Digital Art Heist: My NFTs Got Stolen 😭

Shaan Puri

Alright, it's **Question of the Week** time, or what do we call it? **One Question Friday**. I like that! Alright, **One Question Friday**. Sam is traveling, so I got my boy Ben here. Ben Levy, not Ben the producer, not powerful producer Ben. This is Ben Levy, the CEO of **The Milk Road** and my business partner across my fund and a bunch of other things. You guys hear me reference Ben a lot, but you don't ever know which Ben because I only deal with Bens. So, this is one of the Bens. Ben, what's up, man?

Ben Levy

What's going on? I'm riding high today! Chris Paul and the Suns won by like 25 last night, so I've never been happier.

Shaan Puri

This is true. Alright, so let's do this. One question: I think we have an audio clip, right? Let's play it. I haven't heard this yet, so let's see what it is. Hey!

Listener

Guys, my name is Colin. I just had all of my NFTs stolen today. So my question is, and I'm sure you've been through something like this before: you know when you get gut-punched? Has that happened to you? What happened, and how did you work through it?

Shaan Puri

oh man I could feel the defeat I could feel the the pain in his voice there at the end that thank you that was a soul crushed thank you okay so colin you got your nft stolen I you know I feel for you that's no fun I mean that's a it's a crime right somebody came and stole your property it's digital property but you know a crime has been committed so you know you gotta kind of separate here's my my kind of advice to you have I had somebody steal a bunch of my property before not really but you know there's different flavors of of gut punch and I've had I've had my share so here's my kind of like formula for how to handle it the first step is just be still and I mean this in kind of a zen way which is that look what's gonna happen you know for the next 24 48 hours for you is you're gonna your mind is gonna go to a bunch of different places you're gonna get angry you're gonna feel sad you're gonna feel upset at yourself you're gonna feel upset at others you're gonna feel upset at the the fact that you can't get it back so you're gonna hate crypto you're gonna you're gonna feel a bunch of emotions by default and what you wanna do is you wanna not just react you wanna respond so what's the difference between a reaction and a response a reaction is what you do you know sort of right away it's an impulsive thing and typically we don't love our reactions to things because our reactions are the things that are happening in a more primal way whereas our response is what happens when we pause for a second and we we choose how we're gonna respond so a reaction is typically not something you're choosing a response is something you're choosing and I this happens to me multiple times a day where I gotta check myself alright am I reacting or responding here and which one do I wanna do I know I can do both but I'd rather respond and so the first thing is you gotta be still you gotta distance yourself from it emotionally first then you gotta say alright well how am I gonna respond to this well there's some like logistical steps you might take try to get back report it try to figure out who did it you know notify people in the community so other people don't fall for it what whatever the scam was but then you gotta like okay let's say you've done the logistics part and maybe there is no happy ending where you didn't just all turn out right that's where you gotta what I call you gotta decide what story is true so in any event anything that happens there are there are multiple stories but to simplify I'll say there's 2 stories anytime something happens there's the story that'll make you feel bad and there's the story that'll make you feel good they're both stories right and they both have truth to them but it's just a matter of which which angle you're looking at something and so you gotta decide which story am I gonna roll with am I gonna roll with the version of this that makes me feel really bad or am I gonna roll with the version of this that makes me feel good and I know that probably sounds hard in the moment when you just got a bunch of your shit stolen and you know which is why we first you know try to distance ourselves from it but that's where you're gonna have to go you're gonna have to decide the version of the story that's gonna make you feel good right imagine a breakup most people when they have a breakup in a relationship they feel bad and they choose a story that's gonna make them feel worse which is oh my god all that all those years we spent together is time wasted I'm not good enough or she's not good enough or whatever the reasons are right we have we come up with a story that makes us feel bad or we come up with a story that makes us feel good which is man now I know what I really want now I'm ready for for the right person you know you wanna walk out into the street and just look left and right and say you know next you know I'm ready and so there's a version of the story that'll make you feel good or bad in any given situation the power is in being able to choose what the story is and not just having the default one put on you so that's my like mentality mindset ramp ben what do you think you you've had your fear of gut punches have you ever had something like this

Ben Levy

Yeah, I mean, in crypto, I think like a year ago I had a few ETH stolen out of my wallet, and I was crushed. I think I actually called you and I was like, "Dude, it sucks! I just lost a few ETH because I stupidly clicked on a Discord scam." I think what you said was, "That's the price of admission. Every single person in crypto has had that happen, and that's just the name of the game." So, I don't know, my perspective on it is like, yeah, I definitely have been punched a ton in crypto. I also feel like every crypto win I've ever gotten, I'm mad that I didn't sell it at the right time, or I held too long, or bought too late. I think that's the name of volatility too. So, I'm just like, "That's the... you know, I'm gonna get a huge home run because I play this game," and yeah, learn from my mistakes.

Shaan Puri

yeah there's also like this phrase of investing which is I've never done I've never done an investment right which means on an investment that worked out I should have always been earlier and bet more and on an investment that's wrong I shouldn't have bet or I you know I was too late or whatever and so you'll never ever on any investment feel like you did it right you'll always be kind of kicking yourself wishing you had done it either bet bigger or bet earlier or whatever on it and so I think the thing you said that's right which is it's the nature of the game and so you know crypto nfts this is the wild wild west right now there's a reason your nft can go up 10 x in price in in 1 month or a 100 x in price in a year or like you know I don't know how much bored apes are are were but like I think a year ago they were under 1 eth each and now they're like whatever a 140 or something like that so you know a 140 x in a year so one of the reasons you can get these types of games is because it's the wild wild west but what comes with the wild wild west is that dude it's it's not safe there are there are places where you could stub your toe and me and sam I think said this on a pod once which was if you become an entrepreneur or an investor and then every time things go any anytime disaster strikes or things go poorly or things go down you're like emotionally a wreck because of it and I'm not saying colin is but it's very easy to become close to an emotional wreck when when things go down it's like you signed up to go you waited in line to go on a roller coaster and you strapped yourself in and then the roller coaster went up and down and every time it went down you were like oh like oh my god I can't believe this like get me off this thing it's like dude why did you get on a roller coaster you know like if you choose entrepreneurship or you choose investing if you choose investing you gotta wake up and like the last 4 months dude I've lost 1,000,000 of dollars just because I wake up and every day is red stocks are red crypto is red everything's red I haven't seen green in months dude I I don't even see the color green right like I'm starting to text people on android just so I could see the green speech bubble dude like I just wanna see green and but that's the reality it's like I signed up to be an investor what did I think it's always gonna go up it's like I signed up to you know do this crazy crypto stuff like yes this crazy shit where you know I'm playing this this this game where you're you're a self sovereign individual you're custodying your own assets well there's gonna be times where you didn't custody it very well and it got stolen and so you know same thing with with being an entrepreneur is you gotta ask yourself am I just complaining that the roller coaster went up and down and and that's a way to not let yourself be a victim I think one of the most positive traits somebody can have is that they never let themselves be a victim no matter what happens in their life they view themselves as the person in control and the root cause of whatever has occurred and in doing so so they give themselves the power to make things good and they give themselves the accountability when things go bad and so so you know I think that's a just a decision you gotta make up front am I gonna let myself ever play victim and look for kind of pity self pity or pity from others or you just take that off the table you say nope I'm never gonna play that game and so that means on days where my shit gets stolen it did somebody didn't steal my nfts I let my nfts be stolen and you right so you take control over what happened and it hurts in those moments but that decision to never play victim is like one that pays off you know in spades you know for the rest of your life ben what did I miss

Ben Levy

also it's a great opportunity for a twitter thread right here how I got my nft stolen

Shaan Puri

Yeah, this is the greatest. This is the beginning of every great story, right? I've had this many times where I get a cease and desist letter, and then we turn it into marketing for our company. I've had it where, you know, Google or Facebook will launch a clone of our app. Your investors will send you a link and be like, "Hey, did you see this?" And I'm like, "Yeah, motherfucker, I saw it! I saw that Facebook has cloned our app, you know, pixel by pixel." And that, you know, this $500 billion company is now competing with us. Yes, I saw the news. But, you know, you gotta sort of like, in that moment, it's like, "This is our chance. This is our story." Of course, they're gonna copy us. We're onto something, right? Of course, they're gonna copy us pixel for pixel because we have the right solution. And you have to decide what story you're gonna tell yourself, your team, and the people around you. So that, again, you're gonna feel some kind of way. Would you rather feel bad or feel good? That's all you gotta choose. I tell Ben this all the time. What Ben started this off talking about the Suns winning. Ben, how do you feel when the Suns win? Amazing! Ben, how do you feel when the Suns lose?

Ben Levy

pretty pretty down on myself pretty down on everything

Shaan Puri

So, you ride the roller coaster and you let yourself feel bad. That's a choice you're making right now. At some point, you might decide to play the game differently. Is it possible to feel great when your team wins and not feel shitty when your team loses? Yes, that is possible. It sounds like it's breaking the rules, but that's what you do when you're like a life hacker. It's like, "Yeah, you break the rules." I'm going to play the game on my terms. And so, there is a...

Ben Levy

Version of that... Yeah, and like when your businesses have issues, or I think when the businesses have issues, you don't let it get you down at all. You're able to take the wins in stride really well.

Shaan Puri

Do you have an example of that? Like, something where we've had a situation where other people would have felt down, but we spun it? Do you guys have anything that comes to mind?

Ben Levy

I mean, I think we're in one right now, right? Like, we sent the Milk Road and we've had some deliverability issues recently where the open rates have dropped a little bit. We can't really tell... you know, we're trying to figure out why. I think there's one version where you freak out about that and make it ruin your week or ruin your day. And there's another version where you just take it in stride and know you're going to figure it out.

Hubspot

this data is wrong every freaking time have you heard of hubspot hubspot is a crm platform where everything is fully integrated woah I can see the client's whole history calls support tickets emails and here's a task from 3 days ago I totally missed hubspot grow better yeah like you know you fast forward a year from now this will be a a forgotten footnote on the the overall story and even when things are really crazy and you know something really bad happens like you know in my ecommerce business our entire shipment for christmas got seized and flagged and then inspected and then we had to do a recall and like all this stuff and the people you know people on my team were all like oh my god like just for this you know one eighth of an inch you know this random random seizure for no reason just because of random inspection then on one item they found a a one eighth of an inch discrepancy oh my god this is so unfair this is so bad blah blah blah and it's like alright like dude look like you know we and I created a a channel in our slack called highs and lows and I said let's put them here let's let's document the highs and lows and I think every startup should do this honestly is document the highs and lows because it'll just get you used to being like when you go in there when things feel really bad and you wanna go in there and write it down and you've it's like you see the last one 6 months ago and you're like oh yeah that felt pretty bad too but I've like I've totally forgotten that our business has grown 2 x since then and like oh you know just the way that that one turned out to be nothing this one's gonna be nothing too I'm gonna eat this and I'm gonna like use this as an opportunity to learn like oh shit we didn't even know these this one eighth of an inch rule we had to go like you know change the measurements of some thing like I'm glad we knew now versus when it's bigger right I'm glad this happened because that's gonna lead to all these good things and so you know there's we had an example like this where like I'll give you another one with our e commerce business the warehouse managers that we had hired turned it wasn't working out then we found out they were trying to like you know sort of like copy our business in a way like launch a competitor or something like that because you know they're in the warehouse they see business is going great so they wanted a piece of the action and this was a moment where our team was sort of like you know immediately felt betrayed and then upset and was like well you know what what should we do should we change you know should we we're gonna have to make a change it's gonna be so hard and that those are the moments where you need to show the most poise alright that's when that's strength matters is when things get hard things are easy is not when strength matters so it's like oh dude I've been training for this I've been training for these types of moments finally I got a reason to use these muscles and that are that are in my body to be able to be strong here and so it was all about poise it was all about basically coming up with alright let's first be still let's not overreact 2nd let's decide how we're gonna approach this and re respond to this situation not react and then in that response it turned out we're actually we ended up finding this amazing manager and we ended up saving all this money now we couldn't have seen that upfront in the moment it felt bad now 3 months later or 2 months later or whatever it's like oh dude we found this thing that's saving us you know $2 per order which is gonna add up to be 100 of 1,000 of dollars of extra profit saved because we found this new manager who found this new process who found this new thing and we would have never done that had that disaster not struck and so once you go through life enough you have enough experience you realize oh it's all working for me not against me and once you decide it's all working for me not against me then the next time the disaster strikes you're like alright cool what's this how is this working for me and you don't panic and then the people around you are like man how does this person never panic they never freak out about this stuff that and then that becomes the culture of the company that's where you wanna be

Ben Levy

ironically I'm good at that at everything except when it comes to phoenix suns basketball

Shaan Puri

Yeah, well, that's because you're fit. You're mentally fit. It's like, you know, you're mentally fit with your upper body; it's just you never do leg day, right? So, it's like everybody's got something in the gym where they're really strong at it. It's easy for them, and it's hard for others. Then they have something that's easy for others but hard for them, and that might be calf raises or whatever. And so, like, you know, you could take a bodybuilder, but you go put them in a Pilates class, and they're struggling because they don't have the flexibility or maybe the core strength or coordination to be able to do some movements. So, everybody's got these moments or situations that are harder for them. Like Ben Wilson, I'm curious for you. What's the thing? Give me yours. What's the adversity or disaster strike situation where you're pretty good? And then what's the adversity or disaster strike situation where you're pretty weak? What's your version of leg day?

Ben Wilson

I'm actually, like, because I'm a pretty relaxed person, I tend to do pretty well with adversity. But personal attacks really get to me. Bad things happening in the world don't bother me.

Shaan Puri

bad things for other people don't care bad things for me really care

Ben Levy

no but it can have

Ben Wilson

Like, if it hurts my bank account or whatever, I just kind of move on with life. But if someone says something bad about my character or insults me, that's different. One instance I think I dealt with pretty well was when I was in Barcelona. It relates to what this guy was talking about. I was sitting at a café on La Rambla, which is a walking street. I was facing this big street with a lot of people, eating dinner, and I had my phone on the table while reading it. An old woman came up to me, stuck a sign in my face, and started asking for money. The weird thing was, I speak Spanish, but she wasn't speaking Spanish. I couldn't understand what she was saying. She had a sign right in my face and was clearly asking for money, but I couldn't tell what she meant. I said, "What? I don't understand you," and tried to shoo her away. She left, and I was kind of shaken up. After a couple of seconds of reorienting myself, I went back to my dinner and realized what was going on. Someone had stuck the sign in my face and, underneath it, had taken my phone from the table. I ran off to search for her, but of course, even if I found her, she’d probably handed it off to someone else, and my phone was gone. That is the kind of thing that I actually deal with. Obviously, I freaked out for a couple of minutes and was really mad, stewing over it. But eventually, I was like, "Okay, I'm okay." It was hard to explain; I was freaking out because I didn't have a phone in a foreign country, and it was scary. But I thought, "I'm okay. I've got all my fingers and toes." It was actually a good opportunity to reevaluate. I realized this was going to mess with a lot of stuff, but all the things that actually matter in my life were not affected by this phone being gone.

Shaan Puri

right I'm gonna also give a technique because one one part's the philosophy another is just a simple technique you could do so how do you actually be still how do you actually get to the response not the thing and it's really annoying when bad things happen and then the advice you're getting is like it's okay don't worry about it just shake it off you know because it's like no in the moment I feel I feel bad I feel some sense of loss you know and so you know it's very hard and so the actual technique here is a tony robbins technique that he calls the 90 seconds of suffering and the story is tony goes to india and he's like he's taking he's taking his platinum partners and these are the dudes who is like you go to the beginner tony robbins event you're like oh my god this guy's the messiah and so you're like oh if I pay 25 k a year I get to go on a trip with tony and like I get to be a platinum partner and so you pay maybe it's even more than that it's a 100 k or something like that you pay some crazy amount of money and you become a platinum partner so he took his platinum partners to india to some like ashram in the mountains and he's like know just giving them a unique experience and he goes in this like kinda guru guy in the mountains is like oh mister tony robbins you know blah blah blah and he's like he's like how are you he's like oh I'm fantastic you know life is amazing I feel so grateful saying all the tony robbins things in his like monster voice and then they're like the guy was like you know said something like you know but how you know he said so how are you dealing with your suffering and he's like so he's like suffering like what the hell are you talking about bro like I'm tony robbins I'm not suffering I'm mister positivity I got my platinum partners here we're in india I'm I'm teaching I'm I'm not suffering they they might be suffering I'm not suffering and he's like but I just saw you a moment ago you know your whatever your employee was saying about the thing they forgot and you got so upset you were telling them how they should do it differently you you totally changed your face and he's like oh well you know that was just we have this I want this trip to be great for our partners and you know this person dropped the ball and yeah I guess I kinda lost my cool but you know I I really care about blah blah he's like and he caught himself he's like oh okay I'm just justifying and he's like he's like that's not suffering though suffering is like you know look around in india you see people suffering on the streets and he's like he's like it's the same thing they they have a deep they have a different cause but they they feel the same thing they feel suffering in a moment right and so he goes he goes you know you he's like you are tony robbins I see you now and you're you're you're you're bright and you're happy you're lit up you're you're energetic you've got the you have your charisma all the stuff and he's like don't make your happiness so cheap tony robbins and he told him and he was like happiness cheap what do you mean he goes that I mean he's like that guy just did this small thing and your happiness he took your happiness so your happiness had a very low price it only took a very small thing to acquire your happiness he took it away from you and so what you wanna do and so my takeaway from this was like you wanna have this like you wanna be the louis vuitton of happiness you want your happiness to be very expensive that it takes a very very big event even bigger than all your nfts get stolen for for somebody something to take it away so you have to decide the price of your happiness is your happiness gonna go away if someone gives you a wrong look or cuts you off from traffic or you know your delivery gets your pizza delivery on doordash gets delayed are you gonna get upset and it not upset in a big way but like you lose that joyful state of mind you could otherwise be in and so he gave himself this thing tony came up with this technique called 90 seconds of suffering he goes okay so I started to notice these little moments where I would lose my state I would lose my state of mind where I wasn't I was no longer in that kind of happy grateful you know optimistic enthusiastic state of mind he's like and I would just decide alright I can't prevent feeling that feeling like it's very hard to just prevent it but I can contain it and so he's like I'm gonna give myself 90 seconds to suffer and after the 90 seconds I gotta let it go but I get 90 seconds to to to do it and of course what happens is like you know if you don't give if you don't time box it it's very easy to like have something ruin your day or even kinda get you down for a week or a month or a year and you're depressed all of a sudden so timeboxing is valuable but but the funny thing is if you do the 90 seconds of suffering where you're like alright this shit happened I'm gonna give myself 90 seconds within like 24 seconds you'll be like

Ben Levy

alright

Shaan Puri

Whatever. I don't even need to do the whole 90 seconds like, "Oh, it's done." I know it's going to end anyway in 90 seconds. Do I really need to sit here and wait the 90 to feel bad? If it's going to end in 90 seconds anyway, you don't even end up doing 30. So that technique of giving yourself 90 seconds of suffering, whenever whatever happens, has been pretty game-changing for me. I’d encourage you to do that. Alright, your NFTs got stolen? Alright, have at it. You have 90 seconds to suffer. Suffer fully and as much as you want for 90 seconds. But the agreement is, at the end of that 90, you no longer get to suffer about this. At the end of the 90, you're going to take a deep breath and change the story in your head about what's making you feel bad. Because it's not that your NFTs got stolen; it's some story about that. It's how much money you've lost, how you're not going to get them back, how you spent so long collecting them, how that was your favorite one. That story is what's making you feel bad. After 90 seconds, you gotta change that story. So that's my advice for one question Friday. That's it. Peace out.