Here’s what I know - you can’t build a citadel by yourself.
I just got back from a mini Bitcoin speaking tour. First, I was at the Canadian Bitcoin Conference in Montreal where I spoke on a panel about treasury companies and then I travelled to Lugano Switzerland for Plan ₿ where I spoke on a panel about mainstream adoption, one on quantum computing & was a judge on the CyperTank show.
I never enjoyed the process of traveling. I LOVE being in new places and experiencing what new cities & geographies have to offer - but I don’t look forward to the process of travelling.
Packing, booking flights & hotels, researching where to stay and where to eat, sorting through what to do, adding things to my calendar, contact people and chatting about plans, chasing after people on DMs. Gag me.
For this reason I don’t travel to a lot of Bitcoin conferences. However, by staying in my comfort zone at home, I miss a lot of opportunities to grow, expand and be a bigger part of this once-in-a-lifetime revolution we’re living through.
In Jan 2023, I was stressed about financial markets, the ongoing wars, the Canadian political problems & all the bitcoin vs crypto drama going on at the time. I was letting that affect how I interacted with my wife & daughter, and it impacted how I looked at myself in the mirror.
Without realizing it, by focusing too much on the long time preference combined with filling my mind with spam & not controlling my inputs, I had put up a barrier around my heart, preventing me from truly enjoying the present moment & tainting my view of my life.
Even though I felt my ego was in check and I was a happy-go-lucky guy around friends, my logical side was fully in control, and it made me focus more on the gap in where I wanted to be than the gains I was making along the journey.
One day I was thinking I needed to change my surroundings to get me out of this funk and truly start enjoying my life - a mini midlife crisis perhaps. The Bitcoin price was starting to rise & I got it in my head that I just needed to buy a nicer home in a nicer neighborhood.
Then I recalled a line from Letters From Seneca.
“You must change your mind, not your place. Though you may cross the sea, you carry your faults with you.”
Commonly paraphrased as:
“No matter where you travel, you take yourself with you.”
That set me on a path to look inside myself and figure out what was causing me to feel unhappy.
In mid-late 2022, I had gone down the rabbit hole of the Great Depression & read a lot about financial collapses of the past couple of centuries.
I got myself to a place where I really believed Bitcoin was now inevitable, its rise to global reserve asset unstoppable even during a great depression 2.0 event.
When my conviction in Bitcoin reached such a place of unshakeable strength (after 11 years & 4 brutal bear markets in BTC) - I started to think about whether or not I would have the strength to hold on for the rest of the ride.
I thought about what it might be like in 20 years when 1 BTC is $20,000,000 per coin.
In Bitcoin we all know about the meme of The Citadel, where bitcoiners build sovereign fortresses all over the world to protect ourselves & our vassals from fiat collapse.
The citadel is kinda of a self-deprecating, ridiculous meme in its Reddit time-traveller origins. It was a troll, but we took control of it like most trollish memes like Maxi, Toxic, etc. Even though it’s a joke, what if it’s true?
As I explored whether I was the kind of person who could hold on to BTC for the next 100X & whether I could handle the problems that come along with citadel level wealth - I realized it wasn’t anyone or anything else that had to change, it was me.
If I was operating from a place of fear & letting myself get frustrated out of traveling to bitcoin centres & spending time with my most positive peers because of the thought of booking flights & coordinating with people, I would never be able to lead a team to build a citadel.
So since then, I’ve been leveling-up as a leader, husband, father & sovereign individual. I’m building a citadel mind & body to keep pace with Bitcoin’s growth.
If you’re all in Bitcoin, everyone knows about the exercise to take your current amount of wealth & 10X it - then think if you’ve got the appropriate level of security in your setup.
However, I invite you to try this exercise:
Take your current problems and 10X them.
If the thought of 10Xing your current problems scares you like it did me, you might want to consider starting to work on a citadel mind & body of your own.
I hired a lot of coaches & I started reducing the time I spent online and increasing the amount of time I spent learning new skills & putting them to work.
Regarding the trips, my coach Dan Martell gave me a good blueprint for traveling. Here’s what he does:
1 To protect his time, he bought a private jet & charges a speaking fee where farther distance = higher cost.
2 He either brings his family or he sells seats on his jet to cover the jet fuel expenses.
3 He brings his media team and records content on the trip. Either lifestyle footage for his vlog, or business content for his social media.
4 He gets a driver in the city he’s going to be in, and has his Executive Assistant (or House Manager) setup his lodging so he has the right food & can get right to his healthy habits when he lands. (No stressing about what to eat or where to work out.)
5 He lines up podcasts & media shoots in the city the conference is happening in so he can get some good content on the trip.
6 He organizes a founder dinner or office tour and brings along his jet mastermind crew or any entrepreneurs in the city he’s in for some next-level private networking.
If you execute this playbook correctly, all of your travel actually pays for itself & helps build your brand & increase your influence online.
Imagine a life where you can just show up to what’s on the calendar & run through life trusting everything is figured out to your preferences. Snags are resolved by your team right away, and you don’t have to waste time doing things that drain your energy.
This only works efficiently though if you use Playbooks & SOPs and syncs-ups & direct report coaching sessions to keep things moving forward in a positive direction. Each problem is a puzzle to solve and update the SOP/Playbook.
So while I’m not quite at Dan Martell levels, I did hire an Executive Assistant and I’ve been trying to prioritize living out of my calendar and letting my team handle logistics & execution.
This last trip in Montreal the team got practice organizing some events like a Bitcoin Hike & Founder Dinner & Proof of Work gym sessions.
I presently struggle with executing Dan’s playbook to anywhere near his level, but I’m not giving up.
It’s hard to go from 40 years of operating as a move-fast-break-things solopreneur with no need to develop leadership skills to then transition from a leader who delegates & accomplishes more by building a machine using systems & processes.
However, one things’s for certain - you can’t build a citadel by yourself - and we’ve got time to figure it out.
I’m lucky that I get to travel with the love of my life. My relationship with my wife of ~20 years is also at all time highs because I’ve been focusing on living a life of proof of work and inspiring those around me, rather than trying to drag everyone along on my journey.
We arrived in Lugano by train we were impressed by the beauty of the area. The conference organizers put us up in an incredible room.
I was extremely tired, tried to stay up but had to take a nap - after I worked out in the hotel gym to try to fix my jet lag and then we went to the POW space in Lugano.
I got a full tour by Giacomo and Mir. This is probably one of the best examples of a modern Bitcoin citadel being built before our eyes by Bitcoin companies like Blockstream, Tether, Fulgur & the Bitcoiners in Lugano.
I was speaking on a panel with Adam Back, Roy from Breeze & Francis from Bull Bitcoin. It was a couple of days before the actual Plan B event started, but some friends were in town.
I invited Willy Woo and gave him a big heart-to-heart hug when I saw him. Was really nice to see him after what seemed like a couple of years! At the afterparty across the street at Proof of Steak, Willy took an hour of his time to have a big chat with my wife Liz. He’s so kind to sit and chat with her.
I met up with Adam Back who was also staying at the same hotel as me. Adam shared an Uber back & had dinner with my wife & I. We had a long catch-up chat with him about living in Malta, his travels, our diet preferences and then we got into a 30-minute discussion about the Bitcoin spam debate which I have been ignoring.
We chatted past midnight & after dinner with Adam, I went over and had a chat with Preston Pysh and Max from DebiFi + Roy from Breez about traveling, lifestyle and borrowing against your bitcoin to fund lifestyle upgrades.
We chatted for 20 min or so and then retired to bed around 1 am Switzerland time.
The next day was the CypherTank recording hosted by Walker America & Joe Nakamoto. I was honoured to be asked to do a short podcast with Mir, and spent the day at the POW space mingling with fellow bitcoin investors & startup entrepreneurs working out of the space or pitching on the show.
After that, I walked back along the breathtaking waterfront, saw the Satoshi monument as well as bitcoin artifacts & ads here and there.
I hit the incredible spa for a soak and sauna session at the hotel & my wife & I went out for a private steak dinner with Jameson Lopp, Carla & Walker, Nico & Willy Woo. BTC Archie showed up as well with his podcast producer.
We had a long chat about bitcoin culture, the future of BTC as a social movement, the quantum risk, and debated the merits of selling some BTC to give lifestyle comfort guarantees vs being fully exposed to BTC price volatility & risk.
On the walk home my wife ask me if I realized what a big deal it is that I am in this position to be asked to speak, have my hotel covered, invited to dinners & asked to go on this show that might turn into something special.
I realized I wasn’t really internalizing it. When Giacomo first asked me to be a judge in the CyperTank show a month or so ago, initially I felt a wave of gratitude for the opportunity and immediately said yes.
But then time passed, and it just became normal life - tick tock, next block - what’s the next problem to solve on the to-do list.
The next morning I was reading my daily entry in “Your Big Leap Leap Year” (a daily journal compendium to The Big Leap), which was incredibly appropriate for the situation:
“What’s the difference between feeling you deserve love, success, and abundance, and feeling that you’re entitled to them? Thought it may seem like semantics, the difference is profound.
Deserving means feeling worthy. Feeling worthy leads to gratitude and appreciation, furthering the cycle of positivity.
Entitlement has a demanding quality to it. When you get something you think is owed to you, it’s like getting a pay check. There’s very little gratitude or wonder generated in your heart at receiving it.”
Along the path to building our citadels, we should become aware of any feelings of entitlement and make sure to stay in the energy of gratitude.
I’ve been trying to feel genuine worthiness and warmth in my heart...to really breathe in the gratitude and sit with it before moving on.
The rest of the trip I made sure to rekindle those warm feelings of gratitude in my heart any time I had a nice long conversation with someone in Bitcoin & really savoured the fact that they could have spent their time with anyone else (such as sauna sessions with Efrat & Madex, gym sessions with R0ckstar and Mir, etc).
I love meeting Bitcoiners and more times than I can count I’ve met someone for the first time in real life that feels like we’ve known each other for years. It happened this time with Matt O’Dell, Paolo from Tether and Jack Mallers. 3 People I know of, respect & co-invest with in Bitcoin, in the twitter trenches for years … first time meeting in real life.
I practiced the joy of being alive and being in Bitcoin when I was invited to investor dinners by BitVault, Relai & Jan 3 - had so many amazing conversations with the founders & team members & other investors at these events.
I did the same when people came up to me to introduce themselves and tell me how they were a fan of mine, or they wanted to pitch me their bitcoin startup, or just get a pic and say hi.
What an interesting life I get to live. I tried to take lots of pictures with people I met so I could remember them and what they told me during our interactions.
I remember the feelings I had in 2013 when I was a nobody and I’d see Roger Ver or Andreas at a conference - being scared to approach or just staring awkwardly.
Heck I still do it, I’m sure I did it this trip to someone.
My wife also remarked that she prefers going to Bitcoin conferences than crypto events because the majority of bitcoiners are genuinely good ppl, down to earth and care about being good humans, focused on family and the things that matter in life. She gets good vibes more often at bitcoin events.
Lugano is breathtaking and what the Fulgur/Tether/Giacomo & team is building here is inspirational.
So happy I get to spend this time with my wife and bring her along with me to meet my bitcoin compatriots as well as share this life with her.
Grateful for what I’ve accomplished while also honouring my desire to do more to fix the money & fix the world.
Blissful Dissatisfaction is the state I’m striving for these days.
Oh and I finished up this 12 day multi-country trip LEANER than when I left, another huge win.
You can travel, have fun AND be healthy.
