From Gamer To Learning The Truth About Money w/ Donny Taylor

as the dollar is being cut, its ties being cut from gold, it's starting to inflate more exponentially and all other currencies are kind of floating up. Think of like a helium balloon as soon as you cut the end, that's weighed down. The balloon is just floating, it's floating, it's floating, it's floating. You can't get it unless you're inside and there's a roof. The thing is is with the monetary system, there is no roof. There is no cap to how much money can be created anymore. Now, what we see as quote, unquote money doesn't even meet the definition, the most important definition of money, which it needs to be a store of value.

Hey everyone, welcome back to the Walk 12 podcast. If you're tuning in on YouTube or any of the podcast directories, make sure to do yourself one teeny, tiny little favor and make sure to give us a follow, because I don't want you to miss out on any of the amazing guests I got coming on this year. Without further ado, let's get right into this one for Donnie. For anyone who hasn't had the opportunity yet to get to know you, to get to meet you yet, brother, tell us your elevator pitch. You know who are you and what do you do.

Absolutely. My name is Donovan Taylor, also known as Donnie Dropout. I'm a serial entrepreneur, investor, keynote speaker, and my main focus is just to help people elevate in the three most important pillars of life, which are health, wealth and happiness, and so super excited to be here, john and yeah, and for the podcast, let's get it.

So I always like to start things off by telling us you know, taking us back in time to little Donnie like, take us back in the time machine. What was little Donnie like when he was first growing up?

Man, yeah, it's always so cool, it's like nostalgic when you look back on on where you've come from and life thus far. So I'm 24 years old and little Donnie I'ma be honest was just this gamer, this guy that loves sports. You know, growing up I played hockey for seven years. I'm from Canada as well, so hockey's like pretty much the main sport that we play over here, and aside from school and sports, it was just video games. You know, that's what I was really, really keen on growing up. I played a lot of Call of Duty, a lot of Rocket League. You know for those of you that you know maybe are gamers on here, but that was pretty much the majority of my childhood and into high school I was still just nerding out, like after school I would go to work for a little bit. I had a part-time job then right after that it's like eight hours of just video games, just grinding it out. So not too exciting, not too exciting my childhood and kind of growing up in that sense. But I will say that you know that I guess just commitment to video games and that love for something like video games I was able to then transpire into or transform into something that's more meaningful, which is, of course, entrepreneurship and everything that I've got going on now, so it's.

Let me ask you, man, what was the first Call of Duty you picked up?

First one I ever played was Black Ops 2, still to date like the best Call of Duty. I put Call of Duty Black Ops 2, against just about any other card and it would like beat it any day of the week, except for MW2, I know MW2 is a pretty big one.

MW2, I feel like it was just a time period, more sort of game than itself. I feel like, as the time has something more to do with it. I feel like, as a game like Black Ops 2 definitely was better. I just think Modern Warfare 2, like that time period, was better for gaming as a whole. So I think, overall, like I got in Modern Warfare 3, that was like my fifth grade of year I got Xbox 360, and we didn't have a car growing up. So I still remember me and my mom we took the bus to Target or it was the Targeted GameStop. Forget which one it was and I think it was the mall. I think we went to the mall and we got the GameStop and we had to pretty much walk with the box which was pretty heavy, that Xbox 360 box. It was pretty heavy and had to pretty much take the bus back home and then walk back from the bus stop all the way back home and I was carrying that Jain also over here, a little fifth grader, carrying this big old heavy box that was like half my size, and then I- that's hilarious. I still got memories, bro, from back in fifth grade. I remember I sucked like I was really bad starting off. Man, I had like a.4KD and. But I learned very, very quickly, just to just grip my way through obstacles. I was completely aware it was a school night one night and I remember I was just like balling my eyes out, crying because I would try to get in a monogorfer three for anyone that's not a gamer. They have different types of killstreaks. So you have the killstreaks where you go on a spree without dying, and then they have the assist killstreaks, where you get them just for the amount of kills that you get. So you didn't have to go on a spree without dying if you just had 10 kills, regardless of whether you died 10 times or 100 times, like you would still get the streak. And so I was on the assist one I forget what the exact word was called and I remember at 18 kills you got like that. I think it's like some type of. It was like five care packages would come down and I was staying up on a school night to like one in the morning just balling my eyes out because I sucked so bad and I eventually got it. And then, as soon as I got it, I think I played one more game and then went right to bed and it was a school night the next night. But, like man, there was plenty of nights like that where I would just grip my way through. And then Black Ops 2 is when I eventually started getting really good and that's when I think I could have went comp Like I think we could have played like we would play like Master League, what's it called? Like the Elite Master Team, the four on fours where they were ranked.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, it was like try to remember what it was called in Black Ops 2. I think it was just League play. I think it was League play. I think it was League play.

I swear we could have went ranked. I think we got platinum one time. But yeah, we were official, especially once I started getting good bro, I still remember my first nuclear I ever got, which is like a 30 kill streak without dying. I remember it vividly, bro, like video games. Like that day it was a Sunday or Saturday morning. We were on this map called Express. It was a train map.

Wow, you got it on Express too. That's fire. That's fire, I got it on.

Express. We were playing, if I'm not mistaken, domination. I was playing solo and had a MSMC with suppressor, I think Quick Draw. I forget what else I had, that's a demon girl. And I forget what else was in Black Ops. I was going crazy, bro. I remember my boy he was in the Xbox party because everyone else was asleep. I got that kill streak and it was just like bro, the way I started yelling on the mic. Bro, you would have thought someone broke it to my house. Man, gaming really made a big, big and I actually haven't really ever talked about the podcast, so you might have to take a quick tangent. What was gaming like to you? Because for me that was a real, real big part of my life, growing up from like fifth grade year to like, maybe I'd say, senior year at high school. Man, I was on the game all the time.

Yeah, no, me too, man. I mean, that's where it all began, even before Call of Duty, when I first. When I consider myself a gamer and when I think about the time that I was spending on games, that's the period of my life, like middle school, the high school and playing Call of Duty, that's kind of what I think of. But even before that, pokemon was huge for me. The guy used to play Pokemon Emerald. That was like the game that I was just like really dialed in with. And it's so cool because with video games it's like you were mentioning, like it develops that grit. It's like you're playing Mario you got to get to the next level, you got to survive the entirety of that level to get to the next one. And then it's like you might play at a level 15, 20 times, maybe more than that, before you even beat it, before you can go on to the next level, and it's just like you're just so dedicated to making it happen. And so Pokemon was like that for me, because it was one. I'm like a maybe 10 year old kid not really knowing how to do anything on Pokemon, like total new. I don't know what to do to get to the next gym, let alone beat the Elite Four. It's just such a huge trial and error city for me playing Pokemon man. I can definitely relate to you on that with the trial and error.

Let me ask you so. You said you were gaming a ton, you had a job in high school, but you weren't very entrepreneurially minded in the traditional sense, meaning you didn't have the lemonade stand or the paper router, the business selling sneakers, whatever. But for me, what I found out is I also wasn't like that, and then I realized, when I did get into entrepreneurship, a lot of those traits that I learned from playing football, from playing video games, were very, very easily transferred over into the business world. So what was that first thing that made you become a little bit more entrepreneurial and start seeing the entrepreneurial light as a path that you wanted to head down? And when you did the second question to follow up after that is like how did the skills that you got along your earlier life help transfer over?

Yeah, that's a great question. I think it's actually funny. So I did have a paper out. Really, I did have a paper out. Yeah, I'm remembering. Now it's not something that I was really thinking about when we were taking a trip down memory lane come to the surface now. So I had a paper out, two different ones. I had a paper out in one area of my city where I'm from, and then we ended up moving to a different place about five, 10 minutes away. So I just took that paper out, gave it to somebody else and then took over a new one in the new area where I was going to be living at. So I guess, yeah, that was like probably like 13, 14 years old, so that's when I got a taste for being able to create income for myself. And it wasn't really. It's not the same as like a traditional job where you're having to go clock in, clock out, kind of thing. It's basically the papers you deliver to your crib and then you just you take them and you deliver them. No one says anything if you're doing it later than you should or anything like that. So it was kind of. It was unique in that sense. But I would say what really got me into the entrepreneurial spirit was I remember this so vividly. So I'm in the computer lab. This is, I believe, grade 12. And I'm having this conversation with one of my really close friends. At the time we're talking about investing. Like he's just telling me about how his family that you know he's from a well off family, they've got investments and they're very transparent about where their funds go to. You know, imagine like you have wealthy parents and the wealthy parents who wanted to pour into their kids everything that they know at a much younger age. That's kind of like what they were doing with him. So he's telling me about the stock market and investing, making money on the markets, you know, going up and stuff like that. I remember being so fascinated by the idea of doing that, and he was telling me like yeah, like there are people that do this full time, like they're making a full time income just through investments, and I was like whoa, like that's such a crazy and cool opportunity, a cool thing, and so you know, it's so interesting too, because that same individual later that year actually ended up taking his own life and If it weren't for that conversation with him and being open to the idea of making money in an unconventional way through investments, I don't think I would have actually started to be an investor a year later when the opportunity presented itself, and that's when it really started to become more of a reality for me is just this entrepreneurial, unconventional route of making money online. And to answer the second part of your question, the trials and tribulations with video games and that persistence and what it really takes to become successful at any sort of a game was something that was certainly a transferable skill for me with trading, because trading and investing, those are things where you're going to be. Odds are, you're just going to be falling on your face like a bunch of times before you really understand what's good and what you're doing. And so that same persistence I was able to take from video games growing up and apply that to the trading investing space and ultimately persist for the past six, going on yeah, I guess 2018,. Yeah, going on six years.

Yeah, that's amazing man. So let me ask you, because I had a very similar thing where my boy, marcus he's actually a guy. This was supposed to be a co-host show where I was supposed to co-host Marcus, and he told me back in like 2019, 2020, before the pandemic started about Robinhood and he had me sign up again a free account. I got like a free stock and instead of going downhill, so instead of selling, I mean I never put any money in. So I made a stock, was like maybe like two bucks or something like that, but I started going down and then I just sold it and then I kept like the $1 and something centers on like that and then close the app and never opened it ever again. Now is my history with like trading and I like to talk. It was kind of like John the Baptist in my life where he came before. He came too soon. He came to pave the way right, he ain't come to save me and so like, but he planted that seed without him realizing it and to another opportunity. I didn't understand it at all. Took me about a year after that for me to even open my mind to the entrepreneurial road. Similar to you, it was a big time delay and for me I didn't think personally I was ready to even start understanding that stuff at the time and my mindset wasn't where it needed to actually even embrace that as an opportunity. So like what happened in that time gap between him telling you about stocks and then you actually running with the opportunity, like what happened in between then that allowed you to take action that second time around when the opportunity presented itself.

Yeah, great, great question. I think so. For me at that time, this was around the time when I started to dive into personal development, so this would have been 2017 probably. I graduated in 2017 from 12th grade here in Canada and then I took a what we call a victory lap. So you can choose to do it for a full year. It's basically like a 13th grade. You can do it for like half the year or a full year, so I ended up taking it for just half the year, six months. I was like man, I just don't want to go to university yet. I was like I'm not trying to go out of pocket for this quite yet. So I ended up taking an online class to boost my average and then a power fit class. So those are the only two classes that I took. The only one I had to show up for was this like gym, like power, power fit, kind of like weightlifting class, and then I would just go, I would just go work out and then I would go to my job and I was working at a drug store. I remember this is so funny this is like as I was starting to transition into the world of investing during my fifth year, and so that was like my routine. I would like wake up. I would go to the gym at my school, go home If I didn't have work, I would go home and play video games, or I would go to work and just grind it out there and so the Thank you, yeah, like that timeline. I started to go down this personal development route. So I started with like meditation. I just had so much time I was like man, like yeah maybe I should do something a little bit more productive than just like grinding out caught, you know. So meditation was something I started to learn about in practice and, and you know, reading and things of that nature. And then, when the opportunity represented itself, so that was like he planted the seed for me in that computer lab and I was like I want to say it was like three or four months before he took his life and a year later, as I was just pouring into myself and doing personal development, the opportunity of crypto presented itself. So 2018, april 2018 is when I first started to actually invest, and that was right after the 2016, 2017 bull market and crypto. So that's when everything was like going crazy. You know everybody and their moms is talking about crypto and Bitcoin. This is like the first time. On a social media scale, too, it was really blowing up. So I had a bunch of different people I was seeing on my Instagram feed that were just like seeing this crazy, like almost seemingly overnight success with crypto. I was like man like this is. I remember that conversation in the computer lab where we were talking about this and people are really out here doing it like my age people buying Lambos and stuff. Like I can do this too. So I think the difference was that conversation that we had was him planting the seed of the opportunity and then, when it really presented itself to me a little over a year later and I had already been kind of going through a little bit of this personal development side of things and getting exposure to that space of personal development, which a lot of people that are doing personal development are entrepreneurs so it was like, hey, this is maybe my opportunity to take action on it. And it just so happened I was 18 at the time so I could open an account like Robinhood. I think the first, first account that I opened because it was crypto specifically is it was on an exchange. It doesn't even exist anymore. It's called Quadriga and that exchange actually got like rug pulled completely Like there's, there's like a conspiracy around, like the CEO or the owner of that exchange like faking his death and shit. It's actually pretty crazy.

But yeah, that is nuts, bro, that is nuts, so let me ask you right. So then you got into trading a little bit. So when did the name Donnie Dropout come into the picture? How did that come about? Why did people call you Donnie Dropout? Why did that become like your personal brand? And let me ask you a follow up question to that right. Why were you okay making that your personal brand? Because a lot of people on the traditional track are like entirely against anything that's not graduating from a four year university and getting a corporate job.

I love that question. I get that one sometimes and it's like I love answering that question because it's just so funny how it all like transpired. So 2018 is when I started investing in trading that same year. So April that was April 2018. September 2018 is when I officially enrolled in post-secondary school. So I took like basically from the beginning of 2018 to like May June as like a victory lap where I was just kind of messing around and had a bunch of time on my hands with school, saved up some money, and then I took Postsecondary school. So I applied to a bunch of different universities. I went to the University of Waterloo here in Ontario, canada, and I was in a program called recreation and leisure studies, which is basically a prerequisite program for teachers. College that's what I wanted to do was like teaching. At the time, I still I still love teaching. It's still something that that's a part of my regime. It's just a little bit different. It's not off the curriculum. So, anyways, I was doing that and Very, very early into my experience trading, I was like man, like I know this is what I want to do. I know this is something that I really want to take in and run with and so, despite, you know, being in school and also working jobs, you know, with my, with my city, I was doing a lot of like before and after school programs. I was doing some support positions where I was like supporting kids and youth with special needs, like autism, down syndrome, stuff like that, and it was really fulfilling work. I loved what I was doing. But I had this I still had like in the back of my mind like making this work, like investing, trading, and at the time I had like a little group of people, I think it was on like discord or telegram. We were, you know, working together and I was just kind of helping people out in in the space that we're new, just like I was earlier that year and and so going into my second year of university. So this was like the first term was like September to April, and then you got like that four months until September comes around again for Second year. So that four month period things really started to like Shift for me with with trading and investing, and not just not monetarily, because monetarily I still wasn't in a position to, you know, do it full-time, but it was like the skill set was there, the connections were there. The network was there where I could really make something with this, and so I remember so vividly for my summer job, which was basically full day camp and supporting kids with special needs in that camp setting. I remember us doing the training leading up to it, which was in May, and During one of the training sessions I'm like thinking, hmm, like what could I make for my Instagram handle? That would just be like super dope. And so I'm thinking about all these different ideas like, hmm, like I'm in school right now, like part of me wants to just drop out and just do this thing, like just run with it. So that's that. That ended up ultimately being what I did. I was like okay, donnie, drop out. Super sweet. A lot of people call me Donnie instead of my full name, donovan. So Donnie drop out, I think has a nice ring to it. I got like a couple second opinions for me. People are like man, that's kind of fire, like that. So I just I just did. I changed my name to Donnie drop out immediately when I dropped out, which was November of 2019, and yeah, from there, I mean, it's been, it's been history in the making from there on with with the name and kind of, I guess, the brand. And to answer the second half of that question, which is you know why something like that, that can be so, so on, traditional or unconventional, when it comes to you know people in this day and age, I think the reality is like a lot of people are starting to realize that school isn't a necessity anymore, especially when I look at the curriculum. I love your input on this as well, because I know that we're probably on the same way, like with this. John is like the curriculum and school, as we know, it is like one of the only things that hasn't Evolved in like the past hundred years, in the same way that everything else. House, like the way that we communicate, has changed so drastically. We have, like social medias. Now we have, I mean, even just Cell phones that you know are not just cell phones but smartphones. It's like so crazy, like everything's Been accelerating so quickly. We got AI now, as you know, and like a, as you know. You know AI is not replaced some people's jobs with people using AI, right, as you, as you know, and as you know, that's one of your, one of the things that you always talk about. So it's like school hasn't caught up with everything else in terms of, yeah, like evolution and just humans changing and us as as a as beings, changing and evolving over time, and the technology that we're using is changing so quickly so it's like school is just so outdated. So I think a lot of people are starting to open up more to the quote, unconventional routes like entrepreneurship and and and so on and so forth. Really the route that that we're on and we're kind of leading that path for people that are Alright, you know yeah, 100%, man.

It's one of those things where I had and I think it might have been you that posted this, but I'm not sure but I said, since like 2013, instagram has updated hundreds of times, right, and change hundreds of times, but school, since the dawn of time, has a pretty much changed, and now at the education system, I guess back in the ancient days were to actually make people successful and they watered it down and Changed it to that people.