Digital Art Heist: My NFTs Got Stolen 😭

All right. It's question of the week time, or one— what do we call it? One Question Friday. I like that. All right. One Question Friday. Sam is traveling, so I got my boy Ben here. Ben Levy. Not Ben the— not producer Ben. Not powerful producer Ben. This is Ben Levy, the, the CEO of the Milk Road and my business partner across my fund and a bunch of other things. You guys hear me reference Ben a lot, but you don't ever know which Ben, because I only deal with Ben. Bens. So, uh, this is one of the Bens. Ben, what's up, man?

What's going on? I'm riding high today. Chris Paul and the Suns won by like 25 last night, so I've never been happier.

This is true. Um, all right, so let's, let's do this one question. Uh, I think we have an audio clip, right? Let's play it. Let's play the audio clip. I haven't heard this yet, so let's see what it is. Hey guys, my name is Colin. Um, I just had all of my NFTs stolen today. So my question is, and I'm sure you've been through something like it before, um, you know, when you get gut punched, like, has that happened to you? Uh, what happened and how did you work through it? Oh man, I could feel the defeat. I could feel the, uh, the pain in his voice there at the end. That thank you, that was a soul-crushed thank you. Uh, okay, so Colin You got your NFT stolen. I, you know, I feel for you. That's no fun. I mean, that's a— it's a crime, right? Somebody came and stole your property. It's digital property, but, uh, you know, a crime has been committed. So, you know, you got to kind of separate. Um, here's my, my kind of advice to you. Have I had somebody steal a bunch of my property before? Uh, not really, but you know, there's different flavors of, of gut punch, and I've had, I've had my share. So here's my kind of like formula for how to handle it. The first step is just be still. Um, and I mean this in kind of a Zen way, which is that, look, what's gonna happen, you know, for the next 24, 48 hours for you is you're gonna, your mind is gonna go to a bunch of different places. You're gonna get angry, you're gonna feel sad, you're gonna feel upset at yourself, you're gonna feel upset at others, you're gonna feel upset at the, the fact that you can't get it back. So you're gonna hate crypto, you're gonna, you're gonna feel a bunch of emotions by default. And what you want to do is you want to not, um, just react. You want to respond. So what's the difference between a reaction and a response? A reaction is what you do, uh, you know, sort of right away. It's an impulsive thing. And typically we don't love our reactions to things because our reactions are the things that are happening in a more primal way. Whereas our response is what happens when we pause for a second. And we, we choose how we're going to respond. So a reaction is typically not something you're choosing. A response is something you're choosing. And I— this happens to me multiple times a day where I got to check myself. All right, am I reacting or responding here? And which one do I want to do? I know I can do both, but I'd rather respond. And so the first thing is you got to be still. You got to distance yourself from it emotionally first. Then you got to say, all right, well, how am I going to respond to this? Well, there's some like logistical steps you might take. Try to get back, report it, try to figure out who did it, you know, notify people in the community so other people don't fall for it, whatever the scam was. But then you got to like, okay, let's say you've done the logistics part and maybe there is no happy ending where you didn't just all turn out right. That's where you got to what I call you got to decide what story is true. So in any event, anything that happens, there are, there are multiple stories. But to simplify, I'll say there's two stories anytime something happens. There's the story that'll make you feel bad, and there's the story that'll make you feel good. They're both stories, right? Uh, and they both have truth to them, but it's just a matter of which, which angle you're looking at something. And so you got to decide, which story am I going to roll with? Am I going to roll with the version of this that makes me feel really bad, or am I going to roll with the version of this that makes me feel good? And I know that probably sounds hard in the moment when you just got a bunch of your shit stolen and, uh, you know which is why we first, you know, try to distance ourselves from it. But that's where you're gonna have to go. You're gonna have to decide the version of this story that's gonna make you feel good, right? Uh, imagine a breakup. Most people, when they have a breakup in a relationship, they feel bad, um, and they choose a story that's gonna make them feel worse, which is, oh my God, all the— all those years we spent together is time wasted. I'm not good enough, or she's not good enough, or whatever the reasons are, right? We have— we come up with a story that makes us feel bad. or we come up with a story that makes us feel good, which is, man, now I know what I really want. Uh, now I'm ready for, for the right person. You know, you wanna walk out into the street and just look left and right and say, you know, next, you know, I'm ready. And so there's a version of the story that'll make you feel good or bad in any given situation. The power is in being able to choose what the story is and not just having the default one put on you. So that's my like mentality mindset rant. Ben, what do you think? You, you've had your fair of gut punches. Have you ever had something like this?

Yeah, I mean, in crypto, I think like a year ago I had like a few ETH stolen out of my wallet and I was crushed. And I think I actually called you and I was like, dude, it sucks. I just lost a few ETH because I stupidly clicked on a Discord scam. And I think what you said was, that's the price of admission. Every single person in crypto has had that happen. And that's just what— that's just the name of the game. Uh, so I don't know, my perspective on it is like, yeah, definitely been got punched a ton in crypto. And I also feel like every crypto one I've ever gotten, I'm mad that I didn't sell it at the right time, or I held or bought too late. I think that's the name of volatility too. So I'm just like, that's the, you know, I'm going to get a huge home run because I play this game and yeah, learn from my mistakes.

Yeah. There's also like this phrase with investing, which is, I've never done, I've never done an investment right. Which means on an investment that worked out, I should have always been earlier and bet more. And on an investment that's wrong, I shouldn't have bet, or I, you know, I was too late or whatever. And so you'll never ever on any investment feel like you did it right. You'll always be kind of kicking yourself wishing you had done it either bet bigger or bet earlier or whatever on it. And so, um, I think the thing you said that's right, which is it's the nature of the game. And so, um, you know, crypto, NFTs, this is the wild, wild west right now. There's a reason your NFT can go up 10x in price in, in one month or 100x in price in a year. Or like, you know, I don't know how much Bored Apes were, but like I think a year ago they were under 1 ETH each and now they're like whatever, 140 or something like that. So, you know, 140x in a year. So one of the reasons you can get these types of gains is because it's the wild, wild west. But what comes with the wild, wild west is that, dude, it's, it's not safe. There are, there are places where you could stub your toe. And me and Sam, I think, said this on a pod once, which was if you become an entrepreneur or an investor, And then every time things go— anytime disaster strikes or things go poorly or things go down, you're like emotionally a wreck because of it. And I'm not saying Colin is, but it's very easy to become close to an emotional wreck when things go down. Uh, it's like you signed up to go— you waited in line to go on a roller coaster and you strapped yourself in, and then the roller coaster went up and down, and every time it went down you were like, ah, like, oh my God, I can't believe this. Like get me off this thing. It's like, dude, why did you get on a roller coaster? You know, like, uh, if you choose entrepreneurship or you choose investing, if you choose investing, you got to wake up and like the last 4 months, dude, I've lost millions of dollars just because I wake up and every day is red. Stocks are red, crypto is red, everything's red. I haven't seen green in months, dude. I don't even see the color green, right? Like I'm starting to text people on Android just so I could see the green speech bubble, dude. Like I just want to see green. And, uh, but that's the reality. It's like, I signed up to be an investor. What did I think? It's always going to go up? It's like, I signed up to, you know, do this crazy crypto stuff. Like, yes, this crazy shit where, you know, I'm playing this, this, this game where you're, you're a self-sovereign individual, you're custodying your own assets. Well, there's gonna be times where you didn't custody it very well and it got stolen. Um, and so, you know, same thing with, with being an entrepreneur is you gotta ask yourself, am I just complaining that the roller coaster went up and down. And, uh, and that's a way to not let yourself be a victim. I think one of the most positive traits somebody can have is that they never let themselves be a victim. No matter what happens in their life, they view themselves as the person in control and the root cause of whatever has occurred. And in doing so, they give themselves the power to make things good and they give themselves the accountability when things go bad. And so, um, so, you know, I think that's a just a decision you got to make up front. Am I going to let myself ever play victim and look for kind of pity, self-pity, or pity from others? Or you just take that off the table. You say, nope, I'm never going to play that game. And so that means on days where my shit gets stolen, it did— somebody didn't steal my NFTs. I let my NFTs be stolen. And you, right? So you take control over what happened and it hurts in those moments. But that decision to never play victim is like one that pays off, you know, in spades, you know, for the rest of your life. Ben, what did I miss?

Also, it's a great opportunity for a Twitter thread right here. How I got my NFT stolen.

Yeah, this is the great— this is the beginning of every great story, right? I've had this many times where I get a cease and desist letter and then we turn it into marketing for our company. I've had it where, you know, Google or Facebook will launch a clone of our app and your investors will send you a link and be like, hey, did you see this? It's like, yeah, motherfucker, I saw it. Like, I saw that Facebook has cloned our app, you know, pixel by pixel, and that, you know, this, you know, $500 billion company is now competing with us. Yes, I saw the news. But you know, you gotta sort of like, in that moment it's like, this is our chance. This is our story. Of course they're gonna copy us. We're onto something, right? Of course they're gonna copy us pixel for pixel cuz we have the right solution, right? And you have to decide what story you're gonna tell yourself and your team and your, the people around you. So that again, you're going to feel some kind of way. Would you rather feel bad or feel good? That's all you got to choose. I tell Ben this all the time. Ben started this off talking about the Suns winning. And Ben, how do you feel when the Suns win? Amazing. Ben, how do you feel when the Suns lose?

Pretty, pretty down on myself. Pretty down on everything.

So you ride the roller coaster and you let yourself feel bad. And so, you know, that's a choice you're making right now. At some point, you might decide to play the game differently, which is I'm going to feel— is it possible to feel great when your team wins and not feel shitty when your team loses? Yes, that is possible. Uh, sounds like it sounds like it's breaking the rules, but like, that's what you do when you're like a life hacker. It's like, yeah, you break the rules. It's like, I'm going to play the game. I'm going to play the game on my terms. And, uh, and so there is a version of that.

Yeah. And like when your businesses have issues, I think when the businesses have issues, like you don't let it get you down at all. And you're able to take the wins in stride really well.

Do you have an example of that? Like something where we've, we've taken— we've had a situation where other people would have felt down, but we, we spun it. Do you have anything come to mind?

I mean, I think we're in one right now, right? Like we send the Milk Road and we've had some deliverability issues recently where the open rates have dropped a little bit and we can't really tell, you know, we're trying to figure out why. And I think there's one version where you freak out about that and you make it ruin your week or ruin your day. And there's another version where you just take it in stride and know you're going to figure it out.

This data is wrong every freaking time. Have you heard of HubSpot? HubSpot is a CRM platform where everything is fully integrated. Whoa. I can see the client's whole history, calls, support tickets, emails. And here's a task from 3 days ago I totally missed. HubSpot.

Grow better.

Yeah, like, you know, you fast forward a year from now, this will be a forgotten footnote on the overall story. And even when things are really crazy and, you know, uh, something really bad happens, like, you know, in my e-commerce business, our entire shipment for Christmas got seized and flagged and then inspected, and then we had to do a recall and like all this stuff. And the people, you know, people on my team were all like, oh my God, like just for this, you know, 1/8 of an inch You know, this random seizure for no reason, just 'cause of random inspection. Then on one item they found a 1/8 of an inch discrepancy. Oh my God, this is so unfair. This is so bad, blah, blah, blah. And it's like, all right, like, dude, look like, you know, we, and I created a channel in our Slack called Highs and Lows. And I said, let's put 'em here. Let's document the highs and lows. And I think every startup should do this honestly, is document the highs and lows. 'Cause it'll just get you used to being like, When you go in there, when things feel really bad and you want to go in there and write it down and you've, it's like you see the last one 6 months ago and you're like, oh yeah, that felt pretty bad too. But I've like, I've totally forgotten that our business has grown 2x since then. And like, oh, you know, just the way that that one turned out to be nothing, this one's going to be nothing too. I'm going to eat this and I'm going to like use this as an opportunity to learn. Like, oh shit, we didn't even know these, this 1/8 of an inch rule. We had to go like, you know, change the measurements of something. Like, I'm glad we knew now versus when it's bigger, right? I'm glad this happened because that's gonna lead to all these good things. Um, and so, you know, there's, uh, we had an example like this where, like, I'll give you another one with our e-commerce business. Uh, the warehouse manager that we had hired, uh, turn— it wasn't working out. Then we found out they were trying to like, you know, sort of like copy our business in a way and like launch a competitor or something like that. 'Cause you know, they're in the warehouse, they see business is going great. So they wanted a piece of the action. And this was a moment where our team was sort of like, you know, immediately felt betrayed and then upset and was like, well, you know, um, what should we do? Should we change? You know, should we— we're gonna have to make a change. It's gonna be so hard. And that— those are the moments where you need to show the most poise, right? That's when, that's when strength matters is when things get hard. When things are easy is not when strength matters. So it's like, oh dude, I've been training for this. I've been training for these types of moments. Finally, I got a reason to use these muscles and that are, that are in my body to be able to be strong here. And so it was all about poise. It was all about basically coming up with, all right, let's first be still. Let's not overreact. Second, let's decide how we're gonna approach this and re— respond to this situation, not react. And then in that response, it turned out where actually we ended up finding this amazing manager and we ended up saving all this money. Now, we couldn't have seen that up front. In the moment, it felt bad. Now, 3 months later or 2 months later or whatever, it's like, oh dude, we found this thing that's saving us, you know, $2 per order, which is going to add up to be hundreds of thousands of dollars of extra profit saved because we found this new manager who found this new process, who found this new thing. And we would have never done that had that disaster not struck. And so once you go through life enough, you have enough experience, you realize, oh, it's all working for me, not against me. And once you decide it's all working for me, not against me, then the next time the disaster strikes, you're like, all right, cool. What's this? How is this working for me? And you don't panic. And then the people around you are like, man, how's this person never panic? They never freak out about this stuff. Um, that, and then that becomes the culture of the company. That's where you wanna be.

Ironically, I'm good at that at everything except when it comes to Phoenix Suns basketball.

Yeah. Well, that's cuz you're fit, you're mentally fit. It's like, you know, you're mentally fit with your upper body. It's just you never do leg day, right? So it's like everybody's got something in the gym where they're really strong at it. It's easy for them, it's hard for others. And then they have something that's easy for others, hard for them. And that might be calf raises, that might be whatever. And so like, you know, you could take a bodybuilder, but you go put 'em in a Pilates class and they're struggling cuz they don't have the flexibility or the, maybe the core strength or coordination to be able to do some, some movements. And so everybody's got these moments that are, these situations that are harder for them. Like Ben Wilson, I'm curious for you, uh, what's the thing? Give me yours. What's the adversity disaster strike situation where you're pretty good? And then what's the adversity or disaster strike situation where you're pretty weak? What's your version of leg day?

I'm actually like, because I'm a pretty relaxed person, I tend to do pretty well with adversity. But like personal attacks really get to me. Like, like bad things happening in the world don't, don't bother me.

Bad things for other people, don't care. For me, really care.

No, but it can have like, if it hurts my bank account even, or like whatever, like I, I just kind of, I move on with life. Um, but if someone says something bad about my character, um, or yeah, insults me or something like that. The one I think of that I think I dealt with pretty well was, um, I was in Barcelona and it relates to what this guy was talking about. And, uh, I'm sitting there at like a like a cafe. So imagine a cafe. I'm on La Rambla, which is like a walking street, and so I'm facing this, this big street with a lot of people, and I'm eating dinner, and I've got my phone on the table, and I'm reading my phone as I eat dinner, and this old woman comes up to me and sticks a sign in my face and starts asking for money. But the weird thing is I speak Spanish and she's not speaking Spanish, and I, and so I don't know what she's saying. She's got the sign right in my face and she's She's speaking clearly, asking for money, but I can't tell what she's saying. And I was like, what? I don't understand you. And she keeps saying something. I'm like, go away. I try and kind of shoo her off. She leaves. I'm kind of shaken up. And after like a couple of seconds reorienting myself, I go back to my dinner.

Realize my phone's gone. Yeah.

This woman had stuck the sign in my face and underneath it had taken my phone from off the table. And I run off and go search for her. And of course, even if I had found her, she'd probably handed it off to someone else and the phone was gone. And that is the kind of thing that I actually like deal with okay. Like obviously I freaked out for a couple minutes, was really mad and was stewing. But eventually I was, I just kind of like was like, okay, I'm okay. It was hard to explain. Like I was freaking out because I didn't have a phone in a foreign country and it was like scary. But I was like, I'm okay. I've got all my fingers and toes. And it was like actually a good opportunity to kind of like reevaluate of like, All right, this is gonna mess with a lot of stuff, but all the things that actually matter in my life are not affected by this song being gone.

Right. I'm gonna also give a technique, uh, because one, one part's the philosophy, another is just a simple technique you could do. So how do you actually be still? How do you actually get to the response, not the thing? And it's really annoying when bad things happen and then the advice you're getting is like, it's okay, don't worry about it, shake it off. You know, because it's like, no, in the moment I feel I feel bad. I feel some sense of loss, uh, you know, and so, you know, it's very hard. And so the actual technique here is a Tony Robbins technique that he calls the 90 seconds of suffering. And the story is Tony goes to India and he's like, he's taking, he's taking his platinum partners. And these are the dudes who it's like, you go to the beginner Tony Robbins event, you're like, oh my God, this guy's the messiah. And so you're like, oh, if I pay $25K a year, I get to go on a trip with Tony. And like, I get to be a platinum partner. And so you pay, maybe it's even more than that, it's 100K or something like that. You pay some crazy amount of money and you become a platinum partner. So he took his platinum partners to India to some like ashram in the mountains and he's like, you know, just giving them a unique experience. And he goes and this like kind of guru guy in the mountains is like, oh, Mr. Tony Robbins, you know, blah, blah, blah. And he's like, he's like, how are you? He's like, oh, I'm fantastic. You know, life is amazing. I feel so grateful. Saying all the Tony Robbins things in his like monster voice. And then they're like, the guy was like, um, uh, you know, said something like, you know, but how, uh, you know, uh, he said, so how are you dealing with your suffering? And he's like, he's like, uh, suffering? Like, the hell you talking about, bro? Like, I'm Tony Robbins. Uh, I'm not suffering. I'm Mr. Positivity. I got my Platinum Partners here. We're in India. I'm, I'm teaching. I'm not suffering. They, they might be suffering. I'm not suffering. And he's like, but I just saw you a moment ago. You know, you're— whatever your employee was saying about the thing they forgot and you got so upset, you were telling them how they should do it differently. You totally changed your face. And he's like, oh, well, you know, that was just— we have this— I want this trip to be great for our partners. And, you know, this person dropped the ball and yeah, I guess I kind of lost my cool. But, you know, I really care about— but he's like, he caught himself. He's like, okay, I'm just justifying. He's like, He's like, that's not suffering though. Suffering is like, you know, look around in India, you see people suffering on the streets. And he's like, he's like, it's the same thing. They have a deep— they have different cause, but they feel the same thing. They feel suffering in a moment, right? And so he goes, he goes, um, you know, you— he's like, you are Tony Robbins. I see you now and you're, you're, you're, you're bright and you're happy, you're lit up, you're, you're energetic, you got the— you have your charisma, all the stuff. And he's like Don't make your happiness so cheap, Tony Robbins. And he told him, and he was like, um, happiness cheap? What do you mean? He goes, that— and he's like, that guy just did this small thing and your happiness— he took your happiness. See, your happiness had a very low price. It only took a very small thing to acquire your happiness. He took it away from you. And so what you want to do— and so my takeaway from this was like, you want to have this— like, you want to be the Louis Vuitton of happiness. You want your happiness to be very expensive, that it takes a very, very big event even bigger than all your NFTs get stolen for somebody, something to take it away. So you have to decide the price of your happiness. Is your happiness going to go away if someone gives you a wrong look or cuts you off in traffic or, you know, your delivery gets— your pizza delivery on DoorDash gets delayed? Are you going to get upset? And not upset in a big way, but like you lose that joyful state of mind you could otherwise be in. And so he gave himself this thing. Tony came up with this technique called 90 seconds of suffering. He goes, okay, so I started to notice these little moments where I would lose my state. I would lose my state of mind where I wasn't— I was no longer in that kind of happy, grateful, you know, optimistic, enthusiastic state of mind. He's like, and I would just decide, all right, I can't prevent feeling that feeling. Like, it's very hard to just prevent it, but I can contain it. And so he's like, I'm gonna give myself 90 seconds to suffer, and after the 90 seconds, I gotta let it go. But I get 90 seconds to do it. And of course, what happens is like, you know, if you don't give— if you don't time box it, it's very easy to like have something ruin your day. Or even kind of get you down for a week or a month or a year and you're depressed all of a sudden. So timeboxing is valuable. But, but the funny thing is, if you do the 90 seconds of suffering where you're like, all right, this shit happened, I'm going to give myself 90 seconds. Within like 24 seconds, you'll be like, all right, whatever. I don't even need to do the whole 90. Like, it's done. Like, I know it's going to end anyways in 90 seconds. Do I really need to sit here and wait the 90 to feel bad? Like, if it's going to end in 90 seconds anyways, you don't even— you end up not even doing 30. And so that technique of like giving yourself 90 seconds of suffering whenever whatever happens has been like pretty game-changing for me. And so, you know, I'd encourage you to do that. All right, your NFT's got stolen. All right, have at it. 90 seconds to suffer, suffer fully and as much as you want for 90 seconds. But the agreement is at the end of that 90, you no longer get to get to suffer about this. At the end of the 90, you got to take a deep breath. You're going to change the story in your head about what's making you feel bad, because it's not that your NFT's got stolen. It's some story about that. It's how much money you've lost, how you're not going to get them back, how you spent so long collecting them, how that was your favorite one. That story is what's making you feel bad. And that— after 90 seconds, you got to change that story. So that's my advice for, uh, One Question Friday. That's it. Peace out.