The Pomp Podcast - Richard Ryan On Building A Billion Dollar Coffee Company #907

Episode Date: April 10, 2022

Richard Ryan is the Co-Founder of Black Rifle Coffee Black Rifle Coffee Company. In this conversation we discuss Richard's experience building companies through digital media marketing, how he built Black Riffle Coffee, free speech, understanding emerging technologies, Bitcoin and why Richard is so excited about the Crypto Industry. ======================= Fundrise is the largest direct-to-investor real estate investment platform out there, giving you the opportunity to achieve upside of an asset class previously reserved for institutions and high net worth individuals. That’s right, Fundrise is making high-end private market real estate investing accessible to everyone via an easy-to-use, automated platform. See for yourself how over 190,000 investors have built a better portfolio with private real estate. It takes just a few minutes to get started with as little as $10.  Go to http://Fundrise.com/Pomp today and, for a limited time, get $10 when you place your first investment. That’s Fundrise.com/Pomp ======================= Compass Mining is the world's first online marketplace for bitcoin mining hardware and hosting. Compass was founded with the goal of making it easy for everyone to mine bitcoin.  Visit http://compassmining.io to start mining bit ======================= This episode is sponsored by my favorite place to buy, trade, and stake crypto, Okcoin. They're the fastest growing US based exchange, serving over 190 countries globally with the easy onboarding and low fees. If you haven't tried them out yet, you should. They're on a mission to make learning about and buying crypto easier than ever, and they're all about bringing more financial literacy to everyone, something we can always use more of.  From being the only exchange to integrate Lightning to contributing over $1M for Bitcoin core devs, they're doing incredible work to further the bitcoin ecosystem and they offer lots of other vetted utility assets from gaming to defi. With Okcoin, I feel confident that the future really will be ok. To get started, go to http://okcoin.com/pomp for some free bitcoin when you sign up. =======================

What's up, everyone? This is Anthony Pompliano. Most of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to the Pomp Podcast, simply the best podcast out there. Now let's kick this thing off. Richard Ryan is the co-founder of Black Rifle Coffee. In this conversation, we talked about digital media businesses, the building of Black Rifle Coffee into a multi-billion dollar business, free speech, technology, and Richard's foray into Bitcoin, cryptocurrencies, NFTs, and much more. I really enjoyed this conversation with Richard, and I hope that you enjoy it as well. Before we get into this episode, I want to quickly talk about our sponsors. Today's episode is brought to you by Fundrise. You all know I believe that the best investors

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how over 190,000 other investors have built a better portfolio with private real estate. It takes just a few minutes to get started with as little as $10. Go to fundrise.com slash pomp today. And for a limited time, you'll get $10 when you place your first investment. Again, that's fundrise.com slash pomp. Go check it out. And when you make your first investment, they'll give you $10 on top of it. Fundrise.com slash pomp. Next up is Compass Mining. Compass Mining is the world's largest marketplace for mining hardware and hosting. With Compass, everyone can mine Bitcoin. Their team makes it easy to start mining wherever you want, at home, or in one of their 23 hosting facilities around the world.

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Again, compassmining.io. Go check them out and let me know what you think. This episode is brought to you by OKCoin. They are my favorite place to buy, trade, and stake crypto. They're the fastest growing US-based exchange, serving over 190 countries globally with the easy onboarding and low fees. If you haven't tried them out yet, you should. They're on a mission to make learning about and buying crypto easier than ever.

And they're all about bringing more financial literacy to everyone, something we can always use more of. From being the only exchange to integrate Lightning to contributing over $1 million for Bitcoin core developers, they're doing incredible work to further the Bitcoin ecosystem. And they offer lots of other vetted utility assets from gaming to DeFi. With OKCoin, I feel confident that the future really will be OK. To get started, go to okcoin.com slash POMP for some free Bitcoin when you sign up.

Again, if you want free Bitcoin, go to okcoin.com slash POMP today. All right, let's get in this episode. I hope you guys enjoyed this one. Anthony Pompliano runs POMP Investments. All views of him and the guests on his podcast are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of POMP Investments. You should not treat any opinion expressed by POMP or his guests as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy.

but only as an expression of his personal opinion. This podcast is for informational purposes only. All right, guys, bang, bang. I've got Richard here with me. I'm super excited about this. I feel like we could sit here for 17 hours and talk about all kinds of different shit. Let's start with Black Rifle Coffee,

which is probably what people, the brand that they're going to know the most about. Sure. Who was the genius who was like, we should take all these military terminologies and put them on coffee and then sell them to millions of Americans? How did this all come up?

And how do you think about the business today? Wow. Yeah, it's been a long time coming. Evan definitely gets the credit for that, for sure. To their credit, we all had kind of lines in the water at the time. This is 2014. Evan was standing up businesses between Twistrate and Readyman. And JT and Matt had their clothing company.

They have a whiskey company. I was launching a digital media company with Verizon and her as part of their Go90 initiative. and evan was like hey i want to roast some coffee for you guys at art 15 they did a trial run and it did exceptionally well and he's like we need to figure this out and you know we all came together and black rifle coffee was born again there was a lot of lines in the water but that was the thing that took off and we wholeheartedly embraced it and it's been a uh a wild ride how big is the business is this like a it's not a five million dollar a year revenue business it's like a hundred million dollar but like what can you tell me ballpark wise like how fucking big is this yeah

So it's funny, I have a lot of experience with three letter agencies or government organizations and the SEC is not one of them. So I'm very reluctant to talk about things that could be construed as insider information. But there is publicly available information because we are a publicly traded company now. So you can find all that stuff online. Okay, that's fair. uh and so when you think about uh why this brand specifically was so uh uh successful like it's coffee right it's good coffee but it's still coffee is it marketing is it branding is it something about the product is it uh you guys like like why did it work when there's so many

different coffee brands out there and this one stands out in the minds of so many people sure yeah it's one of those things a lot of people can speculate in hindsight it's 2020 but it's a lifestyle brand, um, for sure. Like people, you know, I made the joke, uh, back in the day that chicks wanted to, uh, bang Matt best and guys wanted to be him. Uh, and it's, it's true. Like with the content that we do, it's fun, it's exciting, it's engaging, but it also comes with meaning and purpose. And I think when we, we focused our narrative on hiring 10,000 veterans and helping veterans transition from military service into civilian life and giving them a path to do so, mentoring them.

It really became a value proposition that resonated with the average American. They're like, how can we support this? I want to be a part of this thing. And over the last few years, it's been like rocket fuel, just igniting. Yeah. When you think about your specific background, obviously you've got the digital media component of this. Maybe explain a little bit of kind of your history, getting into the digital media space,

and then how that helped build, you know, which I cheated, right? It's like a $5 billion business. So like, I got a lot of friends who have heard of Black Rifle Coffee, and I think they think it's like, you know, two guys, a couple of cameras, and they're like fooling around down in Texas or something, right? They're like, ah, whatever. And they're like, ah, that's a really, really big business. Yeah, so I have such a complicated background.

I think the best way to do it is to just start from the beginning. Let's do it. And so what I tell people is a story about my very first vehicle, a 67 Mustang that my grandma and my mom got me. And they're like, oh, wow, that's awesome. That's cool. In the 90s, it was a 30-year-old car. So it wasn't the sexiest thing.

And it didn't even run. And, you know, I was like 12 or 13. And my mom and my grandma was like, hey, here's a Haynes manual. It doesn't run. Figure it out. So when you turn 15, you get your driver's license because, you know, I qualified for hardship and everything growing up on a farm in Georgia. I could drive at 15. So I took the Haynes manual, worked the summers, and figured out how to fix this vehicle.

And that's kind of been my ethos, you know, not having money growing up. You know, you figure things out because you can't afford to hire people to do it for you, and you just get it done. and so keeping that in mind i moved to los angeles to pursue a career in the entertainment industry i went to the groundlings i did stand-up comedy for a while were you funny i absolutely not no it's funny i would like to think i was yeah you know i definitely had my shtick and it was what was like some of the uh the better ones oh i don't even want to go there But I will say this, if anybody wants to watch kind of the progression, uh, I was, I was frustrated with the traditional way of doing things. Doing standup was great. I loved it. I would, I remember I had like this walk of shame that I do. I would, I park over by, um, I forget like Sepulveda or whatever and walk all the way up to the hill, uh, to the store because I couldn't afford parking. and uh you know one of my buddies was talking about different things i was like i just want

to vent creatively i just there were these things on the internet at the time reebok did the terry tate office linebacker commercials that were a little bit risky and everything and i that's what i wanted to do i wanted to vent creatively i wanted to make funny stuff for the sake of being funny, not necessarily to get rich doing it. And YouTube came out in 2006. Um, and so I immediately started pursuing digital media opportunities. Uh, I got cast in a top 100 YouTube channel called totally sketch. And if anybody wants to see some of that stuff, you can see some cringeworthy funny Richard Ryan stuff from back of the day. But, uh, yeah, so I was like, you know, forget this, this traditional way of doing things, digital media, I want to go straight to consumer

and keeping that in mind the same time the iPhone came out. Yeah. It's very forward thinking. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. 2007. And then again, I was frustrated as a consumer with so many different things. And so I taught myself how to code, how to program. And, uh, I was living on a porch in downtown Los Angeles in MacArthur park. And I actually loved the community. A lot of people talk about the rampart division how rough it was it's like the sense of community was fantastic but yeah living on a porch i taught myself how to program i started my own software company sounds super bougie but it's just a legal entity that i was creating mobile apps to be disruptive that was the key so uh some of the first mobile apps that i created were one the entertainment industry

like for those who know there were casting notices three big uh companies out there now casting, LA casting, and actors access. And so what I did was I created a mobile app that aggregated all of them. So you'd use your login credentials and it would populate or query the different casting notices that would be of interest to you. Now it was a big deal because the kind of legacy system was you either had to call on the phone and hear, listen to all the different casting notices, or you had to scrub through these like 30 page sheets of very inefficient ways of trying to find stuff, which you could overlook fairly easy. And I remember one day, I got a call from one of the owners of one of those companies. And he was like, you're a hard

man to get a hold of. And I was like, well, who is this? Like, this is so and so. I have this company and you have this app, you need to take it down. I was like, well, I'm just increasing your sales, right? Because people still have to have your service that I'm just using their login credentials to make your site better and he's like i don't care i'm gonna sue you until you don't have any more money i was like well i don't have any money so good luck okay i'll take it down you know again being broke i was like i don't want to get sued i can't deal with this but that was kind of my first taste of being disruptive and the parallels of youtube social media and mobile app technology. I see a lot of that right now in the world of blockchain and crypto.

But, you know, moving forward, creating those mobile apps, I created some of the first YouTube apps. So YouTube was native to iOS whenever you got your iPhone back in the day. A lot of people don't even remember that. So being in the group of people who were big content creators, they had no clear monetization strategy. So what I did, again, trying to be forward thinking, I tied their AdSense to their mobile app so that we could serve ads onto that. And so everybody had their own app. I don't know if you remember that back in the day. It was like, Ooh, download my app, download my app. And it was like, there was a lot of things like the get rich quick app or I'm rich app. That's what it was. Um, people would try to charge, you know, five bucks for their app,

which was really nothing. But that led to a really good relationship with YouTube and Google. Um, where I was on a Venn diagram, I was kind of a unicorn in a lot of ways because here I was as content creator and marketer, but also a developer. So I kind of hit that sweet spot where I could speak from all perspectives. So I was fortunate enough to be brought on, you know, to help consult on different issues or features. And to this day, I still get emails. I think a lot of people do too. But that led to good relationships with studios, ad agencies, game developers and everything. because again hindsight's 2020 you look at today what our standard practices were extremely revolutionary back then i give you examples like tying a tracking pixel to your your website or

at least remarketing because google owns youtube remarketing to your your youtube channel i have three million followers on my personal youtube channel or subscribers remarketing to them maybe standard practices now back then nobody even knew it the same thing with facebook facebook i remember where you could get one cent per targeted impression or even cpms were dirt cheap now it's like astronomical because everybody's doing it but i would go in and i would consult for different studios ad agencies and help them develop creative marketing strategies from a content creator perspective but also help them calculate calculate their return on investment based off of impressions and everything.

And it was interesting as an observation because back then everybody looked down upon digital. It was like, oh, we like using these Hollywood actors. We'll have this trash budget over here. It's just disposable that we'll incorporate it, but you do what you want, which was awesome for me because it didn't come with any strings attached.

That was money they were flushing anyways because they didn't care about it. Now you have a lot of brands or agencies that micromanage their campaigns And, you know, you have all these middlemen that look for attribution models and they're like, oh, just trust me. You know, this is, you know, they're in the funnel or whatever it is. But I guess I'm getting distracted here. But the relationship with YouTube, Google and all the agencies led to a relationship with Verizon and Hearst when they launched their Go90 initiative.

They wanted to do a digital media brand that targeted the Heartland Millennial Mail daily editorial news based off of my then. youtube channel called rated r they wanted to launch one called rated red um and so from there i was like okay let's do it i'm gonna move from los angeles to uh nashville we launched this digital media brand there's about 40 or 50 people in the studio and at the same time we were starting black rifle coffee everyone was kind of doing their thing um and here we are today it was just when you think of that studio how much content were you guys cranking out seven seven to ten pieces so it was a really ambitious project on verizon and hearst's you know like they they did seven to ten daily editorial news pieces but so the way i like to

grow brands like black rifle is a great example of that where we just took the same strategy that i was using on rated red inspiration education and entertainment you lean on those different things to either bring in a larger uh a larger demographic and then you focus it with inspiration and then you seo with education and so give me an example like what's one of the most popular sure so um i guess with black rifle coffee is a an easier example so education you know i had to tell the guys that hey look let's do a bunch of coffee tutorials like drinks how to make it how to think about all of those things lay the foundation for seo because once the big sensational controversial whatever videos that get millions of views come in this is going to help us uh rank

hire and search for all these videos because the channel is going to inherently get more more traffic that way because youtube's going to say hey look you like this you might like this and then it'll sample audiences with uh the larger demographics and everything so we have the gear and drink videos but then the inspiration component letting people know that you know hey we're not just these guys shooting stuff and blowing stuff up we actually have a purpose so created a series of videos um called it's who we are and black rifle coffee presents which is focused on veterans and telling their stories and inside of our company a great example of the inspiration component would be wally who you know he was it will i'm going to do it no justice talking off

the cuff here like i recommend everybody go watch his story but it's it's it's inspirational to see an Afghan come here to the States that was dealing with racism and all the hardships and everything and, and the immigration process and him coming in to just being a rock star in our company. Like the dude is, he is a badass. He is, he is, he's got an amazing heart. He's an extremely hard worker. We're so grateful to have him in our company, but there's so many stories like that. And so focusing on that inspiration component that solidifies our mission statement with the customer so that they understand that we're not just dudes going out here, jumping out of helicopters and blowing stuff up. But then there is that piece, there is the component of blowing

up limousines and doing really fun, wild, crazy stuff that people know, Hey, look, we're not this crazy corporate organization. We are a bunch of people that you could see just walking down the street, but we're having a good time doing it. Like you don't have to have a, uh, extremely boring buttoned up, you know, like there, there can be a level of chaos. There can be a level of, of fun and excitement to the organization. So those three, three components work really well together. Same thing with Verizon and Hearst. We had our inspiration. We had our education. The education was more the daily editorial news, what's going on in the world, which had a very short shelf life. Whereas Black Rifle Coffee's education component SEOs really well. So it's

going to have a long tail far as the algorithm's concerned. And then we did documentaries at verizon or rated red and you know some of those documents documentaries were fantastic uh we were also at one point in time where like people were just laughing because we were we were licensing any and everything that could be good for like they were throwing money at so many different things uh and unfortunately you know they they killed the go 90 initiative and under that pretty much all of the brands like rated red with the exception of complex is still going um but you They just said, hey, look, we're going to walk away from creating digital media. We're going to focus on the hardware component and providing, selling your blah, blah, blah, blah.

At what point do you start to learn about Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies? And you have this foresight from a digital media perspective. Bitcoin is related because lots of content being created around it, but also completely different. And most people wouldn't think of those two things as kind of intersecting. So at what point does that become interesting? It's so funny. I get cold chills cause I'm like so excited right now. Like, like it's funny cause like, dude, this is so crazy. Uh, I get really excited about these things because it, again, it reminds me of the world of blockchain, Bitcoin, crypto, whatever,

you know, whatever your niche is. It reminds me of social media and, um, the iPhone early on, because right now, and I gotta say, thank you for having me here because I'm a huge fan. Like, you're very articulate very well spoken like you're a great ambassador like i'm seeing you on traditional media and everything else and it's like the frustrations for me is seeing a lot of people exploiting something new early on and i've seen the exploitation early on of of social media and and crypto or mobile apps and i'll give you a couple examples mobile apps it was the i'm rich app and everybody had a flashlight app right what i was focusing on is providing value to the consumer because I was that consumer.

You know, there was a lot of cash grabs early on, but I wanted inventory control management via mobile device accessing a website. You know, looking back, hindsight's 20-20 now. Yeah, you can look at Best Buy and see the inventory of something. But 15 years ago, that was crazy forward thinking. Same thing with social media.

A lot of people will claim to be influencers because they have a large social media following. That's not very accurate in my opinion because though you may get views, you don't necessarily have the ability to drive a conversion or influence the behavior of the people consuming your content. Matt, one of my business partners is a great example of that. Like guys want to be him, chicks want to bang him, right? And so he can drive that influence, drive the conversion and sales. Whereas, you know, early on there were some fitness channels on

youtube that some fitness channels that got a lot of views but they would never sell anything which is kind of funny now looking at social media where instagram is a lot of a lot of that and now i'm looking at the world of you know crypto and everything i guess 2013 funny story i was on reddit and just looking around at like these different forums and stuff and i i started mining and uh i think i was using like i said diablo miner and yeah because i i was i was mining off of the i wasn't gpu mining um yeah it was cpu mining anyways uh i could give you a photo i don't know if you edit these videos or not but i just did it for fun i did it for fun in 2013 and you know, like 2017 Bitcoin kind of started going up, woke up. Yeah. And I was at Verizon at the

time. And, and some of the guys were like, Hey, what about this Bitcoin thing? And blah, blah, blah, blah. And I had this stack of hard drives because I was in media. I never threw anything away. I legit had over a hundred hard drives and I had no idea where my wallets were. No clue. And like there's so many stories where people talk about that and everything. I was legit one of those people. And fortunately at the time I was very methodical about my security protocols, how I stored and remembered things. And I was like,

there's no way I'm going to figure out where these wallets are. And we, Black Rifle had this company that was organizing a lot of our archive footage and was like, Hey, can I hire you guys to kind of archive all of my stuff, kind of sort things by dates and stuff like that. Didn't tell them what I was doing,

but I knew approximately what year I could go through. Cause I had footage from like 2009 when I was making YouTube videos and everything. So they did and I was able to query and actually find it and everything, which was fantastic. You know, it was life changing in a lot of ways, but you know,

now I'm looking at the world of, of, of, of crypto and from a brand standpoint and a consumer standpoint, it's extremely exciting because, you know, I see the exact same thing with the writing on the walls. There's a lot of people who are claiming to be experts because they're loud or they're controversial or they're making sensational statements and stuff like that, but they're not actually providing value to the viewer or the consumer. And that's, that's, what's getting me excited because I'll give you

a couple of examples. So what I see in the world, like NFTs are great example. You hear a lot of people talking about NFTs and the average person sees it as scarce digital art. And when somebody asks me, well, what's an NFT? Well, it's proof. Well, what does that mean? Well, it can be proof of work. It can be proof of stake. It can be proof of ownership. It can be proof of brand loyalty. And that's a huge one for me because I can, I can figure out, you know, take Black Rifle as an example, we have a coffee club and we have all these different value propositions that makes it more advantageous for somebody to be in our coffee club subscription program than to just go out and buy it at some random place. Well, if I can create or tokenize that process for specific

people, I can have a larger spend for keeping them in the club because you have attribution models you have, all these people that you pay that say, oh, well, you know, we're trying to keep people from churning out. And you have to trust us here because they're on this website and they're here, they're here, they're here. And there's no real clear proof that they're in your funnel, but you got to trust us on it. So, well, if I can tokenize this in a way, I know where they're going to churn. I can spend, instead of giving that money to a third party, I can give it directly to the consumer. You can think of it as frequent flyer miles or whatever, But once everything gets on a few chains, it's going to be way easier for brands to reward brand loyalty in a way that I think the consumer is really, really going to benefit from in either experiences, tangible things, or virtual things.

And that's what I've been focused on building in the last couple of years. But, you know, you have so many challenges with what chain to build on. um where do i hire people that's been a huge i know you have what is it uh pomp crypto jobs yeah um and trying to find a solidity dev right now is like trying to find an iphone app developer in 2007 yes the the demand is far outpacing the supply and that's what i've been struggling trying to recruit for these these different positions or even find companies that could supplement in on that. But the writing is on the walls. You know, there's a lot of get rich quick kind of schemes out there and everything. But I think the consumer and the brands are going to create a relationship

that is going to be way more meaningful. And that's going to be ultimately beneficial for brands and lifestyle brands like Black Rifle Coffee, because we're purpose driven. You know, we're not just profit driven or, you know, some brands are just like identity driven, whatever it is for us, you know, it's about the consumers like NFTs. Like I get so excited because a lot of people aren't necessarily thinking, they're thinking about the scarce digital art component, which is fun. It's exciting. And hopefully that brings some masses in, not to the point where they get burned, like rug pulls and stuff like that. But like they start seeing things like, Hey, you know, I want to mint tokens to people who physically

go out and make a difference in their communities. Like if we have a nonprofit, uh, that we're going to work with or the national park system, we're going to go pick up trash. We're going to be able to mint the tokenization and proof that they were there, that they helped and be able to reward them in the system. And there are so many different use cases and I'm not, I, you know, some people would be worried about front running themselves. I don't care at this point. Like, like I am just so much opportunity. There's so much opportunity and I am just looking to fund as much as I can in that space to be as disruptive and and a key component of that is uh open source too because i think it's going to be a race to the bottom uh right now there's a lot of

middlemen out there looking to get their royalties and blah blah blah blah blah and um it's just going to take a little bit of time but uh you know right now i'm standing up an organization that will be a suite of tools hopefully that brands creators and and everyone could utilize without having to use all those third parties that are looking to be middlemen and take their their cuts on it because right now that's profitable for them but i think down the road it's just going to be a race to the bottom so i'm looking at a picture uh it looks like you went uh dead air jump and you had your board ape along with you. What has been the experience of joining the ape club there? Yeah. So it's funny. I've kind of been following the project since its inception

and I've been active in the community. And I don't want to say paying my dues, but I don't, I'm not looking to exploit the NFT for social clout. What I care about is the community and the people in it so i've been active even before i had the ape i reached out to a couple of guys last summer because they were very specific like uh captain trippy or whatever i was like hey man i really want this ape how much would you sell it to me for and he was like uh my cost basis on ethereum was super cheap so uh but he was like ah i'm not gonna sell it and i like i i was i have all these multi-sig wallets. And I was trying to, cause he had it listed for a 50 ETH and I was trying to get it. And it was literally an hour after going through all the multi-sig process

that I was able to fund a wallet to try to buy it. And he took it down. And, uh, it's been great though. Like I talked to a couple of guys like, uh, Carson, who is, uh, an air force vet. I know it's a fascinating observation for me because I see, I see the guys in the community or the people in the community. And that's really what gives a project value. There's the devs, their roadmap and the community. And there's a lot of empty projects out there that the, the devs have a roadmap, but they're not really proven on it. I think the board, a, uh, project or Yuga in particular have done an exceptional job on their execution component. Um, but again, I was talking with Carson, I was noticing the social observation where some guys, their identity had become their PFP or their NFT.

And some people choose not to, let's say, create a better real world life by the financial gain that they could have from selling their PFP. pfp because the identity is so meaningful to them the community is so meaningful and it's it's it's a really interesting social observation and that's why i'm like okay how can we do this in a way that we can provide the community component give people the purpose but not have to worry about the financial gain maybe maybe the financial gain is a is a component that people like I completely understand that, but it's just, it's just a fascinating observation. And he sold, I think he sold a M3 or a, um, a mega serum. And, uh, he was like, I, I, I got kids, man. I can't not improve their quality of life. And I totally understand that. But the fact that there was a

dilemma in the first place puts again, the writing on the walls that there's something big coming and, and you're not going to be able to stop it. Like you can plan for it. And again, right now, I'm never going to be the guy who says this is where it's going, what it's doing, because it'd be the same thing. And my opinion is in 1996 saying in 2020, people are going to be looking up definitions on the internet. They're not going to be carrying a dictionary around, or, you know, if you want to go anywhere in 2020, people are going to be printing directions off of a website called MapQuest, and they're going to be going to WebCrawler and all these. It's like, yeah, you're kind of right, but you can't really see where the innovation is going

to go. So I try not to be arrogant about predictions. I try to be as brutally honest as possible as what I want as a consumer and help build towards that. And ultimately, if you feel like you're exploiting, like, you know, some people, again, I go back to the royalties as an example and everything it's like what would you want personally as a consumer and if you can build that for people there is so many value propositions out there right now that are not being catered to that you know the next amazon's coming yeah it's pretty incredible when you start to think of it from that perspective yeah what do you think the things that the bitcoin and crypto community are doing well and the things that they need to improve on like if you had to uh be both a bull

and kind of a bear to some degree? That's a great question. And I don't want to throw anybody under the bus. I think education is a huge component to anything, right? So, you know, I appreciate people like you who are clearly articulate when going on mainstream media where there are some sensationalists and I bust your balls about the Bitcoin

is closer to zero than it is to 100,000. But that's great. Listen, I never said I was Einstein, but when it crosses over 50 and I could tweet that, people would get so mad. I'm like, that's true, though. It's a fact. But there's an education component that I think that the average person isn't willing to necessarily spend the amount of time that's required to understand Ethereum or what a hard fork versus a soft fork is. And maybe that comes in time. Maybe it doesn't.

But I think when people get on TV, be it, I don't know, business shows or big YouTube or Twitter accounts, I've followed a bunch of YouTube channels for the longest period of time. And I found out that they were just kind of wrecking my emotions. And I was getting churned out in the volatility in the market and everything. And I have to believe that that's happening to a lot of people. they're getting burned um you know in the volatility they they they go in arguably way heavier than they should and i think again there's just an education component i think for the the people in the the community like yourself or whoever it's i don't want to say you want to disown certain people but

the education hopefully could maybe be more helpful and so influencers are a good example you know early on 2010 a lot of influencers who got views and stuff and now you got people like mr beast who are absolutely crushing it and very strategic very calculated but also a meaningful way um and i think over time it's going to help but the the to accelerate adoption we need people to understand certain things like what's the difference between bitcoin and ethereum and why is that important there's no necessarily right or wrong answer because a lot of times things can be distilled down to an ideology or whatever it is um you know people see bitcoin another good example as a nefarious way to to transfer money i i i promise you all the three-letter government

organizations love Bitcoin. It's a public ledger. It's permissionless, but it's public ledger. So from transaction one to the most recent, they can follow the money. And that becomes a challenge too, because people think, well, what's going on in the world with Ukraine and everything and some of the challenges I've had recently, whereas like with some exchanges, it's like, well, what happens if you get blacklisted, your wallet gets blacklisted and they say, well, okay, well, you can move it to another wallet. But what if they come up with a system that says,

hey, look, let's just blacklist any wallet that interacts with this wallet. So there's different things that we should be having conversations about. But I think there's a lot of misinformation out there that be it financial institutions that didn't want the adoption of Bitcoin or or whoever there's just a gross miseducation early on as to what the value proposition of

each chain is and yeah and why it's important and you know like bitcoin's not a nefarious thing like we everyone loves it you know for the most part but what are you most excited about looking for let's go over the next 10 years like are there milestones are there things that you're nfts okay why nfts um because again it's it's it's that the the non-fungible component of the the tokenization of brand loyalty for me specifically because i don't see like everything that i'm looking at right now isn't necessarily an investment i'm like i'm looking at how can we incentivize change in a meaningful way in our world between and i know this sounds super cheesy but between brands and consumers to have a more positive impact on our communities, our countries and

the world as a whole. And I think that that's in part where Web2 failed, right? Because I heard someone speaking at some point in time, I forget where it was, but they were like, if there was a payment mechanism implemented in the HTTP protocol early on, we'd probably be in a really, really different world right now. You think about the incentive structure in Web2 is almost all ad based. Same thing with television too. It's advertising based. So he's most sensational, gets the most views, gets the most ad revenue. So it's like we've kind of the polarization in America and people and communities and everything else. You know, again, I don't want to be too idealistic, but hopefully Web3 can fix that by having a more direct relationship between

the creators, the brands and the people and the consumers. And when the people say, Hey, look, I'm tired of arguing with everybody. Like I want to have a more meaningful relationship with my family, my community, my country and the world. We start focusing on getting rid of all this noise and misinformation. I know I sound idealistic, but I wholeheartedly believe that, you know, the more transparent with open protocols or whatever, I think this web three thing is really going to revolutionize how we interact as humans with each other in a way that's just going to completely transform the landscape. Um, and it, and it starts with monkey pictures. No, but like legit, like, like, like I started, so I I'm on the flight out here. I emailed or I

texted one of my friends, Mike Ritland, who is a former Navy SEAL. He has, um, um, uh, a handful of businesses from, um, working dogs that he, um, procures and trains for either executive protection or, or to his dog food treat company to his nonprofit. Um, I believe it's the warrior dog foundation and they, they bring in military working dogs that can't be, or might not have homes right they bit people or whatever he's got like a hundred dogs in his kennel and i was i was thinking about i was like like i can tokenize um support for each one of these dogs and have a meaningful relationship with the token holders in a way that is is going to be attributable and if at any point they turn or whatever we can burn this or do this and and just the ability to

do that in a very, very efficient way without having to build websites and involve middlemen in doing it either with like a layer two solution, be it Polygon or Avalanche or whatever. The cost will be minimal, not necessarily worried about security in that sense, but we're going to be able to solidify a relationship between real world impact, meaningful impact on the life of an animal that served its country, right? That has no home, but still needs support in some way directly to that consumer. And I'm like, that's fucking awesome. Because, you know, traditionally you'd have to, you'd have to do snail mail mailers and you maybe get a postcard and okay, I'm supporting this cause, but like through blockchain technology, you, you'll be able to have a, a

transparent attributable trail and the costs are going to be minimal um so that's one use case and again i'm front running myself on a lot of things here but uh it's exciting it's like it's extremely exciting um i feel like my vocabulary lacks me on that but it's it's it's the thing that wakes me up in the morning where i'm willing to throw as much money like again like i'm standing up a company i don't even have a name for it but i i know like it's like a g suite of tools or an adobe suite of tools that i'm gonna eventually just have open source take it or leave it um but for creators brands people to plug and play in a sense that you know you don't have to worry about middlemen just always cutting in for royalties i think there's a lot of people out

there right now that again i don't want to throw people under the bus but it's frustrating when i see people going on GitHub or open Zeppelin and then just copy and pasting code and charging people astronomical amounts of money. And all they're doing is, is changing variables. I did that. I'm that guy. Like I remember when doom came out way back in the day, one of my first things that I did as like a programmer hacker or whatever, uh, that I was so proud of. I don't even remember how old I was. I was under 10 for sure. But all I did was I went into doom and it was MS Paint at the time and I created a bunch of really shoddy looking mobster images and guns and and I just changed all the demons and aliens to gangsters and so I played Doom as this this

really crappy mobster game with Tommy guns and everything and so I get it I totally understand it but like to move the ball forward as quick as possible I'm I'm really really excited to be in the space yeah uh before we finish up i want to play a little game where i just throw out topics or questions and you just fire off whatever you think of first i'm so cerebral man i'm like probably the worst about that stuff yeah let's do it favorite black rifle coffee uh um roast roast yeah silencer smooth okay uh person you most respect in the world oh jesus not necessarily jesus but i have no i have no idea that's such a tough one respect wow wow i i i don't know okay person who you think is the biggest idiot in the public sphere when talking

oh man no way no i i like there is there is someone i would say but um i'm not gonna start drama. No way. No way. Single best video you've seen on the internet. Respect. I will say Paul Newman, Paul Newman. Okay. That's a great answer. Uh, single best video you've seen on the internet in last year. Man, again, I have to say the first thing that comes to mind, this, this isn't going to be the best. I'm going to walk out of here and I'm going to do another one. I'm going to think of something exponentially better. We had, uh, one of the guys who works for our company, Dan horgan shout out to dan horgan was at a spartan race in san antonio and goes to jump a a ditch of water and completely fail and it is getting memed all over the place on instagram and tiktok

it's going viral and it is cringeworthy watching him fail like he like does the front splits and just cases hard on it i hope you're doing okay buddy that is amazing what's your favorite twitter account to follow oh i'm trying to think what's what's it's the first thing that comes to mind um man i don't know like again the first person i would i would say would like because i'm so each social media platform is kind of a different value proposition for me and it would probably be uh you were into that crypto first i i kid you not because twitter is more of it so people hate like they'll see me on youtube yep and they'll be like oh the guy with guns and

explosives awesome i'll follow him on twitter all he talks about fucking crypto and it's like talk about guns or the things that like i care about so it's like every different social media platform is a different thing that i focus on because it's what interests me on there and it's horrible so what is your favorite youtube channel oh man i don't know i can tell like so i kid you not so like so i'm subscribed to you phil defranco into the cryptoverse and this art that's funny because those i would say are the twitter accounts that i'm interacting with all the crypto yeah information yeah yeah and so so ben uh is is an interesting one from a data analytics perspective because i you know i i being that person myself i really value that and having been burned over

the years with the clickbait of youtube channels and everything i really appreciate his channel and his very calculated approach to traditional markets and you know the crypto markets and everything. Um, but I find myself like on space channels and all these different weird ones. Yeah. Like I watched this video the other day at like 10 o'clock at night and I was like, how am I here? And it's this, this, this dude in Europe doing beehives with clear plastic jars and stuff. And like, what, what am I doing? Like, how am I being served up these things? But you get to pick one place to go on vacation. The only vacation you'll have the rest of your life. Where do you go? Oh, wow. Wow. These are so challenging.

One vacation. It's weird because, so there's a book that I really enjoy called Algorithms to Live By. Yeah, it's a great book. And it goes into detail about the exploration and exploitation parts of your life. And I feel like I've gotten to the point of exploitation. and I'm kind of out of that exploration where it's like there's things that I know that I like and and one of the greatest experiences I've ever had was being able to go to this remote island off of Seychelles and the food was absolutely fantastic it was the people were

amazing it's like I would love to say hey I want to go here I want to go there like but it would probably be Alphonse off of Seychelles or Kodiak Island off of Alaska, because those were two of the greatest experiences I've ever had. I'm very reluctant to experience new things. Now I'm like in that exploitation part of my life. All right. Uh, you get kidnapped, you get to a phone, you get one phone call, somebody to come help you. Who do you call? Uh, one of my partners. All right. which one i don't know that'd be a tough one do you do you have their cell phones memorized that's the other thing i am i don't know anybody's number i don't know any i barely know my number like yeah i feel like i feel like evan's so well connected in so many different ways um

between yeah it would probably be evan he'd be like hey sorry richard i can't help you today Like, can you call me back? I'm busy right now. I'm running a fucking company here, man. Like, quit calling me with your problems. Like, hey, hey, hey. Who's the one person you could see becoming the president of the United States that would blow people's minds?

Oh, man. You legitimately think they would have a shot? That I would want or I could see? That you could see. I don't know. Really? Like, again, I'm at that point. where assumptions and speculation like i know we're just gonna get

burned in that sense where it's like who's who's all trump coming and and you know 2016 i would say like what i like since i would look that's true uh objectively like i would love to see somebody i feel like rogan said it best where it's like anybody who we'd want in that position probably doesn't want to be there and and you know between him and patrick david and everyone there's there's really great people who are in positions of power but they're still able to be objective rational thinkers to which might some people might argue but i think that they don't get too passionately ignorant about certain things and their willingness to change their opinions is it's really profound especially this day and age i'd love to see those guys

entertain those things i know rogan was saying that he you know didn't want to have politicians on anymore and everything else but you know i man i i wish i i have no idea at this point i i think the rock's gonna be president see i was gonna say the rock i was gonna say the rock but then i start thinking of idiocracy or is that where was it terry cruz that was the president you gotta remember that uh the rock is uh i think he's intelligent i think that he actually is pretty cent centrist uh and it feels to me like uh a lot of the bullshit would just get like removed right like

he seems to me like kind of like a no bullshit guy yeah uh which is probably like a pretty good thing you need somebody who's like not into the bureaucracy you need somebody who uh appears to keep an open mind you need somebody who is uh intelligent and i also just like the idea of like the rock being the united states representative to meet all these like world leaders like little you know a little short five seven foot people and him being like hello we're gonna negotiate now that's funny because you know i i would love i'd love to see somebody like him who's who perceptionally like has you know been a a really compassionate person and things that they do but also well spoken but you know i think the change can't necessarily come from just one person it's

going to have to come from the ground up. And, you know, I've said this for a long time. I even tried doing a podcast, you know, 2014, 2015. I was like, how do we do that? Was you first have to play an active role in your family and then play an active role in your community. And then maybe on a state level and figure out things, um, on a federal level. Um, because I think that's where it starts right from the ground up. And again, very idealistic. It's a lot of work and everything. But, you know, I think that's, that's one of the bigger problems that we have as a country or as a world. You know, I joke, I say that whenever I was in Los Angeles, I was the gun-toting redneck. And when I was in Nashville, I was the gay, loving liberal, because people

inherently gravitate towards the things that they disagree with you on, but that's not necessarily the case. We're probably like, I think the shade of gray in America is, is way bigger than what it gets credit for. But again, the polarization gets all the views and it gets all the ad revenue, which is extremely unfortunate, and especially with a two party system, where, you know, you're a registered Democrat, or you're a registered Republican, you're probably going to be on a polarized perspective of a lot of issues. But it's like, that's why I've never really embraced one party, maybe libertarian short of anarchy, you know, believe in the individual's right to choose and a lot of different levels, as long as it's not, you know, impacting somebody

else. And again, like COVID or, you know, abortion, there's all these different things that people aren't necessarily arguing that shade of gray. They're arguing the polarizing thing. So it's like, you know, if we can, we can come together on that in some way, shape or form where information is, is laid out in a way that we can have open conversations. I don't think it's ever going to happen with just one president, but, and again, that's me going on a rant. I apologize for that. I think, I think you're dead on that. That's the, that's the key to it. Where can we send people to find you on the internet or uh or learn more about uh the various projects you've done yeah i'm the worst when it comes to social media because i'm i'm usually so focused on

on everyone else um and and creating systems that like instagram is a good example i post or i had posted like once or twice a year twitter is mostly about crypto my youtube channel is mostly about firearms so that's full mag uh but also black rifle coffee like you're not gonna see me on a lot of that stuff, but no, I'm working, uh, behind the scenes on a lot of different solutions there. Um, you know, at Richard Ryan on most different things. So the, um, uh, the thing that I appreciate is, uh, you just gotta do it for very long periods of time. Everyone gets all excited. Like, Oh, look, I got some followers of first week, first month, whatever. It's like, listen, you've been doing this for over a decade, right? It's very cliche.

It's very cliche for people to say you have to do it because you love it. Um, but the truth of the matter is, you're not going to make any money, you're going to get burned out. And what's going to give you a competitive edge is being excited about the things you're creating. If you're doing it solely for monetary gain, you'll get burned out, you won't feel as rewarded. For me, I was, you know, jumping out airplanes or doing things that I was actually genuinely excited about. If it got views, great, but that wasn't necessarily the thing that was driving me in it. And I think there's be it business or whatever, it's not to say that everything in life is going to be something that you're going to enjoy. You do have to put in hard work and everything,

you know, go on another rant there. That's one of the frustrations that a lot of people, you know, will have once they do find some type of success or is like, you know, I sacrificed my twenties and my most of my thirties to get where I'm at now. And a lot of people don't see that. It's like when you're going out partying or whatever, it's not to say you can't do that, But, you know, I was, you know, and woe is me, woe is me. I'm not complaining in any shape or form. But, you know, I was, you know, I moved out to Los Angeles and was homeless, you know, like, you know, sleeping on a porch, sleeping in my truck, you know, one, you know, broken alternator away from, you know, not having a vehicle to get from A to B. But this thing consumed me, like these things consumed me.

And, you know, it came at the sacrifice of probably relationships, be it personal or professional or whatever. And, you know, now I'm at that exploitation part. And it's like there is life is a yin and yang in a lot of ways where it's like you have to find some type of balance. Ultimately, otherwise, it's not going to be healthy. And I feel like I'm trying to find that now while still being excited and still being as obsessive. And, you know, we'll see. We'll see where the road leads. I think you're doing a great job so far.

Thanks so much for coming in and we'll definitely have to do this again in the future. I appreciate it. It's extremely a lot of fun. Like it's an honor being here. I never thought I would be. And thanks for responding to me on Twitter for me. Thanks so much for listening to today's episode.

I really hope you guys enjoyed this one. Make sure you're subscribed on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast player. And if you're looking to try to transition to get a new job in the Bitcoin or crypto industry, we've got you covered. Head over to palmscryptocourse.com. we've developed a curriculum with the top teams across the industry it's a three-week intensive

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