Ep. 44 - VeeCon Recap

In this week's episode of the Digital Wrap-Up, Riley recaps his experience at #VeeCon2023.

Riley and Hannah both had the awesome opportunity to attend VeeCon this year in Indianapolis. It started with the chance to teach pickleball to people from all over the world and led to them getting to meet and hear from some amazing celebrities.

#VeeCon was a chance to combine both work and play for the two. Yes, Riley talks about #pickleball, but he breaks down the conference speakers first, for all of you non-pickleball lovers out there.

Do you enjoy watching the Digital Wrap-Up? You can support the show by visiting https://bit.ly/DigitalWrapUp. Your support directly impacts the show and allows Riley and Harden Digital & Design to continue producing quality content each week. 

Transcript

Unknown: 0:06

Hi.

Riley Harden: 0:23

Welcome back to another episode of digital wrap up. My name is Riley and I'm the host and I'm the CEO of hardened digital and design. And today's episode I'm going to be giving you my recap of V con. I had the opportunity to be involved in Gary Vaynerchuk Gary V's Conference this past week, and it was honestly one of the cooler things I've done in a long time, if not ever, it was just such a unique experience for me on multiple different levels. Pickleball which if you know me is a big part of my life. I love playing pickleball I coach it I play in tournaments, but then also getting to attend the event and learn from some big name people. Listen to great speakers, Drew Barrymore, Neil Patrick Harris, Gary Vee. So just going to recap some of the things and that I learned some of the takeaways from the conference, and all that in today's episode. But before I get into that, I do want to mention a couple of things. Again, I've talked about these in the previous couple of episodes. But if you listen to last week's episode, our online shop is live harden digital dot shop, we have some hard digital swag, some mouse pads, stickers, pint glasses, coffee mugs, and then also our love Tipton for all of our local listeners who live in Tipton. So if you want to check that out, again, that's hardened digital that shop. And also you can support the show directly the digital wrap up directly by going to bit.li/digital wrap up. And it's just another way to give back to the show. If you enjoy listening to me sit here and talk about small business and marketing and all these different topics that I cover. If you don't necessarily need swag from the heart and digital shopper don't need the services we offer. But you've gotten something out of this podcast, it's a great way to show your support there. Again, that's bit.li/digital wrap up. So back to V con. I'm going to kind of go out of order because the days were the field day. So there's a three day conference, the first day was a field day. And then the second two day was more of the traditional conference with speakers and sessions that you could attend and listen to some high profile people. But so I was involved with the pickleball side of things. I don't want to talk about pickleball first because this isn't a pickleball podcast. But basically, I we I got approached through my affiliation with being on the board for in the pickleball club. And they were looking for some pickleball players, pros coaches in the area to help out during the event. And in return, we got to have access to the rest of the conference. So I jumped all over that one. I know what v con was a lot of the other people in the thread didn't know what it was or weren't as excited but I jumped all over it. Getting free access to Gary V's conference was awesome. You know, it's roughly a $200 conference, you have to buy an NF T to get in and all that. So if you haven't heard of V con just look it up and it's really game changing in everything that they're doing, but anyways, we got free access to the rest of the conference. I'll circle back to the pickleball side of things later on. So if you want to hear me talk about what we did with pickleball just stay tuned. But for those people who listen that are more business oriented marketing, all that going to get into day two of the conference, which was on Friday, and talk about some of the speakers I listened to and some of the takeaways that came from those speakers. So started off the day 20 10am Gary Vee kicks off the conference or second day of the conference first full day of actual sessions. And he brought out his dad and his brother and talked about running a business as a family and being in business with family which Gary Vee was involved still is with his dad's wine business and now his brother He's involved with a bunch of other VaynerMedia, Vayner, sports, all these other different ventures with his brother as well. So, brought them on stage and talked about, you know, being in business with them and some of the takeaways and things that he's learned through that, through those experiences over the years, and that kind of hit home for me, because as many of you know, Kaylee's, my sister, and my girlfriend, Hannah is an account manager here. So, very family oriented. Kaylee's a part owner, she's creative director. And then obviously, Hannah's doing a lot of day to day stuff with our clients. So interacting with family on a daily basis, through the business. So it's good to get Gary's thoughts. I think the big takeaway there is that you leave business at business or work at work. And then, you know, family life outside of work, you know, making sure you really separate the two, especially when it comes to any debates or arguments or differentiating opinions on different topics or whatever. But make sure there's that separate, you know, work and home balance, I guess, when you're dealing with family, luckily, knock on wood. Kaylee, and I haven't had any issues, Hannah, and I haven't had any issues. To my best knowledge, Hannah and Kaylee haven't had any issues. But really, we all work together really? Well. You know, Kaylee, and I used to get on each other's nerves growing up, but I think that's long gone now. But we haven't really had any major disputes or issues since we joined up. Almost, it's almost been a year wow. In July of last year. So you know, it's something that what they were talking about on stages to keep in mind, if there is anything that comes up, you know, don't let work get in volved, or in the middle of our personal and family relationships? And, you know, hopefully, that never happens, but it's just a good takeaway there. So, yeah, I think, you know, that was one of the things concerns that we had going into it about that is we didn't want it to cause any issues. And you know, there are some family families that do try and do what we're doing or they're involved in business with each other and it can ruin relationships, and we definitely didn't want that at all. So, so far, so good, and I don't plan I don't plan on changing that anytime soon. And I know Kayleigh doesn't either, so go and smooth and and on top of the business that we run here harden digital and design, Kaylee and I and I guess Hannah's looped in this year to also help out our aunt and uncle who own a business gooseberry Creek garden centers. And Kaylee's heavily involved. She's been a manager for one of their greenhouse locations for the past several years. And I, I'm the hired muscle, I always joke, I just do a lot of setup and teardown and occasional truck days if they need just some people to carry stuff. But just another family business venture that we're involved with especially Kaylee. And I know there's always differentiating opinions on setup and ordering and design, not necessarily design, but I guess Yeah, design, you know, just the inner workings of everything to get planned for the greenhouse, there's a lot more than just putting up a structure and having plants come. And I know there's differences, differences in opinions a lot of times from hearing from them talk, but I know they they don't let it affect their personal relationships. To my knowledge. I've never seen it. And I've never had that issue with my aunt and uncle or when I've worked at Kaylee's store, you know, it's a big family business. They're my cousins involved. He's in another manager of a store. So it's, I think something that's pretty common. And Gary even mentioned that too is that especially like entrepreneurs, raising their kids to be entrepreneurs and start their own businesses as well. It's becoming more and more common. So we've, I think across the board have been pretty good about all that the family relationships, the business relationships, keeping them separate. Scott and Julie, if you're watching or listening, I can't say whether you guys have let it impact you but I being around you. I think you guys are pretty solid, as well. So and you have been big mentors for me. Getting my business started a couple of years ago and the random time Call a question or something like that, that, that i i bug Julia with the pirate with a lot of times. So thank you for being so helpful for everything you've done with my business. But yeah, that was just the kind of Gary's opening talk kinda just caught me off guard. But I didn't expect him to be talking about family at this big conference, but it was pretty cool and got a lot of takeaways out of that. So next up. Yeah, I guess I'll go in order of speakers that I saw on day two. So next up is Jesse Eisler, who's a part owner of Atlanta, Cox, GS Atlanta Hawks, and just a motivational speaker. He's an ultra marathon or ultra athlete, whatever, they are just very motivational. And I think I got the most out of his talk across the entire board during the conference, because he was just very passionate, very inspirational, very motivational. Just everything that I can say just positivity reflected off of him into the crowd. And one of the biggest takeaways from him is that he mentioned this can versus will mentality. And it really breaks it down to can you, everybody can do something, but will you do something? You know, I can say, I'm going to create a podcast and record, I can record a podcast episode every week. But will I record a podcast every episode every week? You know, I can start a business and do all this. But will I or, you know, just these can versus will statements. And you know, what, just the the way you phrase things, the way you talk about things, in terms of what you're going to do and how to do it and how to go about it is pretty powerful. When you when you think about it, you know, I went home Saturday night? Yeah, Saturday night, I believe. And you know, I was just sitting there I was been meaning to get a pub podcast episode published for a few days. But you know, the conference got in the way busy, blah, blah, blah, made excuses, you know, and then Jesse's talk kind of resignated. Can versus will, I mean, I can, but really you and it's just whenever you're thinking about, Oh, I could go do this, or I can do that, really just rephrasing it yourself, you know, putting into I will do something. For me, that was just extra motivation. And I've kind of stuck with that everything that I'm doing. That's the decision of I can do this, or I can go read in that just saying I can, but I will do this. And it's like, once you say you will, it kind of in my mind just pushes the other options out of the way, there is no other option and just I'm going to get this done, or I'm going to go do this. So, you know, he, I hadn't really heard of him before the conference and is actually pretty crazy. Hannah and I walked down, it was at Lucas Oil Stadium. So we walked down onto the floor of Lucas Oil Stadium, which is you know, they put plastic, whatever on top of the field. And as we were walking in, there is a taller guy and a couple of people around them walking towards the stage, you know, you had to walk 70 yards across the field to get to the main stage. And this, this other random person runs up to the guy who's walking in front of us and is asking for a picture and Hannah looked at me, it's like, Who is that? It's like, I have no idea. And then, you know, an hour later, when Jesse comes on stage, I was like, Holy crap, that was this guy. And he was like 10 feet in front of us. And we just had no idea who he was. And that's, you know, no knock on him. It just didn't know who he was at the time. And you know, that's kind of one of the crazy overall things about V con was there's all these huge celebrities, all these big name people, influencers, celebrities, movie stars, whatever it may be, and they're just all open and so inviting, will stop and talk to you stop and take a picture. It's just a very big welcoming community at V con. And I think that's one of Gary V's big things is what he's pushing for with this conferences. It's all about the community and creativity and being open and, and all that so it's just like, we were walking next to this guy right behind this guy and had no idea and when it was just funny because we even were like, Oh, we don't know who he is. And we stopped and thought about it. For a second, but I think going back to his speech and what he was talking about, you know, he's super motivational. He's the way he gave the speech, the way he presented it, you know, he shaved his head, in the middle of the talk to get his point across during the can versus will, you know, it was just very powerful. And I think that will stick with me for a long time and everything that I'm doing for the business. So then, after that, there's a bunch of breakout sessions. And, you know, you could choose between like three different sessions in each time slot and where you wanted to go. And one of them that we went to was with a bunch of Chief Marketing Officers, for some bigger companies like to be the TV streaming, MTV. And then there was another TV market. I don't remember her specific company that she is with, but she had been with some major sports and sports teams. I think she used to work with the Muppets. But anyways, some high level chief marketing officers, you know, that have been in the game for a long time and have you know, really, I think the one from Tooby was, you know, she helped plan the crazy Superbowl ads with the giant rabbits that kind of surprised people. And there's another one, I think that she, I think they are responsible for the one that made people think the game glitched out or the the stream stopped working, or whatever it was, I don't quote me on this, because I just kind of remembered it. And I didn't look into it before recording this episode, but so she's been behind a lot of big, you know, marketing efforts. And so it was great hearing from them is really just reaffirming the fact that you have to, you know, in all of your marketing efforts, draw to the human factor of what people you know, the emotions, the, the human factor of what people want to do, and what draws them into something. And it's, you know, every business, every market, every industry has, you know, at the end of the day, you're trying to connect with another human. So, the more that you can keep those factors in mind and all of your marketing efforts, the more successful you're going to be. So it was great hearing from them. THE MODERATOR kind of ruined that one for me, he's just a little overboard and made it all about him. And it is what it is sometimes there those sessions are hit or miss, but I still got you know, it was more of a reaffirming, you know, what I had already kind of knew and been practicing trying to practice for a while now. So it was just nice hearing from some bigger name people in the industry. There. Let me see. Oops, I posted a long thread, not a thread, because you know, I'm a Twitter blue subscriber now. So it was all one tweet V con recap and I'll link it in the show notes and you can go read it there if you want to, but so that was kind of Oh, the next session we went to if you're big, if you're on Tik Tok, you've probably came across the dancing weatherman. You know, he's a meteorologist out of New York. And now he does a whole he used to be out of North Carolina when he got started and kind of blew up on Tik Tok. But he's a meteorologist. He works in studio, but he dances and has millions of followers and yeah, so he's just big on tick tock out and on Instagram a little bit. But we actually met him Thursday during the field day during pickleball and connected with him during the celebrity pickleball match, which I'll talk about here in a little bit. And it was funny because Hannah was teamed up with him and they had no idea of you know, the event producers had no idea that Hannah was a meteorologist. They obviously knew Nick Nick Kosar is his name. The dancing weatherman, obviously knew he was a meteorologist because that's his claim to fame. And then Hannah, they didn't know she was a meteorologist but they put them on the same team for the celebrity match. And so you know, they hit it off instantly and got talking and Nick is a really great just down to earth. chill guy, we got to talk to him quite a bit Thursday, and then he was actually speaking on Friday. So we made it a point to, you know, catch up with him on Friday, hung out with him for a few minutes before and afters, his talk and then also listen to his talk, obviously, and he was just talking about how, how he kind of took off and became the dancing weatherman, and you know, started from just posting, you know, he, his story was that he had to his producers or his bosses were telling him, he had to put out 12 pieces of content a day on social media, which people in the social media world know, like, that's insane. That's a lot, especially just for one individual. But they were telling him put out 12 pieces of content a day, and he needed to put out one more, one more post. And so he just jokingly recorded him dancing and posted it, went home, took a nap, and then woke up and his phone was blowing up and kind of the rest was history. And so just talked about how he evolved from, you know, jokingly posting a video of him dancing to now being you know, having millions of followers on Tiktok and Instagram and having brand deals and hiring a manager, talent manager and, you know, lawyers, all this other stuff, you know, that comes with becoming a quote unquote, well, it's not even a quote unquote, because he is an actual influencer. He's you know, somebody that has made it big. But he talked about the steps of how he got there, and kind of when he decided he needed to get representation and have that backing and the support behind them, and it wasn't just him throwing up videos anymore. So it was really, you know, aside from meeting him personally and chatting with him the day before and before, what he actually talked about in his session was really insightful, especially, you know, Ken and I, we have a bunch of pickleball content, you know, and we're sponsored by a team, we get a bunch of gear from them, you know, kind of in the Creator influencer world, they're obviously much lower scale, but you know, we've had a couple of our videos blow up as well across Tik Tok or Instagram. And so hearing how he did it in the process was pretty insightful there. So, Nick, great guy, look him up. Nick Kosar on Instagram and Tiktok. And you'll love his videos. Now he's doing collabs with huge influencers flying across the country just to record a 15 second video and then flying back and he's on Time Square a lot dancing. It's just a really cool connection to meet there. And you know, we have a wedding out in Boston sometime either later this year, or next year. And we're going to hopefully stop by and check it out his studio and meet up with him and play some pickleball. So after that, the you know, we had lunch, whatever, just being in Lucas Oil Stadium, being down on the field is always fun. I've done it a lot in my previous job at the state. But, you know, being underneath seeing everything being down on the field, looking up in the stands and all this. It's just a really cool experience in general. So you know, we got some lunch set in the stadium sat in the seats, and it was just looking down on Lucas Oil while we ate our pizza and everything. So really cool, just overall experience. But then, after we were done, lunch, I guess we had lunch before Nick's talk, but whatever. You know, then kind of to wrap up the day. We had to the bigger speakers. They were looking for nothing against Gary Vee or Jesse or nick or anything. But I think the big draw was the keynotes from Drew Barrymore and Neil Patrick Harris. You know, obviously two huge celebrities, two huge names out there getting to listen to them. And we both we sat purposely sat in the aisle that they walked down so you know, I was literally like an inch away from getting a fist bump from Neil Patrick Harris is actually one of those awkward like, he was giving other people fist bumps but I was holding my phone recording. And then I like went for fist bump to and then he went for one but I had already pulled back. I captured it all on video and on. took some photos as well and just kind of, you know, one of those awkward like high five or fist bump moments, you know, but it was really cool to see both of them up close, obviously walking down that aisle to the stage and then both of them. Drew Barrymore is actually, if you don't know obviously she's the actress but then she's started multiple companies and has one that started more recently. That's huge. So she's an entrepreneur, business owner and herself. And she brought a lot of passion and excitement to it. And not just not just about business, but just about living life in general. So it was really nice listening to her. She, you know, she was super motive, like, she would just keep getting up and being passionate and like, they were all there's three of them sitting in a chair, but she would get up and start walking and pacing while she was talking just because she was so excited, so pumped up to be talking about what she was talking about. And so it was just a lot of fun listening to her and her experiences and her being a female business owner and just their creative process and how they go about things with her business partner who is sitting next to her che, I believe, and sorry, I don't remember his last name. But I was mainly paying attention to Drew Barrymore. And I think she talked most of the time anyways, but it was really insightful listening to her. And then, right after her was Neil Patrick Harris, and if you don't, I'm assuming most people know who Neil Patrick Harris. Harris is, you know, it was more of just an entertaining conversation with him talking about his different life adventures, what he's done, he's kind of done it all in the acting world, from movies, TV shows. Draw not drama. Oh, jeez. Plays, that's the word. You know, he's kind of done at all. So he talked about his experiences, and some of his more fun times, some of his harder lessons. All that stuff, it was just a really entertaining conversation with him, you know, we were probably 30 yards away from him. And so yeah, it was just a very unique opportunity to get to see and interact with all these people. On a more personal level, you know, it's a big conference, but it didn't feel like he like in the sense of seeing people like we saw a lot of the same people both days that we were there interacted with a bunch of the same people. And then like just it felt more personal being able to see all these celebrities and influencers than probably would like if you just ran into them out in LA or something like that. So it was really cool to just interact with all those people. And some of the people who have been in the game for a long time have been doing it have been very successful. listening to them talk was awesome. So that was Friday of econ. Unfortunately, we didn't get to go to Saturday a V con we were thinking about it, because Tim Tebow was there speaking Saturday morning, but we surprise surprise had a pickleball tournament on Saturday afternoon and we had already committed Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, I've been down in Indy for it. So just took the day off and slept a little bit which we hadn't done a lot of before going to our pickleball tournament so Miss Tim Tebow Miss Jessica Alba. Miss Gary V's closing keynote but overall just got a lot out of the actual conference listening to these people talk and and share their stories and their experiences with us. So like I said that the Jesse Itzler conversation I think will stick with me for a long time. And the motivation he shared there was worth the lack of sleep the driving to nd 4550 minutes, three days in a row is definitely worth it just that conversation in itself. So yeah, now I've been mentioning pickleball and what we did this was kind of what to transition so you know, if you're just here to listen about V con and the speakers in the marketing business side of things, well, if you don't like pick wall now I'm going to talk about pickleball just because it's I have the platform and this is kind of why we even got to go to V con in the first place. So like I said, I got included on an email because I'm a board member for in the pickleball club. I do all of their websites, stuff and some of their social media and the one of the people with V friends which is one of Gary V's companies reached out to us just through a Contact Us form on our website, you know having a website even if you don't do a lot through it. You never know when that one big opportunities haven't come across your, your inbox from your Contact Us form excuse me as I got a drink there, but they reached out and said, Hey, we need some pickleball pros, pickleball coaches, high level pickleball players to help us out on Thursday mainly for we're doing a celebrity pickleball match with some big name influencers. Do you know anybody? Or could you connect us and so I was like, well, not quote unquote, pro, you know, defining what a pickleball Pro is, excuse me in the first place is, you know, it's hit or miss, you know, but high level player four or five plus level player turned play in tournaments coach at Community sports and wellness and Pendleton. So I responded and told them all that and we're like, Great, let's jump on a call and kind of talk about what we're looking for. So they were setting up a pickleball court in the middle of White River State Park. Because Thursday day one of the conference was their field day, really just a bunch of different competitions, different outdoor events. I think there's like a inflatable obstacle course there is those big giant inflatable balls that you can run in and they had human bowling, they had popper shots, they had a bunch of different they had a human claw machine, which is pretty cool, didn't get a chance to go on that. But they were saying Gary's just all about competition. So they wanted it to be a field day have people just get out, interact with people have fun, you know, to kick off the conference. So they, Gary v's and owner of the fives Pickleball for Major League pickleball. And so obviously, he wanted to pickleball court out there. And so they put they were putting together a celebrity match. So they needed at least two people to come out. And so I volunteered was great. Nobody else from the pickleball club really picked up on it, or wasn't available. So Hannah. By default, I invited her, obviously, and she was excited to come to so we were in for that, which was you know, just an hour out of time for the match. But then they were like, if you are available, during the day, we're going to have the court setup, we're going to have people, we're going to be allowing people to come onto the court hit the ball around and learn how to play pickleball if you're here for if you're available, we'd love to have you come out and teach people pickleball coach Pickleball for all these conference attendees who are coming to Field Day, so we're like, yeah, absolutely. Especially, you know, I knew I was getting free conference X access. So I was like, yeah, definitely worth it there. So, Wednesday, we did a big walkthrough with the production team, when there's not really much to walk through on the pick wall side of things, but just getting the layout of White River State Park, what to do the plan and all that stuff. And then Thursday came around then we were there until like 11 ish or so and hung out for a little bit. People didn't the quote, unquote, field day conference, whatever you want to call, it didn't actually open until 2pm. So we were just hanging out got free lunch, whoo, free food. But then, after that, we were literally just once two o'clock hit, we were four people on the core rotation every five minutes. So like it was, I kid you not probably hundreds, if not 1000s or more people throughout that two to seven, two to 630 timeframe, we had four people on the court for five minutes. For every five minutes, we were just rotating people on and off because the line was so long of people wanting to get on and play pickleball during field day. So we would, you know, bring on four people ask them if they'd played before, if they had and all four of them had played before, they would just like Alright, you guys go at it. Have fun play. Play a few points play as much as you can in five minutes. If they hadn't played. We, you know, you can't teach pickleball in five minutes, you can barely even cover the rules in five minutes. But we gave them the real basic rules of serving under hand can't go in the kitchen, serve diagonally, letting the ball bounce on this the serve and the return all you know the real basics of pickleball. We'd give them that while they're hitting warming up for a minute or so then the the play for another four or five minutes. And then that was it, because we just couldn't keep them on any longer because there's so many people to get through. And I think one of the coolest things about that is, you know, we had people from all over the world coming and playing football with us and talking to them about pickup While teaching them the sport, even, you know, you're up, Singapore, Australia, like just literally all over the world coming that they were there for Wii con. But you know, they learned pickleball as well, which is really cool just spreading the game. It's not as big other places as it is in the US. So they have other sports like paddle, and things like that. But it was just a really cool experience to interact with all these people from across the world and teach them something that I love in pickleball. And, you know, even if people didn't get all the rules down, we weren't like sticklers calling kitchen violations or anything. We just wanted people to have fun hitting the ball back and forth. And you know, take that experience of, even if I wasn't good, it was fun to be out there hitting the ball. And that's how everybody starts playing pick balls, you pick up a paddle and start hitting the ball back and forth. And then you just naturally start learning how to hit it softer, hit it harder, place it and that's just what gets you addicted to pickleball. So just getting people on the courts for five minutes was awesome. Now there are a lot of people that came back and stood in line multiple times to get back out onto the courts. There's even a couple of people that had pickleball paddles with them, which was kind of crazy. Because it wasn't really advertised that there's going to be a pickleball court there, but props to them for bringing their own stuff, I guess. But maybe as they wanted their paddle signed by Gary or something, because he's been all in on Pickleball lately, so yeah, it was just a really cool experience to interact with all these people and teach them the sport that I love. And then to wrap things up that night, excuse me as I get another drink. To wrap things up that night, we had the celebrity piccolo match. So there was Hannah and I and then two other local guys came out towards the end of the day. And so there's four of us, quote unquote pros and then they had four influencers show up. So like I mentioned, Nick Kosar, the dancing weatherman was one there is another person who's parkour street runner who had been on American Ninja Warriors done actor in Hollywood. And then another guy who was on fear factor I believe in has started his own influencer agency and then I was paired up with a famous tick tock or who has like 8 million followers Kaz Sawyer on tick tock does a bunch of pranks and just cool, fun ideas on tick tock. And so we just played two teams played against each other, the other teams, teams played against each other. And then the winner of those two games played for the championship. So Hannah, unfortunately lost her first game. I won our my first game, so then I moved on to the championship. And then I ended up winning the championship with Kaz, which was awesome, we got these super cool paddles that are on a gold chain and says V con 2023 pickleball champion is super cool decked out. It'll be on the YouTube thumbnail. If you're watching on YouTube, or even if you're not watching, just go check out the YouTube thumbnail. It's also on my twitter at Riley harden. So yeah, just a really cool time playing and meeting these huge celebrities, all of them had millions and millions of followers on social media. So not, you know, not the Drew Barrymore's or the Neil Patrick Harris or Jessica Alba, but to some people, like I knew of Nick, but I didn't know of the others before this event. But some people were there and they knew who these people were there they are big name influencers, big name celebrities, to a lot of people so just really cool getting to interact with them on a personal level. All of them so, you know, the games were semi competitive. Every all the influencers have their first time ever playing pickleball so the stage was pretty level on that. That front, and then the other players, the pros. There was one guy in particular who's taking it pretty serious and just hitting it directly to Kaz every time so I jumped in and Kaz was like, let's be aggressive and if you can step over and take it, take it so then I started playing really serious and Kaz and I ended up winning winning the championship pretty easily. So it was a lot of fun. I think the highlight there too was Gary Vee came on during my first match so came on to the court, and so he his whole entourage was there. If you don't know Gary Vee is like full followed constantly by an entourage of people recording content editing, taking notes of what he's saying and what he's doing. So they were all there. He came on talk to the entire crowd. There's bleachers and everything. There's everybody. It was like the, the focal point of the event at that time. So when he came on, it obviously attracted even more people. But yeah, he came on, he was five feet away from me talking to everybody. He was taught he talked directly at me once or twice, when he was saying about signing the pickleball paddles, which I did get mine signed, didn't get to talk to him, personally, but I got it signed. So that's good enough for now. Gary Vee, if you're listening, still waiting to meet you. He had a big selfie station line that was you had to sign up Wednesday night or Thursday morning. And if you weren't signed up or didn't have tickets to it, you couldn't get in. But anyways, he was there came out on stage talk to everybody. So it's just really cool to be, you know, five feet away from Gary Vee for a few minutes while he was talking to everybody and talking about pickleball and V con in general. So pickleball was a blast got absolutely fried, if you're looking, you can't really tell anymore, but my forehead got absolutely fried. Starting to peel, but it was there's just so much fun being outdoors teaching pickleball to people that had never played it before. So that was Thursday. And then obviously, Friday, already talked about. But I think overall, just a quick recap. V con was awesome. It was something that I've heard about obviously, there's only a year or two of it. So I heard about it last year, and I followed Gary Gary Vee for a while now, and knew it was coming to Indy but never expected to go one. I don't have any Aetherium or haven't bought any NF T's or anything like that. And that's the only way you can get a ticket. And to just, I wasn't really planning on spending a couple $100 to go but this opportunity presented itself. So it's like, awesome for pickleball awesome for business and marketing. I'm absolutely on board. And it was just a great experience, the positivity surrounding the entire event was awesome. It was just everybody was so happy, positive, welcoming the entire community from the people on the production staff on Thursday that we interacted with and worked with all day and who organized it all to the different celebrities and influencers that we ran into to just everybody who attended. You know, people walking by saying, hey, asking questions, just saying what's up like everybody was just so positive and uplifting. During the entire conference, it was it was a lot of fun to be there is very inspiring and motivating as well. So if you ever have the chance to go to V con, it's once a year, I don't they haven't announced where it's going to be next year yet. But if it comes to anywhere close to that you are and you're financially able to go I 100% recommend going because you'll get a lot out of it, even if it's just a break from the day to day life and something that's positive and uplifting and you'll have some fun doing it. So V con 2023 It was a blast. So happy I was able to attend and take advantage of the opportunity. And Gary, if you come back to in the next year, I will be happy to go and play some pickleball and learn some from some of the best again. So that'll do it for this week's episode of digital wrap up. Hope you enjoyed hope you got something out of it. No real tips or tricks, but just wanted to get on and share about this cool experience that I had. So again, you can check out Twitter, and my Instagram at Riley harden to see some more highlights from V con if you're interested. And until next time, I hope you have a great week and we'll talk to you soon