34. How To Build Wealth Tax-Free, Work Remotely And Travel The World With Rhys Skellern

Got into crypto, you're looking ahead, you're imagining all these amazing gains and profits and things you can do.

Right.

But making money in life is half the battle. Then you've got to figure out how to keep it.

Yeah.

And I think I've literally Googled the words, how do rich people not pay tax? Because at the time, Trump was. Whatever it was, you know, he'd not paid any tax for 15 years and all these kind of things. And that took me down this whole other rabbit hole of second residencies, second passports, all these kind of things. Now, there's countries in the world you can just buy a passport. Dominica Sublusia in the Caribbean, Vanuatu, close to Australia. Right. You make a hundred thousand dollar donation, you're a citizen of that country within 60 days, and you can move there and, you know, enjoy whatever tax benefits they offer. And we went from 2,000 users at the start of February to 350,000 users at the end of March. And the app fell apart. Right. We spent three years building this thing. The whole thing fell apart. We had to take the market offline for two months. You had to build that. You have to maintain, you know, community sentiment. I was in Australia at the time, so at drop time would be three in the morning here, right? When I'd wake up for this drop, of course, too many people spamming the buttons, the app would fall apart again. We'd spend the next four hours in Telegram trying to tell everybody that it's going to be okay, right? And, and all of this. And it was every week this. This would kind of happen, but each week it got a bit better and a bit better until we. We genuinely pioneered the systems that we needed to, to make this kind of to happen now and scale up to the millions of users.

Welcome back to another episode of the Benneberg show with our second special guest of all time. First, for 2023, we have Reese coming in, the token operations and communications manager at VV, the world's first and biggest mobile first NFT platform that has over 200 brands such as Disney, Marvel Studios, MGM, Coke. The list goes on. Reese is also a collective Shift member. I've known Reece for a little while and always actually looked up to him as a guy that's been able to live abroad, travel, work remotely, work in a crypto company, and just. Just seemingly living life to the fullest, mate. So thanks for jumping on.

Thanks, mate. Really appreciate it.

We've been able to snag him while he's back in Sydney, although apparently he's not enjoying it too much. So thanks for finding the mate. Today. We, we're keen to dig into a few different areas, you know, around. You are one of the first employee employees at vv. I really want to get into that and just hear some stories about growing a crypto company across, you know, bull and bear markets. We want to talk to you about, you know, how you've actually worked abroad, how you made that transition, how do you work full time, how do you manage that? I think you mentioned that you've been somewhere between 50 and 60 countries over the last few years and been doing for about five or six years. I'd love to dig into that. And plus also Bergs is ready to grill you on some, some tax strategies and how to make the most of your money, man. So maybe firstly, do you want to give us a quick backstory of how you got into VV and then just generally like what's it been like the last few years working in crypto and working abroad and remotely?

Yeah, yeah. So I've, I've been with EOMI and VV pretty much since day one. Right. And we sort of started with EOMI and our own cold storage wallet. That was our first sort of intro into, into building products in this ecosystem. And you know, at the time there wasn't that much competition in, in the wallet space. Right. Ledger was kind of there. But I mean it's probably the same as it is today. People didn't really value their own custody and everyone learns that lesson every bear market. But late 2017, CryptoKitties kind of came to the forefront and our CEO had been in licensing and collectibles for, you know, 20 odd years. At that time. You guys might be aware of these stores like Games R Us and those little hobby Co stores you can paint the figurines you see in shopping centers everywhere. They're all his businesses. Right. He's a Kiwi entrepreneur. And the lights kind of it all just went off. We realized, okay, here's this new technology that enables you to own digital files and we actually have the right connections in the collectibles industry to try and transition that really heavily physical product line into something digital. So that's where the idea was born. Now it took three years from that point to actually launch VeeVee as a platform. And that's because no one had ever done this before. Right. We were trying to solve all these problems that came up as they went. You build one way and then you realize there's a much better way to go about it. And you know, reiterate and reiterate and go through all of the normal startup pains that you go through right, when you're trying to launch a product like that. And our biggest selling point of value proposition at the time was to, was to have these premium brands and licenses on board. But they'd never heard of NFTs, right, and didn't have any idea what we were talking about when we first approached them with it. So that, that actually took a couple of years to break those barriers down, go back and show them the app, really start to exemplify what we were aiming at and what we were building. And then one by one, you know, you kind of saw the light bulb go off for these licensors as well. Not just from a sustainable product point of view, but obviously that idea of perpetual royalties, which you just don't get on a physical product. And at the end of the day, these guys are licensing companies, right? They're profit driven. So once that all started falling into place, Marvel became one of our marquee partnerships. And that was about probably nine months after we launched Vivi, right after it was sort of public and we'd squashed a lot of the early issues and bugs and things like that. Once Marvel came on board, it wasn't long before Disney came on board as well. And now, yeah, as you mentioned, we're sort of sitting with 200, 250 brand partners, license partners, all of that.

Our entire focus of this product, it wasn't just a seller digital product. We're trying to digitize the collectibles industry, right, which has its own insane community of collectors. Like it's, it's the niche kind of product that you want to provide. But if you've ever met a real collector, you know, they've got warehouses full of comic books and figurines and all this kind of stuff. So really trying to hit those, those touch points, which I think we've done, you know, pretty effectively. And then along the way, we've really figured out that people attach the same value to a digital product as they do a physical. And for me, probably for all of us, I know, Ben, you're a bit younger, mate, maybe it's your generation. But like my younger brother, I watch him play computer games and all those kind of things and they're already buying skins and they don't want physical toys, they want weapons in a game and that kind of thing. So it was really easy to kind of see the future plans and roadmap of that. But what made our product way more Effective was that we integrated augmented reality from day one. Right. So it wasn't just a. Our collectibles aren't just flat 2D images. You can drop them in the real world, you can interact with them, our collectible cars, you can literally drive them around in augmented reality. So it's really created that tangible link to a digital product and I think that that's probably fed our success there.

That's epic, man. That's absolutely wild. I wanna, I wanna ask a quick question. What was, what were the discussions, what was the conversations around, you know, internally at the point where you went away from creating that hardware wallet to like a digital collectibles platform? Like was that at the time, did that feel like a difficult move? Like you were basically changing business models completely. Right? Like it was like throwing one product out, selling another. Was it? Stop this start. This was a transition. How did you think about that?

Yeah, so we actually started with four planned products. The wallet was the first, collectibles platform was the second. We had plans for a payment card and plans for digital file storage, like a kind of weave filecoin esque thing that you would access with your, with your wallet.

Now we went to market with that and when we did it, it was June 2018 I think is when we attempted to have a crowd sale. And that's, I think two days later, eth fell off that cliff from 600 bucks and crypto was dead and the world was over and we didn't raise it empty. So classic startup journey. Had to go back to the drawing board, squash those last two products. The wallet was already out and live really re engineer our business, you know, business model and what we wanted to achieve there and then kind of went back out to raise money there. So yeah, the transition came out of necessity more than anything, but it wasn't at the expense of the wallet. You know, at the time we were really planning to, to for that wallet to become a retail product, right? Where you would, you would buy this wallet and you would have a redeem an NFT with it, right? A licensed nft. And that may still happen, right? We still have the technology and the product line to be able to do something like that.

But as NFTs really kind of came to the forefront at the start of 2021, it became less necessary to have a physical product to link to the digital because people just, you know, really started to understand the value of these digital products.

That's awesome. So if you had that in your product roadmap already, I guess your team were kind of aligned to go in that direction and you're trying the next thing and it was successful, which is awesome. That's really great to see. And when you kind of launched this NFT marketplace and you got, you know, Marvel and Disney on board, did the existing collectors in the physical world get it? Like, did they understand what was going on? Did they all kind of barrel in or like you as kind of, you know, aiding communications in your community? What did you have to do in that space to kind of, to really tell them what it was about and what you were offering?

Yeah, some of them get it right. Even today you still see a lot of pushback on NFTs because you know, Ethereum uses more electricity than Sweden or whatever the narrative was at the time. Right. Like there's all of that, all of that nonsense. Some licensors, like we do have one licensor that, that released NFTs with us and there was so much pushback from the community, decided to stop those plans. Right now that licensor is almost irrelevant in today's physical product market. And this was a way for them to really revamp, but they had to go back to the drawing board in terms of how they, they want to market that product and educate their fan base. You know, I understand it because you want to try and maintain the customers and the people who have supported you, but there's just such a disconnect between the information people were receiving and the reality of the situation that there was a lot of pushback.

Now a lot of collectors, real collectors, see the value in this quickly because we are the, for most of the brands that we roll out, we're the only ones with access to these products. Right. And these licenses, which means that the first appearance of Captain America and the first appearance of Mickey Mouse and all of that as a digital collectible happens on Vivi. And in the collectibles world, it's usually the first appearance of a character or a comic book that is the most sought after. Right. So as soon as people made that link and understood the difference between like right click save on Google and owning this, this digital product.

It actually isn't that hard to, for them to see the value in it. And it's just hard to, you know, appease everybody with the content they want.

And with your community race like you like specifically more the ecomi side. I've seen more of it seems you guys have such an engaged community now. Obviously that's like fully your, you know, your all your doings, but as a communication manager. But is that because the brands that you're working with already have such a, you know, really engaged, passionate community. Or has there been strategies that you have implemented that other crypto communities haven't? Is there some secret sauce you guys have been working on? Like, how do you have such a highly engaged community?

Yeah. As you say, I'm clearly the secret sauce in this. In this situation.

Here we go.

If you're gonna let me, I'll do it.

I think both of your points. Both of your points are correct. Right.

We're really separate from most crypto companies because we're a collectibles company. Right. NFTs are a technology that we use in delivering that experience, but we're not solely focused on, like, must pump token, must do everything to pump token price, because that's the only way to maintain interest. Right. And then you add to that the fact that we actually have a product that people already know and buy and understand in the real world. Right. We're not trying to sell you on a. On a 2D ape picture where we're selling you Batman and Superman and things you already have a nostalgic attachment to. So it's a much easier avenue to be able to kind of showcase these products and introduce people to them. But from a community standpoint.

I think we're in it for the right reasons. And people can see that we're very genuine in the way that we act and the way that we carry ourselves. Because we truly believe in digitizing this industry. Right. And we understand the opportunity at hand in terms of building the community. Yeah. I mean, there's plenty of strategies and things that we've done over the last few years, whether it's retroactively rewarding people. And that's not just with collectibles. We've sent out these beautiful signed light boxes with merchandise and shirts and all of those kind of things to people who just started making content. Right. It was just a thank you from us to them because they were, they were obviously helping us to spread the word about this. And I mean, we're. We're two years in. I think we've sold 8 million NFTs at this point. Hundreds of thousands of users on the platform, and we've done zero paid marketing. Right. Like, none. So I think that that's a testament to. To everybody that's been involved. But, you know, it's. It's really a. And it's been one of the most humbling parts of this journey just to see everyone come together to help it out.

That's incredible, man. And Those, those numbers are huge. And I remember seeing, like this quite a while ago, the announcement you had from Marvel. I'm like, that's not right. It's got to be fake. But it was legit and it was amazing. And I wonder if you could take us back to that moment when, you know, you guys were a younger company and you just landed one of the biggest brands on, on the planet. What was that like for you guys at that moment?

I think, I think that was the, the confirmation that we were, we were moving in the right direction with the business, you know, and, and that took the better part of two years to secure and, and many meetings and, and things as we were building this application and all those things. But when we went to, to share it and announce it, it was like a kick in the dick. Like we got, we went, I remember people asking us, we were hyping up this announcement. We're saying, you know, we've got something big in the works, get ready for it. You know, and my community still doesn't let me live this down. They're saying, well, how big is the announcement out of 10? And I'm always quoted as saying 12 out of 10 because we were a week away from announcement and everyone was hyped up for this thing. And then Disney wanted to take a proper look at it, right? Disney has their own, obviously, licensing arm and legal teams and all of that kind of thing. So it actually delayed our announcement in announcing in, In Marvel by two or three months. And for that two or three months, it was just, I just got berated constantly about it, you know, so the day that it finally launched was, was actually just a huge weight off our shoulders. But having them on board and, and being able to go back to all of these other licensors who maybe didn't see the, the future potential of this product and being able to say to them, well, hey, you know, Marvel's just signed on. They very quickly crossed the fence after that, right? And that's when the snowball really started and, and all of the momentum kind of picked up from that point and we're still signing new licensing deals today.

That's awesome. And there's, there's a crypto lesson in there. Never do an announcement about an announcement. Yeah, See, so many people get burnt on that.

I've learned it a couple times and I dare say I will again. But, you know, it's hard. It's a. You get so excited. You've spent years grinding, hoping that you're going to get these brands on Board. So when you finally have them, obviously you want to shout it from the rooftops. But, you know, we're very reserved in the way that we go about that now. And really we, yeah, we take the opinions. We have a marketing and PR firm, Rogers and Cohen. These guys are one of the most kind of decorated agencies in Hollywood. They work with creative Chris, Pat and Denzel Washington, McDonald's, Hasbro, all that kind of stuff. So, you know, we brought them on quite early when we realized that the potential of this brand power and, and trying to reach into these different collectible communities. So we, we definitely take their guidance now instead of, you know, us just running around being excited about things.

Reese, how do you find balancing, you know, having a token, the company, like the pressures of the token price? Like, you know, I, I see crypto companies that have a token. Just like you're on the NASDAQ, right? You've IPO'd now you've got stock price and you have to communicate to the shareholders and you've got the market and there's different announcements. Crypto is on a whole new level with the volatility. And obviously like the token price rarely actually is showcasing the value that the product's creating or sort of, you know, trailing whatever's going on. How do you guys look at that in terms of, you know, the pressures of crypto and the market? You know, because I think you guys are pretty unique in the actually have a product that people use in crypto. How do you balance the focus on token price and those pressures versus just building and focusing on the product?

I, I personally think you can't focus on price, right? And, and that's because, you know, the fundamentals, the utility of these tokens, especially ours, you know, that that's what's going to actually deliver real value to the token. Right? And you know, as an example, we spent three years building this product and no one knew what an NFT was, right? Our token price stayed at 4,02 for three years. You know, it was dead. It was this and that. As soon as people understood the value prop of digital collectibles and realized there was a token attached to it, you know, Omi ran to the moon, right? I think it was 19,000% in three months or something. I've never seen anything like it. And then of course, the people that were in early have taken their profits off the table and you deal with the community backlash from that point on, but you can't, you know, obviously it plays into what we try to design, but we're trying to design value into this product and into the ecosystem so that the token price will reflect genuine use and utility over time. Not hype. Right. And 99% of crypto, maybe even more than 99%, is all hype. Right. If there's no users, there's no actual product, there's no use for the token, then it's all right. So you're trying to. You're trying to circumvent that while maintaining community sentiment. Right. And again, for us, you know, a lot of people found omi, then realized what VIVI was and have become collectors since.

Right.

And if you're playing the game properly, well, you can play both sides of our house. Right. You're either in obi, you're in collectibles, you're going back and forth between them and that kind of thing. So, you know, I guess we're very blessed that, that our community has the option to do either one. But it's. Yeah, it's tough. It's tough in a bear market. You know, when you wake up every day and not even in a bear market. Right. As soon as the price goes down 4%, it's, you know, you've got 10,000 people telling you you're at your job every day. It's like you just got to kind of.

Yeah.

Because you have no other choice. It's. Yeah. Our belief in our product and in our ability to build real value into these products is strong enough that you have to just shake off the market and acknowledge that it's just so early that most things in crypto shouldn't have any real value. Right. It's just not there yet. But that gives us so much opportunity to run. It gives us opportunity to stand out in amongst that crowd and to deliver that value to everybody. As long as they hold on, that's it.

People do get very vocal in a bear market. They get so fiery.

How have you guys gone in the bear market? Because we've talked a lot on Bennett Bergs about all the tech layoffs that are happening. You see through all the crypto companies that are closing. How are you guys doing? How is staff morale? How are you kind of managing this?

We're actually great. We're great. Right. And this is. This is probably, you know, goes back to the point I just made. In a bull market, everybody wants you to have 3,000 staff members and everything has to be done yesterday. And how could you possibly not be hiring more devs and more this and more that? Right. But if you have business experience and thankfully you Know, collectively amongst our team, we have decades of experience there. You know that the good times will come and the bad times will come.

Right.

And you don't over leverage in the good times and you prepare to build through the bad times. So we haven't had to let anybody go. There was no, like, staff cuts or anything like that. If anything, you know, we've, we are very well funded because of the success of the product and now we're growing the team out to be able to deliver, you know, many more experiences, our own metaverse and things included.

Yeah, yeah. So no, for us, it was a very positive experience. And of course, the same people that yelled at us in the bull market to get more staff are now praising us for not having done it. The bear market. Right. Because now we're in a position, we can actually hire more people. Yeah. So you just have to, honestly, you have to be unapologetic in the way that you, you do things because nobody else has the full picture.

Right.

It's. It's us that knows where we're going and what we're doing.

Has it been Reese, any. Can you pinpoint any experience of the. Over the two years of VV that have been the toughest times? Like, have you gone through a period that has been really tough to navigate or just difficult? Whether it be, you know, trying to find product, market fit or the market or internal problems or like, has there been any real challenges for you and how have you sort of faced those as a business owner?

Yeah, every, every single bit of it, every single day that's been a challenge. Right. But you get to a point where you relish those challenges. You have to. And, and of course you're going to make mistakes. You have to accept that you're building with new technologies and not just building a new product, we're building a new industry. The digital collectibles industry is brand new, which means we're not just trying to push these things out, we're trying to shift a paradigm. So every single piece of it has been challenging, but every time you overcome something, you're moving forward, whether that's failing or not. You're always kind of progressing through that. So, yeah, I mean, the first challenge was convincing licensors that there was value in this kind of product. That took three years to genuinely get over the line with some of these guys. Right. I think maybe two or three months after we launched the platform, you know, we had our expected adoption rate and I think we're expecting maybe 50,000 users by the end of the first year, right? So we had built obviously redundancies in for up to maybe double that or something, you know, and within three months, all the, all the big influencers, the Gary Vees chamath, all these guys started talking about NFTs and digital collectibles. And we went from 2,000 users at the start of February to 350,000 users at the end of March. And the app fell apart. Right? We spent three years building this thing. The whole thing fell apart. We had to take the market offline for two months. You had to rebuild that. You have to maintain community sentiment. I was in Australia at the time, so our drop time would be three in the morning here, right? And I'd wake up for this drop. Of course, too many people spamming the buttons, the app would fall apart again. You'd spend the next four hours in telegram trying to tell everybody that it's going to be okay, right? And, and all of these. And it was every week this, this would kind of happen, but each week it got a bit better and a bit better until we, we genuinely pioneered the systems that we needed to, to make this kind of, to happen now and scale up to the millions of users. So, you know, at the time it was that it was hells. It was 3am Hell every Thursday morning or every Friday morning, whatever it was. What if we didn't do it? We wouldn't be in a position now to scale to more and more users and actually start to market this product and attract that. So, you know, every, every piece of. It's been challenging, but I think when you're entrepreneurial and you're really chasing that, you relish the challenges because it means you're making progress.

Isn't that the game where you're like, shit, I don't have enough customers. That's like, shit, I've got too many customers.

And then like for us, like a digital product, you know, and we're not the only ones that have dealt with this and will continue to. But then bots become a problem, right? You have this, you spend all this time hoping someone's going to buy your digital Batman and then you've got to spend all your money trying to stop people buying stuff because it's. They're not genuine users, right? So like our platform became that every, you know, Nike and everybody else is still dealing with those kind of challenges. And, and at this end of the game, you know, we're very confident that on top of that. But it's, it's amazing how quick it goes from this is A fun and exciting experience for people to. Here's all these assholes that are going to try and ruin it for everybody just to make a quick buck, you know, and trying to maintain consumer confidence and excitement and enjoyment in amongst that where people feel like they're being, you know, unfairly targeted or left behind. It's. It was all tough. It was all tough. Honestly, my hairline used to be down here and in crypto all the way up, like, yeah, it's full on.

That is crazy. And this is the thing. So you're in a startup, not only a startup, a crypto one, a web three startup. So you've obviously got it in for yourself. Ben's mentioned all the countries, Ben's mentioned all the countries you've been to, all the stuff you've been building. And you can take this question any direction you like, but how have you managed to kind of stay sane or human or avoid burnout? Like what things do you structure in your life or your day so you can kind of keep up performance and keep going and not just fall in an absolute heap?

That's a good question. I don't know that I necessarily.

Just go until I burn. Look, I, I've worked remotely for, for quite a while now out. Our whole team is actually remote. Our developers are in one place, front of house is in another place, you know, and that brings its own set of challenges. But I think having. Having kind of strived for remote work for a long time, I just genuinely appreciate the opportunity that I'm given to, to continue to do that.

But outside of that, I mean, I mean, the classics work, right. I journal, I meditate, do yoga, I'm in the gym five times a week out in nature, right. I live in Canada at the moment, so I'll be snowboarding and if I'm by the beach, I'm surfing and you know, activities that I enjoy that aren't behind a screen. Right. And yeah, now I don't know that anything else gives me as much of a dopamine hit as crypto does, right. Or is running this kind of business. But you have to, you have to do other things to maintain that. Now in the early days, I mean, I like to push myself to learn new things, right. That is my drive. It's. It's not the end result because it's always a disappointment. It's. It's the journey to kind of get there. So, you know, I learned, when I lived in Canada, the first time I learned how to fly, you know, wanted to pick up my pilot's license, things like that. So I like to look for other things that will give me as much mental stimulation or challenge as I can so that I can switch off from one and onto the other. But I think in doing that for so many years it has helped me level up and become quite a high performing individual.

Reese, I quickly. Are you single race or do you have a partner? Married?

I have a partner.

Yeah.

Okay, now I do. Sorry ladies.

Sorry ladies. Sorry Bergs.

I was the only single one here mate. I know you were the one that got him on and now I know the reason.

Mate, look at, look at, look at, look at his face. How could you not?

Anyway, yeah, I don't blame you. He's beautiful.

Reese I, I've started traveling this Last year now 2022 like try, you know I love the travel, remote work lifestyle. It obviously has comes with its challenges. One of those I faced this year I became single halfway through last year was you know, the entrepreneurial business journey is lonely at the best of times. Sometimes traveling remote, being in a place you've never been before, you know, not, not around people, you know, can be, you know, be a lonely journey. I think probably with a partner it's probably a little bit different. But was there points over your last five or six years when you've been traveling? I'm not sure if you traveled a bit when you were single that you went through those, those times, those challenges like you know, whether it was before vv how did you navigate that?

And have you always had that real desire to travel and work and like explore. I mean 50 to 60 countries. That's a fair, that's a fair whack.

Yeah, yeah, I have, I have. And, and to your point earlier, you know, as to how I kind of balance my life a little bit, traveling for me has always been the best teacher. Right. Because you are always in situations where things go wrong. You can't communicate with people, you don't know how to read the bus sign, someone steals your bag, you know you're in the toilet somewhere, there's no toilet paper. Like anything right. Any, everything that can go wrong goes wrong. But I, I'm very blessed to have. I started traveling as soon as I left school. You know, I did the typical gap year thing but I didn't really. That was it for me. I was like okay, this is what I want to keep doing. Right. And then I spent the next 10 years working towards a point where I could earn a wage online and work remotely. Now these days after Covid, everybody does it, it's not even special anymore. But back then it was really hard to do if you weren't drop shipping or multi level marketing or this or that. It was, it was hard to find. But because I've been doing it now for 15 years, it's really easy for me. I feel so much more comfortable on the move and out into the world that, that really helps me to, to find that balance and find that calm and, and I think the main driver for me there, and it's probably what's bled into me being pretty good, I call myself pretty good at my role with, with a Comey and Vivi is that I'm always communicating with different people, you know, different cultures, different backgrounds. I want to understand their point of view and their way of thinking because we, you know, Australia is a great country if you want to run the normal, the normal run of life, right, like school, trade, uni, house dog, kids dead, that's kind of Australia. Right? But that wasn't it for me. Like I wanted more for, from, from what I was doing and I think that's what kind of pushed me out of the nest in, in the first place, you know. And over the years that's what I've really come to relish. You know, I love having those conversations with people and reminding myself that people are fundamentally the same everywhere. It doesn't matter what country or what language. Everyone wants the best for their family. Everyone wants to make an impact on, on the people around them or be remembered for something. And every time I step out into that environment and, and I'm reminded of that again and it's putting me out of my comfort zone. It's a lot easier to just assimilate those lessons and bring it back to my day to day life and carry myself the way that I want to. So yeah, for me it's always been the most, the biggest source of inspiration and creativity because I'm constantly presented with new stimulus, new people, new things to do. Whereas like, you know, if I just sat in a cubicle all day and worked from a computer, yeah, I think I'd, I would have gone crazy a long time ago.

And where for those that are, maybe for listeners on the fence about wanting to work remotely or maybe they're in a 9 to 5 or maybe they're starting to travel. Any places that you'd recommend people to start out, maybe trying to work abroad and any tips for people wanting to make that move or that transition?

Yeah, I guess. First tip, quit. Go do it. Try it out. You know, if it doesn't work out, you can come back and get another job. I think people live in too much fear that they, they won't be able to figure something out. Right. And one of the fundamental truths of life is that, you know, you've always figured out every problem you've come up against. If you hadn't, you'd be dead.

Right.

You've always come to the other side of it. So for me, it's always been a matter of I know that. I know whatever challenge I come up against, I'm going to be able to get through and overcome. So if I can remember that when I'm presented with, with the challenge, it makes the whole process much more enjoyable. Right. It becomes something that I want to do instead of something that I'm, I'm living in fear of now when it comes to where to go or what to do, depends where you're from, right. If you're Australian and you're under 35, very easy to travel. Canada, UK, anywhere like that. It's easy to get a visa and it's good to dip the toe where you can still speak the language. Right. You can understand people and get around. So, you know, that would be a pretty easy suggestion. But I don't know if you're sitting at home with a country on your vision board and you've always thought about going there, like, get on a plane and fucking go. It's not that hard, you know, it's like, go for a week, try it out. Maybe you hate it, right? Maybe it's not for you, but you have to go. You can't just live there and have these dreams up on a pedestal that you never go after. Otherwise you will just live the same life as everybody. Everybody else. Yeah. So I don't know. It takes a certain type of person to be comfortable in the chaos, I think. But that's something you could learn, right? It's not something that you just have to be, be able to do from day one. And, and it is chaotic trying to figure out how to get Internet in another country. I need to, you know, get on this bus to be here by the time I'm, this meeting's on. Otherwise I'll, you know, whatever. Right. But if you want it enough, you'll make it happen. You know, that's my gossip.

I remember. And Bergs has probably got like a viewpoint at the other side. Like when I started trying to travel this year and like, I'm in Dubai, I don't know where I am. Like, I don't know which way? I'm going. I'm late to meetings. It's 40 degrees. I forgot my laptop. It's like, how do I get to where I'm.

Where am I going? Where am I?

So I had a meeting with Ben and I'm like, bro, where are. He's like, uber driver dropped me, like, 10Ks from the venue. Walking in 50 degrees. I'm sweaty. Yeah, I gotta go present. This is. Why am I here? This is. It was just so funny. You can imagine the widest guy on the planet under the desert sun at 50 degrees, just walking along because he's so pissed off, and then he has to go and he has to man a booth at a conference and then deal with me giving him lip on the other side.

So good. Exactly. Right? But you did it, right. You figured it out, you got there, you made it happen, right? And. And it all comes good in the end. Although I'm sure he was sunburnt, but, like.

Oh, he's habitually sunburned, mate.

Even look at him.

White skin.

Yeah, it's just fun.

That. That is awesome. And it. Yeah, it made me think back, like, how you saying, you know, you go to school, go to uni, get a job, get a dog, die, like, have kids along the way, maybe. And it's a very. Like, I see a lot of my Australian mates doing that, and a lot of them choosing unhappiness over uncertainty. And I was like that for quite a while until last year I joined Collective Shift, went full crypto. Crypto for quite a while, and finally made that hard decision. And you're so right. Where you get caught up in this mentality of, I need to stay, I need to build on what I've been building on. I've got this inertia. But you need to decide, is that inertia? Is it what I want? Or can I go and try something else? And don't be afraid to leave. You can come back. Like, you can go back and do another thing. There's so many different things. And, mate, when you just said, like, you figured out everything in your life that was beautiful. Like, otherwise you'd be dead. And if you think back, it's like, at one point, you've learned everything. You didn't even know how to, like, eat or wipe your ass. You learned everything, right? And now, like, you literally, you keep going and you will solve every problem.

Yeah, yeah. Humans suffer from. We all suffer from recency bias. We think, oh, what I know now, I've always known. Because we don't have the memory of learning it. Right? But it's, yeah, everything, you know, every word you've ever said you've learned from somewhere, right? And that means you can keep learning. I think one of my biggest fears, or not even a fear, but, you know, we see it in our older generations where everyone's getting Alzheimer's and dementia and things because they've done the same thing for the last 45 years, right. There has been no push to re. Educate themselves or to continue. Now I obviously acknowledge that that's a product of their generation and the environment they're in, because that was the Australian dream 40 years ago, 50 years ago, and that's what people work towards. But like, it's a different world now. You can work from a laptop, from anywhere in the world, you can have these conversations, you know, you can maintain connections with family and friends through video chat. And it's not that different, you know, it's, it's. There's so many opportunities out there that I don't know, for me the opportunity is too great not to pursue it.

That's amazing. And so what was your path to kind of get to this lifestyle setup that you have now? So what did you kind of start out doing and then eventually made it to a comey and Vivi and this full remote way of living. What was your kind of path to get there?

It's probably been about as roundabout as it could be. I have two degrees, complete waste of time and money, but one's in construction management.

So I was on the path to doing the normal run of the mill thing, right? I had that gap year, came back, did some uni, traveled in between, you know, for a couple of months every year, but thought, okay, you know, like, my mum's a teacher, my whole family are educators, it was important to them. But two years into that degree and I realized, like, there's no fucking way I'm going to spend six days a week on a job site yelling at people to go do things, right? Like, that's not for me.

So very quickly I kind of started looking ahead, like, okay, how can I make an income doing something else, right? And originally when I was enrolled in uni, I was enrolled to do a journalism degree. Media communications. Journalism. Which is kind of funny that 10 years later I'm sort of in that position. But I started writing, started writing my own travel blog, just really so my mum knew I was alive more than anything, but with the intention of, of turning it into something income earning, longer term, right? And just because I was doing that and it was something that I was doing with a really pure intention at the time. A friend of mine met Dan, who is the COO of the Combian vb, who was running a media company, put me forward as a writer. Dan gave me my first writing job, you know, and sort of four or five years later, when they started a Comey, and Vivi reached back out to me to say, start writing for a comey about the secure wallet and all that kind of stuff.

And at the time, I had just gotten into crypto. I think.

One of the things that's helped me the most in life is being really good at listening. I don't just mean listening to other people, but listening to my intuition and listening when the world kind of pushes you in a certain direction. And at the time, you know, and to this day, if I hear something twice in quick succession, especially from people that I know or trust, that's kind of my signal from the world to look into something, right? And mid-2017, two people that I knew and trusted sort of started talking about bitcoin and mentioning this thing, and I was like, okay, I'm going to look into this stuff, right? Within sort of two or three months, I started writing for a Comey and really dove headfirst into. Into crypto security and understanding how these companies worked and the products and all that kind of thing. So, yeah, to get there, it was. It started with something that I really enjoyed, and it was a passion. And then I didn't. I didn't have to actively try to turn it into. Into a wage. It was just something that I was doing that was true to myself, that. That came down the pipeline and really helped me to kind of accelerate my journey in this industry. But between then or, you know, like university and then, I mean, I've done breakfast radio. I've worked retail. I've worked in warehousing, construction, laboring. Like, I ran a catering business for five years. You know, you name it, I've kind of done it. And every single time I did it, I was like, this isn't it. Oh, how about I try this? Don't want to do that either. It's only now that I've landed here that I can comfortably say, like, no, this is. This is something I truly enjoy doing. But it's because I tried a hell of a lot of different things, too. I didn't just run one degree or one job and see what happened.

I like the. I think that's what a lot of people my age don't do is try new Shit, they especially, like, I'm from Tassie, like I'm home in towns at the moment and just sort of seeing a lot of my friends or people I've seen, grew up with, you know, at school, whatever. It's like, man, it's just such a, you know, for most people, such a. Just a. Not a mundane thing, but just everyone just does the same thing. Like, no one's out there doing shit. Like, the only thing you'd really do is go to Melbourne and watch a game of footy, get pissed and come home again. Like, that's all that really goes on, you know?

Yeah. They don't call it breaking the mold for nothing. Right? And. And as soon as you do it, as soon as you show people that you can successfully do something else, it gives everyone permission to try it. Right? But. But someone has to lead that, that pack before your friends or your family kind of understand, like, okay, maybe I can do this. And you know, my family is a perfect example of that. I left home when I could, went traveling, would always come back with these amazing stories and adventures and all this kind of thing. And in the last 10 years, you know, my brother ended up moving to Hong Kong and now Singapore. My sister moved to the uk. These are guys that were always going to leave the very normal Australian life. But because I had done it and they now had not a role model necessarily, but an example of someone to follow, you know, it gave them permission to do it. And then it extends to my friends who all, most of them now live in other countries and are making money online. Some of them have got jobs in crypto now as well because it's, you know, someone, you know, and trust has already kind of led the way there.

Right.

And I just think that that's what people are missing in their lives. They need someone like you, Ben, or like you, Bergs to really take it by the reins and go after something more. Right. And I don't know that that just gives everybody else a chance to, to believe in themselves enough to do it as well. Because they know you, right? My family knows me. They know what a delinquent I am. I know that it's like all of the things I've done wrong in my life. Right. And to still see success come at the end of that is, is that's the magic that comes out of it.

Right.

And. And you don't have to. You don't have to generous against people.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. And even like Ben, he went back recently to speak at his school, which I really like, because it shows people there is a different path. Like the real.

Disease or pandemic or whatever you want to call call it is the, the gross indoctrination of people through school and getting an education in better commerce. Then you go to uni, then you get a job, and it's just sitting in a series of desks and rooms. And that is your life. And you, the people that you know break that mold and live full lives, they're seen as being, you know, risky or weird or too much. We're just kind of. We have to fight that so much and undo. And this is why I've said so many times, Ben, I'm quite jealous of you, where I've had to undo all that learning and thinking and training in order to think this way and think for myself and just go for what I actually want to achieve. Whereas you've done that from a very, very early age. Yeah.

I think it comes from, like, being so naive about the world that you don't have those barriers. You just sort of attack it. Like, I left school, quit school at 17. So I didn't really, like, know or I didn't feel as though there was like these barriers, was just like, I want to do that. Let's just figure it out. Let's just go do it. And then you, you get halfway, like, oh, what was it doing? But that's like, that's the way I've learned. I think that's like, it's been so fun to just get hands on. I think that's really accelerated my journey to be able to just get, you know, get amongst it.

Yeah, for sure. I remember years ago hearing a quote, years ago I heard a quote that was to your point, Bergs, you know, education happens to you. Learning happens because of you. Right. So what we call education is just all this nonsense getting chucked down your throat, most of which you'll never use again, all to tickle the balls of a university professor because they're the ones that are setting what happens there. Right. And it filters down into the school system and all that kind of stuff. Right. So it's, it's really just a big game of ego to push you into a degree and, and whatever. Right. And then because society glorifies that, you know, oh, if you're a doctor or if you're a lawyer or something, because you've wasted an extra eight years of your life reading books, we're now supposed to garner more respect in your direction. Right. Whereas, like, you're probably not happy. You probably have no time to yourself and all of these things. But because the weight of expectation is so strong, people go down that path. Whereas, as you said, Ben, like, living in a bit of blissful naivety is sometimes the best thing that can happen to people because you don't have that wall that you're trying to bash your head against.

Isn't it weird how we shove people through schools and you don't really learn like in the real world. You collaborate, you work in teams, you figure things out at school. That's called cheating. Right? That's collusion. So everyone learns. Everyone learns the same thing. So you've got no competitive advantage. You're all funneled through to a score. You don't get to learn about your interest areas. Then you go to university. 3, 4, 5, 10 years, however long you go there, and you're somehow now qualified for industry. But when you get to industry, you realize you know nothing because what you learned is so old.

It is the weirdest, weird system.

Yeah.

And it's all funded by, like, the. Schools have to teach. Schools have to teach. So I sit. I sit on a board of a school and they have to teach in a certain way to get funded. You can't move very far away from that, otherwise you don't get funding. And they get funded generally through bums on seats, especially public schools after that, their goal is to get you to a score. That score then gets you into uni. Same thing again. They're funded on a very tight curriculum. Have to teach certain things in a certain way. There's not a lot of industry engagement is better now than it was, but it's just a fundamentally, like, broken system. That being said, I did enjoy and I did learn a lot. Not in my undergrad in computer science. Didn't learn a lot there, but definitely my mba, because I was older, I think, and I wanted to do it. I wanted that kind of learning. And it was more like peers rather than a teacher teaching you. It's like, hey, let's go through this. Learn together, Problem solve, get industry experts in. That one really did it for me. And that. That was a really awesome way to learn.

Yeah, yeah. As you say. Because as you know, at that point you're. You're motivated for it. Right. You've made the choice to be there instead of just kind of following the routine or the expectation. It makes a big difference.

Absolutely. And speaking of breaking the mold, before the show, we were talking about, you've got a. You've got a bit of a move coming up. Mate, you're moving somewhere beautiful, and there's a bit of a strategy behind it. Do you want to walk us through where you're going and what your thought process was behind that?

Yeah, yeah, happily so. I guess this feeds into just the life that I've lived in the last 10, 15 years in terms of being comfortable in different places. You know, I've lived in Canada, probably more so than Australia in the last decade, and, you know, I'm always on the move, so setting up my proverbial home base somewhere else isn't that scary to me. But it actually gives me a really amazing opportunity. Now, being from Australia and only having Australian passport, one of my biggest drivers has always been to try and get, you know, multiple passports or multiple residencies elsewhere. And I think that that's become more important after the events of the last couple of years, where people realize, like, okay, we're actually living in a pretty draconian society. We can be locked in our houses and, and all those kind of things. So, you know, I was on this path before that, but. But it's definitely kind of accelerated my, my move towards that. So, yeah, I'm on the way to Portugal, which, you know, a lot of people in, in crypto and Web three may have, have kind of sussed out already as a bit of a backup or a plan B. But before I, I suss that out, I went down the journey of, here's actually how it happened, right? I was in crypto, got into crypto. You're looking ahead, you're imagining all these amazing gains and profits and things you can do, right? But making money in life is half the battle. Then you've got to figure out how to keep it.

Yeah.

And I think I'd literally Googled the words, how do rich people not pay tax, right? Because at the time, I think Trump was. Whatever it was, you know, he'd not paid any tax for 15 years and all these kind of things. And that took me down this whole other rabbit hole of second residencies, second passports, all these kind of things. Right? Now, these countries in the world, you can just buy a passport. Dominica St. Lucia in the Caribbean, Vanuatu, close to Australia, right? You make a hundred thousand dollar donation, you're a citizen of that country within 60 days, and you can move there and, you know, enjoy whatever tax benefits they offer.

You still have to relocate to these countries to actually make it, you know, and change your life around, to kind of cut ties with one one and move to the other. But as I said, for me, that was A, that's a pretty easy transition. So the journey really began as to where, where I would want to live, right? Where would I want to spend time and where can I kind of get the most benefit financially, obviously, but, but in terms of quality of life and, and that's kind of where I've landed with the vision of, of having residency there for long enough to, to acquire a passport. Now, Portugal, being a European country means that with that passport I can live in 26 countries. It's kind of just opens my world to all of main mainland Europe while while obviously being quite a benefit to, to my lifestyle. So, yeah, there's a lot of, a lot of options there. The same goes from a company standpoint, right? If you're moving around a lot, the choice of where you incorporate a company, because a lot of people don't even consider incorporating a company out of the place where they were born. It just seems too foreign. But in today's world, it's actually very easy. You can incorporate a company through an app on your phone and move around, right? So went down that rabbit hole as well and started looking at tax structures, business structures, all those kind of things to really try to capitalize on these things. And look, it's applicable for me because I don't live in Australia, I don't live here. I see no benefit in, in handing over 49% of my money to a country that I don't live in. But anyone can make that move, Anyone can make that move if it's right for them. And obviously it's easier to do if you don't have assets and you're a bit younger and not so set in your community and that kind of thing, but, you know, the opportunity to maximize your profits. If we're talking about Web3, they really go up if you're moving to a different place.

Amazing, mate. And just before the show, we're talking a bit about how you structured this, where you've incorporated your company and how you kind of move some funds around and just to your advantage. And this, this is. We're going to go deep. I love this part. This is like my favorite thing in the world. And honestly, because like, we pay way too much tax in Australia. Can you, can you kind of walk us through how you kind of incorporated company, how you moved your assets and, and how you've, how you've kind of set that up? Because I think our listeners will get so much out of this. And Ben, this is for you as well, because you're probably going to have to do something similar, mate.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm listening, absolutely. Like, you know, first and foremost, you need to choose somewhere where you either, you know, you want a stable system of government, stable economy, that kind of thing, right? You can go and incorporate somewhere that's war torn, but the chances of actually getting your money out of a bank account again are pretty slick. Right? So there's plenty of options out there that have better tax regimes than Western countries, Right? Especially if you're in the U.S. i mean, USA taxes you on worldwide income, doesn't matter where you live. Right. And I think Australia will try to go that way at some point. So places like, you know, Singapore doesn't have any capital gains tax, so if you've held an asset for more than 12 months, it's completely tax free. Georgia in Europe has some pretty good tax schemes as well. Hong Kong used to be the place, but they're pretty averse to Web three.

Right.

And when you, when you actually pay attention, you realize, like, oh, that's why Singapore and Hong Kong are business centers, right? That's why. Because they give any sort of company, like the incentive to have a business there is much stronger than the incentive to have a business in Canada or Australia or somewhere like that, Right. Even New Zealand didn't have capital gains tax on a lot of this stuff until recently and they're starting to bring those things in. So, yeah, I think the first piece of advice would be to do some research and depending on what business you're trying to run and whether you need it to be in a particular location.

You can really start to play the game a little bit and move elsewhere. The second thing, and I think a lot of modern businesses kind of do this anyway, but don't have employees, have contractors. As soon as you get rid of employees, especially in these countries, there's no payroll taxes, there's no withholding taxes, there's no superannuation, there's none of that kind of bullshit. So from a business point of view, having contractors is a much more effective way to build a company, so you don't have to worry about that. And then you as an individual, depending on the structure you go with, you need to consider your own individual tax residency. And for me that means moving to Portugal. For other people, it might mean Vanuatu or anywhere, Right? You don't have to the Caymans, right? Everyone knows the Caymans as a bit of a pseudo tax haven. It's not tax haven, they just don't tax income tax.

Right?

So if you're making money from anywhere that's not the Caymans. It's in your pocket, right. You still pay taxes on goods and services and, and that kind of thing. But for anyone who does want to look into this stuff, I think I got started down the rabbit hole with nomad. Capitalist guy's a bit of a wank, but like, you know, read some of his stuff. It's pretty good. Plan B. There's another one. Like there's companies out there that literally help you do this. They help you restructure your finances or your assets to be able to take advantage of better tax regimes elsewhere. But you've got to do the research, you've got to look into it, you've got to be willing to make the move. And for people like us, right, especially in Australia, the narrative is always just get on the property ladder. That's property ladder, property ladder, property ladder. There's no other asset. It will never go down, could never go wrong. That's. But all that does is lock you into being in one place for 30 years, right? You've now you've got to work the job you hate because you got to pay a mortgage. You can't afford to live in a place that you don't even enjoy. Yeah, like it's, that wasn't enough for me, you know, and that's really what pushed me into it. And I would just say there's, there's better ways out there to go about this and it's not that hard to find them.

That's exactly right. I say that with property, even though I like property and I invest in property, but to a lot of my mates and it's like, is it a castle? Especially the primary place of residence that's not income producing? Is this a castle or is it a mausoleum? Like, is this a noose around your neck because you've over capitalized now you have to work that job. Now you've had a kid and your wife's not working. Now you have to get another job or you have to work extra hours, you got to work two jobs, whatever it may be. And that's the Australian life for a lot of people. And 30 years of your life goes by and it's incredible to say that, absolutely crazy. And just speaking of that, like, so how do, how do you kind of invest your money in terms of asset allocation? Do you have anything to real estate or like, you know, a rate or an ETF or a lot in crypto? How do you kind of allocate your capital? How do you think about that?

Yeah, so I Mean, I wouldn't advise this for most people, but I'm 100 crypto. It's, that's all of my time.

Yeah.

I don't leave this market.

Right.

Because there's, I mean the opportunity is too great. Right. And Ben, I'm sure you both agree with me. Right. We all work in this industry and see the mechanics of it and the adoption and, and you know, when, when I see people fearful now in a bear market, I understand it. But four years ago in the bear market there was no applications and no products and, and the energy was still there. Right. So right now I'm 100 crypto and will be for the next few years, I think, after, you know, at the moment my thesis is this 18.6 year property cycle. I don't know if you've seen the economist Phil Anderson, Jason Pizzino, another guy on YouTube talks about it a fair bit, which basically, you know, shows the actual economic crash that we, that everyone's kind of expecting now will probably land in 2026. So my game plan is if the world works out, we have another nice beautiful bull market in crypto and then I'll reallocate some assets then. But I don't personally believe in stocks. I think they get diluted. I think it's a complete sham. It's over investment for me. Property I will look to invest in. I mean I do have a very big interest in property. I did a degree in construction management, all that kind of stuff. But for most people property is not an actual investment. As you said, books. Right. Property on average in most countries maybe appreciates 2% a year. I can make 2% in two minutes in crypto. Right. Like I don't. It's not the value proposition of it, of having this kind of landlocked asset isn't strong enough for me to go after yet. And when it is, it'll be because I want to live in it or turn it into a business. It won't be just to hold it and negatively gear something so that I can show off to my buddies about having two houses. You know, it's not, that doesn't appeal to me. So yeah, for now I'm full DJ and full crypto probably will continue that way for, for quite a long time. And, and honestly that choice has paid off. Right. It was always the four years ago when we're in this bear market and I was allocating and learning and you know, every single dollar that I earn that I don't need to eat or pay rent goes into crypto because it's either going to be zero or it's going to be millions. Right? And I think the zero part of the equation has been removed based on adoption and seeing this industry develop. So, yeah, the opportunity there is just too great to be in any other asset class, in my opinion. And that is definitely not financial advice.

Yeah, I love that. And just when you're saying, like, your mates bragging about negative gearing, I'm like, oh, so you're losing money every month. Great investment bra. Like, they don't get it. I've reduced my tax. I'm like, yeah, you get back 40 cents in every dollar you've lost. Do you understand how this works?

That's wild. You know, even like classic in Australia is like, people get close, close to paying off their mortgage and then they just keep the loan open, right? I'm just going to keep it open in case I need to redraw on it. It's much easier, easier to redraw than it is to just close it out. I'm like, stop paying the fucking bank. Get your, get your assets, get the deed. If you need to withdraw it, you've got it. You can just take out another mortgage. Like, I don't, I don't know, there's. There's a few things that people don't understand.

Like, yeah, they can refinance, like relatively quickly. There's even apps that do it now.

Yeah, easily. Right. Especially if you own.

Yeah, exactly. And you know, setting up things like, you know, debt, recycling or a line of credit. It's like, this is what rich people do, they exit the tax system, they get a line of credit at a couple of percent, they pay it back by the end of the year and they pay zero tax.

Exactly.

This is the way things work.

This is how you should structure and like, I just recommend it to everybody, literally. Google, how do rich people not pay tax? It will start you on a fantastic journey to at least reduce your own taxable burden. Because they're doing it. And that's exactly as you said, that's how they make money right? Now in crypto, you can do that, right? You can take out loans on your eth, you can take out loans on your assets now. And of course there's volatility there. But in the next 10 years, if this thesis plays out well, then, then you have an asset that nobody can take from you that you can take loans out against. Right? Not just, you know, if you're living in most of the world, like governments can come and take your house from you if they choose to. Right.

So, yeah, and this is, this is something I'm very strong on. Like, if you don't have an accountant, what is wrong with you? Get one. Even if you're very simple tax, they're very cheap, they will save you tons. And this is tax avoidance. This is completely legal. This is not evasion. This is. Here is a set of rules and your accountant will tell you how to play within those rules to save you money. And you've got to do fuck all. You got to have like a half hour, an hour conversation and they'll do it all for you. Get out there. If there's one actionable thing from this, get yourself a bloody accountant.

Definitely.

Reese, I want to take a little bit of a different direction to sort of close things out. You've been a Collective Shift member for a little while now. You know, before Collective Shift, you were around. You've been. You've been with us for a little while. I'd love to get your.

Take as a busy, you know, business person, entrepreneur traveler. Like how you embed an avid crypto follower. How, how you use Collective Shift, why is available to you? How's it sort of helped you? I'd love to get your sort of take on.

Yeah, it's actually really convenient. Now that we're talking, can you just show me how to get a refund on my membership? Actually, it's.

We'll pay you back in a comey tokens, mate.

I'm only joking.

I've been using Collective Shift since. Since you guys launched. Right. I was in the Facebook group that really started it all off. And for me, it's. It's the quickest summary of. Of crypto news that I can get. Right. And I think some of the most valuable pieces on there, I mean, I do really like the on chain analysis. I know it's quite bitcoin focused on a lot of those things, but they're resources that I just wouldn't have the time to look into or understand. Right. So first and foremost, I think having that insight is really valuable. But I think fundamentally, having the voices and opinions of quite a number of analysts that you guys have on your team makes the biggest difference, right? Because everyone has their own understanding and viewpoint of the industry. And as you know, this industry really is run on sentiment, right. And you can pick up on that sentiment on Twitter or you can pick up on it, you know, in the posts that you guys have on Collective Shift, depending on who's interested in what. So I've always found that one of the most valuable things. Right. And I understand that, you know, we as people are so much more likely to follow, you know, Twitter accounts and YouTubers that reinforce our beliefs. Right. And I often need someone to give me the opposite of what I believe, just to kind of check me every now and again. And. And that's what I get the most out of, out of Collective Shift, the asset pages. And, and those individual things are. Personally, I've been around crypto long enough to kind of have seen a lot of these projects launch, so I've followed those journeys. But being able to go to one place and just be like, oh, what's the latest update on that? And seeing you guys have already kind of wrapped it up into like, here's the bull case, here's the bear case, it just cuts out a lot of the bullshit that I'd have to do myself. I don't. I think that's the point of paying for a research platform. That's what I want from it. Yeah, I've always found that really valuable.

Awesome, man, that's so cool. Burke, did you have anything else, man?

No, man, you've answered all my questions. I love the, the tax structure and everything and running a company right from the get go and the journey that you've been through and just the lessons you've learned along the way, man. That was just a fascinating conversation for me. I've taken a lot away. Thanks so much.

Yeah, it was awesome.

No worries, lads. Really appreciate the invite and obviously working together and everything you do at Collective Shift, I mean, you know, we kind of touched on it earlier, but I just think that when you were talking about the. How do we deal with token price and sentiment and all those kind of things. Well, I mean, one of the main ways I try to deal with that is providing people with education and resources. Right? Because no one is responsible for a choice except the person that makes it. Right? And you make it based on the available information. But if the information you're getting is shit, then the choice you make is going to be shit. So it's really important to me, and I know it is to you too as well, just to be able to provide these resources to as wide an audience as possible so that other people can take advantage of better tax structures and bull markets and understand where we are in that cycle and what drives these markets. So for anyone out there who isn't a Collective Shift member, I mean, check it out. It's well worth the time.

Thank you so much. Rhys, mate, where can our listeners follow you VV Ecomi? Yeah, maybe. Maybe show some links.

Yep.

Yeah, yeah. The quickest place to find VE is probably Twitter. We've got a link tree link there that will take you to our discord and all of those kind of things. I think there's more than 100,000 people in that discord now. And shout out to all our moderators who volunteer their time to introduce people to the community and everything else. You can find me behind the ecomi handle, Takomikomi on Twitter and Ikomi Reese for my personal profiles. But outside of that I'm always floating around YouTube and doing AMAs and interviews, so you can pretty much catch me anywhere these days.

Thank you so much, Reece. That's been brilliant.

Please would love to anyone that enjoyed this episode share it with a friend, give us a rating and review and bergs. I'll see you next week.

Catch you next week. Thanks again, Reece.