Jared Navarre Podcast Transcript
Jared Navarre joins host Brian Thomas on The Digital Executive Podcast.
Brian Thomas: Welcome to Coruzant Technologies, home of the Digital Executive podcast.
Welcome to the Digital Executive. Today’s guest is Jared Navarre. Jared Navarre is a multidisciplinary founder and creative strategist with a proven track record in launching, scaling and exiting ventures across IT, logistics, entertainment, and service industries. He has consulted with over 250 businesses specializing in building operational systems, designing resilient technology infrastructure, and developing multi-platform brand ecosystems that resonate with niche and mainstream audiences alike.
He’s the creator of Zillion, an immersive music project that blends narrative, multimedia, and live performance into a cohesive storytelling experience with a unique ability to translate artistic concepts into monetizable intellectual property. Jared is positioning Zillion as a breakout multi-platform brand with potential applications across music, animation, comics, and ar.
Well, good afternoon, Jared. Welcome to the show.
Jared Navarre: Thank you. Thank you. Happy to be here.
Brian Thomas: Absolutely, my friend. I appreciate it. Traversing the globe sometimes gets a little difficult, but we love doing that. 54 countries now and counting in the last four and a half years of the podcast, so I appreciate you being one of our awesome guests.
And Jared, if I could, I’m gonna jump into your first question. You’ve built and exited ventures across it, logistics, entertainment, and more. What core principles guide you when launching a new business? No matter the industry.
Jared Navarre: Well, first of all, I’m in Alaska for this podcast. Does that count as an additional country?
’cause I think it should, shouldn’t be part of the US
Brian Thomas: a frontier anyway. Yep.
Jared Navarre: Uh, onto your question. So I stopped counting a few years ago when I passed the, having consulted or worked with over 250 businesses, it’s probably getting close to 300 at this point. So some of the core principles, you know, obviously having a good model.
A good product or solving a problem are kind of key foundational principles to me, jumping in in any capacity, even on the consulting side, being part of a business. I also think that, uh, the true intention behind the founders, if it’s not myself, is really, really difficult and important for me to vet.
Figure out. I used to, for, you know, quite a few years, get tens of decks that would come across my desk or into my inbox, and most of the time people were searching for hope in the form of funding security in the form of partnership. And so it’s really finding partners and or ideas that are founded upon true faith and passion.
And again, on the partnership level, trying to gauge somebody’s risk tolerance. Again, people seeking money, I would say it’s upwards in the 90 percentile that are, that are, again, they’re searching for security and comfort rather than searching for something that’s gonna solve an actual cash flow problem.
And so for those people, I usually bluntly tell them, you’re not a founder, you’re not a uh, entrepreneur. Go get a day job, move on. But yeah, at the end of the day, to succinctly answer what you’re saying, it has to be solving a real problem. The business does has to be a product or a service that I believe in, and it has to have some sort of exit potential.
I, when I say exit potential, that means it can take a chunk of my time, my money, the founder’s time and money and so on and so forth. But are we giving ourselves a full-time job or is this an actual venture? That’s going to produce cash flow and again, a product or service that has some sort of trajectory that we all believe in.
Brian Thomas: Thank you. I appreciate that. And you do have a lot of experience. You’d mentioned nearly 300 businesses over the years that you’ve consulted with, and I think that’s impressive. But a few takeaways here. Having a good product, solving a problem is always been key to you, especially as consulting with these businesses.
But finding out that true intention of the leaders, leadership, business owners, whoever it is, is really important to you. And those ideals founded in trust and partnership are also important. I like how you vet, whether it’s a job versus a venture, and I think that’s important and uh, you’re willing to cut those two different people apart, essentially separating those based on where you find that they’re at.
So, Jared Zillion is described as an immersive music project that blends narrative, multimedia, and live performance. What inspired the concept and how did you bring it to life?
Jared Navarre: Yeah, so this is the other, uh, I’ll call it the other half of my life. So this is the passion project. Love. I’ve been part of music since I was a child in many different capacities, but I’ve been writing and singing and playing instruments basically since birth.
And Zillion was founded, I was about five years ago. I was actually at a. Hard Rock Show Three Days, grace and Disturbed, two incredible bands were playing at the, uh, T-Mobile arena in Las Vegas and, uh, the guitars for three days. Grace is a friend of mine and I had had a prior touring band at that point, and I watched them go on stage and play in front of tens of thousands of adoring fans.
And we had had some conversations after. And long story short. From there, I realized that the hard rock genre in particular, it wasn’t fusing any of the, the current technologies and any of the theatrical elements that I saw at that time. Budding in technology, even in performances like the Cirque Le Performances, you know, that tour of the world and were wonderful.
So I started to dig in and started to create and ideate around some sort of full immersive project. That could fuse these two worlds of both. I now describe it as Broadway meets Cirque de Soleil meets a hard rock show. And so the, the full performance is, it’s unlike anything I think that exists on the planet.
We pump scent in the building. When we drop snow on the audience, it push and pulls and blends the lines between theater and music and two worlds that have coexisted. But, uh, oddly, as I built this project, I, I found that some of the. Even the unions, the producers, the creators, the writers almost that there was a line in the sand between the commercial music business that we know that’s pop and country and rock and hip hop versus this theatrical world that is Broadway and the circ shows and stuff like that.
And so as I had conversations and started to build the project, I was communicating almost it felt like, with two sides of different armies. And so that’s how it was birth and, and still to this day, it’s evolving every day as technology does. But, uh, yeah, it’s, that’s the love project side of me.
Brian Thomas: I really love that.
I think like a lot of people just like me, music is my passion, and. If the day’s not going great, I throw on some music and the day is all better and I truly mean that. That’s how much music means to me. But I really like that you found something as you call your passion project, the love of your life and coordinating with some of some folks, you know in the music industry through Days Grace, you found that there really.
The hard rock genre wasn’t really adopting some of the newer technology. I see a lot of that. People are scared to get outta their comfort zones and maybe experiment or do something different, and you’re seeing other genres or other shows, live shows adopting it. Why can’t we come together? And I think that’s amazing.
It’s gonna make the world a better place, in my opinion. Jared, what excites you most about the future of immersive entertainment and where do you see zillion fitting into the next wave of media experiences?
Jared Navarre: Well, great question. So at its inception. I knew that I wanted to try and blend these different worlds, and coincidentally, that has now started to intersect with artificial intelligence, right?
AI is, I don’t know if there’s a hotter topic on the planet right now, and that’s infiltrating itself into music creation in ways that are still predictable and unpredictable. We don’t know what the future of that looks like, right? It’s, uh, infringing upon copyrights, so on and so forth. And so as I built zillion, each one of the characters has, the project itself, has other amazing writers that I brought in because I don’t wanna pretend myself that I am simultaneously a, a, a singer and a writer, and also can craft all these stories on my own.
So there’s a team behind this, and we built some really incredible and intriguing stories. That coincide with each album, that coincide with each show. And with that, we have comics that are attached to that and we’ve been experimenting with different AR technologies to try and bring these different levels of immersion into the live show.
And there’s a fork in the road we’re kind of facing right now of whether or not this eventually becomes some sort of residency or whether. It continues to be some sort of touring show. If we can find the right partners in the right location, be it Nashville, and we can have a residency there, you can put down some tent pole technologies that allow us to bring an even greater level of immersion.
But no joke, every day I’m battling back and forth. Tech versus art and trying to figure out how that fuses back into Zillion. So it’s a beautiful push and pull and I don’t know what tomorrow looks like, but I know that we’re gonna stay on what we call the bleeding edge. And some of that comes with some wounds and scars and some, uh, high expenses.
But that’s what this project is for me. To push the limits and see how far we can take it and blaze something, whether it’s whether it’s us or somebody else that comes after us that can bring, and fuse, you said yourself, the power of music into these other art forms and into our other senses in person.
Right? Exploring how that all happens is, again, we’re doing it every day. We have a version of the show today. It’ll change tomorrow, but there’s nothing more exciting about it. I could talk for hours on it.
Brian Thomas: That’s amazing. I have so many awesome people like yourself, guests on the show creators. And remind me, maybe a, after we get done here, is make an introduction for you, someone that’s kind of in your space totally different, but might be able to help you or spark some ideas there.
Jared Navarre: Oh, that’s amazing.
Brian Thomas: He, he’s an illusionist actually. And, uh, anyway, that’s another story. So I like what you said. Obviously AI is creeping into that music creation and obviously we’re seeing some copyright issues going across the spectrum of the world right now, but we weren’t sure what the future will bring, but.
People like you who are experimenting with AR technology and other technologies in this immersion process is only gonna make it better in the future. So I appreciate that. Jared, last question of the day. What excites you most about the future of immersive entertainment and where do you see Zillion fitting into the next wave of media experiences?
Jared Navarre: I will say that we are in the middle of witnessing the collapse of the fourth wall, and I see it deteriorating quickly and I don’t know how exactly yet the audience is going to fully become part of the show and the experience, but that’s what I envisioned and that’s what I’m watching happen. We can go back to seven, eight years ago.
This is prior to me even fully understanding where Zillion would be headed, and we were experimenting with, at that time some smart devices and having metrics on stage where we could actually monitor in real time the vitals of people in the crowd. Right. Now, fast forward today, and imagine this would take the buy-in of the audience obviously as well, but if you could.
Cater not just sonically, but if you could cater all of the different senses and all of the different deliverables from stage to the individuals themselves in real time in a responsive way, I think it’s limitless from there. And that also terrifies me, right? Because I think a lot of the beauty of art itself is birthed from human trauma, from human experience, and so on and so forth.
So this reactive side, that technology is fueling, again, I think it’s really, really exciting. But there’s a downside to it, right? We can’t lose humanity as we blaze these paths forward. They’re inevitable. Yeah. You know, imagine you turn on music and you’re having a rough day as you described earlier, and it’s just not your favorite song anymore.
Imagine that it’s a responsive sonic piece that is tracking every one of your vitals and. Controlling your mood towards whatever you’ve requested that it dictate you to. Those are some of the beautiful and terrifying potentials we have as, as music blends together with technology. So I’m privileged, terrified.
Honored. And, uh, I also think it’s a, a big responsibility to be part of that, that I don’t take lightly. And all the other artists I know that, that are part of this movement, they don’t take it lightly either because there’s a real risk that the voice of art can be smothered and suffocated and maybe even extinguished if we’re not.
Careful, and that’s not a doomsday speech. I think that’s genuinely the reality that we face. It’s a real possibility.
Brian Thomas: Absolutely. It’s interesting and I just love having these conversations, but if you go back to the sixties when the, the Star Trek first came out, right? We’re seeing the technology that was imagined back then starting to come about, and so you’re absolutely right.
There’s so many pros and cons with ai. We could. Make the world a better place. But of course, you know, we can’t lose humanity in it. We gotta keep the ethics in it. As we see, and we see musics like the Matrix. We know that this is a possibility, and you’re absolutely right. I like to accentuate the positive and if we can eliminate the negative, but we just got to make sure those ethics are involved because people have biases and ulterior motives and we just need to stay on top of it.
But I’m really excited for the future. Jared, it was such a pleasure having you on today, and I look forward to speaking with you real soon.
Jared Navarre: Hey, thank you, man. Really appreciate what you do, what you do for art, technology, business, all the topics you’ve covered. I am a fan of yours and I appreciate what you do.
Brian Thomas: Thanks, brother. Bye for now.
Jared Navarre Podcast Transcript. Listen to the audio on the guest’s Podcast Page.
