Michel Tremblay

Full transcript: Michel Tremblay on London Real

0:03 This is London Real, I am Brian Rose. My guest today is Michel Tremblay, a recent graduate of the Business Accelerator. Welcome to the show. Thank you, Brian. Tell us about you. Where are you from, what do you do? Well, I’m from Canada, from Montreal, and I’m in the world of Bitcoin. As you know, I paid for this course, for my course with you, in Bitcoin.

0:26 Our newest buyer in Bitcoin. Yes, and thank you, it was an amazing investment actually. You doubled your money. Yes, so that’s why I love you even more, and I’m still holding my Bitcoin. Hopefully. Don’t send it to anyone, keep it forever. Yeah. Okay, that’s good. Tell me more about your history with crypto and the business you were doing before the accelerator.

0:43 Yeah, so in 2013, for the first time I met Bitcoin, I mean online obviously, and like anyone else I fell in love, and the day I went down the rabbit hole I never came out. So for one or two years I was just researching and researching and researching all the time, and at some point last year, at the end of January, I pulled the trigger and I got into this sphere, started putting money inside of it.

1:15 And at the end of April, you were asking what I was doing before the accelerator, I met a trader online on Twitter. His nickname was Crypto Yoda. It’s a cool name. Well, that’s the world of crypto, right? Yeah, it’s got all those pretty interesting names. So we got together and we started a trading room, like a trading chat room, and that worked pretty well for a couple of months.

1:37 And I wanted to get not bigger on Bitcoin but more mainstream, because the world of crypto is mostly on Twitter and on Reddit, and it’s for geeks, right? And I wanted to take crypto and Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies on to the public, more like people like my mother, my uncles, my friends. So I decided to look around for courses and try to find a structure or a place where I could develop my ideas.

2:02 So that’s where I actually met Brian Rose and London Real, because one day I was looking for a video, and I think it was Permissionless, of Bitcoin, the permission is a Bitcoin, and there was a show of you and Andreas Antonopoulos, if I pronounced it well, and that’s where I met you and London Real.

2:32 And from there on I just started going down the rabbit hole with the other Bitcoin documentary or interviews they had two or three years ago, and then I just kept going and going and going and going and getting deeper, and at some point I fell in love with London Real, and here I am today. And what was going on in your business and in you at the time, before you decided to join the accelerator? I mean, you must have been going through some changes, some personal challenges. Why join?

2:56 Well, we were a bunch of kids basically joining forces together to create that trading chat room, right? And it was an encounter of people online, so some guys from Germany, one kid from Indonesia or Philippines actually, this Canadian from Montreal, and joining force together to build a business when you’re not in the same country, at different time zones, it’s pretty complicated when you think about it.

3:31 So that became a challenge after a while, because all these different ways of working together, and those schedules, and different natures also. Like, I’m pretty old, I was working with kids more in their 20s or early 20s. Or about there, you know, that old. Well, you know, this time I’ve got some experience, but I’m still very young in the world of Bitcoin. Okay. All right, and so you’re saying you’re trying to create a business, you had young guys, different time zones, and struggling to do it.

4:00 And the main challenge was that, or still is, that a lot of people in crypto, when talking about mainstream stuff, like for example talking about money, like they talk crypto, they hold bitcoins, they have other cryptocurrencies, but the old financial system is corrupted, is bad. So banks are bad, everything is bad. So if you want to build a business in crypto, for some people, you don’t want to get people to pay you in dog and US dollars, you don’t want to do marketing because that’s bad, capitalism is bad, everything is bad.

4:32 So that became an issue, because basically, although we were getting paid in Bitcoin, which was very interesting, the prices were going up, on the other side we had to pay for services. So if on one side you don’t want to get money, usual paper money, well, your business can’t go forward. Okay. So at some point we sort of reached a point of different destinations, let’s say.

4:56 And that’s where I decided to get on my own into crypto and Bitcoin, and try to, I can’t call myself an evangelist because there’s bigger evangelists than myself, but that’s what I decided to take as a path. Okay, and why, I finally pulled the trigger and sent me that 1.0 whatever Bitcoin, I mean what made you finally decide?

5:19 Well, that’s been like five, six years in the making, so you’re like the final destination of a long trip, right? I paid for many people’s courses online. Frank Kern is a good teacher, Ramit Sethi is a great one, they all have great courses, but I’m a disorganised person, a little bit procrastinator in the heart, hedonistic, you know, present time kind of person. So I always knew that something was missing.

5:50 Actually, in the review of the course, that was my main point, that although you can pay thousands of dollars for a course online, you don’t get the feedback, the instructor, and I’d say like the tough love and the accountability that we’re getting in this course. So by just seeing the video that you had online, I, I’m sorry, you could tell we had a structure. Yeah, exactly.

6:18 Yeah, talk to me about that first two weeks. You jump in, I’m asking you to watch the video modules, you got me for two hours live every week, you know, a hundred and forty students from around the world that are doing all sorts of different businesses, you’ve got the accountability doc, I’m asking you to do assignments. What’s it like? What’s great, what’s scary?

6:34 The same thing, because that’s what this program does, that’s what you do, that’s what you’re good at, right? Getting people to get out of their comfort zone. And I just mentioned I was a little bit procrastinator, so my worst enemy is myself. From the first weeks, that was hard. It was really hard because I had to get things done.

6:59 And although I’ve read all those many books about, you know, David Allen’s book, Getting Things Done, you know, I was not operating on those principles in my ideas, in my way of building a business, right? So by getting that structure, the accountability sheet, it’s as if I could put everything together for me to be a better student and a better person in that course. So it started working, although at first it was very, very stressful. Yeah, I remember. A lot of resistance. A lot of resistance, yeah.

7:31 Biggest success? What was the first big win where you were like, wait a second, I got…? First vlog. The first one, first vlog. First vlog, yeah. Explain that, and explain to people why that was hard. Well, it’s all mental at the end, but basically it was just the idea of putting my face out in the world, and also the second language, you know.

7:53 It’s hard in a way, but that might be resistance also, right? But it’s hard in a way to express yourself, to go deep, when you’re using something like your second language. It’s a tool that you never get used to, like being perfect at it. So that was one of the biggest, one of the two biggest stresses.

8:16 The third one was the fact that I had to improvise stuff. I have to talk to myself and get deep, so it’s like taking this stuff out of myself and putting it into a video. I remember the first one took me like five minutes, at the end was five minutes, all right, but the whole recording took three hours. Shooting, reshooting, reshooting again.

8:41 And also I remember going to bed the first two days, the first two vlogs actually, and practising in my bed, overthinking it, practising in my bed my vlog for the day after. My girlfriend at the time would say, go to sleep, stop talking. But it’s as if my brain, to get that energy out, had to ventilate.

9:06 By, you know what, that’s where the third and the fourth videos, if you remember, I got more at ease and stuff. That’s because I started releasing the pressure and just saying, okay, screw it, I’ll just do it, and then it came more easy, it got a lot easier. How important was it getting over that, as in publishing your own video blogs?

9:23 Well, for me it’s not a question of important or not, it’s just doing it, because logically in my head there’s nothing wrong about putting your video on your walls, on your personal walls, or in the group, right? So it’s just to get it there. So for me that was the hard part, to get it there. Like, it’s logical that you can put your videos on the wall. I think Facebook should be more about videos than posts. So that was just the bridge there to cross.

9:48 Okay, other big wins from the whole course? The whole course, my big aha moment was when I made a sale, and I said, no, no, it went, administrate, yes, but when I was live and I convinced someone to actually buy, and I told myself, wow, Jesus Christ, I’m a seller, and I’ve never been a seller in my life.

10:17 So that was a big, I can sell, I can convince someone, and my ideas are not that stupid. So that was a big aha moment. It really felt good knowing that I could express myself in a way that makes it possible for someone to buy from me. Yeah, and then live, live. Yeah, not even recorded. Imagine a crypto geek that can sell. That’s power, isn’t it? Well, hopefully it is. And I still have this impostor syndrome, I guess. Yeah, we’ll get over it, that’s why we’re still here.

10:50 I mean, all right, so the first sale was big, the first live sale was big, and then by the end of the course you had done quite a bit of sales, right? Yeah, well, I ended up selling over 35, while a friend called today, said he bought twice, so we’ll be honest here, 34. Okay, that’s a lot. 34 products.

11:15 And the most amazing thing was that I did resist a lot at first, because I wanted to do two webinars, one for French people, French-speaking people, my friends back home, yes, and one for the English world, right? And I spent two days just turning around how I would do that, and at some point I said, just skip it, I’ll just do a webinar, send that on my Facebook wall to all my friends, French or English, and we’ll just do that in English.

11:40 And actually there were more French-speaking people in my webinar, on that first one, out of 30 people coming to buy or listen to Bitcoin stuff, than actual English-speaking people. That’s a proof that I was really resisting for no real reason, and I was off the track completely. Yes. Keep it simple. Yeah, KISS it. But you learned that. So 34 courses, how much money did you make? 27 US dollars times 34, so that’s around nine fifty. Fifty. And that’s when you’re just getting started here, so that’s pretty successful. So congratulations. Thank you, thank you so much.

12:20 Talk to me about the community. What’s it like? You’re meeting a bunch of them this weekend, you know, we got 150 people, but there are different businesses. What’s the vibe like, how would you explain it to someone on the outside? Yeah, well, that’s the place where, even this interview, just thinking about the community now, I’m relaxed, because you’ve created something that does not exist on any planet in this universe.

12:43 An online community of people who know each other so well that when they get to London after eight weeks of course, right, it feels closer than, I had a graduation party this summer, 10 years, or 20 years sorry, those were high school reunions, thanks, and it felt, okay, yesterday, meeting with the team, with the team, and this cool meeting with two classmates, felt 10 times closer than all friends from high school.

13:09 Explain that. When you support each other all the time, when you get to know such intimacy, 10 to 15 team members, they’re like brothers and sisters. I could have taken a plane to come to whichever country my teammates were, to help them into something business-related or not, on the go. Lina, our friend here, wanted to come and we teamed up together, so we couldn’t, it’s family. If that’s the feeling you get at the end.

13:46 And I would say strong and family sometimes, because it’s this short period of time, there’s so many things happening that the number of emotions and connections you make in a day is more than a normal month or year, you know? If I look back in my early 30s, like some months and years I’ve lost, these eight weeks are basically two years of life, when you look at what you learn and what you get into, and the intensity of connections and learning. So for me it’s not eight weeks, it’s about two years or three years’ worth of energy and emotions.

14:21 Yeah, and you were leading the charge a lot of the time. I mean, you were the one in that Facebook chat getting people on the phone. Let’s do a video call now, let me help you. And I always said, like, I’m looking out for the people that help, and the people that help get more out of this course, but you get it anyways.

14:45 Well, that’s what I said earlier about the other courses. Once I figured out that the structure in this course, the elements that make it a real learning environment, that makes me a better person in itself, it’s as if it locks in good elements of myself, kicks out the bad ones, and then I become a natural leader, which in my daily life is harder. I’m more dedicated, which in my natural daily life sometimes I can, you know, have my moments and stuff.

15:10 So it’s as if the elements of the course sort of locked me into a better version of myself, and it was just natural. Actually, I wanted so much to be there to help out, and I had more ideas. In the first two weeks I created an Airbnb group for London, so all the teammates could join into that group and have a place to stay, right? So I would not have had that idea if it was not that kind of infrastructure inside the course, in the whole community.

15:42 So it made me be better, a better version of myself, and that’s something. I mean, the days that I was in that vibe, it’s as if time was flying by. Everything was so easy, calling my teammate Carmen in Spain when I’m in Mexico, an hour before it’s the deadline for the week. I was just there and dialling, and until she would pick up I would just call back, and that was fun, and she ultimately picked up and we finished a task for the week.

16:12 But that’s what the course did to me. It changed me inside the course, so I hopefully will be the same in the future, or a better version of that, but it really helped me up my own personality and use things that I learned before, that I was doing here and there and here and there, helping out, calling on people and stuff, do them at the same time in the same environment.

16:35 Okay, so biggest takeaway from the course. Out of everything you learned, what’s the one thing you’re gonna take away? That’s a hard question. All right, any one? No numbers, there’s so many things. From this, accountability, I’ll take that very simply, and I’ll take two, so I go against your question. One, the accountability. Accountability, sorry. So strong, to be reliable on people, this whole system that we had in the course.

17:08 Because I don’t believe in full agency of human beings, I believe that structure can lead us, right? So having this system of being accountable to people, it becomes your own teacher, even though it’s only a document, right? It’s the structure. So that was for me one of the biggest takeaways.

17:31 The other one is this concept of resistance, which, it’s a hate and love relationship. You invented it, and you talked about it in your TED talk, and although sometimes I don’t agree with some political aspects of the definition, I mean, I’m a person, sometimes I’m a little bit disorganised, so obviously it speaks to me, right?

17:48 So I’m taking that into my daily life and I’m never taking it out, even though I don’t agree, for saying, with all your definition of it, but let’s say 90%, and I’m taking that out and I’m bringing that to the world, at least my small world with friends and family, right? So that’s strong. Yeah, because I’ve got a monkey brain, I think a lot of people do. Yeah, but now you can see it. So we’re gonna get you meditating after this.

18:18 If we walked outside and hit the streets of London and bumped into the Michel who didn’t take this course, how is that guy different than the guy I’m looking at now? I have so many aspects that, I mean, even the skin would be different in terms of colours, right? Because, and I’ll take one example, actionable stuff. The guy before had all those ideas, and people who know me know that I think a lot and stuff like that, but a lot of people know that I don’t take actions on the most important things for myself.

18:57 I do take action for a lot of things that belong to others. We always say that we’re natural helpers or not, right? So that guy was taking less action on his things and too many actions on other people’s things. Now this guy is taking action on himself and trying to keep some energy for other people maybe, but the focus has changed towards myself.

19:24 Trying not to forget that I’m the centre of my life, and then what comes around me is not necessarily the priority, as a reflex, like an impulsion, right? So that guy is different on that aspect. I like that guy. To anybody who’s thinking about taking this course but is not sure if the investment is worth it, what would you say?

19:51 See, this, my breathing, like, I can’t even explain how this course is not even an investment. I mean, it’s even insulting, the term investment. It’s like a gift from the skies, that’s all I could say. It’s like, I mean, I’m without words, so I’d have to get thinking about it to convince them. Actually, I’d be the guy that goes like, guys, come on, you go try it, because you will not regret it.

20:25 You’re gonna invest into yourself, and if you don’t pull the trigger now, you know, if you want to build an online business, in my case it’s been a dream of five years, right, and most of the people looking for those courses online, they want to build their dream business, that’s their goal. So I didn’t pull the trigger for three, four years. I was just reading books and following some courses online but not taking action.

20:50 So I tell them that this course will make you take action. If I went from being, like, you wrote me emails sometimes saying, get out of your own way, right? So if this course was able to make me get out more than before, at least out of my own way, it can do that for everyone who ever dreamed to have an online business. So that’s it. Final thoughts?

21:20 My final thoughts? Yeah. I’m gonna miss this. I mean, the eight weeks, I know the rest, this is not over obviously. We’ve got a great team, it’s a great class, and there’s a lot of people in there that I cherish a lot, and lots of great ideas. This weekend in London is actually crazy when you think about it, putting 130 people, of those who came at least, together, and just talking.

21:43 We have a path together already. We shared emotions, we shared thoughts and experiences. Now we’re sharing a daily life in London, mixing all that together and having ideas together. It’s just like, it’s again without words, it’s unbelievable really. It’s very special.

22:08 And I still remember you and me on that Zoom call, and I kind of procrastinate and this and that, and I just was like, I didn’t know if this guy’s gonna join, and then we accepted crypto from you, which I thought was awesome, and then you made it happen, and I never expected you to be one of our team leaders. And so you are now one of the team leaders for them going forward.

22:33 But I mean, Michel, I just want to say I’ve been so impressed with your energy, the amount of giving you’ve done in this course, and how much you’ve given Team Rose and everybody else. It’s just amazing. I think if you keep this level up and fight your procrastination and get out of your own way and stop second-guessing yourself, you’re gonna have an incredible future. It’s seriously incredible, sky’s the limit.

22:55 And so, because you bring a lot of things the crypto community doesn’t have, you know, that sense of caring, that human side, that ability to go both sides, stick a foot in the dollar, banking side, stick a foot in that side, and I can’t wait to see what you do. You know, and you deserve all of this stuff, so keep it going. I’m gonna be watching you, you better. All right, we got 12 months of this accountability system.

23:19 So I just want to say thanks, and looking forward to spending the weekend with you and all of our other graduates here. Same thing here. Thank you, Brian. No, my pleasure. As we say on London Real, it’s about the journey. Get on the crypto journey, make it happen, and thank you, buddy.