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Network. What super awesome is like when you're putting the winds on the board. Nobody even gives nobody wants to touch it. Then keep going. Keep going. Nobody wants to talk to me.
I feel like I can rule the world. I know I could be what I want to put my all in it. Like all Days on the Road Less Traveled never looking back. That was pretty, that was intense 45 minutes, dude. Sometimes you have high hopes for a guest, and I on this podcast, I've been disappointed. Today was not that day, my friend. I love that. I had a great time. Honestly, we didn't even get to a, we got to like 20% of the stuff. I wanted to ask him about so we
Gary vaynerchuk on the Pod today. It was phenomenal whenever I leave. So I've hung out with Gary maybe three or four times, maybe three times. Whenever I leave his presence. I do feel better and a lot of people and I'll admit, I was one of those people years ago. I would like, oh, this guy's just some loud guy who's selling nonsense. She's totally the real deal. And I went to we talked about it, but I went to a dinner with them one time and he talked the entire time and most people would be like, dude.
What the hell? That was so rude. And when I left, I was like, I just want to continue listening to him. I wanted to continue telling stories. I love his point of view. He's entertaining that dies. Intense. I love it. He does what we try to do. He's been doing it for a long time, which is business entertainment. It's the entertainment side of business, where he, you know, he'll go to a garage. He'll make content that's like going to a garage sale, buying things for a quarter, and flipping them for $28 on eBay, and how that Stacks up and out.
Go from like, you know $42 to fourteen thousand dollars in a year if you just did this and like obviously he doesn't need to do that anymore. He's got this agency with hundreds of employees. He's got, you know, he's got a bunch of stuff going on as far as his own business goes, but I like that he's been able to do what I think the world needs more of in, he's more business entertainment. Because like, why do I, why did I grow up? Wanting to be a basketball player? Because then be a was so God damn entertaining, right? And, and so,
when you have entertainment, it's that creates inspiration and aspiration. So it ends up creating more Founders in the world.
Yeah, he was amazing man. And I, whenever I talk about what, whenever I'm off with it, whenever I'm with him off the air, by the way, he's exactly the same. So there's not a there's no show here. So, all right, we started off. We got right into it in the first 30 seconds. I asked him. So I've been tracking this for a long time when I was managing my business. I was trying to manage cash flow and I was trying to understand how hard to push it, and I made a document. A from Gary vaynerchuk about vaynermedia. They grew to 1200 employees. I track the revenue revenue per head over hundreds of interviews, I basically
Found where he said a clip like, oh, we have this many employees and I asked him about it. So, I asked him how I manage cash flow. Then we got into a really interesting discussion about, and of teas, and of teased, a lot of people talk about them. I'm not like a 10 ft guy. Sean, you are. This was the one time I've ever had a conversation. We're interested me Beyond just like academic, right? Yeah. He does a good job with making it. I don't know, like tangible. And like not making the big mistake, which is, and if T's let me tell you what it stands for, and how it works under the hood.
Like no, no. No, I don't care how the engine works. I want to get in the car and go somewhere. So where does this? Let me go? And I think you did a pretty good job of that. So we talked about any 50s we talked about, you know, just somebody kind of like the Lessons Learned, you know, going from like what he saw in the.com boom because he was kind of like early in the game right in 2010. He was there for like Twitter, Facebook, Uber, and he got in, he invested new Twitter, but he missed out on Uber even though there was one of his best friends. And then what is so how did he take that?
That learning. And what's he doing now with it today? How does he take those learnings and apply them now? So we talked about that for a bit, but good episode. He, you know, he was, I don't know, super nice guy wants to come back on. I think we should have them on again, for sure. I take a lot. It makes me feel happy that sometimes a lot of times people tweet at us and they say, I want to run through a wall after that episode or I want to go and accomplish something. I feel that way right now, after listening to that episode. I felt like I was a part of it more. So as a fan,
More. So, as a participant, I thought it was wonderful. Yeah, you know, it's when people say, you know, I'm almost late to work because when I'm driving, listen at my family. Got to pull over right, shit down, right? Like, yeah, let this idea go. I gotta write this down. That's a, that's when we do it. Well, and sometimes we don't always hit that but I think we did it well on this one, so, all right. There's that. That's the episode Gary Vee. Enjoy. Thank all right. Are you weird or are you normal? And they're like, we're a little bit of both and then they came out and did it and it worked out. Well, I'm just using an iPhone.
Get the fuck out of here.
Well, someone drowning now
said he looking. Are you really?
I'm in New York. It's just an iPhone
also, be a blurred out. Why is?
It looks so good. So why do you got this app that basically uses your iPhone? As like a DSLR, which is really cool. Awesome.
It's called you guys. I hope you're
well. It's called camo, get must shout. It's called cam. I think I paid $49 for it. It's awesome, and hope everyone is well, so we have a lot to get into. I'm pumped. You're here.
Can I it's something that I've always recording, now something I've always wondered about.
Out how many people work at vaynermedia right
now?
Somewhere between probably 1050 and 1,300 they table. Sorry. Vayner X. So vaynermedia is biggest adventure at, right? Because we have Gallery. We have. Yep.
So I was looking, I did some research based off of a ton of interviews and I was like, going through the head count of how fast you grew and I believe between around years. Number number, three, and four. Did you grow from like 30 people to a hundred and twenty five people? Yes,
because in
Thousand Eleven September of 2011. I kind of made the decision to go full-time Vayner, no longer what I would call full-time, Wine Library, secondary Vayner, I made that switch and then the lighter fluid kind of went on.
Dude. How the hell do you manage that cash flow for a company like that? Because
I didn't I just researched
and it was tell me if I'm II just guesstimated off some interviews around. I'm gonna start at year, one around 5:00.
People, 20 people, 30 people, a hundred twenty-five people, 300, 550 600, 800. Yeah. Is that a ballpark? Right?
Yeah, like if I, if you were asking me and I was spitballing us, who the fuck? You know, the first year was like, we started in May of 2009 staff that first half year I think was like six or seven then it might have been like 20 and through all of 2010 and then in 211 probably got to like 30 and then that's September 2011. Look what you'll appreciate this.
You've got this in you, there's certain people who I think are really really good at top line revenue, driving initiatives. What I think has been the balance of my life and it's very similar to what happened at Wine Library, right? Is because I'm able to create so much top-line rep.
And because I'm playing forever, right? Wine Library, my dad's family business and Boehner for me is really for an F forever business.
I'm just able to hire a lot. Right? And then you just gotta, you know, with retail. It was really easy. Right? I was like, I knew how to sell wine. So, like I was with with B2B, it took me a little while to calibrate like, oh, fuck, they didn't pay us. Wait a minute, why the bills do, like, why didn't you pay? But like overall. It's just thing in your shit, right? I think it. When you stay in your business and you know what, you got coming in and what is going out?
You know, I'm not a CFO like oriented CEO, but I'm also not a schlemiel. I always have a good sense of like, is this, are we gonna be deadly? I'm always playing to, like, well, this hurt me like, well, I'd be in trouble. You know, I try to stay within those
confines. That's, it's just crazy. I mean, did you have a line of credit from the bank?
No, we didn't have a line of it. So fucking wine. Like this is where my dad's a fucking psycho. I was so undereducated because I was such a poor student and I was such a sorry for this background or so go away in a second.
It was my Dad ran his fucking business with no line of credit, which I love, right? It's old-school immigrant, you know, pay with what you have, but a train me because that business even crazier, that business went from four million to fucking 25 in like 30 month, like so fast and inventory and payroll like, but I got so trained in playing Within Myself. We didn't have a line of credit for a long time. We did that. We definitely got a line of credit. Probably.
A limb may be in 2013. So but the first four or five years and then in the pocket, you're talking about which is very much more will resonate a lot more with people on the call, who got it. We're going to go through the seven to Seventeen 277 to 277. It was more about just not spending what you don't have, right? Like like it was just as simple as basic being a businessman like hey, we just land this account. They're paying us 480 a year. It's
Fucking you know Mondelez or Pepsi you feel like they're going to pay, you feel good. It's not going to, you know, and it's like okay now I got 480. I'm going to hire these six people at 40K a piece. I feel good with you know, it was like very like back of the napkin, what's funny about it is and, you know, this and I think this is where, you know, as when you're on the podcast we hung out outdoor dinner, like, every time I come there's something about just like Street business versus like I find myself laughing that like mine can be like intuitive and back of napkin and
People that are like all about learning and Excel sheets and doing a proper and fucking sap and clouds. You know, they have all the software like get fucked up. It's because they don't have a good pulse of their actual business and they get ahead of themselves and lack
patience. Yeah. It's just like when you're growing that fast, it seems like like you're kind of playing. It may be month by month. Maybe quarter by quarter where I would be. I mean, it just, I would go to bed at night wondering like
I hope this client done bail. Otherwise, I gotta lay
off. Yeah, 20 people. I think I think what was happening was we were selling so this and I think I, you know, it's so funny. I was very long-winded. I think I had the answer when you are selling at a level that people are not accustomed to like when you're outpacing normality, it just fucking selling hides everything, you know, when I'm landing fucking client week after we, like, you know, you start getting into a place where you're just outpacing
vulnerability.
That's always a question. I had Sean, you want to give him an update on. I mean, I jumped right into that because I've always had that question about management. Have been like sitting on that question for two years or so. I have been he didn't say hello. He didn't say what the podcast is fucking about. He's like, you know what they have when you scaled. How'd you manage casual? You know, what's funny? I've
gotten those same through my pockets and a little couple Hangouts. It makes sense to me because I think Sam's really good at what he does and he's any live that life and he knows he did it super well and he knows what the
Anxiety. And like the challenges are like it, you could, you know, I always say you can only my favorite people to talk to or the people that know, like, I love talking to people that know because they've lived it. Not because they read it. It just makes it so much more fun. It's the same way. I feel like when I talk, like I love sports but I fully know when I'm talking to an athlete. I don't know, right? I
don't know what you don't know. Yeah. I did this. This thread that went viral on Twitter. It was about Clubhouse and I was like, you know, this was when Clubhouse.
A peaking and I said this thing. I was like, it's kind of unpopular because you know, why should on a start-up, you know, it was, it wasn't my intention but I said everybody thinks Clubhouse is the next big thing and I think it's going to fail but here's how I think it's going to go play it out and I kind of wrote it like an episode of Silicon Valley like I wrote it like a you're the CEO first, you know, christakis texting you this is happening and I wrote this thing and went viral ended up getting on CNBC. It has like I don't know tens of millions of Impressions and people are like, oh man, you're a good writer and Trust.
Like, I'm not a good writer. I fucking. I built this thing called blab, that was very similar to clubhouse. And I went through this run and I was getting all this shit. It wasn't anywhere near Clubhouse. But I, yeah, you know,
their help was. I remember, I remember. Yeah,
and so I was like, you know, I went through this exact pain and so I'm just literally telling a story I know of myself and I'm exaggerating a little bit to make it funny. It has nothing to do with
right, you know, what's so crazy about that. I don't know if you can see this. You see the Goosebumps. Yeah. Yeah. It's kind of how I think why I'm a good content producer.
I literally stay in my fucking Lane. I may say the same shit 8700 different ways and that's a little bit of my talent. I'm good and incorporating contemporary pop culture. Slang, nuances of the day, but the reason I think it works for me is similar to a you like like I have so much conviction in my shit because I'm not guessing out here, right?
Yeah, you know, I was watching your trash talk video on the way here. So if people haven't seen a good as YouTube fun series, actually I was watching. I was like I bet this hits I couldn't see because I was driving. Stop listening to it and I'm like, God, this is good content. I was like, I bet this video hits and of course the views were pretty high on if you
physically for me and you to I'm starting to rub, it's by far my best show. It's my best content immediately. And do you know why I made it? No, because I listen to my audience. I read my comments. I read my shit. So,
Was super awesome. Was I started getting a lot of emails from people saying, yo, you're awesome. I love you. But like this whole like yeah, you put a $25,000 check in to Twitter to like that doesn't work for me and with 25,000. I'm like, you know, cool. Let me go, even further back in my origin story. What did I do? When I dick shit, I fucking went garage saling on Saturday and sold that shit at baseball card shows or other flea markets on on Sunday, right?
Wait, by the way, it's more.
Fun, so I just sold 3,500 dollars worth of old computers and I got more joy. Having that $3,500 in my venmo than I did 20 million dollars in.
My brother, is everything that I believe I believe the reason I like stuff. It's easier is I'm in it for the game. I'm just like you. I could, there is no comparison to how I feel when I my last episode. And if that's what you're watching, I found a bunch of Magna that sounds about, right? So for two hun
$70. I bought. What ends up being about 6400 in eBay, post fees sales, right? It's crazy because it's like the thrill of the hunt. Like it was lower one
even before that. Right? So, I watched my drive home from the bank to get to his home. I didn't get to that part yet, but I saw that was the title. So the, you know, some people are like, oh, that's cool. You by Senator to sanity, you sell for six grand. The part that I was blown away by was the part. I was watching you went to 20 fucking garage sales in a day and
I was just thinking to myself to things. I was like, he made the most kind of like this this channel. This show is basically the most approachable version of Entrepreneurship. Like, yes, we do these segments on the show that people love, that's called, will do the Billy of the week, which is like a billionaire that we profile. But sometimes will do the hillbilly of the week, which is someone who zones 22 vending machines. If we break down, how much money they
make, that's fucking so
smart. Another one we do is called the Blue Collar side hustle. It's like, here's something you don't need to be a genius for cuz sometimes I go off on my Crypt. Oh shit. I'll be like, oh, yeah, this is the future, but then sometimes
It's like, hey, you know what? You should do with your
drawer. You're the same Pest Control leads, you know, I love Billy. That's so fucking smart. By the way. That's what I'm living right now. I'm like, can't function.
Because I literally, like look at my calendar today and I saw we have this podcast and obviously you guys have done a great job and I'm like fired up about it. But like, literally in the back of my brain, I'm like man. I hope they got caught up or something because if I get back that 45 minutes where I can go more on Open Sea and do a little more research so enthralled right now in NFP life that I'm like, every meeting I'm like, cutting five minutes short to, like, like I'm just but meanwhile, equally, the only other thing that's got me Juiced is garage sale education, because I know it can help people and I love
It's the same game.
Do you know, why do you know American Pickers?
I know that show. Yes.
So I used to work on that show. I used to work for Mike Wolfe, the main guy in that show.
The guy who is that the taller guy, or the
chubby, hog? I need haga. And the way it worked is he would go from garage sale, the garage sale or not garage sale Barns and he would buy stuff and we would buy like some cheap stuff like something. We could sell in the store for 50 bucks. Then we would buy some like a old motorcycle that doesn't work. But sorry, we could sell for 20 grand and all these people would come in from all.
All over the country to the store that I helped run and we would probably sell 5,000 dollars worth of items, but we would sell probably 30 grand a day of t-shirts and gray and doesn't bring of business crushed it, but Shawn you were to talk about some nft stuff. So I know that excites both. You excites me to
start to get into Sam. Are you like digging in a little
know? I am I'm into it. Shawn told me what it was like a year ago and he bought like some really cool Kobe stuff. And I went and got a I thought it was bad ass and so a bunch.
John's like really into it. I think he's got a ticker behind him that you could see ya. Now. This is, this is just me on my own little, I motivate myself, my motivational quote every day or whatever. But I do have this programmed up where you can tell me the price of whatever. Yeah, if there are more, you know, whether it's some old coin. Or in this case, I start I met the founder of nifty Gateway and I was like, dude, first this story is hilarious. I don't know if you've met them but it's two twins. Tyler knows how they got there. It's two twins. That build Nifty. Gateway think.
And so this was like pretty early in the wave of like a Nifty started getting hotter and hotter, what they did, which was smart because they said look, nft is have value because they're scarce. But the problem is anyone can make a printer nft tomorrow, which is like the fun. But also there's like an abundance of scarce objects now, right,
supply and demand. Like there's such an incredibly fascinating supply and demand game going
some what Nifty started doing was they were kind of, like, look what we'll do is we'll be like, Christie's will cure rate.
So, won't find the best artists on Instagram and we'll bring them on and they've been building up. This, you know, people did their thing. I think through Nifty early on, they've been building up a following for 10 years. Just doing free art, cause, For the Love of the Game on Instagram. And now that there's a way to monetize that audience monetize that art, they can bring it over here. And so I bought this like Kobe. They know they're there forever, mom, bought it off, you're seeing it. But basically I was telling Sam on the bottles. Yeah, just bought this thing for $800. And, you know, he goes through the cycle. Everybody goes through, which is you bought a file. Like, what why are you buying
Jpegs, like what's that going to do? You spent $800 on this? And I was like, yeah, actually about five, if you bought five copies of the same fucking thing and you know, those sell for ten, ten to twenty five k now. And so that was my first flip basically, my version of the and this garage sale, right?
That's why I'm so addicted. I think like I'm a did. I'm addicted to the digital garage
sale. And so give us like your simplified version of the thesis because some people kind of like some people love this shit there in the weeds, some people just sit there and I roll and then the truth.
That there's something really exciting going on and then there's also a bunch of shit that's going to go away in a few years. Like it all gets swept under the rug. So I mean Josh your take.
Yeah, I've been you know, I'll just well I'll give you the micro thing on that. I think 90% of the current projects go to
0, right?
Like I think it's very it's to me it's the most similar thing to Web Internet stocks 99 2000. That I remember. I remember being there. I really like I was me young. So I wasn't as experienced and didn't have as many pattern.
Ignitions and Reps, but I had a lot of the good ingredients, right? And I remember sitting there and saying, man, a lot of these businesses, make no sense. Like just no sense of like, how could they be worth this much money. They're losing so much money and I didn't understand Wall Street, so I wasn't sure. But when the affirmation of March and April 2000, came along and most things got smoked out. It kind of was a Monumental moment for me because the only stock that I bought was Amazon. Hmm, and and and because I
I really thought it was like a real business. He would always losing money was losing money in a different way than other things that had an actual business. Like back said, well, how's him? I started like rubbing you mattered, like the other ones in that fucking Revenue, right? You know, like no customer gave a fuck and I'm always like, does the customer care. So what do I think? Overall, I think people are grossly under estimating and ft's. I think right now, people think of them as collectible and art and Flip Game. And for a lot of us that have that American picture garage sale sports cards for me, like there's a ton of people that
Of that. Like, that's that's why half of Wall Street. That's where they go. Like, there's a lot of those people and that's amazing. And that's big, that's a big industry like over the next 15 years, big collecting flipping, you know, you've got an entire generation of kids that go on for tonight and Madden and 2K and by digital assets to flex. So that's going to fucking play out. But I think that's just a Nuance of ftes. I think people misunderstand the utility nature of spark contracts. I believe in next 15 years that that nobody right.
Book when the publisher, they do it through an mft infrastructure. I believe that in 15 years. Nobody launches a record label by having a record, record by having a record label. Give them the bag. They're going to get it from crowdfunding by selling n ftes and giving a percentage of royalties. I believe that there's not a single sporting event or concert in 10 years. That the ticket is not an mft because there's no incentive for that organization and that artist or people to launch it as anything, but an N of T, because a QR code,
Code or a piece of paper means nothing. But the N of T, if Luca donek drops a hundred points in that game, that becomes a fertile ever collectible. There's a trillion fucking dollars. Worth of tickets stubs. That have sold over the last 25 years, on eBay. Do you know that all goes to royalties to the person? So what's really fascinating to me? I'll give you a weird one. If you own a home that is wildly unique and has a 25 million-dollar home on a beach or something wild. Right? You nft that fucking home right now.
Put into the smart contract that you get one percent of every transaction of this home in perpetuity. And the first person that's going to buy it from you is going to be fine with that. They don't give a fuck because these things are long leads. Right? You buy it you sit on it for 13 15 years. So like there's so much that nft blockchain realities are going to bring that. I think people are under estimating it.
You want to hear you want to? Yeah. Yeah, Sean. Tell them this idea. We had read minds think alike. I like months ago a few months ago. We're shooting the shit before an episode.
And we don't tell each other what we're going to talk about. Saikyo. I'm bringing Greece, a bringing three pieces of heat. You're going to react to it. I got to know my shit. You have to be able to react and that people like that people like the reaction. It's
the
worst part of a podcast is. Hey, do you know this? Yes. Okay. Well, let me explain because I'm not actually asking you motherfucker, the audience, right? I'm trying to present this here. So one of the ideas that I brought on was that I noticed that Michael Jordan's house had been sitting on the market has sat on the market is house in Chicago.
That's got the 23 emblem on the gate. It's got like a basketball court inside, got everything, and it's been sitting on the market for years and the price has been dropping. I think, I don't know what it started at. I think something like 20 million then went down to 15 14th, and it's like, so I came on the pot. I was like, dude. I think we could by Michael Jordan's house for ten million dollars. Wow, and I was like, you know, so we could kind of like do the, you know, the way that know where normally somebody would do. This, is all right. Do I have that kind of Fu money to go by Michael Jordan's house? My wife doesn't kill me.
Or do I go, you know like rays of fun amongst, you know, if you back alley conversations and dinners with some folks who are rich I said or we could just get this podcast, we could crowdfund ten million dollars. Yep, as soon as we could basically fractional, you can do fractions either through an mft or one Rally Road or whatever house like this by Michael Jordan's house. And we start in this went viral a little bit in our world like in my head. You listen to every episode religiously, it's your phone and you say cancel, your clear? My calendar. I need to go listen to this. I know you probably didn't but that was an
We had a few months ago. So how would that play out in the nft world? So walk us through
that.
You guys and now it sounds like it went viral and you're like, that's exactly what should happen. Like, I think that's, you can't imagine. And I'm a man who tends to like. I don't love that many ideas. Right? Really, I mean that, I love execution. I think a lot of people can execute a b and c idea and do great, but the say I love and ideas rare. And that's why I think I've done really well. Like I really bet when I love something and it's worked for me and I've lost sometimes because the executor couldn't do it. You'll bongos
My favorite investment. It was a precursor to Tinder in a lot of ways. Caleb and the team, they're just couldn't get it there. They didn't execute, which is okay. But but when I tell you, I love the idea of buying Michael Jordan's house so much because I know that,
You can literally Arbitrage it in perpetuity. Like I, you guys are people that can Garner attention and promote. So it's worth so much more to you than somebody else. I could see the entire entrepreneurial ecosystem renting out the basketball court game, like, like you can run a real business. Now, now, back to my big point about unique property. I think this is going to change the real estate industry. The fact that you could put in, you guys are young, dudes. You put a
Percent royalty in perpetuity. I'm at home. You sell it to the next person for nine million, let alone 12 million, right? Let's just play you guys. You're locked. Your great-grandchildren great-great-grandchildren are like are fucking great. Great
great. Great grandfather's a fucking genius is you just
gotta fucking $100,000 check in the mail or 80,000, whatever it ends up. Being I do think in the next five years. There will be a haha to what nft blockchain, smart contracts mean and I think it will.
Trickle into real estate. People will buy unique properties and I think they're going to make incredible in perpetuity monies that. Maybe they themselves won't get the crazy because you know, how often the house is turn per se but ma'am it. Listen if you're listening to this right now. Listen if I've got a real good sense to listen to this because you guys got a lot of fans, you are either there or you are spying to be there from a professional standpoint, right? For the people that are listening right now, who have been fortunate.
And we're sitting this weird moment right now because of crypto and N of T where there's some people that have really come into some real money in, like, making a very smart play. If you're sitting with some money, you know, these are the things you're thinking about, like what can I do that? Like is fun for me, but also leaves for my generational wealth. I want to do shit. That still is good for like the house is perfect. Right? Because it'll be fun for you 16 or two or nine weeks a year, but you're also creating something that's an asset. Let me say it. One more.
More time in perpetuity right? Like once it goes on there and get senft, heed Its nft. Right is a contract like, there's the ABA team. Do you know the story about the ABA team from st. Louis? No. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So this could say, I'm this is epic. They merged the League's the st. Louis team is out and the fuckers, like, fuck you. We're not signing the deal. And so what they did was they was like, I don't know what the finite details were, but they needed.
The sign off to make the merger happen and they tell them that your franchise doesn't Advance because we're folding. Some, they said they fight. They fight, they fight because they really loved basketball. They're like New York, like, schmatta guys who bought like TV right at the end they go. Okay. Well, if that's the case, you have to, we have to be treated financially as the 12 at the time. The 26 started, 22nd to the 24th NBA franchise. And in perpetuity, we get the economics flipper - so we're at,
Out of the league. But economy, then we get it. And so as the
league, I mean, I think they made like a billion dollars or something. It was cheap to, I think your brother's right.
That's right. That's exactly what
Spirit, two brothers. I think they like made like hundreds of
millions, hundreds of millions, when that was like a different number over those 70s 80s and 90s. I do think they got bought out like the grandkids got bought out by the NBA like and before the last big deal, but like, wow,
unbelievable. Go ahead, hon. I was just gonna say,
You were talking about NFC another. I think another nft use case that why I like when talking about it with you versus like we've had a bunch of crypto heads on here, you know, super Geniuses like biology and others. And you know one challenge is if our audience is a guy who owns his own marketing agency in St. Louis. He's sort of like, okay. Well, yeah, like I don't want to hear how I want the, what what does it mean? What does it mean for
me? Come to me? Exactly. And to me when I talk about and at peace, I think about the fashion industry, I think about why somebody owns
A Rolex, right? Think about social media like like how about that? See how everyone's like social medias full of shit, like everyone takes photos and fakes it, you know, what's going to be a much better? Social identity. What tokens do you have in your wallet publicly? Yes. I was thinking about this yesterday meeting. Both of you. If I looked at your toes. Look at these wallets. Yeah. My public wallet is going to represent me because it's not only gonna be like, what I believe in crypto punks, you know, my V friends collection. Like, but it's also going to be like, all my Jets tickets.
Right? And all of you good one. I've been mentioned Dave Matthews publicly in my entire life. But if somebody went in my, if this was going on, for 30 years of like, at like, every day on Twitter, I probably get a Gary. You went to Dave Matthews, New Year's 99, Madison Square Garden. I'm like, oh, yeah, my friend, Tokyo, Joe loved like like, you know, it's a truth indicator. And by the way, one last point, this is what really confuses people. Every I'm going to give you such a clear picture that I think will help people every one of you has an aunt, uncle niece.
Nephew friend Grandma. When you go into their house, they collect marbles. They collect little miniature elephants. They collect magnets every state. They go to, they pick up a matchbox humans. Humans are in hemp inherently hoarding assets and we use them for ourselves because we like it. We get caught up in the Nostalgia and the story and we use it to flex. Yep. Flexing, a painting or your Winnie, the Pooh collection, that's epic in. Your house is kind of hard except for the people that come through.
The blockchain is going to accelerate accelerate at a scale. The way I thought that it would accelerate communication with social and that's why I think people are under estimating, the first internet collected, the information, the second internet created the framework for communication, right? This third thing, this web 3ft thing. It's going to capture the consumerization of assets. And the stakes are fucking high.
I just got off the phone with
An airline and I had to tell three different people in this hour-long call. What I was going through, who I talked to you before, why I needed a new ticket and it was a Nightmare made me so angry. Do you know why this happens? It happens? Because as your company grows, you've got lots of different employees talking to customers on loads of different channels. And it's a huge pain in the butt because when a customer contacts your company, they want to personalize and helpful experience. This my friend is exactly what HubSpot CRM platform. Does. It makes it very
Easy, it integrates with your inbox. So, emails are automatically saved and stored in your contacts. Timeline, sales reps are in customer service can then make and record calls right within HubSpot and notes are saved for future. Reference on top of that. We have a universal in box that lets your team tackle live chat team email addresses. We even look at Facebook messenger and more. It's pretty unique. It's pretty amazing. And the airline that I called, I won't say their name. I wish they were using it. So learn about how you can scale your company without scaling complexity. Just go to HubSpot.com
And with your deal to the new, the the Gary, what was called, be friends, be friends. You do you you offer a conference a year. Are you going to do that forever? Or is there a timeline on that?
What I wanted to show my? This is pretty interesting because I've done it in a couple of shows but with you guys, it's people like this. So I
do want to host it at Michael Jordan's house because we've let you do it, my friend, we can help you host too. Add Michael Jordan's
ass. So, for the hardest core.
Consumers of my content be friends made so much sense. Why the amount of times I referenced Walt Disney and Vince McMahon character creation. I'm building Boehner X2 by the Stahl. Gip. I'm going to refurbish storytelling Saturday morning cartoons, all the ship behind me in my office, right? Like, wrestling and Thundercats and Transformers. So I'm just so affected by pop culture, and all that my whole life and like I wanted to buy like animal crackers for Mondelez, and I was going to turn into Madagascar like
I've been like in this place forever. Right? As my fact, you won't be friends. Has two years ago. I was going to launch a toy line called workplace. Warriors were little desk toys, right, with what basically became his character. So for me, I see an FPS. I have my I've been like kind of like flirting in the winter. I have my crazy Eureka like no. No, this is the fucking it it right moment. I bought a nice long time ago. Aaron Battalion, shout-out former CTO LivingSocial. Got me on in 2015-16. I've been watching but I wait to the
Sumer the normal shit. The marketing agency st. Louis moment. Not the fucking hard core infrastructure nerd. Shit. That's just not my jam, right? So
I go fuck, man. I'm going to build the next Pokemon Harry Potter Transformers, but 99.9% of the world's not going to believe me. So let me launch this program and show people that you can do a lot more than just have pictures on it, right? So, what's your point Sam? Like I'm like, so the answer is, it's a three-year contract be friends series. One says, you get a conference ticket to be con 2022. 2023 2024, right? I'll figure shit out after the fact, but
I knew that that would have such an inherent value that people would lock in for that. But basically what I'm trying to do is Trick, this is the word I would use trick my hardest core Advocates by giving them an asset. I'm UV friends, the original thing. I just launched as kind of like the original Disney cells, you know, those things that sell for like a drill Ian. That were like the hand, Drew Snow White in the 40s. Like, if I pull off what I think I can pull off stuffed animals, Toys trading cards, movies video games over the next 40 years.
Years. This original nft has real potential, and I wanted to create a thing. That wouldn't make my biggest earliest supporters trade it. You look at board ape. You look at me because you look at these epic projects that are killing right now. People are trading. I wanted I wanted people to be locked in so that by the time the three years are over there like wait, I'm never selling this because I wanted them to benefit the
most and the data backs us up. So, right now, if I go on crypto slam, if you guys wanted this crypto sign that iot,
Little aggregator of nft projects. I think you guys are like number eight. Okay. So, your number eight in the last 24 hours, last 24. Yes, sir. It's a 24-hour rolling scoreboard. But you can do, you can do up top. It's got all the stuff. Yeah, so we can do like let's say 30 days. All right. So 30 days, your number 12, last 30 days about 12 million of sales, volume of transaction volume. And the funny thing is, if you go through all the other ones, crypto Punk's, maybe it's all these. They have somewhere between thousands or tens of thousands or you know, the top one acts Infinity is quarter million.
In buyers that are doing these number doing these transactions. V friends is like an outlier to 300 people with 580 transactions. What that tells me is that there is a small group of Hardcore, people who are not looking to flip this rapidly for a quick Buck because they believe in you, they believe in the utility value of the conference. So I like that because it's different and you're pushing
it more point. I think I've been very aggressive if there's some like, do not bet against me. I'm gonna fucking build Transformers like, you know, like and I so I think a lot of
You're holding now bit more, you know, the conference going to be epic and I'm going to come through. But I think I think I think they're betting on my propaganda right now. And I'm going to just like
it's like Bitcoin the thing that gets it like early days, Bitcoin, people who bought in were because they were Anarchist crypto nerds. Yeah. It's like they needed. You need the first people to buy in for one reason II people, you know, the speculators who got and then it's like, once everybody's got the damn thing y'all speculated on it. Now we can just use it as a medium of exchange. So similarly,
interesting about
An FPS more so than Bitcoin today and obviously things will about, it's just functional, like the vikan makes it function like they're about to get very functional. Right? Like the functionality is going to be extraordinary.
Right? And so so I like V friends, I think be friends is cool. I told my guy before this pot. I was like, oh I'm going to talk to Gary today. You know, let's pick up a v friend. Like I go get me. One off the floor. They're pretty sure he's like cool. The floor. Price is like getting a 17 grand Mal's.
Okay. Well, alright looks like Gary that much.
That is not what I expected. I was like that's interesting that really kind of like open my eyes. In fact the last few days you've been seeing so I want to bring back one thing you talked about which is your wallet is going to be a new type of profiles, can be a new place to flex, going to be
place to learn about somebody in a real way. Like like the only reason I'm in is that right? And then you know, I think you till she was going the other way.
You can well filter your face. You can do many things to get not verifiable there.
Are, you know, you know, what's really
interesting, the argument of, like, us controlling our narrative, because everyone's become the pr agent of themselves versus the black and white public data of what we buy. Now, don't forget for everyone who's scared and loves privacy. You don't have to share your wallet, right? It's just that my, my argument is I was there for Myspace 2004, when everyone's like people get raped at the mall and kidnapped and you know, I was like, yeah, I think it's gonna go this way and now it is,
Everyone's in, I think that's what's going to happen with an FTS. Like, you've got the hardcore people that I get on Zoom with, like, just chopping. And they've got literally like moisty activators and like painting. I don't know. They are all those girls. Every day. The masses are coming and they're in the public wallet, the rainbow wallet that got eith world and I think that's where it's
going. You are. So, you've been talking about buying Brands and putting them through Vayner for? I mean, you like your 3/4 of the company, you've been saying that hole,
Appeal for a long time. First of all, you haven't done it yet. When you going to do it and second of all, I think that this putting him through the, the nft thing is significantly better than the old model that I bet you were planning on doing of like what were, you know, we could put them through the the vaynermedia
machine. Yep. Machine. You've got
it. Like I mean, I would much rather buy an old like a 90s Brannon do this because I'm looking at who the biggest brands are on crypto. Say, I mean, it's Sports and sports companies.
Yeah,
I mean, I think you can do brands are going to be better. What are you finally going to execute on that and pull the trigger? Because you've been talking about it for a long time. I'm excited to see it happen. Come on Sherry. It's like no. Like dude. Why do you need look at 1500 employees? Still like you built that machine? It's better to do the other thing now.
Yeah, you'll appreciate it. I think that's an incredibly strong observation from the outside. I just know how, you know, you know what? Like, it's a version of golden can cuffs, like, instead of
Like selling your company, you have to be stuck or or like you have a big salary. I just know. I'm so fucking close for an actually being a death star versus like yeah. It's a better badass machine than anybody else. Is God. Like I feel that like truly I do. I'm like I got a better machine than the other fucking 500 people. I admire that I think have this down but it's like but it's so it's like so close to being two times better than four times better. And the way I scratched, my itch was resi, the restaurant app, which I had a major exit.
It empathy wines, which, like I was creating and now be friends. And like the V friends thing is really fucking with me because I'm like, you know, oh, by the way said, you'll appreciate this. I had one executed four years ago, signed and they pulled out late and kind of had like a clause in there that allowed them to. And I feel good about this publicly. I had to animal crackers. Bought I mentioned, it's slightly quickly. When I was talking, I had it and I fucking have the master fucking plan. It was a cookie brand. I was going to make it healthier to be on trend.
But what I was really going to do was turn it into an animated film and build up like make the lion like, fucking Larry. The like I was, It was kind of be friendiy. Now. Listen, ultimately. I think I'm gonna play some micro. I'm young enough at 45. Have the leverage have the infrastructure that I think I'm going to do a whole bunch of everything, right? I think I can build a studio like Pixar with be friends at the Forefront and do other shit and I think I can buy Champion when it gets cold again and refurbish in 13 years because I like both of those things. And I'm going to how much for
both
Could you have bought animal crackers for
48? I think the deal was at a time. No shit. Yeah, what was the revenue? I hate making up? Shit. I genuinely don't remember. I remember the number pretty, pretty, nearly
cover around the multiple.
It was like nothing. It was like, I feel
you're valuing to IP. Not the core business
at that stage. They were like, just fucking it was dead. They're like, right. Like they didn't give a like and we're going to use it as a proxy to teach them how to do it with their breath. Like it was fucking setup.
Voice. Did it with the Nilla wafers. I mean,
from a marketing standpoint, we crushed it there. And, you know, I really scratch my itch with K-Swiss K-Swiss was fucking finished dead. Done happened to him
something so recently. Yeah, the res
folder to a Chinese apparel company, right? K-Swiss was at the Forefront of that leverage. We fucking explode. It. Not only did we sell a fuckload of carry these sneakers, the residual effect than the brand was very real. That was that's the closest. I've come to like testing my machine.
Only difference was, it was a fake test because I was so involved with in the face. My plan is not to be that as a metric beef. The best part of the friends for me is Gary, Vee has been the Catalyst for all the shit. I'm passionate about. Like work ethic patient. I'm so pumped. And I'm going to be over the next three years. Be able to go a little bit more in the backdrop and let these and let these characters take over for me as I build that I P. So I'm looking forward to that.
Well, are you doing - you when I was watching this garage sale videos like this great content, but
then he actually had to go to 20 garage sales and I'm sure there's some fun to it. But also there's you graduated past that stage and your life. And
that's the biggest thing that pisses me off in my bujji fucking friends. So I carried the fuck. Are you doing? I'm like, fuck you, you you go play golf and go on a yacht. I'm going to fucking garage. So I'm not telling you what to do. Like, you know, like pee even besides that. Like,
I know, you know, just I've done this podcast now for only an 18 months, right? So we're new to the game, something like that. And there's a lot of benefits of building up this personal.
Like, boom, I want to raise a fund, raiser fun. I launched a course and sell out, you know, like make a lot of money. When you build a personal brand new build trust with an audience. Yep, by giving them give them giving them like it like you say and then you should have your ass later. So the part I thought was interesting is man. He's been on this what you know, quote, unquote treadmill of creating content, you know, you're in your car, you're in your over going somewhere, you know, you got to for taught, you got a cameraman with you and you got to put out, a sound bite for Instagram reels because that's the new hot shit or whatever. And so like does are
You, I guess like there's more of a personal question. Like Sam wanted to know the, how the hell did you manage the cash flow question. This is mine as like I see myself doing this content thing for a long time, but I don't want to work as hard as you as far as creating that much content. Do you do it because like, it's fun. Do you do it? You know, are you, do you feel like you're on a treadmill when you're creative? It's much content. This much Gary
Vee. The, the answer is, I only do what I like. As a matter of fact, like I'm not hitting all my
My team in my quotas right now with my content. These last two weeks because I can't stop being on crypto Sam open sea Discord like you'd be stunned. How how much I could shut it down or triple down. I understand the benefits of it and the leverage and I always did. I always thought that community and brand was very underestimated in the last 10 years. I just feel like people are just getting around to like oh shit. This is like the actual game, but I don't I don't really I
I enjoy it. I really do and I also did a little bit different. I slowly, I did it by myself for 7 years, but then I really built out and infrastructure of a team, right? Like to your point. Like, I'm I'm just living and everyone's recording and then we're post producing it scale.
How many folks are on the team
right now? I think there's
22 and is are you the majority owner of vaynermedia or venorex? Yes, so then you're able to kind of it's not like a VC thing. Where you
You're able to, like use the same resources across all your shit. You don't have to worry about, you don't have to worry about, pleasing everyone. That's right. Or like your fiduciary. I mean, your fiduciaries, to your, to yourself and to your brother,
but like yeah, exactly. So like and so I'm I'm in heavy control. It's a long-term play. I have no board. There's no not publicly traded to you exact point. I can like I'm it's very much just a very large family
business. Yeah, you don't have to justify to anyone but you and your bro,
and what's cool about that is I don't have to my
I broke because I've been super Relic by him and more importantly, you know, I'm delivering like, you know, you know this right? Like what super awesome is like when you're putting the winds on the board. Nobody even gives nobody wants to touch it. Then keep going. Keep going. Nobody wants to talk to me, you know,
did you do you pay yourself from the the company? Or do you just take all your side wins? And it reinvest most your, what would be your salary income from the brand back into the agency.
Originally, I peed myself very very, very little. It just is so much of the percentage of my time. So I've started paying myself, probably over the last 40 years, but I'm still like wildly under compensated in comparison to what I would feel like the god of Merit would come down and she, or he would say, yeah, you are, like, way on because it's the kind of all cycling in the same game to your
point. Sure. And do you like, do you look back because I think you're excited about web 3.
Yes, and you look back at web to I know you can quickly tell the story of missing Uber. Yeah. Your buddy but the guy you miss Hoover. That's a big one. Big one. What was the tell that story but also just in general would you learn from the web to waive that you're like? Okay web 3, I'm better prepared. Because I've been in a long
time. I love you for that question because the only thing I've been thinking about for the last nine months is like, damn. This is the first time I felt like this since I was six. Right. The thing I learned there was I was going to meet a lot of people that were technically stronger than me, teach me new things having.
Credibly fun young fucking on fire thinkers different shit. The world is rescheduling recalibrating. And that I knew that I understood the consumer and the humans so well, that I would figure out my path within it. I think like, you know, main thing I learned was, I've told you we were story at nausea. Travis is the only person I thank in. Crush it. My first book, besides my family. We were Incredibly Close. What I learned there was defense, all
These losses. I bought my first like apartment in Manhattan. I'd played so conservative up until like 35. Like I've no money. First of all, because I was building a family business. I just didn't have a lot of liquid. I had enough to make the Uber investment, I passed twice and there's two things I learned from it. One. The full story is that when I was asked to invest in Uber Garrett and Travis were just the inventors of it and Ryan Graves was the CEO was going to run it. And I had just
Failed in putting up a wine social network called corked, and it was because it was a distraction to my core. And so, I was affected by thinking that if this is their side hustle, it's not really them
what I mean. Reasonable by the way, totally reasonable and Applause and you'll be right nine out of ten
times. The second one hurts because Travis came back to me on this, there's this grassy. No, I have no idea where it is in San Francisco like a little Park. I drove by it like seven years ago and got like the worst feelings of like, I think you'll back here every year once a year for humbleness.
I'll tell you. I want to, I know we're going to be wrapping up. So let me give you the real. This is something. I really hope helps a lot of people. I have completely gone the other way. Let me tell you what I mean by that. I am now completely infatuated with investing only based on the person. I have to hate. That would be the word I use, and I don't like that word. I would have to hate the person's idea to not go. If I think that the jockey is a gangster and it's worked out for me. There's a company called mi'kmaq, where I just saw Rachel had one meeting.
And I said, she's one of us, right. That's it. She's one of us and she's pivoted, four times. But the company is a monster now and is well on its way and between the Uber thing. And the Rachel thing, like it's kind of how I'm navigating web 3 right now. I'm really trying to pay attention to is this person one of us, because I think there's something about a human's ability to will their way to the success. Even if they have to completely change the business model halfway
through,
I love it. Well, we, you're supposed to bounce a three minutes ago. We don't want to go over your time. I it sounds like, it looks like you're in the Hamptons, and it sounds like someone's preparing dinner right now, that right. This is all right. Do you have someone who is vacuuming and cooking dinner, right now?
We're setting up infrastructure for the weekend. But listen, I let me say this. It's super fun for me to see this show pop from afar like there are not.
No, it's a very funny time and Society where like work ethic and the grind, like I'm incredibly excited that we have a balanced conversation. But the energy of Entrepreneurship is just such an important variable. And so I appreciate what you guys are doing this
space and I'm not going to. I'll have to ask him if it's if he's cool. If I blow up his spot a little bit but me and Gary had dinner with like 8 or 10 other people like two months ago and I went back to this guy's house about a month ago. Again for another dinner. We're
You have to tell the story about this guy's house and it was like the craziest house with everything you do and already. We're going to stop working until the
listen. I'd love to come back if whatever you guys feel is a appropriate time for recycling, a guest. Hit me up. I wish you nothing but good and and thank you for having me
on.
I feel like I can rule the world. I know I could be what I want to put my all in it. Like all Days on the Road, Less Traveled never looking back.
