From Hollywood Acting to Silicon Valley with Blake Michael | Digital Social Hour #41

Is it true that child actors do not get royalties?

There was a period where this actor got all of his money stolen by his parents.

I remember I created a Twitter account in 2009, and that was at the time that I was on Disney Channel.

And it was kind of looked down upon.

If your company is not a media company, you will not succeed.

All right, welcome back to the digital social hour.

I'm your host, Sean Kelly, along with my co-host, Charlie Cavalier, and our guest today, Blake Michael.

How are we doing?

What's up, man?

Thanks for having me.

Absolutely.

I'm a huge fan of the pod.

Yeah?

Yeah.

The clips are cool, right?

Algorithm just keeps pushing them up.

I'm like, who is this guy?

So it's cool to be here.

Yeah, I'm glad you responded.

I reached out over DMs.

It's crazy how that works.

I feel like these days you can get in touch with just about anybody.

Yeah, it's your first time meeting.

It's incredible.

Yeah.

I'd love to dive into your story, man.

Where should we even start?

I mean, you got a crazy journey.

I wear a lot of hats, right?

So it's hard to like define me as like one thing.

I've been working since I was four years old

in acting and I found my passion super young.

I loved playing pretend, being inside the box.

Right.

And my mom put me in acting classes and it like blew up.

Wow.

So I started by doing, you know, background work being an extra.

You know, like in movies, there's the extras.

Zach and Cody were extras as babies, right?

Exactly.

The guy drinking the coffee in the background so just as that experience to get on a set and be around a crew and know what that's like it just sort of snowballed and shortly I was doing you know my own commercials and TV ads and then got my first TV show when I was like eight years old on Cartoon Network

and it just exploded so there's like the acting portion of my life um you know a lot of people know me from my disney channel stuff so i was in a movie called lemonade mouth right which came out on a disney channel um dog with a blog i got this tv show that ran for four years.

It also got four Emmy nominations, which is, it's kind of crazy.

Like we went to the Emmys three times and they throw this insane party at this convention center and it's like a ball.

And there are like 25 different bars and like people on like tightropes above you and like the most insane entertainment.

So there's this massive party after the Emmys, if anyone was wondering, and it was sick.

But yeah, man, it's been quite, quite a journey.

And yeah, so I mean, I don't know if you want to talk about the other stuff but it kind of blends into some of the other things i'm doing now is more on like the tech side and building apps and startups yeah and then there's also a whole like vc investing right we'll dive into that one question about the acting i saw um you did hundreds of auditions and it was really hard to get that first job what was that process like yeah i mean it's it's all about like building up a reputation and a brand and like meeting the right people so much of acting is like being in the right place at the right time and having a lot of luck and maybe also some talent right so i think that's a huge, a huge part of it.

But, you know, I've been in about a hundred projects over my career.

I've been on over 2,000 auditions to get those projects.

People don't realize how much failure and rejection is involved in this industry.

And I know so many people who have come out to LA to pursue this dream and they never get their shot because they just didn't.

get that they didn't try one more time to get that job they would have booked right there's so much failure and so much rejection and as a kid it's extremely difficult to deal with that.

And I'm lucky because my mom and I were very close and my whole family was super supportive of me.

My mom always told me that if I just focus on being 1%

better on the next audition, good things will happen.

Rather than focusing on, oh, well, I get the call back.

Did I get the part?

Oh, I want this so bad.

And rather just think of yourself, think of how you can be a little bit better for the next time.

That's how I got past that rejection.

but there was so much, and I see so many actors drop out because they just,

they don't book something after 5, 10, 20 auditions.

Right.

And they don't realize it was just the next one they might have booked.

Yeah, those auditions are fun to watch, man.

Like whenever I have a show I really like, I go back and I watch the auditions from the main cast and it's so fascinating to see where they started and like how it turned into fruition.

I love watching actors talk about acting.

And I actually teach acting classes on the weekends to this group of kids.

It's a ton of fun.

But I always tell them, like, look up your favorite actor and then search that actor talking about acting.

And it's so cool.

I think this goes the same for a lot of industries.

To hear people speak about the business side of what they do and how they've handled certain things is incredibly inspiring.

Absolutely.

Is it true that child actors do not get royalties from their shows?

So

it.

I believe most should.

I'm sure there are people out there who probably have unclaimed residuals.

But what happened back in the, I don't know how long ago this was.

You could probably fact check me.

But there was a period where this actor got all of his money stolen away from him by his parents.

And so I believe his name was Jackie Coogan.

His last name was Coogan.

So he went to the courts and he said, basically, hey, my family stole all my money from me while I was a child actor.

And the

evolution of that was they created the Coogan Fund.

And now for every single actor since that point who books a job and they're under the age of 18, 10% of it goes to this Coogan fund, which protects the actors.

So if your family tried to steal everything, you still have that 10% left over.

So there's some safeguards in place now to protect young actors.

And I heard the pay for child actors isn't as much as adult.

Is that true?

That's probably true.

What's fascinating, though, is also the amount of hours you're allowed to work on a set as a kid are much less than that of an adult.

So as soon as as you hit 18, like I did on the set of Dog with a Blog, they would work me way more hours.

I was working, you know, I went from working eight hour days to working 12 hour days.

And that's actually very beneficial because they get to use you a lot more.

So they put you in more scenes and have you do more work.

But for example, like an eight-year-old might only get four or five hours they're allowed to be on set.

Right.

So they have some restrictions in place for that too.

Right.

What is it like filming?

Like, do you have to memorize the whole script for each episode and then go out there and just film it?

The whole thing.

I think what people don't realize, too, is that for a sitcom, situational comedy, for those who don't know,

they give you this script and it takes five days to film a TV episode.

On the first day, you do a table read and they give you the cold draft, the white draft.

They're all labeled in colors.

And so that script, you'll start memorizing, getting familiar with it, get it on its feet, start rehearsing.

But by day two, they've already made changes, the writers, the producers, the network, to that script to make it funnier.

or maybe there were some jokes that were too raunchy for the network So now you've got a brand new revision that they call blue the blue draft and you've got to memorize that script and then by day three There's another script and it gets so extreme that even on shooting days two hours before you film your scene the writers might come up to you and be like hey Blake, here's a brand new script.

You've never seen this before.

We've got to have you memorize.

And we're going live in two hours.

That's crazy.

So my memorization skills when I was eight years old were whack.

They were so bad.

And I think through the repetition and being being on it on a TV show like that really helped me memorize.

So, I mean, I remember when I was eight years old, I booked my first TV show on Cartoon Network and I was practicing my script and I was memorizing, spending all this time, but I was only doing it in my head.

I wasn't saying it out loud.

So I thought I was memorized.

Big mistake because I show up on the set and I had this big walk and talk.

You know, I was like the host of this Cartoon Network show.

The camera's following me.

I have like a full page of dialogue and I would get to the second sentence and then completely forget what all of my lines were.

We took over 40 takes that day, and I cannot describe to you the amount of embarrassment I felt because I wasn't prepared enough for that script.

And so, ever since that point, I've made sure I've got to have my lines down, I've got to show up to set prepared because that's ultimately your job as an actor.

Wow, that's fascinating.

What made you transition from acting to tech and VC?

Because that's a very unique transition.

So, I think what excites me the most about tech is how innovative and fast-paced and collaborative it is.

Acting's awesome.

As an actor, I love being on a set and practicing my art and getting to show the world what I love to do.

But there's so many gatekeepers in Hollywood that prevent you from actually, you know, if I say I want to be in a Marvel movie tomorrow, the chances of that happening are very, very low.

Right.

Got to be at the right place at the right time, know the right people.

But in this world of technology, I realized how amazing it was because you kind of get to control your own destiny in the way that, like, if you're a vocalist, you can go on YouTube and upload a video of yourself and it goes viral and you blow up.

As an actor, it's much harder to force that to happen or to have that same opportunity.

People don't really like share clips of themselves acting and get known for their talent.

The world of technology, too, got, you know, I started creating online.

So, just like you started blowing up, posting clips, sharing content, growing a loyal fan base like you have, which I I think is so cool.

And I realized that so many other creators out there were in need of tools for them to build.

So the area of tech that I'm really attracted to in terms of building is like the creator economy and building stuff for people like you and me.

And I think the story behind that is in 2007, I started a YouTube channel.

And at the time,

YouTube was just experimenting with this monetization thing.

They allowed people for the first time to run ads on their content and earn a portion of the revenue.

So they launched this very exclusive program called the Partner Program in 2008.

And at the time, I was the youngest person to get accepted into that program.

My channel did, I did magic tricks, by the way.

Very cool.

I love magic tricks.

Dude, I love magic so much.

David Blaine, Chris Angel.

So I started this YouTube channel, got accepted into this program, and started earning money.

But I realized all of my other YouTuber friends were also trying to get into this program.

And it was so hard to do that.

So my very first company I made at the age of like eight or nine years old was called Get Partnered and it helped other YouTubers get monetized on YouTube.

Wow.

That was like the beginning of my obsession of building things for creators.

And that's sort of how I got into this.

Okay.

So you started early.

Yeah, man.

I love building companies.

And I was even like trading stocks when I was eight years old.

I was a very abnormal eight-year-old for sure.

Those are the people that do well, honestly.

Yeah.

And I mean, do you think that obviously you grew up around a lot of adults, right?

Because you were working at an early age.

And do you think that

being around adults disproportionately more than most other kids is what contributed to you doing so many businesses so early on?

Or was it just something inside of you that wanted to make money, make connections, network, do all that stuff?

I think it was probably a combination of everything.

But yeah, being around so many adults growing up, that's a great point.

I mean, at seven years old on the set of a commercial, I was like going up to this director who's probably in his 40s or 50s, trying to collaborate with him and work on ideas.

Or, hey, like maybe i could say this one line and i realized that people actually gave me the opportunity despite my age as long as i asked um people who are much older than me were were down to let me collaborate and so like i think that that's also a big part of it but nice yeah i basically grew up on sets you know i never went to middle school or high school so i've you know had a kind of different upbringing than than most and i'm grateful for it i don't i don't think about what it would have been otherwise but wow i've never met someone that didn't do middle school in high school how did you bypass that?

Because I wish I did.

I wish I did that sometimes.

So I was homeschooled.

It wasn't like I wasn't doing any schooling,

but it was pretty difficult.

I mean, you miss out on, you completely miss out on any social interaction, making friends like that.

Growing up on sets, they actually give you a studio teacher.

And this teacher is assigned to a certain number of actors and you meet with them for, you know, three hours, four hours a day.

But as we all know, it doesn't, you can't do high school in three to four hours a day.

Right.

Like, that's impossible.

Yeah.

And so while filming Dog with the Blog, getting through high school was really difficult.

And I was in all AP classes and I fell way behind.

And I had to catch up a lot during the summer when I wasn't filming.

Right.

Because you're spending 10, 12 hours a day filming.

So you got no time to study or do anything.

Yeah, there's very little downtime.

And then as soon as I get home, like, I want to relax.

I want to chill.

Right.

So, you know, a working day on a TV set, you might be working, waking up at 6 a.m.

and then getting back home by like 5, 6, 7 p.m.

Some of the shooting nights even go as late as like 10 and 11 p.m.

That's crazy.

And then on a film set, you might be doing an overnight shoot.

So I did this one movie called Princess of the Row that we started the production.

We started filming at 2 a.m.

because it was a nighttime scene.

So the hours can get pretty crazy.

Why do you think a lot of these child actors and these famous Disney actors like go crazy like later on in their adult lives?

I can't speak to everyone.

I don't know.

I feel like everyone's got their own story and situation.

But when you're very young and you're blessed with certain opportunities and making sometimes a lot of money at a very young age,

I think it's pretty easy to fall into things that might not be the best for your

trajectory.

And so I grew up around a lot of other peers and Disney Channel kids growing up.

I always had my own path and my parents were, I was very close to my parents.

And I think that relationship was very helpful.

Like they were my rock.

They were there to support me and help guide me.

So luckily I didn't fall into any of those other buckets.

But I saw a lot of stuff.

And I feel for a lot of the child actors out there who might have gone down the wrong path.

Yeah, that's interesting.

We always wonder what it's like, you know, having friends when you're just becoming such a productive person.

You're doing a lot of stuff in life.

Are there any friends that you've had with you since you were seven, eight years old on a a set at a, you know, acting?

Oh, for sure, like as support?

Anything, right?

Like friends you made then that you are still friends with now that have shepherd you through life.

There are very few people I can say

because you, you know, people come and go.

And moving to LA, I realized a lot of people want to be friends with you for the wrong reasons or people aren't what they say they are.

Right.

So, I mean, I've definitely had that core group of friends.

You know, I can count on my fingers.

Nice.

And I think, you know, you are who you

are who you surround yourself yourself with.

Yeah.

Right.

So one of one of the guys, Nicky Pabone, he's actually now Jack Harlow's music producer.

Nice.

It's always fun like tagging along on the shows and stuff like that.

But

yeah, it's been my family and like a core group of three or four people for sure.

Nice.

Let's get into the venture capital stuff you're doing because that's a world that I know nothing about

in terms of like running that operation.

So how did you get involved with that?

Yeah, so I started working with a company called Lumanu back about three years ago, and Lumanu was building tools for creators.

And during Lumanu's Series A, so companies do fundraising rounds in venture capital.

And, you know, your Series A, you're typically raising $12 to $15 million for your startup.

We decided that as a creator-first company, it would be imperative that we actually bring in creators as part of the cap table, as part of the investors.

And in doing that, I realized so many creators, influencers have so much more to offer than just being digital billboards.

And it spawned the idea of launching something called Creator-led Ventures, which is my venture fund.

And the venture fund is backed by influencers.

So we have people like Graham Steffen, Nas from Nas Daily, Alexis Wren, and all sorts of really cool people.

Would love for you to be a part of it one day too.

And, you know, we invest in early stage companies and we come together and bring our influence to the table, bring our strategy, our business acumen, and women.

And I think it's a a really cool kind of 20, 30 year trajectory for myself.

Like I've always been fascinated by investing ever since I was eight years old.

There's so many cool companies out there who are doing amazing things.

I mean, this AI renaissance is so exciting.

Absolutely.

There's a lot of cool stuff happening, and I want to be a part of it.

It's exciting, man.

I mean, I think this new creator investment model is going to really work well because you're seeing it with Logan Paul and Prime.

You're seeing it with Mr.

Beast.

I forget his name, but he just sold Mint Mobile and he owned 25% of it.

Ryan Reynolds.

I mean, that's exciting.

If you're a creator now, there's going to be some great opportunities, I think.

You're exactly right.

I mean, there's the retail side of it, right?

Where you're like launching products.

There's also the actual company side where you're building technology.

And so we're seeing Kim Kardashian launched her own fund.

Mr.

Beast has a fund.

Charlie D'Amelio has a fund where they invest in companies.

I see creator-led as the fund for all creators.

It doesn't matter how big or small you are.

It's not one creator's fund.

It's where anybody with a following, it could be 10,000 followers or 100 million followers can come together and have access to this really unique asset class.

It's awesome.

I'm wondering, how did this start?

Because obviously, you know, you grew up slightly pre-social media craze, right?

And then you benefited very much from a lot of exposure when exposure was in limited supply.

Now that you're moving into this creator investment model, how do you see it flipping from celebrities in the more traditional sense, right?

TV, radio, everything, to now becoming pseudo-celebrities via social media?

Is this a transition that's going to move away from the traditional roles of celebrity status?

Are we seeing just like a completely different economy where social media is going to matter more than anything else?

It's completely flipped for sure.

I mean, and you're right.

I grew up in this pre-social media day.

I remember I created a Twitter account in 2009, and that was at the time that I was on Disney Channel.

And it was kind of looked down upon.

Nobody was encouraging the fact that I had social media, the fact that I, an actor who happened to be on a TV show, could have the power to post to my whole audience.

Like suddenly the power had shifted and that dynamic was really, really interesting.

So we look at it today, fast forward, you've got all the major networks are on social media.

They all have strategies.

I believe that in 2023 and for the next five years, if your company is not a media company, you will not succeed.

Wow.

So we're seeing more traditional companies being flipped upside down or in T-Mobile's case, even partnering with a big actor slash celebrity slash creator like Renee Reynolds

to basically fast track themselves to have that brand recognition and take what he's built already.

But you're absolutely right.

I think every company has to become a media company or they will not survive.

And the alternative to that is partnering with creators who have already built up a really strong presence in brand.

Absolutely.

I agree.

I mean, Barstool Sports just got acquired.

All they do is media.

Great example.

Yeah.

I 100% agree.

I want to touch up on the caffeine stuff.

Okay.

So

I've never talked about this on the podcast before.

It's very interesting to me.

I've never met someone who has given up caffeine.

What made you decide to go that route?

So it's funny because I used to be sponsored by an energy drink company.

So that's a whole other story.

I think that for me, I realized whenever I was on caffeine, I was kind of anxious, jittery.

It put my mind in a state where I did not feel like I was in control.

And I tried it as just kind of a challenge with my friends, like, hey, let's just quit caffeine for a week and see what happens.

And a week turned into two weeks, which turned into a month, which turned into a year.

Wow.

I think I've been off caffeine for almost four years now.

Whoa.

And I also quit alcohol the same day that I quit caffeine.

Nice.

So

it's been challenging.

And, you know, all of this to say, I did it to experiment with myself, with my own body, and see how I feel.

And you've got people like, you know, Dr.

Huberman out there with his podcast talking about the effects.

And he's got some really powerful and compelling facts to back why people should consider lowering their alcohol consumption, lowering their caffeine consumption.

I feel like a completely different person.

And my energy level all day is just

straight.

Interesting.

And I don't have any crashes or ups and downs.

I feel like from the moment I wake up to the moment I go to sleep, I'm just on in a steady like state of energy.

So Charlie, you drink coffee every day.

Do you want to make a rebuttal to his argument?

No, because it's a stopgap measure, right?

Like it is, coffee is a band-aid for a bullet hole, right?

It is basically a way to get up.

It's a blocker, right?

To basically trick your body into not thinking you're awake or not thinking you're asleep.

The hardest thing for me is just getting going in the morning without that cup of coffee.

You could probably, it'd be a good placebo effect to try giving me decaf and seeing if it's just like the sheer act of drinking the coffee that makes me happy.

I quit drinking or quit eating sugar recently.

That is the most addicting thing in the world.

So was it harder for you to quit coffee or alcohol?

Good question.

Yeah, I feel like

I feel like the

I feel like the caffeine was probably a lot harder.

Really?

Yeah, I feel like caffeine is super addicting.

I don't know if alcohol has the same addicting qualities.

I don't know the science behind that.

I'm sure it has some.

But yeah, for me, the caffeine was super difficult to quit.

Yeah.

Yeah, I'm a month off alcohol now, and I feel amazing.

I think I'm done forever, honestly.

Really?

Yeah, maybe like when I get married, but other than that, I mean, there's no point.

That's awesome.

And I think more and more people are waking up to this.

Now, when I go out to parties or clubs, people aren't talking as much about

getting blacked out, getting hammered.

It used to be a cool thing.

It used to be cool.

And now it's, I think people are starting to accept the fact that there might be other alternatives out there.

I mean, you know, you look at cannabis industry, even

some of the other things that are out there that I think can help people like get some sort of a high that's going to be a lot more

natural for your body.

I've also got something for you for the coffee thing.

So something I tried that I think is really helpful.

It sounds a little bit crazy, but it's chicken broth in the morning.

You guys ever heard of this?

No.

So chicken broth in the morning, apparently, it's amazing for your immune system, for your health.

It's got protein, fat.

Every morning, I heat up some chicken broth.

I do a little cayenne pepper, salt, pepper, and it tastes amazing, and I feel great because

it's got everything you need.

Watered down or just like straight chicken broth?

Straight chicken broth, just organic, you know, for your intro.

Put it in a bowl, put some cayenne, salt, put it in the microwave for a minute.

A little bit of cayenne.

Don't overdo the cayenne.

Okay, a little bit of cayenne.

Put it in the microwave for a minute, and then you drink it.

That's it.

Yeah.

I do it over a stove top, but

yeah, every morning.

I'm going to try that.

If you ever take a meeting with me in the morning and I'm drinking drinking out of like chicken broth.

It's chicken broth.

Yeah.

Wow.

I visited my buddy over at Ben Group.

It's just like a media network.

And he was like, hey, do you want a coffee?

I'm like, no, I'm good.

I've got this.

He's like, oh, what is that?

And I'm like, it's chicken broth.

He's like, you're joking.

He went around the office and like trying to make everyone guess what I was drinking.

Nobody guessed it, of course.

You might have to start a chicken broth brand now.

That's actually not a bad idea.

I feel like that's been done before, though.

So is there any energy boosters that you do use?

Right?

Because, like, I mean, caffeine, obviously, you cut that out.

Does the chicken broth give you energy?

Is there any sort of supplements, vitamins, anything that you think that is giving you energy other than just you letting everything be natural?

I definitely have a pretty good supplement routine.

I take Ritual, which is a pretty cool brand that's out there that

you can trace back where every single ingredient comes from.

Oh, nice.

But I don't do any stimulants.

Okay.

So, anything, like even having a chocolate bar for me, I can feel the the effects of the caffeine whoa it's crazy wait oh there's caffeine in chocolate because of the cacao or the cocoa

i didn't i didn't know that i didn't even think about that

so i have to be kind of careful because i get yeah like i said i get a like a little bit anxious sometimes or even like um teas like i have to watch out if it's an herbal tea versus you know green tea or something like that right because they have caffeine too what role does money play in your life is it the most important thing for you is it a byproduct how do you treat money i think money is a tool and it comes, it ebbs, it flows.

Ultimately, you know, to acquire the most amount of money you can in your lifetime takes a lot of effort in most people's cases.

And I think it's easy to get distracted by that.

And so something I learned, especially as an actor and someone who's like...

literally had an income since I was like seven years old.

I formed my LLC at that young age.

I realized that money isn't everything and that I've really got to prioritize.

My big thing for the past three years is trying to prioritize family and making time for them and seeing them

over money because especially now, I think it has never been a better time to earn a living doing what you love to do.

All the tools are out there.

The cost to entry is next to nothing.

And so I think a lot of people are finding their side hustles and the things that they love to do, but I would definitely caution them that

money isn't everything.

I love thought.

What is your biggest L?

Not from a money standpoint, maybe time, maybe like a collaborative relationship or anything like that.

What would you say is your biggest regret or your biggest loss

since being seven years old?

No regrets.

No regrets.

My biggest L?

That's such a loaded question.

Throw someone under the bus.

It'll be fun.

Throw someone under the bus.

It doesn't have to be money.

It could be just.

Yeah, time investment.

It can be emotional investment.

Ex-girlfriend.

Yeah, Yeah, anything.

I think that from around when I was 19, I spent a lot of my time hanging around people who probably weren't the best influences for me and kind of got lost in the sauce.

You know, like I was around people who loved to party and hang out and like be out super late hours.

There wasn't any ill intent.

I was having a fun time.

It was just a total waste of time because I look back at that time period and I was like, damn, I could have been building something.

I could have been creating a company that could have changed people's lives in some way.

I could have been building my trajectory.

So I think I wasted a lot of time during those years.

But I look back at that and I'm grateful that I had that opportunity to kind of figure myself out

because at a certain point, I kind of snapped out of it.

And that's around the time where that's around the time when I quit alcohol and caffeine just as an experiment to myself to see if i could do it right where that one week turned into two turned into a month yeah and my my whole life 10x wow when i when i made those changes that's crazy i can relate for sure i think we all had that weird party phase in like high school college where we just thought it was cool to black out and smoke weed and stuff Yeah, yeah, it was wasn't as much the blacking out.

Just I think like being around the wrong people, right?

Like I love surrounding myself with really motivated people who are going to uplift me and together, collectively, we can sort of bring each other to a higher level.

And it doesn't have to be money, right?

Absolutely.

But just having conversations about creating things and making things, that's what really inspires me.

Facts.

What are you excited about with AI?

AI.

That's a big subject.

Yeah.

I'd love to hear your thoughts, but

from a creating perspective and someone who loves to create things online, I think it's going to totally change the game.

It already is, of how people are creating content, editing content.

There are so many tools out there that can literally expedite your sort of content workflow.

Yep.

I love it.

So you're seeing editing apps like Big Room.

You're seeing, you know, Notion has an awesome AI editor where you can, you know,

create different texts.

And I think they use OpenAI, you know, GPT through that.

And we're just going to see a massive influx of, I think, companies that are built by a single person who don't have any staff and they're entirely using AI to sort of be their staff there too.

Yeah, I met someone yesterday who's saving like 20k a month on legal bills using like just legal AI.

I use a copywriting AI.

I use an AI that determines my YouTube titles and descriptions.

What do you use?

I think it's called podcastmarketing.ai.

Nice.

And it literally makes the title, makes a description.

There's another AI that will make the clips.

So you input the full podcast.

It makes clips with the subtitles.

It's crazy.

Yeah.

It saves you so much time.

That's so exciting.

Yeah.

I think there's so much that's going to be built out of this.

And it's just the beginning.

Do you think it's a fad or do you think it's here to stay?

AI is for sure here to stay.

I don't know how far we'll get until we sort of hit a stopgap.

But, I mean, it's exciting to see, and I think there's a lot more innovation that can happen in the space.

Absolutely.

The craziest ad I heard was within a year, 90% of everything you see online will be generated by AI.

Whoa.

Wow.

That's insane.

You know, even down to like, you know, editing the clips, doing the copy, even if there's actually real people, you know, doing the prompts and stuff like that, almost all the content you're going to see will have been had AI's hands in it at some point.

Yeah.

Wow.

That's mind-boggling.

And there's a lot of people who've already fully committed to it, right?

So there's a lot of people like with social media, like with the internet, like we saw with NFTs, cryptocurrency, everything, where people are taking this wait-and-see approach.

I think with AI, it doesn't need mass adoption for it to already be everywhere.

It just takes a very dedicated, committed, small group of entrepreneurs, whatever, who are growing businesses with the use of AI.

People are going to be consuming AI without even knowing it.

So whether they like it or not, it's absolutely here to say.

Yeah, and I mean, I don't know what number would

justify mass adoption, but Chat GPT, you know, gained a million users within the first day.

I think they might be closer in the tens or hundreds of millions.

So holy crap.

You might need to fact-check me on that, but I think they've grown substantially and it's like hockey stick growth right now.

I haven't tried the new one they just came out with.

GPT-4?

Yeah, apparently it can like pass the bar exam and all of these other tests.

It's amazing.

Yeah, it's awesome.

It's got like, it's another level of cognitive abilities that I think GPT-3 just did not, did not have.

And I think it's going to allow people to go, you know, ask it a lot more deeper questions.

And right now, I feel like GPT-3 is like very elementary level.

Sure.

Right.

But GPT-4 and as they continue, it's sort of like the Teslas, right?

Like the more Teslas that are on the road, the more they all contribute to this.

you know, idea of singularity, this like hive mind.

And that's exactly what's happening with OpenAI.

Would you get Neuralink?

Would I get Neuralink?

Maybe

if it was proved safe.

Okay.

So you would be in AI?

I would be in AI.

I'm not sure that's what Neuralink is going to be in the short term.

I think Neuralink is going to be more about helping diseases, from what I understand.

Wait, are we talking about the same thing?

Neuralink from Elon?

Yeah.

Yeah.

So Neuralink in the beginning, I believe their goal is to sort of eradicate some diseases

that usually spawn from old age.

Okay.

I didn't know that.

So that's how they're sort of getting into market and will probably get their stamp of approval by the government, although I've heard they've been having some issues with that.

Okay.

Eventually, I think it'll definitely get into more of like the robot humanoid.

Interesting.

So they plan on rewiring the brain to fight diseases, basically.

I think that's part of the goal, which I think is really exciting.

You know, fighting things like dementia, for example.

I know plenty of people and families who have suffered from that.

So it's going to be very, very cool to see in our lifetime, some of those things being completely eradicated.

And that's just like, it kind of speaks to some of the amazing advancements that technology is going to be able to bring to us and our families in our lifetime.

Like something like Neuralink, at least on the, you know, disease fighting path forward, I'm, I'm really happy about that.

Yeah.

Man, it's been a pleasure.

Any closing comments and where people can find you?

Yeah, you can find me just searching my name, Blake Michael, Instagram, TikTok, all the things.

Awesome.

You heard it here, folks.

Digital Social Hour, Sean Kelly here, Charlie.

I'll see you guys next week.

Peace.