Trading Secrets - 17: Gary Vaynerchuk's secrets to Life, Money, NFTs, Opportunity and Purpose

Episode Date: September 6, 2021

Gary Vaynerchuk comes in with unmatched electric energy, dishing on all the tradings secrets centered around Life, Money, NFT’s, Opportunity and Purpose.  From the 90’s to 2021 he’s always been a step ahead of the market and he divulges the research and strategy he used to do just that! Could you imagine not blinking twice at a $50+ million NFT launch or new $6,000,000 deal but getting fired up about flipping yard sale goods?  I could NOT, but Gary Vee does and he shares his perspective on what actually drives him day in and day out.  Secrets about NFTs, crypto, and life advice you can’t afford to miss. For All Access Content - join our networking group for less than 30 cents a day! Host: Jason Tartick Voice of Viewer: David Arduin Executive Producer: Evan Sahr Produced by Dear Media.

The following podcast is a Dear Media production. Welcome back to another episode of Trading Secrets. Today we are talking with the serial entrepreneur, angel investor, chairman of VaynerX, CEO of VaynerMedia, multiple New York Times bestseller, Fortune 40 under 40 list. digital media mogul. I'll tell you what, if that's not enough, Gary serves on the board of Mick Mack, Bojangles, restaurants, and pencils of promise. Honestly, I could have done that for about 15 more pages, but I had to pick some of my favorites. So that being said, we have what I'm going to refer to him as just the electric factory, Gary Vee here. Gary Vee, thank you so much

for being on an episode of Trading Secrets with us today. I appreciate it. Thank you so much for having me on. Good stuff. Well, we got you for a little bit of time here, so I want to dig right into it. Usually I might rewire my guests, start from the beginning to see where they are today. But I'm going to get right into it. And when I read everything you've done, Gary, and of course, you know, we follow you on Instagram and your YouTube, your podcast, everything. The one thing that just blows me away is that you're always like eight steps ahead. You're like a fucking magician. I don't know how you do it. And for anyone that doesn't know in the intro, I'll give some more information. We will in the recap, but you're an early adopter, an angel investor to company, huge, Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Venmo, Snap,

check, Coinbase, and Uber. We'll get into your NFT stuff here soon. You're also one of the first guys that had an e-commerce business with your wine, YouTube, right after YouTube launches. How is it from the 90s to 2021? And even before that, you're so many steps ahead. What are these tactics that you do that maybe we could implement into our lives? I think one is extremely tangible. And one is like something that I continue to try to spend a lot of time figuring out because one day I'm going to go into the ground and I'm not I think the world is abundant and I love it's pretty you know actually one of the things that I think is real is that my framework around abundance and how I think everyone can win and like I try to share all this stuff right like the second I decided NFTs was the next

thing since social I got loud it's not like I went and picked up everything you know like yeah maybe once in a boom and I'll pick up a little something before I tell everybody everything but so I think the biggest thing that I do that everybody here can do is spend a lot of time listening, which always makes it all my friends and like, even like people that are, this is a great crossover show. I think, you know, there's definitely going to be some people that hear this for the first time, hear about me for the first time in this. And, you know, my intensity, my Jersey, my, you know, East Coast, my Alpha, my competitive, it's so abundant in the way that I communicate. But all my soft skills and all my other attributes are,

kind of a little, like, less obvious, right? And so I think the thing that everybody can do is spend a lot more time listening. I'll give me an example. Sure. I read the far majority of my comments and DMs to this day. Seriously. Seriously. Now, here's why. I've had this career of being ahead. I know that what I'm really doing is research. Okay. Right? So when you think of it as like harding somebody back or saying what's up, first of all, that matters. My second book I ever wrote was called the thank you economy and like if you want to build something connections matter and the internet allows you to build a bigger connection right you can you can scale connections i think everyone is so i think everyone isn't humble enough of humility let me give

you an example i am at a very big place in my professional career at this point i'm like fuck man i'm 45 and i'm like the momentum's really building right like the last three four years was like really on fire with a big base, right? And so I'm like, man, I'm really, like, you know, sometimes I'm like, man, these next 10 to 20 years are going to be weird. Like, I'm going to be way the fuck up there, you know? And so, but yet I still, for like two hours last night, read two hours worth of Discord conversations on seven brand new NFT projects

that have a 0.001% chance of being the next Ford API Club or V Friends or something, quote, unquote, worth the time I put in. it comes from humility, even where I'm at. And this is me saying I'm at a high place. Isn't for me to stroke my own ego. It's for everybody who's listening, who isn't more professionally successful than me, to say if I'm willing to reply to people

and read their comments and do it, like, why are you fancy after you've gotten 10,000 followers and now you're not replying to the comments or thanking people who fuck with you or reading the comments to get a sense of where should you take your content or where's the temperature of the world, right? I'm a 45-year-old dude with plenty of,

of gray hairs crushing on TikTok because I'm reading what 15 year olds like from what I'm saying. And I'm also reading when they say I'm fucking old and finished and I suck and I'm adjusting. Got it. All right. So the reason I'm blown away by that though is because like so this morning and I'm like kind of punching myself, we have one account that is about 110,000 followers all on career management. And we're literally strategizing who can respond to the DMs because they blow, they're going crazy. Right. And it's like a negative, right? It's like, who's the lowest man or woman on the to?

Like, right? It's like a... Seriously. Yeah. Where meanwhile, I flipped it. I'm like, this is the fucking magic. It's brilliant. I've got a good one.

If you're listening to the podcast, Google Gary VEE, space PCS. I wrote a blog post about this new position I created at VaynerMedia. By the way, with all this stuff that I'm doing, Jason, people don't realize I'm the active CEO of a 1,400 person global marketing company. And that's what I actually do. Sure, sure. And in that company, because of me, Gary V, doing this work that we've been starting this podcast within, Jason, this is a real, like, coup for you a little bit.

I don't really talk about this that often, so you put me in a good spot. So I have a funny feeling I'm going to set a ton of people to this podcast to hear this. I created a position in strategy called a PCS, which is the post-creative strategist, her and his job is when we post for a brand like Pepsi or Budweiser, all the companies we work with, to read all the comments, to then form an opinion or an observation to then help make the creative on the next post better. It is actually the answer to your question. I've been reading the room, the culture, the society, the humans. I'm very good at understanding history. I was a terrible shit student, except for history. So I understand that what people said about the television

and what people said about, I'll give you a good one. Do you know why I know NFTs are going to work? Because it's the same shit that people told me about Twitter and it's the same shit that people said about credit cards. This is stupid. I'm not going to do it. So you're seeing the kind of the same behaviors, whether it was YouTube three months, four months after when you started your show, or the early investment in Facebook or Twitter, or now crypto and NFTs. You're seeing those same patterns circulate and you're identifying the same thing that was 20 years ago is today and that's what's driving a lot of your behaviors to be three steps ahead. Is that fair? I watched exactly. I watched the same movie play out over and over. I know what it tastes like now in the beginning

with the internet in 95. I was like, fuck man, this feels like it's going to change the world. I was going on spiky. This is the part that's not scalable. I've had a, I was at a baseball card show in 1993 when I was 17 years old selling cards and just decided that I didn't like the way that the show was flowing. I didn't feel what I felt at shows before and decided the card market was about to collapse and literally sold the majority of my collection and literally six months later to the entire market collapsed. It's brilliant because it's not only the reading, but it's also the executing. And that brings me to another question because I watched your Larry King interview where you said this was 2016 for anyone that hasn't seen it yet. And so what you say

is that you believe that our TV is becoming the radio and that our phones are actually becoming the TV. So again, back to kind of our theme here of looking at history and bringing it to today, five years later, that statement, right? TV is becoming the radio. Phones are becoming our TV. Would you modify that statement at all? No, because, you know, obviously streaming is a monster, right? And so the way TV is being consumed is different. The context of that Larry King thing had a lot to do with marketing. So, right? So I would actually say that point is even more valid because what I didn't see at that point, though I was very bullish on Netflix and an investor even back then, was how fast OTT, I mean, you know, besides the show that you were on, like literally,

besides sports and like three shows. Sports and The Bachelor. And the Bachelor. Honestly, what else is programmed? What else do people actually watch on, let's say, network TV and then cable has been annihilated. You know, YouTube, Netflix, and social have completely absorbed the human, you know, attention span. And so, yeah, I mean, I think, you know, the context of that was around commercials and why market, you know, I was explaining to Larry by company, which is the, what I was saying was like in his work, you know, trying to land for him. I was like, look, we're a modern madmen, right? We're the best agency in the world once Starbucks and Ford and Toyota and Nike understand that making 30-second commercials with the majority of your money that you

spend on marketing is fucking asinine in 2022. Absolutely. And so then I think you would assume that like network TV, cable TV, and maybe five, ten years ago, it will just be non-existent. Yeah. I mean, I think those companies, kudos to them, whether it's Peacock or other things like they're they're gonna just like they went into cable after they realized that was a problem bought up networks they're going to go into streaming the problem is Netflix doesn't seem like they're fooling around yeah they got they got some moves they're making moves they're doing the right thing one thing you talked about Gary Vian you already brought it up was NFTs so I want to quickly talk about it from radio to NFTs in two minutes we're trying to cover it all here so for anybody

that doesn't know there's two billion spent on NFTs in the first quarter if you look at NBA top shop they are just blowing it 600 million plus and then you come in and you launch, my understanding, it's VFriends. And that from your launch, like almost instantaneously after your launch, you guys are making 50 million plus. So I need this a two-part question. The first one is a 101. Someone that hears you say NFT, V-Friends, what the hell is it?

Let us know the one-on-one, and then we'll go from there. There's a lot to break down here, so I'll go fast. 101. NFTs. First, you have to understand that Web 1.0 came and organized information. Literally, I'm old. You know, I used to not be, have Google and Yahoo, and I had to go to an encyclopedia, which is why I got F's, because I wasn't willing to do that.

That was information. Web 2.0, 2005, 67, which I really crushed with my, you know, my investments. And I didn't have a lot of money if fuck. If I had the kind of money I had today, then I would already have the New York Jets. And I'd still be reading comments, by the way. I love the game. Fuck the money. Fuck the accolades.

I love the game. But that was documenting communication. What I understood then was, oh, my God, the way we. interact is not going to be as much on a telephone calling, writing letters, and meeting in person. We're going to use this. I used to call it AOL Insta Messenger 6.0. That's what I used to call it in my head. This MySpace Friendster thing and then Facebook came and Twitter came and I was like, okay, it's over. So information 1.0, communication 2.0, consumerization 3.0. We buy shit. Humans buy shit. And a lot of times the reason we buy it is to communicate to the world. Look what

outfit I'm wearing. Look how expensive my watch is. It is not acceptable to roll up on somebody and tell them how much money is in your bank account, but it is actually overly accepted by our culture to wear a $7,000, $8,000 watch or $250,000, and people know. So we're peacocking. The same reason the car we drive, our facial hair, everything we do is communicating. We do that through words. That was 2.0. That was social media. But we do it through stuff. Now, when you take Make that macro-cuban historical thesis that I think I understand well. And you layer what's been going on for the last decade, which is digitalization for communication.

Do people value a blue check on Instagram? They do. Do you believe that you have friends who if somebody was like, if you give me 20 grand, I can get you a blue check on Instagram, do you believe they would pay for it? A hundred percent. Okay. So that is a digital, that's right.

That's a digital asset. That means you don't own it. You can't fucking touch it, but for some reason, both of you know, and everybody listening was nodding their head, that there's a ton of human beings that would buy it. Why? Because our life has become equally digital as it has become non-digital. And status, follow count, blue checks, digital things you can't touch matter a whole lot. Your Wikipedia page, your Google results, I don't touch that shit. Sounds like it's really valuable. You layer that with watching the kids and how much they're willing to pay for a fortnight skin.

My nephew, this is real. I'm going to read it live, live. This is live. My sister texting my brother and I, because she knows this is my thesis. Okay. She texts, this is her son who's 11. This kid better learn NFTs soon

because he's negotiating money for more skins, right? And then she wrote, then she wrote, what is she right? Oh, my Lord, he went from asking for $11 to $25. My nephew Max wants $25 right now to buy a Fortnite skin because he wants to communicate or power up in Fortnite. Sure. That's happening in video games in Madden, in 2K, in Fortnite.

It's happening in Candy Crush. I knew this would have, the reason there's videos of me talking about virtual goods in 2010 and everybody thinks I'm a profit. Yes, I got it, but I didn't get it this way. What it was was Farmville, people were already buying fucking sheep on Facebook with real US dollars. And I'm like, right?

So basically, NFTs are no different than a Rolex or a pair of off whites because you want people to see what you have. So I think, now I got a real deep one coming. Let me drop you my third one. So I believe NFTs are going to do that for everything. The reason fashion works, the reason Fortnite works is the reason NFTs are going to work. People will have public wallets and people will be able to see what's in them. Got it? Got it.

This will become the new social network. I'm going to look you up on Wikipedia or Google. I'm going to look at your, right? Jason, David, you guys meet somebody brand new. They walk away, female, male, whatever it is. And there's always different things, business hook up, whatever everybody's living, you're going to look at their gram, right? You're going to look. I believe in 10 years, everyone's going to look at everybody's public wallet because they'll see what concerts you went to because your ticket's going to be an NFT. They're going to see how you flex with your kid. Hey, do you have money? Like, listen, that's a real talk. People think about that shit. They're going to see,

oh, shit, he has an expensive crypto punk. That's flex. Because that's like having, a fucking banksy painting in your wall when they come to the apartment. This is all human shit. It's just going digital, right? Yep. And the big one is on social, we control our pictures. Right. On social, what's happening now is we're PR agents of ourselves. Sure. When you buy something, you can't alter it. I actually believe I will have a better read on people by looking at their NFT wallet in 10 years than looking at their social media. So I was going to ask you, how do you keep momentum in this space? because if you analyze how many NFTs are being bought on a month-to-month basis, it's this crazy, high, low, volatile dip in it's all over.

That's because it's Internet 95. You can't. This whole thing is a lot of the projects that are out right now are going to crash to zero. We're in the gold rush part of it right now. This is Internet Stock 95. Pets.com is in the mix right now. There's been something that has been spent $100 million on that is definitely going to zero because the supply is going to outpace the demand.

The problem is what I want V-Friends to be, what I think Cryptopunks is, is the Amazon and AOL stock when everything went to zero. Fascinating. So in April of 2000, Jason, history less than time, the stock market collapsed of all the Internet stocks because it wasn't sustainable. Just like these individual NFT projects right now are not sustainable. Got it. The problem was Amazon was a fucking five, who though, I got to go do my homework, probably five, ten, fifteen bucks a share. That would have been a really good idea. That would have been a brilliant one.

So what ever, but now I got to tell you what everybody wrote was the internet's a fad. That was the article. See, the internet's a fad. It's not a sustainable business. It's not real. Sure. What was really happening was they were judging individual executions, not the overall thing. There will be NFT projects that go to zero. And there might even be an NFT winter tomorrow, six months from now, two years from now. But the macro of the NFT movement is beyond real. And this goes back to your exact point. We started this conversation. The whole macro ideology that You hit play. The whole movie plays and the whole movie restarts. And now this movie is the

NFT movie. And it sounds exactly similar to like you said, Amazon at $15, $20 a share. People were saying it's a fad. We're hearing the same things with NFTs. Question for you. You want a good one real quick before you segue? Go Google. Social media is a fad. Right? Okay. I mean, the amount of people that wrote that was astonishing. Yeah. Unbelievable. I got a quick question, too. What do you think it's a better long-term investment play since VFriends and NFP spaces usually ran off the Ethereum platform? Do you think Ethereum or Bitcoin is a better long-term investment play? I believe that I'm more bullish on Ethereum, but I'm incredibly bullish on the Bitcoin community as well. But I've been pretty consistently more bullish on Ethereum. I think Bitcoin, in a lot of ways, is more stable because it is the gold, whereas Ethereum could get out innovated by another chain. but I'm incredibly at this point still more Ethereum. But the fact of the matter is I'm also not educated enough

to give you a tremendous answer on that. I'm more bullish NFTs because those can sit on Ethereum or it can sit on Pocod or they could sit on. So they could sit on something else in the future. I don't care what it sits on. It's kind of like saying, Gary, are you more bullish? Yahoo or Amazon? And I would have said, you know, I love Amazon,

but I bore bullish on search engine. And what ended up happening was it wasn't Yahoo, it was fucking Google, right? I'm not sure if it's a theory I'm not feeling like it might be, but I'm more bullish on the human behavior. I don't have the technical know-how or the understanding of central financing and banking, nor do I understand what sovereign nations are going to do with legalities to impact all this. But what I can definitely tell you that I can't wait to clip in 12 years when I'm bald and not as good-looking. I'm going to have the side-by-side video like I always do with my other content. And I say, see, this is going to be a C moment. What I know is, what I know is that a stunning amount of people are going to buy digital assets, the way they buy handbags, sneakers, chachkas on their desk,

hats, toys, sweaters. It's going to be way more digital than people think. I love that. I never in my thought, never in my mind ever thought I would think of the following, comparing different cryptocurrencies right now to search engines and being like, okay, which one's ask Jeeves, which one's Google. It's kind of a wild thought. Jason, because at the end of the day, what this is all about is who wins the game of brand. Right. Right, because there's a technology part. And listen, when you outpace everybody on your tech, you win. Google's search engine was so wicked crazy. They changed the way search was done. So the results were so good that then it was fucking over, right? The iPhone.

This thing came out and everything else was like a piece of dog shit. You know, like... Unreal. All right. So it's like a full sprint trying to touch a little piece of Gary's life all within this, but we're going to try and do it. For those that don't know, the cool thing about Gary Vee, he also has this fascinating YouTube series called Trash Talk.

And so this was kind of like the blood and spirit of the animal at seven when he had a lemonade stand, make it thousands of dollars. He'll go to garage sales, find goods, find Pokemon cards, trading cards, et cetera. He'll buy them and flip them. So if you have any comments on Trash Talk, I'd like to hear them, but I really are curious the best return you've had from doing something as simple as going to a garage sale and then reselling a good.

My brother and I went to a garage sale probably in 2005, six, seven. It was like 1.30 p.m. if you're an OG garage sale, you know, it's finished. That's the end of the night. Yeah. You know, like 1.30 p.m. is like fucking midnight. It's over. And we were just like kind of beaten and battered. It wasn't a great, great day. And We just pulled up, and it was like, we judge garage sales, like, immediately, like, oh, fuck, it's a 60-year-old guy. We like pop culture for, you know, youth toys, video games. That's what we knew best.

This was before iPhone is on you where you can look up shit. So you're going on fucking memory and your fucking skills of the not. Me and AJ used to spend hours on eBay completed auctions doing research just so when we go to garage shows, be like, oh, forks. Like, I remember, like, shit, like, staplers are worth money. They are. Like, you know, like that kind of stuff, right? And he finds this box.

and I see him negotiating and it was one of my proudest moments because he's only like 14. I was a young kid at that point. He's 11 years younger to me. And he gets the box for like 10 bucks. It started at 20. And he started at 5,

which was a tactic I taught him because when he was really like 11 and 12, if it was 20, you'd be like, when you take 18 and it was over. I was like, no, they ask 20, you ask 5 so you can settle at 10. Like you need room, right? So I was really proud already

of how he negotiated. And then he looks at me and his face like, bro. And I'm like, what? And he opens the box. And it is loaded with Super Nintendo RPG rare games like you would not believe. He paid $10 for what was flipped on eBay for like $7,800. Oh, that's brilliant. That is brilliant.

780 times at a garage sale. I mean, we found a gunned sailor bear for $0.0.10 that's sold for $3.90. There's been some good shit. But it's crazy to me. So I got it. This wasn't part of it. I'll tell you, Jason, ready? It's going to go full circle.

Started getting comments because I would talk about like what you can do for $25,000 investing, what you can do. Started getting a ton of comments. Go, fuck you, rich dude. I got fucking $80. Fuck you, Gary. You fucking lost touch with the people. I got $100.

I was like, fine. I was like, let me show you what I did from 17 to 25 when no fucking I had dick shit. I was like, this is what I did. I was fucking hungry. I wanted to save more money. I had time. and instead of golfing or watching fucking college football, my Saturdays were garage sailing

because I had knowledge and I fucking had hustle and humility. I didn't give a shit my cool friends would make fun of me. Could give two fucks. I was going to the garage sales and fucking buying, you know, spending $89 and coming back with a thousand a month later, buying all sorts of pop culture, happy days this, Whist or Abbas, that, you know, fucking the alf doll this, you know, like backstreet boys board game, that,

like super pop culture, super pop culture. And so, which is why I'm so prepared 35 years, into my business career to build V-Friends. I'm going to build Pokemon. I'm going to build Power Rangers. I'm going to build Care Bears. And I know how to do it. I'm going to use NFTs to do it,

which I never thought possible. But it was all this training of pop culture. And so it was me reading comments that led to me doing Trash Talk the show. I'm like, I'm going to show people how to go from $80,000 to $80,000. If you go to Trash Talk 6, which is the current one, a guy rolls up on me, super emotional, and goes, me and my wife do this because of you,

and I could see he's emotional, so I like kind of give him a hug. And he shows me, he shows me his phone. He's like, this is because of you. And I'm like, no, it's because of you. You put in the work. I talk, I give away free game all the time. You did it. And I see his fucking eBay, PayPal, it's got 34,000 in it.

And I go, how much do you start with? And he said, $100. Unbelievable. And literally what's wild about the question that you just answered, it goes back to my original question, like reading what the future is. I didn't even get to get the question out of my mouth. You knew what I was going to say before I was going to say it. Because this is a guy who blinks in a million dollars falls in his lap.

I'm like, what the fuck are you doing at a garage sale for a $10 card? It goes back to the comments, the research, the relevancy. It's why I understand, like, it was funny, like, towards the end of his life, which is so tragic. I, you know, I started really being like, oh, fuck, I understand Kobe Bryant. I'm like, he just liked the game. Yeah. And, like, to me, like, even when you set up million dollars opens him out, whatever, I'm like, Like, you know, I'm like, I don't, like, when I tell you, it would break your face.

If you cut me open and read the data, you'd be like, wow, this guy really wasn't full of shit. He just doesn't really give a fuck about the money. Of course I'll take it. Of course it makes your life better. Like, let's not be delusional. I'm not fucking out of my mind. I understand the value of money in society.

But when I tell you, I go find a video game. I found a fucking thunder cat. That's worth $34 on eBay. And I bought it for a quarter. This was like episode two. I can tell you, because I'm telling you the fucking truth. The chemicals that went through my body was more exciting to me. We just landed a $6 million client for VaynerMedia the other day.

I was happy, but it was nowhere, you know, and so like that's like public speaking. Like, it's not really a great use of my time anymore. This podcast, not a great use of my time. Sure, sure. You know what's a great use of my time? I know that this, me being on your show will help you get bigger guests. Sure. Because I know what I, what I mean.

right now to a lot of other bigger guests. 100%. I know that I'm going to link this at some point and a lot of new people are going to discover you. That's karma. That's doing right by somebody. I also know that you may ask a question in a way differently that makes me say something

that I want to clip and put on my thing that's going to help me put out good content. I also know that there's 39 people here who never heard of me who right now are like looking into me and 16 of them are going to stick with me on my journey. I also know that there's nine people here who have seen me in their feed. fuck that guy. He's too much, whatever. And they're going to be like, wait a minute, there might be

something a little bit deeper there. He's not a full of shit, just all sizzle guy. So, you know, it's just, you know, what do you play for? And I play for different things. And that's why I think I get different results. I absolutely love it. It's fascinating. And there will be plenty of people that hear this and see this podcast when we put it out that are going to have a lot to say. And I'll share the feedback with you. I can't wait. I got to challenge you, though. So you're motivated by the game, which I fucking love. I love the $6 million example. That is so beautiful. But I also know one of your biggest things in life that you say all the time is I want to buy the New York Jets. So I did a little work. I saw that the Jets about two weeks ago were valued at about

$4 billion. My past life, I was a corporate banker. I know, let's say you got to put at least a billion dollars down to get that finance. The NFL is even worse because you guys are worse? Let's say it's 50% right. So $2 billion. At some point, you got to be like, how do I get there? And my question is to you, how is it that Gary Vee, when you look back and you do get there, because every place you want to travel, you get, do you think you'll look back and say, this was the investment, this was the company, or this is to come that'll put you in that spot? What will it be? It will be the fact that 13 years ago, at the height of my hype in Silicon Valley,

I could have raised $200 million for a fund, a VC firm, and deployed it. and would have made, as you know, with your background, 2% management fees on that number. I would have hired some young kids that knew the game, which means I would have taken a nice little salary of a million bucks a year or so just to take meetings and get 20% of the action. I was hot, Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, I was hot. I was three for three on the three biggest things going, right? And I could have done that. Instead, I chose to be incredibly patient and self-aware and say, I'm the best marketer

the world. I think so. Okay, but I'm a human, but what if I built the best marketing company in the world? Wouldn't that scale all my activities? Wouldn't that mean something? And if I own this asset, I could deploy it against all my things. That's what I've been doing. Rezi, the restaurant app that you might be familiar with. A lot of people don't realize. I'm the co-founder of that, and that was breeded in Vayner. Empathy wines, and we sold that to Amex in a nine-figure deal. Empathy wines, we sold to consolation last year in an eight, potentially nine-figure deal, depending on the earn-out. That was incubated by two interns that worked for me, John Troutman and Nate Schroeder,

started as interns for me, became my minority partners, and we sold that, incubated, right? Gary Vee the brand, literally me, incubated by the machine inside of it. My company VaynerX now, in itself, if I liquidate here in the next year or two, puts me in striking distance to buy a minority piece of the jets at the Johnsons would ever want that

and give me the first right to buy on the way up. Already, just that. Yet, I view that as secondary, V-Friends has generated me 51 million in upfront sales. And in 60 days, I think somewhere in a ballpark of three or four million in residual royalty sales, because when you sell an NFT in the secondary market from peer to peer, the original IP owner takes a rake. And I have a 10% royalty on every transaction of a V-Friend. In the last 24 hours, I'm going to give you the exact data because I'm on CryptoSlam right now. I'll give it to you hardcore right now. Cryptoslam.io, V-Friends has done $402,000 in secondary

transactions. I mean, 40,000 in, I don't think it's passive income because people, like, the amount of work, this was my life's work to get to this moment. Sure. But the reality is it, between V-Friends and Vayner-X, I think I'm in dangerously interesting, striking distance as we speak. Not to mention I bought a Cryptopunks ape that is extremely rare for $3.6 million the other day, and I think it's already worth $15 million. And in 20 years, I think it's going to be worth $100 million because I think it's an Andy Warhol and a Jackson Pollock. And I promise you, when some crazy character like me on the Upper East Side or Upper West Side of Manhattan or Greenwich, Connecticut in 1957 or 71 said, I just bought this Warhol for $200,000 and it's going to be worth of this Pollock for, you know, 800,000,

There's a lot of money back then, but it's going to be worth $100 million. Everybody listening to that person laughed them out of the room, just like everybody who just heard me say I bought a JPEG for $3.7 million that I think I'll sell for $100 million, but I know I'm right. It's fucking insane. All right, two very basic questions. I'm going to let you go because they're simple answers. But someone hears what you're saying.

And now you have them intrigued and they want to start, just like someone wants to start at a garage sale. I want to do something with an NFT. Gary, how could someone like that go buy an NFT or what would you suggest an average individual? 30 hours of homework. Before you do a single thing, you Google what is an NFT, you go to YouTube, what is an NFT, and you literally watch or listen or read for 30 hours. And oh, by the way, there's not a single person who's listening to this that shouldn't do

it because NFTs are going to eat up life the way social media did. And whether as an investor, as a career change, as something that's going to help your family business, as little side hustle, or just happiness, a little day trading of NFTs to make an extra $1,800 so your family can go to a Disney trip. It's fun. But you will lose your ass if you don't do 30 hours of homework. 30 hours of homework. That's the answer. Second basic question, I need an answer to this. So my fiance was the Bachelorette six years ago. In the social media scene, she's now the co-host of the Bachelorette. She gets, we all do. We all get a lot of these comments and these DMs. And you're saying, read them. My question to you is a lot

of stuff with the good comes the bad. There comes a lot of hate, a lot of chirping, a lot of things that you can't even control, like your look, you're aging, all this shit. How do you differentiate what is a constructive piece of feedback versus what is a negative piece of feedback? And then also, how do you ignore it? Because sometimes it hits in places that hurts. Great question. And we're wrapping up with this. It's what I would love to wrap up with. If somebody took the time to DM you for your partner in crime to say, you don't look as good as you used to, you were always full of shit, whatever this thing that they're trying to tear you down, I genuinely deploy empathy.

When people say, I get lucky, you're full of shit. I know that you're a con artist. The other shoe's going to drip. You've been lucky. You're not as good as you think you are. I genuinely deploy empathy. For somebody, the thought of spending my time to try to hurt somebody else's feelings only goes to one place.

I have so much compassion and sympathy to the hurt. Like that is your life. Your life is that you want to spend time making somebody else feel bad is a 100% proxy to you're not in a good place. And that, and I deployed gratitude. I was lucky enough that I was an immigrant that, so I'm not entitled. I didn't have anything. I had the greatest mom in the world that instilled so much self-esteem in me that I never

valued other people's opinions, which you can imagine, even, I mean, as early as high school, no peer pressure, didn't do dumb shit, didn't hurt people, like gave up popularity upside to like be nice to people people were picking on because you have to be mean in high school to win in the 80s and 90s. Like, you know, like did all these things. and like so I I would tell everybody who's lucky enough

that they have a volume of hate coming at them you know it's not as much as like fuck the haters or if they hate you they love like it's like I hate when people put down the person that's deploying the hate

yeah haters are gonna hate or trolls I don't feel that way about them I feel like they are people that are hurting and I want to like I like actually reply a lot of times be like yo I'm sorry you think that about me comma

I really wish you like happiness and health comma, can I do anything for you? Yeah. So much logic. Compassion. Compassion and envy. All right. When it's hurting you, it means you're insecure.

It means you were playing for validation in the outside to begin with. If you're hurt by somebody saying you're not good looking anymore, well, then your validation was coming from being good looking. This is why it's so important as a parent to be balanced of what you're saying to your kids. You know, if you're telling your kid, you're beautiful, you're beautiful, she or he, and the world's going to tell you it even if your parents don't. So parents have to really guide that balance.

Like if you have a very attractive child, you can't triple reinforce what they're feeling on the outside. You've got to find the other shit. My mom made me feel great about how nice I was. That's why I think, like, my content's crazy. I'm an alpha out here, aggressive dude, right? And I'm out here like empathy, kindness, compatible. Some of my cool friends are like,

oh, this is some dork shit. Like in the beginning, you're dork. I'm like, fuck you. I'm like, I believe that. kindness is good. Like, I believe that, like, being patient is fresh. Like, like, I believe that shit. Unbelievable. So many Gary Vee, so many unbelievable financial and professional tips. But I got to say, I think probably the most powerful tip of them all was the last one you ended with. Can't put into words how much we appreciate your time. Thank you so much. Thank you so much.

Cheers. All right, Gary. Take care. Thanks, Gary. We are ringing in another closing bell with the curious Canadian, the voice of the viewer, David Ardoin. And I'll tell you what, my energy is high just because of how high Gary V's energy was. I just started, I just did my ding, ding, ding, ding. And the boys felt my energy. So I can only imagine, David, how you're feeling after the energy of Gary V. I mean, you always use the word electric.

And that's literally the definition of this guy, start to finish day in and day out. What do you think? the definition of an electric factory. Gary Vee, I've never, like, I washed it back. I've never seen both of us

just smile with their eyes open like the whole time. You're like, this guy is brilliant. From him just saying like, the fact the podcast flowed and him saying like, this podcast is not a great use to my time to,

okay, I push my 5.30 by 5 to 7 minutes to him being like, I'm the best marketer in the world. I'm like, this guy is an electric factory. And, you know,

everything he talked about, what the most fascinating takeaway is the V-Friends thing. I mean... The V-Friends thing, I mean, I can't not touch on the energy. The energy's crazy. And if you haven't seen... There's a YouTube out there that talks about power positions and the impact your energy could have on your success

and the people that are watching you. He's the definition of that, because I feel recharged just after that 30 seconds. My brain feels like it's moving faster. But the V-Friends stuff was wild. And I'm glad you brought that up, David, because for anyone that is listening to this, we do podcasts live because we have a networking group you can network your businesses or anything else

going on we have a day trader there it's nine bucks a month just go to jason tardick dot com backslash restart all access or just email me restart at jason tardick dot com you could join but we had people that were live and then gary v signed off and we had a discussion and i had no idea but one of the members actually bought one of Gary V's V Friends NFTs right when it came out. So, David, if you're cool with it, I'm going to take a two-second break into this recap, and we are actually going to go live back to the recording of the restart all-access member who shared with us the V-Friend that she bought, how she bought it, the cost of it, and the value of it today.

You good with that? Yeah, let's do it. Let's roll it back. so I'm a Gary fan which is why I was like I've got to get it I need to do it and he really pumped it up before he released them yeah so I bought a four so a core at the floor he had a five day launch it was half point five seven of an eath okay so so the floor now today is six wow I bought it for 0.57 it's the only thing I've ever it's the only that's the first time I even got heath like I bought the east to buy the NFT. And that's, so anyone that doesn't know or understand what Kay's referring to is ETH is Ethereum, right? So you have to use Ethereum to buy NFTs.

And so that goes back to your question, David, about Bitcoin or Ethereum. This is a prime example of someone who's never used Ethereum but bought Ethereum to buy his piece of NFT. Katie, how much is Ethereum worth at the time of the purchase? When he started talking about his release, I bought it like a month out. So I bought it around 2000. By the time it was released it, it was up around four. And I think, so what I ended up paying for my NFT was about $1,500.

Gotcha. So the gas was really high that day. So it was like $260 in gas. Okay. Interesting. And I'm like, what the hell even is any of this? And my husband is super techy. So he had to like talk me through all of it.

And now we have invested in crypto because it kind of started that ball. rolling. Fascinating. And then when you said gas, explain to people what the gases, the 200. Oh, God, don't make me do it. I'm not techy enough to understand. Like, you have to pay someone to do all of the transaction, right? Yep, exactly. No, that's the, that's the 101 of it. It makes sense. And so you bought it at that rate. And now, if you're saying the floor of his NFTs are now at the six Ethereum dollar amount, you know, right now, guys, Ethereum is about, I think it's around 33. What is it? It was like 3,300, 3, 300. Okay, I see someone said 3,200. So do the math in your head. You're talking close to 20K. You paid 15 under bucks, 20K minimum right now. How long ago was that? May. May. The middle of May, middle of May.

There is money to be made out here. But wait, listen to what's so crazy about it. Let's hear it. Gary has value that we can understand outside of crypto attached to his NFT. I now have a ticket to go to VCon for three years. That's what's attached to everyone, even his core NFTs. Now, he has some that will be gifts or some that are, you can meet him to play basketball. They all have something attached to them that is something that you can assign value to as a human that maybe doesn't understand crypto or blockchain or any of the stuff. So I get to go to VCon for three years. And if I go year one and then I sell my NFT, the next person can go to the following two years. So it was sort of like buying a ticket to a

conference in a way. And that was, I think, the easiest way for everyone to understand it. That was one of his followers. And now, I'm kicking myself, though, like, why didn't I buy two? Because I'm like, no, it's just me. Gosh, I love it. It's brilliant because you now own the NFT, but you actually have the physical ticket. So you have a physical tangible something, too. And then if you sell it, you would get royalties on the NFT, correct? But I would never sell it. So I'm like, I'm a moron. I should have bought two because I knew I. I would never sell it because I'm such a fan of him. Brilliant.

Like, I knew I would never sell it. Classic crypto. Classic crypto. Everyone's like, I should have got more. What is your, thank you so much for sharing that story. David, you got a question.

What is your, again, I sound like such an idiot. What is your NFT like look like? Like, what is it? Like, is it on your phone? Like, is it a picture? What is it?

It's just a picture. Yeah, mine is actually, his are all animals. Can I see it? Can you put your phone to like the camera? I don't know. I'll have to look at my metamask. No, don't worry about it.

It's too much. It's too much. Could you like screenshot in the Facebook and put in the Facebook group at something? Yeah. Yeah, totally cool. If you could do that, that would be cool. Yeah. Yeah, I can do that. From 1500 to now over 18,000, also with a physical, tangible item attached to the V friend. This NFT game, it's crazy. I mean, David, you were firing some questions at her. What are your thoughts now listening to that back? I mean, the inflation for me is the thing that sticks out because I see NFTs a lot like I saw

like the crypto kind of movement in terms of like inflation, like the feeling of getting like missing out on it. Like all the price is too high. The price is too high. Do you have an opinion on inflation for NFTs as it relates to specifically like that industry? I mean, it reminds me of kind of what he's saying like when you bring up inflation or overvalued and he said it's like the same movie he watches over and over. Like he did in 96 with the e-commerce wine, he started. People said he's crazy. I think a lot of people in that same fashion of YouTube and e-commerce in the 90s and now NFTs is saying, can this last? Will this be a bubble? Will it break? I got to share this information with you. Now, OpenC. OpenC is a place that you can go and

buy. It's an open ecosystem. You can go on there right now and buy an NFT. They just reported their sales volume. In 2019, their sales volume was $8 million. NFTs, OpenC. In 2020, it was $24 million. And in 2021, it is $4 billion. That's last year, $24 million, $2021, $4 billion. The craziest part about it, a tweet that I recently just read to as that $3 billion of that $4 billion in sales this year, David, has come in August alone. I mean, I knew the B word was coming. I didn't know the B was going to be followed with three and then the month of August behind it. If that's any indication that you need to know that this thing ain't slowing down anytime soon, like, you know, I got to do my 30 hours, my 30 hours of YouTube for NFD. Have you done

30 hours? I mean, you got to, I've done my 30 hours. You've got to do your NFT, your NFT homework of 30 hours, but you also have a lot of homework. And maybe we'll follow up with that at the end of there's a recap. And I know you do have some homework about telling us if you open that crypto wallet with thousands and thousands of dollars, but we'll end with that. Don't make me sweat. All right. Don't make me sweat. So speaking of homework, quickly touching on a couple things that she said about her V-Friends, she said, I need some definitions if you got them. If you don't, sorry for you on the spot. Gas, like gas. She said gas and metamask. And those are two things that are way over my head. Yeah. So gas is a fee

that people will pay when they're buying an NFT, right? So it's a fee. The reason people say, Like, why are there these gas fees? So when you have these transactions on the blockchain, essentially the way that these miners can justify the cost, because this is one of the big issues with NFTs. I don't want to get two in the weeds here. But it creates these huge systems of that require tons of electricity that are very powerful.

And the amount to recourse that cost to get these transactions on the NFTs, they refer to these fees as gas costs. So, for example, here's one of the issues with NFTs is that you might buy an NFT that's worth just like, I don't know, $50, $100 in Ethereum, but the gas fees for that NFT could be like $200. It fluctuates. Yeah, so it's all over.

And then the metamask, again, this is one I don't want to get two in the weeds with, but the high-level idea of a metamask is it's an area that allows you to really just, like, store and transact, uh, Ethereum or any other type of crypto. It's essentially a crypto wallet. Okay. Which sounds like we're getting into my crypto wall in a little bit. Yes, we are. Metamask. Metamask sounds like a Mega Man or like, uh, you know, some kind of like cartoon character. Oh my God. Remember Mega Man with the hand that dude should be in a I'd buy that NFT. Yeah, exactly. All right. Before we move on, I'm not in the Facebook group. Uh,

Did she ever end up sending what it, because I'm a visual learner. Like, did she ever end up sending what the picture looks like? Oh, she did. And okay, so I got to get you in the Facebook group. If anyone isn't here and wants to be in the Facebook group, again, nine bucks a month. We have a full private Facebook group. Her NFT is in there. You can see it.

And you can join us and talk with us about every live podcast. And we have 24-7 text group. If you have financial questions, stuff like that. But David, I'm going to show it to you. Okay. I'm going to show it to you. And I have no clue. want your reaction.

This is the NFT. You ready? So this cost you half and ethosur 6th now? This is worst almost 20 grand. Here we go. One, two, three. No. No, no, no, no, no.

I mean, is this done by like a third grader? Like, David's face right now is glorious. What you guys can't see is I am showing him this NFT. It's in our Facebook group. And David is actually. sweating at the fact that this little picture is worth 20K. And this is a wild podcasting.

This is bad podcasting because my face says more than I'm talking right now. Dude, that looks like Pingu met two can Sam from the Fruit Loops box and they had a baby. And Gary V made is making 40K off royalty fees on transactions for all those V friends. Over 50 million. Over 50 million. So they launched. No matter what anybody says, call Gary Vee, whatever you want. Don't call him stupid because he's making two can't sam pingo family relatives

are raking in 50K and 24 hours. In fact, he's a genius. And that actually goes back to the point about him saying like, I'm like, dude, you blink and you make a million bucks. He's like, you say that and I want to throw up. He doesn't even give a shit about the money. He just wants to be in the game. He wants to be an early adopter.

The first guy there putting out two K and Sam and making 20K off it. I'll never. I'm not making 20K off it. I'll never, ever get that out of my head, what I just saw. But did you? All right, there you go, guys. Restart at jason tardick.com. You could join our group, and you can see this.

So you can see what David is actually looking at. But David, do you think you'll ever own an NFT? It's a great question. And I'm going to say yes. But I'm afraid that I will get one because just like I got Bitcoin and Ethereum, that it's going to get to a point. where I feel like I have to. And then where I'm afraid is because just like you're going to put me in the spot

and open this wallet I haven't opened for three years and don't know how to access my funds. I'm going to be in the same place with the NFD. All right. Well, so you're going to buy one. It's going to sit. You're going to lose it. And then you'll be like, wait, what's that metal wallet thing again? Tell me where I can find A, B, and C, which is wild.

I know that you're, if you haven't, do you have some? Because I know if you haven't, like, when you do, I'm just going to, it's going to be one of those things like, Tarduk, I'm in. Like, just tell me how much to Venmo. Here's what I need people to, because I'm, I'm in the process of working through some NFT conversations. I don't want to get in the weeds because it's too early and I don't want to put it out there yet.

Here's what I want to know. If there was an NFT out there and you felt there was a decent physical asset behind it, and I'm actually talking to the listeners right now, would you consider buying it knowing the marketplace? Here's what I need you to do. Go to our reviews. give us five stars. Just tell me, yes, I would buy NFT and you're at at Instagram or no, I would not buy NFT. I think it's brilliant that Gary V linked an actual physical item, playing basketball,

going to his conference, et cetera. So once that happens, David, I'm calling you. You're going to Venmo me. You're going to be an early investor, but you're not going to be able to access your funds until you tell us. David said that he might have 75, might have 100 grand, might have 50 grand in crypto, and I said, well, show me your portfolio on the episode. And he said that he, within this week, would get the balls to open it because he said he couldn't open it. Explain before you open it. Why can you not open it? Why have you not looked at your portfolio in years? All right, real quick. I can't open it because I'm shaking. You're lazy. Are you lazy? No, not lazy. It's under Jacks. Jacks is the wallet.

And then I just hadn't gone into Jacks for a long time because it was just sitting in there you know hold on for dear life that's the strategy with crypto with a lot of people i went to open jacks like six months ago and i it came across and said jacks is like no longer you have to download this new app called jacks liberty so i went to download jacks liberty and immediately i was just like i don't i i forget how to get in this thing so i had to do a little research and i had to find this 12 word phrase password that apparently is my backup up to get into Jack's Liberty, which was the old Jacks. But I'm just too scared because I couldn't find the phrase for a long time.

And here's a tip, pro tip people. Yeah. I had only taken a picture at him on my phone. So that's all it was. And it was when we first recorded the podcast that we talked about this missing link. Sure. And because of this, I emailed myself a picture with an attachment of the picture with a phrase. I then smashed my phone.

with a dumbbell before my bachelor party in Vegas and lost all my pictures on that phone. So if I didn't email myself, the photo of the phrase, I wouldn't be able to even be at this point. It would be locked out forever, done, gone. David, have you ever heard of this crazy concept, the ICloud? Dude, you know me. I'm the worst.

I still do my notes section in my, I still do everything in my notes section, my phone. I still do Excel projects in my note section of my phone. I'm doing worse. All right. We've talked on this podcast from my budgets. the phone. Okay. So, here it is. Do you have, so you have the phase. When was the last time you logged into this account? 2017. 2017. He's going to put the phrase in and you're going

to do it. You updated the app, right? I'm shaking. Okay. So here we are. Here we are. Back up your wall. Now. It says, uh, make sure, uh, make sure that, uh, okay, back up now. No one's looking. It says no one's looking. It's safe to proceed. Here we go. The drum roll. I'm going to bring up this email here. Here we go. Here we go. Here we go.

There's the phrase. No one's looking. Start backup. Will David be broke? Will David be rich? What's in his cryptocurrency? Oh, no. Okay.

I don't like this. What happened? It says this is your 12 word backup phrase. Write them down in correct order and store them to safe place. But I already have a backup phrase. So I don't need a new one. Okay. Okay.

This is not good. So you need 12 words or one word? David right now is unlocking what could be $0 because he's locked out or $100,000. We don't know the value. He hasn't looked at his crypto portfolio since 2017.

Don't ask why because you won't be able to understand. And he's trying to get in right now and I can tell you right now his skin is slowly getting a little pale. Oh my God. Could you give us an update? It's not really letting me like go to any like log in place. It's acting as if like I don't exist.

Yeah. They take your money and run? No, this is not good, folks, at home. I thought this would be a lot easier. Oh, my God. Okay, I'm going to have to revisit this, folks. Okay. What happened?

Nothing's happened. I just, it's basically- Why do you have to revisit it? Because there's nowhere to say, like, enter your backup phrase. Okay. Like, I need to, like, go. I'm looking for, like, a login button, and I'm not seeing it. I don't think this is going to get solved

unless I go security Are your beats per minute high Backup wallet No I already have Oh I'm shaking I can't believe that this mic is even staying still The saga continues With David Ardwin

We will report back on the saga At restart underscore reset On IG that is the home of trading secrets Restart underscore reset That's the home of creating secrets where we talk about career and personal finance every single day. Oh, oh, oh. Oh, oh. What do we got? Pair slash restore existing wallet. Let's go. This will erase your existing Jack's wallet forever. Do not do that. Don't erase your wallet. No, but I don't have a

wallet. That's right. I have an old wallet, not a new wallet. Continue to pair or restore wallet. That's what I need to do, right? I mean, dude, do not put this on me. This is 100K and you're going to press one button and not know what happens. Without recording your backup phrase, you'll never have access to this Jack's Liberty wallet again. Back it up before you pair or restore, please. Back up before racing. There's nothing in this one.

That's what I'm trying to get at. This one says like $0 because I just like open the app for the first time and I haven't put anything in. All right. I see $0. David is sweating. bullets right now. And what we're going to do is we're going to close out the bell. And we have some serious work for David to do. You got to do the work. You got to let us know next recap, whether you

lost 100K, whether it is 100K, or whether you could even get into your crypto portfolio, which for some reason you haven't signed in since 2017, a strategy. We would not recommend here on trading secrets. Don't judge me, people. Don't judge me. I know there's someone out there that knows what I'm going for our judging. Don't forget to subscribe, guys. Give us five stars in the reviews. We appreciate it. Any feedback is also appreciated. And thank you for tuning into again, I mean, at least for me, an episode you can't afford to miss Gary V. I can afford to miss this episode. Let me tell you, this one. David is a train wreck right now. Signing out, closing the bell, the electric factory, Gary Vee in the house. What an episode.

We look forward to seeing you next Monday for another episode of Trading Secrets. One, of course, you can't afford to miss. Thank you. Thank you.