NorCal and Shill
A podcast where NFT artists tell stories, hosted by NorCal Guy. https://twitter.com/GuyNorcal
https://twitter.com/norcalandshill
NorCal and Shill
Creator Collection
Episode 25: Show Notes.
Today we're joined by CC, also known as Creator Collection. In his own words, he's here to “build community, relationships, projects, armed with an entrepreneurial mindset.” In this episode, we talk to CC about his innovative hybrid project entitled “Personalities”, which takes the rare traits that are present in generative projects and combines that with the beauty and excitement of one-of-one artwork. The project includes the contributions of over 30 artists. In this episode, CC shares how something like this comes together, the path to finding collectors who mirror the philosophy and ethos of the project, and a bit about how the formulaic pricing contributes to uplifting artists and the space in the long run. A fan of the entrepreneurial long-game, you'll learn the ways CC envisions this work and his role in the NFT space through the lens of patience and expansion over time, as well as the unanimously positive responses that reveal an exciting new layer to the future of our digital community. The conversation also touches on the importance of mental health breaks to prevent burnout, some of the harsh realities of being the founder of a startup, and some sage advice for new artists entering the space on how to divide their time! Tune in now to hear about this incredible project and what to expect next!
Key Points From This Episode:
● Meet CC, who has a hardware wallet but hasn't set it up yet.
● Hear about the hybrid project Personalities and how all the pieces came together.
● Being slow and steady in the fast-paced NFT world.
● How he selects the artists who get involved.
● Insight into the unanimously positive responses they've been receiving.
● The specific type of collector who will be attracted to the philosophy of this project.
● A little about CC's upbringing and the harsh realities of being an entrepreneur.
● The advice that CC lives by and the unlikely story of who gave it to him.
● Hear his advice to new artists entering the space on being 50/50.
● CC comments on the noise in the space at the moment and finding your authenticity.
● Addressing burnout among artists and how hard it is to come back from it.
● Why CC would love to go back in time to live in America before the Europeans came.
● CC questions NorCal about how he chooses the pieces for his collection.
Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:
EPISODE 25
[INTRODUCTION]
[00:00:32] NORCAL: Hey, everyone. Welcome to the next episode of NorCal and Shill. Today’s guest is CC, also known as Creator Collection. His Twitter is @creator_cllctn, website is presonalities.cc. We’re going to talk a little bit about the collector, Creative Collection, in this podcast and a little bit about a unique project he’s working on called Personalities. It’s not another generative project, it has the beauty of rare traits but applied to fine art, PFPs that are one-of-one’s.
They’re created by some of the best crypto artists in the space. The advisors to the project are Creator Collection, Archan, Zenavi and Roost. A quote from CC, “I’m here to build community, relationships, projects, armed with an entrepreneurial mindset. It’s clear there is an ocean of opportunity for those who are willing to work for in NFT space.” You can find this project on foundation@personalities. Everyone, please welcome, Creator Collection.
[INTERVIEW]
[0:01:53.6] NORCAL: Hey CC, welcome to the podcast, how are you doing today?
[0:01:57.8] CC: Hey, Guy NorCal, doing great. Thanks for having me, appreciate it.
[0:02:02.0] NORCAL: Yeah, well, I’m glad you could take some time out of your day, come join us, have a nice chat.
[0:02:08.1] CC: Absolutely, yes. I’m very chill right now, I’m ready.
[0:02:13.5] NORCAL: Good. Do you have a hardware wallet?
[0:02:18.5] CC: I am – okay, I can be a poster child for lots of people here and who are listening because I know that there are so many that are just like me, all right? I have one but I haven’t yet set it up, okay? That’s going to be – that’s my resolution today is to get it set up in the next week and I have to credit, I think it was you actually, either you or maybe OSF but somebody had a thread or retweeted something about the, you know, you had another hack or something like that.
[0:02:55.5] NORCAL: Yeah.
[0:02:57.1] CC: That’s what got me over the tipping point to actually get the order. I got it sitting on my desk, I’m going to set it up soon.
[0:03:02.9] NORCAL: Nice, what did you get?
[0:03:05.2] CC: I think I got a – is it Ledger Nano X.
[0:03:08.3] NORCAL: Yeah, that sounds it. The one with the Bluetooth built in.
[0:03:11.2] CC: Yeah.
[0:03:12.9] NORCAL: Nice.
[0:03:14.6] CC: I’m on my way.
[0:03:15.2] NORCAL: Hey, everyone starts somewhere and that’s a good starting point.
[0:03:19.3] CC: Good, yup.
[0:03:20.9] NORCAL: What were your first thoughts when you heard about NFTs?
[0:03:26.6] CC: Well, I first heard about it in January 2020. In fact, actually, almost like a year exactly a year ago and I actually don’t remember exactly what or where I first heard about it. But the first thing I remember is I went and I searched, I did a Google search for it and I found some Dune analytics on the sales volume on SuperRare and it was like nothing for all of 2020 and it started to take up a little bit in December of 2020. And it looked like it was going higher in January and I’ve been in –
I got involved a little bit in crypto in 2017 like a lot of people. And then also like a lot of people and maybe the biggest mistake of my life, forgot about it in the crypto winter, and then I got back involved in 2020. I just wanted to – having sort of that perspective and that context and starting to see the charts of volume and also being a pretty creative and entrepreneurial person who is used to sort of doing things for the first time or being out ahead of the innovation curve.
All of that was like, “You know what? I’m going to make this something that is important to me this year.” And so I got involved in crypto art back in January.
[0:04:46.7] NORCAL: Nice, yeah, it’s a good way to get in. Sounds a little bit smarter than how I got in. I guess I just was following some crypto traders and was like, they were like, talking about it and I was like, “Oh man, I need to jump in on this.”
[0:05:01.4] CC: Nice. Well, you know, however we heard, it’s fun to be early on something, that’s for sure. Is that around when you got involved or were you there in 2020 also?
[0:05:14.8] NORCAL: No, I got involved about the same time as you. I got, maybe just a little bit earlier because I got into Top Shots first and then through Discord, was hearing about other things and I was like, “I’ll go jump in on and see what this other stuff is.”
[0:05:30.6] CC: Yeah, that’s how I heard about it and I guess, I’ll do a little bit more on me as an NFT community member. I started as a collector and now, if you fast forward to now, not the biggest or best collection but liked it a lot. I love all the works that I’ve got, I’ve got maybe 60 pieces on SuperRare and another couple of dozen across other platforms and got caught up a little bit in the hype of the last six months on different PFP or collectible projects as well. And then in the spring of last year, I started a crypto art blog actually.
one-of-ones is really my thing and I interviewed almost a hundred artists between March, April and May. It’s was like a blog a day basically and then that’s how you and I met. We both were invited, I think, to join Kenshiro and Bittm and some others on Spaces, right? When Twitter Spaces was launched and that was a ton of fun, I mean, I remember we would have four or 500 listeners because there was nothing out there. There were no other NFT spaces caught at the time. It’s like very easy to capture a lot of sort of the active audience.
Just to round out my – to share with your listeners, what’s going on with me in the NFT world, that sort of, the blog weaned in June but I then started working on this project that I’ve got that I founded in the NFT space called Personalities, which is this hybrid project where it takes the genius or rare traits that is present in the generative projects and it combines that with the – my opinion, like the beauty and the excitement of one-on-one artwork.
I guess I’ll try to sum it all up in one sentence by saying, we’ve got – now, we’ve done three seasons, we’ve got over 30 one-on-one artist involved in it, we produced 67 one-of-one’s and each of those is created through the – each of the artists has created a couple of them but using a set of traits that has been defined by the project and they have to interpret them and create them in their own technique and style.
It's on Foundation and anybody can go and check it out if you search Personalities or on the website, it’s personalities.cc. And it lays out all of the background on it and so that’s sort of like, I wanted to have something that would be long lasting that would keep me involved in this space for a period of years that could grow with me, that could expand as this space expands. I’m really proud of that and that that is something that I continue to work on now.
[0:08:28.8] NORCAL: Nice. Well, it’s a cool project. I know I’ve picked up two or three of them so far and –
[0:08:35.5] CC: Yes, thank you very much for your support on that.
[0:08:37.3] NORCAL: Yeah, they’re awesome. You have a great list of artists on there. I just can’t wait for it to see how it grows.
[0:08:45.4] CC: Yeah, I think that the there’s a lot of opportunity, I think. I guess I’ll put it this way, when it started to come online in August and September, I wasn’t sure if other people would try to do something similar to it and no one’s actually tried it, even now that we’ve been around for this long, for almost six months now. I think the reason is because it’s really hard, it’s hard man, it’s hard. I’ve recruited artists, I have to pitch them on the idea which is not that intuitive except when you learn about it, at least, it's like the kind of thing that everybody has this same reaction.
Once they understand it, they’re like, “Oh my god, this is really smart and really interesting,” but it’s not, it is much more – there’s a lot more depth there than just another PFP on open city. You've got to recruit the artist, you got to explain it to them, got to get them onboard, they have to do a lot of work, they’re producing the work, takes them time to do that and then it’s all minted through the Personalities account. So I’m part of the – I incur the minting cost and we get it up on the projects page and then try to just bring attention to it and the artist together.
Actually, today, I woke up today, one of our pieces was just bought by, I don’t think the auction’s ended. The auction was kicked off by the World of Women, they have a fund through the proceeds that they’ve raised in the project and they’re buying up. They’ve got curators who go and find pieces and bring them back I think to the project team, and they talk about what they want to invest in. And so we are really excited today to wake up to find, one of our artists, Nesaart, I miss her Twitter handle. Her piece has an auction today.
[0:10:41.8] NORCAL: Perfect.
[0:10:42.7] CC: Yeah, it’s fun, it’s a very strong artist community that we’re building and hoping also to then find ways to connect artist and collectors in a more deliberate way and help to make those sort of – bridge is more available over time.
[0:11:02.7] NORCAL: Yeah, it’s going well so far, I think.
[0:11:05.2] CC: Thank you, yeah. We’ve got – I think it is going well, I think the first season, I was able to convince seven artist who are known to my blog to join. And then the second season, we doubled that to get to 14 and then 13 and then we got 14 again. And so I think there’s definitely something there and from the very beginning, I’ve sort of had this opinion that I wanted to be slow and steady, which is like almost nonexistent in the NFT world. Everything’s very fast-paced, and hype trains, and fast-paced. I just try to go at a pace that I know I can maintain over a long period of time, which is actually pretty slow.
[0:11:54.2] NORCAL: Yeah, well, I mean, you got to keep your sanity somehow.
[0:12:00.0] CC: Exactly.
[0:12:04.0] NORCAL: How did you select the artists who got involved?
[0:12:10.4] CC: Well, because it was like, something new and different, I needed to – I had to convince them to come and participate in it. I started with artist that I knew. Those who were either in my collection or who I interviewed from the blog, that was two groups make up all of the artist that were in the first season and great artist like Frank Moss and Andre Viera and MZK Visuals and Ytopp, just to name a few off the top of my head were all involved in season one and these are artist who – they are, I think, well-known in the community and they’ve all got their own thing going on and they’ve got this really strong existing collector base.
It was really important to me from the very beginning to make sure that the quality of artist met a certain threshold so that when all of the pieces would be sort of seen together, I mean, people would go to the website and see which artist were involved that there were start of this immediate – it doesn’t’ take more than a second to sort of validate that this is a really interesting project with a lot of high-quality different people involved, both artists and collectors as well.
[0:13:36.4] NORCAL: Yeah.
[0:13:37.1] CC: You obviously, you got a couple of pieces, other really well-known collectors are involved, the alchemist DFI, TDC gallery, we just talked about World of Women. I’m trying o network with one-on-one collectors and get the project on their radar and I think over time, if I’m consistent and just sort of share updates and continue to try to think innovative ways to keep the project going and be different that I think over time, will be successful.
[0:14:07.8] NORCAL: Yeah. I agree. How has response from collectors been pretty positive?
[0:14:15.2] CC: Yeah, I think that all – the responses have all been positive, 100% unanimous, everybody who hears about it and takes a minute to look at the website and understand what the project is all about is very complimentary, which is of course, very rewarding and I think that means a lot. Because this is sort of my side hobby, I’ve got a – we talked a little bit about it offline before but I’m a founder in real life, I’ve got a family, I got kids, I got busy life and this is my escape and my hobby.
To do something that, when I introduce it to collectors, to see that they understand it and respect it and are sort of excited by it, that means a lot. Of course, not everybody – it’s not designed to be the kind of project that everyone immediately jumps into, you’d think it takes a certain collector who has a philosophy that mirrors the philosophy of the project which is really – I would love more collectors who really are into one-of-one art, that’s the type of collector that I’m trying to attract and that we have and that we want to grow.
I said, of the 67 pieces, I think now, maybe – I think we’ve sold maybe almost 20 one-of-ones as a group. And another thing that I’ll mention and then I’ll take a pause, another thing I’ll mention is that the way that the pricing works for all the pieces is very formulaic and that’s something that we’re transparent about and is available on the website. But by design, it’s meant to slightly increase – all the prices that you’ll see on Foundations, they’re all a slight increase from the average of the last three sales for that particular artist.
The project is also designed to help the artist along their journey and raise their floor price little by little which is sort of – that’s something that we talked about back in April. Everything was so new and everyone was like, “Hey, how do I price my work, where do I start, how should I – if I sold one, what should I do with the next one?” And I think there is a consensus like, you got to start – if you're just getting involved as a new artist, you got to start pretty low and then you try to sell something and then arise it a little bit over time and that’s how you sort of build it up. So, that’s one thing that I think can be hard for people or it’s like common question, it’s just how are these priced? And it’s really transparent, it’s available and I think it’s a fair price for the collector, it’s easy for them to understand, they’re happy to pay it once they get it and it also helps the artist along their journey.
[0:16:56.1] NORCAL: Okay. What’s next for the project?
[0:17:00.5] CC: We just launched season three and I think that what we’re going to do now is, I’m going to press pause. I’m not going to – I've sort of done back-to-back-to-back. As soon as the season one ended, we started recruiting season two artists. As soon as season two ended, we recruited the season three artists, and it’s about a four-to-six-week process between when we start recruiting the artists to when I can mint the final works on foundation.
I’ve decided to hold on season four until we – I wanted to focus more energy and time on the great works that we’ve got available. The artists that are currently available and that are part of the project are amazing artists and I want to start to tell, I’m going to do a better job of telling their story to the community and getting attracting more interest and ultimately, selling more work that we already had before we go on to season four.
The way that we are planning to do that is, I’m in touch with a couple of other podcasts or interviews so I want to get more sort of eyeballs and ears on the project just through formats like this. And thanks for having me on by the way. And then, we’re also, I’m sort of going to go back to my roots as a blogger. We’re going to be doing in depth interviews with the artist that are already involved in the project and we’ll be sort of knocking the rust off of my blog.
We’ll be reposting those and/or I will be posting those and then hopefully, I think that will give me some, and us, some new fresh good content to go back to the collector base and give them an update on the project. And sort of hopefully tap into, at least for me, one of the things I really love, I love hearing about the story behind the artwork and knowing more about the artist and their background, where they’re from the world, what techniques they use.
Anything like that is something that really attracted me to one-of-one art and so we’re going to tell those stories in these blogs and I’m hoping that resonates with more collectors and we – and then we’ll go from there.
[0:19:12.4] NORCAL: Nice. I like the background and hearing about the work and the artist, it’s a good for that.
[0:19:20.1] CC: Yeah, I think those stories are really what draws, that’s sort of what helps to make that connection I think and for me, I’m not artistically gifted and so I sort of hold it off all of these artists, because the skill that they have, whether it’s somebody like Juaquin Rodriguez who is also involved in season one, actually, I think you and I both owned one of his pieces as part of the project.
He is this incredible ballpoint pen artist and his work – he does it in ballpoint pen, on paper and then he digitizes it and I’m looking at my pad at work right now, I’ve got like doodles on the side of a paper, it’s like, my god, this guy is so skilled, it’s unbelievable. And sort of that feeling – I sort of think you’ve got all the techniques in that way. I enjoy that part of it.
[0:20:13.2] NORCAL: Nice. Transitioning a little bit, I’m curious, what jobs have you done along the way? I always like to hear the past.
[0:20:22.8] CC: Yeah.
[0:20:23.7] NORCAL: The buildup.
[0:20:27.5] CC: These are fun. I’m going to go way back, all right? Will you come with me there too? Can we exchange childhoods, or our first job, okay?
[0:20:34.3] NORCAL: Sure, yeah.
[0:20:34.9] CC: Okay, so I was a paperboy and a soccer referee and actually yeah, that’s really what it’s like – in middle school and high school, my first jobs, those were – that’s really where I got my start. How about you, did you have any jobs growing up when you were that age?
[0:20:58.3] NORCAL: When I was really young or in high school I should say, my parents, my dad has this dentist, they made me and my sister clean the office so that was our first job. We’d have to go there and every – it was every day, take out the trash, clean some things and so that was our first job. And then after high school, I got a job – was it right at – it wasn’t right after high school but I got a job at a TV delivery – or a TV store and I was a delivery guy for big screen TVs.
[0:21:30.4] CC: Nice. Hopefully, you didn’t drop any along the way.
[0:21:35.6] NORCAL: No but that was back, oh my goodness, it was back when the – it was the projection TVs, they were so big and heavy.
[0:21:41.8] CC: Oh yeah, oh god yeah, those are really heavy. I remember those.
[0:21:47.4] NORCAL: Yeah, well and I was a bagger at a grocery store for a little bit and then I had a paper route when I was a little bit older and I was like, “This is terrible.”
[0:21:58.6] CC: Yeah, the paper route really sucks. I would have – I remember walking up like I have to get up and stuff papers before I even delivered them at 4 AM or something. But looking back at it now, I think those jobs especially the service industry ones like your experience cleaning the office or later in life, I also – when I started my first company, it was – I mean, I was living the stereotypical startup life.
You know, my cofounder, we shared an apartment that also was our office and we were eating noodles every single day for like a year, and the business made so little money that I had to get a job as a waiter on the side, so I also had that experience like as a service, you know, in the service industry, which is really informative and I learned a lot and I look back really fondly on that.
[0:22:53.8] NORCAL: It’s always good to look back so you can laugh at it because I definitely didn’t love going through it.
[0:23:02.1] CC: Exactly, yeah. Thankfully things have gotten well since then and I could have a laugh about it now, right?
[0:23:11.5] NORCAL: Oh man, if you were an animal, what would you be and why?
[0:23:16.8] CC: Oh man, I would be an eagle for sure and it is a question I thought about throughout my whole life and my answer has always been eagle. And I challenge myself like, “CC, do you really think that your favorite animal or that you would want to be is still an eagle?” the reason is because how cool would it be just fly and soar over whatever you want. And just to be the apex animal with wings and just have total control over your dominion like that.
Also actually, around where I live and work in New England in the eastern coast of the States as I mentioned, there is some bald eagles around here and I see them from time to time as well and so I feel like I got like a kinship with them when I see them.
[0:24:09.0] NORCAL: It works, I like it.
[0:24:11.6] CC: How about you? What is it? I got to apologize, I haven’t listen to all of your podcasts so I am sorry if I am asking you.
[0:24:18.2] NORCAL: No, it’s fine.
[0:24:18.7] CC: Something you’ve already answered but what’s your animal of choice?
[0:24:22.4] NORCAL: It was hard the first time someone asked me, I had to think about it was on the podcast. I was like, “Oh man” but I’ve gone with the octopus.
[0:24:29.7] CC: Why is that?
[0:24:31.7] NORCAL: I don’t know, I guess because they can be involved, you can see them if they want you to see them or they can just hide in the background. They can figure things out.
[0:24:44.7] CC: It’s very, very smart. There is that Netflix documentary I think it’s My Octopus Friend I think, which is such a great film.
[0:24:52.3] NORCAL: It was really good. I like that film, it was really good but yeah, I don’t know, they can blend in, they can figure things out and they are just kind of overlooked but they are kind of cool creatures when you look at it.
[0:25:07.4] CC: Yeah, I like it.
[0:25:09.1] NORCAL: What is your favorite food?
[0:25:10.7] CC: Oh, this one, I got to go pizza. I mean, it’s like I really enjoy trying different pizzas and whenever I go to a new spot, so that I’ve got this like “scientific method.” I will always order the pepperoni, so I’ve got a baseline to compare it to.
[0:25:34.5] NORCAL: Fair.
[0:25:35.2] CC: I got to go with it, the pepperoni pizza there.
[0:25:39.1] NORCAL: All right, the next question is pineapple or no pineapple then?
[0:25:44.1] CC: Ooh, I’m more no pineapple on my pizzas.
[0:25:48.5] NORCAL: All right.
[0:25:49.1] CC: I’m more like if it’s not just straight pepperoni, I enjoy black olives, mushrooms, sausage, sometimes some of the onions but rarely the – I don’t know, I never got the Hawaiian pizza and buy it. I don’t know.
[0:26:03.2] NORCAL: No, it’s fair enough. I mean, I feel like a lot of people didn’t grow up eating it, so it’s kind of like, “Wait, what?”
[0:26:11.5] CC: Right.
[0:26:15.7] NORCAL: I am curious, what is the best piece of advice you’ve been given?
[0:26:19.3] CC: Ooh, yeah, this one I think I try to live my life by, actions speak louder than words. Have you heard that one?
[0:26:30.9] NORCAL: Yes.
[0:26:31.5] CC: Yeah, so you know I think someone once – I will share this little story about why it’s so important to me. I played a D1 varsity sport in the States in college and when I was a freshman, me and my freshman idiot teammates slept in and missed – or like we were out partying and we missed the morning – the deadline to be there for the morning workout. And our coach, who was a new coach that year was so pissed off and wanted to make an example out of us that he made each of the freshman choose a senior on the team and he made the senior run laps while we sat on the sidelines.
[0:27:19.8] NORCAL: Oh, oh man.
[0:27:23.4] CC: Yeah and I won’t tell the follow up story about what happened after that but I ended up actually developing a good bond with the senior who I chose. And he, that was really the first time that someone shared that piece of advice with me and he – like in our follow up in our relationship and as it grew, he ended up sharing that with me and so that really stuck with me and I mean, it’s just like you know, I think it’s a great message to live by.
If you want to have an impact on whatever you’re doing like you know, there are people who talk the talk and people who actually get it done like let’s be a get it done person.
[0:28:04.7] NORCAL: Yeah, for sure. Do you have advice to artists joining the NFT space?
[0:28:10.8] CC: I haven’t been asked this question since we were probably on the Spaces, you know? That was a topic like last spring and the reason I am saying that is because I feel like, there has to be some updated set of advice like my standard answer is like, “Well, you got to like, it is as much about marketing yourself as it is about your artwork” right? I think I am actually, and I used to give the advice that you’ve got to be 50/50 focusing on your skills and your technique and trying to make – improve your artwork.
You’ve got to be 50/50 on that with how you spend your time versus networking, marketing yourself, building relationships with potential collectors, et cetera. Now that there is just – I mean, there are a lot of ways to describe the space now but one way is like there’s just a lot more noise, right? I think it is harder, I think it is a lot harder for artists to make those end roads and so I mean, I don’t even know if this is – I don’t think I would ever want to tell an artists to spend less time on their craft.
That sort of got to be standard, it’s almost like you got to find more time in the day so you are actually doing like a 130%, so you are doing like you know, 80% marketing yourself, 50% working on your craft.
[0:29:35.1] NORCAL: Right.
[0:29:36.0] CC: Right? I guess maybe the practical advice there is just know that – I think here is a simple way to describe it. My guess is that the ratio of DM responses that new artists get today is significantly lower than what it was last April. And collectors, we were all making our – doing our billionaire collection and making those relationships and sort of art as a – humans can only have so many nodes in their personal networks and connections.
You know, I guess try to find something that stands out about you, always be professional when you are communicating with collectors, don’t do copy and paste in Dms. Be genuine, be authentic, those are all things that I think still will always hold true.
[0:30:32.2] NORCAL: Yeah, for sure. Yeah, it’s got to be hard because I am like – because even me I’m like, “Oh, do I want to respond to this because that means I have to dedicate more time to this?” Because I already feel like, “Man, I don’t have enough time for whatever, the DMs I already get.” And then I’m like, “Oh man.”
[0:30:57.7] CC: Right, I know. Yeah and I think you know, as I’ve – a theme of some of the conversations I’ve had over the last couple of months has been burnout. I think a lot of people who were here starting around when we got involved like Q1 or Q2 last year, I think we all had this super intense and exciting six to nine months, and I think I certainly went through it myself actually. And it’s in part how your life changes in the real world and if something big changes there, you just can’t dedicate as much time to NFT world, which is what happened to me.
But I am talking to artists and I think a lot of artists have gone through a little bit of burnout and are trying to find a balance in their life where they can keep being active participants in our community but also do that in a sustainable way, so I think that is actually probably another good piece of advice is like, you know, it’s a marathon not a sprint. And just make sure that you’re thinking about your energy that way. It is hard to come back from burnout. I don’t know if you’ve ever experienced that professionally or personally but that can be really hard.
[0:32:06.6] NORCAL: Yeah. No, I mean, I was – I don’t know. It’s not I guess fortunate or not fortunate but I got sick for like a couple of weeks like twice this year and I was like off. It felt like I was off Twitter for the most part and I was like – I came back and strong like, “Okay, I got a break that was forced on me.”
[0:32:24.9] CC: Right and then when you came back, did you feel like you sort of like were you had that excitement again and you feel refreshed?
[0:32:32.3] NORCAL: Yeah, I did.
[0:32:33.5] CC: Yes, I found the same thing to be true. Yeah, those mental health breaks however long they are even if it is a day, a week or a couple of days a week or you go for a month and then you need a whole week off, those are important to weave in.
[0:32:48.6] NORCAL: Yeah, I mean I try to take off the weekends for the most part and spend it with the kids, so that helps a lot.
[0:32:54.8] CC: That’s good. Yeah, you got to remember the kids, okay?
[0:33:01.0] NORCAL: Oh, if you –
[0:33:03.9] CC: Yeah, I get that.
[0:33:05.5] NORCAL: Yeah, I mean because you feel like I got so much time with them and they’re like going off to college and you’re like, “Oh.”
[0:33:13.3] CC: Yeah, mine aren’t quite there yet. They’re more like going off to like grade school.
[0:33:20.7] NORCAL: Oh yeah, mind aren’t there yet but everyone says it flies by, so mine are – my daughter is in pre-school, my son is eight months.
[0:33:29.6] CC: Ah man, congratulations on the little one.
[0:33:32.5] NORCAL: Thanks. If you could live or move anywhere, where would you live and why?
[0:33:39.6] CC: Okay, can I add another dimension to the answer here?
[0:33:43.8] NORCAL: Yes, let’s hear it.
[0:33:44.2] CC: I’m going to add in a layer of time, okay? I’m obsessed, not that I had time to read about this but in my imagination where I like to go like if I need a break, I would love to someday have the ability to time travel back. I think a lot about the United States before Europeans came and what it was like just as the native Americans lived here and I am a pretty outdoorsy guy. I really enjoy things like flatfish and hiking, back country, snowboarding and all that.
I try to soak up as much as I can from the outdoor world and I feel like that I have this connection to nature and so I just think about, you know, how did this civilization lived for many thousands of years and did that without all of the modern luxuries and what was that like. If I can go, if you ask like where could I go and then I can time travel too, I think that’s definitely – that is what always will pop to my mind first.
[0:34:52.8] NORCAL: Okay, that’s interesting and it would be – I mean, it is interesting especially if you go, like to the wilderness, to the forest and you’re like, “What? How different was this back a 100 years ago or 200 years ago?” It does, that kind of thing is interesting to me as well. Just like what was this place like before there was a town here?
[0:35:19.8] CC: Exactly or you know, things – let me organize my thoughts here. The world, if you think about time like in generations, you’re thinking about where the world was a couple of hundred years ago, if you think about it in those like centuries, that feels like a long period of time but a couple hundred years ago is like your great-great grandparents, right? It’s like you know, so things were very different not so long ago.
In the early 1900s, a hundred years ago or in the 1800s, I mean [inaudible 0:35:53.9] and so then I’m like, my mind totally flips. I’m like, “Okay, where are things going to be a hundred years from now? Or can we even imagine what it is going to be like 10 years from now?” I’m like this weird, I love thinking about the distant past and also really love spending time thinking about the future, which I think that’s common among us in the NFT and crypto world.
Because we’re all sort of part of this movement that is going to, I think we all believe to some extent have an enormous impact on the world over the next 10, 20, 30 years. And so, yeah, I’ve got those two extremes, those bookends I guess.
[0:36:33.1] NORCAL: Well, they’re fun to think about.
[0:36:35.4] CC: Yeah.
[0:36:36.5] NORCAL: Do you have any questions for me?
[0:36:38.9] CC: Yeah, I mean oh my god, I have so many questions. I mean, we’ll see how far I get with these. I mean, okay, so here’s one that I think and again, apologies if you already answered this on previous podcasts but you have – you are well-known in the community, you’ve got an array of this amazing collection. Take us behind the scenes in your mind as you think about what pieces to collect.
[0:37:14.6] NORCAL: Oh man, that’s a hard one. I think you know, I guess initially I have to be drawn to it somehow, whether it’s the colors or the thought that’s in it, like if it’s some statement in the piece or just the colors or the – but then, I dive into try and see what the artist potential is as far as, are they willing to put in the work to work with through like a winter, an NFT winter. And then that’s I guess more of how I evaluate it because I mean, everyone loves it when there is a bull market but that winter time, that’s when the true players come out.
[0:38:01.4] CC: Yes. I think yeah, if – for those of us who collect it, we can find the folks who are going to stick around like that in itself is going to be probably the main indicator of how our collections do but you certainly got a big one and well-diversified and I know a lot of people admire it.
[0:38:24.8] NORCAL: Oh thanks. Any others?
[0:38:27.0] CC: Let’s see, maybe I’ll ask another question related to the podcast. Tell us a little bit more about what the future holds for you and for the podcast and how you want to spend your time in 2022?
[0:38:42.1] NORCAL: Well, I am going to continue the podcast. I really enjoy interviewing the artists and getting to know them. I’d like to add a collector version of it as well, just working on that. I guess, figuring out the best, yeah.
[0:38:57.0] CC: Nice.
[0:38:58.0] NORCAL: Shoot, yeah, I guess I just try to figure that out how I want to do it because I have a lot of artists I want to interview as well and I am like, “How do I…” I feel like I have too many to really too and it is going to take too long, I can’t fit everyone in, so I am like, “Do I add more podcasts per week or what do I do with this?”
[0:39:20.0] CC: Yes.
[0:39:20.8] NORCAL: I guess that is a good issue to have but I am trying to figure that out.
[0:39:24.4] CC: Yes, scaling that content is tough with all this stuff that I talked a lot about when I was doing the blogs. And so I can understand a little bit of that. It is fun to work on these things.
[0:39:36.5] NORCAL: Yeah.
[0:39:37.2] CC: Nice, awesome. Well, congratulations on the podcast. I think you and I were in touch like as you were planning it. We were sharing, you shared with me your first ever promo for it and it’s been really fun to be an observer and supporter of it and see how it’s coming along, so well done.
[0:39:58.1] NORCAL: Well, thanks. Thanks. Yeah, I just – I don’t know, I just wanted something that was just laid back, chill, semi-short and that was recorded, so you didn’t have to like be there for the live spaces if you wanted to participate.
[0:40:15.9] CC: That’s a great point.
[0:40:17.6] NORCAL: Do you have any shoutouts?
[0:40:20.4] CC: Oh, I mean, I have so many shoutouts. I am going to have to choose. I think number one, I definitely want to shoutout a couple of the people that have helped me get personalities to where it is, I think starting with my friends in the project team. I think somebody who you know and many others know in the space, Archan, Archan Nair, he was on The Space but that’s in the spring, and he and I became close friends. And he, I was starting to developing the concept, he helped me sort of ironed out the bunch of the kinks, which was hugely valuable to me.
Then more recently, sort of after the project launched, Zenavi and Roost, who are both one-on-one artist in the community. We have a weekly call, they have a huge impact on the evolution and the success of our personalities project together and so I couldn’t have done it without any of those guys. So I want to give a real big shoutout and thank you to them and then, too many to name but all the artists in my collection, I definitely have to shoutout them.
Of course, all the artists and collectors that are part of Personalities also, so thanks for giving me the opportunity to do that.
[0:41:40.0] NORCAL: Nice, awesome. Well CC, thanks for your time. This was awesome, awesome chat.
[0:41:45.4] CC: Of course, thank you for having me on. I hope we can do it again sometime, maybe when you launch the collector one. We can take a couple layers deeper on that. I love to do that with you.
[0:41:56.3] NORCAL: All right, that sounds great. I have to figure out some different questions.
[0:41:59.5] CC: All right.
[0:42:01.2] NORCAL: All right, have a good one.
[0:42:02.5] CC: Thanks a lot.
[0:42:03.0] NORCAL: Bye.
[0:42:03.6] CC: All right, bye.
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