Welcome to the crazy wisdom podcast. This podcast doesn't really have a specific theme. Covers a lot of my interests, covers a lot of other people's interests. It goes into philosophy, spirituality, business, how to live a good life, many different things. Ultimately, I don't believe in having themes for the things that we do. We can categorize things, and obviously we categorize things all the time. But I like to keep things open ended. A continuous process of discovering the truth as it is on the truth is tricky because we can't really get to the truth exactly, because the truth is nonlinear. It is,

in the words of John Barr, Vicky combinatorial e explosive, even the truth of this window that I'm looking at the window itself. The glass that makes up the windows combinatorial e explosive. The cup that holds your water is combinatorial e explosive. You cannot model that cup totally in your head. You're only getting an image of it in with your eyes in your brain. That's not the actual cup itself. So this this show is a discovery of truth, wherever it may appear. By talking to people from various different fields, I've talked to artist engineers, entrepreneurs, investors, refugees of just talking to anybody who has a glimpse into the truth. On through this conversation,

through this mutual inquiry into what is true what Israel Hopefully we get to something that is helpful for to you. Now we are in a time of crisis right now, but it is in those times of crisis that we find our strength. And so this show hopefully will help you to find the strength that is resting that is deep inside of you. That is part of your birthright as a human being on find that strength so that you can get through these difficult times. Also, I want to let you know that I'm offering breath work sessions every day. I've got seven sessions a day and really excited to bring this to people. People have been really enjoying it, and it has brought strength to people and courage. And that's my that's my goal is to help you find the courage to not only survive but to thrive in the next couple years. Maybe because this virus is not going away. Usually viruses come in waves. S o. This is the first wave it will go away and then it might come back. I'm not saying that.

I know for sure it will come back, but we are in this for the long hole. So this is a marathon, not a sprint on. I want to do everything I can to help you not only survive but to thrive s O. If you are interested in that police find me on Twitter at Stewart Allsopp II. My diem's air open. I'd love to hear about what you think about this show. Also, be very, very kind of you to both subscribe to the show on Spotify stitcher iTunes, many of the major Pott flat platforms. And if you're really feeling generous, go ahead and give a review on iTunes. So join me for the breath work. Just send me a message on Twitter at Stewart Alsop II with her email,

and I'll add you to the email list where I'm sending out e mails for the schedule. I hopefully see you there. Have a great day. Welcome to the crazy wisdom podcast. Today. My guest is Matt Move Marylise. He is a serial entrepreneur, a CEO of a new help A stealth ai ai startup and an angel. Investors, Welcome to the show.

Thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here.

It's really great for those of our listeners right now. I'm looking at Matt and he's in this garage, and it's he isn't a startup garage. So he started this company. Is your company being started in that garage door?

Uh, we're actually fully remote, but, um, the company did. The start is part of the start happened here, and I started My previous company described robotics in this garage, so it has meaning for me.

Move. And what was that? Getting into the specifics of your company. What has been the biggest thing you've learned this time around, Seeing as you've done this several times?

Oh, honestly, Having the right team and the right partners just makes life so good, like me. Be honest, like it can be so frustrating having the wrong team or the long partners are compromising or even having good people. But they're not, like aligned. Um, I'm not ready to talk about publicly about what we're doing, but, you know, we started this company, my co founder and I sat down and, you know, like wrote our values and went through literally every professional experience we've had, including startups that we co founded.

Um, and look, talk about what we liked, what we didn't like about the culture of the companies. Um, you know, we did. We mapped out our strengths and weaknesses, like I'm half my strength because he added stuff, you know, um, vice versa. It turns out that my strengths are his weaknesses and his weaknesses from our strikes. So, um, like and vice versa.

So it turned out to be really good match, but we're just very intentional about building the company and also like articulating it, articulating the vision and the values and not just sort of leaving so much of that stuff on Saturday. Unspoken. And I've gotten into a lot of trouble assuming you work with people life, you know, maybe kind of knew, but didn't know super well, and then assuming that we had the same values and the same perspective, or maybe glossing over that, you know, to focus on, like, the business plan or what not and then end up down the road, whether it's six months or two years later, butting heads,

realizing we're not on the same page. Being incredibly frustrated about, you know that I have different ideas is where we have different ideas and, you know, there's lots of there's many paths to the top of the mountain. It's not that there's just one way to build a company that's successful, but it is could be incredibly miserable building a company with someone who doesn't share your values. Who doesn't? I think in the same way you know that you d'oh! Um and you can just use put so much energy into building company. Um, and he put so much of your soul and heart into At least I do that if you're not a wine with your partner, Um, you are just cruising for an emotional bruising. Um, and I'm so glad that we did the opposite this time and we just we've been super intentional about it and,

you know, on the same page we have very explicit conversations about things. Any disagreement gets surfaced very early. Um, we were honest with each other. We speak the truth, and it's just it's it's really cool. It's better and more fun than any business I've ever not just started. But like, worked at frankly, but this is my best job I've ever had.

And are you familiar with the flow state?

Um, the concept? Like where you're doing something, and you're sort of like operating yet like your peak capacity and totally, um, you know, in the zone.

Yeah. Um, how much of your day would you say that you spend in the flow estate compared with this start up versus compared with the last ones?

Oh, yeah, way more. Um, Tae like e t did 95% in this one. Um although to be perfectly honest, there's like, I think I don't think that alignment and co founder is the only thing. Um, in 2018 I got tested for a DHD, and basically, my son was having issues in school, and they were talking about this, and I I'd heard about it, right. Like everyone hears about this. But I didn't I hadn't really thought about it seriously and good.

You're taking the doctor and hearing them explain how it manifests time. Listening to them dyke was him. But I'm like, Oh, uh, okay, this sounds very familiar. These issues. Oh, that happens, huh? And so you know, the whole time I'm I'm listening to you talk about him and and thinking about him, but also thinking about myself. And, um And so in January 2018 I went,

you know, I've got test rated HD and, you know, scored off the charts or something like that very high and did a bunch things to change my life, uh, knowing that, you know, And like, I turned off all the push notifications on my phone, for example. You know, my apple watch used to be always buzzing all the time. Um, I used to be constantly, like getting distracted going and read it, and I worked out of Ah,

you know, up until that point I've been working on Amazon, and, you know, that was like a shared office, and I just could not focus all the distraction. So now you know, uh, I don't I don't have push notifications. I said meditating, prioritizing exercise, you know, um, also, quite frankly, like,

started taking like Lotos Adderall, which has been, like, amazing for me. Like I hear other people talk about negative effects, but for me, it's been, like, all awesome, and I feel so much more productive. Um, and I work from home, so there's not like a Brazilian people walking by conversations except try. I control my environment much more. Uh and so I know. But it's much,

much easier for me to be in a flow state, whereas in the past, to be honest, like being in a flow state was like, I don't know, like, it felt like you ever see, you know, like, here, like, yeah, Crow, Manion man tryingto, you know, make a fire,

you know, like trying trying to rub sticks together and then, like when you get a little spark, you have, like, you know, blow, blow, blow. You know, I don't like guns and you don't know when the fire's gonna go outside. You have to, like, ride it, you know, as long as you can.

And that's like, sort of how my productivity was before it was very, uh, is much more came in waves and I didn't have control over it. And now I Look, I'm just and jam on the regular way. I never could before

that fits. My eye was 80. I was diagnosed with a d h d. When I was think 17 and I was on medication for quite a long time. Um, eventually, Meditation helped me to replace that, um, And for me, I do a lot of these interviews remotely. And if not, when I'm back in San Francisco, usually have people come to the house on. So I don't I do most of the work out of out of my house on, and it has been just like, I don't understand how people can go into coffee shops and get worked on my there. It just doesn't make any sense whatsoever.

I don't think any of them are productive, but maybe they can be. I don't know, maybe they were brains work differently, but it it brings to mind something I haven't thought about before. Which is what is the relationship between remote work and a d. H. D. And I wonder if anybody has done any sort of ah, empirical studies on this and whether remote work does help people with a Thu. Be very curious about that. But maybe an industry anecdotal experience. What? What is the relationship between remote work and a DHD?

I mean, I think like working from home where you don't have constant distraction, you know? I mean, look, there's always the the danger that, like, you have, like, a beer in the fridge. Or like, you know, you end up, like, fucking off doing something else. Um, so it's different.

That's a different kind of danger. It requires a certain little self discipline. Um, and I think, frankly, motivation, Right. Uh, but at the same time, if you're motivated and disciplined, being able, like jam from home without distraction, I've I've never had a more productive time. Then the last, you know, frankly,

18 months. We're two years since I, you know, working from home, like after Amazon. You know, it was a really cool office, you know, with, like, a beautiful view. But it was mostly an open office, and I just I could not focus. And my boss at the time was all about having people come into the office, and I just like I tried to explain to him like, Dude,

I cannot fucking focus in this place. I'm, like, constantly distracted. Um and so it made it really hard. Now, I also wasn't, like, didn't have a DHD diagnosis and wasn't treated, so I was I just felt like a kind of like a failure, quite frankly, because I just like looking around other people over to focus and get stuffed on and seemed like happy and productive. But I wasn't, And I was like, I'm a suck. Um,

so, yeah, I I think if you have a PhD in, you're motivated. We're coming home is really good if you're not motivated. Well, I mean, that's a kind of, ah, welcome home might not be as good. But then again, go to the office. Might just fuck around as well. Like, you know, YouTube is available on reddit and afternoons available everywhere. So, um, there's always a plethora of distractions as long as you're connected to the internet.

So I was looking at your background a little bit, and I noticed that you did a few things which now make a lot of sense to me. At least be curious to hear what your what your opinion on is you were a fire jumper. I believe that's what it said. And you were also, uh, paramedic or you were you were in an ambulance or something like that. It does seem like they're high rush kind of like environments where there's always stimuli coming at you. Do you think you chose those like, subconsciously because of the factor?

Um, I say it Sze contributing So I worked as an e m t on 9 11 ambulance in South Central Los Angeles. Um, I fought forest fires for the U. S. For service for three seasons and my last season. I was on a hot shot crew called the Mo Doc Inter agency hotshots from traveled all around, um, to the country fighting big crazy fires. And then for about five or six years, I worked as, ah no one paramedic in New York City. Um, so, uh, actually, if I'm like being really honest,

you know, growing up my mom, uh, my mom's bipolar and you know, for her she always talked about how she's very so she's like a a Latin immigrant from South America, Argentina, and should always talk about how, you know, got like, her fate was in God's hands. And getting out of bed was like and, you know, just being to get out of bed was like a successful day for her, And I grew up really terrified that I was gonna be like her and have, you know, end up,

uh, so fragile, you know? And I think, frankly, now I have a more than he wants. Take on it, you know, as an older, maybe wiser are kind of, uh, more more critical and thoughtful of my parent's relationship. But so I was deathly afraid of this. So I was always putting myself Yeah, because she was also this kind of personally, there's any stress applied to her.

She would kind of collapse. Um, and I and I was very afraid of that being my fate. And so I put myself in a lot of very stressful kind of extreme situations as a way of proving to myself that I was not gonna be, you know, I wasn't gonna suffer the same fate. Um, you know, there's a lots of different variations and sort of mental illness and bipolar disorder and what that actually looks like but growing up, like my model was my mom on. And, you know, I never I didn't know that, like Winston Churchill was bipolar. You know, Steve jobs from back home,

too. And so I just had this one role model that frankly, was like pretty negative. She's a good person, like, very loving except right. But, like, I was always super ambitious, and and so, um, that, I think, was the drove me a lot. Now, I think the fact that I'm really enjoying those activities and they played to my you know,

my strengths was you know, I think more than 80 each decide. Um, and like, frankly, there's kind of a window, you know, you're early 28 your twenties, and then, like early thirties, one, like, sort of you can become bipolar, I guess. You know, uh,

and that window is kind of passed for me. And so I feel like I passed the test on, like, you know, I've proven to myself that I am who I want to be. And that's not this, Like driving in security, but for a lot of my twenties, you know, that was a driving in security. Um, but at the same time, like honestly, like I wanted adventure. I wanted excitement like my dad was. This is I mean,

he just turned 90 but he's this amazing character who grew up in, like, a one room adobe hut in New Mexico and then, like you know, was part of the oppressed underclass of New Mexico. The Hispano says he called them, um and, you know, moved a l A when he was 16. Because he was like an angry, fatherless child who was being oppressed and, you know, he almost shot somebody in the face. And he was like, Okay, I want to get out of here.

You know? I'm gonna go crazy. I'm gonna kill somebody if I stay in this place. And so you went to East L A. To the projects and like he was Ah, you see the movie Wedding Crashers? He was a kid Ceneta crasher. Okay, Yeah. Uh, and then, like he worked pipeline construction is like the military didn't have to, like, wear a uniform. You know, uh,

I don't know how you get that, but he liked talked his way out of like, having toe wear a uniform on the military during the Korean War. And then, like, you know what? The college and community college and grad school U C l A. And got a PhD ended like crazy shit and, like education and activism and started with Chicano studies programs in the country and that my older brother is like my oldest brother. You know, he was one of the top rock climbers in the country in the nineties. My other brother dropped out of college to mountain bike, over the Andes and through the Amazon. Um, you know. So this is kind of the what I grew up with,

you know, like my brother telling stories of, like, getting attacked by killer bees in the Amazon and like, getting, you know, fighting off kidnappers while being, you know, smuggled into Peru. You know, um and like so the idea that I would, you know, work on an ambulance in South L A or fight forest fires was, like, pretty tame, you know, Or at least it was like in the normal distribution of my house, you know, if not the normal distribution of everyone else.

The question you bring up about because I have a lot of other people have it is just like for me, it was with both parents, like, wanting to be not be like either of them and kind of over correcting to the other side. And it brings in a lot of other stuff of like, It's the cycle of generations where you where one swings too much to the opposite way and then the other way. And then there's all this random stuff and I wonder it like it seems like there's an element of progress in there as well, because it also seems that just like a generational level, each generation that comes essentially fight back fights against the tradition that has been imposed on them by the generation previous to them, and then eventually becomes the new tradition on, then gets fought back by their kids. Um, what do you think about

that whole cycle? That wasn't me? Like I I grew up pretty much idolizing my father, and, um, you know, actually, the There's a book that I read when I was 19 I was living in Montana. It was my first season fighting fire for the Forest Service and, ah, it's called Lonesome Dove. And there's this quote that opens the book. It's something like what Our fathers lived. We dream what we live. They dreamed, you know, um,

and I think you know, for me, I I grew up with all these stories, and I wanted my life to be is interesting and cool is my dad's. Um and, you know, I think he did all that stuff, so he could have, you know, like the educational material advantages that we did like. It was like we grew up like a very middle class. Use a commune college professor My mom didn't work, like was not. You know, we generally had more education and less money than the people around us, but,

um, you know, But compared to, you know, growing up, being born in 1929 in a one room dirt floor Adobe hut, New Mexico, when his father died before I was born were dramatically, dramatically better off mom than than him. And so, yeah, I I didn't I wasn't reacting against I was more, frankly, I wanted to keep up with, um, him And what what he'd done.

Um and so going back to the a d H d thing. What? Like if you were to describe what goes on in your brain as you're experiencing a th g recognizing that that might be a difficult thing because it's very intimate to you. And so it's very difficult to, like, extrapolate out. But how would you explain it to another person what it means to have a DHD or what it feels like. We're even. Maybe what is the emotional flavor of a DHD? And if you want to explain that term, I can explain it.

Um, yeah. I don't know how they're people's brains work. Um, I see, Like, I come up with lots of ideas all the time. Um, sometimes they're fucking crazy. Sometimes they're funny. And, uh, adolescence, um, like, for the 15 year old boy is still strong. And me,

I'd say, Um, but for me, like, idea, generation is never been a problem at all. Um, I have way more ideas than I could possibly act on And one of my things, You know, uh, that's one of my challenges and things that, like, I think I've gotten better at. I mean, honestly, though,

I've actually been pretty good at it. I have always had lots of ideas. I'm just choosing amongst the different ideas and cool concepts I have on things I want to do and things that get excited by, uh has been the thing that, you know is the big challenge for me And like staying focused. Um like I have a Yeah, I love one of things. I love about being entrepreneurs that I always I feel like I'm at the steep edge of the learning curve. You know, I think there's some entrepreneurs have done, you know, kind of one version of the same thing over and over and over again for their career. I am definitely not. You know, uh, I've I.

You know, in 2008 when I started my first company, I was still working, you know, as a paramedic in New York City. Freelancing is a journalist from New York Times. You know, I had no idea what the hell I was doing. Ended up building a crowd sourced video transcription service, you know, with a bunch of like, aye, aye, that would manage it. Man's them that I started on demand booze delivery company that I started that turned into, like,

a weekly grocery delivery company. Um, I had a bunch of other random projects that went nowhere, uh, or false starts. And I'm starting a company called Dish Craft Robotics That makes dishwashing robots for restaurants. But we sell is a service. Um, that's done really well. And you know, like at the time. What business did I have, like building a hardware company like a robe? Like a legitimate about robotics company. Like Moses stuff I've done like I've been completely unqualified to do. Um,

and actually going back, Thio kind of getting every conversation, one of the values of our company. And the main thing we look for we hire people is intellectual fearlessness. You know what? We actually look for? People who have done things that they're on paper, completely unqualified to do people who have punched above their weight class. Um, because I think, you know, that's many of the best, most creative minds. They don't. You know, they do shit that they shouldn't be able to do on paper,

but they figure it out and they go for it. And, you know, I think one of the things that a lot of Silicon Valley companies, I think rightly get dinged for, You know, it was kind of the model culture, and, you know, Okay, we're just looking for people from like, uh, m I t CME you Berkeley. Whatever. Whatever. Um,

and you know, I always look for who's the person that punched above their weight class. That didn't Okay, maybe they didn't. They had lots of, you know, they didn't have many advantages growing up, or they had some actually, important disadvantages, actually, for the delta, between what? Someone sort of like station, you know, assumed station in life is gonna be based on where they grow up or like there. So,

like, birth conditions as it were, um, or educational level or whatever. And then how much did they you know, What was the delta between what was expected of them versus what they did and the greater the Delta. To me, that's the bigger indicator of count, like someone who's smart but grew up in like but wealthy Northeast family went to the best private schools, went toe. You know, the best college, you know, then got a job at Google. That person's probably smart. Um,

but they didn't, You know, the delta between what was suspected to them and what they accomplished was, like, pretty low. And the best people are out liars. The best people break the pattern. And that's what I look for. And that's, you know, we're all I think, biased. Um, in sort of a narcissistic way to look for people who look like us. And so that's my bias is I always look for people who broke in, you know,

like people like my dad, you know, like, who just complete out liars you punched way above his weight class hung. And those people I admire the most is people I love hanging out with and working with, you know, and and having the frankly privilege of employing, you know, that's those are the best people in my in my opinion. What?

Why? Why do those outlined? Like, Why did somebody like your dad figure out a way? I'll give example cause I found somebody here in meditation who grew up like an absolute poverty. And then Waas selling empanada is just to survive. And then he eventually likes got this scholarship for an American University. And it was one of the first scholarships in Colombia and then made his way to, uh, university. Learned English there, Andi, just like through this one stroke of luck, like I had this whole like pathway that opened up to him, which then he then he is that it sounds very similar to your father's story. Actually, like created a huge self social health problem program in Massachusetts that end up being one of the largest in the country and,

like did all these other things toe help people that we're in the type of poverty that he was in when he was a Columbia. It's just like it seems almost like magical somehow the set of conditions that allowed because, like most people, don't do that like most people in Colombia, like are just are stuck in this cycle of poverty and there is no way to escape. Why is it that some are lucky and others are not? Order? Some are have this kind of motivation toe Get out.

Oh, I don't pretend to have, like, the entire answer to that. I don't I don't know, Ivan, I speculate. And I believe that it's some combination of luck. Like luck is very real. Um, it's a very riel aspect. And you know, I think another part, though, and winning the genetic lottery in terms of like the specific DNA you get is part of look right, Um, but I also think at the end of the day,

it boils down to self belief. And if you believe. Did you deserve more then what the world has handed you And you believe in yourself enough that you're willing that like you, you deserve better than that. And you can do more. Um, then, like that's prerequisite to breaking the pattern. Right? And actually, that's a lot of what my father worked on. Um, you know, he in, like, the late seventies,

uh, in the seventies and eighties, probably 60 stealing that wasn't around for it. But, um, a lot of what he did was work on self esteem and self image. Uh, and he did it in the Chicano context. You know, he was a community college professor in East L. A. He said they came to college and, you know, primarily serving, you know, immigrants,

you know, and and poor people, you know, he had a problem. We taught ex convicts how to read, and his whole thing was all about making helping people improve their self image in their self belief. Because he taught anatomy and physiology was like a wieder course for you. No jobs in the health care and life sciences, right? Like you can't be a nurse. You can't be a doctor. you can't be a physician's assistant unless you passed anatomy and physiology, and he was not a softy. Um, yeah, he's He's,

like an old school, like, you know, liberal. But he's not a softie. So he was never gonna, like, lower his standards. And so what he did is he tried Thio, as he would put it, brainwash people, um, to believe in themselves that they could do this hard thing that was hard and that they have a lot of self doubt about, you know, that triggered a lot of self doubt. Um,

any time you do something that you suck out, you doubt yourself and most of the things that you do that our new you're gonna suck out in the beginning. Um, and he saw overcoming. Overcoming that, you know, um was if you could do something hard and succeed. That was the foundation of self belief. And I I internalize that on a pretty deep level, like you have to believe in yourself. And I think, like, you know, they now called growth mindset, you know, like,

uh that's that's so important. You know, I think that's that's part of it, you know, I do think there is some people for reasons that I can't explain, have an ambition, uh, and dr that is incredibly powerful. And they do stuff that, you know, It's not just okay, I can do something like I will. I must, uh I don't know where that comes from exactly, but I think it's It's a ambition, plus self belief.

Um, is the magic formula, you know, uh, you know, I think, plus, like, some degree of risk taking, right, if you If you want to punch above your weight class if you want to outperform your circumstances of birth, there's no safe path for you look like there is no safety. And you have to be willing to take risks intellectual, emotional, often financial, uh,

to be able to achieve what you believe you deserve. Uh, and and I I see that a lot. You know, I think, uh, a lot of ways my dad was a risk caper. If they're not financially Cubism the union, you know, like a Greek god professor working union. He didn't. You know, he was never a big financial risk taker, But, you know, he was a depression baby. So, uh, different perspective there.

So did you. And what about the importance of role models? Did your father have any role models that ever that kind of showed him a way out or had any specific influences towards kind of opening up that self belief in his head?

Um, kind of, uh, to be honest, like his father died before he was born, Um, he his uncle Dan was blind. He'd been playing with dynamite as a kid and and, uh, blinded him on. He would take care of him. And then, you know, I guess my his grandpa, my great grandpa, was like, literally like a popular,

you know, he was like an old school cowboy, you know, like who, like, done cattle drives, you know, from, like, Texas to Chicago. Um, about that. Like, you know, I think he had, like,

an abusive stepfather who was toughest nails and tell stories of, uh, escaping in the middle of the night, you know, on the train from this guy. But, you know, they would. He is like old school grandpa talk, but he would talk about, you know, they would buy shock in shells on credit from the general store, and then shoot blackbirds. And then he was like, six or seven years old, and there was like,

uh, they lived in Oklahoma. And, uh, in a town that's now at the biggest Superfund site United States was the guy was a lead and zinc miner. You know, a lead miner. If you can think of, like, one of the worst jobs possible and enter the winter, they would sometimes shoot a bird, and it landed like one this scum ponds on. And then they'd stripped naked and have to, like, break through the ice to go fish out the this like Blackbeard or Crow or something like that, Just like

when a rat

in order to eat it, Yeah, that was dinner. And I was, like, the only thing they could do it. And so I mean, I don't know. My dad talks about how that's the guy who, like Tom, would be a man. I taught him to be tough. Um, So there those are role models, but I don't know my uses, not liars like he, you know,

he existed. He went to U C L A. Before there was affirmative action, right? Like I looked at his yearbook from a 1962 or something like that. It's like ham in a black guy like the only two brown people in the entire graduating class. That's it. There was nobody else. Um, and it's not clear to me that he had, you know, you didn't have a father. He was the man of the house. You know, I'm, like,

sort of Latin culture. Um, you know, the oldest male becomes the man of the house. And so maybe with some of that, I don't know, But he's an outlier. He statistically he should exist, right? But you did what he does in his music.

Yeah, this is a thing for me because I've never experienced it. Is this kind of intense poverty? I'm around it a lot more here in Colombia than I would be in us, Although in San Francisco there's its own type of extreme poverty. Um, but it's just like all of the attention for most people goes towards as individuals mostly goes towards the rich and successful and like, we know who they are on Ben. But when it comes to poor individuals as statistics, we pay attention a lot to them. But as like individuals. We don't pay that much attention to him, and we just I don't know what it's like to grow up and actually have, like, absolutely nothing and have to go shoot blackbirds in order to eat. Um, and just like that,

experience is such a different experience than what I grew up with. I don't really have a question here, but it's been on my mind a lot since I've been in Colombia and after interviewing this guy who made it out because his story was very challenging and it's like then that's That's most people's experience on the planet. It's like, Is that, um, But then all of the attention goes to the story of the individuals who have power and money and all this other things. What do you

think about that? I mean, I think, and I learned this lesson. Fighting force fires. Hey, the thing that makes humans unique amongst all creatures on Earth is our ability to adapt toe like basically any situation right? And, you know, on one level it's like what underlies the hedonic treadmill of like, the more stuff you have more success. You have, you know, like you just very quickly get accustomed to it. Um, and so the hedonic treadmill is oftentimes scene is like a bad thing, right?

Like you get more material goods, your happiness increases temporarily, and then it goes back to your baseline happiness. Oh, but I think that the reverse is also true. If you grew up like dirt poor and especially if everyone around you is also dirt for then it's normal, right? Like you grow like somebody. Last week it was like on bipolar. Mom, there's a month of my mom. You know, it was it was like I did. I don't have any frame of reference, you know, that's different.

Um, and I think humans, everything anything, weaken anything to become normalized, right? Like think of the people who, like, went through, you know, like Doc cow. And like the Nazi concentration camps, it became normal. And they survived. And it's unconceivable, inconceivable toe. Two people living in modern America with its comforts and whatnot,

but like those were, like, not extraordinary people going into those situations, right? Like they were just like normal people that got flung into something fucking crazy. Ah, a lot of the incredible men of the dive demand them survived and, you know, got through it. And it was traumatic. But they're a bit like, you know, wake up every day and put one foot in front of the other. Um, and so I think in my research on the subject, people mostly,

like if people, if you're exposed to people who are in the same economic situation, is you, uh, primarily, like you don't complaint, you know, it's it's very normal. It's only when you get exposed to vast differences and wealth, you know, and but your comfort that you get, uh, Ingrid, I'm sad. And it becomes the poverty of your situation becomes a parent, and you become resentful for me.

My personal experience with this it has been burned in my mind. Huh? I was I was fighting forest fires on this hotshot who and we were in North Central Washington in a town called Leavenworth on this big, crazy fire. And I remember we got there on the first night. We didn't. You know what? You just camp out everywhere on, and there is, like, this big meadow in the middle of this canyon of the valley. I was like, Oh, Yeah, it was like fluffy grass s sleep on, like,

soft grass. So nice. And the crew's super kind of the crew boss, Greg Keller was like, All right, men, it's too noisy in the metal here. We're gonna go found a spot. We're gonna go to the gravel pit gravel pit, like, you know, I was at least thinking like, a little small gravel, but no, it was actually a mining quarry was like a rock quarry. So there was just,

like, big fucking rocks that were like, I don't know, like, shoe sized rocks. And so I slept on rocks for three or four nights, and I remember just laying there, being so fucking miserable being, like, Why the fuck am I sleepy on rocks? This is so you have a little half inch therm arrest. But other than that, it's about fucking rocks. And then he was the fourth or fifth night. Um, we got reassigned and we got helicoptered into the back country.

And I remember that night I laid down in just regular dirt and I fuck you not. It was the most comfortable like night. I like the most comfortable bed I've ever slept on in my entire life. The level of, like, sheer joy of just sleeping and dirt after sleeping for five nights in a rock quarry like on rocks was like, made me so happy. And I remember catching myself, you know, I was 24 at the time. Um, yeah, 23. I remember catching myself like, Oh, um,

just so hee Like 10 12 seconds later, I was like, Dude, you are like having orgasmic sleep here, but because you're on dirt remembers moment like you are so happy right now and you're not in the bed. You know, you're not a plush anything you're just It was like some sand like it was like I was dirt next to a river and so it was like, natural. I don't know if you know, like, that is really soft sand that, like, is next to like a river. And I slept there and I was just so happy. And I always have tried to remember that moment, you know,

and bring back to it like, bring myself back to it whenever I like, complain or get frustrated with whatever B s you know, First world problem. I'm deal dealing with because, you know, like we all can adapt, like that's what that's what we are. That's what makes us unique. That's why we kind of taken over the world. Anything become can become normal to basically anybody. And once you realize that, I think it can unlock a lot for you when you realize I will get accustomed to anything because that's kind of what I'm programmed to do. Is it gonna be, um and so I imagine wherever your circumstances of birth, that's normal to you and it doesn't feel,

you know, it doesn't feel weird. Um, especially if everyone isn't nursing situation. Right. Uh, and I think this is kind of one of the things that's like, you know, special about Silicon Valley is you. You kind of come to this place you want if you do it right. A cohort of entrepreneur friends. We're all kind of doing the same thing, you know, all going to the same struggles. And everyone else thinks it's crazy, you know?

But it's normal amongst your cohort in your peers. Um, and I think you know, and that makes it a lot easier, even if you don't realize it at the time. Um, and I think that people have hardest or when the ones that are like alone and they're the only ones doing this thing, but they don't have a community that they don't have a pure group that's going through the same sort of struggles and experiences, et cetera.

And that's actually I've been finding a lot of those people in Latin America as I've been doing these interviews of people building companies outside of Silicon Valley. And it is really, really difficult particular because the investment situation, because in in San Francisco and Silicon Valley, you confined investors who understand what it takes two to invest in a start up company. But and, ah, Latin America, you confined investors who know what it takes to invest in a real estate business or, ah, large commercial enterprise, or just like things that are not at all applicable to start ups. And you also you don't really have a peer of people, although that's becoming more and more common is to find appear particular on the Internet. So that has been finding a lot of that here, which

is interesting, I think, actually, like finding your finding your tribe building community is one of the best ways to, like, manage your mental health on like we as humans are. We're we're social animals were tribal animals, right? And having people who are going through something similar, whatever you're going through, right, like that's powerful. That's important, right in the military, like they don't they don't ever put one man in a foxhole, you know, like it's always too,

because as long as you have somebody else, you know that, like, kind of anything is bearable. Um, especially if you feel bonded to the person and feel like you owe the person something like We're capable of so much. Um, you know, so much more than I think any of us thinks we are. You know so much That's like, so inconceivable to us that we can go through just creating the right circumstances for success. And I believe having peers and having friends with the right people around you, like you can kind of basically do anything, Um, because people and enabling each other. And you know, as much as we might focus on physical discomfort, I think all the negatives of any experience are dramatically magnified. And when you're in isolation. So

this is it. This goes into something I've been thinking a lot about, which is that our the species that we descended from were on all fours and they're most vulnerable part bull parts of their body, their throat and their bellies were all pointed towards the ground. So meaning that somebody would have to go underneath them in order to attack him. But we, as human beings, have essentially made of this trade off where we're now upright in our our bellies and are most vulnerable parts. And now it's completely out in the open if anybody wants to hurt us. But in exchange, we've essentially we've built this community and we all, you know, I imagine back in the day we would have been around a fire. Um, and everybody's bellies would have been facing the fire, and everybody's minds would be in, uh,

mouths being pointed towards each other and essentially creating this like circle of people basically, and that really is the benefit. The the trade off that we made in order to take off over the world is just like this ability to connect mine with another mind, create tools which then help us to take over the world. Thanks.

Yeah. I mean, like, you know, uh, if you're hunting with spear, you know, your unless it's like for fish or something like that. You're not doing that alone. You know, um, like, a small group of people can accomplish incredible things. Incredible, credible thing. Especially when armed with with modern technology.

So last five minutes, 56 minutes. Ah, I'd like to take There's one question that came up earlier, and it's about tough love. And maybe those two questions I could ask, like, what is your relationship to tough love? And what is the relationship between self belief and tough love is tough left on element of self belief. Or is it? We're gonna have tough, tough love from those around you in order to believe in yourself.

Yeah. I mean, in my perspective, uh, you like you give tough love to people that you believe in, um and you can accept it if you believe in yourself. Um, if you don't have that, I think it's really hard. Thio how people be tough on you if you don't believe in yourself, right? And to me, the number one value if the number one thing we look for it only attracting talent is intellectual fearlessness. The number one thing I care about inside our company is speaking the truth and being really honest. Um, and you can on Lee be can only receive difficult truths is their separate from your self belief, right?

Like the reason we let and we want people to lie to us is that we think that it will damage our ego. It'll damage yourself. Believe because your self belief is frail. Um, but if there's shared trust, if if I believe in you, if I trust you and you believe in yourself, I can tell you something like, Hey, this thing we thought is working. Yeah, it's wrong. Hey, this assumption we had, yes, completely fucked.

Like we can have that conversation. And it's not about attacking you as a person or saying like you suck as a person. But you have to have the confidence on the self belief to separate out your specific performance, your specific ideas from your ego on yourself, you know, and people that are insecure. If you tell them an uncomfortable truth, we'll take that. Isn't it a little translate. That is, too. I suck you say? You know, your idea sucks. Then that must mean that I suck and you're saying I sock and so I can't accept that. Therefore,

I can't accept this. You know this idea and then you to counterattack. Um, you know, and so I think that those two things are are are deeply late. Like if you love it. If you love somebody and that that person loves themselves, you can push them. You can tell them they're wrong. You can speak the truth. But if a person doesn't love themselves and you don't and does not feel loved by you, then you're gonna have a very hard time being honest because that will automatically trigger. You know, this this oughta gnomic stress response in this fear response. But it's in the conditions of love and self love and self belief that we could be the most honest and do the best work of our careers. Because if you don't embrace reality,

you can't do anything great in this world. You can't do shit that matters unless you embrace the truth. Wholehearted the fearlessly. You can't do anything like not in a startup, maybe in some political environment where it's just about, you know, appeasing some group of people. But when it comes to like actually making something and selling stuff, making something that people who don't know you and don't care about your feelings, use and want the truth has to be the foundation and so many people. So many companies, so many politicians, so many leaders fail because they don't No one tells him the truth. You know, like the truth is like the first thing to go in a hierarchical relationship. You know,

like truth decays rapidly in any social structure where that you know where there's a hierarchy and you want, you know, there's a boss, and the more power you get, more power, you accrue. The more important you are, the last truth you get unless you actively put energy into the system. Unless he actively demanded push for they tried to expose it, you know, surface descent. Um, what's wrong with this idea? You have to be paranoid. The more power you get, the more important you are,

the more paranoid you need to be. That the truth. You know that you're not hearing the truth Um, yeah, that's one of the I think scariest and craziest things about leadership is that you start off in your nobody and everyone tells you the truth because you don't matter once you start to matter, Then people start lying to you. And you didn't ask for it? Probably, you know, But it happens, right? Like you hire people, they don't want to upset you. They don't want to piss off the boss. They don't want to tell the boss that, like,

Well, that I'd be we had. Yeah, it's pretty stupid, actually. You know, it's not working, you know, like people try to do the stats, you know, and then you accrue more power, More success. You know that you have more people who want to kiss your ass like the supplicant. See, you know, like on lies,

that's that's and that's inevitable. Like that's, like, almost like a force like entropy. Unless you apply energy of the system. Unless you demand the truth, you will not get it. It will decay around you. Um, and what success you have will probably be It has been a result of truth. You know, that was spoken when you didn't matter, you know, like, uh and, um,

you know, but invariably the market, you know, reality hits us all. Um, you know, you couldn't find that the hard way. You know, when your bubble gets gets burst or you can, you know, find it the also hard but frankly easier way Over the long term, when the people around you you surround yourself with speak truth to each other,

it also could just be like a slow decay into meaninglessness. As nobody tells you the truth, because you I'm sure some part of that person who's now has power senses that no one is telling them the truth on. So it's just kind of meaningless, like there's nothing really going on. Basically,

yeah. Um, when I was 25 I had this crazy experience where I won the biggest journalism award in the country for conscience, and I was I dropped out of Berkeley, and then I was going now back to smack in school at Columbia, And, uh, it was just, like, kind of bonkers, like New Conservative Journalism Award. And I ended up like on stage with Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes. Uh, just hilarious like, because I didn't even have, like, cable TV,

and my dad was there. It was in another story. But, um, every time this guy Marty Singer Hman, who's the guy who ran it, he had been the publisher of the New York Post in the nineties. And so, you know, uh, uh, lieutenant of Rupert Murdoch, Um, it was there when the Fox News Channel was getting idea tid and created and, you know, he was a mentor to me.

I've never been around people with that kind of power and privilege, like I was working as a ghetto now one street paramedic in the Bronx, you know, like in housing projects and whatnot. And one of the things that he told me was that people like Rupert Murdoch crave people who tell them the truth so rare and that the powerful Yeah, the most powerful people struggle and are always looking for people who be honest with them because it's so rare. And I thought that was interesting. Neck I'd never thought of the world from that position of power. I'd always been in a position of weakness. You always playing cards, you know, with a weak hand they never thought of the world what it might be like to be in a position of power. And you're the kind of problems that you have to deal with. And then, you know, my first startup.

You know, when you have, like, 9 10 12 maybe 12 people. And I saw how the truth decayed. I saw how sometimes running that I walked in the room and people back talking with someone coming, Be quiet, you know, And we were doing lots of dumb shit, and not that no one was saying it, but I believe that the people at the front lines had more knowledge, and we're aware of problems. Debt. I only found out later, and I saw that gap starting to form. And it was crazy cause like,

just a year or so before I had been, you know, three guys in a garage and, you know, like in a crappy apartment someplace and like, yeah, there was no there was technically hierarchy. But there's no rule hierarchy, right? But I you know, it was a big lesson for me. How quickly, you know, with hierarchy with power once like people, salaries are on the line. And listen that like they believe things.

They become afraid to tell them to you because they think it might upset you and then, you know, like their job. But you might lose a job or something like that or whatever. Um, and you know, as I've gone and, you know, work for other people And what my I've seen that myself. You know, Uh, I even saw that Amazon, like in 2017 you know, Amazon. I was an Amazon Web service. Eight of us.

There's this big push for, like, machine learning, and they're behind this framework called Mxnet, and they made a big bet on it. But, like, no one wanted to use it like no one was using it like tense. Google's tensorflow had, like, clearly won the day, But we're like pushing it and pushing it. And it was just like guys dumb like Like no one is like almost no one is using this like, Why are we? We're supposed to be a customer obsessed organization, but it's not like no one was being honest about the reality,

you know, and eventually they figured it out. But I am always. I imagined that, like Andy Jassy the guy who's your C o V if you asked like No, it just felt like no one was being honest, saying like, Yeah, we lost this one already. Why are we fighting this fight? You know, like this is just a waste of time and money, and we're like, being anti customer by trying to push this. I want to say garbage. I mean,

might be fine, whatever, but like this thing that they don't want, um, and a lot of resource is and talent was poured into and it was it wasn't like it was just like it was an experiment. Tried, he failed. It was like it was very clear on the ground that I know a lot of this thing, but we were putting tons of effort into pushing it, and and I, you know, I just stuck with me here in this organization where Amazon is traditional, like, very well known as like a pretty ruthless culture, you know, people don't like you don't worry about hurt each other's feelings.

Amazon. It's a kind of a pretty emotionally brutal place to work. But even there there was this fluff of bullshit, you know, around this that all the people, all the people who had my job at the front. But you know, what's this garbage, you know? But then, like, there's all this corporate speak about, you know, and I'm pushing it and and it was and I was, like, kind of the asshole like you like,

Hey, what about the fact that, like, no one wants this, you know, and Ah, that was just didn't compute. Um and you know, so whether it's a small start up or, you know, a giant asked me in company like, you know, Amazon, like the truth can erode And listen, you're not losing a lot of money and making a lot of expensive mistakes and wasting worse your time because, like you can get,

you know, hopefully you can get more money in the future, but you can't really buy more time, and you can waste a lot of your life doing dumb shit by not having, you know, a grasp on the truth on by being surrounded by people who aren't being honest with you, you know which ultimate comes down to people not being honest. We either with themselves or with you.

We'll call this has been an absolute pleasure. How can people find out more about what you're doing? Um, or about you?

Yeah. You can follow me on Twitter at Matt Morales. Uh, m i r e L Yes, Matt, with two teas. Oh, are my website Pamela's dot com. I blogged occasionally a most since one of these days. I rarely check Facebook almost very, really. Check Instagram. That's the main thing. And, uh, you know, we'll be talking more about our company and what we're doing in the you know,

uh, the middle of the year, You'd probably hear a lot more, but yeah, for now, that's part of the best place.

Cool. Well, thank you so much for coming on the show.

All right? No problem. Did. Thanks for having me.

Hope you enjoyed this episode. We'll be publishing episodes every Monday, Wednesday and Friday in the morning. If you did enjoy this episode, please find us on iTunes. Spotify stitcher many of the major podcasting platforms and go ahead and give us a review and also subscribe Missouri's I'm on Twitter at Stewart also II come join the conversation as WeII on. Funny thing about truth is that I can't really put it into words because every time you put the truth into words created linear narrative out of something that is non linear, the truth is nonlinear. It's not. It's really recognize the truth right now. Mine wouldn't know what to do it. Well, beauty. It's something that has been on our linguistic capability to represent. But that doesn't mean that the language isn't helpful. Language can point us in the direct right direction, but it's it's not.

It's not the truth itself. So come join this collective inquiry into the truth. Find me on Twitter at Stewart. Also, I I described to the podcast share the podcast with friends. Most people don't have the ability to let go of this linguistic understanding of the way the world works and just aim for the truth regardless of what the language tells us. So I think what I'm doing with this show is necessary for us because a CZ we enter this stage of uncertainty way are most definitely entering an age of uncertainty. Way do. It's really, really important. Stop paying attention to what the mind is telling us doesn't mean to say that mine doesn't have its place. One of one of the ways the feelings. We use our actual senses. We can check our intuition with other people because sometimes the intuition tells us the wrong thing as well. Sometimes the intuition is wrong, so we can't. We can't rely on anyone tool to get us there. So come join the show. Find us on iTunes. Find us on Twitter at Stewart also II come join this inquiry for truth.