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Can psychedelics make web3 founders more productive ? With Lukas Holter
121 Plays2 years ago
Discover Lukas, a remarkable life coach who had his fair chair of challenges and is now breaking barriers in the web3 space 🛣️💡
In this episode, we discuss his journey from a business, computer science background in the corporate world to life coaching in web3 and his unique coaching approach. Find out how he blends conventional methods with innovative techniques like retreats involving psychedelics.
Find Lukas here:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/lukas-holter-7a11b32b/
The Polymath Experience is a podcast owned by its listeners, join us here to be rewarded : https://discord.gg/PwYt39W95k
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Transcript
Introduction and Excitement
00:00:00
Speaker
My man, here we are.
00:00:02
Speaker
Lucas, such a pleasure to have you.
00:00:04
Speaker
We've had a few beautiful conversations ever since meeting a few months ago now.
00:00:10
Speaker
And I'm actually really excited to have one that is actually recorded for the world to hear.
00:00:15
Speaker
So welcome and thank you for joining me.
00:00:18
Speaker
Yeah, thank you, man.
00:00:19
Speaker
Really a pleasure being here.
00:00:21
Speaker
Like you said, we had a lot of exciting conversations.
00:00:23
Speaker
So let's have another one.
00:00:25
Speaker
Exactly.
00:00:25
Speaker
Let's have another one for the world to hear.
Choosing Conversation Angles
00:00:28
Speaker
And it's really, it's like before going into the conversations, I usually try to plan, all right, what's the best angle?
00:00:34
Speaker
What's the best way to approach this?
00:00:36
Speaker
But for you especially, there's so many of those.
00:00:40
Speaker
There's so many where we could get started.
00:00:42
Speaker
Light.
00:00:46
Speaker
The universe sings.
Web3 and Personal Growth
00:00:49
Speaker
The idea that just came up while we were chatting before was the inner journey is a big subject of ours.
00:00:55
Speaker
And there is no better trigger for inner growth than the Web3 space.
00:01:02
Speaker
Because it is just, it goes in so many places.
00:01:06
Speaker
It goes so fast.
00:01:07
Speaker
And we've both had a pretty, let's call it interesting past year with a lot of lessons.
00:01:13
Speaker
And I'd love if we could start here with...
00:01:17
Speaker
Like, how was the past few months?
00:01:18
Speaker
How did you live through Web3?
00:01:20
Speaker
How did your how was your inner journey for that part of the path of the journey?
00:01:26
Speaker
Such a big question.
00:01:27
Speaker
I mean, the last few months, it wasn't connected that much to Web3.
00:01:31
Speaker
I mean, what I'm doing, I'm working with people in Web3 and I'm doing my own business.
00:01:36
Speaker
So it wasn't related that much.
00:01:39
Speaker
However, like looking back with what happened with the market and with my journey, being originally from Germany and part of the reason why I came was the text things and a lot of paperwork.
Overcoming Personal Challenges
00:01:54
Speaker
And the bottom line, to give a bit of perspective, I'm 42 and for 41 years I've been super stable, never had therapy or any troubles mentally or something.
00:02:08
Speaker
Um, just last year in September was kind of the first time I had like a burnout and a real depressive face.
00:02:17
Speaker
And that was a big hallway.
00:02:19
Speaker
I can already look back at it.
00:02:21
Speaker
And that was connected with like everything I'm doing in my life.
00:02:24
Speaker
There was so many things moving.
00:02:26
Speaker
One was like getting into full-time coaching.
00:02:30
Speaker
And, um, since the beginning of last year, and then not having a home, having,
00:02:35
Speaker
financial instability, having a lot of paperwork in two countries at the same time and privately just it's just all hit the fan at the same time.
00:02:44
Speaker
And eventually even me, which I never thought possible was like breaking then in September.
00:02:50
Speaker
And we connected back then a little bit later, just after that, I think that's like the bigger
00:02:59
Speaker
nutshell yeah the bigger story happened to me and yeah yeah and the last year that was like in september and then i've like recovered and i just noticed like i'm coming back to energy and it still is a process of getting back into the vibe i notice like i got energy and i go up and down it's a bit like it feels a bit like borderline which is like crazy enough because uh
00:03:23
Speaker
That's totally not who I am generally.
Coaching in Web3
00:03:26
Speaker
Like I've been working with myself and like calming down and things so much.
00:03:30
Speaker
And right now I find myself in a position where everything is moving and I just have to take care of myself.
00:03:36
Speaker
And that's what I find with a lot of people as well.
00:03:38
Speaker
And what we share on our way as well.
00:03:40
Speaker
We talked a lot about it, right?
00:03:43
Speaker
this most precious thing we all have is like our own health, mental and physical.
00:03:46
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely.
00:03:48
Speaker
And actually, you mentioned that you're a coach and you focus specifically on what you would like to bring your coaching specifically to the Web3 space where it is extremely needed.
00:03:59
Speaker
And as coaches, our own experience guides who we are as coaches, because obviously you draw from your own experience and that's what you bring together.
00:04:10
Speaker
to the people that you help out.
00:04:12
Speaker
And I think that part of the maturing phase of Web3 is that people are going to have to start taking care of themselves because longevity is the name of the game.
00:04:21
Speaker
You're not just doing this to make a few hundred K and then retire.
00:04:26
Speaker
That's just not how it happens because
00:04:28
Speaker
the emotional impact is huge.
00:04:30
Speaker
The stress impact is huge.
00:04:32
Speaker
All of that is huge.
00:04:33
Speaker
And like, how did you as a coach decide that you wanted to go into the Web3 space and what's the impact that you want to have
Career Transformation
00:04:40
Speaker
in it?
00:04:40
Speaker
You're polymath and me too.
00:04:42
Speaker
I recently learned this other name, multipotentialite.
00:04:46
Speaker
So I've always been doing a lot of things.
00:04:49
Speaker
So my original background, I was studying computer science and business and went into consulting.
00:04:55
Speaker
back then and at the same time I've always been like exploring the mind, meditation and yoga and teaching and training a lot and being in the whole talent development and leadership coaching realm in the corporate world.
00:05:08
Speaker
And I always loved it.
00:05:09
Speaker
That's been the theme in my life.
00:05:11
Speaker
Like I always loved connecting with people, understanding people and understanding interaction between people and seeing so many organizations as a consultant and then later in my professional life as well.
00:05:22
Speaker
And it all doesn't work out in teams.
00:05:24
Speaker
It's always the same.
00:05:25
Speaker
Like people come together, communication gets lost, personal things get in the way, ego gets in the way, and there's so much friction and loss and suffering, actually.
00:05:35
Speaker
Like people suffer all the time because there is no connection.
00:05:39
Speaker
that has always been like, like, since I was a kid, actually really interesting, like when I was observing conversations between my parents and other people, I was but I'm spotting things in between people like I like other people don't see it.
00:05:52
Speaker
I was like, it's been really weird.
00:05:54
Speaker
And kind of like enlightenment moments.
00:05:57
Speaker
Yeah.
Corporate to Crypto
00:05:58
Speaker
And all that, like then 2021, I was kind of done in my corporate job of like talent development and coaching people in the corporate environment.
00:06:08
Speaker
And now it's time for something like bigger and like a break.
00:06:11
Speaker
And it all came together and moved to Portugal.
00:06:14
Speaker
And at the same time, because I'm interested in so many things, I had been following the crypto space for since 2018, maybe since like that, that hype cycle.
00:06:23
Speaker
I jumped in again, big emotional rollercoaster there, jumped in when it was up, lost a lot of money, normal story.
00:06:29
Speaker
And I dealt with the emotions and stuff.
00:06:32
Speaker
However, I was like following a few projects and diving into the technology and the technology.
00:06:38
Speaker
psychology and the philosophy behind it and just believe as we all do, right, in the potential to
Retreat Planning and Coaching
00:06:46
Speaker
change the world.
00:06:46
Speaker
And then it all came naturally together to get out of the corporate world, noticing that there is there as well so much needed to make teams and people work.
00:06:59
Speaker
both at the same time.
00:07:00
Speaker
And then I came to Lisbon, was going to the blog for some co-working, talking to people.
00:07:04
Speaker
First time I ever got real people behind all the memes and the projects.
00:07:08
Speaker
I was like, oh my gosh, there's real people.
00:07:10
Speaker
That's exciting.
00:07:12
Speaker
And
00:07:13
Speaker
Yeah.
00:07:13
Speaker
And they just struck me.
00:07:16
Speaker
It was like, so how is it going with your communication?
00:07:18
Speaker
How are you doing?
00:07:19
Speaker
And people were like suffering, burnt out, overworked and teams were not working out.
00:07:24
Speaker
And I had this big impulse of, man, I really got to make make a big ayahuasca or psychedelic retreat, take you out in nature and make a big reset with all of you.
00:07:34
Speaker
And that's how my journey started.
00:07:37
Speaker
I was planning a little retreat and then spreading the word a bit and all emerged pretty naturally.
00:07:42
Speaker
And we ended up having one weekend retreat.
00:07:45
Speaker
And that's where I really got to know a few more.
00:07:48
Speaker
I worked three people.
00:07:49
Speaker
And then from there, I started coaching three of the people who were in the retreat.
00:07:53
Speaker
And from there, things started rolling, like beginning of last year.
00:07:56
Speaker
That's really cool.
00:07:57
Speaker
I actually didn't know that that was how things started for you.
Investing in People
00:08:02
Speaker
And now that you put it in perspective, one of the I mean, I've known this for a while, but it's become even more clear is that you don't bet on projects, you bet on people.
00:08:14
Speaker
And so if the people who you are betting on don't get along together and it can relationships,
00:08:22
Speaker
can be strained by a lot of factors.
00:08:24
Speaker
And it just so happens that in our industry, there's 10x the factors that there are in any other types of industry, because there's more volatility, there's more uncertainty, there's more, there's a real time feeling to it, a real time state, like having launched the token a year and a half ago, I can tell you firsthand that
00:08:46
Speaker
It is incredibly stressful because you wake up and you know that there's the price of your token that's changed.
00:08:54
Speaker
Sometimes it's for the better, sometimes it's for the worse.
00:08:56
Speaker
For NFT projects, it's the same.
00:08:58
Speaker
And so part of this decentralization thing is that there's no weekends, there's no after hours trading.
00:09:05
Speaker
So there's no real respite.
00:09:08
Speaker
And you have people in your community from all across the world and you have people in your team from all across the world.
00:09:14
Speaker
So does the...
00:09:15
Speaker
The first time in the morning that you open Discord, you can have a message that's going to fuck up your day or you're going to see, oh, my God, the price has crashed 20%, which can happen for younger projects because you will see 20%, 30%, 50% volatility days.
00:09:34
Speaker
And all of this, like if I have the stress trigger and then I go talk to my team and I still carry the burden of that stress trigger, and then all of this accumulates week over week over week, and you don't have the reset that you're talking about, then at some point is going to implode for sure.
Stress and Decision Making
00:09:54
Speaker
And that's why you're here.
00:09:55
Speaker
Yeah.
00:09:58
Speaker
Yeah, it's nicely put into words.
00:10:00
Speaker
And it's really crazy because our ability to decide really diminishes with the amount of stress we put on ourselves.
00:10:07
Speaker
Cognitively, we know.
00:10:08
Speaker
I mean, it's not big news.
00:10:10
Speaker
It's not complicated, right?
00:10:12
Speaker
But the moment you're in stress, you're in this fight or flight, you have a narrow vision.
00:10:16
Speaker
You're not open for possibilities.
00:10:18
Speaker
You're not open for people.
00:10:20
Speaker
And you decide poorly.
00:10:21
Speaker
This is just what happens.
00:10:23
Speaker
And if your calendar is just like packed from morning till night, and I mean, you are the founder of a project and that's normally how the calendars look like.
00:10:32
Speaker
Like for them, it's so hard to squeeze anything else in there.
00:10:35
Speaker
And there's like so little space to like zoom out and think the bigger picture.
00:10:39
Speaker
It's really important.
00:10:41
Speaker
And I love this concept.
00:10:43
Speaker
I'm talking with my clients a lot about it, like slow down to speed up.
00:10:46
Speaker
Like you've got to take your time to zoom out and really decide what's important.
00:10:51
Speaker
And then kind of decide is like the ladder you're running up is actually the wall, the right one you're leaning towards.
00:10:58
Speaker
I actually wish that more people were mindful of their own cycles because that's, that's what you're
Managing Stress and Pressure
00:11:04
Speaker
describing.
00:11:04
Speaker
Sometimes you need to slow down in order to accelerate again.
00:11:07
Speaker
And especially for like everything that you're saying, when you're stressed, you go into beta brainwaves.
00:11:15
Speaker
So fight or flight, and that brings in more stress because you want to figure things out and you're in, you're in beta and, and,
00:11:25
Speaker
If you don't break the cycle, the cycle is not going to break itself.
00:11:29
Speaker
And if we don't build the right habits, then it just never ends up happening.
00:11:36
Speaker
And what you're saying, your calendar day, so from 8 to 6 p.m., 8 a.m.
00:11:43
Speaker
from 6 p.m., you're packed with meetings, you're packed with problems to solve.
00:11:47
Speaker
And then at night, you're exhausted.
00:11:49
Speaker
And so you're going to have a beer or three, and then you're going to smoke a joint.
00:11:53
Speaker
And this thing is going to start the next day.
00:11:55
Speaker
I meditate a lot and having that in my life has not prevented me from being slapped in the face from the stress of not just being a founder, but also being an investor.
00:12:08
Speaker
Because sometimes you have like 5% of your portfolio that's into something that's like the more risky part of your portfolio.
00:12:18
Speaker
and it just evaporates.
00:12:20
Speaker
And all of this is just stressful.
00:12:21
Speaker
And if you don't have the proper tools in order to deal with it,
00:12:27
Speaker
you're in trouble.
00:12:28
Speaker
Yeah, man.
00:12:29
Speaker
And just like you say, man, it's hard.
00:12:33
Speaker
Same as me.
00:12:34
Speaker
I'm teaching these other people.
00:12:36
Speaker
I studied psychology.
00:12:38
Speaker
I know what brings a burnout.
00:12:40
Speaker
I know how to get out.
00:12:41
Speaker
I know the ins and I know everything.
00:12:43
Speaker
I know the routines.
00:12:44
Speaker
I have normally good routines.
00:12:47
Speaker
And still, it also hit me.
00:12:49
Speaker
And part of it was also, like you said, the external facts.
00:12:52
Speaker
It's just too much on the outside.
00:12:54
Speaker
And
00:12:56
Speaker
And it happens to everyone.
00:12:58
Speaker
People die in your family, relationships end, markets crash.
00:13:03
Speaker
We had enough last year.
00:13:05
Speaker
It's all coming at a time.
Stress and Team Culture
00:13:08
Speaker
Like, like nobody is 100% safe from this.
00:13:11
Speaker
Never know.
00:13:11
Speaker
And it's no one is physical things in your brain, like your nutrition.
00:13:15
Speaker
It can be so many factors and just like being aware of that and doing the best we can to, to minimize the risk for it.
00:13:22
Speaker
And like prevention, obviously is like, like the best thing.
00:13:26
Speaker
do that what i would like to add to what you said is i mean the one thing i yourself especially as a founder and i would like to hear like your your calling this as well because uh what i see in the teams i work with like it's really like a correlation of like the how the founders are handling their stuff and how stressed they are and how dense their calendars are how much capacity they have actually to firefight and deal on things and
00:13:52
Speaker
then like what i see is really like the culture trickling down on the people there as well and little example from last week i was here in lisbon at an event and i was talking it was like a bigger project like more than 200 people and there was the head of stuff and when i meet the head of stuff i'm always like so how is it like like how are your people doing and how's culture like how's communication but it's like
00:14:17
Speaker
people are happy in general but like we're still actually our our founders they would really need some coaching but they're not aware of it and what we're actually doing is we're still in startup mode and firefighting everywhere and everything is like not really organized and everything is like stressful and hectic you can tell like how that is down instead of like
00:14:40
Speaker
people who sit down and think through the challenges in terms of people beforehand and create structures early enough to address these
Remote Work Challenges
00:14:50
Speaker
things.
00:14:50
Speaker
I was also like with people development and stuff, it's like nothing, there's no time for it.
00:14:57
Speaker
It doesn't exist.
00:14:59
Speaker
Yeah.
00:15:00
Speaker
It's like, wow, interesting.
00:15:01
Speaker
And there's others.
00:15:02
Speaker
I mean, others I talked to also like to the head of staff.
00:15:05
Speaker
It's like, what are you doing here?
00:15:06
Speaker
Like, yeah, we're working like with big coaching providers, all our key players, you know, like they get individual coaching and we're really like taking care and taking space.
00:15:18
Speaker
Are these remote companies or are they physical based?
00:15:22
Speaker
Yeah, it is so hard.
00:15:24
Speaker
If you asked me a few years ago, I would have said, man, remote work is the dream.
00:15:28
Speaker
And you can just...
00:15:30
Speaker
do whatever you want, work from anywhere you want.
00:15:32
Speaker
And now that I've been living through it for 18 months, it's not that simple on the individual level.
00:15:40
Speaker
It's not that simple on the team level because you're not at the contact of those people on a day-to-day basis.
00:15:46
Speaker
And you interact with them.
00:15:49
Speaker
You never interact with them spontaneously.
00:15:52
Speaker
You never have random coffee breaks with people.
00:15:54
Speaker
You never just go out for a beer.
00:15:56
Speaker
You never do all of these things which are
00:16:00
Speaker
really important, not just for the well-being of the company, but for the well-being of the individual.
00:16:05
Speaker
And it's a lot harder to notice when something is not right, when you're not directly facing the people.
00:16:13
Speaker
So how do you address that?
00:16:16
Speaker
You working with
00:16:18
Speaker
I assume mostly remote team as well.
00:16:19
Speaker
How do you bypass that problem of not being in physical contact with these people?
00:16:24
Speaker
That challenge every remote team has, right?
00:16:27
Speaker
I mean, there's no one solution for this all.
00:16:30
Speaker
I mean, you can read it up like it's all the same.
00:16:32
Speaker
You know, like what to do as a remote team.
00:16:34
Speaker
You have remote team meetings, you have coffee hours, you make space outside of the thing, you do engaging things.
00:16:42
Speaker
I mean, the usual, it's nothing new, right?
00:16:45
Speaker
What's maybe more interesting is diving into what's your challenge?
00:16:50
Speaker
Because it's so individual.
00:16:52
Speaker
Because that's what I do.
00:16:54
Speaker
I help people.
00:16:55
Speaker
And you just raised that challenge for you.
00:16:57
Speaker
So do you want to dive into this?
00:17:01
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely.
00:17:02
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:17:03
Speaker
What's your challenge there?
00:17:07
Speaker
Right now I'm really lucky because bear market happened.
00:17:11
Speaker
And so we had a lot of people, we were working with a lot of people who were, who are all extremely smart, extremely driven and just all around good people, but who there was more of a human fit than a business fit with.
00:17:29
Speaker
And the bear market happened.
00:17:31
Speaker
And just so the financial incentive for most kind of disappeared.
Deep Work and Productivity
00:17:35
Speaker
And now the co-founding team that is being built again around us is, well, it's just working with different versions of ourselves who are
00:17:47
Speaker
Like they're more experienced and they know where they're going.
00:17:51
Speaker
And so it's becoming, it's really enjoyable.
00:17:54
Speaker
And when a question needs to be asked, it is asked.
00:17:58
Speaker
When a problem needs to be addressed, it is addressed.
00:18:01
Speaker
And voices are raised at times, but that's just part of the fun.
00:18:06
Speaker
Like it's part of the conversation.
00:18:08
Speaker
conflict is part of human nature and we have to go through conflict in order to deal, especially when you have multiple alpha males in the room, it will happen.
00:18:21
Speaker
But that's also the way to get the most out of things.
00:18:24
Speaker
So right now, I'm very fortunate that I don't have to ask myself these questions because whatever problem we see
00:18:33
Speaker
we raise and it is addressed before it needs to be implemented on.
00:18:37
Speaker
But before that, it was very much different because
00:18:42
Speaker
We were still at the phase where we're like basically a project where you're not, you don't really have a, the good aspect of having a contract with people is that you know what you give and you know what you take.
00:18:54
Speaker
It's very clear.
00:18:56
Speaker
But in the space that we're living in, there's a lot of things that are left a little bit unsaid.
00:19:01
Speaker
Oh, you're going to get $500 this week.
00:19:03
Speaker
Here's what you need to do.
00:19:05
Speaker
And then you don't really necessarily realize how the thing is done, how much time is being dedicated to those tasks.
Trust in Remote Teams
00:19:14
Speaker
And for me personally, for example, one of the most important things is deep work.
00:19:19
Speaker
I try to have as much of it as possible.
00:19:21
Speaker
I try to have at least one flow or deep work session during the day.
00:19:24
Speaker
And it's something that I've tried to pass on to people I've worked with.
00:19:29
Speaker
because I know how valuable it is for myself and for others and for the company.
00:19:34
Speaker
But you don't want to be the policeman.
00:19:36
Speaker
You don't want to be like, hey, did you do four hours of deep work today?
00:19:40
Speaker
Did you do your time?
00:19:42
Speaker
Even we've worked with very truthful people, very honest people.
00:19:46
Speaker
And so they would answer and they would play the game, but it's not a really cool position to be in.
00:19:53
Speaker
And so it's all of these little things where I don't want to track people.
00:19:58
Speaker
You know, I don't want to, I don't want to have them give me an Excel sheet at the end of the week with like the time that they worked on each task and all of that.
00:20:05
Speaker
So it's, it's, um,
00:20:07
Speaker
It's not really a problem, I guess.
00:20:09
Speaker
I don't know where I went with this, but it's more of a... It changes everything, and I still don't see the perfect solution for all these things.
00:20:19
Speaker
And it's so beautiful how you describe it, because everything you just said thrives to this one word of trust.
00:20:26
Speaker
That's what it comes down to.
00:20:28
Speaker
If there's trust, you don't have these challenges...
00:20:31
Speaker
And that's connecting also to this question, like, so how do you deal with the stressful things with remote life, remote team dynamics?
00:20:40
Speaker
And also it comes down to trusting each other, building up the trust to open up.
00:20:48
Speaker
And
00:20:50
Speaker
What I see in my experience is the most important aspect of this whole thing, like how to tackle it as a team.
00:20:57
Speaker
We have this tension and this stuff and we have the challenges and I have the challenges and others have too.
00:21:03
Speaker
You as a team, you need to find a way, a space to address this and talk about this.
00:21:09
Speaker
and nobody's going to give it to you.
00:21:10
Speaker
It's never going to be there because it's always busy.
00:21:13
Speaker
Like you have to make space.
00:21:14
Speaker
That's the tricky part.
00:21:16
Speaker
To talk about the dynamics that are happening besides the product and the building and the community and the challenges, but just giving space to talk about like what's happening in between us, what's happening with me and however that looks like.
00:21:29
Speaker
And like, I can't tell you from the outside because again, like every team is different and, and it's just been so beautiful.
00:21:36
Speaker
Like one client, I was working with a founder and then,
00:21:40
Speaker
I just offered them, if you want, I can facilitate a team session for you.
00:21:45
Speaker
That's what we started doing now.
00:21:48
Speaker
We do the simplest thing ever.
00:21:49
Speaker
It's just super simple time boxing of giving everybody three minutes to express what's there in terms of challenges, what is it there, and then talk about what is the question we actually want to tackle.
00:22:01
Speaker
It can be something like personal challenges, things in between the team, conflict, and
00:22:09
Speaker
I call it also like an exercise with the elephant.
00:22:11
Speaker
Like what's the elephant in the room?
00:22:13
Speaker
Like nobody is talking about and that can be stuff like depression.
00:22:17
Speaker
It can be stuff like, yeah, there's like underlying conflicts we're not talking about.
00:22:24
Speaker
I mean, it can be.
00:22:27
Speaker
I feel like our whole team is running in the wrong direction, but we have this group thing going on and we all don't want to acknowledge what's happening because we're just busy building stuff without questioning ourselves.
00:22:38
Speaker
So we're not daring ourselves to question what we're actually doing here.
00:22:41
Speaker
Yeah, that's super powerful because it is when you don't have that trust or put in other words, when you have people who don't trust themselves to be valued enough within the group or that it is their place to say something, you have things that are left unsaid.
00:23:00
Speaker
that shouldn't because it might not be as huge as we're going in the wrong direction and no one seems to notice it.
00:23:09
Speaker
It can be very, very subtle.
00:23:12
Speaker
Like you're working on this project and on this product and there's this feature that has been in it or that should have been and everyone is so like focused and driven and you have that one person who notices it but can't, like doesn't feel that it's their place.
00:23:30
Speaker
because it's just happened that way.
00:23:33
Speaker
And I had this conversation, we had a woman work with us for a little bit and I valued her.
00:23:41
Speaker
And I think that she was valued by the team, but she didn't seem to value herself as much or didn't see that she was valued as much.
00:23:51
Speaker
And
00:23:52
Speaker
it puts that person into into reposition.
00:23:55
Speaker
Yeah, it is so important to take the time away from the building, the project to build the humans who are building the project.
00:24:04
Speaker
But that's also one of the problems that you raise where, well, we're working remotely, there are time constraints.
00:24:10
Speaker
It's 9am here, it's 9pm there.
00:24:14
Speaker
So we only have this many meetings during the week.
00:24:17
Speaker
Do we really want to dedicate one to this?
00:24:19
Speaker
That doesn't seem like a short term priority, but which very much is a long term priority.
00:24:25
Speaker
So it's it's all.
00:24:27
Speaker
Oh, man.
00:24:27
Speaker
Yeah.
00:24:28
Speaker
Yeah.
00:24:29
Speaker
And there is no right or wrong answer to this.
00:24:32
Speaker
I mean, you as a team need to ask yourself that question, like, is our time now?
00:24:38
Speaker
better spent with talking about what's happening in the team or is now the time to grind and to build and to do
Decentralized Leadership
00:24:43
Speaker
things.
00:24:43
Speaker
I mean, there's like times for everything.
00:24:46
Speaker
And it's really hard to define and opinions differentiate as well.
00:24:52
Speaker
You know, like some people feel, it's all good.
00:24:53
Speaker
Like, you know, you have eight people in the team and five feel like everything is going well.
00:24:57
Speaker
We don't need to talk about anything.
00:25:00
Speaker
And the three, the other three can just leave.
00:25:03
Speaker
completely left behind.
00:25:04
Speaker
And then it's like, and then normally what happens, you do that, what the most loudest, the biggest alpha male is dictating to do, or the two biggest, oh yeah, yeah, we go on, no time, and then you've got to find
00:25:21
Speaker
mechanisms to communicate like really what's happening in the team.
00:25:24
Speaker
And that is so fucking difficult to get these mechanisms in place and this openness.
00:25:30
Speaker
And it comes down to like one of my favorite words these days.
00:25:34
Speaker
It's like decentralized leadership.
00:25:36
Speaker
Because when we're building this decentralized world and what we all like, like, like allude to now is like, like, I mean, there is always hierarchies.
00:25:44
Speaker
Like there's the alpha male, right?
00:25:46
Speaker
The alpha person in the team.
00:25:48
Speaker
And that is already a hierarchy, no matter how you like organize when you're in a team meeting.
00:25:52
Speaker
And if you want to have real decentralization, you need to empower everyone in the team and distribute the leadership and give everybody a part of it.
00:26:03
Speaker
Because naturally, not everybody will take it by themselves and some don't want, and that is also fine.
00:26:11
Speaker
But then having these roles clearly defined, like what people actually want to do in their teams and whatnot,
00:26:18
Speaker
Because it all comes down to, are people feeling valued and happy and trusted in the position they're in?
00:26:23
Speaker
It doesn't mean that everybody needs to be a leader and go to the front, but it's about, is everybody happy with what they are doing?
00:26:31
Speaker
And are we all aligned in what we do?
00:26:32
Speaker
And are we working together in the best possible way for us right now?
00:26:38
Speaker
Or are we losing productivity?
00:26:41
Speaker
And then, I mean, that's another abstraction layer in a way.
00:26:44
Speaker
Why are we here?
00:26:46
Speaker
What is the reason for our existence?
00:26:48
Speaker
What are our values?
00:26:51
Speaker
And if we say part of our values might be, we do this project for fun.
00:26:55
Speaker
We want to have fun together.
00:26:57
Speaker
then it does just make sense to like put some time aside to have fun together, because that's part of your purpose as a team.
00:27:04
Speaker
And being clear about that, like, why are we doing what we're doing?
00:27:07
Speaker
The whole decentralized leadership thing is
AR Filters and Ego
00:27:10
Speaker
so important.
00:27:10
Speaker
And that, you know what, that's actually why I care so much about this AR filter, because to the rest of the world, I'm not my person.
00:27:20
Speaker
It's not focused on me, me, me, I'm the founder, I'm the leader.
00:27:24
Speaker
this gives an online persona that does the job and it takes away a lot of the ego and what it allows for there's something that I've been trying to do for years but that my ego snuck up on me often and and prevented me from doing I always wanted to
00:27:42
Speaker
grow away from the CEO type, you know, like the big person in the middle who says the things that other people do.
00:27:51
Speaker
Because, yeah, I realized what two, three years ago that it just it just didn't work.
00:27:58
Speaker
But even after realizing it, I was still playing the part.
00:28:02
Speaker
I was still telling people like, no, this is the right way to do things.
00:28:07
Speaker
So you should do it that way.
00:28:09
Speaker
Oh, you have ideas that go against this judgment.
00:28:14
Speaker
Then here's a very elaborate and very intelligent demonstration that my idea is better.
00:28:21
Speaker
And it always works because I don't know, you have...
00:28:25
Speaker
even if you're trying to remove yourself from that role a little bit, you still have that legitimacy because it's still built into you a little bit.
00:28:33
Speaker
And so if you don't actively do it, it's just, I started to call myself a facilitator.
00:28:39
Speaker
And that's where I thought we have a, you and I have a, not a business, a framework to build, because this has helped me a lot by being the facilitator on the team.
00:28:48
Speaker
I'm the person that
00:28:50
Speaker
I've thought about the project more than anyone on the team.
00:28:53
Speaker
I've spent more time on it.
00:28:56
Speaker
I've like flipped it around.
00:28:57
Speaker
I've, I I'm, I'm the holder of the vision.
00:29:00
Speaker
So I'm, I'm the holder of the thing that holds it together, but I wouldn't be anything without the parts that it is holding together.
00:29:08
Speaker
Like, and there's no, when there's this question of like, who's more valuable, the leader or the employees, there's,
00:29:16
Speaker
There's no answer to that question because none exist without the other.
00:29:19
Speaker
That's the duality of life.
00:29:23
Speaker
And the facilitator thing is really interesting because it allows you to be, your role is not to direct, your goal is not to dictate.
00:29:33
Speaker
It's to notice all the strengths and all the best resources and all the best ideas.
00:29:41
Speaker
and to put them together.
00:29:43
Speaker
And sometimes they come from you, sometimes they don't.
00:29:45
Speaker
And so you have to... My process right now, I'm at a part of the phase where I've been...
00:29:54
Speaker
withdrawing myself too much.
00:29:56
Speaker
So I've been trying to let things just happen.
00:29:59
Speaker
And then I point out and I give my thoughts, but I don't make them decisive.
00:30:05
Speaker
But we got to a point where we had five very smart people in the room saying very smart stuff.
00:30:11
Speaker
And we're not going anywhere.
00:30:13
Speaker
Because if you don't have a direction, then you just keep going deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper.
00:30:21
Speaker
And so, yeah, there's a right balance.
00:30:23
Speaker
Right?
00:30:26
Speaker
How do you, like, if I'm the founder that you're trying to coach into decentralized leadership, how do you coach me into it?
00:30:34
Speaker
What's the framework?
00:30:35
Speaker
What do you try to pass on to me?
00:30:38
Speaker
I don't work with like fixed frameworks of like prescriptions.
00:30:41
Speaker
This is what we do, like strength, weakness, game plan, action.
00:30:45
Speaker
Like I don't believe that is much of a code.
00:30:48
Speaker
It's like a training thing.
00:30:49
Speaker
You can go like get the theory and like act out a plan.
00:30:52
Speaker
So it's very individual.
00:30:54
Speaker
and like in in your case what was like coming up to me a lot it's like like when you say like you're a facilitator i mean that's it comes down to the question like who are you as who are you as a leader and if you see yourself as a facilitator for me like this image of a gardener was coming up a lot it's a beautiful analogy right like like you as like the founder like it's your garden and your team is like the plants and the trees and the veggies and
00:31:22
Speaker
your job is to make this thing flourish and you do everything you can you facilitate you know enough sunlight enough water the right conditions to everything to grow and to grow in harmony and just what you describe as oh and you were withdrawing a lot and then things grow like in a way you don't want it to grow so you got to intervene again and see okay where do I need to cut maybe or like to add something that was coming up so when I'm talking with founders like
00:31:52
Speaker
All of them I talked to so far, like everyone is to some degree, yeah, I want to move towards like DAO structures, decentralized leadership.
00:32:00
Speaker
I don't want hierarchy.
00:32:01
Speaker
Like that's what everyone is about.
00:32:04
Speaker
But then it comes down to like what's beneath it in you?
00:32:06
Speaker
Like who are you as a leader?
00:32:09
Speaker
are you still micromanaging people?
00:32:11
Speaker
And then when we look into this thing, what are your actions actually?
00:32:16
Speaker
Yes, you talk about how you talk about decentralization, but what do you do?
00:32:20
Speaker
In your meetings, are you subtly imposing your things?
00:32:25
Speaker
Are you getting into the meetings with like, this is my idea, who's for it and who's against it?
00:32:29
Speaker
Or are you the one like, okay, here is the question, what is your ideas?
00:32:35
Speaker
You come in last in a way.
00:32:39
Speaker
So people often think they want it, but then there is a lot of underlying fears which can then be rooted in like childhood stuff and traumas and like the old Web 2 world as well.
00:32:51
Speaker
You know, like this whole world, how it's functioning, it's still so hierarchical.
00:32:55
Speaker
So we carry this whole burden with us and the whole decentralization is really such a big mind shift.
00:33:01
Speaker
letting go and because it is scary to let go and that's why everyone right like no money depends on it like you're giving away power to other people and that is so difficult looking into the fears of
Parental Influences
00:33:18
Speaker
the founder this is very often like a thing and I think we talked about this a little bit as well how about your fears like within this whole process because you're like
00:33:28
Speaker
nodding there.
00:33:31
Speaker
I view the growth that I've had these past few years in sort of a U-shaped curve where the first part, the first leg down was I was letting go of, I was basically going to neutral, letting go of all the deeper darkness, the deeper stuff that was really preventing me from doing anything.
00:33:50
Speaker
And, and then, uh, I think two or three years ago, I reached the neutral part and then I started like the expansion.
00:33:56
Speaker
And, and right now I don't think I could pinpoint any specific fears that are relating to, to me as a founder or to me as a, or, or like to the project, it really is directly me as a person, you know, you get, you get past certain things, things on from your, from your parents, from your, um,
00:34:18
Speaker
from the way you've been brought up.
00:34:22
Speaker
And for me, there have been these things around like self-love that have had an impact on me being present and on overextending my dopamine system.
00:34:35
Speaker
And so right now I'm at the phase where I'm finally through a mixture of meditating and doing specific types of yoga and, and doing things that make me happy and that, that
Aligning Inner and Outer Work
00:34:53
Speaker
drive pleasure.
00:34:53
Speaker
I'm trying to,
00:34:55
Speaker
basically align all of this.
00:34:57
Speaker
And what's really interesting is that as I'm doing this work, everything in my life as a founder is changing as well.
00:35:06
Speaker
I'm more and more surrounded by super smart people.
00:35:09
Speaker
There are more and more good opportunities that are coming this way.
00:35:15
Speaker
And that's actually one of the things that I was excited to touch base on because it's often forgotten where as founders, as people, as career oriented individuals, we look to the outside for the, oh, I should do this.
00:35:29
Speaker
Oh, I need to do this.
00:35:30
Speaker
This is my next goal.
00:35:31
Speaker
This is what I need to achieve.
00:35:33
Speaker
And there's this, and I was actually thinking about this when I was going on Power Walk yesterday, the idea of the compounding effect.
00:35:41
Speaker
If you read a book every month, then after 10 years, you've read all of this and it's compounded.
00:35:46
Speaker
And so it's made you all that much smarter.
00:35:48
Speaker
And then I realized that if you do only the external work, the knowledge part, and you don't do the inner work of finding out what your fears are, finding out what your biases are, finding out what your parents have passed on to you that is hindering your goal.
00:36:08
Speaker
then you're just limiting the compounding effect.
00:36:10
Speaker
And I wanted to touch base on this with you because I did a session with you.
00:36:15
Speaker
So I know what it is that you're doing and I know how powerful it is.
00:36:18
Speaker
And it's just reinforcing a pre-existing building that I had, obviously.
00:36:22
Speaker
But is that something that you put a lot of focus on, a lot of emphasis on that inner part?
00:36:27
Speaker
Or is it just integrated into your discourse?
00:36:32
Speaker
It's the most crucial part, like your deep beliefs you've built up in your time, right?
00:36:37
Speaker
I mean, when you do coaching, you can always do like the thing that, I mean, you want to change something in your life in a way, right?
00:36:43
Speaker
Like people come to you because something they want change in their life.
00:36:47
Speaker
And then you ask, okay, what is your goal?
00:36:49
Speaker
What is it?
00:36:50
Speaker
What is your vision?
00:36:50
Speaker
What do you want to do?
00:36:52
Speaker
And then the very big question is where is this vision or goal coming from?
00:36:57
Speaker
Is that from a part of you which is compensating for you being bullied as a child and all you want is to get rich and show off and pay all that back what you didn't have when you were young or something?
00:37:10
Speaker
And then that is your goal.
00:37:11
Speaker
But the question is, is that your real goal?
00:37:14
Speaker
Is that just an underlying belief you want to get rid of and deeper within you?
00:37:22
Speaker
There is more meaningful things to do in life.
00:37:25
Speaker
And then diving into these dynamics and then looking, okay, we all have like this achieving part, but want something.
00:37:32
Speaker
And then we have this voice in us, which tells us you're not good enough.
00:37:35
Speaker
Like something's holding me back.
00:37:37
Speaker
And then you're judging yourself for not sticking to your routines, which creates a lot of confusion in your brain.
00:37:42
Speaker
And you think like, who the fuck am I?
00:37:44
Speaker
What's going on?
00:37:45
Speaker
And there's like all this tension in the team as well.
00:37:49
Speaker
Is that because of me?
00:37:50
Speaker
And you're taking things personally.
00:37:52
Speaker
And then,
00:37:53
Speaker
it's so many things to handle.
00:37:54
Speaker
I mean, even for me without a team, you know, I'm just dealing with life.
00:37:58
Speaker
I mean, it's all already there.
00:38:00
Speaker
And just giving that a little bit of order and putting the attention like inside, like closing your eyes.
00:38:07
Speaker
And like, I love working with these parts, which we were touching on, right?
00:38:11
Speaker
And in our session as well, it's like, okay, like that is, you know, like that part of me that is super ambitious and that is the part that keeps criticizing me.
00:38:19
Speaker
And
00:38:19
Speaker
They are scientifically proven.
00:38:21
Speaker
I mean, there's a lot of research on it.
00:38:22
Speaker
They kind of have their life by their own.
00:38:25
Speaker
When you're schizophrenic, you have different personalities.
00:38:27
Speaker
They become the extremes.
00:38:29
Speaker
But bottom line, we're all schizophrenic and have these different voices in our heads.
00:38:35
Speaker
And just acknowledging this, there's this beautiful quote of like, if you can hold two opposing opinions in your mind at one time, that's like second level intelligence.
00:38:47
Speaker
That's the opposite of what Trump, you know, like, that's the opposite of what politicians do, like give simple solutions to everything.
00:38:56
Speaker
It's just, no, it's fucking complex, like even in the inner world.
00:38:59
Speaker
And then,
00:39:00
Speaker
acknowledging that and zooming out a little bit, zooming into your intuition, even on a spiritual level, like, like, and feeling into it, tapping into your intuition, like, what is it that's really important, that really matters and then go in that direction.
00:39:15
Speaker
Yeah.
00:39:16
Speaker
So you were telling me that, uh, another important part, um, beyond the inner journey for the founder is the systems that they set in place.
00:39:23
Speaker
Uh, and I'm obviously very, very interested in that.
00:39:27
Speaker
Yeah.
00:39:28
Speaker
Me too.
00:39:30
Speaker
So, I mean, most of the clients I'm working with are like,
00:39:37
Speaker
early stage startups, like eight, 10 people.
00:39:39
Speaker
And for them, it's not a big deal, right?
00:39:42
Speaker
I mean, the structure, it's just like, it's so small, you can talk to each other, you can relate to it, right?
00:39:47
Speaker
Like you're similar size, so you don't really need big procedures and processes in place.
00:39:53
Speaker
So it really comes down to like, the inner work of the and the role modeling of the founder, like what is it he wants to create?
00:40:01
Speaker
And how does he create the structures?
00:40:04
Speaker
However, and that's an area I'm not an expert in, but I really want to become an expert because it's so fascinating.
00:40:11
Speaker
And that is this whole world of how do we structure ourselves decentralized, decentrally, right?
00:40:18
Speaker
And all these frameworks which have been there longer than blockchain, how communities organize themselves, how other organizations have been decentralized.
00:40:26
Speaker
It's not a new idea, right, to have like...
00:40:29
Speaker
flat hierarchies and organize yourself by decentralized.
00:40:33
Speaker
So like these concepts of holacracy, sociocracy, which give super clear guidelines and models in how you can structure yourself.
00:40:44
Speaker
And
00:40:44
Speaker
I'm not an expert.
00:40:45
Speaker
I'm in touch with a lot of experts and I hope to learn more about it.
00:40:50
Speaker
But I think that can be a very powerful tool for founders as well to like dive into these ideas.
00:40:58
Speaker
Yeah.
00:41:01
Speaker
And early on create structures and there's systems around it.
00:41:04
Speaker
This morning I was talking with Joost van Schrauten who's like the founder of Nesta which is a tool which is...
00:41:14
Speaker
organized in circles.
00:41:15
Speaker
It helps you to connect your decisions, your governance, your task management, everything you do to organize it actually in circles.
00:41:23
Speaker
And if you start to implement these tools early enough, then you can grow into these decentralized structures instead of the challenges I mentioned before with this other company I was talking about.
00:41:37
Speaker
I mean, they grew hierarchically up to 200
00:41:41
Speaker
And then they still have these structures.
00:41:43
Speaker
And if you want to go from there, it's just so hard.
00:41:46
Speaker
Yeah, because the gravity is insane.
00:41:49
Speaker
I actually have a friend of mine who has launched something like what you're mentioning, a group of freelancer got together.
00:41:59
Speaker
And the way they do things is they have all of these individual people and all of these individual skills.
00:42:05
Speaker
And when the need arises, so when there's a specific mission,
00:42:10
Speaker
They form a team for it.
00:42:12
Speaker
And this lives as a living and breathing organism.
00:42:16
Speaker
They have...
00:42:18
Speaker
systems in place to make the organization grow, but it is very well balanced between the organization and the individual.
00:42:25
Speaker
And what actually you made me think of is that this is super important for the team that wants to build a decentralized organization, even more specifically, because eventually there's no...
00:42:40
Speaker
while there's no frontier between the team and the community, you want as much as possible for every member of this organization to have a say in the governance, in the product development.
00:42:52
Speaker
And so you have to build a feedback loop that gets them in.
00:42:57
Speaker
But where I think you'll very much agree with, because it's basically what you're saying, is if the person who
00:43:05
Speaker
was there at the beginning or the group of people that were there at the beginning can't delegate to people who are close to them how are they ever going to delegate to people who are far to them far from them in the in the system yeah it's it's a philosophical shift right from having a community manager as a function was like managing the community
00:43:30
Speaker
instead of like actually merging with the community, becoming one with it, really inviting it in and getting, getting the full power of it.
00:43:39
Speaker
Very different, right?
00:43:40
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely.
00:43:42
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:43:43
Speaker
Go ahead.
00:43:44
Speaker
You're the guest.
00:43:45
Speaker
It's you first.
00:43:48
Speaker
Thank you.
00:43:51
Speaker
I myself am so much on the verge of exploring these whole ideas and concepts.
00:43:55
Speaker
I've been part of a DAO and I really want to get back to a DAO.
00:43:58
Speaker
There's a DAO called Talent DAO and they're researching on decentralized leadership.
00:44:02
Speaker
So I'm very much drawn to it.
00:44:04
Speaker
I have a call with them next week.
00:44:05
Speaker
So I might be involved in that in the future.
00:44:07
Speaker
I don't know.
00:44:08
Speaker
Got a taste into it.
00:44:12
Speaker
But it feels to me like this is really like a missing link in this whole thing.
00:44:16
Speaker
It's like the actual structure, like when you want to be a DAO and decentralized, and then it seems to me like people think we have these government rules in place and the code is taking away the need of organizing us because now we have like voting and decisions are made.
00:44:34
Speaker
And what I heard from here, AstroDAO from Jordan, who's like the DAO maker for the NIA ecosystem, right?
00:44:40
Speaker
I was like having an interview with him as well.
00:44:42
Speaker
And he was like, yeah, it all comes down.
00:44:44
Speaker
Like it all doesn't help.
00:44:45
Speaker
You still have the people conflicts, no matter the government model you do, no matter the voting mechanism and the participation, like you always have like these conflicts.
00:44:53
Speaker
So you just need mechanisms to deal with the human side.
00:44:56
Speaker
That's like, it's never going to go away.
00:44:58
Speaker
Like even if on paper, everything is, the scenes,
00:45:04
Speaker
Yes, behind the scenes, there is politics.
DAOs and Conflict Management
00:45:07
Speaker
And I heard that from different ecosystems as well.
00:45:11
Speaker
And then there is a position for a DAO moderator, which is distributing funds.
00:45:17
Speaker
then reality is that is again like a position of super big power although it's all about daos and then it's all like politics and games and you know people backstabbing and shitting each other it's really interesting like even that happening like like in the dao world so i think um and i don't know if that's right but i think we're like all um experiments never fail so we're all experimenting on this um at this time
00:45:45
Speaker
It's like the earlier you can manage to get these structures and utilizing these proven systems of decentralized organization,
00:45:53
Speaker
And once you have that in place and once you have a functioning living organism, I needed to think of Frederick Lallou reinventing organizations like this teal organism, which is like really living and breathing or like the Peter Zenger thing of a learning organization.
00:46:10
Speaker
The book is from the fucking seventies where he was like developing these concepts.
00:46:14
Speaker
I can highly recommend the fifth discipline, Peter Zenger.
00:46:17
Speaker
It's not new ideas to make these organizations which are breathing and living.
00:46:23
Speaker
So if you manage to get this group of people breathing and living and reacting to the environment and then agree on government rules which are working for everyone, that is probably the way forward.
00:46:38
Speaker
Yeah, and probably the next steps.
00:46:41
Speaker
And then in a few months, you have something that changes and you need to have the proper mechanisms in place to make sure that things just don't get stuck.
00:46:53
Speaker
But that's what I was saying before when I was talking about conflicts within the team.
00:46:58
Speaker
They're so important.
00:46:59
Speaker
If you don't get conflict, you don't get progress.
00:47:03
Speaker
And that's true for relationships as well.
00:47:05
Speaker
My partner right now, we...
00:47:08
Speaker
fought so much in the beginning.
00:47:10
Speaker
And, and I told her many times, like, this is work.
00:47:13
Speaker
We're doing the work right now.
00:47:15
Speaker
It's not for nothing.
00:47:17
Speaker
Just stick around.
00:47:18
Speaker
And, and, and you'll see that we've, we've, we've, it's not been easy every time, but it's been worth it.
00:47:25
Speaker
And well, and, and now that I think about it, I've actually told all of my past girlfriends that, and, and she's the one that benefits from, from all of this.
00:47:36
Speaker
Um,
00:47:38
Speaker
But yeah, conflict is important.
00:47:41
Speaker
And you should have... That's why I think the whole Twitter thing with Elon Musk and free speech, it is important that we get both sides of the subject as long as we educate people on...
00:47:53
Speaker
like try to understand the person on the other.
00:47:55
Speaker
You have different opinions and that's good.
00:47:58
Speaker
And that's just the world.
00:47:59
Speaker
There's polarity.
00:48:01
Speaker
Not everyone's gonna like everything because we don't have the same background.
00:48:04
Speaker
We don't look at things from the same timeframe.
00:48:07
Speaker
Like for example, with us and what we're building with JPEG and Project Magenta, we are trying to bridge the gap.
00:48:14
Speaker
So we're trying to bridge the gap between people who are underprivileged and people who are very privileged.
00:48:21
Speaker
And obviously, they're going to have different approaches.
00:48:24
Speaker
Obviously, the person who's fighting for their life, who's fighting for survival, is going to be more short-term focused and minded because they have to eat.
00:48:33
Speaker
They have to provide shelter for themselves and their family.
00:48:36
Speaker
Whereas for that other person, it's more of a, ooh, hopefully I make a...
00:48:41
Speaker
shit ton of money in the next five years or, or hopefully like this or that happens.
00:48:45
Speaker
And like, it's different.
00:48:46
Speaker
And so it doesn't mean that any of these people are wrong.
00:48:50
Speaker
It just means that they have a different outlook and a different, um, a different way to look at things in different priorities.
00:48:57
Speaker
And that's,
00:48:58
Speaker
And the other thing that I wanted to, that made me react in what you were saying is the problem with the legal system right now is that when thing, when something is set, it is so hard to move.
00:49:10
Speaker
That's why you have laws that apply to us right now that were written like 150 years ago.
00:49:16
Speaker
And that just doesn't make any sense for anyone.
00:49:19
Speaker
And, and I think that's one of the biggest things that these systems need to be mindful of.
00:49:25
Speaker
And I'm actually, you have no idea how,
00:49:28
Speaker
focused I am on this portion of the conversation because this is work that I'm going to have to be doing in the next little while.
00:49:36
Speaker
And so, yeah, you're so right.
00:49:38
Speaker
We need to have the vision to be aligned on the vision.
00:49:41
Speaker
We need to have the proper systems to make sure that we can pose with the different people who want to work toward that mission.
00:49:51
Speaker
Yeah.
00:49:51
Speaker
And it's such pioneering work.
00:49:54
Speaker
I mean, there's, and, and it's like just expanding.
00:49:58
Speaker
Like there's so many examples.
00:50:00
Speaker
Like I'm so excited to like, like to talk with more people with like bigger DAOs as well to dive more into, into like, how have they done it?
00:50:08
Speaker
You know, and the whole legal framework, right.
00:50:12
Speaker
What you are touching on as well.
00:50:13
Speaker
I mean, like that's, that's all ahead of you guys, isn't that?
00:50:17
Speaker
Yeah, it is.
00:50:17
Speaker
It is.
00:50:18
Speaker
It's, it's funny that you say it's all pioneering because it is, and it's not.
00:50:23
Speaker
It's pioneering because it just takes another approach and it tries to shift the paradigm.
00:50:30
Speaker
But that's what people in Greece were trying to do thousands of years ago.
00:50:34
Speaker
They were trying to build organizations, human groups that were fair and somewhat decentralized or were like the power of voice.
00:50:44
Speaker
And then...
00:50:46
Speaker
Yeah, greed happened and trust was misplaced and then people seized power and just kept it for hundreds of years.
00:50:55
Speaker
But the main problem was that we didn't have the proper information systems.
00:51:00
Speaker
It was really hard to, there was no transparency, there was no nothing.
00:51:06
Speaker
And so now we're finally at a place where technology is advanced enough that it can help us build these big organizations.
00:51:18
Speaker
I wrote down conflict resolution at scale when you were talking, because that's what we want to do.
00:51:25
Speaker
We
00:51:26
Speaker
For example, I was talking to our CMO before and his plan is that in the next 18 months, that at the end of the next 18 months, we have 20,000 members.
00:51:35
Speaker
And so with 20,000 members, well, you need to be, the system needs to be solid because it's not just like five people talking across the table and who are very much aligned with each other.
00:51:47
Speaker
You have like people who are poor, people who are very poor, people who are less poor and you need to,
00:51:53
Speaker
compose with all of this.
00:51:55
Speaker
And that's where the, I think this sheds an even brighter light on the whole facilitator thing, because if I really put myself in the shoes of a facilitator and not of a dictator, and that people around me do that as well, and people around them do that as well, and around them and around them, then you have managed to build an organization where people actually listen to each other and take out what really matters out of each other.
00:52:23
Speaker
Oh, I really want to make as much money as I can in 10 years.
00:52:26
Speaker
But does that matter more than the person who's trying to eat today?
00:52:31
Speaker
And you move forward and you talk and you build something that's more sustainable, I
Fair NFT Distribution
00:52:38
Speaker
think.
00:52:38
Speaker
Yeah, you're touching on a lot of points at a time.
00:52:42
Speaker
They're all intertwined, right?
00:52:44
Speaker
Because, I mean, if you talk with the different groups which are involved, right, like the rich and the poor, like when I think of conflict, I mean, the rich one doesn't even have a conflict or anything, right?
00:52:56
Speaker
Like with another person.
00:52:58
Speaker
It's just like the whole system is just like imbalanced and favoring.
00:53:04
Speaker
Yeah, it's just like where it's at at the moment.
00:53:07
Speaker
And
00:53:09
Speaker
the players in there.
00:53:10
Speaker
And the poor one doesn't have a direct conflict with a big one.
00:53:13
Speaker
It's just like victim of the circumstances in a way.
00:53:16
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:53:17
Speaker
It actually ties into what we're doing right now where we are.
00:53:22
Speaker
There will be NFTs in our upcoming ecosystem and we're trying to determine how to distribute them in the most fair way possible in a way that benefits everyone who gets them and that doesn't take away from anyone.
00:53:37
Speaker
And so
00:53:38
Speaker
For example, the term pay to play comes up a lot because our CMO is really, he's very vocal about wanting to create something that is free to play.
00:53:51
Speaker
And what I'm, my perspective on it is that it should be as free to play as possible, but that pay to play for the people who don't have the time, but have the money should be beneficial for the people who play for free.
00:54:08
Speaker
And so that's what we're trying to do in our upcoming Mint.
00:54:12
Speaker
We're trying to make sure that you have people who have time and skills and you have people who have money and you have people who have a mix of both.
00:54:18
Speaker
And we want to try to set it up so that the people who just have money can contribute and can partake and can benefit.
00:54:26
Speaker
And that the money that they put into the ecosystem actually benefits the people who have less of it and who have more time.
00:54:33
Speaker
It's a very interesting concept and a very interesting dilemma because if we do this well, then maybe we are working towards building a new society of people who actually understand like, oh, this person has money, but it doesn't make them a bad person because I'm actually benefiting from it.
00:54:53
Speaker
And, oh, this person doesn't have a lot of money.
00:54:55
Speaker
Like they're from that other place in the world.
00:54:57
Speaker
And, oh, but they're actually contributing.
00:55:00
Speaker
And we're actually, and if we, oh man, I get so excited talking about this because if we do manage to build this, then it has,
00:55:10
Speaker
Yeah, it's finally going to go back to doing something that Web3 was meant to do in the beginning, which was uniting.
00:55:17
Speaker
What are the values behind this thing you're doing?
00:55:20
Speaker
The one that I keep going back to is fair distribution of value.
00:55:24
Speaker
That's the one that I care about the most.
00:55:27
Speaker
I want to make sure that was the biggest problem in the origins of Web3.
00:55:31
Speaker
I mean, that was the biggest problem that I saw Web3 solving.
00:55:34
Speaker
Um, initially I thought my, my, my always comparison is Amazon of they're so good.
00:55:41
Speaker
They're extremely efficient, like efficiency masters, but they're also value extraction masters.
00:55:47
Speaker
And, and for me, web three was the,
00:55:51
Speaker
opportunity to be able to maximize efficiency while maximizing fair value distribution.
Value Distribution in Web3
00:55:58
Speaker
And so that's why I care about the most.
00:56:00
Speaker
There are a few others.
00:56:01
Speaker
We want people who work hard because that's important.
00:56:05
Speaker
We want people who are humble, all of that.
00:56:07
Speaker
But the guiding thing for me is definitely that one.
00:56:10
Speaker
I mean, when you're saying for you, I mean, that's for you personally.
00:56:13
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:56:14
Speaker
It sounds like, I mean, you're aligned in your project, but I mean, you're all aligned in your vision.
00:56:18
Speaker
And like, I'm just curious, like, did you put that into words, into like a thing, into like an agreement of like, wow, that's actually what we stand for, for like value distribution?
00:56:29
Speaker
That's the power of this team, man.
00:56:31
Speaker
It's that one, my initial co-founder, Cosmos, he and I, we're just two peas in a pod.
00:56:37
Speaker
We get along very well.
00:56:38
Speaker
And we're always aligned.
00:56:40
Speaker
We cared about this space and we wanted to have a positive impact and we care for others as much as we care for ourselves.
00:56:47
Speaker
We want this thing to be a success for us because we put everything in and we deserve it and we want to be financially free.
00:56:57
Speaker
I want to build a family and all of that and it's important.
00:57:00
Speaker
But we
00:57:01
Speaker
we would not be okay with it being at the expense of other people.
00:57:06
Speaker
So he and I were always aligned.
00:57:07
Speaker
We never had to really like say it, it was always between us.
00:57:11
Speaker
And then now with the transformation of this project, it started with our CMO who's
00:57:18
Speaker
he hasn't agreed yet, I hope that he does, but who will become a co-founder.
00:57:23
Speaker
And then a fourth person who hasn't given the final word yet, but he's acting like it.
00:57:27
Speaker
And I hope he does too, because he's a fantastic person.
00:57:30
Speaker
And now maybe a fifth person.
00:57:34
Speaker
And the one thing that we all care about, and that we never had to discuss or anything, it was
00:57:42
Speaker
was that we wanna bridge the gap using Web3.
00:57:46
Speaker
And so, and that's what I think things should be.
00:57:49
Speaker
I remember in my first business, wanting to figure out the why, wanting to figure out what our values were.
00:57:58
Speaker
And so it became more of intellectual work of trying to find a thing that has the most impact that will inspire people and all of that.
00:58:08
Speaker
And it kind of corrupts it.
00:58:10
Speaker
Whereas here we came in and we're like, all right, let's do something good.
00:58:15
Speaker
And let's also make money for ourselves.
00:58:18
Speaker
And let's build something that benefits everyone who participates.
00:58:22
Speaker
And it's so fucking powerful.
00:58:25
Speaker
Yeah, my, my thought of training, like it goes in some some directions in worldwide.
00:58:29
Speaker
Why I'm asking is
00:58:30
Speaker
You know, for everybody, it's not like for you.
00:58:33
Speaker
I mean, we all know the company values in corporates.
00:58:36
Speaker
They're like hanging on the wall.
00:58:37
Speaker
Nobody cares.
00:58:38
Speaker
It's more like a downer than an upper.
00:58:40
Speaker
It doesn't help.
00:58:40
Speaker
Like I totally agree.
00:58:42
Speaker
And with your thing, it's so powerful.
00:58:44
Speaker
It's coming from the inside.
00:58:45
Speaker
It's real.
00:58:45
Speaker
It's coming from you.
00:58:46
Speaker
It's coming from your friends, from your founders.
00:58:48
Speaker
And you're like, that's us.
00:58:50
Speaker
So it's just like super amazing for the community as well to understand this is why we do things.
00:58:57
Speaker
Like this big question of why is that we all want to know why as a kid, you want to know why, why, why, why can't I eat this?
00:59:03
Speaker
Like you want to know everything.
00:59:05
Speaker
Yeah.
00:59:05
Speaker
And, and,
00:59:06
Speaker
it just just makes a lot of sense to like like put that why not just you know and it's humble enough to just like yeah we do this but it's just an amazing thing to put out there say like we also like courageous enough to put it out there and say like this is what we're here for and and the other thing um why it is also so can can be very helpful um no matter what you're doing like when you were talking about yeah like like we want to
00:59:33
Speaker
do it with the pay-for-me stuff, like how we distribute between rich and poor.
00:59:38
Speaker
This is what we're going to do.
00:59:40
Speaker
And I recently came across this quote.
00:59:43
Speaker
It's my favorite one at the moment.
00:59:45
Speaker
Experiments never fail.
00:59:47
Speaker
So what you're doing there is one big experiment for the sake of creating equality and fair value distribution.
00:59:57
Speaker
And I can already tell you in a sense of whatever you're going to do there,
01:00:02
Speaker
people are going to game the system.
01:00:03
Speaker
It's not going to be 100% value distributed and fair.
01:00:07
Speaker
It's never going to be 100%, and that is fine.
01:00:09
Speaker
And just having these values as a guiding principle, like it's an infinite game what we're playing here.
01:00:16
Speaker
Like we're just trying to iterate and get better.
01:00:19
Speaker
And what's in the back of my mind is...
01:00:23
Speaker
as early as possible, like whatever you're trying to into that system you're building to try these to build in these loops of OK, where this is like one try and then there's going to be other tries and more tries and we're just like
01:00:38
Speaker
As a learning organization, this is like one of the tools that we're doing.
01:00:41
Speaker
And then we just keep on adapting and living that and getting, because we're so often trapped in this thought of, okay, this is the right thing to do.
01:00:51
Speaker
That's how we reach our goal.
Risk, Failure, and Growth
01:00:54
Speaker
But this is like a big infinite game of like we're trying and doing things for the rest of our lives, hopefully with this thing to try to improve things for the best.
01:01:05
Speaker
And this other quote, which is with me since ever, is yesterday's solution is creating today's problems or today's solutions is creating tomorrow's problems.
01:01:16
Speaker
So whatever solution you're creating with that, it's going to make new problems again.
01:01:22
Speaker
And that is good.
01:01:24
Speaker
That is normal.
01:01:25
Speaker
And then you go on the next iteration.
01:01:27
Speaker
Yeah.
01:01:28
Speaker
kind of a retro and then like you keep improving on things.
01:01:31
Speaker
It's the exact same thing as conflicts.
01:01:37
Speaker
You have to take some risks.
01:01:38
Speaker
You know that not all of them work.
01:01:42
Speaker
And I always go back, I played a lot of online poker.
01:01:45
Speaker
And I always go back to having a pair of aces.
01:01:49
Speaker
If you look at a pair of aces, you are subjectively convinced that you're going to win the hand.
01:01:53
Speaker
But if you're playing against one person, you're 80%.
01:01:57
Speaker
You have 80% chance this to win.
01:01:59
Speaker
And you basically take away 10% for every new player that's added.
01:02:03
Speaker
And so that's just what life is.
01:02:07
Speaker
It's just statistics.
01:02:09
Speaker
Sometimes you win, sometimes you learn.
01:02:13
Speaker
And you have to, yeah, you have to accept the fact.
01:02:16
Speaker
And I actually want to tie this back into what we were talking about, the cycles before, where you learn until you're ready to expand and really thrive.
01:02:25
Speaker
Because I think we go through these phases where you thrive, you thrive, you thrive, and you reach a point where, okay, it's going to be back to the drawing board and you hit rock bottom and then you go back up again.
01:02:36
Speaker
And on the short timeframe, I've had quite a few...
01:02:41
Speaker
thriving periods of like two weeks, 10 days, three weeks, but I'm still waiting for that long-term thriving period.
01:02:49
Speaker
And it's fucking coming.
01:02:51
Speaker
Like I can feel it.
01:02:52
Speaker
It's been, it's been the expansion has been, and I'm saying this, like, I don't need to convince myself because I'm convinced of it.
01:02:59
Speaker
I'm saying this also because this is exciting for the people who are joining me and my projects right now, because I,
01:03:09
Speaker
Like we're all going to take flight together.
01:03:11
Speaker
And that's super.
01:03:13
Speaker
I don't know how you use this information as an investor, but I think there is value in this and in understanding that like the past doesn't predict the future.
01:03:24
Speaker
You need to know where your founders are.
01:03:27
Speaker
You need to know who your founders are.
01:03:29
Speaker
How do you do this with anonymity?
01:03:31
Speaker
Like it raises all of these questions.
01:03:34
Speaker
Now I'm really, I almost don't want to put my money anywhere until I've met the founders now.
01:03:41
Speaker
And until I felt like personally, like, okay, where are you on your journey?
01:03:45
Speaker
And it's like, you're speaking out a lot of my feelings and thoughts.
01:03:50
Speaker
Like I was talking with like venture capital friends of mine as well.
01:03:54
Speaker
And so I was like,
01:03:56
Speaker
And I feel it might even be like a thing, like also that conversation, which I was mentioning before, you know, like of a big company, which like feels like they don't have their shit together organizationally.
01:04:07
Speaker
And in terms of like people management, nobody's looking at that, right?
01:04:11
Speaker
Like everybody looks, oh, this is the project, this is the technology, this is the market, this is, you know, the area they are focused in and
01:04:20
Speaker
And it comes down as the most crucial thing.
01:04:23
Speaker
If your teams are not working together, the project, I mean, possibly it's going to last long, but it's never going to thrive entirely sustainable on a long term if you don't have the culture in the team.
01:04:39
Speaker
It's so difficult.
01:04:40
Speaker
Yeah.
01:04:40
Speaker
I don't know how, but I have this kind of research project in the back of my mind, you know, like I'm talking to so many people and I have this qualitative information from like all these companies and I'm so excited, you know, like to see which ones are going to make it where I have the feeling, this is an amazing team, you know, like you're definitely one of them.
01:05:00
Speaker
Like you're one of the few teams.
01:05:01
Speaker
I was like, I was asking you when we were speaking before, like, so how is it like in your team?
01:05:05
Speaker
He is like, yeah,
01:05:06
Speaker
we all have space and express our emotions.
01:05:08
Speaker
And when everybody's, anybody is down, there's like space for everything.
01:05:12
Speaker
And we have an awesome team culture.
01:05:13
Speaker
Like we don't need you basically, you know, we don't need you right now.
01:05:20
Speaker
Yeah.
01:05:20
Speaker
And I was like, Oh my gosh, this is like so amazing.
01:05:24
Speaker
Cause like the most projee, like people are just challenged with this thing of team formation or organization on a small level or like on a big level.
01:05:32
Speaker
I just want to say, like, for full transparency, that we were and we're still far from perfect.
01:05:38
Speaker
Like, I don't think there's a perfect...
01:05:41
Speaker
There's no perfect team.
01:05:42
Speaker
There's no perfect people.
01:05:44
Speaker
There's, it just doesn't, it just doesn't happen.
01:05:47
Speaker
And sometimes you're going to trust someone and you're going to be right.
01:05:49
Speaker
And sometimes you're going to trust the same person at a different time and be wrong.
01:05:53
Speaker
A lot of this thing also comes down to, to damn luck.
01:05:57
Speaker
Sometimes you're going to like, who would have thought, I mean, we, I talked about it on the previous podcast.
01:06:02
Speaker
It's probably going to come up, but who would have bet against FTX?
01:06:05
Speaker
Honestly,
01:06:06
Speaker
Like there are a few very, very smart people in this world who had maybe personally met SPF and just trust their intuition.
01:06:13
Speaker
And like Elon Musk claims that he does, that he met him or like that he talked to him, just called bullshit on him.
01:06:21
Speaker
But like, we're all wrong.
01:06:22
Speaker
I was planning on slowly like going there.
01:06:24
Speaker
I was actually...
01:06:26
Speaker
seriously considering Luna as a long-term thing because I I didn't even question it despite my better judgment despite Like it just didn't make any rational sense and yet because you have millions of people in the world who trust it it just like we're all sheep in the end no matter how smart we are how that are smart how smart we think we are we follow people we trust and
01:06:55
Speaker
Yeah, all of this say there's no safe bet.
01:06:57
Speaker
So hedge your investments, diversify your portfolio, know your risk profile.
01:07:03
Speaker
It's, yeah.
01:07:04
Speaker
And I did not talk to anybody from Luna or from FTX, unfortunately.
01:07:09
Speaker
That would have been interesting.
01:07:12
Speaker
I don't know, like how, he's so interesting.
01:07:15
Speaker
Because I would be so, really, yeah, like, because,
01:07:19
Speaker
often it trickles down, not always, right?
01:07:21
Speaker
Sometimes they're like in the boardroom in the top, they just do their thing and nobody knows about it.
01:07:26
Speaker
I mean, people didn't know, but still there's like a certain culture that can trickle down.
01:07:32
Speaker
Like how unorganized things seem to be with the FTX thing.
01:07:36
Speaker
And if you...
01:07:37
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, if there's any FTEX people listening to this, please reach out to me.
01:07:41
Speaker
I'd really love to listen to all the lunar people.
01:07:43
Speaker
And me too, actually.
01:07:44
Speaker
And if they reach out to you, please tell me.
01:07:46
Speaker
Because what's really cool in what you're saying is that things work until they don't.
01:07:56
Speaker
And so...
01:07:58
Speaker
You can rationalize any type of behavior and that's what these people are really good at doing.
01:08:02
Speaker
When you have a dictator, when you have a manipulator, what they are very good at doing is making you do things that are beyond what you would normally
01:08:14
Speaker
feel like doing and they rationalize it.
01:08:17
Speaker
Have you watched the Epstein show, the Epstein documentary on Netflix?
01:08:22
Speaker
No.
01:08:22
Speaker
Holy fuck.
01:08:23
Speaker
Holy shit.
01:08:24
Speaker
Just watch it.
01:08:24
Speaker
Honestly, it is mind boggling that someone was so good at manipulating other people that they were capable of doing this at that scale.
01:08:36
Speaker
It is just, for me, it is the...
01:08:40
Speaker
absolute masterclass in how to be an asshole at scale and how to be a manipulator at scale.
01:08:46
Speaker
And it shows you, it says a lot about humans and how to,
01:08:52
Speaker
You see this in scams and rock pools as well.
01:08:54
Speaker
Like they're, they're able to identify weaknesses in people and they're able to identify triggers, emotional, psychological triggers to generate a behavior.
01:09:06
Speaker
And I was, when, when, when talking, I thought back to, I thought I saw a thread on Twitter about SBF and a conversation that he had with one of his C member.
01:09:16
Speaker
And when you, you,
01:09:17
Speaker
think about it through the context of the collapse of FTX is just say, oh, okay, it makes sense.
01:09:24
Speaker
Makes sense that this type of person would end up in this position.
01:09:28
Speaker
But when you're in it, when FTX is still a multi-billion, very much trusted company that you are the genius, the whiz kid of crypto and all of that, then when you're the person on the other side of it, what are you going to do?
01:09:44
Speaker
Because like...
01:09:46
Speaker
That person is a God.
01:09:47
Speaker
The company that you're working on, that you're working for, will make you one of the most wealthy people, one of the most respected people in your profession.
01:09:58
Speaker
And so it just, it justifies a lot of things.
01:10:02
Speaker
Yeah.
01:10:02
Speaker
There is a lot of psychopaths.
01:10:04
Speaker
Yeah.
01:10:05
Speaker
Boardrooms and on top of obviously crypto companies as well.
01:10:11
Speaker
And it's normal.
01:10:12
Speaker
It's natural.
01:10:12
Speaker
Just like you said, like they know how to manipulate.
01:10:15
Speaker
They know how to play with other people's emotions.
01:10:18
Speaker
I mean, that's the psychopath thing, right?
01:10:20
Speaker
They don't have the empathy themselves.
01:10:23
Speaker
So they train 100% perfectly to like be able to mimic and play with emotions of other people.
01:10:32
Speaker
And
01:10:34
Speaker
that's what's happening in the world.
01:10:36
Speaker
I mean, they are there.
01:10:37
Speaker
I mean, it's like, it's also never black and white, right?
01:10:40
Speaker
There's this psychopath checklist or like this test where you can like see and there's like a lot of books written about it.
01:10:46
Speaker
Yeah, but ultimately those people all end up in these positions.
01:10:52
Speaker
And that's this world.
01:10:54
Speaker
And it's normal.
01:10:55
Speaker
I mean, this whole crypto world is not so different compared to the world outside, the economic world outside on steroids, right?
01:11:04
Speaker
I mean, the whole market, the chart is like stock market on steroids with the same emotions, just like all a bit more crazy.
01:11:11
Speaker
It's the same startup scene, just everything a bit more crazy because like more community, more competition, everybody, everything more fast paced, the technology development, everything is like.
01:11:22
Speaker
The volatility, the financial opportunity, everything.
01:11:26
Speaker
Yeah, you're absolutely right.
01:11:27
Speaker
Yeah, everything.
01:11:30
Speaker
And still, we still have our same brains and our same emotions, which we fall a trap on.
01:11:35
Speaker
And then we come back to the beginning of the conversation.
01:11:37
Speaker
How do we handle this as a human being, like, without breaking down emotionally, also, like, these financial things, right?
01:11:45
Speaker
Like, when markets go up and down, or, like, FTX, or, like, with fucking Luna, I lost a lot of money with UST.
01:11:51
Speaker
I just thought, like, yeah, it's like...
01:11:53
Speaker
So stay with call with the biggest deal that I don't even want to play the new, you know, I keep it safe and put in the stable coin.
01:12:00
Speaker
And then it's like, okay, let's learn, you know, or another, yeah, yeah.
01:12:05
Speaker
Another life lesson thing.
01:12:07
Speaker
You know what, this is probably actually the best segue into what might be the last part of this conversation.
Psychedelics and Personal Growth
01:12:14
Speaker
Let's talk about psychedelics, man.
01:12:18
Speaker
I initially wanted to bring it up just from the beginning because it's an important component.
01:12:22
Speaker
It's a point where you and I both met.
01:12:25
Speaker
Just talk to me about psychedelics, the role they've played in your life and how they seeped into how you approach coaching and all of that.
01:12:33
Speaker
I also think, no, we should have started the conversation with it.
01:12:36
Speaker
I like starting my, when I have presentation and talks, I'm like, who's into psychedelics?
01:12:42
Speaker
And then everybody listens.
01:12:44
Speaker
My intro with psychedelics, interestingly enough, I was never like the party drug guy.
01:12:49
Speaker
And so maybe seven, eight years ago, yoga friends of mine told me about this thing where they would go,
01:12:55
Speaker
into the room with like this guy from the Netherlands and everybody would drink something and then vomit in buckets and get like crazy epiphanies about things.
01:13:04
Speaker
And she didn't even drink or smoke or anything.
01:13:06
Speaker
I was like, what the fuck?
01:13:08
Speaker
What are you doing there?
01:13:09
Speaker
And then I got curious and learned about ayahuasca and
01:13:12
Speaker
just out of curiosity, I went to one of these events and that was like my first actual psychedelic substance experience back then.
01:13:21
Speaker
And it was super amazing for me as a psychologist, as a yogi, as a meditation practitioner, like to fuck, like that's such a beautiful possibility to observe your mind, right?
01:13:34
Speaker
Stan Grof, one of the pioneers, I said like,
01:13:37
Speaker
psychedelics can be what a magnifying glass is for a biologist with your mind.
01:13:41
Speaker
It can give you a deeper understanding of how you function or how your whole system functions.
01:13:49
Speaker
Besides spiritual possibilities, whatever might come up,
01:13:53
Speaker
And that sparked my interest and from there I went to more ceremonies, from there I was reading up and learning about the whole research on LSD and psilocybin and MDMA and I've been following that also just from a scientific standpoint as a psychologist I find it super interesting.
01:14:10
Speaker
And yeah, and then I like tried that and I was like replicating in a way the protocols of the therapy sessions with friends and with myself where we went into from the beginning, it's always been super intentional and not like the party thing for me.
01:14:27
Speaker
and that's how I've been using it and it has been of tremendous benefit for my life I just like understood myself better it changed it actually made me spiritual in a way I had these experiences where I just was at this point this is what I experienced I now decide to believe it whatever you know any other state of consciousness is but what I'm experiencing right now is reality for me full stop because that's what I experience and since then like
01:14:56
Speaker
Yeah, it's been like a shift from being agnostic to, yeah, there might be whatever.
01:15:01
Speaker
I don't know.
01:15:03
Speaker
I believe my experience.
01:15:05
Speaker
I mean, I still don't know, but for myself, I just decide to believe this is like my reality.
01:15:12
Speaker
Yeah.
01:15:13
Speaker
There's this... No, I just wanted to respond to this.
01:15:17
Speaker
No, the whole belief to see or see to believe two groups of people in the world.
01:15:22
Speaker
I was very much a see to believe too.
01:15:24
Speaker
Like I need scientific proof in order to believe in something.
01:15:27
Speaker
And these past, these last few years had...
01:15:30
Speaker
You years have showed me that believing things will make them happen sometimes that there are forces.
01:15:38
Speaker
There are things flows.
01:15:39
Speaker
I don't know how to call them to the web three people that might listen to this.
01:15:44
Speaker
Yeah.
01:15:45
Speaker
It's yes.
01:15:46
Speaker
I could Alex helping that way.
01:15:47
Speaker
Sorry.
01:15:47
Speaker
I cut you off.
01:15:48
Speaker
What did you, where'd you want to go?
01:15:49
Speaker
I love it.
01:15:50
Speaker
Believe to see and see to believe.
01:15:52
Speaker
That's exactly what I was talking.
01:15:53
Speaker
I was shifting from the one as well.
01:15:55
Speaker
Exactly.
01:15:56
Speaker
That was the shift in my, my life in a way at some point.
01:15:59
Speaker
Yeah, and then I got more and more into that work, learned about it, learned with the Mind Institute, with people who do this professionally, and started just supporting people on a small scale with it, and I still...
01:16:12
Speaker
love doing this.
01:16:13
Speaker
And that's mainly with integration coaching, just like preparing people for the experiences and giving integration, like integration means literally becoming whole.
01:16:23
Speaker
So whatever you experience, you want to integrate into your life to change something, right?
01:16:29
Speaker
Otherwise, you don't really need to do this.
01:16:33
Speaker
Or you can do it for fun.
01:16:34
Speaker
It's also nice to have the intention of just having fun together and that can be- Yeah.
01:16:38
Speaker
And one can get to the other.
01:16:39
Speaker
I deal with that.
01:16:41
Speaker
Yeah.
01:16:41
Speaker
Exactly.
01:16:42
Speaker
That's what I was going to say where I think you've had probably the textbook optimal introduction and experience with psychedelics.
01:16:52
Speaker
just exploration from A to Z and self-exploration and just curiosity and being accompanied by the right people.
01:16:59
Speaker
Whereas I've had the complete opposite experience of did MDMA for the first time, I think in 2014.
01:17:11
Speaker
And from then on for like three or four years, my experience through these substances was purely
01:17:19
Speaker
quite destructive and and and the guiding principle was how fucked up can i get and and that was my exploration it was an interesting one i don't regret it per se but i wish someone would have come in at the beginning and told me hey um
01:17:40
Speaker
If you want to do things a little bit better, if you don't want to mess yourself up too much, if you want to really make the most out of it, have the right balance between fun and learning, this is how you should approach it.
01:17:53
Speaker
And slowly it's morphed into pretty much not doing drugs anymore, but when I do them, do exactly what you're saying of very intentionally.
Intentional Use of Substances
01:18:04
Speaker
And
01:18:05
Speaker
in, all right, I'm going to do this.
01:18:08
Speaker
I'm going to make a ritual around it.
01:18:10
Speaker
Even these days, I don't really smoke a lot of weed anymore.
01:18:12
Speaker
But when I do, I put an intention in it.
01:18:15
Speaker
And I'm thinking, all right, this is what I want out of this.
01:18:19
Speaker
This is, this is,
01:18:22
Speaker
And it changes everything.
01:18:23
Speaker
There's no more anxiety.
01:18:25
Speaker
There's no more feeling shitty the next day or having the wrong energy.
01:18:30
Speaker
It's just, you feel amazing.
01:18:32
Speaker
That's also why I care about talking about psychedelics, because that's how we start to educate and where we give the proper...
01:18:42
Speaker
guideline to people on how to do things and we open the conversation because that's the one thing that's lacking.
01:18:47
Speaker
It's not a matter of legalization or not legalization.
01:18:51
Speaker
It's a matter of education.
01:18:53
Speaker
If you have the proper education, then you can just let people do whatever they want because then it's their responsibility.
01:18:59
Speaker
They're going to, if you're not just being told, no, don't do that.
01:19:03
Speaker
And you're being told, hey, if you do this, this is probably the best way to do it.
01:19:08
Speaker
And
01:19:10
Speaker
If you do it that way, these are the risks, then hey, we're all adults here.
01:19:16
Speaker
Yeah, 100% agree.
01:19:18
Speaker
And that's where I see my mission as well.
01:19:20
Speaker
I mean, in Web3, there's a lot of psychedelics around.
01:19:23
Speaker
People do it.
01:19:24
Speaker
And I mean, I'm not prescribing anything or tell people what to do.
01:19:30
Speaker
I just love encouraging people to like, yeah, look what's possible.
01:19:36
Speaker
Just what you described.
01:19:37
Speaker
I mean, you can utilize the substance for personal growth instead of using them for escape from whatever is there, what you don't want to look into.
01:19:47
Speaker
And that is such a big difference.
01:19:49
Speaker
I mean, the one is kind of abuse and the other one is celebration almost, you could say.
01:19:55
Speaker
Absolutely.
01:19:55
Speaker
And growth.
01:19:56
Speaker
I mean, it's a two-edged sword.
01:19:58
Speaker
Oh, it's a super sharp sword.
01:20:00
Speaker
It's so powerful.
01:20:02
Speaker
It fucking messes with your system.
01:20:04
Speaker
There is dangers connected with it.
01:20:06
Speaker
I mean, NVMA or like overuse of any substance is always like a challenge.
01:20:12
Speaker
And at the same time, there's like so much potential in so many different directions as well.
01:20:17
Speaker
And I mean, the one is like the whole healing thing with a therapeutic approach, like what's happening, like where we're...
01:20:24
Speaker
John Hopkins and maps and all these guys are doing amazing work with like the therapeutics as the side all which I'm Connected with as well like we're supporting psychedelic research actually like like supporting their so much that's cool Yeah, and
01:20:41
Speaker
And that is all on the healing part of the therapy part of like, okay, I'm replacing conventional therapy with psychedelic assisted therapy, which is like super important.
01:20:50
Speaker
There's a lot of unanswered question.
01:20:53
Speaker
It's elite thing as well.
01:20:54
Speaker
It's super expensive.
01:20:55
Speaker
It's not going to be easy, blah, blah, blah.
01:20:56
Speaker
But nevertheless, it's like it's opening up the whole discussion for the world like about these substances, which is awesome.
01:21:03
Speaker
And it's helping people bottom line like the...
01:21:06
Speaker
studies are so amazingly convincing in terms of the numbers, how they help.
01:21:12
Speaker
And then what I'm more focusing on is like the whole growth, self-consciousness and creativity side.
01:21:22
Speaker
I know so many people, I think I know five who started, there were three projects out of like psychedelic journeys.
01:21:30
Speaker
That makes sense.
01:21:32
Speaker
Mostly had like ayahuasca journeys and then kind of got this download.
01:21:35
Speaker
Oh my gosh, this is how to change the world.
01:21:38
Speaker
Okay.
01:21:38
Speaker
Message received.
01:21:39
Speaker
Let's go and do it.
01:21:40
Speaker
And out of that, like,
01:21:42
Speaker
projects or Marvin the polka dot guy.
01:21:46
Speaker
Oh, that's cool.
01:21:47
Speaker
Yeah, he was very vocal about it as well.
01:21:50
Speaker
For me, it wasn't the... Okay, I genuinely think that
01:21:57
Speaker
it played a huge role in where I am today.
01:21:59
Speaker
So maybe it wasn't like an instant download of, ooh, this is what I need to build, but it participated in making me into the person that would get there eventually.
01:22:10
Speaker
But for example, I've experimented with ketamine quite a bit.
01:22:17
Speaker
I find it a very useful substance as well.
01:22:22
Speaker
and very good for introspection and very good for having the psychedelic effects without the violence of LSD, for example.
01:22:32
Speaker
And so I've done a few trips and it's during one of those trips that I
01:22:39
Speaker
that I realized, oh, you know, like when you're between two things, you have a tendency to try to hold on to both.
01:22:47
Speaker
Like people who are in a relationship, it's not going super well.
01:22:51
Speaker
They meet someone super cool and they're very interested in that new relationship, but they don't want to let go of the past.
01:22:58
Speaker
That's basically where I was at with my two businesses, with the Web3 business and the other business that I was in.
01:23:05
Speaker
And then one day I went into this meditation, this substance enhanced meditation.
01:23:14
Speaker
And it took me a few hours to get there, but a few hours in and I...
01:23:20
Speaker
And I got to this place where I was like, okay, you know what?
01:23:24
Speaker
This is where I need to put all of my attention and my energy in because if I do it, it will bring success to everything in my life, my past, my present and my future.
01:23:35
Speaker
What I really liked about what you said in the beginning about the retreats is the reset part.
01:23:39
Speaker
It's those substances are so good because when done right, they allow you to...
01:23:48
Speaker
Take a huge step back, look at yourself from another perspective and basically rebalance, re-weight everything.
01:23:57
Speaker
Oh, this fear was huge.
01:24:01
Speaker
not that important actually.
01:24:02
Speaker
It's just, I've been so focused.
01:24:04
Speaker
I've been putting it so much, I've been giving it so much energy that it's taken a huge spot in my mind, but it's not actually that important.
01:24:14
Speaker
And so, yeah, all of this is so- Man, there's another beautiful circle back to what we talked about.
01:24:19
Speaker
Remember about the fears of the founders and stuff.
01:24:23
Speaker
Oh, you have like all these different fears and parts and judgments in yourself.
01:24:27
Speaker
And
01:24:28
Speaker
In the MAPS Institute for the ketamine therapy, they actually use this model of internal family systems in order to prepare people for psychedelic experiences.
01:24:39
Speaker
So you would ask your different parts if they are all okay to go into the experience, or if there's some resistance from some part you might not be aware of.
01:24:48
Speaker
Then also, what they found out, even without telling people about this whole concept of there's paths and there's like yourself, people would report exactly that naturally in the state in psychedelics, no matter if it's like ketamine or LSD.
01:25:02
Speaker
People are like, oh, this is like this connected state of who I am, and I can see detached, just what you describe, oh, these are my fears and my...
01:25:13
Speaker
things and my parts and my stories, I'm engaged in.
01:25:16
Speaker
That's the story.
01:25:17
Speaker
I can see the story, but I'm outside of the story and reset and understand and take a different angle and perspective on things.
01:25:25
Speaker
Yeah.
01:25:25
Speaker
It helps you objectivize your life a little bit.
01:25:29
Speaker
Yeah.
01:25:30
Speaker
Yeah, very, very often.
01:25:31
Speaker
Very often.
Challenging Psychedelic Experiences
01:25:33
Speaker
What a cool conversation.
01:25:34
Speaker
I know you have other engagements and so I'm going to, I'm going to.
01:25:38
Speaker
Yeah, I would love to, because also like taking one last circle back because it's just been a recent,
01:25:47
Speaker
Yeah, big experience for me as well like talking about psychedelics like whoever's listening to this I also had like the most terrifying experience kind of recently on psychedelics as well that was like in September when I was like having my burnout thing that actually happened in an ayahuasca ceremony where I went into the ceremony like not in a good state not in a good mindset and this whole setting was
01:26:10
Speaker
um yeah i wouldn't blame the setting it was like mainly myself and the mindset i was in and there's nothing to regret afterwards however it put me into like a psychedelic emergency mode where i needed help never had that before like part of my ego died as well which they're oh i'm always good and psyched i can handle it and you know like helping other people with this it expanded my horizon it made me learn it made me humble
01:26:35
Speaker
about the whole thing because it's really not just like another thing to do it's it's really a big thing if you go especially like on like higher doses or like stronger psychedelics so it's it's really a two-edged sword yeah so whoever like wants to try like do it but do it yeah carefully people you really trust and carefully and get good guidance and like really good guidance like don't do it because of fomo yes really listen to yourself it's the right time at the right place and then
01:27:03
Speaker
I think some of my most fruitful experiences have been quote-unquote bad experiences.
01:27:10
Speaker
Because I don't know, it puts you in a very vulnerable state.
01:27:14
Speaker
Yeah, it just pushes you to look deeper than you've looked before, to look more in the face of your fears than you have before.
01:27:23
Speaker
And that's where most of the growth happens.
01:27:26
Speaker
And I think I've heard it from somewhere, but when they say that in a psychedelic session, you do 10 years of growth, like there's so much truth to that.
01:27:35
Speaker
Yeah, 10 years of therapy, right?
01:27:37
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
01:27:40
Speaker
And I so much agree.
01:27:41
Speaker
I mean that experience this whole experience of breaking down in the ceremony and like months and weeks of depression afterwards and like it was like my darkest time in my life and just like you said I know like it's been necessary in my life as well because I had never been there and seen it and it makes me a better person it makes me a better coach and I just see from there
01:28:03
Speaker
there's like so much depth it's giving myself for like further growth.
01:28:07
Speaker
Absolutely.
01:28:08
Speaker
And also said like the deeper the roots, the higher the branches of the tree, right?
01:28:13
Speaker
And that's, that's like the thing I kept telling me and, and I, I agree, but if you do it for the first time, maybe you don't want to aim for that, you know, first time, perfect dose, perfect setting, uh, and perfect.
01:28:26
Speaker
Yeah.
01:28:27
Speaker
And, and there, there are like,
01:28:29
Speaker
good ground
Connecting with Web3 Community
01:28:31
Speaker
rules.
01:28:31
Speaker
Before we cut this off, who are the people that you want to talk to these days?
01:28:36
Speaker
Who are you looking for?
01:28:37
Speaker
Who should reach out to you?
01:28:38
Speaker
FTX people, please.
01:28:40
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
01:28:43
Speaker
Please come here for some therapy and, you know, they can say it.
01:28:49
Speaker
Yeah, and then really anybody like in Web3 with who's excited, like who's inspired by what I do and who's interested in what I do.
01:29:02
Speaker
I'm super excited to just talk to people in this space and learn.
Session Reflection
01:29:07
Speaker
That's awesome.
01:29:07
Speaker
That's what I do.
01:29:08
Speaker
And I can, I can vouch for him.
01:29:09
Speaker
I've done a session and it's, it's, it's top notch and it, and it will help a lot of people into either you're just starting with your introspective work or your, your advanced, um,
01:29:23
Speaker
there's a lot of value in it.
01:29:24
Speaker
Thanks, man.
01:29:25
Speaker
Thanks a lot.
01:29:26
Speaker
What another beautiful conversation for the books.
01:29:29
Speaker
And yeah, I look forward to the next one already.
01:29:32
Speaker
Yes.
01:29:33
Speaker
Many more to have my friend and all the best with you and us.
01:29:36
Speaker
It sounds amazing what you're doing.
01:29:38
Speaker
Thank you.
01:29:39
Speaker
Thank you.
01:29:39
Speaker
All the best.
01:29:40
Speaker
I really believe in you.
01:29:41
Speaker
Thanks.
01:29:41
Speaker
I appreciate it.
01:29:42
Speaker
It goes straight to my heart.