EXPERIENCE 210 | Alex Raymond - Serial Entrepreneur, Techstars Alum and Mentor, Founder of the Conscious Entrepreneur Summit and Host of the Conscious Entrepreneur Podcast

Alex Raymond is a 3x tech startup founder and entrepreneur who made the journey up from Boulder to The LoCo Experience studio to share his journey and some wisdom he’s learned along the way.  He was an early client of TechStars, and has been a long-term mentor in the program.  And - he share how listeners can expand their business brains and mindfulness at the Conscious Entrepreneur Summit - upcoming May 28 and 29 in Boulder.  

Alex is also the Host of the Conscious Entrepreneur Podcast, which has hosted many dozens of conscious leaders on topics as diverse as building teams for scaling, developing a personal brand, or redefining happiness in your life.  He’s also a generous guy, and gave our listeners the opportunity to save $100 off your Summit tickets by March 31 - use code LOCO - and one lucky listener will win 50% off tickets - but you’ll have to listen to win!  

As always, Alex and I enjoyed a wide-ranging conversation, dialing in on crucial business and life principals - and chasing lots of squirrels.  So please enjoy - as I did, my conversation with Alex Raymond.  

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Alex Raymond is a three time tech startup founder and entrepreneur who made the journey up from Boulder to the Loco Experience Studio to share his journey and some wisdom he's learned along the way. He was an early client of Techstars and has been a long term mentor in the program, and he shares how listeners can expand their business brains and mindfulness. At the Conscious Entrepreneur Summit, upcoming May 28th and 29th in Boulder. Alex is also the host of the Conscious Entrepreneur Podcast, which has hosted many dozens of conscious leaders on topics as diverse as building teams for scaling, developing a personal brand, or redefining happiness in your life. He's a generous guy and gave our listeners the opportunity to save 100 off your summit tickets by March 31st. Use code LOCO and one lucky listener will win 50 percent off tickets, but you'll have to listen to win that. As always, Alex and I enjoyed a wide ranging conversation dialing in on crucial business and life principles and chasing lots of squirrels. So please enjoy, as I did, my conversation with Alex Raymond. And welcome back to the local experience podcast. My guest today is Alex Raymond and Alex is the founder of the conscious entrepreneur summit. Coming up in May, we'll talk more about that. He's the host of the Conscious Entrepreneur podcast, as well as the founder of a business called Amplify, and he's been involved with Techstars, mostly in the Boulder area for a long time in various capacities. So, uh, Uh, long list of titles and accomplishments there, Mr. Raymond, thanks for being here. Awesome. Uh, thanks for, thanks for having me, Kurt. Great to see you. So, um, I guess let's start with the Conscious Entrepreneur Summit. Like, uh, when is it? Who should go? What's it cost? Who will they see there? Um, how long you've been doing it? All the, all the, all the Yeah, let's start, let's start with, with Conscious Entrepreneur. And, and actually what I'll do is Link it back to something you just mentioned in the introduction, which is, which is tech stars. So I've been an entrepreneur for a long time, primarily in the software space. And when I say a long time, I mean it like 15 years. I just turned 49 last month. And so probably 15, 16, 17 years, I've been an entrepreneur, uh, which. As you know, it has pros and cons. Uh, many years ago, I started a company called CAPTA and we got into the tech stars program in Boulder, um, back when tech stars was really cool right now. It's kind of cool, but it used to be really cool. Well, it's coming back. It seems like it's getting cooler. Correct. It's a resurrecting brand. So, so we went through that, we were going through the program and you know, just, just so that your listeners know. Uh, Techstars is one of these startup accelerators and it's one of the original ones has been around for a while, but really well established, really well known, very, very, uh, uh, beneficial program, like tons, really valuable. And it's a big deal to get into. Did they bring capital to the equation as well? They do. So they get into the program, like we'll pick the cool kids and maybe we'll even invest in you if we think you get cool enough and smart enough, fast enough. Totally. So, so there's an application process. pretty lengthy and pretty involved. Uh, they select very small percentage of whoever applies. And then when you apply, you get, uh, funding. So you get kind of this equity grant in exchange for part of your company. So, uh, when we did it, it was something like a hundred thousand dollars for 6 percent of the company. That's their business model, right? I would make that trade right now. So they take, they take equity in your company and return for. Uh, for you going through the program and they invest a small amount as well. So that you have capital, but on top of that, then they open up other funding facilities so you can have access to convertible debt notes and stuff like that. And so it's a great program. A lot of people are excited to be in it. Uh, it's a big deal. Uh, it's, it's, it's prestigious if you will. And so. I was going through this program and just like maybe 12 other companies or 11 other companies in the program itself, uh, everyone at various stages of how far along they are from like very, very little to, you know, at that point, my company, I think we were probably one of the farther along we were doing like maybe a quarter million dollars a year in revenue or something like that in software as a service. Yeah, right. So, so, so this company I was with at the time was software as a service and. A lot of companies are sort of tech in one form or another. So it could be apps or FinTech or software, the tech stars, hence the name. Yeah. And so I was going through the program and it's a very, it's structured. There's a lot of mentors. There's a lot of support. There's a lot of people out there kind of. Designed to be, to be helping you. And one day I'm back at home in the evening and I'm sitting on a couch, kind of, kind of like this one. And, uh, I've got this look on my face that my wife calls my fish face. Fish face, meaning like, it's kind of droopy. I'm not looking very excited. You know, like I got something on my mind. Uh, and she looks over me and she's like, why do you have that fish face? Like she, and then she followed up with like. Why are you so miserable? And I was like, wait a minute. She goes, you're supposed to be yours. She's like, you're supposed to be at the height of your entrepreneurial career. You just got into textiles. You've all these people supporting you. You just raised some money. Uh, all these things are happening in your life. Why are you so fucking miserable? Like fair question. Right. And, uh, and it was kind of like a whack on the head. Yeah. Yeah. Right. And after I got over my initial defensiveness, once I got over my initial defensiveness, um, And I, and I started to think, you know, what is going on? Like, yes. Why am I, why am I unhappy? Why do I feel unsatisfied? Why am I miserable? What I realized Kurt was I was spending all this time that I was in the program, comparing myself to everybody else. Hey, this guy's farther along because of this. This person's farther along because, Oh, these people have more money. They've, they raised more money than we did. Oh, they, they have a sexier app. They have a, this, they have a, that they have a bigger team. They have a marquee. Mentor, whatever it is. Right. And I was like, giving away all my energy into this like, doom loop spiral. I don't belong here. Uh, I feel like an imposter. I just snuck in. When are they going to find out that I don't really belong? You know, all these sorts of stories in my head. Yeah. And entrepreneurs have been there. So a lot of entrepreneurs have been there. And so, so here's, here's what, how this kind of. Evolved for me was, you know, went on with building the business, but I had this thought in my head that, Hey, you know, I can do better here. Like it doesn't have to be this way. It doesn't have to feel this way. And so as we built that business, you know, went through a number of different stages and we raised money and hired a team and then. Shifted and fired a bunch of people who had revenue and lost them and customer, you know, up and down and sideways and so on, you know, but along the way, I kept on this journey to say, to really understand and explore what was going on inside of me, what was going on in my, what was going on in my head was going on in my heart, what was going on in my body as it relates to being an entrepreneur. And I know we just talked about, we're going to, you know, come to our faith family, uh, uh, politics segment later, but like, what was your faith perspective? Were you also like. learning about meditation, or Buddhism, or Taoism, or something at the same time, like, or was that the instigator to that for you? I basically did everything. Right, threw everything on the wall. Everything there was to do, I did. Went to church, said a dog. I mean, you know, uh, at this point I had done, you know, the meditation programs. And I had done the retreats, and read the books, and watched the videos. I even spent months at an ashram in India. Uh, so my wife had gone to Anantara in India a long time ago, she went for six months, I went and joined her for three months. So, uh, that was a big part of it, is like, how can I use the tools I already know to quiet my mind, or to still my mind, or to understand what's going on. Yeah, so that was definitely a thing. I'm starting to jump in, but I just felt like it was part of that exploratory, for you at least. It was, it was a thing. And, uh, I also then tried to tap into local resources. So I joined entrepreneur groups and a men's group and 1 million cups or all this sort of stuff. So, so like, um, it was EO Accelerator at the time. Cause we were sub a million dollars with EO Accelerator. And I went to, and I joined a men's group and then I had my own sort of like gaggle of entrepreneurs and we would get together every couple of weeks and talk about stuff. And, uh, and so this was all part of me tapping into whatever was out there trying to help get support for myself. Then I became. A mentor in the tech stars program. Okay. So one of the things they do is they have all these measure of success through this. So you weren't rich yet, but you were figuring it out. And it's basically people who could, who can be helpful to entrepreneurs at some point in their journey. So since I'd gone through and. Survived the program and raised money, and we started a business. It was like, great. I could be of help to people who were a year or two behind. Okay, great. And I would go to all these mentor meetings and you know, people would be with, come to me thinking that they wanted to talk about their pricing strategy or their go to market strawberry strategy, of You know, how to build the website or, you know, how to, how to do a sales deck or enterprise sale, whatever, something like this. Right. Totally. And, uh, so everyone's like, what do you really want to do? Well, everyone's very serious, right? They're all very serious and they want to talk about their go to market strategy. But what I realized was they all just wanted to say, they want an answer to the question of when am I going to start feeling better inside? Yeah. And a lot of entrepreneurs just didn't have. The vocabulary, they didn't have the awareness. They didn't have permission to talk about stuff like that. Because think about it, like you're building a business. There's a very, there's a very specific playbook. You find a problem, you investigate the problem, you have a solution, you raise money, you, you staff up, you go solve it. You scale up and then everyone's a gajillionaire and happy ever after. Right. Except, except it doesn't really look like that for most people, right? For most people, it looks like this, blah, blah, blah, like kind of bouncing around. And there's a lot of stuff. Uh, that's driving you. So fears and limiting beliefs and whatever you got left over from your childhood and all this time and stuff. So I'm still answering the first question on, on why conscious entrepreneur. So. Here's, here's how it, here's how it emerged. I realized, Oh, everyone else wants to talk about this stuff too. Uh, and none of the things that I found around me were particularly suited in the way that I wanted, but it was important to realize I'm not alone. Yeah. And all these people are also looking for some type of community. So, in the summer of 2021, during mid pandemic, Yeah, yeah. I was out walking my, I was out walking my dog. Just getting ready to come back into lockdown again. Quite. We didn't know that yet. Or maskies or whatever. We didn't know that yet. Yeah, it seemed like we were done with it finally. Mm hmm. Uh, I have a, I have a miniature schnauzer. Her name is Dash. Oh, I've got a schnauzer cocker. A schnauzer. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Nice. Uh, so I was out walking Dash. And just as we're rounding the corner on 26th street, coming back toward my house, uh, in, in Boulder, um, I had one of these, you know, kind of like epiphanies in my mind and the epiphany in my mind went, boy, I really like being an entrepreneur. I really like all this personal growth stuff that I've been working on and doing. And even though I'm an introvert, I actually really like. Putting on conferences. Yeah, it's a thing. Yeah. And so basically it was like this Venn diagram of these three things like boom, boom, boom, all coming together and Literally, you know sometimes as an entrepreneur, there's something that you can't not do Podcasting for me is one of those so this this is what it was for me. It was okay. This is gonna happen There's gonna be an event for entrepreneurs who are dedicated to their personal growth And somehow this is going to come to life, and I guess I'm the one who's going to be doing this. So What do we got to do? Off we go, right? Like, what's next? And, and that was the, that was the origin of it. So that was in the, that was in the summer of 2021. The first event took place in May of 2022. Okay. So I had like nine or ten months to, to put it together. Um, but the thesis So this will be a third year event? This is year four. Oh, yeah. 22, 23, 24, 25 already. Dang. Yeah, so, so, the, the thesis of the event is That growth starts from within and that there are ways to build a business and to scale a business without sacrificing yourself. Hmm. Yeah. I, uh, I resonate in part. I'm actually reflecting to our next level summit last summer. Uh, and part of the, the talk from our, uh, one of our facilitators was kind of this concentric circle of, you know, kind of focus on yourself. First and be thoughtful about where that growth is happening. And then now your business. And then now let's take it out to the community. And where are you engaging in the community and in what capacities, where are your special powers and things like that? Totally. When you talk about working on yourself, like it sounds like so many different things, you know, right? It's like your relationships, your, your gym, your physical health, your food intake, all the stuff. Is that, or is it more business y focused on that entrepreneur role? Who, who is coming for, for this? So it's, College Entrepreneur Summit, well the answer's in the name. Uh, it's for the, it's for the, Person on the website. It's for the founder. It's for the person in the arena, right? That's who we're, that's what we're focusing on. We don't, we, while we, while we, we welcome other people like maybe the COO or the, so on, like for the most part, these are founders, CEOs, the, the person who is the entrepreneur and. You know, we all have this perception that being an entrepreneur is just nonstop hustle, nonstop success. Everything is up and to the right, uh, and so on. And when you get into it, and you know, a lot of entrepreneurs here in Colorado, like when you get into it, so many people. They may not be open to telling you about this, but maybe they're having issues with their health or their marriage or their, their, their, their unhappy for all, for multiple reasons, or, you know, the internalizing so much stress, anxiety, fear, et cetera. And we need a place to release that. We can't, we as entrepreneurs. Often can't go to our spouses and have the same level of conversation. Yeah. We can't go to our team and have that same level of conversation because it sets the team off, right? Like, well, and plus they don't want to know you're going to have trouble making payroll. They don't, they don't, they don't want to know it doesn't land very well. Um, and by, by the way, it's also not that helpful if you're the CEO to go to your team members and say, Oh, I'm having all these doubts about X, Y, Z. Right. Totally. So you have to be that. Frankly, I, I mean, I just wanted to share some resonance, I guess. Yeah. Um, loco think tank is local community think tank, but it's also make you crazy if you don't talk to somebody about your challenges. And creating this business that you're building, um, and, or make your spouse crazy if you bring them all your challenges that you can't talk to with your team about. Yeah, absolutely. And so because of that, a lot of people just clam up and they don't yeah, yeah. They just work harder at the problem without any perspective. And so that's like, we're doing. The same thing in different ways, I guess, is some ways how I would say it. Yeah. And that's why, that's why I'm here to share these stories. Fair enough. So people, people get, you know, like the pressure just builds internally. And you know, there's a lot of, unfortunately, there's a lot of stories. I recruited my marriage counselor to my second Loco Think Tank chapter, actually. Nice. He became a member. He was scaling his counseling practice at the time. And so it was kind of like, I could keep going to counseling because I couldn't really afford it. But as long as he was a member, I was like, well, he's kind of paying me to. Go see him, you know, that's good. Uh, and, and so, so So, yes, I understand is what I mean to say by that. Well, you, you, you understand, like, you get it. And if we don't have a place to, to share, if we don't have community, if we don't have people, we can talk to about this stuff, the pressure builds up and then lo and behold, you've got an illness or you've got some issue in your, with your health or with your family or with your whatever, or you're exploding, your temper or stress, whatever. And these things can, can, can kill. And unfortunately, there's also stories about entrepreneurs who take their own lives, for example. Right. And. Probably at a much higher level than the general public, I'm sure. Well, there's a lot of, there's a lot of data on this, right? So, so So, uh, Dr. Michael Freeman has done a lot of research on, uh, entrepreneurial mental health, on entrepreneur resilience. And entrepreneurs have a lot of very pro, uh, growth capacities, right? Like we're creative and we're industrious and, uh, we fix, fix problems and we're social, et cetera. Meritocracy generally and stuff like that. And we have a lot of, you know, negative orientation as well. Depression, uh, stress. You're never where you want to be by now. All of these things, right? And so it's a real, it's a real thing. And, and what, what we've done with conscious entrepreneur summit is create a place where people can, can not only connect with one another, but then learn tools and ideas and resources. Okay. So we bring it, it's a very, very high quality event. This is, uh, we bring in incredible speakers. We've had people like Gay Hendricks, the guy who wrote, uh, all about zone of genius. We invited his own genius. Uh, Keith Farrazi, the guy who wrote Never Eat Alone, Ryan Holliday, uh, who wrote all those books on, on Stoics, uh, Liz Foslein, who does all this work on, um, uh, emotional, uh, like emotions at work, Kaylee Klemp, one of the coauthors of the 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership. So we have really, really You talk about people you actually pay to come. Serious people. Correct? Yes. Big money. Big time. Uh, and, and this year we're bringing in Dr. Benjamin Hardy, who is the coauthor of a book, well, many books, but The one that really attracted me was, uh, this book called 10 X is easier than two X. Have you read it? I've heard about it, but I haven't read it yet. A super book. And it's, it's really about the, it's not about the, Hey, if you want to grow 10 X, you need to raise your price or sell more products or go enterprise or whatever. It's not that it's here's the psychology of what it takes to think. And become the person who's going to grow like this, as opposed to the person who's going to grow like that. So really, really interesting mindset shift is all the mindset shift allow for that, which then can allow you to explore the systems, the processes, the sales literature, whatever that is for your business. Yeah. And so, you know, really great, really great gang. It's coming up May 28th and 29th in Boulder, Colorado. We'll have a couple hundred people there. Right after the Memorial Day weekend. Yep. So what is that a Thursday, Friday, Wednesday, Thursday, Wednesday, Thursday. Okay. All right. So sign up through like, uh, everything you want, everything you want. And more is on the website at conscious entrepreneur dot U S I realized that those are two very difficult words to spell conscious and entrepreneur. You put them together. It's even harder to spell and we don't even have the. com it's a dot U S. But if you Google any sort of approximation, it will find us. So, um, How has the Conscious Entrepreneur Summit evolved over now it's coming into its fourth year, easier to get cool speakers probably because you've had cool speakers before. Yeah. So the evolution has been, um, so several things are going on. Uh, we have consistently been able to attract. Good speakers because we pay for the ones that we, we want. Um, but I've also learned about how to create a really great event. So in the past, my, you know, my bias on this Kurt was, I'm just going to get as many cool speakers and we're going to fill the day. And it's going to be like a fire hose of information from the stage. And everyone's going to say rah, rah, and then be done. Uh, and what, what I realized over time, like the feedback I was getting from people was like, Hey, this is really great. And we would like a lot more space in the day to connect with one another. And then, so great. So then we created more space in the day to connect with one another. Guess what they said after that? Oh, we'd like more space to connect with one another during the day. Uh, and so, so we're, we're building in the way I think about it is, is a hierarchy and the hierarchy that I use to run the summit is connection at the top. Event. So let her experience and then, uh, and then content at the bottom. Oh, interesting. So in the past I would have said, let's put content on at the top and like blast the content. Now I've realized that what entrepreneurs value most is connecting with others who, and sharing their journey. So if we can build in experiences, like we do connection dinners. So, so community, community organized connection dinners around a specific theme, we do a connection hike where everyone gets out in nature. Yeah, and walks around and connects that way. Um, and those things, and plus, you know, whatever, whatever workshops or things we're organizing during the summit itself, they allow people to open up, to be, to be vulnerable, to create connection, to meet new people, to network a little bit, and so on. So, we do a lot more of that than we have in the past. What's your venue? Um, The venue, we're at the University of Colorado in the, in the, the Glenn Miller Ballroom at the UMC, so it's, It's one big room? It's one big, so it's one big room. So, my other philosophy on this is, I like to guide, I like groupism and I like everyone together for the entire thing. So we don't break up. We don't have, we don't split up into speakers over here and speakers over there and choose your journey. No, we were doing it. So I'm a little bit of a control freak in that regard. Uh, but we do it, we do it all together. Cause that way we can really build a fantastic experience and arc for everybody as opposed to, Oh, I went to this one. I went to that one. I didn't meet you yet. I haven't seen you before. You know, where it gets really diluted. I try to keep everything. Everything together. That sounds like a pretty interesting, and, like, you can literally, like, hike out the back door and go for a cruise. Yeah. So it's like the most amazing scenery in the world right outside the door. Who's your demographic? Are you, like, half Boulder Denver region and then half people from around the country? Or is it way different than that? We typically get about, uh, 75 percent of our audience from Colorado. Okay. And, uh, 25 percent from not. So, so we've already, we've already had some international visitors, people flew in from, uh, London and Mexico and, uh, Spain. So we've had, we've had some, some amount of, uh, non U. S. folks, Canada, of course, uh, but, um, mostly Colorado. And then people who are like really interested in these topics come from other, other parts of the U S yeah. And when it, within Colorado, you know, it's going to be mostly, mostly Denver and Boulder. Right. And is, is it mostly also kind of that tech oriented software, banky stuff? Well, that's where, that's where it's interesting. Also now, like manufacturers of windows or sign company. It's exceedingly diverse. And, and, and that's an awesome, awesome thing about it. Yeah. So what I mean is you're going to find everything from, uh, you know, software or FinTech, you know, kind of thing, which you might think it's more traditional entrepreneurs, but that's kind of what comes to mind, uh, to people who are doing funded entrepreneurs. Yeah, but, but we also have people who are doing, uh, consulting companies, people who are doing manufacturing, people doing healthcare, people, uh, there was one year, some people came who run a franchise of like swim clubs for kids. Uh, we have people from the construction business, so it's pretty broad and, and here's why it's broad because there's so many commonalities for entrepreneurs in their experience, no matter what industry they're in. So as, as a founder. In tech, I have more in common with a founder in healthcare than I do with someone else in tech. Yeah. Right? Yeah, yeah. Who's not a founder. And so, that's the bond. Like, that's the glue. Okay. So, it's especially founders. Like, Correct. Not necessarily second generation, not necessarily, I mean, that's, that's, because, because that is Like if you were handed the keys to something, you just got to drive it in a way, but being the founder comes with its own special set of challenges. Correct. Yeah. So it's, it's very much, it's very much the founders. Uh, and that allows us to really talk to them. Right. So, so it's highly, highly. Um, should we shift to the conscious entrepreneur podcast? We can talk about the podcast. The, the, the podcast is an effort to broaden the conversation. So when did you start? Uh, about a year and a half ago, I think I'm 75, 76. You're crushing them out. So you're about one a week. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a, it's a bit of a slog. It's a lot of work. Do you love it? It's a lot of work. There are parts that I love and there are parts that I'm like, Ugh, let me tell you. I mean, so you do podcast, you know all about this. Uh, the parts that I love are the interviews and learning something new and finding really cool people to talk to. Uh, the parts that I don't like as much, actually the one part I really don't like, which is writing the intro and then recording the intro. For some reason it drives me nuts. I'm always, I'm always putting it off. I put, I shrunk mine way down this year. I'm like, I'm just going to do like, uh, uh, eight line, two paragraph introduction. And if people want to listen to this person, they should listen. But I don't want to like, try to think back to three weeks ago when I interviewed this person. Cause you got, you got it. And plus you got to get everything in one take and it's got to be perfect. And you got to have the right energy and inflections and intonations. Anyway, that part, I'm always just like, Oh, who else could do this? Yeah, but I do, I do have a great partner, uh, with, uh, with the podcast, uh, which is Sarah Lockwood at Hivecast. She does. company, a production company, her company does all this stuff for me, which I'm, which I'm super glad for. So they take a lot of it out. Hey, Sarah, what's up? She does a lot of great stuff for us. Awesome. Um, so like, what are you trying to achieve? Is it really just a voice for that conscious entrepreneur summit? Are you trying to just. Take your voice farther away than people that would come to the organizing. So it actually serves multiple purposes, the podcast. So the podcast serves one purpose of just broadening the message around conscious entrepreneurship. So broadly it's because people hear it and they make a lot of assumptions. I'll tell you the one assumption they make is if it's got the word conscious in it, it's for a bunch of barefoot hippie people who are not serious. I forgot to offer. We always have a, I got a joint. A homegrown joint right there, if you want. And there's also a mushroom in the bottom of that little can. Thank you. Cause you're hippie, right? Like you're a conscious entrepreneur. Thank you for that. I'm a conscious entrepreneur and I drove here. So I think I will pass. I thought you would. But being Colorado, I think it's well played. If we were in your backyard instead of my backyard, then you would perhaps indulge. Correct. Correct. Um, so anyway, I digress. I think it's just kind of a funny thing to. Offer the community. Sure. Uh, and you never know, usually go about nine weeks. By the way, help you help yourself. No, no, I'm okay. I'm okay. You polished off your drink. Do you need a second drink? Not yet, because I had a little splash before you got here. Got it. Otherwise your voice will start to slur a little bit. I hear myself. Like, do you hear yourself slur when you've been drinking? I drink very little, but I do, yes. So, you have, and you do. I think there's like, I do too, and I'm even, I'm a, I'm a like a 4 percent slur right now. Um, just cause I've had two whiskeys and, you know, not big whiskeys, but small whiskeys in the last hour and I can, I can hear it. Um, and so whenever I hear it, I'm like, nope, I'm good. Have some water instead. And it, and it doesn't take much, like, like nobody would notice my slur. You think? I think. Um, but a lot of people wouldn't notice their own slurs, is the thing. Right. Right. Like, and those are, that's the dangerous thing. If you can notice your own slur, I think you're not quite I used to drink, I used to drink, you know, like any, whatever, in my 20s and whatever, I just used to drink like anybody else. Uh, and I, essentially because I started doing a lot of, uh, meditating and I told you I was in the ashram in India, um, there was a time during the ashram in India, uh, well first there was no alcohol but we were there, fine, but then when we were doing other programs kind of around it, there were all these rules and one of the rules A decent amount of time, I think it was a hundred days, was no meat and no alcohol. Oh, wow. And, and at first I was like, Which one? Which one bothers you more? Both. And then once I did it, I was like, oh, that was easy. And by the way, day 101 is a lot easier to tack on after you've done it for a hundred days. So that led to me being, like, not eating meat for probably another two years or three years after that. And then alcohol, uh, Probably also and then, you know, it came back a bit, but it is not playing a significant role at all in my life anymore So I probably now drink three to four units Yeah. A month. Okay. So. Like a glass of wine with dinner once in a while. Like, actually, what I, what I, what I most like is, uh, tequila and mezcal. Oh. Yeah. My wife's from Mexico, so we spend a ton of time in Mexico, and, uh, that's like, I love it. I do have the Anejo of the, the Boulder Base brand of tequila, if you'd like just a little tiny sipper. Um, so no, that's an opportunity because we are on the Local Experience Podcast. Indeed, yes, well, I, I, I support local businesses as well. And it's, what is that brand? It's called Suerte. Suerte, yeah. Um, actually, one of our chapters launched with Suerte, like, sponsored, I guess? An event we had, and we, we, it was, what was it? It was called, um, Tips, Tacos, and Tequila. And so we had business tips from yours truly. We had tacos from the Hooli and Juan who were on my podcast a few months ago. Um, and we had tequila from Swarte and Melissa with an unusual spelling. was our sponsor for that and she did a really nice talk about how Suerte was like smoking their Oh cool. their agave hearts before they turned it into tequila and that was why it tasted that much better. Right. So, anyway, that's like six years ago in May. It was a while ago. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Anyway, I digress. Sorry to change. Uh, that's what we do. here. Uh, we chase squirrels. We chase squirrels. We chase squirrels. Um, talk to me about, uh, while we're still on the topic of, uh, self destructive behaviors or enlightening behaviors, perhaps. Sure. Uh, talk to me about your relationship with, uh, both mushrooms and marijuana. In light of that. Yeah, I, you know, I'm, I'm lucky in, in so far as, uh, I never, I didn't do very much marijuana in college. Okay. And I consider myself lucky for that. Yeah. Yeah. It's better for people. Yeah, it's better for people. Like, people that started smoking marijuana before 15, 16 especially. Yeah. Hmm. Not so great. Not usually. Uh, but, but I, I did, I did. After 20, better. I did smoke in my, in my 20s. Um, and it got to the point where like, I realized that this just wasn't fun, it wasn't good for me, it wasn't a thing that I was enjoying, but I still found myself, it was like a default behavior. Yeah. And, uh. Plus you were hanging out with hippies. Well, plus just like, uh, no, I've not given you my, my whole history. We'll come back to it. We'll come back to that. But there was a time right before my 30th birthday. Where I essentially was like this is not an appropriate thing for me to be continuing. I don't like it I don't know why I'm doing this all the time And so I literally did the proverbial take my stash flush it down the toilet. Really? Yeah, and not to say I've never gone back I have but Every time I do anything, edibles or whatever, I'm like, I'm like, yeah, it doesn't make me feel great. Mushrooms, psychedelics, on the other hand, I'm a huge fan. Uh, I, I, like, I think these are incredible, powerful tools, powerful tools. I don't, I don't do these things in social recreational settings. I just don't, like, I'm not interested. It's more of a guided introspective. I do it in a ceremonial setting. I do it. Internally laying on a couch, eye folds on, boom, like that whole thing, you know, much more significant dosage as opposed to like go part, you know, go concert or whatever. That part I've got zero interest in. Interesting. Yeah. Okay. Well, thanks. I like, I find that that's part of why I put those there in my little dinosaurs, because I think it's really interesting. Well, Colorado obviously being like the first state to really rock it. Uh, and in, in the mushrooms too. Yeah. But I haven't had mushrooms on the podcast for two years. Nobody's taken me up on it. Well, I mean, look, they're a really, really powerful tool. They are. And for me, any time I've done a micro I get all agitated and irritated. Oh, wow. Yeah. Yeah. Like, so, Oh, so you're like big or nothing. Oh, interesting. Yeah. Some people really like the microdose. Yeah. Yeah. That's what mostly I've done like since those early twenties days when I would like see streaks and colors and stuff, but to mine, Hmm. In. inspection. Um, like a little bit is like, you know, the green is just a little bit greener. The sun's just a little bit warmer and you don't actually have a change to your behavior quotient. Um, but for you, it's like annoying because you're not far enough or it's just, it's just like, it's just, I'm slightly heightened and I'm slightly like aware and I'm slightly irritated and yeah, I was like, I've done it. I did it several times and I was just like, ah, I'm done. I don't need to do this. So you're like, I'll just hero dose and talk on the couch to somebody. Yeah. Yeah. Fascinating. Yeah. Uh, in fact, um, uh, Many of my experiences for this happened in Arvada at Ceremonial. Have you been there? No. Oh yeah. Yeah. I dunno. Anything about it? Uh, it's a psychedelic church. Oh. Uh, and, and uh, I bought some mushrooms at a psychedelic church in Oakland. Okay. So it's a psychedelic ago, just down, just down the street in, in Arvada, Colorado. Uh, run by Austin Mao. He's actually been on my podcast, podcast's. I've heard of that. Been a speaker. He's been a speaker at my, at my events. Super, super great guy and someone dedicated to helping people. Transform their lives by seeing and learning things that you get on a psychedelic experience. One thing I've noticed from both my own observation as well as podcasts and stuff is that It's one of the real things that can bust you out of a rut. Totally. Like whether it's PTSD or depression because you think you suck as an entrepreneur or different things. Like a lot of people have used it as that kind of lever that gets them out of a stuck spot. Yeah. I mean, you know, you know the expressions about like ski grooves in the mind, right? Yeah. We're always chasing these same thoughts. We wear those tracks. We have 60 thoughts a day. 90 to 95 percent of them are the exact same thought as yesterday. Most of them are not positive because we tend to be negatively oriented because that's what keeps us alive. Therefore, I'm thinking 40, 000 negative thoughts a day and they're the same thoughts every single day. That creates a lot of super powerful connections in my brain and what the psilocybin does is it disorganizes my brain. All sorts of new information to start flowing around. It's like fresh pow pow. It's exactly like fresh powder. And it allows me to then reconsider. And it doesn't mean that, you know, I'm never going to have some type of fear or anxiety or worry. But I can then see stuff and say, well, is this thought really true? Yeah. Right? And that's incredibly powerful because then I can interrogate my own mind and say, Based on this information, how do I want to show up in the world? Yeah. Yeah. Um, so we're going to chase the squirrel back onto the tree. Sure. Um, what is Amplify? Oh. Uh, you have another operating business right now. I have, I have a business called Amplify. Uh, we just started it in October, so like four months ago. All right. Uh, uh, Amplify is a professional development community for a very specific set of people. Okay. So, so the very specific set of people is, uh, B2B post sales. Account managers. So let's say I'm, uh, whatever I'm IBM, right? I probably have, CSU is probably a client of IBM or they're a client of Google or AWS or whatever, right? And, uh, AWS or Google or IBM will have a whole team of post sales people whose job it is to make sure that CSU is happy that they stay that way. They keep buying their stuff. They're aware of the new releases. They buy new things when it's appropriate. They're not looking at the competitors. You know, and so on. So there's a whole world out there, people called account managers. Uh, this happens to be a world that I've been working in for a long time and I. Realize that there's basically nowhere for them to go get support, get, get training. Uh, if you're a CFO or a CEO, you've got lots of resources, you got a lot of resources, account manager, right? And so within a typical company, who's getting training, the sales team is getting trained in the marketing teams, getting training and the, and the, the account managers are literally like sitting at the back row, like, and they're being told, well, this one's get paid good. They get very valuable job. They're very, really important to their company. So. Here's a stat for you. In a typical year, 71 percent of your revenue comes from existing customers. Wow, yeah. So therefore, why don't we do more to help these people do their job well? Yeah, even in a high growth company. Correct. So why don't we help them do their job well? So Amplify is Tools, resources, courses, and community for account managers so that they can get really, really good at their job. Wow, that's cool. Yeah. Um, subscription type service? Like you become an Amplify member? It's a member, it's an annual membership. For their people based on how many member, employees they have and whatever. It's an annual membership. Uh, people are signing up on their own. Oh. So they're, because they want to grow. Because they want to connect and network and improve their skills. Nice. We have corporate members? We do have some core members, but core members, the engagement tends to be lower because like, you know, Oh, my boss told me to do this final, go do this versus I'm like super psyched to go. Yeah. Yeah. Different story. Really cool. Yeah. Um, how's that working? Are you, it's going great. Are you costing it by your focus on the podcast and the conscious entrepreneur summit or is it super fun? It's super fun. It works great. Uh, there's no reason that this business won't work. I don't yet have a sense of what the scale of that business is going to be. Yeah. But like the economics are good. The delivering value, we're delivering value. The funnel is, you know, I mean, I'm still trying to figure out lots of stuff about the business, but generally speaking, it looks like it's going to work. And then, uh, I just don't know. Um, you know how it evolves and changes over time, but so far I'm super excited about it. Um, we already kind of covered the lots of stuff with Techstars, I think. Yeah. Um, and so now our norm is to jump in the time machine and uh, go find little Alex. Sure. At like five years old or seven years old or something like that. Um, where would we find you? So, like let me, let me just think about how, how I want to start. Um, the answer is, the answer is I grew up in Europe. Okay. And most people, most people don't, they don't know that about me. As an American? Yeah. Like, it's not quite like, it's not immediately obvious that that would have happened. No. But let me tell you, I'll tell you how it did come about and then what it's done for my life philosophy. Please. So, uh, I was born in the States. My parents are both from Massachusetts. They met at the University of Massachusetts in the late 1960s. Uh, they met on a blind date and, uh, uh, and then my dad finished one year before my mom and he took a job at Union Carbide, Union Carbide Chemical Company, which is now part of Dow Chemical. And he moved to a bunch of places doing different roles, rose fairly quickly, like through their, through their, um, bureaucracy. And when he was in. I guess he was 35 and we were living in Connecticut somewhere outside of, you know, suburbs of New York city type of thing. And, uh, he had the opportunity to nominate someone on his team to go be the, some version of like deputy CIO for Europe. Think of it that way. I don't think that was what it was called, but that's essentially what it was. And he basically said. Well, hang on, this is a slightly more junior position than I'm in now, but I would really like to go work in Switzerland. So he put his hand up, and when I was five, we moved to Geneva. And so, I grew up in Geneva, Switzerland, until I was 16. Oh wow, what a hub too, right? So my entire schooling, from grade, from first year, first day of first grade, up until halfway through Uh, 10th grade, I was at the same school, the international school of Geneva and I lived there. It's a bilingual school. Yeah, I was going to say they taught you English and stuff properly, but also It used to be the UN international school, then it changed its name. So it's, uh, there were two sides, there's a bilingual English side and a French side. I had to learn, I had to learn a third language. I took German for several years. Uh, and What that did for me was it kind of showed me how small the world is. Now, the school that I went to, the school that I went to had probably. I think the, I think the number was like 60 different nationalities represented within the school. And so, you know, you go to, you go down to the cafeteria and there's someone from Saudi Arabia and there's someone from South Africa and there's someone from Canada and there's someone from England or whatever. And we all learned to get along. We all, we all growing up together, right? So you're just kind of figuring out what does it mean to be human, right? How many students in this whole school? It was not a big school. Not a big school. I don't know the full number. I would guess there might've been like a hundred to 150 in my year. Okay. Okay. Right. Divided into different little classes. Yeah, sure. So, but that's just a guess. Yeah. Um, probably like a medium, pretty big, medium sized school. Yeah. Not a gigantic thing, but the whole, everything from first grade all the way to the end, but the diversity quotient is off the charts. Super high, super high. Yeah. And, uh, so, cause a lot of people are like, oh, wow, you grew up in Europe. What was it like? And I'm like, it was just, for me, it was just, Right. I mean, I did basketball and baseball and boy scouts and, you know, there's some classes I liked, some classes I didn't like, and right. So, you know, sort of normal stuff. It just happened to be in, in what a lot of people think of as an exotic and interesting setting. Um, and, but, you know, for me, it was really suddenly understanding or not suddenly, it was, it was really embodying and seeing every day that. The world is small, there's people all around, everyone basically has the same needs and challenges and interests and, uh, that there's nothing to fear from going somewhere new or exploring something or, or working, you know, having colleagues or, or friends who are, look different than you or sound different than you or speak a different language at home than you do and stuff like that. And so it made me very comfortable in a, in a global environment. Yeah. And so later in life, later in my life, like I went to, I went to. University at Georgetown in Washington, DC, again, super, super international. I was in the school of foreign service. Uh, after that I lived in Boston, London, Baltimore, back in London, went to business school in France and Singapore. Then I moved to Hong Kong. Then I moved to Beijing and then I moved to Boulder. So out of all those Baltimore seems like the one doesn't really fit. Totally doesn't fit. And I was, they twisted my arm to get there. I was working for the same company. And I was in London and they were like, basically, basically they were like, Hey, we need somebody to go to Baltimore. We need, we need, we need you, we need you at this office in Baltimore or you're, or we're going to fire you have a future in this company. Yeah. And I was like, fine. And I, and I did it for about a year and a half. And there were pockets to like, there were things to like, but generally speaking, it was kind of an outlier in my life and, uh, I didn't stay there for super long. Yeah, fair enough. Um, and you landed in Boulder and you're like, okay, I'm done moving around with this. Yeah, I mean, in between, in between, in the late nineties, my parents moved to Boulder from, from Massachusetts. So they moved out here. And so my wife and I were living in, in China. I lived, in total, I lived in Asia for like five years. And, uh, And where did you find her at? Um, so, in January 2006. Okay. I'd been living in Hong Kong for about three months. Alright. Uh, I moved to Hong Kong for this job, and I, just because I was like, I want to live in Asia, it looks cool, like, bang, let's figure it out, I made it happen, I found a company, awesome. So I moved to Hong Kong, and, as you do when you move to a new town, you know, people are like, oh, I know such and such, and, you know, so on. My, one of my cousins had said, Danielle had said, Oh, a friend of mine from high school works for the U S consulate in Hong Kong. You should meet her when you get there. I'm like, yeah, sure. Great. Wonderful. And like, there's a lot of these when, when you're in late twenties, there's a lot of people, there's a lot of people who know people and you're supposed to meet this person, that person and whatever. So, so I met this guy at a, at a Mexican bar in Hong Kong and I had a beer and a shot of tequila. Right? And when we met and drank our cake, great, and we hung out a few times, he introduced me to a friend of his, and that friend of his, uh, had a wife, he also worked at the consulate, he had a wife who was from Spain. Okay, great. And then you met her sister. So, so this was, so this was in, so this was in, so I moved there in 2005, so in early 2006, January 2006, uh, I'm at the gym. I'm in the, I'm in the locker room and I see there's a missed call from my, from my friend Tyler and voicemail, voicemail. He's like, Hey, uh, I want to see if you want to come over for dinner tonight. And immediately I'm like, Oh, I just got back from a business trip. I'm tired. I don't feel like going out, you know, whatever, like, you know, like, no, I don't feel like it. And then, yeah, but then he leaves the little kicker at the end. He's like, yeah, I want to see if you want to come over for dinner tonight. Uh, we're, we invited a couple of, uh, my wife's friends who, these Mexican girls are coming over too. Okay. So I'm like, huh, that sounds a lot more interesting. I'm willing, I'm willing. And, uh, and so I was like, all right, I rallied and, and, and went out there and, uh, on my way into their apartment, they lived on Kennedy Road in Hong Kong and I lived on McDonnell Road, which is just above it. So. Walked down there and as I'm getting to the, to his, his house, into the lobby of the apartment building, there's two ladies standing there, looking at the little like door thing. You're supposed to punch in the code. And I just walk up to them and I said, I bet you're looking for 14 B or whatever his apartment number was. And they're like, Oh yeah, how did you know? And we walk in together and one of them. Was my wife. So I spent the next, uh, did it take you a while to figure out which one it did? I was very clear on the one that, that I was, uh, that I was attracted to. And then I spent the next like several days, like chasing her around home, wherever she was going, I was, you know, Oh, I'm going to be in that area too. Let's grab a coffee. Let's hang out. And, uh, uh, but amazingly she lived in some of my wife's name is Laura. So, so she was living in Mexico, Guadalajara, uh, and I lived in Hong And so we were like, How is this all going to work? And over the course of the one year that we were together before we got married, we managed to see each other pretty much once a month, somewhere. So we met in San Francisco, Boston, Guadalajara, Bali, India, Hong Kong, Paris, whatever it all is more. Cause you know, like we were both like. early thirties. I think we were both 30 at the time. And so it's just like, you know, traveling for work. And so she'd go somewhere and I'd make up some excuse to go to, or, you know, it's also the age when friends are getting married. All sorts of social stuff. Social pressures are there. All sorts of stuff. So we'd just meet here. We'd meet there. It was awesome. And then we got married, uh, 13 months after we met. Oh, wow. Congratulations. Yeah, we just had our 18. 18th anniversary. Laura, yeah. So, so, I mean like. Laura effectively for. Laura. Correct. Laura with the Mexican pronunciation. I can't roll my R's properly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I kind of can sometimes, but. Um, and so you picked her up along the way and, uh. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we moved, we moved to Boulder. So now you're a team moving to Boulder. We moved to Boulder because we decided we, we wanted, we didn't want to live in China anymore. Yeah. And so. One of the things about living in China is it's, it's very cool. Super interesting. Beijing was a really, really neat city to live in. I super enjoyed it. And I super enjoyed it right up into the minute where I was like, we need to leave now. So one day Laura was just like. It's over like, we're like now we're, we're leaving. And so instead of fight it, I was just like, okay. And I think within six weeks we had sold everything, put other things in boxes, bake it in the apartment and boom, we were off. But we had a dog, another miniature Schnauzer, Jackie, who we adopted in Hong Kong, and it was like, what do we do with Jackie? It was like, well, maybe my dad was, yeah. So my dad came over and was like, Hey dad, would you mind taking the dog back with you? Uh, and so when we decided to move. To the states was literally what we thought of it as. Like, okay, let's move to the States. Where, where do we go? pick up the dog first. Well, we'll go pick up the dog first and here we are 13 years later. Um, I jump ahead sometimes, but I could tell that's where you were going. Yeah. Um, well, schnauzers should guide the way. They're smart dogs. Well, so Jackie, so we, we adopted Jackie from the Hong Kong dog rescue when she was 10. Oh, wow. So she was this incredibly sweet dog. She had this stare, you know, she would just like get her way by like burrowing into your heart and, uh, absolutely lovely dog. She lived until. Almost 18 years old. Yeah. Super dog. I hope we have the same, uh, Tucker just turned 12 this month actually. So, uh, so let's see. So you find Boulder and then like, started company, started company. Shortly after you started the company, like what was the impetus there? Were you capitalized? Did you not have a job? You were just moving back to the States. Yeah, I'd been, I'd been, I'd been an entrepreneur already, but I just moved back to the States and was like, what do I do? And, and Laura was like, Oh, well, you've been having this one idea. So. I had an idea. It was in the HR software space, called up a bunch of people. I know some of them said, yeah, sure. I don't have anything else going on. Uh, my business partner, uh, moved here from South Africa, uh, to, to start the business, super incredible. Some of that you knew before. Yeah, I knew from before incredible coders, super talented, and, uh, we were able to build a, and we had a couple of other people who joined us. So we had a great gang and able to get a business off the ground. And that's what we went through tech stars. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That was the cap capta capta. Um, like, would you, what would you say were your special sauces in terms of being an entrepreneur? It sounds like you were the idea person and kind of needed to build teams, both of skills, people, as well as investors to make these ideas happen. Yeah. Um, yeah. Where, where do you like? How, how did you get good at that? Like, you hadn't done it before, right? Yeah. I mean, um, or a little bit kind of, I'd, I'd done, I'd done some of this sort of stuff before and so lemme see. Like, what's the interesting way to answer that? Um, I'm not sure that I did it particularly well. Okay. Fair. You know, like I would say that, uh, I had some, the idea was good enough to weather all of the The idea was, the idea was good enough. And then the spirit was there to do it. Um, but when I look back at that part of my entrepreneurial journey, I think we missed some opportunities. I think I wasn't as, uh, courageous about really examining all the different assumptions behind the business. Uh, I don't, I did not understand. What it meant to capitalize a business for the future. What I'm, what I mean by that was, is, is I was happy taking small checks and not realizing, Oh, to get a software company off the ground, it actually takes several millions of dollars, you know? So we, what we did is we raised. We raised like 750 K and it was like, Oh, cool. Awesome. But it doesn't last that long. Halfway there. Right. And then, and it was like, Oh shit, we need to raise more. So then we went back and raise more. And then, and then everyone was like, yeah, but you didn't do all the things you said you were going to do the first time and So I thought it was incredibly painful. Yeah, yeah. And I do remember And the market doesn't get any bigger in the meantime, usually. Things don't get any easier. Right. And, and I remember, I remember two really good pieces of advice that I got. Didn't, didn't do anything with them, but they were true. Um, the, the first one was someone telling me, Hey, actually to make this work, you need millions of dollars. And I was like, no, no, look at how far we're going to get with 750 or 500, whatever. And he was like, nah, you actually are going to need resources. So I should have listened to that one. Um, and then the second one was. When you're at the very, very beginning, you can raise on the idea, the energy and the vision, as soon as you start getting revenue and customers, you only raise and get measured on the metrics. And so it's great at the beginning, you have no idea. And so it's okay to say. Hey, we've got this gigantic market and we're going to do this and that. And it's going to grow, but gangbusters and so on. And, and some people will buy into it and be willing to invest in some people won't. And that's okay. But then as soon as you get customers, it's like, well, what's your customer growth rate? What's your retention rate? Are they buying new stuff? How many users do they have? Uh, what's your NPS score? You get all these like, like metrics. And then they say, well, since it's a business, we're going to value this based based on your growth rate and your cash flow and so on and so forth. So everything gets a lot harder and entrepreneurs don't understand that part about fundraising. So raising at the seed round to, to some extent, like you're doing that on the dream and the future and the promise people who are then raising series a, b, c, etc. That's all the mechanics of the business. So go bigger on the seed. If you have a chance, is that a fair statement? I like, if I did this again, it would be to raise enough capital at the beginning that we felt we could give it a good shot, right? Give it a real shot. Or don't go to the well to start with. Yeah. So basically just like. Like right now, amplify not raise money, extremely low cost business, good dynamics. I don't need to raise money, but if I was doing something that needed resources, you've got to go find the resources. And so, you know, one of the issues that a lot of entrepreneurs that I know, um, are suffering with right now is they raise money. 500 K a million dollars, something that sounded interesting and meaningful at the time. And now they're like, ah, but you know, I've got a 10 person team and we have customers, we have revenue, but we don't have enough revenue to cover everything. And so, you know, they're, and the thing is An investor who gave you money for, you know, back in the day, five, let's say, let's say you raise a million on a 6 million pre or something like that. They're like fairly excited about you and they're like, all right, but I understand they're a whole lot less willing if all of a sudden you're down to five people and you might have half a million revenue. They're like. Uh, right. Right. Cause these guys are all about swings, right? Like they want to see you swing and hitting it. And so the other thing that I, you know, when I think back on my journey here is like, I should have thought harder about just shutting it down. Really? Yes. So the business continued and the business is still going now. Okay. And we pivoted the business. We found a thing that worked, et cetera. So I'm not saying this as a, as a knock on the business, but I'm saying for me as a CEO, I should have thought more about. Do we stick with this or not? Wow. Because what I realized was the opportunity cost. Is real, the sunk cost fallacy is real attribution bias is real, right? Attribution biases. This is my idea. So it must be a good idea, right? And sunk cost is I've already been doing this for five years. What what's one more year. Versus am I excited about the future, which is the opportunity cost. So I actually quit the company I founded last summer. Oh, wow. Yeah. Okay. So this is the thing is I was, I just got to the point where I was burned out. I wasn't being helpful or effective to the business. So I was not in service, I was not of service to the business. And then I was feeling guilty because I didn't, my head wasn't in it. So it made me less effective because I felt guilty. And so I was like, what the fuck am I doing? Like I'm a bad, I would, I would say I'm being a bad CEO is what I was telling myself, right? Because a good CEO would be, you know, focused and hard charging and doing all these things. And well, meanwhile, you're passionate about the conscious entrepreneurs. Some of it, and I'm just like, and I'm just doing things to like distract me from this, right? Instead of what was really going on. I'd run my course with the business, the business deserves a new home, a new, new thing, et cetera. And it took me a long time to fully separate myself out because I was like, oh, you know, I was, I was like, uh, trapped by this idea. Oh, we just need one more X, X, literally one more customer, one more year, one more feature, one more, you know, whatever it is. Right. And, uh, I would have been bet I would have been better off myself. Like. Several years earlier saying, Hey, you know what? I got it to a certain level. I'm, I'm, I'm ready to go on and do something else. I'm not as bad as I was. And I stuck with it too long. Yeah. Well, thanks for confessing that that's actually pretty cool. Um, oh, and I was just going to mention while I'm thinking about it, that in banking, like people would come to try to borrow, you know, a hundred or 150 grand sometimes for an SBA loan. And I was, I was really good at startup financing. I could see that combination of talent and perseverance. Yeah. And gosh, I bet about 20 or 30 percent of the time, and it wasn't because I wanted to make a bigger loan, but borrow a little more than you think you need. Like, make that case because you can't really come back to the well with banks either. Correct. Like, you can get a startup loan, but if you come back for more because it didn't work like you thought it was gonna work, nope, you fool me once. It's not a good luck. Yeah. It's not a good luck. And it's probably maybe a tiny more forgiving when you're talking about equity. But not that much. Well, it's the same kind of game. So, so the, the surprising thing about the equity investor, to your point, the surprising thing about the equity investor is that they are willing to let the company go poof. Right. Right. They're just like, Oh, it didn't work out. Right. Sorry. And you're like, well, wait a minute. You put in a million dollars. And they're like, yeah, whatever. Yeah. I put a million into a bunch of other things too. And I'm going to go put another few million. And you're like, but this is my baby. Like, and they're just like, I don't care. Bye. Bye. Yeah. Banks are always trying to get their money back. Right. And the investors are just like. Yeah. Well, part because their, their model is they want a 25 X return on one deal, right? Right. Yeah. Versus the other, the rest of them are just occupying time and space in their brain. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Understood. Um, well, we're gonna take a break. Okay. And we'll come right back. And we are back. Um, so now is when we traditionally come into our faith, family, and politics segments. Um, Well, do you have a preference on where we start in that? Lester, go ahead. Um, I feel like we should talk about family more'cause we kind of met your wife along the journey here. Um, do you guys have children? Uh, we don't have children. Okay. Even though that social pressure in your early 30 or 30 ish was there to like start making some smart babies and stuff. It, it was all there. We, we couldn't, we, we tried, uh, IVF we tried. Uh oh. So you did full boat? Oh, we did. We did everything. But, uh, it didn't happen. My wife and I don't. Also don't have any children. And, uh, but we've hosted a bunch of exchange students. Um, and so if you're looking for something to have periods of adulting in your life, I highly recommend like a, we're, we're finishing up our first one year exchange right now. Wow. The whole school year. Wow. I'd recommend the semester exchange. Start smaller. Like, yeah, at least start smaller before you go big. And even now I'm like. You know, Lenny's awesome. Lenny from Finland is staying with us, but like, I'm kind of tired of putting my robe on when I want to go from the shower to my bedroom, um, and there's just things like that, that, well, I mean, you know, we, so, so we have a very, uh, Laura and I have a very quiet life compared to all of our friends with kids. Right. And so occasionally there's slaves to their children. Well, we, you know, and we, we, we have a lot of friends that have kids and, and when we, when we hang out with them, uh, I mean, there's times when we're just like, holy shit, like how do people with children get Anything done ever, like our needs, like my, my niece, our goddaughter was over with, with Laura's brother and his, his wife in January. And it's just like total chaos all the time. And like the success of the day is like having lunch. Well, and I think there's one thing that's interesting about that is I think that people with children actually get like an extra switch flipped where they can actually work a little harder and they have a little bit more. Purposeful intention to their days. And, you know, probably to some extent they don't, this is going to sound weird, but they don't need the conscious entrepreneurs summit as much because they know that they're working to like raise their kids and provide for their family and the purpose. Yeah. Uh, if, as long as you got that, you can kind of pedal hard even without really knowing where you're trying to go. Right. So, uh, talk to me about, um, Your wife a little bit more. Um, was she born and raised in Europe also, or like, what was her circumstance in a, as a person? Sure. So, so, uh, Laura's from Guadalajara. Well, she's, she was born in Mexico city and she grew up in Guadalajara. All right. Uh, so she's a full, full on Mexico. She, both of her parents have passed away. Uh, but she has a. Big family, Mexico, great people that live all over the country actually. Yeah. Uh, and so we go down there and see them, see them a lot. Yeah. Uh, and you know, it's funny, she, her, her, you're like the tall white guy that comes to some of the Well, so some, sometimes, yeah. Yeah. In co comparison to some, some of her friends call me, um, Blanco. So uh, you know, yes, I'm a lot, I'm a lot fairer skinned and I burn a lot easier than, uh, than a lot of her friends. Um, but, uh. You know, she, she has this very adventurous part of her. And so when it, when we got married, when, when, when we, when we got engaged and all this stuff, like, um, there wasn't, there wasn't this sense of like, Oh, you're leaving. Right. Like, Oh, stay in Mexico. It was much more of the sense of like, we always knew you were going to. Go travel and go find someone over internationally and stuff like that. So, uh, that wasn't such a great big shock for her family that she was marrying a foreigner, marrying a gringo. Uh, and, uh, so that that's allowed us to have a life living in lots of places because after we got married, we lived in Hong Kong and then we lived in Beijing and now we live in Boulder. So it's had a, uh, it's been great for, for us to like have that shared. Desire, if you will. Sure. Sure. And are your, your parents were in Boulder before you were, are they still with you guys? Yeah, my, yeah, my, my parents, my parents are still alive. Uh, my mom moved into a memories care center in Boulder in, in August. So she has Alzheimer's and so she needs full time care and attention. My dad has been looking after her as, as the caretaker for, for two or three years, which is huge, huge amount of work, uh, really ton of, ton of work. It's been wearing him down. Of course it was, Pretty tough decision to, you know, they've been married for 55 years, everything you can to keep that from happening. Correct. Correct. You do. But you know, in, in, in August, it was like, Hey, you know, we, we really need to do this. Uh, we did it. The good thing is that the Senate that she's in is super close to my house actually. So like, so we're able to see her a lot. Uh, you know, she's on a journey. She's fading. She's on, she's on a journey. And, and unfortunately this is just, it's a one way road. My, my, my dad's mom had, yeah. Dementia, Alzheimer's and, you know, it took, gosh, for her, it was like seven years, probably, that she was institutionalized with, you know, just struggles to live on her own kind of capability and, uh, yeah, it's, I don't know. Um, it's an interesting thing. Like it's, uh, I don't know how to think about this right. Like sub comedian said recently, you know, um. You know, a lot of, uh, Down syndrome babies are aborted and stuff like that, and the hospital will be like, Hey, you should do this if they figure it out. But Down's people are like the happiest people he's ever known. Um, and I've kind of applied that in some respects almost to the Alzheimer's dementia kind of quadrant that Except for those times of extreme frustration, you know, especially early on, like to some extent, they're kind of chilling, you know, some, some of them, some of them, that's not what's happening. No, it's not. Uh, you know, the, the way that this seems to be affecting her is, um, it's primarily hitting, uh, like her visual perception and her visual analysis and therefore how she, She experiences the world, um, confusion all the time, inability to recognize ordinary objects in front of her, doesn't, not sure what, you know, how to, how to put, you know, the clothing, all that sort of stuff. Very difficult. She could be looking at two very different objects and have no idea what they are. Um, you know, type of thing. So it's, it's really, and we don't. You know, there's a lot that people don't know about this, and so we don't know what's exactly going on. We don't know how to, how to truly help, uh, and so it's like really tough to see this, yeah. Well, I'll, uh, maybe be blessed with strength and, uh, perseverance as this goes. Thank you. And be blessed by whatever service you can provide. Um, you guys have schnauzers. Yeah. Or you had one, now you have another one. Yeah. Um, so Well, actually, actually, I'll tell you a story. Okay. So, we had another one. Uh We, when, when, when Jackie died, uh, it was devastating. Like putting my dog down was just like the worst. Uh, and then we finally came around to, okay, we want to get another, we want to get another dog. Uh, and right around that time, I read this. This great book called Tribe, I think the author is Sebastian Junger. Yeah. Does that sound familiar? I've seen the title, but I haven't read it. Okay, so it's a great book and it's about how we all need connection in our lives and how we're all better together and so on. So I'm reading this book and I'm like, oh, we don't need one puppy, we need two puppies. Okay. So that they can keep each other company and they can Each other tribe, it's gonna, they're gonna be each other's friends and they'll all be together. Uh, and so my wife's like, are you sure about this? And I'm like, yeah, I just read it. I read a book, but yeah, let's do it. Um, and so we got our, we got our dog in, in Mexico. Okay. Uh,'cause it's, because, you know, it's, they're in the town where Lara's aunts live and it's very easy and whatever sch now SNS are expensive in the, the US SN are like$200 in Mexico, right? So we. So we, like, you know, FaceTime with the guy or video, you know, we had the, we know the dogs we're getting and we had the one and we told him in advance before she was born, don't dock the tail. So Dash has a long tail. So we're like, don't dock the tail. We don't want to be, we want our dog to be intact. Like we, poor thing, like her tail's cut off. So we're like, don't dock the tail. And then we're like, Oh shit. We don't want a second dog. Go find a second dog. And he's like, well, we, we've got one, but the tail's already docked. And we're like, okay, we'll keep those two dogs. We'll do that. And so, uh, one night I was, I was drifting off to sleep. I was literally like just about to get sleep and I jump up and I look at my wife and I go. Dot and dash, like that's the name of the dogs dot for the one that doesn't have a tail and dash for the one that does, that's what we're going to call them. And then I went back to sleep and then, and then, but I had the names, the names just appeared. Right. And it was like, perfect. So we go down, we go down to Mexico one time when we're visiting her family and it's Christmas time, we're picking up the dogs. And we go to the, we go to the, the breeder thing and we get the dogs, we bring them back to the States and literally all hell breaks loose once we have two dogs in the house. Like they are just chasing each other and barking and fighting and they'll pay, they won't pay any attention to the humans. Yeah, you're not the boss. And they're, they're like just trying to establish dominance over the other. And they won't, you know, they're not eating. And we, we had to split them up to take them to the humane society for the training sessions and all this sort of stuff. And, but it's like, they're squabbling on it. And so Laura and I were just like. What did we do? Like, this is so much work. This is exponentially different. This is not two times having a puppy. This is like 25 times having a puppy. What did we do? Why is this so much work? Why is this so difficult? And as soon as we do that, I start Googling and literally every single page is like, don't get two puppies at the same time. Don't get two, never get two puppies. If there's one piece of life advice, it's never get two puppies. And I was like, uh oh. Uh, so I guess I made a mistake here because they're, cause they say the dogs, they won't pay attention to you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They want not to do, and, and. They're competing for like dominance instead of just acknowledging you as the boss man. So therefore. So, can I interject actually? Cause the first thought that came into my mind when you said that is. An old truism, I guess, from my father. Um, and it was, gosh, I was probably a teenager in high school, he's like, or maybe I was already in college even, he's like, son, you know, a dog is a good thing to have, you know, a man should have a dog, it's a good, good thing, but. No dogs is way better than two dogs. Uh, yeah. And that was all he ever said about it. Your dad was right about that. Your dad was right about that. So what, what I learned, uh, a little bit too late was that you, it's okay to have two dogs. If you want your dog to have a friend, that's okay. But wait until one dog is like a year or two old and then get a puppy. Yeah, yeah. Right? Or whatever. But when there are two puppies, it's a disaster. So. It's a nightmare. Now on the topic of family, Laura and I are very blessed. We have a very peaceful life. We have a great marriage. We love and respect each other. We're committed to one another. We've had a great time. The closest we have ever gotten to divorce was when I sold the second dog. Oh, no shit. Yes. So you were like, I'm, I'm taking care of business. We're like, I put the dog on Craig's list and, and, and, and, uh, made a nice tidy margin. Cause it's a snazzer after all. So the funny, the funny thing is we had these two dogs. We had the one dog, Dot, who was like, jet black, beautiful, very good behavior, smart dog, connected to humans, total doll, like, textbook beautiful dog. Yeah. And then we had the other one, which is the one we kept, which is like, goofy, not as pretty, she's kind of like the, she's kind of like, I don't know. Monocode. Yeah, she's just like. Anyway, she's not, doesn't look, she's cute in her own way, but like, she's different. She's definitely not that smart either. But that's the one we decided to keep, and I sold the other one. Okay. And, you know, basically the family just came over, and Laura was like, Oh, we need to think about it, this, that, and the other, and I was like, Here's the dog, think about it. And, whew, boy. Uh. So I felt like I was just solving a problem, right? And I was actually creating a gigantic problem and I was breaking trust with my wife and it caused, you guys talked with your counselor about that. It caused tremendous upset for her because that was her baby for a week, for a week or two. So that was, that was a big problem and I was reminded of it many times, rightfully so. Uh, and. Anyway, so yeah, so, so the moral of the story is Good job, Laura, for allowing him that indiscretion. Yeah, we, we survived, we survived, uh, it wasn't easy. By the way, like, not having the one dog was also not very pleasant, but, you know, like, giving away the dog was, was great, but way better to just have one than, than two. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Well, you can go steal that dog back sometime. Yeah, moral of the story. It moved, it moved to, uh, Colorado Springs. Yeah, you can go down there for a weekend sometime and kind of scope out the spotting scope, you know, and see if Dash is, uh, ready to be adopted. Um, faith or politics would you like to venture into? Uh, I mean, I could talk about either. My, my politics, uh, I told you I went to college at Georgetown. Yeah. Uh, Washington DC is a school of foreign service, cultural thing going on right now. I imagine. Oh, I'm, I'm sure a lot of mayhem going on people's thoughts right now. Yeah. Yeah. So, so, so Georgetown is a school that has produced a lot of people in government and produced a lot of politicians, uh, and produced a president bill Clinton. Sure. So, uh, I was big, I am big fan of bill Clinton when I was, when I just went to school that when I was, yeah. Basically, uh, I started in 94, so he was, he'd been president for two years. So it was cool because he would like come back to the alma mater and like give speeches. Like, really cool. Uh, so, my politics are, are, are liberal. Uh, fan of, fan of Bill, Bill, fan of Bill Clinton, Obama. Well, Bill Clinton would be conservative in today's world. A lot of respects, though. Yeah, I mean Um, although the world has changed, not necessarily the rankings, right? The U. S. is always skewed to the right. So even the people that we consider liberal in the U. S. typically would be centrist in Europe, for example. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. And, uh, but, you know, big fan of, big fan of, uh, Bill Clinton, I worked on his re election campaign in 1996. So I was like, you know, student volunteer on his re election campaign in 96. Uh, and, and that was fun. And I had a chance to shake his hand a couple of times at events and whatever. Um, What do you think about the current events in politics? Um, I'm guessing that the general, like Lerner County, like in the last election, what, like 67 percent for Paris, which is one of the few counties that actually increased from the Biden. We were like 88 or something like that. So I would imagine that there's a lot of. Nashing of teeth and consternation culturally going on right now and Boulder is probably more heavily funded from federal Grants than Fort Collins, which is pretty heavily funded, too. Mm hmm Have you gotten in those conversations or no, I don't really have much insight into the into the funding mechanisms I know that like people in Boulder were pretty fucking pissed off, right? And it hasn't gotten a lot better since November and You know, and, and, and as it relates to Trump, uh, he is doing what he said he was going to do. And so I see a lot of videos on X. com. Yeah. Say that, you know, so the, the, the, the reminders are that elections have consequences and to the victor belong the spoils. And. He is our vehicle of reminding of us of that right now, you know, like he said he was what he was gonna do He's doing it and we shouldn't all be acting surprised about what's what's going on You know, I don't agree with essentially any of what's happening and I wish I wish it was the outcome had been different I wish Kamala Harris were our president. I wish there was some Democrat or whatever but you know the world that we live in is such that We have this scorched earth, winner takes all politics and I don't think it's setting us up for future success at all. So that makes me, makes me very uncertain. And we have a lot of friends who are like, why are we still here? Why bother? Why stay in the States? Interesting. Um, like a lot of what's getting the headlines is just cutting of unnecessary spending stuff. Yeah. Do you agree with some of that? Just not the fashion by which it's done? Or when I, as a banker, you know, 15 years of banker, when I look at. our like debt profile as a company, the United States of America. I look at that, you know, 30, whatever trillion kind of thing and look, if we don't turn this around, it's not going to work. And so, and I, I, I voted for Trump for my first time, actually. I voted for Gary Johnson, the Libertarian and Kanye West because I thought it was a protest vote last time, but I didn't like the way the Democrats handle the primary and I didn't like Kamala as a, as a candidate. I thought she was Terrible. Okay. Um, and unelected, you know, and unprimaried. Um, and so for the very first time I voted for Trump and I'm kind of like in this mix of nervous, but also as a, as a more libertarian leaning kind of guy from a, from a fiscal perspective, I'm like, well, somebody had to stop going 2 trillion more a year into debt eventually. So, um, and so there's part of me that's cautiously optimistic. about some of the spending uncoverings, we'll say. I don't, I don't, I don't know the full detail on all the numbers, but I do know that Republicans. Republican administrations tend to talk a great game, and then Well, and Trump was terrible last time. Like, he blew that up worse. By the way, so was Bush. Right, so who did all the tarp? Well, because of wars, you know, mostly. Well, who started the war? Well, and Trump's the first anti war Republican in a long time. Which, I don't think there's anything wrong with being anti war. Uh, the, but the thing that I do know is The messaging on the debt is one thing, the actions on the debt are something completely different. Right. And it's, it's funny because The, it's like one of these big immovable blocks. Republicans are better at spending and taxation and so on, but as far as I'm aware, at least, and I'm not a professional at this, as far as I'm aware, it's not true in the slightest. Like, the only president, or the last one to have anything close to a balanced budget or a surplus was Bill Clinton. Yeah, yeah. Totally. Well, and that's And he was the last person to talk about reducing the size of government in any capacity. They had, they had that very, very famous thing with Al Gore and they're doing this whole government efficiency thing. So I, I don't think that this is a trade off between should government be efficiently run and effective or should it be bloated and wasteful and stupid. Right. Like, yes, of course. And at the same time, uh, I, I understand the method that That Elon Musk is going through. Like, I understand his, I understand how he operates, right? Super engineers it, cuts all the way down to the bone, and then add back what we need to, but see what we can survive without, etc. Okay, great. Uh, I think there's So is it fair to say you're kind of cautiously optimistic as well? In that regard? No. No. Here's why. Okay. Uh, I don't think this is about government efficiency. I think this is about bludgeoning the things that they don't like. Hmm. Yeah. And it's, I mean, there's a difference. Yeah, for sure. There's like an objective thing that said, you know what, we need to take the government down by X billions of dollars. So let's do a review and see what's out there and see what we want to keep and what we don't want to keep. Okay, fine. If instead, it's. We're going to go after these things that have cultural significance, or that have some sort of, you know, meaning to us, or that, right, kind of some sort of built in issues, we're going to go for them, and then we're going to basically throw a bomb into their office, eh. Now if you see, um, which, I would not be shocked to see this administration, like, announce a big Investment into the inner cities of America, um, in part as a big middle finger to the, the, the leaders of those inner cities, right? The, the, the Chicago's, the Boston's, the Detroit's, the New York's, whatever. And I think that that would be an amazing thing because we've let our inner cities be rotten for way too long in terms of socioeconomic opportunity. Like, is that something that you think the more liberal caucus would support? Or would they not like it because Donald Trump said to do it and so therefore we hate it? Like, that's one of my concerns about, not just that policy in particular, but that's one that I can imagine that you would resonate with. Sure. And that I think Trump would resonate with, because he loves the black vote, he loves the Latino vote, you know? He's a populist. That's how they do it. Uh, he claims to be a populist. And the I think the, the, the proof of the pudding is in the eating, right? So, so it depends on what's going to happen. And it depends on what these guys are doing, what the outcomes are. Yeah. Like it, it all depends. Um, if let me put it this way, if I felt like I didn't agree with this guy. I didn't vote for him, but he's clearly working in the interest of solving big, complicated problems for the benefit of the entire country, if not the entire world. And we're all going to put our heads together and see what the outcomes are. Maybe he has a different approach or wants to run different experiments than I might want. Then I'd be like, okay, I get that. But that's not how I feel. How I feel is Uh, this is a lunatic with a vendetta who has brought his own set of people in, uh, and are bullying the entire country and basically like a mindfuck on the entire country. Which makes me less receptive to what everybody else might be out there. Well, I like to say, uh, you know, ask me to do something nicely and I'm probably on board, but tell me and I'm raising both of these, you know? And so that perception, like to me, that first scenario you described of doing interesting things to try to modernize and efficiencize the government, that's me. Been my heart tone so far, although very much a skeptic, um, and I can see how you could think what you think, if that makes sense. Um, we haven't touched on faith yet, uh, not properly anyway. Okay. tell me about your, your faith background and your wife for that matter, because I think that's interesting when you're talking about international communities and growing up in Switzerland, which is historically, like, is Switzerland still a Christian nation? Well, uh, uh, Geneva is, I don't know if it's the birthplace, but certainly the home of John Calvin. Okay, so Calvinism. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So very serious people, the Swiss. But, uh, not, not, that has not necessarily Is Calvinism kind of the predestination kind of thing? Uh, it's the Like, oh, I fell down the stairs, but that was bound to happen because I think so, maybe, maybe. Anyway, I digress. But they're very, they're very like serious and rigid, right? Yeah, yeah. So there's a reason the Swiss have the reputation that they do. Right, right. Yeah, because it's true. Uh, but, uh, so, but, uh, I'll, I'll share about Lara first. So Lara is, uh, uh, culturally and historically Catholic. Mexico is a very Catholic country. Yep, yep. Um, and So she went to Catholic schools and, you know, went to church all the time and, and all this sort of stuff. It's not been a guiding force in her life, in her life as an adult, but it's something that's pervasive, it's pervasive in Mexican culture. It's just like what you do, it's just like how things are. Uh, and so, you know, we got married in a church. Scandal. It was a negotiation. Uh, when she told me we were getting married in church, I was like, what? And then But less disruptive than you selling off Well, yeah, it was less of a big deal because we We were still excited about the potential. About the future. But my, so let me, I'll tell that story in a second, but, uh, so my, my, my mom's Irish Catholic. Okay. Right? Uh, which comes with all the Irish Catholic guilt. Yeah, yeah. And all that sort of stuff. And that kind of, that's why your beard is nice and white. That's my beard, and that's why I look up. Your head is nice and bald. That's how I look, I look like I do because I'm Irish, and so she's from, Springfield, Massachusetts, uh, Irish, Irish Catholic family, uh, grew up. So my mom also went to Catholic schools until she got to university. And so my dad, uh, probably got dragged to church as a kid, but like, it wasn't such a big deal for him. It wasn't really a part of his life. Uh, but when we were, when I was a kid, we, I did get dragged to church and. You know, it was drag is the word, right? It was like, ah, really? And my mom, my mom will now say that, uh, that she would have to start warning us like on Tuesday, right? That we're going to church on Sunday and just hear all the bitching and moaning until it was time Sunday and, uh, you know, we wouldn't go off, but we would go like Maybe every other week or once a month. Yeah, like, you know, sort of thing. It wasn't just Christmas and Easter, but it was like occasional. And we went to the American church in Geneva, not the, not the Catholic church in Geneva. And so we went there and, you know, Which was basically what, like a kind of a bland Protestant kind of church? Episcopalian. Okay. So as close to Catholic as you can get. And everything was in English. Pope was that cool. And the, and the, there was a whole community there and like, you know, friends went there and it's where we had like our boy scout ceremonies were in this church. So like, it was like a part of the community if you will. Um, and I got, uh, but I had gotten baptized Catholic when I was born. Oh yeah. Yeah. So, so this is going to be, this is going to feature in our story in our story in a second. Okay. Um, and then I was dragged kicking and screaming through a confirmation process in the Episcopalian church when I was 13 or 14. And I was like, Oh, this is, you know, but you memorize the books of the Bible. So they were going to withhold my allowance or not give me a skateboard or whatever it was that, you know, I went and I went and I did this. Uh, And then, and then I went to, so Georgetown is a Jesuit school. Oh, it is. Yeah. That's right. So I actually had a little flirtation with Catholicism my freshman year. Yeah, the Jesuits are like the super conservative, no, they're the super liberal part of the Catholic Church. But they're a serious bunch. They're a serious bunch. They're serious, but they're pretty liberal. Serious bunch. And so I, I went, I went to mass a couple of times. Uh, probably like six or seven times my first semester of freshman year. And cause I was like curious and wanted to explore and learn about it. But you know, it didn't really, didn't really stick if you will. Um, and so organized religion has never played much of a part in my life, but never really stuck, never really stuck. But let me come back to this getting married in a church thing. So after we get engaged, uh. You know, we had this conversation about getting married in a church, and I was like, I had never even considered getting married. I was like, why bother? We'll just go get married on the beach in Mexico. It's gonna be great. Right. And I was like, no, for my family, blah, blah, blah, whatever, we're getting married in a church. Okay, fine. I exceed, I, I, I will allow that. I will call, I will compromise, and then I submit basically, and then, and then she's like, okay, I need like some paperwork because the priests are asking about this, that, and the other. Here's the problem, because I had been baptized, I accept the Catholic this and this because I had been baptized Catholic. Oh, but not confirmed Catholic. I didn't quite count, but I counted enough, like I could have been a. Total heathen, right? Like, let's say that I was Jewish, or I was not Catholic, or whatever. The Catholics would have been fine, he can still get married in the church, he just has to, you know, sign here, or whatever. But because I had some Catholic history and background But it seemed like to them that you had rejected the faith. I had By going to Episcopalia. I had to go have meetings with this priest in Hong Kong, and like, I got lectured like three or four times, I had to go find a buddy of mine. To come and like be my sponsor for the Catholicism thingy majiggy. And I was like, God, and I was, you know, I was, I had this job. I was traveling all over the traveling all over the world. I was super busy and I wanted nothing to do with this. And it was like part of what I had to go through just to get the stupid piece of paper so that we, so that this. Yeah, this guy would marry us at this church in in Mexico. So anyway, so all that just to get the piece of paper Largely your faith journey is yeah Reluctant Yes. Acceptance. Yes. Ish. Yes. Of the cultural relevance. So have you, have you investigated, like, like do you think that a God spun this whole thing up? Like the God? Like the one God? Or do you think this is like a happy accident and, and what do you do with Jesus or Mohammed or like the, the Jewish Talmud or the Hindu book of Proverbs or whatever they have? I think there have always been. Charismatic people in the world who find followers with messages of hope and upliftment and improvement. And so you're one of those with the conscious entrepreneur, I mean, to, to like a 0. 000 fraction of it, but I think there've always been these kinds of people. And then I think people hear what they want to hear and I think stories and rituals, uh, emerge as a result of those. And I think for the most part, they're well intentioned. And I think that these things have been purveyors of death and destruction for pretty much as long as they've been around. Yeah. Uh, and so. I don't spend a lot of time on organized religion, and when it comes to the bigger picture stuff, um, you know, my personal experiences are that I, I spend a lot more time just connecting with myself, and trying to understand who I am, and I spend less time on big cosmological questions. Um, like where do you think ethics come from? If it's not from a creator type thing or these old texts or these old things like that's one of the phrases or we call it a meme almost sure that if if God isn't God then the state is God is something I've heard the government is God whoever tells me what to do because I've seen a lot of evidence https: otter. ai Told what to do. Sure. Um, in the world and whether that's by some kind of an organized religion or some other stuff, like people cling to that. So talking about like, what is the right thing to do? What is the ethical thing to do? And how do you know that? Uh, You know, my personal view on this is that ethics is primarily a social construct and that we've all agreed over time to behave in a certain way or not behave in a certain way to thou shalt not murder was to maximize happiness and potential in everyone and we've realized that it's not a good idea to race to the bottom if we can lift each other up or agree to a certain amount of rules. I do think You That there are a lot of people who want to be told what to do. There are people who are more comfortable in the passenger seat than the driver's seat. I'm not one of them. Uh, and I think that, that like my journey in my journey in the world. So my spiritual journey is figuring out who, who am I and the vehicle that I've chosen to do that is a physical form and it's running a business and it's being married and all that stuff. Like these are all ways through which I test my spirituality and understand who I am. Uh, I am one of the people who wants to understand, like I'm an Enneagram five, which is one of the people who. Wants to learn, right? So I want to connect the dots. I want to figure out what's really going on. But a lot of my focus is just internal, right? Like what's going on for me? What's going on inside of me? Who am I, who am I showing up as? What, what do I have to learn? And so, so that's the aspect for me of when I, when I think of faith, you know, I don't so much look outside to say, Oh, give me an answer, right? Whoever you are, like, I just need a sign, right? That's not really my, my, my experience. My experience is, no, it's not my jam. My experience is, what's happening inside me and what can I learn from that? Yeah. Because I'm the product of thousands of generations of humans, and there's a lot of wisdom inside me. And there's a lot of stuff that I'm experiencing today on a day to day basis where I can figure out why am I here, what am I doing here, simply in this physical experience. So, you're almost, I would say, in the space of kind of material post modern ish kind of thought process. Humanism. Yeah, humanism. Yeah, yeah. So, like, from your perspective, there isn't really, like, a, a more powerful force that created this thing, or even a, a necessarily a universal consciousness that, like, you know, if you pray, or if you do this or do that, you can kind of move the consciousness to your thing, or, I don't know, like, talk to me about that. I think Like, is there, is there a more powerful, like, a creator force out there in your Understanding. Actually, I, I, I have no idea how we got to be where we are. Fair, right? Yeah. How we got to be on this rock. Doesn't matter how we got to be on this. We're here on this rock spinning, spinning around in the middle of nothing and have water on it. And we have people and like, I, I have no idea how we got there. What I believe is that we've got a certain amount of time to experience our lives here. Yeah. Uh, a thing that I really loved was. This expression, make the dash dance. So here's what that means in my case, in my case, it starts with 1976. The year I was born dash some year, I'm going to die. I don't know what year that is, but there's a dash in between when I was born, when I'm going to die, make the dash dance means to me, have fun, have the full experience, order the entire, all you can eat buffet, do the things that bring me life. The wiggle. The Dash with the Wiggle is like, who knows where that end time is, but live there. Correct. That's fair. So, is it fair to say you resonate more with like, Buddhism type notions of the expression in the world? Or humanism and Buddhism? I mean, look, I've been to, I've done meditation programs, uh, in India. Sure, I'm sure you've experienced a ton of stuff. I've done, I've done, I've done whole things on, on Hinduism and Hindu gods. I think these are, I think these are nice representations to try to understand the world, right? So Buddhism, I'm not a Buddhist, but it's probably the one that I'm comfortable with because Buddhism basically just says experience yourself and see what you learn. And see how you can become a better person. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Well, it doesn't necessarily have a creator force in it. It's just like, hey, you're here. Yeah. Make the best of it, dude. So I don't, I don't know what, you know, what it is, but I typically don't have These like big philosophical questions. Yeah. Yeah, you're more much a center on me. I sent her on me instead. Yeah I I definitely would say I'm not quite opposite But it's interesting how we came to so many similar places like earlier in our conversation, but from a different Psychosomatic context. So this is our grab bag. Yeah, let's do it. It's a Numbers on them. So I pick one pick three Okay One. Number one. Okay. Um, do you want to give me all three numbers and I'll decide what order? Twenty nine. Okay. And five. One, twenty nine, and five. So one is what's your favorite childhood memory? Five is what's the most important lesson you've learned from failure? And 29 is what's been the most surprising thing about running your business. And I would say in this context, it's probably the, either the summit or the podcast. Um, so I'm going to start with that last one. Okay. What's been the most surprising thing about running your business? Whether it be CAPTA, whether it be your current recent enterprise or the summit, the podcast. Like, what's surprising about that to you that you wouldn't have imagined before you became a Um, the thing that surprised me most, we talked about this a little bit earlier, but the thing that surprised me most about running the conscious entrepreneur summit is the emotional context and emotional meaning that people put on the word conscious. Um, uh, so I assume you're going to smoke a joint with me. Yeah, quite, quite. So people make all these assumptions. It's like, Oh, it's. It's, uh, you know, it's all hippies or it's all totally out there or, oh, it's all for like, you know, people who, these aren't real businesses. Right. Right. These are, these are fake, this is a bunch of, you know, small, small potatoes businesses kind of thing. Right. And that's not how I think of the word at all. I think of the word as, uh, intention and meaning and, Yep. Uh, purpose and manifesting and awareness, like all that goes into creativity to me, all that goes into conscious. And so when I get that response from people, I'm always like, Oh, right. Yeah. Yeah. That's fair. And I I'm like the most open conservative born and raised in North Dakota. Can I go, you're going to meet. And so for me, conscious doesn't mean that at all, but I recognize the truth of that statement, if you will. Okay. Um. Well, good job starting to break that barrier. I'm trying. Um, what did we say, number one, favorite childhood memory or the most, no we already said that one. And number five, the most important lesson you've learned from failure. Let's go there next. So, I'm going to talk about failure in the context of what I was talking about earlier with my journey with CAPTA. Yeah. The business is still around. Right. So it's difficult to say it failed. But I can say that. There were multiple places where I could have been stricter with myself. Mm-hmm I could have held myself to certain standards and I could have followed through more on the things that I knew I wanted to do. And so to, to a certain extent with that experience, uh, I wasn't being courageous. I wasn't being as brave as I could have been. And. What that meant like so what the fit how the failure manifested it was a failure of me Fully express my needs and wants and desires Yeah and to implement those instead of being on the On the train and swept along or in the passenger seat of the entire thing So you feel like maybe if you could have Advocated a little bit better, you'd still be there pointing toward what you were focusing on, potentially? The way, the way I think of it is I probably would have made, I would have made a decision for myself to leave sooner. Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. Yeah. Um, alright, last question. Your favorite childhood memory? Oh yeah. And one of these questions we're gonna give a gift away to a lucky listener, but they have to listen to the whole darn podcast to get here. Favorite, let's see, favorite Yeah, favorite childhood memory. There's a really amazing fireworks show that takes place in, uh, in Geneva during a festival called the Fête de Genève. It's the, it's like the town celebration of itself. You know, the town, the town, the towns all across North Dakota where I grew up. Yeah. Yeah. So it's like, right. So, so it's a, it's a, it's a great thing. And it's, you know, Geneva is a very well off town, so the fireworks are impressive. And they're synchronized to music. And even when I lived there in the eighties, they were synchronized to me. It was like, it was like big deal. Uh, but I will say that the, you know, very, very fond memories that I have is. Being with my dad and my younger brother, Sean, uh, up on a mountain. There's a, there's a mountain just outside of Geneva called the Salève and we would go camping up there in the summertime. And I just remember being up there and being able to watch the fireworks that were, so it's probably, you know, from above them 15 miles or 20 miles or whatever, but being able to see the fireworks from up there, it's all dark over the mountain. We're camping out, we, you know, go outside with the tent and watch the fireworks in the distance with my dad and brother. Let's jump to the final segment. Oh, um, and for our listeners, I think we're going to choose, what was the second topic that we talked about? Uh, the failure kind of thing? Yeah, five. Um, is that the topic? Or is it the fireworks? Maybe it's fireworks in Geneva. Alright, for listeners, um, PM us the fireworks in Geneva, and that'll be your winning answer. Nice. Um, the Loco Experience is your craziest experience of your lifetime. Alright. That you're willing to share with our listeners. In 1995, I was a freshman in college and between my freshman year and sophomore year in college, the summer in between. All right. And, uh, you know, as I already told you, I, I, you know, you can tell I have a bit of an adventurous streak in me, right? For sure. So I like to go, I like to go places and do things. And so I recruited two of my friends, one from college and one of a friend of mine from high school. And we were going to drive from my house in Massachusetts all the way to. Uh, Yellowstone National Park and back to start the summer. Like for spring break? Oh, for summer. For summer, because I, I didn't have a job lined up yet. And, uh, we all had like a couple of weeks, we could do this. And we were 19 years old. It was like, Oh, totally, uh, let's go do this. And, uh, so there was three of us, me, Mark and Sean, and we all get in this car. It was a, it was a red 1991 Ford Taurus. Very nice. Yeah, totally. Classy. Only four years old though. Yeah. Great, great car, new car. And, uh, so we drove that. You know, through, you know, whatever, Massachusetts to Connecticut, uh, Pennsylvania through Chicago, through Illinois. And, you know, we kind of, everyone's taking turns driving and we stopped in, uh, South Dakota and, uh, and, and had some adventures and camped or whatever it was. And then we went to the next place, went to Wyoming. Uh, we went to Yellowstone. It was amazing. We went to the Badlands. We went to devil's thumb or devil's tower. Oh, it's like super cool. Uh, and then plus you were like all born and raised. Well, you were in Switzerland, so you knew mountains and stuff, but everybody else was probably like It was beautiful. It was super fun. It was super, super fun. And we had a great time, and we were just like goofing off and, uh, you know, being 19 year olds and having a great time. And we stayed in Yellowstone, and then we drove down into Jackson Jackson Hole. Jackson, Wyoming. Grand Teton National Park, we had this incredible adventure, like out there paddling on the lakes and all this, all this sort of fun stuff. So super, super fun. And then we're going to turn around from there. We're going to go and drop my one friend off to see his girlfriend in like North Carolina and then go back up to Massachusetts. Okay. And I, I didn't have a job lined up for the summer yet. Right. So I was like, I'll figure it out when I get home. Yep. And we get to Jackson. Early June and there's help, help wanted cowboy signs. The Cowboy Boy Saloon is like, is like Help Wanted signs all over the place. Yeah. Right. It's like, oh, you know, help, wanted, help, wanted help wanted. And I was like, Hmm, it's pretty nice out here, right? I'm help. I could be helpful, I could be wild. I could figure this out. And so the craziest thing I'd ever done in my life to that point, which is still up there, is I called my parents, I said. I'm not coming home, I'm gonna miss my brother's high school graduation, I'm gonna stay in Jackson, I'm gonna find a job, and my friends are driving your car home. I love it. And so I stayed there, I found a job at the Jackson Hole Lodge, where I was in charge of Not even the housekeeping. I wasn't, I was the guy who was filling the closets and the carts for the housekeepers so that they could do their jobs. And I also worked at the pool on occasion and I had a second job at the Jackson Hole Public Library restocking books. And I stayed there for eight weeks and that was my entire summer. Yeah. And then I got back, I returned from Jackson. To Massachusetts to Boston on a Greyhound bus. Nice. It took 60 hours and the only book I had with me, the only book I had with me is probably a book that you appreciate. Yeah. I read about a quarter of it and I thought, this sucks. Why does everybody like it? It's not zen in the art of motorcycle maintenance, is it? It's worse. It's Atlas Shrugged I love that book. I know I could read that book three times, six hours. Everybody was like, everybody was like, this book is so great and I'm reading this book and I was like, oh my. God, what a bunch of nonsense. And, and I'd like, I just couldn't do it. I couldn't keep reading the book. So I was like, I would rather stare out of the window for 40 hours than read this book. Anyway, take that Ayn Rand. So it goes. So Ayn Rand, I love you. I think you're awesome. Despite some of your fallacies. And, um, so what'd you think of that story? I think that was awesome. I think that was a great story. And, um. Alex, why don't you talk to our listeners about like, where to go register for the conscious entrepreneur summit, your LinkedIn profile, whatever like that you want to do wrapping, wrapping up, wrapping it up. Yeah. You know, anyone who's interested in, in the conscious entrepreneur summit. So first of all, you're an entrepreneur of some form or fashion. You're building a business, you're in the trenches, you got blood on your knuckles, you're out there doing things and you, and you know, there's got to be a better way, you know, there's got to be a better way. Okay. Right. It doesn't have to be this hard. Uh, I want you to come and check out the Conscious Entrepreneur Summit. It's a, an incredible community. It's an incredible experience. Uh, the website is consciousentrepreneur. us. On top of that, we have the podcast. We've got a YouTube channel. I'm pretty active on LinkedIn. Uh, so there's a lot of materials there. It's very easy to tap into us and super rewarding. Do you want to do something cool? Like. Half off your registration for the Conscious Entrepreneur Summit for like the first person that responds with a DM to our Instapage or something. So the first, let's, let's give for the first person who does the fireworks in Geneva. Let's give them, in addition to whatever you're going to give them, a half off discount code. All right. And I'll one up you. I'll see you in one up you and we'll offer a hundred dollar code off. The code is loco L O C O is the code for anyone who signs up for the conscious entrepreneur summit before the end of March, we'll get a hundred dollars off either the one day or the two day. Thank you. That's very generous of you. I hit you out of the blue with that. We didn't talk about it before. Let's do it. Um, did I cover all your social handles and stuff like that? Um, LinkedIn, LinkedIn is the best place to find me. All right. Yeah. Uh, hit him with the chat bot. Yeah. Hey, uh, thanks for being here. Uh, drive safe back to Boulder and I've enjoyed this conversation very much and thank you. Thanks for having me.