193. Chaos, Shenanigans & Super Yachts - The Story Behind Aus Crypto Con

Welcome back to another episode of the Ben and Bergs podcast. I'm Ben, your favorite high school dropout and founder of Collective Shift alongside Ms. Bergs, your favorite MBA and CEO of Collective Shift. Join us as we bring you world class crypto research and strategies to help you dominate this crypto bull market as well as behind the scenes view of us scanning the leading crypto research company here in Australia. If you like the podcast, we'd love for you to leave us a follow on your favorite podcasting app or subscribe if you are on YouTube. We are back after an epic weekend in Sydney. As you can probably still hear, I'm just getting my voice back. What a weekend it was. We're going to give you a behind the scenes look at what was it like doing the podcast Collective Shift behind the scenes. We had thousands of people coming through the booths and our talks. We had seven Collective Shift team members up there over the weekend. We had the super yacht, we had partying, we had all sorts. There was some pretty loose comments being thrown around by some followers, Bergs and you know, it was the best bit meeting all of you amazing people that listen to the podcast because we did a live podcast for those of you that weren't there. We had 400 people packed out for live Bennettburgs and it was classic Ben and Bergs. It was banner, it was swearing, there was bullying, there was, it was all happening.

It was so good, mate. I had the most fun. It was an epic time. There are a lot of dusty mornings, mate. Putting the team back together, they all still rocked up. It was absolutely amazing, mate. Let's kick off with the Thursday when you and the team flew in. What did you get up to?

So flew in on Thursday and straight away went for lunch. Forgot my jackets, I lost my jacket. But within about an hour of being there, pretty classic. Down only, down only. Great start. And we had the blockies at night so had to get ready and bitcoin was like pumping towards 100k. So like it was all happening. We're like, I mean my hotel room going, oh, we're going to pump through 100k tonight. Look down at my watch, I'm going to be downstairs in five minutes. Had to get changed quickly. Forgot my belt, didn't bring my belt, didn't bring cufflinks, didn't bring anything useless.

So roll down the stairs, got in there. The team were late but we rocked up and the blockies was epic. Everyone was there from the industry. Greg Oakford, he was MC and it was, it was a Great mc. It was good fun, cracking some jokes. I got roasted all night. I was just like the guy that he decided to pick on all night. So I was just getting lit up.

Alice got roasted, I got roasted.

You got roasted. You weren't even there and got roasted, mate.

But we were up for like, what, four awards or something?

Up for four awards, yep. Which was awesome. And then, yeah, very lucky enough to win the community leader of the year. So that was, that was great. I was first off the blocks.

Well, hang on, hang on. Did you really win? Who did they give the award to? What was the name on the award, mate?

So, so the C. The CMO of Binance, like the big dog of Binance. She announced that was sponsoring the awards. So she announced the award and called me Ben Simon, not Ben Simpson. So not only was I getting lit up by. By Greg, I was now then called Ben Simon. For the rest of the weekend on social media, everyone that came up to me was just taking the piss. Call me Ben Simon. It's absolute classic. But got the award. And, mate, the champagnes were going down pretty well that night. We, we got fairly, fairly loose. We partied on. There's a group of us that went to out in Sydney. One thing led to another and we were, oh, mate. And everyone was just buying us drinks because we won the award. So there was just those shots, there was vodka, there was fireball, it was tequila. I was like, oh, my goodness. And then we woke up the next day, very, very, very average. And I was like, where's my trophy? Found it out there out in the lounge room. Went out and had a look at it, opened the lid and mate, it was just busted. It was smashed to smithereens. Glass trophy. The top was chipped off the bottom. It was smashed. I'm like, yep, that checks out, mate.

So first of all, classic band. And you might not remember, but you were actually sending me photos that night. And within five minutes of you getting the award, it was already busted up. It's like one of our primary marketing tools. And it's like all chipped. Half of it's missing. I'm surprised you actually didn't lose it, to be honest. But you just must have been thrown around. Just like, it's so crazy. So as of today, which is half a week later, Alice has ordered another one to your house. I'm like, no, do not order it to his house. He'll lose it within five seconds. Order, put it in the office. Keep it safe.

I checked the camera roll the next morning and it was just. Man, this thing was just getting passed around. There was like every. I had photos of people from Finance, SwiftX. It was like everyone was taking photos of this thing. It was just a storyline.

And mate, your ma. Your mate Greg, Jesus, he was. He was so lit. He would have had 50,000 beers. And what these guys were doing, they're like recording Greg and he's just hurling abuses. He's like, you effing mother. Like, he was just going nuts. And honestly, this is the most coherent I have ever heard Greg speak. Like, usually he's like bumbling around, going on side missions, talking about all sorts of nonsense. This was one of the highest quality roasts I've ever seen. I copped two, two minute videos of him just destroying me. And I loved it. He would be on Comedy Central. The roast was that good. He was getting up about my Twitter engagement, putting bread on there like my sourdough.

Oh, mate, it was some pent up, pent up frustration there. I sensed when it was on that.

This is years of me roasting Greg 24 7. And it all just came out, mate. It was beautiful. So after that, mate, you're all a bit dusty.

Stupid o' clock Friday.

What happened on the Friday, mate? Because I only got there the Friday night.

We had an event Friday night. So we had a members only event with a few others. And yeah, we kicked off at three o' clock and by, you know, one or two o', clock, I was just watching the cricket on the couch. I'm like, right, I need to get needy my skates on here. So I went down, went to the gym, freshened up, went to, went to the event. The event was great. Saw a lot of Platinum members, saw a lot of other people. It was just awesome. Just to get a. Get a, you know, a few conversations in with a lot of our Platinum clients, Did a talk and then, mate, waited for you. You. You took forever to get in. All we want to do is get a bit of food, mate. Classic.

All right, so. So here's the real story I'm telling these guys. I'm like, hey, you know that they've finished up the member drinks. They're just having a few more drinks because they're all alcoholics. And so I'm at the airport and I'm waiting for my bag. Get my bag. So I'm telling the ETA is like, you know, 15 minutes, whatever. And I'm like, I'll be at the hotel in like four minutes. I'm just gonna dump my bag and then just go out We've got two lads that are there, bloody Nick and Simon and they're just like, no, I'm not gonna wait, I'm just gonna go ahead. They're so adhd they couldn't wait the four minutes to go to the pub. So anyway, I go there, dump my bags and I'm like, great, where's the pub? Catch an Uber to the pub. It's like, I don't know, 10 minutes away. Get there as soon as we get there, everyone's just coming downstairs, oh, let's go to dinner. So we end up going to dinner and we walk all the way back past the bloody hotel to go to dinner. I literally could have just probably put my bags in my room, had a shower because I'm fresh off the plane. Bloody four hour flight from Perth. Rubbish flight in economy couldn't get an upgrade like Ben Simpson always does. And then we walk literally past the bloody hotel to go to dinner. And where do we go, Ben? We go to some random bloody place. We try and find a massive table. Ben's farting around, talking to all these people. He's got this audience so he's bloody happy. And then we sit down. 10 minutes go by putting bloody, kitchen's closed, mate. Classic Ben. So what do we do? We go to another place. All right, so go to some like random Mexican joint. There's 20 of us standing around a three person table. We're all super hungry. So we scan the things, start ordering food. Ben's wandered off and found another bloody table downstairs, hasn't told anyone. So we all end up going downstairs. All right, so we've got 20 people, we all order our food. Alice is the only competent person in the business, so she's ordering the food on the app. Like, great, we'll have this. I'm starving. I've had like steak and eggs for breakfast and I've had a small little salad on the plane at bloody midday from Qantas. And it's like 500 hours after that. I'm ready to bite someone's arm off, I'm so hungry. So all these people start getting their food. The chicken burgers are arriving, the steaks are arriving, chips are arriving and our food bin is nowhere to be seen. So we're like, what the hell is going on? 20 minutes goes by, 30 minutes, 40 minutes. Alice goes and asks them. Turns out she ordered on the other table when she scanned it. So the went up there. So my okay, no worries, they're going to send the food down. So what do they do? They Send out Alice's food and she's eating nice tacos, like fish taco, beef taco. Amazing. Our food is nowhere to be seen. The four blokes, Ben, myself, Simon and Nick all ordered the same thing. No food. And it's like then 40 minutes go by, 50 minutes, it's almost pushing an hour. I'm just ropeable by this point. And then the food comes out. Ben. Finally the food arrives and we ordered this like do it yourself kind of steak taco thing. It was amazing. It was like properly like awesome, Nicely marbled cooked steak cut up. And then they had, you know, six or seven taco wraps, they had mint, chimichurri, all this kind of stuff and make your own taco. And it was amazing. It was absolutely delicious and it was worth the wait. But it was a classic Ben Simpson night, mate. Everything just goes wrong. Nothing goes right but, but somehow it all works out in the end.

That's my life, mate. Somehow it all works out in the wash. So that was, mate, that was Friday, so all cooked. Anyway, Saturday rolls around. Big day, big day.

Let's start with the morning, mate. Let's start with it. So I get back and Perth is three hours behind eastern states time. So I didn't get much of a sleep, anything like that, whatever. Ben's like, you're going to the gym in the morning. And he's just harassing me. I'm like, look, I'm not having this, I'm going to the gym. So I'm in the gym 6:45 in the morning, which is 3:45am per time. Ben's in there lifting his like one kilo weights with his wrist, doing just this weird exercises, bro. How was the leg press? How funny was that?

This guy rolls in, I'm, I'm pushing big, big weights.

You're literally on the chest press machine pushing 10 kilos, going. The other guy in the gym's just looking at you like what the hell, right?

That's a lie. Anyway, Bergs rolls in.

Okay, it is a lie. It was five kilos.

Bergs rolls in. This guy looks like he's been hit by a truck. He's got the biggest bags, comes in, I'm like, here we go. What's he gonna complain about this time? Yeah, the room's too cold, the vents are noisy, I got no sleep. It's 3:00am this, I'm going in late. Why am I here? This, I'm just gonna go home, blah, blah, blah, blah blah.

I just see your face and I'm just instantly like, you know that book, the body keeps the score. Like, when you've had very traumatic experiences, your body just brings it out, mate. To be fair, the aircon was like, super loud and rattly in my room. Even if you turn it off, the aircon in the main area of the apartment was loud. They ended up fixing it so all my other night's sleep were fine. Anyway, so rock up to the gym, mate, and you get on a leg press, mate. And what did it sound like?

I'm not even gonna try and make the noise.

So it was like. It literally sounded like a springy mattress.

It was amorous activity happening on top of it. I just couldn't stop laughing. It's the smallest gym. It's literally the size of a bedroom.

So dodgy. Anyway, so we finish. We finished the gym, we go for a bit of a bit of break here. We catch up. I forget I've got a videographer with me because we're doing a YouTube video, doing behind the scenes YouTube video, classic. Get a text message from the videographer saying, I'll be there in five. I'm like, oh, I forgot about that.

Useless videographer. Rise. We're doing a Behind the Scenes YouTube video, which will be out soon. Gonna have breakfast. And we're in the conference and, mate, it was just on. As soon as we got there, it was just people.

Oh, hang on. Before we got to the conference, mate, we've got the videographer and Ben's going. I'm just standing there. Ben's going up and down the bloody escalators, like, doing his little speech. Oh, welcome to Australia's biggest conference. I'm Ben Simpson. Look at me, I'm in front of a camera. Did you know I lived in a bedroom with my brother until I was 35 years old and I made it out of Tassie, and now I'm amazing with my business. So he's going up and down the escalators, like, doing this 50, 000 tastes because he's not a professional.

And I nailed it both times. The videographer said, I've never seen someone as good as you. That's what he said, mate.

He. He. To be fair, he did only take two takes. And that's because the first time the videographer, like, stacked it when he was kind of going up, it wasn't a perfect take. And it's always nice to have another one. But you would have been up all night practicing that in the mirror, mate. Just looking at yourself, doing your hair. Go, mate.

I didn't know I Had a bigger girl until five minutes before he rocked up. I forgot.

Nah, mate, you knew it. You knew it. Deep in your soul. You're like, this is go time. This is. This is Ben's time for people to. To look at his mate.

You know, it's really in front of camera. That's all right, mate. That's all good. Anyway, so we finished it.

Oh, how is it? No, we go inside and we get these bloody wristbands. So if you're like a premium or vip, you get a wristband. So you go on the boat. So you put it on. They're like, no, you have to put it on now. And it's one way it doesn't bloody come off. So you have to leave it on your hand on your WRIST for like, 48 hours, this big ribbon. So every time you wash your hands, I have a shower most and you only get one if you lose it. That's it. You can't get on the boat.

Yeah, so. So classy. But anyway, man, we get in there, I've got my talk at one o'. Clock. The boys have no talk at three. I think the boys had a talk at one. We went in, the booth was set up. Alice set it all up. Was amazing. We had the merch out, people were flying in. DT was just doing demos all day. There was. Booth was full, flat out. We saw so many of our members, you know, we had Simon there, the. One of our pro members just recently became a platinum. He was helping us out all weekend.

He was a legend, mate. It was so good just having him around, having a chat. And even members were bringing up non members. They're like, you need to talk to these guys. They're legends. You should sign up.

Members were selling the memberships to other new members, which was insane. People coming up, they were getting photos, they were getting like, just wanted a conversation. It was. The booth was just flat out all day and the boys crushed their first talk. It was packed to the brim. They did a silver. Was it? I think it was known as the narratives, which was awesome. And then, yeah, I had my talk at 3:00pm, I think.

Oh, and leading. Leading up to Ben's talk. Well, first of all, had an amazing lunch and there was like a Nepalese festival just happening outside, which is just incredible. But Ben didn't eat because he was very nervous. He's like walking around, he's like, autism's flaring, he's like shaking his hands and stuff. He's like, oh, no, got a keynote. Always going and checking out the stage. He's got his video. Videographer walking around. Mate, you're in a state. Alice. Had to get you like a. A smoothie to calm you down. A smoothie.

I had a videographer. I was doing pop. People pulled me over. Podcast. In a Binance interview. There was like, people coming up, trying to take, like, selfies. It was just nuts. Like, it was just.

It was pretty crazy.

It was crazy.

It was way beyond expectations. It was full on.

Full on. And then al beforehand, I'm starting to get real nervous. You know, this, this keynote theater was massive. Like thousand, thousand seats rolled in there. I'm getting about five, 10 minutes ago. I'm getting flat out called by the account, the. The manager of the conference. Maddie, no, you got to get. You got to get in now. There's problems with your slides. Your slides are. I'm like, oh, here we go. Classic roll in. Six minutes to go. Guys like, you can't use your slides that, you know, the files corrupt, they're upside down, they're back to front. You can't use them. It's all over. And I'm like, oh, here we go. Classic. So I'm like, I'm nervous as hell. The place is filling up. I've got no slides. And I'm about to talk for 45 minutes. Mate, this is great.

I love that this happened, mate.

Classic. And then Alice, like, I'm gonna sort it out. I'm like, right, please help me out, Alice. So she's flying. She runs off. I'm like, trying to prep. Look at my notes. Got the videographer trying to do a Behind the Scenes YouTube video. We're trying to get, like, notes done there. The guy's giving me a microphone. He's like, here's the clicker. And then five minutes, I had a five minute timer. All of a sudden, the MC's up on stage starting to introduce me. I'm like, holy. Alice is trying to get the slides started sorted. I'm walking up there going, I'm not sure if we're gonna have slides or not. Slides come good. I roll up on stage, get up there, look out. And then, mate, the nerves just disappeared. Got it. Got. Got a few laughs in a couple of zingers. And then it was on. Just dialed in and yeah, it was.

I saw your talk was brilliant. I was actually at the booth when Alice came through, kicks DT off the laptop. She's like, nah, got to do this.

Yeah.

And so Ben has no slides. I'm like, classic. I'm trying to delay her. No not really, but how good is Alice, mate? What would your life be without her?

Oh, disaster. Absolute disaster. So Alice is my EA for those that don't know. So she's, she's absolutely awesome. And yeah, she, she's, yeah, she made everything. Yeah, I don't know what. Without her.

Mate, your talk was absolutely amazing. You rocked the house. There was a thousand people every. All the seats were gone. People were standing up as well. It was awesome. So Simon, one of our members, sat next to me and he's like, I love this guy because you just legit, you're authentic. If someone asks you a question, you don't know, you're like, I don't know, I don't. What was the question? Like, I don't think about that. What was that?

Oh, the question was like.

Would your outlook be different if fiat currency was still backed by gold and commodities and whatever?

Oh, the mining question.

Oh, there's two questions. One was like, yeah, what would your outlook be different if the fair currency was. We were still on the gold standard? I'm like, I don't know, Maybe it was 60 years ago, who cares?

And then the other one was like, yeah, what's going to happen when the bitcoin mining rewards and when the 20, 21 millionth bitcoin is mined? I'm like, well, who cares? I mean, 120 years, none of us are going to be, is it? What does it matter?

It's so legit, but like, so good.

I didn't answer with like, well, you know, the fees will kick in and like, just like quantum computing, like, there'll be, you know, probably a fork or whatever. But you know, honestly, I'll figure it out.

And you went through a live sales strategy with everyone, which was awesome. It really got people thinking.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I had so much awesome feedback saying it was one of the best talks all weekend and they learn a lot. And, you know, there was people coming up. We, you know, I think we had four or five platinum members sign up on the spot after the talk, which was just insane. And then, yeah, there was a bunch of people. Oh, then we had the networking event. So everyone piled into the networking event. So we just had this collective shift meetup and that mate that was pumping over there when I rolled up, it.

Was so much fun. I had the best conversations. Everyone's getting amongst it. Everyone just loves what we're doing and they're just so happy to be a member and they just wanted merch so people knew they were a member. It was great.

So we have, we have some photos, we put up a member, a member post on, on our platform. And the networking lounge was just pumping. Yeah, People were just so excited to see everything. And then Saturday night, what do we do?

Saturday night we went out to an early dinner.

Remember an early dinner? Had a little team dinner. That was great, just seeing everyone. And then we had some, there was some private events, like invite only events. So I think, I think you so.

So it was nice to just after that to unwind or sit down and just talk to the team about how amazing they are, how hard we've prepared for this and how we really showed up and we were above and beyond our own expectations. But we think a lot of other people as well, a lot of other exhibitors and that's not us saying that, that's other people saying, you know, you guys have a really clear offering, you're easy to talk to. I still don't know what half the people do, even though they've tried to tell me, which was just really nice to hear. So I went back to the hotel because I'm like, look, I'm tired. I've got some like time off between now and tomorrow.

I don't have eggs on Sunday.

Yeah. I don't have my wife, kid or anxious dog. I'm just gonna have an amazing sleep. And I got like nine and a half hours of sleep. It was amazing. But Mr. Simpson, he's like, I've got to have a light night. It'll be fine. You went upstairs to the court. First of all you saw the IMF lads. Then he went upstairs to the Coinbase event and talk us through what happened next, mate.

So I was like, yeah, if you remember, have a few drinks and you know, we'll have a big wine night. Well that, that went out the window pretty quick. So went up the Coinbase event, invite only event and we work with Coinbase so, you know, feel the team rolled up, made beautiful Top Cafe Del something for those who are in Sydney over the harbor, beautiful spot, free drinks. It was just like, it was, it was, it was pumping. Great, great time. That fireworks dj. And then that one thing led to another there that sort of just got pretty, got pretty loose. Drinks are flowing all of a sudden on the, on the margaritas. All of a sudden the expresso martinis were out. Was catching up with everyone. Seeing people hadn't seen in ages. It's awesome to see each other. And it was just like, I just, it felt like I felt like a bloody F grade celebrity mate in the Crypto space. Just people constantly coming up, taking photos, wanting to talk. It's awesome. I love it. But it's pretty full on, like, especially when you're absolutely knackered.

F is a good grade. That's probably where you're at, like, just in life.

Absolute wanker. Anyway, so all the.

All the lads and lasses were out. It was. It was a good time, but it.

Got to a point where it was actually too much. I'm like, right, we need to go. He's like, this is just getting. This is out of hand. So we went to the One Inch party, got over there.

Coinbase is out of hand. Wait to hear what happens next, mate.

I thought the Coinbase party was our hand rolled into One Inch. That was loose. End up going in there. I'm doing, you know, tequila shots with Sergey, the founder of One Inch.

Sergey looks like he's from the Matrix. Bait. He's got those, like, small glasses. He wears, like, a white kind of suit, like Seraph in the Matrix. And he's got, like this ponytail, half kind of shaved head.

Yeah. And for those that haven't been to a crypto party, like, they're essentially like free drinks. It was like free cock. Like, people. Like, people just bringing up drinks to me, going, mate, I don't even know what this is. I just got six of them. Here you go. People rolling around with, like, drinks to give out at a DJ there. Dt our head member. Success, mate. He was pumping out some. Some dance moves.

He was. It was flying, mate. He showed me a video and he's just gone straight back to his youth, mate.

Yeah, man. He was like, doing the Melbourne Shuffle. Like, it was all. I was like, mate, this. This guy's like, these guys got it. Anyway, that wrapped up, like, right, oh, we should probably should wrap it up. No, all the crypto people, about 20. And apparently this is like a regular crew, right? Led by Jock from. From Hashlock. Great guy. Loves a drink. He decides we're going to karaoke. I'm like, oh, here we go. I don't think I've ever done karaoke. I'm not singing, like, in my head. I. I just think of the idea of a karaoke, like two people up on stage. And it's just this kind of weird, awkward thing where, like, is there someone really bad singing? And it's just like, you know. No, this place was called, like, canine.

You know, karaoke bar or something. Anyway, you essentially go in and you have a private room with, like, a massive TV screen and a bunch of Microphones and just a bunch of drinks. So there's like 25 crypto people roll into this like blacked out karaoke room and at first I'm like, what the hell is going on here, mate? And then. And it just kicked in. It dialed in. Everyone's like, everyone knew what was going on. There was like a, it was like music. There was like a, There's a flow of drinks coming. And then, mate, it just started. And there was duets, there was Katy Perry, there was like, it was just like. I was like, what the hell? What have I just walked into? This is bananas. Anyway, I looked down at the watch after my lead. Lead song at. I don't know what it was, ABBA or something. Looked down at the watch after my, you know, awful rendition of Abba. Mate, it's like three o', clock, three, three thirty. I've nearly lost my voice. I'm like, oh, I've got a podcast in about, in about seven hours.

Just shows you how much he cares. Folks.

I've done my keynote. The Ben Sims show's over. Ben and Bergs doesn't matter.

So I'm like, I need to go home. So I went home, didn't set an alarm, forgot. Just rolled in. I was like, just passed out. Got some Mac is passed out. Anyway, wake up the next day, 37 missed calls from Aaron Bur Cuba. I'm like, oh.

So he had two missed calls from me. One was like, I let him sleep in. I called him at 9am and then 9:30 calling Alice as well. No one's picking up. And the reason I called them was because they've got my shirt. It's like, so show us a Benneberg shirt, mate. How good's that? And then on the back I think I've got, I've got. Kiss my ass, let's see if I can show it.

So good, epic T shirt.

There we go, cracking, cracking merch. So we'll try to get that before we went to the conference. Anyway, they eventually called me back like bloody 10 o' clock or some. And turns out Alice has the shirts. Ben's like, I'll be ready in five minutes. He picks up the place like.

I was like, oh, I've got no voice. That's not good.

You were just wrecked. You just sounded absolute ration. I'm like, yeah, doesn't give a classic. Classic band, mate. Can't say no. He's got a massive no problem. Went out, wrote himself off. Fine. You're going to suffer this morning, mate. So we end up we go, okay, Alice will meet you in the lobby. We're on. We were coming down in the lift. Ben came to my place, going down the lift. And then we met Alice on her floor just by chance. And I looked at her and I was like.

You look rough. And she's like, I'm not myself.

It was so sad. And then she's like, I'll be in the conference later.

So got our shirts, got them on, and then went to the conference for Sunday, mate.

So we went for breaky. I was feeling rough. I was like, coffee, Red Bull, need to pep. Pep up. Because we had a podcast.

Oh, you had a frappe.

Oh, that frapper was so good.

Best rap I've ever had. And the burger's halfway through. Like, right, I'm down, I'm going, I'm going, I'm gonna go to conference.

I'm literally like mid sentence. And he just like packs up his base and he goes to the front to pay. I'm like, we've already paid you. You're probably still drunk.

You're probably still drunk for half the morning, mate.

Probably was. Anyway, so we go to the booth, people. It's all happening next door. We got the coin spot booth and they've got this big.

Oh, actually we were doing our slides, weren't we?

Yeah, like, this is gonna be interesting. I've lost my voice and, you know, probably still drunk. About to go and do a live podcast. I came, came good. The food, the food sorted me out. Went back to the booth, Coin spot. I. I couldn't be at the booth because the coin spot guys had this massive, like, you know, there's arcade games with a massive hammer and you got to smash the thing. And the higher the score, the more points you win. And they're just. Every three seconds, just smash, bang, bang.

It just wakes you up because you're micro sleeping because you're knackered so bad.

I'm like, right, I need to get the hell out of here. So went for a wonder. Anyway, podcast comes in and, you know, we've got these, we've got the custom. What have we got, boys? The merch. Now what? It's called the swag. We got some exclusive swag merch, mate. Alpha merch, which was epic. So we had all that getting ready for the podcast and I was like, oh, I'm not sure how many people gonna show up Sunday, you know. You know, the Bennett, the true Bennett Bergs fans will show out.

But, yeah, I was expecting like 10 people, mate.

Yeah, I was even like, maybe five, 10 people. We go up there, we got a couple of beers, burgers in thongs. Like, we're doing a real kit, like proper Benneberg style. Anyway, we get up there.

Wait, hang on. Before we get up there, you're just like, you're in your pants, mate. Like, nah, we won't go on stage now. Now let's just go here and then like, oh, I'm planning everything perfectly to the second. You're talking to like, the sound and lighting guy. You're just like, freaking out. I'm just trying to like, poke you. I'm like, dude, it's been in burgs. This is fine.

I'm such a, like, perfectionist control freak. I'm like, boogie wants to go up like six minutes before we summon. Now what are we gonna do is sit up there and just be weird.

Like sit up and just drink beers, mate. It's gonna be amazing. If you watch the crowd flowing. Sensational. Soak it all up.

You gotta time it well. May try to.

You've got to time it well. It's got to be perfect. In the middle of second, I've got to jump on stage.

I might try to rug us 10 minutes. He wanted to give us 25 minutes right now, mate. Check the schedule. He's like, I'll check it. He's like, oh, yeah, right. Yeah, don't rug us, mate. And then we go up and we just get into a mate. And it was fun. The place was packed. Yeah.

Before this. Ben's like, freaking out. He's like, it's 45 minutes, man. Our podcast is usually 20 minutes. What if you ran out of things to say? We need some things to say. Let's have some ideas. He's writing all these notes in his phone. It's so funny. I'm like, dude, it's better bergs. It'll be fine.

Now.

Freaking out.

That crowd was fun. You know, I. I had to keep everyone entertained because bergs was boring. But it was, it was okay. We got through it. Everyone was. Everyone was stoked.

Ben just like mumbled his way through. No one was listening. He's like, I'm 99, allocating crypto. I've got some meme coins. I know nothing about life. I don't know about structuring that, mate. All you do is just like roasting me. I've got like, you know, the, the thought provoking answers and everyone's like nodding their heads and they're like, yeah, just dropping dimes and you're talking about like dog whiff hat and how excited you are about it. I want to buy my parents a house. I used to live with my brother. And the funniest part was on the slides. It had, like, the speaker's notes.

The wrong note.

The wrong notes is from his keynote. So I start looking at it like, ah, just start getting halfway through. And then you're like, oh, no, you got too much money. We pay you too much. Right? That was boring. Now listen to me. Like, he literally said that. He's like, that's boring. No one cares. Right. Here's my strategy.

Oh, it was all fun. It was all one. Yeah. To be fair, you did have some. You did have some good. Some good commentary, some good alpha. The microstrategy explanation. Haven't heard anyone else explain as good as you. And even over the course of the weekend, the sophistication of the investing strategies we spoke about, like, that's. That's what everyone loved.

Yeah, absolutely. The questions at the end were absolutely amazing. Everyone was engaged. And then we held up the merch. So for Ben and Bergs, Ben and I have, like, shirts for ourselves that just he and I wear. And across the back, it's your favorite NBA coo. High signal area and ungovernable. And on the back, Benz is high school dropout, CEO, High signal area and ungovernable. But we've got other shirts. What do we have? Barbells within Barbells. Kiss My assets with the bitcoin logo. And then volatility is my friend with a trading chart. And man. So we're like. We showed people the merch. Like, right, we're out of time. Come up to stage, grab some merch. We got the boxes, mate. And I'm like, people start coming up. This small, medium, large. Like, what size are you? And they just. They just swamped it. And I had to get out. Like, honestly, it was like 50 people on stage. I legged it right to the back. I'm not. I'm not dying for this.

There's a photo on my Twitter. Go check it out. The stage got swamped. One of our platinum in the crowd said he saw a grandma get knocked over.

It was so wild. It was so wild. Within, like, two minutes, the merch was gone. And then Ben and I got swamped. Everyone's asking us questions. They're taking photos with us. It was incredible.

Yeah, that was so much fun. Yeah, I loved it. Bennett Boogs was great. Hopefully there's a few new listeners here listening on, so welcome. And then, mate, what do we do? The bow Party.

The bow party. So this was. This was a lot of fun. Alice was still not herself. We ended up catching an Uber to the boat, which was actually probably longer than just walking there. It's like a four minute walk, six.

Minute Uber, four minute walk.

We all get this Uber xl and we always like, like the running jokes. We chuck Ben in the back with the baby chair. He's in like the third row. He's like just squashed in there.

This is some man.

It was so funny. He lost his voice. It was amazing. And so we're all standing out the front of the harbor and there's this massive boat that we're all about to get on. We met Crypto Jesus. It was amazing. He was. He was handing out like free Jesus coin.

And then we got on the boat mate, which was sensational.

Yeah, it's great, it's great fun. People coming up saying, hi. The Bennett Burkes. We were in the Benneberg shirts. More photos, lots of champagne. And they had a big light show that would be drone show, which is awesome. Like crypto stuff in the sky. And. Yeah. And I was. It was, it was, it was.

Yeah. It was a Swift X party. It was a super yacht. Biggest yacht in Australia. So that. So they've claimed. I haven't verified it. The food was amazing. They're cooking up like. Oh, it would have been like 2 meter, like vats. Yeah. Of like paella. And they had arancini sliders.

Yeah, it was awesome.

Drinks are flowing all night. They had models wearing like cash kind of things. It was pretty awesome. And they had like the 3D thing. You go, you stand in the middle and the little light ring spins around. Does a 3D thing of what you're doing. Multiple dance floors, VIP area. We were outside pretty much most of the night chatting to everyone. Everyone was coming up like, you know, the. The bamboo guys. Greeny, Zenica, Trader, Travis. Like every. Everyone that you've seen on was. It was just great, amazing night. And as we're going through, we went from like the harbor, under the bridge, taking photos as the sun setting, go past the opera house. Then they went to the bay and kind of parked the yacht over there. They give me, call me skipper because I Skipper's jacket on. So good. So good. And then we had to wait for the drone show. We saw the drones going up, doing a test, but it was too windy, so they had to wait. And it was amazing. So it was just the Swift X logo going around. They went from gold to like cash to card to Crypto three of the drones decided to just fly the sky and suicide in the bay. I would too if I had to do the SwiftX logo. And then.

Sorry, Swift X, we love you guys. Gotta give me a bit of. Give me along the way. But it was an amazing night. We're out on the boat for four hours and I was thinking, oh God, I don't know if I'm gonna go be stuck on a boat for four hours with like all these people. They're gonna talk to me. It's gonna be packed. But there was so much space. You could walk around. It was brilliant. And everyone just had a cracking time, mate.

Yeah, it was good fun. Everyone was bullish. Yeah, it was a great, great end to a big weekend. And yeah, that wasn't the end, mate.

After that you're like, right, we're going out, everyone, we're going out. That's Ben's like, Ben's like leadership voice and it's hilarious. He's like, right, I'm making the decisions. And then like he takes 16 hours to get off the boat because he wants to talk to every single person that even glances at him. And as we're getting off the boat, we're getting off the ramp, he forgets he's on a ramp, looks backwards, crashes into the guy in front of him. Absolute knob. We're waiting for like 10 minutes on the jetty for him to stop taking photos with people and stroking his own ego. It's absolutely ridiculous. And then like you eventually make it to some club and I'm like, alice, just point the way home. I need to go home. She's like, no, I'm going to. I'm like, great, let's go. Let's leave these, let's leave this knob head behind. And mate, what did you do? You wrote yourself off again until like 4:00am.

Was it 4:00am? DT and I, we, we were out till maybe, maybe 1:32. All the SwiftX guys rocked up. It was fun night. It was pretty loose. Then DT and I looked at each other, we're like, we're done. So we grab Maccas, go back to the hotel and then we had a 40 minute sales meeting at 2am in the morning in the lobby. Speaking of that strategy, you guys are wild.

Even DT had like 3 minutes of sleep. Pretty sure he was still drunk. And he's CLOS partner members in the booth.

That man just got to bed and he just got back up and he was flying. He had a shower. He's all right, let's go. Where are we going, oh.

So we forgot to say on the Sunday, Ben was freaking out after we got the shirts because DT had his bag and he's calling DT. DT's not picking up. He's. He actually brought his misses with him. His misses must be like, mate, who is this guy? He's rocking up pissed every night at 4am and the reason Ben's freaking out is because there was something special in your bag, mate. Your hair gel. Gotta have me hair gel. Oh, my God. 47 missed calls to DT. You're just like, what am I gonna do? The world's gonna end if I don't do me hair, mate.

See, boys doesn't know what it's like to have hair.

Obviously, mate, when you're this good, you don't need hair.

You had 47 haircuts last week to just get it, to get it perfect, mate. The haircuts per second on this guy is incredible. Such a top signal.

The haircut to LTV ratio, mate, that's what you're looking at.

Amazing. And then you went back and died. And the next morning, crew got together, all flew out, which is amazing. And I got to. I walked all the way around Barangaroo to the Opera House, the Bridge, Botanical Gardens, then went out to Bondi Junction, got us some sick carbon fiber dual suspension E bikes, had a fantastic day and flew home at night. Mate, it was just the most amazing.

Weekend or four days. Crypto was just pumping. The people were amazing. The event was at such a. A higher level than it was last time. We've got the well done Dave Haslop and his team. And also, like, I'm on stage and Dave's taking pics of my feet, mate. Did you see that?

Yeah, I saw everyone on Twitter.

Jesus, mate. Because we give him about wearing thongs everywhere and I was wearing thongs on stage. I'd had it. I'm like, I'm not wearing shoes, not doing anything. Just rock up. Half the people are barefoot anyway. It was brilliant.

So good.

It was amazing. And you guys have been working very hard since then, following up with all the people, doing the sales calls, sending people the awesome emails we have with all the alpha in it.

The amount of members signing up, like, it's just bananas. Like, we, we're just, you know, trying to keep up with everything. It's just been absolutely nuts. The feedback's been awesome. Everyone's loving the membership, they're loving the group, they're loving, you know, you know, everything that we, we put on over the weekend, the talks, it was educational. We weren't shilling stuff. Everyone else is shilling their. And we just like. Nah, we didn't even speak about our membership really just spoke about all education. Yeah.

Oh, there were, there were some terrible things being shield.

I won't say this specific thing because everyone know what the company is but just the promises they were making with the thing that they had was like well no, if the thing really worked you would just use it and not try and sell it. It was, it was, yeah. That's the kind of stuff I don't like and I hope too many people didn't get sucked in and lose a lot of money with those. Those kind of things that were happening.

Apys and stuff like come on man.

Yeah, you're like where's, where's that coming from? Like it's. You're not being honest and you're just going to rip off a lot of people. Last year you were selling something else, now you're selling another thing.

They should be AI Anyway.

Oh, bro. But mate, how good is it? Yeah, it was amazing. Very great week for us. A combination of heaps of stuff and because Ben doesn't like to rest and he's crazy in his a problem saying no to things. We've got the summit coming up mate, just to cap things off.

Very excited. So if you, if you're wanting to keep rolling on and keep just getting, you know, more and more sort of insights and value, we have the first and biggest Australian online crypto summit that is completely free. It's on Thursday, Thursday the 5th of December. It's an all day event, completely free. We've got 30amazing speakers, topics including meme coins, ethereum, high net wealth, how to get a job in crypto, all sorts of stuff. Head over to collectorshift IO Summit. You can see the previous episode where we spoke about it. Just go to the website, there'll be a link in the description. Jump over there, register, grab your ticket. We only have limited spots. I think we've got two or three thousand spots. We're already a long way into that so jump in, register now and we'll see you there.

Yeah, this will fill up quickly so do register for your spot otherwise you're going to have to watch a replay of it. And you heard it here first from Ben Simpson. It is the first and biggest.

The first and biggest summit.

You can't go wrong with you the first. It's the first biggest, smallest and medium.

Size first, first biggest free crypto collective Shift 30 Speaker Summit. First and biggest mate let's. Let's wrap up there.

Let's wrap it up, guys. Thank you so much. And girls, for, thank you for listening to Bennett Burke's podcast. We're so excited for the next year in Crypto. It's gonna be so much fun. We'll be here helping you along the way. Thank you for coming up. If you said g' day to us or saw one of our talks or saw the live podcast or maybe got some merch. Thank you so much. We love you all and we'll see you on the next episode.

Thanks, champions. First and biggest.