How many people like you and i get high on their own supply just because they won somewhere else? They become delusional that they think the next thing's going to work. I think that, as soon as you give the vibe out to the universe that you're smarter than that you're better than you've got it rigged, you're finished the garyvee audio experience all right. Podcast nation. We are back, as i said, uh many times with the befriends nft project exploding i'll, be doing less interviews in 2022, but more meaningful ones or people that i think can bring you uh uh a lot of value and uh our guest today is definitely someone who Will share friends and i've heard really great things, but we've never really been able to chop up.

As a matter of fact, it's the first time we're really even jamming together, but um thomas toll is with us, i'm gon na. Let him uh kind of give us a three minute: five minute five-minute, two-minute kind of comic book number one little bio and how he sees himself or what things he's done and then we'll kind of uh shoot the about um. Some of those themes and and kind of where the world is my friend. How are you i'm good? I'm good, thank you for having me on i'm happy to do it so for everybody on here that you know when they, google, you and says american businessman.

How do you speak about yourself, hopefully very little? That's always uh feels awkward strange and you know so uh look. I've. I've been very fortunate in my life. There's no, no question about it and uh.

What i enjoy doing is looking at opportunities, markets, companies, uh and then applying innovation, technology and so forth to hopefully give that company a uh a chance to to do something both different and profitable um and i've gone through. You know a number of iterations in my career from uh being in tech, venture capital uh. My background is in tech and finance took a big left-hand turn in my life had no media experience, but i was fascinated by the way movies and television was financed and their revenue streams. This was back in 2004.

uh and thought i could bring institutional capital to that ecosystem. Uh built legendary into a a pretty sizable company, um along the way introduced who's listening. What what is legendary a production company yeah so legendary uh was, is a production company that does movies television. There was a comic book division.

There was a digital division, um you know, etc. I sold the company back in 2016 and one of the things that happened along the way is using data science. To do. We felt like a much better job of deploying capital not to make film and television or to predict how audiences would feel and all that stuff i you know i had the chance to partner with chris nolan and folks like that, so that, on the creative side, That that worked well.

But we were really the first company to use data science to find people who were persuadable to find audiences and talk to them in a very uh sort of bespoke way in order to cause an outcome and that that made a big difference. For the company that led me, after selling it uh to form tulco, which i know is not very imaginative in terms of the name, but it's a holding company you're talking to somebody who's got vayner vayner land i mean i'm. I like it just makes it easy. Well, in our case uh, the joke of it was they kept asking me to come up with a name and it's a holding company right.

So it's not a brand right and they kept jokingly instead of calling it newco, they'd call it telco and one day they're like look man, we need to wire money. So what's the name of the company and that i'd love to tell you a better story, but that's that's how that happened and the idea behind telco was we go and buy either whole companies or usually controlling stakes in them and besides, providing uh the capital and And hopefully, some business acumen. We also had telco labs, which was sort of a you know. I was always uh enamored with bell labs and what bell labs meant in terms of innovation.

So we had practitioners of artificial intelligence, machine learning, data science. So we would bring those resources to bear in companies that didn't traditionally have a lot of innovation and would not have access to folks like that, and it's worked well, you know, do you, do you think of yourself as an operator? Well, i certainly you know it was. I ran legendary and so forth, but it's not my it's not my favorite thing to do. My favorite thing is first, go ahead.

I'm sorry! I finished your thought. Well, no, i'm just going to say my favorite thing to do is to partner with great operators uh and provide capital input. You know access to strategic financial, strategic financial arbitrage. Yes, but i think also, if i have any skill sets which is certainly up for debate.

It's looking at a business or looking at a sector and thinking about it differently, right and saying, like seeing white space. Seeing your face that, but you know it's funny. I mean like let's actually break this down, because even just listening to the way, you're deploying humility and a little self-deprecation, because i understand it - and i do it at times, though, i'm a little bit more comfortable being like look, i'm really good at this one thing And i suck - i usually go with i suck at these 99 things, but i'm really good at this one thing: let's break this down, because i now i'm starting to see where i may want to take this. We have a lot of people listening up in 40.

I mean what is it really actually in eight minutes? What's very clear to me: i'm, like oh here's, my connection point with this other winning player, there's a level of self-awareness that i am hypothesizing that we share that allows us to squeeze the out of the things we like and are good at versus over obsessing at Maybe some of the things we're not as good at and in that there's a real level of like happiness and success when i say that does that connect and then, more importantly, for everyone, who's listening? What's the learning in that in their world of what they may be good or not good, at thoughts? Well, i i think, there's a blend of extreme intellectual honesty right being able to look at yourself and if you can, and it's a hard thing is to put ego aside and say what am i good at? What am i not good at what makes me happy and fulfilled, and what are the things that even i, even though i know i wish i were better at it? Is it worth spending the cycles, those 10 000 hours to get good at something versus using my time elsewhere? And you know the other thing that i think in this day and age, i'm not on any social media and i'm not here to bash or whatever else. It's just not interesting for me and you know so because you have to spend so much time, curating and so forth. Uh and i also know i'm bound to say something stupid which then gets amplified and so forth. So i try to be very comfortable with look.

This is what i like. This is what i think i'm pretty good at and i'm gon na stay on. You know on that highway um and at the same time, i think you also have to have the conviction that look if you've, you know, if you've done the homework and you've convinced yourself, that something is real important. It's an opportunity, then, even if there are a chorus of well-meaning people telling you you're, you're, stupid or you're wrong, or you shouldn't do this, even if they're well-intentioned you have to have the convention conviction to say no, no, i i've measured twice.

I'm going to cut once and and on that note, do you factor in regret as a variable to why you're willing to make that cut. So when i hear you say that that's been the story of my life as well, i also am a little bit more. Like white space, new stuff right, one of the big factors in my world - and that is - i just know that when i'm 87 - whether i was right or wrong i'll - always regret not cutting that one time, because i've already gotten to that convinced place and if god Forbid, i let my dad or you if we became best friends for 20 years, and i respected you, anybody if i let them convince me otherwise that i would be too accountable to knowing at the end of the day was my call and i would not be Willing to point fingers and then i would be disappointed in the regret of not tasting the experience and that actually drives me almost more than any, even more than thinking i'm gon na win and make money, and all that like it's, just like the fear of regretting It being like, because i'd rather die on my sword than someone else's. I i think that's well said, and, and frankly i think if that is partnered, if you will with again that awareness to say have, i really thought about this.

Well, i have any expertise. Have i consulted with people and have i convinced myself in a rational fashion, and now i am willing to take that mountain yeah. If you haven't done that work because there's plenty of times how many people like you and i get high on their own supply just because they won somewhere else, they become delusional that they think the next thing's going to work. I i have to tell you that is you know i uh.

I think that, as soon as you give the vibe out to the universe that you're smarter than that you're better than you've got it rigged, you're finished, i i i think the universe will come back and teach you. Are you a? Are you a bach? I know you love football like me and you've accomplished a lot of things i want to buy the new york jets. Do you have a sense of do you like boxing or mma yeah, i mean look, i'm completely convinced that that's what happens to great fighters completely? Well, look at the end of the day. You know, there's something.

Certainly very primal about two people go into a ring and it's pretty clear most of the time at the end of it, and i think that um again, you think about what it takes to be. A great fighter it has to be, you have to be crazy enough and have enough resiliency and hubris to enter that ring, but at the same time you have to have enough of check yourself to say: hey. Is it time to stop? Is it so? I think that's a really i'll show you something keep talking, i'm going to show you something, oh, my goodness, you're going to lose viewers by the minute. If i just sit here, looking good all right, so i just wrote this book right.

This is where we're going. The whole way and it talks about emotional ingredients and i'm listening to you and obviously i've known about your success from afar and i'm getting excited because i'm like man, i think i really landed on something with this concept of ingredients. So here are the ones that i value the fact that you're talking right now for the last seven minutes about number 10 and 11 in combination, and so few people understand that 10 and 11 feel like they're opposites. But when mixed together like making a meal.

That's what you're describing to me right now, i'm literally, i don't know if you see it, i have goosebumps because you have been talking for seven minutes about conviction mixed equally with humility, and that and you know this a lot of people struggle when you carry it's Kind of how i think about the world right now we're living in a very you know this a very red and blue world, and i'm like it's purple. It's if you can't. If you don't go to purple you're, it's not. How are people walking? I mean, no matter how conservative or liberal you are no matter what, if you do not have the intellect or the humility or the curiosity, to understand that it's purple and that's what you're saying right now you are.

You went right down a path right away, which i'm a huge fan of 10 and 11. humility mixed with conviction, because your humility will protect you, because that's what you were talking about doing the home, that humility allows you to stay, curious and open to somebody talking. You out of it along the way or making a point or a data set that may make you look at it slightly different. No, i think that's exactly right and you have hopefully some internal compass that says has i have i earned this right.

Have i put the work in and the reason i have conviction isn't because i read something on the internet or the last person i talked to said no, it's i did the work and therefore i've earned the right to to dig in on this position. Look at in terms of purple the thing that i am hopeful of. I love this country uh. You know i came from very you know: single mom poor background this country afforded me the opportunity to to you know, do what i've, what i've been fortunate enough to do and at the same time i always think about the whole point of this being the united States is that it's a whole big country of different cultures and different things, but at the end of the day, what's made this country great, is a belief in certain things and as soon as you villainize the other side, that it's not just that we don't see It the same way because i've had different life experiences than you have, but you're a villain and now you're a bad person or you're a dummy.

I i just. I think that that's we've lost civility yes on both sides and we are going to need to lean into civility in purple or were in deep trouble. Let's go to that childhood. Real quick, worry! You know i i was born in the soviet union, so talk about somebody who really values yeah, so i don't remember it.

Obviously, my parents lived until they were 22 there, so i have a lot of feelings towards it, but we grew up very, like immigrant eight family members in a studio apartment. So i i associate to humble beginnings what what i guess? Here's the first question: were you an entrepreneurial kid yeah by necessity you know it's one of these things that um, you know everybody that has had some challenge as a kid or in life. I'm not gon na sit here and say when i was eight years old that i thought to myself wow, you know what this sucks, but i'm building resiliency i'll bet. This will affect me.

No, you didn't, you didn't say, attend my favorite sentence of you know. Adversity is the foundation of success. Yeah. No, i just said this, but you know look, there is the things that i do think happened is um where i was in life made me comfortable, being uncomfortable right and then the second thing you know my mom is that why you're petrified of 8th place trophies Because that's why i'm petrified of them like i'm? Not i'm not a big look, i'm not a big particip participation, trophy person, i think life, whether you like it or not, keeps score um, and i think that even with our foreign adversaries at this point, we're sort of wishing and hoping that we lived in a Different world than we do right - and i i i wonder sometimes when i watch americans screaming at each other - if if, if they don't understand that we have foreign adversaries, that are a true challenge and that we keep taking our eye off the ball yeah.

And i think, if you deploy any level of common sense and understand scale and influence like, i would argue that it's already a foregone conclusion like like. There is no scenario of our great great grandkids, not in a world where you know china's only vulnerability is people forget they're, actually, communists and thus that's against the human spirit and they'll have to figure that out, but china runs its country the way we run businesses. It's communism with capitalism right like every good company, your legendary vayner. I promise you here's what it looks like you empower people to do a ton of, but you at the tippy top you're gon na make three to six decisions that are not debatable, they're, just and and so yeah i mean i think, but i think more taking It out of the macro in the geopolitical, because i want to get this out of you, because now i've got a sense of your philosophical framework, which i think we can extract some really cool insights for some of the entrepreneurs and executives that are listening.

Tell actually before i make this assumption, would you argue and i based on that hard pivot you made, i think we share another thing, i'm starting to sense. Do you find yourself curious? Do you think curiosity has helped you go down some of these paths and because of that curiosity, you're coming in with fresh eyes and when you come in with fresh eyes. Sometimes you can see things that the people that have been living in it forever can't see anymore. Well, look i could tell you uh.

Intellectual curiosity has been a staple of my life since i was a little kid i i read voraciously eclectically, um and, and i think that that's extraordinarily important and once you latch on to something going down that rabbit hole and saying i want to know everything there Is to know about this like it's something important, eclectically right like you're, saying things i want to make sure everybody caught that, because that was i thought that was a very important word. You're saying like you may randomly find coin collecting interesting out of left field, because you heard somebody say one thing and then actually start reading and then actually may go even and then you decide actually after this first book, i'm going to go deep. Is that what you're saying yeah i i think, and whether that comes in a business opportunity, personal satisfaction - and i i think also that context with with learning and knowledge is everything right. If you can, whether it's history, whether it's science, i'm i'm a huge believer in math and science uh, you know i'm i'm on the board at carnegie mellon and i'm on the uh engineering school advisory board at mit.

So i'm proximate to some pretty amazing things. That's some fancy bougie there, my friend yeah, just i'm just standing next to them and hoping i'll suppose this happens. But you know at the end of the day that curiosity and being not only curious but hope, but but trying to get context around that. So it's either applicable or you've built mental models and things that allow pattern recognition to happen.

I think all those things are extremely important. Let me ask you a question that really just popped up after this enjoyable. 20 minutes. Do you believe that being underestimated is a tremendous advantage and gift? That's an interesting question because i think sometimes, yes, being underregarded, allows you the opportunity to grow without people trying to stop that growth.

There are other times when you want to cut through all the crap and just say: look let's: let's try to fast forward to the real thing because there's another. So what you're saying there is, because you value actual execution and practicality, that, after putting some wins on the board in your life, that that reputation allows you in that meeting, setting or board room or whatever environment is to maybe speed up the waste. No question about it because look: there is a certain point where you've done enough in your career to not have to explain either who you are or hey what about when you're innovating at scale. So, for example, one thing that i find interesting about my career is i pivot so much, and even though i continuously put wins on the board when you're going to something so new, it's almost like you're doing the same thing all over again, and i also think And i've come to realize this in my mid-40s now that oh, i actually enjoy being underestimated, i like being an underdog.

This is probably why i'm a jets fan by the way uh you know um, but because i do that to myself. There is a level of like having to repeat certain things um and i'm, but at the same token, to your point, which is why i use that analogy. I do enjoy this point of my career where i could be like hey. Can we just get to this point because talk about somebody who's obsessed with seven minute meetings? I don't want to waste one minute because it's the only resource, besides health, that i care about, and i don't want to have a 45 minute meeting, pandering to people's insecurities and lack of knowledge of the subject matter.

Let's just get to the punch line and collectively do something here. Look, i think, that's absolutely right, and i i it's always interesting to me that people are willing to waste money, um or i'm sorry, miss speaking the exact opposite that they obsess over saving money. But up time the time is like oh, you know i can, because i i doubt that anybody on their deathbed says bring me my financial statements, not one person right. So that's a regret by the way.

Well, one of the things that speaks to me just in terms of reading and so forth is stoicism right, it's hard to apply every day, but i i find if, if you haven't read marcus aurelius or you know any of the stoics it's worth visiting and one Of the things that they talk about ryan holiday, oh ryan's, a good friend, so ryan has been enjoying the last five years. Just whispering to me like taking clips of me and being like. Do you know how much of a stoic you are and i'm actually very interesting? I love information, but i've come to learn. I haven't really gotten classified though i may it just takes time back to what we're talking about.

I clearly have a massive reading comprehension issue. So i i don't read books. Obviously i read a lot of micro and i listen and watch a lot, but he just gets a kick out of it and it's interesting you're bringing it up because he's really pounding up me on like how much i am it. Well, look i i ryan's a great guy great author, um big thinker, and i a lot of their philosophy speaks to me just because you worry about what you control and you know their whole thing is you.

You should contemplate death every day, not in a morbid way, but just to say look. We all have an expiration date right and, if kovid hasn't shoved that like right up in your face that you know, you need to really focus on not only what's important but even relationships. People you care about. You know making sure that you continue to cultivate that.

So it's something i at least try to say to myself. Did i do a good job today of spending time on things that matter and that there's real yield before we get you out of here since we're running out of time? I want to go current events in business um because i'm going to take advantage now that i understand how much i enjoy your macro, let's go little micro, where, if anywhere, are you with your curiosity or digging into of nfts? Well, i have a number of investments in that world and obviously we're hearing all kinds of monikers. Now right, there's there's nft uh there there's there's tokens, there's crypto, there's web 3.0, all these different things and i do have a number of uh of investments uh in that world. The thing that's interesting to me that i'm trying to watch is what is the intrinsic value going to be, and how will it stand the test of time and sort itself out? There's no question in my mind that digital goods right, if we assign value to them, that is no different than hey.

I have a baseball card and it has a value because other people say right. It's it's a shared myth, sort of thing, um. The thing that's interesting to me about crypto is what happens when governments writ large sort of say. Okay, now this currency has the full faith and credit of the us of whatever it is.

It's going to be really interesting to watch what that policy looks, looks like the tax situation, how all of that is going to unfold. I have some very, very smart friends in in deep finance that tell me that they think this will be one of the biggest sort of opportunities and transfer of wealth in human history. As this thing unfolds yeah. So i'm trying to participate but also yeah, and just because i don't i don't quote where it's going.

Let me do a little more wrap around. I apologize. I love the in-depth questions movie theaters. Given your background state of the union of the movie theater business hot takes two three sentences.

What are you thinking tough business going forward? I don't think movies are going anywhere. You think they can innovate to go super, like i keep wondering. Would i pay? Why am i willing to pay 400 for a sushi night like there's, got to be a way to get me to pay 300 bucks for the new batman? There's got to be no well, but the question is: do you need that large box piece of real estate, which you're talking to someone who loves going to the movies that communal experience? That's my point right. The community like like the answer, is no but the, but the world is and now instead of ore right like sometimes i want to sit and like i watch the lucille ball thing on amazon, prime, i didn't need to go to the theater for that.

You know. Uh, a marvel versus dc crossover, super film of justice league versus you know like avengers with you know, i don't know, i could see myself wanting to especially you know. I, like the head-to-head that could be really fun in the theater to see who likes the one side or the other yeah. I think the other challenge is just the appointment nature of it.

So if i need to go out at 7 40 park a car go inside, but you're so willing to do that for dinner, so many times a month. Look, the the question is, though, if you have a 60 inch flat screen at home in high def or for this is a combo of and right to your point, the experience now is so i mean look you and i, how old are you my friend? I am 51., you look great, so i'm 46 we've had the same basic thing. Right, ghostbusters comes out. You know that if you don't go see it there that you're not going to see it for 18 months on vhs and you're going to be on your shitty team like it's like right.

So be your point, but i still think the communal and then i still think food and beverage. You know, i know these. Some of these things have popped up right. I went to one in naples.

You can get a nice little glass of wine, but i still don't think they broke the format. Listen, we've we've run out of time. I i would love to do this again in the future. I loved.

I really enjoyed this me too. Thank you very much for having me on thanks for being on you.