The Pomp Podcast - Peter McCormack, Host of What Bitcoin Did: Marketing, Memes, and the Adoption of Crypto

Episode Date: March 8, 2019

Peter McCormack is the host of popular Bitcoin podcast: "What Bitcoin Did." In this wide-ranging conversation, Peter and Anthony Pompliano discuss podcasting, marketing, Twitter, and how to build brands in today's environment. This is part one of two. Head over to "What Bitcoin Did" podcast to find the second half of the conversation. ----- Join the Off the Chain newsletter. Pomp's daily email analyzes the crypto market for institutional investors. Simply, it’s the best crypto newsletter delivered to your inbox every morning. No frills. No bullsh*t. Just everything you need to know in a 3-minute read. https://offthechain.substack.com/ ----- If you enjoyed this conversation, share it with your colleagues & friends, rate, review, and subscribe. This podcast is presented by BlockWorks Group. For exclusive content and events that provide insights into the crypto and blockchain space, visit them at: https://www.blockworksgroup.io

What's up, everyone? This is Anthony Pompliano. Most of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to Off The Chain, simply the best podcast in crypto. Let's kick this thing off. Peter McCormick is the host of popular crypto podcast, What Bitcoin Did. In this wide-ranging conversation, we cover podcasting, marketing, Twitter, and how to build brands in today's environment. We played a game during the recording where there was a $10 fine for anyone who mention Bitcoin or crypto, so you'll enjoy hearing that. You're listening to part one of two right now. When you're done listening to part one, head on over to What Bitcoin Did podcast to listen to part two. This was an epic two and a half hour recording, and we really enjoyed it. So I hope

that you find it nearly as much fun and entertaining as we did. Anthony Pompliano is a partner at Morgan Creek Digital. All opinions expressed by Pomp or his guests on this podcast are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Morgan Creek Digital or Morgan Creek Capital Management. You should not treat any opinion expressed by Pomp as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his opinion. This podcast is for informational purposes only. Hi, Pomp. How are you? I'm doing fantastic. I appreciate this opportunity to speak with you on this

wonderfully cold day in New York City. Yeah. Thank you for having me over here. How long have we been trying to do this? we've been trying to do this for months and we're here and there's more cameras staring at us and microphones in our face i think we probably are used to and we big shout out to cody vargas my twin do you know the story of cody i do not cody what's your story no do you know how we met oh no how did you guys meet so um i was in vegas for world crypto con and everywhere i was going people kept going to me go and say all right cody how you doing and i was like i'm not cody i'm pete and then um oh you two do look yeah oh you two do look alike yeah so we went to and then i was

it it's like happened for like three days and i was at this party and somebody says to me all right cody i was like look i'm not cody i'm pete and she went oh no look there's cody and he was behind me so i went up to i was like all right everyone keeps saying hi cody and he was like everyone keeps saying hi pete so he's become like he's become my crypto twin yeah you guys are doppelgangers yeah i love it i love it so so all right what should we talk about podcasting man i got all kinds of stuff let's talk yeah let's talk about podcasting so i started a few months before you you did and i was having this really good run you're my idol well i was having this good run and then like say i'm driving say i think i'm driving a nice bmw and up comes this

ferrari behind me it's like i'm like oh great like you've really crushed it man i uh i cheated i uh got to build it off your back you're the one who convinced everyone they should listen to podcasts. And then I came along and was like, hey, if you put some music in the beginning and just yell and scream a lot, they'll listen. And now you are doing things that I'm a huge fan of. We were talking before we started and the fact that you are so transparent about everything and take the time to literally list out, here's every single view, here's every single dollar, here's every single expense. I think that's how businesses are going to get built in future it's awesome but i do everything right i like i book the interviews crazy i travel to the

interviews i do it's only these the last two episodes that come out i haven't done the engineering i finally because i've made some good money i've took an engineer on which is going to save me 40 hours a month i do all the website i do all the publishing but you you've run in a business during the day right i i literally said to uh blockworks groups the guys uh jason yanowitz and mikey palito i said look i'm happy to do it i think i can get people to show up i think i can interview them uh i don't have time to do all that stuff right and uh and they said we'll figure it out they didn't know how to do it right but it's i mean it's a it's a first class lesson in you want to do something and somebody says hey here's an opportunity i'm willing to do half i need you

to do the other half and you don't know how to do it just say yes yeah i'll figure it out and they went and figured it out and here we are so how have you found it man it's like how many episodes have you done i have no clue like 50 yeah probably 50 what about you uh 82 82 82 went out today andreas i'm trying to uh to catch up well so that was the other thing i was like going along coasting on an episode a week and then you come and there's like two a week i'm like oh god now i need to do two to keep up i i only know one speed that's been my whole life is just uh if you're gonna do something do it right and the part that i like is uh there's people who i've interviewed and you've interviewed and i actually enjoy listening to your interview with them because what i notice

is my interview has a very specific bent on it right it's pretty much how do i get this person to explain what they're doing uh why they're doing it how they're doing it for an audience that is intrigued and interested in crypto but they're not the hardcore enthusiast right fine number one you owe me ten dollars oh man all right that's ten that's ten dollars and uh and so from my standpoint how do you get um how do you get that to that audience you got to get them to the guests to speak in a very specific way in a very specific um you know kind of perspective etc you get to go all out right you get asked about all the nuances and kind of the really detailed stuff and so i actually learn a ton from yours that are questions i can't ask

because they're too in the weeds and so interesting i uh i actually that's my big secret is if somebody comes on i'll listen to a couple of other people have interviewed them because i'll learn uh aspects about that person or their story that i can't get to just given who the audience is see i find i always say to people mine is like entry level as well like really simple because i will listen to someone like marty bent and listen to him talk about finance and i'm blown away by like his depth of knowledge or i listen to stefan or pierre and the things they know the detail they know is way beyond me i just i'm just not smart enough like i don't understand some of the things i'm reading or hearing so when i go into interviews i'm actually asking the questions about things i

just don't understand and also sometimes i'm like i'll see something and i'm like that just seems like like bullshit i'm like and i just kind of want to ask it but like sometimes i feel uncomfortable it's like am i not allowed to ask this like shouldn't i ask this but no i just do it and it seems to have worked and seems to have what's the number one lesson you've learned from doing all this uh what like life lesson or as a podcaster like both one life lesson and one podcast lesson um it's it's more of like it's not a new lesson it's just like hard work pays off yep yeah like really hard work pays off i don't um maybe they do because i talk about it but like i work really really hard at this you know i do and i don't have a choice right i'm single dad

yep uh two kids one lives with me full time how old are they uh my son's nearly 15 he's 15 so he came out to japan with me for the car palace interview because i had nowhere for him to go i was like well you want to come with this guy who may or may not have lost a bunch of money for people and he was cool and it was great to have him with me but like i had no choice because i had nowhere for him to go um and i have to juggle that and then you know my daughter's with me every other week and how old is she she's just turned nine okay and i can't go and get a job in london because i can't commute because i need to be so i have to make this work from my home yep from my home office so i i do 60 70 hours a week and i just i just work really hard so hard work pays

off um marty bent shout out marty bent who will probably talk about a bunch who's got a podcast uh tftc and um he said it to me he said look the whole key is just show up every day right and so you know the just work hard show up every day like it's not really that big of a secret just hard to do yeah i mean it's and you know i made a commitment early on to do a lot of interviews in person so i flew out to north carolina you know an area you know well to interview lop and i flew out to uh san francisco to interview charlie lee and i and then i went out to japan to interview roger v and i just put that commitment into that kind of difference and then i just hustle work hard hustle work hard so that's that's the biggest lesson i've learned but

it's more of like um it's like a repeat understanding of a lesson you just got to work hard and then i think the thing that i've learned most about um podcasting oh god what have i learned most about podcasting i guess it's a really tough one um i guess over time i've learned i think i'd like to think i've learned more about how to interview people and when i listen to someone like marty i want to hear marty all the way through it because i really respect his opinion and i love the conversation but i don't want to hear me on mine i want to say as little as possible to get as much from the guests and hear them talk so what i think i've learned most is how to construct an interview and try i try and make all my guests feel comfortable and

and like i'm not going to trap them and and then just try and get them to open up and talk and i think if you listen to my first podcast and you you follow the trajectory you'll see interviews changes yeah i think and i think that's just me getting more comfortable what about you what um do you tell guests in the beginning like here's the structure here's what we're going to talk about no uh okay so you don't do that uh i i usually don't talk to the guest at all about what we're going to talk about until they're in the room and i say hey like are there things you want to talk about or things that you're not comfortable talking about so i like i do let them set boundaries yeah um which some people may not like and some people do like um but to me it's

i'm very clear that like i'm not a uh i'm not a journalist right uh i'm there's no gotchas there there's no uh there's no anything um and uh i think that puts people at ease right because they're just like okay you know peter or pompa aren't gonna be here and they're not gonna trick me which is uh you know when i go on podcast right i'm like i can i trust this person not to put me in a position where they're gonna ask me something that's awkward or whatever or can we just have a good time and talk about things we want to talk about yeah well i had a conversation with somebody yesterday and it was on twitter and they said see that i'd interviewed andreas and they said i hope you ask him all about this stuff and that comes up occasionally

it has the same with mark carpalas yep somebody wanted me to ask him about something quite controversial and i said the subject you firstly want to ask about has got nothing to do with what i'm going to interview him about secondly i've spent a year trying to get this interview and i'm flying out to japan for it it's not your agenda it's mine if you don't like it i'm very sorry yep but also i think if you go around doing like hard-hitting interviews and you really pull some people apart you're going to struggle to get future guests on because they're going to be like well it's different goals too right like um you know we talked about marty but like let's talk about uh laura shint right another great uh podcast and like she is a journalist yeah right

and part of the or a big part of the value that i get out of what she does is she will ask those questions but i think guests go on knowing that's what they're there for right you're going to get kind of a very um unbiased journalistic approach and uh i'm sure that she there's certain guests who are you know worried or less likely to go on but there's a lot of guests who actually that's what they want right they you and i are gonna you know be buddies with them basically and let them kind of tell their story and that's great but that's not a hundred percent of people and so you know it the beauty of this whole uh ecosystem is everyone approaches it a little bit differently and you can bring the same person on four or five different podcasts and you'll literally get

you know 30 40 different content uh and so it's uh it's really fascinating kind of watching all develop yeah and that journalism thing's really interesting because i've been told a few times i need to be more responsible and i need to be more impartial and i said it's very difficult to be impartial because i've got i've got an opinion and also i find that i kind of find that funny especially if it came comes from someone in america because whenever i come over here and i watch the news the news is either liberal or it's conservative of course it's hardly ever impartial so like how do you get impartiality and i'm not impartial and i'm not a journalist i'm not trained i fell into this i used to work in advertising and you know here i am and yeah

i mean do you get much flack for your interviews all the time all right i look i i'll talk about it uh we just had um uh rick burton come on and he's great love rick high energy comes in came in at 7 a.m in the morning knocked it out uh and there's people who are upset that i didn't ask specific questions or didn't push back etc and again it goes back to what i tell every guest is i'm not here to argue with you i'm not here to debate with you i'm not here to do anything what i'm here to do is there's a platform i want you to tell your story in your words and then let people decide right right and uh it's just this idea of like i don't know maybe you feel the same responsibility like i don't think i should tell people what to believe or listen to right like

like you should tell your story yeah and people can believe whether you're full of shit or not yeah yeah and and i get that and we got it the other night you know i was with uh katherine woo uh-huh we were in a bar missouri yeah missouri yeah so we were she came to the hoxton um we wanted to catch up on a couple of things and by the way i think she's utterly amazing and some guy the bar guy heard us talking and he came over to us and he said um are you talking about crypto can i ask you about something and we're like yeah sure even yeah but no then the question comes out he goes what do you think of xrp and i start cracking up like i'm like what are you doing i'm cracking up and um yeah we have the conversation it goes out on twitter

and some guy goes yeah you just made that story up it's like no no we didn't and then the funny thing that happened after that so previously i've been talking to this uh girl next to us and she wrote on a beer mat to me her phone number she was like uh if you want to have a drink another time yep here's my number which was really cool and also like kind of brave because she interrupted the conversation go here you go anyway katherine goes and the beer mat's gone and i'm like yes it's gone i mean she was lovely so um i asked the barman couldn't find it the next day he messaged me on twitter with a photo oh let me show you it oh the phone's there after i show you he messaged me on twitter goes i found the beer mat here's the number let's go so i put that

up on twitter as proof but like sometimes i find myself always having to defend myself and of course why here's the secret uh somebody told me a very long time ago um and i forget who i'm gonna forget whose quote this is but it's somebody who's important that i probably should remember their name but their quote basically goes um you know in your 20s you're really really worried what everybody else thinks about in like your 30s and 40s you realize that like you're not as worried anymore and by the time you're like 50 or 60 you realize no one ever cared about anything you were doing right it's a little different when you've got kind of a public audience that uh feeds off each other um but there is the sentiment of like is the anonymous troll on twitter who is trolling

right it's not it's not we just label multiple like they're trolling you is it worth engaging with them well part of your brand right and mine is being authentic engaging and and having that conversation but i troll the fuck out of you all the time i love it i love it i'm literally whenever you post them i'll be like because you know what you know what annoys me like i will put out a really authentic heart like heart story and i'll get like 500 likes you'll put out this bank sucks 20 million retweets i'm like this is this bullshit so the two people who i could always count on well there's a couple of people actually that can count on trolling me at non-stop are you my girlfriend and then uh usually i will get either uh larry cermak or uh frank chaparro

from the block but there's good everyone's doing it in fun yeah but the part i love is the real trolls don't know that yeah and then they like pile in and we're all like oh wait we're all kidding you're serious yeah because it's good and bad trolling right of course i was try and troll him Brian Selkis this morning I have to troll him regularly but I think I think

it's a badge of honor to be trolled by you but no no that's embarrassing I think it's I think if you can take the trolling yep I think it's a it's a good

sign of you but I also think it's like shows a community we're all kind of in this together and also it makes you responsible for what you're saying if you're

getting trolled you did something a bit dumb of course and look part of the beauty of Twitter in my opinion and why I love it so much is I can throw an idea out

there and if you don't come you know proper you will get snapped up immediately i mean i've literally said things and within two minutes i'm like oh i i you know it's being perceived incorrectly or i literally said something inaccurate yeah there is no past there is no uh you know oh we like you it's okay but you say something that's out of bounds like people do not care uh and that responsibility accountability is important i think when you have these big audiences yeah and you know i had this conversation with somebody last night it was talking about you and i said the thing is pom's got a bunch of haters because he's out because he's out there he's a man in the arena

but i said he my perception of you is that you're doing more than 99 of people out there for the space you get a pass if you if you put out something dumb you make a fuck up and i think i think almost any of us do none of us people know our intentions yeah right like like once you've created if you create one piece of content that's the only piece of content anyone knows about they don't have enough context as to what is your perspective what is your intentions good-hearted bad-hearted all that if you create content on a daily basis you're constantly engaging you're you're very authentic uh very open and transparent in the way you engage with people on twitter you probably get a quote-unquote pass in the sense of they know that you're

good-hearted well-intentioned but they will tell you right to your face hey you're an idiot right but it's not that you are an idiot what they really mean is you're saying something idiotic right and then there's a difference between that yeah um you know it's like hey look that was dumb versus you are dumb do you do you feel pressure uh i used to and then i just stopped caring like at some point i just said you know how many followers you have on twitter at this point i'm at like i'm just short of 50 000 okay so let's say 50 000 right which is so weird well there's nobody in the world who can have 50 000 people paying attention to what they're saying and not have one of them not like you or disagree with you etc and the problem is that the people

who disagree are the loudest yeah right like think about if you say something and i like it i'm gonna retweet you yeah so i will further the message but i actually won't reputation wise make a comment that says this is great content right like my action says that but i don't step in and say that the quote-unquote hater what they're gonna do is they're gonna light you up in the comments and then all their friends are gonna see that and then they all pile right so like the way that twitter is structured the incentives are a little weird and so i think that's part of you just have a big audience of course people are not gonna like you yeah i find it so weird though i do i went to see my dad my dad lives in this little village in ireland i think

i was at like 30 000 followers at that point i showed him it i said dad look watch this and we put out a question it was like should my dad buy something yep and yes or no and it just like this poll starts going up and my dad my dad's going what is going on who are those people this is so weird and i was like i don't know dad it's so weird so what what's the um what's your favorite interview you've done my favorite interview i've done it's got to be marad uh a moment in time man just marad was um so you want to know a secret about the marad episode is marad came in to the office on i think a wednesday or thursday and uh i had done i think an interview right before like two interviews before and they'd gone over and i only had a specific amount of time

right because i got to actually have like a real job and do all this other stuff and i knew that we were going to be really rushed. And I have like 40 minutes. And so we started and within five minutes, I literally, we stopped. And I just said, no, no, no, shut this off. And everyone's like, what are you doing? And I was like, this is going to be an epic episode. Let's come back this weekend when we have no time constraints and we're going to go for as long as it takes to record exactly what you want to say. And I think he was a little kind of freaked out. Like you just i came here we stopped it we're gonna restart and we came in on sunday and we record and it's like you know over an hour i think like an hour and a half or something and when we got

done normally people were you know that are in the room helping record and stuff are like oh that's great episode it was silent and we honestly remember and it was it was freaky and we were just like that was incredible yeah do you know what i remember listening to that one and sitting back and i was like all right pop yeah you know you know that one he gets all the credit right because he the way that he can articulate his ideas and the conviction he has in them you feel it when you're listening to it i think i always think it you need to i think one can ruin it on their own for sure but uh i think you need two people for a good interview because you need the structure your questions and you need the answers i mean what's your favorite that's a tough one i

I usually always say my first interview with Lynn Albrecht, which is Ross Albrecht's mom. How did you get that? Let's talk about how you actually signed some of these people up. Well, I just approached her, and I said, I'm very interested in the story. I'm going to be in Austin. I know that's where you're based. Can I come and see you? Can I talk to you?

And she said, yeah. And it turned out the day we were recording was Ross's birthday. Wow. The day after her birthday. I didn't know that. And I filmed that. It was the first one I filmed. And it was a lot of prep because it was a personal story.

it's nothing it whilst it's attached to what i normally interview about it's got nothing to do it's like that game isn't it it's attached to the story but we didn't talk about it at all we talked a personal story about you know a family losing a son to the prison system and it also made me realize like eventually i want a podcast which is broad yep which i've trapped myself with because of the name of my podcast um but but is that true so i think about this a lot too could you not bring somebody on that's not related to the industry and still do an interview with them and maybe you can only do it every once in a while i think so i don't think people would judge you no i think you can sometimes but also i noticed the no the reality is the it's a it's

a business i treat my podcast like a business and you have to look at the downloads so i interviewed andrew torba from gab yep it's connected it's 20 less listeners than a normal show oh interesting so i am you know and i'm interviewing when i'm in la i'm interviewing mark weinstein who was one of the founders of the fire festival which i think is going to be a fascinating interview but i don't know where i'll go but he's related to the industry a little bit right a little bit definitely related and works in the industry but what you're going to talk to him probably is less related well yeah and i've already had a pre-call with him and i don't agree with some of his thoughts and i don't even want to get into that i want to find out about

the fire festival because that's insane right that's an insane story but um you want to hear you want to hear a wild story yeah uh i won't say which one i've got four brothers so i won't say which one uh but one of them uh don't tell me you went well so what he did was he has a buddy who basically got essentially free tickets like 100 tickets or something and so his buddy convinced them they were going down got to miami got on the plane they were the first plane on the tarmac that got turned away from taking off no way so he didn't actually go and they're like oh we have to like find a place to sleep but it was to get a hotel and uh he went out had a great time with his friends for the weekend and he calls me and he's like everyone else's fire festival experience

sucked mine was awesome well i mean have you watched both documentaries uh i've watched a lot of netflix i haven't gotten through the one on uh who oh no no uh yeah i did actually i watched both of them yes it's very different perspective right yes and different people in both of them Yeah, I think one of my friends is in it. Really? Seth Crosney, I think the guy who William Finley is the fake account. He was the one sending all the pictures. He lives in Raleigh, North Carolina.

Yes. Shout out, Seth. And his claim to fame in that whole situation was all the media was citing him as William Finley. And he's literally like, this is a fake persona that I made up as kind of like an onion style character. So are you from Raleigh? I grew up there. So I've been there. Oh, really?

Yeah. So when I went to interview Jameson Lopp, I think I... Jameson lived in Durham, I think. Yeah. So I flew into Raleigh, but stayed in Durham. And I went and shot guns. Oh. I shot my first ever gun.

Really? Yeah. Did you go with Jameson? Yeah, he took me. He's the man. Well, yeah. So he was my third interview. Oh, wow.

So I reached out to him and I said, look, I'd like to come and interview you. And can you take me to shoot a gun? basically it was just like this really weird request i don't you must have thinking who is this guy yeah so for those that don't know jameson is um he is mr security and uh opsec he uh he has literally moved himself to an undisclosed location in the world uh and he's written a bunch about how you can basically remove yourself from the digital world and traces of you uh and he also loves guns and he's uh from north carolina and and just shoots

machine guns all the time well so i turn up at his house with all my recording gear yep and i go in the house and he's there organizing guns bear in mind i've never even held a gun yep this is guns everyone like this is weird like these are actually your guns you're not just taking pictures on the internet no he had like a lot of guns and then and so we did recorded the interview and then we went to get something to eat and by the way i was a vegetarian at the time wow and he was like right we're going for barbecue and i was thinking i don't think i've got the heart to tell right he has a big beard and everything going on yeah yep and i was like i don't think i've got the heart to tell you i'm a vegetarian so i went and ate barbecue with him

oh you ate it even though you're vegetarian i couldn't do this and then and then we went to shotguns which by the way i i was blown away by the power of them yep it's crazy not what you expect and then i left and i was like wow that was an amazing like a one of those days you'll never forget and i'm really grateful to james he's actually been such a great support of the podcast he's helped me get lots of interviews and like nobody going pester him now but he's just been a really great support he is um so he's one of the first people i met in crypto as well just being uh there a um a very uh young um a very young kid uh introduced us and when we met i remember talking to him and realizing this guy is in this for all the

right reasons right he doesn't care about 95 of the things that other people care about he even believed so much at one point they sold a lot of his possessions and went all in at a time when like you had to be pretty crazy you know what i mean like 2013 is very different than 2017 right or 2018 and so it's uh it's special that this industry has so many people like that in it what are you like with guns what's your view on them uh so i was in the army for uh six and a half years yeah uh uh ryan selkis outed me yeah not a bad way but uh he recently tweeted this and so uh i've literally spent a year in iraq wow uh and you carry a gun everywhere you go um you do lots of training with guns you like were you like just a foot soldier

Yeah. Yeah. And so I probably have spent a good portion of my life with guns for somewhat of a profession. Right. And it's a thing where I'm of the view guns aren't good or bad. Right. Money is not good or bad. You know, certain assets aren't good or bad. how they are used or implemented or applied that can be for good or bad uses i think guns are like the perfect example because if you think about um let's say you're a good guy i'm a bad guy the world actually wants you to have guns right they don't want me to have guns and if the rules are a person i'm the good guy you're the bad guy they now they want me to have the gun not you yeah and so it's a tool or uh or a weapon it's just how they're applied and so i think that that type of view uh is really different right i think you've got to have shot a gun before right to understand that type of stuff um and i always think about uh when you're shooting the gun you're

not thinking like this is this dirty tool used by bad people because you're like you're a good person right like i'm a good person if i have this then good and bad people can have it right you you change your psychology i think a little bit once you're actually uh like um initiated a little bit with it was that what did you think when you shot a gun for the first time i'm just scared how powerful it was really yeah like scared in what way because you see it in films and tv you see somebody shoot a gun and it's like pop pop pop and you're like okay that's a gun when you're doing a real person it's insane how powerful the bullet flies out of the gun to the bag at the end of the room like i was just like well that's yeah that's that's scary um i

And it was a weird experience. It was kind of like going bowling because you had different lanes. There was a couple. There was family. It was kind of strange because I come from a country where we don't have guns. You don't see guns. Is it illegal or is it just uncommon? It's uncommon and you have to have special licenses.

And actually, to say I've never shot a gun is a bit of a lie. I went clay pigeon shooting once and shot a shotgun. But it's just not a thing in our society. But when I held it and I shot this gun, I was like, that is so powerful. And that scared me. But I also learned a lot about it. i it's funny in north carolina i trust people with guns more than i do in la why because it feels like it's part of the culture and therefore it's responsible i don't i don't know why i just

everyone i spoke to it's like drinking in europe yeah yeah but like i speak to spoke to the girl behind the counter and she's like yeah i've got 37 guns i was like what she's like got 37 guns i've always had guns it's always been part of my life you know you felt like they're familiar they're trained they're educated and they understand safety yeah right intentions are different yeah yeah but you know i don't know i just i don't know it's a really it's a really funny thing and i probably i don't know if it's a stupid thing to say i feel like i trust a gun with a conservative person more than i trust it really you think that there's like political uh components to it too no it's more i think it's more cultural i feel like there's a like

when i've been around america when i've been into more conservative areas i feel that there's like a conservative culture which is very much family hard work guns rodeo and country okay and do so here's a good question for you because uh you aren't from the united states when you come to the u.s do you get the sense that take those cultural components you just described on the conservative side do you get the sense that those don't exist on the other side or they're just less emphasized like is it like a a um intensity difference or is it just literally binary like in some cultures some things exist and then the other uh sides they don't exist yeah i think it's more binary i just i've spent a lot of time in a lot of time in la new york vegas and then i've spent

a little bit of time in places like texas and north carolina i tell you what the interesting thing is is i feel a lot of warmth towards the conservative people i've met i don't agree with them politically i would never vote for trump but you know when i went to austin i went to a rodeo i meant there was you know a lot of kind of republican people there really family orientated you know they were all there as a family and i just they felt like a lot of unity felt like the like the family was a big deal that's one of the things i've noticed like when i was in durham and i stayed at this bar now i started chatting politics to these two guys yep it was a useless conversation because i completely disagreed with everything they said about

trump but then when we started talking about life and family i was like i really like you guys you know they're out there hard working for their family then i'll go somewhere like la and i've got a lot of friends in la but you've got a lot of like just over the top you know cosmopolitan ridiculous people and i'm just like i don't feel any warmth to you you're gonna love this i have a friend who's a hardcore conservative okay and he always says the same thing he goes ah liberals are too smart to have fun and i think that like perfectly sums up the political spectrum in the united states right he's literally this guy who he could care less about any intellectual topic that you and i could debate but he's just like i just want to have fun in life right and i think

that a lot of people are like that kind of summarizes a lot i've got really politically confused over the last few years to the point where i i can't find myself aligning myself to anything because i see things i like across the spectrum but do you don't you feel like that's rational yeah right like um yeah i do i i i just feel like the older you get and especially the culture that you and i are growing up in like we have phones in our hands where we can talk to tens or not or hundreds of millions of people right you literally right now could pull up your phone and tweet to 50 000 people like that yeah right my parents didn't grow up with that so the collision of different ideas and the kind of like attrition of ideas that we experience on a daily

basis it pulls people i think from the extremes more towards the middle uh because you at least are exposed on a higher frequency to other ideas uh as long as you don't get you don't go like over the edge into one of the ego chambers right like that's the only downside to it is it would be very easy for you let's say that you're like i'm a hardcore liberal i'm only going to follow liberal accounts and that's the only information you consume you actually like it actually could become a detriment but i feel like for most people uh you actually get pulled more towards to middle i don't know what do you think i think you're right and actually funny enough when i was growing up i was very liberal i quite like socialist policies i used to think oh the nhs

is great and if you earn too much money yes it should be taxed from you and given to you know other people and and i think it's i find it kind of strange if you don't grow up feeling like that you know like where's your heart as a youngster and then as i've got older i've started to feel like oh and you know of course the industry i work and you start to feel like oh god socialism is awful it's like the most evil thing in the world and then i'm like oh i kind of want to help people it's really weird what's the most defining experience from your childhood that you think is a great example of like who you are today like one story from your childhood let's say like under 20 years old my my father worked my brother worked hard so my father was

an aircraft engineer shift worker 12 hour shifts he wanted us he the most important thing for him was for us to go to a private school okay his salary alone could not put yep me my sister didn't go in the end but for choice but me and my brother went his salary alone did not cover the school fees so he it was his shift patterns four days on four days off okay and every single time an overtime would come up he would take it it was paid more time and a half or something time and a half every now and again something come up called the ghost shift which is 24 hours and he would do it and he worked and he worked and he worked and he put me and my brother and he raised three of us very well but put us both through private school so he's probably very proud of

that yeah he's very proud of it but like but he just said to me if you ever have children i want you to do the same and it's one of those weird things also like like so my children are in a private school um and i work very hard to do that for them and i feel very sad that not everyone else can have the same absolutely like a tough thing but i just have this memory of you know my dad would be either leaving for work at six in the morning so he'd be gone by the time i get up or he would leave in it six o'clock in the evening because he does the night shift you know turning the planes around and so my memory is always him uh us three kids running the door to give him a hug goodbye or running the door to give him a hug coming home yep so i've

just always got that memory of my dad working hard i'll tell you another component i'll add to that though like i woke up like sorry i grew up with my dad as my hero right yep totally ignored everything my mom did took her totally for granted raising three kids at home my dad was the fucking hero right um my mom passed away two years ago um an amazing woman what happened was is i got divorced prior to her getting sick and decided i would be committed to my children and being a dad through that period i learned how hard it is to raise children it's really really hard that's fascinating yeah and what happened was my company collapsed after my divorce and i decided not to go to work for a year and i spent a whole year just going back and forth to ireland see my mom i take

her to akima and just hang out with her and take her to dinner and i kind of fell in love with her as a woman over that period because i got to know her again and you know about two months before she died i you know i apologized so i said look i didn't appreciate how hard work how hard it was for you to raise kids until i'm doing it now and i've taken you for granted and given dad all the credit and i'm really really sorry about that so sorry that's a long-winded answer to to your question but i think i i think from my childhood i've learned about hard work but i didn't want to leave my mom out of this yeah because i've left her out of so many things i feel terrible about i've learned as an adult how hard my mom worked do do you think that you are a better father today

because of the experience of that year where you said look i've got to do this i've got to commit to it and it was your sole focus or do you feel like um what like do you think there's another way you could have gotten the same experience no i i mean i don't think i am a great father i'll be honest i think i think i'm all right like i'm a fun dad i'm gonna interview one of your kids next yeah they're you know what they look i have a good relationship with them um i had a very bad breakup with my ex-wife like awful the worst that you could possibly go through and they've been exposed to too much through that process and i wish i'd handled it better and i feel terrible about that and i i think how i handled it hasn't helped but i do think i'm a i think i'm a good dad

i give them a lot of freedom i uh laura shin influenced me here did you see her ted talk i did not know see if she talked about when she was growing up she didn't have any rules in the house they could do what they want and that shaped them wow so i went home that day i was like kids no rules you can get a bed when you want eat what you want do what you want strangely it worked very well for my daughter and not my son okay explain this more because i grew up in a family with five boys so i'm very fascinated the difference between a daughter and a son she her bedtime is half eight she's first night she stayed up really late and then she was really tired so she started putting herself to bed between half eight and nine because she knew she had to be up for school

very responsible very responsible if she was eight at the time she'll get up get her school uniform ready she sets her alarm sometimes she wakes me up or like i wake up and she's in front of me she's like get up like it totally works for her she owned the responsibility just not work for my son because he stays up till two in the morning playing fortnight yep of course i did trap him with it though like one day i was like i just didn't get him up for school and he woke up at nine he's like dad i'm going to be at school i was like yeah and he's like why haven't you got me up i was like it's no rules you chose to stay up till two in the morning it's just not work with him i think the difference i've noticed the difference is is that i think girls are a little

bit more organized when they're young and boys are a little bit more dopey do you think that that is uh i don't want to say genetic in the sense of but like it's a natural tendency or do you feel like there's some conditioning at very early stages i'm kind of nervous to answer this because I feel like if you ever try and identify anything that may be like gender difference, you'll get attacked. It's almost like this whole- All right, don't answer it. I don't want to get attacked either.

But you know what I mean? There's this whole thing at the moment about trans athletes. I don't know about this. What is this? It's about, I've been reading the news about female, I'm even nervous about getting my terminology wrong. Okay. female trans who are now going through hormone replacement therapy and competing with in women's

sports okay and there's oh is this is this right is this wrong and people are saying look this is wrong because you know you've got the physiology of a male they're upset about the sensitivities around the treatments the gender etc it's more like you've got somebody with the physiology of a man go through gender um whatever the thing is um gender reassignment or hormone replacement therapy and then competing with females but still having some of the physiology of a male and some people are saying it's just if you're saying this isn't allowed you'll be in discriminatory and other people are saying well hold on this is unfair we've got gender differences in sport for a reason so i'm always really nervous about stuff like that because you can be attacked from any

direction but i'm a believer that uh it's funny to hear the thing about laura shin and your kids let people do what they want great kids need boundaries horrible advice give the freedom to be themselves all right so well here's here's what's funny so let's let's go to the uh the rules thing i grew up with four younger brothers i'm the oldest of five boys there was it would have been a nightmare for my parents to say no rules i'm the oldest how much responsibility does that come with uh as a kid um well here's the best way to describe it so one of the situations or stories that i would tell as like defining of my brothers and i is my brothers and i would literally uh when we get home we name a thing we fought over it food the remote uh who's looking

at who uh you know i heard you said something or literally just i'm walking by you in the hallway and you're not paying attention and i just whacked in the stomach right i mean just like anything you could think of five boys you can imagine right we're all eight years uh from oldest to youngest so we're all very close in age just madhouse in terms of what we want to do with each other Always in eight years. Yes. My mom's an absolute angel. So I had the opposite experience where we spent all the time with my mom because my dad traveled for work.

So he was gone basically Monday through Friday. So my mom had to take care of us. And very similar thing, right? Like, why didn't my mom do this? Why didn't my mom do that? Right? Or, you know, like, of course she did that. Like, she's my mom.

And only when we got older did we start to really appreciate it. Um, but, but the thing that, uh, I remember as kids is there are very specific points in almost every single one of my brother or eyes, uh, school experience where the day before knockout drag out fights that you would expect brothers to have the next day, somebody outside of my brothers would say something, push one of the, you know, something happened where it was an attack from the outside, immediately the five of us, you don't want to mess with us right and it's just like look i can push my brother i can yell at him i can you know because i can do whatever i want to him he can do whatever he wants to me don't even come

over here because you're not gonna get one of us you can get all five of us and i think that like some of that is my mom knew like hey i'm gonna like teach you guys this stuff and uh my favorite story as a kid is my mom got mad at me one time because i was on a school bus um with my brother who's right underneath me and uh they used to play this dumb game where uh the seat they would like slap each other's hands and he broke his finger right like somehow like you know he hit it and bent it whatever he broke his finger complete accident nobody was even like upset he thought he like jammed his finger whatever he goes doctor it's broken and i'm talking like broken like it's like sideways and my mom was so mad at me because she looks at me she's not mad

at him she looks at me goes what did you do i was like what do you mean what did i do so i broke your brother's finger and not like go beat him up right this person who did it but did you defend your brother did you stand up for him did you help him right and it's little things like that where i i think that uh like mothers do that instinctively uh and i look and it's just like time and time again things like that uh and it's fascinating right because my brothers and i are very close today um and i'll see them and i'll greet them with you know what's up idiot how often do you get together so uh it's unfair because all five of us live uh within 25 minutes new york city wow and so we you know we hang out as much as we can uh um i have a beautiful girlfriend uh another

one of them is married i have two younger brothers who uh are uh 23 and 25 and you know they're doing things 23 and 25 year olds are doing and uh and i'm probably a little too old at this point to go out every night and do all that kind of stuff but they're having a time of their lives i met your girlfriend last night she's beautiful yeah she seems great she seems like she's totally got your back she uh she's smarter than me she's tougher than me and uh and actually uh she's an immigrant so she's from uh bulgaria right into the u.s and uh it's fascinating to hear just the difference of mentality etc um and so i think that's part of look part of this whole industry is people are everywhere right i mean i i literally on a daily basis get to talk to

people all over the world with different experiences different perspectives different belief systems and you're like you know what this is pretty cool like everyone is um collecting around a single idea that you know without overblowing it can change the world and it's changing the world okay so what's the one interview you want to get who have you got like i want that person oh man there's a bunch uh i'm gonna list three but for three different reasons okay right but after i list one you have to go okay and then we'll go back and forth uh so one of them that i absolutely want to do is uh i want to interview joe rogan interesting so he he always interviews everybody yeah right and uh i think it would be fascinating to uh because i think that

the way that he is very conversationalist um there's times where i'm listening to him interview somebody and i'm like i wish that they would immediately turn the question back on him so i think that would be a fascinating thing and you can he has such a breadth of topics that he could discuss everything from you know economics to aliens to drugs to politics i mean he can talk about it all right and then he has so i think that would be like my number one thing would be interview him wow okay what about you i think you know my number one who is our boat oh why i just find him fascinating um because i think to to interview him i'm gonna have to do so much preparation because here's kind of the things he writes about on another level like i had with

peter todd it was just like whoa i thought i got him you know when i threw the remember i threw the bait out yes like that was a whole day of planning like how am i gonna reel him in watch this yeah if you guys are watching right now or listening uh to this podcast go and tweet at nick zavo and tell him he has to go on peter's podcast no don't you know what i don't want people to do that because i think if he wants to come on he'll come on come on naturally that'd be fine but i definitely don't want him pestered to you know because i'm sure he gets asked all the time i would hate for him to be like you don't want to be pressured no i don't if he wants to come on great you know i've been trying to gradually get everyone from that like the history of the old

days back you know i did whitfield diffy on cryptography which was like insane and how did you get that i think that counts you're at two by the way i'm at two um i reached out to him no no actually what happened was i interviewed david chow okay he didn't work out it just it was one of those interviews that just didn't and we i decided not to publish it i discussed it with david and he was fine and i said to him can you introduce me to whitfield and he did and i met up with whitfield and he was great it was a great interview that's awesome and i do i'd like to for you ralph merkel like so i want to get everyone i want to almost have done the complete history and zabo is part of that so hopefully in time that will happen that'll be happening but

that's my number one okay what's your number two chamath papapilia who uh he started the uh the growth team at facebook um he is a uh i did do you know him uh i do not know him but uh he has agreed on twitter actually to do it so um we're we're going to coordinate it but uh the reason why i want to interview him is uh he's into all of the um kind of decentralization etc right so so i think that that would be pretty fascinating uh he's very specific and unique views on social media and a lot of the way that we communicate probably have built audiences and things like that uh but the the most fascinating part to me is he is a guy who appears from the outside to have reached uh what i call total freedom and the freedom has nothing to do with money it has

nothing to do with lifestyle. It has everything to do with the mental position. I don't care what anyone else thinks. And it is a very, um, careful line to walk in that it can be perceived as arrogance, egotistical, narcissistic, right? Kind of like all the negative side effects, but it is very freeing for the individual. And so walking that line around a lot of topics and he's very public about i don't care what anybody thinks right which also like compounds some of the negative side of perspectives but also is probably even more freeing um to me that is uh that's a fascinating just area to think through of like you know i always ask people like what's your goal and almost everyone that i ask that question to i usually ask it in private because

a very personal question they will tell me something that is measured by status or amount of wealth etc right it's like a measurement thing when people ask me this and i took this from somebody else happiness something that is completely undefined and personal to you and so when you think about that like what does that mean to you for a lot of people it actually is freedom and how you define freedom and like you can just go down this whole rabbit hole and the next you know you probably spent two hours talking to somebody you're like i not only don't have the answers i actually have more questions now yeah and those are the conversations that fascinating to me wow okay that's a good one what's yours i hadn't really thought beyond one

i only have but i tell you i can i can come up with them um come on don't you listen all i do is great questions well i'll tell you what so there's a guy there's a newsreader guy a news reporter guy in england called john simpson okay and i'd really like to interview him and i tell you why it's kind of funny so i really like the news and i i do like journalism and he's one of my favorites right yep but actually what happened was when we were kids um and i was about eight at school we were all told we had to go and write a letter to a famous person okay pre-internet you know that world that my kids don't realize existed so i wrote to john simpson and i was like have you ever been in jail were you scared he wrote back to me really yeah and he's like um like i can't

remember the job title but he's something like head of reporting for the bbc right he is their top guy but anyway i don't know what it was back then but he wrote back to me so i'd like to interview him awesome i've actually wrote to them because i'm i'm at some point going to do another podcast i'm going to do a broader okay do you know what yet what the focus will be i think it will be like you know news current affairs you know um kind of edgy topics you know i've so i've already done a few interviews i interviewed a guy who was put in prison in uh panama who's from new york city by mistake ended up in a scary ass prison yeah i interviewed a lady who campaigns for um freedom of choice with drugs um and i'd like to interview john simpson about kind of news

current affairs they actually replied and said he would do it this year at some point which is amazing that's awesome so yeah i would like to do that what's your three uh my third one that i would want to do you know what i actually want to do i want to go somewhere in the world so this is i just call this the like faceless interview i want to go somewhere in the world where you know nobody just um so i'll give you context on this uh my brother who's right under me and i for a couple of years in a row every christmas we would um like on the 20th let's say we would sit down we'd get on our computer and we would say where do we want to go no plan no anything and we would pick a place in the world we would buy a flight we had to leave within 24 hours of that flight

right of whenever we sat down had to be within 24 hours we would fly there one of the rules was we could have no lodging figured out so the first year we ever did this we flew to india landed in india and didn't have a hotel didn't have a plan didn't have anything india's wild right we landed at midnight in india uh in uh mumbai and we had to figure out what to do yeah well your phone may or may not have service right the wi-fi i mean you got to figure all stuff out and so it was somewhat of like a kind of a fun thing for us to do together or whatever and so we got a hotel right then we figured okay then now we're that we're there that's the first time we ever looked well what are the things to do in this city and you ask around and like and you kind of work thing

and we spent two weeks in india and we went to like seven six or seven different cities wow and uh you know we did things like um we went to uh jaipur india which is um a pretty small area in um, in India and we rented motorcycles and I had a motorcycle. He'd never driven one before. So imagine being in Jaipur, there's no traffic line. Like it's just crazy. Everything you see in the videos, right. And he's driving a motorcycle for the first time. It's like, kudos to him for just, you know, he just tackled it. And so what I'd love to do is go to like in that type of environment and you just find a random person and you interview them and you say, explain to me your perspectives on, and it's like every topic that you could think of.

yeah and then you basically publish it and you're like this is a person who lives in this village in this country who maybe doesn't even have internet connection or maybe has you know 5g or you know whatever it is and you just kind of go through the whole thing and then you just see like this is a this is somebody who lives on the same planet as you who thinks completely differently india is one of my favorite places i've ever been to it's just wild and so different i don't know about you i'm like i'm not religious right but i think if i spent enough time in india i could be convinced because it just has do you know what i mean you've got a feeling there's like something oh it's like the holy land yeah right like like you you feel like there's something going on

that's what i felt all right what's your third one oh god third one i'm gonna just pick a random like just just something that i think would be super interesting is um uh i'd love to interview someone like axel rose oh wow because like it was the first man i saw live i'm like a huge guns and roses fan um when they reformed i took my son to vegas we went to see them yep i think i'd like to do that yeah i think i just because what would you ask about oh god i would ask about i i'd like to ask a lot about the creation the music creation process because actually what i can for reading their books and seeing the breakup i think everyone else was getting so smashed on drugs and he just wanted to create this these albums and i think in so i controversially prefer usual

illusion one and two to appetite for destruction everyone loves appetite and appetite is amazing every single song's great i just think some of the best songs in usual illusion one or two are mind-blowing i think coma and estranged which are both like 10 11 minute songs are phenomenal they're like masterpieces to me it's almost like modern like um like modern mozart right it's just absolute masterpieces and actually cool they never used to play those songs live on when they reformed they now play them so i've heard them like and so i'd like to ask him about the music creation process and what it meant to him he tried to do on that chinese democracy and you could see what he was trying to do i just think he didn't have the formula of the whole band but yeah it's

just like i've got i've got a deal with my kids so my kids want a dog and i said the deal is you can have any dog you want but we're calling it axel rose the dog oh i love that so it's funny hear you say this because um is it kanye i think that says uh name me a genius that's not crazy right and i think music is probably one of the best um ways to look at this in that pretty much every single great musician lyricist just creator like that they're a little quote unquote off by society standards right whether it's the way they think the way they act the way that they perceive what's you know okay to talk about not okay well you know whatever it is but it always makes me think that's true across every industry right like like i would actually

argue the reason why you are great at recording the podcast and the approach you take like some things you do is crazy right by everyone else's standard but you think that they're normal and i actually look at it i'm like of course like the idea of like being fully transparent about everything you're doing okay there's a lot of people like that's crazy okay and you're like why would you not do this right like actually this like makes a ton of sense and i look at i'm like that actually makes a ton of sense right yeah and it's probably things that i do that you look and you're like that's crazy right and so you kind of it's almost like um the people who push the edge they have to break out of that main mindset and music is like the perfect example well

i like it how melton put it she put she's like i don't give a flying fuck and i'm like yeah i want i'm trying to be that hardcore i'm not but i'm like yeah i've got tattoos i like every metal i'm i'm not i'm not going to wear a uniform for anyone i'm just going to be me and do what i want i like the music comparison because i had this conversation with somebody the other night i was like what was the last great album like in 20 years time people are still going to be talking about and listen to it and there's loads of albums from my childhood you can think of like classic elton john or guns and roses everything right but like modern albums and i i think the last great album was by amy winehouse back to black i don't think there's been a great album there'll

be albums of people put out go this is amazing i'm going to be like i don't think people in 20 years will be talking about that album but i still think they're going to be talking about back to black because it was a phenomenal album and i don't think those get better with time like like there's this belief that they were good at the time and then now 20 years later like oh that was you know that was an all-time hit and it's because 20 years has gone by maybe i think also one of the other things is i think it's controversial but i think music is better when people are off their face on drugs making music you go back and you listen a lot of the best music was made by people smashed on drugs but but i think this goes to the point of what do the drugs

do they release a lot of the the inhibitions right and they you know i i think a lot about um Um, there, as a human, there are, uh, real rules is what I call it, like real world rules, right? If you kill somebody, you're going to jail pretty much in any country in the world, right? Like that is, that is a rule that we, as humans have all agreed off limits. Then there are society rules, which means that if you walk down the street and you just flick off a random person, everyone's gonna be like, that guy's an asshole. there's not repercussions in the sense of you go to jail but you do that enough times and you

become known as that person you kind of get put in society's jail right in terms of you're an outcast then there's like the personal rules and it's things that usually i find you believe you wouldn't do or you wouldn't test that boundary or if you've never been put in a situation to test a boundary and it's and a lot of time it's mental it's the way you think and i think most these music creators etc like when you hear them give interviews and they talk about like being on drugs not on drugs whatever they feel like they're like escaping to something you know what i mean like like it's very weird how they describe it uh and then you look at like steve jobs same thing right like like breaking out of those boundaries and so again there's real world rules and

repercussions and all the stuff but uh but this is why we have corporate governance right because corporate governance allows companies to set the like the things that can't be legislated for the things they're going to do for the morality of the company right that's why you have corporate governance you know and that's i think i think we do that in life in different parts because like for example you can't legislate perfectly for global warming and policies but companies will put their own policies in place so i think that's why we have kind of different forms of governance right for sure well and also there's again real governance and there's like you and i as friends there are certain um rules that we either intentionally agree on or just over time as

we become friends i have certain expectations of you you have certain expectations of me right and if you ever do something i don't expect and in a negative way right violated the rules right Let me ask this. Talk to me about how you think about marketing in terms of part of building a podcast is the creation process, right? So you got to find interesting people, realize that you have things to talk to them about, book them, get them logistically in the same place or remotely record, right? which is obviously a task. You've got to clean up the audio. You've got to kind of get it all ready to go. And then you've got to distribute it. That distribution part to me is fascinating

because I think a lot of different people take different approaches to it. And in certain industries, you have certain tools like Twitter that are available to you where, again, in a heavily regulated place like healthcare or finance, they probably actually can't use some of the platforms that you and I would use. Yeah, yeah. For me, the most important thing is brand from the very start. it was like what is my brand and how is my brand represented i very by by design and by purpose

went for the pink and the black as two very strong colors yep that i knew in terms of banners would stand out and i designed those banners in a way because i'm very consistent so people would see them over and over again they'll go okay what is this i keep seeing and then part of the brand for me was the guest i was like i have worked so hard to have good guests i mean i've worked really like I don't think people understand how much goes on in the background. So when I put out those income reports, some of it's to help people. Some of it's to help myself be accountable. But as the money's been going up, people have been getting in touch and saying,

I really want to do a podcast. And I'm like, yes, cool. I'll help you. Let's get on Skype. Let's talk about it. But you have to realize how much work goes into this. So, for example, my first 25 interviews were all in person. I was on a plane every two weeks, every week with my kids,

then on a plane to go and interview somebody and doing everything else. but yeah for me it's all about brand and i play more of a i think i play a different game to you um i play more of so i'm playing a long game in terms of trying to establish what i think is a very credible bitcoin podcast and a very strong brand around having a very strong brand around um but around that and about the guest that that was that was what i was um so that's that's what i've tried to do and less so in terms of you know pushing my twitter and plus also on twitter i just struggle to be professional like i can't i just i'm a troll i'm sarcastic so rather i think that's good yeah but sometimes it gets me in trouble like like what

well like just people out here sometimes don't understand it so for example my profile is a troll of you do you remember that thing where you put out a list of jobs yes so i made that my profile so it says i'm a tech titan 15 years in uh evangelist guru instagram oh but and it says also it says but like i also say it says tech titan and mommy blogger lord of the dance right it's like i love it i love it the amount of time people come to me like you're a fucking idiot you think you're an evangelist and i'm like look it's a joke it says mommy blogger and that's how i got andreas on so what happened was and there was like i've been trying to get andreas for a year right and this kind of meme was going thread was

going on twitter and andreas replied to it and i was and it was a picture of a big hairy ass and he replied and i was like andreas i've messaged you twice from your website i've been trying to get hold of you for a year and you haven't replied yet you replied to a big hairy ass and he comes back to me and goes it's probably because you're an ico advisor and i want nothing to do with you and i was like no my profile's a joke and then all these people coming and going no andreas you need to check him out like his his podcast is serious week later he's on that's amazing but it gets me in trouble because people so a lot of people will say to me say like you're really different in person than you're on twitter like you seem like a nice guy and kind of um friendly

on twitter you seem like you're a bit of a dick and i'm like yeah i'm just like what it's got also i think it's maybe it's like a british thing like we we just fuck with people all the time we're always winding people up and so that's all i'm doing i'm like you post something i'm like right how can i wind up pomp circus post something i'm like how can i wind up you're gonna love this ready yeah my whole theory on twitter and i've talked about this before it's all characterizations so think of it like the wwf wrestling in the u.s right wrestling is fake they script it right there's gonna be conspiracy theorists by the way who say wrestling's not fake right it's real but they script these things they go they put on a show and they entertain twitter is the same thing

there are the heroes there are the villains there's the tag team partners there's you know all these different kind of characters on twitter yeah and if you ever stopped being snarky and kind of uh facetious all the time i would think something was wrong right and and there's people who are super serious and if they ever said a joke we'd be like oh my god like you know what people would just you know overheat part of it though is uh and i i've actually never said this before so if somebody somebody people ask me in private who are the people I respect the most in in the industry and I always say you oh wow thank you and Marty bet interesting and here's why it takes incredible courage every day to

put this thing in your face and talk and have this moment in time every idea you have every thought you have etc to either be recorded or typed out and to put it out to the public and you will be judged by that for 10 years. Yeah. Right. You're putting ideas on, on record every single day or every week or whatever it is. But here's the best part. There's a lot of people who do that and they're very inauthentic when they do it.

Okay. Yeah. So they'll create a piece of content. They'll have 10 other people read it, right? They'll get it all edited it up and they'll put it out there and be like, Oh, look how smart I am. Right. And I call it the intellectual Olympics.

The long game that you're playing at Marty's playing that I'm playing is this is who I am. if you don't like it to use a uh a british term jog on like i don't care if you don't like who i am but this is who i am well even this interview is risky because we're used to asking the questions and now we're talking to each other like it was even crossing my mind this like people might think we're being obnoxious doing this what we're doing and like it is risky every single day but that's really cool um there was a there was a long period i really didn't want to like you but i struggled it i struggled it i was like because i like as nice as i try to win them over no no i wanted

i'm quite competitive okay i'm really fun i like to win right and like i say why i like you guys well this ferrari comes up behind me a pomp and like you put out this show and you're like 50,000 dollars i'm like fuck sake i've worked so hard and here he comes but like every interaction i've had with you as has been nothing but great and i'm like i'm i'm one of your fans and i'm whenever people like dog on you i'm like no no you've got you've got to see he's find me find me where pumps ever addicted to someone like rude so this is the key this is my whole belief on communication in general yeah is because i'm a dick to people all the time yeah oh and by the way so i'm i'm a dick but here's the two key the two secrets to when i am rude or i kind of lash back at people

i always include smiley face or an emoji because it's kind of it's kind of like a british accent right somebody can basically tell you fuck off and if they say it in british accent you're like oh what a nice guy like so they're like smiley face and emojis are are your best friend on the internet and then the other thing is i am so overly um i think or i try to be kind and uh open I mean, look, the example I always give people is I've got 109,000 followers. My direct messages are open. People can DM me whenever they want, right? Most people who put themselves out there actually have their DMs open.

And I respond to as many people as I can. I can't get to them all. I try to do it as much. Somebody calls you and they say, hey, I'm trying to start a podcast. You jump on. There's no benefit to you doing that personally except for the long game, right? Well, someone did it for me though, right? Exactly.

I told you before we started, like Rich Roll, a good friend of mine, I reached out to him. I said, look, I'm going to do a podcast. What do I do? And he's like, all this. Here's what you do. Yeah. And like, he's busy, like he gets like 100,000 downloads an episode, right? He's busy and he did it for me.

So anyone wants to do it? I'm like, like anyone now listening, you want to do it? I'll tell you everything I know. There's no secret. Like I'm competitive in that. I want to kind of win, but I still see us all on the same side. Do you see what I mean? Of course.

Like, that's why I promote everyone else. Well, and it's also a thing where you could sit and, you know, you could argue with people and do all this stuff. And you buy yourself some karma, I think, by being a good person, right? And what I mean by that is there are very few times, but I've definitely done it, everyone's done it, where just somebody says something so outlandish, you're just like, really? Right? You just, that's seriously like your argument or that's what you're going to come out of the blue out of nowhere or whatever.

And in those times when you basically say, okay, enough is enough, like I'm serious and i'm gonna actually say something what you find is again people have context they know your intentions they think you're good-hearted right like you have all these things that are working towards you and people might not even agree with you like i like my favorite direct messages i get on twitter are people who say i actually disagree with everything you say i just want to say thanks though for putting in so much effort yeah that's like you know what kudos to you for having you know basically the the wherewithal to to kind of throw a jab at me right you don't agree but also say thanks like i really appreciate that and i'm actually much more likely to respond to that

person than the person who you know is like i follow everything you do but you know yeah just like i i get it thanks i appreciate it right but like this person has an opinion they recognize that it's different than mine but they're not gonna just like walk away and not engage at all and i don't know it's just it's very unique uh when you get to talk to a lot of people every day how you see some of these interactions and you're putting out public content yeah you get some weird stuff though the dm's all right what's the weirdest dm you've ever gotten uh boobs it was so embarrassing i'm lucky in that uh i'm very public about my relationship with my girlfriend and so i've avoided a lot of that it just came in one day she's messaging me and i was

like hi how you doing she's like oh do you want to like um she's like i see you're in la a lot you want to meet up sometimes like oh you know maybe maybe not because i've kind of i kind of got a um yeah but anyway in comes these boobs and i'm like what are you doing there's 10 people who just signed up for pod to start podcast now but i was like i was like you you shouldn't be sending stuff like this out like this like thank you i really appreciate um your boobs but like you shouldn't be sending this stuff out and it was really oh it was so awkward um that's the weirdest thing but then i just i know you get lots of people who i know you get heartbreaking stories but you just have to ignore them because you don't know what's truth or not that's that's the worst

part yeah it's like oh like my whole family's dying and we haven't eaten in a year can you give me some bitcoin and you're just like i don't even know if you're telling the truth i'm losing now there's a lot of swearing in this one by the way do you know if you swear on your podcast and you don't warn about it there are certain regions you don't get played in uh so i did not know that but i did know that you have to put the like explicit tag on it or whatever yeah and uh laura told me that when uh see she she uh she's been doing this way long she or uh so when i learned about the explicit thing i remembered uh it made me think of remember uh cds and they would come with the like parental advisory thing yeah that was cool right you wanted

to get the parental advisory because it had all the curse words and stuff i remember thinking in the first episode we're going to release and we had to put the explicit thing i was like actually this is like kind of business related i don't know if we want parental advisory or explicit on this um but but i really i think in my opinion nobody actually cares right nobody does anything they don't not listen because of it or whatever ken bozak's indeed ken uh i've never met him but legend in the sense of uh he has sent me information he's introduced me to people uh he's been like hey you should go check this out and then uh i recently saw that he bought one of the the short the bankers t-shirts he was wearing it around he made a gif out of it and and just

i enjoy people who are enthusiastic about the things that they do on a daily basis and he is like the epitome of that so we our birthdays are a day apart i met him in vegas i went okay so when i turned 40 i didn't want to have a party with my friends and stuff because i'm divorced i didn't want to have all these weird couple non-couple so i was like i went out for a couple of beers with my friends and i'm not having anything i went out to vegas instead went out to dinner with a whole bunch of people yeah uh like luke luke came and like martin yeah luke martin but a whole bunch of like different uh people that you would know from that world and we went out it was great but somebody organized a birthday party for me and uh ken which was where i met

cody okay and um and and and i was at this conference and the thing about ken is like he's like he's like a famous person at these conferences like people are just like running up to it because he's he dresses different he looks cool he's got like this cool girlfriend people are like running up to him but the really interesting thing about him he did an interview on the crypto street pod you know you've been on that yep fucking four um he lives entirely i can't even say it entirely off of all yeah he lived yeah and you know he hustles it i mean he's a great guy thanks for listening so far to this recording as i mentioned in the beginning this was a two and a half hour recording that peter and i did you've now finished part one and to

listen to the remainder of the conversation please go to the what bitcoin did podcast to listen to part two thanks so much and see you over there hey everyone pop here if you like this episode of off the chain and want to help us take crypto to the top of the apple spotify and other podcast charts, please do us a favor and rate, review, and subscribe. To review, simply go to the Off The Chain homepage, scroll down until you see the five blank stars. Taking 15 seconds to fill those stars in and leave a quick review goes a long way in helping us take the entire crypto ecosystem to the top of the charts. I appreciate you listening and see you next time on Off The Chain.