The Hobby is Big Business - Introducing Vee Friends w/ Gary Vaynerchuk

0:00Could you imagine if you and I told our 22 year old selves that same fire that you have in your stomach right now you'll have it at 49. we would have been ecstatic to know that. This is Right About Now with Ryan Alford, a Radcast Network production. We are the number one business show on the planet with over 1 million downloads a month. Taking the BS out of business for over six years and over 400 episodes. You ready to start snapping necks and cashing checks? Well, it starts right about now. Hey guys, what's up? Welcome to Right About Now. We are in the midst of our trading card hobby business edition.

0:40We are talking a business of trading cards, investments, opportunities. And look, we're talking opportunities. I knew a better person to call than my good friend, Gary Vaynerchuk. He is the creator of VFriends, the hottest, newest, tops Chrome trading card that is out. And of course, the CEO of VaynerMedia. Gary, what's up, man? Thanks for joining the hobby series, man. I had to have the king of the hobby. I've been watching you for 20 years talk about trading cards, so I appreciate you joining. Thanks, Ryan. I really appreciate it, man. Hope you're well. Yeah, man. Life is good. It's been exciting watching.

1:16You've been talking about, you know, you've been going to garage sales, going and talking trading cards. And I grew up collecting cards. It might have been the first reason, you know, between the wine. It was wine to start, Gary. I got to admit, I was in New York. We traded places. I'm in South Carolina. I was in New York. You're talking wine. I go, I like this guy. And then you started talking trading cards. So now it comes full circle. But you've had your hand, you've had your finger pinged on this for a while. Yep. You know, set this table for our audience a bit. We'll get into VFriends. And congrats, man.

1:49It's a big deal. I mean, it's not lost on me what you're doing here. So congratulations, number one. Thank you. Set the table for our audience that knows you, but with trading cards and what led up to this. You know, I've just I've always thought about intellectual property. It's always been a fascinating industry creatively and and business wise, Disney, Marvel, Lucas.

2:18and I wanted to have my own world and when the NFT thing happened I saw that as a really smart place to create the providence because I could mint these characters on the blockchain and I believe in digital collectibles I still do I know so many people think that NFTs were a fad or baloney but if you look today it's stunning how many NFTs will sell today Like I was saying back in the hype in 2021, 99 % of NFTs were going to go to zero, just like 99 % of trading cards and comic books and watches and toys and sneakers are not worth anything. Same with NFTs. So I saw that and I launched this BeFriends world in that manner.

2:59But I knew that I was going to do comic books, cartoons, trading cards. This is actually our third series of trading cards. We had a Series 1 and Series 2 with a company called Zero Cool that Topps bought. But this has obviously been a whole different animal because Topps is the iconic brand in the industry and Topps Chrome is such a big platform. And so this is just kind of year four of a journey of building this intellectual property that I'm very excited about, Rye. Yeah, man. And congrats. It's a big deal, especially the Topps Chrome. If anyone's into collecting, it is the iconic brand of Topps meets the new and hottest thing that collectors want, the chrome, the inserts, the parallels, all that stuff.

3:43I love how you've sort of embraced the, you know, part of me, I think some people might would ask, well, why Topps Chrome and why this and why the parallels and all that? Oh, I get it, man. I feel like you've created something uniquely original while tapping into sort of the hype and interest that already exists with some of these products. Talk a little bit about that. Yeah, I think to your point, obviously, you're a little bit deeper and you're knowledgeable. Like there's a lot of inserts and structure to this checklist that honors the chrome model that, you know, the red refractors to five and 50 gold and the superfractor one of one.

4:22And then there's uniquely new stuff. We did something really smart. Our main character, the very, very, very, very lucky black cat has yellow eyes. But we did an insert a variant where you could get them with green eyes or blue eyes or white eyes or red eyes. and that's a little head nod to Pokemon's original set with the Pikachu and so there's there's a lot of really clever things there's a one in every nine cases insert called Erupt that I'm very fond of that is a hat tip to the Kaboom inspired by that great insert and we found the original artist of that Kaboom set and he designed the characters.

5:10So it's, you know, I think it's been fun because even people that let's say are cynical to this project or even me in the hobby of trading cards, because it's a very insular kind of protective community, which I respect and love, have been giving flowers to how thoughtful the checklist is. And that has been rewarding. Yeah, man. Smart is what I'd call it. So where does what gets me, you know, you brought up the NFT thing, but we live in a digital world and you're an attention arbitrage guy. Yep. Where does VFriends fit? And two parts for you in attention arbitrage and building your long term, you know, legacy.

5:53Where do you see VFriends in that? And then part two of that, you've got to we live in this digital world, but physical cards are still booming. Yeah, I mean, it's I'll do the second part because it's so easy. Six, seven years ago, eight years ago, people were like, Gary, why do you still write books? You're so Mr. Digital. And my answer always was because people read them. Like, I don't know why the world is obsessed with or. Yeah, right. People love or people are like, even in politics, blue or red, right? Like, you know, digital or physical. You know, like the life is gray. Everything is the middle.

6:32So I, I, of course, physical cards and comic books and and I'll do toys like because the world is physical, but the world is also digital and the world continues to become more digital, not less digital. Right. So, you know, all those hours today that are being played on Roblox 40 years ago were kids that were outside playing physically. So, you know, things are changing, but not to zero. We're not in Ready Player One full time yet. So true. Thankfully, that's why I keep doing those things. Where do I see VFriends sitting? Really at the center. You know, I think VFriends is probably going to end up being the biggest business I ever built.

7:14You know, I feel like it's a very substantial intellectual property, collectible business. I think the characters represent the things I most care about in the world. So I think these 250 characters are going to allow me to extend all these things I want the world to know about. And so Patient Panda will take the baton in helping people learn that patience matters, not just Gary V's content, the one that you've been consuming for 20 years. I've done a lot as a human and put myself on the map, but I'm not going to reach all 8 billion people. Meanwhile, a VFriends cartoon that talks about tenacity and hustle and kindness can be dubbed in Italian and be running on Netflix Italy in five years.

7:56And I'll be accomplishing the same ambition, which is my whole life has been about really a framework of selfish and selfless behavior. Right. Selfishly, I'm an entrepreneur. I want to build things for me and my family. I think I'm allowed. I think you're allowed. I think everyone's allowed. However, I do like leaving a positive impact. I want other entrepreneurs. I get pumped when entrepreneurs come up to me that basically make more money than me taking my learnings and applying them. I'm like, good for you. That makes me happy. That doesn't make me unhappy. So I think that's kind of the goal with the framework here.

8:30Yeah. And when people have asked me, you know, how you describe Gary Vee, I say, well, he's got the tenacity of a cougar, but the dude's really empathetic if you go watch his shit, man. Like it is like, I see it. You, you live and breathe it. You couldn't have spoken any better because it's clear that you are selfish motherfucker going after your legacy. However, if you really pay attention, the way you do it is truly empathetic and the, and the messages that you push are positive. And I commend, I commend you for that. Thank you, brother. I really do. I do not see a world where you're like, I believe that all of us as animals, especially us men, we want to protect and provide for our families.

9:18Like, I don't know, like, you know, we're animals. What do you want from me? I'm sorry. We're not robots. Exactly. But at the same token, I was born and raised in a manner that has a lot of compassion. I feel feelings. I do care about my fellow man. I do not want to win at the expense of someone else. Ryan, you know, like I want to be better than the businesses I'm competing with, but I don't want bad for them. And then there's a billion other people, billions of other people that are in businesses that have nothing to do with mine. And I cheer for all of them. I do not understand envy and jealousy.

9:55You shitting on someone else and saying they're not as good as you think they are does not make you better. And until people figure that out, we will continue to have a lot of people who spend all their energy envying instead of building. Yeah, man. Well, guess what's exciting? I'm holding the cards and I'm going to open some packs. I got a few more questions, but let's have some fun, man. It's not fun. So you can narrate for me as I go through this. I will. All right. Your team sent some packs. We've got the boxes. I got a local guy. My voice hooked me up with some stuff here. So let's open. First hand on.

10:31We got Diamond Hands. Hen. Yep. Have conviction. Believe in what you believe in. Nice one. Good character. Kind Kadoo. The Kind Kadoo is an interesting one to talk about for a second. because I want VFriends to be a global brand. As you know, kindness is a huge part of like what I try to push. I didn't go with a kangaroo. I didn't go with a koala. I didn't go with some other easier known character. I went with an African-based character. And one of my long-term strategies is to build out certain characters in certain regions where the kids or the culture might feel more of an association towards it.

11:12So kind could do was a very thoughtful reason because I do. I'm very bullish on Africa in general over the next 30, 40 years and wanted to have one of the more important traits represented by an animal that was indigenous to the area. You right there just showed the thoughtfulness you put in all this. It's crazy. Creative crab. You can see one of the reasons I love creative crab. I don't know if you felt this, Ryan, But when you like look at it, it's very easy to like this character very fast. There's a level of like instant. One of the things that's been really working for V friends is it doesn't take a lot to like get associated with the universe, meaning I'm getting a lot of emails here in the first couple of weeks of people who are like, wow, I knew nothing about this.

11:53My friend is into you that we bought a box. We opened it. I can't believe I already have a favorite character. And I reply to them. I'm like, that's because it's easy to understand. You either associate with being creative. So you're like, oh, I'm super creative. I love the creative crab. or you had a crab as a pet when you were a kid and you loved crabs or you grew up in Maryland or out in Boston and you loved crabs. And so, yeah, Creative Crab is very popular. I grew up in South Carolina, and I'm a big boy. And I like eating some crab down in Charleston. So it made me think, you know, just the association growing up, going down to Charleston.

12:29Sympathetic squid. Very, very solid character. Again, read the back of this card, Rye. Yep. Let's see. We got it. Competitive advantage, compassionate and attentive, reaches out to support others without judgment. And then what about the quote from Sympathetic Sweat on the bottom there? With open arms and a caring heart, I'm here for you. So this, what just happened there is been the other big piece of feedback. The amount of, first of all, a lot of dads collect trading cards and a lot of conversation about how they love this set because they're going to collect it with their daughter and they've been able to find a hobby with their daughter.

13:06So that's been huge. Second, a lot of parents just stumbling on the product and they're reading the back of these cards and they're going, wait a minute, I want my kid to care about these characters. These characters are opening up the dialogue to things that I want to teach them. I think parenting is hard and I think we should be helping parents more and VFriends has that ability. Yeah. And I've heard you made the connection and look, I have four boys under the age of 15 and let's just say a trading card fever has hit the offered house and uh v friends is on the list and but i love it for that very reason they're you know they're not nines the youngest 15 is the oldest and i love the message you know like it's it's it's teaching them okay the collectibles the business side the things i love teaching them but the messages are positive and you know it's still i think you struck this really great balance between i've heard you use the Sesame Street comparison.

14:00Um, but it doesn't feel too kiddy. It feels, I don't know. It's, it's, you're, you're hitting exactly open another pack. You know, this is exactly what I care about. Like I, your boys represent my target. I, I, I want good virtues. It's kind of like Gary Vee. Gary Vee is cool to teenage boys, but I'm pushing positivity in a good way on them. I want B friends to do a very similar thing. I want to basically I want to trick kids into thinking these characters are cool so that they then start to care about being sympathetic, being, you know, being, you know. And then there's other things. I mean, like, let's go.

14:38There's there's tenacity. There's there's it's not just soft skills. There's plenty of what I would call alpha skills in these characters as well. Five, five, five, 55, 55 fan. Yep. And let's look at the back of that one. Competitive advantage. It's Pokemon meets Sesame Street. It just hit me. I don't know why. That's probably a unique take, Gary, but it just hit me. 5555 fan shows that support is about quality, not quantity, has unwavering loyalty, feels like the strength of thousands pushing you towards every victory. You don't need 555555 fans, just one person who supports you enough. And I'm blind as a bat, So I can't even read the quote.

15:24My contact is blurry. This is real life here, Gary. I'm 48, buddy. I just turned 48 yesterday. Bro, I'm 49, and Dustin's filming right now. He's laughing. I've become creep blind, too. It's devastating. Hey, James, don't turn 50. Don't turn 50. I'm pushing it. All right. Authentic anaconda. There we go. Oh, I've got a little parallel after it, too. The rationale rattlesnake. Yep. Is that a gold parallel? Oh, man, I'm getting excited. I'm shaking. That's what all the videos say. I'm shaking. I got a very well. And then finally, pleasant platypus. Yeah, I think, you know, what's going to be fun about this is I recently joined the board of Spin Master, which owns Paw Patrol and all these great.

16:09It's the third biggest toy company in the world behind Hasbro and Mattel. And I'm just in this great chapter in my career, kind of making this more broad for a lot of people that are listening. I've had all these accomplishments. I've done all these things, but, you know, I'm invigorated by being in a new chapter and doing new stuff. And I just really hope it motivates people to realize you can change your script at any point in the movie. You know, and and I really I'm I'm challenged and I'm invigorated and I'm enjoying it. And I hope it inspires others to try some creative ventures, some different stuff that's been on their mind.

16:47It's like, I don't know, you know, back to us being 49 and 48. I could you imagine if you and I told our 22 year old selves that same fire that you have in your stomach right now, you'll have it at 49. We would have been ecstatic to know that to be true. 100 percent. I wouldn't have believed it. Yeah, it would have been hard. You know, I don't know how I thought about age and all that. I've always been pretty a wisdom oriented kid. I was patient, but it might have been too hard to believe it. I would have been like exactly the same. And yeah. And then I would have said to myself, yeah, exactly the same.

17:22No different. No, every day. Gary, talk to, what's your feelings on the overall hobby? You know, this series is about the hobby. Yeah. V friends fitting right into it. It's a huge launch. Everybody, Hey, go out there. We're going to hit all the channels where you can do that. And if you're in South Carolina, I'll send you there, but talk to me about what your feelings are in the hobby overall? I think the hype of 2020 COVID, you know, 2019 into 2020 COVID, and then the bubble bursting when we all came back to real life and had other things to spend money on besides cards on eBay during COVID. I think that that was really good for the hobby of where it's at now because we're only a couple of years removed from a lot of rookie speculation and other speculation losing a lot of value.

18:12I think the consumer right now is more educated than ever. I think that they're being more thoughtful. I say a lot that people will not buy Jackson Dart rookies the way they bought Mac Jones rookies. And I use that analogy as not that I think Jackson's better or worse than Mac. It's that people are starting to be more strategic and thoughtful. And I think that's really good for the hobby. And I think that the hobby is probably in the best place it's been in a very, very long time because there's so much content, podcasts, social media, breaking platforms. All this stuff really is helping. Yeah.

18:53Speaking of breaking rad, that's my boys and I are breaking. We're actually partnering up with SI Collectibles. It's fun. I mean, you know, I'm living to live vicariously with my kids and teach them business and everything else. So it's got a lot of, I don't know, there's sort of the stigma that goes with it. But I think the positive outweigh the negatives. And I think you can teach your kids. And the negatives are controllable. Like, you know, like this is just good parenting. Like the positives in social media outweigh the negatives. Yet the whole world has decided to spend 100 percent of its time worrying about the negatives.

19:29You know, like I feel as though the negatives in a hobby is you allow your kids to treat it like gambling. And all they really care about is opening up expensive packs, hoping for a miracle lottery ticket. But but for example, let me give you my favorite thing about the hobby. If someone was disciplined and educated and put in the work, the amount of money people can make by going to dollar boxes at shows and stores, buying cards for a dollar and selling them for$4.99,$6.99,$9.99 on eBay. Somebody with$100 listening right now, in a year, only buying dollar cards for the dollar box, if they put in the hours of, you know, because you've got to be really knowledgeable.

20:16You can't look up every card at a show or at a store. It'll take you too long. But if you got really good, even with AI, even with image, if you really knew your shit, the fact that you take a hundred dollars and i'm serious about this and turn that into 20 000 in a year by only buying one dollar cards and flipping them for five to ten a piece which is all day long with these dollar boxes at shows and stores you teach your sons that your daughters that that is a skill set that they'll take with their whole lives around arbitrage market dynamics marketing, putting in the work ethic on tedious behaviors and things to get to a goal.

20:59So, you know, you're in control. There's good and bad to everything in life. You're in control. What's it been like working with Topps? It's been, I mean, in many ways, it's been a dream come true because, I mean, it's the company that like I most looked up to as a child. And in other ways, really the only negative was they didn't believe how much demand there would be for the product. So we didn't make enough. I was trying to tell them the whole year. I was like, I'm telling you, we're not making enough. Um, and so I'd be lying if I didn't say I was disappointed that these boxes have gone from$99 a box on presale to now close to 500 a box.

21:39That has been a bummer because I know that that has kept it out of the hands of many people who can't afford a$500 box who could, who would and could afford a$99 box. So that's my one, you know, regret slash razz at tops. I wish they listened to me a little more, but I was empathetic to why they didn't, they didn't know, they weren't sure. They appreciated my conviction. Um, but they had to make their own business decisions, but I'm excited for, um, for 2026 version of this set. Yeah. Anything you can say with what would be changing for the next round? You know, hopefully they'll make, we haven't really, like there'll be, So there's 250 characters plus in V Friends Land.

22:19This set only has 100. So I'm comfortable in saying that we'll have most, if not all, of the characters that were not in this set. And there's a lot of big ones. Rare Robot, Resilient Red Devil, Motivated Monster. There's some big, very popular characters that were not accountable. Aunt Gary B., my personal favorite, were not in this set. So that I can say for sure. And I can also say that we'll have a bunch of cool inserts like we did in this. But we still got a couple more months of building the product. How many texts do you get a week for people asking you for cards? These first – it came out two weeks ago.

23:01In the first two weeks, it's dozens a day on text, email, or DM from people in my life that I'm more acquaintances or random acquaintances with than let's say friends and family. Sure. or fans on social. So it's definitely, it's hitting for sure. Yeah. Now, how many do you keep yourself? You got to have some stocked away. Yeah, I do. I have a couple of cases sealed because I want to keep sealed product forever. And then I'm building a collection. I'm collecting the erupts, that very rare insert. I'm going to try to collect the whole set of that. It's, it's definitely, it's, I want to wait a little bit because if I'm going to buy it on the open market, I don't want to like impact the market too much, you know?

23:50So I'm kind of, I'll wait in a couple more months and let the storm settle, but I'll be collecting for sure. So if I get some hits with my kids, can I get Gary V to sign and kind of send your team some cars to sign for their collection? Make their year. I told them I'm talking to Gary V today. They're just like, you're V friends. You're not Gary to them. You're Gary to me. I'm like, yeah, you're V friends. Yeah, I don't know V friends. I'm like, you idiot. Yeah, I know V friends. Have they seen the eBay comps yet, right? You got to show them what these things are selling for. Their heads are going to spin.

24:28Yeah. I've almost kept them away from it because I wanted them to just kind of take in the organics a little bit of it. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, of course, because once the commerce part comes up, it eats up the oxygen of the room and the value, not the message. I get that. Yep. Yep. Any final thoughts on this product and what it means to you? Honestly, I'll flip it and what it could mean to all of you. I've said it already. I am telling you right now, if you're a dad like I was, where you're constantly thinking about shared interests with your children. some come easy some don't my son is my carbon clone and likes every single thing i like and it's the easiest thing in the world my daughter has different interests i i cannot explain to someone who's lucky enough to have somebody who's four to eight four to ten in their life right now this is a hugely awesome collectible having common interests with your children i think is one of the great gifts in the world so my final thought is if you're looking for an interest with your child listen let's talk about a bunch of bros who get sad when their boys aren't into sports I have a couple buddies like this you know maybe they're not into sports like you are with basketball cards or football cards but maybe this is something you could be in with and then and then the other final thought is not about them being collectors of vFriends but vFriends inspiring them to do their version of vFriends I've always wanted to do something like this now I'm doing it maybe you've always wanted to open an ice cream store down the shore or at the lake because your grandpappy did and you've been dragging your feet for seven years talking about it how about this interview and me doing vFriends inspiring you to go you know rent some space and opening the ice cream shop like never never ever ever give up on your dreams and execute on them And so whether this leads to you being a collector of VFriends and the value of that, or if this leads to you creating some version of your own VFriends in a different form factor, in a different dream that you've had, I hope one of those two things happens.

26:41I'm going to let that breathe on its own, brother. Thank you, Bill. Obviously, it's hard to find, but any calls to action for everyone? Yeah, I mean, you know, VEEfriends.com is definitely the site to go to. We have free cartoons, free stuff for kids. You should definitely check that out. And eBay, type in VFriends. Go to completed sold items. You'll get a real sense of the market. If you're a flipper collector like I am and you're curious about getting in, that's the way to do the homework. Always gracious with your time, brother. I appreciate you. Always happy to support, brother. Talk soon.

27:13All right, brother. See you. Take care. When I started this series, it was all about the business. But Gary brings it back to what this is all about for me. My four boys teaching them business. also teaching them great characteristics like Gary talked about, hustling, getting ahead, repetitive tasks, learning business through the lens of this. It's an incredible hobby for investing and learning and collecting and doing different things. And I couldn't be more proud to talk with Gary today about VFriends and everything he said and he's doing with these characters in a positive way, bringing to life these characters that teach our kids and different people, traits of accountability, responsibility, and empathy.

27:56And again, I can't thank Gary enough for coming on the show. You know where to find us, ryanisright.com. All the highlight clips from this incredible series, links to VFriends, Gary's info, and we appreciate you. We couldn't do it without you. Thank you for making us number one. We'll see you next time on Right About Now. this has been right about now with ryan alford a radcast network production visit ryanisright.com for full audio and video versions of the show or to inquire about sponsorship opportunities thanks for listening