Announcer: Wall Street Unplugged looks beyond the regular headlines heard on mainstream financial media to bring you unscripted interviews and breaking commentary direct from Wall Street right to you on Main Street.

Frank Curzio: How’s it going out there? It’s February 3rd. I’m Frank Curzio, host of the Wall Street Unplugged podcast, where I break down the headlines and tell you what’s really moving these markets. Welcome to this very special Friday podcast. It’s special for several reasons. The first is, I never do a Wall Street Unplugged podcast on Friday. I do a Frankly Speaking, where I answer questions from my subscribers every week. Frankly Speaking is free for any paid subscriber to any of our products. You don’t find it on iTunes. We send an email directly to subscribers when it publishes, and based on your feedback, it’s one of your favorite podcasts.

Frank Curzio: But for this special podcast, I’m interviewing Chris Champion. I met Chris at the party at the Consumer Electronics Show. Got to know him very well over the past month, and quickly realized that he has one of the deepest networks of any person I know. He’s a guy that hosts celebrity dinners, hosts a lot of major streaming events, like the one he’s doing in Vegas this week at the Celebrity All-Star Basketball game.

Frank Curzio: That’s also where they’re having the Pro Bowl, which is flag football this year, which is kind of weird. There’s some people that are leaving, they’re going to the Pro-Am to play golf instead of going to the Pro Bowl, because they’re like, “It’s flag football. I’m not even going,” like Josh Allen. Stuff’s crazy, but it’s a big, big weekend this weekend, pre-weekend, right? Pre-Super Bowl weekend, because you have a lot going on. That includes that celebrity basketball game. And Chris is going to be hosting, right? He’s the live streamer here, live streamer from the Thomas & Mack Center. So, guests include Floyd Mayweather, with Gary Payton, Dennis Rodman, Eric Dickerson, Michael Vick. If you’re a sports fan, you know a lot of these names. If not, maybe not. Deebo Samuel, you should know. I know him well, because we beat him last week, which is cool, and the San Francisco 49ers, great, great player. Stefon Diggs, many, many other celebrities and influencers.

Frank Curzio: Another celebrity influencer and good looking person he knows is Frank Curzio, right? He’s going to be interviewing me as well. He asked me to come on, and I’m going to go on at 4:15 PM tomorrow. Obviously, I’m joking about the good looking part and everything else. I just think it’s cool to be associated. But again, he has a lot of clout. He knows a lot of people, listens to the podcast and it’s really cool. He said, “Hey listen, I want you to come on.” And he said, “I can interview you.” He’s going to be the interviewer at 4:15 PM tomorrow, which you could watch. It’s live stream through our Twitter, our YouTube channels. So, you could watch free on Twitter, handle’s @FrankCurzio, or on our Curzio Research YouTube channel.

Frank Curzio: And Chris has a fantastic story. And I loved and got attached to it so much because I love to see people like this. So, I love to see people who fail, fail, fail, have problems, and then succeed. That it’s just constantly getting bashed down, constantly getting bashed down, constantly going into that hole, and finding ways to crawl out of it. I always find it inspirational. And he talks about how things are pretty bad for him, which led to an addiction, crazy lifestyle, could have killed him. But he tells this story of how he crawled out of that deep hole, come up with the best sources of bringing together millions and millions of people, including these influencers, professional athletes, celebrities, all these people he knows, right? They have massive followings. He loves connecting them, learning, sharing ideas, and that’s what he’s done. He said, “Hey Frank, listen, you’ll have access to everything. I like you a lot. I like what you’re doing.”

Frank Curzio: And I said, “Look, I’d love to have you on the podcast. I think a lot of people could learn from what you’re doing.” And now because of Chris, I’m in this circle, which is great from a business perspective. If you’re an investor in our company through our CURZ token, which we launched a couple of years ago, gives you a direct equity stake in our company. It’s on tZERO. But from a business perspective, bringing my research, it’s going to go to a new massive audience where so many of these people want to follow. They want to invest along someone they trust. What you’re going to hear, Chris and I go back and forth on that.

Frank Curzio: I mean, there’s so much bullshit out there with the media. It’s on both sides, there’s just so much garbage. You just want to say, “Hey, you know what? This is the guy I trust. This is the guy with experience. This is the guy that’s not going to F me. He’s going to admit that that is wrong. This is the guy I want to learn from,” and that’s the people that I’m in search of, that I want to find. And it’s massive. It’s just a massive, massive audience out there. Now, we’re going to have access to a lot of these new people, and it’s great for you listeners, where we’ll have some pretty high profile guests that I’m going to be interviewing in the future. And being in these types of circles has always helped me find new ideas, especially from this group, right? They’re always getting pitched about new trends, real estate deals, early stage ventures, to launching new things, new FTs, different projects, and having my deep network, including all of you, where Wall Street Unplugged has been downloaded in over a hundred countries. A hundred countries.

Frank Curzio: I get emails from people all around the world all the time. It helped me tremendously, what’s really going on in China, what was really going on with COVID. Just, what countries are doing well, what countries are still seeing inflation? It’s just amazing to have that perspective. Your finger into real time data, real time. Everything we have and all the data with the Fed, it’s always like a month long or it’s going to be. This is real time. People saying, “Hey, Frank, this is what’s really happening here. I don’t know what you’re reading and all the bullshit, but this is what’s happening here.” Which is cool. No agenda, no nothing. They’re not asking for anything. They’re saying, “Hey,” it’s part of this massive network where we want to get the story right, so we all make the most money as possible.

Frank Curzio: But having a network has led me to invest in so many amazing ventures, and that’s been incredibly lucrative for me. Becoming the biggest source of my wealth over the years. Just things, were able to invest even in the mining industry. Very, very low prices and sat there for three years, while it did nothing, and just forgot about it and never sold. And some of these things went up tremendously. 10X, 20X, 30X. But having access, being in the room, traveling. Constantly traveling, constantly getting in front of people. It’s so important. And compared to a Zoom call, believe me, it’s so important. And the most fun, it’s not when you really talk about business. When you’re going out drinking and bullshitting about something totally crazy, and laughing and you just talk about your family, and you just get, having fun. That’s where you get the best ideas.

Frank Curzio: All of a sudden you’re like, “Yeah, did you hear about this?” “Yeah, this guy talked to me.” “Oh yeah, really? I know that guy. Holy cow.” Yeah, it just leads right to more and more ideas. And I’m like, “Hey, I’ll introduce you.” Yesterday, I interviewed Scott from Masterworks, and he was asking me about NFTs and he’s like, “We really don’t know this market.” I said, “You should get to know it because having your platform, that’s the toughest thing.” That’s the toughest thing. And there are great NFT projects. A lot of them are shit. But man, when you see OpenSea is doing the business that they’re doing, and they’re not registering this work with the SEC or anything like that. But if you have real NFT projects that you’re going to be doing that with, I mean, here’s the platform.

Frank Curzio: So I told him, I said, “Listen, I know two people that are unbelievable sources for me in this industry, that’ll introduce you to.” He’s like, “Please do it.” That’s how it happens. That was after our interview when we talked, just saying, “Hey, how’s everything going?” “Good, building it.” Asking them, telling them congratulations on success of your company. I still worked over a billion dollars. Sure, the valuation came down a little bit over the past 18 months, but that’s how all this happens.

Frank Curzio: And that’s been the biggest source of my wealth. Getting into ideas alongside people. Having access where our general counsel is amazing. I mean, he’s worked for some of the biggest hedge funds. He’s introduced me to the founder of Reebok. Got me into a couple different ideas, a special hedge fund that I was able to pass on in a biotech, which it’s very, very early stage, super early stage. And it’s a great fund, where I would never have access to and Curzio One members have access to that. They had access to it to get into that deal, which is cool. I love it because the market’s been shit. But just looking at details of this and some of the things they are investing in, it’s very, very exciting. But that’s how it happens.

Frank Curzio: You’re going to hear from Chris in a minute. Great interview. But I wanted to have a special podcast to tell you about the launch of our newest product. Something we, my entire team, spent months putting together, in terms of logistics, the schedule, the format. Most importantly, how we, Curzio Research can provide even more value to you. Our most trusted audience who wants to learn, educate yourselves, right? I’m always hearing, “Frank, could you provide more education? How to research stocks.” Believe me, I check, frank@curzioresearch.com, and also customer service. When we see certain topics get more mentions than others, it automatically gets sent to me.

Frank Curzio: This way, I can address it. I always want to know the sentiment of my followers are, and what they’re thinking, what they’re saying. Maybe it’s a name that went down a little bit, that they want more information. “Hey, I got three or four questions.” I know what to talk about. I do that even with Frankly Speaking, but listening to your audience is the most important thing. I’m not spending time reading every single email, but I have people monitoring this where, “Hey, okay, we’re seeing a little bit more about this subject. We’re seeing a little bit more about,” and just seeing what you guys want is very important in terms of launching this new product. Makes you want to learn more about the markets, have access to more trading ideas. So again, things that I see you ask numerous times when you’re emailing me, frank@curzioresearch.com.

Frank Curzio: So, this new product is called Wall Street Unplugged Premium, which is going to be based around a brand-new podcast that Daniel and I are going to host. Right now, we host a 30-minute podcast, and that’s every Wednesday. Not going to do that anymore. Going forward, this podcast is going to be on Thursdays. We’ll probably do that another week or two. But going forward, that podcast is going to be on Thursdays. It’s going to be longer, have much more analysis, education, and of course, trading ideas. And I’m talking about a new trading idea, every single week. When I say, “Frank at Dollar Stock Club, Dollar Stock Club.” We try to do that and take an idea from our guests every week. But as you know, some of those are CEOs that can’t talk about the stock. Sometimes, it’s the head of state I’m interviewing. Sometimes, it’s different.

Frank Curzio: Not everyone has a stock pick. And then, even when we do have someone on, and even a hedge fund manager, a portfolio manager, a lot of times through the compliance department, they’re like, seriously? I’m not going to mention who. A couple guys that I love, that I love interviewing. And you’re just like, “Oh, we can’t really talk about individual stocks.” So, it gets harder and harder. So, what we want to do is actually provide you with trading ideas, since we follow the markets every day, we do podcasts every day. And give you that trading idea, the timely ones that are being talked about during earning season, and give you the details behind it, give you the buy up to price.

Frank Curzio: So, that’s what’s going to be revolved around Wall Street Unplugged Premium. Including the membership, it’s going to be special interviews like the one you’re about to hear, video portfolio updates, free access to Dollar Stock Club, and Frankly Speaking, and a lot, lot more. Again, we put a lot of effort into launching this. I think it’s going to be an awesome product. It’s going to launch probably in a week or two, might be next week, might be the week after. But I’ll fill you in more details in next week’s podcast. So, definitely give a listen. Very excited. We’re excited about this launch, and I know you’re going to be too. I want you to hear more of the details. Now, let’s get to our special interview with Chris Champion.

Frank Curzio: Chris Champion, thanks so much for joining us on Wall Street Unplugged.

Chris Champion: Hey, thank you, Frank.

Frank Curzio: Well, it’s amazing how you meet in certain circles. I always say that for me, building my network, you always have to be in the room, you have to be traveling, you have to go there. I met you, I want to say kind of like at an after party in Vegas. It was a major studio. They were highlighting the future of virtual reality in movies. It was unbelievable, right? This place. And also demoing one of the hottest products at CES, which was the HTC Vive. And then I noticed there was a lot of influencers there, pretty important people. And you knew them all.

Frank Curzio: And you came over and everyone was coming over to you. I’m like, “Who is this guy?” And then, you’re like, “Hey, I listen to your podcast.” And we got to meet each other. I just realized, we started talking after that. And for me, I want them to know, and you could explain that, but how did you build such an amazing network? Because there was very, very powerful people in just that room. And then, as I got to meet you, I see that you’re hosting some of the different events and everything. I say, “You got to come to my podcast. I think a lot of people would be interested in how to build a network, how you did it, and how you got your start.”

Chris Champion: Yeah, so I’ve been in the crypto space about 10 years. And in 2017, I had had a really good year. And it was actually the first year where CES had a crypto section. And I spoke there, and I was one of the last speakers. And as I got off stage, I said, “Listen, everybody that wants to come to Umiya Sushi. We’re having a group of us out there, and we’re throwing a dinner, and it’s on me. Come eat, connect, make great connections, and let’s have a good time.” So, I thought 20, 30, 40 people might show up. We ended up having 168 people. I had a $29,000 food bill and liquor bill. Literally had to swipe my credit card so many times. It took an hour to pay the bill, because every $3,000 that I would get swiped, they would shut down my credit card because they thought there was fraud.

Chris Champion: And I’m literally on the phone with American Express saying, “No, it’s not fraud.” So I did that, and it worked out really well. But then the interesting thing is, I had a lot of people say, “When’s the next dinner?” I’m like, “Are you f-ing crazy? I just spent 29 grand. That was me giving back to the community.” And I started realizing that people enjoyed connecting over food. And there’s something about when you sit down with somebody or a group of people and have dinner, you tend to put your phone away, and you tend to connect better with people than when you do at a trade show or a conference. When you’re at a conference and somebody’s on stage speaking, if you’re speaking on stage and you’re trying to give your talk, well guess what? Most of the people in the audience, they’re tweeting, they’re Instagramming, they’re texting, they’re checking their email. They’re doing everything else but paying attention to you.

Chris Champion: And when you’re sitting down and having dinner with somebody, especially at a nice dinner place, like the dinners that I’ve thrown, I’ve thrown over 158 of them over the last five years. Actually, six years now. The dinners we throw, we throw at high-end places, really super nice restaurants. And when you go to a nice restaurant, you act accordingly. And when you act accordingly, one of the things you do is you sit down, you eat properly, you talk properly to people, but you take your phone and you tend to put it away. And when you put your phone away, you have much deeper, much better connections with the people around you. And that’s one thing that I learned very early on. And not only do people like these dinners, but I mean, I’ve rented out the entire NASDAQ. I’ve thrown dinners in Dubai, I’ve thrown dinners in Singapore with CZ from Binance.

Chris Champion: And it’s something unique about when you have a dinner, and you’re the guy that paid for the dinner, you make high level connections. People are like, “Hey, next time you have a dinner, invite me. This was great. I loved it.” The last dinner we had, we had the owner of the Sacramento Kings, a billionaire, Chris Kelly come. We’ve had celebrities, athletes coming to all my dinners. The starting defensive tackle for the Niners was at the last one. And then this weekend, we’re doing a kickoff dinner for a celebrity basketball tournament. I’ve got Floyd Mayweather there, Tyreek Hill. Yeah, you can see some of them right here. And it’s interesting, because celebrities want to level up in life, too. So, I’ve learned that not everyone wants to level up, like you and I. We’re business people, we want to level up and meet celebrities.

Chris Champion: Well guess what? Celebrities want to meet business people. They want to get in early into a business deal, and they want to have those business contacts. And the nice thing too is, when you have dinner with people, people say, “Hey.” At a conference they say, “Here’s my business card.” Well guess what? At dinner, they say, “Hey, here’s my number, text me.” And that’s a different relationship. When you start texting somebody, you have a better connection with that person than when you send them an email off of a business card that you got at some sort of business function, trade show, conference, whatever.

Frank Curzio: I noticed that a lot of this stuff that you, it’s so laid back. Laid back to the point where people listen or they’re watching. They’ll hear your dog in the background and they hear your phone ringing, where it’s so casual when people talk to you. It’s never, you have these grand setups behind you and everything’s got to be perfect. And it’s, I feel like I’m just talking to one of the guys and the influencers that you introduced me to, it’s amazing how far that can go. Like you said, it’s like everybody wants to get connected. It one thing that everyone wants, no matter how much money. They always want to learn more. They always want to have a bigger following. They always-

Chris Champion: Well, it’s not even learning more. It’s not even learning more. They want to level up. Everyone, when it comes to connections, everyone wants to level up. When you connect with athletes, you’re considering yourself leveling up. Hey, I had dinner with Tyreek Hill, I had dinner with Floyd Mayweather, one of the greatest boxers of all time. That’s a level up in your life. That’s something you’ll remember.

Chris Champion: Well guess what? When Floyd Mayweather sits down, I have guys that are NBA basketball players, they call me up, they’re like, “Hey listen, Chris, are you coming out to Salt Lake City? I want to have dinner with you.” They consider me a genius of when it comes to crypto related stuff like DAOs or DeFi or anything crypto related. And to me, for them, I’m a level up for them when it comes to learning about crypto. And for me, for them, it’s I’m leveling up, because I get to go have dinner with Baron Davis or Kevin Garnet, who went to high school the same year that I graduated high school in Chicago. He went to Farragut, I went to Richards. Clearly I did not go pro.

Frank Curzio: So, when did you realize… Because you have something called, I believe it’s the Crypto Dinner Club. And a lot of people would say, “These mansion parties and stuff like that.” When did you realize that hey, it’s not just crypto. And you mentioned like, hey, they’re leveling up by talking to you about crypto. Just like people level up talking to me about stocks or whatever, and we’re involved in crypto as well. When did you realize that you can cross over? Because a lot of people talk about their one subject that they’re great at, but yet, I think now you’re going into athletes, you’re going into celebrities, just the whole circle just comes around where everyone gets bigger and bigger. When did you realize you can cross over some of that stuff and not just focus on one particular topic?

Chris Champion: So, as I started throwing more of these dinners, I started attracting people from all walks of life. It wasn’t just the crypto industry and it’s partly because people wanted to learn about crypto, but they came from the sports industry, or the entertainment industry or other industries. And then, I got to investing into a water brand, and I own part of a liquor distributorship here in Vegas. And then, I own part of a real estate development company, that develops multimillion-dollar mansions. And I started getting into other verticals with my money and my wealth, and I started realizing that it’s no longer the Crypto Dinner Club. It’s beyond that. It’s, for example, on February 7th, we’re renting out a mansion. We’ve got guys flying in to spend a whole day going through a workshop, a boot camp, and then a live stream where we literally teach and eat. And literally people are going to teach, eat and connect with high level people, that are going to level up their life in wealth, health, and in all different areas.

Frank Curzio: Talk about the health part, because it seems to me that there’s something much bigger here. And I want you to talk about it because just how you started, where you came from. We’ll get to the book that you’re going to write in a minute, that I definitely want to mention. And this isn’t you plugging it. This is me saying, “No, I want to plug it,” because I think it’s going to be a positive influence on so many people. But talk about your history and how you got to this point. Because everybody wants to build a big network. And I could tell you something about it.

Frank Curzio: It’s not like if you have a rich dad or rich family, they could pass money. You can’t pass on a network. You could say, “Hey, I know this guy,” but if you go there, if they don’t like it, they’re not going to talk to you. They don’t care where. You got to be able to say the right things, know the right things, introduce them to the right things. Explain that part of it, of building up, and how long did it take before you could pay $30,000 for a dinner, and now you’re building that network even more.

Chris Champion: So, I grew up in Chicago, and one thing that I think my grandmother taught me early on growing up in life is, you just got to be transparent. You got to be real with people. And in Chicago, you learn very quickly. You can’t bullshit anybody. Like people in Chicago, they’ll smell your bullshit coming a mile away. So you just keep things real with people, in Chicago growing up. That’s how I operated my entire life. Whether I’m dating or doing business, or talking to anybody, I just, I’m transparent. If it’s good, it’s good. If it’s bad, it’s bad. And if it’s bad, it’s usually not as bad as you think it is. If everyone thinks, “Oh God, I got to tell somebody the bad news.” Well I got news for you. In life, the good news is never as good as you think it is, and the bad news is never as bad as you think it is.

Chris Champion: And I think that, that attitude of transparency has enamored me with some high level people. I think people at a certain level, especially very successful people, they respect the transparency that they get from somebody because most of the people that they meet are always trying to suck up to them, and give them a version of themselves that is not their real version. That’s not their real person. And when you’re real with people, I mean, at the end of the day, being transparent and real is one of the things that this generation of people, this generation of younger people is losing because everyone wants to, I think, I call it the Instagram generation. Everyone wants to be the guy or the girl that has the perfect life and image wise, they want to take a picture in front of a Lambo even though they rented the Lambo or it’s not theirs.

Chris Champion: Or, they want to take a picture in front of a mansion, a big giant home, even though the home’s not theirs. We live in a day and age where being transparent and being real is no longer sexy. The sexy thing is showing people that you’re driving a fancy car or living in a fancy home, or you spread out bunch of hundred dollars bills on the table. People want more than ever before, in today’s day and age, for you to be real. For you to be transparent, and especially at a very high level. Very high level, those people more than ever before, want you to be transparent. They want the real truth. They want exactly what you’re saying to be exactly what you mean.

Frank Curzio: No, it doesn’t make any sense.

Chris Champion: And that’s one of the things that that’s helped me connect with people on an insanely high level. And the funny thing is too, as we started getting away from just being a Crypto Dinner Club to being what I call now a Mastermind Connect, where we literally bring in people that are thought leaders, people that are very smart. And they can be smart at just one thing, but if they share that one thing, like for example, I don’t know if you know Gary Brecka from 10X Health, he lives here in Vegas. He worked with Grant Cardone. He’s teaching people how to literally 10X their health, and his focus is on just health. Well, I got news for you. We’re bringing him in for a dinner. People can’t wait to talk to him. People can’t wait to give him their blood. Like, “Hey, here, take my blood. I want you to look at my blood work,” because he does so much. He literally can tell you how long you’re going to live, based on studying your blood work and doing some basic stuff with you.

Chris Champion: And he’s done amazing stuff to change Dana White’s entire physiology, and his life and his health.

Frank Curzio: That’s right.

Chris Champion: I mean, if you talk to Dana, I mean Dana’s lost 40 pounds. He feels better, he’s more energetic, he’s sleeping better. I mean, there’s so many qualities of his life that have gone up dramatically because of Gary. Well, guess what, Gary is one of those people that people want to be in a room with, people want to spend time with, people want to eat dinner with. Why? Because when you eat dinner with somebody, when you connect with people like that on a very high level, you’re now leveling up your health. You may not level up your wealth, but you level up your health.

Chris Champion: Well, I got news for you. There’s five areas in all of our lives, our wealth, our social life, our family, our health and our spiritual life, our faith. And on any given day, you can look at those five areas of your life, and you could look to level up those areas. For example, Raymond White, he used to play running back for the Baltimore Ravens, a while back ago. He’s the minister for the Las Vegas Raiders. He’s coming to the live stream we’re doing on Saturday. I’ve known Raymond for a while. He is a very amazing person. He ministers the word of God to people that need it in the NFL, but he also ministers it to me. And in my world, he helps me level up my faith, my connection with God, my belief in what is right and what is good, and what is black and what is white.

Frank Curzio: Now for me, it took me a very long time to build my network. And so many people who listen to my Wall Street Unplugged podcast ask me about it. And one of the things I tell them is like you said, you want to be real. I’m from New York. When someone’s full of shit, you could spot it pretty easy. When you moved, you’re from Chicago, it’s you have no choice. You have to learn that way or everyone’s going to take advantage of you. It’s not like New York or Chicago are better than everybody. It’s just you’re thrown into the fire, and it’s a tough environment sometimes.

Frank Curzio: Are you ever mad when someone doesn’t like you? Because I always say that, if everyone’s liking you, it means that you are not true to yourself, because you trying to please everybody else. And that’s okay. If someone doesn’t like you, they might look at you and say, “Whatever.” But for me, I was never concerned about it. I was always like, “Hey, maybe this podcast isn’t for you. Maybe you can get better advice someplace else,” or do whatever. But I feel like that there’s this whole thing, especially social media being at the forefront, especially in the last 10 years, especially the last two, three years where everybody wants everyone to like them. They want to show them, they want to show them and be like, “Hey, how’s it going?” Just, yeah. How do you feel about that? Because that’s one of the things that I tell people, “Listen, if they don’t like you, it’s okay. Doesn’t mean you have to fight with them or anything, but it’s just not everyone’s got to like you.” And to me, it provides, you’re more authentic with people. You are real with them.

Chris Champion: So, I’m glad you talked then about that, because we live in a day and age where everyone wants everyone to like them. And they consider themselves to be liked, based on the number of people that follow them. So, if you have a lot of followers, people will literally go out and pay some North Koreans to put fake followers on their social media, because that higher number mentally tells them, “People like me.” Now, my grandmother came over here during World War II and she raised me. And she raised me like a staff sergeant with a wooden spoon. But one of the things, she taught me a lot of things about life. But one of the things she taught me early on is she taught me, she said, “Listen, in life, 40% of the people you meet are going to like you. 40% of the people you meet are not going to like you, and the other 20% won’t give a shit.”

Chris Champion: “You don’t have to worry about the 40% that don’t like they have nothing to do with your life. You don’t have to pay attention to them. They’re not in your circle. The people that like you, they’re the ones in your circle and the other 20%, you can let them in your circle whenever you want. But at the end of the day, don’t ever worry about the people that don’t like you, because their opinion doesn’t matter. The only opinion that matters is your opinion of yourself. When you look in the mirror, if you like that guy, if you like that girl, if you like that person, if you like who they are, that’s all that matters. Your opinion and God’s opinion. Everybody else, don’t give a f- about.” And by the way, she used that exact language.

Frank Curzio: So, let me just-

Chris Champion: When I was a five-year-old boy, when your grandmother says, “Don’t give a f- about them,” you pretty much pay attention.

Frank Curzio: Cursing was like a regular thing growing up too. So, that’s something I do a little bit too much on the podcasts. We get heat from it, but that’s me.

Chris Champion: The best thing, the best thing my grandmother ever taught that I’ll share with everyone right now, that I’ll share with you, is people listen to 75% of what you say when you don’t swear, but they listen to a hundred percent of what you say when you do swear.

Frank Curzio: That’s a good point. It’s true. It’s definitely true. It’s definitely true. So, I want to dig a little deeper here before we get in, just the celebrities contacts and more about the Vegas event that you are going to be live streaming. You asked me to speak there, which is great, and I can’t make it there, unfortunately. I wish I could, but you’re going to be live streaming the event and I’m looking forward to it. You are the person at that event that, that’s streaming, that celebrity all-star game, that’s you, which is cool. It’s not like, “Hey, I’m going to be there at the CES, I’m going to be in a corner doing it.” You are the guy, right? So, it is awesome.

Chris Champion: Well, I’m going to have two cameramen and four assistants. But yeah, we got co-hosts also and yeah, it’s a pretty big undertaking. It’s pretty cool. We’re doing a mobile live stream. We use Restream.io, which is a great product, allows you to stream to multiple channels. In fact, we’re going to stream to your channel too, so people can see that content live. Yeah, I mean you got to understand, when you get an event this, this might be the only time in my life where I can sit down and talk to Floyd Mayweather for 15 minutes, and ask him any question I want. Or Tyreek Hill, probably one of the greatest wide receivers in the game of NFL, in football right now, or some of the other celebrities that are coming. If you go check the page out and show it to everyone, the amount of people that are coming, I got a shot to literally spend six, seven hours talking on a live stream with some pretty big name celebrities.

Frank Curzio: Yeah, I mean, you talking, like you mentioned a few of them with Gary Payton, Dennis Rodman, and Eric Dickerson, Michael Vick, Deebo Samuel, Stefon Diggs. I mean, the list is unbelievable. I mean, me-

Chris Champion: His brother, too. The other are there too. Stefon and Trevon. I think it’s Trevon or yes, I hope I’m not messing that up.

Frank Curzio: Yes. Dallas Cowboys, right, so.

Chris Champion: Yeah, cornerback.

Frank Curzio: Corner, yeah.

Chris Champion: Great cornerback.

Frank Curzio: So talk about what… I thought this was really cool because you are about to launch a book, I think it’s coming out in a couple months, and it’s, “Win The Day, A Guide to a Successful and Sober Life.” The sober life… For me, I was like, “Okay, let me give you a chance to talk about this.” What is this book about? And again, this is something that you didn’t ask about, you didn’t tell me about, but when I always ask, “Hey, you want me to mention something?” I thought this was interesting. And it builds up to the character of who you are and everything you talked about, and you’re going to see why. But talk about that book and what’s it about.

Chris Champion: So this May, I’ll be 15 years sober. And I made a decision to start living a sober life as I started hitting the rock bottom of my life. And it took me a lot of learning and going to counseling, to learn how to live a sober life. But one of the things that I picked up very quickly, and one of the things that I learned very quickly is when you’re starting to live a sober life, you can’t think about 15 years. 14 years ago, I couldn’t think about a 14-year stretch of not drinking. I had to focus on winning the day. I had to focus on one day, today, I was not going to drink, and that was my victory. At the end of the day, at midnight and one second, if I didn’t drink, that was a win. And tomorrow comes, then all I focus on is winning that day.

Chris Champion: And I did that, and I started doing that just as a part of my sober living process. But then, it started creeping into other areas of my life. I started saying, “Okay, you know what? I’m going to set three goals today for my business or for my wealth, and I’m going to set those goals and if I achieve those goals, I’m going to consider that a win for that day.” And then, I started looking at it as physical parts of my life, and I started winning the day physically. And then, I started winning the day socially, by being a good friend of my friends. And then, I started winning the day with my faith in God, by spending 15 minutes every day and meditating with God. And I started realizing very quickly that there’s a secret to being successful, and also being sober. And they’re both very much aligned with each other, and the alignment that broke down to one thing, and that is win the day.

Chris Champion: And if you win the day and you do it for 90 days in a row, guess what? You are a winner in your mindset. Your confidence level is way up there, because now you’ve had 90 days in a row of victory. You’re not a loser, you’re a winner. You’re mentally supercharged on winning. And the more victories you mentally put in your head, the more you live the lifestyle of a winner, not a loser. Winners drive nice cars. Winners live in nice houses, winners have money in the bank, winners close big deals, winners hang around with high level individuals. Losers don’t. And the way that you start winning in your life, the way you start winning in all areas of your life, physical, spiritual, faith, financial, all family, the way that you start winning in all areas of your life is you win that day.

Chris Champion: Because guess what? Tomorrow’s not promised. In fact, you may not see tomorrow, but you can win today. You can win the day. And we live in a day and age where everyone sets these goals for the year. Okay, I’m going to set my one-year and my five-year goals, and I got three-month goals, six month goals, all these goals. But guess what? In three months, if you haven’t hit that goal that you set yourself three months ago, you’re like, “F-, I’m a loser.” You don’t have that winning mentality. You don’t have the winning mindset. But guess what? If you could win the day, at the end of that day, you just told yourself mentally, “I won.” And if you keep telling yourself, “I won,” for 90 days in a row, guess what? After 90 days, you feel like a winner. And sometimes, the confidence that comes with a winning mindset propels you into doing bigger things with your life.

Chris Champion: See, when your mindset, when you’re winning mindset starts taking over, you start to live a luckier life. I literally tell people all the time, “I am lucky as shit. I am so lucky sometimes.” And I don’t say it to brag, I say it because in my mind, I literally am super lucky. And at the end of the day, when you start saying to yourself, “I’m lucky,” it’s not because of anything else, other than when you start winning enough times, you feel like things are just going to go your way. And all of a sudden, things do just go your way. It’s shocking. You look around sometimes and you say to yourself, “How did that happen? I am so lucky.”

Chris Champion: But in reality, it’s because your confidence was high. It’s because you were used to winning. It’s because your expectations were to win, not to lose. We live in a day and age where today, now more than ever, I see where people need to have a winning mindset. And the way to do that is to give them a simple tool. And that tool is just to teach them how to win the day. Don’t think of anything else beyond today, just focus on winning the day.

Frank Curzio: Chris, that’s really cool, man. And congrats. I have high respect. I mean, that’s something very hard to do, staying sober that long, which is incredible. And you could see how you, I think going through these events, and we both grew up with a lot of people, and I had my crazy friends who just continue to fall or whatever. But just, I was fortunate about growing up, we saw a lot of stuff going on and it helped me tremendously, helped me understand people. It helped me understand if someone’s really pissed off, I’m not really, I’m that quick to jump on. If they’re pissed off all the time, it’s different. We’ll talk to them, but maybe they had a bad day or whatever. And I’m always, giving them the benefit of the doubt. Just learning about people and just, it’s pretty amazing to see where you are, how you overcame it, how it’s always what you hear, it’s always a struggle. It’s a day thing and how you figured it out, and writing about it.

Frank Curzio: And if someone wants to, again, I don’t know if they could pre-order, I know it’s coming out in a couple months. I just want to definitely mention it. So when the day, if someone wants to pre-order it or get more information, I’ll tweet about when it does come out for you. Again, you’re not paying me to do any of this, I just like to do it and give people great products and things that could help them. But how could they get that?

Chris Champion: If they follow me on Twitter or social media. If you follow me, @iamchrischampion on Instagram, and then @ImChrisChampion on Twitter, because Twitter doesn’t let you have enough characters for me to add the A. But if they follow me on social media, I’ll post a link where they can order early and get a discount. And the book comes out in January. It’ll be a paperback book. And the nice thing is, it’s a dollar.

Frank Curzio: Is it January or June?

Chris Champion: I’m sorry, June. June. Did I say January?

Frank Curzio: Yeah, I got your back.

Chris Champion: It’s June. June. Well, we’re now in, well, we just passed January. But yeah, so it’ll be out in June. And the nice thing is, I’m writing it as a guide and a journal. And there’s going to be opportunities for them to literally write things in the book and literally make it part of their own journal, part of their own journey as a tool for them to level up their entire life, whether it be sober living or building wealth, or becoming a better person, or losing weight, or getting healthier. All of those things can happen by just one skillset. If you master the skill of winning just the day, focus on nothing else but just win today. If you master that, imagine winning 365 days in a year. You will feel indestructible. You will literally feel like your confidence will be sky high, you will feel like a winner. And winners just win, and losers just lose.

Frank Curzio: I love it. And before we go here, and this is going to be a cool question, because from the crypto side, there’s so much bullshit. And it’s the reason why we were able to merge the gap between Wall Street and crypto, and people trust us on both sides, which is great, because we’re real with people. You’re the same way. Your circle around crypto, where you see a lot of the bullshit, but now, you lead out where you have such an amazing network. Tell me some of the projects that you’re hearing within your circles, that are pretty exciting. Because at the end of the day, this is an investment podcast and people are always looking for new ideas. And I travel, I go to CES for the last 10 years, 12 years, I think. Travel over the world, go to conferences, meet people all the time, and try to bring them great ideas.

Frank Curzio: And I know even talking to you, where we talked about a couple of these things, what are some of the ideas that have you excited what you’re doing or maybe you’re investing in? Because being in those circles, the biggest part is you’re hearing new ideas and great ideas. You hear a lot of crappy ideas, but there’s a lot of good ideas when you have these types of circles.

Chris Champion: So, I love what’s going on in Wyoming and how they’re creating a legal structure for DAOs, decentralized autonomous organization. So, you’re a stock guy, and one of the beautiful things about the stock market is, you can own a fraction of a company, but that’s it. You can own that fraction of the company. That’s your extent of your participation in that company. With a DAO, you can own a fraction, a token of a DAO, which could be a digital asset like a movie or a song, or even a project where it invests and buys companies or other things.

Chris Champion: And not only can you own a fraction and get a yield through a DeFi platform, but you can also have a say through the DAO, because you have voting rights. And you have voting rights, which allow you in real time to literally vote on anything. For example, I’m involved in a couple of movie related DAOs. I think the movie industry is going to be massively disrupted starting this year with DAOs. Mark my words. So, if you know anything about Hollywood, Hollywood is controlled by a very small amount of studios that literally suck all the money out of the industry. Are you aware of that or no?

Frank Curzio: Of course.

Chris Champion: You know a little bit about Hollywood?

Frank Curzio: Very aware, yep.

Chris Champion: Yeah. So imagine going with, and I’m not dropping names of anybody I’m working with, I’m just giving him as examples, but it could be that I’m working with him. Jamie Foxx, instead of going to a studio to finance his next film, he gave up 51% of the film and he got his fans, his 12 million followers, his fans, to own a piece of a film and buy into a decentralized, autonomous organization, a DAO. And that DAO gave them the right to vote on things in the film. Hey, Jamie wants to know from the DAO token holders, should he wear this black jacket or this blue leather jacket in this scene, or hey, should we shoot the scene in California or Nevada?

Chris Champion: Literally have an active participation in the entire project, and literally get a yield through a DeFi platform. And the beauty of DeFi is, if you know anything about the movie industry, the administration of royalties eats up most so much of the royalties that the biggest complaint you ever hear from people that have invested in a movie or have royalties from a movie, is they always look at their royalty check and they’re like, “How the f- did I get such a small check?” And then, they look at all the administrative fees and they’re like, “They ate up all the check with administrative fees, just to send me this piece of paper.”

Chris Champion: Well, the beauty with crypto is, if you own a token in a DAO, you can literally get a yield, a royalty sent to a wallet address that you can now pull down. And that yield, let’s say, will be an Ethereum. And now, you can take that yield and you can get that instantly. There’s no administrative cost of 45%. There might be an administrative fee of five or 6%. So now, you’re literally delivering the royalties faster, more efficiently, and you’re not eating it up with administrative costs, because it’s all done on the blockchain, and it’s primarily done on Ethereum. Ethereum is still the best blockchain when it comes to smart contracts. I don’t care what anyone says, Ethereum is 98% of all smart contract activity.

Chris Champion: Everyone’s excited that Bitcoin is now starting to add Layer 2 with smart contracts. But trust me, I saw the Ethereum growth model, it’s going to be a year or two, three, probably four years before Bitcoin’s Layer 2 smart contracts are even anywhere near what Ethereum. And by the way, all the people that are out there that are going to hate on Ethereum, Ethereum and Bitcoin are two different blockchains entirely, and they serve a purpose. Bitcoin is a great store of value. Ethereum is the Google of blockchains. It is the smartest blockchain out there. So, if you’re asking me what the road ahead looks like for crypto, I think DAOs, especially with the legal structure that Wyoming has given them. Colorado has also done it. I think DeFi, I’ve literally said, “Long live DeFi.” I think DeFi disrupts everything, from a banking and a finance in a Wall Street standpoint.

Chris Champion: In fact, mark my words, you’re going to start seeing Wall Street utilizing DeFi and other types of tools in the crypto space on an ongoing basis. You’re going to see some things happening, especially from a Wall Street standpoint in the use of DeFi and smart contract. So, if you’re asking me, I think the two biggest things that I’m looking at from an investment standpoint is, I love disrupt. I’m telling you right now, mark my words, the Hollywood industry, the movie industry, the film industry is going to be massively disrupted by DAOs and DeFi. And you’re going to literally let the creators, the actors, own more of their product, and you’re going to let their fans be the financing, not the studios. The scumbag studios, shout out to Harvey Weinstein, but the fans.

Chris Champion: And when the fans are participants, not just investors, participants. See DAOs and tokenized DAOs, they instead of stocks where you own stock in a project, when you own a token in a DAO, you become an active participant, not just an investor. So, that’s a huge difference. Now, you have voting rights and depending on how much you invested in the DAO, you have more voting rights or less voting rights than other people. That becomes something that’s interesting. And here’s the other interesting part. You can get a royalty on a quarterly basis. Not to have to wait a whole year to get your royalties. And you get it digitally, which means you can access it right away. And the beauty is, when you own a royalty in a digital product like a film or a movie, that’s something that you get royalties. I mean, the Frosty the Snowman is still paying out royalties and that was made in 1973, like 50 years old.

Chris Champion: I mean, I see every Christmastime, the Frosty the Snowman cartoon. That stuff is like antiquated. But you guess what? Parents buy it on iTunes, and they let their kids watch Frosty the Snowman on their iPad because it’s a digital babysitter. So, I think what you’re going to see in the next year and a half is Hollywood is going to be massively disrupted by DAOs and DeFi and the crypto industry. Unlike any other industry, crypto is going to be huge in the Hollywood space.

Chris Champion: Everyone, we saw the advent of NFTs in the last two years and before that, it was ICOs. And now, crypto has matured to a point where now you can get involved in actually producing Hollywood films, and having it funded entirely by a decentralized autonomous organization. And not only funded, but now you have an organization of people that can help market the film, that can help, that can have a participant engagement with the film. They can literally vote on things. It’s going to be more fun for people to invest in a DAO that creates a film with Jamie Foxx or some massive celebrity, and it’s going to be more fun than investing in a stock of a company that makes those films.

Frank Curzio: Nah, that’s great stuff. That’s great stuff. So Chris, listen, can’t wait for your book to come out. Again, I’m going to be tweeting for you. I love this conversation. I thought it’d be very helpful for my listeners and my network, because you have already introduced me to so many people and we’re talking all the time, and it’s incredible. I didn’t ask anything of you. And I say that all the time with people, where if you’re going to help them, you don’t ask anything in return. Because, it always came back to me 10 times more where you help people. And just to see how you’re doing that, I’m like, wow, yeah. This guy, how do you build up that kind of network with all these celebrities and everything, because people want to do that. And I think yeah, people could learn just from this interview and everything, and I’ll definitely learn a lot more from you.

Chris Champion: Well, let me give you two things before I let you go.

Frank Curzio: Sure.

Chris Champion: The one thing that I can share with everyone that watches this is this. If you get a chance to go to a mastermind event, or to go to a dinner, or any high level dinner, get it. I get people who spend money to go to conferences and trade shows and all that shit, but there’s something different about going to a mastermind event or a dinner where you sit down and you actually meet people, and you sit down at a table and you break food with another person. Go do it. Invest that 300 or 600, or a thousand dollars. It’s the best money you’ll ever put into your future, number one.

Chris Champion: Number two, I can tell you this, living a sober life was the greatest life hack for all areas of my life. It helped me financially, it helped me with my faith, it helped me with my friends. It helped me with all areas of my life. And I know a lot of people that are going to watch this video. They may drink, they may not have a drinking problem, but I promise you this, if you give it up for 90 days, you will see an improvement in your physical life. You will see an improvement in your wealth, you will see an improvement in all areas of your life. And I promise you, sober living and my dog can testify to that, is a life hack.

Frank Curzio: That’s awesome stuff, Chris. Well, listen, thank you so much for joining us, and I know we’ll talk again soon, especially in a couple days at the All-Star game, which I’m looking forward to live streaming with you. Thank you so much for that invite, and hopefully, you’ll join us again soon.

Chris Champion: Peace out, Frank.

Frank Curzio: I hope you enjoyed that interview with Chris Champion. I mentioned earlier, Chris is going to be interviewing me through livestream at the All-Star celebrity basketball game in Vegas. It’s going to take place at 4:15 PM. It’s going to be streaming on our Twitter and YouTube channel, so you can watch for free at Twitter. My handle’s @FrankCurzio, or on our Curzio Research YouTube channel. You can see my ugly mug. Going to be talking about stocks, market, bringing education to these people. I think it’s going to be about 15, 20 minutes or so. Should be cool. But also, if you’re streaming that event or watching it, you’re going to see a lot of celebrities. Basketball game’s going to be really, really cool. But Chris is basically the guy, one of the hosts of that, and he was also one of the biggest hosts in the Consumer Electronics Show, which he asked me to come on, but I was leaving, and that was the last day for the wrap up and stuff like that.

Frank Curzio: And I was like, “Hey, I’m getting out of here.” He’s like, “Look, this goes out to like a million or so people if you want to come on.” And that’s how we started our relationship, which is cool. I was like, “Man, this guy’s freaking has access to everything.” And I like him. I like the fact that if you watch this video on YouTube, that he has the shakes. That he’s drinking while I’m interviewing him, and it’s in the big mixers and stuff. I like the fact that his dog is barking in the back. He’s just a regular guy, not looking to impress anyone, but looking to educate and saying, “Here, this is how I did it.” And I love people like that, because by making other people’s lives better and helping people, it helps themselves. And I see that in him.

Frank Curzio: That’s why I was like, “Hey, you know what? You need to come on. I love this. Explain how you got your network. Explain everything.” And again, I said, “Look.” He didn’t even tell me about his book. I said, “Let me know your book.” I said, “I’ll let everyone know I’m not getting paid,” to market his book or anything. But again, he’s a good guy, he’s a good contact. And the fact that he has me in these circles now, is going to be great for you guys. Because again, it’s going to lead to more interviews, much more ideas. Great for if you’re just increasing our audience by probably a factor of 10X, in terms of the people. We’re going to have that kind of reach. And a lot of these people who I’ve met already and influencers are calling me like crazy, because they have these massive followings, but they don’t know how to monetize.

Frank Curzio: They want to start podcasts, they want to do different things. And that’s what I have to offer. Because I could tell them all how to do a podcast. Most of the time, 95% of the people that come to me, has been well over a hundred, I tell them how to have a successful podcast and they’re not going to do it. They just don’t understand the work that has to go in. You have to love it. You have to love doing this. You have to love talking to people. You have to love, you get a lot of these guys like, “All right, I’m going to have these three great guests.” I said, “Don’t put them all on at the same time.” I said, “Spread them out. Make sure whatever schedule you have, you’re going to stick to. Make sure you have good sound, good quality, everything. And listen to your audience. They’re going to tell you when anything’s up.”

Frank Curzio: If there’s an edit that’s wrong in one of my newsletters, I get like 15 emails. “Hey Frank, hey, just to let you know,” which is, this is awesome, which we’re going to have, right? We’re human. And just having that type of audience and listening to them, it just builds and builds and builds. But you have to be consistent. A lot of people don’t want to be consistent. They just want to do a podcast because someone else is doing podcasts, and I know three or four of them that I could do, that are going to be great. Well, you got to think of how a hundred podcasts are going to be great. How do you provide the value? And that’s what I’m offering some of these people. And they’re all in, they’re like, “Holy shit, this is great.” And they’re listening.

Frank Curzio: And thanks to you, we could show them statistics where it’s been downloaded, whatever, 15, 20 million times, a hundred countries and stuff like that. And they see all the guests and everything and they’re like, “Wow.” And it’s cool. And I’m offering these services for free and saying, “Hey, I’ll help you guys out.” And that gives me access to these people and their audiences. And it’s great, because they trust you and that’s how you build networks and stuff. So hopefully, that came out in that interview. I just loved it. And let me know what you thought, frank@curzioresearch.com. Sometimes I will love something and you may not, but I just thought that was pretty cool. But a lot of interviews like that are going to be on Wall Street Unplugged Premium, going forward. Special ones that people I see when I’m on the road, people that I meet, maybe Marin and I are hanging out, and I’m just going to have a special interview with him. Or mining conferences, technology conferences, if they’re industry insiders and certain employees and stuff.

Frank Curzio: I mean, that’s the people. That’s where you get the best information from when you’re traveling. When you’re going to these conferences, where you’re speaking to these people. It’s not just, they’re on stage and you’re asking them a question, or you’re talking to a CEO who has to talk great about his company all the time. That’s what CEOs do. It’s not knocking them, but that’s what they do. You don’t ever see a CEO go, “You know what? Stay away from our stock, man. I think we’re going to have a shitty quarter.” Or, “Yeah, we’re having trouble this year.” No, nobody says that. Nobody. And they’re not supposed to. But you want the real information, right? Because information is the key to making your decisions, the research process. To making those great decisions, in terms of what stocks you’re going to buy, what you’re going to do, which is key.

Frank Curzio: But, great having Chris on. Again, let me know what you thought, frank@curzioresearch.com. And again, be sure to listen to next week’s podcasts. It’s going to be talking a lot more about our new product, Wall Street Unplugged Premium, which will include so many new features, including trading ideas every single week, video portfolio updates, special interviews, again, like the one you just heard with Chris. More access, much more detail on the research process, more education. A service that we created, based on your feedback, from listening to you on how we can offer even more value to our most loyal listeners and followers of Curzio Research. It’s really exciting stuff. Be sure to be able to listen next week and have a wonderful, wonderful, relaxed weekend. Drink some beers, do whatever you got to do, whatever advice you have, have some fun, and I’ll see you guys next week. Take care.

Announcer: Wall Street Unplugged is produced by Curzio Research, one of the most respected financial media companies in the industry. The information presented on Wall Street Unplugged is the opinion of its host and guests. You should not base your investment decisions solely on this broadcast. Remember, it’s your money and your responsibility.