 This is Start at the Storefront, the podcast where we inspire entrepreneurship through truth. And welcome back as we begin season four of the show. Today's guest is Kevin Mendoza, founder of Crypto Collective. And today we are, in fact, talking about all things crypto. By now, you've likely heard everyone from your friends, that drunk guy in the bar talk about cryptocurrency and NFTs. Maybe you know a little. Maybe you're somewhat of an expert. Maybe you're even a little bit skeptical. The point is that this digital infrastructure is having a very real impact on the world around us and we would all do well to learn more. Luckily enough for you, this is a great episode for expanding upon whatever foundational knowledge you already have. We cover everything from centralized to decentralized finance and rift ideas of how to join in and capitalize on a booming NFT marketplace. Because no matter if you're looking to join the Board Abe Yacht Club or have no idea what that is. This is the place to be. Now on to the episode. Welcome to the podcast on today's show. We're talking to Kevin Mendoza of Crypto Collective. Kevin, thanks so much for joining us. Just tell everyone a little bit about what you do. So many different things, but specifically in the crypto world. Thank you. It's great to be here. Specifically in the crypto world, I've been in crypto and when I say that, like I played around with crypto in 2013 with a couple of mates and also learned programming and graphic design. And that's kind of my background in IT computers. And currently I have a crypto based resort that I designed and built in 2017, 2018. We opened just before closed before COVID and then had to close down. But I'm still living in the place and we function with crypto here. I've been earning an income through crypto solely for the last three years. And then on top of that, I consult on different projects based in crypto and NFTs and blockchain, anything. I do some programming. I do graphic design, free animation and CAD art, that kind of stuff. And then I'm a product manager for a B5 product called Syncdow, which is essentially like digital banking, but for the general masses. And then I'm also a blockchain analyst for a private fund where we have funds in stable coins in volatile crypto, some NFTs and things like that. And then I'm a new money mentor. Part of crypto collective as well is basically like teaching people about crypto and then hopefully finding mentors and entrepreneurs to teach others as well about the wonders of crypto and blockchain. Your hands are full. I also love your shirt, which is hilarious. So people for those those listening, he has a shirt that says, sure, let me drop everything and work on your problem, which is exactly what he's doing for us today. So why I wanted to show you is for a number of different reasons. So one, obviously we're just coming out of the holidays. Happy 2022. And the whole Christmas, at least the holidays on my side of the family were all around crypto. Everyone's asking crypto and there's all of these reactions. So there's the whole like, is it a scam? What are you buying? What it what really is it? But there's a curiosity, which is the thing I picked up on. And so for two weeks prior to me going on, I was just going down the YouTube brow of just trying to figure this game out. And it's one, it's complicated. I think there's a tremendous amount of noise. But at the same time, there's a tremendous amount of opportunity. And even Gary V is even going off in this space right now, which which I think is good and bad. I think at some point people go, oh, he's a legitimate human going into crypto NFTs at the same time. He's also very much well invested and can win. Like he has a company called VaynerNFT now, who just launched some NFTs with Nike or not Nike Pepsi. And so he's very much in the game. But the reason I want to talk with you is we're going to start super, super low level. And so for the people that have never or are just embarking on their crypto journey, I know you guys run like a whole bunch of courses and stuff. How do you explain it to people like the simplest way? And do you bring up banking first? Do you go, OK, cool. So you have a bank, Mark Cuban has this funny example where he says, if he like he who has a lot of liquid assets, one wants to go to the bank and get all his money, he can't. There's a process. There's a bunch of paperwork. He's going to have to sign all these documents. And then maybe within eight, eight days or let's say five to eight business days, then he's finally allowed to get his money, which is really fascinating. It's a fascinating concept to think about. How do you firstly introduce crypto to the novice? For me, I basically just explain what blockchain is, right? How that concept works. But without going into too much detail at the end of the day, it's just an accounting ledger or for lack of a better description. For those familiar with, you know, a receipt book or an Excel file that just says, you know, Joe gave Sally 50 bucks. That's all it is really, right? And then it's encrypted. So that section is encrypted. So the simple explanation is that it's a transactional record. And that's the basics of blockchain or what Bitcoin came out to be as. And then from there, you've got, you know, the other layers of Ethereum, which created smart contracts, which allows not just a transfer of currency, but a transfer of value and conditions. So what that means is instead of your plain ledger saying, Joe gave Sally 50 dollars, you can say Joe gave Sally a house and a car, or Joe gave Sally one fifth of an iPhone, you know, ownership or whatever conditions you want to put into into that transaction. You can record it in the internet and it's verifiable and secure across the network. So then you don't need some people say intermediaries or middlemen, right? You don't need some banker to sign this document and, you know, go to the teller and doing all these things. It's just like it's computer code that just says A equals B equals C equals D and so on and so forth. And that essentially is how the chain works, right? You've got one piece of data that says something to another piece of data and so on and so forth. I don't know if that's a very simple explanation, but that's essentially what it is. I think the way I think about it is twofold. So I think in today's world, we all view what we're doing as efficient because, you know, we saw the internet age, we saw all of this new technology. If you're my age, you remember picking up a landline and calling any girl's house that you might have been trying to date and ask for her when her parents pick up the phone. And then all of a sudden, while we were in high school, it was like cell phones emerged and we were like, this text messaging is the new wave and then the internet blew up and now everyone's seemingly connected. But at the same time, I think about it like as a real estate developer today, when I think about raising capital, there's about maybe like 78 pages of paper that I have to send to an individual to confirm their investment in real estate. And then from there, I have to send that document to my accounting team. I have to give my accounting team access to my Chase Bank account under the LLC so that they can match the investment shown on the paperwork to the investment, the wire coming in. And then I have to send a K1, right? And so all the accountants create a K1 every year. And then that K1 tells the investors, yes, your investment. Here's how much. Here's the percentage ownership. And then I have to make distributions, which literally means wires or writing checks. And while in today's society, that's accepted as normal, I think crypto is bringing an awareness to this game where that should be viewed as a fax machine. And also, not only you mentioned intermediaries, there is a tremendous number of parties, right? So I've Chase Bank, I have my accounting team, I have my legal, and then all these people run back and forth for God knows how long while I'm paying for it. So it's also slow and expensive and a little bit annoying. So when I first started thinking about crypto, I said, this is literally technology, like tech. I thought about like this is this is how people should view tech compared to anything. This is how people should view the cell phone versus the fax machine, right? To me, it was like this just this just helps us create an efficiency that I think we all need. And what's funny about this, and I think this happens a lot with technology, is the names are always ugly, like Neuralink is boring and edgy and like techie, right? The cyber truck, people are like, oh, the cyber truck. And then crypto is it's got the same thing where it's like it's confusing. What is crypto is a cryptic? And then cryptic has this it's already like I have to have a PhD to understand it. But at least when I started thinking about real estate, that's how I started thinking about it. And that's what got me excited personally. So I just wanted to share like my story with like the thing I saw. The aha moment for me was right now I'm hiring all these people, all these different parties to do really simple stuff, in my opinion. And they should be able to be coded and then it's simple. So I was like, how do I tokenize real estate? Before we get there, what is your story? Like what was the moment that you and I know you were in early? I mean, you were in maybe seven years ago, but what was the thing for you that made you curious about crypto? And what did you see as like the value? Well, initially, because I got in only on on Bitcoin. So in the early days, right? It was just that concept of, it's digital money, it's digital banking and being able to verify that the transaction is what it is. And it's there's no one dipping their fingers in or anything like that or farging numbers. But when Ethereum came into the picture and, you know, the whole concept of smart contracts, which is what you've been talking about. That's when I had my aha moment of like, ah, instead of the paper trail of basically just trying to get this document to that person and get their signature and then sending it over here and blah, blah, blah, we already do that online. We can do that online. Why not just automate it? Right. And then instead of just transactional value or approvals on different things, there are so many different things that we're only seeing now, you know, with digital media rights and royalties and things like that being shared that, you know, years ago, I was like, how do I figure that out? And that's how I ended up coming up with the resort idea and like the tokenization of this, like before, before tokenized real estate was a term or before NFTs were a term. I was already experimenting with those things. And and like we were talking about earlier, I can't remember if it was when we started recording or not, but I just went, I'm just going to give this a go because it feels feels like this is where I want to go. And and who knows if it's good, bad, right, wrong, right? Just just give it a go. And then I ended up here and then probably five years too early, as you said, seven years too early, but it works. Right. And yeah, it just makes things so much more efficient. I guess it's also going back to the whole concept of block chain. It literally just is a block of information that you then send over and that you create a chain of information or with what you're talking about with mobile phones and landlines, the whole craze with NFTs, right? These these people are seeing them as just JPEGs that you buy of monkeys and penguins or whatever. But the technology underlying all that is similar to mobile phones where you have a unique number that that is in your pocket with NFTs. These are blockchain addresses that you can basically have, like having five different mobile phones in your pocket. And each one has a different identity and it holds a different value, stores, different photos. Like you're basically having with these addresses, you have a, I guess, a repository for whatever your digital content is or your digital identity, your digital value. And you can have those traveling with you technically, right? In different accounts and different wallets and have multiple identities and multiple stores of value, multiple ways to transact, cross-border, like there's so many possibilities with it. And same with the real estate thing, you basically have real estate in your pocket now with the benefits. You know, you can buy properties online, things like that. And yeah, no one necessarily needs to know what you own and what assets you hold, because it's in some encrypted gibberish address that no one really understands. While we're talking about the apes and stuff, so there's the board API club, which is probably and then the crypto punks. I would say these are the two things that people are seeing all over the Twitterverse or even the Instagram world, whether they want to or not. It seems to be everywhere. There's celebrities entering the game now. When people ask me and also to get your review on it, when people ask me, you know, what's an NFT? Are you are you just buying a JPEG, blah, blah, blah. And what I try to tell people is like, it's a lot like startup investing, right? So if there's 10 people in a room and we all decide we're going to create, let's just make it simple. We're going to start a coffee shop. And of the 10 of us, four of us have funding. And so I say, I have 10 million and Kevin, you stand up and you go, I have 50 million and I have this roaster and I'm already engaged with these farms. People could quickly deduce that of the 10, Diego and Kevin might be the two people to bet on in terms of winning in the space. Right. And I think when people view NFTs, it's the same. It's it's if you're looking at just the photo, you have it wrong. If you're looking at just the picture, you've missed the entire dev team behind you, you've missed what they're trying to create in 2022, 2023, how they're playing into the metaverse and where it is that they're going. And the problem and opportunity, right? Two sides to the same coin is you have to do the research and try to figure this out. You have to read in between the lines and see what you can decipher as to where these teams are going. What I know about the board APA club is one, they're creating community in an immense amount of community. I know you have a few of them. And from what I understand, they're creating a game. So there's going to be some sort of game that comes out in 2022. And they're also releasing their own token, which comes out in 2022. And I think the most important part of all of this is these people, these communities, so board APA club and others are all rewarding their early members. And so the people that said, yeah, I'm willing to make this crazy bet with you, they're getting free stuff or they're getting first access to the new releases. And I think when I think about like clothing brands or let's call it, let's go back to how the world used to exist, coffee shops. It's like, you should be rewarding the people that are coming to visit you first. But for some reason they haven't, they've never said corporate America has never thanked the first 1,000 customers in a meaningful way. What I love is that board APA is doing that in two ways. One, in literally rewarding them with free stuff. And then two, they're promising to deliver, right? They're continuously delivering because they have a dev team and a roadmap that aligns around building community. And these two things are hard to find if you're just meandering the internet, being like, oh, I'm just going to buy this NFT, but not understanding what's coming for that specific company or NFT. When you first got into it, what did you see in the space? Yeah, there's the first two points that you mentioned, right? Giving, you know, the access and the value and the longevity and all that sort of thing. But the third component is also that they're enabling people to give back or to at least open opportunities up to others, you know, with muted apes and like other spin-offs and all that sort of thing. And personally, that's what draws me towards certain crypto projects. It's like whoever is the arrowhead of the team or whatever the principles are of the DAO, you know, decentralized autonomous organizations, what are their guiding principles and what are they doing to give back to the community? You know, I just said, what are they giving back to the first users? That's what really draws my attention because I see all these energy projects as just an upgrade of Kickstarter or you might have had WeFundr or Indiegogo, you know, the crowdfunding upgrade. That's all it really is, right? You're coming up with a product and a promise and then delivering on that, you know, and if you can deliver on that, you can continue to create value for people. You mentioned Gary Vee with the whole Vee Friends thing. I got some of those as well. And, you know, it's like, yeah, if you can launch an idea and then deliver on that, I think that is super valuable, right? Whether you deliver on it on a personal level, like a lot of these artists who are writing songs or creating art, or you do it as a team or as a, you know, a DAO where like it sort of just runs on its own with guiding principles. That's where I see the future of, I guess, as a collective, you know, humanity, I think we've gone through this period of like trying to do things on our own and it clearly like works for some, but not for all. And the more we can sort of band together and, you know, solve certain problems and work efficiently and with good vibes and less friction, right, then so much the better for everyone. When you think about your, the apes you have, so when I, I'll just give you my view and then I'd love to hear yours. When I think about them today, right? So I think the bottom, the entry level, it might be like 250, 250,000 US to 300,000, somewhere in that range. And so when I think about it, I think about it in two different ways. I'm like, one, obviously we have this podcast, so here it is. We're talking to you on the podcast. And so to me, it becomes an opportunity to, one, we can buy this, we join a community instantly. A community of what I would call, you know, I know some people in the community and they're all people I would like to talk to, frankly. And so there's, there's that, there's the mind share seems to be the same. And as a tech person, startup investor, I love the roadmap. I'm just a fan. Like I'm a fan first and then the rest of it I like. And then from a business perspective, people are going to wonder, like, how do I monetize and potentially monetize the ape? And so is it a function? Like when I think about that, do you think about it like it's a function of maybe just putting selling merch or just making it part of your identity or like, I think like 11 just bought one, right? So 11, the nightclub in Miami just bought one and they're trying to just, you know, figure it out. How do you view the opportunities, if any, in that space? I see it as, as a brand, as a, you know, you got brand association to board at your club, but the character itself is a brand in itself. It's a character that, you know, you buy a, you buy a club and you can do what you want with it. You, you own the rights to it. So you could turn it into a 3D cartoon character. You could, you could create a whole movie out of, turn it into a superhero. You could, you know, use it as a, as a brand for whatever, you know, or whatever you want to do, entrepreneurially and create clothing for it or make it a totally different identity. Give it a voice, you know, that becomes your persona, your pseudonym or, you know, your ghost ride or whatever it is online. And similar to what I said before about having mobile phones, you know, different mobile phones, this is a whole different identity. You could craft a whole ecosystem and a story and everything around your particular ape, you know, and, and craft something out of that that could be, yeah, super, super valuable. I know several of my friends are sort of looking down those paths of like, what can they actually do with it? Because being given this, this, you know, it's essentially it's a gift. Well, you bought it, but you've been given this opportunity to go, OK, you now have another way to express your creativity, your ideas. Another way to monetize that as well and to have your, you know, your digital avatar living its own life. It's almost like Sims or Second Life or whatever, but you're using real money and real interaction with, with people. I'm in a couple of different projects where, you know, I've never met any of the people like in real life, especially being stuck here in the, you know, for the last couple of years, but the community bonds and the access to certain things and, you know, the conversations and whatever that form out of that are inherently more valuable than the initial purchase price. There's a few things that bug me, right? So they're like, I used to have a bow tie company. And so a bunch of the apes actually have a tuxedo tee. And I'm like, oh, I'm like so tempted. I'm just like, I should just buy one of these things and then figure it out later. But then it's like, which one do you buy? And I think that's the other part of it, where it's like, you want one that represents you in some way. And so when I see that tuxedo tee, I go, oh, this is so this is part of the story. And then there's there's one with the fur that's like noise, like TV noise. And so I'm like, this we're obviously a meat, we're doing media. Here we are with the podcast. And so to me, it feels like such a no brainer. But at the same time, there's, I think there's just like human reluctance of like, am I really going to throw $280,000 at something? But, but as an entrepreneur, my brain goes the other way, right? It goes like, oh, I can monetize anything. I mean, in real estate, we buy $2 million assets, $5 million assets, and we improve them. What's value at? And it's up to us to create the value. And sorry, sorry, I'm not getting excited because my my I really like ideating on the fly. And let's do something you just said, yeah, put a pause. But you can monetize that. You said you have experience with the bow tie company, right? You could you could either you design it or get someone else to design 10,000 different bow ties or whatever, vests or hats or merchandise to stick on as a layer. It's just a Photoshop layer, right? And you can you can sell that to then add to your body. Right. You make it exclusively for for anyone who owns a body. They can buy your bow ties or whatever. And you might go, OK, aside from the Photoshop layer that you have, you can also get a real world bow tie, like you want to go down that path of manufacturing something you could build, you know, other perks for being part of the board at your club bow tie society or whatever. Right. So that from that simple idea of something that you've already got experience in, in the real world, digitize it. And then that item can also be like, you know, as the metaverse grows, OK, they might be able to wear that on the avatar in the central or whatever the video game comes out or the movie, this cartoon series. So, yeah, that you don't necessarily need to have the two hundred and fifty thousand dollars or whatever to own an ape to still monetize, being able to, you know, to to facilitate things for those apes and then eventually get more of your own and do that sort of thing. So I don't need the two fifty, you said. Yeah, you don't need the two fifty. Just just start designing some digital bow ties and then offer them to the, you know, the apes themselves, maybe price it up. If you're going to do 10,000, well, actually, this is the 10,000 original apes plus the mutant apes, right? Now, 30,000 or 20, whatever it is, make 40,000 different variants of bow ties or something as a JPEG. But just make sure that when you sell them all that the price equals the price of the flow rate or something like that. So then, you know, you save up the money, get your own ape. And then you also create a name for yourself as you could be like the the board at your dealer or something. You know, and then you just keep releasing these layers of clothing that they put, you know, on top of their avatars, changing hats, changing glasses, all these sorts of things that, you know, they will cost that much to to create like digitally, right? You could go on Fiverr and find some artists to create those things on your behalf. Oh, we have a team that could do that. This is good stuff. Exactly. And then if you go down the route of, you know, getting board eight, you know, like actual real merchandise, then obviously, yeah, you get off to China, Thailand, whatever, get it manufactured and then send it to people as a, you know, physical item. So there's a area of the market that's being classified as digital goods, you know, physical to digital goods and vice versa. So you could enter that. I mean, that that's a whole nother, you know, rabbit hole. So any brand could do that. I mean, any clothing company could start to, yeah, create like a wardrobe. That's fascinating. And then there's also like this, say, NFT platform called async.art. So A, S, Y, N, C dot art. And if you upload your, you know, your Photoshop file, whatever you upload it with layers and they have this concept that whoever buys the initial piece of artwork owns the master file. But then those layers can get sold to other people. And if you're displaying your art at home, but then there's, you know, four or five other people that have the different layers and say someone decides, you know, it's a Monday and they feel blue. So they're going to put up the blue version of their piece of art. It then influences the master file. So as an art collector, as an art folder, you will see something different based on other people's input, right? So you have this changing thing and you can program that as well, right? So you could have, you know, if you do have an ape or piece of art or whatever, you put it out there with different hats, different sunglasses, different bow ties or whatever. And, you know, you put it out to the community. They can they can change their preferences and dress up your ape so that every day you've got a different version of it. And then because it's also your your item, your your IP, essentially, you can then mint those and sell those and, you know, do that sort of thing that you would normally do in the real world. Anyway, it's like it's like styling for apes totally. I really like this idea. This is a good riff not to, you know, since you're in real estate, then you could go, OK, I'm going to what if what if you build digital houses for these board a yacht club characters, you know, in the central land or sandbox or any of these other metaverses popping up? That's why there's all this, you know, land grabbing happening at the moment in the metaverse, right? Anything you can digitize, you can build, you know, online. And then when people play, they'll have their super ape mansion or whatever it is. And then you just sell it the same way that you do with normal real estate. That's like several ideas out of that little rabbit hole there. I'm just thinking like I could start like a little tailor shop. But also, like, I know the CEO or the founder of market market clothing. I don't know if you know who they are, but super. I mean, LeBron James, where is their stuff? I mean, like really, really, he was on the podcast, very creative genius. Finger on the pulse, finger on the culture type guy. And I'll have to chat with him about this concept, because if anyone's in position to do it, be for sure. I mean, he's already got the brand, you know, he's already in terms of clothing. But I like the concept of like a metaverse tailor. That's fascinating. You can put up a shop and a vendor like anything you can do in the real world. It's a whole ready play a one or free guy kind of thing. Right. So for people listening, if they wanted to create a meta, if they want, they go to that. OK, let's go to the sandbox or decentralized land. They buy a piece of real estate. What do they need to hire a piece of digital real estate? Who do they in their head? Right. They probably think I had a higher. They don't even know that's I think that's the first step. Like, who do they have to hire that understands the coding mechanisms in order to get this off the ground? Well, it depends on which metaverse land you sort of plug into. Right. I mean, the metaverse, in my opinion, is just one whole piece of digital. It's another upgrade to the internet. Right. And it depends on what platform you go on to. Like things like decentralized in the sandbox, people are flocking to them because, you know, first to market and it's really easy to get into. Like you don't need to know coding. But in saying that the art on those platforms is still, you know, it looks like Minecraft and Lego blocks and that sort of thing. You're not going to get like digital high. But there are other platforms where, you know, you can get like, I've seen, you know, auctioned with like Hermes bags and Balenciaga. This and that. That's what Nike is doing now with, you know, doing doing Nike and out of that artifact creating. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. So it depends on the platform that you go to, but you don't necessarily need to know coding. I would say the first thing to go is to an artist, right? Unless you can draw yourself or learn how to draw in 2D or 3D applications. Then, yeah, you need the creators. You need the artists to help out and flesh out ideas. And you can give them parameters of, you know, I want this thing to be a red polka dot thing and this one to have black and white stripes and this thing to have fluoro green and yellow or whatever. Dish out your ideas and then start creating, you know, putting those things out. And then you can go to different platforms where they can be minted. So you're creating it from, you know, a digital file to now becoming a token. So that's just the very sort of basic level. If you wanted to get technical and go, OK, I want to program in that every time someone buys this shirt, I receive a 10 percent royalty from that purchase. Then you would need, you know, a developer to help you with that smart contract and a developer who knows like solidity programming or one of these other sort of programming languages that's used in smart contracts for anyone that's looking to like hire a team or something like that. The DIY version is you can go to a website like mynf.team. So my mynf.team. It's it's like a marketplace where you can say, hey, I have this idea. Are there any developers and artists here who can, you know, help me out with this? And vice versa, you might have some skills that you can throw in into the pool. I mean, that's that's more like a kind of it's like a lack of a draw. Things like it's like going to Fiverr as well. Right. Or we use there in the U.S. like Freelancer or Upwork or any of the five years up. Yeah. While we're on this and then we'll go back to crypto. So I'm going to show you a picture. This is this is what you're seeing right now, actually our podcast studio. And so there you see the mic set up and that mural was done by James Peter Henry, who's he's a local artist, but he's done a bunch of work all over LA, like on buildings and stuff. And he just released an NFT with Snoop Dogg, actually, where he did had a mural, just like you're seeing right now. But they took pictures of it stills and then put it in motion. And so in this case, you could you could see there's a carousel there. And so essentially, like that carousel could be moving and they created. He had a whole team come in. I forget the name of the whole the whole team, but they came in and created an NFT from the mural, which was pretty incredible. And so, you know, we obviously commissioned him to do this piece of art. Now he's a good friend of ours and amazing guy. And I'm just like, always like, how do I NFT this? Or how do I how do I have fun with this mural? That's one of one. And it's in our studio space. And for a lot of it's funny because he has a lot of fans. He's, you know, he's he's becoming well known in the art world all over the country. He was our art Basel, but he's based here in LA. And I just think like nobody actually has seen this art. And so we were thinking about holding an event once this Omicron virus goes down to the variant goes down a little bit at our studio for all his fans because his fans are clearing to see this art. But it's in my office, my studio, you know. And so but then so there's the man there. And I'm just like, how would how could I possibly do something interesting in the digital world with this piece of art? And it's so many things you could do with that art. It looks awesome just off the top of my head. Now you could do the thing that's most prominent is, you know, AR experiences. So if Omicron wasn't around, you know, augmented reality, right? Like with the Google glasses or even on your phone. Have you seen any of that sort of tech? Sure. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So so just just off the bat here, just looking at that. You've got the carousel, you've got the hand. Like there's different stories painted on the wall, right? What you could do is create an AR experience where they, you know, look at it through the glasses or through their phone and certain sections would then trigger an animation or a short film or something, you know, depict a story of that particular wall or that that piece on the wall. And you can do that for the whole thing. And then maybe those short stories all interact somehow into, you know, a movie or some sort of experience. So that's that's the first idea. The second idea is that you could if this was actually like a piece of art that could be sold. I don't know if it's painted on the wall or a canvas, but you can paint it on the wall. OK, it's painted on the wall. You could technically make it that it's a fractional ownership of that piece. So that whole wall, you give it a value based on the artist and you slice it up in small pieces, right? And whoever holds a piece of the entity, you can say that it's, you know, divided into 10,000 pieces and, you know, you own a certain part of it. There are certain things as well that depending on what you're doing in the studio, you could provide access to the studio. So yeah, that's what we want to do. Yeah, exactly. Hold hold the NFT and then it you could do, you know, membership kind of things where if you're if you're an NFT holder, it gives you access to the studio to do podcasts and do whatever. But you might have perks every couple of months or you might hold an event or they might get a discount on some free merch. Yeah, there's a coffee shop in front of this that we put in there. Yeah, so it's it's all these things that you do to build value for for your clientele, right, for your thousand true fans. Like you don't necessarily need to reach a million people out there. You find people that are fans and then just continue giving value and giving experiences. Let me share the story with you of this art. So he did the art. I told him the story about what we were trying to create with our podcast. And then he made this piece and I didn't ask for anything. I was like, I don't need to prove. I'm like, go. Like, you're the artist. I'm not trying to put you in a box. And so he ended up making this piece. And then at the end of it, he's like, you want to know what it means. And I'm like, you know, not really because it makes me nervous to know like the meaning of what you were trying to create. And so anyway, he started explaining it to me. And so basically the way this this piece works is it goes it goes right to left. And so you see a face right on the right side of the right hand corner. And you can see you can just see the lips. And so you don't see any eyeballs. You don't see anything. You just see this the lips and everything that he creates is a personal journey. He uses women and so he's always going to represent the human as a female. And so in this setting, you see somebody with the lips and no eyeballs. And basically he says people wake up and they can't see their missing clarity and they're thrown into the carousel, which is what you see here, the carousel of life. And that means you're dropping kids off or you're going to work or you're just doing the things you need to do to get through the day, your obligations and at some point of this experience, which is in the middle here, you see a hand reaching for a hand break. And so that's a hand break. And so you want to shut it off. You want to shut the noise off. You want to come down so that you can start to do what you want to do. And then if you keep going to the left of the bottom, you finally see an eye. And so you start to see an eye. And that's when that's when the human starts to see things a little bit more clearly. And then a right above the eye is a hand. And this is the part that blew me away. He's like the hand is your podcast. He's like the hand is your the moment where you bring people here and you allow them to shine and tell their story in their own way. And that's when you see the whole silhouette. Dude, I lost it. I was like, that's so freaking awesome, man. Like I see it now. And the funny thing is the way you describe, you know, the meaning behind it. Yes, that that relates to so many people's lives like the day to day. And for me, that's that's what led me here to this this project, like, you know, getting up, doing that thing, getting getting in, you know, on the carousel of life and then wanting to pull the break. Well, in my case, the break was kind of pulled from several several times. Right. And I had to extract myself from my my, you know, business before. I'm actually more busy now than I have ever been. But it's doing the stuff I love and doing the things I want. And it leads back to, you know, the hand helping others. The whole point of me coming here and building this sort of like incubator entrepreneurship thing on an island is for people to come and land and just like have a breather as well, right? The whole idea behind this, right? Like, you know, my story, right? Like with burnout and whatever else. So in my room, I've got my my messy little creative station and I draw and paint and do music and and whatever there, right? And then out here, like, you can see the beach is just there. That's our lobby and kitchen area. And then these are all the bamboo domes that built. So there's ten of them around all the way up the hill. And the idea is that, like, I have I have my moments where I'm fully in the nerd zone, geeking out on crypto and graphics and whatever else on the inside. But then I can take a break and, you know, put my feet in the water, go eat some healthy food. We've got a chef here. And it's that sort of like we're in a in a in an era now. We don't have to be stuck in the office, right? All this work for our own self. This is your handbrake. Yeah, yeah. So then created over here is like both sides of the same coin. What you're doing at the podcast by giving people a voice, I guess my where I see what I do is like in that bottom section of the artwork, where it's the place for people to land and just go, OK, I've been I've been running on the carousel. What do I what am I really want to do now? What do I see what I want to ideate? And that's where I sort of come in with people with this whole, you know, let me solve your problems kind of thing is like I literally am here. And then when people come over, I'm like, hey, so what do you want to do? And how can I help? Or do you need a website? Do you need to do you need someone to do a podcast for you? Do you need whatever? Because I want to see their ideas sort of go out into the world again. And crypto is a way to do that because you don't technically need you know, a lot of physical sort of interaction when you're first building things, right? And you just do it all digitally. And then if it's got legs, you can you can make it run in the world. So yeah, that art is awesome. Make it an AR thing, man. Make it a like augmented reality. We're going to do it. I'll loop in the artist. I'll send an email with you and the artist and me on it. And we can we can obviously we got to get him fed. And then we'll figure out a path for everyone to eat. And we'll make something really cool. He did a Kobe Bryant mural and they turned it into a jacket with Jeff Hamilton, who makes a lot of really famous jackets for a lot of celebrities and, you know, icons in the space, but they made an NFT from it. And it ended up what they ended up doing was taking this one dimensional mural and then it's super beautiful. It's like also really sad. It's a moment where Kobe's shooting a shot. The ball goes in and then the ball goes up a set of staircases. And then ultimately you see his daughter and he crowns her. He he like takes and so it's like an art piece they put into motion like you're saying around the stories. And then they took that and they put it on the jacket and it was in front of it was in LA at the Chinese theater where it's you could see it. It was in a box, but it was a hologram. And so it goes from art to story to a hologram that turns into the jacket. It was like soup. I mean, just incredible. It really, really incredible stuff. But hearing your perspective around the community is great because that's what we're I mean, I think everyone at the end of the day is trying to do that. But with the podcast, you know, we that's where we are. And I think as a podcast or as a normal company, you always just go, let me just make some merch, which is fine. But I think to bring people into the studio, like you're saying, by making this thing accessible or purchasable in pieces is unique. Yeah, you're giving them a piece of not just the art, but like your world, you know, the ecosystem that you thrive in and the potential opportunities that could come out of that. Like always sort of asking what else is possible, right? Like we only know what we know now, but we don't know what we don't know yet. So at least being around, you know, other like-minded creatives and people with business minds, like you can sort of meld the two together and then like make something happen. So that's that's awesome. I'm going to do that. We're going to do that together. All right, let's go back to crypto. So for when it comes to crypto and people. OK, so everyone I talked to at home during the holidays, Christmas, they were all like, all right, cool. How do I start? And I think like me, the first thing I did was open up a coin based account, which is fine. And then I realized like, oh, there's all these other ones that offer no fees, essentially. And so I think like, for example, I transferred thirty five thousand dollars into my coin based account. And I think the fee was like one hundred and fifty dollars. And I hate fees. I don't know banks don't charge me fees. And so like the fact that I had to pay a fee. You know, it annoyed me, you know, and then I moved to Voyager because Voyager feels like the vanguard for those in the 401k space. It just felt very free and there was no fees. What marketplaces do you recommend for people? Or does it even matter? You just go start your calling based account, do the Voyager, do whatever. Yeah, I mean, it really depends, right? Because I see crypto in general. And when I say crypto, it's like the cryptocurrency side of things, not blockchain technology, right? So the money making side, it's like going into a restaurant and there's just so many options, right? And for initial buyers, they're like, I don't know if I want a burger. I don't know if I want a salad. I don't know if I want a steak or start with dessert first. So, yes, things like coin based. So anything that's centralized finance, I think, is the easiest way to get in. But then you're going to get stung with fees because the company is doing the work for you of security and intelligence and whatever else. It's a way to get in. Yes, you've got coin based, finance, FTX, Celsius, all these centralized things. So I would first recommend people to learn the difference between what centralized finance is and decentralized finance, right? And they come with their advantages and disadvantages. Centralized means you're basically just going to the bigger brother of a bank. They're still holding it in, but then they're not as dodgy as the banks, I guess, right? Whereas with decentralized finance, with DeFi, you're going with the mate down the road who could have programmed something really, really awesome and has a good heart to help thousands and millions of people around the world. Or it could be the mate down the road who has created a scammy kind of thing like you mentioned earlier and you just don't know, right? So you have to do a little bit more work and more due diligence to figure out whether it's a good thing to do or not. And where do you do that work? You just go to YouTube, I just try to get specific, very specific with people so they're at least they know where to go. Do they just start Googling YouTube? What's the do you have any recommendations? There's a whole bunch of links and resources, I guess. I mean, in general, like, yes, YouTube and Google. Like, Google is the best friend of anyone, really. It's a superpower that everyone has access to. If they've got access to the internet, I would say, look at, OK, if you're going to look at DeFi, then start with DeFi Pulse, right? There's a website called DeFiPulse.com, which tells you exactly what's in DeFi. And then you can start looking at things like DeFiRate.com or DeFi Prime. So anything with the DeFi tag in general will give you sort of an idea of what's out there. And then for those who aren't aware of it yet, look at Bankless Dow, right? Bankless Dow has a really good system and a newsletter system. And like, they have this, you know, idea with a bankless cube. It's kind of like a menu of this. This is, you know, what's available in the DeFi space. And most people that I know of will go, first of all, into like borrowing and lending crypto, you know, to start earning an income in that. That's all the rage now. That's like everybody's hearing about that now. Yeah, exactly. You're going to have your crypto there. I mean, there's obviously like a whole bunch of other due diligence stuff that I go through, but those are kind of starters. And with the DeFi stuff, if you're totally new to crypto, right? And you're scared about the volatility, just buy some stable coins. Like my recommend, not financial advice because I'm not a financial advisor, but disclaimer, disclaimer, he is not a financial advisor. We're just here riffing on ideas, follow them or not off that I've done. And it's worked for me. But for, you know, most people who heard about crypto back in the 2017 boom and earlier, all they really knew about with Bitcoin and Ethereum and, you know, shitcoins, right? But now you can have, I'd say, relative safety of buying to stable coins where, you know, a USDC or USDT or whatever stable coin equals generally the value of the dollar. And you can you can hold that. So at least you'll be in the crypto space. And then from there, you can start experimenting and go, OK, what can I do with this? Where can I put my stable dollars to earn five, 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 percent interest, which is like way better than most banks provide. But I think the average in the U.S. is like 0.3 percent or something like that. And the numbers sound huge and ridiculous at first. But at least if you're in a stable coin, you can get used to the systems and see, see, you know, test the waters. And what stable coins do you like just so we can give people a window into the ones that you've vetted for them? And obviously we'll post Kevin's website. Kevin has a lot of information on his website, which is amazing. But which ones do you do you like? So stable coins are only the ones that are pegged to like a real world, you know, currency. So like USDC, USDT, UST by a company, I wouldn't say company or project called Terra and then DAI, which is like the original sort of stable coin, DAI. Those would be the top four. And then there are now, you know, stable coins in euros that are coming out. I think the Australian dollar has one. There's MUSD, which is like part of the M stable sort of company. You can go on CoinGecko or CoinMarketCap. I think most people would know about those websites, right? CoinGecko.com or CoinMarketCap.com. And you can just in the filter type in stable coins, right? And that'll give you a list of I think there's probably a hundred plus now different stable coins, but for anyone who doesn't know much about math or finance or whatever, if you're just a visual person, you just look at the pictures on the side, the graphs. And it's in the name. It's a stable coin, which means the line should be fairly stable, right? So if you're going to look at getting into stable coins, if it's like high rocketing green or red line going down, it's like that. That's not stable. So would you call it like a bond from that? But it's like a bond, like a save. Yeah, well, it's the USDT, that stands for USDTether, which means it's tethered to the value of the US dollar. You know, at the moment, they're kind of like a little bit of hot water because they did their financials and only 76 percent of their actual finances are backed by a dollar. And they're still trying to figure out, OK, what is the other 30 percent? Also, you know, what is it really backed by the dollar? But anyway, USDC is with Circle and then Coinbase. So because you're with Coinbase, you know, that's what they do. But yeah, there are variants. But one thing they sort of teach in the in the course is like, don't put all your eggs in one basket, right? So, so, you know, if you if you're going to put in, you know, $100,000 or $1,000 or $100, whatever it is in stable coins, you wouldn't just go, I'm going to put the whole lot in USDC. You might divide and go, I'll put 20,000 USDC, 20,000 USDT, 20,000 Tera, 20,000, whatever. Right. So then you still have a hundred thousand dollars, but it's just in different types of stable coin. That's if you want to play it super safe. OK, nobody here wants to do that. Everybody's reading. Everyone's like, we want we want to 20 X our money and go buy some. Yeah. Everyone's right now. What's the next thing that you you invest in? And what are the heavy hitters in that space? OK, so so one of the portfolios that I start off with is, you know, 70 percent stable coins, 20 percent growth assets, right? So growth assets are your your things like Bitcoin, Miriam, you know, ADA is one of them called Cardano. So people know it. Things that have been around for at least the last five or 10 years and they have a solid user base, they're not as wild, you know, you won't hear about them in news like skyrocketing, skyrocketing 2,000 percent or whatever. But, you know, if you hold a bit of that 20 percent or so, then then you're it's kind of like what you mentioned before with the Microsoft, you know, 5 percent each time it's growing. It's great. It provides you growth. And then you've got 10 percent left over in your allocation that you can put towards venture bets where it's like, OK, Doge or Shiba Inu or whatever, whatever are risky things. I'm not recommending those, by the way, but it's just that's that's the portion that you go, OK, maybe this thing could a thousand X could 10X, 20X, whatever. Is that what you do? Is that your your portfolio blend? So that's the general. Well, I have one portfolio that does that. I have several portfolios, but that's my my sort of my saviour portfolio, the portfolio when I stuff up on the other portfolios that I have, which are like 90 percent risky and 10 percent safe. You know, so yeah, I feel like I have 70 percent Bitcoin, Ethereum, ADA, maybe 20 percent stable, maybe. And then it's money like yeah, with people that that I've come through with the course, a lot of people think having money in stable coins is risky like that to them. It's like, why would I want to have money in stable coins when I already know that it's tethered to the current currency value, which is inflationary and it's not going to be a shit. It's actually risky a long term holding on to the old, you know, shoe, put your feet like dive all into crypto. And so one of the main things is just don't what you can afford to lose and then don't go all in on any one thing. Right. Have your eggs in different baskets. Yeah. And then in terms of, you know, what I actually look for in those, you know, volatile tokens, I have a due diligence process, which basically just assesses, OK, what's the project about? Like, does it really need crypto? Like, what does it do? And does it really need crypto? And then who who who are the developers? You know, who's behind the team? Like, have they shown proof that they've been able to do this before? And then super important, you check the community. Right. What are they saying? Telecom? What are they saying on Discord? What are they saying on Twitter? Are people invested in this thing? Or are they just all saying moonshot, moonshot, moonshot, but no one's actually doing any work, right? And then, yeah, you can look back in the network and, you know, the use cases and all the other sort of ancillary things. But essentially, I have a sort of process where I look at the infrastructure first, right? I think of it like, like if crypto is a highway, but with different lanes and each of the lanes is like, OK, this is the Bitcoin lanes. I look at each of those lanes and go, OK, I want to own a bit of that road, right? So so I'll buy some Bitcoin, some ADA, some AVAX, some Phantom, some, you know, FTM, all these coins. And then that's that's the first layer of the road. And then I look at, OK, what's driving on these roads? Which projects are going to be going down these these roads, right? And so that's with different cars. And so there might be different projects or farms that, you know, you might invest in that are running on that network, on that driving on that road. And then from there, I'll look at, OK, which of these projects, which of these cars are the Ferrari or the Toyota, you know, which ones which along and they have a good team. And they're all like, you know, the teams all develop as but they really crap at marketing, but they've got a good product. OK, maybe I'll put some stake in them and maybe later on, they'll get a good marketing team or you might find something that's like, yeah, we're going to the moon and like everyone's on the party bus and, you know, or it's like driving the Ferrari down. You're like, OK, this is going somewhere because there's hype and they've got 50,000 followers or a million followers and Elon's talking about it or whatever. But then you look at the car in the substance and it's like, this is just full of hot air. This is going to pass. You know, how far down the highway are you going to travel with the people in that team or in that car? And that pretty much wraps up how I look at the, you know, the crypto space and like investment. It's interesting, it's similar to how I view startup investing, which we do, but I like the example of when you compare like the freeways and they're all together, right? It's like you have and then what cars are driving on it. That's a super good analogy as it relates to comparison. And so, you know, full disclosure, again, not a financial advisor. We mentioned this. I was talking to you about Cardano, where I just started calling my friends what's going on in the space and someone knows the founder Charles. I start watching videos on Charles and I'm like, oh, this guy seems really like it seems like he's nobody's doing, but it's not sexy. It's the marketing is one would argue. He feels like he's building a more efficient system. Maybe that's true. I have no idea. And then he helped start Ethereum, which I'm like, OK, cool. There's some he's got a feather in his cap. And so for that, there's belief, but it's not sexy. It doesn't feel very fun to be honest. It feels like Microsoft, which is what I was saying to you off air. But I still like it. I still like it. And then I guess this whole thing with like Ethereum 2.0 is a yeah, there's people on all sides. And so then there's a lot of noise. If you start going down that rabbit hole, there's people who are going to say this is going to fail on the other side. People say there's no way it can fail. It still hasn't reached its its potential, but either way. I mean, Cardano is up like 640 percent this year, which is insane. I mean, beat that in any other real world setting. It's impossible. What what else would you, you know, what are the things that that, you know, in your training course, once you explain blockchain, once you explain crypto, once you explain smart contracts, what is the, you know, what is the next thing that you advise people outside of doing no one research, but obviously wallets is a thing. So I have a MetaMask wallet for people who are wondering. There's a few out there, several same thing restaurant. There's a big menu, but I have a MetaMask wallet. The only reason I went with it is because someone told me to, frankly, that's really how I've been about this whole game is I just I'm trying to talk to the experts. And then and then follow suit, essentially. What is chapter two or three of your training in your program for people to sort of get get their feet wet and then jump in? What I do, like, we don't really have it's not like a formalized or like there's no curriculum to say in the course. It's we do zoom calls where I sort of handhold people in very small groups through, you know, five, six weeks worth of, you know, getting their heads around crypto, what it all means. And then how do you buy and then how do you allocate your, you know, your tokens or whatever or what you're going to be doing in crypto? So similar to the things that we've been talking about now, is getting them from the point of, I don't know anything about crypto. So now I own crypto and I feel confident in investing in crypto. And then from there, I filter through who are the people that, you know, might want to do a business out of this or they have an idea for an NFT project or they they possibly have a business where they can tokenize it, right? And then I could draw on my contacts in the VC world or whatever with the incubator stuff here, maybe we flesh that out into, hey, come over to the island, spend a couple of weeks with me, you know, I'll do this whole problem solving thing and do a bit of, you know, crypto during the day. And then island hopping, wakeboarding, seeing whatever, like have had that sort of balance of lifestyle, which is, you know, when you get moments of stillness or activity and that kind of thing, that's when the creativity comes out, right? And then, yeah, I kind of like want to bottle up those experiences. And then depending on who I'm working with, go, OK, maybe I can come along for the ride, you know, either helping with the development or helping with a product placement or helping with whatever skills that I have or pointing them in the right direction and helping them direct their compass towards someone who could help them. And then along the way, you know, with anything you just work out, OK, is it a startup thing where we get equity or do we get tokens or do I get some NFTs out of this as well or whatever exchanges are available? Like I'm open to, you know, negotiating that kind of thing. But the main thing is like, hey, let's let's meet, let's connect and like jam on things. So I didn't cover before, but when when you met me, my main career was as a musician. Right. Amazing drummer. Yeah, I love the concept of like, hey, bring your instruments to the rehearsal room and then let's just jam and see what happens. We could make terrible noise. We could make some really good songs. You're not going to know until you start playing together, right? And then once once you do that, you can, OK, hey, we could really jam on this or this this can this song can turn into an album kind of thing. So I'm basically just applying that with with crypto. So the initial thing is help people just understand, hey, this this thing is real. It exists. You can live off it. You can make money off it. You can, you know, change your lifestyle because of it, you can you can create vaults that help, you know, generations moving forward, you know, kids, you know, certain people need their kids millionaires already just from what they've been doing with crypto. And that's not to just say like it's all about the money, but money is just a tool that can then obviously help you build build out certain things in your dreams and lifestyle and helping others. And again, just making the world a better place or building the future. Right. So that's pretty much it. I kind of want to end this, but then have people maybe tune in. Maybe we'll do this monthly or quarterly and give people updates. And you can be kind of be their shepherd. I think it's it's a complicated space. It's evolving in this conversation. I've moved all of my attention from potentially purchasing a board able to just go on ham on creating our own NFT and our own virtual virtual world around our studio, because I think it's it's really special. The space we've created. We want to bring people in and COVID has made that really difficult. You know, we've wanted to have events. We wanted to do live podcast recordings, but everyone's concerned and rightly so. And so it's been, but the digitize it feels like the opportunity feels like the right thing about building community in our space. So that's anyway, my mindset has shifted from board able to we're just going to do it ourselves and see where it goes. I want to add something more to that. The experience that you just described is similar to, you know, what I've sort of tried to cultivate here and what we get back from the guests where, you know, they land on this sort of island thinking that, you know, they're disconnected from the world and they can breathe fresh air. No one's wearing masks. He doesn't cover it and whatnot. Like we're an island separated from mainland, right? But it only takes like 20 minutes to get here. But what I've found is once people settle in, they start having these conversations on I forgot about this from my childhood or I didn't know, like I've always wanted to do or I have this idea and because I'm kind of open to anything, right? I'm like, Oh, cool. Yeah, we can we can go do this or, you know, or you want a 3D print that. Cool. Let's let's make it happen. Or you want to build this thing, you know, the workshop. Cool. Paint it, do whatever you kind of like create this environment where people see what's possible, right? And then not all ideas are good, but maybe they can build something out of that from just from being given the permission to breathe and find stillness and disconnect and reconnect to what they really want to do. So in saying that, there's an idea that's forming in my head of what if we come up with in conjunction with the NFT piece that you're doing there and the podcast and stuff like that, we come up with like an NFT that gives access to people to this place and your podcast studio at some point, like, you know, within your community that I don't know, it could be like an end of year thing. Like whoever the top 10 holders are of the NFTs, they get a week stay here and we do some sort of, you know, DA go and that kind of like what Richard Branson has, the Necker Island or something or a summit event, something where we do an island based podcast here, right? And then do a wrap up of what everyone did throughout the year in crypto, NFTs and business or whatever and then ideate on potential collaborations and other things throughout the year. So there's an idea somewhere around there, like we can figure it out. Obviously, you know, travel restrictions and whatnot, but I'd love to put that out there to, you know, connect with the entrepreneurs that you're connecting with and, you know, people that need a voice. We have the physical space here to sort of help get that voice out as well in a different way, not through a podcast, but I love that. Yeah, I want to take my whole team there. I mean, as we were talking, I was like, we got to have a retreat there. We got to do our thing. We have to have the, I like how you phrased it too, where you say, you know, you allow, you give yourself permission. I think that's ultimately what entrepreneurship is about. I mean, it's about giving yourself permission to be crazy or to be daring or to escape the realities or the constructs that have been placed upon you. And it's it's that simple and that hard. But giving yourself permission pieces is, you know, you've you said it well. The Aussie thing of just just give it a go, good, bad, right or wrong, pass or fail, like give it a go because you'll never know what could happen out of it. You know, Kevin, I appreciate your time, man. Thanks so much. What's the main thing you use to to interact with people? I use everything like all mostly WhatsApp. But, you know, my Twitter is at PK Mendoza, so my first name is Paul. So PK Kevin, PK Mendoza. It's the same as my Instagram as well. I mean, you know, I am not very active on those platforms, because I'm usually on the ground helping helping others, but people can reach out to me and either those tags or just my website, kevinmendoza.com and email and see what happens. Appreciate it, brother. Thanks so much for joining, man. This is amazing, amazing. The start of the storefront team consists of Diego Torres Palma, Natalia Capolini, Owen Capolini, Lexie Jamison and me, Nick Conrad. Our music is composed by Double Touch. We release a new episode each week. So make sure to subscribe so you don't miss a thing. Our handle for all social media platforms is at Startup Storefront. We also film all of these episodes and put them up on our YouTube page because there's just some things that can't be experienced through audio alone. You can always go back and listen to any of our other episodes available wherever you get your podcasts and on our website, startupstorefront.com. Thank you for listening. We'll see you next time.