Pod Insights The Pomp Podcast Natalia Karayaneva, CEO of Propy: How Blockchain is Transforming Real Estate About this episode Natalia Karayaneva is the Founder and CEO of Propy, a Silicon Valley prop-tech company revolutionizing home purchasing globally by deploying smart contracts on the blockchain. In this conversation, Natalia and Anthony discuss growing up in Russia and Bulgaria, the current fundraising environment for blockchain companies, how real estate markets are evolving globally, and where international investor demand has gone for U. S. based real estate. American Airlines-----airline tickets, cheap flights, vacation packages and American Airlines AAdvantage bonus mile offers at AA.com. McDonald's-----It's a good time for the great taste of McDonald's. Just look for the Golden Arches and pick up a meal that will have you saying "Mhm I'm lovin’ it". -----If you enjoyed this episode and want to stay updated on everything Bitcoin, blockchain, and crypto. Check out Off the Chain newsletter by visiting offthechain.substack.com and join 35,000+ other investors currently subscribed to my daily investor letter.
Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Anthony Pompliano? What's up everyone, this is Anthony Pompliano. Most of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to Off the Chain, simply the best podcast in crypto. Let's kick this thing off. Natalie Kara-Yaneva is the founder and CEO of Propy, an automation platform for real estate transactions for homebuyers, brokerages, and title companies. In this conversation, we discuss growing up in Russia and Bulgaria, the current fundraising environment for blockchain companies, how real estate markets are evolving globally, and where international investor demand has gone for US-based real estate. I really enjoyed this conversation, and I hope you do as well. But before we get into the episode, I want to talk about our two sponsors today. That's right, one of them is American Airlines. They're the
0:45 Anthony Pompliano? only company that I trust with my life while in the air. Head on over to aa.com, get you an Advantage number, and start booking flights. They go anywhere you want to go. Seriously, though. American is the only airline that I fly. If you head on over to aa.com, they got all kinds of flights. You could fly to Miami, you could fly to China, you could fly to Europe, South America, they probably even got one to Antarctica. Head on over to aa.com. I'm Executive Platinum, get upgraded every time. But if you fly anything else, that's alright, I'll see you at the airport. I'll just be getting on the nice planes at American. So aa.com. Now, our second sponsor today, McDonald's. That's right, Mickey D's.
1:27 Anthony Pompliano? Everyone knows the best restaurant in America. Why? They're consistent, they're cheap, and they got great food. There's not a person listening to this that's going to tell me they've gone and eaten a Big Mac, or a McFlurry, or a McChicken, or how about a large fry? You walk out of McDonald's every time saying, "Mm-mm, damn, that was good." That's right, McDonald's. There's one on every street corner, head on over to McDonald's. So, go check out American Airlines and McDonald's, the two sponsors for today's episode. Now, before we get into the episode, though, don't forget, Off the Chain's not only a podcast. Every morning, I also wake up and I write a newsletter to 40,000 investors analyzing
2:07 Anthony Pompliano? the Bitcoin, blockchain, and cryptocurrency industry. Head on over to offthechain.substack.com, that's offthechain.substack.com, and sign up today. Now, let's get into the episode with Natalie and see what she's got to say.
2:21 Speaker 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.
2:47 Anthony Pompliano? All right, guys. Bang, bang. Coming to you live from the new off the chain studio. Not really, we just moved the office around. But I'm here with Natalie. Thanks so much for coming to do this.
2:59 Speaker 02 Sure. Thank you so much for inviting me.
3:01 Anthony Pompliano? You got your Propy shirt on, ready to go.
3:03 Speaker 02 Absolutely. I love your new office.
3:05 Anthony Pompliano? ABC, always be closing. I like it. All right, let's, uh, let's jump right in. You are not from the United States and you've got an awesome story. So you were born in Russia.
3:17 Speaker 02 Yeah.
3:18 Anthony Pompliano? Right? And then eventually ended up in Bulgaria. Kind of tell us how.
3:21 Speaker 02 Yeah.
3:22 Anthony Pompliano? We were in Russia and then in Bulgaria.
3:23 Speaker 02 Yeah, absolutely. So I was studying software engineering in Russia and at the age of 19, I moved to Bulgaria, established my first engineering company. That's my, how my entrepreneurial career started. And for 15 years, I was, uh, building and constructing real estate in Bulgaria. And then I thought, well, actually I want again to build software. And so knowing all the problems I've experienced in real estate, I relocated myself to the US four years ago. And this is how the story of Propy started.
4:02 Anthony Pompliano? All right, let's talk about school in Russia.
4:04 Speaker 02 Okay.
4:05 Anthony Pompliano? What is that like? I'm assuming it's like school in most other countries.
4:10 Speaker 02 Absolutely.
4:11 Anthony Pompliano? I think in America, we have this, uh, vision of like. Russian kids going to school and sitting there from 5 a.m. to like 10 p.m. and just being told, "Learn!"
4:20 Speaker 02 Yeah, learn how to code and spy on the U.S., right?
4:23 Anthony Pompliano? Yeah. You can't say that joke. That's not allowed.
4:27 Speaker 02 Yeah.
4:27 Anthony Pompliano? All the Americans are now turning off the podcast. Wait, but no, what is that like?
4:31 Speaker 02 Well, actually, it's a great point that recently we had one account at Propy that we didn't pass the background check with them because of my Russian background. They were very resistant to give data to a Russian-founded company.
4:50 Anthony Pompliano? Crazy. All right, so what's school like in Russia as you study computer science?
4:56 Speaker 02 Yeah, so it's an international university of nature and computer science close to Moscow. And the beauty of this university is that the first two years you have to learn many subjects, including software engineering, even if your major, like mine, was environmental scientist. And then the others were lawyers, economists. They had to learn how to code.
5:28 Anthony Pompliano? Oh, everyone learns.
5:29 Speaker 02 Yeah, the first two years, everyone had to learn how to code. And I just loved it. That was my first experience with a computer. Before that, I never touched the computer, even though I had a dream to do it. And but this led me to actually transition from the environmental studies to coding engineering department. And I used to help all the, like, those artistic majors to code and then do their work the first year. Yeah.
5:57 Anthony Pompliano? That's awesome. All right, so you learn how to code and you pretty much know, hey, I'm gonna go do this instead of the environmental work. Why go to Bulgaria?
6:08 Speaker 02 Our university was international.
6:12 Anthony Pompliano? You're putting that in air quotes. Why are you putting that in air quotes?
6:15 Speaker 02 Because the only international students we had was from other post-communist country, which was Bulgarian group.
6:24 Speaker 02 And so, yeah, I met my now ex-husband in the university. I relocated myself to Bulgaria. And yeah, so this is how I ended up in Bulgaria.
6:39 Anthony Pompliano? So, most people know that I'm fond of Bulgaria now that Polina is in my life. And I've been to Bulgaria numerous times. Where in the country were you? In Sofia?
6:52 Speaker 02 I used to live in Sofia, in Plavdiv, on the seacoast. Right now, our engineering team sits in Sofia. But before that, I was constructing resorts on the seacoast. So, it was a lot of fun.
7:07 Anthony Pompliano? It's nice there.
7:08 Speaker 02 Yeah, it is beautiful. You know that.
7:12 Anthony Pompliano? So, what is that like? Like, how do you go from software development to building resorts?
7:18 Speaker 02 Yeah. So, my first company was in a small garage. And I was coding simple applications, primarily web applications for small businesses and some real estate developers. And then Bulgaria, as you know, it's a new European Union country. They announced that they will join the European Union. So, suddenly, those British investors were coming to Bulgaria to acquire properties and build. And I was looking at the couple of those buildings appearing on the seacoast. And I thought, okay, it looks like it's a very capital-intensive and lucrative business. So, I went to UK, I went to Russia, Latvia, talked to potential customers,
8:01 Speaker 02 figure out what they want, and told to my engineers, "Okay, now we're gonna acquire land." Do awesome renderings of future buildings and sell them cross borders. So this what made me to transition our engineering team to.
8:15 Anthony Pompliano? So you took the engineers that you had and you would buy land. Then you would have the engineers create building renderings, just drawings of them, basically.
8:25 Speaker 02 And they were the the most beautiful sophisticated renderings. And people were buying those real estate pieces cross borders without coming and seeing even the site. So the site was empty.
8:37 Anthony Pompliano? So you would sell the land or you would sell them on investing to build the property? Like to build out the building?
8:44 Speaker 02 I would sell condos. So it's a resort full of condos with like spas, restaurants and so on. So they would buy a future unit that I would build.
8:54 Anthony Pompliano? And then you would build it?
8:55 Speaker 02 Yeah, and I would build it within one or two years. And normally they would be all very happy with execution that everything is just like it was projected and designed for the pictures, but everything was tech driven, like we had our own CRM system. We had programmers to make sure we're having the tracking system of our customers. That was 2005.
9:20 Anthony Pompliano? Yeah, and so one of the theories I have is that Bulgarian real estate is going to make a resurgence. You agree?
9:28 Speaker 02 Well, with the reason I decided to relocate myself from Bulgaria is actually we, my company was able to drive all that interest to Bulgaria from Russia, Latvia. So UK was interested there anyway, you know, they they're they love real estate globally. But then 2009 and 10, the interest started to decline. So there is there is no more such an interest from foreign investors, not only because there is a decline of those international home buyers, but also the economic situation, the political is really depressing there.
10:10 Speaker 02 So yeah, as soon as there is no such an influence from direct foreign investment, the local community also stopped investing in real estate and it's very affordable. So yeah, I would agree that. The real estate industry, they won't see anymore.
10:29 Anthony Pompliano? Oh, you think they won't see anymore interest?
10:32 Speaker 02 No.
10:33 Anthony Pompliano? All right, here's my theory. Ready?
10:35 Speaker 02 Tell me, yeah.
10:36 Anthony Pompliano? So before Instagram, nobody really knew about Iceland.
10:40 Speaker 02 Yeah.
10:41 Anthony Pompliano? Right? And then all of a sudden, some people go and they take a picture in Iceland and they put it on Instagram and it's, oh my God, it looks so beautiful.
10:47 Speaker 02 Yeah.
10:48 Anthony Pompliano? And now Iceland's popping off. Everyone loves Iceland.
10:50 Speaker 02 Yeah.
10:51 Anthony Pompliano? And there's a bunch of these places around the world where that's happened. Bulgaria is a place that a lot of people don't know about. They couldn't find it on the map, you know, etc. But they have the sea, they've got the mountains, etc. At some point over the next five years, my guess is that people are gonna quote-unquote "discover Bulgaria."
11:08 Speaker 02 Yeah.
11:08 Anthony Pompliano? And then they're gonna all start going there and it's like this whole thing.
11:12 Speaker 02 So this is what I did in 2005, 2010.
11:15 Anthony Pompliano? You did that 15 years ago.
11:17 Speaker 02 Yeah, I actually opened the eyes of Russians, which is huge population. I opened their eyes to Bulgaria, invited TV shows, there, reporters, influencers like yourself. So what might happen now...
11:31 Anthony Pompliano? I'm not a Russian influencer.
11:32 Speaker 02 Yeah, but what may happen now is an American influencer will drive an American interest to Bulgaria and maybe we'll see a new wave in Bulgaria to be discovered by Americans.
11:45 Anthony Pompliano? Yeah, I think, I think it's gonna happen. We'll see.
11:48 Speaker 02 Let's do that.
11:49 Anthony Pompliano? All right, so how much did a condo cost at one of these resorts?
11:53 Speaker 02 Super cheap, like $50,000.
11:56 Anthony Pompliano? $50,000 for a condo? And that was in 2005?
12:00 Speaker 02 Right now, you can buy a property for $50,000 with one bedroom.
12:05 Anthony Pompliano? Okay, so now it's $50,000, even then it was even probably cheaper than...
12:08 Speaker 02 Back then, for example, I could sell a property in 2007 for $30,000. Next year, it would be $90,000, so 3X.
12:19 Anthony Pompliano? Wow.
12:19 Speaker 02 We did that with my property.
12:21 Anthony Pompliano? That's pretty crazy.
12:22 Speaker 02 Yeah.
12:23 Anthony Pompliano? Sounds like some crypto investment.
12:25 Speaker 02 Absolutely. It was that hype of a market and we were part of the creation of it. Because it's a beautiful country. It's really beautiful country with the sea coast, the mountains, the talent, the food, everything is natural, organic. Also, it could become, Sophia is becoming a technical hub. There are many talented.
12:48 Anthony Pompliano? Google, there's a bunch of places there.
12:50 Speaker 02 Uber, Hewlett Packard, and the engineers there are very talented and very disciplined.
12:57 Anthony Pompliano? And they work hard.
12:58 Speaker 02 Yes, they do.
13:00 Anthony Pompliano? They don't complain like the people in America sometimes.
13:03 Speaker 02 Absolutely, 24/7.
13:06 Anthony Pompliano? Yeah. All right. So how do you go from building the resorts to running a real estate technology company?
13:12 Speaker 02 Yeah, so I've met many high net worth individuals acquiring properties in Bulgaria, Dubai, UK, and they all had this stress like, okay, I want to buy property in London and also I want to buy property in Silicon Valley, but the process is different and I'm not sure if I will be fooled. So we saw this pain and I just, I got very, very excited like, hey, we have the opportunity here, a huge opportunity to automate the process and we know how to make it internationally. So this is how, I came here for one real estate conference for the first time in America, made this visa. Those times it was easy.
13:55 Speaker 02 And yeah, I came here and the American real estate community was very welcoming and saying, you have to do it here. Yeah, so this is how I transitioned into the property.
14:06 Anthony Pompliano? Got it. And then that's when you moved to the US four years ago?
14:09 Speaker 02 Yeah.
14:10 Anthony Pompliano? What was the first city you went to in America?
14:12 Speaker 02 San Francisco.
14:13 Anthony Pompliano? Ah, what was your initial impression?
14:16 Speaker 02 You would be surprised. It was very, very good. Somehow I missed all the homeless part and all the disasters. I don't know how, but for the first week, I kind of didn't see that. And I loved the city. I loved the community. Every single meeting I would go to in San Francisco or in the Bay Area, in the peninsula, all people are so welcoming to newcomers. They would ask, how can we help you? Can we make an introduction? You need to meet this person or that person. So that was a big changing environment for me because before that I considered to move to Dubai or Monaco or London.
14:54 Anthony Pompliano? Those are all horrible places. Very bad.
15:00 Anthony Pompliano? What a list, London, Dubai, or Monaco. Oh my God.
15:04 Speaker 02 I had a hard time to decide.
15:07 Anthony Pompliano? Okay, so you choose San Francisco, right? And you knew that you were going to go try to solve this problem, but had you already started Propy yet? Or, okay, you had already started the company?
15:17 Speaker 02 I just bought the propy.com domain. So I knew that I want to build a global listing, something like Zillow but global with an ability to talk by properties with a couple of clicks. Obviously, in order to make this process with a couple of clicks, I knew that I will need hundreds of millions of dollars to make it as a technological infrastructure. So we just started as an infrastructure, like a listing platform. Very simple. And then I started to go around and meet many, many engineers who can solve cross-border payments, who can solve paperwork and process. And this is when I got to know blockchain.
15:53 Anthony Pompliano? Got it. And so when you first started, you didn't have any clue that blockchain or crypto would be a part of the business, but quickly figured that out?
16:01 Speaker 02 Yeah, absolutely.
16:02 Anthony Pompliano? Okay, and so tell us, what exactly is Propy doing today?
16:06 Speaker 02 Yeah, Propy today probably is the only solution that is dedicated to automate the entire home buying process, the closing process, from the offer to recording. And the infrastructure level is powered by smart contracts, but on the front end, it's all easy to understand for the home buyer, step-by-step wizard, how to acquire a property.
16:33 Anthony Pompliano? Got it. And does the same thing apply when you're selling those resort condos? I don't have to go see the property, right? Back then, they weren't looking at them. Today, I don't need to see it because you guys are doing what? Like, what information are you providing me on the platform? And are you guys doing the due diligence for me to make sure that the property, it says, you know, it is what it says? Or how does that work?
16:57 Speaker 02 Well, actually, we are, for now, our focus is a closing process, which means that you've made a decision. And we always recommend our customers to come and see the property. Property, but there are many cases like our first transactions were all made remotely with not even like seeing a property. Uh, so yeah, we're just focused on the closing process. Even when I was constructing and selling properties in Bulgaria and they're cheap. Uh, many of our customers, like half of them would not come and see the property, but we always like recommend them strongly to see what they're buying and then afterwards to to make the closing.
17:36 Anthony Pompliano? Got it. And so today, if I find a property that I want to buy, do I need to have that property on Propy? Like, does it already have to be listed?
17:47 Speaker 02 No.
17:47 Anthony Pompliano? Or I can talk to the seller and say, hey, let's go ahead and actually finalize this transaction, go on Propy, create an account, etc.
17:54 Speaker 02 Yeah, that's correct. So you can find a property, you may have an agent and the seller has an agent. You tell to your agent or the seller, hey, I'm ready to close. And I'd love to make it securely and faster, so let's use Propy.
18:09 Anthony Pompliano? Got it. Uh, where does crypto come in?
18:12 Speaker 02 Uh, the crypto is coming on the smart contract level. Uh, so every single transaction step is powered by smart contracts. Uh, and our goal is to eliminate all the manual work. Right now there are twenty participants in every deal, at least that's minimum. That has to do manual verification and they input data manually again and again and again. So at the point when the transaction is going to recording, there is a twenty percent rate of mistakes from manual work. Uh, so where smart contracts is is coming. Uh, the mission is that we're doing e-recording and ownership transfer. Uh, when software detects that the payment wire transfer is executed and the paperwork is executed.
18:56 Speaker 02 This is why every single step is handled by smart contracts. Obviously, it's not seen by the users. And for every single transaction on our platform, we have a token that unlocks the access to smart contracts.
19:08 Anthony Pompliano? And do I need to buy the property in crypto? Like, do I pay in Bitcoin or Ethereum? Uh, or can I pay in dollars?
19:15 Speaker 02 You can do both. You can do any currency. We work with forty currencies, Fiat and all the cryptocurrencies. We do transactions in Bitcoin, Ether.
19:25 Anthony Pompliano? What's the weirdest one?
19:29 Speaker 02 Well, not the weirdest, but I love this first transaction that we did 2017, the first ever blockchain powered transaction.
19:39 Anthony Pompliano? What happened?
19:39 Speaker 02 In Ether and the buyer, Michael Arrington.
19:46 Anthony Pompliano? Oh, that guy's horrible. Michael Arrington, what a bad guy.
19:50 Speaker 02 He did a good transaction, though.
19:54 Anthony Pompliano? No, Michael's great, obviously.
19:55 Speaker 02 I know, obviously.
19:57 Anthony Pompliano? I tried to get him to come and deals with us. Hey, man, let's go.
20:02 Speaker 02 Yeah.
20:02 Anthony Pompliano? I know he's listening to this right now. He's probably laughing right now. All right, go ahead.
20:05 Speaker 02 Absolutely, regards.
20:08 Anthony Pompliano? She said regards.
20:11 Speaker 02 Well, sitting here in New York and Michael being in, yeah. So, the transaction was fabulous in a sense that Ether were transferred to acquire property in Ukraine. The seller was in New York and the smart contract hold the funds till we get the data that the paperwork is in place and the signature with notary is approved and notary actually approved the transaction on the platform. And then, once the ownership transfer happened, which we had a data on because of our governmental
20:53 Speaker 02 pilot, the smart contract released the funds to the seller and to other parties associated. So, it actually disrupted the escrow function entirely. So, that was the interesting part of the transaction back then. And this is what we're aiming here in the US, because the majority of our deals here are happening with wire transfers in dollars. It's like 99.9% and we're aiming to do the escrow function with smart contract capability.
21:27 Anthony Pompliano? Got it. And so in that first transaction, Mike was sitting in California, the seller's sitting in New York, but the property's in Ukraine.
21:36 Speaker 02 Yeah, that's correct.
21:37 Anthony Pompliano? It's pretty complex, but you guys can automate that.
21:40 Speaker 02 All remotely, everything automated, everything is recorded and there are hashes on smart contracts now. You can go to EtherScan, find the transaction, see the movement of money.
21:51 Anthony Pompliano? Yeah, that's pretty good. Look out 20 years. What does this grow into? Right? Like where are you kind of building towards?
21:59 Speaker 02 Yeah. In 20 years, we're envision Propy to be, Propy.com to be an international e-commerce platform where people are finding this property they want to see, to buy. They would see it and they would come and they would have an experience like on Amazon. They go through a number of clicks and they got the deed registered that right there on the platform. So very easy way to transfer money. You would put your bank account, if banks still exist in the way they exist today, and you would get your deed. No worries, no anxiety, enjoyable process, just like we love our iPhones.
22:43 Speaker 02 You would love actually the process of home buying because it's one of the most valuable assets in our lives.
22:49 Anthony Pompliano? And do you do fractional ownership or is it just I own the property or I don't?
22:54 Speaker 02 We had a number of requests, probably over a one billion worth of requests. One day we just sat and counted them all of from institutional players to tokenize their real estate. So we have great expertise on that, but we don't do that.
23:12 Anthony Pompliano? But you don't do it?
23:13 Speaker 02 Yeah.
23:14 Anthony Pompliano? Will you potentially do it in the future?
23:16 Speaker 02 Maybe, maybe. I mean, once we have this marketplace up and running for many, many countries and many buildings, then obviously why not to also offer, hey, invest $1,000 in this building or that building or in a resort.
23:31 Anthony Pompliano? Yeah, that makes sense. What are you seeing globally in real estate? So I want to talk a little bit about kind of the macro economy and real estate for a second because real estate, similar to stocks, has just been going up.
23:48 Speaker 02 Yeah.
23:49 Anthony Pompliano? Value keeps going, keeps going, keeps going, as we know as students of history, that can't go on forever.
23:54 Speaker 02 Yeah.
23:55 Anthony Pompliano? And so there's likely to be a market downturn at some point in the future.
23:59 Speaker 02 It is happening already.
24:00 Anthony Pompliano? It's already happening. Explain that.
24:01 Speaker 02 Silicon Valley, San Francisco market are all soft for over 15 months.
24:08 Anthony Pompliano? Really?
24:08 Speaker 02 Yeah, it's been soft. Some markets are turning from seller market to buyer market. Dubai had a disaster in the last two years after even announcing the Expo 2020, and everyone was hoping that the market will outperform. But instead, it had at least 40% down rate. So yeah, you are right. We're in this time when the real estate market is softening globally, but at the same time, there are so many emerging markets where the properties are underestimated, like Bulgaria, for example. It's still a very, very affordable market.
24:51 Speaker 02 And there are a number of countries where they just figured how to avoid fraud and make more efficient title registry. In fact, 7, no, $9 trillion are unrecorded today, and it's dead capital in real estate, which will come to the economy one day. And obviously, why you would invest in a property in Silicon Valley where the minimum check is $2 million, where you can invest in 200 countries with a couple thousand...
25:24 Anthony Pompliano? 50 grand.
25:24 Speaker 02 Yeah, yeah, exactly. And you know that they would appreciate.
25:28 Anthony Pompliano? For sure.
25:31 Anthony Pompliano? One of the pieces that is interesting here in the US, so take New York for example. I read that 50% of the construction since 2015 of high-rise condos, only 50% has been sold. So there's incredible amount of supply that has come online that there's just no demand for.
25:57 Speaker 02 Really? I didn't know about that.
25:59 Anthony Pompliano? And one of the reasons why, in one of these articles I was reading, is because foreign investment has gone down.
26:06 Speaker 02 Okay.
26:07 Anthony Pompliano? So basically, one of the things that you gotta think about in terms of real estate for the people listening, you obviously know this, is we sit here and we say, hey, there's a lot of people who want to buy real estate. And we say, let's go build real estate, right? We're gonna build high-rise condos. That sounds like a great idea, you know, today, in January 2020, let's say. Well, it takes us a year to build it, or more, right? 18 months. But by the time it gets done, now all of a sudden, nobody wants to buy it. The demand has gone away. And so that lag is actually pretty painful for real estate developers. And they're faced with, do they offload the inventory at below-market prices and try to recoup something? Or do they hold it, right?
26:49 Speaker 02 Rent out and yeah, sit on the cash flow.
26:51 Anthony Pompliano? It's pretty crazy to kind of see it happen.
26:53 Speaker 02 Well, it's not happening in the Bay Area for sure, and in San Francisco, because there is still a huge lack of housing. Of course, affordable housing is the main asset the region lacks. But in terms of real estate development, yeah, this is what I was doing before. I see the interest and demand, and then my company would build a lot of inventory. We sell it, but then we saw the interest was softening, and we just stopped doing that. So in New York...
27:28 Speaker 02 Because foreign investors are now had to pass through more KYC than I used to. It refers to Russian investors, Chinese investors, and of course, the majority of local communities, they don't want the outsiders that don't occupy buildings. So some of the cities like Vancouver, for example, they actually introduced taxes for foreign investors.
27:51 Anthony Pompliano? Oh, interesting.
27:52 Speaker 02 Yeah, fifteen percent tax on top of the property price. So that they encourage more the local community to occupy those buildings.
28:04 Anthony Pompliano? Yeah, it's pretty crazy how real estate is such a like well-established game, right? It's been around forever.
28:14 Speaker 02 Yeah.
28:15 Anthony Pompliano? And people still make the same mistakes. People still make a lot of money off of it.
28:20 Speaker 02 Yeah.
28:21 Anthony Pompliano? And there's the same cycles that you would see in real estate and every other market. And it's kind of this, you know, the more things change, the more they stay the same.
28:30 Speaker 02 Yeah, definitely. It's one of the most outdated industries, but it's worth $280 trillion globally. So it's a huge.
28:39 Anthony Pompliano? That's more than Bitcoin.
28:40 Speaker 02 Yeah, a little bit more, right? Just a little bit.
28:44 Anthony Pompliano? For now.
28:45 Speaker 02 Yeah, for now. But the reality is that the population is growing. We will need more inventory. We will need more homes. We will need more buildings. And yes, in some local regions like here in New York, they might be, we reached some highest peaks in price. And this is now the market has to adjust. But in the majority of places, even though the market will soften, but we probably won't see any crashes.
29:11 Anthony Pompliano? Yeah, it's really interesting to think through, right? Because there's some counterintuitive components to it. But we'll see. What's the general environment right now as a founder in terms of fundraising and kind of interest in crypto, etc. Like you're doing this every day. What do you see in there? And how are investors feeling about blockchain and crypto companies?
29:31 Speaker 02 Yeah. So as a founder, obviously, I had to fundraise. I have to build a product. I have to sell. We're thirty people right now in the team. When we talk to investors.
29:49 Speaker 02 It's it's very different now in comparison to 2018. In 2018, we probably was were bomb- uh bombarded by emails from VCs every single week. From generalists, from top VCs, like, yeah, the blockchain is cool and also you're applying it to a real industry. Uh, and now it seems like they all are afraid of the blockchain and related investments. But in every single VC that is not focused on the blockchain, they always have this young associate or young partner that is super excited about cryptocurrencies and and uh blockchain. And they always try to push through the senior partner or or investor
30:34 Speaker 02 uh to find a way still to to be uh at least to research or or invest.
30:42 Anthony Pompliano? Do you think that that changes in the short term? Or do you think that it feels like this is going to be how the sentiment will be among venture capitalists for a while?
30:52 Speaker 02 Um, it's a hard question. Yeah, I'm not sure. Probably. Uh, it, yeah, maybe two, three years, it will be staying the same. Um, but I see more and more VCs, traditional ones that are not focused on blockchain, have still blockchain-related companies in their portfolio, and they start to perform. Uh, they start to have exits, acquisitions, so they tend to prove themselves as very valuable businesses.
31:22 Anthony Pompliano? Yeah, so it's kind of like if they see success in the investments they've already made, they'll get more excited.
31:29 Speaker 02 Yeah.
31:29 Anthony Pompliano? Kind of poor capital, it makes sense.
31:31 Speaker 02 Yeah, especially those that are now, that have invested in Ripple, in Coinbase, and now they became giant companies. Obviously, they uh they tend to be those that can attract more LPs and more investments. The same with venture capital and early-stage startups.
31:49 Anthony Pompliano? You you mentioned Ripple. Has anybody bought a house or a property with XRP yet?
31:54 Speaker 02 We had a number of sellers listing in XRP in 2018, but then we didn't have any sales.
32:03 Anthony Pompliano? No sales?
32:04 Speaker 02 Yeah.
32:05 Anthony Pompliano? Brad would have been excited.
32:07 Speaker 02 I know. I think he actually retweeted one of those listings. But at that point, the majority of people felt that they had to hold and wait the market to recover, which never happened.
32:23 Anthony Pompliano? Yeah.
32:23 Speaker 02 Till now.
32:24 Anthony Pompliano? Well, we'll see what happens.
32:25 Speaker 02 We'll see, right? We're believers.
32:27 Anthony Pompliano? Absolutely. What's the one lesson that you've learned building Propy? Like right now?
32:33 Speaker 02 Just one?
32:34 Anthony Pompliano? At this point in time, like what's the one big takeaway that you have so far that maybe when you went into building a business, you didn't know or think about, but now you're like, oh, this is what I've learned?
32:44 Speaker 02 As a founder, right?
32:45 Anthony Pompliano? Yeah, of course.
32:46 Speaker 02 Blockchain space?
32:48 Anthony Pompliano? No, just company building.
32:53 Speaker 02 Probably be ready to learn every single week. Like the, very often we would discover something like, hey, that's the path to go. And we would stick to it for two, three, four months. And then we would realize, oh no, that's a mistake. So every single week to be learning, reading and asking successful people in your field that have already proved for their mentorship. That was very, because we did a lot of mistakes, obviously, as every startup. We did many, many successes. We did all those historical transactions. We proved to the world that blockchain can work for a real industry, for a real case.
33:39 Speaker 02 But just never stop learning. And there are so many amazing books. Yeah, just asking on Twitter, like following you and seeing what articles people are reading and liking. This is helpful as well.
33:56 Anthony Pompliano? It's one of my favorite things I do because people actually find really high quality articles.
34:00 Speaker 02 Yeah.
34:00 Anthony Pompliano? Like I tweeted it, I don't know, one Saturday and tweeted it again. And I genuinely was interested like, what are people, you know, reading? So I could kind of be lazy and just have them send me stuff. And then it was so valuable that I just kept doing it.
34:13 Speaker 02 Yeah. And then it became a routine, right?
34:15 Anthony Pompliano? Yeah, this is amazing.
34:16 Speaker 02 Yeah, and we follow that.
34:18 Anthony Pompliano? I can't believe all these smart people are actually sending me stuff to read. But what, um, okay, so being willing to learn something new every week. Do you do anything from like a habit standpoint that you do intentionally for learning?
34:35 Speaker 02 Yeah. Uh, yeah, we just discussed it now with your colleague that.
34:41 Anthony Pompliano? Joe, Joe's sitting in the corner. Joe's got a new desk. He's fucking balling over in the corner.
34:47 Speaker 02 Thank you, Joe. Yeah. And he updated me with your fantastic metrics that you're doing so great with the podcast, like.
34:54 Anthony Pompliano? Don't tell anybody that we have 10 million downloads a month. Come on, don't, don't share that.
34:59 Speaker 02 So congrats.
35:01 Anthony Pompliano? I wish you guys could see Joe's face. Joe's bright red and he's dying laughing because there's really 12 million downloads a month. All right, go ahead.
35:08 Speaker 02 That's a great asset, actually. Um, I think you, you guys are a great team. Um, yeah, back to routine.
35:14 Anthony Pompliano? Joe's just trying to sell ads, that's all.
35:18 Anthony Pompliano? All right. So, great team.
35:20 Speaker 02 Yeah, absolutely. Great team. Congrats on that. And, um, um, your previous podcast was fantastic as well. Uh, this book.
35:30 Anthony Pompliano? Oh, Kamal, we're recording this right after we just recorded with Kamal Ravikant, uh, the author of Love Yourself Like Your Life Depends On It.
35:40 Speaker 02 Yeah, yeah, exactly.
35:41 Anthony Pompliano? Pretty good.
35:42 Speaker 02 Pretty good title.
35:43 Anthony Pompliano? You like those kind of books, right?
35:44 Speaker 02 Absolutely. And this what I got into my schedule of learnings, a lot of business books.
35:51 Anthony Pompliano? Okay.
35:52 Speaker 02 And a lot of psychological books on how to be more effective and productive and how to make my family, especially my daughter, teenage daughter, how to communicate with her better in more effective a way. Because I can learn a lot from experiencing the daily life. But sometimes you just read a book and know how to deal with the with the specific situation. Uh, so my habit is whenever I go to gym, uh, I have this one hour to listen to a podcast. And I have this queue of those items that I want to hear as well as when I go to massage, which I also have a routine.
36:30 Speaker 02 Uh, also I have a podcast and it's a, I consider those hours as like work hours. Because I, yeah, learning for something, something specific I need in my business today. So during the day, it's always something specific I need to learn today to make my company better.
36:49 Anthony Pompliano? What's the best business book you've recently read? Will be a recommendation.
36:53 Speaker 02 Oh, this one I love, uh, From Impossible to Inevitable by Aaron Ross and James, uh, Jason Lemkin. It's on SaaS.
37:03 Anthony Pompliano? From Impossible to Inevitable.
37:05 Speaker 02 Yes.
37:06 Anthony Pompliano? Okay.
37:06 Speaker 02 Uh, or the book they, uh, Aaron Ross, uh, published previously. It's a bible for B two B sales, uh, predictive, uh, revenue. Uh, yeah, this is a book, the phenomenal for B two B sales. Uh, and for sales in general, uh, how to practically do it, how to build the team or how to rebuild, restructure some tactics. Then I really love the book Negotiate, uh, Negotiate by Chris Voss by the FBI.
37:39 Anthony Pompliano? Oh, uh, How to Negotiate.
37:41 Speaker 02 Yeah.
37:42 Anthony Pompliano? But that's not what it's called.
37:43 Speaker 02 Never split the difference. Uh, yeah.
37:45 Anthony Pompliano? Chris Voss, the former FBI negotiator.
37:48 Speaker 02 Yes, that's correct. That was also fantastic. Then the CEO Within, uh, recent one, uh, by a CEO coach. Again, very practical on how to be an effective SEO, how to build OKRs, KPIs, how to score your team, yourself. Um, yeah, so those items are very, very helpful.
38:09 Anthony Pompliano? What about the psychological books?
38:11 Speaker 02 Yeah, the one I recently loved is the courage to be disliked. Uh, then the non-violence communication.
38:22 Anthony Pompliano? So non-violent communication and the courage to be disliked.
38:25 Speaker 02 Yeah, yeah, those I really like. Normally, like those motivational speakers like Tony Robbins and so on, they don't very much relate to me because they empower you to act, execute, and go and do something. And I have an opposite problem. I want everything to execute. I have tons of ideas.
38:49 Anthony Pompliano? You need somebody to tell you, stop, breathe, slow down.
38:52 Speaker 02 Yeah, exactly. Like, stop, focus on one thing. Do just one thing at a time.
38:56 Anthony Pompliano? If you don't want to pay Tony Robbins $20,000 to tell you to go act, you could pay me $20,000. I'll tell you, stop, breathe, chill out.
39:04 Speaker 02 I will next time.
39:06 Anthony Pompliano? And then what is it like raising your daughter, who, as you said, is a teenage daughter in today's society with TikTok, Instagram, Twitter, Tinder, whatever other things she can have on her phone? Like, what is that like as a parent?
39:23 Speaker 02 It's tough. It's always negotiating. And this book, Never Split the Difference, helps.
39:30 Anthony Pompliano? What are you negotiating with her over?
39:33 Speaker 02 Yeah.
39:34 Anthony Pompliano? How old is she?
39:34 Speaker 02 She's 13. She just turned 13. She has never been into Instagram, social media just yet, but I feel she's turning into that. And she's very much into iPad, watching YouTube videos. Till now, they were more like, okay, doing some stuff, crafts. So I was kind of, okay, it's not that bad. But then, very often, she would not do her routine stuff. She's really great in homework. When we moved to the US, she was actually very self-independent. Nine years old, but she would go to the school all alone. She would wake up herself. She
40:11 Speaker 02 would make pasta for herself. So we just had to survive and be self-efficient, because I couldn't afford nannies or something like that. But then, now, this iPad and always being on screen, it's very, very hard to find a balance.
40:33 Anthony Pompliano? What does she watch on YouTube now?
40:36 Speaker 02 I wish she was just watching your podcast, but no.
40:41 Anthony Pompliano? Our podcast gets 50,000 downloads a day on YouTube too, no worries.
40:46 Speaker 02 Yeah, I'm trying to get her into crypto. We're talking very often about Bitcoin. She knows that you can buy a house with a token. Yeah, she knows that stuff already, but she's just watching some teenage series plus.
41:02 Anthony Pompliano? Like the influencer stuff and all that stuff.
41:04 Speaker 02 Yeah, that stuff and then like doing slimes, also those childish stuff like toys and wrapping.
41:12 Speaker 02 And then what to wear.
41:14 Anthony Pompliano? Yeah, it's crazy to me. I obviously don't have any kids, although Plina would tell you I am a kid. But the rise of the devices, the connected devices, the social media, etc. Yeah, I remember as a kid, like my mom and dad had a pretty good idea of what I was doing, right? Like, I see what you're watching on television. I know what video games you're playing. Like the things that were going into my head, the content, they pretty much knew.
41:45 Speaker 02 Yeah.
41:45 Anthony Pompliano? I feel like parents don't know that anymore.
41:47 Speaker 02 Yeah, right now it's scary.
41:49 Anthony Pompliano? A harder time knowing what their kids are doing.
41:52 Speaker 02 Absolutely, yeah.
41:53 Anthony Pompliano? Which could be good or bad, right? Look, you got a kid that, you know, wants to learn and stuff.
41:57 Speaker 02 Yeah, they just need to know that they have borders because sometimes with internet, they feel they can do whatever they want, but.
42:05 Anthony Pompliano? Well, they can. They can do whatever they want. You don't want them to.
42:08 Speaker 02 Yeah, yeah, yeah, but there are many apps with like parent control, but it's an additional work for a parent. Okay, you have, again, those apps you have to control, see what's going on. But I agree with you, just paying attention and look what they're excited about. That helps to understand where their minds are into. But yeah, our childhood was easy and we had like, you know, the TV channel with a program. You have 15 minutes cartoons and Saturday movie.
42:37 Anthony Pompliano? Well, the conspiracy theorists would say that the state was programming people, right? They're like, we're gonna tell you what you're gonna watch.
42:44 Speaker 02 Yeah, yeah, exactly. And you're like, looking forward. Okay, it's on your schedule.
42:49 Anthony Pompliano? Yeah, absolutely.
42:50 Speaker 02 And then you're bored between those, this time in our childhood, we were very bored what to do in between. So we were very creative and loving nature, going, exploring what's happening outside.
43:01 Anthony Pompliano? Kids don't go outside, come on. The only thing they know about the forest is they saw it on their iPad.
43:07 Speaker 02 Yeah, exactly. YouTube scenes.
43:09 Anthony Pompliano? I got a 23-year-old brother who was in New York City, no joke, for two weeks doing an internship. He was two weeks into his summer internship, this is two years ago. And we had to go to St. Louis. My brother was getting married, not him, but another one. And so when we get there, the entire bridal party, whatever, went golfing, all the guys. And we're out on the golf course, and I hear my 23-year-old brother, who's been in New York City for legitimately two weeks, hit everyone with, "Man, it's so great to see like trees and stuff." And we all looked at him like, "Shut the hell up."
43:47 Speaker 02 How about Central Park at least?
43:49 Anthony Pompliano? He's been there for two weeks.
43:51 Speaker 02 Yeah, actually, I think that's my main challenge, because I love to rest in nature, going in parks and hikes. And it's very hard to get out my family from the house and get to that. And it's very hard for me to actually make her love nature and explore, like.
44:09 Anthony Pompliano? Yeah, yeah.
44:10 Speaker 02 But we made it, there's a habit now. So she knows that she just has to do it, because it's a family tradition now.
44:18 Anthony Pompliano? That's a good way to get her to do it, right?
44:19 Speaker 02 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
44:20 Anthony Pompliano? It's family tradition. All right, so before I get into rapid-fire questions, I feel like for people to be a user of property, they've got to understand real estate. And most people will do that on their own, right? They'll go figure out how to learn about real estate, "Hey, I want to buy property," whatever. But one of the things that strikes me is I've got to know about other countries' real estate, right? So I understand the US, or, you know, New York City or San Francisco, whatever, I can find that stuff out. I can talk to people who live there, whatever. How do you suggest people learn about other countries' real estate markets? So Ukraine, Bulgaria, whatever, if I don't go there, how do I actually get a good sense for what's going on in that market?
45:01 Speaker 02 I think that that what will happen in 20 years with Propy or with another competitor, this what will happen.
45:09 Anthony Pompliano? No, with Propy, come on.
45:10 Speaker 02 Of course.
45:13 Speaker 02 The world will come to a one platform that they have trust to it. Like in Amazon, we have the trust that the good will be delivered. Then there will be one platform where you will be able to to trust that the value of a certain property in Bulgaria or London is the one that should be. And the property is actually physically there because what happens in other countries, they don't have MLS systems, they don't have national certification of realtors at all. And there are just many, many frauds, agents, very often they are fragile and they're not licensed. So there are a lot of scams happening and you would want, you wouldn't want to risk and buy property of this way.
45:54 Speaker 02 So now you know, okay, maybe I want to buy a property in Sofia for like, I don't know, $30,000, which is nothing, but it's, it will appreciate potentially.
46:05 Speaker 02 And then you have to go there, you know, you have to invest time. Or with a platform in the future, you would just trust the system, you would read what's going on with the country, with the economical and political situation. You will trust the valuation because it will be based on data. Yeah, so this is how I envisioned that the world will be more, in real estate will be more open, transparent. And maybe even a little bit homogenic because right now we have so many differences. But maybe at some point we'll actually will come to a more homogenic market.
46:43 Anthony Pompliano? Yeah, it's pretty crazy to think about how much real estate has changed, yet how fragmented the knowledge is.
46:51 Speaker 02 Yeah, yeah, very fragmented, yeah, and the process very full of frictions, yeah.
46:56 Anthony Pompliano? What do you think the most important company in crypto is other than Propy?
47:00 Speaker 02 In crypto, company, not protocol.
47:04 Anthony Pompliano? You get name of a protocol?
47:06 Speaker 02 Well, I'm the believer in Bitcoin and
47:09 Anthony Pompliano? Great answer.
47:10 Speaker 02 Of course, Bitcoin standard, right? I just respect all the teams that are working on the protocols. Algorand, Near, Ethereum. We're developing Ethereum, so we see a lot of negative parts as well.
47:27 Speaker 02 But I think, I mean, the main thing now is to have the real adoption. This is what we are aiming. To have those enterprise and we have the support of US institutional partners already. Then when we provide the value, when we see finally that blockchain brings the trust and change to the industry like real estate, then we need all those protocols, the underlying technology, the first level layer and the second layer.
47:55 Speaker 02 And so it's amazing that those teams are working on developing them even though still there are no real volume happening in those networks.
48:06 Anthony Pompliano? Makes sense. What's the one regulation or law that you would change or improve if you could?
48:11 Speaker 02 Of course, you know this one.
48:14 Speaker 02 We all want this to sit a little bit. Allow us innovators finally work and innovate. Yeah, so definitely the securities laws.
48:25 Anthony Pompliano? And just revamp them?
48:27 Speaker 02 Yeah, yeah, absolutely. From 30s finally like make it to our century and yeah, rewrite them.
48:37 Anthony Pompliano? What about aliens, believer, non-believer?
48:39 Speaker 02 There is something there.
48:41 Anthony Pompliano? You think so?
48:42 Speaker 02 Yeah, I totally believe there is something.
48:44 Anthony Pompliano? You're saying like you know, like you've seen an alien before.
48:48 Speaker 02 Well, actually, yeah, once I saw something unbelievable in my childhood and I don't know what was that in Russia, yeah.
48:55 Anthony Pompliano? What did you see?
48:56 Speaker 02 Something happening in the sky, but I'm not sure what was that.
49:01 Anthony Pompliano? What, like it was like lights or what?
49:03 Speaker 02 A lot of lights, different colors.
49:08 Speaker 02 Yeah, there were some speculations that there were some experiments with some rockets nearby in the near city. But I I was born in a nuclear power plant serving city. So we were only 25,000 people in the city, all engineers. And it's a small town to see such a thing, a random thing. Yeah, but I don't know about aliens. Maybe not aliens, but there is something there in the universe.
49:39 Anthony Pompliano? Oh, there's definitely aliens. Come on. The just so I can put it on the record, I read yesterday that there's a star that is close to the sun. And previously, that star, there was a planet revolving around it, right? That's been known since 2016. Big deal. There is now speculation and confirmation. There's a second planet revolving around that star. And so I don't know what that means. Like, it's in like the habitable or habitable area, right? I said that word really funny.
50:23 Anthony Pompliano? That's funny. Um, habitable type planet. Second one, all revolving around the star. And so, of course, I tweeted, right? Because, you know, I basically have only two types of friends on the internet, people who like crypto or people who like aliens. And immediately, people started tweeting back at me that it's four light years away. I don't even know what that means. That's far as shit, though. Yeah, right? And they still think that four light years away could be a planet in which life could exist. Oh, wow. Can't get to it, but we can somehow see it, I guess.
51:02 Speaker 02 Yeah, yeah. Oh, my God. Yeah, this is scary to me.
51:05 Anthony Pompliano? When you were in school in Russia, how many planets did they tell you there were?
51:11 Anthony Pompliano? In America, they told us nine. They tell you guys nine or they tell you more?
51:14 Speaker 02 Yeah, in the sun system.
51:16 Anthony Pompliano? Yeah, yeah.
51:17 Speaker 02 Nine.
51:17 Anthony Pompliano? Nine planets.
51:17 Speaker 02 And all sudden later.
51:19 Anthony Pompliano? Over a thousand.
51:20 Speaker 02 Yeah.
51:22 Anthony Pompliano? I don't know where the other.
51:23 Speaker 02 Yeah.
51:25 Anthony Pompliano? Nine hundred and ninety-one of them came from. But it's pretty crazy to think about in terms of, you know, you're dealing with space and property here and on Earth.
51:37 Speaker 02 Yeah.
51:37 Anthony Pompliano? There's a solar system out there.
51:39 Speaker 02 Yeah, there is a whole universe there. We're such a small planet, but also it's fascinating how we're built as humans. How our system is self-sufficient. We have this intelligence. We're building the artificial intelligence.
51:55 Anthony Pompliano? Some of us have intelligence.
51:56 Speaker 02 Yeah.
51:57 Anthony Pompliano? I've seen some people on the internet that are a little shaky on that.
52:00 Speaker 02 I've seen them as well.
52:01 Anthony Pompliano? You've seen them too?
52:03 Speaker 02 In our community. I've seen those too.
52:06 Anthony Pompliano? All right. What one question you have for me to wrap this up?
52:10 Speaker 02 The one question I would have is, um, what is the kind of a founder you believe in, uh, to succeed, like generally?
52:24 Anthony Pompliano? Simple. They don't give up. That's it. I'm a big believer that, um, building a company is really fucking hard. And if you want to put yourself through that pain, you have to have one very important quality. And it's that you will literally take every punch right on the chin, like you don't care. You're not going to give up. And if you can have that mentality, you got a shot. Not guaranteed to succeed, but you're at least in a position where you can be successful. And you gotta have a lot of things go right. You gotta find the right people, gotta build the right product. All that stuff's gotta happen.
53:01 Speaker 02 Yeah.
53:01 Anthony Pompliano? But if you don't have that quality, you're dead in the water. There's no way you can build a company.
53:05 Speaker 02 How do you estimate, evaluate one founder if they have that quality or not?
53:09 Anthony Pompliano? I don't know if you can necessarily evaluate it as much as, uh, you're looking for, um, other things in their life that they've gone through that are hard, that they didn't give up on, right? And so like, it's kind of this belief. I call it the warrior theory. I've never actually shared this before. So warrior theory is basically if you take somebody who joins a warrior culture, whether it's, you know, developed nation's army, or some kind of, you know, crazy, wild, unsophisticated thing. Warrior theory is that if you put a warrior in that situation, whether it's their first day or their last day, they are predisposed to being successful. But the difference between
53:54 Anthony Pompliano? the person who is their first day versus the last day is the warrior who it's their last day, they've been through a lot. They're just, they're literally war hardened, right? They've been through it, like, like they have mental armor. They are ready to handle anything because they have seen themselves perform over and over and over again in combat.
54:14 Speaker 02 Yeah, yeah.
54:16 Anthony Pompliano? The person who is their first day, they believe that they have it, but they've never proven it to themselves.
54:21 Speaker 02 Yeah.
54:21 Anthony Pompliano? And so that doesn't mean, hey, you gotta go start a bunch of companies or anything like that. It just means somebody who's been through a lot of hard things in their life immediately is better positioned to handle the next hard thing because they themselves know, I've been through a lot of shit.
54:36 Speaker 02 Yeah.
54:36 Anthony Pompliano? Right? And so I think that that's something that.
54:39 Speaker 02 And are you normally born as a warrior? Or you can educate yourself?
54:46 Anthony Pompliano? I think that people who are not warriors are just warriors that haven't been trained yet.
54:54 Speaker 02 Yeah.
54:55 Anthony Pompliano? Meaning that it's all mindset.
54:57 Speaker 02 Yeah.
54:57 Anthony Pompliano? Right? It's like, it sounds stupid and super cliche, whatever. But at the end of the day, it's not what happens to you, it's what you do about it. Right? And so like entrepreneurs are better than anybody. Like there's the shit entrepreneurs deal with on a daily basis. People that don't go through it have no clue.
55:15 Speaker 02 Yeah.
55:15 Anthony Pompliano? Like literally you can wake up, you know, server basically melted down. Fuck, right? Okay. No press came out. Look, we're so great. Oh, wait, uh, somebody on Twitter screaming at us because, you know, they lost their login or whatever. Oh, we just got nominated for an award, you know? Okay, it's lunchtime.
55:36 Speaker 02 Exactly.
55:36 Anthony Pompliano? And this is like, we got the rest of the day left. Like, so it's just like this crazy up and down all day long. And it's kind of, you gotta get comfortable.
55:44 Speaker 02 Yeah, you have to have the resilience. Yeah, for that. And what are the like three tips, short, for those that are not waking up warriors but would love to be?
55:55 Anthony Pompliano? Go do some hard shit. There's no, there's no three, it's just one tip. Just go do hard shit.
56:00 Speaker 02 Yeah.
56:00 Anthony Pompliano? Right? And that's different for everybody, right? Some people, they need to do physically hard stuff, right? Go work out, go on a hike, you know, all kinds of that kind of stuff. There's other people who need to put themselves in mentally hard positions. Meaning that they're very comfortable and they don't ever step out of that comfort zone. And so therefore they get-
56:18 Speaker 02 Like to go to podcast.
56:19 Anthony Pompliano? Yeah, do a podcast. If you're scared of doing a podcast, you should go do a podcast, right? If you're scared of, you know, I don't know, fucking walking in Grand Central because you're claustrophobic and there's too many people. Go fucking sit in Grand Central for an hour, right? Like, like whatever the thing is that you fear. A lot of times I think the best thing to do is just do it.
56:40 Speaker 02 Yeah, totally agree.
56:41 Anthony Pompliano? The, the over exaggerated example is like the parent who says, hey, my kid doesn't know how to swim. Throw him in the pool. Like now I'm standing there, I'm going to make sure he doesn't drown, right? But like, that's one of the fastest ways to figure out, the kid to figure out, like, how do you paddle?
56:56 Speaker 02 Yeah, yeah.
56:56 Anthony Pompliano? How do you swim? Um, so I think like that stuff, uh, generally in life, um, is important. The other thing is go talk to people who've been through it, right? And so like, do hard shit and then talk to other people who've done hard shit.
57:09 Speaker 02 Yeah.
57:10 Anthony Pompliano? And if you start to surround yourself with like people with that warrior mindset, all of a sudden you're just like, yeah, this is what's expected.
57:16 Speaker 02 Mindset, you're empowered.
57:19 Anthony Pompliano? Yeah, it's, look, one of the greatest things that happened to me in my life is I grew up in a family of five boys, right?
57:24 Speaker 02 Yeah, yeah, I, I heard about that.
57:26 Anthony Pompliano? Cause you can't be soft. Like you just couldn't be. Literally if everyone wanted to do something and you didn't want to do it because you were scared or nervous or, you know, it was hard or whatever. The other four not only did it and you didn't, so you felt left out.
57:40 Speaker 02 Yeah.
57:40 Anthony Pompliano? But they made fun of you while they were doing it.
57:42 Speaker 02 Yeah.
57:43 Anthony Pompliano? So eventually you just realized like, all right, well, I might as well go do this. So look, you, you've been through all kinds of stuff in your life, right? Like you're, uh, you're a Russian influencer. You lived in Bulgaria, came to the US, didn't really know anybody. Like all of those things are data points in a story that like, people go through hard shit in life. And if they are successful in overcoming those obstacles, they're likely to keep doing it.
58:05 Speaker 02 Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I agree with you.
58:08 Anthony Pompliano? Look, every immigrant does, right? Because they've all, they've all lived it.
58:13 Speaker 02 Mm-hmm.
58:13 Anthony Pompliano? And it's like, Plina and I talk about it all the time. It's just like, there is something about people who, especially immigrants, who come to the United States when they don't know anybody.
58:25 Speaker 02 Yeah, and especially from a post-communism country. You're just born to be resilient. And if you're already here, you relocated yourself. That's a very, very good sign that you go through hardships. You got here, so you're a fighter. Yeah, and very often, yeah, very often I got those questions, especially female entrepreneurs, on how, how to move forward when you don't know anybody? How to move forward if you have a kid? So I totally agree with you, Pomp here, that, yeah, just do the hard thing and go out of the zone of comfort. Like, I, for example, had a fear of public speaking before when I just moved here.
59:07 Speaker 02 I very much feared my accent, the lack of English fluency. You see, now, again, I'm making the mistake. But just going there, out of the zone of comfort, and then you become an expert in that. And even you have fans and you influence people's life. And so you start enjoying something that you used to fear.
59:28 Anthony Pompliano? Yeah, it's practice.
59:30 Speaker 02 Yeah, exactly.
59:31 Anthony Pompliano? Right, like, how, I always am shocked by people who believe that you're gonna be good at something and you never practiced it.
59:38 Speaker 02 Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
59:39 Anthony Pompliano? Right, I literally have never met anybody who's just naturally, like, the best at something. They might be good at it, they might be predisposed to be good at something, right? They might have certain talents that make them good at something, but they're never the best. And so you gotta be the best.
59:53 Speaker 02 Yeah.
59:53 Anthony Pompliano? Go fucking practice.
59:54 Speaker 02 Exactly, yeah.
59:55 Anthony Pompliano? All right, I'm getting off my soapbox. Where can, where can people find Propy? Proppy.com?
59:59 Speaker 02 Proppy.com, yeah.
1:00:00 Anthony Pompliano? All right, what's the Twitter handle?
1:00:02 Speaker 02 @ProppyInc.
1:00:04 Anthony Pompliano? @ProppyInc, and what's your Twitter handle?
1:00:07 Speaker 02 @NataliaProppy.
1:00:10 Anthony Pompliano? All right, @NataliaProppy.
1:00:12 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:00:12 Anthony Pompliano? All right, thank you so much for doing this.
1:00:14 Speaker 02 Absolutely, thank you, I enjoyed it very much.
1:00:16 Anthony Pompliano? Long Propy, short, all the soft people in the world.
1:00:19 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:00:23 Anthony Pompliano? Hey everyone, Pop here. If you liked this episode of Off the Chain and want to help us take crypto to the top of the Apple, Spotify, and other podcast charts, please do us a favor and rate, review, and subscribe. To review, simply go to the Off the Chain homepage, scroll down until you see the five blank stars. Taking 15 seconds to fill those stars in and leave a quick review goes a long way in helping us take the entire crypto ecosystem to the top of the charts. I appreciate you listening and see you next time on Off the Chain.
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