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All right, it's question of the week time or one What do we call it? One question Friday? I like that.
All right, it's question of the week time or one What do we call it? One question Friday? I like that.
All right, one question Friday.
Uh Sam is traveling, so I got my boy Ben here, Ben Levy, not Ben the Not producer Ben, not powerful producer Ben.
This is Ben Levy, the uh the CEO of The Milk Road and uh my business partner across my fund and a bunch of other things.
You guys hear me reference Ben a lot, but you don't even know which Ben cuz I only deal with Bens.
So, uh this is one of the Bens. Ben, what's up, man? What's going on? I'm riding high today.
Chris Paul and the Suns won by like 25 last night, so I've never been happier. This is true.
Um all right, so let's let's do this one question.
Uh I think we have an audio clip, right? Let's play it.
Let's play the audio clip clip.
I haven't heard this yet, so let's see what it is.
Hey guys, my name is Colin.
Um I just had all of my NFTs stolen today.
So, my question is and I'm sure you've been through something like it before.
Um you know, when you get gut punched, like has that happened to you?
Uh what happened and how did you work through it?
Oh man, I can feel the defeat.
I can feel the uh the pain in his voice there at the end. That thank you.
That was a soul crushed thank you.
Uh okay, so Colin, you got your NFTs stolen.
I, you know, I feel for you. That's no fun.
I mean, that's it's a crime, right?
Somebody came and stole your property.
It's digital property, but uh you know, a crime has been committed.
So, you know, there you got to kind of separate Um here's my my kind of advice to you.
Have I had somebody steal a bunch of my property before?
Uh not really, but you know, there's different flavors of of gut punch and I've had I've had my share.
So, here's my kind of like formula for how to handle it.
The first step is just be still.
Um and I mean this in kind of a Zen way, which is that look, what's going to happen, you know, for the next 24-48 hours for you is you're going to your mind is going to go to a bunch of different places.
You're going to get angry, you're going to feel sad, you're going to feel upset at yourself, you're going to feel upset at others, you're going to feel upset at the the fact that you can't get it back, so you're going to hate crypto, you're going to hate you're going to feel a bunch of emotions by default.
And what you want to do is you want to not um just react. You want to respond.
So, what's the difference between a reaction and a response?
A reaction is what you do uh you know, sort of right away. It's an impulsive thing.
And typically we don't love our reactions to things because our reactions are the things that are happening in a more primal way.
Whereas whereas our response is what happens when we pause for a second and we we choose how we're going to respond.
So, a reaction is typically not something you're choosing.
A response is something you're choosing.
And I this happens to me multiple times a day where I got to check myself.
All right, am I reacting or responding here?
And which one do I want to do?
I know I can do both, but I'd rather respond.
And so, the first thing is you got to be still, you got to distance yourself from it emotionally first.
Then you got to say, all right, well, how am I going to respond to this?
Well, there's some like logistical steps you might take to try to get it back, report it, try to figure out who did it, uh you know, notify people in the community so other people don't fall for it, what whatever the scam was.
But then you got to like, okay, let's say you've done the logistics part um and maybe there is no happy ending where you didn't just all turn out right.
That's where you got to what I call you got to decide what story is true.
So, in any event uh anything that happens, there are there are multiple stories, but that's to simplify, I'll say there's two stories anytime something happens.
There's the story that'll make you feel bad and there's the story that'll make you feel good.
They're both stories, right?
Uh and they both have truth to them, but it's just a matter of which which angle you're looking at something.
And so you got to decide which story am I going to roll with?
Am I going to roll with the version of this that makes me feel really bad, or am I going to vote roll with the version of this that makes me feel good?
And uh I know that probably sounds hard in the moment when you just got a bunch of your stolen and uh you know, which is why we first, you know, try to distance ourselves from it.
But, that's where you're going to have to go.
You're going to have to decide the version of this story that's going to make you feel good, right? Uh imagine a breakup.
Most people when they have a breakup in a relationship, they feel bad um and they choose a story that's going to make them feel worse, which is oh my god, all that all those years we spent together is time wasted.
I'm not good enough, or she's not good enough, or whatever the reasons are, right?
We have we come up with a story that makes us feel bad, or we come up with a story that makes us feel good, which is man, now I know what I really want.
Uh now I'm ready for for the right person.
You know, you want to walk out into the street and just look left and right and say, you know, next, you know, I'm ready.
And so, there's a version of the story that'll make you feel good or bad in any given situation.
The power is in being able to choose what the story is, and not just having the default one put on you.
So, that's my like mentality mindset rant. Ben, what do you think?
You You've had your fair of gut punches.
Have you ever had something like this?
Yeah, I mean, in crypto, I think like a year ago, I had like a few ETH stolen out of my wallet, and I was crushed.
And I think I actually called you, and I was like, dude, it sucks.
I just lost a few ETH cuz I stupidly clicked on a Discord scam.
And I think what you said was, that's the price of admission.
Every single person in crypto has had that happen, and that's just what That's just the name of the game. Uh so, I don't know.
My perspective on it is like Yeah, definitely been gut punched a ton in crypto.
And I also feel like every crypto one I've ever gotten, I'm mad that I didn't sell it at the right time, or I held too long, or bought too late.
Uh I think that's the name of volatility, too.
So, I'm just like, that's the you know, I'm going to get a huge home run because I play this game, and uh yeah, learn from my mistakes.
Yeah, there's also like uh this phrase with investing which is I've never done I've never done an investment right.
Which means on an investment that worked out, I should have always been earlier and bet more.
And on an investment that is wrong, I shouldn't have bet or I you know, I was too late or whatever.
And so you'll never ever on any investment feel like you did it right.
You'll always be kind of kicking yourself wishing you had done it either bet bigger or better earlier or whatever on it.
And so um I think the thing you said that's right which is it's the nature of the game.
And so um you know, crypto NFTs, this is the wild wild west right now.
There's a reason your NFT can go up in 10x in price in in 1 month or 100x in price in a year or like you know, I don't know how much bored apes are were but like I think a year ago they were under one ETH each and now they're like whatever 140 or something like that.
So you know, 140x in a year.
So one of the reasons you can get these types of gains is because it's the wild wild west.
But what comes with the wild wild west is that dude, it's it's not safe.
Uh there are there are places where you can stub your toe.
And um me and Sam I think said this on a pod once which was if you become an entrepreneur or an investor and then every time things go any time disaster strikes or things go poorly or things go down you're like emotionally a wreck because of it.
And I'm not saying call it as but it's very easy to become uh close to an emotional wreck when when things go down.
Uh it's like you signed up to go you waited in line to go on a roller coaster and you strapped yourself in and then the roller coaster went up and down and every time it went down you were like ah like oh my god, I can't believe this.
Like get me off this thing.
It's like dude, why did you get on a roller coaster?
And you know, like uh if you choose entrepreneurship or you choose investing if you choose investing, you got to wake up and like the last 4 months, dude, I've lost millions of dollars just cuz I wake up and every day is red.
Stocks are red, crypto is red, everything's red.
I haven't seen green in months, dude.
I don't I don't even see the color green, right?
Like I'm starting to text people on Android just so I can see the green speech bubble, dude.
Like, I just want to see green.
And but that's the reality.
It's like I signed up to be an investor. What did I think?
It's always going to go up?
It's like I signed up to, you know, do this crazy crypto stuff.
Like, yes, this crazy where, you know, I'm playing this this this game where you're you're self-sovereign individual, you're custodying your own assets.
Well, there's going to be times where you didn't custody it very well and it got stolen.
Um and so, you know, same thing with with being an entrepreneur is you got to ask yourself, am I just complaining that the roller coaster went up and down?
And and that's a way to not let yourself be a victim.
I think one of the most positive trait somebody can have is that they never let themselves be a victim.
No matter what happens in their life, they view themselves as the person in control and the root cause of whatever has occurred.
And in doing so, they give themselves the power to make things good and they give themselves the accountability when things go bad.
And so, um so, you know, I think that's a just a decision you got to make up front.
Am I going to let myself ever play victim and look for kind of pity self-pity or pity from others?
Or you just take that off the table, you say, "Nope, I'm never going to play that game."
And so, that means on days where my gets stolen, it did Somebody didn't steal my NFTs, I let my NFTs be stolen. And you right?
So, you take control over what happened.
And it hurts in those moments, but that decision to never play victim is like one that pays off, you know, in spades, you know, for the rest of your life. Ben, what did I miss?
Also, it's a great opportunity for a Twitter thread right here.
How I got my NFTs stolen.
Yeah, this is the great This is the beginning of every great story, right?
Uh I've had this many times where I get a cease and desist letter.
And then we turned it into marketing for our company.
I've had it where, you know, Google or Facebook will launch a clone of our app.
And your investors will send you a link and be like, "Hey, did you see this?" Like, yeah, I saw it.
Like, I saw that Facebook has cloned our app, you know, pixel by pixel, and that, you know, this, you know, $500 billion company is now competing with us. Yes, I saw the news.
But, you know, you got to sort of like, in that moment, it's like, this is our chance. This is our story.
Of course, they're going to copy us. We're on to something. Right?
Of course, they're going to copy us pixel for pixel cuz we have the right solution. Right?
And you have to decide what story you're going to tell yourself and your team and your the people around you so that, again, you're going to feel some kind of way.
Would you rather feel bad or feel good?
That's all you got to choose.
I tell Ben this all the time when Ben started this off time about the Suns winning.
And uh Ben, how do you feel when the Suns win? Amazing.
Ben, how do you feel when the Suns lose?
Pretty pretty down on myself.
Pretty down on everything.
So, you ride the roller coaster and you let yourself feel bad.
And so, you know, that's a choice you're making right now.
At some point, you might decide to play the game differently, which is I'm going to feel Is it possible to feel great when your team wins and not feel shitty when your team loses? Yes, that is possible.
Sounds like it Sounds like it's breaking the rules, but like, that's what you do when you're like a life hacker.
It's like, yeah, you break the rules.
It's like, I'm going to play the game I'm going to play the game on my terms.
And uh and so, there is a version of that. Yeah.
And like, when your businesses have issues, uh I think when the businesses have issues, like, you don't let it get you down at all.
Uh And you're you're able to take the wins in stride really well.
Do you have an example of that?
Like, something where we've we've taken what We we've had a situation where other people would have felt down, but we we spun it to Does anything come to mind?
Uh I mean, I think we're in one right now, right?
Like, we sent the Milk Road, and we've had some deliverability issues recently where the open rates have dropped a little bit, and we can't really tell, you know, we're trying to figure out why.
And I think there's one version where you freak out about that, and you make it ruin your week or ruin your day.
And there's another version where you just take it in stride and know you're going to figure it out.
This data is wrong every freaking Have you heard of HubSpot?
HubSpot is a CRM platform where everything is fully integrated.
Wow, I can see the client's whole history, call support tickets, emails, and here's a task from 3 days ago I totally missed. HubSpot, grow better.
Yeah, like you know, you fast forward a year from now, this will be a a forgotten footnote on the the overall story.
And even when things are really crazy and you know, uh something really bad happens.
Like, you know, in my e-commerce business, our entire shipment for Christmas got seized and flagged and then inspected and then we had to do a recall and like all this stuff and the people, you know, the people on my team were all like oh my god, like just for this, you know, 1/8 of an inch, you know, this random random seizure for no reason just cuz of random inspection and then on one item they found a a 1/8 of an inch discrepancy.
Oh my god, this is so unfair, this is so bad, blah blah blah.
And it's like all right, like dude, look, like you know, we and I created a a channel in our Slack called highs and lows.
And I said, let's put them here.
Let's let's document the highs and lows.
And I think every startup should do this honestly is document the highs and lows cuz it'll just get you used to being like when you go in there, when things feel really bad and you want to go in there and write it down and you it's like you see the last one 6 months ago and you're like oh yeah, that felt pretty bad too, but I like I've totally forgotten that.
Our business has grown 2X since then and like, oh, you know, just the way that that one turned out to be nothing, this one's going to be nothing, too.
I'm going to eat this and I'm going to like use this as an opportunity to learn.
Like, oh we didn't even know these this 1/8 of an inch rule.
We had to go like, you know, change the measurements of something.
Like, I'm glad we knew now versus when it's bigger, right?
I'm glad this happened because that's going to lead to all these good things.
Um and so, you know, there's uh we had an example like this where like I'll give you another one with our e-commerce business.
Uh the warehouse managers that we had hired uh, turn it wasn't working out.
Then we found out they were trying to like, you know, sort of like copy our business in a way and like launch a competitor or something like that cuz, you know, they're in the warehouse, they see business going great, so they wanted a piece of the action.
And this was a moment where our team was sort of like, you know, immediately felt betrayed and then upset and was like, well, you know, um, what should what should we do?
Should we change, you know, should we we're going to have to make a change, it's going to be so hard.
And it that those are the moments where you need to show the most poise.
All right, that's when that's when strength matters is when things get hard.
When things are easy is not when strength matters.
So, it's like, oh dude, I've been training for this.
I've been training for these types of moments.
Finally, I got a reason to use these muscles in that are that are in my body to be able to be strong here.
And so, it was all about poise.
It was all about basically coming up with all right, let's first be still, let's not overreact.
Second, let's decide how we're going to approach this and respond to the situation, not react.
And then in that response, it turned out where actually, we ended up finding this amazing manager and we ended up saving all this money.
Now, we couldn't have seen that up front.
In the moment, it felt bad.
Now, 3 months later or 2 months later or whatever, it's like, oh dude, we found this thing that's saving us, you know, $2 per order, which is going to add up to be hundreds of thousands of dollars of extra profit saved because we found this new manager who found this new process, who found this new thing and we would have never done that had that disaster not struck.
And so, once you go through life enough uh, you have enough experience, you realize, oh, it's all working for me, not against me.
And once you decide it's all working for me, not against me, then the next time the disaster strikes, you're like, all right, cool, what's this how is this working for me? And you don't panic.
And then the people around you are like, man, how's this person never panic?
They never freak out about this stuff.
Um, that and then that becomes the culture of the company.
That's where you want to be.
Ironically, I'm good at that and everything except when it comes to Phoenix Suns basketball.
Yeah, well, that's cuz you're fit, you're mentally fit.
It's like, you know, you're mentally fit with your upper body as you never do leg day. Right?
So, it's like everybody's got something in the gym where they're really strong at it. It's easy for them. It's hard for others.
And then they have something that's easy for others, hard for them.
And that might be a calf raises, that might be whatever.
And so, like, you know, you can take a bodybuilder, but you go put them in a Pilates class and they're struggling cuz they don't have the flexibility or the maybe the core strength or coordination to be able to do some some movements.
And so, everybody's got these moments that are these situations that are harder for them.
Like, Ben Wilson, I'm curious for you, uh what's the thing Give me yours.
What's the adversities, disaster strikes situation where you're pretty good?
And then what's the adversity or disaster strikes situation where you're pretty weak?
What's your version of leg day?
I'm actually like um because I'm a pretty relaxed person, I tend to do pretty well with adversity.
Um but like personal attacks really get to me.
Like like bad things happening in the world um don't don't bother me.
Bad things for other people? Don't care. Bad things for me? Really care.
No, but it can have like if it hurts my bank account even or like whatever, like I I just kind of I I move on with life.
Um but if someone says something bad about my character um or yeah, insults me or something like that.
The the one I think of that I think I dealt with pretty well was um I was in Barcelona and as as relates to what this guy was talking about.
And uh I'm sitting there at like a like a cafe.
So, imagine a cafe, I'm on La Rambla, which is like a a walking street.
And so, I'm facing this this big street with a lot of people, and I'm eating dinner, and I've I've got my phone on the table, and I'm reading my phone as I eat dinner.
And this old woman comes up to me and sticks a sign in my face.
And starts asking for money, but the weird thing is I speak Spanish and she's not speaking Spanish.
And I And so I don't know what she's saying.
She's got the sign right in my face and she's she's speaking it clearly asking for money, but I can't tell what she's saying. And I was like, "What?
I I don't understand you."
And she keeps saying something and I'm like, "Go go away."
I try and kind of shoo her off. She leaves.
I'm kind of shaken up and after like a a couple seconds of reorienting myself, I go back to my dinner, realize my phone is gone. Yeah.
this woman that stuck the the sign in my face and underneath it had taken my phone off the table.
And uh I run off and go search for her.
And uh of course even if I'd found her, she'd probably handed it off to someone else and the phone was gone.
And um And that is the kind of thing that I actually like deal with okay.
Like obviously I freaked out for a couple minutes.
Uh was was really mad and was stewing, but uh eventually I was I just kind of like was like, "Okay. I'm okay."
It was It was hard to explain.
Like I was freaking out cuz I didn't have a phone in a foreign country and it was like scary, but I was like, "I'm okay.
I've got all my fingers and toes and it was like actually a a good opportunity to kind of like reevaluate of like, all right, this is going to mess with a lot of stuff, but all the things that actually matter in my life are not affected by this phone being gone." Right.
I'm going to also give a technique uh because one one part's the philosophy and others is just a simple technique you can do.
So, how do you actually be still?
How do you actually get to the response not the thing?
And it's really annoying when bad things happen and then the advice you're getting is like, "It's okay. Don't worry about it. Shake it off."
You know, because it's like, "No, in the moment I feel I feel bad.
I feel some sense of loss."
Uh you know, and so you know, it's really hard.
And so the actual technique here is a Tony Robbins technique that he calls the 90 seconds of suffering.
And the story is Tony goes to India and he's like he's taking he's taking his platinum partners.
And these are the dudes who it's like you go to the beginner Tony Robbins event, you're like, "Oh my god, this guy's the Messiah."
And so you're like, "Oh, if I pay 25k a year, I get to go on a trip with Tony and like I get to be a platinum partner.
And so you pay maybe it's even more than that.
Maybe it's 100K or something like that.
You pay some crazy amount of money and you become a platinum partner.
So he took his platinum partners to India to some like ashram in the mountains and he's like, you know, just giving them a unique experience.
And he goes and this like kind of guru guy in the mountains is like, "Oh, Mr.
Tony Robbins, you know, blah blah blah."
And he's like He's like, "How are you?"
He's like, "I'm fantastic, you know, life is amazing. I feel so grateful."
Saying all the Tony Robbins things in his like monster voice.
And then they're like the guy was like um uh you know, said something like, you know, but how you know, he said "So how are you dealing with your suffering?"
And he's like he's like, "Suffering?
Like the hell you talking about, bro? Like I'm Tony Robbins. I'm not suffering. I'm Mr. Positivity.
I got my platinum partners here. We're in India. I'm I'm teaching. I'm not suffering. They might be suffering. I'm not suffering."
And he's like, "But I just saw you a moment ago um you know, your whatever your employee was saying about the thing they forgot and you got so upset.
You were telling them how they should do it differently and you you totally changed your face."
And he's like "Oh, well, you know, that was just we have this I want this trip to be great for our partners and you know, this person dropped the ball and yeah, I guess I kind of lost my cool, but you know, I really care about blah blah."
And he's like and he caught himself.
He's like, "Okay, I'm just justifying and he's like He's like, "That's not suffering though.
Suffering is like, you know, look around in India.
You see people suffering on the streets."
And he's like He's like, "It's the same thing.
They they have a deep they have different cause, but they they feel the same thing.
They feel suffering in a moment, right?"
And so he goes He goes "You know, you He's like, you are Tony Robbins.
I see you now and you're you're you're you're bright and you're happy. You're lit up. You're you're energetic.
You got the you have your charisma all the stuff."
And he's like, "Don't make your happiness so cheap, Tony Robbins."
And he told him and he was like, "Happiness cheap?
What do What do He goes, "That" and he's like, "That guy just did this small thing and your happiness he took your happiness.
So, your happiness had a very low price.
It only took a very small thing to acquire your happiness.
It took it away from you.
And so, what you want to do and as a my takeaway from this was like, you want to have this like you want to be the Louis Vuitton of happiness.
You want your happiness to be very expensive that it takes a very very big event, even bigger than all your NFTs get stolen for for somebody something to take it away.
So, you have to decide the price of your happiness.
Is your happiness going to go away if someone gives you a wrong look or cuts you off in traffic or you know, your delivery gets your pizza delivery on DoorDash gets delayed?
Are you going to get upset and it not upset in a big way, but like you lose that joyful state of mind you could otherwise be in.
And so, he gave himself this thing Tony came up with this technique called 90 seconds of suffering.
He goes, "Okay, so I started to notice these little moments where I would lose my state.
I would lose my state of mind where I wasn't I was no longer in that kind of happy, grateful, you know, optimistic, enthusiastic state of mind.
He's like, and I would just decide, all right, I can't prevent feeling that feeling.
Like it's very hard to just prevent it, but I can contain it.
And so, he's like, I'm going to give myself 90 seconds to suffer.
And after the 90 seconds, I got to let it go.
But I get 90 seconds to to do it.
And of course, what happens is like, you know, if you don't give if you don't time box it, it's very easy to like have something ruin your day or even kind of get you down for a week or a month or a year and you're depressed all of a sudden.
So, time boxing is valuable, but but the funny thing is, if you do the 90 seconds of suffering where you're like, all right, this happened.
I'm going to give myself 90 seconds.
Within like 24 seconds, you'll be like, all right, whatever.
I don't even need to do the whole 90. Like it's done.
Like I know it's going to end anyways in 90 seconds.
Do I really need to sit here and wait the 90 to feel bad?
Like if it's going to end in 90 seconds anyways, you don't even you end up not even doing 30.
And so, that technique of like giving yourself 90 seconds of suffering whenever whatever happens has been like pretty game-changing for me.
And so, you know, I'd encourage you to do that.
All right, your NFTs got stolen? All right, have at it. 90 seconds to suffer.
Suffer fully and as much as you want for 90 seconds.
But the agreement is at the end of that 90, you you no longer get to get to suffer about this.
At the end of the 90, you're going to take a deep breath and you're going to change the story in your head about what's making you feel bad.
Cuz it's not that your NFTs got stolen.
It's some story about that.
It's how much money you've lost, how you're not going to get them back, how you spent so long collecting them, how that was your favorite one.
That story is what's making you feel bad.
And that after 90 seconds, you got to change that story.
So, that's my advice for uh one question Friday. That's it. Peace out.