A 24-Year-Old's Three-Hobby System for Building Skills and Financial Discipline

Vance Crowe [00:00:00] This is Keaton Krueger from Iowa, and you're listening to the Vance Crow podcast.

AJ Reeves [00:00:06] AJ Reeves. Yes,

Vance Crowe [00:00:07] Sir. Welcome

AJ Reeves [00:00:08] To the podcast.

Vance Crowe [00:00:08] Thanks. It's a pleasure to be here.

AJ Reeves [00:00:10] I'm glad you're here. I, I invited you on as kind of a, a wild card and it's that all of the other guests that I've had so far have been established experts in some field. And it is clear when we're talking that they know something really, really, really deeply. And no offense, but you're too young, I think, to have most people at your age, I certainly at at your age, do not have a deep, deep expertise. But you have some characteristics about you that I think are remarkable, I think, that are, are actually worthy of people taking note and being like, Hey, wow, I could learn something from this guy. 'cause I know that I have. Right.

Vance Crowe [00:00:55] And

AJ Reeves [00:00:55] So I wanted to bring you on and talk about what is it like to be a young man in his twenties living in a Midwestern city, and you are trying to figure out what's gonna happen in the future. What kind of job should I get? What, what's going on with marriage? What's this thing all about? I wanna talk about like, what is your view? And the reason that I chose you is because we met at Juujitsu. You had gotten your ass in there before I had gotten mine in there. Like you had said, Hey, this is a skill I wanna learn and I'm willing to go through the abuse and the beatings to get it. And so you and I are both white belts. You are a four stripe white belt. Yes. And I'm a two stripe white belt. And since going there, I, I can tell you that the thing that has helped me progress is that I see how the way you work on things gets you to progress faster. And I think there are a lot of things that we could learn, people could learn from that. Yeah. And so let's just have a conversation about you and your life and whatever. And I'll even talk about what it was like when I was in my twenties. Sound good?

Vance Crowe [00:02:02] Yeah. Sounds great. And I would like to say too, that the kind words mean a lot coming from you van.

AJ Reeves [00:02:06] Oh man. So when you think about what brought you into the Jiujitsu studio at first, what, what is that? Why did a guy like you decide, Hey, I'm gonna go start fighting and grappling and choking people to death and letting them choke me to death?

Vance Crowe [00:02:20] I think a little bit of fear and a little bit of being a fan of MMA. So I've been a fan of MMA for a long time. I like watching fights. The UFC Bellator Pride, Strikeforce, I just am a fan of that.

AJ Reeves [00:02:33] You knew about this stuff before you came to Juujitsu?

Vance Crowe [00:02:35] Yes.

AJ Reeves [00:02:36] I didn't even really know about it at all really

Vance Crowe [00:02:38] Until

AJ Reeves [00:02:38] After I came to Jiujitsu. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:02:40] I've been a fan of MMA for a long time.

AJ Reeves [00:02:42] Okay.

Vance Crowe [00:02:42] And I think that's part of the reason I wanted to start training. Another reason is where I grew up. It's not the greatest neighborhood of all time. And I've had friends get jumped and I've had friends get beat up

AJ Reeves [00:02:53] Really just by like random people that wanna take their, their money or,

Vance Crowe [00:02:56] Yeah. Take Yeah. Yeah.

AJ Reeves [00:02:57] No kidding.

Vance Crowe [00:02:57] Yeah. Yeah.

AJ Reeves [00:02:58] Have you, have you ever been in a situation where you've been held up?

Vance Crowe [00:03:01] I have not. I think I, I've been scared before in like, situations that could turn bad, but no, I haven't been in one.

AJ Reeves [00:03:09] And how old are you?

Vance Crowe [00:03:09] 24. I'm gonna be 25 on the fifth or the ninth. So

AJ Reeves [00:03:13] How are you deciding what to do with your life right now?

Vance Crowe [00:03:16] I'm just trying to pick up skills and I'm trying to find out what I want to do with the rest of my life. Kind of, I think I'm, I'm exploring right now. I'm trying juujitsu, I'm doing web development, learning a lot about investments and how to use my money and make my money work for me. I'm just trying to learn as much as I can and figure out what my real interests are.

AJ Reeves [00:03:35] How are you, how do, how do you even establish that list of the things that you want to, you know, learn more about? I mean, 'cause I would say those are Yeah,

Vance Crowe [00:03:42] Sure. Those

AJ Reeves [00:03:42] Are a damn good list. Yeah. You, you could probably make a principled list and those would all be core principles for everybody to learn how to defend yourself, how to manage your money, what should I be spending my time working towards. So

Vance Crowe [00:03:53] On the fly, I can't think of the title of the book, but there was a book I was reading may, but think of it later, and the author said that you should have three hobbies and it's one that keeps you smart, which is web development for me, one that keeps you in shape, which is juujitsu for me, and one that makes you money, which is just learning about investing and investing my money.

AJ Reeves [00:04:09] Oh man, that is really good.

Vance Crowe [00:04:11] So I tried to get three hobbies based around that.

AJ Reeves [00:04:14] Who, who introduced you to the idea that you could go be reading books and somebody would've already figured something out that you could learn from?

Vance Crowe [00:04:21] That's a good question. I think I got lucky in high school by having a good string of literature, literature teachers that I kind of looked up to and were good to talk to. And they didn't force books down your throat. Like we read Catcher on Their Eye and all that stuff in high school, like most high school kids do. But they had a really relaxed approach and just would talk to you and have conversations. And I kind of looked up to them and I had one that was really into nonfiction and more philosophical books, which was also fun to talk to him about. I got into reading at a really young age, actually, my mom loves to tell this story when she was just talking about me being a kid is in preschool or kindergarten. One of the two kids weren't really reading that much yet. And if they were, it was just piece like one word at a time, you know, like, this is Apple, right,

AJ Reeves [00:05:03] Right. Sight words. Yes,

Vance Crowe [00:05:04] Yes. So in preschool or kindergarten, I can't remember, but I, after my first day, I came home crying, like just bawling my eyes out and my mom's like, what's wrong? What's wrong? And I, I was like, the teacher said she wouldn't let us read. Like she wasn't gonna teach us how to read yet. And I was mad, oh,

AJ Reeves [00:05:23] I wanted

Vance Crowe [00:05:24] To learn how to read. That's why I, I'm like, if I'm gonna go to school, I wanna learn how to read

AJ Reeves [00:05:27] Hell. Yeah. That is exactly what you want your kid

Vance Crowe [00:05:29] Yeah. To

AJ Reeves [00:05:29] Come home and be like, I was, I thought I was gonna learn at this level and we're not doing it.

Vance Crowe [00:05:33] Yeah. And so my mom actually told my teacher just talking to her like, he really wants to learn how to read. If you could kind of just squeeze that in if you can. Right. And then come the end of the year, I was reading like little Dr. Seuss books or whatever to the class.

AJ Reeves [00:05:50] I, so I'm a hundred percent with you, man. Like, my, as my childhood is filled with books. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:05:57] So

AJ Reeves [00:05:57] There's all the adventures that I went on going to my first day at kindergarten, and, you know, going to a dude ranch with my family as our one big family vacation we ever took. And then I had these book adventures that I went on, like Louis Lamore. Did you ever read those books? I did

Vance Crowe [00:06:12] Not. They're

AJ Reeves [00:06:13] Cowboy books. And then I read, I never read Harry Potter, but I read like similar sets of things. Right. And kids that go on these adventures, learn about how the world works before the kids that are just sitting around doing nothing.

Vance Crowe [00:06:26] Yeah, absolutely. Reading's very powerful.

AJ Reeves [00:06:30] What are you reading right now?

Vance Crowe [00:06:31] So right now I'm kind of in between books and I'm thinking I'm just gonna pick up on the book club you're doing here.

AJ Reeves [00:06:37] Nice.

Vance Crowe [00:06:38] Yeah. I, I have a couple books set aside that I do need to read. And I'm really, I really procrastinating on that.

AJ Reeves [00:06:44] The, the all quiet on the Western front. You can get the book for like five bucks if you wanna hold it, you know, I to hold it. And the first chapter, just to give you an idea of what's going on there, having like a great time. They're eating, they've come out of the trenches, everybody's happy. And then partway through they talk about a guy getting shot killed through the eye. And so you have this juxtaposition in this first chapter of like, joy, happiness, people celebrating and then, you know, horrific immediate death right next to it. And you know that they've just crawled out of the trenches in World War I, where they're trying to do that to other guys too. Oh wow. Yeah. So the book has already started off just like at, at full speed,

Vance Crowe [00:07:29] Just a punch in the face.

AJ Reeves [00:07:30] Yeah, that's right.

Vance Crowe [00:07:31] That's awesome. So I actually had the chance to read All Quiet on the Western Front in high school. We had to pick between two books and I actually picked the other one.

AJ Reeves [00:07:38] What was the other one?

Vance Crowe [00:07:39] It's called The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime.

AJ Reeves [00:07:41] I've never heard of this.

Vance Crowe [00:07:42] It actually ended up becoming my favorite book of all time, so. Oh,

AJ Reeves [00:07:44] Wow. I'm

Vance Crowe [00:07:45] Glad that I read it. It's a very interesting perspective. And I think if you know anybody that has autism, you should read that book.

AJ Reeves [00:07:53] I certainly 100%. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:07:54] Yeah. So it's written about this kid and he is really into mysteries like the Nancy Drew or the, you know, Sherlock Holmes Mysteries. Right. And he has autism, the main character, and you're seeing the book through his eyes. So the author's actually writing through the perspective of someone with autism. So you're not reading the book as, or seeing things in the real world as we would see it. You're seeing it as the kid with autism would see it.

AJ Reeves [00:08:16] Wow. Yeah,

Vance Crowe [00:08:16] It's very impressive.

AJ Reeves [00:08:17] That's like putting VR goggles on.

Vance Crowe [00:08:19] Yes.

AJ Reeves [00:08:19] And, and walking through that. But

Vance Crowe [00:08:21] There's something about the universe that this author painted that is very descriptive and very visual. Like you can see it when you read it.

AJ Reeves [00:08:29] Okay. Okay. So tell me the name one more time. What's the name of it?

Vance Crowe [00:08:31] The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime.

AJ Reeves [00:08:34] Okay. I, I will, you know what, so how, how would, do you have any idea when that book would've been written?

Vance Crowe [00:08:40] I actually do not.

AJ Reeves [00:08:42] So here is a challenge that I'm trying to overcome with the book club, right. Which is I want the books to have stood a long enough test of time that you can say, Hey, there's something culturally important for us to know about this book.

Vance Crowe [00:08:56] Right?

AJ Reeves [00:08:56] Right. And so there's this concept called the Lindy Effect, which Nassim Taleb talks about. Like, okay, a book, as long as a book has been around, it is likely it that it will be around for approximately that much time. On the other side. The the odds are, if you were gonna choose, of all the books that are out there, which one's gonna last at least this long, that one's gonna have a higher odds of doing it.

Vance Crowe [00:09:17] Right. Oh wow. Yeah.

AJ Reeves [00:09:17] So there's a value in finding books that are further out because it means they've had deeper contextual, you know, cultural meaning,

Vance Crowe [00:09:25] But

AJ Reeves [00:09:26] You don't wanna go so far back that you lose the people that could be kind of following your, your way down there. So I wanna have things that are in the era of To Kill a Mockingbird, but I don't wanna read To Kill a Mockingbird again. Right. It was a good book, but I learned my lesson there. So I wanna find out like, what's that cutoff line? Because to Kill a Mockingbird iss like the 1960s. Okay.

Vance Crowe [00:09:47] And

AJ Reeves [00:09:47] So, you know, is it that it has to be 60 years old? I don't know what, what happens if there was a book in the eighties? Yeah. It was really important and shaped some part of culture. And so like when I think about you, the book you're talking about, if it's more recent, I'm okay with that. Yeah. But I want it to be, because it's teaching me like some deep important meaning.

Vance Crowe [00:10:09] Right.

AJ Reeves [00:10:10] And that's what Dante's Inferno was for me.

Vance Crowe [00:10:12] Sure. And Dante's Inferno is pretty far back. Right. When did that come out?

AJ Reeves [00:10:14] Yeah, 14 hundreds.

Vance Crowe [00:10:15] Yeah.

AJ Reeves [00:10:16] Yeah. That's

Vance Crowe [00:10:17] Interesting.

AJ Reeves [00:10:17] And it, it, it, did you, did you read it?

Vance Crowe [00:10:19] I did not. I got, I read the first three cantos and then did my thing and procrastinated on it. But I,

AJ Reeves [00:10:24] I mean, like I understand that because if I had not had the book club Yeah. I 100% would've done that because that's where you're walking from. Like, Hey, I'm, I'm on a walk and I got lost and I was chased by these animals to the gates of hell. Yeah. And it says, you know, all you who enter here abandon all hope because it's just black and abysmal from here. And if you don't get past that door, You don't actually know how deep that hole is. And it is definitely worth it because he climbs down into the pits of hell. And his point of view is showing like, this is the suffering that awaits you if you do something of a crime of this magnitude. You know, I had somebody show up on my Facebook and be like, yeah, Dante was just trying to get e even with all of his enemies showing how they were in hell. And he's like, yeah, maybe that's one context. But what he's doing is he's saying, look, everybody, there are some rules that if you break those rules, your eternity is forever punishment.

Vance Crowe [00:11:28] Yeah.

AJ Reeves [00:11:30] That's deep. That's deep.

Vance Crowe [00:11:32] Sure. Sounds like I quit right before the good part, huh?

AJ Reeves [00:11:34] Right.

Vance Crowe [00:11:34] Yeah. Sometimes I wonder like how often I do that in life, if I quit something, I'm like, what if I just stopped right before it got good or something?

AJ Reeves [00:11:42] I, that is a wonderful question because I think that the difference between my life and your life in my twenties, one of them is that you've gone deeper on your explorations, on your hobbies. And I explored really wide really. So I was like going on this ship, but I only did it for 10 months, 11 months, you know, and then I did this house, but I didn't do two or three or four where I'm like renovating it and figuring that out. I was like, ah, I do that, but I don't really like it. So I'm not even getting out of the white belt where you're a beginner to a blue belt where you could defend yourself. I'm not quite getting to that level. I'm close, but not there. And I give up on all these things and move into different fields. Yeah. Whereas you have gone deep on juujitsu, on drumming on now you're trying to do the one on coding.

Vance Crowe [00:12:33] Yeah. Yeah. So actually let me ask you something about that. So you're a kid, right? And you've gone on this ecotourism ship and you're out in the ocean. I mean, that's, that's a little scary to some people. Right? And you bought this house, you renovate it, you flipped it, right?

AJ Reeves [00:12:49] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:12:49] Okay. And that's, that's a good investment. And that's kind of a big jump sometimes to some people. But then you talk about the Peace Corps and going all the way to Africa. To me, that's insane. That is,

AJ Reeves [00:13:00] You mean it frightens you. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:13:02] Yeah. That's just such a big, just it could change your life so much.

AJ Reeves [00:13:07] Would, would you be worried about your safety or would you be worried about like, what you would do with your time? Or would it be like being, leaving the rest of the world behind,

Vance Crowe [00:13:15] Probably leaving the rest of the world behind a little bit. And I think just how, I don't know, just how big of a decision that is to just pack up and leave. I kinda wanna know what was going through your head when you were like Peace Corps? I'm in,

AJ Reeves [00:13:28] I, I, I can tell you there's, there's two major drivers. One, and both of them really fear-based. One was I had this sensation that everything that was important that was happening was happening somewhere else. Right. So I grew up in Eureka, Illinois. It's small town. Okay. You know, 4,500 people, great people. I love my hometown. Like wow. Like love, love it. I, on Facebook, I see my friends succeeding and I celebrate and excited about it. And I want to see their businesses going. Like, I loved my hometown, but I always thought that the town next to ours probably was doing something cooler.

Vance Crowe [00:14:10] Yeah.

AJ Reeves [00:14:11] And then the same thing, you know, oh, maybe, maybe at the university that's gonna be something cooler and then, you know, I wanna go see other people. So I'm always motivated by this. Like, there's something else going on and I'm not a part of it. So that was like, okay, I've gotta go do this. And then the other thing was I was absolutely deathly terrified that I would not earn the respect of my father.

Vance Crowe [00:14:35] Wow. That's, that's a big one to overcome. I wanna hear about that.

AJ Reeves [00:14:39] So my dad traveled all over the world before other people did it. You know, like now people have semester at sea, they get a chance to get out and see things.

Vance Crowe [00:14:48] Yeah.

AJ Reeves [00:14:50] But my dad was born in 1942 and so before he had seven kids, he had this life where he was, you know, he, he joined the Peace Corps as well. He was in the second class of the Peace Corps. He heard John F. Kennedy give the speech. And my dad was like, I'm signing up for that. And there was, this was back when it was like more of like a military thing. So they used to have it where you like showed up in barracks in, in Puerto Rico and you trained and you had to do, you know, running and medical stuff. You had to like really learn how to do this in a really hardcore way and they were gonna drop you in and help people. That's not at all. I, I was in a settled area. Yes. It was dirt floors for most people. They, they drew their water outta wells and stuff, but it was just different than what my dad was doing. Then my dad gets back to the us He meets Pete's Ttes, that guy I went out and met and then, and then I, I could go on and on about his story, but ultimately he has a Fulbright scholarship in Ecuador. So he now speaks fluent, you know, Spanish. 'cause he was already down in the Peace Corps in Peru. Then he comes, he does some sort of language program where he learns how to speak Portuguese. So he also speaks Portuguese and traveled and lived down in Brazil. Then he got some job that sent him to Japan right. At, at Japan as they were starting to become an industrialized major superpower, you know, like late seventies. And then he came back after all that met my mother who was a school teacher and had seven children.

AJ Reeves [00:16:22] And so he does not fight to be a part of politics in our hometown. He's like, he's a country stockbroker. He helps people make money off of the money that they're earning in other ways. Yeah. And he was very, very successful and he was completely a hermit. And he had tens of thousands, maybe maybe more than 10,000 books all throughout my house. And, and he doesn't go out and, and go to parties and things like, doesn't drink, doesn't, he's just country guy reading his books.

Vance Crowe [00:16:53] Wow.

AJ Reeves [00:16:54] And so as a kid I'm growing up being like, I gotta get outta here. Dad had this wild life and then he came here. Like, why would he do that? I need to be out there where all the fun and exciting things are happening.

Vance Crowe [00:17:05] Right.

AJ Reeves [00:17:06] And I'm also deathly afraid as soon as I get out there that my dad's gonna think that I'm wasting my time. 'cause I wasn't going to Japan, you know, nobody was paying me to, to get a, you know, to do a full Brighton Ecuador. And so like, what can I possibly do to live up to what this guy already did?

Vance Crowe [00:17:24] Right.

AJ Reeves [00:17:24] And that's driven me most of my life probably until I met my wife.

Vance Crowe [00:17:29] Wow. Yeah. That's amazing. I think most people look up to their parents and some, a lot of people do. Right. And your dad doing all that, that's obviously something to look up to. So Yeah.

AJ Reeves [00:17:40] And I think that the interesting part about it is there's a difference between looking up to someone and then being afraid of their disappointment.

Vance Crowe [00:17:51] Right. That too. Yeah.

AJ Reeves [00:17:54] Right. Like, because there's an equal, there's an equal. However much you look up to them, then that's how much the, the disappointment if you do something wrong would hurt you. Right.

Vance Crowe [00:18:03] Do you view this as a negative thing? You being dis or like scared of what your dad would think?

AJ Reeves [00:18:08] No.

Vance Crowe [00:18:08] No.

AJ Reeves [00:18:09] At at the time I did. I mean, at one point in time, I, I was at the point where one time I was telling my friend court, I told this on the podcast one time, I think, and, but I don't know how blunt I was about it. I, I was talking with my friend court and telling him, you know, I don't know what my dad, what what I could grow up to be Right.

Vance Crowe [00:18:28] That

AJ Reeves [00:18:28] My dad would respect. And, and so he was like, well you should call him and tell him that. And I was like, I would rather put a gun in my mouth than call my father and tell him that I don't know how to earn his respect. Sure.

Vance Crowe [00:18:42] And

AJ Reeves [00:18:42] My buddy court was like, okay. And he sets the phone down and was like, then I think that means you should call him and he and he leaves.

Vance Crowe [00:18:48] Yeah.

AJ Reeves [00:18:49] And that was a life changing experience for me. And I think that everyone has to go through that. If you've ever found somebody that you really respect, but that respect is turned into some form of slavery to who they think you should be or to who you think they think you should be, you gotta get outta that. And my dad wasn't doing it to me. No. He wasn't doing anything wrong at all. I had put him on that pedestal.

Vance Crowe [00:19:13] Yeah. You just built this up in your head and just looped it and looped it and looped it until he got bigger. Right.

AJ Reeves [00:19:16] He was just a man that decided that what he wanted was to live among his books and have his seven kids and, and their grandkids. And he's just living a quiet life with my mother and they're deeply, deeply happy.

Vance Crowe [00:19:27] Just small town. And,

AJ Reeves [00:19:28] But when you're a kid, you don't think of being quiet and no

Vance Crowe [00:19:32] Fulfilled

AJ Reeves [00:19:33] And you know, having kids around as being, you know, the way to have succeeded, you think go out there become important.

Vance Crowe [00:19:40] You wanna be where the party's at too.

AJ Reeves [00:19:42] Right.

Vance Crowe [00:19:42] Yeah.

AJ Reeves [00:19:43] What is your aspiration?

Vance Crowe [00:19:45] My aspiration? You know, that's, that's a good question. I think I'm more of a person of building these short-term goals right now. I think right now I'm pretty shortsighted on what I wanna be doing. I just, instead of thinking I wanna be a doctor in 20 years, I'm kind of thinking like, I wanna get better at this now. And I think that's kind of my approach to it. I don't know if it's right or wrong or in between, but,

AJ Reeves [00:20:10] Well, I think that you could make the case that there is a cost with time that you have to consider. Right? Sure. So

Vance Crowe [00:20:17] Sure.

AJ Reeves [00:20:18] The, you wanna wait until you know what you wanna do, but you don't want to wait so long that you've missed the starting gun. True. You know? Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:20:27] And

AJ Reeves [00:20:27] I like, that's probably the area of my life that I probably hurt the most in, in that I was spending time not really choosing something. Yeah. And using it like, okay, I don't know what to do. I'll do this next step. And it, I don't know that I, I definitely couldn't know where I ended up, but I wish I would've spent more time just stopping and thinking about what it is that I actually want in my life.

Vance Crowe [00:20:52] Yes.

AJ Reeves [00:20:53] You know? And, and, and imagining myself having tastes that change. Because when I was 22 I remember thinking like, only losers would quit partying and having fun at the bars like this.

Vance Crowe [00:21:07] Yeah.

AJ Reeves [00:21:07] And then later you get older and you're like, if you were 30 years old and you act like that, then you're, you're dipshit

Vance Crowe [00:21:12] Oh, you're, you're lost. You're

AJ Reeves [00:21:13] Done. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:21:14] Yeah.

AJ Reeves [00:21:14] So anyway, I'm not saying you're a drunker or anything like that. I'm just saying like,

Vance Crowe [00:21:18] I figured that

AJ Reeves [00:21:19] You wanna make sure that you shoot the gun. I don't have any criticisms on what you're doing. I'm just wondering, do you think you will be on a path? Are you anticipating like, you know, 2020 I'm gonna know what I'm gonna be? Or are you thinking, no, I got a few more years to figure this out.

Vance Crowe [00:21:35] I would like to get it figured out sooner rather than later, but I also wanna figure it out. Like I wanna do it right. And know what I wanna do. Like I said, I'm kind of on this exploration of figuring out what I wanna do and I, I think I'm narrowing in on something. Right. I'm, I'm actually getting really interested in stocks and investing and how money works. And I've been teaching myself that just for fun.

AJ Reeves [00:21:58] How are you learning that? Just

Vance Crowe [00:22:00] Various sources online, whether it's through YouTubers or books

AJ Reeves [00:22:04] And how do you know you're not getting the, like, essential oils treatment? Where, where, or like the multilevel marketing I, you know, you should buy these shares in this?

Vance Crowe [00:22:14] Well, I guess hypothetically I don't. Okay. However, I haven't spent anything on any extra courses or,

AJ Reeves [00:22:22] Okay.

Vance Crowe [00:22:22] So I think that's a good start.

AJ Reeves [00:22:24] And then do you have names of people that come to mind that have been interesting?

Vance Crowe [00:22:28] Yeah, one of them is Graham Stevens. He's a YouTuber. He's a little out there. I think some people might kind of find him abrasive, but he's a real estate investor and he's young. So I kind of level with him on that. Like, it's just cool to hear someone that's around my age being super successful. But he also gives real practical advice. It's not big lofty, crazy unreachable. Like, you see a lot of people kind of like, I think of the essential oils thing, like you said. Right. I think there's a lot of good in like, some of the cryptocurrency stuff that's out there, but there's a lot of fake salesmen online and people selling their courses and how to become a billionaire in 10 years and how to become a millionaire tomorrow.

AJ Reeves [00:23:09] Oh, that's really interesting. Yeah. Like I stay away from all that stuff, but you know what that means that I do miss that there are people that can be explaining to, I don't watch much on finances. So I, my dad was a stockbroker. My brother is a, a CCP level CPA level. I don't think he ever got a CPA, but he's an accountant hardcore runs, you know, a a really sophisticated geothermal well drilling company. Yeah. But anyway, so I was kind of always around people that understood money, and if I had questions I could ask them. But one of the benefits of watching a YouTube channel is sometimes they're gonna tell you about things you didn't know to ask.

Vance Crowe [00:23:45] Yes.

AJ Reeves [00:23:47] And that's the important thing about getting out into the chaos and finding these people. Correct.

Vance Crowe [00:23:51] Yeah. And I think a lot of it too is just, you know, when you're studying these things, finding people that are actually energetic, I think that's a, that's a big thing for me. I like, like people like these YouTubers are like, kind of energetic and make me feel more excited. I don't think I could do it if the guy was super monotone and just sitting there telling me how things work.

AJ Reeves [00:24:10] So I've been reading Carl Young and he talks about you can't force yourself to be interested in things you're not interested in. Yeah. And he talks about how when you do become curious about something, you should really pay attention to that. And I thought, man, that is exactly right.

Vance Crowe [00:24:29] Yeah. I, I would agree with that. And if you could maybe send me something on where to find the Carl Young pamphlet you're talking about. I would love to look into it. Yeah.

AJ Reeves [00:24:36] Dude, I'll throw a link to it on the, on this part of the podcast on the, in the notes on the YouTube channel. Okay. But, you know, I don't, I don't have a full like picture of Carl Young. I've just barely started. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:24:49] I don't know much about,

AJ Reeves [00:24:50] But he talks a lot about archetypes, which are like the core fundamental heroes and the, and the characteristics that a person could have deep down kind of at their core.

Vance Crowe [00:25:00] Okay.

AJ Reeves [00:25:00] And there's so much there that I don't know where to tell you to look. I, I think, but I'll sh share with the one that I have.

Vance Crowe [00:25:08] Okay.

AJ Reeves [00:25:09] I'm gonna have my, I I have a wild story. So Monsanto gave me an executive coach 'cause they wanted me to, to go from being director of millennial engagement to do I wanna do finance or supply chain. Right. And they were like trying to get the executive coach to explore my options. They sat me down with this woman that was unbelievable. She was so good. I went there thinking it was gonna be like a rah rah rah, you can do it there. You know? No, no. This woman was able to ask me questions and listen to what I said to her about what I cared about and what I wanted and what I was passionate about. She came and watched me give a speech and she knew deep, deep down my archetype Right. And what I'm trying to do. And I met with her a couple weeks ago and she agreed after a really careful thought that she would come on the podcast, I'm gonna do that in a couple weeks. And she did a whole bunch of work in Youngie in psychology. Wow. So I will, I will definitely load up people and give you a chance to explore some young Yeah. Because I think the conversation with her is gonna be fantastic. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:26:18] That sounds awesome.

AJ Reeves [00:26:19] And so when you go to Juujitsu, are you excited about getting there or are you dreading it?

Vance Crowe [00:26:24] Neither. I think whenever I first started, especially, I was really excited, nervous, like it's a new thing and I don't wanna look dumb, I don't wanna get beat up all the time. Right. But now it's kind of, I don't know if I have like some overwhelming emotion when I show up. I'm just there, I'm ready to go.

AJ Reeves [00:26:43] I, for me, when I get there now I get excited the better that the person is that walks in the door.

Vance Crowe [00:26:51] Yeah.

AJ Reeves [00:26:51] And I remember for most of the time, I'm like, oh, I hope somebody new comes in. I don't wanna be the new guy anymore. But eventually you get to the point where you're like, yeah, I can, I can roll with that guy and beat him, but what I really want is to roll with a guy that I can't beat. Yes. Because then I get way better.

Vance Crowe [00:27:06] No, I agree. I think there's, it reaches a limit though, right? Like you, but then if your coach is gonna be rolling that night, like what, what can you do? Right.

AJ Reeves [00:27:15] Right.

Vance Crowe [00:27:15] So

AJ Reeves [00:27:15] That's, I I, that's one of the things that you really can't understand just by looking and, and, and talking with coach that men can train for 10 years, lift weights as heavy as they can run every single day. And they could go up against coach and not, it

Vance Crowe [00:27:32] Doesn't matter.

AJ Reeves [00:27:32] Yeah. There are, there are only a small number of people in the world that can roll with him and, and beat him.

Vance Crowe [00:27:40] And quite frankly, I wanna see it. I wanna see what it takes to beat coach. I just

AJ Reeves [00:27:44] Live and in person.

Vance Crowe [00:27:44] Yes. I wanna see someone do it. I don't know why I just,

AJ Reeves [00:27:47] It, I, I think it's because you know how strong he actually is. Yeah. I actually maybe better put we don't know because he never goes. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:27:55] Do

AJ Reeves [00:27:55] Do you have this sensation when you're rolling with coach that you're like a little kid? Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:28:00] Rolling

AJ Reeves [00:28:00] Around on his dad?

Vance Crowe [00:28:01] Yeah. Sometimes I try new things, rolling against coach things I've never tried before because it doesn't matter what I do. Like I could pull guard and do my game like what I normally do. But I, that's where whenever I roll with coach, I've been trying weird stuff just because,

AJ Reeves [00:28:15] But I think that one of the things that you get from that with coach is you see what essentially the paradise state would be, right? Yes.

Vance Crowe [00:28:24] Yes.

AJ Reeves [00:28:24] But you also see like, we know what it took him to get there and he makes you go like, I don't know that I'm willing to do that.

Vance Crowe [00:28:30] Yeah. Like

AJ Reeves [00:28:31] He was trying to get out of the, the, the hell that was the parts of Brazil that he was in, where he is getting beat up. And so he got out of there and then climbed up a mountain. I want to go far in Juujitsu. I want it to be a passion. I want it to be my art, but I don't want to go that far. No,

Vance Crowe [00:28:48] No, I don't. Most people, normal people can't go that far. People like, I think, I don't know, something has to happen to you to make you wanna train as much as coach trained.

AJ Reeves [00:28:56] What is your drive come from

Vance Crowe [00:28:58] For Juujitsu?

AJ Reeves [00:28:59] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:29:00] I wanna get better at it. I think that's where it is right now. I think I started maybe a little bit out of a place of fear and I think that place of fear is kind of dissipated a little bit. But I think right now I just see people like Justin or you know, blue belts and up that are doing great and I want to get that good.

AJ Reeves [00:29:18] How does being a guy that's been doing it for a year and a half, two years?

Vance Crowe [00:29:21] Yeah. Year and a half,

AJ Reeves [00:29:23] How did it change the way that you walk around on the streets or go to a baseball game or, you know, go to work? I

Vance Crowe [00:29:28] Don't know. I think it definitely helped. I think I know that I train hard and I know that other most people aren't. And I think there's maybe in my head, even though I don't have any ego, I don't want to have an, have an ego. And jujitsu definitely will kill your ego. But I definitely think I have maybe a little one up sometimes.

AJ Reeves [00:29:47] Yeah. I think for me, you, you at first get that sensation of like, chances are you don't know what you're doing. Correct. But then you also have the humility that says, but you might be, you may look like you're just some big goofy oath, but you may be real good at jiujitsu. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:30:06] Yeah. You

AJ Reeves [00:30:07] Or, or some other striking art or, you know, like they're all over the place and you, you can't tell just by looking at 'em.

Vance Crowe [00:30:12] Yes. You see some of these brown belts and black belts and you wouldn't, if you saw 'em in street clothes, you wouldn't think otherwise. You wouldn't think that they were some super trained beast. But they are. I mean, sometimes you can't see it on everybody.

AJ Reeves [00:30:26] So you're a guy working not a nine to five job. What you can talk about, what are you doing right now for work? So

Vance Crowe [00:30:33] Right now for work, I'm at Sam's Club. I work the tire installation section of Sam's Club. I'm there seven to three or seven to three 30 most of the time.

AJ Reeves [00:30:41] And what are you doing there?

Vance Crowe [00:30:43] So I, I'm making sales, like talking to people about what tires they should get for their car. And I'm installing the tires when they purchase them.

AJ Reeves [00:30:50] What do you think is the split between selling them the tires and, and putting the tires on?

Vance Crowe [00:30:55] What do you mean?

AJ Reeves [00:30:56] I mean, is it you spending half your time putting on tires and half your time?

Vance Crowe [00:31:00] I think I'm 80% putting on tires.

AJ Reeves [00:31:02] Okay. And do you enjoy that work?

Vance Crowe [00:31:05] Yeah. It's all right. I, it's not like what I wanna do forever, but I, it's not bad. I think it's a it decent job, especially for a younger person. It got me through college.

AJ Reeves [00:31:13] Why did you choose that one?

Vance Crowe [00:31:15] I originally just got a job at Sam's Club because I was working fast food and I hated it. And I just putting applications in everywhere. I'm 18, I'm just throwing applications into the fire. And Sam's Club called me and they said they needed a person, so I showed up.

AJ Reeves [00:31:30] That's, so my dad had like an extreme aversion to men working at restaurants.

Vance Crowe [00:31:38] Really?

AJ Reeves [00:31:39] And it wasn't because he was like, I don't think they can do a good job. Or like, you belong out in the sun. He was saying most men are not learning skills that they can compound with interest. Like Yeah. You're learning service skills, right? Sure. Like how to be nice to customers, but you're not learning how to build something. You're not learning how to fix something. You're not learning how to construct. And if you don't learn it when you're young, you won't learn it. Yes.

Vance Crowe [00:32:05] And

AJ Reeves [00:32:05] So he was like absolutely no fast food restaurants for me working, that was not gonna happen.

Vance Crowe [00:32:11] I, I think I balance that out a little bit by studying a lot outside of work. Now I'm not learning these crazy life altering lessons when I'm there, typically. But it's doing a job for me, which is paying for things. And that's kinda the job I needed to serve right now. But I'm looking for that next step.

AJ Reeves [00:32:28] Step. And so what do you value with your money? You know, like right now you, you've got a, you've got a paycheck coming in. Yeah. If you overspend, there's nothing there. Right?

Vance Crowe [00:32:37] Right. Exactly.

AJ Reeves [00:32:38] So what, what, what do you do? What do you spend your money on?

Vance Crowe [00:32:41] So jujitsu monthly, I like to, I like to try to eat healthy.

AJ Reeves [00:32:45] Is that a painful thing to come outta your checking account? Are are you sitting there watching it and being like, Ugh.

Vance Crowe [00:32:50] Sometimes. It depends. I've been a lot better about saving and having money put aside and making it to where that a hundred dollars a month doesn't matter, but

AJ Reeves [00:32:57] That's good.

Vance Crowe [00:32:58] So that's actually helped a lot. I've been less stressed since I've been learning how to invest and move money

AJ Reeves [00:33:02] Into, it's so funny because people, I remember when I was in my twenties having a budget seemed insane to me. Yeah. I didn't ever have a credit card, so I never went in debt. Okay.

Vance Crowe [00:33:11] But

AJ Reeves [00:33:11] I, I, you know, I knew how much my rent and stuff was, but I wasn't sitting down being like, and this is how much I can have for entertainment and this is how much I can have for exercise. Yeah. And this is, it was all just a pile of money that I threw around and really I was buying a lot of cigarettes with it when I think about it. So

Vance Crowe [00:33:27] That'll do

AJ Reeves [00:33:28] It. Bravo to you for Yeah. Staying outta that shit. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:33:30] Right. So Juujitsu mostly I have a gym membership. I try to eat healthy, have a couple supplements, things like that. But outside of,

AJ Reeves [00:33:39] What do you supplement with?

Vance Crowe [00:33:40] Just protein, creatine and pre-workout. I don't go too crazy in it. I think some of it's a little snake oil, but some of it isn't.

AJ Reeves [00:33:48] Yeah. I, I eat a lot of whey protein. Yeah,

Vance Crowe [00:33:52] I do too.

AJ Reeves [00:33:52] I, a lot. And it's because I wanna get the protein and it's, it's the way that my diet is set up, and particularly if I'm hearing close to my diet and like, I just can't eat enough chicken to make that happen.

Vance Crowe [00:34:05] Yeah. It's convenient. The having 30 grams in one scoop like that.

AJ Reeves [00:34:08] Yeah. And then you, you don't add a whole bunch of extra fat in there. You don't have a bunch of other calories. It's just like bang and it tastes good. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:34:15] Do you just do water and powder?

AJ Reeves [00:34:17] No. Oh. So I have an elaborate setup for my breakfast.

Vance Crowe [00:34:20] Okay. Because

AJ Reeves [00:34:21] I want my macros to be dialed in for as much of the day as I can. So that, that way when I have dinner, if I need to be flexible, I can be, so in the morning I have a protein powder shake with 20 grams of oats, 140 grams of blueberries and 15 grams of peanut butter. So I have my proteins, carbs, and fats that are in a perfect conglomeration. Sure.

Vance Crowe [00:34:45] And

AJ Reeves [00:34:45] Then I put water in it and I blend it up and the, the protein powder is the exact amount of protein I need. And it just goes straight into my app. So I hit the, I had my regular breakfast, and then I move throughout the day. So I try and have as much of my life as can be regimented. I have regimented.

Vance Crowe [00:35:02] Nice. Yeah. I, I would like to get into doing kind of a breakfast smoothie deal like that. I think I could, I would enjoy that and I'd benefit from it.

AJ Reeves [00:35:09] Frozen blueberries, man. Frozen

Vance Crowe [00:35:11] Blueberries, they're cheap.

AJ Reeves [00:35:13] It's like $11 for a giant big bag of them. They taste great. Yeah. And it's one of those things that they've got a lot of other nutrients in them. Sure. You know, you get a big bright berry, they're great. And that's actually my other trick for having snacks. I don't know if you're ever, you, I don't know how much, do you worry about how many calories you eat

Vance Crowe [00:35:33] Loosely? I, I try not to. I don't eat fast food that much. I don't eat

AJ Reeves [00:35:37] Junk. Do you know how many calories you eat in a week? In a day?

Vance Crowe [00:35:39] No, I don't track my macros that much. I think I could. Have

AJ Reeves [00:35:42] You ever?

Vance Crowe [00:35:43] No, I think I could benefit from it a little bit, but I also know that if I start following some strict crazy diet, I'll only stick to it for a couple weeks.

AJ Reeves [00:35:50] So there's a guy on YouTube that I found named Du Antonio. And I, he's this Hungarian, like bodybuilder, but he's not like crazy jacked or anything. Okay. He's just, he's just a guy. And I liked the way that he put on entertaining videos about if you want this physique, then you need to eat this way. And like the physiques he's shooting for is like Brad Pitt and Fight club. Right. Yeah. So you are watching a little bit of like, oh, I wanna look like that. But then after all that stuff, and you can fast forward through or you can listen because it's kinda like making a friend. Okay. Because he tells you about what he's interested in. Then he talks about like how macros really work and about, you know, how to space 'em out, how to calculate all these things. And once I learned how proteins, carbs, and fats related to calories, I dropped 50 pounds in like, it, it was probably under 12 months. It was probably 10 months. That's,

Vance Crowe [00:36:46] That's impressive. That's, yeah. And

AJ Reeves [00:36:47] It was all from knowledge. Really.

Vance Crowe [00:36:49] Yeah.

AJ Reeves [00:36:49] And like now, if I want to lose weight and I'm not losing weight, it's because I'm just like indulging myself. I'm like, you know, eating candies or not tracking it. But as soon as I wanna lose weight and I'm motivated to do it, I get on that thing and the, and the train just rides down.

Vance Crowe [00:37:05] So what were you doing different with exercise in that time?

AJ Reeves [00:37:08] I did virtually no cardio. And I, when I was losing all that weight, I was starting to lift and that's what really got me going on fitness. And in order to be able to lift, I was so stiff from having sat in an office chair and from being a big fatty that, that there was a lot that I couldn't do. So I had to do a ton of stretching and that was really humbling. Yeah. Because instead of lifting the, the bar on the, on the bench press and moving it up, I'm sitting on the ground like stretching my arms and, and so I wish I would've done that faster and earlier and better.

Vance Crowe [00:37:47] Yeah. So I'm not much of a New Year's resolutions guy. I just never have been. But one of mine for 2020 is I'm stretching a lot more. I'm trying to, I wanna do it to where I can maybe put aside 10 minutes in the morning and stretch and then meditate.

AJ Reeves [00:38:01] Is it hard for you to set aside 10 minutes?

Vance Crowe [00:38:03] No, I don't. What

AJ Reeves [00:38:04] Time do you get up?

Vance Crowe [00:38:05] It depends. I usually get up around four or five.

AJ Reeves [00:38:08] Wow.

Vance Crowe [00:38:08] And try to, I always try to get workouts done early. It's just worked the best for me. I've also found I'm just, if I need to get something done, that's when to do it.

AJ Reeves [00:38:16] Yeah, that's right. Yeah. When, when, when you go to the gym and you're working out, what, what are you doing?

Vance Crowe [00:38:22] So I've been into a strong lift five by five.

AJ Reeves [00:38:24] Okay. It's

Vance Crowe [00:38:25] A program they just set aside. They have five different lifts. They have bench press squats, dead lifts, bent over barbell rows, and then overhead press and they have it, they have those five split up between two different days. You got eight days and B days. So I think one of the days is overhead press, deadlift and the rows. Then the other day is deadlift, squat, bench press. And you do five sets of five and then every week you add five pounds to what you're doing.

AJ Reeves [00:38:54] Wow. And you do that by yourself? Or you got a buddy that shows up?

Vance Crowe [00:38:57] I do it by myself.

AJ Reeves [00:38:59] Wow.

Vance Crowe [00:38:59] Yeah. Just pop in the headphones and start listening to music and get going.

AJ Reeves [00:39:04] That's interesting. You know, I quit listening to music and even podcasts when I go on my runs now

Vance Crowe [00:39:11] Because

AJ Reeves [00:39:12] I figured out that I can actually, instead of hating the run and trying to distract myself, I can focus on the run and what I am observing. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:39:22] What

AJ Reeves [00:39:22] I'm observing about myself, what I'm observing about my neighborhood when I'm running. And it was like freedom because now all of a sudden noise feels like Yeah. A distraction. Like any music or anything you put in, I'm like, ah, I want to think

Vance Crowe [00:39:37] So. So you listen to podcasts when you run?

AJ Reeves [00:39:39] I used to. Oh,

Vance Crowe [00:39:40] You used to? I don't, when I run, I don't listen to anything if it's outdoors. I love like taking in like just whatever's going on around me when I run. I think I get into like this flow state when I start running. And

AJ Reeves [00:39:50] But you were a cross country runner, right?

Vance Crowe [00:39:52] Yeah. Yeah. I was a cross country runner through high school.

AJ Reeves [00:39:54] Yeah. That's what a great habit for you to have picked up. That's, I, so I played football

Vance Crowe [00:39:59] And

AJ Reeves [00:40:00] In football, part of being a football player was that you smoked or you like, you know, hung out and stuff. It was like stupid. Yeah. There's, there's nothing smart about that. The cross country team, which was winning state year after year, after year, where I'm from.

Vance Crowe [00:40:11] Oh, nice.

AJ Reeves [00:40:13] They weren't doing that. They had a culture of like, Hey, focus, this is how you eat better. This is how you run. What a mistake it was for me to have been a football player and not a cross country runner. There's

Vance Crowe [00:40:23] A really good documentary about like the most successful high school cross country team of all time. I believe it's called the Long Green Line.

AJ Reeves [00:40:30] Okay. And

Vance Crowe [00:40:31] That really dives into kind of their lifestyle. And some of these kids man are nuts. They're running like they're running 3.1 miles in 15 minutes and

AJ Reeves [00:40:39] Oh my God. Going,

Vance Crowe [00:40:40] I mean my, I had a pretty good time, but it wasn't like that. I mean, I was doing 3.1 miles in maybe like 18 or high 18 minutes, but for

AJ Reeves [00:40:48] A high school kid, that's pretty incredible.

Vance Crowe [00:40:50] But man, these kids are in the fifteens and

AJ Reeves [00:40:53] That's really crazy. Five

Vance Crowe [00:40:54] Minute mile paces for three miles. And

AJ Reeves [00:40:57] Do you run now?

Vance Crowe [00:40:58] Not as much as I should probably, but I've kind of had this knee, a lingering knee thing I'm working through. It's a lot better now. It's, I think it's just like a one-off thing. I don't think it's gonna,

AJ Reeves [00:41:08] You know, my immediate reaction when you said that was you should talk to my wife, but you know what I am, I am really pissed off about something to do with physical therapy that you probably know nothing about and people should know about this. Inform me in the state of Missouri, if you have an injury, your knee hurts, you were running, you know, you started being like, Hey, this hurts. You have to first go to a doctor to get a prescription to be able to go see a physical therapist, despite the fact that the physical therapist has the same amount of education as the doctor. Well, and way more on the muscular skeletal system. Right.

Vance Crowe [00:41:43] Right.

AJ Reeves [00:41:44] So you could be an anesthesiologist, here's somebody say, Hey, the I have knee pain. And they could write you a script to go to a physical therapist, but you can't just decide to go do it yourself.

Vance Crowe [00:41:56] Okay. So let me ask this, if, you know, typically, right, whenever someone makes a rule or a law like that, it's solving a problem. Like what problem are they solving when they made that, whenever someone drafted that and was like, no, you need to get a doctor's note to go see a physical therapist. Why?

AJ Reeves [00:42:10] So I think there's two parts of it. This was the case in a lot of states and most states have gotten rid of it. And I think it was because when physical therapy first started as a field, it really was just therapeutic. It was a doctor saying like, their knee needs to, or, you know, move better. So make sure you give them some mobility exercises and some other things. And that was as close as they knew. Right.

Vance Crowe [00:42:32] But

AJ Reeves [00:42:33] Now the field is so much more advanced than that because since I had the woman that was one of the, you know, godmothers of, of that field on since they discovered like, look, it's not just doing exercises. You need to look at how the whole body is moving Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:42:49] To

AJ Reeves [00:42:50] Be able to figure out how this is happening, why you're having this impingement, why you're having this pain. And so they developed it into a deep, deep field. And they still call it physical therapy, but it's not really in the old fashioned way of doing this. So I think at the time when they set it up, they were saying it, well, this is just a part of this is how serious what they can do is you have to have a prescription to get it. And then you get to a, a certain point where you're like, we don't need this anymore. We, we've got this. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:43:17] You

AJ Reeves [00:43:17] Know, if you, if you're a physical therapist now in today's modern age, you can handle this, you're not gonna do any harm. Yeah. And they just never got rid of it. But there are, there are senators in the state of Missouri that have actively worked against being able to, to directly access a physical therapist. That makes me mad because Yeah. I see guys down at the gym and I'm like, Hey, I, I, I know you're having problems with that. You're telling me you should, we should like line you up to go see my wife. But I know that in order to do it, they gotta go to the doctor and then go do this. And like,

Vance Crowe [00:43:47] That's a hassle. It's,

AJ Reeves [00:43:48] It's crazy's. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:43:49] I am glad that there's experts like that in this world though, like physical therapists. So whenever I was running, I started getting these back pains and Right. So you're getting back pains. What do you think? Like, oh, maybe I need to stretch my back more. Right. That was my, my first thought. I looked at back stretches and it wasn't helping. And then I knew a physical therapist and I was talking to them and they said, oh, it's because your hamstrings are tight. I'm like, yeah, that was my first guess. My legs are tight so my back's gonna hurt. But no, it's because my hamstrings are tight. And

AJ Reeves [00:44:15] Of course you're tall guy, right? Yeah. You, you're sitting most of the day with your knees are above your hips and so your hamstrings aren't getting the proper I I totally get it, man.

Vance Crowe [00:44:25] Yeah. My hamstrings were super tight and I started stretching those and my back pain went away.

AJ Reeves [00:44:31] Yeah. I'm in with you on the, on the stretching thing this year. So I'm, I'm out for of juujitsu for the next few days because I started having hip problems.

Vance Crowe [00:44:39] Yeah.

AJ Reeves [00:44:39] And I gotta get that squared away. But I was able to talk with my wife and, and figure out what the problem was. And like, it's, it's, it's just, it's unfortunate that people can't just go directly to a physical therapist.

Vance Crowe [00:44:54] That is unfortunate. Yeah. Yeah.

AJ Reeves [00:44:57] We, we should do something about it is what I think we should, we should, yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:44:59] Start a riot.

AJ Reeves [00:45:01] Yeah. So speaking of, of riots, what do you hear about what's going on in Iran?

Vance Crowe [00:45:06] It's pretty nuts. I can't say I'm like, I've done a deep dive on it, but I've been enjoying the Twitter memes.

AJ Reeves [00:45:12] Yeah. It's, it's interesting how dark that got so quickly.

Vance Crowe [00:45:15] Yeah. Everyone thinks they're getting ready for the draft already.

AJ Reeves [00:45:18] You you think so?

Vance Crowe [00:45:19] No.

AJ Reeves [00:45:19] Oh.

Vance Crowe [00:45:20] I think Twitter thinks that

AJ Reeves [00:45:21] I, it, it was interesting to me how much I saw of people making light of that and I don't care.

Vance Crowe [00:45:27] No, sure.

AJ Reeves [00:45:27] So do whatever you want. But it was just, that's not always happened. Right. We didn't used to, Hey, we're maybe going into a really serious altercation now. Let's everybody make jokes. And maybe they did and I just wasn't in that club. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:45:39] But

AJ Reeves [00:45:40] I am now. Yeah. And I know there's sending funny things around. They

Vance Crowe [00:45:43] Are. Yeah. That's crazy. I think it's pretty, I think it's just a thing to make light of things now. Especially with the internet. I think people find certain comfort in it.

AJ Reeves [00:45:51] It gets a

Vance Crowe [00:45:52] Little dark.

AJ Reeves [00:45:52] The guy Dwayne Faber, the, the dairy farmer that was on the podcast.

Vance Crowe [00:45:55] Yes.

AJ Reeves [00:45:55] He had a hilarious tweet about if you were in Iraq every time you saw the sun go behind the clouds, like you, you duck because it'd be so I was like, wow.

Vance Crowe [00:46:09] Whoa. Yeah, I've seen a few like that. I tweeted one, I tweeted one today. That was, it was like when you find out that you can't be drafted if you have a felony. And then, and then it was, it was Freddie Mercury singing. Mama just killed a man, put a gun against his head, pulled the trigger and

AJ Reeves [00:46:28] His head. Oh,

Vance Crowe [00:46:29] Whoa.

AJ Reeves [00:46:31] So

Vance Crowe [00:46:31] It's, it's like a joke about like, oh, willing to get a felony to get outta the draft.

AJ Reeves [00:46:35] Oh man.

Vance Crowe [00:46:37] That

AJ Reeves [00:46:37] Is, I'm,

Vance Crowe [00:46:38] I, I don't actually believe that I'm just here for the memes, but

AJ Reeves [00:46:41] Yeah. I mean, me, it's pretty funny. Mean good memes are good memes. And you know what, even it's, you should be able to share memes of things you don't, you like completely disagree with. Absolutely. Right. Like, that's, that's how you get to molt. That's how you get changed. Where, where do you find your memes?

Vance Crowe [00:46:55] Is

AJ Reeves [00:46:55] That something you're willing to give away or is that a secret that most people hold? I

Vance Crowe [00:46:58] Get my memes illegally, so I can't really talk about that. No, I get, I, Reddit is probably the biggest one. Reddit or Twitter.

AJ Reeves [00:47:05] Okay.

Vance Crowe [00:47:06] Probably good places for memes.

AJ Reeves [00:47:08] And you specifically go, I mean you Yeah. So you, I'm in, I'm in a, I'm in a chat group with you and you are like, you are like, it's like you got a deck of cards and you're just waiting for the time to throw that one in. And then that one

Vance Crowe [00:47:19] I, yeah, I absolutely have a deck of cards.

AJ Reeves [00:47:21] And so have you always been a jokester? You're kind of a jokester, trickster?

Vance Crowe [00:47:26] Maybe a little bit. I think I, I think I kind of get that from my brother, my little brother. I just, he's just an hilarious person. So I think it kind of rubbed off on me a little bit. He loves making fun of people and lightheartedly and like his friends and me and parents and stuff, and he's always kind of found his way through humor and he is just a humorous guy. So I think it kind of rubbed off on me just growing up with him all the time. He's one of the five people I spent the most time with, so I think I became kind of a jokester through him in a way. But I'm, I'm a little more subtle than he is or a little calmer about it. But

AJ Reeves [00:47:58] Is he a high energy kinda guy? He

Vance Crowe [00:48:00] Can be for sure. He definitely can be. Now he is in the Navy, and I know he is just being rowdy.

AJ Reeves [00:48:05] Oh, really? Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:48:06] He's probably going through a little party thing, but he might need it

AJ Reeves [00:48:09] Any concern because you have a brother in the military with, with Iran, I mean, like you're saying, you know, we're making jokes, but like there'll be real soldiers going into a real place. A little

Vance Crowe [00:48:18] Bit. I mean, it's, it's there. I don't think it's right now I've, man, it has become real yet to me, but it's definitely there. He, he would be one on a ship too. He's quartermaster, which apparently in all the other branches of the military means you gather supplies, but in the Navy it means you navigate. So he's a ship navigator and he's already navigated ships from Maine to Jacksonville, Florida, and kind of all around, so. Wow. I think he would, I think it's possible that if there's action for the Navy, he might see it. But

AJ Reeves [00:48:45] I mean, the, the Navy is used in war a lot more than people realize. Yeah. Because you take those ships and you put them offshore, and most of the time in the US Navy you can set up our ships so that we're far enough away that somebody's striking us would be pretty difficult. But you're still there. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:49:02] You

AJ Reeves [00:49:02] Know, and, and in Iran you're talking about some pretty tight, there's some pretty tight areas where you could come in conflict next to ships coming, you know, where somebody decides we're gonna block off the, the straight of four moves, you know, we're gonna make it so nobody can move through here. And then you've gotta decide, are we gonna go pick a fight with them? And then if they, their gun, if their ship shoots at us, do we shoot back at them? Like that's, these questions are being asked right now.

Vance Crowe [00:49:29] Yes, 100%. And I, I needed to look in more into it. I don't think I'm,

AJ Reeves [00:49:35] You know, so, so I did the opposite right? When I was, when I was your age, I looked into all this stuff. I was watching it, I was reading, I mean, I read the New York Times. I had a subscription. I was pretty poor for most of my life. Oh, cool. I had a subscription to the Sunday, New York Times, basically for five years. Right.

Vance Crowe [00:49:52] And

AJ Reeves [00:49:52] I would read it cover to cover. I was like, all right, I wanna know what's going on in the world. And now I look back and I, that was all noise

Vance Crowe [00:49:59] Just

AJ Reeves [00:49:59] Because it had the sheen of being in the news. Did I have like a sensation that I, that I knew what was going on? But really they're just like, you know, think of the, the medieval times when there's guys with marionettes being like telling you a story. Yeah. And all the people are watching is this box. And we look at them and be like, how could they watch that and think that's so funny or, or interesting or worth watching. That's what our news media is now. They're just putting on a show show.

Vance Crowe [00:50:27] Oh yeah. I don't, I've never liked the news. I just, I don't know. I'm not super political or anything, and that's what nine out 10 of it is. And I'm not all like super, like fake news, fake news, but I don't believe some of it sometimes. And I just, I'm just ignoring it. I think, and maybe that's not a good response, but I don't, I

AJ Reeves [00:50:43] Think, I don't wanna a part think it is, man, I think I wasted, you know, a lot of hours being up on what this guy said or that guy said, like it's a soap opera. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:50:52] And

AJ Reeves [00:50:52] It's not even altogether different than watching the WWF. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:50:56] Right.

AJ Reeves [00:50:56] And the people that are like die hard, they know what is going on and who those bad senators are on the other side. Like, can't you see their your own people, the people that you're on the side of, they're showing you things to get you to have an emotional reaction

Vance Crowe [00:51:11] Yes.

AJ Reeves [00:51:11] So that you will go give them the power for them to do what they want to do. And they aren't on your side.

Vance Crowe [00:51:17] Yeah.

AJ Reeves [00:51:17] I, you gotta have some system, but to be so vitriolic and hateful and angry on either side, you're lost. Well,

Vance Crowe [00:51:25] What they're doing now. And it's not the effect they intended, but it's making everyone desensitized to it. Like every, every article is the most extreme title. It's, there's, it's usually not a truthful headline. The headline is Blood and guts and war and Money and like what people catches people's eyes. But, and instead of making people like, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, now I think people are becoming desensitized and don't care. It's like, what's it take to shock people now? I think it's a lot more now. There's very offended people out there. But I mean, in general, I think it's,

AJ Reeves [00:51:55] Well, and I think about how easy it is to read the articles I find when I'm just like thumbing through social media because everybody is like, I wanna optimize it for this to be the easiest thing for somebody to read so that they stay engaged with it and they scroll down. There are exceptions. I started, my buddy Keaton Krueger told me about this. Wait, but why have you heard of this guy? I

Vance Crowe [00:52:20] Have not.

AJ Reeves [00:52:21] And he, I've only just begun. But he has a very interesting way of making comparisons that are simple so that you can understand how the world works. Sure. Like, we're as close now to the Civil War as some other experiences. I can't even remember any of 'em. They were, they were good though.

Vance Crowe [00:52:39] Yeah.

AJ Reeves [00:52:39] But most of the things that you read on the internet are easy and simple and don't actually, they're fluff, they're candy, they're junk food.

Vance Crowe [00:52:48] Right.

AJ Reeves [00:52:48] Which is why I love that book club because I started realizing like, if I can shut down the phone for 30 minutes Yeah. The value I'm gonna derive out of reading this book for 30 minutes, I know. Is this, is, is high. How high? I don't know, but I know it's high. 'cause the book's been around for a long time. Yes.

Vance Crowe [00:53:06] And

AJ Reeves [00:53:06] People told me it was their favorite book they ever read versus this where I'm just pulling the roulette wheel saying, I hope somebody on Twitter shares something with me that I think is interesting. But most of the time I'm just sitting there cheering for my tribe and cheering against the other tribes.

Vance Crowe [00:53:22] Yeah. I think I look at reading as like a, like I said, I've been getting into investments and stuff more. Right. I've been kind of looking into reading as more like a, a dividend, right? Like it just, it just pays off. The more you do it, the more you absorb. Maybe you can't, you're not gonna read a book and absorb 100% of everything you see. Right. But you're going to take nuggets. You're gonna take little bits and pieces that means something to you or that relate to your life or that you think you can value from. And I think that just builds on itself the more you read.

AJ Reeves [00:53:49] I a hundred percent agree with that. And one of the things, so, you know, the Twitter feed visualize value.

Vance Crowe [00:53:55] Yes.

AJ Reeves [00:53:56] So the guy has like black background and white options, white straight lines Yeah. Are all of his options. It's not curves usually. It's very like, and it, it looks like even slower than eight bit, not slower, but lower resolution or however you wanna say that. Okay. But the, the cool thing is he puts in like a quote, but then he adds in drawings that make that quote makes sense. Yes.

Vance Crowe [00:54:21] And it's very minimal artwork.

AJ Reeves [00:54:23] Right.

Vance Crowe [00:54:23] That, and I think that's something in a way like it's creativity through limitation. Like he's limiting himself to no color palette. He's limiting himself to straight white lines.

AJ Reeves [00:54:33] Yeah, that's right.

Vance Crowe [00:54:34] And it forces him to kind of, in my opinion, I don't know him, I don't know if this is what he is doing or not, but I would think it's forcing him to like, I have to be creative because I have to be able to tell a story through this quote using only straight white lines.

AJ Reeves [00:54:47] And the quotes are usually like seven or eight words. Oh yeah. At the most.

Vance Crowe [00:54:51] Yeah. I know your, he made one for Rob Long, didn't he? Your buddy. Yeah. Yeah.

AJ Reeves [00:54:54] So the Rob Long one was, attention is your budget to change the world, spend it wisely.

Vance Crowe [00:55:01] I love that.

AJ Reeves [00:55:02] And it like, the way that he does the drawing, I'll throw it up here. It, it's like a circle with a bunch of circles in between and you can see that's like the distracted world. And then you have over here one just giant circle. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:55:15] And

AJ Reeves [00:55:15] The way that he does the writing makes it so you see how the, how the picture represents the words. And it's so deep because it's so crystal clear. Yes. It's so simple.

Vance Crowe [00:55:28] Yes.

AJ Reeves [00:55:28] And he does all of the work to distill the value. And that's the difference between people on Twitter and books is the same thing. It's that the author, in order to get that book published and then to have it live through all these years. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:55:43] They

AJ Reeves [00:55:43] Didn't have fluff. Your every sentence is packing, meaning Yes. There's not waste in there. There's a lot of waste over here. And that visualized value is is prob you, I don't know how you could get better than that. No. Yeah. At being simple. Like, I think it's actually archetypal. I think it's all the way down at the core.

Vance Crowe [00:55:59] Yeah. I, it's just amazing. I really do enjoy looking at 'em. I've retweeted 'em a bunch, I think. And I try not to be too annoying with the retweets. I don't wanna my page look like his page. But what

AJ Reeves [00:56:10] Is your, what is your philosophy on how you use Twitter?

Vance Crowe [00:56:14] I just want, so that's a really good question. I like looking at the jokes and I kind of, I like following MMA news and sports news and things like that. I kinda just use it to consume content mostly. For now, I would like to have my page, especially if I end up doing something where I'm running a business or something, have my page be something that's fun to follow. Like strange Donuts, if you ever look at his Twitter just Oh

AJ Reeves [00:56:40] Yeah, Bachman. Oh yeah. I know

Vance Crowe [00:56:41] He's been on here a couple of times. His Twitter to me is the funniest thing on Earth. I just, some of his tweets are so dumb and creative at the same time. It's just, it's impressive how funny he is.

AJ Reeves [00:56:51] I mean, and I think it's because he's so genuine. Oh yeah. And like the other day, he had some dust up some, somebody was, I dunno bad writing bad reviews on his page or something, but he found out that the person was doing it maliciously or something like that. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:57:06] I

AJ Reeves [00:57:06] Don't really understand. But he comes on and he does a 32nd video. He's cut out all the nonsense and he just, he explains what's going on. And then he says, I don't have any hard feelings for you. I know what it's like to be under the gun. I, I feel you. I know what it's like to be afraid. I got nothing but love for you. I got, I want nothing but success for you. Yeah. So, you know, I watched that and I was like, I'm a, I'm a better man for having seen that.

Vance Crowe [00:57:32] Yes. 100%. You were asking me earlier about like aspirations and stuff. I wanna be bachman when I'm older. I think. Wow. I think that's what I wanna be.

AJ Reeves [00:57:40] I think that you have to be prepared to go to hell for that. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:57:42] I know.

AJ Reeves [00:57:43] I don't, I don't, I think he earned every bit of his knowledge of how to handle that situation.

Vance Crowe [00:57:49] Yes.

AJ Reeves [00:57:49] 'cause he was in hell and that, so that's, that brings up actually a good question. Like the only way you get better at things is if you're willing to suffer in some way. Now you can turn that suffering into meaning, and you don't have to hate it, like we talked about with running.

Vance Crowe [00:58:04] Yeah.

AJ Reeves [00:58:04] But how much are you willing to suffer for the dream that you have? And I think maybe that's where you and I were probably similar in that you aren't, you aren't really willing to, to announce like, Hey, I want to go be a, an accountant and owned an account firm. Yeah. I think and I was the same way.

Vance Crowe [00:58:19] Yeah.

AJ Reeves [00:58:20] I think it's 'cause of that

Vance Crowe [00:58:21] I have a, I have a feeling that when I know I'll know, like when I know what I, that this is what I wanna be doing, I will be willing to

AJ Reeves [00:58:29] Go through that suffering. Yes.

Vance Crowe [00:58:30] But I think I'm maybe being a little conservative in my approach.

AJ Reeves [00:58:35] I think that's a good idea. There's this guy named Kenneth Stanley who Rob and I used to read before, way before we ever met you. He, he talks about this concept that you can't really know where you're going. Innovation happens by just taking the next step. You know, you look around at what your options are and then you take the next step instead of saying, this is how I'm gonna get from point A to point B, because you don't always know what point B is. So you, you keep taking that next step. But I think when you know where you're going, yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:59:06] You

AJ Reeves [00:59:06] Have a willingness to take larger risks,

Vance Crowe [00:59:09] Which

AJ Reeves [00:59:09] Means you increase your level of, of your willingness to suffer for things in case they don't work out or as they do work out.

Vance Crowe [00:59:17] Right. And it's like you've, you've told me before about the your, about chaos. Right? That's where all new things come from. And it's just your willingness to step away or like to go outside your comfort zone and bring something back into your comfort zone, which expands your comfort zone. Right?

AJ Reeves [00:59:29] Yeah. That's right. Yeah. And, and I, so I heard a really interesting quote from Rob actually was the one telling me, Rob Long Plant Mols on Twitter. He, he was telling us about the book, the, it was something about the revolutions in science or how, how science evolves. And he basically said, the quote was essentially, knowledge doesn't come from chaos, it comes from mistakes.

Vance Crowe [00:59:57] And

AJ Reeves [00:59:58] I, at first was like, I, you know, I've been saying this other thing, how do I feel about that? And that's actually true though. It's like a scientist, like Doug Salmons or Fred Perla goes into the chaos and says, we're gonna look at these bacteria. We're gonna grab this up and we're gonna go over here and we're gonna see what we can do with it. And it's not that they guess correctly, it's that they run experiments to find what did or didn't work, and then they follow down that path. Yeah. So it's applying order to chaos.

Vance Crowe [01:00:26] Right.

AJ Reeves [01:00:26] And it's a give and take thing. Yeah. So I think that's right. Knowledge comes from mistakes. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [01:00:31] And look at jiujitsu like learning, you make a bunch of mistakes and that's when you learn the most. Is like, you, you might, you might be doing this thing where you keep your elbow out and that's a mistake, but someone points it out to you and then tries to break your arm. You're not making that mistake again.

AJ Reeves [01:00:45] Oh, that's exa. So I think that that is one of Steve, our, one of our coaches, our Wednesday night coach. I think that that is one of his excellent strategies is that he, we do so much live rolling and when he sees you making a mistake, he'll tell you about it.

Vance Crowe [01:01:00] Yes.

AJ Reeves [01:01:01] But then he gets in and rolls with you and you're going as hard as you can. And he is not going as hard as he can. But he exploits the thing that he told you to fix. He gets you into the situation and then he exploits it and you'd never forget.

Vance Crowe [01:01:13] No, no. Why?

AJ Reeves [01:01:14] 'cause it hurts so bad.

Vance Crowe [01:01:15] What, what's gonna make you learn more than having the threat of going unconscious or having your arm broken?

AJ Reeves [01:01:20] Right.

Vance Crowe [01:01:21] Yeah. Nothing,

AJ Reeves [01:01:21] Nothing.

Vance Crowe [01:01:22] Nothing.

AJ Reeves [01:01:23] I, I that, so Steve and Keith are our two primary coaches outside a coach, you know? Right. But we don't see coach all the time. He's got a lot of students. So, so we get Keith and Steve. Steve, I feel like is the rough and tumble you're gonna learn through the hard way, the fighting way. And then you've got Keith who is like, really technically excellent

Vance Crowe [01:01:44] Yes.

AJ Reeves [01:01:44] And is focused on improving his technique. So I feel like a lot of times we work on things that he's like, I need to learn this better. And so the way that I'm gonna learn it is by teaching you guys. And I'll figure things out

Vance Crowe [01:01:56] And

AJ Reeves [01:01:57] We get done with class with him, and I'm like, I know a new thing.

Vance Crowe [01:02:00] Yes.

AJ Reeves [01:02:00] You get done with Steve's class and you're like dead tired. Yep.

Vance Crowe [01:02:04] But you're like,

AJ Reeves [01:02:05] I'll never do that, that or that again. Yes.

Vance Crowe [01:02:08] Or,

AJ Reeves [01:02:08] Or Oh, that kind of worked.

Vance Crowe [01:02:10] And I think having the balance between the two coaches is gonna make me a lot better.

AJ Reeves [01:02:13] Right.

Vance Crowe [01:02:13] Yeah. I, I take what I learned in Keith's class and I do it, I try to do it a hundred times, enrolling at Steve's class. Like

AJ Reeves [01:02:21] It's a good system.

Vance Crowe [01:02:22] Yeah.

AJ Reeves [01:02:22] It's a good system. And the best thing about it is the guys that show up.

Vance Crowe [01:02:27] Oh man.

AJ Reeves [01:02:28] I mean, like, we don't need to go into different things, but that's the cool thing about having a community. Yes.

Vance Crowe [01:02:33] Because,

AJ Reeves [01:02:34] And the amp and, and I were talking about this the other day, you don't know how much your life is static until you get into a community and you start seeing other people in their day-to-day lives and you start seeing like, oh, they were trying to get through college, or Oh, they had that semester. Oh, they had, you know, people that you don't know in another context. But then you start to get to know them and you start to know about how they're progressing along the path, right? Yes. In their, in their life outside of where you're doing this thing And then you have a bond with them. 'cause you wanna see them succeed. Yeah. 'cause they're working out and rolling as hard as they can with you. Or my wife does synchronized swimming. So you don't even have to be fighting. You can be dancing in the water together, but when you have that, the richness that it brings to your life is so difficult to try and describe. But it's a, it's that you have a wider spectrum of how you see the world going on right now. And that's one of the things I love about our crew at Juujitsu. Right? Oh yeah. And anytime somebody new comes in, you're like, yeah, all right. What are you gonna bring? Come on, come on in.

Vance Crowe [01:03:38] Yeah. I think Juujitsu is something that's done for me, has made me not as scared of failure.

AJ Reeves [01:03:43] Yeah, that's right.

Vance Crowe [01:03:44] Yeah. I think so. And I was, I'm trying to balance those too. Like I just explained how failing makes you learn, but it sucks and it hurts. But I'm also, even though it hurts every time, I'm not scared of it. It's 'cause I know in the long term it's making me better.

AJ Reeves [01:04:00] Yeah. I think over the last year I found out while I was running that most of the barriers that I put on myself are like the fear ones of like, oh no, what might happen? And once you start getting past that, oh no, what might happen? Like, no, I'm controlled, I'm trying this new thing, but I'm gonna do it within these parameters. I can go a little further. When you learn that you can go a little further, it becomes addictive.

Vance Crowe [01:04:28] Oh yeah. Yeah. I think right now I'm kind of chasing this like dragon of trying to tap upper belt. It's just kind of like this. I've just been trying, I, now, when I go against, I used to go against upper belts, blue and up, because I'm just a white, I'm a white belt blue and up I go against them like blue belts sometimes I'll be like, I'll get a feel for it and then I usually get beat. Right. And then purple belts and up, it's just fighting a magician.

AJ Reeves [01:04:52] So speaking of the different belts, you, you had a really good point the other day where I was saying, I think the just, we were hanging out.

Vance Crowe [01:05:00] Yeah.

AJ Reeves [01:05:00] And I was like, I think that using the belt system to describe levels of expertise is really helpful out in the world. And you made a really good point, and you're like, it is because it shows there are levels of expertise, but what you don't know is the distance that it takes to go from getting your white belt to getting your blue belt starting walking in the door when you're handed your white belt to your blue belt. You're right. Without that perspective, you don't know. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [01:05:28] That

AJ Reeves [01:05:28] Having a color belt means you are like legit good. You actually know what you're

Vance Crowe [01:05:32] Doing. Yeah. I think, I think if you took someone that doesn't understand the, that dynamic, right. And you showed him like that, the explain it to him that these are the expert levels and you had him like, how good do you think a purple belt is? They would probably be like, oh, he is okay. Right. Just looking at it on that scale, it's like, oh, he's okay. He's, you know, he's three out of five, he's eh.

AJ Reeves [01:05:52] Right. That's,

Vance Crowe [01:05:52] But in reality, he's a magician. He's a wizard. That's

AJ Reeves [01:05:55] Right. That's

Vance Crowe [01:05:55] Right. He's just maybe a little too inexperienced to get to that mastery yet,

AJ Reeves [01:05:59] Or, or he's just begun or he's like, yeah. Working on the, the honing of the skill. That's right. But I do think in every single field

Vance Crowe [01:06:09] That

AJ Reeves [01:06:09] You have, there is that thing. And, and it's probably that same Pareto distribution of how many people quit

Vance Crowe [01:06:17] Before

AJ Reeves [01:06:17] They get to that blue belt level. And it's most everybody, right? Somebody starts as like 80% or maybe maybe 65% they're gonna quit. But the ones that make it here, then that is because it's so hard to get there.

Vance Crowe [01:06:30] Yes. Yeah. I think people think that it's, it's gonna be easy or they kind of, you know, juujitsu crushes your ego, and if you can't handle that, you're not gonna last.

AJ Reeves [01:06:38] I think that that's what I wanted in a job,

Vance Crowe [01:06:41] Really.

AJ Reeves [01:06:42] I wanted to be able to be like, okay, I have a skill that's good enough for me to be able to do it, but I want it to be a skill that the more that I do it, the better that I could get. Yeah. And I see how powerful that could be to, to have a mastery of something.

Vance Crowe [01:06:58] Absolutely.

AJ Reeves [01:06:59] And that's, that's what it is for me.

Vance Crowe [01:07:00] Yeah.

AJ Reeves [01:07:01] I that like, I think that that's what I'm doing with my work, right? Like now I'm consulting and I do speaking and the speaking, I can, I can work on both. I can hone a lot of them, but with the speaking, I watch people that are way, way better than me. I, I film myself and say, what could I have done to have said that better? Why is it that I thought I was gonna get a laugh there and I didn't? What, what stopped me up on the way that I was talking? Or how did I stutter? And once you get over the like, oh, I look silly, or Oh, I'm, I don't like the sound of my voice. And you can probe yourself as hard as you probe your friends. It's awesome. Oh,

Vance Crowe [01:07:41] It's amazing. It's liberating. It really is. I used funny you brought that up. I used to hate my voice, like middle school, high school, I hated it. I didn't want to be in recordings and I was in a band. I didn't wanna sing anything I didn't wanna is I just didn't like it.

AJ Reeves [01:07:55] And now

Vance Crowe [01:07:56] I don't care. It's whatever. I, I'm stuck with it. Whether it's not that bad

AJ Reeves [01:08:00] Now I can paint it in my own mind. I can hear it even when it's, when I'm not on because you know, I, we'll record this and then I'll go edit them. Right? Yeah. So I'll listen and I don't generally cut things out, but if some, some kinda mistake happens or whatever. So I, I wanna listen to the whole thing. And now I've gotten so used to my voice that it, it is my voice. Yeah. It's like, oh, that's the sound of me.

Vance Crowe [01:08:21] Yeah.

AJ Reeves [01:08:22] And that's a, that's a, you know, it's an important feeling because once you get past that, you're able to probe yourself a lot more.

Vance Crowe [01:08:29] There's a, there's a comedian and he's, I'll remember his name in a little bit, but he was on the show, it's called The Green Room. And it's just a bunch of comedians. Like, there's five comedians in a room, and they have a podcast like, just like a five comedians from different backgrounds. There's older guys, younger guys, actor comedians, like Ray Romano is on there a lot. Or he was on there once, but he said, he said, when I was a kid, I used to worry about my hair a lot. And then I realized that was a dead end. It's pretty funny. It's humorous, right. Hair dead end, but

AJ Reeves [01:08:58] Right.

Vance Crowe [01:08:58] It's also like, you have these things that you don't like, but then you reach a point and it's just like you get over it. And that's kind of where I'm at.

AJ Reeves [01:09:06] Do you have people around you that are telling you what they think you could do to get better?

Vance Crowe [01:09:13] A lot of that in Jiujitsu, and I think, I think you, Chris Oliver is doing that for me.

AJ Reeves [01:09:19] He's been on the podcast. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [01:09:20] Yeah. Chris Oliver's doing that for me. We go get lunch weekly now.

AJ Reeves [01:09:22] Oh, wow.

Vance Crowe [01:09:23] Yeah. And he's been kind of, he's, I'm, I'm looking at him like a mentor. Definitely. I think he's a great guy to learn from.

AJ Reeves [01:09:30] I mean, he just has so much wisdom. When you hear Chris talk about something, I find myself being like, everybody shut up. Like he's, he's gonna tell us something. Oh, really important about how to think about solving this problem. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [01:09:44] And

AJ Reeves [01:09:45] He's, he's just dead on when he's talking. What

Vance Crowe [01:09:47] I like about Chris too is he picks his fights a little bit. He, if he, he, he sits and he waits, and then when he talks, it means something. Yeah,

AJ Reeves [01:09:55] That's right.

Vance Crowe [01:09:56] Yeah.

AJ Reeves [01:09:56] That's right. Well, that's cool.

Vance Crowe [01:10:00] Yeah. I've been getting lunch with Chris weekly, hanging out with you guys, I think is doing that for me. Outside of that, not as, not that much. I mean, there are,

AJ Reeves [01:10:08] I gotta say, so you hang out with the, the, the group, like we hang out with, you know, we, we don't have to talk about it, but like, there's a wide range of ages.

Vance Crowe [01:10:15] Yes.

AJ Reeves [01:10:16] But you are the first time we've brought in somebody that's remarkably younger. And as soon as you started hanging out with us, I was like, this is absolutely the right decision because you're bringing things, parts of culture that we've left behind we're not involved in,

Vance Crowe [01:10:33] In

AJ Reeves [01:10:33] Any way. Yeah. And it really helps the group like be like, oh, there's this other way of looking and thinking about things. And it's not the fact that you're young, it's the fact that you are a part of that wave of culture that's happening right now.

Vance Crowe [01:10:46] Right. And then also it helps me out a bunch too, right. Because I'm with people that are older, been where I'm been, where I'm at. Like I think I have something to offer and I think I can be a successful person later in my life. Right. But hanging out with you guys, I'm kind of figuring out what it takes. I'm learning what works and what doesn't, just being there. Right. I'm kind of trying to be a sponge a little bit too.

AJ Reeves [01:11:10] I had a little tweet thread because some guys were talking about wanting to get groups of guys together and, you know, how do you think about this? And I was trying to put together my thoughts on, hey, you wanna pick a place where you know, where everybody's gonna meet regularly? I don't think it should bounce around, because then you've gotta coordinate and who's turn is it? And whatever. You just pick a place. Yep. And you say, this is where we meet. Now sometimes they're necessarily gonna work. You can meet another place. But that's the standard now people know, Hey, if it's a little later than what we thought we were gonna start, that's okay. I can still swing by. They'll, they'll be there.

Vance Crowe [01:11:42] Yeah.

AJ Reeves [01:11:43] Then you gotta have the, the group have like, something that they enjoy doing together.

Vance Crowe [01:11:50] Okay.

AJ Reeves [01:11:51] Like, it doesn't have to be like, you could be drinking or smoking or, or whatever you wanted, but you could also be working on cars or you could be, you know, try trying some hobby like you were talking about. Like, but you wanna make it so that everybody is excited to be there because there's something going on.

Vance Crowe [01:12:09] And

AJ Reeves [01:12:09] Then you've gotta make sure that everybody is getting a chance to talk about what's going on in their lives at some point. Right? Yes. Like, that's the point, because that's what you're doing, is you're sharing the wisdom of what's going on so far. And invariably somebody be like, oh, I had that problem and this is what happened to me. And it's a, it's a fun back and

Vance Crowe [01:12:30] Forth.

AJ Reeves [01:12:31] Yeah. And if you can set those parameters up, I don't care who you are, you can get a group of guys together.

Vance Crowe [01:12:35] Absolutely. Absolutely. And I, I do appreciate being a part of this group. I think it's a very productive group and something that I'm learning a lot from.

AJ Reeves [01:12:42] I think that people should spend more time just sitting and talking with other groups of driven people. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [01:12:50] And

AJ Reeves [01:12:50] If you don't, I if you don't have it, get out there and find it and you can find it on Twitter. I, I found a lot of people that I'm connected with really deeply on Twitter and, and you can start building it that way, but you gotta find a community and it should be live.

Vance Crowe [01:13:06] Yeah. I think there's two sides to that coin. I think one, you should be hanging out with more people and having conversations with people and you're, you're learning a lot from that. I'm learning a lot from that. And it's great. Also, you should be having these conversations with yourself too. I think spending time by yourself is really good in journaling is been helping me a lot.

AJ Reeves [01:13:22] How long have you been journaling?

Vance Crowe [01:13:24] I've been journaling not that long. I, so I started maybe a couple months ago and then I fizzled out. I wasn't able to do it regularly. I didn't have a system. And then I was like, you know, I wanna do this. I don't, this is something I don't wanna give up on yet. I found this journal online that's more guided. It gives you a format. Like it tells you what's write where to write it, but how you write, it's up to you obviously. Right. Like it tells you, it just tells you date and time up here. When did you go to bed?

AJ Reeves [01:13:48] Yeah. You know, I had made a commitment when I was trying to encourage people to do their journaling, to give them prompts because my wife was like, I sit down and write and I don't know what I should write down. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [01:13:57] And

AJ Reeves [01:13:57] It's, it's been hard for me to do hard because I don't think of it that way. I sit down and I have such a tight structure on what I write about.

Vance Crowe [01:14:07] Yeah.

AJ Reeves [01:14:08] That if I tried to tell somebody else, and I tried to, to, I try to be like, oh, I do my weight and I do my, how, how far I exercised and my name, and then I start here. But like, it wouldn't make sense. It like, it's, it's just, it's written for the, the path down my brain. Right. Not down somebody else's. So I completely appreciate the value of having a template. Oh

Vance Crowe [01:14:28] Yeah.

AJ Reeves [01:14:29] Absolutely. But it's, it's one that like, to me, it would be like somebody giving me an assignment and I'd be like, get outta here. I don't want, I don't need your help here to write this down.

Vance Crowe [01:14:36] Yeah. You didn't need help with that. I definitely needed help with that. My old journals were just scatterbrained. Right. Like, sometimes I'd write the date, sometimes I wouldn't, sometimes it'd be three paragraphs, sometimes it'd be two sentences. I didn't have anything like a,

AJ Reeves [01:14:50] Oh yeah. My world is littered with journals that have the first five pages written in 'em. Right.

Vance Crowe [01:14:55] Yeah.

AJ Reeves [01:14:55] And, but I, I, now I have ones that I can fill cover to cover and it's just, then it's like, oh, I have this manual. Like it's, this is the manual that made me, me. And I just set it down over here.

Vance Crowe [01:15:08] I got my girlfriend into journaling too, and she's been getting a lot of value out of it as well. I,

AJ Reeves [01:15:13] I What would you say she gets value out of it? Like in what way?

Vance Crowe [01:15:16] I think one thing she likes is she's, she said sometimes, you know, she's working a lot and sometimes she has days where it just kind of like blends. Like Wednesday and Thursday are the same day. And she can go back and be like, oh, I did this that day. That's actually really cool. Or Yeah. Oh,

AJ Reeves [01:15:32] That's a

Vance Crowe [01:15:32] Really good point. This, so she, I think she looks at it as almost like a history book into her own life already. And it hasn't been that long and she's been doing it. But also I needed, I think for journaling I needed that framework. Right. Like, that's something I needed. I would've lost it a long time ago if I didn't pick up a guided journal. I think

AJ Reeves [01:15:51] I So what are you picking out from, from your guided journal? What's coming out for you?

Vance Crowe [01:15:56] So I think one thing that's pretty cool is it has me list three things. I'm grateful for that day and kind of reflect on things that I'm grateful for. I think gratitude is a really important Oh

AJ Reeves [01:16:06] Yeah. You cannot, you have to be humble in order to be grateful.

Vance Crowe [01:16:09] Yeah. Absolutely. And you, if you're familiar with Gary Vaynerchuk, he'll, he pushes gratitude. He pushes empathy and self-awareness. And I, I don't watch him that much, honestly. But those are three things I totally agree with. I like, I, I pride myself a little bit on self-awareness and I definitely need to work on being more empathetic towards people or having like a, I don't know.

AJ Reeves [01:16:33] I worry about the word empathy.

Vance Crowe [01:16:35] Why? Because

AJ Reeves [01:16:35] I think that we pushed that idea into our culture that, that being empathetic, that understanding where somebody was coming from is, is a core like way to be good or nice or, but you know, sometimes empathy, and I know it's not sympathy, but sometimes understanding where somebody's coming from clouds the objective reality of where they are. Okay. And I think that sometimes if you're like so empathetic that you're like, I really understand that AJ's working a lot of hours and he is doing this and he is doing that. So of course he's let his weight go. You know? Wild. Yeah. I think that that keeps people from being able to say, like, I'm gonna tell you something that I know you would want me to tell you if you knew that I knew it.

Vance Crowe [01:17:26] Okay. Yeah. I think there's a time and place, there's definitely a line, right? Like if I'm harming myself by, if I'm like working all this time and doing all this stuff and I'm just gorging myself with cheeseburgers, that's something that's harmful to me. And I definitely would want it pointed out. 'cause maybe I'm not realizing I'm as bad as I,

AJ Reeves [01:17:41] I think that that's been a good thing for me out of the community that I have both our group, but definitely with my wife was opening. And this is probably from Juujitsu too, right? Like what is it that I am willing to let someone correct me on?

Vance Crowe [01:17:56] Yeah.

AJ Reeves [01:17:57] Because it's humbling to be corrected. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [01:17:59] I think you're, I think you're a lot more empathetic than you gave yourself credit a little bit. Huh? Like, for example, you went on that, you went to that ag road show in Canada, right? Right. And you kind of talked about if you're not, if you're not looking at people that are oppose you, then you're not getting things that can like rattle your foundation.

AJ Reeves [01:18:19] Oh, that's true. Yeah. That's fair.

Vance Crowe [01:18:20] And that's definitely a, that's definitely a very empathetic place you're coming from when you say that.

AJ Reeves [01:18:24] Yeah. I, I, that's interesting because it, it puts it in a different light. You know, I'm always saying that because I'm like, you really could fall into a bear trap. You, you think you know what they're saying. You go to, to make a commentary to somebody thinking that they agree with you and that this is your caricature of them. Yeah. And you actually may run into a bandsaw because that people, that person may really know what they're talking about and you're about to look really, really foolish and they're going to love doing it. Yeah. And so I try and prepare people. It's just like juujitsu, I try and prepare people for, you've gotta be looking at what they're saying and not through the eyes of another person. Because if you do it through the eyes of the other person, they may have a vested interest in changing your view on Yeah, sure. Who that person is. So I, I don't, I appreciate you thinking it's from a place of empathy, but I think it's more of a place for self defense.

Vance Crowe [01:19:17] I can respect that. I I definitely see that too. I, I think I viewed it as like, 'cause you were talking about, like, you were talking with Dwayne, I believe, and they were, you were talking about fake meat, like the Beyond Burgers Right.

AJ Reeves [01:19:31] And

Vance Crowe [01:19:31] Things like that. And you were, he was kind of saying, you know, why does there need to be a substitute for beef? We already have beef, it's great. All this stuff. And then you were kind of saying, you know, that's, oh, it was with Jared.

AJ Reeves [01:19:41] Jared McDaniel. Yeah. Jared,

Vance Crowe [01:19:42] Daniel. That's right. And you kind of said, you know, that's narrow minded to think like that. Right? Like and you don't think there's like vegan activisms that are just here for, 'cause they support animals and they believe Oh yeah,

AJ Reeves [01:19:52] That's right. Okay. Fair enough. I mean that one of the things that I have found as I got older that I definitely didn't have in my twenties was I didn't understand that you could have a different worldview than me. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [01:20:05] And

AJ Reeves [01:20:06] You could be right. And so could I.

Vance Crowe [01:20:08] Yes.

AJ Reeves [01:20:09] And that, that, that did not conflict with my, you know, my moral principle. That there was a black and white right and wrong. So you're in your twenties.

Vance Crowe [01:20:20] Yes.

AJ Reeves [01:20:20] And you got a job and you're fit and you're young. What do you do on Friday and Saturday night?

Vance Crowe [01:20:28] I like to spend time with my girlfriend and we usually try to find something to do some event. Sometimes it's a local concert. I like to support local music when I can. I haven't that much

AJ Reeves [01:20:39] What kind of music? I wouldn't even know where to go if there, if it was like, let's go see some local music, I would've no idea where you go there.

Vance Crowe [01:20:45] St. Louis has some great places and it also depends what you're into. I like punk rock or like high energy kinda.

AJ Reeves [01:20:52] So your girlfriend's going to punk con like concerts with you?

Vance Crowe [01:20:55] Yeah.

AJ Reeves [01:20:56] Wow. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [01:20:56] She likes it too. It's, dude,

AJ Reeves [01:20:57] That's cool. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [01:20:58] It's a lot of fun. Definitely wanna start going to more. I think it's something that I feel, I can feel like a direct value is given. Like, whenever you're in the crowd at these local shows, there's only, there's not a lot of people a lot of times, you know, and it means something to the bands if you talk to 'em and say, Hey, I enjoyed that and you can,

AJ Reeves [01:21:16] I guess I never thought about that. Yeah. Like

Vance Crowe [01:21:17] Local bands do a lot and they don't get the support.

AJ Reeves [01:21:20] Yeah. I, I think about being a speaker and having somebody come up to you and be like, Hey, that really meant a lot to me. What I loved what you had to say. Yeah. But of course it would be, I look at people in a band like, you sent photos and I saw you being a drummer in the back of a stage with a huge crowd of people gathered around you. And I was like, I have never had that sensation. I have never had the feeling of like a room of people cheering to have you keep going and to keep playing your music. That's awesome, man.

Vance Crowe [01:21:50] I mean, that's what I think you do when you speak, right? Like I see you speak in front of codes. Yeah.

AJ Reeves [01:21:54] But that I, I think you should just take this compliment because it is like, and, and really think about the fact that there are a lot of people that dreamed of being a rock star

Vance Crowe [01:22:03] And

AJ Reeves [01:22:03] You've at least tasted it. And maybe you don't want to go to be the black belt that you'd have to be to do it, but you at least got to, to smell the air of the mountain up there. This

Vance Crowe [01:22:12] Reminds me of something I wanna talk about real quick. I, I'm petitioning to have, and as the crow flies episode about how to take a compliment. So this is my petition. I'm sliding it for you on your desk.

AJ Reeves [01:22:22] Oh, alright. That's a good one, man. That's it. Because it, it definitely takes tack and I see a lot of people, I'll need to think about how I learned this. 'cause I know that I learned, somebody taught me this, this was not, but there's a lot of tack that goes into it because you need to understand that a person can give you a compliment for several different reasons. But you have to understand, you know, that it, that a lot of times if somebody gives you a compliment that you really care about it, it, it was scary to them.

Vance Crowe [01:22:59] Yeah.

AJ Reeves [01:22:59] And most people don't realize that sometimes the, the compliment that meant the most to them, them was the hardest one to give. And so you wanna make sure that you recognize that with people and you reward them for making observations for about you or about another person that by, by sharing it, you made them better. Right. Yeah. That's why I even take my criticisms after the fact

Vance Crowe [01:23:23] Okay.

AJ Reeves [01:23:24] To be compliments. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [01:23:25] They are.

AJ Reeves [01:23:25] Because if somebody didn't care, they just leave.

Vance Crowe [01:23:27] Yeah. I Criticisms are without a doubt, compliments. It's complimenting something else though. It's complimenting that they care. It's complimenting that you're someone worth caring about. Right. Like, I care enough to tell you if I didn't care, I wouldn't point it out to you. Right. It doesn't matter Right. To me. Right. Whether you get better at this or not, but if I care about you, it's like, Hey, I think if you did this instead of doing this, you'd be way better off.

AJ Reeves [01:23:50] You know, I, and I've been on stage during a q and a where somebody stands up and makes a criticism. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [01:23:57] And

AJ Reeves [01:23:57] That is a, like, I could feel like the, the adrenaline making my fingers tingly and tasting a metal taste in my mouth. Right. Oh yeah. Like I've been hit in the face or something. And eventually that happens enough when somebody's doing that, you start to realize like, that person may be pointing this at you, but they don't actually care about you.

Vance Crowe [01:24:19] Right.

AJ Reeves [01:24:19] They're afraid of something and they're pointing out that what you told them did not ally their fears or their, or their, what they're angry about. And so you gotta change that. That's, that's, that is them giving you very direct, very clear feedback

Vance Crowe [01:24:37] That

AJ Reeves [01:24:37] You failed, you did not achieve what you came to. 'cause I was going and talking with people like, you don't need to be afraid of genetic engineering. You don't need to be afraid of pesticides. These are, you can ask me any question you want. And sometimes people got really like, dig on me. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [01:24:53] But

AJ Reeves [01:24:54] Once you let go of that being about you, you can handle it. It's

Vance Crowe [01:24:58] Different when it's a divisive subject too. Right, right. Like that you're talking about, there's one side and the other and you're, and you're trying to, you know, maybe like you're on this side and you're trying to talk to people on this side. And I could see that getting a little aggressive in the criticism department. Right? Yeah,

AJ Reeves [01:25:11] Absolutely. I'm sure

Vance Crowe [01:25:11] People have gotten aggressive or like maybe you got a little scared of something. Right? Like people are going, I don't know.

AJ Reeves [01:25:17] Well, so what can happen is that somebody can come to a microphone and they, they're working up the courage to ask you something and they're nervous 'cause they aren't public speakers. They don't do this all the time. Yeah. And so then they have emotion because it's something that they're doing. They believe that they are standing up for something.

Vance Crowe [01:25:37] So

AJ Reeves [01:25:38] They go up to that microphone and their voice is shaking. Yeah. And they may be saying things to you that you interpret as like you are crazy. That you think that and that you would even ask that question of me. You must be reading some way conspiratorial sites. There are people, but people don't choose to be afraid. Correct. They don't want to be afraid. Afraid is an unstable position.

Vance Crowe [01:26:00] Yeah.

AJ Reeves [01:26:00] What they want is to know how can I trust what's going on here that I can be confident that I'm not doing something that's gonna harm me or, or, or that somebody's not gonna take advantage of me. And you gotta recognize that that's what drives somebody to come up and pick up a microphone and say something to the man that just stood on a box and told them takes

Vance Crowe [01:26:20] Confidence.

AJ Reeves [01:26:21] Yeah. Yeah. And so once you, once I began to realize that's how people feel. Even if what they do is they walk up there and they're angry. So they don't have the shaky, they have the, I'm gonna yell into this microphone. It's all coming from a place of fear. Yeah,

Vance Crowe [01:26:35] Sure. And

AJ Reeves [01:26:36] That's a great thing to understand. Yeah,

Vance Crowe [01:26:38] Absolutely. Do you think the anger approach is compensating or like covering up the fact that they're scared?

AJ Reeves [01:26:43] Yes. Yeah. Yes. Okay. And and most of the time if somebody's angry, one of the biggest things is that they interpret that you are not going to pay attention to them. Because if you were gonna pay attention to them, they wouldn't need to raise their voice. No. They wouldn't need to signal to you that they are, you know, showing aggression. And so that's why that mirroring thing like that is no joke. You can have, you heard me talk about mirroring before? Maybe

Vance Crowe [01:27:09] A little. But

AJ Reeves [01:27:10] So, so somebody tells you something and instead of you responding to it, so this person's angry, they make an accusation at you. Instead of you responding to the accusation, you just repeat back for them exactly what you heard them say. So, you know, you think that this guy, you know what I'm hearing you say is you think Monsanto is poisoning the soil and the, and the air and that everything is going to be destroyed if you don't stop them. Is that correct? Yeah. And then the guy will say yes. And then you say, is there more? And they then I do it again. So I repeat back for him exactly what I heard him say. Now the second time you watch anger

Vance Crowe [01:27:49] Yeah.

AJ Reeves [01:27:49] Dissipate because

Vance Crowe [01:27:50] You're trying to understand his perspective. Right. Right.

AJ Reeves [01:27:51] Yeah. And by understanding the way these emotions work, this is probably empathy actually.

Vance Crowe [01:27:57] It is,

AJ Reeves [01:27:58] It is.

Vance Crowe [01:27:59] I was, I

AJ Reeves [01:28:00] So, but when you can understand that, then you can calibrate yourself. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [01:28:04] To

AJ Reeves [01:28:04] Have that flow state with another person where even if they're too hyped up, you can control

Vance Crowe [01:28:10] I was, I was 50 50 on if I was gonna call you out on that or not.

AJ Reeves [01:28:13] Okay.

Vance Crowe [01:28:14] Call that empathy. I was like, should I or should I not?

AJ Reeves [01:28:16] You're right. You're right. And that's one of the things that you get with age, is you start understanding that shit happens to people. It

Vance Crowe [01:28:24] Does. Right.

AJ Reeves [01:28:24] Hundred. You think like, how could you be like that? And you're like, because shit happens man. Things, things bad things happen to people's lives. Lemme

Vance Crowe [01:28:30] Ask you this real quick. You've talked to all these people, I'm sure you've changed some minds on some subjects, right? Right. Yeah,

AJ Reeves [01:28:35] I'm sure.

Vance Crowe [01:28:35] Yeah. Do you find the angry ones? Like there's no changing, there's no like, they're just stuck in their way. Like they're not gonna believe your side.

AJ Reeves [01:28:42] The angry ones tend to be people that are, you know, strong opinions are often loosely held. Right. You can't, you can't hold onto 'em. Sometimes they're not. But it's the people that come that are sad, those are the ones that you have like real trouble with. So I will occasionally have somebody that, that would come and say, like one time a woman at an Iowa State University talk came and said, my child has autism. And these people say that it's your company's fault that that what your GMOs and your glyphosate did this to him.

Vance Crowe [01:29:19] Sure.

AJ Reeves [01:29:19] And what do you have to say for yourself? Right? Like there's very little energy that's positive there. She's come in with a real problem and if you pop back and you're defensive or you're strong, like that's not right. But if you let her continue to believe that's true, she's going down a wrong path.

Vance Crowe [01:29:40] Right.

AJ Reeves [01:29:40] And so you've gotta, like, that is the level of connection with other people that I only got because I've been around the block and I've had shit happen to me and I've made mistakes. And you know, that's when you start to say, I know how to relate to people because I know what I would've wanted them to do to me.

Vance Crowe [01:29:59] Wow. Yeah. I'm sure that's, that's something that's hard to hear too. Like that's even, even if you, you know, you have statistical data showing that this didn't have, like glyphosate doesn't cause autism. Right. But you're still hearing her say that you're like, it's a hard, I'm sure that's a hard argument to approach.

AJ Reeves [01:30:16] Absolutely. Yeah. And, and really you think about anything that you represent, if somebody came and said, that thing is harming me. Any human being wants to like, because it's for your own self-preservation, you're like, okay, I wanna know what is that? Am I doing something wrong? Yeah. And the more anger they bring with you, the more you're able to push back on that level of emotion. But if the emotion is just a tiny blip and it's way understated, it's much harder to com com to engage in with flow in that circumstance where you're just kind of taking their energy and using it in the way that helps get the thing resolved. They don't have much energy. Yeah. Whatcha gonna do be sad with them.

Vance Crowe [01:30:58] Yeah. Right. I don't know. Yeah. Wow.

AJ Reeves [01:31:02] So I will do one on accepting a compliment. Please. I'll need to, I'll, I'll think about that because I'm certain that that is probably been taught to me. I, I can remember being rebuked by people for not accepting a compliment that they gave me. I just gotta think about it.

Vance Crowe [01:31:18] I, I think whenever I receive a compliment, I naturally bring it down a little bit. Like almost, I don't know, it's like I'm defending like a defense mechanism or something. Like you say, oh, you're great at this. I'll be like, yeah, but am I really? Because I don't know.

AJ Reeves [01:31:31] Yeah. I mean I think humility is really good. I think the response about like accepting a compliment is trying to figure out what it was that they wanted to shine a light on in you

Vance Crowe [01:31:42] And

AJ Reeves [01:31:42] What it, what it, and that's not that you need to deflect that light 'cause the light's already being projected onto you. Right.

Vance Crowe [01:31:48] It's

AJ Reeves [01:31:49] Better if you then say how that helped you understand, you know, them some Sure. In some way. I, I'll think about this. Yeah. I need to iron this out, but I, I I accept your request.

Vance Crowe [01:32:00] Awesome. I appreciate that.

AJ Reeves [01:32:02] So man, you're gonna be 31 day,

Vance Crowe [01:32:06] One day.

AJ Reeves [01:32:07] What do you think your life will be like when you begin your thirties?

Vance Crowe [01:32:10] When I begin my thirties, I think I will be one in a house or late stages of an apartment looking to get a move into a house. I would like to have what, I would like to know what my career path looks like, at least a little bit. Obviously things change, things happen. Sometimes you end up in a different field. Right. But I would like to at least have, you

AJ Reeves [01:32:31] Want to own a company, you wanna be an employee.

Vance Crowe [01:32:33] I think I, you know, I've been talking, I've been thinking about this for a while. I've, I've had experiences somewhat owning a company. I did freelance, freelance web development in high school to pay for things. And I understand kind of, I think I have a brief, a small amount of understanding of what kind of work that takes and what kind of sacrifice that takes to build something like that. And I've, I've been thinking about it. I also think I could be a good employee too. I don't know yet. I, I see myself right now as an employee, but I think I could change without a doubt

AJ Reeves [01:33:06] When I was in my twenties, I didn't think, and I probably couldn't have been as dedicated to like, getting my work done.

Vance Crowe [01:33:16] Okay.

AJ Reeves [01:33:16] When I wasn't as intrinsically motivated as I am now. And that's what being an entrepreneur requires

Vance Crowe [01:33:23] Because

AJ Reeves [01:33:23] There's nobody to tell you to get to work. Right. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [01:33:26] It just, you

AJ Reeves [01:33:26] Just gotta do it. And whether results happen or not, it's on you, but there's also luck and chance and all kinds of things. And if I had not had deep intrinsic desire to make that happen, the suffering that you go through Yeah. I couldn't have done it and, you know. Correct. You know, you know, like that, that's, it's a good thing to be aware of. But the other thing is that when you're an employee of somebody, you're building what they want you to build. Yeah. And it's not building what you wanna build.

Vance Crowe [01:33:51] Yeah. And, and that obviously doesn't go to say you can't enjoy being an employee.

AJ Reeves [01:33:55] Right.

Vance Crowe [01:33:56] But I do agree with the philosophy that you're putting forward. Yeah. Like you're, you're not building your dream. Right. And you could be, I guess like you don't have to identify with your career necessarily, but if you wanna be an expert in something, you have to. Yeah,

AJ Reeves [01:34:08] That's right. And there are some scientists, you just can't work unless you're working with a

Vance Crowe [01:34:12] Conglomeration

AJ Reeves [01:34:13] Of people and you just, there are, there are experiments that can't be run unless you have millions and millions and millions of dollars to run it. There's nothing wrong. No. With people going to get a job. You just have to make sure that, that either your identity is not tied in with your career. Correct. Or that whatever career you're in, it allows you to continue to build towards a mastery that you want to have.

Vance Crowe [01:34:36] Correct. Yes. That's exactly kind of what I was getting at.

AJ Reeves [01:34:39] And I think if you're not in that position, certainly people have to be like, Hey, I've got kids, I've got responsibilities. Then you should be thinking about like, what's my end game here though? Yeah. Is it to wait it out? Is it to have a life I don't really want for the next 10 years, you only have this moment here. Yeah,

Vance Crowe [01:34:55] Absolutely.

AJ Reeves [01:34:55] And that's, that's the difference between waiting something out and being like, I know I'm gonna start this thing and it's gonna take me forever to get there.

Vance Crowe [01:35:04] Yeah.

AJ Reeves [01:35:05] But I will get there eventually. What's the difference between those two things? Between

Vance Crowe [01:35:09] Waiting something out and

AJ Reeves [01:35:09] This

Vance Crowe [01:35:10] Thing? Yeah, I think it's, I think the difference is waiting and actively waiting.

AJ Reeves [01:35:15] There you go.

Vance Crowe [01:35:15] Right. Like waiting, sitting here. If I sat in my room all day and played video games and I said, no, I'll get a job. I'm not going to, I'm, I'm gonna be sitting in my room playing video games. I'm not gonna be applying and out there. But if I'm waiting to maybe find my path, but I'm actively, actively moving in some direction, which for me is learning right now, like I'm actively moving into learning about different things. Then I think eventually I'll keep pushing forward and then I'll end up on a path.

AJ Reeves [01:35:42] And where, where would be your ideal place to work for a job? Right now?

Vance Crowe [01:35:46] Right now? That's, that's, that's a good question. I've been applying to more IT related jobs. Cybersecurity. I have a cybersecurity degree. I've been applying to some like computer science type jobs or web development jobs, something maybe in tech. I had a internship at New Balance in here in St. Louis. They have a small building on in Kirkwood, and it was a very free place to work. Like they gave you a lot of freedoms. You didn't have to wear a suit and tie, you know, like my manager wore gym shorts and basketball shoes to work and

AJ Reeves [01:36:19] Wow.

Vance Crowe [01:36:20] It was you, they put a lot of trust in their employees, like kind of was able to take lunch, you know, if you're gone for 20 minutes or an hour, like just as long as you're back and responsible, you know, they put trust in. I think that's pretty cool. Like having

AJ Reeves [01:36:35] Oh yeah. It's a huge change from when you're working in a job where people have gotta be told, now is your break. Now you're done with your break. Now you can start working now you're done working. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [01:36:44] Be

AJ Reeves [01:36:45] Back at seven. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [01:36:45] I enjoyed the freedom there. Yeah.

AJ Reeves [01:36:47] That makes a big difference.

Vance Crowe [01:36:48] Yeah, for sure.

AJ Reeves [01:36:50] Well, I, I guess as, as we close out, if there's somebody that wanted to get a hold of you because they heard you, they know how hard you're working. Yeah. They know that you're into cybersecurity and could do an all manner of things on computers. How would they go about getting a ahold of you?

Vance Crowe [01:37:07] I would say talk word on Twitter. T-A-L-L-K-W-A-R-D. It's a combination of tall and awkward and,

AJ Reeves [01:37:14] Ah, spell it one more time.

Vance Crowe [01:37:15] T-A-L-L-K-W-A-R-D.

AJ Reeves [01:37:18] Alright. And

Vance Crowe [01:37:19] I also recently bought the domain, domain name talk word.com.

AJ Reeves [01:37:22] So that's a good one, man.

Vance Crowe [01:37:23] Yeah. I, I just developed a website for it. I'm gonna keep adding improvements right now. It's pretty minimal. But

AJ Reeves [01:37:28] Is it up there now? It's

Vance Crowe [01:37:29] Live. Yeah. Yeah.

AJ Reeves [01:37:30] Oh, all right. I'll go check that out.

Vance Crowe [01:37:31] Cool.

AJ Reeves [01:37:32] Well man, I'm so glad you came on. Here you are. If you're one thing, you are the disciplined driven man that I wish I could have been when I was your age. Appreciate that. I am deeply impressed with all that you're doing, and I'm so glad you're in St. Louis. Yeah. And whatever you decide to do, man. Oh,

Vance Crowe [01:37:54] For sure. Sure.

AJ Reeves [01:37:55] I'm fully behind you. I'm

Vance Crowe [01:37:56] One step at a time. I, you know, I, I, right now I wake up early, I go work out, I eat healthy, I do all these things, but it just was one step at a time. I started waking up at six and then five 30 and then five 15.

AJ Reeves [01:38:07] You are on the path. And I am, I'm, I'm grateful for, for knowing you. So thanks man. Thank you. We'll, you back on.

Vance Crowe [01:38:14] Thank you.

AJ Reeves [01:38:15] Thanks.