The Future of NFTs with Avery Akkineni: An EOFire Classic from 2021

0:01Boom! Shake the room, Fire Nation! JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs on Fire, the only daily show interviewing the world's top entrepreneurs seven days a week. Today, we're pulling a classic episode from the archives and we'll be breaking down the future of NFTs. To drop these value bombs, I brought Avery A. into EO Fire Studios. Avery serves as the president of VaynerNFT. She leads the company's mission to build long-term strategic NFT projects for the world's leading intellectual property owners serving brands, celebrities, athletes, and associations looking to incentivize and reward brand advocacy and customer loyalty.

0:35And today, Fire Nation will talk about how you You can build a program that invites people and rewards early adopters. And that has some special access experience built in for a higher tier program. Allow some of your loyal listeners and fans to be part of that crew. And oh, so much more. And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to Avery and our sponsors. Is this your year to grow a successful business? Attend the world's highest rated business growth workshop taught personally by Clay Clark. And now featuring football star Tim Tebow and President Trump's son, Eric Trump. at thrivetimeshow.com slash EO fire.

1:10Again, request life changing tickets today at thrivetimeshow.com slash EO fire. Avery say what's up to fire nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with. Hello, fire nation. And thank you so much for having me. That is an amazing question. And one thing that I believe that many people disagree with is that execution is even more important than strategy. So especially in the world of marketing and making things happen and building things, a lot of times I spent the early part of my career at major corporations where we would agonize over strategy for months and years before we even got into the execution.

1:56And in the past four years, I've really shifted that where, of course, you need a strategy and that's important to know where you're heading, but the execution and actually making it happen is, is even more important for getting on the track to success. Yeah. And this day and age, if you're strategizing for three or four months, let alone three or four years, like you've already missed the opportunity, like it's gone by because things are moving so fast. And I, you know, I can't tell you the amount of people that have come out to me and say, John, like I literally thought of Uber before Uber launched, or I thought of Airbnb before Airbnb.

2:28And I'm like, so where's your execution? Where's the execution on that. Exactly. Just wasn't there. Yeah, you should have launched it. Should have launched it. So at VaynerNFT, you help other people unlock the potential of one of the greatest technology shifts that we are experiencing. This is literally the greatest technology shift of our time. Can you share some of the details about this shift? We believe that Web3 is going to be a transformative technological change for everyone, the same way the internet was a major change. Fundamentally shifting the way that people interacted with content, communication, payments, travel, etc., etc.

3:10We think the same is going to be true of Web3. And NFTs are the gateway into Web3. NFTs fundamentally are the first way that you can actually own a digital asset. And that's a big mind shift for a lot of people. And it's our great pleasure and opportunity and challenge and joy to be helping some of the world's biggest intellectual property owners figure out this wonderful new world of NFTs and Web3 and create programs that engage their communities, inspire their communities, and let them interact in a new way as we kind of start this ascent into this wonderful new technology transformation. Can you give a couple examples of people that you're helping right now at VaynerNFT?

3:55And we can get as vague or specific as you're able or willing to do. I mean, we can, again, just kind of be very broad stroke here and not name names, but we'd love to hear maybe a couple examples of real world. We work with a couple of different groups. First, celebrities and sort of people of interest, whether they're influencers or more traditional and mainstream celebrities who have engaged audiences. Maybe they've become successful via social media or via other more traditional channels. We help them engage with NFT programs that engage their communities in a new way. So that's one group.

4:30And I'll give you an example. One of our first projects was the world's largest YouTuber with over 200 million subscribers. She's seven years old and we helped her launch her first NFT project a couple of months back. And we're now working on a whole new program that's going to be a new way for her to engage with her community and fan base. So that's one example. We also have examples of brand partners. We're working with Budweiser and Stella Artois and Corona and everyone in the Anheuser-Busch family to launch brand programs, which allow their communities a new way to collect and to engage with the brands.

5:06And just last Friday, a couple of days ago, we did a really fun collaboration with Tom Sachs Rocket Factory. Budweiser actually purchased a rocket from Tom Sachs, who's a contemporary artist who's launched a very successful NFT program. We then invited Tom and his team to launch the rockets from Budweiser headquarters and hosted some of Tom's fans and collectors and Budweiser fans and collectors there at an exclusive NFT event, which included sort of special tour of the brewery and some exclusive merch and fun stuff of that nature. And then we also work with platforms like we work with Coinbase on launching their their new NFT offering.

5:44So we're in the midst of that right now, which is very exciting. We believe this is a whole new platform is going to bring way more people into the wonderful world of NFTs. And we also work with associations. So folks like the U.S. Tennis Association on celebrating remarkable achievements of their players at their iconic event, which is the U.S. Open. We did a really awesome program there, which included elements of both free NFTs, low cost NFTs that are collectibles and that golden ace at sort of trading card NFTs, which unlocked these incredible experiences that only U.S. Open and their tennis legends could provide.

6:25We also work with folks like artists. We're working with a renowned photographer and artist called David Drubbin on launching something really fun at Art Basel. And yeah, that's all in a day's work. Well, I want to keep talking about the future of NFTs because this is all very fascinating to me. I want to really get into how they're becoming a game changer. And we're talking right now specifically for brands, specifically for IP owners. What are you seeing that's going to be happening in the future going forward? NFTs are fundamentally so different from a marketing campaign that it's a very new thing for brands because I've spent a lot of my career in marketing where we thought we're launching a new product or a new line or something like that.

7:07And campaigns were, one, very localized to specific markets because the products might only be available in certain countries. And then two, they were very temporary. It was only meant to be the message for a few months, a specific campaign thing. NFTs are different. NFTs are inherently global and they're inherently forever. And that's a huge mindset shift for brands. And we're coaching a lot of our brand partners to think about NFTs way beyond a campaign, way beyond an earned media moment, really is something that is a new kind of a business for them that requires always on support and always on surprise and delight of their fan bases and communities and really, you know, an investment in both time and resources to make them really successful.

7:49So I think for brands, like there are so many amazing brands that have intellectual property that people really love. You know, people wear Budweiser t-shirts that they buy with their hard-earned money because they want to affiliate themselves to that brand. Like that might mean that they want to have NFTs of that same brand in their digital wallet, or they want to be able, eligible for exclusive drops from the brand that are digital in nature. If you look at what the hundreds brand did. They're a streetwear brand. They launched Atom Bomb Squad, which is a really cool way for their fans to engage with their brand in a new way that unlocks special events.

8:22It unlocks special merch and whitelisting for some of their future drops. So I think they're a good reference. Probably one of the brands who's done the most in this space to date. So what I want to talk about before we take a quick break is royalties and proof of attendance, Because those are a couple of things that came up to me while you were talking, because that's one area for me that I really understand why brands are getting so excited about this. Because now when Budweiser sells an NFT, now if that gets sold in the secondary market a thousand times in the next 10 years, they're going to be getting a piece of that, which is really exciting to them.

8:58Instead of like if they sell a collector's edition t-shirt 10 years ago, and then that thing gets sold a thousand times over the last 10 years, they got zero dollars of that going forward. They maybe just made the$10 from that t-shirt. And then when you were talking about like the tennis and things along those lines, that was really interesting. And I've seen a lot of things coming up around POA, which is proof of attendance. So it's like, okay, like I was here and like, I can prove that I was here. And, you know, just like a lot of people are obsessed with going to like one place in Italy, like Cinque Terre, there's like this one famous picture place to take just to take the picture.

9:32They just want to take the picture almost even more than being in the place. Like, you know, that's like one of the crazy things about our culture now. We're seeing that a lot of people maybe now just are going to want to go to like events and different things more so so they can get the proof of attendance, which is kind of interesting going forward because that might be worth something, you know, above and beyond just the enjoyable experience that they hopefully had there. So can you talk about those two things? Let's start with proof of attendance because I'm so passionate about this. There's an amazing app out there called POAP, Proof of Attendance Protocol, free NFTs that are on a side chain.

10:05We've done a lot of stuff with them across some of our activations. And we think it's really cool to show that you are there. It's a low cost way for people to get involved. And especially folks who are new to NFTs, it's easy. That on-ramp is super simple. You don't have to explain gas. You can just say, hey, prove that you're here. And then this can be saved in your digital wallet. So I'm really passionate about that as something that we built into a lot of our programs. There's no reason not to, right? Because it isn't such a major investment. And we think that those will be increasingly valuable in the future.

10:34For example, with the U.S. Open, people save their tickets from the Open. Sometimes they frame them, they keep them in their house, they save those kinds of memorabilia to show that they were there. You know, they love to take an Instagram with their honey deuce. So we did a similar type of integration at the game. So you could actually, you know, save your, you basically got a token for free that showed which game you were at at the U.S. Open, which was pretty awesome. And that was something we gave as an added value to all U.S. Open attendees. So super passionate about that. Super fun. You can even do it in a small way, like for someone's birthday.

11:09It's something that anyone can really activate on their own. So that's very cool. And then secondarily, royalties. I think this is a game changer for businesses. And it's great that you picked up on this right away. I think anytime we're having a conversation with C-level execs and they start to wrap their heads around secondary royalties, a little bit of a light bulb goes off. I don't think brands right now are thinking about this only as a commercialization vehicle. Like, yes, that's a nice thing to have. And those royalties are more something I think will set them up for success further down the line than right now.

11:41But if you look at many of the successful projects out today in the NFT space, a lot of them have really gotten the majority of their revenue from secondary sales because their mints were free, were low cost. Look at something like CryptoPunks, which were free and the value you can see today. Larva Labs has really benefited from those secondary sales and seen the long-term payout from the investment they put in initially. There's so much, Fire Nation, that's coming down the line here. I just want you to get excited. You can hear Avery's excitement in her voice, my excitement in my voice. These are all things that even a year ago, people are just like, I've never heard of those things.

12:20Now they're kind of becoming part of the day-to-day lingo for people who are in the know. So I want you in the know. And we have a lot more to talk about when we get back from thanking our sponsors. Is this your year to grow a successful business? Are you looking to learn the proven processes and success systems that have been used to create thousands of millionaire success stories? See thousands of success stories and testimonials from real people just like you, who Clay Clark has mentored and coached into prosperity at thrivetimeshow.com slash EO fire. Clay's proven business coaching program is month to month and it costs less money than hiring a minimum wage employee.

12:55Yes, it's month to month and it costs less money than hiring a minimum wage employee. Schedule your free personal 13 point assessment with Clay Clark himself today at thrivetimeshow.com slash EO fire because Clay only takes on 160 clients and only allows 300 attendees to each business conference. You will interact with Clay directly. See thousands of real success stories and learn about attending the Thrive Time Show two-day in-person workshop featuring football star Tim Tebow and President Trump's son, Eric Trump, today at thrivetimeshow.com slash EOFire. Become the next success story. Schedule a free consultation and request tickets to join football star Tim Tebow and President Trump's son, Eric Trump, at Clay Clark's next business conference today at thrivetimeshow.com slash EO fire.

13:42Avery, we're back. And what I want to dive into next is specifically and shockingly NFTs. I mean, that's our focus we're having here today. So when it comes to NFTs, let's talk about building our brand, our brands, while we're delivering community value. I mean, our audience, Fire Nation is built up of solopreneurs, small business owners. Like how can we build our brand with NFTs delivering value? A million and one ways. And there's not just one way to think about the way to build your NFT program. But let's just say Fire Nation, you wanted to have a loyalty club where you were, let's just come in and pretend land.

14:21Let's just say you wanted to create a program that was going to be low cost at Mint, but these would be like your OG Fire Nation folks, right? Maybe they get first access to your podcast. Maybe they can listen to it before it hits the airwaves for everyone else. Maybe they could go to some exclusive event that you're going to be hosting as the host of Entrepreneurs on Fire podcast. Maybe there's even a special token that allows one of your listeners to join you on one of these podcasts with an exclusive experience. I would think about building a tiered program that invites people in, rewards early adopters, and then maybe there's some special access experience built into the higher tiers of the program.

15:03I think you could create a program like this, launch it, make some of your loyal listeners and fans part of that OG crew, develop a community. Maybe you launch a Discord for this or you support it on some of your Twitter efforts. And then as the Entrepreneurs on Firebrand grows and your fan base grows, those early adopters can benefit from that growth of the NFT program and really allows them to be sort of part of it. Another thing I would think about when you're building your brand is maybe you could give those token holders rights to vote on some of the decisions that you make as the host of this podcast.

15:43Maybe it's like, which guest should I have next? Or where should we host this event? Or what color should I change my logo? Give them some kind of voting rights so the community actually feels like they're part of this. I think that's one really cool feature of NFTs that builds that brand and also enables such deep, fierce, loyal participation from your community. Fire Nation, you can see this is just the tip of the iceberg. I mean, there's going to be so many opportunities, so many different things that you can do to not only get your audience involved, but get your audience involved in a way that's going to benefit you and your business going forward.

16:18And I mean, that's one of the things that's so exciting to me is that, you know, for years, everybody's been talking about the dream of passive income. And, you know, we've all wanted that and wanted to get there. And let's just be frank, like passive income can be elusive because, hey, like it's it's takes a lot of maintenance and upkeep and updating. But with NFTs, as I mentioned, like if you create something of real value that continues to hold value over time and people are going to continue to want to trade that or to buy that or to own that or wherever that might be. this is truly a way that you can be adding another revenue stream to you in your business, not to mention another way to keep your raving fan base, your raving fan base.

16:55So Avery, I want to end with this main topic here, which is how NFTs can actually create opportunities for brand new business models. I mean, like right now, again, there's things that are possible today that weren't possible even six months ago because of NFTs. There's brand new business models that our listeners could be getting into right now and could be getting excited about. Do you have a couple examples of things that have, you know, again, come to light as an opportunity here today that weren't even available 6, 12, 18 months ago? A hundred percent. So I'll give you an example that's very near and dear to our hearts at Vayner, which is vFriends.

17:34So vFriends is a project launched by Gary that in May, that has become a whole new business model. And I'll take your listeners through a little bit of our strategy with launching that. The whole idea was to create a new community and a new kind of business around traits that matter to Gary that he talks about in his content, like empathy and kindness and patience. So all of the traits are something that really matters to Gary. He actually hand drew every character of VFriends and we created a platform to launch it on. And we enabled some really cool access features within these NFTs. For example, FaceTiming with Gary, going to a game with him, going to brunch with him, these things that we knew his community really wanted.

18:16And we enabled that through NFTs. But more than that, we also enabled a whole new conference, which is going to be called VCon, happening in May in Minneapolis. And your NFT equals access to that conference, which is pretty amazing. So that's a whole new thing that wouldn't have been possible without NFTs. And I think the business model side of it, It's really interesting because that's something brand new that we created out of thin air to engage Gary's communities in a new way with event-based access, all sort of empowered by NFTs. I mean, this is really exciting. And I will say, Fire Nation, that vFriends was actually my first dipping of the toe into the whole NFT world.

18:59It was so fun. I didn't know what I was doing, Avery. I was just like, OK, I do have a MetaMask wallet. I got to get some ETH into there. and then I just kind of was watching it and seeing like what Gary was doing. I loved watching the videos of him actually doing the drawings. And I said, you know what? My kind of mentality was, I think, you know, Gary's amazing. I love him. I've had him on the show many, many times and he's just, you know, one of a kind of our generation. I know he's going to be doing amazing things for decades and decades and decades to come. So I said, what do I want when it comes to his NFTs?

19:29And I said, well, one thing I'm seeing after like scrolling through all of them is only a handful actually have his signature on them. Some of these artworks that he did. So I went ahead and again, not really knowing what I was doing. And again, and these were about$10 ,000 each. They weren't cheap. And I bought three of his spectaculars for three ETH each, which was equivalent back then to about$10 ,000. And it's just been crazy to see like what's happened in the NFT world since. And that just kind of got me down the rabbit hole of like, wow, I need to like continue to look at what other projects people are doing and seeing all these other things.

20:05And you must be happy about that. Bye. I'm really happy about that. Bye. I'm hanging on for dear life. I don't see myself ever letting this go. I mean, that's one of those things where I just, I love the artwork. I love the message that the artwork actually has on it. Cause I actually went for, you know, he actually has phrases on it. Like one of them actually has like a podcaster listening to love in the world. And I'm like, I have to get this one. Like that's so may. And I get to go to his event now in Milwaukee. I've already got an Airbnb with six other people that bought these, you know, um, these NFTs, these V friends.

20:38So we're all excited for the Milwaukee events, um, coming up in May and it's just awesome. And like Minneapolis, but yes, we'll see you there. Sorry. I will not go to Milwaukee. We did. We did book it in Minneapolis. Luckily I wasn't in charge. Um, somebody else, somebody else knew what they were doing. And, um, it is funny though. So when you talk about like it, you know, we're always like, Oh my God, like we could essentially sell these things for 10, 20 X right now, what we bought them for, but everybody's like, but then I can't go to VCon, but then I'm not going to get what Gary's doing next and doing next to add more and more utility to these NFTs.

21:11And like study people like Gary, fire nation study people that are out there. Like Tom Sacks with his rocket factory did It's such a cool project. Like, what are they doing? They can give you ideas of what you can do for your community to, again, build brand, build excitement, build uniqueness around what you are doing in this world. So, Avery, you're busy. Really appreciate you hanging out with us. Give us one big takeaway. Like, what do you want to make sure our listeners really get from today's conversation? Then anything that you want to say about us connecting with what you have going on over in the world of Vayner and all that jazz.

21:47And then we'll say goodbye. Epic. So I think I'll leave you all with one take that it's amazing that you got in on VFriends early. And one, thank you for that. And two, I'm so happy that you're happy with the way things are trending. That means a lot to us. And that's really like the ambition of the project is to create a new engaged community. And I love to hear that people are, you know, it's amazing to read like people have met through VFriends, changed their lives in different ways, which is just, that's the real, that's the real best part of this. But I'll leave y 'all with the fact that it's still very early.

22:21You know, I talked to a lot of people who are like, I miss the boat on NFTs. I miss the boat on ETH. I miss the boat on this. And it's like the boat hasn't even, we haven't even left the port. The boat is still loading. It's still so early. And when you think about like a market adoption curve, we're still at that innovator stage, not even early adopter. So I'll leave Fire Nation with the fact that it's still early, not too late to get in. In fact, please help join the community of NFTs to shape the direction where we're going. This is all new and everyone's building it together. And we'd love to have more people involved, inviting more people into this wonderful world.

22:57So remember that it is still super early and, you know, jump in, start by starting. And where would you want Fire Nation to go to maybe learn more about what you have going on and all that jazz. Follow us, VaynerNFT. Hit us up on Twitter. And I'm Avery Acadini. If I can ever be a help to any of your awesome listeners, would love to know. Find me on Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Discord, whatever your social media channel of choice is. I'm there. So I really appreciate y 'all having me on the show and letting me talk a little bit about what we're up to at Vayner. Fire Nation, you're the average of the five people you spend the most time with.

23:32And you've been hanging out with Avery. and JLD today. So keep up the heat and head over to eofire.com type Avery, A-V-E-R-Y into the search bar. Her show notes page will pop up with everything we've talked about links to everything that we just chatted about. And Avery, thank you for sharing your truth, knowledge, value with Fire Nation today. For that, we salute you and we'll catch you on the flip side. Hey, Fire Nation, today's value bomb content was brought to you by Avery and Fire Nation. Over the last decade, I've interviewed more than 3 ,000 of the world's most successful entrepreneurs, and I've created a revolutionary 17-step roadmap to your financial freedom and fulfillment.

24:12I put it all into my first traditionally published book, The Common Path to Uncommon Success, personally endorsed by Seth Godin and Gary Vaynerchuk. The Common Path to Uncommon Success is the step-by-step guidance that you need to achieve the lifestyle of your dreams. Visit UncommonSuccessBook.com to order your copy, and I'll catch you there, or I'll catch you on the flip side. Is this your year to grow a successful business? Attend the world's highest rated business growth workshop taught personally by Clay Clark and now featuring football star Tim Tebow and President Trump's son, Eric Trump at thrivetimeshow.com slash EO fire.