All right, what is up everybody?
So, I am here with an author, Brian Oakes, who has a very interesting story to tell us about life, loss, and persevering through some of the hardest moments that you've, you know, had in your life.
And so, I think it'll be very, it'll be a fun conversation.
We kind of had a little bit of this conversation yesterday, so we'll play off of that.
We'll be diving into a little bit of conspiracy theory and, you know, governmental, whatever you want to talk about it, corruption.
So, Brian, before we start this off, can you just tell us who you are and what you do?
Sure.
So, my name is Brian Oakes.
I am a early crypto investor, crypto miner.
I also am a escalation engineer at Microsoft and I'm not representing Microsoft in any way.
That makes all the lawyers happy.
I'm also an IT director for another company in Texas.
So, pretty much my whole career has been in IT management, IT hardcore debugging, just things related to that.
Awesome.
So, you wrote a book.
It's called Undermine.
I'm holding it right here.
This is a good little book.
I have one.
I'm actually looking, very looking forward to reading it.
Now , tell us, before we get into the story, tell us the premise behind the book.
So , the premise behind the book was a December 8th, 2020, I was sim-swapped and that ultimately led to the loss of 31.5 million in crypto.
Took them about eight minutes and I was actually watching it occur while it happened.
Completely helpless, unable to do anything.
Yeah.
Can you, you know, let's kind of dive into that now.
Let's start to unpack some of the things here.
So, tell us the story, you know, as much details you want to share without, you know, obviously giving out all the details of the book.
We want people to go and buy the book.
Come over to Brian's booth.
He's got a QR code.
Buy his book.
It's on Amazon.
Everywhere you get books.
But yeah, just tell us how this occurred, you know, what was your initial feelings when it happened?
Sure.
So, like any good story, it was a cold and windy night.
It actually was, which is kind of ironic.
I was actually at the office with my wife and kids because, you know, we were moving into a new office.
And this was an office for where I was an IT director.
And so, bring up the kids.
Child labor is a good thing, right?
Teach them good responsibilities.
Have my son help rearrange the office.
Brandy went ahead and brought up some food.
And actually, I remember she had a little Instapot.
She made something.
It was nice.
And we're going ahead and we're moving things around.
And it was about 8.08 p.m.
And I looked down at my computer.
And actually, I get an email first in my Hotmail account that says a transaction was processed at AT&T.
And then about a few seconds later, I look down at my computer and it says needs password.
Like an Outlook, right?
And then all of a sudden, I look to my left and my phone says no signal.
So, at that point, I mean, you just kind of get the chills.
Because everything that we do is through this device.
And so, if you think about it, right?
You're all of a sudden in a remote area and you need help.
You look down and you have no signal.
It's that type of feeling.
You just kind of get that weird pins.
And then immediately, I'm like, you know, ask Brandy if she did anything.
She said no.
And then I just begin to start processes this.
And that's where the story starts.
Yeah, you know, this is something that can happen to anyone.
I mean, you don't necessarily need to be a crypto millionaire to be targeted for this attack.
But kind of go over that target.
What makes a good target for one of these attacks?
So, the best target is the person who doesn't think they're ever going to be a target.
And in fact, everyone in this room is a target.
But we just never realize it, right?
So, for me, in the crypto space, I was a very unassuming behind the scenes person.
Not really a speaker, I mean, I've been to conferences and was somewhat known in some mining circles.
But as far as a person who would do a keynote or anyone who would ever be considered a target, I would never see myself as that.
And that was one of the mistakes that I made.
Yeah, absolutely.
So, can you tell us like, how much did they take?
So, total that night, it was $31.5 million in crypto.
So, it was a total of 500 Bitcoin, plus another wallet that had various, lots of other coins that I used for buying, selling, trading, more of a quick wallet.
And what, how were they able, I mean, we know that you got SimSwapped, they were able to get into your phone, but how did they actually take the crypto?
So, the crypto was, so, okay, so, effectively, when you're SimSwapped, if you think about it, you are no longer in control of the device that we're using for two-factor authentication.
So, as much as you want to use your normal SMS two-factor, it's probably not the strongest thing.
That's why they always want you to use the standard two-factor app.
Well, those are also compromisable as well.
In my particular case, they were able to reset a password on my Hotmail account, and in the information associated in the Hotmail account, led them to be able to get access to all the crypto.
Yeah, so, what are, you know, because I want to dive into your reaction and how you responded to it, but before we get there, I want to kind of paint this picture of how people can protect themselves from a scenario like this as best as they possibly can.
So, you really, I mean, you can, but you can't, if that makes any sense, because in my particular case, I never thought I was going to be a target, and what I ended up leaving was simple breadcrumbs in a mailbox that I had forgotten about for over a decade.
So, it's the logic of, you want to email yourself maybe a picture of your driver's license, or maybe part of a social security number, or maybe a part of a password, or something that we all have done it, and anyone in this room who says they haven't,
they're a bold-faced liar, because we all have, and that's okay.
It's just a matter of those pieces of information are useless until somebody wants to connect the dots on you.
And if someone is sitting watching any one of us, they could pick up our patterns, they could pick up some of the things that we repeat, they could pick up some of our tells, and use that effectively against you.
In fact, a lot of these projects that I'm seeing here throughout the conference are great, they're awesome, neat things, until they're used for nefarious purposes.
And I come from the generation that maybe is naive.
We generated a lot of these things, and we thought they were neat, they were fun, they were interesting educational projects.
Sure, there was probably a segment of the people who were in that, were into it for nefarious, but I just don't think that way.
So again, I never thought I was going to be a target in this case.
Yeah, I think it's, you know, even though you don't think you're going to be a target, always understand that the unexpected can happen.
Absolutely.
I mean, you know, we had our company build or Bitcoin Mining World, we had an experience like this, you know, I mean, obviously not to this extent, but these kinds of attacks, they can happen to anyone.
And if you're unsuspecting, I mean, you're more vulnerable than you are, if you are suspecting, and if you're suspecting, then you can start to prepare and just be vigilant.
And in this space, I mean, especially in Bitcoin, there's so much money that's on the line, and it's, you know, increasing in value every single year.
And so it is more and more important to be vigilant and, you know, take this seriously.
Don't just, you know, buy Bitcoin and say, oh, you know, I've got the greatest asset in the world, I don't need to do anything with it, I don't need to protect myself.
It's like, actually, you kind of do, it's super important.
So one other point I'll bring up though, because there's an interesting angle to this, the one piece that I no longer, the one piece of security that I didn't have control over, is what was compromised.
And that's the thing that I want to take people, I really want people to understand is that when we sign up with our bank, excuse me, or we sign up with a financial institution, they want us to use SMS two-factor messaging.
And in this particular case, when I was SIM swapped, the actual phone number was sent to another phone.
So for instance, let's say I wanted to reset my password, I no longer had physical control of the device receiving that information.
And it was due to no fault of my own.
It was due to the fault of a compromise of the carrier.
So the carrier in this case was as much of a victim as I was.
Doesn't make it any better.
But they were actually compromised just like I was.
I unfortunately was the end target who was exploited.
Yeah, absolutely.
So when I think about what I would do in a scenario where I had $30 million plus and the value is exponentially increasing every year, because that's what Bitcoin does.
When I think about that, I don't have great thoughts.
I think it gets a little dark pretty quickly.
And, you know, I really believe that most people working nine to five spending trading their time and their energy for dollars, look at that number being stolen, lost, or whatever as as a devastating event that cannot be recovered from.
So what did you do?
What was your response?
And how did you overcome this?
So a lot of thoughts and a lot of things went into this, right?
So when I initially started telling people the story, I mean, kind of vary off on that for a second.
I began to see how they reacted, right?
So similarly, when I initially told you the story, people reacted in a way where, in fact, actually, when I was talking to some folks yesterday, I could see them visually change when I told them the dollar amount.
And immediately in their head, they kind of went to a different space.
And it was that dark place.
And it was a situation where folks would, and some of the feedback I got initially, when we initially started telling people this happened to us, and this was our friends and family, mind you, the reaction was, hey, you know, I would have killed myself or something.
Now, would they have actually done that?
Probably not.
But the simple fact that they actually went to that first bothered me.
And what it kind of showed me was that, as a society, maybe we just are not equipped to handle things like we used to.
And so one of the takeaways from the book was, I had to get to a point where what worked for me was what I put in the book and how I got through this from a kind of a therapy mental health perspective.
And maybe what worked for me could work for some other folks.
Effectively, kind of going back to the beginning is, when this occurred, I'm seeing it and I'm watching it real time.
I had to send Brandy home because I needed to focus on it.
So at that point, I'm not in the post-traumatic stress, I'm dealing with it.
And so I went into what I call critsit mode.
And some of my jobs, I'm part of a critsit team where we deal with critical situations.
So you're easily able to take away the emotion of what you're feeling and concentrate on the data.
And I was able to gather enough data that night where I was able to track the folks who got into the account to a compromised computer in Seattle.
So at that point, I'm gathering data.
About an hour later, after I was done, got AT&T to finally cancel my phone for that night, I broke down.
Because at that moment, it's just kind of hitting you.
It's hitting you of what actually took place.
And I don't think people realize that in the moment.
Because you have a lot of emotions going through and, you know, it's not the financial loss at that point, it's making a mistake, right?
And how we handle that and how we treat each other and, friends and peers, because everyone here is effectively, you know, I've said this to a few people, we're kind of the smart people in the room.
And when you realize what happened, because I was able to connect the dots very quickly.
You know, that's what I do for a living.
I was able to connect the dots of what actually happened and I knew immediately.
And going and telling your, you know, spouse and family, you don't have any more of what they, to be honest, didn't even know I had in the first place.
So it just came crashing down.
And then, you know, eventually I gathered the data the next day and we, you know, continue on with parts of the story.
Yeah.
This is a devastating thing that happens, you know, and to your earlier point of how most people react, I really do believe that that is due to our association of money with energy spent.
Whether it's, you know, whether you intrinsically know it, whether you outwardly know it, we spend a lot of time in our lives working for this value, this dollar value.
And when something like that happens, almost very much like a physical moment in time where you lose something that matters very much to you, your mind goes to a dark place.
How am I going to recover?
How am I going to move through this?
And how am I going to tell the people that I love that I experienced this or I lost this thing?
And that becomes very traumatic for a lot of people.
Sure.
And one of the things that you also want to think about is, for me, I'm a, you know, one Bitcoin is one Bitcoin.
One Litecoin is one Litecoin.
Just, you know, one coin is one coin.
The dollar amount has never really been my focus.
And that's, you know, as long as other folks have known me, that's been a statement I've stayed true to.
But it comes down to the trophy that I had, the big stack of whatever that I accumulated is now gone.
And so there's that loss, regardless of the dollar amount.
And then you begin to think of, well, it's gone.
So the time that I'd spent, the emotions that I put in, the sacrifices that I'd made was for nothing.
And so you go through those thoughts in the moment, because that's how we react to things.
And so the point of telling the story was, this is what worked for me.
This was my journey going through it.
And here is how I was able to come out the other side.
The book begins with the theft.
But then you have to tell the story of how I even accumulated that in the first place.
And the thoughts and the dedication and the time.
And it's like I said, it's a memoir with a lot of thoughts and mental health, you know, sprinkled in.
Yeah.
So after the theft occurs, you know, you gather all this data, you gather all this information.
What was your next step?
What did you do?
So the next step was, where do I go from here?
So initially, I knew the carrier.
I knew that was going to be a mountain I didn't necessarily want to climb.
So believe it or not, I contacted LifeLock, which is kind of funny when you think about it.
Well, based on crypto, that's technically property.
So I had a property theft.
So I also contacted my homeowner's insurance too.
Why not, right?
And it was interesting because I had to explain and relive the crime every single person I had to explain.
So that's what I did.
Now, well, technically that was second.
What it first did was actually contact the police, right?
So I filed a police report where the theft actually occurred.
Come to find out you're supposed to file that where you live.
Didn't know about that.
So learned a lot about that, but actually went through and was able to gather as much data as I could.
And there's a lot of details to that process in the book because as you're going through this and retelling the story, you're having to relive it every single time, right?
Which is then creating additional stress and frustrations because they don't see it like you see it.
If you see this as a bar of gold that you physically mined out of the ground that was stolen, they would understand that.
But the people you're talking to really at that point in time can't comprehend that's the equivalent of.
Yeah.
So, you know, after you've contacted LifeLock, after you've contacted your carrier, after you've contacted all the people, you know, relive this story over and over and over again, trying to stay calm, trying to not react, but respond.
What did you do?
I mean, I want to get to this whole story of the detective.
That's really where I'm going with this.
So there's an interesting angle to this.
So when I filed the police report, it was a suburb of St.
Louis and it was a small police department.
And so I filed the police report, was contacted by the detective.
And when I went ahead and told him the story, he didn't really understand it because he'd never really experienced this before.
I said, well, just think of it as retail theft.
And he said, well, but nobody was in the store.
And I said, well, yeah, they remotely controlled the computer.
Well, how did you know that?
Well, that's what I'm theorizing.
So then I went ahead and gave him some breadcrumbs of what I think he might be able to find.
And sure enough, he was able to find.
And I was able to give him enough data that eventually he was able to confirm what I was suspecting.
Those are data points that I provided to the and so on and so forth.
Yeah.
So, you know, this detective was able to walk through what you were telling him to do.
Did that bring up any suspicion on his part that you might be involved with this theft or, you know, how did that look like?
Because, I mean, you were handing him everything.
So the accusation was actually made by the carrier, which I thought that was kind of interesting.
Why would I steal from myself?
But that's a whole other conversation.
It actually got to an interesting point where the detective was actually instructed to no longer talk to me, which I thought was interesting.
I didn't really think about that in the moment because I was kind of moving on in this whole process.
After all that was complete, we eventually contacted the carrier and had to relive it all over again.
Yeah.
It's crazy to me that, you know, all of this can happen.
And, you know, because we're dealing with something that, you know, a lot of people don't understand, you know, shots fired across the bow, you know, you're being suspected of stealing from yourself.
Meanwhile, you just lost $30 million or more at this point as we're increasing through the time.
But why on earth would you steal that money from yourself?
And why, like, my mind starts to go to even darker places of corruption and lies when the detective who's supposed to be working on your case is told he's no longer allowed to contact you.
Yeah, so that was kind of another additional data point that came up is that I was reached through other mechanisms by this individual who said he was instructed to no longer contact me.
And, you know, I can theorize of what was happening in the background at that point in time.
The carrier came in and removed all of the equipment actually from the store.
And this was a franchise store.
So, you know, there's some other situations with that.
But at the end of the day, you know, nobody really wanted to protect the consumer.
And that's kind of something that I like to continue to talk about in this particular case.
So let me just kind of take a step back.
So for anybody who has ever seen SIM swapping, there's effectively three types.
But really there's two.
One is there's somebody on the inside of the store who is paid to go ahead and transfer numbers, right?
That's fairly common, more than people want to admit.
The second type is what I call the telegram groups, right?
Where there's a coordinated group of folks.
They go in, they steal the manager's laptop or tablet, which is logged in.
They've got about 35, 40 minutes to actually go ahead and change as many numbers as they can.
Usually a coordinated group, you know.
And then there's mine, which you don't really ever hear about.
The actual terminals or laptops, computers inside the store were compromised remotely.
The store was actually closed when mine occurred.
So the store was specifically targeted, pre-planned.
They already had, I'm again theorizing, that they had already lifted the manager's password.
The folks in the store, based on my observation and just feeling, had zero indication or involvement in this.
So again, they were as much victims as myself.
And at some of those franchise stores, they have a secondary level of security that's not a requirement .
Simple username and password is all that's required.
Yeah, this was a coordinated attack from a sophisticated group of individuals.
And kind of tell us how you've come to that conclusion .
I know that we kind of laid it out from the store perspective and from the sim swap.
But the different things that happened through the sim swap, what are those indications that made you feel like this was a coordinated attack of sophisticated individuals who've probably done this before?
So, you know, when people are really good at what they do, sometimes it's just beautiful to watch people work.
And I know this is kind of odd from this perspective, but I was impressed at how well it was done.
Now, in the moment, yeah, obviously not, right?
But when you kind of take a step back and you begin to look at how quickly it was executed, how well it was organized in the sense of, just as an example, once they were in, I started and I was able to get back into the account, I could see every exchange and every provider was hit alphabetically quite well.
And I mean simultaneously.
So it was either automated, scripted, passwords were reset through the two-factor code.
And in fact, the interesting piece in this is that the phone was actually triangulated to about 150 miles from the actual store.
So the IP addresses where that it came from was actually in a compromised computer in Seattle, but the physical phone that it was triangulated to was about 150 miles away from the actual store, which was in a completely other state.
So that actually created another interesting issue.
When I called the carrier that night, I have to argue with the gentleman who's on the phone, just a normal customer service rep, and convince him that I did not go to the store, I am the actual person, and get him to turn off the phone.
And that was another hour and a half, two hours at that point that I was completely out of control.
Now, you know, in the moment, I'm thinking IT guy, I want to track everybody, I want to follow them.
But what I should have done is just pick up the desk phone that was sitting right there and actually called the carrier.
Never crossed my mind until maybe an hour later.
Yeah, I mean, you're going through a very traumatic moment at that time, and your mind is racing, it's hard to see what's right in front of you.
Well, and you also have to remember, again, nothing against the customer service guy I was talking to, but to have him understand what was happening as I'm seeing it, this was completely in another dimension that he, in the moment, or maybe now, still doesn't even comprehend.
Yeah.
So you've been through this very rough experience in life.
And, you know, I think that a lot of people, maybe they don't lose 30 million dollars, but they go through experiences that are just as bad to them in the moment.
And, you know, the way that we react or the way that we respond to those events kind of defines us as individuals, as human beings, and how we progress further in life.
I can think back to multiple experiences in my life where something bad has happened, and the way that I reacted to it could have been much better.
And, you know, maybe I focused on it, hyperfixated on it, really led me down a dark path, and I had to learn and grow from that.
So this experience, the way that you responded to it, how has it affected your life and other moments in your life?
So, well, I mean, really you have to begin to think of how you identify, right?
So, like I made the comment earlier, right?
If we're effectively the smartest people in the room, and we make a simple human mistake that everyone else does, what does that do?
And I know that may seem, you know, some people may get it, some people may not, but it's kind of that whole personal pride in the simple fact that you have to admit that you made a mistake.
And once I realized what had actually happened, that was the beginning of me trying to figure out how to handle it, right?
And so in this particular case, you know, acceptance from wife, spouse, friends, family, I mean, that was one of those things.
But you also had to tell them what you were doing for the last decade that they had no clue of.
So it was one of those things, you know, you go to your Sunday school, small group, that type of thing, you know, your social group, your friends, family.
Yeah, hey, yeah, I got hacked, lost 30 million bucks.
What?
Like, what?
Oh, yeah, all the times I wasn't at church, or I wasn't, you know, at a function, I was at the farm doing stuff.
Had a few people saying, I thought you were doing farming.
Like, no, I was doing crypto farm.
What's crypto?
You know, so it basically began all these conversations.
You know, as much as they wanted to understand and help and listen, they still really didn't get it.
What I found helpful was I ended up finding a therapist, which is a fun conversation, because in my life, this was a massive loss.
But I have a healthy marriage, my kids are okay, I have a fine job.
The other aspects of my life are fine.
This was just a big focus of attention that I had to figure out how to handle.
So what I ended up doing was I went to BetterHelp, this isn't an advertisement, but it was easy and simple.
And I found a therapist, which was a fun conversation itself.
So one thing I like about them was you could try them out.
And there was one lady, for all the people who are older, in California, you had Miss Cleo from California Psychics, I always remember that.
And she was basically kind of a Caribbean lady, she had a voice .
And the first therapist that they hooked me up with was kind of a Miss Cleo type.
And all she wanted to do was, she was chatting with me, what can I fix?
What can I fix?
And my response to her was, I don't need to be fixed.
I just need somebody to listen.
And so after a few therapists, there was a lady in South Texas, Lynn, and we talked.
And she didn't try to fix anything, she just listened.
Because I began the conversations, and a lot of the conversations we had are actually in the book, and I wanted to put those in there.
Because when I'm talking to her, I begin this with, this is my first world problem.
Because I wanted to frame this in perspective.
Because you know, in order to deal with some of your problems, you have to frame them so you provide a proper understanding of where you are, right?
This is my loss, and this is how I understand it.
But it's still my, like I always call it, my first world problem.
And once we had those dialogues, it was nice to finally get them out.
Because it wasn't something I wouldn't burden my wife with.
And she would absolutely listen.
But it really didn't matter.
In fact, a point that I put in the book is, she never even knew how much crypto I had.
Because I never brought it up.
Because it was something that I never really focused on, if that made sense.
I was about the mining, the technology, the interest, the blockchain itself.
Not the dollar amount, right?
And that was just something.
So she took that pretty well.
She knew I had a lot, but she never really knew the amount.
Still loves me, still happily married.
So that worked out well.
But it was one of those things, when I started talking to Elin, it was nice because I could finally get it out without judgment.
Somebody just listening.
Now, it's funny because we've had some conversations afterward.
I haven't talked to her in a while.
I included her in the book.
But we chatted offline and she said it was... she's kind of given me the un-therapist view.
And she said it was interesting as I'm driving in the car telling her about my first world problem.
She didn't really believe the story in the beginning.
But at the end of the day, she is a Bitcoin supporter and she loves it.
A lot of our conversations turned into me having to educate her, even through the therapy process, as she's listening so she could understand what I was saying.
Yeah, I want to take this back to what you said about a happy marriage and your life.
Otherwise, your life was quote-unquote perfect from your standpoint.
And maybe that kind of sets you up to not utterly fail in this situation and utterly lose yourself in the desperation of the loss.
But I want to talk about the definition of happiness and success.
Because I think this is really important in no matter what endeavor you do.
I mean, we're all entrepreneurs here and we're all trying to build businesses and failure happens.
Whether you lose 30 million dollars, whether your wife gets breast cancer, which is an experience you also had, or your business fails, your definition of happiness, your definition of success can make or break you in that situation.
So let's dive into that a little bit.
So that's an interesting question that I always ask is, how do people define happiness?
And that was something that as I go through this journey, I always ask people that.
So in the case of Brandy, that's my wife.
So I go and I tell her this and her response was, okay.
And I know people wouldn't really understand that, but when you begin to understand her, she's just okay.
So she has been throughout my whole career, I hate to refer to my wife as a battle buddy, but she's my battle buddy and she always has been.
And having that partner going, friend, family, spouse, however it works for people.
Having that person who goes through that experience with you, any experience, you just naturally have that support.
And that's something that I think people seem to forget in a lot of cases.
So in my case, having that support going through the process with me just gives you that inert strength that people don't necessarily value as much as they used to.
Yeah, you know, having a good life partner is very helpful.
And you know, for me, the definition of success is varying.
And I think that depending on how you define success, depending on who you have in your life, I mean, something like this happens.
Let's say you build a business and it fails.
If you define your value of success, you define success for yourself as, you know, I am a happy person.
I have love in my life.
I have that battle partner.
Then it doesn't matter what happens to you.
It doesn't matter if the business fails.
Well, and that's the other thing, having that localized support system.
When you go through something like this, people obviously try and relate.
Like, hey, well, you know, I went through this experience.
That's their process to try and connect with you.
In this particular case, the one thing that, you know, she always said was, hey, we'll be okay.
And I completely agree with that, right?
But in the moment, you know, you're still having to deal with it as yourself.
And until people are willing to deal with it how they deal with it, you know, it's just going to be that thing that continually creeps up.
So somebody who, you know, I always preach the mental health journey as much as I can, because I think in society today, we don't deal with things like we used to.
We're just not necessarily equipping people through social relationships and family.
And again, I lucked out in this case, because I have a spouse who lets me go off on, she likes, she likes to refer to them as my adventures.
I go off on these adventures and tangents and things, and that's just me.
And that has allowed me to have great success in some areas, obviously some failures.
The other thing I had to kind of figure out is, and I'll go back to the happiness question in a second, is maybe the story I needed to tell was not what I wanted to do with crypto, which was philanthropic and those type of things.
Maybe the story I was supposed to tell was how I got through it.
So tough pill to swallow, but maybe that is the case.
So it's the whole keep on keeping on.
But the question that I was asking, this is what I asked you the other day, is how do you define happiness, right?
And this is something I want everybody here to kind of think about, is when somebody asks you that question, it's an in-the-moment question, but it's not.
It's a how do you define happiness in your own life?
And it's okay.
It's completely subjective to who you are, how you're in the moment.
Some people like to turn it up to 11.
Spinal tap's awesome.
Some people don't, right?
Some people like to be low-key.
Some people like to have support to go off on adventures.
Some people like to write books.
Some people like to crypto mine.
It doesn't matter.
It's how you define it.
And once you define that for you, then you become who you actually are.
Yeah, and if you can define that for you, and there are no wrong answers at the end of the day.
It's as long as you know who you are and you're willing to define that for you.
That is how you become a better entrepreneur.
Because when you are secure in what you want, you're secure in your happiness.
As you more move forward and progress through life, through your endeavors, your journeys, you make better decisions because they're aligned with who you truly are and what you want.
So the process of writing this book, I mean, you had this experience and I think it's valuable for the wider world to know, to understand that this happened so that we can better protect ourselves and be more vigilant.
But why on earth would you write a book, Brian?
So the book actually started as a burn journal, right?
So there's a burn journal concept where you write down your notes and you burn it and it's off to the ether and it's out of you.
It's part of a therapy process.
But also, I'm having to write all these notes down for attorneys and lawyers and cops and so I've got a pretty good note thing.
And after we went through the theft, I began to start to tell people about it a little bit.
And how they reacted kind of caused me to do more notes and then eventually went ahead and just kind of came up with the timeline and then eventually hooked up with Carrie Nyman, who was a ghostwriter that I hired to help me through the process, which that's a fun process in itself.
I'll just go into that real quick.
So a fun story with that.
So with Carrie, so I actually hired her to help me write the book and she's an official ghostwriter.
I think she's at 27 books now.
And so I talked to her about the first chapter and she writes it and this was after we talked for about four hours.
She then gives it to me and I rewrote about 60% of it.
And so she kind of reacted odd.
She was like, okay, that's fine.
She didn't like my redlining on all the things that she wrote.
This was her baby that she was writing.
So then we did chapter two.
And chapter two was a little bit more of history and I rewrote about 60% of that.
And she got a little irritated and said, why do you keep messing with my book?
I said, well, first off, the way I think is I'm a reverse engineer guy.
I'm a rewriting the code of my book.
And once I began to explain that to her and once I began to get her to understand that, it was a magical process because now she understood that I'm going to critique everything.
And so if you end up reading the book, the book has two narratives.
It has the constant, which is kind of her words, and then it has mine, which are the shiny squirrel things that are all over the place and all the important details that kind of fill in the gaps.
Yeah, you know, as we start to wrap this up, you know, I want to give you the opportunity, you know, speaking to your audience, speaking to the wider world.
What are some pieces of advice that you have?
What are some key takeaways that you want to leave the audience with?
So one of the key takeaways is that if you don't think you're ever going to be a target, you already are.
And in fact, everybody here is a target.
Some of the mistakes that I own up to that I make in the book, every single person here has made those mistakes.
It's the concept of convenience versus security.
And I mean, just as a great example, I'm sure everyone has put part of their social security number, maybe a picture of their driver's license.
They emailed it to get it between devices conveniently, which is fine.
It's not.
But people do it.
They just never go back and clean it up.
So if you're part of my age, I'm 49, so I'm at the beginning of the analog digital technology, had email addresses since the mid 90s.
And of course, I'm a pack rat of digital data like everybody else.
And if you don't go back and sanitize it, then if somebody wants to get in, it's a simple fact of they can.
Yeah, absolutely.
Go back and sanitize your digital life.
I think it's very important.
We're here at the CypherCon.
I mean, there is all kinds of technology here, people educating people on cybersecurity, on ways to protect your digital life.
And I think that there's a lot of different things that we can do to protect ourselves.
I mean, that doesn't mean that it's not going to happen.
You're still going to be able to be targeted.
This was a very sophisticated attack, that there's not really much you can stop from the attack happening.
But there are ways that you can mitigate them being able to get the information like you were saying.
But there's also ways to keep them from getting valuable crypto or money.
Like if you back up your wallets, if you do it in secure encrypted ways, there are other methods to protect yourself.
But there's also another angle to this too, is that when it does happen, it's okay.
And that's the part that I think people don't realize is that when this does happen to you, you will be okay.
Your life may be a little different.
You may have to change some things, but you'll come out okay.
And that's the thing that... so in the book, I talk about two people that I know who were in the crypto equipment sales and the ups and downs trading, and they took their own life.
And it was they took their own life because they couldn't handle what they thought this was going to turn into.
They were not mentally prepared to handle the downfalls.
And it was sad to see they had put their value in how they were being identified as a crypto trader, or this was going to solve all their marriage problems, or solve their... a guy that I knew was a basically divorced father, and he wanted custody of his kids.
And so this was his answer.
And unfortunately, he ended up taking his own life.
He couldn't handle the ups and downs, unfortunately, and it was sad to see.
And so the message I want to leave people with is that when this does happen, because it's going to happen to everybody at some point, in some way, it'll be okay.
That's kind of why I ended up writing the book.
Yeah, I think that's why I wanted to outline the definition of happiness.
Because when your happiness is, and again, it's subjective, but if your happiness is tied up in what you do, and who you are, like your role...
How you identify yourself.
Exactly, exactly.
I mean, particularly for me, I mean, just to get a little bit meta, I'm a father.
And what defines happiness for me is my little boy, my wife, the way that they see me.
And so looking at your experience and thinking about, okay, if something similar like this had happened to me, I think what would be more important, more devastating is if my family looked at me different because something like this happened.
And I know that that would never happen.
I mean, my wife would never look at me differently.
She would be very similar, your battle partner.
And I think that that would help me get through a scenario like this.
And again, going back to it doesn't necessarily have to be the loss of $30 million.
It can be the loss of a family member.
It can be the loss of a business that you've dedicated your heart and soul into.
It can be a medical expense.
It can be a lot of different things.
Life has hardships, but who you define yourself as, where you place your value, happiness, and your success in will help you get through this.
One of the expressions I use a lot is just keep on keeping on.
And so one of the things that, and as we were writing the book, my wife was diagnosed with breast cancer.
That was rough, but the reason we ended up putting in the book was because as I was telling Carrie, we just handled it.
And so she ended up having a double mastectomy a month after she was diagnosed.
And that just absolutely floored Carrie.
And she wanted us to put it in because how we handled that was kind of how we handled the crypto theft.
We just kept on.
We just continually moved forward.
Didn't dwell in the moment and what was happening.
You just have to keep it on.
Absolutely.
I couldn't agree more.
Well, Brian, I want to say thank you so much for writing this book and telling your story.
I think this is an important story to tell.
For anybody who wants to get the book, you can find it on Amazon.
It's called Undermined by Brian Oakes.
I highly recommend that you go and get the book.
He has some with him here today.
If you're in the audience, he's got some books.
Come buy a book, get it signed by Brian.
If you have any questions for him, I'm sure he'd be happy to answer them.
Brian, I want to say thank you so much for what you do and I appreciate your time.
Thank you very much.
All right, guys, we will be back in about 15 minutes for the next one.
It's not on the TV, but we've got some good stuff for you.
We're going to be talking about Bitcoin and Bitcoin mining.