E60: Irene Zhao - 3 Crypto Lessons I Learned The Hard Way

0:28People always share about how much money they make. lot of efforts because people are not dumb if you keep using people get bored anyway if you know how to make the best value out of it then you are smart you went down the meme coin rabbit hole recently why i was trying to find out on twitter got into one group chat and they were talking about this troll he don't must change his twitter profile to chief troll officer some traders bought the token immediately and now i think they made like million dollars what are some of the concrete experiences you've lived where you learned the most you should make your team very lean don't try to make five star teams.

0:58Oh, I want the best people from here, here, here, here. Just start as lean as possible and don't expand so quickly. Why Chinese people are so into Bitcoin despite government banning Bitcoin so many times? There's a lot of Bitcoin farmers from China, basically. They are trying to make more money from the gas phase on the Bitcoin ecosystem. Do you think it's possible for an entrepreneur to be super successful in his or her first venture?

1:29Irene is back on the podcast, which is amazing. After an amazingly successful first episode where we had more than 11 million views across platform, which is fucking crazy, to be honest, for us. And I mean, it actually helped us understand what people like to see, right? Which is not necessarily talking about crypto. At least last year, because no one gave a fuck about crypto. Maybe this year is going to be a bit more. But depending on the platform. But there has to be really, really, really, really general knowledge about crypto. Yeah. It cannot be anything specific because it's not going to appear to the mass audience.

2:07They don't understand anything. It really depends on the platform, actually. And we realize TikTok, Instagram, YouTube short. I mean, unless it's Twitter. Then it's different. Exactly, Twitter. Only Twitter people are interested in the details. Absolutely. Which is why now we split the podcast between different parts. One is more like, I mean, obviously we want it to be interesting, but one is more what's more likely to go viral on all the platforms except twitter oh and then what's more likely to go viral on twitter um but yeah maybe for people who've been living under a rock who are you just just a short description for people who were they maybe didn't see the other episode and who don't know you i haven't done introduction for a long time okay hello Hello everyone, this is Irene.

2:52I'm the founder of Soko and Irene Dao. So I got into crypto earlier 2020 and I started to learn how NFT can really help creators to reorganize the relationship between them and their fans. So I started a platform called Soko, which is a web 2.5 social platform that helps all the creators to launch their own NFT collections at the click of a button. When you say Web 2.5, what do you mean exactly? Web 2.5 means it's like a bridge between Web 2 and Web 3. So NFT is Web 3, but we are helping Web 2 creators and mass audience to create their own NFT. So we call it a Web 2.5 platform where we help the people from both Web 2 and Web 3 to do their own connections.

3:47Hmm. Because the main problem today is still user interface, right? Especially in crypto. Yes. Kind of like hard and like you need to find a way to bridge all the people who are familiar with. When we talk about Web2, it's basically all the applications that we're using today. Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc. And then there's this new Web3 world, which is kind of like probably intimidating for most people. It is too intimidating and it gets more intimidating. Yeah, the more you go in there, the more it's intimidating. Yes. So I think we can continue what we were talking about before, which is the trading on the pitch.

4:28Yeah, let's talk about it. Because this is a really interesting point, because actually one of the main ways a lot of people start crypto is that, right? By trading. By thinking that they might be able in this, you know, they're like, oh, this crypto thing is very interesting. and it can go up a lot or go down a lot. And then if it goes up a lot, but I don't necessarily have a lot of money to play with. But which, you know, like we all wish we had more money to start to make more money faster, right? And then there is this thing called leverage trading where you can actually play or kind of invest, I mean, trade with money that you don't have by using leverage, right?

5:12So do you want to talk about that? And kind of like your journey with it, because you told me that it's one of the things that you really like to do right now. Trading. I think my trading journey is very short. It's only like less than two hours or like less than two months. But I almost experienced everything in the past two months. I make a lot of money. They go back to zero. They make money again. They over-laverage and got liquidated. And then I put in more money as the margin and I lost everything again. And now I'm starting over again, always in like two months. I feel like I experienced everything already yeah why are you still doing it um why am I still doing it I think it becomes it becomes like a habit it's not really I mean of course a habit or habit habit I feel like a habit or an addiction it's not addiction because I know exactly my goal is still to make money so we don't call it addiction because for addiction it's like gambling because you don't know whether you are going to make money or not I just feel the thrill to trade.

6:17But for me, it's not really about the thrill. It's really about trying to at least not losing money again. So I don't see it as addiction. I think it's still like a habit. I become more and more professional, of course, along the way, because I start to read books about trading and how people lose everything and how people start over again and how you can actually have some strategy before trading. Like you have start, stop loss, everything. Before that, I don't have anything. can you go through the journey two months which doesn't sound like a lot but in crypto is actually a lot like i mean a lot of things can happen as you said yes and what do you learn like every step of the way because i've been through the same journey at some point i stopped because i really stopped okay the leverage trading i thought what's the leverage you used i was using two or three x Only 2 or 3x.

7:11Only 2 or 3. My strategy was 2019, late 2019, my strategy was I had quite a good amount of Bitcoin, but I wanted more Bitcoin and I didn't have more cash. So I was like, I discovered BitMEX. Yes, exactly. BitMEX is like they trade coins with coins, right? It's like not USDT pairs, it's coin-com pair. So basically I was like, oh, I have this Bitcoin and I can use them as a collateral to trade and make more Bitcoin. For me, it was if I make more Bitcoin and then the Bitcoin price goes up, it's like a double win. Exactly. And you're like, oh, I found the holy grail, right? Yeah. And then before starting with real money, I knew that, you know, 90 or 95 or 99 % of the people actually don't make money trading.

7:54So I was like, I need to understand how I'm not part of this 90 or 95 or 99. And so I spent probably four months trying to learn and doing some different things. I even bought a course and everything. And then at some point, I thought I understood the trick, right? I was like, I thought I was smarter than most people. Which when you think you're smarter than most people, you're probably not smarter than most people. And so it was a bit crazy. So I started, my strategy was very simple. Bitcoin was 7K back then, December 2019. My strategy was just long only, right? Compound. So basically, I was leveraged 2 or 3X because I knew if I'm leveraged 2X, Bitcoin price needs to go down 50 % for me to be liquidated which is almost impossible and then I was also I'm going to trade only with 10 % of my Bitcoin so in case it goes down too crazy I can top up, add more margin, lower my liquidation price it sounds like a very safe plan exactly, so I was like man I'm safe and because I had quite a good amount of Bitcoin to play with even 10 % would be a significant amount then I thought you know you leverage yourself 2 or 3x and then every time Bitcoin goes up 3 % or whatever you close the position so you're up 9 or 10 % you replay it and then you compound those gains so instead of compounding interest over years you compound gains It sounds like a very safe plan and if you do the math when you compound you know 3 % at 3x I don't know 100 times you go from like 10k to like 2 mil or whatever so I was like man this makes so much sense right yeah So first month, so December 2019, my goal was I was starting another company in data and we were paying ourselves, I was in Geneva, we're paying ourselves 6K Swiss franc a month.

9:45So I was like, my goal for the first month of trading is to match this. So I double my salary, right? First month, I made 30K, realized in Bitcoin. So I was like, oh man, 30K and then this is going to go up. You made for... Exactly. Then I was like, this is going to go up. 10 yen is going to be 300k in the future. What? Crazy. Suck. And then I discovered, this was just trading Bitcoin. Then I discovered this contract on BitMEX, the ETH. So I was like, oh, it's more volatile. So I can trade ETH instead, right? With my Bitcoin as collateral. I make more Bitcoin. First week I did that, 80k realized profit.

10:27And then second week, 80k. So I started to go crazy. So it's 160K in total. 80K and 80K. 80 plus then 30. So 190 in Bitcoin, right? Back then. And Bitcoin maybe went, it was pure luck. Bitcoin went from 7K to 10K. Oh, and you still have Bitcoin. And I was just like leveraging long, closing, replay. And at some point, like obviously the market started to kind of... Fluxuate a little bit. It was stagnating. And then COVID happened. And then there was a COVID crash. Oh. And I just basically lost everything. How much does it crash for Bitcoin? I mean, I was leveraged on ETH, which ETH probably went down 70 % in a day.

11:0770 % in a day? I think so, something like that. Oh, so you got liquidated. Yeah, meanwhile, I had topped up most of my Bitcoin because the price was stagnating, but there was something called funding fees. Yeah, the funding fees is so expensive. So I got completely fucked and lost 80 % of all my money, all my net worth in that March crash. You mean including the money you had? Not the money you made. Everything included. 80 % gone. Poof. So then I learned trading on leverage is not for me. And I was never sleeping. It was fucking horrible. I was like, as you said, you're on the plane, you go crazy.

11:45It's 24-7, Mark. I couldn't sleep. So what's your experience? Because mine was a disaster. Yours is more, it's crazy. I don't want to talk about my own experience anymore. Yours is even crazier. But it's very extreme conditions that happen to you, right? Because I don't think under this market condition, it can crash like 50 % or 70%. What happened two weeks ago? Yeah, but it's because I leverage on like 20x. So it's different because only a little bit change in the price. My portfolio will drop a lot. Because, for example, I don't agree with you because I thought the same. Oh, it's very extreme.

12:22But look, in 2021, Bitcoin went from 60K to 30K, like within a few days or weeks when there was the first crash. And then it went back up to like 69K. So there is these liquidation events every few months or maybe once or twice a year, which is made to liquidate everyone. And the problem is for me, what I understood. Yes, to liquidate both the loan and the short. Exactly. Yeah, it suddenly decreased a lot to liquidate all the loans. It suddenly increased a lot to liquidate the short, like probably within a week. they can liquidate both parties and only the exchange make money. So for me, I understood that that day that trading on leverage seems like an illusion or you use these stop losses, right?

13:05But they don't always work from what I understood. Like sometimes it just doesn't, if it goes down too quick. Yeah, but stop loss is also very dangerous because some certainly just drop a lot but then it goes back again. So actually if you have enough margin, you're probably not going to lose that amount of money. if you right sometimes it boils back so basically for me the whole thing was a mind fuck and I was like I can't sleep anymore I lost so much money it's not made for me and if you hold spot yeah you could have made much more in a bull market you outperform everything yeah that's what people said after trying everything about trading they said we should just buy spot exactly that's what happened to me yeah don't trade paper at all so that's why for me it's really interesting to know why you're trading on leverage and all this stuff maybe you're still like in the journey of like I think you are right.

13:50Realizing that, right? I just closed all my positions after this podcast. That's the biggest takeaway for this podcast. I should just close all my positions. Just to be able to sleep and take a plane normally, right? To sleep at nine and be chill. I think right now it's better, but when I just started, it's really hard to sleep. Because you know it's 24 hours, right? And when you just keep losing, you have to keep adding more money into the trading account. Otherwise, you're going to get liquidated. So I think that's really crazy. it's pretty crazy i completely agree with you uh so overall and also right i think internet also plays a very important role in in terms of your journey because people always share about how much money they made on internet right unrealized gains absolutely and that's how you realize profit yeah they never talk about how much money they lose they only talk about how much money they made on on on trade in trading and then they think oh if they can make so much money and i i'm looking at the markets every day and also i've been this in the market for so many so many years probably i know the market as well i can try to trade as well and so you get into the market and get fucked absolutely yeah for me what i realized is like the people who really make a lot of money trading on leverage are the people who basically got fucked so many times lost everything so many times and started to adjust their strategy and to more develop a sort of like gut feeling about the market rather than you know ta and like all these basically indicators that traders most of them they're saying they just use i think volume and price and gut feeling at some point like oh i use this and like i can kind of like know uh on average and i try to know if i lose i try to lose to limit my losses that's like the key yeah yeah yes yes i think there's many ways for people to make money like different ways to make money but the only way to keep money is to have stop loss whenever you can and also you have the strategy before you get into the market say oh how much money i'm gonna lose today if like once you see the kind of amount you just close everything and just leave which is which for me maybe it's because i hate losing and just love winning was it was impossible i was like i can't go into something knowing oh i'm gonna lose that much and accept that you know because the more you lose you're like it might just go back up yes yes yes And then you lose more and more and more.

16:08And like cutting the loss is so painful. I know. But if you made enough money in the beginning and you are just like making less money, right? If you think in that way, it's better. Yeah. For me, it was more like I'll invest. I'll kind of do these swing trades for two years. Like basically you buy, spot, you sell after two years. And then I'm just going to build things. Because my brain is not made for trading on leverage. like it's just fucking like and if you're trading it has to be like really full time like 24 hours even if you are out having fun with your friends you're not looking at the screens yeah if it's going down or going up I think it's really very like mind fucked that's a crazy one I remember being at my sister's birthday she was turning 30 and being crazy there or being with you know my girlfriend or my friends and never mentally present like that's the problem of trading yeah and people think people think I'm gonna trade for freedom because I don't like my 9 to 5 but actually it's consuming you 24 7 and it's destroying your mental health and you're even present anymore right it's true yeah not at all so yeah anyway we are doing the podcast now i'm still thinking about my position because i loaned it at like four three four zero zero and now it's like one thousand dollars like one thousand done so i'm thinking like if it's going up going down while i'm doing this podcast with you so now you so now you have open positions right yeah at this very moment yes horrible it's been like a few days i started like a week ago when it was like high yeah so it's been like a week how many close my positions yeah i feel you i feel you and also i talked to a lot of people uh in taiwan when i went to taipei at least time i talked to a lot of traders i talked to the people from exchange blah blah blah i thought i learned some strategies and then i'm gonna reapply again but still the same thing happens So I'm trying to, it also is like competing with yourself, right?

18:06If this time I make money or like lose less money than the previous months, I improved. So to me, it's like a journey. It's like something, some skill I want to master. What's the max that you risk? Like percentage of like all your crypto holdings or how do you limit? One or two percent. I only used 1 % of the money I had to play with trading. But if you lose 1%, then you add another percent. And then if you lose another percent, you add another percent. That became 3%. Because I have Ethereum and the E's price keeps going up. So it's your hedge, basically. The price of the spot actually covers the loss in the future.

18:46Beautiful. Beautiful. Okay. Amazing. There is, I mean, talking about crypto, So there is another few things that you've been very interested by. So not only trading on leverage, but also meme coins. Yes, meme coins. You went down the meme coin rabbit hole recently. Why? Because I was trying to find alpha on Twitter, but I realized Twitter is not actually where the original alpha is. The earliest alpha started with all these group chats from Telegram group chat, the VChat group chats, where people start to talk about it. And then I just got into one group chat. I was looking at what people are talking about.

19:28And they were talking about this troll. Because Elon Musk changed his Twitter profile to chief troll officer. T-R-O-L-L. Okay. And the traders, some traders bought the coin immediately. Bought or created it? Bought it or created one because they're looking at, oh, what is Elon Musk? It was already there. The token was already there. but once Elon Musk changed his profile to chief troll officer, some traders bought the token immediately. I think just a week ago. And now I think they made like a million dollars. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I was a bit late. I bought at like a price, but I still like 5X.

20:09You're late and you're up 500%. Yeah, 500%. I mean, 4 or 500%. 5X. That's terrible, right? I mean... 5X in one week. I knew it. My God. I already know it when Elon Musk changed, but I didn't bother to buy it. You have to be very active. I just only have two or three days. I'm like, okay, fine, just buy a little bit. So this one is called Troll? Troll, yeah. Troll meme coin. P-R-O-L-L. Is there another meme coin that you are interested in or that you played with? Yeah, it's called Smiley. Smiley. Smiley? Smiley, yeah. It's also Elon Musk concept meme coin. yeah that one I went like 10x 1000 % yeah that covers my loss in the future did you manage to sell because the problem when things go too quickly you don't sell I sold like 50 % because I know when people start talking about it on Twitter it's time to sell otherwise everything is going back to zero exactly when people start to talk about it too much it's probably a bit late right it's not the moment to jump in I think it's more important to know when to sell it's more important than when to buy because if you don't sell anything everything is going back to zero you talked about this meme also called that is doing crazy returns and a lot of people talking about it about it on Twitter dog with hat dog with hat yeah now it's cat with hat it's everything with hat I didn't I'm not I didn't buy yeah but what do you think about the dog with hat concept and do you think it really has like a better potential than others just think some people are saying hey look because there is a hat and you can add a hat everywhere like it's probably one of the best meme cons out out there i don't know i mean i mean for me right i just look at the concept because um i'm not a ulo mask fan but i feel like ulo mask really fits a lot of people in the crypto because everything related to him makes a lot of money so i'm just looking at all the coins that associate themselves with you know mask and then it makes me more focused because that's the kind of the meme coin concept i was looking at so i don't really bother about like like those coins on eth or on like solana or av uh a wax because it's gonna distract me so i only focus on elon and what he's talking about yeah yeah okay there's another thing that uh you've been captivated by which is brc20 and brc420 i think i'm too late for brc20 can you explain what it is because even me i mean i kind of know but i kind of like don't i follow i lost the whole i mean i missed the whole thing brc20 just nft is on bitcoin yeah it's like erc20 but it's brc20 right now so it's like all everything like like ethereum now we move everything from ethereum back to bitcoin Bitcoin is like an NFT attached to the Bitcoin ecosystem.

23:11And there's a lot of tokens, a lot of projects that are building on Bitcoin. I like Bitcoin layer 2 to help to make the Bitcoin ecosystem more secure and faster. It's like a whole new ecosystem. But I think right now it's mainly for the Chinese people, for Bitcoin. I think about 50 % of the Chinese people are into the Bitcoin ecosystem. But for the Westerns, like you, only like 10 to 20%. So I think it's due early. Do you know why? Because I think there's a lot of Bitcoin farmers. They are from China, basically. And they are trying to make more money from the gas fees on the Bitcoin ecosystem.

23:47That's why they are trying to... Talking about this concept right now. You know those farming Bitcoins, right? Yeah. Yeah, they try to make more money by people trading on the Bitcoin ecosystem. So they make more trading fees. Okay. Yeah, that's why the concept originated from China. And it's still more like Chinese people are talking about it and play around with it. Do you know how or why Chinese people are so into Bitcoin despite the government banning Bitcoin so many times and even banning Bitcoin mining, I think it was two years ago? Yeah. It's actually the thing that crashed the price. Because Bitcoin is happening very soon and there's a chance they are not able to make as much money as before.

24:29and therefore they are trying to create all these Bitcoin ecosystem, these narratives so they can make more money before the Bitcoin halving happens. That's some of the explanation I heard from my friends. So they think the Arduino is not going to be popular after the Bitcoin halving. It won't? It won't, yeah. Why? Because once Bitcoin halving, there's nothing more to promote. But before that, people still want to talk about Bitcoin, the farming everything so they can make money from the trading fees when the system got really congested but the of course the american people or the western hate it right because they just make the ecosystem even more congested yeah yeah especially the true bitcoiners who like always said that bitcoin yeah they don't like it at all yes but i think this is the like the new narratives right now and what's popular right now and it's not really like um not people are looking at it I mean, still like for the Western, they are not really looking at Audinos, the Bitcoin ecosystem right now.

25:29So I think there is still potential. Yeah, though, that's why what I'm working on or like what I'm focusing on right now, because I already missed the first hype, which is probably started in June last year. But Audie was like, it's free mint. Yeah. Yeah. All free. Yeah, it's free. Now it's now it's like$70.

25:49There's too many things happening and it's really impossible to yeah so that's why i i didn't really look at out to like op obi chum i don't really have time to look at that impossible i mean very difficult you need to pick up a few things that you like yes probably more like that by interest and then like focus on that because it's impossible there is too much innovation and and it happens so fast yeah everything just happens within like two months yeah audi was like only like ten dollars two months ago and now it's seventy dollars so it just happened so fast within like two months everything in crypto will just move too fast and it's really hard to catch everything yeah

26:30we talked about you said before you said hey I learned about the money management with my business in a very hard way do you want to tell us more about that I would like to talk about business and the reality of entrepreneurship, which most people still don't understand. They think, hey, they think when you start a company, you know, it's like freedom. Like I'm financially not working. It's not at all. And do you want to tell us about your, you know, you've been involved in your first big experience as an entrepreneur with SoCal? What are the key learnings from it? You still have some sort of freedom because you don't need to work on a 9-to-6 job anymore.

27:19But what you give to exchange the freedom is something that is like the mental. You're probably fucked mentally every day, right? Absolutely. And you have people who are trying to get money from you every day when they know you actually raise so much money. and just like a lot of bad things can happen when you actually have money. You thought only good things happen, but actually a lot of bad things happen when you actually have the money. And it's very, very hard to keep. More money, more problems. So many, like if the business is bigger, there's more problems too. What are some of the concrete experiences you've lived where you learned the most regarding this money thing, money management, business, people trying to take advantage?

28:12and where you would have acted differently had you known how people are really and how greedy they are and how not everyone has your values of trying to do the best out of the money you raise. As I said, I think you should make your team very lean at the start. Don't try to make all-star, five-star teams. Oh, I want the best people from here, here, here, here. You're not going to do anything even though you have the best people in the team because they cannot really contribute that much even though they are together, right? So you should just start as lean as possible and don't expand so quickly.

28:52I think that's the most important lesson I learned. So stay lean, have a big vision. Use whatever resources you have at the start, even if you had a lot of money to spend on. So you're saying even if you have a lot of money, you should still, it's very difficult, but you should still see how do I make the best of like simple resources. Yes, exactly. And not even this money, I should kind of like ignore it or like maybe invest a bit like wisely here and there, but think more, hey, look, I raised, let's say, let's say I raised 5 million and I know my entire costs for my current team for the year is 500K.

29:31So basically I can leave, it's more having a mindset of, hey, now I can survive for 10 years without making money instead of saying, hey, let's get 10 times bigger directly, right? Yeah, yeah. Because if you can survive in time... I think it also depends on the market condition because sometimes it's a bull market and you have to develop really, really fast. Otherwise, the hype is going to go away. I think that is fine to expand, but you have to really know the exact right time to expand at the right situation. Otherwise, the money just goes away. And when Frank had... really very popular and a lot of advisors or like investors were like why don't you just do a a front tech version like a aka like front tech yeah and build into the so-called the platform yeah and of course it takes at least like two weeks right and by the time if i listen to his otherwise by the time we build the product out front tech already died yeah so that's the time where you need to choose whether you want to build these functions or not whether you want to catch the hype or not it's basically learning how to control your formal right and the more you have means the more you're like ah if i can afford all this stuff i can just form all in yeah because there's always a delay yes it's the same as buying a coin yeah i have the money to buy the coin but i'm for for moving into this thing but it's probably kind of too late you have to have like this kind of trust like gut feeling and instinct probably bought at the top right when you when you got it exactly so it's really very hard

31:02how hard is it to build a business how hard it's just a lot of but I think it's hard but a good thing is I learned a lot along the journey and I'm much more mentally tough right now compared to two years ago you know two years ago when I started Iron Dao there are so many people who are criticizing and they say I'm a man at the time because they find a photo of me on a blog shop wearing like a costume and they think I like me steal the photo from the blog shop to post it on my Twitter to find engagement but it was a real photo of you? yeah it's the blog shop who steal my photo on Instagram but the people think I steal the photo from the blog shop to post on Twitter because they find this photo on this foreign blog shop so they think I'm a man who is still in the blog shop's photo to post as a woman and it's actually from a very big KOL I still remember his name he's called Gansey do you know Gansey?

32:05Gansey, yeah of course yeah Gansey, he's the one that started everything he said oh Irene is a man blah blah blah all these guys who bought his NFT got scammed because he was a man and literally I cried you know just because people think I'm a man and actually when I when I talked to a very successful entrepreneur like OG in the crypto space. I was like, and he saw me crying. He's like, why? He said, oh, because people think I'm a man. He was laughing. He said, I don't think you're ready to be an entrepreneur. You are so mentally weak. Develop on that. Develop, it's so interesting. But right now, you know, I'm just like went through all these things for the past two years.

32:40People blah, blah, blah, blah. That if people think you're a man or you're a monster, you would not care anymore, right? Because you develop your tolerance to stress and to fuck up. You stretch yourself. So much. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. For me, I mean, I've been building companies since I'm 23, and it's probably the way to become mature and grow as quickly as possible. Like you have employees, and then maybe you hire some people who have kids and a family to take care of, but then you need to fire them and all that stuff. I remember crying, I mean, multiple times. Once I was crying at 23 because I had to fire my first co-founder.

33:11Once I was crying because I had to fire this dude who had a family to take care of, right? But it was not even my fault that we had to fire him. we had gotten a big project that we needed more people on. We hired this dude and then after three or four months we lose the big project because the person who hired us internally from this big company got fired. And so the whole political thing is fuck because he's not there anymore so we're going to lose the project. And I'm like fuck I don't have the money anymore to pay this guy. But like I'm a horrible person I just hired this person. He has a family depending on me.

33:44And like I have to tell him tomorrow that it's over, right? And so he's going to be in trouble because of me and the whole family and everything. And then you just spend the night crying and feeling horrible. And then at the end of the day, I was just like, hey, man, I'll just pay you a plane ticket wherever you want because I'm sorry, right? And then, I mean, he ended up doing really well anyway. But it's more like all these things that you think is like the end of the world, but actually it is not. It's just like one more shit, you know? And then at some point, the smaller shits that looked huge in the beginning, just like, don't care and I got so mad when the first investor rejected the project he didn't even reply he just ghosted us I was so mad when I got ghosted by the investors you mean an investor or a potential investor a potential investor you basically learned that you should have zero ego towards customers towards investors towards people in general like the ego doesn't work in business because no one gives a fuck about you that's completely true yeah yeah so I'm like very I'm shameless now like no matter what you say I'm not okay don't care I don't care unbothered in my lane focused but it's true I mean if you think about if you everybody think about something and you have to take it to like take it personally there's no way you can you keep growing or you can develop yourself right because you are just like mentally fucked by so many different voices so many criticisms, whatever people can say about you.

35:14Probably even more when you're a woman and you look good. Yeah, I don't care anymore. Don't you think so? Like people attack you much more. You know, there is, I mean, what do you think about the reputation, which is not really a reputation, that female influencers make money just for being pretty? I mean, that's the assets they have, right? That's one of the assets I had. And as I said, it's really tough to remain pretty because you have to put in a lot of efforts to look good, to even look good. So I think if you have the assets and you know how to use it strategically, because people are not dumb.

35:50If you keep using it, reuse, reuse, reuse it, people will get bored anyways, right? You eventually lost that advantage. But if you know how to use it, like carefully, you know how to make the best value out of it, then you are smart. People will also think you are smart. Absolutely. You went through at the first, they think, ah, this woman just used her face to blah, blah, blah. But once you do it bigger and bigger, people think, oh, actually, she's great. She's smart. So people change the perception when you are being successful. They help you justify what you have been doing in the past. Is pretty privilege real?