# The Underground Marketer Getting Billions of Views on Autopilot

Channel: Brett Malinowski
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wx7XykZYAgI
Duration: 1 hr 11 min
Language: English
Words: 15670
Transcript page: https://viewrankai.com/tools/youtube-transcript/Wx7XykZYAgI

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[0:00] how many toys have you sold 1.5 million and when did you start this 12 months ago okay your story isn't as well known throughout the Universe because you're really good at underground marketing is how I like to describe it or think of it so how old were you when you made your first million dollars 18 years old how old are you now 26 okay so everyone's obsessed with like internet money like digital products and everything yeah and you obviously got your start with like you were doing Drop Shipping with what jewelry celebrity rappers you then became the CMO of gel blasters is that correct co-founder and CMO nice and that

[0:33] became like the what the bestselling toy in America yeah fastest growing toy company in North America Zer to100 million in sales in about 15 months oh my god dude that's just insane and then you're still involved with that still yeah I'm still I think the second largest shareholder and gel Blaster but uh obviously I've been full-time py Penguins now for the last two and a half years yeah but gel blast just crossed America every store possible it's just running and you did everything you needed to new Cheng 1.5 million toys in the year like that is just AB so would love to break down why did you decide to

[1:07] start a toy BR uh I really look at pudgy Penguins as like an IP business and then the toy business being a vertical within the IP business and it just seemed like really low hanging fruit to kind of create a physical world in a brand that is super digitally native it seem obvious you guys have dominated giy is that what it called is that giy y okay you've dominated that your Instagram reals you create like these like animated characters is absolutely rip and then you're creating the whole digital experience and you guys are launching your own blockchain y abstract Y and so I want to get I just want to go

[1:39] through this whole Vision but first let's start at the beginning of your toy launch like first why penguins well we probably have to go back a little bit further to the history and origin of pudgy Penguins so I'll give you the really brief version we bought pudgy Penguins for two and a half million do and it was an nft business and so we you know were huge Believers in nfts huge collectors I was actually one of the pudgy penguin's biggest holders and they didn't have the capacity at the time to kind of take the brand where I envisioned it could go so you know fast forward you know six months after my

[2:12] first purchase of the pudgey penguin nft I placed a bid for $2 and5 million to buy it we put half a million dollars into the business and then kind of crypto and nfts fell off a cliff literally the day we bought it and so we were kind of scrambling we're like okay well you know we believe that you know pudy Penguins has this huge IP potential like what is the first next step and so figuring that that you know nfts and crypto was collapsing we're like well we need to make some money uh and we need to like create a growable forecastable and projectable business and uh

[2:39] obviously toys were super low hanging fruit off of the backs of gel Blaster you know I understood Walmart I understood Target I understood Mass retail distribution and how to move you know units and mass and uh that seemed like the first step so we basically spent you know a couple months figuring out exactly how we were going to pull it off we actually licensed the toys from the nft holder so this is pretty interesting uh every nft holder who owns an nft actually has the opportunity to get their nft licensed and we pay them a royalty and perpetuity so we had to license some nfts I think the first

[3:08] Bunch or batch that we did was 25 uh we licensed them uh we put them into production took about 12 months from start to finish to basically take like Hey we're going to get into the toy business as our first Like Home Run swing uh to licensing to actually manufacturing and distributing and then basically we started the whole journey kind of uh hitting it to what the biggest and best retailer you can go with which is Walmart uh and it's basically been 13 14 months since that moment what did you see in pudgy penguins like why did you choose Penguins dude I just I I I one I think

[3:39] people love penguins and when you think Penguins there is no Penguin brand right like when I think Penguins when I think dogs like I think Paw Patrol I think 100 different brands I think cats is like 100 different brands but people love penguins the same way they love dogs cats and lions and elephants and hippos but nobody's own the penguin character and I think just from a consumer product perspective the penguin character is a billion dooll character it's a it's a billion doll animal uh so and just like the name py penguins like if I just close my eyes and I take my take I I I

[4:09] go back to when I first bought the nft I I I thought that there was brand potential here and if that somebody built something that had a lot of demand that this would be like the most valuable nft and you know the most valuable Next Generation brand that this stuff was incubating yeah it's there's something to the fact that P Penguins kind of just natively took off in the nft like there's some the simp of the art and the memes behind it naturally arose I remember like B Club was at like 5 or 10 eth and they were like killing everybody and then all of a sudden pudgy

[4:39] just for some reason got MD into existence yeah and so it was just like such a beautiful moment and I feel like that is like a level of proof of concept too is that what you were like and I totally agree with you it's like you know all these other projects had so much going for them so much operational excellence or you know people trying to push the boundary or or sell a narrative these kids were 18 to 19 year olds in their college dorm basement and this thing was like printed on the New York Times it was all over CNBC all over MSNBC everyone was meing at the culture

[5:07] the vibe everything was different about it in a way that I felt like it had that it factor that was like the essence of what nft culture is supposed to be yeah and then probably two months later got very toxic but that was like I will always cherish that moment waking up going in the Discord every single day that New York Times article was just out like so many crazy things were happening out of nowhere and everyone was just so happy to be there together for the sake of that community so that's beautiful and I know that you experienced that too and like you're like keeping that ethos

[5:34] and that Essence throughout now bringing this to a billion dollar brand and I think that like you're only the one person in the entire web 3 Community capable of doing that right now so app one of the most excited podcasts I've ever had I'm like generally so excited to be here with you dude well I'm happy to be here okay so I need you guys went to Walmart first of its kind in the web 3 space obviously but just in general a huge feat of its just being you had like the center aisle like this was like no joke of a release so how did you guys

[5:58] even like make that let's leave the logistical stuff aside for now but from a marketing and deal making perspective like how did you get the first meeting yeah so the first meeting I think was just done through uh that initial relationship I had a touch point there already right so so when you with gel blasters you built a relationship yeah mind you gel Blaster was Walmart's bestselling product for like a year how did you do that uh that that you know there's two different uh product opportunities uh specifically around the toys you either have like a brand Affinity play which is like a py penguin play or you have a play pattern play

[6:31] right so gel Blaster was a play pattern gel Blaster was this disruptive water Orbeez gun that just like was infinitely better than Nerf Nerf was just a giant disappointment always was right but we always like the concept of being able to shoot each other with something and then now you have this like new you know different way of shooting somebody with something but like had a little more consequence but like wouldn't put you in the hospital or hurt you like like a airsoft or a paintball and I think just tapped into a really awesome nerve uh and and and and obviously like my whole thing is just like takeover right social

[7:02] media takeover we just we did challenges we put it in the hands of every influencer every rapper every celebrity and then the product did the heavy lifting so you know the combination of just Mass distribution Mass marketing with mass placement you have this recipe for Success okay can we talk about this for a little longer because this is like so interesting to me actually it's one of the best products like the sound that it makes when it shoots the gels like dissolve so it's like environmentally friendly it doesn't hurt you and like very differentiated but I think if I remember correctly you already the product was

[7:34] already made by the really good engineering team and you saw that yes so you saw the product and then just knew that if you appli to your skill set it would blow up that was your thesis so the concept was I was like actually on a road trip with Jesse and like uh Jesse from n so you know he was doing he was doing his own thing uh he's doing like a whole [ __ ] hole thing so we went on like a [ __ ] hole uh tour around like uh Southern California and like Arizona and Sedona and uh Courtney who was assistant at the time like got these like Rinky

[8:03] Dink like little blasters like from Kickstarter and uh we start like blasting each other with it I'm like dude this is a winning product yeah I was like cuz you know you know I was in the business of finding winning products I was like dude this is the most legendary we've never had I haven't had more fun as like a 23y old 22y old uh in a long time so I was like this is a winner I made a post on Instagram I said who owns this let me get in touch and then it turns out one of my friends was like talking to the the

[8:32] Creator who just finished his Kickstarter campaign and was looking like find a marketing agency and so I end up reaching out to the guy and uh we get on a conversation I'm like dude look like how do how do we be a part of this we throw $600,000 into the business I become the CMO uh you know and basically second largest shareholder I'm like look let's let's cook this thing let's send to the Moon Put Peter on it who you will hear in the pudgy penguin story rebranded it redid All the logos of the whole nine whole color palette made it look like a real brand it was like some

[9:03] gray orange like Kitty toy before didn't look like what it look like today uh redid it reframed it repositioned it and then just dispers the first shipment just to every single person who matters in the world that's probably like one only influencers like yeah so so that's kind of like one of my secret edges is I think I have one of the most powerful gifting lists in the world right gifting list yeah gifting list and I got that through Von Dutch okay right so so Von Dutch and then obviously my experience with Pat can you explain what that is a gifting list like this idea that a list

[9:36] of people that I can send it to that just like I probably have 10 billion followers and people that I can send product to are they required to like make a no I don't want them to it's just like literally here's a gift here's a but you know the product's good and fun and is they're in the mean the industry of needing content so it does a couple it does a couple things it's like you know it depends on the conversion of the product but if it's like exactly if it's fun you know gel Blaster was great cuz like you used it you obviously made a

[10:01] video from with it because it was so easy to make a video with you know so 25% of the people I sent it to made a video you know Von Dutch is a nice t-shirt you become a billboard I only need 1% of the people I send it to to wear it and like you know be featured impressed and then the network effect pudgy same thing right so the gifting list is one of my one of my secret weapons in my toolbox how have you gotten these people's addresses it's so you know obviously my my first my first Endeavor was you know building Brands around influencers and

[10:27] creators and I basically was living with Patty for years and he was the hottest thing on Instagram for like 12 months we just built a relationship and built a Rolodex and I was kind of known as like this 20-year-old money kid that like everyone all the famous people wanted to inter you know wanted to know cuz like who's this kid making all these other guys all this money so I built that initial list there and then Von Dutch is when I really scaled the list did they teach you this no no no no this was just like this just seemed like instinctual gotcha so you like saw their model and

[10:55] just like I was just dude like you know organized it made it like a system thing correct but but Von Dutch Von Dutch didn't uh didn't have a list I I went into Von Dutch and leverage to create an even bigger list so like for example Patty and crew like gave me every influencer every instagrammer and Tik tocker and like with maybe some rappers Von Dutch gave me every A-list celebrity wait did you because yeah yeah I was basically at their CMO for a year so I basically came in I came in they already had it yeah but they didn't have a list I basically leverag Von Dutch because it was such an

[11:33] affluent brand in the 2000s the 1990s like there was like Kim K and you know the did you know was wearing the Von dut and all that so at the time Uh I that was enough leverage for me to be like hey you know let's say I went to like the FaZe house you know on West Lake and you know there was trippy and you know you know all these different guys like dude Von Dutch are like oh that's dope boom boom boom and then I was like Hey trippy I'll send it to 20 of your friends like who do you want me to send you a pack to there's nothing giving

[12:00] people free things is a lot of things it's great marketing it's great relationship building and then if you know how to Leverage The gifting you can also get them to be like you know my whole thing was like hey send it to your homie like I'll send you free stuff I'll send it on your behalf so I was able to just cheat my way and just build this list as conglomerate because because what I ended up doing for Von Dutch specifically was I would send it to all the celebrities and then I would run ads on all the celebrities that posted it for so for example Drake posted with a

[12:26] fond Dutch hat that night I was running ads targeting followers and we just printed we probably like made like oh my God we we were that is so smart dude so then I was just going like that I was going through the different audiences I was like so whoever whoever wore it like one like the the followers it naturally got some sort of boost and some sort of conversion like through Google and stuff but then I would Target the followers off the backs of the post and things would go bananas so you were you would send it to them you just be like monitoring their social media the second

[12:55] you saw them repping vonu or something you then immediately run an ad yeah to their followers are you you can't use the picture of them but so but they're it's in their mind because I'm running I'm running the skew I'm just running a single image skew image because they'd seen it before subconsciously whether they remembered it or not so just straight story swipe up entire followers wow that is genius and just so everyone knows he didn't wasn't just born with this network your first business how you made your initial money right was partnering with creators helping them start jewelry businesses and operating for rappers other influencers who wanted

[13:26] to have a jewelry business correct it was you know we had multiple lines of products to jewelry business being the highest margin you know best one that had the most success but we basically came early Instagram days you know basically went to influencers found out they didn't have millions of dollars but had millions of followers and was like dude I got these five products this one does best which one of these products do you want to sell I'll stand you up a Shopify and that's ultimately like how my career in first millions of dollars was made were you buying shopgld I shop GLD was a direct

[13:56] competitor but it's the exact exact style products that we were selling interesting okay cool okay so back to the gel blasters then that's super interesting so you had a gift list of all that built up previously throughout your career you've been in the game for 10 years now dude that's what I'm saying people are like dude you're so successful I'm like we don't know I've been doing this pretty much my whole life step and all building off the last advantages cool dude so you had that gift list for gel blasters you sent out all the gel blasters to all the influencers and that the sounds so good

[14:22] it's such a fun thing they were just naturally like posting using it shooting each other with it like that's just great content are you a non-technical entrepreneur with software or app idea but you can't figure out where or how to find trustworthy developers that used to be me I knew I wanted to build a software company but I had no idea where to start with no one to help guide me through the process I made countless mistakes costing me thousands of dollars and months of headache which is why I founded my development agency wgmi Labs an allinone development agency specifically tailored to non-technical entrepreneurs where we don't just take

[14:58] your feature set build it and say our goodbyes we are in it for the long haul and we want to see all of the SAS Founders that we work with be successful after building our own successful software companies and then taking our Blueprints and helping thousands of other non-technical founders with their own we know how to build products that people will actually pay for so we have taken that model and just applied it to all of our client projects helping them not only build the product of their dreams but also giving them the road map to their first 1 5 10,000 per month in recurring Revenue think of wgmi labs as

[15:33] your technical co-founder where we actually care about the success of your project and we're not just building something that we know will never work so if you're ready to bring your software idea to life I'll leave a link in the description so you can book a call and we'll show you what those next steps look like or head over to wgmi labs.com and then what did you do from there then uh I think it went into like the Orbeez challenge so there's this whole Orbeez challenge this is like probably unbeknownst most but like there was like whole driveby challenge where it's like you just take the Orbeez gun

[16:03] and just do a driveby it was on your friends on your friends like yeah on your friends and unfortunately people took it like way too far way too far I'm just tapping into like the D gen genen Z culture uh then the Orbeez challenge kicked off did you conceptualize that like did you like plan it was a plan nice yeah it was a plan I didn't expect it to go the way that it did and I think our competitors actually there was a couple there was a couple like low OEM competitors that actually really benefited off of it it because you know we didn't have like AK-47s people

[16:31] started taking like AK-47 gel blasters and like going like way too far with it like they copied you yeah they copied with with it and then just like went like way too egregious like the creatives and the hooks were like way too egregious I wasn't doing that I was just like hey like you're you're you know you're you're pulling up to the driveway of your house like you know shoot your mom you know this was this was like Hey like take like five AK47 gel blasters and like go hit your local grandma in the face like it was like not good but the Orbeez challenge kicked off

[17:01] in a really meaningful way um and and then and then placement then we just started selling the Amazon started churning the product started churning and then like the the Walmart the first Walmart deal was an amazing close by the CEO who's calling um and then once it was there it was like game over things were just selling because people like had wanted it it was so much pent up demand it was just like and then once once it flies off the shelf once Walmart's like they do the math and they start they like this whole algorithm on how they project and then they order again and if like the if the first this

[17:33] if the second order like fulfills the first order on the projections then they go they go like Walmart can make some crazy orders like millions of prod yeah like like yeah like million dollar po you have to make it out of nowhere with no like incremental prep yeah and the problem is is is not only that people don't understand it you get paid net 90 for net0 which is basically after shipment so after it delivers it can take 90 to 180 days so the financing on a $60 million po this is where this is where this is where things actually get tricky because you know we could make a

[18:05] hundred million in 12 months but like the bank account will have like $3 million in it and you'd be like why right because you obviously have Staffing you have marketing spend you have the whole the whole nine but the real kicker is that you don't get paid from the big retailer until 90 or 100 days after depending on the deal Jesus and so when you go from a a $2 million po to an $8 million po to a 60 million po the logistics of that are incredibly tough I can't even imag that's so like just clinched yeah clinch you have to go get loan you know what I mean you have

[18:39] toan yeah you have to go get loans you have to figure out you know we had a great you know can get some lines of credit things like that but I mean oh my God okay so he you planted that how I I do want to ask you about the Orbeez how did you like make that like how did you announce that how did that get seed Into The Ether of the of the world the challenge like were you parking the meme Pages oh no you just you just you just do one crazy hook and then you dist distribute it through like 10 10 meme Pages 10 theme pages and then it just

[19:07] takes so meme pages and theme Pages this is like this is what I mean the underworld this is the underground Alpha so you just you're planting the con if you have something good you can seat it with like 20 grand you can seat a good challenge with 20 grand if you have a CR it's all about the hook and the angle though so for the marketers out there it starts and stops the hook or the angle or the creative and and naturally it's like if it's going viral like a driveby Orbeez like is naturally going to go viral then everyone was is going to Pile in not because they want to promote your

[19:35] product but because they want millions of right the incentive the incentive on social and for being a Creator is not money it's views which you hope trans one day translates to money so if your product can be a mechanism for views like Tide Pods agreed in a very bad example yeah not Tide Pods but yeah yeah but if that somehow be if you can seed that and so you didn't it's not you making a video talking about it on jail Blaster social media it's you conceptu conceptualizing this idea hiring actors or people to do this concept use this language and then distribute that across meme pages and it like plants the seed

[20:09] and spreads yes that's [ __ ] marketing dude that is genius okay cool and then that just obviously once you're in Target Walmart these people see it they're like I got to go to Target I got to do this and it's there and then and then the the machine starts turning right you know um little ues posting you know what I mean then then then just becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy and then and then the next phase from that is like licensing right so like because there's fatigue there like eventually the play pattern so it goes we did a that probably eight months and then we do the Starfire where now the Orbeez

[20:39] glow in the dark so you're like dude this is like laser tag on steroids it's like 10 times better than laser tag that was great and then now now the brand based on the the recent update that I've got like the brand is in a new phase which is like licensing so we just did the Halo Needler nice so you've got the Needler just an exp yeah so so now you're getting there and then like eventually like you know once you go through licensing then it becomes like the beauty of gel Blaster probably the best thing is actually the naming convention because the name of the brand

[21:06] is the name of the category right gel blasting is the name of the gel blasting category and we the gel Blaster yeah they own that so that was probably and that that was not my doing did they invent the concept like the team before you got involved no actually it was a thing in Australia that police policemen were using to basically like like train with and and actually in Australia but it was like very it wasn't like a toy it was like a lifelike like supplement for like training mhm and then Colin who's like an inventor was just like dude during Co like my kids just want to have

[21:39] fun like he's like just a super Action Sports guy like you know paintball whatever he saw you know what was going on in Australia and was just like let me just reinvent this made it a little better there's some proprietary things that they kind of figured out like it's definitely a better product than you know just like a there's some real invention there's some real science behind it and now there there's a whole Tech component to it that's crazy he saw in Australia as like and that's where he came up with the concept yeah wow that's cool it's kind of like Airsoft but not bullets to hurt you and they're like

[22:09] aoft will really will really hurt you and plastic yeah this this there's consequence when you get shot with a jail Blaster which makes it fun but it's not like oh my God I'm going to go cry me River yeah right cool that's a really cool story is that public is that valuation public of that company or no gel Blaster valuation is not public okay all right then let's it's worth a couple hundred million dollars though that's insane though all right let's go back to your billion dollar baby that we're working on now because this is also equally interesting so you had that experience CMO multi million doll gel Blaster company you

[22:44] conceptualize the entire marketing you made it what it is obviously great product first but marketing as far as far as getting it to the world you really conceptualized that and executed at the highest level good [ __ ] dude apprciate that now with pudgy penguins you're saying it's an IP brand so I use toys because that's like what you guys launched with first but this could be like movies video games everything and so you saw that as like this is like time to go into the big leagues of business opportunity and who makes the most money IP Brands and then you saw the gap of penguins no one

[23:13] really owned Penguins IP Y and you saw proof of concept with this little project py Penguins there's like a whole cultural thing that kind of proves you there's something there y so you take the BET $25 million was that all you or did you it was basically 7 5% me then the couple the the executive team that I knew kind of brought in since day one they kind of bought their their piece uh and then there was like seven to eight% that I actually put away for like strategic advisers and people that I thought could provide value uh so they all put like uh you know 25 50 Grand in

[23:48] at the time so it's about a a group of like six or seven guys just got in early that that helped from a strategic point of view yeah but so basically people that were going to help you with this big of a vision you're going to that pry took a to but you got it it got it was compated I you were deal making when we were in Colorado and that was a stressful time for you but now that you got it done did you when you were buying it when you were in the process of buying it did you know toys was going to be the first launch no you just wanted

[24:17] to save the project no I I wanted to save the project and I thought that I I knew there was going to be like there was going to be multiple directions I didn't the the toys was simply out of the and I'm glad that everything happened the way that it did I think we went toys first out of desperation I mean we literally bought it and a week later the market just went collapsed and royalties got royalties got taken away and and and there was Black Swan after Black Swan right FTX like it wasn't I just like came into a Deb like I came into a catastrophe yeah you're staring

[24:47] at the void so I'm like dude I'm not and $2 and5 million no small amount of money so I'm like okay I'm scrambling I'm like what's going on and uh and I was like well we just came off the backs of 100 million a year toy business so that seems like low hanging fruit and I see there's an opportunity here and it was always on the agenda right we had there's probably eight different verticals and facets that I think are a priority for us uh and that was just the lowest hanging fruit in terms of like we're consumer product guys so let's go build a consumer product first and we

[25:15] need some money yeah so I have a lot of questions on this because then once you made that decision because it's kind of defaulting into what you knew I think I'm sure when you bought it you were banking on royalties and like I was banking on royalties suain to pay for the employees everything like pay for costs and that just got ripped away from you in a brutal way yeah I had to bank roll it with another half a million bucks dude that's insane yeah okay so now that you're in that position you're like toys is the way to go you guys have I follow your YouTube channel I've

[25:38] watched every one of your building public and it's so fascinating to me that who's the who's your creative partner that's like in uh Peter Peter he's really talented super incredibly Talent we wouldn't be here without him dude so I'm so curious like you guys you came up with the toy concept you got the art done you built the team around it you guys go to like these like I don't know to call them like event like Creator or like toy cons the word licensing Expo conferences so why are you going so hard and spending like a CU that like you have like the arcade games you have like this whole Booth setup

[26:10] that seems like it's only there for like a weekend why are you guys going so what's the Thought I think it's just a matter of like one deal can change the entire trajectory of a business right you're trying to find like a production yeah so so so like licensing Expo for example is a place where you go to like go and get potential licensing deals so like you know can I put Penguins on like a Lunchable or like a hogendos right like that happens at licensing Expo so we go right there's toy conventions those get purchase orders those purchase orders come to our bank account in some

[26:35] capacity right uh so I I think there's different shows for different things but I think you know our first two years like dude we have to show up we have to show out ComicCon is like brand awareness like that sells you know showing up and having a presence of Comic-Con help sells out the units at Walmart and Target so that's like more B2B yes I was I was watching I'm like why are you guys spending 200 Grand just to get like sell a few like I thought people were buying them there okay so that's to close the B2B deal for licensing and getting on other distribution channels and you can make

[27:02] some real big orders there cool Netflix Hulu these are the type of guys that there that's cool okay so that's like kind of what the first thing I saw you guys doing publicly and seeing that boots on the ground backend relationships getting into like the niche trenches of Collectibles is this is that kind of the angle that you're going with the toys is because I know you have like you may didn't you launch Collectibles first yeah there we launched Collectibles first which are like more of a high-end product so just you know per my my my my background like I'm I'm in in the I'm of the belief that

[27:29] I should have a wide range of products for a lot for a wide range of you know people in different Financial categories we started off initially with like a really high-end collectible uh you know that we actually sold on network which is like a huge Marketplace and for a while we were like their fastest selling and bestselling collectible for the units and the amount of units we were selling yeah we were crushing it uh and then we expanded a little more into Mass which is the toys you see in Walmart and Target and I think Peter wants to contract you know the brand back into a

[27:56] little more highend you know over the course of the next coming year when you think about businesses growing their sales Beyond forecasts like Mattel sure you think about a product with demand a focused brand and influence driven marketing but an often overlooked secret is actually the businesses behind the business making selling and for the Shoppers buying simple for millions of businesses that business is Shopify home of the number one checkout on the planet and the Not So secret secret with shop pay that boost conversion up to 50% so if you're into growing your business your Commerce platform better be ready to sell wherever your customers are

[28:35] scrolling or strolling on the web in your store or in their feed and everywhere in between upgrade your business and get the same checkout as Matel sign up for your $1 per month trial period at shopify.com wgmi all lowercase go to shopify.com wgmi to upgrade your selling today shopify.com wgmi thank you for sponsoring today's episode you want to go back into the highend Collectibles but I want to I Really I love that episode you were planning like your takeover like planning for the uh Walmart launch but just so I understand the order of events you chose high-end Collectibles first that was like your initial release to get product into the

[29:15] world kind of in the init initial web 3 Community then what was the did you go on you did an Amazon launch first they did an Amazon launch and that's what created fomo for Walmart went to Walmart went to Bentonville couldn't close the deal then we started to gain some momentum and I got one of the influencers that I had worked with from way back in the day had posted something around pudy penguins and then a woman who was the senior vice president at Walmart uh followed that Creator and said I heard this kid was here let me follow up back with them I go back to

[29:49] Bentonville we have a conversation I say look like this is a Next Generation brand we have huge value propositions here that are just way bigger than being a cute penguin uh you know take a chance on us she's like okay you're on my radar but they didn't make the order still then we launched on Amazon and the whole Space rallied behind us basically half a million dollars in two days we're the number one selling toy on Amazon thesis has been proven there's clearly some support Walmart hits us up how quickly can you get a pallet here for quarter 4 center of the store you know only you

[30:21] know that's just for people who are not familiar that's the most Prime real estate that you can get in a retailer like Walmart especially in the most like you if you're not Star Wars or Hello Kitty you can't get that right like that's Star Wars Hello Kitty you have like a Power Ranger movie for Christmas yeah yeah Christmas quarter four pallet Center the store like you a new brand doesn't get that no way but they gave it to us and so then our objective comes you know ask why why they gave that to you you I think they're just I I think they're just on I I think they want to

[30:50] be Innovative and they want to be at the Forefront of new so the web three angle I think the web three angle I think the momentum I think the social strategy it's just different it's not like it's not like every every toy that you see on shelf like gets pushed because they have like a movie or a TV show so it's like okay they acknowledge that yeah let let's see let's see what a toy does who has social and like new cool technology bake it into it so then so then the challenge is once you get through all of that and I won't give you guys all the

[31:18] logistical hurdles and how hard that is to get that many toys in 2,000 stores in 90 days but once that is is on uh on the retail floor then the challenge comes you have have to sell out basically 80% of the stock in in in two months you basically have until the end of the year to sell 80% of the stock out minimum 70% but 80% if you want to be back right and so 2,000 stores like 500 basically it's 800,000 toys Jesus so you're like how are you going to do it yeah in every like it's not like one store it's like every state yeah and the and the problem

[31:49] is is you don't get indexed uh you get indexed like you you don't get indexed on like oh you sold out of every Metropolitan because that that that happen quickly for us so we sold out of every Metropolitan City quick right it didn't take that long but the issue was was there's all these places in the middle of nowhere 10,000 people where we had no presence and no poll yeah the farmers aren't web three people right and and and so you were you were we were judged not on how well certain stores did but on the entire basket and that's where the challenge really presented itself so product had to win there

[32:23] product had to that's where you have to force it that that's where you have to just pull out all the stock like commercials news stations uh you know catalogs you're running radi in local areas I don't even know how to yeah dude I'm a I'm a I'm a Metropol so to your point like I'm a gen Z gen Alpha marketer like dude I don't know how to Market to to to Virginia Rono rural yeah you know what I mean I don't know how to do that uh so you figure it out you figure out on the Fly and and you're liter like we have so the problem

[32:54] presents itself we have to sell you have to not faure it's just okay how do we do this radio TVs yes you can't even do Instagram ads in that area maybe yeah you do Instagram so you have the addresses of the stores that you're not so every week you get a report so you understand what stores are doing well and what stores are doing poorly so I can then go Target the stores that are doing po poorly from like so I can go like you know zip code 33138 like I can go make sure that like everyone in 33138 who like has any affinity for toys or

[33:23] Penguins or anything is seeing me somewhere somehow gotcha but like there's not direct conversion I can't see them swipe up and buy so like I'm really just and at at that point you're sending money into a void and you just have to realize that that's the name of the game and just trickle down a few days later maybe you see a slight bump maybe you see a slight bump dude that's crazy that's scary it's super scary okay before I want to keep going on that topic but before I just want to make sure I understand so you got the meeting to Walmart because of your track record

[33:49] they turned you down then as a result of that you wanted to do an Amazon launch yes so they needed the Amazon launch directly natively online what you're comfortable with through your online you have a pretty strong online community on Twitter so to that point I'll give you some Alpha because I know you want to give Alpha to your community one thing that we've learn with Pudgies we have a group of like a thousand loyalists like just die hard they will show up if I say hey I need you guys here they will they will they will kill right they're just an AR like a ver call them Seal Team

[34:16] ping right like a complete just SEAL Team Six group of guys and gals and they've actually been super impactful in terms of finagling the algorithm right so I this was actually a plan but I was like I I was going to go launch to another retailer I was like dude before all this let me just leverage Amazon because I actually think I can get number one across the board on Amazon because I think I can get this group to just piranha on this pack of Flesh that is like this initiative you know and and hit trigger these algorithms and we did this with the giy so we're not going to

[34:50] get into this and we did this with early social which was like early social notifications on share early giy use use use comm's core community's core especially that core unit so if I get a thousand people to go buy a new toy on Amazon in the first 5 minutes it just slams The algorithm Amazon break Amazon doesn't know how to compute even you know because that it's just so it's the timing of it like all happening at once that's kind of a sync thing huh sync thing so we just we launched boom synced one number one toy across like many categories so like number one toy number

[35:21] one plush number one figure number one mystery 11111 and then the network effects pile then the rest of the space has fomo they're like dude number one number one I'm going to buy what the toys about would be part of it and then just compounds and then like then we run out of stock and we're like we didn't know we make we're going to sell this much but mission accomplished and and the right problem to have and you leverage that you basically one lady had like a kid that had heard of it that's like spiritual right there that's awesome and but you had that proof that

[35:48] gave them the confidence to do the first batch Y and then that went well and you have to do a second batch but that's way bigger yeah so second so so first batch is is huge in terms of its unit basis and its significance for the program and the timing of the program and like just how hard that is second program is more stores probably double we went from 2,000 to 3500 stores but then like you're on shelf right you have your assortment you have your selection you know 15 or in our case 10 different items uh from a unit basis not a pallet so but they only really do those pallets

[36:24] from a seasonal perspective um and so now we're in 3,500 stores in our assortment and uh we're going strong okay so now let's tackle the marketing cuz you have done some really genius things really high level like you have the two characters on Instagram reals my girlfriend sends to me all the time y then you have you've dominated what is it giy or Jiffy giy giy you've dominated giy and I have no understanding of that world yeah and so could you explain those two what those are so so so giy Gippy is probably my favorite one and I think it's our most impactful marketing strategy and I think because for a

[36:56] couple things so like if you have to understand our business like at our business at our core like we're crypto native and we're digital native and so a lot of the things that you see us do from the physical side is really like a a today it's marketing right because I think revenue is not we're not as desperate for Revenue as we were you know two years ago the gify I think is the most impactful marketing strategy of them all uh because of how it really correlates and translates uh with what we're trying to accomplish so I think first and foremost I want pudgy Penguins to be the mascot of crypto and then I

[37:25] want pudgy Penguins to be the face of penguin around the world those are like my two core objectives from a crypto perspective pudgy Penguins is super mimic and if you actually understand gifts gifts are memes and they basically are the distribution mechanism for memes around all of the major social channels and so for for I think both of our core objectives gifts I think meet there the most uh and ultimately do I think the best for the brand in that respect but GIF is not a conversion mechanism so for example like a 100 million views on YouTube will convert more direct sales than my 30 billion gift views but what

[38:06] my 30 billion gift views does is it creates an unseparable amount of Mind share and an incredible touch point an omnipresent touch point that creates trust and credibility and familiarity around the brand in the IP so in the crypto world for example if you're a crypto guy and you don't do toys you don't do any of that stuff you don't do IP you don't give a [ __ ] you know your girlfriend or your friend or your family member says you a gift it's not H moment it's a light it's a light you're like what this pudgy penguin native brand if you are you know a a boyfriend and a

[38:36] girlfriend who love the toys it's a Communication channel it's how you communicate if you're a Community member it is your penguins being brought to life right so if you actually look at like what it does for our business and our business is pretty complicated in terms of the different facets it is so significant and to to that point we're getting probably three four billion views use a month right now on geffy if I told you what we'd spend on that like just transparently we're spending like $115,000 a month on that just making the art really yeah right just we've built the machine right but three to four

[39:10] billion views and Impressions on a character IP which is like really I'm in the IP Market I'm in the brand I'm in the penguin familiarity business right at its core you know if I'm spending $15,000 at 3 to four billion views like what is the CPM on that like the like it's probably fractions of fractions of pennies that's just absurd it's like the ultimate top of funnel totally and so many people are using it without even knowing what it is but they're just getting it drilled into their subconscious they do see it like I like that exactly and we've built such a machine behind it we built like a whole

[39:44] proprietary like text stack to the gifts a whole portal so it it was it was more expensive at one point but we've just siphoned it down it's almost like automated like running AI on half of it dang uh so can you just explain what a gif is real quick and what gify is as a platform yeah so gify is basically gifs are basically animated memes or image animated images that are indexed or referenced as gifs and these gifs are basically gify has Partnerships with Instagram WhatsApp telegram basically every major social network and messaging platform and if you want to send an animated gif it's used through gify and

[40:23] so a lot of what we do is we like index on gify so you know when you type type in sad right if you're you know everybody has you know this easily accessible you know part of their phone when they're messaging somebody they want to send like a funny gift to somebody they'll type in sad you'll see pudgy penguin show up there right like you know displaying this person that you're sad exactly or love or all these different words so a lot of the sauce around giy is how you index it it's actually like the the one channel where I spent like basically a whole year

[40:53] trying to figure out cuz I was so fascinated cuz I I I thought it was so impactful and so meaningful now from a consumer product guy a lot of people steer away from it because you know it's not like I go launch a giy campaign and I make a million dollars on my Shopify store but in the IP business right if I'm in the character business now this is what I've learned and this is why I'm so in love with giy because if you go to Asia which now I've become like a Asia World traveler for obvious reasons qip is dominant in Asia there's companies like Lon and caca who have built

[41:24] multi-billion doll businesses and they all started with viral stickers social so stickers and gifts are the same thing so like viral that makes sense messaging stickers so when I first went to Asia and I found out that lon's whole multi-billion Dollar Empire started from these gifts and these stickers I was like okay this is insane scale it's just digital stickers now yeah and and so like so it actually converts into something meaningful like this is not like for an IP business I would say it's the most meaningful and impactful marketing spend and place where you should be spending marketing if you're trying to become familiar with the

[42:01] character now cryptos and meme coins and all these other things now it's like whoever can have the most popular prolific mimetic character wins in the form of multi-billions and I'm over here like dude you know we're the kings of this that's such a New Concept to me yeah but it's all about like the like all the different emotions that you can display what would they pop up if you type a certain word why does yours pop up why does it convey that that's a really in-depth strategy probably and remember marketing is about touch points right so seven touch points you close the you close the consumer so like this

[42:31] is like the easiest touch point of them all and it's probably the first yeah probably you know you go Instagram Tik Tok like it's the first and then you go then you hit them in you meet them at their favorite retailer and then you hit them with the you know so the life cycle marketing of this do you start with giy and then that's what Instagram is have you thought did you think I probably we probably start with Instagram start with Instagram we probably start with Instagram or we start it it you can't really you can't really project where they start right what you really have to

[42:55] do is just be like do you have the seven or eight or nine Infinity Stones like do the do the Infinity Stones exist and like where somebody discovers that as their prerogative and like you don't really know but you have like all these little nodes in a network and they could stumble across one they all light up eventually I love that analogy and the last one will be web 3 yes but you start with web 3 because you have that those a thousand people exactly and also helps when all of them if they own a penguin the minimum it's like 40 Grand exact so that's probably a pretty loyal crowd and

[43:23] they're pretty resourced that's really cool that's so powerful so the core is the web 3 Community where you started yep and then the widest net is giy y but then Instagram is in between where you actually have character character building so explain to me the character building and the thought process behind that because it's like these like pink and blue yeah Pax and poly so uh the two characters on the Instagram I think just like for us again uh you know social and this is the alpha too I was giving you Alpha because I think it it's worth it Instagram is about shares MH right so

[43:52] like there's we went we kind of went the relationship angle because like nothing shares better than me sending it to a boyfriend or a girlfriend and and the reason why Instagram Factor shares above all else is because it's pretty simple if I send you something on Instagram I go to the app Instagram wins by you going to the app right so the share is the most powerful conversion to take somebody from like texting to like oh Brett just shared this to me let me go see what he shared then I consume then I'm on the app then I'm in their ad Network then I'm spending money gotcha

[44:22] right so the share is the is the thing you want to hack the most across any social Channel specifically Instagram uh because it's the most valuable to their algorithm share this podcast with the FR yeah totally that makes a lot of sense though and so you're like that's your that's your like uh goal whatever goal stick or whatever is that the right word I don't know that's what your goal is and so you have to reverse engineer how do we maximize shares so you came up with two characters and you're telling like little cute stories and so my girlfriend sends me like anytime it's a cute relationship thing of the

[44:53] girlfriend like cuddling or something I always get him every single day makes me smile yeah and so what was the thought process behind the actual like how are you choosing what to share is that like yeah or what to create so people share sorry yeah I think I you know this is this is where I you know this is where like the second part of this business comes in which is like team and I know what I'm not good at and I'm not Walt Disney I'm not a creative so this is where we let Peter Cook you know Peter steps in he cooks his thing figures out

[45:20] what it thinks Mak sense and there's a really good building and public it's under your name now right so lucet on YouTu they have a building in public series we can see all of this like raw and he has there's one episode that's like around those characters that was so fascinating to me he's really smart and he does such a good job and your animator's cooking like he's a busy guy yeah so is there any because those are the three that I've seen from seeing this from the start are there any other like sleepers that aren't so obvious or what other network nodes have you created I think probably the nft side

[45:51] it's not to be underestimated in the community side right goes back to those thousand people right like the the championing of somebody who has aligned financial interest is unparalleled and to be frank I'll take a thousand of my core community members over 2 million Instagram followers any day of the week I really would explain a line incentive a line incentive in this idea that like if you own a pudgy penguin nft you know the more the brand succeeds the more demand that's created around the character and more love and Affinity is created around the penguin then ultimately at some point in time your asset's going to appreciate in price

[46:34] based on that demand now that demand is created by people on the team it's created by community members right uh and it's the first time in human history now again like you know some people listening to this like nfts it depends like what experience you've had with nfts the experience that the pudy penguin NFD holders have had is one of obviously trial and tribulations prior but like I think we've all been marching towards this direction of like Hey we're going to build the world's most famous Penguin brand and there's enough penguin lovers who have hundreds of thousands of not millions of dollars that will own a

[47:06] penguin and never sell their penguin and that want to identify as this puty penguin right and there's many people that will own multiple right because of what this brand represents both within the crypto space and outside of the crypto space and so as we continue to March forward on this path for Success the beauty of the nft is it's a finite Supply there's can't issue anymore I've been very clear that I would never issue any new mint any new FS there's 8,888 pudgy Penguins eventually the supply and demand you know Elementary School model kicks in and you have this situation where price appreciates violently right you know when I bought pudgy Penguins

[47:43] they were worth half in ethereum which is like $1,300 you know it's been two and a half years you know they are3 $335,000 a day and you know six months ago they were $60,000 when the market was hot so uh you know this is uh kind of the nature of the business and the aligned incentive that you asked about yeah P penguins are like etched into like web3 lore like one of the most there's only very few nft projects that are actually like true to web 3 culture were there like pivotal moments and py pinguin is 100% had one of the most iconic runs well before the whole nft

[48:16] boom became a thing kind of got ruined by a lot of Bad actors and so like to the web 3 True Enthusiast pudy Penguins can be that face and I'm so excited for what you're building and so I want to just make this very clear to anyone who might have a negative P perception of nfts yeah just understand that is like a digital collectible that people that are really into this technology and this culture really do value like the True Believers not the Bad actors not the scammers not people are trying to sell you an nft like this is actually a really cool thing that can permeate

[48:41] across the internet and be a really big part of how people interact on the internet and this is that and the Baseline 10 eath right now once this becomes adopted oh my God and the quality of your holder base CEOs of major companies Investment Bank like the most diverse talented intelligent people and it's just so funny they have a penguin as their pfp too it's just a perfect like jux the position there and and and you brought it up like that's that's the beauty it's like almost like access right like if you own if you have a penguin pfp like you can reach me you know and and and I know that you know

[49:17] prior to me you know being the CEO of paji penguins like I was able to reach billion doll Executives because they had penguin pfps it's like a interesting cultural phenomenon but it kind of It kind of like it kind of represents this like Underdog Tech story you know of like the little guy who got like shat on but like rose from the Phoenix of the ashes and like a lot of really powerful people resonate with that and they identify with that and especially like the the super affluent crypto group like py penguin is one of those Brands within the industry that has to win right and

[49:52] they know that they're like so so it's just like a matter of like timing and obviously like you know you know market conditions and things like that but I but I think our destiny at this point is pre-ordained I really worry about your mental health for what you have to deal with just because it's absolutely [ __ ] brutal so I hope you're doing okay brother I appreciate that but like I don't see a world where the core strategy for any IP brand isn't web 3 focused in the future I agree and you are like setting the standard for how it should be done but you have to eat all

[50:19] the [ __ ] of timing and with the market conditions and people being against it in these days so in 5 10 years dude in enjoy your [ __ ] Victory lap but right now you're in the trenches but I love how you're creating a broader IP brand and because you have to play the Legacy game to show that respect and so that was just the first product that was in existence but now you have toys now you have arcade games which are sick I want to talk about that you have the Collectibles you have what else have you guys built out like really officially now I think we're the content machine is

[50:50] a bigger Beast than I think people give credit for I think also the community machine right like so many community events like we we build like this there's there's a there's speculators and there's like the penguin family there's a family here right and like like every family you have to take care of that family you have to like speak with them you have to you know have a you know reward them for helping right right you have to go and bring us together in real life you know what I mean so there's parts of the business that are not necessarily as exciting or that people see on the day-to-day basis

[51:22] but I think are the reason why we've seen so much success uh have pudgy World which is our game that we're building which is basically like Club Penguin in 2025 this idea that you know you can buy a toy scan the QR code you know get some nfts put those nfts on your 3D penguin and go run around with it in an open world you guys should probably see around when this video comes out probably be a couple weeks away from launching I think the set date is like November 21st okay so you know giving it some sort of like digital experience we have another mobile game coming out uh

[51:51] that's going to be like a stumble guys for Penguins yeah uh been working on that for quite a while so I'm pretty excited about that so I think gaming is huge and and I think we now we want to take the IP to be a little more digital native like we survived the worst part we've raised money we're making money right so like let's now go take some like franchise uh level swings which is like H you know Netflix Hulu mobile games Happy Meals right like let's let's take it up to a whole different Notch here uh which is kind of arcades right I thought arcades was super sick always a

[52:25] place of fun we recently announced that uh we're in you know Castle parks and Chuck-E-Cheeses around the country are you really yeah we're going to announce some of that like pretty here soon but oh my God so that's what you but what is the game the game is like a like an endless run or a competition like who can fall off the iceberg quicker uh oh like everyone trying to stay on it or yeah everyone's just trying to stay on it I mean this is just like a two-player arcade game obviously have like an arcade cting crane machine uh but just a two-player arcade game where I just like

[52:54] you know endless Runner fun compelling Loop obviously can't be violent because of the nature of the brand uh but the beauty of the way that we kind of positioned it is like it's kind of positioned to like have updates and like really exciting things but uh probably like a core endless Runner PVP uh stuff like a Mario Party type of game in a way a little bit not not as uh to to Mario party's Credit Credit Mario part is really fun uh this this is also one of mini games in it yeah it's like one of the mini games in it yeah yeah exactly cool dude and it's

[53:26] kind of like combat like they're next to each other but like it's friendly trying to stay ice that's cool and that's going to be all Chuck E cheeses and people get tickets from yeah yeah that is so cool I don't know how you cut these deals dude it's such a legacy industry yeah and so I think I don't think people understand like you people hear the word Community or I don't think they understand how powerful web 3 is but besides that but even just having a community like I think you're so far ahead of thinking of these brands that they haven't even conceptualized the digital space but

[53:53] you're so advanced in the digital space that over time you were about to mop the floor with them so super excited for that bro but let's get into I'm so down a nerd out on web 3 right now and so I think that the biggest problem that I had always seen was like there's no way for people to actually use this like gas fees and everything like that how is someone going to scan a QR code and get nft in their wallet that's not even a possibility back then and there's just so many holes between the physical world but once it does get integrated you're turning the entire physical world

[54:24] digital and there's a chance this is the most important technology of Our Generation and you are like tackling head-on trying to solve that problem consumer to the digital world without the technical expertise making a wallet all of this these prere requirements to get in onboarded so what is your thought process behind since there was step one get everything in the real world get the toys get in Walmart get in front of people step two how do we get them on board into web 3 Tech what's your thought process so we we rolled up Igloo uh so py Penguins is rolled up into a company called igloo and Igloo has three

[54:56] businesses one is pudgy penguins which is you know the the nucleus to the entire thing I mean it's the reason why we're here so you know it's always going to be the center of our universe uh you know not not our figurative Universe our literal business Universe right just for because I'm I'm a believer that like you can't lose your core base and your core group of Believers and champions because if if you do then then you're pretty screwed uh then we have another company it's probably the smallest one in the igloo which is a company called overpass basically licensing on chain so every product that we make at pudgy Penguins

[55:28] or 95% of them is actually licensed right so this idea that like I hold an nft I'm a first edition collector I'm a Community member rather than me just like drawing a new penguin for a toy I license it from you and then every year every January I pay you a royalty right pretty cool pretty cool story we needed to build the tech to kind of make that process seamless and onchain and transparent and that was overpass and eventually we'll open it up to other you know people who have nfts and digital IP to go and do the same just lowkey a massive business right there it's super

[55:59] important it's a it's a super it's a super important business but I think one that like if you really wanted to grow it into like an Empire probably has like the hardest path to get there the legal yeah just like it's just a headache so probably the the smallest priority on our totem poll uh and then we're contributing to uh we own a company called Cube Labs which contributes to a blockchain called abstract and so abstract was conceptualized by a bunch of different people throughout the world but ultimately Cub laabs is the the biggest and probably most important contributor within that ecosystem and this idea that like we need to solve

[56:34] this flow and this experience for end consumers and that this this blockchain needs to be abstracted away like what what blockchain really is for all the technical people out there and all the entrepreneurs out there they're really payment rails and they're payment rails without any of the nonsense right it's payment rails without you know uh you know 2.9% fees and chargebacks and all of the nonsense and and restrictions and freeing yeah none of that right and and then there's Global composability right and there's borderless liquidity so even if you did had all if you did have all those things figured out like how can somebody in China go and participate in

[57:10] your ecosystem well if they have an internet connection and they can access your blockchain right through a domain URL then they can you know give their liquidity or participate in whatever you guys are doing and then Global composability meaning like that same person in China that can then go permissionless build on top of your payment rails right so I think blockchain in general I think has looked been looked at as maybe too much of like a an investment vehicle and less of like a uh hey this is like a super disruptive technology that that solves a ton of problems the problem is is right now no

[57:41] one's abstracted those complexities away and it doesn't feel like a stripe or doesn't feel like a Shopify but to get where to get to where I think like crypto's next Frontier is and ultimately where I think pudy Penguins is a little bit handicapped in our vision we needed to go and solve this problem so it actually kind of this this whole Endeavor kind of transpired when it was like Hey you know we're building pudgy Penguins pudgy Penguins wants to go scale and bring blockchain to mass our toys come with QR codes that whole experience if you buy a pudgy penguin toy for those that are listening that QR

[58:13] code from start to finish is entirely blockchain native like you're on chain you don't even know it you're putting an email and a password those those traits that you redeem our nfts like that whole experience is abstracted away and it feels regular it feels like web 2 it feels like things that you've been participating in uh but ultimately we we couldn't find a blockchain to service that experience the way that we wanted it to so ultimately that led us to like you know bringing a group of guys and gals together and being like hey we have to contribute to something bigger here yeah blockchain's biggest problem is UI

[58:43] like and making tailored uis for tailored use cases agreed I my biggest problem with the web 3 space is everyone's so obsessed with calling it a separate thing totally like calling it the web three space or calling it blockchain like in in the future if your vision is correct no one will ever know they're on a blockchain or not like https on like httpswww no one knows what that is no one cares but it's there and that's what blockchain will be and you won't really know and so you guys are trying to build yes it's a blockchain but simultaneously with the focus on UI towards consumer

[59:11] physical experiences essentially physical bringing them into the digital and so I'm so curious what like where are they going right now and what is the actual like Invision because this is like basically all it is is your Webkins basically and you're scanning they kind of did a good job of that kind of the same vision but you're taking your stuffed animal and bring into a digital experience and then you build a games's ecosystem around that but you have a physical character that matches your in-game character and I loved that as a kid so what are you guys trying to really focus on the gaming side so on

[59:43] the gaming side I ultimately want to complete that Loop uh of like buy toy scan QR code you know customize your character and uh play around with it over and Pudgy world but the beauty of blockchain and why that helps I think is the digital ownership side yes so the value proposition here where this gets really exciting and where this is only possible on blockchain Rails is imagine I buy a toy at Walmart and it's a pudgy penguin toy and I bought it for five bucks and I scan the QR code and I unlock those nfts M and I go pop those nfts that I just unlocked call it three

[1:00:14] to five little wearables this game that I'm playing pudgy world has millions of people on it and I just go pop these nfts that I just got from this toy and I put it on a Marketplace and I sell it for 15 bucks I just 3x my money my physical item still in my room right and I just I just got and I just got an insane bang for my buck mhm from this Walmart purchase and now I'm in the profit and I have one of the traits still left I'm rocking it I'm playing with my friend and everyone knows that the trait that I'm wearing super rare so

[1:00:44] I'm running around this little open world game like the man and everyone knows I'm the man because I got this epic you know wizard hat on so I'm the man so like I made 15 bucks I have my physical toy I'm in the money $10 and I'm the man in this world right and the guy who bought my stuff is in China like I don't even know him and it was instant and it was instant he's in China and just hit my bank account now I just deposited out and no in-game marketplace where you can get your account locked anything like that exactly it's I can't

[1:01:16] take it away from you I can't shut it down yeah my whole goal KN is byy a Counter-Strike team and so I love Counterstrike skins and that like a huge Allure just fortnite skins but you could own them and sell them like it's absolutely the future of gaming or like make imagine like a RuneScape character was an nft and you could like rank it up and sell it like if for anyone doesn't understand the game those are some examples but I'm curious are you guys allowing so pudgy world is like pudgy or is like uh kind of like Club Penguin yeah yeah and our own version of it

[1:01:46] obviously dis like I got penguin IP we're making an open world so those are the similarities right open World Penguin game but one is yeah so just to simplify for everybody if you buy a inperson pudgy P toy right now you get a character in a game right now in pudgy world you scan the QR code that comes with that toy and but there's going to be a bigger Vision all that is on chain right and the big Vision hopefully November 21st if we stick to that date uh is you'll be able to go into that you know scan those QR codes if the game now

[1:02:13] the the key on the financial aspect is like the game has to have momentum right there has to be if there's millions of people playing it then people will be buying those traits and all of that will be done seamlessly on on abstract rails great That's So Co it's so cool that you get rewarded for the effort you put into the game you could buy a random toy and it could be a rare trait you can Flex in the game to all your friends make you feel really special it's such a cool Vision right and so where does that that's only I'm sure that's only the tip

[1:02:36] of the iceberg for your vision and with abstract specifically how do you see abstract impacting broader than that so I think abstract just needs to power all of those different rails and so where I think abstract is going to start off first is actually a via platform so this is probably you're probably the first person that's going to hear this but imagine like twitch meets Google Play Store is kind of what we're building as like the core app on abstract in which I think all these other apps are going to live uh and so like really the beauty about blockchain is like this these incentives that you can kind of create

[1:03:11] around ecosystems so one thing that I want to do is I really want to incentivize creators and so this again I don't know when you're going to release this but there should be you should be able to go to abstract chain on X and you should be able to click the link in that bio and you should be able to see a portal and that portal should open you to this Hub of fun and this Hub of fun should have streamers it should have games and the streamers that are going to be streaming on that hubba fund should be making eons more than what twitch and kick are paying streamers a

[1:03:41] day and on the other side of it is that that those those games should be making more money uh than than what a typical steam game would would make and so this idea of just like abstracting away the middleman and kind of just letting people transact freely is is also like a really interesting part about about you know blockchain I think where does it go 5 10 years from now I mean it needs to be the backbone uh for Consumer applications it needs to be the consumer chain and when you're building you know Mass market products in crypto you're going to build it on abstract have you

[1:04:12] thought about like specific use cases that like in like plain English of like how different like hypothetically how people could use it yeah so I think from my perspective it would be like uh you know in in plain English if I have if I'm building a game right right I'm building it on abstract rails versus building it on Steam if I build it on abstract rails I have a slew of different incentives that I can offer and and experiences that I can offer that are both abst abstract proprietary and just blockchain proprietary that I can then offer that in consumer that you know gives it you know a bunch of

[1:04:47] different Pros that maybe uh you know a typical steam deployment wouldn't be able to give me that those Pros again being borderless liquidity composability censorship resistance no fees no chargebacks no nonsense so be able to pay across any country to each other peerto peer I think it's huge for for a product for an application great and then being able to like deploy in-game assets that are ownable and distributable correct automatically through the through your game you used another big word that I didn't understand composability so this idea that like if you build an application let's say you build a game right I don't somebody can go build on top of it and

[1:05:22] make that experience better without asking permission M right so this idea that like right now if I go I want to go build on yeah like if I want to go build on Call of Duty I can't but like a Counter-Strike map like a community map gotcha and act all natively through the blockchain to enable that so composability is a huge part of it it's like n it's naturally open source I mean by default blockchains are the most powerful open source protocol of them all gotcha and so Igloo owns this entity but there so but it contributes as this entity like you but it's like is this

[1:05:55] like a centralized yeah no one can technically own a blockchain right unless decentralized blockchain yeah if you own a blockchain you don't really you're like a you're in a different business you're like xrp or something yeah on the scale of from salana to bitcoin where are we at uh I guess you're on ethereum so yeah we're probably we're probably between salana and ethereum okay oh okay that's nice middle ground because you do still need the control ability you do need some you do and that's the problem right you can't build a positive consumer experience that's where I think like where salana has beat ethereum in the

[1:06:27] sense which is like ethereum is a decentralized network State and salana is a lot more centralized but you would argue that salana today probably has a better end consumer experience I mean that's hard to argue different assets need different chains different security permissions but they should all be able to communicate and you can operate seamlessly agreed like once that's solved blockchain is massive just having one wallet with all of your assets physical and digital and using that to log in on every platform is awesome like there's I don't know why anyone would be against that it's just crazy but education Gap UI Problem whatever so from here if I wanted to support the if

[1:07:03] I wanted to support the abstract ecosystem yeah and be in a and get rewarded for my support what would I want to be doing right now you'd be wanting to create you'd want to be a Creator on what form of you'd want to stream you'd want to uh make content you'd want to participate in the community M you want to be a Creator is there a platform that I want to be a Creator on specific is it's going to be this it's going to be this portal we don't know the name in convention yet but it's going to be this portal it's going to be the link in the bio probably

[1:07:31] when this time when this thing releases okay so I'll definitely be paying attention to that I'll definitely be making content for that I hope it is definitely in my best interest so okay so that's the vision for pudgy Penguins longterm that's the vision for Consumer longterm is there anything else that you're like genuinely excited about as an entrepreneur in the space I'm excited about AI I'm excited about how Ai and blockchain uh I'm excited about w m uh I'm really excited about W uh I'm excited [Music] about this this this idea of like culture coins and consumer brand and like I like this you know the the most

[1:08:15] interesting thing about tokens is like this the this idea of tokenizing in it's it's making tokenization to make something easy for people to understand is like I can wrap uh I can wrap a token or I can wrap like a uh like a metal like uranium in a token and then it can trade borderless and have that composability and have that Global liquidity so like people are wrapping things in tokens and they're calling it tokenization one of the really interesting Parts about tokenization for me is this idea of making intangible things tangible and so you're seeing this a lot with like meme coins right which is like how do I take this

[1:08:52] intangible beam this cultural phenomen on and I make it tangible right and so one thing that I'm really excited about is like how do I take something that's the probably the most powerful thing in the world and make it tangible it's influence right how do I take intangible influence and make it tangible uh I know some people that are working on it I'm you know working on it a part of like the igloo and things like that but this is where I think things are going to get really exciting and I actually think you're going to see like a hundred million hundred billion dollar business come out of that specific you know case

[1:09:25] I don't know what you mean by influ can I explain like if I'm uh you kind of saw it with like bit clout you probably remember this around the same time like there's a thesis there right or is it friend uh friend Tech friend Tech but but friend Tech totally missed the mark it was like it was like it was like making group chats tangible but like w does that 10 times better right like that was a broken system you know you would want to do it on like like influence like influ like an influencer's influence is a great like like interesting I've never thought about that yeah I thought I always think

[1:09:55] about car titles you know like being able to scan NFC chip on your car so now your Lamborghini titles in your wallet so people can see it all the different physical things you can bring digital your watch collection everything but that's very fascinating I I guess the last thing I want to ask you because I know you got to go is uh you said AI is also interesting what do you think about worldcoin I think it's interesting I think I think Sam Alton is an interesting guy I think it's an interesting take I I just see the problem with I always think that nfts could be the solution to AI

[1:10:24] misinformation like AI Bots like verifying human content so I think that'll be pretty interesting dude you're one of the most I think you're going to be one of the most well-known entrepreneurs of our time one of the best entrepreneurs of our time one of the most respected entrepreneurs of our time I think you're solving one of the most important problems in the world right now I think you're doing it for all the right reasons I think you shared some extremely insightful marketing tactics if people are really listening a few of those subtleties are what will make a big difference so dude just thank you so much for what you're doing thank

[1:10:51] you for coming here that was the best conversation I appreciate you having me

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