The Unexpected Benefits of Helping Others with Kevin Wojton

Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, wherever you are in the world.

Welcome to the Krillionaire Crypto Chat, where we'll talk about interesting things, emerging technology, blockchains, how to make money, and just meet some really cool people.

I've invited Kevin Watjan along to have a chat to us.

Kevin's sitting in New York right now.

I'm sitting in Byron Bay.

What day is it there, mate?

What day?

7th.

Okay, so Thursday, you've.

You've just had the US elections.

I'm in Australia.

So we're a day ahead.

It's.

It's past news for us.

We've all moved on.

We don't care anymore.

So we'll probably ignore the politics and just have a look at what's going on in your life.

Mike.

Yeah, thank you for having me on this.

You know, I'm really impressed and really enjoy talking to amazing people.

You know, this podcast is a really great way to help get unique knowledge out to people so they can make their lives better.

And we're here just to chat about how we can do that, what's worked for us, and, you know, how we've made money and how we've maybe lost money and, you know, at the end of the day, we all can make mistakes, but we all have to learn from each other.

So, you know, I'm really excited to chat today with you, Jeremy.

Love to learn from you.

You know, you're.

Boston Trading has been doing some amazing work in the crypto space.

I've worked in automated trading, fintech, venture investing, real estate, a lot of different asset classes, including crypto.

So I'm sure we can talk about, you know, I'm sure we both have a lot of great insights here for the listeners.

Absolutely, absolutely.

So tell us a bit about your background, Mike.

Yeah, I'm.

I started my career in investment banking, high frequency trading.

I also built numerous startups and sold them.

Sorry, if there's.

You can hear the sirens outside, it's New York.

But I invested in a lot of companies, sold them, grew them.

I was a early team member at a company called Capsule.

We raised about $600 million in less than two years.

You know, I've invested a lot of money in real estate.

What I really enjoy doing, my background is just championing and elevating founders and really trying to focus on humanity enhancing ventures.

Okay, what about you?

Would you.

Do you have any sort of insights for the crowd about your background and what you're doing?

I know they probably listened to your podcast before, but for those new listeners.

Yeah, I was, I was just going to ask you what, what do you mean by humanity enhancing conventions?

Because that could be anything really.

Smiling at strangers as you walk to walk to work or.

Yeah, yeah, there is a lack of humanity in today's world.

So how do we make the world a better place?

Yeah, I could build a SaaS business app that sell to enterprise users and banking apps.

But you know, that's not fun.

What's fun is reducing human suffering.

Right.

There seems to be a unfortunate trend of suffering increasing over time.

So you know, try to combat that.

But I can tell you about some of the companies just to give you some examples.

So.

Yeah, so one of the companies I helped start was a drone swarm company.

We released product in Eastern Europe, wink wink, South Africa for anti human trafficking and anti poaching, you know, all humanitarian efforts.

And the idea being that, you know, if it's within my means and our means to, you know, we refuse to stand idly by, well, injustice in the world occurs.

So we have a drone swarm company, we have a building decarbonization company that for no costs out of pocket.

It's called Green Street Global.

If you're a building owner, go check it out.

For no costs out of pocket, they'll reduce your operating costs for utilities about 20 to 50% by doing upgrades to your building and then they just share in the cost savings.

We do that.

You know, a lot of AI toolings, you know, so you know, trying to save the world from global warming warfare, you know, food security.

We work with a bunch of farms and South Africa as well.

And yeah, we just try to help entrepreneurs win because if one company becomes a Facebook, that's going to change the lives of hundreds, thousands, millions of people by creating jobs, you know, so that's kind of our focus.

Excellent.

Wide, wide variety of projects there.

M.

Yeah, you know, it's, it's, you know, we're not really focused on an industry.

If I find a founder that's worth investing in, I just go all in, you know.

Drones and some of these things that are amazing, like very, very cost effective methods of self defense for a country.

Yeah, it's interesting.

You know, I'll put it this way.

The US technology is about 40 years ahead of everybody else, you know, where they're still using FPV drones, you know, and very rudimentary technologies.

You know, there's just such a gap between the US and everyone else that bridging that gap isn't that hard because they don't have the talent, time or energy.

You Know, so coming in and being a consultant and helping out, you know, with specific applications, it's just you help them with one thing, build goodwill and then you're there saving lives and that's what really matters, you know, are you.

Saving human lives and you're saving the planet with the, with the green buildings and also feed, feeding the hungry with the, with the farm.

So it's amazing.

Yeah, exactly.

You know my, I also had started a non profit where I taught about 500 people coding for free.

Started about 15 companies out of that that generated about 200 jobs.

There's a lot of them are still running.

Sold those, those entrepreneurs went on to start companies that are now hiring hundreds if not thousands of people.

So the model of giving first just works, right?

I always tell people, they come to me and talk to them their startup and I'm like, no, no, no, you got it wrong.

You gotta go help people first, build goodwill and then you can build your company.

I don't care about, I have five companies but I don't tell anyone about them.

I just say, how can I help you?

What can I do for you?

Because as soon as you reverse that script, everything starts working your favor.

When you look at yourself and say me, my, my thing.

Investment, me and me.

Yeah, you got to do that.

But go help 100 people first.

And then when they, when you help them, they're going to help you.

Right?

And that's how it turns around.

So that's why also you can do the right thing and make more money than you would otherwise.

It's kind of like a crazy thing.

That's what I call being a humanist over a capitalist.

When you treat people right, you can make way more money.

You know, capitalism loves to extract value.

If you add value, you know, you can, everyone wins instead of you losing and me winning as a capitalist, you know.

Fantastic.

You've just encapsulated some of my philosophies there.

So the, the wealth boomerang thing for years in New York, the radio show that I did for years in New York, every, every week it went out to about 50 million people for two years.

And that was all about, you know, whatever you send out comes back to you like a boomerang.

And it's a philosophy that's in every major religion, whether it's Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity, whatever, whatever you give out comes back to you.

So always looking to add value, which is fantastic.

Do you have any suggestions for people listening about the best way they can do that, get started in that kind of.

You also don't want to get taken advantage of by giving freely.

Do you have any advice on how to balance that of trying to give without, you know, wasting all your time?

Yeah, I think, you know, there's, there's a good analogy would be gardening.

And you know, in investment worlds, we always talk about diversifying.

And in the garden, you know, you want to plant different crops and things like that, because if the bugs come in and eat all your wheat, well, at least you've got some peaches and some apricots and some.

Some other things growing.

So, you know, if you want to be helping humanity and adding value, if you're adding value always to one person and that person is a leech and they just want all your time and they want everything for free, you're going to get burned out very, very quickly.

But if you're helping 10 people, hopefully, you know, at least 20 or 30 or 20 or 30% of those people are going to be the ones who actually take that value and do something else with it.

So finding fertile soil.

So, yeah, to people who are sowing into others, I mean, obviously volunteering your time at a food bank or something like that, where someone's got the similar philosophy for you.

If you want to give and add value and someone else is always taking, then there's going to be a problem.

But if you're giving adding value to someone else who also wants to give and add value, then it's going to make the world a better place.

Yeah, and that's a great point.

You're absolutely right.

And I think that's one thing I learned over my life too, is that you got to test people, right?

We can't.

You can trust people, but you got to trust but verify, right?

So when I go out and help people, I.

I'll go out and make 20 investor connections with them, and then I'll call them up after and say, hey, you know, let's say you close one of those deals, what's my cut?

How are we going to work together?

And they say, I'm not going to give you anything.

I don't want to work with you.

Thanks for the intro.

See you later.

I'm like, all right, well know I gave you my least quality intros, so, you know, you kind of there because that was a test and you failed.

But the founders that come back and you're are like, oh my gosh, you've done more work than anyone else in my life.

I'm so thankful.

I love what you're doing.

How can I keep motivating and incentivizing you, you know, I'll give you, you know what, what do you think's fair, right?

So if that dialogue is a two way street, you gotta test people, you got to prove their merit.

95% of people wear a mask and you got to just lift it up a little bit and peer under.

Actions always speak louder than words.

And so my rule of thumb is I'll help anyone, right?

And I'll go out of my way to leave something better than I left it, ideas, thoughts, places, you know, whatever, just because that's the right thing to do.

But if they're not going to give back the energy I give them, that's it, right?

And then I'll double down on them after that, and then I'll double down again, and then I'll double down again.

Because I'm not going to waste my time with someone who takes the mentality of scarcity.

I need people who are equally as mentality of abundance because they don't have that, they're going to screw themselves over.

They got to learn the lessons the hard way that it's not about you or me, it's about others, right?

And that's.

Do you have any advice?

Was that good advice or would you have any suggestions to people how to get started in that humanism?

I think that's great.

Trust, trust and verify.

We'll take a little break and we'll come right back.

Let's go.

So you said trust but verify, which is something that if people have been in the crypto world for a little while, it is a great mantra to have.

I haven't heard it used in human interactions before.

Interesting story.

Because we met in the US I was flying out of LAX late at night and I'd gone through, gone through security and that sort of stuff.

And there's the food court and it's like 8:00 at night.

So do I have dinner now or do I wait till I get on the plane and see what the plane food is like?

And I was standing there thinking about it and this guy came up to me and he said, oh, hey, can you help me out?

And I'm like, okay.

He just randomly, you know, walked up to me, he said, I need to get some food, but you know, I don't have any cash on me and I've lost my card.

So if I transfer some money into your account, can you buy me some dinner?

And my first thought was, well, that sounds reasonable.

But my second thought was, you can dispute a bank transaction, right?

So he could transfer 100 bucks into my bank account, I could buy him his dinner, and then the next day he could phone the bank and say, oh, no, I didn't authorize that transaction.

And he could reverse that money back out of my account.

Right.

This is why we have cryptocurrency, because once you transfer your Bitcoin or your Ethereum to someone, it's there, it can't go back.

Nobody on earth has the power to reverse that transaction.

Which is, which is one of the things I love about crypto is it's, it's completely transparent.

It can't be tampered with.

Unlike bank transaction, people can buy your product, and if you're in business, you'll know this.

People can buy your product, and six months later they can contact the credit card company and say, oh, no, that product was no good, or it fell apart or whatever, and the bank will just pull the money out of your business account.

And then you've got to try and get it back or prove that the person is lying.

A lot of it went on during the pandemic where people were actually effectively stealing from companies.

They'd order things and then say, oh, no, no, it never turned up.

So trust that.

Verify is very, very important.

So have you got some examples how it's worked in your life?

Yeah, you know, I would say that every single time I help someone, it always came back 10x, maybe not a year later, maybe not four years later.

But when I, you know, when I help someone, they always are there and they got my back because they know, you know, we're in it together.

A good example of that, actually.

Will you give me an example of yours?

I can think of two immediately.

One is from the olden days because people used to carry checks around kids.

That was one of the things we did.

And you had to keep a balance of how many checks you'd written versus how much money you got in the bank because it was easy to write out more checks than you had space for.

And I was doing a reconciliation of my business account one day and I went, holy crap.

I'd forgotten about a couple of things because I had automatic debits coming out of my account as well as writing checks.

And I'd forgotten about a couple of things and my account was going to bounce.

Like, there was definitely going to be a couple of checks that I'd written that were going to bounce by a couple of hundred dollars.

And of course, this was the olden days when checks were around.

A couple of hundred dollars was, was Big bickies to me back then.

And I just sat there looking at it and going, oh, my God, this is going to happen.

And then I'm going to get charged a fee by the bank for overdrawing my account, so I'll be even more in the red.

And I just went, you know what?

I believe in the power of the universe.

I believe in giving out, and it'll come back to me.

So what I did is I wrote out another big check to a local charity, right?

And because I figured, like, if the account's going to bounce, if the check's going to bounce, it may as well bounce a lot, right?

Like, what's the difference between being overdrawn $400 to being overdrawn $1,000?

Like, who cares?

So I wrote this big check out and then sent the check off.

And then I waited and I waited and I waited.

I knew I'd get a phone call from the bank, right?

They always phone up.

Nothing happened.

And it'd been about a week, and I'm like, this is really weird.

And I didn't realize that he hadn't paid my last paycheck when I'd left.

But all of a sudden he realized, and he sent me the money.

Didn't call me, didn't notify me.

So these checks that I thought were going to bounce, there was actually all this money piled into my account, and it covered the charity donations and it covered everything.

And I was back in the black, and I was like, oh, my God, that was amazing.

And literally this week, so I've just had a big trip, 22 days in the US where I was going to conferences and meeting people 8am till midnight every day, seven days a week.

I didn't get a lot of work done, didn't have a lot of stuff happening.

I was just spending money, meeting people, having a great old time.

Came back to my office and go, oh, actually, the account's getting a little bit below my water bark.

I need to do some work.

And I did three days work.

Nothing came in.

I'm like, okay, well, that's okay.

And then I got to the stage where I was like, it's getting close to the watermark.

When it gets below a certain level, I start to panic, right?

And whatever that figure is for you, whether it's below a hundred dollars in your account or below 20,000 or below 20 million, whatever that figure is.

I was getting close to that watermark, and part of me is like, oh, I got a hustle.

I got to push harder.

I got to put pressure on.

I went, you know what?

No, I'm going to start my day off by donating.

And so I went on to one of the partner sites that we have, B1G1, and I got water for 900 people.

And I educated a couple of people, gave some micro loans away, you know, and impacted around about a thousand people and went, you know what?

I'm just going to do that, like the last little bit of my watermark money.

And then there was a guy that I'd spoken to maybe six or 12 months ago, and I hadn't followed him up because he was selling a property, he was developing a property.

It was going to take ages to get DA approval and that sort of stuff.

And out of the blue, this guy emailed me, like within 10 minutes of me giving away all this money, this guy emailed me and said, hey, I've finally done that da.

I've finally sold the property.

I want to put six figures into your investment fund.

And I'm like, wow, that was quick.

It was literally, you know, it wasn't even 15, 20 minutes after I'd done it.

It just happened.

Oh, no way.

And it's.

That's how.

And it's weird how the universe works like that.

Like, as soon as you stop thinking about yourself and helping others and start thinking about helping others, you know, it gives back.

And it's a weird thing.

I don't know if you believe in that too, but there is, there's a.

An energy there that I don't know what it is.

What do you want to touch on that?

What are your thoughts there?

It's probably I.

It depends if you're.

If you're spiritual over your scientist, if you're spiritual, then every religion has written about, you know, cast your bread upon the water and it'll return back to you in many days, you know, given.

It will come back to you.

Press down, shaken together, full method, running over it.

As I say, it's in Christianity, it's in Judaism, it's in Hinduism, it's in Buddhism.

This idea of sending out and it comes back to you.

But also, if you, if you're just a basic student of physics, you know, reaction, there's an equal and opposite reaction.

So, yeah, it is interesting.

In every religion there is that karma, you know, Hinduism, you know, there's so much about that.

And I think it's a very Western concept to think of me before everyone else.

Right.

And I.

And, like, really.

And I'll put it this way, we could kind of move on to the next topic, but, you know, it's the most important thing to do once you realize that life gets easier.

If you sit and stir and say, woe is me, and I'm.

There's no way out of it.

You create that power of attraction and you create a cage around yourself and the.

And it's hard.

I mean, depression, it gets you anxiety.

You know, people use drugs and alcohol and just creates this cloud around you that stops that energy.

And I'm not religious, but I do believe it kind of puts you in a position where you're kind of blocking receiving by not giving.

Right.

And every time I get into a space where I'm like, oh, this is it, I'm.

You know, this business is going to go whatever.

I just give.

I.

You can't give up, of course, but I did exactly what you did, right.

I go out and I say, I need to go help 15 people because I obviously don't have my network big enough to have 100 people.

I can call when I'm in need.

And then I build that up, you know, and try to make sure I have a long list of people that.

That would go to the bat for me, that would say things and try to help.

If I get no out now, I can call, you know, 15 people in businesses, and if I'm broke, I can say, can I have a job?

Because when they started their business, I helped them with their first fundraising, I helped them build tech, I helped them go through the, you know, the.

For no cost.

I just did it because I want to see them be successful.

And I mean, it's not job security, because I might say no, but I know there's a better chance than trying to apply for jobs, you know, so, you know, I think that's what it's all about.

So.

Yeah, for sure.

All right, we'll take a quick break and we'll come right back.

Yeah.

All right, so we're back.

We're talking about quantum physics, we're talking about the fields of energy, we're talking about all sorts of mystical, magical stuff.

But again, it's got.

It's got scientific basis.

So, you know, people, when.

But, you know, there's, there's actually scientific evidence for it now.

So, I mean, you're saying you're helping people and sometimes I've been in situations in my life.

Like I've had 13 startup businesses.

Some went well, some didn't go well.

I've actually been homeless on a couple of occasions because I wasn't going to, no matter what, I wasn't going to inconvenience my customers, my investors.

You know, I was, I was paying $30,000 rent on a business prem, and I was sleeping on the floor in a garage because, you know, I literally was putting everything into everybody else and looking after everybody else.

Sometimes you don't have the cash to give away.

But as you're saying, you can volunteer, you can help people, whether you're helping people in business, whether you're going and dishing out soup at the homeless shelter, you know, and you might meet somebody there who's another volunteer who's looking for something.

So there's always a way of giving out some form of energy, whether it's cash, whether it's time, supporting people, helping people, loving.

Yeah.

And my, my suggestion is if you want to get started on this humanity, you know, humanism approach of helping others, my suggestion, I do this every day.

Go to LinkedIn, go follow 100, 200, 500 founders.

Go follow 2, 3, 500 VCs and investors.

Now all you got to do is friend request them.

Bam, bam, bam, bam.

Expand your work and then talk.

You know, if you see a founder that's doing something that looks of interest, reach out to them.

Just say, hey, I would love to help out.

If you're fundraising, you know, with your permission, I'd love to tag you in some posts on LinkedIn.

And I do this all day just for fun.

If I see in my head, I'll connect with the founders, like in, you know, biotech.

I don't do anything in biotech, But I saw LinkedIn post about an investor in biotech saying, hey, can I.

Anyone know any good biotech companies?

And I said, yeah, this is biochar company.

This guy, he's amazing.

You got to talk to him.

They invested $2 million into that company like a month later.

And, you know, now that guy called me and was like, hey, that was.

You did more help than anyone in my whole life.

And I was like, I didn't do anything, man.

You did it all yourself.

I hyped him up and all I did was just try to make connections.

And I.

He was like, you know, I want to pay you, I want to do this.

And I was like, I just want equity.

Just give me whatever equity.

I don't care.

I'm not going to try to take money from you.

Just whatever equity.

And I thought it was going to be like 3%.

He signed over a vesting schedule for like almost 8 and a half percent.

I was like, oh, amazing.

Let's go, biotech company.

Yeah.

So, I mean, I'll get diluted to about 1% in about a year, but, you know, but that's what it is.

And I think I see so many founders, so many people in the world hustling.

They're out there on the phone, they're calling, they're emailing.

But like, that one connection took me five seconds, you know, and it's just about that, like, really try to think about how to use your time the best.

LinkedIn is incredible, you know, but if you did that for 10 people a day, you're going to get on the radar for VCs, you're going to get on the radar for founders.

People are going to say, who the hell is this person that's going out of their way just to help and stoke people up?

Right?

And that, to me, is just the best way to practice.

Take 20 minutes of your day, go on LinkedIn, find the people who need capital, find the people who invest capital, disconnect them, that's it, and you'll become a millionaire, you know, within two, three years just by being on LinkedIn.

I don't know if you agree or not.

Maybe you won't become a millionaire, but you have a good chance to become one.

You know, it certainly increases your chances and you're not actually risking anything because you can become a millionaire by going to the casino and betting on red 10 times in a row.

But you obviously got a chance of losing everything.

I mean, you can invest in crypto and you can become a millionaire overnight, and you can lose 99% the following day.

Exactly.

By.

By utilizing connections and by just helping people and trusting in the universe has got your back.

I think that that's amazing advice, Mike.

Yeah.

And question for you.

So for all the founders, business owners, people, if you had to tell someone one piece of advice, what would it be?

Well, in all the businesses you ran of failure successes, is there anything that stands out to you to be like, hey, listen to this, right?

Oh, one piece of advice.

It's hard to distill it down to one piece of advice, because I'd like to give 10 based on my experiences and my failures and things like that.

But I'd say one, if you only had one piece of advice, it would be to get a coach.

Now there's.

There's people out there who have done a weekend workshop.

They paid $50, and now they're an officially licensed business coach or a life coach or some bullshit.

But you want a coach who's actually done the thing that you're looking to do.

So.

Yeah.

My first business, I've shared with Kevin previously in my first business, I thought I was smart.

You know, I was good at school.

I thought I was clever, but I had no street smarts.

Right.

There's people who dropped out of school at 15 because they weren't good academically, but they were good with their hands, and they went on to own mechanic workshops or became builders or whatever and built a huge industry.

I thought I was clever academically.

I started the business.

Within six months.

I was broke.

Right.

Yeah.

I didn't know there was actually things that you need to know that are street smarts that are not taught at school.

So getting.

Getting a business coach, which I did for.

For my subsequent business, and, you know, that business became successful because there was someone who'd actually walked the walk and knew the things that I didn't know.

So.

Yeah, and I'd agree with you.

I think that's my number one advice.

I wish I had a business coach for my last so many ventures.

Right.

I had the same problem as you is I thought I was smart, and that's the worst place to be in.

And my advice to every founder that I tell now is if you feel like you get slighted, if you feel emotional towards anything, never make a rash decision.

Right.

I wish I had a good.

I had a, you know, investors, family.

Everyone's giving you different advice, but you like what you said.

You need someone who's independent, doesn't have any skin in the game, doesn't really care.

They just want you to be successful.

And you got to listen to them.

Right.

And, you know, at the end of the day, you know, like, as a founder, as someone trying to make take on risk and win, you will make bad mistakes.

You will, and you will learn the hard way.

So go get a goddamn business coach, because hopefully they'll stop you.

Right?

So.

And I wish I had that.

Like, I.

My whole life, I never really had a good, strong mentor.

I was always just figuring it out and failing and learning and scaling and growing and doing bigger and bigger, taking on more risk.

But I needed someone to be like, yo, that's probably not the best way to do it, you know?

So there was just no one challenging me.

Everyone was like, wow, you're doing so well.

You know what you're doing?

And that kind of creates this negative or positive feedback loop that ends up in you buying into your own hype.

So my real advice is never buy into your own hype.

Know that you're just a person and you will make mistakes and people depend on you.

So don't, you know, go get a business coach.

That's a great advice.

And don't believe what your friends and family tell you, because they love you.

They'll be supportive, but they've probably got no experience.

So find someone who's got the experience.

And never, ever make a decision in a vacuum.

Right.

I made so many decisions in a vacuum, thinking I knew best, and every time I did that, I found out later I did not know best.

So never ever make big decisions in a vacuum.

Fantastic.

We'll wrap it up for this week's episode.

I think that's brilliant advice.

We didn't really get to discuss the intricacies of AI or crypto, but we'll do that next time.

This is more about business and the universe and motivation and inspiration, which I'm sure a lot of people would find helpful on a general level.

And we'll come back to you next time.

Thank you, Kevin.

Thank you for listening, and we'll catch you very soon.

Adios.