Holiday Bonuses, Cryptocurrency, ERC, and Summit

The following transcription was from the Bulletproof Youtube channel. Here is the https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYHFP3gddoE

Peter Boulden
0:00:00
Let's roll in.

Craig Spodak
0:00:11
We're going live with this pod, Craig. I know we are. So let me get into the meat of what we're saying. So you were telling the group that you believe in a holiday, you know, gift. It's a Christmas bonus, as you called it, and that you reward each team member a certain amount of money for every year of tenured service that they've given to the practice. So if someone's been there multiple years, they get a larger reward, which met with like vehement criticism, Peter. It was like Harvard Business Study shows that this and that. I mean, let's just out it was train train Dwight that Goes to Christmas past and the screw just here to foreknow, but they got really upset about that So so unpack your logic of why you feel strongly about this a little more context too. So the discussion was over Essentially to Christmas bonus or not And which I replied, like, not only do I, yes, do a Christmas bonus, but it also doesn't, it doesn't abate in any way to the monthly or year-end bonus as well.

Peter Boulden
0:01:23
It's an add-on.

Craig Spodak
0:01:25
Well, so it's a Christmas gift.

Peter Boulden
0:01:26
It's not really a bonus.

Peter Boulden
0:01:27
It's a Christmas, well, it's a bonus, it's a bonus, and it's accretive to the number of years

Craig Spodak
0:01:31
that they've been. Right, but it just gets a little bit more confusing. It gets more confusing when you say bonus, because then they were saying, well, what if you bonus out in December and they get a Christmas bonus on top of the bonus and that's what I was trying to get some you know some concession yeah so maybe it was a semantic war that we were having yeah I think you were having a semantic war well well we did break it down and then there were several people who are not don't give any kind of Christmas gift bonus whatever you want to call it right it's not a financial anything that there's a party, potentially the parties at the office, which I didn't agree with as well. Well, and you know, but like this is the beautiful thing. I was sitting there actually Craig, and we were having that discussion, and as hot and heated and as fun as it was, and we were all laughing. It just kind of, we couldn't believe the other side. Yeah. It was just amazing because like dentistry, this is something we always say, it still works. Completely different, Dwight's practice works, Trey's practice works, people on the mastermind their practice works, and it's just kind of where you feel led, so to speak. And I feel led, and maybe it's been just over time, I feel led to give a bonus, a Christmas gift, bonus, whatever it is, based on seniority. Meaning, and with no cap. Right, I just thought it was funny. And the cap came up too, which was funny. I was like, well I do it, but we cap it at, we do 50 bucks a year. Oh yeah, cap for four years. And I was like, well, heaven forbid you keep people on longer than five years. Yeah, because people can get really destructive after four or five years. Yeah, and I know that's just, we're having fun with it. But it was interesting how polarizing the, and then it became, again, I guess maybe you're right, more of a semantic war on, you know, we started getting, well, here's the study that shows

Peter Boulden
0:03:21
that incentives don't work and blah, blah, blah.

Craig Spodak
0:03:23
Yeah, it went on beyond, we hung up the phone two hours later and we're getting like Harvard Business studies about why bonuses don't work. I'm like, holy shit. I am just, I personally, and this is just my personal, I am a fan of incentives and bonus. You know, like, there's, it's not Warren Buffett, it's Warren Buffett's partner who had this quote that said, you know, you show me the incentive and I'll show you the outcome. And I think that, and basically that Harvard business study that Dwight said refuted, tried to refute that whole thing. And in my experience, you know, and look, I only know, Craig, I have a conformational bias. I only know what I have done. And so it feels good, feels good at Christmas time sometimes it's tough to like god dang that's a lot of money going for a bonus or a gift god dang that's a lot of money for a party but it's it's it always feels good to provide that right yeah I also think that our stance yeah and I like it and I'd love to hear people's comments on you know even on the as you can comment on either bulletproof that dental which is our Mighty Network, or you can comment on their YouTube channel.

Peter Boulden
0:04:30
I think that's probably why we do YouTube.

Craig Spodak
0:04:31
Yeah, answer all those comments. But I'd love to hear, what are your thoughts? What are your thoughts on this one, for sure? I'm in your camp, I wanna do the Christmas gift, especially this year for my team, because we were short-staffed, and we didn't wanna just bring on additional bodies, we wanted to hire really good people. And my team, the average person on my team was doing like 1.2 jobs. Everybody's been stretched. So I, um, I'm excited to do that for this year. Uh, and I just think it feels good. And listen, you're the way the formula works for you, the way you devised it, people get incented for tenure. So God willing, those checks get bigger and bigger and bigger. You want to keep the same great people on your team. And I think it's a great gift and people have come to expect it. And also I'm just leery of Harvard Business School in general, no offense to Harvard in particular, but when you look at the-

Peter Boulden
0:05:21
I doubt they're listening, Greg, I doubt they're listening.

Craig Spodak
0:05:22
They're not, but I'll encompass all the major Ivy League business schools and the ivory towers that are around, I think that when you listen to the podcasts and the voices that we're listening to, you hear about this massive wave of layoffs that's coming. And it's not from people that actually provide, the majority of the layoffs are actually, are not the people that are providing the services on the ground level, it's the elite, educated business consultants within the companies. It's the average power academics. It is, it is, and if Elon pulls this off, where he's gonna be able to strip all the fat out of Twitter and still maintain. We're jumping to Elon, we're going for Elon? Well, I'm just saying like he he he is he he's the one that's saying like hey We don't need these elite educated people to run this company Correct and and and that's tied it back to the Harvard thing because I was all Everybody will remain nameless in the who I was with last week but I was with a bunch of people that are very smart and very well paid and We were talking about I'm helping this company And the interesting thing was they had videos on their YouTube channel and they're all very smart people all very well trained but they had videos on their YouTube channel that were counter to the product and messaging they were trying to support so immediately I'm like give me the password I'll get these videos off because you and I know how to take videos down on our own YouTube channels like in a second but a Harvard Business School guy may not know how to do that so that's why when I come to the M.O.'s job that's a CMO's job. And then we have to get an email and a directive and pass it through corporate. And I'm just kind of bringing that full circle because, you know, when Harvard Business School says that Christmas bonuses are not effective, you know, maybe it's a different scale of

Peter Boulden
0:07:02
company.

Peter Boulden
0:07:03
Well, in full defense of it, it said it was arguing against incentives. And then I guess we got into the semantic war of like that's, you know, I was like, Dwight, that's not an, I was saying, that's not an incentive. That's just a year-end thank you for going above and beyond, you know. And I do disagree with tenure, ten year relates to tenure. It relates to just, oh, I've been present for X amount of time, therefore I should get more. And so I did hear that argument and for me, it's basically if you exist in my ecosystem, you're bringing a tremendous amount of values because my team will cut the fat, so to speak. Right, just like my team will even do it. They'll cut the fat and be like, this person is not performing, not pulling their weight. Like they will protect the house. And so tenure in my environment is warranted. Yeah, of course. Bonus situation, just in this little Christmas bonus because it's like, I want to reward that. And it's cool to have it be, to watch it build year over year a little bit. You know, some people have $1,500 bonuses, some people have $100, you know, and obviously it's different based on the years you were there. That's a significant change. I mean, that's a significant change. Oh, I agree with you. And if you look at this text chain from this, it's four Harvard Business Review studies all in a row. Four. And I just think that at a certain point, you know, I just don't know if Harvard Business Review has as much, I'm just saying that I prefer the knowledge of a specific person like you, and I value Dwight and Trey immensely, but when you start pulling Harvard in to try to run our businesses, I just think there's holes and biases there as well. That's all I wanted to say. It's not that I don't think Harvard's a great school. The biggest data point in that whole conversation, and then we'll wrap on this, was that we had a member basically say, hey, I remember when my wife as a dentist got a bonus, and then I worked at a different practice. Once upon a time, I didn't get a bonus. And I was like, well, how'd that make you feel?

Peter Boulden
0:09:13
Kind of thing.

Peter Boulden
0:09:14
And it was like, shitty. Yeah, that's my piece of that is that these people who are not going to quote, unquote, get bonus if their colleagues or friends that work at other practices in the town, if they hear about it all of a sudden now this this. Well, I didn't get that. Now you start. Now they start questioning everything, Craig. And we just got the most difficult hiring process from covid ever and all these things. And so the last thing I want is like uncertainty of people thinking that they're not being taken care of by the company. And so, you know, is there a quote ROI on this? Probably not, I don't know. Yeah, it reminds me of that quote, it's not everything that counts can be counted. And sometimes that's all, I mean, that's. That's a good. Well, it's just, that's, I mean, I just, I have a personal charge right now because I'm seeing a lot of big shakeups and larger companies and the studies and the you know the business reviews I just feel are getting more and more obsolete like like without getting tangential it's kind of like the way specialty training is going right now too you're seeing a crumbling the beginning of the the first crack in the ivory tower of specialty you know where you don't necessarily have to go for three or four years. You could go and get trained up after. So I just, I see we're at the precipice of a large disruption in higher levels of education. I'm not saying that dental school will go down, but the higher levels of dental specialization or specialization in business school and stuff like that. It's just interesting to me. We might be early, but I think we beat that one up pretty good. But speaking about businesses, if you don't mind. What do you think about, because we're hearing about blood on the streets and that the recession yet hasn't started, but there's signs that it's going to start. What do you think in your ecosystem, because I know you're a member of YPO and you got a lot of good voices in your ear, what do you think about capital being drying up and valuations and ability to borrow and stuff like that? Anything happening yet? Yeah, I mean, Bud, a lot of, so much of the deals in our environment, whether it's SAS or dentistry or roll-ups or this and that, are predicated on debt, right? Yeah, SAS is Subscription as a Service, so software businesses, just to explain that. So I'm going to draw on dentistry. The cost of capital has gone up. When some, when DSOs are using leverage, i.e. debt, someone else's money, a bank's money, when the cost of funds, cost of capital goes up it changes everything because now the yield has to be far greater than the interest rate at which you borrow or else it's not a good deal. And so, you know, 30-year home mortgages are in the 7% range. Isn't that crazy? So mezzanine and bridge loans and venture loans and things like that are way higher because the higher the higher reward, the higher the risk, therefore the higher the rate. So the cost of capital has gone up, therefore things are going to dry up. Well, valuations are still holding pretty robust though, which is interesting. You know, I'm seeing… For now, I think, for now, for now. Look, it's a recalibration, just like anything. Just like, look, it's a recalibration just like in home prices, Greg. So when interest rates were at 3% for home values, what was happening in Florida? Like your house went up 100% in value.

Craig Spodak
0:12:33
Right.

Peter Boulden
0:12:34
Right?

Craig Spodak
0:12:35
So it hasn't been, the lead indication hasn't been attributed yet to the 7%. It takes a long time for it to get there. Right, and the Fed's saying they'd rather break the economy because they have tools to fix it than to not slow it down fast enough. So they have tools to fix a broken economy, they don't have tools to slow it down, so they're gonna be raising even more. So I think what we're saying here is-

Craig Spodak
0:13:01
Tools, Greg.

Craig Spodak
0:13:02
Well, that's what they say. They have one tool. Print money.

Peter Boulden
0:13:06
Nope.

Peter Boulden
0:13:07
Well, fuck.

Craig Spodak
0:13:07
Well, that's a tool, though.

Peter Boulden
0:13:08
Raise interest rates.

Craig Spodak
0:13:09
Right, well, that's to slow it down, but if they raise interest rates so much that everything goes into a grinding halt, they can print money, is what I'm saying. That's a tool. It's a shitty tool, but that's a tool. So I just, I think what's happening, rates are rising, valuations are still high. I have dentist friends that are closing now and have just closed recently on ridiculous valuations. Wouldn't you agree that printing money, this is just a side note, but I was I was listening to a pod the other day and some guy used the term and I was like you know what he's kind

Craig Spodak
0:13:39
of right.

Peter Boulden
0:13:40
He said that quantitative easing, right, i.e. printing money is really no different than counterfeiting. Right, but the whole world has agreed to accept this counterfeit currency. Okay, right, because the dollar denomination. Right, so he who controls the dollar. Let's say you and I wanted to increase the dollar amount, we made our own, right, we tried to make our own we go to jail for counterfeiting right it is counterfeit but as long as everybody's agreement of the help it's not it's not everyone in agreement well I mean maybe not you know mr. crypto but I think a crypto thing Congress even I mean look look at look at how like mansion like I mean the span well listen everybody prevented he should get a Nobel Prize for present preventing that extra three trillion dollars of infrastructure act that he blocked. Right I know I know that but of all the people of all the actors that print money the US is amongst the best because we have the world's reserve currency so we… That's the only reason we're… That's the only reason, right, but that's what I'm saying we're the best because we everybody has agreed by consensus that we are allowed to print slash counterfeit it's fine consensus meaning the petrodollar but whatever so speaking of consensus let's bounce the crypto for a second mr. crypto let's talk to you about consensus and crypto I want to see where you are I want to see what's going on with bitcoins obviously holding its value right now but we've you know and all that I want to hear this I want to go we haven't talked about it it's probably gonna shock a lot of people this week I converted all of my holdings to Bitcoin. All of Ethereum, everything. My portfolio consists of 99.5% Bitcoin.

Peter Boulden
0:15:30
Right.

Craig Spodak
0:15:31
What do you mean right?

Craig Spodak
0:15:33
No, you told me. That's not breaking news to you? Well, not really. You actually gave me the news a couple of days ago, definitely, like, I sold everything. Like, did you really? Like, gotcha. You got me, though. Yeah. Well, I mean, that's good. I mean, I think if you have to bet on one… Let's back up. Let me give you some… So this year has been rough in crypto and me personally as a crypto speculator, right? Investor or something. You never identified yourself as a crypto speculator. Look, there's a little bit of confession in that. You've always been a hodler and a Bitcoin maximalist, crypto maximalist. I'm speculating that we'll go higher one day. Right. High conviction. Yes, I just like the fact that you're now a speculator. Sounds a little bit more realistic. Okay, well look, investment is, I mean let's not kid yourself. No one buys something with the- I know, I'm just a word guy and I don't think I've ever heard you call yourself a speculator. I'm just enjoying that.

Craig Spodak
0:16:33
I'm an optimistic speculator.

Craig Spodak
0:16:35
Okay, got it. Then call yourself an investor. So look, between the crashes, this year again, this year has been rough for the industry. For sure. But I want to do a 30,000 foot view because everyone's like, oh, crypto's dead. So we had Celsius first, which I got caught in, right?

Peter Boulden
0:16:50
Celsius where they-

Craig Spodak
0:16:51
That was that stable coin that you said that was pegged? No, no, no. That was Luna. But Celsius was basically over leveraging some customer funds and it turned into a bankruptcy situation. A lot of these companies like Voyager and Celsius and people had exposure to Luna, which Luna was Doquan's thing, coin, which was on the Luna the Terra ecosystem Luna Terra you heard about it

Peter Boulden
0:17:16
No

Peter Boulden
0:17:16
I'm not

Craig Spodak
0:17:17
But people have exposure to it because there was this system where it was getting you not talked about on the pot actually Where it was giving you it was a peg 20% interest rate right right is that the one you asked me to borrow money for? No, I did not no. I didn't you say like hey Can you loan me money, and I like if you need it? I'll give it to you like no I want to invest it in something. I remember you saying that to me. I don't remember what it was. Hopefully I was kidding. You probably weren't kidding. Thank God you didn't do it to me. All right, so then we had the Luna crash, which essentially it went from a stable coin down to being worth five cents now. Stable coin meaning worth a dollar down to five cents. Okay, and then, and so obviously there's a cascade of events, Craig, that happens when all these things happen and it weakens the whole environment. And now with the SBF thing, it really was almost, in my opinion, the nail in the coffin. Yeah, so just for the listener who doesn't know.

Peter Boulden
0:18:08
I say the nail in the coffin, okay.

Craig Spodak
0:18:10
Right, but I wanna unpack the SBF thing too for the person who's been living under a rocker doesn't understand what that is.

Peter Boulden
0:18:15
So Sam Beckman-Fried, you wanna unpack that?

Craig Spodak
0:18:18
Yeah, just quickly unpack that. Because right now, if you're just a casual listener of what's going on in the world. Everyone's heard about this, bud. No, you may see him on the Good Morning America show. He seems like a nice guy, kind of like, mea culpa, no big deal, you know, just wasn't really on top of my books, no big deal, but let's unpack exactly what he did and why. So FTX was one of the biggest, I think the second largest exchange. And so basically what he would do is he would take, you know, Tom Brady was endorsing him, he had one of those. Yeah, they had the Miami Arena too. They had the Miami Arena, bought the naming rights to the arena, and basically FTX was taking customer funds, and then he had FTX and then he had Almeda Research. And his whole fraudulent past, if you dig into his story, right, like he was this mythical guy who started FTX, and he was mythical, Greg, because he said he made billions of dollars on arbitrage back in Bitcoin in the years like 2015-16. Unbelievable. Potentially. Basically what he would do, and he made these big believable stories that like, look, we were buying Bitcoin in the US and then basically taking it over on ledger drives over to Korea where there was a spread of three or four thousand dollars more per Bitcoin, right, because their access to it was so much limited. So it was a geographical arbitrage. And he's like, we made, we just were printing money. People were flying over in 747s. We were just doing it all day, all day. Right. And so it was like, and that was the Almeda research. So he had two, two fronts. One was Almeda research, which was basically his piggy bank and one was the FTX exchange. So basically he was he's very philanthropic. He wanted to tell you he's philanthropic at every point. He's a large, one of the second largest. Second largest donator to the Democratic Party outside of George Soros. Forty million dollars. He bought news stories. He's made off the New York Times. So he's so he is now going around on the apology tour. Do you think he's going to get prosecuted? This story, honestly, this is worse than Madoff. No, I know. Worse than Madoff, worse than Enron, worse than all these. But the big question is Madoff went to jail for life. You know, the guys from Enron either killed themselves or faced huge criminal penalties. Do you think that this guy gets prosecuted and sentenced in your gut? What do you think? Well, we can, this is just, I don't know. We'll talk about in six months. My gut says no as well. He has too many friends in high places and I don't think he, uh, he gets prosecuted, which is crazy because literally, did you see Elon put a little post about him on Twitter? He puts a porn hub, a header and puts SBS face on it says man simultaneously You love them.

Peter Boulden
0:21:13
He's crazy.

Peter Boulden
0:21:14
It's great.

Craig Spodak
0:21:15
The number one troll.

Craig Spodak
0:21:16
I mean, but listen, I mean, as you're the guy who always wore the decentralized everything T-shirt, but this is kind of like what you get when you decentralize and no, because there are bad actors. No. Okay. So tell me, you bring this up. Okay. Tell me the nuance. An exchange is so, so there's silver lining in all this happening. I'm going to get, I wish we had more time on this. So I do believe you should decentralize everything. And exchange though, Craig, is central centralization, meaning you are sending your coins to an exchange and you say, Hey, keep my. So he made the friction. And when you have the keys, there's a there's a saying in crypto Twitter, it's not my coins. I'm sorry, not my keys, not my coins. So if I send money to Coinbase, if I send my Bitcoin to Coinbase or buy it and leave it there, they are the custodian of my keys. They are really the true owner of it. And ask me how I know, because my funds got caught on Celsius and in their terms of service it actually says we are a bank. Yeah, it could be collateralized. It could be collateralized. So it's not really, it's mine, it's attributed to my account, but is it really mine? So the whole thing with Bitcoin and crypto is not your keys, not your coins, is get it off of centralized exchanges. Meaning get it into storage, get it into your own custody, get it at used ledger devices, things like that. So get it into your own custody where you don't have to ask anyone's permission and you're not buying on leverage. I think leverage in just general is bad for crypto. Right. But I'm glad you brought this up because that's not the same thing. So, well it's going to usher in a new wave of regulation. Well, this is why. This is going back to the first wave of why I… And look, he was the wolf in sheep's… He was in the meetings with… No, he was making… He was going to be the one that was going to make the regulation. So they were actually asking him, literally, it was the fox in the henhouse. They were literally saying how do we buy Fox in that house? I was I was saying wolf in sheep's clothing. I like that too. I like that too He could have been a fox in sheep's clothing in the henhouse. So here's what's gonna. Here's why I'm what's gonna happen then Here's my regulation to correct draconian move into converting all right because I I believe that regulation is coming faster than we know now and I think this was the inflection point for what should happen. Because there's going to be too much that happens from this. So then let me ask you a focus question. What happens to Bitcoin? Does it become a security? So I think, so they've already announced, Gary Gensler, I'm sorry. Fed chair? Let's call it Jay Clayton. Even Jay Clayton, who was four years ago the Fed chairman, had a large interview with CNBC where he essentially came out and said Bitcoin is a commodity. Right. No different than as we pull gas out of the ground. It's a commoditized thing. And people may say, well, what about Ethereum? What about this, that and the other? Meaning that that that's correct. Let's say you and I wanted to start the bulletproof coin and I was like, hey, dude We're gonna start this bulletproof coin But I'm gonna give you like 20% and me like 20% of it and then we'll put 60% on the open market and sell it You're like awesome. Great idea That's essentially what aetherium did 20% of bitcoins initial token allocation was a pre-mine to the fad. I don't like and the fad peg to yeah So so here so this is why they're going to look at this from a security standpoint. I mean, potentially, right? Bitcoin, I mean, Ethereum has tons of utility. Almost everything is based on it. So I think that would be bad if Ethereum does.

Peter Boulden
0:24:58
I think the only two that will survive.

Craig Spodak
0:24:59
But obviously you think it's bad enough because you got out of Ethereum. I did because, to me, the risk wasn't worth the reward. And when I say that, I mean, I look back at my history. And when I've seen Ethereum go up, let's say it's $1,000. When I saw it go to $3,000, Bitcoin also went from $10,000 to $30,000. So the same incremental growth happened. My exposure to Bitcoin was very para-pursue with that equilibrium. And so I was like, why am I winning? So you just think it's a more likely winning horse, yeah. Well, there's no asymmetric upside risk. Gary Gensler. Gary Gensler is the new SEC. He used to teach a class of cryptocurrency at MIT that basically went over the fact that it is a commodity so By the way, this is also remnant, but this is also reminiscent of like the Peter Maluk pods We had we were pushing him on this He's like listen. I am NOT saying that the blockchain and or a crypto doesn't have a future He says just like the same way that link what was the early search engines? You know like oh son Yahoo. We were the dominant search players. He knew search engines were gonna be a thing He just didn't know it was going to be Lycos, AOL or Google. So he mentioned the same thing as like now we're finally capitulating, you know, a year or two later. Like, yeah, the winners are appearing to be certain players that would have been very different if we chose them two years ago. Yeah, you know, I agree with that. I think also it's the immaculate conception of Bitcoin, meaning no pre-mine. There was no one got any, there's no tip of the spear, meaning there's not a foundation or someone who's in charge of it. Right, but there is enough, there's enough more of a commodity, right? Right. Ethereum has a foundation, so all these other ones have foundations and founders and they are, they don't pass what's called the Howey Test, and the Howey Test is somehow something the SEC basically looks at. So, in order to fully land this plane and just get off of it, it was a tough year. I think it, I think ultimately it serves very good for crypto No different than when the housing industry blows up, right? It is a cleansing that happens But if you look back so everyone's like, oh my god, it's been stable at like sixteen seventeen thousand dollars Okay, but rewind to 2017 Yeah, seventeen thousand dollars was pandemonium levels people were losing their shit and mortgaging their house.

Peter Boulden
0:27:13
So as long as I see lower lows, I'm sorry, higher lows,

Craig Spodak
0:27:18
right?

Craig Spodak
0:27:19
You've seen lower lows, so you should be happy. I've seen lower lows. As long as I see higher lows. Now I hear it. You're very consistent, Peter. You're always very consistent. Your dialogue really hasn't changed, which I admire your conviction. I think I've mentioned in the pod, I bounced out in May of 2021, never looked back. Does it feel good right now no no it doesn't yeah guess what in I even as of last week I'm still I am still dollar-cost averaging every day every week all the time dude that is freaking crazy I really for I totally you know listen when I think there's certain things that that are you just you like a little bit of risk you like adventure to hundred percent so you're you don't have risk or adventure or drama in my life. I create it.

Peter Boulden
0:28:06
Right, right, right.

Craig Spodak
0:28:07
Right. So I think for the, I'm a sociopath now. So no, it's, it works for you, but I mean, it's just you and I think very differently. I did not look like looking at my coin base and seeing that I was up, you know, a hundred grand one day and down 200 grand the next day and 300. It was the euphoria was not working for me. I'm also a pretty big libertarian to Craig, which is why, like, I'm big, like, don't tread on me, you know, so now I agree. Also resonated with it. I agree. But remember when you remember it during covid, by the way, when you went to your bank, you're like, I want to withdraw my money. Like, how much? I like my money. Like, we can't give you your money.

Craig Spodak
0:28:41
No, no money.

Peter Boulden
0:28:42
It wasn't like, give me all my money.

Craig Spodak
0:28:44
Well, it was enough that, like, freaked you out that it wasn't available.

Peter Boulden
0:28:47
Yeah.

Peter Boulden
0:28:47
Yeah.

Craig Spodak
0:28:48
Because I thought it was going to be bank run.

Peter Boulden
0:28:49
Right.

Peter Boulden
0:28:49
I remember going to the grocery store the night before

Craig Spodak
0:28:52
Oh, I remember I was on the phone with you And I'm like go to the I'm putting on a mask and you're like, yeah for and I was like, yeah I feel like this I feel like this China virus is about to crush us. Yeah, I remember this whole thing It was late at night. It was like 10 o'clock and I took yeah, I took one of my kids with me, too And so early on the phone was that we were texting to somebody else to maybe Dwight or something like that But I remember we're talking about hey, I was like, all right shit. There was a line last night at the grocery store, right? It was like the snow when a snowstorm comes, you know, and I was the only thing that I was like, guess what? There's gonna be a run on the bank people are gonna freak out And so I went to the bank the next day and I was like, hey, I need to take out some money No problem how much and I think you know being a little like 20 grand I think right? Yeah I think it was a 20 or 50 something. They couldn't do it. Maybe 20 grand And it was like we'll be right back. I was like what no, we can't we can't do that much amount. I remember you called me right away.

Peter Boulden
0:29:43
I was like, dude. I was like, I, Greg, when I say I lost some shit, I was like, where, where is it? They're like, it's not here. I was like, where is it? I gave it to you here. Where is it? Well, we can't give you that.

Craig Spodak
0:29:53
We've loaned it to somebody for 6%. What do you mean?

15
0:29:56
Isn't this the bank?

Peter Boulden
0:29:58
It just freaked me out.

Craig Spodak
0:29:59
And they're like, we'll have to order it from the Fed. It took four weeks for me to get that money. That's crazy. That's crazy.

Craig Spodak
0:30:08
Anyway.

Craig Spodak
0:30:09
Well, I mean, look, there's been there's obviously at that point was a low point, but look what happened. I mean, the CARES Act and so many other things happened and a lot of people.

Peter Boulden
0:30:17
I'm not saying that things happen.

Craig Spodak
0:30:19
It was just it was shocking. And now I know, but we were we were in terms of service. Craig, going back to crypto. If you read the terms of service for your bank, you will see the same thing.

Peter Boulden
0:30:26
Oh yeah.

Craig Spodak
0:30:27
Cause you think it's, well, look at tick tocks terms of serve. We'll look at Apple's terms of services. Have you ever read the 40 page document?

Peter Boulden
0:30:32
No.

Craig Spodak
0:30:33
Have you?

Craig Spodak
0:30:33
There's like a South park. Oh, I haven't. I don't read any document, buddy. I don't read any document, but like there's a South park. Like you didn't read, we asked you to agree twice. You know, you sure you want to agree? The rest is pretty funny, but I mean, speaking of the cares act, by the way, kind of a pivot here. Um, I remember, I do want to go to that but okay I want to like the car man episode I want to fully land the plane on the crypto thing Because I know I'm gonna get some I don't know well Do me a favor if you agree with Peter or you disagree please post in the comments We needed to hear what our audience is thinking about that I'd love to hear it go on YouTube even if you don't watch us But go in there and leave a comment love to hear what people think Yeah, and I but that being said I do feel and this is not financial advice, I feel like if there is regulation, if we do get an ETF, and if we do get the idea that the dam is going to break, then Bitcoin will be the obvious choice.

Craig Spodak
0:31:27
I love it.

Craig Spodak
0:31:28
Listen, I fully agree that if cryptocurrency does what it's supposed to do, Bitcoin 100% will be the obvious choice. I got that advice that I got in May of 2021 and so far it's almost been prophetic Because of you know, and listen, it's a threat to a lot of governments and governments don't want to lose control Right, you know, I mean we can all agree that one thing we've learned in the last two years is Governments like to have control but let's talk about every day that it's in existence though. It becomes yeah every day It doesn't blow up. I agree with you. Let's talk about how the government can help though. I wanna talk about the CARES Act and one thing that was interesting when I brought it up to you. So many of you are familiar about the ERC credit, the Employee Retention Credit. And I consider Peter a very, very savvy business person, extremely savvy in fact. And when I mentioned it to him, actually one of our people in the network or something and said like, can I get that? And you know, Peter, you had, there's so many credits and incentives and stuff like that, that a lot of people still don't know about this. You didn't know about it. You're like, nah, nah, I didn't qualify for that.

Craig Spodak
0:32:36
And-

Craig Spodak
0:32:37
Well, because I asked my CPA, Craig.

Peter Boulden
0:32:38
Right.

Craig Spodak
0:32:39
Which I'm not saying you were-

Craig Spodak
0:32:40
I was a specialist in-

Peter Boulden
0:32:41
I was trying to-

Craig Spodak
0:32:42
Yeah, you don't apply.

Peter Boulden
0:32:43
I know, I'm just putting in some-

Craig Spodak
0:32:44
Yeah, what I'm really trying to say is that I consider you a sophisticated business person. And the fact that you were like, that doesn't work for me, and then come to find out how much money is still being allocated for the employee retention credit, it is ridiculous. Like I'm just shocked at what's going on. Yeah, let me jump in here, because this is crazy. So, of course I thought it was a little bit, when I heard it again, I was like, look, I've got PPP1, PPP2, like another ERC, I get a retention thing? I was like, this is hocus pocus. Right, isn't that what PPP was for? PPP is the employee retention. Yeah, and so basically what this was, Greg, is this was signed into law, but it's not that common because honestly, a lot of our dental colleagues that didn't really, you know, I ask people and not everyone is taking advantage of this. Or they've done it, they did it wrong unfortunately. It was signed into law in March of 2020 and in the CARES Act was kind of based on COVID and so basically business owners can receive refundable credits per employee in 2020 and

Peter Boulden
0:33:53
then for each quarter.

Craig Spodak
0:33:55
By the way it's not a tax credit that's actually money written to you.

Peter Boulden
0:33:59
To you yeah not a tax credit.

Craig Spodak
0:34:02
Yeah well it is a retention credit, but it's a fund.

Peter Boulden
0:34:05
The total refund, Craig, when they did it,

Craig Spodak
0:34:07
your total refund can be up to $26,000 per employee. Yeah, so Peter, you and I are living proof of that, and we've been really fortunate. We created an alignment with a company, and we have a page that we built called BulletproofERC.com, and we were able to go through the process and receive significant funds. And unfortunately, some of our masterminders and some of our network have gone through their local CPA and be like, oh, I can do that crap. Yeah, I know how to do that. And they got really anemic checks. And we only know this because we know what our top line revenue is. So we could pretty much figure out what our salaries and expenditures for team is. And then we can assimilate or approximate what a size of an ERC credit. And one of our guys has a very large practice and got an ERC credit that's 30 grand, which is like a fraction of what we got. So the good news, he was able to go see my buddy Norm, who's over there at Bulletproof ERC, and they're gonna be able to repair or amend his return. In other words, he got it for 2020, but he has more money for 2021, which is awesome.

Craig Spodak
0:35:09
And you've known Norm forever, so what happened?

Craig Spodak
0:35:11
Yeah, literally, Norm's one of my besties. I've known him for 10 years and he's just awesome. But he'll actually, because the process is so extremely difficult, he will actually fill out the application with you. And there's two ways to do it, by the way. I couldn't believe the amount, Craig. I was like, did you calculate this amount right? Like, is this right? Oh, the amount of the credit, yeah. Yeah, you didn't And so I was like, well, you know. But look, just like a lot of government things, they put an allocation of funds, a bucket of funds, and they say, hey, come apply. But it's not like, and honestly, who knows how long it will last. If you're listening to this and you were in business in 2020 and 2021, and you haven't utilized this as a dentist, I would not delay because who knows how long the funds will

Peter Boulden
0:36:03
be available.

Craig Spodak
0:36:04
Yeah, you must do it right away. Even though they say the deadlines are like 2024. 2024, yeah, it can be done before 2025, but do not wait. But this is also, it's an allocation of funds, and if it gets utilized beforehand, when the funds run out, you're done. Right, that's what I'm saying. There's a little bit of an urgency. I couldn't believe from going from my CPA saying, hey, you don't qualify, to then basically getting told, with someone who specializes in that norm, that here's the amount that you are due. And I was like, what? So, anyway, what was the thing? It's bulletprooferc.com, bulletprooferc.com. Judging on what I've heard, people have told me, yeah, I got that. When we dig deep, we can actually see that people unfortunately have not received the appropriate

Peter Boulden
0:37:00
level of credit.

Peter Boulden
0:37:00
You see, I put it in the scrolling banner.

Peter Boulden
0:37:02
I do see that.

Craig Spodak
0:37:03
It's pretty damn cool.

Peter Boulden
0:37:04
I'm pretty good. I mean, hey, I'm getting pretty good with this

Craig Spodak
0:37:07
on the fly video production. Yeah, but that's an important thing. Is there anything else that's going on in your world? Anything else that's going on? We covered, I think, a lot of ground here. What's your plans for Christmas outside of giving a Christmas gift?

Peter Boulden
0:37:21
Yeah, outside of giving an incentive that I shouldn't be giving, according to Harvard.

Craig Spodak
0:37:26
Yeah, four different articles in Harvard. Harvard thinks you're going to run your business. We're having a cool Christmas party. What are you doing? We are going to, I believe we're going bowling like a like you know we have high-end bowling play I'm sorry I thought you said it's a cool Christmas party it was cool do we have all stuff in Atlanta I know in South Florida you just have cord outs and blonde blonde spiky hair but yeah Magnum PI and Don Johnson that's all yeah we're stuck in like 98 yeah exactly we get Miami Vice I'll be fun.

Peter Boulden
0:38:02
Yeah, it'll be cool.

Craig Spodak
0:38:03
Well, look, I mean, let's talk about the real thing.

Craig Spodak
0:38:05
What did you do?

Craig Spodak
0:38:06
You went to Cabo with your whole team back in like September or July, right? That was amazing.

Peter Boulden
0:38:11
That was the team bonus from the year for 2021, right? So it takes a lot of time. So when you hit there, you know, we have tiers, Greg. The way we do it is we have tiers of tier one, tier two, tier three, tier four.

Craig Spodak
0:38:22
And then we have yearly stuff. And then we have the big ass stretch goals that are called our beach goals. And you know, and so again, writing a check to go for 60, 45 people to go to Cabo is not fun, but you remember back, it's like, and everyone's thanking me. I'm like, you're the one who earned it.

Craig Spodak
0:38:36
Oh, I love that.

Peter Boulden
0:38:37
I've done the same thing.

Craig Spodak
0:38:38
Yeah.

Craig Spodak
0:38:39
Compensation drives behavior. It's not me that gave you a trip.

Peter Boulden
0:38:42
You earned it. I always do the same exact thing.

Craig Spodak
0:38:44
It's not, don't thank me. Thank you. You're the one who did it. And so that was cool, that was cool. What about you, what's up? No, the Christmas party is actually, I'm inserting myself into one of your earlier punchlines, it's at the office, so. We're actually doing it at the office, but we are doing a Christmas gift this year, similar to what you do, it's $100 per person, per year they've been here. So that's gonna feel really good. And then I'm just gonna be hanging out with the family. I get a lot of down time, but I'll probably just be off grid. Yeah, at the farm doing my thing. You've become quite the southern gentleman, I have to say. I don't know about that. I have to say, your Instagram, if you don't follow Craig, follow him and he'll show you that he's become, you've come a long way from the big bird driving the white Porsche. What a great story. So now I've converted you into this, I don't know, I've converted you. Well, it's like a drug. Well, I think you have a lot to do with it. It's like the entry drug. I remember shaming. Well, I mean, listen, you shame me out of my Porsche into a Raptor, and then you find a need. What's a human being's greatest motivation is to stay consistent with who they identify with? So you drive a Raptor, you're like, maybe we should have some cows.

Peter Boulden
0:40:02
And the next thing you know, it's like.

Craig Spodak
0:40:04
Maybe I should buy a power tool or two. Yeah, you get a Makita, you get a chainsaw, get a couple of sleeveless shirts. Fast forward three years later, you've got 28 head of cattle.

Peter Boulden
0:40:16
100 acres and a head of cattle and a house out in the woods

Craig Spodak
0:40:19
and you can spend all your time there. Oh, it's so funny. But I was texting Peter the other day, all kidding aside. I'm like, dude, you got to get out here. You have a track. Oh, it's so amazing. I hope you really do come. That'd be so fun. There's something so, uh, I don't know what it is about land and I, you know, I'm romantic about a piece of land right now that I should be. And it's just like, there's something about a man or human owning a piece of land. That's just when it's big, right? You start thinking about it in terms of like, my kids could get married here and this could be a legacy piece. And what if this is a compound and look at all the things you could do. And you start envisioning all these things you can do. And you're experiencing it. But I'm right now like, OK, winter's coming. You know, we've always said this, Craig. The winter's coming with the economy. Is now the best time to be plopping down a large chunk of money that could then stress me out six months from now if I hadn't bought that land? Yeah, but if you zoom out, if you zoom out though, Peter, and you look at the economic return on land. And you zoom out enough to kind of regulate out those little bumps up and down. I mean, overall, it's been a fantastic investment. If you're telling me I want to buy the, you're talking about your kids getting married. Your oldest child is minimally like 20 years, 15 years, 20 years away from getting married. So if you look at that time level, timeline, Peter, then absolutely you do it, man. I think it's, yeah.

Peter Boulden
0:41:39
Yeah, it's a, you know, everyone who's a big fan of it is like, it's a no-brainer.

Peter Boulden
0:41:42
It's a no-brainer, bro.

Craig Spodak
0:41:43
It's a no-brainer. But also, Craig, I don't want, I know as much as you think I seek adventure, I do, but I don't want to wake up in the middle of the night being like, holy shit, I just plunked down because guess what? Banks don't loan very favorably and to a large degree on loan to value on land. They do not have lending on land. So this is, you and I talk about winter's coming and dry powder and have your stuff. And so for me to have a small window to buy it, but deploying this much dry powder at something like that makes me a little uneasy. But in the long term, zoomed out, I know you're right. I know you're right.

Craig Spodak
0:42:20
I won't regret it.

Peter Boulden
0:42:21
Yeah.

Craig Spodak
0:42:21
Plus the utility of it too. I mean, that's, listen, if I was told I could have my property but never allow a friend to come there, I wouldn't want it. So the property I have is just, it's a reason to pull people that I love together. You know, that's my invitation to you. Like, imagine like, hey, Peter, come to my house in Delray for like four or five days. Like, uh, no thanks. Like, what am I going to do? Like out there? It's amazing. There's so much to do. Yeah. That's a reason to come.

Peter Boulden
0:42:48
That's a different invite, right? Totally.

Craig Spodak
0:42:50
We'll go out and we'll grill and we'll do… Yeah. Yeah, but there's awesome stuff to do. There's hunting, there's horseback riding, it's super fun. So I'm a big fan of you buying that land, so hopefully, hopefully you do it. Well, hopefully I just continue to think this, Craig, forever and ever. Yeah. I got this, this is, this is, I don't know if I've… Is it sharp? Yeah, it's sharp, dude. So this is what I'm holding, if you're listening in the car, is a giant sword. Not giant. Well, yeah. Yeah, it's giant. It's 30… It's a saber, actually. So in This is the one I just showed you is for bulletproof. But we take the saber and we go saber a bottle of sparkling orange apple juice for them, right? And here- Can I ask you a technical question real quick? Yes. When you cut it, does it break the bottle?

Peter Boulden
0:43:31
No, it breaks the bottle. Oh, it just-

Craig Spodak
0:43:32
Because these are designed to cut the bottle. So I- Oh, wait, but it does cut the bottle though, correct? Oh, it-

Peter Boulden
0:43:38
Where it takes the top-

Peter Boulden
0:43:39
Takes the top right off.

Craig Spodak
0:43:40
Okay, but does it cut, does it break glass? It's raw glass. That's crazy to me. Why? I don't know. I just feel like, I don't know. I just feel like there's like glass shards in there. I don't know. I don't want to eat glass. Dude, where this became popular or what? I know everybody does it. Just that's my brain. Well, no, in Telluride, we do it all the time, right? At this one lodge and everyone, it's called the beach. It's up in the middle of the mountain and music's going and people are just sabering, you know, like bottles of champagne, which is fun. And I remember every one of those things. And I was like, you know, I don't remember all my kids' events, and I don't have a good memory of little allocations of life. You throw a little savory and champagne in there, and it cements that memory. I remember saying that in our mastermind in Cabo, and I tried to use a knife to saber something I did work for. And I was like, you know what, that's it. I'm going to bring the saber to Salt Lake for our next mastermind. And then I went so far, Craig, I was like, not only did I get the saber, but now you see I got it engraved. It says I am bulletproof on it. It's a pretty nice saber, by the way.

Peter Boulden
0:44:59
Amazing.

Craig Spodak
0:45:00
You are like the guru of Chinese customized manufacturing.

Peter Boulden
0:45:05
I really am. I've gotten good, whether it was lake trampolines or toothbrushes.

Craig Spodak
0:45:11
Or branded toothbrushes for ADS. That's right. I've become I become excellent at how is your Mandarin?

Peter Boulden
0:45:17
Not good, but get Alibaba has a converter. So

Craig Spodak
0:45:20
Obviously, you're fluent one day. They'll meet you'll be shocked. You're you're a Caucasian Speaking of speaking of Conversation, I'm we're gonna do it. We're gonna end this pod, but I'm gonna we're gonna do an AI pod. Oh, the GPT-3?

Craig Spodak
0:45:40
Hold on.

Craig Spodak
0:45:40
I've been losing myself lately, losing my mind. I'm going to show you some things live, and it's going to make you pick up all the pieces to your brain and put them back together, because you're going to be like, what the hell? But I'm going to do it live on a pod, because I have some, like, I am in deep, I am as interested in AI right now as I was interested in crypto in 2015, 16. That's awesome. And it's taking me down the same wormholes. Well, hopefully you can make me as much money as you did in Bitcoin. I'll make money, but it's just fucking fascinating how it's going to transform the world. I know we were all over the place today, but it was good to, you know, I miss Dwight and Trey, especially for the intros. Dwight, I miss you guys, but sometimes it's nice to meet you just to have a, this is like a dialogue you and I always have, by the way, which is synonymous. You know, just the same dialogue we always do.

Craig Spodak
0:46:31
Some of them aren't recorded. All right, everybody, thanks for tuning in. Hope everyone's having a nice holiday season and we'll see you next time.

Peter Boulden
0:46:38
Take care, everybody.

Craig Spodak
0:46:39
Oh, oh, oh, what's up? Don't hang up yet.

Peter Boulden
0:46:43
Don't hang up, don't hang the phone. We've locked down.

Craig Spodak
0:46:45
Should we talk about the summit, by the way? Oh, yeah, holy smokes, I totally forgot. Because that just happened last minute yeah last minute addition because it hasn't been announced but and by the time this pod comes hopefully it is because registration but the cool thing dude I gotta tell you and I know I said this with everyone but the fact that oh no this one's easily to say yeah whatever we said I mean Nashville's amazing don't get me wrong it was an awesome event but how would you feel if we said we were going to Las Not Circus Circus like I wanted to because of that roast beef for $4.99, but the Wynn, the freaking Wynn. I mean, that's where you and I would go if we were just going to hang. It's crazy, honestly. And for us to take the leap, because honestly, when you do a conference, and those of you probably who have experience in that, you know, you have to plunk down a large amount of money just to say, we believe in the process, we believe in this. And so it's scary to put down like 500, you know this auditorium we're getting

Peter Boulden
0:47:44
and the amount of meals we're getting and the things.

Craig Spodak
0:47:46
But the cool thing by the way, I mean obviously we're excited about every summit and new content and just larger venues. And I mean Vegas has its own special draw but like I see a lot of, without mentioning the A's, I see a lot of offices investing in their team for these quote reward trips and they go have fun right and these fun trips cruise boats or something yeah I mean they're all they're all fine they're all they're all great there's many there's many iterations of these fun trips but it the one thing I always come back I'm like well did your team learn anything well we weren't really expecting to learn anything it was more of a reward trip why can't you have it all why can't you have a fun trip that actually proves to be an ROI for your practice. And that's exactly what the Bulletproof Dental Summit is. It's a true ROI. And I mean, we still have our 10 times guarantee. It won't be any different for Vegas. So if you can take your team and actually implement what you learn, you will make more than 10 times what you spent in the coming year, which is crazy. And the cool thing about what we did with the Vegas trip is it's actually incentivized because if you go right now, at least time of recording, and try to book a hotel at the win right now a year out It's August 11th, by the way, if you go out right now and try to book August 11th and 12th the 13th It's gonna be about four or five hundred dollars right now. No, no, it's 700 I'd okay so 700 now But guess what's gonna be like May or June a lot more and our rooms are what? 200 to 209 and 209, 299 for those.

Peter Boulden
0:49:15
So 209 and 299 for Friday, Saturday.

Craig Spodak
0:49:18
So right there is like the cost of the summer ticket and the difference between what that real estate. I mean, that's it. Hopefully this comes out. We're really pushing Lacey. I was like, Lacey, and you and I felt very strongly about this, correct? Because we were like, we got to have this.

Peter Boulden
0:49:32
And she was like, really, we want to launch this year. And I was like, well, we really need to. Because it helps out so many people who had great years.

Craig Spodak
0:49:39
And they want to take advantage of this tax, the tax benefit. Yeah, you spend it this year, you don't pay the taxes. It's true.

Peter Boulden
0:49:45
So hopefully, if you've signed up to get informed

Craig Spodak
0:49:49
or you're on Mighty Networks, we'll announce it. Yeah, as soon as it comes out, you'll have it. But also, what we did this year is we made some really special pricing as well, so that you can bring your whole team. So it's going to be like, buy 10, get 10, buy 20, get 20. Yeah. The pricing is definitely more favorable now versus last year it was the same ticket price for anyone. Now we've adjusted it because we-

Craig Spodak
0:50:08
Well, we-

Peter Boulden
0:50:09
We heard you loud and clear.

Craig Spodak
0:50:10
We want to bring more team. We also see the people that actually pony up and bring their teams, how much easier it is to implement. Peter, it's the most annoying thing ever when you and I learn something and we wish we had our team there. We've heard it so many times. I wish I would've brought my team. I wish I would've brought my team. When's the next one? And they're far apart, you know, they're not exactly yearly, so bring your team this year, it will sell out like always, and those room blocks will all sell out as well. So as soon as these come live, whenever that is, hopefully before the end of the year, pull trigger. And plus, you don't pay the tax on the things you expend this year as well. Yep, obviously.

Peter Boulden
0:50:45
That's it, I'm glad we snuck that in.

Craig Spodak
0:50:47
Yeah, thanks for remembering that, yeah.

Craig Spodak
0:50:49
And this will, who knows when this will go. So of course it will be on BulletproofSummit.com when we announce. But anyway, alright bud, I gotta scoot. But anyway, alright bud, I gotta scoot.

Craig Spodak
0:50:56
Okay bud, nice to see ya.

Transcribed with Cockatoo