Blake Wynn on The Importance of Team Culture & Building Enclave & Key

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Welcome to the Casey Adams show. Today I am joined by my good friend Blake Wynn, the co founder of Enclave and Key. Thanks so much for coming on the show.

Blake, man, thanks for having me. First ever episode. I'm excited.

We are here at the the Blue Wire studio. Thank you so much for coming out. I'm in town in Vegas where you are from and I'm super glad that we can make it happen.

Me too, man. And this is without a doubt the most beautiful studio. This is such a treat. Thank you for having me.

Of course. So, man, let's get right into it. I mean, we've. I feel like we've known each other for over a year now just on social media and then recently we really got to know each other when we had dinner and just. I'm so not only amazed by your story, but how you've been able to build relationships and build this incredible company, Enclave and Key. So for the people that don't know what Enclave and Key is, I'd love for you to give a background on what you built.

So Enclave and Key, at the end of the day is just the bridging gap between brands and in often cases, celebrities. And those celebrities were originally just pro athletes. The company started three years ago is called B Win Sports llc. And the whole purpose of the company was to help the players who were on the trajectory to be part of the statistic of the 86% of NFL players that are broke within 36 months of retiring. Helping guys like that make some money off the field because their agents didn't have a rooting interest in doing that. They weren't necessarily able to do it for themselves. And at the time I was a YouTuber so I had a lot of the brand contacts that were necessary to make that happen. So for about a year and a half, that was the business and then it Transitioned to, well, now we have such a large pool of influencers to work with, not even just athletes, but now it was, you know, TikTokers and YouTubers and that whole, you know, realm of social media. It was, well, let's just go to the brands and say, hey, if you want to work with 200 of the world's most influential people, we can help you do that. And so now our positioning is very much so. If you've, if you're a brand and you've got a story to tell, we have the world's best storytellers to help you do that.

I love that. Speaking of being a YouTuber, I know just your past life, I guess you could say you've had an incredible YouTube presence, sneaker collection, I should say the least. When did that start? When did you start, you know, collecting sneakers, building a brand on YouTube? Because I know when we talk about it at dinner, like that was such an important part of your journey before Enclave and Key, which has been an incredible journey to watch. But when did you get into sneaker collecting?

So I didn't, you know, sneaker collecting was something that kind of happened as a byproduct of reselling sneakers, which, you know, looked a lot different 10 years ago. I started in 2011. I was 11 years old at the time. Time I walked into an Adidas outlet. I saw a pair of shoes for 1999 that said, suggested retail $199.99. And for some reason it triggered in my head that, hey, these are probably worth more than 20 bucks. So I bought two pairs of them, I put them on my ebay. Next day, they both sold for $110 each. And I just got so fascinated by the concept of essentially arbitrage at 11 years old. So did that for about five years. And in order to grow that business, that was actually why I started the YouTube. I wanted to market it. So I reached out to NiceKicks and sneaker watch and Kaisomar and all these people that had following in that space at the time, hey, how much would it be to promote my ebay store? Keep mine. There's no stockx at this point. This 20, this late 2015, there's no stock X that was 2016. There may have been goat, but it was nothing if it was. And so ebay was it. And so they hit me with rates that they later went on to hit these brands with. Except I wasn't a brand. I was a 15, 16 year old kid in high school still. So I was like do this myself. And so I started the YouTube 45 days later I hit 10,000 subscribers. Six months after that, I hit 100,000. And very quickly it went from, oh, let me have YouTube as an as help to resell sneakers. It very quickly became, oh, shoot, there's this whole influencer thing, right? Because you got to think this same time is when Jake and Logan Paul were doing the music videos back and forth and Team 10 was becoming a thing and Sneaker Con was becoming really, really popular amongst YouTubers. So I was definitely a beneficiary of just really the perfect timing.

I love that. How did you continue to maintain that over time when it comes to doing brand deals, working with companies as an influencer yourself? Also as someone that's selling sneakers? I know you've told me some incredible stories just about the companies that you've been able to work with and even get ownership in at an early stage through being an influencer. And I think, you know, that's an important conversation nowadays where, you know, at Media Kids, we're talking to creators about the creator economy and how they can monetize. And I think it's. It's fluctuated so much over the past decade that, you know, the deals that you were doing back then with like, let's say early StockX or whatever it been, are different than the deals that are maybe these being done now. So I'd love for you to dive into that.

Well, you know, at the end of the day, every influencer, and this is especially true for social media influencers, different than athletes, is that they're really their own micro business, whether they like to acknowledge that or not. Right. Like you as an individual have a following, and that following is essentially your clientele or consumer base. And then, you know, there's the standard, let's, you know, do merchandise, let's go on tour, let's do all these things. But then there's a, you know, the desire to work with brands and get brands backing your small brand. Like, imagine being a small business and having, you know, let's say you were a small sneaker seller and Nike endorsed your business. Well, you might be a sneaker seller, but all of a sudden one of the biggest brands in the world, who in theory should be your biggest competition, but they're so much larger than. You don't even look at it that way, is now actually endorsing you. Right. Like, that's a lot of the positioning for brand deals. It's like these companies that would otherwise be competition that are essentially using their Audience to become part of their clientele because they are competitors. Right. And so it's interesting because a lot of influencers, I think, love to very, very, very quickly outsource the deal making. And to me, the deal making was the reason I wanted to be an influencer. It gave me something to bring to the table that had value to whoever I was sitting across from. Most influencers, they hire a manager. Let's say they're the best manager in the world, so be it. That person's job is to get them deals and they're very caught up in their content, their editing, their video, all those things. I was the complete opposite. I hired a videographer, I hired an editor, and I was unwilling at all costs to take a manager because that's what I got a kick out of. And so for me, I was always looking for the next fun deal to kind of structure because to be honest, I think that's probably the larger, like a largest skill set I have is the ability to negotiate.

Love that. What, what have you seen through working with athletes on and off the field? I mean, I think nowadays with now college athletes being able to monetize, it just opened up an entire new genre of influencers, I guess you could say. So how do you look at monetizing athletes and how do you, you know, bring more value to that? You said 86 of athletes that, you know, become broke three years after they stopped playing the league. Like, how are you continuing to bring value to these athletes and what is the strategy to helping these athletes monetize?

So in a sense, we're almost coming in as a secondary manager, except we're just telling them, look, we're not exclusive, we're just bringing you offers, right?

Yep.

Now the positioning is different on an in, on a completely individual basis, like for nil guys. I have certain conversations with guys where I'm like, look, here's the reality. Like you're an influencer now. You're on a big time college team, you guys are in the top 25 brands are busting your door down. Let's take these deals because you're not going to go pro. You're not going to go pro. So you may as well capitalize on the exposure you have right now as an influencer, nil athlete, whatever you want to call it, because you know you're going to go on in life to go be, you know, an accountant or a real estate agent or whatever it is I'm doing, but it's not going to be playing probably. Yeah, if you're going to be a pro. I tell people, take the deals that only apply to college athletes. Like I would do not go get your sneaker deal right now, your Nike deal, your water deal, your Beats headphones deal. There's no, there's no point because you're going to get 10x more as soon as you enter the draft and get signed by a team or whatever it may be. So there's a lot of strategy there in terms of what to take versus what not to. But it's also challenging because you can tell an 18 year old who's going to go number three in the NFL draft. Like, hey, they're only three years away from making 40, 50 million bucks. Like, but they're right then and there. They might have $100 in their checking account, you know, so they're like, well, this brand's offering me a thousand bucks. I'm just going to take it. And if the brand's able to get away with that, huge win for the brand.

Yep.

But to the player, I'm like, look like, probably not your best bet, you know, Totally.

How have you guys transitioned over the years from, you know, since you started it, working with Dan, different athletes, like, how have not only the deals changed, but how have you grown when it comes to deal making? And what has changed in the industry now with the nil component?

The nil component for us at least hasn't been as dramatic of a change as you might think. Just because we're not being super aggressive on the nil side. We have about 12 nil guys that we work with. All 12 of them are going to be professional athletes one day. And that's kind of our positioning is, you know, at this point in time because we represent the brand. I do want to get some really good college guys in early with these brands where these brands can end up paying, you know, cents on the dollar for the value that they're going to end up getting long term. And at the same time the guy is able to get some income short term. And so on the nil front, it's really just a battle of making sure that the fit is right and that it doesn't hurt their ability to do anything long term. Separate from that, I, I think it's great for them to be able to earn some money. Now going back to our positioning, it's changed so, so much and it changes so frequently. And what I mean by that is every month, all of a sudden it's like we'll be doing something with a brand and they'll Say to me, we need to increase our impressions on this. But then the next month, it's like, well, we have a Black Friday thing. We just want website traffic. And then it's this and it's this and it's this. And you have to be able to juggle that flip of the messaging, of the content, the creative and all that. Except you got to remember we're not dealing with influencers, right? Like, if I said that to you, you understand so much about how to create content and how it works. That would be no problem for you. But explaining that to a football player is a little different. Combined with their schedules, combined with their, you know, like, for example, even, let's say it's a product, and they need the product in their hand. Well, they might not be home for three weeks straight. You know what I mean? Like, there's complications there that are so nuanced that it's incredibly important for us to pick brand partners who understand those things and are not only not scared of those things, but they're like, no, we like that kind of flexibility of it, you know?

Totally. I want to transition a bit, I think. Just talking about entrepreneurship as a whole. I know you said you got into the reselling of sneakers at 11 years old. Where did this drive come from for you early on, and how have you maintained that over time? When it comes to what motivates you.

I think a lot of it you're born with. I've always been the kind of person that says, like, I truly do believe that you're born with entrepreneur, entrepreneurial tendency, because you have a desire to live in a way that most normal people would never want to live. It's really uncomfortable when you get a close look at it. And so I think I was born with it, but I was also, you know, exposed to it a lot at a very young age. We're sitting here in Blue Wire Studios in the Wynn Hotel, which my uncle started. And so at a very, very early age, seeing him do it, like, I probably didn't even understand what he was doing, but I was just exposed to it, like, literally in the room. And then my parents got divorced in 2008, and around 2010, as my mom and I are kind of trying to figure out what's, you know, what's the next step of life for us, if you will, ended up being raised primarily by my single mom. She learned how to do options trading, and I kind of fell into the sneaker thing. And so from that moment on, I've never known anything besides entrepreneurship I never had a summer job mowing lawns or working somewhere doing anything like that. I've worked for myself since I was 11 years old. I've paid taxes as a sole proprietor, owner of an LLC since I was 12. And that's all I've really ever known.

I love that. And when you talk about mentorship and growing up with it, when you talk about your uncle Steve Wynn, what would you say you've learned from him overall, but also just the mentors in your life that have instilled entrepreneurship in you from early age, Because, I mean, you said you didn't really see maybe what he was doing there, but the values and what rubbed off on you, whether that's his grit, his, you know, his deal mentality, whatever it may be. Just I'd love to know, like, what you learned through spending time with him and what's been instilled in you.

So inherently, you learn that days are not eight hours long. You know, a lot of people. A lot of people look at days as eight hours long, and then they got their time. You know, Steve was 8 to 8am to 10pm for 50, 60 years. You know, that's all he knew. It's like business dinners. But it's not to say that you're sitting at a desk in a cubicle for 19 hours. You know, you don't have to be unrealistic. But, you know, you go to dinner and it's with a client or with a friend of the business or whatever it may be. And so you see those things happen, and you realize that being an entrepreneur is a lifestyle, not a career choice. And in accepting that lifestyle, your goal has to be to learn and to get better as quickly as possible. So as I got older, I would then go back to my uncle and seek advice that I could understand because I was older. And he would explain to me, like, for example, the value of any enterprise is its ability to create a culture, because if you don't create a culture, then that thing cannot live on without you. Right? And so there's thoughts like that that have dramatically impacted my ability to lead my team. You know, we have about 30 people on our staff, counting our contractors and everything like that. And as much as I can maybe do as many deals as I can maybe make, if they're not done properly, the whole thing falls apart. And so I've taken a pretty unique approach to going the business in that respect. But a lot of it is because that's what I've, you know, more or less been coached and advised to do by people around me who I trust, not just. And not just my uncle, by any means. You know, I have a number of mentors, one of whom is going to be on your show next. Justin Blau.

Yes.

You know, he convinced me to drop out of college. It's like. It's people who I trust, who I know.

Let's talk about that. He convinced you to drop out of college? Yes. That's an important thing to say.

So we were in New York City. I was at Fordham University at the time. I lived a couple blocks away from this place called the Aviary. It's a beautiful bar, but they also have a speakeasy. And Justin loves speakeasies. He likes the ability to get all these different kinds of drinks and have smoke and different stuff come out of it. So he says, let's go get a drink. So we're getting a drink. It's about 9pm at 2am I stand up and I have a different outlook on life. I went there to have a drink. I went there to have a drink because. Cause I didn't have homework or whatever it may be. And I left there thinking, okay, well, I'm done with school.

What was it that he spoke to you about?

So, Justin, I might be wrong on the semester, but I wanna say he dropped out the second semester of his junior year. I was in the very end of my freshman year. And he knew a lot about my business, all the way down, truth be told, to the numbers of it, the growth pattern. I mean, he knew a lot about it. He was one of our first clients outside of athletes. He signed to us when we were b win sports.

Wow.

And he was an EDM artist. Right. So he knew quite a bit about the business. And he says, look, I mean, at the end of the day, you need school to get you to a point to where you can do this in life. And if you put this on hold for three years, what would happen? I said, well, I'd lose it. I'd lose the opportunity. Well, then put school on hold because you won't lose that opportunity and see what you can do. Because he says you can always go back if it doesn't work. But if you're truly supporting yourself and you're, you know, doing well and the businesses has an upward trajectory, you should explore that a little bit. And so taking that thought and combining with some of the other advice I had been given, you know, my uncle had told me, he says, look, school's different in this day and age than it was when I was A kid, but stay in school until the exact moment in time that you can no longer do both. And so I was doing some work in Barcelona. I had gotten an opportunity to do some work for a pretty big company over in Barcelona. I had to go. I got a call. This was a Sunday morning, March 20th of 2019, and I got a call. I said, can you be in Barcelona tomorrow? And I lived in New York at the time. I said, well, I don't know about that. They said, well, we'll let you bring a plus one. We'll let you do this. This. I said, yeah, I'll be there. I've never been to Barcelona. So 24 hours later, I'm in Barcelona, in Barcelona for two days, and I come back, and I was only going for two days because on Thursday, at a composition class, class that I couldn't miss, and I knew that if I missed it, I was gonna flunk out of that class. And it was past the withdrawal period. It's like, I'm taking an F on my transcript. If I'm not back in the United States by Wednesday, and it's Monday morning, and I'm on a flight to Barcelona. So sure enough, it's about to come back. They said, wait, can you go to London for three days straight from Barcelona? So, yeah, I'll go. Sure enough. 1:45 in the morning at London. I walk outside of. We're the last people inside Nobu. I'm in the middle of a meeting, and I walk outside, and it's the dean of Fordham's business school calling me. She says, you know, you missed your fourth competition class. You're taking an F. We're gonna have to fill you. I say, hang on, hang on, hang on. I get, like, my mom and dad on the phone, and I'm like, guys, like, what do you advise I say or do here?

Were they supportive in that moment? Like, did they know you were Barcelona in life? They didn't.

They did know what I was doing. I was there for work. They knew the whole thing. But, you know, they're. They're. They were more so honestly taking the approach with the dean of, like, look, like he's in the entrepreneurship program. Program here. Like, that's what he's majoring in. He's here for this. We can show you invoices. We can show you whatever you want to prove it. It's not like he got up and went to Barcelona on a whim. Five hours later. No, no, no, no, no. 45 minutes later, I said. I said, I've reached the point where I can't do both. So I'm going to leave this. And so, sure enough, two in the morning on the side of the street in London. That was where I dropped out of school.

Wow.

And that was about a week after the competition with Justin.

That is incredible.

Yeah.

So you're in London now. You drop out. Like, do you instantly have this moment of relief or what's going through your head in that moment? Is it. Are you nervous? Are you. Do you. Do you have any regret of, oh, my God, why did I do that? Or what was the byproduct of making that decision?

Going back to an initial point, I said, you know, you're born with the ability to live discomfort in an uncomfortable manner if you're an entrepreneur. And so to me, it probably was not nearly what other people looked at it and thought it was. You know, to me, it was, oh, this is real. But nothing more than that. Like, oh, this is real. Yeah, time to do what I need to do tomorrow and the next day and the next day after that. I never looked at it as a big deal because, truth be told, I never wanted to go to college in the first place. My mom cared a lot about me going to school. She has a PhD and MBA. Like, she's gone to a lot of school. And, you know, and I felt like she's. She's been there for me more than anyone else my whole life. I wanted to go to school just to honestly appease her. That being said, I realized I could do that by leaving when I did at that particular moment, which I couldn't have done if I had just said no college at the end of high school. What I did do, though, was I was gonna go to usc. She went to usc. She was really excited that I was gonna be, you know, five hour drive from home, one hour flight, the whole thing, six days before you could no longer switch where you were gonna go to school. I ate the deposit to usc and I switched to Fordham because I wanted to go, frankly, to an easier school because. Because I didn't want to be so caught up in classes. And I wanted to be in New York, not Los Angeles, because I thought it'd be better for growing the business. And so all throughout my life, I was making decisions that weren't necessarily agreeable to my mom or to the people around me, but I still made those decisions based on the lessons they had taught me. And that was what I would always go back to. I said, mom, I got to be in control of my own Life at some point in time. You lived yours, you're living yours. I got to do my own at some point. So, um, no, I was. I've. I've never really been scared in my life.

Love that. Well, huge shout out to Justin. Yeah, that's coming on next. That's ironic. How ironic is that? So when you think about mentors moving into your future and building what you do, how do you approach mentorship? Right. Because I think when I think about the people in my life that have brought value to me, it's almost by accident in a sense. Right. Like it's situational. So for you, how do you think about mentorship in different genres of your life?

I only really have one genre of my life. You know, it really like this whole, this, this business thing, if you will, that every entrepreneur does. That is your life. So, for example, you're not really any older than me, but we've had conversations that in essence have given me mentorship. You've taught me something in those moments. Right. Kieran has taught me something in a conversation that we had 30 minutes ago. Right. So part of the lifestyle that I live comes with constant mentorship. And now, because Enclave has gotten to a certain level, the kinds of people who we do business with are at the level that I'm learning from all of them. I'm oftentimes the dumbest person in the room, and I love that because I'm 21, and that won't be the case when I'm 45 and I've spent 24 years in rooms with people that are smarter than me. And I would say that's. That's what mentorship is to me for sure.

Love that. I want to transition into just day to day operations and culture building. Right. I know you said that's something that's important to you. How have you instilled culture in your organization and how do you continue to maintain that over time?

So I'm gonna explain.

And what does culture even mean to you?

Sure. So I'm gonna explain to you the way that my uncle explained to me, because I think it's one of the most single most valuable pieces of information that's ever been shared with me. If people are paid fairly to do a job, then for the most part, as long as they're living comfortably and everything like that, the money becomes secondary. People's self esteem is the most important thing. And so as an enterprise, if you can attach someone's self esteem to their ability to work and be productive and have individual successes, then you've done what every CEO should dream of doing. And so we've put a few different things in place to foster that kind of situation. Like I'll give you an example. We have an unlimited days off policy at my office. So, and paid unlimited paid days off. So when I come into the office every morning and I look around and I see all the people there, I know that they chose to be there not because it's their job, but because they wanted to be a part of what we're doing that day. And it's really, it's really, it's a nice thing because you, you look at 20, 20, in 18 people, the person who missed the most amount of days was six. That was it. But we have an unlimited paydays off policy because if you're 23 years old and your 85 year old grandparents come to town and it's a Thursday or it's a Friday and your family's renting a boat on Lake Mead and you guys are all going to go out and you're going to miss that experience with your 85 year old grandparents because you got to work for this business. That's not what this business is here for. This business is here for to be one of the main things in your life that you devote your time, attention and care to. And if there's a day where that's not how you want to best spend your day, then don't. And that's totally okay with us. And that's just one example. We have a million different things.

I love that.

But, but, but, but to that point though, I mean, you got to look at it like most companies have to offer 10 paid days off and then most people abuse the sick days. We offer unlimited paid days off and people don't even use as many as they would get working anywhere else. Because we make it a fun place to come into. We make it fun. It's a desk job maybe, but you know, you've got so much freedom and flexibility. You want to work from home, find work from home. No one does because they want to be in the office, you know, and it's constantly, I mean, just to put in perspective, to give you some numbers here, I mean, we, we budget about $15,000 a year per employee to culture. And what that means is essentially we're talking about, you know, 2030 enterprise. How about a couple hundred thousand dollars a year is being spent on making the Culture Fund on something as simple as having TVs in the office all the way to every Memorial Day, I take the entire staff who's been with us more than 12 months on a trip, all expenses paid, to the Bahamas on the weekend of September 27th. That's our annual anniversary. Same thing applies. And I take all the people. This past year, we did. We did a lake trip. The year before that, we went to la. We've done Bahamas, we've done a number, we've done New York, we've done Miami. And we make it fun because it's, you know, if it's just my business and it's my vision and I'm just paying these people to kind of do it, well, then you just. Then. Then it's just an enterprise. That's one person with 28 assistants. Because there's too much to do. And that's not. And that's not what Enclave's about. And so that's what culture is. Is. It's building. Something like that, you know?

Very well said. I love that approach to it. And I think just the way you explained that, I think anyone listening can learn something from.

And I explained it the way that he explained it to me, like, almost verbatim.

I can tell. I can tell. Like, very strategic, and it's impactful. So I appreciate you for sharing that. When you think about your future as Blake Wynn, who you want to be, who you want to become, right. We're both 21 years old, young guys. In the grand scheme of things, what is your ultimate goal in life? Maybe you don't know that yet. Maybe it comes to you and it's different every day. But when you think about the future, what excites you and who do you want to become?

I would like to be someone that people are proud to know. And I think that that's a pretty common answer. And there's the whole legacy answer and all that. And look, ultimately, a legacy is a byproduct of what you do. What mark do you actually leave. And that'll determine your legacy. But there's people who I'm proud to know, who knows, they might have 48 followers on Instagram. They're just. They're good people. They have the. Their mind is in the right place. Their heart is full of the best interest for everyone, and that's what I would like to be known as. You know, like, there's so much of my day where I will spend it doing favors for people who are outside of the enclave and key brand favors that have no impact on our business. But I'll do them because I want to be that guy that if your back's against the wall. No, it's trouble or something like that. I don't mean that. But if your backs against the wall or you got a killer idea and you just don't know where to go or, you know, you need to. You need to be connected to someone that you know, that I know that you otherwise could never get to. I want to be that guy. Says, yeah, here's a group text. Not that guy. That's like, watch my relationship.

That's mine.

You know, and there's a lot of people like that.

Yeah.

And so to me, I want to be known as one of those people who you can just go to and when you're done talking to them, you're just gonna say, wow, that was a good. That was a good encounter that made my day better. That's really all I'd like.

Love that. Very cool. I have a couple more questions before we wrap, wrap up here, Blake. I want to talk about sports. When you're working, when you're working with athletes in, in the day to day operations, like, where do you tend to spend your time working with these athletes? Because I know, right? I'll see you on Instagram. You're on the fields at the Chargers games and you're, you're engaging with the players. Like, that is a type of energy and behavior that is very special to who you are, based on what I know about you. But how do you spend your days with the players, nurturing the relationships and overall making sure that they are happy as clients, but also friends and people that you respect?

You know, it's interesting, like, these players are the same as me. Besides, they're a lot more physically gifted. I mean, but, but hear me out here. I'm about to turn 22 years old. Our average client's probably 26. Okay, so there's a couple years apart, but basically, we're at the same point in life. We're into the same things. Sneakers is a very common denominator between athletes and myself. I like cards. I like art. I'm into real estate. I'm in all these different things, and they're the same things that they're into. You know, I was sharing with you before this. Like, I'm on a bowling league team on Wednesday nights with Henry Rugs from the Raiders. It's like we're into the same things. So we become very, very good friends. And the fact that we can do business together becomes icing on the top for them. And truth be told, that's how it should feel because I'm not the one that's brokering every last detail. I'm not the one sending them their content briefings when they got to do a deal. Right? That's my team. So if they have a real strong relationship with me, and let's just say they don't even care about the deal, they just don't want to let me down, then the deal that they do for the company that they're essentially sold to is, is going to be that much better. And so my job in building these relationships is to really strengthen the end product that enclave is here to serve to a particular company. Now on a personal level, there's nothing I could have dreamed of more than to do what I do right now. As a, as a young kid, the only reason I even knew about ebay was because I used to buy and sell football cards on there for a dollar two at a time. It was not a business. I lost a lot of money for a 9 or 10 year old, I probably lost, you know, my mom would give me 20 bucks a week and I would get to go to Target or Walmart at the time, buy some cards, I could rip them open and then I would take a couple of nice ones, I'd sell them on ebay just so I could get, you know, an extra $15 that week. So I was kind of just burning, burning cash 25% of the time. But now the people who I grew up idolizing are some of my best friends. And it's a, it's a unique feeling because, you know, I am only 21. So there is still that 11 year old inside of me that's not that far removed from today that says, do you believe this? Like, do you believe that this is actually like what you do on a daily basis? The Chargers are a client of yours, you know, these players who, whose autographs go for $1,000. And you know that when you were 10 years old, you would have spent that thousand dollars on autographs because I did do it. Ladan Tomlinson. I probably spent every birthday present, can I have Ladanian Tomlinson? That's all I, that's all I want. So I got, you know, sign helmets, signed photos, sign this, sign this. My parents over five years probably spent fifteen hundred dollars on Laudanian Tomlinson. Now I see him every other week. And it's the coolest thing.

Yep. That is so cool to know and just to understand it when you say like you still can't believe what you do, I completely resonate with that. Right. When it comes to the interviews and the people and just the experiences. And I think that's something that if you can live in that feeling for an extended period of time, you will be really truthfully fulfilled. So, last question before we wrap up here. Blake, I know we're both young, 21 years old, but if you were to go back in time and give yourself a piece of advice, like, what would that be and why?

Just keep doing it. It'll get there. You know, I mean, I'll tell you, there's a great. I think there's a really easy way to explain this, and I call it the dark side of ambition. Every entrepreneur is so ambitious that what they end up doing becomes this thing that tens to millions of people rally around, Right? And they're often asked about, why does this work and how do you build this and how do you do this? But there's a dark side of ambition that's almost never talked about, which is the. When you're sitting there and your significant other wants to break up with you because you haven't spent time talking to them because you've been so focused on your business, or when you're still in school and your grades are suffering because you're all in on your business, or when you miss out on parties or events or experiences and all these things, those are things that. I don't place the burden of doing that on my employees, which is why we have that policy. But I do place that burden on myself, and I would call that the dark side of ambition, because without those things, you can't stay grounded enough as an entrepreneur to even allow 20 or 30 people to be financially dependent on you and to be willing to rally around the ideas and things that you want to do. And so, for me, I would say I had a lot of those moments where it does seem easier to quit than to keep going, and I'm lucky that I didn't. But I would say take tenfold, because, you know, every day that goes by, you think about what you want to do in five years, but you don't know that it'll come. You just. You just really, really hope, and you're willing to work relentlessly to try to get there. And I would have told myself, like, no, it'll work out. Just stick with it, because there were times where it was dark, if you will.

Absolutely. Well, Blake, I just want to say thank you so much for. For coming on the Casey Adams show today. I really appreciate it. And for everyone listening, make sure we're watching. Make sure you go follow Blake. Check. Check out what he has built and stay up to date with what he has going on. Thanks so much for coming on today.

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