21. Elon Musk Acquires Twitter - DOGECOIN +90%, What It Takes To Be A Successful Founder, How To Achieve Your Goals

Welcome back to the Bennet Berg show with your favorite MBA and high school dropout. Talking everything business, crypto and personal growth. Another power punched episode today. Burks. We've got Doge. Finally a bit of movement in the crypto market. Doge up 90. Not that I own anybody.

So good.

Hopefully Mask acquires Twitter. Why? Three reasons. Sorry, three reasons why Bitcoin is better than gold, but Exchange volumes down 90. Crypto.com just take an absolute beating. Exchange volumes down nearly 95, which is quite extraordinary. We'll get into all of that. Bergs think he applying to uni. They failed his wife's chances of getting into uni.

It's a good story.

Looking forward to that. What does it take to be a good fan? I'm going to walk through some things that apparently. I don't know. Burgess. Call me a good founder, but walk through some things that I do anyway as a founder.

Okay. Just for clarity, I would never say that ever. We're going through what Ben needs to be to be a good founder.

Which. Which, you know, I'm just going to explain what I. What I do, which is probably not good anyway.

Meta. So Facebook loses $3.6 billion in the last three months. Absolutely extraordinary. Zucks is doubling down on the metaverse. Is he crazy or smart? Plus some personal growth stuff. How did I go in my accountability? How did Burgers go in his accountability? We'll get all to that at the end because I think we're building up a pretty big bank. Burgs. Well, one of us is for a pretty big bank.

That's it, mate. That's it.

There'll be a very, very healthy bar tab.

Let's get into it. So Doge pumps 90 off the back of the Twitter acquisition that happened just a few days ago. So Elon Musk, for those have been living under a rock, just purchased Twitter for $44 billion, taking it from a publicly listed company to private. He's come in is the second time he tried to buy. He tried to buy a little bit, little while ago, then started to back out of the deal when he thought that the Twitter leadership team wasn't giving him accurate numbers on how many bots there were. So there was like fake user counts. Try to back out of the deal. Twitter then tried to sue Elon Musk for backing out of the deal for whatever reason. Elon says turn around and gone. Right, no worries, we'll buy it. And it scripted up for a lazy $44 billion in cash, taking it all to Elon's he now owns the whole lot and he's got some exciting plans.

I think Bergs, it's so good and I love that, you know, there's. He's like, I'm gonna buy. He's like, what about this problem? What about that problem? And he doesn't waste any time. He's like, nah, not buying it, not backing out. And he's already set the expectation. All the people that hold the shares want that price because it was above market value. They want to hold them to it. They're pressuring Twitter. He's driving the price down. He's trying to get numbers. It was just a brilliant game. And to acquire something like Twitter is like probably the most strategic piece of tech that you could buy on this planet.

100 and and the reason why Doge has gone up is for those that don't know, Elon Musk has been a big Dogecoin fan for a long time now. Dogecoin peaked out at its highest price back last year. I think it was in May just before Elon went on Friday Night live in the U.S. yeah, May last year peaked at 73 cents per Dogecoin and it's currently down even after 100 pump. It's down 83 since then. So it's been pretty battered. But a market cap of US$16 billion, it's something that's, you know, can't be, can't be, can't be missed. Bergs is sitting number eight I think on the market.

Market cap, sorry, coin geckos as largest market cap. So yeah, it's been, it's been whispered that maybe Dogecoin will be used as a currency on the Twitter platform. So I think we could see, you know, Twitter start to do a few different things that it hasn't done in the past. Maybe becoming a payments platform. You know they're already looking to add NFTs. We can buy and sell NFTs on the platform as well. But we, you know, must being so far behind Doge for a little while. I mean he's tweeted back here around even maybe options to pay in Doge. I think some of his companies, you can actually pay for things in Dogecoin already. So yeah, it'd be interesting to see.

How it runs, how good as like a tipping coin. That would be amazing. It would just be brilliant to have that. What if you could integrate with these other businesses as well? Like integrate with Teslas and for like every image your Tesla sends you get 10 cents to like make their AI better to look at Stop signs and stuff like that. It's pretty wild when you start integrating all of that stuff.

Was listening to the all in podcast and I was sort of talking about some other opportunities. I think one of the biggest. I don't know about you bugs, but every day I'm getting like five to 10 notifications of just all these scams and people tagging me and bots and all these sort of like this annoying thing. So verifications a bit a big thing. So maybe you know, even about the freedom of speech and things like that. And just random people on the Internet saying God knows what. Like some sort of verification process, like an optional verification process where you can verify yourself if you want and get like a verified tag or something like that so they know it's like legit. It's like on Tinder. Not that you've been on Tinder, but in Tinder they've got these verification things. So like if you verify your identity, you take a photo of yourself and it verifies that that to you with your license or something like that, you get like a verified badge. So you know you're not talking to some like 45 year old dude in his basement.

Catfish.

Mate. They must think you're catfishing people when they see that lid in person. Jeez.

So this, this just came out as well. Elon gave the Twitter team eight days to build a blue check mark verification service that, that costs 19.99. So $20 per person. Go and build it in eight days. So think about what this guy's done. He's wanted to acquire Twitter for quite some time. When you acquire a business that is known to be quite heavy, not as profitable as it could be, there's a lot of, in quotes, whinging technicians that have a lot of time to complain about stuff because they only work a couple of hours a day. So what does he do? He comes in and he fires the leadership straight away. He's like, you guys, yeah, see you later. And everyone was like bagging him out for that. But the reality is that needed to be done because he wants to take Twitter in a fundamentally different direction. And you can't have the people that have been building something that had their alliances, that have their incentives and their own goals that they want to achieve, they're still going to go after those goals. So you have to get rid of the management and instill new management or less management. He's also fired teams of people to, you know, basically get people out. He's got a lot of the, the Tesla and SpaceX people in to overlook the code. And now this is the class move, set them a challenge. Eight days to achieve this thing. So not only has he got rid of the old team and their old vision, he's really cut down to a strategy and now he's got new revenue opportunities as well, which is just huge to achieve in the first week.

Well, I think they were saying again on the podcast I was listening to, it's like, you know, Twitter hasn't done too much of the last 10 years. The stock price is down, I think 10 or 15% over the last 10 years. Literally hasn't done much. The product hasn't done too much.

Yeah.

And you know, I think Elon's gonna be able to come in with these entrepreneurial sort of spirits and try and build it up into, you know, it's got a lot of potential. Yeah. Who knows what to do?

So it's, it's what we do. If we bought the businessman and look at this.

Sorry, just quickly, you know the Chinese app, We. WeChat is a WeChat. Yeah, we, yeah, that is like the, like the, the app that does everything right. You can do payments, you can book taxis, you can like, you know, it's a social networking app, it's a banking app, it's everything I do potentially see like Twitter becoming that all in use case app. Right. Where you can add in payments. You know, you've already got the social network aspect, got businesses already on there and building that real, you know, what does Elon call it? The global town square. You know, restoring free speech. So yeah, I think there's a lot of adult products you could build.

Yeah. He said comedy is back, which is just, it's great. He came in with the sink.

It was so good. I just walking into Twitter headquarters, jcal's out there as well, giving his two cents. I think it's a good move. And if you think about all of his businesses, he's got Teslas, right. So he knows where people are moving, how they move, the cars they like to buy. He's got the battery company, he's got the boring company to build, you know, hyperloop, whatever he's building there, whatever it's called nowadays. He's got SpaceX too, he's got Neuralink. All of these kind of things connect together. It's about people connectedness, moving people around, people wanting specific product. There's payment layer over the entire thing. There's a lot of synergy between his businesses. Now, mate, did you, did you see those two? Two Comedians that interviewed on Twitter where like, they were holding their boxes, right? And they go, what's your name? He's like, Raul Ligma. And the other guy was like, Daniel Johnson. So I was like, ligma Johnson.

It's like, so good. So good. And they were like, deadpan, like, they look devastated that they lost their jobs. They weren't even employed there. The media took it seriously. And all, all the headlines like, ligma Johnson, blah, blah, blah, blah. Lisanna's so good. Even Elon got amongst the mate. It was absolutely hilarious. So good to see.

I loved. I saw a lot of those memes come out on Twitter about, like, you know, ex employees of Twitter, you know, they're so devastated. They can't. They can't block people's speech anymore. They can't remove people without warning, you know? Yeah.

I was leading the team that had like, the follow button and, like, how many pixels around it.

It's like.

And it sounds mental, but literally there are teams that will look after a button. Like, it is it is that crazy where you have teams and teams of people? Or they're like, I'm in Mexico. My manager hasn't talked to me for six months. I don't know if I can go back to a real job. Oh, they're taking the piss. But you can get lost in these big bureaucratic businesses.

Yeah, Yeah. I think he's gonna really bring that entrepreneurial startup strategy and mindset cold. That's what happened with Apple, right? Was it Steve Cook or Jobs? Sorry, Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs, when he came in and he. He came in and just completely wiped out like, 80 of the company, you know, when he came back, right. And he just liked outside again.

He had to for survival. And you think with Elon, yeah, he's. He's acquiring Twitter, but what is he actually doing? It's a business there. It's got something valuable, something he can grow. He can lean it out and then he can borrow against it to build the next company.

They were saying on the only podcast, I think the dollar per monthly active user, like on is like a hundred, and it's like $140 per monthly active user on the platform. That's how much you're paying per user that uses the platform. 140 bucks per person. That's extraordinary. Like, what? He could use that platform for his own, like, benefit like that. He's like, he just acquired a whole social. Him just acquired a marketing channel. You've acquired a. Literally one of the biggest social network platforms on the Planet, Yeah, Behind Facebook.

And that's it. And they can, they can do their ads a lot better. All their ads are just crap. They're, you know, promoted, tweets, all that kind of stuff. They could make the ads more interesting, more targeted. There's so much that business could do that, you know, when you've been in a business for a while. They did lose their leadership with Jack and it's just kind of floundered. When you're at the top, you become complacent. And I think they need that new blood to really invigorate the company and become the next thing.

In your portfolio. Would you think about it after this?

No.

Why not?

Because, shit, I don't want to own it.

Like, seriously, why would I spend my capital on Dogecoin when I could buy Bitcoin or Ethereum? And from my perspective, if I buy Dogecoin, I'm going to have to look at that every day to see when it pumps and sell it or set a sell price. That's more like trading. I don't want to fuck around with it. I don't care about the capital gains. I don't have to write down all my fucking trades and give it to my account and all that sort of horseshit. I'm like, no, if I'm going to put my capital somewhere, I'm going to put it somewhere where I think it's a really good deal and it's good long term, instead of trying to catch falling knives and pumps and all this kind of stuff, and then I'm only going to trade back into Bitcoin and Ethereum. Anyway, like, I got too many problems in my life. I have to work with you. I need less problems. Mate.

Mate, I'm not saying I disagree with you. All I'm saying is it's the 8th largest cryptocurrency by market cap. It has just like, it's obviously a favorite cryptocurrency by a guy who's just bought the second largest social media app, who has had intentions, who's communicated this publicly that he thinks Dogecoin can be an actual payment system and now has the platform to actually make that a reality.

Oh, but yeah, okay, is there a case. And again, every. Everyone out there, this is not financial advice. Right? Please, please be aware. Talk to your professional and, and really like, okay, I agree that there's potential there, There's. It's a meme coin. You've got Elon behind it. It can potentially pump hundreds of percent. But I'm just not Interested in that game. Like I played that game a lot with ICOs, I played it with NFTs, I've been burnt a lot and now for me it's just about sticking to my strategy and managing my own psychology. And if I go into Dogecoin, all that's going to fall off the wagon and it's going to go out the window. It's going to affect my entire strategy because it's going to get me thinking in a different way, it's going to get me in the gambling mentality, it's going to. Every tweet that Elon sends is going to get me looking at the charts. When can I get in, when can I get out, what I do with my capital now, how much tax I have to pay and that's just not worth it for me.

Yeah, you're speculating, right? At best. Yeah. And really, and really it's a payment system. That's all it's really used for. And the tokenomics are awful at best. You know, I think they're literally printing like new dogecoins every day. I'm pretty sure, like if I, yeah, maybe we can look back this. But I'm pretty sure it's like, like, yeah, it's got an infinite supply. Like it's literally.

People calling like a dollar, a dollar per dogecoin.

It's literally that high though, is really, really impressive.

Yeah.

16 billion dollar market cap circulating supply, 132 billion dogecoin.

It's got infinite supply.

That is just, that is crazy.

It's like buying, it's like buying.

Grass. It's just like infinite supply of grass.

I'd actually look into their repository and see what's happening in the Doge community. Like if you are interested in this, this is what you would do. Of course we're talking about, you know, speculation and those kind of things, but if you want to know what's behind the crypto, look at the Dogecoin white paper, if it still exists or any improvement proposals they have, look at their repository, see the activity there. Join a Dogecoin community or the Reddit board and see what's happening in their community, what they've got planned, what's actually going on. See if it's all a big joke from the outside looking in. Of course it is. And we've got, you know, better things to invest in. You're going way out on the risk curve here. But if you are interested, look at those and then apply the Elon factor to it and see if it's Something that you're interested in.

Like even just looking at their Twitter, just.

Such.

Such.

Wow. Doge Dogepedia.

This is the thing, though, like, Doge was a huge meme. Right. I still use the Doge meme and it's amazing with the Shiba Inu. And it was just, I don't know, it's just ingrained in our culture. And if you want to have a message go across the Internet, a meme is the fastest way to send that through. And the thing that gets the most attention will win. And this is getting the attention. It is going to get people's dollars.

Well, it's. It's a very Web3 culture. It's very. That crypto bro. Web3 Wall street bet sort of culture. Right. Guys just like barreling money into this thing. It's a meme. Everyone's like laughing at it. But, like, people are making serious money. I mean, it's up 100% last couple of years, couple of days, you know.

Yeah.

Don't need the downside. We did hear about that guy that was suing Elon Musk for Pumping it Doge, if you remember that.

Yeah, that was like July, wasn't it?

Yeah, it was suing for like 250 million, I think. Not sure where that's at, but yeah, you don't hear that.

And just be be aware that if you're into this crypto markets are mental. They will turn on a dime. You will get liquidated.

Yeah. Market, was it. The markets could stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent.

Yeah, yeah. Be careful. Be trading. That's. Yeah. Something to be very careful about.

That's a whole nother game.

Now the other thing is, like, outside of dogecoin, there's been absolutely, really nothing happening. You know, Ethereum's up 15, 20% this week, but the trading volumes have absolutely plummeted. So I think we saw coin crypto.com, sorry, was going in around. I was in the multiple billions of dollars of trading volume trying to bring out the article here and then it went down to around the mid. I think it was around 300 million. So down around 90% in trading volume. You're down 91%. So this decrypt article was having a bit of a crack at them, you know, you know, the old, you know, Matt Damon ad, like. Yeah.

He'S brave. Yeah, brave.

Be brave. Fortune favors the ball.

Yeah.

Keeper Sutherland as well. He's getting in there. Oh, my God.

Brave. They whacked 700 million for naming rights sponsor the Los Angeles Arena. That was the absolute top. And then like a few months later, multiple rounds of layoffs. Had to cancel a 500 million dollar sponsorship deal with the European Champions League. Accidentally sent 10 million dollars to someone who didn't. Forgot to realize for two years now, now their volumes like 90 just struggling. Classic. Classic crypto.

Unbelievable.

And I think all exchanges, all exchanges. Right. So you know, FTX is down. Yes, 77. Coinbase down 75. Hall B down 90.

Extraordinary, you know, amount of losses, not at losses, but just reduction in, in the volume. So we're just saying crypto is really boring right now. People just don't have really the money to invest.

Absolutely, mate. And everything's going up, everything's expensive. All right, check this out. This is a website from Matt in our team. This layoffs, FYI, and this has all of the startups with layoffs. And some of these aren't startups, they're big companies as well. There you go. Crypto.com. they've just, they've laid off 2,000 people, which is 30% of their workforce. 2,000 people, which is just incredible. Even here, like booking.com, 4,300 people, quarter of their workforce. Uber, 3,700 people, 14% of their workforce. It is just huge. Like there are such, such big layoffs. Coinbase, 18% of their workforce.

Isn't it funny how crypto, there's like, what, two crypto companies there in the top 20, top 30.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. All as well. I'm not sure what Bite dance is, but that's TikTok. There you go.

Wow.

And even if you go by like, percent, like, all of these have just folded. So all of these startups lost 100%.

Well, so many of these companies, look at what they raised. Some of these were. They're Series B. Yeah.

How crazy. Series A, Series B. Here we go.

Yeah. How much they raised? 1.8 billion.

Is it a billion?

Yeah.

I shouldn't laugh, but that, man, that's extraordinary. You raised $1.6 billion.

That's got to be a million, surely.

All right, yeah, yeah.

A million raised. A million.

Yeah. But you look at Qatar there, that, you know, 16.

Yeah, that's 1.6 billion they raised.

And they've gone.

Blown up. And again, they might have just, I don't know that particular company, but they might have just closed their company and gone. We can't be competitive and then return whatever money they had to the investors.

Construction laid off two and a half thousand people. My goodness. But this just goes to show, like the, the lay of the land for startups companies, you know, globally this is a really tough market. That's tough market to raise, it's tough market to grow and a lot of people, you know, letting off a lot of people.

So this is huge. But it's also, it's also very normal. Like startups fail all the time. You know, 90% of them barely reach like, you know, was it 1 million revenue? I think it was. 90% don't make it to 1 million revenue. And then between 1 and 10 another 90% lose. So basically 1% makes it through.

How crazy is that? To 10 mil revenue?

Yeah, it's wild. It's wild. A lot of these companies like pre revenue or pretty pre product market fit, raising all this money, hiring all these people, you know, people get out of, People get pretty excited pretty quick.

Yeah, this is the thing like people can get revenue but they can't scale. Or other people will have product market fit and have thousands and thousands of users but they don't know how to monetize them. And then on the other side, we've been talking quite a lot about these AI guys. So Danny Postma and Levels IO, they've both released another AI kind of thing. So they got the text to AI now they've released AI profile pics and I'll put the information in the show notes so you can upload 10 pictures of yourself and it will generate all these AI images of you that look exactly like you. Like an old version, an Asian version, a Viking version, like all this kind of stuff. It is incredible. These solopreneurs that are just spinning up like week after week. A brand new company, a brand new site and within one day they've sold like 10 grand worth of sales. Like they've found product market fit in one day. That's the other side of the coin.

This is really interesting. Burgs, like the best companies I think are built out of bear markets. And when we've sort of found this, you know, more recently when your, your backs up against the wall, you have limited resources, you have limited capital. Everything you do is so important that you get right because you don't have the flexibility and have all that money in the bank and you don't have like endless amounts of, you know, interest food for business in bear markets when the economy's down, you know, you have to be more vigilant, you have to be more resourceful, you have to make the right decisions and you have to really focus on what's most important. You know, in crypto, the two biggest companies came out of 2018 with Synthetics and AAVE. And I think we'll see like the best companies are built in this time because you don't have that excess capital and people just aren't starting businesses for the fun of it because it, to be honest, not, not all of it is fun. It's fucking tough, you know, it's tough at least on the year.

And people quit. Like the things we've been through Recently, I reckon 90% of people would have quit. It was fucked. It's very, very hard. But you have to go through that to get through to the other side and actually win. And people don't understand that success is a really bad teacher. It teaches you nothing. Whereas hard times, scarcity, almost failing, not being able to make payroll, not having the right people, all this kind of stuff, this, these are the things that teach you. They give you those lessons so you're better and you're more prepared the next time these events come around. Because a lot of people, they call them pace time pussies, you know, it's like abundance. They've got lots of money. They just caretakers, you know, you don't have to make those hard decisions, but when it's war times, you want someone behind the helm that is willing to make those hard decisions for the survival of the company.

Yeah, you have to be wartime CEO in this sort of timing. And the other thing I'll mention, I remember back in 2018, we were in a very similar position with the last business. We're in the crypto company. Like, it was brutal. We didn't have enough money for payroll. There's only two or three of us at the time. We had no money coming in. We're burning all these members, like. And we literally sat down. I was like, is this the end? Like, the hell are we doing here? This is just a disaster. It's all over. Like, we can't afford to pay anyone. Like, we're completely fucked. And it was like the, the only thing that gets you through is like the vision and the tenacity and the conviction that, you know, you've got a good idea and the market's going to come back. But the last day in business is the day you give up, right? Literally.

That's right. Startups only fail because people give up. And if you look back to that time, what did you do in that bear market? It was hectic. And, you know, you, you had people like me around you more kind of advising you. And the one major risk was that it was all dependent on Facebook. And if they shut your group down, you're done. So you needed to own your customer and build a platform. Well, how do you do that? With close to $0, you hire a bunch of Filipino developers. Right. And they cobble together a site. And. And it was. It was pretty hokey. It was written in the worst way. It was very inefficient, but it worked.

Yeah.

And then when you got it to a point to actually launch it during the bull market, you're able to capture all those customers at multiple price points.

Yep, Yep. And the other thing we did as well was we just sat down. We're like, where do we. Where are we generating revenue from? What have we got now? Like, we don't have time to, like, develop new stuff. We just need to sell what we have now. So we pivoted the business from more of a subscription model to, like, advertising. We started taking on advertising affiliate dollars, and that was. That was where we're able to take some actual revenue. Right.

That kept you alive. You hustled like one of the. One of the big players.

Yeah.

And you went down there, you met them, you got a deal, and then you started signing people up, you started selling, and that is what kept the business alive.

Yeah. And then I think that's what a lot of businesses go through now that do survive is you just got to sit down and go, what the hell are we going to do? Like, we need to. We need to focus on the most important thing. We do not have any room to like, to around here. Like, this is it. If we this up, we're out.

And everyone knew that was the one lifeline.

It's a. It's amazing what happens when you get to that point. That's where the really magic happens, because everyone's like, okay, this is it. Like, we're either gonna have a job next week or we're not. We need to figure it out.

And you will figure it out. You always do.

Yeah. Yeah. 100. That's the most exciting times, I think, in business.

Absolutely, man.

It's probably good leeway and bergs to.

You know, we wrote down here what it is. What does it take to be a good founder? And I only saw this in our notes this morning, which is the gym. And I wrote down a few different things. I'm not sure if you want to add any context here, but I've got a few things that I can not say. I'm a good founder, but I can sort of explain what I think you need or that helps to last through.

This, I will actually say, Ben, you are a good founder for quite a few reasons. But I'll let you go into what you think it is to be a good founder. And after you've said that, I'll give you the reasons why I think you're a good founder.

Okay, so I wrote this down.

Yeah, I put this down. So yeah, I don't necessarily look at myself as good, bad, great. Like I question myself all the time, you know, like, am I doing the right things? Are we doing the right things and the right person of the job? And I think you only start to question some of those things sometimes when, when times are tough. You know, it's not what, get that quote, it's not about something around. It's not about what you, what you do when times are good. It's about, you know, how you present and how you show up when times are bad is like who the real character is is that, you know, we really show up.

And I think, you know, more recently, like just with this market, like things, you know, things aren't just like a, you know, a dream. I think we've had to work hard. So for me, I think one of the biggest things that's got me through the last, like working in crypto startups for the last, know, five or six years now and been through all the ups and downs, like being when we're literally printing cash and then being when we've literally had no cash. I mean, I've seen it all. I think one is conviction and passion in what you're doing. Like you have to believe in what the hell you're doing and you have to know that you're going to figure it out in some way, shape or form. If you don't enjoy it and you don't have conviction, like, you're fucked. Like, don't even worry about it as a, as you need to be a good team member. I see myself as a team leader. I'm definitely not the smartest guy on our team, but I can pull everyone together and get us to work on the right things. I think, I think that's one of my skill sets is being empathetic and understanding people and pushing people to let them achieve their best. Because building a startup is not about.

You know, doing things on your own. It's about, you know, putting together smart people, achieve great things. I think you need to be very risky and you need to be ballsy. I've got here, like you need to take risks. You can't be risk adverse and you can't be sitting on the sidelines hoping to. It's going to happen. Especially building a Web3 startup like you. It is risky, inherently risky, and you need to be able to be comfortable with that risk because if you play things too softly, you're going to be beaten by competitors or you're going to run out of money, or you're not going to make the right decisions or make the right decisions for the company, which may be tough to actually succeed. So that's another one. And then just consistency. Day in, day out, you do the same night, not the same shit, but you just need to, you need to grind day in, day out. Like, it's not going to happen overnight, it's not going to happen in a year. Usually I find the magic happens after around three years is when things start to actually work. We're about two and a bit years in, just actually about two years right now. So I fully expect us to grind for the next year before things really start to pick up. That just seems to be sort of the word by most startup founders that, you know, three years of consistent grinding is usually when the magic starts to happen. That's what happened our last business as well. Like, we were just flatlined for about two or three years and then we went absolutely parabolic.

And then you need to, like, be consistently improving and leveling up. Like, I didn't go to, like, I didn't go to university, I don't have an education, I don't have certificates, didn't do an mba. I just learned off my own back and that's how I continue to learn. You need to level up. And always I say you need to be two steps ahead of the company at all times. You need to be like, you need to be as good, if not better than where the current the company currently is. Because if you fall behind the growth or you fall behind the skill sets you need in your company, you're going to start to make bad decisions. You're probably going to start to lose trust in your team. They're going to start questioning whether you're making much things. You're going to start to feel pressure because you don't know what you're doing. So I always surround myself with advisors. You listen to audible books, listen to podcasts, talk to a lot of people. I mean, the entrepreneurs organization group, I mean the founders group, I mean a mastermind do a lot of different things to continue with personal growth. That's another big one. And then you just really need a good team around you. Like, it's it's all about the people that you surround yourself with, surrounding yourself with smarter people than you bring them in to help, allow them to do their best work. And if you let more people than just you do their best work within you, you're getting the, the hive mind, right? You're getting like a group of really smart people to help all towards that one vision. So they're really my top things, I think. It's not one skill set. It's not, I'm not saying I'm great at all of these. I'm just saying that's what you need, I think, to, to be a good founder.

Yeah, I agree as well. And I don't.

The most successful people I've met, they're not hyper smart people. The one thing they have in common is that they're ultra consistent. They're always willing to push themselves and they always show up every day. And then you compound that day after day, year after year, and that leads to success. And I think why you're a good founder is you're willing to question everything, including yourself. And this includes even self awareness. You always ask me like, am I thinking about this, right? You drop me a voice message by Oy Bergs. This is the situation. This has happened. This is completely, this is how I'm thinking about it. Is this right? And just having that awareness to ask someone else, like you did that recently, like on the weekend, right? And it was a situation where we're like this, I'm like, but hang on, maybe this is happening with this person and maybe if you just communicate to them and this was someone, this was a partner outside the business and you know, it turned out really, really well. And really, you honestly do whatever it takes. You look at our business and you constantly ask yourself, what do I have to do to 10x this company? Oh great, I have to go to Dubai and raise capital for a month. I have to go to the United States, I have to get on a speaking tour. You literally write that down and you go and you execute. Whereas the majority of people would be like, fuck that. That sounds like a lot of work. It's completely uncomfortable. I do not want to do that shit. And us seeing you do that is incredibly motivating. Like we look at that going, fuck if this guy can do all that stuff and he didn't know how to do it a week ago and then like in a couple of months later, like, you're an absolute master at it. Like, holy crap, this guy's accelerating at a pace. I need to Keep up. And it inspires and motivates the rest of the team. And really, when you talk, you're always pushing for more. Nothing is off the table. Like, I can bring anything to you. Even when I go to eo, like, the people there talk about, oh, my CEO does this, they do that. There is nothing I would not bring to your attention. Like, the second it happens, I'm picking up the phone and be like, oh, lad, this has happened. And you just handle it. You're like, oh, great, we'll just do this, or don't worry about it, it's never such a big thing. Or, leave it with me or I'll get back to you. Any horse shit like that. Or you're like, don't even think that way. It's not a real thing, right? Like, it's just always. And you're just willing to take that feedback. And you're always chasing personal growth. You're always growing as a person. The person you were three months ago is completely different to the person you are. And being around someone like that is really inspiring and it motivates you to do your best work. That's why I think you're a good founder man. And that's the other thing. Like, you're not. I've been around a lot of business owners and very few are at the level that you're at. Like, a lot of them do what's convenient. They don't do what's required. You always do what is required.

It's funny you said it's a. I don't know if I've always been like that. I think it's.

I think I've probably gotten better at that because I.

I hate having unproductive days. Like, I hate going in the day going, what the fuck did I do today? Like, what was actually done. Especially in situations when you're trying to grow a business. Like, I think we're all. If we were success, like, at the point of successful, and we're like, you know, we're just killing it. You probably, you have that ability to be a bit more laid back or comfortable with where you're at, but when you've got to make shit happen every day, like, you've got to look at your day so goddamn hard. And I hope, like, you know, I hope everyone's listening. This trying to build a company, like, that's one of the biggest things I've got it out of the. That's where I get most of my results from, is being so, like. What's the word? Like, I'm not sure if anal's the right way, but just so, like, focusing on, like, what needs, what has to happen. So like on a Sunday, like yesterday I went through my I've got a shelf list to do. I've got it this week to do and I've got it today do. And I've got what my quarterly objectives are. So I've got my three quarterly objectives I want to achieve. Then I put all the shit that doesn't matter in the shelf. I put all the things that are most important in the, in the this week, and then I prioritize them from high to low. And each task has to, has to tie into one of my quarterly objectives. If it doesn't, if I can go, it doesn't matter.

Yeah.

And then my calendar is the same thing. Like everything has to be of the most highest priority that's going to help the business achieve the goals, otherwise it's a waste of time.

That's exactly right. And you're, you're going after effectiveness over efficiency, right? Like, you still want efficiency, but if you're working on effectiveness and just the differentiation there, effectiveness is did I get to the target? And efficiency is, did I get there at the fastest, most critical path? The inference there is you can be effective and you can get to your target, but it can take too long. You can be efficient, but you can go in completely the wrong direction. And you want both. If you have to choose one, it is always effectiveness over efficiency because you're at least going the right way. You got way more shots on goal because you know you're going towards the right thing. You're not getting distracted by a whole bunch of shit. And by writing your goals down from your yearly to quarterly to daily, that really focuses you. And you'd be surprised how quickly you reach your goals. And the thing you're talking about there is you're focused and you're committed to. And I would say for the majority of days you are disciplined as well. A lot of the time you're off the work, off the wheels, mate. But you know, you gotta, you gotta have a few days loose.

This is, that's the other thing I was thinking about like today around, like being even in doesn't have to be a founder, but even startups like you do have to let the head on every now and again. Otherwise just go crazy. Right? Like, you know, you're working so hard and so stressful and like, you've got a lot going on. You need to, you need to be able to take A break. And I haven't always been like that with my, like, my focus either. Like, even more recently, I feel as though I've really stepped up. I've had to, you know, if you keep always compounding, that's what I found is accountability. Yes, I've failed a few times, but the things that are actually important to me have compounded. For example, no phone of an evening. Like, no phone before lunchtime. Going to the gym each day I'm eating better. I'm actually prioritizing more. Like, I'm getting deeper work done and more done in a day. You know, working with my assistant. Even, like, when you're on your own, even in your daily, daily lives. Structure your week. The best thing I've done recently is, like, structured days where I really struggle. For example, creating content. I've started this week where I've blocked out all of Thursday to create content. I've been trying to do it for so long. Literally blocking out that day, going, that is a damn to achieve this Monday. Wednesdays are for meetings and other content. Wednesday and Friday for something else. You know, instructional week. Structure your days in a way that, you know, you can go into the day knowing what you're going to achieve in the day. What's the most important. And the fulfillment you get of ticking off those things is really, really good. And you need that to get that momentum.

And even looking back on those things, you're like, holy shit. Like, the amount that you actually achieve. Because as humans, we don't look, we don't look back. We just keep moving forward. We're like, what's the next thing? What's the next thing? And again, doing the hard thing. You've written a couple of things here and you've just jogged my memory. Like going to a foreign land. You literally went to Dubai. Don't speak Arabic. You're running a conference and a booth by yourself for multiple days, talking to investors. Got haste. Investor meetings, getting up at 4:30am for meetings, going right till bloody, you know, 10pm at night. Just doing crazy things, putting yourself in crazy situations, meeting people in random places, going to, like, random people's houses. We could get murdered and end up in a bathtub. But you still do it because you know you're meeting these people and investors and it could be a potential lead. A lot of it leads to nothing. But those few interactions that lead to the goal that you want to get to. You really have to chase it. And it's only the people that really chase it to the extreme that become Successful.

Yeah. It's funny to say that even the, the other side, like you said, they're, you know, the wasting time. But that's other, that's another lesson. I think if anyone starting a business or you know, professionals want to improve and doing like networking or trying to drive and do this other thing, not only is it being effective, but it's also being efficient and knowing where you need to spend your time and who not to spend your time with. Realize more, more than ever recently there is so many people that absolutely full of shit people to talk. People will say certain things, they'll, they'll represent themselves as a certain way. You know, like they're like they're a high roller or they make all the decision in the company and they've got the Rolex and the big dog and they're just absolutely full of horseshit. Like there are so many pretenders out there that I realize more recently you need to be aware of because you can spend so much time sapping up with just absolutely like non effective meetings and conversations. It's actually shoots me to tears. I've actually realized I trust people too much. Like I'll give you my full trust if I met you off the street. And I've been called out a number of times, you know, just giving my full trust to people. But the reality is most, not most people, a lot of people, you know, aren't really who they say they are.

It's amazing what a few words and signaling will do. Like wearing a Rolex, how people treat you differently. So I, I have a Rolex. Like I got one as, as a wedding present. I rarely wear it. And when you put that on, the amount of like respect you get and people looking at it and then. And it's not one of the super fancy Rolexes either. It's just like silver with a blue dial, right? But it's just a simple watch that it says something about you. Even if I dress like a bum and I'm wearing that watch, people listen to, oh, he must be super rich. And I'm like no. And it's not, it's not super expensive. Like you buy one if you want, right. But it's just, it's brilliant how we kind of. Because we're chasing a goal and if these people are telling you the things that you want to hear to achieve that goal, you're willing to believe them. You go the extra mile. But really that only happens if they commit further. If they sign a contract, if they give you money, if there's a Deal if they introduce you to someone. But a lot of people just talk crap and want to play the role.

Which I find really weird. Like I'm. One of my core values is honesty and I just can't do that. Like, yeah, fine, you talk up a bit about what you're working on, but you're going to get found out sooner or later. Why do that? Where do you think this is going to lead? And you're just wasting everyone's time as well. It's really weird.

Yeah. No, so what I've done to, for example, you know, I will. At the start of any company, you get to know people don't go straight into business too first. But I try and really understand the person, what they're doing, what their objectives are and where. And where. Where I can add value or where we can add value first and start to test them out and not go too fast too soon. I tend to go get really excited that we can do all these great things. And I think what I've learned is to start small and see where it goes. Because people are busy people, a lot of shit going on. They've got their own priorities or their own problems, their own lives. Everyone's usually busy as hell anyway. To come together and partner with someone, to do something with someone takes something pretty special. It's not just like a partnership happens, like that does take a lot. So starting pretty small and just weeding people out before you get too deep will save you a lot of time.

Because a lot of people, like, you know, they'll meet you, they'll get excited, oh, we put this massive deal together, we'll put this money in, it'll be great.

Yeah.

And when you're out of that and you calm down, you're not emotional, you realize how much it would take and the layers you have to go through to sign a deal like that. And 99% of the time it's not going through. And what you need to do, you say, look, you're interested. You need to get them to either sign something, commit, or open their wallet. And that can be something very small. It could be a thousand or a $10,000 deal. Something small, whatever that is for your company and for that person. So you commit, you start small, you learn about each other, how you work, you make all your failures in the small little part and then you slowly go from there. Look, we showed this value. And again, do simple things like, you know, under promise, under promise and over deliver where you could be like, hey, we're going to get like A hundred thousand page views, even though you know you're capable of getting 200,000, sell it at that price, you get double the amount. Look, this has been really great, okay? Now we want to move further. Like, we've had great success with this small thing. Let's move on to something slightly larger and then start building from there. Always, you know, it's. What is it? Crawl, walk, run. Everyone just wants to run straight away. No, just start crawling. Then you can stand up and start walking. Then you can start running.

Yeah, 100%. And I think like the other thing I tried to remember when doing business is you get into business for the freedom. You get into business for the enjoyment, the passion, the excitement. You know, that's the, that's the flexibility you get when you start your own business or you get into business. So to follow through on that and continue to optimize your business and your day to day by doing the things that you want to do is so important because it's only going to give you more energy if you get sucked in and doing the stuff that you don't. And this is stuff that you don't want to do all the time. But you know, if you can minimize that and work on the shit that you'd like, that gives you energy. You're gonna have all those things we just mentioned before. You're gonna have the conviction, you know, the vision you have, the energy, the drive, the consistency because you like doing it. If you hate what you do, you're not gonna be any good at it.

And to get to that point, you have to make the hard decisions. I know quite a few people that own businesses that hate their lives. They hate the way it's structured. Their management team isn't great. They have to have all these difficult conversations and they know what they need to do. They need to, you know, get a coach, learn more, restructure their businesses and get the right people in. But that's fucking hard. Who wants to do that? This is like, this is the, like, the individual equivalent is like, I'm, I'm depressed. Okay, great. Now I have to work on myself. I have to understand why. I have to see a doctor, I have to see a psychologist. I have to go down this path. That's a fucking lot of work and no one wants to do that shit. But it's like anything good in life, you have to put the work in. And you were saying before, just generally in business, like work smarter, not harder. That's something that everyone says. The challenge with that is you have to work hard and you have to work a lot in order to work smarter. You have to do the dumb shit. You have to do this stuff that doesn't scale. You have to be inefficient, you have to be ineffective. And only once you get, you start to get success and you start going along the success path, you look back and you realize what worked and what didn't. And then it just informs your future decision making. So don't think that you can get into a business or into a job and immediately be smart about it. That's just not going to happen. You need to learn, you need to fail. You need to learn the lay of the land and then you can work smarter, not harder.

Yeah, I agree. You have to work hard when you don't have anything to begin with. That's it.

Oh, mate, mate, I got a story for you. Right?

Yeah.

So my misses Applied to uni, right? And she puts her, she's putting a CV together and application letter and all this kind of stuff, puts it all together and she's like, oh, look, I haven't done my CV in a long time. And I'm like, all right, cool, you know, let's go through it. Let's see what you got here. She's showing me her CV and it's late at night, of course, and I'm going through it and I'm like, because I'm held off, I don't want to do it during the day. Like, I'm busy, I don't want to do it. So she gives it to me and I'm, I sit on the couch like a fat. And I'm just typing away on the laptop and I'm like, look at the way you're talking about it. You're like, no, like you, you know, you put this lab together. I'm like, I'm typing. I'm like, you built shit, you run shit, you do this. I'm like, just typing it all in. And I bolded parts of it and everything. She's like, oh, this is awesome. This is really great. And she had all this stuff there, but she was just talking about it in a very like, low level way. Not the way you need to communicate it for what she actually did. Anyway, he sends off a CV all, I can't. Everything to the uni gets rejected immediately. And it's like, holy, what the. So she's applying for a master's and what had happened was to get into this masters you need in your undergraduate degree. I think it's 65% average. And she had less than that because she'd swapped courses and a few other factors, and they immediately reject you. And she's like, hang on a minute, this. So she goes down to the uni, talks to the course coordinator and she's like. Talks to the academic office. She's like, what the fuck? Like, your criteria is a degree that I did, like, 20 years ago. Are you mental? I'm a completely different person. I've worked in a lab, I've gone. I've done all this research, I've gone to conferences, I've led teams, I've done heaps of stuff. And your criteria is, were you okay at your undergrad, something you did 20 years ago? And they were like, holy shit. So they went through this massive process and it brought on all these meetings. It took months and months, and one day she just. When she got that rejection letter, she looked at it and then she starts laughing. And I was like, what do you mean? So she goes to the little uni portal and her CV in one of the areas had. I build shit, I run shit. Yeah, lad, it was still in there, right? And she uploaded it and thank God she was laughing and didn't grab a knife out of the kitchen and come and try and stab me, right, so. And then. So she went and talked to him and then she found this out. And it's not the reason that she got rejected. They didn't even get to that point. They just looked at her average because she went to this particular uni previously. So anyway, she calls up, she read as her CV and the portal won't let her upload it again. So that one's up there and she's contested this, she's appealed and it's been emailed out to everyone else. And I'm like, oh, so they've got the link for the portal. So she goes. She goes into the. Makes a phone call, she's calling up one of the admissions office people and she's like, look, I've got a new CV and I need to upload it because the other one had some errors in it. And the lady's like, yeah, no worries. This happens all the time. Just send me the cv. And she goes, can you let me know which one is which so I can make sure I put the right one in there because they look very similar. So she goes, okay, if you just go down to this part and read the first sentence. And then the lady on the phone's like, oh. And the missus is like, ah. She just starts laughing and Then the lady on the other phone starts laughing as well. She's like, holy. She's like, oh, I see. And they're just cackling away. And thankfully they managed to change it over so that when everyone read it from there, they actually had the right cv. But honestly, the amount this went on for like a month, maybe two, the amount of following up my missus had to do with uni and they're like, maybe our process is wrong. This is a really good candidate. We've interviewed her, she's come in and this is the kind of person we want in the course. Because they're hungry, they're getting after it, they've got a previous degree that's applicable, they're at the right time, they've done all this, you know, extracurricular stuff. Why can we not get them? And it went into this whole review, typical bureaucracy stuff about, is our process wrong? Do we need to change it? And eventually she just went down there, she fought, she called them every single day and mate, we got that letter and she fucking got in. She fought hard and she got in. And honestly. So the moral of this is, if you fucking want something, go after it, go down, put on your best clothes and talk to those people. Do not take no for an answer. Because there's so many in businesses, there's so many layers, there's so many people that don't have authority or autonomy. Go down and talk to the people, fight for what you want. Keep calling them and pestering, they'll say that you want it and you will get what you want. Even if you write I build, I run in your cv, you will still get in. If she can do it, all you out there in podcast land, do the thing you want to do, get after it and get in.

That's so good, man.

Believe in yourself.

For so many people that, you know, they, they could have just gone off, you know, given up, throwing in the towel, failed like I must, something must be wrong with me. Just a bullshit bureaucracy system.

Like, yeah, you know, the amount of people that would just give up for the like 4 or 4th or 5th rejection. And she's like, no, I'm not having it, I'm getting in, I'm going to do this. And she's looking at, you know, what they wanted her to do to prove that she was capable of doing this course. They wanted her to do a six month course that would cost like 15 or 20 grand, that has no credit towards her course. And I was like, fuck that noise. At one point she was like, Look, I'm just gonna do it so I can get it. I'm like, nah, fuck that noise. Why are you gonna pay that amount of money? Do this stupid course to prove you can do the course. That doesn't even give you any credit towards the course. I might go in there and fight these. And she was up at night, she was typing on her laptop. She hardly slept. Got ready the next day, she's like, I'm gone. And she went in there and she fucking crushed it, man. And then she followed up again and again and again, man. I'm so proud of it. It's just so seriously, seriously epic. And it's just going to set her life on a completely different trajectory with a new career path in an area that she really wants to get into, man.

Moral of the story, just get after it if you want something.

Hey, yeah, don't take from any hater. You go after that and you get what you want.

I love it. Awesome, mate, Great story. Well, I'm glad you, you didn't get stabbed or divorced after your complete up.

Any reason to race me, mate?

Right, well, it's your turn to roast me boogs. Because my accountability.

I always.

So, Ben, you had a challenge. And your challenge on the outside, on the surface, seemed quite simple. And it was to read for half an hour every day between the podcasts, which was slightly less than a week, half an hour a day. How did you go, Ben?

How was.

How's the first night? How was the first night? What'd you do on the first night?

Well, actually, I actually tried and then fell asleep after 27 minutes because I was busy in Dubai packing up, raising money, making happen, running the car.

We go. Here we go.

Trying to get on.

Okay.

Packing up on my own.

And so immediately on the first day, Ben's. Ben's failed. And I'm like, you're out. You failed. Bugger off. But I talked to the team and the team's like, nah, look, 27 minutes is pretty good. Like, he's a busy guy, you should let him go. I talked to my daughter and I'm like, hey, Like, I had a bet on and it was supposed to read for 30 minutes because she's doing reading every night as well, right? And it read for 30 minutes and he made it to 27. Do you think that's good enough? She was like, oh, maybe you can just give him another chance.

It was so cute. It smells my heart. And in my head I was still like, nah, fuck him. So I was gonna roast you, but look, I Let it go. I let it go. And how'd you go on the subsequent nights, mate?

Failed every night.

Mate. Reading 30 minutes. Come on. You even said you're like, man. Oh, I've been doing self reflection. I've been journaling. Guess what, man, I have been learning enough. I need to read more. That's what's missing in my life, mate. And then you set yourself a challenge and you're like, not.

So.

You even told me you're like, I've gone for the bigger challenge because I.

Don'T want to bungee jumpy challenges going on, mate. I made that many bets with people. I don't want to bungee jump.

Oh, mate, your life is just one big challenge. It's like trying to get somewhere on time, trying to wake up in the morning, trying to bloody put your clothes on, trying to iron something, trying to use a washing machine. Just so many challenges, mate.

Well, I just, just something about it just doesn't motivate me. Like I, I realize I only like to read when I'm in the mood and I'm not in the mood very often, so to try and sit down and read for 30 minutes. My day, I've not set my day up for success. I've set myself up for failure. Every day I'm packed the brain like morning tonight and then I'm completely fucked and do not want to read of a nighttime. So I need to reschedule.

You failed, mate. You failed reading again. This is high school for you all over again, mate. Like, you just, you're just failing. Look, we've had four accountability challenges and you failed three of them. That is disgusting. That is a 75% failure rate. You are single handedly gonna fund all of Melbourne for drinks, mate.

I go all in, mate, when I want to do something. And right now all in for me is raising capital. So this, that's going to burn, mate. There's fires burning everywhere.

And.

All right, all right. But before we get to, to my accountability, if I made it, do you have an accountability of the week this week or should I go through mine? While you think about it, you, you go.

Because I need to reassess my life because otherwise I'm going to run out of money by the time we.

This is, this is like a monthlong journey for you to reassess your life. It is such a shambles. It's going to take way too long, mate. You can't cover it in one pod.

I need.

All right, let's go.

I need a KPMG audit on My. On my lot.

Oh, mate, this order is not true and fair. You get roasted, mate. Okay, My. My accountability of the week was to lift weights at least three times during the week. Minimum 100 kilo, deadlift, 40 kilo minimum, minimum military press and minimum 60 kilo bench. And I had to walk for half an hour every day. First couple of days, not too bad. And I got to tell you, the walking is good. I was walking without my phone about halfway. There's like this awesome swing. It's like this big basket. You can just lie in his swing and just look up at the sky. It's amazing. I do that for a couple of minutes. All the builders are looking at me like, what a dickhead. And I'm like, look, mate, look, I'm at a crypto startup. I've aged like six years in the last six months. And they're just looking at me like, you lazy dog. And I'm just like, oh, get over it, son. And then, so I go for my walks. First weight session, absolutely fine. Deadlifted 105 kilos and did the rest. That was Wednesday. Then it comes to Friday. Friday was a tough day. And then I was knackered and I had to lift because I knew the pod was coming on Monday. And it was Friday night about 8 o', clock. And I am absolutely shagged. I'm exhausted and I'm like, oh, my body's hurting. Nothing's working right. I can't even open my eyes. And I'm like, you know what? I'm not gonna lose to Ben. I can't lose to him. I don't care about the 500. So I went in there, deadlifted 107 and a half kilos. I was just exhausted. I was just sending abusive messages to Ben. I sent him photos and videos to prove I was doing it. And he looks at me, he looks at my shoes and he's like, what are those? No wonder you're injured all the time, dog. And I'm like, what are you talking about? So wear Converse All Stars because they're flat shoes. Because if you're walking on marshmallows when you're lifting, they're just going to get compressed and you're going to roll your ankle. Oh, on the Friday when I went for a walk, I bloody rolled my ankle as well and I blew up and I'm like, oh, stop. This is the last thing that I need. I'm not going to be able to lift anyway. Lifted, it was fine. Went for a walk again. And then, oh, Mate, I was just exhausted. Like, I was not able to recover. I haven't been sleeping well. Everything hurts. I'm tired. Look at me now. I look like Sunday rolls around, mate. Go out in the morning. My mates want to go out to T20. There was a double feature, but I had a dinner and I had to lift. So I'm like, sorry, boys, I can't go out. I've committed, so I'm gonna do my. Oh, the Saturday. No, the Saturday was just so bad because it was raining and I couldn't go for a walk. So I had to do 40 burpees. My God, I was doing them in sets of 10.

I want to watch this. The pod. The pod list is what you do.

I could not breathe. I sent you the most abusive.

After 10 burpees because I'm doing it properly. And not the weak burpees, the proper push up ones. Right, like where? And you bounce out. And I'm like, oh my God. So on Sunday I'm like, I do not want to do this again. So I started going for a walk. I'm 10 minutes into my walk and it pelts down with rain. So defeated I had to turn around and come back home. And I'm like, I'm just gonna have to do my burpees. Resigned myself to my fate. Twenty minutes later, the sky just clears and I'm like, lad, it's on. And I went for a walk and I crushed it. Got the walk in, went on the swing and everything. The wet swing. Loved it. A couple of builders out on the Sunday. But it's Sunday and I have to lift and I am exhausted and it hurts and I'm like, nah, I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna push this because I want to know if I'm just being a lazy dog or if like two lifting sessions is my. Is my limit. Like, can I push this? Look at how soft I've become. 110 kilo deadlift. Close. The number two captains of crush gripper twice, which is like a record for me. And did overhead press. I think it was like 42 and a half kilos. Crushed it. Absolutely crushed it. And rolled into today, big smile on my face, managed to achieve everything. Bang. Three from three, baby. How do you like that?

Well done, mate. Congratulations.

And. And mate, Mate, I'm gonna call you out on something. You don't have time to read, but you've got time to drunk dial me with your mates. So I get, I get this call. Ben's like, oi, One of my mates Wants to talk to you. And I'm like, he's a huge part of the. Huge fan of the pot. I'm like, okay. And next thing I hear this video call and it's Ben and his mate. Ben's got a bourbon and coke in one hand and I'm like, mate, he looks smashed. He's like, nah, mate, just having a quiet one. And his face is so red, his eyes are pissed as. And I could barely understand what these guys are saying. I talked to them for a couple of minutes. So you can't read for half an hour, but you can get absolutely shit faced, mate.

Look at those.

Priorities, the founder Priorities need to wind down, mate. Oh, mate, that was. Mate, if I did that, I'd be hungover for a month.

You're lucky you're young and your organs still work, mate.

Okay. Oh. So have you got your new account? I've got mine. I'm gonna.

I've got mine.

You go, okay. I restructured mine. Restructured because for me it's about. I went too hard, too early. I went for. I went from zero to like, I can't, literally cannot do half an hour a day. And I had a book, to be fair, I started reading that happiness book and it's. It was dreadful. So I've got a new book.

I don't want none of this happening. This ain't reality. I can't apply this to my life. How's this going to help me raise capital? This noise? I got to raise that money, son.

Literally my brain, I'm like, this is. I don't have time for this. So I've just got, I got the new book, Built to Sell that just arrived. Hey, what a good book.

I'm reading that as well.

I'm going to restructure my day. So for this week, Burks. I want to. Every day, I want to meditate, journal and read for 15 minutes every day. If I can do that, then I'll level up to half an hour. But I went too hard too early. I want to structure my mornings. I'm going to read in the mornings. Reading at night doesn't work for me. I don't like it. I'm going to read in the mornings because I still don't have any other business books. I start raising business books and I'll be wired till 4am so every day this week I'm going to meditate, I'm going to journal and I'm going to read for 15 minutes.

Awesome.

Lock it in.

That's great. So 45 minutes all up.

Yeah. So I usually. Yeah. Probably be more closer. I meditate for 10 minutes, journal for 10, read for 15. So 35, 40 minutes, something like that.

Perfect. And try and finish. That book's not that long. I think it's 120 pages. Try and finish it by next week. We got that strategy session because there's so much good stuff in that book. I'm only about a quarter of the way through. I'll polish it off in the next couple of days. It is amazing. We're already applying a lot of those lessons and it just helps you to lean out your business and just make it an absolute machine. And it's not that we want to sell Collective Shift, it's that it helps us create an awesome business as a real engine that can run kind of, you know, without us or reliant on a founder. And what it is, is it gives you options. You want as many options as you can have in business. So at any point you've got the maximum amount available to you. So you can choose any path. And that book really helps you with it.

Are you. Are you scheduling time to read in your day in your calendar?

Sometimes I do. Generally I don't. So maybe twice a week I'll schedule to read, but it'll be. I generally go on how I'm feeling. So if I'm overthinking, I'll need to. I'll write down, I'll journal. So it's more of when I reach a threshold. If I'm bored, I'll read to get my brain going again. So I've been doing a lot of boring stuff in the website.

Yeah.

So I'll do that for, like, however long I can stand it. And then I'll read to get myself back. And if I'm not sure what I'm feeling, then I'll meditate.

Fascinating. I think I need a schedule. You like today I was busy. You do like 8:30 to 7. You know, like, there's no type of reading then. I just can't be reading by the end of the day. So I think I need to schedule in anyway.

And I have a lot of movable things in my day. You don't necessarily, because you're meeting with people. It has to be at a certain time and you've got a lot of things to do. So if you put yourself first at the start of the day and you do those three things and it's only 35 minutes, your day is already successful.

Yeah.

Chuck in some exercise and mate, that's.

That's the ultimate. What do you got for me, Burks? What are you being accountable? I heard it's big or hard it.

Is big and hard, Ben. You heard right.

Wasn't talking about you or I then Berg so someone else.

Well, it's definitely not you but you know, I'll speak for myself, mate.

So I've really thought about this and what do I want to do next? And I think I'm becoming soft. I really think I'm becoming soft.

Becoming.

And I talked to the missus about this and she's like. And she's like.

Better, better, better. Bleed that out.

I'll get cancelled for saying the C word. So. And she's like, no, you're not. You're doing all this stuff. You're doing all this extra stuff. And I'm like, no, I'm soft. So I thought, what can I do? And I came up with two things so number one was I've done this before is have cold showers. No hot showers whatsoever for an entire.

Week or no hot at all. No getting out hot, just straight cold.

Just like banging in the eye, son. Yeah so I heard this where I think it might have even been jcal a founder came up to him and he was like, you know, what do I need to do? He's like, have cold showers for a month and come back and talk to me. And what it does, it teaches you to be comfortable with being uncomfortable. So you have to get in that shower, you know you're having a shower. I have a shower generally twice a day it's going to be freezing and you can't freak out. You have to control your breathing and after a minute you adjust and it just becomes normal. And Tim Ferriss has this in his book as well where you have to be uncomfortable being a startup founder or working in a startup and he suggested all these random things like staring at people till they stare back and don't look away for 15 seconds or going to a crowded place and just lying down on the floor face down for like a minute, like doing this weird shit. So I was like, cool, I've done that before. That was great. And then I was like, I want something more and I started to look at structured learning and I was like, oh, I really want to do this Google course because I haven't done any programming for a long time. I want to get that part of my brain working again. I've never been a programmer but I like to hack away and there's a Python course for data creating data structures and I just Love data and working it. And I'm like, well, I could do both of those.

And then I was really thinking about the work smart, not hard, efficiency, effectiveness. And I also thought about, you know, working out. And there's this guy called Ed Thorpe. So he's 89 years old and his approach to risk. He's 89 and he looks fucking 60 and he's like, you know, and even this guy, Dango, follow him on Twitter Dan and his surname Geo. He does personal training for entrepreneurs. And he was saying, I don't do deadlifts and squats. He's 43. Because, you know, you lift very heavy. The recovery is a lot. You can injure yourself. And he does these other exercises. So I started thinking, you know, what ways can I de risk with a lot of upside, asymmetric upside, for the most benefit and the least risk. And I started thinking about longevity and goals. And then what do I really want to achieve here? And Ben, this is the thing. So the thing that is going to give me the most benefit is to fix something I've needed to fix for a long time. It is going to improve my sleep, but it's a of a thing and I reckon I've got 10% chance of actually doing it. And the thing is booking in with my surgeon to have surgery on my deviated septum. And I do not want to do this. It is going to be fucked. You're going to have all these tissues up your nose, you're going to have blood coming out. You have to rinse your nose multiple times a day. You need one to two weeks recovery from doing it. But after you do, you can just breathe properly, you'll sleep properly. There are so many life benefits from this. It is the number one thing to do.

Have you. Have you got a problem? Like, is it not like.

Yeah. So this. So this side of my nose, my septum goes like that. So this is like 99% blocked. And then because of that, there's things called turbinates, which are little round things and they've grown inside. So I can't breathe that well through my nose. So when you're sleeping, you're like. Like, you sleep like an idiot and you keep waking up. You have really poor sleep.

The thing is, I have, yeah. So I do not want to do this. I hate the idea of surgery. I hate the idea of this surgery. Sometimes in small cases it doesn't work and you have to go back for further surgery. Also, I don't want to take time off work because I like Working and I feel like the team needs me and everything's gonna. What's not gonna die without me. But I feel like I'm letting people down. Which is the stupidest attitude and is the wrong thing. Because if you said you had to go for surgery, I'd be like right off. Don't worry, we've got it, mate. If anyone.

If you're not sleeping, probably I'm not.

Recovering and I'm not sleeping. This is the number one thing I can do for my life. That'll and my mates have done it and they're like. I've even talked to their surgeon and they're like, it's the best thing ever. This guy has the hands of an angel. I've met with him, but this was months ago and then Covid kicked off in like April.

And when are you booking it?

I kind of put it on. Put on the back burner. It was winter and I was depressed.

When are you booking it? And now when are you booking it in?

What's that?

When are you booking it in?

I'm going to give him a call, I'm going to book it in. What I have to do when? Well, whenever he's available. Mate. It has to be. It has to be this year.

As soon as possible. So.

Yeah, earliest will be like three weeks from now and book it in. The goal is to book it in, have a surgery date. So I'm going to call him up and hopefully they just book it in over the phone. If I've had to go. If I have to go in and see him again, I'll go in and see him. But I'm getting that date, mate.

Wow.

Yeah. And it's going to be a of a thing. I'm going to be on the couch for a week, I'm going to be in pain, I'm going to have to rinse my nose and then after a week they pull out the bandages and all this blood comes out. It's all up like it's. It's not great, but like the lifelong benefits for just a small amount of.

Yeah.

You know, uncomfortability. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I told you multiple times but you never listen to me.

I don't listen.

It's like when we're talking on the pod last week, I tell you what an MBA is and how long it takes one minute later. So what's an NBA mate? How long does it take to do? I'm like, I just told you that.

I was thinking about disrespect, I was thinking about strategy. Mate, I need to concentrate.

Oh, ridiculous. Absolutely ridiculous.

Meme in the Week. Meal of the week.

All right, let's get into Meme of the Week. All right. I like this one. It. It fits in with what we're talking about after we trashed the British Prime Minister last week.

Here we go.

Meme of the week, mate. Here's your boy Elon. He's Thanos and he's got the glove and he just clicks his fingers and all the Twitter staff alone, no, they just disappear to dust.

It's so good. He's done the old. The old McKinsey just gone in and just cut heads. Mate, that company is so lean now. They've got like three engineers just crushing it. So he looks so happy. He's like. This is little face with his hand, like, bang. It is amazing. Infinity glove, Elon. We love you, mate. Make Twitter amazing.

Oh, man.

Right.

So good that. That one. Yeah. As soon as I saw it, I'm like, oh, man of the week. Now, we do have meal of the week here and Ben, you can go first. And I'm interested to see what this is, mate.

So, Berks, this is my flight meal. I got on the way back from Dubai on Emirates.

Wow.

This is. I was in premium economy, so I've heard economy foods, just like dog food. So what I got here, you've heard.

Because you've never been in it, Because I only travel business class.

I was a business. Premium economy. Premium economy, just a little bit better, but it's worse for the food. So we got here was grilled chicken, potato, corn. No, no, sorry. Peas and carrots. And they had, like a little ricotta and a salad. Now, folks, what amazes me is how on earth you can make this good of a meal in the middle of, like, nowhere in a plane, 30, 000ft in the air. Like, the chicken was well cooked. Potato skins were like chips. You like steamed vegetables. This was for like, hundreds of people. Like, I don't know how they cook this sort of in the air.

It's not like the salad looks good.

Sounds good. Didn't have the recorder. Not really. Desserts fan. It looks like.

It looks like panna cotta.

Panna cotta. Sorry, no desserts fan. Bit of cheese and biscuits.

But it's even got, like the little white chocolate chew on the top. Raspberries. Look at that salad. It's got pine nuts and Parmesan. Shaved Parmesan.

This is Emirates made. They look after you, so. And the chicken was good with a mushroom sauce. Fresh. Fresh veggies. And had about four scotches. Just knocked me out because during the day, just try and go to sleep ready for the year.

So that's the true reason you didn't read your book on the plane?

Yes, Just got pissed to watch Harry Potter and ate food.

I'm a wizard.

But now bergs. Overall, this was. This is probably good like eight and a half, you know, portion. I was pretty hungry stuff for this. Portions could have been bigger, but overall this is pretty good for in the middle of the air. I'll take this any day.

And it looks like you're on the A380, mate. How was it?

Oh, mate, flying hotel. Beautiful. First time on the A380. Just. Just good, man. There's barely any turbulence, it's so smooth. And Emirates have good.

Amazing.

That's good. I was nice.

Brilliant. All right, mate. This is my meal of the week.

Oh, hello.

And this is a curry Luxor, mate. So this is the Malaysian place, huh?

Seafood in there?

Yeah, man. So it's got prawns, squid, fish balls, tofu. It is just delicious. So this was the place I went to a couple of weeks ago where it's just a lovely old Malaysian lady cooking and her son's out the front. And mate, this was just like a warm hug. It had all egg noodles in there, bean shoots. And this was just like the dubstep of luxes, man. It was just. It hits you in the face. It was just banging a couple of areas that I love. It wasn't too oily, it didn't have the grit in the bottom. Prawns were sensational. I would eat this any day. This is the kind of thing you eat and it's spicy and your stomach feels good and it just. It heals you, man. It is healing. And the best Luxor I've ever had is at another place. And I give that a 10 out of 10. This one, I'll give an eight and a half just because it could have had some more stuff in it and some more cream. But the wild thing is, even though it's only 8 and a half, 9 times out of 10 I would order this over the 10 out of 10 Luxa.

Why?

Because a 10 out of 10 Luxa has like extra cream, extra oil, extra grit, extra prawn flavor. But then you eat and you're like, oh, I don't feel very great. Whereas you could eat this all day long. It's amazing. It hits the spot and it is just so, so satisfying.

Yeah.

And I was really happy. I'll definitely Be back for this one. Eight and a half out of ten.

Epic. Dude, looks nice. I love a good bit of seafood.

Oh, yeah. Mate. Mate, have you got a gratitude or kindness of the week?

I've got one.

Okay, hit me.

My. My gratitude of the week, believe it or not. And I thought about doing this and I'm like, oh, no, it's a bit lame. I'll get roasted for it, but I'm gonna do it anyway. My gratitude is for knowing you, Ben. Like, I'm genuinely thankful for that. As much as I give you and roast you 24 7, I really think about what my life is now compared to where it was seven months ago, before I worked for Collective Shift. And the things I'm able to do now, I'm able to work out more. I'm the fittest I've ever. Almost the fittest I've ever been. Fittest I've been since, well, the last eight or nine years, definitely. I'm able to work with amazing people, work at pace, at speed, create amazing things. I'm challenged every single day. I'm the happiest I've been since I can remember. And just being able to work with you and the person you are, the way that you motivate and push the rest of us and inspire us, the way that we work together and we still laugh all the time, give each other, but we still achieve big goals. We've always got each other's backs. And I'm just very thankful that, mate, honestly, to have you in my life and to be able to work with you in this capacity and to call you my friend, I'm very, very grateful, Ben.

Oh, mate, thank you. Hell, that was. That was deep. My. Deeper than we usually get on this pod.

Yeah, man. I really thought about it and I was like, well, what would happen if Ben didn't exist? Where would I be? What would I be doing? Would I be doing challenges? Would I have podcasts? Would I have all these amazing people on my team? No, I'd be somewhere else. And I can guarantee it wouldn't be as good as.

This is awesome, man. I appreciate it. I'm going to throw it back at you. Sound like a wank fester. Sorry the listeners, but.

Just the accountability stuff, like recently, I think, you know what we've been able to do together just on this pod. You know, we've got a good core listeners and just the enjoyment we have, but the leveling up, the ability for you to help me with my self awareness. I'll throw you a problem or A perspective that I have and I'll prone you on it, I'll ask questions and you'll give me another perspective. Allows me to level up and think about things in a different way because you think about things differently than I do. So when we come together and collaborate on something, we usually fucking kill it. And yeah, very, very grateful have you on the team. Don't have to worry about you at all. You're just doing your thing. You give you all your freedom to do what you need to do. Just a smart fella. No, I'm not gonna lie. Hate to say it, but you are pretty smart.

Thanks, mate. And that, that's the thing as well. Like you have the humility to be able to throw things out to me and whatever I give back to you, it's just a different lens. It doesn't mean it's going to be right, it could be wrong, but it'll just give you a different perspective and a different way of looking at it. And then you choose what you're going to do anyway. But it just works. And we have that ability and that even working relationship and friendship to be able to do that. And it just makes it really, really easy. Even during the tough times, we're still there. We're not going to bail out. We've got each other's backs. And even the decision I made, like, I've got a family, I had a career, I'm like, do I hitch my wagon to this guy's business? And you have to do a lot of thinking when you do that and just the way that you want to succeed and get after it and will not give up the relentlessness that you have. I'm like, yes, this is the guy. Because that's what I need. Like I have a lot of those traits myself and I need to have it and see it in other people and even more extreme than I have it. And that's, that's, that was my decision making process around that, Mike. And it was like, you know, like other offers, like I had offers for more money, larger role, larger team, all that kind of thing. But none of that mattered because it wasn't exactly what I wanted to do in the space I wanted to do it and with the people I wanted to do it with. And I was always like, did I make the right choice? And a month in I was just like, yeah, definitely the right choice.

That goes to show who you are. And that's what, I have a lot of respect for you too. Because we're not paying big salaries, we're not, you know, given, like massive packages, but we're here enjoying what we do, grinding out for something bigger in the long term and loving what we're doing and growing each other. Not just you and I, but the whole team. And we're. We come together next week for the first time all in person. You're gonna meet Amman for the first time in person. Like, we're all gonna be together for the first time ever. This is gonna be so much super fun.

Super. Like, I'm looking forward to it.

I think it's gonna be very motivating. I think it's gonna be very inspiring to have us all there, like, just knocking strategy out. It's gonna. I'm looking forward to it. It's gonna be good fun.

How good?

Okay, let's wrap it up there. We've got a. We've updated the website, so you head over to Ben and bergs.com you can check it out there. I'm gonna update. By the time this goes up, you'll see a live bar tab count. You can get our Twitter, you can join our discord. All the links to our podcast is there too. So head over to Benandbergs.com if you have any feedback, please send us a message. We had shout out to which is we had a. One of our fans, one of our listeners. Queensland bloke on Twitter.

Oh, yeah, what a lad.

Crack the 4X. Had a listen to Bennett Bergs. What a. What a good combo.

What a champion. He. He posts on Twitter and I'm pretty sure it was a Friday. He's like cracking a 4x goal. Classic Queenslander and he's like, listen to my favorite pot. I was like, oh, right in the fields. I'm like, what an absolute legend. Oh, I can't wait to meet that bloke. What a weapon.

I think there's three of us now at the. At the Bennettburg Summit, mate.

Amazing. Three people. It's already like a 1500.

It's gonna be wild.

We order like challenge like chicken burgers, mate.

Yeah. So if you're loving it, please leave us a like and review. Give some feedback at baby back Berg on Twitter and at Ben Simpsonau on Twitter. Apart from that, we'll see you next week. Thank you.

Have fun everyone. Ben, pleasure as always. Catch you all next week.