Creative Space with Jennifer Logue
Entrepreneur Jonathan Sposato On the Alchemy of Creativity
On today’s episode of Creative Space, we have the pleasure of chatting with Jonathan Sposato, a renowned entrepreneur with an impressive track record in the tech and publishing industries. He’s the co-founder of Geekwire, CEO of PicMonkey, owner of Seattle Magazine, as well as the founder and acting editor-in-chief of JoySauce, Jonathan’s latest project that aims to increase American Asian representation in popular culture.
Sposato shares his unique approach to creativity, which involves merging unlikely elements to create something extraordinary. He emphasizes the importance of learning from our mistakes, the exhilarating baptism by fire that comes with starting a company, and the balance between humility and confidence. Drawing from his experiences working with Bill Gates, he provides valuable insights into the art of balancing confidence and humility and finding fulfillment in creativity.
For more information on JoySauce, visit: joysauce.com.
To sign up for the weekly Creative Space newsletter, visit: eepurl.com/h8SJ9b.
To become a patron of the Creative Space Podcast, visit: bit.ly/3ECD2Kr.
SHOW NOTES:
0:00—Introduction
2:17—”I always wanted to do multiple things.”
4:39—The alchemy of creativity
9:38—The freedom in his formative years
11:50—”It’s only by doing that you figure it out.”
12:40—Getting inspired by Star Trek
19:40—Growing up feeling less than
24:16—The meritocracy of the early tech industry
28:35—His studies at Whitman College
31:22—Becoming an entrepreneur at 21
35:00—The move to Microsoft and working with Bill Gates
42:00—Jonathan’s definition of creativity
47:14—Balancing multiple projects
49:00—The dangers of FOMO
55:00—Digging into JoySauce
1:10:00—Technology and AI
1:16:00—What’s next for Jonathan
On today’s episode of Creative Space, we have the pleasure of chatting with Jonathan Sposato, a renowned entrepreneur with an impressive track record in the tech and publishing industries. He’s the co-founder of Geekwire, CEO of PicMonkey, owner of Seattle Magazine, as well as the founder and acting editor-in-chief of JoySauce, Jonathan’s latest project that aims to increase American Asian representation in popular culture.
Sposato shares his unique approach to creativity, which involves merging unlikely elements to create something extraordinary. He emphasizes the importance of learning from our mistakes, the exhilarating baptism by fire that comes with starting a company, and the balance between humility and confidence. Drawing from his experiences working with Bill Gates, he provides valuable insights into the art of balancing confidence and humility and finding fulfillment in creativity.
For more information on JoySauce, visit: joysauce.com.
To sign up for the weekly Creative Space newsletter, visit: eepurl.com/h8SJ9b.
To become a patron of the Creative Space Podcast, visit: bit.ly/3ECD2Kr.
SHOW NOTES:
0:00—Introduction
2:17—”I always wanted to do multiple things.”
4:39—The alchemy of creativity
9:38—The freedom in his formative years
11:50—”It’s only by doing that you figure it out.”
12:40—Getting inspired by Star Trek
19:40—Growing up feeling less than
24:16—The meritocracy of the early tech industry
28:35—His studies at Whitman College
31:22—Becoming an entrepreneur at 21
35:00—The move to Microsoft and working with Bill Gates
42:00—Jonathan’s definition of creativity
47:14—Balancing multiple projects
49:00—The dangers of FOMO
55:00—Digging into JoySauce
1:10:00—Technology and AI
1:16:00—What’s next for Jonathan
Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of Creative Space, a podcast where we explore, learn and grow in creativity together. I'm your host, jennifer Loge, and today we have the absolute pleasure of chatting with Jonathan Spasato, a serial entrepreneur who's founded a number of companies, two of which were sold to Google and one you may be using right now Pick Monkey. He's also heavily involved in the media space, as the chairman of Geekwire and owner of Seattle Magazine. His latest venture is the JoySauce Network, a platform that addresses the lack of Asian-American representation in entertainment through highlighting the Asian-American experience. Welcome to Creative Space, jonathan. It's such an honor to have you on this show. Seriously.
Jonathan Sposato:Thanks so much, jennifer. Thank you so much. It's a delight talking with you and I'm very honored to be on this show. This is a great show and I'm just happy to be a part of it.
Jennifer Logue:Oh my gosh. Thank you so much. What are you calling from today?
Jonathan Sposato:I'm actually calling from very, very sunny Palm Springs, where I spend some of my time when I'm not in wet, rainy Seattle, which I understand. Right now, seattle is very wet today.
Jennifer Logue:Oh my gosh, You're in the sunshine enjoying it.
Jonathan Sposato:That's right. That's right, kind of drying out a little bit. It's been a long winter for some of us in Seattle, so oh my gosh, I'm glad you're able to get away.
Jennifer Logue:You have such a range when it comes to creativity. Thank you.
Jonathan Sposato:You're in technology.
Jennifer Logue:What was that?
Jonathan Sposato:That means a lot coming from you, Jennifer. Thank you.
Jennifer Logue:Oh my gosh, yeah, so technology media, you're a founder, you're a talk show host, you're an author, like. I'm really looking forward to digging into your creative journey and exploring the important work you're doing with the Joy Sauce Network.
Jonathan Sposato:Yeah, yeah, absolutely. You know, it's really interesting, I guess, and I'd be curious to know, interactively, if you felt this way as you were coming of age, growing up and exploring what you wanted to do. But I can say that I've always wanted to do multiple things and I think at a young age I had heard that the average sort of career lifespan of someone or the amount of time that you spend at one job is like five to seven years, and so I really internalized that and then later, when I went to work at Microsoft, they sort of supported that. You know, I was there I'm going to cut my teeth as in the early years of Microsoft in the early 90s. Shortly after that they went public, I think, and they were exploring all different kinds of new businesses. They wanted to grow beyond windows and operating systems and they wanted to, you know, create kids' educational products and they wanted to create, you know, online encyclopedias and travel applications and the Xbox and all of that in the ongoing years, and they really supported this notion that every five or so years, if you stay at the company a long time, that you should change jobs and explore different things.
Jonathan Sposato:So I would say that in my 12 years at Microsoft, I probably had no fewer than, by choice, five different jobs. So I kind of beat the average of changing every five years or so. It was more like every three, I think. And so to me it's normal that you see an opportunity as an entrepreneur and you go after it. And if you can trust yourself to be resilient and mentally agile and to do the research and figure it out, figure out what the total addressable market is and if there's a new way that you can approach it, I would say that you kind of owe it to yourself to do it. There's no way you can back out from that right.
Jennifer Logue:Exactly, and I think that you have to have inspiration and just obeying. And I think sometimes we hear that, oh, you should stick to one thing to become a master at it. But for me, I've found that all my different experiences have helped me see the world from a bigger picture or a bigger perspective and see angles. It just ends up creating a filter through which you're seeing things that's totally unique and totally you.
Jonathan Sposato:Yeah, but yes, yes, now you've kind of analyzed me to remember something, which is that I actually think that the best results, if you work backwards from some of the most creative things that have ever been created by people, there's a certain kind of it's a function of a certain kind of alchemy.
Jonathan Sposato:Alchemy has been literally taking two things that don't usually get put together, but you put them together and you get kind of something a little bit more magical, a certain result. And there are many, many examples of that with sort of the work that we do on Joy Sauce, for example. There have been other Asian American efforts in the past. There have never been sort of Asian American centered efforts that also fuse a very, very kind of edgy, colorful, saturated look and feel where the position despite my age, that we position a lot younger and edgier and we're more inclusive of our LGBTQ brothers and sisters and that is a new sort of form of alchemy right, we're not just focused on, we're not an Asian American side focused on business and celebrating the doctors and the engineers doing great things.
Jonathan Sposato:There are plenty of people that are doing that and that's wonderful, but we decided to take a different tack. So I think a lot of times, creativity that I'm drawn to is when you take a couple of things that don't usually go together and you make something of it right.
Jennifer Logue:Yes, and it definitely has a vibe all its own and we're going to dig into that in a little bit. The first uncreative space. I love diving into your early years, starting at the very beginning. Okay, where did you grow up and what was your childhood like?
Jonathan Sposato:Yeah, yeah, let's see, honestly, I grew up kind of all over. So I was born in London to a single mom who really couldn't afford to take care of me. We moved from London to Brooklyn, new York, to Brooklyn Heights. I like the joke, brooklyn Heights when it was before it was very shi-shi, it was very working class, single mothers, old people, but I still remember it very viscerally what the old Brooklyn Heights used to be like, and but then she couldn't afford to take care of me after a while. And I think that what's interesting about my background is that my birth mother was, or still is, a Chinese American and my birth father was a Korean American and at that time, in the late 60s, they were not allowed to get married their families. You know, they're sort of just saying a familiarity breeds contempt and I think that that back then was very true of certain Asian cultures where you can't mix.
Jonathan Sposato:That was not, you know, like a kosher thing for the families. So they couldn't get married. She tried to raise me as a single mother, but she couldn't really afford to do that and, you know, also have a job and pay for a babysitter. So she sent me to Hong Kong to live with my maternal grandparents, and this was when I was about three and a half and I did not come back to the United States until I was almost 10 years old, and so I actually look at it with nothing, but honestly, you know, with no, you know, sometimes I scratch my head, I'm wondering like, am I, am I burying some, or am I? Am I supposed to be more upset about this? But I tell my mother all the time she's older and she has some issues now, but but, but I tell her I thought it was wonderful that I got to spend time with my grandparents and wonderful to have been sort of infused with, I think, a lot of creative ideas from being metropolitan, very, very mixed kind of boiling pot of cultures.
Jonathan Sposato:That was Hong Kong in the 70s. I mean it was incredible the growth of that city. There was a financial growth of the city but a lot of cultural growth. You know East West influences. There was the British influence. You know Bruce Lee himself was making a lot of films in Hong Kong at that time. I still remember to this day what it was like to be a young child watching him on the big screen in the movie theater with my grandfather, and then, sadly, a few years later when he passed, his funeral was obviously a very big deal in Hong Kong, as the entire world really warned his passing. So so, but that was the long story, a long story short, that there was an incredible set of influences that I think impacted my childhood and my creativity.
Jennifer Logue:Wow, Um. So what did you love most about your upbringing and what did you learn from your grandparents?
Jonathan Sposato:Well, you know, to be honest, this, this is not an observation that flatters, but when you are an only child and when you are then sort of spoiled by, you know, grandparents spoiled their children.
Jennifer Logue:Oh yeah.
Jonathan Sposato:They're like just whatever you do they're just really, really happy about, and I think that must have created a situation where to answer your question about what I love most was that I was allowed to explore and free me whoever I wanted to be, to play in ways that I wanted to be, to explore different things while I was in school that I wanted to do without them sort of anybody sort of sweating it too much, and so that would reason why I say that this doesn't very much flatter me.
Jonathan Sposato:A couple of reasons. One is that you know, basically I was spoiled brat, maybe that I was allowed to do whatever I wanted to and kind of be in my own head and, you know, being creative and writing my own stories and my drawings and all that stuff. But also as a parent now of a 13 year old boy, I do sometimes have to take a step back and wonder am I kind of micromanaging him or am I becoming a helicopter parent, when I care a lot about the intimate details of what he's doing in school and how he's doing it or how he's loading a dishwasher or things like that, and so I, knowing that I grew up without that, I wonder if there's a connection between that freedom.
Jennifer Logue:Yes.
Jonathan Sposato:It's with being in such a big city. I was even allowed to kind of roam the city at a certain age by myself, right, and you know, take the bus and go places. So I wonder if all of those factors had an impact on my creativity and my willingness to kind of take on certain challenges, as they're almost uncapped. It's like you know what? Let's see what happens, let's just do it. We'll figure out where the extents and the boundaries of the problem are. But it's only by doing it that you figure it out, not sitting back and kind of thinking about it forever.
Jennifer Logue:Yeah, not having so many boundaries growing up. Yeah, it just opens the world up and you're more open as an adult to possibility. And so, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I think so Take no steps, yeah, right right, right.
Jonathan Sposato:So could you agree with that, jennifer, or the words I?
Jennifer Logue:definitely agree with that. I think our early years have such a big impact on how we create later. You know it has a profound impact. But who are your biggest inspirations to the kid besides Bruce Lee?
Jonathan Sposato:Oh right, I know it's probably cliche of every Asian American. No, not at all. Gosh, there were. Well, you know this is from the perspective of a kid, but I remember watching and being fascinated by American TV shows when I was living in Hong Kong. Fascinating. When we first got our color, the first color TV, we traded our black and white TV in for a color one my grandparents, it's like you know. It was as immersive to me as virtual reality is to people today. And I remember probably being very inspired by Star Trek. Okay, I just remember that Captain Kirk was the coolest white guy I had ever.
Jonathan Sposato:He has a little confidence, his swagger, I would say what you will about the real William Shatner, and I know that from having a talk with George Takei. He's been on Joy Sauce, I know that perhaps there was a lot of interesting drama behind the scenes, but the character that was Captain Kirk Sysib, he was confident, he had vision, he had ideas about what to do and then he also was an amazing captain. He was an amazing boss or CEO where he knew how to sort of leverage the talents of the really good people that worked for him, such as Spock and how afraid Spock was and of course McCoy, who was more emotional, and there's a lot that's been said. Just like they say that sex in the city, that all four women, is really just four different sides of one woman, I really think that Star Trek you know the three of them, you know Kirk Spock, mccoy is just really three different facets of the same one man, one person.
Jonathan Sposato:And so I think that early on I drew inspiration from that uniquely American brand of confidence in terms of how you interact with the world and deal with adversity. Of course it's all fantasy, but you know, years later in political science class I would learn that Gene Roddenberry himself was very inspired. You know, gene Roddenberry, the creator of Star Trek, that when he pitched the concept, his idea came out at his very early 60s American, kind of Kennedy-esque. You know that great ideas, creative solutions, technology were uniquely American factors and that they would.
Jonathan Sposato:That's our salvation, that's what gets us out of trouble, that's what will save humanity or our species, between different races or planets, and so that those ideas are actually very powerful, ideas that, I would say, still are things that we need to be reminded of.
Jennifer Logue:I love that you brought that up because, yes, he created a show that's fiction, but it's founded on these like with such a mission.
Jonathan Sposato:Yeah, yeah, it was such an interesting. I've heard Nichelle Nichols, who played Lieutenant Uhura, and other cast members of the original Star Trek say this this really was and you know, jennifer, you're younger than I am, but that really was like the first show on TV where you saw an ensemble cast of different races and different. And then they went beyond. They died up to 11. It's not just that you have a Swahili communications officer, uhura, or a Japanese American pilot or navigator in a Sulu, or a Russian consulman with Chekhov, but they even went beyond that by. You know that Spock was himself, you know, half Vulcan, and from a different planet.
Jonathan Sposato:So I think that was really this idea that we can all in the future, that we're all equals and that we can all get along and that race is no longer an issue. Really powerful to have to have visualized that in the late 60s.
Jennifer Logue:It's incredible and the impact the show has had.
Jonathan Sposato:Yeah, it used to have.
Jennifer Logue:Yes, it's incredible.
Jonathan Sposato:Are you a Star Trek fan at all, Jennifer?
Jennifer Logue:So my dad was growing when I was growing up. I need to catch up on Star Trek because one of my bosses was like he's really into it, not the original Star Trek, but like another.
Jonathan Sposato:Star Trek the next generation.
Jennifer Logue:That's it. He's really into that one.
Jonathan Sposato:Yeah, oh yeah.
Jennifer Logue:It's on my list because he said he learned so much about. I think like teamwork?
Jonathan Sposato:Yeah, Absolutely. Oh, I know I believe someone's probably already written this book, but like I wish that there was a book that would be titled Everything I Learned in Management or Running a Company I Learned on Star Trek, because it really does write. I'm sure those writers you know kind of shadowed successful CEOs or executives at companies to sort of get the sense of what it's like to delegate, to make decisions, even when the data or the information is imperfect, and you're balancing personnel, emotional elements and human elements of the problem versus the hard firmware elements of the problem. So very inspiring stuff actually.
Jennifer Logue:Super cool. It hasn't been written, you know, maybe you should write it.
Jonathan Sposato:Jennifer, did I address your question adequately about what I found inspiring growing up?
Jennifer Logue:Oh yeah, I mean, I just love letting the conversation flow too. Okay, but you definitely answered the question perfectly, and so I did want to ask what did you want to be when you grew up, though?
Jonathan Sposato:Oh, I see, you know, I honestly didn't know there were some other things that drove me to, I think, be who I was. That was a little less. That was kind of framed differently than kind of what job I wanted to be growing up, or something like that. I mean, you go through everyone goes through the phase where I really wanted to be an astronaut, right, yeah. So that was there and then quickly taken off the table once I realized like, oh, you've got to be like all of these amazing things, first you know a physicist and like a brain surgeon and an engineer and maybe test pilot, and then you get to be on the list to even be admitted out, so. So there were those cliche kinds of things that I thought about. But the true answer is that I really didn't know and that the factors that kind of drove me forward had a little bit more to do with maybe running away from my own pain and feeling seen, and so this is not my clever segue to Joyce sauce. It's an authentic connection to why I created joy sauce, which is that growing up I really did feel that as an Asian American, sort of at times less than when I was back in the United States you know there were.
Jonathan Sposato:There may be bullies at school or they may be taught, or the occasional, even very subtle things that people double entendre and you're like, well, that person really was there meaning in all that phrase, that are the word that they chose. You can never really tell. That, I think, is really the majority of how racism presents itself in this day and age. It's never super, super clear. So one has to be not overly sensitive and like kind of have that lens on everything that's coming at you but at the same time, when it does happen and it's very acute, it's correct to acknowledge it.
Jonathan Sposato:So so, because of some of those experiences growing up I always did feel like a lot of what I did, right or wrong, was an attempt to be so good at what I did that there's, they can't harness me, they can't take anything away from me, or to to give them nothing to make fun of me about. That I think is not uncommon for anybody who sort of has that ambition. You know, maybe if they really dig deep, you know they're, they're, we're all compensating for something. And I think what I ended up doing you know, getting into technology and finding something that I love to do. I wrote my first computer game when I was about 13 or so, and so that was on the Apple too, and that dates me.
Jennifer Logue:And this is when you went back to the United States after age 10.
Jonathan Sposato:After, after I had already moved to Seattle, back to Seattle, and I'd already been in the United States for like four or five years or four years or something like that. And so my, my uncle, was a very successful entrepreneur in Silicon Valley, sort of back when they really didn't call it Silicon Valley, and he had a hardware assembly, testing, manufacturing business that he started with his wife, which inspired me in a different way that that, oh, you know, it's like, who you marry and what you do together can make a big difference to your, your path in life, right? So so the point is that he asked me to work for him during the summers, and this was kind of a way to, you know, for young Jonathan to develop a little more grit and understand hard work, all of which I was true, and I was very grateful for. But, being the good Chinese uncle that he was, he didn't want to pay me in some you know large dollar amount that I was going to blow on something silly. He paid me in the form of an Apple II computer that he didn't, really he wasn't interested in using.
Jonathan Sposato:He, I think, got it and he was trying to decide between. This was in the very, very early days of the PC revolution and you could buy. Like you know, radio Shack had a TRS 80,. You know, apple had their Apple II, ibm had some sort of PC that was interesting, and maybe Commodore had a Commodore pet and so he was trying to decide which one he was going to use for his own, decided that the Apple II was not for him and he goes. You know, jonathan, this is an expensive machine. This is your payment at the end of this summer, and I'm like yeah.
Jonathan Sposato:I just really went to town and again the only child thing no real cap or definition of nobody was telling me like hey, don't spend so much time in your room blinking away on this computer. And so I wrote my first computer game. I kind of figured some things out with the help of a lot of great users groups and older folks who then I did probably only like in college, who kind of showed me some things. You know, even magazine bite magazine had they would have sample lines of code that you can kind of deconstruct and customize to fit your own needs. And so I just kind of figured this stuff out and so wrote my first computer game at age 13 and work with the trend on some other ones as well, and so yeah.
Jennifer Logue:Wow, so you had the bug early on. I mean, that's so young to even start building things like that. That scale.
Jonathan Sposato:Yeah, I think so, and so when I got into that stuff and then it seemed like just financially, even then there were companies like emerging, nascent, just early days. This would have been like an the we let it maybe 1980 or 79, 80, 81, I gotta do the math correctly but around there and so the very first game companies were hugely successful. But they were also small entrepreneurial shops, sometimes run by just like a couple or one person, and they would have like 35 employees, you have small businesses and they had no problems paying a kid, they didn't care.
Jonathan Sposato:And to talk about a very inclusive, egalitarian atmosphere, I would say that in the early days of tech it truly felt like a meritocracy. I think it. I think else later, but where I did not feel less than because I was a teenager, I saw, I mean, let's just face it, the entire industry was populated by kind of geeks and freaks right, these are the same guys and some women. There were a few women who were the Dungeons and Dragons players or who were the ones that would drop lots of quarters into the newest arcade game and spend hours trying to figure it out, and so they were a marginalized, ringy people who all of a sudden started to feel very successful and I kind of felt like this was my tribe. I kind of felt like I'm watching Star Trek and like a talk Star Trek, you know all that.
Jonathan Sposato:But the point is that I again tapping back into the theme of alchemy and sometimes putting things together that you don't usually mix. The tech industry really was born out of a bunch of misfits and a bunch of people who they wouldn't otherwise have found each other. You know, maybe otherwise they would have become the most uninspiring accountant or but unhappy accountants, or unhappy doctors or mechanics or what have you. But because of this new creative field, we all found each other, and one plus one equals three, and so that was a and we all felt equal. Again, echoes of Star Trek, echoes of alchemy and pretending sort of to the summoner vision behind Joy Sauce.
Jennifer Logue:I'm seeing it, I'm already seeing. The writer of me is like oh man, this should be a great book, Great chapter for the book.
Jonathan Sposato:Yeah, somebody will do it. Somebody will write a book or make a movie about those early, early video game, computer game times. I mean, there's so many stories of like. You know, a few years later, right after college, you know, I've founded a games company that very quickly. I mean I was 21 at the time, just turned 22, I think and we grew to about 43 employees. And I remember like having meetings with, like, mr Ira Ocawa, the CEO of Nintendo of America at the time oh Just, you know, being just this young kid, you know, trying to convince Nintendo that we're gonna develop these games with them, or meeting with the executives at Sega or Electronic Arts, things like that. It was just, those were a heady, heady times and it felt like almost everyone that I met with even the grownups, you know, even the people who were the heads of those companies were sort of crazy rock stars in their own right. Maybe not Mr Ira Ocawa of Nintendo.
Jonathan Sposato:I mean, he was a rock star, he was someone of very high stature but he would occur as more conservative, but nearly everyone else was sort of like some sort of reform like was like a music agent or a Hollywood agent that had decided to change careers, or someone who had done something else, and this was like a whole new territory, a whole new frontier for them.
Jennifer Logue:So quickly Rewinding. What did you study in college?
Jonathan Sposato:So I went to a small liberal arts college called Whitman Whitman College and I studied my. I studied both political science, because I thought I was gonna go on to law school, and I also studied fine art. So I get the alchemy of mixing a couple of things together and I really I still to this day. And I'll tell in full disclosure I'm a trustee now at Whitman College but I still tell people at the college I think about that education nearly every day. It kind of informs some of my work is when you are in as part of your fine arts degree.
Jonathan Sposato:When you have to take a set design class, then you have to be reading waiting for Godot, you have to be reading Shakespeare, you have to be reading Samuel Beckett, and then you have to think about how some of the themes from the story should translate and be visualized as you design a set. And then if you go from that class to some class in current events or history and you think about the dynamics between, say, kennedy's Camelot, between Robert McNamara and Henry Kissinger and Arthur Schlesinger, and you think about how their decisions and the policies of that administration were an interesting function of the people who were involved at who sat at the table, you can't help but think a little bit more broadly about the connection between the human experience that we know that we're living now and the narrative experiences from yesteryear, and how there are some common themes about the human experience and how they play out. So I know I'm saying a lot here, but no, it's interesting.
Jennifer Logue:I find this all fascinating and again, shaping that lens through which you view the world and being able to see things from different perspectives.
Jonathan Sposato:Yeah, yeah, right, that's right. Yeah, I'm very bullish on liberal arts programs and that obviously you have to have some things that are more vocational, but liberal arts really, you are challenged often to synthesize and to kind of make connections between things, and so it is out of those kinds of synthesis and connections that we find some cool insights.
Jennifer Logue:So, yes, and I mean after college. Were you working on this company during college and yeah, that's right.
Jonathan Sposato:So how I got my Italian lasting was because my mother eventually married a really lovely Italian-American man named Don Splicato, and so he legally adopted me and he raised me and taught me how to play basketball and how to be a person, and to this day we're still close and I was always asked to not call him my stepdad because he's my dad and so. But sadly, right before graduation senior year they got divorced. They divorced, and so I really didn't feel like that it was right of me to go on to further schooling to contemplate or law school, which I was set to do, because I still, at this point, thought that technology and computer gaming was not a legitimate field. I mean, it was a legitimate field but I didn't think it was a legitimate career, that I could have a long, sustained career. So maybe that was really the first time that I started thinking about the concept of a career and what I really wanted to be, and so that's why I decided well, I'm gonna, of course, go to law school.
Jonathan Sposato:Right, when they got divorced I felt sort of the ground beneath me had kind of fallen away, and so I really needed to take a step back, and nowadays probably someone would take a gap year to figure things out.
Jonathan Sposato:But instead of that, I probably took like a gap two weeks to try to figure it out, and I decided that actually the best thing to do was to say yes to my old employer, someone who had hired me when I was a teenager, or a games company that was very successful here in Seattle.
Jonathan Sposato:And then, as I was contemplating that, I also decided well, I'm young, now is the time, maybe I should strike out on my own, and so that was then when I started this games development company with three other people and we moved very quickly. Like I said, we got to about 43 employees very quickly. We put our own sort of what little money that we all had into the business. We got contracts right away. I think it helped that all of us had had they were all. The other three partners were all older than me, but even I, as the youngest person, had a body of work, professional work that I could show. So all of us got jobs right away with big game publishers, and so we were developing and getting paid, and so that was really the beginning of my entrepreneurial experience.
Jennifer Logue:So cool, just right off the gate. Love it.
Jonathan Sposato:Yeah, it was not without pay. I learned the hard way. A lot of mistakes were made, but I think sometimes it's the baptism by fire is important. We need to survive it, get past it, take away some of the good things and then hopefully be grateful for how you are doing things differently and how you can be the master of your own little universe and create a situation that's happy for you, create a company culture that works for you. That is an extension of what creates fulfillment and happiness for your employees, for the people that you value the most. That's the best thing in life, I think.
Jennifer Logue:Love it, and then you did eventually work for someone else when you went to Microsoft.
Jonathan Sposato:Yeah, so the company, that that company was eventually sold for electronic arts. I went to Microsoft because still to this day and this is sort of the Asian parent thing my mother really didn't understand what I did, and so she kept kind of but why don't you work for like a real company?
Jonathan Sposato:You know like a company that I understand when you tell me the name and I've heard of them and I'm like, okay. So at that time there was the very beginnings of something that was interesting happening at Microsoft. They were exploring interactive television and that's what they were calling it. It was pre they somehow, you know, and I think that this vision was ultimately ended up being correct. It just got called something else. It just got called the internet.
Jonathan Sposato:But back in 91, 92, pre-internet, we weren't sure how data was really gonna be delivered, whether it was through ISDN lines, through phone companies, or it was gonna be through broadband, fiber optic cable, through the cable companies. But either way, there were gonna be some interactive experiences that you could have locally, without a PC, on your television, with like a set-top box which is basically like a PC. But so there was a lot of this big thinking going on on a part of Bill Gates. He started up an interactive TV group. I became a part of that early, early group and I learned a lot from the early exposure to some brilliant people that I worked with at that time, with the occasional actually fairly frequent feedback from Bill Gates on this stuff, and so that was how.
Jonathan Sposato:That was what began a 12 year career, sort of working for a big corporation, and at the time this was pre-Google, pre-facebook or Meta, pre, you know whatever. Amazon, microsoft was like the hottest company in the world Stock growth was unparalleled. They were hiring the best and the brightest at that time. Jennifer, I clearly just snuck in to be clear.
Jonathan Sposato:Oh my gosh being humble, literally like every meeting, I kept thinking like one of these days are gonna figure me out, they're gonna keep, one of these days are gonna be like he's not that smart. Actually, get him out of here, I feel like that a lot.
Jennifer Logue:What do we call that now? Imposter syndrome?
Jonathan Sposato:Oh, absolutely, imposter syndrome is definitely a thing and I've heard from. What gives you a little bit more relief is that you hear from people that I consider way more successful than I, who say I have imposter syndrome.
Jennifer Logue:I'm like you have it, you, yeah, I'm surprised that you ever, or do you even have it Like?
Jonathan Sposato:Oh, 100%. I have it right now, talking to you Like I'm like, oh my gosh, I'm so fucking crazy. So so the 12 year career at Microsoft where we touched on it, where you change jobs every few years, was also really meaningful to me. And working in kids educational software, interactive TV, kids gaming, xbox it was all really, really important work. That helps me to think about whether it's UI UX problems that I face now with Joy Sauce or other ventures, even Seattle Magazine, or how you work with creative talent actors, writers, producers, directors. Those are all instilled in me from that time.
Jennifer Logue:Wow, Did you learn what was it like working with Bill Gates?
Jonathan Sposato:It was incredible. It's a little bit. It's both a little scary but also really rewarding at the same time, and I think the most valuable thing that I would say is that you have to. He's brilliant and typically knows much more about the project that you're working on than you even do Like he's already done his homework on why your project will likely fail or why it might succeed, and he's sort of assessing whether you understand those critical factors as well as he does. He's just staying, or better than he does.
Jonathan Sposato:And so, given that, there's sort of an approach that I think I honestly just lucked into, which is that you have to know what you're doing of course, everybody knows that, but you also have to approach with a certain blend of confidence and humility. And it's hard to explain, but a lot of people over index and they're like, oh, I'm just gonna be super confident and I'm not gonna be wrong. And if he challenges me, it's like no, this is the way it is and this is the data. I have not the right approach. If you're also super meek and don't stand up for your ideas, that's also a disaster.
Jonathan Sposato:Oh, if you're like well, I don't understand this or this sounds stupid, explain it to me and if you're like, oh, you're right, but it is stupid, yeah, so you have to have that the right blend of confidence, but also humility. Where you are, you stand behind your ideas and you can crisply articulate why these ideas are good and why this project should be green lit and why the total addressable market is $1 billion and, over time, this is how we're gonna ramp to that. But at the same time, you have to be able to say you know what? That's a weak area? We're not sure about that and we're working on the answer. So let me get back to you with the answer.
Jennifer Logue:Yes.
Jonathan Sposato:So that's a difficult balance for a lot of young, up-and-coming people to learn, even when they become. I've seen some vice presidents not do that well, because maybe they got there precisely because they sort of rode the wave of success of a product or a product line that succeeded regardless of their. Warren Buffett has that saying, which is that sometimes market forces, greater market forces, will exceed or trump good or bad management decisions. Sometimes somebody could be successful, a false negative or, excuse me, false positive right, and then it's not until you kind of start interacting with someone really, really data rigorous and incredibly strategic like a Bill Gates, that the flaws come out. So I hope I'm answering your question about what it was like to interact with Bill, but for me, I look back at those experiences with a great deal of fondness. So yeah, so cool.
Jennifer Logue:Yeah so this is creative. What was that?
Jonathan Sposato:Thank you for asking.
Jennifer Logue:Oh yeah, no, I had to ask that question, you know. So this is creative space and I love asking this question of everyone. But what is your definition of creativity?
Jonathan Sposato:My definition of creativity is when you make something imbued with wow, love and delight. I think all creative endeavors have a certain amount of delightfulness to the idea that sort of tickles everyone's fancy, that that looks at it or that touches it and it brings joy and it might even elicit a wow.
Jennifer Logue:Right.
Jonathan Sposato:So that's my definition of creativity. Maybe I'm defining just the result a little too much, jennifer, and I should define more the how of it.
Jennifer Logue:That would be interesting too.
Jonathan Sposato:Yeah, I would say creativity is a function of bringing all of the human mental faculties into either solving a problem or creating something new. Oftentimes those are, they can happen at the same time. But bringing all of your faculties to bear it's not just about reacting with emotion, it's not just about thinking only with your left brain, including the logical path or answer, and it's not just being completely unchecked in how you explore and being random about that. It really requires that you fuse all of your human mental faculties into a result.
Jennifer Logue:Yes, it's balancing everything, what was?
Jonathan Sposato:that what's the best definition of creativity that you've come across?
Jennifer Logue:I mean this is complicated for me. I think it's a subjective thing to talk about, right, I'm a very spiritual person, so when I think of creativity as an artist, I view it from a really spiritual perspective. I see myself as a vessel for ideas coming from a higher power. So if I get inspired to do something, I have this choice to act on it. Working in advertising, it's a blend between that emotion and that strategy, but I think ultimately it comes from a higher power and the act of creation is something that every human being has the ability to do. We have the choice whether or not we execute it. We have the choice with how we execute it, but for me it takes on more of a spiritual component. It doesn't begin and end with me, right.
Jennifer Logue:That's good, but yeah those are my thoughts, but then, when it comes to the how and everything, I'm right with you with taking all those influences and experiences, and it is a balancing act between that emotion and the logic. So I hope that made sense.
Jonathan Sposato:It does. It totally makes sense, and I'd be to first to admit that there's a lot of bigger things that are not explained, that are not explainable. That is beyond us, and so I don't preclude that as a component of creativity at all. I guess we'll know, at some point all answers get revealed, so we'll figure it out eventually.
Jennifer Logue:One day it'll be like so this is what it is, but it's a wonderful power that we all have, and I think everyone's creative, yeah, and I think we're happier when we're creating.
Jonathan Sposato:I think so. I think we are. I think that when we are creating, I wish that everyone could have a job where they're creating something right. Or maybe they can reframe the thing that they're doing as some form of creation, because I do think that that's really fulfilling.
Jennifer Logue:Yeah, or even just creating outside of work, like maybe you're really creative with cooking and maybe every day of the week you're planning different recipes you're going to do, or maybe you're in a band, or how you decorate your house Like there's so many ways to bring it in and just find that little spark of joy in the monotony of working a traditional job yeah.
Jonathan Sposato:Yeah, yeah.
Jennifer Logue:So you're a serial entrepreneur, as we talked about, and you've accomplished so much already, lucky thing.
Jonathan Sposato:Huh, well, lucky thing good.
Jennifer Logue:Well, how do you balance projects? How do you balance all these projects in your personal life and businesses? How do you do it?
Jonathan Sposato:Yeah, what. The truthful answer is that I don't always do it really well. I think there are times when I don't do a good job of balancing or something becomes a little bit there's like a fire over here and then you have to focus more on it and it kind of displaces the amount of time it can spend on other things. So I don't know that my model is optimal. I don't know that it's the perfect model. It's not the perfect model at all. But another answer could be simply that one has to draw boundaries, and some, not everything.
Jonathan Sposato:It's okay to say no to a lot of things. In fact, again, Warren Buffett has this other quote, which is the difference between people who are merely good to the people who are great is that the people who are great say no a lot more say no. So it may mean one more meeting. It may be, frankly, someone, a perfectly nice person with their own agenda, reaching out to say John, then I'd love to pick your brain Right, and you're kind of like. I would love for you to pick my brain too, but it ain't going to happen this week, Maybe not even this month, because it has to. I prioritize pretty rigorously. So saying no a lot. Having boundaries honestly, not being afraid to that, the consequences of having boundaries, saying no, not being afraid of those consequences, Not having FOMO and prioritizing rigorously. I think those are the answers.
Jennifer Logue:Oh, FOMO is tough, especially with the social media world we live in. Now. I feel like it's so easy to fall down that trap and use time and focus when you let that get to you.
Jonathan Sposato:Absolutely. I mean, even now there are times when I'll be scrolling and I'll see an event, some glamorous party that some of my friends are at. I'm like, oh, I should be there. Oh, I missed it. And then you kind of have some sort of reflex that comes from maybe the reptilian brain or something, and then you have to just remind yourself no, actually that would have been sort of a waste of two and a half three hours of your time. You spent it with your family. It was more important.
Jennifer Logue:That's more wholesome and soul satisfying.
Jonathan Sposato:Yeah, that's right. I felt that way about geek wire events, a lot of our tentpole events in years past probably we're in our 12th year, I think. In the first seven or eight years I was always on stage kind of playing the role of the emcee, with my other co-founders taking turns, sort of having a bit of a routine and all that on stage, delighting the audience and interviewing CEO's in the tech industry. But over time I found that I really had to dial that down because it's okay, the business is going to do just fine regardless of whether I participate in that way or not, right?
Jonathan Sposato:At that high level in that, yeah, so sometimes you decide whether you work in the business or you work on the business, and so another answer is that, to balance everything, is that you really have to be on the business but not in the business.
Jennifer Logue:On the business, not in the business. That is really okay. Good quote for the wall. Yeah right, figuring out where you stand. You probably have ideas coming to you all the time. How do you choose which idea you're going to pursue for a business?
Jonathan Sposato:Yeah, that's always a good one. I used to have a pretty structured way of choosing, but lately I've been playing a little bit more fast and loose. But I think the common factor is before I say yes to something, it has to be. Is there a chance to do it differently or to do something new? And I value new and different fairly highly. For better or for worse it tends to sometime. In my field, new and different, solving a problem differently, tends to also coincide with that. You're solving the problem in a better way. That is another factor I look for. The third one is more kind of human reasons, subjective reason it was in correct to me which is am I going to have fun doing it?
Jonathan Sposato:A lot of times I choose because it's like, well, this one is maybe even a bigger, potentially a bigger financial opportunity. This one is just fine of a financial opportunity but it's actually more fun. People that I get to work with or interact with on a daily basis and the customers that I get to wow, love and delight with the creativity, with the things that I could that's a more fun group of people than this group, subjectively speaking. That's, I think, another factor that's important. Yeah.
Jennifer Logue:I love that. On that note, what is success for you?
Jonathan Sposato:Success can take different forms. Success is always creating for me something that can be a really wonderful revenue stream for not just me and my family but for others that are doing it with me. I love that. I love writing that nice dividend or distribution check to someone who was a core team member and be like Merry Christmas or happy holidays. You deserve it. You work really hard. This is something that is a better outcome than if you worked in Forfeit America, where a bunch of people many layers above you decide what your compensation should be. That's one definition of success.
Jonathan Sposato:The second definition is, I think, especially in the work that I do now with Joy Sauce and Seattle Magazine and Geekwire going back a few years would be critical acclaim Would be does the community or this particular segment value it really highly? Is it the best in breed, best of the breed? Maybe this is my ego coming into it, but for me it's not that interesting to do something that's just average. The people are like yeah, I get it, this solves a certain problem, but it doesn't really do it that well. It's just okay.
Jonathan Sposato:But what's really rewarding is critical acclaim and having people be like this is the best instanti Nice. That's a version of that that I've seen. I wouldn't have thought of it this way. But look, this wonderful team had the creative vision to make this thing really truly special and unique. Here's why I'm delighted by it. We certainly are seeing that now with both Joy Sauce Joy Sauce Late Night and Seattle Magazine, where we're bringing in these concepts that had never been really contemplated before in their respective segments, and people are responding in kind, saying great things.
Jennifer Logue:So cool, so you recently launched the Joy Sauce Network, and that's a media platform highlighting the experience of Asian Americans. Do you want to tell listeners what inspired you? We touched on some of it in the beginning, but when you first got the idea for Joy Sauce?
Jonathan Sposato:Yeah, I still felt like, even though we have the Oscars and the wonderful movie, everything everywhere at once and Michelle completely sweeping the Oscars, I would still argue that those are exceptional events.
Jonathan Sposato:They are special precisely because they're exceptional. I can't wait and I hope that this will happen that someday there's an Asian American Tom Hanks, and it's not a movie about an Asian American family per se it could be but that it's just a movie about something that we can all relate to and the lead actor just happens to be an Asian American man or a woman, and that's how I measure progress. So Joy Sauce was created to, number one, increase the representation of what I call American Asians in popular media, and I flipped the term instead of Asian Americans, I was going to say American Asian.
Jennifer Logue:I was going to ask you about that because do you want to talk about that?
Jonathan Sposato:But it shifts, flipping. It shifts the center of gravity so that American is sort of the descriptor or the adjective and Asian is the subject. Kind of that shifting of the center of gravity. So we want to increase American, asian representation in popular media. Oh and, by the way, I forgot to say this, which is that the American part distinguishes us from someone like myself, from, say, someone living in Taiwan or Korea or Japan. With all due respect to the wonderful Korean soap operas and Japanese movies that I know I love watching, when I'm watching those I'm not relating to them like we have a common experience. It's like, well, they live there and my experiences as an American Asian are unique to those of us who grew up here in this country, and I have also a lot more in common with you as an Italian American or other different nationality.
Jennifer Logue:A mix Italian Lithuanian.
Jonathan Sposato:Irish, so describing us as an American Asian sort of solves for a lot of those kinds of things and so so Joyce wants to create really like a parallel universe where portrayals of American Asians are always positive, flattering, beautiful, strong, cool, funny and nuanced Right. I wanted to show the full spectrum of how cool we are. That's the bottom line. I think of us as like we're really cool.
Jennifer Logue:Oh heck yeah.
Jonathan Sposato:You know, hey, you know, let's, let's, let's do some great things and show, show you the full spectrum of our identity. Let's be also inclusive of our LGBTQ friends, who are often never represented by by most other. You know mainstream Asian American efforts, and so we're starting to see that change, which is wonderful. But we wanted to do that as well. So the entire network.
Jonathan Sposato:If you go to joy saucecom, it's an online network of mixed media thing, you know, with TV shows, podcasts, really provocative and incisive written editorial At any time. There's really just a wonderful sampling. We publish new things, new articles or shows or podcasts, you know, multiple times a day, every single day, and you're always going to find something interesting. You know the new there's a review on the site right now, near the top. That is about this wonderful new Netflix show called beef, which stars and Stephen Ewan, and it's getting amazing reviews. But we were one of the first, we were probably the first people to review it because we had the preview access and you know, we were the first to call it like this is actually a really great show, regardless of whether you're, whether you're interested in American, asian themed content or not. It's just a really riveting show, and so we have that we showcase really prominent Asian American novelist and writer who's never really been.
Jonathan Sposato:I mean, she's been discovered but she's never really been mainstream yeah, and so we feature musicians who are up and coming, who are just doing amazing things, and we have joy sauce late night, which is my late night talk show.
Jennifer Logue:Yes, it's so fun. I enjoy it so much. You're such a great host too. You're too kind yeah you're such a great host.
Jonathan Sposato:So, but it features always sketch comedy written and directed by an all Asian American cast and cast of writers and young comics. Then we have the main guest and it can range anywhere from, you know, miranda Kwok, who's a very successful Asian American writer, producer, showrunner in Hollywood, who's doing the. She's the woman behind the cleaning lady, which is the award winning show Right, it's a great show. We have, you know, nasa astronaut Ed Lu. He's been on the space shuttle three times and the world record for for the longest amount of time spent on the International Space Station. Because because he was on it and he was supposed to get off of it and then they had, like you know, then I think that was, I think when one of the shuttles had their disaster and so he couldn't get off for get the weight like an entire other nine month period before someone can get it.
Jonathan Sposato:So, anyway, just really interesting successful American Asians who I wanted the world to know more about, and so that's so that late joy sauce, late night, is a really great platform to host a discussion. Deep, deep thoughtfulness, yes.
Jennifer Logue:Yeah, it opens your world up, especially to see people who come from where you come from.
Jonathan Sposato:Yeah, you know it just makes such a difference?
Jennifer Logue:Yeah, it's to know what's possible to. If you're younger and you're tuning into the network to know, oh here's a person that has my background and look at all the cool things they're doing, it just expands the possibilities for your life.
Jonathan Sposato:Yeah, yeah, I exactly. We're hearing so many so often now, whether it's from successful women, whether it's from prominent African American people in entertainment, that they all say, if there's a little girl out there who sees me and feels like you know what, I can do it too, then that's a definition of success. And that's the way about joy sauce. I want some young kid out there, a boy or girl, to see someone like me or someone like Howin or others on joy sauce team, to see us and be like Well, that person isn't a martial arts expert, that person isn't a Shaolin monk, that person isn't, you know, some cool ninja assassin in John Wick or something you know like. That's just a normal American, asian person with you know an idea. And if that person can do it, then I can do it. That's our win, right?
Jennifer Logue:Yes, and then what I also love about Joy Sauce is that everyone can enjoy it. Like you don't have to be an American Asian to enjoy the content, because I had so much fun watching everything. And like I love learning about new cultures too, like learning different perspectives, but again, like we're all Americans you know, that's the point, thank you.
Jennifer Logue:Thank you. Our country's changing yeah, Like you know, the demographics and everything like we are melting pot. We got to celebrate each other and, like you know, I love that. You mentioned that on your website and I just really loved that aspect of it too.
Jonathan Sposato:Thank you for reading that and thank you, I think I think you mean the about us, my letter to the world, talking about sort of why we created Joy Sauce and what it means to me again, growing up with an Italian American adopted father and a Chinese American mother and having an Italian American grandmother and cousins and Chinese cousins and aunts and uncles, it was just to me a little brainer that that that really we all are united by the fact that we have these values as Americans and we should get along and and it's all good and and it's better to be inclusive and not separatist. It means a lot to me, jennifer, that you said that you watched it and, without being an American Asian yourself or I assume you're not married to one that that you could enjoy it, and that's the whole point is, and so I appreciate your allyship and your, your acknowledgement of what we're trying to do. It's it's really important. So thank you.
Jennifer Logue:Oh, my pleasure. And all that note of allyship. How can people be better allies who aren't American Asians themselves, just for listeners who may not? You know, sometimes, unless you hear someone talking about it, you just don't think about it right.
Jonathan Sposato:Yeah, yeah, I think that's a great question and I have sort of done a 180 on this. It used to be that my answer to that question is like well, you know, make sure that you understand someone's culture and read up on this and don't ask. You know, don't, don't put the burden on that person to explain things to you. But now, as I've gotten a little older, I'm a lot more gentle about my answer, which is simply, keep an open mind and just and learn and grow.
Jonathan Sposato:I'm actually totally fine If someone asks me a dumb question. You know we're at a restaurant and well, is it okay if I use a fork instead of chopsticks? Yeah, I don't care, you know. Or if they ask it as long as it's coming from a place of genuine wanting to know and curiosity. And you're, you know, I've had people ask me all manner of questions like, well, you know what's? What do you think is the biggest difference between Korean culture and Chinese culture? And I'll also sincerely try to go. You know what.
Jonathan Sposato:I think it's this, you know I'm not sure, but. But I don't ever sort of take the position like, well, you have to do your homework first, I can't do your homework for you. I think that doesn't grease the skids enough. I think we have to kind of grease the skids for everybody to be able to lean in comfortably and not feel like they're on eggshells, like they're going to offend you if they ask you a question. So, again, it's really just keep an open mind, be open to learning, and that, I think, starts with maybe taking a look at things like joy sauce and other things to. The Center for Asian American Media is another one, or Gold Goldhouse is another one or Wong Fu Productions I happen to think that joy sauces is the most interesting, but everyone is doing really great work in their respective ways, and so just, you know, check it out and just enjoy it, yeah.
Jennifer Logue:Cool. What are your biggest hopes for joy sauce? We have touched on some of them, but, yeah, my biggest hope are, you know, knock on wood.
Jonathan Sposato:We are in some larger strategic conversations about, you know, streaming in what's typically called over the top kinds of arrangements with various providers, streaming services providers where they find our content interesting and they go. Let's have it on our thing.
Jennifer Logue:Yes.
Jonathan Sposato:That would be really wonderful, and but that's probably too specific of an answer.
Jonathan Sposato:I think another one would be that everyone on my team continues to really feel fulfilled in a creation of this.
Jonathan Sposato:I do get that, since every day when I interact with a young, really smart people whose work is really what gives us a lift it's not me that they are fulfilled, that they enjoy this work and that they feel like that they're mission driven and that this is something that they can hang their hat on in the way that maybe you know early, early people who created the village voice in New York that they can always reflect back and be like you know we were part of something really great back then, right? And yet another one is that it just becomes more widely popular amongst not just American Asians but by everyone, and that we contribute in a significant way to building bridges, to help to ambitiously turn the tide with some folks with regards to anti-Asian hate crimes. That that that maybe the next person that decides to villainize Asian Americans for whatever for their problems that they instead get curious and begin to understand like, oh well, that American Asian person that they just profiled has the same problems that I do.
Jonathan Sposato:And in fact maybe we grew up in the same hometown or we'd like the same music, and we're all actually more similar than we think.
Jennifer Logue:Human to human.
Jonathan Sposato:Human to human. That's right yeah.
Jennifer Logue:So okay, you're in technology. I have to ask this question what technology are you most excited about?
Jonathan Sposato:Right, there's a lot, quite frankly. Okay, there's a lot, yeah.
Jonathan Sposato:I mean, AI has been on my mind, but yeah, so I'm, I would say, the one I'm most excited about and I'll give you maybe two or three answers.
Jonathan Sposato:The one that I'm at the top of my list is the impact of technology on sustainability and climate change and hoping to make a dent in that. Just one example is that sort of Moore's law where, you know, technology keeps things either every 18 months, either things double in their capacity or out, or they are halved in price one or the other. So take solar panels, for example. Right now, solar panels are sufficiently affordable and they're the amount of energy that they can actually produce is sufficiently powerful and high that I think that the more that, as we kind of hit that curve of adoption where it can be more affordable and more widely adopted and people see like, wow, my meter is literally running backwards and I'm getting a credit, or even, in some places, some states cash back for the power that I'm producing and giving a grid oh my gosh, what a complete.
Jonathan Sposato:I can't remember the exact math, but but it's more. You know, even if a larger percentage of people did that across the country, the burden, the lessening of the burden on America's power grids would be so significant that it makes a huge dent in what we have to do in terms of, you know, coal production or wind farms, or dams and things like that. So that's. There's a whole world of technologies that I'm very excited about in that field that I think that we're on the cusp of really doing better at. You know, carbon sequestration is another one, right.
Jennifer Logue:Oh, I don't know what that is.
Jonathan Sposato:Yeah, yeah, that's where you can actually take carbon that's from exhaust and from mining and that builds up in the atmosphere and actually capture it. And sometimes I think I think it broadly also includes capturing it from other, not just in the atmosphere, but where it's settled into, you know, a solid state, so so, but you can actually get rid of it. So set of things that can be a component to how we reverse greenhouse, the greenhouse effect. So I'm excited about that.
Jonathan Sposato:Then, sort of maybe a little bit closer to home in terms of software technologies and all that, I would say that I'm both excited but a little trepidatious and very, very curious about the impact of adaptive AI technologies on the human experience. And you know we've all heard of things like chat, gpt and how it's. Almost you can't even discern that that was something that was written by not a human, but you can. There are tools that you can now use to then figure out that that was AI generated. You sit, we've all seen those incredibly beguiling what look like photo realistic images that are generated by AI.
Jennifer Logue:That is incredible.
Jonathan Sposato:I mean.
Jennifer Logue:this is a whole other conversation. I'm a little scared, to be honest. The artist in me is scared, the human in me is scared.
Jonathan Sposato:We should be scared of the implications but at the same time, just like everything else that has preceded it, what at first seems scary. If you can, if we're thoughtful about how we shape it, continue to develop it in ethical ways.
Jennifer Logue:Ethical.
Jonathan Sposato:That's a big F granted. Then it becomes this incredible enabling technology. A dumb example would be the birth of. You know, we went back to PC revolution when things went from a text space interface to a graphical user interface. Then that enabled the development of desktop publishing where you can manipulate and drag and drop in. What you see is what you get way. That completely changed graphic design architecture, newspaper publishing, magazine publishing.
Jonathan Sposato:There were graphic designers old school that were like, oh, this is going to threaten my job and or it's going to make my job go away.
Jonathan Sposato:Instead, what it did was that it took the most boring parts of their job, made it super easy and fast and shifted their talent and focus to be able to do more strategic and more creative things. So I think it's hard to see it right now, but with chat, gbt or AI generated imagery, it's hard to see how it's not threatening and that it could be channeled in a way so that it takes the most. Maybe there are future illustrators who will be really glad. Like you know what? I didn't have to slave away in Photoshop for like 12 hours making this image of the Pope in a white puffy jacket, and my creativity was in actually strategically telling, guiding the API to create the image that that served the purpose of this art or this project that I'm doing. I didn't even have the language, as you can tell, to predict or project ahead what those things would be, but you, but I think you get my need, so I'm kind of excited about that.
Jennifer Logue:Yeah, no, I'm excited. I'm already using AI a little bit in my workflow. That's made my life a little bit easier, so there's definitely benefits to it, I think, as you said, as long as we're ethical about it.
Jonathan Sposato:Yeah, yeah, yeah, maybe even disclose and say this image was AI generated, or this introduction to your next podcast episode was written by AI. It sounds pretty good, you know. So as long as we're talking about AI, I haven't gone that far yet, but.
Jennifer Logue:but yeah, just like you know, with transcribing things rather than doing it myself, it takes a long time.
Jonathan Sposato:Yeah, yeah, right.
Jennifer Logue:I just save myself so much time by just embracing AI. In that regard, it's magical. But what is next for you?
Jonathan Sposato:Well, thank you, jennifer. Next is growing these businesses and, I think, continuing to take what we've learned so far from our first. We're not even at the first year mark yet for Joy Sauce and I think I'm just past the first year mark for my new ish ownership of Seattle Magazine and Seattle Business Magazine, but I'm looking for taking what I've learned so far, the things that I've worked, and doing more of the things that work and and and sunsetting the things that don't work on there's. There's incredible opportunity and this work for me is very, very fulfilling, so I just want to make more of it.
Jennifer Logue:Love it. Thank you so much for taking the time, Jonathan. You were an absolute joy, literally, to have on the podcast.
Jonathan Sposato:Thank you, jennifer. I really appreciate talking with you. These are great, great questions and I think that I'm trying to deliver value to you, so you can deliver value to your listeners and hopefully they get get get good things out of this too.
Jennifer Logue:So for more on Jonathan's Sposato and Joy Sauce, visit joy saucecom and thank you so much for tuning in and growing in creativity with us. I love to know what you thought of today's episode, what you found most interesting, what you found most helpful. You can reach out to me on social media, at Jennifer Loge, or leave a creative space on Apple podcasts so more people can discover it. I appreciate you so much for being here in the beginning stages of this. My name is Jennifer Loge and thanks for listening to this episode of Creative Space. Until next time.