IAM1129- Creator Solves Problems Surrounding How People Interact

James Jensen is an entrepreneur committed to working with leading-edge technology and eager to solve problems surrounding how we interact and engage with each other in physical and virtual worlds. He is the previous creator and co-founder of the world-renowned virtual reality company The VOID. Within the last 25 years, James founded and managed several technology companies in video streaming, social networks, mobile games, and creative services. He has partnered with Disney, Sony Entertainment, FOX, MGM, Intel, Microsoft, SyFy, Dreamworks, and MTV through those ventures. He is now launching a new form of virtual reality, called hyper-reality, in the form of the multi-sensory entertainment company JUMP. JUMP will allow people to come as close to jumping and flying as the real thing but without all of the risk.

• CEO Hack: Treating people like adults
• CEO Nugget: Build relationships and give everything your best
• CEO Defined: Creating the culture and maintaining the vision of the company

Website: http://limitlessflight.com/

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@limitlessflight?lang=en
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/limitlessflight/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_lrbIHXqNB4wJKBGJ5GuPwFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/jumplimitlessflight

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Transcription

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00:32 – 00:59 Intro :

Are you ready to hear business stories and learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and level up your business from awesome CEOs, entrepreneurs, and founders without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresh values your time and is ready to share with you the valuable info you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO podcast.

01:00 – 01:07 Gresham Harkless:

Hello, hello, hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast. I have a very special guest on the show today. I have James Jensen of Jump. James, great to have you on the show.

01:07 – 01:09 James Jensen:

Hey, thanks for having me on. Hello, everybody.

01:10 – 01:35 Gresham Harkless:

Super excited to have you on and super excited about all the awesome things you're doing. And what I wanted to do is just read a little bit more about James before we jumped into the interview from there. James is an entrepreneur committed to working with leading-edge technology and eager to solve problems surrounding how we interact and engage with each other and physical and virtual worlds. He is the previous creator and co-founder of the world-renowned virtual reality company, The Void.

Within the last 25 years, James founded and managed several technology companies and video streaming, social networks, mobile games, and creative services. He partners with Disney, Sony Entertainment, Fox, GM, Intel, Microsoft, Syfy, Dreamworks, and MTV through those adventures. And he is now launching a new form of virtual reality called hyperreality in the form of a multi-sensory entertainment company. The Jump will allow people to come as close to jumping and flying as the real thing but without all of the risks. James is super excited to have you on the show. Are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

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02:02 – 02:04 James Jensen:

Yes, I love it. Let's do it.

02:04 – 02:05 Gresham Harkless:

Let's do it then.

02:05 – 02:07 James Jensen:

Thanks for the intro. That was a great intro.

02:07 – 02:25 Gresham Harkless:

Well, definitely. It always helps when you're doing great things. It makes the intro a little bit easier. I just had to read the part. I didn't have to do all the awesome work that you were doing. So to kick everything off, I wanted to rewind the clock. I know I touched on it a little bit when I read your bio and heard a little bit more about what I like to call your CEO story, and we'll let you start to get all the awesome work you're doing.

02:25 – 02:26 James Jensen:

Nice, thank you.

02:26 – 02:29 Gresham Harkless:

Yes, so could you tell us, I guess, a little bit more about your CEO story?

02:30 – 02:34 James Jensen:

Oh yeah, Which part? Just my CEO story overall?

02:34 – 02:38 Gresham Harkless:

Yeah. What do you think led you to come here? To start everything you're doing?

02:38 – 03:09 James Jensen:

Oh, yeah. My background was in fine arts. I started as an oil painter. My dad was an oil painter and he taught me how to oil paint. And then I got into, oil painting, he was doing a lot of landscape stuff. And so my landscapes were as great as his, but ended up getting into airbrushing. Then I did photorealism and started doing portraits and things like that. Then went to design school, commercial art, and design. And I got into computers and fell in love with the undo button, which is nice. That spun off into doing computer animation, visual effects, and game, video game programming.

So over my career, I've gone from a creative to only my creative agency, then to finding my real passion, which was bringing things into reality that don't exist as an entrepreneur. And a lot of that started with software development, things like that. But I quickly got to a point where I wanted to use all my creative skills and the amazing people around me to build virtual reality worlds and stuff like that.

And that's where the void came from. But through those processes and the amazing relationships I created over so many years, they've enabled me to be able to, and my team to be able to pull off some stuff that's just the leading edge. And so, you know, that the roles that have gone through the whole process, right, I was a creative and then changed over the time as their businesses. And I've been a CFO, I'm not CFO, CTO, I've been a CEO, I've been a creative director.

And so, it's almost to a point now where it's like, well, I need to move past the CEO title and go to something like a chief vision officer or something like that. I feel like that's probably where my end goal lane is, is finding something that's just maintaining the vision of whatever project is or what we're doing. So yeah, that's maybe a quick version.

04:28 – 04:41 Gresham Harkless:

Nice. I love that. And I can imagine, and I don't know what words in your mouth, but do you feel like being able to have that kind of foundation in the creative services that the creative industry allows you to create these new realities that you're doing now?

04:41 – 05:12 James Jensen:

You know, going through that process, I think it's helped me be a lot better of a business owner and a leader is being in the trenches for so long, I understand when I talk to an engineer or I talk to a developer, I ask them to do things. I know roughly now what it takes to do those types of things. And so I can relate to the timelines and the pressures that are being put on them.

And so I can relate to that. And I think that helps me be a better leader. And so absolutely that's been part of my path. And that's why I think there's a lot of creatives and engineers around me that trust me when I ask them to do things because I've been there before. And it has been a while since I've written any code for a video game, but I remember that and I know what it's like.

05:32 – 05:40 Gresham Harkless:

Yeah, I know I touched on a little bit about, you know, jumping you did as well too. Could you take us through a little bit more on what you're doing there and how you're making an impact there? On Jump?

05:41 – 06:17 James Jensen:

Yeah, Jump is, I mean, it's an accumulation of everything that I've done to date, right? But it's very focused on several things. For where we're at on the technology side of things, we're on the very leading edge of everything that we're doing for virtual and what I like to call hyperreal simulations where we're including a lot of physical effects for the end user believe what's going on but the technology side of things has been a challenge because we're trying to map. We're trying to match reality as closely as possible so we're using real-time physics and dynamics in the simulation that allow you to fly wherever you want to.

We're really taking the real-time physics from when you jump and then extending that into the virtual world and then providing effects that do that. So the engineering side of things and putting all those pieces together is pretty wild because we have different software engineers, we have hardware guys, and all of these components have to talk to each other dynamically and automatically and rallying the teams together to be able to have a center vision of what that is, I think is 1 of the most important things you can do. If everybody can believe in that vision and they know what part they play, then it makes a project run smoothly.

06:55 – 07:11 Gresham Harkless:

Would you consider that to be what I like to call your secret sauce? This could be for the business, for yourself personally, or a combination of both, but is it that ability to see the technology, understand it on a deeper level, it sounds like, and be able to kind of see how it can apply to, I guess, the overall human experience? Do you think that makes you unique?

07:12 – 07:42 James Jensen:

Completely makes us unique. People will come in for this X game, hyper-reality, crazy wingsuit jumping experience. Most people leave with something a lot deeper than they thought they were coming in the door for. It's all the good movies that you go into for entertainment. You come out and you're like, man, that's a great concept. And I want to apply that to my life. It's like that on steroids. So I think that's what I hope to share with people is at least a glimpse behind something a lot more meaningful than what exists out there right now. So yeah, that's the motivation for sure.

07:47 – 07:58 Gresham Harkless:

Awesome. I love that. And so I wanted to switch gears a little bit and I want to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. So this could be like an Apple book or a habit that you have but what's something that makes you more effective and efficient?

07:59 – 08:32 James Jensen:

A CEO hack. I think treating people like adults. Honestly, like when it boils down to it, it's like butts in seats and hours on the clock don't mean anything. Like honestly, like for my career, it's about having mutual respect for people and setting, having your employees or personnel that are working with you or your buddies, whatever it is, like agree to their timelines and then hold them accountable to it. It's very simple. And if they want to party for the whole week and knock it out on a Friday, but they complete what they said they're gonna do, who cares, like let them go do their thing. And that's even more relevant now with the whole thing that's going on in reality. It's like, you gotta just trust that your people are gonna do what they're gonna do.

And honestly, if you go down that path, I've seen that you'll, I've always said when people come back from like a vacation or something like my guys are working on it, come back from a vacation or even just over the weekend, more over the weekend, they come back on a Monday and like, hey, I had this thing in my mind I was thinking about and I couldn't help it and I just built it and here it is. It's like, what? you didn't ask them to do that. They just came back on a Monday because they believe in the project.

They believe in the vision and you treat them like an adult and you allow them to create their deadlines. And you just got to hold everybody accountable but if they're creating their deadlines and you're holding them accountable, then you can have mutual respect. And it sorts out people that can't operate like that. I mean, some people don't want to operate like that. They just want a 9 to 5 and check in and sit in their seat. And honestly, I don't want to work with those people.

09:31 – 09:40 Gresham Harkless:

And so I wanted to ask you now for what I call CEO nugget. So this could be a word of wisdom or a piece of advice. It might be something that you would tell your younger business self if you were to happen to a time machine.

09:40 – 10:03 James Jensen:

The nugget that I've had my whole life is, it's kind of in parallel with what we were just talking about. But when I was 12 or 13, I started airbrushing. I told the story before, but I started airbrushing t-shirts and I got about halfway through them. It was like my first job was fun. I was airbrushing t-shirts for this movie theater and I got through half of them and they paid me 50 bucks up front and it was gonna be a hundred bucks like to do all of the t-shirts. I think it was like 12, or 15 shirts. I got halfway done and I showed my dad and I can't check this out. This is awesome. Like, yeah, 50 bucks, but it's really hard.

And I don't know if I can finish all of them. And he said,  James because your reputation will be worth more to you than any amount of money you'll ever make in your life. And I took that to heart. And so that's how I've lived. I've always over-delivered on what I promised and always done my best work, no matter what the budget was. Just because that was so important, it's gotten me so far. And so that, I guess, is relationships, boiling down to relationships. If you are a starting entrepreneur and you think you're going to go out and accomplish this thing by yourself, You are extremely wrong and you're going to suffer.

You need people around you. You need guys that are way better at doing these things than you are. And those relationships, those relationships are built a long time ago. You don't start that right now. You need to start building those relationships, even if you're tossing pizzas at some pizza restaurant. Those relationships you build in that moment you don't know what their path is in the future and you might connect back up with them when I had the funding to build out the first versions of the void I didn't go search out for my engineers for that. I had guys I'd been talking to about that for 18 years that were engineers, that were creative guys, that were everything. I was like, hey, I have money to do this. Now you guys wanna do this?

And like, yeah, let's go, let's do it. So those relationships are built over years and you never know where people are going to shift and change and when they're going to come back into the loop. And so it's always it's about relationships. Yeah, that's probably long-winded, but

11:41 – 12:02 Gresham Harkless:

It's hit home. I love it. And I think so many times we forget about life and the journey of life and the constant change of life. But I think so many times we can get stuck into our eyes and our feet and what we're doing and how we're changing. But we don't realize that everybody around us is changing. So we never realized like how you said so well, that the path and the journey for somebody else might lead directly into what you're doing.

And you might have met each other,15 years ago, and all of a sudden, you're co-founding a business, or that might be the person that's financing your latest idea, you never know. So it's so important to do all things and understand those relationships that you build are something that will be maybe your wealthiest thing, the thing that could determine or make a bricky.

12:29 – 12:39 Gresham Harkless:

Absolutely. And so I want to ask you now my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. We might have already touched on this a little bit, but we're hoping to have different quote-unquote CEOs. And James, I want to ask you what being a CEO means to you.

12:39 – 13:10 James Jensen:

Being CEO to me, I think what the CEO position is, I think is changing and morphing. It's a CEO is currently defined as somebody who structures the business and makes sure that shareholders are happy and all of that stuff. Which is a good thing. I mean, that's the thing that you need to focus on. Most of the stuff that I'm doing right now is having conversations and talking to people and relationships and it's not creative. It's about bringing in money and selling the vision and the dream.

But that's why I think, I might move away from that CEO title and move to something like Chief Vision Officer because the CEO's responsibility or the leader of the company is to maintain the vision of the company, the direction, the North Star, whatever you wanna call it. It's creating the culture and maintaining the vision for the company, as well as doing all of those other utilitarian things, And making sure that the funding is there for everybody to do their jobs. But the most important thing is that culture and the vision.

If you can continue to sell the culture and vision, you'll get an army of people behind you who believe in it and want to execute it. I've seen CEOs who have come into companies and annihilated them because they couldn't create the culture and they couldn't maintain a vision. They were great at executing. These are the business things that have to be executed, but man, they suffer very hard through the culture and the vision portion of it. And I think there needs to be maybe a redefinition for the CEO title or it needs to be modified or that person needs to exist. Whoever's maintaining the vision, that's who it is, At least for me. That's what to me.

14:17 – 14:39 Gresham Harkless:

Nice. I love that definition and that perspective. And that's 1 of the whole things that we try to talk about is just redefining what that is and looking at it differently, especially during a time like this, where it seems like everything is different than what it was before. And I know you, in terms of innovating in so many different ways, I've been able to see that as well. So James truly appreciates that definition and I appreciate your time even more. What I wanted to do is just pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional that you can let our readers and listeners know. And of course, how best they can get a hold of you about all the awesome things you and your team are working on it.

14:45 – 15:12 James Jensen: 

The way technology is evolving is unbelievable. And the education that people have had over the last year and a half on virtual reality, this virtual experience we're having right now, some people have never done video phone calls like this and have been educated on virtual reality and virtual systems and technology. And it's just, I think that's amplified a lot of things. And so there's always a positive side to what is perceived to be negative. So I would say out there, there's a ton of opportunity in this space, and in the space right now to see these opportunities that people can create businesses and create great products to solve all new problems that we're seeing in reality and communicating with each other.

So I would challenge you to go find that. If you don't think there's an opportunity, then you're not looking in the right spot. And then with Jump, We are in the process of opening our first 2 locations, 1 here in Utah, and 1 in New Jersey. It's a multiplayer experience, player, multi-person experience, where you can jump and fly together. I love to have you come out and experience Jump. You can follow us on, or look at limitlessflight.com and follow us on our social media channels. Our TikTok channel has been set up to do like live updates. I'm just going to be filming stuff as they start installing things and watching people do jumps.

15:53 – 16:17 Gresham Harkless:

Awesome, awesome, awesome. Well, James, truly appreciate that to make it even easier. We'll have the links and information in the show notes as well, too. And I love your last piece as well, too. A lot of times we forget that during times of, I guess, disruption or pandemics or whatever might happen, on 1 side of the coin we also have a lot of things that aren't what we want them to be. But on the other side, there's a tremendous amount of opportunities because the way that we do things, and the way that we run our businesses have completely been disrupted and disruption provides that opportunity. So appreciate you for reminding us of that, of course, living and breathing that as well too. And I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

16:30 – Outro