Money Mentality Matters with Bitcoin Birch — Transcript

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Evolvement: The Financial Podcast

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Jan 11, 2019

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This is a transcript of the Podcast — Money Mentality Matters with Bitcoin Birch — You can listen the audio here

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N: What’s going on everybody, it’s your boy Nye and welcome to the next episode of Evolvement the podcast where we’re going to talk about Bitcoin, cryptocurrency and the future of our financial systems. Today I’ve got my man Birch online, AKA Bitcoin Birch, co-founder of Bitcoin Bravado one of the biggest communities in the Bitcoin, cryptocurrency realm, and just a good guy, one of my good friends, so Birch what’s going on my brother?

B: Shill Nye my guy, so grateful to be here proud of you for getting this new show off the ground and happy to talk about it, whats up?

N: Thanks brother, appreciate it, appreciate it. So one thing you guys don’t know about Birch, or maybe you do is not only is he an epic trader, businessman and things like that, but he’s got a really rich history before cryptocurrency, one of the things we are definitely going to be talking about today on today’s show and I really want to like, the thing I really want to touch about is you’ve got this very visionary mind set, so before I get into all that stuff,

01:24 | 1:22:01

N: Like what were you doing before cryptocurrency and what led you into like, buying your first Bitcoin? What’s the story behind that?

B: Yeah, Yeah. I’ve told the story a few times, you know we all remember where we were when we first got involved in the cryptocurrency space, and for me I was, it was, I had heard of Bitcoin I think probably as far back as 2013, Just being a younger entrepreneur in the tax space and being in the tax space and being fairly tax savvy. But I didn’t care to learn about it, I certainly wasn’t you know in awe of it, of its globally, its global impact if you will or what it could become. But a couple years later in September 2015, I was actually in Vegas and I was with some buddies of mine and it was pretty early in the morning and they were still passed out, and I needed my black jack fix, and I played some blackjack online, had my card, my card wasn’t going through because sometimes that happens when you are trying to gamble online, and so I remember seeing this add, and I was like ahhh what was that ad again? I started googling it it and I found Bitstar which is basically cryptocurrency casino. And um, I am pretty early to the crypto space in comparison to a lot of people in the space today. But this was late enough, it was September 2015 that coinbase was up and running and and that’s actually how I bought my first hand full of Bitcoin, they were about $270 bucks right around there and ahhh, yeah I kinda got lucky, I bought the bottom of that cycle, you know that crash, just about from $1200 down to $180 so I bought pretty close to the bottom by mistake just to gamble online. It wasn’t till about a year later, about 9 to 12 months later that I sat back and I was like, what is this? What is this stuff? Started trying to learn more about it.

03:16 | 1:22:01

N: Hell yeah Bro, that’s what’s up, that’s cool. And what were you doing before then? Is that like, ah man I don’t want to give away too much story, but is that like when you were doing the whole hub grub thing and that story or? What was like going on during that time?

B: Yeah man so, you know I’ve been very entrepreneurial since I was about 16 and I started to learn how to build websites and I started an online Ebay store when I was 16.

And you know probably had six or seven side hustles, startups, you can call them whatever you want. Some did better than others, some got further than others, but because I was so, I was so adamant that I wanted to work in the tech space, but not so much as a developer.

I don’t come from much man, you know my story, you know I was never going to be a doctor, lawyer, brain surgeon, you know even a financial advisor, anything like that. You know I knew that I could make money selling, I know if I learned how to sell I could make money no matter where I was, no matter how old I was, no matter the state of the economy. If I could sell, I knew I can be successful.

I wanted to work for a startup and I wanted to work in sales. After spending a couple of years in my early twenties and even late teens, really just crushing sales, sold a few million cars worth of products, I got an opportunity to join this little startup called Grubhub, so yeah to your point. Back in 2015 the reason I was actually in Vegas was because one of my reps that worked for me was growing the Vegas market and I was in Vegas for work actually, and this just happened to be, we went the weekend beforehand and this happened to be the weekend before. But yeah I was working basically you know at Grubhub, and we will talk more about that.

But my life at that time was just very much, you know I had my career which I was really proud of and I was trying to build this young startup, but I also had a couple of side hustles just different passion projects I was working on at the time.

That’s always been true for me, I’ve always just tried to you know stay busy with different things.

N: Hell yea bro, hell yea. I mean I think that’s like one of the things that people miss right, I think you can get so narrowed in on what your doing right now that you cant see other opportunities. And I think that’s what I personally admire about you alot, is the fact that you see different opportunities. I mean every single time we hang out not only are we like kicking it as Homies and Buddies, but were like kinda like brainstorming, mastermining in some way shape or form. “Did you see what he’s doing?’ maybe we should keep and eye on that”. It kind of leads into the topic your talking bout, this side hustle gig.

06:05 | 1:22:01

N: How did you pick side hustles? what was the vision when you were picking the side hustles? Were they like were they feeding your main hustle or how did you like manage to create these other streams of income? cos I think a lot of people are missing that shit.

B: Yeah man, I messed up a lot OK. I mean that’s one thing I always like to tell people, we will get some of my lessons throughout the years. I mean I messed up a lot.

Early, I came from not a whole lot, didn’t have any money growing up, pretty rough upbringing, not much of family, things like that. So money was always something that I had a very strange relationship with.

I obsessed over it at times, I hated it at times, I was jealous of people who had it, I hated people just for being successful. I was very cynical, this is like a younger kid.

Hate might be a strong work but you know, you get beat up by the world at a young age, you see some kinda messed up things. It kinda changes things, it changes the way you see things. So early on, once I was pretty much old enough to make my own money 16/17 years old, my sole focus became making as much of it as possible and by almost any means necessary, sometimes I am thankful crypto wasn’t around when I was 17 because I would probably have been shilling Bitconnect. Just one being stupid at 17, we are all dumb at 17. You know that’s just the type of program that attracted me. Not ponzi schemes but you know the home based business scene, the MLM’s, like these aren’t illegal, these aren’t scams before we get too troll.

But they are not, there not especially depending on the company they are not always run in the most legit ways you know, a lot of times your selling products well above what they are actually worth. To me it didn’t matter, at the time I just wanted to hustle, I wasn’t trying to scam people or anything but I was trying to sell whatever I could, wherever I could, to whoever I could and in any capacity and you know, so early on I spent a lot of time just chasing money, and just trying to make it.

And I failed a lot early, I failed badly just because what I learned is that if your passions not in what your trying to hustle right, then your going to fall on your face, your going to end up smoking weed instead of working on your grind, your going to be playing video games instead of working on your grind, your going to end up going out drinking with you friends instead of working. Because you don’t care, your in it for the end haul but your not loving the journey.

So it was my very early twenties after three or four years kinda just being a scumbag sales person, trying to go to college, things like that, trying to figure the world out. Selling different, like multivitamins online, before I realised what I really enjoyed, what kind of passions I really had and it wasn’t until then that I started you know kinda figuring it out, hey there are ways to make money no matter what you like to do, and it might not be quick but I think I learned beyond that, like wealth isn’t built quickly, you know getting rich quick isn’t actually a thing no matter how many youtube advertisements you watch that tell you otherwise you know. Especially in crypto, let’s be honest you know, I’ve been seeing this stupid kid on youtube with these damn adds.

You know a lot of these guys who run um different groups and communities there whole pitch is that 9–5 ers are being turned into overnight millionaires, that you can make money full time trading crypto even in a bear market. And while that might not be untrue, um it’s that type of misleading crap that you have out there that I think can be really really damaging you know.

And people fall for it because we are desperate. You know when I was 18 I was desperate, you know what I mean.

N: So yeah I think that brings up a really big issue in the space where ahhh in the whole entrepreneurial space where people want to get rich very quickly you now, we see it in **** we especially see it in the crypto space and I think that’s like one of the biggest issues in terms of money mentality, and that’s one of the things you were saying that I really like caught on, was, you were talking about you pretty much had to create a mentality around money and probably how to make it, as well as well as how to spend it, something I’ve been working on, something I’ve been working on over the last couple years.

10:51 | 1:22:01

N: Can you talk a little bit about that? And share a little deeper insight into what that means to you? I’m seeing like how you maybe had a perspective of money as a kid, and was kinda poisonous and kinda negative and how you had to rearrange that in order to create what you are creating today.

B: Yeah, I think if there was one word to sum it up it’s like respect, you know I have a respect over the last, more than a decade of trying to be an entrepreneur, trying to write my own paycheck and knowing what it’s like trying to hustle and 9–5 at the same time, you know I worked 40 plus hours a week with no more than a couple of weeks off a year since I was 16 until I was 29 years old, and when I was in College I worked 40+ hours, when I was in highschool, the last year of highschool I literally worked 37 ½ hours at this call centre.

Over time I really gained respect for how hard it really is to make money, and how hard it is to protect that money.

And you know that’s probably the best word that comes to mind when I think of my relationship with money now, is I have a lot of respect.

I heard something one time, someone said ‘you know things change when you, it clicks when you finally realize that every single dollar in your bank account was once somebody else’ And that kinda clicked for me, I remember being early on, early twenties you know, ‘I know everything’, you know, ‘stick it to the man’, whatever, whatever. And yea, I was like wait a second, all this money was somebody else’s, why do I have it now? What did they do? where did they go left when I went right to get this money, and I know that sounds kinda silly but it is true, its true.

I’m still not great at saving it, I’m still young, I am still learning, I have my ups and my downs you know. I like to think I am pretty financially responsible but there was a time in my early twenties when I was like starting some of these companies where I got myself into some nasty credit card debt, I didn’t pay some bills and just was generally lazy from a finance perspective.

But I don’t think I’m unique in that way, I think that’s true for most people listening right now, they can probably relate to spending money they don’t have, or, there was a time when I was like 18 19 where I as going to the ATM and I was over drawing my bank account because they would let you overdraw by over 300 dollars, this was Washington Mutual they eventually turned it into Chase

N: I used to do the same shit dude

B: Yeah dude they would let me overdraw by $300 then they would charge me a $30 one time overdraft fee, well if you take out a $300 payday loan, cos all I needed was to get to my next Friday payday, I would go and I would just take out that cash because a payday loan is over 100% interest sometimes, when it all works out, you borrow $300 you are going to pay back $500. That didn’t make any sense to me so, I went through that phase too.

N: Yeah, I mean I think its huge, I think like for me specifically like I can really relate to that, especially on the spending money side. You know, um we all buy our things that we like you know, we all spend a little frivolously, but like over the last year specifically even sooner, like over the last like three to six months I’ve gotten supe,r super, super specific about where I spend my money, you know, If it isn’t aiding my business, isn’t aiding my personal health, if it isn’t aiding my relationship you know. Um, I don’t really want to be spending my money there. That shits your energy and like you work your fucking arse off to get that dollar bill, so where ever you put that dollar bill is a direct reflection of like what matters to you.

B: And once I quit my job it changed again, then all of a sudden I mean, and dude I wasnt like, when I joined Grubhub I joined very early, I wasn’t a sales rep. They hired me to build the sales program. They said listen we want a, you know we will talk about this more, we want to get 65,000 restaurants on this platform in the next five years, and we have no idea how to do it.

And so that was my job, and so by the time I quit five years later after everything. I was used to, I was making high 6 figures in my mid/late 20’s and so when I first quit my job then all of a sudden, and when I quit my job by the way, I didn’t have a ton of money coming in from any other stream of income outside of crypto, I was doing fairly well in crypto but ahhh, yeah when you don’t get that check every two weeks, you don’t get those taxes taken out for you, when you don’t have you health insurance just squared away, when you don’t have paid top, dude I had unlimited paid time off. I did not abuse it, but I could have theoretically taken as many days off as I wanted too at my old job, and gotten paid to do nothing! And so in the last year or so especially, I’ve gained a new found respect for money because I’ve had every single dollar that’s come into my bank account, I have had to go get. Ahh like physically, like I had to go get, you know

N: Yeah I fucking get it man.

B: So the bear market…. Ooooopphhhh you really have to go get it, and you lose, this year I am down about 55% um I was doing fairly well until about a month ago. You know just relative to the year I was doing pretty well. Dude I am down 55% on the year from my crypto holdings. That’s trash so, so you got a whole new you know, new outlook on money when its a bear market, you don’t gotta pay check coming in

N: 100% 5 bro, 100% you gotta like learn to adapt you know, I mean for me personally like I grew up, my family wasn’t like crazy rich but we grew up, and I didn’t worry about money, I didnt think about money. It wasn’t until like some super fucking hard times of my life where you don’t even know this about me, but I was like living on the street, like I was homeless and I had been like so privileged earlier in my life that I was like mad at the work, why the fuck don’t I have money, why the fuck do I have to ask this dude for a dollar so I can go in and buy like some peanuts so I am not hungry right now you know. What the fuck is going on you know.

And it wasn’t until I realised that my whole fucking relationship with money was fucked, it was completely fucked. And I think that’s where it’s interesting because I observe it in a lot of people, and I see how like In myself as a kid, as like, either like, sometimes you grow up like really challenged and you have to work to hustle or sometimes you grow up very privileged and shit happens and you have to learn how to work to hustle.

B: You either figure it out or you fall on your face

N: Exactly, exactly, and your going to fall on your face eventually but like, it just, like how many times do you have to fall on your face until you figure it out you know? You know what I mean? It’s do or die, this, it’s how the world works. There isn’t like a free pass for anyone, you don’t get to like sit on your arse and not do anything, and I think that’s like, it’s where it gets interesting.

We are in this crypto space over 2017 specifically and in the very beginning of 2018 people were just like sitting on thier arses and thier making fuck tonnes of money like ridiculous sums of money, and now were at the end of 2018 right now, it’s just the very beginning of December as we are recording this and like you said man, like people are down alot I think you said you were down 55% and that’s like, that’s not even a lot to compared to most people, most people are down like 80 maybe even 90 % if they were buying shit coins at the top and holding them all the way down to the bottom

B: You could have bought shit coins in early 2017 and you would be down on them right now, I mean there’s so many bags that are down lower than they have ever traded in their history. NEO is a good example,

N: Exactly exactly, and that’s where like, NEO right now, NEO AKA Antshares — bring it back. But now like I think that like, like that’s where you have to learn to adapt you know, and i think i see it as a defining factor of yourself, I think like your really really good at this and I’ve observed it in terms of some of our conversations, just kinda observing you work and your work ethic, but you have to learn to adapt you know, the crypto markets down, well do you keep buying shit coins or do you find a new hustle and make more money, and ah make sure that you are sustained, I mean do you cash out, even if your in the middle of June like and bitcoin was like I don’t know like 8,000 or something back then, even if you are there do you cash out what you have, I mean it’s not $16000, / $19,000 but it’s still hell of a lot better than we are looking right now and yea, I mean.

B: Its you know, you know it’s, it’s always easier said than done as you know, especially in this particular space it can be very very challenging to make a lot of the right decisions, we’ve all made bad decisions, I’ve made terrible investments in this space, made plenty of good ones obviously, you know I have made my fair share of mistakes.

You said something about me being a rockstar trader which I appreciate um, but you know for me personally you know I’m a really good risk manager, that’s what I learned in the last you know, I have been trading crypto. Well i’ve been in this space a little over three years, I’ve been actively trading for almost two years now which is nothing, so I will not tell anyone I am an expert until I have done this for about 8 more years. But I am decent and I have had some really good success, but mostly its risk management, it’s not so much being a good technical trader, and I have still made a tonne of mistakes and failures, and all you can hope to do, as cliche as it sounds, you got learn from them.

And what I try to tell people, and I taught professionals for five year you know, I, we can get into that. One of the things I have always tried to teach other young entrepreneurs and other sales people and everything else, is to fail fast. Your gonna fail, you have to learn to embrace it.

I used to hate the ‘I can’t lose’, I used to hate that idea, then I got to the point where I was like, alright your gonna fail, your gonna get old, your hair is going to get thinner, you’re probably gonna get fatter. These are things that are gonna happen. We’re in the habit of pick your battles and embrace it. And your gonna fail, so what? I try and make a point of, when I realized i was failing, I tried to get on with it quick. And that resulted in me shutting down a couple of companies that I started and invested a tonne of money into. I had a company called Gotab, it was a mobile payment solution and ordering solution for bars here in Chicago and the idea was you shouldn’t have to fight for bartenders attention to either order your drink or close your tab, and I invested about $30,000 of my own money getting this off the ground and built, spent almost a year doing almost everything and putting my whole soul into it. I wasn’t passionate about it, that’s another whole other thing, that’s one of the reasons it failed. As soon as I realised it wasn’t gonna go anywhere, I pulled the plug pretty quick and my partners hated me for it, ahhh “we put so much time and money into it, we’ve done this and that”, and I’m like guys’ this isn’t going to work man, like just were not, were too early, we were too early at that time. It’s no different with the shit coin bag, people say you only lose if you sell, yeah I’ve started saying you only lose if you HODL.

‘You only only lose if you sell’, I think people have been proven wrong this year, you’ve gotta know when to fold them, as they say. You know when to cut your losses.

One of the most important lessons I have learned in the last decade or so being an entrepreneur, is to fail fast.

23:15 | 1:22:01

N: So how did you, with this Bartab idea, first off how did you see that it was too early? and like, how did you make that decision to cut that?, thats a hard decision. Like $30,000! Maybe during peak crypto time $30,000 you could just throw it around like, but I mean $30,000 is still a good chunk of money, how did you like say nah this shit aint working and just move on?

B: Yeah I was 24 years old at the time too, you know everyones situations is going to be different, I bet a lot of the people listening, they’re either entrepreneurs or they’re wantrepreneurs right, There are people who they know, they want to live that, they want to be an entrepreneur and we can talk for 5 hours about how most people aren’t cut out for it, the crazy the craziness, the lack of stability all that kind of stuff that’s probably you know, that’s a whole other thing.

You know for me it got to the point where I started to, once the technology started to get built the first thing I tried to figure out was how is this going to make money?. That goes all the way back to that money conversation, I’m a fundamentalist, I believe 90% of cryptos are going to go to zero, only because I believe 90% of startups are going to go to zero, because 90% of startups do go to zero, and that’s just the reality of starting new business, is most of them fail.

That’s all we’re investing in, we’re making speculative investments in startups that are built on a new technology, this is no different in that sense than investing in, in you know Web 2.0. Which was like the Facebook era you know, there’s there’s other companies at that time Myspace is a good example that eventually went to zero.

I’m a Fundamentalist so when I see a startup idea and when I was with Grubhub I gained some prominence because Grubhub went on to become the second most successful tech IPO in Chicago history and has done very very well for themselves. I get all these pitches, I would go to these pitches, these hackathons. One of my first questions is how are you going to make money? just because I believe in, I believe in real business that makes money and I’m not a big fan of some of this other nonsense that’s out in Silicon Valley never turning a profit and I think we’re going to we’re going to see the downfall of some of these startups that don’t turn a profit very soon. So it Gotab it was very clear to me after doing a lot of R&D and after speaking to a lot of bars and testing the tech, that we were years away from having any shot at making any money let alone be profitable. That’s a whole different conversation between making money and being profitable right and so once I realised the business just wasn’t there, like this was a great idea, the tech did a good job of solving the problem but it wasn’t a big enough problem for enough people at a big enough scale to be a real formidable business and once we finally figured that out it wasn’t that difficult of a decision, because again, I was interested in making money and I wasn’t building that particular company out of a passion to pay for drinks easier, as a matter of fact I’m not a big drinker as you know, I wasn’t a big bar guy I was too busy at home trying to learn how to build websites, didn’t go to the bars when I was you know when I was when I was in my mid-twenties I didn’t care I wasn’t even a solving like a problem I cared about and it wasn’t going to make me any money. So I built a cool app you know it was sweet it looked dope you know, lotta people said they wanted to use it but at the end of the day but it wasn’t a formidable business it wasn’t viable

N: Yeah I hear that but that $30,000, gone but at the same time, you fucking learnt a lot you know what I mean, so like thats, that’s what I did in my late teens and like a early 20s is like, I was starting businesses I was throwing money around that I’d made and things like that and some financial money, investment money I mean, and I was throwing it into these business ideas that I had and every single one of them failed, every single one of them fucking failed and while they all failed and while that like you said that monies a sunk cost, it’s really not a sunk cost, like I think that going through that is part of like what shapes you into being able to create something, like for example what you’ve created Bitcoin Bravado you know, like you probably wouldn’t have been able to have the management skills, the understanding of how to actually run an internal business and structure it well on the inside where it can withstand a bear market like it is and all that stuff.

B: It was invaluable, and so the things I learnt from starting Gotab and about 4 other apps and different random ideas, building different companies was I mean, those lessons are the only reason that my next two businesses ended up being extremely successful, yeah it was invaluable in that sense I would pay $30,000 all over again otherwise I would never have been able to do anything else.

28:23 | 1:22:01

N: Hell yeah hell yeah so let’s backtrack a little bit did you go to college? if you did where did you go? what did you study things like that?

B: The old American scam the great AMerican scam. Listen actually, first and foremost I very much believe in education I just define education differently than most people, I think we could do another whole episode on my opinions of the structured institutionalism of the American college system, especially because as a poor kid College was never on the books for me. I was going to hopefully get a GED or graduate High School, and then work for my Dad in blue-collar work driving a tow truck or fixing cars, nothing wrong with those particular careers, my Dad is one of the happiest people I know, he had his own issues you know and his own struggles and everything else but now as a much older man who built a career in blue-collar work, he would never change it for the world, and he’s low stress and happy and lives his simple life. But it wasn’t for me, I didn’t want to do that but I had no choice like just being poor and my Dad never going to college, no one in my family going to college, I didn’t even know where to begin. I got very very lucky and when I was 16 years old my Dad got a rare opportunity, it ended out moving us to Florida and as a result, my Dad was, his company rented a house for him for two years basically and it was in a nice gated community and that was the first time at 16 years old, first time I ever saw a kid like a 16 year old driving and Nissan 350Z or it was the first time I ever first time I ever went on a golf course, it was a first time I ever had a friend with a boat, it was a first time I ever had a friend with a vacation home or with a cabin to go to on the weekends.

And I got this whole new perspective right, I saw this whole new world that I was never privy to and fortunately at that in my life it was the perfect time because I obviously got friends at school and those friends we’re going to go to college right, and as a result that made me want to go to college. I always did good in school, I never cared too much for it I ended up in enrolling in the University of Central Florida in Orlando, very popular school, just gorgeous campus.

Florida is a great place to go to college it’s summer all around the girls were out you around it was great I had a 75% scholarship, the state of Florida has a government funded program where if you graduate high school with a certain GPA you can get up to a full ride scholarship to any Florida University, it’s called the bright future scholarship, it’s incredible I might move my kids to Florida just to take advantage of it.

So here I am this poor kid in this rented house in this neighborhood surrounded by rich kids and I get almost a full ride to go to any school in the state of Florida that I wanted to. Within the first semester I lost it by getting a 1.2 GPA and then I dropped out, then I went back and took out loans and then after two years I dropped out again. And the times that I dropped out of College I’ll remind you as I said earlier in this conversation I was working 40 hours a week while I was going to school because I was working in a call centre and I was making 80 grand a year at 19 years old selling, selling whatever, some things were better than other things, credit repair services, vacation packages, timeshares, tool belts, National Geographic subscriptions, you name it I sold it over the phone or in person or what have you. I had a had a high capacity and so I was making money and I was working full-time and I was an entrepreneur, like having these random ideas that I was working on I was like fuck school man and I dropped out, and I spent two years just working on my business and working for a company, and making ok money.

But once I started learning about this growing tech economy, this Silicon Valley space, once Facebook really kind of blew up then we started getting some of the early versions of like Spotify, I started to really get enthralled with this with this startup economy, and this new age of the internet Instagram just came out, all this stuff right. I just kinda got enthralled right I think most of us are, probably everyone listening can relate to that. And I started doing research, I want to work for one of these startups I quickly realised I could never live in Silicon Valley, I could living live in New York it was too expensive, Chicago was the finalist for me and I started looking at these jobs and every single one of them even the entry level sales jobs required a college degree, and I was like why the hell do these fucking companies require a four-year degree to do sales? I will outsell everybody there guaranteed. I’ve been doing this since I was 16, they didn’t care, you had to have a degree so I ended up just having to enroll in at Penn State because they had a really very, very flexible online program that didn’t require me to go on campus more than a few times a semester, and so I was able to basically do it remote and I was able to use UCF my local school to administer tests, so was great, it was a great program and I ended up graduating from Penn State, it took me about 6 and a half years in total to graduate College and it cost me about $80,000 worth of student loans, just a long winded answer to your question I graduated from Penn State with a Bachelor’s in organisational leadership and I’m glad I did, glad I did.

N: Hell yeah, I mean I think college is important you know, people argue whether it’s valuable or not. I mean did I learn?, do I use the things I learnt in school in my everyday life? Ah, probably not, but the experience itself was a good experience you know being around people.

B: if you can’t beat em, you’ve got to join them. So at the end of the day for me, I still have my opinions of College. This 19 year old kid I work with at Bravado, hes built, he has a million dollar business of his own in the sneaker industry, and he’s a literally 18/19 and I don’t think he should go to college, he dropped out of College, I don’t think he should go to college, but I wasn’t him and I didn’t have a million dollar business when I was 18 or 20 or 22 or 23 so if you can’t beat them join them, and if you know there’s nothing wrong with working at 9 to 5. My career at Grubhub was incredible, anyone would die to have the job I had, to do what I was doing for a company like that with the benefits that I had. But they require that piece of paper, so if you’ve got it if you’re gotta bite the bullet, sometimes you’ve got a bite the bullet, doesn’t mean it’s fair, it doesn’t mean it’s right but you’ve got to do it.

N: Yeah I think it’s important to work a 9–5 actually, I think obviously if you’re 16/17 years old and you’re already running a multi-million dollar company like congratulations you know, but that’s a rare, rare case, that doesn’t happen normally, but if you have like an entrepreneurial mind, if you’re inspired entrepreneurially, you just don’t have the skills yet, I think it’s super important for the nine to five. I mean I didn’t realise how important it was when I was like 18 / 19 you know I was like I’ll never work a job in my life, I don’t need a job, it actually really wasn’t until I was like working in kitchens, working in automotive shops, working jobs that like frankly I probably didn’t, I really didn’t want to be working, they were hard you know I was up till 4 a.m. in the kitchen, it’s hard but like what that shit taught me was, you have to build the internal structures, like inside yourself before you can ever build something on the outside that is valuable, that is successful, that is massive you know, I learnt more working in a kitchen and having my head chef yell at me. He’d be like you fucked it up, what are you doing, don’t do that, move quicker, what are you like, what are you doing, go home, you know like it wasn’t pleasant at all in any way, shape or form. But I couldn’t just like turn around and be like fuck you and leave you know, I had to stick through it, I had to like be in it and I think that’s like super valuable. Same thing in a normal nine to five job, you might not like sitting up at a desk, at a computer all day but if you want something more it’s a good starting ground, I think you have to fucking learn those lessons to fucking evolve and then step into your real role.

B: And for the first half of my career i was working for kinds of random sales companies selling all kinds of random stuff and none of my leadership was particularly motivating, they weren’t people I necessarily looked up to, they were kind of scumbag salespeople in Florida, as you can imagine that type. But you still learn so much about structure and everything else and then having the opportunity to work with several successful companies and Grubhub. I was working directly alongside Googlers, Amazonians and early, like just brilliant successful startup guys and girls. It taught me so much, now in this space, you know I work with a lot of people in this space in a lot of capacities, and I get emails from people and I’m like man I can tell you never, no-one ever taught you how to write an email god bless young man, like no one ever taught you how to structure professional communication this is atrocious, this is a monstrosity, and I got, I was fortunate to get a lot of that because I didn’t have to go work hard labour. Because you don’t learn that in a kitchen either you know. I was very fortunate to to work for a real big boy company and get my hands dirty on the business side, at a fairly young age and that was all because of my experience in sales, and I’ll probably say it a few times on this podcast but, if you’re an if you’re a young entrepreneur or an old entrepreneur if you’re any entrepreneur, even if you’re not an entrepreneur, but especially if you’re an entrepreneur, man you better learn how to sell and you better find a way to enjoy it. But I truly believe that everybody after High School should have to work in sales for one year, before they go to college. Take a gap year and work in sales it will teach people so much about communication, persistence, rejection, negativity, confidence I mean it’s really invaluable.

N: Rejections the big one there, that really stands out to me. I mean you can’t get a yes unless you’ve got a few no’s first, you know.

B: Agree, every no is one no closer to a yes, you know that’s what I always tell people, no means next opportunity you know. I used to teach my team to be no getters, you always hear the cliche bullshit- ‘be a go-getter! Nahhh player be a NO getter, because every single time that phone call ends in no, you know in your soul your that much closer to the next yes that’s just the way this works.

N: Yeah, and I, yeah man it fucking sucks the first few times you know, I remember.

B: It sucks every time dude.

N: I mean it definitely sucks every time but the first few times you’re like even more sensitive to it, you know you’re nervous. I remember like, I’m on the phone with some people and talking to them about what I wanted to sell them, but first off, by any means I’m not really a salesman not to the degree that you you have those skills, but I remember I’d be on the phone and someone would be like ‘no I don’t think I really want to pursue that’ And it’s just like it hit me like ,hit my gut. And I was just like I was like damn, I thought I did really well, and then I like finally over time I realised ok, every person is different, everybody is unique, everybody’s got their own thing going on. I can’t see what’s going on inside of them, they’ve just got their own thing going on so maybe something that I said or maybe something I’m selling or like pushing on them to a degree isn’t vibing with them, you know. And now it’s gotten to the point where, I don’t know about you but for me like if someone says no to something, I’m just like OK that’s cool,just move on.

B: I’m a little more aggressive, but I hear you in the mindset, I think you’re talking certainly about the mindset too, it’s like you can’t cry over spilt milk, you can’t get too caught up in it, you’ve got to be prepared to go after the next one. And I think that’s something that anyone who’s ever had success will tell you, and I know you will agree, is you’ve got to get up, you’ve got a push, you’ve got to do all that, all that cliche stuff is true you have to keep going and you have to be able to kind of brush it off right

41:30 | 1:22:01

N: 100% 100% So you’re involved in Grubhub, did that happen right after you got out of University and got that degree? did you send an application to Grubhub?

B: Yeah I did, I was technically not even done yet when I applied. I was going on 20, I was about 24 and a 1/2 when I started my journey with Grubhub, at least started the process. So yeah, I was just finishing up, I knew I was going to graduate, I knew I was going to get the paper by the time that the job was going to start, I was like a month from finishing or something, or something like that. I left everything in Florida behind including my girlfriend at the time, and all my friends, and my job and everything to move to Chicago because I knew I wanted to be in Chicago. Because there was enough tech companies here, like new startups, whether it be Yelp, Groupon, I mean Grubhub wasn’t even a name, no one even knew about Grubhub. But at the time like, Yelp and Groupon were certainly among the more popular Chicago startups.

Yelp didn’t start in Chicago but they had a major office here, Groupon did start in Chicago and that was definitely the popular one at the time, I mean you remember how huge Groupon was at the time. Like yeah, they blew up and now they’re not worth anything rightfully so.

Yeah so I moved here because I was like that’s going to be my only chance, I moved here and I took sales job, you know I was working in sales, meanwhile looking for startup gig and this startup that I’d seen a couple of ads for on the subway locally, called Grubhub with these little cartoon characters in their ads, were hiring. And for those who, most people listening probably know Grubhub, your International people won’t as much, but essentially it’s on demand food delivery right, Ubereats. Grubhub invented that shit, Grubhub started the whole game and they were hiring someone, they needed someone to build their sales training program. I was like, my friend told me about it, I said dude there’s no way I’m getting this job. Can you imagine, I’m a 24 year old kid I’ve got like 6 years of sales experience, I’ve started a few failed companies, I had some success in affiliate marketing and that’s my life, and that’s my whole resume at that age. I applied and something stuck out, and that got me an interview and the rest is history.

I interviewed with the CEO I mean this was a small startup at the time, and there came this point he said why should I hire you? Well at one point in my interview they asked how I’d overcome objections, and I started telling them one of my signature, psychological, overcoming objections. I actually just shared it on the phone with your boy Digital Lawrence quick shout out, he called and asked me for some help and I shared this with him. And I gave them my spiel. And their Sales Director or VP of sales even, it was somebody high up was like ‘well that’s not the way we do it here, what about feel, felt, found method, do you use that?’ fortunately for me, because I’m very well-versed and very well read in sales, I knew exactly what he was referencing and I told him exactly why it was a really stupid way to overcome objections. I literally told the VP or Director of Sales that the way he was doing it now was wrong. And that was in my interview. I did it in the salesy kind of way you know, I was very charming, convincing and witty, assumptive confident. But then I think it was the VP of customer service actually asked me I was literally in this interview I was 24 with the entire Executive Board of a company that would go on to be worth 13 billion dollars, but at the time you know it was a small startup, and he’s like why ultimately at the end of the day man, obviously you know how to sell but we’ve got sales reps here who know how to sell, who are pretty good at selling Grubhub and were looking at promoting one of them into this role you know, why should we hire you? and I said one, because I actually have experience outside of Grubhub and these other kids didn’t, and two, I really don’t think you can afford anyone else. He was like what do you mean? I said I did some research and if you’re going to promote one of your top sales reps then you’re asking your top sales rep to take a 50% pay cut. And I think if there is interest in doing that you’re probably would have filled the role by now, then you have to look externally and for 50 grand a year, which was what they were offering me, and at the time right I’m in sales making making over 80 and doing all these other things for 50 grand a year man, you can’t hire anyone better than me so, so I might be young and because I might be inexperienced in that sense, I’m willing to work for a lot less but I promise you I earn my keep, I will learn this spot, and if it doesn’t work out you can still fall back on those other options. They called me a week later and offered me the job and is a part of it they offered me a bunch of stock, because they couldn’t afford to pay me very much so, so the rest is history.

N: Hell yeah, that’s what’s up bro that’s what’s up.

B: That was all confidence, so it was just having confidence,

46:32 | 1:22:01

N: I mean confidence is key, that’s a huge key, and you ended up taking grubhub public am I right?

B: Yeah so Grubhub you know at the time like I said was a small startup, over the years they hired me to figure out a way, at the time they were signing all their restaurants face to face, they were flying people out to different cities, people were walking into restaurants getting a contract and walking out, in order to become the behemoth it become and a company on a national scale and I think Grubhub’s doing something like a million orders a day which is blowing Ubereats and **** & ***** combined out of the water, at the time the only way to do that was to get 60,000 restaurants on the platform. The only way way to do it over the phone, there was no other way, and they didn’t believe that, a couple of the C level people there, there’s no way you can sell this product over the phone, we’ve called restaurants and the small business owners are going to hang up on you, and that was my task you know. Was figure out how to sell this product over the phone, figure out how to call a sweaty, greasy, angry, restaurant owner. I’m not talking Olive Garden Ok, I’m talking a local mum and Pa fish fry place in the middle of Kentucky, in the middle of Orlando, in the middle of Austin, downtown Chicago during the lunch rush, call one of these guys and convince them to sign up for Grubhub and convince them to let us keep 20% of all the orders that we send them. That was my task and we obviously did well and we figured that out and 5 years later, actually about 3 years later, three and a half years later we took the company public. Now I was not a part of the executive team, I was part of Sales leadership so I was not obviously involved in the day-to-day of taking the company public. I don’t take any credit for that, that’s Matt the CEO and his whole team. But if it wasn’t for, obviously sales crushing it. I had to be beat Uber I had to beat *** and they all had free products.

The way Uber tried to compete with Grubhub for anyone who cares just as an entrepreneur, Uber had a lot of money to spend so when they got into Ubereats which was Grubhub’s domain, they just went to all the restaurants and said we’ll do it for free, cos they had a billion dollars in funding, we’ll just take a loss and we’ll do it for free.

Grubhub was like well we can’t do that, we need to make money and everything else so I had to go and sell against a more popular brand in Uber even though Grubhub dominated the restaurant world, and I had to compete against them selling a 20 or 30% product, commission product against one that was free. But obviously we did well and as a result grubhub IPO $20 share price which was really, really lucrative and a few billion dollar evaluation. And earlier this year actually about 2 months ago, it topped out ait $150 a share, 13 billion dollars. I still can’t believe like I was a paw part of something that went on to become just egregiously successful. Grubhub is bigger, more powerful and makes more money than Yelp, I mean everybody on earth knows Yelp, everyone on earth does not know Grubhub. I mean it’s a much lesser known brand and that shows the power of profit. Grubhub made money, Yelp doesn’t, so Yelp has 115 million users Grubhub has 10 million but Grubhub makes money they built a business a startup that had a revenue stream built-in, and that’s where I resonated and that’s why I think that’s still so important in startups today.

N: Oh yeah bro I dig it, I dig it and this all led into what you doing now, obviously you’re a trader, obviously you’re in the crypto realm, but the reason I know you specifically or at least I knew you before I actually knew you was Bitcoin Bravado, so Bitcoin Bravado is one of the biggest communities in cryptocurrency, I think you have the largest telegram community if I’m not mistaken. And so I mean before I was even Shill Nye, before I even like jumped on Twitter and when I like first got really into crypto like full-time, Bravado was my go-to place, like I was in your telegram channel, I was following all of your updates on Bitcoin price movements on qlc and all over these other coins. Shout out to that, dragon all those good ones you know. And yeah I mean it’s fucking massive, it’s really cool you guys have a whole community behind you.

51:13 | 1:22:01

N: So for people that are listening, what the hell is Bravado? did I give a good description of it?

B: Yeah man, so all the experience you heard and just all this, all this stuff learning how to build websites early and learning how to monetize and learning how to, how to do proper customer service, learning how to offer products the right way, learning how to structure businesses legally, things like that all lead to Bravados success. Basically when I started Bravado in August of 2017 I had been in the space for about two years, and like you, at that time anyways I wasn’t involved much in the social media side. I didn’t care, I didn’t care for Twitter I didn’t care for Facebook I didn’t care to watch videos on YouTube I spent a lot of time in Reddit I spent a lot of time just reading and doing my own quiet research, and telegram is a place that I ended up finding and finding a bunch of groups on telegram and that’s what motivated me to start, start Bravado is because you know how trash that content is.

I got hit up yesterday I’m going to share this, I’m going to share the screens on Twitter when I come back on Twitter in January. I got hit up by somebody yesterday he’s like let’s do a cross promo bro let’s do a cross promo. He’s got 170,000 people in his telegram channel I mean mind you Bravado has 41,000 subscribers. Were easily the largest if you take out like coin Telegraph, and you take out those ones, and you take out all those channels that buy all their followers. So he has 170,000 followers, 3000 views per post trying to convince me that it’s legit. When I get 20,000 views on a post and I have some posts that are 100.000 views, I mean we absolutely owned the telegram scene. But that’s the kind of stuff that was out there, it’s just trash. It’s stolen, repurposed content just bullshit right and I’m not talking about like behind-the-scenes manipulation, Im talking about ‘pump starting in a few minutes’ the coin is bittrex, the coin is on bittrex, wait 5 minutes, pump starting in 2 minutes, pump starting in one minute, and like aahhhhh boom. It was just the craziest, most blatant crazy nonsense and it just blew me away right.

So we started Bravado, what we wanted, and as you will note makes like a post a day, one or two posts a day, on the high end and sometimes will go three or four days especially in the bear market now without making a post. The whole point was I want people to subscribe to Bravado and I don’t want them to mute us and I want to make sure that they know if they get a post from us it’s important every time. it’s all the bullshit out there disseminated into something people can understand, that’s relevant, and that’s digestible, and I think that’s why it worked. I threw up a logo, we spoke proper English, we use like nice emojis and really structured our content like I know you’re the Emoji King now on Twitter and sometimes you get trolled for it but there’s science behind this folks, science behind using these things.

And look back on bravados posts and look how different they look compared to any other content on telegram from the just the way that they’re written, and that is where like my sales came in, and most of the time we weren’t even covering coins. I mean like yeah there were plenty of times we were talking about coins and we tried to be very careful and cover like larger cap coins like qlc or something like that, it would have less of an effect on the market like we try to be very cognitive of that, but most of the time we’re just sharing like educational information, we’re sharing charts, we’re sharing news. A lot of times we were like talking about FUD like it would be FUD and it was all bullshit and we’d use the Bravado platform to tell people why they shouldn’t be worried about that, or why it was bullshit, or why like no binance wasn’t hacked your reading misleading headlines, and I think that’s why people resonated and we disseminated all of that information in a really digestible way. That’s why we were successful, so Bravado is news, crypto and trading, education and insight. I mean that’s what it is, fundamental analysis with research our telegram is completely free always will be and of course we do have our private community that we launched at the end of last year where we get a little were posting all day long or posting 100 times a day we’re sharing all kinds of stuff that people want if they want it, that’s what Bravado is.

N: Hell yeah, I mean you’ve got a great team, I know like I’ve met probably almost all of them, almost all of the Bravado guys now, maybe not all of them but I know a good amount of them. good guys always pushing out good content.

55:45 | 1:22:01

How did this start? You know.

B: Yeah so obviously you guys know that I was working at Grubhub, and again Id been in crypto for a while, I was pretty well positioned and again my backgrounds not in trading.

When I started Bravado I had been actively trading, I would say trading like, making money trading, and like learning TA and watching all of the videos and doing all that stuff for a like 6 months, and that’s why Bravados channel has never been TA focused, and now it’s a lot more TA focused, I have a team of people who know that stuff, but at the time I wasn’t as focused on that, it was more like startup and valuation and things like that.

So yeah I’ve been trading for about 6 months and so my friends obviously knew this and they scoffed at crypto right, early 2017 late 2016 they turned their nose up at Etherium it’s whatever, Bitcoin’s a scam it’s Silk Road, but obviously once August came around and I started Bravado next thing you know, 2 months later I have 5,000 people on my channel, then a month after that you know I had 8,000 people on my channel and it’s going crazy. I Quit Grubhub to start my consulting business, actually separate from Bravado. And three guys basically were like, two of them were were from Grubhub and one of them was like a friend of a guy, yeah we’re like coming with you, and this kid, his name is Kyle, he does crypto live with me it’s our Mon/Wed/Fri live stream on YouTube and he manages our Twitter and stuff like that, he worked at Grubhub, he literally walked up to me, and he’s like, when he found out I was quitting, once he found out it was like two weeks notice, it was kind of a big day when I quit I’ve been at Grubhub for five years, from the early days, I was one of the most tenured people in the entire company, by the time I left I was pretty high up in leadership so everyone found out that I was leaving, he walked, he cornered me, brought me into a room and he’s like ‘I have to come with you’. I said what do you, why? I can’t pay you Bravado doesn’t make any money, like I’m doing a consulting thing I don’t need you, and he was like you don’t have to pay me dude, I just have to come with you. I have to be a part of this and he’s much younger than me, so he’s like 22 right and I was like, you know we had an intimate conversation 30/40 minutes, he quit his job that day and he came with me and another buddy came with me, and I met other people. But the way that I found my analysts now, so that’s like my core team, my friends and colleagues who had the vision, who saw what we were doing, who saw what me and my business partner built early, and took a chance, and they said hey, I just want to be a part of this, I just want to sit next to you every day, I want to learn, I want to see how you’re doing this, why is Bravado blowing up and everyone else is not, like it’s not like every telegram chat channel was, Bravado right that’s what these kids wanted to find out so what we do is we started our own private community just trading all day long just a bunch of dudes in a Discord, we opened it for a very limited time then closed it down right, we didn’t let a bunch of people in, for six months I ran this Discord can most of the first half of this year, like I could have sold a million membership and we didn’t, we shut it down we let like a handful of people in and we just traded I think we had like 100 people in that community total. And during that time I found all of my analysts, I found some guys who were phenomenal technical traders, light years better than me, had experience in traditional equities or who had traded Forex for a couple of years, I knew what they were talking about, I had taught myself I had watched YouTube videos and read BabyPips to death and had experienced just doing it. But I was never going to be the technical analyst, I don’t have a passion for that, I didn’t get a degree in finance for a reason so I found people who did, I found people who love that, I found people who love staring at charts, who loves running algorithms, who loves trading and I promoted them up through the ranks and then eventually the rest of kind of history. And now so much of the content we put out is just way better than I could ever create myself, because it’s coming from people who really know what the hell they’re talking about and it lets me focus on the side of the business that I’m most passionate on and I do a lot of TA because I’ve been doing this for a couple of years.

So yeah I can pump out charts better than 99% of crypto Twitter but you know I wanted to find people who really were well-versed in it, you know and I got lucky and found those people, now we have a team of like 10 that are all full time that all work to put out content into Bravados variety of the different 40 Bravado channels, telegram, discord YouTube.

N: Hell yeah bro, that’s badass that’s badass I mean, I can’t like, like stress enough how important it is to build something you know, I think a lot of crypto people will be listening to this and this is why I like respect what you built Birch, like even before I met you I respect what you guys had going on, while it’s good to trade and it’s fantastic, I don’t think like, I don’t ever put any Traders down, I think it’s like arguably more important to build something, you know. And educational content is key, especially right now in the crypto space and I think that’s like the big opportunity, you know everybody in crypto is always talking about ‘oh this is the biggest opportunity ever buying Bitcoin at $3,000 or buying it at $5,000’ or whatever and while I think that is huge opportunity don’t get me wrong I’m buying Bitcoin right now, I think the bigger opportunity is to build the business or build some sort of service in the industry that in the next five years you’re going to be ahead of the pack of everybody, you know. We just saw this main wave happen at the beginning of this year, end of last year and I think that’s like only phase 1 you know what I mean, I think that we may not ever see crazy pumps like that again but we will see mainstream coming in, we will see more important, more skilled technological people entering into the space as we have over the last year, and yeah just building something, a service platform, something that that provides value to people beyond just trading is super relevant.

B: So I realized very early on that most people should not try to trade anything let alone crypto, they shouldn’t try to trade Forex or equities let alone crypto, and if you can’t be successful in Forex you really can’t be successful trading crypto there’s a big difference between buying some shitcoins at the beginning, middle or towards the end of a cycle and getting pumped on and making tons of money and then like proper risk management trading.

I’ve learned by default, I’ve learned by surrounding myself with brilliant people, that are way smarter than me and probably 10% of my income is from trading. It’s something that I’ve gotten good at but I’m still like, you know whatever, and even the best lose sometimes more than they win I talked recently about 50 or 60% of my trade, I lost,I was doing my audit for September 56% were red trades I still made 240% ROI because of good risk management, because you lose 6% on a red trade but you make 60% on a good trade, and I do think we’ll see crazy pumps again because there’s no liquidity, there’s no liquidity in these coins and they going to move up just as quick as they move down, but that’s another conversation. I just think that the tradings like, so many people think trading is the way, they worship these TA guys on Twitter, worship them! they know some of these guys man are 22 / 23 years old, have never even traded for a living there just really good at doing charts you know, and like absolutely no disrespect I do not respect a lot of people in the space, but no disrespect to those that have made the bigger name for themselves on crypto Twitter, on the trading side. Some people I can think of like ****, **** Scarface, ****,****, ledger status, these are guys have nothing but immense respectful for, they are the exception you know they are not the rule.

Some people come into this space and they think that they should trade, it’s not even that they want, they think they have to trade, and the numbers don’t lie, trading has been around since money was around, and there’s a reason everyone doesn’t do it, there’s a reason that even most of the people that do it, even those that do it for a living, even at the board of trade where my current office resides lose, it’s so extremely difficult way to make a living, and most people if you see someone on Twitter putting out content non-stop I’ve got news for you bud, they’re not trading, trading is more than full-time it’s a complete and Savage grind.

No one knows this, but I would say publicly no one knows this, but the way I am make my money right now is not Bravado, in fact for almost the entirety of this year 100% of the money that Bravado has made has gone back to the Bitcoin community, and it’s gone to my analysts and my team and expansion and like we’re building a couple of products right now, like that’s where it’s all gone. So I’ve made some money no doubt, but that’s not paying the bills especially lately is consulting, my passion and my skill and my expertise, the only expertise I have is sales and building businesses, in particular online like sales funnels and like online like converting online traffic to sales, and monetizing, that’s what I’m good at so, so for the last year I’ve actually low key lived behind closed doors, because I’m not public about my whole life on Twitter.

I work with clients in this space, usually in the crypto space that’s where I had have a lot of credibility, and these are clients that never make it onto Bravados Airwaves, I will never talk about them publicly except for the ones that I actually advised, that’s a little bit different than a client from a consultant standpoint and I work with them quietly on how to not suck at selling because they suck at selling really, really bad, so I say all that because to your original point, build something, but you can like, there are people in this space who are phenomenal graphic designers right ,and they’re trying to be full-time Traders, fuck that dude, like do your research and find some speculative long-term investments in the space that you like, average down on them or buy them now or whatever, and then try to make money by selling your service of designing graphics because there’s a million start-ups in the crypto space and they all need that service, maybe you’re a web designer, maybe you’re a podcast producer, maybe you sell t-shirts, like whatever it is that your personally good at it’s probably not trading if you’re listening, it’s just the averages, probably not trading, probably not TA, try to do that, go build a business.

I haven’t used my massive following one time to promote my consulting business, because those world’s don’t often collide That’s not saying I’ll never do it, but I do something I’m passionate about and trading is a very secondary part of my, you now kind of my income stream and what I do.

N: Yeah I think you touched on a good point there you know, a lot of people who are trying to be Traders really aren’t Traders, doesn’t mean you can’t buy some Bitcoin though and sell it high, but probably not supposed to be on there, or probably shouldn’t be on there day trading and used losing 75% of your money in the middle of a bear market, but yeah dude I mean I had literally people come into my direct messages on Twitter, offer their design skills, offer multiple different skill sets and these guys are good you know, and they’re literally random Twitter avatars with no following but like 40/50 followers and so I think to that point, I think that’s probably the main thing that I would stress to people, is dude just do what you good at man you know, if you want to learn a new skill, learn a new skill, but don’t forget about what you’re good at because the crypto space needs that too, you know the crypto space while we, like it’s not bad to have more Traders

B: There’s enough Traders.

N: Exactly, like we don’t need more Traders, we need more people with design skills, we need more people who have a creativity that could make this shit look attractive and bring in new ideas and new concepts so I’m 100% with that.

B: And guys listening, you don’t have to be an entrepreneur, if you’re listening there’s probably a better than not chance that you do have that passion and if you do great, I will be honoured to be a small part of your journey and I’m sure Nye you feel the same way, but for those who are just casual in this space, and just Killing an hour of their Tuesday listening to this, you don’t have to be an entrepreneur, you don’t have to be an influencer on social media, you don’t have to be a trader, you should really focus on doing something your super passionate about.

It just so happened I saw, I look at the crypto industry as a startup industry, I don’t look at as a finance industry, if it was a finance industry I would not be interested, that’s why I didn’t trade Forex or stocks. I’m not into it, I’m into long-term investments, I’m into real estate I’m not into stocks really and things like that.

I look at crypto as a startup space and as we’ve just discussed, I’m obsessed with tech startups, every single company in crypto is a tech startup, they’re all trying to solve, a lot of them are just terrible ideas they’re trying to solve really dumb problems, but a lot of them are trying to solve really unique problems and their young, scrappy, just exciting companies that reminds me of the early days at Grubhub and that’s why I’m in crypto. I’m in crypto to work with startups and I might be able to do well financially if I make a couple of good bets in the next five years, that’s a nice motivator for me, I’m not in crypto because it’s a way to make money from a trading perspective or from a finance perspective, if there was no underlying asset in this space that you can make money on I would still be very heavily involved in this space, because it’s all entrepreneurs building tech products and that’s what I’m personally into. But if you’re not, if you’re like a fitness professional maybe align yourself with a cryptocurrency company that is in that industry, but outside of that don’t feel like you have to force yourself to be a crypto influencer or cryptotrader just because cryptos trendy and you think that people are going to think that you’re cool if you’re in it. Focus on what you do and let crypto be a side Hustle for you, let crypto be an enthusiast thing for you, let it be a speculative investment that might make your family rich, there’s nothing wrong with being in crypto because you think it might make you very rich one day, understand what you’re getting yourself into, understand the risks associated, and godspeed I wish the best for you.

N: Hell yeah dude, hell yeah it’s all about building that plan, all about building that structure. 100% agree dude, so we’re coming up on a little over an hour now probably going to wrap this up real soon

1:11:04 | 1:22:01

N: But I do want to bring up one last topic with you ‘Twitter ban’ you’re off Twitter right now what’s going on with that? What’s spurred that and yeah like what the hell man your on crypto Facebook what’s going on?

B: Ok ok I’m not on crypto Facebook, no I’m friends with the guys that run CCT it’s a large Facebook community and since I don’t have Twitter distracting me, I’ve moseyed my way unfortunately through some of the things that people say, and the only things that I really respond to is things that trigger me, because I’m just blown away, blown Away by the things people say on crypto Facebook, it’s just wild.

Yeah I mean probably everyone listening, if they’re heard of Bitcoin Birch before, you know most people probably think you have more followers than me, that’s really what triggers me Nye, that’s really what triggers me, That’s why I Quit because people, people see Nye at a conference ‘oh my god there’s Nye’ it’s like I’ve got more followers than Nye you know, Nah you know I’m just messing. With social media we all know, everyone listening knows the negative that comes with social media ok, whether it be bullying, whether it be trolling, whatever that wasn’t a big deal for me, I was telling Nye earlier before we got on, like I don’t find myself getting too caught up in drama, I’m not the most active on Twitter, I tweet about 30 times a day which includes replies, Nye I think you’re at like 100 day, something like that, that includes like replies and things like that obviously, so I’m already a little bit less active, I don’t really get too caught up in drama so it wasn’t that, but for me what happened was about 2 months ago my anxiety and other things, other like kinda like personal issues really started to bubble up, they’d been there for a while, really started to bubble up and I found that I would actually turned to Twitter in times of extreme emotional, kind of like extreme emotions so if I was like really upset or really anxious or really depressed or really happy or really anything, my first reaction was to go to Twitter, it was to either go share it on Twitter, go complain about it on Twitter, go just just go mindlessly sift through Twitter to distract me from what was going on in real life. And I started to crutch myself on this fake world and you know better than most people Nye, most listening can’t even relate.

I have two Twitters, I have the Bravado Twitter to, which has 30,000 and you know, I mean were doing over 10 million impressions a month, there is a lot of pressure that comes with that, there’s a lot of opinion, there’s a lot of people out there who have things to say, there’s a lot man.

And and it doesn’t make me any money, I almost never shill Bravados paid community, like I never, like I don’t use it for that, that’s just not really, you know I’ll do it on very rare occasion but I don’t want to fill my feed with that, so it’s not like it makes me a ton of money so it’s just like, it got to the point that I was crutching on Twitter I was relying on it for way too many things for an emotional standpoint and if you can’t relate, and you think I sound like an idiot like, you know that’s fair, it’s fair to like poor you, and woe is me you have too many Twitter followers, like that’s not what I’m saying but it’s just it got to the point where it was so overwhelmingly emotional, it was like a cigarette.

N: It, it’s literally like another drug, I’m 100% in agreeance with you like, and the pressures fucking real, people who only have 40 or 50 followers might not understand and that’s nothing against (or even 5000 followers even) there’s nothing against them that they don’t have a lot of followers, and it doesn’t mean anything like that but, like when you have a lot of people’s attention on you that is a real thing, that is real, you can feel other people’s energy, you can feel other people’s attention on you and it puts pressure on you, I feel it is well man, I feel pressured to make sure that I’m at least sending out 3 to 5 unique tweets a day, I feel pressure to at least respond to 10 to 20 people a day, I feel pressure to make sure that I’m responding to all of my direct messages, because the fact of the matter is like, I know how Savage the crypto Twitter can be, it really is, and one wrong move, one wrong mistake, or one wrong tweet when I’m in a bad mood, it can hurt like a reputation or an image, for things like that. And this might seem like petty issues but they’re things that are like, these are things are important to me or at least right now in my life.

B: Yeah and you know so kinda just to answer your question, like in November, early November I was like you know what I’m going to take the last month of the year, like my anxiety was just getting to it, and this again, isn’t just like I’ve always had kind of anxiety issues, I’ve had some health concerns this last 12 months that ultimately ended up getting diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome which doesn’t go away, unfortunately it is actually a chronic illness, it’s a real thing, it causes muscle spasms, twitches, joint pain, fatigue, neck pain, headaches you name it, name a symptom, it’s involved in some way, shape or form. And this last decade dude, I didn’t sleep. From 19 to 29 I had two businesses, worked full-time jobs, went to college, had a full-time girlfriend and then I got crazy into crypto, then crypto went crazy, and then I started two businesses in the crypto space, like it’s just I worked myself to death. And then the last year I got out of shape compared to like what I’m used to, I’ve let a lot of my personal standards slip, my business was thriving, my Twitter following was thriving, but I let a lot, I let my personal relationships slip, and so I made the decision in November. I was like you know what, I’m just going to take a month off Twitter because that’s where I’m spending loads of my non productivity time, and I’m just going to see how it, what it does if anything.

And so I’m 9 days in, im 9 days clean, I did make the commitment to log on a couple of times a day onto my computer, I don’t need to completely abandon, it’s not heroin, it’s just I just don’t need it on my cell phone, I don’t need it connected at the hip, and so what I’ve actually found is today, I haven’t even logged in one time. I didn’t even think about it today and it’s been nice and so yeah I’ve moseyed in to Instagram and Facebook a little bit more sure, you know so I’m still poking around, but it’s been nice to kind of prove to myself that I don’t need that platform, I don’t need the attention all the time, and it’s been I think really rewarding, I’m looking forward to coming back full force in January and continuing to be a productive member of the crypto Twitter community, it’s by far the best in crypto it blows Facebook and Instagram out of the water, but I just needed a small break and I recommend it to everyone, seriously think about that for themselves as well, and it might not be Twitter for so many people, it might be like, dude my girlfriend sits on Instagram like 2 hours a day and she’s not an influencer in any capacity or has any business, she’s very much your average American girl and I don’t think that’s healthy dude you know it’s, many hours usually following people from the bachelor or MTV or just the Kardashians, it’s just, it’s not healthy man.

N: Yeah I mean, you gotta produce more than you consume, you know what I mean. Like i’ve always believed that, if you are producing more than you are consuming then you are net positive and if you are net positive then your adding something into the world rather than taking away from it. I mean I get it man, I fucking get it, social media is an addiction and some people like completely hate on in, but I think that balance is necessary and if you are a content creator then throw some content out there, make some shit that adds value. And dude, I’ve literally taken three or four breaks this year from Twitter where I’m off for about 24 hours 48 hours something like that so I’m 100% with you man, it might not be a month but I get it bro, I get it.

B: I miss some of my friends yeah, I miss like just trolling some of my buddies like you and other people for sure, but we all have each other’s cell phones, it’s not like we, we still text and everything you know, it is what it is, but it’s been really relaxing it’s been nice.

N: Twitter will be there in a month man, Twitter will be there in a month.

B: It sure will.

N: So that’s been, this has been awesome Bro I’m fucking digging it, I am glad we got to jump in the conversation, we didn’t get to hit every topic but we pretty much hit every topic we needed to touch on, can you just give the people a little plug like where can they learn about you, where can they learn about Bitcoin Bravado and anything else you want to plug.

B: Yeah I guess in true sales fashion it would be silly to turn down a free plug, you can follow your boy Bitcoin Birch on twitter @ the handle bitcoinbirch on twitter and Instagram, and ah Instagram if your more interested in the entrepreneurial side of my life, what it’s like to be a full time entrepreneur working for yourself, traveling, networking, working with small businesses definitely follow me on instagram that’s where I share most of that. But come troll me on Twitter we will have a good time and if you are interested in learning more about Bravado our free telegram is just @bitcoinbravado if you haven’t already checked it out hop in there and if you want to check out the website and learn a little bit more about our trading community, it’s not like your probably are used to in any way shape or form, it’s not like just spoon fed signals and bullshit, it’s not super expensive either its very much a community for enthusiasts to network and to learn and to make some good trades, and you can check that out at trybravado.com thats the plug

N: Perfect perfect, dude thanks so much for coming on man glad we got to sit down and do this conversation I am sure in the future we ll do another episode when the market turns around and yeah

B: We didn’t even talk crypto which I am perfectly ok with, this Bitcoin price action is exciting right now and I am looking forward to loading a few more bids in as we re approach $3,000 hopefully, hopefully we approach $3,000 cos I got some shorts I need to make some money on first.

N: Hell yeah brother perfect, Awesome my man thanks so much for joining, and as always guys its your boy Nye and this is the evolvement podcast and you can catch us on the next episode.