200: How The F**k Did We Make It To 200 Episodes?

Welcome to the Bennetbergs Podcast. I'm Ben, a high school dropout, now founder of Collective Shift. And alongside me as Bergs MBA and CEO of Collective Shift, we're here to bring you world class crypto research strategies and insights to help you crush it in this crypto bull market. Plus, get an exclusive behind the scenes look as we scale Australia's leading crypto research company.

Yes.

Welcome Berbergs listeners. 200th episode we made it.

Charge your decorations.

All right, so for those just listening on the pod.

Ben, Ben's EA hit me up yesterday saying, I've got these spare balloons from the parties. I'm going to blow them up and we'll have them in the background. Do you have anything, do you have like a party hat or something? I'm like, man, I'm not wearing a party hat. Anyway, this morning it's about half an hour to go for the pod, so I Talked to the Mrs. I'm like, oh, can you kind of, you know, decorate my room if you've got any spare stuff? She's like, yeah, I love that. Comes in, does a bang up job. Look at this. We've got little streamers everywhere. We've got a little, little sign from the little one. 200th episode. She's actually written, what's wrong with Ben's face over here? And we've got all these balloons, all this like party stuff. I'm like, let's go rock up with Ben. Nothing there. And I bro, I'm prepared. I didn't want to be the unprepared one where we've got one decoration and one not. And he's like, no, I can't be, mate, they're downstairs. I'm like, go get your balloons. What do you do? He's like, I don't want to do it on Ben Simpson. So anyway, I'm like, no, go and get it. So he goes and gets it and he gets the number two from the 200 and he just. It's like he's got one of these baby straws and puts it in and tries to blow it up. And thankfully I was recording. What are you doing?

It's not even working.

What is this?

So running a multimillion dollar crypto company can't blow up a balloon.

The air is just coming back out.

You have to squeeze around. Are you coughing from your vaping? What? Is this from vaping? You're coughing.

I'm not vaping anymore.

Yeah, you still have a cough.

Yeah. Oh, that's from Canada. I don't Even cannot.

Oh, now fuck this.

Have you pushed it through far enough? Like. Well, things gotta go far enough and then you gotta squeeze around the bottom edge.

That's going pretty deep.

Oh, now it's working.

Jesus Christ.

Oh my God.

We did it. Oh, mate, the pre show. Amazing. So you've got a two. Do you even know where you're gonna put it?

Mate, I've got all this other. I'm not doing the other ones.

Where are you gonna put the 2?

Jesus Christ. This is so painful to watch, man. I wanted to do a look back for the 200th episode and I wanted to be. Now it's just, I want to work with someone professional that just doesn't. It just doesn't fail every single episode. Still rocks up. Doesn't know to charge his camera. Can't say the intro. Never prepared.

I'm over it, mate.

I could blow up a balloon.

Sir.

You wouldn't have been able to blow it up without my help. This just describes our company. Like everything would just like would fail without my help. You can't even blow up a balloon, mate.

Jesus.

It is an absolute crack up. He cannot blow up a balloon, ladies and gentlemen. And I'm like, Ben, just push the straw in a little bit further. Nah, it's not going to work. It's just not working. Pushes it in, blows it up. See Ben, you just need me there to just encourage you, give you a bit of direction and you can succeed. And now you've got the two from 200.

I did have a lot more balloons on like that. That was enough. That took me 20 minutes just to do this. So we were just.

So everyone thinks you're the hardest working guy and it's only hard because it takes you so long to do normal tasks. That would take one minute for everyone else, it's 20 times as long, mate. No, I'm.

I'm just good at what I'm good at. I'm not good at what I'm not good at. And blowing balloons is not something that's in my core competency.

That's fair enough. But basic things like having a key to get into the office where you don't have to drive there, drive home, get your key and drive back, you know, just everyday task, mate, because I'm.

I'm so fixated on the important stuff, the menial crappy stuff like blowing up balloons and, you know, keys to a, you know, an office. This isn't that important to me. Burks.

So you're operating at such a high level that all the knowledge of just basic everyday tasks like living and breathing just gets pushed out of your head.

I need to use that valuable ram space for more important stuff like winning.

Well, I suppose if you don't have that much space in your brain, then, you know, you would need to use it for those higher order tasks. I completely understand.

Well, you probably don't understand what it's like to, you know, work at such a high level and have to, you know, compute such important information. You know, you live more on the, you know, on the lower, the lower side of society. So I know it might be hard for you to empathize, but we both.

Agree that you do live on the spectrum. And you're not just left curving it, you're left left curving it. So there's a special Ben Simpson curve all the way to the left. And for the majority of like Tasmanians out there, we all kind of agree to that.

I mean, it's hard for me just operating up there and just looking down from the clouds and trying to just lift you up every day and just help you.

Right.

This is the second, the 200th and last episode of Ben and Bergson.

Finally, I'm free.

From the 201st episode. This will be called now the Ben show and basically fuck off.

So good. And we have prepared this episode and we're going to do a look back on the podcast and how we kind of change things, how the podcast has grown, how we're actually, you know, what keeps us going, how we still enjoy and how we've grown as people over the last 200 episodes. It's coming up on. It'll be like three years in July, mate, that we've been doing this podcast, which is pretty wild. Incredible.

Pretty wild. I want to give some stats just to start things off on, on how the podcast has been going and on over the last, yeah, 200 episodes. We're at 48,000 total downloads on the podcast, just the podcast alone. And on YouTube we've had 165,000 views. So close to just a tick over 200,000 views or downloads burgs on our podcast of last 200 episodes, which is pretty awesome.

That's huge. Plus we've got like Squill ins on Instagram, even views on Twitter everywhere, man, it's really, really good. And if you can't tell already, this episode is for the true Benneberg's fans. You're going to get a real behind the scenes kind of look at what goes on and how we think and celebrate with us all episodes that you've been listening to. And we made a decision very early on, Ben, that we were going to go. We're not going for just mass views. We're going for depth and connection with our audience. And I think on that front we've absolutely nailed it. Like some of the people that we've met are like super fans. Like, they just get us. They're our kind of people. And we've really found and connected with our tribe.

We have Bergson. It's taken a long time to figure out what that is because if you look back at our first episode, which I'm about to play a little bit of it for those newer listeners to get a taste of how bad we were.

Bergs before you before makes me cringe. Oh, 100, mate. Before you click play. For those listening to the pod. Up on the screen we've got Ben. He looks like a drug dealer. He's wearing a hoodie, he's got AirPods. He's got a Brooklyn beanie on. He's got his face right into the computer. I look like Ohgan.

You know, you look like you've never been to a security airport without being taken out the back and strip search.

So I've got a giant beard, I'm very pasty white and my body's all out of shape. I'm leaning back and I'm just not enjoying life. And it's just, it is terrible. Like I remember doing this first podcast going, we've just got to get this out the way. I've got my bookshelf, my Gary Vee books. I've obviously just bought a ton of books to get his crummy NFTs that brought me $0. And I remember we got into this episode. The episode was called how long, how long was it? Over an hour.

Over an hour.

And it was called Lessons from Crypto Investing America vs Australia NFTs in Real Life Episode 001. Now Ben.

You'Re. You're in the. You're in the Humble Beginnings room in Tassie.

Humble beginning sharing bug with my brother.

So unplanned, no notes and we just thought we'd record a conversation. Folks, we'll give you just a little preview. This is cringe worthy. Let's go.

Ridiculous. But we have chosen to some Riverside FM because uploads automatically.

Is that, is that the standard microphone?

That's my AirPods microphone.

Oh, Jesus. Okay, just acquired.

Spotify does video podcasts now so you can watch the video but you've got to upload through Anchorage.

That's wild.

Oh, my God. First of all, listen to my voice. It's very different because this is before my deviated septum surgery, so it's a lot deeper. Look at us, mate. We're episode one and we're explaining how to podcast. We've got gaps in between. We're saying. I'm like, that's wild. That's my response.

Let's just skip to a little bit and just hear something.

All right. Oh, mate. Yeah, cop that.

Still have no idea what science. I was like, so what is this? Like, who wrote these books? Who are you? You're getting paid. She's like, no. Like, I'm a volunteer here. And then.

This was such a good story.

Remember when I got. This is when I got st. Well, yeah, pretty much.

This was amazing. I doubt many people would have made it to the 16 minute mark on this episode, but this was Ben going in for a personality test in Scientology and he failed miserably. But they had all the solutions for him.

I didn't even know what Scientology was. Well, just so good. Scared me written on my forehead. So I had a note here about, like, how I hate doing emails, but I think so many people get caught up into, like, oh, yeah, I can't listen to this. This is horrific.

Right towards the end, did we have, like, meal of the week and meme of the week yet? No, I don't think we did Burgs.

It's been an hour, man. That's. That's been fun.

I've enjoyed it, mate. That was. That felt like five minutes on.

Yeah, that was awesome. Your posture looks horrific. You look like you just, like, crouch all the way back.

Like, look, bro, I. I remember how much my back hurt. Look at that. I got big titties there. I got no, like, shape anywhere. That is just disgusting. This is. This is corporate bod. I'm like, nah, like, my posture was just terrible. That was gross.

Anyway, we've come a long way from there. Bugs.

You couldn't even watch it for more than five seconds. The look on your face, you wanted to vomit.

That's so bad.

Do you remember us? Like, we were told something like, oh, it's really good to, like, look at the camera when you're saying something, like, really pretty profound and then put it in a clip. And then I went back and looked at our clips and you're just, like, staring directly into the camera and it's so. It's like, what the. It looks so weird. Like, you. You're telling me off.

You go from, like, talking Conversation to just like.

Yeah, yeah.

So those on the pod, Ben just put his face right in the camera. It's the scariest thing I've ever seen. But it's more like, oh, we're just doing a normal conversation. But now this is how bitcoin works. Works like looking directly down the camera.

And slow down your voice.

Oh my God. And it was just. And we thought we were the best and we were just like, oh mate, this is gonna crazy. We are podcasters.

We thought we were the best, but we're just the worst.

And it's, it's amazing how we've always been really authentic and taking things on board and now we're just like it. We're having a conversation. We leave. I honestly don't think we really edit any of our podcasts. It might be one or two like naughty swear words we might edit out. Yeah. Or we might, you know, rag or say something that we wouldn't want to say on the pod. But maybe one out of every 30 episodes we'll edit it out. The rest is just completely raw. Like this is just how we talk.

Yeah. I think we've gotten better. Be more, be more synthesized in our, in our content and you know, wanting to actually speak for the listener. You guys not just speaking for us because we can just waffle on all day. But if it's not valuable for you, what the we doing here?

Yeah, exactly. Right. Like if we talk at a super high level and there's all this context that people don't understand because you and I have God known each other for seven, eight years, that's just not going to fly. Like we need to explain things for the audience as well so people can keep up.

So how have you changed Bergs personally, how have you changed since we started the pod nearly three years ago, I'm.

A lot more depressed, anxious and sad.

Poorer.

Oh, I'm definitely not poor.

Less knowledgeable.

I'm definitely dumber. Yeah. For, for working with you. I'm more frustrated, more angry, disappointed. I've got a lot of resentment.

No, honestly mate, I think during the pod I think I've personally grown.

A lot. And some of those things are the basic one we talked about before like getting in the gym, looking after my health, eating better, getting out more. Those, you know, basic nuts and bolts really. You've helped me a lot. Focusing on, helping me to focus on my goals and what I want out of life and then having check ins and aligning to those and achieving them. Asking for help is a big one. You're very big on getting mentors in and to. To help you and accelerate you. And that's something I've done as well. Classic one, getting a pt, getting lessons here and there, just taking the fast path and really getting after it. That's something that's been a huge growth point for me. And then a major one is I've always been okay with public speaking, doing talks, those kind of things, but doing a podcast, doing it twice a week, and then really sharing parts of my life I was very uncomfortable with. And now I am completely comfortable with it to the point where we do it live at Oz Cryptocon with a massive audience, which is just an incredible experience for both of us.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think.

How about you, man? How have you grown and changed over the last two and a half years? And particularly with this podcast?

I think I have become a lot better at creating content from the podcast and being able to communicate better. That's really helped me on my personal brand, public speaking. I think we've created a much better, more engaged audience because of how, like you said, authentic we've been. I think you've helped me become more.

Defined in what I'm after. Like in, in the past, I probably was like, yeah, I want to build a billion dollar company and have a million employees and do all this shit. I'm like, nah, fuck that, I won't do that. Like, that sounds horrible.

Oh, let's talk about that. So that came about in 2022 and we had an executive meeting and this was in Melbourne in person. And we really sat down and talked about there were three of us executives at the time, there's only two now. And we were talking about what we wanted out of this company. You're like, oh, I want a jet, I want a billion dollars. I want this, I want that. And we're like, oh, geez. And that if you want that, yeah, cool, we can chase it. But it's a very long path and there's a lot of decision points along the way, and you will have to raise significant capital to do that. You lose control of your company. On and on it goes. So I said, well, that's, you know, that's the kind of starting point, but what do you really want? And it shook down to you wanted a lot less than that and you can still live one of the richest lives and facilitate what you want. And it became more about lifestyle and being able to do what you want when you want and having cash flow as well. And that was a huge change for us. And A huge mindset change, too.

Yeah. It's a time freedom, financial freedom. You know, you don't necessarily have the freedom when you're running a, you know, 100 million dollar company, you know, so, you know, it's just becoming more defining what I'm after. Being healthier, optimizing for freedom and happiness, not just money. Not doing the podcast because it's a chore. Like, consistency has been a big thing. Like, we've been doing two episodes a week for nearly three years. Like, that's pretty crazy. Not many people get that far.

That's important as well. Like, I think you and I are quite good business partners because we have the difficult conversations, we bring up the hard thing where, hey, you did this or you pissed me off. This is what happened. We do that almost daily, right? Like, if we have to, we don't let things fester. And I think we do that in the podcast as well. Like, earlier this week, we had it scheduled in. And you're like, man, I'm just feeling crook. This feels like something I don't want to do. It feels like a chore. Let's do it another time. Like, great. No worries. And we reschedule it to when we're in a better state and we can have a conversation like the one we're having now.

Yeah, yeah, agree. And also, I bet I've loved having the guests on. That's been awesome. Like, you know, I've learned a lot from the guests. We want to keep bringing on more guests. We got some more awesome people, you know, plan this year. Like, it's gonna be awesome to really bring on more special people that have done amazing things.

That was one of the things. I'm a lot less anxious in a lot of areas in my life. One of them is having podcast guests on. Do you remember when we were in Melbourne and we're having Chris Judd on the next day? And I was freaking.

You're freaking the out.

I was like, bro, what? Because. Because we've done no prep. Classic band. Like, he's like, I got a guest on. Yeah, that'd be fine. I've got some stuff. I'm like, cool, where's the stuff? Don't have it, mate. Don't worry, it'll be fine. She'll be right. And I'm like, no. Well, like, we've got a guest on. We need to prepare at least a couple of questions. You don't want it to be awkward, all those kind of things. And I've just. And the second you get in there, you Have a great conversation and it's fine. But I used to want to always prepare and now I'm like, don't worry, we can go in. It's just a conversation. We can do editing. It's fine.

I just remember that now. Like, you, you back in the day, like this, this is classic, like, difference between you and me, though. Like, you need to be prepared. I'm like, ah, it should be right. Maybe we'll figure it out. You're much better now with the podcast. You're the same as me. But when we first started, you were like, freaking out. I was like, bro, chill, we're going to be good. And then I got freaked out, like, well, you know, maybe I need to be prepared, but we'll find.

And then it's to the point where we did the live podcast at Oz cryptocon, and I expected 10 people to be there. There was over 400. It was overflow. People were standing, all the seats were taken. And you're freaking out at the start. You're like talking about asking him stuff, pacing up and down. I'm like, yeah, cool, I'm gonna go, go to the tour, you know, that kind of thing. Do you want waters? Like, you're like, no, no. I'll go to the toilet, like two minutes before, then I'll walk back and I'm going to time it. And I'm like, I'm poking here. I'm like, freaky out. I'm like, bro, I'm literally in shorts and thongs. We're going to sit on stage, drink beer, and we're just going to talk. It's going to be great. You're like, no, no, no. So I'm just like walking around poking the bear. It was so much fun.

It's got to be perfect. You know what it is? This is the coffees for the platinum members all over again.

Oh, yeah. I'm a perfectionist. That's. It's so weird though. Like, in some areas I'm like, nah, fuck, it should be right. Then other areas, I'm like, this has to be perfect.

A lot of the time you're like, she'll be right. We'll figure it out. And so I explained this. So we had a platinum in person event. We had a few cracking guests in Checkmate Trav. Great talks, great sessions. So we ended up ordering coffees and Benz organized everything. She wanted to have a coffee cart there. And Ben was like, no, we don't need a coffee cart. We'll just order coffees. No worries. She's like, are you sure? Like, yeah, okay. Anyway, place the order for the coffees, get them for the platinum members. We start the sessions and the cop 10 minutes go by, 20 minutes go by. The coffee's still not there. Ben's pacing up and down. Everyone's engaged, listening to the conversations. I'm at the back. Ben Case comes to me. He's like, man, where are the coffees? Where the coffees, man? He's like twitchy, he's stimming. He's like, oh, where the coffees? And then he's just free. I'm like, bro, don't worry. Look at everyone. They're hyper engaged. Look at how they're listening to Travis. No one cares about coffees in this moment. Nah, man, got to have coffees. Got to have the coffees. Eventually the coffees rock up. He's like going to Alice where the coffees call them again. Bur the coffees. That's all he's focused on. And he's put on this massive event. It's gone off without a hitch. Our high net wealth. People are hyper engaged and they're having a great time. But no talk about the coffees. The coffees didn't go right. Everyone's going to think it's a event. Eventually gets the coffees and he's like, oh. And he starts going through the audience and giving people all the coffees, interrupting all the. Because he wants to deliver the coff because it's stuck in his brain and that's the most important thing. I'm like, bro, you could just wait the 10 minutes, leave the coffees there and everyone can come and grab one, have a good time and have cake and everything with it.

The day was ruined because people didn't have their coffees. That was in my head, like, this is not the standard that needs to be.

This is classic Ben. This is why a lot of the time you're a to deal with because you'll get an idea in your head. You will hyper focus on it. Put so much emotion and importance behind it and it doesn't even para matter.

On the flip side, that is my superpower. Because when I've got a good idea like the summit game on.

One out of every 200, mate. This is why I'm so tired. I'm exhausted. This is why I have to go to the gym to continually build my resilience, to fend off these crazy ideas by Ben where he just goes and starts running. He's like, it's going to be fantastic. And then I'm like, no, you need to stop. He's like, nah, you're a dickhead. You just hold me back, mate. I'm going to get rid of you. You're a piece of shit. And then he finally realizes when all the emotion wears off a couple of days later, that was the dumbest idea in the world. Yeah, you're right, Burgs. I'm sorry, mate, I won't happen again. Three hours later happens again.

For those that can't tell, during these silent things, Ben's actually laughing really hard.

This is like a therapy session. It's like a therapy session.

It is. It lets me get a lot off my chest, mate. I mean, it's nothing we don't talk about and don't know, but you just got no recollection of the past. Like, I've never done this before, never seen it before.

I'm alive.

I'm like, bro, this came from you and you did it. Nah, I never have, mate.

But another thing is just speaking about anxiety, I am a lot less of an anxious person. Like, do you remember when I used to travel, I couldn't even sleep. I was freaking out about getting on a plane. There are legitimate reasons for that because I got vertigo and I got really sick and I was also worried about when I get there, will I have this, will I have that? Now I'm like, ah, I'll just get on there, we'll figure it out later. It's no problem.

Yeah, it's. Well, I think that's what's with your health, right? You've been, you're going to the gym now, eating better, like back in the day, corporate life.

You were, oh, so you're right, Ben. Like I didn't realize.

In how bad a shape I was, how I was resilient in some areas. But it wouldn't take much to get sick. My sleep was really poor and I didn't realize how exhausted I was from working that corporate job. Like I was in the same environment for about 16, 17 years and it took about a year and a half for that to actually go away. Like all those interactions, long term relationships, the thing that's things that are stuck in your head and we did major things like the things that we built, rolled out commissioned hospitals. That is like accumulated exhaustion and you don't realize until you're removed from that environment. I came to this environment which is very high pressure, high work long hours as well because you're building a startup, but it's a different type. You have higher control, you can make faster Decisions. And even if things don't work out, I'm okay with it because we made the decisions together and it was the path we wanted to go down, rather than someone that doesn't understand anything that I'm doing. Making those decisions and hampering me and deciding my life.

Yeah, 100. And it's fulfilling. Right? You're building something, not just a cog in the wheel.

Yeah. You get the benefit of it as well. It's completely harrowing because you have to make horrible decisions sometimes. Sometimes you have to downsize your team. Sometimes you don't know how you're going to make payroll. Sometimes, you know, a legal thing happens or a cash thing happens or a marketing thing happens and you're constantly fighting fires, but at least you're in control and you can deploy the resources how you see fit.

Yeah, totally. Totally major. Anything else that we missed?

Yeah, man. Let's talk about Ben and Berg's itself. So how we kind of started off. So we started off with just, you know, going on Riverside. We still use Riverside. We've upgraded some of our equipment, which is, you know, we've got DSLR cameras and fancy microphones, which we kind of need anyway because we're a remote team. So it's nice to show. Show up. Nice. It's like the equivalent of wearing nice clothes. But what about how we've. Some of the things we've done, we've. Let's talk about the team. So we started off with a social media team. Do you remember that?

The old agency back in the day.

Yeah, we did. And so you got those guys on board. We had one of their main strategists and they helped us quite a lot to accelerate us because we knew nothing. And they helped us a bit with strategy and what we were doing and also how to do clips, those kind of things. But then you really got into getting mentors and you jumped on. I think it was. Oh, what was the FM site?

Clarity, Clarity, Clarity.

Yeah. And you got a podcast coach. Tell us about that.

So you're the podcast coach. So he listened to a couple of our episodes to give us some feedback and I thought it was really good. He was the one that changed our structures from like an hour long rambling of all sorts of nonsense to like structured, one topic per episode, get the titles right and smaller episodes, just like our listeners wanted. So that was a big turning point. And then we brought the editing and everything in house. So we hired an editor, thumbnail designer.

You know, we had someone uploading the podcast. So we had, you know, an EA helping us with that. Got the better quality mic and camera. Like you said, Bergson, we sort of took control, creative control of everything. And I think that's been a huge increase in terms of the quality of the content since we did that.

It was a lot of work. And our process works. Like we record now on Riverside. We'll have some show notes in notion. We'll then hand it off to Ben's ea. He will create a process in asana, and that asana task then triggers to specific thumbnail editors, video editors, podcast editors to do their work. They'll upload it, and then we have a social media guy that will upload those episodes for us with the titles that we create, the show notes that we create. And it's a relatively smooth process now. And that's how it has to be. Because we didn't want this to be a chore. We want. We spend 99 of our time on content creation. Like in the podcast, we rock up, we talk a little bit, we make an episode. Sometimes we don't even talk. We just go off, you know, off the cuff. Or we'll read some research that we had. And.

It took a while to assemble that team. I remember you had some editors that were phoning it in. And then after we built a brand, you put the call out, I think it was on Twitter, and you're like, hey, if you're a podcast editor, we'll give you regular work and we'll have you on retainer, but you need to do one or two shorts for us, which is maybe an hour's worth of work for these people. And heaps of people hit you up, you got the shorts back, and you're like, wow, this person's amazing. We need to hire them immediately because they're proving that they can do the job. And if you like the quality of work, you put out a few samples saying, we want shorts like this. And one of them just knocked it out of the park. And we've been with her ever since. Yeah.

And she's like, 17. She's awesome.

It's so wild. And these are hide off, upwork and fiverr. And it's a global. Yeah, we even tried, like, local people.

I made this chick through Twitter. That's where I found her.

Yeah, there you go.

Yeah.

And she's posting regularly. Like, you know that she works for us, doesn't name the company, but the effort, the things she does for us, the results she's getting. She's a real, absolutely amazing. Yeah, like, gets after it, real proof of work. And that was probably one of the easiest hires that we've ever had. And mate, we've done a lot of in person as well. It's the best when we get together. We've been to a couple of studios in Perth. Yep. And in Melbourne as well. They're always fun. They're so easy to do. It's much easier to, to do in person podcasts than online for sure.

Great.

And bro, we, we got some merch.

Merch.

So we got some. So this, this is classic Ben. For those that don't know the story. Ben's a bit of a.

What am I, baked.

Loser. Those two words we're allowed to say now that Trump's back and.

Ben didn't want to do this. He was just very. I was on, I was on leave, I was very burnt out and I was taking a week of leave. Ben let me out of the basement. Little reprieve. And we're going to do some merch and of course Ben's like, oh mate, we got to do this merch. I got fucking no idea what's going on. Oh, he drops me his voice message. Oh, mate, just sort it out, man. Like. So I'm like, cool, no worries. I drop him a voice message and explain exactly what to do and then just forward this voice message to his ea. Four days later, get hit up by his EA while I'm on leave. Oh, we've got this merch to do. I haven't heard anything. Like, I'm like, what the actual. Like I've spent all my time when I'm on leave thinking about it and then just dropping you a very succinct message. You just literally had to press the forward button to your EA and you're just not even able to do that. Mate.

This is classic Ben. You can't even just, just do the 3 second job for context.

I'm extremely busy. There is so much stuff going on. Oz, crypto Com. We're doing the summit, Berg's away, I'm running the company. We're growing. Had our biggest month ever in November and Berg sends me a two minute voice message on merch. I'm like, I'm not listening, I don't have time for this. So I didn't even look at it. And then.

So you asked me to do something, I do something, you don't even do it. And this is all bullshit. All the company was sorted. Everyone knew what they were doing. Ben's just like doing on a random ADHD task, just making More work to appear busy. But busy doesn't fulfill our goals, mate. You're like, oh, I'm too busy. You know what you're busy about? Probably just stressing about your keynote talk that no one cared about.

We had our biggest month ever and you weren't there, so shut the hell up.

I was there, mate. That wasn't our biggest month.

November.

I was. Before November was like, October, man. We talked about. You don't remember when it was. Anyway, the moral of the story is I came in to save the day. So Alice, who's an absolute legend, your ea, she went off and made these shirts with our designer and they came out even better than I imagined, with our amazing heads on them. And then the Kiss My Asset shirt, everything else. So we get the merch made up. And I remember your face when Alice opened the box and showed you the merch. You're like, bloody hell, mate, this is pretty all right. And I'm like, of course, man, I made it. Jesus.

I did look at it. I said about, oh, fuck, these are pretty good.

And then you're just like, oh, no, it's not going to work. I've run an apparel company. I know everything about it. I ran it when I was 14 out of my mum's basement where I was in, like, a bunk bed and timber floors and, oh, it was all so hard. And you just don't make money. You didn't even know what you were doing, mate. You're three years old. So we made this merch. Everyone came to the booth, everyone grabbed it. People didn't even know what we did. They thought we made T shirts that were that damn good. Crushed all the merch at Oz. Crypto Con. Up on stage, we got mobbed to the point where we had to get off the stage because 50 people just hounding that merch. I wear this pretty much every day. Everyone asks me, where can I get some? I want some now. All the platinum members want it, mate. That was one of the big wins for us. Like something that we're really going to build on. We're going to have a merch line. It's going to be alpha merch. Not alpha male, but like alphas. And we're giving you the alpha and we're going to get it out to the people that want it the most.

We got to create that store. Actually, we should get Alice on the creating the alpha merch store. That'd be fun.

So this is classic Ben at Oz. Cryptocon. There's this.

This is just. If I can Crack in a Bend episode, is it? This is ridiculous.

I'm not even cracking into you. I'm literally just telling people what happened. I'm not even having to go. I'm just recounting history, mate. They can make up the decision. Yeah. So we're on the boat, and you remember that. That girl that kept coming up to us because she loved the Kiss My Asset shirt and she didn't know what we did. She was in crypto, and she's like, I thought you guys just made shirts. So Ben and I were talking about, like, wow. Like, that was incredible. Everyone getting the shirts. We should do something about this. So Ben's like, right, option one, we have, like, we go ultra premium, like Prada.

So context. I'd had somewhere in the vicinity of 9 to 14 champagnes at this point. But anyway, no, you hadn't.

The sun was still up. It was within four seconds of getting on the boat. We were not even one drink in. We had. The boat hadn't even taken off yet. It was still docked on the water.

Underneath the bridge, mate. We were like, someone's going.

It was still. The bridge was about three minutes away from where we were docked.

Right?

Getting messy. But continue.

He's acting like he's a king, and he just owns merch. Understands everything about it, right? We're going big. We have, like, Prada super premium. Or we're going like, oh, just for volume. We're just gonna have a store, have all of these. Or we're just doing in person. And he, like, he talks to three people around the table. He's like, right, we're going in person. This is what it's going to be. This is definitely it. Yep, that's it. Sort of, right? Ben Simpson, I'm in charge, right? Chin up in the air, like, oh, man, this guy. And then the girl that really liked the shirts comes to the table, starts talking to us, and then he goes, right, we've got option one, we've got option two, option three. And she ended up talking like, right, now we're going with option one. I'm like, bro, the sample size, like, you've gone in your head and you built this entire arm of our business based off, like, one conversation with one person. And I'm like, mate, you've got no idea. And sure enough, nothing has happened since then. Still trying to decide what to do.

Okay, this is sounding pretty true. Not going to lie. This is pretty funny.

And this is classic you, where you're like, hey, if we're doing an endeavor, we have to make millions of dollars. It's got to be profitable, it's got to be this, it's got to be that. No, it doesn't have to be any of those things. It can just be fun, it can just get out to our listeners. We can make a little bit of money and put on some events and it can just be like a happy thing. It can be brand building and awareness.

Yeah, right. Burgs. I'll take it on board. Does nothing.

Ben's like silent laughing.

This is funny. It's funny to recount because actually that sounds like me. That sounds.

And that's not even me having a go. That's literally just saying what happened.

Anyway, Alpha Merch, that's a good idea. We'll create it.

And I think the, the other thing with Bennett Bergs that really touched my heart was the people coming up to us and even a lot of our platinum members or people that are signing up to be platinum. A lot of our pro members too and legacy members, they're just like bergs, mate, love you on the podcast. People I don't even know coming up to me, people that aren't even members of Collective Shift saying how much they love the pod. People coming up and saying, hey, you saved me from this scam or I made this money or you made me realize I'm not a trader, I'm an investor.

Yeah, that's cool.

And then people that just come out going, oh, Benneberg's absolute pisser. I just love the banter, like absolute lads and lasses like us. It's really special to have that feedback and connection from people in the real world.

Yeah, no, I totally agree. No, I love, I love it. And yeah, to think like nearly 7, 8, 900 people listen to this per episode. That's a lot of, that's a lot of people. So we want to thank you listeners for sticking by us, the shenanigans and the crap that we talk. But we do try and give you as much value as we can in amongst the other shit talking. So thank you so much for listening. We couldn't do without you.

Absolutely. It's been an awesome ride and we actually are going to focus on the strategy of this. Bring you better episodes, bring you more merch, bringing more guests and something we're very excited about this year.

Yeah, yeah. Bang on. Any final words, Bergs, mate?

I'm just enjoying it. I, I do feel really honored to have you as my co host. It's a lot of fun and I feel it's just getting better and more fun for us. And I just feel really privilege to be able to do this with you every week, mate.

Oh, thanks, man. Appreciate it. Yeah, I don't know how, how many other people I'll be able to do this with. I mean, we, we just tolerated each other. There wouldn't be many other people I could tolerate.

So.

That'S, that's another thing for you. Like, thanks, man. Thanks, man. Okay, first of all, people being able to tolerate me and everything that goes on or another co host being able to tolerate you deal with all the crap. And then, yeah, it's just like, I don't think this would work with anyone else. And that's for both of us.

Yeah, no, absolutely.

Just get bored with someone else, I reckon. Yeah.

100.

Radio.

Let's wrap up, mate.

That's good stuff. Good stuff. Thumbs up. No outro.

Thank you, team. Thank you for listening. 200 episodes in. Here's for another 200. Thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed the podcast, please share it around with a friend. Leave us a rating. Subscribe if you're on YouTube, leave us a follow on your favorite podcasting app and we'll see you on the very next episode. Thank you, folks.

Thank you, champions. We really appreciate you listening.