From Construction to Crypto: Why Nathan Poole Calls Bitcoin His Safest Asset | Mini Mines

SPEAKER_02 0:58

Welcome everyone to Doing Business with a Servant's Heart Podcast. I'm your host, Steve Ramona. I'm thrilled to have you join us today. This podcast is dedicated to exploring the idea of doing business and living life with a purpose. Yes, serving others, and yes, achieving success. We all want to succeed. We believe that when we approach our work and our lives with a servant's heart, we can truly make a difference. We create this show for you because we want everyone to be motivated, inspired, and educated to make an impact in your world. So take this incredible guest I have, learn from him, inspire to share with other people. Whether an entrepreneur, community leader, or simply someone looking to bring more purpose into your daily life, this podcast is here to support you. And while you're listening to this incredible guest, I want you to think about how you're going to serve today and what impact you'll create today. Today, let's not wait till tomorrow. Let's start today and just keep doing it every day. Today's episode is brought to you by our amazing sponsor, Pantheon Alliance. Okay. Picture yourself joining an elite community of thriving business owners from a variety of industries, all working together to create a powerful referral marketplace. It's an incredible opportunity to expand your network and elevate your business to new heights. With that being said, uh, you know, any information out, reach out to me. But impact and a servant's heart is a big part of this podcast. Probably most of this podcast. Talking to my guest before the show, he's gonna bring this out in spades. Networking, connecting, and being a servant's heart. Nathan, welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_00 2:27

Hey Steve, it was great to be here.

SPEAKER_02 2:29

Kind of got you on a calm down there a little bit to get you uh ready to roll. Interesting, your background is so interesting. You went from construction or to crypto. Both industries are large, but what drew you to crypto and why'd you leave construction?

SPEAKER_00 2:47

You know, a big part of it was uh we were looking for something more passive, and we had done a bunch of real estate endeavors and you know, five or six different types of real estate-based businesses, construction being our our cash cow at the time. And and we uh we were looking for something that was passive or semi-passive. We were looking for something with high ROI, uh, something that was a little bit riskier, or at least so we thought at the time, because we've got the safest industry, we wanted something with a little bit more risk, and something with a little bit higher upside, and something that uh would provide significant tax benefits for us. My wife's a CPA, and so we said tax. We were looking for something that we can pour money into and have it be a write-off for us um and create uh wealth in a different way. And so we settled on that. Um and it what turned what started as what we thought to be the riskiest asset, we're now like selling real estate to be more all in it, right? So it's in our minds, it's become the safest asset we have, but uh, but one way or the other, it just uh we've really enjoyed the time that it's provided for us, the growth that it's provided for us, the uh you know what would take me dozens of employees in construction to do, we can do with foo and in the crypto space and the mining space. And so uh we we really like the simplicity of our lives with it.

SPEAKER_02 4:09

So risk is a unique word, it goes so many different ways. Talk about what your thoughts are on risk, especially with money.

SPEAKER_00 4:19

Uh, I have the luxury of theoretical time, right? So I'm I'm 39-ish, and so I I theoretically, if the Lord wills, will have something to look, you know, maybe as much as a few decades left. And so um, in a theoretical midlife journey, you know, again, you know, the Lord could take me tomorrow and I would praise him if he did. But uh if he doesn't and I have a full life, then you know, if I lived at 80 or so, I might be about halfway there. And so I figured, let's try all of these risky things uh before I'm 40. And so my wife and I, when we first embarked on a full-time entrepreneurial journey, uh something like seven or eight years ago, we said, look, let's just try it all and we're gonna experience and we wanna we wanna work to learn, not work to earn. And if I have nothing to show for it at 40, that's great. I can always start over at 40 and go do a career. I've had several, you know, W-2 careers before I could go do a career, and you can go do a career. We both got our masters, we can go do something and uh put our 25 years in and retire at 65 in a theoretical, normal, you know, career field. But uh we ended up falling in love with the journey on the way. And so now I don't I don't know if either one of us would be willing to go back to a nine to five, but uh it acts uh like a like a mental umbrella underneath you to catch you, yeah, a mental parachute to to catch you just in case. But I I think at this point, um I I'm pretty sold on the entrepreneur piece.

SPEAKER_02 5:56

Love the passion in your voice and audience. That's a great lesson. What Nathan just told you, and you know it's the passion. He came out, he stayed with construction and made legacy money because I know construction can be very profitable, a lot of work, but profit. My dad was a contractor for 40 years, so I know the space. So it's and that was still back then, it's still hard as it is today. But talk about you know, why crypto and mining? There's a lot of stuff out there, it's like AI, so many different people talking about what's your thoughts on it?

SPEAKER_00 6:30

So, crypto is interesting in that it is both the hardest and softest money on the planet, and what I mean by that is 99 plus percent of crypto, cryptocurrency, is either an unregistered security or a gamble on the future of a tech or a scam, just an outright scam coin, or a lotto ticket. That's 99% of the space. And less than 1% of the space in terms of number of coins, are actual, true, hardest money in the history of the world. Like these are earth-shattering technologies that will it will become apparent in 20 years. Obviously, Bitcoin and Litecoin were the beginning of the new phase of money, just like the internet was the new phase of commerce. But right now it's not because people clump all of these scams and frauds and all this other stuff into this blanket term of cryptocurrency. Um, and even you know, the misnomer of central bank digital currencies, right? CBDCs, they they're clumped in there as a type of crypto, and they're not even close to crypto, right? So uh there's all these things that have that umbrella that add confusion to it. And so it took a it took a year or so to really filter through, you know, we mined dozens of coins, and then we kind of figured out all right, this is these are the hard, this is hard wealth, this is real money. We this is mathematically programmed to go up to an infinite price in terms of US dollars. That's what we want to be in. And so then we narrowed in on the Litecoin and Bitcoin space and uh and haven't looked back. And the more we go down the further down the road we get, the more hardcore sold on the idea we get.

SPEAKER_02 8:17

So education sounds like it's very important in this space.

SPEAKER_00 8:21

It's huge, it's really important. I mean, I've been scammed, I don't know anybody in the space that hasn't been scammed, you know, where yeah, anytime you send crypto, not shaking hands with that individual before you you you start scratching your arm a little bit, saying, Man, am I am I making is this a scam or is this real? And and uh, but even you know, I mean, my antennas up as high as it goes, like I want to make sure I don't get scammed. And I got, you know, that I got I got gotten right at once, but they got me once, you know. And so uh thankfully it was a relatively small amount, but um, but there there is a lot of bad actors in space, but there's a lot of bad actors in the internet. Um, and there's a lot there were even more bad actors when the internet was first invented. So I'm we're trying to not throw the baby out with the bathwater, if you forgive the poor euphemism. Um, and so really trying to hone in on what is this thing of crypto, what's real wealth versus what are you know hope of wealth and what are scams and what are you know really a stock in a company that they're doing in an unregistered manner. And so trying to filter through that took it took probably a few years. I don't think I really became all in like gung ho, Bitcoin and Litecoin only, um, until maybe uh we until maybe we're in it about three years. And then I really, after bearing myself in studying, I said, this is look, I don't have to do anything fancy, I'm not smart enough to trade crypto, so I'm gonna buy it and it's gonna sit there and it's gonna rot for 20 years, and that's the exit plan. There is no sell for US dollars as the exit plan. That Bitcoin and Litecoin are the exit plan, and so it really took some education and learning to get to that point, though.

SPEAKER_02 10:00

I love that you say crypto has bad actors. There's bad chiropractors, there's bad plumbers, there's you know bad roofers. We've you know, some of us have run into it, and that's being scammed as well. So I love that you put that because we forget, we're like, because it's so woo-woo crypto, and it's not, it's just another industry, and you just need to be educated.

SPEAKER_00 10:21

Um, I've been scammed more by contractors than I would ever dream of being scammed by by you know by subcontractors, by prime contractors, because I've been sub and prime, and by far the worst actors I've met. And uh, you know, so I've uh when I look at a relatively small single singular scam in the crypto space, I'm I'm just grateful it's a cleaner space in construction.

SPEAKER_02 10:42

Amen. No, I I love that. I love that you said that. So talk about mini mice. Great name for a company. I love it. When I first saw it, I'm like, that's pretty cool. What's your mission for mini mice?

SPEAKER_00 10:55

So our goal is to create passive wealth uh for outside investors through uh a hard asset of a computer that generates the perfect dollar cost averaging into what we believe to be the hardest wealth that the money has ever that the planet has ever seen.

SPEAKER_02 11:14

Yeah, it's the simple as that. And passive means what?

SPEAKER_00 11:18

So uh right now uh we have hundreds of computers uh running perfectly, and they're about an eight and a half hour drive from me. And so it's about as passive as it gets. All hundreds of my employees are very loyally working their butts off right now, and they're just all computers. And uh and so that it allows us to, you know, we have mines down here in Florida and mines up in North Carolina, and so it allows us to uh have that flexibility to go back and forth and to make sure that we're growing and scaling at a at a reasonable pace, you know. They they say most businesses don't die of starvation, they die of indigestion, right? So it's not I can't get the work, it's I got too much work now, how do I handle it? Right. We've had companies die from that, right? And so I I personally have. And so um I a nice slow rate of growth, and we've just been really building. And instead of taking the profits out, we roll it back into to more computers and more hash rate, which hash rate's a uh industry term for more computers, basically. So more computers and more hash rate and more growth and more facilities as we outgrow them. And uh, and it's been great.

SPEAKER_02 12:27

I love it. And and and individuals down the roll be able to do it on their own. You're gonna show them how to do that and have a system to mine their own coin.

SPEAKER_00 12:38

Correct. So we have a few different options. Again, we have a fund, but then we have people that will you know host with us. So they want to buy the computers, they want to take on all of the risk, and they, you know, and they'll pay a premium to have us manage their computers on their behalf. So we've got all kinds of uh of different people that are involved. There's a handful of LLCs involved, uh, again, from legal protection and make sure that everybody's covered and make sure that everybody's paid out properly. And so um it's just uh it's a really neat thing coming from uh what was a more complex business environment, right? We had you know dozens of LLCs and trusts and and you know uh the the the the ESAs and the HSAs and all these things for the tax purposes, and this this has become a much more simple way of saying, hey, look, if here's here's access to this uh uh this avenue for revenue generation, if you'd like it. If this is for you, then then here's some of the options that helps you uh get to where you're trying to go. And there's no right or wrong answer for anybody. It's hey, you're on your path, and you're on your path, and you might have different goals. And let's see if we can help you get there.

SPEAKER_02 13:49

I love that you use the word simple. I was told by a very wealthy guy many years ago, simple most people can do. When it's hard, yeah, you start taking people out. Well, not a problem. I mean, it's not a big deal, but if you want mass appeal, it's gotta be simple.

SPEAKER_00 14:06

That's one of the things that I do think is another detriment to this industry specifically, is if you ask a crypto guy, which I wasn't, right? I'm a I'm a lowly contractor, right? So if you ask a crypto guy, what's mining, they're gonna say, Oh, it's uh solving uh complex algorithms and and and and you're like, Well, I don't still understand what it is you're doing because they're going into the behind, they're going to the to the to the hardware and software component instead of going to the end user, right? Whereas if you say, What's the internet do? Well, it connects people. Well, that that's in one way it is what the internet does, and then there's some other components of it. And so I like to describe mining as uh a few different analogies, like I view us as the Western Union of cryptocurrency. So we help you send money from point A to point B, and we take a fee in the middle. Um, another way to have an analogy of it is we are converting electricity into a digitized form of money so that way that excess electricity on a grid can be sent financially to anywhere else on the planet. And so we're converting electricity into Litecoin and Bitcoin. We are brokering transactions. We are the server farm between the two buddies that say, Hey, I want to send you 10 bucks, and there's a there's a penny. The the computer makes a penny, but that's our computer, so we make that penny. And so we're like the credit card processing company of crypto. But but people don't say that because it's still such a new industry that the guys that really deeply understand it, they speak like a computer guy that really deeply deeply understands it. And even me, I'm like, listen, I I get it. There's an algorithm and a SHA 256. Let's let's talk at a practical level. What does it mean? And and I think that we need more evangelists, so to speak, in the industry, talking in layman's terms. Hey, what is mining? This is what it is.

SPEAKER_02 16:06

All that being said, I'm glad you said all it's just such a wild, wild west industry, and it shouldn't be. How do you make um how do you work your business with a servant's heart with all this crazy stuff on the media and all over the place? How do you do that?

SPEAKER_00 16:24

So it was it's easier to give examples when you have lots of employees, right? We had many employees in our other businesses, and and you know, we could talk about the you know, the the way that you lead teams and the encouragement, and which you know, I'm I believe encouraging encouragement is the number one thing that you can provide. But with our computers, um it's more simple, which means it becomes a little bit harder to lead with a servant's heart. So we we have a couple of full or part-time subcontractors that I get to lead like employees. Hey, that here's you're paid for your performance, and you do that. But because they're with us full-time, I can encourage them. And well, I'm probably too evangelistic uh in my in my cr in my Christ-based faith with them, but that's okay because they're subcontractors. If they don't like it, they can leave. So I don't have to worry about breaking an employment law. Hey, listen, uh, let me tell you about Jesus. You know, so I I bet one of my buddies I said, look, you know, come read if you read this ESV study Bible cover to cover and you don't think it's the most transformational thing you've read, I'll give you an Ethereum. And like, oh yeah, so now they're reading the Bible, you know, and and one way or the other, uh, I think it's gonna be a winner for them, you know. Hey, you either your life's changed or you got an Ethereum. And so uh uh I think things like that, just doing what we can to try and encourage people to let them know, hey, look, you're gonna make mistakes. I care deeply about our core values, right? And we've got three of them, and one of them is integrity. And so, look, as long as you operate with integrity, integrity, passion, savvy, right? Those are our core values. So if you're operating with those things, you're gonna mess up. And you know, he came, you know, one of our guys came up to me and he says, Listen, I feel bad. I've I've been working all day on this computer. I still I don't even have a single computer to get to work for it and to be able to put my arm around and say, Listen, bud, I have been there, I've done the same thing, I know exactly what you're going through. Some computers are easy to fix, some aren't. So we'll get back up and we'll try it again tomorrow and we'll see if we can get the thing running tomorrow. And to not berate them and to not, you know, I can't believe it. I gave you a KPI and I needed 99% hash rate, and yeah, I got 98.8 right now. Instead of that, just saying, listen, we're gonna mess up. But I watched you work through lunch, work the whole day. You slaved away for I'm really grateful to have you on the team. I think that's a different approach than lots of quote unquote bosses, and and I think it goes it goes uh a long ways with our team.

SPEAKER_02 18:44

You know, that's what's one of the best answers I've ever heard, Nathan. And from a unique perspective of employees, you do the exact same thing with uh the customers, clients that you're gonna eventually have, or vestors or boards, but things are gonna be great. Servant Heart just works. Everybody loves that Christmas gift, being taking care of a bringing dialogue. I love that. Who is the most influential for you to become a servant leader?

SPEAKER_00 19:13

Specifically, I would say uh I mean, obviously, I've got uh through marriage, I've got three moms and three dads. So you can't you can't think, hey, these aren't the the most influential for sure. But the guy that I heard um servant leadership from first was Dr. Mark Rutland out of Southeastern University. I was uh I was there, he wrote books on it, he spoke about it over and over. He wrote a book, Character Matters, and and he talked about servant leadership. And the theme of my senior year of my undergrad was servant leadership. And so he was two, three times a week. He's preaching at chapels, he's like servant leadership, servant leadership. And uh, so that would be one of my first experiences being inundated with that idea on a daily basis of hey, look, you're not you're not going mush, let's work. You're saying, come follow me. And and then relaying that to Jesus, right? Like Jesus didn't go up and say, I, you know, Peter, go do this. He says, No, no, follow me while I do this, and just sit back and watch, and I'm gonna show you how to do this. I I think that learning those two things go hand in hand, like the biblical component of leadership is servant leadership. I think that that was pretty impactful for me as a 20-something year old, as an early 20s.

SPEAKER_02 20:26

Yeah, Bible is the best leadership book out there. Just leave it at that. I'm we're we're not gonna politically politicize anything, but it's just thoughts, and and that's so powerful. And and I love that because audience, you hear what he's got a degree in servant leadership. You made it as a skill when you get a degree in it, a chemist, a biologist, a servant leadership, a person, degree. That's what your expertise is. I love that. I always like to make that point because they kind of flipping about servant leadership. No, you can now get a degree in it. That's how powerful it is, and so cool. You know, we're coming to the end here. What so let's just take crypto on its whole. What would you leave the audience that you want them to know about crypto?

SPEAKER_00 21:18

I would say, and again, if I can use another analogy, uh, I used to teach apologetics, you know, which is the defense of the Christian faith. And so when I was teaching that, I would always say, look, if there is a 0.0001% chance that Christianity is real and that there is an eternity, which nobody can unprove, then the single most logical thing that any human being could do would be to pursue how to have the best eternity. If you can't disprove it and that's a trillion trillion years, and this is maybe a hundred, then we need to figure that one out as our highest ultimate priority. In the same way, financially, if it's possible that things like Bitcoin. And Litecoin are even remotely what uh Michael Saylor, for example, he's the CEO of MS uh MicroStrategy, MSCR. Uh just watch his podcast for a few hours. If you if it's possible, even a half of a fraction of a 1% chance that Bitcoin does what he thinks it's gonna do, 10 million a coin pretty quickly, right? Um, or what Kathy Woods thinks Bitcoin is gonna Bitcoin's gonna do, three quarter million in the next two years, or some of these people that are watching that, if it's even remotely possible, then the single most important financial decision one could make would be to investigate those claims, learn and understand it, and determine if it might be Internet 2.0, if it might be as earth-shattering as the internet, then no other investment advice, no other Vanguard, BlackRock, State Street, no other company or firm could come close to touching what Bitcoin and Litecoin are uh have the potential to do. So if it's possible, at least educate yourself, spend and set a timer. Say, hey, look, I'll give it two hours or I'll give it 30 hours. I would think that's probably more important by far than any single individual undergraduate class that I took. And that's what up, you know, three hours a week for for 18 weeks. So maybe try that and just to learn and understand it because if it's possible, then it could be the most significant financial educational undertaking of your life.

SPEAKER_02 23:35

I love it. Well said, it's such a cool way of talking about crypto. Um, not saying to buy it, you're not saying to do many minds, it's like just educate yourself. Just look at it. Uh what a great guest you are. I just so humble, and the Lord's part of your life. I want to have some fun with you. We got a few minutes left. You ready to have some fun? Let's go. I'm gonna dig deep here. I love I love asking this question. So we're going to a you're going to a restaurant, you've got four four chairs, you occupy one of them, dead or alive, who are gonna sit in those other three chairs, and why? And I think the most important question: what food would you order?

SPEAKER_00 24:17

I would probably have uh no, I know I would have Jesus and my wife, because my wife would be so mad if I got to meet Jesus person to person and not invite her. So I think Jesus. So Jesus and my wife would be Jesus first, and then my wife would be the next seat. Um, and then I would think it probably would be Charles Spurgeon. He has written more theological, deep content than I think anybody of the last 300 years, in my opinion. And um I think he's the most authored or the most written person who's written more content than anybody else uh in the last few hundred years that is uh of any kind, let alone that is that deep theologically. So probably um those would be my three chairs. And I would definitely be having a if they have a big fat tomahawk ribeye, uh uh medium rare with uh with a nice medium balanced red wine and uh and and maybe some shrimp on the side. I did it, I don't think it gets too much better than that.

SPEAKER_02 25:28

You're the second tomahawk in the last three weeks, so I think tomahawk's my next meal. I love it. That's great. Love the tables too, and Jesus would be one of mine, definitely. Um, how can people reach out to you? They want to learn more about crypto, learn more about mini minds. How can they find you?

SPEAKER_00 25:43

Yeah, uh the easy, easiest way is minimines.com. But uh, if if you're okay with me sharing my sell, I'll give my sell them. Uh happy to talk to anybody. Look, if you ever want somebody to talk your ear off about crypto, shoot me a text. We'll we'll we'll set up a meeting. I'll tell you all all you want to know. Um, and that's uh 863-602-1359. Uh that's my sell and and happy to talk, talk Jesus, happy to talk shop, happy to talk work and business growth. I I'm I'm uh I enjoy talking to people about those things, and uh of course, of course, crypto.

SPEAKER_02 26:16

And a true servant's heart educates like that for free. There's value to everything we do, but some a lot of the time a servant heart will give away their free IP because you know what, that's what it's all about. You'll still make money, you've proved you can still be successful. Doesn't matter. So thank you so much. You are you're a blessing, and please people reach out to him if you have any questions. If you don't, that's okay. Comment on the YouTube channel or on my podcast too. If he doesn't get, I'll make sure he gets any messages you need. I'll put this information in the in the uh show notes as well. Don't forget my TV show, Together We Serve, every Friday at 2 p.m. Pacific and 5 p.m. Eastern. And and me and Nathan, thank you so much for watching or listening to this podcast. We really, really appreciate it. And we look forward to seeing you on the next episode of Doing Business with a Servants Heart.