So tell me what these are exactly like walk, people can't see it. Cause it's not photos online. I've seen some of those. Let me post it knowing

how thoughtful the audience that listens to this is. It's absolutely inspired by Punks and some of the other OG projects. It's character based. There's 10,255 tokens. single token is a ticket to a conference that I'm going to run each year called VCon. What that is going to be is back to our early days. It's going to be a conference that I put on most likely in February or March of next year that looks like a South by Southwest, a multi-day event. I do like to bring in all parts of my world. So for example, I want a lot of competition at my conference, like basketball games and relay, like some of that kind of stuff, lots of keynotes, music, you know, emerging hip hop is a big passion. So I want to do literally post COVID world, one of the signature business, creativity, marketing, innovation, thoughtfulness, like just epic event so every single token is a ticket to that and

every single token is an ft right like every one has a drawing with it correct okay but you didn't create 10 255 individual drawings no i did there's like a hundred of one or there's 200 of another it

works like that for, there's 555 gift goats and gift goat is going to be a token that everybody who buys it gets to have the token, get the, they get the art, but they're going to connect and put their address or PO box. Cause a lot of people like to be anonymous in this world. And we're going to then send minimum six times a year a surprise gift in the mail. So you're just going to be, you're going to buy your asset. Every token is a conference ticket. So gift goat is a conference ticket, but above and beyond that. And what I'm going to do is spend my life trying to make business development deals with epic brands to get 555 units of something unheard of in streetwear, something unheard of in technology, something unheard

of. You know what I mean? So you're bringing a ton of value in the real world to a digital token holder.

Which is my big belief of where NFTs are going to go, right? Like, it's a smart contract. You could do anything. Right now, we're so fixated on the collectability and the art aspect, which is amazing. And I think people flirting with like, oh, you get the physical attachment, also awesome. But there's so much more that can be done. And that's what I want to do with this intellectual property. I want to make a, I want this, again, this is a culmination. I've always wanted my own IP. I've always wanted or buy nostalgic IP. I've always wanted to do my own conference. I've flirted with little things, you know, so that's exactly what I'm doing now. Then there's a whole tier of access tokens, which are completely bananas. Yeah.

Walk me through the different attributes. Like what are the different types? We've got gift code. That's only one. How many in total there? 268

different animals. So there's, you know, there's 555 gift goats. There's 125 hangout hawks. What that is, is if you own one of those, you become part of this hangout community. And we, and we get together five times a year for 45 minutes on Google hangout and jam. Now have take a step back with me. Everybody's listening. The other part is it's a three-year project. So the conference ticket is for VCon 2022, 2023, and 2024. So what my great dream is, is to throw the greatest conference ever in 2022. Everybody freaks out and says, what the hell was that? Oh, shit. You literally can't get in any other. Nope. There's no premium ticket. Nope. You have the NFT. You come, you don't have, you don't come. So my great hope is that the people that support early on buy it, but then they go to year one, have the best time ever. And then they can decide, do I want to go to year two? Or if I don't, hopefully if I do what I'm going to do, and I know I'm going to do it, they're going to be able to sell that token for some real fucking money. Imagine going to that conference in essence for free and making a profit by holding onto it for a period of time. So I'm pretty excited about the HODL kind of component there.

Yeah, that's interesting. So if you have a gift goat and you're saying you get three years of gifts, six times a year delivered to your house. Minimum, by the way, six. Let's just say you drop something amazing and people are like, holy shit, this made up for everything. I paid for this token and then some, all of a sudden the speculation around what you're going to be dropping next or over the next few years is going to go through the roof. And those tokens will appreciate in value because people will be trading. They'll be like, do you want Gary's next thing? You have to buy one of these tokens in the secondary market, right? That's

right. And this is why I structured a deal this way. If I just made a piece of creative art, I would be at the mercy of not being able to control what happens next, which could have put me in a spot where people would have over-invested in me because they're fans. And then, I don't know, like it just, it felt like there's no way that I was going to just smart. And so if I do this, I may lose money because I'm going to throw these three ragers to make sure like, you know, my, my feeling is I'm going to know what everybody paid initially pretty quickly. I can then go to work to make sure that everybody was taken care of. That's right. I actually think gift go ends up becoming a really interesting one, because to your point, I'm no bozo. I'm going to try to make the first goddamn thing. Everyone gets something ludicrous. You know what I mean? Like, why not? Like, it makes me feel happy. Plus, who's going to buy? You're going to have a group of speculators, no question. But the far majority are a lot of people that have really trusted me and gone on this 15-year journey with me, some part of it. And I want to over-deliver for them. Once people start understanding that your NFT project, if you're lucky enough, if you've been blessed enough to have an audience for whatever skill that is, your brain, your sports acting, your beauty, your cleverness, a moment in time. If you worry about your community more than you worry about your short-term finances, you could do something very special in this space.

Yeah. And you have the leverage too, because if you think about it, imagine you have this 555 gift codes, you can go to any brand out there and be like, listen, I would like your product at either a discount or at cost, or you just give it to me. I'm going to put it in front of 555 really hardcore fans that are going to love it. It's going to be on video. It's going to be, I mean, you're essentially making a market for them. They're going to want to give you really special things to gift out to your audience,

right? Not only that, this project is going to become a core part of my vlog now. Like I'm going to, when I'm packing that or I'm negotiating that deal or, you know, like I'm not looking for a brand or a company that decides to give me 555 or sell me at some good price, 555 things to like, oh, you know, we're going to stick it to like, I want them to win because, and by the way, I'm not, I'm not going to pick some product I don't believe in either because all of this, what I love about it is the pressure that comes along with this project. This isn't like I'm recommending a peanut noir and you don't like that flavor. Like this is all wrapped up in me. So if I send that gift and I don't believe in that product, not so good. Like if, if, you know, like I can't, I basically, I have to work every minute or my entire reputation goes down the drain, which I think is good because it forces you to do good.

Yeah. What other traits are there? Like you got gift goat. Yep. You've got the hangry hawk. No hangout hawk. So there's, there's five, there's five

keynote koalas. So keynote koala is a token that allows you to get a premium ticket to every public keynote I give in the world at any time and have a green room meeting with me at that event.

And how many of those are there? There's

gonna be five of those. That's something that I'm really interested to see what happens with, because I see that one possibly trading a lot because you know like my talks are all over the place so like and by the way you saw this with you indignation people get hot on your content for you and then like six months later they're like all right that was enough like yeah especially I mean how many you know like especially with the green room access like the first time cool I get it you admire me I'm very grateful it's insane second time but like by the third time you're like, all right, like you're going to sell that shit. So I think that's pretty cool. Or like I go on a European tour and you're like, I don't know. Like, you know, so like that. So I'm really excited about that. I think that's super clever. Probably the one that I'm most excited about to be frank is garage sale Yale.

And what does that one do? That

one lets you go at Garage Sale with me for four hours and be my co-star in an episode of Trash Talk, which is still my favorite YouTube content. That's

awesome. There's

a courtside cat. So come and sit courtside with me at a New York Knicks game. So what I'm doing is I'm creating a lot of access. There's, there's three Uno unicorns, literally a four person Uno game with me for two hours, like ping pong bubble hockey. Dude, it's just all the shit that you love to do. I love that. And then a couple of things like me, AJ and Matt Higgins went fishing in the Hudson river, like right here. It was unbelievable. I couldn't believe how good the fishing was. And like the build, like it's Manhattan, you're like on the Manhattan skyline. So I've got this one character, Don fishing fish, you know, three hours of fishing with somebody or two hours. I don't remember what the time limit of that one is. It's actually

a good bonding time. It's really a good bonding

time. One of the funniest parts of this whole project was my lawyer who's like, you know, we have to put substantial like background check language in the tokens. I'm like, okay, you know, like that stuff. But like, yeah, like it's, it's really, really, really cool. And like, for me, it's reverse engineering what's happened. Like it's, you know, time is the asset that is hardest. And so I'm really excited about that. One of my other favorite ones is a bowling boa, like a bow construct. Like there's a 10 person bowling game, nine tokens of that. I'll be the 10th. And, you know, so I'm really, really excited about it. I'm excited about it because I, because I think it's number one, a blueprint for much cooler, much smarter, much more epic people than me to say, oh, I'm an asshole. Why am I just putting out a photo of me or having my team do something? Like, this is a chance to do something meaningful. Yeah.

It's a real interaction with like, you're the people that follow you and follow your content and believe in you.

And we all have that. Everyone is a fan of many. Like I, like I secretly want this to crush, because I'll probably want to, you know, I want Jeff Bezos to do this. And I want, you know, like my favorite boxer to do it. So I'm really excited about the future of what it looks like. To me, the really cool part is the next thing I'm about to tell you, which is the part that I don't think most people realize of what I'm actually up to. So I think when people see how sound the tech is on chain, like worked incredibly close with the NFT 42 and guys on their incredible new platform called Nameless, which I think will help. And this is all on Ethereum? All on Ethereum. Like people will see that I gave access. People will realize, oh shit, Gary could have just thrown the conference each year for $4,000 a ticket. The way he's doing this, the person that bought it is making the money. He's only making a 10% royalty. Like they're going to see that I, even though, listen, I anticipate to make some real, real money here. I do think people who are thoughtful realize I've left money on the table for the community, which is the right way to think. All of that is great. And I think there'll be a good reception. I really hope so. All of that is secondary to the fact that I'm going to spend the rest of my life building the intellectual property of these characters. If I fall, I know myself. Like, I don't think I'm going to build Disney or Star Wars because I'm just too distracted, nor do I think these characters merit that kind of storytelling. However, I've got fucking Thundercats in me. You

definitely have Thundercats. You should just buy the Thundercats brand. I

think I could, you know, Power Rangers was so big for a second, so I don't want to go that audacious, but here's what I would say. First of all, mine's going to look different. I have so many characters and I want them to do different things. Some of them are good for apparel. Some are good for like little, you know, gaming. Some are good for, you know, CPG brands, a beverage. If you don't think I'm already thinking about turning one of them into a wine, you're nuts, you know, like, and then some of them may become an animated film, like, like, or a cartoon or, you know, a meaningful video game. Like, so the, the other part that excites me is, okay, so the three years goes on, people crushed it because the conference was incredible. The experiences were incredible. Don't forget the experiences are two and three year tokens too. Not all are three. Some of those are two. So you go to court side with me. I keep doing my thing. You sell it for a profit. Or a slight price. You barely paid anything for it. Whatever it is. But then seven years later, Kev, I come out with a breakout board game with four of the characters and you're still sitting with the token art. So like, you know, what is a GI Joe NFT? What is a Pokemon NFT? It doesn't have the experience part. It was that it mattered in the world, thus making it a collectible. I have my whole life to make these 286 characters mean something.

Yeah. So let me break this down. Basically what you're saying is, okay, yes, there's the short-term two to three-year perks that come associated with one of these NFTs, but you could consider this kind of like a series one, in a sense. Like if you have the very first series of this, a decade from now, you've taken this character, let's just say it's the bowling boa, and it's somehow big in some way, um, that is above and beyond what you originally started with. It's going to be even more collectible because you've done so much to create a brand around that individual character. And so there'll be additional value that goes above and beyond when it runs out at the end of three years. I'm going to, I'm going

to give you something on your podcast that I'm not even sure you know about me. I was 30 years Kev, when I did the first episode of Wine Library TV. I have never really grew up nor thought of being known. I wanted to be a businessman. I still want to be a businessman. I am a businessman. I run a day-to run a company. I don't love being Gary Vee the way people think. I love people the way people think I, like I love people. Yeah, I knew you weren't gonna know this, which is why it's fun to like, I've never said this in public. I want

you to unpack this a little bit more. I'm gonna unpack it. Yeah.

I knew you were gonna like it. That's why I was like, you know what? Fuck it, I'm gonna give it to Kevin. If I'm gonna give it to somebody, I'm gonna give it to Kevin, full circle. Probably the guy who had the biggest impact besides myself on Gary Vee. I love business. I love marketing, attention, communication, strategy. I love people. So the Gary Vee thing comes easy to me. The attention comes easy to me. I'm also, knock on wood, a good person. I was raised by an incredible mother. I have good self-esteem. I know who I am. I have incredible conviction and confidence, but I have incredible humility. I know if I disappear off the face of the earth tomorrow, I get a good day on social media with some love. And like, then just a very small group of people are really hurt for a little while. But after that, 12, 24 hours later, everyone moves on with themselves. And I understand that. And that's important. That level of humility actually makes everything simple. I could live without the interactions every day. I like it. There's a very fine line. I think people understand this. I enjoy when people say hello to me in the airport, genuinely, because it feels nice. And I like people. But if it stopped tomorrow, I would be in the same exact mental place that I am right now because I'm building companies. That's what I love. I just understand the value of brand and awareness. I just had nowhere to point it. So it was pointed on myself because I was good at communicating. I understood social media was coming. It was human-based. This NFT project allows me to have, and by the way, by the way, and you know this, I also know that a lot of people don't hear my good message because they think I'm a charlatan or I'm a loud mouth or I'm eager. Like, so I'm not, I'm a, I'm a good vessel for a lot of people, but I'm a terrible vessel for a lot of people. And they completely tune me out. And they think, you know, you suck. Fuck you, Gary Vee, enough. Like you're too much. But I believe in patience. And I think it would help people with their anxiety and mental health issues. But if they don't like listening to Gary Vee, that fucking, he thinks he's like too loud, East Coast cursing, fuck. Now I have patient panda, Kev. No, I get it. I know it might sound funny, but I do. And I'm good at building brand. Like, that's what I do. And so this is a very big watershed moment for me where, like, these characters are already showing up in my content. And I think it's the preview of them taking over more and more and more of my content. And if five or six of these characters go viral around the things like empathetic elephant, patient panda, to me, those are my Mickey mouse and Donald ducks. Like if I can stand them up, then I don't have to be out in front of my content as much and deal with all like, just like, like, you know, it's a lot. And so listen, I can do it. I can do it to a hundred years old. I just don't need it. And if you don't need it, why wouldn't you put it into something way more scalable, like into intellectual property, which is even more scalable than me? Because when I lose, I don't know how, you know this about me. I don't know how not to be myself, but I hate that that means that there's a portion of people that will never listen to a word I'm saying, because I really believe in the things that I say. And I think they actually bring value. And I think that using these characters is going to be the next evolution of my life. Who

do you think tunes you out when you say that there's certain people that? I think

that I'm very alpha Jersey aggressive. And so there's just a lot of people who feel like that's too much energy. I definitely believe that when the lights are on, and again, you know this about me because we really know each other, my energy goes up compoundingly based on who's around me. So if it's me, you know me, one-on I'm still a high energy guy, but it's definitely a different layer than if I'm on stage or there's 20 people around or when the camera or even this podcast is on because I can feel the ears right now, Kev. I can feel the tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of ears right now. I can feel it. I also think that there was a period of time where, you know, I'm sure you remember this, the Web 2.0 thing's happening at the same time that the economy collapsed. And that's when I first hit the public conscious So I was getting a lot of emails of people very scared because they had just lost their job. So I spoke a lot about hustle and hard work. And that was great. And I'm very proud of it. I still believe work ethic is an incredible part of the journey. But I believe that like, as the world went away from financial woes and went into a better situation, that I think people mistook my ethos, my message, I think got distorted. And I don't think I did. And I think you have to be accountable to everything. I don't think I did a good enough job clarifying it because I didn't think I could lose that that much. And I think I got into a point where people tuned me out if they thought like that I'm this guy who thinks that you have to work at all costs to like make money. It's just so weird to me because it's so not where I'm at. But I very much understand as a communicator and as the timing of where my message and what I started with, crush is an aggressive word. You know me extremely well, like really well. You know, I like nice. I don't like confrontation. I don't like negativity. You know, I stress about those things when they come up. Like, you know, this about me. I don't like it. I like people. I like nice. I love entrepreneurship, but I'm not about like buying watches or champagne bottles or private jet. Like I'm in the game. I like the game we play, Kev.

So in some sense, this gives you a chance, you know, all these characters that you've created. They're really a reflection of some of your beliefs, right?

90%, 80% is beliefs and 20% is pop culture. Like, for example, there's a flexing fox. I don't believe in flexing. I don't have the watch. Oh,

I thought you meant flexing isn't like working out. Cause I was going to say you got, you got pretty, yeah, dude, you're better than it used to be. No, no,

but there's some, you know, there's some like, there's some pop culture stuff like diamond hands and hot. Like I did some culture stuff by the way, to be frank, mainly because it was starting to get hard to come up with adjectives that fit the characters that I was drawing and enjoying it. Yeah, but for the most part, I mean, there's not a lot of, there's no cynical snake. There's no, the things that I don't like. It's a pretty optimistic and practical because I'm not delusional. I'm not like the secret. Like if you dream it, it will come. And it's like, no, no, there's things you have to do. So yes, 80% of them are traits that I really genuinely believe in.

And do you think that virtual characters, like even on Instagram and other places, you're seeing the emergence of these almost lifelike characters that are taking on and having their own followings. You might not even know that they're associated with you in some sense, if they ever became big enough. If

in 21 years, one of these characters is enormous and the majority of, let's say young people, and their parent says, oh, that's Gary V's, you know, empathetic elephant. And the kid goes, who's Gary V? I would be awfully, awfully good with that. And I think that's something that most people probably wouldn't know to be true. You know, and I, and when somebody calls me on that, you know, I'm talking about real friends and family, cause I don't share this. The first time I've ever publicly shared this kind of side of me. I just always remind them, I'm like, you know, me like, you know, if I wanted Gary Vee, you think like, what do you think I would have been doing in my teenage and 20s? Like, that's just a circumstance that YouTube came along. Like, there was no plan for that. That was, oh, shit, this is going to change the world.