Be You. Get Paid.

#006 Entrepreneurship, Bitcoin & the Broken System w/ Aleks Svetski

• Amy Taylor (& friends!) • Episode 6

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"I think what's more important is that people work on things that they actually give a shit about - this doesn't mean they need to be an entrepreneur but they can learn a lot from the entrepreneurial mode of being. Entrepreneurs solve problems. Even if you're not the owner of the business, you can take an entrepreneurial approach to what you're doing in a business if you give a shit!" 
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Aleksandar Svetski is what I call the classic hustler, serial entrepreneur! 

A passionate voice in the Bitcoin space, Aleks is also the co-author of The UnCommunist Manifesto, Founder of The Bitcoin Times, and Founder of Amber - the world's first Bitcoin-only, Dollar Cost Average app, that makes buying Bitcoin simple. Amber recently rolled out in over 65 countries worldwide, making it one of the most accessible ways to put your Bitcoin savings on auto-pilot. 

Aleks writes for Medium and Bitcoin Magazine, and hosts the Wake Up Podcast where he dives into Bitcoin, money, psychology, philosophy, history, entrepreneurship and thinking. 

Follow Aleks on Twitter at https://twitter.com/SvetskiWrites or Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/alekssvetski/

🚨 DISCOUNT ALERT! Check out The Bitcoin Times and get 30k sats off using code 'BEYOUGETPAID' at checkout 👉🏼 https://bitcointimes.io/
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Speaker 1:

Well, hello human. Thanks so much for tuning into the BU Get Paid podcast. I am your host, amy Taylor, and I have one goal by being in your ears To explore as many conversations and perspectives as possible on stuff we did not learn in school, you know, stuff that would have actually helped a lot more of us thrive, rather than just survive as grown-ups in an often challenging and ever-changing world. As the title might suggest, this includes anything involved with knowing ourselves, understanding money and generally anything that might offer some insight into how we can all be happier humans. With that in mind, wherever you're listening, you'll find links to some of the best resources I have personally found to help with all of those things. Sometimes I'll talk about these in a bit more detail, and I want you to know I will only ever recommend products, services and companies that I am a customer or user of myself.

Speaker 1:

Now, real grown-ups here, and as such, you'll possibly hear the occasional use of grown-up language. More importantly, anything discussed here is personal opinion and intended for conversational and educational purposes only, and should not be taken as financial or investment advice. That's housekeeping done. Let's get into what I hope is some helpful chat. Alex, you strike me based on what I've peased together as what I would call the old-school, hardcore version of the hustler entrepreneur. I believe you've only had two jobs in your life. One is a pizza delivery boy and one is a door-to-door salesman. Is that right? Have you ever worked for anyone else in any other capacity?

Speaker 2:

You are correct. I guess even the door-to-door wasn't really working for someone, because I was technically an independent contractor.

Speaker 1:

A commission only.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, commission, only independent contractor. It was basically your own business within a business. That's the effort. You build your own team and all that bullshit. Technically speaking, one job pizza delivery got fired.

Speaker 1:

Oh, you got fired, amazing At 16.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, i mean because I crashed the car twice here because I was trying to prove that I could deliver pizza faster than everyone else.

Speaker 1:

This is the other thing You've mentioned on a couple of podcasts that I've listened to you on. That you actually aced school. You're not that typical entrepreneur. That was like I was useless at school so I had to be an entrepreneur. You were actually very smart, aced it.

Speaker 2:

I think I've heard you say academically.

Speaker 1:

A big thing for me about this podcast is all the things we didn't learn at school, because I was extremely academic at school, but it didn't help me in figuring out what I wanted to do. What would you say for you was because, again, this podcast is be, you get paid. If that's all we'd learn at school, life would have been I'm making my camera wobble life would have been a lot simpler. You left home at 16. Your dad thought success was be a footballer, be a musician, be an actor. I guess fame was his version of success.

Speaker 1:

What for you, drove you to just want to do your own thing? What made you that way?

Speaker 2:

I mean, that's the perennial question, right? Is it nature or nurture? If we dig deep enough, that's really the question we're asking. I don't know. For a while, when I was running my own podcast, that was the question I would ask all the hosts and obviously it's an inconclusive question. It's a question we'll never have an answer to. It's what actually makes us who we are nature or nurture? I think the only answer to that question is just that meme. Yes, basically, are you this or that? Yes, Because I get the sense. It's a mixture of both.

Speaker 2:

Me and my brother obviously were. I think they call us Irish twins or borderline Irish twins, with 13 months apart. We looked very similar. I thought we were twins when we were young. We turned out very differently. We've got some similarities.

Speaker 2:

I think the cultural parts where we've got similarities on is we were raised in the era of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Van Damme and stuff like that. We grew up with a bent for fitness and for being Wog Boys in Australia and that kind of stuff, being a little bit of troublemakers and stuff like that. But then there was definitely from a nature perspective. Academically it seems like I got given all the brains and my brother got given the leftovers because, seriously, i always give him shit about this, but he has to work 10 times harder to comprehend something, whereas I read a sentence and for some reason I get it. That's got to be nature. That was definitely not nurture My dad. When we were young he made us do our times tables. I knew my multiplication times tables when I got to kindergarten, all the way up to my 12 times tables, before anyone was learning how to add up. My brother just didn't do that. He had no fucking clue. He couldn't tell the damn time until he was like eight years old or whatever. But there's other things that he's good at. For example, he's much better at being disciplined and fit and all that sort of stuff. He held the record of all the people that I know he didn't eat chocolate for I think something like 14 years or something like that. He had this diet called the Cassander diet and no one could compete with him because he was such a stubborn little son of a bitch that he would not do anything else other than what was written on his little list. So what I'm getting at there is I think it was a mixture of nature and nurture.

Speaker 2:

I think my life experience growing up in a middle class immigrant family and sort of the western suburbs, coupled with my natural predispositions and also this overbearing father who would beat us up. He was the kind of dad some real funny shit We'd be playing soccer on the weekends and you'd have all the normal dads and everything like encouraging the kids and if someone misses the goal or something like that, they'd be like, don't worry, you'll be better. My dad would be on the sideline going you suck my shit To these fucking 10 year old kids. We'd be so embarrassed. They'd be like they're trying to pretend, like who the fuck is this guy? I don't know him, but it was the most embarrassing.

Speaker 2:

The kind of stuff that you'd see on the movies, like my big fat Greek wedding or Wogboy Literally he was that guy, but that obviously ingrained something Macedonian, yeah. So yeah, that shit obviously ingrained something in us. So there was that. And then also, i think my uncle had a bit of an effect. So he was very kind of philosophy and greatness oriented, so he got me reading stuff about like Alexander the Great etc. Like when I was younger And I think that sort of basically planted the seeds for me. And then, yeah, when I went to university, i felt I was surrounded by idiots, so I decided to teach myself to trade. And then, yeah, the story goes on from there.

Speaker 1:

And you took your scholarship money and invested it in the stock market. Genius.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, like, yeah, well, half genius, yeah, like the first thing I bought, i remember like it was back then, there was a brokers, so you'd like go to a broker, you either call him or go into his office and he would place the trade for you. There was none of this, like there was no smartphone, there was no trading on a computer, there was none of that. And I bought this thing called GYG, i think it was called. It was like some biotech company that this idiot like pitched me on. We bought it at 50 cents and ended up selling it at 25 cents. I was like, fuck this guy. So then at that time West Pack Broking had just come out like E-Trader, just sort of reached Australian shores and, yeah, i set up one of the early West Pack Broking accounts, put the rest of the money I had started trading options and warrants and kind of like, made a couple grand into like 50. I thought I was a genius And, yeah, then go to wake up call and lost a lot, went into debt?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, i've heard that story and it's interesting because, like so did you pursue trading? because it was like just a way to make a lot of money or because you enjoyed, right, okay, yeah because it was my, it was my good. Well, it's just like the crypto space now not the Bitcoin space, but the crypto space.

Speaker 1:

Now it's just, you know, it's a quick way to make money, but it's also, to me, batshit boring, and, i think, a lot of people that end up going on this journey from Bitcoin to Bitcoin and we'll get to Bitcoin eventually. I want to focus on your entrepreneurial journey first, but it's it's realizing that you know I actually need to be doing something that's creative, because people are already in jobs that burn them out. Staring at a screen full of charts is not that exciting for the average person.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, well, well, funny enough. So, like, a lot of people come to trading because and they convinced themselves that it's an exciting thing but the best traders are the most boring motherfuckers who basically follow a set of rules. They do not deviate from it. Like, they like robots, right, like, and this is why, you know, trading has become a quant industry, because it's, you know, it's quantitative analysis, it's data, it's, like you know, pre pre pre prescribed entries and exits and all this sort of stuff. Like, yeah, some people can trade on intuition because they've been staring at the screen for 10 years and they kind of develop six cents for it. But by and large, it's like a I don't know, it's a it's a symptom of a civilization that is in decay. Basically, and for me at the time, like my motivator was, i guess my motivator was like a fuck you to the family, which was, you know, they all hated that. Like my uncle was, you know, very traditional. It's funny, like, now that I'm older, like I would look back and I would have told me as a kid the same thing, right, but you know, i was young, arrogant, stupid. I was like fuck you, i'm gonna make money trading. So, you know, i went and I did that. And then I was in that. I mean I traded for years honestly like and like on and off, like what.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, while I was running companies, you know, i'd be trading on the side and honestly like on net 10 years or 12 years that I was like fucking around trading. I probably broke even And then if you adjust for inflation, i'm probably down 40%. And that's despite having like a series of massive wins. Like I was very early into silver and gold in 2010. Made a bunch of money there and then bled myself dry almost for the next six years. And then I made a bunch of money again, bled myself dry again, made a bunch of money, bled myself. Like it's just dumb, like it really really is dumb.

Speaker 2:

So, like this is, i think I got my. I mean, i had a bit of a trading renaissance when I climbed Mount Stupid and discovered crypto. For a little bit I thought there was a new way to trade, but then very, very quickly moved away from that Because I think I had realized that it was just sort of bringing up the old demons in a sense. So anyway, it was yeah, i definitely did it for the money. I did it to prove to my family that I could do it. So it was. Maybe I shouldn't even say I did it for the money, i did it for more. It was probably proved them wrong. Then the money and then everything else.

Speaker 1:

Chip on the shoulder And it's yeah, it's, and I think that's where I'm. I know that you've got. You had a little period there where you did NLP. That's something I'm training in as a coach And you know it's. I've always said to people just start a business, doesn't matter if it fails, it's going to be the best therapy you ever have, and I feel like trading is probably the same thing.

Speaker 1:

Cause it? just it's emotions. It's learning to manage emotions. It's learning to regulate emotions, learning to recognize your own demons, like you said, And most people are just cruising through life, not realizing that that stuff's going to help them, Like if they're comfortable.

Speaker 1:

There's no reason to look at that stuff. Even if every relationship they've had has failed or you know, they're not happy in their job, whatever, whatever area of life might not be working, a business is going to show you some shit that you can address. That's going to help you in everything. And then the money piece for me is is why I'm trying to dive into these conversations with Bitcoiners, because it's just how money is changing. Is there's like?

Speaker 1:

a value system, alignment with entrepreneurs. I guess And it's not everybody needs to be an entrepreneur, And I think you said something I'll go back to this Yes. In a minute, not, you know, not everyone needs to be an entrepreneur. It should be okay to be in a job that you kind of like, but not feel that you have to do trading on the side. And this is where Bitcoin's starting to bring it all together for me in terms of a value system.

Speaker 1:

You said it was a clip from Bitcoin Conference 2020. Are you going to Miami next week, this week?

Speaker 2:

No no no, no. Taking some time off conferences.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, it was 2021 Conference clip that I found and you said on a panel. You said money represents you. I'm paraphrasing money represents human action. It's the most fundamental level of speech. I don't care what you say. Show me your bank account and I'll show you what you believe. So, speaking into it as an entrepreneur, what do you mean by that?

Speaker 2:

Okay, i mean, as me, what I mean by that is pretty much like money, like how people spend their money reveals their preferences and their preferences reveal their beliefs, basically. So there's like a string there And I guess you can't get more fundamental than that. Like I don't know if my entrepreneurial lens changes that viewpoint, but yeah, like, maybe I'll just look it into your earlier point, which is the piece about I mean, am I answering this question right or have I misheard it?

Speaker 1:

No, no, no, it's just interesting because I guess it's also how you spend your money. Everyone spends money, but not everybody chooses to make money as an entrepreneur.

Speaker 1:

So and we'll probably jump around with this topic because it fascinates me, but what do you think? there's just a fundamental difference in mindset and values between entrepreneurs and employees, and the world needs both, but the people that are and I have so many conversations with people that are just getting started online and there's a difference between starting a business versus making an income online, and you've also said in an article, it's never been easier to become an entrepreneur. I generally work mostly with people that just want the freedom of being able to work online or generate an income online, and those are two different things as well. You don't need to be the next Mark Zuckerberg anymore. You don't need to come up with a big idea. I started with affiliate marketing. I don't deem that to be entrepreneurial. It's selling someone else's product like a salesperson.

Speaker 1:

But the biggest thing that people come up against is the responsibility. Like all of a sudden, they're first of all responsible.

Speaker 1:

It's all on them to generate an income No one's giving you a regular stable paycheck, but also it's solving problems and actually providing something of value, rather than just rocking up and doing what you're told. That's the big difference, and there's so much around that. But for you, like you, what's your? I guess, what's your advice to someone who wants the freedom of making as much money as they can and from anywhere is what's the tough love that they need to realize these days, with money where it's at in the world And I guess you can thread Bitcoin in Just what are your thoughts on giving people that want to get started on either online or offline start their own thing? What's the tough love they need, do you think?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, okay, so there's probably. Let's try approach this question this way. So there's three parts here. One is let's just assume money's working right. You will make money if you're solving a problem and you're actually charging for it. And there's some sophistication around charging for a problem, which is, if you charge too low, your process of going broke is a signal that you haven't charged high enough for your services, like if your input costs are higher than your output, like blah, blah, blah, right. So you've got some sophistication around that. But, generally speaking, if you're solving a problem and you're selling the time or the goods associated with solving that problem, you should be making money And the money is your scorecard, right?

Speaker 2:

So then the next question then is like, if the money is a scorecard, then what kind of points are on that scorecard, right? And the problem we've got today is that the money that we're using is broken. Now, it's broken to different degrees in different parts of the world, right? So, like in Australia, us, blah, blah, blah. Like it's not broken to the extent that you really notice it, at least not at the micro level, but because it's broken at the macro level, it changes the incentives and the orientation around, or, sorry, it changes the incentives in how people orient themselves in their pursuit of which problems they choose to solve. So if you look at civilization and society, it's just a series of games, right, and generally those games are games of like competing with others, creating something, producing something, et cetera. The problem we've got in modern society and with broken money is that we've kind of figured out that the ultimate game is to like fucking print money. Like if you can do that, you own everything, you don't have to worry about anything else. Like you print the money, you run the show. So the game has become how the hell do you get your finger on the money printer? Now, because there's few money printers. Only a certain number of people can get their finger on that sort of or can get involved in that game.

Speaker 2:

Then what happens is the rest of the people, instead of generally playing a competitive game, a productive game, et cetera, et cetera, they orient themselves around a new game which is making friends with the dude or the people who have their fingers on the money printer. And that might mean, instead of solving a problem in the marketplace or instead of producing something, they, basically the government or the central bank becomes their customer. Or what happens is because of two other simultaneous games going on, which is sort of. The third game is people who are not that great at competing or are not that savvy or are not that clued up. What they do is they sort of generally move towards like hedonism or nihilism or just like run of the mill fucking game, like they're just sort of like just status quo And then sort of. The fourth game is the I give up game. Everything's rigged, fuck it, i'm not doing anything right. So because you have those, those last two generally like it's a mixture of like work and yolo they become consumers and gamblers. Exactly, it's a resignation type thing. So they become consumers and gamblers. Like that behavior increases.

Speaker 2:

So if you're in that sort of second tier game which is trying to make friends with the money printers but then also seeing what opportunities are available, you're solving you know phantom problems, which is people want to become gamblers. So you build another Robin Hood app, you build another gambling app. You build another shit coin, a shit coin casino you build, you build all of this sort of stuff because you perceive those as problems, which they are problems within this paradigm, within this framework. But as you do that, you actually exacerbate the problem because more of the hedonistic or, you know, the people with resignation end up doing that and they, you know, con themselves into believing that they can make riches out of trading or all this other bullshit. So you got these kind of like, you know all these like weird effects that feed on each other, that fuck everything up right, whereas if we take a step back and we look at you know what the original thing was, which is you know you're solving a problem, you know you're charging correctly and you're making profit and that's your scorecard. You do that on a bitcoin sort of standard.

Speaker 2:

You, you have a situation where that first game can't be played, so there's no one printing the money, which makes the second game very different. It's like, okay, well, i'm not gonna orient myself around the money printer because i can't play with it. Let's say, you know like bitcoin's innovation is fundamentally, let's take the money and put it in the realm of the untouchable. So it's like over with, you know, speed of light and thermodynamics, like shit that we just can't touch, right? yeah, so it's more than it's just fine that it's like it's um, it's the. The finiteness is unchangeable, so so that's kind of the innovation? right? so the innovation here is like let's take the money and let's just put it on the shelf where none of us can reach it. So now we orient ourselves around a new series of games and then you actually start to, you know, solve problems, do all this sort of stuff.

Speaker 2:

And then that third, you know layer of people playing games.

Speaker 2:

Now they actually have some hope, um, so they might still, you know, tend towards hedonism or nihilism or whatever, but you know that they actually have a chance to succeed. And then the people who otherwise would have given up sort of the fourth game, you know the total resignation, like they might also have a little bit more hopes. So it kind of changes things downstream. So anyway, coming coming back to it all, it's like this doesn't really matter for people in the micro. Honestly, like, if you're an australian, you're running a business like you know that sort of macro stuff, um, you know life scale probably doesn't affect you, um, so you know you can sort of take it for granted that the money works and that you know your approach to business should be solve a problem, um, charge the right price for it. And you know, build, build income, um, but you know at a, at a more collective macro scale, like these other sort of considerations come into play. But i don't know if that answers your original question yeah, it does.

Speaker 1:

I mean you've touched on stuff i was going to ask you about or dive into with um uncommunist manifesto that you wrote. But just to backtrack a sec, like your, your last point there about if you're a business owner in australia or wherever, wherever it doesn't really affect you. Well, it kind of does as an individual, because when you go onto the longer time horizons, the issue that i think everyone's become aware of, certainly as a millennial i don't know how old you are, i'm assuming in that bracket somewhere um, you, you, we're so conditioned and it's it's fact that we have to plan ahead for future, like just having a job, just having the state pension or you know it's by your house, by real estate, but i'm watched my parents do that and great, they now own the roof over their head or they got that.

Speaker 1:

Most people you know the average person it's like great, you own the roof over your head, but they're kind of full to live, they're kind of full to pay their bills.

Speaker 1:

It's just this conditioning that you know you've got to do something other than just work and be you and get paid and enjoy your life, and that that's not enough. So people are doing all these other things in their spare time and wasting their energy because and burnt out, which then has all these other impacts on relationships and the family unit and society, because no one's getting ahead and their, their mortgage gets extended by interest rates.

Speaker 1:

There's all these offshoots of problems you've kind of touched on, but i don't think people are joining the dots to the fact that it's the money that's broken. It's, it's not just what we do, it's their, their, resignation is.

Speaker 1:

No one wants to do this work and, um, i think you know the value system of of bitcoin is a value system of decent human beings as well, and i think, whether you're an entrepreneur or an employee, you've got and you've also got a lot of people in the bitcoin space that i've met who are dead passionate about bitcoin, and my concern is in that pocket of people. You've got a load of people that are in fiat jobs, a lot of trades people and they're they're just excited about when they get rich through bitcoin and it's like, okay, and then what? you've still got a. You've still got to earn your, your, your income, and they're in jobs. They don't like. I'm like start getting creative with what makes you you. How can you start a business? or how are you gonna, what are you gonna do next? because we don't know when that's gonna happen. We don't know when you're gonna get rich through bitcoin.

Speaker 1:

But then you've also got people that aren't even in bitcoin yet in the same problem, with no hope, and it's the common denominator is the fundamentals of the money you're working for is broken, and so this value system and i think you've got another book coming up this value system of just decent human beings are working on a a foundation of quicksand, and it's it's learning about money.

Speaker 1:

There's no, there's no quick way to learn about it at all. You've got to put the work in. But i'm just trying to join these dots with you. Know what, if, if the money we actually use has been designed intentionally on these values that i think no one can really argue with, can you speak into that?

Speaker 2:

yeah. So i mean okay, so a couple, couple threads to pull on there. So, yes, the we sort of the hopelessness and the not being able to get ahead is like very real. So at you know, at the very least you know that that's a, that's a driver for people to, you know, start all these, you know whether it's side hustles or, like you know, other bits of income or whatever else. They're um, whatever else they're doing. And, yeah, the reason they need to do that is because they can't save, so that you know they're basically running on minimal runway, like if you're, if you're running a business with you know no runway, you know something's wrong. So you know they're, they're living their personal lives with basically no runway and, and that's a problem, so you know they, they basically need to figure out other ways to make money and all this sort of stuff.

Speaker 2:

Now there's i mean, there's good and bad to that, obviously, because you know some people might go and actually build something like that pressure might help them, you know, or drive them to create something really interesting. You know they might solve a useful problem, you know they might build something and then that sort of catapults them. But i think that's um, that's far more rare. I think what might actually happen is sort of what's happening in the world today is like you know people becoming part-time traders or you know whatever the fuck else they're doing um, and you know the problem with that is, you know they confuse building a business with um, just like they're desperate for some extra money, they're desperate for some pocket change. You know so like they'll do only fans or they'll do you know whatever other stupidity um, just to to bring in some extra cash. And then you know you've got another cohort who genuinely, they find something that they're passionate about, um, that they think is useful, and they do it.

Speaker 2:

And you know money sort of is the, is the byproduct, and that that's the better kind of world, that's the better path, and i think that's probably what you know you're you're sort of focused on when you're talking about the stuff that you talk about. So you know can, can bitcoin help with that? um for those people, and you know at least, yeah, maybe in the micro, it's like if you've got some savings, um denominated in bitcoin and your savings aren't like, uh, melting away, um, you know you probably have that buffer to think about doing something on the side, um, because it's something you're passionate about. So it's not coming from a place of desperation, it's coming from a place of creativity or curiosity or um, you know intent. So you know, in that sense, bitcoin can probably help. But you know that's sort of predicated on the idea that bitcoin's going to um, to, you know, increase in valuation in the um in the coming years, which, which is obviously going to happen, um, but you know, getting people to understand that is another question.

Speaker 2:

So yeah, and i shut up there for a second no, no, it's just, it's interesting, it's just.

Speaker 1:

I was at um bitcoin alive recently the new um, the inaugural australian bitcoin only conference and i was just speaking to so many people there who, yeah, it just concerns me that it's great that you're on this mission and you're doing what you can to spread the word, but they're still living this life of being stuck in a day job that doesn't really solve the societal problem that they're also so passionate about through bitcoin. So it's just trying to get everyone to realize that just start up in your game as a human being, because you know, you know it there's.

Speaker 1:

There's a lot of cheesy cliches in the coaching business about. You know, just show up and serve and it's like, well, i'm too busy worrying about myself.

Speaker 2:

Um, yeah, yeah, yeah and it's, yeah, it's.

Speaker 1:

I don't know what the answer is, but i guess trying to bring it back down to when the whole fix the money, fix the world thing. Um, you wrote with mark moss the uncommon as manifesto.

Speaker 1:

I was in your kickstarter, got copies here, thank you no, you're welcome, um, and i, i mean, i wouldn't have even known. Apparently, it's one of the most influential books of all time, but i don't remember learning about it at school. I don't remember even understanding the definition of communism until diving down the bitcoin money rabbit hole, um, and do you, do you feel that where we're at in, particularly in the western world, is is on the precipice of communism? is that why you wrote the book? because i feel like people starting to converge socialism and communism and the lines are getting very blurred yeah, i mean okay, so, um, um?

Speaker 2:

i guess the answer is yes, um, but the um. They spring from the same sort of route right, which is we need to. Some bureaucratic organization or setup or apparatus of some sort needs to decide where the resources of a group of people should be deployed, how they should be deployed, and instead of people deciding what they can do with their own stuff, they should do it. So, whether the flavor is soft communism and democracy, medium communism and socialism, or full-blown communism, communism it's all sort of like the same thing. So is the West going down that path? I mean, we've been going down it for a long fucking time, just to a different, yeah, it's just been to a different degree. And the thing is, i learned this from Jordan Peterson when he said how did the Nazi prison guards or whatever, how did they become so brutal? And it's like, well, they didn't wake up one morning and become super brutal. It was inch by inch by inch by inch by inch by inch. And that's sort of how we've got here, and that's why things like vigilance, et cetera, are important. So you sort of like the.

Speaker 2:

They say the road to hell is paved with good intentions. I might add, it's paved with good intentions that are unfounded in terms of their raison d'etre. So you just do shit because it sounds nice and you don't think any deeper, and that's sort of what's brought us here. And I mean, unfortunately, we are definitely up shit creek without a paddle And the only way to come back is to put our hands in the shit and paddle fucking back with Through the shit until we reach the non-shit part of the creek, and that's going to take a whole lot of struggle. Bitcoin is a massive part of that, it's a central part of that, but, as you said, it's going to take people upping their game.

Speaker 2:

I think, to sort of tie this back to the entrepreneurial discussion, it's. I think what's more important is that people do work on things that they actually give a shit about, and this doesn't mean that they need to essentially be an entrepreneur, but they can learn a lot from the entrepreneurial mode of being, which is entrepreneur solve problems. So, even if you are not the owner of the business, you can take an entrepreneurial approach to what you're doing in a business if you give a shit. So you could be a designer who And you fucking love design Go find a company that's building something cool that you would love to design and solve the problems in design. Or you're an engineer Go and work with a company that is building something cool and code up something cool. Now, there's a myriad of these things and I think that's probably the more important piece, because there's one thing I'll sort of close out this idea on is And I learned this from Tony Robbins It's about He talks about the entrepreneur, the artist and the manager leader. Have you ever heard this?

Speaker 1:

I know a lot of Tony Robbins, but not that particular one. But I might ring a bell.

Speaker 2:

Okay.

Speaker 2:

So this one's fantastic. I learned this one at his business mastery years ago but it's a really good framework. So you have these three archetypes of person when it comes to business and career. Basically, you have the entrepreneur, you have the artist and you have the manager leader archetype, and essentially they're all different archetypes, different people, different modalities of operations. So the artist is generally someone like an artist, or maybe an engineer or a designer or a football player or a guitarist or something. They have a talent exactly. They have a talent specifically That's probably the key word there And they can turn that talent into something. So you see that, with the content creators, content creators are artists. They're not entrepreneurs, they're artists. They have managed to take their talent or their skill and monetize it in some way.

Speaker 2:

The second archetype you have is the entrepreneur, and so the entrepreneur is someone who they might not have a specific talent, but they can bring together people. They can take a bucket load of fucking risk. They can corral people around a vision towards solving a problem. So they're probably the Donald Trumps of the world, the Elon Musk's, or maybe in ancient times they would have been like the Alexander the Great's right, something like that. They're the people who can really take on the risk that's associated and they can go through the gut-wrenching process of losing everything, starting again, all that kind of crap. And they're a second archetype and they're more entrepreneurial in nature. And then sort of the third archetype is the manager leader, and that's the person who they run the show, they're the operations, they're the Tim Cook, they're the coach And I guess for people to conceptualize it, think of a football team, for example, or a basketball team The artist is the player, the entrepreneur is the owner of the team And the manager leader is the coach.

Speaker 2:

You need all three And all three can be business owners. But the idea, so what you should do, is you should figure out what archetype you are first and then lean into that. So you know, i'm less artist. Like I've got some artist, obviously because I can write, so I seem to have a talent around that.

Speaker 2:

But you know, and everyone's got a mixture of all three, right. So it's not about like, oh yeah, you know you're one right, yeah, yeah, everyone's got a mixture. But the thing is like where's your center of gravity? If you put your time into your center of gravity, i think that's where you'll find success. So, like I'm primarily entrepreneurial bit of artist and you know the least manager leader Although I'm strong in that too It's not where I like to spend my time. I like to spend my time in the entrepreneurial side of things, like figuring out, solving a problem and then taking a bucket load of risk to figure it out and potentially losing it all, fucking up starting again, like all that sort of shit, and then, if I can weave some artistry into it, fantastic.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, And I feel like you've just. That is so brilliant, I love it. I'll clip that out, But I think the issue that I just see in the mainstream or in the masses is just people don't, they can't think their way out of where they're at.

Speaker 1:

To even figure that out Like and to me it just starts something, even if it's a blog or a newsletter, and, like you've said, you know, several times I've heard you say that it's so easy to start. now You don't have to be any one of the three, but just do something that at least gets you excited about creativity to begin with, because you've figured out who you are by the doing right.

Speaker 1:

You've been an entrepreneur, but you've only figured out which bits of that you are Or which which archetype you are sorry by by the doing. And people are just so, i guess, overwhelmed, short on time, just busy with life, that you can't. Once you're in that situation, it's very difficult to scope out the time to just begin exploring any of those. And I think for those who have some Bitcoin, who have that excitement about the future, that's great, that's hopefully taking away some of the, the overwhelm or some of the financial anxiety, it's like okay, great, what are you going to do with that that time, that headspace, that excitement. And there's so many people in the Bitcoin space, especially just building in Bitcoin, but they could be. I feel like there's a lot of people out there with so many talents that they're just not exploring. And my coaching background is all coaching foundation is Gallup, clifton Strengths, which is all about your natural talents.

Speaker 1:

So, yeah, it's inspiring because you are this one extreme of the entrepreneurial hustling. I think you even printed your own pay slips at one point.

Speaker 2:

I remember reading I've done a lot of weird shit, trust me. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1:

That's that you are the hard core. Yeah, so I mean, it's really interesting hearing your perspective on it, because it just people overthink what they can do to contribute, i think, and whether they're in Bitcoin or not. Just, i would just encourage everyone to take a look at what would get you excited. What did you maybe switch off from your childhood that got you excited? Because, yeah, this flatlining through life that's happening because of fundamentally broken money is just it's really concerning, but we do have this. I don't know that Bitcoin is the answer, but it's the only option we've got at the moment.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, i mean that's why I sort of tied it back to like Bitcoin will fix the macro situation and in time it'll just create different incentives and we are in our ourselves differently and all that sort of stuff. But then it literally all comes back to the individuals and the choices they're making. On a Bitcoin standard, you can totally be a fucking degenerate, nihilistic moron and do nothing. Bitcoin doesn't fix you, i'm sorry, no. So at least what Bitcoin standard does is it creates a situation where those who want to be better, to do better to create, to produce, to innovate, to do all that sort of stuff it gives them a fighting chance where the game is not so rigged that they're like why the fuck should I do this anyway? That's where you get real scalable progress, and that's what the west has shot itself in the foot with. Now is like the game has become so rigged. The best of us are building the next Dick Pick app or the next stupid AI fucking bot or whatever else it is. The middle of us are kind of like, kind of given up on life, and then the worst of us are going out there burning buildings down and whatever the fuck else, so it's like it's a really sick society. So it all comes back to people need to choose better things to do with their time.

Speaker 2:

And you're going to make Mr Ivan man the amount of stupidities I've done in my life I could write. I started writing a book called Hero to Zero in my 20s, which was like how I made a million bucks and lost everything. It was going to be a story of the things you shouldn't do. I never got around to finishing it. Maybe one day I'll come back and I'll finish it, but I feel like I'm going to need like 10 volumes of that shit because the amount of things I've done wrong is innumerable. I can't even count the amount of dumb assness that I've produced in my life. But hey, i'm still here, but you've learned from it because it's not enough. That's right.

Speaker 1:

But you've learned from it because as an entrepreneur and Bitcoin is built on the same kind of value system as an entrepreneur you are the one that's responsible for that. You are the one that's learned the lessons from that and it's made you better. We're living in the society built on money, where it's not, where people aren't held to account, they're just given more money or handed out more money. There's no meritocracy, which I know you've mentioned a lot. Even had some really cool graphics in I'll link it on Communist Manifesto. But meritocracy and proof of work, i think, are the two things about Bitcoin that's missing in society, on the current monetary system. Is that kind of what you're getting?

Speaker 2:

at Totally, you've learned a lot, but that's not because it was on you.

Speaker 1:

We don't get just to farm out your mistakes to everybody else by paying more tax Ten years from now.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, totally, totally, totally, and I think yeah, like the farming out of the mistakes, like that primarily happens on the bottom end of the social structure, in the top end. So if you're on the top end, if you're a sand bank on freed, you can steal $10 billion and then fly private or whatever the fuck it is a couple months later. If you're on the bottom end, you just yell, kick and scream and you get given welfare and handouts and whatever. And then us dumbasses in the middle we've got to carry both. So that kind of sucks.

Speaker 2:

You can sort of sympathize with people about why they get nihilistic. In fact, i had a bit of a phase last year where I was like super fucking nihilistic. I was going down this sort of path of like what's the point of everything? Fuck everyone. I went through a bit of a dark phase and it kind of came out in these angry rants on Twitter and stuff like that and triggered a bunch of people and all this sort of crap.

Speaker 2:

But it can get hard, you mean? Well, i hope so, and the argument is that we're all sort of humans, albeit it seems like we have more NPCs these days than humans, but that's another discussion. But yeah, it's. It's unfair and nobody likes an unfair situation. But at the same time, this is the world we're born into And we don't get a rewind button, we don't get a reset button, we don't get any of that sort of stuff. So it's unfair as it is. It is what it is. So you've got to do something about that And I guess, at least from an entrepreneurial standpoint, you can actually take that problem, at least as a Bitcoin entrepreneur as well.

Speaker 2:

You can take that problem, you can hopefully do something about it, and you might not see the total fruits of your labor. I mean, i'm sure you can make money and do that, but I think the bigger impact you'll have longer term is on how you've helped shift the world. So there's a lot of big stuff here. We can delve into some of that if you want. But like, yeah, i don't know, it's not as hopeless as it might seem.

Speaker 1:

No, And I think what I love about Bitcoin or being exactly what you've just said we may not live to see the world on a full Bitcoin standard where people are peacefully trading with each other and goods and services are no longer Prices of everything in the marketplace is not manipulated. I don't think we will live to see that in its full fruition, But feeling like you're moving the world forward and leaving it in a better place, that's actually something I think everybody wants. It's in Tony Robbins hierarchy of needs and Maslow's hierarchy of needs and the human needs. Sorry, Tony Robbins, And for me it's like I'm just going to dollocost into Bitcoin, dollocost average into Bitcoin, because that's I'm trying to accept it as payment, I'm trying to spend it. Just participating in that ecosystem is helping the world move forward in my little way, And I think the more people that just get that all of a sudden the job is less desperate or less soul destroying, because it's enough for us, But it's also contributing to something for their children, for a better world.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, you touch on something really important there.

Speaker 2:

It's something I've talked about before. It's like if you want to live a good life, here's your ingredients. Basically, step one go do something fucking useful with your life that makes you happy. And even if it's something sorry, let me backtrack. Go do something useful life that gives it meaning. Fuck the happiness.

Speaker 2:

Happiness is a byproduct of meaning. So do something that gives you some meaning. You'll get happiness, you'll get frustration, you'll get sadness, you'll get anger, you'll get excitement. You'll get all the emotions. That's the whole fucking point. So it's like go do something useful and meaningful And then make some damn money out of it and put the money into Bitcoin And that's it. Rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat.

Speaker 2:

That way you build a savings, you have optionality, because the whole point of savings and even the whole point of investing is to have greater future optionality so that you can make your life. I don't want to say easier, but like it gives your life more richness If you use it right. For some people it gives them more optionality. They become anxious, fucking wrecks or whatever. But that's another psychological issue there Which we'll get into that in a future episode.

Speaker 2:

But if you want to live a good life. Honestly, that's the ingredients there. Doing it the way that a lot of people doing it now, as we sort of touched on earlier, is like working a shit job and then desperately trading on the side like a degenerate ugly life. Doing three jobs ugly life. Trying to save and putting your money in fucking NAB or Westpac or whatever other stupid bank there is in Australia these days. Ugly life, like all that sort of stuff. It's all ugly, ugly, ugly. So try and make your life more beautiful by, as I said, doing something meaningful putting your savings in Bitcoin, rinse and repeat, and 10 years from now you'll be in a much better place 10 years, you reckon.

Speaker 1:

It's the first time you've ever done a time scale. Yeah, i mean good things take time, i agree, but 10 years is not long, but it's gonna go Yeah.

Speaker 2:

Well, to quote Tony again, is like most people overestimate what they can do in a year and underestimate what they can do in a decade, And that's such a. It's one of my favorites And I've been a victim of the opposite. It's like I perennially overestimate what I can do in a year And I've perennially underestimated what I can do in 10 years And like I have fucked myself over with this. It's like I'm too overzealous. And if I could go back and get my younger self to understand something, it would be literally that like if man, that would be the one thing I would go and like drill into my head and slap myself across the face and say, listen, dickhead, just be consistent and just step by step, by step by step, don't try to become Steve Jobs next week Like it's not gonna happen. But that's sort of been my Achilles heel, i must say.

Speaker 1:

That's perfect, because my final couple of questions are usually the quick fire of, and that is one of them is what would you give, what advice would you give to your younger self about, first of all, being yourself and secondly, money?

Speaker 1:

I think you've kind of tied those two together then, So be consistent in something you enjoy And that gives you meaning. So then, the last two questions that I would ask you is, just in a nutshell to you, what is money? Which is the perpetual question in both Bitcoin and anyone trying to educate their friends and family about Bitcoin.

Speaker 2:

I'll steal it from the book Language of Value. There we go.

Speaker 1:

The Language of Value. Love it. The was it. You said the article or what you said at the conference was the fundamental speech or something. I'll go back and put it in the show now, yeah, something like that Yeah. Does money buy happiness?

Speaker 2:

It can buy optionality which can lead to happiness, Agreed, But happiness is fleeting. It's a really shit North Star. Like I hate when people say happiness is the goal. It's a dumb goal.

Speaker 1:

I don't know. I've got it as the tagline on this podcast of freedom and happiness because I think it's what gets more eyeballs. I think it's what everybody wants. but when you actually ask someone, well, what does it mean? They don't know. So this is kind of the conversations from people like yourself I'm trying to dive into Awesome. I will link to Uncommunist Manifesto. It's you've said several times in it and on podcasts. it is not IP, it is shareable, so anyone can go print stuff, give it to their friends and family.

Speaker 1:

I think it. I mean, it's what it's. A couple of hours less, i think, less than it took me to listen to it.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it's a 90 minute read. Yeah, 90 minute read. Well, i think me and Mark wrote it really slow, so I think it's two hours on audible.

Speaker 1:

I listened to the blinkest version of Communist Manifesto as well, and I think it's really important that people actually read yours more than that, because the Communist Manifesto. There's such a subtle difference actually between some of the things in there and some of what you say, but there's just a few things that jump out Like it's, and this is why the world is where it is. It's subtle things that sound good, like take all the property and abolish it so that everybody's got the same Like. To a lot of people at first glance that's like a great thing, but what you guys have done is really highlight okay. Well, where does that end? Because governments don't think like this.

Speaker 1:

They don't think 10, 20, 50, 100 years down the track as a result of that decision.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, i mean, you gotta sort of dig a few layers deeper. I think the other thing I'll just do, like sort of shameless shill or shameless plug, is, if people wanna dig a little bit deeper into some of these ideas, particularly if they're new at a Bitcoin like there's Michael Saylor talks about like the 10,000 hours in Bitcoin, et cetera, and all of that is valid, but one of the things we're all pulled with is like time. So I created a little publication called the Bitcoin Times, which it has what I would consider to be some of the best Bitcoin essays ever written, and there's like there's five editions. At the moment It's one edition per year. I get the six of the best writers around a particular theme.

Speaker 2:

So like last year was the Austrian edition. So it was like Safedin Bitstein, pierre Rashad, like a couple awesome writers like that, and yeah, we produced that. So if people wanna pick up like a collectible of that, so I print 2100 of them in total of each edition and they're uniquely numbered. So if people wanna grab a chunk of that, they can. And yeah, like that's like a way to fast track your understanding of Bitcoin, specifically because if you increase the quality of what you're doing, you will decrease the quantity of the shit you need to go through to understand a concept, and that's the premise of this little publication.

Speaker 1:

Awesome And I love that you launched it to one of the two stories. Two years running, you launched things that were in direct opposition to the conference you were asked to speak at. So one was a crypto conference and you talked all about Bitcoin. and then the following year it was oh, it's a blockchain conference and you launched the Bitcoin times. I love that story. People could go and listen to that on other podcasts but it was. that, to me, was just the classic example of someone who is more than willing to be you and get paid. Like I should just meet a conference and then just go against the grain, But you got asked that, yeah, and get booted out of the conference.

Speaker 2:

Yeah well, yes, i mean, they didn't ask me the third time.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, well, I think you're doing okay. And have you got this other book coming? You've mentioned it a couple of times. Is that on the way or is it on hold? What's going?

Speaker 2:

on. Yeah, so That sounds really cool. I love everything to do with Japanese philosophy.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it is on the way, so it's. I mean, i'm hoping it'll be ready before the end of the year. Like I'm kind of like struggling with the editing process, i must admit, like it's driving me crazy. So it's almost there. I think it's gonna be not to blow smoke up my house, but I think it's gonna be one of the best things I've ever written. It's really really, really thought provoking And it was a total journey to write. So the Bushido of Bitcoin is what that's gonna be called. So, yeah, people should keep an eye on that.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I will link your Twitter's where you're most active, right?

Speaker 2:

Indeed. Yeah, you know what? actually, flying by the seat of my pants, i'm gonna do something for anyone who's listening Is if they wanna pick up a copy of the Bitcoin Times, how about? 30,000 sats off? If they wanna pick up a copy, give me a code. What should we create?

Speaker 1:

a code for people that they can get some sats off. Yeah, you get paid.

Speaker 2:

Go on and get some Okay done, b-u get paid. No, full stops nothing, just one worth.

Speaker 1:

Awesome, 30,000 sats off the new book. Did you say? Oh no, Bitcoin Times Off of Bitcoin.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, the Bitcoin Times. any copy of the Bitcoin Times because that's available now? yeah, Legend.

Speaker 1:

I will make sure that's all linked up. And yeah, B-U get paid as a code is perfect. Great, thank you, Done, Awesome thank you so much For sure.

Speaker 1:

Thank you, Amy. Thanks so much for taking the time to tune in to this podcast. I really appreciate it If you found it helpful or useful, or even if you just feel a tiny tiny bit better for having listened. There's a couple of things you can do that would take a few seconds that I'd really appreciate you taking the time to do. First thing you can do is subscribe wherever you're listening. If that's on a podcast platform, it's usually just pressing the plus sign next to the main show listing page. If you're on YouTube, you can subscribe to the channel or give us a like on the video. If you're feeling really generous, you can leave us a comment or a review. That's either on YouTube or the podcast platforms.

Speaker 1:

Once again, If you feel like anyone else in your life might benefit from any of the topics that you hear us talking about, feel free to send them an episode. And, lastly, feel free to give me feedback, comments, suggestions or personal reviews and thoughts and feelings on social media. It's an and tag me so I can thank you. It's at Amy Taylor says on Instagram or Twitter, or send me an email on Amy at bugetpaidcom. And thanks again for listening. Don't forget to keep being. You keep getting paid, but, most importantly, just be happy. Oh and, by the way, if you didn't enjoy it, don't do any of those things. You just go have a nice day, Save your time. Thanks.

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Amy Taylor

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