Can You Monetize Your Passion? l Scott Jochim

0:00I don't think people think you can make money in the thing you like. Look at Barbie right now. Barbie's back in a real way. And if you were obsessed with Barbie three, four years ago, if you had started a meaningful podcast, an Instagram account, a TikTok, there's a percentage chance that Mattel and Barbie would have reached out to you in these last six months or 12 months and paid you 50 ,000 for a sponsorship if you were the leading. Obviously you have to be good at this, everyone who's listening. Vayner Nation, how are you? I'm really excited about this episode of the podcast because anytime you have a guest on the show that's named Mr.

0:31Squishy, You know, it's gotta be decent. It's gotta be fun. And that's exactly what this is. It's also pretty entrepreneurial. I'll let Scott, my guest, give you a ton about his journey. I wanna use this as a double bubble as I like to call it. I wanna hit on a couple things. One, for the general audience, I've been thinking a lot about side hustles, opportunities, the world's changing. It's just very clear that the way people think about their careers, you're seeing a much more multi-dimensional aspect where people think about their core job and then they think about side hustles or having three side jobs to represent the job.

1:11And I recently posted something in social about how much of an arbitrage there is for dog walking businesses because so many people bought dogs during COVID and how lucrative that opportunity is. And it's around a passion that I think a lot of people have. And so that was fun. And I've already within weeks gotten a lot of emails from people who are making hundreds of extra dollars a week and are ecstatic because they love dogs. And I think what Mr. Squishy Scott represents in this vending machine conversation we have is actually a huge opportunity for a lot of people listening to the podcast, whether they do it with him, with us, him and I and our JV around V friends, we'll get into that.

1:51Or if you find something else you want to sell. I you know the day I met him I was like oh my god you know if the internet was around and I found him when I was 16 I would have done this and so we're going to talk about the small toys industry I'm going to talk about at some point in the podcast why I've teamed up with him we've launched the vFriends vending machine this will air probably we're probably going to be in Chicago doing the national sports card the national trading card convention where we'll have some vending machine stuff but we've also talked to a lot of you in the vfriends community but not in the broader gary vaynerchuk gary v community about this opportunity so we'll there'll be an opportunity for you to reach out uh dustin while we're doing this episode come up with a url with the vfriends team of where people can email or not url an email where people that are listening that want to take an opportunity and what we're doing together with scott but that's all a big setup for a really fun episode where i think people are going to learn a whole bunch so scott Why don't you tell the Vayner Nation who you are, what you do, and we'll go into a little bit of your entrepreneurial journey and backstory, and then we'll talk about some of the current opportunities in the marketplace.

2:58Well, I think I'd like to start by my life is about play, passion, persistence, but mostly play. The side hustle has always been part of, I think, everybody's lifestyle surrounding what I've been doing since I've been in high school. I started in high school writing a book, surprisingly, on auctions in Edison, New Jersey. Who here remembers or has any relation to Edison, New Jersey? Me too. Yeah, that was where I got my big start, which was the U.S. customs auctions, the government auctions out of Edison. They were on Route 1, right? Yes, yes. And I got, you know, I'm going to get my high school in trouble a little bit.

3:42I left high school early to go to these auctions to buy goods. Did you go to Edison High or did you go to J.P. Stevens? I went, well, I actually went to Morristown. I went to Chester, New Jersey. Ah, got it. And so, you know, what was super fun and super fascinating in my transition from high school to college was I just continued that hustle mentality, that idea of, okay, so I'm buying stuff in high school. I'm reselling it. Too bad the internet was not huge back then. I had an AOL address. That was super fun. But my teachers figured out what I was doing. They were like, you're bringing scuba gear, old Bibles, toy sets.

4:26Can we buy some of them? And all of a sudden, I started to get a reputation. And my English teacher, which I'll be honest, school was not my best area of expertise. But my English teacher came to me and said, hey, you should write a small pamphlet. And this pamphlet turned into a book. And this book actually got published. And so I ran into college with a published book that was actually being distributed by Success Magazine. And that leverage, that little bit of leverage was just a stepping stone that constantly gave me this opportunity to open new doors. I love that. And that's the idea of this transition.

5:01So I walked into college. I'm a freshman. I have this cool book behind me. I was getting royalties and I wanted a place to spend the money. And so rather than spend it like typical college students, I wanted to invest it. Okay. And so I went two directions. What year is this, just for painting a picture? 93. 93. Understood. It was a while ago. I graduated high school in 94. I mean, we're not, you know, I'm with you right here. I don't know. That seemed very recent. I get where we're getting, we're not like in the 2000 graduating class anymore, but understood. So you're a couple of years ahead of me.

5:39Understood. You go into college. You want to invest in. What do you do? Well, I run into an engineer at the end of my freshman year. Okay. And it was Bob Ferris. And he had started a virtual reality company. Okay. And he needed investment and he needed some strategic alliances. And I had money. at the time. I figured I would invest in his company. I would involve myself in his process. And it was great. And so we took the journey together for the next two to three years. Yeah, because that was the boom of like technology, right? Like we were in it. Yeah. And so the opportunity came. Disney came knocking and we had a little technology we've been working on, some scent technology, some aroma technology.

6:23And I had a choice. I could stay in school or I could invest full time working with Ferris and Ferris Productions at the time. And so I made the leap to the disappointment of my family. I dropped out of school and I jumped in full force and worked full time for this engineer and this company. We built simulators. And all of a sudden, once Disney came knocking and they used this technology for some of their rides, some of you might be familiar, it was called Soaring Over California. It's now called soaring, but it has aromas being released on a time-based event. That is the same technology we worked on and we used as a team.

7:02And so we leveraged this. Early into my career with Ferris, there was a great camaraderie, but at some point I wanted to do my own thing. And so I made the biggest leap of my life. I gave him back all of his stock for one thing, freedom, freedom to make choices, freedom to try to do my own thing. We left on great terms. He got back most of his company. I got my freedom to build whatever I wanted. My first client was General Motors. I built NASCAR simulators for them, full-scale NASCARs with hydraulics that would give people the idea of racing on their tracks and traveled around the nation with it.

7:40Love doing these products. We could spend hours with all the clients and all the cool tech that we've built, But the full circle on this is years later, Bob Ferris calls me up and he goes, hey, you want to come to New York? I'm going to be ringing the bell. We're going public. I'd like you to stand by my side. It's very nice. The amount of respect and empathy and what gratitude he gave to me at that statement. The amount of money gone. It didn't matter. It was the feeling that I had built something with this gentleman. He gave me the respect of saying, I want to ring a bell with you in New York City.

8:17That was priceless. To this day, I would still take that moment over the millions of dollars, 100%. And so that has been my series of experiences over the past few years. One of our clients was even Lego. Everybody here loves Lego animations. We were the first company ever to animate Legos and bring Legos to life. And it was an amazing tour. where Lego came to us and they said, okay, we're launching this new series of products. We'd like to animate this in 3D with aromas and have you travel around. And one of the coolest things is we travel on this huge trailer that we'd animated and brought to the Toys R Uses and the targets of the world.

8:56And this activation was about experiencing if Legos and animations could meld together. We all know it does now. Of course. But the kids would actually come out and this is what was amazing about it. The kids would actually come out and visit me with their Lego creations. And that was so heartwarming to me. The fact that these children would come out and be like, oh, look what I built. And then I could be like, look what I built. And we would share that moment. And I realized that fascination I had, the connection I wanted with the customer. I wanted that customer to feel like they were listened to.

9:26I wanted the customer to feel, even if it was a 10-year-old kid showing me his Lego sculpture, it was the coolest thing ever for 10 months. And part of the contract, and Gary, you'll appreciate this, is I wanted about 30 ,000 Legos when I was done. And I backed my trailer into Connecticut and have them dump Legos. Why? Because I wanted to build my conference table out of Legos. I love it. I just thought it would be fun. So I spent the next few months on the floor building a conference table out of Legos. And it's that type of experience that I've carried. Let me ask you a question, Scott. I think just to bring a lot of value to a lot of people that are listening to this podcast, what do you think has allowed you to keep the joyful adolescence part in your life?

10:14Because I would argue, as I continue to go down my journey of life, professionally and personally, I wonder and I think a lot about why am I happier than most people? And it weighs on me in a great way. One, it keeps me grateful on a 24-7, 365. Even when I am dealing with challenges, is, you know, last week was a challenging week for me personally and professionally. And yet I'm just still like genuinely happy. And so I think about it a lot because I'm also a person who has a large audience now and I'm a good communicator. And much like I have spent the last 15 years enabling people to find angles in business and marketing mentally.

10:59But I do find my ability to hold on to my youth, me being childish as a good thing, as a strength, my never fully converting to full pledge adulthood and holding on to two to 30 percent. I don't know if I've done the work yet to realize what the number is between the 2 % and 30 % that I have in me. But I can tell you whether it's 2%. Let's say it's 2 % or 3%. I have a very funny feeling that that 2 % or 3 % in my mix right now has a huge impact on my joy and my peace of mind. And honestly, my professional success. So I'm jumping in here a little bit just to bring macro value to it. Because I know this can impact.

11:46Regardless if people are listening right now or into collectibles, IPs, entrepreneurship. this can help everyone who's listening. Do you have a sense of why you've been able to hold on to this youthful, when I hear a man has a career, you know, and decides to take months to build a conference table out of Legos, that's a level of youthfulness that I don't even possess. So, and I know you a little bit now because we're doing business together with BeFriends and your vending machine business. And I find you to be really likable. I really like you. and I feel like this has something to do with it.

12:21And I'm curious if you've consciously held onto it, subconsciously, or was it subconscious and then it became conscious and you've doubled down on it? Break this down because I think we can change a person's life right now. Passion. You look at it directly at passion. What do you do on your off time? What do you do that you love? Do you love sneakers? Do you love building? Do you love helping people? Do you love playing? Do you like changing people's lives? Do you like coaching? whatever your passion is, whatever you spend your off time, the time that is most valuable, we all have the 24 hours in a day.

12:54But what do you spend when you have the most valuable resource at your fingertips? Where do you spend it? Is it social media? That's fine. Is it playing with toys? Great. Social media. What are you consuming? Like people like, I, you know, you're talking about, I mean, my first book was, I mean, literally this little book right there is literally cash in on your passion. So you can imagine I'm excited and and surprised by your answer. Like, you know, I don't think people think you can make money in the thing you like. I think if people who like the thrift in Brooklyn and San Francisco and all these, Austin, on the weekends realized that they can make $250 ,000 a year in profit on thrifting full-time, literally waking up at seven in the morning on Monday, having breakfast and being ecstatic instead of going to the office to go to 16 Salvation Armies and 13 other thrift stores and then can't wait for Friday because that's estate sales and can't wait for Saturday because that's garage sales.

13:54I don't think that person realizes that if they didn't buy just for themselves what they want to wear to be cool, that they could buy the other 87 t-shirts that are at the thrift store that they're buying for three bucks or seven bucks and can sell for 29 on all these platforms, right? like Ari or eBay or things of that nature. I don't think the thrifter right now listening thinks or the person that's just fully upset. I just watched a Ray Romano movie on Amazon, which was really good by the way, something about Queens. And in the movie, he plays a part of a dad who's got this kid, Sticks, this basketball kid.

14:28But in it, the dad is clearly obsessed with Rocky. Like he just references Rocky the movie. There's a scene in the movie where he puts in a CD, a DVD and he takes out Rocky II. and I, as we're sitting here, I'm like, the person that's fully immersed in Rocky, or look at Barbie right now. Barbie's back, the way, and if you were obsessed with Barbie three, four years ago, if you had started a meaningful podcast, an Instagram account, a TikTok, there's a percentage chance that the Barbie movie company would have reached, Mattel and Barbie would have reached out to you in these last six months or 12 months and paid you 50 ,000 for a sponsorship.

15:07If you were the leading, obviously you have to be good at this, everyone who's listening. But I don't think the person that is a lawyer making 319 or the person that's a retail store manager making 87 thinks they can make that same number about Barbie. And I know they can. Yes, they can. Yeah. And it's even more than that. It's authenticity. So you've got to mix passion with authenticity. If you take those two together, if you're authentic about what you're talking about, it's not about just the hustle. it's about believing what you're talking about believing what you're flipping or what you're invested in i mean you and i talked briefly on the phone and we had such a connection such an electric connection with who we are as people like just ingrained as individuals enthusiastic passionate authentic and it came across on a webcam yes and and it was just i'm not sure I don't even use the term webcam anymore, but way to date.

16:01That's 90, guys. That was a fun opportunity. Keep going. I'm sure I use so many terms. Oh, but I don't even get started with me. Not only do I use ridiculous terms, I can't pronounce 33 % of the things I say. So I'm right here with you. But I agree with you. I think the authenticity matters. But keep going. And so what I like to look at is, and I've met a lot of people who make a lot of money who are miserable at their jobs. But they go out every weekend, and they're boating with their friends, or they're going out every weekend and they're doing wine tastings. I'm like, why don't you do boating?

16:33Why don't you do wine tasting? Because the world believes that you got to eat shit Monday through Friday to then enjoy the weekend. And by the way, this gets into another reason that school fucks me up so heavily, because I think it's being taught subconsciously there from childhood. I couldn't agree with you more. The thought of eating shit Monday through Friday to be able to enjoy Saturday and Sunday. This is why people like we need four day work weeks because subconsciously people are like fuck man between kids and responsibilities and laundry and other shit I can't even enjoy my two fucking days that I barely get and like the thought of like like I and by the way Scott I lived this life from k through 12 and even further into college I understand what it feels like to like look forward to the weekend or to vacations or hoping it snows or hoping I get sick I spent 10 years of my life hoping I would get sick because it meant that I the school, that's how much I didn't want it.

17:26The thought of doing that from 22 years old to 70 is insane to me. It's miserable. It's, it's, it's miserable. I, it's funny for me. I like Mondays. I actually look forward to money. Monday for me is exciting because I'm raring to go. Everybody got to relax on Sunday. I let them have their time, but man, Monday, I can get a whole lot. I can get going. I can, I can figure out what's going on in my world. Mondays are great. It's a start of a week. It's a restart. It's a rekindling of what I'm trying to do. So for me, it's about passion. It's about authenticity. It's finding what you spend your time on and make that monetarily make that part of your life.

18:03And by the way, unlike if we were doing this in 1965 and we were at a conference, not on the internet talking about this today, that's practical. Meaning everyone's listening right now. I'm like, all right, you two fucking fantasy land guys. Like, fuck you, I have a mortgage, I have children, I have debt. My big point is in 1967, you're right. Like, what do you do? You get home at seven and like, but in 2023, you get home at seven and you can either go to the bar, join a softball team, watch Netflix, decompress and try to enjoy some part of your day because you just went six, seven, eight, 10, 12 hours.

18:44Or you can say, fuck, I got to get out of this. And if I do my podcast or my channel or my side hustle on, you know, 8 p.m. after I do a little family time to 10 p.m. instead of playing video games or pool or darts or watching TV, those two, three hours Monday through Friday can add up to 10 hours in a week. You do that for a year or two. You might be able to build the thing at night that gets you off the drug that you don't want during the day. Yes. And, and, and, and, and speaking of family time, the idea is how do you incorporate your family into what you do? And for many years, I've got two daughters, uh, 10 and 10 and five, and they are my world.

19:24And I love to try to incorporate different things into what I do with what you're fortunate. You sell mini toys and it's cool to them. As you can imagine, if somebody is listening and they do concrete production, I'm not sure that seven-year-old Johnny's gonna love that. But to your point, if more people went into their passion in business, it is more likely that going thrifting or supporting the podcast on the Muppets. Like literally, I know today if someone is the most educated and most passionate listening right now with the Muppets, I'm talking Kermit the fucking frog, that if they become a content producer at scale and do it two hours every night, that a year from now, they could be flabbergasted on the opportunities that come to them.

20:08And by the way, everybody who's listening, why do I know this? This is a hypothesis for me. I've been talking about this for 15 years. I have the unlimited inbox email receipts from people, unlimited, hundreds and hundreds, and now thousands and thousands of people who are just like who's listening right now saying this isn't real. Some people are, Scott, do you know some people are listening right now in their car or walking their dog or exercising and are even frustrated by us saying, do you realize what's going on in the world? There's a recession. There's a this, but this conversation needs to be had because it's true.

20:41Yes. I happiness and mental health are so key to my life. And I navigate what I do and the choices I make and who I do business with because of those. Let's be pulling around a time. So what happens? How do you get to the small toys? How do I made big toys for a while? Simulators, General Motors. I've made Toyota Boss simulators. I've established huge big things. But the problem was I was feast and famine. A lot of the times what would happen is I would build a product for six months and then I would be waiting for three months for the cycle of the new client, the new product would come in. It'd be one, two, three a year.

21:19And I wanted to affect more people. I wanted to do more with the public. And the opportunity came. I was at the New York International Toy Fair and somebody happened to come into my booth and they said, hey, I know you're building these really cool books. I transitioned surprisingly into tech. So, you know, you're talking books, right? Now, the tech I did was books that come to life. So the whole idea was you read a book, you get your phone, you scan the book and the book comes to life. The dinosaur crawls out, the princess waves of wand. What year was that? This was 2005. So when you scan phone, like we're not in smartphone area, so I'm a little confused.

22:00We just started the transition between mobile webcam to mobile phone. The iPhone had the standard, you know, front-facing, rear-facing cameras. We were able to now to have people use a mobile phone. There's enough phones and families to actually have iPads that were available. And so we thought we were on the cusp of something big. And I went into it hard. I went into this whole idea of what I call a digital frontier, part of the other business that I run, is the idea of how do you do physical with digital. So it had to be a little bit later though, right? Because the iPhone came out in June of 2007.

22:35So we started with webcam in 2005. I see. Now I'm following. Thank you. I was confused. Got it. So the book would do the web... Got it. originally the book, it would be webcam. It would be on desktop. And then as, thank you because I was a little confused. Keep going. And I wanted to disrupt print media. I wanted to disrupt puzzles, charts, tattoos, stickers, books. And love this idea of a digital bridge between physical products and the digital need of kids. Parents want to buy something digital. Kids, sorry, parents want to buy something physical. Kids want something digital. It's really hard as a Christmas gift to open up an app.

23:10I just, but will a parent buy a book? Yes. If that book comes with an app, will the kid use the book more? Yes. It's a different type of storytelling. My favorite part of the world now, as we sit together, and again, everyone who's listening, I'm jumping in, though you might be frustrated, like don't interrupt Scott or this and that. I'm really trying to bring value. We are really in a digital world. This physical digital combo is so real. It's funny. We're talking right now, a headline that caught my attention this morning as I was walking to work was the Oppenheimer or whatever the movie crushed right like 235 million and it's just like rolling loud went down in Miami this weekend I saw what happened at VCon record numbers for the national in Chicago that we're going to this week like we were in the house for so long we're so immersed in our digital devices like it's just very clear not just the kids but the grown-ups because really our behaviors with digital and and the real world are more similar than people think from boomers there's plenty of boomers sitting at their desktop computer right now for seven hours shopping and yelling at each other uh or supporting each other uh and on on their desktop computer or laptop so it's just very clear to me that the the physical and digital world is like very real in healthly both are very healthy and when you can be smart and blend them together and let them work together it's really cool earlier if you were listening to the podcast you heard a sound in the background from my mic it was because my friend bridget's here a former vayner uh employee who's like friends with a ton of people she's just visiting the office she decided to sit in i hope when you were talking about the vending machine i have one here in the office and she took one and she opened it and i saw her while you were talking scan the qr code i wasn't sure if it was working or not so i took the piece of paper and i did on my own phone and i was like man, people are gonna buy this little toy for 50 cents, these V friends toys.

25:04They're gonna get the little piece of paper. There's a QR code post COVID, pre COVID. I'm getting some sort of very small percentage of people knowing what to do with that thing and scanning it. Post COVID, everyone from five to 105 now knows what to do with a QR code. Every, you know, the amount of kids with an iPad, the amount of parents with an iPhone, being able to scan it goes to obviously to our video on YouTube. that combo of digital and physical is pretty rad. It's, for me, I saw it back in early 2005 of where this bridge would be. And we talk about failure a lot. I love failing. I failed so much in my career with so many products I have on a shelf that didn't go anywhere.

25:48Of course. But I have, and I love it. I love failing because it shows me a door that closes and I need to do something that opens. You also tried. Do you know how many people that also are yelling at us behind this episode right now, like that's not real, also never try. Oh, I mean, just for the audience to understand, I built, I think, 11 books, 15 puzzles, five charts, tattoos and stickers, and it failed miserably. The public was not ready for this concept. Yeah, too early. The webcam thing, a lot of parents didn't know how to use webcams, didn't have enough yet. The kid's in front of a computer.

26:25You're like, it makes sense in 2005, 6, 7. It just didn't work. And it still is a hard sell today. I mean, we're talking, I've been on QVC. I've been on The View. And I've tried all of it. And it's just, there's a disconnect. People want right now, still today, the book to be a book. And that's fine. And this is the transition to the squishy toys. And so I realized, okay, how do I find a platform that works? and at the show at the New York International Toy Fair, I was debuting all these Pop R products, ran into a group that had these cute little pencil toppers and they had what's called an MMOG, a massive multiplayer online game.

27:07And they were trying to get these little pencil toppers to work on an MMOG. And it was fascinating to me because their users and everything that they were doing with the digital physical connection was working. Inevitably, with what they had, I inevitably bought out their distribution rights, bought out their IP early on, and I transformed that entire product into what today is Squishland. And here's some crazy numbers. I know we're on the cusp of Barbie. So what do you think is the most popular, best-selling toy ever? Of all time? All time. The most popular selling toy of all time is slinky, the pet rock, Mr.

27:56Play-Doh, like what's that thing, the pink stuff. Anyway, go ahead. What's the answer? Hot Wheels. Hot Wheels. Four billion Hot Wheels have been sold. Big shout out, Mattel. What a monster brand. By the way, big shout out for all the garage sailors listening. Hot Wheels, red line. Just for everybody knows, back in the way back day, the Hot Wheels that were sold, the tires had a little red line in the middle. So when I garage sale, I can literally, I'm so knowledgeable about this shit. I can go to a box of Hot Wheels, look at all of them and pull out the red line tire ones, which are like 50, 80, 200 bucks a piece.