0 (2s):
Who's ready to rock today, Fire Nation. JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs On Fire brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network with great shows like the shakeup today, we'll be breaking down the future of passion to profits to drop these value bombs. I brought Josh Fabian into EOFire studios from high school dropout to CEO. Josh is on a mission to change the structure of the passion economy for gamers with Metafy. We'll be talking about the gaming world and how Metafy's disrupting the space. We'll talk about how to make a living in the gaming world. We'll talk about becoming a coach. We'll talk about building and public. What the heck that means. And so much more.

0 (42s):
When we get back from thanking our sponsors, chances are you're no stranger to high deductible health insurance plans. Why is it that there seems to be no good options. Introducing CrowdHealth visits JoinCrowdHealth.com/fit and enter code fire at sign up for a special offer. That's JoinCrowdHealth.com/fit promo code fire CrowdHealth is not health insurance. It's a community powered alternative terms and conditions may apply interested in BDB sales strategies. The salesman podcast is the world's most downloaded B2B sales podcast, hosts, Wilburn and sales professionals learn how to find buyers and win business in a moderate effective and ethical way. I recently tuned into Will's episode on digital body language, how to have better zoom sales meetings.

0 (1m 22s):
And I love how he provides a relatable examples. So the strategies are easy to understand, listen to the salesman podcast, wherever you get your podcasts. Josh say what's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with.

1 (1m 40s):
Well, Fire Nation, I'm excited to be here. Something that I believe about success that most don't, I would say for me, the biggest thing I believe is that the success you get is often proportional to the sacrifice you've given. And it was startups in particular. A big piece of that is it's really hard to have a great social life and great success. It's really great to, or it's really difficult to spend a ton of time with family and friends and all of that and have this great success or watch TV and play games. So for me, success is a conditional side.

0 (2m 21s):
I mean, Fire Nation. People want it all. You just can't have it all. You can't have it all. You really have to sit down at one point in your life and decide, what is it you really want? What are the one, two, maybe three things that you really want and go get those things and stop trying to get it all because that's just a house of cards. And today we're gonna, we're going to be talking about the future of passion to profits. It's why rod Josh here, because he's a great person to talk to about this conversation. You heard about him in the introduction. We talking about the gaming world and about his company. Metafy because I want you Fire Nation to really be able to understand what it takes to build a company that disrupts the space.

0 (3m 6s):
So when you're building your company, you're also a disruptor, not just a copier, not just fitting in with the crowd, but disrupting. So what exactly is the gaming world first and foremost, Josh, for people that may not be that familiar with it. And how is your company? Metafy disrupting the space

1 (3m 27s):
And we're talking about the world of gaming. There's a ton of expert performers that are streaming on Twitch and people are watching them play and learning from them and engaging with them as fans. But they're also on YouTube or also on Patrion. And that's primarily how they're making money today. The problem, however, is that those in the middle, right? The middle-class at these platforms and to drone. I know because I was a member of that. Middle-class for quite a while, I was, I was top 20 in the world and a game called clash, Royale, a streaming on switch every day. And I badly, badly wanted to make a living doing this, but I failed and I failed not because of my ability in the game or my talent.

1 (4m 12s):
I found because despite my audience, despite all of that, despite having four to 500 to sometimes one to 2000 people watching me, anytime I streamed, I wasn't making money because the number of people you need engaging with you on platforms like YouTube and Twitch is so, so high that everyone's struggling and what's Metafy, we are helping give a additional option, but that option is enabling them to do what they love like teaching by, you know, working one-on-one with their audience instead of trying to stream become a celebrity. And so far it's, it's working, you know, so far where we're, we've enabled more than 600 coaches to make money engaging with.

0 (5m 3s):
Well, let's get specific about that. How exactly is Metafy helping gamers make a living doing what they're best at? Like let's get real specific with some examples.

1 (5m 13s):
Yeah. So today it's one-on-one coaching and asynchronous coaching asynchronous in the sense that a student will upload recorded footage of their game play. And then the coach can leave feedback in the timestamp level saying at this exact second, you should've done this or you should've thought about this. So for us, it is through education where a student will pay a coach to, to teach them how to play a video game or a skill-based game like poker, even at an hourly or

0 (5m 43s):
Fire Nation. This is something that I really think is fascinating because Josh knew the gaming world inside out. He was a huge success. He was one of the top people in his game and he still couldn't find a way to make money. So he said, there's a problem here. If one of the people in this game with hundreds, if not thousands of people watching them every single time you plays, if I can't make enough money, something's wrong with this, how can I fix this? How can I disrupt this space? And I kind of want to dive deeper into this last thing you were talking about because gamers, they can make money gaming, but what kind of living can a gamer make being a coach? I mean, it makes so much sense to me with like the timestamps. They can go back, they can study.

0 (6m 23s):
I mean, there's actually a few things right now in the, we can go down this road later, cause I'm pretty interested about it. You know, in the NFT we're are really coming up with all these games and you know, you can make money by staking and by earning and by playing and by winning. And I'm just like, I don't want to sit down and try to figure this game out, just like from scratch, but I can literally see myself hiring a coach for sure. To get pretty good, pretty fast. In fact, I did this a little while ago, maybe a year ago when I got into settlers of Catan, which is just an UN it's a board game, but it's an app as well on the phone. And I just want to watch a bunch of YouTube videos, tutorials. They weren't personally coaching me, but it helps so much. And like, I can just see how coach take that to the next level. So what kind of skill sets do you need to be able to add a revenue when it comes to coaching in the gamer space and kind of talk us through this

1 (7m 13s):
For us, we look for coaches that are among the best in the world and what they do. And a natural question that comes from that is, well, Josh being the best player doesn't necessarily make you the best teacher, but that's where our platform comes in because we're helping to lower the barrier to entry and really bridge the chasm. That is the gap between great player, great teacher. And we're doing that with the research around how people learn. You know, we know that mastery is central to the human condition. You know, these are, these are things that are going to endure for as long as people exist. As long as you believe that there is an opportunity for us to come in and help these expert performers understand how to operate more like a teacher.

1 (7m 56s):
And we're doing that through things like post-session summaries, where after our session happens, we ask questions to kind of bridge that gap. Those three questions are, you know, the first question is what did the student do well in this session? Because we know that expert performance starts from a place of passion. And we want to encourage that they're leading as a positive. The second question that the coach answers is what should the student work on on their own time where we encourage deliberate practice, the bedrock of progression. And then the third question is what do you want to work on in the next session with a student where we encourage retention? But we also reduce anxiety because we know that increased anxiety leads to decreased comprehensive learning environments. And all of that to say, we look for expert performers because they have one, an audience that supports them and cares about them and follows them.

1 (8m 42s):
But also they're, they know the game better than the creative or the game note again. And those are the prerequisites that we have today. And we're very dedicated to keeping that curation on a platform right now in the future, we may open it up to more people.

0 (8m 59s):
So this is fascinating Fire Nation. Again, it's going back to identifying what you know is wrong with an industry, with a vertical, with a niche and saying, how can I come in and make this better, make this more sticky, make evangelists out of what I'm creating. Have people actually talk and share and spread the word about what it is that I'm doing. Have people have success and be vested and invested in their success? Like there's so many products and services that are out there that are looking for that one-time sale. They're like, if I can just get this person to buy one time like that, I can just go find someone else to buy. And they don't have this buy-in to their customers are clients, they're consumers of their content.

0 (9m 42s):
Whoever that individual is to their success. And you can see how Josh is making that such a priority. So we're gonna be talking about some interesting things on this topic. When we get back Fire Nation from thinking our sponsors, looking for a single place online where you can access next level project management tools, plus organized documents, systems, apps, and more with your team. Introducing notion notion is an all-in-one team collaboration tool that combines everything you need to run your business effectively in one space. The best part it's simple, powerful, and beautifully designed for startups notion can provide a full-on operating system for running every aspect of your company. Keeping everyone aligned as you grow fast and take on more it's time to make speed your advantage without the silos and context.

0 (10m 27s):
Switching that slows companies down notion may be the missing piece. Your startup needs to grow and get more done. Want to learn more Notion is running a special offer right now just for startups. Get up to $1,000 off notions team a plan by going to Notion.com/startups. To give you a sense, that's almost a year of free Notion for a team of 10. Again, that's Notion.com/startups to receive up to $1,000 in free credit to use Notion with your team. That's up to a $1,000 value. When you go to Notion.com/startups, how have we been able to continue to create scalable systems and stay in touch with our customers, regardless of whether we're in the office or on a plane with the help of our CRM, if you're ready to grow bigger, faster, and stronger as a business and as a team, then the flexible and customizable HubSpot CRM platform is for you.

0 (11m 20s):
The HubSpot CRM platform gives you the opportunity to have a purpose built solution tailored to your business and team, whether your company is big or small has dozens of systems in place or zero HubSpot is here to scale and grow with you, your team and your business. I've come to realize this. After several years of scaling and growing entrepreneurs on fire, our CRM is no longer just a sales tool. It's the heart of our business. It's time to ditch the over-engineered clunky and unreliable platforms that are costing you more time and money than they're worth and check out the HubSpot CRM platform today. Learn more about how you can customize your CRM platform with Hubspot at hubspot.com. The secret is out. Our health insurance system is broken and more than half of Americans are literally and figuratively paying for it.

0 (12m 4s):
You're on the hook for thousands of dollars in deductibles, copays and are facing sky high premiums. And you feel stuck because to be honest, it doesn't seem like there are any good options. Introducing CrowdHealth, CrowdHealth, isn't health insurance. It's a simple and better way to pay for your medical expenses. Envision a community of people, just like you, who are tired of paying for a broken system and who have come together to share a simple, flexible, and affordable way to pay for healthcare. See any doctor you want easily scan bills through their app and even receive virtual care. Anytime, anywhere, CrowdHealth is able to offer amazing prices because of its community of health conscious members in Fire Nation. A limited time, you can get your first month free and after you've been a member, CrowdHealth will include a fitness wearable. That's 30 days to try risk-free plus a fitness wearable visit JoinCrowdHealth.com/fits and enter code fire at signup that's JoinCrowdHealth.com/fit promo code fire CrowdHealth is not health insurance.

0 (12m 55s):
It's a community powered alternative terms and conditions may apply. So Josh, one thing that I do find fascinating is that you are openly dedicated to a philosophy that's known as building in public. What does this mean? And how have you incorporated this philosophy into metaphor?

1 (13m 14s):
Building in public is something that we were doing before. It became this, this little clever title, you know, and sometimes I feel bad using this, this term and voting on public. And the only reason is because the open source community has been building in public for decades. And, you know, today we have the crypto community they're building in public, but there's now the sector of private companies, private startups that are building in public. And what that really means is we're pretty open about what we're doing. We're open about the good things, but also the bad things. And we're open about how much money we have in the bank and how we're using it, how we're deploying that capital and the biggest reason that it's important to needs, because the reality is regular people don't trust businesses anymore.

1 (14m 7s):
They don't trust the people in the ivory towers because they've been not treating them well for a long time. And with what we're doing at metaphor, we're asking regular people to trust us, to power their business, to be the backbone of their business in order to get them to trust us. I think we need to be incredibly transparent. And that's what building and public is to me is that transparency where I'm saying, Hey, if you're going to take this ride with us, then I want you to see how the sausage is made if you care.

0 (14m 38s):
So you did mention what's happening in cryptocurrency and the NFT world is, as I mentioned earlier on in the interview as well, what are you seeing in that space? Are you looking to incorporate anything in that space? Again, like it's just seeming every day, there's a, you know, 5, 10, 20, and few projects coming out. They're all promising to quote unquote, build a game on their roadmap and that this game is going to help them earn tokens or the user, the player to earn tokens that at some point could technically be worth money or whatever it might be like, what are you seeing in that universe right now?

1 (15m 13s):
I'm seeing a lot of innovation. And of course it was hype, right? There's a lot of, a lot of things happening in that community that are predicated on hype and hype alone that I don't think will last long-term, but I can, there's a lot of things that are happening, where they're bringing a new age of weird inner original to the internet that I think we'd lost. You know, the internet I grew up on as kind of died the internet, the internet of new grounds of MySpace profiles, where the music would play. And we all learn CSS because of it. That was the internet I grew up with later and I fell in love with, and then it became very corporate and it became very sterile.

1 (15m 55s):
And now with crypto, we're seeing this resurgence of the weird, where we're seeing novel, you know, solutions to common struggles that people haven't thought about. I think Axiom is a fantastic example where it's enabling people to make money in the third world in a meaningful way. So I'm really proud of what's happening in that community

0 (16m 19s):
Before you go on Josh a little bit, cause I'm curious about what you're about to say, but can you just for the audience take like a minute and describe what exactly AXI infinity is and the ways that people are literally, especially in third world countries making life-changing money.

1 (16m 34s):
Yeah, I think the best way that I would describe Axion infinity is it's Pokemon where you can make money simply playing it because every Pokemon or every app really has an intrinsic value that goes up as the engagement and adoption of vaccine infinity goes. And as a result, we have people who in the third world in particular are playing acting infinity because it's making them money because it, it actually is more profitable for them to play that than to work in a call center. And that is something that's really special because it's a game that people can engage with and they can play.

1 (17m 19s):
But it's, in my opinion, becoming a very novel equalizer in this new age of, of, of web. And I think that right now it's one of the most expensive collectable NFTs in the market. So I think it's very interesting because they're bringing video game mechanics and they're combining them with this play to earn economy. So I think it's, it's very, very interesting specially with the pandemic happening, which has decimated the third world, where many of them to work, you know, especially in the Philippines, they have to go into, you know, Manila, they've got to work in these stores and they can't do that when there's a lockdown happening.

0 (17m 59s):
So you dropped out of high school at the age of 16 years old when you did that, what were your plans at that time? And then let's talk about the evolvements to what you're doing. Now, tell us the journey.

1 (18m 12s):
Yeah, I wish I could say I had a plan. I did not have even a little bit of a plan. I was young, a riddle gum with a big chip on my shoulder and truth be told I was just a little angry at the world at the time. You know, I was adopted into an all white family. I was the only person of color in my school district. You know, it wasn't the easiest time. And a lot of people don't talk about the trauma of adoption, you know, of, of how that affects an individual mentally and how it affects the relationships that they then are able to have with others without fear of being given up again.

1 (18m 56s):
So I made a lot of decisions then that were, they were rooted in a lot of anger. So I didn't have plans so much as I wanted independence. I wanted to be away from a scenario where somebody could hurt me again, but it was a mess. I didn't know where my life was going. And I, I certainly never thought that I would be here, you know, as a CEO of a high growth startup with employees that are so, so much smarter than I am, you know, believing and sharing my vision.

0 (19m 26s):
Speaking of that vision, what is your vision for the future of Metafy?

1 (19m 30s):
Yeah, 1 million jobs in gaming. That's our vision enabling a new class of employment. You know, the future of work in my opinion is digital first. And I think that when we look at the next generation, when I look at like my kids and their friends, I mean, they're truly digital native. The what work looks like when they're adults is going to be so fundamentally different than what work looks like for us today. And when I think about that, I think, and I hope that companies like Metafy companies like, you know, sky Mavis who makes sexy infinity companies like cameo, all of us are, are pushing this change where people are enabled to work on the things they care about, the things that make them feel alive and not working the things that they have to work on because it keeps them alive.

1 (20m 25s):
I think that level of just passion in how we spend our life is where I hope the future of work is going. And that's, that's my vision of what we're building is really enabling the old guard to pass on the knowledge to the next generation with dignity.

0 (20m 42s):
So Josh, he talks about a lot of really interesting topics about the future, about honestly, areas that I'm really excited about right now, give us one takeaway that you really want to make sure Fire Nation gets from the entire conversation that we had here today. Give us a call to action about how we connect with you, your company, any, anything you want Fire Nation to know about. And then we'll say goodbye,

1 (21m 5s):
I'll give him a couple of bullets and I can do that. The first bullet is a state weird and original. It's so important. It's, it's such a breath of fresh air and it's what people want. And I think to, to, to resist being comfortable. So often patient happens because the last generation got very comfortable and then the next generation came that came along and they decided, ah, maybe we won't be so comfortable and we'll change things up. So I think that those would be my bullets. And then I think the last piece that I would say is loosen up, you know, it's okay to be yourself. Talk like you talk, don't try to be too professional.

1 (21m 48s):
And I think that when you look at our investor updates in public and look at my Twitter, I talked to my audience, like I talked to my friends and that resonates in a way that it would not have 10 years ago. And that's just a shift that we're having culturally people are tired of the corporate speak. So I think that advice will take you far when you're building around.

0 (22m 6s):
I love that advice because I get the question a lot. Like John, like if you could talk to your 20 year old self or your 15 year old self, what would you say? And I always say the same thing, which is chill out. I would tell myself to chill out to just relax. Like we always think that we need to be like on the precipice of something like so serious and so grown up and so real. And sometimes you just get too old and you're like, what was I dealing out with all that time? I could have just been chilling out and man, like, come on now, but how do you want to Fire Nation, Josh, to connect with you? Anything else you want to say? And then we'll say goodbye

1 (22m 40s):
On Twitter at Josh Fabian. And of course, please check out. Metafy, you know, we have coaches for everything from super smash brothers to league of legends, to poker, to daily fantasy sports. So give us,

0 (22m 55s):
What about splinter lands? Do you have a coach for that?

1 (22m 59s):
I think we do. Actually. We just onboarded one yesterday. Actually

0 (23m 2s):
I actually just invested in that project and again, I downloaded their app now and I'm just like, I have no idea because I've never played those like card games in my life. So I'm just like, so if you think about it, show me the info about how I can connect with that person. I will literally pay him on your platform to coach me cause I'm literally serious about it. So you're, you'll get a client right there for splinter lands. Cause it's something that I'm really interested in right now and Fire Nation. You're the average of the five people you spend the most time with. You've been hanging out with JF and JLD today. So please keep up the heat and head over to EOFire.com type Josh in the search bar in his show notes page will pop right up.

0 (23m 45s):
Josh you for sharing your truth, knowledge value with Fire Nation today. For that we salute you and we'll catch you on the flip side. Hey, Fire Nation today's value on content was brought to you by Josh and Fire Nation. The ideato.store contests by.store domains is live. You have the chance to win cash prizes up to $30,000 for sharing your online store ideas. Learn more at www.ideato.store that's www.ideato.store.

0 (24m 25s):
And I'll catch you there or I'll catch you on the flip side. Chances are you're no stranger to high deductible health insurance plans. Why is it that there seems to be no good options. Introducing CrowdHealth visits, JoinCrowdHealth.com/fit and enter code fire at sign up for a special offer. That's JoinCrowdHealth.com/fits promo code fire CrowdHealth is not health insurance. It's a community powered alternative terms and conditions may apply interested in BDB sales strategies. The salesman podcast is the world's most downloaded B2B sales podcast. Host will Barron helps sales professionals learn how to find buyers and win business in a moderate effective and ethical way. I recently tuned into Will's episode on digital body language, how to have better zoom sales meetings.

0 (25m 5s):
And I love how he provides a relatable example. So the strategies are easy to understand, listen to the salesman podcast, wherever you get your podcasts.