go in different ways, you know similar vision, but different pathways to get there.

FOTF - Victoria: 15:30

The boundaries are progress for grounding business concepts and business ideas from more macro and full alignment to more specificity and roles, responsibilities, as Clifton just mentioned.

FOTF - Clifton: 15:42

So I just wanted to chime in and presence that and so, taking that metaphor, what happened or what did you do after all the lessons and the growth from Clubhouse? How have you continued to ground that down into what you're doing now?

Ely Beckman (Glassy): 15:56

Well, the first thing I did was try to recreate it on Twitter and the alignment was just different. You don't have the same pieces on the board. You don't have the same algo. You know even the same people, the same content, the same programming. Like so much of the same we got. We're going to just redo what we just did. Nope, copy paste Further past the pandemic. No, no support, if anything.

Ely Beckman (Glassy): 16:20

That felt like the opposite. I'm like this censorship feels familiar and we just did it relentless. They're like oh, be consistent. Right, I was saying that. How do you, how do you be successful? I'm like consistency, clearly, well, consistent as the dickens, even after like 250 consecutive shows, monday through friday, two to three hours, and it was great. We got everything recorded. There was like still new life from that, but it didn't grow into the entrepreneurial community that I had expected. Yeah, different app, different animal, different game. It's like you might be the best soccer player in the world, but then you go to play football or you might worse, cross sport metaphor you might go to play baseball and you just are terrible.

Ely Beckman (Glassy): 17:00

You're like you might be great at shooting a basketball, but you cannot hit that baseball to save your life. You know that might be the situation anyway. We we carried the community forward. That like just raw determination and a lot of lessons learned.

Ely Beckman (Glassy): 17:12

Uh, also, I think a lot of it too is respecting how powerful an algorithm can be, like you don't know how good you have it until you have it bad for a while and then you're like oh damn algorithm could actually save humanity or keep us up, you know, actually like turn the one that have real messages into only getting those messages heard by echo chambers, versus actually getting them heard by a global audience of people that were so I hate to say the word desperate, but we're just so thirsty for that knowledge, just so thirsty to know about what is the nfc, what is a blockchain? How does it? How does this even work? What are these gas fees like? What is an NFT? What is a blockchain? How does this even work? What are these gas fees Like?

Ely Beckman (Glassy): 17:48

How do I use a bridge? Why would I need to use a bridge? What is an L2 versus an L1? A lot of fundamental stuff. And it was funny because in the early days we would always circle back around like a wave and then it would get so complex into like account abstraction or like something so complex, and then someone will come on stage and just ask a question like yeah, but what is an nft? And then it would start this cycle around and I swear that went on for like a year. That go like, spun, like circle around for about a solid year maybe, maybe a bit older, even more than that.

Ely Beckman (Glassy): 18:20

But that's where Glass Haus was born, originally as an accelerator. To answer and get back answering your question, um was launching this accelerator called Glass Haus to carry a group of artists through a multi-month program of developing something collectively. I'm like we got a hundred of us together. We couldn't fail. That's what that was my thought. And we did 144, 150 people or something signed up for the accelerator. We carried a bunch through. There was definitely fall off.

Ely Beckman (Glassy): 18:45

Over the months we built a story world and from that another brand was born, actually two brands, one being the Glass Haus name, which brought in a lot of clients and was dealing with the client services. Because I'll tell you something, when you have a thriving teaming, community gathering every day and naturally occurs from that is entrepreneurs coming up and saying what is it going to take to get in front of your audience? Can you help me launch a project? You're answering all these questions for free and building community and doing these kind of like public service things. But can we hire you, help us launch our projects? And that's really where Glass Haus got its footing clients and helping launch projects, the the multimillion dollar, you know, drops and successes under its belt.

FOTF - Clifton: 19:28

Wow, this is amazing and this is like from a fire hose we're drinking and it's awesome. I love it. I just also want to presence a few really powerful things that hopefully our listeners caught. One is you had incredible success on clubhouse and then you took that same model and you applied it to a different platform and didn't have anywhere near the amount of success. Correct this idea of, oh, be consistent on social media, be consistent, and you're basically saying you were consistent and the results weren't there.

Ely Beckman (Glassy): 20:01

We spend hours a day. You know what it is. Being consistent doesn't help you if you're consistently doing things that aren't helping you. Yes, that's such a great point. We had value, but it wasn't the community growth that we were aiming for. We're like aiming for unity growth and we got an incredible growth of content and, not to say rooms, didn't get any audience. We were growing. Sometimes we would hit 150. We would hit some hundreds, sometimes we would break into the thousands, but it was interfitting and growing. Sometimes we would hit 150, we would hit some hundreds, sometimes we would break into the thousands, but it was interfitting, and then sometimes we would have a few dozen.

Ely Beckman (Glassy): 20:30

I'm like we're doing all this work and hours of prep and all of these things, inviting guests in. Yeah, when you're doing live, it's different. When you do a podcast, it doesn't matter how many people show up because you can broadcast and syndicate and all these things, but in speaker format or in live audio, you want to invite people in. That was another thing in Twitter, like people seem to want to listen, although I guess I could thank Twitter in some ways of refining my ability to monologue. We don't want to come on stage. We're not going to come. We're not going to come in and we're only going to be listeners, we're not going to be speakers. So it just forces you more. Wow, yeah, it's true, you, what you're underpinning is correct. Just moving over to a different platform, you're not necessarily going to get the same results and if you consistent, but consistently not doing the right things, then it doesn't matter.

FOTF - Clifton: 21:17

You're not getting 1000 a day, then you're never going to move it to two or 5000. Wow, and then. And so then, did you iterate how you were showing up on Twitter, or did you take it off?

Ely Beckman (Glassy): 21:26

We did a lot of things. Probably the one of the things I didn't really. You know, I don't even want to go down that road, but I didn't. I didn't go on a lot of other very popular spaces to get on stage to shill our show. I probably could do more of that. I just didn't. I'm like I don't know. I like to move authentic and natural.

Ely Beckman (Glassy): 21:44

That just didn't feel natural to like, try to like shill what I was doing on other people's platform, like we're, like we're, we're doing it and we helped a lot of people and there were a lot of great stories and the archive that we built was incredible. So that's where Moonriser built into actually being an outlet as a media app and creating a website, moonriserio where we can these? Not only are there access to all those recordings from all those shows. Yeah, so ongoing arts, like telling the deeper story of builders and maybe builders that wouldn't be able to otherwise get exposure that's part of my exposure has been so hard. What if we made that a public good? Like? What if we make public good to find great stories of founders that might not have millions and millions of dollars to burn on marketing but are building incredible protocol level solutions or whatever it might be, and so that's where Moonriser essentially evolved into more of a web platform and less of Twitter spaces and expecting a Twitter community.

FOTF - Clifton: 22:43

Okay. So then you took it into sort of your own hands off of the algorithm of Twitter and created your own community and you applied certain lessons that you learned through the stages of the massive growth of clubhouse to the what's going on with Twitter, to your own creation and community.

Ely Beckman (Glassy): 23:03

I think it's easy to underestimate the variables at play. Oh, doing all these same things, and then why is it not working over here? You're underestimating so many things of like how we were.

FOTF - Victoria: 23:13

Like the world opened back up again and people With variables of like.

Ely Beckman (Glassy): 23:17

How is Twitter going to see me? Like, how are the bots and the algorithm of Twitter going to see me? I wasn't thinking about that, I just jumped in. Now I'm with all the D-gens in Twitter, thinking like, oh, I'm with the collectors and the D-gens, but like next I probably through that process of getting involved in certain collections, promoting those collections, getting a lot of followers from different NFTs that I was holding and buying, and those kinds of situations.

Ely Beckman (Glassy): 23:44

I'm I'm fairly confident in retrospect, what I essentially was doing was telling all the algorithm hey, look at me Like I'm a DJ and like all I care about is NFTs, like all I'm doing. You know what I mean. Like I was giving it the wrong signals. I wasn't coming into this new platform giving it the signals to say I'm a thought leader, I have something to tell this specific audience, with the entrepreneurs focused on web3 and blockchain. Like if I was coming in with those signals right from the get, I would have likely had vastly different results. But that's retrospect. But again, just that simple variable of like. How are you communicating with the platform that you're in? Uh, specifically, like the words you're using and the messages you're using and how it's going to track you forever, or six months of trying to do something different before it puts you in a different category.

FOTF - Clifton: 24:32

Yeah, I love how you're connecting this with what you talked about at the beginning of being that mycelial network to be able to communicate with certain people or coaches. It almost sounds like you're like a coach to speak to the bot or to the algorithm. It almost sounds like you're like a coach to speak to the bot or to the algorithm. Yeah, like the algorithm whisperer.

Ely Beckman (Glassy): 24:49

Yeah, I'm trying to figure it out. I'm more like the person that only knows English, but I got dropped in like Madrid and like everyone speaks Spanish and I'm like using hand symbols to try to figure it out and I think that you're not alone.

FOTF - Clifton: 25:02

I think a lot of people are trying to understand how to play in this, in these worlds. And the algorithms and you know the classic is Google algorithm they always change it every so often, so you think you got something, but now you got more to learn and adapt.

FOTF - Victoria: 25:17

Yeah, one of the previous guests on our show, sheree Alexander, who was talking about presence based marketing, how some people are really good at the algorithm thing, so they know how to do that social media thing, and then there's other people who are really good at the presence thing.

Ely Beckman (Glassy): 25:31

Yeah, I'm on the presence side.

FOTF - Victoria: 25:33

I would say, we are too.

Ely Beckman (Glassy): 25:37

Cool other things that happened was all right. I was talking about people meeting each other without judgment. I don't know I'm not even going to go down the thing of all the different judgments that we make every day, biases that we have whatever it is too short, too tall, hair is too long, whatever it might be. So people started to get familiarity. They knew each other's voices because they were listening. That's probably another. People don't often do talk, but do we really listen? Now you're this new sense of listening and pretty quickly it came into a situation where we started planning events to this, spanning off your last mention of presence marketing. So we moved right into events and some of the best moments we had was meeting people for the first time but feeling like you had known them so long, feeling like your biggest supporter or your brother from another mother or whatever it might be. You know. Just incredible human beings and really diverse.

Ely Beckman (Glassy): 26:29

And it didn't take very long a few months before we were planning massive series of really elaborate events. That's where I shine. That's one of the areas where I shine is creating those events. And then a lot of that comes from fashion and fashion shows some of the hardest production work you can do, in my opinion. So from there it's like create real experiences and then when you're meeting people, you're hearing their voice and now there's familiarity and you're so excited to meet people. That's a whole vibe, as opposed to networking event where you just walk in, you never met anyone, you never heard their voice. It's awkward, there's just social tension and friction you haven't cut through yet. So, yeah, present, I think that's what it's all about really getting people together to really face face to face.

FOTF - Clifton: 27:11

And these events. You mentioned a theme of diversity and, compared to the echo chamber, were these events an expression of that diversity as well?

Ely Beckman (Glassy): 27:22

The first show we put together, the first art show we put together, had 70 artists in, I think, six continents I don't even know how many countries, but it was just this massive uh ray of really high level artwork that was the question of that. The people that were there, the people that were involved, the people that were helping move the needle on things, uh, the people that were at the events themselves and flying in from all over the place Wow.

FOTF - Victoria: 27:48

I remember when we connected on a call a couple of weeks before this podcast, you mentioning some kind of road trip tour of different events and festivals. That's something of the future too.

Ely Beckman (Glassy): 28:00

Yeah, there's actually a couple of things. One is, as part of Continuum, our private entrepreneurs network, is that we're connected with a lot of event producers putting CoinAgenda and a number of others, so we use these as regular, like periodic meetups, and so people might be flying in to LA or flying in to Vegas or Miami those are our three main cities for these different types of events and so, like about once a month or so, we have these as an opportunity for people to actually meet face to face, bill whatever sign deals you know help. It's like an accelerated matchmaking opportunity. So we've definitely carried that play, that play from the playbook forward and keep running it, whether that be activations or just simply being present there or very, very integral to actually producing the programming of the stage, like for we produce the digital assets stage the whole two days, like every speaker we were, we had selected and curated and we're side chats and everything yeah, what is one of your activations?

FOTF - Victoria: 29:05

that's like an immersive experience at the event.

Ely Beckman (Glassy): 29:08

My favorite ones was one that we did at Basel, that actually that story world project that I was talking about, where we had all the artists sign up for the accelerator from Glass Haus. We brought that out as a stealth launch. We rented five yachts and we had five yacht captains drive in succession the boats down the Miami River and along the river we had AR exhibits placed on the banks. That was relevant to our story world, like we did, like a whole river as if it was a natural history museum.

Ely Beckman (Glassy): 29:39

And these AR were cited to say, like this building 3000 years ago, housed like a temple of the, never related to the story and it would. Just so that was. Yeah, that was probably one of my favorite ones that we've done. That sounds magical, like they all got tied together Yachts together, everyone's just dancing and jumping and swimming. And then the sun went down and we went on a little cruise and it was yeah, it felt like you were in a video game by nighttime.

FOTF - Clifton: 30:11

Wow and we went on a little cruise and it was yeah, it felt like you were in a video game. By nighttime is like the best thing in the world have level experiences. I was like we're in a video game. I just love how that this progression you sort of reduced human experience to just voice and then, through your journey, you've gone all the way to arused events in an immersive, transformative world, and I'd love to hear, now that we've had that through-line established, what's your favorite part of creating transformative experiences?

Ely Beckman (Glassy): 30:38

I think it's just the feeling you get when you're there. It's like the best feeling, it's like among the best feelings, like real human connection, connection, like doing something you haven't done before. Also, it's almost immediately a way that you're trying to do something that's so difficult on so many levels, that it's like pushing you past the point of what's possible, yeah, pushing you point of what's like physically, maybe even good for you.

Ely Beckman (Glassy): 31:04

I can't even tell you by the time it was the day of how tired I was. I was like I didn't just like pick what? What flag are we gonna fly on which yacht? I remember like looking in the bag, like I don't even have what it tastes to just pick up these few flags right now, but somehow you dig deep enough that you get past that. So it's like when I love this one quote, I'll probably misquote it, but it's like when the strength of a man runs out, it's his will that sustains him.

FOTF - Clifton: 31:30

Something along those lines.

Ely Beckman (Glassy): 31:32

And it's true, like you expose, like what really matters, what relationships will crumble under that level of pressure, what people thrive or kind of rise to the occasion, maybe find even a strength that they didn't know they had. So I think there's a lot of levels of just, first of all, doing challenging things, but when the details are right and you're actually executing, you might have been in pain the whole time, but then, by the time you actually get to the top of the mountain step, was somehow worth it. And it's really the people. It's like the life moments, that's what I call them. What is the cost or what is the price of a life moment, something that you'll never forget, like because of you and the people that were there, like the relationships were deepened, or even if you never talked to you just know that, no matter anytime you see them in the future, they'll never forget either, like that wasn't like oh, it was another night at the club.

Ely Beckman (Glassy): 32:21

You're like no one had another probably day in their whole life where they were on with that group of people in that time Like it was just a special time.

Ely Beckman (Glassy): 32:29

Yeah, people remember it and there's just something about that feeling that continues to drive me Like I want to make more of those. We had a track of trying to outdo our Basel. That was actually during our Basel, during like the VIP days of our Basel. So every year we're like, how do we outdo ourselves? But we already set the bar kind of high, we figured out.

FOTF - Victoria: 32:47

Yeah, I can relate to your like when your strength runs out, like, dig in and find the will. I've been there many times for sure, and I know Clifton has as well and sometimes, like in that chaos, incredible magic can happen is what we're seeing, with a lot of presence-based experiences and immersive experiences like that. It's like when you come in with such a clear intention and center of what you want to create from that experience, you kind of harmonize and find those aligned people and you find ways to meet each other in the crowds of chaos, the throngs of people. And you know experience that at Burning man, different festivals, conventions.

Ely Beckman (Glassy): 33:29

Absolutely. It's like going through a battle with someone Like the relationships you build in that circumstance. It's just different than like your circumstance.

FOTF - Clifton: 33:40

Yeah.

Ely Beckman (Glassy): 33:41

It's a nice park. You're like okay, oh, we're hanging out at the beach. You're like okay. You're like, remember that time when we didn't sleep together, like we didn't sleep at all, or like, however long it was, you're like, yeah, best times of our life, like deeper relationship. It teaches you more about yourself. That's part of your identity, that's part of your strengths, like another badge of honor that you get to wear for yourself yeah those are all.

Ely Beckman (Glassy): 34:05

I guess that's just what's come. Also, it's just crazy enough. I'm like when you start planning it, it seems like it's going to be easy and then when you actually go to do it. You realize if you knew it was going to be that hard.

FOTF - Victoria: 34:14

You would have said no expanding moments. Yeah, at the breathe convention we originally got a 20 by 20 booth and then they were like how would you?

FOTF - Clifton: 34:22

guys like another space to double the size it was 10 by 10.

FOTF - Victoria: 34:27

10 by 10 originally.

FOTF - Clifton: 34:28

And then, a few days later, you want that doubled Like, just in case.

Ely Beckman (Glassy): 34:33

And then the weekend before.

FOTF - Clifton: 34:34

They're like how do you want that doubled space, doubled, you know. So 4X. We're like what that?

Ely Beckman (Glassy): 34:42

sounds great, but that's 4X the printing, 4X the moving, 4X the body.

FOTF - Victoria: 34:49

So we had to rise to the occasion and do like that accelerated expansion called up Dr Vibe. We're like, hey, do you have more Viber Acoustic Therapy Pads for our immersive experience? We have like our one booth planned out. Now we have two booths so we could make what we want of it, you know, just to create that kind of rejuvenation station experience for the convention goers. So it was like we didn't sleep.

FOTF - Clifton: 35:13

Yeah, we were in the car ride on the way to Vegas and Dr Vibe was maybe not coming. You know, we had to convince him and hold the note.

FOTF - Victoria: 35:24

And that's really what I heard answer yeah.

Ely Beckman (Glassy): 35:27

And I swear that's when your will really matters. You're like no, I have the will for this person to come. I have more will for them to come than they even have.

FOTF - Clifton: 35:36

We're like your life will change if you come, and I love what you said too is it brings relationships closer that lean into that and it demonstrates the strength, or lack thereof, of other relationships that you thought was close. You know that trial by fire and we have one client who she continuously puts on these events that just seem to be that kind of expansive experience with ridiculous timelines and like how is this at all gonna come together? And she's like it just does.

FOTF - Victoria: 36:06

There's just some magic budget or like minimal budget.

Ely Beckman (Glassy): 36:10

Yeah, I saw data or I I heard from someone. This is really just secondhand information, but they said out of all the most stressful jobs, at least according to this one particular poll, all this the hundred most stressful jobs in america that event producer falls number six, so which I can kind of see like it is really stressful.

FOTF - Victoria: 36:29

Yeah.

Ely Beckman (Glassy): 36:31

And I felt like I hit a fork in the road at one point where I was like, look, I'm gonna burn myself out again. I've already done this so many times as an entrepreneur. I'm gonna burn myself out again, totally. So I need to pick a left or right.

Ely Beckman (Glassy): 36:42

I have a fork in the road double down on events or double down on consulting and the entrepreneur side but you can't really do both and after probably six months of deciding on the consulting arm, I was like that was the worst decision. I should have stayed with events. That was like clearly the better way to go and sure enough, that popped back up on the radar and it's been a pretty consistent mainstay and I would say probably the how can I say this Like the best things that are happening right now business wise, because of relationships and people that we've met there in person at these different events that are so wild, rather than just tell, oh, I could just do it on Telegram, I could just do it on Twitter, or, you know, when you have those life experiences, you realize it's so limiting to be audio only, it's so limiting on other companies. Algorithm, face-to-face events critical, critical part of how we grow as entrepreneurs.

FOTF - Victoria: 37:36

I'm going to let the algorithm of the universe guide me. Where am I supposed to go? Who's supposed to find me?

Ely Beckman (Glassy): 37:44

I swear I'm home, I'm lazy, I live on an island. I don't even want to leave my island. I was like walk to the beach island, I don't even want to leave my island. I was like like walk to the beach, so like we walk a lot, so we're it's not like we're lazy that we don't want to walk around. I don't want to drive other places. But then you go to eat Denver. Suddenly you're like you're an operative, you're like a secret operative, like you have to use your intuition, like all these faculty have to come on online to be like in the right place, right time to meet the right restaurants, like every little thing. Suddenly your intuition, I feel like the matrix absolutely.

FOTF - Clifton: 38:13

That's awesome, and this is a thread of human potential, right, and our podcast, this is the startup of human potential. And so how do we continue to cultivate and expand on our human potential? And with that, I'm curious what does human potential mean to you? I?

Ely Beckman (Glassy): 38:31

think I'd like to believe that it's a potential to do things peacefully, that it's a potential to do like to actually achieve harmony. What did you use a great word earlier I don't know if it was congruence or just like being on the same page or for, even if you're not on the same page, that you have a way to still coexist, like, I think, peace. I think really like that, um, support, collaboration, advocacy of each other, of one another, like actually supporting each other. Um, the idea of individuality was like way over promoted and more like we were talking about earlier, like inter interdependence. If it was a bit more focused on that, I think we'd be further and realize that the actions and choices that we make really do affect other people.

Ely Beckman (Glassy): 39:19

With the benefit of having that experience with Clubhouse and the algorithm and growing these massive clubs and regularly having stages of over a thousand people and of them, like every single person was getting it Come speak, come speak. It would be like hilarious. We'd have hundreds of people that unmic and speak at the same time and yet out of that we cultivated a different sense where people actually had to listen so they knew when they could speak without getting moved down to the audience you know like, without getting moved off the ability you know, not being on stage and not being able to speak. You just saw literally million-dollar successes pop off on a regular basis when people had a voice, when they had an ability to be on a stage with even just a few hundred people on a regular basis. After about three to six months, that person had enough support behind them for them to see personal prosperity it was a prosperity machine.

Ely Beckman (Glassy): 40:15

The likes of I always dreamed of but didn't know if it was possible.

Ely Beckman (Glassy): 40:19

Definitely hadn't witnessed before but then after that it hasn't been the same, right, it's not every other. Oh so. And so broke a million dollars on their sales of their art or so, and so this other group had another multi. Literally, it was like million dollar successes were happening on a regular basis. It was just the case of the matter and it just goes to show what local support can do. Even in the quantity of a few hundred or a few thousand people that would band together, how economic impact was able to be achieved. That's beautiful leverage. But now it's not. Now everyone suffers.

Ely Beckman (Glassy): 40:51

It's like if you guys would just get together a little bit more support like a little less of a reason why to go your separate ways and this also occurred to say earlier. It's like when you have a family like your brother might do something you don't like and at some point you're like we got to get over it. Because we're blood, we're family, we have to get over like but it. But I think a lot of people on the internet they don't feel that. They're like I could just run my own separate way. The slightest inconvenience or the slightest friction, I'm just going to go my own separate way.

Ely Beckman (Glassy): 41:19

Don't find that economic prosperity or social prosperity of having more advocates and more supporters and more ability to get their artwork seen. It's crazy and so basic. You're like people aren't really asking for like that much. Like, can I make some artwork and a thousand people see it? We're not even asking for like a thousand people to go buy it. Like, can we get out of 10,000 of my followers? Could I get even a thousand people to see what I post? The answer is generally not, generally, no, that is not the case, but the opposite being true, that if they could, then they would see that prosperity If people leaned in even to the quantity of a thousand people you actually economies bursting open.

FOTF - Clifton: 42:11

A thousand true fans right yeah, I love, I love this duality of you. Know, the way in which the relationship is formed correlates to the stability of that relationship in the long haul. So if it's a very quick ad oh, let me just add this person, follow this person well then it's a very quick add. Oh, let me just add this person, follow this person. Well then it's a very quick unfollow this person versus like, oh man, we went through the ringer here, we committed to this experience and now we have this deep relationship. Then, hey, you know, you can be yourself and challenges may arise in a relationship, but we'll still have those ties.

FOTF - Clifton: 42:50

That's a really potent thing, especially for coming together in transformative technologies and in communities, the oversaturation of all these pockets of community that you can be a part of and then leave from, walk away from. And so it's like how do you build a solid foundation of relationships that you can actually have challenging experiences to empower the shift that we're all calling forth? So how are you incorporating that in all that you're doing with Continuum and with just all these experiences you've cultivated? Was your architecture program very intense as well? I know at you it was crazy.

Ely Beckman (Glassy): 43:36

We literally were up 26 hours a day. A regular night was sleeping a half hour before class, literally under your desk on a piece of cardboard. Wow, and that was just.

Ely Beckman (Glassy): 43:50

That was normal, like that wasn't a a oh, this one crazy kid does this. It was like no, that was just a normal thing. Wow, yeah, and so so? Yeah, I should have answered it like that. You asked about ambition. Yeah, they just trained us wrong. They trained us to have more projects than we could ever really handle, like. The silver lining of that is for you to know how to prioritize and move things forward accordingly, because life is being an entrepreneur is there's so much chaos for you to have to cut through. It was just so much work. Like. We could have just had our design class and that would have been work to be up 20 hours out of every day, but we had five. So there's four other classes that also need 10 to 20 hours a day to stay on top of that was our, and it was a five-year program. Wow, yeah, brilliant out there training ground for sure.

Ely Beckman (Glassy): 44:38

Pp is so crazy. I wouldn't just do that, I was also doing like extracurricular launching company even then and doing cultural events and giant art shows and art and jazz events where we bring musicians and have art decked out all over the club or the lounge or whatever it is all over Lower East Side and I don't know. I was just doing a lot of things even while, I was in school.

FOTF - Victoria: 45:01

I'm curious, as you're sharing this, what kind of cultivated you to that point you know about your upbringing, like how many activities and school and things you balanced back then, because you know it starts young.

Ely Beckman (Glassy): 45:14

It was just always an overachiever, maybe under challenged, a high performer I can say it like that. I learned easy. I can say it like that I'm a fast learner. I was always a fast learner, so school was easy, did really well on tests and was always looking for a bigger challenge, and generally that was not met up until architecture school.

FOTF - Clifton: 45:37

Whoa Okay.

Ely Beckman (Glassy): 45:39

This is even more than I was bargaining for.

FOTF - Victoria: 45:42

Yeah, I felt that way about high school. I went to a specialized engineering and science and technology high school and up until that point I didn't feel super challenged. And then I had all these extracurricular activities on top of that too and I honestly experienced my first burnout back then in high school.

Ely Beckman (Glassy): 45:59

I think it took a solid decade to get over college, like even just wow, patient and otherwise Wow.

FOTF - Clifton: 46:05

Wow. So you've had these transformative experiences. Certainly architecture school five years of it was intense. Now you have these events, these pop-ups that come around. What's next for you?

Ely Beckman (Glassy): 46:17

Well, part of it is wisening up a little.

Ely Beckman (Glassy): 46:19

So, instead of like being the one that's producing the entire event, from the conception all the way through execution, you are leveraging the kind of mycelial network, like they would connect to the oak trees and they would connect to the ferns. So the process of that being implemented is with continuum. We're connected with a lot of event producers. But then number six, most stressful job, you know, we'll do the vip, bring all the investors, or we'll add to the guest list, or we'll we'll add to it, add value and bring nice amenities so that we can, first of all, look out for our membership and either giving them discounts, getting them into the right rooms, knowing the right after parties to go to those kind of things. Um, again, with a high priority of getting people face to face and a high priority of building relationships, events is just something we need to be doing or integrated with in one way or another. So the way we do that now is actually letting other people that are experts and have that entire focus do their focus and we bring the additional layers of value.

Ely Beckman (Glassy): 47:23

What's next? It's interesting because some of the people I've talked to, even in the last week or two, have reminded me about my bigger mission. I think in a lot of ways, I've changed how I talk about what I do in order to be understandable to a wider audience or just to more people in general. So, instead of talking like brain busting ambitions of like wealth redistribution, I talk about the resource gap. Well, there's a resource gap, and then, instead of talking about it for the whole world, I talked about it like for entrepreneurs, even though it's fractal system and again it's a different type of an expression.

Ely Beckman (Glassy): 48:00

Your ambition really is wealth redistribution, is really protocol level solutions, automation, leveraging the technology and the culture that we have to bring about a more equitable system or more equal system, a system where people actually can gain access to information, that can gain access to each other in terms of the right counterparts and that could be done in an intelligent way, digitally and in real life. Uh, some of the new projects that probably don't even have the clearance to talk about, necessarily, but to answer question is to start expressing this continuum, and this is part of what we're calling for Continuum 2030. By 2030, this is what we'd like to see in effect is a real life network where there's physical buildings and structures that are tying together these incubation kind of centers where people in a living environment can tap into these resources, much like we're doing that in a digital and virtual way currently.

Ely Beckman (Glassy): 48:55

So, instead of just a moment of like once a month or two days out of the month to be at a conference, those entrepreneurs that elect it that they could actually live in an environment where they're doing this, they're living and breathing it and they're surrounded by resources and support to give them the edge on launching a successful product kind of like creating hubs or nodes in different spaces that have been identified as big community followings exactly.

FOTF - Victoria: 49:22

I mean like live work situations yeah, clifton and I ran a conscious entrepreneur, co-working, co-living space for about three years in Topanga, just outside Los Angeles, and yeah you, maybe you could talk me out of it.

FOTF - Victoria: 49:35

You're like, listen, don't do that we engineer our lessons, for sure, and all the different new beliefs that came from that for how we would do things differently. Just like you know, you learn from your experiences switching over from clubhouse to twitter spaces and how some things carry over, some things don't fully so, but it's all about the frequency and the culture that is being cultivated in that type of community, because, you know, several people could be working on a similar mission, creating these nodes, but each one has its own distinct flavor and distinct message and offering and it'll resonate with a different type of community, for sure.

Ely Beckman (Glassy): 50:17

Absolutely. You know it's interesting hearing you speak. It reminds me of a couple other things. One is like what was I doing before blockchain? Part of what I was doing before trying to learn about NFTs was working with economic development associations, working with chambers of commerce, working with the regional economic development up here in the Northeast and on a state level, on a regional level, and really asking questions like how do we build incredible communities, how do we add resilience and a sense of equity and all these things in real life communities? How do we restore main streets? Other things, like even in my personal life with my family, like really seeking and questing for a quote unquote community.

Ely Beckman (Glassy): 50:58

We live in a place of either co-working or co-living or whatever We've. We tried so many things. We went on a 10,000 mile journey to go visit all these different communities intentional communities and otherwise, from cows all the way, you know, all over the place, earth ships and all these things. And I'll tell you, out of all the places we looked, we did not find what we were looking for. So they either we have to keep looking and it's somewhere else. Maybe it's in costa rica, maybe somewhere else, or um, or we need to. I think yeah, and I also homeschool my kids two of my children- we homeschool and connecting with a homeschool.

Ely Beckman (Glassy): 51:30

My kids two of my children we homeschool, and connecting with a homeschool community has been probably the first expression since our little amazing club Blip on the Radar, Probably the first community of real life, at least face-to-face real life community, where I'm like, wow, here these other parents are cultivating the same values in their children. Amazing, yeah, I don't know a few dozen families or something like that, so it's not a massive, massive community, but even still you're like, oh no, this is it Like. This is the look and feel and this is what that thing smells like.

FOTF - Victoria: 52:01

Definitely. That's exactly what a lot of entrepreneurs do. You go around and you try to find the thing that you came up with an idea to create and idea to create and you're like, well, it doesn't exist. Does that mean I'm?

Ely Beckman (Glassy): 52:11

supposed to create it? That's another answer to your earlier question. Why am I building so many things? Because I looked for them and I couldn't find them and I had to just make it for my own. I needed a hammer and I didn't have one, so I had to make a hammer.

FOTF - Clifton: 52:23

Yep, nice, and how unique is that perspective? Do you find that you attract a lot of people in that similar view of life, or I think it's a very rare quality.

Ely Beckman (Glassy): 52:38

I think, if anything, we're like conditioning machines and we're really exceptional at one thing which is being conditioned. Yeah, and on our circumstance and context and conditioning you get our output Like.

Ely Beckman (Glassy): 52:50

that's pretty much that would be my summary for humanity, and most people haven't gone through a conditioning that would yield them to think like an engineer or inventor, or they might think like it. They're like oh, I had this cool idea, it just lingers. But their real overriding conditioning is like seek safety and find happiness in routines, and sameness is good and difference is bad. Like the little simple thing like that, like even if they think differently, like fight them. And I think to some degree that's even biologically programmed. The conditioning can go in either way. Like there's, these kids are really kind. Like granted, they'll push each other down, they'll play a football. It's not like no, it's perfect. But someone sees that someone else didn't have a lunch and they just their kid, their parents, not even there. They reach in their bag and they're like hey, you want this. Hey, johnny, you want this. Like these are real kids, they're looking out for each other. They're like this is what humanity can be like.

FOTF - Victoria: 53:43

So yeah.

Ely Beckman (Glassy): 53:43

I'm driven by that. I'd like to see more of that.

FOTF - Victoria: 53:46

Yeah, that you're homeschooling your kids, because that conditioning is present in schools, so you can choose how to cultivate your children rather than what the default mode is. And it's great to find a community of others that are doing that very similar thing, because we're brought up with that mindset that you just talked about of like seek safety, seek approval because we're tribal being. Of like seek safety, seek approval because we're tribal being.

Ely Beckman (Glassy): 54:12

It's not the same, it's not good and that's not. That actually is the post, kind of mentality.

FOTF - Victoria: 54:18

And.

Ely Beckman (Glassy): 54:18

I swear. If you know, even without getting out of the conspiracy theories, it's become a handicap for our evolution as a species, whether it be for entrepreneur or be how we educate or like.

Ely Beckman (Glassy): 54:28

In my opinion, some of the worst things that could ever happen are war, and if wars are happening, then we need to look at the cause of those type of things and start reverse engineering all the way down to how children are raised, the words that we're using, the imagery, the media, like it's a culture-wide thing and it's a global thing, and we don't want one culture and one thing, but we do need to find a way to coexist, like I'll just hear another, whether that be among five kids in a classroom or a dozen kids or a hundred in a clubhouse room, or a thousand people in a twitter space, or whatever it might be.

Ely Beckman (Glassy): 55:01

Um, that idea of finding commonality and finding a way for people to have experiences that evolve them, like they get to evolve, but it's not because someone else is suffering or being left out or being cut out of the picture, like so I guess that's a lot of. What drives me is just to create the framework that can operate like that, without creating a doctrine that forces people to do it one way or another. Playground, and then if you want to go on the slide, you go there. If you want to go on the swings, you go there. There, if you want to go on the swings, you go there. But our playground is more like if you need funding resources over to the left, if you need mentorship over to the right, awesome.

FOTF - Victoria: 55:38

It very much sounds like your definition of human potential earlier, about coexisting and peace. So what's the best way for people to connect with you if they're an entrepreneur looking for resources or people wanting to learn more about the Web3 space?

Ely Beckman (Glassy): 55:57

Probably the top two channels that I spend a lot of time on is Twitter at Glassy Music and the same for Telegram at Glassy Music. Our key websites where you can get a ton of information, as an entrepreneur, about our journey, about how to connect and just build successful businesses, is our media outlet moonriserio, just like it sounds, m-o-o-n-r-i-s-e-rio. Glass Haus is our venture studio website and the immersive arm of what we're doing. The website there is Glass Haus. It's spelled like the German Bauhaus, so it's G-L-A-S-S-H-A-U-S, dot I-O. And for the private business network, the website there to get more information is thecontinuumnetwork, so it's a dot network. Is the domain, the ways of getting direct access. There's contact there that will find its way to my team. That will definitely lead directly to me, but if you wanted to reach out to me straight away, twitter or Telegram is a perfect way to do that.

FOTF - Victoria: 56:59

Awesome and any last words you want to share with the listeners Before we wrap up.

Ely Beckman (Glassy): 57:05

I would just like to say thank you again. This is really probably the last direction or conversation I was expecting to have, although I don't know what conversation was I expecting to have. We do so much networking. We usually spend the entire conversation just talking about what you summarized in like 30 seconds. I was like, oh great, we got that over with. Now we get to have a real conversation. So I don't have to give all this background, so I just really want to say thank you. It's been a wonderful conversation and I wish the best to both of you. I hope Faces the Future gets such a huge following. Just seeing how you hold this space and hold these conversations, I'm eager to go back and look through some of the archives, so I would encourage some of the listeners to do the same.

FOTF - Victoria: 57:46

Amazing. Thank you. Thank you, Glassy.

FOTF - Clifton: 57:50

Well, thank.