3. Raising Capital In New York, NFT Alpha and How To Create A Great Customer Experience

Foreign.

And welcome to the third episode of the Ben and Berg Show. I'm Ben, your co host, founder of Collective Shift and also your other co host, Bergs chief product officer at Collective Shift where we deliver crypto research, analysis, education and all. Some amazing fun stuff. We've launched this new podcast called the Ben and Bergs Podcast as a bit more of a relaxed step back into life of business, crypto, investing, finance, sport, all sorts of different. And we had a bunch of fun today. So in this episode there's some awesome things. Make sure you listen right to the end where I drop some NFT Alpha 2 collections that I think are worth looking into after my week in New York. I also spent a week in New York as did the founder entrepreneur life. I walked you through what I went up to all the madness and chaos that went on as well as some sort of takeaways in network networking and investor meetings where Bergs went to Spec Savers and had a shit show. Well it wasn't a show. It was a great time.

It was, it was great. And I pull apart their business, give you a few business models. Ben talks through his crazy week, some dodgy massage parlors. The state of play with NFTS gives you some alpha there at the end. Oh, and where he is now and some amazing barbecue that he's eaten as well, which is just. I'm jealous mate.

And the. And the meme of the week which you can't miss as well. So enjoy. Episode goes around an hour. If you enjoy it, please give us a subscribe or a follow or a five star or give us something or a one star, whatever you think. Give us what we deserve and we'll be back next week. Enjoy.

Love you guys. See ya.

Bye. Enjoy Episode three, mate.

I can't believe it, mate. We've made it.

Mate. How many episodes reckon we'll get to? I reckon this is like. I don't think it's gonna stop.

You reckon? I reckon we'll just go to infinity, mate. I want to get to at least 80. 80 is my goal. Don't know why, I just want 80 because it's more than a year.

I like that.

And I reckon that's when the magic's gonna happen, mate.

Episode 80, right?

I reckon you're going to that head by episode 80.

Maybe you get a good cover pick by episode 80 as well. You're the rude as.

No, seriously, what is going on with that man? Like the first pick. Okay, okay. Episode one was the pick that we took in Brunswick, right?

Yeah.

And I Was there. And I've got a black beard, wearing a black shirt because you told me to wear a bloody black shirt. So I wore a black shirt. So anyway, it's my turn to go for the photos. I go in for the photos, and she's like, oh, you're too tall. And I'm like, yeah, so get a ladder. Like, what are you talking about? And then she's like, no, no, no. But, like, can you just squat down a little bit? So I'm in a bloody half squat, right? And then she's trying to take the photo. My legs are shaking. Take the photo. Take the photo. And there's this hilarious, like, Indian guy in the back who's cracking jokes about going through the airport and being brown, like. Cause this lady, she goes. She goes to me like this, right? She's like, oh, you got a black beard and you got a black shirt. And she was talking about this stuff. She's like, oh, but not like that. And I was just laughing so much. I'm like, don't worry. I'm used to this shit. And this Indian guy, man, he's just, like, nodding. He's like, yeah, it's my life. As if we get it all the time. But she was a lovely lady. And then she goes, okay, you got a black beard on a black shirt. So she's like, can you just put your neck out forward like this? So, like, there was, like, a little bit of skin there, so it didn't look like all one thing. And then on my photo, so I'm like. Like a bloody Hunchback of Notre Dame. So anyway, fine, I'll let that photo pass. That. That was fine. Come to episode two. And it's like, great. We've done Episode two. Was an amazing episode. Really happy with it. And then I see the YouTube tile, right? And I look at it, and literally, we'll have to post this in. I've got the photos. We'll post it in. We'll get it superimposed on the screen. When I'm talking, I'm literally like. Like, just the weirdest. No, no. The first face was like. And I was like, what the fuck? So, like, I got stitched up, and I'm like, ben, what's going on? What's our YouTube guy doing? This is just ridiculous. This is bull crap. So I'm like, change it. So they changed it. And now my. It's even worse. My face is like. The amount of things that are gonna get photoshopped into my mouth. Who's making this? Is this Our Aussie guy, I don't know.

I don't know who does it.

You don't know who's making. Are you instructing him to be like stitchburgs up again?

It is unbelievable.

The funniest shit.

I get a message from a mate, Joe, and, and he's like, mate, what the fuck? And he just shows me my head and it's like. And it's like they changed the thumbnail. And it's even worse this morning in our work slack, the team's like, oh, nice gaper there, Burks. Just getting slaughtered last night. One of my friends, Greenwood, she's like, oh, I'm loving how all your podcast pics are Photoshop. I hope it happens every week. Fucking hell, mate. And you got all these professional photos. You're looking good, you're looking fresh, nice haircut, good lighting, all this shit. I'm looking like a bum.

Oh man, that's a funny ship. That's okay. Once we get to episode 80, I promise we get some professional photos.

I have to wait. I have 77 episodes to get a professional photo.

There's going to be over a year of stitching me up and memes, mate.

Oh Lord. So Bergs is just like we've got a memes channel in our, in our work chat that's just constantly rolling in. Of the memes from the podcast. My favorite from last week was the chicken sandwich meme and I think that might be our meme of the week.

Burgs definitely mean of the main of the week. So get this put up and I'll explain it. So this, this is the distracted boyfriend meme where he's holding his girlfriend's hand and he's checking out other chico.

So the boyfriend is Ben. He's holding Crypto's hand and he's looking at a chicken sandwich just going, ooh, so good man.

And crypto's, Crypto's so jealous.

Oh yeah, Crypto's like, what the.

Just punching down chicken sandwiches. Hey, we got some feedback as well. This is also from a mate, Joe where he's like look, I came in for the crypto and left with a masters in chicken sandwiches. People loved it.

It's probably a good segue Berg. So we've, we're getting a little bit, a little bit more accurate I think each week as our intros go. So we're sort of slowly improving. This is a very like relaxed, laid back pod style. So keep your feedback rolling in, especially Bergs's mates because I love it. It's been Some hilarious feedback meme. So it's the Bennett Burke Show. We're talking business, sports, life, food, crypto, travel, whatever's cool, whatever's interesting. From the week Bergs and I jump on. It's a collective shift power podcast. So I think Bergs, what we might even do if people were interested, we might even create a free Discord channel called the Ben and Bergs Podcast in our Discord. So anyone that wants to sort of come and chat about the pod or just anything we spoke about, we'll have like a little free Discord channel. So I'll put the link, the show notes if you want to come and chat with us in our collective shift Discord channel and keep things moving along.

Mate.

So let's dive straight into it. Where are you? What was the journey to get there? What's been going on, mate?

Okay, so I've been in New York for the last week and it has been wild. Absolutely wild. So 27 meetings, I counted I had meetings included, like events, lunches, dinners, coffees, whatever. From landed on Saturday, started Monday morning, right until Friday. Five days, 27 meetings around Manhattan, one in Brooklyn. And it was wild, sort of up at. Up at, you know, 6, 7am Whenever I, you know, woke up at one point I was able to get to the gym, which is good. Then it's just all day Ubers, like literally sleeping in between Ubers in between meetings. And this was. Okay, what sort of meetings? Like, why is it important? Well, we're raising capital for collective Shift. So it was like VC meetings, angel meetings, partnership meetings. We went to the Consulate, the shining consulate in New York. It was like. And then, and then by six, seven o', clock, the, the meetings are done and they're in a party time. Now it's NFT time. So, you know, I actually did. I was there for NFT nyc, but didn't have a ticket. Didn't have time to even go to the fucking conference, which, you know, I went to everything else outside it. Six o' clock hits are into the Collection events. So each night There was probably 25 to 50 events every night, all week there's over 100 different satellite events you could go to. That's why these are like NFT collection. So you bought Ape, your club events, Moonbirds events, Chain Runners, you know, whatever you name it. NFTS has got a, an event this week. So we just smash it every night. So we had Moonbirds A couple of nights of the week I had a private Moonbirds event. 120 people. David Blaine, the world Class magician. So let me just, let me just paint a picture for you, right?

How's it. Where. How is he, man?

What's that?

How was David Blaine?

Okay, yeah. So let me just paint a picture. So I don't even know where we're. Middle East, Middle East Village. East Village, whatever it's called in Manhattan. Roll in to this like bar and it's like, oh, this is kind of cool. But then they go, oh, you're here for moon birds. Check the id, scan your nft. No, you go to the left. So went into the left. Cloak room. Take my bags, take your jacket. No worries. Here's free Moonbird stickers. Merchandise. No worries. You go up the stairs, sir, He's a. Here's a glass of champagne, sir.

Sir.

These guys are in suits. They're like, they're clean, right? They're fresh, you know, they're freshly trimmed. They're like, okay, up the stairs you go. Roll upstairs, start to hear some music playing. A bit of a vibe goes like, okay, what's going on here? Go upstairs. And it's literally a two story apartment that's been turned into an event space in Manhattan. 120 people, complete open bar. Any awesome. And every alcohol you could possibly think of in a bar, whatever the hell you want for free. 120 people. So kind of nice like cruisy chilled out vibe. There's a DJ playing house music. Everyone's wearing Moonbirds merch and it's just like, it's popping like on a Tuesday night. They've got like food rolling around, it's free drinks. Everyone's mingling like it's all flowing. And then David Blaine comes out and 120 people, like you can see everything, right? And he just went around tables. It wasn't like a. It was like a stage, it was in person. So people wrapped around these little coffee tables and he was just like picking people out, doing these tricks and no magic. Literally, like, it wasn't stage. It was like, here, here. Like he was like picking people out, going, right, the best one I saw. He goes after this chick and he goes, pick a number. And she goes, yeah, yeah, I didn't thought about. He's like, say it out loud. And she goes, you know, eight of hearts. And he goes, and then he pulls the deck of cards and he shuffles them, does a few things, you know, sort of backs right up, you know, turns to his left, he's you talking to someone else. He goes, what's the time? Turns back to her.

She.

She pulls back her Jacket, sleeve, and she's got a watch. And underneath her watch, between the watch and her arm, there's a folded up card. And she pulls it out, unfolds it as the eight of hearts. And everyone was like, no way. What the hell? What the hell just happened? And I got on video and still to this day have no idea what happened.

That is incredible, man. I love watching that stuff where you walk away, you just don't know how they did it. And you're like, nah, everybody from the future, mate.

It's like, what the. Anyway, so. So that was one event when Moonbirds.

Top shelf. David Blaine is insane.

Top shelf, man, that was fun. We had, we had.

When you, when you go in, you got to show your moonbird, right? Do you have to have it on a hot wallet? How does that work?

Okay, so there's this app called Token Proofs. This was like. This was the app that everyone was using all these events. It's called Token Proof. And on Token Proof, you basically link up your. Your wallet. Hot wallet, cold wallet, doesn't matter. You link up your wallet and this is on a, on a web app. You basically link it to your NFT wallet and you link and verify you own that NFT to get access to the event.

Okay, cool.

Then once you confirmed, it gives you a ticket. So I like, I had these tickets here. So here's my, you know, magical moon birds. The ticket shop here, then it gives you a QR code and then people can basically jump on and scan it. And then I was, I was wondering.

Yeah, so it's like collab land in discord when you join. Like, you just sign a transaction with a third party and it doesn't leave you. Well, I was wondering about them. Like, are these guys going in, like having to scare stuff with their apes? That's a bit weird. And you heard about like a while ago, all the apes getting stolen through like NFC kind of things and Bluetooth. It's crazy.

Now this was pretty cool. And so this is what.

So, yeah, big parties everywhere.

Everywhere. So Ape Fest. Four nights a week. We went to 2. 4. Okay, this is another. Like, picture this. So it's. It's called Pier 16. It's on the. It's on the corner of Manhattan. Like, it's on the water. It's upstairs. Like it's. It's a big pier. You've got New York in the background on one side, lit up in light. In lights. Oh, like no roof. This is outdoors on the right hand side. You're overlooking Brooklyn Bridge and Brooklyn, unbelievable spot. Huge stage, 4,000 people the first night. Donna, who played. Second night you had future the. You know the guy, the rapper. Yeah, yeah. Surprise act rolls up on stage, it's future. Huge. Third night.

It was on third night. Can't remember who was on third night. Fourth night, Eminem, Snoop Dogg and Little Wayne.

That's top shelf. Top Louisiana. Oh, yeah. Fresh eye gel. Yeah, top shelf.

And literally, again, 4,000 people per night. Open bar. And not just like shitty cocktails. I was drinking like Grey Goose vodka, like cocktails, all free. Pizza, hot dogs.

Yeah.

I paid for a meal all week.

To see Eminem, Snoop and Wheezy. Have no idea how much I would pay. Just think about what you would have to do to get into that room, that super exclusive room with those people, that atmosphere and those acts. It is incredible. You would never get in there in your life.

No. 100%, no. So that was epic. I also got invited to a. Found a Web3 founders dinner. So this was a private, exclusive founders dinner. So there was 20 founders across all of Web3. There was, you know, hugely popular trance DJs, guy that had like 12 million followers on Instagram. He was like a professional dancer and DJ and then building NFT collections. There was some big companies like OpenSea competitors. There was some big, big names there and got invited this dinner, private dinner. It was amazing. Met some amazing people again in like a little room. And that was, that was the magic. That was the lifeblood of this event. I was like, not for me, it was the conference. Like, I didn't go to the conference. It was like the conversations, the connections, the people you meet that you cannot possibly walk off the street and get access to that like, like, you know what I mean? Like, unless you own certain collections. Incredible.

Yeah.

Or you sort of meet people that introduce you here. The best conversations I had was, you know, I got introduced to this person who knew of this person that bumped into this guy that like. And then I had coffee with him and like I had 15 minutes, I had to rush, get an Uber and I caught him in a coffee shop. And then it was like magical. Like that's the. That will happen this week.

That's incredible, man. And you were saying, like, even some of the conferences, the way they're organized, you couldn't even get in. Like you were like a VIP holder or a Moonbirds one. And they mixed the lines. You couldn't get in. After a couple of hours, you gave up and went to another thing.

Yeah, it was chaos. It was.

Yeah.

Some were. Some Were really well run, some were poorly ran. There was a lot of money thrown this week. Like, ridiculous. Like, I still think there's a bit more to go in the bear market just because it was just insanity. Like some of the shit that was going on was just like parties and money thrown around. I didn't know what the project did, you know, Nathan, I walked out a couple times. God, I don't even know what that was, you know, like, I still don't, but they're probably spent like 50 grand on it. On a party, right? Stupid.

This is what everyone was talking about in the Collective Shift discord, right? Where it's like, okay, everyone's like, yeah, the bottoms in is definitely in. You go over to the States, you see all this madness, money being thrown around, people being crazy, projects just splashing cash. And you're like, no, this is more like the things you would see at the top, those kind of signals, rather than a bottom signal where it's like just complete despair, capitulation, down in the dumps.

Yeah, 100%.

So that was the week as a sort of, you know, there was a lot happen, key takeaways for sort of me and for other people, founders, business owners, people that just generally want to network. I am, I'm traditionally a bit of an introvert, so like, networking and going to the events wasn't natural for me. This was my third proper one. Now few, few actionable takeaways for those that, you know, want to do more events or want to improve their networking. So for me, having a goal of going to a conference is really important. The first conference I went to Bitcoin Miami back in April. I didn't have a goal and I came out the other end. It was just like a. It was a shit storm, sort of came out the other end and got. Actually don't know what happened this week. Like, didn't really have much to say for it. It was cool. But I was like, like, I don't know what I got out of it. Compared to an NFT NYC this week I had a goal, my goal, I had two goals. One was to meet investors, potential investors, and also like work on, you know, developing more of the relationships for existing investors. And number two was to develop partnerships for Collective Shift to grow the brand, to grow user acquisition, you know, et cetera, et cetera. So that naturally directs you on a path. So one, I didn't go to the conference. I didn't listen to anyone. I did like, I didn't give a shit what was going on. It Wasn't important for me. The volume of meetings and effort I put into just like, trying to meet with people that I wanted to connect to was the number one priority and executed as hard as you could amongst all the like. Because although, like, the partying sounds fun, it's also, again, where you bump into people. It's where you go, hey, I'm Ben. I'm. I'm a Moonbirds holder. What do you do? Oh, I run this company that, you know, has an NFT collection about education. Like, oh, cool. Do you want to catch up next week? Like, that's where it happens, right? So it's just the game. It's. It's not a lot of sleep, it's drinking. It's like I'm losing my voice after, like a week. It's. It's intense, it's full on.

I can't believe you still. Actually, it's really awesome. You have that frame and that lens where you're like, I want to meet investors, I want to grow the brand. So anything, any choice that you make when you're looking through that lens, you're like, does it fit in? Is it a hell yes or is it a no?

Yeah.

And just by having that simple mental model, you're able to choose the things that will set you up for success during that week. Right. Rather than just kind of floating around and going to random things.

Exactly.

And even, like, you're saying, like, you did so much, you tell me what you're doing during the week, I'm just like, what the hell? And then one of our guys, Nathan, he joined you for a few days. He was getting amongst it. You got a photo of him, you taking a selfie. You're just like, smiling. He's sleeping in the back of the Uber. He's like, mate, how do you do this? You've been an absolute beast for the last week. How do you just keep going, mate? He's like, you're a driven dude, man. You're just getting amongst it.

He's literally like, I got a insight into, like, the. The founder. The founder lifestyle this week. It's I call a founder insanity. And like, this trip I've traveled, I've traveled solo and just have been. Been able to execute and do a lot more in terms of my time. And it's literally, you do nothing else. Like, I tried to squeeze in the gym where you can. You try and eat as best as you can because as the week goes on, you feel, like, groggier and groggy of a morning. Like, you feel really sort of like foggy in the morning, so trying to stay healthy, eating a salad every now and again and like line off the beers where you can.

But yeah, I think very long days, you still, you're still on Australian time. Like for a while you jet lagged, you got like the whole day and then the nights. I did see a post from you on Twitter at about 2am saying you bought two drinks. It cost one and a half each.

Oh yeah. Okay, so here's the moment, Alpha. Just be careful when you go to New York. It was ridiculous. The, the cost of. It's funny because that was the first time I bought a drink. Like on day seven. It was like last night, the night I left. We bought drinks like holy this, free booze, the whole. Yeah, literally. Anyway, so takeaways. Yeah, networking. Get yourself out there, just introduce yourself, just be genuine. Be like, don't worry too much. Like I still worry from time to time. You'd be like socially awkward but just like give it a crack. But usually they're feeling the same way. If you're traveling from Australia, like getting these melatonin things to get your sleeping patterns in order, flying business class if you can. If you got meetings the day when you arrive because you just cooked. If you're in economy flying 22 hours, keep notes because you meet so many people. I did all my follow ups on the last day. So I had a notes of everyone I met with a note and their contact details. So grab their contact details, have some sort of synergy. Some are warm leads, some are cold and just not really vibing. Take their details anyway and then hustle the warm leads whenever you can. Whenever you have time, jump on a follow up call so you don't need to do all the business in the first session. Like you're not getting married on the first date. Get to know them, have a coffee and then follow up and do a secondary call. So that's, that's my Network 101.

I love it. I love the first thing you said about networking where just be yourself, be authentic. And especially in this context, you're in crypto, you're in NFTs. Everyone's nerdy. Yeah, everyone's nervous, even though they may look awesome. Like you're meeting new people. You don't know what's going to happen, but you all have something in common, right? You all have something to talk about and you get to talking to people. You just like, oh, why are you here? You know, what are you buying? Those kind of very simple Questions. Eventually you get to talk about, you know, the food or where you're going next or your life, whatever it may be. And it's just a general conversation. Like it's not scary at all. You always have something in common. You're there for a reason and just be authentic and you'll be fine. Like once you start talking to someone, all of that goes out the window.

100% cool. If you had any other questions or how the week went, feel free to message me on probably Twitter's but the best platform. But that's, that's me from New York Bergs. How about you, man? What's, what's been happening? What's on your end?

Oh, mate, just been working hard, working on the platform. Just really. My back is just so sore from carrying the team while you're away. Mate, just like throw everything in my lap. Just like, here you go, suck shit. I'm gonna go drink beers all week.

Literally I hadn't replied to a slack message all week. So as you know, someone had to run this because Aman was away as well. So you, you might need to get yourself a message.

Yeah, so all the executives away left me with everything. Yeah, no worries. Thanks boys. Yeah, great teamwork. Wankers. No, that's all good, man. Look, crush. Crushing it with product, building things out, marketing really happy with where we're at and just. Fuck, man. I've been enjoying the weather like over here. It's been. It's winter here, middle of winter and literally yesterday was like. And over the weekend, 20 degrees, sunny. Just went out with my mates, had some lunch, sitting out at the pub, sun on my face, having beers. It was just, it was great, man. It was just so nice to have that break in the weather and just awesome time. It was just.

You don't get that much in June in Australia, do you? The. The sort of sun peeking out.

The rest of our crews in Melbourne, we're having video conferences all week, you know, going through our work and they're just shivering. They've got beanies on eight layers. They're like, oh, I'm depressed, can't see the sky. Oh, Burgs, you got this sun coming through. Just give me. It's funny. Hilarious, man. But I feel sorry for those guys. And then they're saying like, they only know that it's going to get worse. Like we're in June, so got July and August of bloody winter and it's gonna suck.

It goes for so long.

So, so Ben, mate, where. Where are you now, mate?

So where'd you land it and, and.

Tell us about your trip to get there. Oh God.

Okay, so last night of the week, you know, was so, you know, traveling solo. Bit of the nomad life is super fun because you just meet so many cool people. So it was like 7 o' clock last night. I was a bit tired, but I was like, no, I'll go up and have a drink and just, you know, like finish the week off. Roll up there with my 8 my Fest T shirt on. And then there's this guy in the corner, it's like, bro. What AP God. And he's got that, he's got a custom hat with his eight on the front and he's got this huge gold chain that says his name. I can't remember what his name was. I was like, oh. I was like, what's going on? Like, you know, he's sitting there with his girlfriend and you know, we started chatting all of a sudden like he's like, sit down, sit down. All this. Okay, right now the drinks are flowing, we're catching on. He's from Miami, he's picking aboard apes. He owns the Twitter handle Legend. Like he's at Legend on Twitter, which was epic. Oh yeah, yeah. Or that, that might have been on Instagram. And then anyway, so he was super cool all of a sudden invited to my mates friends was having a birthday. So I was like, okay, I've got to then have some dinner and have some drinks and all of a sudden it's on. We're going down a Middle east village or whatever and like properly seeing New York for what it is. I'm traveling with my mate, my mate Greg. Nft Greg. So we were just, you know, going around. All of a sudden we're at this nightclub and it's, you know, the guys were in new. Like this is, it was called Marquee, which is one of the biggest like nightclubs in New York that you'd like apparently just can't get in. But this, this person knew that there's someone there.

Of course you're an ape holder, so they let you in.

Like in you go. So like, like the red velvet rope up, you know, in you go. Walk in. And it is the most unbelievable. I haven't been to a nightclub in probably like, probably like two years, I reckon. Walked in and it was like the most hectic thing I've ever been a part of. Like, it was the craziest shit I've ever seen. The DJ was like up on this big booth, there was people everywhere, two stories, they had like the bot. The bottle service. Different places. There's like confetti going everywhere. There's like drums banging. There's like people like throwing. It was like, it was nuts. Anyway, so left there at like 3:30am My flight's at 10:00am I was like, I gotta go like this. It wasn't stopping. The guys are still there. I was like, oh, I gotta go. I'm like half an hour anyway. Ubered back to my place, got home at 4. I was like, okay, I need to get up in three hours. Like I need to get the. I need to get the airport. Like I'm an hour away and they get sorted. Yep. I think I forgot to set my alarm, so. Didn't set an alarm. Woke up at 8 a. Woke up so pissed.

You forgot to say woke up.

Sort of like a little bit glazy. Sort of like, where am I? What's going on? Rolled over. It's 8 o' clock and I've gone like, my room's a shit. 10am it's an hour to get there.

And it's an hour away. You got to get your together.

New York, right? So they even sent me an email to say, arrive three hours early. The airport will be busy. So like at a minimum, minimum, I'm going to get there is an hour early. Like I'm going to be late. Like that's the earliest I'll be there. It's going to be from an hour earlier. Like it's going to write, you know. So it was like, pack it. I threw everything, my bags and just like took off. Got there flying dirty spirit airline. So the line to drop your bags like from New Jersey to New York, like it was like so long. Took like an hour in the line. Get through it. Then security. So slow that bags took so long through security. Like I was like, dude, like, is there a trainer on here? Like my flight's like about to go. Like, you know what's going on? She's like, no, this is how long it takes. I said, this is not how long it takes. I've flown so many times. This is. This is ridiculous. Like my bag said, what are you looking at? Like, if you open it up and look through, it'll be faster. Like, don't worry about the X ray. Yeah, get through. Finally get to the gate. I'm hustling with my bags. Get down there. The flight's fully boarded. They're only waiting for me. Get in there. Sit down.

Were they calling you?

I don't know because I was in the Security or. So I was like hustling down there. I was like, is the plane still there? She's like, yeah. Are you banned? Like yeah, here's my ticket, get me on. All right.

Sat down his seat.

They're like bloody Australians.

Sat down the seat and just like passed out for the whole flight. And then.

And they're in Texas.

Awesome. And what's, what's the weather like there, mate?

Hot man, 40 degrees got here. Oh man. Went to the maddest barbecue meat place before. As soon as I got here I thought of you. I gotta send this photo. Went down so Hungry man went downstairs like what's the best Texas barbecue place there is? And she gave me this address, went there, it was chockers think of.

Do you remember what it was called?

Yeah, I've got it here, I'm gonna bring it up. Okay, Berg, you'll love this. It was like, this is your heaven, man. Like you wouldn't leave this place. Basically it was. Yeah, you go.

Yeah. For those that don't know, I'm just like mad into American barbecue, right? So I got like couple of weathers Webers, big green egg cook, brisket ribs, chicken, pork, all that sort of shit all the time Even like jalapeno poppers or get some camembert, wrap it in prosciutto, smoke it. So you cut it and it just oozes, drip honey on it. Oh insane. Always on the barbecue, always on the charcoal. I've got to get across to Texas. Okay, so tell us about this place, lad.

Terry's. Terry Blacks Barbecue. Google it. It's got like a million five star reviews. Terry Space Blacks Barbecue. Right? Roll it there. 12 and a half thousand five star reviews on Google. Roll up this joint and it's got like an old school barbecue like hut that you roll up to it and it's 40 degrees outside. It's a shack and it's smoking out the top and it just smells like, you know, just smells like. Oh, you know, you roll. You're basically rolling up and you're like you're foaming from the mouth of Freeman. Walk in, you're like, this is unbelievable. Roll in and it's like. And all you can eat barbecue buffet style, right? So you roll. You start with your sides, Mac and cheese, coleslaw, bit of salad, I had some Mexican rice, you know, get the get, you know, just get the sides moving. Then you take your tray, you go around the corner. Now you're at the meat factory and you've got a like 20 meters of kitchen with all these butchers behind the desk. What do you want? You've got barbecue ribs, pork ribs, beef brisket, pork, chicken, sausages, whatever you want. And then you just like, they whack it all on the. On this tray. They're like slicing it up in front of you. It's like. It's like all the meats, like, dripping out of.

Serving it on, like, butcher's paper.

Butcher's paper. You get. You get your coke, you roll up, you sit down, and it's like the most heavenly experience ever.

So I'm looking. I just clicked on Google images under Terry Black's Barbecue, and just the trays are insane. So, yeah, you got your coleslaw, Mac and cheese, beans, smoked beans, pickles. And then you can have like, oh, this just looks amazing. So the brisket has a nice thick black rub on it. It's juicy as. It just looks amazing. You've got pork ribs. Oh, even that beef rib and hot links. Oh, my God.

Dude, you could buy too this place. You could bulk bite. So you could bulk buy like a whole, like, you know, a whole beef brisket. This guy next to me was buying you, like, I had a slab. It was like 10 kilos of beef brisket. He was like, rapid. I was like, oozing out big black outskirts. Like, the skin.

It's in the car on the way home.

This is what people do, and they're buying these family packs and just like, straight. The car, straight home, just getting into it.

Oh, because that's the thing. Like, it takes, like, for a good brisket. It's like minimum 12 hours if you don't wrap, depending on how big it is. Yeah, up to 16, 18, mate. And then like. Okay, so when you cook a brisket, right? So you get it, you rub it, you chuck it on, like, any piece of meat that you cook, it kind of goes in, like, this linear kind of progression. You want it to smoke to be beautiful. You want to be nice and blue. Smells really sweet. Drags you in. Just smells amazing, right? So you're smoking, smoking. And then it gets to a point where it's called the stall. So this is like, you meet generally, like, you go. You generally test by probing. When it probes like butter, that's the part when you know it's done. Great. I'll take it off. If you want to go to temperature, it's like 203, 204 Fahrenheit, something like that. But, you know, once you get experience, don't go by temperature. So at about 165 Fahrenheit. There's a thing called the stall. So it gets. The meat starts off real cold, and it gets hotter, hotter, hotter over the hours. And then no matter how many hours you have, it'll just stop. Right? And the stall before. Before it goes from 165 up to that 200. Right. There's all this science behind it about why it happens and moisture redistributing, all this sort of shit. The stall can last anywhere between five, five minutes and, like, a day. Like, seriously, man. Like, it is ridiculous. Like, sometimes I had some. I'm like, got to cook for the family. It's got to be ready. And it's like, I probe it. It's like, 165. Great. Come back two hours later, 165. I'm like, what the. So, like, at that point, you got to make a decision. So do you leave it as it is and you just let it go and then you just delay. Whenever you're going to eat it, most of the time you can't. So you have to wrap it. It's called the Texas cheat. Right. So you either wrap it in alfoil, but if you wrap it in our foil, like, the bark, like the crunchy kind of part on the outside that gets a bit moist, so you don't really want to do that. But if you use that butcher's paper, right. You can put that on, so it creates, like, you know, another layer, and it just powers through the stall and it can cook it a lot faster right through that. And then it keeps, like, the bark on the outside, but it is. So my point is it takes a very long time. You have to look after this stuff for. For barbecue, like, if your temperature goes way too high or, you know, if you get a bit of wind coming through. And it's always good to cook, like, heaps of it in bulk. Yeah. So it's a bastard to do. That's why people buy it.

Yeah.

Because it's a lot of.

That sounds.

It is so rewarding.

Sounds different. It was. Man, this place was packed. It was chockers for, like, three hours. I was in there or not. I wasn't there for three hours, but I was probably in there for, like, an hour and a half.

Did you. Do you have to line up, like. I know, like, Franklin's and stuff. You have to line up for, like, three hours. Were there a huge line to get.

It wasn't three hours. It was a line. But, like, it, you know, it was moving pretty fast. I had a good well oiled machine. Like there was a lot of people in there working like it was a. It was a whole, a whole thing. It was a heap going on. So anyway, definitely be back, man.

I'll cook a brisket tomorrow now. Work from home. Just go out every kind of hour and check on it, mate.

Yeah, or I'm getting amongst it, right, you got that spark back for me, lad?

Right, okay. We don't meme of the week. We've got.

What's this? Wait, wait, wait, what's this? Creepy massage parlors in New York. Okay, what is this, mate?

Okay, so, so wait, wait.

We've got a notion dot. And we type in a few things about what we'll talk about this week. And I see some of the stuff from Ben and I'm just like, what is this? It sounds dodgy as. And we can't talk about it. We've got to save it for the pod. So you get like our natural reactions, right, so, so we're waiting all week to ask you about this.

Okay, so it's been a long week. You know, I've had my backpack on all week. Like I've just been hustling, right? End of the week, my fucking fetus or probably walk like 330 km. I'm super cooked. Get in the way, you know, sort of trying to wind down the afternoon. Like, I need a massage. Like, okay, let's go get a massage. And I got, you know, Google massage near me and there is like a million massage parlors in New York. I was like, what the fuck is going on here? Like there cannot be. There's more massage parlors and people, right? Went to one.

Got there and it was the dodgiest joint I've ever seen. It was like the windows were barred. They were the bar up. They had like a, you know, the old open sign. Like the old LED open like sign on the window. Oh yeah, it was downstairs. You know, you had to walk down this dungeon into like this like amazing creep. So I got there and I was like, hell no, I'm not going in there.

Hell no.

You're like, you're like, either it's going to be some weird sex thing or you're going to wake up in a bathtub and they've stolen your organs.

You just all sewn up and you're missing a kidney. Bathtub full of eyes.

So and then I was like more conscious about how many massage parlors there were. I was like walking down like everywhere. They just had these like what seemed to be dodgy ass message Piles. So anyway, found a good one and that was fine. But I was like, you know, I wanted to make a note because.

Next time, type in like remedial massage or something like massage parlor, and you'll probably get like a qualified masseuse. What you're after, lad?

Yeah, So I thought I'd add that in there. That was funny for the pod.

Oh, mate, absolutely.

I've got another one here. Almond milk is so this, this is just a quick one. So I was like, oh, maybe I'm lactose intolerant. I'll try some almond milk. Bought some almond milk, made my coffee beautiful. Froths up. Amazing. I even bought like the barista blend.

Yeah, Almond milk. Yeah.

And then I went to have a sip and it just tasted like I had to throw that coffee away. I remember you. You were like, oh, I drink almond milk. And I'm like, yeah, it must be all right if Ben drinks it had one. And it was the worst thing in the world. It was disgusting. Love almonds. This just tastes like bitter water. Sadness, despair. Oh, it was okay. It was just ridiculous.

Okay, so I drink almond milk religiously, like, you know, almond milk, lattes, iced coffee.

What is wrong with you?

So it's the only thing.

I just love the pain.

Full cream milk. Just. Just me. So I have the almond milk, but I will say there's some almond milk and if you burn the almond milk, it tastes like ass. And if you tasted sort of bitterness, watery crap. I've had those almond milk coffees before and it's disgusting.

Ah.

So you, you may have got a bad. So this batch of milk, or you might have burnt the milk, potentially, because it's a little bit different to full grain milk. You can have a bad. You can have a bad.

See, so this is the. This is the thing, right? And I've got those barista hands, maybe just right. So like, so after you made a few. Few espressos, right, A few coffees, when you're holding the milk jug, like, usually you'll have a temperature gauge in there and you'll froth it to a certain temperature so it foams nicely and the milk becomes really sweet. And. And after you've done it a while, you can just tell by the temperature in your hand. So I did it to the normal full cream 10. So I might have gone too far. I might have to go under that temp.

Yes.

I haven't thrown the almond milk away yet. I'm going to give it another go.

Go, mate.

And if it's exactly the same I'm going to call you up and abuse you, like, for at least an hour, because that was disgusting.

No, dude, I've had a burnt milk almond coffee board's horrific. Like, enough to only throw you off coffees completely. I. I had it with the barista, like, proper barista's door, too. It's like, guys, like this. You taste this, like, would you. Would you drink this? Like, no.

Yeah, I've had to take coffees back as well, where it just tastes like, watery, burnt. And I'm like, come on. They. And okay. And even when they have a naked filter on it. So, like a naked. You know how you usually have the two spouts and it pours out? The naked filter is, like, cut off. And you can see the coffee, like, coming through underneath. So you can see the little, like.

The coffee pushing through. And it should come from all sides and then just drip down through the middle. That means you've got a proper extraction. It's not like channeling. So channeling is when it goes through, like, one little bit and then it all gets extracted through there and it tastes really like, you know, acidic and gross. And I'm like, you do this for a living. You would know just from the way. But, man, it's disappointing. We have to take a coffee back and you're like, oh, they're going to bite my head off. They're going to spit my next coffee. Like, oh, you thinking twice about it.

So lattes.

Like, you know how you never complain about people that make you food?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Because then they'll go back to the kitchen. You don't know what they're going to do.

Yeah, you eat a bad meal, you turn your buddy go, that was. That was terrible. And then they come over, they ask how the meal was. You're like, no, it's great. Like, you know, it was really.

Why is that? Are you just like, oh, it's fantastic. Like, you never tell them what you really think. Like, okay, occasionally if it's really bad, I'll be like, oh, look, there's definitely something wrong with this. Like, can you please take it back? But generally, if it's just average, like, awesome, like, you know, and then it's like, they're like, how is your meal? And half's left on the plate. And you're telling them it's awesome and it's not awesome. You know it's not awesome. They know it's not awesome, but they'll just nod and smile and take the plate away. They're not going to ask You. No one wants that trouble.

We all know.

No one wants that awkwardness and that conversation.

What are you getting from it? What are you going to like, you send a feedback form to the chef, like, what's going to happen? You know, like that's going to go to the land of knowing.

Oh, yeah, he's mad. Anyway, I've watched Gordon Ramsay. I know how it works. All the guys are working 16 hour days. They're all on meth, they're all idiots. And they're that because they're answering to some guy like Gordon, who's an absolute prick. It's just a vicious.

Then you have this bald headed, bearded, terrorist looking fella, you know, saying that he's. His chicken was overcooked and.

Oh, mate, you can overcook my food. That's fine. Maybe on a steak you can't overcook it. But oh, man, sometimes when you, you cut through and it's like raw chicken.

That's bad.

Or like you order something or you order medium rare steak and it's like well done. Except for like, right the part in the middle. I'm like, that's not how you do steak.

Oh, yeah, okay.

So like, come on.

First steak I had in New York went to a steakh and I ordered a medium rare New York strip. And no, this thing was mooing when it came out. Like, it was, it was like red. Oh, it was real red.

Yep.

Yeah.

Or when it's like well done on the size of medium rare. Okay, so everyone out there, this is how you cook a steak, all right? It's called reverse searing. So if you're on a Weber, you put your coals on one side, you put your steak on the other, you put your rub on it, salt, pepper, and you leave it there, right? Until you bring it up to temperature. I think it's like 50 degrees Celsius. I don't know what that is in Fahrenheit. 110, 120 away from the temperature that you want. So it's like five degrees away from the temperature that you want. So you bring it up to temp, get your coals up real hot, and then you just sear it for 45 seconds on each side and then it's absolutely medium rare through the entire thing and then just charred on the outside. If you don't have a Weber and coals, stick it in the oven. Do the same thing. Get a really nice hot cast iron pan, man. Don't put butter or anything there because you'll burn it and then just 45 seconds each side. Perfect. Steak restaurants, listen up. Do that shit. Whatever you've been doing, it's wrong. No one likes it. Stop fucking up my expensive steak. If I can cook better steak than you, there's something wrong. You need to get better.

You sound like Gordon Ramsay, mate. Oh.

He's like, do you want some advice? Get better. It's like at least a consistent. Yes, consistently. Shit.

My favorite is when he gets two pieces of bread and he goes up to someone, slams it between. You're a fucking idiot. Sandwich.

Idiot Sandwich. Sandwich. How good.

I am an idiot sandwich.

And the other one where it's like, if you want to saute scallops, cook in a non stick pan. That's why it's called.

He has like an aneurysm. It's so good. So good.

That dude's gonna have, like, hard problems when he's older. Like, oh, my God.

Oh, mate. The he has to deal with is just incredible. Even the ones where he goes to, like, the hotels and there's like, okay, have you run a hotel before? No. And he's like, what the did you think was gonna happen? You're not changing the sheets. Like, you're not even a real chef. Get out of the kitchen. It's just like basic stuff where people go and yell, run a business. It's just so crazy.

Oh, that's funny.

It is so, so crazy.

It's some good watching.

Oh, mate, I love it. I like whenever it's on TV and I'll flick over. It's just so entertaining. That lads got it going on. Love him.

Love him, mate, tell me about your Spec Saver story.

All right, mate, what should we pick now?

Tell me about your Spec Saver stories. Your specs, Davis, your spec Save story. You gave warm up midweek and then you said, I've got to wait.

So, okay, so I'm, I'm, I'm late 30s. I'm getting on, so I'm like, fine. I better, better go for an eye test, right? Never had one in my life. So I'm like, oh, how do I get an eye test? All right, I can book for free online. Go to Spec Savers, which is like, in Australia. That's just like a chain of optometrists and apparently they do hearing as well. Book online. Takes 20 seconds and they've got heaps of appointments. Just rock up there. Going to the shop full of glasses. The lady at the front. Oh, how can I help you, sir? I'm like, oh, yeah, this is my name. I'VE got an appointment. They're like, cool, we'll just confirm details. I've already put it in. Great. Either browse for the glasses or just take a seat. I'm like, okay, cool. When I looked at the glass, I'm like, well, I really need glasses. Looked a bit at the sunnies when it sat down. And normally an optometrist shop is really small. It's like the size of a bedroom. But behind there was this huge area, right? So I go and I sit down in this area. Two minutes later, another lady comes and gets me. She goes, okay, we'll do your eye test. So walk through to this little thing. And she's like, oh, and the chair's facing this wall with, like, these headphones. And I'm like, all right, that's weird. And she's oh, you can just put the headphones on. And I'm like. They go, we'll do a free hearing test. I'm like, well, I just want the eye test. She goes, oh, it just takes two minutes. We'll do the free hearing test. I'm like, okay. So she's sitting down, she's setting up. Put the headphones on. Just a little iPad, and it tells you, like, what to do. And you press the button when you hear something. Takes two minutes, right? Oh, your hearing is perfect. And immediately, straight away, just look at this as a business, right? They've checked my hearing. They've given me something for free, right? So they're building reciprocity already, where it's like, they've given me something. I feel like I need to give them something, right? And this is a screening test, because if my hearing is absolutely stuffed, they'll be like, oh, did you know your hearing's like this? We've got audiologists. We can refer you. Would you like to know more? Of course I'd fucking like to know more. Right? So. Right. Anyway, my hearing was fine. She's like, you're in the normal range. That's all great. Let's do the eye test. I'm thinking, fuck, here we go. Because I heard. I heard there's a thing where they, like, blow stuff into your eyes, a pressure test.

And I'm thinking, it's so fucked.

So I'm expecting. I'm expecting this massive thing. Never had an eye test in my life, except, like, when you go to the doctor and you go like that, and you read a thing on the wall, which is not a real eye test, like, back when I was a kid. So anyway, they put. They go, okay, Put your chin here in your head and like, okay. Then they focus on your left eye and you got to look through at a hot air balloon. Then it goes blurry. And then the right eye and they're like, okay, that test done, it took like 10 seconds, right? I'm like, great. I think that was the, the OCT test where they can look behind your eyes. And then they're like, okay, we're gonna do the pressure test. And then it's just, you're looking at this thing. It's just like, like blowing in your eye. It's like a baby blowing in your eye. It doesn't hurt at all, right? But it takes like four or five times. You've got like the reflex, right? And I'm like, oh shit. And then she goes, okay, the eye test is done. I'm like, oh, that was painless. And then she goes, okay, just, just walk past the seats you were and just go around the corner and just sit there. And then the optometrist will be out in a minute, so walk around the corner. I'm like, holy shit, this store's even bigger. And I sit down. There's probably 10 chairs there. And then there's all of these like desks and like little desks. And I'm like, man, when you're just in a normal shop, this is just like your local shops, right? It's not a huge shopping center. And each one has like, there's these big signs that says like free contact lenses, free trials, free hearing aids. And each desk had and this be at least like 10 people working here normally. I thought it was just a shop of one. Like they're just buzzing around. There's people going in and out. They are just a machine, a well oil machine. And each desk has like a computer, it has a F post terminal. It has everything. It is just set up to optimize sales. They do not want anything getting in the way of a sale. It's experience. Unbelievable.

They take you through this journey, right?

Yeah.

That's funny, right? So similar experience I had. I went to the Empire State Building the other day.

Yeah.

And I think these tourist attractions are like the ultimate thing as well. It's a one off thing. Like I'm never going back there again. Like they've got one chance to sell me on everything, right? So you go up, you know, you've got, you've got the, the iPad thing. Do you want the 80th floor or the hundredth floor? I want the hundredth floor. No worries. Do you want the fast Bang, add to cart. Do you want the fast track straight to the top? Skip the queues. Yes or no? $30. Cool. Now, do you want a food and beverage package when you get up there at a discounted rate? Yes or no? Okay. Then you pay, then you go through. And before you start, you get a. You get a photo taken in front of, like, you know, the green screen, and they give you a card, you know, and you save onto that till later you go upstairs and everything's like. You go through this whole journey of, like, you go upstairs, you go around. It's like, it's a completely, like, customized experience with signs and things that pop up. And once you get to the bottom, they have. Where you scan your card and there's your photo. And now you feel obligated because you didn't get a good photo upstairs. Now you got to pay $35 for the photo package. And then you go through and. And just when you think you get you done, you get to the merchandise store. And now you have to go through the merchandise store with all the. The stubby coolers.

Exit through the gift shop, through the.

Gift shop, and then you get through the gift shop, and then they've got the food and drinks again. So now you've got another thing to get through, and you can't, like, you can't leave. You have to go through it all, and then you get to the end, and then they had the final sell. Have you. Have you changed your mind about that photo? You can still scan this QR code before leaving.

Retargeting, mate. Amazing.

They had it all.

And just. Just look at that. That is. That is phenomenal. So everyone, you need to take note of this, okay? When you ask someone if they want something, even if you're in consulting or you're selling something, whatever it may be, right? The way they did it was absolutely perfect. You can't ever ask someone, what do you want? Like, you can't ask a kid, what do you want to eat? You got to give him, like, two choices, all right? You want this or this. Great. And you want to eat a sandwich or a roll. Great. Do you want it chopped up in squares or triangles? Whatever the fuck. And the, like, the perfect example I always go to is when you got something and you need to go get it framed, and you go to the framing guy, right? He doesn't go, oh, what do you want? Like, he might start off like that. Do you know what you want? And you're like, no, I got no fucking idea about frames. So what does he do? He goes out the back, comes and brings out four or five differents. Go. I think this would look good with this or maybe this or this. And he takes a little picture and he moves it along each one. So you got this thing, it's called a consideration set. You know, here's the ones you can consider. And he's basically guiding you down a funnel. Oh, you like the blue? All right, let me get three different blues. Which one do you like most? And then you get to a decision within two minutes. It is absolutely phenomenal.

The sales funnel. It is so the sales funnel to get to the right decision and the right product that you want, but then also the upsells. So it's not just the, you know, the pair of shoes you bought at the checkout, you've got the pair of socks and do you want the shoe cleaners? And then do you want an extra pair of shoelaces? And what about this drink bottle here? And do you want to sign up for the membership? And then do you want, you know what I mean? And it's like constantly, you know, like upgrading. It's like the whole McDonald's offer, right? Like, do you want fries with that? Like, how much money they made with just that small optimization?

Oh, and there's. There's a beautiful thing as well in that, like, if you're doing it yourself. So let's say you're buying a laptop. There's a thing called an implicit favorite. And I love this, right? So you're going to buy a laptop and Ben's a Mac guy, so his implicit favorite, like, laptop is a MacBook, right? So what he's going to do, if there's five laptops in his range, let's make it easy, three. And he's got a MacBook, he's got a Dell and he's got like a Surface. What he's going to do, he's going to take the MacBook, compare it to the Dell or the MacBook wins. The MacBook, compare it to the Surface or the MacBook wins. It's not going to be, you know, a rational kind of decision. It's going to be always comparing to that implicit favorite, which happens, you know, in the awareness, like the top part of the funnel and you just aligning with that product. So this is not the end of the spec saver story. So I'm sitting there, right, and I'm thinking, fuck, I didn't know all this stuff existed. And then the optometrist comes out and he's this, he's this jolly Malaysian man. He is so good. He's probably about my age. He's got a couple of kilos on him and he's just so happy. He just loves his life. He's like, oh, come through, come through. So he goes in and he's like, oh, cool. All this is covered under Medicare. You don't have to pay anything. And your eyes are really great. Let me take down a few details. So see what happened there, right? He makes me feel comfortable. Please, please sit down. My name is this. You're absolutely fine. You don't have to pay anything, but let me take some of your details. All right, so he gets a couple extra details about me, like a little bit of history. He's asking about my parents and if they had any eye stuff. And as I'm saying this, I'm like, oh, you know, Mum had cataracts. He goes, oh, hey, don't worry. That just happens in old age. You can't really prevent it. It's not really herdy thing. I say, hey. And it's not just humans that have it, it's all mammals. And whenever he finishes talking, he's just like. He gets his fist in. He's just like. Like, he's just so happy. Like, he's just. He got it down, right? So think about what's happening here. He's making me feel comfortable. There's no shocks coming. He's managing my expectations. He's taking down my details for his system for the future. And he's educating me as well about eyes. And the stuff this guy told me was just unbelievable, Right? That's awesome. And he said, well, we can. We can go through. He's like, has it. Is anything, like, bothering you? Like, why did you come about your eyes? I said, I've got a few kind of floaters in my eyes, so when I look at white stuff, I can see them moving around. He goes, look, that just happens with age. Don't worry about it. We're only concerned if you've had a recent head injury or a couple of other things, then we'll look into it. But you haven't had any of that, so you're absolutely fine. Just keep going, no worries at all. And then he goes through and he's like, okay, well, just put your head on this thing and we'll look at your eyes. So he puts this thing over my eyes and I'm looking at, you know, the letters that you have to read. And he goes, okay, number one, number two, number three. Which one's Clearer. And I tell him which one? And he goes, read out the top line, read it out. Bang. Done. And he goes, great, you're good enough to drive. And then he did it again for my, my other eye. And he goes, which better, two or three? And I'm like, I'm not sure. Try it again.

Try.

Because it wasn't much difference for me, right? And he goes, right, read the bottom line. So read the bottom line. Bang. He's like, yeah, you're good enough to be a pilot. And he goes, he's like, yeah. He goes like, your eyes aren't perfect. They're like, you know, 98.5%. But he's like, put your head in this thing and this is your eyesight normally. And then he flicks the thing, goes, this is your eyesight with glasses. And he's like, look, there's hardly any difference. I'm not going to tell you to get glasses. You're completely fine. It is not worth it. So what has he done there? He's physically showing me the difference between what my eyesight is right now, looking at something and what it can be, like what the best it can be with glasses. So immediately I can see the benefit and the value proposition of getting glasses. And in my head I'm like, no, it's not worth it because my eyesight's okay. And then what he does, see, this is just beautiful. And if my eyesight was, I'd be like, wow, I didn't even know I could see this. He's demonstrating the benefit. He's explaining what can happen. He goes, oh, I see you've got sunglasses on your head. And he's like, that's brilliant. Wear them all the time. We're not concerned about sunlight, we're concerned about UV and getting into your eyes because it does a lot of damage. And he's explaining all this stuff to me and he's like, even though during winter there's still a lot of UV in Perth, you need to wear sunglasses. And then he says, hey, look, you know, I'm not going to tell you to wear glasses. Look, we do do a follow up in three years. Do you mind if we send you a message in three years you can come back, we can look your eyes. I'm like, yeah, of course, man, this experience has been great. I'm like, in and out in like 10 minutes or something. I've learned heaps. This is just gangster. And like, if my eyes, as I get older and they get worse, right? And then I'm like, wow, I Walk out there, I'm like, this is fantastic. I'm like, I've never had such a good sales experience in my life. I never felt pressured. I felt looked after, was a well honed machine. I wasn't waiting around for ages and I look at my phone and immediately I get a ping and what is it? It's my, my hearing test. So they've literally closed the loop, sent me my hearing test going. You came in on this day. This is what happened. They got my left ear, right ear, a graph and what happened? And I was just like, to the point where I'm even considering buying a Spec Savers mate. It is franchise. They are such a, they are such a well oiled machine and that just the, just the service layer they have on top of that product, they have put so much work into that.

Isn't that just a great, you know, not that you end up buying anything but you know, the word of mouth referrals that you have just given on this podcast and probably have fucking told, you know, a bunch of other people like they've just got. That's the amount of business that just gotten from just a great experience through you to now. The people you're going to refer to them like that's, that's super valuable shit.

Absolutely. And the reason I went there was like my wife got some hearing aids recently, right. Because she worked in a lab her whole life. Machines are so in certain situations like cafes and that kind of stuff, it's hard to hear. She went to one like audiologist, she was like, went to spec saversavers. They were like the cheapest out of anyone. And the audiologist there was like incredible. They're like, take these home, try them for a week, see if you like them. Okay. You want to buy these? It'll take this long. This is what it costs. You can come back every week and we'll retune them. It was just phenomenal. Like in terms of service, I have zero complaints that this is, this is incredible.

That's awesome.

And if, if you're a super business nerd and you want a model to look at, it's called the service profit chain. Look at that. The best companies implement it. Coke, everyone. Enterprise rents car. Spec Savers are all over this. Get amongst it. If you're in a service business, this is the you need to be doing, mate.

I want to get a speak service now. That's it.

Oh lad, it was so good. It was so, so good. I'd be happy to buy from them. I know I'd be looked after. I'm not getting ripped off. It's awesome. It is so good. And it's objective data after data after data. And then showing you the value proposition. It is just amazing.

I wonder if all employees are like that or just that guy.

Well, a lot of them, they were just buzzing. They're helping each other out. They. There's at least two or three there. I know from that I was just like observing. I don't know if all stores are like that one, but that one certainly was. I reckon that'd be a high performing store.

We'll be back in three years when you need to get glasses.

Three years, baby.

When we get to episode 80, baby, or if my hearing goes down to episode 80. You'll be there?

Yeah. Episode eight, maybe. I actually have a decent picture there.

My great story. Let's link that.

If that's a link. Otherwise. Yeah, that. What is it called? The service funnel. I'm gonna check it out. Service funnel. What is it?

Service profit.

Service profit chain.

The service profit chain. So there's a Harvard Business Review article. It's this ugly yellow diagram, but read it and it is amazing. And the crux of this is to create a really good internal service quality. So looking after your employees, making sure they got the tools they need, they're paid well, that they're generally happy with what they're doing and they're working at their highest utility. Because in a service industry, the people that work there are the ones that provide the service to the customers. So if they're happy, they'll give better service to the customers.

Right.

You know, they'll be, they'll be happier, they'll do their jobs better, they'll be more joyful. Sales will go up and then the customers have a better experience. And as the customers have better experiences, they then become loyal customers, they become advocates, they tell other people about your business and they come back to your business. And there's this huge loyalty loop that goes through that. Word of mouth, any service industry get amongst that.

And even on the product side as well. Like even, you know what we focus on collective shift. If you give a good experience and you help people and genuinely like valuable, like they'll share it and they'll, you know, build a good, you know, you'll build a good community that way. So you build a good brand, a long term brand.

That's exactly right. And there's. I learned a brilliant phrase. How do you make the tangible, the intangible tangible? So how do you tangibilize something this is from my, one of my marketing professors, Professors Sanjit Roy. He's, he's just off the planet with services marketing. So in a digital space, how do we tangibilize that experience? How do, when you go to a website or a platform or like a chat group or discord, how do you remove that friction? How do you start to bring those in real life feelings of, you know, I trust this or it feels really good or it's doing the things I want or it's giving me a value proposition. What can I remove, what can I add? Like it's not all about removing friction. Can I put a friction point in here as well? So people think and they go down a certain path. How do I manage that experience and those expectations in a digital way? Very, very hard to do. But when you get it right, oh man, it's just, it feels amazing.

Mate, we've got a few more minutes I want to wrap with. I've got some NFT Alpha if you want to let, if we want to leave on that, let's get amongst it.

I need some baby. What am I buying?

First of all, this is non financial advice and you know all that sort of disclaimer stuff. But I've got two collections for you and this I'm. I was a.

The first one and how'd you come.

How'D you come amongst NFT nyc? So I met this first collection, I'll mention, I met, I know the founder, she did a podcast with the founder and then met her in New York and went to their meetup and I was like, oh, this is, this has got something brewing here. And the second one, I went to their NFT party and it was the best party a week that I went to. So. And I'll tell you why. So the first one's called.

This is. Hold on, before you do it. This is really interesting where if you go behind the scenes and you see the people driving it and the community and the momentum they have, they're all really good signals of a good community before they even have an NFT or something. They're the kind of things you want to look at when you're.

And that's why I think there's some alpha here because this is like.

You know that you had to be there to see what's going on here. So the first one's called 8gin 8s I A N as in Ate Jin. And basically this is a niche female oriented.

Asian community that is led by a founder that I did a podcast with a little while ago. She's from, I think she's from Thailand or Malaysia. Her name is Nicole and she goes by on Twitter, I think Asian, Asian mom, Asian mum, single, eight Asian. But anyway, she is a killer entrepreneur. So they minted eight eight and a half or 8888 Pfp NFTs. I think they raised a few million dollars off the mint. Still have a lot of that money. And they are building a brand like a, like basically, you know, bigger than just a fashion brand but like they're trying to build, you know, agent as like a Disney, you know, brand. And they have an upcoming. Yeah, and they have an upcoming partnership with Uniqlo. Not sure I'm allowed to say that because that's not public yet. They have an upcoming partnership with Uniqlo where Uniqlo is going to be like, you know, selling clothes in a partnership with the eight Asian brand. So the agent brand will be on Uniqlo clothes. And they're really developing this organic partnership community, especially in Asia where they're like building different collaborations and partnerships and growing this like brand. Then they're doing consultancy and generating revenue. And they've got a team of I think 15 or 20 people all on the partnership side. The floor is 0.068. They minted at point zero eight. And I just think this is a really undervalued one. You know, I'm a, I'm a big believer in the founder and the team, the community. And I went to their meetup and it was this really, yeah, interesting, unique, highly engaged community. Like this is an Asian community. There was a meet up in New York. There's probably 30 people there of like hardcore believers. They all love the project, they love Nicole, they love what they're doing. And they were just like really down to earth. Not all investors, like just genuine, genuinely lovers of the project. And I was like, oh, this has got legs.

This is, this is really interesting where you've got a partnership with a clothing brand. So Japanese clothing brand all over the world now and the synergy there. And you know, I could just imagine like, you know, having that NFT getting access to these things or having, having that specific brand and driving traffic towards this particular group. Because what you're doing is you're creating a global group here and you can join them through having that NFT join their community and start, you know, really influencing culture. And I've just pulled up the page now and the Asian main collection. So 8888 NFTs are beautiful Asian women. Painstakingly Crafted where even the most intricate details are steeped in historical significance. And they, some of these are just beautiful. Like this is art I would have on my wall like the traditional.

Chinese dresses with the high necks and the stitching and the hair back and even look at the, the apparel.

Like apparel chongsim. I don't know if I'm saying that right, but even the types of like, okay, this is. There's like 15 different traits here with like face, filter head accessory, the necklace, nose, lips, eyes, skin tattoo, eyewear, background apparel, earrings and the things that you would traditionally wear in your culture. You can really align with and pick those specific NFTs. I could just imagine the drops and stuff that they're going to do based around like the moonbirds had like everyone with a wizard or witch's hat got to go to a thing. So this person that has, you know, this specific traditional dress. Amazing.

Yeah, I bought one with. Mine's got like swords on the back. It looks awesome. And I forgot to mention the founder, Nicole. She runs a like a huge 14 chain bubble tea franchise in Malaysia. Like she's a weapon. I think she's only like mid-20s, an absolute killer. She was early bitcoiner as well. She bought bitcoin when she was 15 and just went all in and she's like, she's killing it. So yeah, you know, they've got good capital behind them.

Bubble tea is huge. Like you go there anytime and you see the coolest, funkiest, generally Asian people dressed up like, I don't know the. Oh man, the sense of style of people that go there is just awesome. Right? Like sitting down on their phones sipping bubble tea. This just, this is really good alignment. Amazing.

So that's one for your bird. Check that out. The other one I wanted to mention was it's called Cyber Brokers. Might be familiar with them. Okay, basically Cyber Brokers is a series of 10,001 on chain. So all of the. For those who don't know what on chain means, basically all of the meta. So a non on chain NFT is basically just an image that's uploaded onto the blockchain. So it's the verifiable. But an on chain NFT basically means that every single piece of metadata is saved on the on chain. And what does metadata mean? What's like every color, every pixel, every trait. Think of like a layered photo. If you've ever used Photoshop, you have the background layer one, layer two, that's. And then you sort of move them all together. That's how on chain NFTs work where each layer is pieced and assigned to the blockchain. And this is quite unique and where you know a lot of that.

Let me just clear one thing up there, mate. So, yeah, on chain, everything lives on the blockchain forever. You're right. Every pixel, every piece of data. The ones like bored apes and big JPEG images, only the link to that image exists on the blockchain. That image exists somewhere else, generally in a thing called ipfs, which can actually be changed. Right. But if it lives on the blockchain, that's not getting changed. It's absolutely immutable, depending on the blockchain you use. But generally, generally Ethereum. And the reason that happens is because JPEG images are large, it costs a lot to put it on there, move it across around, all that kind of stuff with transaction costs.

Perfect. So cool. Yeah. So the, the cyber brokers, I went to their event and it was probably the coolest event. And the reason being I think that artwork's awesome. And basically they're building a membership around access to different, what they're calling metaversal experiences. So each individual cyber brokers basically has its own, you know, varying traits and accessories. And as I said, the artworks epic. And they're building these different metaverses where they cyber brokers will be able to go and live inside, you know, different metaverses. So for example, you know, the new board 8 metaverse coming up, you might be able to take your cyber broker there and whatnot. And what I found at this, this was the, probably the biggest non like blue chip collection event where there was a lot of people and the event was really cool, you know, immutable X. Were there some big names were there. I met the artist, you know, and the, the collection holders were really unique. They were like investors, but they weren't like bored ape rich people. They were like really passionate. Again, community people. And I want to look in this one a little bit further. They minted a 0.358 the floors currently sitting at 2.118. But generally from just the community and you know, the artwork and how organized there were and meeting a lot of their investors and the artists as well was like, okay, this thing, this thing's got legs. They did a partnership with.

Mint. I remember what it was. There was. It was a. It was a collaboration event. And yeah, it was. It was pretty epic. So another one to look into as well. Those two for me is what I took out of as interesting ones.

That looks awesome. They got decent volume and even from, oh, fire off a few days after mint, they're at 2 8th already and then peaked it 8 8th, which is huge. And now they're sitting about 2.1 I think too. Like phenomenal. I love this art.

The artwork's heavy. They had a huge mural on the wall. It was a massive mural. Like all of the, all of the collections, all the images or the PFAS was epic.

This is great. And oh, and in the Discord live, I heard that this is the collective Shift one. Is it? Solana's bringing out a phone.

Yeah. Launch their Web three phone. Yeah.

How wild is this? So literally okay, in the future, every single mobile phone is going to have some kind of crypto wallet built into it. It's just going to happen. Right. And you're getting phones experimenting now. And Solana have just gone, nah, we don't want anyone controlling this. We don't have to go through app stores and get rejected or permissions. Trust me, I've lived that life before and it is bullshit. Everything's on Apple time. We've got these. But I was building health apps and you know, they'll find their corporate apps. You're trying to push them to the store and it's just Apple time. It could be one day, it could be six years before they approve it or they'll make a change and it is just ridiculous. So these Solana guys have gone nut. We're releasing a new entire phone. We're going to own the entire experience. What you would call vertically integrated. They own absolutely everything and they're just going to pump NFTs through that thing. I'm, I'm really excited to see how they actually interface with, first of all consumers, how they utilize the wallets, how seamless that is and then how they interface with proper commerce like stores.

I think the hardware has, is lacked. Right. We've been very software driven on the Web3 side, but we haven't had the hardware to back it up. Like the only hardware that's out there right now is like Ledger and Trezor, which is, they're both, you know, still very early days. So to see this is huge. I actually met, I forgot to say I met the head of nft, the lead developer at Solana in the NFT department. This is before they launched the app, the, the way, by the way, this was day one. I was at, I got invited to this event and anyway. Yeah, man. So yeah, funny, they don't see themselves as competing with Open Seas. What he said back then, like they're building the future. He thinks everything is going to be on chain in the future. Verification, ticketing. Like, everything's going to be on chain all through NFTs. And that's what they're building. Not just any, not just a platform. So they've got some big things they're trying to cook up at Solana obviously launched them. The mobile phone.

Yeah, this is right. Like, all ticketing is going to be on there, like, every. And this is the thing, like, you think about what you have in real life now and you have like a LinkedIn profile or a Facebook whatever, and it's all bullshit. It's all stuff that you put on there. It's a social mask. You make it all up. And the whole thing about crypto is, don't tell me about it, show me. And in the future, you're literally going to have a web wallet that'll have ticket stubs in there for everything. You went to the baseball game or, you know, you're a fan of, like, Snoop Dogg or something. Oh, you're a fan. Show me. Prove it. Have you bought his albums? All right, you'll have something on that. Like, you know, you can start to buy his music now. Do you have his tickets? What else have you got? What art do you own? All right, now I understand instantly who you are, and that is your identity. You don't have to have a Facebook identity, you don't have to have a LinkedIn identity, all this kind of crap. Or a Twitter identity where they're all different. You've got to update them or. No, you connect to those sites and you can select in your wallet what you want to show people. And that is provable because it's on chain, you own it and you can see, like a history of the things you've done, the things that you've bought, and instantly you've got that social credibility.

And think about, like, even on the hardware. So, like, you can. You don't need to hold a physical passport anymore. It can be fully on chain in the Web three phone, so you can have your driver's license, your Medicare, your health insurance, like plane tickets, everything you need on chain on a mobile phone.

Yeah, because at the moment, you have to remember all your logins for all this bullshit. Or there's intermediaries, like, you know, the government has certain stuff, or this airplane, like, why do people need to know my home address to do all this kind of crap? It's like, no, I should just be able to prove that I'm me by signing something with my identity. Great. You are this person. Great. I can then have those things instead of having all these logins and access and middleman, all this sort of horseshit. Hopefully all that goes away and it just becomes a lot simpler for everyone.

Totally agree. Right, let's wrap it up there. If you like this podcast, please give us a, like give us a five star review if you're on podcast does help us out. Share it up to a mate. Share it to someone you think that you can rip in a burgers.

Thumbnails.

I was literally gonna do a call out and be like whoever is doing the YouTube tiles, please give me a half decent head this week. Just half decent is all I ask for. I know you're not working with much, but come on, you got Photoshop, you can do all that kind of stuff. Just, just give me a decent one this week. That's all I ask, that's all I want.

So yeah, if you like to please share with a mate and also with some cool things. So this, this podcast is a partner of Collective Shift. So Bergs and I both work at a company, Collective Shift, that we're building and it's all around crypto, insights, education, analysis, so NFTs, Bitcoin, Ethereum, whatever you, you know, whatever questions you have, whatever you're trying to learn about in the digital asset space, Collective Shift is there for you. We've got a shitload of free content, resources, education, whatever you need, as well as some awesome premium stuff. So we've got copy portfolios, upcoming airdrops, we've got analysis, we've got asset, bullish and bearish pages, community discord courses. There's heaps of stuff all around crypto.

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So a dollar for seven days to try out the premium. We also do have a now affiliate, not affiliate discount code. You get 50% off your first month using the discount code, which we'll put in the description below. I talked to the boss, we got the all clear, so we're all good there. Bergs. So listen, get 50% off the first month and get in, have a crack. I hope you enjoy the pod. We'll be back next week. Bergs, thank you. It was good fun as always.

Love it mate, great stories.

All right man, catch you later on. See ya.