Philosopher Stefan Molyneux engages deeply with a caller, a 38-year-old software developer grappling with career dissatisfaction and existential questions about life choices. The conversation unfolds as the caller shares the distressing changes brought about by his company's recent acquisition, leading to an atmosphere of micromanagement and a project that feels like a regression of nearly a decade's work. Molyneux skillfully guides the caller through his complex feelings surrounding work, life, and personal goals.
As the caller reflects on his career trajectory, he reveals that he has spent over a decade in software development, yet he finds himself questioning the very definition of success. He discusses the financial security he has accumulated, contemplating whether the pursuit of money ultimately leads anywhere fulfilling. Molyneux probes further into the caller's mindset, encouraging him to consider what his personal values are—beyond mere financial gains—when contemplating a future as an entrepreneur. The caller admits he lacks a clear 'definition of done,' a crucial concept he muses could be vital for his entrepreneurial ambitions.
Their exploration shifts to his family situation and personal history. The caller discusses his marriage, his lack of children, and his wife, who has a challenging family background that starkly contrasts with his own stable upbringing. Molyneux calls attention to these contrasting backgrounds, making connections between the caller’s current fears and how his childhood experiences may have influenced his adult relationships. The discussion flows to aspirations around parenthood, their attempts at fostering and adopting, and the emotional weight of these decisions—all while painting a picture of the couple's cautiousness stemming from past traumas.
Moreover, Molyneux delves into what pushes people away from pursuing creative projects—dealing with rejection, fear of failure, and past disappointments can all be formidable barriers. The caller reveals the emotional turmoil of a failed music career that had occupied a significant part of his life. Both recount experiences of feeling devalued and abandoned by the indifference of an audience that seemed unresponsive to their creative outputs. This tough conversation exposes vulnerability as they navigate through the pain of rejection and the possibility of moving forward with courage.
Stefan emphasizes the necessity of passionately pushing one’s ideas into the world despite the resistance that might arise. If an artist permits themselves to tie their self-worth to the approval of others, it becomes a roadblock to fulfilling their creative potential. “You have to believe in your product strongly enough,” he remarks, explaining the entrepreneurial mindset that fuels persistence. The notion of "not taking rejection personally" emerges as a crucial takeaway, one that offers empowerment and insight as they traverse the complex landscape of ambition and creativity.
In closing, Molyneux provides practical advice for harnessing the supportive potential of his wife, emphasizing that meaningful partnerships can significantly enhance the pursuit of personal goals. He underscores that the work required in a marriage should thrive on collaboration rather than hesitation. The caller acknowledges these valuable insights, expressing gratitude for the navigational tools Molyneux provides.
The episode concludes with a heartfelt commitment to keeping the lines of communication open about his artistic endeavors, alongside an invitation for listeners to explore the caller's ongoing projects on Bandcamp. Molyneux’s depth of understanding and ability to weave together personal anecdotes, philosophical insights, and practical encouragement makes this episode a treasure trove for listeners wrestling with their own definitions of success, creativity, and relational dynamics.
[0:00] Well, first, I want to thank you for your time. But, you know, I just want to make sure that I do that up front, just because it's generous of you to spend your time this way. But basically, yeah, I've been at this job for 10 years. I have about 13 years in software development or so. Maybe it's nine years for this job. And we were acquired just this year. And then slowly but surely the screws have been turning in terms of just further process and micromanagement and whatever. And the current project is basically to rewrite, or in my mind, sort of destroy everything that we were writing for the last near decade. And that's caused me to definitely start thinking about going, you know, leaving. Part of it was really the micromanagement and all of that stuff that was really coming into it but as I've been thinking on this for weeks some of it's like, trying to figure out what I'm doing with my life I guess, and realizing that, if I ever went to do entrepreneurial stuff that I don't really have a definition of done.
[1:26] And to launch into that. So, you know, I'm looking at, you know, my finances now and how much I make and all that. And like I could survive for X number of years off of savings and interest and whatever, the house paid off and all that stuff. But that doesn't feel good enough. I feel like, and so then if I extrapolate and I say, oh well what if i saved for what if i kept at this for 10 more years and i had let's say a million in the bank and i could live off the interest per month off of that the the same problem the same at least philosophical problem exists uh you're still dealing with the opportunity cost of not making money every day and a burn down rate on your savings and all of that, so I think that in there is the real crux of the issue you know we could talk about me finding, whether it's mature or not to find the micromanagement and the processes that are being imposed on us and whatever, whether that's actually worth leaving a job for or not but I do think that the kind of crux of it is I'm realizing that.
[2:46] There's There's not an end point that makes sense to actually go do, like, what's the point of the money? You know what I mean?
[2:59] Like what's the point of saving if I'm not going to go do the thing that I want to do like if the point of the money is to go uh you know make games or make software that I actually want to make, as opposed to working for somebody else and then I extrapolate 10 years and that's, doesn't necessarily meet you know a definition of done or whatever such that I could go do that, then it doesn't make sense to not do it now or something like that. I think I'm mixing myself up a little bit here. Does that make sense? Are you there?
[3:55] So sorry about that i was muted um so what is your family situation and how old are you.
[4:01] I am 38 uh when i i moved across the country a few years ago uh it happened to line up with covid i was planning on having a family that has not worked out we then attempted to do foster, i don't think that'll work out but it's still a possibility uh we looked at adoption um this is my frugality coming out but i really don't think adoption is for me i had no idea how expensive it was and you might still get a drug baby or whatever uh you might tell that i'm reasonably risk averse, at least for these kinds of things so 38, no kids I have a wife, own my house decent savings not a lot of debt the debt that I have is either 0% APR or it's, school debt which if the government's going to threaten to pay it off then I figure we'll just pay it off slow in case they ever do pull the trigger on that.
[5:06] Right okay got it okay so um again sorry if this is an uncomfortable topic don't talk about anything that you don't want to but um what was the story with um having kids.
[5:23] Uh, well, when we got together, which was quite a while ago, 12 years ago or so, probably 25 or 26, we were, neither of us were super interested. And I'd always kind of assumed that I would go adoption anyway. This is just sort of programming from school, I would say, like, oh, we shouldn't have too many kids because the world's already had enough or that kind of a thing. And so I think I was, I don't know if I was convinced on that, but I was sympathetic to it enough because it suited me, maybe. And so then we did take care of a niece for a year, and that was probably around when we were 30. It might have been a little bit later than that. It was in this kind of interim where I was planning on moving, but we hadn't moved yet. And we took care of her for about a year. She went back to her dad.
[6:20] And sorry, why were you taking care of her niece?
[6:25] So if you had me take your quiz on how screwed up my family is, I'd probably score very low. But my wife's family was horrendous. And so her sister drank herself basically into a coma and then abducted her kid and made them homeless, using the kid as a way to get into shelters. And her niece, or our niece, contacted us and said, hey, I'm homeless, can you help? So we said yes, but we are not taking in your mother. So we did that. And then it didn't go perfectly swimmingly. We couldn't even get guardianship or anything. We couldn't really get both parents to cooperate at the same time. So, after about nine months or so, we got her back to her dad when he had gotten his self straightened out enough to have an apartment and a stable job and all that stuff.
[7:24] Okay. Alright, and so when was that?
[7:33] As I think on a bit, probably when I was 31. 31 or 32, because we were talking about how we'd probably be moving in the next couple of years, but we hadn't moved yet. And I moved when I was 34, I believe.
[7:49] Okay, got it. and did your wife also um go with the um we can't have kids because there are too many babies in the world kind of propaganda.
[8:00] No she um, well i don't i don't quite know how to answer that uh i i don't think so i think she was she's sort of deathly afraid of having a being growing inside of her i think that's, part of it I also think that she's lived with enough insecurity in her life, that maybe that was part of it I probably don't have the root of that if I'm honest okay.
[8:38] So how long have you guys been together.
[8:41] We were together it's about 12 years I think um i could trace it back to either 2013 or 2014 i get the years a little mixed up, um we were together for i believe it was seven years before i proposed, and then we moved we married after we moved we were originally going to marry before then but covid you know we were going to have like masks at the wedding and you know six foot between guests and all that stuff. We said, this is dumb. We'll just move and then we'll do it, right? That's a little bit talking past the sale. I'm sure you're wondering why it took seven years.
[9:24] I have questions.
[9:26] Sure. Do you want to ask them or should I just...
[9:30] No, no. I mean, just tell me what was the seven-year thing.
[9:39] I don't have a good answer for that, I guess. it always just felt like it wasn't, Sorry for the dead air. I'm thinking on the fly here.
[9:54] No, take your time. Take your time.
[9:58] Yeah, it just, I think we were both waiting for the other to commit more. Like I was always kind of like, well, you know, if you want to get married, like you should act more like the house is part yours. And I think for her, it was like, well, I don't want to take care of the house as much as, if it's not part mine. She didn't have a stake and I felt like if you want a stake, you should act like it. I think that's a way to phrase it. Sort of a stalemate on, that. Because the house was in my name and I was paying for everything and whatever, but she didn't have a stake in it until we moved and then you know and then when we bought this house i i put her on the the uh the deed and then we got married so you know everything's very solidified now but at the time i think that was part of probably a security thing on her side you know she was also wondering like why aren't you marrying me, um but i i think it was just sort of what i didn't i didn't feel it yet.
[11:18] Sorry um what were you hoping to feel.
[11:23] Uh that's a good question um, i don't know i guess i guess i thought that at some point she might go on her own like to some degree i was in in it transactionally maybe like when she was going to school, part of it was you know if we were having a rough time, part of my brain was saying well I want to make sure she gets through school so I'm not an excuse for her not to get through it because that had sort of happened to somebody, she had been with before where she felt like when their situation dissolved, she had to quit school for various reasons to take care of herself and that kind of thing and um, So, yeah, that doesn't answer your question. I'm sorry.
[12:22] No, it's fine. I mean, these are not always the easiest questions to answer, so that's totally fine.
[12:28] Yeah, I think sometimes I was sticking around in part because of that's who I am. You know, duty or something like that. And other times it was good. But like if the time if we if it wasn't going good, then that was a good glue was like setting a I definitely through portions of my life set goals or time frames or that kind of thing to be able to keep myself on the straight and narrow, you might say. Right so so when i was planning to move across the country that was like a five-year plan i said okay i i like that area i'm going to move in x amount of time but to do that i'm going to save a whole bunch of equity and i'm gonna keep an eye on the markets and make sure that the differential is still there so we make money in the move by a significant margin and then if i lose my job i can whatever right so it was like a plan and so i build these sort of long-term plans around swaths of my life to keep myself on track, you might say. And so I think that could have been part of it too, frankly, is keeping things stable and not acting rashly, that kind of thing.
[13:54] Okay, I think I got it. And where did you guys meet?
[14:01] I was in a metal band for a while. I guess technically I might still be in one, but I'm basically the member that's left. And so she had dated the singer years before that. And then she moved into town and came to see the band as sort of becoming friends again with the singer. And I chatted her up thinking that they were getting back together. That was not the case. And anyway, she invited me to her birthday party, which was a couple of days later, which was like karaoke and stuff. And it became very obvious that her and the singer were not together. And so I asked her out on a date and went from there.
[14:49] Okay, got it. All right. What did you play in the band?
[14:54] I am or was a bassist. Since then, I've also done lead vocals and that kind of thing, but not very many of them.
[15:05] Okay, got it. And how did you get into the computer programming side of things?
[15:12] I started to do a little bit of modding and or game programming when I was in high school. And I was originally going to be a marine, that was the plan I told you we set up plans anyway, then that didn't work out, I'm sure you'll ask a question about that in a minute, and so then it was like well I can do band and college and, so college I sort of straddled math and or computer science and at some point i was convinced more towards the computer science angle because it frankly it's more practical for job use and if i did want to do stuff on my own later uh you know it's it's more practical for let's say starting a software company right right okay.
[16:10] All right. And sorry, just remind me how old you are. 38, right?
[16:14] 38.
[16:15] 38. And your wife?
[16:16] 38.
[16:18] 38. Okay. All right. So it's unusual, not bad or anything, but it is a little unusual for people of different family sort of situations to get together, like wildly disparate family situations. So what was your family situation? What was her family situation? And the situation So I can get a sort of sense of the difference between the two.
[16:43] Yeah. So I grew up a pretty middle class, two parent household until late high school. My dad was a nuclear engineer/like spec ops warfare guy. So he was, you know, I always say everywhere you've heard of and everywhere you haven't heard of kind of a thing. He was he was doing it all. Um, that's who he was, you know, and, uh, she grew up, uh, her dad committed suicide very early on. Um, and she grew up semi homeless in and out of different homes. Uh, her mom is basically a drug addict who's professionally homeless. You might say, uh.
[17:34] I don't quite understand the laughter here.
[17:36] If I guess it's nervousness. yeah if you could because.
[17:40] It's a bit disconcerting.
[17:41] Yeah I.
[17:42] Know it's I guess it's not your job to know how to do this like chatty on the internet thing but it is a bit disconcerting if you're talking about suicide and homelessness.
[17:52] Yeah it's so she grew up in and out of different homes couldn't quite get like sometimes a family would get close to, wanting to adopt her but then you have all the hurdles of the state and then she'd get nabbed by her mom and then get, shipped off somewhere else in rural i'll say rural oregon we don't live there anymore so it doesn't matter yeah yeah okay um uh and then she her mom would get another husband and then something would happen there and then they'd move again and so she was in and out of different homes it was reasonably rough going. She emancipated herself at 15, I want to say, and then finished high school how do you say it? Where you do it on your own, however you say that.
[18:48] Yeah, at GED I think it's called or something like that.
[18:51] It's still a high school diploma, but she did it on her own time, rather than.
[19:01] Okay all right and what uh what does she do for a living.
[19:06] Well um frankly i've i've earned well for our entire time so despite you know trying to make sure that she got her degree because she wanted it uh we she did that she did a little bit of graphic design for a while um and off and on and she'd hate those jobs and that kind of thing. So for the most part, she's been pseudo-stay-at-home off and on, depending on how bored she is, really. So for the last few years, especially since when the kid's situation isn't working out, let's say, so we did have foster placements for a little while. So when we didn't have foster placements, she's tried out different small businesses, is like making soaps and lotions and knickknacks and those kinds of things. And so currently she does a few days a week at a shop where she sells oddities, we'll say. She pins bugs and that kind of thing.
[20:05] She pins bugs? What is that?
[20:07] Yeah, it's like taxidermy for bugs. Like you mount them in frames or put them next to dried flowers or in a cloche and that kind of thing.
[20:17] Okay. and so um has she had um any kind of career that would um be i don't know standard or you know not that that's better or worse but.
[20:29] Um not really since we've been together like i said she did a couple of years of graphic design but it was very uh not didn't pay as well as you would hope for for a graphic design degree right it was like helping make pamphlets for the schools and that kind of thing where they do um they sell like local coupons to burger joints and that kind of thing right so it was like some of those kinds of businesses or a place that made like all kinds of safety signs and that kind of stuff and they weren't very fulfilling we'll say and the pay wasn't amazing and so basically if she wanted to go i said well you don't gotta stay there like we're more than covered so that was my position and i would rather have a happy wife and a clean house and all that the niceties of that but then uh you know an extra 10 percent income or 20 percent income that's uh unnecessary frankly right.
[21:35] Okay okay uh so she has been uh a lady of leisure to some degree right.
[21:41] To some degree yeah okay.
[21:43] I mean because that she works a couple of days a week right.
[21:46] Yeah right now it's probably three i'd say uh.
[21:53] Three days a week okay got it.
[21:55] Yeah.
[21:57] Okay. And does she have ambitions for anything else? Or, I mean, how is she going to have, is this a satisfying life for her? Is this what she wants as a whole?
[22:08] I think right now she's probably satisfied. That'd be a good question to ask her. But, you know, there's been a few jobs where she probably would have taken them if I didn't prefer that she have some more time at home for homemaking, we'll say. So, like, she could have worked for the local township or whatever to do something. I don't quite remember what it was. I think there was a graphic design gig she could have done for the town, or there might have been another job that she had considered. And she probably could take a full-time position if she really wanted to. She's talented enough. But yeah, in terms of is she satisfied, I would say since she's running a shop right now, she's probably reasonably satisfied. Because she gets to make art things that she likes and then sell them. Networks you know okay.
[23:07] And um again you don't have to get into any huge details but what sort of differences of income are you facing with each other.
[23:16] Oh it's uh a lot her her money is effectively funneled back towards that business i would say she i think we were talking about it the other month as i was kind of doing burndowns uh to to see what what our savings would last if if I did just leave and then was utterly unsuccessful, let's say. And so I think she pulls about like 400 to a thousand a month and I'm closer to 8K a month after taxes.
[23:48] Oh, wow. Okay. Got it. Now, of course, normally the setup is that she's running the household, raising the kids, but you're saying that she does run the household, right?
[23:57] Yeah. She, she helps, you know, get all the, all the things I need for DIY projects and she gets the groceries and she cooks the meals and, uh, keeps the house clean. And, you know, if, if the pets have an issue, she takes care of it or that kind of thing. Yeah. Okay. Got it.
[24:15] All right. Okay. So, um, what is it that you want to do with your career? Do you think?
[24:22] Um, well, I've, I've always wanted to make games. I, I'm mildly embarrassed to say that, I guess. Uh, but that's, that's kind of what got me into programming. And I think when I originally, you know, I'd sought advice many years ago on, Oh, how do I go do this? And basically the advice was don't.
[24:44] Was how do you what?
[24:46] What?
[24:47] You said, how do I, I didn't quite catch that. You said, how do I?
[24:50] Oh how do I do this like how do I go make games and basically the advice I got was well you can work a crappy job in the industry until you're able to make what you want to make or you can just go get you know do it as a hobby kind of a thing, and make much better money in the non game sphere we would say right okay and so the sort of long term plan has always been, in theory you know get a big amount of savings be nice and secure and then i can go take risks like that if i want to right.
[25:29] Okay and since you're not having kids and have you made that sort of final decision.
[25:35] I wouldn't say final um 38 right well right the the bio the biological kids are not on the table, I would say.
[25:49] And that's because she doesn't want to have things inside her, is that right?
[25:54] No, so in the last few years we were trying to have kids but she has medical things that probably preclude that.
[26:03] Oh, I'm so sorry to hear that, that's very tough. My sympathies okay all right so um so kids is off the table biologically uh because of medical issues and so on right.
[26:17] Yeah okay.
[26:19] Okay and my sympathies again i'm i'm very sorry to hear that um okay so uh you're thinking of making games as a whole right that's that would be your ideal.
[26:31] I mean it it could just be other software that i was super interested in you know if there is an interesting problem to really dig into i can nerd out on it right uh if if there's if there's you know a sufficient math thing to dig into that that i can program against you know there's certainly possibility there and i've been reasonably satisfied with my job up until it became annoying to the point of like actively being angry every day right uh so this it's that's sort of that's kind of crux of the issue is that this wasn't in the plan you know what i mean this was sort of thrust upon me like well if i'm angry all the time i should probably start looking at, something else and as I've been stewing on this for a month or two I was sort of realizing that I, don't have this next stage planned out and that's in part because I guess this last one didn't quite you know, I was expecting when we moved we would end up having children and that would be sort of the next life stage but that is not where we're at, yeah so.
[27:55] And sorry, remind me of the move.
[27:58] I moved across the United States partly for financial reasons. Basically, as you might be aware, the West Coast is sort of Californianized. And so prices have gone insane. So I looked at the differential to move out into the Midwest and said, well, they'll basically pay me to leave. So I guess I'll leave. So that's what I did.
[28:25] Right okay got it got it all right so have you had any entrepreneurial experience before.
[28:40] Um not unless you include the band stuff which would be uh a very negative profit or.
[28:47] Whatever maybe if you went the bassist barely an instrument anyway yeah unless you were writing songs too like john deacon style or whatever right.
[28:55] Well we it was a very collaborative effort and i do miss those days but they are gone right.
[29:02] Okay got it all right so you don't have any entrepreneurial which is fine right but you don't have any particular do you have access to entrepreneurial experience do you is there anyone you know or anyone in in the family or anything like that that might be able to help you with that stuff i.
[29:20] Mean yeah uh you know i'm in a small town and I know a guy who does his own handyman type of thing, and I know the guy who owns the local feed store. I know the people who own the bar, and that kind of thing. I probably know a lot of entrepreneurs, really.
[29:50] All right. So, um, what is it that would be the most helpful information that you could get out of me today? Extract. What would be helpful information?
[30:03] So one of the things I have sort of noted was you somehow, I know that it, I think you started your own software company or something and you eventually sold it. And then question mark, question mark, question mark, became a philosopher, I assume that you didn't go into philosophy for the money. So you've somehow made this transition before, and I don't know what all the question marks in there, but I did think you had to make a similar decision where you said, okay, I got a pile of money from software. It's time to go do the thing that I presumably really wanted to do.
[30:45] But apologies.
[30:46] If i've mischaracterized that.
[30:48] No no that's uh i mean that's not not entirely inaccurate i did take a lot of the money of course that i got out of software and i was writing novels and and books and all of that because that was going to be my, thing the philosophy you know i enjoy it for sure but i'd never really thought of any particular way to monetize it or it even could could be a thing although.
[31:13] The novels i mean that's still also much riskier than a presumably reliable paycheck from the software right.
[31:21] Yeah yeah i mean i took i took a year and a half and didn't make a didn't make a penny um because i was doing the software thing so well.
[31:30] And so part of that so that's that's one of the key insights one of the one of the wrenches that's really in my gears is the opportunity cost you know i'm sort of sitting here in what people call analysis paralysis, where I look at, you know, that just it, let's say I quit tomorrow, no notice, blah, blah, blah, done Monday. It's time to go Monday. I write a little bit of code end of the day, zero dollars. You say, was that, was that a $400 vacation or what? Right? Like that's a, it's a total mind shift shift.
[32:11] I'm sorry. I didn't understand the $400 vacation.
[32:14] Well, so let's say I earn roughly 400 bucks in a day. And so if you don't make really good use of that day, you've effectively paid 400 bucks by not earning it. Okay. And so if you're in that mindset, that adds up very quickly to be like, oh, this was a bad idea.
[32:37] Oh, so everything you do that's not software is costing you $400 a day.
[32:43] Something like that. Yeah.
[32:44] Okay.
[32:44] And somehow, so there was a break in my employment between the two software jobs that I've had. And somehow, nine years ago or whatever, when I did that, I just said, I'm going to, I hate this job now. I'm leaving. And I left and I said, I'm going to take a few months to myself and then I'll get another job. And I think that was easier to swallow because the plan was, I'm just going to take a few months off and then get another job.
[33:14] Right.
[33:14] The, there's a couple key differences here, and some of those could also be squared away potentially by chit-chatting. But one is that AI exists and the economy is probably on a cliff. I've been waiting for us to fall off the cliff, but we seem to, something keeps getting in the way of that, I guess. Um and so you know they're not software jobs are not as plentiful as they were although there's plenty online like but also if if the plan is to leave to go do my own thing then you've sort of got a contradiction am i supposed to be applying for these jobs or not right uh you can see how i've gotten my head really mixed up in this right.
[34:01] Right right okay um sorry if there's more that you wanted to mention, I'm happy to hear. I'm certainly happy to give you my thoughts, whatever works best for you.
[34:13] I'd love to hear some thoughts.
[34:18] Well, tell me a little bit about, because I know this may sound like a non sequitur, but I'll sort of explain it in a sec. Tell me a little bit about your wife and what has drawn you to her.
[34:33] Um, well, I mean, I, I did, I obviously found her attractive. Well, it's still felt, still find her attractive, but you know, that, that certainly lubricates the conversation. Um, but she's, I, the, the top thing that comes up when I think of her is loyalty. Like I can tell her anything. I don't, I don't worry about her leaving. I, it's just utter trust. like she has faith that if I leave this job things will be fine she you know just lots of trust lots of loyalty, is very nice to me tolerates my isms as you might as you might assume between software and the way I talk to you there's probably a few isms, so yeah just it's very compatible.
[35:32] Okay and um what are the virtues that you most admire about her and please understand i'm not saying there aren't any i'm just curious what they are.
[35:39] Um honest it'll sound ironic but hard-working like she she emancipated herself at 15 she had to work for herself to to be in an apartment before most people have their first job you know um so she's definitely willing to put in the effort to to go through those hardships and be able to support herself and um yeah i so so yeah very honest trustworthy uh hard-working loving um and.
[36:23] How do you think she was able to achieve these skills I mean, it's really remarkable, and I mean that in the very best possible sense, given the childhood that she had.
[36:33] I don't know. She's gotten that question from, you know, family members and stuff, like, well, what differentiates you from, you know, your other family members who are, like, complete leeches on the government or drunkards or homeless, right? And um i don't i don't really know if if i were to take a guess i she's i mean i think she's reasonably intelligent frankly uh and that's a big marker of being able to take care of yourself, i think anyway.
[37:15] All right and um what does she think of your entrepreneurial ambitions.
[37:24] I mean i think she would support it um you think well she's very supportive of the idea that i i could leave and we would be fine so we we don't talk i i haven't talked directly about, i'm trying to figure out how to answer your question she's not she's not a if if i went to do that for a few years and you know and that's what i was doing i don't think she would be concerned at all like she knows she's she has faith in me that i can go do it and she would probably help me with it and um you know i'm sure she would be anxious about it but we do have, savings for x number of years so it's not like we would be starving or eating only rice or anything you know right.
[38:19] Okay got it okay so what uh does your father think if you're you know if you've talked to him about any of your ambitions or preferences what does he think of these things.
[38:31] Ah, well, I guess I didn't mention that. He died of cancer quite a while ago. That was actually around the... My wife had a... Oh, dang it, I can't remember the words. Baptism by fire kind of a thing. Basically, he was dying while we were getting together.
[38:55] Oh, gosh.
[38:56] He was going through cancer treatments. and, yeah so he passed away about 11 years ago if you put me on the spot right yeah.
[39:10] Okay. And what's the story with your mother?
[39:15] She was a stay-at-home mom and very, very kind, very saintly, very religious, very, I mean, I would say she's very patient. I'm looking for a different word about cautious. So I would say a lot of my caution comes from there. Right uh and you know she's the type where if you know she's she's very much like oh if you're leaving a job you should have a job before you leave and i'm very much not that i don't think i've ever done that i might have done that once when i happened to get a job in like a day you know from going at it as a bootmaker to like a cook and again it was because they ticked me off, They basically said, don't come back tomorrow, and when you come back Monday, maybe you'll appreciate your job. So I went and found a job on Saturday, and I no-call, no-showed him. Or maybe I called, but I was mad. So anyway, she's much more, she's very cautious and so I definitely think that comes through in the way I approach some of this stuff, or at least think about it.
[40:38] Right, okay. All right. And what has been, if anything, your management experience or team lead experience or something like that?
[40:52] Oh, definitely very little unless it's just sort of managing myself, like maybe a tiny bit in college as like part of a, you know, a class that said, oh, one of you needs to be the manager. One of you needs to, you know, kind of imitating the software team, but very little on that side of things.
[41:11] Okay. Got it. All right. So you've got the analysis paralysis thing. Uh, if I understand this correctly.
[41:20] Sure.
[41:21] And have you done the sort of pros and cons of getting into entrepreneurs, entrepreneurial stuff versus not?
[41:31] Well i if if i mean i haven't made a list i've definitely been thinking about this a lot so i get that as an entrepreneur you're wearing all the hats and you don't make any money until you basically completely finish the thing unless you somehow get some sort of uh forward um, you know you have to deal with all the marketing you have to have a novel idea you have to you know there's a lot of things there um but you know the the pros are i i get to write what i want and i gotta write it the way i want and i gotta just slam it out and feel productive rather than um dealing with processes that uh, you know, purposely impede you from getting stuff done to appease.
[42:27] Sorry, what does that mean? Processes that purposefully impedes you? You mean like in your current job?
[42:31] Yeah. Like, just like I said in the last, so a big one, so I don't know if peer reviews existed when you were in software.
[42:43] Well, it was called the board. Yeah, the board would give me a review, but yeah.
[42:47] But, well, the peer review is you put your code, your code changes up, and then people go and review it. And we've had this for years.
[42:55] Right.
[42:55] But the current one is that your approvals are not sticky, which means any change unsticks them. And that sounds reasonable until you're dealing with files that change every time anybody merges, which means every time somebody merges, every single other PR, which is a pull request, is unapproved. And now you have to go harass people to approve them again and then they'll look through it and if they leave comments now you've got changes so you might get one or two of the approvals you need and now you have to make changes and those changes unapprove your thing it's very annoying like, I feel like in the last few weeks I've lost like a week of work just waiting on people just over and over oh sorry I gotta get this reviewed oh this guy's this guy is mandatory on the review, but he's on vacation today, right? Stuff like that. That's a small bit of my gripes, but it was really spinning me up because basically we've been dictated to, oh, we need this done by the end of September. Also, we're writing it in a language that nobody has any experience in on a new build server, and we're going to tell you how the build script works. Also, we don't support the normal build process, Uh.
[44:15] You know just it like dictated down to your pull request will have we'll have this as its title and your your branches will have these as what they're called and just x y and z just on down the line and like the team i'm on basically we our approvals don't count but people who were just hired back on to the company the other day because they're known you know because we were acquired so we've been sort of in a silo if you want to think of it that way, so where we've been we had a very high trust thing, where we could just do work and then if you put up a PR and somebody put comments on it A their approval stuck but B there was like trust there where they put their approval on and there's an understanding where they left some comments and they understand you're going to go address those comments and you're probably even going to bug them to go look at it, but it's not actually required for them to go click all the buttons and whatever again, it's just sort of like i've gone from a high trust to a low trust environment and a very low and a low oversight to a micromanagement, thing right.
[45:33] Okay so uh you feel like you are smarter than the people, that you are working with, right?
[45:42] Oh.
[45:44] Or working for?
[45:46] I, so not necessarily. I try to be humble on that kind of thing. But when they make decisions and then don't dean us necessary to talk to, it's very annoying.
[46:02] Like we have at least three layers of management between us and the architect. Now that makes sense in a big company but the architect is putting comments like going and commenting on the prs he's probably paid three times as much as i am right and he's spending his time and these aren't comments that affect let's say the interface that the customer's ever going to see these are like the inner workings that don't matter like sorry this is going to get me fired up potentially but like we're talking about whether the zero is defined in the ina like defined as none or just not there and you're sitting there potentially arguing in the comments about that and that's holding up real work like you set the deadline for the end of september and you're holding up my thing for two weeks on these inane comments right and you also won't explain yourself like there's two other layers of management beyond my manager at least between us and him and he's never talked to us and that it's like if you're going to set the deadlines and set the requirements and you're not going to talk to us that's like a a level of disrespect or something it's something about that really irritates me uh it's um yeah so that does it does that help yeah okay so.
[47:30] Yeah you're frustrated at work and is this something that because i mean it's not like if you become an entrepreneur all your frustrations are going to vanish right i mean they just they shift but at least you're more in control of them and you're not subject to other people's whims except maybe the customers which is certainly an issue so you replace your boss with your customers and it's not like you escape the irrationality or you know because customers can want things and then they can change things that's this weird thing because software is not like a physical thing people think they can just change it you know like if i order a car and i say, and they say, do you want a sunroof? And I say, no, I don't want a sunroof. And then the car is being delivered. And then I say, oh, you know what? Can you just throw a sunroof in? They'd be like, okay, well, I mean, we can take it back to the factory. We can carve it. It's going to cost you 10 grand or whatever. In which case I'm going to say no, right? But customers in the software space, or at least it was the case when I was there, are just like, oh, we forgot this. So could you add that? Or could you throw this? And it's because it's not a physical thing. In the same way the car is they think you can just tweak it or adjust it or massage it or like it's like you know just just you know take the plasticine and just add a little thing onto it and it's a kind of a funny thing so people.
[48:38] Don't understand that well and same with um, you know when you're sitting there and you make arguments let's say in the comments or whatever about how you've written a piece of software it's like well you can write it an infinite number of ways so you know yes you can do anything in software but what's actually wrong with the thing that's in front of you and does it have an impact i guess so so one thing and then i want to get back to what you whatever you were going for i apologize um but but one thing that i often would say about myself versus the people i run into conflicts with is i think of myself as very pragmatic, as in, I want to get it done, we can deal with especially tech debt that isn't going to affect anybody later. Like, you have a deadline, we want this done.
[49:34] If what you're arguing about is zero defined in an enum, that's dumb. Like, that doesn't matter at all. We can deal, like, I can go fix it, for sure. But we don't need to quibble about 30 things on this for a week or two uh you know and so i'm happy to go fix all those things or content fixing those things is a better word but at the same time it's a total waste of time like i we have a deadline that you set and you're in my way like like you want this thing i'm trying to give it to you but you also want this other thing and anyways what i was saying is pragmatism versus what i would call idealism some people get very stuffy about oh this this doesn't have a good pattern about the way it is and it's like that's fine we can change it but first let's get it working and and in and then we can worry about making it perfect it's the whole perfect in the way the good.
[50:40] Right. Okay. All right. Do you have something in the software field that you have as a sort of hobby or something you're excited about or something that you work on for free outside of office hours?
[50:51] Yeah a lot of times i've i'll take it's in the spring and fall a lot of times i find myself doing some sort of personal programming project uh to advance one of the things that i have in my backlog so uh the previous summer before i had the foster kids there's something called it was a mod for a game and it uses code injection and that was pretty cool because because of the code injection, you could pretty much do whatever you wanted to alter the AI or alter how some of the base things in the game worked so you could make it more difficult or make the AI act more intelligently and all that kind of thing.
[51:30] I've written a couple of, let's say, the backends for games in terms of, so there's a Pokemon-like game where I did all the battle system and all of the catching mechanics and all of the backend work for like all the creatures and all that kind of stuff but it i always hit a roadblock and i know that like if you really want to do it on the cheap and you're like you should go just use sprites that don't matter and then you can get art later.
[52:03] I get that but i don't it's because i don't have the art and it looks dumb and if i'm doing it in my off time for free it's not very satisfying at that point right like it's it's satisfying for me to like totally geek out on a damage function and be like oh it's kind of like an x over one here and you get like this semi-cubic when you add these functions together um totally fine for me to geek out on that but uh it's it's a lot more lame to like deal with the ui if if it's just for free and it's going to look dumb anyway if that makes sense, so like if i'm not paying for art then it's not going to look good i'll put it that way.
[52:48] Okay and have any of these projects gone to fruition or gone to the app store or something like that.
[52:53] No um that's the short answer no and why not because they're unfinished uh okay by.
[53:04] Definition they're unfinished but why are they unfinished, Because, I mean, if you're an entrepreneur, you know, like 90% of the work is the last 10% of the project.
[53:15] I fully agree.
[53:17] So, if you're not taking things through to completion, I guess, in the stuff that you're passionate about that you're doing for free, why do you think that you don't do that?
[53:29] Well, it's that last hurdle of paying somebody for the art, I think, is a big part of it. And some of that you know I can get around so there's like a D20 system if you know what I mean by D20 Dungeons and Dragons, I have a very detailed D20 system that I've sort of beta tested with friends and that kind of thing you mean for.
[53:56] Dungeons and Dragons.
[53:58] This would be its own thing it's just similar so kind of like how Pathfinder is its own thing but it's similar this would be like that, uh but like making that as a book and getting all the art for it and finding a you know let's say a publisher do you.
[54:16] Mean like a how to play the game book.
[54:18] Yeah like a rule book like making those as rule books and bestiaries and getting all the art okay so so why.
[54:26] Why just i don't want too many details i just need the principle so why is it that you don't finish stuff.
[54:31] Uh i would say the the cost of the barrier to entry is the cost like and if i expect no that it's not no.
[54:40] No no no no no no no eight thousand dollars a month bro i listen carefully.
[54:46] Yeah don't.
[54:48] Tell me that your cost when you're making 8 000 us a month don't tell me that cost is the major issue.
[54:54] Well, I guess it's part of it is that.
[54:57] And your wife makes between $500 and $1,000 a month.
[55:01] Sure. And I mean, also there's like interest on savings and whatever, if they really want to get in.
[55:08] You've got money. So why are you trying to sell me that you don't finish stuff because you don't have the money?
[55:13] Well, I think that's my mindset. I think that's the problem.
[55:17] Okay, but the mindset isn't that you don't have money. Sorry, the issue isn't that you don't have money. The issue is something else.
[55:24] That i won't spend it.
[55:25] Okay but so why don't you spend it.
[55:28] I well so my current frame of mind the sort of plan that i was operating under was well well part of it like i said is it kind of got screwed up with the family thing okay a little bit i'm so.
[55:42] Sorry i i i i need more direct answers.
[55:46] Oh i.
[55:47] Feel you're taking me on a journey and i don't really know that i want to go.
[55:51] So why don't you.
[55:53] Spend money to finish your passion projects? You got the money. Why don't you spend it? Because otherwise your time's all wasted, right?
[56:01] Right. That's the problem.
[56:03] Okay. So why don't you spend the money to finish your passion projects? You've got it.
[56:07] I guess because in theory, I need to save it to go do them. And I know that that sounds...
[56:13] Sorry, to go do what?
[56:14] To go do those projects, right? And I know that that's a total contradiction.
[56:18] That doesn't explain anything to me.
[56:20] No, it's a contradiction, but...
[56:22] Give me a project name for the book that you were working on, the D20 book.
[56:31] The current working name, or what?
[56:35] A name that we can refer to it as.
[56:37] We'll call it Scion.
[56:39] Scion? Or Scion?
[56:40] Scion.
[56:41] Scion, okay. So, how much time did you spend on Scion overall?
[56:50] Oh, I don't know. Probably, I wouldn't be surprised if it was 100 hours or better. Not insane. It's definitely, it's like 13,000 lines of stuff, at least, plus a bunch of, you know, sorry, to answer your question, probably, let's call it 100.
[57:15] Okay, so over the course of your life, on this particular D20 project, Scion, you spent 100 hours.
[57:24] Let's call it that. I don't believe that.
[57:27] I'm not saying you're lying, obviously. But because there's a lot of thought time as well. You don't just sit down and start coding, right? So in terms of like you came up with the idea, you puzzled it over, you turned it over in your mind you maybe drew it out a little bit and then you started coding and like what's your total time investment oh.
[57:49] Sorry this isn't uh this isn't the coding this is a d20 game like on paper uh so this is all like written rules and written.
[57:56] Oh so 13 000 lines uh is is what you've written.
[58:01] Yeah so it's like all the how you do skills and how you do you know all that stuff.
[58:06] Okay So how much time have you spent thinking and reasoning and puzzling and playtesting over the course of your life in this area?
[58:16] Just this game or all sorts of things?
[58:19] Let's say this game.
[58:21] This one, I mean, I don't have a good estimate. Maybe we could call it 500 hours, I guess, but I don't think it's that high.
[58:31] Okay, let's just say 400 hours. okay so 400 hours 10 work weeks two and a half months and you said that you make 400 a day is that right.
[58:43] I mean if that's rounding up but it's like a good round number.
[58:49] Okay so you make 50 uh 50 bucks an hour right.
[58:55] Uh yeah i guess so yeah okay.
[58:57] So if you've got um, 400 hours in, that's quite a lot, right?
[59:06] Yeah.
[59:06] I mean, we're talking $20,000, right?
[59:12] I guess so.
[59:13] Okay. So you've got $20,000 invested in your game. And why don't you finish it? You said there's a cost barrier for the artist, right? So I'm just getting you to think like an entrepreneur right it's.
[59:28] Sort of.
[59:29] The mindset that you need right.
[59:30] So because because.
[59:32] Usually when we get paralysis it's because we haven't run the numbers so if you put twenty thousand dollars worth of time into this game into scion then what was the barrier to finishing it you said it was the cost of the artwork how much would the artwork have cost i.
[59:53] I have no idea but i think no that's not.
[59:56] True that's not true.
[59:57] No idea is.
[59:59] Zero to infinity right.
[1:00:01] Well i i don't know a few thousand dollars let's say yes okay.
[1:00:08] Two it's a few two or three.
[1:00:09] I would guess three but you know like i i haven't looked into artists for it i mean it's it'd be cheaper now if you were doing it with ai or something but yeah and.
[1:00:21] When did you abandon the project it.
[1:00:23] I i wouldn't call it fully abandoned but uh the last time i was now so you gotta.
[1:00:29] You gotta think like an entrepreneur which is if you're not working on it okay when was the last time you worked on it.
[1:00:35] Aside from like little tidbits probably when was the.
[1:00:40] Last time you worked on.
[1:00:42] It you've.
[1:00:42] Also got to be concise.
[1:00:43] Well do you do you mean at all or seriously right because i can go and put two sentences into it but that's not really working on it right okay.
[1:00:53] When was the last time you put substantial labor into your project.
[1:00:56] I'd say two years ago so.
[1:00:59] Is it reasonable to say that it's abandoned.
[1:01:01] Sure no.
[1:01:05] Don't hedge me bro if you don't agree that's fine just tell me.
[1:01:09] Well uh like if i if i went to go to entrepreneurial you know because i've been sort of trying up plans let's say and so one of the things i thought that would make it very cheap to be able to go do that also might expand my skills if i was um trying to apply to places is i could go turn it into a website to like do a character builder and be able to link skills and have an easier time picking feats and all that kind of stuff right go turn it into a website go build a database for all the stuff make it relational so like you can say if you have this feat suggest a better a good combination for it right so uh the the reason i say not abandon is because it's kind of on my list of, things that i might go do if uh if i stop making money.
[1:02:01] So, the question is, why don't you finish stuff? And we've been talking for 20 minutes about it. I don't have a clue.
[1:02:09] I think.
[1:02:11] And this is not a criticism, right? It's not a criticism. I'm just, this is why you're having trouble.
[1:02:17] Yeah.
[1:02:18] Now, since AI came along, you could do the artwork. At least you could do placeholders, right?
[1:02:24] Yeah.
[1:02:25] Okay. So, the AI came along a couple of years ago, right? Maybe you could say over the last year or two years or whatever. It's advanced to the point where you could get some decent art out of it, right? So, if the barrier was the cost of the AI art, oh, sorry, the cost of the art as a whole, then why haven't you finished it now that the art cost has vanished?
[1:02:51] Well, I mean, if you'll indulge me for a sec, this might go back to being in a band, and the reason I say that is we did spend an atrocious amount of time and money, making a couple of albums and they did not work out right?
[1:03:14] Sorry, what do you mean they did not work out?
[1:03:17] They obviously didn't make their money back we didn't get interest from labels, we didn't really accrue tons of fans or anything, I would call it a big failure other than it's a cool album, like we made something cool at the cost of tens of thousands of dollars uh and many hundreds hours huh we did finish it okay yes so.
[1:03:42] Why did the album fail.
[1:03:46] I i i mean it's it's very niche right it's a sub genre of a sub genre it's tons.
[1:03:53] Of niche tons of niche stuff succeeds.
[1:03:55] That's i mean it's.
[1:03:56] Not like philosophy podcasts are all the rage right.
[1:03:59] Yeah.
[1:03:59] So there's only two reasons that things fail. Number one, low quality. Number two, low marketing. That's it. That's all there is.
[1:04:12] Now, it's the new Coke thing. I mean, you're a younger guy, but, you know, I think it was in the 80s. The brilliant minds at Coca-Cola said, well, we've got the most popular soft drink in the world, so I know what we're going to do. We're going to change the formula. And they came up with new Coke. And, I mean, it's still studied in business schools as one of the most atrocious business decisions ever made in the history of the world. Because everyone hated it. It was too sweet. And it was just abandoned. And it was just terrible all around, right? And so, and they, of course, they marketed the living crap out of that stuff. I mean, there were ads, you know, New Coke, you know, there were ads for like six months or a year or something like that, building up and everyone was dying to try New Coke and all of that. So they had all the marketing, but the quality was crap. Nobody liked it, right? On the other hand, there are lots of bands and songs. I saw a singer not too long ago who, believe it or not, gave the backstory to the song, a very famous song, I Left My Heart in San Francisco. And it was some pianist. He noodled it out. He doodled it. It sat in a drawer for like 10 years or something like that because he just never got around to getting people to record it and he'd play it for people sometimes. And then Tony Bennett came along and just turned it into an absolute classic.
[1:05:36] And it is an odd and quirky song. It's very short. It's kind of atonal at the beginning and so on but that was a very high quality song, with no marketing no push right yeah so when i first started doing my show you've heard me say this before but it's worth mentioning again i was i've been a director of marketing fortunately before, i started my show and so when i started my show i spent about 80 of my time, promoting it you know it's the old story of like mc hammer the rapper from the 80s just driving all over every place just nagging all of the djs to try and play his album you know he spent um i don't know a week recording the album and then spent a year driving around nagging people to get them to play it right now he had a good album and he had good pushy marketing so So the question is, why did the album, was it one or two or three?
[1:06:38] We made two. The first one was much cheaper and whatever, you know, but the second one, we really, I mean, we took years doing all of the professional recording and mixing and correcting things and, yeah, loads and loads of time.
[1:07:05] And tens of thousands of dollars, right? Okay. And what happened then when the album was complete?
[1:07:16] I mean, we did do some marketing. Like, we hired a guy who does, you know, marketing for that kind of album. And we tried to do interviews and a couple of podcasts and those kinds of things. But you're probably right. We probably, like, if I were to look at it as a movie, you know, when they do a movie and they spend $60 million, you expect them to spend $60 million on advertising.
[1:07:44] Sure, yeah.
[1:07:45] But, you know, we spent, let's call it $50,000.
[1:07:51] Wait, you spent $50,000 on the album?
[1:07:53] It split up between people over years, yeah. It was digging deep. Okay. And that was not.
[1:08:01] Mind you, it was not planned. And what was your budget for marketing?
[1:08:04] The budget i don't know a couple thousand so it's definitely like when i look at it in the context of like what they do for a movie you're absolutely right it's like, the the proportion wasn't isn't there right.
[1:08:19] Okay so why uh do you think and now of course you've had a bit of time and so on i guess a lot of time do you think that the album was had enough quality in it, that it could have succeeded with the right marketing.
[1:08:41] Definitely more than it did, you know, but yeah, that's a, that's a big question. Like, uh, sorry to give you a concise answer. Yes.
[1:08:54] So why, why didn't you market more?
[1:08:58] I guess, um, sunk costs and we didn't know what we were doing. I guess that would be.
[1:09:04] Well, why didn't you know what you were doing? Why didn't you talk to people? And again, I know this is all naggy stuff, right? But I'm just, this is to get you to think like an entrepreneur so you can decide if you want the life or not. Right.
[1:09:15] Yeah. We, so I mean, part of it might get.
[1:09:18] Hang on, albums get recorded and released for like 150 years or whatever. Right. So there's people out there who know how to market, right? They know, oh, if you're going to do an album, man, here's what you do. And you guys understand the studio stuff, but you got to develop your contacts in the radio industry or the music industry, or you got to tour like crazy and sell the albums everywhere you go and word of mouth. I don't know because I'm not a musician or anything, but there's a whole bunch of people who you could have paid for, you could have dropped them a thousand bucks for a couple of hours of their time, and they could have drawn out a whole plan for you, and you could have budgeted some for the, because you spent all your money on the album and had nothing left for marketing, right?
[1:10:02] Yeah well and um like you talking about this there's sort of built-in poison because at least me and somebody else were software guys and so for us it was more of a hobby like hey this is a thing that we don't expect to make money and we have a career so probably taking it that way didn't help, we'll say.
[1:10:30] Sorry, but didn't you, I mean, if you could have been in a band rather than a computer programmer, wouldn't you have preferred that?
[1:10:39] Yeah, I mean, probably. That's a, sorry, that question caught me very off guard. Yeah, probably. But the likelihood of being a successful band is extremely low i guess i.
[1:11:00] Mean the likelihood of being a successful entrepreneur ain't that high either.
[1:11:03] That's fair okay.
[1:11:08] So how many people were involved in the album.
[1:11:13] Uh well five well five in the band although one left during the album he basically recorded his parts and left um, and a producer/the guy who was doing the mixing technically there was a guy at the end for mastering but that's a very short involvement and then a couple of guest musicians who were in for short stints so like uh cello did a solo a cello was maybe right yeah something like that okay.
[1:11:46] And a bunch of you put in a couple of grand each to record it and, after you finished the album i guess nobody had sat there and said how are we going to get this out to the masses or was that something you discussed or no i.
[1:12:03] Guess i guess we just didn't frame it right on how much we should have marketed right because like now when i compare it to a movie now it's like oh i guess i guess half your budget's supposed to be marketing or something um but that's.
[1:12:17] Not i mean i don't exactly know how it works in the music industry as opposed to the movie industry, but you've got to do something, right? Once you have the album, then what? Well, you went on a couple of podcasts, and did you tour relentlessly with it? Did you run after record executives down the street? I don't know what you do, right?
[1:12:40] I mean, we shipped it off to labels, hoping to hear back, and we did do some shows. It wasn't like a big tour or anything, but it was a handful of shows around the time.
[1:12:53] And because the bad out of hell guys like jim steinman and and meatloaf i mean they had this album written out i think they would it was 18 months they were just taking it from place to place and everyone was telling them you can't make it it's not going to happen it's not not possible nobody's going to buy something that long or of course you know bohemian rhapsody, nobody's going to play a song that's over seven minutes long and you know and and they just kept pushing and they wouldn't come like and i mean obviously it's easy to say well look at these are the very successful musicians just do what they do i know that that's an annoying thing to hear but, there and this is the entrepreneurial thinking is it is crazy and it is a passion that you've got this album, And you will do whatever it takes to get it into people's hands. The album cries out to be delivered to the world, and you can't sleep until more and more and more people hear it. That's the entrepreneurial mindset. It's a crazy passion, and it is, I will not stop.
[1:14:16] Until my passion project is out there in the world. So whether it's your two albums or it's Scion, the role-playing game, the question is, why haven't you finished this stuff or why haven't you pushed this stuff? And I think it's probably because, like most people, like, I mean, just about everyone, it's painful. Because you care enormously about it this is the entrepreneurial problem right i care enormously about philosophy and this podcast nobody else does i mean at least when i was starting out right i'm just some guy who's yelling in a car and recording it right and so nobody else cares and there's nothing wrong with that i mean there's a million people who have a million projects that have probably passed through your life at some point or another you don't particularly care about their projects either right yeah so to try to differentiate yourself from the crowd is the entrepreneurial challenge right and it's a big challenge.
[1:15:27] Now, this is why I keep haranguing you as to why you don't finish things. And the correct answer is, I think, either you don't care enough or your caring is stopped by the fear of rejection. Or the fear of other people's indifference.
[1:15:50] I i i do think that it's it's the the like like the way i was phrasing it where um i was saying sort of i have a very prepare for the worst or what do you say hope for the best prepare for the worst mindset and so the worst from the.
[1:16:05] Military dad right.
[1:16:06] Sure and no does it i.
[1:16:09] Mean does it does that make sense.
[1:16:10] I think so i think you're right because in the military.
[1:16:13] The downsides of mistakes are like death.
[1:16:16] Yeah they're they're not good and so a little.
[1:16:21] Too high stakes for entrepreneurial mindsets but that may be in what you inherited like you can't get anything wrong but the ammo needs to be there when i reach for it or we're all dead right.
[1:16:30] Yeah well and so when i'm, and this is what i've been really stewing on but it's like when i'm looking at it's like well what if i just fail for two years and get and get nothing out of it then i'm just down two years of earnings you know what i mean and um then i've screwed up the current plan and that plan if you want to think of it that way uh and it's like i i shouldn't be expecting well failure so.
[1:17:06] So let me, no, you should, you should, you should be expecting failure because statistically that's, that's likely how many people start podcasts that go nowhere.
[1:17:17] Most of them.
[1:17:18] Right and the difference of course look i can't do anything, about the foundational quality right because that's yours to create and there's nobody who can say make it quality right i mean you guys put years and tens of thousands of dollars into these albums so i assume that you believed of course that this was the best source material that you could you could do right now so i can't do anything about foundational quality but if you believe in it, if you believe in it then, you should stop at nothing to get other people invested other people are going to judge the quality of the thing you do, not based upon the thing itself, but based upon you at the beginning, right? If you're passionate about it, if you won't take no for an answer, if you're behind it 150%, if you're an insane guy who just pushes and pushes, so to speak, people will be like, okay, maybe he's got something. But if you're like oh you know i sent an email a month ago i'm just following up with another email.
[1:18:44] Right nobody's going to think that you believe in it and if you don't really believe in it why would anyone else i mean you're the guy who made it right if you don't believe in it to the point where you're willing to be kind of quote annoying right if you don't believe in it Why would anyone else?
[1:19:00] Yeah.
[1:19:01] So people judge the quality of what you do, not based on the thing itself, but based on your perception of it. And that's my question is, if you're passionate about the album, then you should wake up every day saying, what can I do to get people to listen to this album? Oh my God, what can I get people to do to listen to this album? So, I mean, again, I mean, I'm an annoying entrepreneurial guy, but I'm just giving you the mindset. So when I was starting out my show, I would make a show and I would send, I would turn it into an article. I would send articles around. I would post the show on on forums i would um message sorry not massage i would massage my contacts and message people anyone i'd ever had any contact with uh that you know i'm doing this podcast i'd love it if you could listen or share it around that kind of stuff right and you know and then i just started trying to get people i started doing calling shows i started getting people to come in and do, interviews and then of course they would share it on their side as well i'd collaborate with other.
[1:20:14] Podcasters so that, you know, we could potentially get double the audience. And again, it was 80% of the time was just pushing the show, pushing the show, pushing the show. Why? Because it's the greatest show ever. I mean, I would go to my grave believing this is the greatest show ever. And it's the greatest show that ever will be because everything after this has this is a template and this is unique now i i can't control whether people agree with me or not i can work as hard as i can to make the material as quality as possible and then i can push it as hard as i can but that's the entrepreneurial mindset which is i will stop at nothing to get this out like it's like if if you have a child and your child needs medicine that's hard to get, how hard would you work to get it? If your child was dying.
[1:21:13] Yeah, you would do everything you could.
[1:21:16] Right. The album is your child, and it died.
[1:21:21] And the medicine was marketing. And you're like, eh, let it die. I mean, I'm not saying it was like that exactly. But you have a child.
[1:21:33] And your child needs an audience in order to live. Right? whether it's your prion role-playing book or it's your album or the game that you might make you have a child and you have given birth to a child and the child dies without an audience so you go and get the freaking audience because your child is going to die do you see what i mean yeah that's the mindset the world desperately needs philosophy i think most philosophy in history, it doesn't suck. I mean, obviously, incredibly brilliant people, but they missed the point of a stateless society and peaceful parenting, right? That's the issue for me. Now, if I get, and look, it's easy for me because the stakes are just so high, you know, peaceful parenting and all that. So if I get the podcast out there, then, you know, I've done the back of the napkin calculations, you know, 1.5 billion fewer assaults on children around the worlds, right? Now, if it's just, you've got a role-playing game that's going to give people, thousands of hours of fun. I mean, I never would have come up with Dungeons & Dragons. I can't tell you how much fun I've had over the years with Dungeons & Dragons. Massive, massive. Some of my great memories are of that game.
[1:22:56] So, Gary Gikax and all the people who got it going, i mean they had to really push it because nobody cares about your child nobody cares about your passion project nobody cares about your dream just as you don't care about other people's, dreams and you know like a couple of times a week people email me like, hey man i got this book i got this article i got this video right now generally, I won't review it until they bugged me three times.
[1:23:34] I don't know if you want to say that on your podcast.
[1:23:36] No, I will absolutely say that on my podcast because people need to know this stuff. And the reason I do that is because I don't want to invest in someone's book or project or video or article or whatever. I don't want to invest in that if they're not fully behind it. If they don't feel like, Stef, you have to read this, like, I'm sorry to bug you, I'm sorry to this, I'm sorry to that, right? Sometimes when people invite me to come on their shows, I'll look and it'll be like, it's kind of small or kind of obscure. You know, it's not particularly a great use of my time, blah, blah, blah. But, you know, if they're patient and persistent, I don't mean like, you jerk, why haven't you gotten back to me? Because that's just rude, right?
[1:24:18] Yeah.
[1:24:19] But if they're patient and persistent, that can overcome my resistance, right? Or my skepticism, because then it's like, okay, they're small, but they're persistent. They care. They want to get me on the show. Obviously, they care about what I have to say, but they care about their show to the point where they're willing to work hard. I remember many years ago being on a plane, and I'm going to think, it may not have been this exactly but it was something like a cigar magazine or it was like a food foodie magazine, and the guy took two years to get tom cruise to do a 20-minute interview.
[1:25:02] Two years to get tom cruise to do a 20-minute interview now you gotta you gotta admire that in a way it's a little manic it's a little it's a little ocd but so what i mean that's how you get things done in the world, right?
[1:25:18] So the entrepreneurial mindset is, I will not let my child die for lack of medicine. I will do whatever it takes, right? I mean, this is an old story. I've mentioned it before about the guy who developed the Ethernet protocol for internet transfer, or for transfer of information across a network. And he taught at a university. He had all of the kids over, all of his students over to his big giant-ass townhouse and all of that. And they're all looking like, wow, beautiful view of the ocean. This place is magnificent. Man, man, I wish I'd invented Ethernet. And he laughed at them. Literally laughed at them. He said, bro, inventing Ethernet was nothing. In fact, there were 20 guys around with as good ideas or even better. No, no, no. The reason I have to town host is not because I invented Ethernet. It's because I spent years going to conferences, making presentations, writing articles, pushing it and pushing it and pushing it. And the other guys, they thought that inventing it was going to be enough.
[1:26:39] The song Roxanne was played on the radio well over a year before it became one of the biggest hits of the 70s. Just they didn't have the push behind it. They didn't have any of that.
[1:26:54] So as far as being an entrepreneur goes, you think that it's about money. You think that it's about, well, if I invest two years and it doesn't work out, I've lost two years. No, no, no, no. That's nothing to do with entrepreneur stuff. The entrepreneurial stuff is, am I willing to overcome fear?
[1:27:14] Am I willing to get behind an idea and push it? Because when you look around in your life, it's an old line from a Peter Gabriel song, all of the buildings and all of the cars, it was just a dream in somebody's head. You look at everything, right? You look at a lamp, you look at a table, you look at a carpet. They were just an idea in somebody's head. Now, how did they get from an idea in somebody's head into your living room? Well, it's 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration. It's because these people work like crazy bastards to get it from their head into design, into manufacturing, into a sales pipeline, into a workflow, into a store, right? And the idea for the lamp or the table or the carpet is maybe 1% of that. So the entrepreneurial thing is, am I going to break out of the terrible public school mold of don't be annoying, don't impose, don't do this, don't do that? Am I willing to really get behind an idea and push it? Because that's what keeps humanity alive.
[1:28:31] You know, that's what keeps humanity, I mean, the guy who invented the Edison, invented the light bulb, went through like hundreds of iterations, right? And then once you got the right iteration, you had to push like crazy to get people to accept it. Do you have something that you're passionate about that it's no longer ego-based? To free yourself from the ego is the foundational entrepreneurial goal, right? It's not about me, right? It's not, well, I got this philosophy podcast, but if people don't like it, I'm going to feel really bad and I'm going to recoil from it. I'm going to drop it like a hot potato because it's not about me. It's about, is philosophy good for the world? Yes. Am I good at philosophy? Yes. Then I have to get out there in the world and do the best philosophy that I can do in the most practical and actionable and comprehensible manner possible. It's not about me. Now, if people reject, and Lord knows I've gone through my share of rejection and counterattack and blah, blah, blah, but it's not about my ego. It's not about me feeling good. It's not about me feeling smart. It's not about me making money. It's not about me getting the right numbers or anything. It's about me passionately pushing the truth to the best of my ability, and I'm still working on the edges of my ability just about every time I do anything.
[1:29:50] So, it is a psychological exercise that frees you from the tyranny of fear and the ego. Is there something that you care enough about that you will put your ego aside, ignore rejection, and push that thing out into the world? Does that make sense?
[1:30:12] Yeah, that does.
[1:30:14] Now, I don't think you've cared enough, or you've surrendered to fear, or it's not been put to you this starkly.
[1:30:23] But it's like the creation is just having the baby. That's not easy, right? But you bring the baby home, that's just the beginning of your parenting, right? So creating the thing is just the beginning of the process. So the question is, why don't you finish things? It's because if you don't finish things, you won't have to deal with the ego battering of other people's indifference and rejection. And you'll put it out there a little bit and then you'll recoil. like most people do. And listen, this is not a diss on you. I have my own issues with this stuff too. So I'm right down in the trenches with you. But you want to avoid finishing things, because I don't think you have had it put to you clearly that if you can overcome the fear of rejection and other people's indifference, you have a superpower held by not one person in 10,000. If you can overcome shame, embarrassment, not wanting to impose, cringe, negativity, anxiety, oh, I don't want to get in people's faces. It's like, well, everything that gets made is because people get in other people's faces, not in an aggressive way, but in a persistent way.
[1:31:45] Yeah so i think i'm not sure about your level of passion as a whole um i'm so i'm sort of trying to gauge that in the first part of our conversation so i'm not sure about your level of passion as a whole obviously being in the band was a passion project but you let the album, die on the hard drive you and the band right and the question is why well because it's personal to you and then when people reject your album or your your your recordings or they're indifferent to them you don't want to push and you have to you have to and if you wait for things to fall in your lap, you'll wait forever.
[1:32:37] So you say, well, but I could be out all of this money if I go for two years and I don't succeed. But the entrepreneurial thing is you can't fail.
[1:32:51] You can't fail if you believe in the quality of your product and you test it with people, right? I mean, I had done hundreds of conversations about philosophy before I ever touched a microphone on this show. Probably thousands over the years, right? And so I was sort of prepared. I knew that I was really good at philosophy. I knew I was really good at self-knowledge. And so I knew I could provide quality. And I also knew that the world would be indifferent, if not hostile, to what I was doing. That's a given. That's the gig of a philosopher is to be loved by the future and hated by the present for the most part, right? It's a sad deal, but that's why a lot of people don't do it. But I knew the quality was there and therefore all that was left was the willpower. You've got to be like a water cascading from the top of a mountain, right? It hits a rock. What does it do? It just changes shape and goes around it. It hits a pool while it waits to gather its strength. And then once there's more water, it spills over the pool. It keeps going down the mountain to find a way down, just find a way down. Because I mean, the water, which is not a bad analogy for the entrepreneurial will it's just you find a way and you don't take it personally.
[1:34:09] So when i ask you why don't you finish stuff or i guess with the record that you made but you and the band the 10 people the record was not finished because it didn't get into people's ears the record is finished when it's in people's ears it's not finished when you, stop recording the last track. That's not when the record is finished. My podcast is not finished when I finished recording it. My podcast is finished when it gets into people's ears. And you didn't have that completion. And I don't know if you didn't love the album enough, or if you feared rejection too much. And only you can answer that, and I'm certainly happy to hear your answer, but that's what you think of as being an entrepreneur. Well, I could fail. It's like, but you can't fail because if you cure yourself of the fear of other people's indifference and rejection, that's a superpower you carry with you for the rest of your life, if that makes sense.
[1:35:15] Yeah, it does.
[1:35:17] So what is it? Why don't you finish stuff?
[1:35:21] Uh, yeah, I think, I think there are several things that you said where you're like the, the schools, the, uh, whatever you said about like, don't be bothersome. Don't be, you know.
[1:35:35] Shut up in the back. Don't make noise. Don't get in trouble. Don't, don't impose. Right. Don't be, don't be enthusiastic. Don't be too happy. Don't be. Yeah.
[1:35:44] Yeah. that made a lot of sense to me you're definitely right about you know the album was born and we sort of took care of it for a few days and then yeah just like well we don't need to feed it anymore, and it's very sad but why did.
[1:36:01] You abandon the baby in the cold why didn't you move heaven and earth to get your album into people's ears did you not believe it was high enough quality, or did you fear other people's indifference and rejection.
[1:36:16] I think the latter i think that is connected with the um that don't impose mindset right you fear rejection because if you're uh if you impose on somebody they're like well why are you even talking about this you know or or yeah we heard you the first time kind of a thing did.
[1:36:38] You did you bug all of your friends and say well listen to this tell me what you think what could be improved what could be better what could be different did you enlist your friends tell your friends you know get other people you know and involved in.
[1:36:51] Yeah i mean there was a there was a single we put out later so a couple years later i thought well what if we tried to do um this was this is fairly depressing but like a couple years later i you know i was sort of trying to keep things going and i thought well what if we I can't afford a full album right now but what if I do a single and then I could maybe do little singles along the way and so you know put in a couple grand like I really budgeted it and then we made sure we got a high quality thing and you know I got a little bit press and I bothered people who had were in theory the best customer for it people who had already bought stuff from us and there's thousands of them or whatever and they can go listen to it for free, i put it out god dang it just about nobody listened to the thing and it was it was very uh, i pretty much abandoned it at that point i said it's time to about face like this is clearly not why hang.
[1:37:54] On why did people not listen to it.
[1:37:58] Well, I guess, I guess you're right that I didn't push it. I should have.
[1:38:01] No, you said you did. And I'm not disagreeing with you about that. You said that you went to thousands of people who'd bought your music before, right?
[1:38:09] Yeah, but I just did the, you know, contact people who had bought your stuff before on Bandcamp and like put up a few Facebook posts and things like, like I really, I'm, I'm, it's, I'm very willing to take the blame of like, well, I should have actually like put a lot more effort into getting it. So many people to listen if i was if i was ticked that they didn't listen then i right so okay you.
[1:38:34] Were angry and listen i every every artist says this with the audience right you bastards i should be the most famous artist in the world right okay so so what was your relationship you put this, single out from the uh was it a recut of the album song.
[1:38:49] No it was so when the album came out the singer left and we have a similar range so I'd be able to do the old stuff and so I said well how about we make a single and then that's like a very manageable slice of work where we can put something out and also you know it was during COVID and all this other stuff so it was like it was supposed to be kind of a statement of like we survived we're still here you know what I mean, and then the irony is that we haven't done anything since So.
[1:39:23] Sing me the opening bit.
[1:39:26] Um Give me just a half sec Yeah.
[1:39:31] Yeah, no problem.
[1:39:31] Oh the sirens That called me here To a place That might endear They don't want me to go And so they Hold me to their chest Out of fear, Oh, comfortable at last. Anyway.
[1:40:01] All right, is there more to the song? Keep going. Nice that's great it's funny because uh your your singing voice very different from your speaking voice you get all viking and and i really i get that that's really good like that's like the horned helmet staring out to sea at the dawn that the fog rolls in and the uh the dragon ships arrive from far land so it's really that's good stuff okay so you believe in that it's you know very celtic it's very northern european it's very viking uh and i guess the heavy metal aspect of it is great. So, when you put the single out and people didn't listen to it, what were your thoughts about that?
[1:41:10] I was just kind of mad. I was like, you guys bought stuff before. You won't even listen to it for free? What are you doing? If I were to relate it I know that you've gone through that. I know that that happened. That happened, the whole YouTube, the bit shoot thing. But in mine's on a much smaller scale. But yes, I was pretty grumped about it.
[1:41:42] Okay, so it wasn't the people listen to it, but didn't like it. They didn't even come to listen to it.
[1:41:46] Yes.
[1:41:47] Okay. So how do you process that? Because it's not like they, it's like you can't even get people to come to the restaurant. It's like they come to the restaurant and don't like the food. So how do you process that.
[1:41:58] How did i or yeah and so what.
[1:42:01] Are your thoughts about that what are your conclusions about that what does that mean to you.
[1:42:05] Uh that they at the time it was it i really felt like oh they just don't care like but now i mean right now yeah i'm sort of in the framing of i didn't push it you know.
[1:42:23] Okay. How many people have asked you to listen to songs that you don't really get around to, or you don't spend much time on? I mean, I assume in the music world, I'm sure there's people who want you to listen to their stuff, right?
[1:42:40] At the time, that was more of a thing. I've largely killed off any social media that I would have. So now it would be zero. But at the time, I'm sure it was semi-frequent.
[1:42:52] Okay all right so i probably didn't go.
[1:42:54] Listen to a lot of stuff.
[1:42:55] When it probably didn't it came to people not listening to what it is that you're doing you're angry at them, yeah okay so why do you think it's it's a natural reaction so this is none of this is a criticism But why do you think you took that approach?
[1:43:25] If I'm being very mature about it, it would be that it externalizes it. It puts the onus on them and not on me.
[1:43:33] Well, what does it cover up?
[1:43:36] Failure.
[1:43:36] What does the anger cover up?
[1:43:42] I thought failure would be the answer.
[1:43:45] It covers up hurt. Failure is a judgment, not an emotion. It covers up hurt right sorry yes so what what is the feeling when people don't even listen to the song for free what is the feeling.
[1:44:02] Um yeah abandonment or hurt or uh i guess loss.
[1:44:13] Rejection?
[1:44:15] Yeah, that's fair.
[1:44:17] Okay, so rejection hurts. Now, if you don't have the ability to blame the audience, what happens? Because blaming the audience is a conclusion. People are just careless. They don't care. They're indifferent. They don't care about music. They don't care. Whatever. You get mad at them, right? So if you don't have the option to get mad at your audience i mean you may feel it but if you say okay that's not that's not very productive if you don't have the capacity to get mad at the audience what opens up for you because getting mad at your audience is an answer well i there's no point going any further because they just don't care right that that's the answer right, But if you don't have that anger, what opens up? What possibilities open up? So if you don't get angry at them for not caring or being indifferent or whatever it is, right? Don't get angry at them. What else opens up?
[1:45:22] Questions about like how to make them care. Yes.
[1:45:27] Right. Right. So because you haven't come to a conclusion, they just don't care. Right so if you don't allow yourself to just blame others but simply view that as information, so what i'm doing isn't working this is the entrepreneurial mindset right so what i'm doing isn't working so rather than create a fake answer called well people just don't care to withdraw from my own hurt and to get mad and blame others and throw my hands up and walk away if I don't have that as an option, lots of other options will open up, right?
[1:46:08] Yes.
[1:46:09] And again, not to, I don't want to make this about myself, but, you know, 95% of my audience, didn't follow me over to other platforms, right? And I was like, I was a little surprised, a little surprised because I'm not just like, oh, it's just some meme channel. There are other people make, this is a unique show, right? So i've sort of thought about it i thought about it and i'm like well i can't contact them right because i can't send messages on youtube youtube channel's gone right yeah so i can't contact them so what this means is that i have been liberated from having to satisfy my audience.
[1:46:54] And so that's when I started reading my audio books. I started writing novels and I didn't do politics really because, I mean, I didn't hugely enjoy doing politics. I just know that people liked it. And I think we did some good work in helping people understand the world that is. But for me, it was like, okay, I'm not just going to get mad at them. I'm going to look, if I don't allow myself to get angry at my audience, what opens up? Well, I've been in the trenches fighting this combat called politics for 10 plus years, closer to 15, I think, at that point. And it's like, okay, so if the audience is not following me, I'm freed from pleasing the audience, which means I no longer have an obligation to the audience. I now have an obligation to what? Well, to create things of beauty, to do more art, to have more intimate conversations, you know, that kind of stuff, right? So if you don't allow yourself to just resent rejection lots of things open up uh and and, you and listen i this is a pretty advanced stuff so so you came up with a answer called well the audience just doesn't care well that doesn't give you and there's no there's no moving forward from that right right then you become like a stalker look she just doesn't want to go out with you man stop calling her stop going past her house well.
[1:48:22] And i just i just turned my back on i said well i guess i'm not doing music this way because uh like commit to the failure i guess um.
[1:48:35] What sorry what you mean by commit to the failure well i just don't know what you mean i.
[1:48:39] Didn't make any more music after that at least.
[1:48:42] Not and how could you because you put your best foot forward and people didn't care and at some point don't you have to stop right and so i but but that's because you got mad at the audience, but now if i'd gotten mad at the audience and just said you know you fickle bastards you know i i get death threats bomb threats you know i i give speeches under uh under threat of bullets and explosives and and you all can't come one website over and you know blah you know you know of this kind of stuff right as opposed to okay that's information that's all it's all it is is information people aren't following me over now people might have been very wise to not follow me over i don't think i've talked about this so i'll just keep this really brief so you know things got kind of crazy there in politics for a while there right i mean people getting in all kinds of crazy trouble right so maybe by not following me over they were also keeping me safe right.
[1:49:43] Because I got to drop politics, which, you know, was becoming an increasingly risky game, right? I mean, Mike Cernovich talks about this quite a bit, and he's right to do that, right? So I refuse to sort of say, well, this is just an indifferent, callous audience, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It's like, well, they're just giving me information, which is they don't want to follow me over. So I'm not just going to get mad at them because all it is is information. you know it's like it's like when you really want to ask a girl out you ask her out and she just kind of says ah no you know but it's not like a oh god no or whatever it is right that she's just giving you information which is that she doesn't find you appealing at that particular time maybe it's your outfit maybe it's your haircut maybe it's uh you or maybe it's whatever right or maybe you know she's she's having a really terrible i mean i remember um when i was a teenager going out with a girl.
[1:50:40] And it was super awkward, right? And I was like, geez, I wonder what's going on? Am I doing something wrong? Anyway, many years later, I found out that her father had killed himself, you know, like not too much in the past. So of course, I realized it had nothing to do with me. It was just, she was going through, you know, just about the worst time you could possibly go through. Maybe not the best time to go on a date. So I actually viewed it as a real, whereas I thought it was kind of a rejection. I actually later found out that it was a real compliment that she'd even think about going on a date with me when her father had committed suicide recently. So that was...
[1:51:17] It turned from something that felt like a rejection to something that was actually a huge positive that she'd even think about. It must have been because she liked me quite a lot or found me quite attractive or something like that, right?
[1:51:26] Sure.
[1:51:27] So it's just information. It's just information that says people are not responding to what I'm doing. So when people don't respond to what you do, What could you do? Well, I mean, I could have tried to build up the audience on, you know, the other platforms and gone back into politics and this, that, and the other. Maybe, maybe, but enough people didn't follow me over. And how was I going to contact them to even tell them I was doing politics again, right? I mean, I was shut out of just about everything. So again, not to sort of make this about me, but you just got some information that people weren't responding to what you were doing. And it wasn't like they didn't like the song because they didn't even listen to it right yeah and that's just information, and if you view it as just information rather than jumping into wounded vanity pride stuff which we all do i'm like i'm singling you out here we all have that tendency we all we all do it but if you don't jump into wounded vanity pride thing then you have a whole plethora of options to choose from if that makes sense you can by not taking it personally you can.
[1:52:39] Try again you could try in a different way you could try other ways rather than just having an email list you could try some other way of doing it uh you you could get the band together and do some ridiculous video like you know there's this band i can't remember they do these um.
[1:52:58] Goldberg machine videos and they did one where they're hopping uh on these treadmills back and forth and i can't remember the name of the band i don't actually particularly like their music but the videos are genius right so i mean there's tons of things that you okay well that's not working well what else could we do that might be uh interesting or challenging or fun and you just keep playing until something clicks right yeah but you withdrew oh you were driven out by the story you made up about the audience that they just don't care just bad people don't care and and so on right as opposed to my baby needs air and the air is ears so i gotta go get my baby some ears and the entrepreneurial thing uh why do so many businesses fail because well two reasons either the product isn't that great or it's a good product but they just don't that they recoil from people's indifference and rejection because they take it personally it's ego based you know and the funny thing is that all the people who stopped listening to me missed out on a 600 increase in bitcoin.
[1:54:13] Since I was deplatformed, right? So, I mean, I didn't lose out. I got to spend half a decade doing stuff that I really loved and writing some great books and having great conversations with people. I mean, who really lost out, I think, were the people who didn't follow and listening on all of the Bitcoin roundtables and all that kind of stuff that we were doing and, you know, my presentation on the updated presentation on Bitcoin and all that kind of stuff, right? So, So they missed out on the investment opportunity kind of of a lifetime. Am I going to be mad at them for that?
[1:54:50] Well, no.
[1:54:51] So if your song is going to make people happy, and I hope you'll send me a copy of it when we're done. But if your song, we'll put it at the end if you don't mind. But if your song is going to make people happy, then, you know, go get it into people's ears. And so whatever you're doing next if it's going to make people happy people are going to be indifferent about it of course they are i mean think of think of you go to the mall, and you have to buy a thing right you have to buy a widget right so let's say there are 80 stores in the mall you walk past all the stores right and all of the all of the store owners are looking up as you walk past it's going to be a sale you just walk past right, do they rage quit and shut up the store nope they're just like well i guess he's not looking for one right and then you go into that one store and if the if this let's say it's got a thousand items in the store you're just going for the one all the other 999 manufacturers and entrepreneurs if they were there be like choose mine choose my you're like no you walk right past them you don't even look at them, right? You reject and are indifferent to just about everything. And it's the same thing with other people to you.
[1:56:12] Think of all the music you don't listen to. I mean, I'm sure that there are bands that have put out music that you liked in the past. You liked the band, you liked their music, but you haven't listened to the new stuff.
[1:56:27] Yeah, I guarantee that's true.
[1:56:30] Of course it's true, right? And is that because you hate them? No, you just kind of forgot. Like, I'd completely, basically forgotten about the band Alan Parsons Project, which I liked when I was younger, and I've been listening to them. Again and it's been great and you know there'll be some other band that i've completely forgotten about i listened to kevin samuel some years ago i forgot about him for like two years he popped up and it's just you're busy everyone's busy they've got stuff to do and and all of that so that's why i keep asking oh that's why i kept asking why didn't you finish things and i think it's because you have burned yourself with your interpretation of other people's indifference to the point where your confidence is low and your capacity for resentment is high and if your confidence is low and your capacity for resentment is high you can't succeed yeah now if you go in dig in for two years you push you know you create you push and all of that and let's say it doesn't work out okay so it doesn't work out but, you've lost a central fear in your life forever and ever amen.
[1:57:48] And you no longer react with resentment or pettiness and that's another reason why I was asking about your wife, is if you care about prion then your wife should be doing what.
[1:58:08] Oh, I don't know.
[1:58:11] Yes, you do.
[1:58:12] Supporting that?
[1:58:13] What does support mean? What should she be doing?
[1:58:16] I guess working to keep our accounts looking good.
[1:58:24] Our accounts? What do you mean?
[1:58:26] Well, I assume you're speaking financially. Or do you mean support that because she can do art and stuff for what?
[1:58:33] She's a graphics designer and you say, oh my God, the big barrier is art. Yes. So what should she be doing?
[1:58:44] I guess working together.
[1:58:46] She should be saying, hey, when's this book going to be done? Oh, I'm stuck on the art. It's like, well, I'm a graphics designer. I work part-time. I bring in only $500 to $1,000 a month. I'll do the art. I'd love to. Why isn't that happening? i mean you're paying most of the bills why can't she contribute some art to your passion project.
[1:59:13] I think it would be my reluctance nope because.
[1:59:17] No no you don't think so no no because you're taking the ownership on yourself if she sat you down she said honey i know you really don't like the programming job i know you're passionate about prion i know you're passionate about, creating video games and i'm gonna do that i'm gonna do the art i don't care what you say i'm doing the art you tell me what you need i'm gonna do it over the next two weeks or a week or whatever it is and even if all she does is tweak the living crap out of ai whatever it is you've got the art right why isn't she and this is not any big diss on your wife it's a genuine question of curiosity, why isn't she doing that.
[2:00:01] Um, uh, I mean, I think the, the water that you're leading me to is that I might reject it.
[2:00:13] Nope. No, no. Come on. If, if your loving wife, who's a graphics designer did the art to finish prion, why would you reject her? Would you say, no, I don't want you to do that. No, I'd rather it stay unfinished. I mean, come on. You're not going to do that. Are you?
[2:00:29] Are you Are you saying.
[2:00:31] That No I'm not trying to do I'm just asking a question I'm not trying to lead you to any water I'm just Why hasn't she said, You've put You've put 400 hours And $20,000 Worth of labor into this And the only thing that prevents it From being finished Is a skill Your wife possesses in abundance, Come on man Why hasn't she, She.
[2:00:58] Has suggested it for a different project And I was like, oh yeah, maybe Okay.
[2:01:05] So I mean, if I was your wife, right? I'd be like, well, what do you mean maybe? What's the problem? Like, why wouldn't you take free labor from someone who loves you?
[2:01:21] I mean, that's a good point And why.
[2:01:23] Did you say, maybe?
[2:01:27] Uh because i'm not taking it seriously enough.
[2:01:31] Well i don't know i don't know really what that means she offers you free labor, which is quality because she's trained in it right so she's offering you free labor, about a project you care about and just saying no not really and but why.
[2:01:51] Is the uh well by by by me saying not taking it seriously enough i mean it's probably that fear of rejection thing like well i'm going to put all this time into this thing and it's not going to materialize.
[2:02:04] Okay so what does a loving wife and i'm not saying your wife doesn't love you but we're just trying to up the standard here a little bit right so why if you say no to your wife offering you free skilled labor to finish an important project for you and you say not so much or maybe later or whatever, what does she do?
[2:02:33] I'm sorry, I'm totally missing the mark here.
[2:02:37] It's about persistence. So if I was your wife and I offered you free labor, and about something that was important to you and you said ah maybe i'm not sure i'd say i'm not sure what you mean why wouldn't you want to finish the project i mean what do you feel about it and you ask questions and right all the stuff that we're talking about here right yeah, I mean, she knows, your wife knows that prion is unfinished, right?
[2:03:06] Yeah.
[2:03:07] Does she know that what's missing is the artwork?
[2:03:11] Yeah.
[2:03:13] Has she offered to do the artwork for you?
[2:03:17] Say what?
[2:03:18] Has she offered to do the artwork for you? Given that she knows it's an important project for you, you put in $20,000 worth of labor, and the only thing that's missing is the artwork, and she's a graphics designer. So has she offered to do the artwork for you?
[2:03:34] Maybe not on that specific project, but I would say, yeah.
[2:03:39] You mean on that other project?
[2:03:42] Yeah, she's offered it kind of in general for projects.
[2:03:47] Okay. And when was the last time she made the offer?
[2:03:53] I don't know, in the last two weeks as I've been really stewing on all this.
[2:03:58] Okay so she's offered in the last two weeks hey if you need graphics design i'm your girl right, yeah okay now the problem is i can tell you what the problem is the problem is that she doesn't want to impose and neither do you well i made the offer i don't want to bug him about it i don't know be pushy and you're like well she made the offer but you know i don't want to bug her with having to do all this work and like aren't you both not imposing on each other, yeah okay well that sucks marriage is about imposing on each other it is three to three to four times a week now but but marriage is about imposing on each other because if you're so delicate and you don't want to impose on each other i mean that's not a marriage as far as i mean i'm saying you're not married right but marriage is yeah i need help.
[2:04:51] Yeah.
[2:04:55] So you think that maybe you don't want her graphics design help because that will mean things are completed and then you face the same rejection that you did with the band.
[2:05:06] I mean, that would be a fair explanation.
[2:05:13] Yeah, procrastination is kind of like your way, it's everyone's way of avoiding testing their own potential. I could daydream as long as it's not finished, right? okay so so she she's offering artwork and you know that you need artwork and if you were to say i'd appreciate the artwork would you feel like you're imposing.
[2:05:34] Maybe it's probably a lot of work.
[2:05:39] She's not busy yeah i mean it's one thing if she's a orthopedic surgeon or something working 80 hours a week or something but she's not busy, so why won't you let people help you or your wife because she's a perfect person to do it right yeah so why don't you let people help you.
[2:06:09] I don't know.
[2:06:12] Because you know helping people is really fun it's nice you get to work together on a project, you get to produce something that's really cool you get to have a product that you can start to think start to think about marketing like it's fun isn't it, i mean until the brutal rejection part you know other people's indifference but isn't it or the... To work together with your wife on a project?
[2:06:41] Yeah, that wouldn't be... Yeah.
[2:06:46] So, why not?
[2:06:52] I don't have an answer for you.
[2:06:55] Well, let's get back to your childhood. Were you welcome to participate and contribute into your parents' projects?
[2:07:09] I don't know. I mean, maybe little things. My dad wasn't super approachable, you know, with like, you know, he might ask you to come out to the garage and then he'd get all mad because you weren't that helpful.
[2:07:24] Oh, yeah. Holding the flashlight wrong. Down, left, right? It's the wrong tool. Is it that sort of nightmare of the dad who needs things done and you don't know exactly what he wants?
[2:07:32] Right. And then you'd leave because you're like, well, I don't want to be yelled at for it. You know?
[2:07:38] Okay I mean that's a bit dickish on the part of your dad right because I mean kids they don't know how to help too much and you've got to be patient with them right yeah okay, and so did you ever have a successful project that you enjoyed working on with your dad.
[2:07:56] Yeah maybe like building you know like model airplane type things and he might help me paint it or that kind of thing.
[2:08:04] No but that's him helping you what about you helping him Oh.
[2:08:10] Yeah, I don't know. I don't know if that occurred. I would have to really think on it.
[2:08:15] Okay. So maybe it's a little stressful. You have a bit of avoidance about mutual family projects. And what about your mom? Did she, you know, if she was cooking a big meal, people coming over, I mean, did she get you involved, engaged, have you help out?
[2:08:36] Yeah, I mean, I would probably set the table or...
[2:08:38] No, no, but I mean, that's not the boring stuff. I mean, like the cooking stuff.
[2:08:41] Oh. Maybe not. Yeah, probably not.
[2:08:44] Okay, why didn't she get you involved in the cooking stuff?
[2:08:50] I don't know.
[2:08:54] You must have a theory.
[2:08:56] Yeah, I mean, I guess I haven't really thought about this before.
[2:09:01] Why don't women like men to help them?
[2:09:05] Oh, because they take over and they take over.
[2:09:08] They take over, they elbow you aside, you're doing it wrong, you need to do it this way. And eventually it's like with your dad. Don't you just wander off?
[2:09:15] Sure.
[2:09:17] Right. so you have a family history of not enjoying projects because of yelling or micromanaging or something like that right so you shy away from projects with your wife because it probably brings up some minor ptsd from your childhood yeah.
[2:09:36] I mean that's uh that's probably fair most of the stuff that i do for diy around the house i generally say you can stay out of it i'll deal with this thing. You know, I'll bring her in if I need her, like, you know, a wall is too heavy to put up or something, but I generally don't. I try not to bug her to help.
[2:09:58] Right. And does she have any interest in helping?
[2:10:02] I think so. Yeah, I mean, I think sometimes she's like, oh, I would have helped if he asked or that kind of thing.
[2:10:07] I mean, I assume that, I mean, you don't have kids, so you are each other's company at home, right?
[2:10:14] Yeah.
[2:10:16] So she's able to spend less time with you when you're working on projects, right?
[2:10:21] That's fair, yeah.
[2:10:22] How long ago did you put the single out?
[2:10:25] The what?
[2:10:26] The single, the one you sang.
[2:10:31] Oh. Probably four years ago.
[2:10:37] Okay.
[2:10:38] It was right before I moved, yeah. So it would have been 2021.
[2:10:42] And you'd be married how long at that point?
[2:10:45] We weren't we were married right after we moved we.
[2:10:49] Were okay we were engaged together at that point.
[2:10:51] Oh um seven years maybe eight.
[2:10:55] Okay so you have a big project going out, and it's very disappointing and how does your wife handle that or what does she do or how does she help.
[2:11:17] I don't really remember because we were super busy, and I know this is...
[2:11:25] No, no, no, I don't do excuses. I know, I don't do excuses because this was your biggest heartbreak. I mean, how long did you pour, how much of your life did you pour into being a musician?
[2:11:37] A decade or a decade and a half, something like that.
[2:11:41] So this was your biggest single project and your biggest single passion. And you got brutally ignored that's not something that a wife is too busy to deal with, and the reason i'm pointing this out is look we can all improve our relationships, and if you're going to be an entrepreneur your wife needs to be by your side she needs to be with you she needs to be fully supportive and i think she's not there because, i mean if my wife had poured 10 50 years of her life into something got a brutal rejection and ignored and i mean we talk about it for days days weeks probably to process it to understand it to look at our options whatever it is because we're a team right yeah are you guys a team that way.
[2:12:41] I really don't know.
[2:12:43] Well, no, you're not. And this is not the end of the world, right? It's just, it's an area to grow within your marriage. But if you're going to be an entrepreneur, she's going to have to be right on board with you.
[2:12:56] Yeah.
[2:12:57] And she's going to have to be washing your back and talking you out of the tree and making sure you don't overreact and all those kinds of things, right? I mean, I'm sure you've done this with her at times, but if you're going to go into the entrepreneurial thing, my concern would be that you go and do it. And you kind of self-isolate and then you you're wrestling with it all on your own and it actually makes you further away from your wife and that's not good right yeah she should have been right there in the trenches when you're sounds like great i thought you were going to give me some banshee like shrieking or screaming or something that's actually very pleasant uh almost like a sea shanty and and so when you got brutally rejected from the biggest dream of your life, and gave up on the biggest dream of your life that you'd poured the most energy and effort into, your wife should have been right there with you talking you through it. All night, if need be, for weeks, if that's what it took. But it just kind of came and went, right?
[2:13:58] Yeah.
[2:13:59] So you guys, you still, I don't know, are you a religious man?
[2:14:06] Somewhat, yeah.
[2:14:07] Okay. I'm sorry, go ahead.
[2:14:11] If you ask me, I would say yes, but I'm not exactly a, I'm not like in a denomination at the moment.
[2:14:21] But do you believe that with marriage you become one flesh? If she hurts, you hurt. If she succeeds, you succeed. If she fails, you're right down there with her. You don't have two separate egos that you stand back and judge each other, but you're in it together.
[2:14:44] Sure.
[2:14:45] Well then there's still some merging i think that you you can do, which is you should not go through a brutal rejection of your biggest dream without your wife right there with you for as long as it takes asking probing figuring things out, helping you process and until you can establish that with your wife which you know may not take too long you said she's a very nice and thoughtful person but maybe you're over solicitous with each other well i don't want to bug you well i don't want to bug you and it's like no no bug each other that's how you stay on course right i mean the gps bugs you when you drive off course right, recalculating right so uh that that would be my suggestion is to work on things with your wife and say, you know, how did this come about? Like, was I pushing you away? You know, I went through this horrible thing, destroyed 10 to 15 years of my passion project. I mean, she knows you've never picked up music again, right?
[2:15:52] Effectively, yeah.
[2:15:53] Yeah, yeah. I mean, that's a huge deal, right? She was with you for half of your music career, and then you just dropped it, and has she said, how do you feel about it, or do you miss it, or what's going on, or...
[2:16:06] And she mentions it on occasion, like, oh, why don't you do this anymore? You know, I like it when you play bass and that kind of thing.
[2:16:14] Okay, and how long do those conversations last?
[2:16:17] Well, they're pretty short. Um you know i i think i write off stuff pretty quickly you.
[2:16:27] Know well yeah i wouldn't do that for sure and and so this was my concern about your entrepreneurial life is that you've got to open your heart man you got to really care you got to be very passionate and um i i think you play it distant a little bit i think you play it guarded a little bit i.
[2:16:44] Would agree yes.
[2:16:45] And and i understand that i mean that's this is not any big criticism or anything like that but, if you want to succeed as an entrepreneur you just have to go balls in man like i assume you don't mind some coarse phrases given that you were in a heavy metal band but uh yeah you have to go all in and you have to have the support of people around you and you have to be passionate and you have to not let your precious baby die for lack of attention it has to be like getting medicine for a sick child like you wouldn't just say oh well you know they they were out so i guess i'll just go back home you're like nope someplace else right gotta whatever right gotta go knock on the pharmacist house door i've gotta i gotta get this medicine i can't get home without this medicine that's what it's got to be like but to do that you have to be vulnerable and you have to, survive people's indifference and rejection about that which you care about the most and that's uh it's not an easy process but man is it liberating to go through, Does that make sense about a way that I would suggest approaching it?
[2:18:02] Yes. Yeah, I think that's all very helpful.
[2:18:05] Good, good. Okay, is there anything else that you wanted to mention just as we close things up?
[2:18:12] No. You didn't talk about your transition between your software stuff and whatever, but that's probably, it doesn't seem to be...
[2:18:27] It's the same principle. yeah, I just, I cared about the software stuff. I cared about my employees. I cared about the work that I did to help clean up the environment and keep workers safe in dangerous factory floors, all the health and safety environmental stuff. I cared very passionately about it. And I care even more passionately about philosophy. So I'm just, you know, you get out there, you get bruised, beaten up, you get back up, you do it again and all of that. So it's, these are all the principles that I was working with if that, if that helps or if that makes sense no.
[2:18:57] That that does and i was going to say that it it's not um it probably wasn't too important of a point about how you transition since this is a lot more about uh my reactions or resentment towards let's call it the audience and um.
[2:19:13] Well and also i don't i don't do half measures like if i'm going to do podcasting i'm going to just do podcasting i mean i basically did it in my car and it was just for fun and education to the world and all of that. And then I found out that it was possible to monetize and then I remember I said, geez, if I can make $75 a day, That's, I mean, that's a huge pay cut, but I mean, that means that it's potentially viable. I mean, all you have to do is sell your first item to know that it's something that people will buy. And after that, it's just a matter of willpower. So, um, and then you just, just keep, you just, you just keep pushing and you just keep dedicating yourself to producing as crazy quality of product as you can, being as responsive to your audience's feedback and criticisms as you can. That's why I always open up the shows with, you know, feedback, questions, issues, comments, criticisms whatever it is right and i'm constantly asking donors you know how can i do it better or what can i do differently and i mean if you you really dedicate yourself to the quality products and you get as much feedback as possible and you don't take indifference and rejection personally, and you know if you had a cure to cancer and somebody was sick with cancer and they were like they didn't want to take your call would you be hurt.
[2:20:29] Uh you'd you'd react like what are you doing like you.
[2:20:35] Need this this is the thing yeah that's like you could listen to other podcasts but why what are you crazy right so uh yeah i mean so entrepreneurs is you know i hate to sort of use this kind of phraseology but for me it's like hey i have a cure for cancer and um if people are indifferent to that i think that's a real shame right i i think that's if people don't want to listen to what i have to say about bitcoin over the last five years i think that's a real shame you know they they could have made some coin bitcoin that is right but you know i'm not going to be like oh i'm so wounded it's like you know i've got a cure for cancer oh you don't want the cure for cancer even though you're sick okay um i guess i'll move on to somebody else who does it's kind of baffling but i'm not going to be like oh my god i'm so rejected and blah blah blah right did you know what i mean like that that has to be you have to believe in it that strongly.
[2:21:24] Yeah. There's one other thing, and I think this is already answered, but I think it's worth maybe saying it for your audience. So one of the things I was also really concerned about kind of before this conversation, one of the things I was mulling over was that there's so much AI slop, right? And like, how am I going to get anything through this ever-growing swamp?
[2:21:51] Well, but you use it as leverage, right? So you use the AI as leverage for the stuff that you're creating on your own. Sorry, go ahead.
[2:22:01] But you've pointed out that the way you get through it is persistence and that you know the person pushing the ai slot is just pushing just dumping it into the swamp they aren't sitting there knocking on your door every day saying this is the cool thing that you need to look at right and that sounds like the difference like that's how you get over that hurdle is that you don't just dump it in the swamp with the rest of the sludge you say no this is actually this is actually something worth your time yes.
[2:22:35] Yes it is and if you believe in it strongly enough the world will end up agreeing with you and fighting you but they won't ignore you and that's the big difference all right guys i appreciate the the call and i hope you'll keep me posted send me the song we'll we'll tack it on at the end here and uh what's the website that people can go to if they want to hear more of your music.
[2:22:58] Oh um it should be sorry let me let me pull it up real fast it should be uh tanagra at bandcamp.com but i'm double checking to make sure i got the order of that right good good and we'll yeah it's.
[2:23:15] Nice to have an outro outro song.
[2:23:23] Sorry I'll trim.
[2:23:26] This part so don't worry about it.
[2:23:27] Yeah give me just there we are let's see, TanagraBand.BandCamp.com there we are.
[2:23:38] And how do you spell TanagraBand T-A-N-A-G-R-A B-A-N-D okay TanagraBand at BandCamp.com okay fantastic so we'll put the song in the outro I hope that people will leave comments on your Bandcamp website. And I look forward to hearing how things are going and keep me posted. All right.
[2:24:02] We'll do. Thank you very much for your time.
[2:24:04] All the best. Thanks, man. Bye.
[2:24:06] Yeah. Bye. Are you ready to rock?
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