Latest / Love Conquers Fear / #28: From Techstars to the Soul: Amos Schwartzfarb on Purpose, Creativity, and Abundance

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#28: From Techstars to the Soul: Amos Schwartzfarb on Purpose, Creativity, and Abundance · Love Conquers Fear

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  You can be very, very creative in business.
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  And coming off of what you just said, it was something that
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  always stuck with me. And as I think about everything
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  that I have done in business, so much of it, I've always gone
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  back to that moment of inspiration of my father.
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  Like how can I think about this creatively versus what is the
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  proper way to do it or the rote way to do it as a being that
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  floats around and looks for a home.
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  And so those feelings that you get, you get hit with
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  inspiration. It comes and it's saying, OK,
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  are you going to be my home? And it will stay for some amount
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  of time. And we can choose to say, OK,
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  I'm going to take that inspiration to run with it or
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  not, and then that inspiration will find itself another home.
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  But I realized that my purpose on Earth is actually to help
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  other people be the best versions of themselves.
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  Your ego can outsmart your intuition.
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  I mean, one of the things I learned from Byron Reese is the
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  second most neurons in your body or in your stomach.
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  You do think with your whole body.
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  It's not just with your brain. I believe our brains receive
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  consciousness. If enough people can start to
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  just do that, just show up, not be angry and show love and show
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  love in places they didn't before, I do think we will have
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  a ripple. We have the potential for there
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  to be a ripple effect that will dominate the hate and anger that
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  we are. Well, if 100% of humanity did
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  that, there would be no problem. Hey everyone, welcome back to
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  the Love Conquers Fear podcast. I've really been diving into a
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  book recently that Jeff Birmingham turned me on to.
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  I mentioned his book on this podcast.
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  I'm going to be recording with him in a future episode.
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  We actually just set up a ski trip together in Park City and
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  we're going to be doing it from up there, so the podcast will be
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  on the road when that happens. His book is called The Last Book
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  Written by a Human, and I cannot recommend it more highly, but
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  it's in the final part of his book where he talks about the
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  books that have moved him the most.
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  And the book that he says was his absolute favorite is called
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  The Creative Act. It's by Rick Rubin and I highly
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  recommend that one on Audible. I'm about halfway through with
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  it at this point and it is just so beautifully read and so, so
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  wise. I mean, it really makes you
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  think of the Dao De Ching. I know that Rick Rubin has
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  studied that. He came out with an amazing
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  website recently which rewrote the Dow de Ching for the moment
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  of vibe coding, which is quite fun.
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  I'll put a link to that in the show notes.
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  And also, I watched a recent 60 Minutes episode of Rick Rubin as
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  well in terms of how he helps people realize their greatest
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  accomplishments with their music.
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  But it's a great read for anybody that's an aspiring
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  creative. And Rick Rubin would tell you
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  that creativity is not limited to anything.
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  I was on JP Newman's business or a podcast called Investing on
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  Purpose. And JP Newman, when we're just
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  talking about entrepreneurship, he was trying to convince me,
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  Brett, you're an artist. You know, business people are
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  also artists and you're creating something from scratch.
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  And it felt a little bit awkward at the time when JP was saying
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  that. But I do think business can be
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  an art. You choose the intentionality
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  you want with business. You choose whether or not to be
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  a conscious capitalist. You choose whether or not to be
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  a public benefit corporation. You choose the type of operating
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  system that you want to operate the company with, whether that's
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  your metrics or your culture bringing out the best in people.
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  And so I really embrace what JP Newman said and I am ultimately
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  writing, you know, my third book right now.
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  I came out with The Lattice, my second book, my science fiction
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  novella, but my third book, Love Conquers Fear, humanity, AI, and
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  Age of Abundance for All, really.
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  Rick Rubin's book, The Creative Act is helping me get even more
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  centered with that as I enter the home stretch of completing
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  that book. So definitely shout out to Rick
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  Rubin, shout out to JP Newman, and tune into The Creative Act.
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  It is a fantastic read. And thank you again to Jeff
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  Birmingham. His book, The last book a human
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  will Ever Write, is really exceptional.
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  I highly, highly recommend you read that.
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  And it has a lot of synchronicity with what I'm
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  doing with Love Conquers Fear. And that'll be a great episode
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  when that comes about comes out. So today I'm really excited to
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  welcome Amos Schwartzfarb to the podcast.
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  And Amos, welcome. Yeah, Yeah.
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  Thanks. For having me here.
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  Yeah, so good to have you here. You and I have known each other
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  for a while from the Techstars days and you were the CEO of
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  Techstars. So why don't we start there?
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  Like Techstars is one of the most amazing incubators here in
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  Austin. May I derail a slightly
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  something you said like nailed me right in my heart in the best
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  way possible, which is when I was in high school getting ready
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  to go to college and thinking about what I wanted to do with
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  my life. I had been thinking always that
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  I would go into something creative.
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  And my father, who graduated college when I was 6, came from
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  a family who didn't go to college.
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  He looked at me. He said you can be very, very
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  creative in business. And, and coming off of what you
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  just said, it was something that always stuck with me.
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  And as I think about everything that I have done in business, so
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  much of it, I've always gone back to that moment of
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  inspiration of my father. Like, how can I think about this
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  creatively versus what, what is the proper way to do it or the
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  rote way to do it? Yeah.
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  Yeah, that's awesome. And, and, and I love that Rick
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  Rubin was saying, look, every human being can be creative.
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  You know, there's these so so-called creatives and people
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  think of them as like a director of a movie or, you know, the,
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  the, you know, a band member or something or an artist, you
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  know, that paints. And there are so many creative
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  acts. Yeah.
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  I love how Rick Rubin's really opening the tent to them all
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  because there, there, there sometimes is a little bit of
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  this repulsion of like, oh, you're a business person.
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  You're not really a creative. Which which is so untrue.
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  I think the, you know, being an entrepreneur by default, you
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  have to be creative. You have to think in a way that
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  other people have never thought before and be bold enough and
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  then take that leap. So I think that's one of the
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  things that I love about things that Rick Rubin has said and
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  what my father said. What you know is that is the the
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  act of creating is not just saying I'm going to take paint
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  and write it on a, on a, on an easel, on a, on a canvas, but
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  I'm going to take my brain and I'm going to say, what is this
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  world look like now? Do I create something new from
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  it? Yeah, yeah, yeah, so cool.
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  Yeah. I mean, I, I really embrace that
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  after JP said that and. And it really stuck with me.
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  But Rick Rubin's book, The Creative Act is nailing at home
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  and something that it, it is true that if you look at the
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  creative act as you're plugging into source, as you would say in
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  in that book or, you know, getting messages from the
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  universe. I mean, I get those all the
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  time. I get downloads probably daily.
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  And when you get them, it's a real gift from the universe.
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  And you've got to, like, start writing, you know, pretty
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  quickly. Have you read Big Magic by
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  Elizabeth Gilbert? No, I haven't.
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  I think that it might resonate for yeah, there's a lot of
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  things about the book that are really neat, but there's one
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  thing that that she says early on in it.
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  And I I don't do a lot of book on tape.
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  I usually like to read, but this one, someone recommended that I
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  listen to it and kind of like, like Rick Rubin's book is a
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  listen book, but she, she talks about inspiration as a, as a
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  being that floats around and looks for a home.
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  And so those feelings that you get, you get hit with
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  inspiration. It comes and it's saying, OK,
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  are you going to be my home? And it will stay for some amount
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  of time. And we can choose to say, OK,
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  I'm going to take that inspiration and run with it or
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  not. And then the inspiration will
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  find itself another home. And she actually tells this
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  story in the book, which is which is crazy how she had a
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  moment like that where inspiration hit her and she
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  started to write this book, but there are lots of things in the
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  way. And she never finished it.
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  And a few years later, she was on a panel with one of her
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  favorite authors and they had never met in person before.
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  They've never had a conversation before.
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  And she was in awe of this person.
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  I remember who the other author was and they were talking after
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  the panel and the other and she's and Elizabeth Gilbert said
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  to her, you know, what do you work on next?
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  And she went and described the book almost word for word that
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  she had started, that she had hit and then lost inspiration
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  for. So no, it's just it was a while
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  the the other woman is who who ended up finishing, she said.
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  It was the inspiration left me and it went to this person and
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  my. Gosh.
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  OK, now I get it. Yeah.
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  Have you ever read The War of Art?
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  I haven't. I haven't sitting at home and I
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  have not. So this this is another similar
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  book is by Steven Pressfield who it took until his 50s for him to
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  become a famous author. He wrote The Legend and Bagger
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  Vance and a bunch of other amazing breakout books, but he
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  really credits it to listening to the Muses.
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  He describes in a very spiritual fashion where when he prayed to
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  the Muses to show up that they would show up and and he would
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  basically be channeling his works.
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  That's neat. I'll check out that's.
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  I think about that a lot. And the Elizabeth Gilbert's book
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  had something to do with this, but you've probably felt this
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  before inspiration hits. And what I've tried based on
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  that, on that concept, now when I get hit with inspiration now,
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  I try really hard to say, OK, what's around that I can push to
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  the side because I don't know how long this moment's going to
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  stay and how far can I take this moment of inspiration to
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  whatever it might be. And sometimes it's a really long
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  time. Right now that that is a That is
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  a key lesson from Rick Rubin's book the.
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  Creator is it? Yes.
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  That's a huge part of it is, is like when you get that gift from
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  the universe, make time and like really listen up and go and
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  start, start writing, you know, start doing whatever.
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  Something else you just said too, that that that he wrote his
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  first book in his 50s. And I think like, we're in such
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  a different generation now, like life and time has changed the
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  way that it is acceptable for you or myself to say, hey, I'm
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  in my 50s and it's OK if I want to stop and look around and say
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  it's time to do something completely different.
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  Yeah. Yeah.
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  I think you know, the, the, the thought of it, I don't know how
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  you feel about this, but the thought of what used to maybe be
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  considered a midlife crisis and it would go down this path of
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  whatever is really just people saying I want to be re inspired
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  and allowing themselves the vulnerability and the freedom to
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  go be re inspired. Like, whether you're 50 or 60,
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  whatever. Like, there's no reason we can't
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  do really amazing things at any point in our life.
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  Well, time itself is getting well, time itself is an
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  illusion. That's a whole different thing.
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  I I've recommended the order of time on this podcast before by
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  Carlo Ravelli. Amazing, amazing book, a science
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  book that ends kind of very spiritually, but it's just meant
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  to be a pure science book about the illusion of time.
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  But the, the, you know, we're in a time right now with
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  exponentially accelerating technologies of AI, quantum
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  computing, robotics, brain computer interfaces, where 50
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  may feel like the new 20, you know, 50 years from now, I mean,
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  or 10 years from now or 20 years from now.
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  I mean, we're in such an exponential curve that the only
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  way I'm able to make sense of it is I think a week of tech
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  progress right now. It's kind of like a year of tech
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  progress 10 years ago. I mean, it's, it's, it's just
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  dizzying in terms of what's happening.
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  And that includes in biotech. It's just incredible, like what
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  type of breakthroughs are happening.
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  Yeah, I just, I actually just joined the Advisory Board of the
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  Dell Medical School and I didn't realize this.
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  The reason I joined was for the what's going to be the Dell
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  Teaching Hospital. And it's actually the largest
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  project they've done in the entire history of UT Austin over
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  130 years. And they're going to have state
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  of art robotics, state-of-the-art AI,
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  state-of-the-art sensors from the very beginning.
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  So it's a real, it's a real honor to be involved in this.
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  But we're in this in such a incredible exponential curve
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  that like, you know, I think it's, I think a lot of it is
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  like, how well do you take care of yourself?
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  And I'm in better shape at age 53 now than I was at age 40.
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  And part of it's vegetarian diet, part of it's like my daily
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  workout, you know, including lots of walking.
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  And, you know, anybody can have that type of lifestyle.
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  Like sometimes people say, well, that's because you have money or
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  whatever. And I'm like some of the
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  healthiest people I know don't have a lot of money, you know,
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  and some of the, some of the wealthiest people I know don't
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  have a lot of health, you know, I mean, they drink a lot or
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  they, you know, they get very overweight, etcetera.
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  So you know it, it really is. Age is just a construct.
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  That really is how you feel. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
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  Perspective and and effort. I I fully agree.
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  I think that and, and I don't think it has to start, start
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  early. You can start when you're 50 and
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  get yourself to a my I I'll use my parents as another example.
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  My my mom and dad never. My mom was a big smoker.
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  My dad never did anything, not until they hit around 50.
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  Now, my mom is 82, still runs, you know, runs two to three
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  miles every other day. My dad's still lifting weights,
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  still lifting or not, still started.
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  And he's like, he has become like a fit person later in life.
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  Later in life. By by their standards, yeah.
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  Yeah, it's amazing how fast your body will heal if you if you
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  nourish it. I mean, that's true by the way,
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  about your mind too, you know, whether you do meditation or
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  any, any number of things to center yourself.
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  I'm fascinated about something you said about the the
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  Children's Hospital and I'm, I'm, I'm going to over share
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  maybe a little bit, but just to correct you, it's the Dell
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  Medical school. I'm sorry.
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  Thank you. The Dell medical school.
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  Thank you. Which is at UT Hospital, the
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  Dell Medical School at UT. Dell Children's Hospital is
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  amazing in its own right. It is total state law.
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  Dell Medical Center at UT I, I have, I was diagnosed with this
• 14:28
  tumor. I mentioned this to you before
• 14:30
  and I'm having it actually removed pretty soon, but four
• 14:34
  years ago it came out of nowhere.
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  It's a tumor in your. Brain, it's a tumor.
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  Yeah, right outside my brain on, on the nerves that are in here.
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  And at first it was not a big deal and I lost a little bit of
• 14:43
  hearing, but very quickly I lost all my hearing.
• 14:45
  So I'm deaf in my right ear. And it after having fantastic
• 14:49
  hearing my whole life, I've got perfect hearing in my left ear.
• 14:52
  And I talked to the doctors and I go, I have to go every six to
• 14:55
  12 months to get Mris, which is why now I know it's growing too
• 14:58
  much and I have to do some other things.
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  They are convinced that I will never hear again.
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  And I feel like this may be like in the thematically to love
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  conquers fear. I am convinced otherwise, right?
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  For exactly what you just said, I would.
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  Regret on you A. 100. Percent and this you need you
• 15:14
  need to watch episode 3 with Jason Carp as he was told that
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  he was going to be completely blind in both eyes and in his
• 15:23
  case he had divine inspiration to change his diet and that that
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  was the path. He had a message, you know,
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  download if he will, that told him to embrace, to embrace what
• 15:35
  he was being told and he cured his own blindness and the that
• 15:39
  eye doctors would not believe it.
• 15:41
  They were like, well, we must have misdiagnosed.
• 15:43
  Yeah, I will watch this literally when I go home.
• 15:45
  But I'm convinced they're wrong because science will catch up
• 15:49
  and excel past anything we know today, which actually doesn't
• 15:53
  give me a lot of faith in my doctors, but they know what
• 15:55
  they're doing for the past. Yeah, well.
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  At least you're getting it in 2025.
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  That's the best year you could get it.
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  If you're going to get it, that's right.
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  It's better than 2015 or that's right. 2005 etcetera.
• 16:08
  Yeah, So, yeah, So back to Techstars.
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  I love that diversion though, because that that it's, it's so
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  true. And hopefully anybody listening
• 16:16
  to this or watching this can realize you can be creative.
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  Doesn't matter your age either, but you can be, you can be
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  creative at whatever you do. You can embrace creativity.
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  Yeah, yeah. So tech.
• 16:26
  Yeah, so that's how we originally met, you know?
• 16:29
  Yeah. And I had I had Morgan Linton on
• 16:32
  episode 10 of this past. I did see that.
• 16:35
  Yeah, he, he's fantastic. I had so many great
• 16:38
  conversations with him and Dana, you know, they live in Incline
• 16:42
  Village in Lake Tahoe. Yeah.
• 16:45
  Oh my gosh, we had such a such a great time.
• 16:47
  Did you go to there or did they come?
• 16:48
  Here I did. I went, I went there and I just
• 16:50
  want. To think because it did look
• 16:52
  different than his, yeah. Yeah, we did lots of great
• 16:54
  hikes. We actually recorded that in
• 16:55
  Reno, OK, because it was a nearby podcast studio, but we
• 17:01
  just had so many deep conversations And he, you know,
• 17:04
  real shout out to Morgan cuz he, he leveled me up with AI
• 17:08
  engineer, AI powered engineering.
• 17:10
  So really leveled me up with cursor warp.
• 17:14
  Of course, GitHub Claude code and I felt like a kid again
• 17:19
  because I programmed in since I was seven.
• 17:21
  I was like, Oh my gosh, now I'm playing.
• 17:22
  Yeah, you haven't done it in play.
• 17:24
  Yeah. Yes, I, yeah, I was creating
• 17:25
  applications and yeah, it's, it's amazing.
• 17:28
  Like once you actually experience a true AI agent, it
• 17:33
  really is transformative. It's like you'll never forget
• 17:36
  the first time you experience. Yeah, yeah.
• 17:37
  And you know, we we talked about on that episode that, you know,
• 17:41
  a very easy way for people to experience it is go to
• 17:44
  perplexity, download the comment web browser and just use the
• 17:48
  agent mode and watch it take over your browser.
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  That alone is like. Amazing, I actually had my had a
• 17:54
  similar ish experience, which is but I took one of the books that
• 17:59
  I wrote levers and I've I've started to and and got most of
• 18:03
  the way through creating like how do I turn this into
• 18:05
  something that's interactive and you're getting to use?
• 18:08
  I use lovable, but one of the platforms to do that and just
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  see how easy, not just easy it is, but how how, how it can come
• 18:17
  to life in such a way that would have taken ridiculous amount of
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  time, a ridiculous amount of money even just a couple of
• 18:25
  years ago. Although I do think I'm curious
• 18:28
  what your thought is on this there.
• 18:30
  I do think there's still a skill set that a human has to have in
• 18:33
  the organization of something complex that I think it will be
• 18:37
  a while before computers, if ever, can can do that.
• 18:41
  Well, I, you know, I'm asked a lot what should my kids study as
• 18:46
  if I'm going to be some expert on that.
• 18:49
  And my answer to them is always whatever you think they're most
• 18:53
  passionate about. And then just let, let let
• 18:58
  things happen the way they're meant to unfold.
• 19:00
  Like don't try to game this. And now it's, it's, it's an act
• 19:05
  of love to try to help guide your child.
• 19:08
  I'm not saying that it's not, but only to a point.
• 19:12
  Like if, if, if your child is meant to code, like my mom
• 19:16
  introduced me to it at age 7 and she didn't have to push me at
• 19:22
  all. Like I just wanted to do it
• 19:24
  non-stop. That was what I was meant to do.
• 19:26
  I know that I was born for this purpose, to create a better
• 19:28
  world with technology. So that that was my, that was my
• 19:35
  divine calling. And one thing that we've done
• 19:38
  with our children is expose them to lots of different things.
• 19:42
  And once we see what it is that they want to do, allow them to
• 19:46
  do that without prejudice, which is what my mom did.
• 19:50
  And as a result, they've they've accomplished a lot at very young
• 19:53
  ages, but they've accomplished things that they wanted to do.
• 19:57
  You know, we didn't, we didn't say like, hey, here's a goal, go
• 20:00
  out there and get it. So yeah, I mean with, with,
• 20:05
  with, you know, raising children today.
• 20:07
  It really is. Listening to them and realizing
• 20:10
  they were born for a reason. Yeah.
• 20:13
  And trying to find that out. Yeah, helping guide them there.
• 20:15
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, so let's talk about tech
• 20:18
  stars. Yeah, yeah, it sounds like
• 20:20
  we're, it almost sounds like we're dodging tech stars or
• 20:23
  something. I know that.
• 20:24
  I know that we're not, but you know, Tech Stars was a was a big
• 20:28
  force here in Austin and yeah, you really put a lot of heart
• 20:30
  and soul. Thanks.
• 20:31
  Yeah, it was. It was a lot of fun.
• 20:33
  Yeah. So, so it was originally brought
• 20:35
  to Austin by Jason Seats, who I think you know.
• 20:38
  Jason, I do, yeah. Yeah, I was, I was involved
• 20:40
  actually in the very first year. I, I, I can't remember if I
• 20:46
  reached out to him or reached out to me.
• 20:47
  It really doesn't matter. But but I I loved what he was
• 20:50
  doing and and I wrote about it the year at launch on my blog
• 20:55
  lucky 7 to really celebrate like hey, this is a big Austin
• 21:00
  moment. The Tech Stars has come here.
• 21:02
  Big national incubator. Yeah, that that was my exposure
• 21:05
  to him too, before it launched. I don't, I think Rob Taylor
• 21:09
  introduced Jason and and, and, and me before it launched.
• 21:13
  And, you know, I was like, yeah, it sounds really, I'd never
• 21:15
  heard of it before. It was like, sounds really cool.
• 21:18
  I like helping other people and I, I, I invested in that first
• 21:21
  fund as well. And that was my introduction to
• 21:25
  it. And I remember that first year
• 21:27
  when I was a mentor and one of the rules was only choose one
• 21:33
  company to work with. And I was between, I had just
• 21:37
  exited out of black locally. So I was really just, I was
• 21:40
  spending time, you know, helping, giving back and
• 21:43
  spending time on myself. And I think I had, yeah, I had
• 21:47
  one of my kids at that point and I ended up mentoring like 8 of
• 21:53
  the companies and just fell in love.
• 21:55
  That's that's different. It was a yeah, yeah, I had the
• 21:57
  time and I had the time. Like I'm gonna do 800% greater.
• 22:00
  Yeah, yeah. Well, it wasn't like.
• 22:02
  Intentional and I think maybe like, you know I.
• 22:04
  He said 1 and I didn't really hear it but later on I was like
• 22:06
  yeah, we kind of told you to do 1 You did he actually told me
• 22:08
  this story back Yeah. Three years later when he
• 22:11
  offered me or asked me to take the role from him, OK, so there
• 22:14
  was so. He remember that, Yeah.
• 22:15
  He remember that guys driven, Yeah.
• 22:18
  And we have, we have kind of, I don't remember that, but we also
• 22:21
  have a different recollection of the moment he asked me to take
• 22:23
  the role from him. And so I had mentored for a
• 22:26
  couple of years and at the same time, I had started a company
• 22:30
  called Joust in the social gaming space.
• 22:31
  And of the all the things I've done, it's the one thing that
• 22:34
  unfortunately was not successful.
• 22:36
  And Jason personally had invested in it.
• 22:39
  And so I took Jason out for a drink one day and I said, hey,
• 22:42
  man, you know, I'm really sorry, but I'm leaving.
• 22:44
  Like, I don't see a path for this.
• 22:46
  The CEO is probably going to keep trying, but like, I don't
• 22:49
  see a path and I'm going to, you know, going to go pursue
• 22:51
  something else. And he said, he said, well, it's
• 22:54
  funny because I wasn't sure how to ask you this, but I would
• 22:56
  actually like for you to take my job.
• 22:58
  Right. OK.
• 22:59
  You're like, yeah. Yeah.
• 23:00
  And then, yeah, exactly. So and then a couple months
• 23:03
  later, I ended up joining us. It was the managing director of
• 23:05
  Tech Stars in Austin. And I ran, I ran it from the
• 23:08
  summer of 2015. And my last, my last program
• 23:12
  ended. I'm going to get this low wrong.
• 23:14
  We're in 2524. My last program was the fall of
• 23:17
  23 and I officially left Tech Stars in the winter of 24.
• 23:21
  OK, gotcha. So I ran it for 8 1/2 years and
• 23:23
  did ten programs in 8 1/2 years. What are what are some of your
• 23:26
  biggest lessons learned at Tech Stars?
• 23:29
  I mean, you saw so many great companies come.
• 23:31
  Through so many, I think some of my some of my biggest lessons, I
• 23:36
  can talk on the business side, I can talk on the on the human
• 23:39
  side and both, yeah, the human side are the ones that I get
• 23:41
  more excited about. I think for on the human side, I
• 23:45
  say this as a positive statement, not a negative
• 23:47
  statement, but I'm going to. But it's hard to not come off
• 23:50
  with a little negative sentiment, which is people only
• 23:53
  change when they want to change. And so my learning through that
• 23:56
  is to try to recognize when someone was trying to evolve
• 24:00
  versus what I, regardless of what I thought was the right
• 24:03
  thing, didn't really matter. Were they trying to evolve?
• 24:06
  And then how can I help them kind of like what you were
• 24:08
  saying with your kids, like how can I help them realize the
• 24:10
  thing that they're trying to, to, to evolve to?
• 24:14
  And I learned that lesson the hard way in the first couple of
• 24:16
  years when I was like, well, you're coming to me so I can
• 24:19
  tell you how to do something. And not that I was very
• 24:20
  prescriptive because I'm not very prescriptive by nature.
• 24:24
  But then I would see people running into the same wall over
• 24:27
  and over and not listening to not just me, but all of the
• 24:29
  mentors around. So that was one lesson was
• 24:31
  people are people are only ready to change when they're actually
• 24:33
  ready to change. Yeah, that is so, that is so
• 24:36
  true. And I've, I've almost destroyed
• 24:40
  friendships in the past because of that, because like, I see
• 24:43
  something and I really wanted to help them.
• 24:46
  I really wanted it to change because I could see the train
• 24:50
  wreck about to occur. But you sometimes you really to
• 24:55
  be a good friend, you have to be there for them when they do hit
• 24:59
  the wall and not be so dogmatic trying to get them to not hit
• 25:03
  the wall. And it's really, it's painful to
• 25:06
  see that. Yeah, yeah, I've been on the
• 25:08
  other side of that and it's painful when the person is not
• 25:11
  there when they should be. Right there, right.
• 25:14
  I'm always there when they need me.
• 25:15
  Yeah, I, I I can definitely say that as a friend.
• 25:18
  Like if I get the call I'm there for sure.
• 25:21
  Yeah, yeah, it's a, that's an amazing trait.
• 25:23
  I like to think that I am too. Yeah.
• 25:25
  Yeah, sure you are. I, I think, I think I am.
• 25:28
  If I'm not, it's unbeknownst to me.
• 25:31
  Yeah. So that, so that was one.
• 25:32
  I think another thing is a lesson that I learned, which is
• 25:36
  a lesson that I'm now I'm, I'm getting to put into practice on
• 25:40
  a regular basis, which is I realized, and it took me a
• 25:44
  couple years out of tech stars to be able to get the courage to
• 25:46
  say this to myself, much less out loud here or anywhere for
• 25:50
  that matter. But I realized that my purpose
• 25:52
  on Earth is actually to help other people be the best
• 25:54
  versions of themselves, which has nothing to do with me.
• 25:57
  That's beautiful. It was a thank you.
• 26:00
  It was a really, it was. I remember where I was in the
• 26:03
  moment when it was just, it flushed over me and like it's,
• 26:06
  it's like I always knew it was there, but I articulated it for
• 26:09
  the first time, like I'm not here for me.
• 26:11
  I'm here for a lot of other people.
• 26:13
  How do I bring myself to that? That's probably the biggest.
• 26:17
  Lesson, I mean, in, in spirituality that would be
• 26:19
  called selfless service. You know, that's the, that's the
• 26:22
  highest order form of giving. Yeah.
• 26:26
  You know that's the to be of service to others, to try to
• 26:29
  manifest love. With yeah, yeah, thank you.
• 26:31
  It's even saying thank you. It's saying it out loud.
• 26:33
  I still like I'm I'm squishy with the comfort of it feels
• 26:38
  very, I don't know, it feels like how do I have the courage
• 26:43
  to say that? But that is how I feel and.
• 26:45
  I can you tell me the moment I. Mean yeah, yeah, I was I can I
• 26:49
  was So I was sitting in at my Home Office is also a double S
• 26:53
  as a music studio. And I have this chair that I sit
• 26:57
  in and I sit and I play guitar often and I was I was
• 27:00
  contemplating this combination of like happiness and sadness at
• 27:05
  the same time, thinking about the work that I was doing.
• 27:09
  And I had just come out of having a surgery on my on my ACL
• 27:13
  on my on my knee and I and I'm very very active.
• 27:16
  I don't know if you know this about me, but I've been riding
• 27:18
  bikes and racing bikes. I don't race anymore, but like
• 27:20
  for 25, almost 30 years and I couldn't do anything.
• 27:24
  I was just sitting there and thinking about, you know, who I
• 27:28
  was and, and, and really what I was contemplating was how happy
• 27:31
  I was and how in the moment that I was in, I probably shouldn't
• 27:35
  be as happy as I actually was. Like, why am I so happy?
• 27:38
  And I realized I looked around and like, because everything
• 27:41
  that I'm doing is I am, I am helping other people achieve the
• 27:44
  things that they want. And it had nothing to do with
• 27:46
  me. And it was, I was sitting there
• 27:48
  and like, I had like in the lights were dimmed.
• 27:50
  And I, when I'm playing guitar, I have a couple of different,
• 27:54
  like I have this light that lights up like stars on the, on
• 27:57
  the ceiling. And then I have these other
• 27:59
  lights that, that slowly flash colors and it's, you know, to
• 28:01
  get me into like a more musically creative mood.
• 28:05
  And I, but I wasn't doing that. I was actually thinking about
• 28:07
  work and I was just sitting there and like, I wasn't
• 28:08
  meditating and I wasn't thinking about meditating, but I was
• 28:11
  almost in that sort of a state and it just was like, this is I
• 28:15
  wasn't trying to find what my purpose was, but it, it just
• 28:18
  like came through. He was like, hey, dude, This is
• 28:20
  why you're here. Or like, This is why you're so
• 28:22
  happy because you were doing the things you love.
• 28:24
  Like go own it. Yeah, yeah.
• 28:27
  Well, my, my interpretation of that, because they've become
• 28:30
  much more spiritual over the years, is that your soul was
• 28:34
  telling you, and that's a beautiful place to be because
• 28:37
  when you're, when you know you're in alignment with the
• 28:41
  purpose that you were born for, it gives you boundless energy.
• 28:44
  And it is the highest form of service.
• 28:47
  I mean, it really is the highest form of practicing love is to be
• 28:51
  of selfless service to others. Yeah.
• 28:53
  Yeah. In fact, I don't, I might get
• 28:55
  this a little bit wrong, but I think it was around that time
• 28:58
  that I reached out to you because I was just, I was just,
• 29:00
  I was like, like, it was just, I don't know that anyone else felt
• 29:04
  it, but like here's like some experiences that I had at that
• 29:08
  time, which I would like go to the supermarket.
• 29:11
  It was all around the same bubble and everyone in the
• 29:14
  supermarket, like it didn't matter.
• 29:15
  Like people would just come up and just start talking to me
• 29:17
  about nothing. And I was there and it was so,
• 29:19
  so cool, So cool. And, and you know, like life has
• 29:22
  ups and downs. I've had actually like some lows
• 29:25
  since then and some more highs and some more lows.
• 29:26
  But but it, but it kind of like finding the vision statement for
• 29:30
  your company. If we, you know, reel it back to
• 29:31
  the, you know, the business side of things.
• 29:33
  It's almost like the same thing. Like it has given me this like
• 29:35
  in, in any moment, like am I getting got?
• 29:38
  Am I do it? Like what am I doing?
• 29:40
  Am I guided towards that? Right, right.
• 29:42
  And it got well, you have a, you have.
• 29:44
  Amazing energy and and I've always seen that in you and when
• 29:48
  you reached out to me about love conquers fear, I knew it was
• 29:52
  like a immediate yes I mean you wrote a very passionate letter
• 29:57
  to me. I don't know if you.
• 29:58
  I don't remember what I wrote. It was, it was beautiful.
• 30:00
  I mean, it was all about the alignment with with your
• 30:04
  purpose. And so we're going to Del, Del,
• 30:06
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 30:07
  I don't remember what I wrote, and I think it was kind of I, I,
• 30:10
  I, we, you. I can't remember if it was here
• 30:12
  like when we were talking before we were talking about it, but I
• 30:15
  have started to believe very much in like the universe tells
• 30:19
  you when you're listening for it, pay attention.
• 30:23
  And I and I remember reaching out to you.
• 30:26
  It was one of those moments where I had that like 1 moment
• 30:30
  of hesitation, like should I? And I'm like, no, I'm having
• 30:32
  this moment of inspiration to reach out to Brett for a reason.
• 30:34
  I'm going to do it like we've been waiting years to become,
• 30:38
  Yeah, closer. Like here's a great opportunity
• 30:40
  for us to hang out. Yeah.
• 30:41
  And how? How long did it take me to say
• 30:42
  yes? I think it was.
• 30:43
  I think it was. It was like I was shocked at how
• 30:45
  fast you respond. It was amazing, yeah.
• 30:47
  Well, because because I also really listen to that energy and
• 30:51
  those signs and it's very Dao De Ching, it's very Rick Rubens,
• 30:56
  it's very Celestine Prophecy. If you've if you've ever read
• 30:59
  that book, that's. A long term book, yeah.
• 31:01
  Yeah, that that people will show up for you and your purpose at
• 31:08
  the right time and you have to pay attention to that.
• 31:12
  And sometimes the answer can be literally right in front of you.
• 31:14
  So I was really delighted, really delighted when I mean, I
• 31:18
  immediately like lit up when you reached out.
• 31:21
  It was it was amazing. And I get I get a lot of love
• 31:24
  for for what I'm doing now, which feels great, but I'm doing
• 31:29
  it because I really want humanity to have this heart
• 31:32
  shift. You know, I can, you know, one
• 31:34
  thing that I can claim to be good at.
• 31:38
  I'm not good at many things, but I am good at seeing the future
• 31:42
  when it comes to technology. I've had that ability since I
• 31:44
  was a little kid. I mean, I was back when I was
• 31:46
  1011 years old and in elementary school, I would be tallying
• 31:52
  teachers. You don't realize how the
• 31:53
  world's going to change. You know, it's it's you know,
• 31:56
  technology is going to make you so much better at your job.
• 31:58
  You know, this is it's all the all the stuff that you're doing
• 32:01
  that's so manual. You're going to be able to
• 32:02
  automate, that's going to let you be more creative.
• 32:04
  You're going to be able to spend more time with your students and
• 32:07
  all of these things I was trying to convince them of.
• 32:11
  Did you ever doubt in yourself person?
• 32:12
  What's that? Did you ever doubt yourself
• 32:14
  through those periods? And I ask you that I'm rejecting
• 32:16
  because I have doubted myself in those.
• 32:18
  Absolutely. I mean, I was picked on
• 32:21
  horrendously as a child. So I, my mom never doubted me.
• 32:26
  I doubted myself at various times.
• 32:29
  But whenever I sat back down in front of the computer, I, I
• 32:34
  started that those doubts started melt away because I knew
• 32:38
  that I was in the flow and knew I was doing what it was meant to
• 32:41
  do. But, but growing up in Texas,
• 32:44
  you know, born and raised in Austin, I mean, I can tell you
• 32:47
  that people would say in front of my mom with where I could
• 32:53
  hear, they would say you're ruining him.
• 32:55
  He doesn't know how to do anything but work on the
• 32:58
  computer. He doesn't play football.
• 33:00
  He doesn't do this or that. My third grade teacher actually
• 33:04
  took my mom aside and tried to have an intervention with her
• 33:08
  and said, your son's going to be a loser.
• 33:10
  All he does in class is talk about computers.
• 33:12
  He doesn't do anything else and my mom didn't tell me that story
• 33:17
  until I was in my 20s. I'm.
• 33:19
  Glad she didn't tell you. Oh.
• 33:20
  My well, you know, if she had, she would have told me what she
• 33:25
  did, which is she turned beet red and she was so angry that
• 33:30
  she said you could have fried an egg on her head.
• 33:33
  And she, she, she told me, she didn't tell me that story until
• 33:37
  I was in my 20s and already very financially successful just
• 33:40
  because she didn't want it to dissuade me.
• 33:43
  But honestly, I don't think anything could have dissuaded me
• 33:46
  with the love that my mom gave me.
• 33:50
  But yeah, it was, it was weird. It was a weird place to be
• 33:52
  because I was, I had such conviction that I was right
• 33:56
  about where the future was going to go.
• 33:58
  But all the forces around me, with the exception of a handful
• 34:04
  of friends and my mom and my dad to a large extent, were pretty
• 34:10
  much telling me that I was going to be a loser.
• 34:14
  But you know, I, I, I want you to know, and I really mean this.
• 34:18
  If anybody's watching this that happens to know me from back
• 34:20
  then, I have 0 hatred in my heart for anybody.
• 34:24
  I have no need for anybody to. I'd like I've forgiven any of
• 34:31
  that. I've completely healed from all
• 34:35
  that and I'm not doing what I've been doing with entrepreneurship
• 34:40
  because I had some chip on my shoulder that I'm trying to get
• 34:43
  back at them or whatever. Like I, I've completely healed
• 34:46
  from that. And you know, part of that was
• 34:49
  psychedelic journeys, but part of that was just deep in her
• 34:51
  work. I've been studying Vedanta for
• 34:54
  well over 10 years now. That's an ancient Indian
• 34:57
  philosophy about how to gain mastery over your own mind.
• 35:03
  And, you know, I'm just, I just don't have this type of nature
• 35:08
  where I want to get back at people.
• 35:10
  Like, I just, you know, I try to see the good in everybody.
• 35:13
  And we're all kids back then. And one of the things I learned
• 35:16
  about humanity during that time is that if you go in this
• 35:22
  different direction from everybody else, there is this
• 35:26
  aspect where it's like, oh, no, they're going away from the
• 35:29
  tribe. Like they're going to somehow
• 35:32
  destroy themselves. And you know, I wear this ring
• 35:35
  every day. This is a a ring that my mom
• 35:39
  gave me. I don't know if, you know, if
• 35:40
  I've lost both my parents. You know, I lost my mom 14 years
• 35:43
  ago, my dad 17 years ago. And it's a it's a ring from
• 35:47
  warden where I got my MBA. I went to UT Austin and it's all
• 35:50
  these dots in this cluster and then one dot that's way over to
• 35:56
  the to the right away from the crowd.
• 35:58
  And my mom is always You were like that, dot.
• 36:01
  I love that. I love that.
• 36:03
  So I wear it every day to remember.
• 36:05
  So even through the doubt, you were just like be.
• 36:08
  Able to push. Well, I definitely had dark
• 36:09
  moments. I mean, I had some moments where
• 36:11
  it's really, really dark. But you know, I had faith that I
• 36:17
  was in my soul alignment. That was living my purpose, you
• 36:20
  know. Before you, before this is
• 36:23
  before you started to do that kind of like inner work on Yeah,
• 36:26
  yeah, yeah, you just like something.
• 36:27
  I had, I had, yeah. I've had experiences starting
• 36:30
  when I was very young where I've had voices talking to me, where
• 36:34
  I've had deep experiences with God before I ever did
• 36:37
  psychedelics, yeah. Or studied Vedanta.
• 36:42
  So I've, I've always known that I've had a guardian Angel, Angel
• 36:46
  of sorts, you know, looking out for me.
• 36:49
  And yeah, I mean feeling that presence of God and in different
• 36:53
  moments has been life changing. Here's maybe a question for you.
• 36:58
  A couple years ago, maybe a little more than a couple years
• 37:01
  ago, I'll step back and say I've, I've always felt like I've
• 37:04
  had really good intuition, which is another, I think another way
• 37:07
  to say some of the things you just feel it and you just kind
• 37:09
  of know who you're right. And then at some point I started
• 37:14
  doubting my intuition like I had been more and more successful.
• 37:17
  It wasn't that it was something else for some reason, or I was
• 37:20
  rationalizing it. And a few years ago, I, I, I
• 37:24
  started to have this debate with myself, which is where is the
• 37:29
  line between intuition and rationalizing?
• 37:33
  And how how do I keep myself personally on this on the side
• 37:37
  of intuition? Because when I did that, I was
• 37:40
  always right. And when I, when I rationalized,
• 37:43
  I was often not. And it couldn't be anything from
• 37:45
  business decisions to emotional, you know, family decisions,
• 37:48
  financial didn't really matter what it was.
• 37:50
  But like it sounds to me like that never came.
• 37:54
  It didn't come into play a lot. Or if it did, you were able to
• 37:57
  really clearly delineate between the two if you if you buy into
• 38:00
  that idea that those. Are I wouldn't say that I've
• 38:03
  I've made doozy of mistakes in my life.
• 38:06
  I mean, I've hired. I've hired executives that
• 38:09
  absolutely have not worked out because I tried to rationalize
• 38:12
  their background and ignored my gut instinct telling me that I
• 38:18
  should not. Have this is exactly what we
• 38:20
  yeah. Yeah, No, I you can, your ego
• 38:23
  can outsmart your intuition. I mean, one of the things I
• 38:26
  learned from Byron Reese is that the second most neurons in your
• 38:30
  body are in your stomach. You know, you do, you do think
• 38:34
  with your whole body. It's not just with your brain.
• 38:37
  And, you know, I believe our brains receive consciousness.
• 38:40
  That's a shout out to Mark Gober on episode 2.
• 38:43
  Like his books have really moved me a lot.
• 38:45
  And we're now having all types of books come out about non
• 38:49
  local consciousness and consciousness is being
• 38:51
  fundamental. But whenever I have 2nd guest,
• 38:57
  my gut instinct, which is another way of saying, you know,
• 39:01
  your soul. Oh my gosh, I've, I've, those
• 39:06
  have been the biggest mistakes of my career for sure.
• 39:09
  And I have certainly had many times sort of outsmarted,
• 39:13
  outsmarted myself. My ego has outsmarted myself.
• 39:16
  Like what do you really know? Like I can remember at age 25 or
• 39:22
  26 when I started core metrics, there were people I hired that I
• 39:29
  felt like it was the wrong decision in my gut, that I
• 39:32
  rationalized it because there was so much more experience in
• 39:35
  me. And I'm like, you're 26, what do
• 39:37
  you really know? And, you know, created great
• 39:41
  damage in the company. And and when I finally like came
• 39:47
  back to my gut and made the right decision and moved on, the
• 39:51
  company was liberated from that and could really fly.
• 39:55
  And you know you can do amazing damage when you don't, when you
• 39:58
  don't listen to that. A lupus right back to Techstar
• 40:02
  is that is one of the other lessons that I think I learned,
• 40:05
  which is it's it's so beautiful. Just because someone looks like
• 40:12
  perfect on paper does not make them the right.
• 40:15
  Fit yes, 100% yeah, yeah. And also, and, and just to
• 40:19
  clarify it, the, the thing that I've never let overwhelm me is
• 40:26
  the purpose of why I was born. Like I have always practiced
• 40:30
  that to create a better world with technology that I've never
• 40:33
  second guessed. I've definitely second guessed
• 40:36
  methodologies of building companies and hiring people,
• 40:40
  etcetera. And that's why I wrote the
• 40:41
  Entrepreneurs Essentials. That's why.
• 40:43
  I wrote my first. I think it shows in like your
• 40:45
  track record of the kinds of businesses that you've even
• 40:47
  created, right? You're, you're literally helping
• 40:49
  businesses reshape how they do business in a way that has been
• 40:52
  transformative. Yeah, Yeah.
• 40:55
  Yeah. So coming back to Techstars,
• 40:56
  what were some of the companies that really stand out for you?
• 41:00
  I mean, you had such a long time there.
• 41:02
  So if you could name three. I know it's.
• 41:04
  I know it's unfair to ask. Yeah.
• 41:05
  No, it's OK. But now you're not the CEO of
• 41:07
  Techstar. It's like more in Austin, so you
• 41:09
  can kind of be a little bit more free.
• 41:11
  Yeah. Well, and there's lots of things
• 41:12
  to it, but I would say that the, you know, there's more than
• 41:15
  three, but the three that I'll call out, I think helper bees,
• 41:17
  but I think, you know helper bees.
• 41:19
  I do. Yeah, they're here.
• 41:20
  They're helical in Austano. I'm not an investor in it, but
• 41:23
  but I do think they're great. Yeah, they, you know, I think
• 41:26
  that that was a really, you know, there's a learning in here
• 41:29
  too for for me that I tried to, I tried to find as much as
• 41:33
  possible, which is I'm really, really mission driven and
• 41:41
  industry expert trying to do something that was going to be
• 41:45
  transformative and, and thought he knew how and was and held on
• 41:49
  very loosely to the how and very tightly to the what.
• 41:53
  And it took a while, like a good business does.
• 41:56
  And now, you know, I think there are 8 or 9 maybe even
• 42:00
  approaching 10 years later, probably close to 10 years
• 42:02
  later. They are, you know, a phenomenal
• 42:05
  business making a tremendous, tremendous impact with our
• 42:08
  elderly population. And so I'm, I'm really, really
• 42:10
  proud of stayed very close to that CEO.
• 42:13
  I do think they're awesome. And, and I want to be clear that
• 42:17
  if I was ever asked to invest, I don't remember it.
• 42:19
  So if if I ever was asked, maybe I would have said yes, right.
• 42:22
  So I don't want to act like I passed on the business because
• 42:25
  that's not the recollection. I mean it was at that time I
• 42:29
  have. Nothing but respect.
• 42:30
  Yeah. At that time especially, I feel
• 42:32
  like at any given moment, there were 500 businesses in Austin
• 42:35
  raising money. It was hard to find the right
• 42:37
  one for sure. So that was 1 another another
• 42:44
  one that I really love and is a little younger a lot, quite a
• 42:48
  quite a bit younger. Is it?
• 42:51
  They're called Skip town now. They were called skipper when
• 42:53
  they came in. And there's a couple of things I
• 42:56
  love this one. It transforming the world.
• 42:59
  I don't know. But what I loved about it, it
• 43:01
  was the the the passion that this founder brought to to what
• 43:08
  she was building and the way that she did it and kind of
• 43:12
  similarly holding on to the what very strongly, but the how very
• 43:15
  loosely and what's if you skip town it.
• 43:18
  I don't think we have one and all, We don't have one in Austin
• 43:20
  yet, but they're they're essentially like locations for
• 43:23
  pet owners to go and socialize with their pets.
• 43:28
  That's. Fun.
• 43:28
  It's a it's fun, but and the thing, the thing that I love
• 43:31
  about it was less, I mean, the business is cool.
• 43:33
  What I loved about that and what I look back on that with such
• 43:37
  like positive memories is how she approached it, how she grew,
• 43:42
  how the business grew, how when she opened up her, she opened up
• 43:48
  her first facility in May of 2020 and it was successful.
• 43:53
  That was the heart of people not going places in public and in
• 43:56
  Charlotte, which is a place that people didn't go in public, and
• 44:00
  her ability to figure out how to still make that work and grow it
• 44:05
  and watching her and being a part of that for a long time and
• 44:09
  I'm not any longer. Oh, she was forged in the most
• 44:12
  difficult fires of that period. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 44:15
  To make to make it work in that environment.
• 44:17
  You can make it work in any. Exactly right.
• 44:19
  And like being being really forced to figure out like basic
• 44:24
  things that a company of her age often isn't forced to think
• 44:28
  about. How do the economics work?
• 44:30
  So I can live another day. And I know you probably see this
• 44:34
  all the time to people take for granted that that is actually
• 44:37
  when the early days, like your whole goal is to make it as long
• 44:40
  as possible until you can control that destiny as much as
• 44:43
  possible. And in those early days when
• 44:44
  you're not controlling very much, her ability to figure out
• 44:47
  how to do that and to be alongside of her is like a
• 44:49
  memory that I will have forever. The third one, one I'm going to
• 44:53
  name is a is a little controversial and I'm happy to
• 44:56
  name a fourth if you want to. Sure you can.
• 44:59
  You know you can name a fourth. I don't have hard rules here.
• 45:02
  My favorite one, which was not a successful business in the end
• 45:06
  was scale factor and I don't know if you remember that or
• 45:08
  even remember the name. I do remember the name.
• 45:11
  I'm trying to think what they did.
• 45:13
  I was not. Yeah, Yeah.
• 45:15
  I don't see. I know you.
• 45:16
  I'm pretty sure you weren't because I was really close and
• 45:20
  I've had so many learnings in this one and this one really it,
• 45:24
  it grew me up in a lot of ways that I didn't realize I needed
• 45:29
  to grow up. And it also helped the future me
• 45:33
  carve out and see where do I actually want to be spending my
• 45:36
  professional time because of how this went down.
• 45:39
  And so while the business wasn't successful at in January of
• 45:44
  2020, we had raised $110 million and had 55 or $60 million in the
• 45:48
  bank. And then COVID happened.
• 45:51
  Yes, I do remember. And then some cold feet happened
• 45:54
  and and. I want to say it was very highly
• 45:57
  valued, right? Yeah, yeah.
• 45:59
  And lots of people pointed lots of fingers and I know the real
• 46:02
  story and and what what actually happened.
• 46:05
  And that business was forced to shut down because of a couple of
• 46:11
  decisions that were not made by the CEO.
• 46:14
  And, and, and it's an unfortunate thing because that
• 46:17
  is a business that should exist. And what they they were
• 46:18
  essentially automating the the entire accounting stack.
• 46:21
  Yeah, which is? OK, Yeah, that's that's why I
• 46:24
  read about it because it's very kind of high profile.
• 46:26
  Yeah, you know, quote UN quote failure, but but it sounds like
• 46:29
  a lot of lessons learned. Yeah, for me, lots of personal
• 46:32
  lessons learned and, and, and not just like personal lessons
• 46:37
  in how do I, how do I approach Fords?
• 46:41
  How do I approach business? How do I think about supporting
• 46:43
  CEOs? And then personally it, it's
• 46:47
  like those moments, I don't know if you ever had a like you flip
• 46:50
  the coin, but you're like, OK, which one?
• 46:51
  Which side do I actually want it to land on heads or tails to
• 46:54
  make a decision? It was the clarifying moments on
• 46:57
  what was important to me in that moment.
• 47:00
  I want to say it like it wasn't about the money.
• 47:02
  It was about how do how do we how do we build something that
• 47:05
  is meaningful? And why are we walking away from
• 47:07
  something that we all know can be there and seeing that like,
• 47:11
  well, for some, that wasn't the actual the ultimate goal for
• 47:15
  them. So again, while it wasn't a
• 47:17
  successful business for me, it probably the most memorable
• 47:20
  experience that that I had of all of them.
• 47:24
  Are you still close with their CEO and like help?
• 47:26
  Kurt and I are. Stayed really, really close and
• 47:29
  in fact. Because it's very important in a
• 47:31
  situation like that, you want the CEO to dust off and give out
• 47:35
  and. Go.
• 47:35
  Yeah. And one of the things I said to
• 47:37
  him then and, and which was like, look, the Internet, it's
• 47:43
  my fault now, but the Internet is not going to remember in a
• 47:45
  month from now, especially with COVID happening.
• 47:47
  Like, like it doesn't matter. Just like let it go and like
• 47:51
  we'll do it again. He's doing fantastic now.
• 47:53
  He has a really great fractional CFO business and I just brought
• 47:56
  him into a company. I'm on the board and in New York
• 47:57
  and, and he's already transforming that company and
• 48:00
  he's doing fantastic. Do you want to cover the 4th?
• 48:03
  Yeah, I have to think of 1/4. Let's see.
• 48:08
  It's kind of hard because it's almost in a way I'm asking to
• 48:11
  pick the favorite children. But yeah.
• 48:12
  But I know that you really manifested a lot of love there.
• 48:15
  So we should we should say that that I'm asking you kind of an
• 48:18
  unfair question. I know that you helped a lot of
• 48:22
  people there. Yeah.
• 48:23
  And I'm just trying to get a friend.
• 48:25
  I appreciate that the ones that really, you know, pop out
• 48:28
  because you have this time to reflect on this long journey.
• 48:31
  Yeah, I appreciate that. And I would say like I'm, I'm
• 48:33
  not necessarily picking my favorites.
• 48:34
  I'm I'm trying to pick the ones where I feel like it left the
• 48:38
  footprint on me, which, yeah, you know, like I wouldn't say
• 48:41
  scale factor was my favorite, right?
• 48:44
  Not my favorite, but it left an imprint on me all right.
• 48:46
  All right, well, so let's not cover a fourth.
• 48:49
  Let's not cover a fourth because we could go on and on and on.
• 48:52
  I mean, how many, how many total companies do you think, how many
• 48:57
  total companies came through tech stars during the time where
• 48:59
  you were the CEO? So I was I was managing
• 49:02
  director. Yeah, Andrew, I, I like to.
• 49:05
  Choose Yeah, yeah, CEO of the local, yeah, local.
• 49:08
  Yeah, David hears that. He might get mad at me, but
• 49:09
  right I I invested in 104 I think through the accelerator
• 49:18
  and then there was another 31 that Jason did.
• 49:23
  OK. So a lot, a lot of companies.
• 49:24
  Yeah. And then for anybody who's
• 49:25
  listening, Tech Star, when I left, shortly after I left, they
• 49:28
  decided to pause the Austin Tech Stars.
• 49:31
  We are talking about bringing it back in a different way and I
• 49:35
  wouldn't run it again. I'm past that point in my life.
• 49:37
  All right. But we're talking the whole
• 49:41
  things happen at Techstars. They reduce their national foot
• 49:44
  or international footprint. Now they're looking to expand
• 49:46
  their national footprint again and maybe we will bring it back
• 49:50
  sometime in the next few years. OK, cool.
• 49:52
  So let's talk about what you're doing now.
• 49:55
  Tell tell me what you're up to now and you know when, When you
• 49:59
  reached out. Love conquers fear it.
• 50:02
  It really seems like you're in your soul alignment.
• 50:05
  Help us now. Yeah, I'll, I'll rewind about
• 50:08
  6:00 or so years. And I had been looking for ACEO
• 50:11
  coach for a few years and I really thought that's what would
• 50:14
  help me as A, and I'm sure it would have helped me continue to
• 50:19
  get better as a business person. And I was, I, I went through a
• 50:24
  few and I didn't really find anyone I was connecting with.
• 50:26
  And then I, I got a recommendation from someone,
• 50:29
  this woman Sarah Gates, and said, you know, she's really
• 50:31
  good and she's been a founder a couple of times and she's taken
• 50:34
  companies public and she's been, you know, CEOA bunch of times.
• 50:37
  And she, she really understands and, and I connected with her
• 50:41
  and then when and I met with her and I like, I didn't like go to
• 50:43
  her website, anything. I just took, it was from someone
• 50:45
  I trusted. I took the recommendation at
• 50:47
  face value. I connected with Sarah and now
• 50:50
  we're 6 or so years later, we still work together.
• 50:53
  Turns out Zara is not really a CEO coach.
• 50:56
  It's a little bit of what she does, but she's a life coach and
• 50:58
  she's very spiritual and she's been to seminary and she's,
• 51:00
  she's, she has studied every religion.
• 51:04
  And I mean, she's, she has, she's studied up and down.
• 51:07
  And so while her professional history is exactly what I said,
• 51:11
  she hit a moment in her life where she said this isn't what I
• 51:13
  want in a life anymore and what do I want?
• 51:15
  And so she became a life coach. So I have had a life coach for
• 51:19
  the last six years. I just didn't know it.
• 51:21
  And she has really, I would say when she has made this clear to
• 51:24
  me, like I have always been a spiritual person.
• 51:27
  I've always been on this path. And in the way that I consume
• 51:31
  things, I'm, I am more kinesthetic in my learning.
• 51:36
  So when if I open up a book to read it, I might have to read it
• 51:40
  3 times to get the message. Maybe I have some challenges
• 51:45
  with learning that I have never diagnosed.
• 51:46
  I don't think about it just that's the way I am.
• 51:48
  But I'm very kinesthetic in my learning.
• 51:51
  And so through our talking, that was my version of being
• 51:55
  kinesthetic is I would, I would hear things and I'd be able to
• 51:58
  like try them and do them and think about them in a different
• 52:01
  way. And she really helped me
• 52:04
  understand vocabulary differently and thinking about
• 52:09
  my my own thoughts and my own feelings in AI.
• 52:11
  Don't want to say in a deeper way, but helping me identify the
• 52:15
  things that I didn't have names for before.
• 52:19
  Things like like the uncomfortableness of having an
• 52:25
  interaction with someone and having a reaction to that person
• 52:29
  and knowing it actually had more to do with me than them.
• 52:32
  But not knowing how to reconcile that feeling and that feeling
• 52:35
  alone making me uncomfortable and either defensive or, or
• 52:41
  aggressive or something helping me understand like, oh, actually
• 52:45
  maybe what I'm doing is I'm looking at a mirror and I'm
• 52:47
  seeing the things in myself. And so helping me to start to be
• 52:50
  able to identify how to see the things that I had no words for,
• 52:55
  that were not the right words for.
• 52:57
  Yeah, that's always very humbling.
• 53:01
  Oh my gosh, yeah. It's.
• 53:02
  And it's also amazing because I'm like, wow, yeah.
• 53:04
  Like that thing, that trait that is so frustrating to me, that is
• 53:10
  me. Like how now do I like that
• 53:13
  about myself or not? And if I like it about myself,
• 53:15
  how do I interact with this person differently?
• 53:17
  If I don't like that about myself, how do I interact with
• 53:19
  myself differently? You know, one of one of the, I
• 53:23
  can't remember the name of this book right now because I haven't
• 53:26
  read it in a long time. This is about a couple of years
• 53:28
  ago, but it taught me this principle of Buddhism.
• 53:34
  And it's that every night when you go to sleep and you have
• 53:39
  your dreams and you wake up, you wake up born again.
• 53:44
  And you can choose what you want to take with you from the past
• 53:48
  and say, I'm going to now be this version of Brent with all
• 53:54
  these things that I liked. And you can choose what you want
• 53:57
  to leave behind. And it's a beautiful way to
• 54:00
  think about how to live. And it's, and it's
• 54:03
  counterintuitive because the counter intuitive aspect of that
• 54:07
  is we have a very strong consistency bias as we come from
• 54:12
  a long, long history of scarcity.
• 54:15
  You know, one of the ways I've started frame this recently is
• 54:19
  that, you know, Homo sapiens have been around for around
• 54:22
  300,000 years. 99.9% of that time we have not had
• 54:27
  electricity. So we're already in the point 1%
• 54:30
  of all sapiens ever to live because we we live with the
• 54:35
  abundance we have now through electricity.
• 54:38
  And so that means that our amygdala is like very well
• 54:42
  developed. And during that time of immense
• 54:45
  scarcity, there were so many times where we had to act with
• 54:50
  extreme consistency. But to act with extreme
• 54:54
  consistency means it can be a real prison.
• 54:58
  Like, for example, let's say you're really wronged as a child
• 55:02
  and you're carrying around this anger because of it.
• 55:06
  Like, you know, I could be, I could, I could be that person,
• 55:09
  right? I could be like, I want to get
• 55:10
  back at all those people that, you know, were picking on me as
• 55:13
  a kid. And anger is very consuming.
• 55:17
  Like, you know, it'll make you it'll, it's like a fire that
• 55:20
  will consume you. Or you can just release it, you
• 55:24
  know, and, and, and one book which helped me a lot on that is
• 55:27
  called the untethered Soul by yeah, amazing book.
• 55:31
  I'm transformative. Love that one too, because you
• 55:34
  can feel it and then just release it.
• 55:37
  And that Buddhist principle is such a light way to live because
• 55:41
  you don't have to take your anger from the past and you
• 55:44
  don't have to take your bad habits from the past.
• 55:47
  You can just live free, you know?
• 55:49
  Yeah. So I know you've done a lot of
• 55:51
  this, this inner work. I mean, have psychedelics been a
• 55:54
  tool for you too? Yeah, So I, I, I played around
• 56:00
  with psychedelics when I was young, young, in my early 20s.
• 56:03
  And I do actually reflecting back, it had some it had some
• 56:08
  impacts on me that I'm recognizing now, but I didn't do
• 56:11
  it for that reason, right? In fact, and at the time I was
• 56:14
  like, this is like this was fun, but I don't need to unlock
• 56:17
  anything here, like right, go on and then.
• 56:20
  Very different, by the way, if you do it and you're not wearing
• 56:23
  a mask and you're not listening to music where you have an inner
• 56:26
  journey, it's if it's more of an external journey, that's a
• 56:28
  totally different modality. Totally.
• 56:31
  Totally. Yeah.
• 56:33
  And then and then in the more recent, like I'd say 3 or 4
• 56:37
  years, probably probably three years and reading a little bit
• 56:43
  and hearing some, some stories and thinking about it
• 56:46
  differently, which was it's actually can be a really useful
• 56:50
  tool. And then maybe there's even a
• 56:52
  better word than tool. I, I did, I did a lot of, I did
• 56:56
  and continue to do a lot of experimenting.
• 56:58
  And it's usually self-guided experimentation and it's always
• 57:02
  been self-guided actually. And maybe at some point that
• 57:05
  will change, but and I'll try something different.
• 57:08
  But I've, I've used it as a way at first what I did was say,
• 57:14
  what is, what is this like? How, how will I respond to this
• 57:18
  differently if I approach it differently?
• 57:21
  And some of that differently was just dose size.
• 57:23
  When you're when, when I was young, the idea was take as much
• 57:26
  as you humanly can because you're supposed to be cool and
• 57:29
  tough. And as as an adult, you realize,
• 57:31
  no, actually there's like a, a right sized amount that will
• 57:34
  help you find the channels and be able to understand the
• 57:40
  channels. Maybe it's a way that that it
• 57:42
  hits for me. So finding what that was and a
• 57:47
  cadence through a process when I was working on things.
• 57:50
  And sometimes those things are spiritual or emotional, and
• 57:54
  sometimes those things are physical.
• 57:56
  And I've also used them for my guitar playing and say I, I,
• 57:59
  I'm, I'm on a path to learn something I've never learned
• 58:02
  before. And I know that it's been proven
• 58:05
  that psychedelics, it rewires your pathways.
• 58:07
  And so I've used it for lots of things.
• 58:09
  And for me, like guitar is a form of emotional expression.
• 58:13
  So they do. There really isn't very much a
• 58:15
  tie in there, but particularly around.
• 58:20
  And what I'll share is like when I was leaving Tech stars, I was
• 58:25
  in a different mental state than I have been in in the last
• 58:28
  couple of years for lots and lots of reasons.
• 58:30
  I was really, really tired. I was really worn thin and I
• 58:35
  just wasn't in the greatest mental state.
• 58:37
  And that was around the time and, and as I started to come
• 58:40
  out of that. So I won't say that I didn't
• 58:41
  necessarily use psychedelics to come out of that mental state.
• 58:45
  As I was coming out and thinking about the areas where I felt
• 58:49
  this was an area where I want to lean into, I would, I would do
• 58:51
  that. And so I would basic, I would go
• 58:55
  on like big thinking journeys and they would be fueled by some
• 59:00
  a little bit of micro dosing and, and the, and the pattern
• 59:03
  would sometimes it would, it would almost never be every day,
• 59:05
  but it'd be like every other day for a week and then step back
• 59:08
  for a while. In three or. 4 weeks and every
• 59:10
  other day for we can step back for a while and I watched the
• 59:13
  patterns. I, I think, you know, some of it
• 59:15
  might just be you do something enough and the patterns change.
• 59:19
  But like the, the, the note for me that something different was
• 59:22
  going on is that I felt different and I feel different.
• 59:24
  I approach life completely differently now.
• 59:27
  At least I feel like I do that a lot of the, the anger that I
• 59:30
  didn't even know I had that was fueling things has been mostly
• 59:34
  released, Probably not all, but mostly released.
• 59:36
  And it was released because I was conscious that here is I, my
• 59:41
  motivation is being driven by X anger or fear.
• 59:45
  I want my motivation to be joy. I want my motivation to be
• 59:48
  excitement of what the future could be.
• 59:51
  And I feel that now as I approach things like the
• 59:54
  surgery, I'm happy. Next week, I'm actually kind of
• 59:56
  excited. Like what a cool thing that I'm
• 59:58
  going to have a drill in my head and then I'm going to come out
• 1:00:01
  of that a different person. And that is really cool.
• 1:00:03
  And how neat is it that I get to experience that in this life.
• 1:00:07
  I don't know that I could have approached that four years ago,
• 1:00:09
  and I do. It could be some of that to
• 1:00:10
  psychedelics. Yeah, yeah, cool.
• 1:00:12
  Yeah. And and in terms of your
• 1:00:15
  understanding about both yourself and it sounds like,
• 1:00:20
  sounds like the way I would summarize that is that it's been
• 1:00:24
  both a creativity enhancer but also AD programmer.
• 1:00:30
  Is that fair to say? I would.
• 1:00:31
  I would say AD and I would say AD and a deprogrammer and a
• 1:00:36
  programmer versus a creativity enhancer.
• 1:00:38
  I don't think it enhances my creativity.
• 1:00:40
  Yeah. I what like when I'm thinking
• 1:00:42
  about it, I'm actually thinking of like I use it for technical
• 1:00:44
  things. Like I want to learn how to play
• 1:00:47
  something with my fingers that I've never done before and it's
• 1:00:50
  really, really hard. Can I help accelerate the
• 1:00:53
  pattern, the literally the technicalness of it?
• 1:00:55
  But I would, I don't, I don't think I've ever actually had a
• 1:00:59
  problem with the creative side. I mean, sometimes you find
• 1:01:01
  yourself dry, but I, I don't know that any and maybe it has,
• 1:01:06
  but I don't think it's ever impacted my creativity.
• 1:01:08
  I I find my actually my most creative moments are when I'm
• 1:01:10
  like dead sober and in the middle of doing something else
• 1:01:16
  in the most inopportune times. Yeah, Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
• 1:01:19
  yeah. Cool.
• 1:01:21
  And in in terms of your understanding of this reality
• 1:01:25
  we're in, what did it teach you about that?
• 1:01:28
  So I think this reality that we're in is probably, you know,
• 1:01:34
  an infinite number of realities happening simultaneously and
• 1:01:37
  that we have a choice of which one we want to be in at any
• 1:01:40
  given time and an unconscious choice, not a conscious choice.
• 1:01:46
  And yes, you can think, oh, I don't want to be in this moment
• 1:01:50
  right now. Well, you're in this moment that
• 1:01:52
  you're there consciously. But like subconsciously we we
• 1:01:55
  can be in anyone at any given time and using them can help
• 1:01:59
  guide us to the realities that we hope to to live and the
• 1:02:04
  perspectives that we hope to have.
• 1:02:07
  This is this is getting very quantum physics very quickly.
• 1:02:09
  And I've never studied quantum physics, by the way.
• 1:02:11
  But, but, but, but going somewhere you're, I'm sure
• 1:02:14
  you're familiar, maybe you're familiar with retro causality.
• 1:02:17
  Yeah, I'm fascinated by retro causality.
• 1:02:20
  I have a business that's named retro cause for that exact
• 1:02:23
  reason. And I I love the idea that we
• 1:02:27
  can think something that is in the future and and now shape the
• 1:02:32
  past and the present by getting there.
• 1:02:34
  It's very, very Doctor Joe Dispenser.
• 1:02:37
  Yeah, yeah. So I, I, I mean, I, I believe
• 1:02:40
  that like, I don't, I, I, I, I say that like the word, like, I
• 1:02:45
  don't know, I, I don't have the right language to say it with
• 1:02:48
  enough inflection that I really, really believe that to be true.
• 1:02:52
  Which makes this moment, this reality that we're in, both
• 1:02:58
  really, really fun and exciting and unimportant at the same
• 1:03:00
  time. Yeah, I mean, the the way that I
• 1:03:03
  would summarize all the books I've read on quantum physics and
• 1:03:07
  Doctor Joe Dispenza's work, you know, where he teaches you how
• 1:03:11
  to meditate and the workshops he does where he calls God the
• 1:03:16
  great intelligence of the quantum field essentially is a
• 1:03:20
  way to distill quantum physics is it's all a probability wave
• 1:03:23
  and we manifest the future that we want.
• 1:03:26
  That's a that's a very good way to disturb.
• 1:03:28
  And that, you know, Mark Gobert would say we only understand
• 1:03:32
  what 4% of the universe is made of.
• 1:03:34
  We call that matter 96% we call dark energy and dark matter.
• 1:03:39
  And the more we understand about quantum physics, the weirder it
• 1:03:43
  gets. And my personal thesis on
• 1:03:48
  consciousness being fundamental is it exists in the quantum
• 1:03:52
  realm and that somehow we're plugging into that quantum
• 1:03:55
  realm. And, you know, we're all, if you
• 1:03:59
  go to, you know, the quantum level, everything is light and
• 1:04:03
  energy, you know, this is mostly empty space, like we're mostly
• 1:04:08
  empty space, you know, But yet here we are, you know,
• 1:04:11
  constantly with our cells rebuilding, our brain cells
• 1:04:14
  rebuilding. But there's still this sense of
• 1:04:17
  self and. What energy cannot be created or
• 1:04:20
  nor destroyed? Exactly right, but this body
• 1:04:23
  won't exist at some point. That's right.
• 1:04:25
  That's right. And so so I deeply believe in re
• 1:04:28
  Carnation at this point. I mean, I would say that I
• 1:04:31
  actually, you know, to the greatest extent that I could
• 1:04:34
  know that reincarnation is real. I believe it's real.
• 1:04:37
  Yeah. I've seen it in Journeys as
• 1:04:39
  well, and I've read and I've seen it in other people's
• 1:04:43
  journeys. I mean, I've seen them actually
• 1:04:45
  relive past lives, and I know that that's extremely real, and
• 1:04:49
  it actually helps me understand that better.
• 1:04:51
  There is there's a book that I read that and you may have read
• 1:04:53
  called, I think it's called The Surrender Experiment.
• 1:04:56
  I have. I haven't read it, but that that
• 1:04:59
  is Michael Singer as well. I own it, but this is 1 I
• 1:05:04
  haven't yet read, but it has been mentioned to me many times,
• 1:05:07
  so this is probably the time where I should actually read it.
• 1:05:09
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. I like told me about it because
• 1:05:12
  I love Michael Singer I. Yeah, I would.
• 1:05:14
  So I actually might be thinking of a different book.
• 1:05:17
  It might not be the Michael Singer book.
• 1:05:18
  I might then I'm not remembering the name of, but the book that
• 1:05:21
  I'm thinking of is. It talks about it's it's not the
• 1:05:25
  sort of experiment. I'll get the name for you and
• 1:05:26
  tell you, but it's a it's a psychiatrist who didn't believe
• 1:05:31
  in past lives or. Other many lives, so many
• 1:05:34
  masters. Thank you.
• 1:05:36
  That's that's that's it. I've covered it.
• 1:05:38
  I've covered. It several times on this
• 1:05:40
  podcast. It's Doctor Brian Weiss.
• 1:05:42
  Yes, that's right. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:05:45
  Well, go ahead. Tell us.
• 1:05:46
  Oh, yeah, just the. Yeah.
• 1:05:47
  So you know he. I've covered it, but they're not
• 1:05:49
  going to. Remember it right.
• 1:05:49
  So, you know, he, the psychiatrist did not believe in
• 1:05:52
  any of this and had an interesting patient and, and,
• 1:05:56
  and started to do hypnosis and he was a hypnotist and he
• 1:05:58
  started to do hypnotic therapy with this patient.
• 1:06:02
  And the patient would start doing things like speaking
• 1:06:05
  languages that they had never had any experience with and
• 1:06:08
  talking about places that they had never been.
• 1:06:11
  And the conclusion of the of the psychiatrist in the book is that
• 1:06:15
  actually, and there were experiences where sometimes the
• 1:06:20
  in through hypnosis, the woman would come as a man or a child
• 1:06:24
  or would would come as something from a past experience.
• 1:06:29
  And then sometimes there would be these other beings that were.
• 1:06:34
  More in between. The the in between, Exactly.
• 1:06:37
  It's that in between. So what's interesting to me that
• 1:06:40
  I can't wait to be in that in between.
• 1:06:41
  I hope. Yeah, Yeah.
• 1:06:42
  Fortunate enough to end up there one day.
• 1:06:44
  You will. We'll all end up I, I think so.
• 1:06:46
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:06:47
  Our souls. Yeah.
• 1:06:48
  Have have this knowledge or right?
• 1:06:50
  So, yeah, and, and, and just him coming to that conclusion and
• 1:06:55
  reading this and like, you know, taking the face value that he
• 1:06:57
  truly didn't believe this beforehand.
• 1:06:58
  And he was convinced through this process was I would say for
• 1:07:03
  me, I would, I think in a lot of ways it was kind of like what I
• 1:07:06
  was thinking about my coach. Like these are things that I
• 1:07:08
  didn't know how to articulate, that I didn't, that I believed,
• 1:07:12
  but I didn't know how to formulate compound thoughts
• 1:07:14
  around yet. And then I, I see it come to
• 1:07:16
  life and I'm like, this is the thing that I have this, this
• 1:07:19
  feeling that I have, Which again, sort of leads back to
• 1:07:21
  like, why am I here? To help other people?
• 1:07:23
  Be great. Yeah.
• 1:07:25
  Well, I have I have a a really good book suggestion for you.
• 1:07:28
  So if you love Many Lives and Many Masters by Brian Weiss, you
• 1:07:34
  will absolutely love Journey of Souls by Michael Newton because
• 1:07:39
  Many Lives and Many Masters is a case study of one individual.
• 1:07:43
  Journey of Souls is the meta case study of over 40
• 1:07:49
  individuals where he's looking for the commonality in the
• 1:07:53
  reincarnation process to explain it as best as he can.
• 1:07:58
  And it's fascinating. It's really fascinating.
• 1:08:02
  It's it's one of the most fascinating.
• 1:08:04
  Many, many journeys. It's called a journey of Souls.
• 1:08:07
  Journey of Souls. By Doctor Michael Newton and you
• 1:08:10
  know, it was one of those books that was recommended to me early
• 1:08:13
  on and what I'm calling my soul question, which really started
• 1:08:16
  last year in December in Kerala, India.
• 1:08:20
  I it started in in, in part reading or, or watching the
• 1:08:24
  documentary inner worlds, outer worlds, which if you haven't
• 1:08:27
  seen, I haven't seen, that's a fantastic one.
• 1:08:29
  You can just get it for free on YouTube.
• 1:08:31
  Inner worlds, outer worlds, and it really ties together science
• 1:08:35
  and spirituality in one one mechanism in such a beautiful
• 1:08:40
  way. Really great cinema photography,
• 1:08:43
  but it's essentially, you know, journey of souls.
• 1:08:46
  I I had kind of put up there as like, maybe this is this is one
• 1:08:50
  I'll read later. And I was on a Zoom with the CEO
• 1:08:55
  of a couple of thousand person company that he had taken
• 1:09:00
  public. And he's like, have you ever a
• 1:09:04
  journey of souls? And I knew I felt the energy in
• 1:09:07
  my body shift and just lit up. And I said, I haven't.
• 1:09:12
  But you're now the 4th person to recommend it to me.
• 1:09:14
  And I know now with the level of reading I've done, like giving
• 1:09:18
  myself the foundation that now is the right time because I
• 1:09:21
  could just feel it like, you know, I'm sure you can feel that
• 1:09:24
  energy in your body where, you know, either you get the
• 1:09:27
  goosebumps or you just light up and you know that.
• 1:09:30
  OK, now it's the time. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:09:33
  But but it'll, you'll love that one.
• 1:09:35
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:09:35
  It's a fan. I had that experience with a
• 1:09:37
  book that you may have read and if you haven't I I can highly
• 1:09:40
  recommend it called No Boundary With by Ken Wilber.
• 1:09:43
  I I like Ken, Ken Wilber. I haven't read that book.
• 1:09:46
  Yeah, I have. I've read, I've dabbled another
• 1:09:48
  Ken Wilber, and I have a harder time getting through it.
• 1:09:50
  And this one, I, I read it, closed the cover and immediately
• 1:09:54
  reread it. And I'm about to, that was a
• 1:09:57
  year and a half ago and I'm about to reread it again.
• 1:09:59
  It's the one that touches me like that.
• 1:10:00
  But it was the same experience where like it had been sitting
• 1:10:02
  on my desk. It was actually gifted to me by
• 1:10:05
  my coach and I and I was like, she never does this and it's a
• 1:10:09
  big book. And she, she knows I'm a
• 1:10:12
  kinesthetic learner. I'm sitting on my desk like,
• 1:10:14
  someday I'm going to crack it. Someday I'm going to crack it.
• 1:10:16
  And then, like, in a very short amount of time, three other
• 1:10:18
  people recommended it to me. I was like, all right, it's,
• 1:10:20
  it's. Time.
• 1:10:21
  Yeah, yeah, cool. What did what did you learn from
• 1:10:24
  it? What are I think kind of
• 1:10:26
  summarize? It it's it's it's, I would say
• 1:10:29
  it encompasses all of what we're talking about.
• 1:10:32
  I mean, early on he, I'm going to get the, the levels wrong,
• 1:10:37
  but he kind of just describes about 3 levels and descending
• 1:10:39
  into the levels. And the dissension is not in is,
• 1:10:42
  you know, I, my mind goes dissension is not good, maybe
• 1:10:44
  because business is up and to the right, but the dissension is
• 1:10:47
  good, which is basically you're freeing yourself from, from
• 1:10:50
  other things. And it talks and it's, it's
• 1:10:52
  almost like a, sort of like a playbook in a way of how to
• 1:10:56
  descend yourself where you can let go.
• 1:10:59
  And this is to me, the biggest thing in the book.
• 1:11:01
  How do you let go of everything so that there are no boundaries
• 1:11:05
  in, in the life that you live or that you're not living?
• 1:11:10
  And the first time I read it, I, I took it and read it more
• 1:11:16
  literally. And it is, I think it was was
• 1:11:19
  probably like four or five months out of tech stars when I
• 1:11:23
  read it much more literally, which was how do I come to a
• 1:11:29
  situation where where there seemingly is a boundary and it's
• 1:11:32
  probably a mental boundary, not a physical boundary.
• 1:11:35
  And how do I not breakthrough the boundary, but see that the
• 1:11:39
  boundary never existed to begin with.
• 1:11:42
  And that there is something that in my life that created the
• 1:11:46
  ability for there to be a boundary to begin with.
• 1:11:50
  And then they think the second time I read it through, it had
• 1:11:53
  me on a much deeper spiritual level, which was getting an
• 1:11:58
  understanding of all of the things inside me that have
• 1:12:03
  formed or not formed that came from all of the different places
• 1:12:09
  I've ever been. And by that I don't mean on this
• 1:12:11
  in this this particular 52 year of existence, but all of the
• 1:12:15
  existences that I've ever had and how they're all sort of
• 1:12:19
  inside and how they've created this idea of what life is here
• 1:12:24
  in this moment and how to breakthrough of that.
• 1:12:27
  Very cool All right, cool. I'll dive into that.
• 1:12:31
  So how do you how do you think about this moment?
• 1:12:32
  I mean, you've been a long time technologist and entrepreneur.
• 1:12:36
  You've coached so many entrepreneurs.
• 1:12:38
  You know, the, the reason I started this is again to hope
• 1:12:42
  that I can help humanity have this heart shift that if we
• 1:12:46
  continue to play this 0 sum fear based scarcity mindset, which is
• 1:12:51
  a it's a tall order. I'm, I'm, I'm basically saying
• 1:12:54
  we have to transcend the amygdala.
• 1:12:56
  But technology is a great forcing function.
• 1:13:00
  We are already living with abundance today that would be
• 1:13:03
  unimaginable 100 years ago, 200 years ago, 1000 years ago.
• 1:13:07
  I mean, we would appear like gods to people 1000 years ago.
• 1:13:10
  They would be like, I don't understand.
• 1:13:12
  There's a this thing called the grocery store that you go to and
• 1:13:15
  they have like, you know, dozens of different types of
• 1:13:18
  blueberries. You can choose from.
• 1:13:20
  Like what is even a blueberry? And so, so, but you know, we're
• 1:13:25
  in this moment where we're in the exponential of exponential
• 1:13:28
  curves. And the way I look at this
• 1:13:31
  moment and the message I received is that this is God's
• 1:13:35
  final exam for humanity. It's God working through us to
• 1:13:40
  force us to choose, to allow love to conquer fear.
• 1:13:45
  God loves us all and wants us to make it to this age of abundance
• 1:13:52
  for everyone and realize that we're 99.9% genetically the same
• 1:13:57
  all over the world and that we can transcend this moment.
• 1:14:03
  But it's one of those moments where it's with great power
• 1:14:06
  comes great responsibility. And I am 95% certain that we
• 1:14:11
  make it. And I've laid that out on this
• 1:14:14
  podcast many times that I, I really think we're going to make
• 1:14:17
  it. I really think when push comes
• 1:14:19
  to shove, we will make the right decision.
• 1:14:21
  We'll choose that future of abundance for all versus, you
• 1:14:25
  know, oppression, destruction, you know, all, all the, all the
• 1:14:29
  horrible things that we've done in the past.
• 1:14:33
  But the reality is we mostly practice acts of beauty and love
• 1:14:36
  everyday. That is the actual reality.
• 1:14:39
  And we all come from a world of light and love.
• 1:14:42
  Like that's where our souls are. So how do you, how do you think
• 1:14:47
  about this moment? Like what what do you, what is
• 1:14:49
  your assessment on whether or not we make it to this age
• 1:14:53
  versus versus, you know, destroy ourselves?
• 1:14:55
  Yeah, I think we will make it. I do.
• 1:15:02
  And, and I, I don't know that, that it will be in the way that
• 1:15:06
  we might be able to conceive it now, because I think there is so
• 1:15:10
  much changing and I think kind of going to a lot of other
• 1:15:14
  conversations like we can only conceive of so much.
• 1:15:18
  So I, I, you know, if we, if I look out, you know, 50 years or
• 1:15:21
  500 years, I think there'll be a version of us that exists, but I
• 1:15:29
  don't know what it will look like.
• 1:15:30
  And that I I don't. Even, Oh my gosh, 500 years now
• 1:15:33
  you're way beyond my Baker. But but 500 years, it's like, I
• 1:15:37
  mean, you know, just 50 years. Yeah, yeah, with how
• 1:15:40
  exponential? And this is this is sort of like
• 1:15:44
  this is on my mind every single day.
• 1:15:45
  And it was again, something that my coach said to me.
• 1:15:48
  And you know, this, it's one of the reasons why I got this
• 1:15:52
  butterfly tattoo is that I think every one of us has a
• 1:15:57
  responsibility to to just be kind and show an act of love to
• 1:16:02
  a random person every day. And I not perfect, but I try
• 1:16:05
  really, really hard to do both of those things to be kind to
• 1:16:08
  everyone and to do one kind thing or an act of love for a
• 1:16:12
  random person that doesn't know who I am.
• 1:16:14
  They may never know who I am. They may not even know it was
• 1:16:16
  from me every single day. And I think that if if doesn't
• 1:16:20
  even have to be everybody, but if I'll start with this, by me
• 1:16:24
  doing that, I have immediately changed the world because that
• 1:16:28
  one person has now exerienced something they wouldn't have
• 1:16:30
  experienced. You know what they do with that
• 1:16:32
  could be positive change or negative change.
• 1:16:34
  But I've now I have enough change.
• 1:16:36
  If enough people can start to just do that, just show up and
• 1:16:41
  not be angry and show love and show love in places they didn't
• 1:16:44
  before, I do think we will have a ripple.
• 1:16:47
  We have the potential for there to be a ripple effect that will
• 1:16:50
  that will dominate the the hate and anger that we are.
• 1:16:54
  Well, if 100% of humanity did that, there would be no
• 1:16:57
  problems. Zero.
• 1:16:58
  I mean, we would make it with 100% certainty.
• 1:17:01
  And you know, one of the greatest books I read recently
• 1:17:05
  on that was John Mackey, the founder of Whole Foods.
• 1:17:07
  Recommended Love is Letting Go of Fear, which is by Jerry
• 1:17:12
  Jompalski. Amazing, amazing book.
• 1:17:14
  Highly, highly recommended. It's a, it's a derivative of
• 1:17:17
  this book called A Course in Miracles, and it's like a
• 1:17:20
  distillation of it. And it takes you through
• 1:17:24
  exercises to go through every day.
• 1:17:26
  Like, for example, let's say that you walk into a
• 1:17:30
  supermarket, since we're talking about supermarkets earlier and
• 1:17:33
  the person behind the counter is just super rude to you right
• 1:17:37
  now. The the maybe the natural
• 1:17:40
  reaction in the moment would be to act back with rudeness
• 1:17:43
  because you'd be like so offended and maybe go home and
• 1:17:46
  tell your wife like, I can't believe you know how breathe at
• 1:17:48
  the grocery store, etcetera. Another reaction is to react
• 1:17:53
  with with a lot of empathy and really think about like, wow,
• 1:17:57
  did their mother just pass away or like what's going on here?
• 1:17:59
  Maybe their boss was just super mean to them.
• 1:18:01
  Maybe the customer right before and just ask them, not in a in a
• 1:18:07
  condescending way, but like in a really loving way, like, hey,
• 1:18:10
  you know, is everything OK? Like what's going on?
• 1:18:13
  And you might find find a completely different reaction
• 1:18:17
  where they're like, oh man, I'm so sorry.
• 1:18:19
  Like I'm just having a horrible time.
• 1:18:21
  And then you're now you're having a whole different
• 1:18:23
  conversation with them. And that conversation could
• 1:18:27
  literally transform not just that day for them and all the
• 1:18:31
  people are going to interact with, but could transform their
• 1:18:34
  entire career. You know, it could be the
• 1:18:36
  conversation they've been waiting for to have with.
• 1:18:40
  People yeah, I believe that's so, so much wholeheartedly yeah.
• 1:18:45
  And I don't know that it has to be I don't I hope it doesn't
• 1:18:48
  have to be 100% because I don't know about that's that's will
• 1:18:50
  happen but a large percentage of if a large percentage of people
• 1:18:55
  stop being afraid yeah stop being afraid of of loving yeah
• 1:19:00
  yeah. Well, the way.
• 1:19:01
  I think about this moment is that once we're able to see this
• 1:19:05
  abundance for everyone through this acceleration of technology,
• 1:19:10
  that it's a forcing function to force us to be like, wait, hold
• 1:19:14
  on, now we have so much abundance.
• 1:19:15
  Like what are we really going to fight about?
• 1:19:17
  You know, like if you think about the great wars, they have
• 1:19:21
  tended to be about land and conquering and, you know, trying
• 1:19:25
  to trying to oppress. But if, if, if technology
• 1:19:29
  delivers this unprecedented abundance, then why choose to
• 1:19:33
  fight? You know, do you think, do you
• 1:19:36
  think about that? I, yeah, I do what I'm not what
• 1:19:44
  I'm unsure of and I want to, I, I try to find optimism for is
• 1:19:52
  and it goes to something you said earlier, like we've been
• 1:19:55
  programmed for, you know, 9099% of our existence.
• 1:20:02
  You know, I think about how hard it is to deprogram myself from
• 1:20:07
  habits that I formed as a child. How so maybe the way that I
• 1:20:13
  think about this is like, what are the, what are the ways in
• 1:20:17
  which the world people with the deepest amount of fear get
• 1:20:24
  thrown for a loop in a positive way, in the best way possible so
• 1:20:30
  that they can look at the world differently.
• 1:20:33
  But I, I in the same breath, I worry sometimes, as much as I
• 1:20:39
  hate to do that, that some of these habits are just so deep
• 1:20:44
  that that the everyone is ready, especially right now, like so
• 1:20:50
  ready to just be thrown on their heels and put up their fists and
• 1:20:54
  or verbal fists or whatever it is because everyone is feeling
• 1:20:58
  like their personal whatever is being attacked.
• 1:21:01
  I'm really that that part of it scares me.
• 1:21:03
  And I, I, I, and it's part of why it's a big reason why I try
• 1:21:07
  not to do that. I mean, I'm certainly not
• 1:21:09
  perfect in that, but I try really hard because so many
• 1:21:12
  people are showing up that way. To your examples as such, a
• 1:21:14
  great one is whenever I encounter, and I would say
• 1:21:18
  whenever I encounter someone like that, I try never to match
• 1:21:22
  that energy. This is a personal thing, right?
• 1:21:23
  I try to not match that energy. Whether I would go so far as to
• 1:21:26
  say, hey, are you OK? Maybe in a moment I would or
• 1:21:29
  maybe even I wouldn't. But what I won't do is match the
• 1:21:31
  anger or the frustration or the whatever it might be.
• 1:21:35
  And you probably won't hold on to that.
• 1:21:37
  And I wouldn't hold on, right? I went on to leave.
• 1:21:39
  That energy is gone. And I, I also do believe that.
• 1:21:45
  And I, I just recently I've had some examples of this that like
• 1:21:49
  punch me in the face that this is true, that the energy we
• 1:21:53
  bring to a situation is felt by everyone around us.
• 1:21:56
  So if I can bring really great energy into a situation, I'm
• 1:22:00
  automatically shifting the energy in the room, right?
• 1:22:02
  Right. If there, if the energy is here
• 1:22:04
  and here, like it's here instead of here and here now it's still
• 1:22:07
  down here, right? And just give you like a weird
• 1:22:10
  experience. But like I had this like little
• 1:22:12
  like it was right after I found out about the surgery, like had
• 1:22:14
  a couple days where I was just like, I just, I felt icky.
• 1:22:16
  Like, I mean, I was like, it took me a little while and this
• 1:22:19
  is net had never happened to me before and it happened to me and
• 1:22:22
  then immediately stopped. Happened to me, which is I like
• 1:22:25
  2 times in a row a day apart. I saw a dog and I would kneel
• 1:22:29
  down to pet the dog. And I like, I'm not like I
• 1:22:32
  understand how you're supposed to like approach a dog the first
• 1:22:35
  time you want to get on their level.
• 1:22:36
  You don't want to threaten them. Like I always close fist down
• 1:22:38
  low so they can't bite. And two times I had dogs step
• 1:22:42
  away from me and I'm like, that doesn't happen to me.
• 1:22:45
  And one of those dogs I encountered like a couple of
• 1:22:48
  days later when I was feeling back to myself and I did the
• 1:22:50
  exact same thing. It came and jumped right on me.
• 1:22:53
  And it was just, it was just like, so that taking that
• 1:22:56
  concept and saying, OK, how can I bring, how can I bring energy,
• 1:23:00
  good energy everywhere I go, great energy wherever I go.
• 1:23:02
  How can, how can that butterfly effect help you know anyone else
• 1:23:08
  that I encounter to bring a similar type of raised energy to
• 1:23:11
  wherever they are. So hopefully what we'll start to
• 1:23:14
  get is, is that. So outside of your individual
• 1:23:19
  actions, which I love, this is a this was one of Bayern Reese's
• 1:23:23
  main points in episode 12 of the podcast.
• 1:23:25
  He actually ends his book We Are a Gora with this, that if you
• 1:23:29
  just practice everyday acts of kindness, that is all that is
• 1:23:33
  required for us to make it. What are you doing in terms of
• 1:23:37
  your career now to try to make sure we make it?
• 1:23:41
  Yeah, There's one thing that I am explicitly doing and then
• 1:23:46
  there's another thing that I continue to circle around that I
• 1:23:49
  have a feeling I will end up also doing.
• 1:23:52
  The thing that I'm explicitly doing is this is how I coach.
• 1:23:54
  I'm a CEO coach. I work with a handful of CE OS.
• 1:23:57
  I think I've in total later 9 right now and they're coming to
• 1:24:03
  me for help in how to be a better leader and how to evolve
• 1:24:07
  along as their business evolves. And this is the approach I'm
• 1:24:11
  bringing to them. And again, thinking about, you
• 1:24:14
  know, maybe this is not answering your question exactly,
• 1:24:17
  but like the butterfly effect, I'm having impact on one who's
• 1:24:20
  now having an impact on hundreds or thousands of people, who's
• 1:24:25
  having an impact on 10s of thousands of people, so.
• 1:24:29
  I think that's beautiful, Yeah. And what, what, what area you're
• 1:24:34
  focused on? You focused on startups, you
• 1:24:37
  focused on bigger companies. What?
• 1:24:38
  What is? Yeah, I how do you find?
• 1:24:40
  How do you find the people? Yeah, it's, it's been entirely
• 1:24:43
  referral based to this point, which I feel really fortunate
• 1:24:46
  about. I typically work with first and
• 1:24:48
  second time founders who are in the Series A to Series C range
• 1:24:51
  and I I love the early stage stuff.
• 1:24:54
  I also did it for a really long time and and I'm having some fun
• 1:24:58
  with a little. And you're not joining their
• 1:25:00
  board, you're just their coach, right?
• 1:25:02
  A couple of times I have, sometimes I do, but not
• 1:25:05
  typically. Yeah, yeah, Yeah.
• 1:25:08
  I, I mean, you know, Deborah and I are investors in 149 Startups
• 1:25:11
  now. It's kind of crazy.
• 1:25:12
  We've been doing that for 15 years and one of the things I
• 1:25:16
  love not being on their board is because I'm only on one board of
• 1:25:20
  directors outside of a nonprofit that I Co founded, is that I can
• 1:25:26
  just kick back with them and they can tell me anything
• 1:25:30
  because I'm not responsible for their comp.
• 1:25:32
  I can't fire them and they can tell me like here's stuff going
• 1:25:36
  on the board that's driving me crazy or here's a big
• 1:25:39
  opportunity. I don't know if I should bring
• 1:25:42
  it to the board. You're you're nailing exactly
• 1:25:44
  why I love the CEO coaching work that I do because I am the
• 1:25:48
  person they come to first before their Co founder, before they're
• 1:25:50
  board members for everything. We talk about anything and
• 1:25:53
  everything and nothing's off the plate because they're having
• 1:25:56
  problems with a, with a child or with their spouse or with their,
• 1:25:59
  you know, they're sad because they're, you know, parent just
• 1:26:03
  passed away. This all impacts the business.
• 1:26:06
  And it's like, how do, how do I, how do I show up when I'm
• 1:26:08
  grieving? How do I show up when I'm angry?
• 1:26:10
  How do I, how do I do these things?
• 1:26:11
  And so they do come to me with all of that.
• 1:26:13
  And it's, it's exactly for the reason you say.
• 1:26:16
  It's why, you know, it's, we talked about this a little bit
• 1:26:19
  before, but when I thought about what do I want to do next?
• 1:26:21
  I wanted to do all the things that I love and try to do a few
• 1:26:24
  of the things I don't love this. That's the thing that I love.
• 1:26:26
  Yeah, Yeah, that's cool. Well, that's a great service to
• 1:26:30
  people and some of the most amazing conversations about
• 1:26:33
  startups have happened in this home, all in the balcony.
• 1:26:36
  We're we're talking about something that is really a huge
• 1:26:40
  challenge that could absolutely take the business.
• 1:26:44
  And sometimes it's, it's just a huge opportunity, you know, an
• 1:26:48
  opportunity to sell the company, an opportunity to acquire
• 1:26:51
  another company, an opportunity to really step on the gas and
• 1:26:57
  and, you know, end up raising a lot of money.
• 1:26:59
  Yeah. The other thing I was going to
• 1:27:00
  say about that is I'm, I'm on about 1/2 a dozen boards now and
• 1:27:04
  I actually really, really love the board work and it's
• 1:27:06
  different. One of the things that I love
• 1:27:09
  about the board work is I'm always the independent and I
• 1:27:13
  have a lot of experience as an operator.
• 1:27:15
  I have a lot of experience as an early stage investor.
• 1:27:18
  And I bring this perspective of, you know, what's what's best for
• 1:27:22
  everybody, which is really the ultimately the job of the board
• 1:27:24
  of all the board members. But it's, you know, investor
• 1:27:27
  board members are inherently conflicted because they also
• 1:27:31
  have a fiduciary to their LP's being able to be in that room
• 1:27:36
  with the experience that I have. And by and by experience, I
• 1:27:41
  don't, I mean the years, but I don't mean the years.
• 1:27:42
  I mean literally the hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and
• 1:27:46
  thousands of data points of experience of board experience
• 1:27:51
  or company experience or growth experience or failing experience
• 1:27:54
  or whatever it might be, getting to bring that into the
• 1:27:58
  boardroom, particularly during hard conversations.
• 1:28:01
  And some hard conversations are positive, converse, really
• 1:28:04
  positive conversations, but they're still hard.
• 1:28:06
  How do you make what decision it's, I think it's also
• 1:28:10
  valuable, but for me, ridiculously fun to be able to
• 1:28:14
  bring that perspective in. And to your point before was
• 1:28:17
  like, I'm not the investor in this company.
• 1:28:19
  And yes, well, I might have some outcome lying on it.
• 1:28:23
  Like that's not my role here. My role is like I'm supposed to
• 1:28:25
  look out for everybody and I get to do that really purely.
• 1:28:28
  And it's it's pure joy for me. That's awesome.
• 1:28:32
  That's awesome. That's such a that's such a
• 1:28:33
  beautiful service. And and I I heard you're playing
• 1:28:37
  music again Shoe when we talk about that.
• 1:28:39
  Yeah, I'd love to. Yeah.
• 1:28:40
  Yeah. How did you get back into it?
• 1:28:43
  I originally got back into it in 2017 and 18.
• 1:28:48
  I will kind of think Tech Stars for this.
• 1:28:50
  They're they're headquartered in Boulder and one of the one of
• 1:28:55
  the employees of Tech Stars, Nicole Glaros, her husband is a
• 1:28:57
  musician. And we all went to Nicole's
• 1:28:59
  house one night after some meeting or whatever a bunch of
• 1:29:03
  us did. Jason sees was there too, a few
• 1:29:05
  other people. And we went down to their
• 1:29:07
  basement and we played music. And I hadn't touched a guitar in
• 1:29:10
  probably 2025 years at that point.
• 1:29:11
  Wow. And I didn't remember a lot, but
• 1:29:14
  I remembered a little bit. But what, what, what happened
• 1:29:16
  that night? And I, I, I had this moment and
• 1:29:20
  I knew her, Nicole's husband a little bit, but not really that
• 1:29:23
  well. We met a couple of times, but I
• 1:29:25
  looked up at him at one point and I had this like feeling of
• 1:29:27
  oops, like this warmth, heat radiating from my chest and a
• 1:29:30
  smile like I couldn't stop smiling, tears running down my
• 1:29:35
  face and it was just a joy of like holding this thing.
• 1:29:37
  I was like, this is coming back into my life.
• 1:29:40
  And then Fast forward a couple of years when when COVID
• 1:29:43
  happened and everyone was sheltering in place, the Seats
• 1:29:46
  family and us sheltered in place together.
• 1:29:49
  And my wife had the bright idea of building a garage into a
• 1:29:53
  music studio, which she had no idea what she was saying.
• 1:29:56
  She thought we would get a couple of acoustic guitars and
• 1:29:58
  play once in a while. But I built a music studio and,
• 1:30:01
  and Jason and I started inviting a couple of other people over.
• 1:30:04
  And for a little while we had a band called Barking Stars.
• 1:30:08
  And then, you know, that went its own way.
• 1:30:11
  But I, I realized in that time that this is something that I've
• 1:30:15
  been missing from my life. And I am OK that it disappeared
• 1:30:18
  because now I get to approach it as a starving artist who's not
• 1:30:22
  starving, who can, who can, who has decades of experience that I
• 1:30:26
  can bring to it. But I but I'm also bringing to
• 1:30:29
  it the joy of being a little kid because I haven't done it in so
• 1:30:31
  long. That's awesome.
• 1:30:32
  And so that, and I do, I, I, I play in my, I play every day for
• 1:30:37
  two to three hours a day, sometimes much longer than that.
• 1:30:40
  And then about a year and a half, or I guess maybe two years
• 1:30:43
  ago, I started writing music in about a year and a half ago, I
• 1:30:45
  started recording at a studio, 5th St.
• 1:30:48
  Studios in Austin, with a producer, Con Davidson, and I
• 1:30:51
  started releasing an album in June of this year.
• 1:30:55
  I'm releasing every single as a single because you've released
• 1:30:58
  music differently these days, but I'm halfway through
• 1:31:00
  releasing. An album.
• 1:31:02
  Now that's cool. What's the album called?
• 1:31:04
  The album is called Middle Age No one.
• 1:31:06
  Also the title, the title track, it's it's I did.
• 1:31:10
  The album is not punk music, but this one is kind of a punk song.
• 1:31:13
  And it was talking about inspiration.
• 1:31:16
  This, this is this is my favorite kind of writing.
• 1:31:18
  And it doesn't happen a lot where I was sitting down one
• 1:31:21
  night and I wasn't meaning to do anything and I just started
• 1:31:23
  playing this riff and it was really weird and dissonant.
• 1:31:25
  And I'm like, this is cool. And then and then I have a
• 1:31:28
  looper pedal. So I played the riff on a looper
• 1:31:30
  pedal just. Came to you.
• 1:31:31
  Just came to the yeah, yeah. And it was so it was playing
• 1:31:33
  over and over and I was like what are the chords?
• 1:31:35
  And then like I just started messing around with some chords
• 1:31:37
  over Internet and I found these chords like this is super, super
• 1:31:39
  cool. What do I do with this?
• 1:31:42
  And I don't usually sit down and try to write lyrics right away,
• 1:31:46
  like I'll just do that and I'll wait till I get hit with a
• 1:31:48
  different inspiration. But the words and the chorus
• 1:31:52
  part of it, like I'm just a middle-aged, no one came to me.
• 1:31:55
  I'm like, oh, this feels like something.
• 1:31:58
  So it's it's a very sarcastic song.
• 1:32:01
  It's actually not a serious song.
• 1:32:02
  And I played it live acoustically a few times and I
• 1:32:06
  can see in the audience people's age by how their face looks.
• 1:32:09
  People that are younger are in shock and feel sorry for me that
• 1:32:13
  I that, that and older people are laughing.
• 1:32:15
  But the, the, the chorus is I'm just a middle-aged no one, ain't
• 1:32:18
  no one Googling for me. I'm just another yellow icon
• 1:32:22
  fading into synchronicity. It's just, it's a joke, but it's
• 1:32:26
  sort of so fun and funny. So I put a band together around
• 1:32:29
  it. I have a a we've just started
• 1:32:32
  rehearsing regularly called Future Hippies of Punk, trying
• 1:32:36
  to take in lots of things. The future part is actually
• 1:32:40
  thinking about how technology in the world is evolving and
• 1:32:42
  shaping. I don't know why it's making me
• 1:32:45
  think of this, but you know, my, my oldest daughter, Rachel, she
• 1:32:51
  was playing Sabrina Carpenter for me and she's like, look,
• 1:32:53
  these lyrics for Manchild. It's a it's sarcastic, right?
• 1:32:57
  You're getting them like, yes, Rachel, I'm very much I'm
• 1:33:00
  understanding that, but it's she was the big maybe I'm thinking
• 1:33:05
  of it because she was the big headliner for for ACL fest this
• 1:33:09
  year. But it is a that whole album is
• 1:33:13
  very sarcastic and it's a great narrative too, where we're at
• 1:33:17
  right now. Well, this was super fun, man.
• 1:33:20
  I really appreciate your heart and any any parting words like
• 1:33:25
  what's your greatest hope for humanity?
• 1:33:28
  My my greatest hope for humanity is that people can start finding
• 1:33:32
  the the love in their heart and, and, and stop being so afraid.
• 1:33:40
  Turn around and hug someone for no reason at all tomorrow.
• 1:33:43
  Yeah, that's my greatest. Hope we if we have the ability
• 1:33:46
  and we all have this ability for love to conquer our own fear,
• 1:33:51
  then we can help manifest that in others because we've done the
• 1:33:54
  hard work. So we can help be guides to them
• 1:33:57
  in doing that, whether it's CEO coaching or anything, anything
• 1:34:00
  you're doing or just being a great mom or a great dad.
• 1:34:04
  And then we can help collectively humanity to do that
• 1:34:08
  together. And that's that's the hard work
• 1:34:11
  that we need to do. And the technology is just a
• 1:34:14
  forcing function for us to reconcile with me.
• 1:34:16
  So that's what this is all about.
• 1:34:19
  Well, hey, thanks, bro. Yeah, thank you.
• 1:34:20
  I really, really, really appreciate it.
• 1:34:22
  This is really fun. Yeah, thank you so much.
• 1:34:24
  Well, thanks everybody for tuning in to another episode of
• 1:34:28
  Love Conquers Fear. Stay tuned.
• 1:34:31
  A lot of exciting guests coming on.
• 1:34:34
  I'm having a blast doing this. And thanks again for all of the
• 1:34:37
  shares. I'll tell you that just
• 1:34:39
  recently, someone that has watched every episode of the
• 1:34:43
  podcast wanted to get together with me and tell me the most
• 1:34:48
  amazing story about his near death experience that I've ever
• 1:34:53
  heard. That's now the 10th that I've
• 1:34:55
  seen this year, which really just blew my mind in terms of
• 1:35:00
  the reality that he saw beyond and how he saw that our actual
• 1:35:05
  reality where we come from a world of light and love is so
• 1:35:10
  loving and it changed his life forever.
• 1:35:13
  And so you know what I'm doing and putting this out there and
• 1:35:17
  putting this light out there for all of you and bringing all of
• 1:35:20
  this light into into my own being is really moving me.
• 1:35:25
  And so keep it coming. Share this with a friend if
• 1:35:29
  you're moved by it. There's no advertising on this.
• 1:35:31
  I'm just self funding. I'm doing this to create a heart
• 1:35:35
  shift with humanity in the hope that we ascend and make it.
• 1:35:39
  And I'm 95% certain we will. But let's get it to 100%.
• 1:35:45
  Thanks a lot team. Humanity all the way.
• 1:35:47
  Love you all.