How to get people to open up: 4 listening techniques that unlock family stories

Vance Crowe [00:00:00] When you're lost in thought, if somebody asks you about it, you don't have something ready to tell them, right? It can be a little bit annoying to be able to do that. And what I've come to realize is most of what we think of as thinking is not thinking at all. It's experiencing emotions. I'm Nicholas Barlett, co-owner of the World's first Popcorn Board Game Cafe, living in Fulton, Missouri, and you're listening to the Vance Crow podcast. Welcome back to the podcast. I'm glad you're here. Today we're gonna do something a little bit different. A few weeks ago I was invited by the Colorado Farm Bureau to be a keynote speaker at their annual meeting. Now here I got to talk about a subject that I care a lot about, something that I've come to realize over the last 100 or so Legacy Interviews, and that is the critical importance of a person being able to tell their story. You know, it's obvious that a child that grows up without the wisdom of their parents or their grandparents is harmed. You know, that they don't have the knowledge and the wherewithal and just the understanding of how to navigate certain circumstances. But I think something that's been overlooked, certainly I never understood it, is how important it is for a person that has experienced so much in their lives to be able to tell the stories about what happened to them and how they reacted to it. I've come to the firm belief that we spend so many years in the productive, I've gotta go, I've got to do lists, I've got things to do that we often forget that the transformation to the wise years of our lives requires us to look back so that we could let go of who we were during the productive years and become a wise person.

Vance Crowe [00:01:45] The Colorado Farm Bureau invited me in to address their room full of farmers and ranchers, people well into their eighties and all the way down into the high school years. It was an eclectic group of people, and I was excited to talk about how is it that you help a person to open up? How do you get them focused enough to tell you those stories that really matter? And how do you continue that conversation so that the depth can get as deep as it needs to be to have somebody share something important with them? So we're gonna go to this talk in just a moment, but with the holidays right around the corner, I wanna really encourage you not to procrastinate capturing these stories. The holidays are a wonderful time where all of our families get together, people that we don't see very often, we're in a festive mood, and this is a chance where you can pull out at a very minimum, your phone and stick it on the table and hit record while you ask these older people, what did they experience? What did they see? What did they get through? What did they hope gets remembered. If you have this recording, you'll have it for the rest of your lives. And I know from interviewing hundreds of people that having these recordings is so valuable. If it's something you don't think is right for you, then by all means, we would love to help you, you out. You can go to Legacy Interviews dot com to book a slot with us. Otherwise, I hope you make sure you take the time during the holidays to record these and maybe use some of the lessons in this upcoming talk to figure out how to get people to open up. Alright, without further ado, thank you to the Colorado Farm Bureau for allowing me to share this talk.

Vance Crowe [00:03:18] The art of picking up nails to sit down with people and ask them questions about their history, about where they came from, about what they went through, so that future generations have the opportunity to know where they came from, to know what they can get through to be able to find their place in a world that is changing so rapidly that it's chaotic for all of us. Now, in doing that, I have discovered that we are actually in great peril in this country. We have a huge problem, and that is the stories are not being passed down. We have had growth, this urbanization, these things that have been wonderful, but now people aren't living close together. The stories from grandma and granddad getting passed down to grandchildren aren't happening. And so how do we find a way to be able to pass this knowledge down, this culture that you have spent generations learning and building and creating down to future generations. This is so much bigger than what I do with Legacy Interviews that I've come to realize that I should share. How it is that you get people to open up. How do you get people to tell those stories? Oftentimes, stories that are not easy to tell, stories that maybe don't make you look so good in the moment, but really teach the lesson about how you overcame things. And so I wanna talk a little bit about what you can do to help open up your family members, your people on your operation, your people around you, so that these stories can be passed down.

Vance Crowe [00:04:58] And this opens up the door to all the other conversations that need to happen, stories about succession D, decisions on how is this group going to work? And we'll start by talking about one of the very early clients I ever had. His daughter wanted to get her father's stories, so she invited him in. And now I had always thought that if somebody wants to ask you stories about your life, people would just be an open book. Oh, you want to know? Well, I'll tell you. Well, that's my orientation. But not everyone is like that. In fact, a lot of people, if you start asking them about their questions, they clam up. They don't actually wanna share. Maybe it's because they have something that they feel like they don't really want to talk about it or doesn't look good, or maybe it's because they're humble. They've been told their whole life not to talk about themselves. But what happened for me was I invited this man in and he came in and we sat down and we were about to start the interview and we're talking about what's about to happen. And he crosses his arms and he says, why would I tell you anything at all about my life? Well, he didn't say it like that. So I'm kind of pushed back. I don't really know. I wasn't expecting him to not want to tell me his stories. And I said, well, you sound very intense about this. Is there something you wanted to talk about? Why? Why would you not want to tell your stories? And he said, well, my life is like the bridge on the river qua, and one day when I'm gone, just like my body will be gone, so will my stories be too?

Vance Crowe [00:06:33] And I don't know how many of you have ever seen bridge on the river quai? So for those of you that haven't, this is a story about British engineers that were captured by the Japanese during World War ii, and they were forced to build a bridge and they build this big, magnificent, beautiful bridge that their Japanese counterparts couldn't do. And then they end up blowing it up, all their work just blown to smithereens. So what he was saying is, when I'm gone, my stories don't matter. And I thought for a little bit, took a pause and I said, you know what's interesting about the bridge on the river Kwai is, you're right, the bridge is gone, but the stories remain about the bridge. Now he heard that and he decided, okay, I'll tell you these stories. And the man went on to tell me about how he had been a stowaway to leave his original country, how he'd come to the United States and been abused as a young boy, how he'd gotten all the way to Ivy League schools, made a fortune, lost it through his vices, figured out how to find a wonderful woman, married or overcame all these things. And these stories are now captured and passed on. The family has talked to me about how valuable it is. Imagine what it would be like to be his grandchild if he didn't tell those stories, if that child didn't hear it, when they're facing the world, they have no idea where their people have been, what they've gone through to be able to get where they're at. Because stories turn experience into wisdom.

Vance Crowe [00:08:07] And so being able to get people to share those stories, to be able to help someone understand what has our people gone through? What have they endured, what have they overcome, and how did they do it is critically important. But like I said before, sometimes it's difficult to get people to talk about their stories. That's why I call this conversation that you have with other people trying to get them to open up the art of picking up nails. You know, if you've been around construction sites or works or farms, you know that there's always like a coffee can around that's been filled up with all these nails and screws that you might need one day, but you don't need right now, and you're not taking the time to sort 'em out. You know what I'm talking about? You all have one and you have all experienced the need to dig into that for the one nail that's gonna work for this job. But if you just reach your hand right in there, what's gonna happen? The nails are gonna poke you, it's gonna hurt. You're not gonna get what you need. So you end up picking that can and kinda shaking it, moving it around, and seeing if you can dig in there. And you have to be delicate, but not so delicate that you can't find the right one. But that's like trying to get these stories out of people, trying to get them to open up, trying to give them a reason to be able to share those things that matter most to you. So that's what I wanna share today. And we're gonna start talking about how do you start deeper conversations? How do you begin those conversations that are gonna lead you to finding out something more, something important about the person you're speaking with?

Vance Crowe [00:09:47] And it starts with what question do you begin with? Now, when I'm meeting people, they're coming into my office sometimes from around St. Louis, sometimes from around the country or even Canada. We are only gonna meet each other for this small amount of time. And so it's, they kind of know what's going on. But for you, right? You're around your family members all the time, you're around the people on your operation. How do you signal to somebody that you wanna start a deeper conversation? What do you ask? Well, I can tell you that I know one of the questions that many of you ask that frustrate you because you never get a good answer from it. And oftentimes frustrate the person that's being asked What question is that? It's that question you ask. You hear it all the time. What are you thinking? Any of you ever asked this question? Any of you hate to be asked this question? I'm seeing some heads nod, right? Why? Why is this not a great conversation starter? You look at somebody, they're on the couch, they're, they're sitting right next to you and you see them kind of lost in thought. So it seems like it would be the obvious question to ask somebody, what are you thinking about? Right? But what happens when you ask that question? They say, I'm not thinking about anything, right? Or if I am thinking about something, maybe I don't wanna talk about it, but there's something funny about this, right? Because when you're lost in thought, if somebody asks you about it, you don't have something ready to tell them, right?

Vance Crowe [00:11:19] It can be a little bit annoying to be able to do that. And what I've come to realize is most of what we think of as thinking is not thinking at all. It's experiencing emotions. And so when you ask somebody what they're thinking, they're not actually having a linear thought. They're having their mind put all these ideas up into their minds. They don't control it. And I can prove it. Imagine after you leave here, you've got a little bit of quiet time up in your room today, and I ask you to go one minute without having a thought, could you do it? Not unless you are an expert me meditator, right? Because our mind is always pushing things into our brain, into what we're thinking about. And most of the time it's emotions. It's I'm frustrated, I'm hungry, I'm tired. And so people don't actually, they aren't thinking about something. They're experiencing emotions. So if the question you ask is, what are you thinking? You're inevitably encountering a person that is not actually thinking they're experiencing all these thoughts that could be as random as I need to remember to pay that bill. Or I'm really upset at my brother. So how do you overcome this? How do you find a, a question or a way to be able to get people to start? Well, I can tell you that what I do is when people come into my office and there's lights and cameras and they've been thinking about talking about their stories for weeks, sometimes months, what we do is we, I point out this painting right here and I ask them, what do you see?

Vance Crowe [00:12:54] I guess I would ask that here. What do you see when you look at this painting? Now, this isn't a trick painting. There's nothing hidden in there. It's the same painting to everyone. But is there anybody here that would be willing to describe what they see? Someone spreading seeds, someone spreading seeds? Does anyone see anything different? What's that? She's thinking, what do you see an older lady gonna market to get groceries, going to market to get groceries? This happens every single day in my studio. I have interviewed hundreds of people and almost no one has ever given the same answer twice, which is amazing, right? It's the same painting for every single person in this room. And you think she's spreading seeds and you think she's going to the market. What people often say as they come into my office is, she looks sad or she looks tired, or she looks like she's in a lot of pain. That's okay. It doesn't actually matter to me exactly what they say. The point is that by focusing their attention and now getting them to verbalize something, they are moving from the emotional realm into the thinking realm. And when they do that, they can now begin to talk about things and share things that you wouldn't imagine. And this leads me to my first principle of having these deep conversations, which is if you want someone to open up first, focus their attention and ask them an open-ended question, there's nothing magical about that painting.

Vance Crowe [00:14:40] In fact, it doesn't need to be art at all. Art has that ability to get people to verbalize what's going on in the deep recesses of their mind. But you could do this with things that are going on in your farm. Imagine looking at hogs with your father. You've looked at those hogs hundreds of times, thousands of times before. But asking him, what do you see when you look at those hogs? Or what do you see when you look at this garden or this spreadsheet? What you will find is so many people assume that we already know what the other person sees 'cause they see what we see. But by asking them this question, they will begin to open up and talk about things. And you'll realize that you've just moved them from being lost in their own thoughts and their own emotions to talking. And once that happens, then you should focus on listening. Now, listening is a funny thing to teach about because how do you tell someone to be a better listener? Probably the best advice is just shut up. Just don't say anything at all. But that's not really satisfying, right? It's actually not true. If you think about for yourself, the times when you have encountered somebody that you thought, man, they are a great listener. Can you think of somebody that was a great listener, somebody that made you feel so good and so warm about what you were saying? What did they do? Probably many things. But what's striking to me is there's a reason why when somebody finds a great listener, they feel so good and it's so different.

Vance Crowe [00:16:17] And that's because most of us go most of our lives, never having anybody really listen to us. Certainly people listen like, Hey, are you giving me a task that I have to complete? Hey, am I being able to fulfill this like expectation that I should be nodding along as you're telling me about your day? But truly listening to someone truly and actually hearing what they're saying, responding to it get fills people with a certain sense of euphoria. And in fact, if you think on it on your own, the times when somebody has been an excellent listener, you get going through a conversation and you kind of wake up at some point and you're like, why am I telling this person all of this stuff? Have you experienced that yourself? Now, you may be asking yourself, am I a good listener? And there are varying degrees. I would venture to say that everyone could probably improve something about the way they listen. It could be about how they make eye contact. It could be about your nonverbals, whether you're nodding your head yes or you're doing all these little things. But really at its core, great listening is about asking the right questions. And there's no way for me to tell you, Hey, these are all the right questions for you to ask, because it really matters in the situation. So what I think I can probably do that might help more is to talk about where people make mistakes in their listening or where things go wrong. The first one, the first issue that I see happen all the time, this is even with people that are tremendous listeners.

Vance Crowe [00:17:54] They do what I call quick matching, right? This is something that's culturally, it must be very American because it's something we do quick matching is when you're listening to a story and you're hearing what somebody says, and then you say, ah, yeah, that's like me too. I had that too, right? And let me tell you about it. So I'll give you an example. At one time, this woman gave me permission to tell this story. I one time was talking with a woman and she was telling about her first just torrid love affair, how she had been living in LA and she had met an artist and she just absolutely fell in love with him so much so that she would go over to his house in the middle of the day just to watch him do his art. And she said, oh, he used to get so annoyed with me sitting in there watching him that she, he'd pushed the dog on me and we'd go into the living room and he'd put a movie on and I would just watch movies all day because he didn't want me looking over his shoulders. And we broke up. And it was very sad, right? The person that falls into quick matching will do something like this, oh, I had a terrible breakup once too. Or, oh, that sounds like something that could have happened to me. Right? What happens when you do that in a conversation when you, instead of finding the right question to ask, you relate it back to you? Well, instead of going deeper into that conversation, you're now talking about you. And so you're not going deeper and the conversation is now switched off of what you could have been learning from them and is now about you.

Vance Crowe [00:19:30] The other thing that happens for people, and I don't think this is a mistake, these are things that people are doing genuinely. We've been taught over time that we should do quick matching. We should try and relate with people. But the other one, and this is one that has really affected my wife for years, I'm an extreme extrovert, and she is a tremendous introvert. And so when she's at a at a party or a networking event, she always says, I have this internal dialogue, this monologue going on in my head where I'm trying to listen to what the other person says. I'm trying to focus on what they're telling me about. But I'm so lost in trying to keep focused that I actually, when they end their sentence and they're done talking, I don't have a question for them. And it kind of fizzles out. Is there anybody here that has that sort of internal dialogue that keeps them from being able to ask the right question? Yeah. Yeah. Right? And if you suffer from this, what's the thing that somebody can tell you? Listen harder, right? Like can you say like, just stop thinking so much that doesn't work. But I'll tell you from my experience, the thing that I learned, and I've since talked with my wife about this and many other people, is to teach. I call it a game, but it's not really a game. It's called the Tiniest Choices game. And what the tiniest choices game does when you're listening to somebody is you're listening to their story, you're listening to what they're saying, and you're trying to figure out what is the tiniest detail that they have included in this story that they don't need to be in there.

Vance Crowe [00:21:08] That if you took that detail out and you threw it away, the story still would've gone from A to Z and it would've been fine story. What's the detail they put in there? Now, the reason you're looking for this is because when people go to tell a story, particularly about something deeply meaningful to them, something they haven't thought about in a long time, they are experiencing that as though it happened. Again. They start running that movie through their mind, and as they're telling you the story, they're looking around in that movie and they're picking out those details that were so important to them. But on the bigger part of the picture, wasn't that important. If we think back to the woman that fell in love with the artist, did you notice any details that didn't need to be included? But she did What detail? Well, the one that I picked out was about something she said, that wasn't all that important. I said, wait, tell me about the dog. Right? Right. You heard it, right? It made sense in the story to her. That was an important part. Well, when I asked her to tell me about the dog, you should have seen this woman she went from having just been broken up with to euphoric thinking about her dog that she loved, right? She goes, I love that dog. His name was Sky. He used to sit and cuddle with me. I started buying him better food 'cause he wasn't buying him good food. I took him for walks. We went everywhere. And then she said, you know, it was actually when my boyfriend was talking about the dog when he told me that he would've gotten rid of the dog.

Vance Crowe [00:22:49] 'cause he's just too much of a nuisance. But it'd take more time to get rid of the dog than it would be to keep him than I knew. That's how he felt about me. And so I left him and I took the dog. Why did that work? Right? If I had asked her, if I had said, oh, I had a terrible breakup too, we might have gone off and talked about my breakup. Or if I had said, well, how did the breakup happen? She might have said, well, it just didn't work out right. But that detail that she included in there, and there were a lot of details I could have asked her about what kind of art did he do? Or why were you in la? Right? But if you listen for long enough and if you play this game enough times, if you're really focused on those tiny details, you'll get a sense for what was that detail that I should pull on? And she was delighted to have me ask her about that. And then finally, the third area, this is how do you go from starting a conversation and getting people to really start talking and going and asking the right questions to getting them to deeply open up? There's a man that I've, I had on my podcast a few times, his name is John Lanius. He's an incredible guy. He's written all these books. He's a hypnotist. He does incense experiences, incredible guy. And one time on my podcast, he said something that's really stuck with me, it's really made a big impact on me. He said, you know, trust, and for somebody to trust you, they need two things.

Vance Crowe [00:24:24] They first need to think that you, they need to know that you understand them and then they know need to know that you are for them. But when you ask a question like we were before, you ask one of those tiny choices questions, you demonstrate that you understand them, right? You are really listening. What does it mean to be for someone, right? That's harder to pin down. I don't think what John is suggesting is that you should just smile and tell people like you've made a great decision on all of those things, right? But they need to know that you're on the ride with them, that you understand that sometimes the decisions you made at that particular moment in your life or the things that you were experiencing put you in a position that you did the best that you could. That is deeply important because as you get to talking with somebody and the conversation goes deep and you start really getting people to open up, there's something that I call the law of mutual self-disclosure that comes in. Remember when we talked earlier about how sometimes people will be talking with a great listener and they wake up and they're like, what am I doing telling this person all this stuff? Well, the law of mutual self-disclosure is something embedded in our minds that we don't want to share too much with another person if they're not also sharing with us. So this is why when you're having a conversation, if you've been a great listener, sometimes people are gonna pull up and they're gonna jump over all the little innocent questions and ask you a very deep question.

Vance Crowe [00:26:03] And this is what will take these conversations from being inauthentic, where you're manipulating and you're trying to get somebody to open up for your own benefit. Or if you're really willing to have a deep and honest and interesting conversation, should never ask someone a question that you yourself are not willing to answer. And when the time comes and they do ask you, you owe them the the ability to express things that have happened to you, experiences that you've gone through, where maybe you had to make a decision that wasn't easy or maybe turned out not to be the right one. The law of mutual self-disclosure is one of those things that's hard to really define. But if you can figure out, am I sharing enough that they know I'm here with them, that I understand them and I'm for them without it becoming a conversation about you? And as you go deeper, one of the things that is really amazing to watch is if you can reference something a person said, either earlier in the conversation or earlier in the week or a month ago, or if it's in your family a year ago or five years ago, being able to communicate that you understand where they're coming from and you wanna know more about it, referencing something in the past that they've said really fills people with joy. Even something as simple as, you know, mom, you used to tell me that you hated weeding grandmother's garden.

Vance Crowe [00:27:35] What was so bad about it? Right? Now, you've demonstrated that you were listening to it and you wanna know more. And something as simple as what was it like weeding a garden you didn't wanna weed can open up all these conversations about how did grandma treat mom? Or what vegetables mattered, or how important was it that you had those vegetables growing in your garden for the future? It also can be something like, when did we only allow green paint onto the farm? Right? Getting dad or the uncles or somebody else on the farm to be able to talk about these things and reference something in the past allows you to ask them the exact question that they would love to answer. And truly, as you get better, as you go deeper with people, you can start to get a feel for what is the question that this person wants to answer, but doesn't get the chance? Because most of the time people don't ask. Not that long ago, a man called me up and he said, Hey, I want to bring my mother in. We they, they lived in Minnesota. He said, my mother has been living on the farm since dad died for 15 years. I know she's lonely there. I know she wants to leave, but I, for some reason, we just can't get her to go. And mom has everything she wants. She'll never let us get a present. She always wants to return it. She never wants anything. So I wanna do this. I wanna do an interview with her. Would you interview my mother? She's a wonderful woman.

Vance Crowe [00:29:06] So I said, sure. So she comes in and he was right. His mother was this warm sweet lady, and she talked all about her childhood. She talked about all these sayings that her dad had. She talked about living on the farm. She talked about growing up and how she and her husband took over the farm and what they did with it and how he passed. And when we do these Legacy Interviews, we go through five areas of life. We first talk about your childhood and your ancestors, your career, then your marriage, then parenting. And then we ask questions about wisdom. What did you learn along the way? So when we get to the wisdom section, I ask her, you know, you mentioned your dad and all these sayings that he had, are there any that you still live by today? And the woman have just a quiet smile overcome her. And she said, yeah, there's many. But the one that I'm always telling my children is, you should never leave a tabby cat behind. I had literally no idea what that meant. And so I asked her, what does that mean? One of my favorite questions to ask people, what is the lesson in that? What, why? And she said, well, my father would always say that the tabby cats were the thankless livestock, right? They caught all these mice, they kept vermin away. You could always tell if something was going wrong on the farm because the cats would be getting all up in arms about things and that you owed it to them no matter what, even if you were closing down the farm to take care of them.

Vance Crowe [00:30:45] I thought that was a rather sweet lesson. And I was happy that we captured it. We finished the interview and we stand up and we are, we are having this like nice moment. And then we go into my waiting room. And whenever somebody gets an interview for a parent or a loved one or a colleague, I always say, if you can be at the studio when we're done with these interviews, you should be, because you'd think somebody's talked for two hours or five hours that they don't have anything to say, but that's not the case at all, right? They're just getting warmed up, right? They have a lot to say. And so this little tiny meek sweet woman comes out, sees her son, they're excited, they have this big hug, and the son says, mom, did you uncover any pearls of wisdom? And she says, I just told him this same thing I've been telling you kids for years. Never leave a tabby cat behind. I see this idea hit him like a meteor, right? Something overcomes him and he has this weird look on his face, but we continue with the joyful, you know, they're experiencing it. They leave, they're gonna drive all the way back up to Minnesota. And he calls me the very next day, he says, Vance, you are not gonna believe this what he said on the way home. I asked mom about the tabby cat and what she was talking about there. I'd heard it a bunch of times, but I don't think I was ever really listening. So I asked her Mom, is the reason you're not leaving the farm because of the tabby cats?

Vance Crowe [00:32:18] And she said, yes, of course I've been telling you this. He said, mom, we've talked about this for a long time. We can take care of the cats. We won't get rid of them. And she said, oh no, you told me 15 years ago that Beth was allergic to cats. And he said, mom, there have been advances in science. Beth can take a Zyrtec and we'll be just fine. And he said, once mom got that cleared away, she was totally willing to let go of where she had been. And in fact, they were on their way. He was on his way to target to pick up moving boxes because she was ready to move in with her sister in Minneapolis. That's the power of asking people the questions, the things that they wanna be asked about, the things that they wanna talk about, the things that are weighing on them that they don't normally ever have the context to share. And you think about that and how important it is as, as we conclude, one of the things that I think is obvious that so important is how critical it is that your children and your grandchildren and your great-grandchildren hear the stories about where they came from. This is obviously important. In fact, duke University, Emory University, many of these places that have child, child psychology departments have discovered that children that know their family history are significantly less likely to get involved in drugs, to have depression and anxiety.

Vance Crowe [00:34:04] And I believe, I know very clearly why that is. That's if you know what your grandparents endured to get you to where you are, good, bad or indifferent, it's gonna help you know what you can get through. But I also think there's something else going on. I think that as we have expanded our reach as we've made it, so people can live far away from their families, certainly the children may not be hearing the stories that they need to hear. But I think there's a critical role in the act of telling stories, in the act of being able to talk about all the things that went on as you were a child, what you did in your career, your productive life. You know, when you're raising kids, I've got a three-year-old and a one-year-old come up to me afterwards, I'll show you a photo of what my daughter would look like as I was getting ready this morning, right? Screaming and crying and your hair's all over the place. When you're in the thick of running a farm or running a family or providing for yourself, those are your productive years. You don't have time to look back and say, what have we accomplished? But it used to be that when families lived close together, when they spent all kinds of time together, grandparents had the opportunity to tell those stories and it would help them go of their grip of those productive years. The things when they had to make all those decisions, when everything relied on them.

Vance Crowe [00:35:35] And it allows you to loosen your grip and move from those productive years to the wise years. And it's those wise years that allow us to pass on culture to figure out what was it that the last generation did that this next generation should never forget? Because if we forget it, then it's lost to civilization maybe forever, until they have to learn it again the hard way. So as you're trying to become a better listener, to be able to prepare yourself to have those conversations that lead to the types of changes in your organization on your farm, the best and most direct way is oftentimes sitting down and truly getting a deep conversation by first focusing somebody's attention and getting them to talk through open-ended questions. It's also that tiniest choices game, listening to the smallest details that they couldn't take out of what they're saying because it's so deeply important to them. But if you ask that question, you'll pull a thread and things will open up. And finally, even during the holidays, this is a perfect time. You have to come up with what is the question that they would love to be asked, but nobody ever does. It may be something as simple as, why is this your favorite Christmas ornament? Or it could be mom and dad. How did you come out of bankruptcy? How hard was that? These are the types of questions that will allow you to pass on information that will help your family be strong and continue your agricultural legacy into the future.

Vance Crowe [00:37:17] Now, I wanna end by talking about this painting again. You know, when people stand up after we've done the interview, they, they have this sense of, of, I think I could call it euphoria. They stand up and many of the times, maybe 70% of the times as we're talking, they're taking off their microphone. They're ready to go see their loved ones sitting outside, and they'll touch me on the arm or on the shoulder and they'll point at the painting and they'll say, you know, I've been looking at that painting for a little while as we've been talking. And I don't think she's tired. I think she's determined, or, I don't think she's sad. I think she knows the importance of what she's doing, or she is determined. Truly the power of having people tell their stories is because it will literally change what they see in the world. This is true of you telling your stories and of you being able to help your wise elders, the people that have been mentors to you, the people that have led your organizations by getting them to open up. Not only will you receive that wisdom, but you'll allow them to see the world in a different way. So I wanna thank the Colorado Farm Bureau for taking the time to talk about this subject. I see how strong urbanization is, and I know how easy it would be to be focused just on the outside, but because I know that it is the lessons that agriculture has learned over the last six generations because I've heard these stories, this is what made our civilization work.

Vance Crowe [00:39:05] It's what made our culture work, it what made our strong. And so I implore you as the part the, as the organization in the United States that represents agriculture, get these stories, capture them yourselves, make sure you are telling these stories because this is how we will retain that wisdom that allowed us to be the country that we are. And it will allow us to go on into the future. So thank you very much for this opportunity. Are we doing questions? I dunno, we certainly have time for it if you wanna take question. Sure. Are there, are there questions we can always talk about Rowdy Monsanto questions or, yes. Yes. Do you have video feed PowerPoint, like this presentation that printed? This is the first time I have ever given this presentation. And if you write me, I'll send it to you if you want. Would that work? Okay, other questions? Yes. Have you read Lords of the Harvest? Oh, of course. Yes, of course. When I came into, so he asked, have you read The Lords of the Harvest? That's, is it Dan Charles? Yeah. So, so the the, when I came into Monsanto, what I did was I went and found everything the activist did. I mean, I'm talking about those obscure documentaries that nobody's ever watched. And I'm talking about like the, not just Food Inc, but all the books. What I realized was that oftentimes those stories and books were telling me the story that made me feel good, that the problems and the challenges I had in my life were, well, you guys' fault.

Vance Crowe [00:40:47] And that if I could only, you know, somehow conquer the bad farmers that are doing it at scale, then the good farmers could come in and do everything. Right? And you see how seductive those stories are, which is why it's so important that you have those stories and you're putting them out into the world. Other questions? Yes. What becomes of the interviews that do, the interviews I do are video recorded. And so I have spent a great deal of time trying to think about how do you make a video interview last? Right? So, you know, you can put it on a Google Drive link or YouTube, but if you YouTube decides to shut it down or the the cloud decides to go away, you could put it on A DVD or A USB. But first of all, those are pretty easy to lose, right? And, and it turns out A DVD only lasts about 30 years. So I was talking about Legacy Interviews one time to a group of people, and it was actually a farm bureau group, you know, who solved this problem for how to keep video interviews the Mormons, because they go around the world capturing all this genealogical records. And so I was at the Farm Bureau, I told them about this problem, and somebody came up to me and said, well, a scientist at BYU came up with what's called an M disc, and it is a DVD made out of essentially porcelain. And so we have a special DVD writer and it burns it onto this porcelain disc. And that disc has been tested by the Department of Defense. It'll last for a thousand years and it'll be used in libraries, museums. And the Mormons have said that they, they'll make it available. And so we use that and then we often will transcribe the books if you do a full day interview.

Vance Crowe [00:42:22] And those, we go to a bible binding company that, that knows how to make a book last for hundreds of years. Other questions? Yes. How many of these do you do for the year? You know, the, he asked how many questions did you do for the year? You know, when I was first setting this up, I thought, I love talking to people. I could just do this all day, every day. But what you come to realize is, no, you can't. Right? Like there's a, there's an emotional level and a level of focus and attention that if you wanna do it right, you can't push those boundaries. And so I typically do about three a week. Sometimes it'll be like two half days and one full day. But it's, I just try and keep it a measured pace. Sometimes, like at the beginning of October, harvest was going on at a, in Illinois. And so a guy said, my whole family's here. We're never all here, but everybody comes in for harvest. Why don't you come? We stay at our farmhouse and do eight family interviews. So every once in a while we'll make an exception, but that's a lot. And I, I feel like by the eighth one I'm pushing up on how, how, how much can I focus on the tiny details? Yeah. How many do you do across the country? Well, I, so he asked, how many do you do do across the country? You know, I, I saw on social media a couple of weeks ago of, it was at, it was at a factory. There was a giant banner up there that said, we didn't do this because it was easy. We did it because we thought it would be easy.

Vance Crowe [00:43:55] Right. And that's what I have experienced with this, because people come in from all over the country to do the interviews, but sometimes that doesn't work. And so we just, now, I hired a guy that knows how to do travel, move all the cameras, get everything set up, don't break things. So we've just now started to travel to Iowa, Indiana and, and do a block of interviews, but that's just beginning that we're taking on the travel. Yes. Do you have a book that explains some of this in more detail? So she asked, do you have a book? I wrote a book, but I don't think it's ready for prime time. But like, this is, this is actually a great experience. You know, when I was talking with the Colorado Farm Bureau, we were trying to figure out what could be something that would be special to do for this group. And we started talking about this. And just like I said before, you know, when people, when you ask somebody, what are you thinking about? They don't have an answer. And it, you don't really know what you think until you say it out loud or you write it down right. And writing things down and saying it here helps me crystallize. What am I doing? How do I show this to people? So just the very act of standing up and talking with all of you, and I hope talking with you afterwards, I'll be here all day, will help me write this down. Would would you buy that book? Great. All right. Other questions? Okay.

Vance Crowe [00:45:27] So I think some of the best interviews I've ever seen, not the interview or the individual, it's the, you put brother together and to talk about That is a great question. We had a little back and forth. So actually, yes. So what we do, if I do a full day interview, what I do is I'll, I'll interview like mom and dad or two brothers. We just did two brothers the other day. So mom will go in the morning and then we take a break and then dad goes, and then we have a lunch that we sit and talk and just try and relax. And then we have a couch that we have both of them sit on and I interview them together. And you're totally right. I, I think the couple's interviews are some of the most amazing. And when I get letters from the children of the people that did the interviews, they describe even more than the stories that they love, that they just love watching mom roll her eyes at dad, tell that story or dad, you know, throw in his quips. And it's that dynamism. And that's actually the real beauty and value of having video. It's being able to see people interact and, and share that comradery with one another. So I, I'm totally with you. It's probably my favorite interviews to do. Although in every couple, every single time there's one that's like, just so excited to be sitting down, they sit down, they're ready to go.

Vance Crowe [00:46:58] And the other one being like, what are we doing here? And I'll tell you the pattern that I've seen is the one with the arms crossed. They do the most talking once everything's warmed up. Yes. Have you done it with your parents or your grandparents and you discovered it? So he asked, have you done it with your parents or your grandparents? I've done little ones with my parents. And Temple Grandin once told me I was at, at an event, she said, you know, you're, you're never a prophet in your own land, right? And so kind of blow it up, but my mother's actually very, very into it. And so we've done little bits and pieces, but on Tuesday I'm actually interviewing my wife's grandfather, so my children's great-grandfather, and we're doing an all day one. And I've, I've already interviewed many members of her family and that has been really profound. It's actually humbled me quite a bit to know that I had no idea where my wife had come from and what heritage we were passing on to our children. Yes. Did I understand you have podcast? I do. Like NBR Well, I would say it's pretty far from NPR. I've changed my ways quite a bit if over time, but I, so my podcast is called the Vance Crow podcast, and what I do is I try and interview people from all walks of life to tell me about like, Hey, what do you know about? So I've interviewed, I was interviewing truck drivers during COVID and veterinarians, I've interviewed diplomats.

Vance Crowe [00:48:31] I just interviewed a woman from the House of Lords a few weeks ago. I've interviewed a prostitute. I've interviewed all kinds of people just to say, what is going on in your mind? Why, how did you come to these decisions? What do you care about? And you know, I, I really do it. I I started the podcast because when I left Monsanto, I would get invited to give talks. And I don't actually have that much interesting to say. What I am typically trying to do is to find out what ideas do other people have. And so I, I interact with that and actually the podcast led me to Legacy Interviews. I started that before I started Legacy Interviews. Yes. Would you differentiate a conversation from an interview? It sounds kinda like you would, and if the interviewee is expecting it to be more back and forth conversational, do you kind of set the stage where here's how our interview is going to go? Yes. So I try very hard to be on the interviews as little as possible. So that's different than a conversation in a conversation like we were having this morning. Is is two people, you know, you've got some ideas, I've got some ideas. So there is that distinction. But I would say all of the things I talked about in this are, are the same for the exception of the law of mutual self-disclosure.

Vance Crowe [00:50:06] When I'm doing those interviews, oftentimes people are sharing things like losing a child or about, you know, having a marriage fail or having a vice really take them down. And it wouldn't be appropriate for me during that conversation to do it. But one of the big mistakes I made when I was first thinking about Legacy Interviews was I was thinking, oh, you're gonna need a bunch of time to get people warmed up and then when you're done, you're gonna shake hands and they're gonna leave and you're gonna get back to doing work. But that's not actually what happens because you get done and somebody has just shared all of this with you. And now they wanna ask me questions and I believe that I have to have some level of my own personal privacy. But for the most part, you know, if somebody's talked about losing children and they wanna know, have you experienced that? You know, my wife and I did experience that, or about, you know, tragedies that have happened or vices. And I try and keep that in the studio because I always say, if you're trusting me, this is a confidential conversation, then I trust you as well. And, and I, I feel like I owe that to my clients. I don't, I think that's one of the reasons why this will never be a business. I'm gonna try and scale. You can't, you can't scale trust like that it's art and that art is finding bonds. And, and I found, you know, one of the problems I'm running into is I now have so many friends, right? I have so many people that wanna send Christmas cards and keep talking. But I think I owe that to anybody that's willing to sit down and share with me. Alright. Alright. Well you guys have been wonderful. I'm here all day.

Vance Crowe [00:51:37] Thank you so much. Colorado Farm Bureau. Have a great annual meeting. Thank you. Well, thank you very much Vance. I think there was a lot of insight and wisdom in, in the conversation you had with us. And you could certainly tell from the, the audience reaction there was a lot of interest in what you had to say and we really appreciate that.