25. The Best NFT Business Model & IRL Events, Crypto Collapse, & Long-Term Goals

Welcome back to another episode of the Benedberg show, episode 25, 1/4 of a hundred. Today we're talking about crypto NFT Fest. The block fire has gone bankrupt. Where are we in this bear market and all the crap that's going on this year in crypto. We're now in the second longest crypto bear market ever. Nearly in the longest bear market. I'm going to tell you when that's coming up in this episode. Plus, we deep dive into the V Friends nft. Their roadmap challenges have had to overcome the business model. Berg's going to give a deep dive into the V Friends NFT model. Plus, I'm going to give you the ultimate God mode on how to read faster and consume content faster in this episode. Plus, as always, middle of the week meme of the week accountability and all the other general nonsense.

Bergs, how are you? That was an interesting start, the episode we got there, mate.

It was. We were laughing for about two minutes. That was great. We're gonna have to take some of those outtakes and put them at the end of the episode because they're absolutely cracking. Mate, I'm doing great. I think 25 episodes is to be celebrated, mate. We're a quarter of the way there. We've, we've heard from like the big boys, the big dogs that, you know, a hundred is what you want to get to and things really start to happen around that time. There's a lot of podcasts that die around episode 4, 5, 6 and we're just talking before the show. The hard thing is not necessarily, you know, prepping and doing the podcast. It's showing up every week and being accountable and delivering week on week. That's the challenging part. It's the consistency every single week. So far we've been damn consistent and I reckon we're definitely getting to 100. Mate, I'm just excited to see what.

I don't know about you. I'm more of a guy that tends to find a new shiny object, do it for a couple of weeks, give it up and throw in a the town, do something else. So, like the fact that we are at episode 25. If I was doing a podcast on my own guarantee would not have gotten this far. I would just given up by now or find something else to do. It's very easy to say, no, I can't be bothered. So we're doing good, man.

I, I tried this last year where I was going to start a YouTube channel and things like I did last week with the I actually recorded a video, I did that video ages ago on calculating your personal net worth. And I had 10 videos all mapped out. And because it was me and I was accountable to myself, I just never did them. But because I'm accountable to you. We have touch points during the week. We've got a notion page that we, you know, we feel. And we've got goals to achieve as well. I'm more inclined to do this. And once I. It's like going to the gym, man. Like, I'm so rubbish at. Like, when I used to go to a physical gym, so rubbish at doing that. But once you're there, you've been there for five minutes, it feels fantastic. Even before this episode, I'm like, I'm feeling a bit crook. I've got a bit of a cough. And then you're like, oh, if you're not feeling great, we can do it another time. Like, nah, let's do it. And we're like, straight away, we just start laughing, mate. We're just laughing our asses off at the start of this. We're definitely putting that.

I haven't had that much Billy laughing while. And now.

Now I'm having a good time and I can't wait to get into this stuff. We.

Cracker episode, mate. Let's kick off with the NFT Fest. So St Kilda this week. Last week, sorry, we had NFT Fest run by Greg and. And the crew, Rochelle, Steve, they did a cracker job, mate. I. It was sold out. A thousand people down in St Kilda. What I think they did really well about this event was the curation of speakers and the content. You know, if you look through the topics of the event, it was. It was very Web3. It was very ex. Adventurous in the topics. They weren't like, you know, boring topics, put it that way. Like, you know, I spoke on a Panel which was VCs and Web3 when funded, like wen funded, like very crypto, like, it was nice. And the panel had Simon from Reinventure, who was an early investor in the Coinbase, Kyle who runs Upside down, which is a investment platform through a Dow, and then me as a founder. So it's like a really good mix of opinions and sort of viewpoints and overall they did really well. I didn't get to go back on the Thursday. They had all the after events, which is really cool. We hosted a. An after sort of recovery brunch on the Friday with Amazon, which is just really cool to, you know, catch up with everyone. Everyone's a bit. Sadie, you Know, Matt, Matt. My team just crushed it. He was just. He was hustling the events hard, you know, he was. He was out late networking, you know, on the. On the last night at the club, getting it done and then back up on the record brunch. So.

Yeah, what a lad.

And they had a good mix of educational stuff as well. So Nick and Matt did a workshop and. Yeah, man, the. The event was. The event was really good. The NFT space is certainly a lot more around culture, community, friendships, networking. It's a. It's a nice crowd to be around, man.

Mate, a lot of people flew out and you met a few Ben and Bergs fans, mate.

I did, I did many Real life.

They're not just a little movie.

In real life. We have got at least one listener.

Crypto J. Shout out.

Absolute legend, mate. He's out your way. Actually, I'm not sure if you knew that he's at Perth White. Yeah, yeah, he's a top bloke, mate. We. We had beers both nights. Just hustling. He is. And yeah, met a few other listeners. Met a few members as well, which is really cool. Shout out to Collector Shift members we caught up with. Just had a. Yeah, rip a time, mate. It's. It's nice to see, funnily enough. Yeah, a lot of people sort of recognize Collective Shift now and maybe they've seen some of our content, maybe see me talk on. On a stage or online or see Bennett and Bergs or whatever. So it's cool to sort of people it. Meet people in real life and they're completely different than what who I think they are on Twitter. Like, you know, you've got some sort of, like, you see him in real life, you're like, holy shit, that's not what I pictured. But.

It is, isn't it? Like you're an older bloke and you got a family and, you know, you've got a job as well, but you're a degenerate on Twitter. It's completely different, isn't it?

Web3 provides.

A community or, you know, an opportunity for those people that probably, you know, and no one in particular just generally like, allows people to come out of, you know, their bedroom or whatever they do, you know, their home, when they talk about crypto on their own, into a community where you can actually be yourself. Like, you know, they had the club event on the Saturday, on the Wednesday night or whenever, you know, last night, and it's just like they hide at the whole nightclub and they had everyone there and it's just a all walk to life, young, old, male, female, colored hair, no colored hair. You know, like different communities. It was really cool. Like it's a very open sort of like welcoming thing, you know.

Yeah, it's a very inclusive scene where you've got art people, you've got tech nerds, you've got hardcore finance people. It's all kind of walks of life that are brought together through this technology. It's just, it's phenomenal. What was the general sentiment like when you were there? First of all, what was the atmosphere like? And then what was sentiment like around crypto and NFTs?

So there wasn't a lot of talk about FTX at all. The NFT guys tended to focus. It's not. Wasn't that much talk about price. It really wasn't. It was more around the technology. What we're building, the roadmaps, the Dows, what they're building, you know, how they're sort of networking, how they're adding value. There's a lot of content and media like NFT Melbourne, NFT oz, NFT apac. Like there's all these like media groups, NFT New for noobs. There was a lot of like guys out there. Great, creating a lot of content. So in that retrospect, you didn't really think much similar to NFT NYC when the price was like plummeting, like no one really spoke about price. I think everyone was just there to have a good time. Honestly, I think it was. Everyone was just wanting to let their hair down a little bit and talk to other, you know, crypto folk and not feel weird.

That's it for sure. Because I think when you're in the business space it's about, oh crap, there aren't any customers. What are we doing for revenue? Is our business going to survive? And this was just. No, let's just enjoy the vibes.

And in terms of the.

Yeah, the vibe outside, like it was packed, mate. Like the, it was chockers, you know, Kevin Rose is talking chockers. The networking bit, they purposely, it was in a theater so they purposely made it so everyone was like forced to connect and talk. And it was, yeah, it was buzzing the whole week. Buzzing the whole couple of days. So yeah, really well done.

You might not know the answer to this, but a couple of weeks earlier you and I went for a walk through and they showed us the different stages and everything and they promised and I'm like, nah, this, this is not going to work. That's not how technology works. They Promised they were going to do a live band thing. So someone was playing live on stage and someone was playing in the UK and they reckon there was going to be no lag and everything will play perfectly. Were you around for that or did.

I have no idea. Did not see it. It's. I think it's Ocean's Dao. That's. I don't know if they specifically said they could do it. The guy there said they could do it. I've got no idea. We have to ask Matt. Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

All right.

We'll follow up on that because that's. That's something I'm like, oh, I need to know. And then how did it work with the three different areas with the multiple stages and then the room did all kind of flow nicely.

Yeah, it flowed pretty well. There wasn't a heap of people in the sort of workshop room where we were doing our delivery, where Matt Nick did his delivery. But honestly, they did really well. Like GT from Oshi set up that, that, that room and they looked epic. They had all the screens with NFTs and, you know, GT does a good job. So there was. Honestly.

Shout out to gt. What a lad. We went down and saw him. OSHI Gallery out in. Is that out in Collingwood?

Collingwood?

Where is Collingwood? Head out there. Have a look. The setup is just next level. He's got these amazing rotating TVs and I was, you know the photos that everyone sent out from NFT Fest London, where it was literally the conference screens that you hire and they have these NFTs that are like a quarter of the size of the screen. No, no, no. GT's got custom stuff. It's to the screen size. It looks beautiful. Looks amazing. He's got lighting, he's got projectors that go around. It's such an awesome, like gallery. It is phenomenal. And he's always up for a chat. He's such a lad. He knows this.

Yeah, I totally agree. He. He did a wicked job. And who else did a wicked job? Yeah. NFT for noobs as well. The guys out of Queensland, they did an awesome presentation. It was just. It was just well curated. Met Rowdy, another guy from. From Melbourne.

He's.

He runs a NFT apac. So. Awesome dude there. Yeah. Greg has always killed it. Lauren from Amazon. Yeah, man. There was just like so many people we met across the couple of days was. Yeah. And well. And reconnected with, I must say so now. It was good, man.

Awesome. Did you get a poet?

I didn't. They were there And I feel shit because if you have the POAP for the first, you know the online event they did last year, plus this event, I think Greg was organizing some perks. So.

Yeah, so, so for those people out there, POAP is proof of attendance. I think the other pays protocol. Proof attendance protocol. So you attend like I've seen these using discord lives or you attend a DOW event or you tend a physical event and it's proof of attendance like little NFT that you can send people either on the blockchain or through email, through wherever. And that's good because your community owns something and then you can connect with them later on. So mate, you got to get one. Don't miss out on those.

Yeah. And it's, you can add utility and like rewards back to. It's like a rewards program. Right. So that's, that's kind of cool. The biggest announcement though, I thought that I, I thought Ridley killed from the ao. So the AO Meta. Meta ball, AO Art ball, sorry, is a, is the Australian Open official NFT. They announced that if you own one of the NFTs you actually get a free seven day ground pass to the Australian Open. If you owned. If you own one of the NFTs, which is really cool, mate.

What's, what's the mint price on the nft?

It was right? Yeah, yeah. The floor was sitting at around 0.01. Sorry, 0.118, I think so 300. No less than 100 bucks USD.

What?

They're maybe 200 bucks.

They're already out. The old ones or they're doing new ones?

The old ones. But if you own an old one you get, I think you get a new the. One of the new NFTs. I'm not entirely sure but I'm pretty sure if you. Oh wow. If you own one of the current AO balls, you get an automatic mint into the new.

Don't quote me on that. But yeah, the, the up. I'm not sure when the upcoming mint is.

So. Okay, the floor price for the AO Art Ball is 0.18 which is 178 Australian dollars. Yeah.

So 250 bucks.

No, no. Australian dollars. 178 Australian. Yeah. So I'm a small floor. This is incredible. If they've got that attached to it. If you can attend based on the old ones. That's insane, mate. You got to look into that. Yeah, it's much cheaper than trying to like scalp tickets and get in and that's phenomenal.

No, I, I, we need to double Check if you get an automatic one. But yeah, it's really cool. It's the first real like real world utility sort of aspect that I love about what the, you know, what the NFTs can actually do. And this just goes to show to real, you know like non crypto people like the power and value you can deliver through NFTs and I think it's a great example of that.

And ticketing makes so much sense especially for events, concerts like you want a memento of actually attending. It's like digital ticket stubs that actually look cool and are a piece of art that you can display and that you can trade and they have future perks attached to them. Like if you've attended for the last three years you get upgraded automatically. Like how else would you prove that it's very difficult to do. Whereas you can just sign have your wallet there you go. Or you can try and collect those ticket stubs or go through your purchase.

History in Ticketmaster or what in the accessibility. That's the cool thing like and what we're building at the moment with through collective shift where NFTs soon will be able to have the power where we those that we partner with, you know can get access to the Collective Shift platform where you can learn about crypto and be onboarded and have courses and guides and how tos, you know through the access of your NFT by connecting your MetaMask wallet. Like that's really cool. I'm really excited about that.

That's really powerful just being able to access those groups and activate them and offer them something amazing.

I agree. Now in other news, one thing that isn't really cool bugs is BlockFi have announced they will be filing for bankruptcy today. Data recording which is sad right? You know blockfire was a like a yield platform where you could deposit crypto and get yield. They halted withdrawals back in November 11th. They were looking to FTX to basically help bailing them out. So back on back in June they signed a deal with FTX to get a 250 million dollar revolving credit facility to help them the way through. And then that obviously has gone belly up and.

They have. Yeah since held withdrawals. I think I saw somewhere that they. Yeah blockfire has somewhere it's not known yet entirely but somewhere between 1 to 10 billion of customer liabilities. Yeah 1 to 1 to 10 billion in assets and liabilities. That's unclear how the hole is so bergs not only BlockFi but this year like if you add everything up we've had BlockFi which by the way has more than a hundred thousand creditors, a hundred thousand users. Bergs had money on blockfi that have lost all their money ft. Yeah, this.

Was a big one because it was promoted by some very big people. Pomp was as one of the promoting.

The hell out of it. He was an investor.

And he, he.

Stopped all his bitcoin stuff. He stopped everything. I think he, he knew what was coming.

Yeah, it was promoted by a lot of big people as a safe place to be and you can trust them. And then if, if you go through the list, Ben, like just a recap of this year.

Yeah.

So who's been, who's, who's gone, who's gone down that we know of and it's still not.

This is a recap. This is all the money that has been wiped down the crypto market this year. Celsius, 3ac, FTX. Right. They're the three biggest from, from a, from a, like a bankruptcy standpoint. So Celsius lost $1.2 billion in the hole in the balance sheet. Plus the New York Times reporting $5 billion lost from customers. 3ac lost 3.8, 3.5 billion to creditors. FTX owes 3 billion in unsecured loans of which 3 billion is top is to their top 50 creditors. BlockFi owes its 50 largest creditors 1.3 billion. And I have a hundred thousand creditors, so there's somewhere between 1 and 10 billion. There's been $3 billion lost in DeFi web three hacks and exploits. Plus the entire total crypto market cap has reduced from 3 trillion down to 850 billion. So that's about $2.2 trillion wiped out in crypto market cap, including 40 to 60 billion of that which was wiped out by UST and Luna. That is a. This is so shitload of money.

And the latest ones haven't really affected price price too much. And there's kind of a running joke. It's like yeah, because no one has owns their crypto. It's like locked up in these companies.

It's wild man. Like speaking to a guy the other day, like just a nor, like just a mate of mine who's a business owner who had, you know, a bunch of money tied up in block fun. He's like dude, like is my money gone? Like is it coming back? I'm like, sorry man. Like yeah, I think it's gone.

Yeah.

We, we had a couple investors that had big money on ftx. We know a trader that had money on there and I really feel for traders because they can't really avoid central exchanges. They need the tooling they need to put their money on there in order to be able to trade. It's a very, very difficult situation for them. Other people that just use exchanges for 10, 15 minutes and self custody or you know, get a third party to insure it. Yeah, that costs a lot of money but you can do it. Yeah, I really feel for those guys. Like a lot of people got hit in this and it's kind of the, the die hard crypto people.

I shouldn't say the die hard crypto people. The people have been in crypto for a while that are active on Twitter. You're seeing a lot of them. The hatred pour out. This space is dead. We're getting more and more to the, you know the blood industries capitulation event.

Yeah. We're now burgs into the second longest bear market ever in recording crypto long longer than the 2018 crypto winter.

We are around 360 days into consecutive downwards price action and what? No, not consecutively. 200. Sorry. 360 days since peak all time high. We're down 70% from the highs.

Yep.

And we're only about a month or two away from the longest bear market ever which was between 2013, 2015, which is around 400 days. So by the time we hit into January bergs will be the longest crypto bear market ever.

And I don't think this is that. I don't think the hurts done man. I think like I think there's a long way to go. Like I do not foresee anything else pulling us out outside of macro.

They start turning the money printers on or goodness knows what happens. Inflation gets way under control, energy prices come down like they pull. The hail Mary I just see is continuing chopping sideways which by the way I believe he's going to provide us with probably one of the greatest buying opportunities we will get again in crypto over the next 12 months. I believe the next 12 to 18 months are going to go out. Right now will be the greatest time to buy bitcoin. The reason I say that is because I don't foresee as having like this sharp capitulation drop. We might have a capitulation but for those people that can afford to take a percentage of their money and put into crypto each week, that is for most people like me that's how much cash on the sidelines is the greatest opportunity to buy because you're going to have a long accumulation period. And that's why I think it's time. So, so exciting.

I agree. And I think, you know, we will potentially go further down, but what is the event that is going to take us out of this? And I don't see that event at all. Apart from maybe the halving, which generally tends to trigger an upward trend. I don't see anything else happening that will bring us out. And even now I'm getting phone calls. They're like, bro, are you all right? I went to AO the other day and they're like, bro, are you okay with ftx? And I'm like, yeah, it's okay. It's like a centralized thing. It doesn't affect crypto. It doesn't, you know, it changes the kind of narrative for people that haven't been in this space for a long time. But people like you and I know that if you trust people with your money, they will steal it. And you have to learn these lessons the hard way. And it sucks. It sucks to lose. Yeah.

The perception on the industry is those that you hear news from, you tie, oh, ftx, oh, crypto, oh, the whole industry's over. You know, that's what people think of. So we need to, we need, we need to do a lot to sort of turn things around and rebuild the trust and make this space easier for people to join and, and, and be safe and know what to do.

And one thing I'm seeing as well is people have wanted to get into crypto. They want crypto jobs. That's really slowed down. Like, I don't see a lot of people saying, I want to get into crypto now. I want to learn, I want to work in web 3.

I just don't hear well, look at who's hiring. Like, look at, you know, Coin jar just laid off more people. SwiftX is raising a bridging round. Who knows what the other exchanges are doing. Like it's just layoffs after layoffs, you know, like it's, it's tough times out there for everyone.

Yeah. When the customers drive up, if you look at an exchange perspective, they take a clip of every kind of, you know, brokerage event that they do. They make their, some of them are market makers as well. And if the customers dry up, where are they going to get that clip from? And then how are they going to pay their people, their overheads, their servers, software? It's really, really challenging and it's challenging to operate a business. And only the strongest and well worn businesses will survive this bear market.

Totally agree. So where to from here? Oh, geez, I'm not sure. There has been some really cool like exciting developments. Like on the positive side, we're actually seeing all time high development in terms of dev output on record. So developers continue to build. A report by Acme, we found the Web three developers are more active than ever specifically in Ethereum. I think Ethereum developments up like 40% which is really interesting. We've seen the Cash app in. On the Cash app which is big in the US users can now both send and receive bitcoin using the Lightning network which is really cool. So the Cash app's like a digital like wallet that a lot of people in the US use. And then we've also got Ethereum turning deflationary and reducing supply. So after the move from proof of work to proof of stake, Ethereum is now turned deflationary which is really exciting. It's exactly what they wanted to happen. Rweave, which is an investment we've actually made in our long term growth portfolio on the membership platform announces they've partnered with Meta, Facebook and mastercard is offering crypto trading to some of their clients. So there's still good shit burks, it's, it's hard to find it but there is still positives.

I agree and I think the people that were on the fence and weren't really in crypto for the long term, they've all nicked off and they're working in AI.

That's the whole thing. That's where everyone is, that's, that's where.

The shiny ball mate over there and.

The people like for me, honestly like literally nothing has changed. Like a couple of intermediaries blew up. Great. Crypto is still like if you look at the initial bitcoin white paper, it's to reduce intermediaries and not have them. And if you're using crypto in that way that's okay, but understand the risks and for me it's just, it's plotting along innovations punching through and I'm just excited man. I'm here for.

Well another thing, bitcoins, it's let's just say worst case scenario right now 16,000 U.S. it got down to 4,000 during the2019 winter. So yes, this bear market's longer but, but price is 3.4x higher.

You know, think about supply as well. All that bitcoin that potentially can't be retrieved. So your, your like ownership stake in the 21 million has just gone up as well. If you own bitcoin, it's like all these, like all this interplay, it's really Interesting. I mean the blockchains are still working, hash rate's still up, miners are still there, people are still staking, everything's still working as it should and the narratives are just identical. Yeah, there'll be some businesses that were at risk and they will, there will be contagion, they will blow up. But again, it's like a forest fire that comes through. The strong survive, you get regrowth and you thrive.

Nothing's happened to Bitcoin, that's a change. With Ethereum, we continue on, mate, as per V friends. Shane my cards are right, so I've.

Had.

So I've had this written up for a while and I wanted to do a deep dive on vfriends as an exemplar of how well NFTs can go. So Ben and I have actually been on this journey together since we bought the books. So I'll kick off from the start. And this all kicked off about a year and a half ago. So Gary Vee, how would you describe Gary Vee?

Entrepreneur, digital marketing specialist, sort of public speaker, content machine, like an influencer, business expert, early stage investor. You know, he, he trades attention, he is early to a lot of things. He sort of, he's good at human psychology and he knows sort of what people do.

He's, he's a lad, he gets amongst it. He owns a digital agency that he calls basically the Death Star. So that's where he started with, I don't know, six people, something like that grew into this, I'm guessing, billion dollar business or close to. And that's what he uses to fund the rest of the activities he wants to carry out. So about a year and a half ago, Gary Vee starts talking on podcasts and he's talking about NFTs. I'm listening, I'm like, oh yeah, here we go, another lad trying to get in. But his perspective was different. He took six months to learn about NFTs and if you've ever watched him like he's happiest when he goes to, he loves trading stuff like cards, Beanie Babies, all this kind of crap. And he'd go to these little like garage sales with these old ladies selling stuff he'll go through and he'd be like, oh, I'll buy that. It's like $5. He'll flip it for 60 bucks on eBay. And this guy is like, you know, he's, he's definitely worth over 100 million easy. And, but that's what he gets his joy out of. He's, he's a collector, it's what he does. And he's also known for being a really good operator. He grinded hard for so many years in his parents business, then created his own business. He just works and works and works. So he's getting into NFTs, he's talking about them, but he's really looking to the future. And he ages ago he was talking about ticketing events and collectibles and adding value and having meetups and events who were just way ahead. So what does he do? He goes and he hand draws these shitty little NFTs. Like okay, this guy cannot draw at all. He's not an artist. 10 out of 10 for giving it a go though mate, like I'm not going to rag on you. But he draws these little like pictures of like little clams and different unicorns and he gives them these weird names like Calm Clam, Woke Walrus, Daring Dragonfly, Persuasive Pigeon. And I'm looking at these and they're just drawn in pen. I'm thinking mate, you're going to steal my money. But at the same time he's actually tying his identity to this and he's called it V Friends. So he does his launch, his launch goes really well, it kind of, it sells out. I didn't get into to V Friends because I think, I don't even know if I was that heavily into NFTs at the time or I didn't understand or didn't see the value in spending that much money. But as it is today, the current floor on AV Friends, so the cheapest one you can get is about 10,000 Australian dollars. So leading up to this you think about his audience. They're people that like entrepreneurship, learning business, emotional intelligence, collecting. He's just released these NFTs. So he has to go and educate people about what NFTs are. Can you imagine like being that early in 2021 he has to say like this is Ethereum, this is a wallet, this is how you buy it. And to his credit they did an amazing job. Like their 101 is just unmatched on how to do that. And he got a lot of people into crypto. So the launch sold out quickly and the total volume was like so far is like 57,008. So the royalty amount on that is 5,708 which is about 11 million bucks. Just the royalties, right? OpenSea themselves made two and a half million bucks. So this is incredible. So you got Gary V, he's made these shitty little pictures, he's put 10,000 of them on the Internet. And he keeps telling everyone they're the alpha. I'm going to create value for you until the day I die. And why do people buy them? Well, he. He tied like early utility into them. So there's one like gift goat. So if you own one of those, which is one of the rarer ones, every six months you get an awesome gift from Gary V, which is like, you know, his specialty wine, or you get to meet up with him. There's in real life meetups. There's, you know, six meetups with Gary V. So you can join a call with him, you can play tennis with him or pickleball, you get access to events. It's just incredible the amount of utility he's tied to these. And he's pushed the boundaries with his NFTs as well. And he's made OpenSea make a lot of changes. One of these utilities was tickets to VCon. So if you own a VFriend one for three years, you get a certain amount of utility. I think it's one and a half years gone already, so you've got another year and a half. Consider that if you're considering buying one. But tickets to VCon. So these tickets were going for about one and a half eighth, which was expensive at the time, was. It was like over four grand eighth at the time. It was really expensive. You. So if you own this NFT, you automatically get a VCon NFT, which you can either attend the event or you can sell on to someone else. So, Ben, you went to VCon, you got a photo with Gary V. It's funny because you were what, 22 or 23 at the time? He's in his, like, mid to late 40s and you're dressed the same way. It's just hilarious. It's one of the funniest photos, mate. He's absolutely cracked me up. What, what was Vcon like, being there?

Like, it was like a.

It was like a festival. Like, I think of like, you know, your local, you know, show. You know, everyone, you know, all the country towns have their own, like, show. I think like a Launceston show. Like, you know, it was like that had the Ferris wheel and like, you know, people selling candy, they're eating ice cream, playing games, and then you've just got this huge stage in the middle with like Snoop Dogg and Gary. But you talking about NFTs. It was just wild, man. And luckily enough, I got to see Gary take a photo with him, man. I. He's like my childhood you know, business hero, had all these intentions of, you know, thanking him and you know, saying stuff to him. Got up to him, completely choked, went red in the face.

Just like got just tightened up, couldn't say a word, shook his hand, walked off. My only chance to see game being completely cocked it, mate.

Unbelievable. And even now those, those VCon 2022 tickets that don't have utility, they look like really good art like that. It's just written vcon, but it has art behind it as a different properties. They're going for 0.17-8th so 300 bucks, something like that, which is really interesting. So he's built that into it as well. And I'm very proud to hear that you fangirled there. Amazing.

So after this he, he created a discord where people could come in, they could learn about three friends of what he was doing. They broke the discord limit right at it was 365 members about a month ago. It's probably even more now just in his discord. So Gary Vee, he likes to push the boundaries. A bit of a lad, doesn't take any. He just wants to give it a red hot go. So what does he do? He's made this book and you can see just behind me, I've got quite a lot of that book, right, and it's called 12 and a half and it is, it is a cracking book. If you want a leadership book about.

Contact Bergs, he's got about 45 in his. Behind me.

Yeah, hit me up.

So, so what this guy does, he writes this book. No one's read the book, no one knows what the book is about. And he kind of teases one or two pages and he says, I'm going to, for every 12 books that you buy from me, I am going to give you a free nft. And everyone went, holy shit. Because they look at V friends, they're probably about 20, 38th at this point, the floor price. And everyone's like, oh my God, I want those free NFTs. And he plays games with people where he's like, if you buy from a certain provider, like Barnes and Noble, like taps his nose, you know, you get extra perks, like. And the thing, these people got an extra chance of a rarer NFT or they got another NFT. So 12 books.

People go through and literally they're showing their pissy little New York apartments that are about as big.

As this little room.

I mean, and they've got a palette of books. They've literally ordered like a thousand books. So what Gary Vee has done, I've got this book, this is what it's on. No one has read it. Buy 12 of these NFTs. I'd buy a book. Buy. Sorry, buy 12 books and you'll get a free NFT. The books are about 20 bucks each. You can buy from Amazon. Barnes and Noble sells over a million books. It is the most pre sold book.

On the Breaks all records.

Breaks all the records. No one's read it, no one knows anything, they just want these NFTs. Turns out the book is cracking as well. Emotion, intelligence and leadership. And what I like about his book, he goes through each of the 12 and a half things. One of them is half because he's still working on it. But then he gives you half a book of examples like someone got a promotion over me or this employee has said this or this has happened and that was just life changing for me. Giving exact scenarios and how to use them in your life. Highly recommend it. And then he goes on to sell more of these books, right? So now everyone's bought these books, we don't know where we're getting them. We spent all this money and he's got to work out, right, I have to go and send these people all these tokens. It turns out there's over 100,000 tokens to send out. So it's over 1.2 million books. And I'm thinking what is this guy going to do? Because the gas price on ethereum is about 200 bucks to send one token. So you're buying basically 200 bucks worth of books and he's going to have to spend 200 bucks to net this out. He's not going to have the capital, he's not going to get one for one on his books because that's probably not the deal that he had. How is he going to do this? So he delays a little bit, he delays a little bit and then bang. Layer two, bitch. So what does he do? He acquires, he, he invests in immutable, immutable X, our good old Aussie mates. And then he says great, you know, since I've invested in you guys, we're going to do this on, on layer two. So what does he have to do here? Great, he solved the gas problem. I don't have to spend heaps of money. It's basically a few cents to send each token. I've got to create the token and I've got to send them. So he has to reteach people. This is your wallet, this is the main chain. Now you need to go over here, click on this, follow this tutorial and. And now you're on layer two. And then you can claim it with this wallet. It's like, oh, my God. But people did it and he had people like supporting it and everyone got their tokens and it was like, holy crap. And the price went through, through the roof. It was, it was really good. Everyone made money. But he doesn't stop there, Ben. What does he do? He builds in more utility. He builds in a book games exchange. So this guy's a collector. He's got heaps of basketball cards, he's got other NFTs that he's collected. He puts it on an exchange. So he says book games are played forever. And he's got this exchange where you can take however many book games tokens and you can burn them and he'll send you the physical thing or you'll get an nft. So what is he doing? He's decreasing the supply. He's increasing utility. He's giving, he's setting a price because a Michael Jordan rookie card is a certain amount of NFTs. It is just incredible the amount of utility this guy has built into this. But, mate, that's not all. So you, you got your books, you got some NFTs. I got the books, I got the NFTs. After that, he's like, I'm going to build in some more utility. So he's, he's now released Veefriends 2. So you got series one, you got book games, and you got Veefriends 2. The total supply of Veefriends 1 was 10,000. The supply of book games was just over 100,000. And Veefriends 2 is 55,000 because he likes 55. So for every VFriends 1 token you own, you get the VFriends 2, the NFT, and you get the vcon tickets, plus whatever else he throws at you. Now, the only way to get on the white list for vfriends2 was to own book games tokens. And each day over 30 days, there were different types of tokens. So the, the very first one, sorry, the very first one was, okay, if you own VFriends tokens, you go into the lottery and then, you know, you get in, you own like two tokens or something like that. You got it straight away. This guy Ben is the luckiest guy on the planet. Like, he's like, oh, moonbird yet get it? Got him, got in the whitelist. I never get it this one I was lucky to get in. The majority of people got in that had over five tokens, I think. So it's great. He's got his audience, they're ready to buy, but then he's got the rare ones, Ben. So 30 days of rare ones that are new tokens that are worth a lot more than the other ones, you have to hold 10 wood tokens, 5 diamond tokens, 3 of this token and then in order to get that on that list, you have to have it in your wallet. You will then go on the white list and then you have to burn those book game tokens and you get the vfriends2 token.

How well this guy execute on all this? He must have it as an unbelievable team, really.

Mate. He's. He's got a lot of money goes into it, right? A lot of money and people, the people. He's actually got very high turnover in his team. It's always kind of different people.

Yeah, it's be hard working.

That might be the nature of the industry and you might hire someone to do a certain job, but then they're better placed elsewhere. So different combinations of lotteries along the way. He releases.

Uno cards as well and he's released like all different, like collaborations with Wine, with Macy's, with everything. But wait, Ben, there's more. For every V Friends 2 token that you hold, you get this lad one of these, mate. Sent you.

You got, you got yours. Hold it up, son. Yeah, boy. So these for people on the pod are the V Friends collectible trading card game. So this is like luxury as the way he sends it to you and the way it opens and you have, I can't remember, like 13 packs of like six cards in there. He's created his own VFriends trading card games and there's common ones, there's rare ones. He's basically created Pokemon and sent it to you.

What's your best card and what's your best card?

Oh, I had one of the. One of the kangaroos and it was a 1 of 25 or off.

Oh, you've got one of the. The one above. Very rare, whatever that is like super, super rare or something. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Oh, man, I've seen some people with 101s. Ed got a 1 of 5. I think it was the kangaroo as well. And they're worth like a thousand bucks.

Perth Ed.

Did you get into B Friends?

No, no, he was already.

Yeah, so good.

Oh, no, no, not, not, not, not that different head. No, Eric, not that the Podcast.

Okay, yeah. Oh, I got you. Gotcha, gotcha. Yeah, cool.

Yeah. So he, he was on it and people opening these cards. So never in my life did I think I would be a card collector. I collected phone cards when I was young. But this mate, I've got the white gloves on, right? I bought the top loaders, penny sleeves and I'm like going through them all and when I get a rare one.

I put it in the sleeve and then I put it in the.

Oh, mate. It was unbelievable. So what has this guy done? He's got a captive audience where listening in his discord. He's sending us free stuff, he's making us collectors, he's building his product and his audience. He's literally created Pokemon, right? And really what he is doing is he's building Disney piece by piece. He's building a brand, he's building collectibles, he's even started music and animations around this emotional intelligence that he wants to teach to everyone and teach to children and, and let them understand. He's building Disney piece by piece in public all through these NFTs, which is just mind blowing to me.

No, he's doing, he's doing an incredible job. What's the floor? Burks? What's the floor, what's the current floor of the V1?

So you have that there 5.7. So about 10,000 Australian. And even, even now, man, like he's just, he raised. In July 22, he raised another $15,050,000,000 from a 16Z. So this guy, he's got a huge war chest. He's getting amongst it. I haven't even looked into the future roadmap and utility of things he's got planned. But this is a key thing when you have a person that is known as an executor and then they tie it to their personal brand. And his brand is worth, I would say he's, he's over a billion dollar brand. For everything that he does. It is incredible the partnerships he does, even his speaking gigs. He charges 250 to 300,000 for a half hour speaking gig. Like that's how popular this guy is. And he's no bullshit. And he's still pumping out content day after day. My feed is just filled with Gary V content and he just keeps accelerating and keeps building. It's just so exciting to see. And honestly, that is. I wanted to dive into vfriends for a while just to give people an understanding of the utility you can build in, why you would buy into something. The perks you get the potential future economic benefit from that as well. And how he is creating his customers, building in public, helping them along where he's spending money, it is just unbelievable, mate. It is incredible. It is such a sight to behold. Definitely an exemplar in the NFT space for me.

Totally agree. I think you will cover their books. I think there's anything else to add on my behalf. I was just sort of doing the numbers on whether or not to buy a V1.

All right, so here's the thing. I, I, I'm thinking about buying a V1, particularly Hangout Hawk, which is about.

About 20 grand, something like that, because you get to meet with Gary Vee another like six times, something like that. So it has that innate utility built into it. 5.78 as well. If you're going to get two more VCon tickets and you start doing the math on that, and if he releases V frames 3 and all the other benefits, I'm thinking, oh, mate.

Well, I think we could see ETH price continue to go down, but potentially. So, like, we've always got to remember that NFTs just leveraged longs pretty investment perspective on the blockchain that they're on. So you. These assets are denominated in Ethereum and if Ethereum goes down, we obviously get cheaper, you know. Well, if the ETH price goes down as well or stays the same, you're going to get better prices.

So, yeah, that's why a price in Aussie dollars because it's stable. Right. And at the time I think he was charging between 0.5 and 1 8. I might have been over 1/8, which is 4k US at the time, which would have been maybe 5000 Australian at the time. Now it's about 10, so it's only a 2x. Same with Moonbirds. It was like 10 grand Australian to get in. I think now it's sitting at low 20s Australian last time I checked. So it's only a 2x, which is. Is really interesting and things are getting very appetizing.

I want to get another Moonbird as well. Moonbirds just announced they're having Proof the Proof Festival.

You seriously want to get another movie?

I reckon I want to get another one because I think they're going to absolutely explode in a bull market and I want to. I love the community aspect.

Let's go Halvesy's mate.

Not a bad shout.

Maybe we'll sign.

Maybe you can have the. You have Discord access, because I've already got mine.

Yeah, there you go, mate. We'll work this out. We'll chat on.

We're doing deals on the pod. There we go.

That is because.

Listen.

Oh, mate, this. This is how. This is pure life, mate. We could have, like.

The. You can. You guys can follow us on our. On our crappy NFT deals and what we buy, and then you can follow us up to episode 100 and we'll see how we go. But I think I agree with Moonbirds and Kevin and what he's building and just how strong that community is.

Well, mate, I'd like to. It's amazing, yeah, What I've gotten through, their investors, friendships, events, you know, information.

Consultancy. Like, it's just been great, that community, like.

But okay, for someone like me that probably won't travel to the States for a very long time or go to an overseas meetup, what's the utility in it for me? Like, is there stuff in the group or talking in, or is it not really there yet?

Yeah, I mean, you're one that. I mean, you're involved with some daos and stuff. Like, you're. You're pretty native to Discord. Like, if you spent time in there, you definitely get value. I don't spend a lot of time in the Discord. I. I sort of optimize more for the IRL stuff. So, like, if you were wanting to optimize the community, I'd need to check the engagement of the Discord right now. But, I mean, I reckon it's still buzzing. So, yeah, I. I think you'd find value from it because you had a.

Lot from, like, going to. Going to the dinners is a huge one. Meeting specific people where they're like, oh, you remember, told it. I'll just help you out. And they're helping you out in the very obscure thing that you needed, like cap racing, crypto.

Yeah, no, they've been awesome. And even going to the lunch, like, I go to events. We. We ping the. The Discord, and there's usually people that are keen to catch up for drinks or, you know, dinner or whatever. Like, it's. It's. It's awesome when you're traveling.

All right, I'm gonna look into this. And I have a hard time choosing between a VFRAME one and a moonbird. It's. Yeah, I don't know. I'll need to do some more analysis on it. We'll have a chat off air, and then if we come to a conclusion, we'll fill in listeners.

Okay.

All right, moving on.

Mate, Mate.

So, yeah, you want to move on.

You Posted something on Twitter. And I was like, oh, here we go. This is a bunch of bullshit. And I wanted to ask you about it on the pod. Now, you post because. Because, you know, you're on your social media game, you're posting regularly, you're posting global thought leader, international luminary thoughts. You just, you know, you're just getting amongst them. You're setting the. You're building that brand. I like to see it. And you know how I know it's working? Because when I look at it and I go, oh, this dickhead. Yeah, that's how I know it's working. That's how I know you've hit the mark. I did it to my mate JB as well when he used to do it on LinkedIn. And when I'm like. Because I know what he's doing, but that's exactly what you need to do. And that's how I know you're hitting the mark. So you're doing a good job. Now. You said, mate, the best life hack I've come across. You listen. You listen to audiobooks while reading the physical book. And my initial reaction was like, this is like the people that say, oh, I read a different book while I listen to. Because my brain's that amazing. But then I thought about it and I was like, you said something about activating more of your brain, and I wanted to know more about it, how this works and what it does for you.

So I. To be. To be clear, I just started this with this book because the author recommended it. And I was like. I was like, okay, hang on, hang on.

Is the author, like, buy my book and then buy. Because that's.

I thought that too. Like, that's a great strategy. You're getting. You're getting Audible downloads and buying book. Like, well played. But no, like, honestly, I struggle to concentrate sometimes and consume that information because it just doesn't sit well. But these, like, he's like, hey, like, if you struggle with this. I've found that if you listen and download the Audible, because the Audible book is literally just reading word by word what that is. Plus, read the physical book. No shit. It was like, I felt like God Mode 1, because I was, like, sitting there on 1.5x speed, reading so much faster than I normally would. It's hitting different areas of my brain. So I'm reading it and listening to a guy. It's like. Like having someone read you the book and, like, for the first time, like, I'm quoting things from the book and really remembering what he was saying I was talking to you about it today, right? In the pricing stuff. I'm like, I'm genuinely remembering and I'm flying through the book. So I found God mode on reading, mate. I'm all for it. But quick caveat, quick caveat. I'm not going to do this. Everything right? I'm reading my fiction book when I go to bed. Like, I'm not doing that. Like, I read that to go to sleep.

Oh, oh, you got a story around that as well. Let's, let's, let's finish, let's finish this off first. So, okay, so it helps with concentration. Does it help with the length that you read as well?

Like if you're reading I read for four without that audio for 45 minutes.

Like, mate, you can't do anything for 40. I can't and I'm not having a goal. You like genuinely no.

Like, you're always 10 minutes and I'm like, brother, next thing, I read for 14, I couldn't put it down.

And it's a 1.5x speed. Okay, this, I think you have to try it. As much lip as I give you, this sounds like an amazing.

You have to try it.

And I say it helps with speed, concentration, comprehension, intensity and understanding and recall.

100%.

All five.

Bang. Tick off. Get it done.

I'm going to try this out. And so other people that want some reading tips. The two best tips that I've had was when you're, when you read, your brain does a weird thing where it converts it to language and it's like you're speaking it without the words. So if you do something and keep your mouth occupied, like chew gum while you're reading, you'll read so much faster. It's instant 2X. It's so crazy. And while you're doing that, if your page is that wide and you're going left to right, just narrow your focus so it's like that. Because you don't need to go right to the end of the line. You still see in your peripheral vision. And then you can go to the next line. And I guess the third thing is put your finger underneath so you know exactly where you are and your brain doesn't have to think as much. Chew gum. Don't do the entire line and put your finger and you're like two X's speed straight away.

Okay, what if we add all three.

Now, now, mate, you told me. Oh, it's probably like, yeah, over a 2x for sure. And then, yeah, oh, mate, yeah, start doing it with everything, but also do. Do.

What is fun and enjoyable for you. So a lot of my reading, even my podcast, I listen on one speed. Like a lot of it, I want to take in, I want to be calm. It's more of an activity than finishing the book because I have to. I want to take notes, I want to write down. A lot of the time I'll read books and I'll close them because there's a statement. I'm like, oh, I need to think about that for about half an hour. And I think that's where I get the most value rather than just powering through the book and, and also reading a book the second and third time, man, that is next level. Because you've read it once, you kind of understand it, but then your life has changed, your experience have changed. It takes on different meaning as well. And it's just, it's. It's so good. Read books that you want to read multiple times. Now, your science fiction book, you told me today it was so good, I was like, save it for the pod. Save it for the pod.

So.

So you started reading science fiction books.

For the listeners. I'm on a constant.

Focus of, like, leveling up my life. So like, for me, like, optimization for happiness, joy, calm, balance, like, you know, energy focus. That's what I'm sort of optimizing for. So I've started reading before bed to get a better sleep. But of course, me being an absolute idiot, I started reading business books before bed. Now it made me even sleep, even worse. Worse because I was like getting all these ideas and bergs was like, mate, stop being an idiot. Like, you need to read fiction books before bed now. I love sci fi. I'm a big movie fan when it comes to, like, you know, Harry Potter or any sort of sci fi, like Netflix series, whatever. Love all that sort of stuff. So Bergson went to a. Went to a bookstore the other day, I think I told you. Went to a bookstore physically. Bookstore. I was like, oh, my God, like, what sort of. Like what sort of creatures live in here? Went to the bookstore and it's like.

Going to block more creatures living here. What do you expect to see, like, weird nerds in the corner? Don't look at me like you're going into like a Dungeons and Dragons tournament or something. Yeah.

So when it went to this, did.

You see any characters there or was it just.

No, I just get my head down. No, I'm kidding. I have.

No, no, that was normal. People.

Went to the sci fi section. But the Worst thing is you can't watch a trailer for a book. So I was like reading the blurb. I was like trying to get testimonials, like, googling. Anyway, I found this book and it's thick, man. It's like 500 pages. Like I've never read more than 20 pages of the book and I've just bought a fucking 500 page big daddy. Anyway, brought it home and I'll take it. You know, sleep before bed. And it's actually good. It's, it's. It's these books like set in the future. It's like year 2100, 2200, where the, the world has ended basically. And these guys, I haven't. I'm only in page 30 or 40, but they're like a spaceship and they're like living out of there. You know, they haven't, they haven't seen this generation of people, haven't seen the real world. They're not allowed outside. They go outside and they basically melt. Like it's like, you know, apocalyptic world. Like it's all really fascinating book. I'm actually enjoying it.

What's it called?

Don't know. And.

Fell asleep last night reading the book. And I went out as. Deep sleep. And my, my dream, I've never had such an intense dream. I was like in a spaceship. Like I was in a like an astronaut vest, like going outside, like trying to like, you know, save planet Earth when there's like an apocalyptic world. Like just smoke around me. And then I like, I fall over and I can't move and I'm like literally stuck. And then there's this like alien comes over my back and like comes to my ear and he's like looking at me, talking to me. And I feel like the life sucking out of me and I feel it. Like I'm trying to like move my body, I'm trying to get out, but I'm stuck. And I'm like, like really like my. This alien like sucking the life out of me. Like, you know, like in, in Harry Potter with the. The dragon. Dragon is going to suck the life. That was what going on. I was like. But I physically I was, I was like waking up, but I was still asleep. I couldn't move. And I was, I forced myself to wake up. Like I literally was like my jaw was clenched, my eyes were squeezed. I was like, like yelling inside my head. And I wake up, I look around, my heart's beating, I'm like sweaty. I'm like, holy. Like, what just happened?

You need to unpick that dream. Jeez. It's like something sucking the life out of you, mate. I have a feeling I know what it is.

And I deposited. I'm pretty sure it might have been just that.

Yeah, thanks mate. Thanks. Yeah, I'll definitely shot. We're not making it to 100. It's over. Buy my mood.

When.

When was the last time you had a dream? Do you dream often?

Oh, not really. Sometimes I'll have a thought. But nothing like that. That was like super intense. I was like proper asleep, man. I was proper deep sleep.

You? Oh, just dead to the world. Next level.

Just next level. Next level. Like in the dream.

What's wild is like I have some dreams like that and I'll be like, oh my God. I'll wake up and it's like four minutes has gone by on my clock and I'm like, are you serious? That was like an hour long dream at least. Like I think, I think like, I think mentally we go really fast in your world. Like we can do a lot and it just seems like hours and hours and it's like four. Yes. Which is just crazy.

Yeah. And then when you wake up, you can't really. Incredibly hard to remember. Sometimes the dream, right, it disappears.

Sometimes I like when I'm having a dream and I can either control it or I wake up and I can go back into the dream. I used to be able to do it a lot. It doesn't happen often nowadays. But that was just. That was incredible. But some dreams are just wild and you're thinking, you try and unpick it. You're like, is something happening in my life? You know what's going on at the end? You're like, it's just a dream. Like, you know, you read some stuff, you did some other stuff, what are you gonna do? But mate, wild. So science fiction, just read a couple.

Of pages, bang, literally two or three pages.

Good sleep, mate. I do the same. Like I. I really enjoy it because it helps. It occupies my entire mind. Like science fiction for me, creates an entire world where I have to use all of my brain and I can't think about work or my back hurting or whatever it is of the day or this stupid conversation I have, this stupid person that's bothering me. I go to a different world and it occupies my entire mind. Similar thing with VR where it's like proper mindfulness and that's the only task I'm doing and that's enough for my brain to relax, let go other things and bang, straight to sleep.

It's wild, dude. Highly recommend reading before bed. It's get that sleep in. Okay, Bergs.

Yeah.

What do you got for me? Are we maiming? Are we, we eating? What are we doing? Food or meme?

We're memeing, mate. I got. I got two memes this week.

Spice level.

Oh, they're not too spicy, mate. I thought I'd take it a bit easier this week. Okay, so this one always have a digger. IPhone owners. So you got Windows and Android at the top in the front seat. Why can't you just be normal? And you got Apple in the back seat. It says screams and raises prices just so. I love this all the time. This is amazing. It's just like, you know, really like crazy screaming in the back. This is a typical Apple owner, all of you. Don't try and tell me you're not, because you are. This is who you are. Just own it. And this is particularly pertinent because we're going through and we're developing a collective Shift mobile app and you want to go on Android. Great. Here you go. Here are the rules. Apple. Oh, no, you can't do that. Oh, we want a 30% cut. Oh, you have to make it in this way. Or I can work here, but it won't work over there. How long does it take to get approved? We don't know. Fuck, why would we care about that? Could be two weeks, could be two years. And then we could just say no and we can change it, mate. All these rules, we. Shitty old technology that Android had five years ago. I hate you all. Get a proper phone. All right, next, mate. Why this one I love? This is a shout out to Leon, okay? He's a lad. He. He does content for us. And this is a guy and it's got a water tank and water's pouring out and he just slaps on a big like Band Aid thing. This is the ad for Flex Tank and he's management. The tank leaking water is worker exploitation, low wages, harsh working conditions. And he's like, bang, pizza party. He just plugs the gap. And this is for Leon because his day job is. He's a nurse. He works very, very hard. They. Their patient loads are insane. They're working double shifts and the government's like, here, have this little badge because you did well during token. And he's like, fuck your badge. Give us a proper wage that keeps up with inflation and the working conditions that we have. I'm exhausted every day. It's not safe. This is bullshit. And I just love this meme so all you managers out there, fuck a pizza party now actually have the pizza party. Pizza party's great, but that is not an excuse for exploitation. Shitty working conditions. Sit down with your employees, talk to them, explain the situation. See what you can automate. See what you can take away from their roles. If you're putting more on them, there's so much you can do here. Don't be a dick and give them a pizza party and expect them to be happy and productive. All right, there you go. That's my little plan.

I liked it. I liked it. There's a bit of value in that meme.

Oh, mate, they're always is. All right, so we'll launch into your meal of the week. Mate, this looks amazing.

Yeah, man. So I went around the corner for dinner last night. Little Chinese shop. We had some pork dumplings there on the left hand side. Some steamed dumplings. I think they were lightly fried at the bottom. That were like pristine. And then burgers. Mezzy. Is it is a mezzi Goring. Is that how you pronounce it? Nazi. Maisie. Nah. Okay.

Messi Nazi Goring. Noodles. These were supplies. Football noodles. So good, mate. This looks really good, man. It had like chicken, it had some little shrimps, had like carrot noodles. It wasn't too hot. Flavor was brilliant. Had a little coke, no sugar, you know, a couple of dumplings, man. I was. I was perfectly satisfied after this. It was like 25 bucks for both of it. I was like. And a drink. Well played.

Amazing. And did it have. Because it looks like that's wok fried. The noodles look like they got a bit of char on them. Was it nice?

Yep. Smoky Wok fried. Had that chalky like smoky flavor. Yeah, it's brilliant, man. This is. This is probably a 9.9.4 out of 10. That was really good.

Unbelievable. I don't know what they got the fried egg there. I don't know what they're doing with that token salad, but whatever, you probably need it.

Yeah, I didn't eat the salad.

That was.

The rest of it was good.

This is one of my favorite types of food. Just nice like cooked in five minutes. Hawker food and then a couple of dishes or dumplings on the side. That's just unbelievable, mate. That's a meal. Probably love it. Well, my meal of the week is in similar vein. So I went out for dumplings and that was just amazing, mate. I just love going out for dim sum. So what we've got here is just a few of the things. Just a few. And let's let's dive into it. Got some.

Oh.

So this one, I haven't opened it here, but this is sticky rice with pork cooked in what I think is banana leaf. Could be another type of leaf. So you just open this and it's just steamy and the rice is glutenous and it's stuck together and you've got this amazing like pork flavor cooked in stock and it's just. It's incredible. It's like having a warm hug. Your stomach just feels so good. This is shumai. So it's just prawns in. I think they're just wonton wrappers. Steamed delicious, little bit of roe on top. It's go to. This is prawn and coriander dumplings, which are just incredible. The coriander flavor is insane. I'm a person that likes coriander. A lot of people don't because I think it tastes soapy. But again, Indian bloke grow up in coriander. This was just incredible, man. Just dipping it in the chili oil. Shanghai pork dumplings. You ever had these?

Maybe not. I don't think so, though.

So these.

These have pork inside, like pork mince and soup. So you bite into them. The soup just goes in your mouth and it's just like. There's a lot of like collagen and it's gelatinous and it's just like, oh my God. While you're eating the pork. And then you've got the kind of texture from the dumpling as well. Phenomenal. And the classic haga, which is just pork steamed dump, prawn steamed dumplings. This is always a go to favorite. And we had like prawn rice rolls and a few other things. Mate. This, this was at one of my favorite places. So I go to quite a few dim sum places. This is. I rate this higher than any place I've been to. It's always satisfying. I'll give it a 9.9 out of 10. This was. This was Emma's in Vic Park. It was incredible. Always a great experience. Great service. Great.

We have to go there, man.

Emma's, Vic Park. Go there, get amongst it. 9.9 out of 10.

I spoke.

Love it.

Yum. Yeah, we'll definitely go there when I'm over the next man.

Oh, mate. Got to hit it up all day every day now.

Accountability bugs. We've been working on this a little bit. Some. Some longer term goals. So my sort of core objective over the next, like this quarter, next quarter to really try and build my personal brand that's just around collective shift and being able to add value and help sort of acquire customers and build the. The trust and authority around their sort of crypto onboarding space. So one thing I'm historically not good at is consistency in content creation. So what my accountability piece is leading up to Christmas. I am taking some time off Christmas. I'm not too entirely sure how it's gonna work. But between now and sort of end of January.

And beyond. But between now and January, I'm focusing on five posts on LinkedIn per week. So one per day. We've got a little like, internal strategy I'm working on there. At least two tweets a day, Monday to Friday. So we're looking at around 10 tweets per week.

Obviously. Benedberg's podcast per week. I do, I do three podcasts with decoding crypto and I'm looking to do a YouTube video on the Collective Shift YouTube channel per week. So that's what I'm trying to commit to Bergs. I've selected those four platforms because that's where our demographic and audience tends to live. So I'm doubling down, man. I'm trying to keep myself accountable.

This is awesome. And this is building towards a really good habit. And you're going to do this over a quarter.

Over three? Yeah, over a quarter. Actually, not really half a quarter because I'm leaving South America in February. So between now and sort of end of Jan, awesome.

So I've got two. So one is shorter term, weekly, things that I want to achieve. And this is because I really thought hard about what I want in my life and the type of person I want to be and the things that I need to work on.

And the life that I want is I want to be a lot calmer as a person. I don't want a lot of stuff to affect me. Things are going to happen in my life, but I want to be able to handle them. React in like, an appropriate way. Just be a lot calmer, think a lot more.

That doesn't mean, like, not be productive. It means not letting so much affect me and take energy away from me, me. And so there's a couple of things I want to do here. One is one thing I'm really poor at is doing things for myself. So even waking up in the morning, I'll wake up, I'll make lunch for my daughter, I'll get ready, I'm like, I'll go that meeting at 8, I'll just skip breakfast, I'll do that later. Or exercise later or I'll see my mates later or I'll cancel that. And what I need to do is just do something for myself like every week. That's a mindful thing. And it can be going playing pinball, learn how to surf, hang out with my mates and hit the batting cages, something like that. But always commit to that, at least that thing. Otherwise I'll just put everything else ahead of that. That's one thing I need for balance. So I'm going to do that kind of weekly. I think this week is head out either by myself with my mates, play pinball for a couple hours, just get amongst it, have some beers and just enjoy it. That's one thing I really love to do. That's something I'm going to commit to. And the other thing is looking after my health and my body as well. So I've done that a lot recently. I have been unwell but I lifted again this week and now I'm getting back on the horse. And if I really want to upframe this to a three month goal, the goal is this is pretty out there to dunk a basketball ring.

Oh, I like it.

So. Right, right, so. And the reason I chose this is it fits all of my goals. To do that I'll need to be lighter, I will need to be fitter, I'll need to have more muscle mass and I will have to jump up and dunk a 10 foot ring which I've just got no hope of doing right now. But I think in three months I can absolutely achieve that. But in order to do it I have to do. Yeah, I have to lift weights, I have to do more cardio, I have to do specific exercises every day in order to activate those, those particular muscle groups. But also the form that I need to take and how I jump and how I do like certain steps and launch. And the goal is a video of me dunking a basketball ring. 39.

Yeah, let's do it. Let's make it up. Yeah, I love it. Yeah, I love it.

I'm excited.

Make it happen.

We will, we'll, we'll attach, we'll attach like penalties and stuff to it as well. So we actually like work hard and achieve it. We'll get on to that next week. What they're actually going to be if we don't achieve these. And I think they will be much larger penalties like maybe bungee jumping. Ben, how do you feel about that?

So good. Maybe that's too much of a step for you because I know that out of all the things you could have chosen. This is probably the most difficult for you to do and it. But it's also, if you achieve it, the most meaningful skill and habit you could have.

100. It's going to add a lot of value. Make it happen.

Absolutely brilliant.

Bergs. I'm going on a helicopter on Friday. That's. Whoa.

Hey. No, you didn't tell me. How come you get to do all the fun stuff?

Because you don't. You don't leave your. You don't leave your house, mate.

Yeah, I know, I know.

How come you get to do all the fun stuff? Oh, yeah, that's right. I don't want to leave my house. That's probably why you're on mute, man.

I do want to leave my house. It's just like, it's too hard. It's too much work, mate. You know, when the company's on your shoulders.

But no, honestly, this. This is genuinely where I put myself last at the end of the day, where I'm absolutely knackered and just can't do anything. Like, I need to plan ahead, plan things and actually execute on them and not move them for other things. Be strong, so a positive boundary and say, no, I can't have this meeting.

So. So to be clear, even if it's.

Even if it's in my calendar, yeah, I'll still do that. I'll still be like, oh, I'll just push that. I'll do it next week.

Yeah, you need.

But next week never comes.

You need to try and block it in, man. Now, to be fair, this is an EO thing. So we've got our EO Christmas lunch up in the vineyards. We're going up the hills about an hour and a half drive away. And they put out the. The offer to. To get a helicopter up there.

You know, a couple months ago. So there's about 11 of us going in this item. There must be two choppers. I don't know, 11 people. Sounds like a lot of people for a helicopter. But anyway, we're getting a helicopter out there. A few wines, mate, catching up with all the EO folks, business friends, few wines back in the city. One of the EO guys owns a bar and a restaurant. So we're heading down to south bank for a few more couple of quiet ones Friday evening. It's gonna be fun, man. It's gonna be good.

See you go to the good eo. My EO is you. You get around. You just meet at someone's office and you talk about how bad your CEOs are.

To, to be, to, to be honest, like, I actually don't complain about how bad you are. Like, it's like literally we have this business problem.

This is what he says, guys.

This what he says, though. It's like, we, we. No, no, genuinely, like. And what I did say was, we have a problem in this area. This is what I need to do. My CEO admits he's bad in this area, but he wants to learn in this area area, which is amazing. That's all you need to work with. What do you guys recommend? And it was awesome. It was really, really good. No helicopters. We get, we get free coffee.

Man. We're getting shitty old pastry and getting like five course meal.

Oh, I looked at that photo the other day and it was cracking. I want to eat.

Right, let's wrap it up. We've been carrying on for a long time. Another cracking episode up, episode 25. We also have new cover artwork, if you haven't noticed. For spam, check out the new cover podcast. Bergs and I both look absolutely deteriorating. Old crypto.

Business, people.

It was after a week of super hard work. This is classic Ben, where he's like, I've got these guys for a week. I'm going to book every second of their time and make them work 18 hours a day. They'll be fine. Whole crew end up getting sick at the end of it, mate.

Everyone.

We got Covid. We got food poisoning. We got burnt out. We're still recovering too, weeks later. Mate, I hope you take a lesson away from this.

Yes. They need to stay longer and do more work.

I knew you would do that where you're just like, less people. All right, triple output, let's go. I'm like, that's not how physics works, Ben. Like, come on.

If you're enjoying the pod, please leave us some feedback. You can Tweet us @benSimpsonAU on Twitter and at Babyback Berg. We also have a Discord channel as well. You can jump in there and just generally, if you have anything you'd like us to talk about, not talk about any feedback, we'd love to hear from you. And yeah, I think that's about it for this week. Bugs, anything else from you?

Yeah, no. Give us a shout out. Love the fans, love hearing from you. You guys are amazing. We're going to put the outtakes on right now, which are going to be hilarious because those at the front were just so good. It's going to be about one and a half minutes. Stick around, watch that. Have a good laugh with us. And honestly, thanks for listening to Ben and Bergs. We love you guys.

See you guys. Bye. Bye.

Welcome back.

Welcome back.

What was that?

Welcome back.

Mate. You just like, oh. Like, you're either, like, inhaling life and you're just like, oh. Or you just, like, trying to get centered and like, let's do this. I'm in Ben and Berg's mode. Yes. This is the biggest breath ever, mate.

I'm gonna warm myself up. It was so.

Welcome back.

You know? Right. Say it again.

Stop.

Any cat. Right? Giorgio from here. Welcome back to another.

Why do you have to start laughing? I was trying to be so serious.

That's why I started laughing as you look. You try to be serious.

Okay. All right, all right.

Oh, this is gonna be okay. Come on.

Oh.

You rubbing your ears? You're supposed to make me not laugh.

You're like. You're like.

Oh, my God.

Then you're like.

Oh, I'm losing. Righto. Come on, little band. Pull.

I'm switching tabs. I don't look at you.