Episode of My First Million with Sam Parr and Shaan Puri.
Transcript
Note: This transcript was auto-generated from YouTube captions. It may contain errors and lacks speaker identification. A full Gemini audio transcript will replace this.
Kind: captions Language: en this guy this ukrainian guy their their leader this guy is badass have you seen like him just wearing like green t-shirts giving press conferences yeah he he’s amazing this guy’s amazing this guy is uh i don’t know much about him i don’t know what’s going on i don’t know what’s like kind of media portrayal versus whatever else but the guy does come across like a goddamn hero [Music] all right let me tell you a quick story i don’t know if you’re going to like this topic so i want to get it out of the way if you like it we could spend the whole time on it but i’m not sure if if you’re going to be into this so yeah yeah so it’s about the most popular thing going on right now the ukraine russian conflict it’s not exactly about ukraine but it’s about russia so something that i’ve always been interested in is the russian oligarchs have you ever studied those folks not studied but you know okay tell me about it okay so this starts i’m reading a thing so you’re going to see me look off this starts on november 3rd 1995 in a remote siberian town called sergot basically what happened in this small cabin an auction took place for the right to lend the cash-strapped russian government tens of millions of dollars so basically in 95 the russian government wasn’t doing so hot and they needed money and so they got these banks uh to come to this meeting and they said we need some money we need to borrow some money and also as collateral we’re going to put up shares of some of the large state-owned companies because at this point russia was basically going from uh being a communist nation to being a private country and so they still had some like state-owned oil companies mineral companies basically like if you think of exxon mobil they like the government like owned that and at this point they were trying to figure out how do we make this so private individuals can do this and so at this meeting uh basically only two bidders showed up and if more bidders wanted to come it was kind of a pain and they asked because conveniently there were no more flights the airport shut down and you couldn’t even book a flight to come uh into into this small town by the way your cameras okay you’re there um and so basically what happened at this like small cabin is one company made a bid to buy a or to loan money to the government they loaned it they loaned something like 500 million dollars and that was like a hundred thousand dollars above the opening bid so people were bidding to loan money so this this bank loaned money to the government and then the government had to pay back the loan at a certain point like something like a year later and if they didn’t the bank then was given the the collateral so the shares in this company to auction off and they could keep 30 of the prop profits so obviously the government didn’t pay back the money and there’s like a lot of like wondering why they didn’t pay up payback basically the idea is that the current president was like obviously this is all like we’re all planning this so we don’t pay this back and give us a little bit whatever so they don’t hate that you’re saying it’s collusion basically there was a a handshake wink-wink agreement basically of what’s gonna happen here yes and so the government doesn’t uh pay back the loans and so now this bank is basically now has uh a minority ownership and like 12 large state-owned corporations they basically holler at eight to ten guys guys who are already relatively successful and they basically said do you uh you wanna make a bid on this company i’m gonna make sure no one else bids on this company but i’ll give it to you you interested and that’s exactly what happened and why would they do that why would they hook up these individuals in that way they did it for three different reasons the first reason and a lot of this is just like hearsay the first reason is the person who was president at the time who was it ben what was his name it was the fat guy who yelled at boris yeltsin yes he was basically said to these eight or ten businessmen i’m gonna hook you up you guys hook me up when i’m when i’m when i’m in office hook it up i’m gonna hook you up whatever so that’s one theory the second theory is that they wanted experienced managers in in to run these companies and the third theory basically is even though these eight to ten oligarchs put bids on these companies and basically they bought the equivalent of exxon mobil so we’re talking about like a company that’s worth billions of dollars they paid a hundred million dollars for this company and so these managers these oligarchs these eight to ten folks a lot of them were mildly successful but they were all in on the government they were all friends and friends you know they’re all homies they basically they did take on risk so like these companies did have debt and like they had to go and like collude with other people and fire the rest of the managers at the company so it was basically got almost like a pe thing but it was like pretty dirty all right and then i forgot to tell you this but this is the most important thing uh i can’t believe we didn’t talk about this earlier to be honest with you because if you’re listening to this and you like what you’re hearing right now and you haven’t gone and subscribed to the my first million podcast wherever you get your podcast then that’s the thing you’ve got to do there’s nothing more important than doing that right now and don’t do it because i said to do it do it because you want to do it do it because that’s who you are and the government was like yeah we need we want like these mercenaries to be in power because if they make these companies better our you know our government’s gonna be better the russia’s gonna be better and they basically profits after after this whole deal profits to these companies grow by 50x market caps go up by 100x and so there’s here’s an example the reason i got interested in this is there’s this guy named robin uh abraham what’s his name uh ben how do you say his last name i think it’s abramovich we’re gonna call him roman so roman even knows what the hell you’re talking about right now is impressive and he’s like he’s like a part of your brain that’s like outside of your body and you’re like uh brain what’s that name oh yeah roman’s famous roman owns um we’re gonna call broman he owns chelsea the soccer team so he’s like a famous guy and he owns like this like you know 200 foot yacht he’s like a big deal and basically he paid a hundred million dollars him and his partner boris paid a hundred million dollars and they’ve just they came up a little bit of money and then they went and hollered at like other rich people and they said hey loan us some money let’s buy this company they paid a hundred million dollars for a company that is now like the eighth or tenth largest oil company in the world so imagine paying in the mid 90s imagine paying a hundred million dollars for exxon mobil right insane and so the these companies explode now they explode partially because basically what these owners did these eight to ten oligarchs what they did was they purposely tanked the company so it sucked for a long time and then they bought out the rest of the minority shareholders so it’s again cronyism there and second these were government-run companies so they’re [ ] and so these private individuals they did a pretty good job of making them better and they became far more profitable and this created like eight to ten guys that were worth like up to 40 billion dollars so at one point one of them was worth 83 billion dollars and you know things have changed but it created so much wealth between these few folks and it also like trickled down so here’s the craziest part is that a bunch of the managers of the company so basically there was like the pre there was like the the minister of oil or something like that as a government official he becomes he sets up this these one of these companies he eventually becomes president of one of the companies and now is worth 8 billion dollars even though he was like a a government official so i thought it was interesting because i actually wanted to read a book about these folks because i’m like oh who’s this like rich guy that owns chelsea football let me like go and learn from him and what i realized is like i pretty much can’t learn from him i mean i could maybe learn some stuff but like his process is not like replicable i can’t replicate it because he was like 38 and russia had just fallen and he basically turned zero dollars into he’s worth now like 20 billion dollars all through this cronyism but i thought it was incredibly interested have you not heard about these folks i’ve never heard any of that in my life um it’s crazy it’s like it’s like the big bang for like russian rich oligarchs it’s like there was this one meeting and it kicked off this series of events that like you know seems kind of unfathomable how that would be allowed to happen or just happen um but then they also consolidated power right like didn’t putin basically like take all their money and consolidation so here’s their power here’s the second interesting part of the story and i actually learned this from listening to ben’s podcast so basically putin was considered like the anti-corrupt guy for for a minute like when he was elected he was like you know i’m not going to stand for that nonsense and he made an example of one of the guys one of the billionaires his last name starts with the k i’m not going to try to pronounce it it’s a challenge he put this guy in jail for 14 years and he literally put them and so in russia for some reason they put you in these like cages and you could like take pictures of these folks have you ever seen that like a like a russian serial killer picture or anything like so it’s like visible from the outside you mean yeah it’s like the mug shot but it’s like literally a cage that sits on you and people can come and like take pictures it’s weird and anyway this guy was worth at the time like 15 billion dollars and putin arrested him for not paying taxes things like that and put him in jail for 14 years and he goes to the other guys he goes you want that to happen to you no all right let’s play and so a lot of people think that putin is the richest man in the world and he owns one of the most expensive homes in russia and in the world it’s like a billion dollar two billion dollar house and people are like oh how’d you do that it was a lot of people dollar house yeah ben was telling me all right it’s a billion dollar house wow i didn’t even realize that it’s uh it’s it’s got like it’s got script yeah it is like the account complex it’s got private beaches it’s got like pools on pools it’s got guest houses basically got a hotel on it it’s like a house is maybe not the right way to think of it but it is a house it’s a private residence for putin and but basically like there’s no proof of this but a lot of people because even when the panama papers released they couldn’t find putin’s accounts but basically uh a lot of people are like well so he made an example out of this one guy uh and he went to the rest and goes you all want to play let’s play and and and now roman by the way really hoping you’d attempt a putin accent there kind of disappointed not gonna lie the story is good but it’s just missing that little something i think that you are giving it a shot ben i think you have a little a little bit of the russian twins and you’re speaking yes they say me i they tell me i speak good in russian accent i will try is this like racist can i do this is this okay i don’t know it’s borderline i don’t think it’s a race this we have the the cancellation vaccination you’re allowed to do a uh a funny funny accent here and people as long as it’s russian if you’re listening you took that too seriously just swipe over and delete the podcast and go on with your life and to wrap this up basically the way that these guys all work now is uh a lot of these oligarchs are part of like the peace keeping like they’re they’re part of they’re helping putin like negotiate peace so like the inner the way that this shit’s intertwined is just bananas it’s crazy and i was like trying to learn about these folks and i was like oh well like there’s nothing to learn here i can’t i can’t do this like this is just crazy and these guys are so wealthy and and so it’s trickled down but if you basically a lot of them when that happened were in their 30s like 35 38 years old and that’s why i got interested in this because i was i remember years ago reading about these folks i’m like how does a 38 year old become worth 3 billion what the hell how did a 38 year old become ceo of a diamond mining company and it was a stupid question what does the word oligarch actually mean uh i think it just means when there’s a small group of people that are in power but basically it’s sort of like a cartel basically yeah not well it’s like what do you say ben it’s just like the typically the way that it is classically defined is over here you have a monarchy which is ruled by a single man over here you have democracy which is ruled by everyone oligarchy sits in the middle of like rule by a few handful right yeah but when we talk about russian oligarchies a lot of times people will say that just means like russian rich people uh russian wealthy rich people the way that i’m using it is that there’s literally like nine guys who were given like these 12 companies and now amongst those nine guys there was like dozens more where like roman was like hey i need a homie i need a cousin to come and run this thing hook it up and so there’s like it’s trickled down beyond that and so now there’s hundreds of them quick interruption do me a favor scroll down and you’re going to see a link to the hustle so if you want to stay up to date on the tech and business news you need to know check out the hustle it’s a daily email i used to help write it i love it so check it out scroll down below i’m on a business insider uh news story about putin’s wealth right now just because i wanted to see the billion dollar house so the house 1.35 billion it’s a crazy palace with three helicopter landing pad landing pads and stuff like that but the thumbnail was putin doing basically like a bowflex so he’s he’s like you know he’s basically saying he’s got both uh cables and he’s like clearly about to do like a peck fly and that was the thumbnail they chose not one of his palace or his cars or anything like that that joe’s putin wearing three thousand two no wearing uh cashmere sweats that cost fourteen hundred dollars and then a matching top which just looks like a hanes t-shirt uh for his workout outfit total which was 3 200 and then it’s just like every picture is hilarious it’s like him choosing with a champagne it’s like only power photos which is really funny and keep in mind this is a guy who before this he was in the kgb so it’s like the cia of america so this is a government salary person for the last 30 years so this is crazy yeah ben how did you feel so you did the how to take with the world episodes about putin and uh and i called you up about this i was like ben re-release the episodes a lot of people are curious about putin right now release the like just re-upload them as new episodes but you kind of research this guy a lot what i mean can we talk about this like russia ukraine thing for a second so like what’s y’all’s reaction to this and i guess like you know the disclaimers is we’re not experts we’re just friends talking about like yo do you hear what’s going on what do you think about this uh so ben what did you think cause you’ve spent a lot of time reading about this guy yeah my reaction um is probably different from most people’s um i think most people who listen to my podcast view it as like an anti-putin podcast like think it’s pretty hard on him and i think in some ways it is it calls him out for some of the bad things he’s done including murdering people and uh like maybe doing a false flag domestic terror attack on uh the russian people so like it’s not a pro putin podcast having said that i think a lot of people’s reaction has just been like putin is hitler he’s gonna keep marching through countries until we stop him like all he wants is right more power more territory he’s a megalomaniac who’s doing this just because he’s tripping and i think that what they’re missing a lot of the psychology of putin of of this is someone who was as sam said a part of the kgb right so he’s a part of the soviet empire when it’s a big empire he watches it fall from grace and then he watches his country get looted in the in the mid to late 90s and kind of says to himself all right well america was supposed to come in and make the situation better i’m never trusting these guys again right and so then he’s watching ukraine get pulled closer and closer into the european union and nato orbit and american orbit and they’re basically saying okay yeah they’re aligning with us but that’s their prerogative and don’t worry about it this is not we’re not gonna like invade russia or anything and he’s basically saying no like that’s his red line i will never trust you guys again and that doesn’t make what he’s doing right but i think it is important to understand where he’s coming from so the motivation so that we can make the right decisions and what do you mean by america america was supposed to come in and fix what what do you mean by that exactly so you’re saying post-world war or something no so it was essentially um as the soviet union is coming down uh i can’t remember the name of it but there was some uh essentially like committee um with a bunch of harvard guys who come into moscow and are like hey we’re the experts this is how you do capitalism essentially and initially there’s like some optimism right of okay well america seems pretty great the soviet union has not been great and so we’re excited about this capitalism stuff and it turns out it goes just they just wear the sweatshirts never went to harvard got him that’s right they were they were pulling the bend they were wearing the georgetown lost sweatshirt but they didn’t go to georgetown they uh and uh so things um the the russian economy really crashed during the 90s and so that’s that’s what i’m talking about gotcha okay so he’s like i’ve you know fooled me once [ ] you know shame shame on whoever the [ ] okay so that was your reaction to this as you were sort of thinking about that sam what was your reaction as you kind of saw this all play out my reaction let’s talk about this from i mean first of all i was like you know screw putin not a fan but let’s talk about from a business or like a management perspective when i saw when i’ve seen all this go through or happen i’ve been watching a lot of videos on reddit and admittedly like that’s a usa that’s an american website so i’m trying to figure out like what the truth is i’m seeing these i’m seeing two things one i’m seeing videos of like pows uh russian pows and there’s i didn’t want to be here they go we don’t want to be here we were tricked we don’t we thought we were going to practice we didn’t know what was going on and they also say we thought you guys were going to open us welcome us with open arms we thought you were going to love us what are you what are you doing like why are you being angry at us and so um i see and they also show the tanks and the tanks are [ ] they’re like from the 80s and 90s they’re bad like and their weapons suck and so i’m seeing a i like they’re they just and like and they were a little chubby and like people don’t have like nice haircuts like they do in the middle like in america like they just like undisciplined like it just doesn’t seem like it’s like a well-oiled machine that’s what i’m seeing in second these are the most random observations about this whole thing it’s like reddit videos of guys being like i thought this was a practice war that’s what they were like these chubby faces in 1980s tanks like what i mean look like when you see that you’re like oh this you’re like like i was afraid of you but like maybe i shouldn’t be like you’re out of shape um and the second thing is this guy this ukrainian guy their their leader this guy is badass have you seen like him just wearing like green t-shirts giving press conferences yeah he he’s amazing this guy’s amazing this guy’s uh kind of media portrayal versus whatever else but the guy does come across like a goddamn hero when you think of the word a hero what do you think of it’s like you know the president who says you know not i’m not just ordering you to war i’m going to the front lines and by the way this guy’s the finance minister he’s here this guy’s you know this is my press secretary he here hold this gun you don’t know how to do it you have it backwards doesn’t matter stand here and basically sending out a video being like you know hey putin you know go [ ] yourself or like bring it on basically like the only thing cooler he could have done is if he was like putin meet me at the border you and me unarmed hand-to-hand combat you win you get my country i win i get your country that’s the only one level up this guy could have done as far as being you know the real life macho man randy savage which is kind of the way he was coming across as a when he’s like a real hero like very brave incredibly and what i’m learning what i’m trying to you know when i watch the news i try to be on like this is bad and i want to help uh the the thought is like how can i use this to improve and my takeaway here is what putin has done they they say like he’s like uh they showed him with uh giving a press conference and he was on this huge table and his generals were like literally 20 feet down on this table and he was kind of by himself and that was kind of a represent representation of him him being a little distant and whereas this guy was like literally on the streets toasting coffee in the morning and my takeaway is in order to get someone to do something you have to make them want to do it you can’t force them to do it because if you force them to do it it’s good it’s a short-lived short-term thing right and with the ukrainians there was a poll where 90 of them support this guy and they are all in the streets they’re all like pouring styrofoam into bottles with gasoline because that’s how you make napalm and they’re using it for molotov cocktails and they like it sounds weird but it seems like they’re happy in the sense of like they have a sense of purpose and they have a community and they have a mission and maybe not happy is the right word but like uh purpose driven and that’s the takeaway that i have from this is if i’m gonna convince people to do stuff like running work at a company or whatever you need to make them want to do it not force them to do it yeah that’s uh that’s a great point they definitely have like sort of the the spirit right now um and the morale in the rally it’s sort of like a rally going on right now and you know especially under these circumstances you know definitely like adversity is something that pulls people together so you know it’s definitely done that for them or it’ll break you apart depending on what your sense of purpose is and so this guy’s killing it man yeah this guy’s it’s been real it’s been a it’s a it’s a really good i don’t think we’ve had that in america for a while it’s been it’s a really good example of wonderful leadership this guy is killing it and he also uses really cute phrases like he says something like uh at least sound bites he’s like i don’t need he was he goes america offered me a lift to get out of here i don’t need a lift i need armor-piercing bullets oh my god dude you are rambo you are wonderful he’s saying all the great and that shit’s important and there’s a reason why like have you ever heard about um where they describe all the roman emperors as uh orders you know people who could speak well like now i understand why yeah totally there dude i’ve been uh so i don’t normally read the news or watch the news at all uh i like never never turn it on don’t read the newspaper don’t go to cnn i don’t do any of it and uh and people sometimes like i don’t know make fun of me or sort of tell me i’m an idiot for that uh just yesterday some guy was like you know terrible life choice you know you gotta you gotta be in tune with the world’s realities and i just think you don’t in my head i’m like if you think the news is the world’s reality like you know you’re watching the world’s worst reality show and um but you know i didn’t say anything to him because you know let him do his thing obviously you know the news is is making him a happy cheerful person so so i i’ve always had this mindset which is like don’t get pulled like basically i find that when people get really into government and politics the phrase that my trainer said to me that makes more sense he’s like these people can’t govern themselves but they want to talk about you know what the government can do and it’s like most people fail to even govern themselves you can’t get yourself to do what you should do why are you so worried about what everybody else should do if you can’t even get yourself to do it and i’ve always sort of taken that as like a way to not get sucked into like 2016 i had friends who were crying about trump and all this stuff and you know i said like i get it it’s not who i would have voted for but um i just don’t worry about that like this is not i don’t worry about the government i worry about government myself the exceptions being oh there’s a pandemic i should probably like figure out what’s actually going on what is the recommended course of action um although that basically you know was was not really paid off because we got a bunch of bad information um you know at first the second thing was okay there’s a war going on and this is my first experience really like watching a war break out like there’s been wars that have just been going on forever like india and pakistan at the border like you know israel palestine there’s skirmishes all the time and afghanistan like you know i didn’t even realize we were in it until we pulled out you know like as ignorant as that sounds like it just wasn’t top of mind and it didn’t you didn’t see it play out day by day this is the first time i’ve really seen it play out day by day so there’s definitely like a kind of a crazy thing to see i mean just to see like um just to see people basically take a stand was like kind of like inspirational then to see like experts coming out like on the internet like being like hey civilians this is how you like do urban warfare from your whip your bedroom window and like there’s this guy he’s a urban warfare expert he’s like you need to drag all your furniture out into the streets into this s pattern your goal is to make it so that their vehicles cannot easily like roam your streets they need to be making all these different turns everything desks lamps toss it all into the middle of the street secondly you know drink water because you know you can’t go three days without water so make sure you’re hydrating otherwise you can’t find anybody third here’s how you make a molotov cocktail fourth and he just had this like checklist i was like holy [ ] is this real life um and then you see crazy man you see like you know there’s like what you see in the news versus i’m in these like telegram channels where people people are posting videos from like on the ground and so you see like different perspectives how’d you get in those uh ben had linked me to two i was i was sharing some links to them he’s like check this out there’s a telegram group where you can just get it it’s all in ukrainian like i can’t unders i don’t read i can’t read the text i can only watch the videos um or just like the heartbreak like there’s a video that was going viral of this dad just like because you know they did a conscription right like everybody between the ages of 18 and 60 all men like you’re now in the army and um there’s a dad saying goodbye to his daughter like knowing he may not it may not ever see her again and she doesn’t understand she’s like a four-year-old kid and like i have a two-year-old daughter so that was just like you know i was just like you know shattered by that and just that was like you see that and you’re like this is wrong this is so wrong what’s going on like it just hit in a different way um and i had heard uh on the all-in podcast they were talking about this they go they go yeah like right now the us sentiment is like no don’t don’t go fight other people’s wars like don’t send our human lives into that and then the guy dave freeberger said he’s something he was like you know i wonder how that will change as the like sort of media starts to come out as you start to see videos of like atrocities and kids and women and people are going to have a different reaction when they see that and that’s exactly like literally the first video i saw that was such a heartbreak i was like we got to do something i got to donate some money i gotta saw that same video i gotta do something here and so it’s just been crazy to see kind of how it’s all playing out like crazy is really the only way i could describe it like it’s crazy that this is happening it’s crazy the way it happens it’s crazy that like life gets turned upside down for people like all the things i care about on a day-to-day basis instantly would be out the window if something like this happened then you see the financial side like this is crazy that this war is like i forgot somebody said this like banks not tanks it’s like we’re basically fighting russia with financial warfare it’s it’s crazy it’s way worse like because i was i was telling ben i’m like putin screw has he’s gonna he’s screwed up the only thing that really matters rule number one don’t [ ] with the money yeah paper putin yeah like because because money is like the most important money is more important than lives often or at least you know that’s a perception and so like yeah it’s screwed up and i want to tell you a point i want to pump your ego so do you know who you you said something you didn’t say it as eloquently as i’m about to explain but nassim how do you say his name kind of bad at names to leave okay so he tweeted something really good so basically he is the guy who uh anti-fragile i forget what else he did black swan black swan yeah and he’s kind of an oddball but he’s eccentric his better word and he uh basically says like don’t read the news that’s like what he said has said that he said that for a long time and he’s like don’t read things he says like don’t don’t uh don’t read the news only read things if it’s like 50 years old that’s his whole point and he tweeted out this yesterday he’s like except my book coming this march buy pre-order now yes and he tweeted this out yesterday and he goes most days 99.9 of the news is noise the last few days it’s all signal newspaper reading is useless except in crisis and i actually totally agree with that and that’s what you said i read the news every day but i actually think it’s kind of pointless until it’s like an urgent urgent thing and that bar the threshold of what’s considered urgent is actually really high yeah and also there’s a way to like you can use the news to inform yourself to gather information to like in my case it’s just like have empathy for what’s going on and just not think about this intellectually but the news can also use you and you have to like figure out where that line is are you are are you using the news right now to gather what you want to gather or are is the news using you as like eyeballs that they’re going to drain for the like you bet your ass like you know fox and cnn every news channel like this is their like i’m not saying they don’t care about what’s going on but this is their payday right this is when they get their spikes this is when they say we have 24 7 news coverage stay here don’t move don’t change the channel we are going to send you drip by drip play-by-play updates and it’s like that’s actually not the healthiest you know like most productive way that you can live your life is by like getting hooked onto their 24 7 you know play-by-play update of this war so you know that’s the kind of like caveat so this last point i’ll make but basically one of my heroes he’s on my wall here you can’t see him it’s ted turner and ted turner started cnn i think he started it in like 1981 but it was kind of a failure it lost a lot of money until 1989 1990 when america or sorry when iraq uh invaded kuwait and the reason why is he sent over a bunch of news stations uh news reporters and it was one of the first times that a news reporter could because of technology could film something and it be aired live and so it was one of the first war that was viewed live and it changed people’s sentiment of the war and it made cnn a huge company that one year and that’s kind of like what’s going to happen now except instead of a news instead of like a a publisher it’s going to be facebook and twitter they’re just going to crush for like the next couple years because we’re glued to it and dude there’s uh can i give you the kind of like the finance or crypto angle of what’s going on here so so basically the west is doing this like financial warfare and they’re like okay economic sanctions so we’re gonna make it hard to trade we’re gonna make it hard to uh to buy and sell goods and then they’re doing a form of like um you know they froze they froze them out of swift or kicked them off of swift okay so now you can’t now you can’t do international transfers and then they froze the central bank assets which was like the craziest move that was the financial nuke so that was where all of a sudden you know they had 650 billion dollars of reserves and they needed those reserves why because their local currency is crashing so i think the ruble lost what was it like 40 percent in the last day great so so you know the average citizen is the one who’s paying the price right putin basically attacked his own citizens here because the currency is crashing um nobody wants to hold this currency anymore there’s a bank you know people are lined up to get money out of the bank so normally the way the government props up their currency to prevent it from spiraling to zero is they will buy it back using their reserve assets they hold dollars they hold euros they hold gold they hold some crypto and they’ll use that to buy back the ruble but because it got frozen they can’t do that and so that’s going to cause the currency to go downfall so i think this time crypto’s not going to play as big of a story but you kind of have to bet that any country out there who’s watching this is probably going to say well we probably don’t want the u.s to be able to just freeze all our assets so why are we holding the dollar as reserve why are we holding any currency that one country can uh one country or an alliance can basically freeze our assets or cut us off or take us out of the banking system so i think you’re going to see a pretty big move first by you know the quote-unquote bad guys basically first by the folks that are afraid of the west to get out of the dollar and get more get more heavily into crypto because this is a wake-up call oh wow they can just cut they would do this they’ll cut us off completely they’ll freeze our accounts and so i think in the next few years you’re gonna see uh different regimes like switch over to digital currencies that can’t be controlled by any one country for a bunch of uneducated dumbasses i think we did pretty good with this one yeah we probably just said one thing or maybe it’s ben’s russian accent like that’ll be where everyone just decides you know we’re [ ] and cancels us but other than that you know whatever i think it’s good i thought the ukraine stuff was awesome did you do you agree ben yeah i thought it was really interesting i thought this is the most interesting news story this is all i want to talk about so i thought it was interesting and and i i think it’s cool i think it’s cool that we could actually talk about it it’s funny dude i you know people don’t want it either way so you i didn’t if you don’t talk about it it’s like dude how are you not talking about this what do you you know why are you uh you think your thing is important there’s a war going on like i tweeted something else out i was like oh this is really cool how this is happening some tech thing and somebody this guy’s like bro kind of insensitive don’t you think it’s a war happening i was like oh am i just supposed to not speak about anything else okay and then you talk about the war it’s like oh now you’re now you’re a war expert well you you you wrote something in the milk road that was great you said um i think the opening line was uh we’re not gonna mention the bitcoin price today because it’s not really that important and i know what you guys are thinking like stay on your lane milk road and the truth is we know our purpose but we want to talk about and i forget uh you went into like the the a bunch of different stuff but i thought that was a really good line what did people say about uh the milk road writing about this uh let’s see i’m gonna i’ll open up the this thing is the like feedback thing is so uh helpful but also you know like daunting at the same time uh did you see while you’re pulling this up i’ll say something did you see when i tweeted out uh are there any pro putin people here what is your opinion i want to hear your perspective because everyone i know is is anti-putin and a lot of people got pissed at me for asking that and i thought that was crazy yeah i tweeted something else similar like that i was like hey so you know just trying to like you know educate myself like what would be and i think i said it something like um i forgot exactly what i said but i was basically asking like what’s the what would be the most kind of like pro russian reason for the invasion at first i was like do do the average people in russia does the average person in russia support this right um and then i was like you know second question is is basically like what would uh what would be the like strongest justification for doing this you know or you know if you’re if you’re like in russia’s camp you know i didn’t get too much flack for it because i like had to like hedge it like crazy but it’s so crazy you have to like really um like soften everything so much i guess you don’t have to but uh if you don’t you know you’re definitely gonna like the discussion becomes about you rather than just being able to be intellectually curious and say i’m trying to understand i’m trying to learn i’m trying to think for myself and i’m not saying i disagree with anything i just want to actually like understand all the perspectives that you know that exist so i said deal manning i want to steal steel man this shifter i wrote what would be the most pro-russian invasion reason basically if you tried really hard to think about why this is justified what would you come up with and uh and you know then i got a bunch of answers i got 26 answers to that and i was like okay that’s cool that’s helpful to uh to and what about the milk road what were the replies did anyone tell you to f off uh i’m opening it what are they what do they say to lebron james when lebron james gave his opinion on some stuff everyone’s like dribble just shut up and dribble lebron yeah what did shut up and podcast what are they going to tell me to do shut up and type shot or i don’t know i’m going to read the first i’m going to read the first three good like good reviews like we have a system it’s like one one milk cup like the emoji like one milk is terrible three milks is average or five milks is great so uh the tone the analysis the new war in size humor this is this has it all that’s five another five one i like the insight into the conflict going on right now another one i think you wrote this struck absolutely the right tone sam is that you or is that a difference um that’s not me i i replied i said this is really good okay great uh great news later today way to have a perspective and a sense of humanity i’m glad you avoided the business as usual and dove into how crypto is involved in this uh and then they complain about one uh like i made this analogy because i said this thing which was like i love crypto when it’s like helping the underdog right like when it banks the unbanked or people’s currencies inflating and they can move into this to preserve their wealth but like there’s an idea that oh russia could use crypto to get around these sanctions that sucks and then i was like oh [ __ ] uh how do i feel it’s a moral dilemma in a way i was like then i realized you know like technology is neutral it’s neither good nor evil it’s just used i was like you know the example of a car like you can use a car to you know drop off your mother at the hospital when she needs help or you could use a car as a getaway vehicle to get away from the you know crime scene it doesn’t make a car good or evil in either case it’s sort of like amoral um and so some people work and some guys like disagreeing with that all right let me see if there’s a one star review yeah was there any negativity i literally wow this might be the highest rated one we’ve had oh here we go here we go here’s one you should effing stick to crypto and stay out of politics okay um number one awful shut up and dribble no this one not one one milk awful oh i can’t miss the opportunity to suck on some political ask [Laughter] i don’t know what to make of that and they did the thing where every other letter is capitalized you know oh my god oh man reading your own comments i’m not sure this is even useful i might just uh leave this up so people have an outlet but it’s like here go yell into this shoebox i’m not reading this stuff anymore i check all of it we have a v8 but right now we check it all because it’s new but like we have a va who basically will just summarize the like here was your score and here’s like the the like kind of valid criticism and the valid like compliments um so i’m just going to read that from now on and not the like the raw stuff unless i really need to go hate my life yeah there’s a bunch of i’m actually for this maven thing i’m doing i’m talking about feedback i’m like not all feedback’s important like for example um if people complain about pricing i’m like i don’t really listen to that i don’t care what they say about price because i’m not going to change um another thing is like um if they say like well i wish you would have sent that email this is what you see in the hustle like send that email earlier sometimes i’m like all right i’ll we’ll do it but then once we started sending at six a.m and i would get complaints i’d be like i’m not listening to this anymore i’m not we’re not doing it um and so it is hard to figure out what is actually important and what’s not and for a lot of feedback is actually not important totally it’s all noise or it’ll whiplash you you do one thing and then they’ll say one thing you do the other i remember at twitch this happened we went to an exec off site and they were like all right so the feedback amongst the execs to the ceo and the ceo was like you didn’t listen to our input enough like we felt out of the loop you guys just decided it was too top down and then the next off site was three months so they spent that whole offsite gathering like what do you guys think what are your opinions what would you do like trying to get like the bottoms up three months later it was like okay let’s read out the feedback from last time you know what’s happened in the last three months like god can you guys just make a decision already you’re the leader you’re supposed to just make a call like why do you keep asking us you’re supposed to have the answers it’s like wow it’s like it’s like really extreme whiplash of like you know you never never have it one way or the other and the best answer i got was like if you take 10 pieces of feedback they’re all informative nine will inform you they’ll like they’ll tell you about the person it’s not about you it’ll tell you about them and then one will tell you something interesting or insightful about you you have to figure out what’s the one out of ten and what’s the nine that’s just about this person like some guy tweeted some feedback about my course like saying oh it’s going great like you know it’s been awesome blah blah he was talking about like i love the energy like sean just it’s like a performance it’s not just like here’s some slides and the guy and so some guy replies he goes oh it’s a performance it’s all about energy uh so basically you you know nothing insightful probably just a big motivational talk huh stuff you could have just found on the internet and then the guy the original guy responds he’s like well yeah like you know 80 of anything you can just go google and find but reality is most people are not going to know what to google even if they’re not going to go take the time to google so it’s great to like have it all packed in and the guy’s like yeah yeah yeah all i heard is i paying just i’m paying 950 just to hear sean pump me up it’s like all right so that’s that’s about him that’s not about it it’s not about the course the biggest thing when when the hustle will me first i remember we we hired two it was just me and uh another guy and we hired two or three interns and so these weren’t even full-time employees and we from the beginning we did this thing where every i think wednesday we would go out to lunch and i remember uh i remember the first time we had other people in that office i said all right well what do you guys want to do for lunch and i got three or four different answers and i was like oh lesson learned never ask and so from that point on it was we’re going here uh i and and i said here’s what we’ll do every week someone else there’s a decision maker um but you can’t ask you just you decide right and i found that people are just happier that way and life’s easier and and oftentimes it’s like that with feedback we’re just like i’ll listen to sometimes but most of the time i’m just doing what i want to do and i’m just going to deal with the consequences right good night yep can i ask you a random question about milk road is who designed the the like milk jar who did that little graphic uh i don’t know ben got that made uh or he found that somewhere i think he got it made from there’s a guy who we featured their um their dao so it’s pretty cool there’s a bunch of designers that got together in this dao i think it’s called vector dao it’s basically like high level designers and they’ve basically created like a like a ad hoc agency companies come to them they pay them and then like anybody in the dow can like take the project like form a little guild like a five people form a team and they’ll go design the thing and basically it’s like an agency that was like they don’t have a hiring and firing process you just sort of join and you can either contribute or not contribute at the end of the day and so uh the thing is cool but it’s pretty expensive it’s pretty pricey so i think when we were featuring it we talked to some guy ben met some guy and then one of the people invected i was like yo i just like like i like the milk road and your thing’s so ugly like i got it i got to improve it so are they indian are they indian i don’t think they’re indian no they uh and then and then every what ben does is he’s like he’ll just post something like hey what do you i made this design what do you think of this and the guy’s like ben i know what you’re doing you just keep showing me stuff that’s so ugly that like i can’t help myself but go fix it like fine i’ll fix it again and he’s done that twice so i just did a reverse google image search and there’s an article written in the india times and it’s using your logo so maybe so maybe that one is maybe that icon is one that had been found instead of the design but the guy designed like all the like banners and the the breaks in the like in the in the email itself like the format of the design of the email wow and like why do you ask one lady because i really like the formatting and and they’re the design and it’s really simple like it’s basically just that little milk jar and like that color blue yeah and i i find it really simple but attractive and memorable oh thank you wow that flattered are you describing sean or the why am i blushing right now katie’s gotta watch out she’s gonna watch her back all right that’s the episode i think yeah we’re 17 sam’s like i got a hard stop at the hour and then i’m like just we just keep talking about random useless stuff you