Latest / AI for Founders with Ryan Estes / AI music to heal relationships

Transcript

AI music to heal relationships · AI for Founders with Ryan Estes

• 0:00
  I'll take AI isn't killing creativity, it's exposing how
• 0:03
  emotionally lazy founders have become.
• 0:05
  Because most people use AI to move faster, not to feel deeper.
• 0:09
  AI can either make you more human or quietly turn you into a
• 0:13
  productivity zombie who panics when the tools shut off.
• 0:16
  I'm so happy I met Zaya Orion from Deep Gem Interactive.
• 0:20
  Instead of talking about dashboards and prompts, we went
• 0:23
  somewhere unexpected. He uses generative music to help
• 0:26
  process grief, identity, love, even the inner archetypes.
• 0:30
  Think songs for your dad, your partner, and your future self.
• 0:33
  Not content, but connection technology.
• 0:35
  If your product only saves time, you're competing on features.
• 0:38
  If it helps people feel seen, regulated, or grounded, you're
• 0:42
  competing on meaning. So here's the real question.
• 0:45
  What part of your life or business are you trying to
• 0:47
  automate because you're avoiding actually feeling it?
• 0:50
  Welcome to AI for Founders. I'm Ryan Estes, and here's the
• 0:53
  twist. This interview turned into less
• 0:55
  of a formal conversation and more of two curious humans going
• 0:58
  deep. We barely scratched the surface
• 1:00
  of Zaya's actual work, so we're absolutely bringing him back to
• 1:04
  go deep on what he's building at Deep Gem Interactive.
• 1:07
  And if you're a founder, builder, or creator who wants to
• 1:10
  use AI for human growth, not just speed, this one's for you.
• 1:14
  We talk tools, identity, discipline, and how to build
• 1:17
  without burning out your nervous system.
• 1:18
  And if AI feels exciting, terrifying at the same time, AI
• 1:22
  for founders.co is a newsletter for your weekly grounding
• 1:26
  ritual. Real tools, real builders.
• 1:28
  No hype loops, just what actually works.
• 1:30
  Subscribe to the newsletter at AI for founders.co before your
• 1:34
  competitors copy the insights and pretend they discovered them
• 1:37
  first. And if this episode stretched
• 1:40
  your brain even a little, leave a review.
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• 2:27
  shine stars Computer life AII Take the flight in the glow with
• 2:40
  me on bride. Yeah.
• 2:42
  You know, I think that having a positive relationship with AI
• 2:46
  rather than a detractive relationship with AI is
• 2:48
  something that a lot of people are talking about.
• 2:50
  I call it like heart centered AI mentor, my Nick Sullivan talks a
• 2:54
  lot about that. And so I think that the music is
• 2:56
  a great jumping off point for that.
• 2:58
  Cool. OK, perfect.
• 3:02
  Let's just get into it then. Cool, let's chat about it, all
• 3:04
  right? Ziya, thank you so much for
• 3:05
  coming on the show. Yeah, yeah.
• 3:06
  My pleasure, Ryan. Yeah, It's good to see you and I
• 3:09
  I love that we get to do it in the space, too.
• 3:10
  I know this is the the second interview we've done now at the
• 3:14
  AI Clubhouse, which is the only AI Co working space in the
• 3:18
  nation, I think at this point. And it's possibly one of my most
• 3:22
  favorite places on planet Earth right now, largely because it
• 3:25
  looks like every creative place I've ever been creative in
• 3:29
  'cause it's like a garage, you know what I mean?
• 3:32
  It's got the vibe, lighting, it's got the plants, it's got
• 3:35
  the antique furniture. It's amazing.
• 3:38
  It kind of reminds me of like Burning Man or something like
• 3:41
  that. And you know, growing up in
• 3:42
  Denver, I've always kind of admired those SF startup like
• 3:46
  studios or these Co working places that burn these amazing
• 3:49
  unicorns. And it's cool that we have one
• 3:52
  here in Colorado now that's doing the same.
• 3:54
  And you know, it's a shout out to ID 345.
• 3:57
  Totally, yeah. If people want to learn more
• 3:58
  about it, ID 345.com is the website.
• 4:02
  However, you will not learn very much there.
• 4:05
  This is not a very extensive website.
• 4:08
  I sent it to somebody. I'm like, all I'm finding is a
• 4:10
  paywall, you know, like, just see a place to pay them.
• 4:12
  Like, I don't really understand what's going on here.
• 4:14
  Yeah, I think the Google Places, the actual maps listing is
• 4:18
  probably the most informative. You'll see at least a couple
• 4:20
  pictures there. It's probably better and it
• 4:24
  really should just show up. I think the place to find out
• 4:26
  what's going on here is Let's Vibe Org, which will tell you
• 4:31
  like when the meetups are and the meetups are every Wednesday,
• 4:33
  5:00 to 7:00. If you want to come at 4:00.
• 4:36
  They do kind of a power hour of vibe coding and then you can
• 4:39
  demo your product. It's amazing.
• 4:41
  So like this group has been going maybe about a year now,
• 4:44
  but like the last couple of weeks, man, like 7580 people.
• 4:48
  Yeah, yeah, It's been big. We need to get more seats soon.
• 4:51
  You know, it's kind of like spilling over.
• 4:52
  We first had these, like, church pews, and those weren't enough,
• 4:55
  so we had to get like, individual seats.
• 4:57
  And then now, I mean, we have, like, couches and seats all over
• 5:00
  the place. And, you know, it's like ants.
• 5:02
  They're just like swarming. I know it's amazing.
• 5:05
  You can't tell from this because we're kind of in the corner, but
• 5:07
  like behind us, it's probably it's like what you say, 15,000
• 5:11
  square feet, something like that.
• 5:13
  Yeah, something like that. Maybe even a touch more.
• 5:15
  Yeah, it's a, it's a big space. It's super cool and I absolutely
• 5:18
  love it here. So Zai, there's a couple of
• 5:21
  things I want to talk to you, but first, first, let's get in.
• 5:23
  You're a Denver guy. I'm a Denver guy, born and
• 5:25
  raised. Nice.
• 5:26
  What neighborhood? So I grew up in DTC and then I
• 5:29
  went to Cherry Creek High School and Highlands Ranch High School.
• 5:31
  OH. It's so annoying.
• 5:33
  Are you Denver guy or really all right, All right, we.
• 5:36
  Go to school, I went to South. I see, I see.
• 5:39
  Should I just like get off the? Podcast right now.
• 5:41
  Do I need to what? Do I need to go?
• 5:43
  No, I'm not gonna be that annoying, although my my son is.
• 5:46
  If he was around here and he was like, oh, you, you're from
• 5:48
  Denver and you went, I went to Cherry Creek High School.
• 5:50
  He'd be like, you ain't from Denver.
• 5:52
  Yeah. Exactly.
• 5:54
  That's fair. That's fair.
• 5:55
  It's a little further South, you know, but I love Colorado.
• 5:57
  You know, I've, I've had the opportunity where whenever I've
• 6:00
  had an exit or, you know, a little cash from a business,
• 6:03
  I've travelled and lived in a lot of countries, been to a lot
• 6:06
  of countries. Colorado is one of the most
• 6:08
  special places on earth. Totally agree.
• 6:10
  I love Denver and I'm kind of an evangelist of Denver.
• 6:14
  I have another Denver podcast. I don't know if you know that.
• 6:16
  No, I do not. Know and a Denver newsletter
• 6:18
  that and maybe we'll actually, since you're from Denver, then
• 6:21
  we'll cross promote it and I'll put it on that podcast too.
• 6:24
  And people can get kind of a taste of what this podcast is
• 6:26
  alike because I feel like because everywhere's from every
• 6:30
  everyone's from everywhere else, which is great and I love it.
• 6:33
  It's been good for the city, but also I started this kind of this
• 6:36
  podcast, it's called Real Good Denver, because I feel like
• 6:41
  there is a patina of people from Denver that needs to be retained
• 6:45
  and needs to be acknowledged. A lot of folks that come here,
• 6:49
  you know, they're going to spend all weekend on I-70, you know,
• 6:54
  God bless them or 285 or whatever they're doing.
• 6:56
  But like they're not really, they don't understand the, the,
• 7:00
  the Denver people I grew up with that don't go to the mountains.
• 7:02
  They're not here to go snowboarding.
• 7:03
  They're not here to go mountain biking, you know what I mean?
• 7:06
  It's Denver, you know? So that culture and events and
• 7:10
  those kind of things is something like I really latch
• 7:13
  onto, which ultimately is what I love about Danny.
• 7:15
  He's a Denver boy, 100%. A lot of the guys here are,
• 7:19
  which is really cool and I, I don't mean to give Cherry Creek
• 7:22
  a hard time. For people that don't know,
• 7:23
  Cherry Creek is the perennial heavyweight in all sports.
• 7:27
  It has a ridiculous amount of funding for all of the.
• 7:30
  High schools. And, you know, probably separate
• 7:32
  from the talent, just the pool and, and the, and the funding
• 7:35
  and stuff like that, they usually do pretty well.
• 7:36
  Yeah, I remember when I was growing up, there's this kid I
• 7:40
  played Little League with. His name was Tripp Humphreys.
• 7:43
  And Tripp Humphreys, triple crowned at Cherry Creek High
• 7:47
  School. He won state basketball,
• 7:48
  baseball and football. He was the pitcher, quarterback,
• 7:53
  starting forward. Wow, that's, those are high
• 7:56
  expectations to start moving into adulthood with.
• 7:58
  I mean, like, you know, I like that.
• 8:00
  For me, I felt like I had nowhere to go but up.
• 8:02
  But if we were starting there, I'd feel like a little nervous
• 8:05
  of how do I, how do I continue this legacy?
• 8:07
  And I hear, you know, it's multigenerational for me too.
• 8:08
  My, my uncle, he grew up here as well, man, helped raise me.
• 8:13
  And he was undefeated in both wrestling and in football for
• 8:18
  Cherry Creek all four years in a row as well.
• 8:20
  And so, yeah, very beastly, man. And, you know, there's something
• 8:24
  really special about somebody who does grow up in Colorado.
• 8:26
  Yeah. You know, I don't know if you'd
• 8:27
  expand outside of Denver or not with this analogy.
• 8:30
  Obviously there's different pockets, like Pueblo's gonna be
• 8:32
  very different. Colorado Springs would be very
• 8:33
  different. Boulders can be very different,
• 8:36
  but in Colorado I find that separate from kind of like the
• 8:39
  outdoorsy beer drinking archetype that Colorado's
• 8:42
  associated with. There's like a wholesomeness,
• 8:45
  you know, we're in between the West Coast and the East Coast.
• 8:47
  And I think that like a, a good Denverite or Coloradan, they're
• 8:51
  gonna tell you how they feel. You can trust that If they say,
• 8:54
  hey, I really enjoy spending time with you, they mean it.
• 8:56
  They're not gonna be vapid, right?
• 8:58
  And at the same time, I find that they're a little warmer
• 9:01
  than a New Yorker. You know, like I love my New
• 9:03
  Yorkers. I've got a lot of friends out
• 9:04
  there, but I've find that we have the perfect balance, you
• 9:07
  know, between the two. I totally agree.
• 9:09
  And I think we have a hospitality that's very
• 9:11
  Southern. You know, a lot of people come
• 9:14
  here from Texas and they find kindred spirits because it's
• 9:17
  like here people, we have the the, the laid backness of
• 9:21
  California. We have an edge a little bit
• 9:24
  from the East Coast, and then we have this hospitality from the
• 9:26
  South and then we have kind of the Western energy.
• 9:30
  You know, I'm going to put a pin in this and come back to it
• 9:32
  because I want to explore this more.
• 9:34
  It makes a lot of sense. Things are like crystallizing
• 9:37
  for me now knowing that you're a Denver guy.
• 9:40
  OK. What I want to talk about is
• 9:45
  this, this piece of social media.
• 9:47
  I did a TikTok I did that had a little viral moment and it was
• 9:51
  based on something that you told me at one of these AI meetups.
• 9:57
  So what you had said is that you were using generative music
• 10:02
  tools, generative AI music tools.
• 10:04
  So like UDO or there's a bunch of them out there to make music
• 10:09
  to help work through kind of loss in mourning.
• 10:14
  And I, I one, I thought that was really tender and interesting
• 10:17
  and a cool thing to share. But also I was like, oh, that's
• 10:20
  a really novel use case. You know, I had always kind of
• 10:24
  seen the generative music thing as a, a massive threat because
• 10:27
  I'm a musician. And it's like, oh man, like
• 10:29
  what's even the point anymore? But I think what, what, what you
• 10:33
  kind of opened me up to is that like, no, there's actually a lot
• 10:36
  of different ways you can use these tools.
• 10:38
  So I, I sat with that and I was like, OK.
• 10:41
  And I was like, you know, actually I, I really haven't
• 10:44
  lost anybody. I was like, but you know what?
• 10:46
  I had a beta fish, you know, shout out to Burger.
• 10:49
  Then he passed. Shout out Burger.
• 10:51
  Burger was a good fish. I had that fish for like 3 years
• 10:54
  which is wow that's great for a beta.
• 10:55
  That's a geriatric beta. Right now, Seriously, that's a
• 10:58
  fighter. He was holding on.
• 11:01
  He had a good life, beautiful purple and red.
• 11:03
  Anyway, I, I put into, I think it was a music generator and I
• 11:10
  was just like, Hey, I want you to do kind of a, a folky banjo
• 11:15
  thing about my fish that passed away, a nice tribute.
• 11:18
  And this is what the attributes of the fish were and it made
• 11:21
  this beautiful song, you know, and you were right.
• 11:24
  I, I kind of kept picked up on what you were saying that like
• 11:27
  it gave like, even though it's just like a, a fish, don't
• 11:30
  disrespect, but like, you know, it gave like a little place for
• 11:33
  like me to, to kind of like show reverence and respect for his
• 11:38
  life, you know, So I wanted to thank you for that.
• 11:41
  And then I really wanted to talk to you about how you've kind of
• 11:45
  used that and like how you're approaching generative music AI
• 11:49
  in this kind of field. Yeah, yeah.
• 11:50
  I'd love to share. So I'm really touched that you
• 11:53
  were able to connect with Berger a little bit more deeply through
• 11:56
  that. And you know, I'll give a small
• 11:57
  shout out to a friend of mine, Johnny Klein, who was talking
• 12:00
  about positive relationships with artifacts, these like
• 12:04
  tertiary things in your life. So an example of a negative
• 12:08
  relationship would be your phone, right?
• 12:09
  So if you are a good navigator and then you start using Google
• 12:15
  Maps, you might actually start to lose those navigation skills
• 12:18
  because all you have to do is type in, you know, ID 345 in
• 12:21
  your phone, it'll navigate you right there.
• 12:23
  And so eventually you lose that skill.
• 12:25
  Sure. That is like a downwards file
• 12:27
  relationship. If you take the phone away now,
• 12:29
  you're worse off than where you started.
• 12:32
  I think that AI has that potential, right?
• 12:33
  There's this Einstein quote of when machines become smarter
• 12:37
  than humans, you'll have a generation of idiots.
• 12:39
  And I think that that's a real risk as we start to look at the
• 12:42
  longevity and real like applications of AI and what's
• 12:46
  going to happen to society as people become more dependent on
• 12:48
  this technology. That said, I think that there's
• 12:51
  another kind of relationship we can have with this technology.
• 12:53
  So what I mean by that is something that I did with music
• 12:56
  and you can do with many different things with an AI, but
• 12:59
  with music specifically, I started creating songs for both
• 13:02
  people who are alive that I wanted to connect with that I
• 13:05
  wanted to be, you know, closer with.
• 13:06
  So for instance, like my father, my mother, my girlfriend, I made
• 13:09
  her an album as well as people have passed and I'll talk a
• 13:13
  little bit about my uncle who passed away.
• 13:16
  That's the same man who ended up winning, you know, four years in
• 13:20
  a row and high school for both wrestling and, and in football.
• 13:24
  And I feel a little emotional just talking about it.
• 13:27
  He he raised me like the Father. Amazing man.
• 13:29
  And, you know, as he passed away, it's just been so many
• 13:33
  layers of grief. And you don't really grieve
• 13:39
  linguistically. You know, it's not like I fell
• 13:42
  in love with the man because what he said to me, it's because
• 13:45
  of the experiences. And I think that music, it
• 13:48
  allows you to experience that person again in a way where you
• 13:52
  can kind of like start to scrape the bottom of the barrel of, of
• 13:55
  that grief of that experience. And then you start to feel them
• 13:57
  in that song and you and in feeling them, you're able to let
• 14:01
  go of some of that trapped emotion.
• 14:03
  Yeah, and by experiencing it. By experiencing him again and
• 14:07
  the relationship you've had and you know, as I've started to do
• 14:11
  that for other people, people who are alive, people who are
• 14:14
  like, you know, still really important parts of my life.
• 14:16
  For instance, my father and I made him the songs called Desert
• 14:20
  Rooster and Memphis. My dad, he, he has this hairdo
• 14:25
  just kind of like a rooster. And he's also a big burner.
• 14:28
  And so it's kind of like a, a joking song.
• 14:31
  And at the same time, you know, it's really about who he is as a
• 14:34
  man. And what was really powerful
• 14:36
  about that was he said, you know, I felt seen by you in a
• 14:40
  way I've never felt seen before. We have some other guests here
• 14:45
  in the in the space saying hi. Shout out to Seymour, our our
• 14:48
  resident puppy there as well. And so with Desert Rooster, you
• 14:54
  know, he said, Zia, like, I didn't realize you saw me to the
• 14:58
  extent that you see me. And because I was able to use AI
• 15:01
  to come up with lyrics, you know, the style of music, all of
• 15:05
  those pieces, not only was I able to reflect to AI, obviously
• 15:09
  I know my dad fairly well. I know a lot about him.
• 15:13
  He was able to take what I know about him and articulate that
• 15:16
  better than I could. Yeah.
• 15:18
  And then he started to share things about the song I made
• 15:21
  about him in ways that he felt seen that I had not fully
• 15:26
  articulated myself. And so now he's able to come
• 15:29
  back and say, like, I didn't realize that you saw this in me,
• 15:32
  right. And as I listen to, I'm like,
• 15:33
  oh, I can, I can remember what I said to AI to create that line.
• 15:37
  And I never saw it the same way that he sees it.
• 15:39
  And so now we're closer. Now we see each other better
• 15:42
  because of this artifact. So it's a, a, a long in a
• 15:45
  roundabout way of saying, I think that in creating this
• 15:48
  music, especially articulating somebody like the way that you
• 15:52
  see them, the way that you love them, the way that you
• 15:54
  experience them, they will start to see things within that music
• 15:57
  that AI saw that you never saw yourself and you will now have a
• 16:00
  closer relationship. It's extraordinary, man.
• 16:03
  It's so cool and a cheesy comparison.
• 16:08
  It's like, that's what I wanted to do when I was writing songs
• 16:11
  for my girlfriend in high school.
• 16:13
  You know, I I went through a song and she'd be like, oh,
• 16:17
  thanks, because I sucked. Now the the the benefit I got
• 16:23
  better. I'm.
• 16:24
  Sure that you were better than you're giving yourself credit?
• 16:26
  Not too, not too much better, but I got better.
• 16:28
  But it takes practice. The thing is, is that like when
• 16:30
  you make music what they are, it's really good.
• 16:33
  It's really, really astonishingly good.
• 16:34
  It's astonishingly good. The the, the lyrics are actually
• 16:38
  very poignant. It's very on point.
• 16:39
  You give it a little bit of a massage and like it gets it.
• 16:42
  The harmonies are perfect. It's like, it's really
• 16:46
  interesting because music, if you look at music like a
• 16:49
  technology, it does have kind of like 3 dimensional abilities to
• 16:54
  communicate, you know, because it is the lyrics.
• 16:56
  But it's the way the lyrics, like, punch with the melody,
• 16:59
  harmony and the rhythm that like Add all these things and allow
• 17:03
  you to like experience things in a really unique way.
• 17:07
  You know, just to share a story for me, like this is something
• 17:10
  I've been coming back to. You know, I used to make records
• 17:13
  and tour and I was a music director.
• 17:16
  Shout out to Dazzle here. I was the founding music
• 17:18
  director there. Really.
• 17:19
  I love dazzle. I know it's the best.
• 17:21
  So good, it's the best. That's another overlap in the
• 17:23
  demo, Don't let me interrupt you, but that you're, you know,
• 17:26
  a founding member, really an integral to Dazzle.
• 17:29
  That's epic, man. That's that's a great vibe.
• 17:31
  Yeah, when we when it was basically like a fusion
• 17:34
  restaurant that was doing jazz and when I came in, I was like,
• 17:39
  we're going to do 9 shows a week and we kind of established like
• 17:42
  a, a cadence and a rhythm and so on.
• 17:43
  We had a bunch of firsts. You know, Downbeat gave us one
• 17:46
  of the top 100 jazz clubs in the world, which really put us on
• 17:50
  the map. But that's just to say that like
• 17:51
  there was a time where like music was absolutely everything
• 17:54
  to me. And, you know, my kids got a
• 17:56
  little well, I had kids. And then, you know, trying to
• 18:00
  make a career in music in Denver is not necessary the the fulcrum
• 18:05
  of commerce, to put it that way. A.
• 18:07
  Little bit of an uphill battle. And for me, I couldn't, I can't
• 18:11
  really do things half in. So I was like, you know what,
• 18:14
  fuck music. I'm out so, and I mean out like
• 18:17
  I quit the bands. I stopped, I put my guitars
• 18:20
  away. I stopped writing like
• 18:22
  everything. I was out, you know, because I
• 18:24
  could. It was too painful for me.
• 18:26
  It was like it was such a a dream.
• 18:28
  It was such a goal to go that I just, I had to put it away.
• 18:31
  So I completely put it away. And it was, it's been like that
• 18:34
  for, I don't know, my kids are what, 17 and 18, so probably 15
• 18:39
  years or whatever. And maybe a a few months ago,
• 18:42
  you know, my son was asking me about the music and they like to
• 18:44
  put the band posters up and they like whatever.
• 18:47
  And they're like, he was like, he was like, dad, what, what was
• 18:49
  your, your influences? And I was like, well, for the
• 18:52
  band, I was like, it was like the Beastie Boys and the roots
• 18:57
  and like Tool and Rage Against the Machine.
• 19:01
  And that was for the band. And I was like, but my influence
• 19:04
  is really is like finger style delta Blues, man.
• 19:08
  That's how I play. And he's like, what's that?
• 19:10
  And I, I, I felt like I was depriving him some as a father.
• 19:14
  And so I was like, OK, son. So I made this great Spotify
• 19:17
  playlist called Dusty. That's all this like just
• 19:19
  absolute iconic finger style delta blue stuff.
• 19:23
  And I started listening to it all the time and I brought the
• 19:25
  guitar out and so I've been playing and like getting back
• 19:28
  into it and I forgot how much like actually that's a really
• 19:32
  important part of my life to like metabolize and work through
• 19:36
  all of like kind of stored emotion because that's it's like
• 19:42
  it's innocence. Humans like music is innate, you
• 19:45
  know, so it's been really integral for like the last few
• 19:49
  few months for me to like I'm like, Oh my God, this makes me
• 19:51
  so happy. I forgot, you know, to bring it
• 19:54
  back in. So just to share that
• 19:57
  anecdotally, but but like I think it ties into to and maybe
• 20:01
  this, this whole thing was serendipitous because the the AI
• 20:06
  music generation gives you the ability to like experience that
• 20:09
  without. Having to practice and play now,
• 20:13
  that's that's the best part in my opinion.
• 20:15
  But there's also something magical about putting in a
• 20:17
  prompt and it's spitting out this music.
• 20:20
  So I'm curious, how did you get this idea?
• 20:23
  Yeah, yeah. So firstly, with the the dazzle
• 20:25
  side, I would I'm a Roadrunner, so I went to Metropolitan State
• 20:29
  University of Denver. So did I.
• 20:31
  Nice fellow Roadrunner, too. All right, all right, We got a
• 20:33
  lot of. I also went to CSU and I also
• 20:35
  went to CU. Yeah, so I made my way around.
• 20:38
  Yeah, I'm sorry you had to go to less prestigious universities
• 20:41
  than Metro, but you know, I, I had this teacher, his name was
• 20:45
  Ron Miles and I don't know. Steve.
• 20:49
  Yeah, yeah, I know Ron well. And I mean, what an amazing,
• 20:53
  brilliant man who taught this class called The History of
• 20:56
  America as Told Through Jazz Sick and IT.
• 20:59
  You know, I was a business major and don't tell any of my
• 21:01
  business professors, but it was by far my favorite class that I
• 21:05
  took as like a standalone class within college.
• 21:08
  And, you know, the amount of expression that comes through
• 21:12
  music really paints a picture. And I think that ties into what
• 21:14
  we're talking about here. However, there's a prerequisite
• 21:18
  like in order to actually make great music right to your point
• 21:21
  of being in high school, you need to practice quite a bit,
• 21:24
  you know? And so there's years and years
• 21:26
  where you're starting to get inspiration, figure out your
• 21:28
  style, all those components. Used to be a drummer myself.
• 21:31
  And you know, that said, you're not really able to fully express
• 21:35
  yourself, in my opinion, in a way that other people can
• 21:39
  receive it or will actually genuinely want to receive it
• 21:41
  you. Play like I do, you know?
• 21:45
  Exactly. Exactly.
• 21:47
  That might even be a compliment. Honestly, I haven't, I haven't
• 21:50
  touched a kit in a while. And that said, you know that
• 21:53
  it's so easy to create. This music I think is a real
• 21:57
  blessing through apps like Suno. And there's a couple of pieces
• 22:01
  that I found I'd love to maybe go tactically into some of the
• 22:04
  ways that I got inspired to do it and then the ways that I
• 22:06
  started making it. So I, I've worked with this
• 22:10
  coach with my girlfriend and I for quite a while.
• 22:12
  And she had this archetype that she's working on called the Red
• 22:15
  Witch. And the Red Witch, you know,
• 22:17
  she's a beautiful dancer. And you know, I I was thinking
• 22:21
  if I were to make a song to invoke the archetype of the Red
• 22:25
  Witch, what would that sound like?
• 22:28
  Is it the Red Witch from Game of Thrones?
• 22:30
  It's inspired by the Red Witch of Game of Thrones.
• 22:32
  Who was kind of a shapeshifter, right?
• 22:33
  Yeah, exactly, exactly right. And she's kind of sexy.
• 22:37
  She's a badass. But then underneath it, she's
• 22:40
  like a terrible grotesque. Monster she's got like the the
• 22:43
  the demon inside of her. You know, we're, we're ignoring
• 22:46
  that part of the archetype right now.
• 22:51
  And you know, that said, I wanted to create a song for her.
• 22:53
  And so I've always loved artists like pop smoke or Dior or these
• 22:59
  these artists that have like some real kick to them.
• 23:02
  You know, I feel like a lot of music right now has become very
• 23:04
  bland, but this has got some really dark masculine energy.
• 23:07
  It's like, what if I brought that darkness to the archetype
• 23:10
  type of the red witch? That's almost like a prayer.
• 23:12
  Like you could put on this song and then suddenly she could be
• 23:15
  the red witch. You know, so many people in
• 23:18
  personal development work come up with these archetypes of, you
• 23:20
  know, now I'm this indomitable spirit or I'm this like charming
• 23:23
  salesman or, and this like loving, you know, father or
• 23:26
  whatever. And they'll step into that
• 23:27
  archetype that, well, what if I could use music to make that?
• 23:30
  And so that was my first stab at it is the soundtrack I made.
• 23:34
  Yeah, I made a, an album for her with kind of the pinnacle being
• 23:37
  the Red Witch song. And since then we've, we've
• 23:39
  played it at parties and other people have danced to it and all
• 23:42
  those things. And, you know, it's, it's an
• 23:43
  homage to this person that she's cultivating within herself, this
• 23:48
  archetype that she's cultivating.
• 23:49
  So that's what inspired me. So cool.
• 23:52
  Thank you. OK, so this is a psychological
• 23:56
  technique where you you create and name a character that exists
• 24:01
  inside you, which is kind of like union, where you have
• 24:05
  different archetypes that are all living as like a Senate
• 24:08
  inside your brain. And sometimes certain
• 24:11
  individuals are at, you know, the pulpit and they're taking
• 24:16
  control. And it's helpful to like give
• 24:18
  them a name and understand their attributes so that you can
• 24:21
  actually like, know honestly when they are taking control,
• 24:25
  right? And you're like, oh, that's the
• 24:26
  red witch or Oh, that's in my case.
• 24:29
  I I have two that I really play with, Derek and Steve.
• 24:31
  OK, so I'd love to hear more about Derek and Steve.
• 24:35
  So tell me about the red witch. What are the attributes?
• 24:38
  Yeah. So the red witch, you know, she
• 24:40
  is like fully in her woman. She is like a little bit of a
• 24:44
  seductress. She's also like, you know, like
• 24:48
  very appealing, like you want to be near the red Witch.
• 24:51
  And she's also magical, you know, she's.
• 24:54
  Got magical spells? She'll, she'll put a spell on
• 24:56
  you, dude, she'll put a spell on you all day.
• 24:57
  And you know, Tony Robbins, he says that there's kind of like 3
• 25:00
  levels of personal development before you become a leader in,
• 25:03
  in self mastery. There's pattern identification.
• 25:06
  So like you're saying like, OK, I know when I'm going in this
• 25:09
  thing, right? Then there's pattern
• 25:11
  interruption. So you know, I know I'm going
• 25:14
  into this thing and I would not like to have my default
• 25:15
  programming anymore. And then the last step is
• 25:17
  starting to create your own patterns and archetype work for
• 25:21
  me often is the third, the the latter of those options, which
• 25:24
  is OK, maybe, you know, in public speaking examples,
• 25:27
  something that a lot of people are afraid of rather than me
• 25:30
  getting caught in my head and getting nervous and shaky
• 25:32
  handed. You know, I, I don't personally
• 25:35
  have this issue, but I know a lot of people would say, you
• 25:37
  know, I can't get on stage. And so they'll summon an
• 25:40
  archetype, they'll create an archetype, a Steve this badass
• 25:43
  on stage. And you know, there's some
• 25:46
  really interesting pieces with archetypes as well.
• 25:49
  I love that you brought up young.
• 25:50
  If you want to give yourself a headache, try and read like the
• 25:52
  Red Book or some of his his actual texts.
• 25:54
  I mean, man, that man was a genius.
• 25:56
  It's hard. It's dense.
• 25:58
  I prefer like Netflix documentaries.
• 26:00
  Yeah, that's, that's, that's an easier like, you know, inching
• 26:03
  into the pool approach. And that said, there's a, a
• 26:06
  wonderful book on men's work called King Warrior, Magician
• 26:09
  lover there, there's a couple of programs based off of it.
• 26:12
  But they argue, as does young, that there are these archetypes
• 26:16
  that actually predate the ego and the ID.
• 26:19
  These archetypes are predominant around many cultures over
• 26:23
  centuries, millennia. So things like the king
• 26:26
  archetype, he's saying that it predates most of of history for
• 26:31
  us as far back as you can look, you can look at stories of
• 26:33
  kings, meaning that there is an archetype of a king within you,
• 26:37
  within me, within all men, within all beings, honestly,
• 26:40
  since we all have masculine and feminine parts of ourselves.
• 26:42
  And so not only can you create archetypes, but you can connect
• 26:45
  with archetypes that are already innate within you.
• 26:48
  Oh, that's interesting. So for instance, like you were
• 26:50
  talking about having like a straight spine, you know, like a
• 26:52
  Zen tradition, right, in that I would call that very warrior
• 26:57
  esque energy. Yeah.
• 26:58
  And and I find that a lot of men, they struggle with like
• 27:02
  connecting with that real iron sharpens iron part of
• 27:05
  themselves. And so music and music
• 27:09
  generation tools like SUNO and and one that we're actually
• 27:12
  building. I'll be demoing it in about a
• 27:13
  week. Those allow you to connect with
• 27:17
  those archetypes that can help you throughout your life, for
• 27:20
  instance, like being that straight spined warrior.
• 27:22
  Yeah. And so I think that's really
• 27:24
  interesting as you look at your life, you know, can you identify
• 27:26
  where you're having difficult times?
• 27:27
  Do you start to interrupt those? And then you say, you know what,
• 27:30
  actually, let's not just survive, Let's thrive.
• 27:32
  Let's create an archetype or connect with an archetype
• 27:35
  already within me and use music to invoke that.
• 27:38
  And that's where I really sort of get interested in this work.
• 27:40
  Oh. Cool, you know, that makes me
• 27:42
  think I had never heard of this idea of like archetypes pre ego,
• 27:47
  because then that assumes that there are archetypes that before
• 27:53
  humans had kind of our modern consciousness that exist.
• 27:57
  And I, I, I think I've, I've dabbled with those, you know,
• 28:00
  well, of course we all have, but it would be like the classic
• 28:03
  example might be like the serpent from Adam and Eve, you
• 28:07
  know, yeah, there's like this great book.
• 28:09
  I don't know if you read this book, it's like called The
• 28:11
  Dawning of Consciousness and the Bicameral Mind by James.
• 28:17
  I was going to say James Joyce, but it's obviously not him.
• 28:20
  But it's talking about like kind of tracking these ancient
• 28:24
  scripts, the Bible, the Iliad. And you can start to see like
• 28:28
  the emergence of the human consciousness as it kind of
• 28:30
  emerged with language really as being the main trigger.
• 28:33
  And none of it is verifiable, but there there definitely is
• 28:37
  obviously something that happened maybe maybe a lot older
• 28:39
  than that years ago that humans absolutely exploded for 200,000
• 28:44
  years we're chiseling bone daggers and killing stuff,
• 28:47
  barely surviving. Yeah.
• 28:49
  And then suddenly we're writing. Poetry, you know, so like
• 28:52
  something happened to human consciousness.
• 28:53
  So a lot of the archetypes that are probably deeper into like
• 28:57
  our, our, you know, spinal cord are, are probably much more
• 29:02
  primitive and much more potent, you know, to really dabble into
• 29:06
  it. And particularly like the, the
• 29:07
  kind of warrior type archetypes potentially like they're,
• 29:11
  they're maybe people are a little bit intimidated to go
• 29:14
  there because it's so powerful. Now.
• 29:16
  You don't seem like a person that is concerned about their
• 29:19
  warrior archetype. I I appreciate that.
• 29:23
  I I think that I was born maybe a little hyper warrior ish, you
• 29:27
  know, more things like the lover, the magician or things
• 29:29
  that I work on these days. Yeah, yeah.
• 29:31
  Tell me about the Warrior. Archetype and you, what do you
• 29:33
  do to nurture that? How's that come out in your
• 29:35
  life? Yeah, thanks for asking.
• 29:37
  And and keen to continue to hear more about your archetypes as
• 29:39
  well. So, you know, my warrior, like I
• 29:44
  said, is hyper in the booking or warrior magician lover, they
• 29:48
  argue that you can either have hyper or hypo versions of each
• 29:51
  archetype, right? And so you could be like a
• 29:54
  little bit of a pushover, might be like an underdeveloped
• 29:56
  warrior, or you could be a bit of a bully, right?
• 29:59
  And that might be like more of an overdeveloped warrior.
• 30:02
  And for me, I found that, you know, most of my problems in
• 30:06
  life, I felt like I could just like fight them into no longer
• 30:08
  being problems. You know, let me, sounds
• 30:10
  familiar. Yeah.
• 30:11
  Let me just brute force my way into no longer having this
• 30:15
  issue. And you know, that comes up
• 30:17
  quite a bit. I've, I've been lucky enough to
• 30:19
  train in mini martial arts. I hold 2 black belts.
• 30:21
  Oh I was so ninjutsu and jiu jitsu.
• 30:24
  Amazing Japanese martial arts. Yeah.
• 30:26
  Which I love and now I'm training down here at the Domo
• 30:29
  Dojo Akito in Akito. Dude, I love that Dojo.
• 30:33
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sensei there he is the homosense
• 30:37
  homosense hi hi. He is the oldest surviving
• 30:42
  student of the original founder of aikido.
• 30:44
  And so if you really want to get to the source an amazing place
• 30:46
  to go. And that said, I was able to to
• 30:51
  train for many years underneath a ninjutsu master who actually
• 30:55
  was able to do things like have root canals done with no
• 30:58
  anesthesia. He would meditate through them.
• 31:00
  And I find that those lessons that I picked up as a martial
• 31:03
  artist, specifically the concept of nin, Tim Ferriss actually has
• 31:08
  nin behind him and his in his podcasts.
• 31:12
  It is the balance between patience and perseverance.
• 31:14
  It is the root word of ninja, of someone who is to survive, to
• 31:18
  endure. And I find that the balance
• 31:20
  between being patient, waiting for the thing to show up and and
• 31:24
  still putting in enough effort and perseverant right when it
• 31:27
  feels like the world's a little too hard on you.
• 31:28
  All those things. Balancing those two I think is
• 31:31
  what a an integrated warrior is. I think sometimes I might
• 31:34
  persevere when I should be patient.
• 31:36
  I think patience is the one that I really need to work on in
• 31:38
  those two. But that's where it shows up a
• 31:39
  lot in life for me is kind of this, this balance between the
• 31:42
  two and being that, you know, straight spine person who will
• 31:45
  just kind of wait until life really reveals the next step and
• 31:48
  then pursuing that relentlessly. Yeah, I'm curious for.
• 31:52
  You do you have a. Strong warrior archetype.
• 31:53
  I mean you, you seem like you. You don't struggle with that
• 31:55
  either. Well, you know, I'm martial arts
• 31:59
  myself and I love that quote. That's like, it's better to be a
• 32:03
  warrior in the garden than a gardener in the gardener in the
• 32:06
  war. And that was helpful for me
• 32:08
  because, you know, I grew up like South Denver, the 90s, it
• 32:14
  was rough. It was like it was a different
• 32:16
  situation, you know, So I grew up fighting all the time and,
• 32:19
  and just kind of grew up kind of scared, you know, honestly.
• 32:22
  And like, so that comes out in a lot of different ways.
• 32:25
  And like the way you kind of, I think metabolize it is like
• 32:29
  you're picked on and then you pick on and then there's all
• 32:32
  kinds of different weird ways that like it, it erupts.
• 32:35
  And for me, it was always anger and trying to figure out how to
• 32:37
  deal with anger. And training for me was always
• 32:41
  like such a great release, largely because, you know, you
• 32:45
  if you think you're big, bad and tough and like the baddest guy
• 32:48
  on the block and then go train and you get completely destroyed
• 32:51
  on a daily basis, you. Realize that like.
• 32:55
  Your your propensity for violence, if you can really
• 32:59
  escalate violence. And I really love violence, you
• 33:03
  know, but the the more you grow your capacity to inflict
• 33:07
  violence, let's say, the more almost you have the the opposite
• 33:11
  reaction of living in a a way that is nurturative of peace and
• 33:19
  harmony. And you you can like put that in
• 33:21
  a place, you know, I think a lot of guys probably struggle with
• 33:25
  this, which is just like, you need to put a place for your
• 33:29
  violence somewhere, you know, if that's in you, you know, now I
• 33:33
  say that and people might be a little bit tripped out by that.
• 33:37
  You know, how could you say you love violence?
• 33:40
  And I don't know, I was just Born This Way, you know, I think
• 33:43
  that. Even just with your build, your
• 33:45
  Physiology, right? I mean, you look like you're
• 33:47
  you're built to defend something, right?
• 33:49
  Yeah, totally. Man, I was born.
• 33:50
  To like, pick up a rock and put it over there right on top of
• 33:53
  somebody's head. Yeah.
• 33:55
  And I don't think there's anything wrong with.
• 33:56
  That and you know, our bodies, we evolve so much slower then
• 34:01
  society is evolving and technology is evolving and
• 34:03
  that's where we need to look at things like a positive
• 34:05
  relationship with AI to help us move into this next iteration of
• 34:10
  human existence. Well, because it's going to take
• 34:12
  a while for our bodies to catch up and I, I completely agree,
• 34:15
  especially young men, you know that 13 to 18 year old range
• 34:19
  when you got a lot of hormones going through you, it's nice to
• 34:22
  beat up on a bag rather than somebody else, you know, and the
• 34:25
  sense they will do that with you, you know, they'll, they'll
• 34:26
  show you how to direct that energy in a positive way.
• 34:28
  You bet. And for me, you.
• 34:30
  Know I'm kind of in a different phase too and it's been great
• 34:33
  you know I I trained jiu jitsu, Brazilian jiu Jitsu for 15 years
• 34:37
  and I did not getting on the ground with you.
• 34:42
  I don't know I move a little bit slow, but I I got a heavy
• 34:44
  pressure game don't worry about that.
• 34:47
  But then also like which which I love jiu jitsu is is so fun.
• 34:51
  You know, like, because it grappling, it's like, you know,
• 34:55
  and Aikido's grappling too, It's like the kind of thing that you
• 34:57
  can go 100%, you know, I did boxing and I did Muay Thai,
• 35:03
  which is really fun, but I kind of scared, you know, 'cause like
• 35:06
  if you get kicked in the head, man, it's serious.
• 35:09
  That's a bad day. You know.
• 35:11
  Lifelong implications? Totally.
• 35:12
  And like you're doing. Anything athletic, you're going
• 35:14
  to have injuries and things like that, jujitsu included.
• 35:17
  But, but really, I mean, 99% of the time you can go pretty close
• 35:22
  to 100%, you know, without the fear because you can just always
• 35:26
  tap out. So that was really instrumental.
• 35:28
  Plus it gives you kind of like this like brotherhood connection
• 35:32
  with the people around you. You know, it would be weird that
• 35:35
  I like I would know, I would know this guy, let's say Steve
• 35:40
  for example, I would know the dexterity of his hips to like
• 35:44
  1/2 an inch, but I don't know his last name.
• 35:49
  Those are friends from the. Trenches, you know, there's a
• 35:51
  different bond that you have when you've all, like, bled and
• 35:54
  sweated together, when you've tasted.
• 35:57
  The sweat off their face and like it.
• 35:58
  This is the most disgusting thing ever.
• 36:01
  It was fantastic, but and and that's great and it has a real
• 36:04
  warrior spirit. But then also I did and still
• 36:07
  do. I still, I still train both, but
• 36:09
  Capoueta, which has got much more of like a trickster energy
• 36:15
  and it's much more acrobatic. I'm not, that's not me.
• 36:18
  But it's also like very musical, you know, So like actually in
• 36:22
  retrospect, like probably when I was transitioning out of music
• 36:25
  and like, Kappa would have filled this like huge hole that
• 36:28
  it was like able to bring music into my life in this
• 36:30
  experiential way, you know? So yeah, there's some.
• 36:35
  Really. Positive components of martial
• 36:37
  arts in that. Would you mind if I jump in for
• 36:38
  a second there? You were talking a little bit
• 36:41
  about how you're feeling this explosion of creative
• 36:44
  opportunity within Quad Code. And like, how do you keep your
• 36:47
  head straight? And I think that the things that
• 36:49
  you learn within martial arts are very similar.
• 36:51
  Will it? They'll keep your head straight,
• 36:53
  you know. And so for me, like I found that
• 36:56
  if you attach to things like the seven Zen arts, I think it's 7,
• 37:00
  There's things like heart, archery, horseback riding,
• 37:03
  gardening, calligraphy. Exactly right.
• 37:06
  I found that specifically archery really spoke to me and
• 37:09
  similar to Coppoweta, I got into like projectiles and knife
• 37:12
  throwing and axe throwing and stuff like that.
• 37:14
  I was actually lucky enough to be sponsored by a local axe
• 37:17
  throwing venue, Primal. They just went down,
• 37:19
  unfortunately. But yeah, I got to throw with
• 37:21
  world champions and I was never near that good.
• 37:23
  But we did get to go to the World Championships and things
• 37:25
  like that. And I found that just like
• 37:29
  really shutting off my mind and trying to put this axe in like
• 37:32
  the perfect part of this target is so nurturing to a part of
• 37:36
  ourselves. And I think that mastery of that
• 37:39
  violence, of that inane high energy, you know, archetype
• 37:42
  within you can come both from exertion and from discipline.
• 37:48
  And the discipline of stealing your mind that you get from
• 37:50
  martial arts, I think can serve anybody, especially people who
• 37:53
  are really interested in technology today.
• 37:55
  It's easy to go all over the place in the ether when you can
• 37:58
  create 100 things at once, when you have, you know, 10 terminals
• 38:01
  open and you're, like, creating all this stuff.
• 38:03
  Or, you know, some of my friends are doing 25 agents
• 38:05
  simultaneously, and they're orchestrating at the same time.
• 38:07
  It's crazy. But having that discipline to
• 38:10
  steal your mind is just, you know, invaluable.
• 38:14
  Yeah. I, I agree, man, it's, it's
• 38:17
  interesting. I'm feeling a little
• 38:18
  self-conscious now of like talking about violence.
• 38:22
  It sounds a little douchey, but I don't know, it's just a part.
• 38:25
  It's a part of the whole thing. And I, I think it's also helpful
• 38:30
  in a couple of ways, you know, like the tools we're building
• 38:32
  and we were talking about this before we were on air.
• 38:34
  It's just like, man, how are you handling the pace?
• 38:36
  Because it's intense And like a, a lot of it for me is like work
• 38:41
  is, is kind of like a, like a, a centrifugal like tornado.
• 38:47
  It's just from like the moment I start, I'm basically doing 8:00
• 38:51
  to 6:00 every day. And it's just like it just
• 38:53
  starts slow and it just goes harder and harder and harder all
• 38:56
  day. And then it has to have a place
• 38:58
  to go, you know, So like training has been like a great
• 39:01
  release. It's interesting when you're
• 39:02
  talking about like maybe it's they're built from the same
• 39:05
  cloth in some way, the creative capacity and like putting it
• 39:08
  into like that expenditure in some kind of archetype
• 39:14
  potentially, you know where. OK, OK, that's like an
• 39:18
  interesting thing I hadn't thought about before too.
• 39:20
  So going back to the archetype thing, we'll just jump around if
• 39:23
  that's OK Sounds great. A lot of meditation teacher that
• 39:28
  I had had is they'll say, you know, when you're in your
• 39:31
  sitting practice, if you see a recurrent theme come up, give it
• 39:36
  a name so that you can say in this case, Steve.
• 39:40
  For me, Steve is the creative planner ideas.
• 39:44
  We could do this and we could do this and we could do this and we
• 39:46
  could do this and we could do this.
• 39:48
  Like I love that person. I love that person, but when I'm
• 39:51
  on the cushion, that's not a time for Steve.
• 39:54
  So kind of the way I was taught, it's like, OK, you start to
• 39:57
  you're you're sitting there focusing on your breath.
• 40:00
  You know, I like zoke Gen. techniques.
• 40:02
  So I'm like trying to like kind of expand the my vision on the
• 40:06
  periphery technique. I've been using a lot.
• 40:09
  And then Steve will come in and be like.
• 40:11
  Dude, I got an idea, man. As we get back down to claw,
• 40:14
  like, why don't we do this, this, this, this and this?
• 40:16
  So I'm starting to like systematically plan through it.
• 40:19
  But the second I notice, I'm like, oh, that's Steve.
• 40:22
  Steve's here. Steve, I love that you exist.
• 40:24
  However, this is not a place for you.
• 40:25
  So it gives you opportunity to welcome Steve and then ask Steve
• 40:29
  to politely leave. You know, so maybe there's a new
• 40:35
  archetype. Maybe that's what this like kind
• 40:38
  of new phase and it's not just with us.
• 40:41
  I've been talking to a lot of people particularly it could be
• 40:44
  just new year, new energy, new me kind of stuff.
• 40:47
  But it seems like there is also a new momentum that's building
• 40:50
  right now. And largely I think it's because
• 40:54
  some of the idiation that we've been dreaming about or maybe we
• 40:58
  have, you know, 16 ideas in our Apple notes now.
• 41:03
  We're like, no, dude, actually we can execute on all of those
• 41:06
  now, right? Yeah, you know.
• 41:08
  Yeah. I think.
• 41:10
  That So first, I love that you brought Steve to the forefront
• 41:13
  and Steve sounds like a super fun person to get a beer with.
• 41:16
  That's great. You know, I would love to grab a
• 41:18
  beer with some time and you're reminding me a lot of IFS stuff.
• 41:22
  I don't know if you looked at IFS or not Internal family
• 41:26
  systems. I don't know if I know it.
• 41:28
  You might really enjoy. Ifs it's this idea that we as
• 41:32
  children end up creating these archetypal protectors within
• 41:36
  ourselves. They're managers or protectors
• 41:38
  of some kind. And so for me, like 1 of mine is
• 41:41
  called the Juggernaut. And the Juggernaut will not slow
• 41:44
  down until the problem is dealt with.
• 41:46
  And you know, my girlfriend will kindly remind me when the the
• 41:49
  Juggernaut is is around because she gets annoyed as shit.
• 41:52
  She loves that when she's talking about her.
• 41:54
  Day and you're like, I have this solved already.
• 41:56
  Yeah, exactly. You ready for the answer?
• 41:57
  Yeah, yeah. I'm like, let me pick you.
• 41:59
  Up bring you to where you need to be and let's fix this right
• 42:01
  now. And she's like, you could chill
• 42:02
  out, please. And actually I made a song for
• 42:05
  the Juggernaut, which was very healing for really is a metal
• 42:08
  song. He's like good out of my way.
• 42:11
  You know, I'm the Juggernaut. Obviously it sounds much better
• 42:14
  than my singing, but happy to, you know, share that out as
• 42:17
  well. But that said, so, you know,
• 42:19
  usually these archetypes I've found or these managers will
• 42:22
  show up because you need protection from something.
• 42:25
  You know, for me, I struggled with a, you know, a very, very
• 42:29
  challenging disease when I was younger and I had to work harder
• 42:31
  than most to even just squeak by in school.
• 42:33
  And so the Juggernaut was born. I believe in those moments when,
• 42:37
  you know, I'm playing with 26 cards, you got 52 and I've got
• 42:40
  to show up and play well. And so, you know, the, the
• 42:43
  archetype of the Juggernaut gave me a lot of energy, but now, you
• 42:46
  know, as I'm a full embodied human, you know, he's running at
• 42:50
  150% and I don't really need that from him anymore.
• 42:53
  And so you've got to ask him to leave, right?
• 42:55
  Or you've got to say Juggernaut, like, you know, what are you
• 42:57
  here for and how are you trying to help me?
• 43:00
  And can you trust me as the, the sovereign, right?
• 43:03
  The being that the man now today to take up that role.
• 43:08
  Are you open to taking a back seat and trusting that I can
• 43:10
  help you there? I actually had this experience
• 43:12
  at an Ichio concert. I don't know if you know, Ichio
• 43:14
  or not. It's a local band.
• 43:15
  Totally, quite a bit. And there's this like really
• 43:19
  drunk guy next to me. He's getting really aggressive.
• 43:21
  And you know, I've had some training like you have and I was
• 43:24
  with maybe 5 or 6 other individuals and you know, I just
• 43:27
  had this moment where I was like, oh, like they're safe,
• 43:30
  right? You know, like I don't need to
• 43:31
  worry about it. Like I'm between them and this
• 43:32
  drunk guy and then wait, I'm safe.
• 43:37
  I've actually created safety. For myself and I I feel again
• 43:41
  feel a little emotional saying it because like my little one
• 43:43
  didn't feel safe, you know similar to you like growing up
• 43:46
  and kind of like some conflict having to defend yourself.
• 43:49
  There's a reason why I don't know what belts you are now in
• 43:51
  in jiu jitsu at after 15 years I've met you're pretty high up
• 43:53
  there and I wouldn't want to yeah, that's why I ended up
• 43:58
  quitting kickboxing too. I got a good injury.
• 44:00
  Nobody seemed to care. And I was like, oh, this is how
• 44:02
  I break some shit. Like I didn't get out of here.
• 44:05
  And that said, you know, I had this moment where I could say,
• 44:08
  oh, you know, the I had another archetype called Darth Vader.
• 44:12
  And Darth Vader would often, you know, beat up myself or others.
• 44:16
  And I said, Darth Vader, like, you don't really need to be a
• 44:19
  part of my life anymore. The sovereign, the the martial
• 44:23
  arts master. Not that I'm calling myself a
• 44:25
  master, but, you know, the person who's studied martial
• 44:28
  arts, he can protect the little one now.
• 44:30
  Yeah. You can take a back seat, right?
• 44:32
  And there's just something so powerful about with Steve too.
• 44:34
  I don't know what Steve's trying to do for you, but if,
• 44:37
  especially if you look at IFS, I'm not trying to give you
• 44:39
  unsolicited advice, but there's like this whole framework around
• 44:41
  it. It's just absolutely fascinating
• 44:43
  to talk to it, have dialogue with it, and let it go, you
• 44:46
  know? It's absolutely powerful.
• 44:48
  I love it, man. I like that.
• 44:49
  This conversation, we're talking about personal work.
• 44:52
  Yeah, I was expecting to. Talk about AI and I love that
• 44:54
  we're going deep into the spiritual side it's perfect it's
• 44:56
  great and the Denver side, I mean it's wonderful that we have
• 44:59
  such you know, it's such a love for the state and and for the
• 45:02
  city. We're best friends now and.
• 45:04
  We'll do a podcast about AI another time.
• 45:06
  Sounds great, but but this is really important and it's been
• 45:11
  important to me too. The safety thing is an
• 45:12
  interesting one. There's like certain ideas that
• 45:15
  I didn't even know were possible until I was an adult.
• 45:17
  You know, I was, I remember I was on retreat and I was doing
• 45:21
  meta meditation and part of it was like, may I feel safe?
• 45:25
  And I was like, that's a weird thing to ask.
• 45:27
  That's not possible, right? And they're like, no, you can
• 45:29
  feel safe. I was like, wait, does anybody
• 45:32
  feel safe? Is that like a real thing?
• 45:34
  You know, 'cause it was like it was just revolutionary that I
• 45:38
  was like, I never really acknowledged that.
• 45:39
  Like I never ever felt safe ever.
• 45:42
  You know, that's powerful, man. And so now I sit with that and
• 45:45
  say and just use that mantra, may I feel safe, you know, and
• 45:49
  the meta meditation has been like very transformative and
• 45:52
  very healing in a huge way, you know, because I think that's
• 45:56
  another thing too is like you start to have family and stuff.
• 45:58
  It becomes easy to want your kids to feel safe, but it's
• 46:01
  harder to have that want for yourself, you know?
• 46:05
  So to spend time with that is like transformative, you know?
• 46:09
  And so I think a lot of these things, you know, if you're
• 46:14
  talking about like training and about masculine and, and these
• 46:17
  kind of archetypes, you, you start to find a balance in
• 46:20
  there. And you realize that like the,
• 46:22
  the more capacity you have to defend or the more capacity you
• 46:27
  have for strength, then it gives you more capacity for softness
• 46:30
  and tenderness. And then you can bring all those
• 46:32
  things out. You know it's.
• 46:35
  It's Wildman and there's. All these different techniques,
• 46:38
  you know, but like the, the labeling and and naming things
• 46:41
  has been super helpful. I think for me because it, it,
• 46:45
  it's a way to like get it out of the, the brain body thing.
• 46:49
  Like, like somatic kind of work is is interesting because for me
• 46:56
  it's like, I don't know what to do with anger, but I know what
• 46:58
  to do if like with the symptoms of anger, which would be like
• 47:03
  the back of my neck feels hot. OK, Yeah, you do feel it in your
• 47:06
  body. You can.
• 47:07
  Oh, I'm angry even if I don't think I'm angry.
• 47:09
  Totally. I'm angry for my physical
• 47:10
  response. Yeah, well, and the problem is
• 47:12
  like I've. I've been a meditator since I
• 47:13
  was like 17 years old. And so you think that like
• 47:17
  you're, you're getting somewhere with meditation, but really what
• 47:19
  you get to do is you learn how to gaslight yourself real well.
• 47:23
  So you're like, I'm not angry. And then you're like, the back
• 47:27
  of my neck is red hot. You know I've got an indicator
• 47:32
  here. Saying otherwise, maybe
• 47:33
  breathing your way. Through whatever, but like this
• 47:36
  is like showing up in your body. But so then you don't have to be
• 47:39
  like deal with like the the thoughts and emotions as much as
• 47:42
  like you're dealing with your body.
• 47:44
  And you say, OK, I feel the heat in the back of my neck.
• 47:47
  I'll breathe through that. And as that dissipates, there is
• 47:50
  that connection between the feeling and the bodily
• 47:52
  sensation. So it's helpful for me if I'm
• 47:56
  like, it's like, oh, man, am I feeling depressed?
• 47:59
  And it's like, no, you haven't drinking water in like 48 hours,
• 48:03
  bro. Like, what are you doing that's
• 48:05
  gonna mess with you? Yeah, so I can be.
• 48:06
  Like OK, no I can. Go drink water and then I feel
• 48:08
  better. So to me, like, getting it out
• 48:11
  of like kind of the mental heart space a lot of times is a little
• 48:13
  bit helpful. Yeah, you know, I mean feeling
• 48:15
  it. In your body is so powerful.
• 48:17
  I mean, there's a lot of books like The Body Keeps the Score.
• 48:20
  And you know, I, I feel like people often associate things
• 48:23
  like Zen or even Stoicism, which we haven't talked about with
• 48:28
  this like lack of feeling. And I don't think that that's
• 48:31
  the case for me at least meditation is intensely feeling
• 48:36
  my experience and observing it without attachment, both
• 48:39
  something positive or something negative, right?
• 48:42
  And that's where you can have something like a, like the sense
• 48:44
  I was mentioning where he's feeling extreme pain, having a
• 48:47
  root canal done. And he's, he's not attached to
• 48:50
  the pain. He's experiencing it intensely
• 48:52
  and letting it move through his body, right?
• 48:54
  Just like something positive. And you know, you, you're
• 48:57
  mentioning a lot of people here are entrepreneurs and I find
• 48:59
  that, I mean, the entrepreneurial journey Will
• 49:01
  Rock your world. I mean, it's this and it's that
• 49:04
  it's vicious. And it's that, right?
• 49:06
  There's, there's like 2 phases of a 20 or 30 year old
• 49:09
  entrepreneur, which is either you're broke or you're loaded,
• 49:12
  right? And you're kind of like going
• 49:13
  between the two fairly often. And you both have a grey hoodie.
• 49:16
  You both have grey hoodie and. I think that these philosophies
• 49:22
  like Stoicism and Zen and some of the stuff you're talking
• 49:24
  about this, this experience, right, of, of feeling the red
• 49:27
  hot anchor and letting it move, yeah, can help you in these
• 49:30
  macro moments of your life, right.
• 49:33
  And so like Stoics for a while, I don't know if you're a
• 49:35
  Stoicism fan or not 100%. I mean, well, actually.
• 49:38
  We're crossing like we're checking off every single box on
• 49:41
  this podcast. I think so far we definitely
• 49:44
  talked to AI stoicism. We have to talk about stoicism.
• 49:47
  Of course we must. Yeah, I'm a big fan.
• 49:50
  Yeah. Amazing.
• 49:51
  You. Know they used to actually dress
• 49:55
  like completely obtusely. So think about, I mean, they're
• 49:58
  wearing togas in that time, right?
• 49:59
  I think it's accurate. And they would wear like the
• 50:01
  equivalent of like pink togas and like red noses and all this
• 50:05
  just like absolutely ludicrous stuff with the intention of
• 50:09
  feeling the experience of being ridiculed or judged so that they
• 50:14
  become familiar with that experience, not desensitized to
• 50:17
  it, but they develop a relationship with it in which
• 50:20
  they can handle that experience just like you're handling your
• 50:22
  anger. And, and I think that like this
• 50:25
  idea of being able to master oneself is not ignoring your
• 50:28
  experience. It's feeling your experience so
• 50:32
  intensely that you now have a relationship and an
• 50:35
  understanding of how to deal with it.
• 50:36
  Well, that's dude. Imagine the confidence that
• 50:40
  you're like, I'm going to experience ridicule for fun.
• 50:45
  Dude, masochistic. That's massive swagger.
• 50:48
  Like this is terrible. Well.
• 50:51
  What an absolute shit month I'm having this feels.
• 50:55
  Horrible. Yeah.
• 50:56
  I'll keep this going for another six weeks.
• 50:58
  Yeah, it's amazing. What are some of the?
• 50:59
  Stoicism ideologies or like pieces that you love what are
• 51:02
  some of the things that have attracted you to the philosophy
• 51:04
  I like I. Just like the practicality of
• 51:06
  it, yeah. You know, it's just, it's
• 51:07
  basically like, hey, man, you just got to accept this shit and
• 51:10
  just like keep it moving. You know, I, when I was going to
• 51:14
  Metro when I was in high school and then afterwards off and on
• 51:18
  and what the best professor I think I ever had was also at
• 51:21
  Metro. I forget his name, no
• 51:23
  disrespect, but he got a PhD in chemistry and I was like, I'm
• 51:29
  bored with chemistry and got a PhD in philosophy and he was a
• 51:32
  punk rock singer. He was this giant, probably £400
• 51:35
  man that wore black sweatpants, had a white beard down to here.
• 51:38
  It was like a, a fedora. And so he had like 4 different
• 51:42
  fedoras and so he put on different hats.
• 51:44
  He'd be like, no, I want to be Plato and he would so I know I'm
• 51:46
  going to be Aristotle. And so like he taught philosophy
• 51:49
  one O 1. And so like I got into
• 51:51
  philosophy like that and kind of went through like the Greeks of
• 51:54
  course. And then I got into really the
• 51:56
  phenomena, not the phenomenological track, you
• 51:59
  know, and that really spoke to me.
• 52:01
  But all of this is very cerebral and very logical, which feels
• 52:06
  comforting, where you're like, oh, OK, like at the base
• 52:09
  argument of reality as some kind of mathematical equation and
• 52:12
  things make sense. That was helpful, you know.
• 52:15
  But then you get to Stoicism and they're like, shit happens, man.
• 52:20
  Didn't really no reason for it. There's the, you know, bad
• 52:23
  people win, good people lose. You just keep it moving, you
• 52:27
  know, And so like there's almost no arguing with like how
• 52:30
  practical that really is, you know.
• 52:33
  So I love that, but I also, it was lacking to me.
• 52:37
  So like as we're a tourist of different, like, you know, ideas
• 52:40
  and stuff. What I always loved about Zen
• 52:42
  was largely because, you know, feudal Japan is like so romantic
• 52:46
  to me because the architecture so beautiful, the music and the,
• 52:50
  the, the, the clothing and like the craft.
• 52:55
  It's just like. Immaculate, but also it's so
• 52:57
  conservative and rigid that is like, I would have a terrible
• 53:02
  time there because honestly, I'm a little bit sloppy and I'm, you
• 53:05
  know, kind of full of shit. So.
• 53:08
  But what I love about Zen is it like it's able to take all of
• 53:10
  that pristine rigor and it's always looking for that the
• 53:15
  humor. And like the humor is really
• 53:17
  like it. It, it, it's so delicate
• 53:20
  because, you know, if we're talking about feudal Japan, like
• 53:24
  if you offend somebody, they might just murder you on the
• 53:26
  spot in like a. Sacrificial.
• 53:29
  Beautiful ritualistic way. So it's like 11 sentence could
• 53:33
  like either get you killed or could everyone erupts in
• 53:36
  laughter. So the tension of that I just
• 53:38
  think is like extraordinary. And so like the humor and
• 53:41
  spontaneity and the twinkle in the eye and all of the Zen texts
• 53:45
  and I love all of the the Zen Saints.
• 53:48
  You know, I I tend to favor the drunken ones.
• 53:51
  EUI love that guy. You know where basically they
• 53:55
  let these people be gestures because they're like, dude, he's
• 53:57
  really spiritual advanced. He's super rude.
• 54:00
  I mean, he's very offensive. He he keeps messing around.
• 54:03
  He's about to find out, but like but so enlightened to just
• 54:07
  become a bit. Of a Dick, exactly, but.
• 54:10
  It has, you know, and I think that it like shares that with
• 54:12
  like Stoicism where there is like academic rigor and there is
• 54:16
  like very serious consequences from the people that are
• 54:18
  contributing, you know, but that becomes very interesting.
• 54:23
  Yeah, I I love. That you have this affinity for
• 54:26
  feudal Japan. I have been obsessed as long as
• 54:30
  I can remember and actually just rewatched a movie recently that
• 54:35
  had a large impact on me as a boy, which is called Ghost Dog.
• 54:38
  It's Forest Whitaker. He's living in German.
• 54:40
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 54:41
  So good. So good.
• 54:44
  And. They they read from a book
• 54:46
  called Hagukare throughout the the sequence of that movie.
• 54:50
  And there's a number of quotes that deeply resonate with me in
• 54:53
  that. But there's something that I've
• 54:54
  kind of attached to in life, which is whether you go from
• 55:00
  awning to awning during a rainstorm and you're trying to
• 55:03
  avoid it or you walk through it, you receive the same soaking.
• 55:08
  But the way in which you react with it, it can be as if the
• 55:12
  rain does not touch you. I'm I'm definitely paraphrasing
• 55:16
  there, but there's this idea of if you can resolve to just
• 55:19
  getting soaked, you're so much more free as a person.
• 55:24
  I think that is just so beautiful and and I love that
• 55:26
  you you enjoy these kind of like persnickety or like funny
• 55:30
  philosophers as well, right. I've always been a big fan of
• 55:34
  Miyamoto Musashi. I don't know if you know
• 55:36
  Miyamoto or five rings. Look at the five rings.
• 55:38
  Exactly. Very famous samurai.
• 55:40
  Who would, you know, almost infamously, like show up late
• 55:45
  for duels or early for duels. And you know, he beat all these
• 55:48
  really amazing samurai just by going through the third door,
• 55:51
  which is. I mean, that's.
• 55:53
  The legendary duel, right? That's so cool that you know
• 55:56
  this. I mean, that's amazing.
• 55:58
  Yes, I have a. Bokan hanging on my wall for
• 56:01
  that very story. Really.
• 56:03
  Yes. Wow yes yeah, I think he used an
• 56:07
  odachi for that, which is like the ore right the big.
• 56:10
  Long one, yeah. So he famously.
• 56:12
  Shows up late on this like duel to the death on this island with
• 56:16
  the second best samurai, or they're both the best samurai at
• 56:18
  the time. They're going to figure out
• 56:19
  who's going to win. He shows up without a sword,
• 56:22
  carves the sword out of the OR, and then ends up killing the
• 56:25
  man. And it's interesting cuz
• 56:27
  Miyamoto, he had actually developed using 2 katanas at
• 56:30
  once. That was part of his style.
• 56:32
  You can actually learn it here in Colorado as well.
• 56:34
  If you're interested in learning it.
• 56:35
  I can show you a few senses. Cool, this sensei that's like
• 56:38
  Leonardo. Yeah, it's kind of like
• 56:40
  Leonardo, Yeah. Yeah, exactly.
• 56:43
  Apparently it came from like an epic battle where he showed up
• 56:45
  late and he tried to kill the samurai and he got, you know,
• 56:48
  ambushed. And so he picked up another
• 56:50
  sword and realized that 2 is better than one.
• 56:54
  But he he goes to this this island.
• 56:56
  And the other samurai was a master of a long Cortana, an old
• 56:59
  Cortana, you know, and, and this thing is probably 5 feet long
• 57:04
  and half feet long. It's a long sword.
• 57:06
  Totally and was able to beat the man with his own specialty
• 57:09
  weapon and the wooden version of it.
• 57:11
  And I mean, there's just something so elegant and
• 57:13
  beautiful that this man then goes from that lifestyle,
• 57:15
  becoming the best swordsman and all of Japan, the patron St. of
• 57:18
  swordsmanship of Japan, which, spoiler alert, a country that is
• 57:21
  very, very, very invested in their swordsman and then becomes
• 57:25
  a philosopher, right? He literally, he just sits.
• 57:29
  Yeah, he's a. Hermit.
• 57:29
  Yeah, he, he sits in a can power arranger.
• 57:32
  Oh my God. I mean.
• 57:34
  If they say that like his. Power arrangements would bring
• 57:36
  tears. Really.
• 57:38
  I did not know that about. Him yeah, that's beautiful
• 57:40
  polymath. Wow, It that's.
• 57:44
  I mean, just like, mind blowing talk about a warrior in a
• 57:46
  garden. Could you imagine, like,
• 57:48
  mouthing off to that guy and he's like, I don't know, I'm
• 57:50
  Miyamoto Musashi. You're like, all right, yeah,
• 57:54
  that that solved the. Fighting equation real quick was
• 57:56
  when you realize like how many people out there that are really
• 57:59
  sophisticated fighting Yeah, that's the.
• 58:02
  Thing once you become really trained, you know, you realize I
• 58:05
  have no idea what you know and I would really like to avoid it.
• 58:08
  And I can tell you more often than not, if you're approaching
• 58:10
  me, upset at me and you're trying to start a fight, you
• 58:13
  probably don't know a lot about fighting.
• 58:15
  Yeah, you know, and I was talking a little.
• 58:17
  Bit about being a kid and like, you know, the violence I had to
• 58:19
  have to endure. But really through training
• 58:23
  martial arts for decades, it really did heal that.
• 58:26
  Like I don't feel that way anymore.
• 58:28
  So now it's, it's more about like, you know, what was all
• 58:30
  that anger and stuff like what was it?
• 58:33
  What was it simplifying, you know, 'cause it's easy to
• 58:35
  default to anger. So that's been the the latest
• 58:39
  path. But it it's interesting to think
• 58:41
  about like Musashi as like a destination, how much that
• 58:47
  really actually motivates me because there's something about
• 58:52
  that guy. I mean, there's a lot about that
• 58:54
  guy, you know, I like. Too that he was like.
• 58:57
  Kind of grotesque. And he, he was famous for having
• 58:59
  like, what's the, what's the like skin condition?
• 59:06
  Oh, dermatitis. Shingles or like.
• 59:09
  Oh, shingles? Sure.
• 59:10
  Yeah, chicken. Pox, something like that.
• 59:11
  Something like that, yeah. Like he had like.
• 59:13
  Really bad skin conditions. Not attractive guy.
• 59:15
  He was Ronin. He was just out on his own.
• 59:17
  Yeah, he kind of stank. Yeah, he's like.
• 59:19
  Nasty and like. Dirty and just was like a
• 59:21
  disgrace. I kind of like that about him,
• 59:24
  you know, And then I love the fact that he did retire to that
• 59:28
  kind of hermetic like lifestyle where he worked on mastering his
• 59:33
  work. So like he well, he worked on
• 59:35
  mastering his work his whole life and then was able to like
• 59:37
  put that into words and pass that in as a philosopher, I
• 59:41
  think is amazing. So on the way over here,
• 59:44
  actually, I was thinking about this because I really feel like,
• 59:48
  and maybe this conversation is a good indication of this.
• 59:51
  Maybe a little untethered, like, and I want to always have like
• 59:55
  the center of the bullseye very clear, because otherwise, if
• 1:00:01
  you're not aiming at the center of the bullseye, you're not even
• 1:00:03
  gonna hit the paper. You know what I mean?
• 1:00:05
  We're talking about. Archery so.
• 1:00:07
  Like for a long time my vision was like, OK, at some point I'm
• 1:00:12
  gonna be hunting with my son brown bears in Alaska and epic.
• 1:00:18
  I love where this is going. All right, all right.
• 1:00:21
  I'm in for this turn. That's an.
• 1:00:23
  Initiation and the. Reason is.
• 1:00:25
  Because one, I've had bear tags, I've had, I've had bear under
• 1:00:30
  scope. I'm just not going to shoot a
• 1:00:31
  bear, man. I don't know, man, if they just
• 1:00:34
  don't look like food to me. And I'm kind of scared.
• 1:00:36
  Sacred animal in a lot of ways, yeah.
• 1:00:38
  And I'm kind of scared of them, but they.
• 1:00:39
  Also just kind of have like personalities that like elk are
• 1:00:42
  Beautiful Creatures and I love them, but when I see them, it
• 1:00:45
  looks delicious, you know? So, so like, so the idea of
• 1:00:49
  like, I'm going to be in Alaska brown bear hunting with my son.
• 1:00:53
  A lot of things have to fit into that to make that happen.
• 1:00:58
  You know, a lot of things have to come together.
• 1:01:00
  So for me, it's not really like, OK, these are my revenue goals.
• 1:01:04
  This is my, this is my opportunities, blah, blah, blah.
• 1:01:07
  Like to me, like that's a little murky, but I can just put myself
• 1:01:10
  in Alaska hunting bears, but I really haven't thought about
• 1:01:14
  that a lot lately. It's not like a, a crystallized
• 1:01:17
  vision. It's important for me to have a
• 1:01:19
  very clear vision because every time that I've had a very clear
• 1:01:23
  vision, I find I, I create it. It comes to to being, it's
• 1:01:28
  almost like, and you have a vision of something in the
• 1:01:30
  future. You can kind of attach like a
• 1:01:34
  grappling hook to it, ninja tool and then pull yourself through
• 1:01:38
  time until like at some point you're like, boom, I made it,
• 1:01:41
  I'm here now. It's the weirdest effect.
• 1:01:44
  And if you experience a couple times, you realize how powerful
• 1:01:47
  a potent vision is. But that.
• 1:01:49
  Vision has. Been a little, it hasn't been
• 1:01:52
  potent. So I realized that like OK, I
• 1:01:53
  need a new one and I wasn't thinking Masashi, but I can see
• 1:01:57
  how it's so like influenced by this.
• 1:02:00
  But like, now I have this idea of recording a solo Delta Blues
• 1:02:07
  record with one microphone on the beach.
• 1:02:11
  Epic. Epic.
• 1:02:13
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:02:13
  So like do like a cover track? Where you're doing like
• 1:02:16
  Leadbelly tracks, Robert Johnson tracks, you know, Sun House
• 1:02:20
  tracks, like just do a cover song where like basically I'm
• 1:02:23
  setting up just like this and be like, all right, man.
• 1:02:25
  Which means that I'm so well practiced that I can do it in
• 1:02:28
  one take. That means that I have the time.
• 1:02:31
  That means you can hear the beach in my voice that like,
• 1:02:33
  it's going to be like that. And I was like, dude, that that
• 1:02:37
  might be my new kind of vision. It's like for for that to
• 1:02:41
  happen, it means that I already hit my financial goals so well
• 1:02:44
  that like my personal spiritual family goals are all met because
• 1:02:49
  you can't do a solo acoustic Blues album if like you have
• 1:02:52
  some kind of tension in your voice.
• 1:02:54
  Like you got to have like it has to have like a well, what does
• 1:02:59
  it have to have? It has, it has to have like
• 1:03:01
  there's some flow to it, right? Like.
• 1:03:03
  Almost a flow state to it, Like there's a flow so rigid and
• 1:03:06
  focused on it that it's brittle. No, it's adaptive and organic.
• 1:03:10
  Yeah, it has to have like a. Haunting, like ease to it.
• 1:03:13
  You know, if I think of like John Lee Hooker and like the
• 1:03:16
  kind of guys that like they're singing, but like they're not
• 1:03:18
  trying too hard, you know, they're not like belting it out
• 1:03:22
  there. They're just like kind of or Tom
• 1:03:24
  Waits or something, you know, like there's something else to
• 1:03:30
  the voice. And to get that in my voice,
• 1:03:31
  it's not my voice now. Yeah, You know what I mean?
• 1:03:34
  Yeah, maybe that's going to be my vision.
• 1:03:36
  Yeah. I don't know.
• 1:03:36
  Maybe you could vibe? Code an AI tool, you know, to
• 1:03:39
  give you some feedback on your tambour or your voice or
• 1:03:42
  whatever. I I love that.
• 1:03:43
  What about you? You got a vision.
• 1:03:44
  Yeah, absolutely. You know, for me, I'm really
• 1:03:47
  obsessed right now with family and what does family look like?
• 1:03:50
  And right now I wrote a five year goal.
• 1:03:53
  That was one year ago. I haven't shared the full thing
• 1:03:57
  with even my family members or the people close to me.
• 1:04:00
  But I will share a practice that had a a really large effect on
• 1:04:04
  me, which is there was an English teacher, I think she was
• 1:04:07
  at Princeton. This is another shout out to Tim
• 1:04:10
  Ferriss, who had people vividly write out the future that they
• 1:04:14
  wanted. And I mean, we're talking 1020
• 1:04:17
  pages of just one day of your life 10 years from now.
• 1:04:20
  And the clearer it can be, the more likely it is to happen.
• 1:04:24
  And I found that the the process of sitting down and saying,
• 1:04:27
  like, what time am I waking up? What does it feel like in the
• 1:04:30
  room in which I wake? Who are the people around me?
• 1:04:33
  How do I really spend my time? All of those things kind of like
• 1:04:37
  subtly. Shift.
• 1:04:38
  Me towards this vision, right and so even moments like when I
• 1:04:42
  chose to come back to Denver and and put my roots here I I was
• 1:04:46
  traveling around the world at the time.
• 1:04:47
  I had plans to actually fly over to Europe and continue running
• 1:04:50
  my company, you know, from the road, being a digital nomad and
• 1:04:55
  finding people in this community that Co inspire me.
• 1:04:59
  I'm realizing that's the group of friends that I've been
• 1:05:02
  writing about in my vision. The people who I wake up, I have
• 1:05:05
  coffee and you know, like we all sit around in a circle and we're
• 1:05:08
  just talking about our ideas and birthing things that are
• 1:05:11
  genuinely good for society. You know, having that clear
• 1:05:14
  vision has informed day-to-day decisions naturally, without me
• 1:05:17
  having to sit there and figure out, do I go left or do I go
• 1:05:20
  right at this fork in the road? I know I'm I'm, I'm
• 1:05:22
  unconsciously guided by that vision.
• 1:05:25
  Something I'll also offer is this is also comes from Zen.
• 1:05:29
  There's this idea of things of great importance should be taken
• 1:05:34
  very lightly and things of small importance should be taken very
• 1:05:37
  seriously, right? The things that we think are
• 1:05:41
  really, really important. I've got to make this certain
• 1:05:43
  amount of money before I can be, you know, happy or start my
• 1:05:45
  record or whatever it is. I think that there's a huge
• 1:05:48
  arrival fallacy in it. You know, I've, I've, I've
• 1:05:52
  worked my ass off to achieve a goal, as have you.
• 1:05:54
  And I'm not sure I feel any better after that goal.
• 1:05:57
  You know, there's something really beautiful about like
• 1:06:00
  learning to love the path itself.
• 1:06:02
  And you know, that, that, that said, to directly answer your
• 1:06:05
  question, if I were to offer anything, I've always been
• 1:06:07
  really fascinated with technology and social
• 1:06:09
  entrepreneurship. How do we use the, the, the
• 1:06:12
  technology of business in a way to positively impact society?
• 1:06:16
  So these are our businesses that are for profit.
• 1:06:19
  They're going to continue to grow, whether the founder is, is
• 1:06:22
  involved or not, because they fund themselves.
• 1:06:24
  They're not funded by altruism. And how do you use this to
• 1:06:27
  actually create positive relationships?
• 1:06:29
  And so, you know, for me, I would really like to figure out
• 1:06:32
  how do I build a company that can have some type of positive
• 1:06:35
  impact when people who are trying to reach self
• 1:06:37
  actualization and unlock their latent human potential that is
• 1:06:41
  indeed also profitable at the same time.
• 1:06:43
  So it's, it's not a small goal, it's a lofty goal, but I, I'd
• 1:06:46
  like to figure out how can AI unlock who you really are?
• 1:06:50
  Peeling back the layers of the onion, figuring out who that is
• 1:06:52
  and support that person in this age of abundance.
• 1:06:55
  That's, I think the real gift that AI offers.
• 1:06:58
  And that's, that's a core component of my vision a few
• 1:07:01
  years from now. Amazing man.
• 1:07:03
  Yeah, and I lean on people like you because I, as deep as I am
• 1:07:08
  in an AII, still get scared and I get intimidated and I feel
• 1:07:12
  like it's threatening. I feel like it's like it's like
• 1:07:16
  ruining something that I love. But through kind of like what
• 1:07:19
  you were telling me about, like just with the music thing, it
• 1:07:22
  like realize that like, no, no, no, there's all these other new
• 1:07:24
  ways that we're going to be able to experience this and being
• 1:07:27
  committed to doing a cumulative human good.
• 1:07:32
  You know, that's also like a very important part of what I
• 1:07:35
  do. You know, I try and keep things
• 1:07:37
  simple, which is like, it's got to make money, it's got to be
• 1:07:40
  fun and it's got to be of service, you know, in the
• 1:07:43
  projects that I'm working on. So, you know, I think that fits
• 1:07:46
  really nicely. Let's see how we doing on time,
• 1:07:49
  man. Yeah, I'm feeling like a good
• 1:07:50
  landing. Of the plane there too I am too.
• 1:07:53
  Let's. We definitely will come back and
• 1:07:56
  talk more AI, but I I really like the meandering of this
• 1:08:00
  conversation, man, I appreciate it.
• 1:08:01
  Likewise, you know what a treat. I I've been going through a
• 1:08:04
  mind. I'm like, all right, you know,
• 1:08:05
  here's how I do a multi agent orchestration.
• 1:08:07
  Let me get ready for all these really technical questions.
• 1:08:10
  And I had no idea we were going to be talking to me about to
• 1:08:13
  Masashi. What a treat.
• 1:08:14
  Thank you for the time. Yeah, it's been great.
• 1:08:17
  Website and what's the best place that people can connect
• 1:08:20
  with you online I definitely want people to see the work that
• 1:08:23
  you're doing which is unbelievable what's the best
• 1:08:27
  place for people to check you out yeah I appreciate that man
• 1:08:29
  so. Deep gem GE minteractive.com or
• 1:08:33
  deep gem, you know that's our company, but if you want to find
• 1:08:36
  us, that's deep gem as in a diamond interactive.com.
• 1:08:39
  Cool amazing. We'll.
• 1:08:40
  Definitely check that out. We'll link it up in the show
• 1:08:42
  notes. We'll come back and talk about
• 1:08:44
  this again. But, you know, that's The thing,
• 1:08:45
  is that, like, I don't know. I've known you for a few months
• 1:08:48
  now. I didn't know you're a Denver
• 1:08:49
  guy. I didn't know you're a martial
• 1:08:50
  artist. You like Musashi and Zen and all
• 1:08:53
  the things I like. We're besties, bro.
• 1:08:55
  Yeah. Do we just become best?
• 1:08:57
  Should we go to karate in a garage?
• 1:08:58
  I think we're in a garage right now.
• 1:08:59
  Get the watermelon or something. We're going to be wrestling in
• 1:09:01
  10 minutes this. Is what's going to happen.
• 1:09:04
  Just keep your sweat out of my mouth.
• 1:09:05
  Just all right, brother. No promises.
• 1:09:08
  All right. Thanks man.
• 1:09:11
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