May 30, 2024 • 48 mins
In this episode, we delve into a thought-provoking conversation, embracing the concept of 'Don Quixote-ing' against conventional currents, finding the sacred in the mundane, and the importance of nurturing 'time release capsules' of inspiration. They challenge the notion of success, urging us to consider the 'claustrophobia of standardized paths' and to recognize the beauty of our 'crooked lines' and 'eccentricities.' You are invited to confront the societal 'dusty corners' that often go unnoticed, encouraging a shift towards a culture that values genuine curiosity and the persistence to explore what truly moves us. This episode is not just a call to action but a reminder to cherish the quirks that make us unique, to 'surrender to what wants to use us,' and to foster environments where asking, 'What are you interested in?' ignites the spark of lifelong learning and innovation.
You can find a.m. on Instagram and TikTok at @absurdwisdom. We are produced and distributed by DAE Presents, the production arm of DAE (@dae.community on Instagram and online at mydae.org).
The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of any entities they represent. While we make every effort to ensure that the information shared is accurate, we welcome any comments, suggestions, or correction of errors.
You can contact us at daepresents@mydae.org.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
a.m. (01:45):
I got asked to do the keynote for there's a, as a
conference the judicial branchof the of the state.
So it's every judicial, it'slike 4500 or 5000, workers,
every judicial branch and allthe senior executives and
they're doing a thing and I'mdoing the keynote and I was
asked to talk about wellness inthe workplace and the, and the
title of the thing I gave themwas wellness is a practice, not
a pill.
(02:06):
And, and the conversation isgoing to be that that Y'all keep
fucking this up like you doeverything else, you know for 40
years.
Ben (02:16):
That'll be well received.
Yeah
a.m. (02:17):
Proud track record of getting invited to a lot of
interesting speaking eventsOnce.
Well, if you keep getting backto new ones, you're doing
something right at least.
Listen, the intention is not to,the intention is to provoke,
it's not to genuinely upsetanybody, but, but outside of
provocation, I don't know howyou're going to shake loose some
of this stuff.
And move it to somewheremeaningful as opposed to
breaking it just for the sake ofbreaking it.
(02:37):
Right.
That, you know, that's no fun.
But, but, but, but the, youknow, the, the, the point of the
thing will be something aroundGive me a lot of time to give me
an hour for a keynote.
That's a lot.
You can actually conveysomething.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's I'm like, I get a littleexcited about it.
So cool.
Okay.
We can actually do somethinghere.
For 40 years, for as long as Ican remember this kind of
conversation about employeeengagement, employee
satisfaction, employee health,employee wellness, all flavors
(02:59):
of the same thing.
We've been working on this fordecades, you know, since the
nineties, this became a sort ofway to focus an organization.
People are more disengaged, moreburned out more, et cetera, than
they've ever been.
It's, you can just chart the,you know, the, the, the, the,
the arc of this thing and itkeeps just, you know because
it's like the iron thing, right?
(03:20):
If you're iron deficient,supplements along the way, pill
versions, interventions alongthe way, will only Mask the
symptoms.
And meanwhile, the underlyingproblem will get worse and worse
and worse and worse and worse.
And this is the issue aroundkind of wellness, health,
engagement, all this in theworkplace is, is usually through
good intentions.
You know, people bring in aspeaker, an intervention, a
(03:42):
consultant or whatever, and it'sa pill and you can't fix these
things.
Ben (03:47):
I I'm really, I'm really curious about how the types of
conversations we have heretranslate in a With some sense
of like feeling genuine aboutthe information you're conveying
to that particular audience,because you could, you could
just have a conversation intone.
That's what we're doing here.
And it wouldn't really land withthat audience.
(04:09):
You can also have a conversationthat's effectively pandering to,
okay, here, here is thestructures that you know, here's
the language you're used to.
But how, how do you actuallystand in that room and try to
reach people?
And it may be a fraction of thepeople in the room to something
that we discussed, you know,last episode, not everybody's
(04:29):
going to kind of have thereceptors up and it may not sink
in, but you've got to have asense of if there's, you know
what you said, 4, 500 people,something like that 500 really
hear you and act on it ifthey're managers or executives.
I think just at a high enoughlevel, the trickle down effect
of that is, is actually massive.
You know, that's an opportunityto really affect change.
(04:51):
So you know, how do you, how doyou seize hold of that?
a.m. (04:54):
And I don't know how many are actually going to be at this
event.
So the great Patrice O'Neill,standup comedian one of my
absolute all time favorites.
He died I have some bad withtime, like sometime over the
last decade died young.
He once said in a, episode PaulProvenza's green room.
I'm a big stand up comedy.
I don't think that's an areawe've tapped into.
We've talked film, we've talkedmusic, we've talked stand up
comedy.
Ben (05:15):
I'm happy to go there.
So we might get in trouble forsome of the source material, but
I'm all in.
a.m. (05:20):
Patrice O'Neil will, I mean, I think Elephant in the
Room is one of the greatesthours ever put on film, and it
will piss a lot of you off whoare listening.
Like, it just, and, and it's,it's dated, and some of the, you
know, but, He's tapping it insome anyway, he once said so
that's a good standup, like ashow where everybody is
laughing.
(05:40):
I am not happy with said a goodstandup set.
If 50 percent of the audienceshould be offended and hate you
and 50 percent should be like,holy shit, this is like Now you
can get silly with that, right?
You can get, you can do the, youknow, whatever, old dated
reference.
The Andrew Dice Clay, or, youknow.
Right now, what's, who's this,this idiot kid who's Matt
Somebody listening is going tobe like, Oh yeah Anyway, this
(06:01):
young guy is a comedian.
Matt Rife.
You know, just another, just abro.
You know, just a bro.
He's funny.
He's got some funny stuff, butjust a bro.
And he's doing some bro shit.
Like whatever.
So it's not offended.
Like just, just, just, you know,saying disrespectful, dumb
things.
But, but you're provoking aestablished way of looking at
things.
In a way that forces the personto see the artifice, not in a
(06:25):
way that makes fun of it, thatdemeans it, that right, but that
forces you to step outside andlook at like Carlin did this
amazingly and Richard Pryor didthis amazingly and write a bunch
of people.
So and I tell my grad studentsthis, I was like, you know I am
speaking to maybe 5 percent ofyou.
And I'm hoping the rest of youenjoy the ride.
I'm transparent about it.
My, and I'm very clear.
(06:46):
When we used to have practice,you know, like I'd be
responsible.
You know what?
You should be working with us.
Here's the list of, you know,here's three people that really
are going to help you.
Like I don't help.
You did not, you know, back inthe day, you did not hire me if
you wanted to help.
That wasn't me.
Tell clients you, you, you arenot going to get out of this
alive.
And that was not a joke.
That was not a, it sounds like ajoke early on, but literally you
(07:09):
will not get out of this life.
Your sense of who you are willnot survive this.
If we're successful in havingyou become an innovator, an
artist and whatever you, for me,it's an artist, whatever you
have, you are not going to comeout of this with your sense of
who you are alive.
You're going to love who'sthere.
I have no clue what it's goingto be, but you will not quite
say, right.
So in, in, in, in, you know,what's, what's gotten cultivated
(07:30):
over time through just practiceis doing over and over again,
getting it wrong, beingoffensive, unintentionally being
too safe, unintentionally too,right.
And what's evolved is, is, is acertain approach to these things
where you assess, you know, whatis the reality they live in?
And what are the hypocrisies?
And okay, so what's the realityyou live in?
What is it they're asking for?
And now what are the hypocrisiesinherent when you bring those
(07:53):
two things together?
Right?
On the innovation side, it wasalways like, you know, it's a
joke that almost every call andall the business is inbound,
right?
And the calls, I could distilldown to one sentence.
We really need to get better atinnovation.
We hear you have a process forthat, right?
That was an encapsulation of thehypocrisy where this is the
(08:13):
world they're living in, wherethings have to be predictable
and they have to be able to tellinvestors and shareholders and
whoever that in 12 months time,exactly this will happen.
And then the request is help medo things that are impossible to
know in advance, right?
So the hypocrisy there becomesobvious over time.
And then it becomes in craftingthe intervention, the speech,
the whatever is how do you speakwithin that reality to that
(08:37):
topic in language that has themfeel the hypocrisy in ever
increasing ways to the point ofwhich they started laughing at
themselves about it.
And then beyond that, getuncomfortable about it.
And then beyond that, get angryat you a little bit.
For revealing so much of thehypocrisy, but you're not
(08:57):
revealing it.
They're revealing it by whatyou're, you know.
And in that process you losesome of them who are so
entrenched with how the thinghas to be, right?
And that's okay.
You're not my audience.
But they'll be the, you know, 5,percent, whatever it is, who are
like, okay, I got it.
If we actually want this, It'snot that this is bad, right?
So for the organizational sideinnovation, it's not the kind of
(09:19):
predictable outcome in 12 monthsis bad.
It's just, if I want thisindustry scale innovation, I
have to figure out ways to letthis thing go even temporarily.
Like if you want to parachute,be with like reliable people,
have the parachute packedappropriately, but at some
fucking point you have to bewilling to let go of the ground.
(09:39):
You have to do the completelyidiotic thing of letting go of
predictability of somethingstable under your feet.
It is unavoidable that you mustlet that go.
And so that's what I'm trying todo in these kind of speaking
events is to speak not outsideof their world.
I want to like really understandtheir world, speak within that
world.
Because if I, if I speak outsidetheir world and point to the
hypocrisy, it's easy to dismiss.
(10:01):
Oh, you don't get us.
You don't look all of that,right?
Oh yeah, I'm sure that's trueover in tech where you worked.
Yeah, of course.
All that nonsense, right?
So I want to really understandthat language, their reality and
speak within that reality.
And then I want to bring theirrequest in, in a, in a way that,
you know, kind of starts to in,in iterations within the hour,
point out the hypocrisy of whatthey're asking.
Ben (10:18):
I'm curious whether you make the assumption that your
audience is willing to work forit because there's, there's a
difference between busyness,which I think aligns well with
process.
and work, which aligns well withdiscovery volatility, that kind
(10:39):
of bottoming out of the floormoment.
And it has more to do with whento time that moment, when you're
ready to take that leap and, andless to do with kind of
predictably following a paththat will lead you to that
moment.
when you're ready for it.
It's, it's about remaining,creating that openness.
(11:01):
I think we've talked a lot aboutthis, but the the idea that
something can happen at anytime.
You don't know when it's gonnahappen, you don't know when
you're gonna be ready, but whenyou are, it sure as hell gonna
happen.
And, and that to me aligns morewith my internal definition of
working for something.
a.m. (11:18):
I wouldn't have been able to say this earlier in my life
and career because I would neverwould have occurred to me, but
just I learned it through, youknow, serendipitous you know,
event.
I find that as much of my stuffhistorically is time release
capsules as it is in the momentintervention.
Like I can think of one person Ithink of that actually both of,
you know but I won't say thename.
(11:39):
Who was a grad student and inthe program was one of those
grad students.
It was like in the back of theroom, like, yeah.
Okay.
Sure.
Yeah.
I just know like wasn'tfighting.
It wasn't, it was just likebullshit.
I don't know how this relatesto, you know, organizational
development.
And you know, one off in theworld, did great things, showed
up, Always showed up in class,registered for the classes.
(12:00):
And so showed up, did the work,did all that, right?
So it wasn't like, you know,left, graduated, went out into
the world.
Six and a half years later comesknocking on the door, basically
saying, okay, Not, not, not, notwhat this person said, but
basically it's like, okay, firstoff, fuck you for the fact that
I'm calling you back, right?
Jokingly, right?
And all right, some of thatstuff you're talking about.
(12:21):
I've been inside for half adecade now.
Can we talk and I've had clientslike that and I've had, right.
So some of it I realized isjust, just I don't want to
dilute the potency of myformula, I don't mean formula in
the calculus, but like myformulation of my, you know, of
my message of my provocation ofmy invitation really is the best
way to say it.
And so what I'm looking for isnah, I'm, I'm not, I don't want
(12:42):
to gauge off of how much they'reready to work.
I'm going to assume there'ssomebody in the audience that's
ready to work.
One person.
And in fact, not just ready towork has already, what I'm
actually, what I know is alreadysomebody at work and they are
drowning.
They are, they are Don Quixoteing.
They are, they lack thelanguage.
(13:02):
They lack the framework.
They lack like all of that, butintuitively they're already
working.
Inside of organizations, man,one of the cheats that we had is
there were people already thatwere innovating in their heads
and trying desperately toinnovate in their work.
And all you had to do is helpdisintermediate process and,
and, and prediction and like,you know, all these kinds of
(13:22):
artifices, right?
And then it would look like wehad some massive intervention
and we did in terms of impact,but we weren't adding anything.
We're just removing stuff,right?
So in, in that audience of, of,you know, in that thinking
event, like however many peoplethat are.
I don't, I don't need everybodyto be ready for work.
In fact, I I'd be shocked ifthey were, I think one, you know
what I mean?
Ben (13:39):
I like that.
I like that inside to outsidedistinction that you mentioned,
kind of back to back thoughtsthere, because that to me is, is
pretty important.
I think there are a lot ofpeople who are willing to do the
work or interested in,Understanding what that is, but
they're standing outside, youknow, they're outside the
building with picket signs.
Yeah, and there's like a limitedamount Of change that you can
(14:01):
actually affect by doing this ismy rationale for selling out by
the way It's how I sleep atnight, but I think being inside
is really actually important.
You got to have people insidewho are cognizant of How the
system works, the language thatthe system uses, and then to be
able to share those tools withpeople who have a little bit of
(14:22):
a different perspective and tobegin to kind of infect the
system in a way.
And you know, to some extent,what you're doing, whether
you're a speaker, whether you'rean educator with your students
here is you're kind of creatingthese like sleeper cells that
you're sending into the systemto wake up one day, activate.
And then infect everythingaround them, but with this
(14:45):
energy that actually is going todo some combination of, of
planting seeds that grow andbeing this fire that just
spreads across whatever it isthat they're, they're in.
And, you know, those in equal ormaybe even unpredictable
measures, it seems like, The,the way that we actually, you
(15:06):
always are asking, how do we dothis at scale?
How do we do this at scale?
That to me is how we do this atscale.
a.m. (15:13):
Mel, and I used to talk about this, Mel Toomey, my, my
former partner on the MAOL andactually this was his insight
that, that, that, you know Iloved and it made for a century.
In a chemical reaction, acatalyst, right?
Like, what is a catalyst?
Like, it's a third chemical, orit's heat, or it's, right?
But, but what happens to thecatalyst after the chemical
reaction?
It disappears.
It doesn't exist.
And so this is what I love aboutadvisory work is you're behind
(15:35):
the curtain.
There's no possibility of youhanging out like the design of
the thing.
Part of the challenge we have,like, like, people mistakenly
sometimes think when they talkabout this stuff, or don't like
if I'm out, like, you know, Iget eat out a lot and I go to a
bar like to hang out and Iprobably show up like
introverted, like quiet, likereserved, right?
I'm like, I'm not, right?
(15:56):
I just don't have the bug oflook at me, look at me, look at
me.
I can't.
And then professionally, I can'tfind a movement that had.
that either had or had put uponit a face that didn't ultimately
result in corruption and decay.
I can find evidence of movementsthat had no face that did some
interesting things, but evendown to religions, you put a
(16:18):
face on it and it becomes easyto forget what people actually
said and just start rooting forthe brand.
So political movements, socialmovements, etc.
The work is about catalyzing andthen doing what a catalyst does
afterwards, which isdisappearing.
You should be useless after the,you know, the chemical reaction
has happened.
And if you are still useful, youdidn't catalyze anything, you
(16:41):
indoctrinated.
Ben (16:42):
Oh, that's a great analogy.
The idea of sort of beingconsumed in the process, you
know, is maybe not the person isconsumed, but some amount of
energy that was going towardsthat thing is expended and
dissipates and then needs to beregenerated and gathered for
whatever comes next.
And to a certain extent, you'renot actually the same person
(17:05):
because you've now had thatexperience.
And you're really, you're kindof collecting the molecules from
scratch almost.
I mean that, that sort of speaksto the experience of doing
anything serially in a way.
If you have some conviction of,hey, this is worth doing twice,
or you're crazy enough to do ittwice, whether you're serial
entrepreneur, or you know,having multiple children, or
(17:27):
whatever it is that you'reengaging in this, this process
over and over again, you do kindof, Collect all of those
ingredients and, you know, as a,let's say, I'm to use the term
consultant, I guess, very, verybroadly, but anyone who's
participating in helping otherpeople go through a particular
(17:47):
journey, right?
You're, you're taking a piece ofyourself and you're actually
expending it.
You know, the, the concept isyou're, you're truly giving of
whatever resources you'vegathered, And you're trying to
see those vaporize.
You're trying to be thatcatalyst.
And if you're holding anythingback, then there's a sense of,
(18:08):
well, like maybe you're notgenuinely invested in that
process.
I'm actually kind of curious ifyou've ever had a moment where
you felt like you were goingdown this path and realized, you
know, it's not worth expendingthe fuel, you know?
And I think that's a, that's amoment that is, it's like a
dangerous moment, right?
(18:28):
Because you're, you're movingbackwards.
You know, a lot of we talk aboutkeep going, charge, charge into
the future, make mistakes.
But every once in a while youget the signal of like, this is
a mistake.
I'm going to stop the mistake.
What, what's, what's your litmustest for that?
So,
a.m. (18:43):
I'd first have to flip how you're talking about.
So fuel implies that there's afinite quantity of something I
have that I'm going to burn whenI'm actually doing my work
versus administrative work or,you know, where I do burn fuel,
you know, that is like and thenthese days burning way too much
fuel on operationaladministrative stuff.
And that's got to get fixed.
But When I'm doing what I thinkis my work, and when we're doing
(19:05):
what I think is our work here Iam not depleting anything.
I'm sourcing something.
And that, I don't know what thebottom of that well is.
I've never been able to comeclose to seeing it.
And so, but then what I useinstead of depletion is
sacredness.
You see, I have a finite amountof fuel for operational
administrative, and I do want toreserve that because I'm going
(19:26):
to run out, and I want to use itjudiciously.
When I'm doing my work, I'msourcing whatever the catalyzing
agent is, and I think it'ssacred.
Not in a religious kind of, youknow, whatever, but, but I'll
stick with sacred.
It and my determining factor, itbecomes not, it is the person
I'm working with good enough,getting it enough.
(19:48):
Making enough progress is dothey have reverence for their
journey?
And if they have reverence fortheir journey, we can hang out
for a decade and they'll stillget more ca, you know, catalyst
poured on them, as it were.
I can think of one, a person'spopping in mind right now who I
just learned is having an exit.
from an enterprise that is like15 years of struggle and then it
(20:09):
looks like they've made it rightand You know this person would
joke about themselves that Iactually might be listening i'm
pretty I haven't talked to himin like a year, but i'm likely
positive he listens Who jokeabout himself about what a
remedial student he was and whata remedial this and like, you
know And he was slow going butBut that sum of bitch had
reverence for himself and thejourney he was on the whole
(20:30):
time.
And so, cool, unlimited access.
A lot of folks have a casualrelationship with their own
development and their ownpossibility and their own
potential.
They allow a lot ofpsychological stuff to get in
the way.
Psychological stuff is real andshould be tended to
empathetically and legitimately,right?
But they kind of use it as anexcuse.
(20:50):
We had somebody, I just really,I'm, I'm still not done
processing it.
We had, you know, we startedhiring folks.
I thought that we were upscalinga certain part of our thing and
folks who had real kind ofcommitment to kids.
And one of them was exited sometime ago just kind of uncovering
more and more that they weren'tdoing shit.
All the talk in their livesabout kids and equality and this
(21:10):
and that, it's just posturing.
Like, they would tell you theybelieve it.
People around them might tellyou they believe it.
But they weren't willing to dothe work.
There was no actual reverencefor what they were up to.
It was an idea.
And a thing they could railagainst.
Right?
The other side of it.
I got no patience for that man.
Like I'm an asshole on it.
If I'm not careful, I'm an overtasshole to people who engage
(21:31):
like that way.
This case fortunately didn'tcome up until long after the
person was gone.
And so there's no, you know,didn't have to say I don't want
to deal with this personanymore.
But out in the world, I have toreally check myself on folks who
have a, a you know, who, who,who posture, who pretend on
things that are very human.
I can get sort of, you know,bullshit avenging angel energy.
(21:52):
You know what I mean?
Like I can, I can become thatguy.
And I, I've, I've really learnedto kind of check out of those
scenarios.
So it doesn't, but but, butthat's my answer.
The question is I don't gauge oris the person getting it?
Are they.
You know, whatever, what's theirprogress?
What i'm looking at is how arethey engaging?
Do they have a sense of againreverence for an understanding
of what their journey is?
Ben (22:11):
I I love that description It feels like something goes
hand in hand with that If youhave reverence for something you
have an a certain amount ofpersistence Meaning that you
believe in his worthiness And soyou're going to stick with it
and you're going to stick withit in moments when it appears to
you You To be not fruitful, notdelivering on its promise.
(22:34):
And there's this weird kind ofethos now of like the fail fast
piece, especially in my cornerof the universe of startups.
It's like raise a bunch ofmoney, not working.
Okay.
Digit next thing, you know, godo it again.
And that to me lacks reverence.
It lacks respect for the idea,respect for the process, respect
for the notion failing invarious ways is an important
(22:58):
part of that journey.
And so knowing when to havepersistence is enormously
important to be able to exposeyourself to things that are
downright nasty and unpleasant.
And to go through that and say,this is a moment where we can
walk away and to choose not to,and to choose to incorporate
(23:18):
that into the next step that youtake.
That's having reverence for theprocess, for the idea, for the
commitment and separating thatfrom just abusing yourself or
others.
And to, to being able to drawthat line is, is enormously
important.
And so genuine reverence, athousand percent commitment to
(23:42):
something that's not causinggrowth.
That's, that's something youhave to weed out.
And, and that's near impossibleto really dial in on unless you
have an internal sense of whatgrowth feels like.
There's this like intuitivething where you go, Oh, you know
what?
Like this.
(24:03):
This is on paper.
This is awful, but why do I feelso good?
Why do I feel like I'm waking upand there's something here
that's being enriched by thatprocess?
If that's tricky, but it exists.
a.m. (24:16):
I want to really underscore it I don't think it
needs to be but I just wasbiased on stuff like this when I
say reverence It's not reverencefor my work That actually is a
massive red flag to me.
That's actually worse than ifyou're not serious.
Ben (24:29):
We're all here to worship at the altar.
a.m. (24:30):
That's a shit like that.
People listen, particularly nowwhere we are in the world,
they're looking for who's gotthe answer, right?
And, and, and so that I'm like,but I've always been like, that
one's a big red flag caution.
Because that's somebody who'snot only not serious, they're
actually looking, it's evenmore, they're looking to do even
less of their work.
They want to, yeah.
I'll take, I'll put him on thespot because he's not here.
(24:51):
But Kyley, like I'm fairlycertain Kyley respects me, but
he's not here because of mywork.
Like he, you know, I mentor him,I whatever, you know, like that.
But he is so like, he is in forlife on his work.
He has a legitimate reverencefor what it is.
He's, Kind of, kind of can seeabout his impact with kids and
(25:12):
therefore the world, right?
That's kind of what it lookslike, right?
Is this, you know, staying inthe ecosystem, accepting the
provocations but it's not aboutthat.
That's about serving the visionthat he has for his masterpiece.
All right, his work of art inthe world, his innovation, his
expression, his whatever, right?
(25:33):
And to go back to the speakingthing what I find Ben Is there
actually a lot of people likethat out there?
And they just it's it's it'slike there's shit tons of sodium
out there.
There's shit tons of chlorideout there They just ain't ever
had the proper catalyzingexperience to turn them into
salt.
You know what I mean?
But there's a lot of thatuntapped out there.
And I think there may be a lotof that untapped out there among
(25:54):
young people.
And that could be wishfulthinking on my part.
I don't know.
Where, where you don't have topull folks.
You know, they are, they are,they, without realizing it,
they've been, they've beenwaiting for the, for the, for
the framework or the, whateverit is, I don't know, right?
So, again, in, in a group of 100or 1, 000 or 5, 000, I just need
10 out of 5, 000, 1 out of 100.
(26:17):
But I find that probably 10 outof 100 and 1, 000 out of 5, 000
that Maybe not today, maybe nottomorrow, but who will allow
themselves to be catalyzed.
And again, not take a singleword of what I said, because
that's problematic actually.
But we'll use it as a spark forthe chemical reaction.
That is their work.
Ben (26:36):
It's interesting.
When you see that and when yousee the remnants of that, and I,
I was thinking about thisearlier'cause I was spelunking
in someone's code and it was
a.m. (26:47):
you said spelunking, I immediately, oh.
Like I, I, my one fear in lifeis claustrophobia.
Like you close face, I'm like,oh my God.
Spelunking, I you want do thecode?
Okay.
Ben (26:54):
No, I think actually that's the feeling I want you to have
when you're looking through.
This is anybody who's, who'sworked as an engineer and knows
the feeling of going into a codebase.
That's not your own.
And that was primarily designedby one other person and it has
the contours of the shape oftheir brain and you get to sort
(27:16):
of experience like what it mustbe like to think like that
person and sort of like walkinginto a house that like looks
fine on the outside.
And then you go in and it's likethis Alice in Wonderland, you
know, shrinking hallways, unlitrooms, and you're kind of,
you're peeking around corners tounderstand like what, how, how
(27:36):
do things work in this world?
Is there gravity?
Are the doors locked?
What type of handles are there?
How do these rooms even connect?
Are they all connected or noneof them connected?
Do I need to break down a wallto be able to get upstairs?
Are there stairs?
It really is this feeling.
And for me, when I'm goingthrough this, there's this
Visualization of some type ofphysical space that exists.
(27:59):
And as I'm going through this,it was, it was couldn't have
been more different than the waymy brain works.
You know, it felt foreign.
It felt alien.
alienating, almost, to be inthis space.
And I had been mentally likealmost a little critical of this
kind of corner of our universebecause it didn't conform to a
(28:22):
lot of my strict expectationsabout how we engineer things,
right?
How we build things andstandardize them.
And so, yeah, this is like thelast, the last dusty corner that
I've kind of investigated insome of what we've built.
And it took hours.
I was, I was doing this on thetrain and just late at night and
I realized halfway through thisis parts of this are inspired,
(28:47):
genuinely inspired.
And I wouldn't have expected asingle person to have been
capable of doing anything evenremotely like this.
And this isn't a person that Iknew well and had lots of
personal conversations with, butyou know, a casual work
relationship and suddenly I feltlike I was getting to know them
(29:09):
and I, I almost, I almostreached out and sent them a
message to say, like, we haven'tchatted in a couple of years,
but I want you to know that thisthing that you did is
incredible.
And I am actually moved by.
coming to understand it andInitially, I went in with the
the intent to make all sorts ofchanges and modifications and I
(29:34):
came out I just took everythingthat I had changed over the
course of four hours Selectedall of it and discarded it and
said the way that it was isgreat because I can't I came to
understand it and You know thatThat's a moment where you're
really acknowledging someoneelse's journey, someone else's
process.
(29:54):
And in, you know, people, a lotof times software is about
standardization and moving tothe lowest common denominator in
a way.
Can everybody read it?
Can everybody understand it?
But allowing room for thesepockets of eccentricity and
brilliance and just being struckwith something truly, like,
innovative and creative.
(30:15):
And just letting it be, youknow, it's okay every once in a
while if it's not perfect bysome exterior measure.
Because now that's, that's likethis permanent imprint of this
person that's going to live onin this way.
And I actually hope that otherpeople get to discover that
person's brain in the same waythat I got to walk through it.
a.m. (30:36):
There, I forget who originally said it, but you
know, there are no straightlines in nature.
And, and, and there's no rightway to be a human being, but
there are inauthentic ways,right?
And there's no, you know rightways to do work.
And that there's narrow slicesof narrow, but critical slices
of work that do benefit from amachine orientation and not a
human orientation, right?
(30:56):
Like you know, the personcalibrating the Railroad tracks,
you know, doing the qualitychecks.
Yes, bring minimal humanity tothat and bring bring a lot of
machine precision to it.
You know, do it the right way.
Sure, but it's so narrow.
The number of things thatbenefit from that.
And by the way, all of thosethings we again back to the
enough conversation from lasttime.
(31:18):
We have machines thatincreasingly do those things,
you know, and do better than usand won't get bored by them and
all that.
But but what makes humans intomake life interesting?
Every living thing interestingis not its perfections.
It's flaws.
It's it's crooked lines.
It's it's eccentricities.
It's it's, you know, if if thefucking sunrise were absolutely
(31:39):
identical every single day, likeit were a film, would you care?
You know, it's just the questionfor a human being, though,
becomes.
Do you have, for me, it becomes,do you have reverence for your
eccentricities?
Do you have reverence for yourflaws?
Do you have reverence for yourcrooked lines to the degree to
(32:00):
which you're willing to bringthem into play and make
something that only you canmake?
And if you're not cool, I gotsome names of people you can
work with.
You know?
And if you are and you don'tknow what to do, great.
And if you are and you don'thave skills, great.
And if you are and you've beentold forever that you're
incompetent and in fact have along list of failures, great.
(32:21):
Come on in.
That's what the school is.
That's all it is.
Do you have reverence foryourself?
Are you willing to cultivatethat?
Everything else we'll figureout.
A week, a month, a year, threeyears.
We'll figure it out.
Ben (32:30):
How do you keep track of graduates?
a.m. (32:32):
You know, it's great.
They keep track of us.
Now we at a practical level, wehave, you know, we use power
school and we have differentschools set up in there.
So for any credential grantingprogram, certificate granting is
in school called FULLdae playwith our name a lot, DAE any of
the kind of two week, six week,you know, sort of more intro
programs or immersion programsare in a school called
(32:54):
PARTIALdae and then students wholeave a FULLdae program and
aren't gonna engage with us butaren't also graduating from high
school yet, they go into aschool called RESTdae.
So they're not, they haven'tleft us.
They're in rest day and they'llstill occasionally hear from us
students who finish.
As a program and are truly donein terms of the formal thing we
can offer or graduated highschool.
(33:15):
Whatever they go into NEXTdae.
And in power school allows youto assign years, you know, year
one year two of a program yearthree of usually it's, you know,
K through 12.
You've got 12 different like ifit's school system happens to
have all of them in one system,some small towns, maybe
whatever.
For FULLdae, it's up to fouryears.
You can be in full day up tofour years.
(33:35):
The assumption being you come inyour freshman year of high
school and you're with us forall the four years of high
school, right?
So the max you can do in FULLdaeis four years.
NEXTdae, the thing you go toafter you graduate, there's a
cap on as well.
It's 99 years.
You're in because that's the maxthe power school will allow.
And, and, and, you know, most ofour kids probably won't live
that long.
Although with technology, whoknows, right?
So in essence, the idea isyou're in for life.
(33:55):
And this comes from my practicewith Tuesday Tea.
You know, that group, it's justlike, it's just a lifetime
community.
And so the ones who are like,you know, overusing the terms,
right?
The ones who allowed themselvesto be truly catalyzed, the ones
who have kind of reverence forthe journey, they keep coming
back.
Like we got two of them you'llsee today if you're, if you're
here a little later, thatthey're, they're in college now.
(34:17):
But they come here in theafternoon to study for their
finals.
They don't go home.
They don't go to their college.
They come here to study fortheir finals.
We didn't chase them down.
They asked, right?
At a practical level, in, in,when they're in next day,
they're in that database,they'll get like a quarterly
newsletter from us, but it's notit's stuff that's aligned with
the culture they got when theywere here.
Right?
(34:38):
June 6th.
We're doing a quote unquotealumni event.
And so folks who, you know, arekind of in NEXTdae come in in
person together.
Same thing.
It's in the context of ourculture.
That thing is not about anyformal.
It's what you've been workingon.
Tell us now.
And then we're gonna tell youwhat we've been working on, like
Kay and Mo and like, you know,there's no hierarchy.
We're all doing work, right?
(34:58):
What are we working on?
What do you know?
Yeah, and then hanging out andplaying ping pong and eating and
The same thing they did whenthey were here for a year or two
years or three years, right?
And so that's you know, so toanswer your question how we
keep, you know, structurallyoperationally they're in the
school called next day They geta quarterly news newsletter, you
know making air quotes, from us,but they hear from us quarterly
And we invite them in personformally once a year But in
(35:23):
reality, the ones who were sortof dug in they just show up.
They just, they understood whenthey were here that this is not
a place I come to for atransaction.
This is one of my homes.
And so they just keep comingback.
They just show up.
Ben (35:34):
I'm always tempted to do something fairly taboo when I'm
here, which is just peek over atsomebody's computer while
they're working.
And you're not really supposedto do that.
This is a little bit of aninvasion of privacy.
But there's always this sense ofeveryone who's just present is
doing something, and I'm curiousabout it.
Because it's, there's like,there's an environment where,
(35:56):
what are you doing?
Well, something you'reinterested in.
And if you're interested in it,then I'm interested.
In most environments, it's not agiven that anyone's doing
anything that they themselvesare interested in.
And so that's, this is what ismagical, you know, you really
want to say like, ah, give mesome of that.
What are you doing?
a.m. (36:14):
That, that, that line, just how you phrased that, you
know, I know you got a gig, butthat like immediately qualifies
you for, for, for, to be aneducator, at least as an entry
of conversation, which is, whatare you interested in?
If you're interested, I'minterested.
That, that, that's You know,it's not the only thing, but
that's a, you know, that's apart of being an educator here.
It's not about my curriculum.
It's again that back that thingof cool.
(36:34):
You got reverence for yourjourney.
I'm immediately interested in.
I'm gonna look for ways to kindof provoke you, push you,
catalyze you,
Ben (36:39):
right?
I mean, this partially selfish,right?
Like this is someone asked mewhat's in it for you?
And it was, it was actually inthe context of like the, this
micro grants program I wasworking with and they, I was
seeking advice from some folkswho had worked in nonprofits
before and they smartly askedhim, why are you doing this?
(37:01):
What's in it for you?
I said, well, I just wantsomeone who's interested in
something and trying to pursueit, to talk to me about it.
And, and that feels in anyconversation, you have to
convince people that you're Totalk to you about the thing that
they're interested in normallythey they'll avoid it at all
costs They'll be embarrassed byit.
(37:21):
You know, it reminds me of thisFamous kids book.
It's like what would you do withan idea?
I think it's the title and atfirst there's this sense of
you're embarrassed about youridea, you know
a.m. (37:31):
Dr.
Joan Ball's ears just perked up
Ben (37:33):
Please no, I like it And oftentimes it's like, they just
won't tell you, it's like, no, Idon't, I don't mean what you're
thinking of that you think thatI might relate to.
I want something that youacknowledge could be completely
foreign to me, that I have nocontext for, I might not
understand, I might think isweird, but I want to know what
(37:55):
you care about.
And if we can do that, if we canstart there, then at least we're
talking about something that'sgenuine and you can educate me,
you know, I want to be educated,but that's, it involves like
this phenomenal amount of armtwisting and you know, it's I
don't know why that that's,that's trained out of us.
That is actually rude to talkabout something that you're
(38:18):
passionate about.
a.m. (38:19):
Yeah.
Ben (38:20):
And so you can create an environment where that's the
opening line.
It's like, hey, here's, you knowwhat I love?
Microphones.
I want you to talk to me abouthow microphones are made for as
long as you want to do that.
And I'm going to come away andI'm probably going to go talk to
somebody else about microphonesbecause now, now you've, you've,
I'm on board, right?
You've pulled me into yourworld.
(38:41):
And that's that's how you learn,right?
We don't do that.
I don't know why.
a.m. (38:45):
That.
That's the kids first monthhere.
You know, I think we've talkedabout this.
It's just and it's it's I don'tknow.
Depressing.
Heartbreaking.
How many kids like don't knowwhat to do with that question
because, you know, at the ripeold age of 15, so few people
have asked them like honestly,you know, and they felt kind of
safe enough to kind of exploreand like, I don't know, what,
what, what, what should I be?
I mean, she's in a job, right?
(39:06):
I mean, she's in a job.
That's what I'm wondering.
I mean, she's in college.
But that's, that's kind of wherethe education team's initially
focused with kids is just avariety of things to kind of
help explore.
What is it?
Microphones.
Cool.
Now, are you willing to beserious about microphones?
Are you, again, reverence.
We don't use the word reverencewith kids, but are you willing
to have reverence around yourpassion for microphones?
Cool.
Great.
You're gonna do, you know, IOTrelative to microphones.
(39:28):
That's great.
Can't wait to see what you comeup with.
Yeah.
Ben (39:31):
Yeah, I mean, if you start there, at least everything
Whether it succeeds or fails orflops or continues or whatever
it is, is going to be a genuineextension of something that
you're actually feeling.
You're thinking it's consumingyou and it becomes generative.
yeah, just getting over thathump.
It's so crazy.
It's so crazy that we don't, wedon't actually communicate in
a.m. (39:55):
Well, again, my other, you know, kind of saw I like to
sharpen in all conversations iswe live in an economy.
We don't live in a culture.
And so the whole orientation is,is there utilitarian value?
And can you articulateutilitarian and economic value?
And if there is an economicvalue in a microphone, or if you
(40:15):
can't articulate how you'regoing to make money.
And be a big deal in the worldof microphones.
Shut the fuck up.
Like that's indirectly themessage we send to kids and to
adults, right?
Until you can tell me how thisis going to have utilitarian
value.
You're just wasting time,wasting my time and yours.
You're like, yeah, yeah, youplay with that on the side.
I got it.
But what are you doing?
(40:36):
Right.
And so that's, that's why peopleare afraid to talk about their
thing because it is most oftenthe case, the most interesting
things that people create.
Out of the gate, they have noclue what value it is.
Like if you're writing a novelwith the idea that it's going to
sell X million copies, you maysell X million copies, but
you're going to generate trash.
You know what I mean?
(40:56):
You're going to generate trash.
It's like films, albums, allthis stuff, right?
Sure.
You're going to sell a millionalbums.
You're going to sell whatever itis.
And it's almost like guaranteedto be trash.
It's not got any lasting value.
And you're going to move on toyour next thing.
All, almost all interestingstuff.
The person up front has no cluewhat the utilitarian or economic
value is, but they're fuckingcommitted, you know?
(41:18):
And then at the end of it, it'slike, Oh shit, look at this
amazing, beautiful thing.
Ben (41:22):
I feel like we don't always have a call to action at the end
of these conversations, but Iwould just, this is my call to
action to anyone listening.
Like.
Go talk to somebody about thething you're actually interested
in.
See what happens.
a.m. (41:34):
So yes to that.
And, and, you know, my, my, mysort of, I'm, I'm the what I was
hoping to do next week is ZenMountain Monastery, which I used
to go to annually and haven'tbeen able to since the the
pandemic.
Since DAE, damn it.
Next week is a week long silentmeditation and I was hoping to
kind of hop into that.
It's, it's beautiful, but, butI, I tend to go to the, you
know, to, to that side of thething.
So yes, go talk to somebody.
(41:55):
Absolutely.
Yes.
And then I would add to that,you know, take the fucking thing
seriously.
Stop treating it like a, like atriviality.
You know what I mean?
Have reverence for it.
Actually do the work,
Ben (42:08):
Yeah.
It's easier to dismiss itbecause if you dismissive of
your own idea, then somehow, Idon't know, it hurts less if you
don't do the work, it hurts lessif someone criticizes it.
Instead of having to feel thatand move through it, move past
it, reconcile that.
You just go, eh, it wasn'timportant anyways.
Right.
So it's you're taking on acognitive and emotional load.
(42:32):
But you know what?
That's necessary.
It's necessary to do things thatare actually gratifying.
And, you know, it's not just ina selfish way, but for others
too.
If you're going to connect withpeople, you have to be able to
take that risk.
So,
a.m. (42:47):
and we have a, maybe this is, you know, picked us up in
next season.
But I'm big on surrender.
Surrender is another dirty wordin this culture, because you
think it means giving up.
But, but, but I think part ofthis journey was reverence, and
I think surrender is part of it.
Like, are you willing tosurrender to this thing?
Like, I am a educator.
That's become like, you know,that was in my face at an early
(43:09):
part in my life, right?
It's not what I would havechosen, you know, like I'd be
riding around the country on amotorcycle or a drop top.
I'd be like on a beachsomewhere.
I'd be selling surfboards.
I'd be like, I am like, like, Ilike to hang out.
I like, if I followed like what,you know, but it just became
obvious fairly or that this iswhat there was to surrender to
and life's been amazing.
(43:29):
So it's not like a, like aburden.
But you give yourself to a thingthat wants to use you in a
productive way, not productivein terms of outcomes, economic
value, but like actually havingyour life feel like, Oh yeah,
yeah, my time.
Like I, I used my time on theplanet, you know, I didn't just
pass.
As Mary Oliver says, I don'twant to die having just visited.
(43:50):
You feel, I don't feel like Ivisited, you know what I mean?
That I followed my inclinations.
I may well have felt like Ivisited.
I would have had a great fuckingtime.
I know I'd have a good time.
But I, I, I I have no regretsaround starting this.
So I think there's this thing ofjust whatever it is.
I'm a trivial, dumb, whatever itfeels like.
If you keep pulling you havereverence for it, surrender to
(44:12):
it, get serious about it.
And then you just need one.
Find one person you could talkto about it.
Who isn't going to try to helpyou or fix you or guide you.
But it was just going to belike, Oh, that's interesting.
Tell me more.
You just need one.
And if you don't happen to cometo DAE, you got plenty.
Ben (44:27):
You know, there's a conversational art to just
digging up an anecdote that'slike a soundbite that is your
relevance to somebody else'sthing versus like giving of
yourself in like furthering oflike, Hey, say more about that
because I'm here for it and thisis why, and there's like the
(44:49):
finding that is Because we'reall untrained in the art of
like, really participating
I got asked to do the keynote for there's a, as a
conference the judicial branchof the of the state.
So it's every judicial, it'slike 4500 or 5000, workers,
every judicial branch and allthe senior executives and
they're doing a thing and I'mdoing the keynote and I was
asked to talk about wellness inthe workplace and the, and the
title of the thing I gave themwas wellness is a practice, not
a pill.
(02:06):
And, and the conversation isgoing to be that that Y'all keep
fucking this up like you doeverything else, you know for 40
years.
Ben (02:16):
That'll be well received.
Yeah
a.m. (02:17):
Proud track record of getting invited to a lot of
interesting speaking eventsOnce.
Well, if you keep getting backto new ones, you're doing
something right at least.
Listen, the intention is not to,the intention is to provoke,
it's not to genuinely upsetanybody, but, but outside of
provocation, I don't know howyou're going to shake loose some
of this stuff.
And move it to somewheremeaningful as opposed to
breaking it just for the sake ofbreaking it.
(02:37):
Right.
That, you know, that's no fun.
But, but, but, but the, youknow, the, the, the point of the
thing will be something aroundGive me a lot of time to give me
an hour for a keynote.
That's a lot.
You can actually conveysomething.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's I'm like, I get a littleexcited about it.
So cool.
Okay.
We can actually do somethinghere.
For 40 years, for as long as Ican remember this kind of
conversation about employeeengagement, employee
satisfaction, employee health,employee wellness, all flavors
(02:59):
of the same thing.
We've been working on this fordecades, you know, since the
nineties, this became a sort ofway to focus an organization.
People are more disengaged, moreburned out more, et cetera, than
they've ever been.
It's, you can just chart the,you know, the, the, the, the,
the arc of this thing and itkeeps just, you know because
it's like the iron thing, right?
(03:20):
If you're iron deficient,supplements along the way, pill
versions, interventions alongthe way, will only Mask the
symptoms.
And meanwhile, the underlyingproblem will get worse and worse
and worse and worse and worse.
And this is the issue aroundkind of wellness, health,
engagement, all this in theworkplace is, is usually through
good intentions.
You know, people bring in aspeaker, an intervention, a
(03:42):
consultant or whatever, and it'sa pill and you can't fix these
things.
Ben (03:47):
I I'm really, I'm really curious about how the types of
conversations we have heretranslate in a With some sense
of like feeling genuine aboutthe information you're conveying
to that particular audience,because you could, you could
just have a conversation intone.
That's what we're doing here.
And it wouldn't really land withthat audience.
(04:09):
You can also have a conversationthat's effectively pandering to,
okay, here, here is thestructures that you know, here's
the language you're used to.
But how, how do you actuallystand in that room and try to
reach people?
And it may be a fraction of thepeople in the room to something
that we discussed, you know,last episode, not everybody's
(04:29):
going to kind of have thereceptors up and it may not sink
in, but you've got to have asense of if there's, you know
what you said, 4, 500 people,something like that 500 really
hear you and act on it ifthey're managers or executives.
I think just at a high enoughlevel, the trickle down effect
of that is, is actually massive.
You know, that's an opportunityto really affect change.
(04:51):
So you know, how do you, how doyou seize hold of that?
a.m. (04:54):
And I don't know how many are actually going to be at this
event.
So the great Patrice O'Neill,standup comedian one of my
absolute all time favorites.
He died I have some bad withtime, like sometime over the
last decade died young.
He once said in a, episode PaulProvenza's green room.
I'm a big stand up comedy.
I don't think that's an areawe've tapped into.
We've talked film, we've talkedmusic, we've talked stand up
comedy.
Ben (05:15):
I'm happy to go there.
So we might get in trouble forsome of the source material, but
I'm all in.
a.m. (05:20):
Patrice O'Neil will, I mean, I think Elephant in the
Room is one of the greatesthours ever put on film, and it
will piss a lot of you off whoare listening.
Like, it just, and, and it's,it's dated, and some of the, you
know, but, He's tapping it insome anyway, he once said so
that's a good standup, like ashow where everybody is
laughing.
(05:40):
I am not happy with said a goodstandup set.
If 50 percent of the audienceshould be offended and hate you
and 50 percent should be like,holy shit, this is like Now you
can get silly with that, right?
You can get, you can do the, youknow, whatever, old dated
reference.
The Andrew Dice Clay, or, youknow.
Right now, what's, who's this,this idiot kid who's Matt
Somebody listening is going tobe like, Oh yeah Anyway, this
(06:01):
young guy is a comedian.
Matt Rife.
You know, just another, just abro.
You know, just a bro.
He's funny.
He's got some funny stuff, butjust a bro.
And he's doing some bro shit.
Like whatever.
So it's not offended.
Like just, just, just, you know,saying disrespectful, dumb
things.
But, but you're provoking aestablished way of looking at
things.
In a way that forces the personto see the artifice, not in a
(06:25):
way that makes fun of it, thatdemeans it, that right, but that
forces you to step outside andlook at like Carlin did this
amazingly and Richard Pryor didthis amazingly and write a bunch
of people.
So and I tell my grad studentsthis, I was like, you know I am
speaking to maybe 5 percent ofyou.
And I'm hoping the rest of youenjoy the ride.
I'm transparent about it.
My, and I'm very clear.
(06:46):
When we used to have practice,you know, like I'd be
responsible.
You know what?
You should be working with us.
Here's the list of, you know,here's three people that really
are going to help you.
Like I don't help.
You did not, you know, back inthe day, you did not hire me if
you wanted to help.
That wasn't me.
Tell clients you, you, you arenot going to get out of this
alive.
And that was not a joke.
That was not a, it sounds like ajoke early on, but literally you
(07:09):
will not get out of this life.
Your sense of who you are willnot survive this.
If we're successful in havingyou become an innovator, an
artist and whatever you, for me,it's an artist, whatever you
have, you are not going to comeout of this with your sense of
who you are alive.
You're going to love who'sthere.
I have no clue what it's goingto be, but you will not quite
say, right.
So in, in, in, in, you know,what's, what's gotten cultivated
(07:30):
over time through just practiceis doing over and over again,
getting it wrong, beingoffensive, unintentionally being
too safe, unintentionally too,right.
And what's evolved is, is, is acertain approach to these things
where you assess, you know, whatis the reality they live in?
And what are the hypocrisies?
And okay, so what's the realityyou live in?
What is it they're asking for?
And now what are the hypocrisiesinherent when you bring those
(07:53):
two things together?
Right?
On the innovation side, it wasalways like, you know, it's a
joke that almost every call andall the business is inbound,
right?
And the calls, I could distilldown to one sentence.
We really need to get better atinnovation.
We hear you have a process forthat, right?
That was an encapsulation of thehypocrisy where this is the
(08:13):
world they're living in, wherethings have to be predictable
and they have to be able to tellinvestors and shareholders and
whoever that in 12 months time,exactly this will happen.
And then the request is help medo things that are impossible to
know in advance, right?
So the hypocrisy there becomesobvious over time.
And then it becomes in craftingthe intervention, the speech,
the whatever is how do you speakwithin that reality to that
(08:37):
topic in language that has themfeel the hypocrisy in ever
increasing ways to the point ofwhich they started laughing at
themselves about it.
And then beyond that, getuncomfortable about it.
And then beyond that, get angryat you a little bit.
For revealing so much of thehypocrisy, but you're not
(08:57):
revealing it.
They're revealing it by whatyou're, you know.
And in that process you losesome of them who are so
entrenched with how the thinghas to be, right?
And that's okay.
You're not my audience.
But they'll be the, you know, 5,percent, whatever it is, who are
like, okay, I got it.
If we actually want this, It'snot that this is bad, right?
So for the organizational sideinnovation, it's not the kind of
(09:19):
predictable outcome in 12 monthsis bad.
It's just, if I want thisindustry scale innovation, I
have to figure out ways to letthis thing go even temporarily.
Like if you want to parachute,be with like reliable people,
have the parachute packedappropriately, but at some
fucking point you have to bewilling to let go of the ground.
(09:39):
You have to do the completelyidiotic thing of letting go of
predictability of somethingstable under your feet.
It is unavoidable that you mustlet that go.
And so that's what I'm trying todo in these kind of speaking
events is to speak not outsideof their world.
I want to like really understandtheir world, speak within that
world.
Because if I, if I speak outsidetheir world and point to the
hypocrisy, it's easy to dismiss.
(10:01):
Oh, you don't get us.
You don't look all of that,right?
Oh yeah, I'm sure that's trueover in tech where you worked.
Yeah, of course.
All that nonsense, right?
So I want to really understandthat language, their reality and
speak within that reality.
And then I want to bring theirrequest in, in a, in a way that,
you know, kind of starts to in,in iterations within the hour,
point out the hypocrisy of whatthey're asking.
Ben (10:18):
I'm curious whether you make the assumption that your
audience is willing to work forit because there's, there's a
difference between busyness,which I think aligns well with
process.
and work, which aligns well withdiscovery volatility, that kind
(10:39):
of bottoming out of the floormoment.
And it has more to do with whento time that moment, when you're
ready to take that leap and, andless to do with kind of
predictably following a paththat will lead you to that
moment.
when you're ready for it.
It's, it's about remaining,creating that openness.
(11:01):
I think we've talked a lot aboutthis, but the the idea that
something can happen at anytime.
You don't know when it's gonnahappen, you don't know when
you're gonna be ready, but whenyou are, it sure as hell gonna
happen.
And, and that to me aligns morewith my internal definition of
working for something.
a.m. (11:18):
I wouldn't have been able to say this earlier in my life
and career because I would neverwould have occurred to me, but
just I learned it through, youknow, serendipitous you know,
event.
I find that as much of my stuffhistorically is time release
capsules as it is in the momentintervention.
Like I can think of one person Ithink of that actually both of,
you know but I won't say thename.
(11:39):
Who was a grad student and inthe program was one of those
grad students.
It was like in the back of theroom, like, yeah.
Okay.
Sure.
Yeah.
I just know like wasn'tfighting.
It wasn't, it was just likebullshit.
I don't know how this relatesto, you know, organizational
development.
And you know, one off in theworld, did great things, showed
up, Always showed up in class,registered for the classes.
(12:00):
And so showed up, did the work,did all that, right?
So it wasn't like, you know,left, graduated, went out into
the world.
Six and a half years later comesknocking on the door, basically
saying, okay, Not, not, not, notwhat this person said, but
basically it's like, okay, firstoff, fuck you for the fact that
I'm calling you back, right?
Jokingly, right?
And all right, some of thatstuff you're talking about.
(12:21):
I've been inside for half adecade now.
Can we talk and I've had clientslike that and I've had, right.
So some of it I realized isjust, just I don't want to
dilute the potency of myformula, I don't mean formula in
the calculus, but like myformulation of my, you know, of
my message of my provocation ofmy invitation really is the best
way to say it.
And so what I'm looking for isnah, I'm, I'm not, I don't want
(12:42):
to gauge off of how much they'reready to work.
I'm going to assume there'ssomebody in the audience that's
ready to work.
One person.
And in fact, not just ready towork has already, what I'm
actually, what I know is alreadysomebody at work and they are
drowning.
They are, they are Don Quixoteing.
They are, they lack thelanguage.
(13:02):
They lack the framework.
They lack like all of that, butintuitively they're already
working.
Inside of organizations, man,one of the cheats that we had is
there were people already thatwere innovating in their heads
and trying desperately toinnovate in their work.
And all you had to do is helpdisintermediate process and,
and, and prediction and like,you know, all these kinds of
(13:22):
artifices, right?
And then it would look like wehad some massive intervention
and we did in terms of impact,but we weren't adding anything.
We're just removing stuff,right?
So in, in that audience of, of,you know, in that thinking
event, like however many peoplethat are.
I don't, I don't need everybodyto be ready for work.
In fact, I I'd be shocked ifthey were, I think one, you know
what I mean?
Ben (13:39):
I like that.
I like that inside to outsidedistinction that you mentioned,
kind of back to back thoughtsthere, because that to me is, is
pretty important.
I think there are a lot ofpeople who are willing to do the
work or interested in,Understanding what that is, but
they're standing outside, youknow, they're outside the
building with picket signs.
Yeah, and there's like a limitedamount Of change that you can
(14:01):
actually affect by doing this ismy rationale for selling out by
the way It's how I sleep atnight, but I think being inside
is really actually important.
You got to have people insidewho are cognizant of How the
system works, the language thatthe system uses, and then to be
able to share those tools withpeople who have a little bit of
(14:22):
a different perspective and tobegin to kind of infect the
system in a way.
And you know, to some extent,what you're doing, whether
you're a speaker, whether you'rean educator with your students
here is you're kind of creatingthese like sleeper cells that
you're sending into the systemto wake up one day, activate.
And then infect everythingaround them, but with this
(14:45):
energy that actually is going todo some combination of, of
planting seeds that grow andbeing this fire that just
spreads across whatever it isthat they're, they're in.
And, you know, those in equal ormaybe even unpredictable
measures, it seems like, The,the way that we actually, you
(15:06):
always are asking, how do we dothis at scale?
How do we do this at scale?
That to me is how we do this atscale.
a.m. (15:13):
Mel, and I used to talk about this, Mel Toomey, my, my
former partner on the MAOL andactually this was his insight
that, that, that, you know Iloved and it made for a century.
In a chemical reaction, acatalyst, right?
Like, what is a catalyst?
Like, it's a third chemical, orit's heat, or it's, right?
But, but what happens to thecatalyst after the chemical
reaction?
It disappears.
It doesn't exist.
And so this is what I love aboutadvisory work is you're behind
(15:35):
the curtain.
There's no possibility of youhanging out like the design of
the thing.
Part of the challenge we have,like, like, people mistakenly
sometimes think when they talkabout this stuff, or don't like
if I'm out, like, you know, Iget eat out a lot and I go to a
bar like to hang out and Iprobably show up like
introverted, like quiet, likereserved, right?
I'm like, I'm not, right?
(15:56):
I just don't have the bug oflook at me, look at me, look at
me.
I can't.
And then professionally, I can'tfind a movement that had.
that either had or had put uponit a face that didn't ultimately
result in corruption and decay.
I can find evidence of movementsthat had no face that did some
interesting things, but evendown to religions, you put a
(16:18):
face on it and it becomes easyto forget what people actually
said and just start rooting forthe brand.
So political movements, socialmovements, etc.
The work is about catalyzing andthen doing what a catalyst does
afterwards, which isdisappearing.
You should be useless after the,you know, the chemical reaction
has happened.
And if you are still useful, youdidn't catalyze anything, you
(16:41):
indoctrinated.
Ben (16:42):
Oh, that's a great analogy.
The idea of sort of beingconsumed in the process, you
know, is maybe not the person isconsumed, but some amount of
energy that was going towardsthat thing is expended and
dissipates and then needs to beregenerated and gathered for
whatever comes next.
And to a certain extent, you'renot actually the same person
(17:05):
because you've now had thatexperience.
And you're really, you're kindof collecting the molecules from
scratch almost.
I mean that, that sort of speaksto the experience of doing
anything serially in a way.
If you have some conviction of,hey, this is worth doing twice,
or you're crazy enough to do ittwice, whether you're serial
entrepreneur, or you know,having multiple children, or
(17:27):
whatever it is that you'reengaging in this, this process
over and over again, you do kindof, Collect all of those
ingredients and, you know, as a,let's say, I'm to use the term
consultant, I guess, very, verybroadly, but anyone who's
participating in helping otherpeople go through a particular
(17:47):
journey, right?
You're, you're taking a piece ofyourself and you're actually
expending it.
You know, the, the concept isyou're, you're truly giving of
whatever resources you'vegathered, And you're trying to
see those vaporize.
You're trying to be thatcatalyst.
And if you're holding anythingback, then there's a sense of,
(18:08):
well, like maybe you're notgenuinely invested in that
process.
I'm actually kind of curious ifyou've ever had a moment where
you felt like you were goingdown this path and realized, you
know, it's not worth expendingthe fuel, you know?
And I think that's a, that's amoment that is, it's like a
dangerous moment, right?
(18:28):
Because you're, you're movingbackwards.
You know, a lot of we talk aboutkeep going, charge, charge into
the future, make mistakes.
But every once in a while youget the signal of like, this is
a mistake.
I'm going to stop the mistake.
What, what's, what's your litmustest for that?
So,
a.m. (18:43):
I'd first have to flip how you're talking about.
So fuel implies that there's afinite quantity of something I
have that I'm going to burn whenI'm actually doing my work
versus administrative work or,you know, where I do burn fuel,
you know, that is like and thenthese days burning way too much
fuel on operationaladministrative stuff.
And that's got to get fixed.
But When I'm doing what I thinkis my work, and when we're doing
(19:05):
what I think is our work here Iam not depleting anything.
I'm sourcing something.
And that, I don't know what thebottom of that well is.
I've never been able to comeclose to seeing it.
And so, but then what I useinstead of depletion is
sacredness.
You see, I have a finite amountof fuel for operational
administrative, and I do want toreserve that because I'm going
(19:26):
to run out, and I want to use itjudiciously.
When I'm doing my work, I'msourcing whatever the catalyzing
agent is, and I think it'ssacred.
Not in a religious kind of, youknow, whatever, but, but I'll
stick with sacred.
It and my determining factor, itbecomes not, it is the person
I'm working with good enough,getting it enough.
(19:48):
Making enough progress is dothey have reverence for their
journey?
And if they have reverence fortheir journey, we can hang out
for a decade and they'll stillget more ca, you know, catalyst
poured on them, as it were.
I can think of one, a person'spopping in mind right now who I
just learned is having an exit.
from an enterprise that is like15 years of struggle and then it
(20:09):
looks like they've made it rightand You know this person would
joke about themselves that Iactually might be listening i'm
pretty I haven't talked to himin like a year, but i'm likely
positive he listens Who jokeabout himself about what a
remedial student he was and whata remedial this and like, you
know And he was slow going butBut that sum of bitch had
reverence for himself and thejourney he was on the whole
(20:30):
time.
And so, cool, unlimited access.
A lot of folks have a casualrelationship with their own
development and their ownpossibility and their own
potential.
They allow a lot ofpsychological stuff to get in
the way.
Psychological stuff is real andshould be tended to
empathetically and legitimately,right?
But they kind of use it as anexcuse.
(20:50):
We had somebody, I just really,I'm, I'm still not done
processing it.
We had, you know, we startedhiring folks.
I thought that we were upscalinga certain part of our thing and
folks who had real kind ofcommitment to kids.
And one of them was exited sometime ago just kind of uncovering
more and more that they weren'tdoing shit.
All the talk in their livesabout kids and equality and this
(21:10):
and that, it's just posturing.
Like, they would tell you theybelieve it.
People around them might tellyou they believe it.
But they weren't willing to dothe work.
There was no actual reverencefor what they were up to.
It was an idea.
And a thing they could railagainst.
Right?
The other side of it.
I got no patience for that man.
Like I'm an asshole on it.
If I'm not careful, I'm an overtasshole to people who engage
(21:31):
like that way.
This case fortunately didn'tcome up until long after the
person was gone.
And so there's no, you know,didn't have to say I don't want
to deal with this personanymore.
But out in the world, I have toreally check myself on folks who
have a, a you know, who, who,who posture, who pretend on
things that are very human.
I can get sort of, you know,bullshit avenging angel energy.
(21:52):
You know what I mean?
Like I can, I can become thatguy.
And I, I've, I've really learnedto kind of check out of those
scenarios.
So it doesn't, but but, butthat's my answer.
The question is I don't gauge oris the person getting it?
Are they.
You know, whatever, what's theirprogress?
What i'm looking at is how arethey engaging?
Do they have a sense of againreverence for an understanding
of what their journey is?
Ben (22:11):
I I love that description It feels like something goes
hand in hand with that If youhave reverence for something you
have an a certain amount ofpersistence Meaning that you
believe in his worthiness And soyou're going to stick with it
and you're going to stick withit in moments when it appears to
you You To be not fruitful, notdelivering on its promise.
(22:34):
And there's this weird kind ofethos now of like the fail fast
piece, especially in my cornerof the universe of startups.
It's like raise a bunch ofmoney, not working.
Okay.
Digit next thing, you know, godo it again.
And that to me lacks reverence.
It lacks respect for the idea,respect for the process, respect
for the notion failing invarious ways is an important
(22:58):
part of that journey.
And so knowing when to havepersistence is enormously
important to be able to exposeyourself to things that are
downright nasty and unpleasant.
And to go through that and say,this is a moment where we can
walk away and to choose not to,and to choose to incorporate
(23:18):
that into the next step that youtake.
That's having reverence for theprocess, for the idea, for the
commitment and separating thatfrom just abusing yourself or
others.
And to, to being able to drawthat line is, is enormously
important.
And so genuine reverence, athousand percent commitment to
(23:42):
something that's not causinggrowth.
That's, that's something youhave to weed out.
And, and that's near impossibleto really dial in on unless you
have an internal sense of whatgrowth feels like.
There's this like intuitivething where you go, Oh, you know
what?
Like this.
(24:03):
This is on paper.
This is awful, but why do I feelso good?
Why do I feel like I'm waking upand there's something here
that's being enriched by thatprocess?
If that's tricky, but it exists.
a.m. (24:16):
I want to really underscore it I don't think it
needs to be but I just wasbiased on stuff like this when I
say reverence It's not reverencefor my work That actually is a
massive red flag to me.
That's actually worse than ifyou're not serious.
Ben (24:29):
We're all here to worship at the altar.
a.m. (24:30):
That's a shit like that.
People listen, particularly nowwhere we are in the world,
they're looking for who's gotthe answer, right?
And, and, and so that I'm like,but I've always been like, that
one's a big red flag caution.
Because that's somebody who'snot only not serious, they're
actually looking, it's evenmore, they're looking to do even
less of their work.
They want to, yeah.
I'll take, I'll put him on thespot because he's not here.
(24:51):
But Kyley, like I'm fairlycertain Kyley respects me, but
he's not here because of mywork.
Like he, you know, I mentor him,I whatever, you know, like that.
But he is so like, he is in forlife on his work.
He has a legitimate reverencefor what it is.
He's, Kind of, kind of can seeabout his impact with kids and
(25:12):
therefore the world, right?
That's kind of what it lookslike, right?
Is this, you know, staying inthe ecosystem, accepting the
provocations but it's not aboutthat.
That's about serving the visionthat he has for his masterpiece.
All right, his work of art inthe world, his innovation, his
expression, his whatever, right?
(25:33):
And to go back to the speakingthing what I find Ben Is there
actually a lot of people likethat out there?
And they just it's it's it'slike there's shit tons of sodium
out there.
There's shit tons of chlorideout there They just ain't ever
had the proper catalyzingexperience to turn them into
salt.
You know what I mean?
But there's a lot of thatuntapped out there.
And I think there may be a lotof that untapped out there among
(25:54):
young people.
And that could be wishfulthinking on my part.
I don't know.
Where, where you don't have topull folks.
You know, they are, they are,they, without realizing it,
they've been, they've beenwaiting for the, for the, for
the framework or the, whateverit is, I don't know, right?
So, again, in, in a group of 100or 1, 000 or 5, 000, I just need
10 out of 5, 000, 1 out of 100.
(26:17):
But I find that probably 10 outof 100 and 1, 000 out of 5, 000
that Maybe not today, maybe nottomorrow, but who will allow
themselves to be catalyzed.
And again, not take a singleword of what I said, because
that's problematic actually.
But we'll use it as a spark forthe chemical reaction.
That is their work.
Ben (26:36):
It's interesting.
When you see that and when yousee the remnants of that, and I,
I was thinking about thisearlier'cause I was spelunking
in someone's code and it was
a.m. (26:47):
you said spelunking, I immediately, oh.
Like I, I, my one fear in lifeis claustrophobia.
Like you close face, I'm like,oh my God.
Spelunking, I you want do thecode?
Okay.
Ben (26:54):
No, I think actually that's the feeling I want you to have
when you're looking through.
This is anybody who's, who'sworked as an engineer and knows
the feeling of going into a codebase.
That's not your own.
And that was primarily designedby one other person and it has
the contours of the shape oftheir brain and you get to sort
(27:16):
of experience like what it mustbe like to think like that
person and sort of like walkinginto a house that like looks
fine on the outside.
And then you go in and it's likethis Alice in Wonderland, you
know, shrinking hallways, unlitrooms, and you're kind of,
you're peeking around corners tounderstand like what, how, how
(27:36):
do things work in this world?
Is there gravity?
Are the doors locked?
What type of handles are there?
How do these rooms even connect?
Are they all connected or noneof them connected?
Do I need to break down a wallto be able to get upstairs?
Are there stairs?
It really is this feeling.
And for me, when I'm goingthrough this, there's this
Visualization of some type ofphysical space that exists.
(27:59):
And as I'm going through this,it was, it was couldn't have
been more different than the waymy brain works.
You know, it felt foreign.
It felt alien.
alienating, almost, to be inthis space.
And I had been mentally likealmost a little critical of this
kind of corner of our universebecause it didn't conform to a
(28:22):
lot of my strict expectationsabout how we engineer things,
right?
How we build things andstandardize them.
And so, yeah, this is like thelast, the last dusty corner that
I've kind of investigated insome of what we've built.
And it took hours.
I was, I was doing this on thetrain and just late at night and
I realized halfway through thisis parts of this are inspired,
(28:47):
genuinely inspired.
And I wouldn't have expected asingle person to have been
capable of doing anything evenremotely like this.
And this isn't a person that Iknew well and had lots of
personal conversations with, butyou know, a casual work
relationship and suddenly I feltlike I was getting to know them
(29:09):
and I, I almost, I almostreached out and sent them a
message to say, like, we haven'tchatted in a couple of years,
but I want you to know that thisthing that you did is
incredible.
And I am actually moved by.
coming to understand it andInitially, I went in with the
the intent to make all sorts ofchanges and modifications and I
(29:34):
came out I just took everythingthat I had changed over the
course of four hours Selectedall of it and discarded it and
said the way that it was isgreat because I can't I came to
understand it and You know thatThat's a moment where you're
really acknowledging someoneelse's journey, someone else's
process.
(29:54):
And in, you know, people, a lotof times software is about
standardization and moving tothe lowest common denominator in
a way.
Can everybody read it?
Can everybody understand it?
But allowing room for thesepockets of eccentricity and
brilliance and just being struckwith something truly, like,
innovative and creative.
(30:15):
And just letting it be, youknow, it's okay every once in a
while if it's not perfect bysome exterior measure.
Because now that's, that's likethis permanent imprint of this
person that's going to live onin this way.
And I actually hope that otherpeople get to discover that
person's brain in the same waythat I got to walk through it.
a.m. (30:36):
There, I forget who originally said it, but you
know, there are no straightlines in nature.
And, and, and there's no rightway to be a human being, but
there are inauthentic ways,right?
And there's no, you know rightways to do work.
And that there's narrow slicesof narrow, but critical slices
of work that do benefit from amachine orientation and not a
human orientation, right?
(30:56):
Like you know, the personcalibrating the Railroad tracks,
you know, doing the qualitychecks.
Yes, bring minimal humanity tothat and bring bring a lot of
machine precision to it.
You know, do it the right way.
Sure, but it's so narrow.
The number of things thatbenefit from that.
And by the way, all of thosethings we again back to the
enough conversation from lasttime.
(31:18):
We have machines thatincreasingly do those things,
you know, and do better than usand won't get bored by them and
all that.
But but what makes humans intomake life interesting?
Every living thing interestingis not its perfections.
It's flaws.
It's it's crooked lines.
It's it's eccentricities.
It's it's, you know, if if thefucking sunrise were absolutely
(31:39):
identical every single day, likeit were a film, would you care?
You know, it's just the questionfor a human being, though,
becomes.
Do you have, for me, it becomes,do you have reverence for your
eccentricities?
Do you have reverence for yourflaws?
Do you have reverence for yourcrooked lines to the degree to
(32:00):
which you're willing to bringthem into play and make
something that only you canmake?
And if you're not cool, I gotsome names of people you can
work with.
You know?
And if you are and you don'tknow what to do, great.
And if you are and you don'thave skills, great.
And if you are and you've beentold forever that you're
incompetent and in fact have along list of failures, great.
(32:21):
Come on in.
That's what the school is.
That's all it is.
Do you have reverence foryourself?
Are you willing to cultivatethat?
Everything else we'll figureout.
A week, a month, a year, threeyears.
We'll figure it out.
Ben (32:30):
How do you keep track of graduates?
a.m. (32:32):
You know, it's great.
They keep track of us.
Now we at a practical level, wehave, you know, we use power
school and we have differentschools set up in there.
So for any credential grantingprogram, certificate granting is
in school called FULLdae playwith our name a lot, DAE any of
the kind of two week, six week,you know, sort of more intro
programs or immersion programsare in a school called
(32:54):
PARTIALdae and then students wholeave a FULLdae program and
aren't gonna engage with us butaren't also graduating from high
school yet, they go into aschool called RESTdae.
So they're not, they haven'tleft us.
They're in rest day and they'llstill occasionally hear from us
students who finish.
As a program and are truly donein terms of the formal thing we
can offer or graduated highschool.
(33:15):
Whatever they go into NEXTdae.
And in power school allows youto assign years, you know, year
one year two of a program yearthree of usually it's, you know,
K through 12.
You've got 12 different like ifit's school system happens to
have all of them in one system,some small towns, maybe
whatever.
For FULLdae, it's up to fouryears.
You can be in full day up tofour years.
(33:35):
The assumption being you come inyour freshman year of high
school and you're with us forall the four years of high
school, right?
So the max you can do in FULLdaeis four years.
NEXTdae, the thing you go toafter you graduate, there's a
cap on as well.
It's 99 years.
You're in because that's the maxthe power school will allow.
And, and, and, you know, most ofour kids probably won't live
that long.
Although with technology, whoknows, right?
So in essence, the idea isyou're in for life.
(33:55):
And this comes from my practicewith Tuesday Tea.
You know, that group, it's justlike, it's just a lifetime
community.
And so the ones who are like,you know, overusing the terms,
right?
The ones who allowed themselvesto be truly catalyzed, the ones
who have kind of reverence forthe journey, they keep coming
back.
Like we got two of them you'llsee today if you're, if you're
here a little later, thatthey're, they're in college now.
(34:17):
But they come here in theafternoon to study for their
finals.
They don't go home.
They don't go to their college.
They come here to study fortheir finals.
We didn't chase them down.
They asked, right?
At a practical level, in, in,when they're in next day,
they're in that database,they'll get like a quarterly
newsletter from us, but it's notit's stuff that's aligned with
the culture they got when theywere here.
Right?
(34:38):
June 6th.
We're doing a quote unquotealumni event.
And so folks who, you know, arekind of in NEXTdae come in in
person together.
Same thing.
It's in the context of ourculture.
That thing is not about anyformal.
It's what you've been workingon.
Tell us now.
And then we're gonna tell youwhat we've been working on, like
Kay and Mo and like, you know,there's no hierarchy.
We're all doing work, right?
(34:58):
What are we working on?
What do you know?
Yeah, and then hanging out andplaying ping pong and eating and
The same thing they did whenthey were here for a year or two
years or three years, right?
And so that's you know, so toanswer your question how we
keep, you know, structurallyoperationally they're in the
school called next day They geta quarterly news newsletter, you
know making air quotes, from us,but they hear from us quarterly
And we invite them in personformally once a year But in
(35:23):
reality, the ones who were sortof dug in they just show up.
They just, they understood whenthey were here that this is not
a place I come to for atransaction.
This is one of my homes.
And so they just keep comingback.
They just show up.
Ben (35:34):
I'm always tempted to do something fairly taboo when I'm
here, which is just peek over atsomebody's computer while
they're working.
And you're not really supposedto do that.
This is a little bit of aninvasion of privacy.
But there's always this sense ofeveryone who's just present is
doing something, and I'm curiousabout it.
Because it's, there's like,there's an environment where,
(35:56):
what are you doing?
Well, something you'reinterested in.
And if you're interested in it,then I'm interested.
In most environments, it's not agiven that anyone's doing
anything that they themselvesare interested in.
And so that's, this is what ismagical, you know, you really
want to say like, ah, give mesome of that.
What are you doing?
a.m. (36:14):
That, that, that line, just how you phrased that, you
know, I know you got a gig, butthat like immediately qualifies
you for, for, for, to be aneducator, at least as an entry
of conversation, which is, whatare you interested in?
If you're interested, I'minterested.
That, that, that's You know,it's not the only thing, but
that's a, you know, that's apart of being an educator here.
It's not about my curriculum.
It's again that back that thingof cool.
(36:34):
You got reverence for yourjourney.
I'm immediately interested in.
I'm gonna look for ways to kindof provoke you, push you,
catalyze you,
Ben (36:39):
right?
I mean, this partially selfish,right?
Like this is someone asked mewhat's in it for you?
And it was, it was actually inthe context of like the, this
micro grants program I wasworking with and they, I was
seeking advice from some folkswho had worked in nonprofits
before and they smartly askedhim, why are you doing this?
(37:01):
What's in it for you?
I said, well, I just wantsomeone who's interested in
something and trying to pursueit, to talk to me about it.
And, and that feels in anyconversation, you have to
convince people that you're Totalk to you about the thing that
they're interested in normallythey they'll avoid it at all
costs They'll be embarrassed byit.
(37:21):
You know, it reminds me of thisFamous kids book.
It's like what would you do withan idea?
I think it's the title and atfirst there's this sense of
you're embarrassed about youridea, you know
a.m. (37:31):
Dr.
Joan Ball's ears just perked up
Ben (37:33):
Please no, I like it And oftentimes it's like, they just
won't tell you, it's like, no, Idon't, I don't mean what you're
thinking of that you think thatI might relate to.
I want something that youacknowledge could be completely
foreign to me, that I have nocontext for, I might not
understand, I might think isweird, but I want to know what
(37:55):
you care about.
And if we can do that, if we canstart there, then at least we're
talking about something that'sgenuine and you can educate me,
you know, I want to be educated,but that's, it involves like
this phenomenal amount of armtwisting and you know, it's I
don't know why that that's,that's trained out of us.
That is actually rude to talkabout something that you're
(38:18):
passionate about.
a.m. (38:19):
Yeah.
Ben (38:20):
And so you can create an environment where that's the
opening line.
It's like, hey, here's, you knowwhat I love?
Microphones.
I want you to talk to me abouthow microphones are made for as
long as you want to do that.
And I'm going to come away andI'm probably going to go talk to
somebody else about microphonesbecause now, now you've, you've,
I'm on board, right?
You've pulled me into yourworld.
(38:41):
And that's that's how you learn,right?
We don't do that.
I don't know why.
a.m. (38:45):
That.
That's the kids first monthhere.
You know, I think we've talkedabout this.
It's just and it's it's I don'tknow.
Depressing.
Heartbreaking.
How many kids like don't knowwhat to do with that question
because, you know, at the ripeold age of 15, so few people
have asked them like honestly,you know, and they felt kind of
safe enough to kind of exploreand like, I don't know, what,
what, what, what should I be?
I mean, she's in a job, right?
(39:06):
I mean, she's in a job.
That's what I'm wondering.
I mean, she's in college.
But that's, that's kind of wherethe education team's initially
focused with kids is just avariety of things to kind of
help explore.
What is it?
Microphones.
Cool.
Now, are you willing to beserious about microphones?
Are you, again, reverence.
We don't use the word reverencewith kids, but are you willing
to have reverence around yourpassion for microphones?
Cool.
Great.
You're gonna do, you know, IOTrelative to microphones.
(39:28):
That's great.
Can't wait to see what you comeup with.
Yeah.
Ben (39:31):
Yeah, I mean, if you start there, at least everything
Whether it succeeds or fails orflops or continues or whatever
it is, is going to be a genuineextension of something that
you're actually feeling.
You're thinking it's consumingyou and it becomes generative.
yeah, just getting over thathump.
It's so crazy.
It's so crazy that we don't, wedon't actually communicate in
a.m. (39:55):
Well, again, my other, you know, kind of saw I like to
sharpen in all conversations iswe live in an economy.
We don't live in a culture.
And so the whole orientation is,is there utilitarian value?
And can you articulateutilitarian and economic value?
And if there is an economicvalue in a microphone, or if you
(40:15):
can't articulate how you'regoing to make money.
And be a big deal in the worldof microphones.
Shut the fuck up.
Like that's indirectly themessage we send to kids and to
adults, right?
Until you can tell me how thisis going to have utilitarian
value.
You're just wasting time,wasting my time and yours.
You're like, yeah, yeah, youplay with that on the side.
I got it.
But what are you doing?
(40:36):
Right.
And so that's, that's why peopleare afraid to talk about their
thing because it is most oftenthe case, the most interesting
things that people create.
Out of the gate, they have noclue what value it is.
Like if you're writing a novelwith the idea that it's going to
sell X million copies, you maysell X million copies, but
you're going to generate trash.
You know what I mean?
(40:56):
You're going to generate trash.
It's like films, albums, allthis stuff, right?
Sure.
You're going to sell a millionalbums.
You're going to sell whatever itis.
And it's almost like guaranteedto be trash.
It's not got any lasting value.
And you're going to move on toyour next thing.
All, almost all interestingstuff.
The person up front has no cluewhat the utilitarian or economic
value is, but they're fuckingcommitted, you know?
(41:18):
And then at the end of it, it'slike, Oh shit, look at this
amazing, beautiful thing.
Ben (41:22):
I feel like we don't always have a call to action at the end
of these conversations, but Iwould just, this is my call to
action to anyone listening.
Like.
Go talk to somebody about thething you're actually interested
in.
See what happens.
a.m. (41:34):
So yes to that.
And, and, you know, my, my, mysort of, I'm, I'm the what I was
hoping to do next week is ZenMountain Monastery, which I used
to go to annually and haven'tbeen able to since the the
pandemic.
Since DAE, damn it.
Next week is a week long silentmeditation and I was hoping to
kind of hop into that.
It's, it's beautiful, but, butI, I tend to go to the, you
know, to, to that side of thething.
So yes, go talk to somebody.
(41:55):
Absolutely.
Yes.
And then I would add to that,you know, take the fucking thing
seriously.
Stop treating it like a, like atriviality.
You know what I mean?
Have reverence for it.
Actually do the work,
Ben (42:08):
Yeah.
It's easier to dismiss itbecause if you dismissive of
your own idea, then somehow, Idon't know, it hurts less if you
don't do the work, it hurts lessif someone criticizes it.
Instead of having to feel thatand move through it, move past
it, reconcile that.
You just go, eh, it wasn'timportant anyways.
Right.
So it's you're taking on acognitive and emotional load.
(42:32):
But you know what?
That's necessary.
It's necessary to do things thatare actually gratifying.
And, you know, it's not just ina selfish way, but for others
too.
If you're going to connect withpeople, you have to be able to
take that risk.
So,
a.m. (42:47):
and we have a, maybe this is, you know, picked us up in
next season.
But I'm big on surrender.
Surrender is another dirty wordin this culture, because you
think it means giving up.
But, but, but I think part ofthis journey was reverence, and
I think surrender is part of it.
Like, are you willing tosurrender to this thing?
Like, I am a educator.
That's become like, you know,that was in my face at an early
(43:09):
part in my life, right?
It's not what I would havechosen, you know, like I'd be
riding around the country on amotorcycle or a drop top.
I'd be like on a beachsomewhere.
I'd be selling surfboards.
I'd be like, I am like, like, Ilike to hang out.
I like, if I followed like what,you know, but it just became
obvious fairly or that this iswhat there was to surrender to
and life's been amazing.
(43:29):
So it's not like a, like aburden.
But you give yourself to a thingthat wants to use you in a
productive way, not productivein terms of outcomes, economic
value, but like actually havingyour life feel like, Oh yeah,
yeah, my time.
Like I, I used my time on theplanet, you know, I didn't just
pass.
As Mary Oliver says, I don'twant to die having just visited.
(43:50):
You feel, I don't feel like Ivisited, you know what I mean?
That I followed my inclinations.
I may well have felt like Ivisited.
I would have had a great fuckingtime.
I know I'd have a good time.
But I, I, I I have no regretsaround starting this.
So I think there's this thing ofjust whatever it is.
I'm a trivial, dumb, whatever itfeels like.
If you keep pulling you havereverence for it, surrender to
(44:12):
it, get serious about it.
And then you just need one.
Find one person you could talkto about it.
Who isn't going to try to helpyou or fix you or guide you.
But it was just going to belike, Oh, that's interesting.
Tell me more.
You just need one.
And if you don't happen to cometo DAE, you got plenty.
Ben (44:27):
You know, there's a conversational art to just
digging up an anecdote that'slike a soundbite that is your
relevance to somebody else'sthing versus like giving of
yourself in like furthering oflike, Hey, say more about that
because I'm here for it and thisis why, and there's like the
(44:49):
finding that is Because we'reall untrained in the art of
like, really participating
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