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Phunky Phridays - Presented by GlobalStake - Ep. 11 - Captain Zwingli
Recorded: Dec. 19, 2025 Duration: 0:58:10Space Recording
Short Summary
In a recent episode of Funky Fridays, host Ryan Hizinski and guest Chris Jordan discussed the evolving landscape of Web3 and the growing trend towards non-alcoholic social spaces, including the rise of Kava bars. They explored the potential for partnerships in the crypto ecosystem and the significant growth opportunities in the non-alcoholic beverage market, projected to reach billions by 2030.
Full Transcription
I feel the phone flash.
I feel the phone flash.
I feel the phone flash.
I feel the phone flash.
I feel the phone flash.
I feel the phone flash.
I feel the phone flash.
I got it.
I got it.
I got it. I got it. I got it. I got it. And we are live.
Welcome back to Funky Fridays, the show about life and everything outside of markets and
Web3.
This is Funky Fridays brought to you by Global Stake.
We are your institutional bare metal infrastructure provider, SOC 2 type 2 certified, one of the best in the biz.
So if you're looking to stake your digital assets, we're always happy to have conversations.
My DMs are open or if you're a blockchain team building in the industry, we'd love to support your platform as well.
So give me a shout.
Today's guest, we have none other than everybody's favorite from Coffee with Captain, Captain Zwingli,
aka Chris Jordan.
Of course, I'm your host, Funky Ryan Hizinski.
They had a protocol partnerships at Global Stake.
So really looking forward to diving into today's conversation.
I got to start before getting into it too deeply.
My wife says we made the biggest mistake ever because Chris and I live about an hour from
each other.
And she's like, this is crazy.
You could have done this in the same room and had a great kind of conversation slash
live stream.
So she was kind of telling me last night that I screwed this up, but I'm still super excited.
We got to get together at some point, whether that's actually for coffee, a lunch, whatever.
But Chris, welcome to the show.
Why don't we, I always start off by asking guests, like, because we met in web three, what is your backstory? Like, how did you get involved
with web three? How did you get into the space before we kind of transition more into just
general conversations about life? Sure. Happy to share. And don't feel bad because I didn't
even think about that, which would have made a lot of sense. Didn't even think about it until
you just said that. And yeah, that was, that was like an easy one. We could have, uh, uh, and I've been
thinking for a while, like, not that I necessarily want a studio or going that far, but of just doing
a live show or somehow incorporating it into, uh, what we already do. And yet didn't even,
didn't even cross my mind until you said that, but yeah, happy, happy to be here. As you said,
my name, my name's Chris, I go by cap and at least the uh the web3 persona and um prior to crypto prior to web3 i was so i grew up in in retail in specifically
what the wireless industry uh primarily franchising first as a franchisee i was a verizon dealer had
had a couple dozen verizon stores uh primarily throughout the midwest i was in like five states
in the midwest and then opened a single location in Florida.
But that's a story for another day.
And I grew up in that industry, started selling phones in college, free smartphones.
Like the first Black Friday I had was we were selling the camera phone.
You know, it was an external caller ID on this flip phone to give you an idea to date myself.
I had a lot of success in that business by, we really prided ourselves on being
wireless professionals and we didn't have a sales rep position. It was,
you know, our, our uniform was at the time like shirt and ties and, and really taking a more
professional approach to the wireless business. And when we always encourage all of our,
all of our clients, if you have any needs, if you have any issues, even a simple billing question, come back and see us, let us go to bat for you.
We can't guarantee we can fix your billing issue, but at least we'll call Verizon on your behalf and do everything we can.
Long story short, it led to a lot of positive word of mouth, led to a lot of repeat business.
I was standing in a store one day talking to a regional manager, and I witnessed a customer comes in the door.
Five seconds later, they're out the door after
talking to the sales rep the wireless professional not could you not not even a minute later an
identical conversation occurred with a different customer and if you've ever been in a wireless
store again this is like 2012 five seconds were was not the norm most people were there for like
45 minutes to an hour and um i was like, dude, did you not brush your teeth? What
the heck's going on? He's like, no, we had broken phones. We couldn't help them. And so it was the
first time where our business model at the time was, hey, come see us for all your needs. We
wanted to build relationships. We wanted to build that lifetime value and them to think of us when
they had any need, knowing that when they needed their next phone or their next accessory, we would
also be top of mind. So we put a lot of energy and effort into customer service and just taking care of the clients.
And it hit me like a brick that day where it was like, there was just, it was the first time we
weren't able to help them and come to find out, digging a little deeper. We were referring them
up the street to some mom and pop phone repair company, probably had dirt floors at the time.
And they're like, half the customers coming back and their phones in worse shape than it was when we sent them there. And it's like, well,
we need to fix this. So long story short, we hired a tech,
put them in one store just so we could say yes, just so we could add that,
you know, provide that value add. And after a couple of months,
we found that like half our,
we're doing like 50 to a hundred repairs a month with no advertising,
no marketing. It was simply at the time, again,
this is 2012, there was virtually no professional phone repair organizations. At the time,
the top four market leaders combined for less than 10% market share, despite there being over
5,000 phone repair companies at retail in the US. They were mostly mom and pops, mostly
independent onesie twosies. And I just like, well, this is going to change. There's likely going to be a lot of consolidation.
There's going to be some roll-ups. And then also having that experience in our Verizon stores,
I saw often there'd be like someone come in for an insurance claim on their phone. They had
insurance, they were paying monthly on their insurance, and then they had a broken phone.
And their options at the time were to pay a big deductible, wait for a refurbished phone to be shipped to them.
And it was their archaic.
No one wanted that experience.
They wanted their phone fixed the same day, preferably not to be in the age of smartphones.
They didn't want to be without their phone for an hour, let alone two, three days.
And so we started expanding the repair offering in our stores, started talking to some of the insurance companies, pitched them on the model.
Like, listen, you need to be offering same day localized repair.
Your customers don't want to wait for refurbishment.
They want their phone fixed.
Not only would you scale it in more of our stores,
several of my peers, other franchisees, other dealers started reaching,
Hey, we saw you're doing repair. We need to do the same thing.
It's like an epidemic, these broken phones.
And our customers don't want to go, you know,
schedule an appointment at Apple store and get their phone fixed three weeks
later. They don't want to go to the mom and pop.
So we spun off the brand as a separate entity. Fast forward a year or two,
I would sell the Verizon stores and go all in on phone repair business.
And a publicly traded company was our first,
our first seed investor with that concept.
Basically there was two major insurance companies in the US that were underwriting the mobile insurance plans for the major wireless carriers.
And I pitched them both.
One said, no, we don't need to do that.
The other said, yeah, we love it.
We're in.
Both would ultimately end up following the same model.
And we got to about 20 locations under the brand that I founded and just realized quickly that we'd even done, I think it was 2016, we did the first insurance claim, insurance repair at retail.
It's actually in Southeast Florida.
I'm sorry.
Yeah, Southeast Florida.
If you're familiar with BrandSmart, we had a store inside of a store concept.
What we were doing was for T-Mobile at the time.
T-Mobile, Samsung specifically.
Any T-Mobile customer with a Samsung phone broke their phone.
We gave them an option where they could get their phone fixed
as opposed to pay the higher deductible
and wait for a refurbished phone to be shipped to them.
And we just quickly realized that even with an unlimited war chest,
we weren't going to get to nationwide coverage fast enough.
And while I was early in 2012, late to the brick and mortar,
there was a couple competitors around 100 locations at the time. And so I merged with the largest one, our largest competitor, divested my stores, took a were a little over 500 locations in the u.s and canada and eventually they would acquire us and i i stayed on there for
about three years to help with the transition and finish earn out and whatnot and um i i share all
that it was during that time where i've been an entrepreneur my whole life and was a passion
project built the brand and i don't say I was done. Like we, they still,
so to this day they have work to do,
but basically the goal I set out was to build a trusted,
recognizable national phone repair brand that could facilitate repairs at
retail on behalf of the insurance companies, the carriers, the OEMs.
And at the time when we did that, people thought it was crazy.
They're like,
no way is Apple ever going to give you their parts or allow you to fix their customers phones
and actually endorse it no way are the insurance companies ever going to work with you and um
it did it worked like today there's the company that we i axited uh and one other there's two of
us basically that scaled nationally both got acquired by the different insurance companies and, you know, strategic acquisition, right? That was their, a way to provide better customer service, better experience. It also brought their costs down significantly. And, um, I kind of like check those boxes and I'm just not a corporate, I'm not one to enjoy eight, one hour long zoom meetings every day.
long Zoom meetings every day. It was also like we sold during the pandemic as when the acquisition
completed and we stayed around for like, we stayed in the family office and kept managing it for a
couple of years in our management agreement. But ultimately after became an actual employee of the
publicly traded company, started realizing this is not like, I'll do it. I want to help our
franchisees, but I just am not one to want to work in that bureaucratic environment.
It's just not me.
So anyways, during that time, I was January 21.
I guess during that, even scaling both those businesses, my evenings, weekend, my hobby,
instead of trading crypto or NFTs, was DFS.
I was a daily fantasy sports player in the evenings, weekends, and not a pro by any means, but had done well, wasn't profitable every year, but had multiple.
I never hit a six or seven figure score, but I had probably a dozen or so five figure scores in DFS and many, many profitable years.
It was a great side hustle. It was fun. It was something I enjoyed. It was entertainment and I was making a little bit of money doing it.
It was something I enjoyed.
It was entertainment.
And I was making a little bit of money doing it.
And there was a guy by the name of Jonathan Bales, who was a, he'd wrote a book on DFS
and was a commentator on the space.
Adam Levitan was another one who didn't necessarily get into crypto.
It's kind of like anti-crypto now, but they had all, like four or five of these guys.
Peter Jennings is another one who still to this day rocks like a hoodie crypto punk.
They started talking about NBA Top Shot
and Bales published a blog article
on why I bought this video of John Moran for $35,000.
And at first I thought it was crazy.
It didn't make any sense to me.
And then I started thinking about it.
And then I started hearing more people talk about it.
Gary Vee started talking about it.
And I brought the pandemic conversation in because it was also during that time.
I got on my old baseball cards from my parents and started going through and I started doing some pack rips.
And just that downtime, I got back into collecting digital collectibles or physical collectibles.
And so it was just an obvious natural progression to when I found
Top Shot in January of 21. It was like, okay, this makes sense. It's just a better product
on chain for all these reasons. Because while I was buying some of these baseball cards,
football cards, basketball cards, I don't to this day know if I ever sold one of them.
Because just the process, oh man, I got to get an eBay account set up and I'm not a power seller,
so no one's going to see me. And then when I do sell it,
I got to go pick pack and ship this thing.
And it's just the friction involved in flipping,
you know, like a single baseball card
or basketball card or two.
Like I get people do it
and it's like, it's not impossible.
It certainly works today,
but for a casual,
someone who like myself,
who just wanted to do it occasionally,
it wasn't like going to be a real side hustle or a business.
It was a lot of friction.
And when I found Topshop, I was like, well, this is easy to buy and sell.
And it makes sense that our world's heading more digital.
So it clicked pretty quickly and then started going down that rabbit hole of all things
blockchain.
Like at the time, I had a little bit of ETH, a little bit of Bitcoin,
a little bit of Litecoin were the three cryptos I held in my Coinbase account.
I think my first ETH buy was at, I want to say $25, either $25 or $125.
It was a good entry on ETH.
And I kid you not, I set up a weekly DCA, an auto buy of $25 a week.
And not a huge amount, but I did that.
And then I remember if I changed accounts
or something happened where I only did it for a few months
and then it stopped.
And I never went back and reset it up.
Had I done that, I would have had a much bigger bag of ETH
when I started.
But when I got into TopShot,
I mean, it was less than one ETH combined.
I might've had like half an ETH and, you know,
point something Bitcoin and some Litecoin in there.
And got started with Top Shot via the Google.
My Gmail account was my first crypto wallet.
And shortly after, some of the guys,
they started doing like Club Top Shot.
Mostly it was like the same commentators,
the same content creators that I followed in the DFS world,
the sports analysts and stuff. They were mostly talking Top Shot. Pete Overzette's someone who's another content
creator who's had a tremendous rise in that world over the last few years. But he was early. He was
getting started in his content career. And Top Shot, Club Top Shot, was really what kind of
put him into the sphere that some of those other creators were in. And it was on one
of those shows where
I can't remember who I was. It was maybe like Andy
80502
8052
Andy, he's a known crypto
personality, was the founder
of IKB, was a DFS
site on Blast actually
that's actually winding down which by the way if
anyone randomly happens to have a blast uh ikb account make sure you go check out their sun
setting at the end of the month and uh he sent out a note recently i found i had 70 bucks in there i
wasn't aware of so um go check that out if you ever had an account there anyways i digress uh
it was like andy and peter jen think Jack Settlement. And they started talking about Zed Run and it was like,
digital horses,
this kind of makes sense.
And the idea of breeding these things and the game,
like it piqued my interest.
So I set an alarm.
The Nexus drop for horses was like at 2 a.m.
Eastern time.
So I set an alarm because they're an Australia based company.
And I got up at two in the morning, went to go try to buy one of these things. I didn't even know if it was called a mint
at the time. I'm sure it was. I didn't realize that though. And it was on Polygon and I finally
got some funds over there. And long story short, I didn't get any. The thing came and whether it
was bought it or not, I just, I wasn't fascinated. Didn't know what I was doing. But even though I
didn't get that first one, I set an alarm to wake up the middle of the night to do something.
It just drove home the demand.
First, it was the Topshop packs and the queues there
and the queues kept growing.
And then I saw the Zed run like,
okay, something's really heating up here.
And I literally jumped in with both of these.
Still had the corporate day job at this point.
But if I wasn't on a Zoom meeting,
maybe sometimes if I was, but in my evenings, my weekends, my podcast went from
consuming sports content to consuming as much blockchain content as I could. I mean,
I listened to every bank list that came out for a while. I listened to non-fund gerbils. I listened
to, man, there's a few that aren't in existence anymore, but
I was consuming everything I could, learning as much
as I could.
It was
enjoying that. I wasn't
spending a lot of money, but I was
breeding horses. I was racing horses. I was flipping those
horses. The economy early
on, it really did work.
It was one that was exciting.
It was having fun, was making a little bit of money.
And then I saw a lot of, you know,
some of the friends I was hanging out with,
they were making these things apes.
And like, this seems like a, this seems cool.
There's some of my friends,
the community that I go into enjoy
spending time with the Discord and respect. They seem to know what they're
talking about. Josh Ong was
one, Baron Von Hustle. It's like, okay,
I minted one of these things. I'm going to
pay attention to this one and
I might mint a couple more over the next few weeks.
We'll see how the thing goes. And that was it.
That was May
or April 30th of 2021.
And I go to sleep
and I had an old golden retriever.
He was almost 17 years old at the time.
Woke me up at like four in the morning.
He had to go to the bathroom and which wasn't normal for him.
Usually he would like sleep in.
And anyways,
we go out,
go out to him outside.
I opened up my phone.
And the last thing I had opened was the boarding club discord and wasn't
thinking anything.
I just killing some time while I was waiting for my dog go to the bathroom.
And I'll never forget, it was unlike anything I'd ever seen before.
In any Discord, any Slack, it was literal pandemonium.
It was the only word I know how to describe it.
It was just...
And if you were ever in a hot NFT man or anything,
you've probably experienced something since then.
But that first night, it was very much so a core memory.
And I saw Justin Blauu who actually did have that was maybe
the only other nft other than zed and top shot at the time i met in one of his uh faces on nifty
gateway because he was an artist i like and doing cool things on chain i was just as i was
immersing myself in the space and i saw pranks again i'm like oh wait this thing is popping off
i better i better enter a couple more and i think i had maybe like 0.17 ETH left in my MetaMask wallet.
And so I minted two more and like, okay, I'm going to go back to bed for a little bit. When I wake
up, I'll move some funds around and I might miss some more of these things. That never happened.
It was, you know, that I, my first one I meant it was like 6.72. And then at four in the morning,
it was like 6.953, 6.954.
Went to bed thinking I'd still have some time.
And within minutes or hours, they were all minted out.
And kind of the rest is history.
But it was the excitement.
It was the, certainly there was, we were making money flipping Top Shot and Zed.
But it was really then, I think where it hit me was maybe May 16th. It was about
two weeks after Mint. I sent out a post that I've shared a couple of times since that I tagged
BornAPYotClub and I said, I feel like I just joined a unicorn startup with like 2,500 of my
closest friends who I've never met yet. And that to me, I still feel that way about crypto. I still feel that way
about the people here. I mean, people joke about, oh, it's about the friends we made along the way.
I live that. That's what attracted me to this space. That's what got me so excited about not
just FortiPiacht Club, but this space in general is, it was extremely diverse. It was global and such a wide range of backgrounds and people from
all different walks of life, all different regions of the globe. And yet we all were at this bleeding
edge of tech and finance and gaming. And it just, it seemed like for someone who grew up in the
wireless business and saw that go from its infancy stages where when I started selling phones, there was hundreds of carriers.
Verizon had just become Verizon Wireless by acquiring 19 regional carriers.
It was thousands of agents where today there's basically three carriers in the US.
It's Verizon, T-Mobile, and AT&T.
It's Verizon, T-Mobile, and AT&T.
And those dealers, those agents for the dealers, their distribution force, think of like a car dealership model, kind of, if you're not familiar with wireless business.
They went from thousands to each carrier has maybe three or four major players they work with.
And so I lived through tech evolution. I lived through, like when I started, one of my Verizon stores opened in 08 and Verizon
didn't get the iPhone for like four more years, I think. Going through like the smartphone
evolution, like 3% of the country had a smartphone when I was selling phones and we got off to a
great start, a lot of success because we set an internal goal of a 70% smartphone take rate.
And my peers thought I was crazy. My, you know,
some employees thought I was nuts, too aggressive, but we ended up hitting it. And part of it was
probably a little bit of reality distortion where like, I didn't think it wasn't possible. So we
just, we made it possible, but we talked about it all the time. We got excited about new technology
and I share all that.
It's just, I've been at the forefront of tech and or new emerging industries a couple of times.
Everything I saw early on in crypto and still to this day, it just reminded me so much, so many parallels of this new emerging industry, new emerging tech.
And yet a lot of excitement around it, a lot of unknown.
And yeah, I just, I jumped in both feet. It was really probably before the Board of Piat Club
in, but then certainly after that and seeing that community and the groundswell that came out of
that, it was just, you know, I don't know. I never calculated it, but I put my 10,000 hours in,
I don't know. I never calculated it, but I put my 10,000 hours in, whether it's 10,000 or shy of that.
I don't know exactly, but I don't even know if I've come up for error yet because the space changes so fast.
There's always something new, similar to wireless and phone repair.
Every year you had new phones and you may think all these phones are just incremental advancements now.
Maybe now I would give you that. At the time, early on, they weren't.
Even on the phone repair side, even though you may not notice much more than incremental
advancements, the technology, the hardware was very different.
The hardware, sometimes the repair process was completely different than the year before.
different than the year before. So it was always learning something new. It was always overcoming
So it was always learning something new.
It was always overcoming new challenges.
new challenges. And it was also something where the general public had a hard time understanding.
The general public wanted a wireless professional in their life, someone they could go ask questions
to. The reason that retail stores still exist in that space, even to this day, a lot of people
don't want to buy their phones online. They want to go talk to a real person. They want to have that
experiential retail environment to help someone kind of guide them
through it. And I feel, while very different, I feel this space is similar
to where could someone sit down and Google or YouTube
or talk with an AI LLM and it teach them about blockchain
technology and how to use this stuff and how to participate
in DeFi? Yeah, they could.
But I don't think most people will until they have some kind of hold their hand and show
them the way.
And so I fast forward to December of 21, after spending about a decade in my evenings and
weekends playing DFS, consuming a lot of DFS content,
a lot of sports content,
I kind of kicked myself.
I was like, man, I wish I would have done something.
I wish I would have taken my shot.
I wish I would have started a podcast
or started a stream in that arena
because it was one of the things I enjoyed in my day life,
whether it was the Verizon world
and leading sales trainings for my own teams
or when I got into repair,
it was leading franchisee trainings or curating,
hosting and emceeing our annual conference or hosting our national network
update calls with all our franchisees.
This is something I enjoy and whether it's communicating on a stream or a space or on a stage,
something I enjoyed in my professional career,
but I'd never pursued to build a personal brand.
I'd never pursued anything in my, not to say it's unprofessional,
but as a side hustle,
I never attempted to do anything outside of what my day job was.
Even though it was my business,
I never did anything above and beyond whatever that core business was.
And so I just decided, okay, I'm not doing this again.
I'm passionate about this industry. I do. It's not going anywhere.
There is a big opportunity for education and,
and commentary.
And so we started Coffee with Captain in December,rd to 21 so it's been a little over
four years now
but the beginning was just opportunity
to talk through what's going on in the space
self-serving quite frankly
because I usually go to bed early
at night I'm up at 5 in the morning and
those DJ hours during peak NFT
mania was often between like 11
you know 10pm to
4am and I was asleep so it'd be like
scanning hundreds of discords figuring out what i missed or what i should be looking to today
and we just the space started we coffee with captain we literally just i'd have coffee we'd
talk through it and a few people come up on stage hey this thing minted last night you know floor
is running or this thing mints today at 10 and for the first few weeks, we might have had, you know,
10, 15 dozen people in there.
And it was close, quickly, slowly grew to where maybe then we broke 100,
like not concurrent for the total for the course of the show.
But we just kept doing it every day. And then it was late December, early January.
Steve came on and just kept coming back every day.
And so we made him the co-host.
We said, hey, let's do this thing.
And we locked in and said, hey, we'll figure this out as we go,
but we're going to show up and we're going to have this space.
It started just an hour long, then it became an hour and a half.
And now it's been, for as long as I can remember,
8 to 10 a.m. Eastern time every weekday.
And I think today was 1,056.
Every weekday since December 3rd,
either myself or Steve has been there.
We haven't missed a single weekday, holidays included.
And that's, I guess, the journey.
I got excited about the space, immersed myself in it,
and quite literally have shown up, at least as weekdays go,
every single day since then, yes, to help educate others,
yes, to help comment on, yes, to help comment
on the space, drag commentary, but also to learn.
What I enjoy so much about it is almost every single morning, I pick up something, whether
it's something new or something about the technology, something about a new dApp, something
about finance, something that I didn't know prior.
And sometimes it is a special guest we're interviewing,
but more often than not, it's someone like yourself
that just jumps up and joins the conversation,
someone that's a subject matter expert on whatever we're talking about that day.
And I'm able to get more educated by hosting a show.
And while I hope we provide some value and people tune in
because they take away something of value from the show, I don't think many realize that
I do the same thing. I get value out of
whether it's a scheduled co-host or a scheduled guest or
someone just jumps up impromptu. And not only just the impromptu
guest, but often we'll be talking about a subject or topic and
someone in the audience will
know the team or the founder. Next thing you know, they're on the stage talking with us.
And it's just become a, I think what, yes, the tech, I've always been somewhat on the bleeding
edge of tech. And I've always been a tech nerd, building computers when I was in high school and
then getting into wireless early and then the phone repair side.
But I think the other thing that the common thread, and I'll, I'll wrap my rant here is
the, is the community element is, you know, I liken it to franchising, whereas both as
a franchisee and as a franchisor, the, the thing that I took the most value out of that
entire room, it wasn't the branding.
It wasn't like, yeah, the Verizon checkmark brought a lot of people in our door.
But it was as far as a franchisee, like why I became a franchisee, it was WirelessN was the company I was a franchisee with.
They were one of like four major Verizon national dealers.
It was, I could have started Chris Wireless, Cap Wireless.
And when I opened, I acquired three stores
and I immediately converted them to the franchise model.
I didn't necessarily fully know it at the time,
but as I reflect and why I continued there,
it was the community.
My favorite part of that,
the most value I took out of that organization,
out of that franchise model was the annual conference.
And the other times I could network with other like-minded
people in that world, it was people building in the same business as me. In that case, even the
same brand, oftentimes having the same challenges I would be going through. Therefore, they'd come
up with a solution sometimes fast to me. So this idea of collaboration and working with peers
and building in this communal type environment.
And then same thing in repair.
When I got into repair and started franchising on the franchisor side then,
again, what I enjoyed the most was talking with our franchisees,
was doing the franchisee sales training,
was hosting that annual conference every year.
And I think most of them would tell you,
I'm sure there's some people who didn't like me there.
They thought I didn't like my style or whatever.
I'm not perfect.
You can't make everyone happy. Similar to crypto and web three. But I think most of them would tell you, I'm sure there's some people who didn't like me there. They thought I didn't like my style or whatever. I'm not perfect. You can't make everyone happy.
Similar to crypto and Web3.
But I think most of them would say the most value they took out was the stuff we talked about that wasn't...
I wasn't a technician, so I never taught anyone how to turn the screws and fix the phone.
It was how to run their business, how to lead their teams.
And while we could do that over calls and whatnot,
it was really those annual conferences where everyone got together and you
really felt that community collaborative spirit.
And I felt that from this space from day one,
maybe I just got lucky in the groups I, you know,
I guess coalesced around and from Top Shot to Zed Run to Board of Yacht Club.
I just, I've been very fortunate to have met a lot of incredible people in the space.
I continue to do so almost, if not monthly or if not daily,
weekly or monthly, meet someone new in the space,
a new door's opened or maybe it's someone we've connected
and we've never traded DMs or ever had a conversation
until we go to a conference or something.
And then now it's another friend.
And that's, I think, what got me so excited about the space is not just the tech, but the collaborative and
the people here really are incredible. Like, I don't just say that to glaze you or blow smoke.
Like it's just, it's incredible from, I think that we all have a lot in common, far more than
most people would, would, would realize beyond the tech, beyond the blockchain technology, beyond the DeFi and the money making.
But everyone's willingness to share and help other people along, I actually don't think it gets enough credit.
I think crypto industry has a poor reputation.
And I think a lot of people's perception is wrong.
Like, unfortunately, what makes the headlines
is the grifters, the scammers, the extractors.
People aren't talking about, you know,
Steve and I, for instance,
we co-hosted a thousand shows together.
We went to the same college at the same time
and never met each other until Bordepiak Club.
You know, when they talk about, you know,
Garga says it's the best place to make friends
on the internet like that's been my lived journey i've made a lot of it's not just the
board of york club it's been this crypto community and people here are really i do i think you'd be
really hard-pressed to find such a diverse group of talented people that so many people have
different skill sets and strengths and backgrounds that as someone
who enjoys learning and getting better it's it's been like i feel like i live in like
like an online and digital silicon valley if you will i never i've been in the startup world most
my life but i've never i was in the midwest startup world which is vastly different than
like silicon valley and um even even tampa in this area, you know, it's, it's just the startup world.
There was like,
I'd go to like a chamber of commerce conference or something.
And I was,
you know,
younger at the time,
most of the people there were twice my age.
And it wasn't just like,
I never really felt I was part of like the startup community as I have since
crypto and web three,
way more information you're hoping for.
Yeah.
Sorry for my,
that's, that was by far and away the longest intro and web three, way more information you're hoping for. Yeah. Sorry for my, that's,
that was by far and away the longest intro and backstory ever,
but it's all good because it gives you so many things that I want to ask
you about.
And speaking of community,
we have about 50 people watching.
We're halfway into the show already.
So thank you for tuning in.
If you haven't already done so,
give us a like a repost,
share the space is going to have another great half the conversation.
Again,
this is funky Fridays presented by globalake, your institutional enterprise grade bare metal
infrastructure provider in Web3. We'd love to talk to you about staking your digital assets with us
or running your blockchain protocol. We're actually trying to grow our presence here on X as well. So
if you haven't, it's in the audience. If you're listening to the space, give Global Stake a follow
just at Global Stake. And gosh, man, there were so many things that i was going to ask you
about that you already discussed which was great and especially you being a lifelong entrepreneur
and something that really captured like my attention you posted i don't know when it was
um a few days ago a week ago i i think are you starting to do a new business where you're opening some kind of like hangout place?
I don't want to call it a bar because like, it's not expressly a bar.
Like you're really focusing and leaning into sort of this non-alcoholic beverage thing, which we know for anybody who's paying attention
to business, this is a really massively growing segment. So are you doing something locally? Are
you, are you opening a new business? And, you know, just because of that entrepreneurial mindset and
you're trying to always like discover new things and be on the edge. Cause I, I'm not crazy,
right? Like you said something about this in the last week or so. Probably not opening my own or starting a new brand per se,
but I'm extremely bullish on the category,
both from a product standpoint and functional beverages
from functional mushrooms, aptogenics,
to cannabis,
to what we see a lot here in Pinellas County is the Kava bars.
And I wasn't even familiar with them until moving down here.
And there's like 50 plus Kava bars in Pinellas County.
If you're not familiar, it's a, it comes from the Fijian islands and it's,
it's like a, it's like a non-toxic, it's a plant-based social drink where you,
you do feel a little something.
It's not just like a non-alcoholic beer where it's just tastes kind of like beer with no
alcohol and calories.
It's not a social lubricant.
There's no, you don't feel anything from it.
Cava, and there's other botanicals and some of the functional functional stuff i mean not even
not even talking psychedelics or getting in that realm but the what i what i saw was and i've been
thought this category was going to explode for years i just um i'm not a prohibitionist i had
a lot of fun at bars and and uh i drank my fair share of booze, but just decided as I was aging 2017,
2018, um, stopped drinking and, um, I never went back and, um, but I would still go to these places
and it was always like, okay, you can have water or, and I don't, you know, I don't drink, I drink
black coffee and sparkling water. And, um, I started seeing more of these pop up. You start seeing like I was
traveling a lot when I was scaling the franchise and I'd go to some bougie place in Salt Lake City
and they had an incredible mocktail menu. And I'm like, hmm, something's going on here. I'm not the
only one who's either stopped drinking or cut back my alcohol intake. And now, as you said,
entire younger generation is alcohol sales are going like this throughout the country. Anyways,
the,
so the product itself,
I think is emerging market.
The,
what gets me more excited though,
is the,
the establishment,
the,
the bar,
the lounge,
the,
and they don't call them like non-alcoholic bars,
but that's essentially what they are.
It's,
it's a,
it's like a cafe meets bars meets nightclub.
They just don't serve booze.
In the morning, you go in one of these places and you'll see dozens of people sitting around on their laptops and working like you would see at a thriving coffee shop.
And then probably four or five, six at night, it kind of evolves into more of like what you'd see at like a bar and they're playing pool or darts or there's open mic nights.
And this is, like I said, there's over 50 of them in Pinellas County alone.
It's kind of the US epicenter of these Kava bars,
these social clubs.
And I just, going back to my earlier take on experiential retail,
I think it's not just experiential retail.
I think a lot of society isn't online,
not making friends with people
because of their affiliation for crypto.
A lot of people,
when you get our age, it's like, where do you make new friends?
At work?
At the bar?
There's not
people like Starbucks built,
I think, early built their brand on becoming the third
home for these people.
Go to meet people, to socialize. But if you go to Starbucks
and say no one's really socializing in there, there's people that might be having a business meeting or maybe I've go to meet people to socialize. But if you go to Starbucks, no one's really socializing in there.
There's people that might be having a business meeting or maybe I've got to
meet someone there for coffee or tea or whatever, but you don't see,
I can't remember the last time I went into a Starbucks and talked to a random
stranger. I just, it's just not the culture there.
I don't know what changed that, but this, this concept,
this idea for a third home someplace, it's not, it's not school.
You had a place you can go and hang out. You can meet people. You can be social. It's not, people aren't there
because they want to go drink, but yet as more and more people go either reducing or away from
alcohol, they still want to have that third home type environment. And you're seeing like saunas and contrast therapy places
like saunas and cold plunges
and building community around that.
Because people,
there's this massive desire for that.
And I just, I think as society
becomes more health conscious
and looking for alternatives,
I think based on what I've seen here,
because most of me going to,
they're busy from 7 a.m.
till 3 a.mam in the morning.
And I don't, as a lifelong retailer, I don't know any other industry that has that kind of traffic for that long of a day, for that many hours, right?
Like there's some, I mean, you might say, oh, like cannabis dispensaries or doors are spinning all the time.
Maybe, but they're not into the late night hours like that.
And it's different.
People aren't hanging out. They're coming in and they're buying. Some of them are
leaving. I have this environment where people are coming in and often hanging out for hours and
meeting other people. So yeah, yes, I am, but likely helping a couple of local establishments
might have a location or two. Because that's the industry, again, back to reminding me of
wireless repair, it's extremely fragmented. even though it's exploded here in Florida, there's no real market leader yet. I think the most locations,
it's called Cava Culture. And I think they've got maybe like 30 locations primarily in the
state of Florida, maybe in another state or two. And it's double-digit CAGR. It's already a billion
dollar industry. It's going to be many billions by 2030.
Not me saying this.
This is IBIS World and all the third-party business research reports,
industry reports.
And so I just look at it as, okay, just like wireless, just like repair,
there's going to be, if not national,
there's going to be locally regional leaders.
There's going to be recognizable brands in the space.
Today, they just don't exist.
And while there are some great establishments, most of them have never scaled retail before.
So long story short, again, I'm looking to partner up with some people who they've got the product
down, they've had some success, but they just need help scaling. And that's what I enjoy going from
zero to 60 or one know one store to 100
stores or even 100 to 500 and then once it gets kind of like in maintain mode and it's time for
me to hand it off to someone else but yeah i i have uh not inked anything yet but likely will help
in some way or another help one of these uh or more of these local brands hopefully scale uh
you know throughout the state if not the the. It's becoming evident that you are a startup junkie.
Yes.
You love taking things from zero to one because to me,
Aaron and I were on a walk this morning,
and it was one of these things where we were just talking about my work at GlobalStick,
and we're a startup, right?
And I don't know what to expect at times because of being in a startup environment,
because it's the first time for me, right?
Like I went from being a classroom educator for over 20 years and being in a big system,
not necessarily with a lot of resources here in Florida, but still like, and then in an
environment where I was literally the second or third person hired.
And it was like, when I started back in 2022, there were five of us or six of us,
including the co-founders.
And now the team's like 25 and, you know,
but it still feels small.
It's still intimate.
Everybody's like wearing multiple hats
and stuff like that.
And there is something energizing about that, right?
Like, because you feel like
you are really building something in a way that
it's, you're not just taking part
of something. So that's established. So I can kind of see that, like just hearing your stories
about whether it was starting with the franchises or doing the wireless repair or heck even,
and I can't imagine ever going to step away from Coffee Captain, but that's like a startup,
right? Like you went from just wanting to share your love and, and, and learn with other people
and the show has grown and you always have this massive audience tuning in every day.
And I wish I could take part in it more often.
It's just like my day is really getting rolling by that point, whereas like modern markets, like very convenient because like I don't have any meetings like 7 a.m.
But like 8 a.m. is kind of like the East Coast is waking up.
It's sort of like the working world and stuff like that.
So always happy to jump on stage and share when I can. But you're also very disciplined. And I think that there's
something to be said about needing a lot of discipline to be in a startup, right? Because
where so many things could be grabbing your attention all at the same time, you have to
really learn how to prioritize and was part of, because
you're a very disciplined guy when it comes to working out.
And that was one thing that I think you and I share, and we still got to work out at some
point together.
And was that part of your maturation in terms of like deciding why you were consuming less
alcohol?
Cause it was for me, like I went from, you know, being a casual, like I'd have a beer
or glass of wine every night. I'm a big whiskey guy, like post went from, you know, being a casual, like I'd have a beer or glass
of wine every night.
I'm a big whiskey guy, like post 40, I really got into whiskey.
I have this massive cabinet full of whiskey that will take me years to drink because I
basically, you know, in the last year and a half, two years, I thought like, okay, I
know the evidence is there, like how alcohol just wrecks your sleep, right?
Like it's just something where, or your recovery or you can't work out or whatever
it is. And so that was the big impetus for me to just say, like, I wouldn't say I'm not to the
point where you are, where I don't drink at all. Like I do on special occasions or sometimes when
I travel, I feel like the, you know, like it's just because I do a lot of BD and, you know, like
drinks are part of that, you know, so like I typically will have one but I try
not to have more than that especially knowing how it's going to impact my sleep and I'm already away
from home and traveling and stuff like that so was that part of the rationale for you quitting
alcohol and then just because you were getting older you noticing it and you're a workout guy
like me like you like your your gym guy um was that part of it? And just the discipline
that you kind of thought you would need to continue to progress and live a better life?
Yep, absolutely. I mean, you've almost nailed it. I wasn't a workout guy. I mean, I was like in
high school, um, then broke my leg my senior year and never got back to it. And as I was in my mid
thirties, I just, I was unhealthy.
Like I didn't like close on.
I probably didn't look that unhealthy to most people, but now if I do like side by side or before,
and I was like, holy shit, I was out of shape.
And I was sleeping like crap.
I was also traveling all the time.
I was always in a business meeting, always at a conference.
And if you've ever been to a trade show or a conference,
like if you're a drinker, you probably tied one off a time or two and it would be like going from one
business center to the next and not realizing the impact it like not even going out and getting
wasted just having alcohol in my system yeah five or six days a week even a couple and then and then
building a business as a startup entrepreneur like you got stressed like oh i'm gonna have a nightcap
and i'm gonna you know drink a gin and tonic and help me fall asleep. And it did help me fall asleep,
but not realizing I was getting shitty sleep. Like this is before this like pre,
actually it wasn't even probably like pre Apple watch or maybe Apple watch it got out, but like
the sleep data wasn't as great. And like, so even not realizing, like I didn't have a whoop or
anything like that at the time, but when i cut alcohol and decided at the same
time so okay i'm gonna i'm gonna i'm aging to the point where if i do get a hangover it wasn't like
oh i'm okay by like noon or one o'clock the next day it'd be like a 48 hour hangover and it's like
oh like i can't it was hurting my productivity it was hurting what i wanted to accomplish in my days
and so it started like a month like i'm gonna take a month off i'm gonna get after it i'm
gonna start working out i'm gonna and i just started started sleeping so much better i started
i saw like actually like i think i'm in pretty decent shape today i'll never see the results
that i got like that first 30 to 60 days when i made that move like when i went from
not i wasn't like some raging alcoholic i just just was a business drinker. I was a social drinker
and not realizing that, okay, I might've had a couple of drinks, but that it's always staying
into my system. It's impacting my sleep negatively. I'm not getting good REM sleep
going from that to 30, 60 days later. Like I went from out of shape, overweight to feeling
really good. I was sleeping incredible and just noticing real tangible results. Like,
okay, well, I'm going to do this, keep doing this for a while. And I also work hard. I play hard.
I have an addictive personality. And so the idea of me going out and just having a beer every six
months or two, it's just not in my wiring. I could go out and have a couple drinks and not get wasted.
But then the next time I was at a business center, I'd have a couple drinks.
So it was really an all or nothing thing for me.
And after I saw the results of what nothing did, I just leaned into it.
And yeah, I haven't went back uh and it became kind of like a this is also like we talked about
like just alcohol consumption is going down the younger generation doesn't drink nearly like my
generation did in college the first couple years it was like people would look at me like i had a
third eyeball like i'd be out we are at a dinner like i'm good i'm not i don't drink and like what's
wrong with you whereas today it's like it's like half the people at a not, I don't drink. And you're like, what's wrong with you?
Whereas today it's like,
it's like half the people at a meeting like that don't drink anymore. It's like, it's become much, much, much more normal and socially acceptable,
which sounds weird even to say,
like it's the only drug on the planet that you have to give you a reason why
you don't partake. Or, you know, people used to view it as like, well,
that they're, they're weird for not
wanting to it's like could you imagine telling someone like oh yeah i'm i don't smoke cigarettes
or do heroin and they're like what why why not it was like our society really has changed
significantly in the last seven eight years on that regard to where at the time and then i also
started realizing in those business meetings it became like a superpower because i would be that there'd be eight of us around the table mostly like alpha types you know
entrepreneurs business leaders strong negotiators charismatic well-spoken fast forward a couple
hours later i'm still on my a game most of them are on their B or C or D game at
best sometimes. And some people just look like a just straight up idiot. Like they got too drunk
and they look like an idiot. Even those that weren't drunk, like you could just tell they
weren't on their A game. So for me, it was like, okay, now I have an edge. I'm a, whether it was
DFS or crypto or sports betting, like I look, I'm an EV hunter. I try to get bets or investments or take risks where I feel I have an edge.
It doesn't always work out, but I believe if I'm getting it in whatever it is plus expected value
over my lifetime, I'll be a winner. And to me, interacting in those environments and being
oftentimes the only sober person, it was an edge. Like I got business deals done or just, I,
A, I never, never made a fool of myself. I never said anything I shouldn't say,
but more so is like, I could see where I just stayed the same and other, others started going
like this. A lot of them didn't even realize it, but it was very clear as like the only sober guy
in the room. So as then it became like, okay, this is, as I'm building a startup business, scaling a national franchise,
this is actually,
it's a,
it's like a unspoken cheat code.
And so that was part of it.
And then it became kind of like my,
not,
I don't want to say it became my personality
because it hasn't.
Like I said,
I still go to bars.
I still hang out.
I'm not a prohibitionist by any means.
I don't,
if you drink,
cool.
I don't,
I don't care.
I just choose not to.
And it's, I've had, I don't know.
I can't count the number of people who have shared with me just because I vocal, just
because I shared this, I vocalized my story and it caused them to reevaluate or some,
some cases stopped drinking altogether.
Other cases drastically reduced their consumption. And then like the, the feedback they've later gave me, like, I'm not trying to
like, Oh, look at me, but literally dozens of people have thanked me for helping them change
their life. That was never my intent. That's not why I stopped drinking, but it's why I continue
to talk about it. And it's nothing I like shy away from. And, and like I said, it's society's reaction to a non-drinker has changed a lot, at least in the
U S over the last five or six, seven years. And, but it's something even early on, I would,
someone asked, I would share and I wouldn't shy away from it. And some people don't even do this.
They don't talk about it. They're not public about it, but they've shared with me that the impact that had on their life,
that they got in shape,
they're sleeping better.
The relationships are better.
And again,
please don't take this the wrong way.
I'm not a,
I mean,
but everything out of moderation.
And,
and,
you know,
a lot of us here probably are somewhere on the,
everything's a spectrum,
but we're,
we're probably skewed a little bit towards the addictive personality side of the spectrum.
And we all can fall in ruts, even if you don't realize it.
Like it's very easy to fall in like the nightly nightcap
and not realize that that's a farce.
Like it doesn't help you sleep better.
And so for me, it was a combination of health
and relationships and the edge in business.
Speaking of relationships, one thing I wanted to ask you about, because, you know, we, we
used to have two big dogs.
We had an, and as mentioned, you mentioned a 17 year old golden at the time, I think
or retriever.
Um, and we had a golden, we had a box.
We do not have any dogs right now, but I one of my favorite things just because I interact
with you on the timeline I do see a lot of your stuff and I love when you're always posting
pictures of Duke and I showed that one to my wife yesterday because she loves dogs
and if you guys haven't seen it like first and foremost if you're not following Chris
follow Chris on x like he's a great, very wholesome account to pay attention to.
And of course, if you're watching the stream, his handle's right there, Chris Jordan.
And he had this great picture of Duke.
They're out on a walk and he's got this massive stick in his mouth, this big smile.
And how old is Duke now?
Because Duke is young, right?
He's still like, is he like a year?
I mean, he's still kind of like a puppy.
Because I remember when you've got Duke and.
Yeah, he'll be two in February.
I got him this past February.
He was one then.
And yeah, so he's still he's still very much a puppy, but he's a good boy.
Was he a rescue then?
If you got him when he was one.
OK, because, yeah, our boxer was a rescue.
My wife took in Britt was her name.
And the two of them were think is thieves from from when
Yeah, he's awesome. I lucked out like he's I know there's a lot of great dogs and I've had great dogs
But yeah, he's uh, I just dropped a few pictures of him in the chat if anyone hasn't seen him yet. He's uh
He's a character. He is very you talk about personality. He loves sticks
He's really really excited when he finds one and
He's very expressive with his ears and
his like he gets like he'll get forehead wrinkles when he wants to say it gets he's uh he's something
else yeah very handsome dog um is just is it something that since you were a kid like have
you always had you said you had dogs a lot like just go back yeah we did the country um southeast
ohio and we did have dogs as kids,
but they were outdoor dogs.
We took good care of them,
but they were just...
It was when I was...
I guess...
So got a first house and married
in like 26, 2007,
and got a golden retriever's first one,
and then a year later got Ace,
was the one I was referencing and they were just
awesome. So had a pack really, it was the two goldens.
And we added a, like a German shepherd mix a few years later.
So probably like a decade had a pack of two or three.
Moxie was my guy.
I had the, like, I, I,
if reincarnation is a thing, I'm pretty sure Moxie got reincarnated
as Cooper was a dog.
When I was shortly after my divorce, I rescued Cooper.
He was a big like Rottweiler mix.
Unfortunately, he was only with me about a year, but we traveled everywhere that year.
We probably drove 50,000 miles in my Jeep doing all these trainings and all across the
game.
It was less than an eight hour drive.
We were driving and he went everywhere with me.
He'd be, he'd go to the franchisee trainings and um people
loved him he was just awesome he was it seemingly to me he was moxie my my first golden reincarnated
and then duke is almost a spitting image of their personality three different breeds they all have
very similar personalities their their interaction with me are all very similar and yeah i think part
of it's i just i've been very fortunate to have incredible dogs that are literally, I know people say this, but well,
like family, like he's like a kid. I mean, he's like toddler age, but yeah, it really is probably
last 20 years. I would say that a dog or dogs have been a part of my family at a deep level
more so than just a pet. Do you think that they're a reflection of you because i'm convinced that when you meet great people the animals that they have in their lives
whether cats or dogs because i think this is true for ours as well is a reflection of sort of the
care that they're given by their owners right and so like do you think that that part of that
reincarnation is just because of who you are, Chris, as a person?
Yeah, you're probably, yeah, it makes sense, right?
Chucks out.
I've never had that conscious thought, but yeah, I'm sure, you know, they say we become, you know, an average of the five people we spend the most time with.
You know, makes sense that would hold true for animals as well, right? You know, if you're spending a lot of time with them, they see your personality, how you interact with other humans and other animals.
You know, if you're spending a lot of time with him, they see your personality, how you interact with other humans and other animals.
Like, he's, he just, he loves all the people, all the dogs, as do I'm a people person.
And yeah, I've never, I never connected that dot, but I'm sure there's, I'm sure there's something to it.
And you're in a great spot, too, because for people who don't know Florida geography, obviously, I'm on the other side of the bay.
I'm in Hillsborough.
Chris is over in Pinellas, which is by the water.
There's this, probably one of my favorite things about Pinell is over in pinellas which is by the water there's this probably one of
my favorite things about pinellas is the pinellas trail like you have it's a very dog friendly
spot to be in right because you can just go down the trail you see people who are riding bikes you
see people walking running many people with other dogs and stuff like that so i'm sure that's a big
part of it too just like most of those most of like I lived in Dunedin for about five years and then now St.
Pete and they're,
they're both like extremely dog friendly towns,
like little beach ones that are,
you know,
not everyone,
but most of the restaurants,
most of the bars,
not only can you take,
like they encourage you,
like they've got signs up,
like dogs welcome here.
Like it's,
it's,
they're,
they're like walkable cities and yeah, there's everywhere yeah i mean florida is great about that um gosh
we're already coming up in the end of our hour it's uh we have 110 people watching thank you to
everybody who's tuned into this conversation for for today chris you've been a fantastic guest we've
got to get together maybe we'll go check out one of those those kava places you're talking about i'd be curious to see one for myself just you know to i didn't realize that
they were so big over there so i'm really looking forward to doing that maybe after the holidays
we'll finally get together you know if not that then coffee for sure so for sure i didn't even
realize you left unedin too because i was like oh man there's so many good places to eat there
like like i was saying beat is um i'd slept on it the whole time I'd been done eating.
It is a thriving restaurant, bar scene,
and not just both the non-alcoholic side and the alcoholic side.
It is a popping. I love it. I'm a big fan.
Awesome. Well, thank you for taking the time.
For those of you who have tuned in, this has been Funky Friday is the show where we kind of step a little bit away from Web3 and talk
more about life. I'm your host, Funky Ryan Hizinski, Head of Protocol Partnerships at Global
Stake. We are an enterprise-grade, institutional-focused bare metal infrastructure
provider, SOC 2 Type 2 certified, working with all the big custodians and custody enablement
solutions. But we're here to also help retail. So if you have digital assets, you want to speak with us,
be happy to have that conversation.
Or if you're a blockchain team
building a protocol
and want to run on our bare metal info,
we'd love to have that conversation as well.
So thanks, everybody.
This is going to be the last Funky Fridays
until after the holidays.
So I hope everybody has
a very happy holiday season
and gets to enjoy time
with family and friends.
And we'll see you on the next edition
of Funky Fridays.
Take care, everybody.
Happy holidays. Thank you.
Insights
P
