6. How I got Drugged in Vegas, Crypto Strategies & the Reality of Starting a Start-up

You're not a cog in the wheel. You are the master of your own destiny. If you want to take four days off a week, don't play golf and drink martinis by the pool, or you're going to have a fucking shit business. But if you work harder and smarter and work with better people and build something really cool, you're going to have something amazing on the other side. You're going to touch a lot of people on the way. You're going to help a lot of people.

Look, if you want to be enlightened, just drop everything. Drop all your labels, drop all your expectations, and immediately you'll be enlightened. And life is not moving from imperfection to perfection. It's moving from perfection to perfection. It's just as it is.

G', Day, champions. Welcome to episode six of the Ben and Bergs Podcast. Now, I've started off a little differently today. I've got my camera off, and I got a little surprise for Ben. And this is one of the benefits of doing a podcast with your boss. You get to stitch him up and make him do weird stuff. All right, Ben, are you ready, mate?

I don't know, man. I'm nervous.

All right, let's go. Boom.

You did. Oh, my God.

Mate, look at that.

You've got a chin.

I know, bro. It's wild.

Take your headphones off.

Oh, my God.

So for those listening on the pod, I've shaved my giant beard off and I've just got this super, super thin beard. I'm still not used to my own face. Ben's lost his shit. He's gone.

Could we get an ID check, please?

Oh, lad. So imagine if I actually shave this off. I look like I'm 12. I'm still not used to my old face. I feel like half my face is missing. Like, I had an accident or something. And, like, it's gone.

Mate, you've got a chin. I know, bro.

It's pretty gangster.

Oh, my God, dude. I know. It's wild, eh?

You looked so different. Like, you actually look a different human being.

Absolutely. People wouldn't spot me in the street, mate.

So Ben. Ben has never seen me without a beard before.

That's unbelievable. What made you do that?

Oh, mate, I just had enough. I was like, it. I think probably about three months ago, the beard was just giving me the shits. Like, I'm trying to, like, line it up here, line it up there. It's getting lower and lower. Got to trim it and all this crap. And I literally had, like, the cut Throat out doing. I'm like, oh, I should just go for it, but didn't have the guts to do it. And like, every day, like, you get out of the shower, you got a hair dryer and, like, straighten it and do all this stuff. And it's just the biggest around. Like, after so many years, there's so much effort. So I'm like, it. We're on holidays. I'm like, I'm gonna do it. And then like, so the people we went with, they're like, all right. They held me to it. So we had a couple of little ones with us. I got them to get the scissors and just like, start chopping. My little one hasn't seen me without a big beard because I've had that since she was born.

How many years you've been growing that? What's the.

Oh, so here's the hot tip about beards, right? So probably only about a year and a half. I grew it for so inbuilt. Every man has their own or person has their own genetic length. So I could keep growing that, but that's about the longest it would ever go, right? So probably about, I don't know, one hand width kind of down. And that's my genetic length. Like, if. Even if I didn't chop it, it wouldn't go any longer. That's it.

That's funny. Right, so this is. This is what I can grow. And my moustache grows like two, so I can't grow anything here. It's like two shitty patches of lawn on me.

The reverse Hitler. So I went on some beard forums. I'm like, how do I get a bigger beard? And they're like, oh, rub this stuff into your beard and eat this diet. Do this supplements. Do heaps of squats. Fucking all this nonsense. And I'm like, no, I'm not doing all that to get a bigger beard. I wanted like, the giant bloody, you know, crazy Gandalf kind of beard. Didn't happen for me, mate. And then I'm like, look, I'm tired of all this crap. I want a new fresh thing. Let's just go. And I went for it. I've never looked back, lad.

Mate, good on you for doing it, man. You look weird, I'm not gonna lie.

Thanks, lad. Thanks, mate.

When you said, when you. Because we had our. We had our catch up call today and we did a phone call for those in the pod. And you know, Burgundy and I rarely do a phone call. Oh, we do phone calls, but it's usually video call. And then I was like, nah, bro, you've. You shaved the beard off. And he replies, he goes, I wouldn't shave the speed off of 50k in Bitcoin. I was like, okay, maybe you have it. Maybe, maybe you've got like a. I don't know, maybe you dyed your hair or something and. Oh, there it is. Nice, man.

There it is, mate. So. And the best part about this is you're gonna have to look at this face continually, mate. You're gonna have to eat it.

That's why I work remote mates and have to see you on the lead every day.

Jesus, just light me up, mate. I had a, had a little bit of time off. First day back, bang, just slaughtered. What's this, mate? What's this? You're back in Australia. What's this propaganda behind you?

Got some propaganda here. So we've got a conference next week in Sydney. And then earlier today I was doing some work, I was like, I need a break. So I put this thing up and it was such a pain in the house to put it up. So it's not coming down. The stain.

It's a big collective shift banner and all the propaganda around the company.

We're going to go to Sydney next week, dude. So we've got. We're at the Wholesale Investor Conference next week in Sydney, 1100. I was just on a call with the CEO. So 1100.

Invitees. Attendees. Attendees. It's a three day conference. It's called the Wholesale Investor Conference. So it's basically investors, VC funds, angel investors. Three different days. Day one's crypto tech and web three. I think a web three day or something. So I'm on a panel, I'm speaking about crypto and crypto in bear markets or crypto in. In the winter.

Sorry, navigating. Yeah, navigating investments in crypto winter.

So do all the audience need to bring their tissues? Mate, they're gonna be crying.

We're gonna be dropping some alpha, mate. They won't be, they won't be crying.

Oh, here we go.

All right, bring your wallets in with the wallets in. And then they've got a good A pitch. Got an 8 minute pitch to investors at the end of the day. At some point, Matt, Shane and I heading out. We're gonna.

Booth.

So we've got out this way, we've got these things. Then we. We're hosting a web three happy hour. So collective shift, Etoro wholesale investor and crypto Sydney. Shout out to the guys there, David Sydney and Luciana from Etoro we're doing a web three happy hour. We're actually, I'm pretty sure we're already over capacity. We have a hundred reserved spots for at 110 already. Some people won't come so we're gonna maybe sell to 150, 200 tickets but free event. Web3 happy hour. It's gonna be fun man. It's gonna be drinks. IRL's back. Looking forward.

You brought it back from the States mate.

So that's the, that's the play. I went out to these partners and put out to the community. I'm like this shilling your, your project stuff and you know your crappy NFT project, we're just going to host it. There's no sponsors. It's just a collaboration of like cool people in the space coming together, having a few beers, meeting some other crypto people, meet some investors, meet some folks, meet some collective shift members. We're gonna, we're not gonna do a panel. We might just say a few words and just give out inside of the market but it's not going to be boring. It's gonna be fun. And that was the best in, in America. That was the best stuff. So we're gonna bring that to Australia.

That's amazing. And Shane O's going as well. So everyone out there, if you want to get orange peel by bitcoin, go see Shano. He'll talk your ear off. He knows everything about it. He loves it.

Breezy channel, be there. Maddie will be there. It's gonna be good crew. It's gonna be good fun. So yeah I've already got 100. We've literally put out an email and had a hundred and blockchain Australia shared it. So yeah we've had about a hundred and one hundred and twenty people sign up already which is, which is massive for a minute.

That's amazing. That's gonna be huge.

Yeah, have to fly over man.

Mate, I'm thinking about it. I need, I need a in real life meetup mate. That'll be amazing.

So Bergs, I'm home. I'm back in Tassie.

Yep.

So I've moved, I've moved back home for a bit. Startup life, single life. Move back home. Figure out me going to travel a bit but back in Tassie for a while. What a trip home man.

I'm looking forward. I've been waiting for a few weeks to hear this story. I haven't heard it. Okay, there's a couple of stories on the trip back.

Okay so, so I sent this story To Oman on slack. I sent him a sentiment VM that was getting on a plane. It's about two minute VM game. The fast story. I land wherever I was going. He's like, bro, the audio didn't work. He's like on the edge of his seat. I gave him the build up and then I gave him a two minute long muted audio message. He couldn't hear it.

Classic band.

Yeah, classic, Classic.

So I'm in Milwaukee for a public speaking course and I had to get to San Francisco to fly back home because I was flying out of San Francisco, but there's no flights from Milwaukee to San Fran. So I need a stopover. So we stop over in Vegas for a night. One night in Vegas. First night I've ever been. Never been to Vegas on a Saturday night. One night on the way home after three months long in the, in the, you know, the US grinding it out. One night, one night in Vegas.

I like where this is going already.

I land at the airport.

They turn the engines off and within about three minutes it's steamy on the plane. It's 43 degrees in Vegas. It is steamy. Get off the plane, go into the airport. First thing I see is just a mountain of pokies. People are going ham at gate 47 at the Vegas airport. Did you get on bananas? Going wild. I'm looking around, going, this is crazy. Walk down the, towards the, the baggage carousel. There's a smoking pokies room. It's a big smoke filled room. There's about 40 people in there. Chockers, chuff and duries, gambling on the pokies at the airport on a Saturday afternoon. On the way out.

Yeah, that's it. It's like you're either on the way out or the way in. It's just, you got to get that last or that first siggy in. And you gotta have a quick gamble, mate.

Quick gamble. Quick, quick. The slots. They know their audience went to, went to, went to check in. And it is why I'm gonna get the tour into Vegas. And it's just casinos everywhere. It's hot parties, there's advertising. It's like an adult theme park. If anyone that's never been to Vegas. So it's like it's a whole new world.

It's the first time you've been.

First time I've been. Have you been?

Nah, man, I haven't been to the States.

Okay, all right. Okay. It's crazy. So went down to casinos everywhere. There's billboards, there's like, there's you know, there's trucks with trailers on the back basically promoting like, you know, prostitution. And it's just like the whole place is crazy. Got to the hotel room and we had our, we had a pod. We had last week's pod. Recorded that, went downstairs, had a meal, had a few drinks. Okay, one night in Vegas. Let's do it properly.

Went to, went to, I was at the Bellagio. Went to, went to the Mirage and place of blackjack. Cleaned up. Blackjack, never, never played such a better game in blackjack. You know, I was probably there for a couple hours drinking a few mojitos and it is pumping people ever at this. So the wsop, the World Series of Pokers on. Yep, it's people everywhere. Saturday night in Vegas. Played blackjack. Great. Went to roulette, cleaned up. Roulette. I was like, you know, having a great night. Cleaned up there, chipped out, just went for a walk down, down the street. I was like, you know, see where we go from here. I was on the phone with a few mates back home and a guy, it's probably like 10:30, 11:00 clock on the side of the road. I'm walking down the strip of Vegas. The guy's like, mate, how are you? Like, oh great, how are you? He's like, yeah, awesome. I've got a, got a free limo here if you want to head to the club. We've got the limo. You know, we've got a club just around the corner. Come on in the. Yeah, I'm getting a free limo.

Get in a random free limo in Vegas.

Upon reflection. Reflection, that's probably not a great idea.

So we get in the limo.

Not at this point, not really sure where we're going. There's a, there's a, there's a female drive. It looks legit. You know, huge limo parties inside. I'm the only one in the limo going around Vegas. It's a seven minute drive and get to the club. Now the club is legit. It's like, it's like a castle at the front. So it's like a club slash restaurant. You know, girls, you know, it's just a bit, that's a whole like show.

That's what you want.

Yeah, you know, one night in Vegas, get out, walk, you know, red velvet ropes. Got the ropes got the red carpet into, into the place, get let in and it's like, you know, it's a male, you know, fantasy land. Basically. You go in and there's food, there's steak, there's drinks. You Know, it's all happening anyway. Sit down, we're drinking champagne, there's ladies, there's guys. It's just all. It's just all a big party, having a great time in there for a couple hours. Had some dinner and.

Went to go upstairs and a few more drinks, whatever, you know, go upstairs, you know, have a great time. All of a sudden I started to feel a little bit, like, jittery. Like, my legs started to feel, like, really, like, jittery. My heart started to go. And I was like, oh, that doesn't feel like. That's not normal. Maybe I'm just a bit drunk, but I'm like, that doesn't feel like it's like midnight, right? Like, and I had me drinking heavily. I was just, you know, sipping on a few cocktails, whatever. I don't feel so good. And then I was like, okay, maybe I'm just gonna go to the bathroom. Got up and literally nearly like, stumbled to the bathroom. And I was like, I don't feel good. Went to the bathroom, splashing water on my face. I was like, maybe I'm just drunk. Like, you know, because I'm having a good night, whatever, go back upstairs. And it just got worse. Like, I felt jelly legged. I felt like. And that people were talking at me. I couldn't understand what they were saying. Like, I got to a point where I was actually incoherent. Like, I didn't know what. I couldn't consume what they were saying. And I was like, I need to go. And I was like, get me out of here. And they're like, no, no, where are you going? Like, you know, we're having a great night because, you know, we're drinking or whatever. Like, I was like, basically paying for. Paying for the nights. Everyone's a great night. Where are you going? Like, no, I don't feel good. Like, but you haven't paid. Like, I don't care about the bill. I'll pay for the bill. Like, I don't feel good. I'm going right now. Like, yeah, where's the door? I need to go. I'm like, no, what are you saying? You're saying we, we drugged you? You're saying, like, the security council. I'm like, I don't know. I don't know what's going on. I'm not blaming anyone. I'm just saying I don't feel good. And I'm like, get me the hell out of here. Went home and like, was not good that I obviously got like a date rape drug or A roofie or something like that. Got home, called up, caught up Dave, finance manager Dave, and said, you know, cancel the cards. This is what's going on. You know, I remember everything that's happened, but like, I wouldn't trust that place. It's the place I went. No fucking idea. Like, cancel the cards. You know, cancel the cards. Checked out the reviews of this place and it's basically the business model is to get probably single guys like me or solo travelers in, get them drunk, drug them, get their car details and scan them. And there was like review after review after review of like 1 star reviews on Google of like people that have like been in there with their wife, been in solo, been in their 21st birthdays, 18th birthdays, 30th birthdays, been drugged, being scammed, been robbed. That's the whole business model that absolutely insane. I was like, oh my God. And the next day I woke up to a message from Dave to say that they were reauthorizing the transactions off the card. They were adding more money to the transactions than what the transactions actually were. They were adding $300, $500,000. They were trying to like take more money. Because in the US it's a credit system. You basically pay or you give them the card details, you sign the, sign the receipt and then they, and then they update the transaction. So they were illegally doing that on top of basically drugging their people that come in. And this place isn't sketchy. Like this isn't like a back of the weird, like a garage, sort of like, like, you know, sketchy place. This is legit. It looked like a castle and they had security at the front. It was like, it was tight, it was clean, it was sophisticated. People were in suits. It was like a whole thing. And that's what they do.

This is crazy, mate. Could you imagine being the limo driver picking people up, knowing what's going to happen to them?

Imagine being anyone in that joint. Imagine being the, the girls in there or the restaurant, the chef, the owners, anyone morally knowing what the business model is and what you're doing to people. And it's a churning thing because it's like, well, I'm never going to go back there again. And like, what am I going to, what evidence do I have? Anything happened? It's, that's impossible to, you know, to prove anything.

That's the thing, right? Like all the people that'll do kind of one star reviews, they'll be travelers, they'll be, oh, they were just drunk, you know, it's like, you have to stay around. You have to fight it. You have to prove stuff. It's. That's so full on, man.

Yeah.

You're lucky you got out. Like, you could have woken up in a bloody bathtub, half your organs missing, mate. Jesus.

Who knows, man? Like, it's.

I mean, I'm pretty. I'm pretty good, right? I'm sorry. I've been traveling alone for a little while now. Like, I Pretty good at picking things up and, you know, but by the time we got home, like, I was pretty bad. But, like, I picked up on it earlier. I was like, this isn't normal. I don't feel good. Like, I'm done.

Like, yeah, it's a good thing you caught it, man. Geez.

Yeah. Yeah, you can imagine, you know, some other guys like, oh, I'm fine, or like, you, you know, you know, taking on their wing and, you know. And as I said, it wasn't like I wasn't going in there drunk at all. Like, I was. I've had a few drinks. Like, maybe, you know, four or five. But I wasn't pissed. I was, like, just having a good night. And one of my mottos for traveling this last month has been yes and not know. I wanted to always just do. So it was like, unfortunately filling the bracket of, like, you know, I'm all. I'm gonna try and do more than I'm gonna do, at least, because I just want to, like, experience stuff. Probably not the best thing to experience, but also the other side. I got out of it okay. Didn't lose a bunch of money. Learn a lot about Vegas. Yeah, that's like the gateway. That's the. That's the. The entry fee, the Vegas.

All right. What are your lessons from that? Experience, mate.

Never trust anyone. I didn't trust anyone to begin with, but super don't trust anyone. Free limos. Probably not a good idea. Anything that's, like, too good to be true usually is. I knew that, but still did anyway. And I think Vegas is probably a place where you want to do with it. With a mate or. Mate, sir. Yeah, you know, that. That place is, like, serious. I've heard a lot of stories, like, people getting up there. You know, you sort of get chewed up and spat out in Vegas. That's the. That's the wild west in there. No one gives a flying for Hoosier about you.

Yeah. And a good idea is always buy your own drinks. No matter who you are, where you are, buy your own drinks. Do not trust anyone.

That was the thing I Even bought my drink. I was, I paid for everything. I was just like, obviously had the drink up there. I was, went to the bathroom, I went to the toilet and someone's, yeah, dropped the whatever in there.

You know, that's the thing with bottle service. I mean like, go to like the bar and get your own drink kind of thing. I've heard about this, like a lot with.

A few male friends, but a lot of female friends as well. Like where someone will buy them a drink, that kind of thing. And they just feel so unwell, just pass out. It's just, it's so crazy. It's. It's scary, man.

Oh, you know, and I was debating talking about it, but I think apart from it's a great story, you know, but the real takeaway is like, seriously, just be careful. I think like that in places like that, it was a whole facade. They lied the whole night. Even when I knew I wasn't good, they were trying to tell me. I was like, you know, I was, I was wrong. And nothing happened. Like, there's no one looking out for you. The wall. The world is wild. They just want your money. That's the whole business model. And there's some bad people out there. That's just like, that's crazy.

And then after that, mate, you had a bit of an adventure coming home. Okay, what happened on your stopover, mate?

So I went from San Francis next. I went To San Francisco, 100 San Fran, went to LA, to Fiji, to Melbourne, to Tassie. I had a 10 hour stopper in Fiji. Get into Fiji at 5am, had a pretty shitty night. You know, sleep, whatever. I mean, you know, track pants. And like, it was sweaty, it was hot. Get to Fiji, it's 5am get off the plane, stay at the Garrett baggage carousel for like 45 minutes. Bags don't show up. For sake. Right, go over the bag thing. My bags aren't here. You know, can you, can you check them? Where's your bag number? Oh, I don't know. I think I left on the plane. Right. Did a manual search for bags. Sorry, sir, we don't have any bags checked in for you. I mean, you have any bags checked in for me? Two bags I came from. I double checked because I came from San Fran to la. I double checked. The lady said they'll be here. Nah, man, you got no bags.

Thanks for telling me I've got no bags because, like, that's, you know, I don't have bags. Fill out this form, sir, and we'll try and find. So It's a, a four page form. It's taking me half an hour. Fill out details.

Right.

I've got no Internet, my phone. We're in Fiji, right? Nothing's working. Fill out the form, give it back. When will I know back? You know, I've got a flight tonight. I don't know, sir. We'll call you.

Brilliant, Brilliant. Went upstairs. I've got 10 hours in Fiji. It's 5:30. Got no, no phone service, no bags. Don't know, like, never been to Fiji. Just want to go home. I keep. I'm done. I'm over it. Lost me bags, get me home. But I'm pretty sure I got access to the lounge. You know, from all research, I had access to the lounge for the day so I could chill there, do some work, whatever.

Yeah, yeah.

Went upstairs. Can I grab up? You know, I need to go to the lounge here for 10 hours. It's a connecting flight. No, sorry sir, you can't check in until three hours before your flight.

Brilliant.

I'm pretty sure I read I can get in check. Like, this is a connecting flight. No, sorry sir, three hours. But I'm like, you lost my bags. I've got nothing. Like, I've got no phone service. I don't know where I am. Like, can I just sit in there for an hour and figure out. No, sorry, sir, three hours. Come back at 6:00pm and it's quarter past five in the morning at this point. Come back at 6pm.

Jay.

So I nearly, I go and said I was done at this point. I had no sleep. It's 5am I sat down and I got a bit teary. I was like, I was like, I don't know. I don't know where I am. I don't want to be here. Give me home.

Yep.

And then took three deep breaths. I said, pull yourself together, Simpson. You're in Fiji. Got 10 hours. What are you gonna do? You're gonna sit here and cry? You're gonna make a day of it. So like, right, pull yourself together. When I got to the cab, drove down to the, said, take me to breakfast. I need breakfast, man. To anywhere that's got food. Anyway, he showed me around. Get to the, get the thing. Here's my card, you know. How much is it? 40 bucks in my car. No, we don't take card here, Sir. Okay, here's $20 US dollars. No, we don't take US dollars. Well, what sort of. What are you doing? VG dollars. Oh, your feed dollars. Where'd I get that from? You'd go on atm.

It's like Disney dollars, mate.

Oh, it's like it's just going any worse. Like in a fun day again. Found 40 bucks game 40 bucks. Had breakfast, got us in. I had a, found a paper clip to switch my SIM cards or get service. Anyway, at that point was done. I went and bought, had to go buy deodorant, toothpaste. Because smelled like, like I'd been, you know, in a plane for 15 hours and showered, didn't brush my teeth. Like just disaster. The sweat, it was 28 degrees or sweating it up.

Ordered the wrong coffee. Just a disaster of a morning. And then I, I found a tour guide, a taxi driver said, man, I got 10 hours. Like what are we doing? And he couldn't really speak English. I just like, you know, he kind of understood that I was. Didn't, didn't belong. He didn't know what I was doing.

So he's like, he saw my hat. He's like, oh, you play golf? Yeah, I play golf. So went to the golf course, met a Kiwi named Steve. We played nine hours ago. I had to buy a shirt. I had to buy everything I was playing in skate shoes and a golf shirt.

That's right, you had nothing. I had to buy your clothes to get on the course.

Cost me $460 to play nine holes.

The golf. The cheapest golf shirt was 160 bucks. 150 to higher clubs. $40 for a golf cart. I had to buy balls, teas. I had to buy sunscreen because I'm a white boy and I was going tomato. Had to buy water. It was, cost me 460 to play golf. Met Steve, had a sick round. It was great. Fiji golf was unbelievable. Had a great time and then go back to the old mate was waiting for me, took me around. We went to. I had Carver, the local carver drink. This is the plant. So I had a whole like ceremony. I was like on the, on the, on the, on the. Went inside and it was dodgy ass place to begin with, but it was awesome. Guys inside sat on like a carpet, you know, had the whole ceremony. Drank the carver. Awful stuff. Terrible stuff.

Is it, is it like alcoholic stuff?

I don't know. It tastes like bark. It was. Oh no. And then it was the whole ceremony, you know, clapping. It was great. Like, you know. Yeah, it was cool to, you know, do whatever until he poured more carbon. Had to drink.

You don't want to offend them. So you got to sing.

Yeah. And then bought some stuff, said thanks when he got a massage, went and had lunch on the water, went. He took me around in Fiji, dropped me off at the airport, cost me 250 bucks. Fiji. And I was like, 200 for a six hour show. For experience. Had an amazing day. Fiji, people. Amazing. Finish up the day, got the. Finally got to check in, got the flight, got the hell home. And that was my day in.

Feature one adventure, mate. Jeez, it just goes like super bad from like Vegas to losing your bags to then like getting ripped off at a golf course to then pretty good.

It was like this. It was like down and then just like sort of like scrape the bottom. And then where we are now in the bear market, you know, we're down 80. We've had a. And we've had a bit of a bounce off the floor.

That sums you up pretty well. Just like, like constantly, mate. Like a normal person would have just gone, all right, I'll just check into a hotel for a while, have a kip, no worries. Maybe a massage. But no, you're like, I'm going on a adventure.

Yes. And man. Yes. And that's the yes and yes.

Oh, so good. So good. Oh, all right. Should we do. Should we do old mate that you met the next one on there?

Yeah, so. Yeah, so I had a nine. Had a night in Melbourne because I got home late. Was in the lounge scooping up some eggs and bacon on the way out. You know, I was pretty tired. When you get home jet lagged, our mate Eddie Betts walks in. Boy, boy. I said, eddie, Eddie, how are you? He turns around, he goes, yeah, good.

I was like, oh, mate, he's. He's like the happiest lad on the planet, mate. What did you do? Did he see your face on tv?

Yes. And then over or sort of realize you're in the lounge, you probably don't get heckled by some Brisbane Line supporter in the. In the virgin land. So I was like, okay, no worries, man.

We.

We'll leave it there. That's my. Nice to be.

I want to borrow you, mate. You didn't follow him up later with a drink or anything?

Didn't push him down the funnel. Didn't take his email. I just push him down the funnel.

Oh, so good. The Simpson funnel. You gotta, you gotta. The networking funnel, mate. So good. Oh, mate.

Anyway. Oh, so that was my stories. Right, what do you got?

All right, let's jump into. Let's do meme of the week, mate.

Let's do it. What do you got for us this week?

All right. So I'll do a trigger warning for this meme. It's a bit spicy. It's just mild spice.

All right, here we go. So this is. This is a father and his son. He's holding his son's arms and he says, show me on the balance sheet where Three Arrows touched. You.

Probably gonna have to cut this out at the end of the show, but it was just too good to pass up. Too spicy. So the context for the people out there.

The context is Three Arrows Capital, basically, they've. They've a lot of people invested in. They borrowed a lot of money and allegedly they've gone. They've gone bankrupt. So a lot of people are posting all their losses, their balance sheets and everything. This meme was just phenomenal. It's so bad. It's so good.

And then.

Yeah, we're probably going to jail. And then I've got another.

I've got another meme to back it up, just in case.

So this one, there's a couple of artists and they got their turtlenecks and very fancy hair. And there's people who tweet about Web3. And under that, it's got people who actually build Web3. And they look like shit. They look like us. They've got big bags under their eyes, frazzled hair, wearing hoodies, drinking massive cans of Mother. Just hating their lives.

You know, that reminds me of.

Reminds me of my hotel room photo, you know, of all my shit. A couple of episodes, Episode four of the Last Coffee.

That's it. He had like a desk, a laptop, a microphone and like 600 coffees. Yeah, yeah.

Web3. People, like depressed, sleep deprived, like, lonely probably.

Oh, this. This is it. And this. This leads perfectly into. Why would you start a startup? So, Ben, you started a startup. Why on earth did you do it? What is wrong with you, mate? Well, maybe that's a big list. Maybe try and shorten the list about.

What'S wrong.

And maybe just stick to business, not all your other problems, mate.

How far down the list do.

Top three, mate.

Top three.

We're not going down to number 250.

Call my therapist and let you know.

Oh, dear.

So startups are hard. They're brutal. Why on earth would you do one?

Look, I've seen both sides. We had a good business, you know, the last business we're in. And I feel as I've seen both sides of the story. We've been in a really frothy startup, you know, basically printing cash. And then we've been on the other side, which is like, you know, bleeding, bleeding, stabbing your eyes out, like difficult bear market.

It's a good. Probably ask myself the same question sometimes. It's, it's, honestly I think it's, it's, it's exciting, it's fulfilling is another one. You know, everything you do, everything you touch directly has an impact on the other side. And that's not just me, that's every employee of ours. We've got 12 full time guys. You're not a cog in the wheel. You are the master of your own destiny. If you want to take four days off a week, go play golf and drink martinis by the pool, well, you're gonna have a fucking shit business. But if you work harder and smarter and work with better people and build something really cool, you're gonna have something amazing outside, you're gonna touch a lot of people on the way, you're gonna help a lot of people. And for me, being a first mover advantage or being in a space that's unique, that isn't mainstream, I love that, I love doing things that other people don't. And that's not from a ego perspective. I just like doing shit that no one or not many people have done before. I like to be unique and like to just try new shit. You know, I don't want to do the 9 to 5 and I want to fucking work a corporate job. I don't want to have weekends off every week and I don't want to go on a three month vacation once a year. Like want to build something really fucking cool. And I love working and I love hustling and I love the people that we work with. I love the shit that we do, the freedom that it gives you, the opportunities. I just traveled three months in the US and yes, was a lot of work, but work hard, play hard. I love that it gives you so many opportunities as a founder to try new stuff, meet new people, building a new space. And that's why I love it. Would I, would I do it for the rest of my life? No, like it is like it is after probably two or three startups. Like man, you'll be, you'll be gray and I'll be, that's, that's the thing.

You kind of got to be. Especially if you're, you're seeing, be younger or at least have a young team because you go very hard all the time. And that's when you see like when people get older and they get money, they've had a few exits, what they'll do is they'll spot really good businesses, they'll understand them, but they'll get other people to run them. So they'll get another CEO in. That's their main job, is to get the right CEO in to run the place, set their, you know, KPIs and make sure that they're incentivized correctly. Because this is, yeah, you need a significant break after you've, you've been at a startup for what, three years, five years.

It's full on, it's full on. And the things you have to balance. I will admit being single now is so much better. As a business owner, I feel as I mentally I can compute a lot more, I can handle a lot more. Like I just have to worry about myself and like, and that's, you know, not to say that I won't be in a relationship again, but just in terms of, you know, for you burgs for example, that, you know, married with a kid, you know, you're at a different stage of life. Like it would fundamentally in my opinion be a lot more difficult for you to manage everything because you've got other shit you need to worry about, like serious responsibilities.

Oh, definitely.

Life stuff, right? Yeah, I don't have that. So like, you know, managing CEO, life, finance, people, strategy, fundraising, public speaking, podcasts, media, marketing, like everything is like, is a lot that I think would be very different. I give hats off to anyone that's got like a, you know, young family or whatever. You know, you're in a startup so like you, you know, you're not busy, you're flat out yourself. But yeah, you know what I mean.

Like it's, it's very different running it and being the CEO and really what you're talking about there is like looking at what you don't do determines what you can do. What are you willing to sacrifice in order to achieve that? A lot of people have these ideas that being an entrepreneur is just amazing and you've got all this money and you've got all these people around you. They don't see the 10 or 20 years that went into beforehand where you're two weeks from making payroll and you don't know how you're going to do it or you've just worked 100 hour week and you've got to back it up again and then you have to be on TV and be the face of the company or now you have to travel here and it all relies on you and you're setting the tone and direction for the organization. It is a brutal, relentless job and you have to sacrifice so much in order to do it.

Well I think it's the. I think it does come with a lot of loneliness I think and also sometimes.

Imposter syndrome you know the TEDx talk I'm doing later in September like I met the other speakers the other day I was like holy like these guys are legit you know legit but you know you don't see like you know that day after Vegas like being dragged waked up I had to get up the next day after that 4:30am investor calls at a 4:30 or 6am investor calls you know while you're still.

Shaking off being bloody one night's sleep.

And then next time Jesus but then like then it's then it's a fly then it's like another meeting here and you know yesterday Sundays investor meetings all day and some on Saturday like it's 2477 days a week doesn't stop you know tomorrow morning up at six got another one at seven o' clock tonight like it and people don't see that but that's the grind, that's the game and if you can build and be better and it's not just grinding and hustling harder but it's also working with an amazing team I've got an incredible team and like bringing yourself on Berg since we've started working together in Oman has been a real game changer I've got two incredibly talented people in in your own fields respectively with an even better team below that as well you know we got a great, a great team we got software engineers we're our research team We've got an incredible fucking team passionate that works hard you know Dave operations working 247 Dave was up at 3 time he was up at 3am some like Australian time helping me out in the US Matt doesn't sleep you know Nathan we've got Shane and they never complain software engineers like you know learning web3 stuff they're in discords like just doesn't stop yeah they're putting.

In big hours as well and delivery schedules it's insane like everyone but this is the thing right and this is why we all join because you really set a pace and a vision and a tone right of this is who I am, this is what I want to be I'm going to go absolute helpful leather do everything I can. You never rest you just keep going and that is inspiring that's why we all joined and want to be a part of it we want to help execute on that vision yeah, that's cool, man. And the other thing, man, is not just a startup, but a crypto startup. So you didn't just go, oh yeah, you know, I'll do a startup, mate, no worries. Startup, you go, nah, let's do the hardest one. Let's do the one that changes the most. The one that's the grayest area. Right. It also has the most opportunity for growth, but it's got the most opportunity for uncertainty as well. And like we say, a day in crypto is like a week in the normal world. And it absolutely is because it's global 247 does not stop. Shit just goes absolutely crazy. You have to be able to adjust on a dime, just completely pivot. You chose the hardest one, mate.

For me, like I'm usually an all or nothing kind of guy. Like we're not going to do this half ass if we're going to do startup. But for me it wasn't the startup. Crypto got me first into crypto and I love business. Like I left school to run that sports. I love business. And the business and crypto intersect was like, oh my God. Because guess what, we're going to have no competitors for the next 18 months because no one in their right mind is going to start building in this market.

Yeah.

So we're going to have a three year advantage on anyone that comes into this space and wants to compete with us and the that we're building. The conversation we had this morning. Holy. That's why I do a startup.

Oh, I'm excited, man.

For context is like.

A conversation this morning of like the, that we're building and they're going to focus on the next six months. Truly going to be incredibly, like just incredible. It's gonna be so challenging to build, but so, you know, amazing and valuating for the space. It's gonna be super exciting.

You're only giving me six months to build all that. Are you mental?

I said three on the call, man.

This guy, he's like, oh, can we get an MVP in two days? I'm like, I don't even know what this is yet. Like he dispersed out all this where we're gonna need the best rocket scientists in the world and. And he's like, oh, what MVP in two days? Crazy, man. I mean, I'm gonna try. But still, you know.

While we're on it, bear market right now in crypto. Speaking of bear markets. Well, we had a bouncer. I was gonna say as of yesterday, crypto was boring, but I mean, ETH's up 60 off its lows up to 1400 US dollar ETH. 20, 100 US dollar BTC.

It's boring though. Like, what do you think?

I think it's, it's boring in the sense that there's not price to drive things and news and all that kind of stuff. But I think a lot of people are heads down, bums up, building, and they're in the discords. A lot of people, they're just building out their products, thinking about their products. NFTs are still moving. There's new mechanics coming out all the time. There's so much to get across. It's just that price has fallen into a hole. So a lot of people are here to invest. Price is what brings the people in and they're just not that interested anymore. And I think people have had to really reassess their investing posture and what they're doing because it's not just crypto's fallen in a hole, stocks are in a hole, inflation's up, wages haven't really risen that much. So people are rethinking, you know, where, where do I work, how do I position myself, what do I invest in.

What do I divest from? And really crypto is kind of, you know, it's the out there risky thing and I think it's not getting any love at all. And I think this is going to be prolonged for quite some time until we inflate our way out of all that money that was printed.

Yeah, I'm still pretty bearish. It's interesting about the bounce. It's crypto sometimes.

Mostly does it complete opposite of what we all think. But, you know, inflation came in at 9.2%, I think the highest in 40 years. Again, they said it was gonna be transitory. It's not here to stay. The Fed are basically kind of come, they've come out and said, we're just going to continue to obliterate the market by rising interest rates until inflation comes under control. Inflation will come down, then they'll push in more stimmy checks to keep the economy moving. It's going to be this like just.

Revolting beast to keep people from starving.

Yep, exactly. But one tweet I did see, what thread, I can't remember those, it was pretty interesting around, like crypto is the only. It's, it is the market that moves first. Crypto is always well ahead because it trades 24 7. There's no compression, there's no manipulation, you know, from, from government entities. Anyway, Crypto is always the first market to move it's always three steps ahead. That's why we see it's a huge dump. Leading indicator, leading indicator. You know, is this just a decap bounce? Do we go lower or is that. Is the, is crypto already seeing where, where we're going to be in three or four months time?

I think if we think macro and we think everything is happening not. Let's not throw crypt out the window for the sake.

Really. I don't think we're going through short term pain at the moment. You saw all the investor advice from all the VCs that came out, all the fund advice that's coming out and generally just what's happening in the macro space. This is going to be a prolonged event. Right. I don't think we're talking three months, four months. I think there's going to be at least 18 plus months of pain for everyone, just in general terms. And if we relate that back to crypto, crypto is not immune to that. Now what would need to happen in order for crypto to, you know, go back up and start attracting people? Right. You know, we need some new kind of innovation. We'd need some giant funds to maybe come through. We would need some regulations. There would need to be some event to draw all those people back that were shaken out, plus more people. I don't know what that event is. I haven't seen anything kind of upcoming or going ooh, I'm thinking about that. Have you seen anything coming up mate or. Yeah, I haven't.

Nick did a good write up Reese. I did a video on it that should be out on YouTube next couple of days on, on the collective shift, YouTube around. There's actually an all time high number of or value of stable coins on exchanges the moment, you know. Yeah, ever. So it looks like that actually there's been a lot of people that rotated out of their BTC eth alts and rotate in the stables and get them on exchanges, which is interesting. Like it, it's not exactly the catalyst for turning things around but it certainly looks like there is a lot of investors waiting for that bottom or waiting to reinvest, you know, so I don't again, it's not a matter of if the market will return, it's a matter of when. And I think the macro is still pretty ugly at this point. I don't see this being a V shaped recovery but certainly like, I mean Sam Bankman Fried, the CEO of ftx said recently that you know, he thinks the worst is behind us. Do I think that the Prices will return. Maybe not. Do we go lower? Maybe. But I don't think we're gonna.

You know, I don't think it's going to go down to insanely low prices, put it that way. Like, I think there's as enough. There's been enough bad happen. Like just look at June, episode four or whatever we did burgs when we reviewed June, like that was a disaster of a month. Right?

Yeah.

It doesn't get much worse than that.

Look at Sam Bankman. Fried mate. He's just buying up distressed assets. What a lad.

What a lad.

Oh, absolutely.

Scooping it.

This is what you do when you got money.

He's like the Warren Buffett of crypto.

Oh yeah, yeah. And he doesn't even care about crypto. Like, he's just like, he just wants to get as much money as he can to give it away, give it to politics. What a legend. So. So things are boring, but we always talk about dollar cost averaging. So I want to go through and explain what that actually means and some general ways in which you can do it. And again, this is not financial advice at all. These are just general ways in which you can. Dollar cost average, if that is right for you. And of course check with your finance professional. So generally the easiest one is to jump on like an exchange, like a coinbase or something like that. These are the ones that people have already done. You jump on there, you do a bank transfer or your credit card and you put in your amount, let's say it's $1,200 and you're going to average, I don't know, $100 a month over the next 12 months. You can either set that up in there or you can go in and manually on the first of every month. You can buy $100 worth of Bitcoin and you're done. That's dollar cost averaging for a year. If a year is your time cycle. If it's six months, then make it $200 per month. The next one would probably be. This is actually, I think easier nowadays, an app like Bamboo. So there's some people we know, there are Perth crew and really they've made an app that's like raise, where you connect your bank account to it and every purchase that you make. So say you buy something for $1.95, it rounds it up to $2, so it's 5 cents that you will invest in crypto and you can add more amounts as you want as well. And that really goes through. And that's just a Way to make sure that you're constantly buying and you're constantly dollar cost averaging. And really I thought I saw this guy in the traditional world, I think and his catchphrase is like always be buying or something like that. And really he shows the graphs of the highs and lows of stocks over time. And it's something like over the last 10 years, I think maybe 10 or 20 days are responsible 50% of the gains. So it's time in the market rather than timing the market. So Bamboo's a good run for that. There's other ones like get paid in bitcoin. I think this is another Australian company and I love this one. So you call them up, call all mate up and you're like, mate, want some bitcoin? He's like, no worries lad. So he gets in contact with your payroll people at your work and the amount of bitcoin that you want per pay, whether your pay is every week, every fortnight or every month, he'll then they'll send him that amount. He'll charge you like a dollar transaction. Buy the bitcoin and send it directly to your custody wallet. So they don't own or control it, they send it directly to your wallet. That is just a awesome set and forget way. Because honestly in crypto these days you spent. I spend personally a lot of time in discords, catching up with my nft, seeing what's happening and it is just eating my life. I just need to automate as much as I possibly can and just forget about it. Maybe once a month I'll have a glass of wine and go through all that kind of stuff. But I'm spending way too much time for too little benefit to do that kind of thing now. Next level up is something like ftx. I got a thing called Quantzine. So thanks to Leon for pointing this out. Metaverse explorer, he's a lady. And this was one of the best dollar cost averaging strategies I've ever seen. So say you want to invest like 200 bucks a week, $30 a day. What this guy does, he sets it to every eight hours he buys $10 worth of Bitcoin. So that way he's not missing any cycle. 8 hours, 8 hours, 8 hours keeps adding up, up and up. And apparently the fees are just next to nothing. They're sense for what he's doing. So I love that, I absolutely love that. So I'm actually going to investigate that. And then if you want to go like full nuclear decentralized, you can hold your value in a Stable coin, USDC or something like that. And you can use a decentralized exchange. You can go to that exchange, it's non custodial, you're interacting with a contract. You put in your USDC and you get bitcoin out on the other end. There's heaps of those. I haven't looked into any recently, so I can't recommend any or point you in a direction but you know, do your own research in all of those areas. There you go, mate.

I like that. I think the other thing too, I want to mention in terms of selection of assets, and I'll use a story here of my brother. He was getting into crypto and I told him to buy bitcoin and ease and like most people do, they think bitcoin at least boring. And he went out and bought aave. And you and Luna. Luna went tits up three days later and our base tanked.

And that's the moral of the story here, is that, you know, just because you think bitcoin and ETH isn't pretty or it's not as you know, it's a bit more slower, you're not going to get like huge gains next day. It's a much better investment longer term. And you should have at least 75% of your portfolio, in my opinion, in bitcoin, in these before dabbling in the old coins. It's like your stock portfolio and you're going out and buying penny stocks before earning something somewhat in blue chip, you know, because you're going to get hugely volatile in crypto regardless. And if you go to number, you know, 300 and 600 on the, on the market cap rankings, you're going to get massive volatility. And the reality is 90 of these altcoins are going to go to zero. And in this market, this bear market, you have a higher chance of the altcoins going down even further. And you're drawing out not 75 losses, but 95, 96 losses. Because altcoins get hit much, much harder than bitcoin and ETH does.

Yep.

So if you're just starting out, get your bitcoin sorted first before dabbling in the other stuff. Because I guarantee you can't explain to me how AAVE works, my brother.

That's it. And don't this, this is the other thing as well. Just look at the traditional kind of share investing game and the stuff that if you, if you're picking your own stocks, right, look at the gains that you've got over the last year, two years, three years, I guarantee you you will not have beaten a Vanguard ETF and the gains that they have got. And if you have, either you're in like 0.01% or you got extremely lucky or you're full of. Because it's like nine times out of ten you did not do that right. Like you would. You would be in like the top echelon or you had insider information and you acted on it and then, yeah, fair enough, you know you're going to get those gains. But this is, this is really turning to my kind of strategy as well, and I'm going back to that. And again, people look at the cost of bitcoin and what, what people don't understand, there's a thing called unit cost bias. It costs so much to buy one bitcoin compared to, I don't know, power ledger or whatever was like under a dollar. The thing is, you need to look at the total supply of that. And the reality with bitcoin is you can buy a fraction of a bitcoin, you can buy like up to 100 millionth of a bitcoin, right? And all you need to do is just stack that over time and it will eventually add up. And the reality of bitcoin is they did something very fancy where bitcoin was worth nothing at the start. And they say there's only 21 million Bitcoin, right? But the actual unit of account is a satoshi. So it's 21 million times a hundred million. That's how many satoshis are out there. And this is going to become more important in time when bitcoin appreciates in value and satoshis are worth more and more, it's going to get to the point where one Satoshi, so 100 millionth of a Bitcoin is going to be too much money and they'll need to use millie satoshis, you know, for tipping and lightning and transactions and contracts. It's going to be exciting. So don't get put off by the big cost of everything. Look at it and think of it as Bitcoin is good enough. It is the perfect layer one. It does what you need it to do. All the fancy stuff is being built on top of. And think of this as back in the day, your transport. These are just railway tracks through the desert. They get you to where you're going. If you want a fancier train, great. If you want different, you know, goods on the train, great. And then eventually, you know, you build out other things as well.

Totally agree, Bugs. And I think still, bitcoin is still. So, like, I was at the pub last night with a few mates, haven't seen a little while, and I was showing them when I was a bitcoin Miami, how I paid in satoshis. I showed them all the satoshi app and I took a video and they were like, oh, my God, like, you just sent big. And they got bitcoin. And that was like that. There was no fees and there's no intermediate. I was like, no. They're like, oh, you know. So, yeah, it was still very early on in these days in terms of tech, technological adoption for, for a lot of people.

The thing that blew my mind in crypto was I'd listened to a few podcasts and all that and I bought some and it was on Coinbase. What I did was I took it off Coinbase, sent it to an extension, a decentralized exchange which was in Malta.

Apparently that's where all the cool kids are. And then. Yeah, and then, oh, no, this is all legit. This is tracked. And then I use a decentralized exchange. They're just based out of there. So think about this. I'm in Australia. It was an Australian exchange. Within five minutes, I sent my money to Malta. Within another five minutes I'd swapped it for another token. And within another five minutes it was back in my wallet, in my possession. I've just moved money globally and swapped it between different asset classes, all within 15 minutes. None of this fucking I sell my stuff, it might go through T&2 until I get my money. Bullshit. You just get it instantly. And once you've experienced that and you understand the power of it, that is absolutely game changing. Mmm.

It's fascinating coming from a non crypto world and being used to limited trading, the markets close, slow delays, time frames, fees, all this bs and you come to crypto and you're like, oh my God. You know, some of the most common things people don't realize 24 7. And that was actually one of the questions the guys had last night. They're like, but can you like, switch in Australian dollars quickly? It's like, yeah, like now, right now, and have it in an hour from Coin Spot. But the only delay again is the traditional system. I can have Australian dollars in three seconds. It's the traditional system that's going to take one or two hours from, you know, at Coin Spot or wherever to my bank account crypto.

You know, this is a really good point. If I've got gains and I've sold some bitcoin, why Would I move that back to Aussie dollars? I really don't understand why, unless I need to actually buy some things in Aussie dollars, because otherwise I'd want to have it somewhere in a contract that's open, that has been audited, that I can order it myself, that I own and control, and I can move it around instantly. Because can you imagine selling your Bitcoin, getting Aussie dollars, putting in your bank how much of a fuck around it is to then get it back to an exchange, wait all that time, you know, then have to buy another thing, get eaten with fees and eventually get it back to your wallet? Like, how long does that take when you can move like that instantly? That just makes so much sense.

100.

All right, mate, let's do. Let's do my last week.

How was your break, man? You've been MIA for the last week. What have you been up to?

So good. So this is leading off our social media detox we talked about last week, right? So I just did a full detox, bruv. So took the family down with another family, went to Margaret River. Beautiful house, mate. So we're. We're out in, near the town, like only five minutes away, but we're in the middle of the bush. We're wake up this kangaroos hopping through this big beautiful house. You walk in and it's got kind of, you know, dining room, living room, another room, kitchen. And it's got two wings to the house. So they had one wing which had like a study, a massive bedroom, spa, bath, all this stuff. We had the other wing and it had like three bedrooms, bathroom, toilet. Then there was downstairs with another bedroom, another, another bathroom, a big pool area, like had like billiards pool outside, had like mini golf and everything. So we stayed at this house last year. We stayed there and man, just went there and completely disconnected, like just sat down. There was no expectations. They're really awesome people, you know, we drank wine, we played board games. It's like, man, we were just there, we just had our tribe, man, it was awesome. The kids were just loving it. And the best part, man, was like.

Like going out every day. And we had a fire pit, we had a fire inside, we had a fire pit outside. And just lighting that fire, sitting down, having a glass of something and just talking like humans and staring at the fire, like that is the most relaxing in the world. And all the tension in my back and my stomach and everything was absolutely gone. We went for walks down by the creek. Just got back my zest for life. It was just unbelievable. And, man, I listened to, like, a lot of philosophy and stuff. And there's. Yeah, there's one guy who's kind of like a guru, Osho. I listen to one of his things and he's saying, look, if you want to be enlightened, just drop everything. Drop all your labels, drop all your expectations, and immediately you'll be enlightened. And life is not moving from imperfection to perfection. It's moving from perfection to perfection. It's just as it is. And when I was there, I was nobody, right? Like, yeah, I was a husband and I was a father, but I wasn't like, chief product officer. I wasn't this guy. I wasn't this board member. I wasn't, you know, a manager. All this stuff was just dropped. And it was just so peaceful, mate. It was unbelievable. I'm a firm believer that if you earn with your mind, definitely rest with your hands, get out there, chop some wood, do some stuff. It was just.

That's awesome, man.

It was amazing, man. It was so, so good.

I think it goes back to, like, you know, what do we do before technology? Like, what did our ancestors do back in the day? Right? They did. Oh, that's exactly what they did. That's what the brain was like. The brain wasn't built for, like, constant overload.

Yeah. We used to have something like a few hundred megs of data per day into our brains, and now it's like terabytes of data that we consume through video and slack and fucking notion and all this kind of crap. Like, ding, ding, ding, all day long. It is just mental. No wonder we're exhausted. Humans are having less sex than ever. They're more tired than ever. Like, this, like, this is the real pandemic. People, like, get out there, reset, reset. Turn all your off and just have a good time. Do the boring human. Like, get out there and cut your garden. You don't need some big, you know, hedge trimmer things. Get out there and use a proper shears. Use your body. Just get into it. Oh, so good. So now the challenge for me is to keep that up. Like, keep doing all those basic things. I've written down, like, a big list of, like, stuff I'm gonna do. You see, my skirting boards at the back there aren't painted. I've started painting them in the house, just doing basic human. Where you feel really satisfied and just reconnecting as a human being, getting back into your body. And this is the thing. Like, you know, we're human beings, we're not human doings. We don't always have to be doing all this and feeling like we're missing out. We're not productive enough. There's so much productivity porn. It's all horseshit. Like, seriously, just look after yourself and get amongst it.

I love that man, mate.

So good. Hey, we got a. We got meal of the week. Do you have a meal of the.

Week before we wrap? I've got a meal of the week.

All right, all right, you go first. I want to see what your meal of the week is.

Okay. Your middle of the week here, by the way. I'm gonna have to. We'll have to book in a trip now.

Oh, you need to, mate.

You sold me on it.

Just get amongst it, Leave all your tech behind and just have a good life. Read a couple of books, sit down by a fire and just contemplate life.

You just. You slow down and you just enjoy. I was just walking around normally, and I've got this big smile on my face. Nothing's happened at all. Just, like, default happy. And it's just amazing to get back to that place.

I usually do that in January. We go camping for a month. Yeah, for about three or four weeks. But I honestly, the last, like, five years, I've been there for, like, two days because I just feel as though it's hard to disconnect. You just got to make the call, right? Just go, oh, drop everything.

Yeah, I do it for a decent amount of time, do it for a couple of weeks. The world's not going to end. You'll be fine. Oh, mate, what is this?

Okay, I'm not gonna lie. I have no idea what it's called. I can't remember. This is a local Fijian. So if you sing at home, we've got. It's a. It's a fish of some description. Some sort of Fijian fish with coconut milk. It's got some sort of light batter on the outside. We've got some mango. I think it's mango. You know, real piece of mango and like a mango puree on the outside. So this was. Went to the. Went to Fiji and lunch. And there was, like, Palmies and pies and all this fucking shit. I was like, no, what is the most Fijian shit on this fucking menu?

And he goes, how did y' all get down?

What is coming from your waters below your feet? And, yeah, he pointed this thing and it was nice, man. It was definitely not something I would have picked up off the menu. It was. Wasn't a chicken burger. It was fish, mango, bit of. Not even sure what that thing on the top is. Didn't try that. Looks like some sort of orangey thing. It was nice, man.

It's lemon squirt on your fish, it looks like. Or lime. That looks delicious.

Yeah, that was wicked, man. It was great. Had a water, little coke on the side. Yeah. Proper meal, man.

What's that tail looking thing coming out the left, that green thing?

Don't know, I didn't touch it. Looked kind of weird.

Probably some like, kind of Fijian vegetable or something.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Oh, that's beautiful, man.

Yeah, it was good, man. That's good.

And what would you rate it out of 10?

I'm gonna give it like a. Like an 8.2, mate.

That's up there for a new dish you haven't tried before.

Yeah, no, it was good. Like, I love fish, love seafood, and I don't usually. It's not something I would have tried, but the mango, you know, that was nice. It was a good experience. It was. Next to the water, it's 27 degrees. The whole experience is an 8.2.

Amazing, amazing.

What do you got?

All right, here we go. Let's share this bad boy. I've been looking forward to sharing this one. So this is what I got, mate. This, I. I dream about this dish. This is. It's an egg frittata with mushrooms and caramelized onions in balsamic with spinach. So this is from the Margaret River Bakery, right? So think. Think about this. You're waking up in bloody the middle of the bush. Just paradise. Feeling good, Got a bit of a hunger on. Yeah, no worries, lad. Let's hit the bakery. So you go down there and. Oh, mate, they're cinnamon scrolls as well. Just off the hook. You could eat a thousand of those and you die a happy man. Their breads are amazing. All. Everything there is good. But this one, like the egg man, like, you just dive in and it's like the perfect consistency. Like, it's not too hard, not too soft. Every bite just has like, you know, mushroom and umami flavor and zing and balsamic and it was just incredible. So I had a couple of these when I was down there. Went there twice. A breakfast that was amazing. Now this, this one only gets nine out of ten. Oh, because only.

Only nine out of ten.

Only usually you'd get a ten because this is the way it should be, right where they serve it with rocket on top and extra balsamic. So this is from last year, but for some Reason they didn't have rocket and they didn't have like the extra balsamic stuff on top. So it's nine out of 10. So anyone going to Margaret river, go the Market River Bakery in WA, get the mushroom and onion egg frittata and you will not be disappointed. Phenomenal dish. Get it. Get the rocket. You'll need it to cut through. Get a nice peppery rocket, baby.

Nice, man. I like it.

Yeah.

A couple, couple new meals there. Rotated chicken, burger, the normal stuff. Yeah, that's it.

New new meals and new beard. Mate, are you missing my face yet?

New man. Nice to look weird as man.

To be fair, you used to say that before when I had the beard.

You were weird last week. That's all right. I could.

Right, so good. So good.

Yeah. Thanks again. Pod. We're up to. What are you up to? Episode 6 Bugs.

This is Six, mate. I can't believe it.

You're still enjoying it.

I am, man. I really look forward to these. You still enjoying it or what? All right.

No, I'm enjoying it, man. I've got a new mic now, so hopefully you can hear me properly. Got the banner. Speaking of the banner, we as always, builders are collective shift. So if you're new to crypto, young, experienced, intermediate, whatever you are, we've got something for you. We're pumping out a bunch of new features all the time and really keeping you on top of everything. And the thing that really helping people right now is just this time. There's obviously so much going on in the space all the time. No one's got fucking time for crypto. Although you might be invested and just. You don't have time to be on the discords and the twitters and you know, everywhere figuring out what the hell is going on. So we've got a team that dumbs down everything for you, really simplified content. You can jump on one of our weekly live calls if you want. Jump in the content feed, get access to just whatever you need. If you're just starting out, we've got our long term growth portfolio. I met one of my buddies on Saturday I hadn't seen in a little while. He's a huge supporter of the Podbergs. He's dollar cost averaging in the LTG every week, the long term growth portfolio. So if you, if you don't know where to start, that's a great place to start where you can get a research based portfolio with monthly updates so you can follow all the updates and things you need to know the projects but balance portfolio. We've got that with the NFT portfolio. We've got so much going on Bergs we've got. So yeah so if you, if you want to join there's a dollar for seven day trial. There's only a buck you can get in there and check that out. We've got a code in the link below and we've also got a bunch of free stuff as always so if you want to just learn for free courses, resources, newsletters, you name it. So I've got it.

Get amongst it. Collective Shift IO and just with those weekly live calls. So any members here can get access to our weekly calls and we'll go through the most important stuff over an hour. The most important stuff in crypto and at the end you can ask any question that you want to our research team. So think about this. You've got some of the biggest brains in crypto and you can ask them specific things that you want to know about. That is phenomenal. It's my favorite part of the week. Love joining in on those calls. Always have a good time. I learn so much as well even though I'm already in the space. Get amongst it.

Yeah. If you're feeling confused, if you just don't know what the hell is going on, don't know how to understand, it's all too hard. You'll come out of the other end of Collective Shift with clarity. You have investment ready to go. You're going to feel on top of the world and you're going to take advantage of this accumulation period. Burgs this is now the times to.

Invest and you'll have a community as well. Like you'll actually be able to have like minded people be able to talk to them in a respectful community. Not one of those bloody ones where it's just like when moon you know or just talking absolute and you get in real life events as well which.

Speaking of if you're in Sydney next week, Monday night, Monday the 25th we've got a web three happy hour. We'd nearly sold out of tickets. We've got a free event at the loft in Sydney.

6 till 8pm at the Loft UTS building, 915 Broadway. There's a web3 happy hour hosting. There's already bugs. Already 120 people register for this event. It's going to be fantastic. Yeah.

Oh it's going to be awesome. Those events just really pump you up man. They make you feel so good and just being able to talk to people about things. We have a common interest. If you're thinking about going and you're not sure, just go. Or if you're worried or if you're afraid or you're anxious, don't be. We're all crypto nerds. Everyone's going to want to talk about crypto. If you like crypto, get your ass down there and have a good time.

Yeah, 100%. There will be three of us there from collective shift. We have our shirts on. Come and say goodbye to me. Matt will be there. Shane will be there. We love talking crypto. It's going to be a good night.

Amazing.

To our Twitter to get access to that mate.

Great episode. What a place to wrap.

Let's wrap it up there, man. We'll see you next week.

All right, catch you, folks. See ya.

See you, guys.

Bye.

Bye.