Shaan Loses $700k In Crypto Crash And The Mentality of A Downturn

am trying to be intentionally out of touch in the same way that i intentionally avoid the abuse alright we're live what's going on well yeah well sam yeah yeah yeah you're my first million has become my first hundred thousand yeah your first my my last million yeah on a good day what you took something out of the milk road i texted you this but we didn't reply you so in the milk road my favorite part was you had what was the starting amount a million or five hundred or what was it you had your portfolio is actually less it's nine nine hundred fifty thousand so nine hundred fifty thousand dollar portfolio and every day you would say what it's at compared to where what what it was you took it out what's it at now correct why'd did you take it out i don't even wanna look we took out the prices today because or what do we do we today we did a little different so the crypto prices crashed over the weekend and so we were like okay people are definitely gonna wanna know like what's all the stuff so no not saturday monday we resent today no you said weekend weekend version version yeah that was just a different that was just like a special edition yeah that was that was nothing today we sent like wise crypto crashing the weekend one was about jack do because jack do announced something called web five and we were like we're just hilarious it's just like hilarious thing because it's like web three people are debating it is even a thing and like he just skipped web four and went straight to web five and like you know people are like what the hell is this so we explained what the hell is this that's what the weekend one was but today crypto down like twenty percent or something crazy like if the room is is like i don't know thousand dollars or something like that right now so yeah dude it's brutal the million dollar portfolio we basically started this right where i'm gonna start the milk road i was like what will be entertaining to get people hooked to subscribe and i was like oh i know i'll put up a million dollars and i'll say watch i will publicly invest this money and let's try to turn it into ten million and became a mission turning one million a ten million through crypto investing and to be honest we did even do that much we didn't even make very many moves i could just started with a million dollars worth of of eth and i think we made like two investments maybe since then just because i've been busy with the milk like building the milk road and like the podcast and my other business and stuff like that not like i've been super active but eth is down like sixty six percent and all of crypto is down like that or worse and so the portfolio is brutal it's like you know are you million dollars is currently two hundred fifty or three hundred thousand dollars is my guess based on where we were at where's is your head at are you freaking out or are you still calm like you always are i'm still calm yeah so so this is it's a funny little like story i guess i don't know why i said it's funny this is actually no humor at all in it but it's interesting how how i feel about it ben flew so ben flew in last night not producer ben this is part of ben so business part ben flies in last night we're he's gonna be here for the week we're gonna like work on a bunch of stuff and like basically like you know from the time you took off the time he landed like our whole business has changed and what what has changed is basically like well aside from our own personal net worth you know going down and the mil road public portfolio going down like we've have just entered like the whole economy is entered a recession and crypto is entered for for sure like a big down swing bear market crash whatever you wanna call it and it's it's not gonna like just bounce right back and all gonna be like fun of dandy again like if you think about this time last year i'm not this time last year but let's say like six to twelve months ago it felt like money was raining from the skies like you know i i invested in a bunch of tech stocks everything was up every day everything was up zoom is tripled in price and amazon is up because everybody's ordering all their shit online and like every company that we invest in private startup was like raising money at crazy valuations and literally like there's a phrase of money raining on fools money was raining on fools and like n t's were selling you know n nxt were selling for ridiculous prices and it's so crazy that like you know on a dime it feels like the whole world has changed and everybody's mindset mentality has also changed which is that like now it feels almost impossible to make money it's like well where do go make money this stock market is down brutally crypto is crashed every business is now laying off people or freezing hiring on top of that you know at companies are cutting their budgets and ad spend so if you're at if your business relied on ads you know that's getting cut and so now you know money was on for and now money's is being drained from from smart people too you're seeing advertisers were i tweeted out like what's going on in the ad world because i'm not in the anymore you're seeing it go away not this fast but yeah like you know the first shooter drop was like kind of like consumer brands like d brands and whatnot they were the first i would say in the last three months to start like reducing spending whereas before it was like how do i spend more and then there was like companies that are like well it's hard to have a big ad budget when you're laying off a bunch of people so they're and now that they went into hiring freezes or layoffs offs their ad budgets are certainly tightening up we don't see it this month like this month an all time high an ad avenue but like i'm sure in the next three months that ad budgets are gonna constrict they'd be crazy not to in our e commerce business we see sales like this month is good but you could see the tightening happening where it's like revenue you know people just are you know they're not getting stem checks that they can go spend on you know you know electronics and toys and and and clothes and and all this good stuff and so consumers are start slowing down their their spending and so it's like and all these things are inter linked right like the when the consumer spends less the the business makes less money than it has less money to hire less money to advertise and then the platforms get less revenue and then they do the same thing and it's just all interconnected right so this is interesting to me because i have not lived through a bear market as a founder or investor right like two thousand eight i was a sophomore in college or something like that right like i of you're like a yeah software college i graduated i graduated high school o eight so basically this is our first time as like money earning professionals that we've experienced anything like this yeah dude it is great i'll give you kind of my my mentality because you said like are you freaking out my mentality was like definitely have i've had thoughts of like oh shit oh shit oh shit oh shit but then i sort of like well the thought can arise but i'm not like consumed by it like i definitely had like a day where i was like kept checking prices kept doom scrolling twitter but like i don't know if i pride myself on like you know my my mental fitness and it's like well this is the time to be fit it's like when stuff that's hard happens this is the time to use all those tools you've been building up all those muscles you've been building about like seeing things in a way that actually serves you and so for me i'm like immediately i'll show you this thing so ben flies in and last night at midnight we're basically he were sitting in my office and we we wrote this thing at the i don't know if you can see this is like un focus but it says like how a loser brain would work right now loser brain i loser brain says that so we all like you know like rich dad port dad in my head i have this thing called loser brand winner brand it's like a loser brand will bring these thoughts up and bring its attention to these things and a winners brand will have these like so we basically wrote down all the scary thoughts it's like yeah yeah and so i like ben just rattle them off so i'm i'll read you some of these if you're interested but like well alright but we did this exercise in order to reframe our thinking everything that i think about right now and i've been i'm calm about it because i i've always i'm you everyone gives me a hard time that i'm conservative and it's kinda working out right now but even still i'm down a sick a huge amount and my fear is always rooted in like i'm gonna run out i'm like i'm i'm homeless do you have those fears of like i'm i'm gonna run out no because if i act if i asked you do you actually think you're gonna run out no but do i take away you sample think you're gonna go broke which is a combination of you got a lot of money still and secondly you always have like your core skill is the ability to make and sell products that people are gonna want well i'm not saying how do you i'm not saying it's logical i'm saying like it's like my fear of flying i understand that like i'm i'm far more likely to fall off like a set of stairs or to get hit in the car go into the plane but i'm still like it's such a deep rooted yeah issue and i think it's actually deep rooted in a lot of people of like i just fuck i work for so long for this thing and it's gonna run out joseph kennedy the jfk dad i i read his biography he was like the eighth or ninth richest person in america when he was alive and i think he was worth a hundred million dollars and he said i would give away half of my money now if it meant i would be guaranteed yeah i get i would be guaranteed to have the other half forever and grow at a very conservative but consistent rate because he was like i'm just so afraid of losing everything that i worked for and that loss aversion is often like it's like way harder would you do that by the way would you take that trade no no i wouldn't but at no no tempe i i i think that the world so he said that probably in nineteen twenty i think like i think that i still em bullish on america and i still think that over the next hundred years like i'm gonna it's gonna average seven or eight percent a year and i'll be okay so i'm i'm okay with no i i wouldn't do it i i felt like and everyone talks about america like like oh like empire's only last two hundred and fifty years and we're we're there and in my head i'm like but do do you think that we're gonna go to zero like england like has been around for two thousand years and they're not number one or number two but like b number seven is pretty good too do you know what i mean and so whatever people talk about like america's gonna collapse i i'm like well like wait this like they still got like a dude standing in front of a building all day like a statue you can go take pictures of them right so like life can't be that bad there they got fuzzy black hat on yeah i like it's not that bad like i wouldn't mind being germany or france and like they they like were the best for two thousand years and now they're not number one or number two but like you know i'll be the red sox it's okay like it's not a big deal so anyway i'm pretty like long term bullish out america so no i wouldn't give away half italians italian still eating pasta or the span the span it's still take naps in the middle a day like yeah you don't need to be number one to live a very sweet life yeah yeah yeah yeah so like it's not like i'm i'm happy like so i wanna describe because i think this is the main topic right like i had a bunch of like you know random ideas and stuff like that and we can get to those but i do think the main topic is probably where most people are at is our audiences is i would say heavily entrepreneurial and or work in tech if you let's just go through both scenarios if you work in tech you're likely you know have a lot of your net worth invested in either the stock of the company that you're being paid in or you you know you might be investing the mark crypto the crypto markets or the stock markets and most likely you are you've taken a bath of like you know something between thirty and sixty percent of your net worth in like the span of five months has evaporated and like whatever plan you had for buying a house you know you're like oh wait you know the my money is sort of you know a lot of my money is gone and the interest rate has gone up and like you know or like you know i wanna to have that kit in another kid and like now i to like think twice before i do that and like shit up been ordering groceries like three days you know or ordering door three days a week or like do i really need to pay like you know thirty two dollars for you know burrito and chips like you know you start to reassess a bunch of things in your life especially because the last ten years like if you're around our age were like you know kinda like early thirties like all you've seen since you graduated was numbers go up and so it's kinda jarring to suddenly see numbers go down at least that's my perspective did using i accurately like labeled one part of our audience yeah in particular the last two years like it's been like up up up up up like crazy yes that and that that is our audience and then you have business owners who are like great this thing i've been you know working so hard at every day for the last x years like here's the here's the good news long silence okay here's the bad news now your valuation is like cut in half your customers are likely going to you know start tightening up and paying you less money you're probably gonna have to do some layoffs trimming somewhere in your business and your cost structure and like there's a i don't know thirty to forty percent chance you got out a business in the next year and a half on top of whatever your normal risk of going out of business was and so like great you know we have you have risk of going to zero and so that's a kind of stressful thought and so on both sides you have this kind of stressful kind of depressing thought and i would say and and if you're an investor you know all the same thoughts you know times too so where does that leave you you know you're either in a puddle of despair or you're gonna be like okay i need to kind of like gi up and real and and i have to realize the environment has changed and if that changed what needs to change in my world and so i think there's like a pretty healthy exercise to go down of like what needs to change in my world and that i would say like that's the productive conversation so it's not enough to just be like i'm just gonna close my eyes and think happy thoughts and be positive it's like well i need to be realistic a lot of shit's change i probably need to change with it but also like do i wanna sit here and feel depressed or hopeless no and so therefore i gotta like you might have that thought of like i could lose it all or this is all get to zero or like all my hard work is gone or like whatever all those thoughts but in my mind it's like i need to reprogram my brain to operate in this new world and i need to like basically i need to like consciously reprogram my brain so that i well well what what i'm my point is i do believe like or i do have that fear of it's all gonna go away and my reaction is not quit my or my app reaction isn't even spend less my reaction is yeah it might although the my it might go away let's get after it like let's go get more or let's go you you know like it that it to me it's a very stressful period but it's a period and it's not actually stressful when i actually like logically think about it i'm it's not that big a deal but it is a i think that whenever i look back at the shit that i've made that's been successful it typically is when there's not a lot of alternatives and it's like oh man this needs to work so right i do my best work when when back against the wall that's a that's a one thing that a lot of people believe and that's a belief that can serve you well when things get hard so it it is stressful but you you i i think i said this a while ago i ago go you're i think i'm more likely to be like a slow and steady like success whereas you're more likely to become a billionaire in like five years or lose at all and so because you take or you take well you take a lot of risk or both you'll become a billionaire then lose little you take way more re your risk on so that's why i'm interested in hearing your perspective on this right now because you're like you're you're all in on a couple things that that just so happen are getting hit the worst so what would be fun to talk about what would be interesting to talk about like you know we can go into like why we think it's happening we can go like what are you gonna do about it can go do well i don't have show band like where do you wanna go i don't wanna go into why it's happening and i was thinking about this we're in this text group with all those guys and they're all like it's just a bunch of like supposedly smart people no that they actually are smart but like they they're what's crazy is that like america has been around for hundreds of years capitalism has been around for thousands of years and yet the smartest people don't agree on the cause or the solution and they can't predict what happens and that's kind of interesting to me because at your business at a business like you have a pipeline and you have a funnel and when you build a good business you're like alright there's a ninety percent chance that blank is gonna happen and i understand that business america's is kinda like a business just with three hundred thirty million people and like a weird cover a a weird corporate structure where like you can't really like do whatever you gotta get all these checks and balances and all this shit done but what's isn't it kind of fascinating that we still three don't entirely understand the cause or the solution to a lot of these different problems that's always been very un unsatisfied it's like stock market goes up or down then there's like this race to make up the cause and it's like okay so you're saying every time that happens this will happen no okay so you're saying that you could have foresee this well it's like and what it it is is like you know sort of this backwards application of narratives so and it's not that there was no cause or there is no true narrative it's just that it's not easy or clear to see what is the true cause and what are the true narratives amongst the many possible explanations and reasoning you could have right like did it rain today because i did this dance or did it rain today because you know the clouds have you know heavy whatever a precipitation and why do they have that bill because of the changes in weather and whatever else like you know it's very it's very hard to separate the people who think things are happening because they did the they think it's raining because they did a funny dance it's just that we can predict certain human behavior relatively reliably like you know the whole padlock dog thing like i i know that if i do this this and this most of the time a creature is gonna react by doing x y and z and i was and it just kinda has always baffled me i'm like well why can't we just take all of this input and put it together and figure out what the solution or what the causes is and that's always baffled me and it also freaks me out that so many people who i view as smart say opposite things do you follow a zero hedge on twitter yeah so zero hedge is like this pretty hardcore i don't know if it's like libertarian is the best way to describe it but like they're pretty much always like doom gloom and every article is written by the guy from fight club what's his name tyler du tyler du yeah and every article written by that guy and their twitter profile they only tweet in caps every tweet is it is it caps lock and they tweet yeah they tweet the scariest stuff all the time and it's incredibly easy to believe and trust for some reason because i don't know what it is about emotion that i just automatically assume that the worst is actually the truth and i i've had it like un follow that did you have you ever do follow that handle yeah for sure and i i i would not un follow it but i i totally get what you mean which is that like if you follow zero hedge you're just like wow all of the big people in charge are sort of idiots and all of the stuff that's going up is you know over value and over inflated and over everything and like you know no matter how bad it is it could get worse don't think that this is the end of the pain right and and and that you know like people have said this about like you know people who predict crashes and recessions it's sort of like this guy predicted you know a recession thirteen out of the last three times it's happened and it's like you know if you're every year you predict a crash you know you'll be seen as a genius because you predict it for three straight years like you then it happens like well you weren't wrong you were just a little early and then like you know all those years where things are going up you know you're again you're just sort of like you're just early and so it it kinda pays somebody said this the other day like would say in general like it in a bear market you know it pays to be a pe and in a bull market it's sort of pays to be an opt and somebody who's always a pe or somebody always an opt is not gonna have like long term success the ability to shift gears between like optimism and pessimism and knowing when to do what is a like highly underrated trait that very few people have let me tell you what i'm doing with the i don't exactly have a biz i don't really have like a business business but i have a a a a small version of that that might become a proper business let me tell what i'm doing and then you tell me what you're gonna do but basically my reasoning and keep in mind i'm like a i i feel so stupid when it comes to this finance economy stuff i don't know i i really don't i don't understand anything but my belief is basically like well now is the bottom and i actually discovered this with the hustle where i was like i was creating something that people kind of dismiss or thought it couldn't work but then it takes like four or five six years to get to like a substantial business and by that point people took it seriously and i was the biggest and the best and therefore it could get acquired or was making lot of the revenue so with my the thing i'm working on now my my logic is well now is the time to work really really hard and it might suck for one or two or three years but when things start changing a little bit that's actually around the time where i'm gonna have a team i'm gonna have process off systems on have product market fit and then we could accelerate really hard then because we've already done the the hard work during the hard times is that is that kinda how you're looking at it too a little bit yeah definitely i i think that's that's definitely the case so what what i'd had said was i said to kinda kind of three things to myself i said number one this is a good chance to remember what i truly believe it's like and this is like first i needed to calm my nerves because if i'm in a sort of fight flight if i'm in a state of like panic anxiety and stress i already know my decision making is not very good my decision making is at best rushed and at worst it's like you know like operating from a place of fear and therefore all i'm trying to do is like you know like minimize pain and never like get any any advantage out of it just like minimize the amount of disadvantage i'm having in the short term and so our my first step from for me is get out of a fight flight mindset and so that that's where i first just check myself i'm like what do really believe i truly believe this in the bottom of my heart i don't mean this in an arrogant way but i truly believe that like if i look at my life over like a ten to twenty year period from here right i'm in my early thirties so by time i'm forty or fifty like i think i'm gonna have more money than i ever know what to do it to me that's like the spoiler of my life it's like if i flip to the end of the book i'm like oh it ends happily ever after yeah like i i truly believe that i truly believe that like i'm just gonna keep doing business projects i'm gonna keep investing in things and like on the whole i'm gonna end up so far ahead even if any individual investment or any individual business project doesn't work out in a ten to twenty year period that when i check the score at the end of the game like i'm gonna be a i'm gonna have more money that i know what to do within my personal life i truly believe that about myself so if i knew that was the ending then there's no real reason to panic like if i know that's what the score is at the end of the fourth quarter then like it doesn't really matter what happens in the first quarter like i should i should for sure playing and doing my best but like it doesn't matter if i fall behind or if i lose a little bit money here if the score doesn't go my way for this next twelve to eighteen months that's okay so that that it's like i kind remember do i believe that or not alright i do believe that then she'll first chill the fuck out okay that's that's like wait let me let me tell you something though really quick the to let me be the huge pe here i believe that that is true about you as well i believe that that is true about a a bunch of people who we know but here's the thing that i think about all the time it's like i don't wanna be i don't wanna have more money that i know what to do with when i'm seventy i wanna fucking now when i'm young i'm gonna get experience all this crazy stuff and like enjoy life i don't want it then i want it now by by then i don't care like i'll i i'm okay with having way less i want it today i want the freedom now what i'm healthy and can go do whatever i want that's why i i freaking with like i'm with you but it's sooner the better it's not now or never so sooner the better is very different than now or never and so okay we got a sooner the better at mindset so we're gonna take a bunch of shots we're we'll take a bunch of action out increase the odds that it comes sooner rather than later the second thing is does it matter did my day to day actually change because my stock portfolio my crypto portfolio my net worth changed right like your net worth it's not a fig of your imagination but it's sort of like a fig of your like ego or sort of like a fig of your like perceived sense of safety and so like in reality the stock mart go down the credit market go down it doesn't actually change my like day to day lifestyle or comfort based on where i'm at for some people it's going to change that but for me it's not gonna change that so that also to helps take the edge off which allows me to think with a clear head then i start thinking they're not changing how not changing your spending pattern oh like in a small way but nothing that like my happiness on a day to level doesn't change whether i you know like like you know have a chef or not you know like oh oh cool it's cooking season then right okay cool i'm buying i'm going to like i to trader joe's yesterday and then instead of whole foods yeah i'm i shift some shift some small decisions but like that's cool trader joe's doesn't saying like you know who cares like those sorts of things don't actually like sway how i feel yeah i was gonna another car did you actually do i guess hold off on that you're doing trader joe's trader just yeah like literally literally yeah like but again i like trader genesis is not big problem for me because i drove four extra blocks and went to the trader joe's you know like wait cool you know so you know and again not everybody is fortunate like these are like their situations i get that but like i'd like to believe that in general my my day to day like kind of happiness quotient is not so so weak that it's like dependent on these like material or like you know like frivolous things i like you know sometimes like it's stuck in traffic well guess what i don't know the radio baby it's a concert right like a big ass honey crisp apple for whole foods it's not trivial if you asking me yeah but i i don't i've always had this feeling of like i i've always kept myself honest which is what i want is to have you know a fat mansion and be eating a feast with all the people i my friends and you know family like all at the table we're laughing and joking that's my ideal but what's even better than that what's even better that having the sick mansion with the feast with all your friends and family all around you and you're laughing at the great joke you just cracked okay that's what i thought was the peak but the actual peak of the peak is you're the type person that you can get stuck in an elevator and have fun because then you're invincible what's better than invincible mode is like you could put me in the shitty situation and i'm still gonna be laughing okay so now now what now i don't really have anything to fear because my my my situation my my feelings weren't dependent on having all those those items alright even though i prefer them so so yeah yeah know i think that i guess like yeah i do make some shifts in my life lifestyle but it's not like to me i'm like oh cool it's a new season like it's tightening up season it's like you know it's like getting shredded for the summer for you know your body it's like cool i'm also gonna go and cancel a bunch of subscriptions i don't care about because it'll make me feel good like i'm i'm i'm putting a healthy amount of discipline in like i kind of accrued a bunch of excess fat when it was one season and now it's time to cleanse and like good like you know where where am i spending that don't really wanna be spending you know where are we where are we advertising that's inefficient you know who's on our payroll that's not really pulling their weight let's get rid of all that weight now it's like spring cleaning baby so it's like that's the next step for me is like you an actual spring cleaning and be excited about it i've been using true bill this isn't not an ad but have you seen yeah it's called true bill i bought like the hundred dollar subscription have you ever used that you know what that hasn't used it but i have used stuff like it yeah it basically like looks at your subscriptions like suggest how does it know what you're not using it suggest what to cut right where like drives them like i didn't realize that me and sarah both had amazon prime subscriptions like apparently i thought i canceled one of them and so it catches that and it also like i just see how much i'm spending every month and i'll say you have an upcoming three hundred dollar subscription coming up and it's like oh that's my trainer but there's been times where i'm like oh damn i thought i didn't know i had x box live or whatever hell that thing called it's a twenty nine dollar thing and it's coming up and so you can like cancel it but then what they do is if you need to cancel something that you wanna call they'll like do it for you they'll do it for you it's pretty cool yeah and so so that's another piece of this which is me me ben and saf we were hanging out this morning and so we you know we all hung out together and we're getting our coffee for the that's the milk road team and we're like or like part of it and we were like okay let's just make a real list real quick let's assume for a second assume this market condition these market conditions last for the next let's call it eighteen months so let's assume the stock market it'll bounce back from like whatever it'll find some low and it'll bounce back a little bit but it's not gonna be like alright baby we're back to every you know everything's just keeps going up we all print money right that's not gonna happen let's say for for the next cycle same thing was crypto let's say that you know companies you know they're not giving out raises or hiring as much let's say that customers tighten up their spending so revenues go down across the board like cool let's assume all that to be true do we also believe that like like first some things are gonna die some things are gonna survive and some things are gonna thrive true bill is something that thrive during a time like this right because it's helping you bring some you know austerity or like you know financial discipline into your life so people are gonna want that product more they're gonna thrive what else is gonna thrive baby short sellers are gonna thrive right now because they've been betting that the market's is gonna go down and churn if it has who else is gonna thrive you know the guy who's been sitting on a bunch of cash on the sidelines is like oh actually like there's things that i think are valuable businesses like you know facebook and amazon that are trading at all times sort of like you know lows in the last decade like now is the time to dollar cost average into these companies into dude how about that sense how about mo za saying he had in the interview you did with him saying he had fifty million in cash and he was like i just been waiting it's like oh okay now yeah i understand what you you lost the time i understand her yeah yeah exactly i remember just as like a small anecdote like i remember maybe seven years ago six years ago something like that i don't know i bought bitcoin for the first i i about ten grand of bitcoin back when bitcoin was like at six hundred seven hundred dollars six seven hundred bucks and and the next week it goes up to eight hundred and i'm like there we go baby just as i wanted by the thing price goes up love it when they stick to the script and like i think two weeks later or something like that i don't know make up time timelines here but very short soon after that bitcoin crashed to like two hundred dollars so my like what was eight hundred was now you know i lost you know whatever seventy five percent i don't know public math but you get the idea lost a bunch of money in that process and at that time ten thousand dollar like i was making a hundred and fifty k a year i think it was like my salary hundred actually definitely i made either a hundred twenty or hundred and sixty so i remember when that was and i remember you told me you made a hundred and fifty grand a year in salary and i was like oh my god you're the rich person i know yeah i was a rich person i knew at that time so i was like and you know and actually like in reality i was underpaid for you know what i was doing about in my head i was i was like wow don't say anything they might realize how much money they're paying you know like that was like i was so honored to be making that kind of money so and like i feel good that i was on like it feels it's it's great to feel honored at what you're getting that's actually an awesome feeling to be in versus consistently dissatisfied but like i remember it went down to two hundred i walk into the office and i was like bitch vision about the like the crash i was my bitcoin because like you know i'm very public when i invest in things which makes me often look like a dummy but occasionally makes sure you look very smart and i was like oh guys my bitcoin purchase my my my my forgot to put a ten or twenty grand something like that i was like it's oh it's like all gone now and fe was like he's was like this is great right like you know do you like do you believe less in bitcoin just like than you did two weeks ago like did you learn some new information like besides the price changing like did you learn any new official pick bitcoin that makes you less bullish on bitcoin i was like no like barely knew anything to begin with and like you know nothing changed and he's like cool so like if you bought now you could bring your average cost base down to like four hundred and i was like oh like yes that's true and i went home and i did it and i was like i like i remember going from like just what i thought was the only response i thought the only response is bitumen and moan and then he kinda pointed out well like did your actual conviction change or just the valuation i was like right well i don't know a conviction didn't change not not to say i had a ton of like very well thought through conviction at the time but like it didn't change and so i did i i lowered my cost basis to four hundred now as big bitcoin bitcoin say trading like don't know twenty three hundred a twenty two thousand something like that but like let's say on the average last year it's been a thirty k so that that's the difference between basically like an eight x and a four x in your return was that one conversation during that one time and i've i heard this many many times before which is like you know fortunes are built during these bear market times and it's really for two reasons number one if you start a company you're gonna be like the lean meeting cockroach you're not gonna have too much competition and you're gonna build up your your kind of team and consumer base now so that as you know as the tide lifts all the boats you're the biggest fucking boat that's what happened to you with the hustle and like that's what happened to many companies that started during you know let's say that recessions or bear markets the same thing happens with investing it's like well the goal if your strategy with investing is to only buy in when things are going up and then like sell or do nothing when prices go down like you have inadvertently subscribe to a buy high sell strategy and like you know i think we know that that's not a winning strategy and so like you know well then what's the opposite of that the opposite of that is to if you have conviction or if there are good assets that are under price temporarily like there's a dislocation because a panic and fear like those are the times where you're supposed to buy in it's very hard to do so because your mentality is like like i just lost a ton of money i don't feel like going and putting more at risk but in reality we kinda know that is the right thing to do for the if you could pick assets properly dude what i've been learning about this and i treated this out was like i'd rather just earn more income and build more companies than worry about these losses so let me can can i let's let's shift a little bit can i tell you about a company or this you remember how you said i i find these things that are kind of interesting and weird i found another one and i wanna tell you about it alright have you heard of this conference called shop talk shop talk no alright that name sounds familiar one second let me go you this so just start to describe it let me see if i have heard of this alright so it's a conference that i think you would have been involved in because it's for e commerce people but it's not just like e it's not like d entrepreneurs it's like shopify as well as like every shopify plugin as well as like retail brands like like the founder of or the ceo of j crew might go and talk to like the see talk on a panel with like the someone that stripe i don't know just like it's like online commerce but like for retail stuff that makes sense but it's like be the use case so who who goes i'm a i'm at eco com store or should i go to this probably not but if you're like you would go and speak and like executives at gap would be like oh like these young startups ups here's what they're doing maybe we should like consider changing our strategy to x y and z or we're we're making apps for this we're making software for this ecosystem let's go and talk to other apps and maybe we could do business together does that make sense let me ask you slightly slightly differently there's like kind of like trade shows or like it's a trade show instance where it's okay it's more like a trade show gotcha it's a trade show alright but here's where things get interesting so the guy who started it i linked to his his linkedin down there in the document and i think the name jonathan wiener and he has this c cofounder he's an indian guy named i i forget the indian guy's name but so listen to their background and let me tell you what they're doing now and why this is so fascinating so i relate linkedin article from v and it said the guy behind money twenty twenty conference won't do the same thing but for commerce so what that's what what that we'll explain is basically this guy jonathan and his partner they started a company by the way i saw you sm when i said the guy's last name that was hilarious i was trying so hard to come up with a good joke and i just you know my filter in my brain was like you know what not worth the risk this data is wrong every freaking in time have you heard of hubspot hubspot is a crm platform where everything is fully integrated well i can see the clients hold history calls support tickets emails and here's a task from three days ago i'm totally missed hotspot hubspot girl better so this guy is partner jonathan wei is in his indian partner so it's like you and you and me like the wiener and the brown guy so this guy they had an ad tech company as well as a payment software business that they sold for hundreds of millions of dollars and then oddly they went and started a conference and it was called money twenty twenty which was like a fintech payment processors trade show business and within two years they scaled it to like thirty or twenty five million dollars in revenue with ten million dollars in profit and they sold it for a hundred million dollars right when they sold it they went and started the same thing and they called it shop talk and they did it for commerce and they sold that for over a hundred million dollars and they sold both money twenty twenty and shop talked to two different publicly traded companies so all these numbers that i'm saying you can actually go and look at the numbers and like verify the acquisition price as well as the revenue now i noticed that one of the founders spun off and he's doing a different thing called like the fintech meetup up for something involving fintech and then the other guy is doing one called health it's pronounce health it's spelled h l t h dot com and he's doing this a a trade business for health care and they're basically doing the same strategy every single time and if you go to all three of their of their conference websites and you click the about page they have these really cool cartoons about cartoons instead of like shots of each employee they just do cartoons they've done that for every sequel about page so they're more likely than not like hiring like the same people the same graphic designers the the because they're not compete yeah their non compete probably says like look you can't create anything in the fintech space anymore you can't create a thing in the commerce space anymore and they're like alright let's do health let's do this let's do that and it's so interesting that they're getting into conference and trade show businesses as opposed to software and they've have crushed it they are crushing it and they don't raise money and they just like it's like every three years they start something can sell it for a hundred million dollars and it's the same thing and they've done it two or three times now isn't that crazy this is amazing but you've done it again sam you have done it again dude i love these fact i remember you telling me about money twenty twenty a little while back because you've always been interested in conferences trade shows businesses from the hustle con days and i remember every time you told me about these i was like sort of consistently blown away as to how much money these make now what do you think is the playbook to do this because like for example well just kind of in transparency we've talked about this with the milk road of like dude this there's a lot of like there's a lot of money and there's a lot of moving parts to like people who are you know have some interest in this whether it's like wall street people kinda wanna get educated on this stuff you know in insurance you know let's call it like mutual funds hedge funds bankers whatever and then there's like crypto people there's vcs it's like all these different people who are like professionals and there are tons of conferences right so it's it's not like some un competitive space but what are these guys doing that's better or different because i don't believe most conferences businesses are scaling this fast or selling for this much so what are the what's this guy what are their what's their playbook compared to how most people do do you know a little bit so the misconception with a lot of these make some con make some guesses because before know exactly and i've tried to like d it just based on the outside but so the misconception about conferences is that you need cool speakers and people come to watch content and as i've studied these guys and read their quotes and figure out exactly how they i do it and i ran a conference business that made millions of dollars a year i've realized that the real money like the twenty thirty forty million dollar a year money it's not necessarily a conference it's a three day transactional event it's you you're creating ebay or you're creating main street with stores on the on the street and renting it out you're creating that but it just so happens that's it's gonna happen in three days so years where the business is gonna happen in three days and so what you have to think about is your your speakers are just the bait to get the right people to come and then once a certain right people are coming the rest of the right people will come and they're justifying all of it in the they're justifying all of it by a couple things the first thing they're justifying it because they say shit our competitors there we have to be there so that's like a really big thing and so i've talked to my friend who runs black works that other crypto media site and they have this huge crypto business and he was like man it's pretty crazy like if blank company is coming other companies is like oh we gotta comment and can we like get a better boost in them and so that's like a really common thing but the second thing and more logical thing is alright look if we're gonna buy this hundred thousand dollar booth we gotta close all these deals whose you know what shot collars are gonna be there and we have to do a really good job of making transactions happen that's a really big thing you have to realize that this so there's this guy named sheldon ad do you know who that is yeah he's like the vegas casino guy right or is that his cousin yeah he's a mean is fuck old billionaire he's like known for being like a huge asshole and he's worth like twenty or forty billion dollars out of the looking guy yeah like he's like looks like this and he like thinks that like weed is like the end of the world and so he like buys all these ads about how like weed is you remember like those commercials is like julie used to care about stuff now she just smokes weed all day and then you know like this it's like it's like someone this is your day on is your a and this is your brain on weed it's like cracks it yeah it was it was like it it was like there you said these commercials with like these someone like melting into the couch and they're like she used to go for runs all the time now she just sits and watch tv like anyway he's like her huge anti weed guy and so but he's this like ninety year old guy i think forget what he owns but it's like the largest way he basically this guy definitely just had like a bad weed experience he like definitely smoked weed in college and like peter's pants got bit fun of forward like this has gotta be some deep rooted like i've looked at hospital an what is it i so this it is serious his kid i think became a drug addict and he like thought and this guy like grouped weed and and into the same as all that other bullshit which is not which i think is very crazy but he basically started this event called com which eventually was acquired for a billion dollars by soft bank and it be and it became what's that thing the consumer electronic ces and i read i would read all these old articles about them and he goes you know you're in the conference business and now you're in the real estate business building up las vegas strip what are you doing and he goes well the conference business is the real estate business what i learned early on was i gotta get people and foot traffic to my event and then i'm just selling real estate at a crazy high square footage and it's the same thing and so that's why i'm into real estate now and he basically built up all these hotels i forget all the casinos he owns that there's like three big biggest casinos and he owns one of the biggest one and anyway so these events are rooted in like real estate and foot traffic and so that's really how you do it the second thing is it's gotta be b2b to b of course a fucking ted talk is like the coolest thing out there but like you know people coming to like hear talk about why sleep matters or like how to cure malaria that's unfortunately not where the money is if your name is anything but ted so if you're anyone else but ted don't do these like sexy things do boring ass b to b we're here to get some deals done and we're gonna sell you some shit you know it's a bunch of a bunch of white dudes with tight blue cheese and like those brown leather shoes and tucked in collar shirts it's just like you know sales that's what that's like where the money is at least forty percent of participants must have a tucked in button up shirt or polo and you know like half the jokes need to be about their wife you know like something something complain about their wife and then like if you said the old ball and chain you'd get like a default sm from anybody it has like their badge needs to be like you know semi tucked in under the belly like that's who you need at these conferences for this to work yeah and if you don't have a tucker in your crew you're out you're just you're not part of this you have to have a tucker in your crew right right so there's like a dog like a bomb sniffing dog that's just looking for tucker in line yeah i think i should not of know tucker in this in this queue shut it down you know so so that's what it is shepherd that's that's where it seems the money is is like joining these industries that are fast growing and making it a a a real state you thinking like a real estate person and how do you how do they go get people to go buy these tickets so like i'm i'm was assuming they're basically selling or is their model you sell tickets for a couple thousand each and then you sell sponsor booths for you know tens of thousands each something like that is that the model i think what they do so i went and look at the revenue and so the revenue in year one is like two or three million and then in year two it's like twelve and then year three it's like thirty so based off of that and it's a bunch of marketing materials and as well as their head count on their about page i think what they do is they a just give away a bunch in the first year in the first year you're just trying not to lose your shirt and i also think that they when they sell sponsorships which are actually can be easier to sell for these things they like only give away x amount of tickets and for the rest of the people to come you have to purchase it and once you get a certain an amount of sponsors it's kinda like we host we host events and we would purposely have like as many speakers as possible because each speaker would bring like ten people and so i think it's kinda like that where each sponsored company automatically brings a small crew and that is how they actually do it and because they don't and they spend a lot in marketing though and they based on the team they have like you know that spider man meme the spider man mean we're all pointing at each other like yeah spider man it's that but just sponsors at the booth being like buy my buy my thing buy like you buy my thing i'm here to sell not to buy yeah it's a it's a circular economy of just like you know buying buying one another's crap but anyway it's kinda cool what they're doing and i think this business i think events can be a headache but there's a way that you can build it what what i would do by the way if i was international i would study these guys and i would do the exact same thing in europe then i would do the exact same thing in australia i would do the exact same thing in india and in china and in south africa like wherever you are there is a version of this that can be built locally that is not going to be competitive with these they're basically like this is a cl template in my opinion i'm sure it takes good execution i'm not i'm not saying that but i think this is a business that can like generically work in other markets and either or other countries there can be more than one winner you know like you can go to more than one conference a year and so it it's not a winner take all business so it's kind of interesting and interestingly all the companies that have bought these guys as companies have been european and i looked online about what they were doing and one of the big things that they are doing was at first of all they've gotten really good at selling so they host the event two thousand twenty two and and at at the end of two thousand twenty two they already have a ninety percent of the revenue for two thousand twenty three because you sell you up upsell the people like right away for the next year and you could sell multiple years the second thing that they're doing is they're starting to charge money for online communities so like alright you met at the conference you can keep this up and like until they're doing online communities and that's one of the reason that's the business one of the business i'm interested in and that's why i've been studying this and figuring this out it's a this is a super fascinating writing thing i think it is this is great i i really like this one anything else on this otherwise we could do another topic no i don't i fucking i just so i have i so much stuff back loaded by the way and i know i spent like half of of forty minutes of this podcast just being like the mentality of a downturn but again i think it's the most whether you're an employee your employer or you're an investor like nobody is gonna be spared from the economy going into a recession the stock market tanking in the crypto markets tanking and global inflation like this is like you know like you like oprah comes out and she's like you know you get a disaster you get a disaster you get a disaster to everybody right like nobody is gonna be untouched by the effects of this some people are gonna get hit to the point where their business goes under they declare bankruptcy personally or in the business whatever right that's gonna happen but i don't see anybody getting untouched by like a stack of problems like that man when i remember when their biden was saying that putin was gonna evade invade ukraine and i was like reading about putin and listening to ben's podcast podcasts how to take care over the world and i was like hey putin why do you do you wanna fuck this up for everyone like things are pretty awesome right now like what are you thinking like this i that that's just the conversation i wanted to have like you know like putin like everything's pretty pretty good what what what it like you're gonna blow this for everyone we're all gonna get screwed and that's like a conversation that that's like the get class the getting class who raises his hand it's just like hey miss you forgot to collect the homework and it's like dude what are you doing are you check for your seven minutes away from getting out of here dude do you buy okay so this is like sounds like a very like yu asshole thing to say but i don't really look at gas prices because they i don't drive that much but you know it's just like it's i gotta buy gas and it's not gonna hurt me yeah however much it costs i'll buy and i was driving up here from austin to brooklyn where i'm living now and i was listening to the news and talking about my gas prices and i was oh shit i haven't even looked at the gas prices why i've been driving up here i i wonder what it is and it was like five fifty and it was crazy again i know like what the news was saying but i just wasn't looking because i don't drive that much what's the gas in california where you are are you paying like six fifty seven dollars a gallon how the fuck are normal people doing this that is crazy that is crazy seven dollars yeah when you said five fifty i was like wait you're saying you found a good deal you were trying to say that's a bad deal right i thought that was real i i haven't lived california in two years i remember california it was five dollars but wouldn't what is it in austin i don't even know i just looked in like west virginia when i was driving up here i i don't pay attention to the gas prices i don't drive that much and i just don't i'm buying it no matter what it says but like seven dollars this is we're we sell fucking fools right now how much gas is a car take i even know like yeah i mean it cost like a hundred and fifty dollars i guess to fill up like like how big of tank i mean yeah i drive one tv so it's like you know twenty gallons basically alright job says like four fifty austin dude so you're spending a hundred and fifty dollars to get gas yes yeah it's bad but you know asking for a friend you know like okay i got like a you know a car that says like you should use the good you know pay the most i'm when you go to the guest station be like pick the pick the top of the of the three options like let's just say what do you what's your suv i gotta bmw x fine and so it's like let's say your boy's been putting the shitty one in for a while like you know does this matter is this is this like marketing or you know like do pay some price later in life or do i pay some price now like i actually never really knew how big of a deal that is like is it pretty strict i don't know i i but you're it sounds feel like you know i don't know but i'm gonna be honest it doesn't sound great it doesn't sound like that's what you wanna be doing to me i'm like you know is that this seems like a recommendation not a rule and you know so i've been going with the eighty seven whatever that stands for instead of the like ninety or whatever the the top end gas is and i've just been like so okay so the most expensive whatever is like eating mcdonald's it's the most yeah i don't even know what yes it's basically around seven bucks seven bucks ago gallon i think it's i think that's kind of the top oh exactly or something that's crazy yeah that's that's wild so every eighteen miles is seven dollars for you basically yeah i don't know i even think about it like it is what it is i need to get places and like that's the cost of cash right now like what am i gonna do what i'm not gonna drive to west virginia and get gas i'm not gonna not drive around you know like a a do go places and so you know it is what it is of course it's not the big deal for you but you remember how we were talking you we were talking about how the economy was crushing for years and years and i've got so many friends that they're like man i've got i've been in in my apartment for a year and a half for two years i've got a money burning home in my pocket like i i i haven't bought anything out i have i have all time high savings i'm ready to save and all these people are quitting their jobs because they're like f that like i get these checks i've saved up money like i'm not taking this thing at seven dollars a gallon like people just gonna run out i guess right i mean like you're just gonna run out of savings huge people again you i again you gotta cut right so you know i cut back down to that low end gas so i could do save the thirty forty cents a gallon other people who just kinda drive less so they're gonna say a public transport or they're gonna a carp pool or they're gonna find something like people will find a way is you know my meant general mentality and like i don't know i started a lot of more life living in like jak carta or like beijing and you to see people like in beijing right next to our house there's just people just shu corn like all day in a they're just sitting in a squat just like removing husks from corn for like ten hours straight in the heat and they were just like you know and then they would like take their break smoke a cigarette and place a m and like you know like that's just what they did and they were fine and then like you know your driver had different set of problems and like car other in india people just burn trash on the side of the road because there's no like waste removal thing so they're like you burn it and then it's gone i was like yeah but like it smells awful all day and they're like what do you talk about this just like how air smells i like no man that's not how air has to smell but like you know i don't know you the the range of how humans can live survive and thrive is so much wider than like you know the average person thinks and so i don't know like i don't know i just don't really pay too much attention it's just like you you have to like i don't know you just have to like how to figure out how to govern yourself in a new world it's like do are you a self governing individual or not because like if you are not a self governing individual every day you're gonna get punched in the face with bad news right now and like you gotta learn how to par a punch otherwise you were gonna get like knocked out by just to most to the nose every day like i just got done i was in missouri for two weeks most people aren't like that they're just like there most people are not that resourceful that's what i've i've learned i i actually think that the our audiences is like that most are not like oh i gotta go start something i gotta do this i gotta i think most people we'll just are are just gonna be fucked that's i mean that that's really what i think so so i'm right to book right now i don't i tell you this so i'm rent write to book i'm using that like scribe media thing where you they like write the book for you or whatever is it all your content they just they write the words after you say it to the guy on the phone for like two hours every like week or something i don't know if it's awesome i'm loving doing it because i'm like oh cool i to like put something down a paper like that this is fun and i'm not gonna like sell the book i i i'm gonna do something different it but whatever so basically point is the start of my book is that everybody wants the same things like everybody wants to be like wealthy everybody wants to be like in a great really relationships great family and everybody wants to be like in you know great shape but you look at like okay cool so like if everybody wants that and that's all achievable then certainly you know like most people are doing that no okay half people are it's like most people have the exact opposite of that result most marriages are ending in you know unhappy or ending to get divorce most people in america are are you know overweight or obese and most people don't have like you know more than ten thousand dollars of savings to the bank or whatever for like a rainy day and so everybody wants the same things everybody wants to be you know you know rich fit and madly in love and in fact everybody has the opposite and so like if if you think like most people think you're gonna do what most people do and you're gonna get the result most people get and the sad truth is that the results most people are getting are not very good and like i so that's the start of my like that's the premise of my book and that's a start and then the the the second part of of i guess i would say a controversial thing about me is i am totally okay not taking into consideration most people's situation i am totally so like for example i always it sounds like an asshole thing i understand i said it it put in a purposely provocative way right i did not wanna soften that what do i mean by that like i always talked about like oh i love to teach and i wanna be a teacher so most people see that as like some like mother teresa you know like sort of like save the world like be the educator who helps all i'm like no i do not wanna try to educate everybody or teach everybody i'm like most people are horrible students they don't wanna learn anything they're not gonna learn anything they're not gonna do anything with even if you told them the exact right answer or how to think they're just not gonna do it so like why would i waste my energy doing that like no no my preference is like in a in a population of a hundred percent of people there's like three percent that like really want to know the answer and of them maybe like twenty percent of them are gonna be able to actually take action on it like i'm only gonna try to teach the driven and motivated and capable like and that is not as like society like socially acceptable point of view but it is my like operating philosophy is to like myself i focus on the controlling the things i can control and not other things and secondly like even when i'm like talking about what most people should do i know that most people are not gonna be able to do that or want to do that or choose to do that that's okay i'm not talking to most people i'm talking to the one to three percent of the population who like wants to thrive in those ways and i hope everybody else set listens to it and says this guy a jerk and like so out of touch it's like and they leave they leave my orbit and they un follow me completely because i'm like i i am trying to be intentionally out of touch in the same way that i intentionally avoid the news that's so hilarious it it isn't my part of my core strategy is to be out of touch and avoid the news and like not not not learn from or speak to the common denominator of the population and i i know that all of that sounds completely awful to some people and but you know i'm okay with that like it i i i do believe even if you disagree with that i hope you agree that like you i'm allowed to have that choice to to do that and if you don't think i have the choice to do that like you know then i disagree with you in all of your your ways of living yeah you're like if you i get that if if you don't if you don't think that my opinion is good i get that and you're fine but you're wrong and i hate you that's basically no who what it is if you if you think my opinions wrong if you think my opinions wrong i understand and i i would expect that from a lot of people if you think i shouldn't be allowed to have by a opinion or to act up by opinion that's where like there's a difference between i disagree and that's not allowed or that's not okay or no you can't do that or you know lynch him you know like there's a there's a difference in like being able to disagree and dis and i would say you're you're you know like i know doing get a little far with the ledge yeah they're gonna kill them yeah lynch them yeah yeah yeah that's that's probably bit bit harsh alright that's a pod we'll see if people dig it i dude what if tomorrow it just goes back to normal that would be nice the way if if you wanna cancel b i hope people get our voices make up and this has been sam talking that whole time why this voice who use is sam i think they're saying b a r r yeah you could find him he's a there's affiliated with hubspot if you wanna go get them like that the guy to go get it if you didn't like what was just said dude i still get people messaging me saying that they they they confuse us still i don't want to understand that yeah i guess i think they're people go watch the youtube video and they're like shit i've been it's had you guys opted mixed up for like a year i i think what they're saying is i look beef here but i talk nerd and you look nerd and you talk beef here so it is what it is yeah you you look dumb and you talk smart and i look smart and i talk dumb alright we'll talk to you peanut butter and jelly baby it's a perfect compliment yeah ready