Ep697: Peter Saddington – I Got Fired From My Own Company

Andrew Stotz 00:01
Hello fellow risk takers and welcome to my worst investment ever stories of loss to keep you winning. In our community we know that to win in investing, you must take risks but to win big you've got to reduce it. Ladies and gentlemen, I'm on a mission to help 1 million people reduce risk in their lives. To join me go to my worst investment ever.com and sign up for my free weekly become a better investor newsletter where I share how to reduce risk and create grow and protect your wealth. Fellow risk takers this is your worst podcast hosts Andrew Stotz, from a Stotz Academy, and I'm here with featured guests Peter Saddington. Peter, are you ready to join the mission?

Peter Saddington 00:44
Let's go appreciate you having me. Yeah, and for

Andrew Stotz 00:47
the listeners out there, you can't you can't see it. But for the viewers, you can all those cool stickers and posters and cars and all of that, which I'm sure we're gonna get into, as we get into our discussion, but let me introduce you to the audience. Peter is a software developer, a multi founder and author in a VC he founded a $2.5 million Bitcoin mining fund, a $10 million dollar Internet of Things fun, and a $50 million web three fun in 2022. He published three books, Scrum, agile and personal branding. And he writes the Agile VC newsletter, which covers inside startups venture capital and life. Peter, take a minute and tell us about the unique value that you are bringing to this wonderful world.

Peter Saddington 01:35
Thanks so much for that amazing introduction, Andrew, it's a pleasure for me to be on this podcast as a guest. And I am excited to tell a little bit of my story to your audience here. What is my unique characteristic? Or what is the unique proposition that I bring to the world? Well, it's very simple. I like to document life. The first time that I ever put a video online was in 1998. And this is the time of Lycos geo cities Ask Jeeves and meta crawler. Right. These were these were the times of the before the.com Before the.com boom and bust. I put my first video online and I decided from then it was on Zynga by the way on the Sangha. So for many some of you guys might not know of Zynga, but it's still out. It's x, a nga Zenga. So I put it up on sang and I had to upload it to my own server. And from ever since the late 90s. Till today, so two decades plus later, I love sharing my life on video, my life on social media, when social media platforms came out in the early 2000s. And in blogging and writing and letting the world know about my journey, I always found it to be fascinating that many people aren't documenting their journey. And so for me, I've been able to accrue a global audience, and be able to have people that have walked with me through life through many of my experiences, my startups, my projects, my venture funds, and they've supported me for over a decade. And so the unique proposition I bring to the world is I love documenting life, whether it's building companies building startups, learning growing, I have three graduate degrees, so three master's degrees, so I'm proof in the pudding when it comes to the the old, traditional way of learning, and I love documenting and sharing my life with others, and hopefully, just hopefully, Andrew, I can be an inspiration for those that are watching or listening.

Andrew Stotz 03:30
Well, I think you're definitely already an inspiration to a lot of people. And one of the questions I have for you is that you know, I I I teach a course evaluation masterclass boot camp, and it's a six week course and I tried to tell people like, first thing I do, so I helped them work on their LinkedIn. And I'm like, You got to come up with a hook. You know, like, what's so cool, why someone should even pay attention to you. And I gave them an example, like I have a hook on on LinkedIn. My first hook on LinkedIn is the worst. I am the worst podcast host of my worst investment ever. Now that hook turns out to be kind of strange, you know, like people like why do you call us on the words and all that? Well, the reason why I originally did it, Peter is just because I was not confident of doing podcasts and all that. So I thought, hey, if you call yourself the worst, you make a mistake. He said, Hey, I told you I was the worst. So you know, what do you expect?

Peter Saddington 04:27
Well, a little self deprecating humor is never bad. So

Andrew Stotz 04:31
but the other thing I was saying, tell them that they've got to tell a story. You know, they got to tell something like I give them an example. I said, you know, an example of me was in jail at the age of 14 and I almost killed myself at the age of 17.

Peter Saddington 04:48
Well now well now you have more than my interest now you have my attention. I think the hooks work and

Andrew Stotz 04:52
so there's a hook there's an open loop and what I'm but what I'm trying to get them to think about you It's something that you already naturally do, which is, you know, share. And they're like, you know, they don't sometimes they don't want to write and some of them like to do videos, but others don't. And all that, and I'm just thinking, like, What can I tell them? That can help them? See, I'm gonna, first of all, I'm going to show them, your, you know, Twitter, your LinkedIn, your other areas of your life and all that and say, let's use this as an example. But what would you tell them if you were speaking to them or other young people that are listening?

Peter Saddington 05:30
Well, I my third book, and I don't, I don't want to jump into it too early. But my third book is all about that. And I give it away for free. So for everyone that's watching or listening, I'll make sure to give it to Andrew here. So he can link it below or link it wherever it needs to be. It's called gravity. And this book is all about creating gravity to yourself, in a web three world, where, frankly, your voice is getting drowned out by so many others. And so let me take a step back. Before I go into more of that context there. The first question that I would ask is, you know, what's the end purpose? What's the end goal? Is it a career move that you want to make? Is it a leveling up? Is it a project you want to endeavor on? Isn't a new hobby? Like, what is it that where social could provide value to you Or put differently, how creating content can help elevate, you help grow, you help move you towards that goal? I think in most cases, if I if because I gave a lot of kind of generic ideas here, I think in most cases, that's generally where people want to be, they want to level up, they want to grow something, they want to do a passion project a hobby, or they just want to improve some aspect of their life that says what YouTube and video are great for. And so my advice to them always is, absolutely do the easiest thing. And the easiest thing is document, don't create, document, don't create, when you create, it takes mindspace and you get in and your rational brain, your logical brain starts to take over and says you're not good at this, you're not going to communicate it effectively. You're not a good speaker, you don't look good on camera, or you messed up the way that you said that since that's the problem with planning and creating documentation requires none of that. And so that was, for me, this was over two decades ago, when I came to the realization that it's far easier to document my life than to create a narrative around it. That allowed me the right muscle memory and growing the right muscles to say, You know what I can do this, I can post about what I'm doing. Now, I can post about what's interesting to me, I can post and show what I'm into now. And the documentation will never be polished. It's not meant to be the purpose of documenting not creating is to grow that muscle memory to grow that discipline, so that you will continue to create content, as per your purpose and your and the reason that you're doing it, obviously with that in the background. But the in most cases, just like you said, with this narrative with this hook, document, documenting over time, grows, your confidence, it grows your narrative ability, it grows your speaking ability. And eventually you move into the highest level of communication, which is what you brought in early, which is storytelling, storytelling is the masterclass of how to engage people's hearts, minds and souls. And the only way that you can get to grow becoming a great storyteller is you have to learn how to communicate effectively. And the best way in my opinion, starting out with 20 years of experience now is just document don't create

Andrew Stotz 08:47
no great, you know, great points. So the first thing is like, what are you trying to do, you know, like, and then the second is shift your mindset, you know, we're not talking about spending a lot of time trying to, you know, create some amazing content, keep it simple. And I know for my students, they have three goals, they fall in three categories. Number one, they're a student who wants to get their first job and finance. Number two, they're a finance professional who wants to accelerate their career. And number three, they're an engineer or other professional who wants to move into the industry of finance. And those are the three types of people that join my valuation masterclass. And now, I think what I need to do is talk to them and say make sure you clearly understand what category you're in. And then think about, you know, what's your objective here? Who are you reaching out to what are you trying to do with that and then tell them to think maybe what I'm trying to do is get them to document their journey in the valuation masterclass boot camp.

Peter Saddington 09:53
Exactly. And I would and I would actually, maybe even remove a little bit of friction What you just said maybe lower the barrier to entry even more, and what I would say for the people that are working with you, because I take a look on my notes I've taken already. People that are working with you who are looking for their first job, are looking to advance or accelerate their career or move into the industry, the answer is the same brother, the answer is the same, which is simply document your journey. In all, the common theme in all three of those is very simple. It's the individual themself, wanting and desiring to move to a next phase in life. That is the commonality, the best way, in my opinion. Now, you might have other people who have different opinions. But the best way in today's social media, socially rich, social content, social community web three world that we live in today, I'll tell you, brother, all three of those can benefit from documenting their journey. Why? Because you're trying to get to the next phase. There are many other people just like you that are trying to get to the next phase, they want to garner confidence from you, they want to see other people doing it, they want to see other people struggling through it. They want to learn vicariously sometimes just maybe being a lurker, and that's okay. And they just want to see what you're doing. And what happens always is when you document over a period of time, job opportunities arise people from your subscriber base, your follower base or community reach out and say, Hey, I've been following you you don't know me but I've been following you and listening to you for two and a half months and my company just had an engineering job open and I kind of liked you you're visually appealing your communicate well, and the way that you're talking, it seems like you might be a good fit. This is the world we live in now. Andrew? Yep,

Andrew Stotz 11:51
that's great. So document their journey of moving to the next phase in their life path there. And in the valuation masterclass, I always say from day one, valuation masterclass is about transformation, not information. So they're constantly focusing on what's their transformation, but I think based upon what you've said, I need them to kind of declare that right at the beginning, where are they going? Yeah. And that, and that then allows the journey to unfold, you know, more clearly, when we understand where they're going. That's a

Peter Saddington 12:21
chapter in my third book that everyone here is gonna get for free, is that in the title of it is where do you want to be? Where do you want to be, and kind of a little bit of a jab that I like to add in there is that there are and I say this to people that I work with, is I tell them, there are already people less sophisticated than you, less smart than you less resource than you, maybe even older than you who are doing what you're doing. Or, and they're not. And they're not as capable, but they're already doing what you want to do. And they're, they're already at the place that you want to be. And so the rails for that, in this world are already established, right? The rules for that, in many ways are already established, the frameworks, the mental models around that are already established. And a lot of it, of course, you're going to traverse your own path. But don't be deceived. Where you want to be someone is already there. And in most cases, many of those people are less smart, less sophisticated and less capable than you. And they're already where you want to be. And so by documenting your journey you can find and you can bring to yourself, people who can help you get to there. And sometimes just sometimes, if you're really assertive in your documentation and content creation, you end up connecting with the people that in the place that you want to be, and they end up helping you or mentoring you. And so I was

Andrew Stotz 13:44
the first one on the railroad tracks, you know, there was people before me, and there's people behind me and

Peter Saddington 13:51
there was a wise man who said once long ago in history, he said that there's nothing new under the sun. And because there's nothing new under the sun, that's truly true. Everything that you and I experienced in this life, let's be intellectually honest, is not that novel or new. It's many cases just a permutation of an already existing entity or existing situation or existing context. And so I think we need not always try to reinvent the wheel here. When it comes to personal improvement. I think that really is kind of the umbrella statement of a lot of what we're talking about here.

Andrew Stotz 14:24
A lot of a lot of great tidbits for all of us, including myself. I had one student she was a lady that had worked about 1015 years at a bank in Nigeria. And she understood banking very well but she wanted to change her career and move into consulting. So she took the valuation masterclass boot camp did really well. Amazing because she was working full time in the boot camps super hard. In fact, the symbol of how hard it is. Oh, is that I kick ass um, for those that aren't seeing it. I'm wearing my boot camp hat, which is like my drill instructor hat. Where I tell people to boot camp is tough. So she survived, despite the fact she was working full time and raising four children. And she documented her journey, not in a huge way on LinkedIn, but just little bits. And she got a big four consulting firm reach out to her on LinkedIn and got hired by them. And she switched her career out of that commercial banking, and then now has a global career. And so it works, the documentation and all that. So you really, you really fired that up for me, for my students. And I know for the listeners and viewers, so for that, I appreciate it. And I just want to tell everybody, I'll have links in the show notes to go get the book, download it, and start to learn.

Peter Saddington 15:43
Absolutely. And one thing that you'll read in the book, and I don't mind recoating it here, because it's it's so opportune is, especially for those that are serious about personal development and personal improvement, I always tell them straight to their face, I say, no one is going to build your dream for you. No one is going to carry you there, no one's going to show you the path. And so who is going to tell the universe who's going to tell the divine matrix that this is a value to you that this is something that you care about? Who is going to carry that torch? And the answer, obviously, is nobody but yourself. And so we have an amazing medium today. It's called social media and the internet. And now with this amazing medium, you can communicate your purpose, even though you're not there yet. You can communicate your purpose to the world and bring like minded individuals to yourself that in many cases, will end up helping you. And you might say, how are they going to help you? If they just comment, what I want and what every one of your videos it says keeps going, trust me, in the dark days of Andrew, you know, as a as an operator and entrepreneur yourself, you know that sometimes those comments that that one positive comment will last you a month, you'll live off that positivity. And so especially in the dark times, creating content is a way to connect with people of like mind that can give you the the mental and emotional, maybe not physical, but it'd be great if it was physical these days, but mental and emotional, psychological support that you need to continue on and persevere on that dream that you so say you care about.

Andrew Stotz 17:25
Yeah, and it's good. The last thing I would say about this discussion is that for those people who were like me when I was young, and we thought that just put your head down, do your work, you're gonna get recognized, you're gonna get noticed. I've watched many people in my career. I mean, my career was a great career. But I watched many people go further than me that were much less qualified, much, they produced much less than what I did. But they knew how to balance the amount of production they were doing with the amount of promotion that they were doing. And you've got to get out there. And nobody's going to tell your story. Like you've just said, nobody's going to tell it, except you. And what you've got to do is bring it out there until it gets to a point where other people start telling your

Peter Saddington 18:10
story. Absolutely. I liked the way you ended that. You keep telling your story until other people tell your story of

Andrew Stotz 18:19
yep, there it is.

Peter Saddington 18:20
So Oh, lock in that one away lots of stuff. So

Andrew Stotz 18:23
I listened this podcast and guy was in jail. He was 14 and you know, having to close that loop yet. But now it's time to share your worst investment ever. And since no one goes into their worst investment thinking it will be tell us a bit about the circumstances leading up to it then tell us your story.

Peter Saddington 18:39
Oh, man, well, you know it as a venture capitalist and perennial entrepreneur. So I've been an entrepreneur since the mid 90s. I look young, I'm in my 40s. But that maybe that's the Asian in me, you would know coming from Bangkok, Thailand, Andrew, but it was kind of hard to choose my worst investment ever. And what I ended up landing on is not an investment of any monetary or fiscal consideration. It was a relational investment. And so the context building up to this was over a decade ago now. So we're in 2023. So over a decade ago, I built an amazing startup bootstrapped it out of my garage, that garage, similar to what I'm sitting in right now. And it was this passion project of mine. It was the cryptocurrency at the time and digital currency was just growing. And what was amazing about it is that there were these silos of exchanges and they and they were all disparate islands of sorts, and there was no ability to create arbitrage opportunities between multiple exchanges. So for me, as an Engine developer, I thought this was an absolutely tasty proposition of be becoming a middleware solution provider essentially, so that traders and investors would be able to trade cross platform and multiple exchanges and find opportunities for liquidity and Obviously, any type of arbitrage or spread these types of things that you're, I'm sure your audience knows well all well about. And so this was early in the digital currency days, and so no one was doing this. And man, I was so excited I, as an engineer, I've laid first brick, I started building it out, I started putting together team, bootstrapping it myself out of my own money, eventually, over a period of many validations, with our community and user groups, saying that this is why this works. This is amazing, you should scale this out. And then we ended up raising $4.8 million for this, for this venture for this project. And everything was great. It was amazing. It seemed like there was no possibility that this thing could ever go off the rails, we had a growing community. I had already at that time done meetups in San Francisco, Dallas, New York, Atlanta, Miami, Tokyo, like our global community of cryptocurrency and digital currency enthusiast was growing, we had ambassadors in each of these different cities that were given out swag growing, growing startup, our, our, our user growth was was amazing at the time, we had what was really substantial we, at the time, we had almost 78% of daily active users, which is unheard of in a retail kind of application, usually you're looking at like, less than 10%. And of course, everything was hype, and everything was new. And so with all this money, and this, this was a decade plus ago, so I was a little more naive and a little less experienced in my operational duties and operational maturity, for sure. There was a rising engineer in this startup. So we were so fast forward to about two and a half years into it. And a rising engineer, brilliant engineer it for for me, he cut, he, he, he, he could cut the he could cut code with the best of them. And what was great about it is that I saw in him the amazing ability to be able to do stuff beyond myself. Now I consider myself pretty well, you know, full stack engineer, I've been coding since the 90s. For me, code is not a problem. I love learning it. And so it was this amazing opportunity to mentor and to go and go even deeper with this engineer and developer. Here's why this ended up becoming my worst investment. I was so enamored by his communication ability at the time, my communication ability at the time was still pretty good. It's better now. But it's more polished now for sure. But my communication ability a decade ago, wasn't terrible, I was relatively sophisticated. In the operational world, I had finished my first acquisition at nine years, a nine year grind, that allowed me to become the usual trope of an operator, you know, turned a venture capitalist type of deal. And, and I just, I was so enamored by his, his the way that he communicated. And, and his skill set. And the models he created. He, he blew me away with his visuals, and he blew me away with with the kind of the, the presentation layer, if you will, of and, and I was so enamored by this, that I said, You are the right person to lead this company into the next the next phase, because you have the technical prowess to be able to do it. And so the immaturity for me, was focusing on a technical skill that I needed that he had, that could help scale our application to the next level. Lord knows to lead a company and you know this as well. It takes more than technical aptitude, it takes leadership skills, it takes relational skills, it creates communication skills, team building skills, right financial skills, some type of managerial, like I could go on and on and on and on. And in my naivete, and in my ignorance, and being blown away by his technical prowess and thinking and considering that being the primary value that he could provide me and my company, I ended up elevating him to CEO. Long story short, six months later, he fired me. I got fired from my own company. And, and this was a passion project. We're three years in at this time, Andrew, and this sent me into and I think this is important. This is really crucial. I always up to this point. I had always thought depression was a weak man's game. I always thought depression was you just couldn't hack it. You don't have the emotional constitution to be able to survive the dark days. Right? Because I had a nine year grind acquisition my first company that's a decade plus of grind, slaving in i There were dark days. But this was the first true. And I think this is important. The first true identity rug poll. This was the first time, Andrew that I realized that my identity was wrapped up in what I did, not who I was. And this in this man revealed to me through firing me from my own company sending me into a nine month depression cycle of which I didn't want to get out of bed, I didn't want to talk to nobody, I wanted to literally lay on my couch and do nothing, I thought my world was gone, my wife was kicking me in the ass, I don't know, you can bleep that out later, kicking me in the butt. And she was telling me like, You got to figure something out, you're an entrepreneur, go build the next thing, right. And I stood in this and stood in this and stood in this, and maybe we can have a conversation about that later. But the lessons I learned, the lessons I learned in relationships, is you must understand the individual more deeper than just what they bring to the table. If you're going to be doing any type of promotions, I'm sure you probably have some horror stories and some promotions of your own that you promoted people and they turned out not being the right fit, if we want to put it that way to put it mildly. In the second thing that I learned was not only that, number one, I need to understand the farther spectrum of this person's ability, and understand whether they're capable. But number two, they need to be a person that can be lead, and can lead others. This person was not that person, they ended up tanking the entire company. And third, and most crucially, time, I didn't spend enough time really digging in with him. I had grown with him, you know, peripherally as the CEO and founder of the company as in, he was an engineer. But as he started coming up the ranks, I just didn't spend enough time to truly understand the depth of the man, the morality of the man, the ethics of the man, and most importantly, the integrity of the man. And whenever I say the word integrity, integrity has no negative positive or negative integrity is more important than I think morality and ethics because morality and ethics have, can have a sliding rule of good and bad. Integrity is just integrity. It is what it is, right? This wood has integrity, right? Gravity, it has integrity, it just is what it is. You can't argue with it. And what I whenever I bring up integrity, when it comes to companies is Are you do you have internal reliability is the scientific terms. And do you have internal consistency from what you say? And what you do. And it takes time to be able to really tease that out, and be able to validate the veracity and truthfulness of that of what they what they say they're going to do. And if they actually do it. And these are three powerful lessons from my worst investment ever, of being overly emotional. We all know that we make our best decisions when were highly emotional, right? Being emotional and being enamored by, by, by essentially just lipstick, right on a pig of sorts, and being enamored by the tasty treats and the ice cream, when the rest of it wasn't really filling. And so this was something that had had countless let life lessons for me. And I'm in many cases, I'm just touching the tip of the iceberg.

Andrew Stotz 28:25
Yeah. That's great. Lots of great learning there. And I think for everybody, you're gonna face the situations of hiring. And what I would say, the thing that I was thinking about a lot when you were talking is my business partner, Dale, who runs our coffee factory that's now 28 years old or so. And basically, we grew up together in Ohio, we knew each other since we were about 14. We live with each other in Ohio with each other in California. And then we came to Thailand, I came first and he was studying Japanese. And he came to Thailand. And you know, I knew he had a skill in coffee because he was working in coffee in America. So clearly he had the skill. But there's just no way that you can know also, you know, I mean that there's an aspect of this, you just things are revealed. And when I think about what he went through in and what most startup companies go through, it's like you're gonna walk through the valley of the shadow of death. Yes. And a question is, can you get to the US can that person get to the other end of that valley. And that is not only about their skills, skills are important. And that helps. You know, in Dale's case, he can open up an espresso machine with the highest tech in it, take it completely apart with the technicians show the client exactly how it works. That's fantastic. But that skill is not what's going to get you to the end of that valley. And so, when you think about the hiring aspect for a leader, it's really can that person bring to bear They're all the resources they possibly can from different aspects of their life and other people's to get to the, the end of that valley. And I think that's very hard to predict to it.

Peter Saddington 30:13
It is hard to predict. But I've learned something. And I've created a rubric around this. So I'm going to ask you a question. And you can completely disagree with me on this. And maybe it's just my heuristic and my anecdotal experience here in this one life that I got. But in my, from this experience, over a decade ago, I ended up creating a rubric that required management or leadership, let's just bring it up a level, leader, executive leadership must be multifaceted in their capabilities. Because leading this is just coming from Peter, because leading a company in my experience requires the multifaceted this. And of of an individual where they can do multiple things with excellence. And it's not that you're gonna be the jack of all trades, and you're awesome at all 10 things that are required of an Executive leader, never gonna happen. However, it has to be more than just that technical skill that got them to the job themselves. And it was so funny, there was a friend of mine, after I went through this experience, he sent me this Dilbert comic, I'm not going to get it right. But essentially, it was this idea of, of this engineer is so good at being an engineer, let's promote him to management that requires social skills. And it's like, the obviously the joke, obviously, is, if he's a great engineer, you should probably keep him a great engineer, instead of promoting them into, you know, failure, promoting them into a position that he's not going to succeed at. And so that's what I did. I promoted someone who's amazing at what he did, technically, but he did not have the multifaceted Vnus that I believe is required at the executive level. What say you?

Andrew Stotz 31:59
Yeah, I agree with that. I mean, I think I would just add one last thing is that you've got to have some, you got to have demonstrated you're multifaceted Enos. While the buildings on fire, yes. Like, under pressure. And that's where it gets hard. Because it just, it's just, it's, every business has, you know, significant challenges that you got to get over. And so it's and so I would say I like the idea of kind of relentlessness, resilience, you got to be able to rise when it's when it's when it's tough. So I agree, multifaceted newness, and also some demonstration that you've got the toughness to get through it.

Peter Saddington 32:46
So you are absolutely correct. I wrote a blog post, that of my most basic rubric for an investment in an operator, or entrepreneur, which is resilience and perseverance. That's all I require. Because at the end of the day, you already have the technical skills, or you already have enough to want to do this project, this passion project, you might not have all the resources to do it. But at the end of the day, at the end of the day, it because the Venture Fund is a 10 year lifespan, I think that's by design, because in my experience, it generally takes 10 years to do anything of significance. And so can you last 10 years, can you persevere? 10 years, can you be resilient when you get punched in the groin? Right? When you get seriously punched in the groin? Are you able to kick pick yourself back up and continue and persevere under that duress? And under that stress? You hit it on? You hit the nail on the head brother? Yeah,

Andrew Stotz 33:39
I mean, it's, it's, it's the challenge. And I think you a lot of that gets revealed. That's why it's also it's sometimes you can solve this problem by hiring people, and putting people in place that have already done it. But that doesn't always solve it, too. So you know, there's no permanent solutions in this. But let me ask you based upon what you learned from this story, and what you continue to learn, what's one action that you could recommend to a listener or a viewer who is in the same spot, they've got that type of person? They're sitting there and they're thinking I need this and that and this and I think that that, what's one action that you would recommend they take to avoid suffering the same fate?

Peter Saddington 34:18
The first, it's, it's easy. You should buy two books. The first book is asking great questions by Eileen Gibb, gi BB. Okay, asking great questions by Eileen Gibb. And the second book is great Leaders Ask Great Questions by Maxwell. Okay. And the context is, ask more questions. Ask more questions. I'll tell you brother, the number one most important skill, I believe in any type of investment is are you willing to ask every single bloody question possible? Are you? are you experienced enough to know the questions to ask? Are you sophisticated enough? to reach for questions that avail emergent opportunities in emergent contexts and conversation. And are you situationally aware enough to listen actively and be able to ask questions that are pertinent and important, and give you context for informed decision making? And so I'm basically sound like a book because I actually wrote this. But it's everything I'm repeating here is true. It's asking great questions. I am able, and I, I actually pride myself in this, Andrew, I am able to go through entire meetings, workshops with investors, startup entrepreneurs, and I don't see a bloody statement. It's only questions. I have a Rolodex of hundreds of questions. And then it's not just the, you know, what did you think? It's like? What does your gut say? What is your second brain considering it? Have we considered this? Have we brought this into the equation here? What happens if we do X? What happens if we do why have you considered Z right? And so these are the questions that I am armed with now, that allow me to dig deeper into the person, the project, or the personality, which is in again, I'm kind of, I've written a lot of books I write all the time. So I'm kind of right, speaking out some of the things that I've written, which is why it's maybe sounds polished and smooth. But asking great questions by Eileen Gibb, great leaders asked good questions. By Jhansi, Maxwell, two great books that have those in the

Andrew Stotz 36:27
show notes, too. I was just meeting with a client of mine in their family office in Thailand. And they really hit a wall, they said to me that they've found all the companies that they feel comfortable investing in now they're looking outside to how we invest outside. And so I just asked them a lot of questions like, you know, why can't you expand what your universe is? And look at some others. And, you know, what, why do you want to invest outside of Thailand? Well, we want to learn, I said, Okay, so let me ask you a question. If you invest it outside of Thailand for the next five years, and you learn a time, but you lost 50% of your money. Are you okay?

Peter Saddington 37:11
What a great scenario question. Yeah, so

Andrew Stotz 37:13
they were like, no, no, no, no, no, that's no, that I'm not okay with that. I was like, Okay, that's good. So we started to go through a lot of questions until they got to a point where they're like, it really made them think about, you know, what is motivating us to do this, I think when what you're telling all of us is just ask, ask, ask. But there's another aspect that you didn't say, but you did that I want to highlight. And for the listeners, I'm going to pull out something here. But the key to asking questions, is listening. Yeah, and the key to listening is taking notes. And I have a book and you have a book right here. And this book is, you know, I've just got some of my notes here. But on every single day, every single week, I actually wrote this book, which is a planner book, you know, and I use that to plan my life. And basically, you can you show up you can you open up your book just again. So for those that can't see it, you know, you got all kinds of scribbles and notes there.

Peter Saddington 38:15
So yeah, this is all you my worst interview ever. Andrew Stotz, I've written. This is all the stuff that I've written just in the last 1520 minutes of our conversation.

Andrew Stotz 38:24
Yeah. So I asked you a question, you know, what's one action? And your answer was ask questions. And I'm going to add on to that, and write down notes on that because it's the number one way it's the number one hack. Everybody likes to say hack secret. It's way, the biggest hack of how to listen. Alright, last question. What is your number one goal for the next 12 months? Speaking of questions,

Peter Saddington 38:48
oh, next goal? Well, I have an amazing startup that I'm working on. That is not quite ripe yet, but if you follow me on Twitter, you follow it or you read my blog or LinkedIn or any of the social sites, you'll end up hearing about it relatively soon. This is an amazing company that I'm really excited to start with some great gentleman, some great operators, and it's perfect because it's in my wheelhouse, which includes three things Number one, I love digital currency, the digital currency revolution, Bitcoin, I love it to death. One of my kind of claim to fame is I'm the Bitcoin Lambo guy. So if you Googled Bitcoin Lambo, you come up with my face I was the guy who created the Lambo means I'm the first guy to buy a Lamborghini with Bitcoin actually, it's sitting right behind me right there in the picture. So love digital currency, love Bitcoin early adopter number two, I love love, love, love, love racing and cars. And so I'm a second generation racecar driver, my son is a third. And so this company and the third is family members that are passionate about family. And so this startup has to do with all three the blockchain with cars and race car and family, it might sound like they're not intertwine Abul, but brother, I'll tell you, there is a powerful use case and I'm excited to launch in the next 12 months.

Andrew Stotz 40:09
Fantastic. And we'll be watching that we'll have links to all of all of the different stuff that you're doing, including your Twitter, in the show notes. So, as well as the books that you've referenced. So listeners, there you have it another story of loss to keep you winning. Remember, I'm on a mission to help 1 million people reduce risk in their lives. And today, we learned some ways to reduce risk in your hiring. If you've not yet joined that mission, just go to my worst investment ever.com And join for free, our become a better investor newsletter to reduce risk in your life. As we conclude, Peter, I want to thank you again for joining our mission and on behalf of a Stotz Academy, I hereby award you alumni status for turning your worst investment ever into your best teaching moment. Do you have any parting words for the audience?

Peter Saddington 40:56
Stay positive, and understand, as the stoics used to say, the great Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus, these types of individuals, they would only say that the only thing that you ever have in your control is your own reasoned choice. That's it. You can't control the outcome. You can't almost in many ways can't even control the input. You can't control the context in which the situation happens. All you can control is your own reason choice, and how you're going to respond to the situation at hand. And my answer to that is always stay positive.

Andrew Stotz 41:30
That's a wrap on another great story to help us create, grow and protect our well fellow risk takers. Let's celebrate that today. We added one more person to our mission to help 1 million people reduce risk in their lives. This is your worst podcast hose Andrew Stotz saying, I'll see you on the upside.