#209 with Gary Vaynerchuk - Why NFTS Are the Future

What's super awesome is like when you're putting the wins on the board, nobody even gives up nobody wants to touch it. They're like, keep going, keep going. Nobody wants to talk to me. Yeah. I feel like I can rule the world, I know I can be what I want to I put my law in it like my day's all on the road, less travel, never looking back. That was pretty uh That was intense forty five minutes. Dude, sometimes

You have high hopes for a guest. And I in on this podcast I've been disappointed. Today was not that day, my friend. I love that. I I had a great time, honestly. We didn't even get to a we got to like twenty percent of the stuff I wanted to ask him about. So we had Gary Bainerchuk on the pod today. It was phenomenal. Whenever I leave. So I've 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 be like, Oh, this guy's just some loud Guy who's selling nonsense. She's totally the real deal. And I went to we we talk about it, but I went to a dinner with him 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 want him to continue telling stories. I love his point of view. He's entertaining. He that guy's 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 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 how you can go from like, you know,$42 to$14,000 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 you know hundreds of employees. He's got Uh, you know, his 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 what I think the world needs more of. It needs more business entertainment because Like why do I why did I grow up wanting to be a basketball player? Cause the NBA was so goddamn entertaining, right? And uh 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. Um And I whenever we talk about w 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 start off. I we got right into it. In the first thirty 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 from Gary Vanerchuk. about Vaner Media. They grew to twelve hundred employees. I tracked 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 he managed cash flow. Then we got into a really interesting cut discussion about NFTs. NFTs, a lot of people talk about'em. I'm not like an NFT guy. Sean, you are. This was the one time I've ever had a conversation where it inter interested me beyond just like uh academic.

Right. Yeah, yeah. He he does a good job with Making it I don't know, like uh tangible and like not making the big mistake, which is NFTs. Let me tell you what it stands for and how it works under the hood. It's like no no no I don't care how the engine works. I wanna get in the car and go somewhere. So where does this let me go?

And uh I think he did a pretty good job of that. So we talked about NFTs. Uh we talked about um You know, just some of kinda like the lessons learned, you know, going from like what he saw in the dot com boom because he was Kind of like early in the game, right in two thousand. Then he was there for like Twitter, Facebook, Uber.

And he got in he invested in Twitter, but he missed out on Uber even though Garrett was one of his best friends. And then what is so how did he take that learning and what's he doing now with it? Today, how does he take those learnings and and apply them now? So we talked about that for a bit, but

Good episode. He he Yeah, he was I don't know, super nice guy. uh wants to come back on, I think we should have him on again for sure. I t 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. uh l after listening to that episode. I I felt like I was uh a part of it more so uh as a fan, more so as a participant. I thought it was wonderful.

Yeah, you know the it's when people say uh You know. I'm I'm always late to work because when I'm driving and listen to MFM, I gotta pull over and write shit down, right? Like I can't let this idea go. I gotta write this down. That's uh that's when we do it well. And sometimes we don't always hit that, but I think we did it well in this one. So all right, that's that that's the episode.

Jerry V Enjoy. F Alright, 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 it uh it worked out well.

I'm just using an iPhone. Get the fuck out of here. Well Sam's traveling now, so Sam you looking s are you really? I'm in New York. This is just an iPhone. Oh, but with the blurred out why does it look so good? It's really cool. Awesome.

It's nice to see you guys. I hope you're well. It's called Camo. I'll give him a shout. It's called Camo. I think I paid forty nine dollars for it. It's awesome, man. Hope everyone's well. Um, so we have uh a lot to get into. Um I'm pumped you're here. Um

Can I it's something that I've I've all and we're recording now. Something I've always wondered about. How many people work at Bayner Media right now? Somewhere between Probably ten fifty and thirteen hundred. Ba I'm sorry, Vayner X, so Vayner Media.

Yeah, Vain R right,'cause we have gallery, we have yes. So I was looking, uh, I did some research based off of a ton of interviews and I was like going through the headcount of how how fast you grew, and I believe between around years number um Number three and four, did you grow f from like thirty people to a hundred and twenty five people? Yes, because in two thousand eleven, September of two thousand eleven I kinda made the decision

To go full time veiner, no longer. What I would call full time wine library secondary veiner. I mean that switch. And then the lighter fluid kinda went on. Dude, how the hell do you manage that cash flow? For a company like that. Cause I I did I did research. And it was tell me if I'm I I just guesstimated off some interviews.

Around I'm gonna start at year one. Around five people, twenty people, thirty people, a hundred and twenty five people, three hundred, five fifty, six hundred, eight hundred. Yeah. Is that a ballpark, right? Yeah, like if I if you were asking me and I was spitballing guess who the fuck you know, the first year was like We we started in May of two thousand nine, so that that first half year.

I think it was like six or seven. Then it might have been like twenty And through all of two thousand ten and then until eleven, it probably got to like thirty, and then that's September two thousand eleven. Look what You'll appreciate this and 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 Bahner for me is really for and a forever business.

Um 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? Like the bills due. Like, why didn't you pay? But like overall,

Um It's just Staying in your shit, right? I think it when you stay in your business and you know what you've got coming in and what g is going out. You know, I'm not a CFO

Like Oрієd CEO But I'm also not a schlamel. I always have a good sense of like Is this are we gonna be dead? I'm always playing to like, will this hurt me? Like will I 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 across a fucking wine line. 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 noise, I'll go away in a second. Um It was I w 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 it trained me because that business even crazier. That business went from four million The fucking Twive and like Thirty 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 de we definitely got a line of credit probably

Two thousand eleven. Maybe in two thousand thirteen. So but the first four or five years, and then in the pocket you're talking about, which is very much more um Will resonate a lot more with people on the call who've got it, who are gonna go through the seven to seventeen to seventy seven to two seventy seven. It was more about um Just not spending what you don't have, right? Like it was just as simple as basic being a businessman. Like, hey, we just landed this account. They're paying us 480 a year. It's fucking, you know, Mondelez or Pepsi. You feel like they're gonna pay you. You feel good. It's not gonna, you know. And it's like, okay, now I got four eighty. I'm gonna 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 w when you were on the podcast we hung out at 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 up napkin and yet people that are like all about learning and Excel sheets and doing it proper and fucking SAP and cloud, you know, they they have all the software, like get fucked up. It's because They don't have a good pulse of their actual business so they get ahead of themselves and lack patience. Yeah, it's just like when you're growing that fast, it it it seems like Like you're kinda playing it maybe month by month, maybe quarter by quarter, where I would be I mean, it just I I

I would go to bed at night wondering like I hope this client doesn't bail, otherwise I gotta lay off twenty people. I think I think what was happening was we were selling so f this and I think I you know, it's so funny, I was very long winded and 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 week, like you you know You start getting into a place where you're just outpacing vulnerability. That's always a question I had. Sean, do you want to give him um

An update on I mean I jumped right into that because I've always had that question about management. Sam's been like sitting on that question for two years or something. He didn't say hello. He didn't say what the podcast is fucking about. He's like how when you scaled, how'd you manage cash flow? You know what's funny? I've gotten into Sam through my podcast in a little couple hangouts. Uh it makes sense to me because I think Sam's really Good at what he does. And he's and he lived that life. And he knows he did it super well, and he knows what the anxiety and like the challenges are of like it. You could you know, I always say you can only My favorite people to talk to are 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 I yeah. I did this uh uh this thread that went viral on Twitter. It was about Clubhouse and I was like, you know

This was when Clubhouse was sort of peeking and I I said this thing, I was like, it's kinda unpopular'cause You know, why should on a startup, you know, it was it wasn't my intention, but I said Everybody thinks Clubhouse is the the next big thing. And I think it's gonna fail, but here's how I think it's gonna go play it out. And I kinda wrote it like an episode of Silicon Valley. Like I wrote it like a Like you're the CEO, first you know, Chris Socke is texting you, this is happening.

And I wrote this thing and it went viral. Getting on C N B C it has like I don't know Tens of millions of impressions. And People are like, Oh man, you're a good writer. And I was 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 you know, they're I remember.

And and so I was like, you know, I f I 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 writing. You know what's so crazy about that? I don't know if you can see this. Do you see the goosebumps? Yeah, it's it's it's kinda how I think why I'm a good content producer. Bye.

literally stay in my fucking lane. I may say the same shit eighty, seven, hundred different ways, and that's a little bit of my talent. I'm good in incorporating Contemporary pop culture. slang nuances of the day But the reason I think it works for me is similar to you. Like I like

I have so much conviction in my shit. 'Cause I'm not guessing out here. Right. Yeah. You know, uh, I was watching your uh trash talk video on the way here. So if you people haven't seen it, go to go to his YouTube. It's fun series, actually. I was watching, I was like, I bet this hits. I couldn't see because I was driving, so I'm 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 it. For me and you two, I'm sorry to interrupt. It's by far my best show.

It's my best contact. And do you know why I made it? Be because I listen to my audience. I read my comments. I read my shit. So what 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 twenty five thousand dollar check into Twitter, they're like, that doesn't work for me. I don't have twenty five thousand. I'm like, you know, cool, let me go even further back in my origin story. What did I do when I had dick shit? I fucking fli went went garage saling on Saturday and sold that shit at baseball card shows or other flea markets. Uh Um on Sunday. Right.

Wait, by the way, it it's more fun. So I I I I just sold thirty five hundred dollars worth of old computers and I got More joy having that thirty five hundred dollars in my Venmo than I did twenty million dollars in my bank. This this 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's no comparison to how I feel. When I uh in my last episode, I don't know if that's what you're watching, I found A bunch of magna That's what I was watching. So for two hundred seventy dollars.

I bought What ends up being about sixty four hundred in eBay post f Sales, right? It's crazy because it's like the thrill of the hunt. Like it was more fun. Even before that, right? So I watched my drive home from the bank to get to get to home. I didn't get to that part yet, but I saw that was the title. So the the the you know, some people are like, Oh, that's cool, you buy something at two seventy, 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 Two 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 we we do these segments on the show that people love that's called Uh we'll do the Billy of the Week, which is like a billionaire that we profile, but sometimes we'll do the Hill Billy of the Week, which is someone who's owns twenty two vending machines and 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,'cause sometimes I go off on my crypto shit. And I'll be like, Oh yeah, this is the future. But then sometimes it's like Hey, you know what you should do? Go door to door pest control leaves, you know and Billy Hill. I love Billy that 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 looked at my calendar today and I saw we I had 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, I can go more on OpenC and do a little more research. But I'm so enthralled right now in NFT 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. It's the same game. Do you know um.

Do you know American pickers? I know that show, yes. So I used to work on that show. I used to work for Mike Wolf, the main guy in that show. Is that the guy who uh is that the taller guy or the chubby? The tall guy. The tall guy. And the way it worked is he would go from garage sale to garage sale. And we would buy like some cheap stuff, like something we could sell in the store for fifty bucks. Then we would buy some like a old motorcycle that doesn't work, but it's art that we could sell for twenty grand. And all these people would come in from all over the country to the store that I helped run. And we would probably sell

Five thousand dollars worth of items, but we would sell probably thirty grand a day of T shirts. And this freaking business crushed it. But um Sean, you want to talk about some N N NFT stuff because so sh the I know that excites both of you. It excites me too. Are you starting to get into it, Sam? Are you like digging in a little? No, I I I am. I'm into it. Sean told me what it was like a year ago and he bought like some really cool Kobe stuff and I went and got a f I I thought it was badass. And so but Sean's like really into it. I think he's got a ticker behind him that you could see. Yeah, no th this is this is just m you know, my own little I motivate myself with my own motivational quote every day or whatever. But

I do have this programmed up where it can tell me the price of whatever, you know, Ethereum or You know, uh whether it's a it' some altcoin or In this case, I start I met the founder of Nifty Gateway and I was like, dude. Uh first his story is hilarious. I don't know if you've met them, but it's two twins. Oh the Tyler?

No, when it's a it's two twins that built Nifti Gateway. They got acquired by the two twins. Gemini's fucking amazing. And so he this was like pretty early in the wave of like NFT started getting hotter and hotter. What they did, which was smart, was They said, Look. NFTs have value because they're scarce, but the problem is anyone can make a print of NFT tomorrow, which is like the fun, but also the there's like an abundance of scarce objects now, right? Yeah, supply and demand like there's such an incredibly fascinating supply and demand game going on. What nifty started doing was they were kind of like look, what we'll do is we'll be like Christie's, we'll curate

So we'll 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 through NIFTI early on. They've been building up a following for ten years just doing free art ca 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, you know, the the Forever Mamba. I don't know if you've seen it. But basically, I was telling Sam on the pot, I was like, Yeah, I just bought this thing for eight hundred dollars. 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 gonna do? You spent eight hundred dollars on this? And I was like, Yeah, actually I bought five. He's like you bought five copies of the same fucking thing. And you know, those sell for ten ten ten to twenty five K now. And so

Um, that was my first flip, basically my version of the and the digital garage sale, right? That's why I'm so addicted, I think. Like I'm addict I'm addicted to the digital garage sale. And so give us like your simplified version of the thesis because some people kinda like Some people love this shit. They're in the weeds. Some people just sit there and eye roll. And then the truth is that there's something really exciting going on. And then there's also a bunch of shit that's gonna go away in a few years, like it'll all give swept on the road. So I mean us your take. Yeah, I've been, you know, I'll just

Well, I'll I'll give you the micro thing on that. I think ninety eight percent of the current projects go to zero. Right. Like I think it's very It's it to me it's the s Most similar thing to

Uh Web internet stocks ninety nine two thousand that I remember. I remember being there. I really like I I was me young. So I wasn't as experienced and didn't have as many pattern recognitions 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. I'm like, how could they be worth this much money? They're losing so much money. And I 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. Hm. And And and because I really thought it was like a real business, even though it was losing money, was losing money in a different way than other things that had an actual business like back to House Sam and I started like revenue mattered. Like the other ones didn't have fucking revenue. 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 underestimating NFTs. 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 Picker Garage Sale sports cards for me, like and there's a ton of people that love that like that's That's why half a 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 fifteen years, big. Collecting, flipping. You know, you've got an entire generation of kids that go on Fortnite and Madden and 2K and buy digital assets to Flex. So that's gonna fucking play out. But I think that's just a nuance of NFTs. I think people misunderstand the utility nature of smart contracts.

I believe in the next fifteen years. That That nobody writes a book with a publisher, they do it through an NFT infrastructure. I believe that in fifteen years. Nobody launches a record label by having a a a record a record by having a record label give them the bag. They're gonna get it from crowdfunding by selling NFTs 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 NFT. Because there's no incentive for that organization and that artist or people to launch it as anything but an NFT because a QR code or a piece of paper means nothing, but the NFT, if Luka Donich drops a hundred points in that game, that becomes a forever collectible. There's a trillion fucking dollars.

Worth of s of ticket stubs that have sold over the last twenty five years on eBay. Do you know that all goes to royalties to the person. So what's really fascinating to me, uh, I'll give you a weird one. If you own a home that is wildly unique. And it's a twenty five million dollar home on a beach or somet 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 gonna buy it from you is gonna 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 gonna bring. Then I think people are underestimating it. You wanna yeah, go ahead, Sean.

I'll tell them this idea we have. Few months ago, a few months ago we're shooting shit before an episode and we we don't tell each other what we're gonna talk about. It's like yo, I'm bringing three I'm bringing three pieces of heat. You're gonna react to it. I gotta know my shit, you have to be able to react. And that people like that. People like the reaction. Yes, fuck that. The worst part of a podcast is, hey, do you know this? Yes. Okay, well let me explain it because I'm not actually asking you, motherfucker, I'm asking 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 his house in Chicago, that's got the twenty three emblem on the gate. It's got like a basketball court inside, got everything. And uh it's been sitting on the m market for years and the price has been dropping. I think I don't know what it started at. I think something like twenty million. Then it went down to s fifteen, fourteen, th and it's like

So I came on the pot, I was like, dude, I think we could buy Michael Jordan's house for 10 million dollars. Wow. And I was like, you know, so we could kind of like do the the you know, the way that no normally somebody would do this is All right, do I have that kind of effone to go buy Michael Jordan's house, my wife doesn't kill me? Or do I go, you know, like raise a fun amongst you know, a few back alley conversations at dinners with some folks who are rich? I said, or we could just get this podcast. We could crowdfund ten million dollars. Yep. And we could basically fractional do you could do fractional either through an NFT or on Rally Road or whatever. I was like, let's buy Michael Jordan's house. And we start and this went viral a little bit in our world, like

In my head You listen to every episode religiously, it hits your phone and you you say cancel, you know, clear my calendar, I need to go listen to this. I know you probably didn't. But that was an idea 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. 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 to say I love an idea is 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'cause the executor couldn't do it. Yo Bongo was my favorite investment. It was a precursor to Tinder in a lot of ways. Caleb and the team there just couldn't get it there. They didn't execute it, 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 you can run a real business. Now Now back to my big point about unique property. I think this is gonna change the real estate industry. The fact that you could put you guys are young dudes. You put a two percent royalty in perpetuity on that home.

You sell it to the next person for nine million, let alone twelve million, right? Let's just play. You guys are locked. Your great grandchildren, great great, great grandchildren are like our fucking great great great great grandfathers are fucking geniuses. We just got a fucking eight hundred thousand dollar check in the mail or eighty thousand, whatever it ends up being. I do think In the next five years.

There will be a aha. To what NFT Blockchain smart contract mean And I think it will trickle into real estate. People will buy unique properties. And I think they're gonna make incredible in perpetuity monies that maybe they themselves won't get the crazy, because you know how often the houses turn per se.

But Man, listen. If you're listening to this right now. Listen, if I I I've got a real good sense to who listens to this'cause 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've been fortunate and we're sitting in this weird moment right now because of crypto and NFT. Where there's some people that have really come into some real money in like um 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 wanna do shit that still is good for like the house is perfect, right? Cause it'll be fun for you sixteen or two or nine weeks a year, but you're also creating something that's an asset. Let me say it one more time. In Perpetuity. Right.

Like once it goes on there And gets NFT? It's NFT. It is a contract. Like there's the ABA team. Do you know the story about the ABA team from St. Louis?

No, M B A and No, this Sam, this is epic. They merge the leagues. The Saint Louis team Is out. And the fuckers like, fuck you, we're not signing the deal. And

So what they did was they they was like I don't know what the finite details were, but They needed them to sign off to make the merger happen. And they tell them that your franchise doesn't advance because we're folding some. They s they they fight, they fight, they fight'cause they really love the basketball. They're like New York like Schmata 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 tw at the time, the twenty sixth or the twenty second or the twenty fourth MBA franchise, and in perpetuity. We get the economic split for that. So we're out of the league, but economy. Did we get it? And so as the least I mean I think they made like a billion dollars or something. It was two brothers, right? That's right. That's exactly what I think. It was two brothers. I think they like made like hundreds of millions. Hundreds of millions when that was like a different number over those seventies, eighties, and nineties.

I do think they got bought out, like the grandkids got bought out by the NBA like in before the last big deal, but like Wow. Unbelievable. Do you um Go ahead, Sean.

I was just gonna say you were talking about NFT, another uh I think another NFT use case that why I like when talking about it with you versus like we've had a bunch of cryphead on here, you know, uh super geniuses like Bology 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 Yeah, what does this mean? Yeah, like I don't want the how, I want the what. What does this mean and what does it mean for me to me to me exactly. And to me, when I talk about NFTs, I think about the fashion. I think about why somebody owns a Rolex.

I think about social media like like How about this? You know how everyone's like social media's full of shit, like everyone takes photos and fakes it? You know what's gonna be a much better social identity? What tokens do you have in your wallet publicly? Yes. Dude, I was thinking about this yesterday.

If I looked at your token for five years, yeah, like like my public wallet is gonna 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 gonna be like All my jets tickets. And I'll give you a good one. I haven't mentioned Dave Matthews publicly in my entire life, but if somebody went in my if this was going on for thirty years. I'm like I 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 Love. Like, you know, it's a truth. Invitator.

And by the way, one last point. This is what really confuses people. Every I'm gonna give you such a clear picture that I think will help people. Every one of you kn 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 hen inherently hoarding assets. And we use them for ourselves because we like it. We get caught up in the nostalgia in 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 kinda hard except for the people that come through. The blockchain is gonna accelerate. The way I thought that it would accelerate communication with social. And that's why I think people are underestimating it. The first internet

collected the information. The second internet created the framework for communication. Right. This third thing, this web three NFT thing.

It's going to Capture the consumerization. Of assets. And the stakes are fucking high. And with your deal, the the new um the the Gary w what was it called? B Friends. B Friends you

Do you um You offer uh a conference a year. Are you gonna do that forever? Or is there a timeline on that? What I wanted to so my this is pretty interesting'cause I've I've Done it in a couple shows, but with you guys it's a mu like this. So I don't know. Do you want to host it at Michael Jordan's house? Because we'll let you do it, my friend. We can help you host it at Michael Jordan's house. My guy. So

For the hardest core. consumers of my content. B friends made so much sense. Why? The amount of times I referenced Walt Disney and Vince McMahon, character creation. I'm building Bainer X to buy nostalgic IP. I'm gonna refurbish storytelling, Saturday morning cartoons, all the shit 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 from Mondalise and I was gonna turn it into Madagascar. Like I've been like in this place forever, right?

As a matter of fact, you know what B friends is? Two years ago I was gonna launch a toy line called Workplace warriors were little death toys. Right. With what basically became these characters. So For me, I see NFTs, I have my I've been like kind of like

Flirting in the winter, I have my crazy Eureka like, no, no, no, this is the fucking it, right? Moment. I bought ETH a long time ago, Aaron Battalion shout out, former CTO of Living Social got me on in 2015, 16. I've been watching. But I wait to the consumer, the normal shit, the Marketing agency St. Louis moment, not the fucking hardcore infrastructure nerd shit. That's just not my jam. Right? So

I go fuck, man. I'm gonna build the next Pokemon Harry Potter transformers, but ninety nine point nine percent of the world's not gonna believe me. So Let let me launch this program and show people that you can do a lot more than just have pictures on it. So to your point, Sam, uh like I'm like uh so the answer is it's a three year contract.

VFriend Series One says you get a conference ticket to V Con 2022, 2023, 2024. Right. I'll figure shit out after the fact. But I knew that that would have such inherent value that People would lock in for that.

But basically what I was trying to do is trick. This is the word I would use. Trick my hardest core advocates by giving them an asset i friends The original thing I just launched. As

Kind of like the original Disney cells. You know, those things that sell for like a drillion that were like the handrew snow white in the forties? 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, 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 Mebis, 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, they're like, Wait a minute, I'm never selling this because I wanted them to benefit the most.

And the data backs this up. So right now if I go on Crypto Slam Uh if you you guys don't know this crypto slam.io easy little aggregator of NFT projects. I think you guys are like number Eight. Okay, so you're number eight. In the last twenty four hours, twenty four yeah sorry, it's a twenty four hour rolling scoreboard. You can do up top, it's got all the stuff.

Yeah, so we can do like let's say thirty days. All right. So thirty days, you're number twelve. Last thirty days about twelve million of sales volume of transaction volume. And the funny thing is if you go through all the other ones, crypto punks, me bits, all these They have somewhere between thousands or tens of thousands, or you know, the top one X infinity is quarter million.

buyers that are doing these number doing these transactions. V Friends is like an outlier. It's like Three hundred people. with five hundred eighty 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 you're pushing it more more. At this point, I think I've been very aggressive with this. I'm like, do not bet against me. I'm gonna fucking build transformers. Like you know, like and I so I think a lot of people are holding now. be more, you know, the conference is gonna be epic. And I'm gonna come through, but I think I think I think they're betting on my propaganda right now and I'm gonna come through.

It's like Bitcoin. Uh the thing that gets it like early days bitcoin, the people who bought in were because they were anarchist crypto nerds. It's like they they needed to you need the the first people to buy in for one reason. Then the second people, you know, the speculators. And then it's like once everybody's got the damn thing, we all speculated on it. Now we can just use it as a medium of exchange. So What's interesting about NFTs more so than Bitcoin today, and obviously things will evolve. It's just

Functional. Yeah. Like V V V Con makes it function like they're about to get very functional. Right. Like the the the functionality is gonna be extraordinary. Right. And so uh so I like V Friends. I think V Friends is cool. I told my guy before this pod I was like oh I'm gonna talk to Gary today. Um

You know, let's pick up a V friend, like go go get me one off the floor there. I appreciate it. And he's like, Cool, the floor price is like a seventeen grand now. I was like, Oh, okay, well, all right, all right, let's uh we don't like Gary that much. I was like I was like, I'm gonna do it, but that is not what I expected. I was like, That's interesting. That really kinda like opened my eyes. In fact, the the last few days you've been seeing so I wanna bring back one thing you talked about, which is Your wallet. Is gonna be a new type of profile. It's gonna be a new place to flex. It's gonna be new place to learn about somebody. In a real way. Like like the only reason I'm in. Is that Right. And then the other social is going to be the other way.

You can filter your face. You can do many things to get non-verifiable there. You know, you know, it'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.

It's just that my My argument Is I was there for MySpace two thousand four when everyone's like People gonna get raped at the mall and kidnapped, and you know, I was like, nah, I think it's gonna go this way, and now it is, right? Everyone's in. I think that's what's gonna happen with NFTs.

Like you've got the hardcore people that I get on Zoom with, like just shopping, and they've got literally like voice deactivators and like screen saving I don't know who they are. But like every every day The masses are coming and they're in the public wallet, the Rainbow Wallet, the dot E world, and I think that's where it's going. You um so you you you've been talking about buying brands and putting them through Vanor for I mean you in like year three four of of the m company you I mean you've been saying that whole spiel for a long time. I first of all You ha you haven't done it yet. When are you gonna 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 well you know we could put'em through the the Vayner media Machine. Yep. Machine. You you've got it. Like I mean, I would much rather buy an old like a nineties brand and do this because I'm I'm looking at who the biggest uh brands are on on crypto slave. I mean, it's sports, it's sports companies. Yeah. I mean I think you can do Brands are going to be better. W when are you finally going to execute on that and and pull the trigger? Because you've you've been talking about it for a long time. I'm excited to see it happen.

Well it's like dude, why do you need fucking fi fifteen hundred Employees still. Like Uh you built that machine. It's badass. 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 handcuffs.

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 it actually being a death star versus like, yeah, it's a better badass machine than anybody else has got. Like I feel that. Like truly I do. I'm like, I got a better machine than the other fucking five hundred 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 and four times better.

And the way I scratched my itch. Was Resi the restaurant app, which I had a major exit with. Empathy wines, which like I was creating and now V Friends, and like the V Friends thing is really fucking with me. Because I'm like

Mm. You know Oh, by the way, Sim, uh 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 the Animal Crackers bought. I mentioned it slightly quickly when I was talking. I had it. And I fucking had the master fucking plan. It was a cook cookie brand. I was gonna make it healthier to be on trend, but what I was really gonna do was turn it into an animated film and build up like make the lion like fucking Larry the Lion. Like I was it was kind of V friendy. Now Listen, ultimately, I think I'm gonna place the micro. I'm young enough at 45, have the leverage, have the infrastructure, that I think I'm gonna do a whole bunch of everything, right? I think I can build a studio like Pixar with B friends at the forefront and do other shit. And I think I can buy.

champion when it gets cold again and refurbish it in 13 years because I like both of those things and I'm gonna try to get them both. How much w could you have bought animal crackers for? F forty eight, I think the deal was at at the time. No shit. Yeah. What was the revenue?

I hate making up shit. I genuinely don't remember. I remember the number pretty pretty goodly. Do you remember around the multiple? It was like nothing. It was like fucking No. But you're valuing the IP, not the core business at that time. No, they were like just fucking it was dead. They were like we need the like they didn't give a they and like and we were gonna use it as a proxy to teach them how to do it with their brain like it was fucking set up. Well Nila wafers just I mean from a marketing standpoint, we crushed it there. And you know, I I really scratched my itch with K Swiss.

K Swiss was fucking finished, dead, done. What happened to him? Something happened recently. Yeah, right. Right. uh K Swiss was at the forefront of that leverage. We fucking exploded. Not only did we sell a fuckload of Carry B sneakers, the residual effect on 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 it in the face. My plan is not to be that. As a matter of fact, be f the best part of be friends for me Is Gary V has been the catalyst for all the shit I'm passionate about, like work ethic, patient. I'm so pumped that I'm gonna 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 IP. So

I'm looking forward to that. Well that's what I was gonna ask you when I was when I was watching this garage sale video, I was like This is great content, but man, he actually had to go to twenty garage sales and I'm sure there's some fun to it, but also there's you graduated past that stage in your life. That's the biggest thing that pisses me off of my bougie fucking friends. They're like, Gary, what the fuck are you doing? I'm like, fuck you. You you go you go play golf and go on a yawn. I'm in a fucking garage sale. I'm not telling you what to do. Like, you know, like even besides that, like I I know, you know, just I've done this podcast now for only uh 18 months, right? So so we're we're we're new to the game, something like that. And

There's a lot of benefits of building up this personal brand. It's like boom, I want to raise a fund, I raise a fund. I launch a course, I l sell out, you know, like You can make a lot of money when you build a personal brand. You build trust with an audience. Yep. Uh by giving them, giving them, giving them like you say. And then you you sort of your ass later. So the 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 Uber going somewhere. You know, you got a for talk you got a cameraman with you and you gotta put out a sound bite for Instagram reels because that's the new hot shit or whatever. And so like Does Are you uh I guess like this is 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 creating this much content, this much Gary Vee?

The answer is I only do what I like. As a matter of fact Like I'm not hitting all my my team and my quotas right now with my content these last two weeks, because I can't stop being on CryptoSlam OpenC 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 the 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 Uh I enjoy it. I really do. And and I also did a little bit different. I Slowly I did it by myself for seven years, but then I really built out an 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 at scale. How many uh folks are on the team? Right now I think there's twenty two. And is um d are you the majority owner of Vayner Media or Vayner X? Yes.

So then you're able to kind of um it's not like a V C thing where you're 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 fiduciary is to your to yourself and to your brother. So like and so I'm I'm in heavy control. It's a long term play.

I have no board. There's no Or not publicly traded, to your exact point. I can like um 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 bro because I've done super rel by him and more importantly You know.

I'm delivering like you know you know this right like what's super awesome is like when you're putting the wins on the board nobody even gives nobody wants to touch it they're like 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 and reinvest most of your your what would be your salary or income from the the brand back into the Agency.

Originally I paid 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 four years. Um But I'm still like Wildly undercompensated 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 um Like do you look back'cause I I I think you're excited about web three. Yes. And you look back at web two, I know uh you can quickly tell the story of missing Uber. You know, your buddy with the guy you miss Uber. That's a big one. Big one. What what was the tell that story, but also just in general What'd you learn from the web two wave that you're like, Okay, web three, I'm better prepared because I've been in a long game. 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 oh six. Right. The thing I learned there was I was gonna meet a lot of people that were technically stronger than me. Teach me new things. have incredibly

Fun. Young Fucking On fire thinkers. different shit. The world is rescheduling.

Recalibrating? And that I knew that I understood the consumer and the human so well that I would figure out my path within it. I think like you know The thing I learned with I've I've told the Uber story ad nausea. Travis is the only person I thank in Crush It, my first book, besides my family. We were incredibly close. Um

What I learned there was defense always loses. I bought my first like apartment in Manhattan. I'd played so conservative up until like thirty five. Like I had no money, first of all, because I was building the 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 who was gonna run it. And I had just failed. In putting up a wine social network called Cork, 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.

Totally reasonable, by the way. Totally reasonable line of thought. 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 knoll. 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 have to go back here every year once a year for humbleness. I know we're gonna 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 Micmac. Where I just saw Rachel had one meeting with her 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 three right now. I'm really trying to pay attention. To is this person one of us? Because I think there's something about

А хун'сбилі торвай то. even if they have to completely change the business model halfway through. I love it. Well, we uh you were supposed to bounce it uh 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. Is that right? Is that right?

Oh you're the kid. You're in the kitchen, you have someone who is vacuuming and cooking dinner. We're setting up infrastructure for the weekend, but listen, I I uh let me say this. It's super fun for me to see this show pop from afar. Like They're not

You know, it's a very funny time in society where like work ethic and the grind like I I'm incredibly excited that we have a balanced conversation. But

The energy of entrepreneurship is just such an important variable, and so I I I appreciate what you guys are doing in this space. And I'm not gonna I'll have to ask him if if it's if he's cool if I blow up his spot a little bit, but me and Gary had dinner with like eight or ten other people like two months ago and I went back to this guy's house uh about a month ago again for another dinner. We're gonna have to tell the story about this guy's house. It w it was like the craest house I've ever been to and uh we're gonna have to tell the way I'd love listen, I'd love to come back if whenever you guys feel is a appropriate time for recycling a guest.

Hit me up. I wish you nothing but good and And uh thank you for having me on. Uh-huh. I feel like I can rule the world, I know I can be what I want to I put my all in it like my day's off On a roadless travel never looking back

What you see above is a preview of the first minutes. One unlock costs 3 credits and covers this episode forever: full segment and word-level timestamps on this page, plus .txt, .srt, .vtt and word-level JSON downloads, as many times as you like.