Anthony Di Iorio, Co-Founder of Ethereum | The Perfect Formula To Solve Any Problem

Welcome to success story the most useful podcast in the world. I'm your host Scott D. Clary. The success story podcast is part of the blue wire podcast network as well as the HubSpot podcast network. Now the HubSpot podcast network has incredible shows like the hustle daily. It's hosted by Zachary Crockett, Jacob Cohen, Rob Litterst and Juliet Bennett Ryla. Now the hustle daily brings you a healthy dose of a reverent offbeat and informative takes on business tech and news and it happens daily. So if you want to stay up to date on the latest and greatest and some of these topics are interesting to you then you're going to love the hustle daily topics like Amazon's grocery strategy. The rise of the ugly shoe economy is AI the secret to love and America's sleep deficit problem. So if these are topics you want to get into and you love hearing up to date content whenever you wake up in the morning go listen to the hustle day. And daily wherever you listen to your podcast. Today my guest is Anthony Dioreo. He is the co founder of Ethereum. Now over the course of three decades. Anthony has launched more than 10 companies and invested tens of millions of dollars in numerous industries including blockchain. Anthony immediately recognize the paradigm shift from the age of computing to the age of information and more recently the age of value in late 2013. He co founded Ethereum the decentralized smart contract platform that at its peak hit $150 billion in market cap. Currently is the founder and CEO of Decentral a Toronto-based innovation hub and software development company focused on decentralized technology. Decentral is a maker of Jack's Liberty a digital asset platform that has empowered millions of people with the tools they need to control their digital lives. Well versus cryptocurrency blockchain finance in business. He's advised a number of companies and as the inaugural chief digital officer for the TMX group. The parent company of the Toronto stock exchange. He is a sport ways to make exchanges operate faster and cheaper through blockchain technology in 2018. He further distinguished himself as the winner of the EY emerging entrepreneur of the year award as the winner of the FinTech leader of the year award and made Toronto life's list of the fifth most influential people in 2018. Currently he is working on a new project called perfect formula. So what do we speak about? Well we spoke about his origin story. We spoke about the problems he was trying to solve when he started Ethereum. We spoke about crypto blockchain. We spoke about financial gain versus underlying technology. We spoke about the future of the entire industry where it's going. What we have to do to make sure that the crypto blockchain DeFi world moves in the right direction. Then we spoke about some of the things that he's working on now with perfect formula and how he's trying to reinvision how we do business, how we compensate stakeholder shareholders, how we place importance on certain things versus other things when we're scaling a business properly and ethically. So he's an incredible wealth of knowledge from everything business to tech to crypto to blockchain to future to DeFi. Let's jump right into it. This is an awesome interview. I was super happy to sit down with him. This is Anthony Diorio. He is the co-founder of Ethereum. I go back to when I was eight years old. I was born in 1975 so when early 80s my dad brought home a computer. This was kind of the daughter of the personal computing age. People didn't have computers at home at that time and that was really the thing that really did it for me. As a kid it just since that I've been known as a computer guy in the family and taking the computers apart and building them back up and going to camp for computers and rocketry. I really was a defining moment when my life was my dad who used to work for IBM back in the day and used to do a number of different things from driving cabs to eventually settling and starting a door manufacturing company. He was an entrepreneur and bringing home that computer and really set things up for me. In my teens I was using modems to communicate with other computers before the dawn of the internet. When the internet took off I was like wow I cannot connect to websites. It wasn't just connecting to one of the person's computer which at the time before the internet that's what you would do is you would log into one of the guy's computer and if someone else tried to log on the same computer you get a busy signal. It was kind of the precursor to the internet so yeah it was I followed the whole modem speed thing which went from like 300 modems to 600 to 900 to 9600 to 2440. So there was this whole evolution of speeds that were going on where you know it would take like sometimes a minute to download an image. So that was really my life was sports and computers growing up. I grew up in North of Toronto. It's about a half an hour in a place called Calibur, which may help. Those were kind of the two defining things for me was sports and computers. Great family, parents were all about the family. I have an older brother and older sister. When I went to university I didn't go for computers. I went for business. My dad was an entrepreneur and I didn't want to be a developer. I kind of was my thing already. So I decided to go in a business but school was something I never really aligned with too much. Going into high school and university I really just kind of coasted through. It wasn't something that was very meaningful for me but it's just kind of what you did when you're in my family. You know you go to school and you get a job. So I graduated with a marketing degree at Ryerson University and a Bachelor of Commerce degree. I went into marketing for a while. I didn't care for it too much. I learned back then. I didn't really like. A lot of marketing is kind to get someone to do something or influence them to kind of create a purchase or do something that you're trying to promote or push. After a couple years of that, not realizing it's something that I wanted to pursue, I eventually started working for the family business. My dad's business and his cousin and brother's business and the four of them had a sliding padded door manufacturing company. I learned a lot of my other business skills there and through my teams and into my 20s I had a few other startups and businesses. My first thing that I did was setting up a web design company back in the early 90s. Me and my brother set up a company doing logo design and doing web design right at HTML 1 back in the early 90s. So computer was always my thing there and business and already entrepreneurial skills with the family business until 2008 when my dad decided to sell a business and his brother decided to sell it. He came to me and said, you know, what do you want to do? You probably don't want to be working with the same with the owners that are buying it and what would you like to do when I thought about it for a while. I decided I wanted to get into something kind of green technology focused and we had a friend who was the kind of the foremost leader in geothermal drilling. And this is geothermal drilling where you drill the holes on the ground and use the earth's temperature heat and cool buildings. So I proceeded to buy this massive drill out of Italy, went over to Italy and my drilling company which I started up was we did two large IKEA projects in Italy where we were using the parking lot to drill hundreds of holes on the ground. There were hundreds of feet deep and then that's what was heating and cooling the IKEA centers there. So they did two big projects there and then brought the drill to Canada and proceeded to do commercial buildings, condos, homes. At the time there was a lot of government incentives and it was kind of a hot thing at the time there. Over a couple of years it actually changed and there's a lot of red tape that started to be put on to it by the government and the incentives were taken off through the change of government. And I'm not a fan of government incentives. It's not something I really aligned with but at the time it was the two factors of removal of those incentives and just the red tape that was put on that didn't make it really feasible anymore. And I ended up in a situation where I lease the drill out to another company and again I was in a position where what do I really want to get into right now. From 2005 to 2010 I had some properties that I purchased and some student housing by York University that I had put together there and this was in 2008, 2009 did the housing crisis and financial crisis in the US. I kind of thought the same thing was going to happen up here in Canada and I ended up selling my properties. I did quite well with them then and I had this cash. And along that time my brother had got me thinking about the history of money. He had been in politics, he was a counselor up in Richmond Hill at the same place that I grew up in. After getting out of his position, he started learning a lot about the history of money and banks and this was again by the time the housing crisis and financial crisis is when I started studying economics quite a lot and got into that. I learned about the Austrian School of Economics which is a little bit different than the Keynesian model which is taught in universities and the Austrian School is all about having sound money and it's all about creating value and limited government and free markets. And that's really what I aligned well towards and I started studying and figuring out what had happened during the housing crisis and the financial crisis and that also with the kind of when government got involved with my drilling business and how they were impacting things there. I started learning a lot about debt and a lot about sound money and I dabbled in gold and silver for a bit in 2011 and lost about 25% of what I put in there. And then in 2012 when I was looking for some new podcasts, a new listing material I came across a show called Free Talk Live and Free Talk Live is a show that's on a number of radio stations in the US and on the very first show they mentioned something called Bitcoin. And I've never heard of it before that day I started reading into it and it was combining decentralized technologies which I was quite familiar with in terms of following the full file sharing growth from Napster and because all the things from there and being kind of understanding where that was and understanding the internet and. And also combine economics and then combine solutions for how we could empower people to you know be their own banks to to empower people to understand that that you can have a technology that has you know a sound kind of cash digital cash system that. That's a kind of a predictable inflation rate something that you don't have with traditional currencies and it just right away that day was a major changing point in my life and I like to say the first 10 years my life was like computers a second 20 10 years was about connecting and communications with the internet and or with the modems. The third decade was kind of like entrepreneurship and learning business schools and the tools that I would need and then when I heard about Bitcoin it just after I've been studying economics and it was like a perfect storm for me to take all these things of my past and what would I have and be able to utilize it at the time that I think I thought I was prepared whereby with the internet I just wasn't there yet I was still going to university with the internet but. This was like a perfect storm for me to say this is something I'm interested in I understand it I think it has a lot of value and I have a lot of hope to empower people and to you know remove us potentially from the clutches of third parties intermediary areas that usually exists between individuals. In Toronto there was nothing that existed in terms of a community and I decided to start it so I started Toronto Bitcoin meet up group in 2012. I started a nonprofit called the Bitcoin Alliance of Canada in 2013 which is more of a national organization to help promote Bitcoin and to to discuss it with the media and the governments and. I the the meet up group I started kept growing throughout 2013. Eventually I set up a physical location at King and Spina in Toronto called Bitcoin Decentral and I started you know thinking from 2012 to 2013 were how can I provide value in the space and. Initially I started a gambling site for Bitcoin with a partner or a developer that I connected with in the US and a few months later we exited that for a few thousand Bitcoin at the time and. Then started building wallets and wallets are really the interface for for the whole ecosystem it's the way that you can manage and move value just like the browser is the way that you can manage and move information for the internet and. I got very early on that this was this was like the age of value it's now you can be in control of your own value and just like you had the age of information that democratized information now you have the ability to be your own bank the ability to send directly to these decentralized networks and to be able to send from peer to peer one person to the other. Another value anywhere anywhere around the world at very low cost and remove a lot of the expensive middle layer so this was 2013. I then at the same time I was opening Bitcoin Decentral in Toronto, a gentleman named metallic buterin who would come to my first meet ups and I got to know him over 2012 and 2013. He showed me a white paper for something called Ethereum that he had devised and he had helped me building some wallets that I had prior and I then along with him and three others based on the funding that I had for my prior exit ended up funding and founding Ethereum out of my shop. Decentral in Toronto and that's that's how Ethereum got kicked out kicked out there so I know I've been rambling on a bit but that kind of takes you to 2013 and the the start of a theory and then it's been a whole world when we became the largest crowd fund reported of all time raising 18 million dollars from 9000 participants around the world and that market cap was now gone up to I don't know what's what it's at these days 500 billion or something like that. Incredibly I know it's just incredible but I want to get into it so I want to get into your mind and your thought process because I think it will carry over to even what you're working on now so when you started Ethereum what problems are you trying to solve because you go big like you're trying to solve like if you're talking about removing intermediaries, disrupting banking, disrupting any interest that's a like a like a monumental task that most people can't even fathom. So what were you trying to solve how how did your brain work to think that this project this white paper with this developer that you met at Vitalik Patirin like that you met at this meetup could actually solve these things what was like the first iteration of Ethereum and then obviously how did that change over time sure. So even before here I made it my mission to build the tools to empower people to be in control of their digital life that was the that's your mission that's what I was my mission my mission was has always been about freedom as I mentioned I don't like school I never never like being told what to do and I you know a lot of business models revolve around becoming an intermediary layer between two individuals who need that that's how banks kind of came about was provide a service for individuals to be able to protect their money and be able to to provide services that help connect people but as the internet would grow and as new technologies emerge the need for these middle layers and costly and maybe an efficient middle layers becomes less and less necessary and with Bitcoin I saw it as a big opportunity to help create change and empower billions of people around the world with tools that they need to to be their own bank and be able to send transactions where maybe they don't have the financial systems in their countries like or areas like Africa or or areas that that don't have the basic things that we have in banking systems here that we're still used to. But with the theory was much different this was now taking it beyond the financial ecosystem into pretty much any other any other space that has intermediary layers that you can then create contracts that that would that individuals can create amongst themselves that can be trustworthy and transparent and can execute as they're supposed to without the without kind of humans getting in the way. And the idea of inefficiencies how they can be removed in areas of law in areas of pretty much any business model again relies on these third parties that usually have centralized authority to to do things but more and more these empowering individuals and creators to to develop code that can execute those well beyond finance and that's where I saw was the kind of the light that went off when Vitalik showed this was Bitcoin is great for what it does it enables you to see. You can't just send and receive something but you can't kind of put in a if this then that and then this happens to this and and that was really like the game changing aspect that people started to realize that the theory had the opportunity to create a really valuable change in many many different other sectors not just in finance. But that's really what what got me excited. It's what when I brought Charles Hotskinson in to show him the paper there and got him on board for the project. This is Charles at once Cardano and a few others will meet we got all together we realize very soon after because of the amount of attention was getting that this was something that could be really big. And we end up spending the next year carrying it out doing the crowd sale and then over the next year building up the product and launching in 2015. And kind of the rest is history we've got amazing growth of developers and community and this was a combination of thousands and thousands of people coming together in an open source protocol that just is has been being used by just pretty much every fortune 500 company or companies that they're getting in space or using a theory and for what is they're doing it's led to the whole end of tea space it's led to the decentralized autonomous organization space which is starting to bear fruit and it's just it's a much more utilized and just can do so much more than what you can do with Bitcoin and that's that's why people have kind of rallied around it and it's grown to where it is. I just want to take a second and thank the sponsor of today's episode HubSpot now the new year might have you thinking ahead to what you want out of your career. So when you think about your success story what do you actually picture is it retiring early with a beautiful view of the skyline is it leaving a legacy with your name on it or maybe it's helping influence and change some of the world's most pressing issues. However it is writing your success story starts by working smart because when you work smart your success story writes itself a HubSpot CRM platform helps your marketing campaigns work harder and smarter with intuitive visual workflows and bought builders you can create scalable automated campaigns across email social media web and chat. So your customers hear your messages loud and clear are you tired of your content not adapting to mobile making it difficult for your customers to absorb your message. HubSpot CRM platform optimizes your content for multiple devices so that you can reach your customers wherever they are which is just smart learn more about how you can transform your customer experience with a HubSpot CRM at HubSpot.com. And do you find that we're late in the game in terms of like actually implementing this tech or are we still early on do you feel like there's a lot more that we could do with it. Yeah I think you know when we started it we you know we knew what Dowsr had the potential of being in these are decentralized autonomous organizations are kind of organizations that run in the cloud for those that don't know that don't have jurisdictions that don't necessarily know who's behind these these these new type of corporations. Now that was something that we knew was going to be massive down the road and NFTs I mean NFTs have been something that I've been you know thinking a lot about for over five years really. And and the power that they're going to have to help empower creators and create digital assets that are unique. Whereas before you couldn't have these digital assets because everything could be popular and duplicated and now you have Bitcoin that created a non duplicated or currency and now you have these digital unique assets collectibles that are just some creators are putting together now in order to create digital value. So we kind of saw what the future was going to be in those things but there's just like with the internet you're going to over the next number of years are going to be consistent things that are going to emerge new ideas that are going to lead to things you never even thought about yet. So that's I think you know on a time frame we're still very very early on it's exciting what's to come down the road a lot of it hasn't been probably thought about yet but what's has been thought about is super exciting and just getting off the ground as well. I love that and I guess like the point that I'm trying to to get to is the market like crypto as a market it's a lot it's really driven with a lot of speculation as well. So I'm wondering if it's more like the underlying tech and like practical applications use cases that are driving the technology forward or is it more speculation and potential financial gain that's driving this industry forward. So it's it's combination of both and over time I think you're going to see more and more of the utility aspect that's going to lead to more and more of the value increases and that's that's where the value comes from in my opinion it's. You know when we started off we had 9,000 people that that entrusted us with their Bitcoin to then turn that into the technology that we were creating and they they took a gamble and a risk by giving us that money upfront. In a pre sale of a product that we didn't deliver till a year later which was which was the plan but you know they were they were speculating that work you know when it's speculations just another term for you know taking a risk or it's a term for investing there's a lot of it's just terminology but. Early on there was a lot of speculation there's still a lot of speculation but more and more every month you're seeing utility come out of it you're seeing how the the different sectors and different industries are going to be radically changed from the technologies so it's it is still speculation but it's it's people also that realize where it's going to go and it's always about thinking ahead of the curve and that's something that I think I pride myself on on. On being able to see where things are heading in the future whether it be business models that are deficient or whether it be where the crypto space was going to come in and be able to start to offering potentially alternatives for government currencies it's all about staying ahead of the curve and understanding where things are going based on where things have gone in the past and making sure you get the tools and assets that you can put it together in order to utilize what your knowledge is so there is a lot of speculation I'd say most of it is still on speculation but there's a lot of good utility coming out there's a lot of good people. Realizing that they're their jobs in their areas of where they they're in are going to be radically changed and it's important to stay on it and a lot of people are betting on a theory and other similar technologies and it's and that's why it's growing it's growing because there is a realization that these things are very powerful they're very empowering they they could be really efficient and once they scale and grow beyond some of the barriers they may have now watching it's it's it's going to be really radically changing the world. Yeah and like now you see like obviously El Salvador has adopted Bitcoin as legal tender and these are these are more like actual fixing addition like existing currency problems that countries have I know that Zimbabwe is looking at adopting Bitcoin as legal tender so you're starting to see some like practical application that are like that are really changing how a country can function. But yeah okay so let's let's walk through you know your your story so after Ethereum I know that you worked on decentralized for a bit but then you left those are walk me through how you how you left what you're working on with Ethereum and decentralized and then what you wanted to focus on going forward because I know that you're working on a new project now I think it's actually very interesting and it totally syncs up with like what your vision and your mission is. So walk me through that process and what we're doing right now. So I left Ethereum in 2015 you know I was one of the initial funders we had also Joseph Lubin who runs a company called Consensus and Organization we kind of we funded the operations of it until the crowd sale then the money came in from the crowd sale and it kind of came down to the developers carrying out the mission. So there's a little bit of the restriction back in the day there was there was eight founders at that time it was difficult to get decisions made and what happened is kind of the developer team you know it was about them carrying things out and they kind of took things by the reins and and work towards getting the product out and Charles ended up leaving the project and a mere one of their founders and then over time Joseph and myself also knew that the writing was on the wall there and with Ethereum it kind of opened my doors to things or my mind to things. Other than Bitcoin which at the time before Ethereum everything was Bitcoin and then there was Ethereum and then it's like well Ethereum to this bond so many other organizations and projects that are going to be run on Ethereum and other technology so it's not just about one technology and I like to be very inclusive in my mindset with things and so the idea was there's going to be thousands of these things out there and they only interfaces they all need ways to send and receive and connect to the network so I continued building the wallets that and creating the first multi currency multi platform wallets. In the space that wouldn't just support Bitcoin or Ethereum but also would support Litecoin and dogecoin and eventually thousands of these technologies so in 2015 I continued building wallets and technology and infrastructure to connect it all together and I launched a product called Jax and Jax I think launched in 2016 we launched a successor called Jax Liberty and really again building the tools to empower people to be in control of their digital lives their money their communication identities. I think it's really important to own your identity it's really important to own your money it's really important to own your communications and those three together are done in a decentralized fashion where the user is in full control it's a very powerful product and that's what we built is we built wallets that put the keys and allow the individual user to actually fully own his assets we don't ever take custodianship of any of the digital assets it's actually fully owned by the users and they only they want the key. But what we do is connect them to all the different protocols and the platforms like Bitcoin and Ethereum so that's where that's going to be my main focus is CEO of Decentral over the years and just just you know since 2018 when the markets really started hitting down in 2018 after the big ICO craze that happened in 2017 I started re-evaluating what it is I want to do with my life and I got into the point where I didn't need to be you know thinking about about setting myself up for the rest of my life things are pretty good at the time but I realize that more and more of the more freedom that I was seeking actually less freedom I actually had and what I mean by that is you know when you become your own bank you got certain responsibilities and you no longer have your money sitting in a bank somewhere that's being secured by a bank and it's not black and white one of the biggest lessons I've ever learned in my life is that nothing's black and white and there's kind of gray areas of everything and there's always dials and you get to turn up and down and yes it's important to be in control of your life but also sometimes it can be good to have others that are offering services to help you along the way and it was I open experience when you know Ethereum started getting really really big and just the attention that we were getting got really massive and it just you know it was I'm at a point in my life I'm like I don't want something to happen here that could really make a game changing life on my family and things you know I make wallets we don't hold the keys but something could still happen there that could could cross some issue and there's other risk factors to be considered of and I ended up rethinking what my mission was and spend a lot of time thinking about three things my what my why and my how and those three things I ended up figuring out where my my what you know what is it I want to do with my life and now that I've done what I've done and I have the resources to continue to do what I'm doing what is it that I really want to do and what and then it's like well why do I want to do the thing that I want to do and then how am I going to do it and what we're trying to really thinking about this and I decided to know what makes me happy is being in service it's it's it's the idea that you know what am I good at and what can I do to offer to the world that I that I with what I'm good at and and it's to be to service many people as possible and to help people and and that's a figure out why do I like to be in service not about posting events and doing things like that and but it's generally because I it makes me happy to see other people happy so the idea what is it I want to do is to serve why I want to do it is because it makes me happy and then how do I do it is is something I call perfect formula it's a it's a general framework that I came up to solve problems it's a it's a general problem solving formula that runs around the basis of creating winning situations where as many stakeholders as you can possibly imagine what and what it is you're doing it's a framework that I've developed based on princess principles processes and tools I've developed over my lifetime and it's it just kind of revolves around you have a problem or there's something you want to achieve and it takes it's I take a framework through where I say okay who are what what is the problem you're trying to do who are your stakeholders and by stakeholders I mean anybody that you could potentially have in the mix that could provide value to you and what you're trying to do something where you're trying to to create movements of people all aligned towards common interesting common goals so that people realize by joining you on what you're doing your life gets better so I spent time putting together this framework that kind of is how I've run my businesses in the past and and I end up coming up with something that I think is pretty powerful and something that I that I think can I can utilize as a problem solver and as a leader to take my framework to the world and no matter what sector it's in and be able to utilize the framework to create better results that create more situations of winning for more people and doesn't exclude people from the equation because a lot of times a business formulas and business models they're not they're not they're not efficient enough for and they're they have deficiencies which exclude people and those decisions of people leads to people that aren't happy with what you're doing or leads to people that you're not creating a win for and if you're not thinking ahead of how you can actually provide value to as many stakeholders as possible over time you're either going to get disrupted with change that comes about because you haven't thought as good as someone else doesn't comes down the road or you're going to get people that that are feeling that you're you're mission whether it be to return maximum returns to shareholders which is what a lot of companies are are kind of forced to do that's what their mandate is it usually becomes an expense of something else whether it's other people or comes an expense to the planet and I think if we can move the dial from efficient models which are maybe let's say 50% efficient and they're still not serving 50% of the population how do we move it to 60% or being served how do we move to 70% how do we create models of aligned people that come together to create 90% that models where people are realizing that by joining your product or joining your company or joining your mission their day-to-day life is getting better and that's kind of what I'm trying to do with with my framework is is bring to the table that there are better ways to have business models there's better ways to do things that don't necessarily rely on advertising models which create in my opinion a lot of misinformation and people that are that are that are taken down these paths because advertisers are paying money to get eyeballs on something which leads to you know this this attention economy that we have in the amount of screen time that's out there and even models that collect user information and then are allowing that information somehow to get to get exposed and people are in control of their other stuff so I think there's a big deficiency in business models which usually stem from having to return money to investors and people having to squeeze things that eventually lead to problems and lead to a situation where like we've had with Facebook you know governments questioning hey your business models are leading to these problems here and and it's not good and and why are you doing it this well it's like well it's that's all that's what that's what everyone does that's a status quo and we haven't thought differently and we need to think different you know I I created models for my world that don't hold customer funds because I realized when you're holding stuff of other people you're now responsible for it and I don't want to be responsible for it so how do you think differently to create wallets where the user is holding the key and I'm not holding the key we've never used advertising in our models I think generally people don't like advertising and there's better ways to do things so our models for our wallets are we create partnerships and provide services that connect individuals with with companies that provide good services and we provide interface and kind of the thing that connects it all together so I believe there's better ways to do things in the business models that exist I think the business models that exist lead to a lot of problems that hold has and it leads to exclusion of people and it leads to situation where a few are maybe being served but a lot aren't and when you have that type of situation you don't get a line people coming together to create movements when everybody feels that they're in this together so I kind of want to be a leader and a problem solver because I think that's two things that the world is totally lacking these days and using my frameworks that I've developed I want to serve as many people as possible with what I'm bringing out as perfect formula which is really a framework I want to get out to the world that has no other intention rather than to just be in service it's not something I'm doing good at plan on doing for profit in fact if I was winter that in the game I think I would lose credibility from a lot of people that believe that it's the same type of motive that I'm trying to fix or trying to work with so it's really important have trust it's really important have social capital trust capital you need wealth cap you know these things to come together to create a perfect formula to be able to do what it is you want to do and check all the boxes in your business and create a situation where no one can say you didn't think of that and what you're doing and your your solutions are creating more inclusivity they're creating more people coming together to on common goals and interests and you're creating new solutions for incumbents to even come along because you can't exclude them in the mix either you have to bring everybody along and what you do and I want to help the catalyst for that I just want to take a second and thank the sponsor of today's episode trade coffee now I'm a coffee lover and I just found out a really unnerving stat and fact about coffee 90% of coffee that you buy from a grocery store is actually stale you heard that right it blew my mind the coffee you know in love and you go buy from your grocery store needs an upgrade and that's not the way coffee is actually supposed to taste instead of buying this old same coffee that you're already getting and that's stale trade coffee sends you fresh coffee as much as you want has fastest you drink it it's going to replenish but it's always going to be fresh so trade cells 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set up an intro offer to get you off the ground they're offering a total of twenty dollars off your first three bags when you go to drinktrade.com slash success story but you have to get started so to start take their quiz figure out what coffee works for you go to drinktrade.com slash success story start your journey to your perfect cup at drinktrade.com slash success story get twenty dollars off your first three bags and you and I guess if a business like say an executive is listening to this right now and they're like we are entrenched in the system that we already have we have investors it could be early stage even we have investors or we're larger we're public we you know we have we have shareholders we have to deliver to like how do we move in the right direction what are steps that you can take because obviously just if you're starting a business with this in mind you can take actionable steps from day one and I'd still have to hear what those are but if you already are operating a business how do you move the needle towards something that is more inclusive because this is obviously not the norm at all. No and I'm a pretty optimistic and positive person I think there's always ways that you can create change and for me I learned a long time ago I don't want to ever hold people's money I don't take investor money for any of my projects the last time I did that was with a theory and when we when we raised that capital for the project then with a little out of my hands and with the way I necessarily want to do it because with this group of people that were putting this amazing thing together I didn't have as much say I was I would have on my own but since then and this was 2014 I don't take investor money I figure out ways to fund things myself in ways that I then stay in control that I can go in the pace that I want with the speed that I want to carry out what I want instead of having it be consistent and considering of investors along the way which you know it's a lot of people have to do and I understand that I invest in a lot of produce so it's not it's not necessarily something I say is you know for me principally I I don't do it but what I would say is that a lot of founders will lose their way and lose their mission and what they've actually set up to do because they take investor money and then investors have certain timelines or horizons that they want and it ends up it can it can really detract from the goal of what you're trying to achieve and then maybe you're losing your mission of what you started out and then you're kind of in the system and the way things generally work so I always like to say you know I don't like normal I don't like doing things normally and it makes you think differently this and if I don't like this this and this and I don't want to be under someone else's thumb could there be another way that I'm able to do this where I'm figuring out how to do things myself or or do things differently if if the way things have always been done if they never existed what would you do that's the way I look at it you know the the the general flow of raising capital and doing all these other things or the general flow of well I'm a bank I got to hold someone's money but then I'm taking their their I got to worry about it to being stolen I got to work think differently think if if the ways of making money didn't exist right now what would you do you know if the ways of sitting between individuals technology can replace that now I'm a place what it is you're doing in your job and that's potentially could happen but what are you going to do so don't be complacent potentially in what you're doing right now and start thinking if this was to happen what am I going to do and it allows you to think differently it allows you to think outside the normal box of this is going to change do I want to do the person that's going to figure out what that change is going to be and how am I going to get there so it's thinking differently it's trying to think in different lenses of of if this exit didn't exist now what would I do in the future and saying it might not be the easiest way to do it and it might be really challenging but I do believe there's a solution everything is a better way to do things and let's keep moving the dial towards better situations and better business models and better experiences that that that that that that allow people to be more served and to have problems in their life solve and improve people's lives because at the end of the day for me the big thing is to improve lighter that's my that's my ultimate goal is what can I do to improve life as a whole and for me it's using my frameworks and being a leader and solving problems and using my framework which is based on principles tools and processes and sticking to the principles that I've always adhered to and and that's where how I want to and showing people that they can be successful with these tools these principles because you're you're living it that's that's that that's the thing too like I think that a lot of people are very short-sighted and they say well yeah that that's nice in theory but then you look at someone like yourself that has had exits that has had success and it's like what why not if I if I can do it let me just lay out the framework that I've adopted my entire life and then yeah that that's where I see you being like incredibly valuable like being an evangelist for a better way of doing things yeah it's not just the people that that maybe you're looking at other comments like even the large companies out there the companies that are relying on business models right now that have maybe shot themselves in the foot because they didn't see years before how their business models are going to lead to their potential demise deficiencies and models leads to other people coming in and and and the the more efficient you are the more you're checking all the boxes the more you're creating situations that are bringing more people along the more you're creating wins for more people the longer you're going to be around the more you're going to stay ahead of others so I it's it's the lack of foresight that I've seen with some of the biggest companies in the world that haven't realized maybe that maybe it's not a good thing to collect user information and use that as a monetary aspect or maybe it's not a good idea to have this type of advertising model which is leading to fake news and leading to misinformation being spread and if we have thought a little bit differently on how to do what it is we're doing and maybe thought ahead of the curve which so many people in the crypto space do maybe we've been in a better position and don't find us in the situation that we're in right now so that's kind of I still believe there's hope I still believe that change can happen I think it's about having discussions and and seeing how change can happen by talking to problem solvers and putting it on the right direction and and speaking with people that are not about not only maybe dismissive of what they've done but if they want to learn and want to get on the right track and want to see what the future is heading speak to some technologies that have seen it before and have understood for years like like like I and other have been 10 years in the space so far in the crypto space and seeing it right away in 2012 for me and those that even did it earlier that this is something that's been very powerful more powerful than the internet and encouraging those company leaders to to look at things differently and and look to see how they can do things that are providing more value for more people in the world and not just themselves or how they can do it to bring others along because the more you're helping other people the more they'll help you is the way that I look at the more you're serving others the more they're going to join you because their lives are getting better by them joining you on your mission and that's how I think Ruben's are creating amazing I want to I want to just ask some rapid fire questions to pull some career insights from you just to close this off but before before we close it if people want to reach out to you where should they go and also after that what do you want to be remembered for when your career your life is all said and done so drop some socials but then just close out what you want to be remembered for so I don't I'm not really in social media very much for me I learned that that you can get really lost in those things you got my mission right now once I start putting my frameworks I've got some papers coming on frameworks that I'm going to be getting out there anything I bring you on social media it's got to have a positive thing for me it's not about promoting something it's not about so you know Twitter is something that I used to use a lot and I'm still checking every once in a while but generally I've shut off any notifications stuff for social media for me but I would probably say once I start really coming forward with what I'm doing with perfect formula that's probably the best place and that's that's Deoreo Anthony it's just my name reversed and it's and it's not Deloreo is a lot of people think there's no Ellen my name it's three eyes D.I.O.R.I.O. Anthony San Seraphon's can look the same L and capitalized so a lot of people think that it's actually Deloreo but it's not so that's probably the best the best way for now I plan on having some articles coming out that I'll be that I'll be writing and really putting out the framework so that my goal is to get into the hands of many people as possible this framework that I use because it's really worked for me and I think if I can get that out and if I can use those frameworks to go kind of sector by sector industry by industry and take that framework through identifying who the who the stakeholders are what each storekeeper is good at what they're bad at and what problem each stakeholder have that's really a key thing to buy my formula and my framework is if you could figure out what what each stakeholder that you have in the mixes good at and utilize that to your advantage when you're trying to do it if you can realize what they're bad at and get them away from doing that thing there are a lot of people are doing things that they're they're not necessarily good at like problem solving and then the third thing if you you can figure out what problems each stakeholder has and your elements of solutions have to have to encompass that as a solution that's kind of the the the flow that I do when I do case studies from sector to sector whether it's in real estate or whether it's working with some government leaders on on how they're going to create change in their company I can really take it through a flow that's that's I think can create some really productive outcomes so getting that framework out there in that formula and being able to say that that framework really helped to create a lot of change and to create movements of individuals coming together for on your common interests of just trying to be of service to others is kind of what I would would like to leave as a market of serving is is is really an amazing thing and it's really I think the way to happiness is seeing things to others eyes and being able to do things to help others amazing okay that's that's great let's let's do a couple rapid fire just pull out some last career insights from you you've had an incredible obviously an incredible life you've done incredible stuff what was the biggest challenge that you've overcome in your personal or professional life had you overcome it so for me it's how do I stay in balance and how do I ensure that I'm ready to take on the large things that I want to do for the world I've had a tendency over the years to take on too much and to get overwhelmed and kind of have a down cycle to to that up cycle and kind of going through these ups and ups and downs and I realized how do I you know I want to do greater things it's always what's the next big thing that I want to do and if I can't stay balanced and ensure that my physical state mental state emotional state is all where it should be to take on things then I'm going to get in a situation where I feel it's going to be too much and I have to kind of do reset so over the last few years it's really about maintaining that balance and the biggest thing that I've done is is I go to bed early I get up super early I'm usually up at before four taking time to myself I do my workouts I do my meditation really just slowing down is kind of the biggest thing that I've been able to do I was always a very fast-paced child it's just it's the way my mind works I'm always looking to try to solve problems question why with everything but without that balance and maintaining that balance things can get overwhelming anxiety can set in and it brings about fear fear of not wanting to take on what it is you know that you're here to do so for me the biggest challenge was getting over and figuring out how I can put in my data my data life balance that I need in order to tackle these large mountains that I want to tackle so the more time I can spend you know on my own in the more early mornings before the sun comes up and slowing down my pace and being present and being mindful and really being grateful I think that's that's the biggest thing being grateful for everything I have being grateful for the things I've had in the past and knowing that everything will work out and and being at a state where I can have that balance to tackle the large things that I want to do I think was the biggest challenge that I can it's still something I'm working on something that I'm hopefully doing better with every day but it's I got big big objectives and big things I want to do and the biggest thing I need to is make sure I'm staying balanced and doing that and making sure that I'm staying grounded and staying positive and staying in the presence of what I'm doing with everything I think that's the biggest thing and that's the biggest thing that's helped me to to do things as well who was one person who had a major impact on your life what did they teach you I think it's super important that that's we that I get my message out to children so leaders and problem solvers if we can create the next generation of leaders and problem solvers and children that's something that that's I would also like to be to to to to help with and I think Mr. Rogers was someone that really not Rogers in terms of Rogers communication which the Rogers the the the the the TV show the child TV show personality really knew how to speak to children really knew how to break down even what's going on that can be very intense topics he was able to bring them to to to the children in ways to really get down to their level and be able to speak to them if I can do that with children that's something that I would love to to to mimic her model after what he did so he's one person that I say was was really important to me and I'd love to be someone that can really get to the youth to create leaders and create problem solvers because it's something sorry sorry you did in this world amazing a book or podcast you'd recommend that you like that you go ask people to check out yeah I I love the daily stoic daily stoic basically it's 365 meditations each with one page per year sorry per day and it goes from just so many different topics and reading reading those either straight through or reading at one time one at a time it's really helped me it just it's all about ways of mindsets of looking at the world and it's it's helped me to kind of stake grounded in the things I do and realize you know I can impact things or things that I can't impact and for me positivity has been something that's really important to me I try to remove all negative words my vocabulary because negative words and negative energies create create you know that's what what you can become if that's what you're exuding so for me everything is about positivity and being open minded and change and and trying to bring value and seeing that the good and all things for me to stay grounded and actually with a with with the book the daily stoic has been been really great and it's something of the last few years that I pick up quite frequently and go through the daily meditations each one has come through the quote from a famous philosopher like Aristotle and and and Seneca and so it's just little one page things that you can think about during the day and if you do one of those a day and kind of keep it on your forefront through your mind for the day and then go through that entire book it's something that's been very helpful for me when I do my retreats and silo retreats where I do fasting for a number of days and kind of disconnect from everything and spend like five seven days completely in silence and and just reading and writing the daily stoic is one of the books I usually take when I do that I mean that's a great recommendation so that's Ryan Holiday I'll link that in the show notes that's it's a great book he goes the enemy as well and also obstacles the way or two of other those are good books that's right very yeah really the obstacle is the way the way that you can the challenges leads to your learnings and failures leads to learnings and it's all part of life it's all great things to embrace and to be thankful for yeah agreed agreed if you could tell your 20-year-old self one thing what would it be I don't know okay I always I always struggle those because I feel like I've fight did that I changed something that I don't want to change that's fair I kind of that could be an answer too if you don't have to change if the obstacle is the way you don't have to change anything yeah I just go happy with where things have been I'm happy to be where I am right now everything is the way things should happen and everything the future will be the way things happen that's the way I like to look amazing and lastly last question what does success mean to you all right I think for me success is is doing something meaningful something that I feel that I can help others with something that I feel that every day when I go to bed that I feel that I've accomplished something of meaning that just isn't for myself it's for others and how to let have had an impact on other people's lives and I help people with their problems and help people with their struggles and that to me is a successful day and hopefully a successful life if I keep focusing on those things