Ep.3 – Mac Lackey – NFTs & The Future of Fandom

Hey everyone, it's Greg Campion here. Welcome to another episode of Intentional Wisdom. I am so fired up about today's episode featuring Mack Lackie. Mack founded and successfully sold six businesses over the last 25 years, from a soccer-based social media platform to a consumer apparel company. Today, Mack is added again. He is launching a new sports-based NFT project, which he thinks has the potential to revolutionize the way that sports teams interact with their fans. You know, I thought Mack was the perfect person really to come on the show to help demystify the world of Web 3 and NFTs and to help us sort of visualize how this technology might begin to show up in our actual day-to-day lives. This episode is brought to you by Intentional Wisdom and the newsletter. That's my newsletter. Would you like to receive one email every other week with a practical strategy to improve your career, your habits, your motivation, your physical and mental health? Well, if so, make sure to subscribe to Intentional Wisdom, the newsletter. I would love for you to join this growing community of smart and curious readers. You can find the newsletter at GregCampion.substac.com or click on the link in the show notes. All right, enough shameless self-promotion. Here is my conversation with Mack Lackie. All right, Mack Lackie, welcome to the Intentional Wisdom broadcast. Greg, happy to be here. Psych to have you here. And I'm excited about this topic. Excited to talk about NFTs and Web 3. Excited to talk about all the opportunity that you're seeing here. And maybe before we get into that, I think it would be helpful to give our audience just a little bit of background on you and who you are and some of the really impressive things that you've done in your career. And it's funny. I was thinking back, back on how long I've known you personally. And I was thinking, gosh, it's probably about 10 years now. And then I looked back in my old email box and I saw that you and I had a conference call set up in 2009. So apparently, I've been hassling you for like 13 years now. So maybe if you could give our listeners just a little bit of background on kind of what you've been up to in your very impressive career for the last, you know, 25 years. Sure. Yeah. Thanks again for having me. So I think of my life in two big buckets. Life for me growing up was all about soccer. That was my passion. I was very fortunate to play at a pretty high level. Got an opportunity to travel a lot to play soccer. Went to college on a scholarship, played at a top D1 school in the ACC and then played one year professionally after college in the newly formed USL. And that was before MLS. And so kind of checked off a lot of my goals and dreams around soccer. But that was a big part of my life. And then I really didn't know what I was going to do for a career. I was a psychology major. I had really never thought about business. And in the first quarter of 1995, a long time collaborator of mine and I started our first business together. And so I, you know, I got my start effectively just after Netscape launched the commercial web browser. We launched an internet company. So the highlight reel would basically say, you know, from that moment in first quarter of '95 up until today, 25 years as an entrepreneur, I started scaled up and exited six companies, had a million mistakes, a lot of dumb decisions. But but I had some really, really fortunate outcomes along the way. You know, those six exes, it's too pretty early in my 20s. It set sort of a tone and I fell in love with startup. So that's basically what I've done over the past 25 plus years. Yeah, wow. I was looking back at your resume. So it's, really incredible all the businesses that you've started and sold along the way. So in touch, interactive started in '95, sold in '98, internet soccer.com started in '99, sold in 2000, Aiton Group started in 2000, sold in 2003, Mountain Cackies, which seems different than all the other ones, which is like a consumer apparel company 2003 started sold in 2010, started Kick, which was I would describe that probably as a web 2 company, soccer based social media platform started in 2011, sold in 2016 and started ISL Football in 2012 sold in 2018. You've been busy for 25 years, Matt. Yeah, it's been a really, really fun journey and I think the highlight for me is having the opportunity to work on things I love. You know, I've been really having fun. There's again, plenty of mistakes and a lot of stress, but the subject matter as you rattle those off or things that I really enjoyed working on. So it's been great. That's really cool. So I'm not going to do justice to your very impressive background in this podcast and what I'm going to do is actually link back to some other podcasts where you've probably gone deeper on your background. Selfishly, I'm kind of very interested in the present and in the future as well, specifically as it relates to web 3 and NFTs. And I know it's an area that you've kind of recently just kind of dove into the deep end on. So I want to hear about that. And then maybe ultimately what I'd like to do by the end of this conversation is help people figure out, especially if they haven't done the work to really get up to speed themselves yet on NFTs or web 3 and all these acronyms and new buzzwords or confusing to them. I love to help people sort of get started on the right foot in terms of bringing themselves up up to date from an education standpoint. So, but why don't we talk about this very impressive career where you kind of were a year or two ago and where you thought you were going to be going from a career direction from this point forward. And then maybe how that's changed with the advent of a lot of this new technology that we're seeing. Yeah, it's a great question. So as you mentioned, I sold what effectively was my last kind of startup company in 2018. I sold it to my partners and a hedge fund. And in my mind, that was really kind of my exit event. I thought I was going to be not retired. I don't like to play golf. I'm not a lay on the beach kind of guy. But I thought I would really be focused on continuing to focus on family, but also just really helping other people. And so I had started a little program to mentor founders and entrepreneurs called exit DNA. And I really imagined doing that until literally about this year because my oldest dollar dollars in college, my youngest is going to go in the fall. My wife and I have a lot of, you know, plans for travel and adventure. And so that's kind of where I fault I would be. And if you would have asked me two years ago, would I start another company? I would have said absolutely not. I want to co-invest, don't help people. I want to, you know, but I just am not going to start a net new company. It may just be so ingrained in your jeans at this point though, Matt. That's probably fair. But I really did have what I would almost call an epiphany kind of moment, where a lot of things that I've been thinking about and care about had all kind of converged at the same time. And that's what really led me to where I am today, which is having made the decision to go not only back into starting something but going deep. I feel like I'm, you know, kind of all in for the first time in quite a while. And that's because I believe that my career, if you look back over those 25 years, I had a lot of really, really fun times, a lot of really good outcomes. I was very blessed and fortunate. However, there was a very specific time in 95, 96, 97 when I felt like my partners and I were seeing something that all the smart people around me were not seeing. And it was a weird feeling. And at that time, I thought, okay, I'm a kid. I'm just out of college. I'm probably naive. People were certainly telling me I was naive. But we thought the internet and e-commerce were going to change everything. And we went to meeting after meeting where people were like, hey, you guys, this is a fad and nobody's going to put their credit card on the internet and all that kind of stuff. So anyway, long story short, about a year, a year and a half ago, I had that same feeling for the first time, which is Web 3, holistically speaking, the stuff that I'm seeing happen, I feel like I see a very clear path into the future. And I'm looking around and people aren't seeing it. And it's not that they're not talking about NFTs and blockchain. They are people. It's buzzwords. It's cocktail party conversations. The true business opportunity, I don't think people are yet embracing it. And I thought, You know what? This is probably the only other time of my life that I'm going to have that zeitgeist moment where I'm early. I see it. I'm very clear. I'm very convicted. And so that's kind of what pulled me back in. I saw something that you had written kind of expressing that seam sentiment and that excitement and that idea that maybe you hadn't seen a kind of a clear runway like this since those early days, 95, 96 time. And that, my ears really perked up. I mean, I had already been doing a decent a bit of work just trying to educate myself and probably starting about a year ago and I wrote a piece that was really to help me collect my own thoughts just on what NFTs are and some of the value they could potentially help unlock. Now let's define our terms for some of the folks who may be less familiar. So you've mentioned Web 3 once or twice. How would you kind of define that? So yeah, it's a fair question in terms of definitions. The way I think about it, which is probably not as descriptive, but Web 1 was the early internet. It was kind of the launch of the commercial internet. Web 2, as it's been sort of classified, was the social web where we started seeing Facebook and LinkedIn and all these things that connected us as humans in a social framework. That was really Web 2. Web 3 is all about participation in my mind. It's a new opportunity to own, control, and participate in assets and opportunities that you just didn't have access to before. So I think about Web 3 is the very significant next iteration of technology and kind of the internet, if you will. It's the future internet in my mind. Yeah. I mean, I think that ownership point is really critical. So I think Chris Dixon from A16C has a framework that's really simple to remember, which is Web 1 was read. So you think about, OK, AOL and websites like that. There wasn't a lot of interaction you're going on, just reading whatever's posted there. Web 2 was to your point, the more social elements. So it's read and write. So it's like, OK, now communities can form and people can share with each other and all that. And then Web 3, I think he's got read, write, own. And so Web 3 is, OK, how did you actually own a piece of this? And one way to think about it is if you've got all these social platforms that were the kind of darlings of Web 2, which were Twitter and Facebook and all these companies, right? And those companies have done extraordinarily well. But the vast, vast majority of the economic pie has accumulated to them. The idea or the hope or the vision of Web 3 is instead of users going on platforms like this and sharing their ideas in exchange for likes, they are owning, having some ownership in their own content. That's exactly right. Would you agree with that? I think that's exactly right. And it's another way a lot of people sort of talk about it and think about it is centralized. So Facebook and Twitter, all those centralized organizations that control everything. And then Web 3, which is decentralized or distributed. So the ownership and controls instead of one corporation or to the universe, effectively and all the participants. Yep. Yep. OK. One more definition I'm going to ask you for. NFTs. So we're going to talk a little bit about NFTs or a lot about NFTs. How do you kind of frame up NFTs? Yes. So NFTs stands for non-fungible token. And to me, I think of an NFT as a one-of-one, something that is absolutely unique. It is the only one that ever exists on the earth. And it exists in a technology framework. So it is a digital asset, but there's only one of them. And so unlike Bitcoin, which a lot of people talk about as a cryptocurrency, one Bitcoin is just like the next. If you own one and Macones want and Greg with one, they're the same thing. They both have a Bitcoin. But if I own it, Greg can't own it. I'm the only owner. There's only one of them. So a lot of it is in my mind, a unique digital asset. Yep. I think that's a great way to describe it. Also, as a kind of digital record on a blockchain. So similar to you mentioned Bitcoin, cryptocurrencies are built on top of blockchain. Same thing with NFT. But obviously, as you say, the big difference is one is fungible. One is non-fungible. Right. It's the name. The marketing folks have not gotten a hold of NFTs yet. I don't think I think. Correct. I think Web 3 is some pretty good branding. NFTs, I think, probably still needs to work. OK, so you mentioned about a year, a year and a half ago, you started getting really interested in the space, seeing that something special is going on here. What was your first kind of personal entree into this world? I'm interested. Like, did you start putting money to work? Did you start buying NFTs, minting NFTs? What's your experience been like? Thanks, actually, in hindsight, one of the things I did very early, 2014, 2015, is I started buying Bitcoin. And so I was really involved in that first Bitcoin at $200. And so in hindsight, I didn't buy near enough. But really, for me, it was I wanted to understand it. I just wanted to just see what was happening. There was no vision or concept in my mind. I'm not, you know, I don't have that much foresight. It was just, it looked interesting. I wanted to understand it. So I'd had some light exposure to cryptocurrencies and the power of this kind of distribution for a number of years. But really, it was a, I was reading about some art and an artist and how the artists had created these NFTs around their work. And what really stood out to me was had nothing to do with the art or nothing to do with the collectible. But it was the fact that once that NFT was sold, the artist got 10% of the proceeds. And if the NFT was sold again and again and again, he would continue to participate in the future success of his art. Unlike a Picasso, which, you know, the first time it was sold, Picasso got 100% of the proceeds. But if it sells to someone tomorrow for $100 million, Picasso or his heirs get zero. And so that idea of participation back to an artist was very much the aha moment for me that, you know, led to all these different faults, which I'm happy to talk about where it's taken me. But that was the real pivotable moment where everyone kept talking about art and collectibles. And candidly, I think it's cool and neat, but I could care less about art and collectibles. I was seeing the underlying utility and opportunity associated with that contract that says, I own an asset and I can wire it into the contract that for the end of eternity, if this asset is sold or moves, I don't have to know who it's sold to. It's on the blockchain and I'm going to get paid. And I thought, wow, that's going to change everything. I think so too. That really struck me as well. And I think, you know, it's funny, you mentioned, you know, around the art, I think that I think there's still a perception out there that this is people buying really overpriced JPEGs and all that kind of stuff. And certainly there is an element of that. But I agree with you. I think it's not necessarily about the crypto punks or the board apes or, you know, especially some of these that have gone for millions of dollars and people are just like, this is crazy. This is a bubble. It probably is. There probably is a massive hype cycle going on and there will probably be a lot of money made and a lot of money lost. But I think I agree with you. I think that the underlying technology and especially that point that you just made around, basically what amounts to royalty streams. So what you have is, you know, with these NFTs, they're essentially smart contracts and you can program in the programmable in any way you see fit. So one way is one manifestation of that is a piece of art as you said that continues to get sold over time. But you know, other areas are taking off just as much and there's a lot of parallels with the music industry and what's kind of happened there and how royalties have traditionally worked and you have a lot of artists now coming out with, you know, NFT albums and things like that, but it's the same sort of thing. So I love that feature of it as well. That's really interesting to me. How about in terms of like, you know, just getting in there and getting your hands dirty, like did you make any silly mistakes in terms of like, you know, buying things and sending money down black holes or anything like that? I have been, you know, I would say the biggest challenge thus far of this whole category is it is truly so early that it is an engineer's game, you know, what is not happening yet. It's slowly happening I should say is that the UI, UX to make it easy for an average person to buy something, sell something, transfer something. So to answer your question, I have tiptoed. into some of the more technically challenging things for me. I have a bias towards, although I know how to use Metamask and Uniswap and all these various platforms to me, those give me anxiety versus if I want to buy a cryptocurrency on Coinbase, it's very simple. Just like buying a stock or buying a bond. And so a lot of what I have done is trying to balance risk by saying I'm going to still use the path of least resistance to purchase assets, whether it's NFTs or cryptocurrencies. But I'm going to spend a little bit of time consistently challenging myself in a low risk way, so not a lot of money, but using Uniswap to purchase something, using Metamask to buy and sell assets. And so I was doing that this morning, I was picking up some NFTs and it's still quirky, sending Ethereum to Metamask and making sure you get it in your wallet and then going to OpenC or wherever you're going. It is very high risk, especially I would be the first admit, I am not a detailed oriented person and details matter. Double checking your addresses, double checking what you're doing. So I have not thankfully yet made any huge mistakes, but that's because I've really tried to manage risk on things that I'm not yet comfortable with. Yeah, yeah. I mean, so I totally agree on the UX or user experience point. I mean, I think it just feels very, very early days. And I think that's good in its bad. It's like, in terms of the, well, the bad points are obvious. It's just harder to use. You know, people who are more technical or have an advantage, it's easier to lose money and make dumb mistakes. I've done it myself. And but I guess from the positive side, you know, you have more experience than me for sure with this. But when things are quirky and clunky and don't quite work yet, there's probably still a heck of a lot of money to be made in the space, right? There's a lot of things. No, that's exactly right. I mean, I, to some degree, I'm very excited about what you're doing because it's like, I feel compelled to shout from the rooftops to my friends and people I care about that like you need to be in this space precisely because of what you just said, which is if you're early, you don't have to be the smartest person in the room. You don't have to be the most technical person in the room. There's so much alpha and margin when it's this early, as long as you're kind of in the right church, you don't have to be in the right pew yet, right? You don't have to do the precise thing. And that's going to change over time. I'm convinced that two years from now, just like everything else, when it matures, you've got to be really good and you got to be really smart and really focused. But today, you just need to be in the space. And I think there's a lot of opportunity. Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That makes sense to me. Yeah. Yeah, I've kind of, my journey has been somewhat similar to yours, although not as early. So I probably started in 2017 or so getting a little bit involved in Bitcoin and Ethereum and a couple of the kind of well-known tokens out there. And then, you know, watch to go through what they call crypto winter. So I kind of didn't look at the Coinbase account for a few years, which is probably a good way to do it. And then maybe a year ago, started getting interested in NFTs. And so I've kind of played around with a couple of things. One, I bought my ENS address, which is essentially like an identifier on the Ethereum blockchain. It's almost similar to like getting your name.com or your name at Gmail or whatever kind of a stake in the sand on that blockchain. So I bought that. That was pretty straightforward. I participated in the Constitution Dow, which was an interesting little social experiment where a group of people came together and formed a Dow, a decentralized autonomous organization to try to buy a copy of the actual US Constitution that was up for sale. I think it's other bees. Ultimately, the group failed. Raise a bunch of money, millions of dollars, but ultimately failed to buy it. But that was an interesting little experiment for me just in terms of like connecting the dots and, you know, I had to go on a Discord channel and this and that. And I was like, God, I don't even know anything about Discord. And at one point, this will tell you how early like the UX is like there was one button that said redeem and then one button said something else. And I hit, I hit, it wasn't obvious to me and I feel like, okay, I'm like reasonably technology savvy. I don't know, like, but it wasn't obvious to me which button to hit. So I hit one. And apparently the one that I hit sends your, sends your coin is like this coin called People Coin, sends it to what they call a black hole on the blockchain. Now if you don't know what that is, it's exactly what you, it sounds like it's a black hole. It's that you don't ever see that in the currency again. So now one question I had was, okay, well, why is one of the two buttons that you might hit send it to a place where you could never, no one could ever access it again. So, I chucked that up to like experience and, and you know, I was listening, you, you turned me on to Kevin, Kevin Rose, who's a really great thinker in the space. He's got a, I think he's got two different podcasts. Now, yeah, is one modern finance that, finance and then, yeah. So I was listening to him and he was saying, look, you know, his recommendation was kind of like, if you want to learn about the space, there's no better way to do it than like, you know, take a couple hundred bucks and just start messing around with stuff and, you know, get a, get a wallet, you know, whether you do it through Coinbase or MetaMask or whatever. And then go on to like one of the big exchanges. Biggest one out there probably is OpenC and just try to buy something and try to participate in one of these things. See what happens. You may lose a little bit of money like I did, but you, but you gained some valuable experience. And then the other one that I participated in was, I actually was in a, an auction for an NFT recently that was, there's guy named Jim O'Shaunasey, who's like really well known guy in the finance Twitter world. He owns a business called the O'Shaunasey Asset Management. And anyways, he's got a, he has a podcast and all the stuff, but he commissioned an artist to put, to create a really cool piece of art. They have a kind of a funny thing with O'Shaunasey Asset Management where like, you know you're the in crowd if they, if you get one of their like Patagonia, uh, Vlease Vests. So they had the artists like basically create an artistic representation of the O'Shaun Vest. And like I thought, okay, well that's pretty cool, but I probably wouldn't, you know, spend a bunch of money just to have that. You know, as my profile picture or whatever. But interestingly, and this is something I want to talk to you about is they attached a real world benefit to it. So he's got a really popular podcast called Infinite Loops and he said, okay, whoever buys this NFT, whoever wins this NFT auction will co-host an episode of Infinite Loops with me and pick the guest. And I was like, that would be awesome. I was, I was very intrigued by that. So I ended up bidding and got into a bidding where I ultimately lost, um, but the, uh, it was a fun experience, even just figuring out like, okay, I had to bid in rap teeth instead of regular teeth. So I had to convert teeth to rap teeth, right? So there's a lot of like non-obvious things that are going on there. But anyways, that was, that was a fun, uh, a fun experience. So anyways, long story short, I guess, still early, still clunky, but that means opportunity, right? I think that's right. Okay. So let's talk about, um, let's talk about opportunity and let's talk about what you're doing specifically. So you are setting up a new business. Tell me about it and tell me, tell me what the vision is. So yeah, the real fast backstory on this one, I mentioned, you know, I had this kind of epiphany moment, um, where I was thinking about the, the, the, um, the fact that it's transparent, you can see, you know, who owns the asset, the smart contract, as you mentioned, kind of controls the revenue streams. And I, I really went back to a moment when I was living in Barcelona. My family and I moved to Brawl. We moved to Barcelona. And after we got, you know, got our house and we got the kids in school. My next top priority was getting season ticket staff, see Barcelona. That process is, um, broken in every way you can imagine, you know, there's a hundred thousand person waiting list, which is generation long, basically, um, so technically impossible. So I immediately went to the black market, paid cash for amazing seats. But what happened is every single time I walked into a match, I was walking in with what looked like a passport, a physical hard kind of, um, entrance, the season pass had a picture of someone 25 years older than me. My little girls were walking in with, you know, pictures of people that were 30 years older than them. And it kept striking me that, you know, you're not allowed to do that. Every time I walk in the stadium, I could get in trouble. The family that sold me their season tickets could get an intermitted amount of trouble. But the two big standout issues where FC Barcelona did not get one dollar of that transaction. And I paid a premium. And number two, they had no idea who was sitting in their stadium. And so what sort of struck me was blockchain. NFTs solve all that. And I had this moment where I thought, you know what, I can't believe that we haven't done this, we haven't figured this out, but why don't we effectively tokenize a seat and a stadium and put it on the blockchain and make it incredibly transparent? And rather than prohibit people from selling season tickets or transferring, let's make it absolutely beneficial and lucrative so that FC Barcelona, in this case, if that exact scenario would have happened, Mac would have been in Barcelona, paid for someone's seasons tickets, the person that sold it to me would have made good money 'cause I paid a premium and without even knowing or thinking about it, FC Barcelona, 10% of that transaction would have been wired by the smart contract into their account. And they would have complete visibility who was in their stadium, which in today's world matters a lot. Coronavirus, terrorism, everything else you can think of. So long story short, I felt like I was seeing an opportunity, I filed a patent, which is an unusual step for me, but I work with the group that does a lot of the IP work for Square and for Amazon to file a patent around a concept that I call digital seat ownership. And so effectively, what we're doing is we are helping sports organizations, any sport anywhere in the world, create a net new asset, which is a digital seat. And it is non-fungible in that it has to be tied, one to one, to a physical seat in a stadium, which means is inherently limited. If you have a 50,000 seat stadium, you can create 50,000 new digital seats, or some smaller number than that. But what's so cool about this concept is a digital seat is an NFT, but it actually is almost like a bucket that you can drop other things in. So you can associate that NFT with season tickets. You can associate that NFT with collectibles so that if you are an owner of the digital seat, and maybe you're sitting in North America, but the digital seat is in Barcelona, you can decide to have the season tickets or the individual game tickets sold, and you get a percentage of every transaction. It's almost like you're a landlord of that seat. So if someone sits in your seat, you benefit, and the club benefits. If something amazing happens at a game, some world record is set, or they score 10 goals, and they decide to create a collectible moment as an NFT, a video or a picture, they basically can drop it right on top of the digital seat, and then in your wallet shows up this new collectible. That you can keep, or you can sell. So we think we've created a really powerful innovation that is to the benefit of clubs and sports organizations, but has a huge kind of game-changing benefit to fans and supporters. And so we really are starting to call it kind of the future of fan ownership. So how does a fan actually feel like they're part of what's really happening? They can get financial benefit. They can get experiences. They can get access to things that no other people have access to just because they own the digital seat. Maybe they can go into a special area of the stadium, or they can get access to a digital stream of a game that no one else has access to. So that's kind of the innovation we've been working on. And yeah, I mean, you can tell as I start talking about it, get excited. I'm just like giddy with excitement, because I believe it's the future. Yeah, I mean, it seems like there's just so many directions that that could go in. And there's so many different use cases that you're-- we probably aren't even thinking about or imagining today. But I think that idea of creating this community-- well, it's really interesting, I think, from all perspectives. So it's really interesting from a fan perspective. So I'm sitting here in North Carolina, but I happen to be a big Boston Red Sox fan. So it's not feasible for me to go to the games all the time. But at some point, if there's a digital representation of Fenway Park, do I own that? And that becomes part of my identity. And in a similar way, buying a-- well, here's an example. Like my son just got a signed baseball from Mookie Bats who used to be the Red Sox best player. Like, that's a really cool thing. A collectible. He's got him in his room. Probably worth some money. But it's like a way to really show his fandom. So I think from that perspective, from a fan's perspective, I could see certainly it making sense to own something like that, especially if there are benefits to it at some point. Especially if you end up receiving, as you said, priority access to events or special drops that the team does, access to different things. That makes a lot of sense. But then to your point, I think back to that original point that we were talking about earlier with regards to art, with artists seeing royalty streams on every sale. It seems like a no-brainer for the sports organizations. So they keep getting a cut of their sales. So how's it going so far? And what kind of headway are you making so far? And then also, if you wouldn't mind just addressing, it's a little unclear to me. If there has to be a tie to the physical, see or if that is like an option. How was that? That's a great question. So one really important thing that you said a moment ago is the reality is most humans on Earth do not have the ability financially or otherwise to own a sports organization. That's left for billionaires and sovereign nations. Most fans don't have even the ability to purchase season tickets or permanent seat license or any other iterations of that because they're either not physically located in that market and/or they can't afford to do so. And so we're creating a new asset that you can own. And it is a digital seat. You can be the only owner of that seat in Fenway Park on Earth. Now, that doesn't give you the ability to walk into Fenway Park and unhinge a physical seat and put it in your living room. But this new digital seat is limited to a very specific physical seat. So it's one to one, which means if there's 50 million fans on Earth, there are only the number of digital seats as physical seats. So there's a lot of supply demand opportunity there. The other thing you just ask, which is really, really, I think, innovative, is the answer is you can tie and associate the digital seat with season tickets or a game day tickets or not. And the reason that's so important is because a lot of organizations around the world-- I know soccer better than most sports. But if you go to some of the famous soccer teams on Earth, they are generally 100 plus years old. They're multi-generation fans. Those older fans don't really like change. They don't really want-- they don't know what an NFT is. They don't want to think about digital tickets. And the back of my mind, I'm thinking about Augusta and the Masters as well, just as being a golf fan. Exactly. So one of the challenges these sports organizations have is how do they innovate and reach new fans locally and around the world without upsetting existing fans? And so what we've said is if you have season ticket holders and multi-generational fans, that seat, you can still create a new digital asset and sell it to Greg in North America because that local fan doesn't want it, doesn't care about it. It doesn't give you any rights to the season tickets because someone else own them. But they could write into the smart contract if that season ticket ever defaults or rolls over, you have the first right or refusal to purchase it. In other situations, many sports organizations around the world don't sell out every game, don't have a waiting list, and they have some number of seats or in a venue that they could create a new digital asset, a digital seat, and say, with that digital seat, you have the opportunity, but not the obligation every year to buy the season ticket or the individual tickets that you want. And after that 30-day period of your first right or refusal, they just roll back into however they sell tickets. But anytime someone sits in the seat that you own, the digital seat to, you can get 10% of the proceeds. So all of a sudden, you're incentivized to tell all your friends, hey, you should go to the games. You should promote it because you're going to participate as well as the sports organization. So that ability to associate it or not is what's really interesting to a lot of these sports organizations, whether I've talked to the NBA franchises, NFL, NHL, International Soccer, University, it's sort of applicable in all of those different categories. So a couple of the things that jump out one is these are unique digital assets, right? So they are, by their nature, inherently limited in quantity. And so to your point, that's pretty interesting from a supply-demand perspective when you start to look at the numbers of some Yeah. fan bases around the world you mentioned Barcelona. I'm sure there's I don't know hundreds of millions of fans around the world for Barcelona right and and how many seats are in Barcelona and stadium okay so you got to supply demand mismatched they are same thing goes certainly for all major sports franchises right many multitudes the of actual fans versus those who could actually show up and being a seat so there's that kind of scarcity factor and then you've got the customization factor I think as well is really interesting because that means again we're we've thrown out like the rear four use cases but there are right thousands of millions of of potential ways that that teams could you know figure out how to how to use this well and to me you know a lot of web too some degree web one was driven by you know marketing and advertising and and I think web3 makes all that even more powerful you know it's really easy to come up with a use case it says you know every digital seat owner who was physically sitting in Barcelona stadium five minutes before half time we're going to drop a digital coupon for Australia, Dombier and redeemable with a QR code at the counter you know like it's just instant it goes only to people that you want it to and so it's things like that where you can really tie it down to a one-to-one level is really unique and powerful and I you ask earlier about vision you know I have this vision of not only the digital seat of a team where you have a massive affinity you mentioned the Boston Red Sox like of course you would want to own digital seats of the Boston Red Sox because you're a fan you're a super fan and it means something to you but if you're a soccer fan I have this vision of you know a year two years from now being at a Champions League Final in Russia or Turkey or wherever it's being held and having a local restaurant or bar or hotel that the only way you can go to that hotel or bar is if you're a digital seat owner doesn't you matter what team you have to walk in with your phone and show that you're a digital seat owner because it's a club right it's a it's what board apes that you mentioned earlier has done so incredibly well is they've created a community well beyond anything that is a picture or a JPEG it is only people that are getting access to certain opportunities today own a board ape or own a crypto punk and my vision is very much you know being a digital seat owner is going to mean something beyond your affinity for 18 or beyond your financial or other participation with that team it's your part of this very exclusive global community. I love that my wheels are spinning and I'm just thinking about buying your digital seats and then like passing those down generation to generation you know that's well you know I you mentioned I did the exact same thing you know I own Maclacky.Eath when my daughters were born you know I bought their comms I mean their names is comms because I thought you know in the future this may or may not be relevant but I've owned and continued to pay for their comms even though they don't you're you're much better than me I only got my son's Gmail I think what he was born the first born and the other two I don't know it's exactly right is like this idea is you know you would say I'm a Red Sox fan I want to own and control as many digital seats in my family as part of our legacy because we're just going to be fans now if my future heirs decide to sell them because they want the money they need the money more than they have the affinity like you've just handed them something powerful. Yeah so yeah the other question you ask is where we are and so we we've been working you know filed filed patents around a lot of these things just because we think it's really unique and compelling we've been building out a marketplace and we are literally in first quarter which we're in the middle of now going to do our genesis drop which all that means in the world of NFTs is you know we will have a digital seat that is not associated with a team it's not associated with a sports organization it is the actual token on our platform that we think will over time give you rights and opportunities across everything maybe it's the first right for if we do a Boston Red Sox deal our genesis token holders are going to have the first chance to purchase or a discount or whatever we are going to only do 999 of those most people do 10,000 or more but we're going to have this kind of black token membership that will launch in the first quarter and so people are joining a waiting list now it's dso.co so digital seat ownership is again kind of the acronym dso.co we'll link to that and so people again i'm telling my friends you know could i be wrong 100% i am going all in at just about every level but for someone to buy a genesis token might be a few hundred dollars and i i will assure you if i could go back in time and buy crypto punks and board apes i looked at board apes five times when it was at you know a couple of eath and and just didn't pull the trigger and now you know it's a couple hundred thousand dollars to get one and again not suggesting that's exactly what will be our journey but i do think for a lot of my friends and sports enthusiasts and soccer enthusiasts what an interesting way to participate in web 3 without having to leave your job do something really dramatic take money out of your savings which is um you only do that if you are crazy or you see something other people don't and in my life again i i think my wife is thought i was crazy many times because i would sell a company and be getting paid well by the acquire and finally looking like i had some stability and maybe have a normal paycheck and then i would resign and dump all our money into my next idea and put it all at risk and and that's not necessarily advisable but it's because i when i see something and i'm convicted i know what that means and this is a simple way for people to participate and learn and over time it could be very meaningful for them so that's that's kind of where we are um we'll have a public launch probably in the next 90 days um and the most the easiest way to you know be involved in any way no no need to purchase anything if you don't want to but it's just beyond that waiting list dso.co so you learn more about it now let me ask you just a technical question do you envision a world where there are teams that have digital versions of their stadiums and then are you thinking that um you would potentially buy that by uh the currency that you would buy that would be a dso token in the same way that like you would use east to buy an ft on them so glad you asked that question because i i think i'm very biased but i i think we've addressed one of the biggest issues which is the answer is no the way you purchase dso's on our platform is with fiat currency and so you want to own a digital seat in the red sock stadium if we do a deal with the red socks is you go on there put in a credit card and purchase a digital seat we did that very intentionally um even though we're going to be introducing purchase with crypto um we wanted to focus on users who are really excited to participate in their sports fans and their their supporters but they don't want to have to figure out how to purchase eath and get met a mask and go to uniswap and that's a huge barrier and hurdle that we did not want to deal with so our marketplace is um designed to be very user friendly and and no different than you go into amazon or any other site you go to you create an account you purchase they show up on your dashboard you can own them and look at them or you can sell them to friends and you know all of the things that are very very intuitive and straightforward we've tried to focus on all of the technology is there it's built on a private ethereum blockchain but you'll never have to think about it or see it unless you want to it's all technology enables but it does not require you to know or understand all of the stuff that's making it work under the screens uh that's an important point i think it was i think it was might have been Seth Gins from coin fun to i heard him on a podcast with Ted Cytys a while back on a capital allocators podcast they did a really um great series uh crypto for institutions and he made the point that i think you're making here which is most people probably don't care about the underlying protocols and all the technology that is backing these blockchains and ultimately probably what happens is in a similar way that what happened with the internet what happened with email all this all this all this type of technology that stuff kind of gets abstracted away in the background right And all the stuff that we were complaining about up front in terms of bad user experience, that becomes a really good simple one-click user experience. And you move from being involved in Web 2 to being involved in Web 3 without even really. The power of Web 3 is very obvious to me. But I think great technology is sort of under the radar. You don't know it's there. It just powers things. I don't want to set my father and I. My father is a brilliant engineering mind and likes to take things apart and put it back together whether it's cars or radios. And I always joke around and say, I just want to turn the key in a car start. I don't need to know why it starts or how it starts or what the engine is. I feel the same way about technology, which is I want to do something. I want to own something. I want to take action. And I don't need to know that that was a transaction from Ethereum to blockchain and smart contract wired. I want to put it in a credit card and I want to get wires into my bank account. That's it. So we've tried to abstract that stuff away to make it really easier. And there are other organizations, you know, Dapper Labs with NBA top shots, I think really innovated in that way. You know, the founder of Dapper Rome was an advisor and investor in my last business. He's done an amazing job at making collectibles in particular accessible to NBA fans. They've done 880 million in sales with those things. I'm just looking at the NFT rankings on crypto slam.io. It's the number five largest NFT. Yeah, and he has several. You know, he did crypto kitties. He's got a La Liga project. He's got an NFL project. And he, you know, I mean, he and our friends, he's an amazing innovator and thinker himself. But what they did that was so compelling with top shot is making it so that the average fan could buy a LeBron James moment with a credit card. They don't feel like they're doing some Web 3 NFT crazy thing. They just, they want to LeBron James moment and they enable that. So that's that's been kind of our motivation is make it very accessible for the true fan and supporter, which also benefits the sports organization. So I'm curious, like, what kind of reception are you getting from teams at this point? And then are there any other big challenges or hurdles that are keeping you awake at night as you get this thing? Yeah, I think the two, the reception has been very good, but limited. You know, we have been very much under the radar. We have not talked about this much. We wanted to get to the point we were close to launch. So I, you know, again, I'm talking about it here. I have not talked about it very much except for to my very tight inner circle. We've talked to sports organizations mainly to to learn, you know, what are their challenges that we might be able to solve? We take a kind of a consultative approach. We're not hard selling anything, but what's been an eye opener for the sports organization is that we don't compete. You know, when we talk to an NBA team, for example, the first thing they say is, oh, we have a deal with Dapper. And I said, absolutely. And I know Dapper and I love Dapper. Dapper is a collaborative opportunity with us. Dapper moments can drop right on top of a digital seat. Yeah. And you have season tickets. We're not going to disrupt those. We're not going to tell you to change that. We're going to give you the opportunity to attach them or not, but it's a net new asset for you. And you know, you think about math. You mentioned Barcelona Stadium. Let's call it 100,000. If you took a hundred or 50,000, took half the seats of FC Barcelona and you sold a digital seat for $2,000. And I think supply and demand would tell you that if 300 million fans are interested in 50,000 seats, 2000 might be conservative. That's $100 million dollars tomorrow to an organization as a net new asset that for the rest of eternity, they will continue to participate in financially. So the math is compelling to these sports organizations. But most of the challenge Candle is no different than what I was challenged by in Web 1 when I was in my 20s talking to Fortune 500 executives. It's just education, you know, and what is this thing? How does it work? And the fact that people have heard a lot about NFTs, they think they're all the same. You know, a NBA top shot collectible of LeBron is the same as an NFT that I'm doing and they could not be more. Yeah, I think that's probably the biggest hurdle for NFTs right now. It's just the idea that people have it associated in their minds with crypto ponds or top shot or whatever. More as collectibles or art, whereas what it actually is is technology that enables economic transfer in a totally different way. Exactly. So I'm not disillusioned. I know that's going to be part of our challenge is just educating people, being patient with those kind of things. And we'll do, I think we'll do a lot of tests. I'll go to sports organizations and say, Hey, you've got a 50,000 seats stadium. I think 500 seats. Let's prove it. Yeah, that would be an interesting way to do it. I mean, I would think that some owners of some of these teams are pretty forward thinking like I think about someone like Mark Cuban, right? And he's sure. I don't I'm sure he's heavily involved in this space already, right? And so yeah, you probably have the full spectrum of sophistication and willingness and interests on teams at this point. But once some of them start to do it, and they see that to your point, like if you can make a hundred million bucks appear out of thin air and all of a sudden have a tighter connection with your fanbase and know who they are and be able to build something that is actual like sustainable community. Once a few of these guys do it, they're all going to do it, right? Because they're going to see the thing. I think as a matter of fact, I have a lunch meeting just after this with a large university and the fundraising sort of side of the university, I think universities have an incredible opportunity because it's not one stadium. It's football, basketball, soccer, volleyball, Olympic sports. And you know what? I went to two different universities played soccer at two different schools. Do I have an affinity to those schools? Yes, do I support those schools? Yeah, to some degree, but it's a donation. But if both of those schools came to me purely from a soccer perspective and said, "Hey, Mack, you have an interest in a affinity as an alumni. Would you like to be one of five thousand digital seat owners in the soccer stadium that will ever exist in time?" That's pretty interesting to me. The money goes to the school. They benefit from it right away. Is it a fundraising mechanism? Is it an athletic booster? Yes, yes, and yes, right? So to me, I think there are going to be lots of people that are going to see this and it will become something bigger than it is even in my mind because different sports organizations will say, "Hey, could we try it for this?" Would it also allow us to do this thing that we're trying to solve for? So I'm really excited about where we're headed. I always tell people, "I like the market to dictate where I go next. I try to introduce something. I try to introduce it early with my vision, but my vision is loosely held because I think the market is going to tell me where the real opportunities are. And so that's kind of right where we are today. That's awesome. Very exciting. I didn't even think about that whole college element and I'm sure if we listen back to this conversation in two years from now, three years from now, we're going to be like, "You guys will only see in the tip of the iceberg on this thing, right?" We're talking about sports teams and I'm sure it's much more broad than that too. So yeah, that's really cool. Really exciting. I mean, I'm fired up for you that you found something at this point in your career that you are so enthusiastic about and that you want to pursue with such fervors. I feel like that's cool. Your enthusiasm is, your enthusiasm is wearing off. I feel like the tone. That's a backhanded way of saying I'm old. I mean, I know what you're saying, Greg. No, you're right. I am really excited. It's been really fun to work on and imagine what's possible. And it does give me a lot of energy to be in a space early because I know what that meant for me and my life just being early in Web 1 and kind of again in Web 2, it's just really helping me have a very fortunate guy because I was early. And I think that opportunity, not only is there for me, I see it very clearly in Web 3 for so many people. So I'm excited for people to embrace it. Okay. And as we finish up here, I have two more questions for you. One is, is there any advice you'd give to people? So if you're listening to this, you haven't been as smart as Greg can't be and to go and lose a bunch of money on the Constitution Dow or things like that. And you're like, okay, this sounds interesting. It's probably the point where I start to need to get involved here in some way, shape or form. What would be your first steps to get involved? Yeah, I think, for me personally, I've tried to tell people I'm going to be a little more transparent, not only about my DSO.co project, but other things I'm looking at. and doing. So I created a little newsletter or not like a list, maclacky.com/crypto where I can just say, "Hey, I'll try to tell people what I'm working on." But in terms of external resources, you mentioned Christixon. I think for most people, one of the best places to start is that Tim Ferris podcast with Naval and Christixon is just so good. You've got three brilliant minds talking and debating definitions and opportunities. It's on Tim Ferris podcast. It's an easy Google search to that. Yeah, I'll link Tim in the show. You mentioned Kevin Rose, who I think I've said to you before. I mean, he's another brilliant thinker, really early, has embraced Web 3 all in in every way. NFTs, cryptocurrencies, personal investments, e-fi. So he's one I sort of recommend people follow. And then again, I think selfishly, but with no requirements to do anything, if people just follow DSO.co and they get on that waiting list, they're going to get emails. And what we're going to talk about is slightly different because it is really about the utility of ownership and participation, not as much about collectibles and going to open sea. So it's just a different way to learn. And so those are a couple places I would probably start. Yeah, I think that's great. I'm going to link to a bunch of those in the show notes as well as some other resources that I've had that were kind of my starting points in terms of getting up the curve. Okay, Mack, last question. And this can be related to what we have talked about today or completely different. But one question I like to ask folks on this podcast is if there's one thing that you have kind of figured out in life to this point that maybe others have not figured out yet or could use to learn, what would be that one thing? What a great question. Yeah, you know, I actually don't think it's related to this. I think it's my life choice and I will not belabor the long-winded story. Like you said, maybe if you linked to some other podcasts, I've told the story before about the exact moment that I made this decision. But, you know, I made a decision in 2000, specifically in August of 2000, that I was going to spend time with my family, particularly my girls as they were, you know, being born and young daughters, that I wasn't going to accept the trade-offs that everyone around me kept telling me I had to accept. Like you can't be a dad who's super engaged in home every night at five o'clock and coaching the soccer team and carving the pumpkins and be a successful entrepreneur because successful entrepreneurs work 80, 90 hours a week. And I just said, I'm not going to do that. I'm going to do both. I don't know how I'm just going to do it. And making that decision and committing to it has literally changed my life. And what that means to me is every time I hear someone say, oh, well, you can't do that or you, that'll be great when you retire. You know, we moved to Barcelona and I pulled my kids out of school and traveled the world. And a lot of people thought that's because Mac is wealthy. If you looked at my net worth over 25 years, one thing you would know for sure is my approach to life did not change and my net worth changed 90% swings. I mean, I was worth millions and almost bankrupt multiple times over 25 years, but I never, ever wavered from I'm going to live my life. I'm going to travel. I'm going to go to my kids play. I'm going to, you know, so that sort of moment I have continued to prove out to myself that that's the way you do it. And I think a lot of people are just convinced that you have to wait for retirement to travel or you have to work 100 hours a week to make your business successful. I just, I just don't believe it. And I think I've lived it now for since, since August of 2000. So, uh, so yeah, that's probably the biggest one for me. Yeah, that's awesome. That's awesome. I love that advice. I think it's a lot of it comes down to, you know, where you choose to place your priorities. And if you know that family is a major priority, the biggest priority, then everything else slots in around that. And so a lot of it, to be comes down to like, and I don't know, would you agree with this? A lot of it does it come down to like, you start there because I'm just thinking about, first of all, that's super inspiring. I think that's a great message. But you translate that into the day to day, right? Um, what does that mean? Like, do you have to say, okay, I'm committing first and foremost to my, to my family and these obligations. And then does it literally come down to like scheduling? This is what I'm going to allow to get on my calendar. This is where, you know, yeah, the, the practical execution, I think is, was where it was eye opening to me is I just decided I was going to do it. Didn't know what it was going to look like. And honestly, the first couple of times that I stood up in a middle of a meeting at 445 so that I could be home for a five o'clock dinner, I mean, you could just see and feel the like, oh my gosh, what is he doing? Um, and then within a couple of weeks, it was like, huh, Max, going to leave it 445. The meeting still has to happen. Work has to go on. Now I may come back and work at 8 o'clock at night till midnight, but I had committed, I'm going to be home for dinner. So what happens is the business and your partners and the people around you adjust and actually it got better. Now people, you know, if Max and the meeting, Max going to talk, Max going to run the meeting, Max going to be at the whiteboard. But if Max steps away, who runs the meeting, they figure it out. They become better at running meetings. They become better at planning. So the, the, the people element, which is everything and every business I've ever had, I mean, all of the success I've had is because of smart people around me. Um, they get better faster. So anyway, I think the, what people miss is, oh, if I leave it 445, the meeting is going to fall apart. Maybe the first one does two weeks later, it's going to run just as good if not better than when you were sitting in it and your team is now better and more capable. So that's, the way I did it is I just drew a hard line and said, I'm not going to take this trip. I'm going to go home early. I'm still going to do my work. This is not about Max slacking. There are plenty of days I would work till two, three in the morning just so I could go to my daughter's soccer game at four o'clock in the afternoon. Um, but because of that decision, everything around it just got adjusted and easier and can't really better over time. Yeah, I, that's a really important point to me. And I think it's, it's applicable in a lot of different parts of life because I think I had a similar experience when a couple of years ago, I did an experiment where I said, okay, I'm not going to drink any alcohol for a year, right? And what I found was the first month, two months, whatever. We're pretty difficult, right? Because I would go to friends houses. I would go to this event. I go to that. Everyone's like, oh, you're not drinking. What you know, like it was very strange. And then like maybe like a couple months in, I'd show up at the same friends house and they'd have like three different non-alcoholic beverages for me. And so my world started to conform and adapt around me to make what I was doing easier because I drew, drew, drew that line in the sand. So I think that lesson of yours is applicable. And that's actually a really good example. I had not heard that one, but I think that is exactly the point, which is, and it's not to be selfish or a jerk or anything. It's like, it's your, your life and your prioritizations. And you're allowing everyone around you to do the exact same thing. You want to support them and their family or health or whatever's important to them. And that's a great example. Yeah, first couple of times you show up and if you're a person that socially drinks, your friends are going to make fun of you for a time or two or kind of review about it and maybe that, you know, joking around. And then they're going to be curious. And then two or three times later, they're going to make it great for you by having things that you like to drink that are not out in the eye and they're not going to say a word, you know, life just bends. And so you can either choose to bend it in a way that's beneficial to you or you can just kind of drift through life. And that's what I, I'm terrified of doing for myself. I don't ever want to drift. I want to design and control my life and, uh, my experience is said people adjust to that, which is great. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I love it. I think you've done a heck of a job so far. And I'm excited to keep falling and everything that you do. I've been falling you for 13 years now, I guess. So I can't wait to see what happens in the next 13. Okay, Mac, where should people find you if they found everything that you said is fascinating. Yeah. So Maclacky.com is kind of my personal website and I try to link out to things I'm doing. I'm actually literally updating right now. So baby, by the time this is live, it'll be updated and pointing to some of these projects. And then the other is that DSO dot co, which is kind of the current project. I'm going deep on. So, uh, and then on Twitter and all the socials on it, you know, Maclacky, it's M-A-C-L-A-C-K-E-Y. Uh, so that's, that's where you can find me. See, he doesn't have a bunch of numbers in those handles because he was early, right? Same thing. All right. Good stuff. We'll link to all of that in the show. And it's Mac. This has been awesome. Thank you so much for joining me. I appreciate it. Everyone, it's Greg again. I hope that you enjoyed that conversation as much as I did. I think Mac is just fantastic. I really appreciate him coming on the show. Uh, as I mentioned in that episode, I have included links in the show notes to Max new project, DSO dot co, along with a number of other resources that were helpful for me as I got up to speed on NFTs myself. I'm still learning very much. But these are some of the resources that have helped me to at least initiate that learning process. So check that out if you're interested in diving deeper on that topic. Also remember please to subscribe to Intentional Wisdom Newsletter. It's one email every other Thursday with the best of what I'm learning. From experts just like Mac. Finally, please do leave a rating and a review for the Intentional Wisdom podcast on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. It really, really does help us to spread the word and to find more amazing people just like you. That's it. Thank you so much for listening. I will see you next time.