Speaker 1:

Welcome to ETF Central, recorded here at the New York Stock Exchange, the home of ETFs. We're diving deep with the people shaping the space, the technology's driving innovation and the stories behind the tickers. Whether you're an investor, issuer or industry insider, welcome home.

Bilal Little:

When did your passion start for finance and how did you get involved?

Gav Blaxberg:

Pretty interesting. Hardcore background with finance, and I've shared it a few times, but I don't think a ton of people know. It actually goes back to 2008. I'm 10 years old at the time. My dad had a pretty unhealthy distrust of the stock market for most of his life. My dad was a doctor, he was making good money being a doctor, but his father had gone through some crazy turmoil in the stock market. So my dad basically was in save mode, you know, saves money, well spend most of it on his kids, sending seven boys to private day school.

Bilal Little:

It's expensive.

Gav Blaxberg:

Spend most of the money there. But yeah, so we get to 2006, 2007 area, and my dad, something clicked and he said, "I know what it is. I'm going to go all in on real estate." And 2007 early, he buys up a bunch of properties. We're in Baltimore, not the best properties. He's just kind of jumping into that gold rush and 2008 hits. And 2008 just completely changed their life.

And so of the 10 houses that he had just purchased, the bank forecloses on eight of them. He had also taken out a HELOC on our house. It just really blew up the situation. We had to declare bankruptcy. I switched schools. My whole life changed and I got into this mindset of, "Okay, we had all that money and it didn't matter. We couldn't keep it. There was no plan. I have to change that for myself." And I think just literally starting at 10 years old, I got drilled into my head and I started trying to start my own companies. I had two companies in high school that I started and I was doing and filing taxes and everything, and I just got really into that mindset of you have to make a lot of money and figure out how you can keep it and how you can properly invest it. And so that was really the origin story.

Bilal Little:

I'm glad you kind of leaned into that because most people's personal experience of how they get into the business or why their experience should be different is based off of some catastrophic and or very negative experience. And I always like to ask that question because I think it instills or at least will expose what your core tenants and or fundamentals are. So thanks for sharing that. Leaning into that though, how did you decide to grow a business from it? I think that's where the conversation will really start to build to meat and potatoes.

Gav Blaxberg:

I had these great opportunities. I went to Drexel University and Drexel allows you to get a lot of real life work experience going out. You do three full-time, non internship, like 6 months you are getting put to work at these positions, and I was able to figure out what I liked and what I didn't like. I knew I wanted to be in that finance world, but it's such a broad spectrum. I did an accounting position first and I learned that accounting's not for me. I then did private wealth management at Goldman Sachs, and for me, that was a lot more interesting.

Bilal Little:

As a financial advisor?

Gav Blaxberg:

As an analyst to a financial advisor. Yes, correct. For high net worth individuals. We were managing a 5 billion portfolio. And for me that was kind of life-changing. I had just turned 19 and I was now sitting in the office and taking calls from billionaires on a daily basis, kind of just talking with them, having fun, building relationships. I was able to also go in and see all of the portfolios, how they were allocated, what we changed on a daily basis. And then my last position that I took there was at a private equity firm.

Bilal Little:

Okay.

Gav Blaxberg:

That was private equity firm up in Philly with a $1.2 billion fund targeting distressed assets. And I think from all of those, I learned that I felt most at home on the people side. And it was talking with people about finances and helping them through that process and just kind of seeing that light bulb in their eyes. I think that I like to think I have a good amount of skills, but I've always found that one of the things I'm best at is taking complex topics and making them simple and explaining them, which is always down to education.

And so when I started to finish up college and I was like, "Okay, I'm going to go and do something in the world." Do I want to do something on the financial advisor side and talking with people or is there something that's a little bit more person to person? I saw an opportunity there with some friends to dive into the startup world of financial education. That's a long journey. We were originally working on an app, some other pieces, but it brought me to social media. And this area where I found that, okay, I can just shoot out my message and everyone can see it at once.

And I got very lucky, right time, right place with COVID and social media and everyone being online and then in addition, I think I was one of the few people who was trying to look for something new. Twitter spaces came along, they had not been a thing beforehand. This type of live audio radio podcast format. I reached out to every single person that I could find at Twitter that worked on the product, became the first beta tester, and then built a company off that as my audience grew.

Bilal Little:

Wow. Unpack that a little further as far as that COVID experience, right? Again, another catalyst based moment, which led to you really growing that social media platform.

Gav Blaxberg:

COVID was so helpful for me, I feel for others who went through tough times in there, but for me it just couldn't have been better timing. It hit right as I was. So I was doing a five-year program at Drexel, but I graduated about half year early just from stacking credits. And so it ended up being about my last year in college was COVID, and while normally I was such an anal student, I could not deal. I got one B plus through all of college, all A's besides that, and it irked me, that B plus. And I'm the type of guy that would just work myself to death studying. And when we moved to that COVID online, for me, it just really made things a lot easier. I felt like I had to spend a lot less time studying in order to get those four O's.

And so I freed up 60 hours a week and now I was like, "Okay, well what am I going to do with this?" Because we're not going out to parties, we're not going to the frat house. I need to do something productive. And I think for me, I found that when I am not productive and not active, it leads to depression and just kind of a real sadness. And so I'm always like, "Okay, I got to be doing something productive." And so started this, basically, got in touch with a couple of friends and the idea was simple. At the beginning was, "Hey, we're about to graduate and they haven't actually taught us how to evaluate stocks and ETFs. We need to really learn these pieces and teach others."

And so we started building an app that would teach people the process for investing, how to research, going through all the different items like expense ratios and different pieces. And as we were building that, there came this need of, "Okay, we need to get users to this app." Somebody has to go to social media, start spreading financial messages, build an audience, move them over here, and that became me.

Bilal Little:

What was the early findings with that as far as getting that audience? What were they looking for?

Gav Blaxberg:

So I just got so lucky, again, with the spaces. I found that I think people were looking to not just get written content. It turned out that they wanted to hear verbal and audio content. I think this was when podcasts really started blowing up.

Bilal Little:

For sure.

Gav Blaxberg:

And so many people were just going through their daily lives and they switched over from music. They were like, "Okay, I don't need to listen to the same song a hundred times anymore. I can actually just listen to something new every day and it's people talking and educating me." I would say that the biggest things people gravitated to at that time was how to constructively build a portfolio, because we went through 2020, '21, '22, and I think that there was huge ups and downswings throughout there and people were like, "Oh, this is the thing. It's these SPACs, right?" Or maybe it's these high growth stocks. And eventually I think that my constant messaging throughout was, "No, we're going to get really high quality ETFs and we're going to build a portfolio on them and we're going to hold them long term and you may not outperform someone this month, but you are going to outperform them in the next 5 to 10 years. And if you can stick with that plan..." So many of these growth stocks, they crashed and burned, but the S&P 500 went up 40% over two years there for sure.

Bilal Little:

So let's stay with that, right? So I think the ETF conversation is really important because it does provide that access, but what were the first ones? I'm sure S&P, it's SPY, it's VOO, it's IVV. As far as the entry points for most people, what were the things or topics that people were interested in investing in? Or was it just, "Hey, let's tiptoe here and then start that journey." What was it for you guys?

Gav Blaxberg:

There are a couple people who I'll certainly credit with bringing people into that ETF world. I think Cathie Wood is one of them who made it really popular. I'm decently close with Cathie. We've had her on the show a number of times. We've spent time together in person. And I think that her mission is really, really strong in that powerful mission of thematic ETFs that allow people to invest in their passions, but allow them to have diversity within those passions. Now listen, they haven't all worked out the best. They're not going up the most.

Bilal Little:

That's why diversification matters.

Gav Blaxberg:

Diversification matters. But I think the idea of those there that it brought people in to say, "Hey, ETFs can be sexy. They can be fun. They can be interesting." You can have the S&P 500. You can have VTI. You can have QQQ. These can all be a part of your portfolio, but you can then accentuate with new and exciting ideas and topics. And if you're someone that is very interested in genomics or you're very interested in AI, you can actually have something curated for you. And it's a perfect middle ground. It's not a single individual stock where you need to go and spend 10 hours of your time researching it and then constantly staying updated on the company, but it's also not set and forget. It's kind of in that middle ground where you get to do your research and you get it to be interested and you're invested in the process, but you also diversify your risk.

Bilal Little:

So infuse how you guys, meaning WOLF Financial, how you guys kind of came to market, and then how did you build relationships to build the insight for the ETF education? Meaning to your point, okay, you have a relationship with Cathie Wood, who else were the thought leaders that were, I would say, open to working with you guys to getting in front of these audiences?

Gav Blaxberg:

Well, I love the story. So when you're a small account, you're pretty much undiscovered when you first start on social media.

Bilal Little:

Everyone.

Gav Blaxberg:

Yeah, everyone, right? You have to start from zero. You have to create the account. And sometimes it can take literally years for anyone to notice you. A guy on my podcast this past week, his name is Zubi. He does positive inspirational rap. He has over a million followers. It took him 20 years. He was one of the first people on social media, and he was like, "It just took so much time." And so for me, it was wild. One of my first 100 followers was the CEO of Roundel at the time, Will, now of course, I'm blank on his last name, but there's a new Dave Mazza now, the CEO, and Dave was also there.

But basically, Will was one of my first 100 followers, and he started engaging with me. I was like, "This guy has billions in AUM and an ETF, why does he care what I have to say?" But he did, and he would just start coming to my shows and start having conversations about finance. I was like, wow, these fund managers are not stuck up. He's literally coming to a first 100 followers account. He's joining in. And to me, that was just this crazy experience. And from there, I started networking through the area. So Roundhill became really one of my first clients in that area, and they also just had some of those perfect fit products. It was funny to me because I actually was studying his ETFs in college.

Bilal Little:

Oh, wow.

Gav Blaxberg:

I took a course and the professor printed out a newspaper about this ETF called Nerd, which was a gaming ETF. And he was like, "Look, guys, they're building things for you." He's like, "Nobody would've built a gaming ETF for my generation." We don't care. And it was so [inaudible 00:11:23]... So I actually owned Nerd and he was like, "They have another one called Bets." And so I was studying this guy's ETFs in college classes, and then he's following me on Twitter a year later, and then we're having conversations and we're moving through the chain. And so having someone like them that trusted us went a long way. REX Shares ended up becoming a very significant client of mine as well, and that was just because they just saw us talking about their stuff all the time. So the way it happened was I ran a weekly stock picking competition. You could pick ETFs if you wanted as well. And people started seeing these double leverage and triple leverage ETFs and so they started picking them in our competitions. Then to them it was like, "Oh, here's a little bit of this safer play."

Bilal Little:

You gamified, you gamified it.

Gav Blaxberg:

And REX Shares was like, "Hey." They DM me. They go, "Hey, we see you're talking about our stuff. Would you like a T-shirt?" And I was like, "Yeah, I'd love a T-shirt." And so they sent me a T-shirt and then they had another launch here about two years ago for these ETF, [inaudible 00:12:13]. So they invited me the new stock exchange, and I came here and I went up on stage with them for the bell ringing and that was such an experience. And now we've done, I mean, a ton of work together. We've seen ETFs go billions of AUM. So it was just cool. Honestly, a lot of these experiences started with someone DMing me, would you like a T-shirt.

Bilal Little:

Wow. So what is WOLF Financial exactly? What do you guys do? It sounds like it's a bit of a media company. What is it?

Gav Blaxberg:

We're a financial media firm and agency.

Bilal Little:

Okay.

Gav Blaxberg:

And so it's a bit unique. I don't know if there's too many people that play in both areas. So on the one side we're creating daily content and media that's free for the end user to absorb. So think about a CNBC or something along those lines.

Bilal Little:

And how many different social platforms?

Gav Blaxberg:

Every social platform. I would say we create, distribute on, but I really believe that Twitter X is the mecca for finance and investing right now. I think it's where people come on a daily basis. You were actually mentioning this, right? It's kind of replacing Google?

Bilal Little:

For sure.

Gav Blaxberg:

It's also kind of replacing a lot of traditional research platforms. It's where people are coming and they're saying, "Okay, maybe I don't need... I'm trying to think, some of the platforms I use in college. Maybe I don't need a Bloomberg terminal." "Maybe I can just get some of my information off of here and start to do my research through this process." And so people are just building off of that.

Bilal Little:

It seems like social media is at this sort of point where it immediately builds trust with a said group or said audience, but to your point, it's consumable to where they digest it, where it's effective or useful for them at that particular time. Is that fair?

Gav Blaxberg:

100%. And it's kind of like stocks and ETFs, the longer that they hold and that they follow you and that they're getting benefits, the more that they believe in it.

Bilal Little:

Absolutely.

Gav Blaxberg:

I almost say it's like, if you follow me for a day, maybe I'll have a good day, maybe I have a bad day. You hold me for 20 years. We're doing well together. And so I try to keep people following along. And just to double back real quick to WOLF. One of the things that I really love was going into this, I never saw myself as an expert or as an educator in these areas. What I did see myself was someone who had an extensive network of people that I had significant trust in and they did not have a floor to share their thoughts on. And that's why my shows, in the beginning of spaces when they first opened them were the biggest shows right off the bat. And it's not because I was getting up there and talking on stage, but I would invite all my friends so I would network.

And networking is ultimately, I think, the superpower. Being able to network, make friends with people, pull them in, offer value to them right off the bat saying, "Hey, I love your messaging. How would you like to share that to 350 people live and giving them that floor?" And that made it such a win-win. And that's how we built the company was not by saying, "Oh, listen to us. We've got all the answers." But rather we have amazing people around us and we're going to place them. And that's what still we do on a daily basis. We schedule, we outreach, we send over 450 messages every single week, bringing in new speakers. I now have a three person team that their sole jobs are just outreach to bring on great speakers to the shows and it shows. We have a lot of the people who are down there on CNBC are coming on our shows now on a daily basis. And so it's just continuing and it's swelling and it's nice to see because it's so different than it was even two years ago.

Bilal Little:

What trends are you seeing right now in social as far as the interest? Obviously, crypto is a big conversation. I think ETFs will remain an important conversation because a lot of the crypto exposure can be had through the ETF wrapper. What other topics are you seeing outside of those or include those? What's resonating with people?

Gav Blaxberg:

I would say you hit the nail on the head with those first two. Crypto, we actually, back in December of '23, we created a separate channel specifically just for crypto because there was such demand and that scaled. We initially was doing 4 or 5 hours a week of content. Now it does 25 hours, and that's live content, engaging, and we have all the big Bitcoin heads coming on there and talking. Same concept. ETFs, I mean we talk ETFs every single day now. We're doing, so YieldMax. Now we do a weekly show with YieldMax, and it's just this cool environment where people who have all these questions about distributions and trading. They now actually have a space to ask these questions to the traders. That's never existed before where there was just this public forum where you could do that. Maybe you could email them in the past and maybe get something back. So that's one show right there.

Bilal Little:

It's kind of flattened the curve of engagement, right?

Gav Blaxberg:

Yeah. So I would say those are both. And then of course right now the big topics are like AI gold has really swelled.

Bilal Little:

Yeah, yeah. Those things still resonate, but I still believe, I think I'm a firm believer in singles and doubles and sticking with a core aspect of a portfolio. I think what happened in our business is we've shifted so much to the thematics that people lose sight of, call it the core big staple positions. I mean, are you still seeing those managers?

Gav Blaxberg:

I preach to people that VTI is my largest position. I told them at the end of the day, that is by far my largest position in my portfolio. When I built around that, and I've shared that in a lot of interviews. I think you need to have that core stability and then just enable... In order to have a profitable long-term portfolio, you have to have confidence in it and really, conviction. I study conviction. I think that people who have severe conviction and things are my favorite types of people in the world. It's so hard to find and it's so hard to have conviction in something if there's no base to build off of. It's kind of like if you were stacking a tower up of blocks, you want that big blocky base so that you can put all the little ones on top.

Bilal Little:

Hundred percent.

Gav Blaxberg:

You don't want to start with something small and shaky and try to build from there.

Bilal Little:

Foundational.

Gav Blaxberg:

And so yeah, those core ones, which you're hitting on, I really preach to people, the S&P 500, VTI, some of these, a little bit of international exposure nowadays.

Bilal Little:

I mean, it makes a ton of sense.

Gav Blaxberg:

Build that as your base.

Bilal Little:

Yeah. Do you have international managers reaching out to engage with you guys? Or actually, do you have the demand from the end audience member or participant? What are they demanding right now?

Gav Blaxberg:

So for international, it's just started growing and that's of course... Retail watches what's working, right?

Bilal Little:

For sure. Absolutely.

Gav Blaxberg:

And right now, they're starting to see all of us posting these graphics showing, "Hey, the international markets are outperforming US markets." And so they say, "Maybe I should have some exposure there."

Bilal Little:

Absolutely.

Gav Blaxberg:

I've had exposure there for years. Didn't always feel great. Now it's looking a little bit more interesting. So yeah, I would say that they're just starting to ask for that. I think right now still there's a very heavy lean towards tech in general. It just comes from these audiences. It's a big talking point. You have names that are cults like Tesla and Palantir.

Bilal Little:

You call them cults?

Gav Blaxberg:

They're totally cults, and I work with them. I was at Palantir headquarters a couple months ago.

Bilal Little:

Yeah.

Gav Blaxberg:

Yes, yes. I mean, good cults. Not the bad type. But yeah, I think that people are really surrounding these items. Outside of that, what is their demand for? Gosh, I get 30 DMs a day and people want different things. "Can you talk about XBI? I want to know about biotech." Different pieces like that.

Bilal Little:

I'm glad you kind of brought this up because I think this is important as far as the demand that you're seeing, meaning the questions that you get. But I still believe although there's this sort of rise of the do-it-yourself investor, that people still need financial advisors. Do you have advisors engaging with you as well?

Gav Blaxberg:

100%. So we bring financial advisors on our shows pretty much every single week, I would say. And we've done a significant amount of direct, just personal finance shows where we'll bring financial advisors on and we'll allow the audience to come up and any question free game. And you can basically get a lot of your free questions answered for free on there.

Bilal Little:

For sure.

Gav Blaxberg:

From licensed professionals, which is very cool. And so yeah, we're completely integrating them. I agree with you. I think that for a lot of retail, the way that I've always preached is take that nest egg and build that nest egg with a financial advisor.

Bilal Little:

Hundred percent.

Gav Blaxberg:

And then take, let's say 10% of your portfolio.

Bilal Little:

There you go.

Gav Blaxberg:

10%, 20%, manage it yourself, right?

Bilal Little:

Yeah.

Gav Blaxberg:

Have that experience. Do some research. It feels good. It's going to make you more confident in the rest of your portfolio. But ultimately what I think people are going to see is there's going to be a lot more volatility in their personal, and there's going to be a lot more stability with their financial advisor. And when things are bad, you're going to be very grateful that you have that financial advisor. When things are good, you're going to see slow growth, right up to the upside.

Or it could be fast. It could depend on your risk tolerance and how it goes. But yeah, I think that the one other thing with a financial advisor is, unless this is your profession, right, as investing and as a hobby, if you are trying to do both, sometimes you're going to detract from your success in your main area. And whatever it is, your daily job, perhaps you are a painter or you're doing whatever it is, you don't need to be balancing both. It makes sense to have someone. And right now it's 1%, right? Some of them are sub 1%. It's not as bad as it used to be.

Bilal Little:

No, no, no, no, no. I think the advisor doesn't have a problem justifying their fee. I think they haven't communicated all of the value that they actually drive to a relationship because at the end of the day, managing, protecting and transitioning wealth is significantly important. You can have these audiences, the do-it-yourself investor that may grow their asset level significantly, but if they struggle on the sort of transitioning that wealth side, meaning the paperwork. We all collect the paper trail, that will be a very, very difficult conversation for their family or the person left to pick up their paper trail.

Gav Blaxberg:

Sure, wish my dad had a better financial advisor back in the day. Yeah, yeah. You're hitting on the points, setting up a 401k, right? And auto pulling and then distributing across and tax loss harvesting and all these things that I guess people are using AI now to we figure out...

Bilal Little:

A little bit of everything at this point.

Gav Blaxberg:

But it's not going to be perfect. I see a lot of value in it. And then estate planning and your will and just different pieces like that. Heck, I've had people who are like, "Yeah, my financial advisor got me to start working out." They were just telling me, "You got to stop doing that. It's not good for you." Your french fries can do a whole lot of stuff.

Bilal Little:

Yeah. Yeah. So look, I want to pivot back to something I want to make sure that we hit on this. So how do ETF issuers work with WOLF from a marketing and distribution perspective?

Gav Blaxberg:

That's the exciting question. It has been a really fun journey working with them because it's a new area, especially due to compliance. And so what's their ultimate message? They want to get in front of self-directed retail investors, and they want to give them enough confidence and imbue them with a sense of curiosity to actually go ahead and do enough research. People don't want them to buy their thing for a day. They want them to buy it for 10 years.

Bilal Little:

A hundred percent.

Gav Blaxberg:

And so it's like how do we get to that point? And so right now in the past, they've gone through the advisors, as you've mentioned, because they say, "Hey, I don't need to go to the retail investor. I'll just go to the advisor." But now retail, probably at least 25% of them are self-directing their own portfolios. And then probably another 10%, 20% are telling the advisor what they want in that portfolio, even if it's with an advisor. So you're looking at almost half the population there.

And so the way that we do it is I try to create a story for the actual ETF manager, and that's what resonates with people is stories, storyline telling and building an actual picture of what this is. And we do that typically through live shows and written content. And so we have two different types of live shows we have with video without video, so similar to radio and audio on those shows, we run a significant amount of interviews. So I like to actually get the fund manager on there and have an honest back and forth with them.

Bilal Little:

Got to unpack their strategy, that's less of a highlight commercial.

Gav Blaxberg:

Yes, yes. It's not a 30 seconds, you know, smile and thumbs up commercial. It's like, "Let's get into the nitty-gritty. Let's understand where this fits into a portfolio. Let's give people in the audience a chance to ask questions." Items like that, let's repackage it up. And I think you're just seeing a real swell, I mean, there's top 50 ETFs in the world by AUM that are now actively running this and working with us. I'm having conversations with top-fifteen ETFs now who are saying, "We've never even considered anything like this." Right?

Bilal Little:

Oh wow.

Gav Blaxberg:

We've been so traditional. We've never wanted to get inside, but now we're doing a little bit of podcasts, and if we're doing podcasts, maybe we can shift over to you. And there's a lot of hesitation because I think people are obviously just concerned with compliance and with other areas, but they're getting a lot more assuaged with those fears, and especially the ones that they themselves have social media presences and they're looking at it. This is probably the number one thing that I see people getting over is they want to have their own social media presence, but when they post, they get four likes.

Bilal Little:

Yeah.

Gav Blaxberg:

And they're like, "Nobody is seeing our messaging." And they come to us and they don't just want us to create new messaging for them. They want us to amplify their own message.

Bilal Little:

A hundred percent.

Gav Blaxberg:

I think that that's a huge area for us to involve, because if you're an ETF manager and you have a person that you're paying $80,000 a year to make social media content and it's great content, but nobody sees it, what's the point?

Bilal Little:

Totally.

Gav Blaxberg:

And if you can say, "Hey, well, we're going to pay this other $5,000." Whatever it is, "And they're going to come in and now a million people are going to see that thing that was seen by a hundred before, that's invaluable."

Bilal Little:

What is it from a coaching perspective, how much coaching do you have to provide some of these managers because this is not their core business. So in many essence, they're leaning on you to get the messaging right, if they do decide to partner with you.

Gav Blaxberg:

Yeah, I honestly was surprised at how, maybe this is just like a financing, how personable and engaged some of these managers can be and are for the shows. They can come on a lot of them and they can just riff with us.

Bilal Little:

Yeah.

Gav Blaxberg:

I mean, I've had some great, if you know, Will Rhind from GraniteShares, get that sexy voice on spaces and he's sharing and everybody's bought in and he's talking about the market. And so these guys are really naturals. Mike Venuto from Tidal. Mike Venuto, I feel like I could get up there and talk with him for 8 hours straight.

Bilal Little:

Yeah, Mike is fantastic.

Gav Blaxberg:

And so it's actually pretty impressive to me. And maybe that's just a form of they kind of realized that they needed someone good that could talk with RIAs and other stuff in the past. So the transition's actually way more natural than I thought it was going to be.

Bilal Little:

Oh, wow.

Gav Blaxberg:

And a lot of them have analysts on board too, and the analysts and traders will come and be part of the shows and things along those lines.

Bilal Little:

What would you say to ETF issuers that have been somewhat opposed to kind of coming on or engaging with you guys?

Gav Blaxberg:

I think right now you have a pretty immense first mover advantage still to getting in now, and that's just the type of person that I am. I think that if you can have a first mover advantage of something, you got to take it because otherwise you're going to look back and just have regret in those areas of I could have got in when this was the hottest thing and I waited 5 to 10 years and then everybody was doing it. Then I came around, I was like, "Okay, I'm going to do it with everybody else."

And so the ones that are taking the so-called leap, it's not so much of a leap. We have our compliance process down. We have clients with proven track records and case studies, those are the ones that are coming in. They're reaping the 10x rewards of the ones that are going to get it later. So to me, I just tell people, have a conversation with me. Get on and let me show you what the contracts look like, what the campaigns look like. Let me talk with your compliance team. Let me make you comfortable with this new area because I understand that it can be scary, and I understand that it's new, but the benefits far outweigh the risks.

Bilal Little:

So I'm glad you unpacked that. What would you say right now, and let me just kind of frame this the right way. What would you say right now is the focus of how you actually engage with other FInfluencers? And the reason I ask this question is because we're seeing the rise of the FInfluencer today more than ever, and people want to get in front of those eyeballs. How is WOLF strategically positioned to sort of partner with them?

Gav Blaxberg:

Well, that's the agency side of what I was mentioning before. We have our own media creation. We do over a million unique listeners in our own shows. But to me, I always looked at it and I was like, "Okay, I can grind for another follower a day, or I can meet someone that has a million followers and just bring them into my network. And boom, now we're a million followers bigger." And that's why I've very closely worked with 25 of the largest financial influencers, Finfluencers, in the world right now. Across the board, another 10 million followers in addition to our own audience, 5 billion monthly impressions.

And I think what's so unique was I didn't start this out as an agency. My goal wasn't to go in and manage other influencers and to be the connecting bridge. I did it because I wanted to build my own audience. And as I was doing that, I made friends with a lot of the others because we were engaging with each other. And so when I ended up starting to come to them and saying, "Hey, I can actually bring you business. I can manage you. I can work with you." I came as a friend. I didn't come as an agency or something else. It was just like, "Hey, let's help each other." Kind of Jerry McGuire, "Help me, help you." I honestly am a little Jerry McGuire in the area with some of these different things. And that's just worked out so well with being able to get in front of them and expand these audiences.

And now it's just become a huge part of the business is where we're going and making the relationships. So I have fund managers who are like, "This person talks about my ETFs. We have no contact with them. Could you please bring them in?" And they're so much more likely to accept, especially on Twitter. So Twitter, when you reach out, it can be very hard to get in touch with someone. They can have their DMs closed. If they're not following you, you get put into a message request box. And the only thing that the message request box shows typically is who are the mutual followers. Now, I'm very lucky that anytime that I send one to someone, there's always going to be a mutual follower because 95% of Twitter follows Elon Musk and he follows WOLF. And so then they see our message come in, it says, "Yeah, this person's followed by Elon Musk." And so our messages just get answered and then we can get on the conversation. We can start making it work.

And so to me, it's been kind of the journey of a lifetime working with these other influencers, building the business. And my favorite part is how many lives it's changed. So you met Jordan today. So I saw Jordan start to host spaces about three years ago, and right off the bat, I could tell something special. He had passion, dedication, excitement for it, huge spaces, good connections. And so I ended up throwing this event in LA. Jordan got invited to the event. We met up and he told you it was the first thing I asked him. I was like, "Man, how much money are you making off these spaces?" He goes, "I don't monetize my spaces." "What do you mean? That's a thing?" I was like, "What do you do for work?" And he goes, "I host spaces all market day. And then I go work at a pizza shop and I deliver pizzas and that's how I survived." And I was like, "Come with me."

And I sat him down. I've done this for a lot of investors now. It's not just about bringing them money. I sit them down and I set up their LLC. I set up their bank account. I teach them how to elect an S Corp, how to do their whole entire structure with client work. I teach them negotiations, and then I start bringing them clients. I think he quit in three weeks on the job. And then actually two weeks ago, we officially fully hired Jordan and brought him into the WOLF team. And so it's just been that journey of he was able to get his life changed, have a business, and now he's just part of the team. And so many of the others have now been joining my team know Shay Boloor, another influencer, now he's my CSO. And he's going on Fox News, CNN regularly. He goes to the studios and speaks.

So we used to have a lot of guys who came in and it really changed their life. You would be surprised how many people out there have a million followers and make $0 off the internet, and they just need someone to show them. And so that's kind of in the cool side. And then the other side is of course, working with these ETFs and these issuers, and then being that middleman person.

Bilal Little:

I'm glad you were able to unpack that. Thank you. If you had to sort of leave the viewers with one thing as far as how they should think about WOLF Financial and how they should either consider collaborating or partnering with you, what would you say?

Gav Blaxberg:

Well, if you are an everyday person, I just seriously believe that deep down, there's nothing more powerful than having an audience. I think that it can transcend...

Bilal Little:

Today more than ever.

Gav Blaxberg:

Today, more than ever. It can transcend money, influence all these things, having that audience and that voice. And the second-best thing to having your own audience is knowing somebody who has an audience. And so if you don't have one, I encourage you to build it. And that's actually a service that we started offering six months ago. "Hey, you don't want to use our services, we'll come and build you an audience in the back end. We'll build your accounts. And we do this for ETF managers right now. We have ETF managers where we're building their own audiences. So then you can own that for forever. And on the other side, in the meantime while you're doing that, we've got 11 million retail investors ready to go. They want to hear your messages. They're excited about ETFs, right? They're not like, stop calling you on the phone. I'm an RIA. They want to hear the messaging. Let's talk."

Bilal Little:

Thanks so much for joining ETF Central, the home of ETFs. Appreciate you coming.

Gav Blaxberg:

Thank you, sir. Appreciate you having me on.

Speaker 1:

That's a wrap for today's conversation, but the ETF discussion doesn't stop here. For more insights, deep dives and voices shaping the market, stay connected on etfcentral.com. From the New York Stock Exchange, we'll see you next time. Information contained in this podcast was obtained in part from publicly available sources and not independently verified. Neither ICE nor its affiliates make any representations or warranties expressed or implied as city accuracy or completeness of the information, and do not sponsor, approve, or endorse any of the content herein, all of which is presented solely for informational and educational purposes. Nothing herein constitutes an offer to sell a solicitation of an offer to buy any security or a recommendation of any security or trading practice. Some portions of the preceding conversation may have been edited for the purpose of length or clarity.