Vegas Circle

The Game Changer: Marketing Mastery & Poker Power, Blake Wynn, Founder/CEO of Celebrity Poker Tour

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Embark on a journey with Blake Wynn, the visionary behind Enclave and Key, as he shares the inside scoop on the transformative world of influencer marketing. Blake illuminates the path from traditional endorsements to the cutting-edge realm of experiential marketing, where events are not mere parties but sophisticated blends of product showcases and influencer engagement. These curated experiences are tailored to resonate with an elite audience, seamlessly integrating brands into the vibrant tapestry of high-profile gatherings.

As the conversation evolves, we navigate the intricacies of brand building and the thrills of hosting events that draw in celebrities, sponsors, and media giants alike—all without monetary incentives. Blake offers a rare glimpse into the strategic planning of events designed to allure stars through pure entertainment value. He also provides profound insights into the legacy of influence and the nuanced challenges faced by entrepreneurs, from fundraising to balancing the rigors of both personal and professional life.

Finally, grab a front-row seat to the Celebrity Poker Tour's creation and its meteoric rise from a casual game among friends to a televised sensation. We close the curtain with an exciting announcement about the live-streaming of the Celebrity Poker Event in Vegas—accessible to all on various platforms, ensuring that you won't miss a moment of the action. Tune in for an exclusive behind-the-scenes look at luxury event marketing and entrepreneurial growth, courtesy of Blake Wynn's exceptional storytelling.

Paki Phillips:

Welcome to Vegas Circle podcast with your host, Paki and Chris. We are people who are passionate about business, success and culture and this is our platform to showcase the people in our city who make it happen. On today's podcast, we're going to dive into a businessman's social media market and expertise and strategic partnerships and network expansion. We're going back to the Circle. Founder and CEO of Enclave and Key, Mr Blake Wynn. It's good to see you again, brother.

Blake Wynn:

It's our third time doing this. Yeah, appreciate you guys having me. You guys are looking good. We appreciate you. We're excited to be back third time.

Paki Phillips:

It's good. I think you're the only person we've had on no, I'm sorry, besides Stephen Jackson and Carl, I think you're the third. Well, that's great company which you introduced me to, so, but we got to give you your flowers, man. So big shout out to you, man. We linked up about five years ago. You've been so consistent, so inspiring, had your hands and have pivoted so many different avenues which we'll get into today, got a new business venture with the celebrity poker out. But let's first start off with because we've never really touched on Enclave and Key. You guys talk about being the ultimate marketing agency, so can you kind of share with our listeners? You know why you rebranded and what Enclave and Key is all about.

Blake Wynn:

You know, when we first started, it was about influencer marketing. It was about helping you know, helping the talent get opportunities with brands, and what ended up happening was, if you want to be able to redo those deals, you got to be able to provide value to the brand. Now, as you went from 2017 and 18, when influencer marketing was sort of newer and it was working all the time, you sort of reached a point diminishing returns, not as Enclave, but as anybody trying to use influencer marketing. You had to start to get more creative. What ended up happening was experiential marketing sort of became where it went.

Blake Wynn:

Experial mental marketing in the sense that, say, you want to have a talent post about your brand, but imagine you can have them do so in a setting that encapsulates what your brand is about in a way that's celebrating your brand as opposed to just here's me with the product, right.

Blake Wynn:

So I'll share an example. You take a client like Louis Tres we've worked with now for a few years and our clients can afford to buy it. They could happily take a photo with it. Maybe somebody would buy it based on seeing that photo and maybe they wouldn't. But imagine that client is also on the cover of a magazine. So we have Louis Tres get involved in the dinner that's designed to help that athlete celebrate the fact that they're on the cover of the magazine and they've got 40 of their athlete friends and celebrity friends and family and whoever it may be at this event. And at the event we have a Louis Tres representative straight from Cognac, france, that will get up there and do a toast and explain how important Louis Tres is. All this is being filmed, covered by PR, covered by the athletes, covered by the guests, and then they pass it out and everyone gets to try it and they get to cheers, these Baccarat crystal glasses that are so spectacular they sound like church bells when they go together and everything.

Blake Wynn:

And next thing, you know that's how we marketed Louis Tres. That's one example. So it's subtle in nature and it maybe requires a couple of additional steps, but that doesn't compare to an Instagram story of them with the product. So we started doing that. Last year we threw about 200 events across the world. I can't say I personally attended all of them and they, of course, were not all for Louis Tres, but as an entity, that's what we did. And then one of them, by accident, was the start of the celebrity poker tour.

Paki Phillips:

Oh, ok, got it.

Chris Smith:

Yeah, kind of using the oclive and queso Going from that kind of Instagram social media marketing going to this avenue, was it a very saturated market? Is this kind of a new endeavor? Is there a lot of competition in that space?

Blake Wynn:

You know what's interesting about experiential marketing. I mean sure there's a lot of companies that do it, but we took the stance that when an oclive throws an event, it's got a certain feel to it. Everything we throw sort of has a certain exclusivity to it, a certain luxury feel to it, a certain white glove approach, if you will, where we don't throw experiences like music festivals you know what I mean we don't throw experience at 15,000 people. For all the different kinds of experiences we throw, they're always catered to 60 to 100 people. But of those 60 or 100 people, more than 50% of them are pretty much always celebrities. So whether it be a suite for 60 people that we have at the Charger Stadium, whether it be a suite for 16 people that we have at Allegiant Stadium, whether it be these 50-person dinners that I was discussing for Louis Triton, they all sort of have that similar personality. So you sort of that's the one you did at Eight Lounds.

Blake Wynn:

It was awesome, very intimate, very intimate you get to meet great people, everybody whose hands you shake. Wow, what are you doing Next thing? You know, you look one way and here's some big artists like Josh. And then you look the other way and what is Kelly Olinik doing in this room? You know what I mean. And then you keep going down the line, and it's not in any way designed to be snooty or anything like that. I don't want it to sound that way. I didn't mean to sort of get name-droppy about it, but I say that to say that there was sort of a personality that we developed when it comes to how we throw events and so, as a result, the kinds of companies that were seeking us out to throw things, we're sort of looking for that exact service, right. So I would say we dominated a smaller niche of how we throw events and we threw all of them that cater to that kind of group.

Paki Phillips:

Got it. It's backing up a little bit about like influence and marketing right, and I'm very curious your perspective on this because you worked really hard at this. The blue check what's your perspective on the blue check, being that you worked hard and built it and were able to get it back in the day when it was the older kind of traditional way. But now, with people being able to pay to have the blue check on different social media platforms, what's your perspective on that?

Blake Wynn:

There's always going to be something. I mean there's always going to be something. I think I mean, look, I have two opinions, right. I mean I think if I'm Elon Musk, I'm Mark Zuckerberg Brilliant.

Chris Smith:

There's a reason why.

Blake Wynn:

Meta just went up 60 bucks after hours today.

Blake Wynn:

Of course, it's not the blue checks, but again, they have the right strategy for this thing and, at the end of the day, I think of nothing else is a reminder that you are at the mercy of these social media platforms, right? So there's a couple of people that would throw 25 grand at PR and this and that just to hope they could potentially get this blue check, and then one day you get it for 16 bucks. That's what happens when you're dealing with an entity that you don't control, right? But no, I mean, look, I think there's new things now. I think now it's less about whether or not you have the blue check and it's whether it's. To me that's kind of a superficial thing. In the same way that so is a watch, so is a car, so is this? So is that there's other ways to show your status? A blue check was a certain kind of status. It was a very valuable networking tool, if nothing else. I mean, if you reached out to somebody with a blue check, you got a response almost always. Right Now, maybe not as much.

Blake Wynn:

I also think, truthfully, like they need to get a little bit of a checks and balances on it, because a lot of people are getting scammed by people with blue checks now, which maybe doesn't impact Facebook's business, but it's impacting their users. And if there's one thing I've learned from Steve, you got to think about the who matters and the people more than the building. He says the building's great and you can make it beautiful, and at the end of the day, as soon as that thing's open, it's a shell. It's the people inside it that make it what it is. If you're a social media platform, it's your users that make your platform what it is. Ask Myspace, right. I mean, your users determine whether or not you're going to last or not, and if they get scammed on your platform and this, that or the third rub's in the wrong way, you'll lose them. And if that happens at scale $20 billion mark, cap or not you'll go away one day. So I think there's things they need to sort of monitor for, but there'll always be something.

Paki Phillips:

How do you like social media now? Because you built a brand like YouTube channels and things like that. I've been an influencer for a while up until what? Probably the last, probably three, four, five years, and you kind of it seems like you've stepped back a little bit on the influence in your own personal Blake Wynn brand. But what's your take on just being an influencer just in general? That's not who you're working with, but do you feel like it's very gimmicky or what's your perspective?

Blake Wynn:

on it. Well, I think for some people it is, but I think more than anything, I think it's about entertainment. I like social media. The way I did social media a few years ago, I was making daily vlogs. I never set out like, oh, I'm going to build all these followers on Instagram. Instagram is sort of a byproduct of my YouTube and YouTube wasn't okay. Let me figure out how I can get X amount of followers or X amount of viewership.

Blake Wynn:

I was trying to entertain people and, as it turned out, there were a few hundred thousand people that were entertained by it and then they were entertained enough that a hundred thousand of them maybe went over to Instagram. So I'm still really fascinated by the idea of entertainment. That's why we've started the celebrity poker tour. That's why we threw all these different events that we've thrown. I like entertaining people. That's always sort of been what I've always sort of felt personally good at. That's what I've always liked doing more than anything else.

Blake Wynn:

And I just think social media got too noisy to be as entertaining as you could possibly be, because you're forced to lose the authenticity nowadays on social media. Back then I was able to be a 16-year-old kid going to my sticker closet and look at this shoe and look how cool it is and people could feel that and I was the same age as my demographic, so it was sort of like they felt like they were listening to a friend talk about sneakers and when I was talking to the camera I felt like I was talking to friends. You know what I mean? That kind of YouTube content. Nowadays I probably wouldn't get 15 views. What built my whole career? I wouldn't get nothing today.

Paki Phillips:

Because it's the wow factor. It's, what's the wow factor? What are you doing to shock?

Chris Smith:

Yeah, it's like all attention grabbing stuff now versus like. Tiktoks over a minute or two versus a whole YouTube video.

Blake Wynn:

And I don't mean to jump to the poker thing, but poker's got the perfect analogy for it when you watch poker online. They have decided that the way to increase viewership is to increase the stakes. So now there's these poker games that happen online for millions of dollars in cash. They're trying to get the wow factor, trying to get the thumbnail. I said wait a second, wait a second, wait a second. Let's pump the brakes. The money is not what makes poker interesting. It's the conflict that makes poker.

Paki Phillips:

It's the back and forth.

Blake Wynn:

Yes, the cards sort of Start that conflict. But the people are the conflict, not the money. You know what I mean, and so I just think it's a perfect example of it's it's it's. It's too inorganic nowadays in my view to be an influencer doing the kinds of things that ought to be done. Credit to mr Beast. I think he's responsible for a lot of this. But at the same time, who does that? Who does what mr Beast? Credit to him he's. I mean, what a what a revolutionary guy to have done what he's done. I mean, he's built a billion dollar business off of YouTube. I thought I had done something special when I built like a million dollar business off of YouTube and look at this guy, right, but you know, it's made it. It's made it tough for the person. You know the days of pulling out a camera at home and getting famous on the internet, short of being just like, I guess, really good looking, are pretty much over.

Paki Phillips:

Yeah, in my view, talking a little bit about celebrity poker, right. So how the conflict? Like this is good, you're a very strategic guy, right? So are you setting these tables up Purposely for the conflict? Let's a little bit of the strategy, that's a good question. How do you set these tables up with the initial initial, because this is your second one, right from understanding you guys did your sort of the second one, and I'll explain that a second.

Blake Wynn:

But let me ask you a question first. Have you ever watched a poker event, really in your life? You'd be honest.

Chris Smith:

You tell me, no only clips. I watched a lot, used to watch to hold them a lot.

Paki Phillips:

I don't know how to play poker, so that that tells you a lot about what I know about poker. But I was a big fan.

Chris Smith:

Yeah, I think when I used to it was the main event series, probably the only event I would ever watch and it would always be like the final table and that'd be it, so it wasn't really like a super involved imagine that, though, right, I mean, what a big thing that.

Blake Wynn:

I mean, millions of people around the world play poker. You guys don't play football, but you watch football. True, you don't play basketball. You watch basketball. You could play poker right, just like you could golf, and people watch golf, but they don't watch poker because it's not really that entertaining, because a lot of times the conflict starts and stops with the cards Because the people that play poker are hoodie, sunglasses. They are doing math that you wouldn't believe. They're sitting there in dead silence. They're. They're reading the, the facial features of their opponents. I mean depends how advanced they are, but but they're there to make money. So when you're watching at home, I'll tell you, the biggest pot in poker history was three point five million dollars. Just happened this last year.

Blake Wynn:

It's a twenty point five three point five million in cash between two people. I mean I'm sure there's bigger pots in private games but the biggest pot in a in a stream.

Blake Wynn:

You know this occurred. Cool, cool situation for sure. Credit to those guys who put that game together Ryan Feldman and Nick for tootsie. But you know it was 20 minutes of silence. You know the guys sitting there thinking in it as he should Million seven dollar decision to decide if he wants to put his money in or not, and he doesn't for sure have the best hand. But that being said, in our events they're playing for nothing. We put up, we put up a prize pool, but they don't, they don't buy. And we put up 50 grand. Winner gets 20 grand, ninth place gets to grand and you know, place in between.

Paki Phillips:

I'll ask you what the pot was, okay.

Blake Wynn:

Yeah, they get something in between that, but we've attached something way more powerful than money to our game. We've attached people self-esteem to our game and we've attached Because these celebrities can't lose to one another. You're gonna have Keenan Allen sitting right next to Austin Eckler to the best players and the chargers. It's gonna matter to them who gets farther the ego kicks right in because their celebrities are not poker guys. They're not thinking about the money. There is no money.

Blake Wynn:

Yeah they're thinking about. Wow, I'm on TV doing something that no one's ever seen me do and I'm against someone that I sort of have a maybe a friendly rivalry with, maybe not a friendly rivalry with, right like we've got a. We've got people who used to date each other sitting right next to each other.

Chris Smith:

We've got married people.

Blake Wynn:

We got Ray J and his wife sitting right next to each other, his wife's big influencer, princess love.

Paki Phillips:

Okay, yeah, ronald Johnson's partner with one of our friends. Yeah, that, yeah, ray J.

Blake Wynn:

Exactly, we've got. We've got Jose can say, go. The great baseball player sitting right next to his daughter, josie, can say go, who's a big-time model used to date? Logan Paul, and everything. And it's fun and people want it, people want to see it and they're gonna. There's gonna be push and pull. You know, when you watch poker, you never hear someone go. So what are you gonna do? What are you gonna do? What are you gonna do? And they're and they're drinking and they're having a good time. Well, at our game you hear that and then you hear the player go. If you don't stop talking right now, I'm gonna smack the shot. I don't know if you can cast me.

Blake Wynn:

But that's really what happened our last tournament, 8 million views in the next 24 hours on just that little micro clip alone. Stuff like this has never happened in poker before. Because what I'm saying is this isn't about poker, it's about conflict, and we're creating conflict that poker has never tried creating before, because it's not about the math, it's not about the stakes, it's a different approach. So the people that watch our events aren't gonna be your mathematicians that love poker. They're gonna be the fans of these celebrities.

Blake Wynn:

Whether it's a football fan we got 50 NFL guys in this next event Whether you're, you know, a big tiktok viewer and you watching for Bryce Hall and Mark de Melio and all those names who are in our tournament. You're watching for them and you just want to see what the heck is about to happen on this screen. And the last thing I'll add is for the people who do like to gamble they can gamble along with the game. We're gonna be the first celebrity poker event. Couple poker events have done in the past, but nothing like what we're doing. You can bet on our events on the online sports books.

Paki Phillips:

Okay, I knew there was something. There's gotta be a spill, because you always get there's gotta be a ROI. So how did you work that out? So when you're doing that, you can bet on who you think is gonna win.

Blake Wynn:

Yeah, this is all live stream the event. Okay, and all throughout the event, the odds adjust every hand. You know what I mean. You can live bet it. You could bet ahead of time with set odds. You can go on that right now and do it. Okay called flip, or you could do it during the event as people bust out. Oh wow, keenan Allen seems like he knows how to play this game.

Chris Smith:

Go ahead. How do they?

Paki Phillips:

just the odds for that.

Chris Smith:

Is it part of, like you know, as say, ken Allen's getting further along and they are. There's somebody like manually determining that he's better at Poker than not and adjusting the odds in the game.

Blake Wynn:

It's not literally a person, I mean it's sort of you know, yeah, they're, you know they have algorithms for for how? They do this stuff, but yeah you might have an opportunity to make a few bucks in this first event, because they're they're essentially doing it without Data yeah first time. Maybe I shouldn't be saying that's okay.

Chris Smith:

I mean the best, like look I don't.

Blake Wynn:

I don't know, I'll tell you why I've no clue who's gonna win, because Whether you're the best in the world at poker or you don't really know the game, the way these things are formatted isn't really meant for a poker Pro. Now, for someone who doesn't watch the game, you might be a little confused to what I mean by that. In a turbo format poker tournament, luck kicks in way more than if you just went to a casino and sat down with some chips.

Paki Phillips:

Okay, well, format meaning is fast-paced.

Blake Wynn:

It's very fast-paced in the sense that Everybody's gonna start with a hundred thousand chips to play a hand. It's gonna cost a thousand chips for the first ten minutes, after that two thousand, after that four.

Paki Phillips:

After that eight.

Blake Wynn:

So at some point, even if you don't like your cards, with the way that the game accelerates, you're forced to put all your money in, and you could have them just the worst hand possible.

Blake Wynn:

It doesn't matter, it's called big blinds, right okay, you're gonna be out of big blinds after an hour and a half into this event. So you have to make some plays and you got to get lucky. And so the first event to test this hypothesis I put one of the guys who's won the World Series of poker bracelet guys named Mike Matta Sal, one of the great poker players.

Chris Smith:

I used to walk up watch all the time when I watched the main event really.

Blake Wynn:

Okay, okay well he got, I think, 36th out of 72 players. Best player in tournament. Meanwhile, brandon Marshall, who learned how to play poker in the uber on the way to the event got fourth place.

Blake Wynn:

I mean, it's just stuff like that that. You know, the guy that got second place folded pocket Queens, which is be the equivalent of of Taking a kneel on first down, down by three in the fourth quarter. If you're a football fan, you know it's just something. You know what? What? No, no, no, never, but they do it and that's what makes us so entertaining. What an entertaining thing to see yeah, right, how'd you connect with?

Paki Phillips:

is it poker go? Is that who you partner with? Yeah, so how did you connect with them? What was the story with that?

Blake Wynn:

What a great question to ask you these things. You're getting answers out of me that I wouldn't have.

Paki Phillips:

I thought I would have put you on the spot. Yeah, I'll give her credit. You can't. If there's something you can't answer, no, no, I'll answer.

Blake Wynn:

It's kind of a funny answer yeah, 12 year old Blake decided that, uh, it was the right time in life to have a girlfriend. Okay, and that girlfriend, her name was Jules Katz, was in seventh grade and her father, kerry Katz, is a poker pro and the founder of poker go.

Paki Phillips:

So when we this is new info people probably don't know. This probably don't know it was four months of my seventh grade. I know she's a great friend.

Chris Smith:

She's gonna be at the tournament In a week.

Blake Wynn:

We, you know, we graduated together and everything you know. That was how the connection came to be okay, but it all sort of started because part of how we would maintain all these relationships, all of our talent is, you know, we take them golfing and a lot of them don't golf, and so, you know, whether it be going to a club or taking them golf finger or playing poker became a thing that we started doing and it became so popular that I actually changed one of the rooms in my house to be a poker room and I started hosting games once a night and I'd have Derek England from the Golden Knights, chumlee from pond stars, austin Echler, shane Victorino, world Series champion, twice Shathe I mean the list goes on of all these amazing people that will come to the house and play and we're playing for 50 or 100 bucks. I mean, it's just it's just for the sake of flipping.

Blake Wynn:

Yeah, you know, and we're just having fun. And one day I'm looking around the table, I'm like man, this would be cool to film and Austin's saying we got to start filming this. What if we? I got camera set up at my house and this and that and I was aware of poker go because I, you know, I know the Katz family so well. So I got an idea of how to do this. So I reached out to them, got a big time quote for what it would cost to do it.

Blake Wynn:

But in all fairness to them, they said but if you do this, you tell us what you want the walls to look like. You tell us what you want the felts of the table to look like. You tell us who you want in our production crew. You tell us who you want in poker calling the event. You know the broadcasters, the commentators. You tell us how many players you want. You tell us this. You tell it, it's yours. You got the keys to throw something that is equivalent in production value and magnitude of the World Series of Poker If you do this.

Blake Wynn:

So I kind of went there thinking I'd like to spend a thousand bucks and do something cool around poker and I left thinking this could be cool, we could throw this one time and it could be a really cool marketing initiative for Enclave. I could get a bunch of our clients to sponsor it because I'll get all these big celebrities to do it and you know, we could make this some pretty special, yeah, so we threw the first event in August with no plans of another event. It wasn't called. There was no celebrity poker tour, it was Enclave Celebrity Invitational. It was all branded our marketing agency.

Paki Phillips:

That's the rebranded name it was going to be a fun activation.

Blake Wynn:

Well, the next morning I wake up and we've gotten reached out to from like every big business on our target list we've ever had. You know what I mean In terms of how do we get involved in your next one as a sponsor. All the celebrities had posted about it for free because they just took content themselves from it and we're getting back the reports. We were trending on Twitter. We did over 50 million unique social media impressions in the 24 hours span from the time the tournament until the next day. We got. I think it was like 10 times the viewership of the World Series of Poker's final table from that same year oh this is a bit.

Paki Phillips:

This is. There's something here.

Blake Wynn:

I poker go comes back and says, well, we got to do this again. It's like, well, if we're going to do it again, what are we going to do the second time and then decide if we want to do it a third time and a fourth? If we're going to do this, let's do this. And so we bought the name Celebrity Poker Tour. We got all the trademarks for it. We spent the last five months sort of building out this brand. In February 8th you know, next week at 6 pm, is going to be the first true celebrity poker tour event. We have eight of them this year. They're all televised right now. They're going to be on Pluto, Sling, YouTube, Twitch, Kick, etc. All the players restream it as well.

Blake Wynn:

That's why their viewership so massive you know, you know we're talking with other larger networks to. You know, get it more on traditional television and things like that. But I like to entertain. No, no, no no different than my YouTube video.

Paki Phillips:

I was about to learn from them.

Chris Smith:

I'm sorry, you know yeah simply kind of built this business model on the fly a little bit Right. The first one was a more of just like a passion project, and now it's you turn into a legitimate business, and is it something that you've already seen? It be profitable from the first event, moving on to the next steps.

Blake Wynn:

Yeah, we were profitable on that event that we threw. And you know, and I don't mean to like scoff that off, I mean of course at the end of the day like this is business, but boy, am I having more fun?

Chris Smith:

than I ever had. I think that's awesome.

Blake Wynn:

This is like it's like being a being a. Youtuber again. It's fun, you know I like. The difference between a B2B business and being sort of the entertainer is that you sort of you know, when you're a B2B business, you kind of got a curtain in front of you Right. I come on a show like this Enclave has been around six years and you guys do your research, but then we sit down and you sort of go tell me about Enclave how does it really work? Because I got a curtain up.

Blake Wynn:

So, I can sit here and I can break that curtain down, but until I do that curtain stays up as much as I'd like it to and I can sort of choose how I maneuvered around as I answer your question. When you're a YouTuber or when you're starting something like this, I'm saying here's what we got right here. You know what I mean and you tell me what you think of it Good, bad or otherwise. I'm inviting every media outlet sports illustrator, pokerorg, poker, news, hope, living, luxury life Everybody's going to be covering this. They're sending representatives to do it. I don't know what they'll write. They might write good, they might write bad, they might write somewhere in between. It's our job to hopefully make it be positive and if it is great, if it isn't and I guess we'll learn from that.

Blake Wynn:

It is only our first event, but I like that, I like that pressure. It's more fun to me, you know, because at the same time, when you have those big wins and they're public, especially like this, this isn't really. I mean, of course, it's an Enclave win. We own this thing, to be clear. But at the same time, there's 72 or 80 celebrities in this thing that are going to be like I can't believe I just got participating in that and there's 10 brands that are sponsors.

Blake Wynn:

Wow, how much fun was that and how good was that for our brand. And look what it did to our website traffic. Look what it did to our socials. Look how much good content it gave us right. Like, when you win publicly, it's usually because hundreds of people are winning with you. You know what I mean. When you're an agency and you win, you got one client who won, which is great because that affects the families of the employees and their customers and all that. But this is just a little different and this has got a sort of, I think, a magic to it that people are really, really fascinated by.

Paki Phillips:

Yeah, that's powerful.

Chris Smith:

I didn't realize how big it was.

Paki Phillips:

Do you think that's so? Let me backtrack a little bit. You said eight tournaments. Right, eight this year, yeah, eight this year, vegas, all eight, or are you picking different spots?

Blake Wynn:

This year they're all in Vegas. Starting next year, they're going to move around.

Paki Phillips:

Okay. So why? Okay, I think I know I'm We'll talk offline, but I think I probably don't want to get that. No, you can ask whatever you like when else are you looking at?

Blake Wynn:

Some will be in the country. So here's the key we got to have a casino operating partner. I'm not going to get a gaming license. Okay, be a little challenging having multiple members of my family. We've gotten gaming license and then no longer have them, and I don't want to be in the gaming business. I want to be in the entertainment business.

Paki Phillips:

That's what I wanted to ask you. That's literally what I was getting at.

Blake Wynn:

So I've got to have us line up with operating partners is what we call them. So if, using an example, casino in Florida decides they'd like to have us host this thing. Pokergo is strictly a production distribution company. They happen to own this studio venue at the ARIA but they pack up their show and they take it to the Bahamas every year for the World Series of Poker. They take it to Sydney, australia, for, I think, it's World Poker Tour. I'm still learning where all the events are, but they're able to move their show. So I wouldn't be surprised if you see a poker cruise happen, a celebrity poker cruise with a cruise line partner. You'll see some around the country. You'll see some internationally. We haven't necessarily finalized all the deals yet.

Paki Phillips:

Okay.

Blake Wynn:

But I would say next year probably only one or two will be in Las Vegas. Okay, that's awesome. My big thing is these people that are coming to the tournament.

Chris Smith:

They're big names. How hard is it to get those people to attend these events? Is it personal relationships help those situations? Is it are you reaching out randomly to a bunch of people to try to get them to come to attend the event? How does that usually work?

Blake Wynn:

No, I think something that really keep in mind it's definitely easier said than done is, when you're building a brand, what's the perception of that brand gonna be? You know what I mean? Like I'll give you a perfect example Steve never comped anybody at win so many of these lessons that I'm sort of applying to how I build this he never comped anybody.

Blake Wynn:

I mean he'd call close friends if he wanted to. But I guess better way to way of putting it is he didn't comp you because you were somebody. He comped you if you were a friend of his. He sort of invited you to be comped, or if you were a gambler and stuff like that. That's a different ball game.

Blake Wynn:

You see what I'm saying so we're sort of taking the approach of call a boss. Neckler, I'd like to invite you to play in this thing. Here's what it's about. Here's what the stakes are. Here's what the minimal ask of you is, and let them say no if they wanna say no. It's just an invitation. I'm not offering to pay you one cent. We didn't pay a player a single cent to play. We're not really asking them of much besides, to come promote that you're being involved in this, enjoy it. But we're not even saying hey, you put your top your two-story. We don't do that.

Blake Wynn:

You wanna be a part of this, be a part of this. You don't wanna be a part of this, that's okay. We're gonna create something that's exciting enough that if you wanna be a part of it, you're gonna do it. No different than when Steve built the win Go stay at MGM then, if you want, was sort of the stance, and it wasn't from like a egotistical perspective. It was just simply we built the coolest product. At least we think so. If you think so, come enjoy it. If you don't think so, that's okay.

Paki Phillips:

You know it's interesting you said that about with your family name being obviously the win. Win is still the best and I'm not just saying that because I know you, but now you see, like Fountain Blue, you see, you know Resorts World Win is still elite.

Chris Smith:

That's just it.

Paki Phillips:

We just went to the Chris Tucker show a couple weeks ago and I'm just like damn, the detail is just unreal. But I know that's strategic for you. So when you're doing the poker, everything's strategic. So I know that's your background. Is that something you learned from Steve or from your father, or yeah, I mean, Steve is like a father to me.

Blake Wynn:

I of course learned so much from him. My mom, my grandfather's honestly a pretty killer entrepreneur as well. He was a. He had an accounting business, he had his own practice out of.

Blake Wynn:

California. That got pretty big. He sold it to American Express the same year I was born. So I've had I've been very lucky to have some just amazing wisdom around me like my entire life. But the attention to detail is the game, and it's not even just specifically attention to detail. I mean a lot of people can sort of get details right. What a lot of people can't get right is attention to detail when it specifically pertains to people. You know, I know in the past I came on the show when I talked about culture and how we built culture.

Blake Wynn:

That's big. Now. We got to build a culture of the players. We got to build a culture around the sponsors. We got to build a culture around what it means to sort of be a viewer of the CPT, right, like. There's all these sort of cultures that you have to build simultaneously, that require real attention to detail, with real strategy in place, and it's not always easy. You know it's not and you know. I think it's funny. I actually tell people to watch a show called Blacklist on Netflix. I love that. What is that? Blacklist is a show with James Spader and Megan Boone it's about. James Spader plays a character named Raymond Reddington and he is the FBI's most wanted. In the first episode he becomes a confidential informant and he's just this like real sort of cool, like classy criminal. That's sort of one step ahead of everybody at all times.

Paki Phillips:

You've seen it? Oh, it's a great show.

Chris Smith:

OK.

Blake Wynn:

I would say that if you want to get a little bit of a better understanding of how to be hyper aware of the attention to detail as it perceives to people and you maybe don't have the Steve Wins the world to phone up or whatever it is the show really can actually teach you things. Like, as weird as it sounds, take the criminal aspect side, take the TV aspects aside. There's just sort of a level of thought and some of the one-liners he comes out with where he was sitting there, like yeah, that's valid, that's great stuff Every little detail of the life too.

Chris Smith:

It's not just like the little nuances here and there, but it's like everything that he was doing in the show. The show is important, and how he perceived and how things are articulated.

Blake Wynn:

It's called Blacklist. Blacklist Best detail-oriented TV show I think I've ever seen in a long time, maybe for me.

Chris Smith:

Yeah, and as you're kind of growing your business right and the last time we talked you were kind of at the beginning stages and now it's growing to something much larger You're having to navigate all these different pieces and the one thing they always say like the hardest part of being a leader is knowing that you could have done it better yourself, but you have to sign off on it anyways. Are you seeing some of those struggles and frustrations where you have to rely on other people and then maybe not do it as good as you would have done if you did it yourself? No, that's good, no, no.

Blake Wynn:

But I say no, because we built the culture. You got a really good team. I know what I get out of Haze. I know what I get out of Brock. I know what I get out of Ani. I know what I get. I'm trying to name people that you guys know. I know what I get out of everybody on our team.

Blake Wynn:

So a lot of people have those struggles because it's all at the what you get out of your workforce in most businesses and in our business.

Blake Wynn:

I'd be sort of overstating it if I said it's not maybe at times a touch volatile, but it's volatile in our business because we're doing things that literally haven't been done before. So when you've got a 25-year-old making a call about something that no one in the world has ever tried doing, never mind that they've never tried doing it sometimes they look at them and go, man, I might not have tried that, but boy, if you line us up and you put us in soundproof pockets and you ask what's the objective of what you guys are trying to build, they'll answer it in different words. They'll say the exact same thing. So I know when they make that call, that call was based on what we're ultimately trying to do and they just use their best common sense and they trust their common sense to decide how are we going to get closer to that finish line with something that's my call? So, no, I don't deal with that too much, fortunately.

Paki Phillips:

What do you want your legacy to be for yourself? Because you've got, obviously, a name and you've built everything that you've been able to do, which is unbelievable, that you're not running into the hospitality space. But what do you want it to be?

Blake Wynn:

I think it's weird as it sounds Like. I know it's only been five years, but my opinion on it's changed a lot. I don't really care as much anymore. I say that more so to say that I'm really excited about what we're doing now and I'm excited to see where all this stuff goes If it doesn't work out. It doesn't work out. I don't want to be worried about oh, how are they going to remember me if I try this? It doesn't work.

Paki Phillips:

I don't so much care anymore.

Blake Wynn:

I want to just go for it. And at the same time, I think one of the things I'm most excited about in life is doing exactly what Steve and my grandfather and my mom do with me. I can't wait to have children and nieces. I do have nieces and nephews, but they're really, really little now. They're both all under the age of four. But I'm excited to sit down with them and tell them stories of the kind of stuff we pulled and show them sort of how they can do the same kind of thing themselves with what they're passionate about. That'll probably, I think, you know.

Blake Wynn:

If you ask me what's the thing that inspires me the most, you know you sort of said I've done a lot of these things and I just turned 24. And so it's a little bit early. But, as weird as it sounds, at times I almost feel like I'm rushing, because to me I feel very lucky. I'm the sum of the best parts of my mom, of my grandfather, of Steve. But these are not the youngest people in the world Steve's 82, my grandfather's 89, my grandmother's 87.

Blake Wynn:

I'm so lucky they're still here, but I'm their legacy in a lot of respects. That's how I look at it and that generation in relation to me, you know, 60 years from now it'll be the same thing, and I want to show them that it's in good hands. And I want to show them that, even if it's not in good hands, it's in hands that are recklessly focused on going after. You know everything that we sort of put our minds to. So I'm proud to do that. So I'm more focused on sort of being their legacy as opposed to sort of building my own right now.

Paki Phillips:

Yeah, you know it's funny, as I've gotten older, you know my kids and stuff is, I'm more focused on living in the moment. Also Because I feel like now specifically, I mean we've done this podcast. You're one of our first guests, right Five years ago. We're going on our sixth year, but it was important to me, man, as we're going so fast, right, and it's like you want to enjoy it a little bit, and so I'm happy you said it. I wasn't expecting you to say that to me, I'm actually calling y'all, so I was very surprised because I thought you were going to say something completely different.

Paki Phillips:

But I'm glad you said it because, like I'm talking to my kids all the time, it's like, man, we got to slow down, we got to live in the moment and really like enjoy it, because something can happen and we've done tomorrow or tonight, got for a bit. So, man, you got a lot of wisdom, man, in 24 years old.

Blake Wynn:

That's impressive. That's impressive. It's like I just said. I'd love to take credit for it.

Blake Wynn:

I'm just absorbing what's being put in my ear from the people I trust the most. Yeah, that sounds accurate to me and I'm sort of living based on that. I mean, even in the last two years I would say I've, sort of, to your point, lived a lot more in the moment. I mean, I'll tell you a funny story even just from this year we were in New York on business setting up different things for somebody poker tour, like Three months ago is just Brock and I. You're wrapped up to Brock. I love Brock. You think you love Brock? Yeah?

Paki Phillips:

pairs to.

Blake Wynn:

All family to me and Brock is in that list, by the way, the list of my grandfather and Steve and my mom, brock, brock and hazer right there in that list too, and I think it's important I say that. But we were sitting in New York and we don't book our return flights anymore. We would eat so much money on return flights. We'd be somewhere. We'd say, all right, we're gonna go on Monday, we're gonna leave Wednesday. Something would happen on Tuesday. Oh, you got to do this on Thursday, yeah, we gotta do this on Thursday. So then you eat the money for the flight home on the Wednesday and everything.

Blake Wynn:

So we've sort of stopped booking return flights. We just book it when it's like are we done? Okay, great, let's go home. So we sort of stopped booking return flights and we're in New York City. We sort of finished up our stuff on on this Friday afternoon and we're sitting in the room and we're sort of scrolling through social. I'm like you ready to go home? Well, we both, and we both love New York and I, you know, I lived there for a few years.

Blake Wynn:

We stayed all the morning and we can, you know, we can go to and go out tonight and go to a nice dinner and they have this thing called a Sinatra weekends at this at the Carnegie Club, where, like they like, have, like this amazing impersonator like common, they sing and it's all anyway. So we're talking about doing that and as we're talking about this, I'm scrolling through Instagram and a clip comes up of rich Eisen, who's one of the great sort of football commentators. He calls games on a film network. He's, you know, a TV guy for football and he's and he's talking about I went to the first ever football game in Munich last year between the Seattle Seahawks and hand-baked Buccaneers. I've been to Super Bowls, have been to this, have been to that. I have never seen anything like this. And he's sharing this and I'm seeing this clip on my social media Because two days later from the time we're watching this, the Miami Dolphins are taken on the Kansas City Chiefs in Frankfurt. So it's gonna be the first time a football game has ever been in Frankfurt, germany. I'm watching this clip and I am a sucker for football.

Blake Wynn:

Hey Brock, why don't we go to Frankfurt? Let's just go now. What do you think? We happen to have it. We always take our passports with us. We sort of use them as IDs in the airport and stuff, just in case our wallets ever got stolen or anything. What the heck? The only flight we could get that night that would get us there by early morning Saturday we could at least have an extra day in front, because we had to be back in Vegas by Monday we had important meetings on Monday was from Philly. That's a 45-man train. From here, we throw our stuff in our bags, we get on the train, we go down to Philadelphia. We get off the train in Philadelphia, we get on a direct flight from Philly to Frankfurt. This is four hours after I'm scrolling through this Instagram clip. We're on our way to Frankfurt, germany. We land there. We got totally immersed in the sort of chiefs, dolphins Come, rotterie that these people had we end up going to dinner with Mike Mayock and his wife.

Blake Wynn:

We used to be general manager of the Raiders ran into him at a steakhouse in Frankfurt like Mayock, what are you doing out here? Oh, I'm calling again tomorrow with rich boy to have a story for you. Next time, you know we sit down, we're having dinner. We totally hit it off. I never met him before that. I just walked up to him to sort of just say hey, you know, I really respect your game. And, funny enough, a little side note about him he was the anchor he used to call the NFL draft. He was the one who announced Hayes pullard gets drafted in the center of my Cleveland.

Chris Smith:

So I told him. So there was all these funny connections.

Blake Wynn:

Anyway, you watch the game in Frankfurt. Rich Eisen couldn't have been more on the money. I've been to Super Bowls, I've watched the foot. I've watched football games with my feet on the field I could hear what's happening in the huddle. I've gotten every experience in sweets, in owners, but I've gotten ever, I've been very fortunate to get any experience you can get in football. I had regular seats at this game. I've never had more fun in my life. I was almost in tears. I mean, every time the play would stop they'd cue up a song on the thing and 51,000 people at not a seat was empty in there would sing in unison. You know, take me home country road, john Denver, sweet Caroline, don't stop, believe it. And they are. They are not missing word.

Blake Wynn:

They don't speak English but they know every word of these songs and they are so into the games. We bought all this chief stuff. I mean one of the experience of a lifetime. Just live it in the moment. I mean I have a there's a video of me sort of listening to this and I'm like looking at the crowd. Just holy cow, look at us.

Chris Smith:

Look where we are.

Blake Wynn:

Imagine that we could even afford to come here because that when Brock and I started this, that was not the case. We worked out of my house for the first two years. Yeah, now, on a whim, we ended up in Frankfurt. Game ended, spent a couple hours jumping around different cheap spas, gone a plane, got home at 6 am the next morning, went straight into the office Like didn't miss a beat. So we're focused, but we're taking some of those moments now which we didn't use to take to just sort of enjoy.

Blake Wynn:

I know and it's getting so it's gonna be so much fun. I'm proud of you guys. Yeah, that's really good because.

Paki Phillips:

I've known you guys and I've seen the growth man and it's awesome to see you guys still working together and being able to do this. But what I want to ask you about is business advice. I know we've asked you before about this. Has it changed? Like, what would you tell somebody because I know you build side hustles with you with the shoe game but what would you tell somebody that wants to be able to be a business owner or maybe start their own business? What would you share with them on what to do?

Blake Wynn:

I'd actually I don't know. You know, it's funny, like some of these other things that you hear people say when you get asked a question like this, you almost are sort of extrapolating different things that you've heard or seen or whatever, and I've sort of Been formulating my own opinion on this. I've never really heard anybody else say and it's sort of along the lines of I'd start off as a hustler. Okay, so I'd start off. What allows you to put one foot in front of the other? Because people get so stuck.

Blake Wynn:

You know they're, they're planning for six months, like just just start doing, just get one foot in front of the other. That's more hustling. However, if you have success while you're in this sort of hustling phase, at some point you got to look yourself in the mirror and go hang on a second. Now we're starting to actually do some of those things that I need to do. You need to be able to have the discipline and and the resources as well within your circle to say, okay, I'm gonna make a transition now. And this is something that I felt like I went through Probably the first time, like when I was 18 19, I sort of went through this right, youtube is your hustler, but then all of a sudden, you start a company, you got to be a CEO or you got to be a president of a company, you got to own it right, and there's a difference between being a hustler and being a CEO.

Blake Wynn:

It's kind of a more cliche way of putting it right, but you kind of need to do both. You know, like you mentioned the point about side hustle. I think a side hustle is a good place for anyone who wants sort of business. That's a good place to start, because a lot of people they go, and especially nowadays is. I've seen so much more of it. They go and they raise these big sums of money from friends and family. The friends and family can't say no, but you don't know how to handle that money.

Paki Phillips:

Yeah.

Blake Wynn:

Why don't you work for your first 20 grand and then go raise another 20 to match it? These people now they start these companies, they have an idea and I'm gonna go get 500 grand from everybody I know and they'll and, and they get it, and they get it and they lose it, yeah, and then they, and then now you're left in position where you didn't hustle, you're not a CEO and you have no friends because you just lost some all their money and like truthfully, like if someone invests in you and and next thing you know, money's gone, no, that's gonna refer anymore, yeah.

Chris Smith:

Oh, this is my guy.

Blake Wynn:

I got it in issue to my dude who yeah cost me 100 but you said you said something was very important.

Paki Phillips:

You said discipline. Yeah, you're very disciplined. You think that's been the biggest key. Is that, because you got to be disciplined, you said raise your own 20 grand and be restricted. That you're not the going out drinking every weekend.

Blake Wynn:

Yeah, the the short, honest answer I don't. I don't really think entrepreneurship for everybody and that's kind of always been what I've sort of thought, and I don't say that to discourage anybody. If you've got the ambition to do it, I, your father, along with most people, that ambition in itself is something that is unique to you, that doesn't exist to everybody. But, that being said, you know it's uncomfortable.

Blake Wynn:

You know, when you're really an entrepreneur, it's been so sort of glamorized because you've got the Michael Rubens of the world and you know people like my uncle, who it's like, whether it's, whether it's the net worth, whether it's the sort of fame they're now getting with social media, all these different things like oh look at Gary Vaynerchuk, I want to do that. It's extremely hard. The alternative is, if you do fall short of that and it doesn't quite work out, or your idea is not quite there, your execution is not, there's so many ways to fail and then, once you fail, stuff, it's tough, you're not in a position. If you don't put yourself in an entrepreneurial position, you're a lot less like you're. You're a lot more likely to avoid failure in life.

Blake Wynn:

Yeah because the stakes are lower. You know what I mean. You got to hold on to your job. You got to you know sort of manage your family and raise your kids. I'm not saying these are easy things, but the the sort of barrier to not be a failure at these things is quite a bit different than when you start something that's never existed before and then decide that you're gonna monetize it and monetize it profitably, when the other side of that equation is essentially required to enable your hypothesis to become reality, right, and you take care of people too.

Paki Phillips:

It's hard.

Blake Wynn:

Take care of your life responsibility.

Paki Phillips:

Yeah, right you know Houston crosta, my chance brought you mentioned something similar. What he was saying built up a bunch of different businesses. But he was saying I don't think you should be a business, oh, you should actually just do the size of work a job and build a side hustle and I think he's right into it between different aspects. But I think it's the personality and, like you said, it's almost like the thought, like to your point.

Chris Smith:

If you're not renewing or not, you're renewer. That's just who you are yeah like there's no way to get away from that. Yeah, it's hard to go. They say get a job. Like I think Houston was kind of implying that yeah, don't do it, meaning like if you tell me not to do, they could do it anyways, because if you're an entrepreneur, that's in your blood. Yeah, like I don't like.

Blake Wynn:

Like, in all honesty, I could. I have done Every single job that takes place in our business, from the lowest level position to the highest level, because what was originally lowest level was I've done all of those jobs. That being said, I'm not sure I would hold down a job at my own company right now. Besides the job and the role that I have, I work more hours than Mostly everybody at the company, but the things I'm doing with those hours Get it done for me mentally. Yeah, you know what I mean, and that is ultimately the reason why certain people can be entrepreneurs because they get enough out. They don't think of it. 16 hours, 12, you know, they don't think of that, they're they, they run it through it.

Blake Wynn:

Yeah right, like all my friends, all my relationships, everybody I named all the people whose advice I take. Like that advice isn't advice on like hey, here's how you should like handle dating life. It's everything about life for me Starts sort of in, stops with business, because my life is my business. You know what I mean, and so it's just a Different way of existing that is inherent to me and a lot of other entrepreneurs in the world. It's a very tough thing to sort of Create in yourself. It's if it isn't, if that's not your personality.

Paki Phillips:

Yeah, no, I love the advice, man. You're in honesty and transparency for sure, just shifting a little bit. We always ask this. What you probably know, we're gonna ask you and I gotta know from you, because you probably have something different to say is what is your favorite restaurant in?

Blake Wynn:

Vegas. I know I said yo g last time because I mean without, and I looked forward to your course, restaurant clothes yeah, or mom's restaurant, yeah.

Blake Wynn:

I miss it every day. You know, I don't know. I feel like I there's certain dishes I like. Now, okay, you know, like I love just very simple, like spice tuna rolls from like no boo or Jane or something like that. I like beef. Carpaccio is my favorite food, so like I love Italian restaurants that serve that. Okay, I think in and out is what I eat most frequently. I think I also said that on the last.

Paki Phillips:

Yeah, that hasn't gone away.

Blake Wynn:

Okay, hmm, if I really had to pick something in Vegas, I think I'm probably picking in and out at this stage.

Paki Phillips:

That's what I just ran into the owner in and out too. It's funny.

Blake Wynn:

No kidding.

Paki Phillips:

Yeah, talk about there. What's Hollywood? It's great Great Her and her husband, great Great lady.

Blake Wynn:

I'd love to shake their head. Yeah, cool thing they've done.

Paki Phillips:

She's. Yeah, that's unbelievable business in that story, which, yeah, unreal. What else do you focus on? I know you got the celebrity poker. What else do you focus on for 2024? That's your main focus?

Blake Wynn:

Yeah, I figured that yeah, yeah and and living in the moment too. Travels sort of been, like, I guess, my primary outlet for that. Now, granted, when I'm doing these different travels I end up doing business long in the way anyways. Like we have Athletes on the Chiefs and the Dolphins that we ended up doing stuff with. You know what I mean. Like there's things like that that come up even in the most sort of on-the-wim moments. You know I'll go to Japan later this year, you know, with my girlfriend on a nice little you know 10-day cruise will be very nice.

Blake Wynn:

I Don't know, you know it's, it's so funny. I mean, if you had asked me that in January of last year, the poker thing wasn't.

Blake Wynn:

Remotely in any part of my brain or anybody else's brain or anything like that. That being said, I do know that is gonna remain the focus throughout the entire year, and then as well. Right like this isn't a like to be very clear. This is not on clave pivoting to CPT. This is a new thing that we've started, that we do own, but on clave is still doing everything that on clave does. You know what I mean. This is just a new venture that's getting added. I think that's actually one of the great, you know, testaments to what we've been able to do over the last few years is that if this was a couple years ago, it'd be a full pivot. You know what I mean. You only have one sort of team.

Paki Phillips:

I was thinking in my mind.

Chris Smith:

Yeah, all those sorts of things like.

Blake Wynn:

I think now it's getting fun Because now we're gonna get to layer stuff and now it's gonna get you watch the blacklist right like about all the different things that that he had, not to bring that one up again.

Blake Wynn:

You know it's, it's. It's fun to. It's fun to have your eggs in a couple of different baskets when all those baskets sort of fit nicely together and in one slightly larger basket, right, yeah, I think I might have even started on the show. But I remember like the first time I had a Celebrity who I think is maybe even been on your show, ask if you know they could buy a small piece of the business. I never had someone ask me that before. This was like three or four years ago.

Blake Wynn:

So I went and I called up Steve and I said Steve, I, I'm at an interesting position. Never been in this position in my life. Can I come ask you a question? It's your come down late at night. I'm here.

Blake Wynn:

So I get there and I tell him what's going on. He's why would you take this? Do you need the money? No, so why would you take this? And like my sort of knee-jerk reaction was like well, you know, like as much as I have this, like I was freshly dropped out of college and you know I I just felt like and I said to him I said you know, I've got all my eggs in one basket right now and he does and, and you know Steve can't see, but Steve's a total showman and he does and he and he's he's so good at in with his delivery as he shares lessons with me he sits there all I Don't like that. You just said that. What Said you know, I never made an investment in my life until a couple of years ago. Outside of the win that's interesting. I mean wins a little bit of a bigger entity than what I'm dealing with, but.

Blake Wynn:

I'm starting to get the point. He says no, says you just said something, which is that you're worried that all your exit one basket. You ever read Mark Twain? No, she's. You can have all your eggs in one basket. Just watch the fucking basket. Okay, no, you're right. I was like thank you, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to waste your time. We'll write back to Vegas. I was there for like two hours. I didn't end up taking the deal, flew back here.

Blake Wynn:

That was the end of that and I was like, yeah, he's right, I just got to watch the basket, that's all it is.

Paki Phillips:

That's what, and so uh, yeah. I'm having fun with that now. Most people would always talk about diversifying and putting it that's interesting.

Blake Wynn:

You say that so Well, and now, like from a financial sense, like I yeah, I own stocks and I have the other investments and things like that, just because my vision I get.

Blake Wynn:

Yeah, I get it business commands all my time, you know Personally, doesn't necessarily command all my money. So I've diversified in that respect. But Um, and unlike Steve, my company's not publicly traded so I can't just buy more stock in it. I would if I could. That is where all my money would be truthfully, because I do really believe that much what we're doing. It's just not obviously the nature of a private service business. Yeah.

Paki Phillips:

Well, you keep winning. Man it's it's absolute pleasure to have you on to be able to share. Man, you gave some gems. So what's your social handles?

Blake Wynn:

people can reach out to you on yep at Blake win and if you're interested in any of the celebrity poker tour stuff I just talked about just at celebrity poker tour on Instagram, the only one that's different is on Twitter. We're at celeb poker tour because you can't have that characters in the Got it in the username, but it's fun what we got going on.

Paki Phillips:

It's February 8th, right yeah?

Blake Wynn:

you'll have to come.

Paki Phillips:

I definitely got to check it out, man. February 8th, so that's next next Thursday, and then six, six watch it. How is free or what live?

Blake Wynn:

Yeah, it's free, you can watch it live on poker go. You can watch it live on. Most of the players are, so we've revealed our player list now. Most of those players are streaming it on their Twitch or YouTube or whatever streaming Twitter, tick, tock, whatever streaming outlet They've got, and then as well it'll be on Pluto, it'll be on sling and then, after that it'll get repackaging, will be on some additional outlets as well.

Chris Smith:

No, that's awesome you won't miss it.

Paki Phillips:

Well, your genius is doing that, especially Super Bowl weekend coming out, first one in Vegas. So salute to you, man. I absolute pleasure we have you on and check us out the Vegas or comms. So thank you, buddy.

Blake Wynn:

I appreciate you guys have me.