EXTRA: Russian Oligarchs, Putin, and Sam and Shaan's Thoughts on Ukraine

this got this ukrainian guy their their leader this guy's badass ass have you seen like him just wearing like green t shirts giving press conferences yeah he he's amazing this guy's amazing this guy's i don't know much about him i don't know what's going on not know what's like kind of media portrayal versus whatever else but the guy does come across like a goddamn hero alright let me tell you a quick story i don't know if you're gonna like this topic so i wanna get it out of the way if you like it we could spend the whole time on it but i'm not sure if if you're gonna be into this alright yeah yeah so it it's about the most popular thing going on right now the ukraine russian conflict not exactly about ukraine but it's about russia so something that i've always been interested in is the russian a arcs so have you ever studied those folks not studied but you know okay tell me about it okay so this starts i'm i'm reading a thing so you're gonna see me look off this starts on november third nineteen ninety five in a remote siberian town called sur basically what happened in this small cabin an auction took place for the right to lend the cash strapped russian government tens of millions of dollars so basically ninety five the russian government wasn't doing so hot and they needed money and so they got these banks to come to this meeting and they said we need some money we need to borrow some money and also as collateral we're gonna put up shares of some of the large state owned companies because at this point russia was basically going from being a communist nation to being a private country and so they still had some like state owned oil companies mineral companies basically like if you think of exxon mob they like the government like own that and at this point they were trying to figure out how do we make this so private individuals can do this and so at this meeting basically only two bidder showed up and if more bidder wanted to come it was kind of a pain they ass because conveniently there were no more flights the airport shut and you couldn't even book a flight to come into into this small town by the way your camera's okay you're there yeah and so basically what happened at this like small cabin is one company made a bid to buy a or to loan money to government they loaned they loaned something like five hundred million dollars and that was like a hundred thousand dollars above the opening bid so the people were bidding to loan money and so that this these this bank loaned money to the government and then the government had to pay back the loan at a certain point like a something like a year later and if they didn't the bank then was given the the collateral so the shares in this company to auction off and they could keep thirty percent of the prop profits so obviously the government didn't pay back the money and there's like a lot of like wondering why they didn't pay up pay back basically the idea is that the current president was like obviously this is all like we're all planning this so don't pay this back and give us a little bit of whatever so they don't lose you're saying think it's collusion basically there was a a handshake wink wink agreement basically of what's gonna happen here yes and so the government doesn't pay back the loans and so now this bank is basically now has a minority ownership and like twelve large state owned corporations and they basically holler at eight to ten guys guys who are already relatively successful and they basically said you do you wanna make a bid on this company i'm gonna make sure no one else bids on this company but i'll give it to you you interested and that's exactly what happen and why did they do that why would they hook up these individuals in that way they did it for three different reasons the first reason and a lot of this is just like hearsay the first reason is the person who was present at the time who has it ben what was his name it was the fact guy who boris y yes he was basically said to these eight or ten businessmen i'm gonna hook you up you guys hook me up when i'm when i'm when i'm in office hook it up i'm gonna hook you up whatever so that's one theory the second theory is that they wanted experienced managers in in to to run these companies and the third theory basically is even though these eight to ten oli arcs put bids on these companies and basically they bought the equivalent of exxon mob so we're talking about like a company that's worth billions of dollars they paid a hundred million dollars for this company and so these managers these a arts these eight to ten folks a lot of them were mildly successful but they were all in on the government they friends and friends you know they're all homie they basically they did take on risk so like these companies did have debt and like they had to go and like c glued with other the people and fire the rest of the managers of the company so it was basically up almost like a pe thing but it was like pretty dirty alright and then i forgot to tell you this but this is the most important thing i can't believe we didn't talk about this earlier to be honest with you because if you're listening to this and you like what you're hearing right now and you haven't gone and subscribed to the my first million podcast wherever ever get get your podcast that that's the thing you gotta do there's nothing more important than doing that right now and don't do it because i tend to do it do because you wanna do do because that's who you are and the government was like yeah we need we want like these mercenaries to be in power because if they these cup companies better are you know our government's is gonna be better the the russia is gonna be better and so they basically profits after after this whole deal profits of these companies grow by fifty act market caps go by hundred x and so there's here's an example the reason i got interested in this is there's this guy named robin abraham but what's his name ben how do say his last name i think it's a bra so we're gonna call them roman so roman knows what the hell you're talking about right now is impressive and he's like a he's like a part of your brain that's like outside of your body and you're like brain what's that name oh here roman famous roman owns we're just gonna call roman he owns chelsea the soccer team so he's like a famous guy and he owns like this like you know two hundred foot yacht he's like a big deal and basically he paid a hundred million dollars him and his partner boris paid a hundred million dollars and they've just they came up a little bit of money and then they went and holler at like other rich people and they said hey loan of some money let's buy this company they paid a hundred million dollars for a company that is now like the eighth or tenth largest oil company in the world so imagine paying in the mid nineties imagine paying a hundred million dollars for exxon mob right insane and so the these companies explode now they explode partially because basically what these owners did these eight to ten all what they did was they purposely tanked the company so it's sucked for a long time and then they bought out the rest of the minority shareholder so it's again cro there and second these were government run companies so they're a shit and so these private individuals they did a pretty good job of making them better and they became far more profitable and this created like eight to ten guys that were worth like up to forty billion dollars so at one point one of them one's worth eighty three billion dollars and you know things have changed but it created so much wealth between these few folks and then also like trickle down so here's the craziest part is that a bunch of the managers of the company so basically there was like the pre there was like the the minister of oil or something like that as a government official he becomes he sets up this the these one of these companies he eventually becomes president of one of the companies and now it's worth eight billion dollars even though he was like a a government official so i thought it was interesting because i actually wanted to read a book about these folks because i'm like oh who's this like rich guy that owns chelsea football let me like go and learn from him and when i realized is like i pretty much can't learn it from him i i could maybe learn some up but like his process is not like replica i can't replicate it because he was like thirty eight and russia had just fallen and he basically turned zero dollars into he's worth now like twenty billion dollars all through this cro but i thought it was incredibly interested have you not heard about these folks i've never heard any of that in my life it's crazy it's like a it's like the big bang for like russian rich oli it's like there was just one meeting and it kicked off this series of events that like you know seems kind of unfathomable how that would be allowed to happen or just happen but then they also consolidated part right like didn't putin basically like take all their money and consolidate here's their power here's the second interesting part of the story and i actually learned this from listening ben's podcast so basically putin was considered like the anti corrupt guy for for for a minute like when he was elected he was like you know i'm gonna stand for that nonsense and he made an example of one of the guys one of the billionaires his last name starts with the k i'm i'm not gonna try to pronounce it it's it's it's a challenge he put this guy in jail for fourteen years and he literally put them so in russia for some reason they put you in these like cages and you could like take pictures of these folks have you ever seen that like a like a russian serial killer picture or anything like wait so it's like visible from the outside you mean yeah it's like the mug shop but it's like literally a cage that sits on you and people can come and like take it's weird and anyway this guy was worth at the time like fifteen billion dollars and putin arrested them for not paying taxes things like that and put them in jail for fourteen years and he goes to the other guys he goes you want that to happen to you no alright let's play and so a lot of people think that putin is the richest man in the world right and he owns one of the most expensive hot homes in russia in in the world it's like a billion dollar two billion dollar house and people were like well how you do that and it's a lot of people linked dollar house yeah ben tell me all about it's like billion dollar house wow i don't even realize that it's it's it's not like it's got skyscraper it's yeah it is like this kinda complex it's got private beaches it's got like pools on pools it's got guest house houses basically got a hotel on it it's like a house is maybe not the right way to think of it but it is a house it's a private residence putin and but basically like there's no proof of this but a lot of people because even when the panama papers release they couldn't find putin's accounts but basically a lot of people are like well so he made an example out of this one guy and he went to the rest and goes y'all all wanna play let's play and and and now roman by the way really hoping you'd attempt a put an accent there kinda this morning not gonna lie the story is good but it's just missing that little something i think that you are been given it a shot then i think you have a little little bit of the russian twins and you're speaking you could yes they same me i they told me i speak good in russian accent i will do i is this like racist can i do this is this okay i don't know don't worry it's borderline that's think get the race this we are we have the the cancellation vaccination you're allowed to do a a a funny funny accent here and people as long as this russian if you're listening and you took that too seriously just swipe over and delete the podcast and go on with your like yeah and to wrap this up basically the way that these guys all work now is a lot of these a arcs are part of like the peace keep it like they're they're part of they're helping putin like negotiate peace so like the inner the way that the shit's intertwined is just bananas it's crazy and i was like trying to learn about these folks and i was like oh like there's nothing to learn here i can't i i can't do this like the this is just crazy and these guys are so wealthy and and so it's trickled down but if you basically a lot of them when it happened were in their thirties like thirty five thirty eight years old and that's why i got interested within this because i was i remember years ago reading about these folks i'm like how does a thirty eight year old become worth three billion dollars what the hell how did the thirty eight year old become ceo of a diamond mining company and was a stupid question what does the word oli arc actually mean i think it just means when there's a a small group of people that are in power but basically little like a cartel basically yeah not well that's like what what do you guys say ben it's just like the typically the way that it is classically defined is over here you have a monarchy which is ruled by a single man over here you have democracy which is ruled by everyone oli sits in the middle of like rule by a few people right yeah but when we talk about russian oli a lot of times people will say that just means like russian rich people russian wealthy rich people the way that i'm using it is that there was literally like nine guys who are given like these twelve companies and now amongst those nine guys there was like dozens more where like roman was like hey i need a homie i need a cousin to come and run this thing hook it up and so there's like it's trickled down beyond that and so now there's hundreds of them quick interruption do me a favor scroll down and you're gonna see a link to the hustle so if you wanna stay up to today date on the tech and business news you need to know check out the hustle the daily email i used to help write it i love it so check it out scroll down below i'm on a business insider news story about putin's wealth right now just because i wanted to see the billion dollar house so the house one point three five billion it's a crazy palace with three helicopter landing landing pads and stuff like that but the thumbnail was putin doing basically like a bow flex so he's he's like you know he's basically stanley a both cables he's like clearly about to do like a pe fly and that was the thumbnail they chose not one of his palace or his cars or anything like that the joe's putin wearing three thousand two no wearing cashmere sweats that cost fourteen hundred dollars and then a matching top which it just looks like a haynes t shirt for his workout outfit total which was three thousand two hundred dollars and then it's just like every picture is hilarious it's like him choosing with a champagne it's like only power photos which is really funny keep in mind this is a guy who before this he was in the kgb so it's like the cia of america so this is a government sal person for the last thirty years so that's crazy yeah ben how did you feel so you did the how to take with the world episodes about putin and and i called you up about this i was like ben re released the episodes a lot of people are curious about putin right now released the like just re upload them as new episodes but you kind of research this guy a lot what i mean can we talk about this like russia ukraine thing for a second so like what's y'all reaction to this and i i guess like you know the disclaimers is we we're not experts we're just friends talking about like y know do you hear what's going on what you think about this so ben what did you think because you've spent a lot of time reading about this guy yeah my reaction is probably different for most people's i think most people who listen to my podcast view it as like an anti putin podcast like think it's pretty hard on him and i think in some ways it is calls him out for some of the bad things he's done including murdering people and like maybe doing a false flag domestic terror attack on the russian people so like it's not a prop putin podcast having said that i think a lot of people's reaction has just been like putin is hitler he's gonna keep marching through country he's until we stop him like all he wants is right more power more territory he's of mega who's doing this just because he's tripping and i think that what they're missing a lot of the psychology of putin of of this is someone who was as sam said a part of the kgb right so he's a part of the soviet empire when it's a big empire he watches it fall from grace and then he watches his country looted in the in the mid to late nineties and kinda says to himself alright well america is supposed to come in and make the situation better i'm never trusting these guys again right and so then he's and ukraine get pulled closer and closer into the european union and and nato orbit and american orbit and they're basically saying okay yeah they're aligning with us but that's their prerogative and don't worry about it this is not we're not gonna like invade russia or anything and he's basically saying no like that's his red line i will never trust you guys again and that doesn't make what he's doing right but i think it is important to understand where his coming from so the motivation so that we can make the right decisions yeah what do mean by america america was supposed to come in and fix what do you mean by that exactly so you're saying post world war or something no so it was essentially as the soviet union is is coming down i i can't remember the name of it but there are some essentially like committee with a bunch of harvard guys who come into moscow and are like hey we're the experts this is how you do capitalism essentially and initially there's like some optimism right of okay well america seems pretty great soviet union has not been great and so we're excited about this capitalism stuff and it turns out it goes just they're just wear the sweatshirt it's never went to harm got them that's right they were they were pulling a bend they were wearing the georgetown channel lost sweatshirt but they didn't go to georgetown channel lobby they and so things the the the russian economy really crashed during the nineties and so that's that's what i'm talking about gotcha okay so he's like i've i i've your fool me once shit you know shame of shame on whoever the fuck okay so that was your reaction to this as you were sort of thinking about that sam what was your reaction as you kinda saw this all play out my reaction let's talk about this from a i mean first of all i was like you know screw putin not a fan but let's talk about from a business or like a management perspective when i saw when i've seen all this go through or happen i've been watching a lot of videos on reddit and admittedly like that's a usa that's a american website so i'm to figure out like what the truth is i'm seeing these i'm seeing two things one i'm seeing videos like pow russian pow and there's like i didn't wanna be here they go we don't wanna be we we were tricked we don't we thought we were going to practice we didn't know what was going on and they also say we thought you guys were gonna open us welcome us with open arms we thought that you were gonna love what are you what are you doing like why are you being angry at us and so i see and and they also show the tanks and the tanks are shit they're like from the eighties and nineties they're bad like and their weapons suck and so i'm seeing a i like they're they just and like and they were a little chu and like people don't have like nice haircuts like they do in the middle like in american mode like they just like un like it just doesn't seem like it's like at a well oiled machine that's what i'm seeing being in second these are the most random observations i about this whole thing it's like reddit videos of guys we like i thought this was a practice war that's what they like to do shall be famous in nineteen eighties tanks like what yeah i mean look like what do you see that you're like oh this you're like like i was afraid of you but like maybe i shouldn't be like you're out of shape and the second thing is this got this ukrainian guy they're they're leader this guy bad ass have you seen like him just wearing like green t shirts giving press conferences yeah he he's amazing this guy's amazing this guy i don't know much about it i don't know what's going on i don't know what's like kind of media portrayal versus whatever else but the guy does come across like a goddamn hero regular when you think of the word of hero what do you think of it's like you know the president who says you know not i'm not just ordering you war i'm going into the front lines and by the way this guy is the finance minister he's here this guy you know this is my press secretary he hey or hold this gun you don't how to do it you a backwards doesn't matter staying here and like basically sending out a video being like you know hey putin you know go fuck yourself or like bring it on basically like the only thing cooler he could have done is if he was like putin meet me at the border you and me unarmed hand to hand combat you win you get my country i win i get your country that's the only one level up on sky could have done as far as big you know the real live macho man randy savage which is kind of the way he was coming across as i was like a real hero break like very brave incredibly and what i'm learning what i'm trying to you know when i watch the news i try to figure beyond like this is bad and i wanna help the the thought is like how can i use us to improve and my takeaway here is what putin has done they they say like he's like they showed him with giving a press conference and here was on this huge table and his generals were like literally twenty feet down on this table and he was kinda by himself and that was kind of a a representation of him him him being a little distant yep and whereas this guy was like literally on the streets toast coffee in the morning right and my takeaway is in order to get someone to do something you have to make them want to do it you can't force them to do it because if you force them to do it it's gonna it's a short lived short term thing right and with the ukrainian i there was a poll where ninety percent of them support this guy and they are all in the streets they're all like pouring styrofoam into bottles with gasoline because that's how you make napa palm and they're using for molotov cocktails yeah and they like it sounds weird but it seems like they're happy in the sense of like they have a sense of purpose and they have a community and they have a mission and maybe not happy is the right word but like purpose driven and that's the takeaway that i have from this is if i'm gonna convince people to do stuff like run a work at a company or whatever you need to make them want to do it not force them to do it yeah that's that's a that's a great point they definitely have sort of the the spirit right now and the the moral morale in the the sort of like a rally going on right now and you know especially under these circumstances you know it definitely like adversity is something that pulls people together so you know it's definitely done that for them or it'll break your apart depending on what's your sense of purpose and so this guy's killing man yeah so this guy's it's been real it's been a it's a it's it's a really good i don't think we've had that in america for a while it's been it's a really good example of wonderful leadership this guy is killing it and he also uses really cute phrases like he says something like least sound bites he's like i don't need he was he was america offered me a lift to get out of here i don't need a lift i need armor piercing bullets yeah he's said and i'm like oh my god dude you are rainbow you are wonderful he's saying all the great stuff and that shit's important and there's a reason why like have you ever heard about where they describe old roman emperors as orders you know people who could speak well like yeah now i i understand why yeah totally there dude i've been so i don't normally read the news or watch the news at all i'd like never never turn it on don't read the newspaper don't go cnn i don't do any of it and and people sometimes like i don't make fun of me or sort of tell me i'm an idiot for that just yesterday some guy was like you know terrible life choice you know you gotta you gotta be in tune with the world's realities and i just think you don't in my head i'm like if you think the news is the world's reality like you know you're watching the world's worst reality show and but i you know i say anything to him because you know let him do his thing obviously you know the news is is making him a happy travel person so so i've i've always had this mindset which is like don't get pulled like basically i find the when people get really into government and politics the the phrase that my trainer said to me that makes more sense is like these people can't govern themselves they wanna talk about you know what the government can do and it's like most people fail to even govern themselves you can't get yourself to do what you should do well why are you so worried about what everybody else should do if you can't even get yourself to do it and i'm always sort of taken that as like a way to not get sucked into like twenty sixteen i had friends who were crying about trump and all this stuff and you know i said like i i get it it's not who i would voted for but i just don't worry about that like this is not i don't worry about the government i worry about government myself the exceptions being there's a pandemic i should probably like figure out what's actually going on what is the recommended course of action although that basically you know was was not really paid off because we got a bunch of bad information you know at first the second thing was okay there's a war going on and this is my first experience really like watching a war breakout like there's been wars that it just been going on forever like indian pakistan on at the border like you know israel real time this just ski all the time and afghanistan like you know i didn't even realize we were in it till we pulled out you know like as ignorant as that sounds like it just wasn't top of mind and it i didn't you didn't see it play out day by day this is the first time i've really seen it play out day by day so there's definitely like kind of a crazy thing to see i mean just to see like just to see people basically take a stand with like kind of like inspirational then to see like spurt coming out like on the internet like being like hey civilians this is how you like do urban warfare from your your bedroom window and like there's guys urban warfare experts he's like you need to drag all your furniture out into the streets into this s pattern your goal is to make that their vehicles cannot easily like roam your streets they need to be making all these different turns everything desks lamps toss it all into the middle of the street secondly you you know drink water because you know you can't go three days without water so make sure you're hydrating otherwise you can't find anybody third here's how you make a molotov tough cocktail fourth and he just had this like checklist i was like holy shit is this real life and then you see crazy man you see like you know there's like what you see in the news versus i'm in these like telegram channels or p people are posting videos from like on the ground and so you see like different perspectives how'd you get those ben had link me to two i was so i was sharing something like them he's like check this out there's is a telegram group where you could just get it's all in ukrainian like i can't under understand i don't i can't read the text i can only watch the videos or just like the heartbreak like there's a video that was going viral of this dad just like because you know they did a conscription right like everybody between the ages of eighteen and sixty all men like you're now in the army and there's a dad saying goodbye to his daughter like you knowing he may not may not ever see her again and she doesn't understand she's like a four year old kid and like i have two year old daughter so that was just like you know i was just like you know shattered by that and just that was like you see that and you're like this is wrong this is so wrong what's going on like it it just hit in a different way and i had heard on the all in podcast they were talking about this they go they go yeah like right now the us sentiment is like no don't don't go fight other people's wars like don't send our human lives into that and then the guy dave said he's something he was like you know i wonder how that'll change as the like sort of media starts to come out as you start to see videos of like atrocities and kids and women and people are gonna have a different reaction when they see that and that's exactly like literally the first video i saw that was such a heartbreak i was like we gotta do something i gotta donate some money i the same video i gotta do something here and so it's just been crazy to see kinda how it's all playing out like crazy is really the only way i describe it like it's crazy that this is happening it's crazy the way it happens it's crazy that like life gets turned upside down for people like all the things i care about on a day to day basis instantly would be out the window if something like this happen and then you see the financial side like this is crazy that this war is like i forgot somebody said this like banks not tanks it's like we're basically fighting russia with financial warfare it's it's crazy it's way worse like this i was i i was telling ben and i'm like putin screw has is he's gonna he's screwed up the only thing that really matters rule number one don't fuck with the money yeah like you messed of money paper putin yeah like because because money is like the the most important money is more important than lives often or at least you know that's a perception and so like yeah it's screwed up and i i wanna tell you a point i wanna pump your ego so do you know who you you said something you didn't say it as eloquently as i'm about to explain but nas sim how do you say the name kinda bad at names to leave okay so he tweeted something really good so basically he is the guy who anti fragile i forget what else he did black swan black swan yeah and he's kind of an odd ball but he's eccentric is better word and he basically says like don't read the news that's like what he said has said he said that for a long time and he's like don't read things he he says like don't don't don't read the news only read things if it's like fifty years old that's his whole point and he tweeted out this yesterday he's like except my book coming this march by pre order now yes and he tweeted this out yesterday and he goes most days ninety nine point nine percent of the news is noise the last few days it's all signal newspaper reading is useless except in crisis and i actually totally agree with that and that's what you said i i read the news every day but i actually think it's kinda pointless until it's like an urgent urgent thing and that bar the threshold of what's considered urgent is actually really high yeah and also there's a way to like you can use the news to inform yourself to gather information to like in my case it's just like have empathy for what's going on and just not think about this intellectually but the the news can also use you and you have to like figure out where that line is are you are are you using the news right now to gather what you wanna gather or are is the news using you as like eyeballs that they're gonna drain for the like you could be better your ass like you know fox and cnn every news channel like this is their like i'm not saying they don't care about what's going on but this is their payday right this is when they get their spikes this is when they say we have twenty four seven news coverage stay here don't move don't change the channel we are gonna sit send you drip by drip play by play updates and it's like that's actually not the healthiest you know like most productive way that you can live your life is by like getting hooked onto their twenty four seven you know play by play date of of this war so you know that's the kind of like caveat so this the last point i'll make but basically one of my heroes he's on my wall here you can't see him as ted turner and ted turner started cnn i think he started it in like nineteen eighty one but it was kind of a failure it lost a lot of money until nineteen eighty nine nineteen ninety when america or sorry when iraq invaded kuwait and the reason why is he sent over a bunch of new stations news reporters and it was one of the first times that news reporter could because of technology could film something and it be aired live and so it was one of the first war that was viewed live and it changed people's sentiment of the war and it made cnn a huge company that one year and that's kinda like what's gonna happen now except instead of a news instead of like a a publisher it's gonna be facebook and twitter they're just gonna crush for the next couple of years because we're glued to it and dude there's can i give you the kind of like the finance or crypto angle of what's going on here so so basically the west is doing this like financial warfare and they're like okay economic sanctions so we're gonna make it hard to trade we're gonna make it hard to to buy and sell goods and then they're doing a form of like you know they froze they froze them out of swift they'll kick them off of swift okay now you can't now you can't do international transfers and then they froze the central bank assets which was like the craziest move that was the financial nuke so that was where all of a sudden you know they had six hundred fifty billion dollars of reserves and they needed those reserves so why because their local currency is crashing so i think the rub lost what what was it like forty percent in the last day crazy so you know the average citizen as the one is paying the price right putin basically attacked selling citizens here because the currency is crashing nobody wants to hold this currency anymore there's a bank you know people are lined up to get money of the bank so normally the way the government props up their currency to prevent it from spiraling to zero as they will buy it back using their reserve assets they hold dollars they hold euros they hold gold they hold some crypto and they'll use that to buy back the rub but because it got frozen they can't do that and so that's gonna cause the occurrence to downfall so i think this time crypto is not gonna play as big of a story but you kinda have to bet that any country out there who's watching this is probably gonna say well we probably don't want the us to be able to just freeze all her assets so why are we holding the dollar as reserve why are we holding any currency that one country can one country or an alliance can basically freeze our assets or cut us off or take us out of the banking system so i think you're gonna see a pretty big move first buy you know the quote unquote bad guys basically quote first by the the folks that are afraid of the west to get out of the dollar and get more get more heavily into crypto because this is a wake up call oh wow they can just cut they would do this they'll cut us off completely they'll freeze our accounts and so i think in the next few years you're gonna see different regimes like switch over to digital currencies that can't be controlled by any one country for a bunch of uneducated dumbass i think we did pretty good with this one yeah we probably just said one thing or maybe it's ben's russian accent like that'll be where everyone just decides you know where assholes and cancels us but other than that you know whatever i think it's good you everything anything else i thought that ukraine stuff was awesome did you do you agree ben yeah i thought was really interesting i thought this is the most interesting news story this is all i wanna talk about so i thought it was interesting and and i think it's cool i think it's cool that we could actually talk about funny did i i so you know people don't wanna it either way so you i didn't if you don't talk about it it's like dude how are you not talking about this what do you you know why you you think your thing is important there's a war going on like i tweeted something else out i was like oh this is really cool how this is some tech thing and some this guy's is like bro it's kinda insensitive don't you think so war happening i was like oh am i just supposed to no not speak about anything else okay and then you're talking about the awards like oh now you're now you're a war expert well you you you you wrote something in the mill road that was great you said i think the opening line was we're not gonna mention the bitcoin price today because it's not really that important and i know what you guys are thinking like stay in your lane milk road and the truth is we know our purpose but we wanna talk about and i forget you went into like the the a bunch of different stuff but i thought that was a really good line what did people say about the milk road writing about this let's see i'm gonna i'll open up the this this thing is the the like feedback thing is so helpful but also you know like daunting at the same time did you see well well while you're pulling this up i'll say something did you see when i tweeted it out are there any pro putin people here what is with your opinion i wanna hear your perspective because everyone i know is is anti putin and a lot of people got pissed at me for asking that and i thought that was crazy yeah i tweeted something else similar like that i was like hey so you know just trying to like you know educate myself like what would be i i think i said something like i forgot what exactly what i said i was asking like what's the what would be the most kinda like pro russian reason for the invasion and the first i was like do do the people in russia does average person russia support this right and then i was like you know second question is is basically like what would what would be the like strongest justification for doing this you know or you know if if you're if you're like in russia's camp and you know i didn't get too much flack for it because i like had to like hedge it like crazy but it's so crazy you have to like really like soften everything so much yeah i guess you don't have to but if you don't you know you're definitely gonna like the the discussion becomes about you rather than just being able to be intellectually curious and say i'm trying to understand i'm trying to learn i'm trying to think for myself and i'm not saying i disagree with anything i just want to actually like understand all the perspectives that you know that exist so i said steel manning i wanna steal steel man the shift i real dog i wrote what would be the most pro pro russian invasion reason basically if you tried really hard to think about why this is justified what would you come up with and and hey you know then i got a bunch of answer i got twenty six answers to that and i was like okay that's cool that's helpful to to to hear and what about the milk road what were the replies did anyone tell you to f off i'm opening up what are they what are they saying to run james when lebron james gave his opinion on some stuff everyone everyone's telling dr it's just shut up and dr lebron yeah what did anyway in there shut up in podcast what are they gonna tell me to do shut up in type shot or i don't know i i'm gonna read that first i'm gonna read the first first three good like good reviews like we we have a this system it's like one one milk cup like the emoji like one milk is terrible three milk is average or five milk is is great so the tone the analysis the new war inside humor this is this has it all that's five another five one i like the insight into the conflict going on right now another one i think you wrote this struck absolutely the right tone sam that you or is that a different tone that's not me i i replied i said this is really good okay great great news newsletter day way to have a perspective and a sense of humanity i'm glad you avoided the business is useful and dove into how crypto was involved in this and then they complain about one like i made this analogy because i i'd said this thing which was like i love crypto when it's like helping the underdog right like when it banks the un bank or in people's currencies in and they could move into this to preserve their wealth but like there's an idea that oh russia could use crypto to get around these sanctions that's sucks and then i was like oh shit how do feel it's a moral dilemma in a way and and then i was like then i realized know like technology is neutral it's neither good nor evil it's just used i was like you know the example of a car like you can use a car to you know drop off your mother at the hospital when she needs help or you can use a car as a getaway vehicle to get away from the you know crime scene doesn't make a car good or evil in either case it's sort of like a moral and so some people were and some guys like that alright let me see if there's a one star roof yeah is there any negativity i literally wow this might be the highest rate to one be had here we go here we go here's one you should effing stick to crypto and stay out of politics okay number one awful shut up and dr no this one no one one milk awful oh i can't miss the opportunity to suck on some political ask well what you think you i you're typically here hear someone say you'd you'd kiss it but that's suck it it's like don't know you've got gross i don't don't make that and they did the thing where every other letter is capitalized you know oh my god been reading your own comments i'm not sure this is even useful so i might just leave this up so people have an outlet but it's like here go yell into this shoe box already this stuff anymore i check all of it we have a va right now we check it all because it's new but like we have va who basically will just summarize the like here was your score and here's like the the like kind of valid criticism and the valid like compliments so i'm just gonna read that from now on and not the like the raw stuff unless i really need to go hate my life yeah there's a bunch of i'm actually for this m thing i'm doing and i'm talking about feedback i'm like not all feedback important like for example if people complain about pricing i'm like i don't really listen to that i i don't care what they say about price because i'm not gonna change another thing is like if they say like well i wish you would've have sent that email this is what the we've see in the hustle like send that email earlier sometimes i'm like alright i'll we'll do it but then once we started sending at six am and i would get complaints like i'm i'm not listening to this anymore we're i'm not we're not doing it and so it it is hard to figure out what is actually important and what's not and for a lot of feedback is actually not important totally it's all noise or whiplash you you do one thing and then they'll say one thing you do the other i remember at twitch this happened we went to an exec off site and they're were like alright so the feedback amongst the execs to the ceo and the ceo was like you didn't listen to our input enough like we fell out of the loop you guys just decided it was too top down and then the next off offset was three months so they they spent that whole off upside gathering like what do you guys think what are your opinion what would you do like trying to get like the bottoms up three months later it was like okay let's read out the feedback from last time the you know what's happened the last three months like god can you guys just make a decision already you're the leader supposed to just make a call like why you keep asking us you're supposed to have the answers it's like wow it's like really extreme whiplash of like you know never never have one way or the other and the the best answer i got was like if you take ten pieces of feedback they're all informative nine will inform you they'll like they'll tell you about the person it's not about you it'll tell you about them and then one will tell you something interesting or insightful about you you have to figure out what's the one out of ten and what's the nine that's just about this person like some guy tweeted some feedback about my course like saying was oh it's going great like you know it's been awesome blah he's talking about like i love the energy like sean just it's like a performance it's not just like here's some slides and the guy and so some guy replies he goes out to performance so all about energy so basically you you know nothing insightful probably just a big motivational talk on of stuff you coulda have just found on the internet and then the guy there were no guy response he's like well yeah like you know eighty percent of any that you could just go google and fine but reality is most people are not gonna know what to google even if they're not gonna go take the time to google so it's great to like have it all packed in and the guy's like yeah yeah yeah all i heard is i paying just i'm paying nine hundred and fifty dollars just to hear sean pump me up it's like alright so that's that's about him that's not about was not about the course the biggest thing when when the hustle when we first i remember we we hired two it was just me and another guy we hired two or three interns and so these weren't even full time employees and we used from the beginning we did this thing every i think wednesday we would go out to lunch and i remember i remember the first time we had other people in that office i said alright well what do guys wanna do for lunch and i got three or four different answers and i was like lesson learned never ask and so from that point on it was we're going here i and and i said here's what we'll do every week someone else there's a decision maker but you can't ask you just you decide right and i found that people are just happier that and life easier and and oftentimes it's like that with feedback where just like i'll listen to sometimes but most of time i'm just doing what i wanna do and i'm just gonna deal with the consequences right so can i yep can i ask you random question about milk road is yeah who designed the the like milk jar who did that little graphic i don't know ben got that made or he found that somewhere i think he got it made from there's a guy who we featured their their dow pretty cool there's a bunch of designers i got together and this is dow i think called vector dow and basically like high level designers and they basically created a like a like a ad hoc agency so companies come to them they pay them and then like anybody in the dow can like take the project like form a little guild like a five people a form team and they'll go design the thing and basically it's like an agency that was like they don't have a hiring and firing hiring process you just sort of join and you can either contribute or not contribute at the end of the day and so the thing is cool but it's pretty expensive pretty pricey so i think when we were featuring it we talked to some guy ben met some guy and then one of the people in victor i was like yeah i just like like i like milk road and you're thinking so ugly like i got i gotta improve it so they indian and sean are they indian i don't think they're indian no they and then and then ben every what ben does is he's like he'll just post something like hey do you i made this design do you think at this and the guy's like ben i what you're doing you just keep showing me stuff that's so ugly that are like i can't help myself but go fix it like fine i'll fix it again and he's done that twice now i just did a reverse google image search and there's an article written in the india times and it's using your logo so so maybe so maybe that one is maybe that icon is one that they've been found instead of the design but the guy designed like all the like banners and the the brakes in the like in the in the email itself like the format of the design of the email wow and like why do you ask one lady because i really like the formatting and in they're the design and it's really simple like it's basically just that little milk jar and like that color blue yeah and i i find it really simple but attractive and memorable oh thank you wow that's flattered are you describing sean or the logo i'm a blushing right now katie's gonna watch out she's watch her bed alright that's the episode i think right yeah we're seventy it sounds like i got a hard stop at the hour and then i'm like just we just keep talking about random use of stuff