A Tech CEO on Student Debt as the Root of America's Anger and Why We Shouldn't Tear Down Statues

Vance Crowe [00:00:01] We've gotta stop the let loan debt. Yeah, we have to stop it. This is, this is the, I think, the most dangerous thing in the United States right now. People, people would, as the crow flies on the Vance Crowe podcast, Ben Anderson, welcome back to the podcast.

Benjamin Anderson [00:00:19] Thanks for having me back. Good to see you, man.

Vance Crowe [00:00:22] So you have a hell of a studio. You are down in the Cortex Center, down in St. Louis. And you've got quite a setup there, huh?

Benjamin Anderson [00:00:29] Yeah, we're down at, I'm at 42 20. Figured I would just roll down here. It's pretty close to where I live. And they've got this beautiful setup that never used for its proper, proper purpose. So here we are doing a podcast in the podcast studio.

Vance Crowe [00:00:43] And so this is a coworking space in St. Louis are very many people showing up to work in a, in a giant place where a bunch of strangers are together.

Benjamin Anderson [00:00:52] There is nobody here right now. In fact, technically I'm supposed to have a mask on right now inside of this space. And like their rules in terms of like being in, like, there's usually not u well, there's like free coffee and there's free food and there's like, stuff like that. But they've got basically their common areas kind of shut down and stuff. Or not shut down, but like the tables separated and I've seen like two other people kind of floating around, like walking into the bathroom and coffee and stuff. But yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:01:16] How is that, you know, you, you were kind of coming of age in a time when coworking space and it's so exciting. You can mix all these strangers and they have serendipitous collisions and that's what makes new businesses start, right? You were a part of this era that people were excited about mixing all these things together. And now it's totally the opposite. People want the opposite of that. They only wanna be around people that they know. How do, how does that feel right now?

Benjamin Anderson [00:01:40] I mean, it's strange. That's part of like why I've like, probably personally more so than what would be like rational, like had some mental pushback because like all of the sere, all of those serendipitous collisions that I owe any relative amount of success to were all those collisions. Like, we had our first like wand guy come in from, I was doing a pitch for a million cups down at our co-working space at T-Rex. Now we've got like our full office set up down there and like, we work together every day. And like the amount of companies that we've met and similar interactions and floating around here, like you can't, it's hard to cultivate that through like what we're doing right now. It's hard to join into something like that where you might just be grabbing a coffee and then you pass a business card and then you shoot somebody a text or an email for a coffee and then that coffee leads to doing business together three, four or five months later. Like, it's hard to al artificially cultivate that now, I'd say. Not that we've been aggressively trying to do that. 'cause we're maybe further along like that startup journey to kind of building the customer base and like the business who's gonna help us out connections. But still it's, yeah, I mean there's, there's definitely like a mental lapse there. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:02:46] You know, it took me about two months of straight doing video calls like this all the time for me to start to be comfortable in this space. And I'm an incredible extrovert, right? Like, I love being around people and I'm realizing now that there are people that were extreme extroverts in the real world, but then when they flip into this telepresence world, the, the strategies, the tactics, all the things that they did to make them feel comfortable, they aren't there. And so in addition to the fact that you don't have as many random people that you just run into also the same skillset that you would normally use to like strike up a conversation doesn't always feel like it's working in the same way as it is in real life.

Benjamin Anderson [00:03:29] Yeah, it's, I don't wanna say it's completely redundant because like from a communication perspective, like the same sort of rhythms follow even virtually. But in terms of how you have to kind of coordinate how you present yourself through mediums like this now, it's like in, it's an entirely different game than putting on something decent, meeting somebody for a coffee. You've gotta make sure that, you know, like what's, what's your environment look like? How are you presenting yourself? What is, I guess just the optics of having to communicate through a medium like this instead of live and in person. There's so many nuances that come into like the perspectives that people will carry away if they have like an interaction with you like this and your environment is subpar. And they'll compare that in their head, even if it's sub subconsciously against the interaction that they've had that was, you know, maybe a higher grade. Like say somebody's who's having a video conference with you who's clearly got your setup dialed in from the podcast and everything else, versus somebody else who might just throw it up in, you know, the corner desk in their bedroom with bad lighting and blah, blah, blah and sounds bouncing off the wall and whatever else.

Vance Crowe [00:04:35] Yeah. And there's like little things that if you do them, they will benefit you for the rest of the time that you ever have this telepresence thing where you're trying to teleport your image and your sound and your presence to another person. And I think the most important one that costs nothing at all is everybody should have their cameras at eye level. Like it is a totally different experience to be on a video call with somebody where they're looking at the camera versus when they're looking above you or looking down on you. Like just the very act of bringing your camera up makes it so too human beings feel like they're looking at each other,

Benjamin Anderson [00:05:10] Right? Yeah. And not just how you're perceived, but how you're having the conversation too. I mean, I've got you on top of like four books right now on my laptop, and like I, it feels more like I'm looking at you like your eye level to me on the screen versus if I was like, you know, up here looking down, like the perception, perception is everything. And you're creating that more so consciously through this.

Vance Crowe [00:05:31] I had a client a couple weeks ago reach out to me and say, Hey, we wanna do something new and interesting. And we came up with the idea of like, Hey, I could help your whole organization do telepresence better. And we were kind of talking and fitting through this idea, and then I talked to another client I had, and I just happened to mention it, and they were like, I want it, I want it right now. I want it on Thursday of next week. My people need this because we have transitioned, we used to be spending money on sending people to dinners and take our clients out to baseball games and, and we don't have any of that anymore. And so now all the interactions are happening online and I'm asking people to convert something that took them, you know, an entire lifetime to build up the career skills to be able to interact with people. And now I've dropped out the medium and they can't go meet in person, so we wanna do something different. And the act of going through and trying to explain how did I learn the things that I did to light a stage or to make the camera be right or to make your sound be good. It takes a long, long, long time to isolate out. What does somebody need to know?

Benjamin Anderson [00:06:36] Yeah, no doubt. I mean, you've, I mean you've obviously been ahead of the curve on some of that stuff, so I, it's, it's easy to see like where the value would be there to transmit and like having to, especially in like a business scenario. It's one thing like families and it's been, it's almost been nice, you know, in some of those kind of subtle ways. Like we're hopping on like the family zooms and stuff more than we ever did before where it's like, all right, everybody knows how to use zoom now let's just shoot out this link and have, you know, the cousins and the uncles and whoever hop on, right? But like when, and it's okay if quality or stuff is subpar. Like you could be on your phone like driving or something and it's just kind of passe or whatever. But if it's, if it is like a business scenario, you do have to kind of take it more seriously. Like I've had to do a couple like, business interactions on here and they've, like, some of them have been like bluntly subpar. It was funny, like you were even picking me apart that one day in terms of like my surroundings and like kinda giving those tidbits. But like you have to put the mental effort in to present yourself well through these now so that you can convey yourselves or so that we can convey ourselves the way that we want to, to build those interactions.

Vance Crowe [00:07:42] Yeah. And I think the biggest component of the telepresence is the one you can't see it's sound. Yeah.

Benjamin Anderson [00:07:47] Right.

Vance Crowe [00:07:47] Like one of the things that I learned from the podcast is it does not matter if I have a beautiful guest and they have a beautiful background and this, everything about them is glowing and warm. If every time they speak it hurts my ears, it's either too loud or there's weird echo or there's weird stuff in it, I don't care how amazing they are, I don't want to hear it because it's, it's my brain saying like, ah, there's not enough signal here to, to make it worth this noise. And so when people are making these changes, they look at their cameras or they look at their telepresence and they think, oh, I gotta go buy a new camera. I gotta get a bunch of lighting. And really the very first thing everybody should work on is make sure you sound good. 'cause if you don't sound good, nobody cares what you think.

Benjamin Anderson [00:08:28] Yeah. Well, yeah, all you gotta do, I mean, I guess I've got a special setup today, but all you've gotta do is plug in something like this, right? I mean, like we, how, especially like people have been on Zoom calls now for months, like out of necessity, how many times have we been on a group call where there's that one person who's talking and then they're like, and they're like fizzling out, right? Like, you never wanna be that person on the call. And it's like, it's one of those kind of like cringe moments where you're like on the call and you're like, oh gosh, now, like what's, what's the stature of how long do we wait this person, if it's like, you know, the signal's fizzling out, whatever.

Vance Crowe [00:09:02] That was one of the big things that the, the second client, the one that wanted it right now to make this telepresence video, they were like, the other thing we want is tell us some etiquette. We don't care what the rules are, we just want to all have the same rules. So I started talking about like, how long do you wait if you're a moderator with somebody having bad sound before you jump in, like who's responsible for it and then who is responsible? If the moderator isn't jumping in, you go 30 seconds and you're like, oh my gosh, I just wish they would shut up or stop talking. When are you responsible for it? And I think these are the types of conversations that if an organization takes just a little bit of time to focus on how do we help put people sound better, feel more confident, and, and know how to behave. Now every single meeting has a higher throughput. You can get more done. People feel happier. I think it's gonna make a huge difference on what work environments are positive and which ones are negative.

Benjamin Anderson [00:09:56] Yeah. It'll, it'll, it'll change work environments that are preexisting for sure. The conventions that will come up. I mean, it's like anything when there's like a paradigm shift where social creatures and if there's a paradigm shift in how we interact, like new conventions will arise to like structure how those interactions take place. And like there will begin to be breakdowns between what's the socially acceptable and what's not socially acceptable. And of course, like I'm, I'm probably like over speaking in terms of something like telepresence, but in, you know, unconventional. But there are, there will be conventional norms that arise where it's like, okay, there's the guy who's typing on his keyboard and he shouldn't be typing. There's the guy who like gets up and leaves when you're in a group conference and it's like, they're gonna be like looked down upon by the individuals on that call. 'cause it's like, you know, when you're in a teleconference call or something, like there might be a slide up or maybe I'm looking at you right now, but if we're in a group meeting and there's five other bubbles over here on my left side, like you, you're able to zoom in and see these individual interactions of people on those calls now in a way that you could in a conference room or say like any other group interaction. But especially like for something like a webinar, if you're doing a presentation, you've got 20, 30 people on. Like, you can sit there and just check out what people are doing. If you're a listener, you can check out what other people are doing. And it's, it's a weird, it's a weird, yeah, it's a weird thing.

Vance Crowe [00:11:15] No, no doubt man. Like you think about telepresence and at first the introvert might seem like the person that's at a disadvantage here 'cause they're like, oh, I don't really like talking with people anyway and now I'm doing it in this scenario. But I've been talking with people that are naturally introverts and being like, Hey, you know that they just gave you a superpower, right? Because everybody's gonna have a, a video camera trained on their faces. So when they're talking, you can put their face up on a big screen and you can stare at them in a way that you never could before. You could be looking for what is their facial reactions trying to tell me what are, what is their body language all about in a way that if you were in a meeting, you can look at somebody but you can't just sit there and stare at them. So all these things that are perceived disadvantages put in the right context can be huge advantages,

Benjamin Anderson [00:12:03] Right? Like it could be a learning experience maybe you're saying for like those individuals to kind of be able to like leverage that to hone in on social cues.

Vance Crowe [00:12:10] Absolutely. And like you can be in a meeting and if that meeting got recorded, 'cause somebody wasn't gonna be able to be there, you can go back and say, Hey, I, I kept getting interrupted. I wonder why that is. And then you go and watch yourself interacting with people. Like I go back and watch myself on these podcasts and there are moments when I've interrupted my guests and I'm like, Ooh, why didn't I see at the time that I was doing that, why, what was wrong with me that I didn't know that? And so now you have this new medium and it could become a little black mirror esque, right? You could watch and rewatch every single thing you do, but if you use it for like, hey, that interaction didn't go well, normally your memory is well because that guy's a jerk and he kept doing jerk things to me. But you may go back and be like, oh, I didn't realize that my sound kind of faded out and they were jumping in because they were trying to help me out. Like, you are able to see context in a way that you couldn't because you're, you have this new medium that records.

Benjamin Anderson [00:13:01] Yeah, no, that's really interesting I guess to be able to look at it because I don't know, I don't know how often you check your yourself out on your setup, but I know it's like, I guess speaking bluntly, I feel like everybody would have to, but I know, like I see myself checking myself. It's like we've been maybe programmed to think that way from things like social medias or whatever else. Like I hate to throw out the social medias like not to blame card, but it's the social media thing. But we're always cultivating this online persona of who we are through these mediums and we're creating these aesthetic pre presences. Like that will translate directly into how we communicate through like Zooms and Google Hangouts and stuff like this. 'cause we'll be constantly, once we get the hang of it, it'll be totally, at what level will it be authentic? Like digital communication, like a learning experience, and what level will we begin to consciously manipulate that the same way that we consciously manipulate our social media channels around the most positive aspects of our lives. You know?

Vance Crowe [00:13:58] Yeah. If it becomes that distorted mirror where the only thing that you put through this lens is the best facets of yourself, you know, eventually you become the very thing that everybody, you know, kind of shutters at that pr polished. Like, there's nothing real here because it's only putting out the, the boldest things that it can say without getting social pushback. And we're watching that right now, right? Corporations, when they're relying on their PR firms, they're putting out there something that seems emotional, but the words are never declarative about this is the actions, these are what we're actually doing in the real world. It's, it's just a facade.

Benjamin Anderson [00:14:37] Yeah. In terms of like they're, they're like external messaging when they're getting kind of that push on from the present, you know, mob for like lack of a better term I guess. Yeah,

Vance Crowe [00:14:46] That's what it seems like to me. So people that don't know this, or if they don't remember if it was their time we spoke, you run a very inventive tech startup called Wand where people can download an app and then they have access to people that will come and clean their, either their house or their apartment that they live in. Or oftentimes people were using it for Airbnb rentals. And so you had this company and then COVID shut it down and for two months I have never seen anyone work harder than I saw you dive in and be like, we've got this time. We can reskin, we can reshape, we can fix all the problems that we normally would never be able to fix because the things in motion. So two and a half months after Coronavirus, where are you guys at with your app startup? How are things going?

Benjamin Anderson [00:15:34] It was, it was, yeah, it was, it was definitely a hit and a challenge in hindsight. But I think that challenge will have been to our benefit moving forward. I mean, I've said a couple times, like in a couple threads, like there's a, there's a new national focus on the importance of cleaning and disinfecting. That's gonna be definitely to our advantage from like an like a customer acquisition perspective. But from the product side, yeah, I mean we, we like launched in December really publicly and we were kind of just starting to see like, you know, you spend X amount to acquire a customer and they use the customer like once a month. Now that customer has paid off their acquisition cost here it's March and we're just starting to see some of these numbers like filter back into positive like generated revenue and we're like, alright, we're on the swing up. And then it's like, world is closed, everybody's home. They don't need to book a cleaner 'cause they're not at work. Airbnb hosts who are like, you know, an Airbnb host is gonna use us two or three times a week, whereas the average person's gonna use us once, maybe twice a month. Those people aren't getting any bookings anymore. So all that business went out the window and we were just like doing this for a little while. It was a stressful two weeks for sure. But then it was like, you've gotta either change your mindset or like what are you gonna stall and then just, alright, just whatever. So we, we kind of pivoted pretty hard into, we definitely, there's like the saying that if you're not embarrassed by like the first version of your product, then you waited too long. We definitely pushed out like a version that was very much scrapped together by, well like me initially. And then now we've got three great developers who kind of patch on it from there. But so we've been,

Vance Crowe [00:17:06] Is that real? Like you think about that, I mean, you say that about the embarrassed of your first thing and I think of everything that I've ever done that I'm proud of, if I go back and look at the first one, the first speech I gave that was in that vein, or the first time I built something, you're right. Like you're always like, how did I even walk outside with that thing and not, you know, hang my head in shade?

Benjamin Anderson [00:17:26] Which is how we feel right now. Like we're, we're really, it's been hard with like the apple and like the, the Android approval funnels to like push, push the apps through. But right now we're in beta with what we're gonna call like our big version two and we're like super, super excited to get it out just because it's like I'm looking at our current version. If you download and I encourage people to do it, still download wand right now and then check out the update when we push it out in a couple weeks, it's gonna be be like you're downloading a mom and pop shop app. Not that it's mom and pop shop, but it's like our team chopping up together something that took, you know, the latter end of next year versus now we've got something that I'm confident that like you could download Wand and you could have it in, you know, your phone next to Uber or Rover, any of these other gig platforms and the quality level that's been like the bar that we're trying to reach. We want people to be able to download Wand and there's not a quality difference or user experience difference between those perceptions.

Vance Crowe [00:18:16] Man, that takes tenacity because those apps, the reason that they're successful is not only did they fill a market need, there were other people trying to fill those market needs. They figured out how can you make the user experience so clean that it feels as though they've always known how to use that app, right? Like when you get an app that you really love, you don't sit there being like, I'm confused, I don't know how to use it. It just naturally flows. Oh, this is the next step, this is the next step. So you're, you think you've made it pretty far down that path?

Benjamin Anderson [00:18:47] Well that's the, that's the power with I think being like niche focused I guess. Like being like an app that, because I mean you could say like there's Handy and Tackle and TaskRabbit or Craigslist, Yelp, like you can find cleaners, otherwhere. Like we're not innovating in terms of like being a model where people can find cleaners through some medium. But the biggest value I think comes from that vertical focus on one industry. Because if you like, you can look at like, a rover is a great example. We've been like kind of eyeballing a company like, like the dog walking app. They're vertically focused on that industry and they're, their customer retention, their revenue, you can look at all of their metrics. The customer attention is the biggest one for platforms like ours. But it's because you're cultivating like what you just described, the experience where it's like, it feels natural, but it's hard to cultivate an experience that feels natural for one customer pain point if you're trying to address like a broad array of service offerings. So it's like, if I can hop on an app and do X, Y, or Z, like if you haven't built out like the custom user experience for X, Y, and Z and A, B, and C, like you're better off to have just, it's like niching down. Like people would say, well and it's,

Vance Crowe [00:19:52] It's to put this in context, like when you're talking about TaskRabbit, so it's possible for you to get an app that you can just see in there, Hey, I need somebody to mow my lawn real quick. I'm just gonna get on here and hire somebody and they're gonna show up with a mower and mow it. Or it may be that they're gonna go run and buy me groceries or they're gonna help me set up my garage door opener or whatever. But those are so broad, right? That in order for the app to be able to make changes or you know, tiny things that would be really specialized to garage door opening, fixing. Now, like you're saying with cleaning, you can really specialize that. You told me one about like you could ask the person that's doing the cleaning to set up your toilet paper roll to have like some kind of special fold on it so people know, oh this was just clean and it hasn't been used yet. And you can just look on the app and say, oh, I'd like that $2 upgrade.

Benjamin Anderson [00:20:41] Yeah. And those and

Vance Crowe [00:20:42] Just click it.

Benjamin Anderson [00:20:43] Yep. Yeah, that's, it's, I mean that's, that's definitely the vertical focus is you can't build out, like there are so many variables that come into something like that that because we're so focused on our space, we're able to allocate the time and attention and the r and d to building out things like that. Like you can chat back and forth with somebody and request that upcharge and add it and you can have your lists for like, this is what I want in this home especially for, and we're even niching down further. That's why I say like the Airbnb host, it's like if we got it costs us X to acquire this user and they're gonna use it once a month and it costs us y to acquire this user and they're gonna use it 10 times a month, we're gonna go and build it niche focus further on that user that's gonna use it 10 times a month. So here we've laid out these features that are making it easier than ever in the next version for who we saw using it the first time around, like making it through the experience, an imperfect experience. But because they felt the pain point stroke so strong, like in our current version, you can add 10 homes to your profile. Like they can just tap a home and they can make it through. And it's an imperfect experience for sure, but it works. And their pain point is strong enough that like it's being felt and we've, we've just honed in on like what, what's working and what isn't. And yeah, there's a big value in like the niche. I think the niche focus platforms in general, we're gonna see, I mean, it'll almost be like social media. Like we're seeing these communities like decentralized from the Twitters and Facebooks. There's gonna be a decentralization of like gig work on platforms like this. Like we've, I've mentioned like we're doing,

Vance Crowe [00:22:08] I never, I wanna, I never imagined how how the future would play out. So, you know, I spend a ton of time or spent a ton of time on Twitter 'cause I loved it, right? I was like, hey, this is where my friends hang out, this is where I'm talking about things. This is where I learn news now because I've built a network off of that, right? Like, so I have this new network we've been talking about, it's in beta test. We'll talk about it maybe more later now I realize like I really like, it's not offline, it's still online, but it's an accordant off area where people are like, Hey, we're a group of people that are intent on learning about X or we wanna build y And by getting people together with a purpose as opposed to let's just make this a social party, the value of spending time in that network goes way up versus the slot machine that is Twitter. Like Twitter, you get on there and you're like, Hey, I wonder if anybody's upset about anything. Let's see what happens Jing. But the your own networks that are away from that kind of random system are awesome.

Benjamin Anderson [00:23:11] Yeah. It's like if you could, if you could port, if you could port your entire following out of something like Twitter and convert them into something like, you know, your own third party network, whatever it is, and then give them a purpose or something to talk about like that. I mean essentially that's like what the Articulate Ventures like network is. I mean like a place to talk about stuff with the purpose, blah, blah blah. But like that's, that's the biggest value is you don't need to go to, it's, it's kind of that same concept of like niching down the purpose of the interaction, I guess, or the, in the in intentioned interaction. Like you can go just like you said, you hop on like a Twitter or Facebook and you do a mindless thumb up and like maybe there's outrage. Maybe you comment on something, maybe you see a family friend say something of value, whatever. But if you bracket down those communities and you kind of niche down and get like, I guess it's the intention and your interaction, I guess is the biggest, I think, takeaway there.

Vance Crowe [00:24:07] Well, and maybe that, that this is the future in terms of the town square is not somewhere that you have private conversations where you work out ideas and maybe what we're finding is that, that, yeah, if we view Twitter and Facebook as the town square where people show up to shout, what you're really doing is you're there to be like, Hey, is there anybody here that thinks about the world the way that I do? Or in a way that if I run into you more and more my worldview gets better, it gets tighter, it gets more high fidelity. And now let's not try and carry on these conversations in town square. 'cause there'll be somebody looking over your shoulder being like, Hey, you're not allowed to talk about that. We already told you, you're not allowed to think that way. So I think that, I think this social media archipelago is growing, right? Where people say, I'm not gonna go to the town square anymore. I'm gonna go to the network where I find value, where I'm meeting people that are like me. That and, and like the, like me is more like willing to explore or not willing to explore echo chamber or the opposite of a gravity well or something,

Benjamin Anderson [00:25:12] Right? Something something along that thread. Yeah. 'cause you're playing a numbers game on something like, like I still kind of abdicate from like Facebook and Instagram, but I've been trying to get back more into Twitter and stuff over the last couple months just because I see a lot of value in that platform. Like based on your feedback actually, like renovated who I follow, blah. Like so I'm seeing what I want to in a feed and actually getting value, not noise, but you're still playing a numbers game in terms of not just in terms of the content that you're bringing back into like your like mental well, but also like the content you're putting out. Like it always feels like you're there with like an air horn trying to get out a message to somebody who might receive it and have value or maybe not even have value, but like push back on what you have to say in a way that's constructive and not just get 300 messages in your follow up and say, you know, you've been canceled, blah, blah blah. Like on some idea. But to cultivate a conversation around opposing viewpoints. I feel like that convention has become more and more lost on the main platforms and like the niche down platforms that are having conversations that are intentioned just enough to still cultivate opposition but cultivating opposition in what is a really, like, I don't wanna say like really safe, but like an authentically safe environment.

Vance Crowe [00:26:31] Yeah, I think it's the difference between a meritocracy that you can have in these tiny cultures where you can say, Hey, this guy has built up a reputation because they've shown their work, they've shown that they're contributing to the overall community. They've demonstrated that they wanna be a part of this, but they make a mistake or they say something that the group doesn't like. You say, okay, well that goes into the entire concept of where you fit in this meritocracy. Whereas social media, there's too many people to have a constructed hierarchy that we agree who's on top, who's on bottom. So it becomes a shame culture, an honor culture. And the only thing you have is like, I'm allowed to be here and people aren't embarrassed to be seen by me. And then if somebody comes around and is like, you're a racist or you're a sexist or you're a terrible thinker, then all of a sudden everybody around you is like, well I, you know, I feel bad, but I don't want to get caught in that blast radius, so I'm gonna separate away. So that shame and honor culture, there's no, there's no path to redemption. There's no way for somebody to make a mistake, which everyone makes, and then figure your way back into the community. Because really what it seems like is it's a zero sum game and people are trying to knock you out so you can't come back. But it doesn't happen that way in the networks.

Benjamin Anderson [00:27:41] Yeah, the communication is the biggest aspect we've dissolved the ability to have and like to tell people they're wrong. 'cause sometimes to the defensive people who like will hop on somebody like that, like maybe they are a racist, maybe they're a sexist, who knows. But when you jump on them with that sort of response, you're only creating like a further separation between those two ideas. Whereas like, and I'm not justifying any kind of behavior like where people communicate in whatever way that might justify a response like that. Like, but if you are able to communicate in a way where it's like cultivating environment where you can have a dialogue about we need to start telling people why they're wrong. We can't just decide what's wrong at the mob level and then communicate the wrong by, you know, canceling people and X-ing out X or Y or Z and then there's, then there it's, it's hard because then there's that takeaway of like if, and you do see it like the, the peaceful protests like don't get covered like the violent ones do. And that's a shame because the peaceful protests certainly have a place, like there's something to be said there, but then like the only thing that draws attention from the outlets like a Twitter or Facebook or even like the major media nowadays, like you have to be creating like that violent noise to even get any of that spotlight. So that's like the negative, that's the negative feedback loop. Or like what you, I think maybe said is the zero sum game of like why people are maybe like it's positively reinforcing this negative behavior that we're seeing and how people tell each other that they're incorrect.

Vance Crowe [00:29:08] Yeah, and I think like one of the ways that people convinced themselves that their way of viewing the world was right, was that they banned together a bunch of people to also scream in the same direction. Like I saw it happen, was it last week or two weeks ago on social media where somebody decided they didn't like a joke that some people put out. And so they went around looking for other people to comment that they didn't like the joke either and that we were, you know, supposed to point and somebody tagged me and was like, don't you agree that those tweets are irresponsible and we shouldn't have them? And I'm like, like what? In what world? Even if these people were straight up the worst people putting the worst jokes out in the world, what benefit is there to gather a mob of people together, point at them and say, you can't be doing that. Because if you can find four people that you don't like what they're doing, I can find 4,000, 4 million people that are doing things you don't like doing. And we don't go looking for them to shout at them. And people are like, well, we've gotta police our own community. No, we don't. That's not, we don't need to do, I don't, I don't walk up to my town square and make sure that everybody up there is saying things I agree with. I let people speak and then just move on and take the ideas I like and and ignore the ones I don't.

Benjamin Anderson [00:30:21] Yeah, that's like necessary for any kind of, I mean, for any kind of like mental progression like is to have like that opposition, but it has to be a constructive opposition. And that's, that's like maybe, I don't wanna say the core breakdown, but that's like one of the biggest things is like opposition as we see it now to what are real problems. Like there might be like, you know, real problems in x, y, or Z that people are kind of running around saying what they're saying now, but we're not having a conversation about like what's, yeah, I mean the y the y you're wrong is obvious in some cases, but like how the, the conversation, the ability to have any conversation has broken down entirely, I think. And how that

Vance Crowe [00:31:02] I'm, I am, I am, every bit is guilty of this. I've, I've talked about how I, I used to see this guy named Joels who is very anti monsano, very anti large scale agriculture. And I knew that I couldn't go into long nuanced details, explanations of why I didn't like it, why, why I didn't like what he was saying. So I took the worst form of a caricature that I could. And I, I painted him in that way 'cause it was a lot simpler to be like, Hey guys, we don't agree with that guy over there. 'cause why? 'cause you know, he's, you know, kind of a, he's playing a shtick and he's got this aw shucks mentality, but he's not really real man. I don't know that, I don't know that guy. I don't know what he's saying. I was only doing that because it was easier. And frankly, like when I learned about this was when I started having people do it to me when they had taken some small thing that I had said and made it into a wild caricature. You have to look at that stuff when it's happening to you and being like, Ooh, that didn't, that didn't feel good. I don't like that May am I doing that to other people? I guess I didn't realize I'm doing that to other people. Maybe I should stop doing that to other people and move on. But it seems like the lesson being learned right now is people, young people are learning maybe older people too, actually. Yeah, I see a ton of 40, 50, 60-year-old people going out there being like, the way I'm gonna be proved that I'm right is I'm gonna rally a mob to go be angry.

Benjamin Anderson [00:32:27] Yeah. Instead of like, it's, it's like when those balls that like hit each other back and forth or I can't remember the Newton's pendulum or whatever, like the, the momentum stays the same on either side and you're just pushing one mob against another mob that's gonna push and push and push and push when really, like, it sounds counterintuitive to growth, I guess so to speak, using that visual specifically. But really you need to be still and they need to be together in the middle and they need to have like that interaction that's necessary to be able to like, I don't know what the next step is from that, I guess using that specific visual example. But that's,

Vance Crowe [00:33:00] Well, I mean, mean I think I can, I can place an an example and see what you think about this.

Benjamin Anderson [00:33:04] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:33:05] This week, the riverfront times in St. Louis, which is like, it's an, it's a major alternative newspaper. I have read that thing for a long time just to see what is the other side of town. You know, the other perspective on this, think of things, they had an article that the next statue that should be torn down is St. Louis Louis the ninth that sits atop Art Hill in front of the art museum. This is called the Apotheosis. And they, they were advocating it's now time to tear that down if we're tearing down Christopher Columbus. What are your thoughts on that?

Benjamin Anderson [00:33:39] Yeah, I put, I put up what I thought in like a blurb on Twitter and I got no response. But like what I bluntly I think it's a disgrace. I mean, pe it's, if we, if we start tearing down figures that we look to as hero might be a strong word, but if we start tearing down figures for their smallest imperfections, then we're taking down the potential of like what we have to become. We're we're stripping down all of these figures that we should be striving towards to a way, but striving towards like maybe with a better perception. But if we're, if we're tearing them down because of their smallest imperfections, it's leaving no room for, I don't know. It's, I mean it's mistakes.

Vance Crowe [00:34:23] It's, it's making it an honor culture.

Benjamin Anderson [00:34:25] No room. Yeah, exactly. No room for mistakes. It's like you can't, and it's, I don't know, I hate to like point out like superhero genre or whatever, but they say that like the Marvel movies do so good. The reason that people love the mar and it's a Peterson concept also is like that the most, the greatest men and women are always dangerous people. The greatest people in history are dangerous individuals. And the reason that we love Marvel movies and there's this new uptick in the superhero genre as a society is because those heroes, these people that we strive towards are painted with their struggles as part of the plot. Like that's, that's a significant factor in how their hero's journey is curtailed, like in each subsequent like entry into that world that they've created over there. And at what point do we start orchestrating even fictional characters, like fictional characters can't have a flaw, you know, because if we're like putting this fictional character with a flaw up on a pedestal, it's like, you know, you can like, and again, like I'm sounding like total nerd, but like Tony Stark alcoholism or you point at this guy, it's like whatever, X, Y, z you can start fishing these out. But that's why people are drawn to these characters because we're able to see the flaws that we have in them. And I'm not like condoning anything that, like any, you know, like historical figure has done that might have been like against what we would refer to now as like not coherent with like what should be, you know, proper behavior and like a productive society. But still, like we, we cannot, we cannot start selectively tearing down, I think fig within reason.

Benjamin Anderson [00:36:02] Like, I guess some, some,

Vance Crowe [00:36:03] Well I don't understand if, if what we're doing is we're saying, hey, this history that we have or these individuals that have been placed in a large, you know, venerable position, what we need to do is to destroy the monuments. They, they need to be torn down, not with any sort of process and then defaced and then they're gone. Obliterated. It doesn't make sense to me. I mean, even the Romans, when they would have different factions come in and they would tear down the statues of their enemies, what they would actually do is take them down and put them in a memory palace. So you could go to a place where you would see the ancient people that they revered and, and then the, the victors could say, well they, they appeared to be a good person, but actually they had these other challenges and you could retell the history, but you weren't destroying everything because you need that physical memory. You want those things. If we start tearing down every, every single monument or every single, think about all the terrible places that we've kept up as monuments, things like Auschwitz or, or different concentration camps, in order to be able to say, we should never forget that this was real.

Benjamin Anderson [00:37:10] Yeah. Well that's with, is that, is that a ca Kate, I guess to name drop like Kate Crosby? Was that what she was talking about with memory palaces? Maybe it

Vance Crowe [00:37:18] Is. Yep. That's

Benjamin Anderson [00:37:18] Kate

Vance Crowe [00:37:19] Kennedy Crosby.

Benjamin Anderson [00:37:20] Yeah, that's, I should have looked into that more because I didn't realize that that was what that was. I never like looked into that terminology, like using the memory palaces term. But I mean that's, that's, that's a great idea. I just like,

Vance Crowe [00:37:31] And it's super important because like, okay, most people as, as they're sitting here listening to us talk and they say, oh, we're talking about a statue of St. Louis. So maybe they picture a guy standing or maybe they picture a guy on a horse. But if you go look at this statue, the apotheosis, it is a truly magnificent sculpture. I've watched children walk up to that thing. I've taken my own nephews, you can go stand by it. As they walk up the hill and they can see this giant monument, they, they all of a sudden, like their eyes get big and they start like wondering who was this character? And in that article by the riverfront times, they claimed that he was hoisting up his sword to plunge it into the, the Muslims against the Crusades, by the way. But if you go actually look at that statue, you'll notice he's holding that sword by the fucking blade. Yeah.

Benjamin Anderson [00:38:22] He's

Vance Crowe [00:38:22] Holding the blade in his hand. He's not actually trying to attack anyone. It's in my interpretation of the apotheosis statue is that he's holding it by the blade and holding the hil, the part where you hold it out to other people. He's saying, look, I took this as far as I could. It's your responsibility to take it further. And if people actually understood Louis the Ninth, they would understand he was one of the first people to bring back innocent until proven guilty. And that you didn't wanna have people fight battles in order that they can decide who was guilty and who wasn't. And he used to go and visit the poor that would come to his palace and bring 200 of them in a night to feed them. So like, if we're gonna look at this character and say he is so terrible that we need to tear it down, well then I wanna see the person that is so clean that their history is so good and so perfect that they should be able to tear this down and not have their own monument torn down then that that would be an interesting conversation.

Benjamin Anderson [00:39:22] Yeah, that's, I mean, like to your credit, I've learned like most of what I admire about like that as like the public figure of our city, like from you. 'cause you like go and you talk around the world and you talk up like King Louis the ninth, but yeah. And here we are in like our own city having calls to action and local papers to tear it down like that. I, I thought that was absolutely ridiculous to even like suggest and

Vance Crowe [00:39:45] People in St. Louis, like, I think people are trying to listen. I think they're trying to be polite. I think they're trying to understand where other people

Benjamin Anderson [00:39:52] Coming

Vance Crowe [00:39:53] From. But at the same time, if you are gonna give that level of understanding, then you should also understand the history and, and what this all means. I mean, the real person that I would love to see a statue of maybe down by the river that's just as large as that is St. Louis's mother.

Benjamin Anderson [00:40:09] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:40:10] 'cause that woman, if you go look into her history, I am not strong enough to do what she did. She was like 35 years old. She'd had 12 children or 13, they don't actually know. Six of them died. And by the time her husband became king and he died three years later, she, the oldest son she had was a 12-year-old boy who now became king of France. And they're in the middle of multiple border wars. There's barons that say they're not going to take him in. And she walks, literally walks to each of the barons with her family and tow and says, we want you to, to to to name him king and we're gonna help you figure out what are the problems that you have right now that we can solve. So she solved two border wars, a prisoner dispute, and one of the guys threatened to have her killed so that he could become king. And they called out to all the townspeople and from the Barons castle to Paris, there was a line of villagers that came out to protect her and the, and the boy because she was so respected for who she was, how she treated people and the, and the children she was raising. So when I sit here and, and, and read an article by some author in the Riverfront Times that says, we want to tear that down, let's entertain that. But I want to know who is the person that we should hold as the apotheosis the highest part of society that we should aspire to because we all need people to aspire to, to,

Benjamin Anderson [00:41:33] Well, and where do you draw the line? Because I love, and I guess that's where I was gonna go like a couple minutes ago, is like sometimes that there is a place, like you don't wanna have statues of Hitler up. You don't wanna have statues of maybe confederate leaders that did X to X amount of people, like whatever the numbers are, but like where does that line get drawn? But to, to tear those things down and stomp on them. Like IGII guess I get it from like a place of like, you know, hate that's built up from X amount of years. But I love, I love hearing that concept. Like that was the first time, like it, it I guess resonated with me. The memory or whatever the terminology, the

Vance Crowe [00:42:07] Memory palace. Yeah, yeah,

Benjamin Anderson [00:42:08] The memory palace of like putting them somewhere, but not in the public's eye. It's like, this is history that we have, we're gonna put it here and we're gonna explain it with context, but we're not gonna tear it down and pretend that it did not exist. That is unacceptable.

Vance Crowe [00:42:23] I was in East Berlin a couple of years ago and I was actually listening to the book on tape, the Gulag Archipelago, which is the most stomach turning book I've ever read. And it describes how people got swept up into bringing the communist revolution into Russia and then it came for them. So the position, the power position that the guy had, he thought, Hey, I'm sitting pretty, I'm follow all the rules. I'm doing everything the mob wants me to do. And then he got put in jail and he talks through the whole time about how he imagined that eventually they would come to their senses and realize he was one of the good guys, but they never did. And so he ends up working in this, in this set set of gulags at work camps that were just awful. So I'm listening to this book and, and you know that the gulags are all a result of the writings of Karl Marx and I'm walking in East Berlin and I run into a statue, a huge statue of Karl Marx, and I think, huh, that's weird. And I take a photo of it and then I'm walking maybe another half a mile or so and I run into another statue. And then another one, if you go in East Berlin, they're everywhere. These statues of Karl Marx and I like, there are some people that believe that he killed millions and millions of people based on his writings. We have statues up of him, or at least they do in Berlin. Who decides which of these people are monsters and which timeframe from history should we understand and under what context should we say? I mean, I would never dare to go tell the East Berlin people tear down these statues. Like it's part of their culture, it's who they are, what, what do I know about what they need to remember?

Benjamin Anderson [00:43:55] Yeah, I don't know what the right answer to that is. I was re there was, it was, it was my partner's dad gave me a book about a guy who travels to Italy and he basically just spends the, I think it's called a summer in Italy. It's like kind of like a light read, but he's talking about how he's in some of these smaller towns and basically exactly what you're describing with Carl Marx, like there's still like a weird, weird idealization behind Stalin in Italy and some of these smaller areas of where like people thought he was a hero of the people, blah, blah, blah. Whatever gets described in that book. And he definitely depicts it in a negative light. But he kind of like elaborates like as he's kind of of thinking in that writing of like, okay, like here's maybe the thought process of these people in these smaller areas and like what they might have seen is the benefit of that person. Like it is a cultural thing and like as a society we should not, you know, leave them up and idealize them like with that positive light. But I think like there's, I don't know, it's, it's, it's a weird line and I definitely don't know the right answer, but I I, I know for what it's worth for like my individual like knowledge or I guess and opinion at that point is like, it, it's not history that should be maybe taken down from like the public eye, but it shouldn't be like shunned or pretended didn't happen. Well

Vance Crowe [00:45:05] We don't make better decisions as an angry mob, right? Like we don't make decisions where we're like, Hey, let's really think about how this is gonna impact things in a year or five years or 10 years or 15 years when we're like, we don't have time to think, we have to act right now. Never in those situations do you make good decisions. And I think it seems like people are saying there's a virtue to acting now. Now you could also look at the other side and say, justice delayed is justice denied. And I, I mean I believe that, right? If there are people sitting in prison cells for things that they didn't do or for crimes that we should not have them locked up for, yeah, let's get that, let's get that problem solved, right? Are you sitting in a jail cell waiting for a trial? Let's go, come on, get everybody in line. But we don't do it in terms of we've gotta make the decision right now because the right now decision making is always the worst. Right? That's, that's why we have reason and rationality is to avoid the emotions of the mob.

Benjamin Anderson [00:46:05] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:46:05] So Ben, when, when we started building this, you are my executive producer, we've done a ton of work together ever since we took that drive out to Kansas together and, and interviewed Barry Flinch Bow and went to a couple of events. You and I have been talking about a dream that I did not think would come true because I never thought that I would have enough time, which was to take a lot of the work that I have been delivering in speeches all across the world and turn them into something that would be digestible online. And you walked me to the edge and showed me how to do this. How did you learn how to put together classes so that that it, that people could take what would've been a talk and turn it into an actual class that they could take?

Benjamin Anderson [00:46:50] You're not gonna like the answer, but it was probably while I was doing it with slash for you, I guess probably right. I mean, I'd, I'd never done that in the past, but it's, I knew how to do it. I've taken, I mean like after I, after I left Wash UI mean my entire education has consisted of six Udemy courses that taught me programming and design and online like marketing. Like I've spent, I spent $60 taking perfectly formatted online courses, you know, it's like they do their flash sales, it's like 12 bucks or whatever. Like, not sponsored by Udemy obviously, but like, that's, that's what hooked me is I bought a couple of these courses and here I've got 36 hours of knowledge sat and recorded by like, I guess frame it from like your perspective, you're a professional communicator, you can sit down or like I've bought in a course from like, you know, for programming languages, like online marketing, whatever, and they're like, here's me with you for X amount of hours and I'm gonna download you this information in five to 10 minute clips and you're gonna get that for 12 bucks. Right? I mean, it's, it's a no brainer. And I've taken enough of those and I have gotten that value for $12. I mean, I've, I, yeah, the, I can't, I can't explain, I mean, there's, there's a discipline to it for sure. 'cause I mean, you're sitting behind a computer screen, like you've gotta take action outside of the content that you're consuming to make it happen. But I guess like maybe consuming it to be like the honest, like answer, not like learning while I did it, but consuming that content and knowing what the value propositions were for me as a user where it's like, okay, here I am learning from a master. And in terms of like communication, I mean, you've spoken like on the world stage countless times.

Benjamin Anderson [00:48:24] Like that's, that's a master level of education. And, and like it was clear whenever we started having those conversations that if that was something that you had the slightest inclination to put together, like there is an absolute value in being able to pack, compartmentalize that in a similar fashion where people like me or anybody else could consume that content to their benefit. Because here they're getting ideas that it's taken you, you know, however many years it took you to get, say like, at least a decade, right? I mean, like, how many years of experience do you like, like from, from say graduating high school or college, wherever it was, like, whatever that time block of years is to get to where you are at this exact moment. That's how much experience you get. Or at whatever moment you record a course, that's the amount of content or that's the amount of experience that's being downloaded to you through this medium, I guess. Yeah,

Vance Crowe [00:49:14] And I don't, I, I think until I started using, I used Skillshare for a while, but now I've gotten, I, you don't realize, 'cause I had always done the free route. I had always gone to like YouTube the way that I learned how to do all the lighting and all. There's a ton of stuff where people are like, lemme just show you this demo. Yeah.

Benjamin Anderson [00:49:30] But

Vance Crowe [00:49:30] The thing that you give up in a demo for free on YouTube that you don't have with a class is in the class. The speaker has every single incentive to make this as densely populated as they can so that people get all the way through it. And on this one they're like, Hey, let me explain it. Let me show you. I'm gonna try and keep you entertained. And there's a mentality that goes into this one. So like if you took all that hours that I spent studying YouTube just to figure out how do, how does light and echo work when you're recording an a video? It, it must be hundreds and hundreds of hours. But to now be able to compress that into a 90 minute class is one of those things where you realize like, that is actually the value of education. Education is distilling vast amounts of information into a compartment that people can upload. And then it gives them the skills to be like, okay, I want to go further down that path, or I've learned enough to be able to do what I'm doing and move on. Which is why Skillshare and Udemy are so different than the collegiate experience, which is still using the industrial revolution. You go to school for four years, regardless of the degree you work for 40 years, you work 40 hours. Like we are still in that old mindset. And I think Udemy, Skillshare, the Articulate Ventures network, these kinds of things are breaking people out of it.

Benjamin Anderson [00:50:48] Yeah. Because it's, I mean it's, it's the And then slapping, yeah, slapping of value on that knowledge. I mean we've, we've been playing the YouTube game right the last couple months or whatever, like the way that you monetize on YouTube is views and hours of viewership. So there's the two metrics you're getting paid for how many people, like what's the net number of people that watch your content and how long are they watching your content for? Because that's gonna determine how many ads have been filtered in whatever for you to monetize off versus

Vance Crowe [00:51:15] Which is how much attention have you gathered Yeah.

Benjamin Anderson [00:51:17] That you

Vance Crowe [00:51:17] Can then give and onto and you can give to Google to exchange for ads. So if you're able to give people something that's worth 30 seconds of their attention to be able to get through that ad and then get to more of your content. But now we flip that model. 'cause I never wanted to sell my, my viewer's attention. I've always felt really uncomfortable about being like, I got your attention with this really great content and now let me throw it to somebody else.

Benjamin Anderson [00:51:42] Which is why Yeah. Which is wh why the obvious like decision was to take it off of something like a YouTube and put it in like our own proprietary community where people can not only just consume the core values of that content. Like at the longest course in there right now is like, what now and a half. But you're getting, we've got a handful of them in there, but they're able to get the direct knowledge points that they need to, and that's, that's value proposition a where I think like we've really taken it a step further. That's like, why I'm most excited is one of the coolest things about like Udemy. Like I, I've taken a lot of courses, I'll shout him out by Maximilian Alexander Schwartz's Academy Mind. I've taken a ton of his programming courses on Udemy. One of the most valuable things that he put together outside of Udemy is a Discord channel where you're able to hop in there and you're able to interact with other people who are taking these programming courses so that you can learn and talk about ideas that have been abstracted from like this knowledge that he's downloading to you from the videos. But that was always a disconnect. You join a Udemy class, it's like, okay, our Facebook group is over here, or our Discord is over here, or our Slack is over here. And the platform we've created, all of that is in one system. And there's an, there's an attributed value to not just being able to consume that content, but being able to bounce ideas and interpretations of that content and that knowledge. 'cause that's what it is. It's not just content, it's knowledge off of each other to like reaffirm those neural connections. Like as you're downloading it into your brain.

Vance Crowe [00:53:07] I, I had received, I mean one of the things that prompted me to go like, okay Ben, I'm, I'm serious about this, was while I was in the midst of coronavirus two to three podcasts a day, I kept getting text messages or dms where people would be like, Hey, I'd love to support the podcast. But I never really felt good about being like, here, just donate to it. I wanted to do something else. But then when you and I started talking about a network and you're like, Hey, people could support the podcast and then they also get to meet all these other people that are supporting it. When we decided to do this beta test, like I was like, I'm gonna ask for 15 people. I don't know if five are gonna show up. Like, I don't know what, what do people, and when I was like, boo, it was within two hours of, of putting it out on the podcast that people were like, I wanna do it. I wanna do it. And I ended up having like a relatively large group. I I had to cap it and apologize to people. And now you see what two for just, it's been almost two weeks. What 25 people have done in two weeks is awesome. And like, it makes me go like, why didn't I do this years ago? I'm getting to meet a person over in Nova Scotia that organizes bike tours. I'm meeting this woman up in Michigan that's trying to get farmers to do things they've never done before. There's college students. There's like, and you're like, oh my God, they're intermixing and doing this stuff and talking about things that I would never have done. Yeah. And so you're like, we're helping create something, but we have no idea where it's going. It's pretty exciting.

Benjamin Anderson [00:54:34] It's, I mean that's, and then it's almost like there's, there's, there's the, you you think about it. Like I, I always think about stuff. I guess maybe for myself in terms of like a company, there's like the two times, like there's, there's the time a corporation evolves from like a dictatorship to a democracy where it's like the CEO doesn't like, there was a tweet the other day, it was probably one of the VC guys I like follow who like retweeted, I don't remember who, but they were like, I think it was Slack, like the Slack founder, like tweeted, I didn't even know we had this feature. And then some VC guy retweeted it and his comment was, your company has grown to the biggest stage in like a positive way when you've decentralized innovation in a way where you don't necessarily need to know what's going on anymore at the base level. And that was like the talk we were having. Like there were there these weird con conventions in communication that are popping up autonomous of like our direction as like hosts that have, I mean as people are communicating with each other and interacting and interacting and colliding like in patterns, it's like the pattern language aspect of like what's gonna be the pattern language for this network watching that develop with such a relatively small group of people. Yeah. It's been completely exciting. Just,

Vance Crowe [00:55:45] Just so I don't forget, we can keep talking about it, but I will leave a thing in the show notes where somebody can sign up if you're interested in this. We're doing the next wave of people that we wanna add in. So Ben and I have talked a lot about this. I'm talking with the network about it on Saturday, is that we don't just wanna open it up so that everybody is there all at once. I feel like if you have too many new people, you're, the culture isn't a kneeling, it's not coming together the way that that group wants it. So we're just gonna keep doing it. I think in waves, and I've had a bunch of people sign up for this next wave. So I think sometime next week we're gonna make all those people that have said, Hey, I wanna sign up for it, it we're gonna let them in. But I wanna make sure the community that's already building there, 'cause they've already started. So like this week I was giving this talk to my client and the night before I was like, Hey, I have to do a dress rehearsal. Normally I do it with people that are around me. Is there anybody in the network that wants to show up? Now my client is paying quite a bit of money per seat to be in, in those classes. But the network was like, yeah, I'll be there and I'll add on an extra half hour and I'll give you feedback about what you should change. What order, how did it go? Was it too fast? Was it too slow? And you realize like, this is awesome that you could use this over and over and over again. And it's not just me, somebody else in the network could say, Hey, I have a big talk coming up. I wanna practice it with people that they aren't gonna hit me hard because they don't agree with my content. I mean, they can push back on the content, but what they're really gonna do is tell me how do I express myself so I get better?

Vance Crowe [00:57:17] Right.

Benjamin Anderson [00:57:17] This

Vance Crowe [00:57:18] To me is like a virtual dojo for communications. It's the greatest thing ever.

Benjamin Anderson [00:57:22] No. 'cause that's what people want. They can't do that. You can't take what you're gonna say. I mean you can, depending on what you're talking about. But it's not a, like the, the numbers, I mean like the attention spans aren't there because it's too like dispersed of a community and yeah, you can't just take something to one of the bigger outlets for that sort of constructive criticism. But it's that aspect of like you are, you're getting paid probably like, I guess not to throw out numbers, but like large figures to do this class here you go following day and here you are delivering it for free for feedback. And it's just like you said, it's not just you as the, like the main tether point of that network either as it grows, there will be, and there have been people in there who are like, Hey, this is how I'm thinking about this. Maybe this is my professional background and this is why it's valid and might be something that you wanna consume in this community that we are a part of. Give me idea, push back on me. Like tell me why I'm wrong so that I can make it better. Don't like tell me it is wrong. Tell me why. And have a conversation with me in this environment where it's like, I hate to use the word safe 'cause it's like the safe zone terminology, but it is what's really like the new authentic safe zone. Well,

Vance Crowe [00:58:31] And it is, it's the culture that says, this is why you have to grow slowly. Because you have to say, Hey, we know that that environments like this where people get to try things out where they get to live a little bit dangerously, they're gonna try and get up and surf on the edge of chaos. Yeah. But if they fall down, they aren't going to be dragged against coral and then left on the shore for dead. We're gonna say like, Hey, these are some other ways of thinking about it. And hey, that's an interesting idea. And to be able to create a culture where you can give and receive feedback that lets you get better. We don't have that in society. You can't do it in corporate America. It's too dangerous. You get sued. You can't do it in the town square and social media. You can't do it at the, at the places that I used to do. I used to go to Toastmasters. Right now you're not getting together in person. And so people need a place to go where they can keep learning, they can try things out and they can get feedback. And I also think another really important component and, and we've already seen this on the network, is people that are giving feedback get better themselves. Because as soon as you tell somebody, Hey, this is something I've learned, or this is something I think you ought to do, now you're obligated to do it yourself. And I think it's a really powerful thing.

Benjamin Anderson [00:59:41] Well, it's like the stages of learning where it's like you, you get the knowledge and then you, you learn it and you embed it and like you, you master that knowledge or master might be a strong term I guess like with a new concept. But once you have to communicate something you've learned to somebody in a else, in a way that they have to then digest it and learn it like that, that gives you a deeper, it's almost like the drawing your ideas idea. It's like once you have to communicate something that you know, in a way that you don't have to, when you're communicating it for yourself by drawing something on a whiteboard or explaining it to somebody else, that they can then take that same knowledge, not diluted, and then execute to the same level of like output, like productive, like positive output. Like that gives you a deeper embedding of that knowledge in your mind in a way. Like maybe it gives you a new perspective like on it that you didn't have before. You know, I think,

Vance Crowe [01:00:30] Well, I mean I think that's the value when you're, I, so I've given a lot of feedback on people's speeches and one of the things that you come away with is I have learned something, I have some wisdom that works for me. I go to articulate that to you and you're gonna take that and mix it in with everything else, you know, and you're not gonna apply it the same way that I would. You're gonna apply it in some different way. And as long as I have an ego that is low enough that I'm not offended that you didn't do it the way that I did, you can be like, huh, I like what Ben did there. I like how he shifted that around. And I find that, so I have this intern Aliya Lee, and we were having these great conversations and I talked with you about it and you're like, well, why don't we make the driven intern series where you just clip out a little bit of the, of the conversation that you have with this intern and put it up on a class. So if somebody is right now trying to get the intern experience, but they don't have it, you can do it this way. I've already seen Aaliyah Lee, I give him some feedback, he comes back the next day and he's not doing it the way that I told him to do it. He's doing it in his way. And you're like, that's really clever. I would not have thought of that. And I, I, that's why I'm so excited about the potential of this Articulate Ventures network. I I think it's pretty exciting.

Benjamin Anderson [01:01:41] Yeah, yeah. No doubt. There's been, I mean, and that's, that's how we're gonna be consuming content. I think that's the future of content conception is we're gonna be choosing, we're gonna choosing, we're gonna be choosing maybe not even individuals. Like it's like another great community. I'd love to shout out. I mean, you've mentioned him before you had him on, he's Jack Butcher. Like he's created an awesome community with like the same value propositions. Like I throw for wand, I throw a landing page that I'm using in an ad set or I throw in like some screenshots of our app that we're playing with. I've had people hop in there and like do YouTube videos for me walking through like, what's wrong. And these are professional people that are getting, you know, paid whatever they're getting paid to do this work at, you know, corporations or maybe other individuals, a freelancer. But long like it's knowledge that's above my knowledge that's giving me feedback to help bring me up to that level in terms of like how I think about my content and my product and stuff like that. Like that's, that's such a

Vance Crowe [01:02:37] Strong thing. Jack Butcher is is the OG here. Yeah.

Benjamin Anderson [01:02:40] And he figured

Vance Crowe [01:02:41] Out how to create a community where he gives the foundational advice and really the, he points north and says, Hey, this is the way everybody should be going. But he has definitely earned that democratization where a whole bunch of people that have skills that even he doesn't have come in and make his stuff better and make other people's stuff better. Like e everything about that. I mean, maybe there should be a monument to Jack Butcher because he is helping us understand how do you build a network whose interconnections actually creates new things of value that didn't exist before in this digital age.

Benjamin Anderson [01:03:16] Yeah. Well, I mean, you're seeing the same thing happen. Like people listen to, like you've, you've mentioned Eric Weinstein on here before, his portal podcast community. I mean, and I'm, I, I don't wanna say that I was baited, but I'm like one of the members at that community and now we're working on his app. It's like you cultivate this community and they've, he's decentralized the people that love his content, like, and he didn't even make the discord. I think that's what,

Vance Crowe [01:03:38] So let's talk about this because Ben, like one thing that I've learned from you is that you have an ability to move into these new spaces, you know, discussion group, a Slack channel a a, a community with Jack Butcher and you seem to do very well there. What is the way that you interact with the digital community that, that you found like really helps progress you along, meet new people, get engaged,

Benjamin Anderson [01:04:02] Participate and share my stuff? I don't, I don't just loiter and like read stuff and visualize value. I'm like, here's my landing page. Like tell me what's wrong with it. I'd love to hear it. I go to Jack's office hours and I enjoy it. He talks for 20 minutes and you get to ask him questions afterwards. Like the portal, there's, you know, hundreds of people in there who are doing nothing and there's probably like 10 to 15 projects. I'm like, okay, I, I know how to build apps. I'll build you guys' app. I mean that's, that's like a quantifiable like value, you know? So it's like, I guess getting in those networks and not just leaching them for what they can add to you. But that's, and that's, that's the whole purpose of these networks is like having the proper culture in place that you get inside and you're encouraged to contribute as an individual member as well. So that's like, I think the biggest key is I get it and I'm like, how can I contribute to the growth of this community? And if I can do that effectively, then I'll make myself a standout member of that community. And there's

Vance Crowe [01:04:53] Well, and you think like we, you know, we've kind of learned in regular society or in in real life that the person that is the nicest, that is like, oh, you did a really good job, is the most valuable. And what I've found in the network and from participators like you, or like, there's a couple people that they've given me feedback on the classes or how the things are structured where you open up that thing and you're like, oh man, that hurts. Yeah, you're right. Oh, I gotta fix that. And what you start doing is the, it, it would be easy to be like, I don't wanna read the text messages or the messages from the person that gave me that negative feedback. But then you start looking around at what helped me get the best, the fastest. It was that person that wrote me that stuff that was like, oh. And so you start seeing in the right environments, the person that has the guts to say what they really think moves up. Yeah. Whereas the people that are trying to be cool or quiet or don't know what, or they're too hesitating to say what they really think. They stay at the, at the base layer because they're not offering things that help other people get better. So I think one of the things that you do really well is provide feedback and you contribute, but, and other people, they're like, Hey, I want to fix this and this is what I think you should do and this is what I'm willing to do to help you fix that. And this is where I think you could go, you can see that happening in the safe space of a network that you don't have in the town hall that is Twitter and Facebook.

Benjamin Anderson [01:06:15] Yeah. No, 'cause that's, I mean that's, that's the layer up. And like I'm, I'm not the main contributor in either by or or any that I joined by any means. I contribute enough that I can like, because you, it's, it's a give and take game. Like it's, it's a closed system. Like what you get it or what you put in, you get out. Like there's people that are putting in way more than I've ever put into any network I've joined and they're getting exponentially more. And it's incredible to like see Yeah. It's just in incredible to see like what people can put into a community and get back from a community and yeah. That's, that's the biggest value in the whole thing. So

Vance Crowe [01:06:47] You mentioned that Eric Weinstein group or wine, did you say Steen or Stein Weinstein?

Benjamin Anderson [01:06:53] I, I said Stein because, well, yeah, Rob said Stein. I usually say Steen. I don't know, honestly, I hate to say that like on the air. 'cause I listened to his podcast, but I, I listened to his one with Steven, God is it Steven Anthony, he's the jazz physicist. And he called him, he called him Weinstein. He referred to him as Weinstein. I guess that was like, where I was like, okay, if they've been friends for a long time and he says Weinstein, it's gotta be Weinstein. But then I hear

Vance Crowe [01:07:17] Some people say Weinstein

Benjamin Anderson [01:07:19] Not to go.

Vance Crowe [01:07:19] Okay. So you have been in the Eric Weinstein network for a while. You followed his podcast. You've even gone so far as to help them build their app. I think he is doing something really different over there at the portal. I agree. And I catch about half of what he puts out. 'cause he is prolifically putting out content and you can't just, you can't just like flip it on and race through it. Like it's deep stuff. What do you think he's doing that's so different? Why is this feel to everyone that touches it? Like Eric's podcasts are different.

Benjamin Anderson [01:07:50] He's communicating. I mean, he's communicating bluntly. Like if you listen, I mean, my gosh, listen to the first 30 minutes of his last podcast with I, I, I hope I'm saying Steven, I hope his name is Steven. Like he wrote a book called The Jazz of Physics that I intend to read soon. But the first 30 minutes of there, like he breaks down his perspective of like kind of the current chaos that's going on in the world, world from, and I mean, this is a guy to just, with his background and his, his positioning in so many, such a broad variety of fields. I mean such a broad like knowledge base in general to hear how he breaks down concepts, not concerned for how they will be filtered, but for the way that he thinks. And he, like he will argue with people on the podcast, he will say like, no, no, no, no, no, this is the way that I think about this. But it's like, you want to hear like it's, it's addictive because it's like an argue. It's, it's a dialogue that people aren't allowing themselves to have in other meeting. Definitely

Vance Crowe [01:08:49] Not in public. Yeah. They talk about things where you're like, I would talk about that if there were no cameras on and maybe people put their phones underneath their, their leg or something, you know, like this, this is, these are conversations that you're like, I don't think you're supposed to do this.

Benjamin Anderson [01:09:02] Yeah. The, the, the ideas that I hear, I guess that's what I like about it a lot and what made me like literally feel a responsibility to contribute in any way I could is like the ideas that they're putting out are like pushing me further to the edge of like what I'm, and I think we even touched about that like maybe the last time we spoke in the other podcast. But like, I think like one of the bigger responsibilities of individuals, like what we can do for ourselves and what we can do for the world is push up against like what we think is possible for lack of a better term, or what we think we are willing to do as individuals or what we, we what we're able to do. And he's pushing from an idea perspective, at least he's pushing me up against my wall of like, wow, I did not think about that that way. Or I would not think about this. This is a great perspective for me to hear from this individual he's had on, he brings people in from different walks of the same way you do. Like, I'm, I watched your podcast Behe like before, like we even started kind of like doing what we do. But like you here you are willing to interview people with different perspectives, like people who are, you know, completely anti mask, completely for mask, completely antix, completely four x like you, you draw this circle around like what the whole picture looks like by talking to people with different perspectives on like everything that's happening in between. And yeah, you cultivate different perspectives that, I mean,

Vance Crowe [01:10:20] Isn't it amazing? The, the thing that is the most surprising is you can go your whole life and people will be like, Hey, you know, don't wa don't believe what you see in the news. Hey, don't, you know, you gotta, when I really started doing this project where I was like, Hey, I'll talk to anybody that I think has a novel, interesting way of looking at the world, that that's what's in. And I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna interview people because somebody else demands that I do. I'm gonna just, if I'm around in the world and I see you and you look interesting, I'm gonna invite you on the podcast. But what has been such a jarring lesson for me has been that these people, every single one of them views the world completely differently. And we right now have this like sense-making apparatus to, to quote Eric Weinstein, is that they want us all to think the same thing. They demand that the words that come out of my mouth replicate the opinions that they have in their head. And like, this is not, this is like a, a very unusual thing when you think about how many different perspectives there are in the world. Every single person I talked to, I would've found things I agreed with and things I definitely did not agree with.

Benjamin Anderson [01:11:25] Well, and that's what's missing from, like, I keep using his terminology, I guess like, and that's what's missing from like the institutional layer. And they were talking about that. I mean, it's been a common theme like across all of his content is like they're, we're not leaving room for these different perspectives in like a constructive way. We're creating artificial, we're creating artificial ways to perceive diversity in a way that doesn't truly acknowledge the, like individ like the intimate authenticity of like what's diverse about that individual. Like here we're saying like, you know, here you are and you're awesome because you are X trait or X color or x, whatever it might be. But that doesn't help actually hone in on like what the intimate value. And that's why I love the beginning because he really says like one of the, one of the coolest creative, like, I don't wanna say values, but like one of the most unique traits about, he says the African American like community, not even at the intellectual level, but at the base level is that they absolutely thrive with like creative like

Vance Crowe [01:12:32] Competition. Yeah,

Benjamin Anderson [01:12:33] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [01:12:33] Like competition, like these games where they're like always trying to one up and, and play this thing. And, and from that means that you have to be innovative enough to be able to improvise. Yes.

Benjamin Anderson [01:12:43] And

Vance Crowe [01:12:43] Improvise improvisation shows that you truly, deeply know something because you can use it in the real world. It's like reading a book on fighting versus actually knowing how to fight.

Benjamin Anderson [01:12:53] Right. And whether it's taboo to say that somebody is good at traits like that because of an ethnicity or a color or a cultural background or a gender is becoming like, we're abstracting we're giving people status because of these traits, but we're not allowing ourselves to have conversations about what's, you know, good about like, like not even good, but like what's different, just what's different, what's different between like these different walks of life that allows people to stand out and kind of individualize in society in a way that's productive for the whole. Like we're not leaving room for that. We're like trying

Vance Crowe [01:13:27] To water

Benjamin Anderson [01:13:27] Down.

Vance Crowe [01:13:28] I think a good example of this is the other day I was talking with a, a female friend of mine and I made the point that I had only just recently realized b because of the mask conversation that as a woman you don't, you have to be much more skeptical of things like your risk tolerance has to be much lower than it does for a six foot 4, 220 pound man. Now, now the man should be careful and should be thinking, do I wanna get into this situation? But a woman doesn't have the ability to just force her way through a crowd of people in the same way that a man does. When we first started having this discussion where I was making a differentiation on what is the calculation of risk between a man, man, and a woman, she was really upset with me and it took like 30 minutes for me to be like, I'm staying, I'm saying something that to me seems so obvious as to be one plus one equals two. And, and, and for some reason you are thinking that I am assaulting you with the idea that you're not strong or you're not capable. And that's the only thing I am saying is you have to think further ahead than I have ever had to. Maybe I should, but you definitely have been thinking further ahead than me and I, I don't know why we can't have these discussions. Yeah.

Benjamin Anderson [01:14:44] We can't discuss things like this. We would rather pretend that everybody is the same based off of all of these, you know, like we'd, we'd rather like acknowledge the differences and say, okay, but like, let's, let's acknowledge them but ignore them for I guess not whatever reason. But yeah, it's like acknowledging but genericizing like not, not not pointing out the individual values of each lake sub.

Vance Crowe [01:15:09] Yeah. Maybe, maybe the idea that people should be finding common ground and where do we relate? Maybe we've taken that too far.

Benjamin Anderson [01:15:17] Yeah. Maybe

Vance Crowe [01:15:17] The, maybe the problem is that what we should be doing is valuing people for the fact that they are all deeply, deeply different and that every single person you look at has a multitude of personalities within them and a multitude of, of opportunities for greatness and, and pitfalls for terrible, terrible tragedy and every single human being being a miracle. And that that when you strip away the diversity of them, the individuality then, then they aren't a miracle anymore.

Benjamin Anderson [01:15:48] Yeah. It's the idea of like individualization and like self-actualization, all that fun. Like have you, like have you heard of like the great, I hate to say like well yeah, the great human theory or the great man or the great woman theory of like history that these individuals pop up and they dramatically change the trajectory of like history because of like some individual actions. Like you can like sure, we can highlight the, because Elon Musk, you can point at Elon Musk. Elon Musk is a great man who has changed the trajectory of history as it will proceed after his actions. But who it's like the blanche of Castile to a Louis V thing. Like you can look at Louis v Louis v is a great manifest.

Vance Crowe [01:16:25] He's saying a blanche of Castile is both,

Benjamin Anderson [01:16:27] Is both

Vance Crowe [01:16:27] St. Louis the ninth's mother. He is

Benjamin Anderson [01:16:30] What you're talking about. Yeah. We can look at King Louis and then we can look at his mom and she is a great woman of history because she pushed that's that's her history. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [01:16:38] Without her. Without him. Yep.

Benjamin Anderson [01:16:39] Yeah. And we can look at whoever was, it's like, this is like where we wrapped up last time. It's like there's, that goes on forever. Somebody who wrote a book or somebody who you bumped into who like smiled or had a perspective that like made you think about something in a different way and it's like the spontaneous collisions that kept going like after that, that caused any remote change and like your action thereafter. It's like the butterfly effect. It goes on forever and everybody who takes action is a great person in history. It's like, yeah, like you said, the miracle of life. Everybody is, there's no great man or woman that stand out among the rest. Everybody is. It's just like to, I guess to what degree or where you're expressing that greatness.

Vance Crowe [01:17:19] When I was in my small town growing up, Eureka, Illinois, I got a construction job with this guy named Don Lit Weiler. And Don was, I, I don't know, maybe five feet tall, maybe just this little tiny old man who would run around. He didn't talk very much and you know, you'd show up for work and someday he'd be like, Hey, put on your nail apron. You get to go hammer two by fours together. This is gonna be great. I'm gonna frame. But many, many times you'd come to work and he'd be like, here's a bucket. I want you to fill it up with rocks and then dump it over that ravine over there and you're gonna do that all day for eight hours or, or you're at the construction site and if you run outta things to do, Don would come up and say, if you ever run outta stuff to do, I want you to just look around and pick up nails. You know, and you're like, this is the worst job in the world. And the worst thing that would happen is if it rained out and it was Friday, so if it rained on Thursday night, you go to work on Friday morning, you would see Don pull up and he'd hand you a little styrofoam cup and he'd be like, yeah, just walk up and down this road here and pick up any worms. 'cause we're gonna go fishing later today. And so you're getting paid the same amount to frame, to pick up nails. To pick up worms. So you're out there picking up worms so that he can go fish and not pay, you know, whatever it is, the 2 25 down at the gas station to go fishing. And, but this is the guy that you run into that you learn, okay, when I don't have anything to do, there's always something to be done. Pick up nails when I, when I wanna get something done. You know, like this is how I coordinate a group of people when I, when I wanna move up and I wanna get that 25 cent per hour raise, which is the, the, the amount that he would give you as a raise if you had worked really hard, you know, for two or three weeks.

Vance Crowe [01:18:54] But he is the singly responsible for like, I don't know, my brother and I were counting it the other day, like 20 different people that started their own construction businesses outta that. I don't know how many young men that went on to like do their own thing. The last day I ever worked for him, he had me stand outside for eight hours and pick up rocks in the sun and wouldn't let me, wouldn't let me take off my shirt 'cause it was in town, wouldn't let me play the music on the truck because it was, it, it would wear out the battery. He didn't want me to drive the truck into the middle of the open lot because he didn't want ruts in the thing. So I'm out in the, in the middle of this plan, you know, there's no trees, there's no shade. I pick up rocks all day, I get done on the last tank. He stops by with some sodas to tell me goodbye. And he goes, did you enjoy that Vance? And I was like, yeah, Don, thank you. You know, I'm so glad to have a job. You know, I'm trying to be polite. And he's like, no, did you enjoy that? And I was like, well, not, not especially known. And he was like, okay, well go study hard in college so nobody can ever tell you what to do like this again. Picks up his cooler, gets in the truck, drives away.

Benjamin Anderson [01:19:55] Damn.

Vance Crowe [01:19:56] And so there's no time when you're studying where you're like, ah, my friends are out party and I should go party when it doesn't ring in your mind. If you don't get out of this, you could be under somebody that makes you do this shit. And it was, I don't think he was doing it to be cruel. I think he was doing it to set me free. Yeah. And that is what the whole world needs is people that they encounter that set them free in the way that they need to be set free.

Benjamin Anderson [01:20:22] Yeah. It's a beautiful thing. And like, you know, what's keeping people, you know, what's keeping a substantial amount of the young and emerging world who will lead the world, you know, 10 to 20 years from now, like from being more free than they had the potential to be student debt.

Vance Crowe [01:20:37] Oh,

Benjamin Anderson [01:20:38] The other day. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [01:20:40] Amen man. Amen. Student debt is so far out of control, so wildly out of control.

Benjamin Anderson [01:20:47] Absurd.

Vance Crowe [01:20:48] That that it is so endemic in our society that it is water.

Benjamin Anderson [01:20:51] Yeah. That

Vance Crowe [01:20:52] We don't even look at people and say, Hey, I wonder if that person has a hundred thousand dollars of nondischargeable debt weighing them down and every single decision that they make,

Benjamin Anderson [01:21:03] It's, we're, we're completely like, I don't wanna say crushing, but we're limiting the net potential of somebody at probably one of their most creative and experimental times of their lives. Because you get out of college on the other side and you're like, okay, I can do this incredibly creative, like, experimental thing that would be maybe unprecedented whatever with this knowledge that I've just spent x amount of time accumulating or, but I can't realistically, like if you, if you frame it with logic, you can't, you can't, it's hard to justify. I don't wanna say you can't because anybody can do anything, but it's very, very hard to justify taking a spontaneous path with no, like, I haven't taken a paycheck in like two years. I've had no spontaneous income from anything. Like it's, it's a hard path for sure, but no student debt, you know, like, I hate to like point to that. Like I would not, if I, if I had taken a loan for and stayed in college for four more years, my entire life would be different because I would be, because I'm like, we talked about it last time. I'm very, very debt averse. I do not want to like, put myself in any position where like I would have to like be, I don't wanna extend myself. If you come outta college and you've got a hundred thousand dollars plus like debt surplus like behind you, I don't wanna take a risk decision that's gonna like throw you even further. Like you gotta start taking care of that. And then next thing you know, you're 35, 40, maybe it's pa maybe keyword, maybe it's paid off. And then you're like, well here I am in my cozy job or whatever and I've got two kids that can't really afford to do something spontaneous and creative anyways.

Vance Crowe [01:22:32] I, I think like you, if you were to take 18-year-old me and say, let me step you into a house that you would own if you took the same amount of cash that you're gonna take for your loan and put that into education, I don't think that would've dissuaded me from going to college. I was definitely like, I, college is the only way for me, it's what I have to do. I don't know what I'm gonna do after college. I don't even know what I'm doing in college. But I was definitely like blinders on to go to college. But had I had something tangible to relate to how much money I was spending to get that education, I think it would've changed the paradigm for me. And, and yesterday or two days ago I tweeted out that I think student loans are a, are a significant component of the social unrest we're seeing right now. And many, many people agreed and then I had people that showed up and were like, that's racist. How dare you say that? And I was like, what are you talking about? Debt is one of those things that all of us, everyone looking around here can, can look and say that is a cold hard wall that presses down on you and forces you into dark alleys and places you don't want to go because you've gotta pay it. I think that this is one thing that if we were to take a look at all the people down there suffering under in, in ways that make them feel like they need to go out and, and protest and loot and, and burn things, my guess is there is a whole lot of debt down there and that that is a major component of something that we could all relate to of that feeling of being under the weight of debt, rightly or wrongly how they got there.

Vance Crowe [01:24:09] I I don't even care. I'm just saying the weight of debt is a real press.

Benjamin Anderson [01:24:13] Yeah. And what does it take to alleviate that weight and promote more freedom for like that sort of creative output like we were talking about before, like don't know the solution, but there's hopefully we're working towards it somewhere in society. 'cause it is a problem. I think it's a problem. I would agree.

Vance Crowe [01:24:28] Yeah. And, and, and I don't know how you do this because, you know, we gave out trillions and trillions of dollars to everybody from bankers to airlines to farmers to, you know, major corporations and we didn't give it out for people for student loans. But at the same time, the person that took out a, a, a mortgage in order to buy and renovate houses and sell it, but then got underwater but didn't go to college and now they have that debt, it's not really fair to pay off the student loans debt because those are the guys running around in the streets without jobs and not pay off the homeowners. Are we gonna pay off everybody's debt? That doesn't seem right. Well

Benjamin Anderson [01:25:01] That's what,

Vance Crowe [01:25:02] So I don't know where we go here.

Benjamin Anderson [01:25:03] Well, that's what happened in 2008. Like if we do anything like that after the fact, like here we bailed out the banks, the ones that were realistically responsible for like putting people in positions where they were spread so thin that it all was inevitable that it come collapsing down at some point here, if we do, like we have to start looking at all of these like examples of like, okay, here, here we've enabled people to overextend themselves because of a lack of a perception of like what the ne maybe not even what the negative repercussions would be, but the overall limitation of that like enabling that freedom I guess of like, it's, it's like here's, I'll give you this like, so that you can go get this instead of like, I don't know, I don't know. It's, it's a, it's a weird gray area, but I

Vance Crowe [01:25:45] I mean the student loan, I, you know who I lay this at the feet of, I i aside from the fact that they made it so you can't bankrupt, you know, you can't declare bankruptcy, but it's also not securitized. Yeah. So somebody goes to get a student loan, we aren't saying, Hey mom and dad have to put up their car or their house or anything. Dan Crow my brother, put that out there. And I thought that was a really good point. But there's another side to this and it is that HR within large corporations are either lazy or lawsuit averse. I think probably lawsuit averse more than anything that what the way they do their hiring is they run it through computer systems that say this person has a degree, it's from, it's a master's degree, so that means they can make this much money. And by the way it was in these schools, so we're gonna put them at this rate right here, right this way. If they make it all the same for everyone, they can just look at where did you go to school and you know, what was your GPA and now they can offer you a salary and nobody can complain that you gave a bigger salary to one person and not another and you don't have to worry about lawsuits. So now you have this system where you can't discharge the debt so there's no risk to the borrower or to the person to the, to the person loaning out the money. And then the students really don't know and they don't have somebody saying like, Hey, you're gonna be responsible for all this money. And then they go out into the workplace and the only way they can get a job is if their slip of paper says that in the HR systems that they can get paid this amount. This is a terrible ticking time bomb that we have here.

Benjamin Anderson [01:27:12] Yeah. We've, I mean we, we bailed out one ticking time bomb 12 years ago and we've shifted the debt and like it's, it's, it's arguable whether the same problems are gonna creep up in housing. I think again too, like if, I mean if depending on like if you put eyes on or not, but here we've like shifted that same kind of core, some of like the same core like I guess problem structures over to like student debt where it's like people are like taking on, they're just taking on much more that they can chew without perception for something that it's like, well yeah, sure, I'll take that mortgage because I can get it for this house that I probably should not afford right now. And then like something happens because the economy tanks or whatever, it all comes collapsing down. Like what are we doing? What, what mobs are we gonna see in two or three months when like, people haven't been getting paid for however long, like pay the, the extra unemployment like stops whenever it stops. I don't, I don't know. 'cause I I think June or July, like they were doing the extra something a hundred dollars a month or something that's I guess been floating people. But yeah, when, when,

Vance Crowe [01:28:10] I haven't even kept track of that, you know, like eventually it got to the point where I was like, I, I know it's so much money and people are getting paid not to work, but there aren't jobs and I, I just, I just stopped knowing what was going on with it.

Benjamin Anderson [01:28:21] Yeah. Economically, like how many people are unemployed right now? How many people are floating off of a stimulus check and unemployment because it's being handed out like candy. And I mean, and I've got, I've I've got no, like I, we've, we got an SBA grant when we were, it was literally like a come to Jesus day where it was like, all right guys, we basically gotta pause wand for like, because we don't know when the world's gonna open back up. We can't afford to keep spending, you know, thousands of dollars a month to keep our lights on when we are like literally not allowed to do business. We we should shut down shop. And that was like the come to Jesus day and we got an SBA grant and we were like, all right, well we'll keep shop open, let's keep building a really, really cool product. So I've got like, it's, it's a hard give and take, but, well, I don't wanna say it's, it, it, it wasn't like wrong, but it's like once that stuff stops, I guess like now we've, now

Vance Crowe [01:29:05] You have to make different decisions.

Benjamin Anderson [01:29:07] D if

Vance Crowe [01:29:07] Given, given money, you make different decisions than the ones you would make.

Benjamin Anderson [01:29:10] Right.

Vance Crowe [01:29:10] So Ben, we're gonna wrap up, but I am very interested in hearing your Peter Teel paradox. So for people that have not heard this before, this is what is one thing that you believe is true that no one agrees with you on?

Benjamin Anderson [01:29:27] I don't wanna say nobody agrees with me on, because I hope that there's like some percentage of 380 something million people that would agree with me on it, but I really do, even if not, even if it's not factually based on like the current state of whatever, even though to a degree, I still think factually like I I think that America is the greatest country on earth. That would probably be my Peter Teel para box.

Vance Crowe [01:29:49] Oh, that's some bullshit. That's a bullshit Peter Teel answer. That's

Benjamin Anderson [01:29:52] A bullshit. That's not a bullshit Peter Teel answer. It's if you, I mean, hmm. I'm trying to think of something else that I would think that like nobody would agree with me on, but I really,

Vance Crowe [01:29:59] Here's what I, here's mine. This is, I just thought of this today while we were talking. I think my, so everybody has heard mine, I think Missouri ought to be sitting, waiting with a pile of cash to buy East St. Louis all the way past Cahokia mounds and bring it into Missouri as, as soon as Illinois needs to sell it. So that one I've already done, but the one that I'm starting to think now is why don't we just put universities on hold for a year? Why don't we just, just shut 'em down? They, they're, they're fine. We'll, we'll just, we'll figure out what it's like if we go a year without stacking on student loan debt for everybody, you know, they haven't been working. There's put a lot of people outta work, but frankly for the amount of debt that those people are being paid by, it might help us sort some things out. So why don't we just stop universities for a year, see where we come out, see what opportunities arise, see what corporations start doing in order to be able to hire top talent because they need those people and they're not able to just use the paper factory that's coming out the backend and let, let's just see how the US works if we stop the academic process for a year.

Benjamin Anderson [01:31:02] That's interesting. Yeah, for sure. Like, we'll we've

Vance Crowe [01:31:07] Gotta stop the let loan debt, we have to stop it. This is, this is the, I think the most dangerous thing in the United States right now is debt. People

Benjamin Anderson [01:31:13] Would, people would do something. And I guess that goes to, I guess to like explain my answer while like addressing yours. Also, part of the reason I think that like is because like our, our metrics here for like highest achievement are better than anywhere else in the world. Like paired with Canada. Like there's a 40% chance you make it into the top 10%, there's a 10% chance you make it into the 1% and then, oh,

Vance Crowe [01:31:34] You're saying on your America answer in that people right now are saying America's terrible, but you're saying

Benjamin Anderson [01:31:38] Yes,

Vance Crowe [01:31:39] Wait a second. That

Benjamin Anderson [01:31:40] That's

Vance Crowe [01:31:41] What I, if you're born in the lower class, you have a 40% chance of making it all the way up into the top 10%. Yeah.

Benjamin Anderson [01:31:46] Like if you're, you're, if you're at the bottom of the rocks, like you've got more net potential here than anywhere else in the world. That's, I mean, and that's one of two things. Like I was, I just finished a really good book today. I'd recommend the brain that changes itself. My sister got it for me for my birthday, but in it they talk about the differences of like why we think that way versus maybe in like eastern culture. And it's because we, and no, no answer is right or wrong, but they study how people like look at, you know, fish, whatever, like they had, they had their reasons, but the they conclusion was is that we view in infinite amount of like, like progression potential for the individual, I guess, if that makes sense. Like, I guess for like lack of a better way of framing it. Like he probably explains it better in the book, like definitely explains it better in the book. But yeah, like our, our like individual motive for achievement is much higher and that individual motive for achievement, like spreads value to everybody else who's able to, I don't wanna say leach, but I mean basically like ride the curtails of others, like on their journey to, on their hero's journeys, people being able to like enable each other to interact spontaneously and serendipitously in communities because of like, and that's where I was saying like if it, even if it's not factually the best country in the world, like in terms of optics, because we were raised with the mentality like people are taking to the streets and saying something because they've been raised with the mentality that their voice matters, maybe to a point of, to a point sometimes of overcompensation, like I've seen, like some like thought leaders suggest, but people are in the streets marching and saying something because they've been raised in a place where they've like, made, made it like where they have not just that, right, but like mentally they believe that their voice matters.

Benjamin Anderson [01:33:31] Like what they say matters. And it's true. Like every individual voice does matter. And like we've been raised with that ingrained in our culture and our society since youth, you know, I think that's probably one of the most powerful. But I guess to

Vance Crowe [01:33:46] All right, I take it back. I take it back. Your whole answer was not bullshit. I it at first. Thank

Benjamin Anderson [01:33:51] You.

Vance Crowe [01:33:51] It sounded like a cop out. But I'm, I'm, I, I, I think you're right. I think, I think that it's a great way to look at the protesters do feel like they're important and, and maybe they take it too far or they, they go, you know, and they break things and that's too much. But at the same time, are you sure you'd even know there were protesters if they weren't breaking things?

Benjamin Anderson [01:34:11] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [01:34:11] And like on some level you have to say like, all right, well what does that mean? And I think that all we can do is keep trying to explore it. And the one, the exploration that I keep coming down to is, my guess is there's a whole lot of people with a whole lot of debt down at those places. And if you've ever been in debt, you can understand that no matter how you got there, it's, it's not a good feeling. And, and we as a society are not better off by having people be in super indebted, as Lyle put it, the university became the company store for, for people that would become indebted, that now have to pay part of their earnings to this university that didn't, didn't provide them something of, of commensurate value.

Benjamin Anderson [01:34:49] Right? Yeah. I mean if that's, like I've, I, I took, I mean, I took, I took a year off and it like the amount of creative output that, like you're kind of, it's like that same experiment or experiential experimental period that you feel you're endowed to after you're out of like the womb of like a high school period. If we could facilitate that same period but without the limitations of, well, just the debt limitations. A but like what, what would you do if you, if you gave that would be an interesting like thing to

Vance Crowe [01:35:17] Play with. Well that's, you know what, that's the commitment I could make on my classes. I will make classes as, as often as I can and put them into the network that would make it so you do not need to go to college to become a communicator. And it won't just mean me. I'll find other people that can teach classes that I can't teach. 'cause there's a lot about communications I'm not an expert on, but the, the education that I got with regards to communications, I think people are spending way too much money for it. And they could be doing a lot better with people that are real practitioners as opposed to, I don't know, tenured professors. Yeah.

Benjamin Anderson [01:35:51] Because how much will like, use the terminology like sweat equity, how much sec how much sweat equity can you accumulate in four years of like aggressive execution, experiential apprenticeship stuff like what we're putting together. Like if you had the same free time and it, it takes an, it takes, I think that's the separation is maybe, maybe, maybe not if the culture changed enough, like the, the individual discipline and incentive to pursue that education and that experience and those apprenticeships and that knowledge because there's, there's probably more of a component of the self-learning, like in like an Articulate Ventures network than if you're like in a classroom with a grade and that grade has to be put on a piece of paper after four years to say how good you did during all this experiential learning, right?

Vance Crowe [01:36:31] Yeah, that's right. And that, and that sweat equity is everything. Like I learned how to do construction by getting way underpaid, but then I also learned all these other skills and Aliya Lee, the intern that, that I work with, that we work with, you know, he one time made the comment, I wanna do more work than the amount of time that I wanna take more work off of your plate than the amount of time it takes you to talk with me every day. And so, like you think about that and it's like, Hey man, if you, if you take a half hour of me doing grunt work out of my way, then I will definitely spend a half hour telling you about anything you wanna know about and like the work that you have. I'll make sure that by the time you're done with it, you know now how to do something that's gonna help you. I remember when I did my internship, they had me clipping out newspaper clippings and, and gluing them in to this board. Now I'm sure there was a lot of value, but when you've done this, this is the only job I basically did for about four months. And you could look at it and be like, well I'm gonna cut these things as straight as I can. I'm gonna glue this thing down as best I can. But in today's day and age, there's a lot of skills that an intern can bring to an organization where their newness, their, their way of looking at the world is actually a thing that brings the entire company value. 'cause this guy has been figuring it out while, while digging around in the world just like you are. I mean that's why you're so valuable because you weren't just indoctrinated with, I'll show up to work and they'll hand me a to-do list and then I'll do that to-do list and then I'll get to go home with my paycheck. You are like, if I don't create something new from nothing, nothing gets created and I don't get paid.

Benjamin Anderson [01:38:04] Right? Yeah. There's a certain level of necessity there that like takes form. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [01:38:08] Well Ben, this has been fantastic. Thank you for jumping in on this interview. I am so excited to see Juan take off. If people wanted to download the app so they can find out if somebody can clean their Airbnb or their house, how would they do that?

Benjamin Anderson [01:38:24] Check us out. Android or the App store? We're probably like third to like fifth result. Neither of those right now we're climbing up, we're active in St. Louis and Denver. Just search wand, it's all capitals. Easily find housekeepers and if you download our current version, stay tuned in about two weeks, we're gonna have killer update. I can't wait to show the world.

Vance Crowe [01:38:43] And if you want to talk with Ben Moore, we will be, you know, in that Articulate Ventures network. So if you're interested in signing up for that, we're gonna let people in in Waves. I'm not sure if the first wave, it might be full. I don't know. We gotta figure this out. So if you're interested, just go into the show notes, check it out. There'll be a link to sign up your email and say, Hey, I want to be invited when this all gets started. So Ben, thanks so much. Have safe travels this weekend.

Benjamin Anderson [01:39:08] Pleasure brother. Talk to you later. Ah.