#527: Jessica Vaugn on Playmate Turned Bitcoiner

Jessica Vaugn is a former Playboy Playmate who has reinvented herself as a talented photographer. She also has become a staunch proponent of bitcoin over the last few months. In this conversation, we discuss her career as a Playboy Playmate, professional reinvention, independent thinking, the Federal Reserve, Bitcoin as freedom, the legacy system, and meme masters. ======================= Remote makes it easy for companies of all sizes to employ global full-time employees and contractors. We take care of international payroll, benefits, taxes and local compliance, so you can focus on growing your business. Learn more about Remote and their new Remote for Startups program at http://www.remote.com. ======================= Choice is a new self-directed IRA product that I'm really excited about. If you are listening to this, you are likely part of the 7.1 million bitcoin owners who have retirement accounts with dollars in them, but not bitcoin. I was in that situation too. Now you can actually buy real Bitcoin in your retirement account. I'm talking about owning your private keys and using tax-advantaged dollars to do it too. Absolute game changer. https://www.retirewithchoice.com/pomp =======================

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

• 0:02Anthony Pompliano?

  What's up everyone, this is Anthony Pompliano. Most of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to the Pomp Podcast, simply the best podcast out there. Let's kick this thing off. Jessica Vaughn is a former Playboy Playmate who has reinvented herself as a talented photographer. She also has become a staunch proponent of Bitcoin over the last few months. In this conversation, we discuss her career as a Playboy Playmate, her professional reinvention, independent thinking, the Federal Reserve, Bitcoin as freedom, the legacy system, and meme masters. I really enjoyed this conversation with Jessica, and I think you will as well. Before we get into the episode, though, I want to quickly talk about our sponsors. First up is Remote.com.

• 0:45Anthony Pompliano?

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• 1:30Anthony Pompliano?

  Learn more about Remote and their new Remote for Startups program at Remote.com. I've had the CEO, Job, on the podcast, and I highly, highly suggest, if you have a global team, go to Remote.com. It is a no-brainer, in my opinion, Remote.com. Next up is BlockFi. BlockFi provides financial products for crypto investors. Those products include a high-yield interest account where you can earn up to 8.6% APY, a US dollar loan product where they give you a US dollar loan to get your crypto collateral. And a no fee cryptocurrency trading where you can buy and sell things like Bitcoin, Ether, and many other cryptocurrencies. They also are coming out with a Bitcoin Rewards

• 2:12Anthony Pompliano?

  credit card. It's a normal credit card, but you get paid Bitcoin back rather than cash back or airline miles. Go check out BlockFi. I'm an investor. I sit on the board and I am a happy user. You will be too. To start earning today, visit blockfi.com/pomp. Again, blockfi.com/pomp. Last, but not least, is Choice. Choice is rebuilding the way you approach retirement, which starts with making it simple to include Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies in your savings. More than 20,000 Bitcoiners, myself included, have already signed up to start investing. Whether we are talking about crypto or stocks, Choice lets you trade real Bitcoin and Tesla in the same place, all without paying a dime in capital gains taxes.

• 2:57Anthony Pompliano?

  And if you want to hold your own keys all the way to the moon, you can do that, too. Either way, Choice is on a mission to give you full control over your retirement savings. So head on over to retirewithchoice.com/pomp. Again, that's retirewithchoice.com/pomp and sign up for an account today. And one more thing, you know how I feel about this, but if you have a pro that manages your money, don't take any BS. Choice has tools for them, too. Take back control today and visit retirewithchoice.com/pomp. Retirewithchoice.com/pomp. All right, let's get into this episode with Jessica. I hope you enjoy this one.

• 3:38Speaker 01

  Anthony Pompliano is a partner at Morgan Creek Digital. All opinions expressed by Pomp or his guests on this podcast are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Morgan Creek Digital or Morgan Creek Capital Management. You should not treat any opinion expressed by Pomp as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his opinion. This podcast is for informational purposes only.

• 4:09Speaker 02

  Alright guys, bang bang, I've got Jessica here with me. She has never been on Zoom before, so we're gonna give this a try. Thank you so much for doing this.

• 4:19Speaker 03

  Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for giving me a reason to download it. I was kind of resistive, but I couldn't, I couldn't deny your invite, so here I am.

• 4:29Speaker 02

  You, you have a very different background than almost anybody else I've ever had on the podcast. Let's start just with where did, where were you born, where did you grow up, and how did you get into modeling, photography, etc.?

• 4:42Speaker 03

  Well, I'm from Kansas, so I did 20 years of hard winter and decided I didn't want snow anymore. So graduated college after doing my undergraduate, moved away, did the Hollywood dream thing, so lots of photo shoots, lots of production. I'm a photographer now, but moved out here to do modeling, hair and makeup, just, you know, the Hollywood thing.

• 5:09Speaker 02

  So when you say the Hollywood thing, how exactly does this work? I think people are fascinated with, if you go to Hollywood and you talk to every waiter, waitress, bar hop, etc., like everyone's trying to break into acting, modeling, or some aspect of that. Like, how did you break into that industry? And like, what is that life like?

• 5:29Speaker 03

  Well, no two days are ever the same, which is a part of the fun of it, I guess, the appeal. So, um, we did, it's hard because it's already been a year that I haven't had my normal life, so it's sort of bittersweet to think back to all the great things about it that aren't afforded to us right now. So, um, it was a lot of castings, a lot of media events, a lot of...

• 6:00Speaker 03

  Production days that were long and I I do all kinds of things. So it was just fun to squeeze in on production however I could and I started doing a sports media for combat sports and that was really fun. So I just sort of could squeeze in wherever my interests led me. So that was a cool thing about the opportunities in Hollywood.

• 6:21Speaker 02

  All right. So let's separate these out. Let's first talk about the modeling part of it. What is that like on a daily basis? So forget it kind of the other aspects of what you do. Like just from a modeling standpoint, is it you show up to a shoot and literally it's like six hours and they just take pictures of you the whole time? Is that weird?

• 6:41Speaker 03

  Um, it was weird for a couple of years. I traveled around the country and I would just fun self fund my tour across America and shooting. And the world was just different when I started in two thousand eight. So um, once I parked it in LA, sure, it's a little more, this is a little more structured, but you build a network and then you start doing projects with people that you're comfortable with creating and you start just cross promoting each other. And so I really work with the same core group of people. A lot of the times and we just diversify and pull each other in on projects we're doing. So.

• 7:15Speaker 02

  So you mentioned being comfortable with the people that you work with. If somebody asked me to go and be a model, I would have all of my clothes on and probably would be the least eventful photo shoot in the world.

• 7:30Speaker 03

  Epirol by your wife. Yeah.

• 7:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, e- e- exactly. Like, you know, my my wife would actually be the one directing it, etc.

• 7:36Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 7:38Speaker 02

  And and she probably would be telling me I'm an idiot for even trying it.

• 7:43Speaker 03

  She's a good cheerleader for you. I watch Lunch Money, I know.

• 7:47Speaker 02

  Well, if you watch Lunch Money, then you already know exactly how how that would go down. I pretty much would would do uh, nothing that I wanted to do. Uh, but in in terms of uh, the modeling that you did, a lot of it, when you're going across the country was unstructured, it sounds like. Then you get to LA, it's a lot more structured, talking about like kind of being comfortable. You eventually end up uh, doing much more with Playboy and all that. Like, how do you get comfortable with people? Is it weird? Like, that's just such a foreign concept to ninety five, ninety nine percent of people. Like, what is that like?

• 8:22Speaker 03

  Well, it's been so long since I had to think about it that it's that it's hard to articulate it. And because pretty much my existing network is all people that are already in it. So I guess I never make that that explanation. It's not unlike anything else when you do it. I mean, you know, when you somebody goes to war, they just get used to the things that come with that. So this was just a different kind of war, a different battle, you know, normalizing some things. And so, um, I don't know. It's it's hard to think back to it. I I just accepted that that was the path I picked to have the ticket out of my hometown. So after graduating college, I just decided to go model, which is strange, but.

• 9:06Speaker 02

  Hey, one of the things that's fascinating about this is, uh, as a ticket out of your hometown, if you decide, okay, I'm gonna go do this, what's the reaction from your family, from friends you've been with to college with? Is it one of, uh, support? Is it something that's so outside of their like framework of the job that they are jealous? They're agnostic to it like what was that?

• 9:32Speaker 03

  Well, I didn't ask anybody's permission. I didn't require anybody's support. And if you're not a person that requires those things, then you can break free of the mold that's made for you. So I didn't want to stay in Kansas and I didn't want to do that.

• 9:51Speaker 03

  Now with the the city having changed some, I can see the appeal of that a little more than I would before the shutdown. So, um, but I feel like people have to get it out of their system. If they want to go and do something, you've got to go check it out because otherwise you'll just wonder.

• 10:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:11Speaker 03

  My my, uh, true friends, my true support system, they didn't care. They now they didn't bring it up all the time. They didn't want to hear stories that don't go like my pictures, that type of thing, which is fine. That's not what I needed from my real world friends. You can always make a digital community that supports you and what you create. So, yeah, that's that's.

• 10:31Speaker 03

  It's, there's been a, a bit of a divide. I come from a, a pretty conservative background. My parents weren't too thrilled, but we just didn't make it a big talking point. They were just happy I made it to eighteen. All good, so.

• 10:45Speaker 02

  Coming from a conservative family and then ended up in Playboy, I'm sure was, uh, was a challenge to navigate. But, uh, it sounds like you figured it out. Uh, talk to me about the, you're good?

• 10:57Speaker 03

  Well, now I'm navigating the opposite terrain, having been a Playboy in Hollywood, you know, that type of thing. And then, and then changing politically to more center right. That comes with its own uphill battle that was reminiscent of coming from a conservative family in a red state and then going off and, you know, posing naked, that type of thing. So it's a similar experience. It's parallel.

• 11:20Speaker 02

  We'll get to your second, uh, transition here in a second, but, uh, the Playboy experience, I am sure that, uh, if you get into modeling, it is, uh, almost like the pinnacle. I almost look at it like, uh, if you play basketball, you want to play in the NBA. If you play football, you want to play in the NFL. As a model, that seems like that is, uh, kind of the aspirational, uh, achievement. What was that like? Uh, any regrets, positives, negatives? Just how do you kind of do that now that you, you don't spend a lot of your time doing it?

• 11:53Speaker 03

  I just accepted it as the terms of modeling that it was no, even supermodels don't get out of the game without posing naked in some capacity. So that part wasn't ever really a concern for me. In fact, if you're going to do it, you may as well go all in. So I looked at people like Jenny McCarthy and, and, you know,

• 12:13Speaker 03

  Melania Trump and people like that. It's, it's like you can, of course, pose for Playboy and then move beyond it into whatever domain you want. And it's a good launching platform. So everybody has to come from somewhere.

• 12:26Speaker 02

  It, it, it's fascinating to me to think about, um, and, and I don't even know if you realize this, like, the thought process that, uh, even the supermodel ends up, uh, modeling naked at some point. Uh, but people being able to transition past, like you mentioned, uh, when it's. Coming up, are you nervous? Are you worried at all? Do you think about like, oh, my friends, my family, etc. Here's what they're going to think? Or is it from a political or a professional standpoint, it is the epitome and kind of that achievement? And so you're more focused on this professional goal and everything else you're like figured out as as a process?

• 13:05Speaker 03

  Well, I wanted to do the commercial aspects of posing for magazines like Playboy and FHM. And there was a whole series of other of other magazines. But I just wanted to do that to legitimize the fact that for two years I had already been modeling. So I had already done sexy photo shoots and lingerie and all that. So I guess I just wanted to commercially validate my endeavor. So and it was good for marketing after the fact. Because then other brands want to use you in that how that whole thing ascends.

• 13:37Speaker 02

  So this sounds nuts, but as I hear you talking, you're basically describing what now everyone is like yelling and screaming all of a sudden about. It's like the creator economy, right? It's these people who they build some large audience and then they're able to monetize it afterwards. Really what you're talking about almost, you know, a decade, decade and a half ago is as you're coming up in the modeling world, you end up getting into Playboy. That's like a stamp of approval or a validation of that career. And then you're able to launch that into other business endeavors. Is that kind of a fair comparison?

• 14:07Speaker 03

  Exactly. And everybody wants to put somebody else in, you know, a bottle, a container that they can understand. And and it's been it's been so long that now I've been interested in so many other things that I feel like I've shattered that mold enough. But I still go to the well enough to support the fact that that's why people follow me. But it's it's been really great to just grow an audience and then whoever wants to stick around for the conversation can. Or, you know, if not, I'll still. Still push the pictures and that type of thing. So I, I know why people came, but that isn't necessarily why they stayed. So. But uh, no, I appreciate the fact that it's been, it's that I got a little bit of head start on the game.

• 14:48Speaker 03

  Um, the only bad side about coming from doing it before the creator economy was is that I didn't necessarily see the um, market potential for some of these things. Cause I had been so used to just giving away my product on online just to build a community around because we weren't um, really community building in two thousand eight so much. I mean, I was just in artist communities growing in that space. Just there was, it, there was social media networks that were just for models and photographers to connect. So we could create in our own little world instead of things that were so wide open, like Instagram for everybody to consume. So.

• 15:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, i- i- it's fascinating to me that uh, you know, if you'd almost done that today. Uh, in one uh, viewpoint, uh, it's almost taboo at this point, right? It seems like there's a lot more uh, social pressures and, and the way that uh, some of those activities and, and uh, publications etc are viewed is very different than it was a decade or fifteen years ago. At the same time, uh, you being the model actually in the content, uh, there's way more tools available for you to actually build an audience, catch the audience, monetize the audience. And so.

• 15:56Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 15:56Speaker 02

  Uh, it, it just.

• 15:57Speaker 03

  And they don't see it coming.

• 15:59Speaker 02

  Uh, uh, and they don't see it coming. Explain that.

• 16:01Speaker 03

  Yeah. Yeah. Um, well, some people are just taken by surprise, I guess, my diverse interests, but everybody is always a, everybody has a whole universe inside them. And obviously everybody has potential to grow and find new interests. So um, it's fun to just sneak up on people and pop some stuff in like, people are often surprised that, uh, you know, I'm a mixed martial artist fan.

• 16:26Speaker 02

  Yeah. And, and so I guess from the publication side, uh, are they in trouble with things like OnlyFans or streaming platforms? Or uh, the ability for whether it's models or other kind of content creators to go direct to audiences? Or is there still some kind of moat that they have in terms of that stamp of approval, right? If there's people who want to be in modeling today, do they still want to go and uh, be featured in Playboy? Or do they just say, yeah, I don't even need that. I can just go direct to an audience and monetize it that way? Like, what do you see happening there?

• 16:58Speaker 03

  I think that it's still a novelty to be associated with brands, but also the brands that are leveraging models or online personalities has opened up so much. You know, makeup campaigns for just beauty bloggers because of their wide audience and the reach that they have. So the power has just shifted to creators and that's a really nice thing because we can validate with stats the reach that we're going to have for a company to choose us as opposed to somebody, one of the other, you know, 90 people that are just like us, but maybe better.

• 17:34Speaker 02

  Yeah. So if I talked to you in 2008, like maybe the early 2010s, and I said, what do you do for a living? How would you have described it? Would you have said, I'm a model, I'm a playmate? Like, what would you have described then? And knowing that it's probably changed, but how did you originally?

• 17:54Speaker 03

  Well, I would sit for artists and sculptors and painters and photographers mostly, and they would work from those images that we would make. But the community was just, was just small. I mean, I was a starving artist for a long time, so it's nice to not be that so much these days.

• 18:12Speaker 02

  Yeah. And so if we fast forward to today, I think that you have tapped into many other different audiences. And it sounds like a lot of those audiences were coming out of your personal interest, right? So we can start with MMA, and there's Bitcoin, and now even, you know, broader macroeconomics and government. But MMA seems to be the first thing that you kind of transitioned to or sort of talked about outside of the art or the creative work. Where does that interest come from? And like, how did you navigate that transition? Was it something that was very strategic and thoughtful? Or did one day you just start tweeting about MMA and said, hey, look, you know, I don't care what people think?

• 18:52Speaker 03

  Well, I would watch the fights with a friend, a Playboy photographer, kind of funny. But yeah, I just watched, really loved it, got enamored with the game. You start investing in, individual sports are so much different than, than team sports because you get to know the players so much more intimately, and they do a pretty good job of brand building the individuals, so especially with social media. And so you become more engaged in their game, I guess. So.

• 19:24Speaker 03

  I just love that. I fell in love with it. I don't really know what to say other than that. But this space was so wide open, especially when I started to shoot pictures. Because then I was getting ringside access and cage side opportunities to shoot for amateur and some professional leagues. So, yeah, it was fun. So I just saw the opportunity. I've done the red carpet around Roll Camera for UFC Hall of Fame and just these interviews and media days the day before that they, you know, when they do their weigh-ins and stuff. So it was just an opportunity to go leverage my modeling, but then contribute in a different kind of way. And I just loved the scene and it was different. And I relate to fighters

• 20:06Speaker 03

  and their stories and overcoming obstacles and the journey and seeing the hard work. Like, I find them so inspiring. Because we're all, we're all fighting for something.

• 20:17Speaker 02

  What are you fighting for?

• 20:19Speaker 03

  Oh, wow. Such a big idea, right? Um, you have to, I am shattering the mold that was made for me as, you know, a little farm girl in Kansas that was never supposed to leave and get out and certainly not get to break, break the need to have a job and people to have to please all the time. Like, I speak my mind and I say exactly what I mean. Probably too, too far of a degree because I don't have really any accountability in that way, but that's what freedom is to me. So I guess the, what I'm fighting for is building something where nobody can take

• 21:02Speaker 03

  that from me in a world where people are constantly seeking to invalidate your humanity for not having a mainstream opinion and perspective on things.

• 21:12Speaker 02

  And so when you think about the transition around MMA, some of that was personal interest. You enjoyed watching it, you enjoyed talking about it. But you also had somewhat of a career change there. It sounds like you went from being the subject of the photography to actually being the photographer in many cases, where you were capturing the content. Was that anything kind of driving that? Or was it just you were familiar with cameras and had one and wanted to start taking pictures? Like, what drove that transition?

• 21:40Speaker 03

  I found that I had all this access and I picked up a camera to not waste the access that I had. So that worked with MMA because I was just, I was just getting such um positive results and access to fighters and making friends with journalists. And there were just people I wanted to be around and I, like I said, I find the fighter stories. So just inspiring. Um, so it was a way to enhance my hobby and also it gave me a reason to find a new way to be a creator. So I picked up a camera because I didn't want to waste the opportunity. Fumbled my way through it. Nobody seemed to even notice I was fumbling my way through the beginnings of it. So um.

• 22:24Speaker 03

  It is just one, I just, I, I had time to do it and I always love new challenges and being able to um just absorb information. So. It just, it was just something that I, I felt like doing and so I did it and that's the, that's been the best thing that modeling has afforded me. And this lifestyle is, is that I can go all in on anything I'm interested in.

• 22:47Speaker 02

  So uh, I'm noticing a trend here, which it sounds like basically you said, hey, as a Playboy Playmate, I can get my foot in the door. When I get my foot in the door, I have this incredible access. And in a very opportunistic way, you knew that if you had your foot in the door, had access and you brought a camera with you, you could almost launch an entirely new career and not break the mold from going from Kansas to LA, but also break the mold from being the Playboy model to now being uh, somebody who's actually creating the content and stuff. Is that fair?

• 23:21Speaker 03

  That's very fair. Yeah, and they can, and it just, it keeps opening my world up so much. So if, if you're bringing value to other people, then they'll open doors for you too. So.

• 23:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 23:35Speaker 03

  It's nice because it feels, the world feels so big and wide open.

• 23:40Speaker 02

  Okay, so this is fascinating because uh, it sounds like you had this second career, if you will, that was taking off. Covid happens. Uh, everyone's ordered to go sit in their houses. Pretty much everything that you had done up until that point was destroyed, right? There's no photo shoots, whether you're in front of the camera or behind the camera, like it all just goes to zero. What's your reaction when that occurs? How do you think about it? Um, and what did you do?

• 24:07Speaker 03

  Well, um, I had what is commonly called a red pilled moment.

• 24:13Speaker 03

  So it gave me the opportunity to question everything I thought I believed. And that's quite the paradigm shift. It it happens suddenly, but but incrementally.

• 24:26Speaker 03

  But I had something.

• 24:30Speaker 03

  Traumatic, you know, with the shutdown happens because because all of my income was gig economy. And, um, you know, freelance finding my finding my way and. I did so many things, but there has to be international travel and there has to be live events. And there has to be that ecosystem to support, you know. Free market opportunities. So all like suddenly all my income turned off. Cause I've done the internet monetization or anything like that. I was just happily enjoying my life and then all of a sudden it came to a screeching halt.

• 25:09Speaker 03

  And then they started doing things like turning people's power and water off if they were gathering in their homes and all these just. Things that made me really need to go look at. What I thought about size of government and those types of things.

• 25:26Speaker 02

  Okay, so before we get into the the finance and government side, uh, let's just talk about from like a business perspective.

• 25:32Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 25:33Speaker 02

  You've got a great business, multiple streams of income, everything's going awesome, COVID happens. Income goes to zero. What do you do? Do you try to just scramble and figure out online and uh, like other types of revenue channels? What is your, how had you kind of?

• 25:50Speaker 03

  Well, it was tough. At least I had I had some savings. From the years, so I. Burned through that in about six months and I was astonished that. We weren't over this yet. So, um.

• 26:09Speaker 03

  I was angry, you know, it's hard to not be.

• 26:14Speaker 02

  And so when you think about like that anger, is that coming from, uh, you're angry that there's the shutdown? You're angry at yourself that you had everything kind of in the analog world like what was driving the thing?

• 26:26Speaker 03

  Well, I, I was always aware that anything could come, bring my freelancing to a, a screeching halt, but it was never supposed to be government. It was never, they were never supposed to create problems for me. Um, but I was always aware that there was no, there was no safety net for me because that was the exchange that I had made. You know, it wasn't, you know, talk about risk aversion and things like that. I, I'm not a person that's particularly afraid of those things because they're always there. So then when I saw everybody's reaction to, you know, this, the virus, it, it, it was uh, recalibrating of everything I thought that was happening around me.

• 27:11Speaker 02

  And so as this plays out, uh, you said you had kind of this red pill moment. What were the things that maybe, um, were antithetical to what you previously believed or the, uh, changes in opinion that you had as, uh, as this all played out?

• 27:27Speaker 03

  Well, uh, size of government and their ability to, um, the whole emergency powers and being able to just make decisions for you. Um,

• 27:38Speaker 03

  uh, the transparency of the media brought that into question. Um, the amount of coordination between

• 27:49Speaker 03

  nations

• 27:51Speaker 03

  to just wave your hand and shut down the world. That was kind of astonishing to me. Um, there were things that I had always heard conservatives say. But I just hadn't had an opportunity to see it in the world to really point at that thing and say, this is what, you know, overregulation looks like. I'd heard people say that, but I didn't really know what that meant.

• 28:12Speaker 02

  Is it fair to say that, and this is a huge overgeneralization, so correct me if I'm wrong here, but I think Los Angeles and Southern California is generally seen as a very liberal leaning type of geographic region. People, for the most part, it seems like, hey, the government is going to save us. The government is, has the right solution. The government is going to step in here. And so this red pilling that you went through almost kind of went counterfactual to, or was a narrative violation to those around you, right? It seems like it's almost like, while the majority of people felt one way, you started to, again, break the mold and think for yourself to some degree, right?

• 28:53Speaker 03

  Yes, and that's frowned upon.

• 28:56Speaker 02

  Explain why is it frowned upon?

• 28:59Speaker 03

  Well, it's frowned upon because they don't, would prefer that you not challenge any of those beliefs, because it leads other people to doing the same. And I didn't know that disagreeing was going to cause me to lose opportunities and friends, even family members, that type of thing. But it will, and that's, I feel like that's contrary to the entire concept of freedom of speech and freedom of opinion and, you know, diversity of thought. And that opened my eyes to, to a lot, and the problems with mob mentality,

• 29:44Speaker 03

  cancel culture. It just opened up a door to everything, because if you agree with things like the shutdown...

• 29:52Speaker 03

  Then they, the left just turns its back on you entirely and it just eats itself in that way. So I guess I'm just a product of the fact that I had a disagreeing opinion for shutting the economy down locally. And then people make me the bad guy in that situation, which is crazy because I have no institutional powers whatsoever. What does it really matter what I say or think?

• 30:18Speaker 02

  When you say, uh, people make you the bad guy, uh, is this more like industry friends and, uh, kind of forces or more of like the social media world, uh, and people being toxic or whatever online?

• 30:33Speaker 03

  Well, you can always minimize the latter by not talking about it a lot, but it was all I was thinking about. So, and I was, I was having my own journey. It was more like a public, um, uh, an opportunity for me to digest what was happening and my evolution. It was just publicly happening because a lot of it was the, the ideas and the arguments were coming from, you know, online. But yeah, I changed my entire media sources and, um, the people I followed and engaged with. And yeah, it was really recalibrating and you can never, and you can never undo it.

• 31:13Speaker 02

  What was the, uh, what was the most surprising part of all this? And I ask that as, um, uh, I think that there's some people who had a starting point, uh, that was like halfway down the, the red pilling, uh, pathway, and then this all exasperated it. But you strike me as somebody who, uh, went through the full experience, right? From kind of start to finish, um, during this. And so what was the most surprising, uh, thing, uh, that you kind of took away from, from that experience?

• 31:44Speaker 03

  Uh, other, other people's unwillingness to let you change and be fine with it because everybody has this little characterization of who, who you are. They're not actually.

• 32:01Speaker 03

  Able to really roll with the fact that you're going to evolve because usually evolution is slow, but this happened rather aggressively. I mean, I can benchmark it from a one-year point. So I sound different, every, all my interests are different, my perspectives of history, I had to relearn everything I ever believed historically, you know.

• 32:24Speaker 02

  So when, when people hear that, uh, there's two new schools of thought. Uh, the people who agree with you are going to say, uh, amazing. She, uh, you know, was taught one thing, she thought one way, that's the incorrect way of thinking. And now she's seen the light and look how smart she is because she's agrees with, you know, what we agree with. The people who disagree with the way you think now, uh, say, oh my God, she changed her information sources, she created an echo chamber, what an idiot, like, you know, that's the problem in America and, uh, we've got to prevent that from happening to the masses, right? Uh, I always laugh, uh, I'm literally laughing as I ask you the question because it feels like those two extremes, uh, obviously provide like the truth somewhere in between there.

• 33:09Speaker 02

  And so like, walk us through like almost like an execution or application standpoint of like, when you say you changed your information sources, like what were they, what did you change them to? Uh, what were the types of people that you started to consume content from that you hadn't been from before? Uh, just whatever you can share on that front.

• 33:29Speaker 03

  Well, I wouldn't want to risk getting your video demonetized or get you in trouble. So I'm, I'm trying to edit myself to a.

• 33:36Speaker 02

  You can say, listen, you, you can say whatever you want to say. Don't worry about, uh, uh, monetization on YouTube, which by the way, the fact that that's the first thing you think of, uh, may be part of the problem.

• 33:47Speaker 03

  Well, um, I, you know, and I'm not a YouTuber and I don't rely on that, but, or any, I don't rely on brand endorsements or, or any of that. That was one great thing that made me have, um, be in the right situation where I could speak my mind and, and I realized how many people can't or aren't allowed to. People message me and say, hey, I agree with your politics, but I'm afraid I work in Hollywood and you know, that won't go well. And so it was, it was just really surprising to me, the amount of people that want to, but can't. And, and then I saw that phenomenon and I was like, well, it means I need to speak even more.

• 34:30Speaker 02

  So that brings us to the topic that everyone is wondering, which is Bitcoin. How the hell did you come across Bitcoin and why did you become interested?

• 34:40Speaker 03

  Well, I had learned about it just from observing. I've had friends that are into it and they'll make posts and I would read it. But I didn't understand and I didn't have a necessity for it. Until the shutdown came and and then the stimulus has started happening and then you learn about the Fed and you can't audit it. And in all these things and like I said, all this happened to me in a year. The evolution of all of this because I couldn't have cared less about finance. So I had to learn a lot really fast. But I had nothing to do. So that was the upside since Los Angeles was shut down. I had nothing but time and new resources that educated.

• 35:22Speaker 03

  So now I see the necessity of it. How you get there? Just wanting money that they can't ruin. I mean, I don't. I'm not somebody that's amassed a lot of private property. You know, I have a Ford and a French Bulldog. It's not like I have a lot of value to to protect or, you know, transition my assets or something. But it was just the principles, like the fact that people can wave their hand and stop the world. And and destroy people's ability to make a living and they can wave their hand and change, you know, the geopolitics of what's happening in other countries and

• 36:04Speaker 03

  and then they can actively dilute the dollar that's in your bank account that you've already worked for. The and renegotiate essentially renegotiate the the wage you worked for in the retro actively. That seems so crazy to me.

• 36:18Speaker 02

  You you you definitely were not red pilled. You were orange pilled because you're you're speaking the language. Uh, in in terms of this kind of learning journey, right? And it really does sound like you kind of went through an evolution of understanding and and Frank, a kudos to you because it sounds like you were actually very thoughtful, not only of understanding what's happening right now, but you went back in history and started to understand why have certain things happened and created the situation that we're in today.

• 36:49Speaker 02

  Why talk about it publicly, right? Because you could have said, hey, you know what? I've got a bunch of free time. I'm going to educate myself. Okay, cool. Now I'm educated. Uh, you know what? I think I should buy some Bitcoin. Uh, I think I should change my thoughts. And, uh, you could have done that all in private with no risk to your career or anything else.

• 37:06Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 37:07Speaker 02

  You chose to talk about it and talk about it quite a bit. So like, why, why do that?

• 37:11Speaker 03

  Well, I didn't know where it was heading, just publicly discussing the shutdown when it all happened. Obviously, everybody was talking about it for, for the most part. Um, but I didn't know necessarily one thing would lead to another like it would. And then you find yourself in your, in the next discovery and understanding of what's going on leads you to the next step. Like, it took me a, a, a year of the process before I bought Bitcoin, which was what, like, two weeks ago? Wasn't even that long ago. So the, I mean, thought it just takes a while for thought to get you to action. And I was just ready to ease the depress, because I was depressed about the political landscape

• 37:53Speaker 03

  and, and, um, the, uh, social engineering I was witnessing. Uh, and, and I guess the more I witnessed and was a, became aware of those things, the more I felt compelled that I had to say these things that other people weren't going to say, or at least not people in my little domain of the internet. So, um, but like I said, a lot of it, a lot of my understanding came from those online discussions.

• 38:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 38:20Speaker 03

  So as many people, go ahead.

• 38:23Speaker 02

  Well, I should say, it's fascinating to hear you kind of talk about how impactful, uh, the online education, the information was to that term.

• 38:33Speaker 03

  Absolutely.

• 38:35Speaker 02

  Right.

• 38:35Speaker 03

  Yeah. Thank, thank goodness, thank goodness for YouTube educators and people who want to give away what they know, like yourself, because I, I don't think I would have always connected the two. I, I just had an existential crisis with what's happening in my country and specifically my state. And then to, you know, have witnessed places like Texas and Florida fully functioning. And I was like, I want that kind of leadership. Uh, why can't, you know, and then everything that descended from that, I guess, just led me to Bitcoin.

• 39:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, you described it almost as a parallel economy, right? Kind of the digital world and digital currencies and these simple protocols. How do you look at earning moving forward? Is it something where the work that you do, you'll ask to be paid in Bitcoin or other digital currencies? Will you basically take a portion of what you get paid and convert it? Like, does anything change? Or is it more just an awareness of, hey, there's kind of these two economies that are parallel? And you'll exist in both of them, but it won't necessarily change anything in your work perspective?

• 39:39Speaker 03

  Well, I started the daydream of two parallel economies because I wanted to be free of things like cancel culture. And I wanted to, you know, go and, and, you know, Gina Carino and make sure that she had a job, even though she now can't have a job with Disney and, and Candace Owens and people like that that just get accosted online and their, and their opportunities removed for nothing other than their opinion. So I wanted to, I wanted to go back to the land of where we were fine with having diversity of thought. So I just wanted to go participate with people that wouldn't financially consequent each other in this way.

• 40:24Speaker 03

  But it's so new to me. I've had Bitcoin for, for two weeks. So it's sort of hard for me to have amassed the understanding of how it is that I could possibly earn in Bitcoin. But it's just the willingness and it certainly signals some confidence in it. And it's probably going to present new opportunities. I don't even know how you can necessarily earn in crypto yet, so.

• 40:46Speaker 03

  But I'm willing and just being willing is going to bring opportunity, I'm sure.

• 40:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, you, you are very open minded. So I congratulate you on that. That is a rare skill in today's world. What has the response been among other people in the various communities that, that you've worked in and you have friends in? As you've kind of talked about more of this publicly, you bought Bitcoin, et cetera. Is it been one that has been receptive? Is it one that is a little bit more kind of abrasive? Or have they been agnostic to some of this?

• 41:24Speaker 03

  Um, well, um, a couple of my friends already were Bitcoin holders. So, and now I don't really deal with people that, because I'm so public about my, I just assume people know that about me now. So, um, I've been creating with, during the shutdown, it's, it's been less opportunity for growth, but it's made it to where you can have small productions with just the people that you know, and that you're comfortable with and that are all on the same page with some things. Otherwise, you have serious disagreements about what, how it's safe to operate your space and those sorts of things. So, um, my, the people that I consider my friends today, because it's

• 42:09Speaker 03

  changed a little bit, I may have just deepened ties with people who were already, you know, um, right of center. So, they're, so they believe it and they, and they, but they don't need me to have to adopt all their beliefs. They don't have to buy Bitcoin themselves to be fine and never bring it up if they think it's dumb. They're, you know, some people that aren't really all that into it are like, just don't invest more than you can afford to lose. And that's a fair thing to say, but if the government's gonna make me take their money, you know, I may as well do something with it. I feel like it's a fun, harmless way to do something productive with free stimulus money the government is giving me that I don't even want, you know, it's just,

• 42:53Speaker 03

  I don't know, it makes me smile a little bit in the, you know, in the quiet moments.

• 42:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, it, it, uh, it's fascinating to me. Uh, one more thing before I get into the rapid fire questions is, uh, I, uh, I saw this, uh, you tweeted, and I couldn't stop laughing when I read it. Uh, you said that you thought the MMA community were, uh, really great at memes, but the Bitcoiners were the meme masters. Uh, explain that a little bit more because, uh, that, that is a, a topic I, uh, really, really think people underestimate of, like, the meme is the message. But, uh, but talk a little bit about the memes and Bitcoin.

• 43:31Speaker 03

  Yes, well, that is what familiarized me with the fact that there was a whole secret language and certain ways of spelling things and all this has just been a fun, it's been a fun few weeks, I gotta say. It's definitely a crash course in understanding the lingo and the nomenclature of Bitcoin. So I got flooded with people taking my pictures and giving me laser eyes, which was just so great. I got this whole like gallery or resurrecting Playboy pictures and taking my profile picture and lasering it up. So I got a nice little art gallery, little digital art gallery there made for me. Yeah, but the memes are crazy, but people like put me in memes and make memes about me being in Bitcoin and I'd never

• 44:15Speaker 03

  had experienced anything like that. But it's fine, I'll save them and send them to friends for the ones that can relate to those. So it's fun. I had no idea we're the meme masters.

• 44:27Speaker 02

  Uh, we prefer the terminology meme lords, but meme masters is basically the same thing, right?

• 44:33Speaker 03

  Yeah, see, but meme lords is, you have to have, you have to have the insider language. So thank you for that.

• 44:41Speaker 02

  You'll appreciate this. I think Elon Musk was asked in a New York Times or Bloomberg article, they said, you know, you're a billionaire, you also like memes, but given the choice, would rather be a billionaire or a meme lord, what would you choose? And he said meme lord, which will forever go down as one of the great comments, I think, in a professional interview.

• 45:03Speaker 03

  I love how he doesn't take himself too seriously all the time. You just reach a point of success where you don't have to answer questions in the right predictable way, you know? I think that's why we like him so much.

• 45:14Speaker 02

  That is very, very true. Before I let you go, I'm gonna ask you three questions that I ask everybody. You'll get to ask me one at the end. The first is, what is the most important book that you've ever read?

• 45:25Speaker 03

  Most important book I've ever read? Um, so many, so many great ones. What do I have? I got, I got my wall. Oh.

• 45:47Speaker 03

  I need a minute. Too many. Oh, you know what? Uh, Tim Ferriss, Four Hour Work Week, I would say, pretty revolutionary.

• 45:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's a, that's a great book and obviously with a lot of what you were doing before pandemic makes sense. Second question is sleep schedule. Most of my friends are at eight sleep. They've got a thermo-regulated bed. Means that you can turn it really hot or really cold. I used to sleep like five or six hours. I thought that was normal. And then I started sleeping on this thing and now I'm like eight or nine hours, completely changed my life and full-on convert of the sleep religion. What is your sleep schedule now? And how has that transitioned over time?

• 46:30Speaker 03

  Yeah, well, I've been getting the best sleep of my life now that LA is shut down, I guess, all of California, which isn't super great for my, you know, hustle mentality, I guess, but, um, no, it's, it's, it's been good. I can, you know, sleep like midnight to eight, you know? There's a little bit of flexibility in there, but.

• 46:51Speaker 02

  And, and what did you used to do? You used to sleep eight hours?

• 46:56Speaker 03

  Uh, well, no, I mean, especially with no day ever looked like the next one, I would just fit it in where I could and uh, early mornings with productions and late nights and a lot of Hollywood culture going till two, three in the morning and then you don't go to bed till four. And it was just really inconsistent and then you, you know, had a whole lot to get ready for and get up early and for hair and makeup and all these things that you had to do hours before everybody else. So, no, I'm getting a lot more sleep these days. More than I probably would like, you know, you have these messages in your unconscious buried, like if you're sleeping, if you're sleeping eight hours, you're not working hard enough, that type of thing. So there has been a little bit of alleviation as far as, as that goes.

• 47:39Speaker 03

  Um, but also I'm not missing anything. There's nothing I need to go out and do that. You know, or at least I'm not hearing about it.

• 47:47Speaker 02

  I, I think, I think you're doing just fine with, with eight hours. Uh, last question you get asking one is aliens. Are you a believer or a non-believer?

• 47:57Speaker 03

  Oh, I believe in possibility. I I've been, I've always just been so open minded that it was okay for me to be wrong with whatever I thought and also my conception of if there's aliens, if there's a god, if this or that, and it doesn't change the reality of what actually is. So, everybody can just have their opinion and it's fine, right?

• 48:20Speaker 02

  That is

• 48:20Speaker 03

  I I would, I would say, I would say there's probably the intelligent life out there somewhere.

• 48:28Speaker 02

  That is a fantastic way to answer that question and no one has ever answered it that way. So, I will take it. What uh, what question you have for me to uh, to finish up?

• 48:37Speaker 03

  Well, um, now that I own some Bitcoin, what's next? What do I gotta do? Just wait for a dip? Buy some more? Keep buying Bitcoin? Everybody uh, will come in now that I bought Bitcoin and try to convince me about other altcoins and people will come in and be like, no, no, don't do that, you know?

• 48:55Speaker 02

  I I will let you make your own choices, but uh, I think that uh, what you will find is that every Bitcoiner uh, believes the same two things. They never own enough and they don't want the US dollar price to go up because they wanna buy more of them. So uh, it's a very uh, interesting dynamic, but uh, now look, I think it's a, it's a game of accumulation when you have a finite asset. Uh, and just dollar cost averaging, right? And you get your paycheck and uh, you just take whatever percentage, whether it's, you know, half a percent or some material percentage and you just buy Bitcoin and convert the dollars into Bitcoin and uh, you keep going, right?

• 49:30Speaker 03

  What um, what wallet or platforms do you recommend for me?

• 49:35Speaker 02

  So I I think that uh, for you specifically, given that uh, you're coming at this from kind of a learning perspective, uh, I think it's important that you learn about all of them, right? So there's uh, hardware wallets, uh, there's kind of cold storage and then uh, there's uh, there's hot storage. You can also use things um, like BlockFi to earn interest on uh, on your Bitcoin. Um, but I think that the, the key piece is less about like any one platform. I think it's much more about understanding, you know, hey, there's four or five different ways you can custody the assets and Going and doing it, right? I think that's probably like if I was in your shoes and kind of very, very early on, the thing I wish I'd done way earlier than I really did was go and understand, okay, what exactly does cold storage like? How do I do it?

• 50:21Speaker 02

  Right? Because as you go through that experience, actually you do it, you learn a ton, right? And you learn so much more than if you would have just read about it. Then same thing with hardware. It's like, how do I do it? Right? And if you wanted to get really ambitious, you can even set up a Bitcoin node. Right? And again, like if people online for sure, you can find folks who could help you do it. But like going through that process and understanding how a node works and why it's important, I think would just give you like the crash course of actually like the hands-on experience that reading online, you just can't imitate.

• 50:57Speaker 03

  Yeah, excellent. Well, that gives me something to do since, like I said, I've got a lot of free time right now. So, but I appreciate all the insights. Love watching your podcasts.

• 51:08Speaker 02

  For sure. Where can we send people to find you on the internet if they want to to reach out or are consumers of the content?

• 51:15Speaker 03

  Yeah, follow me Twitter, Instagram, Clubhouse, Jessica Vaughn. Vaughn is V A U G N. There's no H. But yeah, that's where you can find me.

• 51:27Speaker 02

  Awesome. Listen, Jessica, thank you so much for doing it. So I'll do it again in the future.

• 51:30Speaker 03

  Thanks again for the great introductory Zoom experience.