Latest / Love Conquers Fear / #7: From Data to Love: Brett Alexander Hurt on Technology’s Role in Humanity’s Future

Transcript

#7: From Data to Love: Brett Alexander Hurt on Technology’s Role in Humanity’s Future · Love Conquers Fear

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Data is driving AI and the enterprises are upgrading in a
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massive way their efficiency, which is really just means
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having an infinite supply of AI agents to automate all types of
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enterprise task. I grew up very very lucky with a
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mom who bought me my first computer in 1979 when I was 7
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and gave me this gift to allow me to really explore my passion.
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I started Core Metrics in 19, 99.
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This was during the height of the.com boom.
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The term software as a service didn't exist, nor did the term
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application Service Provider, which was the original term for
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SAS. We can wrap services around
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guaranteeing that they use this and teaching them how to use it
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and seeing actually monitoring how they use it.
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That was a big end of the software as a service movement.
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Humility is love, Love is humility.
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I really think that the reason Bizarre Voice was rated the
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number one place to work is that it was the manifestation of
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love. If you lead with love, you will
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bring out the best in people. I actually think love is the
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very definition of God. Hey.
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Everyone. It's Brett from the Love
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Conquers Fear podcast. I'm really excited to share this
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episode with you of Let's Go There by my good friend Carla
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Sublett. Carla and I are both in the
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Henry Crown Fellowship. Out of the Aspen Institute, we.
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Go to the Aspen Action Forum each year.
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I took our youngest daughter, Yuzu this year.
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It was her third time to go and Carla was just absolutely
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beautiful helping her navigate the whole conference and she she
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really, really enjoyed it. Carla's just one of the most
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amazing people that I know. The way she manifests love in
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this world is just it's just incredible.
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And in the Let's Go There podcast, I.
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Think she already has over 80. Episodes and it was one of the
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most fun interviews I've ever had.
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She. Brought so much out of me in
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terms of the question she's asked me.
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And I hope you really enjoyed this.
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It was it was aired on her podcast a while back and I
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wanted to re air it here. Thanks again for tuning into
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Love Conquer spear. If you're enjoying these, please
2:27
share with your friends so that you can impact them as well.
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As you know, we've got 10 to 15 years to really make it to the
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age of abundance for all, and so it's going to count on all of us
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bringing the light to ultimately help manifest that age together.
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Thank you very much for tuning in, and I hope you enjoyed this
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episode of Let's Go There. With Carlos Sublette.
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Brett is a devoted husband, proud father, and mission driven
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entrepreneur. He's currently the Chief
2:58
Executive Officer of Love Conquers Fear, Adventure rooted
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in purpose and impact. He Co founded Data dot World,
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which grew into a global enterprise and was acquired by
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ServiceNow to power their AI platform.
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With his wife Deborah, he Co leads Hurt Family Investments,
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backing 146 startups, 47 VC funds, and meaningful
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philanthropic work. Previously, Brett founded and
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LED Bizarre Voice through its IPO.
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At his core, he built with love, courage, and a deep belief in
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what truly matters. Please enjoy my time with Brett.
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Hey y'all, let's go there. OK, Brett hurt this.
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We've been planning this one for a while.
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That's right. I think that the moment is now.
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There's a reason why while we're having this conversation now and
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and let's tell everyone how we know one another.
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Sure, sure. Yeah.
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So we know each other primarily through the Henry Crown
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Fellowship, which has been really transformational for me.
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And I know that you feel that same way.
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And, you know, I feel so blessed that Josh Baer nominated me for
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it. A funny story is when he
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nominated me for it, I thought the Aspen Institute must be a
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nonprofit about trees. Like, I had no idea.
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You know, I'm a small town Austin boy.
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When I was growing up here, Austin was the size of
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Anchorage, AK. Today it's like 170,000 people.
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It's like mind boggling. This is now the 10th largest
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city in the world. And then when I started to read
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about what Josh nominated me for, I thought, wow, what a
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blessing that he actually thought of me for this.
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And then I started reading about Henry Crown's life as a Jewish
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immigrant turned very successful and how he really gave back so
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much to Chicago and motivated so many leaders.
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And I thought those are footsteps I would love to follow
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in and, and I feel very honored that I got in.
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And then I've gotten to be much closer to you and people like
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Say Ju or just talking about Say Ju and so many others some.
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So it's really been a a very big gift to me and very motivating.
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Yeah, very much so. I say behind the gift of being
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able to live in this country and speak another language and
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behind the gift of my children. The third one is actually the
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fellowship. Yeah, yeah.
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And and it is, it's been life altering as you mentioned.
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And my first memory of the fellowship was actually at your
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home. That's right.
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Oh, gosh, I that's so true. I forgot about that.
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Yeah, that was when you first got in.
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Exactly. You guys had a, a welcome dinner
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for those of us that were just in in the Austin area.
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And and like you, I knew very little about it.
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And once I did do my research, I thought there was no way in hell
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I was going to get selected. And, and when I did, my husband
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Jeff and I came to your house and after that night, he was
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like, whoa, I have a feeling this is going to be very
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special. There was just this warmth that
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night. Yeah, it it and it is, I mean,
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it is, it's, it's the most amazing group of human beings
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I've been around in my entire life.
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And and it's so cool, you know, the class I was in the 19th
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class, which we named ourselves Dare greatly after the Teddy
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Roosevelt speech. That class was more female than
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male. And you know, you know that I
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have a lot of love for females in my mom was the one that put
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the most love in my heart. I dedicated my book to her.
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My book called The Entrepreneurs Essentials to both my mom and my
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wife as the two women that really raised me.
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I've been married almost 29 years.
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And then I donated all the proceeds from my book to the
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Kendra Scott Women's Entrepreneurial Leadership
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Institute. That's AUT Austin, you know, to
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help female entrepreneurs. And, and so it was, it was so
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cool that my class was mostly female and we just had our 10th
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reunion in Miami and it was just an amazing, amazing experience.
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OK, so which takes us to our work because we also have kind
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of been in the same universe in Austin and the tech world.
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I first heard of you through bizarre voice, but but you've
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had a lot of success as an entrepreneur.
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What are you doing now? Tell us a little bit about what
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you're doing now. Well, I'm I'm.
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I'm personally wrapping up my time at data dot world, which is
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really put a big marker out there for AI and enterprise.
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So it's now pretty obvious that data is driving AI and the
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enterprises are upgrading in a massive way their efficiency.
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And this is really the year for a Gentek AI and enterprise,
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which is really just means, you know, having an infinite
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cognitive supply of AI agents to automate all types of enterprise
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task. And you know, we just announced
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last Wednesday that ServiceNow is buying our company and
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ServiceNow is one of the most amazing companies in the world.
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They have 10 billion in cash on the balance sheet.
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They are a company that is known as one of the best places to
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work. They are deeply embedded in
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companies workflows. They have most of the Fortune
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500 as customers and you know, I am not going to ServiceNow not
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because I don't respect the company.
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I really love the company, but because of the fact that I am
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really meant to be an entrepreneur and that's staying
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true to my roots. I've been an entrepreneur since
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I was 24 and 53 now. And so I'm tooling right now to
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really gear up on a thesis I have about what's going to
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happen in the world with AI, quantum computing, robotics to
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ultimately manifest a future of abundance for all.
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And you know, I probably will start a new company in Q1 or Q2
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of next year. Some, some in the, I'm in the
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early beginnings of researching what that will be.
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And one of the things I'm going to do, you know, in terms of the
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fellowship we just talked about is really go out there and
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leverage the Henry Crown Fellowship, leverage my network
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through Ted. I've been to Ted, I don't know,
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15 to 18 times. My network through a conference
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called Dialogue, my network through YPO and all these things
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I've been blessed to be in to talk with the most amazing
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entrepreneurs I know. I'm also alongside my wife,
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we're investors and 142 startups and 47 BC funds and I've got a
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huge network through that. Like I've just incredible
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entrepreneurs that are really changing the world.
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And so I want to go talk with them about my theses and really
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take the time to to be very thoughtful with where I think
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things are going and how we're going to make it there.
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You know, you say let's go there.
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Same of your podcast Will, where I want humanity goes to this age
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of abundance for all. And and it's a very different
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narrative than the dystopian narrative, which is frankly
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embedded in us because of science fiction.
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But it's not just recent science fiction like Terminator in the
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Matrix. It's also old science fiction.
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I'm Jewish. Like there's the story of Gollum
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in Prague. Who the rabbi animated the stone
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Gollum, and the Gollum became sentient and self aware and then
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destroyed the synagogue. And it's like a, you know,
10:45
interest. I've actually have a Gollum at
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home that I look at every morning.
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It's right there on my bathroom counter that I got in Prague.
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And, you know, so the dystopian narrative has been around for a
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long, long time. And I think we need to overcome
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that narrative. Yeah, for sure.
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You and I both agree on that. OK, So let me ask you this is
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that you have a, you have the Midas touch, if you don't mind
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me saying. Thank you.
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And I, I've been blessed to work with really, really good people.
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So I really want to make that point that you never do it alone
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as an entrepreneur and really good investors, really good
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mentors along the way for a long time.
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Well, that's what actually what I want to ask about.
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Would you share the formula with us?
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So you're talking a little bit about your initial process and
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you're giving us some insight as you start to think of an idea.
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It sounds like one of your first steps is to go socialize it with
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the people you respect the most. But what?
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What does the process look like for you and what do you
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attribute your success to, along with team and everything else?
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Well, so I can, I can tell you I learned a lot from both my dad
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and my mom. They both became entrepreneurs
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when I was born, and they did that because they wanted to have
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the type of time to call the shots with where they wanted to
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spend time with us. You know, me and eventually my
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sister, I'm very close to you. And I grew up very, very lucky
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with a mom who realized that I had this weird inclination, and
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there's no way to say it other than it was weird starting in
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1976. I was born in 1972 that, you
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know, she got me Pong. That was the first Atari video
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console. You could only play Pong.
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There wasn't even a cartridge. It was just Pong.
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And you plug it into the TV. And I wasn't satisfied as a four
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year old, which is playing it. I want to take it apart and see
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how it worked. And she bought me my first
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computer in 1979 when I was 7 and then learned how to program
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with me and gave me this gift to of unconditional love to allow
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me to really explore my passion. And I programmed over 40 hours a
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week from age 7 through young adulthood.
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And I got that for my dad in the sense that he was always an
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entrepreneur with my mom, but he would create physical products.
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He created one of the first halogen fishing lights in the
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world. Used to be the case that fishing
13:06
lights, which attract fish, kind of like insects are attracted to
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light, used to be about this big, you know, kind of like 2-3
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feet apart or, you know, wide. And they would often catch boats
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on fire because they're just so big and heavy and, you know,
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hot, you know, lights very hot. And he then created an halogen
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fishing light, which was about 3 inches wide, three times
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brighter than those big fishing lights and would not catch boats
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on fire, had a very protective cage.
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And he was like a celebrity. I mean, I grew up with my dad
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being like the celebrity in those circles.
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And he would go fishing 2-3 days every week.
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He passed away at age 63. But we are all like, well, he
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lived his whole life like he was on vacation.
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And he really did. He really called the shots.
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And and so, you know, I was as obsessive as him about creating
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in the virtual space. He really did not understand
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that. And most family did not
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understand that for a long time. Like most family would tell my
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mom that she was ruining me, that I was going to turn out to
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be a loser, that I knew nothing about anything else besides
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programming. But that's Texas.
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And that's Texas back then. And, you know, I wasn't playing
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football. I was just doing just grinding
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and programming, but I knew that I, I really knew, I mean, I
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really felt blessed that I knew this, that the world was going
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to change through technology. And I knew that personally, I
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was born to be a part of that change.
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Like I really felt that since I was very, very young and then I
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was right place, right time, right passion, You know, I mean,
14:47
my very first entrepreneurial venture, I always joke with
14:50
people. The easiest way to be an
14:51
entrepreneur is do something you know how to do that you can get
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paid for as a consultant. So I started her Technology
14:58
Consulting, not a very innovative name during my first
15:02
year at Warden where I got my MBA.
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I went to UT undergrad. That's where Deborah and I met.
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But Warden is really where I wanted to go for my MBA.
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And it was an amazing experience.
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And then I'm surrounded by brilliant people and I started
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her Technology Consulting and I was making 250 or $350.00 an
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hour at age 24. I could not believe it.
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And it was because I had this skill set that was so rare at
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that time because I knew how to create almost anything online.
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And so like, you know, I leverage a Warden network
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primarily sell to Warden alumni. They're like, I need to create
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this web application. I was like, I can do that.
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And then I started to employ Warden undergrads and that
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management and technology program, which less than 1% of
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the people that apply to Warden get into.
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So these for people like a perfect, perfect SA TS and they
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still can talk with you like a human being.
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They're not, you know, like robots, because usually people
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that are that good at SAT, if that that's really hard.
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I mean, that's really they're almost like robotic.
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And so these are really wholesome people and, and they
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were making, you know, I was paying them like, you know, 2530
16:15
bucks an hour, billing them out at like, you know, $8598.00 an
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hour, which was a good deal because when I worked at
16:20
Deloitte Consulting, I made 110th what they were building
16:25
out on. Interesting.
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And so I was paying them a third what I was pulling them out on.
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And that then led me to say, well, you know, this is great
16:34
and I can always do this. And it's very good cash flow and
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it's making a lot of money. But I really was meant to change
16:41
the world through technology, not just do kind of this bit
16:44
labor and 1. And I really swing for the
16:47
fences while I'm young, you know, and, and so I started to
16:50
swing at some big ideas, created one of the first virtual
16:54
communities called the NBA zone, created one of the first
16:58
e-commerce sites called Body Matrix, selling things like
17:02
sports nutrition products like power bars, protein powder,
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stuff like that. And then the big, big idea came
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along, which really how entrepreneurship works, which
17:12
is, you know, the key is just to start doing something you think
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you'll be passionate about and see where it takes you.
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And life has a way of showing you what you should do.
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And the e-commerce site led to this just obsessive passion by
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working for my parents when I was a kid growing up at their
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furniture stores to really understand what was happening
17:37
inside this black box online where everything was masked by
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web browsers. Because in my parents stores, I
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could ask them how did you hear about us?
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And I could see how they're navigating and I did my
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leadership paper at warden on Sam Walton, the founder of
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Walmart. He wrote a book made in America,
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primarily for his kids on how to run a retail store.
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And he would actually disguise himself in stores as a customer
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and, and do everything he could to get the ground truth and was
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just an amazing, amazing, soulful leader.
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And you know, and, and, and so here I am with this e-commerce
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site building analytics and I went to friends at Warden that
18:15
were already working at cdnow.com and Amazon.com.
18:19
And those two companies were around the same size back then.
18:22
A lot of people don't remember because CD now is not in
18:24
business anymore. But but you know, Amazon only
18:27
sold books back then and CD now only sold CDs.
18:30
And if you're a young person, listen to this, you have no idea
18:32
what ACD was, but but it was pre MP threes, pre iPods.
18:36
It was these disc you'd put in and you know, you'd play music
18:40
via these disc and, and you know, they're better than
18:43
records in the sense that they wouldn't get damaged the same
18:46
way. Although there's vinyls out of
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big resurgence, right, as you know.
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And so I, I ultimately became really obsessive about about
18:56
that. And I talked to friends at seedy
18:58
now on Amazon about what they were doing for analytics and
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they said, no kidding. What you have built here for
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your own low e-commerce site is better than what we have.
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And I was like, you have to be kidding me.
19:10
There's no way that's the case. And they're like, I promise you
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that's the case. ACD now.
19:15
I was like, well, what are you using for analytics?
19:17
And they pointed at a shelf and there was shrink wrap software.
19:21
It hadn't even been opened, cost $300,000.
19:25
And I was like, and is this company called a crew?
19:27
And I was like, why haven't you installed it?
19:30
Like I can't even imagine $300,000 at that age, right?
19:34
And they were, I mean, when I got married, I had $1000 Deborah
19:37
at $2000. That was our whole net worth and
19:39
I was like, you have to be kidding me.
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They're like, it has no time to install it.
19:44
Remember, this is pre AWS, this is pre Amazon Web Services.
19:48
Everybody's building their own structure, you know,
19:50
infrastructure. When we started core metrics, I,
19:53
I spent 15,000,000 just on the data center stuff to, to be able
19:59
to host, you know, Walmart and stuff like that and see, do you
20:02
know? And was that through raising
20:03
money? Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
20:05
Excel Partners and Highland Capital Partners.
20:07
Arthur Patterson and Peter Fenton joined my board of
20:10
directors. They were both at Excel.
20:12
Arthur's the Co founder of Excel.
20:13
He's legendary BC since 1972 since he was born.
20:17
Those are legendary people, Brett.
20:19
How did you get money from those people when you were so young
20:21
And it's just starting out? Well, I, I think they could tell
20:25
I was really passionate and they could tell that I was really
20:30
knowledgeable about what I was doing.
20:31
It was interesting though, because I the term software as a
20:35
service didn't exist, nor did the term application service
20:39
provider, which was the original term for SAS.
20:42
And so I was telling them how at core metrics all the software
20:47
was centralized and I was like, look this like a client server
20:50
or a mainframe dumb terminal and I'll be able to update the
20:54
software anytime I want like one time and everybody's updated
20:57
that's a customer. And I was like, retailers are
21:00
desperate for this because this was during the height of the.com
21:03
boom. I started Core Metrics in 1999,
21:07
right as I was graduating from Warden from my MBA.
21:10
And I was like, you know, they desperately need this.
21:14
They do not know what they're doing online because the IT team
21:19
can't install software because they're so busy trying to keep
21:22
up with the traffic. And so the centralized software
21:26
approach will allow them to outsource it to us.
21:29
And I came from a consulting background, right?
21:31
I worked at Deloitte Consulting and actually I worked full time
21:35
while I was in undergrad at UT Austin for Anderson Consulting,
21:40
now called Accenture. And you know, I was telling them
21:44
like, I can wrap services around this, like, like, because I'm
21:46
the one hosting it and I've this great team with me, you know,
21:50
amazing, amazing initial team at core metrics.
21:54
Like we can, we can wrap services around guaranteeing
21:58
that they use this and teaching them how to use it and seeing,
22:02
actually monitoring how they use it and seeing whether they get
22:05
stocked and everything else. And so that was a big end of the
22:08
software as a service movement. I, I saw Marc Benioff present at
22:12
Stanford. I didn't go to Stanford, but I
22:15
saw him present there because we're living in Silicon Valley
22:17
at the time, me and Deborah and I saw him present there in an
22:22
auditorium of 80 people and Salesforce.com was around 80
22:26
people. And he was talking about the end
22:28
of software and all these things.
22:30
And I was like, that guy is the best marketing guy I've ever
22:32
seen. And I took so much nomenclature
22:35
from that. And then eventually the term SAS
22:37
came along, You know, ASP came along, then SAS and made a lot
22:41
easier to raise money. And we eventually, you know, had
22:45
a good exit at core metrics. But boy, did we go through
22:47
trauma. We went through the.com bust
22:49
and, and all that stuff. So, you know, you asked me how,
22:52
how I've been successful. I think that one thing that I
22:57
have in common with a lot of successful tech entrepreneurs is
23:01
I grew up reading science fiction.
23:02
I grew up deeply thinking about the future.
23:05
I grew up programming. I had the right skill set at the
23:08
right time and never, ever, ever discount luck.
23:12
You know, I, I definitely have grit.
23:14
You can't have success in entrepreneurship without grit.
23:17
But luck also is a big factor. And anybody that does not honor
23:22
that is just lying to you. Like, if they tell you, if they
23:26
try to make it sound like it's all them, they're brilliant.
23:28
So that's just ridiculous. You definitely have to be lucky.
23:33
I mean, like, our most successful entrepreneur in Texas
23:36
is a friend of mine, Michael Dell.
23:39
And Michael Dell had a thesis that the Bill to order model was
23:43
going to be amazing. And he was right.
23:46
But the lot part is the Internet just was about to take off.
23:50
e-commerce was just about to take off.
23:52
And so he was right place, right time.
23:55
I give him all the credit in the world.
23:56
He deserves all that success. He's been an absolute giver to
24:00
our community, him and his wife, Susan.
24:03
But you know that also his luck. I mean, yeah, it's a thesis.
24:07
But when you have a thesis, you don't know how right it is.
24:10
You just have a thesis and you think it's right, but then
24:13
sometimes the forces of the universe converge and align
24:17
where you're like. And that's what happened at my
24:20
next company after core metrics, bizarre voice.
24:22
We went from zero to a billion dollar IPO in six years and that
24:26
was a dream come true for me. And you know, we're rated the
24:29
best place to work in Austin when we're small than medium,
24:31
the large and really popularized customer reviews all over the
24:34
world. And bizarre voice means voice of
24:36
the marketplace. And it was named after chapter 4
24:41
of the Clue Train Manifesto, which you can get online for
24:45
free. And that chapter is called
24:47
Markets or Conversations. That book was written in 1999,
24:51
and it was so predictive of how social the web would become.
24:56
And we started Bizarre Voice just to talk about like 2 years
25:01
before the iPhone came out. Facebook was closed to the
25:03
public, was only a handful of schools.
25:05
There was no Snapchat, no Twitter, no TikTok, none of
25:09
these social platforms were there and there was a social
25:14
media way of about to hit that all brands would be scrambling
25:18
for and the reason bizarre voice was so successful is it work not
25:21
just for retailer, but work for all the brands like PNG and
25:25
three M Sephora, you know all the L'Oreal Lancome, all of
25:30
those brands that sold through them.
25:31
It worked on both sides. So it was a 2 sided market
25:35
opportunity as a SAS company, which meant that you had network
25:39
effects between the business model where if you collected
25:42
reviews on tie.com, you could syndicate them to Walmart and
25:45
say these reviews are coming from tie.com customers and that
25:49
created a phenomenal network effect.
25:51
So I'm seeing some really interesting themes here, Brett.
25:54
So, you know, obviously there's the the theme of problem
25:56
solving, which I see very much in you and the companies in
26:00
which you've built, you know, they're all kind of based on
26:02
this thesis of OK, I see this problem the customer's having
26:05
and I can solve it. The other thing that I'm seeing
26:08
is this kind of culture of inquiry, you know, there's this
26:11
like natural curiosity and many of these companies are based on
26:14
inquiry kind of outside in kind of the Sam Walton approach,
26:16
which is super fascinating. And it's always shocking to me
26:19
how few companies have that outside in perspective and and
26:22
how few companies and people ask questions.
26:25
Yeah, it is it is shocking to me.
26:27
I mean, one, one thing that I learned really early on, it's
26:30
such a so insightful what you just said, like it core metrics,
26:34
we would go out there at the beginning of core metrics and we
26:37
met with over 100 retailers and we said, here's what we have.
26:41
How would you make it better in terms of the analytics?
26:44
Like what's your dream metrics to run the business?
26:46
What are the core metrics to run your business?
26:48
Right? And they would say, it would be
26:51
amazing if I had this and then we built it in be amazing if I
26:54
had that, then we built it in and, and eventually we start
26:57
showing up at retailers. They're like, I can't think of
26:59
anything. You have everything I could
27:00
possibly want. And it's just because we were
27:02
humble enough to listen to the first 100.
27:06
And it's very hard to get a business to fail if you don't
27:12
just listen to your customers and build exactly what they
27:15
want. Yeah, it's so which is.
27:17
What Michael Dell did, which is. Is exactly what Michael Dell
27:20
did. That's so true.
27:21
The bill to order. Yeah, just build what they want.
27:22
Don't try to guess at it. Exactly.
27:24
The other thing that I think is interesting is that you made it
27:28
not just easy to buy, but easy to deploy.
27:30
And that that's something I didn't know about about you.
27:33
So even what you're stating from a core metric standpoint in
27:35
terms of it was a during a time where people were still buying
27:38
software off the shelf and you were like, no, I, I can actually
27:41
deploy this to all of you guys with one flip of a switch, you
27:44
know, versus you guys having to manage that deployment.
27:47
That was super cutting edge. But at its core, it's about
27:50
making it easier to use, which I think a lot of companies, a lot
27:55
of people don't get that either, that you got to make it easy to
27:57
buy, you got to make it easy to use.
27:59
It was actually incredibly radically more efficient.
28:04
I'll I'll tell you a story like a crew took anywhere from 9 to
28:08
18 months to install. It was based on this technology
28:12
called a packet sniffer and a web server log file crawler.
28:16
OK, so nobody even wants to know it give you brain damage to even
28:19
for me to even describe that. So we we instead used a
28:24
technology I helped pioneer called a web beacon where as a
28:27
one by one invisible pixel that would direct right to the
28:31
database as consumers were taking actions on the website.
28:37
And it allowed us to build individual profiles on each
28:41
consumer that were anonymous that then would let us aggregate
28:46
that data into reports. But it would keep the individual
28:49
data where you can run analysis to say show me every customer
28:53
like on my e-commerce site that browse like a fat burner product
28:57
but never bought. How did they find the site?
29:00
What products did they browse, etcetera.
29:03
You could create things like a look to book ratio.
29:05
How many times did someone look at something but versus buy it.
29:08
Sort by the ones that were the worst look to book ratio.
29:12
Like lots of lookers, not a lot of people buying and that meant
29:16
you're either being price shopped, you were not
29:18
competitive, or your product imaging sucked.
29:21
And there are lots of things you can test out there.
29:23
Wait, you're kind of blowing my mind right now.
29:24
Brett, sorry to interrupt, because what you're talking
29:26
about is what underpinned the beginning of behavioral
29:30
targeting propensity deploy personalization.
29:32
Yeah, we developed a lot of that and this is the thing that was
29:36
really cool. It would take anywhere from
29:39
three to four weeks to deploy, not 9 to 18 months, 3 to 4
29:43
weeks. And then people would have the
29:45
whole thing outsourced and we could upgrade as much as we
29:49
want. Plus because it was SAS, we
29:51
provided benchmarking reports as we got bigger, so we could
29:55
benchmark Walmart versus the Home Depot versus Best Buy,
29:58
etcetera anonymously. They had they had to opt in to
30:01
say they wanted to do that. So we had an agreement because
30:05
they didn't want to know they they were not Walmart is not
30:08
willing to tell people this is my Walmart data to Best Buy,
30:11
right. But but like, you know, they
30:14
want to see like where's their conversion ratio in a category
30:17
as compared to other retailers? And so that we called that live
30:21
mark and and that was so cool because they were all in a
30:25
standardized metric system using the same methodology.
30:28
So it was really accurate to be able to end.
30:30
We could do that for advertising and all types of merchandising
30:33
and and it created a network effect in the business model.
30:36
And you know, I wrote that book, The Entrepreneurs Essentials,
30:39
and one of the chapters is on identifying what I called
30:43
natural network effects, which are network effects that already
30:47
exist in an industry. It wasn't like we created
30:49
benchmarking for retail. There were things like Nielsen,
30:52
stuff like that before, but we created much, much better
30:55
benchmarking than ever been created because we had a
30:57
standardized system that went down to the individual product
31:00
level. Yeah, and was dynamic probably.
31:02
Very dynamic. We could update it literally
31:04
every single day. Yeah, it's maybe every hour,
31:07
really. What you're also touching on is
31:09
something that's really for me I think is the future of marketing
31:12
because I feel like marketing is, is marketing as we know it
31:15
is disintegrating, being turned on its head and marketers are
31:19
not going to be able to rely on the same data that they once did
31:21
and the same practices that they once did.
31:23
That's. Probably been true every five
31:24
years. True.
31:25
You probably could say that. But it's, but the disruption is
31:27
real from an SEO perspective and search, it's going to be, it's
31:31
going to be material. But one of the things that I
31:33
think is really important is, is to be generous.
31:37
And you're talking about a great deal of generosity.
31:40
I would say also just being humble.
31:43
I mean, humility is love. Love is humility.
31:46
And just realizing that you just need to listen like, you know,
31:53
gross and big ears and just listen to what people need
31:58
because they will tell you and people love to be listened to
32:01
you. I mean, I love to be listened to
32:03
you. Everybody loves to be listened
32:04
to. You know that that's that's one
32:06
of the biggest gifts you can give someone as a friend is just
32:09
sit there and listen, you know, say Jew and I were just having a
32:11
call and I was doing a lot of listening.
32:14
So, you know, that's a true friend.
32:16
Yeah. OK.
32:18
So you said it, so I'm going to ask it.
32:20
Have you experienced love in the workplace?
32:22
Oh, for sure. I mean not just experienced it.
32:24
I mean, I, I, I mean I'm a product of love, you know,
32:28
starting with my mom and I manifested a lot of love in the
32:32
workplace. I mean, I, I really think that
32:35
the reason bizarre voice was rated the number one place to
32:37
work is small, medium and large in Austin.
32:40
We won in all three categories as we grew is that it was the
32:45
manifestation of love and the people.
32:49
The most amazing thing about Bizarre Voices that there are
32:51
now 70 companies been started by former Bizarre Voice people.
32:55
And the biggest compliment they give me is that they've taken
32:57
that culture and they manifest love and their company.
33:01
And you know, love conquers fear.
33:03
I mean, if you lead with love, you will bring out the best in
33:08
people. And that's true as a parent too.
33:09
If you lead with love with your children, you're going to bring
33:13
out the best in them and your worst moments, you know, you're
33:16
in a state of fear. And so it's very true in
33:19
business. And you know, there's a lot of
33:20
business which unfortunately machismo steps in or, you know,
33:25
in politics too. And the reality is that the
33:28
highest order value of humanity is love.
33:32
That is the nature of the universe is love.
33:35
And I actually think love is the very definition of God.
33:39
I think God is the very definition of love.
33:42
And so that it's just, it's just a natural thing to do and, and
33:47
man, you will have a lot lower blood pressure and everything
33:50
else. If you lead with love, you have
33:52
a lot better marriage, you have a lot better relationship with
33:55
your kids and you'll just have a lot better company.
33:57
And, and you know, fear is a powerful motivator, but to lead
34:02
with fear is prone to giving you a heart attack and, you know,
34:07
keeping you up at night. And it's just not necessary.
34:10
It's, it's, and, and frankly, those that lead with fear are
34:15
broken inside in some way. They have some lack of
34:18
self-confidence inside that maybe they weren't loved as a
34:21
child, which is very sad. And I, you know, I, you know,
34:26
you, you would, if you could wave a magic wand, you would
34:28
change that. But hopefully there's something
34:31
that allows them to overcome that brokenness because that
34:35
brokenness translates to other people that they then make
34:40
suffer because they suffered. And to lead with love is is the
34:45
best way to lead. And you know, the number one
34:48
person I look up to that leads with love is Warren Buffett.
34:52
Like everybody has some leader that they really look up to.
34:56
He's he's my favorite. I'll give you a just a quick
34:59
Warren Buffett story through the Henry Crown Fellowship.
35:02
Actually, I got to spend time with him.
35:04
It's one of our fellows. It was so beautiful.
35:08
And this story tells you everything you need to know
35:10
about Warren Buffett and frankly, everything you need to
35:13
know about leadership. So during the financial downturn
35:17
of 2008, 2009, we all remember how scary that was.
35:20
Lehman Brothers went out of business.
35:22
The CEO of Goldman Sachs calls Warren Buffett.
35:26
He answers, and he's like, I know why you're calling.
35:30
I'm having ice cream with my granddaughter at Dairy Queen.
35:32
Let me call you back in 30 minutes after I finish up.
35:36
He finishes up having ice cream at Dairy Queen, which funny
35:39
story, you know, Berkshire Hathaway owns and and he calls
35:43
him back and he does the deal in 10 minutes.
35:48
He agrees to the deal that the CEO of Goldman Sachs wants,
35:51
which is a 10 billion bailout loan.
35:53
So the Goldman Sachs doesn't go out of business during the
35:56
financial downturn. CNBC He's just ripped like
36:01
people are like the old man has completely lost his mind.
36:04
What an idiot. You know he he's going to be
36:07
wrong this time. It's going to take Berkshire
36:09
Hathaway turns out to be one of the all time greatest loans.
36:12
One of the best returns bails out.
36:14
Goldman Sachs saves. Capitalism saves.
36:16
All of us. Saves all of us.
36:19
So what does that story tell you?
36:20
First of all, he's a man who knows what matters.
36:24
He's going to take the time with his granddaughter.
36:26
Secondly, how can he make a decision in 10 minutes?
36:29
He spends 3 to 4 hours a day reading.
36:31
He already knows all the numbers of Goldman Sachs here.
36:33
He knows why they're calling. He knows exactly what to say.
36:37
That's why he can make the decision in 10 minutes, you
36:39
know? Third, he has conviction.
36:42
He knows that that's the right decision because he's so studied
36:46
and he doesn't care that people are going to think he's a fool.
36:50
And, you know, and he and he doesn't rub it in when he's
36:53
right, you know, he's just like, hey, I did the right thing.
36:56
I'm a believer in in in America, my new capitalism was going to
37:00
come back, that it was temporal. And it just tells you all you
37:05
need to know that is leading with love.
37:07
Yeah. It's starting with his family.
37:09
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. OK.
37:11
So I want to talk before we move on to the next topic.
37:14
And I we wrap up on kind of your amazing success from a career
37:18
standpoint and entrepreneurial standpoint.
37:20
I want to know were there any hard lessons learned along the
37:23
way? Because to hear you talk, it's
37:24
just been amazing. Oh, there's been so many.
37:27
But are there any stories you can share in terms of like
37:29
really hard lessons learned? Oh, yeah.
37:32
I mean, there's been many people have that have really tried to
37:34
hurt me very, very severely. You know, I I'll tell you some
37:39
of them just are timing lessons. I mean, you know, core
37:43
metricsduringthe.com bust. We went from 100 customers in
37:48
six months down to three because our customers went out of
37:50
business because the you know, we were a little bit too early
37:55
time. You know, like timing is
37:57
everything in startup success. And Bill Gross, who Co founded
38:01
Idealab, when he gave his Ted talk, he said that out of every
38:06
company they analyzed, you know, they invest in hundreds of
38:09
companies, incubated hundreds, including overturer, which was
38:13
the beginning of the the bid model that Google copied that
38:18
created the the most amazing cash printing machine maybe in
38:21
human history. You know, that that ultimately
38:26
the thing that mattered the most was timing.
38:28
So here at core metrics, our timing, we did not
38:32
predictthe.com bust. As a matter of fact, investors
38:35
were telling me, Oh my gosh, you guys are going to be worth a
38:38
billion dollars. I had an offer to buy the
38:41
company a year and a half in for like $200 million.
38:46
Would have made a tremendous amount of money.
38:49
Everybody would have been high fiving me, but I just did not
38:54
want to sell. I was like this company is going
38:57
to be a big company. It could go public one day.
39:00
And you know, ultimately I kept going at it.
39:03
We hit a total wall. I had to let go of 2/3 of the
39:06
team members. I was excoriated online.
39:10
There was this, there's this website called Fucked Company
39:13
back then andthe.com bust which just excoriated me.
39:18
The fact that we let go of all those employees, I had no
39:21
choice. I mean, this was something where
39:23
I had to let them go. People are posting pornographic
39:26
videos where they imposed a photo of my wife on them.
39:32
Just really, really vile, you know.
39:34
But it was that it was that time.
39:36
I mean, it's like, fuck company was like manifesting that out of
39:39
people, you know, really trying to create a very big fear state.
39:44
You know what morons, you know, all that stuff.
39:47
And there was a lot of that to go around.
39:50
But the reality is we had no way to predictthe.com bust was
39:53
going. You know, I remember when the
39:55
red herring came out with that article with the.com bust
39:59
predicting it. And they were right and that
40:02
that actually happened. And, you know, I wanted to crawl
40:07
into a hole and just cry. And sometimes I did that.
40:11
But ultimately, I'll tell you a story about that.
40:18
I was, I was probably one or two weeks away from cash out, like
40:23
where the company was going to go out of business.
40:26
And I was talking with Deborah, my wife, you know, until, I
40:30
don't know, 2-3 in the morning. And, you know, I was in my 20s
40:34
and I was just like, you know, this is it, right?
40:37
I mean, it's just that's the end of the story.
40:40
It's going to go out of cash and and you know, there are a lot of
40:44
tears and I went to sleep and I woke up in the morning and I
40:46
just smile on my face. She's like, why are you smiling?
40:49
And I said, because I know in my heart that I am meant to be an
40:53
entrepreneur and I would do it all over again.
40:56
And I went into Arthur Patterson's office, the Co
40:58
founder of Excel. You know, again been a BC since
41:02
1972. And I guess I had the eye of the
41:05
tiger because Arthur Patterson's like, I'm going to do something
41:08
that nobody else is doing right now.
41:11
We're going to write a $40 million check and you're going
41:15
to be one of the winners because I really believe in you.
41:18
And we turn that around and ended up creating almost a $300
41:23
million exit. But it was that close.
41:25
And if you read my book on entrepreneurship, which by the
41:28
way, you can get for free online so you don't have to just buy
41:30
it. If you buy it, all the proceeds
41:32
go to benefit female entrepreneurs through UT.
41:35
But if you, if you just read the entrepreneuressentials.com, you
41:39
know that line between success and failure, sometimes it's very
41:44
thin and it could have been the end of the story, right?
41:47
And it wasn't. And part of the reason it wasn't
41:50
because, because we, I mean, frankly, I manifested that in
41:54
that time like I, I, I needed someone to believe and I had the
41:58
right guy to believe. And if he hadn't done that, that
42:03
would've been the story. Now, it wouldn't have been the
42:06
end of my entrepreneurial story, but it would have been the end
42:08
of that chapter. It wouldn't have been
42:10
successful. There are a few things that
42:12
really are profound in that story that stand out to me,
42:15
which is 1. You actually let yourself feel.
42:18
You actually let yourself grieve the loss of the company.
42:21
That's right. And so, so often when we are in
42:25
a fear state or we're it, we're going through something like
42:27
that, we push those feelings down.
42:30
And one of the things that I've learned through the coach that I
42:33
work with is that when you let yourself feel, if you actually
42:35
move the emotion, there's always clarity on the other side.
42:39
And that's exactly what you're describing.
42:40
You woke up the next morning with a smile on your face
42:42
because you knew the answer. In a way I knew the answer.
42:44
Yeah. And the other thing that I think
42:45
is very profound and special is in particular for those of us
42:50
myself, I'm speaking for myself who are very self reliant and
42:53
have a strong sense of responsibility.
42:55
We don't always share with others when we're going through
42:57
something like that. And the fact that you were
43:00
vulnerable with Deborah and told her everything that you were
43:02
going through rather than trying to protect her from it, enabled
43:06
her to be there for you in a way that would bring you guys closer
43:10
together versus pull you apart, which you see happen in those
43:13
scenarios. That is super profound.
43:15
And then the last thing I would say is it all comes down to a
43:19
kind of unknowing. You know you have a knowing,
43:23
whether it's a calling or confidence in yourself, but just
43:25
a knowing that you continue to follow.
43:28
Yeah. No, that's true.
43:30
And and you know, one thing that that just made me think of for
43:35
the number 2 point is it my parents always involved me in
43:39
the business, including with their business, almost went out
43:42
of business. I saw them punch through those
43:45
times. And honestly, sometimes whether
43:49
you're successful or not as an entrepreneur is if you can
43:51
overcome your fear, like if you can see beyond the fear and see
43:56
the love on the other side. And sometimes you just got to
43:59
push through, you know, and, and if you think about all the great
44:02
movies we love, like Rocky and everything else, it's like where
44:04
they did that, it's where they ultimately overcame their fear.
44:09
And that's, you know, that's kind of entrepreneur hero's
44:12
journey. It's just a false narrative that
44:14
you do it alone. There's always people that help
44:16
you along the way. And I always do everything I can
44:21
to honor those people. And I can truly tell you like I
44:25
would not have got an award. And you know, when I got an
44:26
award and it was the number one Business School and it's always
44:30
been the top three. And, and it was Deborah actually
44:34
that helped me get in there. She kept, I kept on failing on
44:37
the critical reasoning part of the GMAP and she I was like,
44:41
hey, let me help you out with that.
44:42
And as I read her the question, she would get everyone right
44:46
without even looking at the page.
44:47
I'm like, are you doing that? You're going to like 100%.
44:50
And she told me you're over thinking things.
44:53
Go more with your gut instinct and start start doing that.
44:55
And then I scored high enough to get into Warden.
44:58
But it was her. Yeah, it was her that really
45:01
helped me through that. So and she's all the most
45:04
important decisions in my business have been informed by
45:08
talking with her, including that dated out world.
45:10
And so yeah, it is a true partnership and we always make
45:15
investment decisions together. And sometimes that's frustrating
45:18
because I'll have high conviction and she'll be like,
45:20
no thumbs down, but you have to honor that.
45:23
Yeah, I love that. That's a true partnership when
45:25
you can go toe to toe like that and challenge each other.
45:27
Yeah. OK.
45:28
So what made you and forgive the the phrase, I'm not trying to
45:32
not trying to oversimplify, but what made you this tech Buddha?
45:35
How did you get how did you get to this place where you are so
45:40
Zen about everything? Have you always been that way or
45:43
have you done work? I mean, I've definitely done
45:45
work, but I mean, I, I, I, I've done a lot of work over a long
45:49
period of time. You know, after bizarre voice
45:52
went public, I spent a little time in retirement.
45:56
I actually thought I was retired.
45:58
And I'll tell you what was going on in my head because because
46:01
you would be right to think, well, why would you retire when
46:05
your whole life purpose or as to create a world, a better world
46:08
through technology. I mean, you'd be right to
46:11
critique me in that way. But what was going on in my head
46:14
is my dad passed away at age 63 and my mom passed away at age
46:18
65. And the one thing they.
46:20
Yeah, thank you. And yeah, I miss him a lot.
46:23
But the one thing that they said to me is they said, hey, when
46:26
you become successful, however you define that, you know,
46:31
hopefully you'll slow down a bit.
46:34
And they meant that out of love. Like it, it was not a lack of
46:38
love, but there were more lifestyle entrepreneurs.
46:40
I mean, they lived a great, great life.
46:42
Like I said, my dad was like, he was on vacation every week.
46:46
And, you know, my dad would joke with me and say, like, you know,
46:49
you never did get that lesson to just kind of like slow down.
46:54
Like when I was when I was 10 years old, he got an offer from
46:59
Walmart to sell his products in all the Walmart stores.
47:02
And he turned them down. And I was 10.
47:04
And I was like, dad, how can you turn them down?
47:06
This is your chance to go really big.
47:07
And he sat down at a small table and he looked me straight in the
47:10
eyes. And he said, son, you may
47:12
realize the value of keeping life simple one day or you may
47:15
not. That's your choice.
47:17
And he kept life simple. And I have not kept life simple.
47:22
My life is very complex, but I love my life and I feel very
47:25
balanced. And so, you know, so I wanted to
47:27
try on their lifestyle. I was like, OK, that was a
47:31
message they gave me out of love.
47:33
Let me just try it on. And so I traveled the world, you
47:36
know, I'd made enough money where I never had to work.
47:38
And I, and I thought, I'm just going to do all these things and
47:42
none of them filled me with, with real purpose.
47:45
You know, it was like I was missing purpose.
47:48
I remember standing in New Zealand looking at, and I'm
47:51
don't expect anybody to feel sorry for me listening to this
47:54
and I would not feel sorry for me listening to this.
47:58
So I'm not saying this at all. Like I was in a very fortunate
48:01
situation, but standing in New Zealand and I'm looking out at
48:04
the most beautiful scenery and I just felt empty inside.
48:07
I just felt literally empty. And I was like, I can't do this.
48:12
Like, and I went on a walk with Bong SA, who his dad was a
48:16
Chinese immigrant to America and Bong was born here.
48:23
One of my most important mentors was my very first board member
48:26
at Core Metrics back when I was I started that at age 26 and
48:31
Bong flew out to meet me and we had this long walk actually in
48:36
San Diego. I was in San Diego on this trip
48:39
for the JCC here in Austin to understand what made the San
48:42
Diego JCC amazing because we eventually would build the Hurt
48:46
Family Tennis Center here in Austin, which which now it's
48:50
amazing. The JCC now has more than double
48:52
the members it did pre pandemic. And it's really thriving
48:55
financially. And part of that is tennis and
48:58
pickleball. And so, you know, we went on
49:02
this long walk and bond was like, Brett, you can't be like
49:04
your parents. You're not meant to be.
49:07
That's he's, he's like even programming since you were seven
49:10
years old for over 40 hours a week.
49:11
That's not the type of person that just chills out on a beach.
49:16
He's like, that's antithetical to who you are.
49:20
And I was like, you're so right. You know, I'm trying to be them
49:23
and I'm not them. And they would not want me to be
49:26
them if I was not meant to be them.
49:28
They just were saying something out of love.
49:30
And so I went to go study Vedanta in India.
49:34
Really, the whole premise of Vedanta is one of the oldest.
49:39
You know, the beta philosophy of living a happy life is to gain
49:44
control over your mind, that your mind on governed is like a
49:47
child. It can go between states of
49:51
worry about the past and anxiety about the future, and you can
49:54
spend 10 years in that state and miss everything in the present.
49:58
And so I learned, I learned some of those practices.
50:03
You know, I did all types of things.
50:05
I mean, I've done psychedelics before, which has helped me
50:09
really gain this deep connection with God and deep connection
50:15
with myself and my purpose and other souls.
50:18
And I believe very much in God. I believe very much in
50:22
afterlife. I believe very much that Evan
50:25
Alexander really did have that near death experience and proof
50:29
of heaven and you know miraculously lived on after
50:35
getting E coli meningitis and going into a coma and was saved
50:40
in that experience and came back to spread the message to all of
50:43
us about what lays in the beyond and how we're all here for a
50:46
divine purpose. And I believe that's true for
50:48
every human being that God believes in US.
50:52
God loves us. We're all here for something
50:54
that we need to discover in all over my book is man's search for
50:59
meaning. Viktor Frankel's book, he was a
51:02
Holocaust survivor, survived 4 different concentration camps
51:06
and ultimately the only way he endured that he says is he found
51:11
his purpose. And once you find your purpose
51:13
and animate you and I, his divine purpose was to invent
51:16
this field of psychology called logotherapy.
51:19
And he was very sad that people are like medicating themselves
51:23
with these antidepressants where they weren't finding their
51:27
purpose. You know, they were just like
51:28
trying to medicate a way that yearning.
51:31
And, you know, we, we're dealing with that now societally and
51:36
we've got depression at the highest levels it's ever been
51:38
and loneliness at the highest levels it's ever been.
51:41
And I'm involved in a company that's trying to solve that,
51:44
which I'm really passionate about, led by one of my very,
51:48
very, very close friends, Lincoln Brown.
51:50
It's a company called Kinship. And so so, you know, I, I feel,
51:54
I feel very blessed. I've done a lot of deep work on
51:57
myself and it takes work. I mean, it takes work and takes
52:02
a lot of self love and, and I've been very blessed to have many,
52:06
many people come into my life to work on me.
52:11
And you know, I'm a big believer in that book, The Celestine
52:14
Prophecy. It's CELESTINE Prophecy about
52:20
when you set your intentionality in the universe.
52:24
It's amazing all the people that will come into your life.
52:27
And that's happening to me right now as I start to think about my
52:31
thesis. Thesis for my next business,
52:34
which would be a very important one to me because they'll be my
52:36
7th business. And you, you know that my blog
52:40
is named Lucky 7. And I found my purpose at age 7
52:43
with a mom who allowed me to do that and kept everybody on my
52:46
way. Leave him alone.
52:48
He's found his purpose. I love that.
52:50
And so so I've done a lot of self self work and I feel like I
52:57
do because I know that I'm doing what I'm meant to do and I'm
53:01
surrounded by love. I mean, I'm surrounded by love.
53:03
I'm surrounded by loving kids. I'm surrounded by loving wife.
53:06
I'm surrounded by loving friends.
53:07
I have so many friendships. I was actually with one of my
53:10
friends recently. This was on this this way to
53:14
Necker Island where I give this speech on quantum computing,
53:18
robotics, AI on this path to abundance and talked about
53:23
spirituality too. And he said, you know, you have
53:26
a lot of best friends. Like how can you have so many
53:28
best friends? Like, and I thought about that a
53:31
lot recently and I was like, you know, I have an infinite
53:34
capacity to love. God has an infinite capacity to
53:37
love. And God is within us all.
53:39
We're just, we're just all fragments of consciousness.
53:42
Consciousness is ultimately fundamental.
53:45
Matter is derivative of consciousness.
53:47
If you really dive into quantum physics, you'll find that out.
53:50
And it's a change in the materialist paradigm that
53:54
consciousness somehow magically popped out of matter.
53:57
And so, you know, we're all just children of God, and God is the
54:02
definition of love. And so we can all choose to have
54:05
infinite love and we don't have to limit ourselves to a few best
54:09
friends. Like I can have very deep
54:12
friendships like you and I have me and Yummy have.
54:15
I was just on with Yummy. I know he was on your podcast
54:17
recently. Me and say, do have you know me
54:21
and Mika Breakstone, who just announced his $47 million Series
54:25
A yesterday for Somite, you know, led by Koshla Ventures,
54:29
very proud to be an ambassador in him.
54:31
I mean, I can have lots and lots of best friends.
54:33
I don't have to limit my heart to a few.
54:35
Yeah, yeah. I think that's why I'm attracted
54:38
to you, Brett, as your heart and, and it's in your warmth and
54:43
your brilliance, you know, and, and you and I share a lot of the
54:46
same values. And it's so fascinating to hear
54:48
you tell some of these stories because I have parallel stories.
54:52
You know, the, the moment that you had New Zealand, I had the
54:54
same moment. So on a family trip, although
54:57
mine was a little intense, I was on a family trip and, and we
55:00
were on a boat in Croatia. And, you know, based on anyone
55:04
else's, you know, measurement, I should have been extraordinarily
55:10
happy. And all I could think of,
55:12
because I wasn't working at the time, all I could think of was
55:15
if I closed my eyes, would anybody notice?
55:18
Yeah, that's. Sad and and.
55:20
Sorry you felt that way, sis. Well, that's OK, but it wasn't
55:22
suicidal. But I, and now I now know
55:25
through all the spiritual readings that I've done that
55:28
that's a very common feeling when somebody's going through a
55:31
significant transformation. It's kind of like death of self.
55:34
And that that was what was going on for me.
55:36
But I woke up the next morning to the news that Anthony
55:39
Bourdain and Kate Spade had just committed suicide.
55:42
So sad. And I was like, holy smokes.
55:44
That is not how my story is going to go down.
55:46
I know, I know, Anthony Bourdain's business partner.
55:49
They have this company called Roads and Kingdoms, which is an
55:51
amazing travel experience. It's like the back roads for a
55:55
culinary. Oh, I'd love to check that.
55:56
Out Oh my gosh, roads and kingdoms.
55:58
It's amazing. I'm not investor, I'm not
56:00
plugging it as investor. I but I'm a customer.
56:03
And that was with Anthony Bourdain.
56:05
And it was so sad. I mean, I mean, the brokenness
56:08
of someone like Robin Williams, the person that made me laugh
56:12
the hardest I've ever laughed in my entire life was when Robin
56:14
Williams came to Austin. It was at the Irwin Center,
56:18
which no longer exists. Right now it's the Moody Center,
56:20
which is even better. But Robin Williams literally
56:24
made me laugh to the point where I was crying.
56:27
I had like nasal drainage. I didn't have a tissue is
56:31
disgusting but it but it was just so I was destroyed.
56:34
Yeah, we were there too. It was awesome.
56:35
Oh, you were there? Yeah.
56:36
Yeah, totally. Oh my gosh.
56:37
I actually, I've never met another person that was there.
56:40
No, we were there because it was just me and her.
56:41
We didn't go with friends, but if I'd known you were there, we
56:45
would have hopefully been hanging out.
56:47
But yeah, it was so good. Yeah.
56:48
So good. So yeah.
56:50
So I can relate to everything that you're saying.
56:52
And I, very much like you, have this deep knowing that there's
56:56
life beyond, that we're all iterations of each other, that
56:59
we're all connected. All of our souls are connected.
57:02
Absolutely. We're all one.
57:04
We're all one. I mean, the ancient spiritual
57:06
teachers had it, right? Ancient Hinduism, ancient
57:08
Buddhism, Kabbalah and Judaism, you know, I'm Jewish.
57:12
Ancient Christianity. It was all this knowing that
57:15
we're all connected, that we're all one, and we're finding out
57:17
through quantum physics that's actually the case.
57:19
Yeah, absolutely. It's proven by science, which is
57:22
wild. OK, so Brett, I want to talk
57:24
about your Jewish faith, and in particular, I want to talk about
57:27
October 7th. So when we feel so much love in
57:30
our hearts and we feel so connected to everyone, how do
57:33
you reconcile something like October 7th?
57:36
Well, So what I would say about that is that, look, first of
57:41
all, like it's very sad to see so many people die in Gaza.
57:47
No one that I know wants to see that.
57:49
No Jewish person is like, like happy about that.
57:54
But what happened on October 7th is that women, children, men
58:02
were raped, tortured, murdered in a way that is worse than Game
58:06
of Thrones. I mean, Game of Thrones I could
58:07
barely watch and I didn't watch most episodes because it was so
58:11
brutal. You know, I was just like, come
58:13
on, like pan the screen. Like you'll need to show that
58:15
type of gratuitous. I mean, it's, it's just, I don't
58:18
want that those images in my head.
58:20
And I never watched a video about what happened, but Hamas
58:25
broadcast it all with Gopros that day and they showed women
58:30
being tortured and raped. And I Revere women.
58:34
And and so you know, it, it just, it really felt lonely as a
58:40
Jew after October 7th, because people are celebrating that on
58:43
October 8th and not that should never be celebrated.
58:49
If if, if, if Jews went into Gaza and murdered and raped and
58:53
tortured women, that Israeli should be called out for that
58:57
and be held account. And they are they live in a
58:59
country which is defined by rule of law and they will be shamed
59:04
societally forever to for doing something like that.
59:07
Their lives will in Judaism, we don't believe in a hell, but we
59:10
believe you can create a living hell it for yourself forever.
59:16
And so the only thing I would ask for someone that's that's
59:21
that's analyzing October 6th or talking about proportionality of
59:25
like how many people in Gaza are dying, etcetera, is to really go
59:29
back and understand what started it and why it's so existential
59:34
for Israel, because they really want us dead.
59:38
And I'm talking about us as Jews.
59:40
Like they want me dead in America.
59:42
They call it a global day of jihad in America.
59:45
That was very terrified and that's what they want, right?
59:48
And that's how terrorists win is they want fear to conquer love
59:52
and they want fear to conquer love not because they love their
59:55
people like Hamas does not care about its people at all.
59:59
That's why they hide behind them and use them as Shields.
1:00:02
And it is a fact. It's propaganda war and they are
1:00:05
ultimately controlled by around who is the largest exporter of
1:00:09
terrorism. And so, so I just say just get
1:00:11
educated and don't fall into. Simple narratives and I saw it
1:00:15
in the Fellowship. You know, it was really sad in
1:00:18
the Fellowship that it became a simple narrative.
1:00:20
And I've written a lot about it. I wrote some of the most
1:00:23
important pieces of my life about October 7th and and
1:00:28
getting people to understand the history.
1:00:30
And so I wrote three pieces you can find on Medium about it, one
1:00:35
on the one month anniversary of October 7th, 1A year later than
1:00:42
that, and one about the campus protest.
1:00:44
And, and I've just asked people to get educated that that it
1:00:47
really matters. And I, you know, there's this
1:00:50
saying in Judaism and I believe we're all children of God.
1:00:55
I really believe that none of us are above each other, that we
1:00:58
all equally matter. Hierarchy is an illusion.
1:01:04
I've LED that way too. As an entrepreneur.
1:01:07
Every single person at Dated Out World matters as much as every
1:01:10
person. We are all just playing our
1:01:12
role. I do not look at myself in some
1:01:14
kind of high and mighty way as a CEO.
1:01:17
I'm literally just playing a role.
1:01:18
And then I go back home and I do all the things a dad does.
1:01:23
And being a dad is very humbling Sometimes.
1:01:25
You really screwed up. But I will say this about
1:01:29
Judaism. We say that we're the chosen
1:01:31
people. It's in the Torah.
1:01:34
Here's what I believe about the the chosen people.
1:01:37
We are the Canary in the coal mine for humanity.
1:01:41
The Holocaust was a siren song for humanity.
1:01:44
It was a Clarion call to say never again.
1:01:47
And October 7th was the worst attack on the Jewish people
1:01:50
since the Holocaust with more brutality than could be even be
1:01:55
imagined. Like I never want to watch these
1:01:57
videos. I never will watch these videos.
1:01:58
IDF actually went around showing excerpts of these videos to
1:02:02
people that would watch because it was like bear witness.
1:02:05
I never went. I don't want that in my head.
1:02:09
And that they showed it because they're like, we want you to see
1:02:12
what happened. And they majorly edited out.
1:02:15
They did not show the rapes. They did not show what happened
1:02:19
to the women. And I made the mistake of
1:02:21
reading one article about that in the New York Times about what
1:02:24
happened. I literally had nightmares for
1:02:26
months. I'm not kidding.
1:02:27
For months after October 7th, I was having nightmares.
1:02:30
The only way I work through that is writing.
1:02:33
So I'd just say that we are the Canary in the coal mine and we
1:02:39
don't do everything right. You know, I'm not a fan of
1:02:42
Netanyahu. I'm not a fan of punching down.
1:02:46
I'm not a fan of punching down in the USI believe trans people,
1:02:52
gay people, women, minorities, we're all just people.
1:02:56
We're all connected on that soul level.
1:02:58
We're all just one. And we have to have love,
1:03:02
conquer fear for the future of humanity.
1:03:05
And it starts with seeing things clear eyed with things like
1:03:09
October 7th. Because the reality is that if
1:03:14
if Hamas returned all the hostages the next day or never
1:03:18
even captured hostages and they just laid down their arms, there
1:03:22
would be no war. It there really would not be a
1:03:25
war. And the only reason it continues
1:03:28
to happen over and over again in terms of Hamas attacks and
1:03:32
Israel responds is because Israel is an existential fear of
1:03:38
losing everything post Holocaust.
1:03:40
Like if if Hamas takes over Israel, it's over.
1:03:44
It's over. I mean, all the, all the, all
1:03:47
that Jews have worked for is over at that point because then
1:03:50
terrorism wins and terrorism can't win anywhere in the world.
1:03:54
Terrorism is just about a very few people.
1:03:59
Again, hierarchies, illusion. If you took all the people in
1:04:03
the world that are oppressing the rest, it's probably 1000
1:04:05
people out of the world of 8 billion.
1:04:08
And, you know, Gandhi proved that you can just stand strong
1:04:14
and not use violence. Mandela proved you could just
1:04:17
stand strong and not use violence.
1:04:20
You can overcome that 1000 people with sheer numbers.
1:04:25
And we should not tolerate this 1000 people oppressing us in the
1:04:29
world. It's crazy that we do.
1:04:33
And the reason we do is because we are in a state of fear.
1:04:36
We're like, so worried about what those 1000 people can do.
1:04:39
I mean, look at all the people right now cowering to Trump
1:04:43
because they're in a state of fear, because they're like he's
1:04:45
he's on a retribution campaign. And so they're cowering to him.
1:04:49
And it's very, it's very sad that that's happening.
1:04:52
But it also, you know, don't get depressed about it.
1:04:55
Just realize that that's a temporal state and we're mostly
1:05:00
on a good trajectory for humanity and that love will
1:05:04
conquer fear. And my thesis is that AI,
1:05:08
quantum computing, robotics will lead to an age of abundance
1:05:11
where love will have to conquer fear for us to achieve that age.
1:05:16
And it's in this lifetime that we will ultimately overcome
1:05:20
that. And you know, a lot of the fear
1:05:23
is based on a scarcity mindset and based on millennia of
1:05:27
fighting over energy, fighting over food, fighting over water
1:05:33
versus just coming together. And technology is a great
1:05:37
equalizer. I mean, capitalism itself has re
1:05:40
lifted more people out of poverty, starvation than any
1:05:45
other invention of humanity. Just the concept of capitalism
1:05:49
is an invention. And so we're on a good
1:05:51
trajectory. Even though you can be shocked
1:05:55
in the moment at something like October 7th, they're shocked in
1:05:58
the moment about something Trump does or shocked in the moment
1:06:00
about something Putin does, or shocked in the moment about
1:06:03
something that, you know, North Korea does or whatever it is.
1:06:07
But that doesn't mean that that actually is a trajectory of
1:06:11
humanity. We are becoming a more loving
1:06:15
society, and that doesn't mean there won't be test and shock
1:06:19
waves along the way. I really believe in humanity.
1:06:22
I love humanity, God loves humanity.
1:06:25
And I really think that it's a test, you know, the Humanity
1:06:31
project, you know, Earth School as it's referred to and in
1:06:36
things like The Seed of the Soul by Gary Zhukov or you know, so
1:06:41
many other books, you know, Proof of Heaven by Alvin
1:06:43
Alexander, so many books on spirituality and Celestine
1:06:47
prophecy, you know, Earth School.
1:06:48
What we're doing here is we are ultimately here to manifest love
1:06:55
and love expands consciousness and God is consciousness and,
1:07:00
and God is expanding love through us.
1:07:03
We just have to embrace that and see that.
1:07:06
And one thing that really needs to happen for the world is
1:07:09
science and spirituality need to come together.
1:07:11
Like the two serpents around the catechist.
1:07:14
The two serpents should be science and spirituality.
1:07:17
And I'm talking about spirituality, which is different
1:07:19
than religious dogma. I'm talking about the knowing of
1:07:22
God, The knowing that we have a soul, the knowing we're here for
1:07:25
a divine purpose, the knowing that we're here to work together
1:07:30
and ultimately help each other achieve our highest divine
1:07:35
calling. Yeah, you know, it's super
1:07:37
fascinating. I don't know if you've listened
1:07:38
to the Telepathy tapes. I absolutely have.
1:07:40
Yeah, it's the the last episode is especially the best.
1:07:44
What messages the children have for us, the non speakers have
1:07:47
for us is everything you need to know.
1:07:49
Yeah, it's so profound. And it syncs with all these
1:07:52
books we just mentioned. Absolutely, and it all comes
1:07:54
together and it's also really consistent to what I experienced
1:07:56
in my mushroom journey, which was very profound sound and very
1:07:59
spiritual. It's all links.
1:08:00
Yeah, yeah. Tell me about that.
1:08:02
I want to hear about that. Yeah, I'm happy.
1:08:03
I'm happy to talk about it. But the thing I was going to say
1:08:06
about the the telepathy tapes is what's fascinating to me is how
1:08:09
the material scientists are trying to shut that work down.
1:08:13
To your point around science having to come together, Elaine
1:08:15
Pagels talked a little bit about this when she was on in that and
1:08:19
she's professor of religious studies at Princeton and is an
1:08:23
advisor for many of the the studies around psychedelics and
1:08:26
and an advisor on the spiritual component of it that that seems
1:08:29
to be consistent with everyone. I mean, how cool is it talking
1:08:32
about, you know, things that I would have never predicted?
1:08:33
I had dinner with Governor Rick Perry at the time at his home.
1:08:39
I sat right next to him, you know, thanks to a friend, Jeff
1:08:43
Miller, And I would have never predicted that Governor Perry
1:08:49
would go all in on Ibogame to help veterans.
1:08:54
People don't know this by the way.
1:08:55
I have a feeling people this isn't commonly known.
1:08:57
OK, so so here's the story. It's a really cool story because
1:08:59
actually the head of the Brain Center at Stanford just spoke at
1:09:05
Ted back in April that I don't think that Ted talks alive yet,
1:09:09
but it will be soon. And basically there's been these
1:09:15
studies on ibogaine. I don't think I've ever done
1:09:19
ibogaine, but ibogaine is a very intense psychedelic, which it's
1:09:23
like a 18 hour journey. I've definitely never had 18
1:09:26
hour journey in. And they have to monitor your
1:09:28
heart, right? Because it's very careful.
1:09:30
They have to be very careful, careful to keep your heart rate.
1:09:32
I believe at a certain level or you can cardiac experience.
1:09:35
OK, I didn't know that. And so you face every single
1:09:39
fear you've ever had in your life.
1:09:40
And these vets have killed people, some of them.
1:09:43
And so they relive all of that, almost like the life review.
1:09:47
If you, if you study near death experiences, sometimes there's
1:09:50
this life review where you see your entire life flash before
1:09:53
you and you look at it not just from what you experienced, but
1:09:57
what the other person experienced like on a soul
1:09:59
level. And it really will change the
1:10:02
way you live your life. You think about what do you want
1:10:04
to be in your life review? Because everybody you impact,
1:10:07
you're going to get to experience how you impacted them
1:10:09
from their point of view. If you were a terrorist, you're
1:10:12
going to get to see how you, how that woman that you're raping or
1:10:17
whatever torturing experienced it from their point of view,
1:10:20
right. And that's the life review.
1:10:23
And you can read a lot about those with near death
1:10:24
experiences. And so so they go through this.
1:10:27
I began experience these veterans which I was shocked to
1:10:31
know that 20 veterans in the United States kill themselves
1:10:34
every day and they more. People die from suicide than in
1:10:38
combat. That I didn't know that's,
1:10:40
that's, that's, that's wow, that's, that's incredible.
1:10:44
So sad. And so they, they in one session
1:10:48
of ibogaine, they overcome PTSD one session and they're cured
1:10:52
forever. And so Governor Perry is really
1:10:55
passionate about this. He's made it his life work now.
1:10:59
He's dedicated the rest of his life to this, getting it passed
1:11:04
in Texas and then hopefully other states will follow.
1:11:06
Only for therapeutic purposes, right?
1:11:09
Which is what I think should happen with psychedelics.
1:11:13
I think they should be legalized only for therapeutic purposes.
1:11:15
I'm not a fan of them for recreational purposes.
1:11:18
I think they should be very sacred, very deeply therapeutic.
1:11:22
And so, yeah. And so, so.
1:11:25
So this guy Roland, I think his name is Roland doctor at
1:11:29
Stanford, talked about all these studies on the Ted stage and you
1:11:34
can see on Joe Rogan's podcast, Governor Perry and, and 1 of
1:11:39
this guys to partner with them on the Cybergame journey that
1:11:43
they're on to try to get it legalized for vets for
1:11:47
therapeutic purposes. I think I'll be legalized for
1:11:50
other people, not just vets for therapeutic purses, but but you
1:11:53
know, it'll have to be prescribed and a lot of stuff.
1:11:56
And it's really exciting. I would have never thought that
1:11:59
would happen. But you know, it's all part of
1:12:03
the consciousness awakening. I really think there's a
1:12:05
consciousness awakening going on around the world right now.
1:12:07
Something is afoot. Yes, something is afoot.
1:12:10
And I think that that is God trained to awaken us because
1:12:14
we're on the cusp of creating abundance, but we also are on
1:12:19
the cusp of creating the most powerful tools the world has
1:12:22
ever seen. And so our ability to manifest
1:12:25
love and use those tools in a loving way ultimately will
1:12:30
define the destiny of humanity and ultimately the destiny of
1:12:33
Earth. And on the other side of that,
1:12:39
you know, where we overcome the scarcity mindset and we redefine
1:12:43
the measures of GDP, You know, once energy is in an infinite
1:12:47
abundance, once food is in an infinite abundance, once water
1:12:51
is an infinite abundance, once we use solar energy, you know,
1:12:54
the light bulb in the sky that that we can just plug into in an
1:12:58
infinite abundance way for energy, then what's left?
1:13:03
Yeah, What's left for us? What's left for us is beautiful
1:13:08
creativity, beautiful connection with each other, becoming much
1:13:12
more spiritual, realizing the divine purpose of being here.
1:13:17
So what's what's left for us is love.
1:13:20
Like that's what's left. And I think that'll actually be
1:13:23
the most beautiful age for humanity.
1:13:26
And it's prophesied and Celestine prophecy, it's
1:13:29
prophesied and proof of heaven. It's prophesied in the seed of
1:13:32
the soul. It's prophesied and books like
1:13:35
LSD in the Mind of the Universe by Chris Bosh, they all sink
1:13:39
that this is where humanity is ultimately coming to.
1:13:43
And this is the this is our ultimate test to reach that age
1:13:48
together. And I think we will.
1:13:52
I believe in humanity. So you said your mom protected
1:13:55
you from the criticism of family and friends and and walled
1:14:01
everything off so that you could do what you needed to do to
1:14:05
prepare yourself for your role in this world.
1:14:08
How are you now parenting to prepare that?
1:14:11
It's a great. Question given where you see
1:14:12
things going. Yes.
1:14:14
Well, so Yuzu is 100% about AI. She's been programming since she
1:14:19
was four years old, and she's 15 now.
1:14:21
So she's a native AI user and an incredible programmer, so she's
1:14:27
on a very good path. Rachel is a triple major at
1:14:32
Tulane and business psychology and creative writing.
1:14:35
She wrote her first book at age 13.
1:14:37
She has a jewelry business called Radiant Jewel.
1:14:40
She has a podcast called Radiant Resilience that was the hardest
1:14:43
interview I've ever done episode #7 she saved Lucky 7 for me
1:14:48
because it's a totally unscripted.
1:14:50
You have no idea what she's going to ask you.
1:14:51
And I was like, she knows everything about me, including
1:14:53
all the words. Like these kids have studied us
1:14:56
since they were born, right? And so they know everything.
1:14:59
And so all I've done with our kids is tried to show them a ton
1:15:03
of love and try to find out what their divine calling is and
1:15:08
ultimately give them as much support and understanding as
1:15:12
possible and whatever that is. And I've taken them along on the
1:15:16
journey for businesses I've started.
1:15:19
You know, Rachel spent a lot of time growing up coming to
1:15:22
bizarre voice. You see who certainly this to
1:15:25
date at all world many times I've involved in and startup
1:15:28
pitches that I thought they would would be interested in.
1:15:31
They were, they were involved, especially Rachel in the pitch
1:15:36
for Hero, which is Mickey Agarwal's company with Tarot,
1:15:40
founder of for Sigmatic, which is, you know, basically a diaper
1:15:44
product that mushrooms eat. So it's completely about
1:15:48
degradable. It's something like every year
1:15:51
with the throwaway diapers, we could encircle the earth I think
1:15:54
three times every year just and they take 100 years to degrade.
1:15:59
So, you know, we need a solution there and they've got a really
1:16:02
big plan. And, and so she was involved in
1:16:05
that and she's seen many startup pitches.
1:16:08
You know, I've tried to do everything I can to help them
1:16:12
live their purpose and that's all I can do.
1:16:15
And ultimately it's their life and they they will ultimately
1:16:18
choose their path. And I have no judgement about
1:16:21
the path they choose and neither does stubborn.
1:16:23
So we just show them a lot of love and try to just act like my
1:16:27
mom, who was the wisest human being I've ever known and the
1:16:32
most loving human being I've ever known.
1:16:34
So I'm just trying to be like her.
1:16:36
What's her name? What's her name?
1:16:37
Brenda. Brenda.
1:16:38
Go. Brenda.
1:16:39
Yep. Yep.
1:16:40
OK. And then it's amazing.
1:16:42
What sort of advice would you have for somebody who's in the
1:16:44
middle of their career, in particular the knowledge worker
1:16:46
who may see their job going away?
1:16:48
Yeah, sure. Yeah.
1:16:49
So like one thing I would really say is race alongside the
1:16:57
machines here, like embrace AI because what what is discounted
1:17:03
in the dystopian narrative and there will be disruption.
1:17:07
I'm not going to try to candy code and say there won't be any
1:17:09
disruption in jobs. Is that the again, the highest
1:17:14
order emotion for humanity in the universe's love?
1:17:18
And AI ultimately is a creative super machine.
1:17:24
If you can get rid of a lot of the grunt work, then you can
1:17:28
manifest more creativity. So what I see happening as a
1:17:31
result of AI is billions of new startups.
1:17:34
I use that word deliberately, even though there's only a
1:17:37
billion on the planet. Like I'm talking about billions
1:17:39
of new startups over time that all are individually smaller
1:17:45
because you don't need as many people, but will create
1:17:48
personalized products and services that we honestly cannot
1:17:50
imagine today. We just can't even imagine them.
1:17:52
We could not imagine what impact the Internet would have and
1:17:58
that's going to be amazing. And so the more astute you are
1:18:03
in working with AI, and if you're not working with AI lot
1:18:06
today, I really encourage you to do so because you're going to be
1:18:13
a much more capable human being if you embrace it.
1:18:17
And you know, that's why I was early on on the Austin Next
1:18:20
podcast with Worley. You know, a lot of people forget
1:18:24
that the moratorium call was March of 2023.
1:18:29
Chachi PT launched November 30th of 2022.
1:18:33
So literally four months later there was a shut it down.
1:18:37
Do not develop models more powerful than GPT 4.
1:18:40
We're way, way beyond GPT 4 already and we're 2 1/2 years
1:18:44
into this and we're using the worst models today that humanity
1:18:48
will ever use still. And we all know through
1:18:50
technology how fast these things can improve.
1:18:52
And I remember the beginning of printers, the beginning of
1:18:55
modems, etcetera, and where we're at today.
1:18:58
And so, so you need to really embrace it and not be afraid of
1:19:04
it because you will be a much more creative human as a result.
1:19:09
And the reason I thought the moratorium call was so
1:19:12
ridiculous is that the whole destiny of humanity has been
1:19:15
technology. I mean, starting with the
1:19:17
discovery of fire, which allowed us to cook our food to create
1:19:21
bigger brains and ultimately manifest more intelligence on
1:19:25
Earth. We definitely have to work on
1:19:28
manifesting more love on Earth. And I think we're on that
1:19:30
trajectory. That's part of the consciousness
1:19:33
awakening. And so it's, it's really, it's
1:19:36
really making sure that you are not afraid of AI because fear
1:19:42
will contract the love opens. And so if you are fearful of
1:19:45
something, you're not going to use it.
1:19:48
And you know, it's not going away.
1:19:51
I mean, it's, it's you can't wish it away.
1:19:54
Do you have a favorite tool that you use in your day-to-day life?
1:19:57
I love deep research, you know, using O3 for that.
1:20:02
That's ChatGPT. I love anthropic.
1:20:04
I think the anthropic. Coding tools, you know, Claude
1:20:09
code is really amazing. I love the image creation tools.
1:20:14
The video creation tools I mean. You have a favorite.
1:20:18
I mean, you know, they're, they're pretty crude today.
1:20:22
You can, you can use O3 to say, you know, design 10 images and
1:20:28
pick the best one for this purpose.
1:20:30
And and so those are easy to use, but you know, I love I love
1:20:35
a lot of these tools. I love 11 labs.
1:20:37
I mean, there's a lot of these things that I use.
1:20:41
I try to dabble on all of them. And boy, I'm going to be
1:20:46
dabbling a lot more in them coming up because I've been
1:20:48
running a company now for a long time with dated out world.
1:20:52
And now, you know, it's going to be this beautiful outcome where
1:20:57
all of these people go to service now and really get to
1:21:00
enact that whole enterprise, the Gentek AI future.
1:21:04
And so I'll be working very deeply with these tools and
1:21:08
creating a lot of stuff with these tools and ultimately
1:21:12
figuring out my best utility for humanity to help us achieve that
1:21:16
age of abundance with AI, quantum computing and robotics,
1:21:21
which I, I very much believe we're on that trajectory.
1:21:24
And I believe the scarcity mindset will eventually melt
1:21:27
away as a result. Yeah, OK.
1:21:29
So paint a picture first, Brett, what's your hope and wish for
1:21:32
humanity at this stage? Yeah, I mean, I, I know what God
1:21:36
wants for us. God wants us to overcome fear by
1:21:42
manifesting love. And it is really, really, really
1:21:46
matters. And it really matters in this
1:21:49
lifetime because we are on the cusp of that and ultimately our
1:21:54
ability to do that. I can see that future.
1:21:57
It's so clear to me that we are on this trajectory where we're
1:22:01
talking about the end of disease, we're talking about
1:22:04
unlimited energy, practically speaking, unlimited food, water,
1:22:09
practically speaking, etcetera. And you know this, this world of
1:22:14
creativity that we can't imagine, this world of, of love
1:22:17
that we can't imagine today, and this world of abundance that we
1:22:20
can't imagine today. We're on that cusp, but it's
1:22:23
rocky and it's rocky because we're locked into a fear of
1:22:27
mindset. I'll tell you a statistic that
1:22:29
not a lot of people know. And part of this is because we
1:22:32
spent so much money during the pandemic that we're kind of
1:22:35
warped in terms of numbers now. And I'm not saying we did or did
1:22:40
not do the right thing. I do think we overspent that
1:22:43
that we were, but it was it was out of good intentions.
1:22:46
It was out of fear of what we're seeing in Wuhan and what we're
1:22:50
seeing in Italy. And we want to save ourselves,
1:22:52
right? But in hindsight, like, you
1:22:55
know, there are a lot of things we do differently.
1:22:56
And like, there's a lot of things anybody would do
1:22:58
differently with the clarity of hindsight.
1:23:00
I mean, that's true for anybody. So, you know, during, during the
1:23:07
inauguration of Trump, pretty shortly after, a lot of people
1:23:13
don't even think about this, February 21st, Stargate is
1:23:16
announced. Stargate is a $500 billion of
1:23:19
funding which was announced by President Trump alongside Sam
1:23:24
Altman, Mayushi, San Larry Ellison, which is our race to be
1:23:30
the first country to create AGI. You can't even script this.
1:23:35
What happened the day before Stargate, DeepSeek R1 launched
1:23:40
open source model out of China. It took about a week for that to
1:23:44
settle in and then eventually people realized, Oh my gosh,
1:23:48
open source may win here. NVIDIA lost 600 billion of
1:23:52
market cap the next week. NASDAQ lost a total of the
1:23:56
trillion dollars of market cap the next week. 500 billion of
1:24:01
funding for Stargate is more inflation adjusted than we spent
1:24:05
on the Manhattan Project to win against the Nazis and the
1:24:10
Japanese in World War 2. Ultimately they chose capitalism
1:24:15
after World War 2 and Japan is now the third largest economy in
1:24:18
the world and Germany is the 4th largest economy in the world.
1:24:21
This is my wish for Gaza, by the way, is that they embrace
1:24:24
capitalism and, and, and create a land of abundance there that
1:24:29
they have to get rid of terrorism first.
1:24:32
So you know, here you have more funding that was spent on the
1:24:36
Manhattan Project, inflation adjusted, more funding that was
1:24:40
spent on the space race versus the Russians, inflation
1:24:43
adjusted, inflation adjusted. That's $260 billion.
1:24:46
What we spent against the Russians to say if they win
1:24:50
control of space is fear based, right?
1:24:53
And so now we're locked in a fear based mindset versus China
1:24:57
on like if we create AGI before them, then we roll the world.
1:25:01
And if they create AGI before us and they roll the world, and
1:25:03
it's such an illusion because what are we actually going to do
1:25:07
with AGI? We going to destroy the whole
1:25:09
global market to oppress the world?
1:25:12
Is China going to destroy the whole global market to oppress
1:25:15
the world? And actually think in a way, and
1:25:18
I'm no fan of the Chinese government, but I think in a way
1:25:22
that Deeptiq R1 is almost like a peace offering.
1:25:25
It's almost like saying like hey, open source is going to win
1:25:28
here. And Meta, believe it or not, is
1:25:32
a peace offering with Llama 4. Llama 4 is incredibly powerful
1:25:36
and it's like a peace offering saying hey.
1:25:39
And you know, one of my favorite books of all time was Neil
1:25:42
Steffeson, who's a very good sci-fi author.
1:25:45
He wrote a non fiction book called in the beginning was a
1:25:47
command line, and he predicted in that book that Linux would
1:25:51
win the Internet, and it did. And I'm predicting right now
1:25:54
that open source is going to win AI.
1:25:57
Yeah, it's going to win for sure.
1:25:59
It open source always wins. Let's be clear.
1:26:01
It usually does. Yeah, it definitely it
1:26:03
definitely, I mean, it's just mini versus a few, right.
1:26:05
And and that was what we were talking about earlier, like 1000
1:26:07
people control the world and the rest live in a, you know, in
1:26:12
fear sometimes of that those thousand people.
1:26:15
So the mini definitely can, you know, can manifest love to
1:26:19
conquer the few and conquer fear.
1:26:22
Yeah. I mean, this is this is the
1:26:25
ultimate test for humanity. And quantum computing massively
1:26:29
accelerates the whole thing. We are.
1:26:32
Not talking about which blows my mind.
1:26:35
Yeah, they're, they're not talking about it enough, but
1:26:39
watch the 60 minutes on it because it's very interesting to
1:26:42
watch that. And the number one thing you'll
1:26:43
learn and watching that, besides the geeky cool things about
1:26:48
quantum computing and quantum physics and kind of the
1:26:51
spirituality, they take a whole spiritual bent on it too at the
1:26:54
end, a mysticism bent at the end, which is something I very
1:26:57
much believe in. I'll tell you a quick story
1:27:01
about that in a second. But the, but the number one
1:27:04
message they're communicating is that we have to win versus China
1:27:08
on quantum computing. They're like, if if China wins
1:27:10
quantum computing, we're screwed.
1:27:11
Yeah, it's going. To be ubiquitous.
1:27:13
Yeah, exactly. And so, so the 11 story, I'll
1:27:16
just tell you real quick, real quick diversion.
1:27:18
I was at Ted last year, Carmen Nevin, who's the head of the
1:27:23
quantum computing division at Google.
1:27:25
He's this, you know, German guy, really fun guy.
1:27:28
I bet it's really fun to work with him.
1:27:30
He's got sunglasses on his head. He looks like he stepped
1:27:33
straight out of the William Gibson cyberpunk novel.
1:27:36
It's like this, you know, really fun, gregarious guy.
1:27:39
And he was showing a stable quantum computing calculation.
1:27:43
And he said the only thing we can figure out on how this is
1:27:46
working is it must be computing in a different dimension.
1:27:50
Hey, he says this at Ted. OK.
1:27:53
And then the press release comes out on the Willow chip at the
1:27:56
end of last year, Google's new quantum computer chip, which has
1:27:59
already been bested by others since this is December of last
1:28:03
year. And they do a calculation on the
1:28:05
Willow chip that takes 5 minutes using qubits, which can be A1 or
1:28:10
A0 or A1 and A0 or neither, all at the same time.
1:28:13
It's the wave function in quantum physics, which requires
1:28:17
the observer and then it collapses into material.
1:28:21
And the way a classical computer works, including our modern day
1:28:25
supercomputers, is they're all based on bits, which can be a
1:28:29
one or a zero and only a one or a zero.
1:28:31
They can't be in the superposition state.
1:28:34
And that calculation, which took 5 minutes on the Google Willow
1:28:38
chip, would take 10 septillion years on a classical
1:28:45
supercomputer. OK, to put that in perspective,
1:28:49
that is A10 with 25 zeros after it.
1:28:52
That is over 720 trillion times the known age of the universe,
1:28:59
which is supposedly 13.8 billion years old.
1:29:03
OK, so when he says it's computing in a different
1:29:06
dimension, I actually believe it is computing at different
1:29:08
dimension. I believe that quantum is using
1:29:11
the computing power of the cosmos and then robotics is just
1:29:17
the physical manifestation of AI.
1:29:20
So just like we'll have infinite cognitive supply, we'll
1:29:24
eventually have infinite physical labor supply.
1:29:26
And you'll be able to point to a hill and say go build that
1:29:29
building and 1000 robots will go March off and do that.
1:29:32
And, and so we're really talking about manifesting a world of
1:29:36
abundance. This is all, remember that
1:29:38
almost all technology is combinatorial and built on top
1:29:41
of each other. You know, Steve Jobs said we're
1:29:45
all just building layers in the sand.
1:29:47
We're not building the next Taj Mahal, although with robotics
1:29:51
it'll be very easy to build something like a Taj Mahal in
1:29:54
the future. And so that's, that's where
1:29:57
we're heading. And, and it's super exciting.
1:30:01
I mean, it's the most exciting time to be alive.
1:30:02
And I love that the consciousness awakening is
1:30:04
happening alongside it. And I very much believe that's
1:30:07
God. Yeah, and it was super wild.
1:30:09
And I haven't really realized this up until now.
1:30:12
We're talking to you, which is as a as a human race, from a
1:30:17
consciousness standpoint, we are moving away from binary
1:30:20
thinking. Yes, binary compute is binary
1:30:23
thinking. We're moving away from.
1:30:25
Why? That's really profound.
1:30:26
You're so right. And, and that's what's kept us
1:30:28
polarized. That's what's kept us in this
1:30:31
either or state. That's what's kept us in a in a
1:30:34
scarcity mindset. That's what's kept us thinking.
1:30:38
Well, you know, it's you either have to side with, with Israel,
1:30:41
you have to side with, with, right?
1:30:44
Side with humanity. Right, right.
1:30:47
We're all we're all how multiple things can be true at the same
1:30:50
time and and that what we think is reality isn't necessarily the
1:30:55
case. Yeah, yeah.
1:30:57
And, and you know, it doesn't mean our reality here is not
1:30:59
beautiful. It just means that if you read
1:31:04
books like The Celestine Prophecy and The Seed of the
1:31:06
Soul and Proof of Heaven and so many others that you'll realize
1:31:12
that actually it's much more beautiful than you can imagine
1:31:16
and that there is a beyond. And I'm quite certain you and I
1:31:20
have been here before. Me too.
1:31:22
And somehow our souls were connected and here we are, you
1:31:26
know, and hopefully delivering a message that helps people in
1:31:30
this lifetime. Yeah, me too.
1:31:31
I strongly believe that I have a strong and deep knowing that
1:31:34
that is true. OK, so to close this out, Brett,
1:31:38
what would you say to the person that's experiencing fear right
1:31:41
now? They're looking at the world
1:31:43
through the lens of fear. You know, they're seeing the the
1:31:47
they're seeing the Trump's, the Netanyahu's, the Putin's.
1:31:50
They're seeing the things that are happening in the world.
1:31:52
They're looking at the kind of bubbly markets and they're
1:31:56
they're full of fear. What would you say to them?
1:31:59
I mean, the number one thing is, I would say realize that in a
1:32:02
24/7 media environment and a 24/7 social environment, that
1:32:08
there is algorithmic manipulation going on to keep
1:32:11
you locked in that state because they're trying to sell you ads
1:32:15
or subscriptions. And so realize that you have to
1:32:20
break yourself out of that mindset and you have to read
1:32:25
things like watch the Ted Talks by Angus Hervey on Fix the News,
1:32:30
Fix thenews.com. I'm a subscriber there.
1:32:34
Read things like the Progress Networks regular newsletter, Go
1:32:39
out there and reprogram yourself to realize that there's a
1:32:43
constant stream of positive things happening in the world
1:32:47
that just don't get the same amount of coverage because the
1:32:50
algorithms don't reward them. In the same way that there's
1:32:53
scientific breakthroughs happening every single day which
1:32:56
are really, really exciting, there are loving acts of
1:33:00
kindness happening every single day which are absolutely
1:33:03
beautiful. There are governments doing
1:33:05
amazing things, you know, every single day, you know, even, you
1:33:12
know, look, even if you hate someone like Trump or whatever,
1:33:15
it's not everything he's doing that's wrong.
1:33:18
You know, like be able to see through that, right?
1:33:20
Be able to see through I'm, I'm not saying most of the stuff
1:33:23
he's doing is right, but some stuff is OK.
1:33:27
And, and you know, it's not like, it's not like everything
1:33:30
is bad. And so you just have to be able
1:33:34
to see things that way because you're caught.
1:33:38
I like the way you said it. You're caught in the binary
1:33:40
mindset. And it's just like, you know, I
1:33:42
was, I was hosting a dinner actually talking about, you
1:33:45
know, this topic of AI, quantum computing and robotics and us
1:33:51
reaching the age of abundance. And one of the people at the
1:33:54
dinner at our home and I was hosting Mark Gober, I really
1:33:58
recommend his books and his podcast podcast called Where is
1:34:01
my Mind. And his first two books are
1:34:03
amazing called an end to upside down thinking.
1:34:06
And it's about how our brains receive consciousness versus
1:34:09
manifest it. And it's explains like how we
1:34:12
have a soul explains like why near death experiences occur
1:34:16
and, and, and how they're at least out of body experiences,
1:34:18
etcetera. And it goes at very science
1:34:21
based. It's really, really a hardcore,
1:34:23
you know, he was a Princeton grad and, and, and, you know,
1:34:26
really was like, this can't be right.
1:34:28
And he was total materialist And it changed his view when he
1:34:31
really delve into the scientific research and he documents all
1:34:34
that. And one of the people at the
1:34:37
dinner table on, I won't say who it was, but it's a very
1:34:40
prominent CEO here in Austin. And he said, well, you know,
1:34:43
humanity's done such a poor job. And it really, it hurt my heart
1:34:47
when he said that because I, I was like, you know, inside and I
1:34:54
didn't say anything at the time. And I'm going to have lunch with
1:34:57
him and talk with him about this.
1:35:00
But at the time it hurt, made my heart hurt because, you know,
1:35:03
God loves humanity and I love humanity and we don't do
1:35:09
everything right. But don't give up on humanity.
1:35:12
Like, you know, he was basically saying, well, I would trust AI
1:35:15
more than I trust humanity. Well, who made AI?
1:35:18
Yeah, humanity. It's an iteration of us.
1:35:21
Right. It's iteration of us and and so
1:35:24
you know, we have to to reach an age of abundance.
1:35:27
It starts with loving ourselves. We can't get there without
1:35:32
loving ourselves. So we have to internally have
1:35:35
our love conquer fear and imagine what type of world it
1:35:39
would be if every single leader in the world had conquered fear
1:35:43
if they led with love. And truly love themselves.
1:35:46
And truly love themselves and overcame their brokenness,
1:35:49
whatever it was, you know, if their parents were really mean
1:35:53
to them, etcetera. I mean, look, my dad was pretty
1:35:56
tough on me. You know, my mom was all love.
1:36:00
My dad would say things sometimes like I didn't want you
1:36:03
guys, you know? I can't wait till you move out.
1:36:07
That's weird. I got that same message.
1:36:09
That's. Why?
1:36:09
But ultimately he, he and I did reconcile and before he passed
1:36:13
away, it was all about love. And he definitely, you know,
1:36:17
expressed a lot of love and, and, and, and knew that I was on
1:36:21
the right path and was very happy that I became so
1:36:24
successful. So I don't, I don't harbor that,
1:36:28
you know, but I had to overcome that.
1:36:30
Yeah, for. Sure.
1:36:31
So because that was hard. That cuts deep, right?
1:36:34
We can't speed bump that. No, I know when when I became
1:36:37
financially successful, he tried to take credit for it.
1:36:40
And I said, I want you to know I wasn't your science experiment.
1:36:43
Like I ultimately had to overcome that.
1:36:46
And I will not do that to our kids.
1:36:48
But you know, he was raised in a very hard way.
1:36:53
I mean his, his, his father, who was so sweet to me.
1:36:56
My grandfather was raised during the Great Depression and the
1:37:02
father deserted the family. And my grandfather was the
1:37:04
oldest and he had to help my great grandmother raise the
1:37:08
family. And he ultimately was very smart
1:37:11
and he put himself through UT by tutoring people often in
1:37:15
subjects he didn't know. And he ultimately did not want
1:37:18
to take the risk and became one of the most famous mathematics
1:37:21
professors in the world. And you know, he was so loving
1:37:27
to me. I mean, he, he was so, so loving
1:37:29
to me, but he was not like that with my dad.
1:37:31
And that then transferred through my dad to me.
1:37:36
But my mom was so loving that it overcame that and then some.
1:37:40
And so you know, it it, you have to repair your brokenness to
1:37:45
ultimately love yourself. And you have to love yourself to
1:37:50
love your spouse. And you have to love yourself to
1:37:54
love your children, and you have to love yourself to be able to
1:37:56
love people and your company and the people that reflect, like,
1:38:03
lots of anger and depression and meanness towards others.
1:38:09
They are broken and they can overcome that.
1:38:12
And I, and that's all I wish for them.
1:38:14
I don't look at them with scorn. I look at them as I hope you
1:38:18
overcome whatever it is that that broke you.
1:38:21
Yeah. Well, Bright, you're extremely
1:38:24
inspiring to me. Thank you, You are to me.
1:38:28
And not for the reasons people would think.
1:38:30
I mean, yes, you've had tremendous success financially
1:38:32
as an entrepreneur, but it's your heart and the way you raise
1:38:36
your children and the way you move through the world and the
1:38:38
way you treat people that I find extremely inspiring and I wanted
1:38:41
to shine a light on. And so I'm so glad our listeners
1:38:44
got to get a view of that. A peek into your heart.
1:38:47
So glad you're doing this, and I'm so glad all the light you
1:38:50
put in the world, you know you're a beacon of light.
1:38:52
Thanks. Yeah, and this is my small way.
1:38:54
I too feel very called to serve humanity and to help community.
1:38:57
It's not clear for me what it is yet, but I'm listening and I'm
1:39:01
here and I'm ready. You'll figure it out so.
1:39:04
Yeah. You're, you're, you're going
1:39:05
towards the light, you're a beacon of light.
1:39:07
And ultimately, God will work through you and you'll figure
1:39:10
out what your divine calling is. And there's just no doubt it is.
1:39:13
And hey, this might be part of it.
1:39:15
I think this may be this may be, but thank you for your time
1:39:17
today. You bet.
1:39:18
And I want to have you back. Once you've got this company
1:39:21
locked and you're ready to talk to the world about it, I want to
1:39:23
hear about it. Q1 or Q2 of next year will most
1:39:26
likely be the timing. OK, it's a date, Yeah.
1:39:29
OK. Thank you.
1:39:30
Appreciate it. Yeah.
1:39:31
Love you. Love you.