The Future of Digital Money with Joel Comm

Welcome to Real Money Talks, real strategies from the moneymakers and the world changers that you can use to make millions, keep those millions, multiply your wealth and build your team. Here's your host, author of five New York Times bestsellers, money expert on Dr. Phil, CNN, CNBC, The Street TV, Fox News, and The View, Laurel Langmyer. Hi, this is Laurel, and welcome back to Laurel's Real Money Talks, a podcast that talks about how to make money, how to keep it, how to invest it, and why you need a team. So throughout the month and the year, we bring amazing guests and influencers that can teach you one of those categories. So today we're going to talk about making money, we're going to talk about this new industry called crypto. And I have a dear old, old friend, haven't talked to him in forever. When I knew Joel Kahn, he was the Twitter guy, the social media king. So he's back, living in Denver, Colorado, and has his own podcast on cryptocurrency. So I needed to invite him to have this conversation because crypto is highly misunderstood. A lot of people are making a lot of money, a lot of people losing a lot of money. So Joel, welcome to Laurel's Real Money Talks. Hey, thanks for having me. It's great to talk to you. I was looking through my photos to try to remember when it was we did our Australia tour. Was that like 2009 when we got to spend a bunch of time together hitting Australia? Yeah, I think it was 9, 10, for sure in that era. I was thinking 11 would be the latest. Yeah, it's been a while. Awesome. So update my audience. So first of all, who are you, Joel Kahn? And then how did you end up in the crypto space? Because that's a long walk from where most people have known you to be. Yeah, you know, I've been an Internet entrepreneur since 1995. I had my first site that year when there was only 18,000 websites in existence. So that, you know, I've kind of been at this for a while. And since that time, I've written 15 books. I played in the Internet marketing space, the affiliate marketing space, social media marketing space, blogging, podcasting, video. I've done just about everything that's not illegal, immoral or fattening and ended up dabbling in cryptocurrency in 2017, was absolutely enthralled with the future of digital money. And because I was enjoying having conversations with my friend, Travis Wright, all about Bitcoin and blockchain and crypto, we thought, hey, what if we started a show about this that made crypto easy to understand for regular people like us rather than talking over people's heads? And because we weren't financial advisors or because we weren't experts at crypto, we thought, let's throw our humor into it. Let's call it the Bad Crypto Podcast. And that's what we did. We started in July 2017, and we've had over 7 million downloads of our shows to this point. I'm really grateful. It's just been a fun ride. And so I want to kind of back up to your past. I mean, obviously, you're very technical. You have a lot of influence in the online space that was developing in the early stages. Talk a little bit about that from a moneymaking perspective. Because it wasn't just being an author. It wasn't just being a bestseller, taking speaking tours. What had you be really successful in those spaces? Just for those that are still out there working in that space. Sure. Well, you don't do the books and the speaking tours until you've had the success. I feel like people who do it the other way around are the fake it till you make it kind. So I learned how to monetize websites. I created websites that sold other people's products as affiliates or had content. And I made money by selling products or by having advertising on my site. And once I cracked the code on how to do that, that's when I started teaching others how to do it. where I started making over $500 to $1,000 a day in passive income with Google AdSense back in 2004. And in 2006, I came out with the book, The AdSense Code, that taught thousands of people how to do it. And so that's then what I wrote about and what I spoke about, how I was making money and teaching others that they could as well. I love it. So, I mean, because we could go on and on about that, because I think a lot of people are doing that. Give some insight to your, just because you've been in the technical space and one of the really the early, not only adopters, I think creators on the Internet. Where are you seeing us headed? Now we have digital currency, which will come back to that conversation. I mean, technology is changing at a blink. So where are you seeing we're going to be headed, especially for marketers in the next few years? I know there's a lot of summits recently just around emailing, right? What are they going to do when emailing is replaced? What will be replaced by? So just give some futuristic insight, because I know you have it. Well, it could be either really bright and shiny or really dystopian. Unfortunately, you know, the shine is off social media. The shine is off the megalith known as Google. We now know that these companies don't necessarily have our best interests at heart. We are the product. And because of that, there's a lot of ethical issues that are now involved. And a lot of people are waking up to realize that, you know, giving away so much of our information privacy might not be the best idea. This is why blockchain is such a great solution, because it brings transparency back to various activities. It creates a public ledger of activity. Privacy is something that's woven much more into it, and it's really more about taking the power back as individuals. And I've been a big fan of social media, and I'm engaged on social media. But, you know, when you've got so much censorship taking place on these larger platforms, it's causing a lot of people to be very concerned about the future. So, you know, again, either blockchain and some new solutions are going to lead to more freedom and liberty and opportunity for us, or we're facing a really dystopian big brother future. And I'm going to be hopeful that it's going to be the former and not the latter. I would totally agree. So as we transition to the crypto conversation, talk about blockchain. I mean, I'm reviewing right now in pretty deep due diligence some of the new, you know, cannabis, because, again, the big brother Google and Facebook both say we can't use, you know, merge like. I was taken down completely by using crypto, marijuana, cannabis, even CBD. Most of my ads and sites were taken down. So, you know, them again trying to regulate what we want to market and talk about. How do you see blockchain going to fill that gap? So, for example, the one that I'm doing due diligence on, it's like an Instagram. I'm not going to say the name because we're still in an NDA and launching, but it's like that put in blockchain completely. I'm going to stay on a different ledger, but available for anybody to talk about the marijuana and CBD space as much as they want without any filter or censorship. So tell about the technology. It's going to be very different. I mean, we're not going to have to pay. We're going to get paid to have a conversation. That's the idea. So, you know, blockchain is just a fancy database. It is a more sophisticated and accurate database. So, you know, if you'll imagine people all over the world are on these computers. The Internet is made up of nodes, networks of computers, and that makes the Internet decentralized in terms of where hosting is. And so blockchain takes this idea of centralization, like the big sites like Facebook and Google and banking, and it decentralizes it. It says no one entity or power has complete authority over this information. That's how it gives power back to the people. So think about all these computers on the Internet cooperating together, decentralizing the power so that it empowers us as people. So these new solutions that are built on blockchain are essentially empowering people in giving them the opportunity to invest in projects, to participate in projects in a way that they haven't been able to before. Google holds all the power. The governments hold all the power. And it's time for us to take that power back. Blockchain makes that possible. I know it's going to be so exciting. Let's move over to crypto. So 2017, how did you jump in? You said you had a friend in the state. Yeah. How did you jump in? Really funny, Laurel, because I remember, you know, I'm usually on the front lines of stuff. I'm an early adopter and it's not because I'm super smart. It's because I'm like a 12 year old. I'm curious. And I want to play with all the new toys. Well, I remember hearing about Bitcoin probably in 2014. But because I didn't understand it, I just ignored it. It wasn't until 2017 that a mutual friend of ours, Davin Michaels, was the last straw for me. He was telling me about some crypto projects he was involved in. And for whatever reason, at that point, I thought, you know, I really need to learn more about this. And so with March 2017, I started going down the rabbit hole. And what I discovered is this rabbit hole is not only deep, but the deeper you go, the wider it gets. And it's just amazing what is possible with crypto and blockchain. Well, I started having these conversations with my friend Travis Wright. He's a leading marketing technologist. And our conversations after the 2016 election turned from politics to a mutual fascination in crypto. And we have been having these discussions almost every day. What do you think of Ethereum? What do you think of this new token? What about the price of Bitcoin? And we just got immersed in it. Three months later, with July 16, 2017, he sends me a message with a winky face. When are we going to start the Joel and Travis crypto show? And he was kind of being sarcastic. But the moment he said it, I thought, oh, my gosh, we have to do that. Two days later, the first episode of the show was released with website social profiles. We took massive action. The show came out and it just exploded. You know, it was kind of timing. It was the fact that we were two regular guys talking crypto with a sense of humor rather than a highly technical show over people's heads. And it also didn't hurt that we rode the wave as Bitcoin went from 2000 to 20,000. The crypto market exploded. Of course, 2018 has been a much sadder state of affairs. But the show, we do three to four episodes every week. We get to go to blockchain and crypto conferences and perform our show live on stage and do interviews. And it's just a lot of fun. I'm really passionate about the space. So what you learned earlier, you said it not only goes deeper, it goes wider. So here's some insights to the listeners. Right. So when they hear you say that, I just interviewed a gentleman. Actually, that got me back in touch with you, which, you know, he owns over 50 coins. He actually initiates a lot of the coins, does due diligence, a pretty loud voice. So talk about the width of it when you said, you know, when you could get there, it's wide. Because I've also in entering the space, it's small, but very connected is what I'm realizing. Well, you know, a lot of people think cryptocurrency. They immediately go to Bitcoin, which, of course, has over 50 percent of the crypto market share. But that is merely a better form of digital payments. OK, but there are many different types of coins and tokens. With the advent of a token called Ethereum, we now have the ability to go beyond just payments, just peer to peer payment. We now have the ability to write smart contract applications for different tokens. So, you know, one of the examples I really like is the problem with streaming music and the fact that the creators of music get paid diddly for, you know, having their music streamed on Spotify. I think it's something like a million streams get you about four hundred dollars. That's it. So musicians, performers are getting ripped off. Well, with there's a few different tokens out there that are created for music streaming, where by owning this token, you can purchase music direct from the artist and all the proceeds go directly to them. But because of smart contracts, they can designate for portions of that to automatically be paid to the bass player. The drummer, the singer might get 10 percent. The composer's mother could get 2 percent. Right. And the moment that that transaction takes place, those funds are immediately dispersed to the people that are designated. And this empowers the musician. Now, you know, take this type of idea and begin applying it to all kinds of industries, you know, whether it's e-commerce or insurance, medical care. There's just so many different applications for tokens in the new crypto economy. And this is why it's so exciting. This reminds me, Laurel, of when I got started with the Web. You know, in 1995, it was the Wild West. And then the dotcom boom happened and people were throwing crazy money at anything that had a dotcom at the end of it. Of course, that didn't end well, because in 2000, people realized that a lot of the businesses they were throwing money at didn't have legitimate business models. And then over the next few years, we saw the emergence and the rise of real online businesses. And of course, here we are today. The Internet, e-commerce, it's ubiquitous. Well, we are, I would say, circa 1997, 1998, where crypto is concerned, that it's still in its early phase. But I can tell you from having been there before that this space feels a lot like it felt when I was getting into building websites in the late 90s. Well, and what's interesting about that whole dotcom is what I'm seeing in the cannabis space of, you know, I'm going to call it the dot weeds. Right. There are so many companies saying, interesting idea. We're going to build a grow. We're going to have a manufacturing facility. We have all these dispensaries and magically some humans that need actually some proper behavior are going to make it happen. There are so many companies public in the marijuana space, especially out of Canada. That's so much money, billions of dollars being grown. And behind it, there's a revenue. There's not even completed cultivation projects. So it's interesting to watch the dotcom because my partner actually comes from the dotcom in that same era. So what I love that digital currency is doing is just giving it another regulatory space for a lot of people who want to, I would say, get off the grid, but just get into a different capital environment. So, Joel, tell people like from the podcast, millions and millions of views and week after week. So talk about some of the trends, the themes. What do you tell people they should be doing? Do you announce a new coin? Give some insight to how you are operating in this space. Yeah. So we do four shows a week. Two of them are typically interviews with leaders in space. So we've been really fortunate to have people like Charlie Lee, the founder of Litecoin, and Roger Veer. It was a crypto OG, Charlie Shrem, John McAfee, and the list goes on. These people that are deeply involved and passionate about the crypto space. So we'll typically do two shows a week like that. We'll do one show each week called the Bad News episode, which isn't necessarily bad news. It just goes with our theme, and that's where we cover the news for the week. And then we do one episode that's called our Crypto Spotlight, and that's our sponsored show, where various projects that want to be on, after we vet them to make sure that it appears they have a real project, will compensate us to do an interview. We never make any recommendations. We're not financial advisors. We never tell people that they should buy anything. In fact, we tell them and have since the beginning that crypto is incredibly risky. This is pioneering a new field. You could lose all of your money and that they should speak with a qualified financial advisor. We're purely for information and entertainment, which is really good because the SEC is coming after, especially celebrities who have been endorsing various cryptos. Floyd Mayweather just got hit with a six-figure fine. DJ Khaled just got hit with a six-figure fine for pimping, you know, various coins and projects that they got paid to do and stand to benefit from. So they were giving financial advice. And the Securities and Exchange Commission, as you know, does not smile upon that. And so talk a little bit about, as best you can, like I just did a deal with some guys, and they're clearly making a utility coin. So for those that are listening, still sorting out, you know, even the vocabulary, what's the SEC saying about it? Is it a security, not a security? And what's the difference between the secured coins and the utility coins? Well, there's this thing called the Howey test, which you could probably elucidate on better than I could. It's a test that a company has to pass to determine whether or not they are security. There's a number of steps to that. Not being deeply into finances, I can't off the top of my head. But there are those that would make the argument that utility tokens are not securities, that there is not an expectation of profit from buying tokens that work within their own ecosystem. And the SEC is trying to make the case to the contrary. Interestingly enough, they're winning some cases, but they just recently lost a case trying to claim this in a federal court. So they're still sorting this out. We're still awaiting, you know, true guidance and regulation from the CFTC and from the SEC. There's a lot of confusion. Laws vary from country to country. This is why you have a lot of crypto companies that are setting up shop in crypto-friendly nations such as Malta, which is billing itself as the blockchain island because of the environment they are creating, which is crypto-friendly, Gibraltar, Singapore. The U.S. is actually one of the most difficult places to set up a crypto-related company because of the amount of regulation and the uncertainty. Interesting, interesting. So, Joel, I know you have some places. Oh, actually, you know what? Before we leave, I got to talk about your fund formula. So you have your latest book. Let's talk about having fun, which you know how to do all the time. Yeah, you know, the fund formula is my 15th book. And what I did, Laurel, is I reverse engineered my 23 years of doing business online. And what I discovered is that this hustle and grind mentality that is being put out there is actually quite dangerous. I've discovered that if I evaluate my greatest successes and my greatest failures, my greatest failures are the ones that took place when I was working incredibly long hours and working myself to the bone. The greatest successes came with the least amount of effort. And so I kind of looked at that and figured out, why is that? Well, it turns out that when I was being creative and curious, when I was taking risks, when I was having fun and trusting the process, that's when the magic happened. And I discovered the same thing when I've interviewed other successful entrepreneurs. Now, I'm not saying that, you know, busting a hump and getting after it from time to time isn't necessary, but as a lifestyle, I believe it's dangerous. And so the fun formula helps liberate people from the hustle and grind to live both the work life and the personal life that will be more fulfilling. And if they go to funformulabook.com, you can learn more about it there. Awesome. Anything else you'd like to tell our amazing listeners before we roll out of our podcast today? How do they follow you? Funformulabook.com for the book. And then Bad Crypto Podcast is the name of the show, badcryptopodcast.com. You can find it on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play, Spotify, iHeartRadio and all the regular places. Please come listen, subscribe and engage with us. We love hearing from our listeners. Awesome. Joe, it's great to have you on Laurel's Real Money Talks. Look forward to having you back again soon and just connecting personally. So we'll be back in touch. Thanks for being on today. Thanks, Laurel. And those of you that are listening from everywhere in the world, again, send on Laurel's Real Money Talks to other folks. If you have questions, want to request of an interview, a topic that we need to be covering. We're doing a lot of very specific year-end conversations right now because we are in the money space and it's so critical for that timing. Go to asklaurel.com. A-S-K-L-O-R-A-L. You can put in your name, your number, make a request or ask a question. And we'll be back on Laurel's Real Money Talks next week. Thanks for listening to the Real Money Talks podcast. Your host has been Laurel Langmyre, author of five New York Times bestsellers, money expert on Dr. Phil, CNN, CNBC, the Street TV, Fox News and The View. Want to learn more about off Wall Street investing, tax strategies and multimillion dollar business strategies? 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