- PNC is proud to support "Business Forward," where community leaders discuss the issues confronting business in central Illinois.

(uplifting music) (uplifting music) - Welcome to "Business Forward."

I'm your host, Matt George.

Joining me tonight, Eric Scovill.

Eric is the principal at Bedrock Digital Assets Management Company.

Welcome, Eric.

- Thanks, Matt, appreciate you letting me be here.

- Well, I appreciate you coming on.

We've got a lot to talk about.

So are you from the area?

'Cause I know you played hockey, right?

- Yes.

- All right, so are you from here?

- I am, born and raised here in Peoria.

- [Matt] Okay, where'd you go to high school?

- So that's a loaded question.

I started at Notre Dame my freshman year, and then I moved to Chicago my sophomore and junior year to live with a different family, and then Boston my senior year, but I was able to come back and graduate with my friends the last quarter of senior year.

- We're gonna get to the hockey piece in a minute because I always think that when you play a competitive sport at a different level, it does help you in your business.

- [Eric] Yes.

- So I'm gonna get to that in a second, but you have a really, really good feel for this community and it started, you know, you're young now, early in your career, you were with another great company, a homegrown company, Menold, Menold Construction.

Tell us about how all that came about.

- Tom Menold has been a fantastic business mentor and friend to me.

Early in my career, he gave me a chance to come back to Peoria after I'd been traveling all around.

Gave me a chance to come back to Peoria and pursue the dream job that I had at that time, which was construction management for a mid-sized company, which gave me the structure to learn and grow in my professional career, but also the freedom to push the boundaries without as much red tape.

- Okay, and so what does Menold do?

- So Menold does both residential and commercial.

They're remodeling, but they also do insurance restoration, so a lot of the jobs that come in are due to fire, water damage, that type of thing, and that's just normal construction project from there.

- And so, from a business standpoint, not only did you have the owner of the company kind of guiding you, you used the word mentor, which I love and I talk about all the time, but you got to see the deep dive of exactly how a business is run.

- I did.

He brought me on to his leadership team at a pretty young age, so I was very fortunate for that.

And so not only did I get to see how Menold worked and get to be involved with the decisions with a fast-growing company, but we also would go travel around the country to evaluate other similar companies, and so I got to rub elbows with a lot of business owners across the country.

- And that's free education.

- Yeah.

- I mean, if you think about it, because you got to see a business that's interesting, anyway, competitive, but you also got to see a lot of the frontline workers and the value that they have and that they bring and the trades and everything else.

- Right, yeah, you're dealing with, you know, you got people who are making minimum wage, who are the heart and soul of that company, as well as, you know, people who are more high-dollar, white-collar employees and you have to work alongside all of them.

It's a neat team, how they come together.

- It's neat, too, and what's interesting is, and you kind of alluded to it is, a lot of times people think, "Oh, well, you know, "they're at this dollar amount and we're over here."

There's leaders over on this that are making minimum wage or whatever, and that's how a business like that becomes successful.

I say it all the time in my business, that front line is the core of what you do, or nobody else really even has a job.

- Absolutely, when we would get busy, those employees who were the specialists that weren't making as much money, but they were the specialists when it came to water damage, for example.

That's when all of the executives would come around and ask them how they can help.

And so Tom Menold would be going around and going to pick up supplies to take to our employees who are making significantly less to serve them.

- Yeah, and I knew this story about you a few years ago and I give Tom credit, and I actually think about it more often than I probably should, but I think it's really a neat thing for a business owner to sit here and say, and it doesn't really matter the age, but in your case, it was at a young age and say, not only am I gonna mentor you, but you know, someday you could do this.

And it really, whether you're with Menold or not, they're paving a path of success, as much as they can give you, and that's what mentorship does.

That's pretty neat.

- Right, they are growing a lot of future leaders in the area just within their structure.

- I mean, would you say that in that situation, he gave you an opportunity to dream?

- (laughs) Absolutely, so we joke often about how, how we're similar in the visionary standpoint.

And I was just telling him last week at lunch that he really fostered that visionary aspect of me.

I never saw that before, but he gave me the opportunity to push boundaries and he gave me the freedom to challenge him and to challenge other people, which is what helped make that company good, 'cause it wasn't just me.

It was, everyone had that ability.

- Yeah.

And you, again, you figure out teamwork pretty quickly.

- [Eric] Right, right.

- Well, speaking of teamwork, let's talk hockey before we go into your current business because your current business is fascinating to me.

And it's a hobby of mine, you know, looking at investments and looking at the deep dive of companies.

I love that.

But you played hockey at a pretty high level.

I mean, did you play hockey your whole life?

- Since I was about five.

- Okay, so I don't want to necessarily talk about the game, but I wanna talk about the mental piece of it because that mental piece, when you're on the road playing travel and going and playing against some of the top players, you've played against NHL players, and so on.

And you have to have a different mindset, don't you?

- Yes, yes.

Going back a little bit, hockey was, was much more to me than a sport.

It was something that helped keep me on track as a young man, as a young boy who was, very easily could have gone a different path.

And so hockey really helped keep me on track, and as I continued to progress in my career and take steps to higher levels of play, it didn't allow any, you couldn't mess up anymore within school or within my personal life.

I had to be disciplined.

I had to stay on track because the schedule was so stringent.

And then, the other piece of that is you see what, what my parents and especially my mom did.

I had to have a tight schedule, but my mom would work a full schedule.

She'd work a full job, and on Tuesdays and Thursdays, she'd come home, she'd get home to a son who was mad at her for being 15 minutes late because it's time for us to drive three hours to practice.

So I'd have a two-hour workout and then a three-hour practice.

She'd have to stay there in Chicago for that, and then we'd drive home and I'd sleep the whole way home.

You know, we'd get home at 2:00 a.m., she couldn't sleep and then she had to be back at work at six o'clock to go.

You know, we'd do that twice a week, and then on Thursday, we'd come home Thursday night and Friday morning, we're flipping around to Detroit or Toronto or wherever else.

And so, hockey was tremendous for me in develop that discipline, that mental attitude, the toughness, and all of these other pieces.

But man, nothing happens without the people around you.

I think any athlete would say that.

- Yeah, and if you think about it today, there's a piece of that missing a lot of times in our communities because whether it's lack of support, lack of family, whatever it may be, but the importance, you know, I have an athletic theme that is raveled or threaded throughout this whole show all the time because the competitiveness and that mindset does correlate with business.

- Absolutely.

- And as we get older, we can't play hockey at a high level like we did when were 20.

- Right.

- So let's switch gears and talk about your investment business.

You're very, very even keeled.

You are very educated.

You always are in that learning mode.

That's what I know about you.

You care about people.

You work hard no matter what you do.

Now, you get into an area where, and you've been in it a while, this isn't new to you, but you get into an area that is different from what your previous career was.

And now all of a sudden coming on the scene, Bitcoin, and you start hearing about all of these different things with cryptocurrencies.

First of all, what is Bedrock Digital Assets?

I mean, what is that?

- So Bedrock Digital Assets is a, it's a hedge fund that is in the digital asset space.

So you're mostly talking about cryptocurrency.

So it's a cryptocurrency-focused hedge fund that is built around protection of principle.

So we are using algorithms to basically try to remove as much volatility out of the market as possible, and to be profitable as the market swings up and down.

And that's what cryptocurrency is.

When you look at just the investment piece of it, the volatility of the investment side is extreme.

And so it's going up and down all day long, significantly more than the normal stock market does.

- Yeah, so, just for all the viewers, because I hear this all the time and I feel like I'm pretty well versed in it, but then when I talk to you, I know I'm not.

So when you're talking about a cryptocurrency, you're talking about another form or exchange of what's equivalent to a dollar, right?

- Yep.

- So when you think of Bitcoin, and this may be a really dumb question, but is it an actual coin?

- It is not an actual coin.

- [Matt] Okay, what is it?

- Bitcoin, it's basically digital property.

So it is a, what a lot of people are looking at more of a store of value.

So when you own, just like most of the dollars that are in people's bank accounts right now are not actual dollars, they're digital, and so cryptocurrency is in essence that.

It is a digital form of currency that the value of it is derived by what people say it's worth, unlike a asset backed by a government that says it is, there's a set value.

- So when someone says, how many Bitcoins do you, I mean, so if someone says, "I have eight," and then let's say they're at 40,000 a coin, or whatever.

- [Eric] Right.

- So you've got that amount times eight in your account, so to speak, but it's really just digital.

- At this point, it's digital.

Now, again, because the market has had such adoption, you can transfer that to US dollars at any point.

- Yeah, so when you're talking about Bedrock Digital Assets, you're talking about almost like a mutual fund of different cryptocurrencies.

- Correct.

- [Matt] And how many different cryptocurrencies are there?

There's a ton-- - Yeah, there are thousands.

But there are, there are not thousands of them that are good, that are established, that have real viable business purposes.

So yeah, within Bedrock, we fluctuate somewhere between one and 25 of the highest currencies, the highest market cap currencies that we feel have a strong business-backed value behind them.

- Okay, so this really is no different than a, as an example would be a large cap mutual fund where you take big companies, let's say the top 25 Fortune 50 or whatever, and you put them in a mutual fund, this would be the same thing and then you're managing it.

So a guy like me doesn't say, "You know what, I'm gonna buy whatever and cryptocurrency," and I don't even know what I'm buying, number one.

And then number two, I don't know whether it's good or not.

It's no different than going playing black or red at the roulette table, right?

- Right, so most of the investing into cryptocurrency right now by individual, what you'd call, whether they're day traders or people sitting at home doing this is similar to gambling, unless you have a deeper understanding of the market and understand where crypto is heading.

And you have to understand, you know, the volatility is a piece of this, but you know, you're heading toward a bigger picture of where the future of the financial market is heading.

Yeah, outside of that, you really are kind of gambling because there's so much.

And so if you say that you know a lot compared to some people you know, and I might know more than you, but I could give you tons and tons of people who know significantly more than me that make me feel inadequate when I start talking crypto 'cause it's hard to be an expert at this because it's such a vast field and it's constantly changing, as well.

- So, I'll give ya an interesting story to tell you how accessible this is right now.

I know you know this, but so like on the Cash App, as an example, I was doing my homework on Bitcoin.

And I went in on the Cash App and I just bought a hundred dollars' worth just to see what, and it's like point, or 0.000, you know, because it's worth so much, one share, so to speak.

And, but then I was looking at the value.

Next thing you know, it was at 94.

And then it was 88 and then it went back up to 92 and I put in a hundred and this was within minutes.

And so it's constant.

That's the volatility you're talking about.

- That's where, so when we created Bedrock, we were intending it to be something that allowed, allowed people to invest in a cryptocurrency with a piece of their portfolio, a responsible piece of their portfolio, but they didn't have to be educated to know all about it and they didn't have to take on quite the same amount of risk that you do if you just bought it and held it because we are trading all through that volatility, so we're trying to make money when it drops from a hundred to 92 to 88 back to 94, we're trying to make money throughout all of that.

- That's crazy.

So do you think someday it's gonna be a cashless society?

And I know this is just an opinion, but because this stuff is all over, it's part of the ticker now on the stock, and I mean, it's just constant.

- Yeah, and so to try to, to try to hold the crystal ball up and say that Bitcoin is going to be the currency of the future, no way am I capable of saying that, but I do think we will be a cashless society.

I think everything will be digital.

We're already most of the way there right now.

You know, the amount of currency that's in circulation is significantly less than the amount of dollars.

And most of us are very comfortable with credit cards and we're very comfortable-- - [Matt] Venmo, Zelle.

- Venmo.

Yep, so these keep coming in.

You know, China is starting to push their digital currency, as well.

And as this thing continues to, as people get more comfortable with this, similar to when people got more comfortable with a credit card.

You know, if you remember back when people were first learning how to use a credit card, it was a challenge that society had to adopt to.

And so that's the same way that, or adapt, you know, society's gonna have to adapt to this.

And we're much more used to, the same way we got adapted to Zoom meetings so quickly over the last year.

- So I think one of the barriers of this, and maybe why it's taking so long is just the education piece because the typical, let's say the typical investor, I'm just making this up as an example, but let's say 55-year-old person.

And they grew up watching their parents or whatever, 401k, they even, back in the day, stock certificates.

- Right.

- Bonds where, you know, you go into the bank and you actually, you know, I think I still have bonds.

And stocks and money market funds, all these different, you know, they have all these things and then they start hearing Bitcoin and all this stuff on TV all the time and it's almost one ear out the other.

- Right.

Right, it just seems foolish to, you know, ignore that.

But at the same time, when you look at, when you start looking at technology and you apply this to any field, you can go apply this to healthcare.

You can apply it to engineering.

You know, anything that we're doing.

You look at, you know, you look at technology and the way they, the disruptive trends are beginning to exponentially grow and technology is, we are adapting to new technology so much faster than we used to.

And so over the next 10 years, you know, the technology that's gonna be in place is gonna make everything that we're doing now seem, likely seem so prehistoric.

And I think that that's only going to increase as we continue to drive change so much faster.

- What does blockchain mean?

Because I hear that term all the time with cryptocurrencies.

- Yeah, and it's important to distinct between them, to make that distinction between them, because cryptocurrency is not cryptocurrency without blockchain, but blockchain can be its own thing without cryptocurrency.

So blockchain is a mechanism.

It's kinda like a ledger if you think of a ledger, the way that we record transactions.

And so blockchain is the, it's the strongest way that we have developed an incorruptible, the most incorruptible form of a ledger system that we have, as humans, have created so far that allows thousands or hundreds of thousands of computers to basically validate data and then it decentralizes it so no one person could go in there and change the record.

So now all of these computers are storing that record.

It's public record, and it's now backed, so it's basically as incorruptible of a system as we can come up with so far as a way to record any type of transaction.

- So if I bought, well, I don't know what I'm saying here.

So if I bought $10,000 worth of Bitcoin.

And really, I think it's only about a fourth of a share or something like that, but it would be recorded in the blockchain?

- It is, yep.

- So it says, "Matt George, $10,000."

And then if I sold it two minutes later, it says, "Sold, Matt George, $10,000"?

- Right.

(laughs) In crypto, there's so many other pieces to this.

It depends on where you bought it from.

Did you buy it from an exchange, or not, whether it actually got recorded into the blockchain, but in essence, what you're talking about is accurate.

- So this is the legitimacy of the crypto.

- Right.

And so you think about other applications for this.

If someone owns a piece of property in a war-torn Third World country, and they're forced to leave their property, when they come back, who's to say that that belongs to them anymore?

'Cause what if those documents are gone?

Or what if someone, you know, if there's corruption, you know, a fire came in and took out those documents or someone decided to take them out or forge a new one.

We take so much for granted here in America because we have such strong systems, but the rest of the world doesn't have this, so blockchain technology becomes a lot more than, than just cryptocurrency.

- You know, it's funny, someone asked me a couple days ago, they said, "What, "What do you like most about having a TV show?"

And I said, "Well, the most interesting thing "is that I get to learn for free."

(Eric laughing) I get to learn people's businesses for free.

And this is an interesting talk because I guess you could just keep trying to figure it out because I still now, I understand what blockchain is.

I didn't 10 minutes ago.

But let's say I'm a new client.

The client comes in, do you do like an assessment, or, how do you look at what the portfolio, so to speak, of the person is, and then does your business cater to that portfolio depending on wealth and non wealth, I guess, and maybe land, all that?

I mean, do you put together a plan?

- Ideally, and it depends on the client.

But so I am a wealth manager, as well, so I have a fiduciary responsibility within my own financial planning firm.

And so ideally, for the clients, we are trying to make sure that any investment they would have into any asset, you know, whether it's just here in Peoria, you know, a lot of people have Caterpillar stock and they might have 75% of their total net worth in Caterpillar stock and that breaks all of the rules of financial planning.

So certainly, we don't want that into something that's even more risky than Caterpillar stock, you know, like cryptocurrency, but yeah, a responsible portion of a portfolio going into that is exactly what we're after.

And so, you know, investors have to be accredited, which, you know, there's a few distinct things that need to be done to be accredited.

So an investor has to be accredited, but once they are, then that's when we can sit down and talk about what makes sense for them.

- And so you're looking at, like, if I came in, let's say I had a million dollars, which I have five kids, you know I don't.

(Eric laughing) But I had a million dollars, what you're saying is, crypto isn't gonna be a million-dollar portfolio.

It's a piece of that portfolio of Matt and Laura George, or whatever.

- Absolutely, and so, you know, when you think of not only the person who has a million dollars, but also the person who's a ultra high net worth, one of the big concerns that someone like that would have in the risk that they have is the risk of currency.

And you know, if so much of their assets are tied to the US dollar and they're not in businesses per se where they've got, you know, private ownership in a business or land or other real assets, and so currency is something that's certainly a hot topic right now of what's going on with inflation and the bounce between inflation and interest rates, so having a piece of crypto certainly is a, the potential to be a lucrative investment, but it also, a lot of people are using it as a hedge against centralized currencies.

- So, we, we're not gonna mention names, but you've really gotten into the space of professional athletes and that is a growth area for you and being an athlete yourself, that does help being able to talk the talk.

But it's more than really investing, isn't it?

- Yep.

- It's community, it's family, it's taxes.

You know, so let's say an athlete's making $5 million a year.

It's your job, right, to help guide and say, "Hey, I'm not a CPA, but "we need to make sure we have this person over here "and this person over here."

Is that how you look at it?

- Yeah, yeah.

And certainly I have, you know, I know enough to be dangerous, but then I'm gonna bring in the expert around them.

But before we get into tax planning or investment planning, or anything else, you know, the estate plan, all that, we need to assess what they're after.

And the type of client that I'm looking for is someone who's got this philanthropic heart who wants to be part of something bigger than themselves and use their platform they have as a professional athlete or as a business owner, you know, where they have a platform to make a difference.

And so those are the type of clients that I want to attract and we'll pour into them and help them with all of the technical, financial stuff to retain as much money as possible, you know, to have as good a growth as possible.

But the ultimate thing is increased quality of life for them, but also increase their ability to give back, and so empower them in a whole other way to give back to the community.

- And your advice is really talking about everything, family and you name it.

And you know, one thing about you, and we're wrapping up here, but one thing I appreciate about you, and I'm gonna bring you back on the show another time and I think the topic will be servant leadership because that servant leadership piece is what we didn't really dive into today, but it really is who I know of you, how you treat everybody around you.

It's that servant leadership piece, and that's a very important piece close to you and close to your heart and close to your wife and your kids and so on.

So I want to thank you for coming on.

You're welcome back anytime.

It's an interesting business, and I think there's a lot of reading out there that I think people will be doing after this.

And they can get hold of you.

They know how to get hold of you, and please do if you have any questions on cryptocurrencies because it is a complicated space, but the more you know, the better it is.

And so we appreciate you, Eric.

Thanks for coming on.

Thanks for all you do.

I'm Matt George.

- Thanks for having me.

- Yeah, thank you.

I'm Matt George, and it's another episode of "Business Forward."

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