#209 with Gary Vaynerchuk - Why NFTS Are the Future

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

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Gary Vaynerchuk?

  What's super awesome is like when you're putting the wins on the board, nobody even gives, nobody wants to touch it. They're like, keep going, keep going. Nobody wants to talk to me.

• 0:19Sam Parr?

  That was pretty, uh, that was intense 45 minutes.

• 0:23Shaan Puri?

  Dude, sometimes you have high hopes for a guest and I, on this podcast, I've been disappointed. Today was not that day, my friend. I loved that. I had a great time, honestly.

• 0:33Sam Parr?

  We didn't even get to a, we got to like 20% of the stuff I wanted to ask him about. So we had Gary Vaynerchuk on the pod today. It was phenomenal. Whenever I leave, so I've, I've hung out with Gary, maybe three or four times, maybe three times. Whenever I leave his presence, I do feel better and a lot of people, and I'll admit, I was one of those people years ago, I would be like, oh, this guy's just some loud guy who's selling nonsense. He's totally the real deal. And I went to, we talked about it, but I went to a dinner with him one time and he talked the entire time. And most people would be like, dude, what the hell? That was so rude. And when I left, I was like, I just want to continue listening to him.

• 1:13Sam Parr?

  I want him to continue telling stories. I love his point of view. He's entertaining. That guy's intense. I love it.

• 1:21Shaan Puri?

  He does what we try to do. He's been doing it for a long time, which is business entertainment. It's the entertainment side of business where he, you know, he'll go to a garage, he'll, he'll make content that's like going to a garage sale, buying things for a quarter and flipping them for $28 on eBay. And how that stacks up and how you can go from like, you know, $42 to $14,000 in a year if you just did this. And like, obviously he doesn't need to do that anymore. He's got this agency with hundreds of employees. He's got, uh, you know, he's, he's got a bunch of stuff going on as far as his own business goes. But I like that he's been able to do what, what I think the world needs more of. It needs more business entertainment. Cause like, why do I, why did I grow up wanting to be a basketball player?

• 2:05Shaan Puri?

  Cause the NBA was so goddamn entertaining. Right? And, uh, and so when you have entertainment, it's, that creates inspiration and aspiration. So it ends up creating more founders in the world.

• 2:16Sam Parr?

  Yeah, he was amazing, man.

• 2:18Shaan Puri?

  What do we talk about?

• 2:19Sam Parr?

  Whenever I'm off with it, whenever I'm with him off the air, by the way, he's exactly the same. So there's not, there's no show here. So, all right, we started off, we got right into it. In the first 30 seconds, I asked him, so I'd been tracking this for a long time. When I was managing my business, I was trying to manage cash flow and I was trying to understand how hard to push it. And I made a document from Gary Vaynerchuk about VaynerMedia. They grew to 1,200 employees. I tracked the revenue, revenue per head, over hundreds of interviews. I basically found where he set a clip like, oh, we have this many employees. And I asked him about it. So I asked him how he managed cash flow. Then we got into a really interesting discussion about NFTs. NFTs, a lot of people talk about them. I'm not like an NFT guy. Sean, you are. This was the one time I've ever had a conversation where it interested me beyond just like academic.

• 3:04Shaan Puri?

  Right. Yeah. He does a good job with making it, I don't know, like tangible and like not making the big mistake, which is NFTs, let me tell you what it stands for and how it works under the hood. It's like, no, no, no, I don't care how the engine works. I want to get in the car and go somewhere. So where does this let me go? And I think he did a pretty good job of that. So we talked about NFTs. We talked about, you know, just some of the kind of like the lessons learned, you know, going from like what he saw in the dot com boom, because he was kind of like early in the game, right? In 2000, and then he was there for like Twitter, Facebook, Uber. And he got in, he invested in Twitter, but he missed out on Uber, even though Garrett was one of his best friends. And then what is, so how did he take that learning and what's he doing now with it today? How does he take those learnings and apply them now?

• 3:49Shaan Puri?

  So we talked about that for a bit, but good episode. He, you know, he was, I don't know, super nice guy. Wants to come back on. I think we should have him on again, for sure.

• 3:58Sam Parr?

  I take a lot, it makes me feel happy that sometimes, a lot of times people tweet at us and they say, I want to run through a wall after that episode, or I want to go and accomplish something. I feel that way right now, after listening to that episode. I felt like I was a part of it more so as a fan, more so as a participant. I thought it was wonderful.

• 4:18Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, you know, it's when people say, you know, I'm always late to work because when I'm driving, listening to MFM, I gotta pull over and write shit down, right? Like, I can't let this idea go. I gotta write this down. That's, that's when we do it well. And sometimes we don't always hit that, but I think we did it well on this one. So, all right, that's the episode. Gary V, enjoy. All right, are you weird or are you normal? And they're like, we're a little bit of both. And then they came out and did it and it worked out well.

• 4:43Sam Parr?

  I'm just using an iPhone.

• 4:45Gary Vaynerchuk?

  Get the fuck out of here.

• 4:46Shaan Puri?

  Well, Sam's traveling now.

• 4:47Gary Vaynerchuk?

  Sam, are you really?

• 4:50Sam Parr?

  I'm in New York. This is just an iPhone.

• 4:52Gary Vaynerchuk?

  Oh, but with the blurred out, why does it look so good?

• 4:55Shaan Puri?

  So he got this app that basically uses your iPhone as like a DSLR, which is

• 4:59Gary Vaynerchuk?

  really cool.

• 5:00Shaan Puri?

  Awesome.

• 5:00Sam Parr?

  It's called

• 5:01Gary Vaynerchuk?

  Nice to see you guys. I hope you're well.

• 5:03Sam Parr?

  It's called Camo. I'll give them a shout. It's called Camo. I think I paid $49 for it.

• 5:06Gary Vaynerchuk?

  It's awesome, man. Hope everyone's well.

• 5:09Sam Parr?

  So we have a lot to get into. I'm pumped here. Can I, something that I've, I'm, we're recording now. Something I've always wondered about. How many people work at VaynerMedia right now?

• 5:25Gary Vaynerchuk?

  Somewhere between probably 1050 and 1300. I'm sorry, VaynerX. So VaynerMedia is the biggest company. Yeah, Vayner, right. Cause we have Gallery. We have, yep.

• 5:37Sam Parr?

  So I was looking, I did some research based off a ton of interviews and I was like going through the headcount of how, how fast you grew. And I believe between around years, number, um, number three and four, did you grow from like 30 people to 125 people?

• 5:54Gary Vaynerchuk?

  Yes, because in 2011, September of 2011, I kind of made the decision to go full-time Vayner. No longer what I would call full-time Wine Library, secondary Vayner. I made that switch. And then the lighter fluid kind of went on.

• 6:11Sam Parr?

  Dude, how the hell do you manage that cash flow for a company like that? Cause I did, I did research.

• 6:16Gary Vaynerchuk?

  Cause you know your shit, yep.

• 6:18Sam Parr?

  And it was, tell me if I'm, I just guesstimated off some interviews around, I'm gonna start at year one. Around five people, 20 people, 30 people, 125 people, 300, 550, 600, 800.

• 6:32Gary Vaynerchuk?

  Yeah.

• 6:33Sam Parr?

  Is that a ballpark, right?

• 6:34Gary Vaynerchuk?

  Yeah, like if I, if you were asking me and I was spitballing, I guess who the fuck, you know, the first year was like, we started in May of 2009. So that, that first half year, I think it was like six or seven. Then it might've been like 20 and through all of 2010 and then into 11, it probably got to like 30. And then that September 2011, what, you'll appreciate this and you've got this in you. There's certain people who I think are really, really good at top line revenue driving initiatives. What I think has been the balance of my life, and it's very similar to what happened at Wine Library, right? Is because I'm able to create so much top line rev.

• 7:13Gary Vaynerchuk?

  And because I'm playing forever, right? Wine Library, my dad's family business and Vayner for me is really for a forever business. I'm just able to hire a lot, right? And then you just gotta, you know, with retail, it was really easy, right? I was like, I knew how to sell wine. So like I was with, with B2B, it took me a little while to calibrate like, oh, fuck, they didn't pay us. Wait a minute, why? The bills do, like, why didn't you pay? But like overall, um, it's just staying in your shit, right? I think when you stay in your business and you know what you've got coming in and what is going out. You know, I'm not a CFO, like oriented CEO, but I'm also not a schmooil.

• 7:55Gary Vaynerchuk?

  I always have a good sense of like, is this, are we gonna be, I'm always playing to like, will this hurt me? Like, will I be in trouble? You know, I try to stay within those confines.

• 8:04Sam Parr?

  That's, it's just crazy. I mean, did you have a line of credit from the bank?

• 8:07Gary Vaynerchuk?

  No, we didn't have a line of, so fucking Wine Life, this is where my dad's a fucking psycho. I was so undereducated because I was such a poor student and I was such a, sorry for this background noise, it'll go away in a second. It was, I, my dad ran his fucking business with no line of credit, which I love, right? It's old school immigrant, you know, pay with what you have. But it trained me because that business is even crazier. That business went from four million to fucking 25 in like 30 months, like so fast. And inventory and payroll like, but I got so trained in playing within myself. We didn't have a line of credit for a long time. We definitely got a line of credit probably, maybe in 2013.

• 8:50Gary Vaynerchuk?

  So, but the first four or five years and in the, in the pocket you're talking about, which is very much more, um, will resonate a lot more with people on the call who've got it, who are gonna go through the seven to 17 to 77 to 277. It was more about just not spending what you don't have, right? Like, like, it was just as simple as basic being a businessman. Like, hey, we just landed this account. They're paying us 480 a year. It's fucking, you know, Mondelez or Pepsi. You feel like they're gonna pay you. You feel good. It's not gonna, you know? And it's like, okay, now I got 480. I'm gonna hire these six people at 40K apiece. I feel good with, you know, it was like very like back of the napkin.

• 9:32Gary Vaynerchuk?

  What's funny about it is, and you know this, and I think this is where, you know, as when you were on the podcast, we hung out at an outdoor dinner, like every time I come, there's something about just like street business versus like, I find myself laughing that like mine can be like intuitive and back of napkin. And yet people that are like all about learning and Excel sheets and doing it proper and fucking SAP and clouds. You know, they have all the software, like get fucked up. It's because they don't have a good pulse of their actual business and they get ahead of themselves and lack patience.

• 10:04Sam Parr?

  Yeah, it's just like when you're growing that fast, it, it, it seems like, like you're kind of playing it maybe month by month, maybe quarter by quarter where I would be, I mean, it just, I, I, I would go to bed at night wondering like, I hope this client doesn't bail, otherwise I gotta lay off 20 people.

• 10:22Gary Vaynerchuk?

  I think, I think what was happening was we were selling so this, and I think I, you know, it's so funny. I was very long-winded and I think I had the answer. When you are selling at a level that people are not accustomed to, like when you're outpacing normality, it just fucking selling hides everything. You know, when I'm landing fucking client week after week, like you, you know, you start getting into a place where you're just outpacing vulnerability.

• 10:49Sam Parr?

  That's always a question I had. Sean, do you want to give them an update on, I mean, I jumped right into that because I've always had that question about managing cash flow.

• 10:55Shaan Puri?

  Sam's been like sitting on that question for two years or something.

• 10:58Sam Parr?

  I have been.

• 10:58Shaan Puri?

  He didn't say hello. He didn't say what the podcast is fucking about. He's like, when you scaled, how'd you manage cash flow?

• 11:05Gary Vaynerchuk?

  You know what's funny? I've gotten to know Sam through my podcast and a little couple of hangouts. It makes sense to me because I think Sam's really good at what he does and he's, and he lived that life. And he knows he did it super well and he knows what the anxiety and like the challenges are. Like you could, you know, I always say you can only. My favorite people to talk to are the people that know. Like, I love talking to people that know because they've lived it, not because they read it. It just makes it so much more fun. It's the same way I feel like when I talk. Like, I love sports, but I fully know when I'm talking to an athlete, I don't know.

• 11:39Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 11:39Gary Vaynerchuk?

  I don't know what it's like.

• 11:40Shaan Puri?

  You know, I did this, uh, this thread that went viral on Twitter. It was about Clubhouse. And I was like, you know, this was when Clubhouse was sort of peaking. And I said this thing, I was like, it's kind of unpopular because, you know, why should on a startup? You know, it wasn't my intention, but I said, everybody thinks Clubhouse is the next big thing. And I think it's going to fail, but here's how I think it's going to go play it out. And I kind of wrote it like an episode of Silicon Valley. Like, I wrote it like a, like, you're the CEO first, you know, Chris Sock is texting you. This is happening. And I wrote this thing and it went viral and ended up getting on CNBC. It has like, I don't know, tens of millions of impressions. And people were like, oh, man, you're a good writer. And I was like, I'm not a good writer. I fucking, I built this thing called Blab that was very similar to Clubhouse. And I went through this run and I was getting all this shit.

• 12:24Shaan Puri?

  It wasn't anywhere near Clubhouse, but I, you know, their, their hump was higher.

• 12:28Gary Vaynerchuk?

  I remember.

• 12:29Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. And, and so I was like, you know, I, I, I went through this exact pain. And so I'm just literally telling a story I know of myself and I'm exaggerating a little bit to make it funny. And it has nothing to do with writing.

• 12:39Gary Vaynerchuk?

  You know what's so crazy about that? I don't know if you can see this. Do you see the goosebumps?

• 12:43Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 12:44Gary Vaynerchuk?

  It's, it's kind of how I think why I'm a good content producer. I literally stay in my fucking lane. I may say the same shit 8,700 different ways, and that's a little bit of my talent. I'm good in incorporating contemporary pop culture, slang nuances of the day. But the reason I think it works for me is similar to you. Like, like, I have so much conviction in my shit because I'm not guessing out here.

• 13:09Shaan Puri?

  Right. Yeah. You know, I was watching your trash talk video on the way here. So if you, people haven't seen it, go to, go to his YouTube. It's a fun series, actually. I was watching, I was like, I bet this hits. I couldn't see because I was driving, so I'm listening to it. And I'm like, God, this is good content. I was like, I bet this video hits. And of course, the views were pretty high on it.

• 13:27Gary Vaynerchuk?

  If you, for me, for me and YouTube, I'm sorry to interrupt. It's by far my best show. It's my best content.

• 13:32Shaan Puri?

  Immediately, I was like, I'm hooked.

• 13:34Gary Vaynerchuk?

  And do you know why I made it?

• 13:36Shaan Puri?

  No.

• 13:36Gary Vaynerchuk?

  Because I listen to my audience. I read my comments. I read my shit. So what was super awesome was I started getting a lot of emails from people saying, yo, You're awesome. I love you. But like this whole like, yeah, you put a $25,000 check into Twitter. They're like, that doesn't work for me. I don't have 25,000. I'm like, you know, cool. Let me go even further back in my origin story. What did I do when I had dick shit? I fucking went garage selling on Saturday and sold that shit at baseball card shows or other flea markets on, um, on Sunday.

• 14:07Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 14:08Sam Parr?

  Wait, wait, by the way, it's more fun. So I, I, I just sold $3,500 worth of old computers. And I got more joy having that $3,500 in my Venmo than I did $20 million in my bank.

• 14:21Gary Vaynerchuk?

  This brother is everything that I believe. I believe the reason I like stuff, it's easier is I'm in it for the game. I'm just like you. I could, there is no comparison to how I feel. When I, uh, in my last episode, I don't know if that's what you're watching. I found a bunch of Magna.

• 14:38Shaan Puri?

  That's the one I was watching.

• 14:39Gary Vaynerchuk?

  So for $270, I bought what ends up being about 6,400 in eBay post fees sales, right? It's crazy because it's like the thrill of the hunt. Like it was more fun.

• 14:52Shaan Puri?

  Even before that, right? So I watched my drive home from the bank to get to, to get home. I didn't get to that part yet, but I saw that was the title. So the, the, you know, some people are like, oh, that's cool. You buy something for 270, you sell it for six grand. The part that I was blown away by was the part I was watching. You went to 20 fucking garage sales in a day. And I was just thinking to myself, two things. I was like, he made the most kind of like this, this channel, this show is basically the most approachable version of entrepreneurship. Like we, we do these segments on the show that people love. That's called, uh, we'll do the Billy of the week, which is like a billionaire that we profile. But sometimes we'll do the hillbilly of the week, which is someone who owns 22 vending machines. And we break down how much money they make.

• 15:30Gary Vaynerchuk?

  That's fucking so smart.

• 15:32Shaan Puri?

  Another one we do is called the blue collar side hustle. It's like, here's something you don't need to be a genius for. Cause sometimes I go off on my crypto shit and I'll be like, oh yeah, this is the future. But then sometimes it's like, hey, you know what you should do? Like go door to door.

• 15:43Gary Vaynerchuk?

  You're the saint.

• 15:44Shaan Puri?

  Pest control leads, you know?

• 15:46Gary Vaynerchuk?

  I love Billy. That's so fucking smart. By the way, that's what I'm living right now. I'm like, can't function. Because I literally like looked at my calendar today and I saw we I had this podcast and obviously you guys have done a great job and I'm like fired up about it. But like literally in the back of my brain, I'm like, man, I hope they got caught up or something. Cause if I get back that 45 minutes, I can go more on OpenSea and do a little more research. I'm so enthralled right now in NFT life that I'm like every meeting, I'm like cutting five minutes short to like, like I'm just, but meanwhile, equally, the only other thing that's got me juiced is garage sale education because I know it can help people and I love it. It's the same game.

• 16:25Sam Parr?

  Do you know, um, do you know American Pickers?

• 16:29Gary Vaynerchuk?

  I know that show, yes.

• 16:30Sam Parr?

  So I used to work on that show. I used to work for Mike Wolf, the main guy in that show.

• 16:34Gary Vaynerchuk?

  Is that the guy who, is that the taller guy or the chubby?

• 16:36Sam Parr?

  The tall guy, the tall guy. And the way it worked is he would go from garage sale to garage sale, not garage sale, Barnes. And he would buy stuff and we would buy like some cheap stuff, like something we could sell in the store for 50 bucks. Then we would buy some like a old motorcycle that doesn't work, but it's art that we could sell for 20 grand. And all these people would come in from all over the country to the store that I helped run and we would probably sell $5,000 worth of items, but we would sell probably 30 grand a day of T-shirts. And this freaking business crushed it. But Sean, you want to talk about some NFT stuff? Cause so I know that excites both of you. It excites me too.

• 17:12Gary Vaynerchuk?

  Are you starting to get into it, Sam? Are you like digging in a little?

• 17:14Sam Parr?

  No, I, I, I am. I'm into it. Sean told me what it was like a year ago and he bought like some really cool Kobe stuff and I went and got a, I, I thought it was badass. And so, but Sean's like really into it. I think he's got a ticker behind him that you could see.

• 17:28Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, no, this is, this is just, you know, my own little, I motivate myself with my own motivational quote every day or whatever. But I do have this programmed up where it can tell me the price of whatever, you know, Ethereum or, you know, uh, whether it's some altcoin. Or in this case, I start, I met the founder of Nifty Gateway and I was like, dude, uh, first his story is hilarious. I don't know if you've met them, but it's two twins.

• 17:49Gary Vaynerchuk?

  Tyler?

• 17:50Shaan Puri?

  No, so they got, it's two twins that built Nifty Gateway.

• 17:53Gary Vaynerchuk?

  Guy acquired by, oh my God, that's fucking amazing. That's fucking amazing.

• 17:57Shaan Puri?

  And so this was like pretty early in the wave of like, NFT started getting hotter and hotter. What they did, which was smart was they said, look, NFTs have value because they're scarce, but the problem is anyone can make a print of NFT tomorrow, which is like the fun, but also that there's like an abundance of scarce objects now, right?

• 18:14Gary Vaynerchuk?

  Yeah, supply and demand, like there's such an incredibly fascinating supply and demand game going on.

• 18:19Shaan Puri?

  What Nifty started doing was they were kind of like, look, what we'll do is we'll be like Christie's, we'll curate, so we'll find the best artists on Instagram and we'll bring them on. And they've been building up this, you know, people did their thing, I think through through Nifty early on. They've been building up a following for 10 years just doing free art for the love of the game on Instagram. And now that there's a way to monetize that audience, monetize that art, they can bring it over here. And so I bought this like Kobe, you know, the forever Mamba, I don't know if you've ever seen it. But basically I was telling Sam on the pod, I was like, yeah, I just bought this thing for $800. And you know, he goes through the cycle everybody goes through, which is you bought a file? Like, why are you buying JPGs? Like, what's that gonna do? You spent $800 on this? And I was like, yeah, actually I bought five. He's like, you bought five copies of the

• 18:59Shaan Puri?

  same fucking thing? And, you know, those sell for 10 to 25K now. And so that was my first flip, basically, my version of the digital garage sale, right?

• 19:09Gary Vaynerchuk?

  That's why I'm so addicted, I think. Like, I'm addicted to the digital garage sale.

• 19:14Shaan Puri?

  And so give us like your simplified version of the thesis, because some people kind of like, some people love this shit, they're in the weeds. Some people just sit there and eye roll. And then the truth is that there's something really exciting going on. And then there's also a bunch of shit that's gonna go away in a few years, like it'll all get swept out of the rug. So give us your take.

• 19:30Gary Vaynerchuk?

  Yeah, I've been, you know, I'll just, well, I'll give you the micro thing on that. I think 98% of the current projects go to zero.

• 19:36Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 19:37Gary Vaynerchuk?

  Like, I think it's very, it's, to me, it's the most similar thing to web internet stocks, 99, 2000 that I remember. I remember being there, I really, like, I was me, young, so I wasn't as experienced and didn't have as many pattern recognitions and reps, but I had a lot of the good ingredients, right? And I remember sitting there and saying, man, a lot of these businesses make no sense. Like, just no sense. I'm like, how could they be worth this much money? They're losing so much money. And I didn't understand Wall Street, so I wasn't sure. But when the affirmation of March and April 2000 came along and most things got smoked out, it kind of was a monumental moment for me, because the only stock that I bought was Amazon.

• 20:22Gary Vaynerchuk?

  And because I really thought it was like a real business, even though it was losing money, it was losing money in a different way than other things. It had an actual business like Backstreet, Wow Sam. And I started like, revenue mattered. Like, the other ones didn't have fucking revenue. You know, like, no customer gave a fuck. And I'm always like, does the customer care? So, what do I think, overall? I think people are grossly underestimating NFTs. I think right now, people think of them as collectible and art and flip game. And for a lot of us that have that American Pick or Garage Sale, Sports Cards for me, like, and there's a ton of people that love that, like, that's, that's why half of Wall Street, that's where they go. Like, there's a lot of those people, and that's amazing, and that's big. That's a big industry. Like, over the next 15 years, big. Collecting, flipping,

• 21:05Gary Vaynerchuk?

  you know, you've got an entire generation of kids that go on Fortnite, and Madden, and 2K, and buy digital assets to flex. So that's gonna fucking play out. But I think that's just a nuance of NFTs. I think people misunderstand the utility nature of smart contracts. I believe in the next 15 years, that, that nobody writes a book with a publisher, they do it through an NFT infrastructure. I believe that in 15 years, nobody launches a record label by having a, a, a record, a, a record, by having a record label give them the bag. They're gonna get it from crowdfunding by selling NFTs and giving a percentage of royalties. I believe that there's not a single sporting event or concert in 10 years, that the ticket is not an NFT, because there's no incentive for that organization and that artist or people

• 21:50Gary Vaynerchuk?

  to launch it as anything but an NFT, because a QR code or a piece of paper means nothing. But the NFT, if Luka Donic drops 100 points in that game, that becomes a forever collectible. There's a trillion fucking dollars worth of, of ticket stubs that have sold over the last 25 years on eBay. You know, that all goes to royalties to the person that... So, what's really fascinating to me, I'll give you a weird one. If you own a home that is wildly unique... And it's a $25 million home on a beach or something wild, right? You NFT that fucking home right now, put into the smart contract that you get 1% of every transaction of this home in perpetuity. And the first person that's going to buy it from you is going to be fine with that.

• 22:32Gary Vaynerchuk?

  They don't give a fuck because these things are long leads, right? You buy it, you sit on it for 13, 15 years. So like, there's so much that NFT blockchain realities are going to bring that I think people are underestimating it.

• 22:45Sam Parr?

  You wanna, you wanna, yeah. Go ahead, Sean.

• 22:48Shaan Puri?

  I'm telling them this idea we had.

• 22:49Sam Parr?

  Great minds think alike.

• 22:50Shaan Puri?

  A few months ago, a few months ago, we're, we're shooting the shit before an episode and we, we don't tell each other what we're going to talk about. It's like, yo, I'm bringing three, I'm bringing three pieces of heat. You're going to react to it. I gotta know my shit. You have to be able to react and that people like that. People like the reaction.

• 23:03Gary Vaynerchuk?

  That's so good.

• 23:04Shaan Puri?

  We all already know it's like.

• 23:05Gary Vaynerchuk?

  Fuck that.

• 23:06Shaan Puri?

  The worst part of a podcast is, hey, do you know this? Yes. Okay, well, let me explain it because I'm not actually asking you, motherfucker. I'm asking the audience, right? I'm trying to present this here. So one of the ideas that I brought on was that I noticed that Michael Jordan's house had been sitting on the market, has sat on the market, his house in Chicago, that's got the 23 emblem on the gate. It's got like a basketball court inside, it's got everything. And it's been sitting on the market for years and the price has been dropping. I think, I don't know what it started at. I think something like 20 million, then it went down to 15, 14. And it's like, so I came on the pod, I was like, dude, I think we could buy Michael Jordan's house for $10 million.

• 23:43Gary Vaynerchuk?

  Wow.

• 23:44Shaan Puri?

  And I was like, you know, so we could kind of like do the, you know, the way that normally somebody would do this is, all right, do I have that kind of F you money to go buy Michael Jordan's house? My wife doesn't kill me? Or do I go, you know, like raise a fund amongst, you know, a few back alley conversations at dinners with some folks who are rich? I said, or we could just get this podcast, we could crowdfund $10 million.

• 24:04Gary Vaynerchuk?

  Yep.

• 24:04Shaan Puri?

  And we could basically fractional, you could do fractional, either through an NFT or on Rally Road or whatever. I was like, let's buy Michael Jordan's house. And we started, and this went viral a little bit in our world. Like, in my head, you listen to every episode religiously, it hits your phone and you say, cancel, you know, clear my calendar, I need to go listen to this. I know you probably didn't, but that was an idea we had a few months ago. So how would that play out in the NFT world? So walk us through that.

• 24:29Gary Vaynerchuk?

  You guys, and now it sounds like it went viral, and you're like, that's exactly what should hap- Like, I think that's, you can't imagine, and I'm a man who tends to, like, I don't love that many ideas.

• 24:41Speaker 03

  Right.

• 24:41Gary Vaynerchuk?

  Really, I mean that. I love execution. I think a lot of people can execute a B and C idea and do great. But to say I love an idea is rare, and that's why I think I've done really well. Like, I really bet when I love something, and it's worked for me, and I've lost sometimes because the executor couldn't do it. Yo, Bongo was my favorite investment. It was a precursor to Tinder in a lot of ways. Caleb and the team there just couldn't get it there. They didn't execute, which is okay. But, but when I tell you I love the idea of buying Michael Jordan's house so much, because I know that

• 25:15Gary Vaynerchuk?

  you can literally arbitrage it in perpetuity. Like, I, you guys are people that can garner attention and promote. So it's worth so much more to you than somebody else. I could see the entire entrepreneurial ecosystem renting out the basketball court game. Like, like, you can run a real business. Now, now, back to my big point about unique property. I think this is gonna change the real estate industry. The fact that you could put, you guys are young dudes. You put a 2% royalty in perpetuity on that home. You sell it to the next person for 9 million, let alone 12 million, right? Let's just play. You guys are locked. Your great-grandchildren, great-great-great-grandchildren are like, our fucking great-great-great-great-grandfathers

• 26:00Gary Vaynerchuk?

  are fucking geniuses. We just got a fucking $800,000 check in the mail, or 80,000, whatever it ends up being. I do think in the next five years, there will be an aha to what NFT blockchain smart contracts mean. And I think it will trickle into real estate. People will buy unique properties. And I think they're gonna make incredible in-perpetuity monies that maybe they themselves won't get the crazy, because you know how often their houses turn per se? But, man, listen, if you're listening to this right now, listen, I've got a real good sense to who listens to this, because you guys got a lot of fans. You are either there, or you are spying to be there from a professional standpoint.

• 26:42Gary Vaynerchuk?

  For the people that are listening right now who've been fortunate and we're sitting in this weird moment right now because of crypto and NFT where there's some people that have really come into some real money in like I'm making a very smart play if you're sitting with some money you know these are the things you're thinking about like what can I do that like is fun for me but also leaves for my generational wealth I want to do shit that's still is good like the house is perfect right because it'll be fun for you 16 or two or nine weeks a year but you're also creating something that's an asset let me say it one more time in perpetuity

• 27:18Sam Parr?

  Right

• 27:18Gary Vaynerchuk?

  Like once it goes on there and gets NFT it's NFT it is a contract like there's the ABA team do you know the story about the ABA team from St Louis

• 27:29Sam Parr?

  No

• 27:29Gary Vaynerchuk?

  The NBA and the NBA

• 27:30Sam Parr?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah

• 27:31Gary Vaynerchuk?

  No, this Sam, this is epic they merged the leagues the St Louis team is out and the fuckers like fuck you we're not signing the deal and so what they did was they it was like I don't know what the finite details were but they needed them to sign off to make the merger happen and they tell them that your franchise does in advance because we're folding some they they they fight they fight they fight because they really loved basketball they're like New York like schmatta guys who bought like TV right at the end they go okay well if that's the case you have to we have to be treated financially as the at the time the 26th or the 22nd or the 24th NBA franchise and in perpetuity we get the economic split for that so we're out of the league but

• 28:16Gary Vaynerchuk?

  economy that we get it and so as the league

• 28:19Sam Parr?

  I mean I think they made like a billion dollars or something it was

• 28:22Gary Vaynerchuk?

  I think

• 28:22Sam Parr?

  Two brothers, right?

• 28:23Gary Vaynerchuk?

  That's right, that's exactly

• 28:24Sam Parr?

  It was two brothers I think they like made like hundreds of millions

• 28:28Gary Vaynerchuk?

  Hundreds of millions when that was like a different number over those 70s 80s and 90s I do think they got bought out like the grandkids got bought out by the NBA like before the last big deal but like wow

• 28:41Sam Parr?

  Unbelievable. Do you, um, go ahead, Sean.

• 28:44Shaan Puri?

  I was just gonna say, you were talking about NFT, another, I think, another NFT use case that, why I like when talking about it with you versus like, we've had a bunch of crypto heads on here, you know, super geniuses like Biology and others, and, you know, one challenge is, if our audience is a guy who owns his own marketing agency in St. Louis, he's sort of like, okay,

• 29:03Gary Vaynerchuk?

  Yeah, what's this mean?

• 29:04Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, like, I don't want the how, I want the what. What does this mean? And what does it mean for me?

• 29:08Gary Vaynerchuk?

  Exactly. And to me, when I talk about NFTs, I think about the fashion industry. I think about why somebody owns a Rolex. I think about social media. Like, like, how about this? You know how everyone's like, social media is full of shit? Like, everyone takes photos and fakes it? You know what's gonna be a much better social identity? What tokens do you have in your wallet publicly?

• 29:29Shaan Puri?

  Yes. Dude, I was thinking about this yesterday.

• 29:31Gary Vaynerchuk?

  I would have a much better read on both of you if I looked at your tokens in five years. Yeah, like, my public wallet is gonna represent me, because it's not only gonna be like what I believe in, CryptoPunks, you know, my VFriends collection, like, but it's also gonna be like, all my Jets tickets. And I'll give you a good one. I haven't mentioned Dave Matthews publicly in my entire life, but if somebody went in my, if this was going on for 30 years, I'd be like, like, every day on Twitter, I'd probably get a, Gary, you went to Dave Matthews New Year's, 99 Madison Square Garden? I'm like, oh, yeah, my friend Tokyo Joe loved, like, like, you know, it's a truth indicator. And by the way, one last point. This is what really confuses people. Every, I'm gonna give you such a clear picture that I think will help people.

• 30:12Gary Vaynerchuk?

  Every one of you has an aunt, uncle, niece, nephew, friend, grandma, when you go into their house, they collect marbles, they collect little miniature elephants, they collect magnets. Every state they go to, they pick up a matchbox. Humans, humans, are inherently hoarding assets. And we use them for ourselves, because we like it, we get caught up in the nostalgia and the story, and we use it to flex.

• 30:37Shaan Puri?

  Yep.

• 30:37Gary Vaynerchuk?

  Flexing a painting, or your Winnie the Pooh collection, that's epic in your house, is kind of hard, except for the people that come through. The blockchain is going to accelerate, accelerate at a scale

• 30:48Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 30:49Gary Vaynerchuk?

  The way I thought that it would accelerate communication with social. And that's why I think people are underestimating. The first internet collected the information. The second internet created the framework for communication. Right? This third thing, this web three NFT thing, it's going to capture the consumerization of assets and the stakes are fucking high.

• 31:13Sam Parr?

  And with your deal, the, the new, um, the, the Gary, what, what was it called? Be Friends?

• 31:17Gary Vaynerchuk?

  Be Friends.

• 31:18Sam Parr?

  You, you, um, you offer a conference a year. Are you going to do that forever? Or is there a timeline on that?

• 31:25Gary Vaynerchuk?

  What I wanted to, so my, this is pretty interesting because I've, I've done it in a couple of shows, but with you guys, it's, people like this. So I

• 31:32Shaan Puri?

  Do you want to host it at Michael Jordan's house? Because we'll let you do it, my friend. We can help you host at Michael Jordan's house.

• 31:39Gary Vaynerchuk?

  My guy, listen, so for the hardest core consumers of my content, Be Friends made so much sense. Why? The amount of times I referenced Walt Disney and Vince McMahon, character creation. I'm building VaynerX to buy nostalgic IP. I'm going to refurbish storytelling, Saturday morning cartoons, all the shit behind me in my office. Right? Like wrestling and Thundercats and Transformers. So I'm just so affected by pop culture and all that my whole life. And like, I wanted to buy like animal crackers from Mondelez and I was going to turn it into Madagascar. Like, I've been like in this place forever. Right? As a matter of fact, you know what Be Friends is? Two years ago, I was going to launch a toy line called Workplace Warriors, where literal desk toys.

• 32:22Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 32:23Gary Vaynerchuk?

  With what basically became these characters. So for me, I see NFTs. I have my, I've been like, kind of like flirting in the winter. I have my crazy eureka, like, no, no, no, this is the fucking it, it, right? Moment. I bought ETH a long time ago, Aaron Battalion, shout out, former CTO of Living Social, got me on in 2015, 16. I've been watching, but I wait to the consumer, the normal shit, the marketing agency, St. Louis moment, not the fucking hardcore infrastructure nerd shit. That's just not my jam. Right? So. I go, fuck, man. I'm gonna build the next Pokemon Harry Potter Transformers, but 99.9% of the world's not gonna believe me. So let me launch this program and show people that you can do a lot more than just have pictures on it.

• 33:09Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 33:09Gary Vaynerchuk?

  So to your point, Sam, like, I'm like, so the answer is it's a three-year contract. V Friends Series One says you get a conference ticket to VCon 2022, 2023, 2024. Right? I'll figure shit out after the fact, but I knew that that would have such inherent value that people would lock in for that. But basically what I was trying to do was trick, this is the word I would use, trick my hardest core advocates by giving them an asset. I view V Friends, the original thing I just launched, as kind of like the original Disney sells. You know, those things that sell for like a trillion that were like, they hand drew Snow White in the 40s? Like, if I pull off what I think I can pull off, stuffed animals, toys, trading cards, movies,

• 33:51Gary Vaynerchuk?

  video games, over the next 40 years, this original NFT has real potential. And I wanted to create a thing that wouldn't make my biggest, earliest supporters trade it. You look at Bored Ape, you look at Mebit, you look at these epic projects that are killing right now, people are trading. I wanted, I wanted people to be locked in so that by the time the three years are over, they're like, wait a minute, I'm never selling this, because I wanted them to benefit the most.

• 34:17Shaan Puri?

  And the data backs this up. So right now, if I go on Crypto Slam, if you guys don't know, there's cryptoslam.io, easy little aggregator of NFT projects. I think you guys are like number eight. Okay, so you're number eight.

• 34:29Gary Vaynerchuk?

  In the last 24 hours.

• 34:30Shaan Puri?

  Last 24, yes, sorry. It's a 24-hour rolling scoreboard.

• 34:32Gary Vaynerchuk?

  You can do up top. It's got all the stuff.

• 34:35Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, so we can do like, let's say, 30 days. All right, so 30 days, you're number 12. Last 30 days, about 12 million of sales volume, of transaction volume. And the funny thing is, if you go through all the other ones, CryptoPunks, Mebits, all these, they have somewhere between thousands or tens of thousands, or, you know, the top one, Axfinity, is quarter million buyers that are doing these number, doing these transactions. VFriends is like an outlier. It's like 300 people with 580 transactions. What that tells me is that there is a small group of hardcore people who are not looking to flip this rapidly for a quick buck because they believe in you, they believe in the utility value of the conference. So I like that because it's different and you're pushing it more.

• 35:14Gary Vaynerchuk?

  At this point, I think I've been very aggressive with this. I'm like, do not bet against me. I'm gonna fucking build transformers. Like, you know, like, and I, so I think a lot of people are holding now be more, you know, the conference is gonna be epic and I'm gonna come through. But I think, I think, I think they're betting on my propaganda right now and I'm gonna come through.

• 35:33Shaan Puri?

  It's like Bitcoin. The thing that gets it, like, early days Bitcoin, the people who bought in were because they were anarchist crypto nerds. It's like, they needed, you need the first people to buy in for one reason. And the second people are, you know, the speculators.

• 35:45Gary Vaynerchuk?

  You got it.

• 35:46Shaan Puri?

  And then it's like, once everybody's got the damn thing, we all speculated on it. Now we can just use it as a medium of exchange. So similarly.

• 35:52Gary Vaynerchuk?

  What's interesting about NFTs, more so than Bitcoin today, and obviously things will evolve, it's just functional. Like, VCon makes it functional. Like, they're about to get very functional.

• 36:05Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 36:05Gary Vaynerchuk?

  Like, the functionality is gonna be extraordinary.

• 36:09Shaan Puri?

  Right. And so, so I like VFriends. I think VFriends is cool. I told my guy before this pod, I was like, oh, I'm gonna talk to Gary today. You know, let's pick up a VFriend. Like, go, go get me one off the floor there.

• 36:20Gary Vaynerchuk?

  I appreciate it.

• 36:20Shaan Puri?

  And he's like, cool, the floor price is like, get it at 17 grand now. I was like, oh, okay, whoa. All right, all right.

• 36:25Gary Vaynerchuk?

  We don't like Gary that much.

• 36:26Shaan Puri?

  I was like, I was like, I'm gonna do it, but that is not what I expected. I was like, that's interesting. That really kinda like opened my eyes. In fact, the last few days, you've been seeing, so I wanna bring back one thing you talked about, which is your wallet is gonna be a new type of profile. It's gonna be a new place to flex. It's gonna be a new place to learn about somebody.

• 36:42Gary Vaynerchuk?

  In a real way. Like, like, the only reason I'm in is that.

• 36:46Shaan Puri?

  Right. And then the other, social's going the other way. You can filter your face. You can do many things to get non-verifiable there, you know?

• 36:53Gary Vaynerchuk?

  You know, it's really interesting, the argument of like us controlling our narrative, because everyone's become the PR agent of themselves. Versus the black and white public data of what we buy. Now, don't forget, for everyone who's scared and loves privacy, you don't have to share your wallet.

• 37:10Sam Parr?

  Right.

• 37:11Gary Vaynerchuk?

  It's just that my, my argument is I was there for MySpace 2004 when everyone's like, people are gonna get raped at the mall and kidnapped and, you know, I was like, nah, I think it's gonna go this way and now it is, right? Everyone's in. I think that's what's gonna happen with NFTs. Like, you've got the hardcore people that I get on Zoom with, like, just shopping and they've got literally, like, voice deactivators and, like, screens saying, I don't know who they are.

• 37:34Sam Parr?

  I love those guys.

• 37:35Gary Vaynerchuk?

  Every day, the masses are coming and they're in the public wallet, the rainbow wallet, the dot ETH world, and I think that's where it's going.

• 37:44Sam Parr?

  You, um, so you, you, you've been talking about buying brands and putting them through Vayner for, I mean, you, in like year three, four of, of the company, you, I mean, you've been saying that whole spiel for a long time. I, first of all, you, you haven't done it yet. When are you gonna do it? And second of all, I think that this, putting them through the, the NFT thing is significantly better than the old model that I bet you were planning on doing of like, well, you know, we could put them through the, the VaynerMedia.

• 38:11Gary Vaynerchuk?

  Machine, yep.

• 38:12Sam Parr?

  Machine.

• 38:13Gary Vaynerchuk?

  You, you've got to.

• 38:14Sam Parr?

  Like, I mean, I would much rather buy an old, like, a 90s brand and do this, because I'm, I'm looking at who the biggest, uh, brands are on crypto slay. I mean, it's sports, it's sports companies.

• 38:23Gary Vaynerchuk?

  Yeah.

• 38:23Sam Parr?

  I mean, I think you can do, brands are gonna be better. What, when are you finally gonna execute on that and, and pull the trigger? Because you've been talking about it for a long time. I'm excited to see it happen.

• 38:32Gary Vaynerchuk?

  Come on, Gary.

• 38:34Sam Parr?

  Well, it's like, it's like, dude, why do you need fucking 1,500 employees still? Like, uh, you built that machine. It's badass. Do the other thing now.

• 38:43Gary Vaynerchuk?

  Yeah, you'll appreciate it. I think that's an incredibly strong observation from the outside. I just know how, you know, you know what, like, it's a version of golden handcuffs. Like, instead of, like, selling your company, you have to be stuck or, or like, you have a big salary. I just know I'm so fucking close for it actually being a Death Star versus like, yeah, it's a better badass machine than anybody else has got. Like, I feel that. Like, truly, I do. I'm like, I got a better machine than the other fucking 500 people I admire that I think have this down. But it's like, but it's so, it's like so close to being two times better and four times better. And the way I scratched my itch was Resy, the restaurant app, which I had a major exit with, Empathy Wines, which, like, I was creating, and now V Friends.

• 39:26Gary Vaynerchuk?

  And like, the V Friends thing is really fucking with me because I'm like, eh. You know, oh, by the way, Sam, you'll appreciate this. I had one executed four years ago, signed, and they pulled out late and kind of had like a clause in there that allowed them to. And I feel good about this publicly. I had animal crackers bought. I mentioned it slightly quickly when I was talking. I had it. And I fucking had the master fucking plan. It was a cookie brand. I was gonna make it healthier to be on trend. But what I was really gonna do was turn it into an animated film and build up like make the lion like fucking Larry the lion. Like, I was, it was kind of B-Friend-y. Now, listen, ultimately, I think I'm gonna place my ground. I'm young enough at 45, have the leverage, have the infrastructure that I think I'm gonna do a whole bunch of everything, right? I think

• 40:11Gary Vaynerchuk?

  I can build a studio like Pixar with B-Friends at the forefront and do other shit. And I think I can buy Champion when it gets cold again and refurbish it in 13 years. Because I like both of those things. And I'm gonna try to get to both.

• 40:22Sam Parr?

  How much could you have bought animal crackers for?

• 40:25Gary Vaynerchuk?

  Forty-eight, I think the deal was at at the time.

• 40:28Sam Parr?

  No shit?

• 40:29Gary Vaynerchuk?

  Yeah.

• 40:29Sam Parr?

  What was the revenue?

• 40:30Gary Vaynerchuk?

  I hate making up shit. I genuinely don't remember. I remember the number pretty vividly.

• 40:37Sam Parr?

  Do you remember around the multiple?

• 40:38Gary Vaynerchuk?

  It was like, nothing. It was like fucking, nothing.

• 40:42Shaan Puri?

  You're valuing the IP, not the core business at that stage?

• 40:44Gary Vaynerchuk?

  No, they were like, just fucking, it was dead. They're like, we, like, they didn't give, and like, and we were gonna use it as a proxy to teach them how to do it with their, like, it was fucking set up nicely.

• 40:53Sam Parr?

  Well, you did it with the Nilla wafers. I mean...

• 40:56Gary Vaynerchuk?

  From a marketing standpoint, we crushed it there. And you know, I, I really scratched my itch with K-Swiss. K-Swiss was fucking finished, dead, done.

• 41:04Sam Parr?

  What happened to them? Something happened recently, right?

• 41:07Gary Vaynerchuk?

  They sold it to a Chinese apparel company.

• 41:10Sam Parr?

  That's right.

• 41:10Gary Vaynerchuk?

  K-Swiss was at the forefront of that leverage. We fucking exploded. Not only did we sell a fuckload of Gary V sneakers, the residual effect on the brand was very real. That was, that's the closest I've come to like, testing my machine. Only difference was, it was a fake test because I was so involved with it in the face. My plan is not to be that. As a matter of fact, the best part of B-Friends for me, is Gary Vee has been the catalyst for all the shit I'm passionate about, like work ethic, patience. I'm so pumped that I'm gonna be over the next three years be able to go a little bit more in the backdrop and let these and let these characters take over for me as I build that IP. So I'm looking forward to that.

• 41:48Shaan Puri?

  Well, that's what I was gonna ask you when I was watching this garage sale video. I was like, this is great content, but man, he actually had to go to 20 garage sales. And I'm sure there's some fun to it, but also you graduated past that stage in your life.

• 42:00Gary Vaynerchuk?

  Well, that's the biggest thing that pisses me off of my bougie fucking friends. They're like, Gary, what the fuck are you doing? I'm like, fuck you. You, you, you go play golf and go on a yacht? I'm in a fucking garage sale. I'm not telling you what to do.

• 42:10Shaan Puri?

  Like, you know, like even besides that, like I know, you know, I've done this podcast now for only 18 months, right? So, so we're, we're new to the game, something like that. And there's a lot of benefits of building up this personal brands like boom, I want to raise a fund. I raise a fund, I launch a course and sell out, you know, like you make a lot of money when you build a personal brand, you build trust with an audience by giving them, giving them, giving them like you say, and then you sort of have your ass later. So the, the part I thought was interesting is man, he's been on this, what, you know, quote unquote treadmill of creating content. You know, you're in your car, you're in your Uber going somewhere, you know, you got a cameraman with you and you got to put out a soundbite for Instagram reels because that's the new hot shit or whatever. And so like, does, are you, I guess like this is more of a personal question.

• 42:55Shaan Puri?

  Like Sam wanted to know the how the hell did you manage the cash flow question? This is mine as like, I see myself doing this content thing for a long time, but I don't want to work as hard as you as far as creating that much content. Do you do it because like it's fun? Do you do it, you know, are you, do you feel like you're on a treadmill when you're creating this much content, this much Gary V?

• 43:15Gary Vaynerchuk?

  The answer is I only do what I like. As a matter of fact, like I'm not hitting all my, my team and my quotas right now with my content these last two weeks because I can't stop being on crypto slam, open C Discord. Like you'd be stunned how, how much I could shut it down or triple down. I understand the benefits of it and the leverage and I always did. I always thought the community and brand was very underestimated in the last 10 years. I just feel like people are just getting around to like, oh shit, this is like the actual game, but I don't, I don't really, I, I enjoy it. I really do. And, and I also did it a little bit different. Slowly, I did it by myself for seven years, but then I really built out an infrastructure

• 43:58Gary Vaynerchuk?

  of a team, right? Like to your point, like I'm, I'm just living and everyone's recording and then we're post-producing at scale.

• 44:06Sam Parr?

  How many folks are on the team?

• 44:09Gary Vaynerchuk?

  Right now, I think there's 22.

• 44:10Sam Parr?

  And is, are you the majority owner of VaynerMedia or VaynerX?

• 44:15Gary Vaynerchuk?

  Yes.

• 44:16Sam Parr?

  So then you're able to kind of, it's not like a VC thing where you're, you're able to like use the same resources across all your shit. You don't have to worry about, you don't have to worry about pleasing everyone.

• 44:25Gary Vaynerchuk?

  That's right.

• 44:26Sam Parr?

  Or like your fiduciary, I mean, your fiduciary is to your, to yourself and to your brother.

• 44:30Gary Vaynerchuk?

  But like, yeah, exactly. So like, and so I'm, I'm in heavy control. It's a long-term play. I have no board. There's no, I'm not publicly traded. To your exact point, I can like, it's very much just a very large family business.

• 44:45Sam Parr?

  Yeah. You don't have to justify to anyone but you and your bro.

• 44:48Gary Vaynerchuk?

  And what's cool about that is I don't have to my bro because I've done super well by him. And more importantly, you know, I'm delivering. Like, you know, you know this, right? Like what's super awesome is like when you're putting the wins on the board, nobody even gives, nobody wants to touch it. They're like, keep going, keep going. Nobody wants to talk to me, you know?

• 45:06Sam Parr?

  Did you, do you pay yourself from the, the company or do you just take all your side wins and reinvest most of your, your, what would be your salary or income from the, the brand back into the agency?

• 45:19Gary Vaynerchuk?

  Originally I paid myself very, very, very little. It just is so much of the percentage of my time. So I've started paying myself probably over the last four years. But I'm still like wildly undercompensated in comparison to what I would feel like the god of merit would come down and he would say, yeah, you are like way under, because it's kind of all cycling in the same game to your point.

• 45:42Sam Parr?

  Sure. And do you?

• 45:45Shaan Puri?

  Like, do you look back, because I think you're excited about Web 3?

• 45:49Gary Vaynerchuk?

  Yes.

• 45:49Shaan Puri?

  And you look back at Web 2. I know you can quickly tell the story of missing Uber. You know, you're buddies with the guy who missed Uber. That's a big one.

• 45:56Gary Vaynerchuk?

  Big one.

• 45:56Shaan Puri?

  What was the, you tell that story, but also just in general, what'd you learn from the Web 2 wave? That you're like, okay, Web 3, I'm better prepared because I've been in the long game.

• 46:04Gary Vaynerchuk?

  I love you for that question because the only thing I've been thinking about for the last nine months is like, damn, this is the first time I've felt like this since 06.

• 46:12Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 46:13Gary Vaynerchuk?

  The thing I learned there was I was going to meet a lot of people that were technically stronger than me, teach me new things, have incredibly fun, young, fucking on-fire thinkers, different shit, the world is rescheduling, recalibrating, and that I knew that I understood the consumer and the human so well that I would figure out my path within it. I think like, you know, the thing I learned with, I've told the Uber story ad nauseam. Travis is the only person I thank in Crush It!, my first book, besides my family. We were incredibly close.

• 46:47Gary Vaynerchuk?

  What I learned there was defense always loses. I bought my first like apartment in Manhattan. I played so conservative up until like 35, like I had no money, first of all, because I was building a family business. I just didn't have a lot of liquid. I had enough to make the Uber investment. I passed twice. And there was two things I learned from it. One, the full story is that when I was asked to invest in Uber, Garrett and Travis were just the inventors of it. And Ryan Graves was the CEO who was going to run it. And I had just failed in putting up a wine social network called Quirked. And it was because it was a distraction to my core. And so I was affected by thinking that if this is their side hustle, it's not really them.

• 47:31Shaan Puri?

  Totally reasonable, by the way, totally reasonable line of thought. And you'll be right nine out of 10 times.

• 47:36Gary Vaynerchuk?

  The second one hurts because Travis came back to me out of this, there's this grassy knoll. I have no idea where it is in San Francisco, like a little park. I drove by it like seven years ago and got like the worst feelings. I'm like, I have to go back here every year, once a year for humbleness. Well, I'll tell you, I want to, I know we're going to be wrapping up, so let me give you the real, this is something I really hope helps a lot of people. I have completely gone the other way. Let me tell you what I mean by that. I am now completely infatuated with investing only based on the person. I have to hate, that would be the word I use, and I don't like that word. I would have to hate the person's idea to not go if I think that the jockey is a gangster. And it's worked out for me. There's a company called Mick Mack where I just saw Rachel, had one meeting with her, and I said, she's one of us. Right? That's it.

• 48:21Gary Vaynerchuk?

  She's one of us. And she's pivoted four times. But the company is a monster now and is well on its way. And between the Uber thing and the Rachel thing, like, it's kind of how I'm navigating Web three right now. I'm really trying to pay attention to, is this person one of us? Because I think there's something about a human's ability to will their way to the success, even if they have to completely change the business model halfway through.

• 48:48Sam Parr?

  I love it. Well, we, you were supposed to bounce three minutes ago. We don't want to go over your time. I, it sounds like, it looks like you're in the Hamptons and it sounds like someone's preparing dinner right now. Is that right?

• 49:01Gary Vaynerchuk?

  You've got, you've got good intuition.

• 49:03Sam Parr?

  Are you in the kitchen? You're in the kitchen. You have someone who is vacuuming and cooking dinner right now?

• 49:07Gary Vaynerchuk?

  We're, we're setting up infrastructure for the weekend, but listen, I, I, let me say this. It's super fun for me to see this show pop from afar. Like, there are not, you know, it's a very funny time in society where like, work ethic and the grind, like, I, I'm incredibly excited that we have a balanced conversation. But the energy of entrepreneurship is just such an important variable. And so I, I appreciate what you guys are doing in this space.

• 49:34Sam Parr?

  And I'm not gonna, I'll have to ask him if it's, if he's cool if I blow up his spot a little bit. But me and Gary had dinner with like eight or 10 other people like two months ago. And I went back to this guy's house about a month ago again for another dinner. We're gonna have to tell the story about this guy's house. It was, it was like the craziest house I've ever been to. And we're gonna have to tell, we're gonna have to tell that story one day.

• 49:56Gary Vaynerchuk?

  Listen, I'd love to come back if, whenever you guys feel is a appropriate time for recycling a guest, hit me up. I wish you nothing but good and, and thank you for having me on.

• 50:10Speaker 03

  I feel like I could rule the world, I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it like no days off. On the road, let's travel, never looking back.