THE PLACE WHERE IT ALL STARTED | Fireside Chat Q&A VeeFriends Meetup at Wine Library

for me the happiness part is the only part i was happy as [ __ ] in this store down there in 2001 where nobody in the world knew who the [ __ ] i was as happy 21 years ago in this building and it wasn't even this building this was built later it was a little building down there facing that street right down there 21 years ago as i am this exact second not a dollar not a fan not a nothing that has happened to me publicly in the last 20 years has added a single ounce of happiness the process is my happiness and there's no way to get to a great place without it you'll just burn out when it comes to content creation for that so i always kind of want to have my own thing on the side i've been in the jewelry industry and finance so um when it comes to doing your own content creation i know you've been kind of asked this before but is it better because i have so many interests i've got the sneakers i've got the jewelry the finances the content creation how do you kind of tailor that like would you subdivide your tick tock or would you could i mean well together the answer the answers of the past are a little bit void yeah because tick tock really has tripled down on what i've always believed which is it's not about your followers it's about the content yeah so i believed it when it was more about the followers and the followers would see it and i was very empathetic like if you're into business but i'm making a jets post and you're a die-hard dolphins fan or don't care about football well that's not going to hit and i was never worried about that because i always felt that people over analyzed every single piece of content but now where we're at with the tick-tockification of social it's about the content anyway for example everybody here can start a brand new tick tock account have no followers and that post can get 8 000 views and the next one can get 200 if you had 10 000 followers so it's now more than ever about the content anyway thus rendering all of us being able to post about what we want at all times without hurting everyone has always worried that this is going to hurt me it's going to [ __ ] up the algorithm i'm not going to get as many views and likes it's just not the reality of how social works anymore so combining like sneakers and jewelry is fine huge yeah thank you what's going on uh my name is ian lipkowski on most of my socials i'm kowski orkowski. ed just wanna also say first time we met was 2017 it was at a shoe release in new york city didn't realize it was happening i was at work i sprinted out of work to come down there and meet you um when i met you that day i said my favorite quote was that you're gonna die and i was strategizing how to like become uh bigger and build myself so i now own that you're going to die fly strategizing in new york that's awesome by the way on that i apologize because i think this will bring value to people we were talking about it in the corner over there like affinity like right now so much of what nft land was about for the last year was flipping i could make money i could give a [ __ ] if it was an ape or a doodle or a v friend or like it was just like where can i make a buck that story really is important because the reason you'll never sell that is it means something to you the same reason i like collecting occasionally a batman thing because batman means a lot to me it was one of the things i like learned america through or scooby-doo i mentioned a lot of times of buying and if that's on purpose because that's meant something to me and i think it's a really important thing like that is the journey that i'm most on how do i get me included me excluded right there's obviously me in that story but what does the video game look like that has nothing to do with me that gets people to care about gracious grizzly at scale go ahead uh other question is i have my own brand now it's called alien inks uh i'm wearing it right now it's aliens. com it's inks like pennings um i'm basically just doing everything i can to do content creation but these designs are pretty intricate they take a lot of time so my time is split between doing the art uh posting the art just being on different types of socials trying to do videos trying to document everything yes um things are kind of starting to pick up now so i just recently i got into a cafe they're gonna do my they're actually displaying my art i had a friend from high school who does singing now she wore a dress that i made during a concert so that's really cool um you know a few people starting to buy it i have like an nft collection that's on my twitter the nft collection is kind of to build the idea of different characters that are going to exist within the alienx world but then also give back like discounts like a percentage of people who buy things from the website so it has that kind of like instant utility um i don't know if i have a question to ask you specifically but just like hearing everything like i'm thinking you're just gonna be like just keep going do more and more and more um maybe that's it but it's there any other no it's always that like yes of course of course there is how you do forever is variable difference like hey i want to be a great basketball player we'll practice every day but if you're not practicing efficiently or smartly you

can only maximize your talent so much and you only have so many talents like you could say to somebody play basketball every day there's a very good chance that person isn't built to be a professional basketball player i think people really struggle with understanding the difference between maximizing their upside against the delusion of their ambition right like you like that one kid like you know when people like gary i'm gonna when 29 year olds come up to me like gary i'm gonna be like you as an entrepreneur and i get three seconds of context before the third second's done i say to myself unlikely not because i'm being egotistical or competitive it's that by the time i was 29 i did business 24 hours a day every day for 24 years for real actually right like this store like when everyone's like gary i've been doing this for a year i'm like i did a year's worth of wine library tv after i was 30. 15 years of wine education and selling to just get to a minimum base of getting 30 comments per like people are so delusional of what it takes to succeed and and so yes of course it's that but the question becomes getting a discount from the website is not interesting if you don't want anything from the website right and so the question becomes how can someone get it done what gets people to care and so yeah i mean i think it is that i always believe it's content creation is storytelling it's awareness it's how you connect but obviously some people are better at storytelling than others the question for everybody that's trying to do their own [ __ ] is are you realistic with your capability and are you happy about that doesn't mean don't believe in yourself and don't cap out but i think where people really get hurt genuinely get hurt is they have expectations that are so unrealistic that it makes them deviate from the enjoyment of why they're doing it and um and i'm always scared to be compared to when it's in business compare being compared to and playing pickleball i feel good about many of you can be better being compete you know compared to in a million things i feel comfortable i get very uncomfortable when people want to compare themselves to me in entrepreneurship because i've been doing it for so long and i'm really really good at it like i you know and you know i just i think that we all have to be self-aware and i think being self-aware and realistic while pushing the ambition and committing to a decade worth of ungodly amounts of work if you want something special without even thinking about how far along am i is not something most people are comfortable with like for anyone who's starting a dead scratch and has nobody give a [ __ ] about anything alien inc 10 years 15 hours a day 12 hours a day 10 hours a day 8 hours a day minimum 10 years don't even look up to see how you're doing is not something people want to sign up for one thing i'll say is i'm already happy that uh i even got my friend to do it at the concert i'm happy people are seeing it here so i may not beat you as an entrepreneur but i may go hand in hand on the happiness because i'm happy as far as that is the best that's the best that that makes me emotional in the best way that is the purpose of every way i'm trying to communicate which is unless you are completely upset for me on the for me the happiness part is the only part i was happy as [ __ ] in this store down there in 2001 where nobody in the world knew who the [ __ ] i was as happy 21 years ago in this building and it wasn't even this building this was built later it was a little building down there facing that street right down there 21 years ago as i am this exact second not a dollar not a fan not a nothing that has happened to me publicly in the last 20 years has added a single ounce of happiness the process is my happiness and there's no way to get to a great place without it you'll just burn out i think i have the uh the honor of saying i think i've consumed more of your content than anyone in here for sure one baby on the planet because they've been watching since episode one of the thunder show wow around here maybe it's amazing thank you um but i wanted to know and i'm not talking i'm not going to ask you to talk about like which 10k pmp project is your favorite or anything like that but just thinking about like when i got i'm in tech that's what i do for a living it was so [ __ ] painful to get a metamask wallet to put money yeah the whole onboarding process is impossible even to like move my

token from my ledger so hard burner wallet yes so in your mind what and who in web 3 were talking deep by nfts yeah anything i got you who's doing the coolest most innovative stuff that excites you the most so couple questions when did you get into tech like professed professionally 20 years ago in 2002 yeah cool so when i launched winelibrary. com in 1996 here every person that walked through the store that i just mentioned the original store down there we asked them for their email more than half i did i of them more than half had no idea what email was and the other 10 20 that did half of them told me their email was aol yahoo. com this store really exploded in 1998 when i came on full time and started running new york times ads and half half of our business was people driving from new york to here to buy wine here and i would tell all of them i would say you don't have to schlep from new york you should go to winelibrary. com this that almost all of them these are you know high net worth educated wall street type characters that were collecting high-end wine almost all of them in 1998-99 said that they didn't trust putting their credit card into a computer so 96 for me 96 to 2001 and really 96-2003 was this incredible seven year journey of watching the world go from completely dismissing web one and the comforts of it to it beginning in 2003 to where we are today becoming the foundation of our society that is inevitably going to happen the question is going to become to answer your question is the coolest stuff actually web 2. 5 or is it web 3 because what i think is that almost everybody would give up the ideology of web 3 complete control of course because everybody loved total defy until their [ __ ] was stolen and then they were mad at open c me and coin base but we're like you're totally in control we're not i can't do anything and so people want web 25 and if they want web 25 then it opens up everybody visa then it opens up amex then it opens up meta then it opens up google and apple and so the question i think that's most interesting in the next 36 months is where is the world gonna land between web 2 5 and web 3 because i think people don't want centralization in theory [ __ ] the government everyone loves [ __ ] the government until somebody comes to your home with a gun and says get the [ __ ] out of your house like you're looking for the government you know and so you know everybody loves the wild west until they're the one that gets shot so i think that what i think is going to happen is the world's going to be split up into web 2 5 aka front-facing consumer interfaces that are not challenging where the complicated shit's happening behind the scenes but obviously the custodial then sits with coinbase not with you right but you're willing to give up that and willing to give a piece of the transaction action to not have your [ __ ] stolen and then what i like is that the people that want to be pure web3 like [ __ ] coinbase [ __ ] the system knock yourself out you could have a metamask you can have your seed phrase you can and so i think that's what's gonna happen and so the i think the coolest [ __ ] is going to be the company or three or seven that build consumer interfaces that are slick somewhat appease the web 3 people like very easy to like get off like you know what i mean something that gives them kind of like that in between but really works for the masses here so shit's easy you know and that's built like for example to make it easier for like we're spending so much time on what are we gonna do on our dot com and our app that allows you to get verified for here not have to touch your cold wallet not like right even the fact that we made everybody go with id here like we're going to do it bubble gum and tape when i want to randomly do [ __ ] but we're within six months of having that be seamless within the app and puts you in a position to not be vulnerable to take off cold storage but you'll have to be in first party data within vfrs. com web3 maxis don't want that cool how do you offer that while you are willing to put your information so it's a lot of fun to think about web 25 to web 3. but for me

this is just like i've seen this movie before i was there i lived it it's how i started my career most people weren't of the age or were not in web 95 to 2000 so this is all kind of feels so ridiculous because we were we literally went into web 3 from a mature web 2. that's like a big drop off and that's why we've had so many i mean this merge this ethereum merge the amount of people that are gonna get scammed is gonna be extraordinary because it's gonna be all in the air people are gonna people are people fall for the things that people fall for most of the people that were scammed during the last six months were scammed on things that triggered their emotional trigger to be first to get the thing or to get a deal that they couldn't get otherwise and they were too quick to connect and in the beginning of it people didn't even realize that you could connect and give access and be stolen from but the last three four or five months it's all been based on emotional trick the scammers know your trigger point there's a free v friend series three drop go i haven't said [ __ ] about it i've never referenced it you see it on twitter you're like [ __ ] boom and you're out and that's what's happening and so it's just gonna take an education cycle it just is what it is uh thank you for having us thanks for being here um i think the biggest thing i'll be relatively selfish please uh i think i'm subjected to that saying that like jack of all trades master done yeah i'm a damn good personal trainer okay so like that's my bread and butter that's what we keep doing that's what pays the bills yes but the two kind of conflicts that i have is a that takes away from because i work with clients like right six matter when they want to see me that's when they see me yes and i'm always going to be you know mercy to that but i have so many other things i think you don't i tried to do them all hold on there's something really important there which is you're not always going to be at the mercy of that if you're willing to not make that maximize its economics or if you're so damn good people will compromise into yours meaning if you decide that you only work monday wednesday and friday 6 a. m to noon only so that you can really do your other [ __ ] well then you could and if you're so great you might lose harold and susan but timmy and sally are right behind them and you fill those slots and you call it a day people get confused because they think everything is so extreme one or the other and they don't realize they can create restrictions within the middle meaning i just gave you the black and white way that you can control a lot more of your time as a personal trainer you just have trainer hours you're scared properly not scared you're thinking properly i don't want to lose these two people but the reality is if you make those restrictions if you create enough of the content or demand in another way somebody will take up those slots and now you're six to noon monday wednesday friday you could just like re i mean i've watched a lot of trainers be scared shitless for that jump and a lot of times when i talk to them whether they're friends acquaintances or just random dms i've stuff not only do i tell a lot of them the advice of doing that if they have this want i also tell them to raise their costs in the same time and the reality is there's a lot of demand for personal trainers and so all of a sudden you wake up and you're more in control of your schedule and you're making 20 more per hour against that schedule and now you're [ __ ] rolling and to your credit by the way part of i'm trying to do that to an extent like i've been super hard on ticked off the last five months and like for anybody that doubts it i had something over a million views like i went from literally zero nobody on instagram followed me that knew me like these are all strangers like uk germany's it's crazy um three pieces of content a day every day of the week like no matter what um so i'm trying to push that so that i can fill some of my well there's also a two point where do you live stanford i work in westchester right so there's also a 2. 0 version of that which is you run tick tock ads only in that area so that the people that so you've got a million views on that video clearly that video resonates take that video and run instagram facebook and tick tock ads only within a 20-mile radius of your home where the copy says if you're looking for training email me here so there's the first small business like one guy oh like i haven't run out of my life i respect the [ __ ] of that you know like until eight years ago i'd never done a push-up in my life like you know so so yeah i'm giving you the black and white that will change your life the number one thing in social media that i'm most excited about now is something i call brand performance you put out organic to these algorithms all the algorithms on every platform are going to follow tick tock because it works because it's more based on merit we as humans who work hard and

want things to happen for us based on our content want the algorithm to give us as many people to see it if we crush it i would much rather every video i post get 17 views 100 views but then if i really got it give me 19 million if the world is like keeps if the humans keep telling you platform that they still want this that this is a hit it's not that extreme but as you know tick tock is the closest thing to that now meta is going down that direction instagram's gonna do that i think you're seeing it in youtube shorts which is why i've been saying it facebook fan pages why i'm bringing it up they're starting to do it as well so the model is put out as much as you can different [ __ ] it hits now you know that people resonate with it now you take it back the original video and you change the copy so the original copy of whatever got a million had copy now you slightly tweak it and turn it into a right hook right i've been actually i'll drop some alpha here i am like 90 sure i'm gonna write jab jab left hook right because when i think about what that book meant for so many people if i can write wrote it 10 years ago the updated version of it i think it'd be value so i'm like the reason i'm probably even just said it out loud is i think i'm there and i've already started like mapping it in my head right and so i think that i think one of the things i'm going to talk about in that book for sure is this put it out organically it hits take it back add to the copy or slightly tweak the copy to make it a transactional piece of content now not just a brand piece of content for you it's ps if you're interested in training in the westchester connecticut upper new york area please email me info in my bio and then run 500 worth of ads against that it's gonna work because the creative's already shown to you because the algorithm now is not based on people it's based on interest so you know the ad is good yeah i love that tonight really quick youtube shorts do i just take my tick tock that i create just throw it on there for regulated organically on youtube it's always preference that you can textually make it for the platform because even if you start that video it's like hey youtube just that already changes the time temperature on the flip side we throw my tick tocks onto my shorts like you only have so many hours in the day much time and effort and the reality is that are you limiting some of the upside yes but if you don't have time to make one just for youtube shorts it's just i the only reason i'm so hesitant to say it that way is i know if i open up that kimono everyone's just gonna make one cup piece of content and put it everywhere and that's not the way you want to do it for the time being i do think so on the flip side there's a lot of team gary here all of them are thinking in their head how different something is working on tik tok versus instagram like especially this last couple weeks we're seeing things where like we can get a million views on instagram and the tick tock can get like 30 000. these are extreme differences and there has there's a lot to do with it everybody always talks about propaganda like tick tock knows that you posted it on instagram all this [ __ ] there's always chance for certain little things but it's more about humans tend to understand the spirit of it plus platforms are different just i've always said it you're the same person but when you're in your tick tock versus instagram linkedin your entire being is different no different than a lot of scenarios all of you are different in this setting right now than you would be if you with your best friends or at your favorites if i was at a tailgate of the jets i will be at a tailgate on monday with my closest friends my energy is going to be different than it is here i'm in a different setting it's a different context and that's how these platforms work but you should take that mil that one of the things that sid and i talk a lot about is bon jovi is still [ __ ] selling out stadiums selling singing the same nine [ __ ] songs i still haven't gotten there and i might even push it harder just to make it really a good part of jab jab left hook because i don't even need to test it i know the answer which is if i just go back and repost because we do it occasionally and repost the 30 most successful posts i've had in my career today nine years later four years later they're gonna [ __ ] crush that piece of content that you had get a million you should milk the living [ __ ] out of that what most people do is try to find the next one what we don't do is squeeze the [ __ ] out of the viral post that one post you should get into shorts you should set up your facebook fan page because of it should you should do it three more times on instagram in stories twitter this like it should be like squeeze the [ __ ] out of that virality i uh i'm heavy into the card game i love it sports cards uh no training cards and

trading cards oh though yes i've brought three one of ones yes with me and i'd love to work out a trade with you if you're up to okay what do you got i've got the auto ninja wow bubble gum panda wow and the hollow armadillo okay i don't want to figure something out what are you interested in i want a bf1 so i think so you can sit i gotta think um let me tell you what my initial reaction is solely you know and it's fun to like talk this out so it's really fun to see brandon in the background at the card show which i saw a lot of you there and when you watch me on trash talk if you've paid close attention i know a lot of you do and i think this will land with a lot of you i literally just go into that mindset like at the card show i was just a baseball card dealer like the whole time and i think a lot of you noticed that if you watch trash talk like yes there's a part of me that wants to teach people that if somebody has something for three dollars you should offer a dollar because if you only have eighty dollars and you're watching trash talk to like make your life better like you need those two dollars but eighty percent of it is i just don't know how not to be that human being when i'm at a garage sale i don't care how much money i have right now when i go to garage sale i have a garage sale jersey on and if somebody wants five bucks for something i want to offer 50 cents so right now i'm in full not like i want to do nice by you or this is good for the brand or this could be a good video i'm fully in like you want to [ __ ] trade and so and so where my mind goes is the vf1 value is too low in its truth versus the cards value right now are fair if not potentially even slightly elevated because it's hot and so to me that's just going to be a challenging trade to make because i like legitimately no [ __ ] the biggest problem i have right now is i want to buy all the vf ones myself but i don't think i can because unlike the stock market where a stock buyback is often looked as confidence i don't think our market is mature enough yet maybe in six years i'll be able to do that if there's another window i think if i was to do that today people are like oh gary's using his money to inflate the floor price so that's the only reason i've stayed away because i have to be thoughtful of that [ __ ] but i just the thought of trading a vf1 that i have right now is like the worst feeling and like i do i want them all on the flip side the ninja is a big [ __ ] card the panda's a big card i'm incredibly open to the following you should email me within the title i want both the ninja and the panda what do you want in return with a link to my openc and that's how we can start it i've been fortunate enough to live in a few continents and i have been in finance for the last 11 years how should i make the next move i don't know what the next move is whether it's being comedian writing a book or investing all my money on being friends well the third one's clearly right how should i find that inspiration which i did find before different continents right yeah and every time i move continents like it was i was born in india raised in australia moved to united states every time it was a rough ride yes right so let's say i make a move to be friends one i don't want like i'm scared of that roughness that's tough at the same time that's also different investing is not your behavior meaning not like i love the friends because i'm in charge like the biggest reason i don't like buying other stuff is i'm not in charge the reason i only buy crypto punks is it's the only one that i know that doesn't need anybody to do anything it just is going to trade on history whereas board ape and cool cats and goblins and penguins and v friends it's all required on us the operators you know like so to me going to a new country and establishing yourself and living life is a very different journey than being a passive investor in something right um i think the writing book and the comedy stuff excited me a lot more than v friends because that's you doing something v friends is you making a decision listen i would also counter my own talk and tell you that so much of my wealth creation was betting on other things you know facebook and uber and snapchat and like twitter and like i've done very well in that when it's all said done i will absolutely make more by what i operated than by what i invested in but i've won on both i've lost in investing i've never lost operating and so i think that you've got to decide for example i am so uncomfortably

convinced of how the v friends thing plays out i can also die tonight and then it doesn't i mean it's just true right so like if god willing i can operate this thing for the next but the ex but the problem is it's not far enough along right so when i think about v friends if i can do this for 15 years then i feel very comfortable then it's marvel then it's disney then it's established and operators can take it not even anybody can take it bob iger is not related to walt disney like you can you know you can do things but i still need at least 15 years to really set it for at least like what's going through my body as what this is gonna be so i think the way you have to think about it my friend is what's the allocation like you know look sitting on cash versus investing it has been a proven model over like and so i think one needs to sit on enough cash for a rainy day one should only invest money that they can afford to go to zero because you have to especially in something as high risk as nfts we're not talking about you investing in vayner media stock where the ad industry has been around for 100 years you still have to be empathetic that obviously i believe in it but it's too early but i think that's the way you have to think about that but as far as your part i always tell people to do [ __ ] like it's always the same thing one of my favorite things that you've heard a million times the reason i love saying you can't read about push-ups is it's just so easy to understand right like yeah it's very hard to get the benefit for some reason people think you can get the benefit in other parts of their life especially business like as if you just can't so like if it's comedy like make a comedy skit go and literally go to an open mic and try to do stand-up like if you don't do you don't know and you don't taste right that's what was so big about you tasting the tick-tock like that was out of necessity that's why kovid during coven more people took my advice than any other time ever because they had no other choice you know right like during the other time yeah it's consistently been good and i'll tell you why it's consistently good because i only talk about [ __ ] that's already happened there's no guessing and so i think that for you you've got to oh i would try to start doing all those things i would like literally start writing tomorrow i would literally try to start doing comedy either open mic or a piece of tic toc comedy skit dm 100 people back to the i emailed you gary email me a hundred times like dm 100 people that you think are good because you might be improv more than stand up well then that means you need other people well there's a million of those people on tick tock and instagram making skits one of them might want to do one with you know and so thank you you're welcome about my french bulldogs you know even that like i also something i'm very hot and i want to triple down on it's talk about back to books crush it i just wish people built more financial infrastructure around the things they actually like it works so much more it's just too hard to build like a career of meaning or a business of meaning on something you don't like if you're just doing it for the money it's got no shot long term you could make money plenty of people have but like if you're gonna really do it and enjoy it back to happiness like alien inc like you got to do it around something and so like maybe it's around the french bulldogs like i really think about that stuff yeah of course