We don't get angry, we don't get even. We don't talk about beef by the way that I mentioned
I just turned vegan. I need the pagans breathing so they can see my new top boy season. I need
the pagans alive so they can all see that it's still my time. I don't know why they act tough
online, I see them outside and they ain't say nada. Soon as you say on site we looking for
you like some vintage Prada, looking for you like some vodka pieces. Jealousy in the ends,
they hate when you become successful, but in the trenches we were all friends. How long
we trying to pretend? I know they love to see me do well, but only when it benefits them.
Is it about money or is it about girls? Even wait I'm threatening men. The sea just texted
diligent yeah cause the outfits making sense. I told them it cost to be the boss and to
be this fly is the same expense. Let me juice my triple platinum check the digits. Love these
brothers is tired and washed up but they won't admit it. How many times have I dumbed
it down to make a boy feel like he's on my level? And I ain't talking about kettles,
I ain't talking about pressures. Yeah, yeah, yeah, let's go with the big radio.
I see the year out till I can't see no competition. I see anyone threatening my position.
Told the only show fuckers I'm so driven should be in the backseat with both hands
free. Right hand making plays on the iPhone and my left hand gripping on a bb. It's me
praise the Lord for the life I'm living. Big smoke records alive.
I'm flicking the radio. Pretty much going up to the night and early. I know what to
do, man. Life replays, drops the media out the cap. We compliment everything close to
the day people. We'll get it gone.
All my brothers and my choppers and my charges. And we're still the same ain't nothing changes
except the car keys. Vroom, vroom. I told her to gas me up. I need a gasoline. I'm trying
to slide it in. Just like a cash machine. I made a millie on this phone with a crack
screen. So don't be around a bush. Please say what you mean.
GM, GM, wake up, wake up. Good morning. Good morning. Wake up. The beautiful day is a beautiful
Saturday. We got NFT Bart, the homie Steve himself. Thank you for pulling up Saturday.
Thank you for giving us your time on this lovely Saturday. And man, how we feeling today?
We're doing good. We're doing good. Thanks for having me on. Always appreciate that.
And yeah, it's stoked obviously yarn with exposed media profits. She's my girl. Appreciate
her so much. She's she's crushing it right now continuously crushing it. So actually had
a zoom call with her last week. So big fan of that and yeah, excited. And she mentioned
you all rolling on. So I had to do it. Excited to be here.
Definitely appreciate you. Go ahead. Go ahead, Marcus. Go ahead. Expose media, baby. You
already know. Expose me to shut off. We out here, man. We work. We work and we working.
You know, no, I truly appreciate you pulling up. It's definitely great to have you on
today. You know, definitely looking forward to getting into everything. I'm gonna pass
the mic back over to the homie, Ron. GM, GM, you know, the vibes gang. Welcome back to
the episode of wake and bake radio. This episode 94. I'm Rami Elmo at a Rami on Twitter.
We got the family up here as always. Smokey map, Pop, Marcus, the goat, my G's hope
everything's going well. We got an awesome show lined up for you all. We're gonna go
inside the mind. One of the authors behind the everything token. Then other than Steve
Kaczynski, also known as NFT bark was going on family. I hope I said the name right. Close.
You're close. Honestly, like didn't quite like Kaczynski, but didn't, but you know what,
like I've heard way worse than that. So you're doing, you're doing all right. Appreciate
it, bro. Is the name Polish by any chance too? Because that's the Polish pronunciation
that I saw. Yes, sir. It is Polish. It's a, it's interesting. Cause like when there was
actually not related cause it's actually a not an uncommon name in Poland, I guess there
is a prime minister and a president in Poland that were named a twin brothers that were
named Kaczynski, but like they pronounce it that way. So whenever people are trying
to look it up, it's like pretty common to hear it that way. Um, but I don't know if
we just Americanize it or whatever, but it's always been, um, you know, Kaczynski. So, uh,
that's how we roll with it. But no, I appreciate, I appreciate you, uh, you doing the backend
though. Cause you're like, I looked at the Polish pronunciation where everybody's calling
it that. So you did the homework. It's just the homework. Like it's like when you use
Google or chat GPT and it just doesn't give you the right answer. Yeah, absolutely. Um,
before I start asking questions, Steve, also, if I ask anything that pertains too closely
to the content of the book, definitely just let me know and we can move past it. I don't
want to spoil anything that's in there. I want to give everybody a chance to go out, grab
their own copy, either the audio book or the paperback. And, um, yeah, man. Yeah, absolutely.
No, I appreciate that. I appreciate that look and understanding on that. And, uh, I'll
do my best. I mean, I like to give as much as possible because like my goal is for anybody
who's listening to this, listening back to this to really, you know, kind of fully understand,
you know, what it is this book is about, what it is I'm about. So I'm pretty, again, I'm
pretty relaxed. I kind of willing to answer anything. I'm pretty open. So, um, you know,
whatever y'all, whatever y'all want to talk about, I'll dive in. Oh yeah. Um, so
I tried to gravitate the conversation more around your background, the NFTs in general.
I'm going to start the questions up in a second here. Also, this is an open platform. Marcus,
do you want to let the people know how to get in contact with us? You know it. You know it. So
this is waking break radio. We do this every Saturday, 1 PM Eastern standard time. We have
the open platform. So feel free to request stuff, come kick it with his vibe with it.
But if you're not comfortable doing that, you got two other options. You got the little purple
pill down there in the corner, go drop a comment, drop your questions, go drop what you're smoking.
But if you don't want to do that, you got one other option. And that's either hitting the waking
bake page, Rami's personal page, or my personal page in the DM's and what's your question to ask
your flowers. Give me your GM shot it. Cause you know, don't hit smoky up cause he don't
check his DM's. Thank you very much, bro. So Steve, Scott commoners,
how do you say his last name as well? Is it Coleman? You got it. Boom commoners. It's funny.
Cause like a couple of people, we were on with someone else who was asking us the pronunciation
that gets, you know, guest on mine actually said it exactly the way you said it. And they're like,
in Scott and they're asking him and he's like, yes, it's scoot commoners. And they actually
believed him for a second until he, uh, he got it, but you got it. Scott commoners.
Perfect. Yeah. His ad is a scometer is on X for those who are wondering is the coauthor of the
everything token. You work with him on this book as well as the first Harvard business review
article about NFTs. Um, it's titled how NFTs are, uh, how NFTs create value. How did you
guys meet and was it prior to your introduction to web three? Oh, good question. So this is the
crazy part. And actually, I don't mind giving this as like a spoiler. We don't mind telling
this story because it kind of ends the book. So we were actually, um, we met in a space,
a Twitter spaces, uh, uh, basically two and a half years ago or so, uh, called what's quacken
by the sub ducks of all things, uh, Frankie Nines and that people don't know, Frankie Nines,
Frankie Nines helped bring, uh, Gary V's V friends online, worked with him early dapper
and play created sub ducks based on sort of demand from the community. Somebody found
this sub duck and they love the drawing of it. Ended up getting in touch with Frankie,
got him to an NFT project. So Frankie had this space called what's quacken and I'm showing up
because my friend DJ was heavy in the community and I found them really, really engaging and
interesting. And, uh, I'm on stage, uh, I jumped on the stage and there's this guy, Scott
commoners on stage and everybody has that like a duck PFP or like an APFP and this guy's just
got his face and I hear him talking and look, I'm a nerdy dude and I hear him talking about how this
guy limp who's in the community, how his memes are part of a larger economy and why and he's
explaining the human behavior. And I'm like, yo, I vibe with this dude. Like this dude looking
at things in a different way. And my friend DJ is like, you need to connect with him.
And I was like, yeah, maybe then I get a DM from Scott being like, Hey, DJ's telling me I need to
connect with you. So we started talking and we started treating ideas back and forth about the
larger uses of NFTs like like, you know, ticketing and these things like at the time it was like
jpegs, but we were like looking at like the overall implications of it. And then I would
write articles about it and you know, later on he actually asked me like, Hey, you know,
do you want to write the first Harvard business review article about NFTs? And this is actually
the night before NFT NYC, uh, in 2021. So this is the first time I'm going to be meeting all my
friends and everybody at, you know, who, who I only know by their profile picture. And he starts
saying like, look, man, like, first of all, it's hilarious. He thought I might turn it down,
which I would never, but like he was nervous asking and I was like, look, man, like,
you know, like he was like, he was like, I understand you're going. So if you don't have
time. And I was like, I couldn't say yes, quick enough. Like that night I wrote like literally,
I went ahead and like wrote like the first three pages. Um, and then I was basically going out
until like three in the morning at NFT NYC coming back, not drinking too much or anything.
So I could come back and edit the picture, edit the, uh, the tax. Cause we had to do
it that week, you know, skipping certain parties, skipping certain things, you know,
grinding and hustling because I'm meeting people, I'm networking, but I'm getting back to right.
Um, and by the end of the week we had that article and it did really well. And
you know, the funny part is to this day, and this is kind of the perfect web three story.
Scott and I have never met in person. We wrote a 250 page book over the course of,
you know, two years basically, and have not met in person once. We've only met on
countless zoom meetings and spaces and things like that. So it's kind of a crazy,
very web three story. And I remember when our editor found that out, she found it out
and we were like 90% done with the book. She's like, wait a minute. Y'all have never met in
person. We're like, nah. So, um, yeah, it's kind of cool. And it's been a really
great experience to like basically become great friends. Like one of the best friends I have in
the world is this guy who I've never met in person, who I met in a what's quack and sub duct space. So
it's kind of wacky. Yeah. And, um, I definitely want to touch on a couple of different, uh,
topics that you mentioned there as well as the space that you co-host with captain. But
you, you mentioned something that captain captain actually commented on recently, which was
the amount of BPAs that paper receipts cause. Do you also see a paperless future somewhere
in the horizon? Is that something that you're excited for? Yeah, I mean, I think it's, I think
it's certainly possible. I mean, I think we're going to be able to reduce our overall physical
footprint across the board where it makes sense, right? Physical products are always going to be a
thing that certain people want to have. And in fact, the authenticity of, of physical products
can be enhanced by sort of digital products, right? But like, I think things like, okay,
like let's give it, let's give a very, I always like to step out of our own bubble because I
think we are so fortunate to live in a country or countries that many of us live in that are
developed countries, right? Developed world countries, ones that are, you know, we,
we make fun of our monetary system, but it's a relatively stable system.
There are countries where that's not the case. Now, imagine a digital world. I mean,
you talk about receipts, but I'll take it a step further. You know, imagine a world where
somebody is in a country and they're just kind of, you know, that it's just where they were born,
right? And I never think the piece of dirt you're born on should determine your, your,
your ability to succeed in life, right? I always want it to be more than that.
And when I back up and I look at it, imagine a world where somebody is in a country of unrest,
where things aren't going well, right? And they need to flee and they're a teacher. Well,
a teaching degree as an example, you talk about like receipts, let's back it up a line and say
like degrees and things, right? You frame your diploma in like a physical frame. Like imagine
if that is on chain, connects to a LinkedIn seamlessly on the rails of crypto and you have
proof of that. And imagine if your money is digital in the same way, the way cryptocurrency is. Well,
guess what? Like if you leave that country, you know, when you, when you left the country,
you leave a country now, it's like you, you stuff, whatever money you can into your clothes,
you pick up whatever physical belongings you're willing to carry that you're mean something to
you. And you go elsewhere. If you in this world, you talk about like reducing the paper footprint
in this world. Imagine if that teaching degree was on the blockchain, provable from a credential
in place. Like you take that with you. So you don't start over when you get to the next place
or say, trust me, or you're behind. You take your personal credentials with you so you can
prove yourself and who you are much, much easier, you know, on a verified source through a government,
you know, verified source. You take your money with you. So you're not kind of starting back
and figuring out where that's going to come from. And so while I do think like, you know,
receipts as a whole is one that makes sense, I always like to even broaden it out and say,
think of the world at large and the way that this technology can improve as we start to
move this tech forward and be able to get it in the hands of the right people.
Yeah. That's an example that we commonly use here on wake and bake is the,
the paperless degree. And do you feel that web three is accelerating that process just by
the technology that people are creating in the space? Or is it also familiarizing the
mat, the general, you know, mass public with the technology in a conceptual format?
I think it's both. I think that's a great question. It's a really intelligent question. Great question.
I actually think it's really both. So I think web three is moving that along in the sense of we
have the technology to just be a better software. Like one of the things Scott and I talk about
a lot is like, you know, like both in and out of the book is like, the companies are just going to
realize very quickly, this is a strictly better software solution for a variety of applications.
Right. So when you talk about it that way, you know, my favorite example, and I've looked at
what we actually referenced this one in the book, and I love bringing this one up is,
you know, there's a famous interview where Bill Gates goes on David Letterman and he flat out
says, you know, he's like, hey, like, you know, like David Letterman says, um, there was a baseball game
on the Internet because they're talking about the early Internet. This is the mid 90s or late 90s.
And he's like, um, yeah, okay, there's a baseball game on the Internet. Like, have we heard of a
radio? And he's like, and Bill Gates is like, yeah, but it's kind of cool. You can listen to
any time you want. He's like, have we heard of a tape recorder? Like, obviously it's a comedy show
and he's, you know, joking, but like, he's really the reason why the joke lands is there's always
some underlying truth or funny because it's true in comedy, right? Or, or you're being ridiculous.
And in this case, you know, someone listens to that and there are really people who thought,
oh, well, this is, you know, a tape recorder and the radio are already existing. So what do
we need the Internet for? Now it's a very myopic way of looking at it, but that's how people approach
technology. And I think very similar, we have to get over that mindset to the second part of your
question. But then at the same time, in the first part of your question, you know, the more that
people start to understand this technology and how it works, the more people who realize this is
just strictly a better software solution from everything from ticketing to loyalty rewards,
the quicker that we get there because people are going to realize the opportunity to build those
picks and shovels and make it come forward. So I do think it moves things like that forward.
I think it moves things like degrees forward. I think it moves a variety of, you know, industries
forward. And I think the de-stigmatization comes along with it as people realize, like,
we're going to have people who are like, NFTs are a scam. And then we're going to say to them,
like, well, do you use Starbucks Odyssey? They're like, yeah, we're like, you use NFTs.
Do you use Nike dot swoosh? They're like, well, of course. Well, then you use NFTs. It's like
that thing where, you know, we don't say I have an MP3. You say I listen to Spotify, right? It's
just MP3 is what towers it. Like we don't say, let me go to the, you know, let me go to the
baseball game and grab my QR code. You say, let me grab my ticket. The QR code is the thing that is
powering it. And I think once NFTs start becoming the thing they are, no one's going to be like,
oh, you're issuing NFTs. It's going to be like, oh, no, you just gave me a ticket. And it works
better. And you can do more brand building and things on top of it. So I think it's kind of
both on your question, actually. Yeah, absolutely.
And just to piggyback, I was just going to real quick piggyback off that we say that
kind of like once the, the, once you make it to where it affects everybody's daily life,
and it makes things seamless and more easy and effective, that's when you, and you can
kind of blur that line when, like you said, they don't realize that they're using the
blockchain or NFT technology. That's when you get those, the mass adoption. That's,
that's what makes that transition a lot more easy and more seamless.
A hundred percent. That's, that's like so true. And it's like, you know, it's like,
again, like it's so many people and going back to the internet example,
people look at technology the way it is now. Like if I told someone before a smartphone existed,
or even after in the early 2000s, mid 2000s, they'd be like, okay, well, I have a house phone.
It's more optimal. I don't get service everywhere. It's expensive. All these different things,
right? You know, and, and, and so that becomes like something people would say then. But like,
if you look at it now, who could have pictured that I would be talking to, you know, 35 people
I've never met before in my life using my cell phone, like who I otherwise wouldn't have
met without this world and what I consider to be a metaverse, right? I think a metaverse is any
digital space that you talk to, particularly this one, we're behind PFPs talking in a metaverse,
right? It's like, to me, like people look at technology the way it is and not the where
it's going. And it's hard for people to realize it. Like, you know, the video that always
resurfaces about credit cards and being like, Oh my God, I would never use credit card.
Cash is king. But now who uses cash, right? And so I think like,
you know, this is like one of those situations where I totally agree with you. And I think
Um, let me hop in here. Uh, sorry, I was answering a DM.
That's all good. Um, yeah, definitely agree.
Steve, you mentioned the de-stigmatization of the space. And I feel like your book,
the everything token is definitely doing that. I should remind everyone that the official on-shelf
date was January 23rd. So get a copy and support, um, the bro here, you know, he's doing, uh,
you know, God's worth trying to do exactly that de-stigmatize the space.
So, um, you mentioned how you got in contact with Scott. How did you personally get introduced
to web three in general? Were you investing in stocks and crypto at all prior?
Yeah. So I, you know, kind of, I'm going to take the long way around here. I can take a direct
route, but I'm going to go around the block a couple of times and kind of give you the
background. So, you know, for me, I've always been a tech nerd, like in middle school,
like, you know, sixth grade, seventh grade, I was actually creating websites in the mid nineties
and I thought they were so cool. Right. Um, but at the same time, like I thought of this
concept of like I could code something and somebody in like Paris, France could like type in that
address and see what I saw. Like I thought that was the coolest thing. And I remember teachers,
adults, other people being like, that's cool. That's a great hobby, but like we need to know
what you're going to do with your life. Cause this isn't like a sustainable thing that you can
do for the rest of your life, which obviously they were wrong, but it happened and I listened
and I kind of like didn't put as much of a focus there. Right. In the early nine, in the early
2000s, early to Facebook in 2004, I remember the first person who added me as a friend on Facebook
before I even told my wife who I was dating at the time that I even set up a Facebook account.
It was this guy Charles who I was friends with in middle school who had moved away and I'm like,
oh my God, what a great way to create social connection. Like this person I haven't talked
to in years found me on this website somehow. And I thought it was so cool. And of course,
like, you know, with that and Twitter in 2009, people were like, you know, Steve, nobody gives
a shit what you ate for breakfast. This isn't like, you know, this is a waste of time. You
know, social media who cares. You're just poking people on Facebook. And again, I listened and
didn't really parlay that in anything. Crypto in 2018, very much the same story. My poor,
I started getting crypto in 2017, 2018, and my poor team that I worked with, you know,
I see Tebow in the audience, him and I were texting way back when prior to Web 3 about like
buying Bitcoin and Ethereum and all that good stuff or Tebow's up on the speaker stage actually.
And we were, because there was no delayed reaction on the heart. So that's how you know.
But we were texting about crypto way back in the day and I had all these people telling me
crypto's a scam, crypto's a scam. And when the market crashed in 2018, I sold, right? Because I
was like, I guess they were right. And I was just listening to other people instead of like
what I loved and cared about. And of course, my poor team at the time, I was leading a department
at Progressive Insurance, and I would be whiteboarding why I thought Ethereum was actually much
more interesting than Bitcoin. While Bitcoin was great, Ethereum had these things called smart
contracts. I thought it was cool. Like God is my witness. You could ask like my team at the time
in 2018, I talked about smart contracts. Well, then 2021 rolls around late 2020, early 2021.
I started hearing people like, you know, I get into NBA Top Shot. I hear people talking about Top Shot.
And when I look up what an NFT is, of course, Top Shot's built on flow, but I started seeing
NFTs are like this, you know, sort of usage of smart contracts on the Ethereum blockchain.
And I was just like, holy shit, this is the thing that's built, you know, on the thing crypto
that's built on the thing, the internet that I've been obsessed with my whole life.
And so for me, I just was like, I want to learn everything I can about this space. And of course,
nine months later, I wrote that first Harvard Business Review article about NFTs.
Three months after that, I quit a very comfortable corporate job at Nestle, you know, leading public
relations for their food brands of Hot Pockets and Lean Cuisine and DiGiorno and Stovers and all that
good stuff and their innovation brands to just be full time in Web 3. And I haven't looked back
since. And it's like one of those moments where like finally said, you know what, I'm going to
do the thing that I think I should do with my life, not what other people are telling me I
should do with my life and chase it down. So I found NFTs in early 2021, but really,
I think if I didn't have that chip on my shoulder from being so early to tech my whole life,
I wonder if I would have gone as hard as I did in the paint on this one, because I really did
like like it so much, probably because I'm like, this is the thing I'm not going to sleep on
this time. And and so far so good. And how was that personal transition from a web to
15 plus years of communications and marketing to a Web 3 job? And how did that eventually turn into
journalism and writing? Was that something that you always felt you had a knack for?
Oh, man, it's it's it's wonderful and awful at the same time, and I wouldn't trade it.
But I do wonder sometimes, you know, prior to this week, which is like one of the greatest
weeks of my life. And I'm unbelievably humbled by this port we've seen, like my timeline,
having hundreds upon hundreds of tweets about the book that it's like a sold out mint,
but nobody has a financial interest in it. It's just them, you know, we're getting a bunch of
degenerate gamblers to read a book like it's crazy. But, you know, for me, it's like,
if I had told myself prior to this week how hard it was going to be,
I wonder if in my mentality at the time, if I still would have done it, because it's been
really fucking hard. Like, I'll just be honest, because a lot of people like try to like gloss
over and glorify what it is to be an entrepreneur and work in web three and all these other things.
You know, it's really easy for at least for me was easy. Like the job isn't necessarily
without challenges. But when I was in Fortune 500 positions, like leading departments, like my job
is to be a decision maker, delegate work, go to meetings and like, basically be the one to make
the decision and right or wrong, I learned from it and we move forward, right? As long as it's
not too wrong, I'm good. And that's not necessarily easy, but it's like you show up and working hard
in a corporate environment for a lot of people. For me and I worked a lot and I was considered
a high performer because I actually worked eight hours a day. Whereas like people work like five
hours a day and they're high performers at a Fortune 500 because you can pull it off, right?
Here, it's like I work 70 hours a week minimum, I think, for the past three years.
And I've had all out panic attacks because things have been going wrong. I've had times when I didn't
know where my next paycheck was coming through. I've had jobs that have fallen through. Like I
won't get into the specifics of it, but like a couple of years ago when my dad passed away,
I missed a major professional opportunity because of it because I had to spend two weeks help
taking care of my mom. And you know, like in the startup world, they don't wait for anybody,
right? And understandably, so I don't blame them for that. But those things happen. So I've had so
many ups and downs and it's been so wonderfully hard, but you have to climb the mountain if you
want to see the view and realizing kind of that that's so important. So it's been hard to be quite
honest with you. It's been really hard. And you know, I've always been a writer. So for me,
like the writing thing made sense just to get to the second part of your question. And so,
you know, when I was writing stuff and articles like, you know, Scott realized that, you know,
he liked my writing. He had already used a couple articles I'd written in his Harvard classes
because he like saw like things like he asked permission to use an article I wrote about
ticketing in one of his like Harvard Business School classes. I'm like, yeah, of course.
He's like, Oh, I think I need you to sign something. Like I'll sign whatever you want.
But like, yeah, you can definitely bring my work to Harvard. I got a 2.9 GPA at a state school.
So if you want to use mine, great. But like, it's like I got into writing and then like,
you know, it's funny with the book, too, because after we wrote that article,
it was like for three months afterwards, Scott and I were getting all these questions from big
brands about like, Oh, my God, we need more here. Do you want to consult you want to do this?
And like, as we're having these conversations, you know, Scott and they're like, I think there's
a book here. And that's probably the best way to scale these ideas is to because we can't
clone ourselves, at least not in current technology standards. So we're like, fuck it.
Like, let's, you know, let's write this book and see how it goes. And,
you know, since then, it's been, you know, one of the most wonderful two year
journeys that I've been on culminating in this past week.
Yeah. Yeah, go ahead, guys. If you want to comment on that, I know that's something that
we relate to deeply the first answer that he gave us.
Yeah, definitely. But I actually did have a different question. I actually want to talk
about since we brought up the writing, what is the writing process like with,
with creating a book? And like, how do you know when you're like, yeah,
this is the end. I've achieved what I've been trying to achieve.
I've said what I needed to say I am comfortable with this being the stopping point of the book.
Okay, this is a great question, because I am a dude who nerds out on the processes. So like,
I love that you asked this question, because, you know, this is the exact question I would
have asked to an author who was on my show, because I would have been like, I want to know,
like, what is this like, I've never written a book, and I had never done one before either.
So first of all, I'm gonna I'm gonna give you the whole behind the scenes on this one,
because I find it fascinating. Hopefully other people do too. So the first thing you do
is you have to normally in a book process, you have to like, write your book, your chapter,
something, and you have to bring it to a book agent. And then that book agent is going to pitch
an editor, and then that editor is going to say yes or no and offer you some sort of
offer to write the book. We had a little bit of a different process because you're paying one
portfolio, you know, one of the top business publishers in the world. Oh, did I lose
connection? I'm still talking. I was losing connection for a second there. Yeah. Thanks.
Sorry. I just got the I got notification. I'm like, God, I want to run. Um, so Scott is friends with
this person who was this editor. And we sent her an outline and said we think this might be a
book here. And she was like, cool. And took us to their person who I think his titles actually
publisher this guy who's kind of the head guy paying a portfolio. We published start with the
Y and all these other major books. And he was like, Oh, yeah, I think there's a book here because
there's nothing that exists like this in the market. And they're like, we need to make a
book that's good for the late adopters, but also gets out early enough to sort of be the
first resource. And so for us, the timing of it and writing it meant that like we were
always shooting for a pub date of early 2024. And the reason is, is that we signed this thing
in 2022. And we were basically like, I think late 2022 is when mid 2022 is when we started
writing it. We signed the deal in like mid, you know, probably spring 2022. And the goal was
we're going to rock this thing for a year and a half to make sure it comes out before anybody
else gets any major material out there because we want it to be a really good resource. So we
always had that timeline we were working against. Now the writing process is crazy because I'm used
to writing maybe a research paper, maybe an article, certainly never a book. The cool part
about this is just like everybody in this room, I would bet that all 57 people in this room
could write a book just like this because you're just dumping your brain onto a page.
Now we had to have some structure and some organization. We have a whole framework
in there called the NFT staircase, which we think 20 years from now will hopefully still hold up
as a principled sort of framework for starting web three things like, you know, ownership and
utility and identity and community, like those sorts of like elements that go into a brand,
right? So we wanted to make sure we included those. But, um, and the examples will obviously
certainly get dated as time goes on, but what the book to hold up. But it's funny because
when you write a book, we sort of like wrote it in intro. We wrote the staircase and then we
like wrote like a bunch of case studies and our editor was so good at being like, I always
describe it as it's like we handed our editor like those slide puzzles with like the little
mini squares where you got to make a picture where she then took it and made it a picture.
We handled the jubilant slide puzzle to her because she looked at it and said, okay,
this is great, but you have like a three page case study on doodles, for example,
but you could actually just turn this into two paragraphs and explain the evolution of why
doodles made the transition to go into the two like more IRL events and why that made
them a more dynamic, dynamic brand. And then we're going to move it up 37 pages and it's
going to fit better there. And then we have this example where you're using Starbucks.
Well, Starbucks is great, but like what if this is a end-to-end case study that goes here
and Nike, wait, this should go at the beginning here. And so the process is like we wrote it
and then our editor helped us like move things where we would move something sometimes without
changing a single piece of tax from like page like 209 to page 37. And it would be like,
oh, this fits better here. You know, the other thing is making sure that like,
you know, we had our own style interjected. So like our editor was like so good at saying
like making it better, but also making us helping us write in our style. So again,
the process goes like, you know, like, hey, she's like, what style do you guys think you want to
write? And we're like, we want to keep our voices, which is a little silly, a little nerdy,
a little whimsical. Like I think our first footnote was we had a, we had a little,
you know, asterisk next to a Star Wars reference we made. And then when you go to the footnote,
you're expecting to see a footnote that's like very serious. And the footnote just says Han shot
first. And so Scott and I started competing. We're like, then we have an example where you have a
Celtics reference and I'm from Cleveland. So then the footnote says something like,
and of course, Steve would never buy a Celtics ticket, go Cavs or something. And we started doing
this thing where anytime we handed the book back from one another, there would almost be like something
fun to look forward to where we'd be like talking about tickets. And we'd be like,
if an usher is trying to usher you to your seat at an usher concert and like things like that,
right? And so like, it became fun. We also wanted to be more like a Seth Godin book in the sense
that we wanted really shorter digestible areas where it's like subhead, you know, three,
four paragraphs subhead because it's heavy material and we want people who are not in web three to
understand it. Um, so that was another part of the writing process. Another part of the writing
process was making sure we met readers where they are. So we wanted to thread the needle and make
this book super valuable for non web three people and web three people alike. And that's the feedback
we've gotten so far, which has been awesome. But like, you know, on the top and we're
introducing people, we need to like acknowledge the elephant in the room right off the bat. There is
a board a picture on page one and page one basically acknowledges it is absolutely
horrendously ridiculous that a company that seemingly has a primary product of pictures of
monkeys, anthropomorphic monkeys on the internet, got $400 million of funding at a $4.5 billion
evaluation at an oversubscribed fundraising ground. Like what the hell man? And then we kind
of explain why that is and we bring them along. People think crypto is a scam. Page nine headline
like bold headline. But wait, aren't NFTs tied to cryptocurrency? And isn't cryptocurrency a big
scam? We need to take those things head on. And then we can get into more executional things
that anybody whether you're in web three or otherwise can understand. We need to explain
the Ethereum blockchain, because people understanding a blockchain need to know like, you know,
anytime I speak to a company, like someone raises their hand like who works in it or
programmatic ad buying or something and says, nothing's infallible, you can't say there's
infallible proof ownership. So we have to explain why that is. And so all of these things in the
process are things that our editor help us with things that our publisher help us with.
And then, you know, the time when it's time to put it down, like, we just had to make a call
because throughout it, we would have like, like we example, we might we haven't we would have a
hypothetical example of a gated shoe drop. And then Nike and Adidas would do a gated shoe drop,
we'd be like, hell, yes. And so we'd include that example. But there were come times along the way
when there came a time at one point, where we had to go pens down, feels complete, let's finish,
and we know there's going to be new stuff that comes along. I mean, hell, like, we have doodles
talking about IRL in there and camp, we weren't able to get in that they had the most successful
unfortunately, we weren't able to. So it's an exhausting process. But it was like, honestly,
so fun, because it was just like a challenge putting together this giant puzzle. And when it
came time for pens down, it came down for pens down. And we know there's stuff we're going to
wish was in there. But at the end of the day, like we just got a you know, we have to get this
out to the world because, you know, it's this resource that can demystify this world for
regular people and, you know, kind of maybe provide a framework for them to use.
Definitely, because I definitely like, first off, that's extremely interesting, because
I didn't know, I guess you can say I didn't really understand the full job of the editor in the
process of the book being made and produced and written in like the organization and those key
points. So that that's, that's vital for anybody who's looking for a book, you need to find you a good
editor, right? If you're trying to write to a book, you need to find a good editor to that.
That's a phenomenal and creative task to undertake in reading the book and like, no,
no, and having to remember like, No, I think I seen this back here. This sounds better here. So
like, like you were saying, from 209 to 37. That's a big jump, right? Like, even if it's,
okay, so you remember what you read 10 pages ago, and see how it correlates with what I'm saying in
this part. Let's move this here. Like, that's a huge undertaking. So that's really dope. And,
you know, a team is what you need. Like, you really do need a strong team when you're trying
to, trying to make something good. And that was another thing that I was going to bring up was
the fact of how fast this space moves. And like, all right, like, I know more stuff's coming. It's
more stuff could come out next week, but we have to call it quits here. Like, this is what we need
to get out. And it does. You guys do a really great job of taking that the rumors right out of
the gate, right? Like the the misconceptions right out of the gate in the beginning of the book,
which sets up for a very nice journey throughout the book. I'm not completely done with the book,
but I'm about halfway through now. And I said it on a tweet earlier, like, this was some
information I wish I had when I first jumped in two years ago. Because like, it really breaks
things down the way you need it to in a very plain text that's easily digestible.
And but to have it now, it's great because one, I understand everything a lot more as I'm reading.
And I can help I can pass this along to some friends that I've been trying to like, hey,
and like where I wasn't able to make the connection for I can see that this book will
help make that connection for them when you start tying in because you hit it right out
right out of the gate with Nike and Adidas and, and Starbucks, right? So like, those are brands
that everyone recognizes, and it'd be a lot easier to make that connection for them. So
man, kudos to y'all. I know that was a huge undertaking.
Can I build on that for a second? Because I want to say like taking away from the book and even
taking a broader picture, because you mentioned a resource you wish you had when you came into the
space, I think, to me, what makes it so awesome coming into this space now is like, when we came
into the space in, you know, for a lot of us in 2021, 2022, even 2023. Like open C was a fucking
mess, man. I didn't know how to navigate that thing. I didn't know what to look I didn't have
a lot of resources. I was lucky to find friends who could tell me things. And like, forget the
book for a second. Think of the builders that have been working on the infrastructure token
proof didn't exist. Right. And now it does. We can make radio didn't exist. 94 episodes showing up
to work doing a show like someone waking up on Saturday morning saying I want to worry about web
three, they could roll up, they can pop in and they can like learn about it from people who have
shown up every day authentically to the space. And so like, the fact that there are now resources
and places like when people were coming in in 2021, like I didn't even start like copy the
captain didn't even start till December 2021. Right. And we haven't like I'm super proud,
like one of the things we're proud about is like, we show up to work, captain or I have been there
every single day since December 3 2021, Monday through Friday, holidays, birthdays doesn't
matter. One of us had captains going to be out next week. I'm hosting the show all week. I'll
get co hosts like we make it work. Y'all are showing up to work. It's like now. Now,
unlike then, I can tell like, anybody coming into the space, here are five places you should go
to learn, depending on how you want to learn the books, just another resource, but like,
so as we can make radio, so was coffee with captain, you know, so was web three exposed,
so was any of those are our actual resources that you can use for people. And so just building what
you said about like the book, I think it's even broader than that. It's like, you now have people
who are genuinely here because the bear mark comes along, let's say 70% of the space left or
something like that, right? Or 70% of people who are here only for financial reasons, but
well, that 30% that state is rock fucking solid. And then the next time comes around
and another 30% state that are rock solid. And that's how you grow the spaces. We learned a lot
about who is here and who was larping during that bear market. And I don't blame anyone for
leaving for any reason, right? Like everyone has their own reasons, financial, mental health.
I'm not judging, but you also know who stayed through and showed up every day. Like one of
the reasons I own, you know, bodegos and rug tokens and people are like, but you're not
part of rug radio and you're not part of NITI portal. Yeah, but those people showed up every
single day in the bear. You better believe I'm going to buy and support what they have because
they care about it. So anyway, like I just building on what your point from a broader perspective,
like y'all are part of that, right? Like just as valuable as this book is you showing up to work
for 94 episodes. That's insane. 94 you're hitting 106. That's crazy. Yeah. We're right around the
corner at two year marks in March doing the show. So like it's been, it's been a journey,
but like, like you said, man, it's been a learning experience. We've learned a lot
in this bear market, you know, it afforded us the opportunity because a lot of the noise
disappeared and it really was just those core people who are really here to help propel the
space forward, push the technology and who really wanted to build. And so to be in that,
that, uh, that category, it doesn't mean a lot, but cause we, we do strive to, to try to bring
the best, um, you know, the vibes, you know, not just what kept y'all going.
What kept y'all going? I'm so curious about this.
So we truly enjoyed doing this. Like we, we real love, um, you know, building this community out and
bringing people together and making connections happen, but educating and kind of changing the
narrative of what, um, your typical web free space was like, but also try to change the narrative of
how people view people in NFTs. Like, yeah, we smoke weed. Yes. But we're also educated and
yes, we have fun, but also we like to learn, you know, and we like to build and we like to connect and
you know, truthfully couldn't do it without these other two bros, man. Like they, like
wake and bake would be nothing without smoking around me. Like, you know, us, the relationship
that we've built, cause you know, we're rug brothers, you know, we came up in a rug and
but we, we love doing this. Like we, we enjoyed it, getting to meet new people and expand the
community and just grow the sesh. I mean, that's for me. Uh, the bros can, can chime in on it, man.
Absolutely, man. I got to say it's the same thing, Marcus. Like, you know,
it's the love, it's the support that you guys given me to keep coming here every Saturday
and continue to build and build these relationships. And it's the beauty in,
in web three, the love that I have for web three and NFTs, crypto, blockchain technology.
I just, I'm a, I'm a true believer in the tech and you know, I'm always learning. So I found spaces
to be a great place with information that I'm looking for or vibes. And it brings all of that
together. So like, you know, I wanted to add to the vibe. So I linked up with my bros and
you know, we started waking big radio. What's cool about hearing from y'all too,
is cause like, it doesn't take like, you can sniff, like anybody can sniff
bullshit versus authenticity, right? And there's obviously authenticity on the host stage right now.
And what makes it cool as I listened to that is like, one of the things I love about web three is
like, look, I'm, I'm a, I'm a professional. I like to do research, but I'm also a nerdy dude. And I
also like to make, you know, four 20 jokes, whatever, like it's part of who I am. Like,
I want to make those jokes, you know, and not just jokes, but like be part of that culture,
right? And talk about what that is. And I have different aspects of my, of my personal
life that when I come to web three, everyone accepts me for who I am and allows me to,
you know, when I show up to consulting calls with Starbucks, I'm wearing a hat and a hoodie
and nobody blinks an eye because I'm allowed to be myself, right? And for y'all, it's like,
one of the cool parts is like, you're just vibing with your friends and you're also learning and
trading ideas and sharing and having fun on a weekly basis, right? But at the same time,
you don't have to, I think in a lot of corporate environments, the way I grew up at least,
you almost have to hide parts of yourself, you have to wear a mask, you have to be different,
and it's exhausting, it's suffocating, right? And so to be able to not do that and show up here,
it's like, I see that at least I'm trying to like, you know, maybe I'm projecting, but I feel like I'm
translating to a point, what I hear from you all is that you're hanging out with your friends,
you're vibing, you are enjoying the journey, and you get to bring your full self to this place
every single week, and nobody's going to judge you. And in fact, you're more popular because
of it, you're more accepted because of it. And I just think that's a really cool,
that's a really cool concept. And I appreciate y'all sharing that with me,
because I think that that's beautiful. It means a lot. It really does, because you
definitely just hit the nail on the head, like 100%. Because I say it a lot, like,
even when I'm talking like, you know, because we like to create a safe space for everybody to
come up and talk, and even if they're going through a rough time, like you can come up,
come talk to us, like we're here, you know, we're big on the mental health. So it's, you know,
the mask that you wear in everyday life, you get to take that off in this space and just be your
vulnerable self. And that's what allows for these natural, these organic and these meaningful
relationships that we've been able to build over the course of however long you've been in the
space. And so like, that is truly one of the best things about this space. And you know,
we definitely want to have a, I know I'm saying space a lot, but we definitely want to have a space
that allows people to take to have that time and come and just be themselves and connect with
people on the next on that basis, because you never know what beautiful things could come from
it. So you definitely hit the nail on the head. Yeah, it allows people to select in or out. And
that's, by the way, I always tell people like, similarly, like, so like on my space, like,
sometimes I talk about my, my kids, right? Like when people show up and call me the captain,
I might talk about my kids. I might talk about something I'm struggling with. I might talk
about sports that I'm, you know, like, like when my teams lose and I'm, you know, in a shitty mood
or whatever, like those things come with me. And I think it's okay. Cause I've had people
tweet at me and be like, yeah, your space is pretty good. It's just, nobody gives a crap
about your family or whatever. And I'm like, look, like that's totally cool. Like you don't
have to select in and I don't, I have no, no, I have total empathy for that person. Right?
Because if I was listening to something, I'm like, I don't give a shit about this. Like
I wouldn't say something, but I might just self-select out. But what's beautiful is that
people like what you're saying, they can self-select in. And if they don't, it's like,
that's why you can change the channel. Like I'm not offended if somebody leaves our show at nine to
go listen to Nifty Portal because Nick and P.O. and Eazy, those guys crush. They've been supportive
to me during this process. I think they're funny. I think they're this rare combination of
funny, but also, also like smart. And I know they piss a lot of people off and, you know,
that from time to time and that thing happens, right? But if that's your vibe, you can rock
with it. If it rokes your vibe, you can rock with it. If we're your vibe, you can rock with it. Like
just change the radio station and that's okay. And what's great is that by being yourself,
people have the choice to self-select in. Like, like people don't want to hear the whole
cold, hard truth aren't going to listen to prophets. You know,
nobody's going to listen to Shanice if they're not like, if they're not,
if they don't want to hear the truth, right? And so it's like those sort of people, you can make a
choice about where you want to select in. And I think that that's what's cool about you being
authentic and you're rewarded for that authenticity with your vibe attracting your tribe. And I
just think that's so cool. And that means a lot. That means a lot, Steve, honestly,
because we do pride ourselves in just creating that organic vibe, just bringing ourselves here,
not trying to be anybody that we're not and just, you know, stick into the, you know,
the genuineness, just cause like, we can't, we can't lose that. Like that's just us.
That's who you're going to be always. And you know, who we are is who you, who you get
will never change that. And that's what I also love about this space that allows you to do
that. I mean, sure, there's a lot of people who wear masks and whatnot, but forget that,
man. Those people, that mask is going to come off eventually. And yeah, man, I'm grateful for
those words, man, for real. It really means a lot. Appreciate that. Yeah, no. And the masks we
wear, I think often say a lot more about us than what's underneath them. As crazy as that sounds,
right? Where it's like, you know, if you're choosing to wear a mask and present yourself
in a certain way, then it says something about what's behind that mask. And it could
just be a matter of insecurity, right? And I'm super empathetic to that. If like,
somebody is just insecure cause they think they have to do something, or if somebody thinks
this is how it's done, right? I remember, you know, when I worked at certain places,
I dressed a little nicer cause that's what you were supposed to do. It wasn't who I was
and it wasn't representative of myself, but I dressed a little nicer, right? Because of that.
And it's like, I'm empathetic because I get that, but I love when people realize like,
I'm going to take the mask off now and be who I am. And, and so I love that you said the
mask thing. So I know it took us on a way digression there, but I always love this
type of conversation where you can connect with people on a human level and be like, yo, like,
and, and I also want to make sure I'm giving you all flowers on the thing of, you know,
again, 94 episodes is no joke. And that's like, I don't think people who don't do consistent
spaces or content understand. There are days when I'm sure y'all don't want to show up.
There are days when you're like, Oh man, I had a little bit too much drink last night.
There are days when you're like, Oh my God, I'm going through it right now.
And all of those things come into play. But like, you know, it's funny, like I've gotten like
three hours of sleep and woke up and done coffee with captain while my whole family sleeping in
on a day off for them or something. And it's like, we stayed up late the night before. And I'm like,
you know what, like you show up to work. It's what you do. And so, you know, I appreciate that
out of y'all. And yeah, I love this. I love having these types of conversations, truly.
Yo, same here, Steve. I love these conversations as well, especially when we get to just
dive into one another and get to know each other, like just as a person in a personal level.
But dude, yo, you, you just brought me back to one of our earliest episodes where like
one night I was out with, you know, my lady, we were like at a casino and, you know,
you're at a casino, you ain't going to sleep early. But yeah, man, dedication, bro,
woke up early, still did the show with the bros on vacation in Puerto Rico, still did the show with
the bros. Like, you know, it's the love, man. It's the love. It's awesome. It's awesome.
Fresh off of work, still doing the show. Yeah, especially you Marcus Marcus, you know,
he works overnight. So, you know, he definitely doesn't get any rest.
I'll work Friday night and then get up and take a quick nap and then do the show on Saturday.
That's what's up. That's what's up. No, that's what's up. And that's what I think. Like people,
people always see the end final result and they don't know all the blood, sweat and tears that
goes into it. And like, you know, nobody knows when you're going through it. It's like, and
honestly, like I'll give it an example and I don't want to bring the room down, but it's like
last week, you know, I get a text like late, like not last week, but the week before late last week,
uh, you know, a friend of mine passed away. Like, uh, like my, my friend's, my friend's brother
who I've golf with a bunch and play, you know, gotten to know like one of the genuinely nice
person. Actually, one of the very first people back in September before we even announced the presale
stalked and found out my book and purchased it like before anybody else, right? Like he was like,
I got to buy this thing to support you. This guy, he passes away. His funeral was on my book launch day
and nobody's going to know that when I show up to coffee with captain in the morning or I'm on the
timeline and you're having these mixed feelings. Right. But like, and I'm not trying to bring the
room down. It's just more saying the idea that like, you know, and he lived a beautiful life.
His wife is fantastic and they've got a great support system and I'm there for them and all
that, but like people don't know it's like Monday I'm getting ready to release a book and I'm going
to a wake, but like I'm not talking about that necessarily. Sometimes I share that stuff.
Sometimes I don't like people don't know the emotions and the feelings you're going through
in some of the busiest, toughest times of your life. Like people don't know if you just had
a fight with your family. If you just had something go wrong, if like your kid got sick
or you're sick, like people don't know these things when you show up. So it's like the things
that are behind the scenes below the water and the iceberg, they just see the end result.
And a lot of people are like, Oh, must be nice. It's like y'all have an audience of 89 people
in here. I'm sure it's going to kick up to like well over a hundred, 200, like when you're finally
said and done by all listens and people are probably like, Oh, must be nice. It's like,
yeah, must be nice. When you show up for two straight years and do this thing, right? It's like
you put in the backs, the, you know, a lot of people do a space for like a week or two and they're
like, why don't I have a thousand people? It's like, cause that's not how any of this works.
Like, and it's also not about the numbers, but that's a whole nother conversation. But
you know, I think with y'all, it's like, it's really good to hear about like things like your
overnights. I never would have known that if you didn't share that point with me because
nothing you're doing right now would indicate that you're tired, that you were at work.
Everything you're doing right now would indicate that you're fresh as a damn daisy out here,
ready to rock. So, um, no, I appreciate that.
I mean, you know, a little bit of help from the herbals that helps, you know, that ready to rock,
you know, energy. I'm not going to lie to you, Steve, it definitely helps every time.
But, but man, what keeps you going? Like what gives you that drive? Because you do a daily
space, right? That's totally different from a weekend space. So, you know, a once a week
space that we do. And dude, like we were, you know, at the end of this, we're drained,
you know, so we can't even imagine what it's like for, you know, folks like yourself and
profits who do daily spaces and, you know, are just constantly on it, you know, no matter what,
it's there for you, for you to receive, you know, we could always count on you guys to show up.
So what drives you to always show up? You know, I think there's like a couple of things.
I think about this a lot because I'm not really good at answering this question because I don't,
it's one of those things where I just woke up one day. I'm like, what am I doing with my,
how do I explain like, like when I go to church with my mom for like Christmas and her friends
asked me what I do, how do I even explain this? Right. And like, I don't know, like, and then
when I inevitably happens to one of my mom's friends, like, Oh, you work with computers,
so does my son. Like, do you know him? I'm like, your son does it at progressive.
It's very different than what I do. But that's beside the point. Um, no, I think like,
it's honestly, it's, it's, this is going to sound very, very generic, but I promise it's true.
And I promise I'm being authentic here. It's honestly like, I try to map back to that gratitude
all the time. The first thing I try to do when I wake up in the morning is take a breath and say
to myself, like you woke up, there's air in your lungs. That's pretty cool, right? Because not
everybody's afforded that opportunity. And then the next thing I do is I get to jump on a space
with one of my best friends on the planet, Chris, captain, my, my friend, and just shoot the shit
for two hours in front of what ends up being a thousand plus people in and out every single
morning. So it's like, one, I have this gratitude that I get to do that. And then I get to work
with Starbucks, which is like one of my favorite companies on the planet on their NFT program. And
then I get to work on a book with one of my best friends to try and move the space that I care so
deeply about forward. So like part of it is definitely gratitude, but I'd be lying if I
didn't say I am a people pleaser. And part of it is I don't want to let people down.
Like right now I'm talking to y'all. I don't want to let you guys down. I don't want to
let your audience down. Like I want to make sure that I bring value here in some level of degree
or have a good conversation because then I've let you down and you're like, Oh man, Steve,
he kind of was like, what a waste of time, right? Like I don't want to let my audience down in the
morning when we do coffee with captain. I want, when I start seeing, and by the way,
it's not about the numbers either. It's like if one person is listening to us,
that shit goes from a phone call with captain to an actual show. And when that happens,
like I want to make sure that that one person says, wow, I got value this morning.
And then as it grows, I want two people to say, I got value this morning. And like when somebody
reads this book, I want them to say, I got value from this book. When somebody gives
Starbucks Odyssey and is in the discord and I do an interview in there, it's like,
I want people to say like, Oh man, they interviewed the creator of the pumpkin spice latte.
I got value in that discussion. Like I want that shit to like carry value. And so for me,
it's probably, it's like this weird combination and this push pull of like one gratitude.
I am so lucky that I live my life in sweat pants and sweatshirts talking about something
I love. I still can't explain how I get paid to do this, right? It's so weird, right?
Number one, number two, the opportunity to like have to help bring some level of value to people
because the other thing is like, I don't consider myself to be that particularly smart of a person,
but I talk to a lot of smart people. So when I run a show, like, let me bring on like,
when you was going through the lawsuit of IP and copyright, you had a bunch of people like
larping as lawyers on stage being like, Oh, this is what this means. This is what this means.
I'm like, well, I don't know. Like this person, my friend near who listens to the show, like,
this is actually the type of lawsuit practice. Why don't we bring her on to discuss or like,
Oh, we're talking about IP rights specifically. Why don't we bring David Horvath on who's worked
with, you know, did angry dolls and all these other shows. And so like, to me, like it's also
about being able to give the platform to genuine people who are really good at what they do
to educate my and anybody who listens to Coffee with the Captain can tell I'm just as geeked up
to get educated on it as anybody in the audiences. And the way I'm asking questions, like if like,
and again, people who have met me, like we'll say, like, it feels like you're in, you know,
in a fun way there. It feels like you're interviewing me in our conversation.
It's because I'm so intellectually curious about how things work. Like that I'd be having
the same conversations with the IP and the lawyers and everything if zero people are listening. So I
just get to do it in front of a few hundred people every morning, which is pretty cool.
Now that's, that's more than cool, bro. Like it's, and you are bringing value,
you have brought value to our space, dude. Like everything you say, I mean,
it's only been an hour and so much knowledge has been dropped. It's, it's, it's crazy.
It's crazy to think of, man. But dude, you know, I just got to say thank you again,
man. Cause I know it's Saturday and you know, these times, man, they're very valuable and
precious, especially with folks with family. So we always want to make sure that, you know,
that love is always, you know, out there in the open, bro. We fucking love you,
Steve. Thank you so much, bro. Yeah, absolutely, man. I mean, like you,
you hit me up at just the right time. Y'all hit me up at the perfect time because
my son is starting indoor soccer, but he has a bye week. And so it was like, y'all hit me up
this week. I was like, hell yes. Like let's like do this thing. Cause now I don't have to worry
about my son's soccer game. Um, and you know, because the book's out, I don't have,
you know, a bunch of meetings today or anything like that. Cause like the sneaky part about
being an entrepreneur is you actually get more work done on the weekends and the nights when the
emails aren't coming in and when people aren't coming through, then you do otherwise. So it's
like, you know, I've had standing meetings on Sundays for, for three years and they've,
they've been killing it. So it's like, y'all hit me up at the perfect time for this because
it's like, you're like this Saturday. I'm like, damn, I'm free all day.
Nah, that's beautiful, beautiful, man. And no, once we, we started looking into the book that
you guys were dropping and you know how it's definitely going to help us bring that,
you know, that light to people who are trying to get into NFTs like my boss,
I'm going to have to, you know, gift him this book because my boss is very interested,
but it's really hard for me to like explain everything that's going on in the space.
Cause there's just so much, I don't know where to start. So this book right here
is going to be perfect for that. And thank you, man. Do you think that you got all the
information that you wanted to put in this one book or, you know, I know it just dropped,
but are you going to have to, are you going to have to drop another one?
I, you, you, we were talking to NFC now yesterday about this and I was like,
I a thousand percent would write a book with Scott again. The big thing about a book is just
like y'all have a why and a purpose for this space that we talked about earlier.
You know, I would say, you know, Tim Ferriss is one of my favorites and he made this comment
about like, if you're going to write a book, make sure there's a reason to write that book
and make sure you're the person to write it. Cause it's hard. Just like y'all doing this
space and showing up and having a why. Like if you didn't have a strong why you wouldn't
be here. You wouldn't be doing it. Right. And so to me, the big thing is I want to make sure
that whatever book I write, if I do the next one with Scott, which I will, if I do another book,
I couldn't imagine doing without Scott. Like I never want to write a book by myself. It was like
we fought and argued zero times during this process over the course of two years,
had the biggest blast, you know, blew off steam together at times. And at times just like met
just to chat about like, like, so I would do this again with Scott for sure. Right. Um,
but it has to be a book that we absolutely think should be written, right? If there's a next
version to this as time moves forward with, and whether it's NFTs plus AI, whether it's a
more NFT strategy based book, that's really going to dive down into the nitty gritty once
we have more picks and shovels and things built. Right. Um, so I think it's like,
if a book feels like it has to be written and I am the right person to write it, then I will.
But honestly, like if I have this great book idea and I thought that, you know, someone else
is the right person to write it, I would actually tell them about it and try to get them to do it.
Because I think it's important to have the right, like I've talked about AI, my buddy Bunchu should
be writing a all out blown out book on AI. He's brilliant. He does it every day. And I tell him,
like, look, I think this book needs to be written. I'm not the person to write it. You are, you should
write. And so like, to me, it's like, if it meant it should be written. Um, I do want to say
one thing about your boss though, real quick, which I hope he has a similar experience, but
probably the coolest story. Look, this isn't about saying like, don't get me wrong. Sales
numbers are great. I want, I want, I don't want to just put my publisher, right? And it's really
cool. It's been a best seller on Amazon for like, you know, since Tuesday, it's been like leading
categories. In fact, at one point in computers and technology, it was number one, number three,
and number four, number one, for the hardcover, number three, for the audio book, number four,
for the Kindle. Number two was Chris Dixon rewrite own, who actually wrote a quote for the back of
our book, the co-founder of a 16 Z. Um, we got quotes from Chris Dixon, Gary Vaynerchuk,
a couple of Nobel prize winners, Adam Brotman, who brought Starbucks into, into web three,
Jeff Charney, see more progressive. It's really cool for the book jacket.
But one of the coolest things I had, and this is what it's about for me. And this is like,
when I was like, this individual thing is more important to me than any sales number.
I was on a podcast with my buddy Mars, who was asking me some really great questions.
And he just said offhandedly, he was like, Hey, you know, my dad, hopefully my dad will enjoy
this. Cause like, he's like, my dad is way into tech. You know, he like, he's, he's older,
but he'll like play chess on the oculus with me. He's like, but he just thinks NFTs are silly.
He doesn't get them. And I've been in this world for three years and I love it. And I said to him
on the spot, I had these advanced copies, right? These copies that I got before the book came out
sent to my house. I got like, with my contract, I got a certain number of them. And I was like,
look, what I would love to do is send your dad and you each a book and see what he thinks.
Okay. And so I write a note in it, you know, I write a note like, Hey, like, you know, you know,
you know, Mars is your son and he's a great dude. So obviously you're a great dude. Like,
hope you enjoy the book. Sign it, send it away. Right. I get a text from Mars or a message from
Mars. His dad sent him a text. I'm 12 pages into the book and I'm finally understanding what you've
been trying to tell me for three years. Two chapters later, he set up a wallet. Two chapters later,
he bought his first NFT. And it's like, I'm getting goosebumps telling the story like literally
right now, because this is what we want to do. Like, think about that. Anybody with a parent,
right? Imagine like we all love this world. Think of how immersed we are in this world.
Imagine being able to go to your parents, hand them a resource, them to read it. And now you
have enhanced the bond between your parent and a son. It's like, that is such an amazing moment
for me. And like, that is what this about is about. It's about you handing it to your boss
and your boss being like, I thought you were crazy, but now the Harvard professor and the entrepreneur
guy are telling me you're not and I get it. Right. And so like, those moments are what this book
is about to me is like being able to have like a father and a son bond over something that they
love. I mean, fuck man, that gives me like the goosebumps. Like you wouldn't believe because that's
why we wrote this. Like the individual numbers are great when we sell and the best seller. Like,
I love that. I'm not discounting that, but it's like we wrote this book and I keep telling people
people were like, how much commission do you get off sales? The way a book deal works is the
other behind the scenes. We get paid in four installments over four years to spread out their
P and L from like an advance. We don't make money on the book for a long, long time. Okay. Like on the
actual sales. Our goal is to get the ideas into people's hands because Scott and I care so deeply
like to the point where even our publisher and sometimes other people are like, you guys,
you need to show the book more and tell people to buy it and tell people to give it five star
reviews on Amazon and all this other stuff. Cause that's what helps. And I'm like,
but I just want to tell stories and get the ideas out there. So those are the stories like
the father's son. I hope your boss has an experience just like, uh, Mars's dad had.
Oh yeah. Oh dude, I hope so too. And I, you know, I don't doubt it, man. And you know what,
man, you hit two of my questions, like within that answer, dude, like one of them was going to be
like, did you guys have bump heads? You know, but you already answered that it was smooth sailing.
And also, you know, what do you, what do you expect the outcome of this book to be? And,
you know, you just answered that as well. You want, you want people to, you know, who aren't really
web three savvy, NFT savvy tech savvy to be able to understand easily what's going on in the
space and, you know, take that initiative, make that wallet, because soon everyone's going to have
to have a wallet, you know, crypto wallet, whether it's NFTs, you know, Bitcoin, you need it. It's,
it's inevitable, you know, like you said, Nike, Starbucks, you need all that stuff. It's,
it's, it's just, it's there. It's coming. Yeah. A hundred percent. And I would,
the other thing I'll say is like, to your point, like, I want people to understand this because
we've had this conversation where it's like, we're not, our goal is not even necessarily
just to back it up, not even necessarily convert people the way we converted Mark's dad.
Our goal is for people to take a minute to understand it. Right. I mean, because
at the same, like the audio book, I think is, is five and a half hours or something.
When you listen on one X speed, right? Which is not a tremendous amount of time for an audio book.
It's actually a relatively short read. The book seems significantly longer because we have a lot
of pages of acknowledgments because we had a lot of people to acknowledge, right? Like we want to
make sure, in fact, our dedication, even upfront says to our families, both centralized and decentralized.
Like it wasn't to our families. It wasn't, it was everybody, right? But the book's only five
and a half hours. And our goal is like, look, if you're, you don't want to be Netflix or you don't
want to be blockbuster when Netflix comes along, right? Like you don't. And so like, our thing is
to us, this is an incredibly powerful, general purpose technology. And if Starbucks and Nike and
Disney and all these large companies care, like you may want to care. And so our goal isn't
necessarily to say we want to convert you and immediately have you start an NFT program. Now,
look, in my dream of dreams, somebody will read this book in a class or somebody will read this book
who's a data scientist or an engineer and start to build those picks and shovels. Because again,
those websites I was coding in the mid nineties, like if, you know, if I had one slash off,
it turned into a page of tax, right? It didn't, it was completely blown out. And if my sister got
a fucking phone call, kicked me off because we ran the internet through like a fucking phone line,
but now it's like people have built Squarespace and we could all go build a web page tomorrow
together. If we sign up for Squarespace tonight, the internet is now coming through, you know,
we have wifi and cable and all these high speed, right? Options. And so to me, it's like my dream
dream is somebody picks this up and builds those picks and shovels because they understand the
opportunity at hand and the gold rush that they have to build a company that could be a
multi-billion dollar company or a multi, you know, million dollar exit for them to a company like an
apple, you know, like, like, like the way someone created Siri as an AI assistant, then apple bought
it and boom, version of created Siri rich. And so I would love to see somebody do that.
But the truth is my goal is I want people to look at it and consider and you may read it and say,
you know what? This isn't for me. You know what? Like I'm not, I'm not going to do this
with my company, but I'm glad I have the ideas. Our goal is just for people to consider
and get past the stigma of this being JPEGs on the internet that are overpriced and say,
okay, I get what this is and it is for me or it isn't for me or maybe it's not for me right now,
but I don't want companies to be fading this because, you know, ultimately, you know,
the reason we have the title is because our editor said we were on a call and our editors
like, well, what's the problem it's all for? We're going through titles, going through titles.
And we're like, well, it solves loyalty rewards programs. It solves for ticketing.
It solves for health care. It solves for identity. It solves for video games. We're like
kind of everything. It's like the first technology since the internet I can think of
that will fundamentally disrupt pretty much every multi-billion dollar industry. And they're like,
and Scott's just like, what about the everything token? And we're all like, oh, that kind of slaps.
And so, like, we got real excited about it and we all were like, all right,
we're going with that one. So I just want everybody to read it and understand the opportunity at hand
and decide and be thinking about it, not necessarily saying the purpose is to convert people over.
Dope, dope, dope, dope, dope, dope, dope. Yo, it's been the first hour. So let's do a quick
reset. This is Wake and Make Radio. We do this every Saturday once again meets the Standard Time.
We have an open platform, so feel free to request us. Come kick it with us. We're at the Bong if
you want. But if you're not comfortable doing that, you got two other options. You got some
little purple pill down in the corner. Go ahead and drop a comment, let people know you hear,
the Wake and Make Hey, myself or Rami, who's down there and the listeners, I'm sure,
hit his page up in the DMs and we'll get your questions asked, your flowers given,
and your DMs shouted. Don't hit Smokey because he don't check his DMs. You did.
Would it be in the first hour? I want to go ahead and get some DMs going real quick,
so we can get a shout out from all of our speakers up here on the panel. You know what I'm
saying? See how everybody's doing this morning on the Wake and Make side, you know what I'm saying?
I hope everybody's having a good one. I don't know who we're going to first, so I'm going to let...
Let's go with the homie Jonathan. He had his hand up real early. What's good, Jonathan?
Okay, exactly. I'm going home, family. How's everybody doing? I hope everybody had a great week.
This conversation is fucking fire. Steve, I don't know. You seem like somebody I want to sit
out and talk to for like about three hours because of what's going on in your head.
I did just see the thing about the book. I do need to get it. I'm glad that you answered my
question because I own a lot of digital books because I like to learn while I'm on the go
doing other stuff. It's just my brain just absorbs it better. But I really think I need to
have like a case of these books so I can just start like throwing them at people that I meet
because when you start talking about crypto and NFTs, they get that deer in the headlights.
They get that blank look. They'll say, yeah, I get it. But you can hear it in their voice.
They don't understand. And they think, yes, your JPEG or your PFP is just like a picture
until you start talking about all the things that it's connected to.
And then they get a little excited, but you don't have anything for a follow up
so that they can get more excited and dive in deep with themselves. You know what I mean?
So I think this book is going to be is very groundbreaking for people that are newly coming
in, as well as people who are bi-curious about what we actually do, because I'm like
everybody else in here. I fucking love this shit. I've been there for two years.
And yes, crypto is cool, but NFTs is what sucked me in. And it's what's constantly
keep sucking me in and talking about it to people because of the elevation of the technology
and the creativity that people are actually doing. And people don't understand, like,
there's so many moves being made in here that people are missing out on because they're
listening to mainstream media who don't know what the fuck they're talking about.
Jonathan, can I help you out here for a minute? Like, let me tell you two things.
Number one, first of all, love that. Appreciate you. Appreciate the kind words.
Number two, it's funny, you totally hit on something that I didn't say earlier,
which is part of the value if you're in Web3 to this book isn't just to hand it to someone,
but we have such an exhaustive group of examples that you can connect NFTs and Web3 to pretty
much anyone in your life, like music, health care, credentials. You know, the example we
talk about of like fleeing a country, education, you know, like loyalty, like art.
And I'll give you an example right now. First of all, I'm going to help you out right off the
bat because one of the things we have in the book is something from our buddy Adam Hollander,
who's a, you know, traditional finance person, sold the company to Microsoft, like real smart guy.
And I remember hearing him a couple of years ago and I called the Hollander explanation,
and we're going to make it the Hollander explanation. We're going to make it a thing
because Adam has this analogy that I fucking love where he goes,
take a picture of that painting, but that picture is not worth very much money. In fact,
it's worth nothing. You can go get a print in the gift shop of that painting,
but that print's not as much as the one on the wall. The reason the painting on the
wall in the museum is worth so much is because it is the original, the museum owns it,
and they can prove both of those things. And up until recently, it was nearly impossible
without great lengths to improve digital ownership. Now that expands to a variety
of industries. And then from there, the reason the book is valuable is because the next logical
thing is like, give me an example. So that's where you need to be hyper conscious of who
you're talking to. One of the examples I give is when I was flying down to Art Basel,
actually fucking one of the scariest moments of my life, our plane zips past the Miami airport,
and it's getting lower towards the sea as I'm getting terrified. And it turns out they were
just flying past because it was a busy runway. But the guy looked at the guy next to me and he's
like, we're getting kind of low. I'm like, we're getting kind of low. Um, but turned around,
got back to the airport safe and sound probably one of the scariest moments of my life. Um,
but either way, point is, he looked at me and I was telling on myself, I had a right click
save as hat. I had a board API club hoodie on. I'm like wearing my moonburst fanny pack. I'm telling
on myself. And the guy goes, so where are you going to end up? You know, going to Miami for
my, oh, Art Basel, like working in NFTs. And he goes, and you know, the balls, he's like,
Hey, aren't NFTs, it's like the monkey pictures are kind of a big scam. And I'm like,
nobody goes to like the person who like works in like, you know, Nestle and is like DiGiorno
pizza is a big scam, right? It just, but either way, whatever. He's like, but aren't NFTs like a big
scam? And I was like, well, not really. I, and I said, I work with Starbucks and Nike and he's
like, Oh, okay. Like, or work with Starbucks. And my buddy Saf has director of tokenomics at Nike.
And he was like, Oh, okay. Like when Starbucks and Nike, they're not scammy. So that's interesting.
And I was like, well, what do you do? And he's like, I'm an artist going to Art Basel. And I was
like, well, wouldn't you like to know who all your collectors are? He's like, well, I know
everyone who's bought them. I'm like, do you have a way to stay in touch with them? He's like,
not all of them or whatever. And I'm like, and, you know, do you know if they sold your pieces?
Like, I don't know. Maybe I'm like, and did you get a royalty if they sold those pieces? He's like,
well, no, I wouldn't. But like, I think they bought it to keep it. I'm like, well, wouldn't
you love to be able to alert them when you have a new piece out? And wouldn't you love to be
able to give them special access? And wouldn't you love to build a community around people who all love
your art and be able to run an art gallery at Art Basel that allows your true collectors to get in
and have some material advantage instead of being like, Oh yeah, I remember you bought a piece.
Trust me. And he's like, yeah, that sounds awesome. I'm like, that's an FTS man. And he's like,
well, that doesn't sound scammy. I'm like, exactly. And so when I explained it to him
like that, it was me meeting it first. I use that anim Hollander analogy I use. Then I mentioned
Nike and Starbucks, and then I met him where he was as an artist and said, you have a use case.
And the beautiful part about the book and the reason why I think it's not just hand to your
normie friends is there is a use case in there for pretty much anyone on the planet to say,
I can explain to you why this works in your industry and why it matters. And so like,
to your point there, it's like explaining this is so hard. And like, I have gone through an
exhaustive couple year process. Our editor wasn't crypto native. And that was by design.
We like, at the beginning of the process, we're like, should our editor set up a meta mask or
anything like that? The answer is no, because we want her to look at it and be like, this
doesn't make sense. This is jargon. This doesn't land with me. So we went from there. So I think
like, what you said there is like opened up and unlocked the other thing where it's like,
even if you are like, we do think web three people can learn from this book, because I don't think
anyone's ever synthesized all this data and information into one place at once. There is
no product that exists like this in the market. But I also think even if you were the most
knowledgeable person on the planet about NFTs and web three, you would be able to open up this
book and find examples for your friends and family that would help them understand
the applicability of this to their life. So I appreciate you bringing that up.
Hope that answered your question, Jonathan. I want to move along to let's do Cristiano
first, Sima down after. Sima, I'm sorry. I know you had your hand up before Cristiano,
but Cristiano was here a little earlier and got dropped down and came back up.
So we'll go to Cristiano, Sima down and then Machiavelli after.
What up, fam. Thanks for having me up. Having a great morning. This has been awesome.
Steve, aka Barkbro, it's been amazing hearing you talk about this. And I saw the book cover
and actually, I came in because I wanted to hear more and I got here at the perfect time. So
you like answered a bunch of my questions. Thank you for making this onboarding tool.
Thank you for what you do for the space every day. And I definitely when I came in,
you guys were talking about the daily stuff. That's why I came up. And I was like, Oh,
believe me, I know I'm doing episode 608 today of my daily podcast on spaces with no breaks,
no days off and no co-hosts for the last 300 days. So it's just been me rolling solo for half the
show. And it is, it is, it is tough. But like you said, you get up and you go to work.
It's not a thing that's like optional. You just get up and that's not,
I didn't know taking a day off was optional. And everyone's like, take a day off. And I was like,
I wasn't raised like that. No one ever told me that. So, you know, raise my dad was my football
coach. And his dad was a military father who stormed the beaches of Normandy. So very
intense, intense work ethic at my house. So, and it's how I'm happy to bring that here and
be an example for others, because like, I'm sick. I was, you know what I mean? Like,
I was fucked up as a kid and told him to never stop working. So hopefully I can be an inspiration
for others here as well. And you're definitely an inspiration for me and a lot of other people.
And you know, like what you guys are doing here with Wake and Big, man, like you guys
were doing this two months before I even started. And I just did the math 94 episodes, man.
That's like 654 days of the, you know, like that's a lot of time. So, and it is,
it seems like nothing when we started, right? When we were just trying to hold down a good
chill vibe in a space that seemed like chaotic. And it was just like, almost like a protest vote.
You know what I mean? We were just like a protest space thrown in that like, fuck it. Everyone
else is trying to make money and dunk on each other. We're just going to chill and just be the
opposite. And then like that permeated and that became the space. And now the stuff you're
seeing in this space are so holistic and human based and based on community and real community,
not community for money's sake, not community for, you know, extracting value from people,
right? So it's like, I just love to see, like, I want you guys to give yourselves all like,
more credit sometimes, because we're just individuals and we think we can't change anything.
But this is how you do it. You just like, you plant your flag and you just, you just say,
right here, this hill, that's where I'm going to die on. And you just make your hill to die on.
We all just did that. And the next thing you know, like the scammers, they couldn't get at us.
We kept enough people safe. We kept enough people safe and laughing and smoking and having a good
time that they didn't get focused on shiny objects and get wrecked. And you know, just
know that you did your part. And yeah, man, thank you for making this. I'm definitely going
to buy a bunch of copies of this book and I'm going to be disseminating it out because we need
more onboarding tools. It's the reason why I did 22 concerts this year. Not just web three shows,
because like the web two shows were my favorite because I would onboard people.
I would play my Pepe song. I would perform my Pepe song at the end. And then they come and
talk to me about Pepe at the end. And I'd be like, Oh yeah, cryptocurrency. And like,
they're like, how are you, all you artists here, how are you doing this? And I was like, yeah,
we sell NFTs and some of our holders are here, you know, like say hi to them. And the holders
would come up and talk to them and they'd be like, whoa, this is so cool. So I think
to see it in real life, it takes it away from the digital. And I don't use the word NFTs
in real life. When I'm talking to people, I never use them. I say we sell digital art
and people buy the digital art and we fund the concerts, you know, and anyone who has the
digital art, we give them the ticket and they're like, Oh, that's so cool. That's great. Because
as soon as they say NFTs, they yawn. And when someone yawns, it means they don't understand
something. So some just randomly to yawning in the middle. They're not tired. You just,
you confuse the fuck out of them. So you got to take a step back, go back to where they weren't
yawning. You just catch them. Be like, all right, hold up, hold up. Or like you said,
find them where they're at. If they're in finance, talk about finance. If they're in healthcare,
talk about how NFTs can revolutionize healthcare. If they're in, you know, and so that's what's
great when you gave us a book. So if we don't know all those things, we can go and find that.
And just so thank you for that. Honestly, everyone be more like Buck, more onboarding tools.
Appreciate those kind words. And yeah, I mean, that's what it's about, man. It's like,
you know, it's like, it's, it's, there's a reason why Nike, it's like, if you explain what Nike
did, it's like, wait, so I bought this access pass, which is a dope pair of digital sneakers,
which I get to own this digital item, which by the way, that's another thing.
People will talk about the digital items that they buy and not realize, like, they'll be like,
oh, nobody cares about like a digital, like you talk to especially adults,
like, right? They'll be like, no one cares about digital items. It's like, well, guess what?
But the technology ages with the people who grow up with it, right? When I was a kid,
you know, I, this is one of my favorite examples to go to. It's like when I was a kid
and I used played video games, seeing an adult playing a video game in the wild
was like a unicorn. You know what I mean? It didn't happen. They played Dr. Mario,
they played Tetris and that was it. They didn't play anything else, right?
Like nobody played like real straight up video games. Me, now I play Halo with my
brother to blow off steam. People play Fortnite with their friends who are in their 40s.
Like this is what we do because we aged into the technology that we grew up with and cared about.
My kids, I have a nine year old and a 12 year old, you know, my kids, they roll up,
they get home, they call their friends on their iPad to communicate and they load up Fortnite
and they load up Roblox and they load up Minecraft and they load up Animal Crossing and they basically
exist in the metaverse. If you don't think they're going to demand these branded experiences
when they get older, you're out of your mind. Like they're going to come into spending power
in the next 15 years and they're going to change the dynamics that businesses have to operate on.
And if you're not ready with digital collectibles, you're screwed. You're behind
because they want those digital collectibles. My daughter got a plushie that I barely see
huge in Pet Simulator X on Roblox, which is a plushie that came with that. She barely used
the plushie. She wanted the digital item that came with it. That was the big deal to her,
right? Like they spend real money to get digital skins and other items more than any other
generation. And so, you know, people don't realize that they're going to age into this,
but to your point, it's like, you know, when you talk about not using the term NFT,
look at Nike's dot swoosh press release. Nowhere in there does it say Web 3 NFTs and blockchain.
They have a pro, like it's basically program is, you know, they get a digital dope shoe collectible,
which I'll show to my kids. I got one of the rare ones. The year of the dog one looks really
cool, right? And that gets me access to get a pair of sneakers that by the way, coolest moment,
40 year old, like I am the most generic looking white person on the face of the fucking planet.
If you did a computer posit composite AI of every single white person ever to exist who's in
those white middle aged 40s, they'd be like, this is him and his name is Steve, right? That's how I,
so I'm not cool. I'm not cool. I showed up to the Apple store when I was getting my new iPhone,
when my other one crapped out and I'm wearing my Tina J's, my Nike Tina J's and like three
very cool people, like with like, you know, the like, basically the coolest,
like young Apple store workers in their 20 walked up. They're like, yo, what type of shoes are those?
They look like PS five's on your feet. I've never seen those before. They're awesome. And I was like,
and I explained it to them and they were like, that's cool. I got to check out that swoosh.
And it's like, they didn't care about the fact that they'd have a digital collectible to get
access, you know, these, these 20 some year olds, they didn't care about them being NFT related.
They cared that like, they're like, Oh yeah, you got this thing because you have this thing
in your wallet, they gave you access. And now we think those shoes are dope and we want them.
Like that, they're like, because they're one of them was like, I'm a sneakerhead. I've never
seen those. And I was like, yeah. And so it's like your point about not calling them NFTs.
That's what that term goes away. Like people will know it, but like we're the ones who care about
it. Like we get blockchain like maxi, like that's so silly. Like does anybody care what cloud service
runs their software? Does anybody care what we're talking on Twitter spaces right now?
We care it works. And that's what it comes down to. And so your point about like that,
I think is so, so strong. So really appreciate your thoughts there and appreciate what you're
doing out in the world and appreciate your consistency flowers to you for showing up.
Thank you, brother. Same here. Flowers right back to you.
Hell yeah. Cristiano's not easy. 600 spaces consistently. My goodness, bro. Like big,
big, big shout outs to you, man. Keep fucking going, bro. You already know we got you here.
We support you 100%. Keep bringing that value, you know, to the space. Also to the web three
artists. You know, you're a huge supporter without you, bro. Like, you know, a lot of things
aren't possible, man, for them. So big shout out to you and what you're doing in fucking web three,
dude. We see it. I want to get over to our next speaker. Got the handout from some of
them. What's up, some of them. We're going to go to you and then we're going to go to
Drewby right after. What's good. My back. I just want to tap in real quick.
My bad. Yeah, I'm with the family. And we bought the orders on food. I just want to say what's
up, man. The conversation is great. I know we sent this book in a group chat, so I'm going to
definitely keep this book. But yeah, I just want to tap in. I'm going to drop down as a listener,
man, and let y'all rock out. But yeah, I just want to say what's happening.
The Monday show is going to be a vibe this week, man. And for weeks to come, bro,
you already know what we planted. We got that Air Force One giveaway, the fucking custom
by yourself, man. That's going to be awesome for someone. Whoever receives that, man. Shout
out to you. The tweets going to go out later on today or maybe on this show. I think I
sent that to Rami. So I mean, whenever you're ready to post that, you can.
Yeah, man, we're going to be giving away a pair of Air Force Ones customized by the
homie, Dr. Larry Sanders himself provided by Wakenby. So you guys, you know, we're
dripping you down, man. And yeah, I seen some of his work. Trust me, going to be fire.
But Larry, man, say what up to the family, man. Appreciate you. You don't have to drop
down, man. You could stay here. You know, you stay on mute, you vibing, you chilling, you know,
you ain't got to go nowhere, bro. You family, man. You know, this is your home.
Yeah. Okay. So, bro, I'm right here.
Yeah, man, enjoy. Appreciate you pulling up as always. You're saying that's the fam.
And like you said, check us out on Monday. So first, go check out the Sanders says podcast
live on YouTube, and then jump on X at 530 Eastern to check us out for the after party
of the Sanders says podcast, where we recap the Sanders says show, and then we just get into
whatever topics. And you said we talked about conspiracy theories this Monday. So you better
come locked and loaded with your tinfoil hat. So you did.
Yeah, I'm ready for that Congo, man. Last week, it got a little spicy. So I'm ready to bring
some heat plus, you know, like you said, Larry, you said do some research, you know,
I always I'm into this type of stuff. But this week, I've seen a lot of crazy things,
some new things to talk about. So I can't wait. Let's go. Enjoy your day, Larry, my day.
Simba down. What's happening? Yo, what's up, guys? What's up, Smokey? What's up, Marcus?
What's up, Waker Blake show, man? This is a dope ass conversation. Thank you for having us
definitely give you guys some flowers on that. Honestly, this is one of the first interviews
I've like jumped into a space. It was like, so identifiable. So Steve, you know, tons of
flowers, brother, like everything you say I'm like, like resonating with, and like, it's just like,
it's so close to home. Like being in the space and building, man, it's not what everybody thinks
it is. It's like a lot of pressure. It's a lot of shit. So yeah, man, it's awesome that you've made
this far. I love I love the book that you've put together. I really want to check that out. I mean,
the idea of the book and what you told me that's in it so far if you're listening. And it sounds
amazing. So like, yeah, just hats off to you. And yeah, no, just wanted to say how I have a
million questions, but I could even start because there's too many. You know what I mean? Like,
I don't want to waste your place time with all that. But like, dude, definitely like other
home dude would say picking your brain someday would be pretty dope. Yeah, we'd love to even
have you maybe even interview sometime, man. That was yeah, awesome, dude. Thank you.
So madam, ask, ask away, man. Pick one of those questions that you are like you're most
interested in asking, man. Ask away. That's what this space is for, my friend.
Well, how about we just start solving stuff like this? I was curious about you, Steve. It's about
this. How long did it take before like you probably have said if I kind of want to make sure I
probably missed the driving around and stuff. How long did it take before you spent all that
time learning and engaging and figuring out before it really started to work for you
before like that table turned from like I'm like two years in here, man. I'm like, I'm ready.
I'm not saying I'm definitely ready to go more, man. I love it. But just kind of curious how long
it took you. Honestly, like, so this is a crazy part about the process is going to seem like such
generic bullshit answer. But I promise it's true. I have no idea. It's this blur, because like,
just showing up every day, it's like the first time we showed up, it's like we had, I don't know,
12 people total in and out who came to coffee with captain. And then like, I remember we did
our first show where like, yeah, we had 100 people come in and out. That was crazy. And then I
remember like our first and then I don't even remember what was going on. We get a few hundred
here and there. And then the day before the other side dropout, you know, so this is probably,
I don't know, maybe a year into our, I don't know, maybe it's a year and it all blurs together
times a flat circle. But like, basically, at some point, when the other side drop came,
all of a sudden we did, like we have been doing a couple hundred here and there.
We had 11,000 people in and out that day or 12,000 people or something. And what happened was
we were talking about the other side drop. We happen to have this morning show and a bunch
of people just started popping in to talk about it. Cause it was such a big seminal moment in
web three. And I remember because my wife and I were in NF or in, we're in New York City
for some, a meetup with a couple of communities on chain monkey goats, some other ones that we
were out there for. And we had made the trip and it's like, normally our show goes 8am till
about 10am, maybe 10 30. And we always go long. If we're talking about a real topic,
right? When the writer rip stuff came out and we wanted to have more diverse voices on stage,
talking about their opinions of what was going on, because I need to get out of the way at that
point and let other people talk who I can learn from. Like we had a really long show. We went till
noon cause we didn't want, you know, illa and Lara Rodriguez and other people who want to talk
about the way that they were approaching this thing. When they were talking about the sort of
like, you know, racial and potential gender and other implications with the board, APO club.
We didn't want to be the ones that were leading the voices to white dudes. We wanted to get the
hell out of the way and bring other people on. So we ran that thing till like noon. So don't get
me wrong. Sometimes we run along if it's really important. But like on the other side, man, when
we had 11,000 people, people just wanted to talk about it. They were just so stoked. So they
were coming on stage, coming on stage. And I remember my wife, it was like we woke up and
she's the most supportive rider. She was totally cool. So she woke up. She's like,
okay, like we're getting towards 10 o'clock. I'm like, we're cooking. We're going to keep going.
She went down and she went to the gym. She came back. She went, she got food. She came.
She brought it back. We ate like all these things and it's like one o'clock and we're
like, we're finally going to close this sucker down. And I don't know why I remember that being
such a moment because while we didn't retain a ton of people after that point, that one big
moment in time, and this is just a general lesson. If you're consistent and you're good
and you try, you're going to have at least one moment that really works out for you.
And that particular moment, a lot of people resonated with what we were talking about.
They liked our style and then they came back on Monday and started recommending it.
And to me, it's like by providing those great experiences on an individual level,
I am a huge believer. Now that's a large scalable one, right? And some people retained and then
we started and now it's like, you know, we started doing a thousand in and out or 2000
in and out. And then the bear came and it was like 600 never cared about the numbers.
It wasn't about that. One thing I will say though, my biggest tip to people that I don't
think they understand is the power of what is seemingly not unscalable is the most scalable
thing you can do. And it's like saying yes to the podcast, saying yes to the spaces,
saying yes to the meeting, showing up and showing people you care, supporting people on
an individual basis by buying their project and telling them, yes, you're here for the
right reasons with the right intentions. And I choose to support that. All of those things
seem like not scalable until you're suddenly, you know, have a celebrity on because they
happen to know somebody or a community comes out and supports you because you supported them in the
past. One example of that, this is the craziest, like weird example of my life. My friend Katz,
she's in the V friends community and I, you know, I had met her, I had not met her before.
And then NFT NYC last year, actually, we're doing a live show and we collaborated with
World of Women. They let us use the space so that we could do a live show physically.
And we were you doing this live show and Katz walks up and she goes, hey,
I did this thing called V Rose. And I looked at it, I was like, I recognize these things.
You airdropped one of these to every single VCon ticket. I thought it was such a cool moment
and what a wonderful message. And I did a video for her. And then I talked to her on a call
afterwards or whatever, just genuinely thinking how cool it was. She did this thing. It wasn't
disingenuous. It was like legitimately like I remembered it. Well, guess what? A year later,
Katz builds up a business. She starts to crush it. I had my face on a billboard in Times Square
because she got a Reebok deal with basically working with V friends. And she called me
and she was like, a blessing is best when it's shared. And so she put the faces of like
a dozen, two dozen people on a billboard in Times Square with her money. She made doing
this thing because she wanted to share that blessing. And that meant so much to me. And to me,
it's not about necessarily looking for a tipping point. It's about genuinely operating in an
authentic way to yourself, being a good person. And then a weird thing that happens is like,
I never do anything with an expectation of anything in return. If I help someone out,
if I do them a favor, if I have them on his face, if I go to, I don't think like they're
supposed to do anything for me because of that, right? I don't expect anything. But there's like,
life has a funny way that when you just go out of your way to be a genuine kind person,
which is kind of my default mode, I'm very lucky, I'm very empathetic and try to be kind naturally
to people. All of a sudden, a couple years later, that person might call you up. One more example,
Gary Vaynerchuk blurbing the back of my book, him writing a quote to go on the back of my book
jacket. You better believe that if I ever have like any skilled success and Gary's like, I need
something to you. It's an instant. Yes. Because he took the time and he doesn't blur books. He even
told us, I don't blur books. I blurbed authors. And my gut instinct tells me you two are it,
which is like one of the greatest moments of my life. I've been following the guy since 2009.
But like, you tell me like that guy says he needs something. I am going to do it so
quickly because he did me that favor and he didn't do it implicitly to get that social
currency from me. He did it because he believed it. It was the right thing to do.
And it's a very unscalable thing for one of the most important entrepreneurs on the planet
to take 10 minutes to have a phone call with two authors of an unknown book and say,
I believe it. Thanks. I'm in. But that unscalable thing, I'm hoping to one day,
I'm now motivated to not let him down, to make sure the book does well,
to make sure then one day if he needs anything, I can return that favor,
even though you didn't expect it. So to me, it's like, you know, it's kind of a roundabout
way of answering your question, but it's like concentrate on the unscalable and don't worry
about tipping or making it or anything. And all of a sudden you wake up one day and you're like,
I have all these friends and people who I now connect with in a way I never did before just
by doing the unscalable. I love that. Yeah, man. I could totally rez. I definitely find myself
trying, like I do the positive thing, man. I like the positive way, like encouraging people,
like supporting the artists and the music. And that's my only, that's my goal, man,
is to support creativity and help that energy get out there, you know, like in any way possible.
So yeah, I love that, man. And I stay out of all the drama, man. So when people get in the
middle of drama and they put their dirty laundry in spaces, I'm like, that just doesn't make sense
to me. It doesn't make people want to grow with you, I feel like. But yeah, man, I want to spread
that message of positivity like that too. I just got one more quick question, man. What do
you think about like, like the fact that like the pandemic had a big, like there was a big
difference in the way things were done, right? And I was asking a friend today about like, how does
they had a team in this group? I don't know what's on the group, but the group's kind of fall apart,
but they had an awesome team of people that were doing it. And it was just community members that
were started building within the community. And I was like, dude, how do you get a group of that?
Like, I want to get a group of those type of people in my community. And he's like, dude,
he's like, you know, the problem is, is like that group kind of started falling apart, because
it was like, feasible during the pandemic, when everybody gets to stay home and work together
on the pandemic, it really made a lot of sense. But then like, you know, now that these times
are different, people are hard up, they need money, they've been burnt out by time situations
that didn't work out so well for them. And so now everybody's like, it's all about money now,
you know, it's like, I'm kind of curious, what's your thoughts about that?
I think this is why this is this speaks to the most important part of having good collaborators
that you are on the same page with, like, I would say, three hosts of the show right now, like
collaborators who all are on the same page, who all have the same ethos, who all have the same
vision. And that's why this works. And that's why we're 94 straight in to wake and bake, right?
Because they collaborate, they get it, and they're in it together. I would venture to say in their
emoji reaction, they're telling me, I'm probably on point doesn't mean they agree on everything
all the time. No, but they have collaborations and key sort of at a base level, their values
and ethos are the same. And I think my answer to that isn't necessarily like that the spaceship
did, it's making sure that you surround yourself like that shit about like the five people you
surround yourself with or you take that off. That's very real. That is very real. And in fact,
I would say, you know, to bring back to the Gary Vaynerchuk example, when I didn't have friends who
were super hardworking, who had the same sort of ethos as me, I watched a lot of Gary Vaynerchuk
videos. And guess what? He became without knowing it digitally, one of the five people I hung out
with the most and it changed who I was in a positive way. And so my answer would be,
you need to find the collaborators who are on the same page as you. I did I did I did I had more I
had two failed podcasts before I had coffee with captain, I failed the podcast that I had going with
people don't know this before he like ran like the whole I cancelled it because he ran the project,
which wasn't great. It was not exactly a rug. But I did a podcast with team us for a few
episodes that was cooking. And it didn't um, you know, it didn't didn't take like,
it was doing well. And then he released something I didn't know about that I wasn't a fan of. And so I
made the decision to cancel it. And, you know, still, still, you know, whatever all good. He's
a funny guy. And I get along, but that failed. There's a guy named NFT buffet. He's a comedian.
He's a funny dude, did an episode with him, he got poached by another person and said,
like, Oh, I don't want you to do this. And after one episode, we had to cancel that.
And so that was like, that was tough, right? It's not about but guess what? That's great,
because they weren't necessarily the same, like ethos values collaborators that I was looking for.
Then I started doing working with captain. And I've never been so on the same page with someone in
my fucking life in a professional environment, like down to like, we'll get like a sponsorship.
And like DJ Network, our company has paid out over $100,000 to contributors to editors to all
these people over the years, we never took a salary. We only paid out money to other people.
But like, he's down like we get a we get a like when we got like a sponsor, a sponsorship deal,
like we went and we said, how can we take the people who have caught our clips,
who are editing our podcasts, how can we set aside money to ensure we can pay them for the next
12 months with that sponsorship deal, not because we need more money, because we would rather eat
last leaders eat last. And so we have that shared core set of values. And so it works.
So my answer wouldn't necessarily be like, oh, it's over financialized. And it's hard to find,
you just got to be turning over the right rocks and finding the right people. And for me, it's
like, again, finding those people who share those values, you're gonna do it if you keep
running at it. It's just a matter of finding the right people. So I don't think it's necessarily
that I think it's just a matter of like finding the people who you agree with. And I have failed
multiple times in my life. And because I failed is why I can succeed in other areas. And you just
got to take those learnings and move on. Fair enough, man. I love all that. Thanks a lot,
Steve, man. Yeah, thanks to everybody. I appreciate you guys. And I'll, I'll be back
again. I'll hang out, but I'll drop down. Thanks a lot, man. Shout out to you. Awesome
questions. Simmer down. You are a fucking legend, bro. And, um, all right, guys. So
Machiavelli, I know you don't have your hand up, but you did have your
everything is smoking. The ticker is the everything token. You know what I'm saying?
This has been a hundred. This has been a great conversation. I've been following Steve
everywhere this past week. If you don't have the book yet, get it now. It's going to help
you better to explain the craziness that you're involved in that the other people think that
you're crazy for. Uh, no, man. It's great to be up here, man. I just wanted to give
my shout outs, my GM shout out to everybody on the stage, man.
Shout out to you. Love you, bro. Yeah, man. Happy waking, baby.
I appreciate you pulling up as always, Matt.
Uh, who was next? I think it was Drew. Drew B next. Then we got scary Terry little hot.
Executive after, after little hotties. All right, let's go. True B. What's good. What's
good, my goon. Yo, yo, always a pleasure when I'm able to, uh, come and listen to y'all and
this conversation was crazy. So I figured I'd, uh, pop up and just say how much I appreciate y'all
and, uh, all the dope shit y'all been doing for so long. And, uh, did have one question.
Cause I know we've been talking about like a lot of the tech implicate implication side of things,
but also kind of earlier you were talking about how it's cool to like be yourself and how we're all
kind of hella different, but we have this one thing to like bond over. I kind of think of it as like
sports where it's like we all root for our teams, but also we love the game, which is NFTs. And
one example for me that has been like my personal thing to watch is we have, um,
me and Simone's have a like storefront cafe in Williamsburg and we always use it to do
different events for goons. And so like the first time we went in after it was over, he was like,
yo, like not gonna lie. Like I still think you're a fucking nerd, but I also thought everyone was
also going to be like way more like he was just like, it was weird. Cause it's like, you had like
literal people with like kids, you had kids in college, you had like street wear motherfuckers,
you had people in polos, like what's good with this? Like did it. And now, you know,
three events later, he's actually like coming out, playing soccer with us at like the soccer events
and things like that. And it's just really interesting to watch. Like, cause even myself,
I like did not fuck with NFTs at all until I kind of just fell into it. And now I'm like
obsessed and annoyed all my friends. But I'm wondering like in the book,
do you talk about that at all? Kind of like the emotional aspect? Cause I feel like that for me
is always one of the hardest parts to like explain without sounding like super corny.
Banger. First of all, yes. First of all, great, great, great, great, great, great comment,
because this is like something that is actually very importantly explained in the book that I
haven't even, I can't believe I haven't even talked about is the concept of community actually being
value. And you know, that idea that not everything that counts can be counted and not everything
that can be counted counts. And I think people don't realize or think about that as much.
And we absolutely cover this. In fact, two of the five elements of the NFT staircase,
our framework, our identity and community, because you know, sports is the best analogy.
When I win the gold, Wendy, you know, Denver Nuggets win the NBA championship. Nobody's like,
what does this do for the floor of the Denver Nuggets for me? They're just like stoked. They're
high fiving their friends or telling everyone about it. When they release a new shirt, no one says
another low effort cash grab from the Denver Nuggets with this cotton shirt, you buy it
because you want to flex it. This is why the pudgy, you want to know why the pudgy
penguins are cooking right now. I'll tell you, because none of them look at it and say we're
waiting for an airdrop or waiting for a token or waiting for any right. Like they go to Walmart
and they go and buy it because they're like, this is a sports team we root for. And they're
fucking crushing it. Right. They get stoked about that. And what does that lead to?
People wanting to be part of that magic. When somebody makes their profile picture,
them in front of the Magic Kingdom at Disney, they're not doing it. They didn't get nothing
from Disney for that. Right. But what they do get is they get the opportunity to flex their
favorite brand. Now imagine if that's an NFT and by having that as their profile picture,
they get discounts on Disney products and services and Disney makes money on upsells and they get to
flex their favorite brand. So that's sports team. Like, you know, I went to Ohio State.
Don't judge me if you're not a fan. Went to Ohio State. I owe babies. So I went to Ohio State,
right? I was the sports director of the student student TV station there. So I'm a little bit
involved, right? If I'm walking through an airport in, you know, we'll use Denver again, Denver,
Colorado, not really my neck of the woods. And somebody's wearing an Ohio State hoodie.
You best believe what happened on stage here is exactly it. I'm going to yell OH to that
person. That motherfucker is going to yell IO back to me and that person could be a serial killer.
And I don't even know it. We just have a shared identity and community of Ohio State. Like,
this was a perfect example because I said, I went to Ohio State. I get no H immediately.
That's what community and identity is about. And people have to understand I've seen it with
Starbucks. NFTs allow you to find your tribe everywhere. So with Starbucks, we have people
who are from California and Washington and Chicago and New York who are now friends over
this shared love of a similar company because they've been able to meet through web three
and they do things together and they spin up sites called Odyssey tips to show like
different ways and they create different fan sites. Like this is what NFTs are about.
And like we talk about the very important aspect of listening to your community and changing things
based on community feedback and evolving based on that. And you're exactly right that community
based aspect. There's a reason why 40% of our staircase is identity and community. And you can
apply to anything. Jeep people love their Jeeps. Imagine if they were able to connect with people.
Motorcyclists. They give like the two fingers, you know, sort of, you know, peace sign to people
as they go by because it's part of their identity and they share a community. And the list goes on
and on. You cannot like if I ask people, what is the value or floor price of your group of
college friends or your group of friends from high school or your work colleagues. They're not going
to give a number to that because it's a community. It's an identity. And, you know, when somebody
starts running, they divide, they start to develop an identity as a runner, right? Or someone starts
golfing. Let's use golf as an example. Somebody said, take up golf. Maybe they go to the range.
They say, okay, this is kind of fun. Maybe they get some lessons from a golf pro. What are they
going to do next? Maybe their golf pro is going to take them out to learn in the course a little bit.
Okay. Interesting. Cool. Whatever. That's fine. Then what are they going to do? Well,
I need to find some friends to golf with. Now they're part of a community. Maybe they join a
golf club. Maybe they just golf every week with their friends. Maybe they find new people to
golf with. Maybe they meet a friend who brings their friend they've never met before who golfs.
Now they become good friends. That can happen and be supercharged with NFTs. And you have the
ability, you know, for on the brand side, you have the ability to turn your top fans into absolute
super fans. And on the actual personal side, you have the opportunity to participate and select in,
you know, when I was, you know, like you can find these communities, whether you are a person
who loves Dungeons and Dragons, and there's a community around that, or a person who loves
Fortnite, and there's a community around that, or a person who loves, you name it, the most niche
communities, you can find them, and you can connect with them in ways you never did before,
and you can prove it. So I think exactly what you said there, like the sports team analogy
is one that I use constantly. And there's a reason why, yeah, ownership and utility and
those are important. Identity and community are two of the five elements for a reason.
And we didn't put them together for a reason. So I think what you brought that up, it's a great point.
Awesome. I'm super stoked to read the book and appreciate you spreading some knowledge out here
and shout out to the Wake and Bake boys and I'll holler at y'all later.
Yo, Steve, real quick. Um, indigo or sativa?
Uh, sativa, indigo put you in the couch and I can't handle that. So I'm a, I'm a guy who,
yeah, I had to, I have to like, no, it depends on the mood,
you know? But like, if I'm during the day or anything like that, I gotta be on point, you know?
That's right. All right. I feel like
before you get into that question, I just wanted to say shout out you,
Drew B and you and the goons, not just because I'm rocking a goons, PFP, but you built exactly
what my man, Steve was talking about. You built that fucking team that we love. You always delivering
the team is spectacular. Always giving back. We looking for the drops. We love the brand.
We love the, the drip, you know, the drip is amazing. The, the IYK technology behind it too.
That's always dope, man. You guys are always giving back at your IRL events,
always making sure that the, you know, the community is always vibing and we have sub
communities within this, you know, this community, man, where, you know, we all link up together.
We built that bond. We share that now because for our love of the goons, you know? So I want
to always thank you for always putting in that hard work, man, that you guys always doing,
man. Shout out you, man. And on 2024, let's go up. Let's go, Marcus.
All right. So Steve, my famous question is what is your favorite strand? And then
what is your favorite way to consume dead cannabis? Whether it's blood, bones, joints,
dabs, edibles, pictures, you name it.
This motherfucker is making me pick between my favorite children here. No, I, here's what I
would say. Like I would say to me, generally speaking more sativa than indica in general,
like I said earlier, because I think it's important to like, you know, for me to be like,
you know, have my wits about me when I'm doing stuff. And that like, you know, it's like,
it's like you do, you do, you do a, you know, indica, and I'm going to be sitting around watching
like trashy reality TV. You put a sativa in my mouth and I will go work out, clean the garage,
take my dog for a walk and do the dishes. So that's, that's the difference right there.
Um, as far as like strand, I'm going to go niche. Nobody's going to know what this is.
When I was in college at Ohio State, my friends had something they brought up from Cincinnati
called dumpster. And it doesn't exist in the wild as far as I know. And it is, I've never
seen it since. And it is the greatest. I mean, I'm talking about this thing could light up a room
that was pitch black. So that shit always got me going. Um, I mean, as far as now,
as I've gotten to be an adult and I'm 40, I'm not going to turn down anything to be clear,
but I think, uh, tincture slash edibles tends to be my go to because I feel like I have a good
indication on a tincture of exactly what I'm putting in and how much I know kind of when
it's going to kick in and what the indications are going to be. Uh, and I can time it out
pretty well. And it also means that I'm not smoking, which is something I'm trying to do
less of because I did plenty of that in my life that I don't need to keep going on it. So,
um, those are sort of the general go tos, but, uh, you're not going to hear me say no,
uh, at an NFT event to pretty much anything. So this is hilarious.
I actually know what dumpster is. Shut the fuck off from Cincinnati.
I'm from Cincinnati and, uh, my cousin put me on.
This is insane. I've never found somebody. Cause again, my friends, my friends, so my friends
all went to Sycamore. Okay. Uh, so you're familiar and they all went to Sycamore and
played football and all this stuff and whatever. And they came to Ohio state and they're like,
you got to get the dump. And when it would come in, like back in the day when it was like,
you were paying like $40, $50 an eighth for like maybe something that was like really,
really high quality or whatever. It's like this thing would go for 65 because everybody
was just ready to rock it because it was just something like we hadn't seen. Of course,
it's like freshmen in college. We're like, what the hell is this? So like that's hilarious.
You know, a dumpster is cause that's like a, that's like the one that it's like that
always came through. And we were like, whenever we got a thing of dumpster, it was like,
honestly, it was like like a high demand, like sneaker drop where like dumpster would like show
up and we'd be like, it would be like you had to like get in touch, overpay and be ready to get it
because you're like, it's like a Bape drop. You're like, you need to make sure you get your hands on
the dumpster else. You're not going to get it. And if you were able to get a quarter sheesh,
that means you knew somebody at that time. I love that. I love that. You know what that is.
That's so facts. Like when I saw, I was like, I texted my cousin, I was like, yo, I'm coming home.
He's like, I got some special for you. He was like, look, you got to at least send me half.
Okay. And I was like, I mean, I'm right. I mean, I guess he was like, look,
it's going to be a little pricey, but trust me, it's worth it. And I'm like, all right. I touched down,
he picked me up and man, we roll up in the car smoking from the airport. And I was like,
I'm in the car blasted, but like my mind is like, zooming through thoughts. And I'm like,
man, this stuff is nice. He's like, yeah, it's the dump. I'm like the dump. He's like,
that's just the name. I was like, okay. I mean, he smokes good. I mean, I guess it's just the name.
Amazing. That's so good. That's so good. That's like literally like the first time
small world shit. That's the first time I've ever had anybody be like, yes, I know what that is.
Because most people are like, you making this shit up. Or you just like, like people are like,
they were like, never heard of dumpster. This dude's a cop.
You're around a shit ton of stoners right now. So I feel like the odds are the highest
they're going to be ever. That's true. That's true. If anywhere someone was going to know
what I was talking about, this is the spot. So hopefully that gives me a little credibility
too then. Cause like, that's like going down the niche, the niche rabbit hole.
I got the credit, bro. That's like your credit all the way up now.
Didn't put that one in my, in my bio for the book though, just so you know,
it doesn't say anything about dumpster in there. Did not put that one in there
when I was speaking. Did not mention it when I spoke at Harvard.
That's fair. That's fair. That's fair. We did it.
All right. I'm going to pass it over to scary, scary. What happened in my G.
Yo, what is up everybody? GMGN. Happy Saturday. We're waking and baking.
And yeah, man, I've just been enjoying the convo since I woke up.
It's crazy, you know, everything, you know, that you've been, you've guys been
talking about, you know, I read a little synopsis on the book.
You know, I'm waiting for my book to come in. But yeah, the everything token. I mean,
like, I work for a company called rebud. We're a tech slash cannabis company. We have
four storefronts, a couple delivery centers out here in Southern California.
And we are the first and only cannabis token gated marketplace, you know, we've created
NFTs. And we market them to our web two customers as a lifetime membership.
And holding one of our tokens, you know, you receive 30% off any one of our locations,
delivery in store accessories, all cannabis goods, clothing, all that good stuff.
And it just it makes me happy that, you know, we're, we're talking about, you know,
other use cases like that. That was one of the biggest things when, you know,
we're going on two years now. We minted the rebut OG pass in 2022, February of 2022.
And it's, it's wild to see, you know, what since then to now, all of these, you know,
brands companies jumping into the space. You know, you've been talking about Starbucks Odyssey,
like I thought when Starbucks Odyssey was rolling out was probably going to be one of
the biggest things out, you know, since then, we've seen Louis Vuitton enter the space, we've
seen, you know, Nike acquire artifact, you know, all everything that artifact is doing,
like, I'm a big supporter of what artifact is doing, in my opinion, I, I love what they do.
But yeah, I just came up and I just wanted to say like, big shout out to you, man,
big shout out to just, you know, putting it out there for everybody, you know, on, you know,
paper, you know, a book books live on forever. And I'm just excited. This is what, you know,
makes me excited for the future, you know, I don't want to use the term bullish, but like,
hello, bullish, because it's everything, you know, that what we've been building in the company,
everything, you know, we've been doing seven days a week, 24 hours a day. And it just kind
of like solidifies, you know, all this hard work that you know, we've been working on, you know,
creating that bridge from web two to web three and showing, you know, everybody that there is
different use cases for NFT, you know, it is more than just a JPEG, it is more than just,
you know, something you could trade, or hold for value. And really, what we've been doing at
rebud is creating a different use case for NFTs. And I'm just excited to get the book in my hands
and start reading it. You got you got weed, I got I'm working with Starbucks, like two things that go
together, like peas and carrots right there, you know what I mean? Like coffee, and like probably,
probably the best way to start your day if you want to go, you do a little like a little tincture
in your coffee or something like that and just sail off into the day. But I'll tell you what,
like, it's funny when you talk about that idea of adoption and large companies coming in, it's
like, people don't realize the scale that these companies have and the ability that they have.
So Starbucks didn't, it was a beta program, only in the US didn't even turn the lights on last year,
they're starting to pick up steam a little more this year. But they have this like thing where
they give away a stamp, which is what the NFTs are. So it's like a loyalty program,
they're smart, right? The lifetime utilities like basically impossible, depending on the
circumstances, it's just something that I think a lot of NFT brands got wrong, and something I've
learned from Starbucks, don't tell my Starbucks people, I would work for them for free just to
get the free alpha that I'm learning on loyalty programs. But like, you know, so basically,
you earn up the score in a year, and then it resets just like your Delta miles, just like your
Marriott points, just like, and you get something that carries over. And the carryover this year
was a stamp that sets you up for the following year, the NFT. So that means that everybody who
was active at level one or higher, they went up to five levels last year. So level one means you
had to do a decent amount of activity got a stamp. More than 58,000 people got a stamp.
That means they had 58,000 plus active members in Starbucks Odyssey, you know, that there isn't
that wasn't 58,000 NFT DJs, which means they're bringing in people like my 68 year old mom,
they're bringing in people like my friend's wife, they're bringing in people like I was talking to
my mom's neighbor, you know, he's like a 45 year old guy, also, by the way, plays video games,
and like, you know, understand things. And he's like, Oh, you're involved with Starbucks Odyssey.
I do that. And they don't know they're interacting with the blockchain. They don't know their NFTs.
They know they go on this fun, gamified Pokemon go thing for over caffeinated DJs,
and they get rewarded for it. And so for me, it's like, that's what's happened, you know,
Nike and dot swoosh selling 100,000 pairs of digital sneakers, those didn't all go to the NFT
space. And by the way, to get Starbucks stamps, you want to talk about these being ubiquitous
brand assets, to get those stamps, you're not spending $5,000, you're spending $10 $20 for Nike
dot swoosh, it was, you know, $25 pair of digital sneakers, those ubiquitous brand assets at
affordable price points are far more I mean, when you tell the average person you're going
to spend $50 on something, they're like, that's a lot of money. But when you tell an NFT DJ,
and you're going to spend, you know, like an ETH on something, they're like, Oh, it's just an
ETH, it's like, it's crazy, right? It's like the money, and how we see it is so warped.
And so to your point about the brands bringing in like more people, like, yeah, like,
that's what's bringing people in. And to me, mass adoption, I don't define mass adoption as
people coming into buy my bags as egg liquidity, I define mass adoption as this technology,
bringing consumers and brands closer together with aligned incentive structures in a way that
makes sense and having better software solutions across the board. That is the way I see mass
adoption happening. That is what I see mass adoption as. And so I love that you brought up
the example of these big brands coming in, because you know, whether the use case is what
you're working on, or the use case is what Starbucks is working on, showing how we can
fundamentally disrupt industries is important. And sooner or later, just like with streaming
video, Blockbuster elected not to buy Netflix for a million dollars in 2000. They had $5
billion in annual revenue at the time, and didn't buy Netflix for a million dollars,
right? And then what ended up happening within 10 years, Blockbuster filed for
bankruptcy and Netflix took off. And what have we seen since then streaming services,
you know, it's easy to forget, like, man, the iPhone came out in like 2006 2007.
Now I'm talking to a group of 102 people on my phone, right? It's like technology moves
quickly. So like your use cases, Starbucks use case, we're going to see it. And then we're going
to blink one day and look around and be like, Oh, everybody's doing this. Like, that's how tech
tends to work. It's that Moore's law where it's like a curve that slowly goes up. And then that
compounding interest of tech just flies up, boom, out of control.
No, 100%. And that's my thing is like, it's in my opinion, I feel like we are kind of like in a
renaissance of technology, you know, we're going through a revolutionary period of technology,
in my personal opinion, you know, they say, tech advances every two years, right? Like,
I really do feel like the tech is becoming more and more advanced, you know? And again,
the use cases, right? Like, we have people that are building things that have ever been seen before,
because we're actually trying to utilize something that like doesn't exist, right? So and again,
like, we're a cannabis company, we're a tech company, like we've created a POS system to
go around our whole entire cannabis business. And we never thought that we would be in the web
three space, we never thought we'd be, you know, making NFTs, yet alone creating a portion of our
tech, where it is 100%, you know, the capability of reading tokens and applying discounts
automatically to every order that carries this token. But we did, we did do it, because we just
seen, you know, what the possibilities are, you know, and, and again, like our engineering team,
and our development team, like, it's like a playground for them, like that, like this web three,
it's, it's new, right? It's a new industry, it's vast, it's, it could be huge, you know,
like, you can build in any which way and direction. And that is like, the number one thing that has
been very exciting for me, is that it's fun, it's innovative, it's doing things that have never
been seen before, it's trial and error, it's seeing what works, what doesn't work, how can we improve,
how we can make it better. And yeah, it's, it's a beautiful thing to see, because like, I really
do feel like we are on the forefront of what's next, you know. And yeah, it's, I don't think I've
ever been happier a day in my life, you know, every day I wake up, and I'm excited to work,
I'm excited to go with my team, I'm excited, you know, to have my meetings, I'm excited,
just because I know what I'm doing here, and if it's done correctly, like, we'll be cemented forever.
Nope, nope, nope. I was like, did we rug, did we rug?
I was, that was the endless mic drop right there, man, I was just going through comments down in
the right corner, just get a response over there, man. Loving the love, guys, thank you so much,
man. I love chatting with people in there, man, it's a lot of cool things going on in there,
check it out, drop a comment. Also, go check us out in the exposed media discord, we have
our channel, link is in the bio, come shop it up with us, we'd be in there after the show
so you keep the party going, you did, but we'll pass it over to little hotties. What's happening, homie?
What's good, what's good, what's good, what's good, what's good, what's good.
And no, it is indica, not sativa, sorry y'all, indica, it does not put me in the couch because
I'm just built different, but when I find one that does put me in the couch, actually when I
make one, you know, I've been growing over 20 years, when I make one that puts me in the couch,
I'm gonna call it rug OG, that's gonna be, that's what it's gonna be, it's gonna be rug OG,
it's finally something rubbed my ass and yeah, that's what I'm gonna, that's what I'm gonna
call that shit. But I'm Steve, I just wanted to say, you know, I've been growing a long time,
like I just said, and I grew for years, just on just, you know, inexperience and just,
just doing it, and friends and stuff. And then in 2000, the Growers Bible came out,
and it was pretty dope, it was, it showed a lot of stuff about growing and just tons of things
that I didn't know, like little things that enhanced my growing experiences at that time,
you know, in my young growing career at the time. But I think that's what your book is
gonna do for NFT people, and I think that's awesome to have that guide to go to, and not,
I don't want to say for dummies, like dummies 101 kind of a thing, but kind of to that point where
it's for people who don't know, and can go in and learn, and I think that's so dope to have,
because like Marcus said earlier, if he would have had that, he wish he would have had that
at the beginning, just like I wish I would have had my Grow Bible at the beginning,
I wouldn't have had to gone through some of the hurts and tribulations that I went through,
and I think that's what your book is going to do for some people in the Web 3, and I think that's
freaking awesome. And it is hard to have those conversations sometimes when you're trying to
explain to people what Web 3 is, so it is good to have a guide to go to, and maybe even get
some references from that book that you can tell people, you know, when you are out and about.
I think that's pretty freaking amazing. We all have our different little show that we do to Web 2
people. I'm sure everyone has their little ways to do it, but it would be cool to have a guide to go
to and maybe get people in there with a little bit better explanation. I think that would be
good and more seamless, and not coming from someone they know, coming from some, like you
said, accredited people, and they might take it a little differently, because some people just don't
want to understand. It's not that they can't or won't, they just don't want to. Coming from
certain people, so coming from someone that they respect, like some of the stuff that you have in
that book sounds like a good bridging concept for Web 2, Web 3. I really like it.
Just two things. First of all, like you're the perfect encapsulation of Web 3, and like why I
love this place and being able to be yourself is like you came in like having fun, came in hot,
intentionally so, right, having some fun, and then you come with like this really well thought,
intelligent sort of, you know, point that you were making, and it's like that's what makes Web 3
so wonderful and unique to me, is that like we can be ourselves, but at the same time still have
intelligent conversations, and like the way you came in like you came in hot, and like at no point
was I like this guy's not going to come with the heat, right? It's like bring intelligent thought,
and like that's one of the things that makes it really cool to me is like having this sort of
conversation right here, you know, with someone like you about like, yeah man, like this is a uh,
you know, this is a cool conversation we're then able to have, and like actually really
fully discussed, like the ideas in the book, and something you said there that I think is an
important point to bring up that I took for granted before the book came out, and somebody,
I'm trying to remember who it was, I think it was Melina, girl in the verse who does like really
cool videos had brought up when I was talking to her, which she was like, you know what she liked
about it? She was like, it's kind of cool you have this like end notes thing, which I didn't even
think about, so end notes are the end of the book where you have all your references, and
because we want to come correct, and we want this thing to be a educational resource for people,
the end notes have like, if we had something from Bloomberg decrypt, if it's from a tweet,
whatever it is, there is a link in the back of the book, where you can find out sort of like what,
you know, what resource we're referencing, or what we were talking about, right?
And so for us, like, that was an important, you know, thing that we were adding to it.
And what I didn't realize till now, it's like, as people are going through, if they want to read
more, like our, you know, again, as we work with our editor, our editor would be like, oh my god,
you have this whole case study on doodles, we only need this few paragraphs, and it goes in this
section. But if you want to learn more, we have the references in the back where they can go and use
those and say, like, if you're doing a paper about NFTs in your high school or college,
you can get every resource you possibly need, not just from this book, but to link out to
other things and find it. So like, to your point about the resources and directing, like,
those end notes, there's pages and pages of end notes. And my professor colleague credit to him
was like, these must be pristine, because he wants people to be able to use them,
because he teaches this in his class, like, this book is being taught at Harvard,
a 16 crypto school bought a bunch to teach, this is a book that has an opportunity to like,
be in the hands of people who are going to learn. But if they want to learn more,
similar to what we talk about with these spaces and other things, we want them to be able to then
learn more outside of our book and have those extra references. So what you said there is like,
so sound and something I completely take for granted is that the end of the book, like,
if we referenced a fact, basically in the book, that was like a historical fact or something had
happened, we needed to find a link to substantiate it down to like, people saying, why would anyone
pay all this money for pictures of monkeys on the internet, we went to a like a Reddit or a
Chorus site that had that specific question, just so people know, like, we're not bullshitting you,
we're not telling you a tall tale. All of this has been through the ringer factually,
and ultimately, you know, landed in a place where you can use these references. Absolutely.
That's the goal. That's the goal. Nailed it. So I appreciate you.
No, definitely. I appreciate you bringing that tool out for all for all the people
that need it. And I think even people in here that are think that they're seasoned veterans,
it doesn't ever hurt to go back and read through some stuff. Like I said, you know,
I learned one or two things from that growing guide after growing for years.
And those couple things just completely changed my way of growing. So I think that's awesome,
even if you are a veteran and think that you know it all, you know, we don't know it all.
But I'm definitely still going to take a peek and you can definitely learn something. So that's
awesome, brother. I appreciate you. I commend you for doing that for the web three. I'm a web
three maxi. I love this. You know, I love my communities. I love all my people in here. So
anything to make this space grow and grow the right way for it. And you're providing
something that does that. So thank you, brother. Thank you.
Much love, much love. You know, Jay, you're a legend, man. Before we get into the next hand,
we do have a question from the homie, Hizzy. He dropped in the comments. Hizzy was good.
Appreciate you vibing with us while you're driving, man. I hope we're like, you know,
not making your drive boring, man. Much love. But his question, you already know his question
to you, Steve, though, is will you be doing any kind of book tour? First of all,
sorry, my finger got stuck on the mute. First of all, Hizzy is a fucking legend.
Number one, like all the respect. Uncle Hizzy, Uncle Hizzy, like not only is he a legend for
like so many reasons that he's been so goddamn supportive of me and I'll be forever grateful
for how awesome he's been. Hizzy is also I am not convinced he is human. And I'll explain why
when I went to like V con. So I've seen his he always posting these amazing pictures of cars,
of events, of all these other things. And then I go to V con. And he's he's got like a pass or
whatever to go take pictures everywhere and all that. And I swear I saw his he ripping a blunt
behind the stage. And then I go on to the stage and his he's in front of me taking pictures.
And then I go over to go, you know, grab a bite to eat. And he's he's taken a picture of the of the
truck. And I was like, this man has some sort of multidimensional portal shit because I see him
everywhere. So Hizzy is an absolute boss. Number one. So like, I need to like give respect or
respect is due that not only does he document things, shares things, shares, you know,
video with me when I go places of things I've done and pictures. He took a picture like he
looked at me like and again, he's thoughtful. I was there with my co-host Chris Captain,
and like the other block event that she did in Scott down in, you know, and and
passing all them down in Art Basel. And we're in front of a Christmas tree. And he goes,
you know, family Christmas photo right now. I mean, Chris get together, took a beautiful photo
that we like shared with friends and family and people, you know, so like his he's a
legend. Number one. Number two, I probably need to do something for NFT NYC. I don't know what I'm
going to do. No formal book tour because the way book tours work now is unless you're like Joe
Rogan or Tim Ferriss or like some major person, you're not going to go city to city and do
book signings because you're not going to like have the pull to say like come to my local bookstore
to buy my niche tech book about NFTs, right? Like not going to happen. So because of that,
what we're doing is a virtual type media tour. So to me, spaces like this are equally important.
We were on Bloomberg radio last week. We did a Google talk last week. We market watch that
sort of stuff. This stuff is equally important to me because these are the people who have been
here building all day. So sort of this combination of like spaces, media tour,
written media tour, writing a Harvard Business Review article again, we're doing some stuff
for like we're doing an event on the Harvard campus, you know, things like that that we're
kind of like doing, like I said, the Google talk, all that good stuff. So that's sort of the tour
for the book to try to get it, you know, the ideas out into people's brains, right?
And then I would say on the back end, like I might do something at NFT NYC. I'm actually
having a call tomorrow afternoon with somebody who might do something. We might do something.
My friend Poppy, who runs, you know, is one of the head people over at Quirky's like,
you know, he, you know, we're talking about doing a coffee with captain event, maybe with him.
So there will be something in New York where I can at least like, because the weirdest thing to me,
people make fun of me for this, but I swear it's how I think about things. And it's part of me
turning around my imposter syndrome in my head is people want me to sign a book. And I'm like,
because when I first started giving out pre copies of the book, like sort of before it was released,
I would be like, okay, you're a winner. And they're like, well, you signed it. I'm like,
why would you want me to ruin your book by writing it? And they're like, your name is on
the cover. I want you to sign the book. And it's a weird concept to me that people
want me to sign a book. And so what I'm learning now is like, maybe it's not weird,
because I would much like, you know, want an author to sign my book, right? Like if I saw,
you know, whoever, if I saw, you know, Michael Pollan, and I wanted him to like sign how to
change your mind, or Jaco willing to sign extreme ownership, or, you know, Lin-Manuel Moran to sign,
you know, you know, good night, good morning, or, you know, whoever, right? I mean, like,
you know, Thich Nhat Hanh, if you were still alive to sign Miracle of Mindfulness for me,
like, I'd want that, right? You know, and so I get it, you know, when I actually step back.
So I want to do something somewhere at NFTNYC. My wife understands it. She's like, yes,
people want you to sign your book. She came home one day with like a box of Sharpies. And I'm like,
why did you buy me a bunch of Sharpies? Like, these don't work on my whiteboard. And she's
like, because you need to sign books, because people want you to like, and so I've been writing
a personal note in every book I've given out so far, signing them don't know how long it's
sustainable for. But, you know, when I see people like in NFTNYC, I want to sign them.
And likewise, like maybe I'll do something where, you know, if we can find a location that
I can like maybe sell it, sell some and sign them, maybe people can bring their
personalized copies and sign them, you know, maybe try to do something like that, because I would love
to do it because that's what people are asking for it. And so I want to sort of right now it's
been like exclusive to giveaways. We do have some people who really help. You talked about IYK
earlier, by the way, we do have some people like, you know, Adam Brotman, who wrote a
blurb on the book, the former chief digital officer Starbucks, who brought them in here,
you know, some friends who along the way have helped me out a ton, like, you know, captain,
and, you know, some other people who I really look up to. And we do did get them, we are
giving them what we call bookbound copy. So the same way, G money shirt, if you tap like a,
you know, the IYK chip in like a 90 cc shirt, you have an NFT that proves that you own it.
And if somebody else gets that shirt, they can tap it and take it, you know, from you or whatever.
We have like an NFC chip where we have a bookbound token that's so bound,
or only bound if you scan it that travels with the book. And we did it for about 50 people who
like we really kind of look up to and care about and would love to see what that might look like in
the future. But like, we actually are publisher, by the way, I know I'm way off the rails here,
our publisher. It's so funny. I don't think our publisher or our mass distributor that we
have to work with our publisher, like when we have a bulk buy, when someone says,
I want to buy a hundred books, right? I don't think they've ever dealt with so much nonsense
and shenanigans because of web three, we're like, yeah, so we're doing something with a,
with a, with a brand called leech skulls. And we're going to have an IYK chip and every
single one that they scan, they're like, I'm sorry, a what? We're like, well, one sticker goes here
and one sticker goes here. And we're like, so they've dealt with so much nonsense or like,
oh my God, when I, when I bought, I gave 150 away to my community and DJ network because they're,
they're the rider dies. I initially was going to give away 50 then 150 people signed up.
So I'm like, fuck it. Let's dig into the pocketbook. Let's get 150 out here.
Cause I really want to give away to my friends, right? And as I'm giving away,
and I want to make sure everyone had the chance to get two so they could give one to a friend
or family member too. And so, you know, as I'm doing this and I sent it over our boat distributor,
they're like, we can't give something to someone called like, you know,
like you can't put a name of like, you know, uh, of, you can't put a name that's like
John 69, four 20 and expect it to show up in the UK. Like you need real names on it.
So like, I was like making up the most creative real names were like, uh, it would be like,
you know, John six, the word and then like, you know, T E E nine or something like things like
that. So like, I wanted to make it fun. So when it showed up to their house,
they still had an inside joke, but also like got as creative as possible with like every single
name. Um, and so yeah, so like that was like, but even our book distributor was like,
what the fuck is this? Like when we get names, we get like full names and addresses. We don't get
like, you know, like, you know, like, uh, you know, NFT fairy or something. You know what I
mean? That doesn't work that way. And so I had to get really creative with that sort of stuff. Um,
so that stuff's really fun too, but way off the rails. But yes, is he,
I'm going to try to do something in NFT NYC. I can't promise it until I like actually lock it in,
but I'm having a few phone calls. Like I want to do something where I can get this book like
signed if people want it to be signed in their hands and get it to more people.
So I, I appreciate the question. So real quick, two things. One,
wake and bake with in coffee with captain, the fan throwing it out there and NFT NYC
throwing it out there. Two, Hizzy is a legend. The first time I met Hizzy,
I was hanging out with spotty at South by Southwest and it was a total vibe instantly. Uh, went and
got to see Jada kiss and, uh, had poos perform and styles perform. And then right after that,
went to this legendary concert with Q tip, um, Bunby, um, Dave Chappelle ended up
popping up. Red man was there would be a DJ by desk blade. Um, it was just a total vibe.
And then boom, actually on the shoulder was like, Hey, grab spotty. We're gonna go meet
Bunby. So then I got to meet button B for the first time. Well,
Bundy's my guy. Oh yeah. Bundy the beard. And then I got a trill burger
from Bunby himself. So it was just a legendary nightmare. And then
Hizzy can keep up, man. Hizzy a smoker too. So man, we was, we were smoking together. It was
a good time, man. That's just, and every time we meet, every time at any IRL event, it's just
all a big hug and it's immediate. All right. Pose, you know, so you got to get the pose instantly.
I once rode across like eight States with Hizzy's jacket
because he left it in the truck.
You know, shout out Hizzy, but who had the, I think it's executive. And then I am real quick,
Marcus. We got a question in from Mamba. He sent it in super early in the show.
I just want to get, um, Steve's thoughts on it. He said, ask Steve about if someone has a
handcrafted genuine web two product and wants to branch into web three integration on some level,
what would be his advice for a small startup? Maybe an NFT membership discount drop digital
coupons. What's your thoughts? So wait, when they say handcrafted, is this like a physical
item they're selling that's in web two? Is that the impression I'm getting from this?
I want to make sure I'm understanding. Well, uh, from what we know about Mamba,
like we hang out with them a lot. Yeah. It's, it's something similar. Like along the lines of
imagine like handcrafted belt buckles or handcrafted belts themselves along that line.
Okay. So there's a few things you could do here. Um, yeah. I mean, an NFT membership and
loyalty program is easy, right? If you have people who are going to want to consistently
be buying from you, you can certainly do things where it's like, you can sort of like have
that NFT discount membership. I think it will be cool if you can find a way to do it. Um,
and this is like a challenge, right? This is one of the challenges we figure out the tack.
I think this is a great case for I Y K's like I Y K chips that you attach. Now if your belt
going to get a little weird, you're going to be scanning in some funny places, but, um,
I Y K chips, you could actually show, you can do multiple things. One, you could show who
physically owns that product and then you could actually provide sort of discounts to people who
own multiple. So for example, if somebody owns your belt, if somebody owns, let's say you make
a pair of shorts, a shirt, pair of socks, whatever those things are shoes that you have I Y K chips
in, you could actually have sets that you then don't say if you own the full set, you get 50%
off on, you know, five products that you buy or orders over a certain number or give that
sort of loyalty. So you could have this combination. Um, number two, you could do things like scavenger
hunts where you basically say, like, look, you, you can attach to NFTs, the I Y K chips. One is
the ownership, one that you own. And then two would be the one that would show, uh, that
somebody has scanned it. And let's say it's a shirt like, like the 90 CC shirts. Well,
you could say whoever gets the most POAP scanned out of this thing or the most sort of, uh,
claimed scanned out of this thing, that person will then get a free insert thing here. So now
what you've done is you've created a world where, you know, somebody has tried to talk about your
product to people because they want to scan it. You want it, you want them to scan it so that you
can ultimately win the prize, but that's going to open up a conversation with the person about
what it is and why it works. And if you attach really cool art to it, they're going to want
to grab that. So that's another way you could do it. Yet another way you could do with I Y K and
physicals. And I'm bullish on this idea is you could actually have a scavenger hunt. So what's
hilarious is I used to lead internal communications at progressive. I actually read it when we sent
everybody home for COVID, which was like super challenging. 40,000 people go home. But one of
the things we would do is we had this thing called opening day with the Cleveland guardians,
where, you know, our top employees and people who like entered with an essay about why they love
progressive would then come and high five the players. When they came in on opening day,
they would hold the flag for like the Cleveland guardians and on the field and they played the
national anthem. And they got a whole experience that they went through. And one of the things we
did was we would do a scavenger hunt from time to time where people would have to find certain
things. It was a photo scavenger hunt where you would, you know, hashtag, you know, progressive,
you know, something or whatever and opening day or whatever it was and take a picture. And,
you know, the goal would be to fill it out because we had no way to track it.
And one of the things that we did, which is hilarious, is they had to come up with an
extra one. And one of the people who's particularly prone to shenanigans wrote in,
go find a friend of mine, this person who's like a friend of ours. She worked in the group at the
time. And so she was getting people tapping her off, taking pictures over and over again.
And it was like hilarious to watch unfold. Now, again, you could theoretically have an
IYK scavenger hunt where you could say, find our representatives who are wearing this.
If they find it, ask them to scan the shirt and ask them about it. And then they could then,
you know, collect those and sort of go through this whole process of collecting.
You know, Adidas did something like this where they had people go to certain stations,
take positive brands actions, scan an IYK chip, get a POAP. And at the end, you were then able to
collect a fill out this sort of passport and get like a set of merchandise and items.
So my initial thought is there's this brand building opportunity for you to use IYK
or some sort of chipping. And then you could decide which sort of choose your own adventure.
Do you want people to be rewarded for having people scan it? Because then they talk about it.
Do you want people to be rewarded for having certain sets? Do you want people to do an
actual scavenger hunt at like an NFT NYC, where if you find certain people in certain places
and you have hints of where they are, they can be rewarded. So you can actually create a
gamified brand building opportunity around this. And then from there, you can figure out ways to
grow it. But I'm super bullish when it comes to physical items of attaching the actual digital.
Now, again, not to say a loyalty program can't work, but to me, the digital attachment to a
physical item, however you get that in, because for people who don't know about IYK chips, these
are near frequency communication chips, NFCs. And an NFC, these have been used for years
by like dry cleaners and others. So like these things can go through the wash.
They're fine to use. So the other thing about an IYK chip that's cool, and then I'll kind of get
get off it too, that I'll say that you could do is what the NFTBA is doing. So Josh Wong, Peter
Fang, Swicky, like those crew, they put together an IYK chip jersey, where the idea is supposed to
be like, you hoop against someone and you want to remember it. Well, you tap the NFC chip and
you can attach a message with it that is jersey bound, meaning like, hey, remember when I dotted
that jumper in your face to win the game, you can put that in there, right? Like you can say that.
And so this concept is crazy to me because I think about the idea of how many trips I've taken
and how my memories fade, partially because of the title of this show, my memories fade from
those moments, right? And I don't have those sort of like memories in my head. But imagine
if I could tap an NFC chip and vice versa and tell a story about going out to three in the
morning at the dead mass concert and marquee and NFT NYC, and then coming back and editing my,
you know, my my Harvard Business Review article back in 2021. I remember that one. But I'll
tell you what people bring up stuff I forget all the time from that trip. Like I forgot that I
met Ja Rule. Ja Rule, who's in NFTs comes down, never met him before. My friend's like, hey,
this is Steve. And Ja Rule, exactly who you think comes up, it's like, nice to meet you.
You know, he's exactly who you think he is. But like, great guy. But I'd forgotten about that
until someone else brought it up recently. Now imagine if I could immortalize that in time. So
that's the other thing with IYK chips and NFC chips is that you could make it so somebody
wearing your belt, wearing your shirt, wearing your apparel can tap it and leave a message.
So now those things that you wear around can become a time capsule for your life and every
memory and person you've ever met. So I think like those are sort of the expansive things
that I'm bullish on with physicals, even more so than yes, brand building and loyalty,
but that's really expensive and really hard to do right now with the current technology.
And NFC is a lot easier to manage in that sense. So that that would probably be if
I think about it more, maybe I'll think of something else. But that's my gut reaction off
the spot. Phenomenal. Yeah, that definitely gave mom some insight. And just to be clear,
his his product isn't per se a belt, but it's along those lines. I don't know if he was comfortable
with me telling everybody what he is in the works of making. But that was an amazing answer,
as well as the insight from his in the comments. Thank you so much, guys.
Yo, can I ask a question just to add on to that before we switch topics possibly?
For sure. Yeah, I just I wanted to get Steve your opinion on the difference between the IYKs
and the NFC chips. We're going to be pretty much launching web three clothing brand coming
pretty soon. I've been working on it for a while, really excited about it. And honestly,
I've been very kind of like, I don't think I need it. I don't think I need it.
Had a ton of conversation Thursday with Cass Vegas and a few other people and just being like,
sell me on this. Just I'm going to give you all my reasons why I think it's dumb. Give me reasons
why I'm stupid thinking that. And I'm fully turned like exactly everything you said. We were talking
about storylines. We were talking about other things. Stevie Williams blew me away, how he's
basically putting them in skateboards, physicals. And you can scan the skateboard. You can mint
the skateboard on polygon. And now you can use the skateboard in the metaverse. And for me,
I was like, okay, game over. What do I need to do so someone can mint my T-shirt they bought
and possibly be able to wear it in Sandbox or Nifty Island or some of these others. So what is
that difference, I guess, between the IYK and the NFC chip that really stands out?
Yeah. So IYKs are effectively NFC chips. So what you want to do is you want, I would say me
personally. And again, this is your, do your own research, all that good stuff. I would go IYK
with this technology that has a multi-million dollar fundraising around behind it. And I also
know some of the big brains, Austin and some other people. I actually fucking like, I love Austin
who works for IYK. I hate him because the dude is shredded. Like his abs look like he swallowed
an ice cube tray yet he's really, really smart. So I hate that about him. But I love him because
he's a great guy and I vibe with him and he's cool dude. But like IYK has got some really big
brains behind them. So my personal preference, and this is just personal because I think everybody's
going to be different. There's other companies doing it is I would lean into IYK as a company
for the sheer reason that they have a large fundraising round. They're going to be more
likely to invade. It's the same reason I tell people when you look at like companies like
doodles or you look at companies like board apes, no matter what you think about you go
to labs and doodles. They have multi-million dollar fundraising rounds, which means they have
runway and the ability to build products, which means the ability to risk, learn and grow.
I like a very much the same way in the sense that I would say they have funding through
a 16Z, which means and you know what the most underrated part about funding is? Nobody ever
talks about this. When you get a fundraising round, you don't just go to a fundraising round
to get a fundraising round. You go to a fundraising round to get access to the network
and the people who work at those companies. My book partner, who I wrote this with, Scott
Commoners, is a 16Z research partner for obviously for reasons of non-disclosure.
I can't possibly know everything he works on, but the fact of the matter is you have people
like Scott who was quite literally the smartest person I've ever met in my life. I say that with
not hyperbole. That's just naturally smart. There's different types of smarts, but just a
brilliant, brilliant guy who's world-class at market design and many, many other things.
I go to him for his wisdom all the time on life and other things. Scott is a research partner,
meaning he advises some of these brands that have a 16Z funding, meaning that's part of his job.
So it's like, to me, when I look at IYK, those are the things that get me super bullish on
it, particularly because they have a fundraising round. They have advising coming from large
companies. To me, that's why I would say I would probably be in the IYK route because they're
probably more than likely going to continue to evolve and probably going to be at least
an early market leader to look at. So that would be my recommendation. First of all,
I also love the way you ask the questions because to me, one of the things I used to get shit for
that not everybody liked is back in my corporate days, whether I was being recruited for a job
or I was actually interviewing for a job. Everyone gets to the questions and they'll be like,
do you have any questions for us? And the typical ones you get, I was on a lot of interview teams,
probably because I don't say no, and I'll do it, but I was on a lot of interview teams
and people would be like, hey, what's the culture like? What's the career advancement like?
First question I would ask people is I would look at them and say, talk me out of this job.
Tell me why I shouldn't take this job. Look me in the eye and tell me why this job sucks and why
shouldn't take it and the things that are wrong with it so that I know going into it. And a lot
of people are taken back, but I want to know the buyer beware. I want to know what I'm getting into,
not this honeymoon phase where we're courting each other, but I want to know what it's going
to be like when we're married down the line two years and got three kids, right? That's what I
want to know about that job. And so to me, I love that you asked the questions and you challenged and
said, these are the reasons I think all of this sucks. Tell me otherwise with an intellectual
curiosity, but my gut feeling as you went to it is like, man, I think I YK, I would rock with them
all day. And look, money where my mouth is, that's what I'm using for these bookbound tokens
that I'm using for some of the special people who helped us along the way.
Awesome. No, I appreciate it. Yeah. And it's just, you know, there's so much going on, so much happening.
It's like you can use something and be four months into it and then you have to switch over
and et cetera, et cetera. So just questions.
Appreciate you showing me as always, birdie. And Steve,
good call back on the choose your own adventure. Those are my favorite books growing up.
So y'all see you slid that one in there. Yeah. All the pop culture from like the nineties and
late eighties and early two thousands. Like that's what comes out of my mouth pretty much at all
times. Cause it's just like, that's what I grew up with. So that's what I'm going to,
that's my point of reference. I love, I love that you caught that little slip in there.
Definitely. Definitely. I'm the same way. All right. Uh, executive and then IMU and then, uh,
T-roll for show. And then, uh, we'll get back to Ron. I know Ron's got some questions,
Lou probably got some more questions and then we'll just keep a question.
Hey guys. Hey, uh, thank you for having me on the stage today. I appreciate you guys
hosting and having these spaces. Uh, I don't know how I've been in the space for about two years.
I miss this space. It's been a great space. I came in from my buddy, big wineries, a good space. And
I've been loving every second of it. So once I gave you guys your flowers off the rip, so I don't
forget. Uh, Steve, great energy, bro. Uh, just met you to today myself. I followed all of you.
Actually, I found a lot of people in this room, put on notifications for a lot of people and, uh,
really excited. Uh, love what a few points you touched on, man. Like it's the connections in this
space. I've been in the space coming up on two years now. Like, and I didn't even like attempt to
do anything on my own for like a year, at least at first, because like, I wanted to understand the
inning and the adding of it. I want to understand why people did certain things, certain ways.
I want to see what I like. Cause I very quickly learned that, like, how you said there's a
niche and there's a community here. Like when I came in, I just thought, you know, like, Hey,
I'm going to make money. But no, no, I found out very fast that I'm making lifelong friends.
I'm building connections of people that I never knew I would even have a conversation with. Like
I've had a PGA pro golfer already DMing me before, when I first got into NFTs, I was like,
what is going on? This is insane. I brought my father, my father is 67 years old into NFTs with me
and three months, it was real rough to get them to understand it at the start. And like the biggest
part of this book is like, I wish I had it back then. I'm not saying like, it's great now.
I wish I had it back then because my dad, it's hard, you know, it's your dad, you're close with
them. So it's hard to get my point across because I feel like he should understand it the first time I
say it. I don't feel like I should have to explain because I feel like I say this clear as I can. And
that's just because we have a closer connection. I'm more patient with other people. So you know,
I deal with my dad every day. So it would have been great to be able to give him a book. I'm
still buying them this book, just so you know, because I still go through it with them on the
daily. But me and him love it. You know, it's one minute, we'll be like, dad, why aren't you
listening in one minute? Like, all right, I got it to work, and we're happy. So it's not like any
type of actual hate. It's just, you know, a little bit of argument. But no, I just really love it,
bro. I'm excited for this book. I definitely want to get it for a few people. Because like,
I love how you said this is your book tour, because this is web three. And all of us talk about onboarding
our family, our friends, guess what I dropped this book at someone that reads books house,
they're going to understand how NFTs and web three is work now, because you broke it down for them.
Like, I don't have to fully explain to them why I love my communities. I'm part of I don't got to
explain to them that you know, there are certain things that I can't explain, like you just got
to experience it. Well, you put it all on paper for people to understand. And like, I just truly think
that's amazing. I didn't dig into it yet, or anything. I don't want to act like I did. But
I am very excited by everything I heard today. Because it's incredible. Like, this is what was
needed. I have a friend that made a terminology one for like web three Jeets and stuff like that.
And she has it on Amazon also. And it's like, it's amazing. Because that's what's needed for us
that are in web three to give to other people. Because when you have a close relationship with
someone, it is very hard to be patient with them. And patience is a virtue. And having a book,
so I don't have to, you know, make sure I don't argue with people is so much better. Because like
I said, it's just you have a close connection. It's very easy to argue. Just really flowers,
really excited for this book. I go to definitely, like I said, I put all my notifications for
quite a few people in this room definitely want to be keeping up. I know a few people and just love
the energy. Your energy is what brought me on stage though, Steve, I'm just going to be honest,
it's you're just so excited. You're genuine, bro. Like, that's what this space needs to be built on.
And like you said it earlier, there's been a pivot in the space like last year around this time,
I didn't want to go in new spaces, there was too much toxicity, there's too much negativity,
there was too much just of everything that was wrong about the space. And now it's completely
flip-flopped for a greater turn towards what I've seen in the space when I first came in like,
you really touched on like the uses like something eyes would the simplest explanation of what web
three is to me what I explained to people is like, it's not like, oh, I'm trying to go to the top
and have the best project out there. No, I want people to see it for what it is. Like,
guess what I explained this way, Planet Fitness, if they wrote a smart contract, where people had
to send a certain set amount of US dollar in Ethereum to that contract, their month or their
NFT burned, that would be their membership. There you go. We would save on plastic costs
throughout the whole world. If people will just incorporate NFT smart contracts in the
daily memberships to anything, like it really would help our planet just as a whole. And like,
there's so many other benefits, but like, I just try to keep it simple when I talk to people. But like,
you're really breaking it down for people. And that's what I love. Just really excited. I'm not
going to keep on going on with the same things. But just really just shout out to everyone up here,
legends, a lot of people I know in this room that are amazing people. So I'm sure I'm going
to love this for now. Love that. No, I appreciate that. And I think your, your point
of like the way you can meet different people in web three is crazy. I think about like,
you know, the, the example I tend to give is like, you know, like Adam Bronman, again,
one of the people who blurred my book, he was a former chief digital officer at Starbucks,
former co-CEO of J crew. At one point he, you know, he helped, he's the one who got
Howard Schultz on board to bring Starbucks into Starbucks Odyssey a couple of years ago.
And the way I met Adam was he was a ape with a, uh, with a, with a stunt hat on. And we were
just DMing. And then it's like, Oh, he's like, yeah, it was the chief digital officer of Starbucks.
I'm like, Adam, that's a really big deal. He's like, nah, not really. And like, what's funny is
he's so equipped to understand this world because he was chief digital officer at Starbucks.
When it was embarrassing to tell his parents, he was chief digital officer at Starbucks. And right now
we're seeing this entirely new job class emerge of like community, right? Head of community,
community builders, all of those. And guess what? 10 years ago, when somebody was a social media
manager, it was like somebody pointed to their person in public relations and was like, Hey,
who's on Facebook? Oh, you are cool. You're our new social media manager. And then they would tell
them, people would be like, what the fuck's a social media manager? Now, when I left Nestle,
there was like a dozen social media managers, right? Like who are overseeing different things.
And similarly, we're going to see these job classes emerge where we're going to see,
you know, community leads matter because when you start to have an NFT community and you manage it,
it matters how you interact with them, how you engage with them, how you keep them together,
how you enhance their relationship with the brand, how you have those conversations with your members,
so to speak. And, you know, the point being though, it's like when I met Adam, I didn't know
really much about him except for he was another person who I agreed with. And then I found that
out. And we're just like, all I knew is I'm like, this is a guy who we're entering our first
doubt together. And we're like trying to do, you know, buying punks, comics and all this other
stuff. And, you know, here we are. So I think that's one of the cool things about the space is
regardless of sort of your, you know, your age, your gender, your race, your religion,
your whatever, everybody can come together on these shared ideas. And I'll have 16 year olds
on my stage who are doing analysis on charts, right? And I'm like smarter than me. I don't
care that they're 16. I don't treat them like I don't patronize them. But I'm the same with
my own kids. I treat my own kids like they're humans. I don't treat them like I'm someone not
omnipotent being. I do something wrong. I apologize. You know, they want to learn something. I talk to
them like they're adults. They're smart enough to understand. I don't want to talk to them in a baby
voice, right? They're nine, they're 12, they get it. And so, you know, when a 16 year old comes on
my stage and does chart analysis, I let them cook, right? Because they're smarter than me at that. And
that's okay for me to admit that as a 40 year old man that like somebody that's closer to my
daughter's age than they are to me by a mile is better than me at this. And that's cool.
So I like that you talk about that idea of like meeting people through here and then
finding those connections, because that's one of the beautiful parts about web three is like,
none of us would have met a father for this, yet we get to share amazing ideas
together on stages for hours at a time and just jam. So I love that.
Let's go. I love it, Pro. I just just wanted to say I love that you're a family man. You're
my yourself too. Also, that's just always an icing on the cake for me. I'm a web web web
three dad myself. So it just much love. Appreciate you guys. I'll jump down to make more room for
y'all though. Hey, we shot the web three days. I'm one as well. I actually have a nine year old and a
13 year old. So that's why that we have kids in a very similar age of the small world, small world.
Well, yeah, man, Ohio, Ohio boys raising kids in web three, right? We out here.
So after you executive coming up, man, I really appreciate the questions.
I appreciate the support and the flowers. It really means a lot. And you know what I'm saying?
Your vibe is a tribe. So welcome to the tribe, bro. I am you. What's happening?
Hey, everyone. I think it's good afternoon. Wake and bake. First and foremost, happy episode
1990. Oh, looks like the Niners might be going back to that same same year this year. I hope.
No, man, just great conversation. I've been tagging along for the last two, three hours,
just working on this door that broke on me. But Steve, congratulations on releasing a book.
That's that's commendable. It's, you know, it's needed, especially when you're trying to
trying to bring a knowledge base from all walks of life together and try to try to make it easy
for everybody to understand and onboarding. And it's always needed, right? And then I also wanted
to say, man, talk about knocking down stereotypes, right? We're in a we're in a wake and bake,
smoking weed, talking about futuristic things about how how does come together and solve problems. And
you know, what what a picture can do and what digital art can do and how it's how it's how
it's kid like, but it's also adult like at the same time, right in the same token.
Pun intended, right? So I just I like the conversation. I like everything. I have so many
questions. I always I always love running into people who are a lot smarter than I am. And
it's just it's like somebody said earlier, I want to sit down and talk pick your brain brain for
like three, four hours. And, you know, I haven't read the book, so I can't say that, you know,
I've read it or anything like that, or I'm prepared to read it or anything like that. And, you know,
if if if I if I get the chance to purchase it, I'll definitely purchase it and take a look at it.
But I just wanted to give you your flowers, you know, an OG on the space, for sure. I've been
listening to you for a while off and on through my ups and downs in life, you know what I mean? So
I did have a couple questions. Just just curious, more, more, more just curious of thought. I don't
know if you've touched on it or not, but I'm a person that likes cryptic, right? Cryptic things,
crypto in general, just like that in general, and I'm a music head. So I ran across this YouTube
channel that they were like deciphering what bone thugs in harmony did when they released their
book, their first CD, right? And how later on in the years they released the same CD and how the CD
changed and had cryptic messages inside of it. And I was just wondering, like, did you do you have
plans on your second book to like tie into your first book? And that was my first question. And
then my second question is, does your book touch touch on the difference between centralized and
decentralized and how deep into the weeds do you get with that kind of expertise?
Yes, on the first question, I mean, if we write a second book, I'm sure there will be through lines
and there will be things that make connection points. But you know, we'll see what happens
there. You know, like this corny answer, but like, just got to get through this first one first,
right? Got to make sure it's good enough. Got to make sure, you know, like, thankfully,
we've gotten on sort of that Amazon best seller status. So like, hopefully, we're selling enough
that our publishers happy and would have us back, right? Like those sorts of things. But if we do
a second one, I'm sure there will be times the first one, we do talk about the nature of
decentralized versus centralized a little bit, particularly as it relates to blockchains in
different ways. But the truth is, we don't go super deep on it for the reasons being
that sort of like the 102 stuff, right? And this is sort of meant to be a book that can be like 101
into 102. Like, that's even like more than I mean, centralized and centralized is almost like down to
the 202 level. So we do hit on it a little bit. But it's not a major focus for the sheer reason
that our goal is like, there's so much ground to cover, right? Like, and that's maybe to your
point about a second book. Like, I think an NFT strategy book like that is actually an
important thing for like a second book where you can go deeper into those sort of things.
Because right now, I think the way we do it is it's like up front, it's like we want people
who think that this is all a big scam to get to the point where they realize it's not,
then we want to say, okay, this is how you can use this technology authentically to use
it in different ways. Boom. Then we want to say here, the executional considerations and things
we have in the moment. And then at the end of the book, we actually got a really good question
recently. It's like, you didn't spend a lot of time on the challenges. You only spend, you know,
a shorter few pages on the challenges. Like we talk about challenges like, you know,
the technology barrier at the moment, right? Like right now, there aren't those tools.
Eventually, there will be the square spaces of this world. But at the moment, there's not like
somebody's going to do NFT loyalty in a box and it's going to exist. Right now, it doesn't, right?
And so we talk about like that being a thing. We talk about like the lack of diversity in this
space, because frankly, that's a problem, right? Like the only way that companies are successful
is when I spent a tremendous amount of time in my career, I'm one of the things I'm most proud of
is I worked on the diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts at Progressive where
we did things like make job ads more approachable to people because, you know,
women are less likely to apply to a job if they don't need 100% of the requirements,
where men will do it if they reach 70%. So we didn't allow them, you know, we made our
recruiters only put certain preferred requirements. They were limited to five.
They couldn't put a dozen because we wanted to increase the process because there's unconscious
bias that exists. And obviously, that's the deal with the space as well. Anything tech forward,
there are, you know, a lot of people and you want to give space for other voices because any company
or industry succeeds when you represent the general population better, period, full stop,
and a story. So like, that's the challenge we cover. But we don't cover it super deep.
And someone said, why don't you go super deep on the challenges? And the answer is,
because so much is going to change on that by the time someone picks this book up in five years,
in five years, the tech barrier is probably not even going to be a thing, right? And so similarly,
when you talk about challenges like decentralized or centralized, I think that the discussion that's
going to advance in the next five years in which blockchain and how people use them.
And so because of that, we do talk about what the difference is between a centralized database
and a decentralized blockchain and why that matters. But we don't go into the levels of
depth, say, within the blockchain of how people are actually organizing it, because
that's so deep in the weeds at this point. And I do think we're going to see a lot of
advancements in that in the next several years. So for that reason,
we didn't get as deep into the weeds in that one. But really good question. And I love the question.
Sorry. No, thanks, man. I appreciate that. And one quick last question. Since you said you
worked at Starbucks, and I'm a coffee man, my wife's a coffee person, too. So she gets
these rewards all the time. I was wondering, do you know if I'm able to share my rewards with her,
or she's able to share her rewards with me or royal or, you know, like,
not unless you buy off the same phone, and especially with Odyssey, which is I work on
Odyssey, which is their NFT program, like you both would need to sign up for it separate based on
having your own Starbucks rewards account. So they're always individualized. But I always
recommend people if you drink Starbucks, you should have an account anyway, because you can
like link it to Delta and get SkyMiles and the whole nine yards. So I would say go on that one.
Hey, she's the breadwinner, bro. You know, I can't pay in Bitcoin yet. So I'm still waiting on that
one. But hey, I'm gonna step down. Thank you. Appreciate it. Thanks for leading the space,
you know, for the children that are coming in at all ages, 90, 60, 50, 40, 30, 20, 18, 16, 10,
6, 3, 2, 1. All right, I'm out. Appreciate you, man. Appreciate you. Much love, much love.
We'll go through the show. I think Will and Jonathan.
Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Sounds correct to me.
Hey, what's going on, guys? Good afternoon. Hope everyone's doing great this afternoon.
I was trying to hit my, I thought I was going at 1.5x on a podcast or something, because Steve's here.
And then executive got in here and he was mashing that energy. And I was like,
whoa, boy. I was like, I need, he's talking, Mark. Okay. Like, I need to buckle up because like,
this is a wild ride, especially for the wake and bake crowd. Like, you know, you get a little,
you know, glazed over and like, they, Steve starts going, man. He's passionate and he's just
banging out facts and he's just banging out one-liners. Just alpha, alpha, info, info.
It's just amazing. So, mad props to both of you. I just want to show flowers to how much community
means to these projects and community builders, people that can interconnect people and projects,
explain them, break them down. It just really is impactful. And Steve, the question I kind of
had for you, I saw your post that was very heartfelt saying thank you. And basically,
it was the TLDR on it was, I need to accept flowers that people are giving me. I have a
hard time accepting that I'm doing well. I'm very hard on myself. Maybe I'm paraphrasing this.
If you need to correct me at any time, please do. It's something that I push myself athletically.
I have my entire career or in the business world at all points in time. So, I don't achieve,
once I achieve something, it's just like, heads down, what's next? You're climbing up the ladder.
You're knocking down the shots. You're doing what you need to do to be successful. But
you need to be able to spend time and reflect. And I think in this, especially in our culture
and this instantaneous culture where it's instant gratification at all points in time,
everyone is looking for something and their eyes are peeled for the next thing. Everyone's got
attention span of a goldfish. But like, the thing that I wanted to say to you, I just,
thank you for bringing people together and melding those people together and being able to be that
developer of relationships, deeper conversations that are more in depth that people want to geek
out about. It's great to talk about the weather and spaces do it when it's slow and there's no
news about NFTs and stuff like that too. And that's great because you're just coming to a
community where you can trust, share and develop new bonds. And this book is showing
all that to you every single time. I see it on the timeline, people giving you flowers,
the you and Scott, all the grinding you've done it for the last couple of years on this book,
the research, the education, the communication of that education into the web three world and
your show with Captain every Monday through Friday at eight o'clock Eastern. It's just,
it's great. And I just want to say thank you and just kind of shower you with a praise and
wish you all the best and can't wait to hang out. I actually live like 25, 30 minutes away from Steve
and who knows if we ever would have connected if it wasn't for NFTs. And now it's, you know,
it's on the blockchain that we're, we're both DJ network pass on the Genesis pass holders and
that's the way we bond ourselves. And that's pretty cool. So thank you for letting me come
up here, waking Bay crowd. Appreciate it. I'm following as many people as I can try to outreach
and connect people and projects. We don't need to spew hate and say, Oh, we do this game where
we compare these projects. It's like, no, we don't need to let's find ways to interconnect them.
Let's be positive in 2024 as we head into a bull run. Hopefully let's get out of that
bear mindset and, and go from there. So thanks guys. I'll, I'll shut up now. Um, as I continue
to ramble on with my ADHD. No, I appreciate you. I'll say two things on that. I think number one,
um, yeah, I mean, I, I'm somebody who has trouble celebrating wins, accepting compliments,
and someone compliments me. I have some self-deprecating quip to like basically tell myself a
story about myself. It's poor and I'm trying to change that. I'm trying to rewire my hardware
to be humble or this or the other. Like compliments do not land and I do not believe them. And I
started telling this story to myself and realizing that that stuff's implanted when you're young.
There's a whole bunch of stuff and studies and data around that. But beyond that, like
it's also a matter of like, I think I have this fear that if I accept compliments and
that I've been successful in doing something, even just this book release, which by any measure,
you would say it's been on bestseller. It sold more copies than we were asked to buy
or a publisher. It has, you know, been accepted by hundreds of tweets. The web three community
is successful, but I'm afraid if I say yes, then I'm being arrogant or I am putting myself in a
position where I feel like I am then maybe less hungry because part of what I've prided myself
on is that, you know, one of my ethos is when nothing else works, work will work and I, you
know, hungry dogs eat and you know, I don't want to get comfortable. And so I think your,
your sort of like, you know, statement there, I always like dig into myself a little bit from
a brain perspective and say, why do I think this way? So I think a lot of us struggle with that
and everybody's got a different thing that was implanted there, right? And you know, I've talked
to a therapist about this exact issue and tried to get to the bottom of it and tried to implement
things to help me rewire my brain and practice myself even when uncomfortable or it feels silly
at first to try and accept that sort of praising compliments because it's something I have struggled
with my entire life. And meanwhile, I will celebrate my friends wins from the mountain tops
and I will praise friends and strangers and others in ways and bring them onto my stage
to talk about and make sure that they know like, Hey, like I appreciate you and you're awesome.
And I have trouble doing that myself. So I appreciate you said that very much so. And
yeah, man, I think like it's important to be able to share ideas. And the other thing I want to touch
on what you said is like, you know, I think critique is okay of an individual NFT brand
when you're trying to be honestly critique and sort of improve right with the idea of
improvement. One of the beautiful parts is that if you belong to an NFT brand, a lot of times
you're actually getting the most relevant feedback from a customer because you know, if somebody
holds a, you know, board ape or a crypto undead or you name it, right, a goon, whatever it is,
when you give feedback, it's because you want to see the brand improve. You want to see the brand
get better. You're not doing it from a place of fudge or anger. You're doing it from a place of
where you think there's opportunity. Now, the other thing about it is though, I tend to be,
I get shit for being a little bit too nice to founders sometimes. The reason I do that
is because I am a, first of all, I have asymmetrical information at times. A lot of these people are my
friends that I met in 2021 who have then started companies and I know how fucking hard this is.
And I know they've executional considerations. I know like the considerations that people don't
know behind the scenes, like when you're talking about the legal and regulatory implications,
right? Like moonbirds is an example where people get upset about their nesting and they totally
move the fucking sticks on it where it's like, number one, you were originally nesting towards
they act like they didn't get dropped an oddity that they could have sold for like six grand at any given
time, but they didn't because they were expecting it to be worth more money. And then when they
didn't, they're like, Oh, well, all I got was his oddity. Well, if you had sold it, you would have
more than paid for the mint of your moonbird. And I think people move the sticks on founders
and also aren't cognizant of the regulatory problems that come up along the way. And that's
just one example of anywhere, you know, behind the scenes, there's a brand I know I can't get into.
There's a brand I know behind the scenes that had an entire B2B deal with Amazon set up.
And then that fell through another one, the B2C deal, and then Amazon sort of rubbed away from it.
Well, nobody knows that. And nobody cares or understands that because they had to sign
NDAs and all this other stuff. But it's like people critique these brands being like,
what are they doing? The rugs or this or that? It's like, well, you don't know how hard it is
or the things that go on behind the scenes, the conversations that happen. So I think like,
you know, like recently, like Borneo Pia Club, as an example, Gordon Goner tweeted about my book,
he bought 100 copies, it was grateful as hell, like I met Gordon changed my life, like amazing.
But people were like, Oh, my God, why aren't they supporting you? It's like,
I know why they're not supporting me, because I know from months back and talking to Greg
Garga, you know, Greg Solano, Garga from Borneo Pia Club, where the regulatory hurdles are and
where the hurdles are of potentially putting at risk when they have the biggest target on their
back. So I was not offended by that, right? I was like, I get it. And other people were offended
on my behalf, which I actually very much appreciate, right? Like, I love that I have
friends that ride or die for me who will look out for that, like, that's being a great friend.
But I also have this asymmetrical information at times where I understand it. So to me,
being kind and understanding that it is very hard to start a business, and having people
come at you where there's financial interest, it's trying to separate I was actually dollar
from, from crypto undead was DMing him specifically about the fact that how tough
it is to separate the signal from the noise, because people who are mad at dollar,
when the when the drop happened, we're mad because they were told by the market,
this thing was going to go to 30 or 40 soul. And when it was 15 to 20 soul people were like,
wrong, terrible job. What the hell? What are you doing, dollar? It's like,
he's delivering on what he promised. He's not giving an over, you know, an over promise of any
sort. But you're filling in the blanks and then getting mad when he doesn't answer your
phone the blanks. It's like somebody who gets mad because Game of Thrones didn't do what they
wanted in the show. It's not your show. Right. And so like, that's the point. If you could
predict what was going to happen, the show would suck because everybody knows what's going to
happen. And so I think a lot of times, like people need to take a step back. That doesn't
mean there's no accountability for founders. But I think sometimes when you like actually
breathe and consider what it might be like to be in their shoes, you realize that there's a lot
more that goes into this stuff than meets the eye. And I think people miss the plot on that a lot.
So like what you said there, T-ro about people like PVP and yelling, it's like, you know,
it's like, be cognizant and also be cognizant. Just like just a general good rule of thumb in
life. Don't be a dick. Like just people don't want to like, you do know how many doors have
opened for me just by me being a nice person. Not on purpose. You know, I mentioned it earlier.
I was nice to someone who I was like friendly with genuinely, not anything expected in return.
And a year and a half later, I was one of like 12 people. She put on a billboard in Times Square.
Like that's the type of thing that happened. Just because I was nice. Like it costs zero
dollars to be kind. And so I think like that's also just a general good rule of thumb is don't
be a dick because like you like put the shoe on the other foot and you realize like, okay, like
there's a human being on the other end of that PFP. There's a human being who is founding that
company. And like if they have good intentions that are trying, it's like people coming at Frank
de God from talking about how he's rugged them. It's like, you know, you know, he's not rugged
because he's still here because they didn't invent an art puzzle. Like it's not a rug.
And so I do get frustrated when we have people who like act this way in the space and get overly
it's funny, fine to be critical. It's great to be critical. It's okay that people are critical of
me. It's okay. People are critical about the book. As long as we're attacking the ideas and
not the people, then at the very least we get to a spot where it's like ideas are like clothes,
man, you can have the worst ideas ever and you can change them. Right? Like when I look at what
I was wearing in the early 2000s, like when I look at myself in the year 1999 with frosted tips in my
hair with that hair look that looked like sort of like a dinosaur, you know, the straight up like
gelled ass hair and I was wearing Abercrombie and Fitch, like not a great look, but guess what?
I can change my clothes and I can change my ideas and somebody can challenge me on stage today with
an idea and tomorrow I can have a different idea and that's okay. So challenging ideas is one thing,
but going after people, man, like come on, like it's just like realize like what you're doing and how
you're doing it. And so I think T-roy, you brought up a totally fair point there that clearly ignites
a passion within me. So I appreciate you. Yeah, anytime Steve, I appreciate you and
everything you do, just hearing your voice and especially in the afternoon, you see much more
chipper. You're ready to go and rare and to go. So I feel like you got a little energizing.
I can't come out, I can't come out of the gate in the morning at 8 a.m. and just start yelling
people's faces off. It'll take them off guard a little bit, but at 1 p.m. I can get a little bit
more squirrely and get a little bit more froggy in the afternoon. Understood. Tyler likes to get
froggy, but T-roy, I enjoy frogginess and the undeads. I saw you were looking at the
killer bears. I got, I bought, somehow I bought seven killer bears. I don't know what happened.
You like slipped, you like slipped on a banana peel and found seven killer. That's what, yeah,
T-roy is just pushing, T-roy is pushing P out here. I'm gonna, I'm gonna be, I'm gonna be
looking at a killer bear. That's another one we have been on our show. Like people talk about
coffee with captain also. It's like probably the biggest money pit of all because we'll have
these founders on and then they're amazingly inspirational and they care. And then I go buy
their project and I'm like, shit, I spend more money. These are expensive episodes.
Killer bear is on the list once I have the liquidity though, because what they're doing
is absolutely crushing and I love it. I bought some toys just because that's what I can afford
to do right now. Like I am not a rich man. I hope to one day get there, but you know,
like when you're an entrepreneur, I make way less money than I did in the corporate world.
And I also don't get health benefits or anything like that. And because I'm so busy
and working 70 plus hours a week, my wife literally left her job to help me with it
because she is the fucking goat. And so like, you know, like you can't afford everything.
And so I can't buy a killer bear off the spot right now, but I am looking at one
because I think that what they're building is actually crushing and I love Ben and
what the team is doing in that community. Absolutely rocks. Appreciate that.
I got a deal for you live on air. I'm going to let you choose one of seven. Well,
actually one of six because there's one that I really love and I want to keep.
One of my bears, I'm going to give to you just because I want you a part of the project.
So you can look at my wallet and if your son or daughter,
or your wife wants to have some input on which one I want to send over,
I just want to pass the buck here live on stages. Ben NFT and Jed from killer bears were so kind.
They've been talking to me for the last two weeks in my DMS. We've been going back and forth,
kind of kind of playing like tease and, you know, hey, yeah, you're cool. I love you.
You know, like kissing around and all of a sudden now we've got a big old smooch happening.
And what happened was I know they were going to be on your show with captain the other morning.
And I was like, oh, shit, I better front run this thing. And I know I wanted I finally got
my liquidity unlocked from Coinbase. I'd been on the hook for 10 days. I've been in jail.
So I had no liquidity, no, no onboarding ramp that that made any sense other than buying
more and more crypto undeads through cross mint on tensor. That's a devious devil's game that
they're playing that they're letting DJs put credit cards on there. And it's basically an
on ramp to buy immediate soul on tensor through cross mint. And the cross mint sends it to your
wallet and you're paying on a credit card. It's mind blowing. Anyhow, I'm rambling. I'm getting back
to it. Steve, I want to I want to get one of these six to you because what happened was I front
ran your show and their appearance on your show, the founder, both Ben and Jed. And they I bought
one and then I was like, oh, if I buy one, I'm going to want to like maybe, you know, make a
little off the first one if I sell one and keep one, you know, stuff like that. You know, it's
just investment theory, right? And they're like, okay, all of a sudden, they dropped this thing
where you if you bought four kilobears, you get one OG kilobear free. And I was like, hey,
Jed, what the hell, man? Why don't you tell me about this this morning? Because I was like,
I would have bought for a four pack. And then I'd have the extra fit. And I was just joking.
I was just totally busting his balls. And I was like, totally cool. I want the community to do
ecology. Me in my brain, I was like, what do you mean? He's and I posted, I was like,
yeah, I can't afford that or something. And then all of a sudden, boom, I bought the four pack
and they sent over a free kilobear OG and they sent over a kill a cub as well, because that's
what they're making the voyage over to soul with. First, they're crossing that bridge. So I'm just
excited for the journey. Watching their three minute trailer, I was watching with my girlfriend
and her friend the other night. And I was like, hey, you guys know who Seth Green is?
Like, you know, like he's he's been in a bunch of movies and you know, he's he's he's bought
born apes and all this stuff. And basically, I'm just passionate about it. So Steve,
I'll stop rambling and just I'll set my wallet address over to you and you and your family
can pick one and I'll send one out. It's just my appreciation and giving back to the community.
I bought that four pack and got one free. Might as well pass it along to someone that's awesome.
And we'll we'll just enjoy the voyage with what that team is doing.
Look, I'll take a look. I can't promise I'm going to take that is a big gift to accept.
So I don't know if I can. I will look at it. Or if I take one, I will then it will call it a
loan. We'll call it you are the ultimate blend loan. And I will work on paying it back if
I do take one because they definitely cannot accept like a full on killer bear for free
because that's like a big gift. And I appreciate you offering. And I also love your mentality.
You're like, well, if you're gonna buy one, you know, you might as well get six. That's a
that's a fucking just an absolute Chad move. So appreciate it to you. I will take a look.
Can't promise I'm going to take anything because that is a big gift. And I appreciate the offer
more than you know, because that is such kindness. But I'll definitely take a look at that.
You don't appreciate you T row and yeah, welcome to that community. It seems like
they really like you there and you've been accepted with open arms. So love to see it.
Yo, shout out to you. Yo, T row, you're a legend for that woman. Like that's love
right there. And that's what I love about this space. That's what I love about web three.
We're here, you know, I can't count the many times I've I given the NFT away to somebody
who I truly love and wanted to wanted them a part of the community that I was passionate about. And
just like, yo, dude, like this is amazing over here. You need to be a part of it. So shout out
to you zero because that is web three. That's that's us. That's what we love to do. You know,
it's not about the dollars here. It's about wanting that one person who can provide value
for that community that you want in your space with everyone because man, that's you know,
that's that's the way that's web three baby. Let's get to the homie will
and then Jonathan after your will what's up.
Now, first off, I want to say, you know, that that's really awesome, man, really,
really touching that that you would do that for somebody regardless of whether or not you like them.
Like, it's a rarity to see in the space. So just wanted to tell you give me flowers for that.
Um, one thing I wanted to point out, I think everybody kind of gives back in their own ways.
And yeah, I definitely understand, Steve, what are you talking about? It is,
it is difficult to run any business, right? I'm a pretty older gentleman, like a lot of people in
this space. I was a very, very early believer in NFTs. And the reason that I was an early
believer in NFTs is, you know, I basically was born in the 80s. So I saw technology evolve over
time. A lot of people never saw that kind of technological technological advances that,
you know, happened from from the 80s till till 2021. It's actually amazing,
all the things that we've come from. But, you know, I'll try not to ramble too much,
but more give a little more insight. I just saw people just continually talking shit about it,
like NFTs garbage NFT this, so I started research, I'm like, Okay, everybody's talking
shit. Let me let me see why. Let me let me look at I don't need to have somebody else tell me why
they're garbage, because they're just gonna say they're garbage with no explanation. I want to know
what these things do, how they work, and so on and so forth. And when you dig into the nitty gritty
of NFTs in general, like there's there's so many use cases, right? So many use cases,
it's JPEGs is just, it's like a cover level, right? There's there's so many levels to this,
that a lot of people just don't even get it. Like the NFT, like if you look into,
we'll use that, for instance, right? I'm not saying go buy Vt. I never I've never
tried to promote any coin, telling people to buy anything. I'm just trying to give an example.
So they use NFTs in a sense, in a way to track like BMW parts, a lot of people don't even know
they're involved with that. Track tees, track, Louis Vuitton bags, other other types of high end type,
type objects and so on and so forth, or items. And a lot of people don't even realize that these
things are happening on the background when it comes to NFT, because they think NFT just means
JPEG, and that's that's that's your general consensus. They think NFT means you it's basically
garbage and somebody can rug pull it at any time, and so on and so forth. They don't understand the
context and you know, the different layers and levels to NFTs, you can make them where they're
pretty much untouchable on chain, or you can make them where you can slide the picture whenever
you want. Lots of different ways you can make them. And a lot of people, they came into the
space, they got an NFTs thinking they were going to get rich, and they found a community, right,
and then they realized the value was in the community that they found and not necessarily
and getting rich, and that community helped them build on themselves and build their value and so
on and so forth. Me myself, I've been pretty savvy, I came into crypto from the stock market,
and I was like, I'm going to come in and take the quickest places, this whole place is a scam.
But I came in and I learned, right? I wasn't stupid, like a lot of people are like,
oh, I'm not going to touch it because that whole thing is a scam. Like me, I'm like,
everybody's saying it's a scam, I want to go look at it, I want to go check it out.
Because typically, most people are fading the wrong thing,
and they're usually on the wrong side of the trade. And again, it falls back to the 99%.
But overall, since I've been in this space, I've learned so much. I've been here since before 17,
I stayed silent in the background for a long time and just continued to trade and take liquidity and
take liquidity and take liquidity. And then in 2021, man, I just continued to see people get fleeced
just like 2017 and so on and so forth. And I'm just like, dude, I just got to help people.
And you know, so that's why I started trading openly and showing people kind of like,
you know, where the bullshit lies when it comes to money. But money is just it's just a factor.
And it's a layer in the overall process of what's going on here. And I think that's where a lot of
people get lost. They come in, they think only money, right? They don't think of where is the
value in the space. And where can I continue to build my money? Right? And how do you build
money? You find quality products to build them in. You find quality places to put your money.
And there's so many quality places now outside of Bitcoin, which is actually amazing. This is what
a lot of people are just, you know, they hit the wall basically when it comes to understanding
the space beyond Bitcoin. But you know, the development side is absolutely amazing. It's
absolutely amazing, right? And NFTs are just that next level that a lot of people aren't
looking at. Yeah, and I love how somebody brought up tensor, man. That's game changing,
right? But I will say like wallets, they allow something similar, right? You can use moon pain,
a lot of other processes. And I think people getting into or getting past the stigma,
and this was always the hard part, was getting people past the stigma of decentralize or
centralized. Solana really broke that barrier. I will say that. It's not me touting Solana
specifically. I've never been a chain maxi or anything like that. It's just me showing,
or me talking about, you know, these are the instances that a lot of people miss and show
you that, hey, the decentralized, centralized part should just be how you want to operate.
It shouldn't be like, this is the say all, be all that most people think it is.
And there's lots of money to be grabbed in the space. There's lots of communities to be
built in this space. And yes, I agree, people shouldn't actively attack people because number
go down. I hold a ton of NFTs that literally rolled floors for months and months and months,
and now I'm up significantly. But it's because I saw the vision, I saw the project, I saw the
people that were in charge of it. And I'm just like, dude, I'm like, there's value here.
Like, this takes six months to play out. It takes six months. If it takes a year,
it takes a year. But there's value here. But a lot of people aren't coming into this space
from the bear market, right? They're coming into this space just now, and they're expecting
number to go up. And you know, there's different portions where you're going to run into ripples.
And you know, overall, I think like founders themselves, they should just ignore a lot of
the bullshit, like just like, you know, if there's a problem, like, all right, we're looking into
it, we're working on it, but continue to build like it, like, stay on your path versus like trying
to teeter to what people want. There's so many founders, I see that flip positions, or they flip
what they're trying to do. And I'm not saying like, you can't change directions, you can 100%
change directions, right? But if you're constantly trying to stay on trend, you're not staying
towards what you came here for, you're not staying towards what you what you were truly
trying to build. And I feel I feel there are founders in the space that do have lost their way
on what they were actually trying to do. But I feel there are a lot of founders who are trying
to feel out what they want to do. But that's also due to, you know, a couple different things. And
that's experience, right? A lot of founders, this is the first first job, it's their first
business, it's their first everything. And so to find that proper business model, it may take them
some time. And people are not willing to sit around and wait. And that's fine. Like just founders have
to understand that, you know, you're gonna, you're gonna catch some shade, it's part, it's part of
the game. But that's why you make the money, you know, in the end, and you know, everybody else
is just a slight investor, just taking small portions of liquidity. I think doesn't founders,
you know, they kill it in this space. Like, I've thought about it every day. I'm like, dude,
I'm not even talking from a rug perspective. I'm not even talking about from that perspective.
I'm just talking about bringing ideas and teaching people. And one thing that I try to do,
and I know you give a lot back, Steve, too, and you come into these spaces and you talk a lot.
And me myself, like I try to teach, I teach people, you know, basically trading for free,
like I don't, I don't charge anybody, not a penny, not a penny, guys, there's no, there's
no freaking tricks or anything like that. Like, I literally just like, hey, you know, and I've
been trying to do that with profits and stuff on the weekends, is try to come in there and
just literally open up a chart and like, look, this is what this is, this is what that is.
But I do that because that's my skill set, right? I'm not going to tell people like, hey,
this is how you do this, or this is how you write code, or blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,
I do know how to write code and stuff like that, but my best skill set is trading.
So I stick to what I'm good at, and I teach people what I'm good at. It doesn't mean everybody's
going to be good at it. It doesn't mean everybody should do it. But for those interested, you know,
that's, that's what I try to provide. And I think if more people came out and offered,
you know, what they're doing for free, that just shows you how not only well that person is
doing, but you know, how much they're really dedicated to the cause or dedicated to the space
to helping people understand better. And I think a lot of people do, I think a lot of people do
give, right? I just I think that they're the people that do give are the people that are
paid attention to the least, I'll put it that way, right? The people that do provide like those books
you guys see, those are cheap, bro. I was like, that's a thick book for 26 bucks. I was like,
Jesus, you know, I hope you're writing five words on each page because it's a pretty thick book.
Yeah, so I mean, overall, you know, like, again, I think just people need to
slow down a bit in this space, stop expecting fast money, stop being gamblers,
and invest in quality, man. Invest in what you think will progress things because that progression
will will spin back around to you. It will. It truly, truly will. I've seen it time and
time again. And I love how you brought up like 18, a 16 z. And I think to like, I wanted to touch
on one more thing, and I'll be quiet. I've been talking a long time. But the other thing too,
is where you talked about Steven, I think this is it's a hot topic, right? It's a hot topic.
People, people get a little shivery when they hear the word, but it's diversity. And I think
like diversity itself, like, there's nothing wrong with with diversity, I'll put it that way. And
I'll give you an example, something that makes sense, right, rather than just saying we need diversity.
I'll give you an example. People are culturally different, right? They're culturally different.
They they live around who they live around, they listen to what they listen to, they eat what they
eat, and so on and so forth. And so to bring in different experiences from different cultures allows
you to appeal to everyone, right, allows you to appeal to all cultures versus just appealing to
one overall. There's, there's no way, even as far as we've come, right, even as far as we've come,
that all cultures will blend together and become one. It's just, it's so difficult to do that.
And so you have to try and have an edge from all angles. And the only way to have an edge
from all angles is to have somebody who has that experience from that culture. And I'll put it
that way again, it's not it's not a it's not a weeding out of people are weeding out of skill set.
It's more of a finding the bright person from that culture that can relate to those people
and to bring those people in to allow them a spot in an area, and to allow them to develop
in that area, right. And overall, I mean, it will bring a melting pot or a central consensus
between all cultures in that space. But it's not it's not saying necessarily that, oh, we're
going to pick this person because of who they are versus the skill set that they that they
provide. So I think a lot of people do provide skill sets in the space to from different cultures
from different cultures, it just they do it in their own way. Some people are louder about it,
some people are quieter. But yeah, that's, that's it. Overall, I just want to kind of come up and talk
about that a little bit. So many bangers in there. I a couple points that I want to jump
off on number one, the last one you made so important to be like, inclusive in how you do
things. Like when I was at progressive, we actually had a diversity and inclusion council
with people representing from our employee resource groups who looked at every single ad,
because the unconscious bias that can come across in those things, people don't realize. And if you
don't have someone else's lived experiences, you don't know what it's like to feel when somebody
does certain things or walks into certain areas and feels some type of way. Like I remember when
I was in the recruiting area, and we got a diversity recruiter. And we were like, we cannot
get diversity in this one claims office. And we can't figure out why, like, we'll get through
the process and like, then they don't take the job. And our this person was, you know, the guy who
was diversity recruiter was a black man, and he goes to the office and he goes, well, one, when
I walk in the door, everybody's white. And when I look on the wall, there's a picture of everyone
works on the here. And everybody is a white middle aged male. And that is an uncomfortable
place to walk in and say, I can't see myself working here. I never could have lived that
experience or understood that. But our diversity recruiter walked in and right off the bat knew what
was going on. And I'm not saying that every single person who is black is going to think
that or every single person who's white is going to miss that. But that's part of the
reason of having those like blind spots, because our brain, it brings process millions
of pieces of information at once, and then they try to put them all together. And then ultimately,
when you can only process a certain amount, you create shortcuts. And so things like that,
that exist, like will like there was something where there was some very offensive to our
LGBTQ plus ERG that we never would have known because of a certain use of language in a
commercial and ended up getting changed. And if we had put that out in the wild, we would have
been misrepresenting what our values were progressive, which did include diversity,
equity and inclusion. So I think your point of like wanting to have a more diverse representation
in the space to me, that's like a base table stakes thing that you want to have as
many diverse voices because when somebody tells me they feel some way who is a different race,
religion, gender, et cetera, it is not my job to tell them they're wrong because their feelings
are not wrong. They're based on their lived experience. My, my job is to listen to them
and learn from them and sit back and understand that I can be a better member of society by
understanding how to make it more comfortable and inclusive for them. So I love that you said
that number one. And I think that that's such an important thing, especially in the space that
grows. Number two, you know, you talked about like you doing trading, like I listened to you
talk about trading and it's like watching Neo in the matrix, right? Like I can't do that.
And I know what I'm good at and know what I'm not. And I think a lot of people are insecure
about what they don't know. And they want to sort of have that sort of like Dunning Kruger effect
where they're like, well, I'm really good at this. So I'm really good at everything. Right.
And so I don't want that. I want to understand what other people do. And I want to like say,
this is not my area of expertise. And in fact, Scott and I will have discussions where I'll be
like, I'm going to kick this over to Scott because he's world-class at this and I am not
right. And vice versa, like he's mentioned learning about it's wild when a Harvard professor
tells me he's learned about communications and marketing for me, but that's where I spent 15
years. So of course he's right. And so people understanding what that is. The other thing that
you said about like NFTs, you know, changing hands, the key with the founder is separating
the signal from the noise, because some people buy your NFT and want the price to go up. And
that's the only reason, right? And their utility is that. And so to me, it's like creating like
Gordon Goner had this like point with his quote where he said, we build the sandbox and then the
holders build the sandcastles. We give him my P rights, give him the opportunity. It is the
job of the founder to build a sandbox based on what they believe the project and the company to
be. And then it is the job of the holders to exist within that framework and build off
it accordingly. And you can select in or out based on that. Last thing I'll say,
just point about like people hating NFTs. I had this eye opening moment when I realized why. And
again, raising my hand, I'm the guy who got a 2.9 degree at a state school, right? So I'm not like,
I'm not like the Harvard guy. That's my co-author. But I will tell you, I learned from Scott why
Harvard is arguably the greatest university in the world. When Scott started teaching NFTs,
I spoke at I spoke at his class at one point when he did a case study on on Hugo Labs and
board APO club. And this was like a year and a half, two years ago. So that's how early he
was teaching this thing. And a question he commonly would get was, what are your bosses at Harvard
think about you teaching about NFTs when they have all this bad media coverage? And his answer
was really insightful into what Harvard Business School thinks about. And I've had this experience,
by the way, with every single person I met with from Harvard, the intellectual curiosity,
and that his boss has said, if there is a $40 billion industry right now, no matter what anybody
thinks about it, we should understand what this industry is. And the fact that that was the
reaction from his bosses two years ago shows exactly what universities and people should be
doing and exactly how I approach things. If someone feels a certain way, there's always a
root cause and people go to these surface level things and argue about it. What I want to know
is, why do you think that? And maybe you're right and I'm wrong, right? If somebody thinks a core
belief that disagrees with my core belief, instead of having cognitive dissonance to yell at them,
my answer is like, why are you right and I'm wrong? Because I want to be right. And maybe I'll
change my mind and maybe I won't. But a lot of times you can get down to the root cause.
And when it comes down to NFTs, the root cause can almost certainly be found with anybody you
talk to. But if your answer is, if someone says, I don't like NFTs or crypto and you're like,
have fun staying poor, you're not going to get a lot of people winning over that way, right?
But if you go to them and you say, well, why do you think that? And let them extrapolate and you
say, well, why do you think that? And you listen and ingest and then answer their questions,
not tell them what you want to say, but answer based on what you're hearing.
You'd be surprised how often I can talk to money managers, agencies, fortune 500s,
and have them be like, oh, this makes more sense to me now, but you need to actually listen.
And that's one of the reasons why, to your point, like, you know, I said it earlier,
the reason there's a board, board ape on page one is we flat out listen to our editor and
our publisher. And we made it the point of we get it. This is understandably ridiculous to see
this JPEG and say that company got a $4 billion valuation. We get it. Here's why it's not.
Here's what this is. And I think that that level of framework and that level of approach
is the best way to do it. And I always have in the back of my head, that concept of like,
if somebody cares about something like, like I can say, like somebody might not like Taylor Swift
and they can say they hate Taylor Swift's like music all day long, but Taylor Swift's doing
just fine without you. And so why do you think she's doing just fine without you?
What do people like about her? And then you can start to understand it. You watch one
documentary. You're like, oh, okay, this makes a lot more sense. Then you watch another documentary.
You're like, this maybe makes a little more sense. And maybe you still watch it and say,
her music's not for me. I don't ride with it, but you might get to see why her fans vibe with
it. And there's always those reasons. I remember when Post Malone came out and I had people who were
in my age group, cause I'm 40 being like, I don't know, it's just some dude who mumbles.
I don't like it. I'm like, well guess what? He sells out fucking football stadium. So
something is resonating. So it's probably better for you to understand why that is. By the way,
I think Post Malone slaps, that's beside the fact, but like some people, sunflower is a
fucking vibe. But like some people look at it and say like, I don't get it. It's okay to say
you don't get it, but like there was this mentality. And I saw it a lot with my parents'
generation. My dad was big on this and the boomers. I'm not saying it's a boomer thing.
I'm not trying to be ageist, right? But like I see it a lot with my parents' generation.
It might just be their friends where they're like, well, that is stupid. If they don't
like something or that music sucks. And I'm like, well, objectively it doesn't suck because if it
did suck, it wouldn't gone platinum four times. So it's like, no, like if my dad doesn't understand
Jay-Z fucking legend, then like that's fine. He doesn't need to understand Jay-Z,
but I can still like Jay-Z and the rest of the world can still like Jay-Z. And he can
still be a person who absolutely came out of, brought himself up from nothing to the world and
has now become, there's a reason why people resonate with him. And it's more than just the music. It's
a man who represents something that a lot of people want to achieve to be a billionaire who
parked his own way. Frank, like Jay-Z's a modern day Frank Sinatra motherfucker did it his way,
the whole way up. And that's amazing. And when you explain that to someone and they're like,
oh, okay, maybe I don't like his music, but I can understand what people really enjoy and see
about him. And again, his music slaps. I love Jay-Z. I think he's amazing. And he's reinvented
himself a bunch of times. But the point being like, there's always a root cause and there's
always an underlying reason. And I think sometimes people just want to dismiss, well, I don't like
this. And that's the way the world is. And it's like, there is no right or wrong. There is just
eight billion different perspectives in the world. And you are one of them. And understanding the
rest of them is how you get further in life and being empathetic and disagreeing without
being disagreeable is the key in the root cause of all that. So I don't know. I love,
I love what you said. Will is just spitting bars. So I just, I got all fired up real quick.
Just a quick response. Yeah. I think that that's the biggest part. A lot of people don't,
don't understand. It's, it's looking at metrics, right? With everything.
It's like, okay, you got $8 billion here. You got $10 billion here, $20 billion there. Like,
if you'd have told somebody 10 years ago, a game is the future of a multi-billion dollar
industry. They would have laughed at you, right? They'd have been like, gaming is not going
anywhere. It's just a bunch of addictive kids playing things that don't exist. And now look
at, look at the gaming industry, right? And in these, this is, this is where most of the
society and this is why most of the society fails. They, they don't like something and therefore
they think everybody should not like that same thing, but money talks and numbers talk,
right? And money and numbers is everything. I don't care if it's diversity. I don't care
if it's not diversity. I don't care if it's girl songs. I don't care if it's boy songs.
I don't care if it's their songs or whatever it is, right? I don't care if it's NFTs.
I don't care if it's rocks in somebody's front yard. It's all about like, where is the interest?
Where is the money? Okay, there's money there. We need to be looking at the sector and figure
out how we can penetrate it, right? From a business standpoint, from a business standpoint,
and so many people fade that, that easy to play. I mean, look at punk guys, like people
literally lost generational wealth trying to sell those for pennies thinking they were going to
zero. And now look at the floor doesn't even move. The floor doesn't even move.
Snowfro used to give away punks to like 13 year olds as a bar mitzvah gift. And like some
story like birthday gifts and the parents would be like, why the fuck are you giving my kid this
digital thing? Or why are you giving me this as a gift or a wedding gift? Like ridiculous. Like,
what is this? And now those people are feeling real good. But like, you're right. Like punks
were like a thing where it's like, people were getting them for free and giving them out as gifts.
And it's like, you know, the end of the day, like I say this about like NFTs, I say it's about like
Netflix and blockbuster, video games were faded, cell phones were faded, the internet was faded,
technology does not care about your feelings, it doesn't. And so at the end of the day,
understanding why these things work is more important than just looking at them and being
like, I don't get it after the first 10 minutes. For that reason I am out. It's not fucking shark
tank. This is your life. And if you want a business to me, it is irresponsible not to try to understand
the latest technology. It's one of the reasons why the best business Starbucks ahead of the game
spending money beta testing to be in this thing, you know, like progressive as an entire group
called level 20 that is isolated from the rest of the group that works on new technology,
things like can we work in the marijuana industry, et cetera, as his regulation comes up, something
that we were discussing five years ago when I was at progressive, right? Nestle has an innovation
group that's able to work on things again, CBD products, things that Nestle proper does
not have the risk tolerance for, and they're intentionally split off and isolated. The
smartest businesses do this. Most businesses do not. And that's why you put yourself
at an executional risk when you don't. So I know I think you're right.
Phenomenal, man, it's been a phenomenal conversation. We missed 420. So
that's how you know, anger, bro. We missed 420. Yo, Steve, you got stoners missing
420 and not even really caring because I really don't give a damn that it's been a banger.
Oh my God. Between, between the convo just now, just that last 20, 30 minutes between
you and Will is just phenomenal, man. You guys, you guys cooking, man. I do want to get to
Jonathan those, you know, so that way, you know, we don't have his hand fall off. Jonathan.
I do want to say it was a good conversation. I have no idea what I was going to even say
because I've been waiting for like an hour to talk. And my highness has been going up the
entire time. So I don't even fucking remember, but a great space and maybe I'll get something
in next time, bro. I literally take notes in my phone or on my computer because like
in coffee with captain format in the morning is very like I vibe with waking big because like very
similar. We let people cook, right? We let people go because like, you know, there's nothing wrong
with the other type. I'm not saying it's bad, right? But you want both, right? Like modern markets,
like my favorite show and in an hour they cover everything and they have like tight deadlines.
But my vibe is like, I want to have conversations where it's like, I want to go back to something.
If someone says something that I felt like Will said something that was awesome. I wanted to
answer it. Will heard something from me. He answered me. I then answered him. Like to me,
like that gets you some of the most meaningful conversations. So like, like it's funny when I'm
when I'm doing coffee with captain in the morning, even as the host, I am literally taking notes.
Like I have in my phone right now. I just, you know, like just telling myself here,
like as, as Will was cooking, I wrote Scott talking about what his boss at Harvard said
about NFTs, why people hate NFTs, root cause sandbox and sand castles, signal from noise
and know what you're good at. I took those five notes at my phone while Will was talking
because I'm like, I need to like make sure because I would have forgotten all of that.
So I feel you, Jonathan, sorry, you've been, you've been, you've been running, you've been
breaking your shoulder, holding your hand up. I appreciate it. And I'm sorry if you forgot it,
but like, yeah, I have to take notes just for that exact reason, because I will forget
for sure. So no, I appreciate that. You know what? I'm glad you said it because it just came back.
Mine was that I came in here and I didn't know anything about being paid. I came into this
space like in 2000 or 2021, I believe. But I didn't know you could be paid for any of the stuff that
we're doing, speaking in spaces, helping with communities. Like I didn't know that. So all
this time is instead of like January of last year is when I actually was told information.
And while I was at Art Basel, I was asking people, including Romney, on how to really move in this
space better, because I didn't know that. And I have way more connections and meeting people just
from being nice. And I've been given a lot of stuff from just being nice, because I'm from
North Carolina, man, being cordial is like the most important thing. But if you're not cordial,
a rage gets in me that isn't it eats me on the inside, because I don't know why you shouldn't
be that way first. That's the first thing you should be is cordial with somebody because
we're two people. So why not? Until, you know, situation turns, then you got to be a little bit
more aggressive pushback. But other than that, being cordial is like the first default for me.
And I really enjoy this space. And I'm glad that all this happened just because I wanted to go
to different spaces, because I was curious to see what the hell else was going on. And then it
led me to where I am now. And this has just been really dope. And I'm just gonna keep going. But I
will say the hardest thing for me right now that I'm still having to learn is that I need to know
when I actually need my time to be paid for and the things that I do for people. That's the
hardest thing for me right now is knowing like, how do I calculate my time that I spend with
people in spaces, and not where I'm just doing a bunch of work for people. But they're reaping
the benefits, but I'm just helping. So that's the hardest thing for me to learn right now.
So true. No, that's that's actually I'm not even allowed to negotiate. I can be lead gen. I'm not
even allowed to negotiate coffee with Captain sponsorships, because my co host is amazing
at sales and sort of has that background in that traditional industry, and has the ability to do
it in a way where he's good at understanding value, as somebody who has struggles with self worth in
general, which is what I do, I have trouble alone, starting with self worth, let alone thinking
someone should pay me for something, you know, and so I'm the one who's like terrible at that,
because I don't know what I'm supposed to be paid for what I'm not what I'm giving away for free,
what I'm not. And so, like, for me, it's like, you know, I have never found that balance. And
because of it, like, we're lucky like we had a book agent that we use because that book agent
pay him this much money, because I would have been like, we'll do it for free. This is a service to
the space, right? I mean, I would have been terrible. And likewise, like, when somebody
comes to us for a sponsorship, I'm like, we can't ask for that much. And like, my hose would be
like, Well, look, this, like, we were talking about, like, sponsored interviews, for example,
okay, as an example. And I was like, Well, you know, I feel bad about this. And like, I don't know if I
want to do a sponsored interview. And like, you know, obviously, like, we'd only take sponsorships
that align with our values. And he's like, Look, in our second hour of our slot, we interviewed
Daniel Ligre, the CEO of you collapse one time with Julian Holguin, the CEO of doodles, we
interview like, you know, like the Ben Ben from killer bears was on on Friday, he's like, you know,
all these people who come on our spaces, you know, Ralph Paul, like, you know, came on and we interviewed
him, it's like, when you look at those people, he's like, that is a valuable spot in real estate.
And he's like, if we're going to do an interview in that, that is something that we may or may not
do, but we believe in, we don't think it's a rug, he's like, then we should charge enough money,
because what is that spot worth, that we are giving to Daniel Ligre, the CEO of you collapse
that we're giving to Jeff Nicholas, and illa from board representing board API club that we are
giving to, you know, Julian Hogan from doodles that, you know, when we're, you know, the
founder, co founders of polygon, and all these other like big, like, if we're doing that,
what are we, you know, what are we, what is that spot worth? And when he puts it that way, I'm like,
I guess that makes it valuable real estate. But I struggle with I just don't know. So like,
I'm with you, by the way, like the struggle is very real, and how I monetize myself and my time,
especially, I've never done this before. I've worked in a corporate environment for 15 years.
Now I eat what I kill. I don't know what I'm supposed to make for consulting. I don't know what
I'm supposed to make for time. I don't know what people are supposed to pay me for things. Like,
I'm so bad at this. And I'm figuring it out as I go. And I don't know, as long as I can pay the
bills, I'm happy in my mortgage and stuff. But like, it's hard, man. Like that struggle you said
is like, just know you're not fucking alone in that. That is something I struggle with literally
every single day of my life, when I'm talking about any meeting, anything, because like,
I got a lot of DMs and someone wants to do a meeting. And it's like, is there like, I always
want to take the meeting, I always want to help the person, but you only have so much time. And
then I take those meetings, and I'm not able to do my work for Starbucks, who is paying me. And
it's like, so like, it's just such a struggle, man. And just know like, I don't have an answer for you.
I wish I like, there are people who can give you tremendous answers to that question. I am awful at
this. And I'm still learning. So you know, when you get that answer, you let me know, because I'm
right there with you. I appreciate that. I'm not gonna hog up any more of the time. But yeah,
I've been holding that for like two years. So finally, actually seeing it out in the space
this recorded actually is very therapeutic. And 2024 seems to be the year of truth. So
this is my truth is that yes, I love helping people. I will do the same thing you're doing
with how can I help them? How can I help them? But then I have no time for myself, lose my
identity. And then I got to find it all back over again. And it's a it's a very hard thing to
deal with and navigate. But I love this space. And I just wish that I had more money to buy
more things. But if I'm learning how to charge for my time, then I would to be able to buy
and support the people that I want to support and not just lights, follows and shares and
getting people on and being in the spaces even though I love doing that. But there's a way to
monetize that that I have to definitely figure out because I'm a single dad, my daughter's
home school. I don't have any help. It's just me. And I have done nothing but manual labor my
entire life. And I'm very good at it. Very good at it. But I like doing this more didn't
kill my body and my brain is strong. So I'm just gonna keep going. And it's getting
Hey, you got it. Yes, sir. I just want to take the chance to say, you know, Steve,
thank you so much for pulling up. It's been an amazing conversation. I see a lot of parallels in
thinking between yourself and I, like a lot of other people have mentioned on the show today,
not wanting to let people down how you prepare, taking notes during the space going over your
the order of like your questions and notes. I do all the same things. And it's awesome to hear
from someone so like minded. If you want to plug anything else, definitely take time to do so.
I want to remind everybody that the everything token is out now by Steve Kaczynski and Scott
commoners. Coffee with captain every weekday at 8am Eastern Standard Time. And one last
question that I have for you before we wrap it up. I see sincere I see the hand. I was watching
your, your speech or how whatever you want to call it at NFT NYC big brands on the blockchain.
I do urge everybody else to go check it out if they have the time to. One thing that I wanted
to definitely ask before we got out of here was your favorite video games growing up. I know you
mentioned it in the space, your favorite video games growing up. And what are you playing
currently? Oh my god, this is such a fucking Chad question. I love this. God, man. I am
somebody who can't choose a single video game because I'm not kidding up until like Xbox 360
from original Nintendo. I was a little old, a little like young for Atari because I was born in
83. So Atari was a little predating me. I owned every single video game system. I worked,
I did chores, I got allowance, whether it was game gear, fucking virtual boy, which gave people
seizures, all that shit. I owned all of them returned my shit because of that news, man.
I was so pissed, bro. It was like, I was like, I own like all of them. So like,
this is a great question. I'm going to leave something out at one point. I put a tweet out
and I like ranked them like based on like top 10 based on what it was. I should try to find that
because I'll leave some out. I'll say in the early days as awesome and Mario and duck hunt
were for onboarding people and what they did. Um, I would say Mario three in the early days
is my favorite Mario Mario two was a little different, but Mario 64 Mario and 64. I had
Atari too, by the way, but then 64 Mario, Mario 64 changed the game with the open world concepts,
the way that, but for me, again, for my money, I love Mario 64. I'm an Ocarina time guy at that
same time. They know when I look at like video game system, evolutions, like I'll go Mario three
for the Nintendo. Uh, as much as I love all the original games, Mario three was the one that if I
had to single out my Nintendo game, it's my jam. Um, for the, uh, you know, for the, for the Genesis,
obviously Sonic's always going to rock for the, and I won't go every game system, but I'll kind
of go errors. Zelda six, uh, you know, uh, Ocarina of time that Zelda like that was for a long
time. My favorite game ever. And in the newer generations, I would say the fallouts in the
Skyrim open world games are sort of my favorite ones to play. I would just emerge myself and try
to complete every single thing. Fallout four. I know people love fall out there. Fallout four.
I love that game. I think it's fucking awesome. I can't wait for another fallout at some point.
Like that's probably, you know, on my, on my Mount Rushmore of list, you know, obviously
there's like the sports games along the way. I was at one point, this is a true story on my old
Xbox. They used to have online trophies on Xbox live because I'm so nerdy in the initial Xbox.
I actually plugged into land lines and played people across the world. And I don't even know
how we all found this dual software in the original Halo one and like blood gulch and shit with my
friends like that, not like land parties, like literally people I never met that would be playing
in Halo one. So that's how nerdy I was before it was cool. But like the old Xbox, there is a game,
a NCAA football game, and I got a trophy for one week. If you were on the top of the world leader
board, you would get a trophy in your virtual trophy case. I have that trophy on my old Xbox.
So that game, that NCAA game, I got to give credit to NCAA football from the sports.
And then right now, honestly, I mostly do, I mostly jam with my kids. So we play a couple
different Zelda games. We play, you know, we'll, we'll, we'll kind of jam out on super smash just
because he enjoys it. And he's like elite at that. So like, when we play that, I'll let him
just kick my ass, which is like what I'm willing to lose. You know, Mario Kart type stuff. When
my kids beat me, Mario Kart, I'm simultaneously mad, but also proud at the same time. But like,
I did not let those motherfuckers, I do not let those motherfuckers win. Like those kids
have to beat me for real. So when they beat me, they know they beat me. And then with my brother,
I play a lot of Halo 2 online just to like blow off steam and kind of de-stress a little bit.
On the blockchain side, Battle Plan and Pirate Nation are my two go-tos right now,
because they're allowing me to play sort of like, you know, asynchronously over time,
which means that I can actually work them into my day and play for 15, 20 minutes.
Those are sort of my two jams. So it's like, I left a million games out like Goldeneye and
those sorts of things that absolutely changed my life. But those are the ones that kind of come
to mind for me over time. And I'm sure, like I said, someone's gonna mention a game and I'll
be like, I can't believe I left that out. Because like, video games are like, life for me,
like that was something that I grew up on. I was that guy who when the old school Nintendo winner
stayed on, I never dropped the fucking sticks. So like, that was so important to me. And I grinded
and that that's what and what's really makes me proud. Like proudest moment, one of the proudest
moments of my life with my son, which is really cool. My son was like four, maybe even younger.
We had a Nintendo Switch, he's nine now we had Nintendo Switch. And we had the open world Mario
game that's their Super Mario Odyssey. And there are these little mini games that require
very little thinking. So I handed him the controller to play the mini game. And he
without any instruction, I have it on video because I was filming because I'm like, Oh,
my god, my son's playing this thing I love without any instruction. He exited the mini game
and started running around the world. And I have a video of that moment when my son
probably fell in love with video games, because he then started running around. And now
he's like jamming all day, crushing it. And it's so fun. And people are like, Oh, is he
rotting his brain? My son plays soccer, my son goes outside, my son enjoys going on walks.
But guess what? He still loves playing video games. He learns about team dynamics. He learns
about, you know, he has he has this reaction time, he learns about, you know, hand eye
coordination, he learns about conflict. He so like, no, I don't mind my son plays video games.
And I love that he's a fucking boss at them.
Ocarina of Time, baby. That is a legendary game right there, man. That game actually helped
me read, man. A lot of people say it's rotting your brain. No, you have to read in that game in
order for you to get anything done. Especially like, you know, at that age, like what, man,
you know, I'm not getting all that all the fucking puzzles done by myself. You know,
I was reading a strategy guide, so it forced me to read more. And yeah, man. So yeah, I love
that game, too. That game holds up every special place in my heart, especially, you know,
Super Mario three as well, because I had the Super Mario all star game for the Super Nintendo
and it had that in there. And I was one of the ones we used to just like burn out every single
day, you know, me and my sister and my cousins would just pass the remote back and forth.
Like, you know, if you die, pass the remote, you know, that those vibes, man, I miss those
vibes. But awesome, bro, man, dude, are you into Star Wars any chance?
I'm like, I would say I am a, I am a noob at Star Wars compared to like deep Star Wars fans.
I'm like in the worst position because I know enough about Star Wars to be nerdy.
And I love it. I love it. I love the movies. Like, I believe my friends make an event,
even when like when new Star Wars movie comes out, it's so funny. A new Star Wars movie will come out
and people will be like, I don't like Solo. I'm like, just shut up and let me enjoy that Star
Wars is on a screen and I'm watching it. OK, so I dig it to that degree. But like my co-author
swear to God, he got in this like this argument with the trivia, these trivia people because
they said, like, what what is the only planet that doesn't have weapons? And he went through
his brain and index like some random planet that was mentioned like once in the comics back in the
day, like not because he's like, this is the only time that like, you know, this is like basically
this is the only time that like there wouldn't be a planet with no weapons. And they're like,
no, it's like like Tatooine or something, because there's like one line that's like,
oh, Tatooine doesn't have any weapons. It's like they have fucking weapons. We know they
have weapons and he was so mad. So he is the ultimate nerd at that. I dig it like to the
point where like, I get it. I'm a nerd. I like the lore. But like, I'm not like Star Wars people
who are real Star Wars people would say that I'm a poser. But like, I absolutely like, you know,
like I just I enjoy it. But I'm not like a I would say I'm more of a casual in that sense.
Like, like the person who loves football and watches NFL, but might not know every single player,
that's sort of the analogy of me to Star Wars. I might not know every single storyline and plot,
but I friggin love everything about it, if that makes sense.
So my follow up was going to be, dude, this game that they dropped, like I think it's about a year
ago, it's the the Jedi survivor game, bro. This is this game. Oh, my God. This guy's been going crazy.
He's been going crazy about this.
Listen, man, this game, if you are a Star Wars fan, bro, like I am a huge Star Wars,
I love Star Wars, you know, I grew up on it. But man, this game is just phenomenal. Like,
the storyline, the storytelling, like, I really wish they would make this into a movie. It's
great. It's so fun. Super customizable. It's open world. And it just it gets me glued into
this shit, bro. I can't stop playing it, man. Right now, that's what I'm kind of like a little
into. And of course, the sports games, the maddens, the MLB, the shows and all that good stuff.
You know, she just want to say, oh, go ahead, Marcus, you know,
now I just say real quick on the game tip, Pokemon Stadium. And then I also want to say,
Lou, the callback for the game, like game informer and stuff, like having to read
through the manuals, like trying to beg your mom, like, please, I need this so I can beat this game.
You don't understand life, bro. Come on. Come on. If you didn't have a game,
if you didn't have a game genie or some shit, you know, I used to game game.
Yeah. Like when I when I tell my kids, I'm like, I want to tell my kids, I'm like,
you want to know what's hard. Go play the original. Not the Ninja Turtle game. That
was like the arcade game. Play the original Ninja Turtle game. Beat that shit without game genie.
Then I'll tell you what's hard in life. But you want like that'll build grit. But no,
I went true story. I got made fun of because one of the things I said in third grade is they're
like, or maybe it was even first grade. They're like, what do you want to do when you grow up?
And my answer was my answer to my ideal career was I want to be a Nintendo tips giver,
which they're like, what even the fuck is that as adults? I'm like, that's people who write
Nintendo power. It's the person who does the weekly Nintendo power show on Saturday morning
around the cartoons. And that was what I want to do when I grew up. And I just got absolutely
just my dad used to make fun of me for that regularly. I'm like, it's a job. And again,
video games, perfect example of people have no idea what the hell they're talking about.
Like people like when I was good at video games, and I used to play with people who played
competitively. Like when I played Halo two with like competitive people, and they'd be like,
you're not going to be able to play video games for a career when you grow up. God,
I wish I didn't listen to them. Bro, my school, the high school that my son wants to attend,
which is crazy to say out loud that he'll be a high schooler this next school year.
They have an e-sports team. His high school has an e-sports team.
That's a game changer. That would have changed the game in high school. Like, man,
your computer class, we would like literally link up the landlines to play Counter Strike on that
man. So like, man, if they had that in our generation, like, I wish bro, check this out.
It's part of the graphic design track because it's a JSTEM school. So it's like, you know,
it's a junior STEM school and bro, like in the graphic design, he's like, yeah,
we have an e-sports team. We do a story panels. We then turn it into animes. We do all the
animation, like the stuff that he was saying, I was like, man, can I go back to high school?
Because like this class sounds dope. Like, I wish, I wish, like I took grass in this stuff
in school because like, I'm fascinated by architecture. But like that, that right there,
that is dope. And you know, the aerospace that they teach how to, they teach robotics,
they teach how to fly drones, like all kinds of stuff at this school. I'm like just baffled by
what is happening now. Cause you know, I'm an 80s baby race and I didn't do as well.
And so to see the transformation of the technology and what I was being taught, you know, I went from,
you know, no computers to computers in school to get my first gateway computer at home, you know,
like through the whole motions to like now, like these kids are getting Chromebooks as they sign up
for school. Like it's crazy, like what's going on now. So like, it's just dope to see.
Because our generation, I think became more open-minded to the idea growing up in a non-tech
time into a tech time. And now that we're in charge, it's like, we're the change. We're being
the change we want to see. And I love to see that. And that's awesome. I got to run in the next
couple though, cause I do need to get my dog out cause he's going to kill me if I don't get my dog
out in a hot minute. So I probably have time for like another question or something. And if I can
plug real quick before I go, like one thing, like cause my, my editor would kill me if I didn't,
I'm terrible at sales, but I'm going to say it like, one, please buy the book on Amazon,
my pin tweet available anywhere you buy books, whether no matter where you live in the world,
whatever audio, uh, audible. I read the audio book along with my coauthor. Don't worry. I slowed it
down. I know I talk at an auction to your space, slowed it down for the book. Um, two,
like if you buy the book and you like it, those five star reviews on Amazon, we have 21 right
now, all five stars, any review you put on Amazon absolutely means the world to us. Cause
that helps us with that algo that helps us get things done. So if you pop on there,
if you buy the book and you do enjoy it or you think it helps you, it helps onboard someone
a quick five star, five star with a couple of comments, five star with a couple of comments
in a picture, whatever you can do absolutely helps us out because right now we hit the phase,
we hit a bestseller. It's going well. Like it's getting in the hands of people. Somehow
a book about niche technology was like top 1300 and all the books on Amazon,
every book on Amazon, we were like in that top percentage, right? That's awesome. But like next
phase comes. Now people go there. Your, your boss sees it and looks on there and says, what's this
about those reviews make a huge difference. So, uh, you know, buying, uh, reviewing. And then of
course, if you get a tweet me, cause I want to thank you personally, I appreciate that. Um,
I could probably stick around until like for the next couple of minutes to like five, but then my,
my dog is going to kill me cause he is, he is rearing to head out and he has been, uh,
he's been staring out ringing the potty bell for a hot minute.
Now we're going to look to wrap up as well. I do want to get to sincere. I know sincere.
Let's get his last question and then we could, we could wrap up the space. It's been an amazing
one. Um, thank you so much, Steve. And you guys heard it, man. Go to his pen suite.
Please support, man. Get that book. There's no gas fees. You already know the vibes guys. So,
you know, it's, it's super informative. It's somebody doping web three who's building dope
fucking shit for us to onboard the masses to help fucking understand this shit better about
like, so come on, man, let's get it sincere. What's up.
Yeah, I can make radio bro. Just want to give you guys your flowers every week,
delivering coffee with cap Steve every day, Monday to Friday, delivering.
That's why I love this space. That's what keeps me fucking addicted every single day. There's
something popping out here, something new, something going on that keeps us all coming
back for more. My question for Steve, what do you do on a daily basis?
Like a little habit, a little subliminal thing to help onboard people,
something that we could do in our routine daily as people or just something that we could try and
do more of to be able to spread this great place with other people. You know, I haven't had a chance
to read the book yet. It's definitely on my to-do list. If I could go pick it up at Indigo
chapter this weekend, I'm going to go peek and see if it's over there to grab one. But if not,
I got my Amazon order coming in. So before I get a chance to read it and get my own takeaways,
I'm hoping maybe you have a subtle suggestion for everybody here that we could do on a daily basis
to make this space greater and help onboard people on a daily basis.
Honestly, like to me, it's it's about it's going to sound like it's not a great answer,
but I'm going to say it's about letting the universe come to you a little bit. And by that,
I mean, you're here every day. You mentioned you listen to coffee with captain, you listen to
wake and bake. So you're doing your job there. You're getting the book. You're going to read
the book. It's going to help help position you because like it's better to be prepared
and not have something happen than be unprepared and have something happen. Right. It just in
any case, you know, like, you know, like, like the best way to be ready is to stay ready. And so
in that sense, when you read this book, you're going to have every possible answer you need
for a normie who comes up and asks the question. My answer to that is like what you're doing is
exactly the thing they should be doing sincere, which is like you show up, you listen, you
participate, you jump on stages. You don't have to jump on stages, even if you just listen.
And then you are prepared because when somebody when inevitably an opportunity comes up where you
see a place that blockchain makes things better, right? You see a tick. Your friend buys a ticket
and that ticket turns out to be a counterfeit and you have the opportunity to have the conversation,
obviously not rubbing it in your friend's face or anything like that. But like have that
conversation, right? Or you see, you know, your friend who gets the an email, like,
what is Starbucks Odyssey? You are well positioned to have that conversation. My answer is always
letting the universe come to you. You know, I saw the V friends handle. Somebody was talking
about how stupid V friends and NFTs were in trading cards or something. And they responded
in a very non way, like, hey, totally get what you think that there's definitely more than
the eye, but understand it's a really complicated world. And they didn't force it. They didn't jump
on someone. They didn't knock on their door and say, let me tell you about my religion,
anything like that. They just left it at that. And the person responded and said, well,
what is it then? What is it? And they responded. They're like, hey, glad you asked. I didn't
want to just volunteer. That person ended up buying a pack of V friends card and like buying a V friend
later on or something because they were able to understand in here. And so my answer is always
like, I don't want to be sort of like, I don't want to be that person. Like, like when I first
lived years ago, I used to do CrossFit and CrossFit people want to tell everybody about
fucking CrossFit, right? And it gets to the point where it's like, you back off because you're
like another motherfucker telling me about CrossFit. I'm out, right? And so like, I don't want to be that
guy with this technology. What I want is I want to be prepared for people to come to me and ask
the question. And then I want to field it because they're asking the question, they're open-minded
or the opportunity to say, here's where this fits better. So my task to do is what you're already
doing. Show up, understand it, inform yourself and be ready that when someone asks you the
question of what is an NFT or why does this work or why do you, you know, you know, LARP is a snotty
mutant on the internet type thing. When people ask you that question, you're ready to answer that
question, right? And so to me, that's the best thing you can do on a daily basis is being educated
because everybody in this room, all 69 people, nice, all 69 people in this room, every one of
you, trust me, I've been early to every technology, every one of you gets to be right in the next five
to 10 years when people start asking about you. Every one of you gets to say in 2024, I was talking
about this. And in 2029, when everyone's like, Oh, of course, this stuff exists, you could be like,
yeah, receipts, I was there. And so just being ready, because these, this industry is going
to be ready to be built out. Being ready is the best thing you can do. Best way to be ready
right on I apologize, I need to sneak out the door, though, I'm gonna I'm gonna jump, just because
again, the dog is like, he will not go in the house. He's a good boy. He is a good, good boy. But
he is, he is ready to rock. So I'm gonna run out. It has been awesome spending the last four hours
with you all though, like it flew, I enjoyed it, like really enjoyed the conversation.
Awesome discussion with respect the hell out of you all for your consistency and your leadership
and what you're doing. And yeah, my ask of everyone is buy that book, tag me in a tweet so I can thank
you personally. If you don't want to, that's totally cool. Leave an Amazon review, letting
people know what you think about it. So the world can know about this because the better it does
there, the better it does for the world. And hopefully we can move this technology just
to pitch forward and adoption. But appreciate y'all having me I'm gonna I'm gonna jump in and
love and appreciate y'all. Thank you, Steve. Enjoy your day, bro. Yeah, get the dog out.
my bad guys. But, you know, we love y'all. We love y'all, man.
Oh, finally, the moment that I'm able to come up and actually say something is when Steve fucking
dips. Holy man, guys, I'm not gonna make it. No, you're you're definitely gonna make it,
man. You're gonna make it, bro. You're gonna make it. Trust me. We got your back.
Great, great space. So today, guys, I've been at work almost the whole day. I just took my
break. And I've been listening, you know, often on the whole time. It's been awesome. I ordered
two copies of the book. I've got a normie friend of mine who, like, you literally can't even say
you can't say NF together. And he's like, well, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait,
scam, scam, scam. So I got two copies, one of them's gonna be for him. And, you know, he's the
kind of guy that's like, anytime that you say anything, he's like, give me an example. Give me
an example. Give me an example. It's like, motherfucker, find your own example. Like,
I'm not your babysitter. But now, thankfully, Steve's book can be his babysitter. So thank you,
Steve's book. Thanks. Big shout out to Steve's book, man. I'm gonna do the same with my boss
and probably a couple of other co workers. I'm gonna definitely give him this book because
it's gonna be an awesome onboarding tool. I'm gonna buy one to keep on deck as well.
Hopefully, I get to meet the guy and get him to sign the copy that I get
because that'll be special. Yo, Will, what's good?
No, I just wanted to talk about like one point that he stated there and that was, you know,
don't come to somebody's door trying to sell them something, right? Advertise the product,
let them look at it. And if they're interested, they'll come to you. And I think that's always
something important. I think like when people talk about onboarding, they want to,
they want to force people into a position where, you know, they have to make a decision and nobody
likes being in that position. When somebody comes to my door, like, hey, check out this
new vacuum cleaner, you know, it's shut door and face. Not that I'm trying to be rude,
I'm just not interested. And you come in to me, because if I want a vacuum cleaner, I'm gonna
go look for a vacuum cleaner. Just like if I want an investment, I'm gonna look for an investment.
If I'm looking for technology, I'm gonna go look for that technology. And I think just what he
said was really important. And that's how the information available when you're asked,
and that way you're not caught off guard. And you can let people know when they're
wanting to know. And like, I'd love to get people into crypto early. I'd love to,
but nobody wants to invest in the bear market. Nobody. They want to come in at the top, right?
And usually near the top, it's like, yeah, I can tell you where you can probably see the
least downside, but you know, you're probably ideally at the top. Like,
I think this is the top of the market. I told you four years ago,
you need to be investing when we're in a bear, you know, and so on and so forth.
And I think just a lot of people, they don't take that in, right? And you always should be
honest with people. Like, hey, you're buying the top or you're buying the bottom. Everybody's like,
oh, don't fold my bags. Trust me, that person putting in $20 is not going to move price.
They're not going to move price at all. Like you think that, oh, no, I got it. I got to
the only way bags get pumped is whales and institutions and they're not listening to you,
right? They're not listening. They don't care how many bull posts you put up,
how much bullshit you try to feed them. They're not listening to you. They're paying attention
to flows. They're paying attention to the volume. They're looking at where the money's flowing
and they're moving with the money. Like you posting something bullish does not change price.
And I try to point this out to people all the time. When people talk about fud bags,
you have no clue what's going on at all. Like we're just drops in the bucket and nobody's looking at
and that again, I think all that right there is like important stuff, especially not like forcing
things down people's throat. Like always let them come to you, give that opportunity when they
come to you and be able to educate them when they ask. You couldn't have said it any better,
bro. Like I hate that. I hate when it's like forced upon me, right? Like you said, man,
it's there. If I'm looking for something, I'm going to go grab it. I'm going to go do my own
research and figure the product that fits best for me and what I'm trying to get done.
Yeah. Like, well, I definitely agree with the response like Steve said and like you saying
pretty much the same thing because when you're out here pretty much like living and breathing
the life, people just kind of naturally get attracted to you. You know, like you see somebody
with a shirt and it kind of catches your attention. Like what is that? You get a little bit more info
or I put something on my Instagram story and someone's like, Oh, what is that? Or, you know,
you just generate interest naturally without, you know, pushing stuff down people's throat.
So it's definitely real. I've experienced that myself. A couple of weeks ago, well,
I actually brought up on the space that you were in and I was talking about cross chain technologies
and projects like expanding cross chains and why aren't they doing it more? Will we see it more?
And then I came across like killer bears actually doing that, which like blew my mind because I
didn't see any projects doing that. I didn't know anything about it. Like a couple weeks later,
I'm kind of interested if you've had a change in take on like cross chain technologies and
projects utilizing cross chains. If it makes sense or like if you, I remember at the time you said,
like using the technology based off of, you know, the projects goals, whatever the project vision was
with the chain that they're on, it would make the most sense. So it was just kind of interesting
to catch up with you since I caught you here. Yeah. I mean, as far as cross chain,
yeah, you're starting to see more adoption across the board on it.
A lot of it that I'm seeing as far as overall is, you know, projects taking initiative versus the
chains, which, you know, ultimately is kind of the way you have to do it. Like the chains themselves
are not going to integrate each other. Unfortunately, I think there could be some kind of like center
hub that could create itself that allows all chains to combine. And this was my thesis
or at least my thought with Dot specifically, as I was hoping that Dot would go that direction.
I thought that's what they were going to do. And from what I'm saying, it looks like they're
going more of the direction of kind of interoperability, but within their own ecosystem.
And it's like, you know, it kind of sucked from my overall viewpoint from that perspective,
because I thought they were going to try and be that layer zero connectivity
between a lot of chains. I think they'll be doing some integrations between like Ethereum
and Bitcoin and stuff like that. It's just finding that center hub is difficult or that center plug,
that bridge between all chains. But I think like projects themselves can do that on their own.
Again, we talked about I think when I discussed there was like burning on one side, creating on
the other, you know, and so on and so forth to be able to move, you know, kind of through chains,
however you wanted to. So if you wanted your, you know, whatever, you know, we'll go into like
bears, for instance, right? You want your bear on one chain, you could instantly just burn it on
Ethereum and move it over to Solana, or you want it on polygon, you can burn it on Solana,
move it over polygon, and just being able to have that fluidity would be amazing.
Especially when we start looking at projects, start to get into things like, you know,
what everybody thinks was a fad and is now gone, the metaverse, which is not gone,
it's going to be a thing at some point, it's going to build out. And I think like,
once we start to see that play, we'll start to see these PFPs become, you know, real characters
within this, this overall metaverse and this connectivity will will occur much better.
It'll be interesting how this will play out, man, I can see this playing out almost like a,
you know, play a ready one, something like that. And when you look at that movie,
it's really the innovation of what you could see in the space. I know a lot of people think
it's a pipe dream. But I can tell you, in the 1990s, the 2000s, Scott knows this too.
A lot of the things we have today were technologies back then that they were
making movies about and people said, but never come to true, right? Cell phones in
everybody's hands, you know, the size of their hands, not in your car, not in your house,
you know, satellite internet, right? That's that never used to be a thing.
Dial up was a thing for a long time. And then that moved into, you know, cord internet, and then
it moved into cable internet. And now we've got satellite internet, which can be used anywhere in
the world. And, you know, technology is advancing so fast, it's just people's brains aren't able
to keep up with the, you know, technological advances. Again, I think chains wise, we'll
probably see that at some point. I don't know if we'll see it this cycle or next. But,
you know, I think once the metaverse becomes starts to become more of a thing,
that will be the solution to the metaverse is having that interoperability between chains
and being able to move things across chain. And these things, as much as people hate on them,
as much as people hate on PFPs and everything, there is true art here.
I mean, I would I would arguably say punks are art, I wouldn't even say that they're PFPs.
And a lot of people would argue that point, look at the value, they're valued at art valuations,
like the to say any different is just insanity to me. And I would say a lot of these things
are crypto kitties, and so on and so forth. And I think arguably, you know, even apes themselves
have put a staple in time that a lot of people don't appreciate. And I think they're going to
regret that moving into the future, because a lot of people think that they're just trading downhill.
They have their own place in this space. I can go through profit after project, you know,
and talk about the FUD that they've incurred. And I think these projects will do well moving
into the future. I love FUD guys, like a FUD creates great buying opportunities for me.
And then in addition to that, you know, I do think that interoperability will be a thing
at some point. I just I don't know if it's here yet. I don't know if it's here yet. We'll see.
Yo, this has been an amazing episode. If you guys want more of my man,
Wales Outlook, please hop into the wet three exposed
discord. The motherfucking link is in our motherfucking bio. Stop being a bum.
Go inside the discord, tap in with the homies. You know, they're always doing some dope stuff.
When you guys, you know, that marketing analysis you guys did last time on the Zoom meeting,
dude, that was amazing. Dude, like, that's awesome. Like, I love that. And I'm here to
learn that shit. Like, this is one of the reasons why I got into NFTs was, you know,
because I was trading stocks, you know, I was getting into crypto. And now that, you know,
I found I found you will, you know, I can actually get more knowledge and I can understand some
some things that I didn't understand before, man. And thank you for that. Thank you for doing this
shit for free. Thank you for open trading, you know, because not a lot of people do that shit,
you know. So big shout out to you. Big shout out to exposed media. You already know we out here,
man. It's waking big. You already know the vibes, man. Thank you for fucking pulling up on us
every Saturday, 1 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. You know, the vibes are immaculate. The weed was
immaculate. The conversation today was immaculate. Shout out to NFT Bart. Also, guys, we just posted
a fucking giveaway. All right. We're linked up with the homie Larry Sanders himself to give away
a pair of custom Air Force ones customized by him himself. All right. And if I'm gonna give
your size 11, I got a pair of Supreme Air Force ones, white blanks. I got that. So if your size
11, those are those are going to be, you know, those are going to be the ones that get customized
for you. So shout out to everybody. Thank you for pulling up, you know, looking forward to next
week. Please pull up to Shanice Scott and Will's space every fucking Monday, Tuesday,
Thursdays, Fridays, you know, look out for the tweet. It may be five o'clock,
maybe five thirty. They do nighttime shows too. Link in, man. Let's get it.
Yeah, it's about to be 4.20 my time.
Oh, you lit. Then we may have to change. I can't believe it's 5.30, almost 5.30.
We got four minutes till 4.20 my time. So what's good? What we doing? What's good, man?
We got some more conversation. We got Scott here, man. What's up, Scott? What's good, Scott? How we
doing, Scott? How's your Saturday, man? Oh, man. He's been a trend for the kid. Oh, man.
Stayed up to like seven, man. So it was, yeah, I mean, anyone with kids and how them days
goes, it was rough, man. So yeah, I'm just, I ain't doing nothing today. I'm just getting ready
for these games tomorrow. Dude, you know what I mean? Just watching videos, trying to steady up.
Yo, who you got, bro? Who you got for tomorrow, bro?
Because, yo, dude, I remember last week we were talking about Buffalo and, man, dude,
why Buffalo? Yeah, I can't believe I, I was happy the Niners pulled, I was happy the Niners pulled
it out just for my family's sake. This is my mom, mama fool ain't going to be all upset for the next
few months. I really thought they was going to lose, bro. I was like, damn, bro. I was like,
this is crazy. But then I was sad because grandma flew Green Bay fans. So, you know, somebody
had, somebody had to go outside. But, man, it's going to be good games, man. Like,
really, like, of course, I'm going for the Niners, but it's like, what I said last week,
like, I just have a, like, the Lions, it's like, Detroit as a city, bro. They just go through
so much, man. Like, like, like Cleveland, right? Like, I ain't no Cleveland fan at all, but it's
like, you, you like to see a city, like, get something, bro. Like, especially all the shit,
like, and Detroit rebuilding, bro, like, like all the, those fucked up houses is getting, you know,
whether you agree with it or not, what they're changing this shit to, you know, I'm not being
political, you know, I think it's good. Like, we got to, got to, got to put an old metropolis
city like that back to, to, to where it was. So I think like, especially football, you know,
like, don't get me wrong. World Series and NBA championships are cool, but Super Bowl, bro. Like,
imagine Detroit has Super Bowl, bro. Like, that's crazy, right? I know my Bay Area people are going
to be like, bro, like, think about if you ask all like the people's grandparents, like, you got
grandparents in Detroit and you asked them about like, and if they won, bro, like, then they could
just go out peacefully, bro. Like, dude, that's all like, motherfuckers seen them win one game,
playoff game, bro. Like, that's fucking crazy. Like, I could, like, no matter what I like,
the Patriots or the Niners, like, at least I, you know, I got, you know, no matter what team I was
going to choose, I was going to be a decent head, but it's crazy to see that. And I just, I don't
know. Like, I don't want the Niners to lose obviously, but if to lose to anyone, I'm not
mad if it's, if it's then, you know what I mean? Yeah, man. I feel that too, especially for Detroit,
man. I'm super hyped for that city to be where they are now. Like, I know it's a big deal from,
from winning your first playoff game in some odd years to now being in the fucking championship
game. Come on, dawg, come on. Yo, Six, what's good? Haha. What's up? What's up? Wake and fucking
fake, man. What's up, Scott? I FaceTimed you two nights ago. I was with CML and shit.
But what's popping, y'all? What's going on, man? The board mafia in the motherfucker building,
the crypto pioneers in the building. What's up? Shout out to Scott Will. Nancy, what's up?
Nancy, man, I see, I took, hey, the mafia kidnapped Nancy the other night. He ain't
know what was going on. I'm going to tell y'all this story, man. I'm going to tell y'all half
of the story. Let him tell the rest. The motherfucker, he's like, yeah, bro, you know,
my, my, my flight leaves at eight in the morning. And I say, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay.
So bring your shit with you. He's like, what you mean? Yeah. You don't need to go
back to the, Justin Kate. So he brought his shit with him. Guess where? Yeah. He went straight
to the airport, man. You know, man, from the club. It's just, that's what happens. You know,
man, it's just, it was one, a light night. We did it a little light night, you know,
man. But, uh, yeah, studio time. We, we're doing a lot of music, uh, with every web three
rapper. I'm looking for a country web three rapper and a rock and roll web three rapper.
I mean rock and roll rapper. Now fuck my back. Now, uh, any, any country artists, this is web three
and any rock stars, rock and roll motherfucker artists and web three, they want to do some web
three music. Uh, let me know, get in my damn, we ready to work, you know, man. And it's something
different. I know, um, a lot of people is afraid to enter a new realm for us. We different already.
And, um, we, we need, uh, we trying to, we trying to do music with everybody. We, we just dropped a
hot ass motherfucker song with Nessie. Uh, it will be coming out pretty soon. You know,
crypto Rob God and honest, uh, Nessie and honest, we're going to have spotty and honest. We're
going to have stocks and listen, everybody else and whoever don't want to do music, just know we're
doing this songs where we're coming at your fucking neck, man. The mafia will be knocking on your
door. Also, you don't want to be friends. So fuck yeah. You know, man, that's just how we feel.
We want to be buds. We want to do music. We want to just have fun and really show love to
everybody. Uh, and if you don't want to show love back, all right. Okay. Yeah, man. You know,
if you find yourself at a rooftop party, hanging off the roof, you know what I mean? It is not
sugar night, man. It's six night motherfucker around this motherfucker, man. Listen, we can
do this. The easy way or the hard way, man. Uh, I need to start smoking. I've been thinking
about smoking weed, y'all. I'm going to wake a big radio. I'm going to let y'all know. I'm going to
give y'all a, uh, I might, I might start smoking weed, man. You know what I mean? I might got me
yesterday. We did our first part. What has happened? I don't know this thing. Breaking
news, breaking news, man. I might, I might, I'm not listening. Honest almost got me. We just did
our first episode for a new podcast. It's called porn and sugar. And then he trying to pass me
the blood on camera. You know what I mean? Thought I was distracted. You know what I mean? He was
like, man, I almost got him. You know what I mean? But, uh, nah, nah, nah, it's good,
man. It's good to be here, man. It's Saturday, I think, or Friday or I don't know what day it
is today. Uh, but we've been working, man. It's good to see every single one of y'all crazy
motherfuckers in here, man. Ain't nothing but fucking love. I hope y'all ready. East Denver,
uh, consensus, you know, man, uh, waking big radio. We need to get on the call,
man. Let's see what's going on. We are, uh, doing the key. The key will be back in Austin
again. You know, man, the annual key, just so y'all know, if y'all heard about the key last year,
just know, Hey man, partnership, sponsorships will be available this time. Last time we just
showed y'all what we can do with a week notice and just me and bro. That's it. We did everybody
party for free. Pop bottles for free this time. Hey, this one, the partying on us. This one,
it is. Yeah, this is not a play phone. It's a, it's a pay phone. So if you call me,
don't check for me, unless you got a check for me, you know what I mean? Don't get to sending
me DMS and shit. Nah, nah. Hey, listen, it's okay. Write the check. It's all right,
man. It's a mark of these dreams to come around the motherfucking mafia. But what's going on
with my partners? What's up, bro? You already know the five, six. You've already know the
six. I'm just smoking, trying to study all this shit. You know, got to practice what we preach,
not stay on the sideline. You know, let me try to see. You already know Austin, we live.
Look at Nessie. Nessie, post all the videos that I sent you.
Go ahead. Post all the videos. He post some. I've seen him, if you really pay attention to him,
post some. Nessie was in there having a ball, man. You know what I mean?
Hey, shout out to six, man. For real, for real. Yeah, man. Shout out to six. That's all I got to
say. What up, waking back? Yeah. I've been trying to get up here like three fucking times.
I keep getting calls, man. So I apologize. But yo, definitely shout out to NFT Bark earlier.
I was listening to the sauce. Definitely checked out that book. So I'm gonna go take a look at it.
But yeah, man, just wanted to come show some love. Definitely shout out to six. I was in
H-town last week and got this, you know what I'm saying? He took me out. He showed me around
and it was a good time. Got an official residency at the library now. So yeah, man, feeling good.
Yeah. Whenever y'all in the city, I'm gonna take you out to the library to read a book.
I'm gonna take you out to the library, read a book. The library opens at two in the morning.
Actually, this is what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna make some content today. I'm gonna go buy me
a few of them books for NFT Bark. And then I'm gonna leave them at the library. I'm literally
gonna leave some books at the library. Where's Bark at? Tell them to hit me. I will leave.
Y'all laughing, y'all. It's really a library. I'm telling you, you're gonna walk. The first
thing you see when you walk in is bookshelves and bookshelves. Oh, yeah, we know. We know.
All right, well, we saw the book stop. Oh, yeah. Hey, I'm gonna give y'all a,
hey, preview. Never heard before. On your way to fake radio.
Oh, y'all know Nessie is a very smooth motherfucking rapper. Not this time.
You weren't popping this shit, hey, man. Nessie came with the monster. He went in there and changed
up. Like, what's the shit? I'm gonna see for y'all nerds. Like, Goku and Dragon Ball Z,
right? Yeah. Nessie was kicking the door. You know what I mean? He was throwing shit.
We like, damn, Nessie. Bro, calm down, Nessie. It's okay. He's like, nah, fuck that.
So, yeah, man. What's up, man? What's going on, man? What's the wake and bake? Wake and bake
fucking radio, man. It's amazing. Episode 94. People don't fucking understand. It's 94 time.
Hey, Will, I know you got your hand out. I smacked my phone just like I gave you a high
five and shit. You know what I mean? I didn't know if you was trying to give you
a high five or you try to speak. But, yeah, man. Good job, man.
Nah, I was just letting you cook. That's all. I was just letting you cook.
Nah, I just want to thought that just for everybody out here, too. We're gonna be doing
another TA thing there later in the day. I think, like, 5 Western. I don't know if
Prophet's got the memo on the time, but that's what I told her. But maybe I didn't
skip. I didn't tell her 5 Western. Man, listen, them minutes too humble. I'm
gonna tell y'all something about Will. I'm gonna cook for you then, motherfucker. Listen,
I'm like grandma in a motherfucking Sunday dinner. Hey, if you're new to trading,
or if you know about trading, just clock in on what they got going on. What he was doing,
it was on the Zoom, because I asked him a few questions. And damn, he's like, hey,
I got this class. It's free. You know what I mean? It's like you're going there.
And the way he was explaining it was so simple. And we went for, like, an hour and a half. Like,
I was just, man, you know, man, it was super dope. He goes back. He gonna ask little questions and
shit. You know, man, he like the teacher. He like, hey, man, but do you know what these mean?
And he paused. He waiting on somebody, because guess what? The more you think about it,
the more you're going to retain the information. But it was very simple. The way he was explaining,
like, to the point I'm going to, uh, with the link, bro, just because I'm gonna send it,
I sent it to my kids because they, they trying to learn how to trade. I'm like, hey,
I got, I got my dude. He's doing, but they was, they was not working shit,
but it's like, oh, this one I'm going to send to them. So my kids can log in. I'm
smoking motherfuckers. You know, man, we popping bottles, smoking blunts, and talking to models.
What's up, Cristiano? What'd it do? You want to do some music?
Yo, who did that? Somebody's passing her that one.
I was throwing up the hardship.
This is fucking great, man. It's a whole ass theme.
Oh, no, not for real. It's that, bro, people be thinking I'd be putting it like we're going
to the light. We pulled up like library Houston. They're like, you serious? Walk in, boom. And
it's like a library. But then, you know, you open one of the bookshelves and then this,
you ain't reading there. You ain't gotta be quiet in there. It's a little loud in that
motherfucker library. But yeah, it's dope. I want the library of my house to be like that shit.
Wait a second. Get deejans to go to the library. What kind of stupid idea?
These people can't even have velcro shoes. They're like every time they put their shoes on.
I don't think we can hear each other right now.
People get excited when they get to the library. Mark is for real. I'm gonna bring you to the
library, bro. There's no, you know, man, nasty drop the videos, man. You know, especially when
you have one on top of you, one on the side, one in the back, you know, what is going down?
This is not after the books. She's got the fucking library, bro.
This is way to make radio, man. You know, man, we, we planning for the fucking orange soda part
too. You know, man, we, we talk about life. You don't need to go there. Oh, that's just,
uh, oh, oh, oh shit. You wanted to know when you're in the library and you're coming with.
Let me give you so much. All right. So yeah. Yeah. T-rock. T-rock. I got a question for you.
Please, please come at me. What not? I'm not attacking you. I just got questions.
Okay. No, I'm not. I'm not. I'm not like thinking you're like trying to like punch me in the face.
No, no, I can't. It's, I got a phone. You got a phone. We just talking on
PFPs is impossible. I'll give a stranger on the internet. Yeah. Weirdo.
Don't make me upset. I got football games to watch tomorrow.
I'm going to a raid. I'm 38. We run it over like hours and change, man. It's been an awesome
episode. I'm a catch up family. Good looking, good looking. That wasn't my fat finger this time.
Yeah. Nah, it was me, man. I did that shit on purpose because you already know the vibes,
man. Like fucking six. This is waking bay fucking radio, man. We do this every Saturday. 1 p.m.
Eastern standard time and pull up. You already know we missed fucking 2, 4, 20. We missed 4,
20 on the East coast. We missed 4, 20 in Houston, fucking Texas. How the fuck
are we living like this, guys? We are not going to make it. We missed 4, 20, guys.
So, you know what? Enjoy the rest of your weekends. Appreciate y'all pulling up. Y'all
already know the fucking... Y'all know the details, man. Yo, Marcus. Let them know what
the fucking vibes are, baby. Here. Check us on Monday. Check me Monday with Larry Sanders,
the after party of Sander Sells podcast. Check out Sander Sells podcast. Start us live on
YouTube, then catch us on X when we do the live recap and we talking conspiracy theories
this Monday. So definitely jump in and get your ten hats ready. Get your ten foil hats
ready. We diving deep. I got some calls while we were doing the show,
Rami, so the sound board is rugged, so you may have to do a little sound.