My First Million - #209 with Gary Vaynerchuk - Why NFTS Are the Future

Episode Date: August 13, 2021

In this episode Gary Vaynerchuk (@garyvee) joins Sam (@theSamParr) and Shaan (@ShaanVP) to give a master class on NFTs. Gary shares his predictions on the future of NFTs and how they'll be (eventually) used by everyone. He also talks about the growth of VaynerX, his love of garage sales, and the launch of VeeFriends & VeeCon. At the end, he shares the biggest lesson he learned from passing on investing in Uber (twice). --------- * Want to be featured in a future episode? Drop your question/comment/criticism/love here: https://www.mfmpod.com/p/hotline/ * Support the pod by spreading the word, become a referrer here: https://refer.fm/million * Have you joined our private Facebook group yet? Go to https://www.facebook.com/groups/ourfirstmillion and join thousands of other entrepreneurs and founders scheming up ideas. --------- Show notes: * (0:58) Intro * (5:14) The headcount growth of VaynerX * (11:44) On Shaan's Clubhouse prediction * (13:39) Gary's conviction to the game * (17:44) Shaan's first foray into NFTs * (19:53) Gary's prediction on the future of NFTs * (23:24) Revisiting the purchase of Michael Jordan's house * (28:03) The story of the Spirits of St. Louis * (29:21) The what, not the how, for NFTs * (32:53) VeeFriends and VeeCon * (39:24) On Gary's master plan to buy and grow existing brands * (43:28) How Gary thinks about creating content * (45:52) Putting wins on the board * (47:28) Missing on Uber

What's super awesome is like when you're putting the winds on the board, nobody even gives it. Nobody wants to touch it. They're like, keep going, keep going. Nobody wants to talk to me. I feel like I can rule the world. I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it like no days off. On a road, let's travel, never looking back.

That was pretty, uh, that was intense 45 minutes. Dude, sometimes you have high hopes for a guest. And on this podcast, I've been disappointed. Today was not that day, my friend. I loved that. I had a great time, honestly. We didn't even get to a, we got to like 20% of the stuff I wanted to ask him about. So we had Gary Vaynerchuk on the pod today.

It was phenomenal whenever I leave. So I've hung out with Gary maybe three or four times, maybe three times. Whenever I leave his presence, I do feel better. And a lot of people, and I'll admit, I was one of those people years ago. I would be like, oh, this guy's just some loud guy who's selling nonsense. He's totally the real deal. And I went to, 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. That guy is intense. I love it. He does what we try to do. He's been doing it for a long time, which is business entertainment. It's the entertainment. side of business where he, you know, he'll go to a garage, he'll make content that's like,

going to a garage sale, buying things for a quarter and flipping them for $28 on eBay and how that stacks up and 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, you know, he's got a bunch of stuff going on as far as his own business goes. But I like that he's been able to do with. 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? Because the NBA was so goddamn entertaining, right? And so when you have entertainment, that creates inspiration and aspiration. So it ends up creating more founders in the world. Yeah, he was amazing, man. And I, whenever I talk about. Whenever I'm off with him,

off the air, by the way, he's exactly the same. So there's no show here. So, all right, we started, off, we got right into it. In the first 30 seconds, I asked him, so I had 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 Vaynerchuk about VaynerMedia. They grew to 1,200 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

them how he managed cash flow. Then we got into a really interesting discussion about NFTs. NFTs, a lot of people talk about them. I'm not like an NFT guy. Sean, you are. This was the one time I've ever had a conversation where it interested me beyond just like academic. Right. Yeah. He does a good job with making it, I don't know, like tangible and 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 want to get in the car and go somewhere. So where does this let me go? And I think he did a pretty good job of that. So we talked about NFTs. We talked about, you know, just something 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 2000. And 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 learning and apply them now? So we talked about that for a bit. But good episode. He, He was, I don't know, super nice guy. Once to come back on, I think we should have him on again for sure. I take a lot, it makes me feel happy that sometimes, a lot of times people tweet at us and they say,

I want to run through a wall after that episode or I want to go and accomplish something. I feel that way right now after listening to that episode. I felt like I was a part of it more so as a fan, more so as a participant. I thought it was wonderful. Yeah, you know, it's when people say, you know, I'm always late to work because when I'm driving and listen to MFM, I've got to pull over and write shit down. Right? Like, I can't let this idea go. I got to write this down. That's when we do it well. And sometimes we don't always hit that, but I think we did it

well on this one. So, all right, that's the episode. Gary Vee, enjoy. Same. All right, are you weird or are you normal? And they're like, we're a little bit of both and then they came out and did it. And it worked out well. I'm just using an iPhone. Get the fuck out of here. Well, Sam's traveling now. Sam, are you looking, 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? So he got this app that basically uses your iPhone as like a DSLR, which is really cool. Awesome.

It's called, uh, what's nice to see, guys. I hope you're well. It's called Camel. I'll give him a shout. It's called Camo. I think I paid $49 for it. It's awesome, man. Hope everyone's well.

Um, so we have a lot to get into. Um, I'm pumped you here. Um, can I, something that I've, I've, I've all, and we're recording now, something I've always wondered about, how many people work at Vayner? Media right now. Somewhere between probably 1050 and 1,300. I'm sorry, VaynerX. So VaynerMedia is the biggest company. Yeah, Vayner, right, because we have gallery. We have, yeah. So I was looking, I did some research based off a ton of interviews, and I was like going through the head count of how how fast you grew. And I believe between around years number, number three and four, did you grow from

like 30 people to 125 people? Yes, because in 2011, September of 2011, I kind of made the decision to go full-time Vayner, no longer what I would call full-time Wine Library. Secondary Vayner, I made that switch, and then the lighter fluid kind of went on. Dude, how the hell do you manage that cash flow for a company like that? Because I did research. You know your shit, yep. And it was, tell me if I'm, I just guesstimated off some interviews around.

I'm going to start at year one. Around five people, 20 people, 30 people, 125 people, 300, 550, 600, 800, 800. Yeah. Is that a ballpark, right? Yeah, like, if you were asking me and I was spitballing, guess who the fuck, you know, the first year was like, we started in May of 2009. So that first half year, I think it was like six or seven. Then it might have been like 20 and through all of 2010.

And then until 11, it probably got to like 30. And then that's September 2011. You'll appreciate this and you've got this in you. There's certain people who I think are really, really good at topline 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 topline rev and because I'm playing forever, right? Wine Library, my dad's family business and Vayner for me is really for a forever business. I'm just able to hire a lot, right? And then you just got to, you know, with retail,

it was really easy, right? I was like, I knew how to sell wine. So like I was with with B2B, it took me a little while to calibrate like, oh, fuck, they didn't pay us. Wait a minute, why? The bills do. Like, why didn't you pay? But like overall, it's just staying in your shit, right?

I think when you stay in your business and you know what you've got coming in and what is going out, you know, I'm not a CFO-oriented CEO, but I'm also not a shlameel. I always have a good sense of like, is this, are we going to be dead? I'm always playing to like, well, 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. It's so fucking wine. 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, as I'll go away in a second. it was my dad ran his fucking business with no line of credit which i love right it's old school immigrant

you know pay with what you have but it trained me because that business even crazier that business went from four million to fucking 25 in like 30 months 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 We definitely got a line of credit probably maybe in 2013. But the first four or five years, and in the pocket you're talking about, which is very much more, will resonate a lot more with people on the call who've got it, who are going to go through the 7 to 17 to 77 to 27. It was more about just not spending what you don't have, right?

Like it was just as simple as basic being a businessman. man like hey we just landed this account they're paying us 480 a year it's fucking you know mondales or Pepsi you feel like they're going to pay you you feel good it's not going to you know and it's like okay now i got 480 i'm going to hire these six people at 40k apiece i feel good with you know it was like very like back of the napkin what's funny about it is and you know this and I think this is where you know as when you were on the podcast we hung out at an outdoor dinner like every time i come there's something about just like street business versus like I find myself laughing that mine can be like intuitive and back of napkin.

And yet people that are like all about learning and Excel sheets and doing it proper and fucking SAP and clouds. You know, they have all the software like get fucked up. It's because they don't have a good pulse of their actual business and they get ahead of themselves and lack patience. Yeah, it's just like when you're growing that fast, it seems like you're kind of playing it maybe month by month, maybe quarter by quarter where I would be. I mean, I would go to bed at night wondering, like, I hope this client doesn't bail. Otherwise, I got to lay off 20 people. I think what was happening was we were selling so this.

And I think I, you know, it's so funny, it was very long-winded. I think I had the answer. When you are selling at a level that people are not accustomed to, like when you're outpacing normality, it just fucking selling hides everything. You know, when I'm landing fucking client week after week, like, 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 an update on, I mean, I jumped right into that because I've always had that question about managing Caslow. Sam's been like sitting on that question for two years or something because he didn't say hello. He didn't say what the podcast is fucking about.

He's like, you know what it is? When you scaled, how did you manage cash off? You know what's funny? I've gotten into Sam through my podcast and a little couple hangouts. It makes sense to me because I think Sam's really good at what he does. And he lived that life. and he knows he did it super well, and he knows what the anxiety and, like, the challenges are.

Like, you can, 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's, yeah. I did this thread that went viral on Twitter. It was about Clubhouse. And I was like, you know, this was when Clubhouse is sort of peaking. And I said this thing. I was like, it's kind of unpopular because, you know, why shit on a startup? You know, it wasn't my intention.

But I said, everybody thinks Clubhouse is the next big thing. And I think it's going to fail. But here's how I think it's going to go play it out. And I kind of wrote it like an episode of Silicon Valley. Like I wrote it like a, like you're the CEO. First, you know, Chris Sack is texting you. This is happening. And I wrote this thing.

And it went viral. It ended up getting on CNBC. It has like, I don't know, tens of millions of impressions. and people were like, oh, man, you're a good writer. 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, their hump was higher.

I remember. Yeah, and so I was like, you know, I went through this exact pain. And so I'm just literally telling a story I know of myself, and I'm exaggerating a little bit to make it funny. It has nothing to do with 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 kind of how I think why I'm a good content producer. I literally stay in my fucking lane. I may say the same shit 8,700 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 have so much conviction in my shit, because I'm not guessing out here. Right.

Yeah. You know, I was watching your trash. talk video on the way here. So if people haven't seen it, 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 YouTube, I'm starting to interrupt. It's by far my best show. It's my best content. Immediately, I was like, I'm hooked. And do you know why I made it? 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 this whole like, yeah, you put a $25,000 check

into Twitter. They're like, that doesn't work for me. I don't have $25,000. I'm like, you know, cool, let me go even further back in my origin story.

What did I do when I dig shit? I fucking went garage sailing on Saturday and sold that shit at baseball card shows or other flea markets on Sunday. Right.

By the way, it's more fun. So I just sold $3,500 worth of old computers, and I got more joy having that $3,500 in my Venmo than I did $20 million in my bank. 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 is no comparison to how I feel when I, in my last episode, I don't know if that's what you're watching, I found a bunch of magna. That's the one I was watching. So for $270, I bought. what ends up being about 6,400 in eBay post fees 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 home. I didn't get to that part yet, but I saw that was the title. So some people are like, oh, that's cool. You buy something to 270, you sell it for $6 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 do these segments on the show that people love that's called, we'll do the billy of the week, which is like a billionaire that we profile, but sometimes we'll do the hillbilly of the week, which is someone who owns 22 vending machines that 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, because 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? Like go door to door. You're the same pest control leads. I love Billy. I love Billy. That's so fucking smart.

By the way, that's what I'm living right now. I'm like, can't function because I literally like, we looked at my calendar today and I saw 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 open sea and do a little more research. 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 is that the taller guy or the chubby guy? The tall guy. And the way it worked is he would go from garage sale to garage sale, not garage sale, Barnes. And he would buy stuff. And we would buy some cheap stuff, like something we could sell in the store for 50 bucks. Then we would buy some like an old motorcycle that doesn't work, but it's art. We could sell up for 20 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 $5,000 worth of items, but we would sell probably $30,000 a day of T-shirts. And this freaking business crushed it. But, Sean, you want to talk about some NFT stuff? So I know that excites both you. It excites me too. Are you starting to get into it, Sam? Are you, like, digging in a little? No, 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, 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, this is, this is just, 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, whether it's some alt coin, or in this case, I met the founder of Nifty Gateway. And I was like, dude, first his story is hilarious. I don't know if you've met them, but it's two twins. Tyler? No, so they got, it's two twins that built Nifty Gateway. They got acquired by the two twins of Gemini.

That's fucking amazing. And so 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 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 Nifty early on. They've been building up a filing for 10 years,

just doing free art 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 Forever Mamba. I don't know if you were seeing it. But basically I was telling Sam on the pot, I was like, yeah, I just bought this thing for $800. And, you know, he goes through the cycle everybody goes through, which is you bought a file. Like, why are you buying JPEGs?

Like, what's that going to do? You spent $800 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 10 to 25K now. And so that was my own. my first flip, basically, my version of the digital garage sale, right? That's why I'm so addicted, I think.

Like, I'm addicted to the digital garage sale. And so give us, like, your simplified version of the thesis, because some people kind of like, some people love this shit. 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 going to go away in a few years. Like, it'll all get swept on the road.

So give us your take. Yeah, I've been, you know, I'll just, well, I'll give you the micro thing on that. I think 98% of the current projects go to zero. Right. Like, I think it's very, it's, to me, it's the most similar thing to, uh, web internet stocks 99, 2000 that I remember. I remember being there. I really, like I was me, young.

So I wasn't as experienced and didn't have as many pattern 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 can 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. 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. It had an actual business, like back from what house, 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. And there's a ton of people that love that. Like that's why half of Wall Street, that's where they go. Like there's a lot of those people. And that's amazing. And that's big. That's a big industry. Like over the next 15 years, big.

Collecting, flipping. You've got an entire generation of kids that go on Fortnite and Madden and 2K and buy digital assets to flex. So that's going to 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 15 years that nobody writes a book with a publisher. They do it through an NFT infrastructure. I believe that in 15 years, nobody launches a record label by having a,

a record by having a record label, give them the bag. They're going to 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 Luca Donich drops 100 points in that game, that becomes a forever collectible. There's a trillion fucking dollars worth of ticket stuffs

that have sold over the last 25 years on eBay. That all goes to royalties to the person. So what's really fascinating to me, I'll give you a weird one. If you own a home that is wildly unique and is a $25 million home on a beach or something wild, right? You NFT that fucking home right now put into the smart contract that you get 1%

of every transaction of this home in perpetuity. and the first person that's going to buy it from you is going to be fine with that. They don't give a fuck because these things are long leads, right? You buy it, you sit on it for 13, 15 years. So, like, there's so much that NFT blockchain realities are going to bring that I think people are underestimating it. You want to, yeah, go ahead, Sean.

I'll tell them this idea we had. Great minds take a like. A few months ago, we're shooting the shit before an episode and we don't tell each other what we're going to talk about. It's like, yo, I'm bringing three pieces of heat. you're going to react to it. I got to know my shit. You have to be able to react.

And that people like that. People like that already know it's like, 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 23 emblem on the gate. It's got like a basketball court inside. I've got everything. And it's been sitting on the market for years, and the price has been dropping. I don't know what it started at. I think something like $20 million. And then it went down to 15, 14.

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. Wow. And I was like, you know, so we could kind of like do the, you know, the way that normally somebody would do this is, all right, do I have that kind of FU money 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 with some folks who are rich. I said, or we could just get this podcast.

We could crowd fund $10 million. Yep. And we could basically fractional, you could do fractional ownership, either through an NFT or on Rally Road or whatever. I was like, let's buy Michael Jordan's house. And this went viral a little bit in our world. Like, in my head, you listen to every episode religiously.

It hits your phone. 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 that's exactly what should have. Like, I think that's, you can't imagine. And I'm a man who tends to, like, I don't love that many ideas. Right. Really, I mean that. I love execution. I think a lot of people can execute a B and C idea and do great.

But 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 because 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 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 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 back to my big point about unique property.

I think this is going to change the real estate industry. The fact that you could put, you guys are young dudes, you put a 2% royalty in perpetuity on that home. You sell it to the next person for $9 million, let alone $12 million, right? Let's just play. You guys are locked. You're great-grandchildren, great, great-great-great-grandchildren. great, great, great, great children are like, our fucking great, great, great grandfellers

were fucking geniuses. We just got a fucking $800,000 check in the mail or $80,000, whatever it ends up being. I do think in the next five years, there will be an aha to what NFT blockchain smart contracts mean. And I think it will trickle into real estate. People will buy unique properties

and I think they're going to make incredible in-perputity monies that maybe they themselves won't get the crazy, because you know how often their houses turn per se. But man, listen, if you're listening to this right now, listen, I've got a real good sense to who listens to this because you guys got a lot of fans. You are either there or you are spying to be there from a professional standpoint.

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 making a very smart play. if you're sitting with some money, these are the things you're thinking about. Like, what can I do that, like, is fun for me, but also leaves for my generational wealth. I want to do shit that still is good.

Like, the house is perfect, right? Because it'll be fun for you, 16 or 2 or 9 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 NFTed, it's NFTed. Right. It is a contract.

Like there's the ABA team. Do you know this story about the ABA team from St. Louis? No. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sam, this is epic. They merged the leagues. The St. Louis team is out. And the fuckers are like, fuck you, we're not signing the deal.

And so what they did was, it 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 fight, they fight, they fight because they really love 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 at the time, the 26th or the 22nd or the 24th NBA franchise. And in perpetuity, we get the economic split for that. So we're out of the league, but economy that we get it.

And so as the league exploded. I mean, I think they made like a billion dollars or something. It was two brothers, right? That's right. That's exactly. It was two brothers. I think they made like hundreds of millions. Hundreds of millions when that was like a different number over those 70s, 80s and 90s.

I do think they got bought out, like the grandkids got bought out by the NBA like before to last big deal. But like, wow. Unbelievable. Go ahead, Sean. I was just going to say, you were talking about NFT, another, I think another NFT use case that why I like when talking about it with you versus like we've had a bunch of crypto heads on here, you know, super geniuses like biology and others. And, you know, one challenge is if our audience is a guy who owns his own marketing agency in St. Louis, he's sort of like, okay, you know, you know, yeah, like I don't want the how. I want the what. What does this

mean? And what does it mean for me? Exactly. And to me, when I talk about NFPs, I think about the fashion industry. I think about why somebody owns a Rolex. Right. I think about social media. Like, like, how about this? You know, how everyone's like social media is full of shit like everyone takes photos and fakes it you know what's going to be a much better social identity what tokens do you have in your wallet publicly yes dude i was thinking about this yesterday read on both of you if i looked at your tokens in five years yeah like my public wallet is going to represent me because it's not only to be like what i believe in crypto punks you know my v friends collection like but it's also going to be like all my jets tickets right and 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 30 years. Every day on Twitter, I'd 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 indicator. And by the way, one last point,

this is what really confuses people. I'm going to give you such a clear picture that I think will help people. Every one of you has an aunt, uncle, niece, nephew, friend, grandma. When you go into their house, they collect marbles. They collect little miniature elephants.

They collect magnets. Every state they go to, they pick up a matchbox. Humans, humans are inherently hoarding assets. And we use them for ourselves because we like it. We get caught up in the nostalgia and the story. And we use it to flex. Flexing a painting or your Winnie the Pooh collection that's epic in your house is kind of hard except for the people that come through.

The blockchain is going to accelerate. Accelerate at a scale. The way I thought that it would accelerate communication. with social, and that's why I think people are underestimating. The first internet collected the information. The second internet created the framework for communication, right? This third thing, this Web 3 NFT thing, it's going to capture the consumerization of assets and the stakes are fucking high.

And with your deal, the new, the Gary, what was it called, B-Friends? Be friends. Do you offer a conference a year? Are you going to do that forever or is there a timeline on that? What I wanted to, so this is pretty interesting because I've done it in a couple shows, but with you guys, it's people like this. 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. Listen, so for the hardest core consumers of my content, BFriends made so much sense. Why? The amount of times I referenced Walt Disney and Vince McMahon character creation. I'm building VaynerX to buy nostalgic IP. I'm going to refurbish storytelling, Saturday morning cartoons,

all the ship behind me in my office, right? Like wrestling and thundercats and transformers. So I'm just so affected by pop culture and all that my whole life. And like I wanted to buy like animal crackers from Mondalese and I was going to turn it into Madagascar. Like I've been like in this place forever, right? As a matter of fact, you know what BeFriends is? Two years ago, I was going to launch a toy line called Workplace Warriors,

were literal desk toys. Right. With what basically became these characters. So for me, I see NFTs. I've been like kind of like flirting in the winter. I have my crazy eureka like, no, no, no, no. This is the fucking it, it, right? Moment.

I bought Eath 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 going to build the next Pokemon Harry Potter Transformers, but 99.9% of the world is not going to believe me. So let me launch this program and show people that you can do a lot more than just have pictures on it. Right. So to your point, Sam, like, I'm like, so the answer is it's a three-year contract. VFRIEN Series 1 says you get a conference ticket to VCon 2022, 2020, 2023, 2024, 24. 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 was trick, this is the word I would use, trick my hardest core advocates by giving them an asset. I knew V-Friends, the original thing I just launched, as kind of like the original Disney sells. You know, those things that sell for like a trillion that were like the hand drew Snow White in the 40s?

Like, if I pull off what I think I can pull off, stuffed animals, toys, trading cards, movies, video games, over the next 40 years, 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 BORApe, you look at MeeBus, you look at these epic projects that are killing right now. People are trading. 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 CryptoSlam, if you guys don't know this, Cryptoslam.com. Easy little aggregator of NFT projects. I think you guys are like number eight. Okay, so you're number eight. In the last 24 hours. Yeah, sorry, it's a 24 hour rolling scoreboard. You can do it up top.

It's got all this stuff. Yeah, so we can do like, let's say 30 days. All right. So 30 days, you're number 12. Last 30 days, about 12 million of sales volume, of transaction volume. And the funny thing is if you go through all the other ones, Cryptopunks, Mebits, all these, they have somewhere between thousands or tens of thousands or, you know, the top on Ax infinity is quarter million buyers that are doing these numbers, doing these transactions.

VFriends is like an outlier. It's like 300 people with 580 transactions. What that tells me is that there is a small group of hardcore people who are not looking to flip this rapidly for a quick buck because they believe in you. They believe in the utility value of the conference. So I like that because it's different and you're pushing it more. At this point, I think I've been very aggressive of this. I'm like, do not bet against me.

I'm going to fucking build transformers. Like, you know, like, and I so I think a lot of people are holding now more, you know, the conference is going to be epic and I'm going to come through. But I think, I think they're betting on my propaganda right now and I'm going to come through. It's like Bitcoin. 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 needed to, you need the first people to buy in for one reason.

And the second people, you know, the speculators. You got it. And then it's like once everybody's got the damn things, we all speculated on it. Now we can just use it as a medium of exchange. So similarly. What's interesting about NFTs more so than Bitcoin today and obviously things will evolve, it's just functional. Yeah.

Like VCon makes it function. Like they're about to get very functional. Right. Like the functionality is going to be extraordinary. Right. And so I like V Friends. I think V Friends is cool. I told my guy before this podcast.

I was like, oh, I'm going to talk to Gary today. You know, let's pick up a V-friend. Like, go get me one off the floor there. I appreciate it. And he's like, cool, the floor price is like, got out of 17 grand now. I was like, oh, okay, whoa. All right, all right. We don't like Gary that much.

I was like, I was like, I'm going to do it, but that is not what I expected. I was like, that's interesting. That really kind of like opened my eyes. In fact, the last few days you've been seeing. So I want to bring back one thing you talked about, which is your wallet is going to be a new type of profile. It's going to be a new place to flex. It's going to be a new place to learn about somebody. in a real way. Like, like, the only reason I'm in is that. Right. And I think, I think utilities

going 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 argument is I was there for MySpace 2004 when everyone's like, people are going to get raped at the mall and kidnapped. And I was like, nah, I think it's going to go this way. And now it is, right? Everyone's in. I think that's what's going to happen with NFTs. Like, you've got the hardcore people that I get on Zoom with, like just chopping,

and they've got literally like boistery activators and like screens say, I don't know who they are. I love those guys. Every day, the masses are coming and they're in the public wallet. the rainbow wallet, the dot-eath world, and I think that's where it's going. So you've been talking about buying brands and putting them through Vayner for, I mean, in like year three, four of the company, you mean, you've been saying that whole spiel for a long time. First of all, you haven't done it yet. When are you going to do it?

And second of all, I think that this, putting him through the, the NFT thing is significantly better than the old model that I bet you're playing on doing of like, you know, we could put them through the Vayner Media machine. You've got to pick you. Like, I mean, I would much rather buy an old, like a 90s brand and do this. Because I'm looking at who the biggest brands are on crypto slay. I mean, it's sports. It's sports companies.

Yeah. I mean, I think you can do brands are going to be better. When are you finally going to execute on that and pull the trigger? Because you've been talking about it for a long time. I'm excited to see it happen. Come on, Jerry. Well, it's like, dude, why do you need, fucking 500 employees still? Like, 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 can cuffs. Like, instead of, like, selling your company, you have to be stuck or, or, like, you have a big salary. I just know I'm so fucking close for it actually being a death star versus, like, yeah, it's a better badass machine than anybody else's got.

Like, I feel that. Like, truly I do. I'm like, I got a better machine than the other fucking, and 500 people I admire that I think have this down. But it's like, but it's so, it's like so close to being two times better and four times better. And the way I scratched my itch was Rezi,

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, you know, oh, by the way, 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 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 cookie brand. I was going to make it healthier to be on trend, but what I was really going to do was turn it into an animated film and build up, like make the lion like fucking Larry the line. Like I was, it was kind of V-friendly. Now, listen, ultimately,

I think I'm going to place my girl. I'm young enough at 45, have the leverage, have the infrastructure. that I think I'm going to do a whole bunch of everything, right? I think I can build a studio like Pixar with 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 going to try to get to both. How much could you have bought Animal Crackers for? 48, I think the deal was at the time. No shit. Yeah. What was their revenue? I hate making up shit. I genuinely don't remember.

I remember the number pretty vividly. Oh, do you remember around the multiple? It was like nothing. It was like fucking nothing. But you're valuing the IP, not the core business at that stage. No, they were like just fucking, it was dead. They were like, they didn't give a, and like, and we were going to use it as a proxy to teach them how to do it with their, like,

it was fucking set up. Well, you get it with the Nilla Wafers. I mean. From a marketing standpoint, we crushed it there. And you know, I really scratched my itch with K-Swiss. K-Swiss was fucking finished, dead, done. What happened to them? Something happened recently.

Yeah. They sold it. a Chinese apparel company. Kay Swiss was at the forefront of that leverage. We fucking exploded. Not only did we sell a fuckload of Gary V sneakers, the residual effect on the brand was very real. That's the closest I've come to 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, the best part of V friends for me is Gary Vee has been the catalyst for all the shit I'm passionate about, like work ethic, patient. I'm so pumped that I'm going to be able to the next three years

be able to go a little bit more in the backdrop 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 going to ask you when I was watching this garage sale video. I was like, this is great content, but man, he actually had to go to 20 garage sales. I'm sure there's some fun to it, but also you graduated past that stage in your life. That's the biggest thing that pisses me off of my boogey fucking friends.

I'm like, Gary, the fuck are you doing. I'm like, fuck you. You go play. golf and go on a yon. I'm going to fucking garage sale. I'm not telling you what to do. Even besides that, like I know, you know, I've done this podcast now for only, I don't 18 months, right? So we're new to the game, something like that. And there's a lot of benefits of building up this personal brands. Like boom, I want to raise a fun. I raise a fun. I launch a course and 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. By giving them, giving them, giving them like you say. And then you sort of have your ass later. So the part I thought was, interesting is, man, he's been on this, what, you know, quote unquote treadmill of creating content. You know, you're in your car, you're in your Uber going somewhere, you know, you got a cameraman with you and you got to put out a sound bite for Instagram reels because that's the new hot shit or whatever. And so like, are you, 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 you do? Do you do? it because like it's fun do you do it you know are you do you do you feel like you're on a treadmill when you're creating this much content this much gary v the answer is i only do what i like as a matter 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 crypto slam open c 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,

I enjoy it. I really do it. And I also did it 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 folks are on the team? Right now I think there's 22. And is, are you the majority owner of Vayner Media or VaynerX? Yes.

So then you're able to kind of, it's not like a VC thing where 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 to yourself and to your brother.

But like, yeah, exactly. So like, and so I'm, I'm in heavy control. it's a long-term play. I have no board. There's no, I'm not publicly traded. To your exact point, 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 route by him. And more importantly,

you know, I'm delivering. Like, you know this, right? Like, what's super awesome is like when you're putting the wins on the board, 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 it reinvest most of your, what would be your salary or your income from 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. 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 kind of all cycling in the same game to your point. Sure. And do you, like, do you look back, because I think you're excited about Web 3. Yes. And you look back at Web 2.

I know you can quickly tell the story of missing Uber. You know, your buddies with the guy, you miss Uber. That's a big one. Big one. What was the, tell that story, but also just in general, what did you learn from the Web 2 wave that you're like, okay, Web 3, I'm better prepared because I've been in a long game. 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 06. Right. The thing I learned there

was I was going to meet a lot of people that were technically stronger than me, teach me new things, 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 humans so well that I would figure out my path within it. I think like, you know, the thing I learned with, I've told the Uber story at nausea. Travis is the only person I think in Crush It, my first book, besides my family. We were incredibly close. What I learned there was defense always loses. I bought my first, like, apartment in Manhattan. I played so conservative up until like 35. 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 was 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 and was going to run it. And I had just failed in putting up a wine social network called Corked. And it was because it was a distraction to my core. And so I was affected by thinking that if this is their side hustle,

it's not really them. Totally reasonable, by the way. Totally reasonable. 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.

I'm like, I have to go back here every year once a year for humbleness. I'll tell you, I want to, you know we're going to be wrapping up. So let me give you the real, this is something I really hope helps a lot of people. I have completely gone the other way. Let me tell you what I mean by that. I am now completely infatuated with investing only based on the person. I have to hate. That would be the word I use, and I don't like that word.

I would have to hate the person's idea to not go if I think that the jockey is a gangster. And it's worked out for me. There's a company called Mick Mack 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 3 right now. I'm really trying to pay attention to is this person one of us? Because I think there's something about a human's ability to will their way to the success, even if they have to completely change the business model halfway through. I love it. Well, you were supposed to bounce three minutes ago. We don't want to go over your time.

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? You've got good intuition. Are you in the kitchen? Do you have someone who is vacuuming and cooking dinner right now? We're setting up infrastructure for the weekend.

But listen, 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'm incredibly excited that we have a balanced conversation. But the energy of entrepreneurship is just such an important variable. And so I appreciate what you guys are doing this space. And I'm not going to, I'll have to ask him if 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 about a month ago again for another dinner. We're going to have to tell the story about this guy's house. It was like the craziest house I've ever been to. And we're going to have to tell us. Listen, I'd love to come back if whenever you guys feel is an appropriate time for recycling a guest. hit me up. I wish you nothing but good. And thank you for having me on. I feel like I can rule the world. I know I could be what I want to.

I put my all in it like no days off. On the road, let's travel, never looking back.