What Happened to Community Pillars and Why Culture Changes So Fast

Tim Durbin [00:00:00] You cannot really stay focused and attentive if you're writing everything down. I gotta listen and I gotta make sure I capture the most important things. If you read for pleasure, you don't have to retain it all. But if you're reading to really make yourself better, there's so much content out there, you cannot literally do it all. So you have to make those choices of how do I get a little bit better? And what did I read that moved me to share that with somebody else?

Listener intro (station ID) [00:00:00] I'm Tim Bickett, a grain and cattle risk management advisor from Worthington, Minnesota, and you are listening to the Vance Crowe podcast.

Vance Crowe [00:00:33] Welcome back to the podcast. I'm glad you're here today. We have a good friend of mine, Tim Durbin. Now, Tim and I have known each other for so long that I actually have no idea where this conversation will go, but Tim is an extraordinary note taker, a prolific thinker, somebody that captures ideas from all around the world. And then when you're having a conversation with him, he'll subtly put something into the conversation that you never expected. So I'm really looking forward to the conversation. We're gonna get to that in just a moment. But first, we just got back from a really exciting trip for Legacy Interviews. Longtime listeners of the podcast know that Legacy Interviews are where I sit down with an individual or a couple to record their life stories so that future generations can know their family history. Well, we were invited to a Manhattan apartment where we interviewed a brilliant investor and got a chance to hear his stories about how he came from a certain kind of life and worked his way up. But what was really extraordinary about this trip was that the family invited friends in and we recorded stories from those friends talking about their childhood experiences with the guy we were interviewing and just ways that he had impacted them. They're now planning to get two different videos, one, the legacy interview of the father that they love, and the second one is to show the father just how many people love him, what they care about, what was important to them. It's really gonna be a beautiful thing when we're all done with it and we're excited that we can offer these kinds of things. If your family is considering putting together a family reunion, getting together over the summer, and you would like us to potentially record not just the matriarch and patriarch, but maybe some of the people around them, then give me an email directly and say, Hey, I want to talk more about this and what it would cost.

Vance Crowe [00:02:19] You can do that by going to Vance at Legacy Interviews dot com. Otherwise, if you'd like to learn more about our services, go to our website, Legacy Interviews dot com. All right, without further ado, let's head to the interview with my good friend Tim Durbin. Tim Durbin, welcome to the podcast. Good

Tim Durbin [00:02:37] Morning, Vance. It's great to be here with you. Little bit delayed though.

Vance Crowe [00:02:39] Yeah. So you are a prolific note taker, like unlike anything I have ever seen before. You're listening to podcast, watching news, what are you taking notes for? What are you gonna do with all those notes?

Tim Durbin [00:02:51] It's a great question because you kind of can't help how you're wired. And I think from a very early age, like you know, growing up the family I did and the type of environment I was in, I always loved learning. I always loved observing people and you know, learning how they think, what makes 'em tick. And then as you get later on in life, you realize the things that you really wanna remember and the things that you want to be able to communicate. And having four kids, you have to write a lot of stuff down because it's just easy to forget.

Vance Crowe [00:03:18] Yeah. I think like you feel like, oh no, there's no chance that I won't remember this. And then you get a little further along and you're like, oh, I didn't remember that at all. Or I don't remember the specifics of that at all.

Tim Durbin [00:03:30] But even when I first, you know, met you, I guess probably what, 11 years ago you came to speak to Rotary. And I remember thinking to myself, never heard of Vance. I was impressed with your presentation and I think you may remember I actually submitted some feedback to you on your website, I think it was when you had first designed Articulate Ventures. And that was our kind of first back and forth all those years ago. So

Vance Crowe [00:03:50] Wow, that's, and I, I, I don't know if you've seen it, but I actually got, so I did a talk where I referenced a book called Black Sheep and Kissing Cousins way back then, way before I was doing Legacy Interviews. My talk was about like the value of telling family stories. Well, we just had her, the author of that book on the podcast.

Tim Durbin [00:04:07] That was great. I listened to that one. I think we got a chance to chat about that briefly. And I, I've enjoyed listening to your shows and it's your audience. I think I connect a lot with the topics that you bring on here. And, and back to your point about writing things down is that, you know, in a world where there's so much information and you're getting just bombarded, whether it's with news, social media and the amount of content that's out there, you have to really take a step back and think about how am I spending my time and more importantly, my attention. And I think that's where, if I want to be able to be a better father or a better listener or a better advisor to my clients, it's around truly paying attention and, and staying focused and, and trying to remember what's important.

Vance Crowe [00:04:50] Yeah. I once remember seeing a movie with that guy. Was he in Jeff Daniels? Was that the guy in Dumb and Dumber?

Tim Durbin [00:04:56] Yes.

Vance Crowe [00:04:56] So he one time played this like obscure role where he had written a book that everybody thought he knew the meaning of life. And so somebody comes and knocks on his door all the time to be like, what is the meaning of life? And finally opens up the door really frustrated 'cause he doesn't know. And he's like, you're always paying attention to whatever you think is the most valuable because your attention is the most valuable thing that you own. And while that was kind of like a throwaway fun line in that movie, it had a huge impact me because Sure. Like truly the most valuable thing that you own, really the only thing that you do own is your attention.

Tim Durbin [00:05:29] And that's true. And, and depending how you decide to spend it or give, it determines a lot about who you are. And I think you've had some guests on in the past that have used that phrase that you are kind of the average of the five people you spend the most time with. And so when you get reflective around where am I spending my time and trying to stay, you know, whether it's informed or balanced or in the know, you can't know it all, but what you can do is choose where you want to be. And then when you're in a position where you're, what you're listening and you have those moments when you're by yourself and you have no distractions, and you can literally sit there and focus and listen, try to figure out, you know, being a part of the sandwich generation when you're, you know, have parents are getting a little bit older and kids who are now coming older. And my, my oldest is, is 21. So I think back now I'm like, am I really this old? How did I get to this point in my life where I've got a a 21-year-old in college and you realize how just every day is a blessing and every opportunity to learn and grow and share things with other people becomes more and more important as you get older. How

Vance Crowe [00:06:30] Old were you when you had your first kid?

Tim Durbin [00:06:32] I was 24.

Vance Crowe [00:06:34] Wow. So yeah. Were you ready to be a dad?

Tim Durbin [00:06:37] Probably not, but my wife and I, you know, we decided early on she was basically an only child. And so she was always saying, I wanna have a big family. You know, and I, I come from a big family. My dad was one of 10 and I have two sisters, so, you know, we don't have as many at, you know, our level, but growing up like I did where every Sunday it was a race to get home from church, you changed clothes, you'd got your potluck dinner ready, and you ran up to your grandfather's house where, you know, like I said, dad was one of 10. There were six of 'em that lived within five miles of their father. So that was our Sunday. That was how we grew up. And that was how we kind of became to know about family, was through that format. And now as I'm at this stage where I've got, you know, four kids of my own, I don't live near my mom and dad and there are certain things that I can't do with them that I did when I was a kid. And I kind of miss that.

Vance Crowe [00:07:32] Yeah. I, so we were just up in New York and I, I lived out there for a few years when I was in graduate school. And to me, I think for a lot of people, New York was like, oh, this is the highest peak of the mountain. This is if you get to New York and you can make it in New York. So there's a whole bunch about that city that I didn't see. Like, it, it was like completely invisible to me because of the stage of life that I was in. And now I go back after, you know, 15 years since I've spent very much time there, and now I have kids and I've got extended family that I live near. And so when you go back there, you realize like New York City is actually not, there's very, very few children there, right? It's a, it's a lot of 20 year olds and 30 year olds, and then a smaller number of people that are older than that. But when you're looking around the city, you're, you're seeing tens of thousands of people. We were down on Madison Avenue, you know, I went out to different parts of like the really excited part of the city and there's no kids around. I think that does something weird to a culture when there's no kids around. But I couldn't have seen it before. I had kids of my own.

Tim Durbin [00:08:39] Sure, sure. You know, when you, when you step back and you look at the, the things like where you've lived and how you've come to know that area and like, you know, growing up, I grew up in Kentucky. I didn't go to New York for the first time until recently, but it seemed like, you know, I always enjoyed whether it was watching Cardinal's baseball games playing the Mets back in the eighties. And you think about what you start to develop in your own head, what a city is like. And my cousin lived in Manhattan, he and his wife had a kid there, they moved out to California not too long after. I can't imagine, you know, the, the cost of living there, you know, trying to get from point A to point B with a kid and a stroller and all the things it takes to, you know, raise a family and do it. So in that environment, I admired him for, for trying, but I understand why he, you know, moved away.

Vance Crowe [00:09:29] Yeah. There's something really weird about raising your children where pretty much everyone you see is a stranger. Now I know when people get into a neighborhood, eventually you start to know people, but like by and large, you are never going to know almost all of the people that you meet. And so there's this weird anonymity that I'm, children have been growing up in that since there's ever been cities. But like, it would be a very different experience than a kid that grew up, like where I grew up in small town central Illinois, literally everyone knew who you were, where you lived, who your parents were, who your siblings were. It would be like a different, a different kind of civilization.

Tim Durbin [00:10:07] Yeah. And, and my, you think about the sinners of those communities, whether it's the church, the Catholic church, or a different denomination of church. And that was ours. It was a small Catholic church and it was the same, you know, 10, 15, 20 families and everybody did know each other. And there's a certain honesty to that to where like, you know, that, you know, you gotta look somebody in the eye. And you know, I always say that my, my dad's dad, my grandfather, you know, he lived to be 96 and you know, he lost his wife when he had 10 kids in 1966. And it took until he was 96 years old in a couple forms of cancer to to to, you know, cause him to lose his life. But the fact that he made it that long and raised those kids and did what he did, and he was a pillar in his community. He was an elder in the church. He did, he wrote for the church, he wrote for the archdiocese. So he was that type of person that is kind of that focal point of a community. And there were lots of 'em there too, like him. And I wonder if there's gonna be people like that, you know, those pillars of their community, you know, another 50 to a hundred years, you know, what the direction that we're going right now, I do miss, you know, that type of upbringing. You know, we just, you get a little bit more reflective and later in life you're like, it was actually pretty good.

Vance Crowe [00:11:18] Yeah. I think there's something that kind of, it frightens is probably too strong of a word, but like the way that human beings interacted over the last 100 years, that's a social technology and it's a technology that people figured out by living in these small communities and then these communities growing. And eventually you get to a point where if you don't have those elder statesmen, the guy that was an elder in the church, the person that was, you know, always there around, over and over again, then how things were done doesn't get passed down. And all that gets passed down is what you see on the surface Yeah. Of that level. And, and you've probably been around organizations where they're just repeating the voodoo that they heard before, but there's no, they don't understand why they're doing it.

Tim Durbin [00:12:03] Yeah. I think from a part of the reason why I think living a life of service, being interested in those around you, taking an interest in those around you, you know, can stem from how you grew up. And I think that from a, you know, perspective of where are we headed, is it so bad because of social media and technology and you know, those that have embraced it and we want to teach kids how to, you know, use it. We want to be competitive, we want to be globally relevant, we wanna encourage stem and these are all great things, but you cannot do it all. And I think having a mentor, whether it's a grandparent that you could spend time with on the weekends that shows you how to do things around the house or it's, you know, somebody that's maybe your dad or your mom's age that's in the workplace that takes an interest in you. And I think if you have somebody that you can have access to and access in life is a big topic, but having access to a mentor, a peer mentor, somebody that has been through different experiences in yours can help. I think a lot of people take a step back and realize the world's much bigger than just the circle around us.

Vance Crowe [00:13:07] So I, I'm running the danger zone 'cause I could get emotional if I talk about this too much, but I, so I got a chance to see my, my, he's now 104 year old mentor Pete, who I've done an interview with on the podcast and he's now blind and has like real difficulty hearing, but I had a chance to go see him. He's saying like, I probably have, you know, weeks left. And one of the things that I, I was sitting there and I wanted to tell him, you know, thank you so much from the bottom of my heart. And I think the biggest thing that he had was expectations for me, right? You get to be in your twenties and so much of your life is about like, I want freedom. I don't want anybody telling me what to do. I want to be able to be my own person. And that's okay, like to have to try and have freedom, but somebody having expectations that you want to live up to makes you go so far beyond what you could have ever accomplished on your own. At least for me. I would, I would, I mean, I I was telling him before I left, like I wouldn't have my children, I wouldn't have married my wife. None of these things would've happened if I would've met my wife with the expectations for myself that I had. What I did was met my wife after Pete had given me the expectations of me. So I was really way up there. And to live a life where you don't have mentors around that are expressing what they expect of you would be very, very difficult.

Tim Durbin [00:14:28] I agree. I think there's still times where like, I'll talk to my parents and I'll apologize to my mom for something random that I did, you know, when

Vance Crowe [00:14:35] I was a kid. How does she react to that?

Tim Durbin [00:14:37] She's actually makes it like, it's no big deal, you know? And that's always been my mom, it's been that type that always loving, nurturing her mom. I spent a lot of time with my grandmother when I was a kid. So like, I got a chance to be, you know, in this house where, I mean, she was so loving, so caring. And I remember when she got sick, she had, she, she got cancer in her spleen and her husband, they had been married 57 years and he died I think in 2006. And so she was never the same. I remember mom always saying that she died of a broken heart. And that's just how, you know, when you think about the Legacy Interviews that you record these people that you see it spend their entire lives together and the children they create and the, the family and the network of people they influence. And, and from a perspective of what does your family name mean, what are your values, how do you share those with people, how do you wrap it all together really comes back down to what are you doing in your day-to-day life to do, to be better than day before? And to make those around you better. And I've always kind of subscribed to the fact that, you know, growing up as an athlete, a coach has expectations for you. You mentioned expectations, just getting ready for today, I thought to myself, I don't wanna let Vance down, you know, I gotta be ready to go. And I think that gives us, it sharpens an an edge in us to know that we have to be prepared for something. You know, if you're an actor, you get a script. You, you know, you, you rehearse for a player or a movie, but for life you prepare.

Vance Crowe [00:16:02] Yeah. I, I remember the first time Pete called me up one time after we had gotten, we had had martinis and talked and he called me up and he goes, Hey Vance, I was looking over my notes from last night and you said X, Y, Z and I wanted to follow up with you on that. And to me, having somebody that after I left, sat down and wrote notes about it and then wanted to come talk about it, was profound. You are that way. That's, this is like a, a tool you have picked up is shocking to me how much you're like, Hey Vance, I was reflecting on this. When did that develop? How, how did that all come about?

Tim Durbin [00:16:39] I'd say more so in the last, you know, probably five to 10 years. And, and I've always been like that way. I remember one of my first jobs I worked for Lucent Technologies, this was back in 2001, one of my only really non-finance jobs. And they gave us a journal and they gave us a phone. They gave us a, you know, client list and they said, you will write down everything. And I, I took it, I literally wrote down everything wrote down way too much. And I realized you cannot really stay focused and attentive if you're writing everything down. So as I've kind of gone throughout my career, even maybe, you know, 15, 20 years ago as I was starting to get higher up, you know, at the, the bank that I worked, I realized I could not keep up that pace of writing everything down. We kept coming back, I gotta listen and I gotta make sure I capture the most important things, even back to your tiniest choices. Example, like, did I ask about the dog? You know, those little things. Like, and, and more I started listening to podcasts. The more I started reading, the more I started realizing that if you read for pleasure, you don't have to retain it all. But if you're reading to really make yourself better, you, there's so much concept out there, you cannot literally do it all. So you have to make those choices of how do I get a little bit better and what did I read that moved me to share that with somebody else. But you also have to be careful because not everything out there is authentic. I think with the advent of GPT and all the technology right now, you know, I'm, I'm worried about our kids, just like I said, from all the amount of information that is pushed in their direction, maybe they can avoid it.

Tim Durbin [00:18:13] Maybe they can have the discipline to avoid it. But I think for me, it got to that point where I enjoyed learning about things I didn't know about and seeking out things to maybe take a different opinion of what I already had, so that way I could feel, feel very well informed.

Vance Crowe [00:18:29] Have you used GPT or

Tim Durbin [00:18:31] Chip? I have. I have, I have. It's fun to play with because you wanna see what it says. You know, I've, I would say that if I thought I knew something and I wanted to test what I thought I knew I would put something in there. Whether it was a, you know, a planning topic or maybe it was something with a research into, like even for, for this morning, I wanted to talk a little bit about, you know, what we discussed, which was, you know, urban versus rural divide. And like, what do I really know? What do I not know? And I think from a, what I've heard in various podcasts and people talking about the technology, it's only as good as what's being fed into it. So, and you've had say, Jim Rutt, I've listed, he's out of this world, you know, knowledgeable about this. I've learned a lot about the fact that you have to be very careful what you plug into this technology because the prompting what you, what you tell, it really alters the output.

Vance Crowe [00:19:23] Yeah, I think that's it. The, the exactly how you word a question, it's only, it's doing a math problem. It's not doing words or thinking. It's saying he put in 4, 7, 1, 3, 4. So we are gonna go find what response looks back for it. And Jim, you're right, has like this concept of what should you do for prompt engineering? I, I think one thing I noticed when I was in New York about people being on their phones and is that restaurants are quieter and like in an almost spooky way, right? Like, you walk in and there are people sitting at tables with each other and they're staring at their phone. I mean it's, I'm not saying it's like quiet in Manhattan,

Tim Durbin [00:20:06] But

Vance Crowe [00:20:06] It is noticeably quieter when you walk into these places that used to be loud and bustling because people were coming to sit there with their friends and now they're coming to have caffeine and, and sit there with their friends somewhere else.

Tim Durbin [00:20:19] Yeah, and I, this is one thing for me about it as a parent. 'cause I've watched my own kids, you know, and how they interact with their device and their friends and it is largely, you know, face of the screen, but the speed with which they go back and forth from the messaging apps and the communication and then like, I, maybe they're just really retrain their brains to be able to process this so quickly and still be effective in their relationships. But yeah, we, we've, we've tried, I've failed. I always say like I, I remember my failures as a parent more than probably my successes. 'cause you're just hard

Vance Crowe [00:20:49] On yourself. And

Tim Durbin [00:20:50] I really wanted to try to limit the amount of time they spent on a screen. And finally during the, the pandemic during the school environment, you know, I had to give up. You had four kids in the house at the same time, everybody trying to do school or work. And that was just not a conducive environment to I think, yeah, moderation with devices.

Vance Crowe [00:21:08] And how has it all turned out? Are your kids like twitching if they don't have their phones or,

Tim Durbin [00:21:12] I don't think so. I mean, I think they get a little bit more like they're looking over there and, and it's hard to compare them to every 'cause I think I see it generally with kids. It's like they want the phone handy and I guess that's how we're allowing them to be. And we can say, well, that's good or bad, depending on how they can separate, you know, my wife Kelly is a preschool teacher and like you've seen these trends over the last couple of years where younger kids have trouble separating or, you know, transitioning because they're used to having something in their hands. You mentioned going out to eat a couple weeks ago. I went to lunch, a small hole in the wall place. There were maybe five other people in there. Three of them were couples and you know, the two of the three couples, as soon as he got the kid in the, in the highchair gave him an iPad. And I try to, you know, not, you know, pass judgment. I've been there before where you want a kid to be quiet. But I I I do think it's a shame that we would have all this, you know, collective intelligence as kids that are learning their life experiences and, and not looking each other in the eye and having a conversation about it.

Vance Crowe [00:22:15] One thing that is is different that I haven't heard people talk about very much is like, when we grew up, there were Saturday morning cartoons and there were like shows saved by the Bell and these various things that yeah, we watched and we had this kind of continuous culture. So I can talk to somebody else that was born somewhere around me and mention the, you know, you know, did you watch Heman or GI Joe or whatever. Yeah. Will kids have that or is their experience of the internet so individualized? Or is it massively increased and homogenized? I don't know.

Tim Durbin [00:22:48] Yeah, I, I can tell you what's funny is that where Saturday cartoons, or remember NBC must see TV was Thursday night, must see, must see TV now is when Mr. Beast released a video. Like my, my kids will gather around the computer and they will watch it. And that's kind of like their, you know, when something's news coming out and it's being promoted on tv, like you knew this special was coming up and like you, you had to be there in front of that TV to be able to see it. Now they get the notifications, oh, Mr. Beast posted. And what's funny, it's even gotten, like last night we watched maybe an hour of Impractical Jokers, like the top segments they did. That's the first thing we've done as a family to like watch something together in probably a couple weeks. But I, if it brings you together, if it allows you to smile, if you, you know, sometimes you just need pure entertainment too. It doesn't all have to be educational or life changing. Sometimes you just need to be together as a family.

Vance Crowe [00:23:41] Yeah, I think that's, and that's, I think the, one of the biggest roles of a parent is to be able to set down what is, what is like grabbing your attention and being able to create that space. I think that's like the hardest thing for me to do is to be like, because you can, you can trick yourself into thinking my work is the most important thing and the more that I'm working, the better I'm doing. But like I have a toddler now that if I'm not giving a hundred percent attention, she is going to terrorize me until I do. But then you think like, ah, why are you frustrating me so much? But then you put away the phone. Yeah. And then you're with her and you're like, oh my gosh, I have an angel here. Like literally this is what all the Renaissance paintings are of these little children that are exactly her size and I was distracted by my phone.

Tim Durbin [00:24:28] It is a distraction and sometimes it's a necessary distraction when you have multiple kids in multiple places. Sometimes I always say, ha I have to look at my phone. There's a call that comes in, there's an emergency and there's a time and a place for everything. But I like the fact that you, you know, we've had conversations about taking your kids to the art museum or let, letting them explore, you know, let 'em get outside, get their hands dirty. I think, you know, Kelly and I have always kind of taken the approach of we want them to have their own life and their own experience. We want them to make as many decisions for themselves as they are capable. You know, I've got a senior in high school right now who's getting ready to graduate, you know, so I have my second one going off to college. And I think about those little moments when they were younger and before there were phones and all these devices everywhere and how they played and how they went outside and how they had that life to where they could live mostly a distraction free life. And I think that's a challenge for all of us now is how do we, how do we set healthy limits or even if we're capable absorbing more information, is it really, is it really good for us?

Vance Crowe [00:25:26] Oh, I look back, I, you know, I was giving talks when I worked for Monsanto and I remember being like, I wake up and I listen to this many podcasts and then when I'm driving to work, I'm listening to it on two x speed. And like eventually you hit a point where you're like, oh, wait a second, all this information is certainly not helping my sanity. And I don't think it actually makes me all that well informed.

Tim Durbin [00:25:48] Yeah, yeah. Well I started reading Revelations as a result of listening to one of your shows and this whole thought about, and I, I'm, I'm only about a hundred pages into it, so I, I had to, I actually actually was able to put down Oh,

Vance Crowe [00:26:00] The revelations by okay, I'm sitting here thinking like, okay, we're about to have the biblical discussion.

Tim Durbin [00:26:05] No, no, no, no, no, Erik Hoel, who's been on your Chicago.

Vance Crowe [00:26:08] Yeah. Yes.

Tim Durbin [00:26:08] But like, I, I, that's why I've also enjoyed like getting, you know, out of my ordinary environment and starting to listen to things. And like, I would never, I probably would never picked up that book. I'm enjoying it.

Vance Crowe [00:26:20] Oh, that book is good.

Tim Durbin [00:26:21] It's very good. It's good. And, and, and we think about like, whether it's cognition or, you know, whatever makes this really human and, and like, it's pretty technical at, at times. So, you know, there's a part of me where it's like, okay, I'm going to be a little bit faster through this point, but still it gives you that kinda like, when you step into a novel of fiction or something that has a, a pretty interesting story, but also a topic that, and I studied psychology, you know, I did my senior research paper on dream research. So it's like, part of this stuff is, you know, it kind of pulls me in. And the same point in time is, you know, you can be reading a book that's, so, I, I finished Peter Attia's Outlive great book, very technical at times on, on the medical side, you know, talks about proteins and all these things. But the last six, seven chapters were great because they focused on practical things you could do in your day-to-day life to live longer,

Vance Crowe [00:27:10] Like sleep and stress. And

Tim Durbin [00:27:12] I suppose how sleep is kind of important.

Vance Crowe [00:27:14] Yeah. I mean, finding these books and then finding the time to, to do it. So you don't have little kids now?

Tim Durbin [00:27:22] No, the youngest is 11. My daughter's gonna be 16 in June

Vance Crowe [00:27:25] When they were four and two. And were you able to read then?

Tim Durbin [00:27:31] I did, but it was usually when everybody else was asleep or exhausted and, you know, you, you, I would find myself sometimes at two 30 in the morning in my bathroom reading the Michael Connelly book. You know, he wrote the Harry Bosch novels. Kelly come in like, what are you doing? I'm like, I you want me to turn the line off so I can't

Vance Crowe [00:27:47] In here to read. There's a, that's a funny thing. That's a trope that I had seen on like movies and commercials where dad would hide out in the bathroom and then you realize like, no, that's a real thing. It didn't happen. And then you've got these little hands banging on the door.

Tim Durbin [00:28:00] Yeah, yeah. But it's, it's, you make time, right? I mean, if it's important to, you'll make time. And I will say there have been points where I've had a book that I've loved reading, but I just so exhausted 'cause of parenthood. I just have to wait, you know? So, and it has gone in, in I'd say waves. There's a point in time where you get in a mode where you're enjoying reading and you realize it's part of your routine and you go back to the old, you know, Stephen King wrote on writing and talking about how you have to make the commitment. And that even if it's just 30 minutes a day or 10 minutes a day, if you make that commitment to do it, it becomes part of your routine.

Vance Crowe [00:28:36] Well part of my routine is on Sundays, while I'm doing like cooking or outdoor work, I'm listening to podcasts and I try to listen to podcasts I haven't heard before. So that like try and like, hey, how are different people discussing things? You sent me one from the Lincoln Project that like, I'm not easily offended, but that was like, that was offensive.

Tim Durbin [00:28:58] Did you finish the whole thing here?

Vance Crowe [00:28:59] The whole thing?

Tim Durbin [00:28:59] Yeah. I, I started the second one and got through most of it and you know, and I've, I've heard about them and the founder, you know, worked for various campaigns on the Republican side before, and I don't get too big into politics, but I was a little bit surprised at the content and it seemed like it was a little out of touch or,

Vance Crowe [00:29:16] So we were talking about the, it's called the Lincoln Project was the podcast and these two guys

Tim Durbin [00:29:22] That wrote the book,

Vance Crowe [00:29:23] That wrote this book about what is it that rural white people are feeling and thinking. So I was like, Hey, Tim knows this is a big community. I work with a bunch, I'm giving talks.

Tim Durbin [00:29:33] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:29:34] And from the word go, yeah. It was like, you know, this is their term, not mine, but they were othering, right? It was like, we are going to paint rural white America as filled with rage, deeply confused about the future and living in a past that no longer exists. And they were quite confident that their perspective was okay to say out loud. I mean, no, there's no chance you could say those things about another class of people in the US and and not have outrage over it.

Tim Durbin [00:30:06] And it's, it's getting attention. I'm assuming. I, I imagine you're, I know you have a lot of farmers in your follow base and you know, people I I, I grew up, you know, my, like I said, my, my dad grew up on a small farm, you know, they had hogs and cattle and chickens. You know, I think you think about where we all pivot to if you grow up in that community and that the knock on rural America is, is that people don't wanna stick around. It's dying. They have antiquated values or views of the world. And I think that's so blown out of proportion. Yeah. There's definitely people that probably don't represent that community as well as other people would like them to with their thoughts or behaviors. But you can't just go find somebody willing to talk and take that as gospel for how those people behave. 'cause let's be honest, most people that I think that are very open-minded don't always like to share. They may be more reserved and they may not wanna try to convince you otherwise that we're not like this because that's not how I am. I think it's how most those people really are. You look at the population, I think the data says, you know, we've just got 14 million people live, you know, I think it's roughly, or it's 46 million people, 14% of the population that lives in non-urban areas. And roughly the state data says between a half a percent and 5% of all people are narcissists. So you're gonna get some people like that in all, all communities.

Vance Crowe [00:31:27] Yeah. I thought that the thing that was so interesting about that was that they were trying to explain to an urban audience what is it that's going on in the minds of people that are living far away. And I think like that's a very good thing to do. Like we need cross-cultural who's going out into the countryside and who's taking perspectives. But when I was in New York this week, I got to see like friends that I've known for a long time. Yeah.

Tim Durbin [00:31:54] But

Vance Crowe [00:31:54] I don't like go stay at their house very often. So they're telling me like stories like, oh, well we were, we got invited to a wedding down in Georgia and we were pretty nervous to go because we didn't know if we'd run into like the clan or, you know, confederate flags. And like this type of thinking was, was happened more than once. And you start being like, what do you really think is going on out in the countryside? You think that you're gonna fly in to Atlanta and drive out into the rural areas and suddenly there's gonna be Klan rallies. Like this is, this is so non-representative of the rest of the country as to be like bizarre.

Tim Durbin [00:32:34] Well, it's not just that point of view. You look at what's happening with Columbia and these college campuses and we have unrest in the world. And what we really have is a, is a general lack of understanding of each other. And I think for people to come in and selectively pick those people that may reflect their, and I'm not saying confirmation bias as a part of their process, but if you're looking to tell that narrative, what are you gonna try to find? And I think that's where people that are trying to get past the narratives and say, Hey, why are we not in alignment about the future of the country or how we should raise our children? And I think we just get to this point where the louder and louder and louder are just making the people who are normal, they're, they're, I think they're beating us down to a certain extent that, you know, we're, we're tired of having to stand up for ourselves or be able to, you know, you go say the whole concept of fighting back or whether you're taking a stand. I mean, there is amount of patience and energy level that it takes to be able to do that. And I think we're hitting a point right now where a lot of people just don't even wanna get in that game. They

Vance Crowe [00:33:39] Just

Tim Durbin [00:33:39] Wanna focus on themselves. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:33:41] And what, and their family, what is, what is fighting back, right? Like you, what you're you're talking about is a group of people far away from me clearly have a different idea of who I am than, than I do. And frankly, like it's also reversed, right? It's like the people living in the countryside think that everybody in the city is having, you know, trans kids and, and wants to commune everything. But like, it's, it's definitely a vast oversimplification of all sides here. Yeah. And,

Tim Durbin [00:34:07] And it is, I think things are always more complicated than what they appear to be, but, and it should be more simple. And that thing is we tend to overcomplicate a lot of things in life. Whether it's the decision of what to wear in the morning, the thing some people you just need to live life and not stress about stuff. As we were talking about earlier. Life is hard enough as it is just to get through on a day-to-day basis of, you know, trying to stay positive. And you know, we've talked about like the whole idea of what, what do we believe in that maybe other people don't. I, I really do believe people at nature are optimists. I think we've been trained not to be as optimistic because of all the problems in the world. And we focus on the negative more than the positive. Whether that's what we see on the news each night and what, what, what, what do people talk about? You know, is it buzzworthy? Is it gonna get people's attention and like the solid type of people that just go about their day to to day lives, try to raise their kids the right way, try to do the right thing in their communities. I think that's what's missing in all this is those stories. And like, even like when, you know, Tom Brokaw used to go around and do his profiles in courage and he wanted to shine a light on those people doing the good work. A lot of that was in non-urban communities. A lot of that was people that you would say salt of the earth people. And again, I think there's just way too much attention put on the people that don't really fully represent what their communities look like. And not everybody's out there driving a big huge pickup truck with seven guns in the back. There's these caricatures that we create of certain people and I think that's irresponsible for people to, to broad brush paint about any portion of it.

Vance Crowe [00:35:39] Right. And you can see the financial incentive that makes it possible. Right. It is much, much harder, yeah. To run a show that a lot of people feel like not only, oh, do I like it, but do I need to watch it right now? Right. Because if you don't do it right now, then you may not come back to it. So as much baiting as you can put into things. Have you ever seen this YouTube show called All Gas No Brakes?

Tim Durbin [00:36:00] I've heard it referenced. I've never watched it.

Vance Crowe [00:36:02] So it is a fascinating thing. It's this very like goofy guy, you know, like in high school how there was always like the one guy that would go to Goodwill and, and buy a suit and then like, he'd be like extra fancy, but you couldn't quite tell is he trying to be fancy or is he making a joke? Like, so this guy has like crazy hair and he's just like one of those guys that could fit in anywhere. 'cause people are gonna kind of ignore him. They're not gonna take him seriously. Well, he goes around and he's now at the show's no longer called All Gas No Brakes, he's called Channel 5 News. He's trying to make local news. Yeah. But it's by like going into the tunnels in Vegas where the people that are living there, like for years at a time are living. Or he'll go out to like where the riots are and like interview people on both sides in a way that a regular reporter could never do because they're representing an ideology. Well this guy is like a goofy, you know, two man crew and I am learning more about the other side or these, you know, fentanyl addicts or than I ever have before. And that's the thing that I think gives me hope is that the, the corporate media, like, isn't that interesting? This guy is super interesting. Well,

Tim Durbin [00:37:16] It sounds like I haven't heard him, I'll have to check him out. But I think that's where we get down to like the, the authenticity of life, right? I mean like what do we want people to see? Like I I think most life is probably pretty boring. You know, I, a company I used to work for, that's become one of their slogans about being boring. And I, to me it was interesting, I texted a couple of friends who used to work there. I was like, who greenlighted that campaign not throwing shade at 'em. I just thought it was an interesting take to try to, so

Vance Crowe [00:37:44] What's their take? What, what are they, how are they proposing this? They

Tim Durbin [00:37:46] Said we've been boring since 1863 whenever they were founded. Like, we haven't taken,

Vance Crowe [00:37:50] We haven't gambled with your money.

Tim Durbin [00:37:52] We haven't done anything exotic that have caused the economy to collapse. And I think there's something solid about that. It's appealing to a certain, you know, base of people and it's like, oh, okay, you're, you're, you're not, you're not gonna go out and buy Bitcoin or you know, which I know you've talked about quite a bit, but from a, if we walked into any room, whether it's here in St. Louis County, if we drive out a couple hundred miles and go into a, a diner in a small town, can you walk in? Can you have a conversation? Can you just feel like you belong and genuinely enjoy your surroundings and just get to know people? And I think that people are so rushed and so hurried nowadays. They just don't have time to pay attention to, I mean most do, but I think there's a certain set that they have an agenda. I need to get this because, and I think that's a, a problem for all of us. And I, I've worked, I've worked at corporate, corporate America most of my life and you realize that, you know, there's what you think and then, then you get into it and you start working and you realize how the world's an interesting place. And especially within a hierarchical, you know, bureaucratic organization, you can kind of get lost in there.

Vance Crowe [00:38:55] Oh, I mean, every single time it is always more complicated than you thought it was. Right? Like anything of sufficient, you know, longevity is is there because it's complicated. And that was another thing about that Lincoln Project that I thought was just striking to me was that they kept honing on this idea that conservatism the idea that you don't want things to change very quickly was negative or somehow in the past. And they're saying, you know, like, and they don't even believe in all of these rights and they're saying like, trans rights, and I don't even remember all the other topics, but their core framing was, they're not willing, they, they aren't interested in changing quickly and therefore bad when you really think about it like we need both sides of this culture. If you have only conservatism then you have a tyranny. Nothing can change. But if you are constantly changing, then what is your culture? What is it that you've figured out? I mean, culture is really what has our group of people figured out that if we do things in this way, things turn out better than they would when we were doing them without this plan. Yeah. And so if you have like a high change culture, do you really have a culture? That's

Tim Durbin [00:40:10] A good question. I read Jean Twenge's book, she, it's called Generations and it's studies basically from the silence to the current generation. And it's about, you know, all the various factors that go into why we become who we are as a culture, you know, beliefs, religion, politics, sexuality, all the topics that kind of make us who we are. And it was probably one of the best books I read last year because I had to step back and realize that this change has been mostly gradual. But then you look at what's happened these last 10, 15 years where it's accelerating a lot faster. And I think from a, you know, who we are as a, as a, as a, as a people, as a society, we do need to change. I think people can change, especially if they, you know, grew up in an area where they weren't exposed a lot of addit additional ideas of how to think. And I, I, you know, hate to get too much into it, but if you think about what are the odds that you can grow up, you know, here in the Midwest that your, your views of the world are gonna differ from somebody from New York or somebody from another country depending on how they were brought into their society. And I think culture, companies have culture, families have culture. I guess for me the big question's gonna be what does it say about you, but what does it say about what you're willing to become? Because we all have, we're all on a path and I think the open-mindedness and we can all determine whether or not we like something or don't like something. I think the question for me comes back down to how to communicate when you don't agree. And there was tell a brief story. I was at a event back in Paducah, Kentucky where I'm from, the president of University of Kentucky came down to address the group.

Tim Durbin [00:41:47] It's probably five, six years ago. And a lot of the questions I thought were really meaningless. And so I didn't get to ask mine. So I actually hand wrote him a note and mailed it along with a copy of an article from the New York Times around, I think it was, I think it was a, the Art of Disagreement, it may have been Aristotle, it was referencing, you know, great philosophy. And I asked him the question, I said, you know, how are you able to maintain, you know, a college campus where you can have people come to speak and you know, you know, do what you're supposed to do to expose your students to, to different perspectives. He actually took the time to write me back. I had a front and back little card. I kept it, it's one of my nice little mementos from all this note taking. And he said he lived through the Vietnam War on campus and it was a really trying time for college campuses back then. And you know, they focused on what they could do to to, to make a difference for the better. And so I think about, you know, having, you know, soon to have a second kid in college when they're getting out in these environments, you know, what are they really learning? What are the agendas of the universities? And I'd say for the most part, higher education. You know, aside from what you're hearing right now with all the noise, I still believe in higher education. I still believe you have to get outside your environment and go learn different perspectives and study and you know, I'm, I'm hopeful Vance that we can kind of get past all this over time because the trends are not good because all we talk about is the divide instead of what unites us.

Vance Crowe [00:43:16] I'm, I'm kinda one of those people that's on the other side of the fence about higher education. I, I believe strongly that there are fields that you absolutely need higher education, engineering, accounting, these things that it's like, look, there's no way to just naturally know this. You've gotta learn it, you've gotta figure out what are the standards. But when I look at what's going on in Columbia or Yale or any of these places, like I think that this may be an existential split for them. I don't, I don't think the Ivy Leagues are gonna get out of whatever chaos we're in right now in the Middle East and unscathed. I think there's gonna be, I think there's gonna be schisms in the higher academic world. And I think that's a really, really good thing. 'cause the monolith that's going on now doesn't seem like a good thing.

Tim Durbin [00:44:05] Yeah. And Bill Ackman's been taking them the task, I don't know if you've followed him much.

Vance Crowe [00:44:09] A little bit person. Yeah, yeah,

Tim Durbin [00:44:10] Yeah. He's, he's been very vocal with it. And then that's why, you know, and listen, I told you I listened to the Pivot podcast and I do take different perspectives into the equation. 'cause I'm trying to figure out, okay, we know that there's a lot of discourse right now focused on the divide and trying to point, counterpoint, change somebody else's mind about how we should feel about things. And again, back if you don't take the time to really inform yourself and try to form your own opinion. Yeah, you're right. There's a lot of undergraduate majors that are, are we, we have, you know, unfortunately Fontbonne here in St. Louis is closing Webster's having some financial difficulties. These large schools, these massive endowments can ride this out because they have enough money to get through there. But again, what trends are they on? Would you feel comfortable sending your kid to an Ivy League school? And you ask, you know, a lot of people right now, they'd probably say no, but from, yeah, you're right. Engineering probably provides nine of the top 10 paying undergraduate degrees. We don't have where a shortage of accountants right now, I mean there's less and less people studying accounting, you know, back to the, you know, technology and ai. Is that going to create such a different environment to where college may not be as relevant, that we can just go type something in and and, and learn well, who's feeding those models and what, what information are we really getting? And you get back to the, if I had an amazing professor that I could sit down and develop a relationship with and study a subject and maybe it's not, you know, physics, but it's something that gets me to get outside of my own normal way of thinking. You know, there are, you know, professors, I'm sure that could be mentors, maybe they don't because they have so many students they can't but they can be.

Tim Durbin [00:45:45] And I think I didn't do a very good job of that when I was in school. I had a couple of professors that I connected with, but I didn't, I didn't go above and beyond to try and connect with them. I think that probably hurt me on my letters of recommendation.

Vance Crowe [00:45:57] Where did you go to school? I

Tim Durbin [00:45:58] Went to St. Louis University.

Vance Crowe [00:45:59] What'd you study

Tim Durbin [00:46:00] Originally? I was a physical therapy major. So my mom's a pt. I always figured I would, I was an athlete, I love sports and I knew I wasn't gonna probably play at the college level. So I came to St. Louis U, they have a direct entry master's program. And so about two years in is when I started, you know, dating Kelly, her dad was a lawyer. And I remember I just, you know those conversations, those moments in your life, Vance, he's like, I'm a lawyer. Kelly's studying to be a lawyer. You could be a lawyer. I'm like, now you're 19, 20 years old. You're like, sure sounds great. So I switched, I moved from a physical therapy major to a psychology major with a philosophy minor with the intent of going to law school.

Vance Crowe [00:46:42] And how did that turn out?

Tim Durbin [00:46:45] I got in, I didn't go, Kelly's dad died when we were juniors in college. And it was one of those weird moments, you know, you kind of remember certain things in life. We were driving back from Padre Island, Texas. It was a, a 20 hour drive back. Nobody in our car had a cell phone come home to my apartment and there's like three messages of ascending urgency on the voice recorder back when you used to have to hit the button,

Vance Crowe [00:47:08] The

Tim Durbin [00:47:08] Message. Oh yeah. And it was, you know, had, there's been, you know, a phone call, you're, Kelly's dad is at the hospital. Then it was, you know, they're, they're taking him in for evaluation and it was, they were in the quiet room. So it was, so I knew it wasn't good. She didn't know. I had to get downstairs to go tell her because we lived in the same complex, got her drove to St. Louis University Hospital so she could say goodbye to him.

Vance Crowe [00:47:30] Whoa. That changed your spring break trip.

Tim Durbin [00:47:32] Yeah, yeah. That was, it changed our lives. Really. You think about the trajectory of your lives, those moments where things happened. 'cause I would say he would've been one of my mentors here in St. Louis, you know, and so we both got in, neither one of us went, you know, I, I, I was gonna go to Mizzou. I wanted to study alternative dispute resolution and be like an arbitrator or a mediator. And I realized wasn't cut out for it 'cause I couldn't even negotiate my own one year deferral. So, so anyway, that just life.

Vance Crowe [00:47:59] And then how did you go to financial planning then?

Tim Durbin [00:48:01] So my first job outta school, I had to go to a recruiter. 'cause when you have an undergraduate degree in psychology, you're really not, you know, a viable candidate for a lot of jobs. So I went to a recruiter and he sent me to go see, probably was my first real key mentor in St. Louis. I went to work for a finance company in 1999. And great guy Vietnam vet flew helicopter missions, you know, taught me perspective at 22 that I really needed. 'cause here I was, I'd never served in the military, you know, I didn't grow up on a farm, although my dad did, you know, so I came from this area where a lot of people either had military service or grew up on a farm and had that discipline and I didn't. And so he, he kind of whipped me into shape. I saw him not too long ago. I told him, I said, there is no me without having you as my first boss.

Vance Crowe [00:48:47] Isn't that funny? Like the, the thing about a mentor is, you know, the movies need to describe this as some like, you know, perfect relationship and things are all going well. But most of it is, you're a young guy. I don't know how it is for women, but for a young guy, you look at this person, you're like, I wanna be more like that. I wanna have the things that you have in your life, whether that's financial or family or respect or whatever it is. And then you attach yourself to them in some way. And it doesn't have to be like somebody sitting down and teaching you lessons at their knee. It can just be being around somebody that's kicking ass

Tim Durbin [00:49:24] Well and not afraid to call you out on it too as well. But in, in a way that where they're trying to help you understand that if you keep up this pattern of behavior, you're gonna eventually get called on it. So you can't, you can't, I know you've all heard the term, you know, fake it till you make it. And I think Benjamin, who came on and said something about imposter syndrome, oh yeah, Do I belong? And the thing is, until you've been in enough situations where you feel like I can listen as much as I talk or listen more and really absorb and learn. And I think from, you know, working from him really taught me a lot of things. But what I, what I realized is that not as smart as I think I am, you know? And until you go out and live life and, and, and try to really absorb and, and learn from other people. And I think we can never stop learning, you know, back to this whole thing around, if, if you get to a point to like, all right, I, I climbed the mountain, you know, I'm there. I, that, that's really dangerous. Not only to yourself, but to your family and everybody else around you if you stop learning. So I'm hopeful that, you know, with all these, it, it seems like it's harder to learn too when you're getting, you know, back to the whole thing about content coming at you. It, it makes you angry or upset or if it's meant to try to convince you of a certain way of doing things. I don't know, it's just a tough world right now.

Vance Crowe [00:50:37] Yeah. There's something deeply valuable about reading books that the author no longer cares whether you read it, right? Like there's something about when it's put out on the internet and you're looking for like, how are my, you know, my numbers doing, how many people are watching and subscribed? But you think about a, an author that's dead, right? They wrote this thing and they don't care whether you read it or not. There's something that seems more in sync with the universe when you're spending more time reading kind of ideas that are, that have stood the test of time that are Lindy.

Tim Durbin [00:51:12] Yeah, no, I, I think there, there are things that are timeless and we spend a lot of our own time right now processing things that are fleeting and it's, you know, whether it's opinion polls or, you know, essentially what's happening in your daily community. Yeah, there are things you should pay attention to. I'm not saying that you can turn off the world and have zero distractions 'cause you do need to stay informed. But from a, you know, where I want my kids to eventually get to a point in their lives is where did I, do I understand the basics of budgeting? Am I able to listen? Like I said, as much as I talk, am I trying to solve a problem or am I trying to just show up for work? And I think there's, you know, back to this question of the divide between us as country, I think basically we all are good people. I think most people are good people. I, I still believe that we are gonna be better off as a society eventually, you know. But again, back to the seeking to understand if we don't seek to understand each other, if we don't take the time to learn more about our own, you know, view of the world versus others. And we may still put our head in the pillow at night and believe that we're right, but if we're willing to listen and challenge ourselves a little bit. And I think that's where having mentors that have always challenged my way of thinking and they've encouraged me to learn more and to push myself and to never be really comfortable. I mean, people talk a lot about how I wanna be comfortable in life. You think about what happened with the pandemic, with people not wearing suits anymore and all these athleisure companies and you know, kind of anything goes from a dress code.

Tim Durbin [00:52:44] The other week I went to Principia High School to give a, you know, presentation on Rotary. We were thinking about starting an interact club there with them. And I put on my suit and my tie and I didn't know what to expect 'cause I wasn't sure the presentation was in front of the whole school. And I'm like, I felt more confident because I was sitting there in my suit,

Vance Crowe [00:53:01] In my tie and

Tim Durbin [00:53:02] Got to speak to, I don't know, maybe 250, 300 people there. And, you know, standing in front of a podium looking up and there, there's all these faces out there. You start to realize like, man, I have a really big responsibility to be prepared and to make sure I'm actually saying things that matter, or at least things that I know to be true. And I think that's the other part of this too, is that if it's, if it's gonna stir up the pot by saying things that may get people riled up, I, what does that really do?

Vance Crowe [00:53:32] Yeah. So you mentioned Rotary and one of the things that, well, so listeners to the podcast know that I recently joined Rotary 'cause I was like, all right, everyone that does a legacy interview that has a really positive life, I would say 99.9 repeating say, oh, I was involved in this community organization or that community organization usually wasn't just one, it was multiple. And I have to look at those signals and say, if everybody is getting this much value out of it, I should be open to that. And you know, you were kind of around being like, Hey, want to come to a meeting? What is it that's kept you engaged in this, this old kind of, you know Yeah. Historic group. Rotary.

Tim Durbin [00:54:13] Yeah. Yeah. It's not just Rotary, it's, it's things like the Chamber Music Society. And you think about, again, mentors that get you exposed to things. So there was a, a lawyer here in Clayton, his name was Chuck Shepherd. He was a big person in my life who took an interest in me. And he was the one invited me back in 2007 to go to my first lunch. I hadn't been to a rotary luncheon since I was 17 years old, back in Paducah, walking into a crowd. And they were probably 130 to 140 people in that room. It was intimidating. I mean, even though I was there as like a spotlight student, I was like, why am I here? Do I belong here? And so it was a little uncomfortable, but then I realized that's what they did. Every this, those people showed up. They were there every week for lunch. It was important to them to be there. And so I didn't know what to expect when I walked in the first time. But he made it easy for me. He walked me around, he introduced me to people. He made sure that, you know, I knew that he knew them and that he knew something about them. And I started to realize the value of being in a room of people that you could say, I really do know them. I know what they do for a living. I know a little bit about their family. And from a, whether it's Rotary or any service organization, you, why do I stick around? You look at the trends of what people are doing. Less and less people are volunteering and giving their time to service clubs. And there, there's plenty of, you know, work to do in the world right now. But I still believe that being a part of something, being part of an organization that has structure, has long-term history and purpose, and is willing to adapt to the times. I mean, there's a lot of value in that room.

Vance Crowe [00:55:47] Yeah. And I think that the, the biggest part is showing up and having like, just, just show up. And if you show up more than once, then somebody will have that spark of remembering you. And like, we spend a lot of our lives being totally anonymous. You know, you think that you're surrounded by people that you know, but you're so in your shell that by getting to a place and just being like, Hey, we're gonna listen to a speaker, we're gonna, you know, like it is bizarre for me to stand up in a place and, you know, either say the Pledge of Allegiance or sing a song. Yeah. But I can immediately tell there is something that is super human that comes from singing a song with a bunch of strangers that brings you together. And so it's like Rotary has figured something out on how to bring people together. Yeah.

Tim Durbin [00:56:34] And I think that's back to the whole thing around customs and traditions and how things are changing. And maybe it needs to adapt, be a little more modern, but still staying with that focus of honoring those traditions. And you know, if we did it for 2000 years as a, as a, as a people, as a society and it worked, does it all have to change so rapidly? No, I think from a, you know, if, if you, if you come to, whether it's Rotary or if you go to another organization, you walk in, you don't know anybody, you know what that feels like. The first time you walk into a room where you don't know anybody, it's a little awkward, maybe a little bit uncomfortable, maybe you haven't got your, your opening sentence ready to go. So you're really trying. It's, it's, it's almost like when you walk into school the first time and you don't know anybody in that school and you have to figure it out. And I think we've become too, I think, not complacent, but we want everybody to be comfortable. We want everybody to feel like, you know, life is good, that bad things don't happen. And I see a lot of this with, with parents too as well. I'm not necessarily calling them out, it's just that our society, we feels like we don't wanna struggle anymore. Like, you know, we wanna try to eliminate struggle where sometimes the struggle is the journey to get to a point. Whether it's getting to know the people in the room and making a new friend or, you know, I went through a difficult time at practice and I'm want to quit because I'm not as good as the other people. And, and being able to be resilient and sticking with something and having that, that determination. And I think that's what a lot of the divide too, people talk about, you know, rugged individualism and why people are out there on the range doing their thing with their cattle.

Tim Durbin [00:58:07] Or whether it's somebody grinding away in a laboratory trying to create the next amazing discovery again, that time to focus on what is in front of you. And I think that's what, what where I, I feel like we as a society really to help kids is to give them that time and space to be able to stay focused on task. You know, the concept of homework. We've been hearing, oh, maybe we should do away with homework. And I'm like, do away with homework. I'm like, what are they gonna do if they don't have homework? Okay, then you go back, okay, there's sports. And that's the thing that I've been really studying is this a, this this whole influence of travel sports and how it's actually created a bigger, excuse me, created a bigger issue in some of the non-urban or the rural communities. Because these kids all feel like they have to be on travel teams going all, all over the country to play better competition. And it's really made a, a big divide in between the haves and the have nots just from a sports perspective.

Vance Crowe [00:59:02] Oh, that's interesting. Yeah. So my experience of it was, I, I grew up in small town central Illinois and so the traveling teams that either made you play on Wednesday night or anytime on Sunday, that was just a non-starter in my family and frankly a non-starter, mostly in my town. Because you had church to go to and now I see it where this seems to have largely supplanted church on the weekends. You have some kids that have been very, very successful in athletics.

Tim Durbin [00:59:31] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:59:32] Did you spend all of your weekends at baseball games and traveling? I,

Tim Durbin [00:59:35] I hate to even add up the number of games and, and don't get me wrong, I, it made great memories. You really forge really close relationships with the other parents. 'cause it's a bonding thing. You're like, why are we doing this? Why are we spending this much money? But yeah, all, all three of my older kids have all played travel sports. I can't say I've always practiced what I've, you know, wanna preach around responsibility. 'cause I probably spent more money on that than I should have been putting money into their 529 plans or what have you. You talk to a lot of people who say, well hey, you know, don't do travel or you know, this high level ball, put the money in the kids' college education fund. Let 'em just play recreationally. Only 7% of these kids wind up playing at the collegiate level. But we've all been sold this dream as parents that if you spend enough money and put 'em in with this training, that you can make them go from here to here. You remember Dave Winfield was, he was a, a baseball player, but he could have played three professional sports. He was just a natural right

Vance Crowe [01:00:34] Freak

Tim Durbin [01:00:34] Of nature ethic like a Bo Jackson. So, and, and if you think about it, my junior, my senior who's, you know, five, eight, a hundred sixty pounds, you know, not physically gifted like some of these people. Terrific athlete, but I don't know, there's not enough training in the world maybe that could get him to ever be at that competitive level. And he is a great ball player. But again, we have to be, as parents, we have to take a step back and realize what is that trajectory and is it worth it to invest that much money in that experience versus, and whether the college is the right thing or not for a kid or the right, the right college, we all have to learn and grow and get better. And I think that's a, that's a, that's a decision we all have to make as parents is where to put those dollars.

Vance Crowe [01:01:15] Yeah. And I like going back to what we said about how much change is happening, how it happens faster, right? Like many of the things that are available to kids just weren't available when, when I was younger. But my wife and I talk a lot about, so she was a collegiate level swimmer, you know, try it out for the Olympics. She was really, really good. But she'll often look back and be like, I spent my time going back and forth and back and forth in a pool and I want my kids to have athletics, but I don't want 'em to have to go to jail, you know, to do it. Which is in a lot of ways what, what swimming was.

Tim Durbin [01:01:49] And it, it can feel like that because I, the burnout rates and I, I've watched it, I've seen it now between, you know, kind of the 20 somethings to the upper teens now. And you just read about what parents are doing to their kids at eight and nine and 10 years of age. And I've had people ask me, what should I do? And I'm like, I can't tell you what to do. I can tell you what I've seen and I've seen kids quit at 13 or 14 'cause they're tired. They don't wanna go to five practices a week. And they're, again, if you think about whether it's, you know, the, there's, it's a great, a great thing to be a, on a team with other people to learn how to lose to deal with adversity. And you know, and sometimes you have kids that are so far and above at a younger age and they're really good. And the parent's like, oh my kid's amazing. He's leading the team in hitting, he's, he throws the hardest, he runs the fastest. And then all of a sudden, two or three years later they may plateau. And those other kids that have, that have had the potential that are developing catch up or surpass them. So you, you cannot make a, I think a broad brush statement that youth sports is bad. I think it's a necessary outlet for them. We've gotten the point to where we're just asking too much of them, in my opinion,

Vance Crowe [01:02:56] Asking too much of the kids

Tim Durbin [01:02:57] Time commitment. Yeah, absolutely. And, and specialization like, oh you need to only specialize in soccer or baseball or hockey had a dynamite kid, great family that we had in our, you know, he was 12, 13 years of age and he quit baseball to focus on another sport. 'cause the coach told 'em, if you miss a practice, you won't be able to play. And I'm by you. I, I like kids being well-rounded. I like them to be able to play multiple sports. Using those various muscle groups in their body is important to their overall development. Because you look at the incidents like kids that are blowing out their arms now with like Tommy John surgery, the majority of these surgeries now are being done on kids on younger than 22. It's ridiculous.

Vance Crowe [01:03:37] Yeah. And like there's something really important about all the different types of sports and the way they make you your body move and the way that you, and if you just focus on one thing, the amount of skills that you're not developing or the muscle strength that you're not developing, I think probably has long-term consequences.

Tim Durbin [01:03:55] Do you remember like I I, 'cause I remember my dad telling me a story about the one time he hung tobacco. He's like, I never did that again. I was so tired, I was so sore. And I think I did a, you know, a day of hay bale with one of my friends. He's like, Hey, you wanna come make some money? He's like, let's go, let's go over to, I can't remember the name of the family, but I did one day of it, got paid, never went back. 'cause I realized I enjoyed the, the sports part of things better than, and, and it was nice to make a little bit of money, but I didn't, I didn't do that. I don't know if you did that as a kid or for the people around where you grew up.

Vance Crowe [01:04:23] Oh, I worked a lot more than I played sports. I didn't know my parents had like a minimum threshold of the amount of work that you had to do just to, just to exist. And I think I had to choose between, are you gonna play sports or you're gonna work? And I wanted money more than I wanted, more than I wanted to play sports. I don't know that that was a good decision for me. But I also came out with a lot of physical skills. I learned how to pour concrete. I learned how to, you know, bail, hay, all all the kinds of things that you do if you're an uneducated young person.

Tim Durbin [01:04:55] Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean I think that from a, the balance of life, like trying to figure out where you spend your time and I mean like that's like, you know, you, you're making that decision for your two young girls now. What you want them to, to see and to live and to experience and how they're gonna eventually become an adult. And I think the, the passage from, you know, middle schools are hard years for kids. You know, I don't know about you. I went my, my sixth grade class, we had six people in my sixth grade class.

Vance Crowe [01:05:21] Oh, it

Tim Durbin [01:05:21] Was tiny. So it was the, the small Catholic school. So like, you know, going to the big school there were like 30 people in your class. It was an adjustment period. Like even from a, you know, where we you wanna send our kids to school? What, what type of environment are they gonna be in? What, what are what are people that are struggling their own lives bringing to, to the workforce as, as teachers are stressed out? Like I, I mean I I I love my wife. I really feel like, you know, I've seen her put so much effort and energy into these young kids and she cares so much about, she's just exhausted when she gets home. You know?

Vance Crowe [01:05:55] Well, I can't even imagine being around, I mean like my own kids are exhausting to the point of like, you know, throwing your hands up in the air. Somebody else's kids would be, you'd have to just have a totally different mindset. I couldn't do it. I,

Tim Durbin [01:06:07] It it's it. But I think in this environment again too, because we're trying to do so much and whether it's accu academic curriculum or social and play-based preschool education, you know, me, all my kids went to the play-based preschool. I think it worked well with them 'cause they learned how to get along socially and it wasn't about necessarily competition. And yeah, you want them to be smart. You want them to know what they're supposed to know. That's at an age appropriate level. And I think that's the thing kids develop at different periods too as well. Such a vast difference between a 2-year-old, a 3-year-old, and a 4-year-old. And you're probably seeing that right now. So I think, you know, big picture perspective is, is that the age appropriate nature of everything we do in life. You know, back to the, when, when should kids learn about certain things. And I think we've seen some gray of that topic too over the last couple of years because they're really not meant to process some of these heady topics at this age. And it's like, I remember Brooks, my youngest looked at me, that's actually, it was, we were together as a family and it was during this period where right near the tail end of the pandemic, he's like, he's like, I just wanna be a kid again. I mean, this is pretty profound for a 9-year-old kid to say something like that.

Vance Crowe [01:07:14] Yeah. Oh, oh my gosh. I mean I I I will probably err on the side of being overly protective of my girls. I just see, you know, when you give kids a tablet, when they have the ability to flip on anything that they want, you have the Garden of Eden with your children. You're teaching them how, what do we name things? How do we behave? How do you, and if you hand out a tablet, it's not necessarily that they're even gonna navigate to bad things. It's just so much more of the world coming, pumping in where as 30 years ago you, you just didn't have kids, just didn't have as much access or exposure to all the things going on in the world. I'm, but I am like, I mean I'm, I'm not quite John Kemp Amish level, but like my kids have never really seen tv. They've never, you know, they don't let 'em play with our phones or anything like that. But I mean, eventually you have to, eventually you have to get them integrated into it. Otherwise you send a naive child out into the world. Yes.

Tim Durbin [01:08:13] Yeah. And I think that's the challenge for all parent, all parents right now is figuring out what's the appropriate level of activity on the devices, what type of content. And you know, you think about like all the parental controls and trying to make sure I don't get, let them get exposed to something they shouldn't be seeing nowadays. And it's like, you know, when the whole world's in the palm of your hand, it's so different from when we grew up. You know, you, you went outside, you ran around like I remember fondly, like I would probably go in my driveway and just hit rocks with a whiffle ball bat for an hour at a time. And I mean, it never got old to me.

Vance Crowe [01:08:47] You know? Yeah. I mean the boredom thing is really important for kids. My brother and I invented hundreds of different games, games that we could go play right now and know all of the intricate details of, because we didn't have anything else to do. It was like Saturday afternoon and we were locked outta the house. Yeah,

Tim Durbin [01:09:05] Yeah. But from a where are we all going? And you know, why did we decide to be a parent? Why did we have kids? You know, if you think back to the, well, it's just what you did. You know, you got married, you had kids and, you know, that was the cycle of life. And I think back to your point around all the, the changes and where we're at in this, this period, and I, I try not to be overly heady about it. 'cause you can outthink yourself into, you can, you can talk yourself out of anything or talk yourself into anything if you really want to right now. And I think the whole concept for me is not giving up on the fact that people are good people inherently good and trying to figure out how to help them avoid falling into the pitfalls of

Vance Crowe [01:09:46] Why do you think people are inherently good?

Tim Durbin [01:09:50] Well, statistically, I guess you could say that we would be inherently good because most people, you know, whether it's go to school, get in a relationship, try to do things for other people. I think most people, in my opinion, from what I've been around, you know, I am a believer of humanity, you know, but now there are certain things that happen and I, I, well I point it by like, whether it's mental illness or things that somebody, you know, has, is struggling with something.

Vance Crowe [01:10:19] And

Tim Durbin [01:10:19] I think that, you know, it's hard to, it's hard to say because somebody's mentally ill. Maybe they're, they're, they're a bad person and, and whether it's, you know, gun violence, violence, whatever causes somebody to do something that we would say, why would they do that? How could they do that? And that understanding of, of a, of a person at their deep level, how were they raised? Were they like that or did they have a traumatic experience? And I think of actually when John Jennings was on here, you mentioned a couple things too that really stuck out to me about being, you know, vulnerable about sharing. Like if you, if you could experience some form of trauma as a young person, if that's not recognized and dealt with, that may alter the trajectory of their life. And so I think generally we're, I think we're all born to be good people. That our nature, our human nature is to want to understand, to connect. And humans are social creatures. Some become, you know, monsters. And that's awful. As I said, having a, having studied psychology, you do, one of my favorite classes is personality theory and how do you recognize whether it's a narcissist or somebody who's just not like me. And I, you probably can walk into a room and tell within an instant whether you're gonna like somebody or not. Some people may take a couple minutes, some you're like, I'm really not sure about that person. So, but I, but just in my experience, I I, I'm still a believer.

Vance Crowe [01:11:34] I think that I, it is, I didn't know what I thought before I asked you the question, but I think I am, my focus is like, individuals can, can be reasonable and groups of people are absolutely not reasonable. And the individuals that can be reasonable, like, I think that I had a naive view that like everyone was, you know, you know, like looking out for what's best for me or whatever. I don't think that's true at all anymore. So like, I don't know that there, like it's probably good or bad, probably isn't a large enough spectrum to be able to say anything valuable. But I intuitively disagree with the idea that all people are good people. Yeah.

Tim Durbin [01:12:20] And, and, and that's, I, I understand, I think i's been moments where I've been so frustrated and at times about the way things are going, whether it's at work or in society, and have you ever had that feeling? I just wanna sell it all off, move out in the country, live off the land, and

Vance Crowe [01:12:34] Yeah. Oh, this morning. Yeah, yeah,

Tim Durbin [01:12:35] Yeah. And, and we all, we're all dealing with some form of stress in our lives if we choose to live that type of life, to get married, to be responsible to another person, to be responsible to kids. And it can worry you down. But I think from the standpoint, if you wanna set the example for your kids, if you choose to be a parent, I think you've seen the, the birth rates are declining. I think we in some of the information reading through getting ready to talk today around, you know, whether it's urban versus rural, declining birth rates, you know, population trends. Actually the, the numbers looked halfway decent that the non-urban areas actually picked up a tick in terms of Oh really? Yeah. Population migration. It, it kind of reversed just a little bit. But the birth rate's down, the unemployment rate is back down now at, at a level, you know, almost pre pandemic to where both urban and rural unemployment is down. And, and if, if you think about it, if you have a job, if you have dignity, if you have the ability to make income and you can build a life, right, where would you wanna build it? And I think there's been this association that, you know, the smaller towns, the farm towns are dying. I mean, we used to have, I think it was 6 million farms back in the 1930s. Now we're down under 2 million farms, I think in the United States right now. So, and there's this perception that the farming life is hard, it's impossible. It's a tough way of life. You have to really wanna do it. And it's like if you cont if you run those numbers out, they're starting to level off from what I read, and I know this is big with your, your fan bases that I, I would love to see maybe in my, you know, seventies if I retire from, you know, the financial world to go be a part of that lifestyle. I would, I would embrace that. 'cause I think that would be something that would take me back to my roots.

Tim Durbin [01:14:08] But, you know, I'm, I'll be 47 next month. That's a long way to go between now and then.

Vance Crowe [01:14:13] I think one of the things that's happened in, in all fields, but you can specifically see in agriculture is because of the machinery that's out there, people can work so much longer than they used to be able to work. And this is like a, one of those second order consequences that you couldn't predict. Like if all of a sudden dad can go from, he has to quit working at 55 because he is too broken from, you know, saddling up horses and trying to do it with a wagon versus getting into his GPS guided combine. Like these are different things. And so how long dad stays a farmer goes on until he's 70. So he doesn't pass on the farm to his son until his son is 55. And that's the first time that son's ever really been able to make decisions on the farm. And so his 25-year-old son doesn't feel like he has a place to come back to. So I say all this to to say, the Project Lincoln podcast we listened to, like they had glimpses of you are totally right, technology has radically changed agriculture, how many people need to be out in the countryside is different. But their conclusions that they reached about like, well what does this mean? That was when they, you know, I'm expecting them to talk oranges and they start saying bowling balls.

Tim Durbin [01:15:27] Yeah. And I, I, again, if you're, if you're telling a narrative and you're wanting to present what you think is the prevailing wisdom about a certain amount of people, and I, you know, I just don't have a close enough connection to somebody that's doing it right now. Actually, my connection is through listening to the people that you bring on to the show. I mean, what's going on in Canada, if you think about from a, there's a, a couple guys up in Iowa, I think were doing some type of credit work with the farmers up in Iowa. But yeah, you're right. The technology right now, I think I read there's 323,000 combines on the farms here in America. The average cost of them is now between 400 and $700,000. The technology's amazing. I think the big ones can do 25 acres per hour or something in terms of harvesting. So yeah, you've got a technological advantage now. And you did when a John Deere tractor was, you know, 50, $60,000 back in 1982. And you know, you think about if you're a kid who grows up on the farm, you know, and, and I'll go back to my dad's family as an example, and my mom grew up in fancy farm Kentucky too, of course, but smaller farm down there, nine outta these 10 kids, you know, most of 'em stayed living close to where their dad grew up. Not a one of them got into farming and the farm wasn't big enough to really create a leg legacy lasting farm. But back to your comment around these Legacy Interviews, these families, how they connect with each other and how, what stories they leave behind.

Tim Durbin [01:16:59] All these kids put themselves through college. All of them got degrees, all of them did things in their own right. And even though not a one of them got into farming, my uncle did wind up running. My grandfather was not only a farmer, he was a mechanic. He had his own auto body shop and everybody in the community went to go see him 'cause they trusted him. So, and I think by nature, people that grow up on the farm and know hard work that can look other people in the eye and communicate with just straightforwardness around, you know, this is what it's gonna cost, or I need, I, I need to go pick up this park 'cause I don't have it. Their willingness to basically do the right thing and do it in a manner that people could get behind them. You know, I, I think my family could have bought farms other places and ran 'em because they had that type of ethics and integrity and I'm really glad I came from that type of upbringing.

Vance Crowe [01:17:51] Yeah, I think one of the things that struck me about being in New York was it's not that New Yorkers or people in the city like don't want to be more sovereign or self-sustaining. It's that like, you really can't be something plumbing goes wrong in your apartment. You're not allowed to open that thing up and fix it, right? If something goes wrong on the street, it's not your responsibility to fix it. It's either a bureaucrat or a business owner or something. And so much responsibility has been atomized out to the like, like we, the way that we all get along is everybody follows the rules and you are both not responsible and therefore not as self-reliant as you can be. And so it creates a culture, which there's nothing wrong with this, where they're like, we need to get along better. We need to take care of each other more. And so they definitely have a, like a binding thing like we are New Yorkers. They feel like that. And yet you're talking about an entire group of people that the amount of responsibilities they have is really, can I get enough in my bank account to be able to buy all of the things that I need to do to, to survive. Whereas in less urban places, it, it doesn't work that way.

Tim Durbin [01:19:09] Well, I think, and I didn't know at the time I picked up the rational optimist. Oh

Vance Crowe [01:19:14] Yeah. Matt Ridley. Yeah.

Tim Durbin [01:19:16] I, and I, I didn't realize at the time you'd had him on, but I heard about it on a podcast actually a guy named Bill Gurley. And you know, he's, he's interesting if you read some of his work or if you listen to some of the material, but talking about, you know, the, the advancements that we've had over time, you know, the trajectory of humanity has generally been better. Conditions have become better. If you think about what life used to look like in the 18 hundreds, the early 19 hundreds, like things, conditions have improved, things have gotten better. And so from a, you know, do I feel like the living in New York is better inherently living anywhere else? No, it has, its has its benefits. It's, it's an amazing town. It's got lots of history and culture. St. Louis has a lot of history and culture in it. And even right here, you had the Wall Street Journal article recently talking about the death, the

Vance Crowe [01:20:07] Doom Loop. Yeah,

Tim Durbin [01:20:07] Yeah. The Doom Loop and it, and it, and of course these are things that we all have been talking about here for many years. Ironically, coming from smaller town in western Kentucky, it has a city county divide. 'cause back home in Paducah and McCracken County, they're separate and they've had their issues. They've tried to figure out how to make it work just on a smaller scale than St. Louis, which has its own city county divide that we've been talking about for a long time here. So there are, I think, analogies within just our own communities about, it doesn't have to be New York versus LA or St. Louis versus Chicago, or Atlanta versus Austin, Texas. It's the, where we choose to live and work. How we choose to either bring kids in this world or not bring kids in this world. The trends are such that I, I think you can't keep having it in us versus them mentality. And that may be an obvious statement, but it's, it's one thing, you know, to go out and promote those differences. But the more that we try to highlight them, are we trying to fix them? Because even the tone of some of these podcasts, it seems like they think this can be resolved or they want to see it improved. But I think if you wanna see things improved, you have to get involved. And I think the one thing on that, this is the first, the second podcast from Lincoln said, you have to get involved at a local level. Because if you don't get involved at a local level, things that happen regionally or state or nationally really don't affect you as much at the local level. So if we wanna do something different, you know, you have to get involved. Back to your point around these people are having their communities, it's 'cause they got involved. It's 'cause they're doing something, they're serving with other people and you, and you generate I think, the best and purest relationships going through adversity together, serving together, solving problems together.

Tim Durbin [01:21:47] I think it's, it's easy to sit here and say that things are a mess and things aren't gonna get better. Okay. Stop talking, get out there and do something about it.

Vance Crowe [01:21:54] Well man, I think that is a great place to, to, to leave off. If people wanted to learn more about things that you're interested in, to care about, where would you recommend they go?

Tim Durbin [01:22:06] Yeah, I, I'm don't really actively promote myself on, I'm on Twitter. It's at Tim Durbin. I've got a section on our firm's website about me, our, our company's just called Private Wealth Asset Management. If you Google Tim Durbin, there's a couple things that people can find me pretty easily. I, I love to have great conversations and I love to take notes and follow up.

Vance Crowe [01:22:26] Oh, one of the best conversationalists ever and, and, and really somebody that's become a good friend of mine. So thank you so much for coming on. It's

Tim Durbin [01:22:32] A pleasure being here Vance. Thank you for the opportunity.