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Making Money Playing Games
314 Plays3 years ago
Part of the Uncommon path is believing that there’s a way to monetize the thing you’re passionate about. When you can set yourself free of that limiting thought, that no one could possibly pay you for this thing, it starts to open your eyes to all kinds of opportunities and avenues you never knew existed. Joshua Baird, of Iconic Motorsports, knows the feeling…he gets paid to play video games.
Join us this week for a conversation with Joshua about SIM racing, eSports, and what it takes to turn your part-time hobby into a full-time future. Plus, some real-life examples of how to monetize this kind of business, including NFTs, cryptocurrency, sponsorships, and incentivizing the participation.
For more on Iconic Motorsports, check out their Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/iracingiconicmotorsports/
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Transcript
Introduction to The Uncommon Life Project
00:00:02
Speaker
Everyone dreams about living an uncommon life, but how we define that dream is very different for each of us. And for most, it's a lifelong pursuit. Welcome to the Uncommon Life Project podcast. We're going to introduce you to people who are living that life or enjoying the journey to
Meet the Hosts: Brian and Philip
00:00:19
Speaker
get there. We're going to also give you some tools, tricks, and tips for starting or accelerating your own efforts to live an uncommon life.
Guest Introduction: Joshua Baird and Sim Racing
00:00:27
Speaker
A life worth celebrating and savoring. Please welcome your hosts, Brian Dewhurst and Philip Ramsey. Hello and welcome everybody to another episode of the uncommon life project where I'm your host, Philip Ramsey. And I'm Brian Dewhurst. It's good to have you back. I love Aaron Kramer. He is doing an amazing job, but you know, like you're just used to what you're used to and I'm used to Brian Dewhurst. You want to sleep in your own bed. Maybe that's not the best analogy after you've been on vacation.
00:00:54
Speaker
Funny story. When I first, Brian and I partnered together, I always say like, Hey, my partner Brian. And I'm like, we got to really probably have one more adjective there. My business partner, Brian. Um, so if this is your first time tuning in one, thanks for taking your time. We know it's precious. We know it's valuable and we want to provide you, uh, obviously something that is beneficial to what you're doing. And so this episode, we have a guest. I can't wait.
00:01:19
Speaker
I know, and it's something that we are now partnering with to jump into the space. It's sim racing. What in the world is it? Indie car sim racing. I know. And Uncommon Wealth has partnered with them. What does that mean? One, we all know that I am excited about Formula One, and then some guy at church was like, yeah, I have a race, or later today, and I'm like, what do you mean you got a race? He's like, I do sim racing. It's been this whole ordeal. We're now partnered with him. Let's get him on the show so we can at least have him hear his voice. Give me his vial.
00:01:48
Speaker
We have the one, the only, Joshua Baird on the show today. He is a systems engineer for a financial services company by day. Sounds boring. And by night, he is a passionate sim racer. He owns his own motorsports company called Iconic Motorsports and he provides setups and team events for different motorsport enthusiasts. We can't wait to unpack this. Welcome to the show, Joshua. Yeah, thank you guys for having me. It's gonna be a lot of fun today.
00:02:18
Speaker
Where do we start, man? First, can I start? I'm like so jacked up about this. So my son's into video games. I think there's a massive intersection coming to the gaming industry with cryptocurrency.
Gaming, Cryptocurrency, and New Opportunities
00:02:31
Speaker
They call it play to earn is a big movement in crypto right now in the intersection of cryptocurrency and gaming. And then I just got back from Vegas and they had like this massive e-sports
00:02:43
Speaker
arena there. And so I think we've all kind of, you know, you've seen this stuff on like ESPN where the people are flying the drones through the little race course, you know, which is like how are they doing that? And so anyways, and then this last summer, I met my brother-in-law's house of all places and he has this like totally tricked out Indy car setup in his like office, pedals, wheels. I crashed the car in about 3.5 seconds.
00:03:08
Speaker
And it was just like, this is a thing. And so anyways, when we, when I heard Josh, you were going to be on the show, I was just like so jacked up to unpack this because I think it's going to be a big, big movement. So we have a lot to unpack, but first wait, you can get paid for playing video games. Let's start there. Cause I feel like that's just something, just one step up. We're going to go probably five steps up here, but let's just go one step step up because people are now getting paid to play video games. Yeah.
00:03:36
Speaker
Yeah, it's crazy. Just sitting here, I try to tune into that because it is my dream, of course, to be that guy that makes $10 million a month playing video games. We want you to be that guy. I would love to do that. Be that guy. There's probably about one in 10 million chance that I'll actually be that guy, but it's something like video games. You're telling me there's a chance.
00:04:00
Speaker
Yeah. Um, you kind of have to have a niche. Um, you have to have some, there's certain like criteria I'd say that would actually get you to that level, but most of it is just having the passion for it, wanting to be able to sit and have conversations like this about it and to be able to, uh, provide something in the market of, um, you know, sharing your technology and your gaming.
Turning Sim Racing into Profit
00:04:26
Speaker
with other people that have mutual interests in that. So finding that group is key and then just being able to talk with them about it, being passionate about it, get those emotions going with your viewers to try and get them to do that. And then also there's a little bit of an investment and return on investment, right? Like if I'm just sitting there talking all day and like maybe talking back to the viewers that may get me somewhere,
00:04:53
Speaker
But, uh, there's also things that you might have to do, like, uh, provide giveaways or exclusive content. Um, uh, I might drop this ball or bomb a little early, but NFTs, like being able to provide something unique to that user that he can, they can only get through you or the viewer, not user, uh, viewer, they can only get through you. Um,
00:05:17
Speaker
Yeah, let me let me just take a step back of like what in the world? Why are you on this podcast, right? And here's why at the end of the day, Brian and I really do want to help people invest in themselves, right? Like what are you excited about? What do you get passionate about? It's probably not your engineering job, although you're great at it. It's this like I want to learn how to get paid driving behind a sim car. That would be epic, right? Brian and I are those advisors that want to try to make that a reality.
00:05:44
Speaker
And so that's why people come to us, whatever it is, and we've had a lot of quirky, different ideas. That's why when we talked, I was like, this is actually really cool. And I want to at least edify this track that you can get paid to play video games. I don't know what else is more like, this sounds like a passion. You know, I think we all played video games, you know, I'm 40, Phillips 40.
00:06:05
Speaker
As of this airing, I always gotta like, cabbie. But you know, we grew up playing Mario Brothers and Mario
Monetization in Gaming Tournaments
00:06:13
Speaker
Kart and James Bond on Nintendo 64 was my favorite game. If I could have been paid to play a game, it would have been that one. I never got into the Halo scene, but you know, fast forward now, I have a, you know, I think when we started, my son started playing Fortnite. It was probably 10, 11, 12, somewhere in there.
00:06:30
Speaker
And there was this tournament advertised where they were gonna pay, they're gonna have a Fortnite tournament and the winner was gonna get like, I don't know how much he won, but it was like a couple million dollars. And this 13 year old kid, I don't remember where he was from, it doesn't really matter, but he ended up winning the Fortnite tournament and he is now like a multi-millionaire. And I was like, holy cow. And not only that, what was really interesting about Fortnite was you didn't have to go buy the game.
00:06:56
Speaker
They gave the game away for free. And what a lot of people don't understand are the power of Fortnite. When you talk about cryptocurrencies and like user base, Fortnite was like the, like I think it was like the second largest cryptocurrency at one point, their V-Bucks, which is like the currency within the game. And they had over like 500 million active users. So just that infrastructure actually made Fortnite one of the largest cryptocurrencies kind of like
00:07:25
Speaker
that wasn't the primary goal it was just one of the best games ever made and so that's really where and then watching my son study these guys on youtube i was like that's your first two major ways to monetize your passion in fortnite was getting paid to shoot all these youtube videos and then maybe you win a couple tournaments
00:07:45
Speaker
And so kind of you talking Josh about like, how do you monetize this? How do you get paid to do this? That's kind of the onion I want to peel back today because I think there's like five or six ways you could monetize this based on some of the games coming out now, you know, from a model's perspective. Basically, we're having a client interaction right now with Josh. How are we going to get you paid a million dollars? Yeah, let's do it.
00:08:08
Speaker
No, so let's go back to like, when did you start realizing like, wait a second, I can actually start something and create something with this indie car series that could be valuable for not only myself, but it could fill a need for somebody else.
00:08:22
Speaker
Yeah, so it's funny because I didn't actually create this league. I'm actually the newest administrator of this league, but I think kind of where it kind of took the shift and where I've played my part is when we first got started, it was a hobby, right?
00:08:41
Speaker
It costs us quite a bit of money to get the broadcast series to take care of the broadcasting side of the house for us. We were letting people come in for free and just play as a hobby. With hobbies, it's mostly just money pits. You can't
00:09:00
Speaker
So my goal was to come in and actually turn the hobby into a profit. I at least want to break even on this. I can't be putting $2,000 a year down on this or more and not see any return on this, especially from a perspective of we have that ability to create sponsorships and reach out to people and create unique avenues.
00:09:26
Speaker
So do you have a wife? Yeah. Yeah. Uh, that yeah, she keeps me ground level because, uh, I'm sure we'd be pretty broke right now if she let me go full tilt on my, uh, hobbies, turning those passions. Wouldn't we all? Yeah. Yeah. So I'm, I'm very thankful for her that she
Realism in Sim Racing
00:09:49
Speaker
keeps me on the ground level for that. Cause, uh, that's definitely one of those things where I can run into that issue. Yeah.
00:09:56
Speaker
So what was like, uh, when did, you know, just cause I'm not, I'm new to this, but I did it with my brother. When did these like Indy car home racing setups come out? Like how long has this been going on? Yeah. So this has actually been kind of an older, I think 2007 is when the, uh, platform we race on is called I racing, uh, came out and they were like, we want to build a physics model based.
00:10:23
Speaker
racing series, not just, you know, the guy that can go on with the Xbox controller and turn a few laps, hit the left thumbstick properly. But like if your tires overheat, you'll spin out. Right. If you hit the wall at a certain angle, it'll do damage where you have to park your car the rest of the race. So, um, that really launched the sim racing sphere to the point now where they actually have a e Nascar series.
00:10:48
Speaker
They actually have some of the most talented sim racers trying to compete in the eNASCAR environment and it's officially sanctioned by NASCAR. It's launching and I think those guys are actually starting to realize because it's cool watching it because now you have
00:11:09
Speaker
kids that played video games that now interested in stock car racing because they understand what it takes to be a NASCAR driver now because they sat there and played I racing. So it's, it's a two fold, like win-win situation for these guys over in these professional series, because they get new viewers that they've never had before. New fans that they, they probably would have never been able to reach outside of tech kids that would never know who Kyle Busch is or, you know, some of this other stuff.
00:11:35
Speaker
Let me also take this step, this just for the average listener that's listening. All of your fans are probably like, why is Phillip talking right now? Which I get, uh, but like,
00:11:45
Speaker
This is what it means. Like you go on a race and there is no reset, put you back in the middle of the road. Like, no, you're done. You're done now. You're out. Like, sorry about it. You're basic. Like you're really done for the whole race changes the whole game. There's no pizzas. There's no practice to like repair your car, right? Yeah, right, right. There's not like why. And it puts you back in the center of the thing. Or if like there is no a hyper boosts when you're at the end, there is none of that, right?
00:12:14
Speaker
Which really puts it in perspective, like, huh, it's pretty real. It's pretty real. Yeah. Right. The other thing analogy I want to make, because I think to a lot of people, even me, I'm guilty of this, like when I first heard this, like people are going to get paid for video games. But like, if you think about how much money NASCAR makes, you know, I don't know even what the number is, you might, but it's probably tens of billions of dollars a year industry, right? Just NASCAR, not even IndyCar, Formula One, all this other stuff.
00:12:38
Speaker
but you think about it in terms of like american idol where the music industry was super difficult to get into and then american idol opens up and now like kelly clark's into household name michael buble all these people that maybe wouldn't have been discovered maybe they would have been um but it made the path much easier and then you look at
00:12:57
Speaker
NASCAR and what it would take to like run a team and pay for all this stuff. I mean, it's got to be tens of millions of dollars to run a NASCAR team with one or two cars, drivers, support, all of that. And so to me, this is kind of like an extension, a little bit of like American. I don't like these are really talented drivers like
00:13:16
Speaker
The equipment, I mean, the equipment is very similar. I mean, obviously it's not a physical car in your living room, but like it's pretty close from a physics standpoint, right? Yeah, so doubling back to what Philip said really quick with the whole damage you're out thing. Last year I raced for a sponsor that is very generous to us every year, IndyCar Ministry.
00:13:37
Speaker
And, um, they sponsored the Indy 500 and I wanted to raise their paint because I wanted to thank them for, uh, sponsoring us. I racked within like 20 laps. So I missed out. I was like, it was like one of those situations like, but I'm here for the sponsor. Let me go again. You know, but I can't, you know, my day was done.
00:13:57
Speaker
But, uh, going back to your, um, your statement as well, they have, uh, there's a few big names like William Byron. Uh, he races, Jeff Gordon's car got started on I racing. Then you have time of Jesse. He's kind of coming through the ranks. He's one of the top, uh, I racing racers right now as well. And he's actually come up through, uh, I racing's kind of sponsoring him to go into the convert.
00:14:22
Speaker
because that's a huge money maker for them. Like, Oh, you can just come to my platform and then you can go be a professional race car driver. So it's, it's huge. And it's not in similar what you saw in the UFC from like a reality TV show to now like you're fighting on the main card, right? I mean, it's like, we're seeing this type of adoption, I think in all the major entertainment
00:14:45
Speaker
areas, maybe not like baseball, basketball, football as much, but I think you're seeing this path and this barrier to entry come down. Zero to hero pretty
The Growth and Legitimacy of Sim Racing
00:14:59
Speaker
quick with technology, I think, because you can just make your own platform.
00:15:04
Speaker
So after our conversation that we had at church, and you were like, I got a race later, and I'm like, I'm sorry, what? And yeah, I was like, so can I tune into this thing? Like, I kind of want to, I'm kind of intrigued. And I didn't have a chance to do it, but you said it to me later. One, by the time I watched it, there was like 1700 views already. So people are watching this. And you started because you have to have a qualifying lap, just like a real race. And didn't have the greatest qualifying. Can we just start there, Joshua? Yeah, it's terrible.
00:15:33
Speaker
Uh, okay. Started 31 out of 32. Is that how many cars could have been, or could they have been more cars in that race? Uh, so technically speaking, there could have been for that specific race. Um, there's actually a limited number of pit stalls in, uh, certain tracks. So we do actually put a cap on that, uh, but we do try to cap it at the amount of pit stalls that are available. So realistic.
00:15:56
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So our goal at the classic IndyCar series is to make it as realistic as possible. Points we go through and we review every contact that happens between two drivers after every race and then we can dock points or based on stuff like that. So that way it keeps the realism. So that way you don't got guys going out there and trying to drive backwards and stuff like that. Yeah.
00:16:19
Speaker
Yeah, so we try our best to keep the immersion. And I think at some point, my hope is to grow the league enough to where we actually have to say, sorry guys, but we want the best talent on the track and you're not it. And I think that's normal, you know, baseball has a farm system, basketball has a farm system. You know, even I think the,
00:16:48
Speaker
NASCAR Indy car series has some sort of farm system, don't they? Yeah. So like road to Indy is a huge one for Indy car, a NASCAR, you got the trucks and Xfinity series, um, you know, the, the wheel and modified series. Uh, so plenty of, plenty of avenues to get your way into the professionals. Um, and I think we hopefully, I would love to have,
00:17:09
Speaker
a farm league for classic indie culture. It's like a place where you have to prove yourself. What did you figure this out? You're going to have to have that. That's only like the next thing. So I want to keep riffing on this because I have a point of this. So I start watching. I'm in all honesty, laying in bed and like watching it on my phone, but it does look pretty realistic. So that's cool. Then I see your name pop up and I'm like, Ooh, 31st. Like we, we can be better, Josh. And then at the end of it, guess what he got. You ready for this? Say second.
00:17:37
Speaker
No he got 6th which i thought was really good like 31st to 6th is like by the end they were saying your name because they were pretty impressed with the announcers or whoever so anyway it was just one race but i thought it was really cool and like all of a sudden you just see like a crash and then like those people are just gone boop gone like your day is over
00:17:58
Speaker
Yeah. So was it like the yellow flag or the green flag when there's a caution? Oh, yellow flag for caution. Yeah. You have that in this? Yeah. Yeah, we do. And, uh, the, the simulation actually triggers a lot of them. If it, if a car stops on the racing line, it'll, it's smart enough to know that. And then I'll trigger the caution for us. Uh, we're looking into ways because our road course, um, doesn't really have that option right now. Hmm.
00:18:22
Speaker
Um, and I, I've been having discussions with the administrators. I cite on the fact that, uh, immersion like, so, okay. I don't want to go off in this rabbit hole too long, but on road courses, uh, um, you know, cautions will bring cars back together and that brings the competition back together. Right.
00:18:42
Speaker
So they don't get spread out. We had one race last year. Uh, the guy almost slapped the entire, uh, field because there was no way to bring him back together. He just took off like a, you know, like a bullet out of a cannon and no one could catch him because he was just doing that. Great. That's where cautions may actually bring us back together and give somebody a fighting chance.
00:19:04
Speaker
But, um, you know, we can't do that because of the limitations of the software right now. Um, hopefully in the future we can have some discussions. So one thing that I asked, cause you do have to pit like this is a real deal. Like you have to pit and you got to think about when to pit. You obviously don't have a crew saying like, it's time, Joshua, pit, pit, pit, you know, so you have to figure that out. And I was like, well, what happens to the pit? Like, are you pushing buttons and stuff? So can you walk through that?
00:19:28
Speaker
Yeah. So it's pretty crazy. Um, we actually, you can run by yourself or you can run with the team. And luckily I have a smart enough team that can do some math for me because if you pit at the wrong time, you'll get off cycle with the guys. And then sometimes you'll have to go in and get more fuel when everybody else is still out on the track.
00:19:46
Speaker
So you can go to laps over pit, right? Exactly. So you don't want to go to laps down because you miss timed your pit stop. So having your teammates in there in your ear saying, okay, this is what I've determined is the window that you can pit without, uh, without running into issues or we could take this risk or whatever. Do you have a team in your ear?
00:20:05
Speaker
Uh, I do, but they're also out there racing. Okay. Yeah. So there are other guys driving on the track with me. We're just communicating with each other. Like, Hey, we should probably go in this time to get tires because I don't know when the next time we're going to go get tires. Yeah. But when I actually go sit in the stall, I drive straight up to the stall, the computer takes over and it's kind of cool. They, uh, implemented this feature where if you come in, like at a weird angle,
00:20:31
Speaker
Yeah, it'll, it'll increase your time in the pit stop, right? So if you come in dead center, you'll usually get the same pit stop every time. And, um, so, and then one of the other things is too, is if you're out on the track saving fuel, you come in, that's less fuel. You have to fill up in the pit stop, right? So it takes, you take about a second off your time. If you're out there saving fuel, and then you come in and, uh, take the, take the pit with less fuel.
00:20:58
Speaker
This is great. So I want to just say right now we are sponsoring is uncommon, basically uncommon life
Revenue Models for Sim Racing
00:21:04
Speaker
project, our podcast. We're sponsoring a race coming up, which I'm super excited about. Uh, I don't know what that means, but I'm super excited about that. Um, okay. So now I want to kind of move the whole conversation into like, how could you monetize this? Which gets Brian all hyped up because he's like, he's on a great thinker this way. So Brian, where do we, where do we go from here?
00:21:24
Speaker
Well, let's start with how is it generating revenue right now? Okay. Yeah. So question. Yeah. It's been really difficult. Um, from two aspects. One, uh, our goal at classic indie car series is to have the most, uh,
00:21:40
Speaker
let's say at least amount of restrictions to get in as possible, which one of them is a paywall, right? Like we don't want to say, Oh, it's going to cost you a hundred bucks to get in because, um, we don't want people to be deterred from wanting to join our series and then get in that way. Um,
00:21:59
Speaker
And then the other one is too, it started, this project started as a hobby and transitioning that into, let's make this, um, I don't want to say I want to become a millionaire. I mean, it would be really cool to be a millionaire, but I would at least like to break even in this series by the end of the year. Right. And so doing that, um, we've run into a couple of hurdles, uh, but.
00:22:24
Speaker
The huge thing is, especially like generous donors, you guys contributing to be able to have us race under your banner, it gets you exposure, it gets us to pay off some of our operating costs. Another one that's been huge, I don't know if you guys have heard of it, it's called Patreon.
00:22:47
Speaker
Yeah. And the amazing thing about Patreon, it costs the us as an operating cost. It costs us zero dollars. Right. Yeah. It's literally as soon as your money comes in, they take commission, which for us, it's found money. It's, we didn't have it before. So who cares? Like, as long as I don't have to pay it. Right. We, Philip and I actually talked about, uh, cause there's a lot of podcasters that use, uh, Patreon. So we actually talked about,
00:23:13
Speaker
do we put our podcast on Patreon? So very familiar with that. We ended up not doing that, but yeah. So those are kind of the main sources. Is there anything else? Yeah. The really hard thing is, I would say is our league is international. We have people from every, just about every continent in the world coming in and racing and trying to find a way, like one year I was like, oh, if you give this much money, I'll get you a t-shirt.
00:23:40
Speaker
But it's like, how do I ship? When I looked up shipping for a T-shirt to Germany, it was like a hundred bucks for the shirt. And I'm like, Oh, I can't do this. Like I'll just get you a gift card and you go buy your own shirt. Right. But, uh, yeah, so trying to, and Patreon is free international shipping. So that was a huge sale for us. So I'm really leveraging that this year, but
00:24:02
Speaker
going into the future, it's going to be trying to find new avenues, um, ones that are minimal, uh, operating costs or at least like, you know, giveaways where it's a return on investment, right? You get people throwing in money for a raffle and then, um, you, uh, you pay, you pay out the winner, but at the end you're net positive. Yeah. Yeah. Cause so just some return on investment stuff. So, okay. Well, I think,
00:24:32
Speaker
So I've been exploring the play to earn field because I had this conversation with a guy last night actually. I was at my daughter's track meet and it was an acquaintance. We'd known each other for 10 years and he knows what we do or what I do or what Phil and I do. So he's just like, we just need an extra $500 a month.
00:24:54
Speaker
And I was like, this may sound dumb, but there's a lot of play to earn video games out there where you can like make money for just playing a video game.
NFTs and Cryptocurrency in Sim Racing
00:25:04
Speaker
And so anyways, and just the interest my son has had in video games, and I like video games too, I just don't have a lot of time, but so anyways, I've kind of been exploring the space, but there's a really interesting business model that I think is gonna revolutionize gaming.
00:25:20
Speaker
And I'm seeing it play out like in front of my face basically in the last four to six months. And there has been some like to add on what you've already talked about this whole what's the video game that you were talking about? Decentraland or Fortnite. Fortnite yeah to play on that you saw how wildly successful that was and you're thinking through like okay that business model could work let's just
00:25:43
Speaker
Yeah, and like Fortnite didn't even, I don't even think personally they scratched the surface of what they could have done with V-Bucks. I think it was, they were just trying to stay true to the game, and they didn't want to pivot, but they probably could have pivoted into cryptocurrency. But now you're seeing these projects pivot. So I think the first way that I would look at monetizing this, because really this is a digital racing game. Very realistic though.
00:26:12
Speaker
is connecting into the metaverse somehow. And one of the games I've kind of been messing around with is Decentraland. They have several different games you can play to earn, but their big one is poker. And you go into like a digital poker room, but you have to buy an NFT, which is a non-fungible token, to play. So if you don't have one of these NFTs, and again, they're like shirts, hats, like it's clothing for your little avatar.
00:26:40
Speaker
But if you buy one of these NFTs and you play, they have challenges and you win the challenges and then they pay you in their cryptocurrency. So I think the first thing we kind of talked about this pre-show is you could have NFTs to upgrade or brand or market your cars in different ways.
00:26:59
Speaker
or your team stuff, right? Like your driver, I don't know kind of what it all looks like, but your colors, your mirrors, your helmet, all that stuff could be, those could be NFTs because kind of like you said, there's specs on what size the car has to be, what the tires are, you know, like there's a common shape, if you will, to all those things. And so you could NFT that, all that stuff.
00:27:27
Speaker
And what a lot of people don't understand about NFTs is the creator of the NFTs, which could be you guys.
00:27:33
Speaker
Every time those are bought and sold digitally, you're getting a commission on that. And Mark Cuban, kind of the billionaire who owns the Dallas Mavericks, talks about this. Like if I sell, and I being Mark Cuban, if he sells a ticket for 100 bucks to a season ticket holder, and then let's just say, I'm trying to think of who my favorite NBA players are, which is the Golden States in town, and people are willing to spend $500 for that ticket. Mark Cuban and the Mavericks don't make any of the money on the $100 to $500 sale.
00:28:03
Speaker
The extra. The extra. Right. So like if I had that ticket of $100, I was a ticket holder and Brian wanted to go to it, I could sell that ticket to Brian for $500. Right. And what Mark is saying is I don't get a cut of that 400 excess. Right. And so with these NFT platforms, the creator of the NFT, like if the tickets were NFTs, they get 6% of that $400 growth.
00:28:26
Speaker
And so for this poker game, like when their NFTs came out, I think they were like a couple hundred bucks to mint them is what they call them, is basically create them out of thin air.
00:28:35
Speaker
or post the collateral to create them, now they're worth almost 2,000. And that was less than a year ago, it's gone up 10x. And so I think the NFT thing is like the number one thing you gotta figure out because if your drivers had to come in and buy an NFT to participate, which it seems like they're paying some sort of small fee to get in,
00:28:58
Speaker
Actually, that's what's kind of been unique about us right now is that we are actually allowing them to come in for free. Um, but, um, and I do want to have a quick disclosure to any classic ending car series, uh, drivers or listeners out there right now that may have tuned into this podcast that these are just brainstorming ideas. This isn't happening next year or anything like that. Welcome to I'm coming. Well, right. It's not going to be a $10,000 entry fee for 23. I can tell you that it could be. I'm just kidding.
00:29:27
Speaker
Um, but yeah, these are just brainstorming, but yeah, um, yeah, it's, there's so many things with NFTs I think. And that's one of my next steps that I would love to take. But if you were to charge them, so sorry, great caveat. If you were to charge them and then they had like a purse that they could win.
00:29:45
Speaker
You could see like, yeah, I'll buy it. I'll get this now. No, see, and that's, that's another thing that I'm, we're considerate. Well, I guess I should say I'm, I'm brainstorming, uh, ways that, you know, I've improved that. I'll speak for both Phil, but we'd be interested in a purse. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I would love to get to that point. Um, I think we're like step two of five for purses. Um, but that's definitely in the future. Like if you had a purse, it would be more,
00:30:13
Speaker
Like the investment might be there and I'm like, yeah, I'll buy a helmet for X if I knew that I had a chance at Y. How many races are there? Do you have like a season? Yeah, so it's usually a 12 to 14 race season. You throw in a couple drop weeks. And I think another thing that I was considering with NFTs too was buying teams, buying seats.
00:30:35
Speaker
So you come in with a seat, you can, you can give that seat to whatever driver you want, but if the team owns it, then they can pick their best guys to put in those seats. Right. And let that be the, let the teams fund the drivers and let the drivers continue to drive for free.
00:30:51
Speaker
Right. Which is kind of the way it's set up now, right? Yeah, pretty much. Yeah, drivers don't pay out of pockets for their own cars. Yeah. Because just in explaining this, I was just like, I want a team. That was my natural, I'm ready. I don't even race, but I'm ready for a team. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's another thing you can dive into, too, right? I want my own team. Like, on a comparable partner's team, you guys buy the seat for the team, then you go pick the drivers, put them in. I'm right there. I can't speak for Philip.
00:31:21
Speaker
So now I can have sponsors that want to get by the seats for the teams They pick the drivers that they want to race for I mean you can do it just like they do it in the pros, right? It's it's that exact same content I can sell this the the sponsor stickers or the cars to sponsors for NFTs, right? Like yeah, the the possibilities of NFTs are endless so I know that has to be our next step to get I
00:31:48
Speaker
launch us into making classic indie car series a deal like that. Yeah. I think the other, I mean the NFTs open up so much because it's not even so much about the one-time purchase of the NFTs.
00:32:04
Speaker
as much as it is like, you know, especially in like the central end of the poker, it's now like the buying and selling, like every time they're bought and sold, it's creating revenue for, you know, in your example, be the Indy car. And so it's just like the ongoing revenue, you know, it creates like that ongoing cashflow and so.
00:32:22
Speaker
Yeah. And think about this too. I, this popped into my head. Um, like virtual die casts, people love buying die casts. That's kind of like the iconic thing of a motorsports. So what if we created a virtual die cast NFT and then let's say that guy that won the championship and then 10 years later when he's super famous, you have an NFT of him winning his first virtual championship. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
00:32:50
Speaker
So the possibilities of NFT in the sim racing space are just endless. Yeah. So I think the other side of it is probably a little bit more complicated in what, you know, Decentraland is its own, not only ecosystem, but it's its own cryptocurrency.
Creating a Cryptocurrency for Gaming Communities
00:33:07
Speaker
And so there's several of them out there now. There's Sand. There's another one. I can't think of the name of it, but it's, you know, I don't even want to name it. It doesn't matter.
00:33:16
Speaker
So anyways, it would be interesting if you had your own cryptocurrency, because then you could essentially, you know, instead of us saying, Hey, we is uncommon life project, uncommon wealth, we'll put up a purse of $100 or $250.
00:33:30
Speaker
If we said, hey, we'll put up a purse, but it's actually going to be this cryptocurrency that the ease gaming community uses, not only just your league, but maybe other leagues. Now there's like, now there's a groundswell, right? There's like a loyalty there's, and because you're creating that currency out of kind of thin air, I mean,
00:33:51
Speaker
There's only no cost to you, you know, or you could do it in like Bitcoin or, you know, some other cryptocurrency. And so that's kind of how the other games are getting massive traction is, is leveraging their own cryptocurrency. Um, and so I think between NFTs and then creating your own cryptocurrency, I mean, you're in a whole other realm now, like just with those two.
00:34:14
Speaker
Those two carrots, you know, so to speak, driving revenue and adoption and then incentivizing gameplay, right? So that to me is like kind of step one, step two. And then, you know, purses, sponsorships, viewership. I mean, it all kind of would just naturally, like the model in IndyCar Formula One, NASCAR is already built. We're essentially just trying to digitize it, right? Yeah, exactly. So really digitize it. Yeah, right.
00:34:41
Speaker
Yeah, yeah talk about I want to take a step back because you kind of mentioned, you know, I think some people there's a lot of people that aren't into Motorsports.
Differences in Racing Types
00:34:50
Speaker
Okay. Yeah, and I like could could you just like in 30 seconds break down the difference between NASCAR Indy car and Formula one and then take it a step further and then you kind of had some really cool other races that you guys are doing in events that you're doing kind of just kind of unpack that real quick. Yeah, sure. So
00:35:08
Speaker
So we'll say the big three, uh, players in the, the racing discipline, there's probably more than that. And I'll probably get yelled at by, uh, all the, all the, all the racing enthusiasts after this. Um, my big three that all I'll refer to now is a NASCAR, Indy car, and formula one.
00:35:25
Speaker
So, NASCAR is closed body stock cars that you kind of see on the streets, obviously heavily modified. And then Formula One is open wheel, heavy on the wings and stuff like that. Super fast cars, totally designed to go as fast as humanly possible on road courses.
00:35:45
Speaker
So, and NASCAR's focus on oval circuits, right? IndyCar bridges that gap of having the open wheel concept of going as fast as possible, but they, they dive into both, uh, road courses and ovals. So they're almost the middle gap between IndyCar and Formula one. And probably what probably the best drivers, right? Like if you're doing both, would you argue, I'm kind of giving you a platform to brag a little bit.
00:36:11
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Right. So if you, if you can conquer IndyCar, yeah, you're probably the best. Like Jimmy Johnson came from NASCAR to IndyCar because he wants to win the Indy 500, which is the most prestigious, prestigious a racing award. You could pretty much win.
00:36:28
Speaker
Um, and that's in the Indy car series. There's 500,000 people that show up at that race every year. It's the world's largest spectacle. Um, and then you got drivers like, uh, Roman Grosjean that came from formula one and is racing an Indy car now. How's he doing by the way? Uh, he's.
00:36:47
Speaker
He's not doing very good on the ovals as you can imagine. Okay. He's a pretty good road driver. So yeah, probably expect that. Yeah. Right. I'm sure that his bosses were expecting that too. Um, so he's doing pretty decent. Jimmy Johnson, his first over race, he's doing terrible at the road cars.
00:37:06
Speaker
Last five, uh, places on the road races. Um, but he finished sixth in his first, uh, IndyCar oval race. Okay. Yep. Yep. So yeah, respectable. Yep. So as you can imagine, the guys that come from those, those one wing or the other, they come in and they're probably good at that one spot, but they're not good at the other. So.
00:37:27
Speaker
having the guys that balance between all those disciplines is really quite the thing to
Endurance Racing Explained
00:37:34
Speaker
see. And I think that IndyCar is growing because people are realizing that. So there was a second part to the question. Yeah, the events. You guys got different types of events. You're not just driving around the track all the time. Yeah. So there is a third discipline and it's endurance racing or another discipline, I guess I shouldn't label it as third.
00:37:55
Speaker
Uh, it's, um, it's based on real life IMSA, uh, series or, um, other endurance series and their 24 hour races. And literally there's the same car driving around the track for 24 hours straight. So the cool thing, are they trying to do like laps or are they just like, how many laps can you do in 24 hours?
00:38:15
Speaker
That's exactly right. You don't worry about those like, Oh, I'm two seconds slower than the fastest guy in the track. Because if that guy wrecks, then you're going to beat him by a hundred laps, right? Like, so it's all about starting and finishing. Is it team oriented or is it individual? Yeah. So it is team oriented. And what it is, is you can
00:38:34
Speaker
You take about five or six hours shifts and then you swap out drivers. So I like the movie with Christian Bale, right? And yeah, yeah, exactly. For exactly. Yes, that is exactly based on my only way to understand it down. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you take shifts. I've done probably three or four of them. I am. I survive them, but you're not thriving. No one's thriving in that.
00:39:01
Speaker
No, there's a couple of guys out there. I'm like, you're, you're out of this world, dude. You're, we call them aliens in the racing world, semi racing world, because they're just out of this world. Just putting out. All right. So this begs the question. Joshua, I put you in a real car. This is real life. The three of us.
00:39:17
Speaker
Well, I don't know about that. You'll beat us, no problem. But would you be comfortable behind the wheel, real life? Ooh, that's a tough question because one day. It's kind of like trading fake money. Like TD Ameritrade, you have this play money, or what is it called? Paper money. Paper money, yeah. Paper money, and then you go to the real money. It's like a whole different world. So I get that you probably aren't, because it's just you can't. But I still think you'd have a pretty good shot.
00:39:45
Speaker
Yeah. I don't know. It's tough because you want, you want to think that you can have that up. Uh, one of the huge things that they'll never be able to simulate is G forces. And that by itself is a whole makes the, makes it a sport versus just driving your Sunday driver, right? Like you're fighting
00:40:06
Speaker
you know, pounds and pounds of forces pressed up against you. And, uh, over at Iowa speedway, they can hit 180 miles per hour on that little tiny, uh, one mile track and the Indy cars. So those guys are taking on, I think that they take on up to five G's of force in those turns because it's just so much pressure on them.
00:40:30
Speaker
that they're dead by the end of the race. It's super interesting because Philip and I both have VR headsets. We're big. I'm a huge fan of it. I think it's sweet, but they're making now these like vests that you put on. So like if you're in a shooting game or a boxing game or some sort of like combat sport game that the suit will actually
00:40:50
Speaker
They call it a haptic. It'll actually like press it like you'll feel it and from this suit So I bet I bet in the next few years you're gonna have like whole cockpits you can install in your house They have them now they do and then like they can
Advanced Technology in Sim Racing
00:41:04
Speaker
like move. Yeah, it's pretty amazing. Yeah, there's this room would be actually perfect
00:41:09
Speaker
So our title sponsor this year is actually called butt kicker. And what they use, they do is they use the, uh, low frequencies of base to give the feeling of vibrations and stuff like that. So you can really, and, uh, the steering wheels, um, they come out with now there's a entry level steering wheel that, uh, if you hit a wall and you don't take your hands off, it'll break your wrists because it's that much feedback.
00:41:33
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. So, um, there's ton of VR. It supports VR. So half of our racers in our leaguer and virtual reality, I actually started off in virtual reality, um, until my headset broke. And then I was like, I don't know.
00:41:48
Speaker
If I can do this yeah, it's incredible You know what you're gonna be able to do so do Josh I feel like we just scratched the surface surface But I am excited as uncommon wealth to be able to pour into this one You're pursuing your passion to you're trying to figure out how to monetize
00:42:05
Speaker
which is like pretty much what we do every day. Obviously you heard it. Anyway, thank you for taking the time. Tell us more about it. And I think that we would be excited to continue this partnership, helping out and trying to figure out how to monetize this for you.
00:42:20
Speaker
Yeah, we can. So I'm unsure when this is going to actually get posted, but I think what October 16th is the day it is going to be the uncommon wealth partners 300 and it will be at Phillip Island, which is a real life track based out of Australia. So that's the reason why we picked exactly. You got to know that. Yeah.
00:42:44
Speaker
The stars lined up for this one. That's why this has to be this one. So we'll, we'll, we'll bear this before that, just so everybody can get a little excited. Yeah. Yeah. Tune in. Yeah. It should be great last year. Um, it, I think it came down to the last 10 laps of the race where, um, you know, they were fighting until it and tooth and nail and, uh, just ton of great competition last time we raced there. So I'm expecting it to be just as good. One of our, uh,
00:43:09
Speaker
Um, runners up for champion, uh, last year, uh, won that race. So I'm looking forward to see if he can do that again. He's on my team this year. I'm expecting for you to win. Yeah, exactly. And then maybe sometime Brian and I can be the announcers of it. It would be a trip. I'm telling you that right now, dude, I would love to have you guys come on. We could even, even schedule something that, uh, you guys can come on and talk during the race too. Okay. Well, we can do that.
00:43:32
Speaker
Very good. Thank you so much, Joshua. Yeah. Thank you guys for having me. It was such a great time talking about this. Yeah. We got to keep doing this. This is great. Heck yeah. Well, hey, you've been listening to the Uncommon Life Project. I've been your host, Phillip Ramsey. And I am Brian Dewhurst. Until next time, go be uncommon. Thanks for listening. Thanks, everybody.
00:43:48
Speaker
That's all for this episode of The Uncommon Life Project, brought to you by Uncommon Wealth Partners. Be sure to visit uncommonwealth.com to learn more about our services. Don't miss an episode as we introduce you to inspiring people who are actively pursuing an uncommon life.