We Can't Ignore This Anymore And Neither Should You

Hey, welcome back to the Hustle and Flowchart podcast. My name is Matt Wolf and I am your host for today. Joe is not with me because I wanted to make a real quick episode and kind of point your attention over to an area that we've been getting more and more focused on, something that we're really excited about. We've kind of been holding off on talking about it, which will make more sense once I get into this episode. But before I do, I want to remind you that you can grab the notes for this episode if you go to hustle and flowchart.com notes. So the actual notes I am looking at as I'm creating this episode, I'm just going to give you for free over@hustleandflowchart.com notes. All right, so let's go ahead and dive in on this rabbit hole that I've been cryptic about so far. This is an intro, intro, intro, intro. Hustle and Float. Shark with your boy, my boy, Matt Wolf and Joe Fear. Hey. The rabbit hole that we've been going down lately is the rabbit hole of decentralization and blockchain. And I know a lot of people might be going, oh, no, not this again. There's so many people out there talking about it. There's so much noise out there. You're right. But we still need to talk about it. This is a rabbit hole that we are gonna be going down quite a bit on our podcast. We actually went down the rabbit hole back in 2011 when a friend of ours first told us about bitcoin and we actually didn't buy back then. We actually. We've told this story a few times on the show where in 2011, we were sitting in a diner and some kid that we just met for the first time was raving about how we've got to get into bitcoin and it's the next big opportun. We didn't take the leap. We started studying it and researching it and kind of went, ah, we don't really get it yet. And we didn't take the leap. We went down the rabbit hole again in 2013 when Joe and I had our last podcast, the Evergreen Wisdom podcast. And back in 2013, Joe and I literally had a monitor in our office that we mounted to the wall that all day long had the price of bitcoin showing on the chart. And we were just watching the price of bitcoin fluctuate up and down. And we were sitting there trying to time the perfect time to get in. And even in we didn't get in on bitcoin. We went down the rabbit hole once again in 2017. We finally jumped on board ourselves in 2017 and started to actually invest in Bitcoin, Ethereum and a bunch of the various altcoins. We actually started talking on our podcast in 2017 about cryptocurrencies. We actually had guys like Michael Taggart on, Jason Rotman on Michael Traynor, Phil Towne, all of these people. We brought on and had discussions about where blockchain was going, where cryptocurrencies were going, and it was some great convers that really got us fascinated and we finally invested back then in 2017. But after that, we kind of backed off on the conversations. If you look between the beginning of 2018 all the way through now, towards the end of 2021, we really haven't brought it back up again. We did an episode with Gary Henderson where he kind of very briefly touched on NFTs, but that wasn't the main topic of the conversation. And then just even more recently, we had Joel Kahmon where we talked a lot about NFTs and cryptocurrency and where it's all going. And that conversation with Joel really sort of pushed us over the edge to dive deeper and really, really, really study what's going on. Ever since we recorded that episode some six weeks ago, this has taken mine and Joe's total attention. This is the thing that when we're not doing our work, when we're not creating the content or writing emails or doing copywriting or building landing pages or doing that kind of stuff, all of the time outside of that stuff is being spent studying this stuff, investing in this stuff, learning more about it, watching the videos, reading books about it, listening to podcasts about it. My daily drive now consists of podcasts around decentralization and Web3. So this is the thing that we're most passionate about. This is where we feel the most opportunity lies. So this is what we're really, really getting excited about right now. The reason we backed off on these conversations, despite continuing to be bullish. I mean, ever since 2017, we've been invested in Web3 technology, Blockch, all sorts of altcoins and things like that. But we stopped talking about it because there was so many voices on social media. There was so many people pumping up various altcoins, talking about ICOs, a lot of what we like to call crypto bros, right? Like the people that are on YouTube, they're like, Bro, did you get into crypto? I got into this Altcoin and it mooned. And then I bought my Lambo and, you know, there was so much of that going on that it was really creating this kind of negative connotation around cryptocurrencies and NFTs and blockchain technology of these crypto bros were ruining it and making it feel less legitimate. And that was one of the reasons we kind of backed off. We didn't want to be another one of those voices. And also, you know, there was probably still a little bit of uncertainty with it for us. We didn't want to talk about it in a way that this was inevitable yet we wanted to make people aware that it was happening, make people aware that this stuff was exciting and what we're paying attention to. But we didn't want to go too deep down that because we didn't want people to sort of follow us in when we didn't totally know what we were doing. We kind of backed off for those reasons. We also felt that blockchain and cryptocurrencies, it's a high barrier to entry, especially if you're not a real tech savvy person. It still is to this day. That's one of the hurdles that I think still needs to be overcome. Coinbase has come a long way and made it really, really easy to invest in cryptocurrencies, but there's still a long way to go before this feels really mainstream for people. You know, I know a lot of people are probably listening to this going, all right, well, this might be the last episode I listened to of Hustle and Flowchart because I'm not that interested in cryptocurrencies or decentralization or defi or any of that kind of stuff. To that, I'm going to read a super, super brief Twitter conversation that Naval responded on. So Chris Dixon, somebody who's a brilliant, brilliant mind inside of the web3 space, made a conversation on Twitter about why web3 matters. Somebody responded saying, Ah, I muted web3 but forgot to mute web3 with a space between web and 3. And then naval geniusly came on and commented, cover your ears and maybe the future will go away. And that post was so powerful, to me, that post was basically the sign from the universe. You know, actually the sign from Naval that maybe we should talk about this. Maybe the reasons that we've decided not to talk about are kind of invalid. We know that this is the direction things are going. We can confidently predict that this is the direction things are going. We're going to be living in a web3world pretty soon where it's the mainstream thing that everybody just does and doesn't think twice about. We know the world is going there. And anybody who's sitting around going, I'm not gonna pay attention to blockchain. I'm not gonna pay attention to Web3 or decentralization. I'm not gonna pay attention to that stuff. It's all just noise to me. Cool. You're ignoring the future. You're ignoring where things are going. This is inevitable. You need to be paying attention to it. That's how we feel. And you can go ahead and check out at this point if this is something that you are gon to plug your ears to. Now, we're not going to try to claim to be experts. We're not even going to tell you where to put your money or what we think you should be doing. We're not at Financial Advisors and we're still learning a ton ourselves. But what we do plan to do is bring on more guest experts around these topics. We do plan to learn more about the topics and share what we're learning as we go. We do want to share and document our own journey and we do plan to leverage blockchain technology for many of our future projects. Now, we are still planning to interview guests around things like marketing and branding and entrepreneurship and mindset and happiness and everything in between, because those are still the things that interest us. We're still passionate about those things. But I wanted to give you a heads up that we're also going to be adding more of this stuff into the mix. We are going to be sharing more around the side of what we're doing in this space as well. So web3 is where things are going. Whether people like it or not. This is where things are going. And to quote naval again, this is how Nabal describes Web3. Web2 was users are the data, corporations own the platform and the code is closed. Web3 is users own their data, contributors own the platform and the code is open. So that's kind of the difference. When you think of Web2, you think of Facebook and Twitter and Amazon and Apple and Google and all of these places where the users are the data. We're the ones that are providing the data to those big companies. Those big companies own the platform. Platform. Those big companies own the code. And those companies are very centralized and make all of the decisions around where the business goes. Web3 is more about you keeping control of your data. It's more about contributors owning the platform, products, softwares, courses, stuff that you do online is no longer going to be centralized by one big corporation. It's going to be community based. That's where things are going. You're going to be joining a community where the product is created by the sum of all the community. The people that are creating this product together. That is where things are going. With Web3, whole new asset classes are being created that will make creating wealth easier than ever. Communities are forming where success is collaborative effort and those involved only become successful when everyone becomes successful. Web3 is going to be where almost all future financial opportunities are going to lie for people. When you think about it, most manual labor is going to get automated out of existence over time. All of the stuff that people don't want to be doing, the coal mining, the picking fruits and berries, a lot of the farming stuff that people are doing, a lot of this stuff is going to be fixed by automation over time. Even a lot of the online jobs, even things like coding and copywriting and media buying and things that require more logic and formulations, even those over time, are going to be eliminated by artificial intelligence. It is inevitable. A lot of the way people make their income now is going to go away. But that's not something to be scared of because it's going to get easier to make income. It's going to get easier with the blockchain technology and decentralization and decentralized finance and crypto gaming and all of these exciting things that are in the works. Making money is going to get easier. Manual labor and stuff that computers can kind of figure out for you through AI, those jobs are going to disappear over time. Online education is even going to change quite a bit. Instead of purchasing membership access on a monthly basis, you'll be purchasing NFTs that act as an access card to that membership. When you no longer need the membership, instead of canceling or refunding or whatever, you're going to be able to sell your access card for that membership to someone else, even possibly at a profit. Taking so much of the risk out of actually investing in online education this style of membership, it's going to turn members into the marketing team as well for the membership. Because if they're out there spreading the word about the membership, the value of the membership goes up. And when they're ready to resell the access to their membership to someone else, members can actually potentially earn gains from having actually been enrolled in the course, because the value of that membership access will go up over time. If the community that's a part of that membership helps try to grow and spread the word of the membership, the members, the community become the marketing strategy. It's a closed loop system and it's beautiful, it's exciting, it's where things are going. And you might be listening to this thinking that sounds cool, but that still sounds pretty far off. You're wrong. It's already happening in the crypto space, in the blockchain space, in the NFT space. That is how memberships are currently being sold. That is the current way that they're doing it. If you're in the NFT space, there's memberships now where people are building communities, talking about which NFT NFTs to invest in, which altcoins to invest in, which crypto gaming software is going to be the next big game, which dao, decentralized autonomous organization, you know, what's the next big one to be paying attention to? The communities that are teaching that kind of stuff are already using NFTs as access to get those things. So it's already existing, they're already doing it. It's just not mainstream yet. Especially not among like the Internet marketer community who's still doing launches on JVZoo and ClickBank. And then once they've, they've sold it to as many people as they can, they move on and launch a new product. It's not happening in that world yet, but it is happening already in the crypto space. And speaking of NFTs, Joe and I are already seeing success buying and selling NFTs. And you know what, it's actually some of the most fun that we've ever had doing business online. Making money online, buying and selling NFTs is so much fun. Yes, it's kind of expensive to get into right now. Yes, Ethereum is not the best methods at the moment for trading NFTs because the transaction costs are very, very high. Oftentimes you're paying higher gas fees. That's what they call the transaction costs. Oftentimes you're paying higher gas fees than what it cost you to purchase the NFT in the first place. And that's not going to be sustainable. And that's going to make it really hard for this technology to go mainstream. But there are other blockchains that you can trade NFTs on. And Ethereum is actually modifying and becoming Ethereum 2.0 pretty soon, which is going to eliminate a lot of the gas fees. So a lot of that stuff is going to get worked out. And as it gets worked out, more and more people are going to flood in. It's going to become more mainstream and the whole thing is going to rise and everybody that's on board early is going to reap the benefits of this. So this is why we're talking about this stuff. So what does this all mean? I'm going to go ahead and wrap this up now. We're planning on taking you down this rabbit hole with us. But for now, if you want to kind of go down the rabbit hole on your own a little bit, look into things like NFTs, non fungible tokens, look into decentralized finance, also known as DeFi, look into crypto gaming, look into DAOs, decentralized autonomous organizations. Those are some of the most fun and exciting rabbit holes to start with and to really open your eyes to where things could be going. Those are the places to be kind of looking into. Those are the places to Google and type into YouTube and watch other people's explanations, go to podcasts that are about this stuff and find people sharing these conversations. This stuff is super, super exciting. And I can almost guarantee that if you haven't started down the rabbit hole yet, once you do start down the rabbit hole, you'll be extremely glad that you did. Check that stuff out. What I've talked about on this episode is just the very, very tip of the iceberg and we're super excited to take you on this journey with us. That's all I got for you Today. We're going to be revealing more on where this is going in our own business and what we're doing and interviewing people on these topics in future episodes. So make sure you stick around with the Hustle and Flowchart podcast if you want to hear more of that stuff, because we are going to start to angle a little bit more on some of our episodes. Again, I do want to reiterate, we are still bringing in a lot of marketers, brand builders, media buyers, tactical people that can share all the marketing tactics to your heart's desire. We are still bringing those people on because you know what? We still secretly love that stuff too. We still want to learn the latest, greatest tactics so that stuff is still happening. The mindset, the happiness. That's what we're doing all of this for. So that stuff's still gonna happen. But you're going to start to see a little bit more of the web 3 Decentralization conversation creep into more and more episodes. Wanted to give you a heads up that that is where we're going. That is where our brand is going. That is what we're excited about. Everything we've talked about in past episodes. With building our online presence on YouTube, continuing to grow our podcast, getting brands to sponsor us, we're still doing all of that. We're just having a lot more conversations around this stuff these days. So hopefully you're on board with that and we're excited to share where we're going. Last thing before I wrap this up. Once again, this episode is graciously sponsored by Easy Webinar, where you can do live webinars, automated webinars, live streaming, hybrid webinars, build your landing pages, do all the tracking. It does everything you need to do with webinars. So if you're going to do any webinars, why not use Easy Webinar? Because they're hooking you up for being a hustling flowchart listener. If you go to easywebinar.com hustle, they're gonna hook you up with a great discount. Go get your webinar on EasyWebinar.com hustle and once again, I'm putting the notes for this episode up@hustlinflowchart.com notes. So go grab those there. And until the next episode, thanks for tuning in. If you enjoyed this, let us know over on the Facebook group or in the reviews on itunes or somewhere. Just let us know. We read all of that stuff. We're looking everywhere to see where people are talking about us. But we do love you and we do love to hear when people enjoy episodes. So please keep letting us know and we'll see you guys in the next one.