Mark Bell's Power Project - MBPP EP. 628 - NFTs Explained, How to Invest and Our Future Inside Metaverses ft. Michael Knittel

Episode Date: November 22, 2021

Michael Knittel is here to teach us all about NFTs, why they're more than just a jpeg and what our future looks like inside the multiple meta verses. Michael is an investment advisor in El Dorado Hills, California. Currently an investment advisor with Lagunitas Asset Management, LLC, Knittel has 12 years of work experience. Knittel maintains Series 63 and Series 66 licenses, certifying them as a securities agent. Michael also owns the Bored Ape #2719 NFT. Special perks for our listeners below! ➢Vertical Diet Meals: https://verticaldiet.com/ Use code POWERPROJECT for free shipping and two free meals + a Kooler Sport when you order 16 meals or more! ➢Vuori Performance Apparel: Visit https://vuoriclothing.com/powerproject to automatically save 20% off your first order! ➢Magic Spoon Cereal: Visit https://www.magicspoon.com/powerproject to automatically save $5 off a variety pack! ➢8 Sleep: Visit https://www.eightsleep.com/powerproject to automatically save $150 off the Pod Pro! ➢Marek Health: https://marekhealth.com Use code POWERPROJECT15 for 15% off ALL LABS! Also check out the Power Project Panel: https://marekhealth.com/powerproject Use code POWERPROJECT for $101 off! ➢LMNT Electrolytes: http://drinklmnt.com/powerproject ➢Piedmontese Beef: https://www.piedmontese.com/ Use Code "POWERPROJECT" at checkout for 25% off your order plus FREE 2-Day Shipping on orders of $150 Subscribe to the Podcast on on Platforms! ➢ https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast Subscribe to the Power Project Newsletter! ➢ https://bit.ly/2JvmXMb Follow Mark Bell's Power Project Podcast ➢ Insta: https://www.instagram.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ https://www.facebook.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/mbpowerproject ➢ LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/powerproject/ ➢ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/markbellspowerproject ➢TikTok: http://bit.ly/pptiktok FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell ➢ Snapchat: marksmellybell ➢Mark Bell's Daily Workouts, Nutrition and More: https://www.markbell.com/ Follow Nsima Inyang ➢ https://www.breakthebar.com/learn-more ➢YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/NsimaInyang ➢Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nsimainyang/?hl=en ➢TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@nsimayinyang?lang=en Follow Andrew Zaragoza on all platforms ➢ https://direct.me/iamandrewz #PowerProject #Podcast #MarkBell

Power Projects family, have you been curious about what's going on in the metaverse? Do you know what that is? NFTs? Digital real estate? Today we have Michael Niddle, a man who has a deep insight into this space, and this interview gives us tools on where to start, tips on getting the best crypto information, and the best practices for investing. But remember, this is not financial advice.

I hope you guys enjoy this one. I absolutely know you will. Enjoy. Power Projects family, if you watch and listen to this podcast, my assumption is that you're probably the kind of guy or girl who doesn't just like to wear your gym clothes in the gym, but listen up. You can't be wearing those and one shorts at a wedding. Okay, buddy, you can't do that. That's all you've partnered with. The Ori clothing because not only are their clothes suitable for the gym, so you can have the most comfortable and amazing workouts, but you can also wear them to the store, the wedding to dinner anywhere and you're just going to be

looking so good andrew how can the people get it yes step your game up right now head over to viore.com slash power project that's v-u-o-r-i.com slash power project and when you do you'll receive 20 off your first order links to them down in the description as well as the podcast show notes. Let's get back to the podcast. And this girl, Renee, was like 5'8", and I was like 5'4". And so we started dating. She's taller than me. I'm short and fat.

And so my friends were like, it's Ren and Stumpy. So I was like, fuck. I just crushed you. But what about the girl did she care uh no i mean it was my overwhelming personality plus i was uh well there you go i played a mean rusty trombone at that point oh nice nice nice there we go there we go where do we go from here what we're talking about oh how did mike make his money well first i took my rusty trombone skills down to Auburn Boulevard. So let's just say. That's not too far.

You're local. It's an on-call, can-travel-to-San-Francisco, again, to Mark's special club. You've got to own his NFT to get in the front door, though. We were talking about some shoes, then Seamus just rocking these. What are these things called? Tie-dye Crocs. Some tie-dyed Crocs. You know, my buddy, Jim Wender, was rocking Crocs like a long time ago.

And he used to do squats in them and shit. He used to do squats in them? Yeah. People were like, what the hell? You're going to blow out your... Yeah. It can be. You got to be careful.

You need good footwear. And you got lots of shoes. How many shoes you got? An embarrassing amount. You can't be careful. You need good footwear, and you got lots of shoes. How many shoes you got? An embarrassing amount. No, we can't talk about it. It's not a lot. Yeah, I don't want to put it out there because then my fiance would know exactly how much money I've spent on sneakers. But let's just say that I used to have an office, and now I've got sneaker storage to the ceiling.

Do you collect them for reasons to sell them in the future, or do you collect them because you like sneakers and you're going to wear them? So I love sneakers. I think sneakers are an art form. So with every investment that I make, and I use that term very loosely, shit I really like. It's like, do I think it's cool? Because if it ever came to the point where nobody ever wanted to buy it, then I'd always be able to wear them. So I collect all in my own size. But the idea is that I've gone long on Jordan 1s, Yeezys, and Air Force 1s. So I believe, based on the market research that I've done, because the secondary sneaker market is exploding, that I'll probably 4 to 5X that collection over the next five years. Now, wait a second.

They make Yeezy Crocs. Have you gotten into any of those yet? I do not believe they've make Yeezy Crocs. Have you gotten into any of those yet? You do? I do not believe they've got Yeezy Crocs, but they've got their own, like the new Yeezys that are coming out are like the most absurdly stupid looking shoes imaginable. I beg to differ, sir.

I think there's Yeezy Crocs out. Andrew, see if you can look it up. I'm looking it up. Yeah, yeah. I think they might be out. And then you're going to be like kind of nervous on the whole show because you're going to be like, how the fuck do I get these? I need to get out of here. I need to go research it. Exactly. I'm they might be out. And then you're going to be kind of nervous on the whole show because you're going to

be like, how the fuck do I get these? I need to get out of here. I need to go research it. Exactly. I'm just going to start sweating. I'm going to start jonesing for some Crocs. You're going to get your phone out and try to scratch my face. Try to order.

Hey, Crocs are really fucking ugly, but that's why I like them. They're comfy too, right? They're ugly and comfy. I will show you something uglier. Are these the Yeezy? Wow. Are these like the Yeezy boots that you're going to show us? No.

Golly, what is that? Oh, yeah. There they are. Those are not the Yeezy Crocs. Those are the Yeezy Foam Runners. And so those are so fucking hard to get. Like, they drop and they sell out in a minute. Like, everything Kanye touches, you know, turns to gold.

Those are legit. Let's just face it. I fucking love those. I really like those shoes. I've tried to get them multiple times, but I'm not willing to pay $600 on secondary for them. I'm an investor, remember? So if I can't build an investment case for it,

I'm not going to enter it. But if I got them in retail, I'd be down. I think this is your fiancé talking. Believe me. Sounds like she's talked a little bit of sense in you. I don't like that. No, let's call a duck a duck. It's because I'm a capitalist pig.

So, again, if I can't build an investment case. Fair enough, fair enough. But seeing shit like this, this is when I feel so old. Because I look at that and I'm like, that is the dumbest thing I've ever seen. And then it's like, wait, $300 and they're impossible to find because everybody wants them yep i just don't get it and i don't think i ever will get it welcome to middle age fuck that music's too loud my cardigan's not warm enough dad i don't even i don't even like watching movies that have too many explosions now because it just jars me i I don't like it. This movie's cussing too much.

Dude, I'm there. I'm right with you, bro. I've been there for a couple years. One of the reasons that I knew that Cassie was the girl for me is that she absolutely hates romantic comedies. And the more explosion, blood and guts and action that's in a movie, the better. So it's like, perfect. That is perfect. Yeah. How do you, how would you describe what you do for a living? You are an investor, I guess, right? So the, the, the main

business that I run, you know, is an investment firm through the SEC. So I manage people's traditional investments, stocks, bonds, you know, that whole thing. So I probably the less complicated way to say it is I'm a total money nerd. And whether it's for my clients or for myself personally with wild things like sneakers or NFTs or autographed Kobe Bryant jerseys, I'm trying to find things that I believe will be great stores of value that people will eventually want to pay me a lot more money than I paid for them at some point in the future. for them at some point in the future. And then you do a lot of consulting and stuff like that. And the place that you work for, you are ending up having many, many businesses go to you guys to kind of see, I guess they're going for consulting to see what their next move should be. Maybe they want to fundraise.

Maybe they're looking to sell. Is this correct? And then you kind of evaluate and assist them with what you think some of the next steps should be? Yeah. The reality is that I've got clients that are everywhere from eight years old to 95 years old. And so some of my clients ran EV companies and exited. Some of them run regular brick and mortar businesses like dry cleaning, for instance. The investment part is really easy for me. That's just the part where my brain has always been very, very naturally tuned to kind of seeing the rhythm of how numbers figure together. So we tell people we're not just here for that.

Anytime you're going to make a financial decision about anything, and it doesn't matter buying a car, getting a mortgage, or what could your business potentially be valued for, we just want to be part of that conversation. And if I know something that can help, great. Or if there's a complex issue that I know somebody that's really good at that I've vetted, that I, you know, that gives you somebody really smart to talk to. That's I just like connecting people. You said eight to 95. What type of investments are these eight year old, eight year olds making? Like, what do you mean by that? So they've got stock portfolios. So I ran a,

it was probably like the most fun I had this last year was I had a, an investor's club that had eight, eight to 13 year olds that are in it from up and down the west coast that's awesome and so we were zooming in and a couple of Sean Provost's kids were in it too and just like these kids are not only sponges um but really smart and I kind of looked at it as like hey here's a way for a middle-aged man to mine ideas about what's next so one of the kids was like you gotta look at Roblox you gotta look at Roblox and like hey, here's a way for a middle-aged man to mine ideas about what's next. So one of the kids was like, you've got to look at Roblox.

You've got to look at Roblox. And Roblox is a killer investment. So it was definitely a two-way street. That's really awesome. So do you purposefully keep or have – well, actually, you have teenagers. But do you pay attention to the things that your kids are paying attention to so you can understand what's going on and what's going to be future proof yeah i mean especially when i got into nfts and this is just personally you know so there's always a wall between what i do professionally and what i do personally and i'll kind of explain a little bit more on that later

but like when i was looking at decentraland which is a metaverse, you know, that's in this whole NFT world way down the rabbit hole. I went to Jacob, you know, my 15 year old who's spent a lot of time in metaverses himself, whether it was in Fortnite or in Minecraft. Those are metaverses of their own. And we just walked around together, you know, and I just asked what he thought of this stuff. walked around together, you know, and I've just asked what he thought of this stuff. And based on that, I was like able to say, maybe Mike never walks into a metaverse, but I can see a massive generation that's grown up in them. So it was really easy for me to build an investment case for why this stuff should matter. Yeah. And what are you, what are some of your thoughts on what's going on with cryptocurrency? And I think the – is it the Staples Center or the – Staples Center, yeah.

And crypto.com or something? Yeah. And you guys remember Casey Neistat? Yeah. He just made an awesome tweet. He was just like they missed the opportunity to call it the crypto coliseum. And I thought that was very important that they missed out. So I want everyone to know that.

But yeah, crypto.com. Yeah, so it seems like this crypto stuff as much as some people are just like, I think that's stupid. It seems like it's a thing that's going to be here. And it seems like a thing that's going to be tremendously valuable. You know, I have to agree. And it is really early. I have to agree. And it is really early. And one of the things I've always thought is a great indicator of a good investment is when the media or mass amounts of people are coming out telling you it's stupid. The more hate an investment gets, the more they're disrupting and the more I want to look at it as a serious case for investments. And I've stolen most of my really good ideas by listening to smart people, whether it's personally from my fiance or from Warren Buffett. But in this case, like you look at what Andreessen Horowitz is doing, which is one of the largest

venture companies or funds in the world out of the Bay Area. So they've built a $3 billion crypto and digital asset fund. So they sit on the board of Coinbase. They sit on the board of OpenSea because they led early rounds in both of those companies. So if these guys say it's the future in venture and in money in general, winners are chosen. And when you're when companies like them are looking at them. Yeah, I think there's something real here. Quick question. So because some people want to know kind of where to start. Everybody's starting with Coinbase. Yeah. But there's a lot of different websites. There's a lot of different

I don't know. Are they called exchanges? Yep. What are some exchanges that you think people should be looking at for looking to? Because, for example, in Coinbase, you can't find all the coins that other people are investing in purely through that app. So what are some maybe baseline exchanges that people should look and try to get? Yeah, so I think Coinbase is like your classic like gateway drug into the crypto world and great place to start because you can buy Bitcoin, Ethereum, and a handful of other larger cryptocurrencies. From there, you can transfer those into a digital wallet. So the most common one that's really secure is MetaMask. And so when you've got your assets in MetaMask, you can then go to all these other altcoin exchanges.

Altcoins more commonly be known as shitcoins. And I can say shitcoins on the show, correct? Yeah. Okay, good. So we use that term. Talk about your rusty trombone side hustle. So I think it's all fair game. That's correct.

That's where we let in. So I should have known that. Yes. So I can be myself. Thank God. Yes. So really good places are Uniswap, SushiSwap. Those are places that you can take your Ethereum and then be able to buy into some of these smaller coins.

Places like Uniswap, you can't deposit cash directly to. So that's why you have to use Coinbase to get your Ethereum or whatever and then transfer it into your digital wallet so that when you're buying things on Uniswap, it's held under your unique address. Then you can fall way down the shitcoin toilet drain. It's interesting to see. I think there's some NFL athletes

and I think Aaron Rodgers is maybe talking about receiving Bitcoin for some of his salary and stuff like that. How do you compare? talking about like receiving like Bitcoin for some of his salary and stuff like that. Yeah. How do you compare? Is it a mistake to even bother to try to compare like Bitcoin to actual regular money? Or do you think that's a fair comparison?

Or like, I guess a lot of people seem to be confused on like why it has value. Like, I guess a dollar, everyone always says it's like backed by gold. I don't even know it was even have any idea if that's true but uh anyway yeah what's your opinion on like should we even be uh making that analogy or should we look at it totally different way maybe well i'd more compare like bitcoin to gold for instance um you know it used to be that you could like buy things with gold back in the day and it used to be in the 70s that the dollar was backed by gold. But they went off that standard, and that's why we can print so much money now.

The greatest thing that the U.S. government has is the printing press. So it doesn't matter how much national debt we have. We'll just print more money. So no default. We'll just print. So when I look at cryptocurrency, like Bitcoin is just digital gold. It's a store of value. And I don't think that we're ever going to see the dollar or traditional currencies replaced by digital currency.

This is, again, just an opinion, not financial advice, which I'm going to be saying many times as my disclaimer. This is not a recommendation. But I think that when you look at things like Bitcoin, the reason that it has value is that people think it does. It is a finite supply. There's only 20 million Bitcoins in the world ever. Is anybody really buying things with Bitcoin? Not really. I mean, it's accepted at places like Tesla accepted it for a short period of time, but it's basically digital gold. Ethereum, on the other hand, is a totally different story. That, to me, is the most important one of all the cryptocurrencies because of what their blockchain has the capability to do. What's a blockchain?

So a blockchain is just a decentralized computer network that is growing with, you hear all these things about mining. All the miners are just creating new nodes where information can be stored. So if I buy something like an NFT or digital music or whatever, then the record of that purchase is permanently stored across the entire blockchain. So if one of those, think of it as like a computer, one of those computers gets corrupted and it doesn't check out with every other computer on the network, it's immediately cut out. And so what it keeps is a permanent record that's immutable and uncorruptible. So in the case of why the Ethereum currency matters is that if you have a blockchain that you're able to buy things and store records on, then in order to purchase an NFT or purchase digital art or digital real estate, because there is such a thing,

then you have to have a place where that record is stored and you have to have a currency to be able to transact that business in. So it's this market on the decentralized internet where you're able to make these types of purchases and it matters. Now, it's a totally different economy that's flourishing outside of anything we've ever seen. So when it comes to us going down to the convenience store, we're still going to use our cards. But companies like Visa, PayPal, Square have all recognized that the digital economy is real and that's why you can buy, you know, Bitcoins and other cryptocurrencies with those cards now on their sites. So what's the what's the point of holding on to Bitcoin or even Ethereum? I see a lot of people

that I get so pumped when it dips down and they're going to buy the dip. And it's like, I'm going to keep my piece of shit car. I'm live in you know a shack all because i'm gonna keep stacking sats and i'm never gonna use bitcoin for anything and so i'm just sitting there like you're dumping all this money into it and again and full disclosure i don't know a damn thing about any of this but i do own at least 0.6 of an ethereum then like a 0.000 something of Bitcoin. But I have no idea what the hell these people are going to do with it because I don't know what the goal is.

Like, they're just going to hang on to it forever until it... Can you cash out? Yeah, like what's like, yeah, what is the end game for everybody that's just stacking stats right now or sats? Well, first of all, congratulations. You're in the game.

Welcome to the world of internet degenerates, first of all, congratulations. You're in the game. Welcome to the world of internet degenerates like myself. And the thing is, is that people say, oh, I'm never going to sell this. I'm going to live in a shack. But what happens is, is we grow and eventually you have a family or you're 40 or you're 60 and your priorities about what you're looking to do with your life change. So, you know, I think that's one of the beautiful parts about life is that like every week you have a chance to in a moment where you can pivot and you could make a decision that changes the trajectory for the rest of your life. So while we might say, oh, I'm just going to I'm just going to hold this thing forever.

That's, you know's probably pretty rare. But in the case of Bitcoin, and like any investment, it's just supply and demand. So if there's only 20 million Bitcoins, and we know that we're still really, really early in this, and most old school traditional banks are now massively pivoting to start including bitcoins in their balance sheet and using and being able to offer their

clients an avenue as an investment product. There's an ocean of demand that's coming. So one of the estimates is that over the next year, between one and two trillion dollars in institutional capital from banks and investment firms will flow into the crypto space. So if the total value of all cryptocurrency today is $3 trillion, imagine what a difference on the upside $1 to $2 trillion will eventually make. So, yeah, I mean, you know, picking your spots and trying to buy things when you think they're cheap is a good thing. But what's most important is that you've got like a genuine thesis about, well, where do I think the value of this could eventually go? So in my case, I think that the value of Bitcoin and Ethereum can go much, much higher eventually. How it gets there, does it fall from here?

Who knows what tomorrow holds. But I think we've seen some pretty clear signs from the regulators, the government, the SEC, that they're not going to ban it. They're going to come up with a regulatory structure for this stuff eventually, and they've accepted that it's here. So that means game on. God dang. I have a quick selfish question.

Shitcoins, right? Yes. I'm not a great investor by any means or whatever, but like a few years ago, I saw Doge going on Robinhood. And I was just like, let me just put it to like 200 bucks into this. So I have a lot of that just sitting there. I didn't sell it when it was going crazy. But if you've been looking at that, where do you think that might go? Do you think it's just going to continue shitting and go down and become useless in the future?

Or do you think it might have another rally in some time? So in the case of Dogecoin or Shiba Inu that are really popular, I haven't been able to come up like a base investment case, like a theory as to where that can go. But I do look at, you know, the whole winners are chosen thing. And if you have guys like Elon Musk and Mark Cuban that own a lot themselves, at least they say they do, and have a commitment to creating an economy that can come out of these things, then there's potentially something that the future holds. The problem with both of those is that there's an infinite supply. So we know Bitcoin, there's 20 million of them. Ethereum, there's 110 million of them. They're still making millions of new Doge coins

every single day. And so if it's an infinite supply, I can't apply the same supply and demand equation to it. So my advice would be talk to me after about what you should do with your Dogecoin. Okay, I will. What in the world is going on with these – like with metaverses and like what do you think will happen with some of that in maybe the upcoming year or two? Just what I've seen in the growth in that space in the last year is unfathomable. that space in the last year is unfathomable. So I got my securities license in November of 1999, and the boom of the original internet age. And I've seen technology grow really quickly. I've never seen things move at the rate that they are. And that's been mostly organic, meaning people that grew up in this Web3 space are building.

That's really without major companies coming in. And that's all changed. So Facebook, sorry, Meta, the company formerly known as Facebook, has committed to hiring 10,000 engineers and spending tens of billions of dollars to build their metaverse. And it's not that they're starting from scratch. So I know for a fact, because I invested in a company that's been building that particular space with them for the last four or five years, that they're a lot further along than people think they will. So if you've got the Disney's, Meta's, Microsoft's that are going to be bringing tons of employees,

brainpower to focus on this, the growth in it is going to be at a level we haven't seen. So when you say Metaverse, is this like, what was that movie? Black Mirror. No, not Black Mirror. Ready Player One. Ready Player One. Best analogy. Yeah?

Absolutely. Have you seen that? Dude, I love that movie. That's exactly where this is going. Wow. My wife gets mad because I always want to watch it. So when you said you were walking with your son through whatever, did you guys have headsets on and you were doing stuff in VR? Okay, no.

It's just on a laptop. Oh, okay. And so that's the experience right now. It's like the graphics are really great, but you think like where could you know, things like the Oculus headset and so on getting so much cheaper. Like when those things first came out, they were like 700, a thousand bucks. Now you can get a great VR rig for 299. So I've always thought that VR is super legitimate, but that the interfaces and the things you can do with it just haven't caught up with where that technology is. So we're getting there. And those experiences, I believe, are going to be very similar to what we see in Ready Player One.

So if you wanted to have a base case for why this stuff really matters, it's that you can have an experience from anywhere in the world inside of a metaverse. And that could be things like Atari has Vegas land inside of Decentraland. You can go and gamble. Tiffany's is building a digital jewelry store inside of Decentraland so that you can go and take your avatar, try on the jewelry there, and if you buy it, then they'll send you a piece in real life. You could get to a point where maybe you were to go on a date or something

and you can take whoever you're going on a date with to like your hometown, like you're from Alaska. You could be here in California and say, hey, you know, put these, you know, you put this headpiece on or whatever, sunglasses or whatever the hell it is. You think it's kind of going that sort of route, like where the possibilities would sort of be endless? I think that there's potential there, but I really wouldn't want to take anybody back to Galena, Alaska and be like, hey, you can smell smoked salmon and let's eat a fucking caribou. Like, oh, goody. Yeah, it's like freezing here. It actually sounds kind of good, aren't they, Patty? We can take a shit in a bucket just like I did when I was a kid.

This is my bathroom. But you're not actually taking them there. That's what I mean. It's like you can take them there, but in comfort. taking them there that's what i mean is like you can take them there but in comfort so um when you look at uh decentral land like you can think of the fact that it can be beautiful rather than needing to have you know some of the creature comforts that i was accustomed to like community showers you as a child so um i won't go there spare your listeners that one so like right now it's more like um you remember the movie free guy right we were just talking about it so they're watching it on a flat panel on the screen but like they're

in that world so that's kind of where we're at right now but eventually it'll be more like ready player one yeah the technology is just moving really quickly so your ability to experience will change so much you know at this time next year or i mean 10 years from now i have no doubt this is going to be the biggest space in all of technology same it's because the headsets like you said are getting cheaper because before they were over a thousand and you needed an extremely high powerful computer to connect to it so you had wires and shit so with the quest 2 no wires 300 bucks but the graphics and all that stuff isn't there but the thing that's really going to change it is it's going to get a lot lighter.

And so it's going to become just a part of you. It's not going to be a headset that's like kind of like you start sweating in and you can feel that it's there. I forgot which company it is, but they're basically just coming out with glasses. Yeah, Ray-Ban makes sunglasses where you're like on Facebook and you can take pictures and use a camera. Yeah, so when it gets to that level

and then they have the haptic feedback vest that you can wear. So like if you're – it's going to be weird, but like you can get a massage online. Okay. Like by wearing a vest, you can feel when someone's touching you. We all know what's going to push the industry. That's going to be some dick rubbers. Yes. Yeah.

What's that suit? That like sex suit thing you saw? Oh, we did see that. Yeah. did see that yeah damn that was a long time ago like it's probably way better now what what could you do in the metaverse market right right literally be giving like mark bell custom massages to people i love it everyone would be lined up so you know like i think that's a great you know segue where you're talking about those ray-ban ar glasses so there's augmented reality and virtual reality. And if you want to know what augmented reality is, just think of Pokemon Go.

You're on your phone, you're in the park, but you see the little Pokemons and the little world they've created. So both Apple and Facebook have their own AR glasses that they've been building in secret for the last five to ten years. hourglasses that they've been building in secret for like the last five to ten years and i thought apple was going to announce their glasses that came out you know when they had their big event in september that is going to be like everybody's like oh apple just makes phones and so on that is going to be the thing that changes everything for apple so imagine everything you can do on your phone is now on your glasses. We don't have to walk around with our phones anymore recording things because there's a little tiny camera right here. The arms are interchangeable. I've seen all the patent filings they've done for these things, and it's freaking bananas.

So these pieces of these wearables are just going to accentuate what's already been built in these metaverses. Again, it'll be like on Free Guy when he puts on the sunglasses and you see shit floating everywhere. It'll be just like that. So you never make this error again. When you're talking about Pokemon in plural, there's still Pokemon. Pokemon, yes.

Where you're catching all these Pokemon, it's never Pokemons. You age yourself when you do that. You want to be hip with the kids. Ladies and gentlemen, I am 44 years old. Just saying. Thank you. Thank you so much.

Hey, man, I love Pokemon. But I did have a question because, you know, like in games, there's all like kids have been. Shit, I did this shit, too, when I was playing games as a teenager. There's fucking in-game currency where you can buy skins and you can, you know, you can purchase all these things. And it makes me wonder, why are NFTs so special? Because it's a digital asset, right? But how is it that there is only one of this digital asset? How can it not be recreated by someone in that space?

That's what I'm always curious about because it's a digital thing. Somebody can just create another one, right? Yeah, I think that we can compare that to the Mona Lisa, right? If we wanted to see the Mona Lisa in real life, we've got to go to the Louvre and we think it's the Mona Lisa we're seeing there and maybe the one that's in the vaults. And people could always paint a forgery of the Mona Lisa. We can also click on the Internet and see the picture of that. But there's only one. But there's only one.

So in the case of bigger collections like the Bored Ape Yacht Club, for instance, that is kind of everywhere in pop culture right now, there's 10,000 of these things. The way that I know that I own one is that it's sitting in my digital wallet on MetaMask. There's only one because there's a unique code that's locked into the blockchain. So you can right-click and save my image all you want, but I'm the only one that has full commercial rights to use that Bored Ape for whatever I want. Example being Arizona Ice Tea bought a Bored Ape in the middle of August, and they will be coming out with an Arizona Ice Tea, the Bored Ape flavor, using the picture of their Bored Ape. And where the board ape club

did something that nobody had done was they said we're going to give you full ip license if you own this for any commercial purpose that you want so crypto punks like the og project that has you know a hundred eath floor board ape florist 50 ethereum um larva labs still owns all the ip so ETH floor, Bored Ape floor is 50 ETH. Larva Labs still owns all the IP. So you can use that for your profile picture, but that's it. Bored Ape said, take it, build however you want.

So Universal Music bought four of these Bored Apes and they're building a music group solely off of these four board apes. So a month ago, Guy Osiri, who's like Lady Gaga and Madonna's manager, and I think Bono's too, the board ape yacht club signed him as their talent agent. So if you think like, where could this go?

Like the possibilities are really endless. And I think that there's plenty of people that say, yeah, I like to experience things in real life. But if we had an experience much like watching movies or sports games that was far more immersive, that was really easy to get into, I think we all would say, sure, I'd like to check that out. And that's where these metaverses and nfts come into play it doesn't involve all the travel maybe all the hassle right you can just get into it pretty interesting so okay because this is definitely going to be the old man yelling to get off my lawn um i've been a photographer for going on 10 years now. I have hundreds of thousands of JPEGs. And Simu was talking about there's endless amount of JPEGs, right?

I can take a screenshot of your board ape and then now I own it in my own way. It doesn't make any sense to me how what you have is extremely valuable when you cannot, like, it's not tangible. Mark was giving an example earlier about, like, an old rotary phone. Like, kids wouldn't give a, they don't care about an old rotary phone, but maybe I do because my grandmother had one. But I can get that one. There's one of that one that my grandmother had. I cannot take a, I mean mean i guess i could take a picture of it but it would not be in 3d it wouldn't be it wouldn't have weight it wouldn't

be a thing you're bored ape i it's it's it doesn't exist right so how does that become valuable so the the you're making a really good point um and i think that it's one of the things that you know it's there's a things that, you know, it's, there's a lot of comedy on the internet about it. Like now I own your eight because I right clicked and saved it. But what we're missing is that there's the picture, but then there's the utility that comes from owning this particular piece in my

digital wallet. And so only with that particular asset, does it unlock everything that the board ap Ape Yacht Club offers to members? It's basically the new black card. So from a high level, the Bored Ape Yacht Club is building an actual club in Miami that you have to own the NFT to be able to go to. It's like the new Soho Club.

Some of this is a little bit of rich people shit. When one wealthy person talks another wealthy person and they say oh yeah so and so does my finances and someone's like who and then someone else will pop in and say oh you don't go to so and so and they're like and then you have that kind of fear of missing out type thing go on and right and it happens kind of over and over again and you just said black card i think that's a great example of it somebody takes out their black card to pay for dinner or something. The other people at the table are like, like, shit, I need to get on, you know, get on that level. I need to figure that out. So I think

that's a lot of what's going on here, too. And one of the beautiful parts about it is that, yeah, it's if you want to buy a board ape now, it's expensive. You know, 50 Ethereum is essentially $210,000. But here's the beautiful part about the NFT space is that I think it's just an evolution of crypto, which is we're trying to change a system that for so many people is broken and inaccessible. So we know that if you wanted to buy a share of Rivian, the electric truck manufacturers, at the IPO price, you either had to be an insider at the company, lucky enough to have placed a reservation on the truck, or you had to be a really, really rich person at the firm that was doing the offering. So regular people like us, our brokers don't call us. I don't get you know shares as a broker that i can allocate to clients but the board ape yacht club and every other nft when

they come out it's called mint that's when the time when they're created we all have just as much of an ability to buy that as anybody else and so when Apes came out, it was either for 0.08 Ethereum or 0.1. So if you were just dumb lucky like I was, and you bought one on day two, my entry price was 600 bucks. So the reality is, is that it is, it's a system that's designed to democratize, you know, the potential ownership of some pretty special projects. Not everything's going to turn out to be a board ape. Crypto punks were given away for free in the discord. Nobody wanted them.

They sat there unclaimed. And at the beginning of last year, they were worth like $10,000. Now the cheapest crypto punk you can buy is 400 grand. So sometimes it's just about being in the right place at the right time like I was and getting lucky. Isn't there some general fear over like one international currency? uh kind of like one international currency you mean as far as like uh like one dollar or one you know one cryptocurrency to rule them all the the ring of power that but also just like you know when you travel um it's you know it can be a pain in the ass you get your your money you know in whatever country you're in uh you have to transfer your funds into uh whatever they use there um it sounds like this

makes for a better world because you can uh you know one bitcoin is the same everywhere yep uh however there's a lot of people that just have concern over the globalization of the world that we're seeing uh via the internet via digital just stuff in general digital technology and then now with digital uh i guess i guess some of the concern would be like if if our technology goes that way and some of our mindset goes that way will our uh other beliefs and will our other things shift in those directions that that's kind of the i mean i think one of the reasons why we have so much anxiety these days is that there's so much worry and concern over so many things from so many different places in the world. Whereas when I was a kid, you know, you would see commercials and you'd see people talking about raising money and stuff, but there was things that you just thought,

you're like, I can't really do anything about, you know, I can't really help anything about you know i can't really help uh in those situations those things but now we see it so much on the news where i think it is um impacting people and it's kind of hurting people in a way i'm not saying that it's bad but i'm just saying like in general i think there's a concern over some globalization of the world i think america wants to be america and perhaps it doesn't want to be russia and perhaps it doesn't want to be like china and so yeah just what are some of your thoughts on that well i mean it's it want to be Russia and perhaps it doesn't want to be like China. So, yeah, just what are some of your thoughts on that? Well, I mean, it's a big subject. And I think like examining it from the perspective of freedom, right?

Like I think we'd all assume ourselves to be free over here in this country. But I think especially if you look over the last two years, there's a lot of people on both sides of the fence that would argue that the government has too much control. And so in every society, there's a government and there's going to be restrictions about what I can and can't do. And so on the Internet now, we know there's things that you can and can't do. And there's regulation that exists. I think what crypto and NFTs get correct is it's decentralized. Nobody owns it. Nobody controls it.

There will be regulation that comes in. But I think that one of the most important aspects is that this was built from the perspective of people that wanted to try to build something better. Inevitably, just like with Facebook, which started with the best intentions with the like button, people are able to use it for bad purposes and hurt one another by saying rude stuff on the internet. May have been one of those people, may still be. Whereas if you're over here in these decentralized places, If you want to build something that's all your own, go ahead. There are 3,000 apps that have been built on the Ethereum blockchain to this point. Most companies and cryptocurrencies will source themselves off of the Ethereum blockchain.

So if you take a place like Decentraland, for instance, they have their own cryptocurrency. It's called MANA. It's the Decentraland currency. If I want to buy digital real estate inside of Decentraland, I want to buy a new skin to wear around. I want to build something I have to pay in MANA. So that's their protocol. So nobody can come into Decentraland and say, nope, you're not allowed to accept mana anymore. The control and the voting rights over what is going to be the protocol is controlled by whoever has the most of that cryptocurrency. So it seems that there's been a lot of thought that's been put in

from the beginning with these systems that um are designed to make sure nobody takes control and just becomes you know the the goliath and landlord of the internet people have a lot of concern over like artificial intelligence and uh you know robots kind of running things but i think the scary thing is that people don't really recognize that that's already happening oh yeah uh. You're being steered in a direction all the time via the things that are suggested in your feed and via things like YouTube and the things that pop up. They're not random. They pop up because sometimes there are things that kind of align with your goals. And I just think that there are also things that might pop up in your feed just to kind of direct you in a certain direction. And so you could make an argument that, you know, maybe some of these people that run some of these things, maybe these things are a little bit too big.

You know, maybe they're too large. Like maybe this wasn't meant to be that we're supposed to be able to communicate with so many people and to give all our thoughts out to so many different people. It gets to be kind of confusing and overwhelming. And with something like Metaverse, you got like Mark Zuckerberg or whoever's at the helm of any of these companies, who are they to kind of regulate? But it is their business. So it makes sense that I should be able to have rules about how people conduct themselves when they come through these doors here at Slingshot, right? But it's just – it's interesting because like who is going to determine kind of like what's right and wrong within those universes? You know, I think one of the interesting things that I've taken away from this whole thing is that I think that we've all gotten to the point where we've got privacy concerns.

Like is Big Brother watching? Is Facebook controlling my feeds? And I think that there's a move to want more personal privacy. And over here on Web3 are, they've got an avatar. It's not their picture. Most of them aren't using their real names. And I think there's a place where that kind of converges with what Apple's done with the privacy protections on their phones. We aren't going to allow Facebook to harvest this data anymore.

And those two worlds really collide so that if you don't want somebody to know who you are, then they can't. So I think there's, you know, what was that movie? Was it The Social Dilemma? The special that was on Netflix? Like that pointed out exactly what you were saying about artificial intelligence is already here. It's already behind so much of what we do.

behind so much of what we do. You know, if you choose that you want to opt out, you can't do that in Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook. But if you're over here in Web3, you're like, do I want to walk into Meta's Facebookiverse? Nope. I'm going to go over here to something different. You have a choice.

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any flavor you want, for the price of three. That's what we do. That's what you should do. Links to them down in the YouTube description as well as the podcast show notes. Let's get back to the podcast. Let's say I'm a young kid, 18, 22, whatever. A lot of people, in terms of investing, I don't have enough money to invest into X, Y, or Z, right? As far as stocks, et cetera. If somebody is interested

in getting into crypto, I guess you don't give financial advice or this isn't financial advice, et cetera. But maybe where would you tell someone to try looking as far as information? Because when you see things on YouTube, et cetera, there are so many channels going sensational about crypto stuff and they have the craziest clickbait titles like this coin is going to 50x and whatever. Right. Where should individuals start in terms of trying to get information since there's so much out there? And as far as like shit coins and stuff, should they should they just put a few dollars here and there in certain coins that are like point zero zero0008 cents per coin and see what the fuck happens. So again, this is not financial advice. And people are welcome to take wild swings if they

want to. Like my own personal philosophy is to buy something because I understand it and I see like a base case for what this business could eventually be. But my primary source of information about everything I've learned in NFTs and crypto has been from Twitter. That is genuinely, and it's wild because I used to spend 4% of my time on Twitter and the rest just mindlessly scrolling through Instagram. Now it's virtually all on Twitter. It's where all of the conversations about these new NFT offerings, crypto are taking place out in the open. And what I did is I just started recognizing people that I thought these people have a following, they sound reasonably intelligent. And so I started following them. I literally went and unfollowed everybody that I'd followed prior on Twitter and just started, you know, picking up more people in my feed. I'm going to go to who you

follow on Twitter and follow all the same people. That's exactly what I told you. I've told people like I've just spent the time like and I just listen and people are actually willing to share, to have conversations. The crazy part about this is it's one of the most authentic communities that I've found. Nobody is guarding information. Everybody's going to tell you I'm here pumping my own bags like right out in the open. Of course we are. But the main thing is, is that like if you ask a question, people will answer. They want to help. And it's very weird and authentic and kind dude this is a massive fucking gem that you just gave us because i just i just know so many people that are like like we're like learning about things in so many different places and scouring different websites

etc but that's a that's that's a very simple way of learning about this shit yeah in a uh i guess in a truthful way well and and the neat thing is is that if you find a project, an NFT or a cryptocurrency that you want to learn more about, almost every one of them has a link to their Discord channel in their bio. And if you go in their Discord channel, then there's this massive conversation that's taking place. Some people know what they're doing. Some don't. But you have a place where you can read through. You can talk to the team. You can ask questions.

And you can get a sense of who's legitimate, who's authentic, and who's not. And so it's a big do-your-own-research space. But if you're just patient, you're like, I'm not going into this thing hoping that I'm going to know what to buy tomorrow. I'm just here to learn and accumulate knowledge. Recognize that these markets go wildly up and down. And so just because you think you've missed the boat, you probably haven't. There will be a time when it goes down again. And that's where being patient, which I suck at doing in anything else in my life, really pays off. Andrew's got a nine-month-old over there. So what would you think? Could he

potentially buy something that you think would be fairly safe in his name, sort of, or something he could gift to him when he's 18 that magically kind of turns into something? I mean, there's a number of projects that I think are special. And to keep myself from dispensing financial advice, I'll tell you those off air. But, you know, mentioning, you know, five, six projects that I just think have good humans involved. There's one called World of Women, which Gary V tweeted about. It's become kind of the leader in the space for female empowerment. It was one of the first collections that featured pictures of women. It's all art run by a French artist. Really cool.

There's another one called Boss Beauties, which is run by Lisa Mayer. She just signed a partnership with Marvel, which is essentially Disney. They had the first NFT exhibited in the New York Stock Exchange was one of her boss beauties. Of course, there's board apes and everything that's involved in that whole world. And I mean, there's like a thousand new projects that drop every single day. So, you know, just sift through, find something that resonates with you. And especially if you're looking and saying, I just want to give my my child something that I think is really cool. That just shows like hey i'm

not that old and remember you know that they can look back and be like damn my dad gave me an nft when i was a baby i really wish it was a good one because i'd have some money now instead of just a worthless jpeg the point is is that could put you on the journey to like you know learning more later so don't worry about like am I making the right decision now? Use everything as kind of a stepping stone to gathering more knowledge. What are maybe some red flags? Because I get, every so often I'll get a DM

because when you said that something is mint or is in mint, I get DMs about people talking about their projects are in mint and I can get in right now. And I always just kind of delete those DMs about people talking about their projects are in Mint and I can get in right now. And I always just kind of delete those DMs because I figured if it was really that good, they wouldn't be randomly cold DMing me. But other than that, is there something else that, I don't know, maybe somebody gets kind of pretty hyped on and then it ends up being, it ends up turning into shit because they missed a couple of flags. It ends up turning into shit because they missed a couple of flags. So all those things you're getting, the notifications in Discord, the DMs, they're all generated by bots.

It's intelligent. They're trying to hit as many people as they can and pull in suckers on rug pulls. So ignore all those. that one of the best ways is if you think you found somebody that you think is a thought leader on Twitter, for instance, scroll through all their history, read what's in there, and then read all the comments that people are writing as a part of their things. The best thing about Twitter is that it self-polices. So if somebody's a rug pull artist, they are going to get their shit called out really quickly. There was a project that came out last week, and, they are going to get their shit called out really quickly. There was a project that came out last week, and I'm not going to mention names, but that really quickly came to light that there were some serious racist tendencies that were in it.

And people that admitted it immediately sold it. They were like, I don't want to have anything to do with it. I mean, it was it was bad. sold it they were like i don't want to have anything to do with it i mean it was it was bad um and so those people have been put on blast like everything about their history has been investigated and the beautiful thing about the blockchain is that it's all transparent now i may not be smart enough to go and follow all the codes but plenty of other people that are in this space are and within like 20 minutes they can say this was generated from this account you know this is who these people are and it's pretty dope so if you're a dick or just a total neo-con artist people are going to find out really quick

wow and what about like you know and semaema asked the question of some people kind of thinking they don't have enough money to maybe do stocks or, but a lot of times you can have, your investment can be very inexpensive, right? Like it's kind of a little bit of a myth that you need to have a ton of money to play with, right? Well, I think that it's, you know, the, you mentioned it might've been on air, but it might've been before that like the most valuable commodity that any of us have is time. And so you take my nine-year-old clients or my clients that are in their 20s. And I do want to say that like one of the policies I made with my firm is that like I don't charge anybody that has less than $50,000 worth of assets any charge at all because I just want to see them grow. $50,000 worth of assets, any charge at all, because I just want to see them grow. Like, am I, you know, putting shoes on my kids' feet, charging a nine-year-old that has $5,000 fees? No, I just want to see them grow.

You know, if you start at that age, because of how money grows and the fact that it will compound and get bigger and bigger, eventually you're going to have a hell of a snowball. And so there's all these different metrics that you can look up that says if you start saving $50 a month when you're 18 and just let it sit and grow, you'll have more money than if you started and you're saving $1,000 a month when you're 30. So time is your most valuable asset. The most important thing is get off your ass and take advantage of it. So it doesn't matter if you've got 50 bucks or 50 cents.

You can start saving and build something special out of that. And I can help you. How about keeping your crypto safe? Because you hear a lot, you talk about wallets, but what are some ways that you can make sure that your currency isn't, like there's no way of it being lost or hacked, et cetera. What do people need to pay attention to there? So there's two things. Uh, one is, you know, when you have a digital wallet, like MetaMask, um, that you have your password that you get in, but they're going to give you a unique phrase of 12 words and you have to write that down and keep it safe and not give

it to anybody. Because if you ever lose your password, you can recover your wallet by putting in those 12 unique words all in the same sequence. Now, the additional step beyond that are what are called cold wallets, which is basically like a USB stick that you put in there. One of them is called Nano. And basically, if you don't have that USB stick in your computer and put in your code onto that, then you can't transact anything using that digital wallet. So that's another additional step of safety that you can take. Okay. I think it's important to kind of dive into some of this and we can continue to ask you questions questions about uh some of this different currency that we got going on nowadays but um i'd like to dive into uh oh he's going on energy drink number two oh stand back

bro uh the fide doesn't count that was like a healthy drink this is the real mccoy uh we mentioned alaska a little bit earlier uh what in the hell is it like growing up in Alaska? It was, you know, like, uh, obviously a childhood, unlike many that I've run across and it was special, you know, you had the little village I grew up in, in Alaska was on the Yukon river called Galena. And there was a, it was a thousand person native Alaskan village and there was probably 20 white people. So growing up with toe head blonde hair like you look different and kids don't like to look different. So I used to like cry to my mom like genuine tears because all I wanted was black hair and brown skin just like my friends.

I wanted was black hair and brown skin, just like my friends. And like, um, we live the total subsistence lifestyle, which was kill a moose. And that's what you ate, you know, drift net fish, the Yukon river ran trap lines. And it was just a big fucking adventure. Like you could do anything as a kid, like, Oh, take the guns and go out in the woods. Uh, we wanted to build a tree house. My dad gave us a ladder hammer and nails, and we built a rickety ass tree house, and go out in the woods we wanted to build a tree house my dad gave us a ladder hammer and nails and we built a rickety ass tree house 25 feet up in the air so you know it's obviously very cold in the winter you know 55 below was pretty typical and 30 degrees was shorts weather so but you know like things that you wait whoa was it really shorts weather 30 degrees absolutely god damn like i i had a friend in high school and this is in the big city of But, you know, like things that you take – Whoa, whoa, whoa. Was it really Schwarzwether 30 degrees? Absolutely. Goddamn.

Like I had a friend in high school, and this is in the big city of Juneau, which isn't quite as cold, and his name was Star Parker. That was literally his first name was Star. A lot of hippies moved up there and had children and named them Star and Zebulon Aerosmith. Like seriously, these are my friends in high school. You know, I think it would be a big stretch to say I was one of the normal ones, but yeah. This kid literally never wore pants. It did not matter if it was a driving blizzard. He was walking to school in his damn shorts.

Wow. So that's commitment. They just built different over there. Shit, man, I guess he got used to it. It's all what you're used to as a kid. You think like, oh, nobody has running water. I guess this is how the rest of the world is. And without the internet, you're pretty convinced that this is just how normal people live.

And then you realize, no, taking a crap in a bucket adjacent to your kitchen with just a curtain in between, that's not normal. But yeah, that was my childhood. How old were you when you started to kind of recognize that and then maybe even wanting to go somewhere else, move somewhere else? We were really, really lucky as kids because we would come down to the town of Lagunitas, which is where my parents or my grandparents lived for years and years, which is out by Point Reyes. And we'd spend all of our summers there. So a lot of my friends never left the village. And the reason why you have so many unique tribes of Indians is Alaska is a really big place. And they're geographically isolated.

big place and they're geographically isolated. So some kids, besides going to fish camp in the summer, which was, you know, where their families had been, you know, fishing for hundreds and hundreds of years, that was it. So we got to see a bigger world and that, you know, was a tremendous advantage to us, you know, growing up. But, you know, Lagunitas was always like my favorite place on earth and when we uh founded our investment firm nine years ago we had the uh the the heated conversation between Cass and I about why she thought it was dumb to name the firm Lagunitas um because nobody would be able to pronounce it and I won and no unless you've drank the beer and are then sorely disappointed when I come into the room and they're like where's the beer and are then sorely disappointed when i come into the room and they're like where's the beer and i'm like oh i'm the investment firm they're like

boring so um yeah so that's uh you know kind of my family story you just have to have the beer on tap anyway right yeah pretty much so we've we've literally taken like all the logging is you know material they've created jars you know and so on, and just put it all around our office. So it's pretty legit. How have you been able to end up doing what you're doing for a living? Because you and I have talked many times about drug and alcohol addictions. And I know you suffered from some of that stuff. And now it appears that you're heading in a really awesome direction.

It seems like you've got a great family and you've got great people that you work with and for, and it seems like you've surrounded yourself with really good people. How were you able to get through some of that and how are you able to still kind of persist and kind of, I guess, maybe even fight through it today? That's a really good question. And it's like one of the things that I really sucked at for a big part of my life was the ability to be vulnerable. Like I thought, like, I'm supposed to be perfect, like to the outside world. I want everybody to know that I'm OK. And I remember when my Jacob was 12 or 13 at that time and I was after I got sober and I was telling him about, about you know the crushing anxiety that I'd experienced for most of my adult life and he's like well what's anxiety and and I explained it to him and he's like you suffered from that I'm like yeah I was just really really

good at you know making other people believe that I had it under control so like I got into the business that I'm in when I was 19. I did an internship through Davis, got my securities license at 21, and have been doing the same thing ever since. But one of the mantles that I carried really since I was a teenager was feeling like I needed to be perfect. And I think everybody in their life walks through it with some kind of baggage. Most of it's something that, you know, hurts you as a kid, you know, whether it's, you know, physical or emotional damage or trauma, like, you know, life has like some pretty brutal moments for people. And if you don't know how to like cope with that stuff, then you internalize it. don't know how to like cope with that stuff then you internalize it and eventually you isolate it um and it's interesting because you know i remember cast that's my fiancee asked me about

like why did you use drugs and drugs meaning any that i could get my hands on all the time um you know i was definitely equal opportunity how do i do do this job? One hundred and ten percent. So there's like I told Andrew before, there's no quitters in this family until I quit using drugs. So that changed. The reason I use drugs was they worked. I was able to nuke my brain and not feel the pain that I walked around with. Like I it didn't matter if this was 10, 15 years ago. When I looked in the mirror,

I saw somebody that wasn't enough. I saw a miserable piece of shit. And it didn't matter that what I'd achieved on the outside, everybody else looked really good, but the inside of me said, I'll never be enough. And basically, when you're a really thick-headed knucklehead like I am, you have to be hit by some incredibly massive sticks to change. And not diving too far into those, but let's just say that I basically burned my entire family down, and I was dead alone, you know, living in an apartment, not able to see my kids.

Cass had left me and I had ruined everything and it sucked. And like I tried to go to recovery groups and just was never able to get it. And so I was basically at the point where I was like, if this doesn't work, then I'm going to let my kids cash my $1.5 million insurance policy. It was like, I'm going to drive off a cliff. And that was like a genuine thought that I had a lot. So because I was desperate, I went to the one place on earth that I swore I'd never go because I was an atheist, you know, for so many years, which was I went to church and mainly because I got to see my kids there, you know, with their mom and like her support and her husband's support, even when I didn't deserve it, just still means the world to me. But I found a program called Celebrate Recovery, which is like a 12 step

program that has, you know, Jesus and God involved. And it was good for me because the people that I saw there, not perfect, you know, like a lot of people with a really bad story like mine were genuinely happy, you know, three, four or five years into it. And so for the first time, I felt like I don't need to try to figure this out on my own. And for the first time, I had a group of people that I could actually just be vulnerable with and like just puke it all out and learn to talk about like what was going on in my crazy brain. So I keep going there every Monday night. And it's like my favorite night of the week because like I'm still not perfect. I am still a dick.

There are still moments where I'm like, wow, like that was that was fucked up. And but the difference is that I own it now. Like every day I'm able to be able to look back and say, OK, what's all the stuff that I've screwed up on? But what's also the stuff that I did well? that I've screwed up on, but what's also the stuff that I did well. I think the thing that we fail to do really often is like, show yourself some grace, you know, give yourself some credit. Like if you struggle with, you know, alcohol or drugs, or you struggle with food or, or you struggle with anything that's kind of become your God. And you're able to stay straight for a day, that's big. Like it's big for me to stay sober. And so you, you know, you don't just criticize yourself. You say, hey, what did I do

today? Like, hey, I was there for my kid. I showed up, you know, I was kind. I did not kick the dog today. That's growth. And, but if there's, if there's things that I need to clean up, I actually can apologize and own it. And instead of apologizing a thousand times, I try to make living amends. You said the drugs worked, but they probably most likely worked well in the short term, right? And they made the pain worse or maybe, because like we're supposed to have pain. Like you're supposed to be a little bit anxious. You're supposed to be a little bit scared. You're supposed to be a little bit sad, mad, depressed. Like these things we're all supposed to have. And I do recognize that people can have way different peaks and valleys in their life. And given the circumstances that they're surrounded with,

there's a lot of situations where it could be way worse for one person versus another. But drugs seem to kind of make that dip in that high fluctuate a whole lot more, right? It's 100 percent. Like, I just didn't know that, you know, that I was supposed to have peaks and valleys. And it's like the days that suck now for me, I appreciate them. Like I had not been able to feel anything in real life, you know, for 15 or 20 years.

And when I say they worked, it's like a Band-Aid that I put on, you know, my jugular vein that temporarily covered it up. And then I put a thousand more Band-Aids over it. And, you know, at the end, it was just a bloody mess. vein that temporarily covered it up. And then I put a thousand more band-aids over it. And you know, at the end it was just a bloody mess. So yeah, I mean, temporary fix, but eventually it just makes the problems even worse. So bottom line is like, I, you know, I used to like hate anxiety and like, and we're talking like the perpetual anxiety all day long what is this

person thinking about me i'm not enough i wish that i'd done this well oh my god i'm stuck 15 weeks ago and when i screwed this up and didn't make the right call as a coach at a flag football game like that's not normal that's anxiety and the crazy miracle for me was, you know, five months into sobriety, my anxiety lifted, like went away. And I've only had anxiety twice since that point, four years ago, since I'll have, you know, four years on the 27th of this month. And I actually look at anxiety now as my friend. And I actually look at anxiety now as my friends. It's like my smoke alarm, which says when I'm feeling this, I don't like it, but it means that I'm missing something. Like, have I forgotten community?

Have I been holding something in? And so I kind of welcome those anxious moments. I welcome, you know, the joy. I welcome, you know, anger. I welcome sadness because they're part of like our human experience. Like I think we're all kind of like put here. And the amazing thing about people is that we get to experience such a wide range of things. Helps you kind of appreciate the good moments when you can feel the bad ones. So Celebrate Recovery gave you a community of people that you could actually let a lot of these things out to.

Yep. What else in your life, like, changed? What else helped you get rid of those old habits? Therapy. So I'd always, you know, been somebody that, you know, had seen therapists and thought, quack pot, no thank you, all therapists are nuts. And I met a lady in Folsom that's phenomenal. And like I've referred six or seven other people to her and they just rave. And, you know, she calls me out on my shit.

And four years in, like I still go and see her every single month because if I have something that needs a reset, she's usually good about asking questions. So I think the power of Celebrate Recovery or the community that I've built is nobody's trying to fix me. I know that for thick-headed people like me and maybe you guys too, that if somebody points the finger and says, Mark, you need to do this, probably the response I know the one I'm going to give you is, fuck you, I'm going to do it a totally different way. I already said it in my head before you finished your questions. It just becomes the trigger reaction. And so that's like one of the big things at CR, which is we're not here to fix anybody. The only person that I have any control over,

the only things that I've got any kind of ability to change are the three A's. You know, my attitude, my actions, and how I accept other people. Like, just because I think that Andrew might be thinking, why does this guy just keep talking for so long? I just want to kill myself. That doesn't mean that Andrew isn't thinking about it. He's in my head.

He's probably thinking, I wish I had some cookies. I really like cookies. He does like cookies. I do love cookies. Yeah, I mean. Peanut butter and ice cream. So I've been able to divorce my responsibility for managing what other people are thinking. And the only thing I focus on is how do I just improve

what I have that control over? So family has been amazing. It took a long time to make amends in real life besides the I'm sorry's, I blew it. But just like where we all are now is, yeah, I'm like, it's a damn miracle. So just like, it's fun. It it's like i live a life of gratitude now as mark knows i you know like picked up books again you know four years ago and now read a ton every morning it's like my quiet time before the teenagers wake up

or the teenager sadly since the oldest one moved to college. Boo, my best friend. Come on, he's got to come back. Shout out, Gabe, my best friend coming home for Thanksgiving. What's up, Gabe? There we go. So the neat thing is I am now kind of in a position where I'm like, I don't control things. I don't know everything. And so how do I read smart people, listen to smart people? And that could be emotionally, businessy, whatever it is, and just absorb and try to be a little bit better. And it's

just a good place to kind of get my mindset, you know, in a good position for the day. Were these things that you kind of reached for a couple years ago, or you just kind of started that a little bit more recently? So I had a guy that recommended a book to me like six months after I got sober. And I used to read for accomplishment because like my family are like literary geniuses, English teachers, professors, all this stuff. And so I just rejected books because nobody was going to tell me what to do. And so, you know, it was all about, I could read really fast and I could read an entire book in a day and I didn't absorb any of it. And so this book was like, you know, it had like, you know, every day, you know, it was

three pages and stuff just jumped out at me. And so from that point on, when somebody would say, you know, this is a really good book, I'd be like, hold, please, I'm going to go on Amazon and buy this right now. And so now I've got like this stack of 25 or 30 books at the house, 10 to 12 of which I'm reading a couple of pages out of each morning. And, you know, there's there's sometimes it'll be that was interesting. But a lot of times, like, you know, I underline things now. I'm a nerd about books.

And like when things really stand out, I'm like like how do i kind of take that and keep it internal um you know to me throughout the rest of the day and let it guide kind of you know my my behavior about john like in terms of genre of books are you someone who reads like development stuff psychology like what is the stuff that gets you going so like one of my favorite authors is bernie brown you know obviously on vulnerability, the stories that I'm telling myself in my head about Andrew, but he's really thinking about cookies. The majority of the time they're not true. Love that. I love Viktor Frankl's book, Man's Search for Meaning.

One of my favorite books right now is by Dr. Edith Eger. So she was another survivor of the Holocaust. What's it called? I can't remember, but I'll, I'll look it up at Amazon and, you know, and show you afterwards.

And she actually was somebody that she wrote to Frankl back when in the seventies and he wrote back to her and she, it's just a phenomenal book. Like I started reading, I'm like, this really reminds me of Viktor Frankl's book. And then she mentions him like 100 pages into it. So phenomenal.

Like these stories of people that go through abject suffering so that they can figure out the like, how do you not just overcome that, but recognize that that's something that despite how horrible it may have been, that that is what put you right here. Like when I think about my life, you know, if I hadn't crashed my car, you know, when I passed out, you know, right next to the elementary school, you know, then I wouldn't be standing here with you guys today. And so even though I'm not proud of crashing my car in front of the elementary school, I'm grateful for it. And I wouldn't change it because, like, all things are needed. By the way, guys, so there's an echo. We just had a guy named Jay Tate on the podcast, and we asked him about, like, books he recommended. Author again, Brene Brown, came up.

Man's Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl came up, man search for meeting Victor, Victor Frankel came up too. So, you know, get those books. Yeah. And then is the Edith eager book, the choice or the gift? Um,

I think it's the choice. Okay. Yeah. Choice. Really good book. Uh, I'm also reading, uh,

you know, Mark knows this, a book called, uh, driven by Douglas Brackman. I really liked that one. And then I'm reading, gosh,

what's his name? He was, he was, I think he might have been on your podcast, Jordan's former trainer. Oh, yeah, yeah. Tim Grover. Yeah, Tim Grover. Oh, yeah. Yeah, really, really enjoying that. There's just like certain things that I'm like, this is cool.

But then there's certain pieces that just like get me fired up. So, you know, I'm kind of all over the place, you know, read the Bible every day. You know, again, that's weird for me being a former atheist, but I'm like, well, God did what I couldn't do. So let me ask you about that real quick being. So you said former atheists are you're not an atheist anymore. Nope. I definitely believe in God and Jesus. So it's really weird. How did that touch today? Thank you. Yes. And Bo bo jackson hey but he needs to be a little darker than that anyway that's that's that's definitely mormon jesus right there mediterranean jesus during the it's winter so the sun's not out so we'll see what the summer brings but how how was

that for you because i mean you you were an atheist all that your life How did that help you, I guess, getting that faith? I learned it by the forgiveness that was given to me by my family, by finally being able to get sober because I started doing something I really didn't want to. And like where I was, like the withdrawal I had to go through, the hopelessness that I had in the first four months of sobriety, and then seeing my life totally change and having, like I was literally sitting at a Good Friday service with my sons, you know, this is three and a half years ago, and I felt the anxiety lift. And like, you're like, okay, mike is usually a pretty rational person and so if i look at the evidence here that i started doing these things and showing up and like mike's actually going to surrender mike's going to pray and these things start occurring i'm like all right i think i might

have accumulated enough evidence to say that the the way i used to believe just didn't make any sense and everything i've seen in my life since then just like the direction with our kids and like we've been through some hard moments as a family finally not related to me at least not mostly um and our ability to recover and grow together you're like yeah i mean when when god's in the driver's seat of the bus like good things happen um as i was when when god's in the driver's seat of the bus like good things happen um as i was sharing when i was driving the bus before many accidents occurred so okay i think life is easier uh when you kind of just uh maybe are in recognition that there's some weird shit that can go down you know like from like a metaphysical standpoint things that

they maybe don't add up on paper you're're like, how did this, I mean, just how did this happen? And I think sometimes it, it makes sense to just surrender and say, you know, that you believe in a higher power. I think that, um, I think that life is, is very difficult to kind of figure out and it's not meant to be figured out, but because it's not meant to be figured out for a lot of people, there's a lot of suffering that goes on. And because there's a lot of suffering that goes on, it makes it a little nicer to just say, you know what? I'm actually really not in that much control. I'm in control of my own thoughts.

That's about all I can do. I'm in control of how I treat other people. Other than that, I don't know what the fuck's going to happen because a lot of things are kind of a roll of the dice. A lot of things are chance. Some people may say it's God. some people may think it's luck some people might think it's bad luck you know right but i think for a lot of people it makes sense to just surrender to a higher power and just say uh this is what i believe and i'm gonna let that be uh the driver's seat and it takes some work though too because i don't think it's fair to i don't think it's fair to um well i guess

you're you're you can do whatever you choose to do but um i don't think it's fair to just kind of halfway be in you know what i mean i think you kind of make make a decision one one way or the other uh it might take you going through a lot of different things and it might take you until you're 44 years old to figure out which direction to go in. But hopefully you figure it out at some point because that will help you be more on target. I think that the thing I really liked in there was just the idea that mystery is beautiful. And there's like a lot of people in different faiths will point to this is the only path. Well, how do you know because like if i'm god like i'm like maybe the chance is that i'm going to use a lot of different faiths to appeal to a lot of

different people and like i loved the book that was you know with desmond tutu and the dalai lama and like the connection those guys have like their playfulness and you can't tell me that the dalai lama is going to go burn in hell because he didn't follow my path right and it's like and so I'm like why would why would we be like oh and like all the Muslims are wrong how can that be like I mean there's too much good information when you start looking at like the Buddhist culture and you start to look at other cultures and the things that they've have come up with there's just too many good things. There's great information in there. I just look at men have the greatest power to mess up what God intended. And so far be it for me to say that part of God's mystery

isn't that he has more than one path. And I'm just grateful for finding mine. And I love studying other religions and faiths because you're like, there's a lot to be learned. And, and there's so much common ground between them too. Like where they originated from. And,

and I like to think like, whether it's the 10 commandments or whatever it is, like those things are genuinely written on our hearts when we're born. Like kids know, like I shouldn't have done that. And then that's why you tell a lie because you're like, I know that at five years old, like kicking my sister in the face was bad. So yeah, I mean, I'm not gonna sit here

and come off as some Jesus freak, even though I am, but that's just, in my opinion, one path that the one that's worked for me. Yeah, and I think just because you may believe in a higher power, it also doesn't necessarily mean that you have a particular interpretation of what you read in the Bible. It doesn't necessarily mean that you believe in just Adam and Eve and that it doesn't mean that you necessarily totally believe those stories. I think that people make the mistake of thinking that you necessarily totally believe those stories. I think that people make the mistake of thinking that you can't believe in more than one thing.

Like you can – I believe that you can believe in Jesus and you can believe in the theory of evolution. I think that there's room and space for all of it. The truth is no one will ever know. The truth is no one will ever know. Well, like Francis Collins, who is like the head of the Human Genome Project, like one of the preeminent scientists on Earth is like a man of devout faith and believes in creation. It doesn't mean that like you couldn't have had all these beautiful, amazing things happen afterwards. We all want to just be like, well, I've got this little kernel of knowledge over here, and now I want to just be like this expert standing on a pulpit, like, you know, telling everybody why they're wrong. That's very human. I think the people that I really enjoy are the people like, yeah, I don't really know a lot, and I'm just here to listen and continue to absorb.

And it's like, cool. Like, the ability to admit I was wrong and the joy in figuring out how I totally blew it I was an atheist like I'm like glad I was wrong man like that was dope Andrew take us on out of here buddy I will thank you everybody for checking out today's episode let us know what you guys think down in the comment section below and please make

sure you're following the podcast at Mark Biles Power Project on Instagram at MB Power Project on TikTok and Twitter and make sure you guys are subscribed podcast at Mark Biles Power Project on Instagram, at MB Power Project on TikTok and Twitter. And make sure you guys are subscribed right here on YouTube as well. My Instagram and Twitter is at IamAndrewZ, at TheAndrewZ on TikTok. And Sima, where are you at? At Sima Inyang on Instagram and YouTube, at Sima Inyang on TikTok and Twitter. Where can people find all of your stuff, especially your Twitter?

So all of my social media handles are Lagunitas IQ. It's L-A-G-U-N-I-T-A-S IQ or Lagunitas like the beer. And then my firm is a stupid fucking name. Thanks, man. I appreciate it. You know, my, uh, Matt, uh, Cass's, you know, 20 year old daughter. She's like, mom, if I don't make fun of Mike, then, you know, he, he, he won't know that I love him.

I'm like, so when people make fun of me, it's because they care. That's right. So the firm is LagunitasFinancialPlanning.com I was just trying to make you say it more, you know. Lagunitas. Lagunitas. So wait, that town in fucking Canada, that's Lagunitas or whatever, is that

where the Lagunitas beer name originates from? Yeah, so it's actually here in California, like two hours away. And so it's like a bunch of hippies that started the beer in Lagunitas. And if you go and Google their story, there's this fascinating read about how their doors were kicked in

by the DEA way back in the day because they used to have events where people would smoke joints. And so the best thing for me was reading about like when they sold the Heineken, like those guys were like, yeah, DEA,

two and a half billion dollars go fuck yourselves okay I'm at Mark Smelly Bell strength is never weakness weakness is never strength catch y'all later