Cyan Banister Resilience, Radical Accountability & Discovering Magic

(0:00 - 0:06) Coming up in this episode. I had a estranged relationship with my mother. And after that, I ended up homeless. (0:07 - 0:14) She started kicking me out of the house. Sometimes I would run away because the conditions were so bad or we wouldn't have any food. She would disappear for weeks. (0:15 - 0:22) Sometimes I would sleep under a bridge. There was a period of time that I had lived in a squat with a bunch of other squatters. I was part of what you would call a street gang. (0:22 - 0:30) You have to do that for protection. All my dreams for the future of what I would become were shattered. To me, I was going to be dead by the time I was 30. (0:30 - 0:46) Now, funny thing is I never ever thought I would be a venture capitalist. You are now listening to the Year for the Truth podcast, hosted by Joel Rafiti and Yerasimos. What's up, everybody? Welcome back to Here for the Truth. (0:47 - 0:59) I'm Joel Rafiti. Got my co-host Yerasimos with me as always. And today, we are joined by the most interesting, unique, incredible human being. (1:00 - 1:06) This is one of my favorite conversations that we've ever had. Definitely one of my favorites, if not my favorite. Sorry to everyone else. (1:06 - 1:33) We love you too, but this was incredible. Yeah, and I don't want to say too much because I want to leave the element of surprise for what you're about to hear and for this story that unfolds. With Cyan over the course of this podcast together, it's just a double dose of a recognition of the inherent magic that exists in all things. (1:33 - 1:48) When we choose to take personal responsibility and personal power for our lives, the most amazing things can unfold. And yeah, I don't know if I should say more than that. I think that's it, man. (1:48 - 1:57) I think the episode speaks for itself. And I'm looking forward to introducing our audience to this incredible human being. Yeah, absolutely. (1:57 - 2:05) We talk about the hero's journey, like this is it. This is it right here. So enjoy this episode. (2:07 - 2:26) Cyan Bannister, a renowned angel investor and entrepreneur with an extraordinary journey. Starting from humble beginnings, Cyan built her career from the ground up, becoming one of Silicon Valley's most respected early stage investors. She was a partner at Founders Fund and has made successful early investments in companies like SpaceX, Uber, Postmates, and much more. (2:27 - 2:40) Known for her contrarian thinking and unique perspective on technology trends, Cyan continues to identify and support innovative founders who are building the future. Cyan, thank you so much for being here for the truth. Yeah, thank you for having me. (2:40 - 2:44) I'm excited to be here. Yeah, us too. It's an absolute pleasure. (2:45 - 2:51) You caught my attention when I first came across you listening to Tim Ferriss's podcast. I think it was walking to the gym. It was like 5.30 AM. (2:52 - 3:01) Hearing your story really made me emotional. You brought some tears out of me, just the depth of that. And that's something that I'd really like to focus on today. (3:01 - 3:10) A big part of our podcast is the hero's journey. And your hero's journey certainly is incredible. So I'm happy to spend as much time as we need to here. (3:10 - 3:39) But I guess to kick this one off with all first time guests, the question is, what were some of those major rites of passage in your life? Some of the most catalyzing moments that crystallized this path that you're walking down now? I'm happy for you to start wherever you feel called as early as you like. And we can just start fleshing it out from there. Yeah, I mean, some of my earliest memories that really shaped me, I grew up on the Navajo reservation. (3:41 - 3:51) And I was unusual there because I'm a white person. And I was a minority. So there was only a handful of us. (3:52 - 4:17) And the reason why that's important, you know, is a lot of people don't understand what it feels like to be a minority, to be other. And to have everyone point that out about you consistently every day. And to wonder what's wrong with you? Like, why were you born different? And if anything, you could do about it. (4:17 - 4:43) Which in my case, in everyone's case, you cannot. And so I had to develop a resilience towards it. And I had to develop an understanding of it, which is why were they treating me that way? Why were they talking about me that way? What did history have to do with it? And what do I have to do with it? And so I think that really shaped me from a very, very early age. (4:43 - 4:51) I became an observer. And I started being quiet. You know, I was very quiet from a very young age. (4:52 - 5:00) I didn't start talking until I was five. I was nonverbal. And, you know, part of it was because I believe that words have power. (5:01 - 5:10) And that when people speak, they don't understand the power that words have. Because I would witness that people would say things. And then all of a sudden, stuff would move, stuff would happen. (5:11 - 5:24) Wills would get engaged. And so I just wanted to reserve my words and be very judicious about them. And so everybody thought that I was mute and couldn't speak. (5:25 - 5:36) And, you know, the terminology used back then was slow. You know, those are the words that were thrown around, retarded. You can't use those words today as much. (5:36 - 5:43) But those were the words that were thrown around. And I understood everything that everyone was saying around me. That wasn't the issue. (5:44 - 5:58) The issue was that I just didn't trust words. You know, I just knew their power. And when I started speaking, I was about five, six years old. (5:58 - 6:12) And then the floodgates came out. And I just didn't stop, I guess, talking. But then came the, you know, the painful awareness of me being different in other ways. (6:12 - 6:19) Like I'm already different. I'm not neurotypical, you know. And then you add, I don't look the part. (6:20 - 6:24) So that definitely was part of it. You know, as I got older. Oh, go ahead. (6:24 - 6:34) Oh, so how did you end up on the Indian reservation? Well, my mother is a teacher. And my father, my stepfather was a teacher. My grandparents are teachers. (6:34 - 6:54) And if you end up on the Navajo reservation and you're not Native, most likely you are descendant of, or related to, or are a doctor or teacher. And so a lot of those roles are imported in. Because the kids there that go to college and leave the reservation tend to not come back. (6:54 - 7:08) Because they find, you know, that Chicago is much more interesting. Or San Francisco is far more fun than living around tumbleweeds and being in a desert with one movie theater that plays the same movie for a whole month. You know, you get kind of tired of that. (7:09 - 7:28) So I get it. But it also was the highest teaching, paid teaching position in the nation. And so if you were willing to live in a very desolate place with very few resources, then you could get paid a lot and you could just save that money up and then have an amazing retirement. (7:28 - 7:43) And so that was kind of the plan for my grandparents. They discovered the reservation first in the 1950s. And they started teaching at Chinle High School, which is near the Canyon de Chelly, which is like the Little Canyon in Arizona. (7:44 - 7:54) And that's basically how I ended up there. And then I stayed on the reservation until, I want to say, the eighth grade, eighth or ninth grade. And then I moved to Flagstaff, Arizona. (7:55 - 8:21) And in Flagstaff, I would say probably one of the most pivotal moments that happened in my life was the separation of me and my mother, my birth mother. And that happened slowly and then rapidly. So my mother had a very contentious divorce with my stepfather that involved a lengthy custody battle for my brother, my younger brother. (8:22 - 8:38) And she asked me to commit perjury in court. She wanted me to accuse my stepfather of abusing my brother and I. And I had not witnessed this. I had no empirical evidence of it. (8:38 - 8:51) It seems like planted memories. There were a lot of that going on, like coaching as to what to say. And I felt this, I don't know how to describe it, but this panic inside of me. (8:51 - 9:27) This fear that if I didn't stand up and do the right thing, and in this case, it was jump out of my mother's car, her truck as it was moving and running as fast as I could and hiring or not hiring, sorry, running as fast as I could and calling a psychiatrist that was court appointed for our family and basically telling him what my mother was doing. And then after that, my mother was gone. I mean, she pretty much shut off because some rapid things happened that I didn't realize. (9:27 - 9:37) I didn't realize that the psychiatrist was court appointed. I thought we had hired him. And he basically told the judge and the courts what was going on. (9:37 - 9:48) And then my brother was removed from the house pretty much the next day. She lost custody of him completely. And then that left me as the last child because my sister had disappeared before that. (9:50 - 9:57) And how old were you at this point? I was 12. Wow. 12 years old. (9:58 - 10:19) Wow. And I guess, what do you think was it within you at that point in time that clung to that kernel of truth where it's like, I didn't witness this happen? Why would I concede to this kind of manipulation just to kind of please my mom? Well, my mother and I had a complicated relationship anyway. It's not like it was super loving. (10:20 - 10:38) And I've thought about this. I write about my family and my mother and my life because I'm searching for the kernels of what happened to her. What trauma did she experience in her life that she's reenacting as an adult? Because I do think that a lot of us are products of generational trauma. (10:40 - 10:51) And psychologists will sit you down and say, let's start with your childhood and let's go deep and go way back. And I used to think it was hogwash. But I actually think our personalities are often defined. (10:52 - 11:03) We can change them if we realize that the software can be changed. We're often defined by our childhood experiences. And so my mother, I became very skeptical of her very early. (11:04 - 11:14) And the reason is oddly because of Santa Claus. And when I found out that Santa wasn't real, I was devastated. Absolutely devastated. (11:14 - 11:30) And I started to question her from age five. I'm like, well, if she's willing to lie to me about that, what else is she willing to lie about? And so I was always on guard for her. For something that she did that was relatively innocent. (11:30 - 11:43) We have this conversation often in our community. It's just like, should parents tell the truth about Santa Claus? And if not, are there going to be kids who go, you lied to me. I can't trust you. (11:43 - 11:49) And so you just telling that story, it's like. Oh, yeah. She was not trustworthy from that day forward. (11:49 - 12:00) And part of it was because how grandiose the lie was to me. So my mom would go all out and she would. We lived in a trailer, like a little tiny trailer. (12:01 - 12:16) If you're on the reservation, there wasn't a lot of housing. So you would live in whatever they could provide for you. So she would go out and knock on the walls and make jingle bell sounds and then have excuses for why we don't have a chimney and how Santa managed to get in. (12:17 - 12:29) And that if I was bad or I misbehaved all year long, Santa wouldn't come. So for me, it was like Jesus. You know, he's looking over me and I've got to be good. (12:29 - 12:43) And so I would be good because I knew I had to be. And I really loved Christmas. And so one day we were at the mall and my mom had a shopping cart and it was filled with all this wonderful stuff in it, like lip smackers. (12:44 - 12:55) I remember there was like lip smacker stuff, which was always fun, but they were stocking stuffers. And I asked her, I said, what is that for? Who is that? Who are all these amazing things for? She's like, I don't worry about it. You know, she kind of blew it off. (12:57 - 13:16) And on Christmas day, when I went to go open my stocking, all the things that were in the cart were in my stocking. And that's when I had the reveal. And I remember calling her a liar and throwing the stocking down and running off and feeling so betrayed because the one person in the world I was supposed to be able to trust, I couldn't. (13:17 - 13:24) And that was devastating. It was absolute. Then after that, I was like, you know what? Perhaps all grownups are liars. (13:25 - 13:37) Perhaps I shouldn't believe anything they tell me. And a skeptic was born that day. I mean, a hardcore one, because I would not accept the truth from anyone from that point forward. (13:37 - 13:48) I would question everything. And in a sense, it's kind of a gift, you know, if you look at it, because I didn't, you know, I think it made me resilient. I think it helped me later on in life until it didn't anymore. (13:49 - 14:04) We can get to that later, but I became spiritual eventually, but I became an atheist at a very young age. And the other thing my mother did is she took us to churches, and we tried on religions like fashion. And so we were Baptist. (14:04 - 14:17) We were Catholic. She married, the stepfather she wanted me to accuse was Muslim or is Muslim. We were, eventually she settled in on Native American shamanism, but like we tried everything. (14:17 - 14:33) And part of it was, I later on figured out it was free child care. You know, you could drop your child at, you know, at summer camp or after school programs or Sunday school. And all of those things were cheaper than hiring a babysitter. (14:33 - 14:43) And then, you know, I think her logic was religious people are less likely to be predatory. So, you know, leave your kids with them. And luckily nothing bad ever happened to me. (14:43 - 14:55) Like that ended up being true. Like all of these churches were very kind and very accepting of me and took care of me and watched me. I was even left with Mormon missionaries for a while, and they were great. (14:56 - 15:05) But because I was skeptical, I would listen to their stories, and they were just outlandish. You know, it's just like, that doesn't make any sense. It sounds just like Santa Claus. (15:06 - 15:11) I already uncovered the Santa Claus conspiracy. Don't try to fool me with this one. Yeah, exactly. (15:11 - 15:27) I'm on to you. So I think by the time that this situation happened with my mother, I'd already built up this skepticism. And then when she asked me to do something that could put someone in jail, the thought of that was so mortifying to me. (15:28 - 15:38) So horrific. And I love my stepfather. And I couldn't imagine him doing any of the things she was telling me that he was doing or had done. (15:38 - 15:52) It just didn't seem right. And so I couldn't do it. And I knew that you had to place your hand on a Bible and you had to say that, you know, I saw on television, I never actually had to go up in a courtroom, thankfully. (15:54 - 16:02) After that point, they refused to let me testify. I became a tainted witness. And my mother was filled with hatred after this. (16:02 - 16:24) You know, she had her child taken away from her, her youngest, and I became enemy number one that day. And so that was what was really hard, was because what little we had left disappeared because I decided to stand up for the truth. And, you know, it wasn't long after that I ended up homeless, because she started kicking me out of the house. (16:25 - 16:44) Sometimes I would run away because the conditions were so bad or we would be, we wouldn't be have any food, she would disappear for weeks at a time. You know, she once left a note with $20 at the beginning of the summer and said, good luck, and left for a whole summer. And we got evicted. (16:45 - 16:59) And, you know, what are you supposed to do when you're a teenager and this is happening? And eventually I became a ward of the state. And that was a miracle. It was just such a miracle when that happened. (17:00 - 17:14) And I'll never forget the day when it happened because I walked outside and I was free. I was free from her, I was free from all of it. And ready to pave my own way, but I was clueless. (17:15 - 17:25) You know, I was 15 years old. I was not old enough to have a job. I was not old enough to rent a place to live. (17:26 - 17:38) You know, I had to work under the table and find illegal jobs. I had to figure out how to try to go to school and I ultimately failed. I couldn't, I couldn't figure out how to go to school at the same time. (17:38 - 17:46) Eventually when I was 16, I had a job. I just could not make ends meet. All my dreams for the future of what I would become were shattered. (17:47 - 17:52) Like, I remember I wanted to be an architect. I wanted to be a doctor. I wanted to be many things. (17:52 - 18:03) Now, funny thing is I never ever thought I would be a venture capitalist. That's the funniest thing. That was not in my wildest imagination that this would be who I became. (18:03 - 18:26) Uh, and so my life became who I was that day. And to be honest with you, it was a beautiful thing. You know, I, I wish more people would view life from the present, from the now rather than the future anyway, because all of those things where I lived in the future were harming me anyway. (18:26 - 18:48) So when I was reduced to every day, you've got to figure out what you're going to eat and how you're going to pay your rent and then, or how you're going to get off the streets when I was on the streets or, you know, your life becomes very simple and very focused really fast. Yeah, of course. I mean, I think about, you know, Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs. (18:49 - 18:55) If survival needs aren't met, like nothing else matters. You can't have higher values. You can't have self-esteem. (18:55 - 19:14) You can't have purpose if our energy is consumed with survival. Um, so like, where were you, where were you sleeping at this point in time? When I was homeless, I would sleep on, I like to sleep in parks. Uh, there were these, like, I don't know, playground structures that had like at the top of a slide, it looks like a castle. (19:15 - 19:24) And so I would pretend that I lived in a castle, which was really funny to me. Uh, I slept under friends' beds. And so their parents would, you know, hopefully not find me. (19:24 - 19:51) Um, I was found by a friend's parent once while she was vacuuming and that was awkward. Uh, I slept, um, unfortunately at grown men's houses and maybe that's controversial now, but back then, you know, I think people don't realize that sometimes you've got to do what you got to do to survive. And I don't feel hatred or anger towards those people. (19:51 - 20:06) They were 1920, 21 college guys. Um, and I was 15, 16, 17, and it was a place for me to stay. And so I ended up living with, uh, college guys, basically. (20:07 - 20:18) And that helped me get by. And then, um, sometimes I would sleep under a bridge. There was a period of time that I lived in a squat with a bunch of other squatters, a bunch of crusty punk kids. (20:18 - 20:37) I don't know if you've ever seen, if you go to hate on, in San Francisco or every downtown center has these punk rock kids that look like they have clothes that are covered in patches that are sewn. Um, we sew them with dental floss is how they're sewn on, but they have their dogs and they're spare changing. That was me. (20:37 - 20:47) That was basically me and what I look like and who I hung out with and who my friends were. And I was part of what you would call a street gang. Um, you have to do that for protection. (20:49 - 21:12) And we lived, uh, in abandoned houses and beside train tracks in people's backyards, wherever you could stay. How long was this process kind of going on? So I was homeless off and on for about a year and a half, and it ended with me in New Mexico. I was in a place called Hemez Springs, which is outside of Albuquerque. (21:13 - 21:32) And this was a place where, uh, I spent a whole winter working because you had to exchange labor for a place to stay. And I stayed in this little trailer and they, this commune basically made its living off of selling mushroom spores, which is not illegal. You can sell spores. (21:32 - 21:46) It's fine. And, uh, we also had a tattoo artist who would tattoo the locals and locals would come in and, uh, I worked through the winter there and I got really, really, really sad. And I wanted to go home and try to give my mother another chance. (21:48 - 22:12) And I, I finally hitchhiked back home and I got saved by a guy in a, um, RV who saw me on the side of the road hitchhiking and basically drove past me. I think he said like a dozen times he went on down the freeway, got off the exit and came around a dozen times. And he said that God told him to save me and that he had to listen to God. (22:13 - 22:24) And at the time I wasn't religious and so I, or spiritual at all. And so I was like, whatever works, man, this is great. Thank you so much for saving me because I, um, I developed hypothermia on the side of the road. (22:25 - 22:34) And if you've ever had hypothermia, I mean, it's, it sucks. But at the same time, it's a weird, peaceful way to die. You know, I was very warm. (22:34 - 22:55) You become, you're very cold and all of a sudden you start becoming warm and you start getting sleepy. And he saved me just probably when I was about to go soon. And there's a series of these things in my life, by the way, because I've been writing my memoir and I've been going through memory lane, trying to find all of these stories and all of these heroes that saved me. (22:55 - 23:11) And that person, I have to say, it has to be scary to pick up a stranger on the side of the road and stick them in your RV, especially when they're with a boyfriend and you have no idea what we're capable of. Yeah. And to drive me all the way home. (23:13 - 23:32) And so my mom would, yeah, my mom would took me back in and then, you know, obviously the stuff would repeat again and again. How did that moment with the guy who picked you up, um, did it shift you spiritually at all or was this much later down? No, it didn't shift me spiritually. You'd think it would. (23:32 - 23:39) But again, I was kind of like, you're just a nice person. Yeah. And this is the thing we should do for one another. (23:39 - 24:12) Like, you don't need God to be a nice person. What are kind of like the existential thoughts you're having, like at this time, like you're 16 years old, you know, no mother, no family, not really receiving love from anyone. Like, what are you thinking about? Questions like, what is life? Why am I here? What is happening? Like, is this what's meant for me, you know, at that point in time? Well, I remember the first time I fell in love and I was 15 years old and I fell in love with this boy at the time named Josh. (24:14 - 24:38) And I remember being disturbed by it, just so disturbed. I was like, what is this weird feeling that I have? And why is it for someone else? And why do I care if he is fed or safe at night or what he's wearing or if he shows up someplace? Like, I started having all these invasive thoughts where I was caring about this other person. And I was like, this is dangerous. (24:38 - 24:45) Love is dangerous. Like, wow, I cannot have this. So, I broke up with him. (24:46 - 25:00) And I decided, and it's really sad because I decided that love is not something that you can have when you're surviving. Because it makes you make bad choices. And I could see a future with him. (25:01 - 25:08) It was really weird. I was like, oh, I could see marrying this guy and having hundreds of kids and this is it. This is the one. (25:09 - 25:21) But when I really sat and thought about it and was practical, I was like, he's, at the time, 18 years old. He's not going to settle down for me. He doesn't love me the same way I love him. (25:22 - 25:33) Like, what on earth am I thinking? Like, this is ridiculous. But the feelings inside were very real and devastating. You know, and I felt like I developed a mental illness, like a sickness. (25:34 - 25:46) And I was like, ah, this is just the weirdest thing. So, I swore off loving people for a while. Because, and it's a defense mechanism. (25:47 - 25:53) It's a way of surviving. Like, you can't love. And instead, I put him in what I call a snow globe. (25:53 - 26:02) And I basically said, someday, I'll be allowed to have this. And someday, my life will be stable. And I'll be able to allow this into my heart. (26:02 - 26:09) But not now. Not now. So, I don't know if that answers your question or where we started with this question. (26:09 - 26:15) But that memory occurred when you asked it. Yeah. No, thank you for sharing. (26:17 - 26:26) But... Yeah. It's almost like I can't afford to love. Like, this detracts from, you know, the things where I need to be focused on in terms of survival. (26:27 - 26:29) Yeah. Yeah. So, I just, I couldn't love. (26:29 - 26:58) And, you know, I think that I became hyper focused on just, you know, the existential things were, can you eat every day? You know, do you have a place to sleep? I didn't dream about the future anymore. Like, to me, I was going to be dead by the time I was 30, if I made it that far. Like, 30 seemed like ancient from where I was. (26:59 - 27:07) And if I could make it to 30, that would have been a miracle. And so, I didn't think that I would live very long. And I lived every day to its fullest. (27:07 - 27:21) And I tried to be a good person and try to figure out what it meant to be a good person. But I didn't develop close relationships with anyone for quite some time. And that was hard. (27:22 - 27:42) It was very, very hard. And then, at some point, I met my friends that I have to this day. And that was a young man by the name of Chris Collins, who I saw walking down the street who had a jumpsuit and a patch on the back of his jumpsuit that I had made and silkscreened. (27:42 - 27:50) Because one of the ways I got myself off the street was silkscreening and making jewelry. And I saw my first customer walk by in the wild. And I was so excited. (27:50 - 27:54) I was like, ah, I made that. And so, I stopped him. And he was like, prove it. (27:55 - 28:03) And so, we started exchanging stories. And I told him, you must have bought it at Eastside Records or Zia, because that's where I can sign them. And he's like, sure enough. (28:03 - 28:10) So, he sat down on the sidewalk with me. He gave me his phone number and wanted to get together and silkscreen. But he was too friendly. (28:11 - 28:20) And the funny thing is, is when you're homeless and you live on the streets, you're always kind of skeptical of people who are too friendly. And so, I didn't call him. I was like, ah, that guy's too nice. (28:21 - 28:32) But a few months later, I saw him at a coffee shop. And he was on a laptop. And I remember seeing the laptop illuminating his face and it glowing and walking over and being like, what is that? And he's like, this is a laptop. (28:32 - 28:40) And I'm like, wow, computers are portable now. This is amazing. Well, what year is this, roughly? This would be like 1993. (28:41 - 28:47) Wow. Probably 1993. And nobody had computers. (28:47 - 28:57) His job gave him one. And he was a computer repair person and was going to high school. And so, he got paid in laptops and like all sorts of things. (28:57 - 29:08) He was independently employed, which was also really impressive to me that he was an entrepreneur and a kid like me. And so, we started hanging out. And he got me online. (29:08 - 29:15) We got a laptop. And he went and took me and we found a phone jack. And we dialed up for the first time. (29:15 - 29:24) And I remember hearing the modem. And I fell in love. I was like, I don't know what it's going to take for me to do something with computers. (29:24 - 29:35) But all I want to do in the world is something with computers and the internet. And I saw what the internet was going to become. I could visualize it very clearly. (29:35 - 29:53) It was a vision of the future. And for the first time in my life, I wanted to live and I wanted to learn. And I think it was such a powerful, pivotal moment for me because being connected to the world meant that I could travel anywhere in an instant. (29:54 - 30:02) I could talk to someone in Africa. I could make friends in Europe. I could learn anything I wanted to learn. (30:02 - 30:06) There was going to be a university available to me soon. The libraries were coming. I saw. (30:07 - 30:14) I was like, everybody and anybody is going to get on this thing. And at that point, your world isn't small anymore. It's quite large. (30:15 - 30:30) And so, I would just sit and dream about this future that we were entering. And later on, that informed a lot of my investment decisions, interestingly, of these early days of the internet. And how I thought about it and where I thought it was going. (30:31 - 30:49) Because I don't think people remember because we take for granted that we can just get online and it's fast and it works in a blink of an eye. But back when I got started, you know, just to get Windows going was, I don't know, some crazy amount of floppy disks that you had to install. 20 minutes. (30:49 - 30:58) I still remember like downstairs in my home. I grew up in Wayne, New Jersey. And I had the AOL startup getting on AOL and like the screeching. (30:58 - 31:06) And then if the phone rang, you got you got like booted off the internet. You know? Yeah. Yeah, I used to when I worked at an ISP. (31:07 - 31:19) Sorry, Dave, if he listens to this, my roommate. I worked at an internet service provider. And if I needed to reach him, I would go to the modem bank and find out which one he was dialed into and unplug it just so I could call him. (31:20 - 31:27) Wow. Now a short break from the episode. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Here for the Truth. (31:28 - 31:47) It's all about cutting through the noise, getting to the heart of what really matters in this world that's constantly trying to pull you in every direction. We genuinely believe the truth is the only guiding force worth following. And so that's why we created this podcast all about living as authentically as possible, feeding your soul, standing firm in what's real, no matter how uncomfortable it gets. (31:48 - 32:03) And if you're here, I think you already know the journey isn't about fitting in. It's about waking up, stepping up, carving out a life that actually means something. So if you're enjoying this conversation, if this resonates with you, help us keep the conversation going. (32:03 - 32:16) You can follow Here for the Truth wherever you're listening right now and visit hereforthetruth.com to dive deeper into our world. Back to the episode. I want to backtrack just a little bit and then we'll continue the story. (32:16 - 32:36) What are some of the most extreme ways that you fed yourself or that you went and found a meal? Like during these times? I love this question. I love this question. Well, I mean, dumpsters are the classic one, right? There's a lot of restaurants that caught wind of us and they would put food in colored trash bags. (32:36 - 32:44) I think you can even read an article about this in the Arizona. I forget what it's called. New Times of Arizona, I think is what it's called. (32:44 - 33:01) But there was one particular bagel place and donut place that would basically put all of their leftover food that didn't sell into a colored trash bag. And then so we knew which ones were edible and safe in the trash can, which was really nice when they would do that. The cooperative would do the same thing. (33:02 - 33:13) They would put out bruised vegetables and bruised fruit. Now, we didn't have a way to cook these things. So that was the other thing is people would, you know, Salvation Army would give us food. (33:14 - 33:26) Some people had food stamps and would get food that way. But we don't have refrigeration. So what are you going to do with it? I think a lot of people don't realize like how difficult it is to maintain and keep food storages when you're homeless. (33:26 - 33:36) Very, very difficult. But trash cans, you know, I would eat off people's plates. Like I would walk around cafes and if somebody left a half-eaten sandwich, you know, I just grab it. (33:36 - 33:49) Interestingly, food was not the hardest part. If you wanted fresh food that you could order on demand, that was exactly what you wanted, that's difficult. And you'd have to spare change for that or develop a hustle. (33:50 - 34:04) Or in my case, I would go get books that were dropped off for free at the free store and then go sell them at the bookstore or sell things at Buffalo Exchange like clothing. I had my own little grind. Everybody had their grind. (34:05 - 34:23) And then, you know, I think what is the weirdest thing I ever ate on the street, I wonder? That's a good question. I mean, really, the strangest thing was learning how to eat off people's plates. I think probably the grossest thing, and this is going to be gross and sorry, but I smoked cigarettes. (34:25 - 34:32) And a lot of us did. If you're homeless, you smoke a lot. And I'm not sure what the correlation is, but it's just very comforting to smoke. (34:33 - 34:43) And if you can't afford cigarettes, you pick them up out of ashtrays. And that's pretty damn gross if you think about it. Like you're going around in ashtrays picking up cigarettes and smoking other people's leftover butts. (34:43 - 34:48) It's just really nasty. But we did it. I just want to jump in there based on what you said. (34:48 - 35:03) From a Chinese medicine standpoint, the lungs are associated with grief. So I've heard that a lot of people who smoke, there's obviously underlying grief that they're dealing with and navigating. Well, interestingly, I gave up smoking in China. (35:04 - 35:10) Oh, wow. Yeah, that's interesting. Real quickly, based on what you said, I'm just curious your views on this. (35:10 - 35:16) I grew up in the restaurant business. And then 20 plus years ago, I worked in the hotel industry. And of course, in hotels, there's banquets, there's all this stuff. (35:16 - 35:30) And then like the end of the nights of all these events, all this food that's just untouched, it's just blown away. And I used to be like, can't this be dropped off at like a homeless shelter or somewhere? And they'd always be like, no, there's too much liability and restriction. I mean, you're not allowed to do that. (35:31 - 35:35) So I'm curious your views on that. Oh, that's infuriating. Absolutely infuriating. (35:35 - 35:57) Because luckily, there's some of these restrictions have been removed in some municipalities. And you're starting to see where they can gauge the food safety, like safety of the item and take it to food banks and take it to shelters and soup kitchens. But when I was younger, I lived in that era where everything got thrown out. (35:58 - 36:10) And it was so aggravating. So the fact that some of these restaurants would break the law and put things in colored trash bags for us was a way around it. And there's still probably people to this day that do that. (36:12 - 36:21) Because it's kind. It's very, very kind to give food that could be eaten to others. There's so much waste in this country in particular. (36:21 - 36:28) I don't know. I can't speak to other countries. But there's more than enough calories and food in this country that no person should ever starve. (36:28 - 36:36) There's a distribution problem. And like even on my farm, so I own an avocado farm. I have about 800 trees now. (36:37 - 36:43) I culled some of them. I used to have 1,300. But the fruit that falls on the ground, I can't sell. (36:44 - 37:02) And if it has a bruise on it, or if it's sunburned too much, or when you cut it off the tree, if you don't cut it a certain way and that little nub is not on the avocado, I can't sell it. So I give it away, which is technically probably illegal. But I give it to my neighbors. (37:02 - 37:11) We pick up all the ground scores, as we call them. And, you know, it's a protected fruit. It's got this thick outer shell, kind of like a banana. (37:11 - 37:27) And so it's not like it's exposed to the air or exposed to germs or anything. And so it makes no sense that you can't sell it or donate it to a shelter or anything. Like that fruit is untouchable once it hits the ground. (37:28 - 37:43) And so it makes me very sad that we live in a world where there's anyone hungry. Like no one should be hungry. And so that's kind of how I feel about it is we really need to fix this inefficiency and to change our relationship to food. (37:43 - 38:03) Like, I understand it's really beautiful to go to a store and see a pristine apple. But not everyone can afford a pristine apple. Shouldn't there be a non-pristine apple section where you can buy the alternative? Instead, you have to go to these websites and buy, I think it's called ugly fruit or something like that and have it delivered to you. (38:03 - 38:23) But again, if you're poor, can you really afford even that? You know, it's not meeting people where they're at and not figuring out how to distribute this stuff appropriately. And it's just really inefficient and awful. But in my lifetime, I have seen some improvements, and I've seen a lot less food waste happening. (38:24 - 38:26) Yeah. Thanks for that. Yeah. (38:26 - 38:33) All right. So Cyan logs into the internet and all of a sudden she has purpose. She has possibilities. (38:33 - 38:48) She sees visions for the future. What kind of comes after that? Well, immediately I looked to my friends that I had, and I had to start shedding friends. And I think that that's something that's very hard for people to realize that sometimes in your life, you have to do that. (38:49 - 39:11) Sometimes in your life, you have to figure out if you want to talk spiritually about low vibration and high vibration energy, you know, sometimes people are not ready to vibrate higher and they need to stay where they are. And it's not like you're abandoning them or they're judging them as bad people or anything like that. You know, all of the people that I lived with on the streets were beautiful in their own way. (39:11 - 39:22) And we all served a purpose to each other at the time that we were homeless. But they had no dreams, hopes, desires, or purpose. And suddenly I found this group of hacker kids. (39:22 - 39:37) So once I started hanging out with Chris, he introduced me to these meetups called 2600 meetups. And 2600 is a little indie magazine that they sell at some coffee shops and bookstores. That's like a hacker guide to hacking things. (39:37 - 39:59) And at the time, the number one way that you could hack something that was accessible to you was payphones. So a lot of what they would cover in there is like how to make a free phone call or how a payphone works. And so a lot of us became freakers is what it's called spelled P-H-R-E-A-K-E-R-S, which basically means you like to mess with telephony equipment. (40:00 - 40:11) And we never wanted to hurt any of the telephone companies. We wanted to figure out how this stuff worked. And I think a lot of people don't understand the motivation of a hacker is not destruction. (40:11 - 40:37) It's curiosity, which is how does this machine work? How can you infiltrate it? How can you get past its security guards? Not because you want to hurt anything or erase people's data or anything like that. It's actually rooted in just understanding. And so I love the mischief that these kids were up to, but also the fact that they were brainy and they had a purpose. (40:37 - 40:50) And some of them were figuring out things because they wanted to know. Of course, in every hacker group, there's going to be someone who wants to burn everything and is hellbent on destruction. It happens in any community, I'm sure. (40:51 - 41:04) But I would avoid those people. And instead, I fell into a group of kids who would start handing me manuals and books. And they encouraged me to think bigger, to get a job eventually in technology. (41:04 - 41:10) So my first job was dial-up tech support. And these friends would role play with me. And I would call. (41:10 - 41:18) They would call me and I would say, hi, thank you for calling whatever internet. And they would tell me about their problem. And I would walk them through the problem, how to fix it. (41:18 - 41:27) And eventually, I got a job because of all this role playing. And because of these friends, we believed in each other. To this day, we still believe in each other. (41:27 - 41:35) It's phenomenal. It's like the motivated rebel, which really is the root of the entrepreneur, ultimately. Exactly. (41:36 - 41:50) And a lot of these kids went on to become entrepreneurs, became startup founders or worked at startups. Chris today works for Niantic, which is the maker of Pokemon Go. And I talk to him every day to this day. (41:51 - 42:08) And he was probably the most important person in my early life in the formation of figuring out who I was. And interestingly, he's one of these sort of the center of our whole friendship group. Everyone in our friendship group says the same thing about him. (42:08 - 42:28) He's a remarkable person. And one of the things that's really remarkable about him is he would look at you and tell you that you were capable of anything, that every human being had value, and that we all could wake up every day and do something to contribute to humanity every day. And I was addicted to that. (42:28 - 42:59) I just became so addicted to Chris and his friend group and everything around them because they were just inspiring. And after being with street kids who did drugs and heroin and, you know, every day someone you hear about someone dying, going from that to the alternative was, I mean, it was just such a blessing, really. Cyan, with obviously the things that you went through, like, were drugs not part of your story? Like when you were on the street? Interestingly, no. (43:00 - 43:15) You know, I saw the destruction that it caused other people and I wanted no part of it. So one squat that I lived in became overrun with heroin and I would watch them shoot it up and then just sort of slump into a ball and not move. And I couldn't understand what the appeal was. (43:16 - 43:44) I was like, why would I want to slump into a ball and go into a state of sleep and slumber and be unresponsive? And my whole life seems to become centered around finding and obtaining this drug does not seem like an appealing life to me. I was addicted to cigarettes and I smoked a lot, but I didn't drink alcohol. So that was the other thing is I got blacked out drunk early, like when I was probably 14 years old. (43:45 - 44:02) And I ended up in the woods, sleeping in the dirt with my pants down and not understanding how I got there. And that was the end of that. You know, afterwards I was like, I have no excuse to ever be in that situation because I am responsible for what I put in my mouth. (44:02 - 44:17) I am responsible for poisoning my body. And therefore I'm responsible for whatever comes out of me once I'm drunk. And so I would hear my friends try to become a victim when really it was their responsibility. (44:18 - 44:35) And that was a real problem for me because a lot of my friends became victims when I saw that they were exerting their own willpower for their demise. And so I just became very, very negative on drugs. I started using drugs recreationally. (44:35 - 44:47) I became a raver probably in my early 20s. And so I did LSD and MDMA, mushrooms, but I did them recreationally. I never did them for spiritual reasons. (44:47 - 45:02) Later on in life, in the last five years or so, I've done mushrooms for spiritual reasons and very, very guided and very intentional. And it's totally different experience, completely different night and day. Yeah. (45:02 - 45:40) Well, I mean, it's interesting how you were attuned even from that point, like building reason and building your knowledge base and having self-correction and learning from things which didn't feel right. What kind of separates someone like you in that situation from some of your peers who continue to go down a slippery slope of developing addictive habits, self-sabotage, regardless of the pain and the consequences that they obviously experienced? I think I've always felt like I should be radically accountable. And I felt a relief early. (45:40 - 46:02) It's a hack that I figured out early, and maybe it happened with that court case and becoming a ward of the state and standing up and risking everything with my mother. But there's a certain amount of freedom when you assume that everything is your fault. And I don't mean like, oh, woe is me, everything is my fault. (46:02 - 46:34) That's not what I mean. But it's what part of what is happening right now did I facilitate? Did I in any part make this happen? Like, if I got into a traffic accident, was I absent-minded? Was I not paying attention? Chances are I wasn't, because if I was paying attention, it might not have happened. Now, if you get rear-ended out of nowhere and you're sitting still, obviously that's not your fault, other than the fact that you chose to drive that day, but come on. (46:35 - 46:51) But most things, I would say, most, more than 51%, if you really, really analyze it, there was a choice that you could have made differently. You could have not put drugs in your mouth. You could have not screamed at someone. (46:51 - 47:00) You could have not, those are all things that are within your control. And so I became really acutely aware. It goes back to words have power. (47:01 - 47:15) And now I'm more mystical and spiritual. I think words have way more power than I ever even understood as a kid, like ever. And so I think radical accountability is just something that set me apart from my friends. (47:15 - 47:26) I took ownership of all my mistakes with pride and with joy. I didn't beat myself up about it. I just said, wow, that was really messed up, Cyan. (47:26 - 47:34) Why did you do that? And then I would sit and analyze why I did it. And then I would try to correct it for the most part. I'm not perfect. (47:35 - 47:44) I still work and struggle on these things today. But I do think that I'm the first person who will fess up and tell you I did something that was wrong. And I won't hide. (47:44 - 47:50) I won't lie. You're here for the truth. What's that? I said you're here for the truth. (47:50 - 47:54) I'm here for the truth. That's exactly right. That's exactly right. (47:54 - 47:59) Whatever that is, I'm here for it. And it's obviously served you. And that's the thing with truth. (47:59 - 48:17) Even though there's pain in the short term, the long term benefits of adopting that mindset is immeasurable. Yeah. A friend of mine once said the trouble you don't get into is the trouble you don't have to get out of. (48:20 - 48:31) And it's very, very true. I do like radical accountability. And I really think a lot of people, if they would practice it, it could alleviate a lot of suffering. (48:32 - 48:46) At first, it's embarrassing to acknowledge and look inwards and see that you did something. But we're the only animal species that beats ourselves up more than once. Maybe a dog feels a little shame. (48:46 - 48:54) And they're much more advanced. But most animals, they move on. If they do something, they're like, okay, whatever. (48:54 - 49:02) It's time to get back to eating and surviving and living. But we sit and we dwell on it. And we build mountains out of molehills over things. (49:02 - 49:10) And really, if you would just sit down and be like, okay, I did this thing. I'm going to atone for it. I'm going to apologize to the right people. (49:10 - 49:16) You'll get to a place that's much more healthy faster. Yeah. Absolutely. (49:17 - 49:52) Why do you think personal responsibility or personal accountability seems to be at a low in our world today or in this country? Well, I think being a victim is addictive. Simply put, when you're a victim and you can wallow in these emotions that come with being a victim, one, you get attention. Like people, if you can tell the right victim story, all of these things I'm telling you with my life and what happened to me, I don't feel like a victim. (49:53 - 49:58) I never have. It was unfortunate. It happened. (49:59 - 50:10) But I never felt like I was a victim. And so I think if you wallow in that and you're like, woe is me. Everything is outside of my control. (50:10 - 50:15) I have no agency. I can't do anything. I'm just going to self-sabotage. (50:15 - 50:24) I'm going to have these habits that don't serve me. I'm going to escape. All of that is an addiction, just like heroin. (50:25 - 50:32) And I think in order to break the addiction, you have to really face it. And it's scary to look yourself in the mirror. It's scary to be honest. (50:33 - 50:41) It's scary to confront that you might have some ugliness in you. We all have ugliness in us. Every single one of us. (50:42 - 51:03) And, but when you can look at it and then accept it and integrate it back into yourself and reframe it as something beautiful, accountability is what makes it beautiful and brings it into the light. When you're a victim, you keep everything in the dark and it festers. And some people are true victims. (51:03 - 51:25) I mean, there's people out there who are, you know, trafficked or slaves in horrific conditions in this world that are outside of their control. And I don't know if you've ever read the book, Man's Search for Meaning, which is about a man who went to Auschwitz. And Viktor Frankl. (51:25 - 51:31) Yeah, Viktor Frankl. I read it while traveling through Poland. Yeah, it's a powerful, powerful book. (51:32 - 51:52) But that shows you that someone who was living in a condition completely outside of their control decided to find wonder and curiosity in the darkest place. And it should be a lesson to anyone that if you look, there's beauty around you and you can find it. And if you can cling on to it, it gives your life meaning no matter what. (51:54 - 52:07) Yeah. And those that have something to live for and have meaning and purpose, they can go through some of the most horrific things and disappear. So, it's not always the strongest, you know, people that survive, you know, hard times. (52:07 - 52:31) It's those that have something deep within that they want to either bring out into the world or search for or, yeah, bring forth. And if you look in his book, you'll also see some radical accountability. He talks about how no human being in that whole situation was innocent at the end, you know, because it turned out if you were a prisoner, you would sell out your fellow prisoner for food. (52:32 - 52:41) You would kill somebody to save your family. You would, you know, because he does say that. He's like, look, I'm not going to get into it in deep detail. (52:41 - 52:57) But prisoners turned on each other. Prisoners became prison guards and actually started sending people to the chambers, the gas chambers, his own people. And it shows you what human beings can devolve into if we let ourselves. (52:58 - 53:12) Yeah. I think the apropos quote from Frenkel, everything can be taken from a man, but one thing, the last of the human freedoms to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way. That's right. (53:13 - 53:21) Exactly. And so, I think accountability is choosing your own way. It's basically saying, I am not going to do this. (53:21 - 53:33) I am going to own myself and my actions and my ability to have any amount of will. And I'm going to choose that. And I'll choose that every day. (53:34 - 53:48) You know, it's really funny because every time I'm in a situation like recently, a friend and I were on a road trip and we got locked out of the car. And we were at a Tesla charging station. And it was just a comedy of errors. (53:49 - 53:57) You know, I got out because the plug wouldn't release on the charger. And I went in and told my friend, like, it wouldn't release. And so he got out of the car. (53:57 - 54:00) We both shut the door. We left. I was using a phone key card. (54:01 - 54:08) And for whatever reason, the Tesla just locks you out. It's a known issue. I mean, it should be able to detect that your phone is inside the car. (54:08 - 54:19) It's the weirdest thing. But I immediately, instead of panicking, just looked at him and said, well, what do we have? You know, and I said it just like that. Like, excited. (54:19 - 54:24) Like, whoa, this is going to be fun. You know, that's a choice. Yeah. (54:24 - 54:41) You can look at that situation and be like, angry about it and kick the car and walk around and shake your fist at the sky. Or you can say, I just got handed an amazing opportunity to try to solve this puzzle. This lesson that just got handed to me. (54:41 - 54:58) Yeah. And the lesson was, how resourceful could our friend and I, my friend and I be in that moment? And could we remain calm? And could we solve this problem together? And we did. Within one hour, Tesla unlocked the car for us. (54:59 - 55:17) But it was really, really fun to try to figure out how to social engineer that and make that happen. Without a wallet, without a form of ID, without anything was really a fun thing. Part of that joy of that kind of thing comes back from my hacker culture days. (55:19 - 55:21) You know, because it's hacking. It's the same thing. Yeah. (55:21 - 55:32) Like just then, my internet cut out and I was shaking my fist at Starlink, you know, and I just surrendered to what it was. You gotta surrender. I know people pay lip service to this phrase, gratitude. (55:32 - 55:49) But it really is so important. Even in moments that may be on the surface, like this fucking sucks, you know? And it's just like, man, like I have the opportunity to live. What is around me? What do I have that's supporting me? And then again, looking at life as an adventure. (55:49 - 56:03) And I mean, and then we know Joel and I are really into self-esteem as a concept. So it's like, how does one deal with the basic challenges of life? How does one face them? And so it's like, oh, I'm locked out of my car. Am I going to cry? I'm going to freak out. (56:03 - 56:07) I'm going to curse. Sure, you could have moments of it. I'm not saying repression is the way to go. (56:07 - 56:19) But like, what do you stay in? What's the baseline state, you know? And then where do you go from there? So anyway, I just wanted to throw that in there. Well, I have a little story to tell that I think you'll really like. I got into a car accident with the same Tesla. (56:21 - 56:33) And I heard that $5,000 crunching sound. You know, I was like, oh, this is going to be expensive. And so what, how did I get into the accident? You know, I was, that day I was playing. (56:34 - 56:41) I run experiments every day. And I usually set a list of experiments I want to run. And I run them throughout the day to see what would happen. (56:42 - 56:52) And the experiment I was running that day was I'm going to set my intentions for the day. And I'm not going to betray them. And so I made a list of five things that culminated with me ending at a bookstore, volunteering. (56:53 - 56:58) And it was a Saturday. So I volunteered at this bookstore on Saturdays. And everything was going great. (56:58 - 57:07) I was having the time of my life, going down my list of things I was supposed to do. And about halfway through the list, I'm driving down the street and I see Goodwill. And I love Goodwill. (57:08 - 57:15) And so I got distracted. And I was like, oh, it would be okay if I just made a little pit stop. It's not on the plan. (57:16 - 57:20) I'll just make a little pit stop. I'll stop by Goodwill. I'll go thrifting for a little while. (57:20 - 57:29) And I always make a great justification for going to Goodwill because I'm helping. You know, I'm helping the circular economy. And I just love Goodwill. (57:29 - 57:36) I'm addicted to that place. And so all of a sudden, before I know it, I'm in a car accident. And I get out of the car. (57:37 - 57:42) And the guy is so sweet. He can't figure out how it happened. I can't figure out how it happened. (57:42 - 57:46) I go back to the Tesla and it didn't record video. It's supposed to record a video. It didn't. (57:46 - 58:01) And so I look at him and I'm like, well, I can't figure out whose fault this is. And he's like, neither can I. But then I look at his car and he doesn't speak English very well. And he has this car with this custom pin striping on it. (58:01 - 58:09) And the car is probably worth like $800 all in. Like it is a beater from the early 90s. But he loves it. (58:09 - 58:21) He's like hunched over it and rubbing it. I think he's calling it names like it's a girl. And so I looked at him and I was like, can you get a translator? So he gets a translator to come over. (58:21 - 58:30) And this guy is really wonderful. He translates for us. And I realized I'm in a position where I could just, I could probably buy him another $800 car. (58:31 - 58:37) So I tell him, I'm like, look, I'm just going to pay for whatever is going on here. We're not going to go through insurance. Just tell me how much you need to fix this. (58:38 - 58:49) And so they talk amongst themselves and they come back and they're like, we need $500. And that would pay for a day's lost wages and to replace the tire. And that should be enough. (58:50 - 59:05) And I was like, done, you know, let's go to an ATM and I'll pay you and we'll be done with this. And, but afterwards, after the adrenaline kind of wore off from the whole situation, I, and my car was barely drivable. Like the steering wheel was sideways in order to go straight. (59:05 - 59:15) It was, my car was far more damaged than $500. But I thought to myself, I'm going to go home. I'm going to get back into my covers of my bed and I'm going to cry. (59:16 - 59:27) Like that's immediately what I thought. I'm just going to go cry because today started out bad and my experiment failed. But then I thought to myself, did my experiment fail? Or I had a blame for some part of this. (59:27 - 59:40) And I really analyzed the situation and thought about it. And I was like, had I not been distracted by goodwill, had I stuck to my plan, this wouldn't have happened. If I'd gone, because I wouldn't have turned left. (59:40 - 59:49) I would have gone straight towards the bookstore, my ultimate destination. None of it would have happened. So where's the lesson? And I was like, well, the lesson is I still need to go to the bookstore. (59:50 - 1:00:07) I have to muster up the courage to carry on with my list of intentions and finish them. So I got to the bookstore and the guy who owns the bookstore looks at me and he hands me a book on tarot cards. And I said, what's this? And he goes, I don't know. (1:00:07 - 1:00:20) I think you're supposed to have it. And I was like, okay, whatever. And about five minutes later, I get a text message from a guy that I met in New York who I had not heard of or heard from rather. (1:00:21 - 1:00:33) I had not heard from him in probably eight or nine months with a random tarot card spread that he sent to me. And he said, I use this weird app to get a tarot card reading every day. And for some reason, this one's for you. (1:00:33 - 1:00:49) I got a very, very clear message that this is for you. And I looked at the bookstore owner and I was like, can you decipher this tarot card reading? And he goes, read the book. But there's an example of a strange coincidence. (1:00:51 - 1:01:26) And I experienced so many of them and I can't figure out how they work or why they work or where they come from. But I mean, I had a spiritual shift in my life where suddenly I started being more open than I ever have been in my entire life to the things and the possibilities that there's something out there bigger than we are. That we're either part of a simulation or, you know, there is an omnipotent knowing, all-knowing entity or there's just something very magical happening here on Earth. (1:01:27 - 1:01:39) Yeah. And the more that I delve into this magical existence that we all live in, the more excited I am to be alive. Yeah, 100%. (1:01:39 - 1:01:47) Yeah, you're speaking our language with that one for sure. I'm a student of the tarot. We're both into divination in various ways. (1:01:48 - 1:02:00) And the magic is very real. You know, there's things that are just unexplainable, but there's constant evidence of meaning, of purpose, of magic. And I think it's just an incredible gift for sure. (1:02:00 - 1:02:22) And I want to dive deeper into that, but just to kind of close off the thread for our listeners. So, how did you go from becoming, you know, an early investor in such incredible innovations like Uber, SpaceX, things of that nature? Because, I mean, it's insane to think where you started. Where I come from and where I am now, it's kind of, I even marvel at it. (1:02:23 - 1:02:53) I sometimes have to see myself, right? Well, one, I can tell you, I think it was inevitable. When I look at all of the branches of my life and where it could have gone, I don't think it's inevitable that I would be a venture capitalist, but I think it was inevitable that I was going to do something interesting. Because I made those choices to leave that friend group, because I chose curiosity, because I chose this path of following the internet. (1:02:53 - 1:02:59) I was going to end up at a startup. I was going to end up somewhere. And something good was going to happen. (1:02:59 - 1:03:08) I think it's just inevitable. So, I started working at that internet service provider. And I was there for, I want to say, two years. (1:03:09 - 1:03:17) And in those two years, I started out just doing normal tech support for a long time. And I started registering domain names. And at the time, they were free. (1:03:18 - 1:03:34) And so, I would register, I had a thing for Star Wars at the time. And so, I registered a ton of Star Wars domains. I had MasterYoda.com, MillenniumFalcon.com, DarthVader.com. But the real kicker was I got a hold of LucasFilms.com. Oh, wow. (1:03:34 - 1:03:46) Yeah. And my best friend at the time, and still my best friend to this day, was named Lucas. And so, I called up Lucas and I said, Lucas, you make films, right? And he's like, yeah, I make films. (1:03:46 - 1:03:52) And I'm like, great. And I'm like, we're going to put up a website about you and your films and call it LucasFilms. And he started laughing. (1:03:53 - 1:04:01) And I was like, you're the co-owner of LucasFilms with me. And so, this turned into a joke for us. And we put up videos and all sorts of funny things on the site. (1:04:02 - 1:04:10) And what was really weird was I started getting email. I set up a catch-all for the email. And people started emailing. (1:04:10 - 1:04:26) And I started realizing that people at LucasFilm.com didn't know that their domain wasn't LucasFilms. It was LucasFilm with no S. And if you go to LucasFilm.com, that's what the company's actually called, even though they've made multiple films. And I found this really funny. (1:04:26 - 1:04:44) So, I started seeing inter-office private communication being sent to me by accident. And it was thrilling because Phantom Menace, the first movie when it came out, is about the time that this happened. I knew that there was Darth Maul before Darth Maul appeared. (1:04:44 - 1:04:51) I could have leaked secrets. I didn't because I was like, that would be wrong. And that would be bad. (1:04:53 - 1:05:05) And the end of that whole situation was that I wrote back to a guy who kept trying to apply for a job at every single email address. And it was driving me crazy. He was sending thousands of resumes and just flooding my inbox. (1:05:05 - 1:05:17) And I wrote back to him. I was like, I think you want to reach out to HR at LucasFilm.com. This is going nowhere. And so, he reported me to their legal department. (1:05:20 - 1:05:25) And yeah, they came after me. They sent all their lawyers after me. And it ended up with us settling. (1:05:26 - 1:05:32) And I mean, they sent private detectives after me. This thing went on for years. But I eventually got a jacket. (1:05:33 - 1:05:40) I asked for a film crew jacket worn in a Star Wars film. And they gave me an extra, extra large. I think it's a triple extra large jacket. (1:05:40 - 1:05:47) And I was like 90 pounds wet. So, I'm like, this jacket just is so big. I can't possibly wear it. (1:05:47 - 1:05:54) And I feel like they did that on purpose. And then I asked for a lifetime or a life-size Boba Fett. They did not deliver the life-size Boba Fett. (1:05:54 - 1:06:01) And then a tour of Skywalker Ranch, which they also did not deliver. They gave me $500. And then they gave me the right. (1:06:01 - 1:06:16) They didn't even register these domains for me. They gave me the right to register NotAJediYet.com and FeelingThePower.com. I mean, it's so Star Wars to do that. But I started out registering these domains. (1:06:17 - 1:06:24) And again, it's inevitable. Had I figured out how to pay for those domains, I would have been a multi-millionaire just from the domains alone. You know, because I had so many nouns. (1:06:26 - 1:06:43) Many, many nouns that would be worth millions and millions of dollars later on. But what really changed my life then was my boss came over and threw a book on my lap. And he said, you know, if you weren't wasting your time registering domains all day and chatting with your friends on IRC, you could probably make something of yourself. (1:06:44 - 1:06:54) And he was older, in his 40s, and I was really young. And so I just thought he was dumb and out of touch. And so I threw the book into the corner of my desk and it collected dust. (1:06:55 - 1:07:05) But one day I thought, I'm going to crack open that book. I'm going to see what's in it. And so I opened the book and I get to about the eighth page. (1:07:06 - 1:07:30) And on the eighth page, there's this, and I should frame this, it's the Essential Guide to System Administration by O'Reilly. But there's like around the eighth page or so, there's something about what's called shell escaping if you have root access on a Unix box. That basically, if you're running a script as a super user, but you're not a super user and you escape out of it, you become the super user, which gives you global access to do anything on a server. (1:07:31 - 1:07:46) And so I tried it and it worked. And so the first thing is somebody who hangs out with hackers would do is change the password of my boss's password, because that's what you do. So I changed his password and I went into him, very proud. (1:07:47 - 1:08:02) And I said, Lee, I said, guess what? I said, this is your new password to the root on your server. He called it Fulcrum, was the name of his server, or Fulcrum. And he's like, no, that's not possible. (1:08:02 - 1:08:07) And I'm like, try it. And so he tries to log in using his normal password and he's logged out. He can't do it. (1:08:08 - 1:08:20) And so then he uses my password and then he stops. And I remember him freezing and deciding for a moment what he was going to do. And he turns around and he looks at me and he goes, go grab your chair and pull it next to me. (1:08:20 - 1:08:29) He says, you are no longer managing dial up tech support. You are now a junior sysadmin starting today. And I'm going to give you a raise to $13 an hour. (1:08:29 - 1:08:43) And I was like, whoa. So I went from $8 an hour to 13. And that jump, that $5 an hour jump, meant that I could live on my own and I didn't have to have roommates. (1:08:43 - 1:08:49) It meant that I could pay my bills. It meant that I could suddenly travel. I could afford a flight. (1:08:50 - 1:09:00) I could do things that I could never do before. I opened up my whole world just reading this book. And that's when I realized I'd become complacent. (1:09:01 - 1:09:06) Like I was happy with my dial up job. I was not learning. I was not, you know, progressing forward. (1:09:07 - 1:09:16) But that unlock made me realize you can't get lazy. You must learn every day. You must apply yourself every single day. (1:09:17 - 1:09:31) Yeah. And kind of unlock the power of knowledge for you. Yes. And then so I started noticing when I was a junior sysadmin, all these cool things happening in the world. Mark Andreessen appeared. He's with A16Z, a venture capital firm here. (1:09:32 - 1:09:45) And at the time he was one of the pioneers of the early internet. He created Netscape. And Netscape was an early browser that competed with Explorer and came bundled with a lot of different software. (1:09:46 - 1:09:57) And so I, Mark Andreessen was my hero and I wanted to meet him. And so I started sending fan letters to startups that were out in Silicon Valley. And I got a couple of responses back and they were very positive. (1:09:58 - 1:10:12) They were like, why don't you come here? Like, just come here and I bet you can get a job. So I told Lee, I said, I'm really sorry, but I've got to put in my two weeks notice. And I packed everything in my car at the time at a Chevy Cavalier two door 1994 red car. (1:10:13 - 1:10:22) And I drove, it was stick shift, which is important because I drove it to San Francisco with no plan. And it was stalling on the hills. And I had never driven on a hill in my life. (1:10:22 - 1:10:37) And I was like, okay, the first thing I'm gonna do is get rid of this car. But I started working at startup after startup, after startup, after startup. And eventually, you know, I survived the dot com bust and crash in 99, 2000, 2001. (1:10:38 - 1:10:51) And how I did that was I hunkered down and I worked in a nonprofit. And I taught women in a welfare to work program how to route packets on the internet. I became part of a Cisco certified training program. (1:10:52 - 1:11:05) And I just, you know, weathered the storm and then it came back. And, you know, the tech industry returned probably around 2003, 2004. And I got a job at a place called Ironport Systems. (1:11:05 - 1:11:15) And that company sold to Cisco for $830 million. I want to say in 2006 or seven. And I love that company so much. (1:11:15 - 1:11:30) It was the first company that I'd worked at where the leadership was just so profoundly good that instead of taking cash raises, I kept asking for equity and saying, I want more and more equity. So they would be like, we want to give you a $5,000 raise. I'm like, no, give it to me in equity, equity, equity, equity. (1:11:31 - 1:11:45) And I had this feeling that this place was going somewhere and it was. And so when we sold to Cisco, I had my first financial windfall. And I asked my husband, who I didn't realize was an angel investor. (1:11:45 - 1:11:52) I knew he was an entrepreneur. I knew he was a product guy. I knew he's brilliant, but I had no idea that he also invested on the side. (1:11:53 - 1:12:03) And so I asked him for advice. I said, well, what do I do with this money that I just made? And he's like, well, you're young, you're employable, you have a safety net. So this is when you take risks. (1:12:04 - 1:12:36) This is when you take wild swings in your life and you do really irrational things because the alpha, and he started teaching me about this concept of alpha, is in wild risk-taking. Now, as a female, you're not taught to take risks like this. You're socialized to believe that you're supposed to buy real estate or buy some sort of blue chip stock or something that plays dividends or put it into something with very safe returns or S&P 500 or something like that. (1:12:36 - 1:12:59) You're not supposed to do what he was advising me to do. And so he started introducing me to companies and to founders that were raising money. And one of his college friends that he went to college with, his name is Luke Nosek, who was one of the co-founders of PayPal, came over to our house and he got on his knees. (1:12:59 - 1:13:12) And he's a very emphatic person anyway. And he bounces around and he's very excitable. But he basically told me, he was like, it's an existential threat to humanity that we need to make it to Mars. (1:13:13 - 1:13:25) And he pitched me on SpaceX. And he said, it was very hard to raise money at the time because the rockets were blowing up on the launch pad. And so everybody's like, this is a failure. (1:13:26 - 1:13:34) No private citizen deserves to go to space or to build a space company. NASA has this covered. We don't need reusable rockets. (1:13:36 - 1:13:51) We don't need any of this, is basically what everybody said. And I remember looking at the conviction in Luke's face and seeing this passion, this drive, this mission-oriented thing that he was on. And I decided, you know what, I'm gonna take a ticket to ride on this. (1:13:51 - 1:14:03) And so I put everything that I made at Ironport into SpaceX. And it was my first investment. And at the time, now that looks brilliant, but at the time it sure did not. (1:14:03 - 1:14:23) Yeah. You know, when I told people what I'd done, they were like, wow, you know, I guess you lost that one. You know, every step of the way, especially like when he became more controversial, everybody assumed that SpaceX was going to zero and they would tell me like, wow, you know, you really made a mistake there. (1:14:23 - 1:14:27) I've been told that over and over. I'm still being told that now. Yeah. (1:14:27 - 1:14:41) You know, it's like, are you still holding SpaceX? Cause you might wanna sell. And everybody always says, you know, you don't bet against Elon. Like he pulls miracle after miracle after miracle out of his hat and it just continues to do so. (1:14:41 - 1:14:58) And so I'm always in awe of him and his capabilities. Just out of curiosity, as a quick tidbit, have you ever had a conversation with him about the risk you took like back then? I tried, I tried, but he doesn't really, I mean, he knows who I am. I know who he is and we see each other at weddings. (1:14:58 - 1:15:09) It's kind of my relationship with Elon is he's a wedding guest of a mutual friend. And I know you probably, everyone has a friend like that, right? It's like a person you see at a funeral or a wedding. And he's that guy. (1:15:11 - 1:15:22) I went up to him at one of my friend's weddings and I thanked him. And I told him that I did my first investment and I don't think he knew how to deal with it. And he sort of put on, I am Mr. SpaceX mode. (1:15:23 - 1:15:45) And he was like, well, thank you very much for your contributions. And I don't think he knew how to process it. And at some point I really would like to have him hear or understand how that investment changed my life and the impact that it's had on the world, not just in SpaceX. (1:15:46 - 1:15:49) Well, he's a regular listener of our podcast. So go ahead. I'm just kidding. (1:15:50 - 1:16:14) Yeah, yeah. I mean, hey, Elon, if you're out there and you're listening to this, if somebody could forward this to Elon, you know, the things that opened up for my world are obviously later on being a early investor in SpaceX is admirable and it opens doors for you. But the most important thing is it's kind of like going to Burning Man and burning your money in effigy. (1:16:14 - 1:16:28) Like I burned my money up for the betterment of humanity. My feelings around it were pure and good. I believed the mission and I literally set my money on fire because the rocket blew up. (1:16:30 - 1:16:50) So, you know, it's a lot of people had to have this kind of faith in order for that company to survive. Yeah. And it was almost near death so many times, so many times, that it taught me a level of resilience and risk-taking that made me an incredible investor. (1:16:51 - 1:17:03) Mm-hmm. And so I don't think that I would be as good as I am today had I not taken that risk because sometimes you have to go all in. Sometimes you have to, you know, with great risk comes great reward sometimes. (1:17:05 - 1:17:29) You gotta burn the ships. Yes, yes. And if you have a safety net to fall back on, you really, that's the time, you know, if you have the ability to recover and especially if you're younger and you can do this, you really should experiment and take some healthy, safe risks you know, and take a chance and not play it safe because, you know, you don't know, you don't know what's gonna happen. (1:17:30 - 1:17:59) But after that, I started investing and I became addicted to it. I just, I really, really love hearing the pitch, the story, the inception story that someone has around, you know, people are smart and they're capable of doing so much. Why do they choose to do what they're doing that they're telling me about it? And often it comes from some childhood insight or something that happened to them or happened to a loved one or something that happened at work that didn't make any sense or some inefficiency or some secret that they found that's unique. (1:18:00 - 1:18:14) And I love supporting these people and I don't have to be the one to do all the heavy lifting. It's kind of a beautiful place to be where you're just the fuel for their fire. And so I'm really good at one particular type of investing. (1:18:15 - 1:18:32) I tried investing later stage and writing larger checks. I worked for a venture firm called Founders Fund for four years and I loved working there. I loved working with Peter Thiel and everybody there, but I learned that I am not cut out to write checks larger than probably a million dollars. (1:18:34 - 1:18:47) And for a lot of people, that probably sounds like a lot of money and it is a lot of money. But some people are tasked with writing checks of $20 million and $50 million and higher than that. And it's a different ball game. (1:18:47 - 1:19:11) It's a very, very different psychological profile and set of capabilities that I did not want to learn. And that was a really interesting, because I used to think I was capable of anything and I was unstoppable. And maybe I am capable of anything and I'm unstoppable, but at some point you kind of have to reckon with what your true calling is and what your purpose in life is. (1:19:11 - 1:19:26) And my purpose was not to deploy large checks. My purpose is to stick to my lane and it's early seed stage, first check in investing and believing in people when no one else believes in them. Yeah, that's beautiful. (1:19:26 - 1:19:47) How did the Uber investment culminate? Yeah, the Uber investment is a fun story. So I was living in a hotel at the time, a nice hotel, and I asked the front desk to arrange a ride for me to the airport. And so they hired a livery car for me by the hour. (1:19:47 - 1:19:57) And back then you had to have a minimum of two hours. So it was $120 to get a one-way ride to the airport from San Francisco to SFO. And that was just the standard rate. (1:19:57 - 1:20:13) You could not buy a fraction of a livery car. And so this guy picked me up named Roger and on the way to the airport, he asked me about who I was and got to know me and I really liked him. And so I kept booking him so that I got his card. (1:20:13 - 1:20:30) And so the next time I needed to go to the airport, I called Roger and arranged it with him and he picked me up. And he looks at me and he says, you know, I'm not an investor like you, but if I was, I would invest in this little company called UberCab. And he handed me a business card for Ryan Graves, who was the CEO of UberCab at the time. (1:20:31 - 1:20:50) And it had like a phone number in Chicago. And I also didn't believe that I should invest in anything outside of the San Francisco ecosystem that anytime I had, I'd not done well. And there's a variety of reasons at the time why one would not invest overseas or in New York or you just stick to your backyard. (1:20:52 - 1:21:04) And so based on that, I dismissed it. And so a few weeks later, I took another ride with Roger and he brought it up again and handed me another business card. I started to develop a little collection of Ryan Graves business cards from Roger. (1:21:05 - 1:21:15) And every time I rode with him, he would tell me the progress of the company. So when he first gave me the first business card, he was the only driver and he was being paid by the hour. So he was being paid to drive around. (1:21:15 - 1:21:28) And Uber at the time was not an app because the app store, I don't even think existed. Or if it did, it was very, very basic. And so you had to summon a car by text messaging a number. (1:21:28 - 1:21:39) I don't know if you remember that Twitter used to be the same. Like in order to participate on Twitter, you texted a number, there was no app. You know, there was a website and then Uber also had a website. (1:21:39 - 1:22:02) But sometimes you're out at a restaurant, you don't have access to a website. So at some point I told him, I said, you know, when the marketplace is working and when people are summoning you and the company is no longer paying you, then I'm very interested. Can you tell me when that happens? And so there was a time where he picked me up and he told me that something like 10 of his family members were now driving for the company. (1:22:03 - 1:22:09) And they were all still being paid by the hour. And so I thought, well, that's really interesting. This is starting to get super interesting. (1:22:09 - 1:22:34) But at the same time, I was thinking about the taxi medallion system and how I like, like I told you, every day I run an experiment. Sometimes I run thought experiments and I think about something all day. And one day I asked myself, why is it that I can't get a taxi whenever I want one? And when there's certain weather conditions, there isn't an increase in taxis when there should be to adjust for that weather condition. (1:22:34 - 1:22:55) Or when there's a conference in town, how come there aren't enough taxis in the outer areas of the city and they're all concentrated downtown where the conference is? And why did they drive like a bat out of hell? Like their life depends on it when they pick you up from the airport and it feels like you're gonna die. It was always like this crazy rollercoaster ride to get into a taxi. You felt like you were nearing certain death. (1:22:55 - 1:23:20) And why were these cars always run down to the point where the brakes squealed? The whole thing just seemed dangerous. And I discovered there's this thing called the taxi medallion system where you got the right to drive a taxi and then you drove that taxi for a period of time until you developed enough independent wealth and then you started renting your medallion to somebody else so that they could drive. And I realized there was a cap on the number of these licenses that existed. (1:23:20 - 1:23:33) So it was basically a racket. I discovered a racket. So interestingly, I went to this offsite sort of conference called The Lobby, which is thrown by August Capital, David Hornick. (1:23:34 - 1:23:43) And I was in the hot tub because a lot of us went swimming. There's hundreds of people that go to this thing and you go hot tubbing, you go swimming, you go snorkeling together. It's a boondoggle. (1:23:44 - 1:23:59) But it's a very fun and useful boondoggle. I found a lot of deals there. But I was in the hot tub and I noticed this guy named Travis Kalanick who was, it's hard to explain, but sometimes people have that sort of executive ability to lead a group no matter where they're at. (1:23:59 - 1:24:11) And it was very, very clear that he had that. And then he mentioned to everyone that he had just sold his company and he was on the bench and he was looking for his next thing. So if you're an investor, you love to hear stories like this because it's like, you're like a reporter. (1:24:11 - 1:24:21) We trade on secrets. And so when you hear that someone very capable is going to start something, you pay attention. So I talked to him over dinner and I really liked him. (1:24:21 - 1:24:52) And I was like, well, I'm going to watch what Travis Kalanick does because this is interesting. And fast forward a few months later, I got invited to a different event called Open Angel Forum, which Jason Kalkanis put on at the time where he was basically selling, or not selling, sharing. He was sharing access to his deal flow and doing something so that he could help create party rounds for companies so that they could raise money faster by getting all of his friends together to help us see these companies so that we could rally behind them. (1:24:53 - 1:25:16) And one of the companies he presented was UberCab. And who got up to present UberCab? Travis Kalanick, not Ryan Graves, who was on my business card. And I had this epiphany that Travis Kalanick is the type of person who would never ever be a vice president or a COO or anything but a CEO. (1:25:16 - 1:25:34) He would never accept anything because of how I saw him behave. And so I immediately decided to invest that moment in the company and then I invested. It was unbelievable how many people at the time did not believe in that company. (1:25:35 - 1:25:45) Yeah. So you kind of like backed the man more than you did so the idea or the man kind of was the cherry on the cake, you know, for- He was the cherry on the cake. The problem was real. (1:25:45 - 1:25:57) I knew that the idea had legs. I knew that the medallion system was broken and that you needed to dismantle an empire. And if someone's going to dismantle an empire, they have to be, they have to be tough. (1:25:58 - 1:26:07) They have to be aggressive. They have to be willing to do what it takes to win. And he seemed like that guy. (1:26:07 - 1:26:21) From what I saw in Hawaii at that event, I was like, Travis is the guy. And sure enough, after I invested, I met with Ryan Graves because that's the proper appropriate thing to do. And Ryan is a beautiful, wonderful person, one of the sweetest men I've ever met. (1:26:21 - 1:26:46) He became the COO, which is a testament to his personality, right? He stepped aside and he was like, I'm going to do the best thing in service of this company and I'm going to support Travis. And so he became Travis's biggest fan and supporter, along with Mill Michael who joined later and a lot of other executives. But I think all of us saw what an amazing leader he was going to be. (1:26:47 - 1:26:58) And in order to fight regulators, in order to fight an established, entrenched mafia, a lot of these taxi companies were run by the mob. It is a mob. It absolutely is a mob. (1:26:58 - 1:27:06) I used to live in Playa del Carmen in Mexico for a couple of years and Uber's still banned there because it is a taxi racket. It's a taxi mob. They don't want anything coming in there. (1:27:06 - 1:27:10) Like Uber is literally illegal. They chase them off the streets. It's insane. (1:27:10 - 1:27:21) Yeah. No, it's because you want to control the dollars and where they go. And the only way that you can do that is through artificial constraints, right? To not open up a marketplace. (1:27:22 - 1:27:45) But if you think about what Uber did, besides being able to get a ride when you want it, which is convenient, it actually created an entire ecosystem of a gig economy. So along comes TaskRabbit, along comes Postmates, DoorDash, Thumbtack. You went from having a nine to five schedule to suddenly being able to have flexible income. (1:27:46 - 1:28:14) And that changed the world. So people who had a family member who had cancer or a single mother could now drive when their kid was at school or they were at practice and be able to pick their hours and be a present parent or be a present family member for someone who's in a hospital. Like the stories that I hear about Uber drivers and how Uber changed their lives is phenomenal. (1:28:15 - 1:28:31) And that company gets demonized a lot, but people don't realize what the world was like before Uber. Yeah, I mean the ramifications of the introduction of the gig economy are so much more wide-reaching than purely Uber itself. Like that is world-changing. (1:28:32 - 1:28:52) World-changing. Because after that, everybody was like, what else can we turn? What other asset is sitting around not making income? Then you look at Airbnb, came out of this. There's like Airbnb, the narrative at the time was no stranger is going to sleep in a stranger's house on their couch. (1:28:53 - 1:29:01) Like that's just not going to happen. And clearly that's not true. Turns out people will absolutely stay in your house or on your couch or in your bungalow or whatever. (1:29:02 - 1:29:28) And with Uber, same thing. No one's going to drive their car around and allow a stranger to get in the car. And now the question is, will you buy a Tesla and put it into a fleet and have it drive while you're sleeping because of self-driving? That's the big question right now, which is what is self-driving going to do to this economy? And what's going to happen is for the first time, you can own an asset and it's going to make money for you while you sleep. (1:29:29 - 1:29:35) And a lot of people don't have that luxury right now. They have to drive the car. But in the future, they're not going to even have to drive the car. (1:29:35 - 1:29:40) They just have to finance themselves a Tesla. Wow. Think about that. (1:29:40 - 1:29:45) That's amazing. Yeah, I didn't think about that as an option. Yeah, it's amazing. (1:29:46 - 1:29:56) Yeah. Makes me super bullish on Tesla because the options are Waymo, Zoox, and there's a few other self-driving car companies. But Tesla's full self-drive. (1:29:56 - 1:30:10) I've been using it. I don't have to intervene very often and it does incredibly well. And so it's only a matter of time before you start seeing one Tesla rolling out their own service, but eventually people putting their own car in the fleet. (1:30:10 - 1:30:25) Same thing is going to happen to semi-trucks. Semi-trucks are going to probably retrofit their trucks or buy Tesla trucks. Those trucks are going to form trains and they're going to be autonomous and they're going to deliver things without human intervention and it's going to be incredible. (1:30:26 - 1:30:34) But at first people are going to kick and scream because they did with Uber as well. They're going to kick and scream at the change. They're not going to like it. (1:30:34 - 1:30:44) They're going to say, you're going to pry my car from my cold dead hands. And that's going to go on for a while. I don't have a crystal ball to try to figure out how long it's going to go on, but it's going to go on for a while. (1:30:44 - 1:31:06) And eventually we will have nothing but self-driving autonomous vehicles because it's safer for humanity. It's just going to happen. Hey, Sian, do you think obviously everything that you went through in your early life, you know, being homeless, then getting into technology, like this very unique combination has made you a great angel investor? I believe so. (1:31:06 - 1:31:23) Yes. I think a lot of my early investments were especially gig economy. I did a lot of gig economy marketplace investments early was a reflection of, gosh, sorry, there's a helicopter or a plane or something going by. (1:31:24 - 1:31:50) If I were 16 years old and I had access to a car or a bicycle, I could have delivered a sandwich and I could have made money and I wouldn't have had to spare change or do that racket where I was selling things from a free store. You know, I would have had economic mobility and I would have been able to bootstrap my life using any of those technologies and companies that I invested in early on. And it absolutely informed what I do. (1:31:50 - 1:32:27) It still does. So to this day, I still find businesses where I'm like, wow, you know, and then I started my own company too that I ran for 10 years and that informed a lot of my investment decisions because I started to realize how hard it is to own and operate and raise capital and operate a company and kind of where all of the holes were, where there were investable opportunities. So I invested in Carta, which is a cap table management company that ended up being a unicorn and a lot of companies related, like notarization, I backed electronic notarization early all because of the pain points that I experienced. (1:32:28 - 1:33:09) So the thing that makes me a good investor actually, it's not cause play, but I'm kind of like a method actor where I like to immerse myself in a problem and really understand it and then understand where the investable opportunities are. So sometimes I'll do really strange things, like my partners joke about this, but you know, like on Goodwill, I came up with an experiment one morning and I said, can someone make a living off of goodwill.com? Well, the only way to answer that question is to try. So I started buying watches by the bulk that were untested and trying to figure out how many precious metals were inside these watches by taking them apart and how much gold I could get from it. (1:33:09 - 1:33:40) And then if I smelted that gold, how much money could I make? If I bought a pallet of Pokemon cards, how many of Pokemon cards in there end up being valuable that I can get graded? Well, it turns out through doing that experiment, I understood that PSA and Beckett and all of the grading companies are incredibly broken. Incredibly broken. So like if you send them a card during the pandemic, especially when there was this huge Pokemon craze and there was a basketball card craze, during the pandemic, where cards were soaring to outrageous prices. (1:33:42 - 1:34:05) There's a human being that gets to decide whether or not your card is valuable and whether or not it's perfect. But what's gonna happen when computer vision does that? I think we're gonna discover that a lot of collectibles were falsely graded and are not as perfect as we assume they are. And so I think it's gonna completely change the collectibility marketplace AI is and it's gonna be uncomfortable. (1:34:05 - 1:34:13) Yeah. But those are examples of how I find things to invest in is I just really immerse myself in them. Yeah. (1:34:14 - 1:34:31) I'm mindful of your time. I know we have a hard stop coming up. Just I wanna kind of tease out, if you can, as best as possible, what role does intuition play in kind of your process? Because it seems to me like that intuition, the intuitive factor has been reaffirmed to you through certain decisions that you've made in your life. (1:34:32 - 1:34:39) And if you can, we never really touched on your kind of spiritual awakening or turn towards spirituality. If you can kind of weave that in as well. Close this one up. (1:34:40 - 1:34:53) Yeah. So about 20 years ago, I watched a movie called Lost in Translation with Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson. And that movie changed my life. (1:34:54 - 1:35:07) American Beauty also changed my life with Kevin Spacey, but Lost in Translation really, really changed my life. And it was a weird reason why. I had this understanding or this feeling that Bill Murray wasn't acting. (1:35:09 - 1:35:26) That what we were watching was a documentary of sorts, disguised as fiction. And I don't know how I got this intuition, but when I looked at his eyes and when I watched him acting, I didn't feel like I was watching acting. I felt like I was watching reality play out in front of me. (1:35:27 - 1:35:43) And I had this feeling that he was in a bad marriage. And he had a wife who was faxing him color choices for their walls and furniture. And he was a traveling actor and he was lonely in hotels and meeting single-serving friends. (1:35:44 - 1:36:00) And it was lonely. But the question that emerged for me was, why was he who he was? Because I had made an assumption about Bill Murray that he was a goofball. He was a man of no substance. (1:36:01 - 1:36:08) Really, I mean, he was funny. But, and I saw him on Saturday Night Live and I saw him appear every now and then. He was in Ghostbusters. (1:36:09 - 1:36:18) And then all my friends would laugh about how he was in meatballs and all of these movies. But I never was drawn to watch any of them because that was just not my thing. I didn't like stuff like that. (1:36:18 - 1:36:43) So when I saw Lost in Translation, I remember looking at my friend and I said, you know, someday I'm gonna meet him. I don't know how, but I'm gonna figure out something about him that I just am very curious about. And so I went and Google searched him and I discovered that he had been showing up at people's parties and washing people's dishes and crashing weddings and eating french fries off people's plates. (1:36:44 - 1:36:50) And I was like, you know, George Clooney's not doing this. You know, Brad Pitt's not doing this. You know, Tom Cruise isn't doing this. (1:36:50 - 1:37:17) Why is Bill Murray, someone as big as Coca-Cola, that everybody knows who he is, doing this? Clearly, he must have a reason that he's somehow rolling around in the mud with all of us. Why? And that question drove me and drove me and drove me. In the background of my mind, it's not like I read anything or watched any of his movies because I determined from that point forward, I was not gonna watch anything of his until I got a chance to meet him. (1:37:17 - 1:37:31) I would not watch a single thing. And so I avoided him like the plague. And I would tell everyone that I met, if I met anyone in Hollywood, I would say, hey, do you know Bill Murray? And they would be like, no. (1:37:32 - 1:37:52) And I'm like, okay, well, can you tell me any folklore about him? And people would tell me stories. And his legend started to grow more and more, these weird things that he was doing. I would hear more and more things like, did you hear that he has a 1-800 number that you have to call? Like these legends started becoming larger than he is. (1:37:53 - 1:38:12) And one day after, you know, I was successful and had the money to do this. One of my favorite sites in the world is called CharityBuzz. And I love buying experiences for my friends on CharityBuzz because you get to support charity and you get to do something that like, you never even thought was possible. (1:38:12 - 1:38:30) And it doesn't really, in the grand scheme of things, cost a whole lot because of what you're doing with the impact with those dollars. But one day, because I became a VIP on this site because I'd bought so many charitable experiences, one day there was a thing that came up that said, spend a day playing golf with Bill Murray. Whoa. (1:38:31 - 1:38:46) Yeah, right? And I was like, I looked at myself and I was like, man, should I do this? Should I do this? And I'm like, well, I always said I was gonna meet him someday. And I had one question for him, only one that I wanted to ask. And so I said, okay, well, I'm gonna do it. (1:38:46 - 1:38:59) So I wrote to them and I said, would he be willing to let me tag along? Because I don't know anything about golf and I've never played golf in my life. And the golf event was one week away from the purchase. So I didn't have a whole lot of time. (1:38:59 - 1:39:09) It was not like I could go practice and figure out how to play. They said, well, Bill says that you can come and have lunch. And I was like, yeah, lunch is only an hour long. (1:39:09 - 1:39:14) That's too short. I hear golf is like an all day affair. Like I wanna golf. (1:39:14 - 1:39:26) Like, is there any way to push him on the golf thing? Or can we pick another date so I can practice and try to learn? And they wrote back much to my surprise. And they said, you know what? He says you can come and you can bring a friend. And I was like, okay. (1:39:26 - 1:39:33) So I called up a friend of mine who's a really good golfer. She's very, very good. And she's very charismatic and really fun. (1:39:33 - 1:39:47) And I said, how would you like to do this? She's like, oh my gosh, she's on the top three names of people I wanna meet in my life. And so we went out to play golf with him. And when he arrived, I mean, it was magical from the moment he arrived. (1:39:48 - 1:39:58) And he basically said, okay, here's how it's gonna work. The first nine holes, I'm going to play with Emily, who's my friend who was golfing with us. And you're gonna go along with Scott Simpson, my friend here. (1:39:59 - 1:40:10) And by the time we get to the 10th hole, you will know a thing or two and you'll be able to play a little bit of golf. So Scott's gonna teach you. So Scott Simpson is a golf champion, if you look him up. (1:40:11 - 1:40:26) He's a big, big name in golf, sweetest man in the world. And we were raising money for his charity, which was First Tee of Hawaii. He's one of the golf instructors in Hawaii at the University of Hawaii. (1:40:27 - 1:40:39) And so I was having the time of my life with Scott Simpson that I forgot that I was even there to meet Bill Murray. I just completely forgot. And at some point, Bill comes and taps me on the shoulder and he's like, didn't you pay for this whole thing? And I was like, yeah. (1:40:39 - 1:40:51) And he's like, don't you wanna get in my cart? Cause we're already on the 11th hole at this point. We'd gone past the ninth and I wasn't clamoring to get into the cart. And he noticed that I'm having a time of my life with Scott and that he might need to intervene at some point. (1:40:52 - 1:40:57) And I said, oh yeah, yeah. And he's like, wow, you really don't know anything about golf. And I was like, no. (1:40:57 - 1:41:16) But I get in the cart and we're riding along in the cart. And at some point he stops the cart and he looks at me and goes, Cyan, why are you here? Cause I think it was the whole thing was curious. Like who spends that much money, doesn't realize that they've already made it past halfway in the game. (1:41:17 - 1:41:24) Like, why am I here? And so I looked at him and I said, oh yeah, yeah, sorry. I have one question for you. And he goes, okay. (1:41:24 - 1:41:39) And he's like, we're in the middle of this golf course. There's no one around asking me anything. And so I look at him and I said, how do you stay present? And he just, it's almost like the air came out of him because that was not what he was expecting. (1:41:39 - 1:41:48) I think he was expecting like, tell me about Groundhog Day and this and that and other or tell me. But I knew nothing about his art at that point. I knew nothing about any of these movies. (1:41:48 - 1:41:55) I had not watched Groundhog Day. I had not watched Caddyshack. I had not watched Meatballs or any of these movies other than Ghostbusters when I was a kid. (1:41:55 - 1:42:00) You know, I think we all saw Ghostbusters. It was inevitable and Lost in Translation. I hadn't seen anything. (1:42:01 - 1:42:21) And I wasn't a big fan to be honest with you. I was a big fan of his French fry stealing and his choice to live among people and to be a commoner like us was what really drove me to this question. And I perceived him to be someone who had somehow figured out something magical about us that we hadn't figured out. (1:42:21 - 1:42:34) There was this perception that he was somehow magical. And, well, he looked at me and he goes, hmm, hmm. And all of a sudden he looks out in the field and he goes, turkey. (1:42:35 - 1:42:44) And I go, what? And he's like, there's a turkey over there. And he starts saying he and starts talking about the turkey as a he. And so I started cracking jokes that he might be misgendering the turkey. (1:42:46 - 1:42:58) And so we got into a discussion about turkeys and bathrooms. And it was really funny about how in the old days we figured out something called unisex and whatever happened to unisex bathrooms. Like we figured this out. (1:42:59 - 1:43:08) And then I came back to the question. And again, I was like, so the question and he goes, hmm, tree. And he points at a tree and it was like this beautiful tree. (1:43:09 - 1:43:18) And I was like, yeah, it's a beautiful tree. And so we started talking about what kind of tree it was. And eventually it became very clear that he wasn't gonna answer my question. (1:43:18 - 1:43:25) But what I didn't realize at the time was that he was answering my question. Because I wasn't spiritually aware. I was not aware. (1:43:26 - 1:43:42) I was not, I was on the path, but I was, if you're asleep and blind to the answer, you will not see it when it's right in front of you. It could smack you in the fricking face and you will not know that someone is telling you something vital. Vital. (1:43:42 - 1:43:54) And I didn't realize how vital what he was telling me was. And so later that night, he took Emily and I to dinner, which was a bonus. Like we didn't even, that wasn't even part of the charity package. (1:43:54 - 1:44:05) We just got a bonus dinner out of the whole thing. This is how remarkable he is. If you ever get a chance to do a charity thing with him, and if he's ever fundraising for charity, I highly recommend that you sign up for it and you go, you will not be disappointed. (1:44:07 - 1:44:20) If he's your hero, you should definitely meet him. He's a hero that you should meet. But that night he told me that he wasn't very good at being present, but he was working on it. (1:44:22 - 1:44:31) And I watched how he interacted with the restaurant staff. He started doing the crazy stuff that everybody talks about. You know, he wandered around and acted like he was busting tables. (1:44:31 - 1:44:43) He made people drinks at the bar. He disappeared into the back room with the cooks and started singing with them. You know, at the end of the night, he had the whole restaurant singing Ghostbusters songs. (1:44:45 - 1:44:58) And it was just remarkable. But after that, after meeting him, I decided I'm going to watch his movies. I'm going to figure out what it is about him because I didn't get the answer. (1:44:58 - 1:45:08) At least I didn't think I did, but I got it. Yeah. So I started watching all of his movies and I started with the Wes Anderson movies. (1:45:08 - 1:45:22) I started with Groundhog Day, The Greats. I watched all of them, but I could not find anything that really hit me hard until I watched The Razor's Edge. And I don't know if you've ever watched that movie, but it's based off of a book by Somerset Maugham. (1:45:23 - 1:45:43) And I had a spiritual awakening while watching that movie. There's a scene in the movie towards the end where his character is battling with the loss of a loved one. And he becomes very stoic and he says, it just doesn't matter. (1:45:44 - 1:46:03) And if you look across his filmography, you'll see that he says it just doesn't matter a lot. And you might think that's nihilism, like it just doesn't matter. But I looked at it in a different way and all of a sudden I realized that I was carrying around a little bit of a victim story. (1:46:05 - 1:46:24) My mother, I had a strange relationship with my mother and my mother was weight. She was causing immense suffering in my life subconsciously. And all of a sudden I realized it didn't matter because she was a fiction. (1:46:24 - 1:46:41) She was an illusion, an illusion of my own making that I had made her into something that she wasn't anymore. It was a memory, a dream, a bad dream, but it was over. And when I had this realization, it's almost like you have a rotten tooth that gets pulled. (1:46:42 - 1:47:06) All of a sudden this energy from the base of my spine, there was people in the room when it happened, watching the movie with me, they could feel the energy shift in the room. And they all said, what happened to you just now? Because I think I gasped. I think I went, because this, I don't know how to describe it, but this energy at the base of my spine shot out the top of my head. (1:47:08 - 1:47:20) And the world hasn't looked the same since. I don't know how else to describe it because you have to experience it. But suddenly, what's that? Bill fucking Murray. (1:47:21 - 1:47:28) Bill fucking Murray. Yes. So without knowing the truth, because he hasn't said this, because he said turkey and tree. (1:47:30 - 1:47:48) After watching all of his films, I believe that Bill Murray is trying to wake us all up. And I believe that Bill Murray, because he could have taken major roles in Pixar films, blockbuster hits, he could have been an Oscar winner. He could have pursued a path that would have been easy for him. (1:47:48 - 1:48:22) And instead, he took all of these roles that had an underlying message in them, deeply rooted in philosophy. Because if you look at Groundhog Day, it's based off of Al Spinski, a book called The Curious Story of Ivan Ossikan, I think is what it's called, which is about Nietzsche's eternal recurrence. And Groundhog Day is exploring this concept that we are stuck in a time loop of sorts, repeating the same mistakes over and over again until we learn how to grind away our personalities and our egos to become better people. (1:48:22 - 1:48:38) And when you can become a better person, then you can reach enlightenment. All of the movies center on this core principle, except for the goofball comedies that he does. You'll notice this thread throughout all of his art. (1:48:39 - 1:49:00) The other thing is that his art seems to be, speaking of radical accountability, they all seem to be him atoning for behavior, apologizing for his behavior. And in that sense, they're almost all documentaries. And they mirror the life that he led or was leading that he was apologetic for. (1:49:02 - 1:49:29) And I think he identifies the sins that we humans create, because he is a sinner himself, we all are, and how you can live with them or how you can make them right or how you can set the scales right or karmically balance yourself or whatever. If you were to study Bill and really study him, I do believe that you will become a much better person. And that's what I got out of that encounter was a spiritual awakening. (1:49:30 - 1:49:52) And then I realized that he answered me, that he was teaching me how to be present and how to stay present in the moment on that cart that day, that he gave me a very valuable lesson that took a while to integrate and to figure out what he meant. But now I know what he means. And I read Somerset Maugham's book, I've watched both versions of the movie. (1:49:54 - 1:50:24) And that led me down a path of reading early esoteric occultist stuff from the early 1900s, because I think a lot of that probably shaped who he is and has shaped who I am as a result. And I now run these experiments, I try to treat mysticism and spirituality like science, because I'm still a skeptic at heart. And so I run these experiments to see what's repeatable. (1:50:27 - 1:51:01) And I can tell you that I have some really hardcore skeptic friends, like one of my dear friends is Lawrence Krauss, who's friends with Richard Dawkins, and they are hardcore skeptics. They're fans of James Randi, who has a million dollar prize when he was alive for if you could demonstrate paranormal or supernatural activity, you could win a prize. I do believe that some of the things that we are experiencing might be natural and explainable by science at some point, we could have a collective subconscious mind that we all share and that could explain some of these synchronicities. (1:51:02 - 1:51:27) But there is no doubt in my mind now, especially after that weird experience that I had watching the movie, that the world is not at all what I thought it was. And I could no longer with a straight face say that I wasn't a believer in something. So now I think I have a mission, I have a higher purpose, which is to plant seeds. (1:51:28 - 1:51:48) My job is not to go out and Bible thump or hit people over the head with spirituality or to jar people. It's to live the life that I live, to be a good person and to plant seeds of doubt that you might wanna question your deeply held beliefs. I really questioned them. (1:51:48 - 1:52:00) And one of my beliefs at the time was that I had none. And I hadn't thoroughly challenged that belief. I had not tried to believe. (1:52:00 - 1:52:14) Ever since Santa Claus, I had never tried. My heart was closed, incapable of seeing the light, incapable of seeing the magic that resides around us at all times. And after that, some people call it a kundalini awakening. (1:52:15 - 1:52:24) That's what people have described it as. I really feel that if there is a God, God is a scientist and a poet. And a comedian. (1:52:26 - 1:52:34) Because some of the things that happened to me, I'll just sit in my tracks and just laugh. Just laugh. Because I'm like, this is so funny. (1:52:36 - 1:52:43) Like, it's just too funny. Here's an example. The other day I wrote to my friend and I decided I was gonna assign monarch butterflies to him. (1:52:43 - 1:52:50) And I said, every time I see a monarch butterfly, I'm gonna text you. And he's like, that's so sweet. And I'm like, yeah, I'm gonna try this experiment. (1:52:50 - 1:52:57) It's fun. These are types of experiments that harm nobody, that just bring joy and beauty into the world. This was on December 4th. (1:52:57 - 1:53:05) Around February 22nd or so, I was down in LA walking around and I saw a monarch for the first time. And I got so excited. I grabbed my phone. (1:53:05 - 1:53:13) I didn't hesitate. And I messaged my friend, Robert. And he said, you're not gonna believe this, but I'm at the post office mailing you a package. (1:53:15 - 1:53:31) My God. What are the chances, right? And I had repeated this experiment. I assign animals to people, especially the rarer, the better, like a praying mantis or, you know, and I will message a person when I see it. (1:53:32 - 1:53:36) And sure enough, they're like, I was just thinking about you. I was just talking about you. I was just right. (1:53:36 - 1:53:54) All right, if you check your inbox, I just sent you an email or I'll get a text message from them that moment. And all of these experiments I run like this just further my understanding that we are connected on some level we just don't understand. But it's very real. (1:53:55 - 1:53:57) It's very, very real. Yeah. This is amazing. (1:53:58 - 1:54:07) I know we could talk for, I feel like we could talk for so much longer on this. And again, like Joel said, I want to honor your time. So we could do a whole other thing, some other time just on spirituality. (1:54:07 - 1:54:18) Yeah, absolutely. I'd love to hear about your explorations with Gurdjieff and Crowley and things of that nature and keep going deeper. But this has been an incredible couple of hours. (1:54:18 - 1:54:24) And thank you for being so generous with your time. You're an incredible storyteller. I just hope you really know that as well. (1:54:24 - 1:54:28) Oh, thank you. I just tell it how it is. I don't mean to be a good storyteller. (1:54:28 - 1:54:54) I just, I just tell it how it is. There's a gift in the translation, you know, of what the message is in all that as well, for sure. The thing that's hit me the most, because I was really reluctant to tell my story for a long time, was the, like when I went on Tim Ferriss, the amount of emails, thousands, I'm not kidding, thousands of emails that I got where people said, I don't know what it was that you did when you were telling the story, but it did something to me. (1:54:55 - 1:55:05) It did something to me. And it's different parts of different stories did things to people. And it's kind of like Lost in Translation and The Razor's Edge. (1:55:05 - 1:55:22) You don't know what you say or what kind of art you make is going to make a difference in someone's life. And so I do these podcasts specifically because I want to reach someone like me who's searching for the truth and searching for the answers. And they hear me say something and it unlocks something for them. (1:55:23 - 1:55:38) Or they have that epiphany that they live in a beautiful world that is absolutely magical and we can make heaven on earth if we choose to do so. A great way to end this podcast. Right? Yeah. (1:55:39 - 1:55:42) 100% on board. So grateful to have connected. So thank you again. (1:55:43 - 1:55:49) Yeah, thank you. I am grateful too. Anytime I get a chance to talk to people about what I truly care about, and this is what I truly care about. (1:55:49 - 1:56:08) More than investing, more than anything else that I do is to give people a sense of purpose. It's far more important than anything else I could ever do in my life. So I am very grateful to you guys for doing this podcast and you could spend your time doing a million other things, but you chose to do this. (1:56:09 - 1:56:20) And that means to me that you really care about humanity and you really care about other people. Thank you. No other words right now except thank you, Sian. (1:56:20 - 1:56:46) I guess in closing, is there anything that you'd like to share with our audience or where you'd like to direct their attention to at all? Yeah, so I mostly post on X, on my username on there is scientist. And I try very, very hard to live kind of in public to the best of my ability and share what I'm thinking about and what weird experiments I'm running. And then I have a sub stack where I'm writing a memoir about my life. (1:56:46 - 1:56:58) I'm currently at about age 15 or 16. Some people sign up for my sub stack and are really confused because I haven't updated in a while. And so they think it's not alive, but they don't realize you don't start a book on the last page. (1:56:58 - 1:57:12) You've got to start from the beginning. And so I try to tell people like when you come to my sub stack, don't treat it like a blog, treat it like a book and go to the very first entry and start reading from there. And then you can pick and choose stories or you can read from the beginning to the end. (1:57:13 - 1:57:25) But I found that every single story seems to resonate with people differently. And some of them are written like a child wrote them for a reason. Because I'm trying to remember them as the child remembered them. (1:57:26 - 1:57:38) And you'll notice that my writing style changes over time as I mature in age. And eventually when you catch up today, obviously the writing style is gonna be very different. It's gonna be much more in tune with who I am today and much more spiritual. (1:57:39 - 1:57:50) But obviously the things I'm writing right now when I was 14, 15, I'm an atheist. I didn't believe in any of this. And so I've got to go back and remember who that person was because it's very different than who I am. (1:57:51 - 1:58:02) But that's where, maybe that's where you can reach me. And then I have an inbox if you want to send me a message or if anything that I've said or done touches you, feel free to reach out. Amazing. (1:58:03 - 1:58:07) This has been an incredible conversation. Thank you for your time. Everyone else, thank you for listening. (1:58:08 - 1:58:14) Take care. And that wraps up today's journey. But hey, the truth train doesn't stop here. (1:58:14 - 1:58:31) Every Friday, we drop little nuggets of wisdom straight to your inbox. We're talking mind-expanding ideas, heart-opening perspectives, and the kind of content that hopefully makes you go, whoa, I never thought of it that way. Our Friday drops like having coffee with that friend who always blows your mind. (1:58:31 - 1:58:43) Except this friend shows up right on schedule and never asks to borrow money. So if you wanna join our truth-seeking tribe, it's super easy. Just hop over to hearforthetruth.com forward slash Friday and hit that subscribe button. (1:58:44 - 1:58:58) No spam, no fluff, just pure unfiltered goodness delivered weekly. So if you're ready to make your Fridays a little more truthful, a little more inspiring, and a whole lot more awesome, your future self will thank you for this one. See you next time. (1:58:58 - 1:59:02) And remember, we're always here for the truth and we're always here for you.