#259 | The Smoking Watch; Making tiny changes that will make all the difference in your life

Vance Crowe [00:00:00] And so I believe that if you get lost, if you don't know what you should pursue, you should paradoxically think about what are you resentful of? Who is a person around you that you see getting something that you want, that you think they don't deserve, that? This is Kean Kruger from Iowa, and you're listening to the Vance Crow podcast. Welcome back to the podcast. I'm glad you're here. So today I'm gonna do something a little bit different. For the last few weeks, we have been focusing intensely on the conflicts that are happening around the world. And while I am deeply proud of the work we've done here, we've been able to find experts and hear perspectives that put us way far away from that mainstream narrative that seems like it's being pushed down our throats. But at the same time, I find myself saying, you know, it's easy to delude yourself into thinking that the problems that are going on around the world, the ones that everybody you're talking about, are the most important for me to focus on. When the reality is the most important problems to focus on, the most important decisions and choices are the ones that are internal to me. What are the changes that I should be making in my life that will help me no matter what happens internationally or nationally, it will put me in a better situation. So my executive producer, Ben Anderson and I were talking about this, and we decided instead of running a regular interview again today, that we would take a little break and we would go into the archives and pull out a talk that I gave in January down in San Antonio, Texas called The Smoking Watch.

Vance Crowe [00:01:38] Now, this was a talk that I created at the request of the white commercial corporation who said, Hey, we have a group of grain handlers that come together once a year. There's several hundred of them. And what we wanna do with this group is push them to talk with one another, push them to generate conversations because we know that we don't have all of the answers for them. But there is so much wisdom in this room that if we can stimulate good conversations between them, then they will make better decisions and our entire business and organization will benefit from this. So with that kind of vague outline, I created a talk that is really all about how to make choices and how to think about what challenges you can run into when you try and make change in your life. And this talk was delivered to a room full of people that were, even though they were all grain handlers, they really had very diverse backgrounds. They come from different parts of the country. Some of them have only been on the job for a few months. Some of them have been a part of a multi-generational business, and now they're looking at passing that business down. So everyone in this room came with different problems, different opportunities, different perspectives, and it was an exciting group to be a part of and to be able to share what I've learned mostly while on this podcast. Which before we get to the interview, I just wanna point out that I hope you feel a level of ownership of this talk. So many of the things that have been discussed in this talk that you're gonna hear today, first, were brought to my attention either by interviewing people for the podcast or by preparing to interview people on the podcast, or really just from conversations from the audience and people reaching out and saying, Hey, have you ever thought about this?

Vance Crowe [00:03:21] Or do you know about this person? So I am really excited to share this with you because I hope you feel a level of ownership. If you are interested in having me address one of your groups, you can do that by going to Vance Crowe dot com and fill out the contact speaker form. I do have to say I'm not doing any talks in June and July, probably not in August either because we have a new baby on the way. And I'm really excited about this. But I have committed to my wife that I will be here at the house helping with our two kids that we are so excited to have. So without further ado, we're gonna head to this talk. I hope you enjoy it. And thank you so much for being here. I I met Matt in quotes, Vance Crow from Twitter. And right away was interesting to me was that he, he seems to be interested in talking to people that don't agree with him about things, which is, and, and more importantly than that, talk to people who don't agree with him about things and not in the interest of fighting with them just to just hear what they have to say. And I, I think there aren't a lot of us that are like that. A lot of us tend to stick with our own kind, so to speak, and kind of wanna fight about things, maybe if we disagree. And this guy was just out there talking to people on all different subjects. He maybe agreed, maybe disagreed, and just, just listening to 'em and, and learning from them, which I thought was pretty cool. And before he does, before he started doing what he does now, he worked for Monsanto for a while with the job essentially, of convincing people who don't know anything about Monsanto, that they're not as evil as they think they are, which is, communication is the hardest thing people do anyway.

Vance Crowe [00:05:00] And to communicate things that are complicated and controversial is, is a pretty cool job, in my opinion. So I don't make friends easily, it's just my personality. I think I have a lot of friends. It just takes me a long time. I, I figure like six months to a couple years is about how long it takes to form a friendship. Vance was not like that. I, you know, I, I met Vance in person for the first time this last spring, but I talked to him, you know, online and emails and texts several times before that. And I felt like he was an old friend right from the beginning. And I truly don't know exactly what he's gonna talk to you about here, but I believe with all my heart that whatever it is is gonna be good and useful. So please welcome Vance Crowe. Thanks Crow. So Phil's right, but it's maybe bears a little bit more explanation. My job at Monsanto was the awkwardly titled Director Of Millennial Engagement, which meant that My job was to, you know, there's people out there, they have really strong feelings about GMOs and pesticides and those things. No, my job was to go out and talk with them about whatever it was that they thought. And I did this in a very different way when I was hired for the job. I think they thought it was gonna be just a PR and communications person. But the benefit of hiring me as opposed to somebody else was I was insatiably curious. I went throughout the company and talked to literally hundreds of people about how genetics works and pesticides. And actually when I first came to Monsanto, I kind of viewed them as North Korea, right?

Vance Crowe [00:06:35] I was one of those people that definitely thought they were evil and, and genuinely all the way down in the bottom of my mind when I was doing the interview, I always imagined if they let me run around and talk inside of this company, if I got to discover that they were as evil as everybody thought that they were, well then I was gonna go write the greatest tell all book of all time. But if I discovered something different, if I discovered that they weren't as evil as everyone thought that they were, well then you've just stumbled upon maybe the most important communications problem in the history of the modern world, which is we're growing food more bountifully than we ever have before in the history of time. And yet people are afraid and even angry about where their food comes from. So I love this job. I did it for five years, and when Bear took over, it really wasn't gonna be the same thing. So I left, and actually for the next two years, I was hired by farmers all over the country to go talk with them about how can they have conversations with people that disagree with them. These farmers are thinking, look, if some of the technology that's made us profitable and has made our business work has made it so it's been an operation, we could have our kids back too. If this gets banned, we may not be able to keep farming. And so they're very interested in this. But then COVID hit, right? And I know in the grain industry, I've heard a lot of you say, well, not much changed 'cause people still got to eat. You know, animals got to eat, we still gotta move grain. But in my world, everything shut down. I stopped going and giving speeches and I had a whole lot more time on my hands. So what I started doing was my podcast.

Vance Crowe [00:08:06] I had a podcast, I was able to interview people that I thought were interesting. Only now with this podcast, I could call literally anyone in the entire world and ask them to explain to me what was going on with COVID. And just like everybody in this room, I had a deep vested interest. My wife was pregnant with our child. We had no idea what was gonna happen. So I started doing not just one interview a week, but sometimes two, three interviews a day. I was super interested in this. I had no idea where this was gonna take me. But after a little while, some of my guests would call me back and they would say, Hey, I really liked doing the interview. It was an honor, but I really liked the way you ask questions. So would you be open to interviewing my mother before she dies? I'd really like you to record what it was that made her life what it is. And so I, I started doing one and then two and then three. And this started to accelerate. So I started to be able to interview people in what I call Legacy Interviews. This is really asking people before their deathbed, looking back on your life, what were the choices you made? What were the decisions that you created that made you into who you are? And in truth, almost everyone that has a loved one do this for them, has obviously made some right choices because they have grandkids or children that want to hear their stories. So when Phil called me up and said, Hey, I know we didn't do it last year. We had arranged, I was gonna come and do a talk on steel manning and how to have better arguments and negotiate.

Vance Crowe [00:09:39] But when Phil called me up and said, Hey, since we didn't do it last year, we'd still like to have you come. Do you wanna come and give this talk? And I said, yes. However, I have something completely different to share because I have spent hours and hours and hours with people that are telling me about their life. And they're imagining that people a hundred years from now might be hearing these stories. And it really gives you a real flavor for what choices matter in people's lives. What decisions do they make? Maybe when they were young, maybe when they were in the middle of their age, or maybe even just a few years ago, that had the largest impact on them. So one of the really key things that I think came out really early in the Legacy Interviews was that every single person that had a life that I think was impactful had a mentor. How many of you have a mentor? Had a mentor to help you get into this room here, right? A lot, right? I had a mentor and his name was Pete. Pete was an 85-year-old man. I met him when I was in graduate school. I went to graduate school for the reason that most kids go to graduate school. I had no idea what I was gonna be when I grew up. And I knew I could delay it for two more years and all it would cost me was $80,000, right? But one of the benefits of going to graduate school was that I was on the East coast and my, just a friend of the family, Pete, lived in New York and he was an old guy that liked to drink martinis.

Vance Crowe [00:11:14] So I could go over to New York and visit with him. And slowly over time, my relationship with Pete began to build into that kind of mentor mentee relationships. In fact, probably a lot of you have these relationships. You maybe don't even call it the mentor mentee relationship, but that's certainly what it was. 'cause I would come over and have a great time with Pete and there'd always be a little bit of wisdom, kinda snuck in somewhere. And at first, this is great, right? I'm getting free meals, I'm getting a drink, you know, for free. I'm in Manhattan. It's a lot of fun. But anybody in here that's had a mentor that's worth their salt knows that sometimes those mentor relationships are a little bit rough, right? Because a good mentor will tell you the things that you need to hear, but that you don't want to, right? Those kinds of things that are like, ah, you really need to make a change. I remember one time Pete called me up, it was on Sunday morning, we'd probably stayed up pretty late drinking martinis the night before, but it's 7:00 AM And he calls me up and he says, Vance, I've been going through my notes from last night and I wanted to go through three things with you. One, when you come over here, if we're gonna go out to eat, you gotta start dressing better. That's a little embarrassing, right? You can feel your face getting a little red if somebody told you that. The second thing he said was, Hey, you mentioned something in the news. I've never seen that. If you find that article, I want you to send it to me. So Pete was paying attention to what I was saying. And then the third thing he said to me was, Vance, you've been putting on weight. That hurts, right?

Vance Crowe [00:12:46] But there's only two people in the world that'll tell you that, right? People that love you and people that hate you, right? And so my mentor, Pete, was the kind of guy that would do that. And I remember one time I took the train over to see Pete, probably around this time at the last semester of graduate school. And now pressure has started building because now I know the time has run out, right? I'm going to have to make a decision on what it is I'm gonna do with my life. And I'm sitting there telling him over dinner, as we're walking to dinner, as we're walking back, just how nervous I am about this. Just how worked up and how, how much I don't know who's gonna hire me and what will I do and what will that job be like? And I'm thinking of all these things that are off in the future, but to me feel like a crushing weight. So much of a crushing weight that I wasn't doing other things. I wasn't getting things done. So we get back to Pete's apartment and he asks if I want to do a night cap, and I like a good night cap, right? So I sit down with him and he says, Vance, I have a blue box sitting in my study. Would you go pick that box up? So I get up and I go to his office where he has a wall of books about art and all the things that's made him a wonderful person. And he has these trophies and about how he was a war hero, you know, he was an amazing man. So I walk in there and I see the blue box and I pick it up and it's kind of heavy, right? It's like this big, pretty fancy. I walk into Pete, I don't think very much about what's in there. And I hand it to him and Pete has me sit back down and he takes that box and he slides it over to me and I open up the box.

Vance Crowe [00:14:22] And it is a beautiful, shiny, brand new watch. Now, I am from Eureka, Illinois, so I don't know anything at all about watches, right? But I can tell by how heavy this watch is that it is likely more expensive than all the money I have in my bank account, right? Which isn't saying much because I was in graduate school, so I didn't have a lot of money in my bank account. So I take this watch and he says, Vance, I want you to have this. And I am so excited. I'm feeling that level of elation that you have for getting a gift that you didn't do anything to deserve. And it's really exciting. And I'm thinking like, how am I gonna get this thing home? You know, this is so valuable. And then right as I'm at that peak point of euphoria, he says, but that comes with one condition. Vance. If you accept that watch, I want you to quit smoking. All of a sudden, I'm completely crest fallen, right? I'm a graduate student. That's what we do, is we smoke cigarettes irresponsibly. But not only that, smoking has been a friend of mine, right? I traveled all over the world. I was a deckhand on a ship. So cigarettes meant I could find people on the docks or in bars and give them to bouncers and they'd wanna look out for me. I was in Kenya. I would use it to pay off police officers instead of giving 'em cash. I'd use cigarettes to start up conversations with people like Phil, if we didn't have the internet, or maybe some girls outside of a bar. Smoking had been a really big part of my life.

Vance Crowe [00:15:53] And so in that moment, I do what a lot of young people would do. I kind of buck, and in my mind I'm thinking, am I really gonna push this? Watch back if he says I have to quit smoking. But Pete did something I didn't expect. He said, if you accept that watch, you don't have to quit smoking now. You just have to commit that you will quit smoking. So boom, back up and excited. I'm right. This is great, right? I accept I'm thinking about this future person that's not gonna smoke anymore, but I get to smoke and have the watch. I'm sure when I left his apartment, I lit up a cigarette and you know, danced onto the train. But the next morning when I woke up, and I don't know if any of you have ever been a smoker, but there's nothing better than a cigarette and a cup of coffee on a cold morning. So I go get my cup of coffee and I go outside to sit outside and smoke my cigarette. And right as I'm lighting it up, what do I hear? But tick, tick, tick, tick. I had to decide now, every time I smoked a cigarette, am I willing to endure that ticking sound, the heaviness of that watch? And it stayed with me. And quitting smoking was really scary because anybody that's ever tried to do something like that knows that you're quitting forever. You're gonna be a totally different person. All the things that you did that made you, the person that you are now is going to be given up.

Vance Crowe [00:17:26] You have to do something different. And I want to talk about that, right? Because so much of what we think about as the way we improve our lives, or the decisions that we're gonna make that are gonna make our lives better, the things that we could do that would change our situation, we often think about a long way off, right? We ask children things like, what do you wanna be when you grow up? Even though that's so far away, it's almost impossible for a child to imagine it. And you also think about other big decisions. Some decisions you have to think way ahead of time. 'cause you gotta make investments into a new silo or trucks, or you gotta make capital investments. You have to plan. But a lot of those decisions about who we are, we imagine will be different at some other time. But it's really hard to think about, how am I gonna make those changes today that are so monumental, they'll change who I am. And so that's what I want to talk about today. The sort of changes that you can make that will really change who you are in your family, in your network, in your business. All of those decisions that you have to make, that you don't really know exactly where you're going. Now, how many of you have ever been recorded on podcasts? I know there were a couple guys in here that run a podcast, right? One of the most common things that happens with people that are podcast guests is you say, did you listen to the podcast? And you know what? They say? No, I hate the sound of my own voice. I just can't do it. Right? We don't like the sound of our own voice when it's recorded. But to podcasters, you can have a totally different conversation because to the podcaster that has many episodes down, they know that there's a weird phenomenon that happens when you put video and audio out into the world.

Vance Crowe [00:19:12] And that is that that past person, that person that's on that podcast, that's you. But you can't do anything to change what that person said or thought or behaved or did at all. And so there's this weird phenomena that you're stuck. Everyone in the world views that not only as you when you recorded it, but you right now. So you have this kind of weird relationship with it. And just like Phil was talking about this morning, right? You can't do really anything at all to change your future self except for what are you doing right now? This future self that you'll be is different than the one that you are right now. Think about who you are now compared to who you were before you became a parent, before you became the decision maker, before you became the person that even is relied upon at all. Right? These things change us over time. So it's impossible to know who will I actually be in the future? And I think that there's a fun experiment that that people that get into meditation do. Are there, is there anybody in here that meditates at all? This was one of those experiences that made me realize where there's value. What I want everybody to do now is to take out a piece of paper and a pen. And I want you to write something down. It's very important. 'cause it'll change your answer if you don't actually write it down. What I want you to do is I want you to, as quickly as possible, without thinking too deeply about it, name three movies.

Vance Crowe [00:20:53] Just write down three movies. Don't look at your neighbor's movies. Don't. Don't do anything. Don't try and look 'em up. Just three movies. It's hard when you put somebody on the spot. Three movies, okay? So once I, I, there's a lot of people writing, they don't have, these are long movies apparently. Now I want you to ask a question just to reflect a little bit. Where did those three movies come from? Why did you choose those three movies? I like 'em, right? Maybe they're already, maybe you already have a top three, right? But why didn't you choose Jurassic Park or Willy Wonka in the Chocolate Factory or any of the Lord of the Rings, trilogies or frozen? And maybe I'm naming a movie that you did, but all of you have heard of these movies. You could have reached back in your mind and grabbed that one, but you didn't. You grabbed these three. Now that's a funny thing because it's, if you didn't choose, could you have chosen a different movie, right? Only if after you heard that first one you thought, no, I don't want that one. I want a different one. So really when you think about this, this activity, right? You start to realize, meditators realize you don't really have that much control over the thoughts in the back of your mind.

Vance Crowe [00:22:27] You ask yourself a question and some voice or something gives you an answer. This starts to become a little bit surreal when you think about it because it starts to make you say like, wait a second, do I have other voices in my head? Isn't that schizophrenia? Right? But everybody in here does, right? You're having a dialogue with yourself right now. You're hearing it, you're asking yourself, you're thinking about it. And there's some sort of conversation that goes on there. And this is really an interesting thing to think about for just a little bit, because when you start realizing that you have voices in your head, you can start realizing that these conversations go on and they actually affect the decisions that you make. So for example, how many of you, you don't have to raise your hands. How many of you have thought I wanna start exercising this year, right? So we got some hand raisers, right? You start exercising, this happens to everybody, right? You start exercising day one, you killed it, right? That was great. Day two, you woke up a little sore, but you don't care 'cause you're working out, right? So you get out there and work out again, day three, maybe you keep up with it, right? But let's say you do, by day four, most of us start having a voice in the back of our head that says, you did a really good job. Those other three days, you don't have to keep going, right? It's pretty cold out.

Vance Crowe [00:23:59] And I don't think when we were making this deal, we understood how cold it was gonna be, right? You're starting to have this discussion, right? And it happens not just to you, but to every single other human being. All of us have this. Now, one of the most amazing things is if you name this voice now you can start to talk with it. Eyes call this voice. And other people have before me the voice of resistance, right? This is that voice that in the back of your mind, when you go to make some change, it tries to talk you out of it. And sometimes that's a good decision. Sometimes our voice of resistance have kept us from jumping off bridges, right? But most of the time when we go to make a decision that will change our lives, we have this conversation inside of our own head and we don't even realize it's happening. But once you name that voice, once you start to be like, ah, that's the voice that tries to talk me out of doing the things I want. Now you can begin a dialogue with that voice and now you can begin to change it. But the voice of resistance isn't the only thing that knocks us off of the paths that we want to get on, the changes the future self that we want to be. The other thing that happens is all of the external pressures that happen. Now, all of us at some point in our high school classes, or just knowing pop culture, know about Odysseus, right?

Vance Crowe [00:25:33] And we've probably all heard that at one point in time he has to sail by this island. And for some reason he pours beeswax in the in the ears of all of the people that are gonna be doing the sailing. And he has himself strapped to the mass. They have him tie him down. You guys familiar with this? Right? Because he was warned that if he didn't take extra measures, that he would be going by this island. And the sirens, their songs would be so melodious, they would be so wonderful that he would stop what he was doing and drive the ship, steer the ship towards the island where he would be certainly killed, thrown against the rocks and die right along those shores. And the reason is because those sirens would sing things that would induce him to do this. I actually had to look for quite amount of time to find a photograph that doesn't have human skulls littering the beach shore and all the ships. Now, the reason that the Greeks put this together, this story was to illustrate the idea that there are a lot of outside pressures. Things that will call us to them, that will get us off of the path of change or off of the course that we want to be on. In fact, what most people don't know about Odysseus's story is what the sirens were singing to him. Do you know, they were singing how good he'd done in battle, how strong he was. And the temptation was for him to say, oh, I really like those songs.

Vance Crowe [00:27:05] I'm gonna go closer to those rocks so I can hear them more. This is the other side. You have the internal voice of resistance that can keep you from making change. And the Greeks and every other civilization out there know that there are external pressures, things that are calling your name, things that are bringing you close to prompt you to make the changes that you shouldn't make. Now, what Odysseus did was he said, Hey, all of these other sailors, if you see me start yelling out that I want to go in a different direction, I want you to tie me up even tighter. And so that's what they did. And at its core, most of the change that we make in our lives are impacted by our friends, right? I was just in a class about relationships, right? And this was the very core lesson, right? It's your friends, it's the loyalty, it's the relationships that you have that impact your business. But friends do a lot more than that, right? What I want you to do now, you all have your pen and your piece of paper out. Now I want you to do an exercise of writing down the five people that you spend the most time with. Take some time. This is the point of the exercise, is to really think about who are the five people that I spend the most time with the most attention on? Now, I want you to look at that list of five people, and I want you to ask yourself, wait a second, is there a podcast that I listen to every day, every other day, a couple times a week, that if you add up the amount of time that I spend with that podcast host or that radio show or that television show, would it add up to more than any of the people on that list?

Vance Crowe [00:28:57] I know for me, if I include the people that I hear piped into my ears through my earbuds, the list of five changes for me. But this is important to consider because everybody's heard the phrase, you know, it's you are the average of the five people that you spend the most time with. And that's kind of something intuitively obvious, right? The more time you spend with people that do silly things or dumb things, or they don't really, they aren't thinking ahead, that will change you. But I actually think this is a much, much deeper concept than most people realize. And it really dawned on me when I had a child. So about 16 months ago, I had a little baby girl. And one of the things, I don't know if there's any people that are planning expecting to be parents soon, but something nobody ever told me. So I try and tell everyone else, no one tells you that for the first four months that baby is not going to smile or laugh at all. And you're basically dealing with a terrorist that will not negotiate with you, right? There's nothing you can do. They're not giving you anything. The only thing they won't do, the the, the only thing they will do is not cry. That's the best you can get out of here. But right after four months when they can smile, when they do start laughing and you do start building that relationship, another thing happens. The child begins watching what it is that their parents or their siblings are doing, and then they want to do it too. This is called mimetic desire.

Vance Crowe [00:30:29] And the the philosopher that that realized this, his name is Renee Gerard, he pointed out that when human beings are born and they all of a sudden drop into the world, there is so much going on. There are so many things they could look at. So many things they could touch, smell, taste, put in their mouth, shove into outlets, whatever you wanna say, right? That they don't have any idea at all what they should do. And so human beings have been programmed over many, many thousands of years of evolution to say, actually what I want is what the people around me want. And the funny thing is, we don't grow out of that. Whatever the people around you aspire to, whatever they look to, to say, that's achievement. That's the goal that I want. That's the mark of success. Or that's the way that I can know that I've achieved. The more time you spend around people, it will float into you kind of through osmosis that you two will want those things. And I know when you first hear this, you think, no, I, I want things 'cause I want those things. But really stop and ask yourself how many things you want, you really want that nobody else wants. There's very, very few things. And that's the reason advertisers try and put these celebrities right next to a shoe. You're like, you're not even wearing the shoe. Why does that make me wanna buy a shoe? But people do it because it works, because they think, if I want to be like that guy, then I should wear those shoes.

Vance Crowe [00:32:05] The way that you transcend this is that you make sure that list of five people is the right list of five people, right? And really look at that list and say, am I around anybody? And spending time regularly with somebody that I really disagree with? And yet I still respect. That's an important component of the five people on that list. If you're getting up in age, and I would say if you're above 27, you're no longer young. So are you spending time with anybody that's younger, somebody that'll push you, somebody that'll know technology and about trends and about things that are changing in ways that you don't. Now once you've started to realize maybe there's some gaps on that list, maybe there's some tweaks or changes I should make, then the only way you'll make them is if you make them into a routine. You know, there's a reason why people gather at the coffee shop. Maybe it's even at your elevator to get that coffee and to spend time and just talk with the people that are their, their peers. But now, in this modern age, and we were just talking about in the relationship group, it's so easy to text people to feel like you've connected with them. 'cause you're watching 'em on social media to skip out on all those in-person activities. But the only way you're going to build relationships with the right kind of people is if you set up the routines that make it so you regularly see them. For example, for the last 10 years, every Thursday night, this will be one of the rare examples.

Vance Crowe [00:33:40] Tonight I meet with a group of three other guys. Now, those three other guys, we get together, we bring some beers, it's nothing fancy, but we get together. And because we've created that routine, 10 years later, you can look back and say, look at all the good decisions we made. Look at all the things that we talked about that we decided to do different things than had we just been thinking about it on our own. Also, if you have a spouse, you need to set up a routine to make sure you see that spouse, my wife and I meet Friday nights at about seven o'clock. 'cause that's when we're both done with work. The baby's done, but we make sure that we have that time because by doing that, I make sure she stays in the top of that list of five people. Now, I may want her to stay in that list of five people, but if I don't create a routine, something that we both know, we both count on, we both look forward to, then there's always the chance that something better might come along, something that might take my attention. So if you wanna make sure that you're managing the five people that are gonna change the way you think about things, you need to put it into a routine. Often when you've been pursuing something, I've heard some people say today that they sold their business after a long, long history of working in the business, right? You've achieved something, or maybe you, the goals that you thought were gonna be there, something changed in your business or in your family or something. And now the goal that you were pursuing evaporates in both those situations.

Vance Crowe [00:35:16] Whether you just achieved something or the goal that you were pursuing goes away, sometimes it's easy to get lost, right? What is it that I should be pursuing? What change could I make that I would like to make? Sometimes you don't have one in your head. In fact, right now, you might be thinking, I don't really have a change that I wanna make. I, I don't know what he's talking about, but, but it's good to really sit and reflect and think when you get lost, what could I do to find my path? And one of the things that I have heard over and over and over again was how much jealousy and resentment has impacted the way people make decisions. And so I believe that if you get lost, if you don't know what you should pursue, you should paradoxically think about what are you resentful of? Who is a person around you that you see getting something that you want, that you think they don't deserve, that who's a person that you think they get something and it's easy for them, but it's hard for me, right? Resentment is one of those games that our mind plays with us, that it allows us to put off what is our responsibility in this situation. And then instead says they have it easier. But I have a good friend, his name's Michael Ring, he's young farmer. He coined this phrase, and I thought it was brilliant. He said, resentment is a Mac. Whenever I trying to figure out what's going wrong in my life, I start to look around and say, who am I resentful of?

Vance Crowe [00:36:47] And then first say, do I actually want that thing that they're going after? That I'm putting myself, my anger, my frustration, my resentment and jealousy towards them? Do I actually want that thing? Because if I don't, then it'd be good just to let that go. Then I don't have to feel those feelings anymore. But if you actually find yourself in a situation where the thing that they have you want, now all of a sudden you can start addressing it. Not to take it away from them, but to figure out what do I need to do to be able to be in that position that I can get the thing that they have, whether it's to be more fit or a job role that you want, or a relationship with their spouse or their kids. We often try and push resentment in these things out. But it is actually our brain's way of telling us what is it that you really want deep down, even if you're not really thinking about it. You know, we talked about mentors before, and many of the people in here said, yeah, I had a mentor. I know I was talking about mine. Mentorship is one of those things that you're in a much better position than corporate America is. See, corporate America has tried to replicate mentorship on the corporate level, and it never works, right? Not on the large scale. They try and say, we're gonna pair you up with you. You guys are gonna meet all these times. It's gonna just naturally spark up. But you know that mentorship doesn't work like that.

Vance Crowe [00:38:20] There's some unnameable chemistry that happens because you've got one person that looks up to and admires another person, and that person that's being admired has something to give. They have something to share. And also, just like in my relationship with Pete, he wasn't just doing it so he could have a drinking buddy. He liked knowing what are young people thinking about? What are they doing? Now I've got somebody to show up at my house and we can go do things and be excited about it. So it's a two way street, but there aren't very many good books out there about mentorship. I've looked and looked and looked because it's something that has made such a big impact on me and all of those people I've done Legacy Interviews with. And so it wasn't until I was watching YouTube videos with this crazy character that I heard something profound about mentorship. This man's name is Wes Watson, and he is a convicted felon, believe it or not, with the shirt off and the giant muscles and all those tattoos. He now runs a YouTube channel where the entire channel is about him trying to say, this is the way you can straighten your life up. This is how you can get out of the, the, the bad situations you're in to be able to make your life better so you don't have to go to prison like I did. And he's talking one time and he said, I have a, a guy that came to me and he said, Wes, my nephew is in all kinds of trouble. He's doing all the same dumb stuff that I used to do. And I try and tell him, don't do that. Do this other thing.

Vance Crowe [00:39:52] And Wes, even though I clearly know what I'm talking about, he doesn't listen to me. What should I do? And Wes said something that's so profound and hit me so hard that I actually, it jarred me awake. He said, if he's not listening to you, it's 'cause he doesn't wanna be you. And if you want him to wanna be like you, then you have to take a look at yourself and say, why am I not creating the kinds of warm relationships that would make him aspire to be like me? Why am I not doing something that makes him say, Hey, you achieved this thing that I want. I want it too. Now, sometimes you're just around dumb kids. They don't know what they want, they don't want the right mentors. But if you really wanna be the type of person that's a mentor, you really have to ask yourself, what change do I need to make to make it so other people would want to come to me that would want to talk with me, that would wanna learn from me? And I can tell you from all of the Legacy Interviews I've done, some of the most important relationships to these older people. Some of them are 60, some of them are 85. The one of the most important relationships is their mentee. People want to mentor other people. And if you don't have somebody that you're mentoring, consider deeply that this is a place that will enrich your life in ways that you can't imagine before you do it. Now, on the flip side, if you're sitting here and saying, I really wish that I had had a mentor.

Vance Crowe [00:41:23] I, I never had one. In fact, I was talking with a group of my friends and I was telling them about this mentorship concept. And you saw people start to look at their shoes and kinda grumble. And then you realize they're saying, I never had anybody look in on me the way they look in on you. And the only advice that I can give to somebody that wants to have someone mentor them, you don't know who they are, exactly what they could do for you. The best advice I have is ask someone what book they read that changed their lives and then read the book. Most people ask for book recommendations and they have all the aspirations to read it, but the voice of resistance comes in and says, ah, you don't really have to do that. That's probably dumb. But it is a particularly powerful experience. If somebody asks you for a book recommendation and then they go read it, and then they come back and tell you, this is what I thought of that book, you will instantly create a relationship between you and that other person. And finally, if you're lost, it's very important that you get your ideas out loud or on paper because just like we were talking about with the three movies and the voices that you have in your head that you don't always realize are there, it's funny because I think you do not know what you think until you say them out loud. That's the power of writing in a journal. And this is not very an in vogue con concept. But imagine your future self reading about something that you did 20 years ago about a change you made, about a situation that was going on that you didn't know how to handle it.

Vance Crowe [00:43:07] There's no greater gift that you could give your future self than to write down and explain why you think what you think. So we're gonna close, and I, the very interesting thing about this group is it runs a super wide gamut from this is what basis training is to trading is all the way out to how are you going to sell your business? How are you going to plan and, and put this out there. So for many of you, you look at this word legacy and you think that's something I should think about 20 years from now. That's not for me. But when I have heard all of these amazing stories from these people that I've interviewed, one thing has become clear. They started making choices, changes to their life really early and in ways that you wouldn't really think about. So what I thought I would do is give you some of the questions that I ask people in the interviews. And in fact, I would encourage you to write these questions down. These are what I have found gets people to open up to talk about things as though they're close to their deathbed. The first question is, what was one of the most difficult lessons to learn that was the most valuable to know? What was the most difficult lesson to learn that was the most valuable to know? Think about that answer for yourself. I can tell you that by doing so many of these interviews, I've actually seen some patterns emerge. You know what women say when I ask this question?

Vance Crowe [00:44:39] Almost all of them. Any guesses? No, I, they say, I wish I realized it doesn't matter what people think of me. I wish I'd realized that earlier. And in fact, most of them don't learn it until they're at in their mid sixties. They say, that was the point when my life all changed. Men, they talk about, I wish I had been more in control of my emotions. Some of them that means I wish I would've shared my emotions more. Some of them it means I wish I wasn't as angry. But many of them talk about that was something that I didn't realize mattered until I was way older. The next question that brings out answers that I could never have imagined was, what is the vice that was the most difficult to overcome? Now, the reason I think this is so interesting is I've heard people talk about I had to go to AA three times, right? I, I had to. I had to leave my wife and children, they were taken from me. You know, I had a judge put me in jail. You hear people talk about some of these vices with drugs and alcohol, but often those aren't the vices that were really difficult for people to overcome. Sometimes it was food, sometimes it was not going somewhere when I said I was going to right.

Vance Crowe [00:46:11] One of the most amazing questions to get somebody to talk about is openly about the vice that they overcame. Because I'll assure you, every one of us, you, me, every person in this room has vices. Vices that are hard to talk about, vices that are hard to even imagine that you could ever get past. But when you talk about them with other people, suddenly they start sharing with you tips about how they did it. That maybe wouldn't matter to anybody else in the whole world, but it was just what you needed to hear. And so the more open you can be about your vices and understanding other people's vices, the more you can make the kind of changes that are gonna make a big difference. And then finally, and this is the one that brings out the most tears of everyone, is the question, what should your children know about work? Work is what gives so much of our lives meaning, right? So much of what you do, the loyalty, the problems that you solve, the challenges that you overcame, really comes down to what did you learn about along the way while you were working? And what do you hope the next generation knows so that they can be successful? The answers on this are as wide ranging as you can imagine. Some people say, you gotta work hard, they should work a lot of hours. It's really important. Some people say, don't worry too much about work. It's always gonna pan out. One of the most common ones I hear, the one that's the thread that happens all the time, is be careful who your business partners are.

Vance Crowe [00:47:48] And if you have a good one, value him or her. These are questions that if you're thinking about them long before it's time to teach your children, it will shape the way that you yourself behave. That clicking, that ticking clock that I heard every time I pulled up a cigarette for a long time, for many months, I could just hear that ticking and it was just stacking on top of my shoulders because I knew I should quit. I knew I had committed to quitting, but I couldn't. I had too many things to worry about. I had my future to worry about. I had these big choices about what work was I going to do in the future? How was I gonna handle this? But one day I decided I'm going to not smoke the next cigarette and see how long I can go. And so now all of a sudden, that ticking clock started to be something that was, I can count how long I've made a decision that was the right one to make. And if I fail, then I'll just start over again. Eventually, I often tell people the hardest thing I ever had to quit was smoking. And I didn't actually quit. What I did was I just didn't smoke the next one. Now, that may work for you. It may not on many, many things, but for me it worked. And it turns out that two weeks after I quit smoking, I moved to Washington DC to go try and get a job. And I met the woman that would become my wife. And I didn't tell her that I had been a smoker, but thank God I didn't because this Olympic level athlete that was an aerospace engineer and beautiful beyond my wildest dreams would never have given a second date to a person that smoked.

Vance Crowe [00:49:32] And so while I was worried about what job am I going to get about this large picture, about who am I going to be, Pete knew it was the decision that I could make right now, the smallest decisions that I could make that would make that big change happen to me in life. So I would suggest that instead of asking this question, what do you want to be in five years from today? A very helpful way to think about what changes you can make is to ask yourself, what will your future self be glad you did today? You are going to spend the next few hours, we're gonna go to a reception. And then tomorrow you're gonna have this time where you go to more sessions and you have an opportunity to talk and and listen. And I can tell you, I have been to hundreds of conferences. I have never seen one that works like this. This group, the value of this group is that you trust each other. It's that you like each other. It's that you have things to share with one another. That's more than just, Hey, how'd you do on that trade last week? Hey, how you doing with supply chain? It's bigger than that. And so what I want everyone in this room to try and do, and this will be a challenge, it would be to take this list of three questions. And I want you to make a commitment to try and ask at least one person all three of these questions. Or you can split this up and you can say, I'm gonna ask one person, one question, one person, or another one.

Vance Crowe [00:51:09] And if you're a person being asked a question, take it seriously. Most people go most of their lives having no one ever listened to them at all. The reason that these Legacy Interviews work, the reason they're so powerful for so many people is because if you ask someone a question and you stay around to hear their answer, they will tell you things that are beyond your wildest imagination. And in this room, those things could change. Things about your business, about your family, about your inner self that you've thought for so long couldn't change, or you have no way to do it, or it's too overwhelming. So I would encourage and invite each one of you to take this task seriously, and then I'd be very interested to hear people's answers. Thank you very much for being such an attend audience.