My First Million: One Question Friday: Someone Stole My NFTs

All right.

Quick break to tell you about another podcast that we're interested in right now.

HubSpot just launched a Shark Tank rewatch podcast called Another Bite.

Every week, the hosts relive the latest and greatest pitches from Shark Tank, from Squatty

Potty to the Mench on a Bench to Ring Doorbell.

And they break down why these pitches were winners or losers.

And each company's go-to-market strategy, branding, pricing, valuation, everything.

Basically all the things you want to know about how to survive the tank and scale your

company on your own.

If you want to give it a listen, you can find another bite on whatever podcast app you listen

to, like Apple or Spotify or whatever you're using right now.

All right.

Back to the show.

All right.

It's a question of the week time or one, what do we call it?

One question Friday?

I like that.

All right.

Sam is traveling.

So I got my boy Ben here, Ben Levy, not producer Ben, not powerful producer Ben.

This is Ben Levy, the CEO of the Milk Road.

And my business partner across my fund and a bunch of other things.

You guys hear me reference Ben a lot, but you don't ever know which Ben because I only

deal with Ben's.

So this is one of the Ben's.

Ben, what's up, man?

What's going on?

I'm riding high today.

Chris Paul and the Suns won by like 25 last night.

I've never been happier.

This is true.

All right.

So let's, let's do this one question.

I think we have an audio clip, right?

Let's play it.

Let's play the audio clip.

I haven't heard this yet.

So let's see what it is.

Hey guys, my name is Colin.

I just had all of my NFTs stolen today.

So my question is, and I'm sure you've been through something like it before, you know,

when you get gut punched, like, has that happened to you?

What happened and how did you work through it?

Oh man, I could feel the defeat.

I could feel the pain in his voice there at the end that thank you.

That was a soul crush.

Thank you.

Okay.

So Colin, you got your NFTs stolen.

I, you know, I feel for you.

That's no fun.

I mean, that's a crime, right?

Somebody came and stole your property.

It's digital property, but, you know, a crime has been committed.

So, you know, you got to kind of separate, here's my kind of advice to you.

Have I had somebody steal a bunch of my property before?

Not really, but, you know, there's different flavors of gut punch and I've had, I've had

my share.

So here's my kind of like formula for how to handle it.

The first step is just be still.

And I mean this in kind of a Zen way, which is that, look, what's going to happen, you

know, for the next 24, 48 hours for you is you're going to, your mind is going to go

to a bunch of different places.

You're going to get angry.

You're going to feel sad.

You're going to feel upset at yourself.

You're going to feel upset at others.

You're going to feel upset at the, the fact that you can't get it back.

So you're going to hate crypto.

You're going to, you're going to feel a bunch of emotions by default.

And what you want to do is you want to not just react.

You want to respond.

So what's the difference between a reaction and a response?

A reaction is what you do, you know, sort of right away.

It's an impulsive thing.

And typically we don't love our reactions to things because our reactions are the things

that are happening in a more primal way was that whereas our response is what happens

when we pause for a second and we, we choose how we're going to respond.

So a reaction is typically not something you're choosing a response is something you're choosing.

And I, this happens to me multiple times a day where I got to check myself, all right,

am I reacting or responding here and which one do I want to do?

I know I can do both, but I'd rather respond.

So the first thing is you got to be still, you got to distance yourself from it emotionally

first.

Then you got to say, all right, well, how am I going to respond to this?

Well, there's some like logistical steps you might take to try to get back, report it,

try to figure out who did it, you know, notify people in the community so other people don't

fall for it, whatever the scam was.

But then you got to like, okay, let's say you've done the logistics part.

And maybe there is no happy ending where you didn't just all turn out right.

That's where you got it, what I call, you got to decide what story is true.

So in any event, anything that happens, there are, there are multiple stories.

But to simplify, I'll say there's two stories anytime something happens.

There's the story that'll make you feel bad and there's the story that'll make you feel

good.

They're both stories, right?

They both have truth to them, but it's just a matter of which, which angle you're looking

at something.

And so you got to decide, which story am I going to roll with?

Am I going to roll with the version of this that makes me feel really bad?

Or am I going to roll with the version of this that makes me feel good?

And I know that probably sounds hard in the moment when you just got a bunch of your shit

stolen and, and, you know, which is why we first, you know, tried to distance ourselves

from it.

But that's where you're going to have to go.

You're going to have to decide the version of this story that's going to make you feel

good.

Right?

Imagine a breakup.

Most people, when they have a breakup in a relationship, they feel bad and they choose

a story that's going to make them feel worse, which is, oh my God, all the, all those years

we spent together as time wasted, I'm not good enough or she's not good enough or whatever

the reasons are.

Right?

We have, we come up with a story that makes us feel bad or we come up with a story that

makes us feel good, which is, man, now I know what I really want.

Now I'm ready for, for the right person, you know, you want to walk out into the street

and just look left and right and say, you know, next, you know, I'm ready.

And so there's a version of the story that'll make you feel good or bad in any given situation.

The power is in being able to choose what the story is and not just having the default

one put on you.

So that's my like mentality mindset rant, Ben, what do you think you, you've had your

fear of gut punches.

Have you ever had something like this?

Yeah.

I mean, in crypto, I think like a year ago, I had like a few ETH stolen out of my wallet

and I was crushed.

And I think I actually called you and I was like, dude, it sucks.

I just lost a few ETH because I stupidly clicked on a discord scam.

And I think what you said was that's the price of admission.

Every single person in crypto has had that happen and that's just what, that's just the

name of the game.

So I don't know my perspective on it is like, yeah, it definitely been got punched a ton

in crypto.

And I also feel like every crypto when I've ever gotten, I'm mad that I didn't sell it

at the right time or I held too long or bought too late.

I think that's the name of volatility too.

So I'm just like, that's the, you know, I'm going to get a huge home run because I play

this game and yeah, I learned from my mistakes.

Yeah.

There's also like this phrase with investing, which is I've never done, I've never done

an investment right, which means on an investment that worked out, I should have always been

earlier and bet more.

And on an investment that's wrong, I shouldn't have bet or I was too late or whatever.

And so you'll never, ever on any investment feel like you did it right.

You'll always be kind of kicking yourself wishing you had done it either bet bigger or

bet earlier or whatever on it.

And so I think the thing you said that's right, which is it's the nature of the game.

And so, you know, crypto NFTs, this is the wild, wild West right now.

There's a reason your NFT can go up and 10 X in price in one month or a hundred X in

price in a year.

Or like, you know, I don't know how much board Apes are were, but like, I think a year ago

they were under one ETH each and now they're like, whatever, 140 or something like that.

So you know, 140 X in a year.

So one of the reasons you can get these types of gains is because it's the wild, wild West.

But what comes with the wild, wild West is that dude, it's, it's not safe.

There are, there are places where you could stub your toe and me and Sam, I think said

this on a pod once, which was if you become an entrepreneur or an investor and then every

time things go, any time disaster strikes or things go poorly or things go down, you're

like emotionally a wreck because of it.

And I'm not saying colonize, but it's very easy to become a close to an emotional wreck

when, when things go down.

It's like you signed up to go, you waited in line to go on a roller coaster and you

strapped yourself in and then the roller coaster went up and down and every time it

went down, you were like, oh my God, I can't believe this, like get me off this thing.

And it's like, dude, why did you get on a roller coaster?

You know, like if you choose entrepreneurship or you choose investing, if you choose investing,

you got to wake up and like the last four months, dude, I've lost millions of dollars

just because I wake up and every day is red, stocks are red, crypto is red.

Everything's red.

I haven't seen green in months, dude.

I don't even see the color green, right?

Like I'm starting to text people on Android just so I could see the green speech bubble,

dude.

It's gonna be green and but that's the reality is like, I signed up to be an investor.

What did I think?

It's always going to go up.

It's like, I signed up to, you know, do this crazy crypto stuff like, yes, this crazy shit

where, you know, I'm playing this, this, this game where you're, you're a self sovereign

individual.

You're custodianing your own assets.

Well, there's going to be times where you didn't custody it very well and it got stolen.

And so, you know, same thing with, with being an entrepreneur is you got to ask yourself,

am I just complaining that the roller coaster went up and down and that's a way to not

let yourself be a victim.

I think one of the most positive traits somebody can have is that they never let themselves

be a victim.

No matter what happens in their life, they view themselves as the person in control and

the root cause of whatever has occurred.

And in doing so, they give themselves the power to make things good and they give themselves

the accountability when things go bad.

And so, so, you know, I think that's a, just a decision you got to make up front.

Am I going to let myself ever play victim and look for kind of pity, self pity or

pity from others, or you just take that off the table, you say, nope, I'm never going

to play that game.

And so that means on days where my shit gets stolen, it did, somebody didn't steal my NFTs.

I let my NFTs be stolen and right.

So you take control over what happened and it hurts in those moments, but that decision

to never play victim is like one that pays off, you know, in spades, you know, for the

rest of your life.

Then what did I miss?

Also, it's a great opportunity for a Twitter thread right here.

How I got my NFTs stolen.

Yeah.

This is the great, this is the beginning of every great story, right?

I've had this many times where I get a cease and desist letter and then we turn it into

marketing for our company.

I've had it where, you know, Google or Facebook will launch a clone of our app and your investors

will send you a link and be like, Hey, did you see this?

It's like, yeah, motherfucker.

I saw it.

Like I saw that Facebook has cloned our app, you know, the pixel by pixel and that, you

know, this, you know, $500 billion company is now competing with us.

Yes.

I saw the news, but you know, you got to sort of like in that moment, it's like, this is

our chance.

This is our story.

Of course they're going to copy us.

We're on to something.

Right.

Of course they're going to copy us pixel for pixel because we have the right solution.

Right.

And you have to decide what story you're going to tell yourself and your team and your people

around you so that again, you're going to feel some kind of way.

Would you rather feel bad or feel good?

That's all you got to choose.

I tell Ben this all the time, what Ben started this off time about the sun's winning.

And Ben, how do you feel when the sun's win?

Amazing.

Ben, how do you feel when the sun's lose?

Pretty down on myself, pretty down on everything.

So you ride the roller coaster and you let yourself feel bad.

And so, you know, that's a choice you're making right now.

At some point, you might decide to play the game differently, which is I'm going to feel,

is it possible to feel great when your team wins and not feel shitty when your team loses?

Yes.

That is possible.

It sounds like it sounds like it's breaking the rules, but like that's what you do when

you're like a life hacker.

It's like, yeah, you break the rules.

It's like, I'm going to play the game.

I'm going to play the game on my terms.

And so there is a version of that.

Yeah.

And like when your businesses have issues, I think when the business have issues, like

you don't let it get you down at all, and you're able to take the wins and stride really

well.

Do you have an example of that?

Like something where we've taken, we've had a situation where other people would have

felt down, but we spun it.

Do you have anything coming to mind?

I mean, I think we're in one right now, right?

Like we send the milk road and we've had some deliverability issues recently where the open

rates have dropped a little bit and we can't really tell, you know, we're trying to figure

out why.

And I think there's one version where you freak out about that and you make it ruin your

week or ruin your day and there's another version where you just take it and stride

and know you're going to figure it out.

Yeah.

Like, you know, you fast forward a year from now, this will be a forgotten footnote on the

overall story.

And even when things are really crazy and, you know, something really bad happens, like,

you know, in my e-commerce business, our entire shipment for Christmas got seized and flagged

and then inspected and then we had to do a recall and like all this stuff and the people,

you know, people on my team were all like, oh my God, like just for this, you know, one

eighth of an inch, you know, this random random seizure for no reason just because of random

inspection.

Then on one item, they found a one eighth of an inch discrepancy.

Oh my God, this is so unfair.

This is so bad, blah, blah, blah.

And it's like, all right, like, dude, look, like, you know, we, and I created a channel

in our Slack called highs and lows and I said, let's put them here, let's, let's document

the highs and lows.

And I think every startup should do this, honestly, is document the highs and lows because it'll

just get you used to being like, when you go in there, when things feel really bad and

you want to go in there and write it down and you've, it's like, you see the last one

six months ago and you're like, oh yeah, that felt pretty bad too, but I've like, I've totally

forgotten that our business has grown too ex since then.

And like, oh, you know, just the way that that one turned out to be nothing, this one's

going to be nothing too.

I'm going to eat this and I'm going to like use this as an opportunity to learn like,

oh, shit, we didn't even know these, that's one eighth of an inch rule, we had to go like,

you know, change the measurements of something like, I'm glad we knew now versus when it's

bigger, right?

I'm glad this happened because that's going to lead to all these good things.

And so, you know, there's, we had an example like this where like, I'll give you another

one with our e-commerce business, the warehouse manager that we had hired, turn, it wasn't

working out.

Then we found out they were trying to like, you know, sort of like copy our business in

a way and like launch a competitor or something like that because, you know, they're in the

warehouse, they see businesses going great.

So they wanted a piece of the action.

And this was a moment where our team was sort of like, you know, immediately felt betrayed

and then upset and was like, well, you know, what should we do?

Should we change?

You know, should we, we're going to have to make a change, it's going to be so hard.

And those are the moments where you need to show the most poise, right?

That's when, that's when strength matters is when things get hard and things are easy

is not when strength matters.

So it's like, oh, dude, I've been training for this.

I've been training for these times moments, finally, I got a reason to use these muscles

and that are, that are in my body to be able to be strong here.

And so it was all about poise.

It was all about basically coming up with, all right, let's first be still, let's not

overreact.

Second, let's decide how we're going to approach this and respond to this situation, not react.

And then in that response, it turned out where actually we ended up finding this amazing

manager and we ended up saving all this money.

Now we couldn't have seen that up front in the moment, it felt bad.

Now three months later or two months later or whatever, it's like, oh dude, we found

this thing that's saving us, you know, $2 per order, which is going to add up to be hundreds

of thousands of dollars of extra profit saved because we found this new manager who found

this new process, who found this new thing, and we would have never done that had that

disaster not struck.

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And so once you go through life enough, you have enough experience, you realize, oh, it's

all working for me, not against me.

And once you decide it's all working for me, not against me, then the next time the disaster

strikes, you're like, all right, cool, what's this?

How is this working for me?

And you don't panic.

And then the people around you are like, man, how's this person never panicked?

They never freak out about this stuff.

And then that becomes the culture of the company.

That's where you want to be.

Ironically, I'm good at that and everything except when it comes to Phoenix Sun's basketball.

Yeah.

Well, that's because you're fit.

You're mentally fit.

It's like, you know, you're mentally fit with your upper body.

It's just you never do leg day, right?

So it's like everybody's got something in the gym where they're really strong at it.

It's easy for them.

It's hard for others.

And then they have something that's easy for others, hard for them.

And that might be calf raises.

That might be whatever.

And so like, you know, you could take a bodybuilder, but you go put them in a Pilates class and

they're struggling because they don't have the flexibility or the, maybe the core strength

of coordination to be able to do some, some movements.

And so everybody's got these moments that are these situations that are harder for them.

Like Ben Wilson, I'm curious for you.

What's the thing?

Give me yours.

What's the adversity disaster strike situation where you're pretty good?

And then what's the adversity or disaster strike situation where you're pretty weak?

What's your version of leg day?

I'm actually like, because I'm a pretty relaxed person, I tend to do pretty well with adversity.

But like personal attacks really get to me.

Like like bad things happening in the world don't, don't bother me.

Bad things for other people.

Don't care.

Thanks for me.

Really care.

Like if it hurts my bank account even or like whatever, like, I just kind of, I move

on with life, but if someone says something bad about my character, or yeah, insults me

or something like that.

But the one I think of that I think I dealt with pretty well was, I was in Barcelona,

and it relates to what this guy was talking about.

And I'm sitting there at like a, like a cafe.

So imagine a cafe.

I'm on La Rambla, which is like a walking street, and so I'm facing this, this big street

with a lot of people and I'm eating dinner and I've got my phone on the table and I'm

reading my phone as I eat dinner.

And this old woman comes up to me and sticks a sign in my face and starts asking for money.

But the weird thing is, I speak Spanish and she's not speaking Spanish.

And I don't know what she's saying.

She's got the sign right in my face and she's, she's speaking clearly asking for money, but

I can't tell what she's saying.

And I was like, what?

I don't understand you.

And she keeps saying stuff and I'm like, go, go away.

I try and kind of shoo her off.

She leaves.

I'm kind of shaken up and after like a couple of seconds reorienting myself, I go back to

my dinner, realize my phone is gone.

There's someone that stuck the sign in my face and underneath it had taken my phone from

off the table.

And I run off and go search for her.

And of course, even if I had found her, she'd probably handed it off to someone else and

the phone was gone.

And, and that is the kind of thing that I actually like deal with.

Okay.

Obviously I freaked out for a couple of minutes, uh, was, was really mad and was stewing.

But uh, eventually I was, I just kind of like, was like, okay, I'm okay.

It was, it was hard to explain.

Like I was freaking out cause I didn't have a phone in a foreign country and it was like

scary, but I was like, I'm okay.

I've got all my fingers and toes and it was like actually a good opportunity to kind

of like reevaluate of like, all right, this is going to mess with a lot of stuff, but

all the things that actually matter in my life are not affected by this don't being

gone.

Right.

I'm going to also give a technique, uh, because one, one parts of the philosophy and others

is a simple technique you can do.

So how do you actually be still?

How do you actually get to the response?

Not the thing.

And it's really annoying when bad things happen and then the advice you're getting is like,

it's okay.

Don't worry about it.

Shake it off.

You know, because it's like, no, in the moment I feel, I feel bad.

I feel some sense of loss, uh, you know, and so, you know, it's very hard.

And so the actual technique here is a Tony Robbins technique that he calls the 90 seconds

of suffering and the story is Tony goes to India and he's like, he's taking, he's taking

his platinum partners.

And these are the dudes who it's like, you go to the beginner Tony Robbins event.

You're like, Oh my God, this guy's the Messiah.

And so you're like, Oh, if I pay 25 K a year, I get to go on a trip with Tony and like,

I get to be a platinum partner.

And so you pay, maybe it's even more than a hundred K or something like that.

You pay some crazy amount of money and you become a platinum partner.

And he took his platinum partners to India to some like ashram in the mountains and he's

like, you know, just giving them a unique experience.

And he goes in this like kind of guru guy in the mountains is like, Oh, Mr. Tony Robbins,

you know, blah, blah, and he's like, he's like, how are you?

He's like, Oh, fantastic.

You know, life is amazing.

I feel so grateful saying all the Tony Robbins things in his like monster voice.

And then they're like, the guy was like, um, uh, you know, said something like, you know,

but how, uh, you know, uh, he said.

So how are you dealing with your suffering?

And he's like, so he's like, uh, suffering like the hell you talking about, bro.

Like I'm Tony Robbins.

Uh, I'm not suffering.

I'm Mr. Positivity.

I got my platinum partners here.

We're in India.

I'm, I'm teaching.

I'm not suffering.

They, they might be suffering.

I'm not suffering.

And he's like, but I just saw you a moment ago, um, you know, you're whatever your employee

was saying about the thing they forgot and you got so upset, you were telling them how

they should do it differently.

You, you totally changed your face and he's like, Oh, well, you know, that was just, we

have this, I want this trip to be great for our partners and, you know, this person dropped

the ball and, uh, yeah, I guess I kind of lost my cool, but you know, I really care

about the, he's like, they caught himself.

He's like, okay, I'm just justifying, um, and he's like, he's like, that's not suffering

though.

Suffering is like, you know, look around at India, you see people suffering on the streets

and he's like, he's like, it's the same thing.

They, they have a different cause, but they're, they feel the same thing.

They feel suffering in a moment.

Right. And so he goes, he goes, um, you know, you, he's like, you are Tony Robbins.

I see you now and you're, you're, you're, you're bright and you're happy, you're lit

up, you're, you're energetic, you've got the, you have your charisma, all the stuff.

He's like, don't make your happiness so cheap, Tony Robbins.

And he told him, and he was like, um, happiness cheap, what do you mean?

He goes, that game, he's like, that guy just did this small thing and your happiness, he

took your happiness.

So your happiness had a very low price, it only took a very small thing to acquire your

happiness.

He took it away from you.

And so what you want to do, and so my takeaway from this was like, you want to have this

like, you want to be the Louis Vuitton of happiness.

You want your happiness to be very expensive, that it takes a very, very big event, even

bigger than all your NFTs get stolen for, for somebody, something to take it away.

So you have to decide the price of your happiness.

Is your happiness going to go away if someone gives you a wrong look or cuts you off in

traffic or your delivery gets, your pizza delivery on DoorDash gets delayed?

Are you going to get upset?

And it's not upset in a big way, but like you lose that joyful state of mind you could

otherwise be in.

And so he gave himself this thing, Tony came up with this technique called 90 Seconds of

Suffering.

He goes, okay, so I started to notice these little moments where I would lose my state.

I would lose my state of mind where I wasn't, I was no longer in that kind of happy, grateful,

you know, optimistic, enthusiastic state of mind.

He's like, and I would just decide, all right, I can't prevent feeling that feeling like

it's very hard to just prevent it, but I can contain it.

And so he's like, I'm going to give myself 90 seconds to suffer.

And after the 90 seconds, I got to let it go, but I get 90 seconds to do it.

And of course what happens is like, you know, if you don't give, if you don't time box it

is very easy to like have something ruin your day or even kind of get you down for a week

or a month or a year and you're depressed all of a sudden.

So time boxing is valuable, but, but the funny thing is, if you do the 90 seconds of suffering

where you're like, all right, this shit happened, I'm going to give myself 90 seconds.

Within like 24 seconds, you'll be like, all right, whatever, I don't even need to do the

whole 90.

Like, oh, it's done.

Like, I know it's going to end anyways in 90 seconds.

So I really need to sit here and wait the 90 to feel bad.

Like if it's going to end in 90 seconds anyways, you don't even, you end up not even doing

30.

And so that technique of like giving yourself 90 seconds of suffering whenever whatever

happens has been like pretty game changing for me.

And so, you know, I'd encourage you to do that.

And if he's got stolen, all right, have at it 90 seconds to suffer, suffer fully in

as much as you want for 90 seconds.

But the agreement is at the end of that 90, you no longer get to get to suffer about this

at the end of the 90.

You got to take a deep breath and you're going to change the story in your head about what's

making you feel bad because it's not that your NFTs got stolen.

It's some story about that.

It's how much money you've lost, how you're not going to get them back, how you spent

so long collecting them, how that was your favorite one.

That story is what's making you feel bad.

And that after 90 seconds, you got to change that story.

So that's my advice for one question Friday.

That's it.

I feel like I can rule the world, I know I could be what I want to, I put my all in it like no days on, on the road, let's travel never looking back.

Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.