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I'm switching things up this week. 

Instead of writing a how-to article, I'll be sharing a few things that have captured my attention over this last week.

Similar to Tim Ferriss's 5-Bullet Friday newsletter but with my own spin on things. I hope you enjoy. 

Favorite Podcast Episode

Bankless Podcast Episode 164: The FBI Agent Who Took Down the Silk Road with Chris Tarbell

Bankless is one of my favorite podcasts for learning about crypto and this week they interviewed former FBI agent Chris Tarbell. Chris is the person responsible for taking down the Silk Road, a massive online black market that sold everything from drugs to weapons to assassinations. It's a fascinating story that ultimately lead to the arrest of Silk Road founder, Ross Ulbricht and the seizure of 177,000 bitcoin (valued at over $5 Billion).

And oh, by the way, the US government just started selling the Silk Road bitcoin that they seized all the way back in 2013.

Business Lesson of the Week

Lesson: When you're starting out, do things that don't scale. 

A few week's ago, I started preparing my 2022 crypto taxes. If you've never done crypto taxes, I'll let you in a little secret. They suck real bad. 

My crypto taxes in 2021 took me close to 80 hours to prepare and I had 4X as many transactions to dig through in 2022.

I've been dreading my tax prep for months, but then I came across a new crypto tax software called Awaken. The tool itself is a big improvement over other crypto tax tools, but what really sets Awaken apart is the customer service.

Awaken doesn't have any help docs or support articles. In fact, I'm not even sure if they have a support email. But what they do have is a little chat bubble built into their tax software. And on the other side of that bubble is Andrew, one of Awaken's founders/developers.

If you have a question about anything at all, you just type it into the chat bubble and within minutes you'll receive an insightful answer from Andrew.

Over the last few weeks, I would guess that Andrew has spent 5-10 hours helping me. He has taught me how to use Awaken, he has shared countless tips & suggestions, and he has even whipped up new product features to help me complete my taxes more quickly.

Providing that level of customer support isn't sustainable, but Awaken is a brand new company and they are doing something really smart. They are creating raving fans by giving their early customers a "wow" experience.

And guess what I'm doing to say thank you. 

I'm going out of my way to tell everybody I know about Awaken. Not only because I think it's the best crypto tax tool around but because I want to see Andrew and his team succeed.

Fresh New Find

I love sipping a cocktail or crackin' open an ice-cold IPA after a long workday. It helps me turn off my overactive brain and transition from work mode to dad/husband mode. 

But a few weeks ago, I decided to dial back my booze intake for a bit. I wanted to see what kind of effects a booze-free life would have on my sleep quality, energy levels, and overall happiness. 

What I discovered is that I don't actually crave booze at the end of the day. I just enjoy the ritual of sitting down for a few minutes and drinking something besides water or coffee.

I was explaining this to my wife and she suggested I try HOP WTR, a non-alcoholic sparkling water that she'd heard about.

It sounded interesting so I looked it up and discovered that HOP WRT is just sparkling water infused with hops and "mood-boosting, stress-busting adaptogens and nootropics."

We decided to try it out and I'll say that I've been pleasantly surprised. By no means is it as tasty as a real beer, but I've found that it does a nice job of helping me transition from work mode to family mode. 

It's hard to tell if those stress-busting hops are actually working or if it's just a placebo effect, but either way HOP WTR has made my evenings more enjoyable.

Tip: They charge a hefty $36.99 for a 12-pack so definitely keep an eye out for coupons. I was able to snag a buy 2 get 1 free coupon that made the price a bit more reasonable.

ChatGPT Prompt of the Week

Summer is around the corner which means it's time to start working on that beach bod.

I've been starting to get back into shape recently, but the one thing that I've always struggled with is coming up with an effective training program.

For some reason, creating a workout plan is way more challenging than actually doing the workout.

So this time around, I decided to see if AI could help.

I fired up OpenAI's newly released GPT-4 and asked it to create a training program that would help me pack on muscle over the next few months. It took me a little bit of tinkering to dial in my prompt but within 15 minutes, I had a great training program to follow. Here's the prompt that I used: 

"I want to build muscle and put on weight. I'm a 35-year-old male. I'm 5' 11" and I weigh 150 pounds. My target weight is 165 pounds. I need a 3-day per week weight training program that can be done at home. My workout equipment is as follows: TRX, pull-up bar, resistance bands, jump rope, stairs, one light kettlebell and one medium kettlebell, a bench, and dumbbells that go up to 25 lbs. Please act as a personal trainer and create a 4-week training program to help me build muscle. Please also include a warm-up routine that helps me activate the muscles that I will be using during each workout. I prefer short, high-intensity workouts with minimal breaks in between sets".

Here is an example of one of the workouts: 

I've done all three workouts that it created for me this week and each one has been fun and effective.

If you want to try it out for yourself, copy the prompt above and customize it according to your own fitness goals. You will have to be on a paid plan (as of right now) if you want to use GPT-4, but you can use GPT-3.5 for free and I'm sure the results will be comparable.

And if you struggle with the nutrition side of things, try using a prompt like this one to have ChatGPT come up with healthy meal options:

"On Sundays, I want to start making healthy lunches that I can eat throughout the week ahead. The lunches should be delicious, easy to make, and filled with protein to help me build muscle mass. Please act as a nutritionist and come up with 15 lunch ideas with recipes for each." 

That's it for this week's newsletter. I hope you've enjoyed it and I hope you've discovered a few new nuggets of wisdom.

Have a great week ahead!

- Eric