Latest / The iAlign Podcast with Flint Mitchell / #42 - Rediscovering the Importance of Connection with Former D1 Athlete and Entrepreneur Joe Conway

Transcript

#42 - Rediscovering the Importance of Connection with Former D1 Athlete and Entrepreneur Joe Conway · The iAlign Podcast with Flint Mitchell

0:00
SPEAKER_02: What is up?
0:01
SPEAKER_02: My name is Flint Mitchell, and this is the Seeking Authenticity Podcast, hosted by my new company, IAlign, aimed at helping you create a better life in less than 60 seconds a day by aligning with and becoming aware of your values.
0:16
SPEAKER_02: In this episode, I talk with my new friend Joe Conway.
0:19
SPEAKER_02: Joe is a former D1 track athlete, an entrepreneur, and seemingly all-around great guy.
0:25
SPEAKER_02: We met recently at my local coffee shop, Rosemonts Cafe, in La Jolla, San Diego, and he's been helping me with the cloud infrastructure for iON, this project that I'm working on, and will be up and running in the coming month.
0:38
SPEAKER_02: So stick around and I hope you enjoyed a Welcome to the Seeking Authenticity Podcast, Joe.
0:54
SPEAKER_02: Thank you so much for having me.
0:55
SPEAKER_02: I appreciate you giving me a bit of your time.
0:57
SPEAKER_02: You've been spending the past couple months hanging out on the beach.
1:00
SPEAKER_02: Um, it seems like as the result of a successful entrepreneur entrepreneurial venture, I was wondering if to start off with, you could tell me a bit about your career background and how it led you to that um adventure.
1:12
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, that's a great question.
1:14
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I'd have to go all the way back to like middle school at this point when I got into computing.
1:18
SPEAKER_00: Um, I was playing a lot of video games because I just I kind of stopped hanging out with my friends in middle school.
1:23
SPEAKER_00: They were getting into some trouble, and I was spending some time by myself, and I was playing a lot of video games, and I wanted to learn, you know, how to build video games.
1:31
SPEAKER_00: Like I loved like I used to make board games.
1:33
SPEAKER_00: Every time we get like a package in the mail, I take the cardboard and I make a board game out of it or something like that.
1:38
SPEAKER_00: So I started to learn how to program at like a pretty young age.
1:41
SPEAKER_00: And, you know, didn't really know exactly what I was doing because I was just like making games and having fun with it, but it turns out like you can turn that into a career.
1:50
SPEAKER_00: And so went to school for computer science.
1:53
SPEAKER_00: Um, kind of like backed my way into a job at the end of it.
1:56
SPEAKER_00: I don't think I was mature enough to actually be an adult when I got out of college, you know what I mean.
2:01
SPEAKER_02: This was all this uh this part of your life was in college?
2:04
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, well, I mean, I was programming all through college.
2:07
SPEAKER_00: I never went to class, I would just program instead.
2:09
SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
2:09
SPEAKER_00: I just loved being in front of a computer.
2:12
SPEAKER_00: So I'd make like different things.
2:13
SPEAKER_00: Like one time I made like this product where it would help me sort my music, for example, with my keypad.
2:18
SPEAKER_00: So I'd be like really fast being able to sort my music and like made an app.
2:21
SPEAKER_00: And a lot of it was really just I enjoyed the process of of like exploring and learning.
2:25
SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
2:26
SPEAKER_00: I liked building things and I didn't really have to like create anything of value necessarily.
2:30
SPEAKER_00: I just wanted to create things that were like interesting to me at the time.
2:34
SPEAKER_00: And I found programming to be this really cool tool where like when you tell the computer to do something, it does it.
2:38
SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
2:39
SPEAKER_00: Like you're just like do this, this, and this.
2:41
SPEAKER_00: And if you tell it something wrong, it's gonna do the wrong thing, you know?
2:45
SPEAKER_00: Um, and so got out of college and started working for a really small company building Mac software, like for the Mac computer Macintosh.
2:53
SPEAKER_00: This is before the iPhone came out.
2:54
SPEAKER_00: So, like, yeah, yeah.
2:56
SPEAKER_00: Like, not not a cool industry to be in at the time because like no one had Mac computers, there was no iPhones, it was like a dying brand.
3:01
SPEAKER_00: Apple was at this time.
3:03
SPEAKER_00: Right.
3:03
SPEAKER_00: And then the iPhone came out, and the way that you built software for the iPhone was the same way that you built software for the Mac.
3:10
SPEAKER_00: And all of a sudden, I was an expert at this thing that nobody else was an expert at and was about to go absolute bonkers, right?
3:17
SPEAKER_00: And so I started writing a book as part of my job at the time.
3:20
SPEAKER_00: Really?
3:20
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, on how to build software for the iPhone.
3:23
SPEAKER_00: What age were you?
3:24
SPEAKER_00: Uh, this would have been so I would have been out of college for two years at this point, so maybe 25.
3:31
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so about 25, I started writing this book.
3:33
SPEAKER_00: I think I got released in 2009, so I would have been 27.
3:37
SPEAKER_00: Uh, The Bignard Ranch Guide, iOS Programming.
3:40
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
3:40
SPEAKER_00: And it was like a big success.
3:42
SPEAKER_02: This is like, so this is like one of the first books that was on the market for this company.
3:45
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
3:46
SPEAKER_00: It was one of the first books.
3:46
SPEAKER_00: And it was also coming from, you know, the company that I was working at had written a book, a very similar book, on how to develop software for like the Mac and different types of uh other programming languages.
3:56
SPEAKER_00: So they already had a cachet in the industry, and so I was able to kind of like ride in on that cachet with this book, and it became very successful.
4:03
SPEAKER_00: A lot of people read it.
4:03
SPEAKER_00: It was translated to a lot of languages, and then I was teaching a week-long course to all these companies across the country on how to develop software for the iPhone.
4:11
SPEAKER_02: So you were working for a company and teaching classes for them.
4:14
SPEAKER_00: Yes, exactly.
4:15
SPEAKER_00: And at the same time, I was also programming for that company in contract positions.
4:19
SPEAKER_00: So I was building software for like an orthodontist practice so they could see, they could show a patient with their x-rays and their photo what they're gonna look like before and after surgery and how you calculate the type of things that you want to do, like where do you want to move their jaw and how which molars do you want to take out?
4:33
SPEAKER_00: Wow.
4:33
SPEAKER_00: And they could show in real time, right?
4:35
SPEAKER_00: So I was doing both of those jobs basically at the same time.
4:38
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
4:38
SPEAKER_00: Um, and so I was just quite honestly, I loved it.
4:42
SPEAKER_00: Like I was just doing things, I was creating things that were very interesting to me.
4:46
SPEAKER_00: And, you know, that went on for like six years at that company to the point where I realized, well, everything I'm doing at this company, I could just do it on my own.
4:54
SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
4:55
SPEAKER_00: I could do the exact same thing this company does.
4:57
SPEAKER_00: I'm providing services for folks that want to build software.
5:01
SPEAKER_00: And so I set out to create my own company, which is a story in and of itself, honestly.
5:06
SPEAKER_02: Was that like a consulting type company?
5:08
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's a consulting type services company where we would help you strategize on what do you want to build?
5:13
SPEAKER_00: How do you want to get there?
5:14
SPEAKER_00: And then once we decide on that, bringing in the actual talent to build those solutions and taking them all the way to market.
5:20
SPEAKER_02: Do you have any specific projects from those six years that were particularly memorable memorable as uh consulting projects?
5:28
SPEAKER_00: The ones that we did when I was at that company.
5:30
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
5:31
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean, some like the the orthodontic one was really cool.
5:33
SPEAKER_00: That was like my first big project that I ever really worked on.
5:36
SPEAKER_00: I built this thing from like top to bottom by myself.
5:39
SPEAKER_00: Um, and that was really interesting, right?
5:41
SPEAKER_00: Built like the first ebook reader on the iPad for Pearson Education.
5:45
SPEAKER_00: Um, built the app for like ATT's like cable, like their Uverse.
5:49
SPEAKER_00: I don't even know what's called that anymore, right?
5:51
SPEAKER_00: And those were like kind of interesting, you know what I mean?
5:53
SPEAKER_00: Um, and then my company started doing the same thing.
5:56
SPEAKER_00: That's you know, I started my company to do the exact same thing.
5:58
SPEAKER_00: Right.
5:59
SPEAKER_00: And, you know, some of the interesting projects that came out of that were we built this solution for um paper towel and toilet paper dispensers in like big class A office space.
6:08
SPEAKER_00: So like this is installed in Freedom Tower, right?
6:10
SPEAKER_00: So every paper towel and toilet paper dispenser in every bathroom and every hand washing station in this giant building is connected to the internet.
6:17
SPEAKER_01: Right.
6:17
SPEAKER_00: And it'll share how much paper is left in each one of these rolls.
6:20
SPEAKER_00: And that enables like a bunch of different applications.
6:22
SPEAKER_00: So like the property managers have an application for like monitoring usage and paper consumption and automatically reordering paper.
6:28
SPEAKER_00: But the janitors also have an application that says grab this many rolls, go to this floor, don't even look in these different dispensers.
6:34
SPEAKER_00: These places are, you know, these dispensers are fine.
6:36
SPEAKER_00: Right.
6:37
SPEAKER_00: Um, and then go replace the rolls in here.
6:39
SPEAKER_00: And that actually saved like a significant amount of paper.
6:42
SPEAKER_00: Like they cut down like a couple percentage less trees per year just based on the amount of like the amount of roles they don't have to change when there's like 10, 20% left on a roll.
6:52
SPEAKER_00: Right.
6:53
SPEAKER_00: Um, and so like those are the things I get really geeked up about because you're using technology to not only solve like a real problem, but everyone's making money off of it.
7:01
SPEAKER_00: Like everyone, everyone wins in that situation.
7:03
SPEAKER_00: The property managers win, the building owners win, the company that built it win, we win for building it.
7:07
SPEAKER_00: Um and those are the things that I find extremely fascinating.
7:10
SPEAKER_02: When you go after these projects, then is it very much a result-based motivation?
7:18
SPEAKER_02: Like, do you go into these projects thinking more about the technology you're going to be building or like the end result that you think is going to be developed or returned to the person?
7:26
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean, I think about the end result and using technology as a means to get there.
7:30
SPEAKER_00: Right?
7:31
SPEAKER_00: Like, here's what we're trying to do.
7:32
SPEAKER_00: We're trying to solve this problem where there's a bunch of paper that gets wasted, there's a bunch of labor that gets wasted, um, there's a bunch of cost associated with and like that just jams up the supply chain basically.
7:42
SPEAKER_00: And so that's what we're trying to solve.
7:44
SPEAKER_00: What technology can we use to alleviate that problem?
7:48
SPEAKER_02: It's there's a there's one of those great stories, you I'm sure you've heard it then, of Steve Jobs was talking in uh talking somewhere about the amount of energy it takes for animals to move, and they were tracking the efficiency of each animal, and humans were like way down the list.
8:03
SPEAKER_02: But then when you put a human on a bike, we surpassed every animal on the planet.
8:07
SPEAKER_02: That's awesome.
8:08
SPEAKER_02: As efficiency goes, and so his point with that story was humans are tool builders, right?
8:12
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
8:13
SPEAKER_02: And the way we have evolved, I mean, it's fairly obvious, but is via the tools that we have created and not necessarily our mushy selves.
8:21
SPEAKER_00: I agree with that.
8:22
SPEAKER_00: I also think like to just expand on that and get a little bit loopy with you, like if you look around like all of all of life, every plant, every piece of fungus, humans, animals, etc., I actually think we're all like the same one big connected entity.
8:34
SPEAKER_00: And we as humans play a different role than a lot of the other parts of the animal and plant kingdom.
8:40
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
8:40
SPEAKER_00: Um, but it is to be tool builders, is to extend life past the point that biology can take us to.
8:46
SPEAKER_00: Like you have the biology industry, right?
8:48
SPEAKER_00: Biotech, which is like reverse engineering life and being like, how does this all work?
8:52
SPEAKER_00: And then you have like information technology and digital technology that's coming from the other side of it going, how do we recreate what life is in a more durable format that can extend much further and uh basically utilize energy much more efficiently than we can right now?
9:06
SPEAKER_02: What would you say is like the purpose of building those tools though?
9:10
SPEAKER_02: Is it simply to evolve where we're currently at?
9:14
SPEAKER_00: I think it's to I think it's to ensure all of life, not necessarily humans.
9:18
SPEAKER_00: Like I think we're gonna end up building our replacement, quite honestly.
9:21
SPEAKER_00: Like I think when you start thinking about like what computing is, what artificial intelligence is, you know, humans, we have our problems.
9:27
SPEAKER_00: Um we're not the most efficient, as you said, by ourselves.
9:30
SPEAKER_00: And if you could take our consciousness and you could drop it onto silicon instead of um, you know, this biological carbon-based format that we have, I think you're probably gonna get a better result.
9:38
SPEAKER_00: And we're just a temporary, we're a temporary medium to extend the overall broader context of life further past the planet Earth.
9:46
SPEAKER_02: How do you define better though in that context?
9:49
SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's the thing.
9:50
SPEAKER_00: I don't I mean, like there's enough suffering, I guess, that like without all the suffering would be great.
9:55
SPEAKER_00: But also like the sun's gonna die out one day.
9:57
SPEAKER_00: We need to be somewhere else.
9:57
SPEAKER_00: I don't think we're gonna take our bodies as they are and like transport them to another planet or something like that.
10:02
SPEAKER_00: I think we're gonna find a much more efficient energy utilization process that takes all the good parts of humans potentially, but maybe it's in a totally different form.
10:11
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and I can go a whole bunch of ways down that path.
10:14
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, there's too many.
10:15
SPEAKER_02: And you comment about suffering is, and I come from a place where you know my sufferings have been much less than the vast amount of people in the world, but there's definitely the element of suffering be as being a source of meaning.
10:28
SPEAKER_02: One of my favorite books is uh Victor Frankel, A Man's Search for Meaning.
10:33
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
10:34
SPEAKER_02: And his whole premise is on building meaning out of suffering for certain elements of your life.
10:40
SPEAKER_02: So if you remove that from the human experience, it maybe it makes it more efficient or less sad in a way.
10:49
SPEAKER_02: But is it as fulfilling who's to say?
10:53
SPEAKER_02: Better is a crazy word.
10:54
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, but you could also look at that suffering as the motivator to solve the key problems, too, right?
10:59
SPEAKER_00: Like you could call hunger suffering, right?
11:01
SPEAKER_00: But look at what we've done technologically to support how much food can we distribute across the world right now?
11:06
SPEAKER_00: It's insane.
11:06
SPEAKER_00: Right.
11:07
SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
11:07
SPEAKER_00: And so, like, of that you're right, in the sense of like of that suffering, I think that's where we come to our innovation.
11:13
SPEAKER_00: And if we didn't have that suffering, would we come up with anything?
11:17
SPEAKER_00: Probably not.
11:18
SPEAKER_00: But also then, like, we'd be done.
11:19
SPEAKER_00: Our job would be done, you know?
11:21
SPEAKER_00: Like I don't think we'll get there ever.
11:23
SPEAKER_00: I think it'll be a constant state of that.
11:24
SPEAKER_02: But yeah.
11:26
SPEAKER_02: Um pulling back a couple steps, when you were talking about building these products, uh, at the very start you said you were building a lot of these things on your own and that you really enjoyed that experience.
11:38
SPEAKER_02: I guess clearly, after having the past 10 years of this uh owning this business or founding it to get into that, uh obviously you had to delegate a lot of tasks and it became a larger um experience.
11:51
SPEAKER_02: What was the moment where you realized you had in order to go beyond what you were doing, you had to delegate tasks that maybe you wanted complete professional creative control over?
12:01
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean, I'd like to have like a really good answer for that, where like I had this Eureka moment, but it was really just as more work started to come in and more people wanted to build things and being exposed to more ideas and more industries was just like I can't do all of this myself.
12:16
SPEAKER_00: I need somebody else to step in and do this.
12:18
SPEAKER_00: It was a need-based thing.
12:19
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
12:19
SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
12:20
SPEAKER_00: It was recognizing that like I can only help so much in this situation because I'm one person, I have so many hours and a week before I go absolutely nuts, that being able to help set people off on the right course and then trust them to just continue on with that course and being able to like for them to pick it up and adopt it and go forward, um, it just kind of happened, you know, naturally in some ways and organically.
12:43
SPEAKER_00: Um, and I and I wish I would have had, I wish I was smart enough, you know, 15, 20 years ago to recognize the value of other people.
12:51
SPEAKER_00: It took me a long time.
12:52
SPEAKER_00: And and like I think you probab maybe you suffer from this or maybe you've been smart since the beginning, right?
12:56
SPEAKER_00: But like you're really effectively suffer from this.
12:58
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, like you're you're a really smart person.
13:00
SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
13:01
SPEAKER_00: You can do so much.
13:02
SPEAKER_00: I feel the same way about myself.
13:03
SPEAKER_00: I I I can I can learn things, I can do a lot of different things, but there's only so much energy, there's only so much time.
13:10
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
13:10
SPEAKER_00: And I wish I would have learned earlier in life, like actually I should kind of like depend on other people.
13:16
SPEAKER_00: Actually, I should spend more of my time bringing people in and making them feel safe and comfortable around me so that they can be the best versions of themselves, um, so that we could do something together, you know what I mean, and play our different roles and be our, you know, be in our lane a little bit more.
13:30
SPEAKER_00: I think that's actually really valuable.
13:32
SPEAKER_00: And a lot of what I'm doing right now in my life is is trying to get better at that.
13:36
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
13:36
SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
13:37
SPEAKER_00: Just trying to get better at like recognizing just how deep other people's value is, and like if you can just be a good sp good place for them, if you can just shine a light back on them and show them how great they are of the person, they will do amazing things.
13:51
SPEAKER_02: I'd like to dive a little bit deeper into that.
13:54
SPEAKER_02: Where do you or how do you identify maybe the people to bring in in those situations?
14:00
SPEAKER_02: And then also what task do you or what genre of tasks do you delegate to them?
14:09
SPEAKER_02: Like how do you choose which things that they're best at versus the things that maybe they want to do?
14:13
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
14:14
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I guess in terms of one problem I do suffer from still, and I know this, is I will blow past everyone else's red flags that they might be showing me because I'll just believe in them.
14:24
SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
14:24
SPEAKER_00: Like I'll just be like, sure, they'll figure it out.
14:26
SPEAKER_00: Like everyone figures it out.
14:27
SPEAKER_00: This would be totally fine.
14:28
SPEAKER_00: Just nurture your nurture your nurture, and like you know what, they'll get past it, but that's not always the case.
14:32
SPEAKER_00: That like it's just not.
14:34
SPEAKER_00: Um and so I think you know, for me, there's an ease, there's an easiness to some of the things that I was solving in my business around who goes where, because you know, uh if you're an iOS programmer, for example, and we have an iOS app that you need to build, like that's an obvious thing to put together, right?
14:56
SPEAKER_00: And those skill sets at the sort of labor level, those ones are really easy to pick out about, okay, this person can do this, and therefore we need this right now, so let's put this one on the project.
15:04
SPEAKER_00: Right.
15:05
SPEAKER_00: But one thing that I think is really hard for me to figure out, or I'm still learning how to figure out, is when you get to the higher level, like leadership and management stuff, what are the real attributes that you're looking for in someone to be able to affect change at a little bit more of a broader level, not just in their spir specific skill set and like what kind of code they can slang or like what kind of designs they can build, but like how does a person unlock other people's capabilities to be graded in the sum of their parts?
15:34
SPEAKER_02: From that, what are the character traits that you look for in jobs that are not specific task-based?
15:39
SPEAKER_02: Like an iOS programmer, you can do X, Y, and Z technical things, but it's more of you are interacting with other people.
15:48
SPEAKER_02: What are the the maybe the main uh elements of a person's character that you look for?
15:56
SPEAKER_00: Being like an honest person, even when it's not great, you know what I mean?
15:59
SPEAKER_00: Like even when you're just like, hey, like I really don't want to have this conversation, but like I'm willing to go into this conversation and have it.
16:06
SPEAKER_00: But then when going into having it, going into it with an open mind.
16:09
SPEAKER_00: Like you know, someone needs to change something about what they're doing, but you're not going in prescriptively and saying this is what you need to change.
16:16
SPEAKER_00: Rather, you're saying, I'm seeing these things, you know, how can we like move in the right direction, which is something I wasn't all that great at for a long time.
16:23
SPEAKER_00: And a lot of that takes a significant, if I were to sum it up, it takes a significant amount of security in their own selves.
16:30
SPEAKER_00: Like I look for people who like have an easy-going nature about their their own selves because I think that the way that they treat themselves is how they're gonna treat others.
16:38
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
16:39
SPEAKER_00: And so, and vice versa, right?
16:41
SPEAKER_00: You see someone treat someone well, they're treating themselves well, and like, you know, that's just kind of how it works out.
16:46
SPEAKER_00: And so I think that requires an awful lot of emotional intelligence about being able to read through the lines about what someone's saying and what someone's feeling and be able to like be vulnerable and ask questions where someone might not like the fact that you asked that question, but they needed you to ask that question.
17:01
SPEAKER_02: So those two things in my head appear to boil down to integrity and humility.
17:06
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
17:06
SPEAKER_02: So you do you agree with that?
17:08
SPEAKER_00: Integrity and humility.
17:09
SPEAKER_00: So integrity is in that in that context, basically, I'm gonna do the thing that I need to do.
17:13
SPEAKER_00: And what I say, I'm gonna do it.
17:15
SPEAKER_00: Tell the truth.
17:16
SPEAKER_00: Yep.
17:16
SPEAKER_02: Even if it isn't a bad situation where it's not necessarily what appears to other people want me to say, uh, would be integrity.
17:24
SPEAKER_02: And then humility in my uh perception would be the swallowing of the ego in order to allow other people's opinions or their opinions to actually matter in a lot of like if you were a manager and allowing your employees to have opinions that sway your um personal decision.
17:47
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, I would totally agree with that.
17:48
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
17:49
SPEAKER_00: And I think it comes from even both of those things come from a security of yourself, like a belief or a knowing that intrinsically you have good intentions and you're working to be aware of your surroundings and you're working to apply your good intentions to that awareness and like just kind of knowing that like everything's gonna be okay at the end of the day.
18:09
SPEAKER_00: You can be, you can have humility, yeah, and and and hear someone out, even when you're like, God, what if this person whatever this person's saying is absolutely bonkers right now.
18:17
SPEAKER_00: But I'm gonna listen to it out because I'm secure in myself enough to sit here, listen to it, not change my mind.
18:22
SPEAKER_00: Um, and not necessarily change my mind, but not change my position or my frame in life.
18:26
SPEAKER_00: But I'm able to absorb what you're feeling and what you're thinking, and I'm able to at least meet you halfway in some way without trying to bulldoze over you or without me changing myself.
18:36
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
18:40
SPEAKER_02: It's one thing I've been that's been on my mind for the past month or so that I've been constantly reiterating on in reflection is this idea of humility in what you're what you're exactly what you're talking about of believing that your intentions are good or true and that you've created a level of talent or ability in some sort of technical some way.
19:08
SPEAKER_02: So you can implement some skill it could be emotional intelligence or it could be actual programming, and you believe that you're doing it in the right direction.
19:16
SPEAKER_02: This could also be the way I'm framing this in my head is uh ability to communicate with people around myself.
19:24
SPEAKER_02: Because whenever I get to a certain level, because I'm constantly working on myself in this capacity, I the most difficult thing is then to remember that I haven't necessarily gotten to the place that I want to be yet.
19:37
SPEAKER_02: You get to like a level of competency and you start to implement that competency, and you're like, all right, well, I'm doing the right thing and I'm pretty competent, and then something comes up and punches you in the face again.
19:46
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
19:47
SPEAKER_02: And so it's definitely something I've been searching for in the people around me and what I'm trying to work on myself is reflecting that every single time I get to a new level or competency and some ability in my life that I'm working on, um I'm not I can't even see through the perspective of the people that are way better than it at me.
20:07
SPEAKER_01: Right?
20:08
SPEAKER_02: And so there's oh it's it's hard to say.
20:10
SPEAKER_02: I don't I like the idea that there's always work to be done.
20:14
SPEAKER_02: I don't want to prescribe the mentality of never stop like never be satisfied in that moment, but it's it's dramatically impressive to me when I meet people who are so capable of being highly capable or or or competent in whatever they do, but still recognize that they have not necessarily made it to the place that that other people have.
20:41
SPEAKER_00: Um I thought that that's interesting that you bring that up because one thing I was thinking about recently on that same idea is like these levels, right?
20:47
SPEAKER_00: And thinking about them in terms of levels.
20:49
SPEAKER_00: Like, you know, I I was I was a CEO of my own business, you know what I mean?
20:55
SPEAKER_00: I'm exiting that business right now, right?
20:57
SPEAKER_00: Um, because I want to change the way that my life works.
20:59
SPEAKER_00: I didn't I didn't like what I was becoming at this point.
21:03
SPEAKER_00: But in that way, I thought to myself, well, I've reached like this really high level.
21:06
SPEAKER_00: And the negative part of that was because I had reached this this level that I thought was like desirable to me, that my ego started to get in the way a little bit.
21:17
SPEAKER_00: And I was afraid to be vulnerable in different dimensions.
21:21
SPEAKER_00: I was afraid to be, you know, I was good at this one thing, right?
21:25
SPEAKER_00: That I've really spent all this time and energy getting really good at this thing and I've reached this level.
21:29
SPEAKER_00: But there were so many other elements of my life, like I was not a very good listener.
21:33
SPEAKER_00: Sure.
21:34
SPEAKER_00: That, but instead of like kind of like shoving my ego aside and recognizing that I was starting at the lowest level in some of these situations, I was afraid to go into these other places where I wasn't as good as I was in the thing that I was really good at because I've been so used to carrying around this ego that tell me I was a great person.
21:55
SPEAKER_00: I was so awesome at this, right?
21:57
SPEAKER_00: And a lot of me coming out here to San Diego has a Has been about beating up that idea and putting myself in different tracks that I'm not comfortable and familiar with, and just being okay with like, I'm not gonna call it failure, I don't like the word failure, and just being okay with like not getting the results right away or not really know what I'm doing, just being absolutely confused sometimes, quite honestly.
22:19
SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
22:20
SPEAKER_00: Like, and you know, and so I I try not to think in terms of levels anymore, like they're linear in some way, but rather like I'm acquiring these skills so that I have different ways to navigate different situations because I will always be in a different situation.
22:37
SPEAKER_00: Whatever comes next, I'm always going to be hopefully in a situation where I'm uncomfortable and unfamiliar because for me, I was spending a lot of my life just in comfortable and familiar positions, and I wasn't growing.
22:49
SPEAKER_02: So, and I'm not gonna be able to frame what I'm thinking eloquently, so I won't try, but the or like the more abstract way I'm thinking about this, but what I like about what you're saying is it seems like it is more about the mindset that you're in than the actual skill set you've created or that's directed.
23:12
SPEAKER_00: That's a really great way of summing it up, honestly.
23:13
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's like yeah, it's the mindset.
23:15
SPEAKER_00: It is the I want to grow, I want things to change, I'm okay with change, I'm okay with differences, you know, I'm okay with like trying something else out.
23:23
SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
23:24
SPEAKER_00: If I had to keep applying the same thing over and over again, you know, just not fun.
23:28
SPEAKER_02: Why do you not like the word failure?
23:30
SPEAKER_00: Because I don't, I think it has the wrong connotation.
23:32
SPEAKER_00: I think like, how many times have I failed in my life?
23:36
SPEAKER_00: It's probably been a bajillion, right?
23:37
SPEAKER_00: Sure.
23:37
SPEAKER_00: Like just an absolute ass ton amount of failure in like I set my sights on this thing and I don't get it.
23:44
SPEAKER_00: But like, dude, I'm alive.
23:45
SPEAKER_00: Like I'm in San Diego.
23:47
SPEAKER_00: Like I have friends, like I enjoy my time.
23:50
SPEAKER_00: Like, what about my life has been a failure?
23:52
SPEAKER_00: Nothing at the end of the day.
23:54
SPEAKER_00: And so, like these little microscopic blips on the radar of like maybe I didn't get this deal through fast enough, or we didn't, you know, we maybe we just didn't get this deal, or um, you know, maybe I I set out to build this thing and it looks like a piece of crap now.
24:07
SPEAKER_00: And like all those things that like I beat myself up about, like, who cares?
24:12
SPEAKER_00: Like, 10 years removed from it, I don't even think about those things anymore.
24:15
SPEAKER_00: All I remember are like the lessons that help me on the next thing.
24:18
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
24:18
SPEAKER_00: And so, like, yeah, like it just seems so binary to treat it as success fail when like the world keeps moving.
24:26
SPEAKER_02: One of the main uh elements of what you're talking about, from my view, is that when you put yourself into the mindset of I have just failed or I'm actively failing, or like a failure is about to occur, then it puts you into going back to this mindset idea, it puts you into a uh frame of mind of fear.
24:53
SPEAKER_02: And fear-based decisions tend to be our worst decisions because they are impulsive and trying to I think this is human evolution psychologist.
25:05
SPEAKER_02: But when a fear is a emotion that ha we have evolved in order to escape.
25:13
SPEAKER_02: So it's a flight or a fight or flight response.
25:16
SPEAKER_02: And so if we uh put ourselves into that mindset of uh of failure or like thinking about what what we're going to do is going to dramatically change granted, there are failures, but it's going to dramatically change the course of our life because of X, Y, or Z moment, we start to make irrational and poor decisions.
25:33
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I I very much agree with that.
25:35
SPEAKER_00: And I think I was telling our friend Bram about this recently, where like any decision I've made from a fearful perspective, like where I'm actually feeling the fear and I'm making the decision, those are bad decisions, right?
25:47
SPEAKER_00: But anytime I've been fearful about something and I've reflected on that, whatever's on the other side of that fear is like straight glory, dude.
25:54
SPEAKER_00: Like whatever, whatever, if I can conquer, get past this thing in a real reasonable way, and if I actually actively, intentively, that's not a word, intentionally push through that fear in a way that really addresses and aware, addresses that fear and is actually aware of what that fear really is at my gut level, then my life becomes immeasurably better after the fact.
26:15
SPEAKER_00: Like an example of this would literally just be skydiving.
26:18
SPEAKER_00: I'm afraid of heights, I'm afraid of all that stuff.
26:21
SPEAKER_00: And I got up in a plane one time and I jumped out of it.
26:24
SPEAKER_00: And I spent the entire 24 hours before that in like the most focused in like I was so focused.
26:29
SPEAKER_00: I'm like, I'm going through with this.
26:31
SPEAKER_00: Like I'm going to get scared tomorrow.
26:33
SPEAKER_00: I'm scared about this, and I'm going through this.
26:35
SPEAKER_00: I promise myself I'm gonna get through this.
26:36
SPEAKER_00: And I jumped and it was awesome.
26:38
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
26:38
SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
26:39
SPEAKER_00: Um, like another example is doing like Mui Thai, for example.
26:42
SPEAKER_00: I started doing kickboxing because you know what?
26:44
SPEAKER_00: I'm I'm afraid that like someone can just come beat me up one day.
26:47
SPEAKER_00: I just want to be have the ability to defend myself.
26:49
SPEAKER_00: And I can be, I can say that, you know, I can say that's a real fear.
26:51
SPEAKER_00: Like no one wants to get beat up, right?
26:53
SPEAKER_00: Um, and when I put myself in these positions where I really am like, what am I really afraid of?
26:58
SPEAKER_00: I don't try and project the fear onto some someone else or something else.
27:01
SPEAKER_00: If I really get to the bottom of that fear and I push through that fear in some way, just do one little tiny thing, like it just opens up this, like I can almost see it, like opens up this road for me of just like, ah, I'm on the right path now and it feels great.
27:14
SPEAKER_02: It one a parallel to this is, and I think it comments on our earlier conversation about suffering, but hard times in general are so m so many I mean you have to push through difficult times in order to get to the other side, and a lot of I think failure, real failure in life is the lack of pushing through like that difficult experience.
27:40
SPEAKER_02: That I think that's exposes our feeling of resentment or shame or guilt, and those tend to be like the real failures is when we feel really bad.
27:50
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
27:50
SPEAKER_02: Um I liked a quote I heard earlier a couple days ago from Alex Hormozy, this kind of influencer in the business management world, uh, was saying that every entrepreneur who has made it has been in the place you were in.
28:05
SPEAKER_02: Like the fear of whatever the the element of your business has failing is like you're not getting enough leads or you're not you're technically it's not working, whatever element of your business is working, just a parallel.
28:17
SPEAKER_02: It's like every entrepreneur, most likely, most of them have been in that place, and the reason that they made it is because they pushed through that element or that that experience.
28:25
SPEAKER_00: Yep.
28:26
SPEAKER_00: Um I would agree with that.
28:28
SPEAKER_00: I would agree with that too.
28:29
SPEAKER_00: Also, a lot of people would say, like, oh man, it took so much courage to start your business.
28:32
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
28:32
SPEAKER_00: It's like, no, days one through five thousand, or not five thousand, days like one through like seven hundred of the business were like probably the easiest one, so I'm being honest with you.
28:39
SPEAKER_00: Really?
28:39
SPEAKER_00: It's with it's yeah, it's like it's when you get because you don't have anything to lose at that point in a lot of ways.
28:44
SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
28:44
SPEAKER_00: It's when you have a bunch of employees and you're paying for their health insurance and like the deals aren't coming through, and you're like, what am I supposed to do right now?
28:52
SPEAKER_00: That's scary.
28:53
SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
28:54
SPEAKER_00: Years five, six, seven, and eight, those were scary.
28:56
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, COVID was scary.
28:58
SPEAKER_00: Um, starting the business just felt like, whatever, man, let's go.
29:03
SPEAKER_02: It reminds me of a story.
29:05
SPEAKER_02: I one of a or a family friend, very successful businessman, and uh he started a company with a series of people, and probably yeah, three or four years into it, he told me that there was it was like the last bit of their money that they had left, and they were trying to get acquired.
29:25
SPEAKER_02: And the last money that they had they spent on like the bonuses for the people before they went into Christmas.
29:32
SPEAKER_02: No one knew it was like the last money.
29:35
SPEAKER_02: And at their Christmas party, they hadn't told anyone yet, but they were like the four of them who were the founders were like, This is possibly the end.
29:44
SPEAKER_02: We're gonna give these people these bonuses, and then hopefully, you know, when the year new year comes, something comes through.
29:48
SPEAKER_02: But we're probably gonna have to fire not fire, but like this business is gonna be gone.
29:52
SPEAKER_02: And they had a the people who acquired them came in like the next morning.
29:57
SPEAKER_02: No shit.
29:58
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, but I can't the scale of that emotion that those people were feeling in that Christmas party.
30:05
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I can't if it's gonna be orders of magnitude more than the four of them in the garage four years earlier.
30:13
SPEAKER_00: Right.
30:13
SPEAKER_00: I hope this works.
30:14
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, because you made promises to people, you committed to people.
30:16
SPEAKER_00: You said, I'm gonna do this part, you guys do this part, and when you're not when your part's failing as the leader, when the thing, the entire entity is not going the way it needs to go, and and you're at risk, like it does weigh really heavily.
30:29
SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
30:30
SPEAKER_02: That then accumulation of weight, maybe emotional weight over the course of this um company venture lead to what you were talking about earlier or what you mentioned of not liking who you were becoming at the end of it.
30:49
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
30:50
SPEAKER_00: And it was also, it goes into the same thing it's hand in hand with the whole not delegating thing too, where you know, it was a lot of um me and my my business partner taking on all the weight and not wanting to let our staff know that I mean there was times where we were really close to going on business.
31:05
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, like there were definitely times where like a deal came in at the midnight hour when you're just like, okay, cool, we gotta keep our houses now.
31:11
SPEAKER_00: That's awesome, you know.
31:12
SPEAKER_00: Like, um, and and and for me as a person who, you know, really I used to strive so much for project for per perfection.
31:20
SPEAKER_00: I used to want to take it all on my shoulders.
31:22
SPEAKER_00: I wanted to be the strong guy that led everyone through it.
31:25
SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, that was really more my ego in a lot of situations.
31:29
SPEAKER_00: And it's but it's also a double-edged sword because when you're leaving a lot of people, you also don't want them to feel fear and scatter and leave your company when times are tough.
31:43
SPEAKER_00: You kind of want to keep the core together because you need them.
31:46
SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
31:47
SPEAKER_00: And so there's this balance of how much do I share about the situation that we're in?
31:52
SPEAKER_00: Do I believe we're gonna get out of it?
31:54
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes I don't know.
31:55
SPEAKER_00: Um, how much of it I take on my own self?
31:58
SPEAKER_00: And I was thinking I was leaning too far into taking it on myself.
32:02
SPEAKER_00: And I wasn't being honest with the people around me about how much I was really feeling this weight.
32:09
SPEAKER_00: And what started to happen over time is that weight was starting eroding away at the other things that made me a human being.
32:16
SPEAKER_00: It was eroding away at the time that I was spending on taking care of myself in terms of the exercise that I was doing, the food that I was eating, taking care of my body.
32:27
SPEAKER_00: Because I would just throw my body into these grueling work days, and I would just carry the stress and I would just use nicotine to like get past these like stressful moments and like wasn't sleeping and all these things.
32:39
SPEAKER_00: And like for 10 years, that shit, yeah, that shit adds up.
32:42
SPEAKER_00: You know, it really starts to add up to the point where I had to look at myself and I had to say, like, nah, I don't like, sure, you reached your goals, you're successful in the financial sense that you wanted to be successful, and you have a lot of the labels and identifiers and attributes that you thought, or that I'm gonna have to use first person here, that I thought meant success.
33:03
SPEAKER_00: And yet in myself, I didn't feel that success.
33:06
SPEAKER_00: I still felt like nothing, honestly.
33:08
SPEAKER_00: And so I really had to actually like take a step back.
33:10
SPEAKER_00: And I did, I took two months off of my job so I could go back and say, like, let me just take all this off my plate for a while.
33:19
SPEAKER_00: And when I did that, I realized like I didn't like the plate.
33:21
SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
33:22
SPEAKER_00: Like, I wanted to do something different.
33:24
SPEAKER_00: And I the goal that I'd set out to meet, I realized I had met it years ago and I was just grueling through this thing that didn't serve me anymore.
33:32
SPEAKER_02: How did you redefine success in that moment?
33:34
SPEAKER_00: I'm still redefining success right now.
33:36
SPEAKER_02: How are you redefining?
33:38
SPEAKER_00: So when I came out to San Diego, like one of my big goals was to um really work on meeting new people and truly listening to them.
33:47
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
33:48
SPEAKER_00: From like so many different people.
33:49
SPEAKER_00: That's why we meet at the coffee shop, you know what I mean?
33:51
SPEAKER_00: It's just like because I'm in there and I'm talking to people because I generally am interested in their life.
33:56
SPEAKER_00: I feel like I've led a pretty cool life so far.
33:58
SPEAKER_00: I want to stop, pump the brakes on my life, and hear about other people's lives.
34:02
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
34:02
SPEAKER_00: And so I'm starting to think about success in terms of the environment around me.
34:13
SPEAKER_00: Can I impact the environment around me, whether it's the neighborhood I live in, whether that's my group of friends, whether that's people I'm working on a project with in any sort of way?
34:22
SPEAKER_00: And that doesn't have to be work-related, by the way, it doesn't have to be financially motivated.
34:26
SPEAKER_00: Can I can I be supportive in creating this environment?
34:31
SPEAKER_00: And can I do it through working with other people?
34:36
SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
34:37
SPEAKER_00: And recognizing them for who they are, what they bring to the table, where they want to go, and like how do you strategize to make everyone's pieces fit together in a meaningful way so that like we all benefit from that situation?
34:47
SPEAKER_00: And how can I create joy and happiness in other people?
34:50
SPEAKER_00: Because that's what creates joy and happiness in me, honestly.
34:52
SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
34:53
SPEAKER_00: And I didn't realize that I was so I feel like I was so selfish for so long and try to create this vision of what my life was gonna be as the CEO and all this kind of stuff that I forgot, I honestly forgot to take the other people with me.
35:05
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
35:06
SPEAKER_02: A handful of things you've mentioned all kind of support one general theme, I would say, which is some topics have been a importance on vulnerability, integrity, humility, listening, and other inter interpersonal skills which I would say support this general theme of this idea of connection that clearly is one that you have drawn a link to between connection, like the people around you and how connected you are to them and the success of your actual overall life, or maybe life fulfillment.
35:39
SPEAKER_00: Yep.
35:40
SPEAKER_02: Um are there any maybe individual or specific stories that you could tell that very much delineate delineate how important that connection is to you, or like how you found out how important that connection is to you?
35:54
SPEAKER_00: I'm trying to think about specific stories.
35:57
SPEAKER_00: You know, and I'll say this about our buddy Bram that at the coffee shop that I hang out with, right?
36:01
SPEAKER_00: One of the things that's really interesting to me, or so I'll back this up a little bit, right?
36:04
SPEAKER_01: Please.
36:05
SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, I think that every person goes through this where some days are good and some days are bad.
36:10
SPEAKER_00: Some days I'm down, some days I'm up.
36:13
SPEAKER_00: And on the days previously, in a previous life, on the days that I was down, I would isolate.
36:22
SPEAKER_00: I would say, well, I'm not good enough for the people in my life right now.
36:27
SPEAKER_00: I don't want to be this person that isn't as good as I can be.
36:30
SPEAKER_00: And so I'm gonna keep to myself today.
36:33
SPEAKER_00: I'm not gonna reach out, I'm not gonna maybe take care of the things that I need to take care of, right?
36:36
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
36:37
SPEAKER_00: And one thing I really found interesting is one day I was feeling like that recently.
36:41
SPEAKER_00: And I went to the coffee shop to get the coffee because, like, listen, I need my caffeine in the morning.
36:45
SPEAKER_00: And and and Bram was there.
36:47
SPEAKER_00: And I sat down, we just started chatting, and I, you know, I didn't really share anything about how I was having a bad day.
36:53
SPEAKER_00: I just listened to the good day that he was having or the things that he was working on.
36:58
SPEAKER_00: And I came out of that conversation feeling like now I was having a good day.
37:01
SPEAKER_00: And it was like a really like interesting moment for me where I became aware of this fact that like my shit's just temporary, like my feelings are just temporary.
37:09
SPEAKER_00: And in the past where I had isolated myself, all I really needed to do was just expose myself back to the connectivity of human nature, and it will it will take care of me.
37:18
SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
37:19
SPEAKER_00: And it's just like it was getting it was getting past a fear, it's getting past a fear of being seen as not enough.
37:24
SPEAKER_00: It was getting past a fear of not wanting to burden people with my stuff.
37:27
SPEAKER_00: I don't have to burden anyone with that.
37:29
SPEAKER_00: I just had to reconnect with a human that was having human experiences and was and was feeling positive that day and like bam, it flipped a switch at me.
37:37
SPEAKER_00: And so it was like, okay, well, how would I flip that?
37:39
SPEAKER_00: Like, how can I be that person for people?
37:41
SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
37:42
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna assume that everyone else has up, downs, up days, and down days.
37:45
SPEAKER_00: And if I'm feeling good, how do I like share that that feeling into other people because they might be having a bad day and this might be the thing that helps them?
37:54
SPEAKER_00: Like, how can I be a positive energy source?
37:57
SPEAKER_00: Um, and then it's for me, it's just like, well, that's all that really matters at the end of the day is that connectivity is being connected to that mesh network of people that exist.
38:07
SPEAKER_00: Um, because I don't know, I don't think I don't think there is a bigger purpose.
38:11
SPEAKER_00: Like, there might be a bigger purpose, but I don't know if I'm ever gonna know it.
38:13
SPEAKER_00: To me, that seems like a phenomenal purpose.
38:15
SPEAKER_02: I agree.
38:16
SPEAKER_02: What is the emotion, or could you compare the emotions you feel in a state of isolation versus the emotions or feelings you get when you're in a state of um very interconnected?
38:28
SPEAKER_00: Ooh, yeah, yeah.
38:29
SPEAKER_00: I mean, isolation feels like it's depression, it's a cloudiness, it's uh no motivation to move to that inertial barrier to do things.
38:37
SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
38:38
SPEAKER_00: Like, I will know that I need to text somebody back and I'll sit there for six hours and not text somebody back.
38:43
SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
38:44
SPEAKER_00: And it's like building up in my mind and just and then it's just like beating myself up of like, why aren't you doing this thing?
38:49
SPEAKER_00: You're supposed to be doing this thing, like you loser, like you know what I mean.
38:52
SPEAKER_00: Um and then and then and and it it's like it feels like the walls are caving in, my breath gets short.
38:58
SPEAKER_00: Um, I'm I'm I'm bouncing back and forth between um what I call low self-esteem activities.
39:06
SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
39:06
SPEAKER_00: Maybe I'll watch TV or something like that.
39:08
SPEAKER_00: Maybe I'll turn off my phone that's ringing in the background right now.
39:12
SPEAKER_00: Um and I I don't in those moments I don't love myself.
39:19
SPEAKER_00: I don't, and when I think about loving myself, I don't invest in myself.
39:21
SPEAKER_00: I don't use my time and energy to do things that make me feel good and whole and and all that kind of stuff.
39:27
SPEAKER_00: Versus when I feel connected, like I generally feel like a tingliness in my neck when I feel connected to people.
39:32
SPEAKER_00: Like, you know what ASMR physiological ASMR is?
39:36
SPEAKER_00: Have you ever heard of that before?
39:37
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
39:37
SPEAKER_00: So I'll watch that and I'll get tingly, dude.
39:39
SPEAKER_00: But I can do this.
39:41
SPEAKER_00: Um watching someone be authentically doing their thing without any receiving any judgment from anyone else, usually with their hands is what works for me, gives me a sense of deep euphoria.
39:52
SPEAKER_00: Interesting.
39:53
SPEAKER_00: Just watch this person be like, I think people that like cut hair, people that give massages, people that are so in the moment.
39:58
SPEAKER_00: They're so in the moment and they're so dedicated to this dexterous craft, or watching like Bob Ross paint, for example.
40:04
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
40:04
SPEAKER_00: Like all that kind of stuff, it just makes me feel good inside because that's a human being at the center of their being, expressing themselves in the way that they are best able to express themselves.
40:13
SPEAKER_00: Someone else is enjoying it and betting and for benefiting from it, and everyone's winning in that situation.
40:19
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
40:19
SPEAKER_00: Um, and so I feel that.
40:21
SPEAKER_00: I can feel that very deeply.
40:23
SPEAKER_00: Um, and I can feel once I start to feel that way, I start to feel very um motivated to do things.
40:30
SPEAKER_00: I am very proactive about reaching out to people in my life and just trying to improve their day, just sending them a text message, how you doing, this kind of stuff.
40:39
SPEAKER_00: Um, I get tasks done so significantly better.
40:42
SPEAKER_00: And so I realize that like the energy that we share as human beings through that connected network is really, really important.
40:49
SPEAKER_00: Like it's it's like a driving, motivating force for me, and a lack of it feels like death.
40:56
SPEAKER_02: So isolation is death, connection is life.
40:58
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
40:59
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
40:59
SPEAKER_00: I think that's a great way of summing that up.
41:01
SPEAKER_00: I think my therapist would say something similar to that.
41:03
SPEAKER_02: When you look at human behavior and um human humanity in general, I would say it's fairly well established we're social beings.
41:12
SPEAKER_02: Right.
41:12
SPEAKER_02: That was one of the reasons why the pandemic was so difficult.
41:15
SPEAKER_02: Is people were forced to isolate, literally.
41:18
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
41:18
SPEAKER_02: That was the whole shtick.
41:20
SPEAKER_02: Um, and I think that that caused a great amount of depression, which is this taking on the state of mind, as you're talking about, of death.
41:27
SPEAKER_02: Disregarding the anxiety and everything else that came out of that situation.
41:31
SPEAKER_02: But it was the lack of interconnectivity which makes us, yeah, I would say, go toward the path of or the state of mind of a lack of life, a lack of energy or lack of enthusiasm.
41:44
SPEAKER_00: I agree.
41:45
SPEAKER_00: I even think like I think you know, obviously where I was in Atlanta, Georgia, we didn't have the same level of like lockdowns as I think here in California.
41:54
SPEAKER_00: But I do think I came out of that reaching probably a lowest isolation point in my life as well.
42:00
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
42:00
SPEAKER_00: Coming to the what flipped a switch for me in a lot of ways too was that experience of recognizing connectivity as kind of necessary, but it also flipped a switch in me recognizing that even before COVID and all that kind of stuff, you know, modern American life is very isolating.
42:15
SPEAKER_00: You know, it's this idea I know so many people, and I was this way as well, where they isolate into their relationships, they isolate into their homes, they isolate into their small nuclear family and their business.
42:25
SPEAKER_00: Um, and there's just like you just kind of get boxed out and boxed out, and you basically become a cog in this like GDP wheel of what?
42:34
SPEAKER_00: Like, you know what I mean?
42:35
SPEAKER_00: Like it's not it's not beneficial to life to like go to work for 12 hours a day, come home, watch a little bit of TV and conk out and maybe high five someone.
42:44
SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
42:44
SPEAKER_00: Like we need so much more than that.
42:47
SPEAKER_02: It's the United States of America is the best place in the world to create a financial success or financial wealth.
42:58
SPEAKER_02: It is not necessarily the best place in the world to live in it's not the bl best place in the world to live in all respects of life.
43:06
SPEAKER_02: And I think that growing up, especially like I grew up in Silicon Valley, is the entire mindset is around financial or technical success.
43:15
SPEAKER_02: And it's very important to uh for us to remind ourselves how important the rest of our life is from our connection to the people around us and to the connection to the world or like physical geographic world around us.
43:31
SPEAKER_02: Um because yes, it's good that the United States is so such a wonderful place to make that kind of success.
43:38
SPEAKER_02: Like you really can make anything of yourself, but it is very isolating in that sense.
43:42
SPEAKER_02: As if success is only shown as financial or business success, like in the Bay Area, how big is your IPO?
43:51
SPEAKER_02: Uh then it's easy to either forget or not even ever be aware that the rest of life is that much more important.
43:58
SPEAKER_02: When uh you Have friends that you see or acquaintances that are in this state of I would say going away from life or lack of enthusiasm.
44:11
SPEAKER_02: How do you or how can you show them the importance that you've clearly found in your life of connecting with the people around you?
44:21
SPEAKER_00: That's a great question.
44:22
SPEAKER_00: Because like my answer like three or four years ago would be like instruct them.
44:26
SPEAKER_00: Well, no, it would be it'd be like it'd be like, let me let me let me tell you what you need to do, and you need to be doing this, this, and this, and that does not serve anybody.
44:33
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
44:33
SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
44:34
SPEAKER_00: When someone's in a position where because they know their life way better than you know their life, so you're trying to give them like unsolicited advice or even solicited advice, honestly, is not gonna work.
44:43
SPEAKER_00: So now, like, I have this very deep sense of belief that like a person can only make changes themselves.
44:50
SPEAKER_00: You can't change another person.
44:53
SPEAKER_00: And so, and I have friends like this, and the only thing I can do for them is listen to them, be supportive of the things that they are doing right, and ask them questions about the things that are bothering them.
45:04
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, no more prescriptive statements after that.
45:06
SPEAKER_00: I'm not gonna come and say, Well, I did this and therefore you should do this, because my experience was so much different.
45:12
SPEAKER_00: I might be in a completely different place in terms of awareness, resources, my emotional state, the connections that I already have in my life, where my advice just will not make any fucking sense.
45:23
SPEAKER_00: All I can do is just be a person there to listen to them.
45:26
SPEAKER_00: And like maybe over time they might ask me about something specific and I can share with them, like, okay, cool, like that makes sense.
45:32
SPEAKER_00: I've heard a lot from you in the last couple of weeks about this.
45:35
SPEAKER_00: Um, have you thought about this?
45:37
SPEAKER_00: But it's always a question, it's always a series of whys.
45:41
SPEAKER_00: It's it's I've changed so much from wanting to tell someone to wanting to understand them.
45:46
SPEAKER_00: And I think it's it's in programming.
45:48
SPEAKER_00: Have you heard of the concept of rubber duck programming?
45:50
SPEAKER_00: No.
45:51
SPEAKER_00: So basically, well, this thing that happens sometimes when you're writing code is you're on the computer, you're writing all this code, things are going wrong, there's bugs, it's not working, and you you just get to a point you're pulling your hair out.
46:00
SPEAKER_00: So you go talk to somebody about it and you go start to explain your problem.
46:04
SPEAKER_00: And before they can even give you an answer, because you've taken the time to explain your problem, you solve it in your head as you're explaining it.
46:10
SPEAKER_00: Sure.
46:11
SPEAKER_00: And so you grab a little rubber duck and you put it on your desk, and whenever you have a problem, you talk to the rubber duck about your problem, and you eventually come up with an answer because it's in you.
46:19
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, all of our answers are in us.
46:21
SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
46:21
SPEAKER_00: Like I don't think I'm not gonna create some sort of new worldview for someone.
46:25
SPEAKER_00: All I can do is let them see themselves, and they need sometimes a sounding board to see themselves.
46:30
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
46:31
SPEAKER_02: The big my biggest bug fixes always happen seven seconds before I'm about to go to sleep.
46:36
SPEAKER_02: Exactly.
46:37
SPEAKER_00: Or you're hopping into the shower and it's like washing your hands.
46:40
SPEAKER_02: Stop washing your hands.
46:42
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
46:43
SPEAKER_00: Um, but people won't, I think the challenges, and one thing that I experienced myself in that, and and it at times I've been a good leader, and at times I've been a bad leader, you know, and I can recognize some of those times.
46:53
SPEAKER_00: And in times where I was prescriptive about what someone should do, that meant I wasn't listening to them.
46:59
SPEAKER_00: And when people feel, and I I feel this way, I think everyone feels this way, when people feel when they're not actually being listened to, maybe when they're just being preached to in some way, then they don't actually have, they're not going to share their actual problem.
47:11
SPEAKER_00: They can't use you as a sounding board in the situation because they're protecting this thing that they're feeling vulnerable about from you at this stage because you're not being vulnerable with them.
47:20
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you're not being vulnerable with them.
47:21
SPEAKER_00: You're not giving them a place where they can open up and actually explain the problem.
47:24
SPEAKER_00: When they start digging into the problem and start sharing it, and you're pushing back at them, they don't dig any further.
47:30
SPEAKER_00: And like for me, I just give people the grace of like, if you have a problem that you're suffering with right now, it's a struggle for you.
47:37
SPEAKER_00: I doubt in the first 15 seconds of a conversation, are you gonna perfectly articulate it to me?
47:42
SPEAKER_00: You need some time to wiggle around with that.
47:44
SPEAKER_00: You need some time to like say the wrong thing, catch yourself, talk about something different, and have someone just kind of listen to all of that before you get to the point where you can say, you know what, my problem is this.
47:55
SPEAKER_00: The thing I'm really trying to solve is this.
47:57
SPEAKER_00: Then you can look for a solution.
47:59
SPEAKER_02: It's a one element of society right now that is really difficult.
48:07
SPEAKER_02: That's a broad way of putting it, but is the lack of open conversation is so much conversation, I think, in between people, definitely on social media, this is like here's my 45 second video or clip or whatever it is, and then period, that's the end of my statement forever, is just not how the world works.
48:26
SPEAKER_02: And so I think, and this is something I've been trying to get better at recently, is the creation of open conversation, of recognizing that no conversation is fully ever closed.
48:40
SPEAKER_02: There's no real period at the end.
48:42
SPEAKER_02: You can ask a question and let the person the person is valid for them to say, I don't know.
48:48
SPEAKER_02: Let me think about that, and I'll get back to you next time we talk, or in a month when I really have time to thaw think about it.
48:54
SPEAKER_02: But I don't think that we give each other the grace and our give ourselves the grace to not have a conclusion, to not have a period at the end of our statement.
49:02
SPEAKER_02: Um metaphorically.
49:04
SPEAKER_00: That's I think that's an even better way of how I was describing failure earlier.
49:07
SPEAKER_00: You can't really fail because there's no period at the end of the sentence.
49:10
SPEAKER_00: There's no there's no end game until we're dead, right?
49:13
SPEAKER_00: And even then I'm not gonna know what happens because I'll be dead.
49:16
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and this is I mean, this is likely found everywhere in society, but definitely in America, is the rush to get wherever you're going to influences and creates these fear-based decisions like we were talking about earlier, is it's the lack of recognition that there is time.
49:35
SPEAKER_02: You have more time to sure.
49:38
SPEAKER_02: Maybe certain things are gonna happen in life where a period gets pushed onto you, but by and large, you almost always have more time to make a decision or to change your thought or to come back to a conversation and the lack of recognizing that time puts us into the fear-based mindset to make irrational.
49:57
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I like that take.
49:58
SPEAKER_00: Uncontrolled kids' decisions.
50:00
SPEAKER_00: I like that take.
50:01
SPEAKER_00: And I also think, too, in that same context of when you talk about like social media and that kind of stuff, it's such a one-sided conversation.
50:08
SPEAKER_00: And I think people are really lonely right now.
50:10
SPEAKER_00: Like that's one thing I would like.
50:11
SPEAKER_00: Even people who have like they can be married, they can have like full-on relationships, but they might not be being themselves and they're deeply lonely.
50:19
SPEAKER_00: And when you're deeply lonely like that, no one's listening to you.
50:21
SPEAKER_00: And at the same time that no one's listening to you, the entire world is squawking at you about what you should believe.
50:25
SPEAKER_00: They're instructing, they're preaching, they're telling you these things, and no one's listening to you back.
50:29
SPEAKER_00: And I think I don't think we have a lot of tools for that.
50:34
SPEAKER_00: I don't think a lot of people recognize that's a thing.
50:36
SPEAKER_00: And I feel like it's pushing people further into isolation and making them more quick to react in those situations where they need, they need to get their voice heard right now, right now.
50:45
SPEAKER_00: This thing bothered them.
50:46
SPEAKER_00: You gotta get your voice heard right now, and it's like, you know, if you had a couple friends that you could like talk to, it would really smooth out some of this sharpness that a lot of people are feeling where they feel like they need to be heard.
50:58
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
50:59
SPEAKER_02: I have one more question before I go to a couple quick or short answer questions, which is a lot of this conversation talks about our getting into our own heads in these, once again, these fear-based mindsets, not recognizing we have time, not feeling like we're being listened to, whatever.
51:18
SPEAKER_02: It's this difference between the feelings you were mentioning of feeling life or like enthusiasm when you're connected versus the feeling of death or the lack of enthusiasm when you are isolated.
51:30
SPEAKER_02: There is there are there's a flip that is switched both in short term but also in long term.
51:37
SPEAKER_02: Being at some point in time, and some people are better than this, better at this than others, at some point in time, you flip a switch and you create awareness to change behavior in order to bring yourself back toward this state of enthusiasm or life.
51:54
SPEAKER_02: It's also done on a long term.
51:56
SPEAKER_02: I would say this is the one of the flips you switched maybe in this two-month period on a break from work is recreating awareness in that moment or extended moment that something is wrong and I need to do something differently.
52:12
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, but how do you or what advice would you give to people to find that switch in their life?
52:20
SPEAKER_02: The recreation or the creation of awareness on a specific topic, because it's very difficult for us when we're in isolation, yeah, lack of enthusiasm, hazy minds, you know, hunched over shoulders, metaphorically or physically, to recognize something is wrong.
52:37
SPEAKER_02: I'm not something needs to change, and then flipping the switch to to pivoting to something else.
52:43
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean, God, that's a great question.
52:45
SPEAKER_00: Because again, I don't know.
52:46
SPEAKER_00: I think everyone probably has a different switch.
52:48
SPEAKER_00: They probably feel things in a different way, and maybe that awareness piece of it.
52:52
SPEAKER_00: I don't know how someone would, you know, for me, the awareness in my life was other people in my lives getting to a point where they were saying, like, I don't feel like you hear me.
53:00
SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
53:01
SPEAKER_00: So that was me having that light shone back on me and me going, oh yeah, you're right.
53:06
SPEAKER_00: I didn't initially say you were right.
53:07
SPEAKER_00: It took me a while to admit, you know what I mean?
53:10
SPEAKER_00: Um, and so much there's so many things, there's so many things out there to be distractions from that awareness, you know what I mean, that I don't I don't know the answer to that specific question.
53:23
SPEAKER_00: But I do know, I do know that like the work that I did once I started to have that awareness, because it's not like the awareness comes in for me, it wasn't like there's this wholesale like awareness, like this block of information where it's like, ah, I get it now.
53:36
SPEAKER_00: I need to do X, Y, and Z.
53:38
SPEAKER_00: It was like a little thread I started pulling on.
53:40
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
53:41
SPEAKER_00: And when I started pulling on that thread, I started trying to be more aware of myself and how I was talking to myself and how I was spending my time.
53:51
SPEAKER_00: And then I started thinking about, okay, like if I'm treating myself inside my head this way, if I'm calling myself a failure, if I am thinking that, if I'm purposely isolating myself and I'm afraid to be vulnerable, I'm sure everyone else feels that too.
54:06
SPEAKER_00: So I'm not gonna go out and burden other people with this shit.
54:08
SPEAKER_00: How can I start to create a sense of safety and security in myself?
54:12
SPEAKER_00: And at first I started thinking like, I just have to think it.
54:15
SPEAKER_00: I'll just manifest it.
54:16
SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
54:17
SPEAKER_00: I'll start thinking different thoughts, but that doesn't work, honestly.
54:20
SPEAKER_00: And so I went back even further than that and I started.
54:24
SPEAKER_00: I have this document that I keep to this day.
54:26
SPEAKER_00: It's like 25 pages of like all the things that Joe needs to do to be surviving in this world and take care of himself.
54:31
SPEAKER_00: But started actually with my body.
54:33
SPEAKER_00: It actually started with recognizing that um the feelings that I was having.
54:38
SPEAKER_00: Because I, to be honest with you, I'd be waking up two or three times a week, I'd be throwing up in the morning just out of stress and anxiety.
54:44
SPEAKER_00: Thought I had stomach issues, thought I had, I went and like they put a scope down my throat and like checked it out.
54:48
SPEAKER_00: They're like, You're fine, dude.
54:49
SPEAKER_00: Just stress.
54:50
SPEAKER_00: Just stress.
54:51
SPEAKER_00: Um and starting to like hone in on that concept of like, well, well, well, why?
54:56
SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
54:56
SPEAKER_00: What am I doing?
54:58
SPEAKER_00: And literally went, I started building this document of what are the things that make me feel good longer term?
55:04
SPEAKER_00: What are my high esteem activities?
55:07
SPEAKER_00: My high esteem activities are I need to eat right, dude.
55:10
SPEAKER_00: I need to make sure that I'm putting the right things in my body.
55:12
SPEAKER_00: I'm not just crushing fast food every day, which I use, I mean, I love fast food, but it's like you can't, you can't do it, right?
55:18
SPEAKER_00: I need to be exercising on a pretty regular clip.
55:21
SPEAKER_00: Um, and I need to be doing things that I enjoy from exercise perspective.
55:25
SPEAKER_00: I need to be stretching every day, and I need to be getting sunlight every single day.
55:29
SPEAKER_00: And I kind of just set myself out with those intentions in the beginning of like doing those things.
55:35
SPEAKER_00: And once I actually got into, I don't like to call them, I mean, they are habits, right?
55:39
SPEAKER_00: But once I actually start getting into doing those things more regularly, like I didn't schedule them.
55:43
SPEAKER_00: It's not like I like, I have to work out at 6 30 in the morning every morning or else I'm gonna lose it.
55:47
SPEAKER_00: It's like, no, no, no.
55:48
SPEAKER_00: I know that I need every two days, I need to have a good workout in here.
55:51
SPEAKER_00: So I'll have some scheduled with other people and I'll have some workouts for myself that I just kind of jump into and I'm feeling it.
55:56
SPEAKER_00: But I and sometimes they're 10-minute workouts and sometimes they're three hour long workouts.
56:00
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, but I just kind of listen to my body and do what I need to do in those situations.
56:04
SPEAKER_00: And once I could see the difference in my mental state from those things, then I thought to myself, okay, these are things that I need to codify in my life.
56:13
SPEAKER_00: These are things that are non-negotiables in my life.
56:16
SPEAKER_00: I cannot take care of other people or help other people if I cannot take care of or help myself.
56:21
SPEAKER_00: And these are the things that I need to do to be in a state of neutrality so that I can be an additive voice to someone else's life.
56:29
SPEAKER_00: Because otherwise I'm beating up on myself, I'm negative myself, I'm draining energy from people.
56:33
SPEAKER_00: I want to be having an abundance of energy and security that I can share with other people.
56:37
SPEAKER_00: And that starts at, for me, taking care of my body.
56:40
SPEAKER_00: And it's been a world of difference.
56:42
SPEAKER_00: And so when I did that, I have there's a couple pages on what is it, what do I do to take care of my body?
56:47
SPEAKER_00: What are the key elements of that?
56:49
SPEAKER_00: Then there's a level of that am I taking care of my mind?
56:52
SPEAKER_00: Am I taking care of my relationships?
56:53
SPEAKER_00: Am I taking care of my resources?
56:54
SPEAKER_00: It's like Maslow's hierarchy of needs, basically.
56:57
SPEAKER_00: And what I realized is I couldn't skip ahead to what does it mean to take care of my mind?
57:03
SPEAKER_00: What does it mean to take care of my relationships?
57:04
SPEAKER_00: What does it mean to take care of my resources?
57:06
SPEAKER_00: I couldn't like write down the things that I needed to do in those categories until I had started to get really good at the base category of my body.
57:16
SPEAKER_00: So once I started to really turn these things into habits and patterns of taking care of my body, all of a sudden the other stuff just started to unlock itself.
57:24
SPEAKER_00: And I was learning about myself because I had all this energy that I was able to use on myself about my awareness and other people and listening to other people.
57:31
SPEAKER_00: And then all of a sudden, I was building this document.
57:33
SPEAKER_00: I was like, these are the things that I need to do to take care of my relationships.
57:36
SPEAKER_00: Sure.
57:37
SPEAKER_00: These are the things I needed to take care of my mind.
57:38
SPEAKER_00: And it kept building and building from there.
57:40
SPEAKER_00: So I do view it as this pyramid of building myself back up in this way, and from the root level of it's taking care of myself.
57:46
SPEAKER_02: Your health comes first.
57:47
SPEAKER_00: Health comes first.
57:48
SPEAKER_02: Fantastic, man.
57:49
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I really appreciate that.
57:52
SPEAKER_02: I will end it there.
57:55
SPEAKER_02: Um thank you for sharing some time with me.
57:56
SPEAKER_02: It was a fantastic conversation.
57:59
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, man.
58:00
SPEAKER_00: Thank you.