The Startup Ideas Podcast - Why NFT's Won't Fail and How To Spot Winners with Gary Vaynerchuk

Episode Date: January 6, 2022

Many people view Gary Vaynerchuk as a byproduct of his own energetic self-promotion. What they don't realize? Every big bet is highly calculated, and his excitement is a reflection of his absolute certainty. In this episode of Where It Happens, the serial entrepreneur, Chairman of VaynerX, and CEO of Vayner Media shares his research process for spotting trends, provides rules for getting more out of life, and breaks down why he's willing to bet that NFTs will be a success.Want more community? Learn more here: http://trwih.comSPECIAL THANKS TO OUR SPONSORSCAPCHASEhttps://www.capchase.com/roomToday’s show is sponsored by Capchase.Capchase is a new financing option for fast-growing startups. They are offering Where It Happens listeners .25% off their first draw, preferred onboarding, and more. Their main product Capchase Grow lets you tap into your future revenue today, meaning you can reinvest in your business faster. We love what they are offering to business owners.To learn more go to capchase.com/roomCOMMONSTOCKhttps://commonstock.com/Why settle for the old model of investing when new options offer you so much transparency to help you grow your wealth? Commonstock is the home of smart money and an innovative social media approach to investing. We both love the platform and have used it to enhance our financial strategy.Commonstock is a social media platform like Reddit, but it removes anonymity and adds transparency. The app lets you see what smart money investors are buying and selling – in real-time – all while letting you see their reason why. This way, you know whether investors have skin in the game, or whether they only talk a big game. It’s a great way to get insights that support your investing strategy.To learn more and sign-up today go to commonstock.com.

All right, guys, holy shit. We just got done with an epic conversation with The Gary Vee, and it was just about as insane and mind-blowing as I expected it to be. I mean, he under promise over-delivered, to be honest. He went, we talked about Web3, we talked about where things are going, but honestly, most importantly, we talked about how to train your mind to outperform, and to live a happy life. Yeah, and he gave some really tactical insights on how to do it

and his process of going and figuring things out to go make those predictions. So if you don't mind me, I'm going to go run and go through a brick wall over here in the corner. And we will catch you guys for this episode. Enjoy it. Capchase is the financing solution for fast-growing startups. It lets companies access their revenue today so that they can reinvest in their business and grow and scale much quicker than they otherwise would be able to.

Is it complex, though? No, it's super easy to set up. Only a couple of clicks. You can go through the process so quickly. There's no dilution ever. And if you don't draw on the money, you don't have to pay any interest against it. It's a great solution for fast-growing startups,

and they should all check it out today. So if you want to go look into it, go to capchase.com slash room. The saying used to be let your game speak. With common stock, it's about let your gains speak. I love common stock, love the platform, and have really been enjoying learning from other people on there. How does it work? It's a platform for verified investment knowledge. So people are going and sharing their ideas, sharing their trades,

but it's actually connected to their brokerage account. So you can see the results they're generating and see their actual track records over time. So you're learning from people, not only the best investors, the Bill Ackman's, the Daniel Lobes are on there, but also individuals who are actually going and putting their money where their mouth is on these trades, and you're learning alongside them and being taken on the journey. Is it just stocks? There's everything now. There's going to be stocks.

There's crypto. We're in this crazy world where there's so many different investment opportunities, which just means there's so many opportunities to learn. And Common Stock is creating the platform for you to learn alongside the best. And also, as I said, let your gains speak. So to level up your investing game today, check out commonstock.com. You won't regret it. Cheers. Cheers. We are, by the way, we are drinking tequila, Gary. Full disclosure.

That fires me the fuck up. Comos tequila, fire it the fuck up. So we're going to be, you know, as unfiltered as we can possibly be. It's Art Basel, Miami. Can't believe you're not down here. You got to come next to us. Oh, no, man, we just missed you. All right. Well, we'll see you out tomorrow night then. We'll look forward to it. Well, cheers. So Gary, you've been consistently right at predicting, you know, where things are, you know, are going. And now, you know, we've been following V-Friends since the beginning. We love the project so much.

What got you into NFT communities in this whole Web 3 world? Basically, an incredible combination of my entire life, right? Like, I'm in my office. Obviously, I put out a lot of content, so people have seen this. Like, I've been collecting things my whole life, right? Sports cards. It's just who I am. Wine collecting.

And I've been, you know, at the forefront of consumer trends. And so there's videos of me in 2010 talking about virtual currency and Farmville. And, you know, just a brouhaha of events culminating with the explosion of sports cards. again, which kept me even closer to collectibles. COVID allowing for a lot of interesting behaviors to pop up. Natural things that were happening like Roblox and Fortnite and MBA 2K and Madden Skins. And I've just been watching the digital thing, being an early investor in Ethereum. And really just seeing NBA top shot and crypto punks happen and did my 30, 40 hours of homework on the current state of NFTs, not what I'm.

knew about CryptoKitties in 2017 and basically did what I do all the time, whether that was Snapchat or TikTok or musically or podcasting or to your point, I'm very fortunate at this point to have a reputation of being solid at having a sense of what's happening. And that's what happened to me. I thought NFTs were going to happen and they've happened. And the way I've learned my whole career is by doing. And so I knew I had. had to have my own project. I've been working on a toy brand called Workplace Warriors for a long time. And that, in essence, was V-Friends. So it wasn't hard for me to take these characters like Patient Panda and Empathy Elephant and Turned them into an NFT project instead of a collectible toys project.

So I'm incredibly excited to be at the forefront of this stuff. And NFTs for me are an opportunity for human beings to create economies and economies are healthy when you bring value to the economy. And I'm very good at bringing value to my constituents. And that is my plan with this project. Can you, I just want to double down on one thing you said right there. Sorry. So you said like the 30 to 40 hours of homework you did. What is your process? So many people would benefit from hearing this. Like when you get excited about a new idea, you're a very curious person. Everything I've always listened to and read about you is just like your innate curiosity is very real. How do you go do that 30, 40 hours of homework?

Like, do you have a special way that you go into that rabbit hole to figure something out? Yep. First, it's the mental commitment, right? It's like, I'm doing this, right? Like, so it starts with mental commitment because my time is valuable. Everyone's time is valuable. My time is valuable because of the opportunities I have. Other people's time is valuable because people,

perceive their time as valuable. So people don't like wasting time on something that's a fad. I've always used humility and curiosity to say, and intuition to say, okay, there's something here. When it's something as new as NFTs, I start with YouTube

because I don't read well, but I listen well and watch well. So it was literally like NFT 101 videos. And then it was very heavy Twitter search, which led me to realizing people were very, very, very, aggressively active on Discord. So then I joined a bunch of discords and then listened to podcasts,

read a ton of Twitter, hours and hours of Twitter conversations, had hypotheses, Googled those hypotheses, Googled the counterpoint to those hypotheses. That's important. I'm very careful to not get caught in the eco-chamber. I'm almost like a,

I'm a boxer, I'm a counter-puncher, right? I want to know the alternative, the right click and save, the bad for the environment, the fads. Like, I want to know every counterpoint. It's what keeps me from going in on things. It's why I'm not loud about everything. It's why I can be quiet or talk about the same thing for a year and a half. It means nothing's come along that is worthy of my reputational risk to get loud about.

So that's my process. Let's talk about failure for a second. I know how bullish you are on NFTs. We're both super bullish. How does NFTs fail? Is there a world where this just doesn't pan out? No. But that's the macro.

That's as if you asked me this question in 1996 about the internet. Tech.com failed. 99% of the projects on the OpenC top rankings, top 200 right now, are incredibly vulnerable against their value. Let me say that nice and slow. 99%. And by the way, for everybody who's watching, whether that's 90% or 93% or 99%,

like the far majority of, I'm going to do it right now in real time. I'm going right now to OpenC. I'll pull it up too. Yep. I'm going to rankings. I'm doing last, I'm going to do all time. I'm going to do last 30 days, all chains.

When I look at, you know, even the icons like Bored Ape and Cryptopunks, like doodles, great project, chain runners, super interesting, cool cats, cryptodes, I love Gremlin, cybercons killing an artifact had their monster drop.

The Littles has some momentum right now, right? Swamp First is a cute little one that I'm pretty hot on. MeBits, an iconic one from the Crypto-Punks comic, doing everything right lately and structurally, in my opinion. V friends, my own, Creature World. I've been on the record of what I think about Danny called Lazy Lions,

a really emphatic community. Every one of the things I just mentioned, vulnerable. You know why? Because they're too valuable right now. Right. But guess what? In what I just mentioned, there's an eBay and Amazon in 1999. The problem is there's a lot of progress. The arrow of progress is pointing up. And if you go and bet on the space, the macro, it's headed in that direction. Well, blockchains that do affirmation of ownership and contracts is here for the rest of everyone's life. Right. It's here. So what is the right way then for somebody? Slowly, when people say are NFTs, I say stuffed animals. Stuffed animals have been here to stay for the last 200 years. not every stuffed animal company has turned out well

Beanie Babies was a fad Strawberry Strawberry Shortcake My Little Pony have been iconic Cabbage Fetched Kids iconic in some ways Disney stuff Other things, you know The Wuzzles had a good year

Stuffed animals were here to stay Not every stuffed animal Toys and collectibles are here to stay Not every toy and collectible was worth money Art is here to stay Sports cards are here to stay not every sports card. NFTs are here to stay for the rest of our lives.

The far majority of projects in this gold rush cannot maintain their value because the supply of NFTs that are coming into the market is extraordinary. So how do we create? I totally agree with you. And I think it's like a great analogy that you're making to the dot-com burst as an example, pets.com.

And the way I think about it is like, okay, if I'm a normal person then, what I want to do is I want to invest in the NASDAQ. Like I just want to invest in the index of the entire thing because I know that it's headed that way and it's going to be amazing and there's a bright future. You mean Ethereum? Yeah. So that's the question I have for you. But it is Ethereum is Ethereum Yahoo and is going to win the first seven years of search and is, is Solana going to come? Is it Solana? Is it Ethereum? Is it something we don't know? The answer is you can diversify. I'm sitting on E. I'm sitting on other

currencies. I'm buying a ton of different NFT. The reason I want to do. The reason I want to do. NFTs more than currency is my theory is if Ethereum loses, I can bridge over my crypto punks, right? So to me, the NFT asset class feels in a lot of ways like an easier bet if you feel like you really know which NFTs you want to invest in. But then you kind of need a way to do that because not everyone has your specific knowledge base or your ability to understand all the nuance and go and learn it. They're going to be people, my parents as an example, They might want to participate in this growth so that they can benefit from it in their retirement. Your parents will participate leisurely because they have a son who's going to be like,

hey, you should buy this one. Or to your point, they'll buy Bitcoin or Ethereum or maybe in a year, Salana or something else. And that's going to be it. Like what people, you guys are youngsters. What I learned in 95, 6, 7, 8, 9, 2000, 2001 with Wine Library was at first everybody told me nobody would ever buy. wine on the internet, like at all. So that was where we're at now. NFTs are stupid, right, click, all that, right? It's so funny. I have a lot of friends in her 40s and 50s who became their parents. People that don't understand NFTs that make that joke are the same people that didn't get a

cell phone because they liked their pager. Yeah, it's easier to hate on NFTs, I think, than to embrace it. What? Let me give you a news alert. Everyone hated on the iPhone over to Blackberry. Everybody hated on cell phones over pagers. Everybody hated on websites over newspapers. Like, again, you guys are young enough that you haven't been through enough cycles. You know it.

You read it. I read about home computers. That's how I projected the internet. But, like, it's just super clear. Like, people hate on all big shifts because they don't understand it. So how do you figure out, you mentioned your process? of learning about the one once you fit once you kind of start to have that inkling do you just surround yourself or talk to the smartest people you know to figure out what are they excited

about what are they working on on the weekend so that you can then go learn about those things like how do you actually get that first spark of curiosity either a random tweet comment on my social cold email because of where I am in my career or to your point no question Kevin rose one of the smarter consumer internet people I know when we were talking about X-Man comics and Jordan rookie cards when he said, hey, do you know what a crypto, do you have a crypto punk?

And I said, I'm not sure what that is. And he said, do you remember crypto kids? I was like, of course. Like, I'd already known about Top Shot. I met Roham a couple months before Top Shot launched. I knew NFTs were brewing. I was busy. It was the holidays last year.

Last year was still very hardcore COVID. So I was trying to navigate my company. But as soon as he said that, I'm like, you know what? I'm going to dig in a little bit deeper. And so, yes, and what's been really ironic, whether it's Dave Morin, whether it's Kevin Collarine, whether it's MSG or Harper Reed or, you know, Aaron Battalion, you know, Scott Belski, Mike Lazarow, all these people that succeeded in Web 2, right, that I respected and thought were thoughtful, miraculously. In January, February, are all circling around like buzzards. I'm getting a text from friends that I haven't talked to in six months, six years because we've all been a little bit out of the white hot moment of 2007 to 11 of Web 2. Sure enough, even people that aren't in it right now that are a little bit more discreet,

which is why I'm not going to mention them, who really made some serious wins in Web 2. Even they reached out in February March and say they're kind of demotivated, or focused on other things, but even they were like, hey, what is this thing? You could see the spidey senses of the people that really understand when shit changes. And then a couple of icons,

again, I won't mention them, who really didn't get it and came back to me in the last six to eight weeks and said, fuck. And I remember being disappointed in them, like, oh, they lost her edge or they don't give a shit or, or one of two things.

They got soft because they have too much money or the better version, they made so much money, they're on to fixing the environment or to political system. They went out to risk, right? So, you know, it's really fun to watch humans evolve.

But yes, keeping people, again, when you guys get to my age, you've got that extra generation, you're going to have your whole little crew of the people you've decided over this decade are smart, are good, and you'll find it fascinating that in 20 years,

when the next thing pops off, you'll be surprised how many of them are, like, it's been a renaissance for some of my good friends of Web 2 and we're enjoying it because it feels like the old days, right? You can, you can, it feels like Web 2-0's beginning when nobody understood social media and content. That's exactly what's happening with NFTs. Did you, uh, did you follow Aaron Levy in real time transitioning from like an anti-Web 3 guy to like the most pro-web 3 guy in the span of like

72 hours? You know, Aaron was never really, we were never in each other's circle, heavy, obviously connected through many different people, but we never really got to chop. So between that and just you know how much information is being thrown around, usually I pride myself in seeing that. I miss that, but it makes so much sense, right? Like all of us have to go through it. It's like, look, I invested in Ethereum and Bitcoin in 1516. I kind of glanced at CryptoKitties. I didn't buy one. You know, you're in what you're in and you get busy and you get your life evolves. What you're able to capacity do in your late 20s is different as your family grows up. And like it, you know, like humility and curiosity will cure success to be good at this.

I rely on those things. But even for me, like there's a million things going on. You can't get to everything. What I love in what you just said is the humility, even with his success, to be able to, quote, unquote, evolve in front of everybody and not fear changing his mind. because I think changing your mind is a huge strength. I actually think there's a lot of people right now that are in a really tough spot

because they've been very anti-NFT. They've had the aha that it's real and they don't have the humility to say they were wrong and they're going to double down on something they don't believe in and I hope they see this clip and it makes them feel comfortable to change their mind. Yeah, so what you're saying is like it's okay to change your mind.

It's a competitive advantage. It's a competitive advantage. Like, I'm never scared to say I'm wrong. I didn't see it. Uh-huh. Like, I love that. One thing that's funny about me is I do that all the time. One thing that people would be very confused by hearing,

because I don't think people should spend the time to really pay attention to me to understand every little nuance. I just never get loud when I'm not at 100%. If I'm at 97%, I won't make a single comment publicly about it. until I cross the chasm. That's why you see me get so loud. It's when I get to 100, musically, TikTok, Snapchat,

you know, podcast, NFTs. Once I get to 100, there's zero doubt in my mind. And I go pot committed reputation on the line. But you should see, I mean, you know how little VR content there is in the world for me? Because I'm still in 90s.

I don't have my 100%. So I'm scared to say anything. I don't know. You understand. There's so much content of me on the internet. You guys know this. Plenty of people don't love my aggressive communication style. And I'm empathetic to that.

If I gave people ammo of being wrong a lot, they would fucking make unlimited videos of me being wrong. There's not that many, you know why? Because I don't try to say shit about things I don't know. You're not Scott Galloway. With the predictions on tech companies. Yeah, to me, that's, you know, I love Scott too. And I'm not, I love him too, actually.

I think he's amazing. Yeah, I'm scared to do that. I don't want, as a matter of fact, I got very lucky. There's a very funny video of me in a suit, by the way, which is rare. Because I was doing this show, the daily when the iPad came out, and they asked me to do a prediction show. And I fought like hell. I didn't even wear, I, this is a, you were about to get a funny, very nerdy Gary V.

Scoop. I was supposed to wear a tuxedo. for the New Year's episode, which I had, because I'd go to weddings, right? But I didn't wear it with the hope that they were going to get upset because they were very professional. And like, let me not do it.

That's how much I didn't want to do a prediction show because I'm scared to predict. Ironically, it turned into one of my best moments because I predicted that Facebook was going to buy Instagram and they did them to do it. But I don't like predict. I don't predict. I observe and then I'm emphatic about my observation when it crosses my 101 percentile

belief chasm, which is fairly rare. If you look at my content over the last decade, I'll only talk about seven or a ten things. I'm just not willing to be wrong if I can help it. What do you observe around brands and NFTs? So I think it's going to, I'm sorry, interrupt, I think it's going to be just like social. 90% up front of them make garbage. 10%.

If you remember early brands on social, Zappos had a big move on it that worked for them. There were some other brands that did a really nice job. Then you look at brands that were built from social, Jim Shark, I just joined the board, Fashion Nova, another one, you know, like Casper. I mean, we can go on and on with a lot of brands that were building social. But 90% will be done poorly. and 10% will be done awesome. I'm very proud.

You're catching me at a funny time. We're just launched our, we're working for four months on the Budweiser launch that we had. And if you look at, it was very strong yesterday because we really know what we're talking about to their credit.

They really let us do the right thing. And so, you know, Vayner NFT with Avery at the helm, she's amazing. We're going to do good work. And a lot of other companies will pop up and do good work, build equity with brands.

And just like anything with brands, 90% will be atrocious because it's going to be transactional, short term, cheesy, tone-deaf, not understanding. But I do think you'll see some gems in there. Brands have money and leverage and access. So they can do some really cool stuff with their smart contracts.

Right. So when we look at the OpenC, you know, the OpenC, you know, it's 2026. And we're looking at OpenC last 30-day sales. When we went through that list, that was mostly Web3 brands. Do we think, you know, it's going to be 50-50, you know, old-school brands with Web3 brands, 75, 25, any insight there? I think it'll be 10% brands, 20% brands. I think you'll see publishers, gaming companies, like IP that we, right now, V Friends,

Board 8, Cool Cats, IP getting established, but you're going to see Hello Kitty, you're going to see the Flintstones. So you're going to see some icons, Harry Potter, you're going to see some new stuff. V Friends and Board 8 is going to feel like icons because we'll be old by then. New shit will pop up. Brands will be there. Really? Social media.

You'll see Jennifer Aniston join late and get five, right? Right? Jay Z joined late. And you'll see Charlie DeMillian, Logan, Paul build from there and everything in between. It makes sense. So the couple, like the three pretty actionable things that I'm taking away from here and you talk about this stuff. One is like the importance of skin in the game. Like if you're going to go learn something, you've got to put some skin in the game.

And that is the best way to learn because suddenly you're like really invested. in it. Two, it's like the willingness to just admit you don't fucking know something and not be afraid to admit that and continue to own that until you do know it. And for you, like you're saying 97%, 96%, for some people that might be like, you know, 20%, 30%, just continuing to say, I don't know, I don't have an opinion on this because I haven't earned the right to have that opinion yet. And then the third one for me is just like, be willing to change your mind and go search for those counterpunches, the way you put it, of the people that just disagree with you, that you're like, oh, shit, I'm not actually thinking about that the right way. I was flipped completely opposite of

how I should have been. Like, those three things to me are really popping out of what you're saying. I think that's an extremely good recap. You know, usually I'm pretty long-winded, but I don't have much to add to that. I think that's the right recap. I think I have so much confidence. I have so much conviction and I have so much energy that what is incredibly difficult to see unless you're on the inside with me is I use humility as my biggest core driver. I'm not scared because I don't think I'm special. Like this is really important. I don't think I'm better than any man or woman.

I really don't. I'm aware that I'm professionally successful. I'm aware that I have nice relationships. So are hundreds of millions of people. I genuinely believe what makes everything palpable for me and others that have something is humility. It's also what grounds you in the ability to innovate. Yep. Absolutely. So I know we've got a couple minutes left. I do need to ask you the question of for any listeners out there, I mean, I've taken so much personally from watching you and listening to your

different social accounts and things you've been saying publicly for years. Like, what are the two or three pieces of advice, one piece of advice you give to an 18 year old, a 22 year old, in, you know, maybe they don't come from the best situation. They're not, they didn't grow up in a wealthy family. Yeah, walk me. This is great. Is that Gary's Bible? I love that.

I mean, it's my new, like, I've been really thinking, like, honestly, look at number one. Honestly, no matter, yeah, no matter what you come from, let me give you one that I think is a secret of life. Ready for this? This one blows me away. Not everyone has this. Many don't, but many do. If you grow up in a family that doesn't have a, very big financial bag.

Call it lower middle class and down. And you have happiness in your home? You are winning. If you are trained in the first 18 years of your life that happiness and joy is not attached to money, you are unstoppable. And you're looking at that person right now.

And I realized it when I started seeing patterns. If you're grateful for what you have, have instead of envious for what you don't have, you will always win. There will always be somebody with more money. There will always be somebody that's better looking. There's always somebody more athletic, better grades, nicer car. There always will be. There's also always going to be somebody that's less. There's 850 million people on this earth that do not have access to clean fresh water. There's nobody watching this video right now that isn't in a remarkable situation compared to the $8 billion. I don't know what else to tell you. Like once you get there,

once you really lean into gratitude, everything else clicks. I'm going to give you another one since it's right here on my desk. Number three is probably leading to the most happiness for me. I don't think our world right now is built on valuing accountability. We're in full blame mode and that's why so many people are upset. Personal accountability. It's huge. Can you talk more about that? Yeah.

Yeah. When you don't focus on what you've done wrong and you're in full blame game, when you're in fingers instead of thumbs, you don't feel in control, which then immediately makes you upset. Like if you think it's the government's fault or your teacher's fault or your parents' fault or your boyfriend's fault or your girlfriend's fault or your brother's fault or society's fault

or luck's fault or if you think it's something else's fault you by nature are giving up control giving up control feels very helpless and very desperate and I'm I feel like accountability makes me happy. I think everything at VaynerMedia's my fault. Now that's a very overarching thing but here's where I go with it.

If Sally, the VP, screws up or Rick, the VP screws up, well, I hired the person that hired them. The end. Right. And I think that right now, because of social media, the mainstream media, our social unrest for a decade, it's just fucking, you know, I've been thinking a lot about this lately

that the world is very passionate to go blue and red, not just politically, just like how everyone's living their life. And like so much of my happiness comes from purple. And I've been thinking a lot about that. I think accountability is incredibly important. I really do. Like what, what have you done? Like, it's almost like, man, you could do anything.

Like I love the fact that you could do anything. Like even if you don't like the country you live in, no matter where you are, Canada, America, Russia, China, you know, and everything in between. Like, you could immigrate. My parents did, you know. This is why I, love Web 3, by the way, is this exact idea. Like, we've now had conversations with some of the

most amazing minds in Web 3. And one of the things that I just blows me away about everything about it is it doesn't matter if you're a kid on the street in India. My family's from India growing up with nothing. Or if you're a country club kid growing up in Greenwich, Connecticut, you have access to the internet and you can contribute and you can be in these communities. You can get in a Discord. You can talk to people. You can build with other people. And the promise of that is so inspiring that it's hard not to get behind it and want to invest in it.

The end. The end. We just spoke to Geo, the co-founder of Axy Infinity. And we're like, how did you co-found Axi Infinity? He's like, I literally joined the Discord. And then I became a co-founder. He was mopping floors in the Discord. He was like I was the community.

I was like, I was running, yeah, I joined the Discord. This is a very special time. I hope people take advantage of it. I have to go to a family thing right now, so I got to go, but it's a special time. Don't miss. If you're watching this video, you're ahead of 99% of the world. Do something about it. Cheers.

Well, we appreciate you, Gary. Thank you so much, man. We'll see you soon. Cheers. Bye-bye. See ya. Legend. What a legend, dude.

I want to go run through a brick wall right now. What an absolute legend. we're still on. Oh, we're still on. Well, he's a total fucking legend. I was like, I'm sweating. Like, I want to go run through a brick wall. That was great.

Especially that ending. Yeah, that ending was really up. It really fires me up, man. That was so cool. Really, really cool. Takeaways? Ah, geez. I mean, I summarized it when I was on there.

But, like, for me, the coolest things he said, skin in the game, when he was just saying, like, one of the first things he does is part of his process as he goes and, like, puts a little into it to force himself to learn. I'm a big believer in that. Like when we when you first got me in NFTs, the first thing I did was go and do something stupid. Like I I didn't mean to, but I put some skin in the game and I lost a bunch of money on ether lambos. And that was a great learning experience for me. I learned a lot from it. That's a, that was a great one for me. And then the other two were like kind of connected, but just don't be afraid to say I don't know about things. I thought that

was so cool the way he said he doesn't publicly say something until he's 100 on it. And then he gets loud. And so people are like, oh, this guy's loud, but you don't see all the background, all the work he's done to get to 100 on it. And then that final one of just like, be willing to change your mind. Right. It's such a powerful concept. And so many people can learn from that because we live in this polarized black and white culture where you're not supposed to change your mind. You're supposed to be, we used to like criticize politicians for being flip-floppers. Personally, I look at that and say, that's actually a pretty powerful thing, that someone was able to change their mind on an issue. And so shifting the culture around that and his

points on that, I thought were just so, so astute. For me, what do you call it? The counterpunches. Yeah, I liked that. Counterpunches. So, understand them. So for example, with NFTs, there's a bunch of counterpunch arguments, which is, like, it's bad for the environment. It's a Ponzi scheme. Like, so list it out and go actually do the research and try to understand and have a point of view. And I feel like not enough people, you know, on both sides. It's like either pro-NFTs or anti-NFTs or pro this political party or anti-this-poly. And all aspects of life, I think we don't do a good enough job at understanding the counterpunches.

I agree with that. I also think it's because, like, social media culture has made the, like, little quick quip. You get a dopamine hit from that because you do the little like NGMI to somebody that says they don't understand it or they provide a counterpoint. Okay, boomer. No, and people like it and people go like it. And now you're like, oh, saying NGMI got me a bunch of likes, so I'm going to keep doing that. But the reality is when someone says, like, oh, I don't understand how this works. Nick Huber, our friend, like, constantly does that.

He questions these different things in Web Theory and Crypto. For me, I find it as like personally motivating to then try to understand why he thinks that and how you can figure it out. But the natural reaction on social is to just like yell at the person. Attack. Yeah, attack. And it doesn't do you any good when you do that. You actually aren't learning. You're not developing.

You're not strengthening your point of view. anything, you're just ignoring a counter argument to it. And especially if the counter argument comes from someone you consider intelligent or credible, it's worth listening to. Yeah, I think what I've noticed on places like Twitter is that it feels like everyone is attacking everyone a lot of the times. And it doesn't need to be the case. Like, it's totally cool to ask questions, learn, understand counterpunches.

So I think, listen, I thought that conversation went really well. and it started at Web 3, and I think it ended at life lesson. Yeah, I mean, I think it's funny for me, because Gary, I've never met him. I know him from his online personas and the things he's done, and I've always admired his energy

and enthusiasm around different issues and things he's working on, but I came away from that just being like, this fucker is the real deal, man. I mean, like, I got fired up listening to him. He is motivating. He's inspiring, but he's also humble and his humility around learning these things

and wanting to dive in, his track record of getting things right once he dives in on things and figuring them out. He's not just some like motivation guy, you know, that's just out there motivating people. Like he is really in the weeds, putting his money where his mouth is, diving in on things, like in the battle, in the trenches.

I mean, I was blown away. I love it. I thought it was awesome. It was awesome. We're looking forward to getting in the community after this. We're going to do our best to get Gary in there with us to jam with everybody. We'll do a Twitter space is with them or something like that to go deeper on these things. But holy hell, man, I got to go run through a brick wall. Same. We're out.

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