How Sonic Streaming Automates Wealth Creation For Podcasters And Their Communities with Ian Utile: An EOFire Classic from 2023

0:02Who's ready to rock today, Fire Nation. JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs on Fire, brought to you by High Level Level. the all-in-one sales and marketing platform. On today's classic episode, we'll be breaking down how Sonic Streaming automates wealth creation for podcasters and their communities. To drop these value bombs, I have brought Ian Utili into EO Fire Studios. Ian is a seven-times founder, the CEO of ATTN.live and co-producer of NFT.nyc. He's been involved with NFT since 2017. He loves one wheels, sunrises, sunsets, affectionate words, and courageous actions. And today we talk about how podcasters can create content without heavy high production requirements, how sonic streaming has the power to unlock financial abundance across generations and oh, so much more.

0:44And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to Ian and our sponsors. Fire Nation, are you ready to make 2026 your best year yet? I believe it's time to start your transformation by attending the world's highest rated business growth workshop taught personally by Clay Clark and featuring football star and entrepreneur Tim Tebow and President Trump's son, Eric Trump at thrivetimeshow.com slash eofire. Again, request life-changing tickets today at thrivetimeshow.com slash EO Fire. Are you ready for the ultimate all-in-one platform for entrepreneurs, marketers, coaches, and agencies? Build funnels, automate follow-ups, manage clients, and even white-label your own software.

1:25Say hello to our featured partner, High Level, and visit highlevelfire.com to start your free trial today. Ian, say what's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with. What's up, Fire Nation? My name is Ian, and I'm thankful to be here. What's something I believe about success that people might disagree with? I would say that the things that the world judges success, money in the bank account, things of that nature are probably not really success. I think success has to do with how much you laugh is a great measure of success.

2:12How much you smile is a great measure of success. How much you enjoy what you're doing. The feedback you get from people around you, especially people you're closest to, great measure of success. So I just think I live by a different scoreboard than many people that would talk about successes, this achievement, or this acquisition, things of that nature. So maybe that's a bit different than others might feel. Well, I think that's a great way to start this episode. And it's a great theme I want to kind of keep coming back to as we chat here today. Because you've done some pretty cool things over the years.

2:46As I mentioned in the intro, you know, you're the CEO of ATTN.Live, ATTN.Live. You're also the co-producer of NFT NYC, which has taken on a whole animal of itself. You've been involved with NFT since 2017, which is pretty crazy. And you love one wheels, which is fantastic. Sunsets. Can you see a sunset from your treehouse? Is that possible? I can see the sunrise to the left and the sunset to the right. You've nailed it. I'm just like basking in the grace of nature. That's fantastic. I love that. And you've done something pretty cool with a company called Sonic Streaming, which is actually where I want to start today.

3:27I want to hear the story, the aha moments of the creation, the idea for Sonic Streaming. What was that story? Well, it was personal. You know, I had just wrapped up one of my tech companies. It was acquired by a private equity firm. So I was thinking about what to do next. And I became an entrepreneur in residence at a few different places to kind of work out what I was going to start next. And I kept running to this roadblock with wanting to broadcast my content all at one place at one time. So I would end up having, eventually I had multiple phones. I had like four phones, one to go live on Instagram, one to go live on YouTube.

4:09And I thought this is a broken system. And then some different software products came out that let you kind of live broadcast video. And there's some good software companies that have done it. But I still wasn't really happy. I felt like it wasn't very simple. Like I still needed a person to help. So the beginning of Sonic streaming was what if we just had a simple app that could be used on any phone or even a voice device, like a Google Assistant device. So you can just say, I want to go live and you basically do a podcast to every platform at once. So that was the beginning idea. And then it evolved from there.

4:40But my main desire was to save time. I just want to be in my car or on the run or on a one wheel ride. And if I had some thought for a minute or I'm with a friend at a coffee shop and I want to capture a spur of the moment podcast, I could just go live and have clear, crisp, you know, audio that just goes out everywhere at one time. Now, Fire Nation, I can tell you as a creator myself, when it comes to things like audio and just overall content creation, this is a problem in the world. And so that aha moment is something that I can definitely see how and why Ian had. Can you kind of talk us through the next step of the process once you had that idea?

5:20Yeah, the next step for me was seeing how we could build it. And I kept thinking that conversational AI was the most important element. So I felt like, you know, there's all these great distribution software companies, the Hootsuites and the Buffers and the HubSpots of the world. And there's some pretty good like video distribution and video creation platforms like Zoom or Skype. And I thought, okay, but where's the simplicity? I thought, well, if you could just say to your Microsoft Cortana, your Samsung Bixby or Apple Siri device, if you could just say, I want to go live and it already has everything set in the settings and you could go to where it wants, like that was the key.

5:59So we actually spent a ton of time trying to build out our technology with conversational AI as the primary interface rather than thumbs on glass or fingers on a keyboard. while we were doing that i kept looking at future technology and i was just captivated with nfts about five years ago and i thought you know i think nfts can kind of prove ownership of tech of this intellectual property that's like being distributed across all these channels because you know when you send it to youtube or you send it to instagram it's kind of questionable about the terms and conditions and who owns what and what people can do i thought what if i could use an NFT to just prove this is my content or this is our client's content.

6:39So we really were playing in two different advanced fields. One is leveraging smart contracts on the Ethereum blockchain network to prove an actual property and transfer ownership. And the other was using conversational AI so that it would be really easy to use our product because you didn't have to like have a cell phone or a computer in front of you. Now I'm a podcaster. I know a lot of people listening to this are podcasters, our content creators are doing videos, TikToks, different things along those lines. Why are we the ideal creators to leverage sonic streaming? Well, I feel like podcasters can make more content at scale than anybody else.

7:16I feel like podcasters have the ability to create content without worrying about all the different elements that a highly pre-produced, post-produced content has oftentimes. So a podcast doesn't have to often worry about what they look like. They just need a great microphone and they need to have something of significance to say. And everything about podcasters is oftentimes when they're doing a podcast, whether it's really thought through and it's a weekly or monthly podcast or it's spur of the moment, when they do it, a lot of new things are said that they've never said before. And so I think one of the big things is that's all fresh ideas and intellectual property.

7:54And they don't have a great way of proving it's theirs. They don't even have a system to record and transcribe and file something. So we're trying to be an all-in-one solution for content creators that create content at scale, which oftentimes is audio content. And so we feel like this is the ideal market for us to serve because they're underserved. We also recognize that nobody in the NFT space is talking about podcasts. They might be talking about artwork or music or metaverse, but there's still like not even any focus really on this sector of the economy and leveraging these advanced technologies like smart contracts for the sake of people like yourself, John, with entrepreneurs on fire.

8:36Yeah, and that makes me excited. And I love when people like yourself who are, you know, just go getters, entrepreneurs, creators are creating awesome tools and platforms for producers and content producers in general. That's just really exciting. So hat tip to you on that, Ian. Love it. Love it. And Fire Nation, we have some real cool things we're gonna be talking about. We're gonna do a quick change of gears. We're not done talking about Sonic streaming either. But we're gonna take a quick break to thank our sponsors. Let's talk about that level up mindset. You know, the one you need to take your business from comfortable to next level amazing.

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12:37High level, join the revolution. So Ian, we're back. And as I said before the break, I want to do a quick gear shift because something that you're passionate about and you have been since 2017, and me, I'm a little later to the game, but I've been in it for over a year now, are NFTs. And NFT.nyc has been really the NFT conference for at least a year or two now. And so I kind of want to have you talk about this event. How did it come to fruition? How can Fire Nation participate? Why should we be excited about this? NFT NYC is a community event. So our last event was in November. We had 5 ,500 people buy tickets, but we had more than 10 ,000 people come to Times Square, New York, and 128 other events happened in collaboration with ours.

13:26So this year, it's June 20th through the 23rd in Times Square, New York. We've rented Radio City Music Hall and the Palladium Theater and the Edison Ballroom and town square and a bunch of hotels. And we as a team at NFT NYC, we're simply facilitating the community to do what they want to do, which is gather together in real life to forge partnerships, to get contracts done, to get investment, both deploying capital as an investor and getting capitalized as an entrepreneur. And so we're creating environments for this. And of course, we're creating stages, right? We'll have almost 1500 speakers at our event, but our event is not centralized by nature.

14:06It's not about us saying this is what's happening, how it's happening. We try to give the crowd and the community as much influence over what we do as we possibly can. And then we encourage everybody else, like any big NFT project, to do their own event while ours is going on and we'll put it on our website and support it. So it is, in many regards, people kind of think, wow, it's kind of like South By was when it was getting started, like this really cool place where innovative craters are at and everybody's coming together to collaborate. And that's the environment that we want to foster. And our team had this idea, uh, late 2018.

14:42And, and, you know, we're amazed by how it's grown because when we first started doing it, it was, you know, 150 of us, you know, the second year is maybe 300. And then last year, of course, because of, uh, all that's happened in this space, our event in terms of attendance exploded. And I love how there's just how there are so many outside meetups as well. I mean, we're already hearing from some projects that I'm in about how they're basing their annual meetup around NFT.NYC and how that's just going to grow and bring more people to the space, to the city, to the environment, and really looking forward to everything that that has involved with.

15:19And I want to shift gears back now to Sonic Streaming because you have this vision for the future impact of what you've created with Sonic Streaming for creators, for their communities. Can you talk about that future? Well, I think the future comes in a couple parts. So first, can we serve you and your peers really, really well, right? So can we give you a tool to where you don't have to change much about what you do, but you just can do it better? And can we listen to you? And can we actually take in the feedback and then make little pivots in terms of what we're building for today. So today we want to serve podcasters well and anybody involved in audio.

15:59And of course, this could extend to universities and teachers and it could extend to nonprofit organizations that are always talking about what they're doing. But we see podcasters as the core, right? Podcasters are creating amazing IP of big communities that are committed and loyal to them. They also are inviting other people to their platform, like you've invited me to your platform to share and, you know, their ideas. And so we want to support this. And so we believe that our all-in-one solution, which people can, if they want to learn more, they can go to attn.live and to kind of see what we're doing for podcasters.

16:35So that's step number one. And that's just grinding out and working hard and making wise decisions and listening to feedback and, you know, building good tech and making sure that we're also thoughtful of the fact that we are decentralized in our approach, right? We don't want to be a traditional web to SaaS company. We really are working hard to building things that are empowering the community. And you see all these types of things happening in new tech companies with DAOs, decentralized autonomous organizations and things of that nature. So that's immediate. The long-term goal for me is I think that sonic streaming at scale, when you have a billion people leveraging Sonic Streaming either as creators or as consumers, I think Sonic Streaming can really impact the global economy.

17:25And the reason I believe that is audio is so easy to create and so easy to consume. It's passive. So people don't have to give their undivided attention to a screen. So I really believe in audio as a primary format. NFTs allow a content creator to basically compensate their community for their attention. Now, they might still sell an NFT that has utility and rights and things of that nature. We try to allow our clients to decide what they want to do in that regards and not be overly detailed about our suggestions. But of course, we have a dashboard that kind of walks them through that process.

18:01But what we believe is that if a creator can connect with their community, a podcaster with those that listen, and they can provide them something of value and leverage an NFT that way, that all of a sudden it changes the whole dynamic. We see this with the Brave browser, that if you use the Brave browser instead of Safari or Chrome, that you kind of get compensated for your attention. And we'll see this permeate many different areas. We just believe that a smart contract is a great way of automating that process. And then if you take it all the way out, you know, there's 3 billion people in the world that don't have the internet.

18:37They don't speak a major language. They make$2 a day. Well, now you have to think what happens in a few years or in 10 years when a company like ours provides them a tool, an application that has a conversational AI element that they talk to. And now all of a sudden these people all around the world, they can talk to a ring on their finger or watch on their wrist or the glasses on their head. And maybe they don't know how to use a phone or a computer. They aren't really good with thumbs on glass, but they can talk in their own language and our application can understand them. And all of a sudden, these impoverished people can start to share how they rear children, how they do farming, the ancient war stories that we can be entertained by.

19:15And so I think that this approach of sonic streaming at scale has a very, very strong potential of unlocking financial abundance for people that have been impoverished for many, many, many generations. Well, I love this conversation about the 3 billion that you just went through because you've seen it in other countries already in different technologies. I mean, landlines were completely skipped in most countries in Africa. They went right from not having any phones to everybody having a cell phone. They never laid down the landlines because it was just too expensive of an infrastructure process.

19:53And this could be that next leap where people that are in these countries and places and locations that don't even have cell phones or iPads or all those things are skipping right to that next futuristic thing that again, as we're talking about right now, could be a Sonic streaming type of situation. So tell us where Fire Nation can go to learn more about Sonic streaming to connect with you. I don't want to forget about NFT.NYC as well, because there's some cool things going on there. So take us home with all of that. If you want to learn more about Sonic streaming, then you can certainly go to attn.live.

20:26I would encourage you to go to the bottom of our website and look at our white paper. So we spent a couple of years writing the white paper. And what we ended up doing was we did events. So we did NFT NYC. We did a bunch of events for, you know, Google Assistant and Amazon Speaker. I'm not going to say the A word so it doesn't fire off people's speakers. And we did all these events and conversational AI and NFT and blockchain to try to figure out what's happening in the world. And we took all that information and we created the white paper that we released about the importance of a conversational AI interface that you can talk to technology, it talks back, and leveraging NFTs to prove ownership and to compensate communities for their attention and to create massive wealth for the content creators.

21:12So I would encourage people to take a look at the white paper. They can certainly reach out to us. We love for people that are part of Fire Nation to use our platform. So we have some people using it. We have a waiting list that you can jump in, ask a few questions. We can kind of qualify like, hey, are you are you ready to use this technology? And we're available. I'm available right at Ian Utilly at Attention Live on just about any social media site. Love to connect with folks. Happy to answer questions and figure out, hey, how might you use our tech now or in the near future? I hope that in the future, Sonic streaming is not a term that we use to describe our company and our technology.

21:52My great desire is that many, many, many collaborative competitors rise up and they take Sonic streaming and they run with it themselves. And they create these all in one solutions for podcasters and other creators. And so hopefully in the future won't be about, hey, come to my website and see what we are creating. It'll be, oh, look at what this podcaster is doing and look at what this software company has created. So that is my projection of what is to come. As far as taking us home, I would encourage people to join us in New York City. NFT NYC happens June 20th through the 23rd. It's going to be a very meaningful event for business people.

22:32So if you're a business person, no matter what side of the aisle you're on and what your intentions are, there's likely the prospects that you're looking for there. also for artists, whether you're a physical artist, digital artist, a musician, I would consider a podcaster to be an artist in these regards. It is an environment where people are looking to support artists, collaborate with artists, make money with artists and for artists. So I think it's a wonderful place for the Fire Nation community to come and spend time together. And John, I certainly look forward to seeing you there. That is a fantastic ending to a fantastic episode because Fire Nation, You're the average of the five people you spend the most time with.

23:12You've been hanging out with IU and JLD today, so keep up the heat. Head over to eofire.com. Just type Ian, I-A-N, in the search bar. His show notes page will pop up with everything that we've talked about here today. And Ian, thank you for sharing your truth, your knowledge, your value with Fire Nation. For that, we salute you and we'll catch you on the flip side. Hey, Fire Nation. Today's value bomb content was brought to you by Ian and Fire Nation's successful entrepreneurs accomplish big goals. That's why I created the Freedom Journal to guide you in accomplishing your number one goal in 100 days, step by step.

23:47Visit thefreedomjournal.com and I'll catch you there or I'll catch you on the flip side. Fire Nation, are you ready to make 2026 your best year yet? I believe it's time to start your transformation by attending the world's highest rated business growth workshop taught personally by Clay Clark and featuring football star and entrepreneur Tim Tebow and President Trump's son, Eric Trump at thrivetimeshow.com slash EO fire. Again, request life changing tickets today at thrivetimeshow.com slash EO fire. Are you ready for the ultimate all in one platform for entrepreneurs, marketers, coaches, and agencies?

24:23Build funnels, automate follow-ups, manage clients, and even white label your own Say hello to our featured partner, High Level, and visit highlevelfire.com to start your free trial today.