23. Where To From Here After FTX, How To Say Safe In Crypto, Inside View Of Collective Shift

Welcome back to another episode of Ben of Bergs where we talk about crypto, business, sport, life and take the piss out of each other. Bergs, welcome back to another episode. We're back, we're back, we're back. Zooming in. Real life was nice, but we're back.

Back to the old ways, mate.

Reality. We've got a cracker episode today. We are talking about all the debacle with FTX of the last week. We're gonna give our thoughts, break it down. If you haven't heard much about it, we're going to break down what went on. Where are we now, where to in the future talking about. We had a question from one of our listeners around, like how to actually get into crypto safely. So we're going to give our top tips on the best ways to buy and store your crypto. Then we're looking at our strategy day last week. So we had a. Basically a big strategy day. Everyone flew in for the Collective Shift team and it was a huge week. Apparently we've all been sick. Afterwards we're going to break down what we did. A new strategy for Collective Shift and just some lessons learned for business strategy and then finish with a little bit of personal growth stuff. So yeah, just some areas around working out, fitness, outsourcing and a few other bits and pieces.

Burgs FTX has probably been the biggest news piece I've ever seen in crypto and I did a video on this yesterday that hasn't been posted as time of recording but the word I use is embarrassed. Embarrassed to be in this industry and represent it with all the. That went on with SPF and ftx. I might give our listeners a bit of context. So ftx, the third large or second or third largest crypto exchange globally filed for bankruptcy this week. Court filings are coming out showing that there has been significant fraudulent nature. Alleged, must say alleged fraudulent, Alleged nature. The new CEO who's come in in charge of ftx, who by the way, Bergs did the Enron bankruptcy. So had 40 years of legal. By the way, could you imagine this guy's job? Like just. He's the guy you go to when your company's.

Yeah. When things blow up, you call this guy.

Yeah, he's.

He would have seen it all. Enron, they still talk about it in business school. They still use it as a fraud example. And what did he say about ftx, mate?

He said never in his career have I seen such a complete failure of corporate controls and such a complete absence of trustworthy financial information.

This is the new case study mate, everyone's out. Enrons, our old newsmate FTX is.

That's exactly it. 100%. 100%.

So get this really highlights like yeah, get this right. FTX had no in house accountant or accounting division. Alameda Research, which is the holding company of FTX that SBF also owns and is a CEO of, gave SBF the founder a $2 billion loan and another 500 million dollar loan to another employee. They both, they use both customer and corporate funds to buy houses for their employees. And Sam Bankman Fried didn't include customer liabilities in FTX's financial statements. So he didn't even have a line for the deposits of people in FTX on the platform.

And the new CEO has basically said he does not believe it is appropriate for stakeholders or the court to rely on the ordered financial statements as a reliable indication. Apparently FTX had no idea how much cash they had or how many employees they had. I don't know how many people are working, don't know how much money they have. No one's in charge. And the, the last thing Bergs which they implemented was on their trading side they implemented God Mode. So FTX allegedly coded into the platform that any trades that Alameda Research did could not be liquidated.

Could not lose.

Amazing. What a how good this is. Unbelievable man. It is, it is. The news, it's been blowing up over Twitter, so many spaces everyone's talking about it and it's just, mate, this was the company that was seen as kind of the go to company and they were acquiring all these other distressed crypto companies and bailing them out and helping them out and behind the curtain there was nothing. And let's just go through a few things. First of all, why would you have accounting when you could just have a bunch of engineers, mate, that's all you need. You don't need an accountant, you don't need to know what you've got or where it is or you know, you don't need to report to authorities that you're accountable to, you know, don't worry about the regulation mate, you'll be fine. And then don't worry about your liabilities. What are they? Just cash in mate, cash in. That's all that matters. And you know, why don't we just commingle all of our funds, you know, all the company funds and all the active deposits that we're taking, let's just put them all together mate, they're all just one big bucket. It's all good. We've got cash, mate, we'll be fine, mate, we'll be fine. And oh my God, it is just so crypto. It is unbelievable. Like, you would already see that in this space. It is absolutely ridiculous. And the more stuff that's coming out where, you know, old mate's on the run, he's in the Bahamas now he's somewhere else and they've withdrawn more funds. Even just simple things like giving yourself a loan, not recording, recording it. And, mate, the number one thing, this, this was the biggest red flag I've ever heard of. They use Microsoft Teams, mate.

Oh, it's over, it's over. And he started using Microsoft Teams.

This is why, I reckon CZ from Binance went in and the first day he saw they were using Microsoft Teams and he's not due diligence is done. I'm out. I'm not acquiring this company. Get fucked. If you're using teams out there, it's over for you. Unless you're like a giant, giant, giant company, then I'll accept it because you got a Microsoft Enterprise agreement. If you're a startup and you're using teams. See you later. Just stop now, Sam.

Sam dropped CZ alone on Twitter and then drops him a calendar invite with a teams link. And then CZ sells his 500 million in FTT tokens.

But how masterful is CZ, man? Like, he's. So FTX are a competitor of theirs, of Binance, they're both exchanges. And he held quite a bit on their exchange and he signaled to the market that, hey, we're holding a lot of this token, we're going to offload it. I don't believe in it or whatever he said, but we're going to do it over a series of months. So he's protecting himself. He's kind of saying, I'm not going to move the market, I'm not forcing their hands, I'm not that guy. But it highlighted and put a spotlight on exactly what was happening because CZ said, like, he can look at their stuff and kind of be like, oh, well, I run an exchange, I can kind of do the numbers on this. It doesn't really look right. But then, you know, it's a different business. So I'm not too sure. Put a big spotlight on them. And it just all came crashing down just from that one tweet. And then he came in, he's like, well, I'm going to acquire these guys for cents on the dollar. He went in, looked at it and goes, within one day of due Diligence. This is a clusterfuck. I'm getting the fuck out of here. This is just ridiculous. I don't know what's what. There's more liabilities and they have current assets. They're just absolutely screwed. Yeah, it was just unbelievable.

The sad thing for me is like FDX went out of their way to go to the Bahamas to avoid any little regulation they had already. And Brian Armstrong came on Coinbase. Brian Armstrong, the CEO of Coinbase went on all in podcast the other day and spoke about the regulation they have because they're a listed company, like they're a, they're on the stock market, they have a lot more orderly done. But you know I think that the crazy thing here is you know FTX were audited but the fact that they were actually you know allegedly just doing complete fraud, doing things behind auditors back like even an order may have not had picked up all of this, you know. So I think, you know, you know, so for where I'm the total crypto market the contagion risk for me is the scary thing. So Bitcoin has hit two year lows now we're sitting at around a heated to your low, around US$16,000. The total crypto market has dropped $850 billion since the start of 2021. So crypto is down significantly. And I think the contagion risk here as I mentioned is the thing that I'm sort of most worried about. So Multicoin Capital, one of the biggest crypto funds had 10% of their assets under management under FTX. The Ikigai I think I mentioned that a fund is gone completely belly up and probably the biggest news off the back of the FTX blow up is that BlockFi has paused withdrawals and looks like bankruptcy may be on the cards for FTX after BlockFi as well. Now what this means across the board is that you're basically seeing domino effects. This is what happened when 303 Arrows Capital blew up early this year. And Celsius you have this, you have this domino effect because people have their capital invested in other areas and what probably the biggest lenders, sorry, one of the biggest lender to institutional players in the space is Genesis and they're the big ones. They have also halter withdrawals. Genesis has over $2.8 billion in active loans and has a, and is a huge, huge potential victim of FTX collapse with the big implications. So Genesis was one of the biggest lenders to 3 hours capital. They, they lost $1.2 billion already 3 hours capital and Genesis is a big provider to the Gemini and Circle earned programs and both Gemini and Circle have also suspended earn programs. So the flow and effect from here in a worst case scenario Genesis is like this big fund that you know as I mentioned back the institutional players, OTC lending, this etc, they're one of their biggest clients or biggest potential blobs here in the worst case scenario is actually grayscale. So grayscale is another company that's affected in the worst case scenario could potentially create a bit of a nuclear winter. If grayscale go under that is the alt like the ultimate worst case scenario. But yeah if Genesis goes under it could be a knock on effect down the line. So could we see other exchanges go down? We've seen crypto.com also come into question. I think their CEO did a pretty good job earlier this week being a little bit, you know, transparent about where their assets are at. This new sort of proof of reserves thing has come out off the back of it. But yeah bergs it's contagion risk is is huge. Bitcoin's currently sitting at time recording about 16 and a half thousand US but we could see more sell offs to come.

Mate, no one's got their bitcoin to sell anymore. It was all on ftx.

It's and you're right with supply chains as well you have to think of this in a systems way. So how many businesses held their crypto on FTX that they can't get access to now? How do they pay their employees? How do they pay their suppliers? Other companies that relied on their suppliers that were reliant on FTX for either liquidity or held their funds there, what now happens to their business model? This is what's going to come out over the next weeks and months. If they can pivot quickly and their supply chains resilient, they will survive. If they can't they will fold or they'll be in a lot of trouble. And just to touch on that point where you're saying a lot of people are coming out and a lot of exchanges are coming out and saying we've got proof of assets, we're being audited. I've seen a lot of people, they don't understand the difference between an unqualified and a qualified audit and someone will put out like coin spot put out a beautiful piece with a unqualified audit. So an unqualified like opinion is that the financial statements are from free from material misstatements. It's fair and true and they'll sign off on it. So unqualified is the one that you want. Un doesn't mean bad, it means good. The qualified one is the auditor. Means it's an inability to give an unqualified opinion. So that's the one you don't want. If it's a qualified audit, get the fuck out of there. If it's unqualified, it means that someone's gone through, they've looked at the financial statements and they've done all that stuff. And also look at the depth of the audit. Because if they're just auditing financial statements, that's one thing, right, you can fudge those. But are they actually going to the specific accounts and looking at those? Are they auditing internal processes? What are the. What. How deep did the audit actually go? And that will give you an indication of the health of the company and I guess the fairness and compliance as well. Very important distinguishment there because I've seen that in a couple of crypto groups and people like, get your fucking funds off. It's unqualified. I'm like, no, that's good, lads.

Like.

Steady on. That makes no sense. As an uneducated person, that. That usually means not good.

But, oh, mate, things. Things never do, mate, they never do.

So.

But really, what? Yeah, like, yeah, unqualified just means there's nothing there to put there. So it's like, here you go.

So I think this is going to obviously have a pretty big regulation impact. You know, 22 has been. 2022 has been the year of collapses. We had three AC, Lunar, Celsius, FTX. Then we've got SBF, like, carrying on the last few months in Washington, trying to make crypto policy. So, you know, like you said. But you make a good point. Like, there's a difference between just auditing financial statements and auditing proof of reserves, like, actually going in. Because that was the other thing. Like, people have lost their bitcoin and ftx. Well, from what I've read, the FTX was just running a Ponzi scheme. People actually weren't buying bitcoin, they were just putting money into the FTX platform and it was just going into the SPF slush fund. So, you know, people have lost capital here. But I don't think there's necessarily been bitcoin loss per se because of, you know, the fact that they actually weren't buying bitcoin, they were just, you know, sending money SPF and it's just all blown up.

So, yeah, yeah, there was. And in terms of how Big it is. There was a graph of all the different crypto hacks and scams and by far the biggest one, I think it was 10 or 20 times bigger than this, maybe even more was Mount Gox and the amount of bitcoin in there compared to ftx. So it's huge in money terms but in terms of actual bitcoin lost it's quite low.

Yeah. So I don't think we're gonna, and I think that's why we haven't seen a huge sell off.

Right.

Like you know we've only gone down, yes, we're down to two year lows but we're still only sitting at six and a half thousand. I think we're.

Where we could potentially go lower is the contagion risk is the flow on effects. Like if you're, you know, you're who I mentioned just before, like you know, Genesis goes under or you know, grayscale or block fire and then, then we're getting forced selling to, to get cash. That's where I think we could hurt and go down further.

And I think this is very difficult for people to hear the thing that I'm going to say but this is actually what needed to happen and I'm very sorry to people that had their money on exchange and lost it at ftx. But if you look at principles of anti fragility especially in entrepreneurship or emerging markets like this is heaps of people come in and the majority of them will fail. And the ways that they fail, well first of all they fail, they take all the risk and they end up with nothing. But then everyone else in the ecosystem learns from what has happened, they take those principles, they become more anti fragile, more resilient and they succeed. And if you think about this, if you look at any cafe strip that you go to in your local city, it'll be exactly like that. It'll be packed with 100 restaurants and you have those ones that are institutions that have learned the game that will stay and you have people that will come in that will try something that will fail, someone will iterate on top, someone will learn and then eventually something will come in and they will succeed. That's just the way that this area of business works. So it's something that we, we need to see and you know, it's good. There's a huge focus on this now. There probably will be regulation. I think crypto exchanges should be regulated. They're active deposit taking institutes, they're holding banks money. They should be held accountable like yeah they are, they're banks, they should be held accountable like banks. And I think if you're in an area that has regulation that like let's say Australia, America, wherever and you're domiciled there, you should obey those laws. You should have, you know, insurance, all these kind of things. If you're that institute. I also believe that you should be able to be domiciled in the Bahamas, but make that clear and transparent and what you're actually signing up for. So you can get, you know, perhaps fancier features, a bit looser laws, but at least people know the differentiation between those two. And then you can go fully decentralized as well. Or it's just run on code and it's a website somewhere. You should have the option but it should be made very clear to customers which one you are and how they are protected or not protected, what risk they are taking themselves.

Yeah, the big takeaway for me the last few days is being what this is going to force people to remember why we're in crypto to begin with, which is to be your own bank in bitcoin. The reason we all got into this space anyway, well, for me anyway, Burgs was like bitcoin, the truest form of money and freedom. When you don't have to have someone else controlling your money. You've got that on your ledger. It's decentralized, no one can take it off you, you, you are, you know, the money is yours, truly yours and I can take that off you. And this space is now going to force people to remember what self custody is and how to do that. And I think the hardware is still really shit and difficult to use but it's going to force people to learn how to to do it. We've seen cold wallet sales hit I think nearly all time highs or they've especially. They've certainly gone up to record highs the last few days. Ledger, yeah, last week, so Ledger's highest sales week in history, Sunday was our single highest day of sales ever. So this is really going to push that idea of decentralization and self custody and not your keys, not your coins.

Nacho keys, nacho coins. It's honestly it people forget like Satoshi's rolling in his grave mate, being like I invented this so there's no intermediaries and you dickheads have left all your money on like in intermediary and you've lost it. What do you think was going to happen? And I understand that self custody is very hard and you do need to be able to trust some institutions and use their functions but long term it's not really a thing that you want to do because if you let someone hold your money they will steal it and if someone is holding your money, make sure you got it. Make sure that shit's insured and you've got a lot of recourse against them. Yeah, with FTX I don't see many customers getting any money back at all and God knows the hierarchy of their creditors who has to get paid back first. Even if they'll get paid back if there's jurisdiction there, what will actually happen.

Yeah, yeah, it's important to know.

It's so crazy to think about unless.

The exchange is self custody and you own that address, which there's not many of most exchanges, most exchanges in Australia are actually brokers so if you look into Coin Spot OR Coin or SwiftX, you know they are broke. They're brokerages, they are just buying on your behalf. Their business model is to take your money, buy it on your behalf and they take a fee and then they, you store yes it's your account but it's actually their account so you need to get your own ledger and bergs. We only go into now like you know, know step by step what our.

Recommended, I guess step by step plan is to buy crypto and store it yourself with all the, all the bs.

Yeah, let's get into it. So with everything that's happening, as I was saying before, we don't know which exchanges are exposed, which will shut down, which will.

You know, pause withdrawals, we don't know. So at the moment you can't. I wouldn't recommend putting your funds on an exchange long term and really to custody your own crypto, the way to do it is pretty much on a hardware wallet. So we'll go through that now. But anyone listening? If you head to CollectiveShift, IO TopTutorials, that's top tutorials, there's a whole bunch of video tutorials to follow along and the ones you want to look at are how to set up a hardware wallet and how to buy your first crypto. So first things first. Buy a hardware wallet like a ledger, a Trezor and go and set that up. If you can't get that you can do a paper wallet. So which, which software wallets would you recommend for?

For Bitcoin for desktop or mobile?

Do we mean do both? Yeah.

So right now I use the JAX wallet. J A X X. You can get that on mobile and you can get that on desktop. I only use that as an intermediary between exchanges and storage. Because I'm traveling a lot so I tend to just move my crypto onto my, my Jax wallet when, when I need to. That's the best I've found so far. There's others but yeah, in terms of.

Yeah, yeah, there's like Electrum, Samurai and a few other ones. Just grab one and really you set up your software. If you can't get a hardware wallet, it's going to take too long and you want to get your money off in exchange. Set this up and It'll give you 12 to 24 seed words. Write those down on a piece of paper, make sure no one sees it. Put it in that wallet. You're now self custody. You can then restore that seed onto a ledger or a Trezor or any hardware wallet. It's really, really easy to do. So do that first and if you, if you set up your hardware wallet. Okay, great. How do I buy Bitcoin now or how do I buy, you know, Ethereum? If you're doing Ethereum, use Metamask or your hardware wallet. So you can do in a number of ways. Probably the easiest way is over the counter. So these are brokerage services where you basically it's white glove, White glove service. You call them up and you're like lad, I want to buy let's say five grand worth of bitcoin. They're like great. It's at this rate, it's at whatever. Send us your little address, they send you a little contract, you sign it, you send them your address and they send the money across within 10 minutes. And that is probably the easiest way to do it. One I know off the top of my head that I have used myself is Caleb and Brown that I can recommend. Another way to do it is to go to get paid in bitcoin. And there's tons of these services around all over the globe. You go to this guy is get paid in bitcoin. He calls your HR and let's say you want to put in $100 a week into bitcoin. They set it up with your HR and every week 100 bucks will go to your address. And it just constantly goes through. So you only ever got like a hundred dollars at risk. That is the easiest way to dollar cost average.

I've just set that up Berg.

So you do that?

Yeah, as of Monday. So it's really easy. It literally in the platform you click a button to email to your hr. Just type in their email address. It sends them all their details and all the instructions, they just send, as Berg said, a portion of it to a bank account and then it goes directly. The important thing here is that it's not like an account on Get Painting Bitcoin, it's your Bitcoin address. You have to give them your Bitcoin address, which it sends Bitcoin to directly. So that's really easy way of, you know, dollar cost averaging into the market as well.

Absolutely. It's set and forget it's a way to do it. And let's go another way. So you've either set up your software wallet or you set up your hardware wallet. And now you need to buy some funds, you need to get it in there and you don't want to do over the count or get paid in Bitcoin. You can use an exchange. Exchanges are still okay to use for short periods of time. The risk is when you have it on there for a month, a year, two years, the risk increases exponentially because you're betting that that company will survive and doesn't have any exposure risk and is doing the right thing and is compliant. So I would, out of all the exchanges, I would recommend Coinbase to go to because they are a listed company that been around since forever and they're very highly regulated. So head over to Coinbase, open an account, buy your Bitcoin and this will happen almost instantly. You can use your credit card, you can do bank transfer, whatever you would like to do, and it'll go into your Coinbase account. As soon as you've got it in your Coinbase account, you can then just send it to your hardware wallet. And when you're sending it to your hardware wallet, this is a very scary thing because you're just posting in this big address and there's no give backsies mate. So what I highly recommend people do is let's say you've got $1,000 you would like to send, just send $10 to that address. So you go into Coinbase, you go to send, you'll paste in your bitcoin address from your ledger, Trezor or software wallet and you click send. You wait your 10 minutes, go to your address or check on the blockchain. I think it's like blockchain.info for Bitcoin, just look up Bitcoin Explorer. I think Google does it now. You can paste in your address and it'll tell you if the funds have hit your address. As soon as they hit your address, that's $10. Great. You know, that's the address. It's now saved in your contacts. You can send the other $990 and you can send that across. You are now self custodying your funds. No one is going to steal that from you. This is very, very important because people think FTX has affected bitcoin and it has affected the crypto ecosystem. But the way bitcoin is supposed to function is self custody and everyone that's self custody they're just getting on with their lives. FTX does not affect them at all. They're just chilling. They've taken on that risk. They haven't outsourced it to a third party. They're like great. Bitcoin is doing exactly what it's supposed to do. So if you want to get in the game I highly recommend self custody. Do it with a small amount. Try it out, follow our tutorials and just it's screen by screen follow along the little video and you'll see how easy this stuff is to do and store yourself. And you will sleep a lot better at night than having on exchange wondering about that risk.

Yeah. And to go a bit deeper on the self custody. So after you bought your ledger you can head over to Collective Shift again. And if you go to resource the top your resources and go to storage we have the ultimate guide to storing your cryptocurrency. And in there there's some, some tips and tricks on just like how to set that up. But it's important to when you're setting it up to just be careful when you're doing it. Follow the instructions yous're going to basically get this thing called a seed phrase which is your password to your ledger. It's important that you write that down somewhere safe. You don't get it wrong and maybe even test it once you write out. So it's gonna be a 12 to 24 word phrase that you want to test out. Ensure that you, you get that right and sort somewhere that's your password. You don't give that to anyone. That's different to the address Bergs was talking about. The address is like your email address. That's fine, that's the way you transfer funds. But your seed phrase or your private key that is your password to your account. You never want to get that out.

To anyone and you never want to put it anywhere electronic ever. You put it on a piece of paper, you hide it away from cameras because like literally if Ben gave me his 24 word seed phrase I would just download a piece of software, type them in and open his account. Yeah and this is why we recommend hardware wallets. Because everything is done on the hardware wallet. You could put that hardware wallet, you could connect it to the most malware infected computer and you would still be fine because the entry is done on the screen. And if you think about this, if you're typing on a computer, you're typing in that seed phrase, you know, there's 24 words. You could have a key logger. You know, it's, it's challenging. And this, this is the other side of it, right where we're saying self custody is great. But then you take on the risk of securing those funds yourself. You can't outsource that risk or transfer that risk to somewhere else. You are responsible, you and you alone. And there's, there's other things to this as well. Like, okay, great, I've self custody my own funds. But now you have to decide.

Where do I store that seed phrase? Do I break, do I break it up? Do I put half in one bank safe deposit box, One in another one? Do I have a safe at my house? Do I put it somewhere else? These are the things that you need to decide. So. And it's all in our security center. It goes through all of that. But once you've set it up. Yeah, it's easy going.

Yeah.

For the races.

Okay, I think that's, that's it, mate.

Yeah, highly recommend it.

So head over, wrap that up, head over Collective Shift IO, head to our security center, head to resources. We have everything you need there. Step by step. Videos, tutorials, everything you need to, to get, get started.

And one thing you just touched on there, Ben, was. Yeah, hang on, mate. When you, when you've typed in your seed phrase. So if you do have a hardware wallet, they do have a function where you can enter your seed phrase again to see if you've actually written it down correctly. And you do that on your hardware wallet. Highly recommend doing that. Because if you've written it down incorrectly and something happens to that hardware device and you go to restore it, you may not have access to those funds. Yeah, yeah. So definitely give that a go. And it just gives you that extra little bit of security and assurance that you've written it down correctly.

Yeah, 100%.

All right, lad, let's move on.

Let's move on. Last week was a huge week. So we flew all the teaming shift team in person in Melbourne. For the first time ever, we all got to meet each other and it was an epic week.

It was a bit rocky. Bergs barely slept, Everyone was sick. We Sort of got through it. But, yeah, it was good.

It was okay. So it was rough. So we. I fly. I fly in on the Sunday night with. With Big T. And, you know, we get to get to the hotel and it's a. It's a bear market hotel, let's just put it that way. We bought it during the bear market.

Actually. Wasn't too bad, to be honest. But the challenge was because I get there, I'm amped, I'm like, yeah, let's go.

Man. It was. The room was, like, a bit dusty. It was. It was super warm. And I don't know why, but every time someone went to the toilet in the whole hotel, like, I could hear the water, like, going down through, like, the bathroom. There was some homeless guy screaming on the street, like, just nonsense all night long. Is this good?

He could sleep through the middle. This is.

We're in Chapel street. So, yeah, everyone's. Everyone's gonna know we're Chapel Street.

Even. Even Big T said he could sleep anywhere. He's just out. He's like, yeah, I had trouble sleeping. So we get, we get to it. First day, we're hitting like hardcore, like, strategy. We've got a facilitator in, um, doing the. Doing the startup thing. Just going in, punching through our strategy, you know, what is our vision, our goals, our objectives. We even punch through finances, you know, customers, absolutely everything about the business. Who are we? What do we do? Where do we compete? Doing look backs on, like, the last six months. What was successful? What do we need to bring to the table? It was just absolutely epic. We had a team day as well. Team, Team building day, which is great. We went out for.

First of all. First of all, okay, Ben. Fucking Ben. Every day it's like, fuck. You get there, you have like breakfast at 8 o'. Clock. You go from like 9 till 5. Just like hardcore strategy. Burnt out quickly. Go back to the hotel, go out for drinks, go out for dinner, and then go out to drinks, like midnight. And then you're like, fuck, do it all again the next day, mate. We're not all 24, for fuck's sakes, mate. Like, seriously, like, you wait, you got another 15 years on your body, you'll be broken. I'll take you out and we'll see how you dance. God damn.

It was a big week. It was. I think it was just so exciting to see everyone in the same place. And, you know, we wanted to make the most of it. So we're working long days, very deep thinking strategy. Like, everyone was Cooked. And then we'd go out for dinner and, you know, have some drinks. And it was a man's first time in Melbourne, so we're trying to give him a good time as well. And it was. It was good. It was good.

It was awesome to see him. And then on the Thursday, we're like, oh, we'll have the morning off. I'm like, great, finally a morning, you know, I can rest, I can do my thing. Oh, no. Oh, mate, over here. Oh, we're doing a photo shoot, mate. We booked it in. Hour and a half. Photo shoot. I'm thinking, what the. So. So we get to do this photo shoot. We. We have breakfast out the front of the hotel. And then I just start sneezing, mate. And then, like, Leon's eye just starts going red in the picture, mate. And Ben starts getting red all over his face. So there was this storm in Melbourne and, man, it just. Oh, it blew up all this. You could see the pollen coming down the street and going into your eyes and. And like, all the dust and everything. We're standing there waiting for the Uber and I'm like, coughing up a fucking lung. I have to give these guys antihistamines. They're not even bloody big hay fever blokes, mate. It was brutal. And then we go for this photo shoot. So the night before, a couple of the lads, they just got on it and they were. So. They rocked. We found. We found one of them out the back, lying down, like, out the back of the bloody photo shooter just on the grass going, it was so funny. And one of them rocks up late. He's like, oh, I feel so good. Gets his head shot, goes through Chunda and meets us out the front. My God. And we're getting all these photos of walking, going up and down. Matt and I are, like, sitting on the stairs. We're doing another one. Like, the pollen is just going into our eyes and just flying through. Because you can't wear sunnies, like. Oh, it's so punishing. Anyway, after that, we got it all sorted. We went for VR, which was far cry, which was heaps and heaps of fun. That was an awesome time. Went. Went bowling, mate, after that, because they. They up the VR like it was just a mishmash. This person should not have been a facilitator. Oh, yeah. So anyway, we go, we go do some bowling. I haven't slept for a couple of nights. Just having a casual bowl finish the first game. Ben's like, yeah, one year old dogs. I'm the best like, he's big, whatever he is. I'm like, mate, we weren't even competing. What do you talk about? He goes, all right, let's have another game. Like, oh, it's on, lad, it's on, lad. So I get into it, mate, I'll get into it. And what was the end result there, Ben? What? What happened, mate?

Doesn't matter, mate, because my first score was still higher than your winning score, mate. So I had the highest score and I was warming up the first round, apparently to you. So you can, you can.

All I hear is a bunch of weasel words and loser talk. All I remember is winning. I got a photo of that. What do you have, mate? You got nothing. You got nothing, mate. The guy between your legs.

So. So, listeners, I absolutely clean up on the. On the first. The first game had like 180. Like huge. Huge. I didn't take photos. I was humble, humble in my win. Then you were not.

Carrying on.

You carry like a pork shop, mate. I'm half dead. Just like, I'm so tired.

I wasn't taking photos, though.

Yeah, dude, yeah. You're like, you're just running your own race, mate. Everyone's just trying to have a good time.

Everyone's hungover, drinking. I'm just going gun ho, trying to beat everyone. And then Berg steps up, he's like, oh, yeah, I'm gonna try and beat you, mate. And then I. I fall to pieces. I had a shock. And second game.

Oh, my God.

But, but for, like, key action, we'll take away. The number one thing I learned about all of this is like, you can't replicate in life experiences on Zoom as a remote company, as people across the world. You cannot replicate getting in person, talking about business, talking strategy, brainstorming, coming together, breaking bread. We came together as a team. We lined up 20, 23 and just unbelievable. And to have a facilitator as well, helping you guide through that so you don't have to think about facilitating the strategy and implementing it. Just having someone there running it, like, what he did was unbelievable. So that was my number one recommendation.

It is so important. It's so important as well. And even just that piece we did on founder alignment, how we just all stopped and we're like, hang on, what do we want out of this? And just have, like a real honest chat about where we're at in our lives and why we're doing this and what we want to achieve was one of the most valuable things we've done. Yeah, yeah. It was just seriously epic.

I Agree. Transparency and just alignment. Yeah.

Oh, mate. And it was. It was such a big week. Like, literally. Here you go. I'm going to share a photo.

This is us at the end of the week, mate. Like, absolutely.

Look at that. So that is on Friday. That's on Friday. After we did the pod with Judy.

Yeah, yeah.

And I was cooked, going inside the biggest bags under my eyes. Went to Oshi Gallery. We went to St Kilda. So you. You are such a dickhead. So we went to St Kilda, right? And we had to go to this NFT festing to check out the venue. And Ben's like, oh, let's go to the pub on the corner. You know, I used to go here all the time. Great. So go to the pub. Walking stinks like smoke. I'm like, oh, my God, what's going on here? But the food was cracking. It was great. So we finish up and we walk five meters down the street and he's like, oh, this is the place we used to have those epic chicken sandwiches at. And I'm like, what the. I fly all the way to Melbourne, right? And you've been dogging me about these chicken sandwiches the whole time. You're like, the best. The 10 out of 10. We're literally right there. And you're so cooked that you didn't even remember they were there, mate. And we ended up missing out.

I remember just like at lunch, we're like falling asleep. Like, I was proper cooked. Then we walked past the chicken sandwich shop. I'm like, oh, there's the best chicken sandwiches in the world. I forgot about.

Was so bad. It was so bad. And then everyone there's like, oh, Ben, how you going? Like, every shop knew him. Like he was some kind of celebrity. Celebrity, mate. It was just. It was crazy. The coffee lady remembered you. Although Oz, it was. It was crazy. It was a sight to behold, mate. You were. You're king of us. And killed it for a while.

All right, so. So let's. Let's tell. Let's tell a couple of stories, mate.

Escape room.

All right. Oh, no, no, we'll do the escape room second. So this is probably my favorite story. So this is on the Tuesday night. So we'd done the.

First two. First two days were the heaviest ones with the executives going through absolutely everything. Burn your brain out kind of stuff, but really, really valuable. So we all go out to dinner. I can't even remember where did we even go to dinner.

We. Oh, the Italian place.

Yeah. Which is really good. It was amazing. So we get on the wines. Well, we had a few drinks beforehand. Get on the wines, go have some more drinks. We go through the casino. There's five of us, you know, a bit of a gamble here and there. Pounding drinks. Everyone was lit. I was trying to keep it reasonable because I actually wanted to sleep that night. Ben ends up winning like 1600 bucks on roulette, right? Like, he's just like. He's just throwing all this money down. All his cash comes out. He's just like, you. And I'm like, look, it's almost midnight. I gotta go back. We've got to start early tomorrow. Let's just go. So end up going back. We go out the front and we try to get an Uber. And in Melbourne, I don't know what it is, but Uber's just like, cancel. Cancel finding your Uber. Cancel finding your Uber. It was just crazy. It was like a 20, 20 minute wait. There's always cabs lined up. So we go up to the cabs and the first one's like, no, I can't take you because there's five us. Second one's like, oh, where are you going? Or how many people? Guys, it's like, no wonder he's got this big van. He's like, yeah, why does it matter? Why is it? And Aman, like, he walks around the other side of the Uber. No, of the cab to the driver's side. And he's just like, why does it matter? Why does it matter how many people? This is why Uber wins. It was just so funny, man. He's just like berating this driver. Eventually we go the next cab and he's like, yeah, come on. He's got like a seven seater. We jump in, we agree to the price, it's fair. We get in, we go get in, bail out. Turns out the next morning, we find out, Ben loses his wallet. He's left it in the bloody cab. All his cards, all his passes, and 1600 bucks that he won from the casino, never to be heard from again. And. And he has a Costanza wallet from Seinfeld where it's like you can barely close it. It's like a grandad wallet with like 10 million cards in there. This guy that works in tech and crypto hasn't even put his cards on his phone. It was just. It's a disaster. Absolute disaster, mate. But then you did the most gangster thing where you're like, fuck it, just keep moving. What can I do? And I was like, holy shit. Like, that was just so eye opening for me. Usually I'll like, beat myself and be like, I lost this issue. You're like, no, man. I just don't want to feel like, what can I do about. Let's keep going.

We had a conversation about this. We were like, because, you know when you lose something or, like, you beat yourself up, you just feel. And I consciously hate feeling that way. So I just made it a call. I'm like, I'm not gonna feel like it is what it is. It like, let's move on. Like, life goes on. It'll be fine. And we had a conversation about this because I think, like, some, like, we can get in these traps of, like, just feeling shit for days and just, like, constantly. And not to say I'm perfect, because I always, like, I. You know, when I do something like that, you feel shit and, like, whatever. But I think sometimes you just gotta just go, fuck it. Like, whatever. Yeah, let's move on. Yeah.

Yeah. You're just like, oh, it's fucked. Can't control. Everything's fucked. Just keep moving. Yeah. And I was like, holy shit. Like, what a way to be. And then it turns out, like, a couple of days later, I end up losing my sunglasses, which were expensive, and I'm like, I lost. And you should be like, oh, fuck. I kind of knew where they were. And I could have gone back for them. It would have been like, you know, hours and whatever. Yeah. And then I was just like, you know what? Fuck it, I lost them. I'm on holidays. I don't have sunnies. Who cares? It's a thing that happens. I've had them for a while. It's just an opportunity to buy some new ones. And it was honestly, like, a switch. And I didn't feel shit. And I was like, mate, this is amazing. What a way to live.

This is a lovely.

So thank you for that, man.

No, appreciate it. Good. I love the saying, it is what it is. It is just like, the most. It is what it is, whatever.

And that's the thing. And. But I always forget in the moment where I don't use the mental models of, does this really matter? Can I control it? And will it matter in five years? And the answer to all those was no. So why am I placing so much importance on it and going to feel shit on this trip? And then I just felt great afterwards. It was amazing.

I think, all right, even. Even comparing that to, like, other shit that's going on in life or stuff you've dealt with in the process past. And you go, sunnies versus, like, all this other Stuff I've dealt with, like, just doesn't matter.

Like, oh, that's exactly it. Like the hard in your life. Why am I placing the same importance on it? And it's because it's, you know, recent. It's urgent. Yeah. You know, or yeah, and it's. And it's something you have to deal with, but it's nothing compared to the big things you've dealt with in your life yet that's the big thing we have to deal with now. And we place that same, you know, urgency, importance, stress around it. It's just ridiculous. Yeah, it is the silliest, silliest thing to do. So, mate, top tip, I'm gonna use it all the time, mate.

Cool, man.

So good. All right, so let's go back to the cab. We just came back, we got out of the cab and we're going up to our rooms. We're all staying at the same hotel and I've been complaining about my room and these guys like, nah, man, we're going to your room. Going to go see what it's like. So I take all these guys up to my room and they're like, it's not even dusty, bro. You're a princess. They're like, oh. And then all of a sudden we just turn around and Aman's there and he's like, it's so hot, dude. Oh. Like he's like dying. And then everyone else like, oh, it is pretty hot in here. And Iman's like, he's walked out onto the balcony and he's like, it's too hot. He can't handle being hot at all.

Right.

Like, he lives in San Diego. What the. And he's like, he's, I'm sweating, bro. And he walks out of the balcony and he's like, you're on level two, bro. This is the murder level. You're gonna die.

And then he comes back in and he goes to the freezer. He just gets ice out, sticks it in this mug, fills it with water and stuff like gushing it down his face. Face.

He scooped all the ice out of the freezer. He's walking around with a mug, a coffee mug, drinking ice.

While this is going on, T&DB they're looking at my little. So this is so ghetto. It's like aircon and it's just got a little like fan and a plus minus button and none of that works. And they're trying to like get it off the wall and they're like, oh, we can't get it off And T looks up and there's like 50, like, circuit breakers in my room. And he's just like, oh, I got it. He just flicks all of them off, right? Half the whole building goes dead. Yeah.

I was like, Aman's like, you're not even supposed to have those in your room, bro. What the. And then T's like, going up. You can't even put them back on. We're all standing in the dark going, what the. Right? It's like, oh, my God, I gotta get these drunk out of my room. And they're like, nah, bro, we're gonna help you. And like, oh, you need a screwdriver to, like, undo the panel of the air conditioning. And they're like, oh, do you have a screwdriver? Like, yeah. And they're like, what the travels with a screwdriver? And I was like, I always carry around like a little. Little Leatherman. It's like a little multi tool thing in case you need it. Give it to them. They unscrew this little air conditioning panel, pop it off, and then they start just going ham on it. And I'm like, oh, you could imagine this group of drunk guys just absolutely going ham at these. This, like, electronic thing. And I'm like, oh, my God, this is gonna end so badly. It's gonna go up to, like, 40 degrees. I'm gonna have to try and sleep here tonight. Meanwhile, these guys are trying to fix it. Ben's just stumbling around. He knocks over my ironing board and my iron that's just smashed on the floor. These guys, the whole time this has gone on for about at least 10 minutes at this point, are screaming at the top of their lungs. It's midnight. They're waking up the entire hotel. They are so loud. And then they. They eventually get the panel, put it back on the wall, and it's not working because the little, like, slider has separated from the. The thing it connects to at the back to actually change the fan speed. So DB's like. He pulls out the knife on the Leatherman and he starts, like, stabbing the fucking aircon thing and trying to flick it off. And then he's just wheeling this knife around. I'm like, bro, put that on the table. You're gonna cut yourself, mate. And then I was like, quickly take it away from him. They managed to kind of like, half sort it out, and in the end they're like this. And everyone just left. Amman bloody steals my cup. And he's just, like, walking down. He's like, whatever, bro. You.

Know, left in this room going, what the.

Never ended up. It didn't get cooler than 23 degrees. It felt a lot hotter than that. I didn't sleep again. And the next day I was. I was like, ben, I can't do today. I don't feel safe on my feet. Like, I couldn't even walk in my hotel. I was that cooked. It was just so ridiculous. So you guys, that was. It was.

It was like Crypto bros trying to fix, like, you know, trying to be handyman. Like, it's just.

Oh, I was impressed. Like, okay, I'd respect you for. From like, handyman because. And myself as well. But you've done a lot of iPhone repairs. Yeah, DB get amongst. I was impressed with T. That he knew what he was doing. Iman's just like, what the fuck is this? I'll never do that. Isn't there after this, bro.

He's in some call for this.

He's got the softest fucking hands. It's hilarious.

Whereas we're all like, Bunnings bros. Diy getting to the sun. So good. So good. So that was. That was definitely one of the highlights. And then we did an escape room and this was just amazing. So we went down this place. It was an epic bar. It was downstairs. And we go to this escape room and it's a Wizard of Oz themed one. And you could imagine there was like, I know, seven of us, something like that. All these blokes trying to explain to each other, you know, like, there's a clue. How do we do this? How do we do that? Everyone's running off on tangents. Anyway, there's this one place and it's the scarecrow from the wizard of Oz. And he's got this basket and it's filled with different vegetables. And it says, I need brains or something like that on the floor. There's like, it looks like a.

Excuse me, basement door that you open or like a shelter door. Like a cyclone shelter door. These guys, eventually, you know, we go through, we do the clues, you find the keys and we go, yeah. And Tim and I come across it after it's been opened and it's basically Sudoku with vegetables. So we put all the vegetables in. Tim and I do it. And then all of a sudden, Aman and Ben go, oh, hey, guys, there were these little labels in the garden. I think we need them. And Tim and I just look at them, like, what the. Like, these guys, they just open it, go, oh, we need these. Just take them out. I'm like, what the now we don't know where they go. It was literally gonna be the clues because it was like it was next to an onion, but there was nothing there at the time. But you fill it out, you get the onion, and it's like the second letter of this. And the letters give you a code to open a fucking door. And these guys are like, oh, we'll fucking need that. And this was just the perfect metaphor for our fucking business where all the time you guys just bail in. You're like, yeah, let's just fucking do it. Yeah, whatever. And Tim and I just look at you like, don't touch the fucking crime scene. And we're just screaming at you, just like autistic screaming, like, ah, don't do it. You're like, no, we need these later, bro, we've got to take him. I'm like, but they were in the spot. Now we don't know where the spot is. And what are we going to do?

It was amazing. We open it up. Well, Amanda are like, yes, I get the key and open up. And literally without a second of thought, just launching, Grabbed everything when they were like reading it. And then like, we looked at each other like, we shouldn't have done that, shouldn't we? And Martin's like, no, I think we just broke. I think we just lost it.

You guys are so fucked. Like, seriously, this is the shit I have to deal with all the time. Like, you guys are on one end of the spectrum going, like, la dee da. Who fucking cares? She'll be right, mate. And I'm on the other end going, yeah, we need a little bit more detail here, guys. Like, what's going on? You're like, oh, fuck. Nah, we fucked that up ages ago.

So we had to, we had to call the lady and she's just like, you idiots. And she ended, she put it back in like a couple of spots and then we ended up continuing. And mate, we did well. We got out of the escape room.

With about 10 seconds of spare. We. We killed it, man. The hardest escape room in the. In the, in Victoria. So.

And it was our first escape room as well. So collect your ship, boys. Smart af.

Well played, well played.

Cool. So I just wanted to touch on briefly. We did a value sec session last week. It was like a real like self awareness thing. So we went through, we had this big piece of paper. We filled out like, what are we. What's our. What's our super. What's our superpowers? And then also, what's our.

Dynamite Kryptonite? Kryptonite. Sorry. And that was a really interesting exercise. Like sit with your co workers, even your family and friends and sit down and like help each other figure out what their super superpowers were. So mine, mine was around like being able to, you know, bulldoze through anything, just make it happen. Doesn't really like, you know, without you know, thinking any, any challenges too big. I'm the connector, you know, helping people to come together and just like, you know, relationships and those sort of things. And then my weakness was like, you know, not very detail oriented, lack of communication, just taking on too much, doing things without really thinking about it.

Poor organizational skills, poor organization light.

I've got a few kryptonites but, but, but doing that in a, in a team and then being able to like help each other figure out those, what those things are. And then we did this exercise of like how we can help each other around the Kryptonites, like what are the things that we can do to help each other around the things we're not good at. And that whole self awareness exercise was so good. And even just understanding what other people's, you know, challenges were things that they enjoyed and you know, know weren't good at was really good because people are different. Right? We communicate differently. Like, like Bergs, you're the opposite side of the spectrum. Like you're very detail oriented, you're risk averse, you know, you know, you plan things out, you're very structured. I'm the opposite. Just like all over the shop crazy. Very like, you know, lack of details late. And they both have their pros and cons, right. But coming together and being able to work together and knowing what those are is a very, very valuable thing.

Absolutely. And that's the thing. The whole day was building kick ass teams and building high performing teams. And if you get to know your co workers better, where they're strong, where they're potentially weak, where you can help them, it just helps you to understand them as humans and how they function. You understand them at a deeper level and you'll be able to communicate with them more effectively and you'll be able to work more efficiently together as well is just, it's awesome man. So good.

So the other thing I wanted to touch on was off the back of that week we both got sick. And we've spoken about this on the pod before, this idea of like, rather than you know, if there was a feeling of like feeling 10 out of 10 or you know, 0 out of 10, I tend to either be like in like a, like an 8 or a 2. There's nothing in between. And I tend to go in these slumps of just two. So what happened was I, we, we sort of got sick, you know, early this week. And then I just went into this, like this slump and still kind of coming out of it where I was like, I felt shit. I wasn't working out, I started eating, I wasn't sleeping good, I was using social media all the time. Like, I just went into this craving of like cheap dopamine to just escape and just, just feel, just felt shit. There's this interesting thing of. It's really hard, I found it to get out of that 2 out of 10 mindset to try and get some small wins to come back. It's like all or nothing for me and I really, really tried. So like, once I started getting better, I forced myself to go to the gym on Wednesday. I think it was just get, just get a little win. And then I started reading again. Just a little win. And then, you know, getting competing back to the social media after lunchtime thing and just getting some small wins. I found that was a good way to do it because when you're in those form slumps or when you're not feeling that great, to think about where you need to get to the way you were before is a big jump. So just trying to get some small wins and building back up. I think one strategy I had to getting back to where I wanted to be.

Oh, definitely. I agree with that as well. Where I don't do it in numbers, it's like I'm either a God or a piece of shit. Like they're the two extremes. Yeah, true.

Yeah.

And you're absolutely right. I haven't worked out like lift weights for probably two weeks now last week because I was in Melbourne and then I've been crook this week and there's no way I could have worked out this week because I was just too sick. But doing very small thing, small wins and things for yourself. So for me it was meditating for five minutes and that was amazing. Or something that was bothering me, like cleaning the dishes in, you know, around the sink, putting those in and washing my sheets, but that was it. And just doing those small little things instead of sitting on my phone, going on Twitter, you know, razzing people about ftx, whatever it may be. That's not a healthy cycle. It's more building yourself back to where you were. And it's the hardest thing to do when you're feeling unwell and You've kind of got those negative mental models running in your head because of the physical state you're in from being unwell. Yeah.

You avoid. You avoid the hard thing, so you do the easy thing, which is cheap dopamine, phone, you know.

Yeah. Food you feel like you can't do. Yeah, yeah, exactly. You feel like you can't do the hard thing. And because you're sick, your body's craving calories, so you order food and then you sit down and watch tv, and you're like, try and justify it to yourself. Oh, well, I'm sick. I'll just do this. But it's actually making you sicker. It's prolonging your recovery.

Yeah.

It's not a good way to be, but it's. Yeah. So challenging to try and get out of that mind frame when you feel crook.

Yeah. Small wins. Team Small wins.

Brutal, man.

Right, what food have you got for us Bergs? Oh, accountability. Accountability.

Yeah. All right, so why don't you kick us off, Ben, what was your. What was your accountability? Just refresh our minds and maybe let us know how you went.

So I tried to do. I think it was meditate, journal and read every day. Miserably Failed. Absolutely fucking nowhere near it. Tried for two days, did it for two days, and then just became all too hard. And T made a interesting point the other day about this idea of our accountability, where I feel as though I had especially that when I was trying to select things that sounded good in my head, I wanted to be that person, but that's not who I am. You know, the reality is I'm constantly changing Airbnb. I'm traveling all the time. I'm moving, I'm doing new things. I'm constantly. New environments. I can't do that all day, every day. My days aren't structured like that. It's just impossible. And some days I just don't feel like it. I don't want to read, so I don't want to do that. My values. What I realized my values the other day, one of my biggest values is freedom. Doing what I want, when I want, and to do things that I don't want to do goes against one of my values, which is what I was being. Trying to be accountable for. So it was a clash of. But trying to be accountable for something I generally. Like he's not my value. Like, he's not who I want to be. So I want to switch my accountability burks to bigger, bigger things. You know, currently, I had a bigger accountability thing around, like, the fundraise, the seed round. So right now, like for me, it's trying to finish that by the end of this year and being accountable to keep grinding because reality is it's tough, it's shit. I don't like doing it, but I'm just grinding away. So for me it's like closing that by the end of the year is the biggest sort of thing I want to be accountable for. And the other one is like, you know, that I'm building up, that I want to maintain consistencies around content creation. So I've really tripled down on content creation. That's a, it's a big pillar of my strategic focus for next year. So doubling down on my LinkedIn, my Twitter, our podcast, you know, I've got, trying to do a new YouTube video a week. I do three podcasts a week with Nova. We've got Bennett and Bergs as well. So there's a lot of content that I'm doing and wanting to increase. That's what I wanted. Consistency is the, is the problem for me. I'll do something for a couple weeks and then I'll just stop doing it. So I really want to maintain consistency on that front.

That's good. So what I heard out of that was you failed and there's now two grand in the kitty for bandage.

Burgess's eyes were glazed that whole time.

Yeah, it's pretty painful. But no, I'm around. You're right though, because both, both T and Judy as well said this. So T was like, you know, you focus on longer term, bigger, more important things. And even Juddy during the interview was saying people generally have this idea of who they think they want to be, not who they necessarily are. And they have this great idea and they'll go into a job or they'll try a new thing. And Ben, you're not the guy that's going to sit there every morning and read a book and meditate and fucking fuck knows what. You're not that guy. You're the guy that has this big fucking shiny thing, this crazy goal is big hairy, audacious goal that he wants to go after and will do whatever it takes to achieve that goal. Yeah, doing those couple of things isn't going to matter.

Yeah.

So I think, yeah, that's a great point. What we're going to do is this week we'll do.

A lot of self awareness and work out what we really want to achieve and we'll set a longer term time frame and we'll come back next week with those Specific goals and we'll be accountable for those. And we'll check in each week and just to tie things off. Mine was to. And I gave myself a 10 chance of doing this was to call my surgeon and book in surgery to get my deviated septum fixed. And I did it, mate.

So now, now I have. I have a surgery date. It's locked in, gonna get it done. And I'm not looking forward to it, but I did the thing, mate. Like, I'm thankful to this pot. Otherwise I'll probably put it off for another five years. Mate.

Mate. Right.

So, mate. Oh, it's gonna be. Gonna be annoying.

And when's that?

When's the surgery get done? Live a better life.

Well, the earliest date was early January.

Okay.

Yep.

Yeah, it's funny, actually. I'm actually going.

Awesome.

I'm going to see the surgeon too. In 4th of January years.

Whack.

That was no pause.

Get some calf implants. Calf implants. Come on.

So is you, mate. We are both. We got tech pods, mate. Absolute tech.

Yeah.

This is skinny legs. Yeah.

What are you getting done late?

No, I've got a. I've got a hernia, mate. I've got to go potentially take it out. I've already had. I've had one side taken out a couple. Oh, it's a few years ago back now and now I've got it on the other side. So I need to go in. So it's not like bad, but could be bad. So I need to go. I've been putting it off for ages.

Is that just from like lifting heavy. Just carrying the teammate, Just carrying the team.

Working all day, every day. Just like working too hard, mate. Put up with your. I actually only got it after you joined, so that's like. I'm actually blaming you.

Oh, you know why? It's because when I joined, you saw how hard people could actually work and what they could achieve and you thought, oh, I can't relax anymore.

Okay.

So like this guy, this guy's showing me up. Be doing fuck all.

So.

Yeah, so at least pull my finger out and actually start working.

Just for context. Burger's on holiday right now. It's just for context. So, you know, listen. Listen to everything you say in a grain of salt. Because this guy, he takes more holidays than he works.

Just. All right, listen here. So this is like the first week of Leo had forever. And I took this week off as carers. Leave you piece of. Because my wife was away. I was crook as a fucking dog and I still got to Wake up every morning, get the little one ready, make the fucking sandwiches, do the little berries, do the fucking crunch and sip, get myself ready. Take her to school after she comes back, you know, feed her up, take her to all these activities when I'm fucking crook as. And you're just like, oh, no, man, I'm sick. I'm just gonna take two days off and cancel everything. You're a fucking prick, mate. You're a prick.

Never takes holidays. But he'll just cancel like two or three days and just go nut and just do whatever he wants.

The.

The perks of being a CEO, mate.

I was literally lying in bed working while I was crook, mate. So just you to see. He's up there, tiger.

Oh, mate, he sends me this, this voice message on Friday and he's like, oh, man, I talked to my pa. I did this email or call, caught up. Oh, mate, I'm human optimization. I'm the best there is. Yeah, mate, what a week. And I'm like, what the. This is just normal, lad. Like, seriously, you're a CEO. This is normal stuff. You want a participation trophy? What is this? If you lock down a massive deal or an investor or something, sure, come at me. But you're like, oh, man, I want the praise just for being normal.

Oh, my God, this guy here, mate, you. Oh, I never worked in.

Oh, mate, N. Not having it. I'm not having it, man.

I crushed this week. There's no one else working. Tim's sick, Aman's away, you're away, and I've just. I've just carried the whole week through, mate, and I've wrapped. Took me seven minutes to give you a detailed. Wasn't even detailed. I just like, lightly touched some things we did this week. And you, you, you.

He literally labeled out every single thing that you did. I reckon you just had your calendar.

No, I didn't. Like 10. It was like 10 of what I did in one day, mate. And this guy's just carrying on. Right, enough talking. I'm sick of trying to explain to you how hard I work.

Mate, if you have to explain that hard, you're just not doing it right.

That's why I've got a hernia, mate.

Actions, not words.

Land.

Surgery. That's not.

We get to fucking. Okay, this is how hard Ben works. Okay? We had, we had Ben and Bergs planned for Thursday. So I'm. I'm crook as I've got everything done. I've written up like, the. What we're going to talk about because Ben never Prepares. I've managed to actually shave and look half decent. And I get ready in the morning and Ben's just like, well, can't find my WeWork card.

And I'm like, what the. And then like, eventually gets into the Wii work. He goes, oh, no, mate, I can't do it around here. Oh, look. And I'm just too stressed. It's just gonna be, let's just do another time, mate.

You betray me. There is so much context missing here. All you've said there is you do everything and I lost my WeWork card, so we've canceled it. That's.

Are you good at Operation Ben?

You're like the media. You're like. You're no better than a journalist. You take 1% of a story.

All right. Honestly, the. The only reason I give Ben a lot of is because he works very hard and he is genuinely the hardest working in the company. To the point where.

You were saying you're going to take some leave to go to South America next year and you had a offer of a talk and you're going to fly back to Australia, do the talk and then fly back to South America. Like, there is not a thing that this guy will not do for the company and he was crook as a dog. Even flew out to. To Queensland on Monday. So even though I give you a lot of. It's only because you work very, very, very hard, man, and I'm not for me as well.

I don't. I don't tell you for praise. I tell you because there's no one else to talk to.

No.

You'Re the only one that'll listen.

No, no. I do enjoy our Friday calls, man. I enjoy a lot. And it's good to. We're very bad at talking about what we've done and celebrating the wins as well. So it's just good to go over what we've done. And even when we did the look back in this strategy day, even Iman going through what he did in the last year is just phenomenal. All the stuff we've forgotten about because we're so future focused with our company that we forget everything we've done along the way.

Yeah, yeah, it's good. It's good to have that person debrief with. Okay.

Meme or meal.

Let's go. Meal. I'll load it up and you can go first, mate. This looks absolutely cracking.

So. So this is going to be a context or burgs. I posted this on Twitter the other day. Yeah, this was me taking myself out on A date. So Bergs, you probably haven't done this a little while cuz you happily married but as a single dude, single gal I like to take myself out and date every now and again. I don't think people do this enough, you know this was a Monday night, I was cooked. It's pretty tired. I was like, you know what? Stuff this. Take yourself out on a nice meal on your own and you don't have to deal with anyone's bullshit. You can just sit there and you can eat in your own pace, drink what you want, have a look around, take it all in and just be, you know, present with yourself and like you know I was just watching YouTube videos and carrying on and looking around, having a chat to the waitress or whatever, it's, it's good fun and I think people should do this more because I think people, and I'm trying to be better in this like people that are single, you know, being comfortable and happy on your own, you don't need someone else to, to come in and make you whole like you. The goal should be to be whole on your own and a partner should elevate you, not make you. And I think that's what I've learned over the past few months and that's the place I want to get to is where you know and I'm pretty close but it's like hey, like things are sweet, like I don't need anyone to make my life whole, like I'm fucking sweet, you know and this was, it was less about the meal, more about what this represented.

That was, that was really beautiful when I saw that and it's actually quite advanced for your age mate. And I only worked this out later in my 30s after I'd actually done it but not realized what I was doing. And so for you being kind to yourself and doing things like this is just amazing. Like you need to do it especially as a founder, a person that travels around a lot, perfect thing to do and also not always looking for a partner but getting to know yourself, who you are, what you like and then when you do get into a relationship there'll be better relationships because you'll be selecting a better partner, you will know yourself a lot better, you have higher chances of success and compatibility, all of that just spend the time, you don't always need someone there to be whole. That's just amazing. And you're right what you said about elevating like you can be completely fine by yourself and work on yourself and know who you are and then having a Partner just is the cream on top, like having someone else to share that with that is directionally going the same way as you that perhaps complements the things that you don't have is absolutely beautiful, man.

100. What do you got, man?

Hang on. What would you rate the meal, mate?

Oh, the steak was cracker, a little bit, a little bit undercooked. I asked for medium. It was a little bit more medium rare. But it was, it was banging, mate. It was banging. A few greens. Chips were great. It's. It's a good like 8 point. 8.6 out of 10, mate.

Love it. Absolutely love it. All right, so.

This was the meal I had on Qantas coming over. So every time I go on Qantas, I get stitched up. It's like either disgusting curry or a spaghetti Bolognese that looks like an oil slick that the United States would invade. So this is what I got served. Okay. That is so rice great. The Kailan, great. That monstrosity on the left was supposed to be. Oh, and T was on the plane as well. So he's a veggie. He ticked veggie on the thing and they go there like, oh, we don't have any vegetarian meals. And he's like, but I ticked it. He's like, well, do you want the pork? He's like, it's a fucking vegetarian.

Veggie offered pork. Amazing.

So this was like a pork curry. So I'm like, first of all, it looks very greasy. I'm like, I'll give it a little bite. And mate, someone was heavy handed with like the pepper. Like you take a bite. Like it was. So I, I ate the rice and I ate the greens and then I was done, son. I just couldn't do it anymore. And the guy next to me took one bite, he's like this, and just put it to the side. It was disgusting. So when we landed, T and I were hungry. We went for some food and mate, across from our hotel we had the sickest Greek place. And my God. So this is a bowl that you kind of put together. There's a beautiful Greek salad underneath. You can see the tomato there with oregano. Feta, had big chunky cucumber, whole kalamata olives in there, wedge of lemon, had red onion. Delicious. And then the meat was just. Oh, my God. Spicy, fatty lamb. It was just incredible, mate. Absolutely incredible. And then there was some like pitta on the side or the Greek version. I don't know exactly what it's called, but amazing bread. Looks like they made it in house. It just tasted delicious.

Mate. I've got to give this a 10 out of 10.

Wow. There we go.

TT gave his. He ate the I can't believe it's not chicken version. And he gave it a five out of five, like.

And.

And he is a harsh mistress. Like, he would just torch anyone. He's like one star. Half a star, like. And, mate, this was incredible. It was so, so delicious. I would happily eat this anytime to the point where I've started making this kind of food at home. It was. It was cracking, mate. Absolutely loved it.

Epic, man. Meme of the week. Spicy. What do you got for us? How spicy?

Oh, so there are a lot of FTX memes of the week and 99 of them I can't put here. I got a few memes, so the first two aren't ftx, but I'm gonna put them on here anyway just because they're amazing. All right, so this one had me in. Absolutely. Stitches. Have you seen Terminator 2?

Yes.

Do you know what happens next?

Oh, no, I can't remember.

Okay, so this is. This is Sarah Connor, and she's overlooking the playground. She's got her fingers in the fence, and it says, not a cell phone in sight, just people living in the moment. And this is hilarious because about three seconds from now, Skynet launches a nuke. And then everyone just gets nuked and there's this big white light and everyone gets wiped off the face of the planet. So this one absolutely cracked me up. So I love this one. All right, Ben. This. This has a slight bit of spice. This is the. A photo, it looks like, of somewhere in France of a lovely oval shape leading up to a big cathedral. And the caption is, apparently, some men can't find the cathedral.

And this is just like. This is the best man. This just had me in stitches. This is. Oh, all right. Now let's get into some ftx, mate. By our old mate Elon. He's got a. So Elon Musk just bought Twitter. He's literally got a photo of SBF from FTX. He's the CEO, or owner, whatever he is. The caption, It's Pornhub, and man fucks 5 million people at once.

And Elon Musk posted this.

Elon Musk posted it on Twitter.

On Twitter.

Like, how wild. He's really setting the tone for that business, mate. Unbelievable. Unbelievable. Absolutely unbelievable. And then we've got this one. Cracks you up. This is the office of when Steve Carell's really young and he's Got a mullet. And his boss is shaking his hands like, congrats on avoiding ftx. He's shaking his hand, looking distressed. Me with all my money in NFTs that are down like 90%. At least he avoided FTX. All right, FTX again. You'll be liquidated and you will be happy, mate. This guy, the stones on him. Oh, what are the odds?

He looks skinny there.

What do you reckon he'll end up disappeared or Epstein?

No, he's not going to jail, mate. He's fine. He'll be somewhere.

Yeah. And this is for you, Ben. I don't need sex. Crypto fucks me every day. How good this is from. This is from Twitter. I recommend following this. It's called Shirts that Go hard. It's absolutely hilarious. And I think, last one here, good old Ben Simpson. He's looking chuffed as he's like. He's so smug. Look at his eyes. Just smug in the air. And the caption is that feeling when you self custody your crypto because FTX just can't touch him. Look at that. So smug, mate.

So good, mate.

Smuggest face on the planet. So good lads. So good.

Wicked episode bergs. Please anyone that has the feedback. We've been getting some Twitter DMs, Twitter post hosts. It's awesome. Tag us at bensimpsonau on Twitter and at Baby back berg. Leave us a review we've got on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts. I think we're everywhere where you should listen to your podcast, share it with a friend. Check out our episode with Judy if you haven't. Last week, that was an epic episode. We sat down with him.

How amazing was he?

That was awesome.

He was insane. Like I didn't know what to expect going into it because you've been kind of contacting him. You did a talk with him. But yeah, man, that guy is so articulate. The way he lays out his macro thesis, the way he's done so much kind of digging and personal growth and how like self aware he is as well as to what he. It is an amazing listen. Go and listen to that. Just to see how he's transitioned in the person that he is now. Amazing, Amazing. I'll listen to it twice already. I'm gonna listen to it again, mate. I love it.

That's good, man. Go check it out. YouTube and all your podcasting apps. Leave us a review and we'll see you next week.

Yeah, check out everything we just talked about. Benandbergs.com all spelled out Ben a D Burgs. We've got all the links to everything collector shift our Twitter get amongst it and we're copy the flack on Twitter because we didn't have an episode for a while. So keep it coming, love. It keeps us accountable. And we'll catch everyone next week.

Yeah, See you folks.

Sa.