Buying the X Games with Olympic Icon Apolo Ohno | Where It Happens

0:00the world's strongest prison is right between your two years ooh guys we just finished an awesome conversation with a personal hero of mine apollo ono greg what'd you have on it usually we talk about startup trends where the world's going startup ideas this hit absolutely different we talked about life lessons we talked about happiness we talked about so much that don't i think doesn't get talked enough about totally true we also talked about a personal passion project of mine we are going to buy the x games so wag bxg you're gonna love it let's just dive right in greg why do you look so tired i look so tired because i

0:49did not sleep last night have you never slept well or is this a new thing it's not that i can't fall asleep i fall asleep like right away but i wake up a couple hours later and i'm just sitting in my bed and i look at the ceiling and i can't fall back to sleep and i don't know what to do so i was literally you and for the longest time i was this like hustle culture bro sleep when i'm dead didn't want to sleep didn't care about my sleep and then i honestly i started reading more of the research and realizing how impactful sleep is to your

1:26longevity to your health all of these other things and as part of that i found ate sleep which has completely revolutionized the way i sleep i've heard of eight sleep can you tell me more about it think of it as like the future of sleep all of these mattress companies have created these mattresses they're just stuck they're stock mattresses eight sleep is technology plus sleep combined so the whole product is built around optimizing the temperature that you sleep at and so you read about sleeping cold is the key to sleeping and it's not quite true everyone has a different optimal sleep temperature and it changes throughout

1:59the night which is the crazy part about it so you might need really cold to fall asleep and then you might need it to be a little bit warmer to keep you asleep and the eight sleep actually transitions your temperature through the night to keep you at the optimal sleep sleep temperature at any point during the night it keeps you asleep it helps you fall asleep faster and i actually since i started using it have been sleeping better and feeling so much more energized during the day as a result sounds like i need a nate sleep i think everyone needs innate sleep so if you're tuning in right now and you

2:27want to try out the eight sleep to completely change the way you sleep rest recover so that you're ready to take on all of life's challenges check out 8sleep.com where it happens to get a discount on your first product here's a tip don't be like greg eisenberg be like sahil bloom four sigmatic is the secret sauce behind the where it happens podcast you know how much i've been talking about that hot cocoa the one that's jam-packed with the reishi mushrooms it absolutely has been transforming my mornings i have it at night completely chills me out takes out all my stress and allows me to have a good night's rest after those long

3:07days of tequila on the set i'm sure that's helpful i mean it does help the sweet vanilla plant-based protein is the one that i've been going to after my workouts in the mornings it's been a game changer 18 grams of plant-based protein adaptogens jam-packed with mushroom goodness it's been a complete game changer for me so to go check it out go to 4sigmatic.com and use code the room at checkout what's going on man not much uh what there's a bunch of [ __ ] i want to talk about today so i kind of just want to dive right into it but i saw this really cool thing the other day

3:41this i think it was the wall street journal there was this article about chess and ever since queen's gambit on netflix i've been like sort of into chess and um it was this article about magnus carlsen who's like the most legendary i think now considered the most legendary chess player of all time and um it's about his like new nemesis who like right now i think as we speak they're playing in dubai and the like world chess championship it's like a best of 13 or something series and they keep facing off um and the cool thing about the story and like the human interest side of it was that this guy

4:14ian nepo something it's a very complicated last name uh was basically a prodigy like he served as the second they call it for magnus carlsen like seven years ago at this event which is the person that basically like shadows you and kind of like plays the opposing role to you and so it's like at the time people were saying oh wow this is kind of crazy uh magnus carlsen's using this guy like this guy might end up being one of the best players in the world he might have to face off against him and then it would have been an advantage and now like seven years later they're literally

4:45facing off against each other in the championship and this guy apparently is like the best chance at taking down magnus carlson that has happened in the last like 10 you know 15 15 years whatever since this guy's been around that's insane so it's kind of cool it's like a um it's this cool story of like something actually coming to fruition and like the prodigy like is actually coming and going to take down the mentor the student has become the teacher yeah it's kind of cool so i was like reflecting on it and one of the things i was reflecting on with it was like why do i even give a

5:16[ __ ] about chess i had never played chess that was my next question well yeah i like never played growing up really i dabble but queen's gambit was my connection point to chess it was during covid yeah queen's game but if you haven't seen it as like this show on netflix freaking amazing it was so good so engaging and when i looked it up to do some research for this episode i saw that like chess uh play and chess purchases skyrocketed after queen's gambit hit and so it was this very cool example to me of like culture um and media driving some like esoteric uh nuanced niche sport

5:55or game or whatever it is into mainstream and that got me thinking about an idea that i want to talk more about and that idea is i want to buy the x games i like where this is headed so just to set the stage for anyone that doesn't know the x games were an extreme sports event not dissimilar to the olympics um there was like a winter and a summer started by i think by espn in like 1995 providence rhode island was the first x games um and became a kind of a mainstay like for the 2000s when i was a kid the x games were kind

6:30of dope like yeah the winter x games sean white was like the big guy snowboarder red hair um you had you know like the tony hawks of the world and the skateboarding on the x games it was a big deal it was a big thing um and then somewhere along the line in like the 2010s and beyond it started to languish and it declined i don't know whether actual uh participation in the sports declined or whether just espn and disney after they acquired espn did just a poor job kind of amplifying um the games or what it was but somewhere along the line it started to decline and it's not like

7:03extreme sports declined it was just i don't think i don't think that was the case i don't think so i mean i'm on the board of some companies in the space and it's been like gdp growth low single-digit growth generally speaking in these extreme sports but fervent you're a community guy fervent communities people just love the sports are very very into it um and so it got me thinking about the x games and what's going on with them and so i did some research turns out espn last year said they were trying to sell them they're prioritizing streaming and other things at the disney level and so espn

7:37is trying to rid themselves of this originally they wanted 100 million dollars and they were going to keep producing it no one took them up on it and so then they were offering the x games you could buy all of the ip of the x games for 50 million dollars and i want to go buy it and i'm very i'm quite quite serious about it and i want to like i want you to tell me why i'm being dumb or why this isn't going to work so my vision for the x games is you go and you create a cultural moment so like what did queen's gamut do so well with chess what

8:09did drive to survive the formula one do so well that vaulted formula one it was that they created a personality a face that actually went with these sports um drive to survive previously it was watching a car on a track and it was like you're just driving around all of a sudden you watch drive to survive and you know the faces of all these athletes suddenly i'm looking and it's like that's not just a car that's lewis hamilton that's max verstappen and that completely changed the game formula one viewership through the roof now in america as a result crazy why can't you do that exact same thing

8:43with the x games amazing personalities with big cult social followings good looking people in general that are very athletic and working on really cool things you have the base of this fervent community all you need to do is suddenly like expand that with a cultural moment and i think you could do that by creating one of these like kind of follow along like rags to riches type stories where you're following people and the personalities and you create these personalities and this tension that then you can play off of in the games so so much i love about this sometimes i like to just disagree with you on please do

9:21but it's hard to on this one i think like the question for me really is like beyond the content production of hey let's let's commemorate these people and create these moments um what else is different in in in this new version of the x game so for me like what what i would do is i would web 3ify the x the x games right like give people a vote um let's do this let's do this exercise this is a great i love that you went this direction i hadn't thought of this i was thinking like you just go do the x games in a new way

9:59with this culture moment let's do the what is web 3 x game what does the web 3 future of the x games look like well i think the first is to your point you start with the the athlete and you reward the top 1000 [Music] fans of each athlete with an airdropped nft or token and that token gives you you know certain access and and you could vote on where this person can go or what they can do you can go to different events i think like i love the idea of like if there's 5 000 athletes um on on the x games like f they should be

10:44throwing there should be an event every single day that these athletes are throwing and that are bringing like local communities together it shouldn't be that these athletes play just for one week in this the summer and the winter but that they're like like musicians they're touring you know two-thirds of the year and i think with your idea around content and creating content which are just essentially excuses to talk about things and web 3's ability to reward fans and give them certain levels of access and and voting i think that you know that version of the x games is yeah interesting yeah so what you're hitting on is

11:30super interesting which is when you go and do this the x games ip doesn't give you access to the athletes you need to give the best athletes in these extreme sports a reason to be a part of this and so part of the whole pitch i think web 3 actually creates a really good pitch here which is we're going to give the athletes and we're going to prioritize the athletes with immense tools to become monetizable in a much deeper way and to create way more access and we're going to build ip around you as an athlete that we know is going to expand the value of the x games and the

12:03property we're building but it's going to arm you with ways to monetize that you never previously had you have big social followings now we're going to give you arm you with ways to leverage nfts for specific access to events to amas to different things you know super fandom around you we're going to go we're going to go do an interesting like series tour rather than just having it be a summer and a winter games where it's like so event driven and it's a couple of weeks we're gonna make it a much longer thing we're gonna do this show around it maybe there's nft access to the show where you

12:36now have uh people that are kind of directing and pitting matchups within it so that it's like creating and stoking intrigue the same way conor mcgregor kind of created um you know ufc in a big way i mean actually ufc is a great case study of this because i've seen an interview with dana white where i was just talking to my friend who launched the xfl sam schwarz dean as his name he was at stanford with me and he launched the xfl it unfortunately fell apart due to covid but it was an incredible case study of going and trying to do something innovative he was telling me the story about dana white

13:09and dana white talks about basically ufc was on its last dollar and they threw a hail mary and that hail mary was the like ultimate fighter series thing that they did where it was like a reality show of trying to make it to the octagon and like go make it to the top and that was fundamentally like going and doing something that kind of created personalities and created a vibe around it and we're going to go do that for these athletes it's going to create immense value for them and make the games much more valuable also make these athletes much more valuable the other layer to this which i have to

13:43say is i think we should form a dow to go buy the x games right and it would be the first time that like a large uh games property ip was owned by a government you know collective body and a community and it would be so cool because the games themselves and the sports have such amazing communities and so to be able to involve the communities in the decision making around what these games look like what these properties media properties look like what the web theorification looks like it would be such a cool example and case study and like constitution dab just went raise 40 or something like

14:23that to go try to buy the constitutions a piece of paper no utility to it the x games that's like real utili i mean there's an event there's things you can go to there's like real business value to that and so i'm staring at it like we should we should go form a dow to go buy the x games yeah i think uh what i like about this idea is there's there's so much trust that's been built between athletes and viewers already and the communities exist and it's just about like you mentioned kind of like stoking the you know giving the tools or arming the rebels for athletes and it's also

15:02about arming the the audience like it's give you know supercharging the audience so that they could be more involved and get involved so um i like this idea i also it gets me thinking about like will traditional sports leagues like the nfl and hl mlb start embracing web3 or will there have to be or will there be like dao's buying the xfl the x games whatever or will there be like brand new web 3 sports leagues and esports leagues that come out and we're starting to see this i think there's one i forget the name and esports um i think uh that's the question and i

15:49believe that we're probably like number three and number two are more likely to happen yeah it's an interesting question because um sports are a great place for this to happen because fundamentally the community is creating the value and it's like green bay packers what is the value of the green bay packers but for the incredible fandom that's built around it and when i think about the x games that's what i think about that's why i'm so excited about this idea honestly and so i want to do it i'm actually being fairly serious about i don't think 50 million dollars is actually i don't know whether it's a dow or if you go pitch an

16:19investment fund on going and doing it and going doing it but if i can't get excitement around a dow i don't know what i can get excitement around um and so i'm actually pretty serious like wag bxg wag bxg we're gonna buy the x games that's what i'm coining um but we should bring in our guest to talk about this because our guest today is this is crazy for me he's like someone that he's like your hero well i hero i don't know maybe it's a strong word i've looked up to him for a long time grew up watching him um compete win at the highest level two olympic games

16:54you look up to yeah i think he's amazing um and i've recently connected with him in this new life context and we've become friends and that's crazy to me yeah that like how the world like the universe and the way this has all come together and now we get to sit down with him and chat absolutely we're gonna bring in our guests apollo ono and we're looking forward to the conversation we're gonna buy the x games first time that uh we've interviewed someone with multiple gold medals yeah first time maybe the last i don't know we might get michael phelps on the show but for now

17:24most gold medals ever won on the where it happens show so enjoy it wag bxg did you guys go to the yacht party yesterday no i heard about it though it was like a lesson in marshall yeah so dude i just left before they even performed yeah and then someone was like asking someone's asking me they're like why would you do that and i was like that's a good question and then like i came to the realization i was like i just i personally don't really care yeah exactly i understand music i love marshmallow i've done events with him before um you know like i love alesso i've done

17:57stuff with him in the past but i guess like you know when we have like different career paths or different things that are what we believe to be important those times yeah we then like carve out time necessary you're also able to make better decisions around stuff like that when you're sober so like the fact that you don't drink i actually think helps i'm making a bad decision while i'm sober imagine if i wasn't yeah like seriously i mean like i have a really tough time making a decision to leave something and like make that trade-off when i'm like past the point of being a bit drunk like i

18:27just that's when i'm like someone comes up and says like oh come on it's marshmallow and i realized later i'm like i don't care that marshmallow's here i don't even know who that is right that's it that's my my take is that there's so much noise out there and that there's like i see people on twitter saying like i need to be an art pass i need to be arpes so it's like you don't actually like you might have a really good time at arbazel and that like it might be super fun but like from like a career business perspective my take right now is that

18:58new world that we live in like just go and build the thing that you're building be in the discord just yeah like it's probably more alpha yeah and like get a good night's sleep yeah i do think i mean like when you're first trying to get into it immersing yourself in it in a few different ways like i had never really spent time in the like crypto nft web 3 world until nft week and i spent that whole week going to events and that was the first time i was just like i was just holy [ __ ] man like there's the the techno optimism of it

19:29the like positive sum mentality of people all being together and all of the like cool things that were being built and just like the wild [ __ ] that was happening around it i found amazing i just thought it was so cool to see um and so for me that was like that was definitely worth it the second it's diminishing returns right the second set of events you're like this week i'm not quite as motivated to go to the full slate that i went to that week that's awesome that you feel like um it's a good perspective well because i'm gonna see the same people for the most

19:57part right to your point the same people one thing i want to add because bob back just my friend just walked in one of the reasons i left that party was it was like one of those like big lines guest list bouncers yeah and like i had a plus one but they didn't honor my plus one very la new york yeah exactly and honor my plus one so my friend couldn't get inside i heard he was very strict very strict and like i kind of don't want to be in the like i don't want to be in that room straight up i actually do not want to be

20:31in that room because you don't believe in that like exclusivity unnecessary i don't like that vibe like i don't know it's something i guess i grew up with like i just don't i don't like the vibe where it's like there's some people who are excluded i don't like that exclusionary vibe where they make a line for no like no reason yeah yeah that's interesting yeah it's interesting it's also web like crypto and web like it's i personally i think of it as like open access meritocracy borderless anyone can do it a kid on the streets in india has the same access to that discord channel as

21:12a kid growing up in greenwich going to a country club i keep using that example but it's very true and so then when you like stick a line in front of something and it's like guest list oh you're not on this list you can't come in it actually does feel anti the ethos of what we're all here for and what we're trying to build that's why i like fwb so they're throwing a party tonight except the party is you just need at five five fwb right what is that how much does that cost what is five fpv tokens now i don't know 50 bucks maybe okay

21:40we're talking you know so it's like nothing crazy and they allow people to go and buy it which versus like hey i'm gonna select who is on and this is not a you know i'm not trying to like this kygo like i'm sure you know he's a great guy and like the people who through the event moon pays like they're great i love them i love that team it's not like a knock on them it's just like a knock on like yeah the list like culture yeah yeah um so i think we were are we rolling okay yeah he hit us with the cold open so we

22:12were yeah we're good but i think that's like very human though yeah but like so i think you know like right now we've got these like layers right and everyone's like trying to put these like you've got this bottle of bottle of like liquids that are like in chemistry and every like layer is like labeled something right and right now it's like all shaken up everything's mixed up right and over time that [ __ ] just goes back to normal right because humans are still operating in the same kind of neanderthal like ego based still chasing the same thing and i think we like to hide behind this idea that

22:44we're here for maybe a greater purpose and cause and i do believe that is the case like if you really zoom out but still i think in the acute moments we're still driven by the same things that we want desire want to reflect upon i mean it's the same cultural phenomenon that's existing we're just using different tools to exemplify what we believe we should be hiding behind or represent in certain perspectives i don't know that's that's my take i like that unpack there i agree with you in principle i do think i think humans are status signaling monkeys the exact same way we were 10 000 years ago and i think we're seeing a

23:18lot of the new manifestations of that and i do i agree with you there's like there's nothing i'm not a particularly religious person so i don't particularly believe in like some you know brilliant afterlife i sort of just believe that you're here to procreate and you're here to hopefully have fun and smile along the way but that the reality of it is like your purpose is what you make of it and if you can you know create and rationalize a purpose and something that motivates you and makes you happy then that's great i like that's also why i just believe in being nice to people and i like being around

23:49people who are just like you and i only recently met but the first time i met you i was like this is just like i admired you and looked up to you for a long time as a kid because of your work ethic and the things you were doing and what you were about the things you spoke about and then i met you and i was like oh this is just as positive a guy as i hoped and that's not always the case that you meet people and you you feel that same way that um they just you want other people to succeed and you're happy

24:13and you just like that vibe and that personality i think is infectious and so it bums me out when you then meet people and they don't have that or they're kind of a dick and you're just like why are you being an [ __ ] we were talking about this last night with a famous investor that we all know it's like why are you a dick there's absolutely no value to just being an [ __ ] just be nice to people it doesn't cost you anything so anyway it's a weird transition but i um well i mean the transition i will say because i don't know you we just met

24:42like a second ago but i will say that we've done this is our fifth recording today and [Music] three out of five people when we've said that you're coming in they're like oh that guy's such a good guy that's such a nice guy oh tell him i say what up yeah you know so what you know i feel like you're leaving a trailer you're leaving a trail and i feel and i think well so first nice to meet you nice to meet you yeah it's the cold open man i love the cold open but it is um this whole thing is very funny to me and

25:18um we're gonna die i swear we're gonna talk something like interesting life in business though but the whole i do need to track the course of this because as i said i grew up watching you and really admiring your career and everything you were about and your work ethic i was someone that was driving for something athletically and it was very um empowering to me to see someone that had worked at something so hard and your grind and the effort you put in i thought was amazing um what i now think is amazing is we live in a world and we're doing things where somehow our paths have crossed and we've

25:48connected and now i'm sitting here and i'm having this weird like holy [ __ ] life moment of someone that i like grew up watching admiring all of a sudden i can sit have a conversation with and learn things from and be present with and hopefully other people can listen to it benefit from it in the same way i felt i did so there's this crazy thing happening at least for me in my mind of like the universe and the way all of this stuff comes together and so i'm just personally very grateful and excited to uh excited to get to chat about tech business web three

26:19your ethos on life um can we start with your idea you're talking about yes i do want to start there i do want to start there so the way the way the show works is super casual we just like to jam on cool things with with friends and it's not an interview per se but we want to like go deep on cool topics and so one thing i was pitching recently and that greg and i just spent a little time jamming on is sort of at the it's something you're going to understand because it's at the nexus of like cultural movements and sports um so you're familiar with the x games yep

26:53okay so the x games been around for now like i don't know what is it 25 plus years like it's been around since 1995 espn owned it for forever has languished they haven't you know they've kind of disney has gone in a different direction and they're not doing anything with it last year they basically tried publicly said they were trying to sell it and so initially they said it would cost 100 million to buy it no one wanted it they came down and they basically said they would take a 50 million dollar offer for the access for all the ipads together i want to create a day read my

27:26mind i want to create a dow to buy the x games you buy all the ip of the x games and basically completely reimagine the x games for a web 3 and crypto enabled world nft access special events athlete nfts so that they can further monetize and have and capture more of the value that they're creating with their social presence video games licensed peak is [ __ ] like skateboarding video games are rock and they were so tony hawk pro skater was so sick so an x games video game i think would be amazing with all the different sports sell the rights to the broadcast make it

28:02more of like an event series like ufc rather than just like two times a year like the olympics which you obviously participated and know about and just do so much more with the ip than i think what what disney was able to do and what you know what espn did um so what do you think um where am i wrong tell me like tell me why i'm being an idiot about this i don't think you're being an idiot about this i think people do the same thing when they're trying to buy michael jordan's old house sean courier those are like fractionalize that idea i think it was

28:35actually a really interesting i mean in terms like monetization i think there's some friction points there i think the idea in essence is still strong right like there's still a strong community that loves extreme sports um just like people love michael jordan as do i like had i known about that opportunity i probably would have come in much earlier just because i think it's cool to have like some piece of history about someone who i looked up to when i was a kid yeah um but uh i i think so here's an example that i thought of a long time ago so i think nbc you know who broadcasts

29:08and buys like they spend billions of dollars to have the access to the olympic games to broadcast them um i think that those numbers have been somewhat going down over time because the cultural shift is changing where i think the olympics is trying to figure out where it lives inside this next generation's like day and is it important and why is it important i think that conversation is kind of an important one but um something they did was they invested into snapchat and i i don't know what the amount was it might have been like 500 million bucks some like absurd amount of money that i thought it was

29:39crazy in hopes that that would attract the next generation of viewers and i thought i was like well why would they just give the money to a public company versus going directly to the creators themselves the top top 50 creators in the world right speak different languages and saying we're going to give you all access rights we're going to get a whole crew with you each and you're going to go experience an olympics like you've never even dreamed of doing we only ask that you broadcast this daily to your fans right and if they did that how much would that cost to get 50 people in the

30:10room to give them this incredible experience the creators themselves would love to do this because they're always looking for cool unique pieces of content nbc has never had an ability to counter to directly communicate and engage with an audience that they feel really really behind to so i i thought about that i was like why would they do that and i just figured out that like it's i mean it's obviously much harder to do but i mean that's what i would have done so like take that idea and then instead of going to the traditional broadcasting rights like go to the twitches go to the existing

30:40streaming networks and say like hey let's build like an entire like worldwide phenomena kind of like what sean white did with his kind of like what's called um air and style i think it's called um and then he sold it right to a chinese-based company so like i look at stuff like that and i'm like this is pretty it's pretty smart right so you can definitely create something it may not even have to be the x games but i think the branding is definitely an accelerative tool there uh i think it's cool man i do think so i think you're hitting on a lot of the

31:06things i've thought about with it too which number one i think you need to reinstall it in culture so you brought up that kind of culture that shifted away from it i see things like culture is now creating movements around all of these topics drive to survive what they did to formula one and viewership of formula one with that netflix show the secret sauce of that was they installed personalities behind the car so when someone's watching it's not a car anymore it's lewis hamilton right or it's max verstappen and you're watching and now you're like invested in that guy because you've seen him without his helmet on and you really see him and

31:40you could do that same thing like an x-games drive to survive or an x-games like queen's gambit did it with chess chess all of a sudden during covet became this cool thing why not go do something like that where you install personalities you played a somewhat esoteric sport or you competed in an esoteric sport but you were a huge personality you weren't probably able to in the way you could today profit from that as much if you had nfts if you had all these things that you know could have provided unique access giving you the tail of value associated with it today we live in a world where these

32:12athletes can they have huge social media followings a lot of like cult community followings that they could grow and build from and so you create some sort of show or ecosystem whether it's streaming or something unique that installs personalities behind it and then on the back of that give those athletes a way to monetize it to incentivize them to be a part of the new x games that we're creating and i think you could i mean 50 million dollars just doesn't feel like that much to me for something like this you could probably go sell the streaming rights to it for the games and finance part of the

32:46purchase price of it because espn's not going to do it so you can go do something with them but i i just have to believe there's a way with all these new tools we have to give the athletes a reason to do it to give fans a reason to want to come back and be involved in it i'm on the board of an action sports company fox racing which is this amazing motocross mountain bike business and the community and the fandom around it is insane people have tattoos of the fox logo on their bodies like that's a next level thing you see bumper stickers tattoos on their cpu you go to the races

33:17and people have like oh yeah check out my box tattoo and they show it to you it's nuts and so if you can channel that that's that's the crypto right i mean that's web 3 is community yeah i mean i think what we're not talking about here is that in sports and by the way preface it i'm like the most non-sports guy even though i did drain a couple of three pointers outside he did that's not on camera but someone saw it someone saw it right today fans don't have the ability to really have any say in professional sports like you like for example like baseball is how

33:58many games like a 162 it's 162. so boring and i bet you if fans had the ability to vote on that decision maybe they'd make it 62 instead of 162 or maybe they'd change it from nine innings to seven innings i don't know but giving them the ability to vote web 3 in a web 3 oriented way makes a lot of sense to me i think that the fundamental shift that's happening is that people especially younger people don't want to be passive consumers of stuff and that's why i think web3 3 is so interesting from like an entertainment and community perspective is if you could you know actually enable two-way

34:41conversation um great things could happen have you seen mad realities have you seen this new thing yes have you seen this no you'd be interested in this so it's um i don't you might have seen it when clubhouse happened there were these um group of women out of nyu that did like nyu chicks roasting tech bros i think was like the name of it it was this hilarious thing that went pretty viral shoot your shot yeah like they would come up and pitch something and it was like a dating thing sort of and it was very funny and they went very viral one of the women from it who i actually went

35:12to high school with incidentally has started this company called mad realities which is the first nft uh reality dating show and so anyone you and i can go buy an nft for a rose and then we can vote on the outcomes and actually drive the outcomes of this reality dating show that they're going to film in new york and it's kind of a cool version of exactly what you're saying and the application of that towards this x games idea could be cool you can involve fans in like who are you staking head to head in some event because now the personalities matter and you want your athlete to be

35:45going against someone you can kind of like pit people head to head i'm i'm meeting somebody on saturday who's raising a a series b basically a fan controlled community economy around sports that was really cool invest in it yeah yeah it's it's pretty cool yeah i'm seeing a lot more of it that's cool and i think that's the that's the shift right is going from like one single entity now saying like you know creator economy and then now you know like your fans should be actually voting and staking based upon what topics and direction that you guys are talking about how much time you spend who you shouldn't do next how you

36:20reach out to that person are they incentivized to and why i think that's where the concentration happens out on sports specifically i think that's going to happen a lot more i've seen many iterations of it on the kind of gaming side so like online kind of gambling side i've seen a lot of different kind of conversations around what sports looks like and how people can interact and so just i think that now we've got like the tools to really actually produce those things in real time and that's cool right like i don't know i mean it's never going to happen for the olympics right that's such a

36:49centralized controlled entity i mean at the beginning of this year in january i remember having a conversation with some friends of mine um and saying like hey like why don't we produce a dao to see and identify where the next olympic city should actually be held aside like a radically transparent way where communities and participants it's tough right because i think theoretically people don't usually vote when it comes like mass scale but what if they could and what if there was like an economic trail where you could see like hey this is going to benefit the local economy in a way that's really really beneficial and also

37:24this is really important from a societal perspective so that your daughter son whoever can see the impact of having olympic games here or maybe you don't think it's important maybe you don't want this here and you should have a say versus like six people who are controlling a particular entity so you were an olympic athlete yeah how many gold medals did you win two two gold medals insane gold medalist uh how would you reimagine the olympic games like if you could change things about the olympic games make them more athlete friendly make them more fan friendly like what would be the things that you would envision changing about that

37:59um that's a great question that's a long uh that's a long question i think i love the fact that like the world comes together um i i would like to just see more access right that's that's my biggest thing so nbc does a really good job of like providing like all different ways to consume the content like they're really good at that but i still think that they i mean it could always be improved right so like how do you get more people participating um it's it's a bit of a catch-22 right because the olympics as a whole as a business like if you take the uso

38:38c for the usopc the united states olympic and paralympic committee their business model is to generate metals which then in turn attracts sponsors so that they can continue their jobs and have trickle-down effect to supply the training and resources for olympic athletes that's the cycle that's the feedback loop right so it's tough when like we talk about like how what do we want to change because even like with mental health and sports today we want athletes to be open and vulnerable around how they feel um simone biles did something that was perhaps previously unthought of by dropping out of an olympic games i think it was four out of the five events she

39:14was competing in um and saying like hey this is i'm not okay this is not okay and then we saw the backlash of sensitivity around which polarization view you were taking as an individual saying hey i believe that my strongly held um you know conditioning says that you should act a certain way respond a certain way as an athlete because that's what i always believed in and i get that like that's how i was brought up right but then on the flip side there's a new era that says well she's still a human being i have no idea what she's actually going through why should my opinion of how she should

39:42represent herself actually come into play at all she's one in one individual person so like all these i think about all these different kind of fragments of what's happening in the olympic space and how much sports has changed and where it's going and why it's important but i say that because the cycle and the commercialization of the games is all-time high and they're just adding sports like esports will probably become an olympic sport at some point whether i believe that is valid or not it doesn't really matter right i think there's enough people play esports to say like it should be a sport and we should have some kind of control

40:17mechanisms around who should be crowned winner and receive a gold medal now like traditional stick and ball sports uh american sports we'll probably say like that's stupid we don't believe in it just like people will probably point to equestrian or curling and say that that is dumb hey i was on the curling team so i take personal offense to that trigger i had to be a part of a team sure in in high school yeah and it just felt like the easiest i mean i grew up in canada okay side story i can't believe i'm you know we can cut this out but nice or keep it in

40:58um but basically fun times biggest game of the year he like didn't he he was supposed to be it's harder than you think it's harder it's a cool sport but what i'm saying is like yeah because it doesn't replicate the athletic belief that i think should be going into like wrestling for example like to me wrestling is like one of the hardest portions right that's my conditioning and belief because i used to live with those guys i watched them train i know how crazy they are right and i learned a lot from them but then someone who plays chess like who it's not that much of a

41:30physical sport although it takes like a lot of mental brain power like you know someone might say like that's not a sport but it kind of really is right so i don't know we're just like what would i change about the games dude i changed so many things yeah i think that the uh i can't even give you the straight answers the uh the ability for the athletes what one of the things that like broadly bothers me about sports is it's a very short-lived career you have an extreme peak of your relevance and your fame and all of these things and the olympic athletes it's even shorter an olympic um gymnasts

42:02sometimes get two games but a lot of these olympic athletes the sprinters they get one game for the most part where they are like for three weeks a hero of their entire country and they are not able to capture that value for the long term and i do personally think like i know everyone always like the bitcoin fixes this web 3 fixes this i really do think there's an angle here where like michael phelps is an extreme example you're an extreme example but there are people where if they minted a hundred of their gold medal as an nft and you could own one of a hundred of whoever apollo's gold medal

42:36as an nft there are a lot of people that then like oh okay you get to go to an annual meetup or something and or you get on an ama and you get to chat with people if they have access to this ticketed events things like that with it it's sort of a cool way to like provide these athletes with more of a payback on all of the effort that they've put in for quite literally their entire lives to get to that point and i think that there's something beautiful there because so many of these athletes they're they're literally relevant for two three weeks and then

43:05they go back into anonymity and not able to profit from what has been an entire career of crazy sacrifice and like debilitating injury in a lot of cases so i've been having this conversation for years last year i started having conversations with the usopc around kind of reinventing the way that the distribution of payment to athletes has handled and how they can monetize their own branding so like with every influencer that's on instagram or tiktok or youtube or wherever the distribution channel is there's like ample ways to monetize that right um and audience is typically the number one way to do that whether it's your merchandise or

43:44whatever you're kind of selling and shilling it's great with olympic athletes it doesn't work that way so if you look at like nba top shop right they have the kind of athletes commissioner so to speak right um that controls effectively all the rights so all the athletes that are competing in the nba they almost like relinquish their rights because they're playing in the nba and they're paid like handsomely to do so but there is like a give and take there right and because the players association oversees all of their rights they can effectively work with what's happening with dapper or you know top shot or whoever the

44:18entities are that basically say hey like if these things are sold on our platform you basically are only receiving a fraction of what you normally would receive and then when you see someone like gronkowski go and do his own he scrubs the image of all the kind of likeness and ip and all these things does it have relevance does it have value what's happening the challenge of giving that context because with the olympic space you've got nbc you've got the ioc you've got the usopc you've got getty images you've got the individual athletes you've got the other athletes in the same race then you've got the individual

44:50sponsors that are also there and then you've got the ioc sponsors there so like i originally had this idea of saying like hey i want to go create a repository of all of the greatest historically significant olympic moments in time jesse owens right muhammad ali michael phelps like whatever you want to do right like tommy on the stand you know like holding his fist in the air like really historical significant moments in time and have them as a part of like a virtual intra real life museum like that should be here wynwood walls right is here's how you bring sports to an audience maybe that doesn't care about

45:27sports and you bring it through culture through music through politics whatever that is and i had this idea to create all these moments as nfts and then have like a museum and only like you could have like a proper museum like this in place like abu dhabi where like they're willing to pour like billions of dollars into this like cruelly cool like ar immersive experience um and the challenge that we had that i ran into very quickly was that the athletes actually don't own the rights to their own [ __ ] damn i was gonna say this sounds amazing a little over a year ago i started

46:02having this conversation and i was like really really hardcore because i was like look and then the way this benefits is like the the platform can take a small sliver right of the fee and then we can have the majority go towards the athletes or the athletes families or whatever the the entity or the estate or whatever it is or like some like organization that helps oversee also we could pocket like a side over here to say like 10 is going to go towards helping athletes transition beyond sport so that they can communicate to the world that they have extreme productivity they just need to be kind of given guardrails again

46:37outside of the olympic realm that's the biggest we talked about this when i saw you last was that like the reinvention for an athlete is this like closely held identity to one side and then all of a sudden there's this great divorce that happens and the identity that they love that was that they taught him everything i'm writing a book about this so i'm like i'm so passionate about it it tells them like you're no longer good enough i found someone younger who's better and no matter what you do you can't come back to me so you either go be a coach should be a part of the team somehow but you can no

47:02longer compete and be the star light star athlete again in the olympic space it's a very short window and so the athletes then like [ __ ] like what else am i good at what do i do like what skills do i have i've like pushed off school i pushed off social life i'm like this like very narrow isolated person that has incredible attributes underneath this layer but i've never really expressed them outside of leaning on the levers of like my fears of failure or like rage or you know like insecurities and self-doubts to prove myself in my sport because i could physically do that now i

47:34have to do that against if i'm trying to work in like web 3 or i'm trying to become someone who's a new creator i've got some 17 year old kid who's faster smarter or more experienced than i am and i'm 25 or i'm 26. so like there's this like uh letdown that happens and so i had this idea about creating all these little pockets of like i deeply believe in the value that athletes can bring to society and to to to economies because they do contain really cool life lessons that are usually taught later on in your life and they have them right out of the gate

48:03and the work ethic the discipline like the the being coachable all those things are natural they got punched in the face punch in the face many times but they need to be kind of molded and still held in the same way and mentored in a new environment in a new career and it's like really frightening and like very visceral in terms of the breakup that you have with that first identity and so like this nft platform or this like nft museum was like my my way of basically funneling this other idea around something that i cared about and it never took off and i i was like

48:32very sensitive around like pursuing a project um that i wasn't going to be able to spend like a ton of time on um who owns the rights the rights are owned by like a whole series of people so the ioc has like the ultimate say over what's happening but then the person who took the picture for getty images also has the rights um then the athletes that are also there also have a say and then the above the athletes is the u.s olympic committee body so that's like the u.s speed skating right the u.s olympic committee um yeah so it's so basically what i'm trying to say is it's really complex and

49:05it's convoluted and it should change because there's like a lot of value there like to me when i think about sports and like the pinnacle of achievement in the olympic space um it is quite unique right and whether you watch sports or not like there's something cool around someone dedicated an entire lifetime around a moment that lasts nine seconds or 40 seconds and in that moment of time whether you're in a saint bolt or michael johnson or michael phelps or whoever that person is like the difference between first and like being off the podium is like fractions like hundreds of seconds and because it's like that what happens that person who's

49:41in fourth who's in fifth i watched this like really cool documentary i think it was a bbc documentary on the only person who beat floyd mayweather and it's just i think it's i want to say it's this guy who's somewhere in like eastern europe and it showed the two dichotomies of lifestyle difference you got floyd right it's like crushed it like super flashy like all you know like money money mayweather you've got this other dude who like lives in this like localized town that looks like it's been bombed like 10 times and he's like known but he's like had like his own bouts of like depression

50:11and issues associated and he was a celebrated hero in his hometown because he won a medal right in his in his for his home country and i just think about that stuff all the time and like why do two different like people go down different roads it's typically because they've been celebrated by one i'm very lucky dude like i know that i'm very grateful because i was chosen by nbc to be a spotlighted athlete but why me just because i was winning there's like other people who in the olympic space that have crazy cool stories that you've never heard about and i know because i live with these guys in the olympic

50:40training center like coming out like you know being like imagine being olympic gold medals i'm gonna say the person's name but winning a gold medal for like a really hard sport and then retiring for like 10 years uh going and living your life getting married having kids then falling into depression and then having like a drug problem and then losing your family losing your kids no longer have access losing your job you have nothing and then coming back to the sport because the sport is the only place that you've found that gives you some semblance of feeling important or some sense of like purpose in some capacity and then the

51:13first match that you have against the number two in the world you beat him after 10 years it's like really cool right um i have no idea where that guy is now but i remember sitting in this like olympic training center and seeing like an unfamiliar face that could definitely could tell he had been through some [ __ ] in his life and then sitting down with this dude and being like dude like what's up man like i've seen your picture in the halls in the training center because you're a legend but where have you been the past 10 years i mean like just for like three

51:39hours tells me his life story i'm like [ __ ] no one has told this story like why is nbc not commenting on this so but that's the power of streaming and that's why you guys can bring cool people here it is just the i have so many thoughts on that i mean i've as a former athlete on a completely different scale than you but i played at a high level in college sports we were the number one team in the country a number of times and i think about the thing you said about a few seconds feels like a light you've spent your entire lifetime preparing for a few

52:09seconds gives me chills thinking about that because i have a moment like that in my career where it was one game and i was out there and i had to get the last out of this game and it was a big crowd and it was a huge game and i think i thought about that while i was out there like holy [ __ ] i've literally my entire from little league the first t-ball field i was on to like this moment this is it and it's either gonna go one way and like this guy's going to hit a 800 foot home run off me and we're going to

52:34lose or it's going to go the other way celebrating i just was sitting there and i was like and i was it was like a 2-0 count on the guy was a pitcher and i remember thinking like am i really going to walk this guy we're going to lose like this is it my entire life of like training for this moment that's what i'm gonna do and it went the it went a good way luckily i ended up it was a celebratory moment but that transition you talk about and the mental health of athletes and the ability to manage that transition the lack of resources to help them

53:01manage that transition i mean i've had i'm sure you know hundreds of people like it sounds like you're writing a book about it which i'll eagerly look forward to i've had one of my best friends in the world was and i don't think he'll mind me saying this he's one of the most talented baseball players i've ever seen on a field um he was a first overall pick in the mlb draft like got paid six million dollars insane one of the most talented people ever has not made it to the mlb was called the biggest bust in mlb history in mlb draft history and dealt with serious struggle as a result of

53:33that just like defining who you are because it was for your whole life driven around this one persona who you are and he's br and i've had to spend hours talking to him you're brilliant you're an amazing person it had nothing to do with baseball that was one iteration of it but there's a whole new life out in front of you and we don't do a good job having the resources to actually tell those people that like the things you learned and the lessons you learned weren't so that you could go throw a ball or so you could skate quickly or so you could wrestle well it is so broadly

54:03applicable to what you're going to go do next but we don't have institutions resources to go have that conversation with those people at that next level and it's it's not just olympians or professional athletes like think of um you know u.s veterans or or veterans in general like failed startup founders there's millions of veterans who come out come out of training and and service and [Music] they're like okay like what next and then they fall into depression and they fall into you know a lot of dark places but they you know like you know training for the olympics or like training for uh you know high-level sports they've got they're

54:48rooted in a lot of um great skills it's just how do how do we transform those people into the into the real world i know there's some people trying um there's organizations right yeah i think these are all a lot of this is like psychological on a lot of its conditioning you know i think a lot of people when they come home from service they probably feel alien less appreciated like no one knows what they did what they went through and no one can relate because that's how i felt right i felt like you don't you have no idea what it took i wasn't even genetically gifted in my

55:24sport like i had to go to places like you don't even know about like that was my thought right um and so we absolutely need like real transitory like just transition mechanisms to help a lot of these people because uh they're powerful man but like i think people go through this all stage in your life everyone has to reinvent and pivot at some point you know like when i finish the book which i like when's it coming out what's the book called it comes out in february it's called hard pivot okay and it just talks about like i think our all of our human struggle with reinvention adaptation to

55:56uncertainty um and how to how did i figure out kind of my own personal way as i'm figuring it out and just like kind of transparently give like some tool kits some things that i've had to go through both on a personal development level where my own micro traumas have come from um and all these things right like i grew up in a single parent household where you know my father was japanese i'm i'm half japanese and he had like extremely high expectations for me right so very tiger father driven like amazing love like super lucky to have this but also like no matter how bad i failed he

56:30was like oh like you can always you can always pick yourself back up no matter how i even if i won it was always better so like that like level of fear of effectively letting down the one person that i sought the most love from my life which was my dad was like deeply rooted at a very early age and so it drove everything that i did everything like everything was always i think and i didn't know this too much later in my life but i think a lot of people go through that process of like the micro traumas and the experiences that we've had as kids in school

56:57relationships through work they affect you unless you deal with them in some capacity and that's why like during the beginning of the pandemic like 18 months ago i was like man like not only athletes are going through this i think a lot of people are going through this and there's got to be a better way um it's never easy but at least if we can embrace parts of this journey and know that it's not easy and know that there's perhaps a different avenue for us to grow like at least it makes life a little bit less like sisyphus you know what i mean yeah where it's just so painful to like always go

57:28back down again and i don't know and finding the communities to have that outlet to talk about it with peers because i always find these things are built up in your mind more than they're real like for me that pivot away from baseball i was hurt it was very clear to me abundantly clear to me that my career was over and that i needed to hang it up and the hardest conversation you bring up your dad the hardest call in conversation was to call my dad and tell him and i still i mean i still think about it and feel like emotional thinking about it when i called him and

58:01i was like dad you're gonna be so disappointed that i'm having to hang it up and he didn't care at all he was just like you've accomplished so much i'm so happy you know that you feel that you need to call me but there was no like these people love you and you have so much support out there and you we need to create systems where people realize that that there is that support that you have that community right like the team rallies around you the people that you've trained with your whole career rally around you but you need to not be afraid to seek that out because

58:31when people go inward and you just retreat into the shell that's when you end up with the real struggle i found when you're when you're able to just say like hey i'm really sad about this i'm having to change and make strongest prison is right between your two years oh that's great like it literally is yeah you can have the most and we see this with like crypto and web3 and everything that's being created today like it's the most powerful tool in the world it's also like the most damaging tool if it's used against you in the wrong way and i lived in that space for a long time like many

59:04athletes do where like you are literally your own worst enemy and if you listen to that voice that tells you often that you're not good enough and it's not good enough and it's never going to be good enough you're not tall enough you're not attractive enough you're not smart enough and other people have more than you and you know like that's a really like uh confusing and also can be really really um i think just destructive you know and you can sabotage yourself and i think that you know i i for years used that as a lever to like get me up early and keep me up late at night it was a very

59:36motivating tool but it also kept me like in a little bit of my own prison in a sense like where i wasn't fully able to accept myself and also love myself for my own inconsistencies and self-doubts and beliefs and just like being human right it was i wanted to be a machine and uh that's the uh that's the scary part for me about web3 and crypto like the dark side of it is you know it's a financialization of everything and everything is liquid and while that has a lot of benefits it also means you you're playing a game and you're playing as [ __ ] mccormack

1:00:17calls it the great online game and you want a high score and you're just it's 24 7. it's not like the markets that close on holidays or the weekends and there's a public score card it's a publix everyone sees it everyone sees it so i think you know for people playing in the game the people listening like set your own goals and it's f it's great to like hit milestones but i think that you know there's gonna be a burnout i predict a burnout uh and i'm already starting to see some individuals that are just they're taking it too far yeah it's uh but i'm talking to a

1:01:01you know a two-time gold medalist you're looking at like a one-time jump shot not even bronze medalist in curling it's funny there's levels to it right you just we all struggle with the same things just in different ways and iterations i do think athletes it's a very very i'm so excited for your book because i have so many friends i went through it personally i'm super excited for it i'm like share it with a lot of friends because i think colleges should be sharing that type of context with their athletes ncaa had all those commercials like 99 won't be going professional we'll be going professional in something other than sports and for

1:01:40some reason we didn't hear that message in college enough and i i mean i went to one of the best sports schools in the world and we didn't hear that message and so many of my friends were feeling lost after i felt lost there were times when i was like how am i going to have done this and like accomplish what i feel like i've accomplished and not have a job or not be able to go make use of the skills i feel like i've developed and now i have a lot of friends who've gone and played a few years professionally in whatever sport football baseball and they're like holy

1:02:08hell if the rest of my life and they might have made i have friends who have made 80 80 million dollars playing football or whatever it is and now they're like well [ __ ] i'm 28 and yeah i have a ton of money but like i have a whole life to live i need to find some reason to get up in the morning it doesn't matter if i have a lot of money um those transitions are just so hard it doesn't matter the money doesn't fix it on your point with like the burnout and there for sure is an incredible unique opportunity that is existing right now

1:02:37in in in all online activity whether it's crypto whether you're jumping in you're being a creator or you're trying to develop a community economy like whatever the iteration is that you are latching yourself onto i think something to make really important for anyone who's building things in the space where yes there's a small window of opportunity and i'm i'm definitely never one to tell you not to jump out of the airplane with no parachute because there's a lot of power in burning the ships so to speak but also you can't have so much external abundance in your life but then be in like severe internal poverty and if that is what's happening

1:03:13where if you're a trader in crypto and it requires you to be so glued to your devices all the time and if you can't disengage for periods you're you're actually no better off than the guy who's working 18 hour shifts like you're exactly the same your number on the scorecard is just slightly different but your life is the same there's nothing that's inherently different so like again like i get it right like everything needs to like in sports we use the gas principle and in tech you know you go through like short sprints and you know you go through sprints right okay the next two weeks the next

1:03:45week the next six weeks is going to be a sprint everyone hands on deck it's going to be not balanced at all and i think that is important but i also think it's important to be able to disengage and also be present right because this this race of what's happening in in web 3 in the development it's we're like at the tip of the iceberg like where we're heading in the direction that it's going and the opportunities that exist on the other side are the ready player ones like that is literally what we are creating in many iterations and if you are participating in this in some way to reinvent

1:04:16reimagine and um just just change the way that we think about our values between each other between the different games that we're playing between the content that you're producing and consuming between the financialization of products um i always ask myself like why does this need to exist at the end of the day like this is this actually really important and if it is amazing if it's not then i'm still playing the game so you know like like i've done so much like personal deep work and especially like the past like i would say eight years on like why do i act the way that i do

1:04:51why do i operate the way that i operate what am i chasing what do i believe life wants for me and what do i actually really want out of life are those things aligned in some capacity and then i sometimes find myself still being the hamster in the cage right just running running now at least now i know that i'm the hamster i know that i am still on the treadmill and at times we just have to get off you know and so like right now we're doing this at art basel and it's the most insane thing that i've seen in years we kind of talked about that earlier

1:05:24right like you showed me your calendar yep and i almost puked and and i say that with like i i i feel i felt for you because i was like i think that you shouldn't go to you have two through two how many dinners two to three dinners four dinners four dinners tonight they're all at the same time yeah i don't know like what's the yeah and humans should have one dinner and [Laughter] i don't think enough people are hearing that message everyone's hearing the message around and by the way i'm the biggest like the future is web3 the future is creator the future is community person

1:06:08and i also don't sleep a lot so i you know but at the same time i i pull myself out of it and i'm like do i really need to do this right now or can i go and play the guitar or whatever or go and just go for a walk in the park or go do things that are quote-unquote mundane can i ask you something about that because i i think that's i think it's really profound and interesting that you're saying that do you feel more free do i feel more free when i when you're able to tap into that yes i've learned that from him and what does

1:06:43the freedom give you like in terms of i think of two things right fomo and fopo right fomo we know of that exists everywhere in especially in crypto fopo is like fear of other people's opinions which is sometimes directly correlated with fomo do you feel none of that i feel i mean i'm a human being so i do feel some of that um but i think i've trained myself to not care what people think and just do you know we were just talking about this this right before where i was yeah i was wearing this t-shirt and it said snowden deli on it which is this jewish

1:07:23deli that was like right next to my place growing up and i wore it to like a famous person's new york fashion week party and this like well-known hip-hop artist came up to me and he said are you wearing a jewish delis t-shirt to a new york fashion week party and i was like i guess i am because i'm here you know and it's like and he couldn't believe it right it was like celebrities everywhere and everyone was dressed in and i think that the freeing part of it is you have yeah do to answer your question do i feel free i feel free when i when

1:07:57i'm able to do what i want to do isn't that the definition of freedom yeah it's awesome i by the way i love that you do that exercise i think it's really important for all of us to go through that process um i think there's times when we when we when we we decide not to we say okay this is i believe this is important or maybe i don't believe it's important but i'm gonna do it anyway and it doesn't mean you can't work hard right like i now you gotta work hard you gotta work hard pre-requisites yeah right like you got to work hard and like

1:08:24when i'm working i'm working right like i'm all i'm dialed but when i'm not i'm not that yeah that i mean i i think about that is like just being like really just authentic man if you can be authentic to yourself and then kind of catch yourself at least be more mindful of kind of your own internal emotional thoughts that are pulling you or directing you in certain ways maybe that don't directly are in alignment with your true north of what the ultimate goal here is or what the next chapter is in your life like it's it's hard to have that perspective ongoing because we do buy

1:08:58into the external signaling of society telling us what we should have what you should be doing which dow you should be participating in which new token launch you should have which new game you should be participating which new play to earn learn to earn whatever it is um and when you're not you're less than yep right and that's the biggest issue here is like because you're not in the club because you didn't get in at this round or because you didn't buy it at this price you're less than you're less than smart you're not you don't have as much access you're not in the club and

1:09:29those things are true right maybe in some instances but they're also just like made up so iron man it's a i think it's like an age-old conundrum that we are facing right is like how to balance i think psychologically between what we know to be externally signaling to us as the new wave of this conditioning is happening which is to be con you know connected 24 7 all the time and always available and always ready um versus like still being human and then like balancing that it's tough yeah i mean it's funny it's like i'm in between you two sort of on this where i came from a sports background and i had

1:10:10the like very similar mentality that i think you had from what i've read about your background and listen you speak about it i was just like complete balls to the wall like i'd wake up at four go to bed at you know 11 like i had to work harder than anyone else because i knew i wasn't that talented and i was just like i just have to work harder than everyone and i took pride in that and it was like this deep i almost had a bitterness about the fact that i wasn't talented and that drove me like you were better than me but like [ __ ] you i'm gonna like just do better

1:10:39than you because i'm working harder and i took pride in that and then i took a job in traditional finance and that was like a great breeding ground for that mentality where if you just worked harder and you worked more hours you were like okay that was you took pride in how many hours you worked 100 hour week it was like oh great you're doing this and now i'm like in this sort of new world where i'm getting to do more creative things and i'm sort of able to work more like a lion than like a than like a cow to use the naval thing of like more in sprints and real

1:11:07creativity and trying to drive things forward and it's important to how i think for me to actually be able to think clearly and not be foggy all the time because i haven't slept and so i'm somewhere in the middle of that transition now of like i still have that deep-seated feeling of like being an underdog and wanting to go figure these things out neither my parents were in finance like i want to go make money and do a bunch of cool things and like make my parents proud my mom's indian i come from a mixed race background as well and you know indian parents it's like the old thing of like

1:11:38why you're not why you not doctor or like why are you not you know now it's like why you not ceo of big tech companies like all the ceos now but i still have that but i'm trying to like fight against it to some extent to adopt more of these things but the secret is if you end up having in this new world that we live in which is like creativity based like we're creators right we're creating in order to be a great creator you need to have balance like that's what you're going to go on that walk and you're it's going to hit you hey i should

1:12:12you know i just had an idea for a startup i got to go launch it or hey like you know you're you're playing tennis or something and like something hits right with that so i think like the more out like the more hours to a certain point like it's a lot of diminishing returns and like i think people need to figure out what that is for them is it 35 is it 45 a week is it 50 is it 70 and like pick something that's less than 100 ideally and uh and like i like how you put it right be a human like i feel like that's

1:12:41a good thing to end on right like just what makes you happy man we're all on like a rock hurtling through the universe in space like we're all going to die and so like i just i think it's so fun that we get to have conversations with really smart people and get to meet people on a daily basis that are working on cool things that motivates me to want to work a lot it's cool because i can go and have conversations with smart people this week you're here you're meeting all these people part of what's motivating about that for you i imagine it's like there's a bunch

1:13:07of cool people that are building the future and you get to go have conversations with them and be a part of that and that's [ __ ] cool no matter how you slice it that's a cool thing to be in it you're in i mean we call this where it happens it's like being in the room where it happens that's what we all want to do we all want to be a part of it and that's like the brilliance of all of this and why i feel so lucky i also think it's a great place to cut off our time here because i know we're up against the end so yeah man

1:13:33that was uh thanks for having me that was awesome so excited where can people find you so i know we have pivot coming out in february hardcover coming out in february where can people follow you on social you know i'm on ig uh i don't post a ton if i'm on twitter obviously yep um the only apology out there i'm not on tick tock i don't do snap okay um but i think twitter's probably the best place yep um to communicate yeah awesome well thank you so much and tribe crypto um doing amazing things so excited to see what you guys built awesome team yeah it is

1:14:04an awesome team i can definitely vouch for that super exciting thank you so much man real real honor wow um that was far-ranging i felt like we covered i mean he sat with us for a lot longer than i thought so we ended up getting to a whole lot of stuff which was crazy to me by the way just like it's not a takeaway but getting to sit down with a guy that i've admired as long as that who's become a friend just super cool life moment for me so i'll let you go first what was your one big takeaway i mean i'm impressed with i mean i'm impressed with you about this

1:14:36too you and him is just the ambition and and how you you guys are like machines like you there's something about sports and professional sports that just teaches you really really uh to push it to the limits and i admire that but there are is also some downsides and we talked about it and i i think uh i think that push and pull is healthy but i i really enjoyed that yeah i mean you've pushed me to think a lot on those things and it's made my life better so i'm like i'm thankful for that personally that i have a counterpoint to like be a sparring partner to help me

1:15:13kind of ease up on things a bit so they appreciate it so the takeaway for everyone listening really is just uh don't push yourself too hard yeah and also push yourself well it's hustle but no one to rest yeah you gotta know when to rest it's like work like a lion yeah you gotta sprint when you're sprinting and really focus but then know when to rest and like a lion knows when to sleep after it sprints and then i can't leave this episode without my one big takeaway which is i love this idea of buying the x games and i like i'm gonna sing it from the

1:15:46rooftops i want to go do this and if it's still literally on the block for 50 million dollars i think we could do it i think there's a massive opportunity here like enormous opportunity for the x games so if anyone's interested we're going to jump into discord wag bxg we're going to buy the x games four sigmatic is the secret sauce behind the where it happens podcast you know how much i've been talking about that hot cocoa the one that's jam-packed at the reishi mushrooms it absolutely has been transforming my mornings i have it at night completely chills me out takes out all my stress and allows me to have

1:16:23a good night's rest after those long days of tequila on the set i'm sure that's helpful i mean it does help the sweet vanilla plant-based protein is the one that i've been going to after my workouts in the mornings it's been a game changer 18 grams of plant-based protein adaptogens jam-packed with mushroom goodness it's been a complete game changer for me so to go check it out go to 4sigmatic.com and use code the room at checkout greg why do you look so tired i look so tired because i did not sleep last night have you never slept well or is this a new thing it's not that i can't fall asleep i fall

1:17:02asleep like right away but i wake up a couple hours later and i'm just sitting in my bed and i look at the ceiling and i can't fall back asleep and i don't know what to do so i was literally you and for the longest time i was this like hustle culture bro sleep when i'm dead didn't want to sleep didn't care about my sleep and then i honestly i started reading more of the research and realizing how impactful sleep is to your longevity to your health all of these other things and as part of that i found eight sleep which has completely revolutionized the way i sleep i've

1:17:38heard of eight sleep can you tell me more about it think of it as like the future of sleep all of these mattress companies have created these mattresses they're just stuck they're stock mattresses eight sleep is technology plus sleep combined so the whole product is built around optimizing the temperature that you sleep at and so you read about sleeping cold is the key to sleeping and it's not quite true everyone has a different optimal sleep temperature and it changes throughout the night which is the crazy part about it so you might need really cold to fall asleep and then you might need it to be a little bit warmer to keep you asleep

1:18:10and they eight sleep actually transitions your temperature through the night to keep you at the optimal sleep sleep temperature at any point during the night it keeps you asleep it helps you fall asleep faster and i actually since i started using it have been sleeping better and feeling so much more energized during the day as a result sounds like i need a nate sleep i think everyone needs innate sleep so if you're tuning in right now and you want to try out the aid sleep to completely change the way you sleep rest recover so that you're ready to take on all of life's challenges check out

1:18:40eightsleep.com where it happens to get a discount on your first product here's a tip don't be like greg eisenberg be like sahil bloom join our free community at trwia