20. How We Are Investing In Crypto Right Now, NBA, UFC & NFL NFTs Are Being Built On This Blockchain and Why You Need An MBA.

Welcome back to the Ben and Berg show with your favorite MBA and high school dropout talking all things crypto, sport, investing, life and business. Episode 20 and I'm with my co host, Bergs. How are you, mate?

Mate, I'm feeling really, really good. I can't Believe it's episode 22. Zero, mate. How good?

That's 20 weeks. Half nearly been going at this half a year.

Jeez, Unbelievable. And you've actually shown up like you keep cancelling and reschedule, but you're here, mate. It's amazing.

We do an hour pre show. We absolutely roast me where I'm nearly ready to fucking give up. And you can just do the show on your own. Just call it the Berg Show. Well, you can.

You're ready to give up all the time. You know, you got to be professional. You got to show up all the time. And like, mate, Ben roasted me so hard I had to take my jumper off. Like I got too hot. I speak getting hot under the collar.

I give up when I'm talking to you right today. Anyway, big, big show, big show. We've got crypto. We're talking a state of play. And we're pulling in one of our membership posts from Collective Shift, our head of research, Matt, how he's tackling the crypto market right now, how he is investing exactly what he's doing. Talking about a little bit about AI again off the back of last week's episode going into the Ethereum blockchain versus flow blockchain. So talking about some of the new NFTs built on the flow blockchain. So you know the things like UFC, the NBA. We've also got the NFL, Dr. Seuss. These NFTs are not being built on Ethereum. We're going to talk about the flow blockchain. Then we go into business talking about why Bergs is such a shit bloke because he's an NBA mate.

Thank you. No, I've copped a lot of hate. There's continually people just hating on NBA. So I'm going to set the record straight because that is a bunch of. So we're going to get into that. We're going to get into what would have been Berg's Summit slash conference look like and we're getting into personal growth. So did Ben actually achieve his challenge this week and what event happened in Dubai that caused us to cancel this podcast? We'll see if Ben wants to talk about it or not. We're gonna make him.

It's an extreme Ben event. Ben is so Extreme. Listen, we'll talk about the end of the pod. He's gonna cop a roasting. It's going to be glorious.

A copy roasting every week man. The list is. No, I just cop it from you.

Weekend if look if they had to work with you that'd be the same.

Okay, let's get into it. So Matt did a deep dive for our members last week around basically why he hasn't bought any crypto this year and when he will. So I wanted to just maybe touch on a little bit about this post, go through a bit about how Matt's seen the market and then bergs we can discuss it. So really where we're at, I mean the 2022 has just been an absolute nightmare for all assets especially, especially those you know assets like stocks and crypto and even the risk off assets. So you know, some of the more, you know, assets that people tend to go into when, when the markets are crazy have seen their worst year. Things like bonds have been absolutely just, you know, basically blown up the last few months as well. So inflation continues to be high.

We thought inflation was going to be transitionary but it's continuing to be at stubbornly high levels. Inflation sitting around 8.2 in the US, 10% in the euro, 10.1% in the UK and 6.1 in Australia. So for those that don't know most developed economies tend to aim for yearly inflation around the 2 to 3% mark. So we're about 3 to 500% higher than most economies tend to aim for.

So yeah, it's wild and we know that, we know the 6.1 is anyway like look at your food costs, your petrol costs, everything you buy every day, way more than 6.1% increase 100.

We're also seeing the US dollar at near multi decadal highs against major currencies. So like the yen, the pound, the euro, even the Australian dollar has really sold off. And with this rising dollar around the global economy it's pushing everything up, you know, import costs from other countries adding to existing inflationary pressures, you know, squeeze any person into your government that's borrowed in dollars. So it's putting a lot of pressure on non US central banks to raise rates. We're seeing Europe in a suffering energy crisis mainly because of the ongoing Russian Ukraine war which doesn't seem to be any anytime soon. And Bitcoin has been trading between the 18 and a half thousand 24 and a half thousand mark for 130 days straight. So nearly a year since it passed its record high of 69,000. So yeah, look, it's, it's fascinating. With crypto, we know remaining is pretty tiny in terms of the total asset class size, market cap sitting around a trillion dollars more. More than 70% of that is sitting in Bitcoin, Ethereum and Stablecoin. So less than 30% is sitting in the altcoin market. So everything has been wiped out in crypto booze, mate.

I think this was one of the best posts I've written and it got the most reactions on our platform. This is by Matt Williamson, our head analyst and it's just titled why I haven't bought any crypto this year and when I will. And just for him, like what he's doing year to date, what he's looking for and he's still buying NFTs, but it's just trading within that band. It was just such a good dose of realism. It was just amazing. And this really fits in and aligns with what I'm doing as well. Where I'm not buying in heavy, I'm still dollar cost averaging every couple of weeks and getting my allocations, but not piling in heavy, you know, because like signaling this is the bottom of the market. Right?

Yeah. And the biggest mistake Matt really lined out here was that he bought the dip. DIP too many times in 2018. So, you know, like many beginners in the crypto space, you know, he called himself back then a serial buyer of the dip. So the amount of times people were calling buy the dip, buy the dip, buy the dip. It subconsciously affected his decision making. So after more and more time in the market, he learned that most of these people were bias holders protecting their altcoin bag, which led to poor capital management. So, you know, by spending too much cash buying the dips in Q1 2018, before we had the complete capitulation, he wasn't able to really invest at the bottom of the market. So he'll be. So right now he hasn't bought any crypto this year, he'll be recommencing buying his bitcoin and eth. Once one of the two following scenarios happen. So one is that we get more certainty that this year's tightening of the monetary policy is having its desired effect. That is, you know, basically that inflation starts to come down and we get inflation, interest rate, sorry, inflation starts to come down and interest rates start to come down. So we, we know that this is really the bottom end or Bitcoin and Ethereum have a flash crash, meaning that capitulation, like we Saw back in November of 2018, sorry, 2019 when we had that capitulation down to 3,000. If we see those Bitcoin Ethereum go below 16,000 and $1,000 respect respectively, he'll be buying at those levels, although he doesn't see that as a very high likelihood. So yeah, he hasn't been buying and. Okay, and for the other people in the market too. Why are we still here? Well, you know, in Matt's opinion, he firmly believes bitcoin and smart contract optimized blockchains will change the world. If they, if, you know, if he didn't think that he would have left the industry years ago. The pace of innovation, the amount of money that's coming into space, the sheer number of talent that's coming into blockchain and crypto is particularly strong and the zero knowledge technology and blockchain architectures is going gangbusters. So he expects the markets to continue probably chopping this way for a little while. But you know, he's looking really forward to covering the markets and you know, the growth of crypto's market size is going to be hyper over the coming months and years, so still continue to be very, very bullish long term bugs. But yeah, in the short term with a macro environment going on and just, you know, you know, everything that's pushing against crypto probably don't see much catalyst for, for these prices to come out anytime soon.

And Matt's making two really amazing points there where even him, you and I, we're investing something more valuable than our money and that's our time. That is the most precious, non renewable resource that we have and it's not just for a wage. We could like, honestly we're in a startup, we could go work anywhere else and we'd earn more money. Right. It's because we truly believe in this long term and we think it will be a huge fundamental shift in the way that finance digital technologies and ownership actually work. And for me it's about thinking, okay, I'm 80 years old and I look back and I would have so much regret if I didn't work in crypto and didn't give it a go because I'm that confident of, of where this is heading. And we're already seeing that we're right on the edge, the early adopters and we see it, that's why we're here and we're waiting for it to become more usable, pretty much like AI is today, which we'll talk about in a sec. And then the other thing that Matt said was he was a habitual dip buyer. And what that means is at prices we're seeing, you know, around now, people like, oh, this is the dip I need to buy, I need to accumulate. The challenge with that is if you've got $100 to invest, and let's say you put in $10 per week, at the end of 10 weeks, you've got no more capital to invest. That is a problem. And what Matt is saying is he's more sophisticated and he's holding back more capital and he's investing smaller amounts, but he still has a decent capital sum to invest for that huge capitulation event and that final shakeout that he thinks is coming. And I think that's a brilliant strategy to have. Always have some money on the sidelines.

Yeah, I certainly fall in that trap as well. I've spent all my cash and I have cash on the sidelines. And if you have cash on the sidelines right now, you're sitting really pretty because you have the opportunity to take up those, those real downside, you know, market crashes. And although probably not likely, if it does happen, you're going to be very well positioned to take, take poise of that. So yeah, yeah. Warren Buffett also is a huge cat, you know, a believer of having a shitload of cash on the sideline.

Yeah. And you buy when people are fearful. That's when you get greedy. And if you do have, if you are cash heavy, these are the times where you need to start looking to investments. Where is the best place to put my cash? What is value for money? A lot of people have lost 40, 50% of their net worth. What are those assets? Why are they down? What's the outlook long term? Is it stocks, Is it bitcoin? Is it currency? Is it commodity, is it bonds? What is it that you need? And you need to invest in those assets to beat inflation. You need to have a strategy and go for it. You're in a very good position if you cash heavy.

Burges, before we get into the AI bit of taking the limelight of crypto, I wanted to touch on this person that said 5,000 Bitcoin. $96 million the other day using Bitcoin. How much did he pay as a transaction fee to. To send $96 million somewhere?

208 SATs, which is 4 cents. 4 cents to send $96 million. And just the kicker for this is it was a 2 of 3 multi sig. And what that means is when you're sending a transaction there's three people that can authorize it. Two of them need to sign. So these people might not even, like, you know, they'll be in different parts of the world. They can sign a transaction, another one can do it A bit later on. That transaction will go. It'll go from like fund or person or whoever. Account A to account B. Sending $96 million worth of value for 4 cents. Could you imagine if you use like a bank or a centralized place, they would take like, what, a million dollar clip off that minimum? Yeah. A million dollars to go database one to database two. You could literally make a phone call, be a bruh, add this to your databases on the way. A million bucks.

They literally wouldn't approve. You go into the bank. Could you imagine going to a bank going, hey, I need to send $96 million. They'd be like, oh, no. Oh, good. Fill out this paperwork. What for? We need to get this approved.

No, like in Australia, they get the Prime Minister on the phone and be like, oh, this guy wants to send $96 million. We think it's a bit sus. You better come down and verify him.

Mate, mate, you can't get $2,000 out of the ATM, you know, like, it's ridiculous.

I tried to get, I think it was something really small, like $4,000, because I needed to make a purchase for like a household item. They'll like, oh, you need to call ahead. You need to do this. We don't have that kind of money. I'm like, you're a bank. Like, what are you doing? Like, if you don't have four grand, there's problems. And I kicked up a stink and they ended up giving me the money.

Yeah. And let's just be clear. They don't have your money.

Yeah, that's it. That's it, right? I'm like, I've got more than this in my bank. So you're saying out of all the cash you hold, you're supposed to have 5% cash? They're like, nah, you just can't rock up and you just can't have that amount of money. And I'm like, I'm paying a tradie for a bloody job, mate. Like, he wants cash. He's fucking talking my ear off. I'll just come down. So he bloody buggers off out of my house. Like, it was ridiculous. I could not believe it. Phoning ahead and planning ahead for such a pissy amount of money.

So you know the other thing as well, which is interesting? Bitcoin right now is that it's reached the lowest volume. Bitcoin's volatility over the last few month period has reached lower than the S and P index and the NASDAQ index. So Bitcoin, as this thing that's been shouted out from the rooftops as the most volatile asset on the planet, why would you buy it? You're going to lose. All your money is less volatile than the stock market right now.

And Bitcoin's like, look at me, I am stability now.

So good.

It's not to say that it's not going to be the volatile because it will be, but you know, it's continuing to show that this is a mature asset class like Bitcoin is holding up really, really well against all the other fair currencies that are crashing, you know. And over time, as Bitcoin matures and more capital comes into this space, Bitcoin will continue to be this non correlated, yeah, asset that you can store your, your capital in, you can send it without needing to go to the bank, you can do all these things in complete freedom in Bitcoin without needing a bank or an institution to control it. So yeah, fascinating.

Love it. We see the future, mate. We're there, we're there. And, and look, so crypto and web 3 has copped a bit of a beating lately thanks to me old mate AI, Artificial intelligence. And look, it's still in the limelight from crypto. And I'm like, why is this happening and why now from a crypto perspective, it's because crypto is quite boring, right? Everyone likes the price action. No one's really into the technology and the technology's kind of future facing. The thing that AI has is it's really easy to understand, right? Like it's difficult to understand like the technology behind it, but no one cares about that. They don't care about the technology, they care about what it can do for me. And these AI apps, these small SaaS apps that are coming out are immediately applicable and the value proposition is clear and you can begin using it in two minutes. And the whole thing is okay, say I want to get into crypto, man, that, that's, that's not a two minute journey, mate. You're like, excuse me, you got to learn about this, you got to sign up, you got to kyc, you got to do everything. I can go to somewhere like Copy AI or Moonbeam AI and I can go onto their site and I can click Google Connect, I can type in words and within two minutes AI is generating content for me. And I can then decide if the value proposition for me is there or if it is not, if it applies to my job. If it does, great, I'll pay the 20 bucks a month. My job just became 20% easier. The value proposition is so clear and it's immediate. It's not long term like crypto. With crypto, we're waiting for mass adoption. We're waiting for great user interfaces and experiences. We're waiting for really proper use cases that we don't necessarily need right now in developed countries because we can use banks. And it's a long term investment thing. People are willing to wait multiple years. That's why it's kind of losing some of that attention. And AI just feels like, you know, it feels like the future and it feels like an immediate competitive advantage. You feel like you're cheating and you're in the future and you can do something. It just feels great. And that's why all these people are using all these technologies of kind of, they've reached a critical mass where all these technologies have come together. Where an average developer can take those technologies, build an interface around it and deliver a SaaS product for a niche is just absolutely incredible. And mate, I gotta tell you. So I was on I'll shout out Danny Postman again for stock AI. I love this site. I was typing in all these. It's basically you type in a few words and it shows an image of whatever that is. It generates one. And I was having a great time, I was generating all this stuff and then I decided to type something in, something a bit weird. I typed in Ben Simpson, Collective shift. And this is what it came up with. Mate, look at this. You've got some random guy on a couch. You got another guy on the couch with messy rooms. You got Homer Simpson with a really weird face. And you got some guy with, I don't know, is he making pies? And he's stuck in between two bloody tables. He's got another hand touching his chin. None of this makes sense at all. And look, and look, hang on, look at this. This is my favorite one by far. Look at this, look at this lad. So this is the classic Ben Simpson photo. You've got a guy, I don't know what's going on with his face. It's a bit wrong. His hand doesn't make sense. His foot, I don't know what that is. And next thing looks like a prosthetic leg. Even though he doesn't need it. He's got random implements on the floor here. He's got a yellow and red couch and some really weird art. So, look, all I got to say, Ben, is AI is definitely the future, mate. You can see how good it is right there.

You sent it to me. I didn't even reply. I was like, what the is going on? That makes no sense.

It's so good.

It's so good.

The thing with AI is like, you don't know if it's going to correlate to data that exists. So it, quote, understands what you're doing and actually really what it is, it's searching for something, generating something in the hopes that it's what you want. But the more niche you get, the more weird it is. And I'm like, oh my God, AI is just strange.

But this is the thing. So, yeah, it's all. Everyone's pivoting to AI. Investment is going towards AI. Crypto is no longer the flavor of the month, mate.

Berks, you want to quickly just give the. Some of the listeners like some actual wet. Like, even for me, some websites where you can actually go to use AI and like try it out yourself, like you mentioned.

Definitely.

What are the ones?

Yeah, so the ones I would recommend, if you're writing like typing kind of content, blog posts, Instagram hashtags, it'll come up catchy headlines. The ones you can go to copy AI, Moonbeam, AI. There's another one called Jasper. They're probably the leading ones. And then for ones for image generation, you can look@stockai.com which is by Danny Postma. And there's Interior AI by Levels IO. They're definitely the ones I would go to. There's also an AI newsletter which I'll post in the show notes that has a roundup of all these products. And it's really great because every week you get a roundup and it's like this guy created this and you can just click on it. You can go to their site, you can see what it's about. You can see if it's for you. They're the ones I'll definitely be hitting up. And you can also just literally jump on Twitter or Google and Google things like Dall E D A L L hyphen, A stable diffusion. And I forget the other one, but I'll chuck it in the show notes. Sweet, man.

I'm gonna check out Copy AI. That looks cool.

Yeah, that. That was a good one. Moonbeam's really good. Definitely. If you just do two. Do those like Copy AI and Moonbeam and just try it at your job, it's free to sign up with Google and you get, I don't know, 2,000 words for free. Type in some words and see if it makes a difference to you. Whether it's crafting email, doing a blog, doing catchy headlines for Instagram, or even just idea generation. So if you're trying to convey something to a colleague and you're writing an email or you need to do a report, type in what you've got and it will generate further ideas and points for you to then put into your report. It's a really great tool. Get amongst it.

Okay, awesome man. We're gonna check it out. The last thing I want to touch on in crypto Burke's is some of the major NFT sporting NFTs have been developed for the last few months. So we've lost, you know, I guess year or so. So we've got the likes of NBA, UFC, NBC, NFL, Dr. Seuss. That's not sport. But some major companies like Dr. Seuss, Samsung, Ubisoft, Cryptokitties, Animaker brands.

These are the biggest brands, biggest brands.

In the world and they're not being built on Ethereum, which is the largest layer one blockchain where a lot of NFTs are built.

There you go.

This is fascinating. They're being built on what's called the Flow blockchain ticker. Flow for Flow. So Dapper Labs is the creator of, of this Flow blockchain and basically it's purpose built to support NFT collectibles and large scale crypto games. So Flow is basically a blockchain that is designed for extensive scaling without the use of sharding. So it provides a fast and low cost transaction that makes sense for dapp, such as anti marketplaces, crypto video games and yeah, it's really being created to solve the congestion problem that we saw back in the day when cryptokitties was created. It completely basically shut down the Ethereum blockchain with the amount of like fees it was in gas fees it was creating.

So this is it. Whenever you have new technology you deploy cats on it and it'll just blow up and it'll destroy it. So this is guaranteed. Whenever you have any new technology, deploy cats on it and it will just destroy it. It'll obliterate everything. People will just come running towards it. We saw this with lolcats on the Internet, cat videos on YouTube and crypto kitties on Ethereum.

So we won't go into like how flow works but basically it's, it's making it easier for bigger brands to come onto the blockchain because the scalability but also has a little bit more centralization so it allows you to interact with the blockchain a little bit easier making these, you know, I guess businesses and companies have more control and allow them to modify the blockchain and the games a little bit easier. So it's an interesting one Bergs with with the growth of a lot of these NFT collectibles in sport businesses and flow looks to be really killing it. So yeah, I don't know it's one of those blockchains that doesn't get a lot of limelight but has a lot of actual real world use utility. A lot of real world clients from.

A business perspective I really like this because it solves a specific problem and the problem is that if you're deploying on Ethereum, it's a general purpose blockchain, you can do a lot of stuff on it. There's no Ethereum management you can call, you can't roll things back. If you've got a problem, you're stuffed and you're competing with everyone for gas prices. So it's pretty much like Uber, you're competing. If everyone wants a Uber, you, you're paying surge pricing that's not going to be good for your customers. And if you think you're, you know, think about this. You're a big brand, you've got your brand to protect and you want a good experience for your customers but you also want to use newer technologies. Are you going to use something like Ethereum or are you going to use something that has the majority of the new technology feels like the new technology but you have more ownership and control and you have better pricing and just a better experience for your customers and you can perhaps innovate faster. That is what I really like about.

This from an investment perspective. Berg's flow is down right now 96% from its all time high.

Woof it is.

It topped out at $42 back in April and is currently sitting at A$50. This is one I'd look into for those people that wanting to get into crypto and want like an actual sort of real world. If you talk about utility, you know this is one of the what one asset, one crypto asset I'd look into. There's a potential, you know, something that you know has got real revenue and real clients and you know, I would think it's pretty undervalued at the moment.

And definitely not financial advice but this relates to a really important point that, yes, this is a blockchain, yes, I've got customers, yes, I've got a token, but why should I invest? And perhaps we'll go through some things that people that are new that can perhaps help them out, and things that they can look at or when they're considering these different projects. And generally when a thing like this happens, and again, you know, you might not be technically competent or understand everything that's going on, but if someone is releasing a token, I want to know how much of the token is there, right? And who owns that token? Do VCS own it? Do the general public owner, are they using it on the blockchain? Or do you know, does a company own it, where is it? And then is there a lot of it locked up that can be dumped on the market? And the thing is like, sometimes companies will release a token and there won't really be any utility or incentive to use it to keep buying, to keep that buy pressure. But they've released it to get funds to build their product. So you need to know why this token exists, who it is for, and then also look at the price that it is. Like, if it needs to go up a certain amount for you, what would that take in real dollar terms? Would it have to double the application of that blockchain? And what does that look like? And you need to think through this as well as their future roadmap. Look at the things like the team, are they able to execute? Do they have a history here? Have they raised enough money? Have they raised too much money? Are they complacent? Are they active on their Twitter and discord? Are they constantly releasing betas? Do they have a git repository you can look at so you can actually gauge the activity? Look at all of these things, because not only can you invest in them, but these are tech companies, but they're also crypto companies that have treasury management and a lot of things going on in the back. A lot of things to consider.

Great points. So I'm going to put in the description below. We've just recently done a resource on how to look into token economics on Collective Shift. So we'll put that in the description, plus we'll also add we do have a flow blockchain asset page over Collective Shift. If you're looking into any crypto asset, We've reviewed over 60 different assets in our assets library and you can look under what flow is, basically what it does, the utility of the token, and a bullish and bearish analysis from our internal analyst. So if you're wanting to do deeper research on crypto. Head over collective shift. We'll add those links below.

Absolutely.

Awesome Bergs. Let's get into the business side of things, mate. So you had this Fancy Long ass LinkedIn name, right? What I don't even know what the fuck it is I always say is Aaron Burkhuber. You're always a, you know, Mumbai cd mate.

They're my pronouns. Bitch, fuck.

Does that even mean are you a, she, he, they, or them? What does that mean?

I'm a btc eth mate.

I haven't even thought about my pronouns. Cisgendered, he, him, there you go. You can call me day, them. I don't really care. You call me. Everyone calls me anyway. It doesn't really matter too much. I'm not, I'm not very particular about it.

What's an NBA though? Let's. Let's break it down. You get your cop, mate, you know, I don't like you. A lot of people don't like you. Why is it, mate, you got this NBA get?

It's not because, wait, because of my MBA or just generally.

No, Even if you didn't do NBA, I wouldn't like you. But MBA makes it worse.

You're a piece of shit. All right, let's get into this because I have, I've seen so many people posting this shit on Twitter, I've been getting into fights with them and I'm like, get fucked. Okay, so an MBA is a Master's of Business Administration, right? And what this means is you go to uni, generally four years part time, one year full time, and you learn a shitload about business. You learn things like organizational behavior. So in that there's leadership, motivation, people management, a whole bunch of stuff, economics, marketing, finance, accounting, legal stuff. You just do heaps and heaps. So. And really these are all the kind of facets of a business. And I gotta say let's, let's start off at the basics. People hate on MBAs, and generally it's the United States people, because they cost a lot of money. So if you're in the States and you go to a top tier University, an MBA is about US$200,000 in my opinion. Like that is ridiculous. Is it worth it? Probably. Because if you think about it, if you're going to Harvard or Stanford or whatever it may be, if you're going to one of these places and you're getting a top tier mba, that says something about you. It says you're qualified in a certain way. You're at a certain level and you automatically catapult yourself to a certain job. If you work in consulting, you'll likely pay that money back in, I don't know, four years, something like that. You will. You'll generally earn a lot of money. It's a big stepping stone for people. It's why they have it.

What does it stand for?

Mba, Masters of Business Administration. Okay, so they're teaching you to be a business leader, to understand all the facets of business and how long does.

It take to do the course?

I just went through all this. You're not listening.

But can you do it full time or can you do it.

Yeah, full time. Full time, one year. And they guarantee you a job at the end. Or you can do it up at least, generally four years part time, or you can spread it out to like eight while you're working.

Did you do. But I thought yours was longer than a year.

No, mine was four years. I did it part time. So I do it while I was working full time. And it was about 12 hours extra per week.

Yeah.

Okay, so this is the thing. And if it's 200 grand, that would probably be a blocker for me to do it in the States in, in Australia, it's very different. So I went to one of the accredited top 100 ones. So, like a decent one. And that cost about $60,000 for the whole course. Now it's not. You pay $60,000, you get a thing called fee help. So the government pays your fees, and then the money that you earn, your wages at a certain percent, get garnished and they pay it back. So if you never earn any money the rest of your life, you will not pay this back. It's only when you're earning a certain amount of money, they take a few percent off and it pays back that loan. The other thing is this is spread out over four years. So you've only got that small amount up front. With the amount that I was earning. I would generally just pay it off as it goes because it would just come out of my wages. The other thing is you can also claim a tax discount on this. So a lot of people don't know this. They don't know you can actually claim the fee help. Right? Please fucking just talk to your accountant about this. Because I was talking to our accountant about this and I was like, nahla, I'm pretty sure we can do this. He's like, well, I'm not sure. I'm like, nah, lad, I'm pretty sure. And we went for it and it was fine. Like I got ordered and it was great. So get your fee help and then you can still claim a 30% discount or whatever your marginal tax rate is as an education expense. So for me, I was working at the hospital, I was in a management role and I was doing a management degree. All of those line up so I can claim that as an education expense. So that takes 18 grand off. It's 42 grand over however many years it takes to pay back. And this, that is a very good trade. And the reason. And let's just go into entry requirements as well. So. And who should do an mba? Let's just fucking start there. Who should do an mba? I think the entry requirements are.

Hold up, let's go, let's go back a step. What were the things that you now four years on after completing your mba? Like, what have you gotten out of that course? Let's start with like, what are the, like the actual.

Oh sure.

Like, like let's get that. And then let's work back and figure out who should actually do it.

Alright, let's get into it. The things I have now is, I think I was very, I was very technical person, I studied information systems. So I had like one kind of skill set. I was actually incredibly introverted, nerdy, didn't understand a lot of stuff. And what the MBA does for you, it's not about a piece of paper, it's about personal growth. You're thrown into these difficult situations and not only are you working full time and you're probably in a management role, you have to go with these other people at night. You go generally once a week for three hours. You have to study, you have to read all this literature. And the literature we're referencing is literally like our lecturer. It's like that high quality of like you're learning the latest trends in services marketing or you know, some kind of strategic management, whatever it may be. Let's take marketing for an example and this is probably the best way I can explain it. I did marketing as my first unit and my first thought was marketing, yuck. Like disgusting. Gross. You're gonna be running ads or some shit. I was like, fucking idiot. Right? So rock up. And honestly, it is just business cases about what Coke did, what model they used, how they pivoted, all these strategic models and frameworks on how to, how to assess how to do a new product, which market to go into. It was just hardcore strategy. But the kicker on this was whenever you do an assignment, you have to relate it to Your current business. So I was working at the hospital and let's say we're doing services, marketing, or within the first seven weeks, you have to do an assignment. And we're a service industry. So all the business problems I had, whether they were, you know, communication problems, employee problems, whatever it may be, I applied the service profit chain, which is a marketing model, to my business. And I have to write that report, I have to get it marked, and I have to give it to my boss as well. Like, it's incredible. So not only are you learning, you're applying it to your work, but here's the really big kicker. So while we were doing that in marketing, we had to run a program called Mark Strat and basically we got into groups of six and we had to make these. These things are called so nice. And voters. It doesn't really fucking matter. It's like smartphones and, let's say smart watches. Everyone starts off and you've got different resources, different inputs. You've got market analysis, data, and you have to decide within that week. You got to get together with your team, apply everything you've learned and be like, what are we going to build? What attributes are these smartphones going to have? Are they going to have big screen, small screens? How many are we going to produce? How much are we going to spend? And all this, how are we going to brand it? All this sort of shit, where are we going to spend our money? At the end of the week, they run the simulation and immediately you get the results. So you're playing against 10 other teams. Right? Right. And it'll come back, oh, you sold all of your things.

But that.

Then you're like, fantastic, I've got money for next week. I don't have the base level, I'll be able to do more stuff. But what happens is you didn't produce enough, so you've got lost sales. Or you produce the wrong thing and no one wanted it, or your competitors beat you and they took the entire market. So you constantly getting this feedback and applying all the models that you're learning like you are real marketers sitting in a war room trying to beat this. Or if you produce too much, then you have to pay extra money because you have to house something in a warehouse. It's incredible. And then it's like a technological rust. You can put money into R and D till you create what were smartwatches and then you can capture the entire market. So we saw how markets played out and how you need analysis, predict trends, apply all these models. It was just phenomenal. So what this did for me was it gave me. It's like I have an ability to speak 12 other languages now. Yeah, like, fuck, I can understand accounting, managerial finance, quite a lot of like legal stuff. And it just gives me the ability to feel comfortable in any room. I can speak to anyone in a business about any topic. And it gives me the knowledge as a manager to talk to an expert at a level where I can understand and direct them. And the whole thing about being an MBA is you don't sink like they train you so well that they'll throw you in the deep end and you will float no matter what it is. You'll have experience or a knowledge or a network to be able to apply to that. And really what you're doing here is you're going. What it did for me was I went from a specialist, which was just this huge kind of information systems and system designer to a generalist. Yeah. Right across. And it was a team, model employee. And this is important because when you employ people in and you're like, okay, let's say Ben, you work in a lab, you're a technical guy, you fucking do blood tests, okay, now you're a manager, how can you expect that person to succeed? Like, I'm not saying they need an mba, but they don't have any management training, they don't understand people, motivation, human behavior, all of these things. And really when you go through this and you're with all these other people and the experiences they have, you just grow so much as a person. It's not just while you're doing your mba, you apply that for the rest of your life and you come out a complete different person. Yeah.

And even in our startup or any startups, like as a, you need to be general, it's not specialists. It's like you could go into any of our meetings bergs and add a lot of value whether it be strategy, finance, product marketing, whatever. And what I loved about, you know, the skill sets you bring is these real like really clear, simple models and frameworks to think it's something very simply and always have some sort of very simple, clear methodology. Especially when we have like problems or strategy we need to work through. There's always something you've put pulled from maybe your MBA or networks where we sit down and we do, we just map it out. The variaro model, competitive analysis, pricing models, like whatever.

Even the meeting we just had, right with those couple of guys where I'm like, hold on a minute, took like one minute to understand what was going on and then reframe the entire conversation for everyone so we know exactly what we're talking about and everyone's on the same page.

Yeah, yeah, that's. It's, it's good. Who do you recommend does this course?

Everyone, mate. So.

Honestly, like, I recommend this to everyone. I've seen quite a few of my mates do it and come out just completely different. Humans, like they are. So they understand the spectrum. They operate in the gray now. They understand the nuance. Things aren't black and white to them anymore. So I would recommend this for anyone. And okay, let's look at the type of person. Don't do this when you're young. Do not do it when you're young. I know people that have done that fresh out of their undergrad or had a couple of years experience and they wish they had done it later. So I started this when I was 32, so I had a decent amount of work experience and I was at that level where I needed something more. And actually this, this came about because when I was working with Fiona, you get the talk. And the talk is, do you want to do research? Do you want to do a PhD? Do you want to go into medicine? And in my head I was like, fuck all that noise. I want to do an mba. So I went to the pub with my mates and There was about 10 of us. We all agreed to do it, and only Josh and I were the ones.

That signed up to do it.

This was just at the pub and we're like, look, this is what, like, if you look at any person on a board or in, you know, a higher position, quite a lot of them have done an MBA or they've gotten to that position and they've done an executive MBA out at Harvard or something like that. And there's a reason for that because it teaches you really well and it gives you a really awesome base of knowledge and you're just much better for understanding those different areas. And I want to highlight something as well. So people that should do it have at least, like, the entry criteria is 65% of your undergrad. If you haven't gone to uni is eight years work experience. I think that eight years work experience is great. And I probably wouldn't do it before you're 30, unless you've had a shitload of experience and you're looking to get into it and the type of person to do it. If you're in a management role, you're going to continue in that or you're going to change industries. I highly recommend the part time one to do it while you're learning so you can apply it to your business. If say you're a teacher and you want to completely reskill to a consultant or get into another industry, or if you're an engineer, like over half our cohort was engineers because it was a big downswing and they wanted to reskill, do the full time one because the full time one's amazing. Your place of businesses, you go to Silicon Valley, you learn so much stuff, you get connected with the best business leaders and at the end of it, you're guaranteed a job which is just phenomenal. Like any consulting company will snap you up. I cannot recommend it enough. And the thing is, the pathway is so the MBA is 12 units. And I started off with a grad certain business that's only four units and you can do that in a year. So 12 hours a week for a year. And the units are organizational behavior, economics, marketing and accounting. And honestly, just having those, you'll be light years ahead of everyone else just understanding those fundamentals of business. And I also think one final thing is like this thing that set me off on Twitter, man, this guy's like, oh, an MBA comes to a startup and goes, oh, you know, your, your retention's down, so is your, you know, attraction of customers. You should look into that and fix it. And I reply and I'm like, first of all, my initial reaction is get fucked. I mean, that's a pretty shit mba. First of all, a good MBA will come through and say, okay, these two things are happening in your business. Here are some of the strategies and tactics that you should be applying to your business. A great MBA will come in. Do those things, set them up for you and measure against them and perhaps if they're contracting as well, get those things done for you or get the right people in. Because no good just going to business, appointing and saying, oh, over there. That's great for like coaching and a few other things. But if you're very specific, especially with startups, and you are really good at this, those are the things you should be doing. And I think the final thing I'll say is.

Not all MBAs are like me or like Trav or like Raf or like Josh. You know, there's, there's a few that aren't. There are a few that coasted through that did it for the piece of paper and they've got relatively the same ideas as when they started. Just because you have an MBA does not mean you're not a potato. I've seen quite a few MBAs that are potatoes and I would not hire, but I've got to say the overwhelming amount of my cohort, like over 80%, I would absolutely hire any day.

I think what it's good is about like a mix. Like in our team, for example, like, you know, Iman and I don't have MBAs, but even when you and I work, you know, did a lot of work in the past few years, like we have a good balance. Like it's a, it's a completely different perspective. Like I don't come from. I haven't done any university degree or business degree. Like mine's.

Yeah.

Completely different. But then there's a lot of areas that I struggle that I need that real strategic thinking right on your side. Like, so I think it balances itself out really well.

Absolutely. And when you talk about team composition, team performance, all these kind of things, you know, all the good you learn in the NBA. That's exactly right. Could you. This is the thing. If you had the Chicago Bulls, your shirt. Imagine if there was a team of Michael Jordans that would be. Or a team of Scottie Pippins. You need different people on the team with different skill sets, different experiences. You don't have to have an MBA on your team. MBA was just the path for me to gain all of those. The experience, the knowledge, the language, meet all those people, to learn all of those things in a very structured, compact and safe way. Yeah. The other way would be to have multiple businesses do all these kind of things and you don't necessarily have all that control. That was a go fast path for me and it really expanded my knowledge and skillset to the point where I then knew what I wanted and could apply that. And people were telling me just in my old work how much I had changed and the things I was doing now and the way I thought strategically and was able to convey messages to people and how much of a better communicator I've become. And that's because I did that study.

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I think I'd like to do it one day. But yeah, like you said, I've just probably the timing career wise and there's a lot. It's a big commitment. Right. It's not, it's not an easy thing to just go and do.

The one you should do is for you probably later on, like when you're, when you're 30 or a bit older is. I think it's the executive MBA at Harvard. It's the God course. Right? So this is one, I think it's only. I don't know how it might be three months full time or six months full time. I'll have to look into it. But this is the one where like when Wesfarmers, so big company in Australia, they're looking for their next CEO, they'll send like 20 or 30 people. There's. And they had just weapons. Like it's you running through like, you know, finance. Like what's your return on assets? What's this? What's that? This is the framework we use. This is the way, mate. It is just unbelievable. Like what's your free cash flow? What's this like that is one. So people like even swizz beats, like all these rappers, all these guys have gone and done that course because they jam knowledge into your head really quickly. And if you're a practitioner, this is the one that you want to get into.

Amazing. Amazing.

All right, so There you go. MBAs aren't all trash.

Now what wouldn't be trash? Bergs would be at Ben and Berg's podcast summit.

So, so, okay, here we go, Here we go. We've got three options. So a summit, a conference and a meetup. So the difference between those, a summit is like, you know, top of the waza, you're inviting the best people in their fields to present. A conference is people that are interested and they present on research or whatever the fuck they're. Or would it be more like a kind of meet up type thing? A multiple day meet up, experiential retreat type thing. What are you thinking, mate? Which of those do you like?

I. I think, I think we should do like a lot. Just even starting from the. Starting from the bottom. Now we're here. Starting from the bottom.

Yeah, boy.

Pub. Pub, meet up, live pod.

All right. Okay, okay. Let's start there. Let's start there. That's good because we're not the all in podcast, you know, we're not going to do a fucking summit with fucking raging investment bankers talking about some shit I don't fucking understand. What we are is we've got a $500 bar tab minimum. So there you go. Thank courtesy of Ben. We'll bump that up to quite a bit more. All right, we'll have a pub meetup. We'll meet all the degenerates that actually listen to this. Love you, you're amazing. Would be nothing without you. And then we'll have a few beers and we'll do a live pod, mate.

We'll do a live pod. So I think we get a venue. Maybe. Maybe. Probably. Melbourne is probably the best place. I reckon that's where my.

Yeah, I'll fly out. All right.

Come over to Melbourne. We'll hire out a pub for the. For the. For the evening. Few frothies. Live pod, live Q A. And then. Then just rip into it burgers, chicken wings.

So. Yeah, okay. Right, so what food are we gonna have, mate? We've got.

We've got to have hot wings, definitely chicken burgers, obviously.

Big burgers or sliders.

No burgers.

Yeah, boy.

Oh, this is gonna be sick.

Yeah. Now proper food, like, lots of beers on tap.

Yeah. Huge bar tab.

Huge bar tab. Yeah.

A whole listenership of alcoholics. We know it already.

And if you're not, you soon will be.

That is awesome. All right, we're gonna hire out. Yeah, we'll hire at a pub, hire out a room. Yeah, Food's on, beers are on. And we'll do a live pod.

Yeah, I think sometime. Sometime next year. Maybe early the mid.

Next year. Early, man. We'll do summertime, man. Beers taste better.

Maybe like. Maybe like March. Feb. Or March. Maybe March. Okay. Okay.

Oh, this is gonna be good, man. I can't wait.

It's gonna be good. It's gonna be good. You and I, mate, even if no one shows up. Be good. Fun. I'm happy.

Oh, man. We'll smash a bar tab. No worries.

We'll just do the pot. Us too, mate. It'd be so good. It'd be so good.

Amazing. Cool. So good into account personal growth. So how did you.

Ben, Ben, Ben. Did you understand the rules this week, mate? The rules you set yourself, did you understand them?

Of course I did.

Yeah, but you said that last week and you didn't, mate, so jog our memories. What. What was your challenge for the week, mate?

My challenge for the week was no phone in my bedroom.

Of an evening. So when I got no social media, basically, like, first of all, it was no social media before midday. And then it was like to leave my phone out in the kitchen when I went to. When I went to bed. So I didn't use my phone before going to bed or when I wake up. Tick, mate, tick that off.

What about the night you didn't sleep, mate? Did you get up and use your phone?

Okay, to be. To be clear, it was no social media on my phone in my bedroom. I went out to the kitchen to use my phone to message and go on social media. No, no social media. Kept it out there. Didn't go on social media. Kept it.

Wait, wait. I'm gonna go on your Twitter, mate, and if I find a bloody post between those hours, you're gone, son.

No, hold up a minute. So.

No, no, no holding up. No, no, no, no, no.

It's the goal here.

Look at you, Slippery. Look at you.

Not to use social media. And Sasquatch. I did have a couple of tweets that popped up with our absolute gold. So I went in, open Twitter, hit the compose, wrote the tweet, bang, publish, close. Didn't look at anything, no notifications. I saw. Mate, I'm trying to build a personal brand, mate. I can't. I can't not have, like, these golden tweets come out of the great moments.

You slippery gypsy, mate. You are just sliding away, mate. Try not to pay another 500 bucks. You could have set this up earlier, put it on a timer, put it on some software, mate. Nah, that's it. We're gonna. We're gonna get more specific about these bloody goals, mate, because that is horseshit. That is horseshit. I'll give it to you this week. But, mate, we're gonna have to set some rules. You need some boundaries, son. Look at you.

How's your paint job, mate? Who'd you outsourced to do your painting?

Nah, smashed it. So this was very, very painful, right? Like, this is the worst thing I did not want to do, man. And I had to do it just over the weekend, right? So I had to cram in so much stuff. So I get out the. The bloody poly filler and I start filling in all the bloody gaps and I'm like, sanding it back. And then the missus comes along, she goes, oh, yeah, those tiles, like, they're not sealed on the top. We should probably paint those as well. I'm like, oh. So I'm looking at the clock and I'm like, oh. Because I've got to seal the tiles now and I've got to go around and do all this extra stuff. And I'm like, look, it's just not going to get done today. And I'm like, oh, like, it's not going to be done by Monday. We're going to have the pot. We're going to. Ben is just gonna roast me for the rest of my life, and I'm not having that. So, look, I just went hard, sanded it all back and then sealed everything. And then on the Sunday, I ended up doing the cutting in twice and two coats as well. About two and a half hours each. Time. So five hours of painting, plus all the prep and putting away and putting the tape on and taking the tape off and scraping things. It was my whole weekend, mate. But I did it because I'm like that. And I'm accountable, Ben. I'm accountable to our audience. I'm accountable to you. And that's the type of man I am, mate. So absolutely smashed it. And now I sent Ben photos, progress photos, and he was just roasting me, trying to get in my head. But I wouldn't let it happen, you know, Living in my head rent free, mate. And now I just walk into the bathroom. It looks amazing. I feel like I've achieved something. It just feels great. It feels good to finally do that, man.

How does this accountability, this is unbelievable. Like compounding too. Like you've, you've crushed. What'd you do? Stretching. Then you did the. You did painting and you saw my.

Arcade machine, which was painful.

Bang, bang, bang. I'm now going to the gym. I went to the gym yet on Sunday, mate. I haven't gone to the gym on a Sunday in fucking years. Been going to the gym five, maybe six times a week. Not using my phone before lunchtime. Social media, I'm. I'm wired in. I'm not taking it to bed. I'm wired in. And now Bergs, I've come up with my next week.

Here we go.

I'm going to. I'm going to read a book.

When I read bergs for 30, fucking believe I'm saying this. 30 minutes a day, every day until the next pod.

Easy, mate. 30 minutes is nothing. Can you perhaps do something harder? You're gonna be on a plane for 24 hours, mate. You could finish a whole book.

I have tried to read 30 minutes a day for a long, long time. But I'm adhd. I'm fucking fidgety. I'm trying to do stuff. I cannot sit down for more than five minutes. I'm buzzing.

All right, these, okay. Understand these are individual goals and it's about you doing your personal best, not what someone else sets for you. Right?

That is hard for me.

Yeah. Like again, selling an arcade machine might be easy for someone else, but it's the hardest thing. And you're right, but you're right. This compounds so much. Like the cognitive offload I have now. Not having that arcade machine and having that bathroom painted is. And just stretching, right, Is incredible because I now go out and when I lift weights, there's no arcade machine. It's not tight. I feel good. Not tight to like, move my weights around. I've got more space and I feel good that I've achieved something. And I walk into that bathroom, like, this isn't bothering me anymore. Like, for 10 years it's been bothering me and I didn't realize how much has been bothering me. I can literally feel the pain and the tension from it that is now gone. It is incredible. It is so, so good. All right, so he's compounding for you. You're going to read 30 minutes every day. Now let's set the rules. You got to start today. I ain't letting you off today, mate. Between now and the next pod, which should be Monday, but it might not because, Ben, I cancel everything. Simpson will probably reschedule it. So between now, the next pod. Minimum 30 minutes per day. Cannot skip a day and do an hour tomorrow, mate. Okay, and what book are you going to rate? Do you even have a book with you?

Yeah, I've got books with me and I have not opened. I travel because I bring them everywhere I go. I'll bring a book. I'll read, I'll read, I'll read. Don't read.

Yeah, I'll read, mate. It never happens.

So I'm just gonna. I don't know where the book is. I'll pick a book. I'll pick a book.

All right, brilliant. And I want some, I want some notes, mate. I'm a quizzy. Hopefully it's one I read before.

Okay.

All right. Well, that's awesome, man. That's really good because that's, that's a hard thing to sit down, not be fidgety. And especially with the things you've got going on, the way you've been operating, the 15 hour days, the way your brain works, jumping from one thing to the next, that's a very difficult thing to do, is sit down, sit still just right. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And not feel like you're wasting time or you need to be doing something else or you have to be good for the mental health. I love it. I love it. That is a hard thing and that's what I like about it, man. Brilliant. This is about hard shit. All right, so this is mine. And I really thought about what I want to do. And yes, I could do more painting. I could sell another thing. I could do whatever. But my challenge is that.

I sit down too much and I work too much. Right? Like, I always put that ahead of everything else. And how do I reverse that? Like just saying, oh, don't work so much or don't do it. It's not really gonna work for me. Cause I like it and I do it. What I really need to do is just move more. That is the thing that I need to do. So my challenge for this week is to do something every day. So I'm going to walk for a minimum of 30 minutes every day. Just get outside, get in the sun, and go for a walk. I usually walk for about an hour, but let's just set it at 30 minutes, right. Because I've got other stuff as well. And look, if it's raining, I probably won't go for a walk. Like, I would do it to not lose to you, but I'm like that. I'll do like 40 burpees instead, because I hate burpees. They suck and 40s a lot for me. Absolutely sucks. Right. But generally the sun's good, so I'm going to walk 30 minutes every day. I on top of that, between now and the next pod, which will be Monday, which is fine, I'm going to lift weights three times minimum, like three decent sessions. In those sessions, it's going to have to be minimum 100 kilo deadlift, minimum 40 kilo military press, minimum 60 kilo bench. Yeah, my bench is weak. I get it. Unless I'm injured. Right. So they're the minimums. Obviously, I'm going to try and lift more than that.

Yep.

And one day is going to be dead and pressed. The other one's going to be dead bench. The other one's going to be dead press. So there we go.

Do you do this regularly, Bugs? Like, are you hitting the gym doing heavyweights like that regularly, or is this banging?

So I. I was. I was three times a week until about probably three weeks ago. It went down to two times a week because I got a little bit sick and I had, like a niggling injury. Last week was I had two workouts, but only one was heavy weights and the other was like throwing a medicine ball around and some kettlebell stuff. So this is going to be incredibly challenging for me because recovery is very hard for me as well because I just sleep like a dog. So if I'm lifting this amount to recover within two sleeps is very, very hard for me to do. But I'm gonna have to tackle it. I'm gonna have to eat and build up my resilience so I can start doing this three times a week because I want to get those gains. And the thing is, I want to close that Captain's a crush gripper, mate. Like, that is my goal of What I want to get to. Right? And okay, so. So for people that don't know about this, there's a grip challenge. And it's like a. It's one of these, right? These are called captains of Crush grippers. This is the number one gripper and that is 66 kilos of grip strength, right? Like closed. The majority of people can't close out. The average grip strength's about 45, 50 kilos for an average man. I've closed the number two, which is 88 kilos of grip strength, right. I can't close it regularly, but I've closed it like probably twice in the last couple of weeks. To get certified, you have to close number three.

It's certified.

Certified, right. Like you legit. Like only 300 people in the world have done it. You have to close. This is going to be a multi year journey. 127 kilos of grip strength. I'm at about 88 at my best, so I have to get about 50 more, which is incredible. And I'm gonna have to train grip three times per week and lift like that for at least minimum, I reckon a year to get up that strength, to be able to achieve that goal.

Okay, mate, let's do it.

It's an insane goal, but it go for the stars, mate.

Okay, okay. Absolutely. Accountability. Nice work. Well, they're compounding, mate. Week on week, they are.

And Ben, Ben, mate, mate. Oh, but this is the whole thing as well. It's like people like, oh, they work a lot and it's like, oh, you're rich. Well, why aren't you happy? And with me, it's just like I've got. I'm like, oh, yeah, great. You're happy, but you're not fit. Like, you're smart, but you're not. Like, you're fat. Like, what's wrong with you? You're not strong. You're an idiot. You're living a dumb life. So I can tackle that now, Ben, let's talk about how extreme you are, mate. You had to cancel the pod on Monday. And Ben sends me a photo. He's like, oh, mate, look, I'm not feeling too great. I gotta cancel the pod. And he's got a drip in his bloody arm. And I'm like, oh, lad, like, what happened, mate? And he starts telling me a story. And Ben. And this, this is just after he's posting thought leader posts on Twitter. Global luminary Ben Simpson posting things like, to have an extraordinary life, you need to be able to do extraordinary things. And I'M thinking, what a load of. And then he sends me this and Ben, you did an extraordinary thing. Do you want to tell people what happened and why we had to postpone.

The pod, mate, I feel like that scene or you brought this up. Bergs, the wolf of Wall street. When what's his face has too many of the too. He loads and he's crawling to get the loot.

He tries to get in the car, he's trying to drive. He's full paralytic and drooling everywhere. Donnie nearly dies. Like he took too many and he drives his car.

Oh my God. Anyway, okay, so being hustling over here in Dubai on my own. Work my ass off. Working mornings, nights, not sleeping much. I'm having.

You've been crushing it. And also, mate, I gotta say, sorry to interrupt, but you are getting epic results. Like when you went on this trip, these exhaust Results are probably 10x what I thought you would get. It is incredible, man.

It's been awesome.

You've been doing amazing.

It's been really good. But it's come as a cost. I've been having sleeping pills, been having stomach pills for my acid. I've been having like bloating pills. I've been having like food, vitamins. I've been having Panadol. I've been having like all this to try and keep my body moving. And I started to get really like constipated, basically, like bloated over the last. Over the weekend to a point. I got really bad. I bought these from the pharmacy, like these herbal laxative things. I was like, okay, maybe this will just get the get to get the system moving a little bit. Had one, didn't do anything. Had another one, didn't do anything. Wait a few hours. Had another two, didn't do anything. I was like, fuck, I'm feeling shit here. Went out for dinner, had one before we went and come back. Still doing nothing. Right. Fuck. Had another two before I went to bed. Ended up having seven of these tablets, Ben.

What was the recommended dose?

Two a day.

Seven, I said, along with all the other I was taking. Woke up two hours in and just was in all sorts of hurt, mate. I was on the toilet, I reckon, on and off for eight hours. It was awful. I. I rang the doctor because I felt terrible. Like, I was like dizzy, I was like dehydrated.

Yeah, comes in.

My blood pressure was like. I had no sugar. Like my body was just in all sorts of fucking problems.

Shit.

So they laid me down, they plugged me and got me on the IV drip, I was having all sorts of bloody vitamins and, like, all these, like, injections to try and get my body up and going. And he's like, what did you do, mates? Like, oh, I had a few of these. He said, how much have I had?

7.

He said, Mate, they don't work. Like, straight away.

I was like, oh, right, really? So they all hit at once and completely nearly OD'd on bloody herbal bow.

I could just. I could just imagine him looking at you. He's like, you dumb idiot.

Oh, man, it'd be so funny. Absolutely hilarious, man.

Feeling better, though? Absolutely cooked. Feeling better today, though. Back. Yeah, back on the feet.

Oh, brilliant. That's. That's the way, mate. This. You've actually reminded me of John McAfee as well. Remember that guy?

Yeah, yeah.

Where he said when he was young, he, like, took some DMT and it didn't kick in, so he did, like, 10 times a dose. And, mate, he went so deep that for the next 60 or 50 years of his life, he just thought he'd wake up back on the couch as a kid, like, because his life has been so wild and he went so deep, he doesn't know what's reality and what's not. Mate, you're extreme. Extreme. Ben. So good. So good.

Right, but I got five minutes to make sure to whip through the. The meme the week middle of the week. But I'm. Next week. I'm going to be back on. Heading back on a plane tomorrow, back to the land down under. I'm excited.

Oh, lovely.

So she'll be back on normal time zones. Hopefully won't cancel every. Every week for you.

All right, let's get into meme of the week. And I've got. I've got more than one, but we'll whip them quickly. So this is amazing. This is my favorite one. This is. This is definitely aimed at me. So there's a picture of Homelander just smiling the biggest smile and it says when your joke is so good that there's a special meeting with HR and the managing director just to talk about it. It's so good.

That is literally you.

Yeah, I always push the boundaries of memes and jokes at work. One day I'm getting fired, but, you know, for now, it's still good. I'm like, today's the day. Sweet release of firing. But no, we just keep pushing it. And then another event happened during the week. So this is the. Do you know who that is, mate? Yeah, the old British Prime Minister. Yeah, yeah. So, so funny. She's like, I'm a fighter. No, that's an Irish accent. I'm a fighter, not a quitter. And then on the bottom of the meme you got Tyler, the creator who the microphone going. So that was a lie. So good. She got ousted in 40 days.

Was she, is she gone within a month?

She's done, mate. She's done month and a half. See you later. But she was supposed to be a fighter.

Did she quit or did she got voted out?

She left, mate, she was out. And then here we go, there's, there's a picture of her with a Thanos chin and it just looks so good. And it says, becomes Prime Minister unelected, kills the Queen, destroys the economy, destroys the Conservative Party, leaves. How good? If that isn't Thanos, I don't know what is. Mate, that is just 40 days.

How is that even possible?

Mate, you just get in there, you just hit that limit. So you get that pension for the rest of your life and then you leave. Here we go. This is, this is the beans though. This is from some tabloid and it's an iceberg lettuce in blonde wig outlast Liz Truss. So they literally got a lettuce, put it on a desk, put a blonde wig on it and live streamed it. And it survived longer than Liz trust. And I'm going to read this out because it's cracking. A wilting 60p iceberg lettuce from Tesco in a blonde wig has been crowned the winner of a bizarre competition. After outlasting Liz Truss's tenacious grip on power, they the Daily Star webcam set it up to see if would have a longer shelf life than the Prime Minister. To add to Truss's humiliating resignation. The lettuce won. And that as they made her statement, the YouTube livestream soared to 20,000 people. When the Prime Minister confirmed her departure, a plastic gold crown was placed on the now browning leafy vegetable.

As it goes. And the caption was changed to the lettuce outlast live trust.

And then the lettuce was inundated with messages of congratulations. In a chat box beside the video, they included lettuce. Rejoice.

Lettuce being having you lettuce for PM Lettuce. One trust, zero trust sunk by an iceberg. And the final thing on this, this is cracking. What else could Liz Truss have done in 45 days? She could have cooked 9,257 hard boiled eggs. She could have listened 108 times to the Beatles entire back catalog of 213 songs. Watched 19 full length test cricket matches. Binge, watch, binge. Watched all the episodes of the Crown on Netflix 38 times. Or traveled back and forth along the Trans Siberian Railway six and a half times, mate. Unbelievable. Amazing. She got roasted so good. All right, let's jump back in. We're back. Ben had to leave for very important investor meeting. As you always do, you just call them investor. Was it really an investor meeting, mate?

No, it wasn't an investor meeting. It was with corporate places. B2B 2B.

All right, yeah, fair enough. All right, all good. Shall we jump into meal of the week?

Dude, I'm gonna miss.

I can see your meal of the week. I'm gonna pull yours up. And I can now tell why you were constipated. Mate, walk us through this one. You know what?

Here's the funny thing is I had this last night when I was constipated.

On the.

On last week on the pod, which you like. Oh, I ate these fat burritos. Old mate knows me by name. And I had these Mexican colas and I have tortilla chips. And you're wondering why. You're all backed up, mate. This is why you're like, oh, but I'm going to the gym six times a week, mate. And I'm not on my phone with social media.

I've literally. I've literally had tacos and burritos every day while I've been here, like 30 days in a row. That's probably why. Mate, look at them though. Look at it.

They do look delicious.

Can you blame me? Like, this has got this chicken.

Oh, look at that. It's chicken.

Okay, so they come out, the tortilla is warm. This got this chicken that's been like, I don't even know, spiced up like unbelievable. Got this Cos lettuce cold cos lettuce with cheese melted on top and chipotle sauce. Fuck, I'm that hungry. I'm gonna go get something in a minute after we've done this. It makes me hungry. This is unbelievable, mate. This place, they give you the. Give you the corn chips, little Mexican cola. Honestly, I've been here nearly every day. I'm not gonna lie. Nearly every day. And it just gets better and better. This is a.

It's a 9.9 burgs, mate.

I was gonna say it's gonna be close to a 10. Because you are fending this. No, I'm feeding because you got the inter. Look at just. First of all, just look at the color, it just looks so appetizing. You got more than one? Yeah, and it's the interplay between hot and cold, sweet and spicy. And you got your sweet drink and the crunch of the chips and the sauce as well, mate. This is like the social media equivalent of dopamine in food, where it just hits all those receptors, mate.

Yeah, literally making me, like, crave it right now. But I can't. It can't be a 10 because I had the day off yesterday because I'm backed up, so.

So if it didn't give you the shits, It'd be a 10. Yeah. Oh, sorry. If it didn't back you up, rather.

I suppose it's better than getting the shits. All right, man. So this is my meal of the week. So this, mate, is amazing. So on the left, we've got dal palak, which is just spinach and lentils. On the right we have a cauliflower korma. And then got a couple of curries here, mate. We have a spicy chicken curry. And we have chana masala, which is this, like, really spicy chickpea vegetarian, awesome thing. And we had a lot of our friends come over on Saturday, and we ended up playing board games, drinking way too much bloody port and wine and all that kind of stuff. And my missus made this, and it was incredible, mate. Like, it was so fresh and spicy and just nourishing. It's like an old Indian lady just gave you a hug around your stomach, mate. It was unbelievable. It was so homemade, too. So good. Yeah, man, it was just. It was incredible. And it was made the day before, so all the flavors went through. It was just absolutely delicious. I'm gonna give this.

Eight and a half out of 10, mate. And the reason is I take off one point because I just want a heave spicier. And then I'll take off half a point because I'd like some, like, fresh herbs and everything put through it, and then it would just be incredible. But I could eat this all day, every day, mate. This is the food of my people. And I was blown away. It's so good.

Cool, man.

Let's get into gratitude and kindness of the week. So I've got mine. And this might sound a bit weird, but I'm so grateful for the sun. Like, seriously, I was thinking about this the other day. Like, I wake up and I'll go outside and I'll get some sun, and just feeling that on my body and feeling it on my face and is incredible. It just makes me feel happy, alive. Thankful. We've been through winter. Winter absolutely sucks. It's cold, it's miserable, it's annoying. You can't go for walks, you can't get outside. The sun is great. It helps things grow. It shows up every day. We get energy from it. It's this, the reason we're alive. So I'm like, grateful for the sun. Thank you, son. Thank you for showing up.

Amazing, mate.

What about you? You gotta. You got a gratitude or a kindness?

I am grateful for this month in Dubai. I've had a. I leave tomorrow. I've had a belter of a month. I feel as though I've had every emotion. We've been volatile as fuck. We've cried together, burgs, we've laughed about this month. It's been, it's been a wild month. But to come off the back, I'm coming home with, with investors on board, I'm coming home with momentum, confidence. I'm coming home with, like, a new perspective on where we're at.

Just.

I just feel as though like I'm on another level. Like, I really do. I was saying this other guy yesterday, like, although I feel sick and crook, I just feel like I'm really. The team. We've got phenomenal. What we've been able to pull together and just, just where we're headed and the momentum we have. I'm just, yeah, super grateful. We've had amazing month. This place is incredible to buy. Like, I couldn't live here, but I certainly will be coming back. 100,000% I'll be coming back. Just the people I've met here and work with and seen and just like, it just brings you up. The people you spend time with, the, the people, the place that you're in, you're out of your comfort zone. You're forced to make shit happen, you know, like, you can go one of two ways here. You can go into your shell and you can just have a shit time living your hotel and hate life. We just fucking get amongst it. And, and, and, and the first week, I didn't get amongst. I was fucking scared and I was like, I was tired, I was miserable. I want to go home. And then something switched. Just got amongst it and I've had an epic time.

I remember you saying that we like, I don't want to be here missing my mates. It's a footy grand final, but I'm here for work. And then you're just like, I never want to leave. And we talk about being in the right room and being the Dumbest guy in that room, right?

Yeah.

Full of smart people and it sounds like Dubai is the place for that, where everyone's just playing on another level. So you automatically elevate where you are to attain more than you are. Just being around that and seeing, you know, people pouring out champagne or the riches they have or the way they do business or the money they have to invest, being around that must be really inspiring.

Yeah. 100 inspiring, motivating. So, yeah, grateful. Grateful to be coming home. I'm super pumped to get home. But yeah, it's been a good month. Cracker month.

Amazing, mate. What a note to end on.

Fantastic, Anton. Great episode. Next week we'll be back in Australia, both of us. Thanks everyone for listening as always. If you like this episode, we'd love for you to give us a review, good, bad or ugly? And hit us up on Twitter, babyback, Berg and au. Send us a tweet, a DM if you love being the pod. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.

And we are going to update our website. So we've got a site, benandbergs.com it's all just spelled out and on there we've got links to our socials, we're going to have the bar tab on there and a few other little surprises if Ben pulls his finger out and updates it.

That's accountability for me, I think. You've been on.

You've been on my back website accountability. And mate, wait, before, before we go, you had this hair brain scheme. You push one of our meetings today. And what time are you getting up tomorrow, mate? And why are you doing it?

I'm up at 4am tomorrow, I think.

Yeah. And why extreme Ben? Why are you getting up at 4am?

To break the jet lag. So. So I can get straight into meetings when I get back to Melbourne.

Does this actually work?

So there's this app called Timeshifter and it's a whole strategy I go through whenever I fly internationally to minimize the jet lag, to optimize efficiency.

Okay, you told me the pitch, but does it work?

Yeah, it genuinely works. Like, oh, awesome. Yeah, yeah, because so when you rock.

Up, you'll be like, I'm optimizing.

No, no, I won't be like 100%, but I'll be like 60. I won't be like, that's good enough. You know, I know some people that take like five days to get over jet lag. It's just like, I don't have time for that. Like, I need like a day and then just get back into it.

Yeah. People are falling asleep, like, mid meeting.

Yeah. And I like flying pleb class. Like, if you're flying business, usually it's better because you can get to sleep in, but I'm flying pled class, so I need to, you know, try to optimize as much as possible.

How long's the flight from dubai to Sydney?

14 hours. And it's during the. And it's during the day.

So it's gonna be 14 hours during the day in economy, mate. And then.

And then wake up in the day again.

Like wake up in the morning, not wake up, but, like land in the morning. So it's gonna.

Yeah, because there's seven hours difference between Dubai and Sydney, mate.

So I'm chasing the sun. So it's the worst flight ever, basically. That's what I'm saying.

Amazing. Amazing. Don't forget to do your reading, mate.

Yeah, true. Half an hour a day. Okay.

Awesome. All right, mate. Great episode. Thanks everyone, for listening. Catch you later.