Ben Anderson | The Vance Crowe Podcast | Episode 43

Vance Crowe [00:00:00] Like last time I was up there, I was like, what the F am I doing up here? Knowing where I was at in life at that point, like I didn't have anything to lose but my life. This is Jordan Gaul, a senior communications associate living in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and you are listening to the Vance Crowe podcast. Welcome back to the podcast. I'm glad you're here. This week I did an interview with a man named Ben Anderson, a 21-year-old kid who has dropped outta college and started his own web app company. And I'll let him tell you all about it. But I can say that this interview and the conversations with people like Ben Anderson and AJ Reeves, who I had on a few weeks ago, is what is prompting me to believe that the media is entirely wrong about the future and young people today. Because I keep meeting people that are pushing the envelope, that are thinking about the world more deeply than I was at their age, and in a lot of ways more deeply than I even do right now. So I am so excited to put forward this interview because Ben is the kind of person that seems to understand what his capabilities are, what his ego will prevent him from being able to do if he listens to it too much, and has just a way of explaining and thinking about ideas that are refreshing. And that changed my opinion on many, many things.

Vance Crowe [00:01:31] I met Ben at an event that St. Louis Bank put on with a group called Launch Code here in St. Louis, and I definitely underestimated him. He showed up and he's wearing a suit, but it's not that nice and it doesn't fit very well. And he's got his hair in a ponytail, and he's so much younger than everybody else that I just thought, who is this kid? But the more that I began to talk with him, the more I thought, oh, this is a kid I wanna give a helping hand to. And so we ended up going on a long road trip together, and we weren't very long into the road trip that I realized you may not be the mentor here, Vance. You may actually be the one learning from this young guy. And we got to spend a ton of time together, had some really interesting experiences. He was driving me to an event called Women Managing the Farm, which someday I'll tell the story about that event and how special it was to me and yeah, how that whole thing played out. But that's not for today. That's for another time. And just a few minutes I'll get to that interview. But I have a couple of things that I want to give you a heads up about. The first one is that you're gonna hear Ben and I talk about the concept of the Damon. Now, this entire podcast is filled with philosophy and life experiences and mistakes. It's an interesting conversation, but you'll hear us keep referencing this concept of the Damon. And if it's confusing to you or this makes you curious, I'm gonna leave a a link in the show notes to a video that explains this concept of the Damon.

Vance Crowe [00:03:06] And the video is called How to Find Your Purpose and the Psychology of the Damon. And it's put out on a YouTube channel called Academy of Ideas. I have been inhaling the Academy of Ideas videos. They are primers for psychology and philosophy, and oftentimes I find some video that I like and then I dive more deeply with a book. If you're interested in hearing about this concept about the Damon, that video's about 10 minutes long. I've shared it both on Twitter and with some of my closest friends, and even my wife and all of us have taken something away from it. And it has prompted really good conversations, both with other people and really with myself. So if you're wondering what we're talking about with regards to the Damon, go check that out. How to find purpose and psych and the psychology of the Damon. The next thing I wanted to bring up was this weekend. My brother Dan Crow, who goes by at whole deal on Twitter, he and I hopped in the car and we drove a few hours to go meet some other podcast listeners, the Ring Brothers, Joseph and Michael Ring, who run a feedlot up in Northern Illinois. And this was a fascinating and profound experience, and I am so glad that I did it because you see people out on Twitter, you have good interactions. It's people that are involved in the book club and just, you know that they're out there doing things, but sometimes you don't take the time to think, can I just dedicate a a weekend or an afternoon to going and meeting these people that I meet in the social world?

Vance Crowe [00:04:41] Can I go meet them in reality? And I have to say that this experience, along with other experiences that I've had in the past was really good. And it was an added an element of chaos, the unexpected to my life. And I think my brother's life that we did not anticipate. And it prompted conversations about topics we had not thought of. It shined a light on subjects that I really didn't know that much about, and it gave me a chance to go see what they do for work. They are feedlot operators. They are custom feedlot managers, and they know how to take care of cattle, how to feed them the right rations, how to take care of them when they're sick, how to even identify when a cow is sick, when it's in a pen of 60 other cattle. So I want to encourage all of you that are listening that if you find the right circumstance and you wanna be careful and you wanna make sure you're not diving into something too deeply with strangers, but if you get a chance to go meet up with some of the people that you know are listeners of the show or are involved in the book club, go take it. You do not know what will happen, and it's gonna build bonds with somebody else that is interested in the same things that you're interested in. They're, they've heard the same interviews, they've looked up the same books, they're sharing the same kind of videos. These are your people, the other people that are listening to the podcast. And I highly recommend finding ones that you can connect with. Go get coffee with them, go visit their work, go find out a way to build a connection that's not just that you see on a screen, but that you know them in real life.

Vance Crowe [00:06:17] I am really grateful that Michael and Joseph gave of their time. I know Saturdays are busy days for them. They gave up time with their families and time with their work and showed us all around. And I, for one, felt like I was a much better person having left them. So if you're interested, I highly recommend following both Joseph and Michael. Joseph goes by Joseph Ring, and then the number four, Joseph Ring four on Twitter, and then Michael goes by ring Michael J on Twitter. And then of course, my brother at whole deal, Dan Crow. He's a geothermal, well drilling company that he runs and he has very interesting perspective and he's just now getting into social media. So if you're trying to meet other people, Dan is always open to hearing what other people are up to. He's, he's a, he's a good dude on Twitter. Finally, the last thing I wanted to mention is that I will be giving a talk on March 31st at the North American Meat Institute's Meat Industry Summit in San Antonio, Texas. I am particularly excited about delivering this talk because they actually invited me. The, the nami, the North American Meat Institute invited me to one of their events a few months ago with the people that are charged with the safety and humane treatment of animals in processing facilities. They like the talk that I gave so much that they said, we want you to come and deliver that same talk only we want you to do it at this Meat Industry summit, which has CEOs and executives of meat packers, processors and supply companies.

Vance Crowe [00:07:50] And there's something really fulfilling about somebody saying, we really liked what you did right here, and we want you to replicate it over here. And I also think that this is an interesting event. You know, the meat industry, the processors, packers, supply companies are a central node in how Western civilization eats and how we fuel ourselves and how we become the nation that we are. And it's an opportunity to talk with them about how do we tell our story about who we are, the value of what we provide, how much better things are getting when the general public is often told really terrible things about the meat industry. So this is a great chance for me to speak before these people that are central nodes in the food system, but it's also a good chance for me to learn about some of their insecurities and the challenges that they're facing. If, if you are interested, you can check out more about the Meat Industries Conference if you go to meat institute.org/events. So definitely check that out. Okay, I'm gonna go to the interview with Ben Anderson. I am so glad you're here and I hope that you take some time, find some people on Twitter that you enjoy talking with and see if you can't plan a trip so that you can meet them off of the social world and in reality. So without further ado, Mr. Ben Anderson. Ben Anderson, welcome to the podcast. Hey, thank you.

Vance Crowe [00:09:21] You know, you are a rare person because I had known you for probably all of 15 minutes, and then I sent you a text message maybe a week after we had met and said, I need somebody to drive me to Kansas, to Manhattan, Kansas. Would you wanna go with me? And you said yes. And so you agreed to at least 10 hours in the car plus, you know, 24 hours or whatever. We were at K State University given this talk, why in the world did you say yes? I'll, I'll call you out first because you emailed me the next day, and it was two or three days later after we went back and forth, like twice that you asked me. Okay, so you didn't even wait a week. Fair enough. We Didn't do dinner first, nothing. But my, and I, I think I told you this, is that like my rationale in a situation like that where meeting a meeting at an event of that caliber, I didn't know who you were, of course I Googled you, et cetera, but to get an email asking to drive you to Kansas under any circumstances, it's one of those I don't regret really anything I think in my past, but I don't want to think about things that I could have done that I elected not to with a oh man, what could have happened there type scenario. So yeah, I, like I said, I only had one meeting that day, pushed it off and it was like, yeah, no brainer. Well, it, it was amazing. You know, I knew that you had started your own company up, but I did not really understand your backstory, and I don't think we were more than like 10 minutes into the ride.

Vance Crowe [00:10:54] And I was like, I don't know why this is happening, that this guy is the guy driving me. But this seems like divine intervention because we had a fantastic time. So why don't you talk a little bit about what you do. You are a college dropout that runs their own app company, it sounds like crazy person talk. Yeah, it's, it's, yeah, it it, and it seems like crazy person times most of the time when going about the day-to-day, I guess. Yeah, I, I moved back to, or not back to St. Louis. I lived in Missouri. I moved back to Missouri to go to WashU and I was there studying biomedical engineering. And that wasn't exactly complimentary with a tech startup that was beginning to gain some traction. So once it became clear that like a priority kind of had to be latched onto, then made, made the not easy decision, but made, made the clear decision at the time, time to kind of pivot outta school for a little bit and focus full-time on this. It's, How far into your schooling did you get? A, a semester. A Semester. A semester taking like some ala carte classes and floating around, figuring out like if BME was even what I wanted to go degree wise for. And yeah, second, technically second time I think defer or not, I think second time deferring at WashU. I was enrolled three years ago, but didn't end up falling through then either for a different business, but, So you had been in school then left it and went and started another company.

Vance Crowe [00:12:26] What'd your company do? The, so the first one, I never even made it into Wash UI had applied and I graduated high school a little bit early. And How early It's semester early. Okay. So I graduated the December before getting out. All right. But, and I think we talked about this maybe a little bit. My, my buddy and I, we, we, we had been watching a show called Nathan for you on Comedy Central and got a real kick out of it. And Kai had kind of had like a, like a vocal meditation session with each other in the gym one day about how if we were to sell air, how would we go about selling air? And we determined that we would test indoor air quality and sell air purification systems. So we ran with that. Really? Yeah. And So, okay, you and I had this conversation and I remember when you told me this part of it, I actually started to get a little, like, like wary. I was like, okay, this is a guy that wants to sell air, and then he does, you go out and your company was relatively successful, you sold these devices, but when you gave me your background, I was like, all right. That's that's a fair point. That's that's, that was a legitimate business. So tell me a little bit more about what you're doing. About what I'm doing now? No, no. Your air quality, your, your selling air business. We, I Mean it makes you sound like a dick. Yeah, no, no, no. And I, and a lot of times I think I am a dick, but it depends on like what and, and what, when you're put in reference to something, I mean, I'm, I'm not a dick, but I mean, when yeah, if with something like that we kind of aggressively just decided to pursue that idea maybe.

Vance Crowe [00:14:03] And in, in terms of like why it would maybe seem dickish just to, just to keep harping on the word dick and get past it at that time was we, we like thought about like the relative scale of like, this is the worst possible quality of air and this is the best possible quality of air. And so that we could push ourselves up against that betterment side. We were like, we need to partner with the best company out there so that we can take, because the, like the relative indoor air quality, it's like it's hovering towards the better side and like went and put in reference to like the absolute worst of course. Like it's objectively good. So we had to find a product that would push further along to the other side of that. So we would go in and test the air quality for free. That was the whole like, you know, door to door, like, how can we get in here and get somebody to make a decision? It's free under our quality test. We will show you what your air is right now, we will bring in our unit and we will show you what it could be. So then that's where it's like you could teeter the line of like, what was we, we threw around the term snake oil a lot whenever we were driving. And I don't think at any point we were snake oil salesmen because at the end of the day we were improving their overall situation in terms of like their equality inside their homes. But yeah, you Know, if I, so I happen to know a woman that oversees the grantees of the Sloan Foundation. Sure. And one of the big grantees they did was testing air quality. Yeah. And, and what kind of correlations they're coming up with with various, like challenges, asthma for children, all all different kinds of things.

Vance Crowe [00:15:41] And she legitimately was like, everyone I meet, I tell them, get an air purifier. See point. If I had not met her, I would've thought that you're, because the way you framed it, right? Yeah. You Were like, you know, what are we, what could we sell? Let's go sell air. I mean, it sounds like a high school prank idea that then you turn real. But I do actually think that there's, there's value there and It, it very much was at the time our mentality. And then that's where kind of like going down sometimes. And I feel like we even did the same thing to a degree with wand. Like found the problem statement with and kind of overemphasized the pain point. And then as we were going down the journey of building that business, really finding out like how much validity there was behind that pain point to actually like become passionate about it along the way outside of kind of like our initial ideation. So, and yeah, Airtech was a great, great case in point for that happening. Or really, I guess the first time that it happened for, I mean, There's only a certain kind of person that can do that. I mean, like that, I, I wouldn't recommend that le that way of thinking about starting most businesses. But you have, you know, I talk about the big five personality test all the time. And there's one of, are you familiar with it? Like It's the, the big five is that, I don't know, the big five Five introversion and extroversion Sure. Openness to new ideas, agreeableness trait neuroticism, which is like, how likely are you to have an emotional reaction to things? And then industriousness. So industriousness is like, how likely are you if you start a project to, to finish it?

Vance Crowe [00:17:15] Right? And they break down into subcategories, but they're really interesting. Most of the time I am one of the more open people when you look at that openness scale and you say like, you know, who in the room is the furthest on this distribution, and that means that you're inspired by ideas. Music can kick things off in your head. You, you know, going to see art sparks things with you. I think you might be a couple standard deviations beyond me on openness and I'm pretty open. So are you inspired by art and stuff? I mean, the, the way that you come up with these ideas is way different than other people. I grew an appreciation for art. I would say probably more so after like way after that fact. It was after coming to St. Louis that I started to really appreciate art, like having access to our free museums and stuff rolling in there and kind of, well it was our mutual friend like Jared, he, he related one of the first times we sat there, Jared hol Jared you're talking about? Yeah. Jared. Yeah. Give him the full shout out. Yeah. He deserves It. Yeah. Yeah. He's the man. 100%. 100%. But he told me one of the times we sat down, he had just seen at Eternities Gate with Wilm Defoe where he plays Vince Van Gogh and we were talking about like kind of the parallelism between art and entrepreneurship. And once that dot was kind of tied for me, like seeing where, and then we, like I said, my favorite word is gall, right?

Vance Crowe [00:18:46] Like sometimes in art, I think especially, it's not necessarily about the creative instinct or like what you're putting out there being objectively good or whatever. It's having the gall to put paintbrush to canvas and just kind of move it around until something comes together and you have that gall to put it out into the world and say, this is my piece, tell me what you think. And when it elicits emotion in people, then that's, that's the beauty of art. And like going around and seeing that in like art, like in museums and stuff, like trying to figure out what emotion the artist wanted to elicit versus what is actually being elicited. And then tying that back to entrepreneurship. It's like the initial gall of having, you know, that Desire A All Yeah, exactly. I, I have something to sell you. Yeah. I have something to sell you and I need to just kind of put boot to ground and move forward until it's sold. I guess for lack of a better rap to that Analogy. That is fantastic. I had never made that connection. And I've been diving deep in art lately. Like I, I feel like during different people's lives they kind of hit these various renaissance periods, kinda like a wave. Sometimes you're really into it. And then other times it's not so much. And for a, for a long time music was really important to me, so I was just absorbing as much as I could. Sure. But lately I've been looking at art and in particular the St. Louis Art Museum. And I was walking through the museum first with my wife just, just on Saturday.

Vance Crowe [00:20:19] And she goes in to see Monet's water lilies, and we have like a national treasure in, in our art museum that we have a giant Monet and it's the water lilies and my wife can stare at it and it immediately makes her happy. It makes her feel warm and safe and you know, she just loves it and she can stare at it for a long time. And then I was there yesterday for lunch and I got done with lunch and I was like, all right, well I'm gonna walk through the museum and just go see the Monet. And there were all these kids in there and they were like first grade or second grade maybe. And it was astounding to me because I, I don't know when water lilies was painted a hundred years ago, maybe I Know nothing. So these children are sitting there and some of them are totally entrenched by it. I mean, there's kids running around and talking and making noise and doing all kinds of stuff, but there are a couple of kids that they're just staring at the picture. And you think an artist had some sensation, some voice, some feeling something that they were able to put an idea out there that was so close to the human experience that it can capture my wife all the way down to a little child. Yeah. It's amazing. Yeah. I, yeah, and I have, I have no developing thought on that. And in terms of, yeah, what, how it elicits on, 'cause the, you're kind of broad framing that idea.

Vance Crowe [00:21:50] It sounds like, like this is objectively you're insinuating that that piece of art is objectively good or that there's an objective response from youth to like present age that that piece was meant to elicit. There's some level of mastery that when you achieve it, I, I'm coming to the conclusion that this Jungian idea of like an archetypal sensation or feeling or something can be placed out into the world and it can transcend time. And I mean, whether you put a put it like a polarity on it, like good or bad, I don't, I don't know. But I know that that painting will be, it will capture people's attention for hundreds if not thousands of more years. And that to me is amazing. Like, how is that possible that it doesn't matter what age we're in, it's still gonna capture people Right. With people. And do you think they're capturing people with that specific archetype or it's like the objective captivation of like that piece or I guess dive deeper into that. I mean, I really don't know. I'm, I, so I I I say this video before you came over, which was talking about the inner Damon that people have. Yeah. And, And just to give a quick description of it, and this is like a ham-fisted version, but my understanding of the Damon is all of us, every single person has a voice down inside of us that wants to be expressed in some way. Some people can hear it, some people can feel it. And it's that guiding principle that tells you this is who you are.

Vance Crowe [00:23:24] And if, if you don't cover over it, if you don't try and push down that voice and ignore it, you will go to do some dangerous or wild things. And yet it will bring you closer and closer to your purpose and the people that get close enough to their purpose. Because as you get better, that's mastery, right? It, it, the way you hear the voice better is you just keep working on your art over and over and over again. And eventually you strip away the parts of your life that aren't that voice and then it allows you to create something that, that Yeah. Transcends time. Yeah. What do you think? Do you have a Damon? Do you hear a voice? Oh, 100%. Yeah. I mean I, I, yeah, I think, I think that's like not, I don't know. 'cause I hear my voice and I also don't hear my voice. One of the, and I think I, I think it was one of the books I told you to read that I've just finished. I wish I remembered the author's name so I could shout it out. But the book was called Shadow Dance. And I've been trying to get more into like the, the shadow integration side of like union kind of study to elicit that sort of creativity. Because I think like something for me is like, I think, I think in a lot of ways, I mean I'm creative with business, but in a lot of ways I'm not creative. So I've like tried to go outside of like my standard path to elicit more of that creativity. And then I guess getting into the shadow stuff, I 100% I think that everybody has that aspect, but I think that there's a problem in today's world of wanting to instead of integrate that Damon, that shadow, whatever term you wanna put on it, that like sin whatever and integrate it into an acknowledgement of your full self and take pride in Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:25:08] Yeah, go ahead. Lemme Pause you in there. When you talk about a shadow, I have a sense of what you mean, but if you were gonna describe this to somebody that had never heard this idea before, how would you describe it? The, the shadow. The shadow is my impulsive, I don't even know if negativity, I'd wanna put the term negativity on it, I guess like impulsively, but I don't even know if it's negative. It's just the, like if I, if I wake up and I don't want to get up, like that's my impulsive decision of like not wanting to get up. And I think it's like those, those impulsive, those impulsive urges that we overcome on a daily basis, I think is maybe how I would define the shadow. Is it your, is it your natural desires? Is it, and, and it's without polarity, it's without somebody telling you this is good or this is bad. If you just took, or, or you had the power to take what you wanted that your shadow would have weight. Right. It that's like, I'm not who, I'm not even sure who says this, this is young, this is me describing probably Dr. Jordan Peterson. Sure. Describing young, but your shadow is what gives your, your soul weight, right? It's the thing that you are a good person only if you are capable of doing bad and you choose not to. Right. Which is kind of like where I was. And I think that's where the problem statement comes in, in terms of like today, well, not even like, you know, societal problems, whatever. But I think that's one of the issues in today's world is we're not acknowledging our potential for abuse of power. We are trying to lean farther to the other side where we insinuate that we don't have that capacity for abuse at all.

Vance Crowe [00:26:43] Like people saying, oh, I am, you know, benevolently all good and I don't have that part of me in me. But if you don't acknowledge that and take pride in overcoming that at like your conscious level of expression, then I think, I don't know, if I had to pick one of those two avenues, I would rather be conscious of my potential for abuse and bad than blissfully ignorant to the fact that it's there and operating at like the highest level of that hierarchy. And assuming I don't, I Mean I, I completely understand that because if you think of yourself as a person that can't do bad, then what you end up doing is you justify all these other things to yourself. You say, well, I'm not a bad person, but I'm gonna take this detour or I'm gonna take advantage in this situation, or I'm gonna do this negative thing. Because if you've come to the conclusion that either there is no objectively good or bad person or, and or maybe subjectively even, but, but, or that you have somehow transcended this because of your deep reasoning skills or your intellect or just your niceness, Then You are actually missing out on a huge percentage of, of your ability to exist to understand the world around you. Right. Which I think goes back to that video you sent me to go back to that in terms of like how to express mastery and purpose. Because if you think, if you think of like the persona of the person who's blocking out that 50% of you know their themselves really and only operating in that ladder or that ladder 50%, then they're shutting off all of the positive potential that can flow through from that side of themselves as well.

Vance Crowe [00:28:29] And I think that that's where like in, like in in, in that video you sent me, they talk about integrating the Damon to ex or to find purpose or to express mastery because it's only when you're able to integrate that full sense of self and then move confidently forward with the full acknowledgement of your full potential, that you're able to express that mastery and find that purpose and operate as close to, you know, that inner drive. You know, that that voice of creativity, and this is what I should be doing as possible. I think a person that podcast my listeners would know about is a guy named Jason Bachman who runs Strange Donuts. I don't know if you heard that interview, but in the interview he comes on, I didn't know him very well at all. Like we'd seen each other at the gym and I'd been like, Hey man. But he's like huge. So I I'm kinda like, Hey Jason. And he's like, Hey, what's up? He is a fascinating guy because he runs this donut shop and he has a 2% turnover of employees every year. Like the ordinary restaurant has 130%. Yeah. So I have him on the podcast and we're sitting here talking and I eventually say, how do you have this 2% turnover rate? Like, what's going on there? And he goes, well, you know, I had kind of a rough life going on when I was a kid, and so I think I know what people are going through so I know how to treat him right. And I'm like, what do you mean you had kinda a rough time? He was like, oh, I got in some trouble. I'm like, what do you mean trouble like smoking behind the high school or what?

Vance Crowe [00:30:01] And he was like, no, when I was 14 years old, I was an enforcer at a crack house. And he tells the story of going all the way to being sentenced to prison. And a judge at the very last minute granted him clemency mercy. And so he decides on his walk home from there that he's gonna change his life. But he is this huge hulking guy that has seen the darker side of the world, gone all the way to the edge. He has stories of being in jail and having all these things he is capable of doing bad and he knows it, but he chooses not to. And now he's like the most amazing person to be around because he doesn't have any pretenses. He's not, he's not trying to be somebody that he's not. His persona, his mask is, is totally taken off. I think that's describing what you're saying. No, totally. And I, I, I would totally agree, which I guess calls back to like that, that that broader problem of so many people like moving through their walks of life, assuming that they don't have that aspect of themselves and that potential and looking, and then that's where it goes beyond being an issue, like a personal issue of insinuating like your blissful ignorance that you don't have that, but looking to others and thinking of them as those, like those binary creatures, it's like, oh, this guy is either bad or good versus it sounds like if I had to, and I'd love to talk with him about this, if I had to put myself like in his head, I would insinuate knowing that he's got that side of himself for whatever, he's able to look at others and look past their negativities.

Vance Crowe [00:31:33] Because it's that dichotomy that you've got the potential for both to not judge somebody by their overexpression of one or the other, but just to kind of broad frame. Yeah. And it probably, if You can See both sides and you don't just reject one or say you're completely rejected because you have this one, then you're able to look at the best in people and bring it out in them and not naively Sure. You're doing it in a way of saying like, as I make you more powerful, as I make you stronger, as I build you up, your capacity to do evil goes up. But it also is the, is the place for good. Right? No, totally. Yeah. I don't even remember how we got here, but the, the, the shadow concept is one that I, it has really helped me start to understand that you're, you're wasting your time if you don't take a full look at yourself. And it that, I think that's one of the things that I got from journaling because if you ever start to be actually honest with yourself in your journal, not like, Hey, I'm writing this journal and someday maybe I'll be Ben Franklin and somebody's gonna go back and read this, but you actually write down, this is where I fell down, this is where I miss the mark. Your world starts to change, Right? You gotta write down not with that like arrogant mindset of like, oh, what if somebody reads this someday? Am I gonna feel vulnerable? Like if somebody reads my, you know, like whatever happened, what's today, like February 20th, like me stumbling here?

Vance Crowe [00:33:05] Like if you are trying to lie to yourself in your journal, like that's almost the first, that's the first level of like altering your persona because of ego as you're like expressing yourself out in the world. Like if you can't put down your true self and your true thoughts in your journal, like that's the first layer outside of yourself, then There's nowhere you can Then there's nowhere you can, You'll never be able To be Connected with a spouse. You'll never, I mean your best friend and you will have way more distance because you're exactly right. If you can't find a way to articulate it to yourself. And, and this is is something Dr. Peterson said, you don't know what you think until you say it out loud, right? And So you go to write stuff down in your journal and you're like, whoa, I didn't, I didn't know I thought that. Right? Do I think that who, who wrote that? Was that me? Right? And people may be sitting there saying like, no, that doesn't really happen, but try it. Yeah, 100%. Like you are, you're, you are not, what's what's the saying? Yeah. You're not your thoughts, actions, or emotions. Right? And like whenever you're putting, whenever you're putting those things to paper, you get to kind of zoom out and be like, whoa, where did that thought come from? Right? Yeah. And that's, you know, when you try and meditate and you realize how much of your day you spent bombarded with thoughts. Yeah. That The act of trying to clear your mind and just not focus on your to-do list or what happened in that fight last night or what you're planning on doing this weekend.

Vance Crowe [00:34:36] But if instead you try and say, anytime there's a thought, I'm just gonna focus on my breath, I'm gonna have my mind be clear. It becomes, it becomes very obvious how much of your life you spend having these voices bounce around in your head that you don't control and you can't turn off. Right. And like where, where there's a separation between where you go during that meditative state versus where those voices are coming from is, yeah. Oh Man, that's pretty deep. What do you mean? Tell me more In terms of like how, and we touched on this a little bit, like in the car in terms of like how you as yourself or like where that point is we go when we meditate, how that expresses itself through those voices. That's those voices being like the ego, you know, like, and that being a separation from your truest expression of yourself and how close or far apart those two things are from each other, from each other can have a direct impact on, I think at least maybe controversially the authenticity that you have whenever you're moving throughout the world and the impact that you have the potential to make on other people. You have very low ego, like by the time we were, I mean I, I'm sure everybody's got their own ego to deal with, but I had never met a person that we had known each other for, I don't know, maybe an hour or two. And you were very, very open to like feedback and understanding and like, what am I reflecting to you that you can reflect back?

Vance Crowe [00:36:07] To me? It was a really amazing experience to be around a person that's like, let's just talk. I don't, you know, there's no right or wrong answer here. Let's just talk, Right? Because there is no right or wrong answer. And it's kind of like, yeah, I I that there's a lot of people that may or may not hear this and like disagree that I have more ego because, and then that was a, it was a problem. I think I probably had that I overcame after a certain point of like consciously working on that side of myself. But once kind of going down that track, I realized the value that can come whenever you start to ignore that ego as an aspect of your true self. So being able, when You say the ego, what do you mean? The, i when I say the ego, I'm talking, I, I'm meaning, I'm meaning my, that voice, my thoughts sometimes my actions and really my emotions. Like what's, what's the instinctual emotion? Like on my way over here, I did a, on my way over here, I thought about it and I thought it might come up. So I'm gonna go ahead and tell the story anyways. 'cause I think it was meant to, on my way over here, I had to turn around on, I don't remember the road 'cause I took a wrong turn off of 64 and I'm at the stoplight like literally probably two blocks from this house. I had to turn around and this dude knocks on my window, he's fuming. He's like, Hey, you ever turn around my driveway again? I've got your license plate. And I was like, here. And then that was one of those times where I'm like, okay, I'm, this whole like burst of anger is about to come up through me.

Vance Crowe [00:37:39] And I had to like really like consciously separate that ego I think from myself and that like, what am I gonna do? Yell back at this guy? I'm like, okay, next time I'm needing to specifically turn around on whatever this road is called, I'll like, make sure not to do it in your driveway versus like that that spew back that impulsivity. I guess to wrap that thought and conclude your question, I think that's the ego, like those aspects of yourself, the Ego that wants to watch you snap back at him and get a point on the cosmic scale. Yeah, Exactly. Or have a better story, Right? Yeah. Like one up, one up through anger or one up through action or one up through, you know, anything really. Like how, how am I ego is like, how am I better than you really? And like in comparison versus like, we're all the same. I I know that, so you and I both talk had a similar experience, although at different times you lost a bunch of weight when you were in high school and I lost a bunch of weight when I was in my thirties. And I think doing something as monumental as losing weight and keeping it off is, is, I mean, almost entirely a mission of the, of the psyche or you know, like you're really just, it's, it's, it's not a war on the surface where you're eating the food. It's a war much deeper. And I remember when I first started to have success at, at losing weight, I started looking at anybody else that I deemed to be not not as good as me, to be like, absolute failures.

Vance Crowe [00:39:10] There's, they're gross. Like they're not doing it. They have no discipline. And then one day it clicked, like everything that you see in them that you don't like is actually something you are afraid to see in yourself. Yep. And once you have that and you can actually let it go, and it takes a while, right? Because you keep having these thoughts sneak in and you're like, no, no, no, but that person's really disgusting 'cause they don't have this level of discipline or they're weak. Once you start to absorb that, then you, that's integrating your shadow in a way, right? Because then it starts no, You hit, you hit the nail on the head. Like one of the main points of that book is like, you know, seeing, seeing things and things you criticize like outside yourself or things that you're afraid to acknowledge within yourself. But Yeah, I mean, and I think about that and I think about the people that I really get annoyed by and all a sudden I realize those are caricatures, they in my mind of what I do not want to be. And, and, and I'm definitely afraid that I am. Yeah. No, it's, yeah, it's a, it's a, well it's a, I was gonna say it's a scary thing to have fear, but it's a scary thing to sometimes whenever you're going down that path, whenever you see like that cap, not even that capacity for, you know, badness or whatever, but the things that you are afraid that you are. Right. Like that, that is a scary thing for sure. And then the cool thing is, and this happens every time, like at least it doesn't get any easier, it hasn't gotten any easier for me on whatever few steps of this journey I've taken.

Vance Crowe [00:40:46] Like it's a f it's a frightening thing. And then all of a sudden you're like, wait a second, but now that I know this, I can do something about it. Right? But like, there's that gulf between looking at it and actually looking at, looking at a dragon, right? It's the dr it's all the sum of all the things that you're afraid of and then actually doing, encountering it and deciding you're gonna do something different. Sure. Well, yeah, you talk a lot about Jocko and I haven't read his book, I should read the book, but Extreme Ownership. Yeah, extreme Ownership. But he talks in that about, and I only know this because a guy named Austin told me to read this book actually, and we were having this conversation, but whenever you take full responsibility of everything being your f not fault, I think might be too strong of a word. But whenever you take that full responsibility, and this is me obviously talking to somebody who hasn't read the book, so maybe I haven't developed that thought process full enough. But my interpretation is, is that when you take that full responsibility and accept, like you can blame so many things on entropy or chaos, whether it be the weather or your car breaking down or whatever it is. But even when you get to that like base layer of being able to say like, I'm cold because it's cold outside, it's like, you should have brought a jacket, like, my car's broken because it's my car's, you know, not reliable. It's like we should have serviced it or bought a better car. Put yourself in a position to like not have to worry about that. Really. Like you have a certain empowerment at the end of like that funnel where it's like I have complete control over everything that is in my life to a degree.

Vance Crowe [00:42:17] Well, and the, and the clearer you are over what you actually have control over, Then It's, it's a little like I, the, the way that I pictured it when I was reading this book is imagine you're learning how to jog and you go from being able to jog a hundred yards to being able to jog a mile, to being able to jog three miles. The, the more that you can jog, the more perimeter that you can run around and say, I'm aware of what's going on in this area. Kinda like all of this land is mine in some way. Right? I'm, I'm responsible for it because I can see it, I can get to it and I could do something about it. That's what Jocko's philosophy reminded me of. Like, the more that you start saying, well we might get into an accident and therefore I'm gonna put blankets in the car so that, that way if something happens, I've got blankets in the car and I don't have to complain about it now I've taken that much more ground or that much more area. And I think his book is really empowering because it says taking on having the discipline to solve these things is freedom. It's the actual, it's the ability to not have to worry about the things within this perimeter. 'cause you got that on lockdown 'cause you figured out how to prepare yourself. Yeah, I, yeah, I think a lot about, yeah, the em empowerment through freedom and what what freedom means Is that like it pertains to Yeah. Taking control over things and then that's Yeah. Well one of, one of our old developers for Wand actually, like, he, he kind of tied those two dichotomies together for me.

Vance Crowe [00:43:47] Like where between power and freedom and that freedom is, and you know, shout out to Marvin, this is freedom is power over others. Not even other individuals, but other circumstances. And power is, oh, maybe I got it backwards power. Power is like control over the freedom of others. Yeah. And freedom is like freedom from the power of others. I guess. If that, if that makes sense. Probably Explain. Yeah, that does. Yeah. You got there right at the end. It Took, I didn't get it at first, but I mean, the ability to not have to yield to the will of others is some amount of freedom from them. And then your ability to exert your will over others. Yeah. And, And it doesn't matter ma And when we say others, I, I take that over experiences over all of like the, the full culmination of the human experience. Did you feel like you were becoming more free or less free when you decided to drop outta college? I felt like I was becoming more free. I think, yeah, if I, Do you still feel that way now? Living in the, in the world, you're in your, how old are you? 21. So you're 21 years old. You meet people all the time. They must be like, oh, where do you go to school? 'cause everybody that looks and sounds like you goes to school, right? So how does that feel? It's, it's a bit of a, I guess personal, like, and then that's where the ego still expresses itself in me, I think in that, like, I am self-conscious when I get asked that sometimes to say, oh, you know, I'm still affiliated with whatever, blah, blah, blah, et cetera.

Vance Crowe [00:45:21] Like when realistically, like I don't, I, I mean I'm a dropout. Like, and then that's, that's the acknowledgement point. It's like I, I've, I've dropped out and saying that like with integrating that fact and expressing it truthfully and authentically is better than tiptoeing around whenever I get asked that question because I am self-conscious about it. Like if I get asked Yeah, like, what are you studying in school? Like, not even being asked where do you go to school or like, what are you in school? It's like, what are you studying in school? When I say I'm 21, it's like, oh, you know, I, I dropped out to start a mobile app company or whatever and blah, blah, blah. You've gotta kind of shy away from the scenario, but it is what it is. So And so what are you doing now? I run a mobile app company called Wand. All right, tell me all about it. Yeah, wand, I, I started Wand living in Denver prior to coming here for school actually. But it was kind of like, you know, quote unquote started as in like putting some time and effort into it. But it was after coming here and like really not taking advantage, but yeah, taking advantage of like the, the St. Louis community and that we really started to gain some traction with that company. We wanna grant and some other, you know, good things happened to get that going off the ground. What, what Wand is to actually answer is it's a mobile app for booking housekeepers. So basically we're applying the Uber model to the cleaning space and started that in Denver. I did like a, some Airbnb management and I'd, I would, I would on on Rover Rover I would go over and dog sit.

Vance Crowe [00:46:54] So What is Rover? Imagine people don't know what any means. People don't know Rover r Rover is rover's like an Uber for booking dog sitters or dog keepers. So I would, I would go house, sit a dog on Rover and then I'd Airbnb out my place while I was doing that to kind of double up on the income Pay Those Denver bills, right? But I wasn't, I wasn't so cheap that I wouldn't try to book a cleaner like sometimes after doing that. And I saw how much pain in the butt was to do that really. And it was playing, playing pool with an old co-founder one night where we like really honed in on like that problem in that space and was like, there's a, there's a disconnect in this industry between people who are looking for, you know, trusted, vetted cleaners easily versus cleaners who are like, where's the work? Right? If you're starting off as like a freelancer, it's like, how do you get people to book you? So, And I would imagine that in doing it as Uber, Uber has the advantage of if you don't like the driver, you get outta the car and they're gone. Right? Your situation is you're inviting a person into your house and allowing them to look, see, touch, Right. Everything that you hold most dear. Sure. So How, how do you get around that problem? We've, we've had to dive pretty deep into like that whole security. Like I I mentioned the grant we won last year from, from just like a front facing optics perspective in terms of like brand and as brand as it pertains to security. Our platform is what's referred to as HIPAA compliance. So we meet like a medical grade level of security when it comes to how we pass data and our data around and our platform.

Vance Crowe [00:48:30] So between that messaging, we background check all of our providers. We do like the national, you know, sexual fund search, criminal search, then Tri-County search. So something people don't realize about the background check. And then this is where like if anybody who's heard like the horror stories about the care dot coms or some of these other like platforms or not to, not to like throw mud at any of 'em. 'cause we, we don't know, I wouldn't know if I was in the same position as like one of those companies. Thankfully we had a good guy in the compliance space to kind of walk us through these circumstances. But background checks aren't a regulated industry. There's no like national standard for okay, Vance wants to background check Ben before he comes over what is a quote unquote background check as it pertains to like that credentialing of my character. Does that make sense? Oh, I never thought about that. Yeah, yeah. Like's so Anybody could pop up and be like, Hey, I run background checks and you know, we do it for the last 180 days or Right, exactly. It's like, what's a background check? Did you Google me? Did you do a criminal search? Like, did you see if I have any warrants? Did you see if I've got any DUIs? Like what did you do when you put that background check terminology on what you actually did? So we're very like, we're very prevalent in our messaging and saying we did a sex offender search, national criminal search, Tri-County search, et cetera. Like we've got a picture of their driver's license and we've got all of that stored in pro hub system that we use for that right now. But And What, what, like what are our people out there selling right now? Like are there like fly by night background check companies? It, Yeah, and I'm, I'll, I'll, I'll try to tiptoe around like calling any of them out, but yeah, like 100%.

Vance Crowe [00:50:05] Like that's, that's, and I would, I would encourage like the general consumer to, and then that's where sometimes in today's like scary data driven world, you've gotta be the educated buyer in terms of like, there's between a not the background check not being regulated in terms of like just what's being done for the quote unquote background check. Then there's the discrepancies between like one, one example is like running the background check and you get your booking confirmation with say, company X and the burden of actually reviewing, because then that's something people don't even think about is like somebody's gotta review that check and objectively like, because there's so many variables that come into like what somebody could have done wrong in their past that there's gotta be some face behind that that does, okay, we approve this person on our platform, right? And we are doing that. But some companies like at scale are seeing those or not even seeing them come back. I'm saying with the, with the example of company X, like you get your booking confirmation somewhere in the fine print was a link to your service provider's background check and the burden was on you to actually review that. And then that's where it kind of hit the, hit the media. Anybody who's listening can google around and find the story of like, holy cow, somebody that I booked to come over and watch my kids was a sex offender. How'd they not catch this? And it's like the burden was on you to catch that, so. Oh wow. Yeah. And there are stories of that blowing up in people's faces. Oh Yeah. 100%. I never, I don't know anything at all about this, Yeah's, why it's become more prevalent. We've kind of teetered, teetered hard into taking those things into account.

Vance Crowe [00:51:39] Like, and we're, we're still very, very much a startup, but taking those things into account from the ground and like maintaining that, that culture and that level of security moving up super, super important to us. Okay, so now somebody wants to, to hire a housekeeper, they go on your app and they just like, they've signed up. Tell me more about this. I, I actually haven't, I should sign up for this. Yeah, we didn't, we didn't actually talk about it a whole lot. We talked about like everything I know. I actually don't know anything at all about it. We're, so the app is definitely still rough around the edges, but it's called Wand. We've been like live, live for about two months. But you basically sign up, give the email name, phone number right now we make you then add your home. So you've gotta say, okay, this is my address, this is how you get in, blah blah, blah. And then check the latitude and longitude. Here's the cleaners that are in your area. So that's like the hardest part is signing up and adding those details. But once you've got that in there, just it's, we've got really three different ways in the app that you can book. There's book now where you'll just shoot an instant request out to the cleaners that are in the area to accept that request. I just had a giant party at my house and I need Get it cleaned up right now. Exactly. That's Dad, get back. Okay, Somebody take the booking, somebody get over here, somebody take care of it. Okay. We've Got, we've got book later, which is basically picking a time and date for that. Our whole thing is three clicks to a cleaner. We've tried to minimize the click depth to keep it three clicks. Once you're inside the app and you've got the details, it's like four for that simplest route. It's three clicks and then book later. You add the time and date to, if you want specific time for that.

Vance Crowe [00:53:10] And then we've got like a tab for cleaners and you can view, we used to let you pick the cleaner and book later, but we were seeing there was like an issue where like right now, still being a startup, we don't have enough cleaners behind the platform to like have them be reliably accepting those services. So those two routes are just an open request. Any cleaner can accept if you want to like specifically pick a cleaning provider, then we've got a cleaners tab where you can view all of the providers that are in the radius of your home. We're kind of flipping that model around. Like we'll be pushing out, I guess like behind the scenes like this, like first noted of like how we're flipping that model around based off of the feedback we've been seeing is like, right when you download the app, it'll be like being able to view the cleaners. 'cause that we've got, and then that's where it's like from a business standpoint, we start to see like where people are quitting in that process and like crunching that conversion funnel to optimize the platform for getting people to do what we want 'em to do in there, like as a business because They went to the effort. Like, Yeah, if I download an app, right, it's 'cause I want to make it work, right? Like I'm really reluctant to download it so once I do work or I'm getting ready, Well, you'd think that as a business owner, but we see, like we've, and it's, I've, I've talked to a lot of entrepreneurs in the space and like looked at like similar companies and we pull like our competitor data on PitchBook and stuff. And it seems to be like the industry standards, but we see like a huge drop off just between people. And this is probably because we're only operating in two markets. We're operating heavy in St. Louis, and like we're getting started in Denver and There are people having their houses cleaned right now. Yeah, 100%. Yeah. Wow.

Vance Crowe [00:54:41] Wand. But yeah, so we're seeing a drop off between people who download, who actually sign up, people who sign up, who actually add their home, people who add their home, who actually book a service. And then that's where it's gonna be interesting for us moving forward from here is we've got a pretty good grasp of like what it's gonna look like because we've been operating it like in beta for months, but having only been live for like two months, what that recurring usage is gonna look like in terms of who's coming back. Like, and we're kind of seeing that. And then that's where like we're changing some of the, the aspects of the app around to like hone in on like we're saying MVCs, like our most valuable customers, like short term rental hosts are using it like religiously because there's, and that's like we're, and we, and we should have known from the get go because the initial need statement was doing Airbnb, but we kind of broadened, broadened our horizons. We were like, we gotta be the Uber, every, every man book a cleaner for everybody. But so they're using it like two or three times a week to like book those services. 'cause it's like an Airbnb host that needs statement so clear. It's like just book somebody to come over and service that. So Yeah. And they're not so worried about, I mean like they wanna know it's safe, right? But they're not so worried about, It's not like their home or like their pet might be there or some of these things. It's just like, come by for an hour and flip it for the next person to come in so I can get my paycheck. And like, tell me about the success. Like it's, it's going well. It's growing as fast as you expected. What do you think? It's growing as fast as we expected. We're very much bootstrapping right now, so we're being operating between these two markets. We're we're, yeah, we're, we're content with the success, but I'm not stratified. And then that's where it's a sliding scale too, is like if I was, if I was hitting the numbers that I wanna be hitting today, my numbers would be 10 paces ahead of like where I am at at that present stage, I guess.

Vance Crowe [00:56:21] If that makes sense. Yeah. I mean that's the challenge of people that you, you like, once you become successful, then Yeah, Then climbing up that hill is not big enough. So you gotta just keep Exactly, keep Going. So it's, it's important I guess like being in that stage or this stage we're at right now to zoom out and see where we were even four weeks ago or even, even three months ago, much less six months, 12 months ago. So objectively, yeah, I think we're doing pretty great, but I would like to be doing 10 times better at Any moment. And what grant did you get in order to make some of this happen? Yeah, Safety grant. So that's, and we, we grew close through the course of the grant process. We were in this in the first cycle of winners, but it was because we had that level of cybersecurity, like in the platform. It's a company downtown that does like development for HIPAA compliance softwares and you know, in the medical space and government contracting and lots of that sort of stuff. But, and yeah, we won that grant and that gave us $20,000 in capital plus like the unquantified amount of r and d et cetera, and resources, mentorship, blah, blah, blah. Wow. Yeah. And we brought on, or not, we brought, we, we grew close throughout that process and the founder of that grant has since come on as our fractional CTO. Wow. So Oh wow. We're very, very lucky. Yeah. That's cool. Yeah. He's, he's, yeah. Been awesome Jerry. Yeah. I'll shout out Jerry. And when we were coming, when we were making the trip at some point, I don't remember you told me that you got into rock climbing, which that's cool.

Vance Crowe [00:57:52] Yeah, I did a little bit of rock climbing when I was out in Boulder. My buddy court taught me how to do it and I, you know, that's all ropes, but you do it in an insane way. You do like, or at least to me, so talk about how you do or did rock climbing And that's, yeah. I don't do it this way anymore, especially for, for all my shareholders out there. Don't worry. No, I'm kidding. But yeah, I, so I used to, and this is like very, very few times, like, and I'm no Alex Honnold, but I would like free solo sometimes. And I guess for visual context, people listening, I showed Vance or I showed you a picture of me climbing. I was climbing the Flat irons in Boulder. And any, any like rock climber in the community knows, like the flat irons are like V six to like V nine gradient in terms of like difficulty level. So it's really like you're playing at like kind of the, the, the base level of difficulty. Like if, and I'm holding up my hands so people listening can't see. But the, the gradient is there where if you believe or not even believe in your skillset, but if you're, like, if you, anybody who's listening to Alex talk, he says the same thing except he's just playing at a 10 times different level. It's like if you're, if you have conviction, like in your skill, in your practice, then it's less scary. So I guess, and then I, I didn't do it often by any means. I'm no badass, but like Yeah. But Like, just so we're clear, this is not like a hill, it's not like a golf course or something. Like if you fall here, you are dead. Yeah. It's a great feeling. So tell me about that.

Vance Crowe [00:59:23] What is the draw? I have no draw to that. In fact, if I go to a tall hill, I, I, I mean like heights are something that I have, I'm definitely afraid of them. Yeah, no, and I'm definitely being arrogant and saying it's a great feeling. But there's a certain, I guess, and well, and I told you the story, like the third time I was on there, I'll never do it again. 'cause I'm at a different stage in my life where I don't wanna take those sorts of risks anymore when it comes to like, I literally might die and I'm, I don't practice enough. What was the draw the first time? I mean, just, just getting off the ground more than six or seven feet up in the air. Why Do you do anything? Why do you do anything? Think of like the coolest thing you've done in like the last six months and tell me why you did it. I'm asking you on your podcast. I mean, definitely go give a talk. Yeah. Probably Give the talk that you saw me give at the women's conference. Like sure. I don't have a choice. Yeah. Like It's the voice. Like That's Why that voice thing that we were talking about before, to me that is so real, Right? Because I, and like all the moves I've made in my life, going to the Peace Corps, going to the World Bank, all of these things came 'cause I had some voice in my head that I could hear it at varying degrees and it drove me to do it. And had I decided I wasn't going to do it, that voice would've just kept yelling in my ear, you've gotta go do this. I mean, it sounds like a schizophrenic, but Right. It's The truth. Yeah. No, I don't think anybody was yelling in my ear, I guess. But it was, it was sort of that same concept of like, I, I don't know. You do it to do it type deal. And we were, we were young. Like we used to take me and a friend group, we'd go out to Denver like maybe once, twice a year.

Vance Crowe [01:00:57] Like always, always summer and then like maybe spring break we'd go out there and it was just something to do, you know. But like, you know, speaking from a stage, you know, if you fall, you're gonna fall three or four feet. If you, if you say something incorrect, you can caveat it. Yeah. In Your situation, if your foot slips or a rock happens to break off, it's, it's over. Yeah. I think, and probably there's, there's a healthy balance. And then that's where I say like, I would never make those decisions again moving forward. Like, I was, like, last time I was up there, I was like, what the f am I doing up here? Knowing where I was at in life at that point, like, I didn't have anything to lose but my life when I was, I mean there was, there's so many other people that'd be, and like, not to like be selfish, like losing me, but like, other than, and I wasn't thinking this on the spot, like I've got nothing to lose but my life. But like in, in that stage, like I didn't have those same like, man, like I've got a lot going on right now type deal. Like if I was to do it again. But it was, I guess the risk. I've, I've never been very, very risk averse, I guess. And that was maybe like me expressing it more like overcompensating expressing it in my youth versus like, now I show like, 'cause you could, I could, you could say the same thing, like, I've dropped out of school, blah, blah, blah. It's like, I could, what happens if Juan fails? What happens if I run into a brick wall? It's like I could, you know, quote unquote die. Where am I gonna be at now? I'm four years behind any of my peers. And yeah.

Vance Crowe [01:02:29] So that same, that same mentality is always kind of behind you pushing you to not fall. I guess In your case, the risk you were taking there, the, the, you know, the failure state is death. Yeah. Does that mean that it, it prompted you to think very much about death? Yeah, I think, I think so. Probably. I mean I've, I've like, yeah, I've, I've thought about that sort of thing like, or that sort of thing being death, like a lot I guess. What Do you think if, if you hit the bottom of the ground, you, you fall off the side of the mountain, you know, within a few seconds you're dead. Now what? Now what? Now the, and then that's the only place I feel guilty I guess in that process is like if the repercussions in life of like, who has to deal with that fallout of my death. But in terms of like, like I'm not gonna care. I'm dead wherever I go. I've made the right choices. Like if, if there's somewhere good or bad to go, I think I've made the right choices to go somewhere good. And if there's nothing then I especially don't care. Right. 'cause it's like I'm dead. So, and do you anticipate that you'll be going somewhere good or bad? Is there somewhere to go? I like to think so. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think, I mean, I think that's where it goes. Like there's the parallelism between like psychology and like where, how, how. And then that's where like my, I think, I don't think my thoughts get like loopy doy in terms of like expressing like my, how i, my belief system that's in place there. But I think like we are the universe really discovering excel, discovering itself through like the, well you talked about Joffrey West, he talks about like the terminal endpoints in that book scale.

Vance Crowe [01:04:08] And I like kind of broad frame that concept to like where are the terminal end points of like that broader picture kind of discovering itself. So yeah, I think, I think there's somewhere to go. And it's good For context, he's referring to a guy Jeffrey West, Jeffrey West that is at the Santa Fe Institute. And I did a podcast one time describing when I went there, they had a gatekeeper that was like, what are you doing here? So anybody that's ever wanted to know who I was trying to meet with, it's the guy that that Ben here is referencing. Yeah. So that makes my heart sing because I think he's, he's amazing, but I didn't come to him through the concept of any kind of spirituality. For him it was like network theory and math. Yeah. And it was like, which is very much where I came, came to him as well. Like I was reading his book, he's got scale, like the life death of organisms, cities and like companies. And I'm, I'm reading It. I loved that. Yeah. So the interesting concept in there is he describes that take a, like the heart beat of like the heart size of a mouse. Sure. And it will, it is born, it grows really fast, it levels off for a while, then dies, right? And then you can map that directly with all the mammals based on how big they are. And the curve gets bigger the larger the heart is. And then he says here, this will blow your mind. Not only is this true of, of animal hearts having this s growth curve that then drops off. But it's also true of companies and that companies have a lifespan from when they are born, they accelerate and grow really, really fast.

Vance Crowe [01:05:39] And then they level off and then they die. And then he was like, and then to compound it even more, cities do the exact same thing. But the difference between cities, companies and animals is that people can come in and inhabit the shell like a coral reef Right. Of, of the cities and regrow and, and keep the city going. Yeah. So the cities are like really the perpetual, like the perpetual machine, I guess like in that comparison. That's what I like. I like that. What is it, what does it take to make the ladder to perpetual also? And that's, I guess one of the questions I walked away from that book with. Because if, I mean, if you're just like leveling up like a scale system whenever you're like, you know, comparing different layers of that, you know, one holistic system, similar concepts can be applied anywhere. So like what does it take to make the, you know, the, the organisms or the, the companies continue under those same circumstances. Like there's an analogy somewhere where like that sort of science can be like layered down like at the other bracket. Well, and they, and I, so in his short writing on this, or one of the lectures I saw him give, he describes how companies like you get, you're born, you accelerate, you grow, and then when you level off, you really only have one choice to extend, which is to go buy up other small companies and suck out the value. And that gives you, you get to be like a vampire. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [01:07:09] Where You suck out the value until eventually you hit a point where there's so much bureaucracy in your system. There's so many systems you've tried to cram together so much scar tissue that you keep buying more companies. But no matter how much blood you suck out of them, you can't stave off the fact that your company is no longer efficient. And so it dies. Yeah. I think Do you think that your metaphor is going to be the same? Will it require humans to be vampires in some way? Weird way? I think it, I think it requires like a different, like modeling of the company. And then that's something like as, I mean not, and I'm not like actively like pursuing any unique model with Wand, but like something I'm being conscious of, like as a founder in a company that I hope to scale or that I will scale. But it's where like where, where those differences can be established early on from a cultural perspective to maintain that flexibility at the top most stage. Because I think like the key thing from like the company viewpoint is like, it's flexibility. They can't make decisions fast when they can't pivot hard. Like the term pivot is like common in like our space. Like you pivot into something, right? Or you pivot at us something bad if you figure out what's going good and what's going wrong. But whenever you're huge, like Microsoft, if Microsoft learns they're doing something right, they've got a lot of money and resources behind them. But I mean, you made this point with like the bureaucracies of like how decisions have to be passed up and down that funnel. They can't pivot hard into something Right. As fast as a startup can.

Vance Crowe [01:08:41] Right. And a startup can make decisions rapidly and make moves rapidly. And then Microsoft can, you know, throw $50 million on the table and say, give me you basically, and then like they've essentially like enveloped that ideation into their behemoth vampire at that point. So what does it take, what does it take at scale to be able to be like perpetually, you know, a perpetual growth company? I don't, I don't know, but it's something I think about a lot. Yeah, That's really interesting. I think Flexibility's a big deal though. There was a paper one time that I read not all that long ago, maybe a year ago or so called Bullshit Jobs. And in it, the, the guy, he's making a case about politics that I'm, I'm not actually making, but he makes the case about how there's a big percentage, some might say 40%, some might say 60% of the white collar class in the United States have completely bullshit jobs. They don't actually do anything at work. And maybe they have four hours or five hours of work, but we actually have automated away all of their work because once we had computers and, and cell phones and email, you could compress the amount of work that it took administrative people to do or even even a professional. The amount of work that they have to do to accomplish their goals is way, way down. And yet they keep their jobs and they work the four hours a week, but then they go to meetings that are endless where they don't actually have the, the power to make decisions. They have to, they're, there's just a group of people that get together that say, my boss is gonna wanna know about this and weigh in.

Vance Crowe [01:10:16] So then they go away and then they come back and they make the most tiny of of changes. And then, and then the other people are saying, there's a bunch of jobs where we're trying to tabulate and prove that we are getting work done. And so we spend all of our time counting impressions or, you know, customer survey things and coating this data. And then you have to have managers of people that are coating that data. And then those managers have to have managers. And so he's basically saying, we have a welfare system among the, the the white collar class. Because if you're in a regulated industry, the government wants to see you adding jobs, not taking them away. So they're not trying to slough off the dead weight because they need to have those people there because the government, in order to give them the regulations to do whatever it is, maybe water quality or different chemicals you're using, that's the arrangement is that you have to keep those people on. Yeah. Have you Ever heard that idea? No. Yeah. Well, from you, like a week ago, I, I'm totally enthralled by the idea. Yeah. It could Be completely wrong, but I saw a lot of that going on in the corporation, like the, whether it was the World Bank or, or Monsanto, like there are really highly competent people, but they don't have, they're, the work that they're doing is nowhere near what they're capable of, Right? Oh no, yeah, 100%. Like that's, I mean, those are the compromises. You, I mean, not even a compromise because then that's where I'm trying to be conscious of like not making compromises to be made just because they have, you know, quote unquote, not quote unquote like social impact, but like, you know, quantifying things that don't matter.

Vance Crowe [01:11:48] I think like that's the key. Maybe one of the key ideas of like a lot of those positions, it's like counting, I'm doing data analytics, blah, blah, blah. Or not data analytics, data analysts have their space for sure. Like I'm managing my data, especially now probably like 40% of my day. But like counting numbers that don't matter, counting numbers that don't matter to put together plans that will have no impact on return to shareholders. Like all of all of that Waste Sustainability reports. Yeah. Sustainability reports sustain. And that's an unpopular opinion. 'cause people are gonna say, Hey, you know, we wanna know, we wanna know how much carbon they're emitting and, but there are hundreds, thousands of people in the United States that all they are doing is counting numbers that are almost uncountable or if they're not, if they are accountable, it's so abstract and so complicated that you could throw thousands of accountants at it, which is what they're doing. Right? Not only do you have people that are, that are ca tabulating for these sustainability reports, but then you have the people that make the reports and then you have the people that audit the reports and then you have the lawyers that look over it and it is all a giant tax for a document that maybe people demand that they want, but nobody reads that thing, right? Yeah. You take, like, you take the high level blurb and it's like, if we understand the high level problem of why we're counting those numbers or maybe not even the problem, but the high level whatever we need to understand to be able to act on that data, then we don't need to know the granulars and waste the resources on those granulars.

Vance Crowe [01:13:20] And I think, like to your point, that's a lot of what happens at that stage is because of, you know, keeping people busy, whatever it might be. We're worrying, we're worrying and allocating, you know, time, money, and attention, which is worth more than the latter two to counting up those numbers. And like, if, if you get the concepts, like I I, I can't remember if we talked about it a lot, but something I think a lot about like, especially like trying to run a company is like depth versus like span knowledge. Like Ken Wilbur who's like a union, you know, guy, like he's kind of dissolved come some of Jung's ideas into his books, but he talks about like depth versus span as it pertains to consciousness and some other things. But I think about it as it pertains to knowledge and like, you know, time allocation to your practice. Like if you have the high level concept, do you need to know the granulars to be able to act, you know, moving forward, especially as a company like both have their place, specialists have their place, but, and then I guess that's where it goes back to a company perspective. Like, I don't need to know 100% of how to program or 100% of marketing or 100% of sales or 100% of operations, but if I know like 10% of each to make up the whole picture and I have that span, then you're able to delegate very, very effectively in each of those like kind of respective like, you know, vertical silos. I I think that's true and I, I I would have trouble giving somebody advice that they should rely on their ability to have that span unless they're going to be something like an entrepreneur.

Vance Crowe [01:14:52] Because That's where like risk and instinct comes into place is whenever you're acting on span and concepts, Other numbers and there's risk in in depth, right? Because you could get a depth of, of some skill that's completely not needed or the technology just gets blown away. Right. But if you become a master at one thing, your ability to transfer that mastery to another thing is generally pretty high. Yeah. But I, when you're in the span business, then you've gotta convince somebody, Hey, you should trust me that I can, I can blend together these things in a way that will add a synergy as opposed to stand atop of this group and dictate to you how things ought to be. Sure. Yeah. And I think, I think both has their value. I don't, and that's sort of like the dichotomy and like the whole picture comes into place and that you can't, you can't have like a holistic system without both. Like if, if everybody, if anybody in an organization is a span player, then there's no, there's no depth execution. But if the right people to be span players are in those positions, then they're able to have a broader understanding of the full picture to be able to make the decisions that need to be at or executed at like the, the vertical level I guess. And maybe my, so I have like, you know, you could probably tell in my voice, I have a lot an amount of polarity about the sustainability issue because I see people that were like me, you know, when I was in college it wasn't global warming, it was poverty and it was like, look at the people in these, in these places far away.

Vance Crowe [01:16:25] And that inspired me and I went to Africa, right? And I joined the Peace Corps to try and help poor people that were far away. I see these kids taking on huge amounts of college debt, unimaginable amounts of college debt to become an expert in a thing that if the company wasn't in whatever position they're in to be producing those sustainability reports, that job wouldn't exist. And furthermore, they are never actually going to, that. Their skill is so amorphous that it's not deep, but they've paid to have deep skills and they're, they're not an engineer, they're not a chemist, they're not a nurse. Yeah. And you can say it, it doesn't matter what they've gotten, the depth, that depth knowledge is, it doesn't matter. And nobody told them when they were young and idealistic that they were making that decision that what they're investing tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars in does not matter and will not pay them the rest of their lives. Right. And period. And, and even if it does, even if some, some college administrators says, or, or these companies which show up and to show up well to the, to the students, they say, look how sustainable we are. Look at all these jobs we have in sustainability. We're looking for sustainability people. Right. But It's terminal. Yeah. There's nothing, there's nothing down there. It's not like, hey, if you have, are a chemist and you come to our company, even if we get rid of that product or that way of thinking, there are a lot of other things that you could do in chemistry. Sure. And so I see huge volumes of talent get engaged in that. They then know that they have to keep the charade going, that these sustainability reports, and I'm not saying there's no value in knowing whether or not you're getting better at less polluting or, but the way that they're structured, if you actually go read one, and most people, I would say have never read even one Talk in circles, right?

Vance Crowe [01:18:11] Yeah. They Talk in circles and then this person who has something to add to the world now feels stuck and they have to convince themselves they have to ignore their damon, which is telling them this is a waste of time. You're recording meaningless numbers. They have to, you know, muffle that down and then they, they continue in the charade. Yeah. No, 100%. I could be wrong. I don't wanna, like, I, I could be totally wrong here. I'm just one guy's opinion, but I, it breaks my heart when I hear kids telling me they're doing sustainability stuff. 'cause I think they're, they're screwed. Yeah. And you could, I mean, you could apply that same thought process to a number of other industries. And that's like, I guess part of like where my anxiety came into play in terms of like, and I, like biomedical engineering is pretty practical. Like could have could have floated around. But making that decision and taking on those debt decisions, like at, at an age where I, I had no idea what I wanted to apply. And I, I've known, I've known since I was in high school that I would never work, you know, a nine to five the rest of my life. So to be going down that kind of college path, insinuating that that was the case, like thankfully acknowledged that it was a problem very, very quickly. And Without, I could never have done what you did. There's no way. I mean, like, I went to college, had no idea what I wanted to be, but knew I needed that degree from a brand that that would be, that would be good for me, that would allow me to hold my head up high. It was essentially going and buying a mask. Yeah. I will say this though, now, at this point in my life, probably in the last six months to a year I've started to use my philosophy background that I had to have at Marquette.

Vance Crowe [01:19:49] And it has transformed my life. So thank God I did get it. 'cause I don't know how I would've gotten the foundational background. I you can maybe just, you know, A Library card. But, but I think there are a lot of people that do that. And I think it's a charade. Yeah. And I, I would, I had no business taking out the level of loans I took out. I had no, and I, and that's why I don't hold those kids. Like we, we talk shit about these kids taking out these huge college loans. We don't know. We don't know what we're doing. See that's, that's, that's why I only last as long as I did. 'cause I never took out a loan. I did, I did the savings thing and then yeah. Got to the stage where a loan was gonna have to be taken out. And I'm very, very debt averse. Like, I'm, I'm not afraid of a lot of things, but I'm afraid of the idea of debt because I've seen What made you afraid of debt. Deep, deep question. Yeah. I've 2008 really like hit the Anderson family pretty hard. So we've been climbing out of it really since, and I don't want to ever see that be the stage for, you'd Have been like 10 or something like that, or you're younger. Yeah. But I mean, we were, we were kept in the loop. Like I, I think, and yeah, it was, it was, it was a learning experience. But like, I think, and I, I attribute 100%, 100% of my general like mentality and drive to my dad, but he made sure that we understood what we had to learn from that experience, I guess even at that age. And I've, I'll carry that with me the rest of my life. You know, a dad that can share that with his children without scarring them or making them feel bad, but doing it as a lesson.

Vance Crowe [01:21:23] Yeah. That's Not just sharing, not that's not just staring down your own dragon that's teaching other kids. Like, these are the lessons you need to learn for yourself. Right. No, 100%. Wow. Yeah. And for, and maybe, and then that's where it's like, there's, there's a small bit of overcompensation in terms of like my fear that I took away from that towards debt. But I have, I've gone out of my way to make decisions that would not put me in a position where because of things like entropy and chaos, I could find myself in a similar scenario from, from I guess like a strategic standpoint of like not taking on debt when maybe even sometimes I should in order to like do make leveraging A move. Yeah. Leveraging a move. Right. But kind of pivoting around some of those opportunities to avoid that. That's where like I try to acknowledge the overcompensation, but 100% I have no, I have no yeah. Regret for having had that learning experience at that age. 'cause I never need to have it again. Yeah. That's great man. Yeah. I, I, one of my earliest memories, and I'm sure I've constructed most of this in my mind, but normally when I was a kid, my dad would come home and a, a shout would go through the house, you know, I'm the middle child of seven, but at this time it would've just been four of us. A shout would go out, dad's home and everybody would turn off the TV and you know, run around and clean things up. 'cause dad was coming home. But I remember the, when black Monday hit, like in 1987, so I would've been like six years old. And I remember my mother coming in and telling us, this is a bad day. Yeah. Your Father's had a bad day. I think we ended up like getting dressed in better clothes and we, you know, all had dinner, but we were not to cause any problems.

Vance Crowe [01:23:00] And that left such a taste in my mouth for the power of the wave that is the stock market That I've, I feel like it gave me, it's like having a healthy respect to the ocean. Don't ever turn your back on the ocean. Yeah. That's how I feel about the stock market. Yeah. Because of that. Yeah. Probably to my own detriment at various times, but thank goodness because I am impetuous and high risk and you know, let's throw things, but not because of that. I, I don't have the same thing. Yeah, no, that makes sense. Yeah. So let's, let's change subjects a little bit. How in the world did you get the background that you have in Jungian psychology or Jeffrey West or these people that you're reading? How do you encounter these new ideas? And, you know, your 10% is enough to carry you through a lot of heavy conversations. How have you gotten the depth that you're able to traverse the landscape of these complicated ideas? I read and watch YouTube quite a bit, and I do, I do the, do the former, former is the one before the last one. I, I always get a former and ladder mixed up. I read more than I watch YouTube. I probably watch high level YouTube videos to get to, to walk away with concepts. Yeah. I think YouTube is span and books or depth. That's right. Yeah. I'll Read, that's a good point. I'll read, I'll read a book on something I wanna know a lot about. And I kind of got this idea from Wolf, from Musk, like my grandfather got me Musk's book and in there it talked about how like he'd read like a wide variety of things to give him that span knowledge to be able to kind of tie knots between industries that had never been tied before.

Vance Crowe [01:24:38] Yeah. I've been, I've been like a religious reader for like years. And how do you find these books? It's that you go find them yourself or you look around for recommendations? Well, through, through like, like I walked away from our conversations with, you know, like over the last like couple weeks with a ton of books that I'll be reading moving forward, like stuff like that. And then the list just like compiles up from there. And then there's somewhere it's like I'll walk into like the shadow dance book that about the shadow integration. I wasn't looking for that book, but I rolled into left bank on Euclid and it was down in their used section for six books. So it was like, I'll read this. And like I said, it was one of like the best three to five books that I read in the last year. And I've read quite a few over the last couple months Books when I was a kid or even younger, you know, I just voracious reader read all the time. Loved it. And, and probably the greatest gift that the God's ever gave me was the ability to read quickly. Yeah. Because Like once you have that, then the pain of reading is not that bad. But, but now for me to even start a book, like I used to do the thing where I start a book and then I put it down when I'm not interested. Yeah. I Don't do that anymore. I'm, I'm like picking up that book because I wanna find out what's inside of this tome. And I think I've probably become too ordered on that. That I would agree. Yeah. That I'm so fixated on. I wanna read this one and then this one and then this one that the randomness doesn't happen very much. Yeah. The randomness I think is important. And that's where I say I'd agree that like, if that's your mentality, then you should, you should take that back a couple paces because I'll like let a book come across and it's like, I don't know what I'm gonna find out in here, but somebody put months and years of energy into putting this out there into the world.

Vance Crowe [01:26:14] This was like their gall move of like, le I'm gonna take these thoughts I have and put them out into the ether, whether it's in a story or nonfiction or whatever it is. And somebody's gonna read it and walk away with it. Most of the time, most of the time. Like I'll walk away with new ideas in any given book. That's a great way. So my sister is just finishing up a book that she's written and I could not be happier that she's gonna put this out there because she is not a high risk person. Not flashy or flamboyant. She's just, she, she does her things every day, but she had the gall to put this book together and now she's going through the very last stages of like, how do I market it? How do I price it, how do I, what's the cover look like? All these things. And, and I was thinking like the goal it takes to put out a book, because it feels so much more permanent. It really is hours and hours or weeks of your time versus a podcast. Like you have to have the goal to start. Yeah. But it's not like I can just be like, well that's just what Ben and I talked about that day. Right. It wasn't, this is an idea that I have deeply thought about, studied and carefully placed into this thing writing a book's a whole nother level of gall. Yeah. No, yeah. Kudos, kudos to your sister. Very, very badass to like carry that out to the end period. Yeah. It'll Be cool. She, she's this incredibly creative person that managed a lot of like college students. Yeah. And so she figured out like, how do you get college students, maybe like a residence hall people, how do you get these people that are never had a job before to to coalesce work together, follow the rules.

Vance Crowe [01:27:50] They're, they're, they're responsible for people that are almost their age. So how do they transcend the problems of working in for people that they're close in age with? It'll be a cool book and I'll have her on the podcast. It'll be cool. No, for sure. Yeah. She's she's got one reader already. It sounds interesting. Yeah. Do Yeah. Actually you would like it. Yeah. Do Do you, do you have a book in you? Do I have a book in me? I've See that's where I'm saying like, yeah, kudos to your sister. I have sat down and like I say, tried and they might be finished at some point. That's, I have a book in me for sure. And is it a book that's a biography or is it a book of your ideas or what kind of or fiction I have, I have a book of, I think there's a biography, but I think it's, it's too early for the biography unless it's volumes. And then I've got ideas that I wanna spit out there. And we've talked about some of those ideas high level already. What are some of the ideas that have been spinning around in your head now lately? Yeah. And this is where it seems like mumbo jumbo, but it is what it is. And I'll, I'll throw them out there into the ether. If people have stayed This long into the podcast, your mumbo jumbo isn't gonna scare 'em away. They'll at this point, they'll take, it'll I think I, I think, I think that there's, I think there's an analogy somewhere between, well, and that's where like, so I guess background that's only being recapped for the sake of the audience is like, I came down that one morning after our like six hours of car conversation and I'd heard of it before, but we talked deeply on the concept of the euro boroughs. Oh yeah. And That's what really tied some of these concepts that, and I've got this book here, like people in the video can see it. But I, like, I carry these books in my back pocket and I just write ideas and I've been writing some of these like, high level thoughts for so long, but that really tied together.

Vance Crowe [01:29:27] I think there's an analogy somewhere between like human relationships as they pertain to their impact on each other. And I guess like to, to make that more like con convertible or like pick, pick up the idea. Like we talked about the, the infinity and the epsilon and how it's not just a one-to-one. And then that's where it was tied together for me for the aeros is it's not a one-to-one, you know, like vector back and forth is, it's like a continuous cycle and one affects the rest and then like everything just kinda Keeps going. Lemme see if I can decode some of this please. So The euro Burros that you're talking about, and I have a terrible time Professional speaker sing across from me Pronouncing this is, is one of the first symbols that existed in civilization. Like some people say when humans first developed consciousness was when they were able to take an idea and project it out into the world. And one of the first ideas that they put that I could put something out there and you would understand what it means. So the it, the genesis is the first thing they drew was probably a circle. And that circle from now when you go look at artifacts or drawings or petroglyphs, the full circle can sometimes be drawn as a snake eating its tail. And that signifies everything and nothing all at once, no beginning and no end. And if you think about it, that that is the, the beginning of a circle is the beginning of the yin yang. Yeah. Because If you want to divide that thing into dichotomies, like we were talking about before, there would be a split there.

Vance Crowe [01:31:01] And then that split can represent, you know, black and white. Some people would say order in chaos or good and evil or infinity and epsilon. Yeah. And when You're talking about that, that comes from a conversation that I was having with my buddy Rob Long, who goes by Plantables and is is an exceptional guy. He was saying we play this game called the Dichotomies game, where, where you name one word that is archetypal, it's, it's, it's in its perfect form. And then you name what's opposite of it. But the key to this game is you can't just say a word and then add an antonym. You're not just saying it's, you know, a cat is not a dog. You actually have to a, a cat and a dog are different because they are actually different things. Right. And So infinity being like, you know, going out for forever, there's no end to it. And Epsilon being that it's the closest number to getting to nothing without actually being nothing. Right. So it's infinitely regressive. I I don't, I don't exactly know how to describe That one. And that's where you tied it together for me. So I've been trying to tie that analogy to math and like, like putting it in an analogy as it relates to light and light through like intensity and refraction. Like what, what are, You have no idea man. I have a buddy named Kate Crosby and another one named Nick Cizik. They are gonna love this. So Yeah. So hit it. Yeah. Yeah. So what's the analogy between light as it interacts through, whether it be a membrane and whether it's refraction or if it's intensity?

Vance Crowe [01:32:32] I don't know enough. Like I know I'm, I'm pretty good at math, but I don't know enough to like put the right numbers in place. But like, that's been my high level idea of like, what's, what's the mathematical analogy? Like if you consider one human looking at another is like light and their impact on an endpoint. Like what, what what's the mathematical sort of formula for that? That's my high level Concept. You, you lost? I don't, I don't Understand. Yeah. Tell me, tell me more. Yeah, So we're, so take it back to the infinity and the epsilon where, where our conversation with the or boroughs tied it back to me and kind of changed how I've been thinking about some of these ideas for a while is, is if, if everything is the or bois, the dichotomy always loops back to itself. The infinity is the biggest number possible before reaching, you know what? And epsilon is the smallest point possible before reaching zero. Like it's the same endpoint. And then that's where we kind of had the, like my infinity is your epsilon and your episilon is my infinity as it pertains to us interacting with each other. Which is, I guess calling it back to like, my analogy with math is, Let me see if I can capture this. Yeah. And then you can go to the math. You're, so one of the things, so, so Rob talks about this idea that a good portion of the meaning of life, in fact maybe the meaning of life is an intersubjective experience. Yes. Is I am in myself and I know myself and I express an idea in some way and I can watch you get that idea.

Vance Crowe [01:34:03] Right. And Then that is because you and I both say we see this and you know, I, I often think of it as like, you know, monkeys or primates somewhere, you know, going and then the other monkey understanding what he's saying and those two no longer being alone, at least for that brief moment. Sure. And what you are saying is, the way that this relates to the infinity and the epsilon is the infinity is knowing myself all the, that is me and everything that I understand about, about myself. And you can never get all the way down there. Yeah. You can never fully integrate your shadow or completely hear your Damon. But on your side of the equation, if I'm thinking I can never actually fully understand you because the closer that I get to you and and understanding your subjective experience, it somehow makes it pull away from mine. So for every bit that I'm away from my understanding and I accept your understanding of the world, that's where that dichotomy lives. Right. And measuring the impact of like your intention backed effort of changing my understanding, I guess like in that like relationship that inter, what was the term you used? The intra Oh, the intersubjective experience. Yeah. In that intersubjective experience. What's, what's the measurability of your effort to impact my experience And like how that's, that's where like the math comes in and trying to relate that in an analogy to light as it, because light, light is weird because photon, and we talked a little bit about this too, and that photons or not, well everything behaves as waves and particles until observed.

Vance Crowe [01:35:39] Light doesn't interact. Usually the key word is usually, and it under very, very extraneous circumstances do photons like actually have an effect on each other whenever they're shown through each other. Like two, two opposing beams and like what some, and then that, that's where it's like, it's a, there is a book there, but there's nothing there yet. These are the, these are the ideas, but the next step, the next step I think of getting there was our conversation with the arose. That's why I've been very hot and bothered recently thinking about some of that stuff. Well I think that there's, it's not, I think it is completely understandable that when you encounter these ideas that you become captivated by them. Because in many ways the reason I think young is so profound. And I also think he's making a huge surge into the public, into the consciousness of at least the people I'm running around with. But It's that when you grab onto a symbol, you, it both explains what you are thinking about without words and it does it. And, and at the same time it doesn't explain it. Right. It can contain the value of your feeling about something and, but it also means something totally different to you. And, and I, I actually normally I have a book that just says symbols over there, but it's over there right now because I was reading it this morning. Yeah. But I have become totally enthralled, not with the symbols themselves, but with what other, what meaning other people put in that symbolism and where are the symbols that are so archetypal, just like the Monet painting that whether I'm seeing it 3000 years later or the guy drew it on that cliff, you know, long time ago, we understand the same meaning.

Vance Crowe [01:37:25] Yeah. And the fact that he didn't tell me it's not words, it's something else. And yet we can still understand it as it transcends time. I I love that. I love it. Yeah. No, being able to carry that stuff through. 'cause time being time is its own variable. So being able to Tell me more, what do you mean? Well, I mean like it being able to carry something through space is one thing, and space and time. Like that's, that was Einstein's like, whole point is that they're the same thing, but being able to carry, carry something like I can pass my water across to you and you're carrying across space, but carrying something across time from, from like a legacy standpoint and like I'm, I'm far too young to be thinking about legacy, but like I do. But like you think about with something like with that, with the Monet to have the power and like mastery in your art or whatever it is or whatever it is you do. And then that's where I appreciate your idea of a, and I ke I already forgot the term again, interpersonal Intersubjective experience. Intersubjective experience. Because if you can just affect one other person with an intersubjective experience, then you've, you've established your legacy in time, I guess, if that makes sense. Say more If I've, if I've affected you just enough to affect something else that affects something else, that's where it's like the perpetuity of it and the, or Boris of like how that measurability can be affected of what, what can be, what can come of a spontaneous interaction and how it carries on from there.

Vance Crowe [01:38:56] Like, and then that's where, that's where you kind of like have to zoom out like the, because a painting is material in that like it can represent the ego and the individual who did it, but like you, like they, the hero's journey may be just being, you know, blanche of castile, right. Where you're just, where you're just pushing, pushing that thing that's pushing the next thing or wherever you are in that chain. I get it. Yeah. So, so this is the, this I love talking with you man. The, the idea that you really smacked me across the face with when we were driving was the same thing that you were saying about the impermanence. You know, you put a painting on in, in an art museum and it can feel like it's there forever. It's, it's housed in perfect climate conditions but it's on a canvas. Eventually it will wear away. Right? Someday We won't be able to care for it in the way that we do now. But your actions in the world, while they seem completely impermanent, you know, I am going through the grocery store and there's a, a woman checking my, my bags or checking out, checking me out. And I am excited and happy and tell her a joke and she gets in a good mood. And now the next 15 people that she sees, she tells that joke to, it lightens the mood and each one of those people go to their job or to back to their home or whatever challenges that they're facing. And that energy resonates into there.

Vance Crowe [01:40:26] Yeah. And While it seems like, well I can't measure that, I can't know that that's what's going on. You can definitely say I'd rather be pushing good energy into the world as opposed to bad energy because all those little orbits that you've hit and knocked off of their axis and made more positive, that is what's going into the world and it is what will come back to you. Right. And it does feel like once you start breaking it down in simpler terms, it starts saying like, not only should I want to check my ego, so I'm not angry with the guy that yells at me 'cause I'm in his driveway But I should al also, not only is it just better for me not to be angry, hanging, you know, having my emotions drive my actions, but also by being better to him, he goes in and treats his wife better, his wife then treats the dogs better. The dogs don't bite the neighbor. The neighbor then gets along better with people. Like it's the best way to be. And it starts entirely with can I control my ego enough to put positive energy into the world as opposed to negative. Yeah. And then that's where time comes back into play is that that goes on forever and it it's behind you your entire life. Wow. You're right. Yeah. And it does transcend time in a way that the canvas can't. Right, man, I love talking to you anytime, man. So tell me about your friendships. My friendships? Yeah. Like, do you have the same friends from high? Do you stay in touch with the people that you knew when you were a kid?

Vance Crowe [01:41:58] How, how have you thought about friendship right now? Yeah. I've, I've, I've, I've, I've kept pretty good contact with a small group of like really, really solid friends that I made in high school. You know, taking, taking those trips and kind of being idealistic in similar ways and kind of all on our own. Like, you know, like you say, hero's journeys and getting to watch, watch that alternative growth. I've, like, I think, I think my friend group and I are very, very similar in a lot of ways, but we're different in a lot of ways. And it's the ways that I'm most different from each one of my friends that I'm really, really attracted to. It was in that shadow dance book actually I had to write down in here and like, what, what the, what the biggest differences and the things I admire and the things I even don't like. And like my five closest friends and like, writing those things down, I realized like, I've insinuated, but I realized like hard writing the thought on paper. These are the things that draw me to these people because I dislike this about them. And this is how we are Different. Gimme, you don't have to name a person, but gimme an example. What do you mean? I wish I hadn't just switched books. Like, like, well, creativity, creativity is a great example. Like that's a theme across my whole friend group. Like, I'll, I'll name drop like Tanners Sam's Kohl's, you know, I've, I've got a group of very, very immensely creatively talent friends and I don't like, while I'm creatively talented, like in strategy and business and whatever, I don't have a whole lot of like material, like material creativity where I'm able to like create my own art myself and put it out into the world.

Vance Crowe [01:43:29] Like any, anybody listening who's made it to this point, go check out Cole Ray on Spotify. He just dropped him super psyched for him, but just immensely talented guy. And like the, that's, that's something that I create. I'll include a link. Yeah. So this is a buddy of yours? Yeah. And he's Doing music now. Yeah, he is doing music. He just moved out to la He's, yeah. He's gonna be taken off. He's doing his thing and I'm super psyched for him. But that's, that's, that's the draw point with the friendship in that. Like, I, I don't like jealously crave that talent, but I'm attracted to it in him and his expression about how he's doing that in the world. And I'm like so immensely happy for the guy that he's able to like purely express that art in the world. One of the best things that ever happened to me was when I figured out that if I can articulate to another person, a person that I admire, or a person I respect what it is about them that I respect or admire, right? Then it allows me to begin to integrate it into my own life. Right. Because Until I can name what it is in them that I, that I really like, or that I think that I'm drawn to, it's just amorphous, right? They're just a person and I'm like, oh, I like being around 'em. They make me smile or they make me laugh or, you know, they're, they're kind of creative, but it's a whole different thing when you begin to, when you begin to be able to say, Ben, you know, the way that you are authentically yourself and the way that you say as precisely as you can, what you're actually thinking and you're willing to change what you were saying in order to be more precise, even though, you know, it makes you look confused.

Vance Crowe [01:45:08] I really admire that about you and I want, and, and then, and now all of a sudden I can start bringing that into my own life. That was one of the great skills, but I had never until just now thought that I should write that in a journal. Yeah. Well, it's, I think too is your terminology. It's like all of, and I, I just had that thought while you were like explaining that is all my best friends are adversaries. Like Yeah. You, you said the other day, like the best spouse, friend, whatever, like enemy versus adversary was like one of the running themes, but From Barry Flinch Bow, right? Yeah, yeah. From Barry f Yeah. So for Anybody that doesn't know, Ben was actually in that interview. He drove me there. We were there and, and Professor Augh kept turning and talking to Ben, but he has this concept about enemy or adversary, and you should go back and listen to the video because he's saying your enemies, you will, you know, picture them as the worst possible light that you can, you will vilify them, you're willing to do terrible things to them, but your adversaries are not necessarily blocking you from succeeding. They're Just preventing you from doing the path that you is of least resistance. Right. They're putting resistance up and the path that you'll find is generally better than the one you would've gone had they not gotten in your way. Yeah. And I, I totally agree. Yeah. Having a, a worthy adversary as a wife is a really powerful thing. Sure. No doubt. Yeah. And Friends too. Yeah. Yeah. No, my best, my, yeah, my best buddy in the whole world is my biggest adversary in the whole world. Yeah. And we've, Yeah. Well, I would say, you know, there's a Backstory there that'll come out at some point.

Vance Crowe [01:46:39] Yeah. Two, two people that I, I am really very close with. Rob Long and Travis Leig, The, They are like, and I'm always so mad at them when they won't just accept the thing that I'm saying and I just want them to go along with me. Sure. But if they Did, The value of that friendship would, would degrade immensely. Right? Sure. Like, because the real value is I want their respect, and yet they won't give it unless it's earned. Right. And that's, I mean, if you don't, if you look around at your world and you don't have friends like that time to get moving. Yeah. Because Your Damon definitely can't come out if you don't have worthy adversaries around you. No, 100%. Ben, I am so afraid that the tape's gonna run out, that I, I, I know. I've been, I've been thinking the same thing. My watch is broken. I yeah, I I have absolutely loved this. I will have you back on. If there's only two or three people that, that are still listening, because we did all of our WOOWOO stuff, that's completely fine. I started this podcast so that I could create a gravity well where other people would fall into my orbit. People that I couldn't expect, and this is one of the great pleasures, is having met you. Oh, thank. If people wanted to be in touch with you, find you out in social media, how would they do that? Yeah, social media's a great one. I've like, I've abdicated from all of that recently. Go to, I guess go to my website Benjamin b anderson.com or shoot, You're on Twitter? Yeah, yeah, I'm on Twitter. I've got one tweet in the last two years.

Vance Crowe [01:48:12] It's me retweeting us driving together. Yeah. I'm on, I'm on Twitter at Ben Anderson. 4, 2, 1. Tweet me or Yeah, shoot, shoot me an email me@benjaminbanderson.com. Good man. Yeah, I, I really hope people do, there are a lot of people that I think would love to, to talk about your light idea. My audience is very sharp, very creative, please. And I hope they do so. Thanks, Ben. Beautiful Man. Thank you so much. Great.