The Startup Ideas Podcast - The Wolf of All Streets, Scott Melker

Episode Date: January 27, 2022

Scott Melker isn't your average crypto expert. Then again, crypto isn't exactly your average area of investing, which might explain his incredible knowledge and success in the space. On this episode, we invited The Wolf of All Streets onto Where It Happens to help predict the future of crypto, learn new investing approaches, and find out why diversification might be one of the most misunderstood pieces of investing advice. If you ever thought that maybe your window of opportunity has passed, Scott shows it's never too late to make a big splash.Want more community? Learn more here: http://trwih.comSPECIAL THANKS TO OUR SPONSORBEAMbeamorganics.com/roomThis episode is brought to you by Beam. We can’t get enough of their Dream Powder. We both personally take this before bed a few times a week and wake up refreshed in the morning. Their nano-CBD helps improve your body’s ability to absorb CBD, making their product the perfect supplement before you go to bed. And now Beam is offering $20 off any order of $75 or more with the code ROOM at beamorganics.com/room

All right, we just got done with a very interesting conversation with Scott Melker, otherwise known as the Wolf of All Streets on Twitter. We went into a lot of stuff. What did you have, Greg? The wolf is a busy, it's a busy job to be a wolf. The guy works harder than anyone else. And listen, if you want to, if you want to outperform, you do have to put in the hours. And he's got like a podcast.

He's got emails. Tweeting all the time takes a lot of work. Yeah, we went into the creator economy in depth, super interesting, and just the trajectory of it, and just the last few years for him and the dark times he went through to get to where he is today. It was a really interesting conversation. You guys are going to love it. Let's dive right in. 2022 is a great time to take control of your sleep. I used to sleep like crap, but not anymore.

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Just go to beamorganics.com slash room and use code room at checkout. Again, that's B-E-A-Morganics.com slash room, and use code. room at checkout to get $20 off any order of 75 or more. I need to, I feel like, kick this off by telling the story of why we are all sitting here because it is very, I don't know, I think it's very telling of like the era that we live in. And also it's a really interesting story about you and about your personality and the type of person you are. And it's really, for me, at least personally, the reason why I'm sitting here in the first place. And so Scott and I met.

And I don't think you know this story either, so it's a good one. Back in, like, May of 2020, COVID had hit. World was on fire. There was, like, you know, everything was fucking disaster at the time. Like, I think the markets, the markets had probably recovered by then, but, like, world was in chaos. Everyone was unemployed. Like, shit was hitting the fan.

And I wrote this thread. And I had, like, I had 500 followers on Twitter at the time. Threads weren't really a thing yet. And I, like, sat on my garage floor, had this idea of, like, how to try to explain. basically why the markets were soaring while the economy was in the shitter. And so I write this thing and I post it and like not much happens. And then I DMed it to Scott. And I had just seen him on Twitter.

He had a big following. I think you had like 100,000 followers at the time, maybe just under that. And I DMed it to him, not expecting anything. And then suddenly like my phone is fucking blowing up. And I look and Scott has like quote retweeted this thing saying it's good. You're an angel. And I'm like losing my mind texting on my friends. like, dude, this is insane. This guy just retweeted me. This is nuts. I'm, you know, I've, like,

gained 250 followers in 10 minutes. And basically that, so, you know, that tweet kind of blew up. And then what happened over the next six months was, like, the remarkable part. It says a lot about Scott. But basically, as I was, like, starting to kind of create more and write and share, for no reason other than just being a good guy, Scott was, like, my patron saint. He would, like, share everything I was doing with his big and fast-growing audience. at the time, and basically took me along for the ride with him. And so it was like this really cool thing where, you know, I had met someone through the internet. Like, we had never met in person. Actually, right now as we're sitting here, oddly enough, is the first time we've ever met in person.

But we would talk every single day. I was helping with some of the stuff Scott was working on on the business side as he was growing his empire. And here we are today. And he's been like, you know, if I could point to one person that was most influential in getting. me to where I am, it's Scott. And so it's a very cool thing for me to be able to, like, sit here now. I went on his podcast, and it was like the first podcast I had been on. And I remember being really nervous, being like, do you really want to have me on this? I only have 10,000 followers. Can you remember me saying that? I was like, Scott, this isn't good for you. You've got a big following. I've got like 10,000 followers. I'm some random guy. And I went on it. So now

it's kind of a thrill for me to be able to sit here and turn the mic around a little bit and talk to you. That's amazing. I wouldn't have even described it that way, which is funny. I would say that. Yeah, how would you describe it? Chimoth retweeted that, that thread. That's how I remember it. Chimot did retweet it. And, but, who was first? I actually don't remember.

I thought you were first. I think I might have been first, and then it kind of went a bit viral, and then it got to him through no doing of my own, and then he retweeted it. But listen, I think it's a testament to the fact that, especially in this era, like, good content rules everything, right? And so, it was not hard to identify the fact that you had written this incredible, accessible thread on a very

complicated topic, which you made seem very easy. It was the story of Federico who named it in me, right? Mr. Federico, the Fed, of course. I remember it almost word for word because it was so compelling. And you focused in on that and continued to do that. It was impossible not to share the content that you made because, you know, I think the ethos of a lot of what many, you of us do is we want to take complicated topics and make them more simple because they're important and people need to understand which actually happening around them. And you launched that sort of 101 thread series where it was like the Fed put, nobody knows what the Fed put is, options, you know, all these very complex topics that don't really need to be that complex.

Yeah, it is like, it's a story of Web 3 too, which is what I love about it in that a lot of the things we talk about on this show is like the openness. of it. It's like borderless. It doesn't matter whether you're the country club kid from Greenwich, Connecticut, or if you're the kid growing up in India, if you're creating great things, if you're creating great artwork in the context of the things we're seeing this week, if you're creating great content, it can be shared and you can reach people. And it was a cool case study of that, but it's cool to see the people, and it's inspiring when you're on the ground to see, you know, when you're like just getting started, to see the people like where

you were at the time who had already made it in my mind. I know you probably didn't think that, but like I felt that way. I don't. Yeah, and none of us do, right? Like, I'm sitting here. I don't feel that way, and other people probably do. And so it was so cool to see, like, that positive sum ethos that I think characterizes a lot of crypto and Web 3 that people haven't really appreciated yet.

Like, outside looking in, people still look at Crypto or Web 3 and they're like, oh, scam, fraud, whatever. But there's so much positivity and willingness to kind of embrace, share, and grow the space that is happening within it. 100%. And I think that that's such an external perception and is, couldn't be further off, as you said, from what's happening internally. It's funny. I just, on my way here, stopped at my friends, their music producers at their studio, hadn't seen them

since I lived in Miami, wanted to hang out. And they were talking about, man, we're really starting to embrace this, like, NFT and crypto and producer thing. People actually help each other. It's not like the music industry where everybody's shitting on each other all the time, right? And, you know, my background, um, like I went to an Ivy League school and was going to go the finance route. Yeah, you got to tell your story, man. It's crazy. It's, you know, I went to the University of Pennsylvania and I decided to be a DJ. Basically is the gist of it with a thousand twists and turns in between, but I was a guy who got an Ivy League degree, threw it away, and decided to go DJ at clubs downtown in Philadelphia. I'm very, very proud. I'm sure my parents were at the time,

although they were always very supportive of it. But, you know, the music industry is quite literally the opposite. Everybody is for themselves. Nobody wants to help each other. Anyone you do business with is gouging you at every possible turn. And it really is not like that in the crypto industry. This is the first time I've been a part of anything, and that's Web 3 in general, not not crypto's per se, where it really feels like you're on a team and everybody's winning together, right? It's like being at the craps table and, you know, everybody's cheering and of course you have that one guy who's on the don't pass line who you hate, but you know, but the other nine people at the table are cheering, they're winning together. It's sort of how I feel being in this

industry. So I think you're absolutely right. And I think the team is worldwide, right? It's not even just 10 years ago, it would have been like the people you could assemble around you in your town or in your, like, you know, some sort of social media group or something. Now it's everyone everywhere. And, uh, and we're just scratching the very, very basic service. So not to derail the conversation, but I just realized we've met before. We have. We have met before. Oh, jeez. Oh, God, I swear. He's going to get this guy. Yeah, yeah. So. No. You stole my girlfriend. This is going to be awkward.

Do you know your wife? He's married, too. Okay. So, I'm trying to remember the place where we met, but we met in Gainesville, Florida, which is where... That makes perfect sense. That makes sense. Okay. Sam Tarantino.

Okay. Do you know Sam Tarantino? Yes. So, okay. Is this Quentin's son or is it any relationship? No, no. So he started a company called Groove Shark. Okay.

Do you... I remember Grove Shark. I think he introduced us. Is that possible? Is that distinctly possible? If you were in Gainesville, Florida, and you met a guy that looks like... Who is a DJ who threw away his Ivy League degree. There's like...

There can't be three of us. Yeah, you have a group chat with the three of us. There's like, hey guys, remember how our parents. It's a lot of that. It's like a group therapy session, but yeah. I think you're doing all right. I remember group shark well, so that makes perfect sense. See?

That's fun. A small world. Yeah. Yeah. It's so cool, too, because it's... Like, the thing that I find so fascinating about this, like, we're here, you know, it's our Basel week, and there's a lot of... cool stuff going on.

But it's such an eclectic group of people. Like in tech, I lived in San Francisco in the Bay Area for a long time. Not anymore, luckily. But there, it's like, it's only really one type of person. And it gets a bad rep for that. But it's like a lot of the tech bro is like what it gets a rep for. When you come to the Web 3 world, it really is an eclectic. You know, there's musicians.

There's artists. Micah is a great example. Like a baseball player turned artists, turned NFT, extraordinary, turned IP. You know, like, Maven, it's such an amazing, diverse group of talents and people that are coming together in this, like, really awkward mishmash. And it makes sense, right? If you're over, like, 35 years old, you're not native. Right. Right?

You didn't grow up with it. But I still didn't get my first cell phone until my senior year of college. And I was, like, the first guy. And it was one of those big bricks. And people thought I was Scarface or from Night at the Rocksberg. Yeah, that's what I was going to say. Night at the Rocksper is what I remember. But I think that that's the reason, right?

All these other industries, even tech to a degree, because Silicon Valley is an 80s thing, right? As much as it evolved into what it was, Silicon Valley already had its core. I think everybody's sort of figuring it out together and came to it through some other channel, right? So that's why you get the ex-athletes who are now painters, like Micah, as we sort of mentioned below, before, the ex-DJ who turned traitor who became an enthusiast. And you have people from every single walk of life who were sort of either successful, but didn't find what they were looking for in whatever they were doing previously, or aged out.

I would say, you know, you may have aged out of sports. I certainly aged out of DJing, looking for a second act. And, you know, investing is a powerful second act for quite a few people. And if you can do that in a market like this, it's pretty compelling. But I really think that's the reason is because nobody has that like, I've been here for 40 years mentality. Yeah. I failed out.

of sports for what it's worth. I don't know. I think I failed out. I mean, it was just bad. So, sorry, I'm just, I'm remembering now. So. I'm still stuck on this Gainesville meeting. No, no, because when I, you're even in Gainesville is already.

Exactly. Serendipitous, right? So when I met you, it must have been 2017 or something. I don't remember you saying crypto. I don't remember you. You might have been like doing it on the side, but correct, I don't remember you having a big Twitter following. Is this something that's new-ish for you?

Relatively new. So I, I mean, I joined Twitter before Bitcoin was invented, right? I've been there since basically the video. I think 2008 or 2009, I joined Twitter whenever it started. And it was because of music, right? I was a music account. I got my blue check that everyone thinks is from crypto because of my DJing and music production. So I rode that.

Maybe I had 40,000 followers come 2016 and 17. had a kid, decided I didn't want to be on the road anymore, didn't want to tour. As I said, I got older. It's always the joke like Matthew McConaughey in Dase and Confused. You know, I felt like I get older. They stay the same age. That's how I felt with DJing. Like, no matter how old I get, everyone I'm DJing for is 21 and wants to party, right?

It just didn't really work. And so, you know, I'd been trading already. I love trading. I loved markets. And crypto is this sort of world of unicorn 100x pumps in late 2016 and early 2017. and I just timed it well, right? A huge part of, I think, anyone's story in this industry is certainly luck and timing, right? If I had the exact same story at the very beginning of 2018, it would be very different, right?

So I did well fast, became very passionate about it, and I immediately alienated everyone who followed me on Twitter. Like one day it was like, ah, I've got this show, come to South by Southwest, whatever, and the next day it was like, check out this chart of Bitcoin, like, right? And back then my chart for hideous lines all over the place. And so I immediately, like, cut my followers in half, right? You really lost followers. Oh, I lost, like, half. I became a completely and utterly different thing. And if you were following me for, like, new music releases,

why would you follow me when I'm starting to talk about Internet magic? Which is pretty courageous. And there's not that many people, honestly, that do that. I feel like Jack Butcher did that a little bit when he got into Web 3. He was tweeting about, like, design exclusively. And then all of a sudden, he was just, like, hard pivot. You know, I don't think it was intentional. I think, you know, I'm like a vicious ADHD case.

And when I get super, like, into something, I know people say ADHD gives you, like, makes you spastic. But for me, it's a hyper-focused thing, almost like an obsession. So I just talk about what I'm into. And that was what I was into. So my Twitter account had gone through, like, probably weird twists and turns throughout. But there was nothing intentional about it. Zero expectation that I would gain followers because of it, right?

I was just talking about what I was into and what's social media for. if not to share what you're passionate about at that very moment. I view it as sort of like a timeline of my life, right? And for whatever reason, you know, people started to engage with it and it built again from there. And at a certain point, I think it's just the snowball gets bigger and starts heading downhill. And you know, it's a sort of a big fish, small pond, probably scenario to some degree. And it just has some snowballed out of control. But that's very likely that I was probably talking about it superficially on Twitter, but not actually in person.

and I was still like sort of on the downturn of DJing taking the few good things here and there and figuring out what I wanted to do with my life. That's what I remember. I remember you coming back to Gainesville and you were basically like, yeah, man, like that's why I think we connected because you, we want to, you know, you're kind of like,

yeah, I'm trying to figure out what I want to do with my life. Yeah, exactly. And so now I look at it, I'm like... At 40. Yeah, but I remember, like, before you, you know, for some time we're re-meeting. Yeah. But Seahill's like, this guy, Scott's coming,

He's like the man, I check it at your Twitter account. I was like, whoa, this is like amazing content. And like it felt like you were this statue, you know, this sort of like you've been, you know, you're, you've been doing this for 10 years. Right. But nobody has. Well, there's a few people who have. But I think that that's what's funny about social media. Yeah.

So I guess that's one of the lessons I'm kind of picking up, which is like there's a few lessons, actually. One is it's amazing how quick you can ride. Yeah, with consistent Daily. I'm looking at both of you. I'm looking at both of you. I'm like, you know, you can't do it alone. You can't do it alone.

And you had mentors, people that have to share support of you. Yeah, I mean, people that helped me. And like I said, in this community, sort of this Web 3 and tech community, people get it and they share your content. It can go viral very fast. And it's funny, I've gone viral for all these random things before in my life. massively viral. Like, one of them was a inflatable tube man that looked like he was twerking,

and I put it to a Migo song called Hannah Montana. We got like, you know, 40 or 50 million views. Didn't do anything for me, right? I had music projects that I had that went viral. I went viral for writing a story on my Facebook page about Donald Trump Jr. when we went to college together, which was screenshot and became national news, right? Still to this day, if you search your name, I think it's probably the first thing that comes up on Google. Miami DJ says Donald Trump Jr. Right. And so, but none of that ever stuck or was to any benefit to me.

In fact, some of it was probably damaging, right? But because there was no, I think, thought behind it and no meaning and it wasn't connected, right? And now when you sort of get this narrative, like you have, you defined yourself as this specific thing. Like, I'm going to teach people complicated topics in a simple manner. For me, it was like, I want everyone in the world to know about Bitcoin. Right? And that's how it started, but whatever manifestation of that became, Web 3, NFTs, Defi, play to earn gaming, all the things that that's become. But in 2016, it was like, there's so much money to be made here.

You guys got to jump on this boat, right? And that was a very simplistic and unfortunate view, probably at that time. And it took a bear market, I think, for a lot of us to become very passionate about it. You have to justify the reason that you're still here. But I think, you know, when you sort of put that all together and you start to go viral for things, it actually builds into something real that people could sort of engage with. It's very easy to be a one-hit wonder, I think. Yeah, the consistency, that was what I admired about what you were doing.

There were a couple things I admire. I mean, number one, I said it earlier, like the positive sum mentality of it and being willing to help other people, just as you got help along the way is, like, just amazing. And it's something that I now try to embody when there are people that are contacting me or reaching out to me is like, I want to help because I got a lot of help along the way, and it's a good ethos on life. The other one is the consistency of the efforts. It's just like daily pounding your head into a wall, and not everything goes viral. Not everything scales you to like 10,000 followers and you jump, but it's that like consistency

of effort day in, day out, pounding your head into a wall that eventually you break through. And you were a great example of that because you just, I mean, you've been relentless. Like as long as I've known you and you've had to deal with crypto Twitter still has like a dark side And there's a lot of anonymous accounts and there's people that attack and, like, say negative things and you have your family on there. It's a long and nonsensical story. But if you ask certain people, I'm the reason that I think the entire crypto market crashed in May. But obviously, obviously not the case. But, you know, people, it was a very interesting and surprising example of how fast fake news can go when people want to believe it.

You know, and I think that there's obviously an element always of trying to tear people down who are successful. And I'm one of the few people who's non-anonymous in the group space. Very, very easy target, you know. I overshare, certainly, for someone who's in crypto, which is probably not the best thing. And you've had to deal with the dark sides of that. Yes, for sure. And so, you know, like, I've definitely dealt with some crazy stuff. You know, it turned into a lot of sim swapping and hacking.

people attempting to, you know, I mean, I've been hacked so many times at this point. It's hard to count. But, you know, people threatening me and trying to, you know, extort money from me saying that they have information, which they don't, you know, but it's like literally endless. It's calmed down a bit. It goes with the market, you know, up and down. But as you said, it's the dark side. But I choose not to focus on that as, like, painful and brutal as those experiences are.

They're temporary, right? And I think it's a very interesting sort of exploration of human nature how much the negative stands out over the positive. If you could redo it all, it's 2017 when we met and start your Twitter account, fresh, anonymous account. I think on your Twitter title it says like the wolf of all streets. Maybe you call it the wolf of all streets. Would you start it anonymous or would you start it anonymous? you be Scott again? I would be myself. Without question, although I envy the guys who are anonymous to some degree because I think it's just an easier way to interact with this particular community,

I wouldn't change a thing because I feel like everything I've done is uniquely me, you know, and I think that maybe that's why it's funny they say, you know, it takes 20 or 30 years to become an overnight success. But for myself, I think that that's the case that I just found enough people who like either enjoy my content or like my personality or just see something of myself and them, whatever that is, I found enough of those people that it created a community that allowed it to be what it is. And I don't think that would be the case if I was hiding behind a cartoon. And I don't blame anyone for doing that. Honestly, I don't begrudge them that at all. I don't think it would have ever worked for me. I'm just too much of an overshare.

I've been that way since I was a little kid. It's not going to change now. Well, you're also like, I mean, you were a DJ. You were an entertainer. There was no, like, yeah, and so what if I was going to change the face of my Twitter account? And all of a sudden, I'm not a DJ. I'm like a wolf avatar. You know, I just don't think. Well, I mean, it's in your nature, right? Like, your nature, when you play a show, though, I also have friends who are musicians and comics and stuff like that.

Like, they thrive on putting their face out there, connecting with the audience and having that interaction. You're the man in the arena. The funniest thing, though, I think the first time that I had an attempt. attempted canceling on Twitter was because a huge name in the Twitter industry in the crypto Twitter space, I should say, said that I had bought my account from a DJ. Killed a DJ and bought my blue check. I was not verified. It went wildly viral. And I was like, it's literally like I share pictures of myself, my wife, my kids. It's the same guy. Like this is the most easily vetted fake news story in history and went crazy viral. And I hear about it every single

day three years later. That's actually amazing. Yeah, that I bought my Twitter account that it's not real, that I'm buying my followers. Like people just, for some reason, nobody wants to believe. People don't like people, there's always going to be a subset of people that hate success. And they, they would prefer to, we talked about this. We talked about this like right before. So we, we just, um, we just interviewed Gio from Axi Infinity. And he shared a picture of us, all of us, because we, you know, we're on the pod. and like 95% of it was super positive, but 5% of it was like really negative. But that's the part, those are the comments you're going to remember.

And that was the point I was making to go circle back to what we were saying. For whatever reason in the human psyche, the negative comments weigh 100 times heavier than the positive ones. Yeah. Always, right. I can remember what someone said about my kids, my wife, or my mom, and can't remember the 900 people who said, wow, you really change my life with this idea or whatever. You know, for some reason, that starts to wash, kind of wash out. But the negative ones and the negative experiences, listen, that's something you can, like,

rationally sort through. But I think your knee-jerk reaction is always to have an emotional sort of response to that negativity. Totally. That's why you probably don't remember me. I was probably really nice to do. You're way too nice to me, man. You got to be more of a day. You were praising me so much.

Exactly. I made fun of you. That's true. That's right. Absolutely not like that. Can we talk? I mean, one of the things that's really interesting here, too, is like the overlay of all of this of creator economy

and all of the different cool monetization opportunities that exist within this creator world. And you in particular, and I'm kind of experiencing this now, and I learned a lot from watching you do this, it was like you know, you've kind of consistently grown your sphere of creator work while also being actually like skin in the game. and man in the arena on the investing side, which, by the way, is, like, no small thing

because a huge knock for a long time on, like, creators or, like, inspirational speakers or whatever was, oh, they're making money off of selling courses to you, not off of doing the thing that they're teaching you to do. And so you have your money where your mouth is. Like, you're showing trading charts in your newsletter, but you're actually putting skin in the game and making money on these trades. And so it's different in that case, which I really do respect. But can you talk about like the different things you've gone into?

I know you have, you know, podcasting newsletter, the different stuff and like how you've thought about monetizing those things over time and how that scaled. It's interesting. I would love to say that it was intentional. And you'll remember when we met actually came to you to help give me some advice on scaling it as a business because that was never my approach. I need that same advice now, by the way. You know, because it started as a guy tweeting, you know. And as I said, there was no intention of becoming, I didn't even know you could be a personality in the crypto space, right? I was literally following all the guys in the crypto space like a fanboy, you know, all these people, I looked to them for advice and somehow transitioned into that.

But it started as a Twitter account. One day I was like, listen, like my tweets are all over the place. I need a forum where I can speak in long form, right? And so I started a newsletter. And it was the intention of the newsletter was going to be twice a week, right? It was only twice a week. And it was just going to be all the thoughts I had had on Twitter basically hashed out into longer ideas. Did you do it with review when you started?

I started immediately with review. And it was pre- Twitter acquisition. He's an OG review game. Yeah. And I think I can't speak, but I think at one point I'm one of their two or three probably largest newsletters just because I started really in their infancy. And man, there was a lot of pressure to go substack. I'm not going to lie.

But so, yeah, I went with review. I just, I like the way they displayed my charts better. And it just seemed like an easier interface. I was really more of it than the business. And so that started to sort of catch fire as a free newsletter and then became a job, right? My intention was just to put out more content. And then one day I was like, man, I'm spending like 30 hours a week writing a newsletter. The two extra week newsletter at that time.

Wow. Yeah. And I was like, I need to, you know. And so I started charging $15 a month, but kept the free issue. So, okay. there just because I'm fascinated about this. So while you're doing this, like, did you have another job? Was this your full time? You know, you're like, I made, I made the money trading and investing. So you're like, your full time job is essentially trading, investing. Your passion is putting

your thoughts out there in the world. Is that? Correct. Correct. When I started the newsletter, I thought maybe, maybe one day there'll be enough people who want to read this that I can. could somehow monetize it, but I've never felt overly comfortable with monetizing my audience. I have no problem monetizing a sponsor or a company that wants to support what I'm doing. But I never wanted the money necessarily from the people. But it became this challenge. I was like, I want to do this more. I want to do this five days a week, which was something that you were a part of transition

saying, you know, saying maybe we should be doing more content. And so I started to charge the 15, but still kept the free issue just less frequently. And that was a, that was basically a decision you made saying, I need to have the value for my time because I'm spending so much time on this. I need to feel like it's, people kind of expect you to be a charitable giver when you have an audience. But there's a certain point where, you know, time is money, of course. So I felt like $15, you know, for five days, at the time two days a week, but transitioning to five was about as like fair as I could possibly offer. And then I met the guys at Blockworks, Jason Yanowitz, randomly DMed me on Twitter. So when I tell you there was no intention, I mean there was no intention.

He said, you should think about doing a podcast. My response was, what's a podcast? They didn't know, by the way. I was like, you're not on TV, but you're talking, right? I'd never listen to a podcast literally in my life. They didn't know what a podcast was either, by the way. I just had dinner with them and it was hilarious. They just got 30 under 30 for Blockworks.

It's a cool, very cool business. They're awesome guys. And he was telling me the story of Blockworks. And he was like, yeah, we started these podcasts and we literally like, pomp asked them like, hey, can you guys do podcasting? And they were just like, shit, yeah, sure, we can do podcasting. And then they were like Googling what is a podcast. Like how do you produce a podcast?

And now it's a $20 million plus business. Yeah. And so I never, you know, really. And so it's amazing, brutally horrifying to listen back to my first attempts of podcasting. Because you'd think I would have gone and listened to a few before I started as. well but now in my normal manner was just like it'll be fine go on with it my first one was katherine coley who at the time was the uh CEO of finance us and i like did all this prep you know and and all the questions and now i do my podcast like this right i have my my assistant does prep their

guests that i generally know and i feel like i know this person by the time i start just have a conversation and see where it goes but so the podcast was sort of the next iteration i guess and then I was like, wow, podcasts don't come out that often. I need to like engage with my audience more directly and I started a YouTube channel or I could start live streaming and obviously the podcast go up there. And that has just sort of become its own beast. And I don't know how like the guys who like YouTube hardcore, it's, it's a serious. And do those get monetized separately? Like so the podcast has sponsors. Largely they're not. Largely they're not monetized. Every once a while a company will come and say, listen, we want to like sponsor, you know, three months of a stream you're doing or something.

but like I said, I did not start YouTube with the intention of making more money. I figure that will come. So the newsletter at its core has one sponsor that's been there from the very beginning in an exchange called Femex and the paid subscribers. And then, you know, the podcast, up to six sponsors at any given time two days a week. But it was the same feeling I had with the newsletter. I was like, this podcast comes out two times a week. Sometimes the conversations I've had, I feel like, are already outdated.

Crypto moves so fast. So fast. You know, and if I make the mistake of actually talking markets with someone, like, we could be in a bear market or a bull market a week later, and what we've talked about is already irrelevant. So I wanted something that was sort of not just written and more accessible where I could engage with people, and that's how I moved to YouTube. So it was sort of just natural, I think, evolution.

And then then I realized I was like working a double-chipped full-time job. At that time, you had fought. I mean, it's insane. If you follow him and you're on his newsletter, which I am, like, I get a newsletter every single fucking day, by the way, with like, it's wrong. By 7 a. Yeah, by 7 a. Yeah, by the 7 a.

By the way, like, when I was on the West Coast, it was hilarious because I would get it at 4. Like, I'd wake up and I would get it at 4 am. And he was, like, the only person that somehow got me an email before I got up because I'm an early riser. But literally, like, a newsletter super long with detailed charts and analysis every single day. You get, like, two podcasts a week? Yeah. Two podcasts a week, YouTube lives, like almost every day. It was like the hardest working guy in crypto.

And no one was really talking about just like the amount of output that was coming out of this engine, especially for the fact that it was quite literally just you. I mean, I have a team, but like as far as like being the face of it, it's definitely just me. I mean, I get up at 4.30 every single morning, five days a week, Monday through Friday, so that I can get the newsletter out ahead of my kids, right? Because then I missed her mom, you know, I get them up, breakfast, get them to school, come back. do a live stream every single day. Wow.

At 9.30 or 10 o'clock in the morning now. So wait, sorry. I'm stopping you there. So by 9 a.m. By lunch, I've worked, if you count kids as work. And I think that's put it this way. The weekends are a lot harder than the week. Right.

I've got my first kid on the way. So this is what I'm looking forward to. No, it's great. Terrific. Everybody has kids. and lots of them. But yeah, I mean, by 10 at 30 in the morning when I finished my first live stream, I've been full bore for six hours, like relentless on stopping because I, you know,

I write the newsletter in the morning, which is long. I have helped from my assistant who are like, we'll prep some of the news and things like that. And then the minute I'm back from dropping my kids off, I get with my YouTube producer who sends me like all the content we're going to do for that show. and then I have to do all the diligence, obviously, and read everything and know what the hell I'm going to talk about. It's usually like 10 stories. I do the morning stream. Then usually I record a podcast within the next two hours. And then usually I go live again at 1.30 with another hour-long-ish live stream. That's like three days a week. And none of that even includes any of my

market work, investments, trading, any of it. And honestly, like most of it's unpaid. It's so crazy. Like, it's not like ever, I've never had a sponsor on my everyday morning live streams. I just do it because it's, it's fun. You're like a one-man crypto CNBC, man. You're like, it's like nonstop. He's got squawk box and then he's got like the next thing in the day, pass money.

But I love it. I love it. I love it. Listen, when I get sick of it, I slow down. Yeah. Like, well, you've always been good about that, which it's a, I feel like it's a common theme that comes up with people we've talked to, which is super high achievers, people that have achieved incredible success, but that have all a common thread I've found, at least,

you should tell me if you disagree, have found some way to be able to, like, pull back. And when they need to, they're able to, like, kind of withdraw and recharge. And I do feel like you've been able to do that. Like, you've been posting more about, like, playing golf every now and then, which has made me happy because I always knew, like, when you were getting burned out just as a friend, when you just felt like, oh, man, you're going to drive down. Is that why you're like?

Is that why you took up golf? It is. So I played golf in high school that I quit for 25 years and took it up again six weeks ago. And it was, yeah, it was intentional. My wife also works exceptionally hard. We live in Gainesville, Florida. There's not much to do. Let's go play golf.

Of course, I played golf too much. And now I'm injured in every single part of my 45-year-old aged body. But, yeah, it was to force me out of the house. So like even if it was just go, you know, hit balls for 45 minutes after that morning live stream to kind of reset for the afternoon. It was a great activity. But I'll tell you, like, having children naturally slows you down to some degree. I'm not saying it's not very fast pace. But like if you put your phone down and spend the evening or the morning with your kids or an hour in the afternoon, it's pretty easy to detach and to focus on whatever insanity is going on through their little brain.

at that moment. And so I think that becomes naturally easier as you get older because it's almost forced. Like, you don't have a choice. Your kids need to eat. You know, you got to take care of that. Can we talk about trading? Like, it's an underlying thing in everything you're doing is trading, technical analysis, charts, analyzing all of these, you know, stocks, current events,

crypto markets, all of these things that are happening. How did you get into that? What are things that a normal person should be thinking about or looking at? Should they not be trading? If you're not really going to spend time around it, should you just invest for the long run? What are some of your thoughts around trading? The latter. So listen, trading's fun, but the first thing everyone should know is you're going to lose

and it should be your play money. The bottom of every bank email that says, you know, past results not indicative of future gains and be careful and only invest money you can afford to this. 100% true, right? So I naturally got into it when I was at Penn. In the late 90s at Penn, like Wall Street finance jobs was like gathering a Halloween can. Right.

I mean, literally, no joke, my big, big brother in my fraternity went to work for Solomon Smith Barney, became the Penn recruiter, recruited my big brother in my fraternity, who then said, do you want a job at Solomon Smith Barney to me? And I said, I don't know what that is. And I also don't have a resume. Is that problematic? I'm DJing. He's like, no, you're hired if you want the job. I didn't take it, but it was that easy, right? So to go take an investment banking job. And so obviously I had a superficial knowledge of markets and sort of a basic understanding at that point. But I learned by the school of Hard Knocks, which I don't think most people generally survive. I was just kind of there long enough to succeed. I mean, the first

time I really got any money in my life. And I'm not talking about a lot of money. I'm talking about like paying off my debt so I actually have some money. I started investing was like 2006 and 2007. So you can imagine how well that went considering the timing. Right. So I lost all of that. In 2012, I went all in on a stock called Eric's. It was a pharmaceutical company. I had heard from friends who were consulting there that they had this groundbreaking drug that was going to be released. I'm not kidding. Like, I put basically everything I had into it was trading at $6. A month later on the earnings, quarterly earnings call, the CEO showed up like, I don't know,

on mushrooms or something. It was like, yeah, guys, we were like, money's going to be a problem, man. It wasn't the money on the guy. I think the guy was high. And the stock went to zero. Full dose. I literally rode a actual company that was listed on the stock market to zero and a delisting. I saw a hilarious thing, by the way, on riding to zero the other day, which you might have

seen, of all of these. people that have shorted a stock. And if you short a stock, you're like borrowing shares to sell. And you actually need to be able to close that short out. And if it goes to zero and is delisted, you cannot get out of the short. And so you're paying the carrying load of interest on something that like you could not have been more right about. But literally you can't get out of it.

So there are these hedge funds. There's like this. Perfect trade that you can close. Yeah, there's like this list of hedge funds that are like completely fucked because they're sitting in a short that was perfect. You wanted to go to like a dollar. And have some liquidity. In liquidity.

Yeah. So I quit for a very long time. And then I sort of got back into trading, you know, a little bit of options, Forex and stuff and learned technical analysis. Sort of on my own. I had a mentor, this guy Christopher Inks, who Texas West Capital, who I met on Twitter years ago. And sort of developed it from there.

And but to your point, the most important thing everyone can know is just don't trade. Just don't trade. It's so easy. to make money in crypto by simply investing and waiting. That's not even just true in crypto. I always like to tell people all of these people who've made generational wealth in the stock market, the baby boomers that have millions of millions of dollars, have never even heard of technical analysis. Not only have they never thought about trading or looked at a chart, they don't even know that they exist, right? All they've literally ever done is taken money that they don't need and put it into something and let inflation do

the rest of the job. Funny personal story on this exact thing. So earlier this year when I was leaving my job and I was going to go start this new thing, I thought I was going to go join like another fund. And so I was interviewing at this. I won't name it, but it was a large crossover investment funds. They do venture and they do hedge fund stuff. And I had to do a case study and I had to talk them through why I thought this stock was a buy or a short. And I pitched it as a buy and then they asked me at what price and I said and they were like, well, why not right here? Because I said slightly under it. And I had like seen, I didn't know shit about trading stocks. Like, I knew nothing because I just bought and held stuff. And I had seen some of Scott's stuff on like, oh, moving averages and this

and that. And so I said, like, wow, the 50, you know, it just dropped below the 50 day moving average. So it looks like it's got some downside. And the, like, founding partner of this firm on this thing looks at me. And he's like, what, like, I've literally in my entire career, I'm like, I've made a billion dollars. And I've never thought about a 50 day moving average. And I wanted to like unzip my body and just like run away. Needless to say, did not get the job, by the way, got rejected. Right. But it was unbelievable.

And that illustrates my point perfectly, right? So even at the like peak degeneracy of my hardcore trading, which I'm decent at, I would never trade with more than 20% of my portfolio, 15%. I learned very early that you're probably not going to beat the market and the core of your portfolio should be. invested, right? So where is the, just curious, like where you're 75%? You're, you know, where is that money? So listen, the funny thing is before COVID, I was one of the hardcore crypto guys who was saying, yeah, but still don't have more than like 15% of your money in crypto. It's still a risky investment. But then I stopped rebalancing. You know, I saw the nonsense that was happening

with money printing, obviously, and stocks only going up while people on mainstream were suffering, all the memes that are very real and very true. And it just became readily apparent that I didn't really want that much to do with that system anymore. That doesn't mean I sold all my stocks. I still invest in my retirement accounts. I still passively buy all the things that I've always passively bought. But for me now, crypto is, you know, 70, 80 percent of my portfolio.

And then breaking that down, 70 percent of that, I've always believed 70 percent investments, it's 15% cash, 15% for trading and investing in your best friend's company that he's going to lose your money. That's the 15%. The 15% yeah, I guess, fund. And that's basically Bitcoin was the core of it always. Ethereum caught up. So it's a 60-40 Bitcoin Ethereum split now for me.

And then the rest, okay, we'll call that 58, 38. And the rest is the dust from the best trades of my life. do a trade, goes up 100x, something like that, which happens in crypto, I never sold the last 5 or 10% of that position and moved it into the long term in case that is the Amazon of the future in 20 years and I don't feel like I miss the boat. I'm a huge fan of scaling in and scaling out of positions and always keeping a little something just in case. So there's, you know, this sort of dust of all these other things. But still, as deep down this rabbit hole as I am, I still believe that Bitcoin is the most important asset and that it's a slow,

of drip from there, obviously, to Ethereum and then weigh down the risk curve to where some of them start to just naturally look like trades and not necessarily like investments. But I still think your average person should have a stock portfolio, right? Like, listen, we can rail against the problems with inflation and the problems with Fed policy, but that benefits people who take advantage of that inflation by buying assets and buying hard assets, and that should be you if you can, you know. But it's a bit of a hard pill to stomach. The further you go down sort of this rabbit hole

and the more orange-pilled or red-pilled, whichever one you want to say, and you really watch it. I mean, it's like watching, it's like watching a horrible comedy. You know, like one of those comedies that's also gut-wrenching, kind of like cable guy. You know, that movie Cable Guy with,

you're like, he's so funny, but it hurts. You know? Like the scene in Swingers where he calls the girl like 12 times in a row, like that. You know, like, I look back, I'm like, that's hilarious, but also stop calling, you know. And so it's just really hard to, like, I don't actively want to go out and invest and buy stock right now. I just don't. Have you done anything new? Like, I'm thinking about, like, new markets. So you were clearly, you know, you went heavy into crypto. Like, you embraced this new market, new asset class. One of the new asset classes I've been starting to get excited about, which Greg, I like, I keep talking. is earoff about is event contracts and like prediction markets. And so predict it was sort of the

like first player that was in this space. The challenge with them was it wasn't regulated and so the limits were like $500 or something like that. So it was fun like you could bet on Donald Trump or Biden or whoever. And you could do those things. But like it was in America. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. It wasn't, but it was small. And then recently I came across this platform which, it called Kalshi, that I I had a lot of fun with. It was the first CFTC regulated. They spent two years getting CFTC regulated. So there's no limits.

And there's market makers. There's liquidity. There's these huge markets. And I had so much fun with it that I like pounded on their door until they let me invest in the platform, which I'm super psyched about and it's awesome. But the thing that has struck me about that is like it's a new market. And there's still so much pricing inefficiency in it because it's so new that it's like, it's almost a feature of the market.

market because I get in there and I look at it and there's things happening. Like, you know, there are yes, no contracts. And so there was one like the whole stupid Janet Yell and the unrealized capital gains tax. And there was a market that was like, will that get passed by December 31st, 2021? It had to be like one to a hundred. No, but it was trading at 87 cents on the no. And I was like, okay, so in a month I'm going to make 13%. Like that's the easiest. I will pour any amount of money into that. Because the government can't get shit done. First off, on that timeline, anything, let alone that. But it was like, I mean, it was those kind of things when you see a new market, it's kind of a

cool opportunity. So like, are you, do you experiment with any new markets? Have you looked at prediction markets? Like, are there any things that you're seeing out there that are interesting to you? I haven't really looked at prediction markets, per se. I want to intro you to these guys. But I would absolutely love that. But I have in the last year really started doing a lot of like smaller angel stuff.

it's always my belief though I think you're much more in the weeds like I know what I know and I will invest in anything where I trust the person knows what they know right and that's always been my path so you know from going to school where I did I have a lot of very successful friends they have different hedge funds funds so like a friend of mine runs a fund called Marita Capital and it's marijuana investments I know nothing about marijuana investments but I know that I want to invest in it so I invest in his fund and call it a day yeah right rather than than trying to figure it out myself. I'd rather go to the guy who knows exactly what he's doing. That's a great mental model, by the way, just to pause on that. Like, just do what you're great at and be exceptional at the thing you're great at and outsource everything fucking else. Even within crypto now. Two other people that are great at those things. Right. Even within crypto now, I'm taking a very similar approach. When I came into crypto, it was like Bitcoin, Ethereum and a basket of all coins, right? Now it's the metaverse and DeFi and NFTs. And,

right so like i'm not i don't have enough time or under even comprehension to get into punks and apes and other jpags and cartoons i'm not saying they don't have value i'm saying i don't understand it and i'm not going to throw my money at something i don't understand but i'll invest in someone's nfti fund right there's arca who's a is a big hedge fund in the space i just invest in their defy fund but i'm looking at their nft fund now because i don't know enough about it i know about the platforms that are building it. I have a superficial understanding of the market. But now crypto is so exciting and there's so much happening. I don't feel like I can even keep up with that. So I need people to guide me in the directions even within crypto. Like play to earn and I mean,

metaverse. The metaverse is going to be economies of scale beyond anything we've even seen in the real world for the investment opportunities one day. You can't tell me you're going to be able to figure out what the best investments are in that space. It's a powerful. I mean, this is a really, really powerful thing for people to understand. And like everyone that's listening to this is you don't need to be a genius at everything. You're not going to be. And so focus on playing the games that you are uniquely well suited to win. The things that you can really double down on and become an expert in, really focus on those, go deep, become that expert, and double down. And the things you're not embrace the fact that you

don't know that, outsource it to people who are, to your point, like invest in the fund where that person is spending all of their time on NFTs or defy or whatever it is, but don't feel like you need to go be an expert and everything. We've talked about it with Solana. I'm like the idiot that somehow has completely missed Solana, but my whole thing, Greg has keep, he keeps giving me shit about it, like, oh, you haven't invested in it. And my whole thing with it is, and I'm probably an idiot. I'm sure it's going to be amazing. But I have not spent the time, nor do I have the time. to go do my research and diligence to understand it. And so will I go and invest in a friend who really has done, and I have done that?

I'm an LP in funds that are doing that, and so I probably have some derivative bets on it. But I don't have the bandwidth or the time to understand it. And so I want to play games where it's my playing field and the table is set how I like it. Like if you're a tennis player, if you're Serena Williams, you don't want to go and play the match that Maria Sharapova wants to play. you want to play your match. So what's the advice? You know, not everyone went to an Ivy League school

and has friends who... Right, or is accredited to access, which is a whole other conversation, unfortunately. Yeah. Unfortunately. So what's the advice for people who want to do, basically, employ the strategy of

find the smartest person you know and give them and place a bet? You know, how do people think about that? That only comes with access and that's the reason it's only something I've been able to do in the last few years, unfortunately. The fact is the United States law that is supposed to protect consumers actually prohibits

consumers or prohibits your average citizen who does not have enough money from the same opportunities that wealthy people have. It's a sad but real truth. And that's why I love Defi and I love crypto because everybody has a level playing field in that space. As long as they don't regulate it away and do the same thing to it, which is another conversation and another possibility. But what I would say, a lesson that I learned, listen, there's famous quotes about it, right?

Don't put all your eggs in one basket. But then there's a flip side of that. Buffett, someone, you know, put all your eggs in one basket and watch that basket. Right? And so I've had Mark Euseco from Morgan Creek on my, it was one of my favorite people in the world. He's amazing. He's more like sound bites than any human being. You could make one of those little soundboards on the internet.

I don't know. You're a close second. I know. Well, that's amazing. I'm stealing him from all my podcast guests. But Mark said to me, he's like, you know, that's a, a total misnomer to say to diversify. Diversification is what you do when you're already rich. You don't get rich through diversification. You get rich through concentration with the caveat being

that you choose right. So I would say if you're young and you can afford to lose, because you don't feel like when you're 25 that you can afford to go broke, but you can completely afford to go broke. You can reinvent yourself, find something else, especially in this world with the gig economy and find something that you're very passionate. about or very good at and concentrate all of your energy on that. And once that succeeds, then you can start placing those bets in those other arenas. The fact is, if you're a 25-year-old with a $50,000 a year job who's just getting by and paying rent, you can't have investments in six different arenas and spaces. You just can't. So you, but you can buy an index fund and track the stock

market, which is what I did, you know, just buy spy and just buy SBI. Call it today. Number go up. Correct me if I'm wrong. It, it's, feels feels like you've had high conviction throughout your life, really. Like you've placed, like you haven't placed all your eggs in one basket. You've kind of, you talked about it, right? You talked about how this, you know, there was that pharmaceutical stock and you kind of like went all in. Or, you know, you got excited about crypto, so you went all in. Is it safe to say that, like, you've had this strategy for 20 years? I would say I've had this strategy for 20 years and it failed for 18. Exactly. That's what I was going to.

27 years, probably. I started, I was starting, you know, I tell the story as I left Penn and I became a DJ and that erases 20 years of utter and epic entrepreneurial failures that I tried in between on the side of DJ. I actually started a company with four friends from college called Philly Tonight.com, which is in 1998, 1999. It was a nightlife website for Philadelphia restaurants. If you remember, city search, which you were not. remember. It was basically a localized city search in Philadelphia. And then we ended up not getting along and I quit the year after college, was DJing on the side. I have 10 examples like that. I

actually was the editor-in-chief of a magazine that I started in Philadelphia, which then got consumed by another publication in New York, which is why I eventually moved to New York. I became their editor-in-chief. It lasted one year because probably not the easiest person to work with, and I'm not very good at the whole having a boss thing. But yeah, I mean, I've, you know, I sort of like advanced the ball very slowly, but by like falling down and hitting it with my face as opposed to some dramatic, beautiful move, you know. And luckily, I think that I just always had at least a small safety net or something I was doing that could sustain it and keep me afloat as I sort of found what I was good at. I had a great DJ career, but I was never the big name on the top

of the flyer, right? I was always the guy behind the guy or the smaller name on the flyer or the opening act for this guy or the DJ in this guy's band. And it was amazing and I made money and I and it was super fun and I played in stadiums, you know, but rarely was that specifically about me, right? So I would say I was like, I made it to like level D, you know, of the A list. And this is the first thing that I found where I sort of with that same mentality have found this level of success. But it is definitely fair to say, I mean, I've never been deterred by anyone else's opinion of what I should be doing certainly or really have ever wasted my time on something I didn't find interesting. You know, like I said, I don't pay attention to, I don't have hyper focus unless I'm super

passionate about it and I will just, I'll wash out. I can never have one of, I can never just have a basic desk job where I do a menial task. And I actually think it's amazing that people can do that. I would just get fired. Like they would walk in and I'd be playing a video game. You know, I just wouldn't. And I would have gotten my work done in 20 minutes and be bored for seven and a half hours trying to pretend that I was doing work. You know, it's just sort of the nature.

That's how I got through school as well. You know, so yes, I think that I've always been hyperfocused. I just got lucky enough that I finally found something where that worked. And you continued, like, you didn't give up, right? Imagine being married to me, though, or being my parents who sent me to that Ivy League school, right? It's probably a struggle. But it's good to win in the end, I guess, to some. degree, but it was not always easy.

Yeah, I mean, the whole thing that I'm coming away with is like, just this idea of like, just stop playing other people's games and play yours. I've written about this before, and I think about it so much because it's, I mean, it tracks my own personal story as like I, for a long time, felt like I was playing someone else's game. And I went down the career path that, like, I thought I was supposed to or that people were excited about for me, and I felt like it was prestigious. People thought highly of me because of it.

But it wasn't my game. It wasn't my zone of genius. And we all, I think we all need to find ours, and it's a process. Like it took you 27 years. It took me at least seven, probably longer. And I just think for everybody listening, one of the things like I'm really learning from you is like through this story and your whole trajectory, it's just find the things that you are great at, find the things that you're passionate about.

and just go all in on those and stop worrying about the shit you're bad at honestly like people focus so much on like my weaknesses I'm going to try to work at my weaknesses you're much better off and it's like maybe it's contrarian advice and it's a hot take but like you're much better off just saying

fuck it to the stuff you're bad at and like I'm probably not going to ever be amazing at those things I'm bad at let me just like not focus on it and I'm going to double down and go all in on the shit I'm great at and go contribute and like get in the Discord the community aspect of this. If you want to go

participate in things, go join a community, be a part of it, go create. Gio's an amazing example of that. He was just a, he was like mopping the floors in the community in the early Axi days, and now he's a co-founder of it. The head of growth. The CEO of Twitter was just a lowly engineer. Crazy.

I mean, the CEO of Walmart is like a perfect example in a blue-collar way of like he as a stocking manager in a Walmart store and now is the CEO of one of the biggest companies in the world, biggest retailer in the world. It's amazing. And I think all of that comes from just being willing to double down on the things you're great at and just saying screw it to the stuff you're not as good at.

And yell, yell that like you create content, right? Yeah. Just like, like, just put it out there. If your content's good enough eventually, and like I said, initially it's going to be bad. But eventually it'll evolve into something that people engage with. And listen, if you're bad at it, no one engages with it, you'll move on with your life. But at least you've got to try. And I think a huge part of what you're saying, which I agree 100% with,

is another thing you always say, which is shoot your shot. It's also letting go of the fear of judgment or rejection that comes along with it, because I feel like that's what holds a lot of people back from really fully pursuing that dream. I mean, you always tell me the story. We joke about how you just cold called basically Mark Cuban by typing in a bunch of email addresses and hoping that one of them was going to match, you know, and that worked. The guy started retweeting your content and engaging with you. And, you know, most people are not willing to do that.

most people are not willing to suffer the judgment of their family and friends when they say, I'm going to quit my job and become a Twitter, you know, influencer. Not what I said, but there are people, obviously, I'm going to become an Instagram influencer, right? That's what I want to do. Or I'm going to become a trader. I'm going to go all in on trading and take all the money that I have and I'm going to make money doing this. An artist, Micah Johnson, who we keep talking about.

I'm going to quit baseball and become a painter. I've only painted for two years, but I'm going to become a painter. now is one of the most prolific NFT artists in the world because he has the talent to support it. But I think there's so much fear of judgment and failure and just being shot down that people never quite fully pursue it. So not only you got to go all in, you've got to then also disregard all the external factors. And find a community that embraces you for doing that because I had you. And it's a good example of it. Like you were so supportive of the things I was doing and saying like, this is fucking awesome.

You should be doing this full time. Like why? And you were saying that to me. And then I met Greg through a group chat that we were in. And like all of these people when I was going, I was about to go take another, you know, job in the finance world. And they were all like, why are you doing that? Like that doesn't make any sense. Yeah.

And that was what I thought I was supposed to do because of everything I had done before. But I had people and I had a community that actually believed in me before I believed in myself on these things and gave me the like, permission almost that I felt like I needed to do that. And so you need to, and they're out there. And now with the internet, you can find those people. But it's, it's incredible. It's amazing. And so it's like, give yourself, give yourself the permission to go put your neck out on the line, shoot your shot. Every amazing thing that's happened in my life has like, somehow came from being shameless in some sense of like just going and putting myself out on the line. And then find the community of people that will just embrace you for who you are and be genuine about it.

And so many good things can happen if you do that. I just like... It's so funny because you asked about trading. You know, you guys asked about trading before. That's what separates someone who succeeds in trading and someone who fails is being able to accept a loss, not having fear of losing. It's the only reason I was even decent at trading. And I used to be terrible at it because I was so emotional about losing, right?

It's the same thing that makes a good poker player, makes a good athlete, makes a good trader. You have to just eliminate that fear and be able to accept a lot. loss and move on with your life, right? You can't dwell on it forever. If you're a trader and you dwell on every single loss you take or you say, um, you know, my plan was to only lose a thousand bucks, but I think it's going to go right back up. So I'm going to move my stop loss down. Zero. Right. You lose everything. Been there. Right? We've all been there. And that, and that's what, and that's what separates is that ability to sort of have a confidence in your plan and to let that plan play out without fear. And that at the end of the day, being able to separate your emotions

and act that out like a robot is what will make you good at trading, but also will make you good at any of these things that you try to attack and tackle on life. I mean, if that's not a good place to end, I don't really know what. This was like, I honestly, it's so funny because I didn't know where this conversation would necessarily go, but it was, for me, at least personally, it was like one of the more formative conversations I've had. So there you guys. Formative guy to him and formative conversation. It was very cool for me.

This is awesome. Thank you so much. All right. Thank you guys. So we're going to reconnect. We got to reconnect. We're already best friends that we forgot about it. I know, exactly.

Too positive. Now he's going to be a dick to you so that you remember him. Come on, man. I don't remember you. I can. That's true. He is too nice. Where can people follow you?

Everything is linked to my Twitter. Go to his stuff. Go to Twitter. S-O-T-T-E-L-K-Yard. Yeah, and seriously, like, the most prolific content creator out there within the crypto world, insane. I've learned personally so much from you. And even if you're not interested in trading and you want to understand... I don't want people to trade.

Exactly. And tune into a live stream. Or if you're not interested in crypto, if you're not interested in making money, just the fact that, like, you have a model for creating content. I'm sure a lot of people listening want to understand how that happens. it's a great way to get started and just follow you. You're also just a fun guy, man. You post funny shit. I try.

I appreciate it. We're all here. At the end of the day, we're all here for the memes. Yeah, totally. Life is a meme. I'm just trying to do enough serious content that I can slide it. Exactly. You've got to live it.

Got to live it. Awesome. Thank you so much. Thank you, guys. Appreciate it. Amazing. Thank you. Pretty wide-ranging conversation there.

I had a few, but what was your one big takeaway? way. Scott is not afraid to put in the work and share his curiosities, that's for sure. Yeah, he's, I mean, he's had like a pretty wide-ranging career, man. I mean, he clearly had some, like, challenging times with some of the failures he talked about. And what I took away was just this idea and this framework of just focusing on the things you were good at, like finding your zone of genius and outsourcing the rest. Just being willing to go find the people that are great at the things you're not good at and just outsource to them.

And just double down on those things that you love, that you're passionate about, that you can get up every morning and do, and go all in on those things. And the outcomes, let them be as they may. And find your niche, right? Like, he found like a subset of crypto Twitter and became an influencer in like a niche that didn't really exist at the time. and, you know, built relationships and built something that people love. So good on him for that.

Yeah, super interesting. Hope you guys enjoy it. We're going to jump into the community with him and go deeper on it. Thank you all for tuning in. 2020 is a great time to take control of your sleep. I used to sleep like crap, but not anymore. Ever since I found Beam CBD's Dream Sleep product. It's been a complete game changer for my sleep.

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