#768 Building a 9 Figure Empire With Zero Public Funding w/ Val Katayev

Val Katayev is a serial entrepreneur with over $100M in profits and exits. He's successfully lead 4 different start-ups to hyper-growth that center around digital media. He has also recently made significant investments in real estate. In this conversation, we discuss building and selling companies, structuring a holding company, how he hires individuals to run each company, his unique work/sleep schedule, and why he's getting heavily invested in real estate. Val is someone you may not know, but will learn to appreciate it. He is someone who has built a spectacular life without any public funding or notoriety. ======================= Mode, UK Fintech app, allows you to buy, earn and grow Bitcoin, all in one app. Not only is it an easy and safe way to buy and hold Bitcoin, with Mode you can shop and receive up to 10% Bitcoin Cashback for FREE from its growing list of online partner brands. Available on the App Store and Google Play. Download Mode at modeapp.com and enjoy 0% trading fees on all buys and sells until Dec 31, 2021. Only available in the UK. ======================= Cryptocurrency is the future, so don’t get left in the past, bet with MyBookie and you can get in the game now! To get you kickstarted with crypto, use my promo code (POMP) to double your first crypto deposit at MyBookie. The best part is, MyBookie accepts well-known crypto currencies like Bitcoin, Litecoin, and Ethereum so you can bet and withdraw with Crypto. The NFL Playoffs are around the corner and this week the Buffalo Bills and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers will face off in a potential Super Bowl preview. Both teams sit 1 win away from earning the top spot in their respective conference, but in this high stakes game, bet the Buc’s Moneyline. Don’t miss out, double your first deposit up to $1000 by using promo code [POMP]. Head to MyBookie today, place your bets, and watch the sparks fly with UFC269. Bet anything, anytime, anywhere…with MyBookie. Visit http://mybookie.website/joinwithPOMP ======================= Do you want a new job in the bitcoin and crypto industry? You should go apply for hundreds of open roles at http://www.pompcryptojobs.com or sign up for our training program at http://www.pompscryptocourse.com

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. Now let's kick this thing off. Val Kadyev is a serial entrepreneur with a hundred plus million dollars in profits and exits. He has founded and led four successful startups to hypergrowth that center on digital media across various aspects of the industry. He also recently has started to get heavily into real estate as well. This conversation was fascinating. Val talks about building and selling companies. He talks about structuring a holding company and how he hires individuals to run each company. And then we talk about why he's heavily investing in real estate as well. Val's somebody who you may not know, but likely will grow to really appreciate.

• 0:45Anthony Pompliano?

  Before we get into this episode though, I want to quickly talk about our sponsors. First up is Mode. UK Bitcoin investors, listen up. Mode is an app that allows you to buy, earn, and grow Bitcoin effortlessly. Not only is it an easy and safe way to buy and hold Bitcoin, Mode also allows you to pay and receive up to 10% Bitcoin cash back for free from its growing list of online partner brands. For a limited period of time, Mode is offering 0% trading fees on all Bitcoin buys and sells. That's right, you can buy and sell Bitcoin and pay no trading fees. The offer ends at the end of this year, so hurry up and download the app now. I have to say, personally, I think the company behind this app is very, very impressive. They're an FCA registered, they're listed

• 1:28Anthony Pompliano?

  on a public exchange in both the LSE and the OTC QB market here in the US. They choose to hold Bitcoin on their balance sheet, big deal. They were the first UK-based company on publicly traded to hold Bitcoin on their balance sheet. And they are also piloting a Bitcoin payroll product to pay UK employees in Bitcoin. So if you're in the UK, I recommend you go check out Mode right now. Their app's available on the App Store and the Google Play Store. You can download the app now and start buying Bitcoin with 0% trading fees today. If you're not in the UK, go check them out on the public stock exchange as well. Next up is MyBookie. Cryptocurrency is the future, so don't get left in the past. You can bet with MyBookie and you can get in the game now.

• 2:10Anthony Pompliano?

  To get you kickstarted with crypto, you can use promo code POMP to double your first crypto deposit at MyBookie. The best part is that MyBookie accepts well-known cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and others, so you can bet and withdraw with crypto. The NFL playoffs are around the corner, and this week, the Buffalo Bills and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers will face off in a potential Super Bowl preview. Both teams sit one win away from earning the top spot in their respective conference. But in this high stakes game, bet the Bucks money line. Don't miss out. Double your first deposit up to $1,000 by using promo code POMP. Head over to MyBookie today, place your bets, and watch the sparks fly with UFC 269 as well. Bet anything, anytime, anywhere with MyBookie.

• 2:54Anthony Pompliano?

  Just go to mybookie website today. Last but not least, if you are looking for a job in the cryptocurrency industry, whether you're coming from the finance world, the technology world, wherever you're coming from, you're looking for a job, make sure that you go to pompcryptojobs.com. pompcryptojobs.com. We've got hundreds of open roles there from the industry's top companies. There's been over a couple hundred people that have already been hired this year. One company's hired almost 40 people this year off pompcryptojobs.com. So if you're looking for a job, go to pompcryptojobs today and you will find the best open roles that you have to offer. All right, let's get in this episode. I hope you guys enjoy this one.

• 3:37Speaker 01

  Anthony Pompliano runs Pomp Investments. All views of him and the guests on his podcast are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Pomp Investments. You should not treat any opinion expressed by Pomp or his guests as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his personal opinion. This podcast is for informational purposes only.

• 4:00Anthony Pompliano?

  Val, what's going on, man?

• 4:01Speaker 02

  What up, Pomp?

• 4:02Anthony Pompliano?

  How are you?

• 4:03Speaker 02

  I'm good, man. I'm excited to be on the show. I even shaved for you.

• 4:10Anthony Pompliano?

  I'm excited for you to be here because I feel like you got a crazy story that not a lot of people know. So hopefully we can change that. Let's first start with, uh, you've basically built how many companies at this point into hundreds of millions of dollars of revenue in total without taking any venture capital, just basically you self-funded all these companies. How many companies have you built?

• 4:30Speaker 02

  Uh, in total, these companies probably, uh, man, I mean, companies I've built, I lost count. Right now I control, um, five, I've sold a few before that. Every business has been funded by me, no, no outside investors.

• 4:43Anthony Pompliano?

  You know, you're a boss, you know, you're a boss when somebody asks you how many businesses you built and you said, well, I control five.

• 4:51Speaker 02

  I have controlling stakes, I should say, I don't, I have partners, I have co-founders, I have amazing managers, CEOs who like manage all these businesses.

• 4:58Anthony Pompliano?

  Yep.

• 4:59Speaker 02

  I, I try to stay out of, uh, I try to be just CEO of one, you know, that I focus on because I just have to build something.

• 5:06Anthony Pompliano?

  All right.

• 5:06Speaker 02

  Try to take off three years, but like that wasn't for me.

• 5:09Anthony Pompliano?

  What, what is the structure that you use to all this? Do you have like a holding company and a bunch of smaller companies underneath it that are kind of like subsidiaries? Like, walk me through how you structure this.

• 5:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, I have a holding company that holds all those, um, other companies, you know, um, I founded.

• 5:26Speaker 02

  You know, I also have like a service company that kind of manages, I try not to like do a lot of transactions inside the holding company just to keep things nice and clean. So, um, yeah, it's, it's a, it kind of all flows through from one and, and comes into all the, all those other guys, you know? I, I come in when there's like, there's a stressful environment or like, you know, like when COVID hit, I'll, I'll get involved in pretty much every one of my companies, try to get them. You know, if I have to finance them or do whatever I gotta do to, you know, pull the, pull the strings and, and make sure that nothing falls apart.

• 5:59Anthony Pompliano?

  All right. So now walk me through this. I got a lot of questions because actually we may have more similarities than you realize. But, uh, with this holding company, when you come up with a subsidiary, you come up with the idea, somebody else comes up with the idea, sometimes either one, like, like walk me through how you create one of these subsidiaries. Like, uh, does somebody pitch you or are you going and finding someone saying, hey, I want to start this business, come help me?

• 6:20Speaker 02

  Every one of them was an idea that came from me or me and my co-founder that we agreed on and kind of to move forward. There was one situation, I was pretty deep into fintech, like marketplace lending, I'm sure you're familiar with that. You know, I, I, I, I found somebody, I was actually looking to put up, put in some of my own money. And I found somebody, like the guy just started his fund, had like five million under management and I'm like, I'll put a bunch of money in, but I want a stake in the company, I'll buy in the stake, you know, and so that's, that's a, that's a perfect example of a fund that went from five to like several hundred million dollars within like three years.

• 7:04Speaker 02

  That I'm, I'm a partner in, but I wasn't a founder. That's primarily in capital management, you know, so we like manage a bunch of different funds in there. Very boring funds, it's not like the fun, exciting shit you do with crypto.

• 7:19Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, I got a whole bunch of questions. I went back through your Twitter account. It's like the best thing ever. I love your Twitter account because you tweet about just high signal things. You don't shitpost like me and my brothers or fool around on the internet. It's all high quality stuff. So the first thing I want to talk about is when I first came across you was this real estate thread. And you basically said, you know, look, I'm taking inspiration from this other person. And so I'm going to share your experience in real estate. So you've got Poise Property Group, which I think is the, the name of the, the real estate entity. And it launched four years ago. And then you're like, oh yeah, by the way, we've acquired and developed six properties worth nearly a hundred million dollars. Which is a lot of work to do in four years. So walk us through kind of, how do you think about real estate?

• 8:03Anthony Pompliano?

  And why did you start a company four years ago in this space?

• 8:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I was super under invested, under allocated towards real estate all, all these years, right? I've been pretty successful, but I have not, I have nothing in real estate. I did one deal, it was like a minority deal. And the, the two main guys got into a huge lawsuit in New York City. I'm like, I'm never doing another minority deal in real estate ever again, right? So I have a friend that Known for twenty years, he's been in construction with his family. I'm like, dude, let's um, let's, let's, let's, why don't you level up? Why don't we be developers, right? I'll, I'll bring in the financing. I'll help you out with that. I'll bring my balance sheet to the table. Um, you do the rest, right? Like, I don't, I'll be honest with you, I don't have time for anything else, but I'll help you out wherever I can.

• 8:49Speaker 02

  And uh, he's like, alright, cool, let's, let's do it. And uh, I trust this guy with like, uh, you know, pretty much everything, which is very important in real estate. You know, it's very easy to get kind of screwed over in that, in that space. Um, contracts are not, no contracts, you know, the last thing you want to do is, you know, deal with, with legal issues. Um, with a partner in, in, in real estate. So anyway, so um, yeah, that's how it started. So we started, we made the first acquisition, which I tweeted about in a thread. Um, which is pretty cool. We broke a record in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, which is a pretty hot area next to like Williamsburg. A lot of people are moving into now, nowadays, all the kind of hipsters, like VCs, tech guys, everybody who feels like, you know, Manhattan maybe is not that cool anymore.

• 9:33Speaker 02

  Um, are moving those areas. And yeah, we bought a piece of land, we knocked down the house, we put up a couple of luxury townhouses and sold one for four point two five million. Um, and I kept the second one, because I just think these things are going to be worth five, six, seven million dollars in the coming years. Just the replacement cost alone, you know, with all the inflation. Uh, you know, just, just, just the materials are, and the labor are just so much more now than they were when we started that project. So like, um, you know, the, the guy who bought the, the first house actually got a bargain.

• 10:06Anthony Pompliano?

  You got a great deal, yeah. Alright, so walk me through, we're gonna pull up the photos of, of this first project in Greenpoint here, uh, in a second. But in terms of uh, how a deal like this comes together, I want people to actually get value out of understanding uh, real estate from a perspective of uh, kind of what you guys are doing. You, you bought the land, you basically cleared it out, and then you go to build this. How long does that take? How much cost goes into this thing? And then how do you actually decide what you want to hold versus what you want to uh, go ahead and sell?

• 10:34Speaker 02

  This, this project is a little different, because this is my first project. I did not want to take like bank financing, I didn't want to bring out, bring in outside investors. I wanted to like Straighten everything out, get the process down, figure all those kinks out first before I go to anybody else, including a bank, right? Uh, so this one was very easy. I financed the thing with, uh, with, with my, my partner. We bought the piece of land. Um, and then, and then, uh, you know, the way we structured it is, uh, you know, it's an LLC that holds that piece of land, that project, everything done in that specific project LLC. Um, and, um, uh, you know, we kinda, we, we didn't really, we, we, we built to sell,

• 11:15Speaker 02

  but you know, you kinda have to watch the market and see what the market is telling you. So we kinda decided to keep the second unit after we, after we built everything. Um, but yeah, we like, we build to, to sell, you know, you, you, you, you definitely have to project and estimate what your costs are going to be, you know, to buy the land and then the construction, like, you know, as you know, there hard costs and soft costs, uh, as the terminology goes. Hard cost being like what it actually takes to build the bricks and, and mortar and all that stuff. And then the soft cost that a lot of people don't realize how many costs there are in things like, uh, well, if you had a bank, you pay interest or if, uh, you know, like all the legal fees, all the, you know,

• 11:56Speaker 02

  you gotta account for all the licensing fees. Like that house had like four different neighbors, five different neighbors. We have, we even had to like make licensing deals with the neighbors just to get access to a bit of their property in order to be able to build our project properly. So you gotta like, uh, you know, you gotta project all those little nuances which add up really quickly.

• 12:18Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. And then you had a tweet back in October that you said, uh, one of the free lunches in real estate investing, if you know how to use it wisely. You're specifically talking about the 1031 exchange. And so walk through maybe a little bit as to how you think of that. Cause I think real estate investing provides obviously very specific tax advantages that other asset classes don't. Uh, and that's one of the reasons why people really like to invest in real estate. How do you think about the 1031 exchange? Is that something that you guys are like, yeah, we definitely want to leverage that? Or is it more opportunistic if you find the right deals and, and kinda they line up, then you would use it?

• 12:49Speaker 02

  1031 is definitely part of our strategy, strategy wherever we could use it. It's, you know, there are a lot of like moving parts trying to figure out how to make that work. Um, like an area like New York City, you have no idea how many people, you might know, I'm in Miami as well. Uh, how many people are so acid rich because of 1031, right? They sit on all these properties that they accumulated all their lives, but they've never, they never really like cash out for that reason. Um, what 1031 allows you to do, uh, uh, maybe not obvious to many people, but uh, it's kind of like what you do in the stock market, right? If you buy stock, like I love SPY, right? SP500, I, I buy that, I've been buying that for over a decade. I just buy in whole, I never sell, right? And it's essentially same thing. If you never sell it, you never pay taxes.

• 13:34Speaker 02

  The difference with real estate is, uh, you wanna kind of move up and, uh, and, and buy something, something else. So what it allows you to do is just say, okay, I wanna sell a property that has a lot of profit in it, right? But you could roll that profit into the next project and the government allows you to roll that profit into the next project until you sell that other project. You might not sell that next project or when you sell that project, you might have another bigger one that you 1031 and roll into. So a lot of people have been kind of rolling and rolling their profits for, man, probably decades, uh, in some cases that, uh, so they never really, they just accumulating this, uh, wealth and, and, and accumulating assets

• 14:18Speaker 02

  that have this huge baseline profit, but they never pay taxes on it.

• 14:22Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, it's pretty incredible when you can basically just continuously roll it forward, deal after deal after deal after deal, and you take what is maybe a smaller property or smaller investment, and you end up compounding it without having kind of the interruption of compounding via taxes that you would get if you were, you know, switching in and out of stocks or, or pretty much any other asset. So it's definitely.

• 14:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's like, it's like the government is the investor in your deals, cause you know, you're not paying in taxes all these years. So it's free money.

• 14:47Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, I, I completely agree. All right, you got another, uh, set of tweets where you said, if you're young, skip the money managers. Their fees are not tax deductible, so it costs you a lot more than you think. Buy SPY. Y index on a dip, never sell, borrow against it when you need the cash. And then you basically go on to talk about some places where people can do that. And then you also explicitly kind of clarify. And when I say money managers, I'm not talking about funds. Fund fees are fully expensed to the funds. We're talking money managers that manage your money and take a fee generally half a percent to 2% depending on your portfolio. So we, uh, we love to kind of give financial advisors and stuff a hard time on here. We obviously always say, look, there are some great financial advisors. You should maybe go talk to the people who are really, really good.

• 15:33Anthony Pompliano?

  But the average one probably isn't as good as, as people need. And so talk a little bit about this idea of the money managers and their fees. And like, why do you specifically call out that it's not tax deductible?

• 15:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was part of the Trump's tax plan. I wasn't Trump's, I'm sure that was kind of pushed on by the, more by the Democratic, Democratic party than the, than the right. So when the 2018 tax, um, um, act came out, what it did is they made, uh, man, obviously like, I'm not a tax advisor or anything.

• 16:06Anthony Pompliano?

  Neither am I, of course.

• 16:08Speaker 02

  Yeah. But the, the, the, the new law is that you cannot write off, uh, uh, management fees. So if you're, you're with Morgan Stanley or Goldman Sachs, or with any of these guys who take a thief to manage your wealth. It, it, it all of a sudden became non deductible. So essentially, because the tax bracket I'm in and you're probably in, right? Like, that means my fee just doubled because I can't, I can no longer write it off. So like, it was disappointing. So I was already kind of managing the money in my, um, Goldman account on my own in a way. They didn't really like it. And, uh, and, uh, you know, uh, so I just kind of, at that point, that was, I mean, they have, you know, these people have some of the, a lot of these.

• 16:52Speaker 02

  Places have like some of the most, the smartest people working there. But you know, it's like at some point, the numbers just don't make sense to pay.

• 16:59Anthony Pompliano?

  Did you, so, uh, did you pull your capital from wherever, whichever bank you were? When you called, talk to me about that phone call. Is that like an email you send, like give my damn money back? Is that a phone call? You go to lunch and kind of wine and dine them, then tell them, like, how's that work?

• 17:12Speaker 02

  Listen, I had a great relationship with them. And, um, and, uh, so I kind of told them, it's like, listen, I just, it just doesn't make any sense anymore. You know, I've been kind of, um, you know, um,

• 17:24Anthony Pompliano?

  Managing yourself.

• 17:25Speaker 02

  Not managing, but I've been kind of directing them what to do with my money, even in my Goldman account. And, um, so I'm like, listen, this is just, this is just a nail on the coffin, right? Like, it doesn't make sense anymore. And, uh, so it was, it was good conversation. I stay, stay, I still stay in touch with those money managers. Um, they're pretty cool, you know, they, uh, so it was, it was a pretty easy conversation, you know? Uh, maybe, you know, maybe a smaller manager would have taken it differently. I don't know, but, um, but, but I think they have enough business from, from people.

• 17:54Anthony Pompliano?

  I, I recently was talking to one of these people that I would consider like super high quality, you know, top 1% in the world in terms of, uh, uh, strategies, et cetera. And one of the things that they told me that blew my mind, uh, I asked them, I said, you know, what's one of the strategies that, uh, only the ultra-rich know, but, uh, is available to everybody? And a majority of your clients use it. And they blew my mind. They said, well, one of the things that a lot of these ultra-rich people will do is they'll go and they'll buy a house with cash. They'll then take out a mortgage against the house, but they'll actually take the mortgage money and not use it to buy anything because they already own the house. They'll go and they'll invest the capital. And then when they make the interest payments or the payments on the mortgage, it now is tax deductible because it is an investment interest payment,

• 18:39Anthony Pompliano?

  rather than it being just for your primary residence. And so you're still securing the loan with the home, but you're not using it to purchase the home. You're making investments with it. And so I just, it was one of those moments where you're like, yep, makes complete sense when somebody explains it to you. But there's all these little things that the best in the world understand. They've seen it so many times, all their clients are doing this stuff. And it really does kind of separate, I think, the best from kind of everyone else, because they just understand this stuff to a degree that, uh, you know, many others don't to some extent.

• 19:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's a great strategy. Like I, it was cool when I, you know, I bought my first home, my second home. I never had a mortgage, I just bought them straight cash. And then I'm like, Damn, it's like these interest rates are like two and a half percent or whatever, you know, that's free money for 10 years, like interest only, I'll take it. And, you know, and the other thing you probably, yeah, it was like the, the average person has a $750,000 limit of how much they could deduct of interest against their home. But exactly like if you're, if you're using it as investment capital, which you and I probably are, that is completely a business expense, so you don't have a limit.

• 19:47Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, absolutely. The other thing that I found interesting was I saw that you tweeted that you in 2004 almost moved to Cayman Islands. And basically the idea was, you know, there's all these wealthy people right now, kind of over the last two years, that are all moving, right? So they're moving either to the low tax states, obviously there's places like Puerto Rico that have become very popular because of the tax incentives. Cayman for a long time, served as one of those incentives. But you also said, look, you had no offices, no employees, but lots of income taxes. And so you thought about it, which I think a lot of people, once they make a certain number, whatever that number is for them, they start to think, hey, are there things I can do to optimize my income tax? But you'd have to give up your US citizenship. And I think that this is a key thing that a lot of people forget, is that US citizens are taxed globally.

• 20:31Anthony Pompliano?

  And so many of the strategies that would be available to non-US citizens, sound amazing, but even if you move there as a US citizen, doesn't matter, you're still getting taxed globally. And so you said, which I appreciated, you said, for someone who was born in Soviet Union, that was a deal breaker. I'm not giving up my US citizenship. So talk a little bit about the balance between like optimizing your financial life across whether it's moving or other things, but also the importance of like having the US passport and US citizenship.

• 20:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, listen, Americans get taxed no matter where we go. And America has reached everywhere, right? Like you can't get away from America. So, yeah, to me, the decision was, I actually went out to Cayman, my, it just happens to be my friend was in med school over there, and I got to hang out and like check out some places. I actually made a decision, all right, I'm, I'm moving here. And then so like, once I came back. So doing all my due diligence, talking to lawyers and all that good stuff. Yeah, you know, you gotta, you know, get rid of, you know, no more US citizenship. And I mean, to me, that was a deal breaker because I just do feel like invest in America and I want to be part of this country because

• 21:38Speaker 02

  it still gives you the most flexibility to build things, grow things. Um, you know, you have all kinds of freedoms here and and to me, you know, I have family here, a lot of family here. So that was, you know, in New York. So that was another thing, but I was not, it wasn't worth the money. Um, it wasn't the, at the time, I would have saved a lot of money. Yeah. And, um, and actually I would probably today, but um, but it was, it just doesn't make sense. And like, you gotta make, you gotta balance that out and figure out what's best for you. And I, I'm very glad I didn't because, you know, I wouldn't be able, I probably wouldn't be able to build all these businesses that I did.

• 22:16Speaker 02

  Um, over the coming years, right? That was 2004 we're talking about. Um, I wouldn't be able to build a lot, all the stuff that I've built about if I wasn't, um, if I wasn't here.

• 22:26Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. So John and Joe, what, uh, what questions do you guys have? Hey Val, how's it going? Um, my question would just be around like what you're, what you're excited about, right? There's a bunch of new things going on in, in 2022 as we roll into the new year, but like what businesses are you looking at for the next five to 10 years that you're really trying to invest in?

• 22:42Speaker 02

  I'm trying to invest in. Man, it's hard to answer that. You know how like everything is so inflated. Like I'm doing, I do a lot of angel investing. I do a lot of investing in general and, you know, what you paid now for a seed or, or, or a series A is like, uh, it's hard to see what multiples are going to come from, even from winners, right? So no matter what category you look at, it's very tough. Uh, to me, obviously there's a, there's so much going on around crypto and NFTs, right? Um, I, I'm a pretty big believer in blockchain and crypto. I'm less so in, like, I'm not an artist, right? I don't get art. I don't own expensive art.

• 23:24Speaker 02

  So to me, collectible NFTs, for example, like just don't make sense, right? Like they're monkeys. I'm sorry. Um, but you know, look, it's, it's a, it's art in a way, right? So, but I, I don't, so what I think though, um, There is this huge opportunity, what I call personally operational NFTs, right? A perfect example of one, I don't know many examples unfortunately, but perfect example of one is Zedron. I don't know if any of you guys were Yep. across Zedron, right? Um, that is something where, yes, you have an NFT, but the way I view it is like Zedron is a horse racing, um, it's I don't know league or whatever and and it's a platform. You could, you know, people could own horses. There are horses that are worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, there are horses that are worth a couple hundred bucks.

• 24:10Speaker 02

  And everybody could like race them. There are, there are bloodlines. There are all these DNAs. There's like, just like real horse racing. And by the way, I've never bet on horses in my life. I don't, you know, I've never been to a OTB or anything. Uh, but to me, that was a very interesting concept because you imagine, imagine like the way I see like I own some of these horses and the way I view it is like if, if this becomes a big thing, it becomes like the next, like the future NBA, I perpetually own a player in that league, right? But what if that goes to the next level? Right? What if somebody sets up for whether it's NBA or somebody that just does something around basketball, just use basketball as an example.

• 24:51Speaker 02

  Right? What if a player, just like a musician has masters and they could own those masters or they could sell those masters? What if, what if an athlete could, could have a master of themselves, right? And you could, if you have that master, like that player, if you own the player, you could play that player on an NBA court, um, in the metaverse, right? So there's this, to me, that's more operational because there are, um, there are statistics and attributes and all that stuff involved. It's not just a collectible. It's like a, it's again, it's a, it's a very like a moving part. And there's just so much, so much, so much activity going on, but there's also money going, um, money that gets transferred and

• 25:36Speaker 02

  uh, just like in the real NBA, but you kind of poured it into this metaverse that really has its own ecosystem. So. Uh, so it's, it's, it's a little more than just having like, uh, like I know Gary Vee talks about like, you know, concert tickets, right? And, and it's in, in turning into NFTs. Like this is beyond that because now you're taking, taking, um, you're owning a player inside a, a league.

• 26:02Anthony Pompliano?

  Yep. Yeah, I like that. Something with more utility, it sounds like.

• 26:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

• 26:07Anthony Pompliano?

  John, what you got?

• 26:08Speaker 03

  Hey, Val. Nice to meet you. Congrats on all your success.

• 26:10Speaker 02

  John with an H?

• 26:11Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's John with an H. No, you know, um, so I'm just curious, what advice would you have for a young entrepreneur who has an idea and just wants to get started?

• 26:22Speaker 02

  There are, there's so much right now. It's hard. It's, it's really about following what you love about your passion. Right? That's gonna like, set you up for a long, long time. And if you're passionate about it, it's never gonna feel like work.

• 26:39Speaker 02

  To me, my work, my businesses, like, it's, it's, I feel like it's a hobby. I don't have any other hobbies. I, I suck at that. It's like, it sucks in my life. My hobby is my businesses, right? Are my businesses. So if you could find something that you like doing and turn that into a business, into a business, you will be way more successful. Um, uh, at it, you know? I could force things on people all day long. If they don't have the passion for it, it's gonna fall apart and it's not gonna be like, it's not gonna be that effective. Um, so I mean, that's probably my, my, my, my best advice. I'm like, uh, I think the other thing is like your name, like your, the ethics are extremely important. That, I was, I was a kid making money and, um,

• 27:24Speaker 02

  you know, I was like seventeen years, eighteen years old. I owed people, not I owed, like, people that I made deals with. Uh, I had this one, it's a, it's a, it's a story, but like this guy lived outside of US. Back in the days, I think we used like ICQ. And I owe the guy, you know, because I had to pay him $5,000 a month and I can't get a hold of him. He's not answering my ICQs. He doesn't answer my, you know, instant messages or whatever. I can't find the guy. I owe him four months of like, you know, $20,000. I know he lives somewhere in Denmark or something. Dude, I chased that guy for four months. To pay him, you know, and I would tell that to people, they're like, why are you chasing the guy to pay like, you know, maybe he'll, maybe he'll disappear and like, you'll forget about the 20,000 you owe.

• 28:02Speaker 02

  And to me, they're just, that wasn't me. Like, I, I just can't, I can't be that, right? Like, and, and that stayed with me forever. Like, just like, so, because your name and your credibility is extremely important. Because when you have a credibility and you're trustworthy, money will come to you, I promise. Because people want to give you that money on their own, um, um, and, and work with you. So over time, it just like pays the biggest dividends, in my opinion.

• 28:28Speaker 03

  That's great advice.

• 28:29Anthony Pompliano?

  Val, when you start to think about, uh, building versus investing, how do you spend your time? Like, what's your average day look like? I think that'd be fascinating for people to understand, because you, you basically, I think of it as you have multiple advantages in life. You've got an experience, you've got connections because of the experience that you've built and been doing this for so long. You've got a balance sheet and kind of capital that you can deploy. And then you also have like a, a knowledge and skill set. And so I kind of think of it like, um, you show up, you're like, hey, I got all these weapons that I could deploy, but like, how I do it and when I use each one of them becomes a very important decision-making, uh, process. So like, how do you think about your day, where you spend your time? And then also like building versus investing, um, in, in terms of like what you actually do?

• 29:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, so most of my time today goes, um, I spend over 90% of my time on the company that I'm the CEO of. I'm, I'm a CEO of one company. I, I, I once was a CEO of three. It was a bad idea. I learned early on not to do that, you know? Put the right people in place and don't micromanage them. Uh, I'm a CEO of one company called Jokalio. What, what, what I wanted to focus on is, um, so I took a three-year break. I sold a couple of companies a bunch of years ago. Took a three-year break, thought I'd like retired. I couldn't do it. And so I was like, all right, what can I build? And what I wanted to do is, I wanted to look somewhere where I'm, I knew that it's a good chance that I want to, I want to finance whatever I'm doing.

• 29:57Speaker 02

  So I wanted to go into some direction where I'm not going up against all these tech companies with unlimited VC dollars. I can't compete for that. Okay?

• 30:07Speaker 02

  So what I was looking for is an area that is not disrupted, very fragmented. And I kind of wanted to help the main street this time around. You know, most of my companies, like Mobile Fuse included. Work with like Fortune one thousand companies who have multimillion dollar marketing budgets, again, in this case, it's a mobile advertising company. And I wanted to do something with mainstream, right? Mom and pop, so like a lot of mom and pops out there do, you know, millions and millions of dollars. So in that case, I came across an industry that was extremely fragmented, was very far behind in terms of technology. And it's it's the independent jewelers, right?

• 30:49Speaker 02

  So I built, you know, I decided to build a platform that will empower them. And I become part of that ecosystem. So for me, that was my, you know,

• 31:04Speaker 02

  thought process, right? Like I connected my personal situation, financial situation, who I want to compete against. And then I start deciding, okay, start filtering down what categories I want to go. So I had some of my own filters in terms of what kind of business that I that I want. So I came across like, again, to me, it was a three hundred billion dollar industry that like is up, up, up, up for, but it's very complicated. And I could guarantee you like companies don't want to, or VCs don't like to, you know, invest into companies like that because it's so complicated, so many moving parts. And I'm not talking about doing e-commerce and anything like that. So that's, that's, and that's why I spend most of my time.

• 31:47Speaker 02

  My day is, I have strangest days, like you made me wake up early today.

• 31:54Speaker 02

  What? Yeah, I call myself the lazy entrepreneur, right? Like it's, it's, I don't think I'm lazy to be honest with you, but I like to call it because I wake up whenever I feel like it, right? But but it's also because from some, from my childhood, I like to go to sleep late. Like so a lot of people wake up early, right? They wake up five in the morning, they do, they do, they do the gym and like they do all their like good work in the morning. I'm the opposite. I do it in the morning, but before I go to sleep. So my, my, my average time to go to bed is like four, five AM in the morning. Wow. Yeah, and I got better, like I, I, I had another company that was very international that I sold. And I would know to go to sleep when I hear the birds chirping and the lights out, you know,

• 32:38Speaker 02

  and that would be like six, six thirty in the morning. And dude, at three AM, I probably had a Red Bull and hot dogs, you know, just to power myself through the night.

• 32:48Anthony Pompliano?

  All right.

• 32:49Speaker 02

  I do have an occasional cup of noodles in there.

• 32:51Anthony Pompliano?

  So let's say that you wake up at like 12, 1 o'clock, you know, whenever you end up waking up. What do you do between then and like 3 or 4 o'clock in the morning when you go to sleep?

• 33:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, so like depends on the day, right? If I wake up, if I go to sleep 4, I try to get my 7 hours. I wake up at 11, you know, I go straight into work, emails, all that, you know, I'm usually already like seeing a bunch of WhatsApps, you know, from all the, all my, all my teams. And it's funny, I think that they kind of know when, the second you're online and they see the little vows online thing, I get all the messages start coming in through WhatsApp, you know?

• 33:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, so a lot of it is just kind of like block and tackle. Any issues come up, you gotta deal with it. And so during the day, I spend most of my time just kind of focusing on operations. But it's at late night, like that's after, you know, everybody goes to sleep, nobody's emailing you, nobody's calling you. That's when my work is really gets done. Like I could think about things and come up with ideas, come up with strategies, formulate things, you know, whether I have to put together a, sorry, like a little pitch for the, for the team on, so.

• 34:04Anthony Pompliano?

  And do you have, at the holding company level, do you have just you and then each individual team is kind of built out for each individual company? Or do you also have like you plus an operations person, plus like a finance person at the holding company level? Like, how do you think about that?

• 34:18Speaker 02

  No, I don't, I don't have anybody, so I mean, I have like external teams, my accountants, my CPA firm, I look at multiple law firms. And, and yeah, so I have that, those teams. I don't have anybody like at the holding company full time. I probably should at some point and, you know, that's something I am looking into. But each and every company has its own CEO, has its own teams. I don't, I don't micromanage the CEO.

• 34:49Speaker 02

  Because, you know, even if I want to, I, I've learned to stay, stay, stay away from doing that. You know, you gotta, you gotta like, if you trust that person to run that operation, you gotta let them, let them do their job.

• 35:04Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it.

• 35:04Speaker 02

  And so I don't like, I don't like to micromanage. So I, I speak to my. Speak to my CEOs and my partners like maybe once a week in each company.

• 35:17Anthony Pompliano?

  And then my understanding is like you think about the holding companies like you own these businesses. Do you think about your investing activities, et cetera, as like a family office as separate or as part of the holding company? And what I'm trying to help people understand here is the idea of a family office. I think a lot of folks aren't quite familiar with how to think about that. And so like anything that you can kind of share in terms of how you think of either structure or like the difference between when your money was with other money managers versus you managing it yourself and more of like a family office type structure.

• 35:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, in a way I am kind of like a one man family office, right? I'm blessed to be pretty comfortable with tech, so I can be very efficient at doing it. And again, also pretty blessed to just understand finance and you know, kind of like I've learned a lot about operations and taxes and all that kind of stuff over the years. So yeah, I think at some point you kind of, you know, you outgrow that. I would love to at one point in my life to have a small family office that handles a lot of the nuances. But I'm not there yet. So you know, I think I think I'm okay for now.

• 36:28Speaker 02

  And I actually like I like the excitement and of managing my stuff. You know, just to answer your question about, you know, when I had the money manager. So the money manager really manages managing just one part. Initially, I got him because I'm not good with bonds, right? Like I wanted to have municipal bonds and they were pretty good at managing munis. At one point I just kind of got out of munis and you know, and then, and then because I had my own credit fund, it made, you know, I just moved that money into my own credit funds. So I manage a lot of money outside of Goldman even when I had him.

• 37:08Speaker 02

  Um, but you know, it was actually a great decision, you know, forget about taxes because that decision was made in like 2019 when I pulled out from, from my money managers and and COVID hit early 2020 and I already sold down a bit of things. I just felt that the market, actually was literally selling equities, not everything, but I was selling anything I could without taking too much of a tax hit or capital gains of January and February before COVID, like literally I was, I finished selling a week before COVID hit and then once COVID hit, I was like, I was waiting for that moment for years and years and years and years because there hasn't been a dip for such a long time. At that point, I just

• 37:48Speaker 02

  went all in. I used up all my margin. I mean, I put everything in, into the, into the stock market in March when you know, you've seen, but you know, but you gotta be like ready for that because on the screen you're seeing is you're losing seven figures a day. And if I, this, this wasn't my third rodeo, I guess, you know, because the first one was the dot com bubble. The second one was the great recession. So I've seen this show already, right? I was not phased about it. All I was thinking, thinking about is like, what do I get the capital to buy more on March 17, March 18, March 19? I was buying every freaking day. Um, so actually that was a great, great, you know, the fact that I wasn't with a money manager was amazing because I wouldn't be able to move as fast

• 38:31Speaker 02

  if, if I had a, a, I had to deal with a money manager at the time.

• 38:37Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, makes, makes complete sense. It's fascinating to kind of see what you've built and, and how you operate on a daily basis. You guys got any other questions? No, I'm impressed. Thanks Val for coming on. Val, where can we send, where can we send people to find you on the internet? Send them to your Twitter account? Is that the best place or somewhere else?

• 38:56Speaker 02

  Uh, Twitter, I like, all my companies are on LinkedIn as well. Uh, so LinkedIn is a, is a, you know, Twitter is amazing, great as well. And I know you guys are big on Twitter, so I'll say Twitter.

• 39:08Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, I'm dropping, uh, I'm dropping your Twitter account right now in the, uh, in the chat for anyone who, uh, who's interested. Go, uh, go check them out and make sure you follow them there. Uh, dude, listen, thank you so much for, uh, for coming on. This is, uh, this is awesome. We definitely should, uh, should bring you back as, uh, you kind of continue. I think that, uh, you got a lot of stuff to, uh, to teach people and it's pretty cool to see what you built. So, uh, congrats on all the success and, uh, we'll definitely do it again soon.

• 39:32Speaker 02

  Appreciate it. You guys keep going at it too, man. Just guys, you guys bring so much, um, knowledge.

• 39:37Anthony Pompliano?

  We gotta move the show later in the day so you watch it. So you're not sleeping.

• 39:42Speaker 02

  I, I, I, I watch it, uh, you know, the reruns.

• 39:47Anthony Pompliano?

  I love it, man. I love it. All right. You have a good day.

• 39:50Speaker 02

  All right, guys.

• 39:51Anthony Pompliano?

  Later.