April 30, 2025 • 66 mins
This episode is an Introduction/Reference/Efficiency message that explains a bit about this life-changing, unsettling question, “What are you willing to throw your Life Away On?” as well as a bit about Andrew and his incredible journey, thus far, in Life so that listeners and seekers of REALITY know from “wherest” this content comes from! This series of messages explores what LIFE REALLY IS and shares pragmatic, practical, and helpful insights along the way!
Andrew has gone about as DEEP as possible, through personal will, as well as through “events” into the PROFOUND of the Experience of Life. He has accomplished much in worldly terms and in a number of fields, including music, the arts, healthcare, business, wilderness adventurer, scientific research, Alaskan commercial fishermen, consultant/teacher to over 10,000 CEOs and executives, etc. But his life is also littered with almost every catastrophic loss imaginable, from the loss of 2 children in accidents, loss of health, loss of a few fortunes, loss of wives & loves, loss through natural disasters of hurricanes and forest fires. Add in - bear attacks, gunshot fragments in the head, being swept overboard a few times (nearly drowning), escaping from fires (that nearly killed him), having multiple breakdowns and such add color to the philosophical topics and good-natured advice shared…
(00:00) – Intro
(01:35) – A Life Lived Unfiltered
Reed’s intention to be radically honest, without marketing, performance, or pretense.
(03:27) – Risk, Seriousness, and Courage
What it means to live too conservatively and the essential role of danger in finding meaning.
(06:44) – The Power of Ideas
How ideas shape our inner world — and the world we create from it.
(13:12) – A Wild, Winding Biography
From janitor to international musician to CPA to philosophical teacher — a nonlinear life.
(20:27) – Three Core Values
Reed’s guiding principles: Intelligence, Helpfulness, and Goodness.
(25:33) – Lessons from Nature
Finding patterns, purpose, and trust in the mechanical beauty of the natural world.
(29:32) – The Roots in Iowa & Alaska
A childhood of rebellion, curiosity, and hard work that laid the foundation for a unique path.
(42:30) – Systems, Hospice & Multi-View
The journey from heartbreak and burnout to designing some of the most effective systems in healthcare.
(49:41) – Music, Fire, and Personal Liberation
Reflecting on loss, rebirth, and the ongoing pursuit of authenticity and service.
Song: Twisted World - andrew reed & the liberation
Album: As a Bird of the Air… (Trilogy I Album 1)
Social Media Links
www.mvi.life
Official Website: www.AndrewReedMusic.com
Facebook: @andrewreedandtheliberation https://www.facebook.com/andrewreedandtheliberation
Twitter: @AndrewReedMusic https://twitter.com/AndrewReedMusic
Instagram: @AndrewReedMusic https://www.instagram.com/andrewreedmusic/?hl=en
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/2Lx7DnbB5qyt7uwV8yeHwE
Youtube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCDAcljgsZJzLkADGnQQtldg?view_as=subscriber
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:12):
What are you willing to throw your life away on? With
Andrew Reed and The Liberation.It's a serious question, one
worth pondering. Am I living thelife I want, an intelligent
life, or something else? How canI have a better experience of
life?
These are some of the questionsexplored in this series of
(00:34):
messages without the brag andthe advertisement. Getting
beyond even human institutionsand society into the wilderness,
nature, the reality of how lifeactually operates on this
planet. These messages rangefrom intimate recordings from
the awakened forest to concerts,national conferences, and
(00:56):
broadcasts on a wide array ofphilosophical topics.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
Hello. My name's Andrew Reed, and welcome to What
Are You Willing to Throw YourLife Away On? And I'm here in
the Awakened Forest at my lonelymountaintop hermitage where I
often isolate from society. Andwhat I'm offering in this series
(01:23):
of messages is really a fewconsidered opinions. Of course
this is an introductory episodein this series.
And you know some of you will befamiliar with my music and
artistic works, others with theintellectual consulting work
with MBI. But what I'm reallytrying to do here, my objective
(01:47):
is just to be as open and honestas I know to be. Again, I'm not
seeking likes or subscribe oranything like that. I just wanna
get it out there, and I wanna doit in a way that's much more
unguarded than maybe I've doneit before. For example, if I'm
with a music interviewer, well,I don't know what kind of
(02:08):
consciousness I'm dealing with,so that colors my answers.
And of course you don't want tobe completely misunderstood or
misinterpreted. And yeah, I justwant to be open and honest. And
this question, what are youwilling to throw your life away
(02:29):
on? It's a great question. Ithas immense implications.
It goes to the core ofphilosophy really and with its
central question, how best tolive. There is a lot wrapped up
into it and I think that a lotof us, we recognize that from
moment to moment our lives arebeing frittered away and time is
(02:52):
passing by and we don't want tofeel like it's wasted. Right?
And this question, what are youwilling to throw your life away
on? There's a danger aspect thatthings could go wrong, you could
die, all of this.
And so it invokes some aspect orideals of courage. Courage to
(03:17):
choose, to actually sit back andsay, What would satisfy me? What
would make a great life? Again,that takes courage. It takes
guts.
And I think that most peoplelive outrageously conservative,
Way too conservative. I mean,what's really at risk? Which
(03:39):
kind of brings us to thequestion, is life serious? I
mean, are we really riskinganything? Well, certainly
wrapped up in what are youwilling to throw your life away
on?
Yeah. It's serious. Things couldgo wrong. I could die. I could
lose my house.
I could lose my fortune. I couldlose whatever. And that holds
(04:00):
people back. But also you couldlook at it as life is a little
more nonsensical, that we can bea little more frivolous, that we
can take more risks calculate itrisk, apply some intelligence,
and have a better life. But alllife has risk.
(04:22):
Life is risk. And every time wewake up in the morning, we don't
know how that day is going toturn out. Hell, we don't even
know who's gonna wake up. Is itgonna be the energetic guy, the
depressed guy, the sick guy? Youdon't know.
So, you know, you strap on yourrubber underwear and your armor
(04:44):
up for the day, and you go out,hopefully with courage in a
direction that you feel wouldsatisfy you and give you the
life that you see. Now thismessage is really a background
message, a reference orefficiency message as the wind
(05:07):
blows on the top of themountain. It's really so I don't
have to retell my story over andover. I don't have to present my
certificates or diplomas. Idon't have to explain my basis
of faint authority on certaintopics.
No doubt some of you willprobably ascertain that I was
(05:27):
probably denied a few drops ofsap at birth or perhaps my air
tube was constricted or that Iate lead paint chips as a child.
Those probably explain mypeculiarities and all the
nonsense I have to offer. But Iwill say this, and that other
(05:50):
people have pointed out throughthe years, is that I do tend to
think in a both type of mindset.I think in musical terms and I
think in intellectual terms. Themusic, of course, in the spatial
part which is usually associatedwith the right hemisphere of the
brain and then the concretereality based pragmatic of the
(06:14):
left brain.
I seem to have a pretty goodbalance there. Obviously we can
become unbalanced at times andall of us become unbalanced at
times, I assure you. But Isuspect that there's some truth
to that observation. And this isreally a complimentary message.
It goes along with the podcastseries Creating the Perfect
(06:39):
Company where we share ourorganizational expertise.
But this one is much more broadwhere we can explore in a very
substantive way deepphilosophical topics and ideas
and ideas ideas, how I loveideas. And I know that exposing
(07:01):
ourselves to high value ideas orthinking is a great thing to do.
And in my opinion, one of themost valuable things a person
can do. Why? I think firstly isbecause all things in this
material world of c oneconsciousness, that is what we
can touch, started from theintangible in the form of an
(07:23):
idea, whether it be a computer,whether it be a architectural
structure like a building,whether it be a gun, whether it
be whatever invention of food.
It start out as an idea and somecreativity and energy applied to
it. But I think the secondaspect of the value of ideas,
(07:47):
that our very experience of lifeis somehow dictated by our ideas
or attitudes or beliefs aboutlife, and that these color our
experience. That has incrediblevalue. And that the higher
(08:09):
consciousness ideas that wehave, those with more energy and
I'm not saying we have to beoptimists all the time or
pessimists. In fact, the middleway is probably the wise place
to be.
But the fact that these thingsin our heads dictate our
experience, that's that'simmense to understand. And, of
(08:30):
course, then the rationallogical person would want to
surround themselves andcultivate a high consciousness.
So just understanding this, itis a huge deal, and it comes
from ideas. Again, ourconstructs of how the world
operates. Okay?
(08:52):
Now, again, in this initialepisode, I'll try not to
embarrass myself because I findthis kind of thing very hard to
do is to reveal kind of thetruth about you because why?
It's embarrassing a lot oftimes. And you can be
embarrassed by what you'veachieved as well as what you
(09:14):
haven't achieved or yoursetbacks. And so know that I'm
not trying to be mister bighere. I'm not gonna try to
impress you because I found thatwhen I try to impress others, I
don't.
Better to be real, better to beauthentic even if it embarrasses
you. And the thing about thetruth or being candid about
(09:37):
people, like when you'repointing out in maybe a
noncritical way, but you pointout flaws or shortcomings, is
that it clears the air. And youcan focus on the real issues or
problems or whatever you'retrying to do, and it clarifies
things. And being honest andopen is a much more difficult
task than I think a lot of ussuspect. I mean, consider Mark
(10:01):
Twain.
I mean, here, he was gonna dothis. This is an intelligent,
bright, witty writer. And heproduced three volumes of this.
And he told his publisher thathe couldn't publish these,
obviously he'd be dead too,until a hundred years after his
death because then all thosethat were implicated, all those
(10:24):
family members, those peoplethat he criticized, whatever,
would be long dead. Again, beingopen and honest is a much more
difficult task than we suspect.
Now any intelligent person'sgonna say, you know, where does
this come from? I mean, thisthis guy that's talking at me
(10:44):
now. And I'm this guy, and I'vehad some pretty pretty great
success in life, at least inworldly terms, you might say, in
a number of areas and fields.I'm also a guy that's lived a
really unusual life and with alots of different experiences,
(11:04):
but I'm also this guy that's hada tremendous catastrophic loss
both in frequency and scale. Imean, it's almost embarrassing.
I feel like I'm the subchapterof the book of Job and I'm just
waiting for locusts and boilsnext. But all this colors my
(11:27):
life in some way. In some way,I've had to integrate this
experience of life into one. Andwe all do this through all of
our experiences, and then we addour special flavor to it. It's
just like part of the reason I'mputting out these messages is
because I've been impacted bythe ideas and thoughts of all
(11:50):
these marvelous thinkers inhistory that have helped me so
much.
And these voices are in my head,and we all do this. I don't
claim to have any originalideas, really. But I'm a
synthesis, a layering process, acumulative thing that what comes
(12:11):
out of me in my voice is asynthesis of all these other
voices, all these heroes in mylife that have helped shape my
experience of life. You know,the list of these guys is just,
you know, something else. WillDurant, Alan Watts, Doctor.
David Hawkins, Emerson,obviously, classics, the Plato,
(12:36):
Socrates, all all these allthese Voltaire, Kant, all these
brilliant people, their ideasare in my head. And then I lend
my particular flavor to theworld. And, again, you do the
(12:58):
same thing. So I don't thinkit's so much about being
original. It it's about just,again, being you, and we'll talk
more about that really in in theseries.
Now we talk about this kind ofwild adventure that I've been
on. And, again, when you'remissing a few drops of sap, you
(13:22):
know, you're just and, you knowso I'm this guy that's lived
this unusual life. And just, youknow, just to snap off a few
things, I've been an Alaskafisherman farmhand I've been in
gunfights I've got bullet woundson my head to show it I'm the
songwriter and guitarist forUniversal Music and Virgin Music
(13:46):
Group. Again, biggest musiccompanies in the world handle
Taylor Swift, what have you. Whythey keep me around?
I don't know. I've been this onetime Australian jet setter,
entrepreneur, janitor, I'vecleaned toilets, bellboy,
busboy, board member with mybillionaire buddies, lots of
(14:07):
romantic interests andencounters woven into the story.
This organizational expert thatI defaulted in just because I
was very interested in that,CPA, system analyst, programmer,
customer service zealot. Yeah,love that. Teacher by default
(14:29):
because at some point if you'regoing to replicate or run an
organization, you've got todevelop the talents of people.
So I've trained over 10,000 CEOsand senior executives where they
fly, used to fly this conferencecenter we had to just burnt
down. We'll talk about thatlater. Obviously in the arts,
(14:53):
we've produced all thesebillboard charting songs,
albums, and I'm that wild guythat's building a church, kind
of like Voltaire dedicated tothe intelligence of nature. And
at least both halves of nature,the positive and the negative,
the light and the dark, the dayand the night, the two
(15:15):
hemispheres, the brain, the malefemale, the Democrat, the
Republican, all of thosedualities have seemed to be all
over this world that we have toacknowledge and somehow
integrate. I suspect most of thefrustrated people of the world
are only half living.
(15:35):
People with small mouths thatonly want the sweet, that only
want the good, the right, notrealizing that there's absolute
beauty and magnificence in theashes, in the debris, in the
wreckage, in the death. There'ssomething impressive about that
(15:57):
side. And that in some way, theintelligence behind nature,
which I sit in now, which natureis my master teacher, informs me
that that's just part of thedesign of life. So rather than
protest against it and railagainst it and make banners
(16:17):
about it, why don't we alignwith it and make common cause
with nature? That seems to be asuccessful formula, at least in
my humble estimation.
But then I've again, I've hadall these losses, and perhaps
one of the most important orsignificant things about loss is
(16:41):
to allow or let it do the workin you. Again, inside of you
where the kingdom of god is,where you know that you are a
center of consciousnessexperiencing the external or
life. And these rock bottomevents, these tough hits, these
(17:03):
deaths, that somehow thesecompel us to explore the
profound of life, to confrontreality, to look at it steely
eyed and say, how does lifeactually operate on this planet?
But on some level, we've got tobe humbled a lot of times,
(17:23):
especially if we have somefairly pedestrian views of the
world that are not based inreality. Sometimes it takes
blowing up your world, losingyour mind, losing your love,
losing your children, losingyour health, losing the use of
your limbs, being so lost thatyou can't ever imagine the sun
(17:48):
shining as bright as it didbefore.
That's when my son drowned rightafter graduation. I couldn't
even conceive of the sun evershining bright again. But these
ashes, this manure, this debris,this wreckage somehow gets our
attention, gets our focus, ithumbles us, it softens us, it
(18:11):
shakes us up, it destroys ourbeliefs, or belief systems that
I finally call BS. They forceus, the external world force us
that we dance with, it forces usto a new place. So going broke,
hitting rock bottom, beingdepressed, feeling guilt,
(18:34):
feeling regret, all somehownecessary in the process of
life.
And then the question is, canthe process of life,
intelligence behind thisuniverse be trusted? Now these
messages are not aboutpopularity and success, though
we will talk about those, butyou're not gonna hear a needy
(19:00):
voice from me saying, like me,subscribe, follow, all this
social media stuff. Why? BecauseI'm not needy. And there'll be a
couple people that this willprobably resonate with, and, of
course, I always appreciate youand both of my fans tune in.
(19:24):
But there's a downside ofsuccess. Right? I live a great
life now other than half of it'sburn up from the Black Cove
fires, which you'll hear about.No. There's the downside of
success where you lose yourprivacy, where you end up eating
(19:46):
sawdust from all the demands onyour time, your very life, where
you have strange people campingout.
There's all this baggage thatcomes with it. And anyone that's
experienced some level ofsuccess realizes this. But yet
we go on. So I put thesemessages out with a little bit
(20:12):
of trepidation just to betruthful about it. Now with this
said, I'm dedicating really thisseries of messages to three main
points.
The first is intelligence, thesecond is helpfulness, and the
third is goodness. Sointelligence, helpfulness, and
(20:35):
goodness. Intelligence, whywould you listen to me if you
perceive that I'm dumber than arock? No, there's something to
this and most of us want to livean intelligent life. And again,
by observing nature and applyingthe patterns that we observe in
(20:55):
nature, we, and we align withit, make common cause, we will
have a better experience oflife, no doubt.
That's the way the patterndictates. We rail against it, we
protest in this artificialconditioning from society, we
will have a worse experience oflife. Again, it's our choice.
Intelligence will help us. Andthen there's helpfulness.
(21:20):
Well, helpful is a great thing.It's an assured way of
achievement in this world,helping others on their journey,
what they want to be, do,accomplish, and somehow chiming
in or helping them on theirjourney and figuring that out,
(21:43):
well, that's of great value andsignificance in your life. And
plus, it makes you feel good,which brings us to the third
point, which is goodness. Andafter my second child died in a
tragic car wreck, I dedicatedmyself to goodness. And goodness
(22:03):
is like a gift.
It's hard to describe. But buthaving high enough of
consciousness to to be trulyconsiderate of other people. Now
there are times when you need torip people's lungs out. I
realize that. Of course, youwanna do it the nicest way
possible.
So it's not like all light, allgood, you know, all the time.
(22:25):
You've gotta have the salty sideand the vicious side sometimes.
But having the intelligence toknow when to apply it. Right?
Again, by putting out thesemessages, I'm sharing them
because why?
Or at least what is one of themain things? Well, it's because
other people have helped mealong the way. Right? All these
(22:50):
other people that I talkedabout, again, Durant,
Nightingale, Emerson, Voltaire,all these voices in my head. We
owe such a debt to those thatcame before us, that preceded
us.
All civilization is built onthis, right? Otherwise we'd have
to start from square one with nobase knowledge or heritage. So
(23:15):
we're bestowed with thisrichness in which to start to
take basically our species tothe next place, right? And then
we synthesize this into ourparticular voice, add our flavor
and our interpretation, ourcolor for life, and boom. We are
(23:38):
doing our job.
Now I'm sitting here in nature.Why? I love nature. I've since
I've been around it for so longin, again, Iowa, agriculture,
all that, watched the fields,all that, And then Alaska for
nearly a decade. And then forthe last twenty some years up on
(24:02):
top of this mountain in theAppalachians.
And I sit out here, I isolateobserving nature or what I
perceive as the truth about howlife works. To me, that seems
intelligent. And, you know,sometimes I've been hundreds of
miles from the nearest road ortown, when you're in the bush,
(24:26):
extended periods of time. Andthere's something about people
isolating themselves, going outinto the wilderness to get in
touch with themselves, to besurrounded by the truth rather
than something that's maybe madeup like a lot of society, to
find out what they really want.Because most of us can ask
(24:46):
ourselves the question, what doI want?
What would really satisfy me?And we don't have a very good
answer. Do you know what youwant? And as we look into
nature, we see again this systemof patterns that is not random.
(25:07):
That there's a system oforganization.
There's intelligence going downway beyond anything that we can
conceive of to the microscopicand below subatomic levels.
There's all kinds of thingsgoing on. And then above us
there's things so much largerthan us. There's galaxies,
there's universes, there's theinfinite that we can't even get
(25:28):
our minds around. But none ofit's random.
All has pattern and that it's asystem of mutual reliance. And
let me say this, if I have anyclaim to success, it is from
studying these patterns andapplying them to life, to the
(25:51):
organizational work that we do,which is somewhat abstract, to
how to actually live. So there'sthere's huge value in that. Now
with this said, nature has amechanical exactness that's
(26:12):
terrifying. That might seem coldto some people, but yet it's
something that can be trusted.
And if we cooperate with natureand flow with it rather than go
against it, our likelihood ofsuccess on this planet, however
we wanna define success, goes upexponentially. You'll notice
(26:37):
also that my language isprobably odd in that I try to
soften it and I try to avoidstatements of certainty such as
always, must, should, never.Rather, I substitute sometimes,
often, I suspect, usually,perhaps. I try to leave a little
(27:00):
bit of gap or room for theunknown. Because what, it seems
like soon as you make somestatement of certainty, someone
finds the crack in your clay potand there's a paradox.
There's a contradictory,unconsidered element. There's a
counterintuitive aspect of it.And that seems to be in
(27:25):
everything because no one hasthe whole enchilada. Here we are
being on this planet. We havefive senses to interpret the
world, six if we stretch it.
And it's not like we have 72like Volt here talked about with
the Martian who dipped his toein the Mediterranean and that
only lived fifteen thousandyears and then suspected that,
(27:49):
oh, we're just born and soonafter fifteen thousand years
when we're finally learning howto live, we die. So these
statements of certainty, and ifpeople are, I'll say too
confident, I hold them with somesuspicion because nobody, again,
(28:11):
knows it all. No one has thewhole enchilada. And all answers
are technically a dead end. Why?
Because all topics are infinite.Is that not true? In the
conference center, in the studiothat is now a pile of ashes on
(28:33):
top of the mountain, I used tohave a bust of Voltaire,
arguably one of the five mostbrilliant flames to ever grace
this planet. And this is what hehad to say about, quote, knowing
it all. This is paraphrased, ofcourse.
To have doubt is anuncomfortable condition, but to
(28:55):
be certain is absurd. So if thatcame from arguably one of the
five brightest people to everwalk on the planet, I figure
that we all need to have somehumility regarding our
declarations of life and what itconstitutes. Because all
(29:19):
explanations are insufficient atbest. So with that said, let me
go into my life and I'll kind ofbe like Steve Martin in The
Jerk. What?
My story? And then he goes intoit. I was born in Independence,
Iowa farming area, and I wasraised in the cultural
(29:44):
metropolis of Winthrop, Iowa,population seven eighteen, but I
realized there's been apopulation explosion since then
and they're up to seven fiftyeight. Raised normally, my mom
was a beautician, my dad was abarber, but yet I had the
longest hair of anybody. I'msure that was bad for business.
(30:04):
Anyway, I tested high regardingIQ and then I get into first
grade and I'm like the classclown. I'm daydreaming. I'm
making rocket ships onstandardized testing forms.
Disruptive, I am sent to theprincipal often or out in the
hall where I push my littlewooden chair up to the water
(30:27):
fountain. Thought it was prettycool.
And what did they do? They didwhat any logical people would do
with the outsider or theoutlier. They failed me with
devastating effect on my psyche.It took me till the fifth or
sixth grade to snap out of it torealize I wasn't just as dumb as
(30:50):
a brick. Not that I'm trying todemonize bricks.
I wanna have a love for allexpressions of life. But it
really did something and maybethere's a lesson there regarding
our kids and their self imagesbut I felt like I was absolutely
stupid. But I was just naturallyone of these kids that would
(31:10):
drift off, daydream, cut up,felt very free. And you might
call me a space cadet, andthere's a song that, one of my
best songs I feel, calledSpaceman, and I recorded it with
Artemis Pyle of Leonard Skynyrdwho was playing drums, and then
(31:31):
Tony, the bass player fromMarshall Tucker Band, was
playing bass. And but this is avery autobiographical song
really about this period of mymy life.
These daydreamers, well, you'reactually focusing on something.
There's something that'scapturing your imagination. And
(31:53):
I think that explains me to someextent that I've always had this
very deep ability to focus,which has improved everything,
quality, whatever. That's howthings get done. Whereas when
you lack focus or you havethings that are vying for your
attention disrupting you like acell phone.
(32:14):
I mean, holy cow. That is theantithesis of focus. You're
getting texts. You're gettingnotifications. You're getting
emails.
You're you're you're gettingphone calls, And it and it just
it breaks your concentration oryour love for whatever you're
doing. So much for the outlierthere. And then I, you know, I
(32:44):
liked making money. I was fairlyambitious and so I delivered the
Cedar Rapids Gazette. I mowedlawn, shoveled snow, detached
with corn, baled hay, picked uprocks.
Of course, how Iowa got itsgreat soils because it was
really borrowed from Canada andMinnesota because the clay
issues had to push it down,bringing the rich soil, but
(33:05):
bringing the rocks, which we hadto extract to get out of the
fields because of the combinesand plows and everything. Not
good on the blades. I swept thefloor at my dad's barbershop of
hair and all that. And then at15, I went to Alaska. Why?
Because most of my family livesin Alaska. That's the highest
(33:27):
concentration of family, infact. And I'd asked my Uncle
Chuck, both Uncle Chuck andUncle Earl and even Wally, all
of them, all my family spenttime in Alaska, but they
homesteaded back in the late'40s, early '50s, where the town
of Anchor Point is now. So UncleChuck let me come up and I was a
(33:51):
commercial fisherman for thebetter part of a decade in
Alaska working in Prince WilliamSound, Kodiak, Cook Inlet,
salmon seining mainly. I did dohalibut and stuff like that too.
Again, 18 tons of salmon a dayor nets as big as a few football
fields and all that. And Ibecame pretty accomplished at
(34:14):
this, but you think aboutAlaska, you know, you're working
around the roughest people thereare. I mean, you're lumberjacks
and killers and people fromNassau and all these strange
characters in Alaska. And wehave these sayings like in
Alaska, where women are men andmen are animals. And I figured
(34:37):
there's two kinds of people thatare attracted to Alaska.
Number one, seekers, religiouspeople, people trying to find
themselves, get in touch, youknow, great things. And then the
other type of person, those whoare running from something,
normally the law. And so I'vehad my share of run ins and and
drama around that. So Alaska,something else. Then music's
(35:06):
always been part of my life.
I started playing guitar, bassguitar. I started out with
around 12 years old because Ilooked at a six string guitar
and said there's no way that Icould do that. This one only has
four, and you only have to playone note at a time. So, you
know, with all my insecurityissues, of course, I started out
(35:27):
as a bass player because I wouldnever be able to play guitar.
And, anyway, I found out that Iwas quite musical, and music
came easy, and we became greatentertainers even in high
school.
I mean, we just killed it anddid mainly progressive type
rock. Of course, then collegecomes in and I went to Iowa
(35:50):
State. I majored intelecommunicative arts. I took
marketing classes at theUniversity of Northern Iowa. And
then somewhere along the way,bam, I got the religious fever.
And I went to Bible school tobecome a preacher because I was
just kind of disillusioned withstuff. And I'd always had a
(36:11):
spirituality to me. I mean, justfelt like there was some
intelligence, maybe that linkedto nature or what have you. And
I was born and raised Catholicbecause it's like 90% Catholic
where I come from. And if you goto any of my houses or at least
a number of my buildings, you'regonna find all these artifacts
(36:33):
of Catholicism and all that justbecause I think it's beautiful,
it's magnificent, it's reverent,all that.
But then, you know, I realized,hey, there's all these other
faiths. So I started going tothe Methodist Church. I like
their youth group and all that,Baptist Church, Assembly of God,
speaking in tongues. All thatwas of interest to me. But then
I went down to Bible school andI got expelled like, you know,
(36:56):
three times.
I had hair issues because Iliked my long hair and of course
you couldn't have that and itcouldn't touch your collar. So,
you know, there I was in thedean's office. And then even
though I had, like, a 3.8 gradepoint average, I got a d in my
preaching course because mysermons were so scandalous,
(37:17):
apparently. I'm surprised theylet me graduate, but I did
graduate like a good Iowa boybecause we finish what we start
even though I really wanted todrop out at different times. The
other thing I did while I was inBible school is I met wife
number one.
Now I knew having numericalsystem to keep track of such and
(37:39):
with wife number one, I hadthree children. Again, of them
deceased at this point and we'lltalk about that. Well, let's
talk about it right now. I mean,Roman drowned right after
graduation at age 19, and thenChantal was killed, in an auto
accident, age 25. Both died inmy estimation in troubled states
(38:03):
of mind at night in rainstorms.
Therefore, one piece of advicethat I offer people about life
itself is just relax. Don'tpanic. You might find yourself
(38:23):
at night. You might findyourself in a troubled state of
mind. You might find yourself ina rainstorm.
Just relax. The storm cloudswill pass. Wait it out. The sun
will come out again. Now fusedinto this story and my travels
(38:50):
to Alaska, college, bibleschool, all this, I was always
playing, jamming, playing music.
I played a thousand somethingshows and of course not always
getting paid much. So workingodd jobs along the way, janitor,
maintenance man, cleaningtoilets. In fact, I clean, the
Texas Pete manufacturing plant.If you're into that hot sauce,
(39:14):
it's great. I was a busboy, thena waiter.
I had to start out as a busboybecause they took a look at me
and said, this guy, he's notsmart enough to be a waiter. And
then I did get to be one, and Iwas good. A bellboy as a
maintenance man at a apartmentcomplex, sold insurance. I even
(39:37):
delivered newspapers again. Imean, I did whatever is needed.
Why? Because somewhere along theway, again, got married and I
had Roman. And being a provideris a big deal to a guy,
definitely wired into thepsyche. So playing in these
bands, we were good. I mean,there could be three people in
(40:00):
the bar at the beginning of thenight and it would be packed.
If the capacity is 300, we'dhave 300 there, whatever it was,
because we were a spectacle.People couldn't take their eyes
off us. And that led to a majorlabel management and recording
contract, a six year, six albumdeal. And so we worked that for
(40:23):
a few years until I got sick ofit. I had figured out the music
game.
The economics not great. Sowe're gonna get how much? We're
gonna get a quarter and we haveto pay back whatever the advance
was, say it's $50,000. So we'regonna have to sell a half a
million records and we're gonnabe in hock the whole way. And
(40:45):
not only that, I realized thatthe music industry was full of
fruits and flakes and lots ofrelatively low consciousness
people.
So I had had it one day and Imarched up to the top level of
the United Artist Building inNashville and I told my manager,
I'm done. And he he said, well,it's not quite that easy,
(41:07):
Andrew. I own all your music. Iown every picture of you in a
musical context. You can't evenplay in a bar legally.
So then I thought, I've gottawork out a new way to make a
living. So I thought, wait.Computers are kind of the new
thing. So I taught myself how toprogram. Okay.
(41:30):
So I taught myself how toprogram in basic and and in c
and in c plus and then I talkedmy way into a job with a
compensation company that madecompensation software. And they
were hemorrhaging customers, andI stopped it cold just by being
(41:52):
a real person, being helpful,looking and considering their
needs, and solving them. And sothey made me a system analyst
where I directed people afterthat. And then I thought, well,
money's probably important, so Iknocked out my bachelor of
(42:13):
science in Accounting and Ibecame a CPA. Okay, so I'm kind
of on the corporate track atthat point, conform a little
bit, hair gets a little shorter,you know how it goes.
Then I saw an ad in the paper towork for a hospice, and I
(42:35):
thought, well, I'd kinda likeworking something herbal. And I
answered the ad, went in fromthe interview, found out it was
healthcare, end of life care,profound work. And so I came in
as the accounting manager.Immediately I had to understand
what we were doing. I just wascurious.
So I started going out on visitswith nurses, LPNs, hospice
(42:58):
aides, chaplains, socialworkers, all of the
interdisciplinary team, becauseI felt it lacked integrity for
me to be advising people,telling them what their numbers
should be, if I didn'tunderstand what they were doing,
(43:18):
what they were experiencing onthe front lines. And I worked as
close as I could with thoseclinical leaders just to get
into their world. Then theorganization had a few problems,
3 and a half million dollarpayback. Well, I worked out how
to how to fix it. And then, ofcourse, got promoted to the CFO
(43:45):
by Deborah Daley, one of thebrightest people I have ever
met.
And Deborah just took me underher wing and taught me so much.
I owe a great debt to Deborah.When she went to to be the CEO
in Palm Beach, she took me alongwith her, made me her number
(44:06):
two. And of course, that was agreat experience, and we turned
that place around and we putaway a hundred million dollars
in a relatively short period oftime, but I ripped out every
system that they had. And I needto add this to the story is that
Deborah has said, Yourbackground is a programmer and
(44:28):
all that.
You've made all these greatthings for us in addition to
running the financial areas. Ourproductivity is not that great
and our quality, frankly, coulduse a facelift. Could you make a
compensation system for us? Isaid, Well, I don't know if I
can, Deborah. Now at that pointI had done like 38 companies,
(44:51):
textile, restaurants, countryclubs, things like that, comp
systems for them.
I'd never done healthcare. Andshe says, Well, I need it in two
weeks. And so I basically justtook patterns that I had known
and I applied them to thishealthcare setting and it
(45:14):
resulted in a 100 increase inproductivity in almost every
discipline except for one. Inthat outlier, we only had 50%
increase in quality andproductivity. And of course,
this gets me on the nationalstage.
The whole hospice world wantedto know about this and so they
(45:38):
invited me to Washington, D. C.To speak at the national
conference and there's 2,000people in attendance. And so I'm
there explaining what I did andall that to them and they hated
it. This guy is Satan.
He's destroying our lovelyhospice world of kindness,
(45:58):
making it into a business. Theybasically booed me out, heckled
me out. So if I wear black alot, just realize I have issues.
But fortunately there's a fewsmart cookies, Entegris people.
And I'm not saying the othersweren't Entegris.
(46:19):
I mean we're all operating fromwhatever our view of the world
is, what our paradigm is, ourunderstanding. But they saw
there's some directionalcorrectness here to what Andrew
is saying. And so I startedgetting all these calls and that
led to me forming MultiView,this company that studies you
(46:40):
know, what's going on, where weput our little piece of software
into around 1,300 organizationsat this point. And every month
we pull out nine eighty ninedata elements with nine twenty
two cross calculations, againevery month. And then it goes to
our data warehouse in Floridawhere we quantify all these
(47:00):
things and then we study theninetieth percentile.
What are they doing to get thisgreat result? And then in a Six
Sigma kind of way, we structureit or systematize it and then
communicate those practices toour clients so hopefully they
can get a similar result, whichoften results in quality going
(47:23):
up hundreds of percent as wellas economics because they go
hand in hand. And that explainskind of the multi view equation.
Now one of the strange things inthis story is that after the six
years, I started getting callsfrom music executives and
(47:45):
artists saying, Andrew, yourcatalog is open now because some
people knew about it, And youhad some great stuff. Can we
record it?
And suddenly I find myself, bam,right back in the music
business. And we've hadtremendous success with that. I
mean, I've built a couple ofdifferent studios. We still have
the broadcast studio at ourheadquarters building in town.
(48:10):
Again we have the one thathopefully will reconstitute when
we get all the insurancesituations all sorted out.
But it's been pretty epic. Andthen we've had all these artists
in addition to just, you know,my stuff that we record out
there, all these famousmusicians. And it's kind of a
musicians of musicians studiowhere Taylor Swift's people will
(48:32):
come in, John Mayer's peoplecome in, widespread panic, Steve
Canyon Rangers. I mean, listgoes on. Leonard Skynyrd, even
some of these Grammy winningclassical groups like members
of, again, Blue Turtle.
And and then these blues folkstend to gravitate and folks that
(48:54):
have worked with BB King, JimmyBond, you know, John McVeigh,
you know, a great artist. Theblues. The blues. I am so about
the blues. Why?
Because I've lived the blues. Myfretboard is soaked in real
(49:16):
tears, real dirt, real sweat. Iam the blues. And so when I play
it, I mean, it it's coming frommy my gut, and it's a way that I
kind of get it out. So the onething I want to point out though
(49:39):
is that, okay, quit the musicbusiness.
I quit something that I loved.Okay, so that's a form of loss
or limitation or constraint orperceived negative. But what did
it do? It worked a miracle in mylife. Because by cutting that
off, I discovered that I had a,what, a left brain, the critical
(50:04):
side, the practical side, that Icould put numbers together.
I would have never known that Ihad that ability should I have
just stayed in the artsy fartsyworld, Unless that limitation
would have caused me to have togo in another direction. There's
so much in nature that when abranch gets broken or cut off,
(50:25):
that it springs forth in anotherdirection because there's no
other option. And that's the waylife works. That we discover
things about ourselves thatcomes from the external world,
that somehow we've got tointegrate and understand and
then choose what attitude we'regoing to have towards that
(50:46):
circumstance, especially if it'sperceived as negative. So that's
that.
In my life, pretty much it'sfiftyfifty music business, with
the other half, the intellectualhalf, I'll say, being satisfied
by our expert organizationalwork through MBI, the consulting
(51:07):
side. Also in the mix that Iprobably need to mention at this
point is my second marriage,number two, obviously. And I was
on tour in Europe and I met thisAustralian bombshell and fell in
love. I married her in seventytwo days. I rented Shark Island
(51:32):
in the middle of Sydney Harbor.
We got all our jet setters,celebrity, fancy friends, movie
stars, INXS, all those from downunder, and and got married. But
I was living between twocontinents, North America,
Australia. That's a long flight,and I was doing it several times
(51:55):
a month, and I had a breakdown.And there's something about
waking up in a foreign land andhearing foreign birds and
whatever and realizing thatyou're gonna be there and
there's chances that you mightnot even get home. I know that
sounds maybe a littleexaggerated, someone gets sick
or whatever where you're neededand then you got kids on the
(52:16):
other side of the ocean thatyou're not seeing, and all I
know is that whole situationbroke me down.
And finally I went to my doctor,good doctor Smith, and he said,
Andrew, I think you've bittenoff more than you can chew. And
so I had to end it, you know,for my sake, for my kid's sake,
(52:40):
and all that. Now let's talkabout the losses, the counter
side, the dark side, the shadowof this. Again, I'm trying to be
as committed to openness andtruthfulness here because all I
know is that, again, when we arecandid, we can bring things up
(53:00):
and examine them. Big one,again, two of my three children
dead, again, in states ofanxiety, at night in rainstorms,
dying early in life and neverreally getting the chance to
grow up, or for me to see themgrow up.
That's a loss. I've beendivorced twice and I also along
(53:24):
the way lost the love of mylife, the true love. And I think
about that every day. Money,I've been wiped out a few times.
Of course, after a divorce,that's usually a tough hit.
But I've also had obviously bador stupid business decisions
(53:45):
sometimes along the way, butagain, you can come back, right?
And I'm an example of comingback several times and just
staggeringly great, beyond whatyou could even conceive of
before, in fact. I've lost myhealth. Again, I've had four
breakdowns due to this overoccupation aspect of my
(54:08):
personality. I just tend tooverdo it.
And you might say that I wasborn with the off switch broken.
But I've also in thesebreakdowns, you have this
vertigo and all that, and I'venot really felt well probably
most of my life ever since, say,age 32. But there's a vision in
(54:30):
my life that just presses me on.And I think that speaks to the
value of a vision. That if youhave something that you really
want to accomplish, normally youcan muster the energy to pull it
off.
And a lot of people say, well, Ican't do this. I didn't feel
well, or I didn't report to workbecause of this, they call off
(54:51):
or whatever. Well, to me,sometimes, or most of the time
you might say, it's just anexcuse because a lot can be
accomplished by people thatdon't feel very well, and I'm an
example of that. I've also, inthe health realm, I've lost use
(55:13):
of my right hand and arm due toan accident. Then I had this
physician error.
I lost the use of my other arm,and I've had to rehabilitate the
use of my hands. And your handsare essential. But again, hard
work, sweat can be done. I canplay guitar better now than I
(55:34):
ever could when I was at fullstrength. And then just to add
on to this, we've had thesenatural disasters over the last
couple years.
So I I lose Chantal, and, youknow, that grieving process is
is just what it is. And thenhurricane Helene hits where it
(55:58):
wipes out this mountain. I mean,of trees and and structures
destroyed. 32 inches dumped injust a couple hours, wiping out
our only bridge and road in towhere we have to get out on
foot. It took us weeks to cutourselves out.
We were living on the mostprimitive of levels. And talk
(56:23):
about testing your prepping. Andwe did this for five months
until finally a temporarybridge, a one laner, was
installed. But when you go intotown, you strap on your boots,
you put on your backpack, makesure you have your light, your
(56:44):
flashlight, your knife. Youproceed down the hill or down
the mountain past the rockslide,past all the debris, and then
you have cliffs to scale.
And of course, we've upgradedfrom the rope and the ladder to
scaffolding where we have threelevels of scaffolding to go down
(57:06):
to get down to the bridge, tocross over, to go uphill again
through the mud, to hopefully avehicle waiting to take you into
town with your pack. And ofcourse on your return you have
your provisions and you questionwhether to buy the half gallon
of milk because you have to haulit up the hill in reverse. So we
(57:31):
lived like that for a long time.I worked side by side with
special forces guys, my buddies,I was used to that though from
upbringing. And then just onemonth ago, the Black Cove big
hungry forest fires, whichovertook our community, again,
(57:53):
burnt down 13 of my buildings.
Again, two homes, a recordingstudio, greenhouses, art studio,
just wiped out. Now I've got 10others. And you can say, Well,
no tears for the rich man there.You've got a lot, Andrew. It
hurts.
60 guitars, a grand piano fromthis majestic family in Japan
(58:14):
that sent it to me. 1965Hammond, Oregon. '19 '70
Voyagers. I mean, irreplaceableinstruments. Guitars, again,
from the forties, fifties,sixties, seventies, eighties.
Again, I'm a collector of manythings. Go on. They're more than
just things to me. Now with thatsaid, my loss is small
(58:38):
comparative to some of myneighbors. Some of them lost
their house, their one house.
So relatively, that's a biggerhit. So that's taught me a whole
different respect for things,the importance of things. I
almost cry when I'm at thiscabin right now because somehow
(59:01):
it survived. I can't believe it.It shouldn't have.
It burnt the front, But somefirefighter from Oregon used his
shovel and put it out. There's aguy I need to seek out and get a
gift. So the losses. It justseems again, we're always doing
(59:25):
this dance with the externalthat is some kind of fifty fifty
life of push and pull. It's notjust, again, Newtonian dominoes,
a cause and effect that thishappens and this happens and
this happens and this happens.
Again, if that were the case,then nobody bears any
responsibility for anything.Right? Because we can just blame
(59:47):
everything we are today on thepast. That's not the way the
world works. If I want to havethe will to grab a cup of tea
and drink it, I'm doing that.
And thus, this duality that Ispeak of, this reconciliation,
helps to explain things andhelps us reconcile the
(01:00:10):
victories, the sweet, the sunnyof our lives with the dark
nature. And sometimes we needthat push, that loss thing, even
though they can be catastrophicand tough. And again, it's great
(01:00:33):
to grieve. It's great to cry inour beer for a time, but there's
a time where he was saying, I'mnot really accomplishing much,
being depressed, or thinkingabout this too much. I need to
get my mind on something else.
I need to do somethingconstructive. I need a new
vision. Let's start rebuilding.So and a lot of that, I'll just
(01:00:56):
say this, has to do withattitude towards life. We can
look at life with a hostileattitude, Or we can have a much
more friendly or warm attitudeor approach to life.
Give it that gap that, hey,maybe we're not just a little
speck of dust being pushedaround by the big bad world, but
(01:01:16):
there's something I can do aboutit. And I at least have the
ability to have a good attitude.And as in Viktor Frankl's famous
book, Man's Search for Meeting,that he penned right after he
got out of the Naziconcentration camp, where he
said, The last of the humanfreedoms is the ability to
(01:01:36):
choose one's attitude in anygiven circumstance. That's
powerful because he talked aboutall these really strong
physically robust guys in thecamp and how they would just die
off quickly. Whereas you couldhave some shriveled up guy with
a rich world of inner experienceby ideas that would live.
(01:02:03):
There's value to our thinkingand the ideas that we choose to
have. So that's my story.Hopefully, you know, my voice
will offer some type of benefit,you know, or gain. And I realize
that my voice will probably goin and out of your life over
(01:02:26):
time, that is if you listen forsome period of time, and that
other voices are going tocapture your attention and
that's natural. But just like myheroes, the voices that are in
my head, when an external eventor something happens where it
summons those voices or thatknowledge or that idea and I go
(01:02:48):
back to that voice, thatreliable, friendly, comforting
voice that sures up my soul andcultivates again an attitude of
hope, of vision, or whatever Ineed.
My hope is to be one of thosevoices, and hopefully it's a
(01:03:10):
voice of helpfulness andgoodness too. And let me add
just one other thing. Some ofyou are saying, Andrew, what's
with this liberation thing?Well, obviously, the first thing
that comes to mind is AndrewReed and the liberation. Okay.
(01:03:31):
My band. You know, those guysthat support me when I'm
playing. And God knows we allneed some support. But it's also
an idea. It's something thatwe're all trying to do, whether
we are conscious of it or not.
We're all trying to be liberatedor get as liberated as we can in
(01:03:52):
our life. So what is liberation?To me, it is just to be you, and
only you can liberate yourself.And as part of my job, as I
perceive as this forest dweller,is to bring you to yourself.
(01:04:17):
Your own self reliance, your nonneediness, your complete
realization of what you are.
You know, giving yourself overto your own ideas about the
world and being able toconfidently present yourself and
(01:04:37):
your views as you see them andmake your full contribution.
That's your job. Your job is toadd your flavor, your synthesis
of your interpretation of life,and to communicate yourself to
the fullest extent possible,where you reserve the right to
speak boldly on whatever youperceive. Of course, with tech,
(01:05:00):
you you want to get along withpeople and you want to be held
in good standing, of course. Butto communicate yourself with a
confident and not a needy voice,but then reserve the right to
completely change your views thenext day if you wish.
We are all changing all thetime. I certainly don't have the
same views as I had when I wasseven. Right? They change every
(01:05:23):
day. I'm not even the same guy Iwas yesterday.
It might be an extra wrinkle.Definitely another tad of
knowledge. I might have killedoff a few brain cells with
little excess red wine. Butwe're never the same. Life's
(01:05:44):
always going forward, and andthat's it.
So this brings us to the endwith the question. And, again,
questions have juice. They havelife. Again, because answers are
dead stops, and all answers areincomplete at best because all
(01:06:06):
topics are infinite. But thequestion is what?
What are you willing to throwyour life away on?
Speaker 1 (01:06:17):
Thank you for listening. If you need anything
further, just go to MBI.life.
What are you willing to throw your life away on? With
Andrew Reed and The Liberation.It's a serious question, one
worth pondering. Am I living thelife I want, an intelligent
life, or something else? How canI have a better experience of
life?
These are some of the questionsexplored in this series of
(00:34):
messages without the brag andthe advertisement. Getting
beyond even human institutionsand society into the wilderness,
nature, the reality of how lifeactually operates on this
planet. These messages rangefrom intimate recordings from
the awakened forest to concerts,national conferences, and
(00:56):
broadcasts on a wide array ofphilosophical topics.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
Hello. My name's Andrew Reed, and welcome to What
Are You Willing to Throw YourLife Away On? And I'm here in
the Awakened Forest at my lonelymountaintop hermitage where I
often isolate from society. Andwhat I'm offering in this series
(01:23):
of messages is really a fewconsidered opinions. Of course
this is an introductory episodein this series.
And you know some of you will befamiliar with my music and
artistic works, others with theintellectual consulting work
with MBI. But what I'm reallytrying to do here, my objective
(01:47):
is just to be as open and honestas I know to be. Again, I'm not
seeking likes or subscribe oranything like that. I just wanna
get it out there, and I wanna doit in a way that's much more
unguarded than maybe I've doneit before. For example, if I'm
with a music interviewer, well,I don't know what kind of
(02:08):
consciousness I'm dealing with,so that colors my answers.
And of course you don't want tobe completely misunderstood or
misinterpreted. And yeah, I justwant to be open and honest. And
this question, what are youwilling to throw your life away
(02:29):
on? It's a great question. Ithas immense implications.
It goes to the core ofphilosophy really and with its
central question, how best tolive. There is a lot wrapped up
into it and I think that a lotof us, we recognize that from
moment to moment our lives arebeing frittered away and time is
(02:52):
passing by and we don't want tofeel like it's wasted. Right?
And this question, what are youwilling to throw your life away
on? There's a danger aspect thatthings could go wrong, you could
die, all of this.
And so it invokes some aspect orideals of courage. Courage to
(03:17):
choose, to actually sit back andsay, What would satisfy me? What
would make a great life? Again,that takes courage. It takes
guts.
And I think that most peoplelive outrageously conservative,
Way too conservative. I mean,what's really at risk? Which
(03:39):
kind of brings us to thequestion, is life serious? I
mean, are we really riskinganything? Well, certainly
wrapped up in what are youwilling to throw your life away
on?
Yeah. It's serious. Things couldgo wrong. I could die. I could
lose my house.
I could lose my fortune. I couldlose whatever. And that holds
(04:00):
people back. But also you couldlook at it as life is a little
more nonsensical, that we can bea little more frivolous, that we
can take more risks calculate itrisk, apply some intelligence,
and have a better life. But alllife has risk.
(04:22):
Life is risk. And every time wewake up in the morning, we don't
know how that day is going toturn out. Hell, we don't even
know who's gonna wake up. Is itgonna be the energetic guy, the
depressed guy, the sick guy? Youdon't know.
So, you know, you strap on yourrubber underwear and your armor
(04:44):
up for the day, and you go out,hopefully with courage in a
direction that you feel wouldsatisfy you and give you the
life that you see. Now thismessage is really a background
message, a reference orefficiency message as the wind
(05:07):
blows on the top of themountain. It's really so I don't
have to retell my story over andover. I don't have to present my
certificates or diplomas. Idon't have to explain my basis
of faint authority on certaintopics.
No doubt some of you willprobably ascertain that I was
(05:27):
probably denied a few drops ofsap at birth or perhaps my air
tube was constricted or that Iate lead paint chips as a child.
Those probably explain mypeculiarities and all the
nonsense I have to offer. But Iwill say this, and that other
(05:50):
people have pointed out throughthe years, is that I do tend to
think in a both type of mindset.I think in musical terms and I
think in intellectual terms. Themusic, of course, in the spatial
part which is usually associatedwith the right hemisphere of the
brain and then the concretereality based pragmatic of the
(06:14):
left brain.
I seem to have a pretty goodbalance there. Obviously we can
become unbalanced at times andall of us become unbalanced at
times, I assure you. But Isuspect that there's some truth
to that observation. And this isreally a complimentary message.
It goes along with the podcastseries Creating the Perfect
(06:39):
Company where we share ourorganizational expertise.
But this one is much more broadwhere we can explore in a very
substantive way deepphilosophical topics and ideas
and ideas ideas, how I loveideas. And I know that exposing
(07:01):
ourselves to high value ideas orthinking is a great thing to do.
And in my opinion, one of themost valuable things a person
can do. Why? I think firstly isbecause all things in this
material world of c oneconsciousness, that is what we
can touch, started from theintangible in the form of an
(07:23):
idea, whether it be a computer,whether it be a architectural
structure like a building,whether it be a gun, whether it
be whatever invention of food.
It start out as an idea and somecreativity and energy applied to
it. But I think the secondaspect of the value of ideas,
(07:47):
that our very experience of lifeis somehow dictated by our ideas
or attitudes or beliefs aboutlife, and that these color our
experience. That has incrediblevalue. And that the higher
(08:09):
consciousness ideas that wehave, those with more energy and
I'm not saying we have to beoptimists all the time or
pessimists. In fact, the middleway is probably the wise place
to be.
But the fact that these thingsin our heads dictate our
experience, that's that'simmense to understand. And, of
(08:30):
course, then the rationallogical person would want to
surround themselves andcultivate a high consciousness.
So just understanding this, itis a huge deal, and it comes
from ideas. Again, ourconstructs of how the world
operates. Okay?
(08:52):
Now, again, in this initialepisode, I'll try not to
embarrass myself because I findthis kind of thing very hard to
do is to reveal kind of thetruth about you because why?
It's embarrassing a lot oftimes. And you can be
embarrassed by what you'veachieved as well as what you
(09:14):
haven't achieved or yoursetbacks. And so know that I'm
not trying to be mister bighere. I'm not gonna try to
impress you because I found thatwhen I try to impress others, I
don't.
Better to be real, better to beauthentic even if it embarrasses
you. And the thing about thetruth or being candid about
(09:37):
people, like when you'repointing out in maybe a
noncritical way, but you pointout flaws or shortcomings, is
that it clears the air. And youcan focus on the real issues or
problems or whatever you'retrying to do, and it clarifies
things. And being honest andopen is a much more difficult
task than I think a lot of ussuspect. I mean, consider Mark
(10:01):
Twain.
I mean, here, he was gonna dothis. This is an intelligent,
bright, witty writer. And heproduced three volumes of this.
And he told his publisher thathe couldn't publish these,
obviously he'd be dead too,until a hundred years after his
death because then all thosethat were implicated, all those
(10:24):
family members, those peoplethat he criticized, whatever,
would be long dead. Again, beingopen and honest is a much more
difficult task than we suspect.
Now any intelligent person'sgonna say, you know, where does
this come from? I mean, thisthis guy that's talking at me
(10:44):
now. And I'm this guy, and I'vehad some pretty pretty great
success in life, at least inworldly terms, you might say, in
a number of areas and fields.I'm also a guy that's lived a
really unusual life and with alots of different experiences,
(11:04):
but I'm also this guy that's hada tremendous catastrophic loss
both in frequency and scale. Imean, it's almost embarrassing.
I feel like I'm the subchapterof the book of Job and I'm just
waiting for locusts and boilsnext. But all this colors my
(11:27):
life in some way. In some way,I've had to integrate this
experience of life into one. Andwe all do this through all of
our experiences, and then we addour special flavor to it. It's
just like part of the reason I'mputting out these messages is
because I've been impacted bythe ideas and thoughts of all
(11:50):
these marvelous thinkers inhistory that have helped me so
much.
And these voices are in my head,and we all do this. I don't
claim to have any originalideas, really. But I'm a
synthesis, a layering process, acumulative thing that what comes
(12:11):
out of me in my voice is asynthesis of all these other
voices, all these heroes in mylife that have helped shape my
experience of life. You know,the list of these guys is just,
you know, something else. WillDurant, Alan Watts, Doctor.
David Hawkins, Emerson,obviously, classics, the Plato,
(12:36):
Socrates, all all these allthese Voltaire, Kant, all these
brilliant people, their ideasare in my head. And then I lend
my particular flavor to theworld. And, again, you do the
(12:58):
same thing. So I don't thinkit's so much about being
original. It it's about just,again, being you, and we'll talk
more about that really in in theseries.
Now we talk about this kind ofwild adventure that I've been
on. And, again, when you'remissing a few drops of sap, you
(13:22):
know, you're just and, you knowso I'm this guy that's lived
this unusual life. And just, youknow, just to snap off a few
things, I've been an Alaskafisherman farmhand I've been in
gunfights I've got bullet woundson my head to show it I'm the
songwriter and guitarist forUniversal Music and Virgin Music
(13:46):
Group. Again, biggest musiccompanies in the world handle
Taylor Swift, what have you. Whythey keep me around?
I don't know. I've been this onetime Australian jet setter,
entrepreneur, janitor, I'vecleaned toilets, bellboy,
busboy, board member with mybillionaire buddies, lots of
(14:07):
romantic interests andencounters woven into the story.
This organizational expert thatI defaulted in just because I
was very interested in that,CPA, system analyst, programmer,
customer service zealot. Yeah,love that. Teacher by default
(14:29):
because at some point if you'regoing to replicate or run an
organization, you've got todevelop the talents of people.
So I've trained over 10,000 CEOsand senior executives where they
fly, used to fly this conferencecenter we had to just burnt
down. We'll talk about thatlater. Obviously in the arts,
(14:53):
we've produced all thesebillboard charting songs,
albums, and I'm that wild guythat's building a church, kind
of like Voltaire dedicated tothe intelligence of nature. And
at least both halves of nature,the positive and the negative,
the light and the dark, the dayand the night, the two
(15:15):
hemispheres, the brain, the malefemale, the Democrat, the
Republican, all of thosedualities have seemed to be all
over this world that we have toacknowledge and somehow
integrate. I suspect most of thefrustrated people of the world
are only half living.
(15:35):
People with small mouths thatonly want the sweet, that only
want the good, the right, notrealizing that there's absolute
beauty and magnificence in theashes, in the debris, in the
wreckage, in the death. There'ssomething impressive about that
(15:57):
side. And that in some way, theintelligence behind nature,
which I sit in now, which natureis my master teacher, informs me
that that's just part of thedesign of life. So rather than
protest against it and railagainst it and make banners
(16:17):
about it, why don't we alignwith it and make common cause
with nature? That seems to be asuccessful formula, at least in
my humble estimation.
But then I've again, I've hadall these losses, and perhaps
one of the most important orsignificant things about loss is
(16:41):
to allow or let it do the workin you. Again, inside of you
where the kingdom of god is,where you know that you are a
center of consciousnessexperiencing the external or
life. And these rock bottomevents, these tough hits, these
(17:03):
deaths, that somehow thesecompel us to explore the
profound of life, to confrontreality, to look at it steely
eyed and say, how does lifeactually operate on this planet?
But on some level, we've got tobe humbled a lot of times,
(17:23):
especially if we have somefairly pedestrian views of the
world that are not based inreality. Sometimes it takes
blowing up your world, losingyour mind, losing your love,
losing your children, losingyour health, losing the use of
your limbs, being so lost thatyou can't ever imagine the sun
(17:48):
shining as bright as it didbefore.
That's when my son drowned rightafter graduation. I couldn't
even conceive of the sun evershining bright again. But these
ashes, this manure, this debris,this wreckage somehow gets our
attention, gets our focus, ithumbles us, it softens us, it
(18:11):
shakes us up, it destroys ourbeliefs, or belief systems that
I finally call BS. They forceus, the external world force us
that we dance with, it forces usto a new place. So going broke,
hitting rock bottom, beingdepressed, feeling guilt,
(18:34):
feeling regret, all somehownecessary in the process of
life.
And then the question is, canthe process of life,
intelligence behind thisuniverse be trusted? Now these
messages are not aboutpopularity and success, though
we will talk about those, butyou're not gonna hear a needy
(19:00):
voice from me saying, like me,subscribe, follow, all this
social media stuff. Why? BecauseI'm not needy. And there'll be a
couple people that this willprobably resonate with, and, of
course, I always appreciate youand both of my fans tune in.
(19:24):
But there's a downside ofsuccess. Right? I live a great
life now other than half of it'sburn up from the Black Cove
fires, which you'll hear about.No. There's the downside of
success where you lose yourprivacy, where you end up eating
(19:46):
sawdust from all the demands onyour time, your very life, where
you have strange people campingout.
There's all this baggage thatcomes with it. And anyone that's
experienced some level ofsuccess realizes this. But yet
we go on. So I put thesemessages out with a little bit
(20:12):
of trepidation just to betruthful about it. Now with this
said, I'm dedicating really thisseries of messages to three main
points.
The first is intelligence, thesecond is helpfulness, and the
third is goodness. Sointelligence, helpfulness, and
(20:35):
goodness. Intelligence, whywould you listen to me if you
perceive that I'm dumber than arock? No, there's something to
this and most of us want to livean intelligent life. And again,
by observing nature and applyingthe patterns that we observe in
(20:55):
nature, we, and we align withit, make common cause, we will
have a better experience oflife, no doubt.
That's the way the patterndictates. We rail against it, we
protest in this artificialconditioning from society, we
will have a worse experience oflife. Again, it's our choice.
Intelligence will help us. Andthen there's helpfulness.
(21:20):
Well, helpful is a great thing.It's an assured way of
achievement in this world,helping others on their journey,
what they want to be, do,accomplish, and somehow chiming
in or helping them on theirjourney and figuring that out,
(21:43):
well, that's of great value andsignificance in your life. And
plus, it makes you feel good,which brings us to the third
point, which is goodness. Andafter my second child died in a
tragic car wreck, I dedicatedmyself to goodness. And goodness
(22:03):
is like a gift.
It's hard to describe. But buthaving high enough of
consciousness to to be trulyconsiderate of other people. Now
there are times when you need torip people's lungs out. I
realize that. Of course, youwanna do it the nicest way
possible.
So it's not like all light, allgood, you know, all the time.
(22:25):
You've gotta have the salty sideand the vicious side sometimes.
But having the intelligence toknow when to apply it. Right?
Again, by putting out thesemessages, I'm sharing them
because why?
Or at least what is one of themain things? Well, it's because
other people have helped mealong the way. Right? All these
(22:50):
other people that I talkedabout, again, Durant,
Nightingale, Emerson, Voltaire,all these voices in my head. We
owe such a debt to those thatcame before us, that preceded
us.
All civilization is built onthis, right? Otherwise we'd have
to start from square one with nobase knowledge or heritage. So
(23:15):
we're bestowed with thisrichness in which to start to
take basically our species tothe next place, right? And then
we synthesize this into ourparticular voice, add our flavor
and our interpretation, ourcolor for life, and boom. We are
(23:38):
doing our job.
Now I'm sitting here in nature.Why? I love nature. I've since
I've been around it for so longin, again, Iowa, agriculture,
all that, watched the fields,all that, And then Alaska for
nearly a decade. And then forthe last twenty some years up on
(24:02):
top of this mountain in theAppalachians.
And I sit out here, I isolateobserving nature or what I
perceive as the truth about howlife works. To me, that seems
intelligent. And, you know,sometimes I've been hundreds of
miles from the nearest road ortown, when you're in the bush,
(24:26):
extended periods of time. Andthere's something about people
isolating themselves, going outinto the wilderness to get in
touch with themselves, to besurrounded by the truth rather
than something that's maybe madeup like a lot of society, to
find out what they really want.Because most of us can ask
(24:46):
ourselves the question, what doI want?
What would really satisfy me?And we don't have a very good
answer. Do you know what youwant? And as we look into
nature, we see again this systemof patterns that is not random.
(25:07):
That there's a system oforganization.
There's intelligence going downway beyond anything that we can
conceive of to the microscopicand below subatomic levels.
There's all kinds of thingsgoing on. And then above us
there's things so much largerthan us. There's galaxies,
there's universes, there's theinfinite that we can't even get
(25:28):
our minds around. But none ofit's random.
All has pattern and that it's asystem of mutual reliance. And
let me say this, if I have anyclaim to success, it is from
studying these patterns andapplying them to life, to the
(25:51):
organizational work that we do,which is somewhat abstract, to
how to actually live. So there'sthere's huge value in that. Now
with this said, nature has amechanical exactness that's
(26:12):
terrifying. That might seem coldto some people, but yet it's
something that can be trusted.
And if we cooperate with natureand flow with it rather than go
against it, our likelihood ofsuccess on this planet, however
we wanna define success, goes upexponentially. You'll notice
(26:37):
also that my language isprobably odd in that I try to
soften it and I try to avoidstatements of certainty such as
always, must, should, never.Rather, I substitute sometimes,
often, I suspect, usually,perhaps. I try to leave a little
(27:00):
bit of gap or room for theunknown. Because what, it seems
like soon as you make somestatement of certainty, someone
finds the crack in your clay potand there's a paradox.
There's a contradictory,unconsidered element. There's a
counterintuitive aspect of it.And that seems to be in
(27:25):
everything because no one hasthe whole enchilada. Here we are
being on this planet. We havefive senses to interpret the
world, six if we stretch it.
And it's not like we have 72like Volt here talked about with
the Martian who dipped his toein the Mediterranean and that
only lived fifteen thousandyears and then suspected that,
(27:49):
oh, we're just born and soonafter fifteen thousand years
when we're finally learning howto live, we die. So these
statements of certainty, and ifpeople are, I'll say too
confident, I hold them with somesuspicion because nobody, again,
(28:11):
knows it all. No one has thewhole enchilada. And all answers
are technically a dead end. Why?
Because all topics are infinite.Is that not true? In the
conference center, in the studiothat is now a pile of ashes on
(28:33):
top of the mountain, I used tohave a bust of Voltaire,
arguably one of the five mostbrilliant flames to ever grace
this planet. And this is what hehad to say about, quote, knowing
it all. This is paraphrased, ofcourse.
To have doubt is anuncomfortable condition, but to
(28:55):
be certain is absurd. So if thatcame from arguably one of the
five brightest people to everwalk on the planet, I figure
that we all need to have somehumility regarding our
declarations of life and what itconstitutes. Because all
(29:19):
explanations are insufficient atbest. So with that said, let me
go into my life and I'll kind ofbe like Steve Martin in The
Jerk. What?
My story? And then he goes intoit. I was born in Independence,
Iowa farming area, and I wasraised in the cultural
(29:44):
metropolis of Winthrop, Iowa,population seven eighteen, but I
realized there's been apopulation explosion since then
and they're up to seven fiftyeight. Raised normally, my mom
was a beautician, my dad was abarber, but yet I had the
longest hair of anybody. I'msure that was bad for business.
(30:04):
Anyway, I tested high regardingIQ and then I get into first
grade and I'm like the classclown. I'm daydreaming. I'm
making rocket ships onstandardized testing forms.
Disruptive, I am sent to theprincipal often or out in the
hall where I push my littlewooden chair up to the water
(30:27):
fountain. Thought it was prettycool.
And what did they do? They didwhat any logical people would do
with the outsider or theoutlier. They failed me with
devastating effect on my psyche.It took me till the fifth or
sixth grade to snap out of it torealize I wasn't just as dumb as
(30:50):
a brick. Not that I'm trying todemonize bricks.
I wanna have a love for allexpressions of life. But it
really did something and maybethere's a lesson there regarding
our kids and their self imagesbut I felt like I was absolutely
stupid. But I was just naturallyone of these kids that would
(31:10):
drift off, daydream, cut up,felt very free. And you might
call me a space cadet, andthere's a song that, one of my
best songs I feel, calledSpaceman, and I recorded it with
Artemis Pyle of Leonard Skynyrdwho was playing drums, and then
(31:31):
Tony, the bass player fromMarshall Tucker Band, was
playing bass. And but this is avery autobiographical song
really about this period of mymy life.
These daydreamers, well, you'reactually focusing on something.
There's something that'scapturing your imagination. And
(31:53):
I think that explains me to someextent that I've always had this
very deep ability to focus,which has improved everything,
quality, whatever. That's howthings get done. Whereas when
you lack focus or you havethings that are vying for your
attention disrupting you like acell phone.
(32:14):
I mean, holy cow. That is theantithesis of focus. You're
getting texts. You're gettingnotifications. You're getting
emails.
You're you're you're gettingphone calls, And it and it just
it breaks your concentration oryour love for whatever you're
doing. So much for the outlierthere. And then I, you know, I
(32:44):
liked making money. I was fairlyambitious and so I delivered the
Cedar Rapids Gazette. I mowedlawn, shoveled snow, detached
with corn, baled hay, picked uprocks.
Of course, how Iowa got itsgreat soils because it was
really borrowed from Canada andMinnesota because the clay
issues had to push it down,bringing the rich soil, but
(33:05):
bringing the rocks, which we hadto extract to get out of the
fields because of the combinesand plows and everything. Not
good on the blades. I swept thefloor at my dad's barbershop of
hair and all that. And then at15, I went to Alaska. Why?
Because most of my family livesin Alaska. That's the highest
(33:27):
concentration of family, infact. And I'd asked my Uncle
Chuck, both Uncle Chuck andUncle Earl and even Wally, all
of them, all my family spenttime in Alaska, but they
homesteaded back in the late'40s, early '50s, where the town
of Anchor Point is now. So UncleChuck let me come up and I was a
(33:51):
commercial fisherman for thebetter part of a decade in
Alaska working in Prince WilliamSound, Kodiak, Cook Inlet,
salmon seining mainly. I did dohalibut and stuff like that too.
Again, 18 tons of salmon a dayor nets as big as a few football
fields and all that. And Ibecame pretty accomplished at
(34:14):
this, but you think aboutAlaska, you know, you're working
around the roughest people thereare. I mean, you're lumberjacks
and killers and people fromNassau and all these strange
characters in Alaska. And wehave these sayings like in
Alaska, where women are men andmen are animals. And I figured
(34:37):
there's two kinds of people thatare attracted to Alaska.
Number one, seekers, religiouspeople, people trying to find
themselves, get in touch, youknow, great things. And then the
other type of person, those whoare running from something,
normally the law. And so I'vehad my share of run ins and and
drama around that. So Alaska,something else. Then music's
(35:06):
always been part of my life.
I started playing guitar, bassguitar. I started out with
around 12 years old because Ilooked at a six string guitar
and said there's no way that Icould do that. This one only has
four, and you only have to playone note at a time. So, you
know, with all my insecurityissues, of course, I started out
(35:27):
as a bass player because I wouldnever be able to play guitar.
And, anyway, I found out that Iwas quite musical, and music
came easy, and we became greatentertainers even in high
school.
I mean, we just killed it anddid mainly progressive type
rock. Of course, then collegecomes in and I went to Iowa
(35:50):
State. I majored intelecommunicative arts. I took
marketing classes at theUniversity of Northern Iowa. And
then somewhere along the way,bam, I got the religious fever.
And I went to Bible school tobecome a preacher because I was
just kind of disillusioned withstuff. And I'd always had a
(36:11):
spirituality to me. I mean, justfelt like there was some
intelligence, maybe that linkedto nature or what have you. And
I was born and raised Catholicbecause it's like 90% Catholic
where I come from. And if you goto any of my houses or at least
a number of my buildings, you'regonna find all these artifacts
(36:33):
of Catholicism and all that justbecause I think it's beautiful,
it's magnificent, it's reverent,all that.
But then, you know, I realized,hey, there's all these other
faiths. So I started going tothe Methodist Church. I like
their youth group and all that,Baptist Church, Assembly of God,
speaking in tongues. All thatwas of interest to me. But then
I went down to Bible school andI got expelled like, you know,
(36:56):
three times.
I had hair issues because Iliked my long hair and of course
you couldn't have that and itcouldn't touch your collar. So,
you know, there I was in thedean's office. And then even
though I had, like, a 3.8 gradepoint average, I got a d in my
preaching course because mysermons were so scandalous,
(37:17):
apparently. I'm surprised theylet me graduate, but I did
graduate like a good Iowa boybecause we finish what we start
even though I really wanted todrop out at different times. The
other thing I did while I was inBible school is I met wife
number one.
Now I knew having numericalsystem to keep track of such and
(37:39):
with wife number one, I hadthree children. Again, of them
deceased at this point and we'lltalk about that. Well, let's
talk about it right now. I mean,Roman drowned right after
graduation at age 19, and thenChantal was killed, in an auto
accident, age 25. Both died inmy estimation in troubled states
(38:03):
of mind at night in rainstorms.
Therefore, one piece of advicethat I offer people about life
itself is just relax. Don'tpanic. You might find yourself
(38:23):
at night. You might findyourself in a troubled state of
mind. You might find yourself ina rainstorm.
Just relax. The storm cloudswill pass. Wait it out. The sun
will come out again. Now fusedinto this story and my travels
(38:50):
to Alaska, college, bibleschool, all this, I was always
playing, jamming, playing music.
I played a thousand somethingshows and of course not always
getting paid much. So workingodd jobs along the way, janitor,
maintenance man, cleaningtoilets. In fact, I clean, the
Texas Pete manufacturing plant.If you're into that hot sauce,
(39:14):
it's great. I was a busboy, thena waiter.
I had to start out as a busboybecause they took a look at me
and said, this guy, he's notsmart enough to be a waiter. And
then I did get to be one, and Iwas good. A bellboy as a
maintenance man at a apartmentcomplex, sold insurance. I even
(39:37):
delivered newspapers again. Imean, I did whatever is needed.
Why? Because somewhere along theway, again, got married and I
had Roman. And being a provideris a big deal to a guy,
definitely wired into thepsyche. So playing in these
bands, we were good. I mean,there could be three people in
(40:00):
the bar at the beginning of thenight and it would be packed.
If the capacity is 300, we'dhave 300 there, whatever it was,
because we were a spectacle.People couldn't take their eyes
off us. And that led to a majorlabel management and recording
contract, a six year, six albumdeal. And so we worked that for
(40:23):
a few years until I got sick ofit. I had figured out the music
game.
The economics not great. Sowe're gonna get how much? We're
gonna get a quarter and we haveto pay back whatever the advance
was, say it's $50,000. So we'regonna have to sell a half a
million records and we're gonnabe in hock the whole way. And
(40:45):
not only that, I realized thatthe music industry was full of
fruits and flakes and lots ofrelatively low consciousness
people.
So I had had it one day and Imarched up to the top level of
the United Artist Building inNashville and I told my manager,
I'm done. And he he said, well,it's not quite that easy,
(41:07):
Andrew. I own all your music. Iown every picture of you in a
musical context. You can't evenplay in a bar legally.
So then I thought, I've gottawork out a new way to make a
living. So I thought, wait.Computers are kind of the new
thing. So I taught myself how toprogram. Okay.
(41:30):
So I taught myself how toprogram in basic and and in c
and in c plus and then I talkedmy way into a job with a
compensation company that madecompensation software. And they
were hemorrhaging customers, andI stopped it cold just by being
(41:52):
a real person, being helpful,looking and considering their
needs, and solving them. And sothey made me a system analyst
where I directed people afterthat. And then I thought, well,
money's probably important, so Iknocked out my bachelor of
(42:13):
science in Accounting and Ibecame a CPA. Okay, so I'm kind
of on the corporate track atthat point, conform a little
bit, hair gets a little shorter,you know how it goes.
Then I saw an ad in the paper towork for a hospice, and I
(42:35):
thought, well, I'd kinda likeworking something herbal. And I
answered the ad, went in fromthe interview, found out it was
healthcare, end of life care,profound work. And so I came in
as the accounting manager.Immediately I had to understand
what we were doing. I just wascurious.
So I started going out on visitswith nurses, LPNs, hospice
(42:58):
aides, chaplains, socialworkers, all of the
interdisciplinary team, becauseI felt it lacked integrity for
me to be advising people,telling them what their numbers
should be, if I didn'tunderstand what they were doing,
(43:18):
what they were experiencing onthe front lines. And I worked as
close as I could with thoseclinical leaders just to get
into their world. Then theorganization had a few problems,
3 and a half million dollarpayback. Well, I worked out how
to how to fix it. And then, ofcourse, got promoted to the CFO
(43:45):
by Deborah Daley, one of thebrightest people I have ever
met.
And Deborah just took me underher wing and taught me so much.
I owe a great debt to Deborah.When she went to to be the CEO
in Palm Beach, she took me alongwith her, made me her number
(44:06):
two. And of course, that was agreat experience, and we turned
that place around and we putaway a hundred million dollars
in a relatively short period oftime, but I ripped out every
system that they had. And I needto add this to the story is that
Deborah has said, Yourbackground is a programmer and
(44:28):
all that.
You've made all these greatthings for us in addition to
running the financial areas. Ourproductivity is not that great
and our quality, frankly, coulduse a facelift. Could you make a
compensation system for us? Isaid, Well, I don't know if I
can, Deborah. Now at that pointI had done like 38 companies,
(44:51):
textile, restaurants, countryclubs, things like that, comp
systems for them.
I'd never done healthcare. Andshe says, Well, I need it in two
weeks. And so I basically justtook patterns that I had known
and I applied them to thishealthcare setting and it
(45:14):
resulted in a 100 increase inproductivity in almost every
discipline except for one. Inthat outlier, we only had 50%
increase in quality andproductivity. And of course,
this gets me on the nationalstage.
The whole hospice world wantedto know about this and so they
(45:38):
invited me to Washington, D. C.To speak at the national
conference and there's 2,000people in attendance. And so I'm
there explaining what I did andall that to them and they hated
it. This guy is Satan.
He's destroying our lovelyhospice world of kindness,
(45:58):
making it into a business. Theybasically booed me out, heckled
me out. So if I wear black alot, just realize I have issues.
But fortunately there's a fewsmart cookies, Entegris people.
And I'm not saying the othersweren't Entegris.
(46:19):
I mean we're all operating fromwhatever our view of the world
is, what our paradigm is, ourunderstanding. But they saw
there's some directionalcorrectness here to what Andrew
is saying. And so I startedgetting all these calls and that
led to me forming MultiView,this company that studies you
(46:40):
know, what's going on, where weput our little piece of software
into around 1,300 organizationsat this point. And every month
we pull out nine eighty ninedata elements with nine twenty
two cross calculations, againevery month. And then it goes to
our data warehouse in Floridawhere we quantify all these
(47:00):
things and then we study theninetieth percentile.
What are they doing to get thisgreat result? And then in a Six
Sigma kind of way, we structureit or systematize it and then
communicate those practices toour clients so hopefully they
can get a similar result, whichoften results in quality going
(47:23):
up hundreds of percent as wellas economics because they go
hand in hand. And that explainskind of the multi view equation.
Now one of the strange things inthis story is that after the six
years, I started getting callsfrom music executives and
(47:45):
artists saying, Andrew, yourcatalog is open now because some
people knew about it, And youhad some great stuff. Can we
record it?
And suddenly I find myself, bam,right back in the music
business. And we've hadtremendous success with that. I
mean, I've built a couple ofdifferent studios. We still have
the broadcast studio at ourheadquarters building in town.
(48:10):
Again we have the one thathopefully will reconstitute when
we get all the insurancesituations all sorted out.
But it's been pretty epic. Andthen we've had all these artists
in addition to just, you know,my stuff that we record out
there, all these famousmusicians. And it's kind of a
musicians of musicians studiowhere Taylor Swift's people will
(48:32):
come in, John Mayer's peoplecome in, widespread panic, Steve
Canyon Rangers. I mean, listgoes on. Leonard Skynyrd, even
some of these Grammy winningclassical groups like members
of, again, Blue Turtle.
And and then these blues folkstend to gravitate and folks that
(48:54):
have worked with BB King, JimmyBond, you know, John McVeigh,
you know, a great artist. Theblues. The blues. I am so about
the blues. Why?
Because I've lived the blues. Myfretboard is soaked in real
(49:16):
tears, real dirt, real sweat. Iam the blues. And so when I play
it, I mean, it it's coming frommy my gut, and it's a way that I
kind of get it out. So the onething I want to point out though
(49:39):
is that, okay, quit the musicbusiness.
I quit something that I loved.Okay, so that's a form of loss
or limitation or constraint orperceived negative. But what did
it do? It worked a miracle in mylife. Because by cutting that
off, I discovered that I had a,what, a left brain, the critical
(50:04):
side, the practical side, that Icould put numbers together.
I would have never known that Ihad that ability should I have
just stayed in the artsy fartsyworld, Unless that limitation
would have caused me to have togo in another direction. There's
so much in nature that when abranch gets broken or cut off,
(50:25):
that it springs forth in anotherdirection because there's no
other option. And that's the waylife works. That we discover
things about ourselves thatcomes from the external world,
that somehow we've got tointegrate and understand and
then choose what attitude we'regoing to have towards that
(50:46):
circumstance, especially if it'sperceived as negative. So that's
that.
In my life, pretty much it'sfiftyfifty music business, with
the other half, the intellectualhalf, I'll say, being satisfied
by our expert organizationalwork through MBI, the consulting
(51:07):
side. Also in the mix that Iprobably need to mention at this
point is my second marriage,number two, obviously. And I was
on tour in Europe and I met thisAustralian bombshell and fell in
love. I married her in seventytwo days. I rented Shark Island
(51:32):
in the middle of Sydney Harbor.
We got all our jet setters,celebrity, fancy friends, movie
stars, INXS, all those from downunder, and and got married. But
I was living between twocontinents, North America,
Australia. That's a long flight,and I was doing it several times
(51:55):
a month, and I had a breakdown.And there's something about
waking up in a foreign land andhearing foreign birds and
whatever and realizing thatyou're gonna be there and
there's chances that you mightnot even get home. I know that
sounds maybe a littleexaggerated, someone gets sick
or whatever where you're neededand then you got kids on the
(52:16):
other side of the ocean thatyou're not seeing, and all I
know is that whole situationbroke me down.
And finally I went to my doctor,good doctor Smith, and he said,
Andrew, I think you've bittenoff more than you can chew. And
so I had to end it, you know,for my sake, for my kid's sake,
(52:40):
and all that. Now let's talkabout the losses, the counter
side, the dark side, the shadowof this. Again, I'm trying to be
as committed to openness andtruthfulness here because all I
know is that, again, when we arecandid, we can bring things up
(53:00):
and examine them. Big one,again, two of my three children
dead, again, in states ofanxiety, at night in rainstorms,
dying early in life and neverreally getting the chance to
grow up, or for me to see themgrow up.
That's a loss. I've beendivorced twice and I also along
(53:24):
the way lost the love of mylife, the true love. And I think
about that every day. Money,I've been wiped out a few times.
Of course, after a divorce,that's usually a tough hit.
But I've also had obviously bador stupid business decisions
(53:45):
sometimes along the way, butagain, you can come back, right?
And I'm an example of comingback several times and just
staggeringly great, beyond whatyou could even conceive of
before, in fact. I've lost myhealth. Again, I've had four
breakdowns due to this overoccupation aspect of my
(54:08):
personality. I just tend tooverdo it.
And you might say that I wasborn with the off switch broken.
But I've also in thesebreakdowns, you have this
vertigo and all that, and I'venot really felt well probably
most of my life ever since, say,age 32. But there's a vision in
(54:30):
my life that just presses me on.And I think that speaks to the
value of a vision. That if youhave something that you really
want to accomplish, normally youcan muster the energy to pull it
off.
And a lot of people say, well, Ican't do this. I didn't feel
well, or I didn't report to workbecause of this, they call off
(54:51):
or whatever. Well, to me,sometimes, or most of the time
you might say, it's just anexcuse because a lot can be
accomplished by people thatdon't feel very well, and I'm an
example of that. I've also, inthe health realm, I've lost use
(55:13):
of my right hand and arm due toan accident. Then I had this
physician error.
I lost the use of my other arm,and I've had to rehabilitate the
use of my hands. And your handsare essential. But again, hard
work, sweat can be done. I canplay guitar better now than I
(55:34):
ever could when I was at fullstrength. And then just to add
on to this, we've had thesenatural disasters over the last
couple years.
So I I lose Chantal, and, youknow, that grieving process is
is just what it is. And thenhurricane Helene hits where it
(55:58):
wipes out this mountain. I mean,of trees and and structures
destroyed. 32 inches dumped injust a couple hours, wiping out
our only bridge and road in towhere we have to get out on
foot. It took us weeks to cutourselves out.
We were living on the mostprimitive of levels. And talk
(56:23):
about testing your prepping. Andwe did this for five months
until finally a temporarybridge, a one laner, was
installed. But when you go intotown, you strap on your boots,
you put on your backpack, makesure you have your light, your
(56:44):
flashlight, your knife. Youproceed down the hill or down
the mountain past the rockslide,past all the debris, and then
you have cliffs to scale.
And of course, we've upgradedfrom the rope and the ladder to
scaffolding where we have threelevels of scaffolding to go down
(57:06):
to get down to the bridge, tocross over, to go uphill again
through the mud, to hopefully avehicle waiting to take you into
town with your pack. And ofcourse on your return you have
your provisions and you questionwhether to buy the half gallon
of milk because you have to haulit up the hill in reverse. So we
(57:31):
lived like that for a long time.I worked side by side with
special forces guys, my buddies,I was used to that though from
upbringing. And then just onemonth ago, the Black Cove big
hungry forest fires, whichovertook our community, again,
(57:53):
burnt down 13 of my buildings.
Again, two homes, a recordingstudio, greenhouses, art studio,
just wiped out. Now I've got 10others. And you can say, Well,
no tears for the rich man there.You've got a lot, Andrew. It
hurts.
60 guitars, a grand piano fromthis majestic family in Japan
(58:14):
that sent it to me. 1965Hammond, Oregon. '19 '70
Voyagers. I mean, irreplaceableinstruments. Guitars, again,
from the forties, fifties,sixties, seventies, eighties.
Again, I'm a collector of manythings. Go on. They're more than
just things to me. Now with thatsaid, my loss is small
(58:38):
comparative to some of myneighbors. Some of them lost
their house, their one house.
So relatively, that's a biggerhit. So that's taught me a whole
different respect for things,the importance of things. I
almost cry when I'm at thiscabin right now because somehow
(59:01):
it survived. I can't believe it.It shouldn't have.
It burnt the front, But somefirefighter from Oregon used his
shovel and put it out. There's aguy I need to seek out and get a
gift. So the losses. It justseems again, we're always doing
(59:25):
this dance with the externalthat is some kind of fifty fifty
life of push and pull. It's notjust, again, Newtonian dominoes,
a cause and effect that thishappens and this happens and
this happens and this happens.
Again, if that were the case,then nobody bears any
responsibility for anything.Right? Because we can just blame
(59:47):
everything we are today on thepast. That's not the way the
world works. If I want to havethe will to grab a cup of tea
and drink it, I'm doing that.
And thus, this duality that Ispeak of, this reconciliation,
helps to explain things andhelps us reconcile the
(01:00:10):
victories, the sweet, the sunnyof our lives with the dark
nature. And sometimes we needthat push, that loss thing, even
though they can be catastrophicand tough. And again, it's great
(01:00:33):
to grieve. It's great to cry inour beer for a time, but there's
a time where he was saying, I'mnot really accomplishing much,
being depressed, or thinkingabout this too much. I need to
get my mind on something else.
I need to do somethingconstructive. I need a new
vision. Let's start rebuilding.So and a lot of that, I'll just
(01:00:56):
say this, has to do withattitude towards life. We can
look at life with a hostileattitude, Or we can have a much
more friendly or warm attitudeor approach to life.
Give it that gap that, hey,maybe we're not just a little
speck of dust being pushedaround by the big bad world, but
(01:01:16):
there's something I can do aboutit. And I at least have the
ability to have a good attitude.And as in Viktor Frankl's famous
book, Man's Search for Meeting,that he penned right after he
got out of the Naziconcentration camp, where he
said, The last of the humanfreedoms is the ability to
(01:01:36):
choose one's attitude in anygiven circumstance. That's
powerful because he talked aboutall these really strong
physically robust guys in thecamp and how they would just die
off quickly. Whereas you couldhave some shriveled up guy with
a rich world of inner experienceby ideas that would live.
(01:02:03):
There's value to our thinkingand the ideas that we choose to
have. So that's my story.Hopefully, you know, my voice
will offer some type of benefit,you know, or gain. And I realize
that my voice will probably goin and out of your life over
(01:02:26):
time, that is if you listen forsome period of time, and that
other voices are going tocapture your attention and
that's natural. But just like myheroes, the voices that are in
my head, when an external eventor something happens where it
summons those voices or thatknowledge or that idea and I go
(01:02:48):
back to that voice, thatreliable, friendly, comforting
voice that sures up my soul andcultivates again an attitude of
hope, of vision, or whatever Ineed.
My hope is to be one of thosevoices, and hopefully it's a
(01:03:10):
voice of helpfulness andgoodness too. And let me add
just one other thing. Some ofyou are saying, Andrew, what's
with this liberation thing?Well, obviously, the first thing
that comes to mind is AndrewReed and the liberation. Okay.
(01:03:31):
My band. You know, those guysthat support me when I'm
playing. And God knows we allneed some support. But it's also
an idea. It's something thatwe're all trying to do, whether
we are conscious of it or not.
We're all trying to be liberatedor get as liberated as we can in
(01:03:52):
our life. So what is liberation?To me, it is just to be you, and
only you can liberate yourself.And as part of my job, as I
perceive as this forest dweller,is to bring you to yourself.
(01:04:17):
Your own self reliance, your nonneediness, your complete
realization of what you are.
You know, giving yourself overto your own ideas about the
world and being able toconfidently present yourself and
(01:04:37):
your views as you see them andmake your full contribution.
That's your job. Your job is toadd your flavor, your synthesis
of your interpretation of life,and to communicate yourself to
the fullest extent possible,where you reserve the right to
speak boldly on whatever youperceive. Of course, with tech,
(01:05:00):
you you want to get along withpeople and you want to be held
in good standing, of course. Butto communicate yourself with a
confident and not a needy voice,but then reserve the right to
completely change your views thenext day if you wish.
We are all changing all thetime. I certainly don't have the
same views as I had when I wasseven. Right? They change every
(01:05:23):
day. I'm not even the same guy Iwas yesterday.
It might be an extra wrinkle.Definitely another tad of
knowledge. I might have killedoff a few brain cells with
little excess red wine. Butwe're never the same. Life's
(01:05:44):
always going forward, and andthat's it.
So this brings us to the endwith the question. And, again,
questions have juice. They havelife. Again, because answers are
dead stops, and all answers areincomplete at best because all
(01:06:06):
topics are infinite. But thequestion is what?
What are you willing to throwyour life away on?
Speaker 1 (01:06:17):
Thank you for listening. If you need anything
further, just go to MBI.life.
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