Building AI guardrails, systems thinking, and the long road to self-understanding

This is the platform’s machine transcript of the published episode, reproduced as it was generated. It has not been cleaned up, so it carries the mistakes a machine transcript carries: mis-heard names, dropped words, and the author’s own false starts left in. Where a name is wrong here and right in the show notes, the show notes are the corrected record.

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Alright, so I’m this is a very rudimentary, as my friend Jackson would say, way of making a video about something that I’ve snapped as a screenshot. What’s waiting on you? The standing task. Decide the process backbone standing on the priority stack. Kind decision. Three options. This is gate, this gates everything. What the ha what is what my AI assistant brain that’s running on my computer through Fable Five is telling me is.

I’m asking it to do something that’s not in alignment with my priorities and it’s trying to keep me on track. My priorities established in an indexable note that are like tracking all of my projects says I am focused on getting the D7R1 curriculum online and available for consumption. And that’s a, you know, the amount of effort I’m putting into the quality of the course is not a small task. So I’ve been basically saying, like, keep me on track. And right now I’m working on a side squirrel, you know.

like sidestep project, which is related. But then the other thing that’s interesting too about this is it says, you know, this serves no ranked objective. And one honest bridge to rank number one is a decision against number decision number 61. Decision 61 is logged as curriculum derived from run records. the build like so what what this means is like anything I’m doing right now is getting thoroughly logged.

So that I can build rec records of process and decisions and turn it into teachable lessons. And so it’s saying here, hey, don’t work on this because it doesn’t support your thing, but hey, if it supports you building a course later, then it falls under this other rule. And so like I have this brain with thousands, eight thousand thing documents across all my projects, all my clients, all the things I’m focusing on. And then it’s keeping me from chasing squirrels like my dog cowboy would do, and it’s trying to

keep me on track, but it’s also saying like, hey, you know, you it f also you you know you could look at it this way. So it’s like kind of a a way to keep me focused. But what I’ve done here is I actually gave it this direction and I said, okay, you know, I said basically elevate this to priority one. We need to build this out. Because it’s the backbone of like this task and process execution system that I’m building.

And it drives everything. So it’s super important. But I was like, I’ll do it in concurrent, I’ll do it in side, I’ll do it at the same time as D7R1, priority one. And so then I said, you know, proceed and approved. And I said, lock this in and go. Run full workflow, Fable 5 Ultra Code. What this is gonna do is launch this like ridiculous amount of agents now to help me build this thing out. where is the is it actually working? Yeah, here it is.

So it’s running a whole bunch of different agent phases. Anyway, long story long.

Enforcing your priorities, especially when you actually are capable of producing a ridiculous amount of stuff, is very tricky. But you can put guidelines in place and guardrails in place through agent steering in like your own personal vault. And this is something I teach in my courses, is like it’s not necessarily a question of if you can do things. It’s like how do you do things in the right order and how do you use AI to make sure you’re focusing on your shit. And then a really solid process that I use is a daily open and daily close.

set of skills and actions like slash commands. So like every day at the end of the day I go through this daily closeout and it runs through all the logs of all the things it’s been helping me do. Because everything’s logged, decisions are logged, sessions are logged, agent activity is logged, reviews everything and it says, it did is the work that you did today in alignment with your number one priority, which right now is me getting a product to market for selling. So if I’m chasing side squirrel, side quest squirrels, that’s a problem. You know like

AI is gonna make you so productive, it’s gonna give you all these ideas, you’re gonna do all these things, you’re gonna be kept up at night, your girlfriend’s gonna be mad at because you’re sitting there thinking about agents. And then what do you do? You keep yourself focused, you set a specific rank of priorities, and then you use agents to enforce it. And then you basically say, like, look, like, don’t let me work on stuff that doesn’t serve my number one priority, which is getting a product I can sell.

Like, what’s the point of all of this stuff, all these videos, all these like things that I’m doing, these conversations I’m having, if I don’t have actual product page with a credit card form? I have it right now, but I’m going through all this stuff to like make sure I’m legally covering myself and all the things and I’m running through all this process and like the process I’m using to build all of this is turning into curriculum, which I’m gonna turn around and create products from. So anyway, that’s the long-winded, long story long thing. Like

There’s are ways to help you be even more productive. You unlock this ridiculous amount of force multiplication using AI agents, but it can be a double-edged sword, especially if you’re already a high performer. Because you’re gonna realize quickly that you can create this army of people to do anything, but what you need to do is have definiteness of purpose, clearly defined goals, and a priority of what your daily action should be. And it’s like frameworks to create the ultimate to-do list is is like the first step, right? And that’s

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Understanding how to talk to agents, understanding steering, putting some rules in place, and then just letting it do its thing. And it it’s like gonna keep the thing running. You know, it keeps this builds this big machine centered around what are my top five daily actions? Okay, did I accomplish them? Were they in alignment with this thing I’m trying to do? And did they move me closer to my goal? Did I make forward progress towards my goal today? And my goal is.

Post videos, people see the videos, they click the link in my profile, they go to my page, they sign up for my beta, and then once the course is launched, they actually like go through it and buy it. And that’s the thing. So like clearly defining the thing you’re selling and then getting people to look at the thing, and then it’s a numbers game at that point. And so anyway, yeah, this is just it’s just a very exciting time if you know how to use agents right. And like

I think right now ninety nine out of a hundred people are using chat G T P to ask them like what the weather looks like this week. And it’s just like, hold on now. You could be asking it to design you a series of different steps and processes you could use to accomplish any s kind of goal, saving that to your phone, creating a to do list and then executing, but you’re not. You’re not why are you not doing that? You know, like these are bigger questions. Like sometimes it’s not a matter of tools that are the problem.

Like it’s everyone’s focused on tools, everyone’s got AI, everyone’s got a chat bot. But like those are not gonna s actually help you solve the the qu the the the real thing is like why are you not focusing on this thing you’ve been dreaming about? For you’re you lay in bed, I do this, I lay in bed and I imagine I see this future and it’s very clear. And I’m like, okay, well what’s the difference between me and this future that I’m imagining? And it’s a series of steps and choices and actions.

And every day we get to make this. And you know, you can sit I’m literally having like agent swarms, multiple things. I’m building brain, this is the brain task automation session right here. This is b I’m building the ghost protocol spec. I’m doing a couple of different things. I have another one that’s running here. And I was like, why did you spend this money? And then I have, okay, another session just asked for credentials, I’m gonna approve that. I’m pretty I I know what they have access to, so I’m you know, they can’t it was.

An agent session just tried to read a credential from my secure vault and it it needed my fingerprint to proceed. This is the kind of level of control, and once you understand what they’re doing, you know, like, and I can I’m like working on a lot of education around this, because once you this is like what I do most of the time. Just sitting here kind of like, all right, I have all these sessions, you know, they’re doing stuff, and then when it needs me, I open my vault, you know, and I’m like.

What is the thing you need my me to tell what’s the decision I need to make? Okay, lock it in, log it in the record. Log it in the historical record, you know? And then it’s like, it tells me what it’s been working on, and then I can just be like, all right, you know, check in with my thing. One of the things I love, you know, about Napoleon Hill Think and Grew Rich. He talks about Thomas Edison. And he talks about great people that have accomplished great things. One of the s one of the stories is about Henry Ford. So

I should work on my formatting here because I’m gonna run this through Opus clip and then try to get it to viral stuff. But let’s see here. I’m gonna rant. So forward and

So there’s a story in Napoleon Hill about Henry Ford. And Henry Ford wasn’t an educated person by definition. He had an eighth-grade education. He, you know, was commanding a serious workforce that he created, and he was going in front of these really powerful people. And I think it was actually he was testifying in front of Congress, and they were basically like, What gives you the right to like make these calls and build these things when you only have an eighth-grade education? And he was like, I

Have a series of bells that I can ring, of these switches on my desk. And they, when I push one, a bell rings. And then when I need the knowledge, an expert shows up. And the person that I need the knowledge from tells me and gives me their recommendation, and I choose based upon that. So this is an amazing story from Think and Grow Rich. You should listen to the audiobook or buy the book. It’s an amazing book, and it talks about this principle. It’s like,

You don’t have to have all the knowledge, you just need to know how to find experts you can trust. And so right now, the cr the crazy thing is, is people are reaching for AI to be these experts. But the problem is they need to know how to trust the output. And so this is where it’s like critical that you find these experts that you can trust. So you can build all these plans, you can build these proof of concepts, you can take all these things and then present them to someone that has the expertise. So like Henry Ford, he’s just like Henry Ford, except back in the day he didn’t have AI.

There’s no computers. So in instead of him opening up the LLM, he had a bell on his thing on his desk. He would ring it. Somewhere in his factory, a expert would be like, hear a bell bell, and they’d be like, man, Ford again. And then they would get up from their desk or whatever spec or plan they were building, and then they would walk up to Ford’s office and they’re like, What do you need? What do you need, boss? You know? And Ford, the eighth-grade education guy, would be like, All right, well, we’re designing the Model T and I need to understand if

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The suspension can handle putting 2,000 pounds of bricks. And this is my this is my Ford. This is my Ford Model T guy talking voice. We need to understand if if the consumer, the person driving the vehicle, can haul 2,000 pounds of bricks. And they’re like, Model T? Absolutely not. And then Ford’s like, well, we’re gonna want to we gotta build a new model capable of putting bricks into the back of it. And then he’s he’s trusting his the output from these experts, right? So like

Henry Ford has these like LLMs, but they’re humans, you know, with with a meat suit that’s operating the LLM of their mind, and they he calls and summons them. So like I’m doing a similar thing, except I have, you know, Claude Fable V Ultra Code and and that that one expert can build a plan and then, you know, fire up an army of of of subagents and orchestrate this massive like pipeline and stuff. And then in the end, what happens? It’s like, okay, we just ran a huge thing and this is what happened, and

This is like I just asked it to basically like when you recommend a a knowledge, like there’s a critical piece of this process, like can you also find me some places I can buy it? Because now, like these are things that it’s saying, you should buy these books because it’s gonna give me enough information to build my ghost spec compliant agent representation of this expert above an 80% confidence threshold, so then I can build you plants. And I’m like, okay, how much was it? Like I went to s

I went to I went to okay, so I went to Scribd and I found this book, you know, and I use how to master how to master art, you know, by Tom Hopkins. And this is like an old book that from the so so the reason I’m doing this is I was in 24-hour fitness, I worked as a sales cons counselor. We had to go through official Tommy Hopkins sales training, and it was like old school sales stuff: circle the wagons.

Overcome the objections, establish rapport, all those things. He’s been like, this is probably something that Donald Trump read back in the 90s or 80s that helped him build his art of the game, art of, you know, you know, Trump, art of the game, negotiation, all these things. This is old school stuff. It applies today. So now what I’m doing is I was able to buy this book for six dollars, and then I’m I de saved it to my vault, and I have like, I I basically fed in that.

You know, to my AI, and I’m not gonna publish this. This isn’t I’m not gonna claim this knowledge as my own, like absolutely not. This is I’m this is going in my personal vault, right? So now this systems that have been proven, you know, by an expert, and he’s built a book. Like, have I have big, huge respect for people that write books. Like just going through my own process to write some of my own stuff and like try to make it.

like communicate my ideas and then realizing like how hard it would be without AI to do the same thing. Like, holy shit, guys. Like hats off. I have I have a friend that James and I have a friend Eric and they’re authors and they’re published and they’re like, I’m like, man, I had no idea. Big respect for you guys now because it is hard to and then Jordan Peterson, I remember listening to him talk about his books and he’s very tedious and he says, I have to take every sentence and critically think and be able to defend the idea in the sentence. And I’m like that level of

Being able to communicate your ideas and then critically think, this is part of my brain, is this critical thinking process. It’s like when I have a spoken idea, right, and I’m talking through them, and I’m using that voice AI, you know, transcript to take that for there’s like this rigorous onboarding process for my voice-recorded ideas to be translated into text that I can then use to create my own original ideas and materials. And so

Not only am I having to like source a lot of this and make sure that I’m citing all of these experts correctly, because my knowledge is based upon things I’ve learned from all these different experts, right? Like Alex Remozzi is regurgitating things that Tommy Hopkins was saying in the 80s. Like he’s he’s built his own interpretation and created his own, you know, really cool frameworks, and that’s a powerful idea. So, how do you do that? Like, let’s say you had a step-by-step process for

You know, I’ve always like everyone has a series of things that they’ve loved, like books that they’ve loved and that that they’ve read, you know. So like, what if you could, you know, okay, I’m gonna take this book that I read and it was super motivating, and then I read this one and it was super and then I put sat on the shelf for an hour for it never came back and never did anything with it. Well, what if you could take all of those books, all that knowledge, take all the public things, every YouTube video that was on ever released, turn that into a an actionable framework, and then create your own puc personal to-do list.

That’s never published anywhere. Like this is your thing, you know, like and then you could then take that and develop the skills necessary to then just demonstrate that capability and get a raise. Or start a business or lose a hundred pounds or run a marathon. You know, like this is systems based thinking, right? This is what I wanna help people.

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Do is like sit through this, think through this, break it into composable pieces, repeatable items, how to measure it, how do you gate things properly so you’re getting expert opinions. And then once you have this like mastery of systems-based thinking and process development, you apply this army of AIs that can build these amazing plans that then you turn around and you give to real experts. So you go back to the, you know, you go back to the the the f Henry Ford, you know.

And now you’re you’re basically all right, I I and I’m now I’m Elon Musk, you know, because this Elon Musk is doing rocket stuff. So let’s just do Musk like it should be. So so now I don’t know how to do an Elon Musk, but like Musk is like rings his bell, you know. Engineer comes in. Why does this require four bolts? And the engineer’s like

Because the specification written in the 1960s by NASA engineers said we have to have four bolts here. This is from the Walter Isaacson biography. You should check it out. It’s a great book. And Musk is like, do three bolts, we’re doing three. And then the engineers are like, son of a bitch, you’re right. And then and then, you know, like they do three bolts, and that saves them X amount of dollars, and they can get the thing done, and it’s fine. And NASA was wrong, because it was written by engineers in the 60s.

And then, you know, like maybe they’re even like operating on outdated knowledge based upon stuff that was you know created by this guy. You know, like he was operating with the knowledge that was available to him at the time and his available his ab ability to reach that knowledge. Think about how fast we can reach knowledge now. Like we had like I’ve been through the internet since before it was the internet. And the in the access to like

my gosh, like the okay, I had to learn how to do true space, and I type faster, so shut up. True Space Bible. So TrueSpace 2, Calgary TrueSpace 2 Bible. This is a book that I read when I was 14 years old that went through and taught you how to 700 pages long.

I wish you could see inside of it. I don’t think you can.

Let’s see if there’s like images here. So no, this is the Holy Bible. The other that’s a good book too. You should read that. but like

I I don’t refin it like

So here’s here here’s the here’s the what you used to have to do. Like you used to have to go to the store. Like I used to I when I was in high school, we’d go to Borders or we go to Bor Barnes and Noble and there’s all these big books, thick books, you know? This is before YouTube was around. The internet was still barely online, you know, and this is the AOL days, dial up modems. We’d have to buy these books and like it would teach you how to make a drop shadow, you know, like it would show you step by step how to like

Create a thing of text, and then you would like clone it, you know, and then you would blur it and turn it black, and you that’s how you get your board, your shadow. Cool, and I have shadow. Now you can like AI can just all right, whatever. So like the speed now at which we can access information is ridiculous. So, you know, how do you turn that access to knowledge from you know these AIs into actionable plans?

And that’s through systems-based thinking. And there’s this guy that I’m like a huge fan of. I’d love to talk to him someday. I think, I think I see myself, you know, he’s one of these people I imagine having a conversation with. His name is Tim Ferris. And Tim Ferris is famous for the four-hour work week. That’s kind of where he like really started to take off and became viral. And this was released in the early 2000s, kind of like before social media was really a thing. Blogging was like coming out, podcasting was like.

just barely a thing. He’s written a whole bunch of books. he’s got a TV series where he learns things quickly. And and and I’ve I just gobbled up this stuff. Like this is like my he’s one of my I I just admire his thoughts and the way he attacks problems. And like, you know, this is when I was you know going through some really hard times in my life and I was trying to rebuild my life. I was reading his books and it gave me a lot of purpose. And it was like I can learn things and I can break them down into like s composable steps and process and I can try them.

And I’m gonna make a lot of mistakes and I can keep trying again, and then eventually, like, just like Tim, I could learn something. It’s just like you make a system that works for you, and it’s your own personal system that works for probably won’t work for anyone else. You have to build your own systems. And like, if you can learn to do that, you can learn to harness the power of this AI. Let’s look at my usage. This one doesn’t have 219 million tokens in the last like, well, 200, what’s the last like seven days? 17.5 million.

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Probably my favorite model is Opus V. I’ve been using a shit ton of Fable V Ultra Code until I hit my limits. But I’m generating this, you know, massive vault of all the things, you know, and then it is my own little knowledge store. And then I have these very powerful like workflows to take my own ideas, which is a composition of all these other things, and express them as my own original work and not just a regurgitation of AI. Like that’s the risk right now.

We’re that we’re running into is people, I can already tell that emails are being composed by an AI. Like I can tell. And so like we have to be very careful about giving up this ability to compose the our ideas. Like AI can be your editor and give you grammatical. Like it could be like we have already have these things like grammarly and stuff like that. Like when you’re composing an output, there should be very strict guards in place so that you can guarantee that you’re not just like claiming ownership of someone else’s IP.

And all of these guys do this, like not claim ownership of IP, they create ideas, which is a combination of different systems composed from different experts that they’ve broken down and created into things that work for them. And then the only reason people are listening to them is because it worked. Like Hermose is really cool. I love Alex Hermose. Hermose’s got three books that I’ve just been like. They’re on, they’re living rent-free in my mind.

And I’ve listened to the audiobooks. I’ve listened to them while I was reading them. He actually recommended this, and I was like the first time I ever tried it. And they’re really amazing. So, but they’re inspiring, and the stories he tells are literally him putting this these things into action and doing great things. And it gives me this, like, wow, I can do this. It’s like it fires me up, you know? But here’s what happens. And I’m like,

You know, I’ve built amazing things. I’ve built enterprise great applications. I was head architect for the Coors Light Rewards app when we did that for Cor for Miller Coors and we launched and had 250,000 active users in one month. And it was a very successful program. I’ve built stuff for McDonald’s, Monopoly, Pepsi. I can name all the names. I have worked on teams that have executed massive projects from start to finish. I’ve been pivotal in making decisions that have been, you know, made certain projects very successful.

I I have a ta talent to sit and listen and come up with a solution very quickly. But that doesn’t translate into necessarily me operating in my by myself executing things. Like I’ve been able to accomplish a lot of things, but it takes coordination of effort and people. And now you have this agent army that you have to coordinate. So like I, you know, one of the other people I really love is Jocko. And when I was a manager.

And let’s see, Jocko. I love this guy. Jocko Willink. His he’s I just, you know, love the way he’s he’s he’s this is not a good fi picture of him really. So Jocko, sir, he is, you know, ex-army, you know, he’s he’s just like he’s a Navy SEAL, he’s black belt in Brazilian jujitsu, which I’m also a black belt in Brazilian Jujits Jiu-Jitsu. He could just kick my butt though.

For sure, like there’s no doubt. Like, I would be like tied up in a knot, you know, and I’m pretty good at jujitsu comparatively I’m a professional amateur jujitsu athlete. Anyway, but Jocko talks about leadership. And when I was this leading teams at so at the software agency, I was basically I started as a front-end engineer and then I ended up becoming a director, and then I ended up leading a team of engineers, and I failed hard, fast at it, because I was doing a ton of work.

And I was super stressed and I have this tendency to become very impatient quickly and get frustrated when people don’t like quickly come to the same conclusion that I came to five hours ago. And I had to really work hard at becoming a leader. So like this is a skill that I had to really work from. So I like found Jocko, I listened to his book, audio book, I read all of his books. He has one called Extreme Ownership that’s it’s a must-have if you’re trying to lead teams.

You know, I read it, I listened to it over and over and over again. I heard about him first on on Rogan’s podcast, and I listened to Rogan a lot. And Rogan Rogan was a a treasure trove of people because he had like just I I wasn’t a huge fan of the comedy people that he brought on, even though there’s a lot of really smart people, but I he brought in a lot of like scientists and other really cool experts, and it would introduce introduce me to their ideas, and then I would go and read books and listen to their podcasts and stuff. And so like

Jocko was one. He had Tim Ferris on a few times. He had he had this other guy who wrote the book, it’s Josh Waitskin, The Art of Learning. look it up, Art of Learning.

So Josh Waitskin is a prodigy, a chess prodigy. He’s the inspiration for the movie Searching for Bobby Fisher. His dad actually wrote the the screenplay and had that movie made. So he was like a chess prodigy when he was little. Now and then he’s moved on to like martial arts. Like he was this he did like Tai Chi touchhands, which is Tai Chi, and it’s form of martial arts around like conservation of energy and for balancing of forces and all these like thing thingies.

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Then he actually found the real martial art that you should be focusing on, which was Jiu-Jitsu, and he trained with Marcelo Garcia in in New York, and John probably Donnaher too. But like, he’s a systems-based learner. And this book is incredible, and I highly ch recommend you check it out. Like, but here’s the thing. So, like, I’m getting ahead of I’m getting all over the weeds here. The idea is there’s knowledge out there, right? There’s knowledge out there, is an abundance of knowledge. There’s an abundance of experts. I’m

Back to the Ford analogy here. Like I can I’m Henry Ford, you know, I can I can ring a bell and the expert shows up and I can figure out how to design the right forward, design the right model T so I can I can help the bootleggers move the alcohol. Chicago’s a big market and there’s bootleggers. Al Capone needs to move booze. How do we make that happen? How how do we move the bricks? You know? So you know, that’s my

Henry Ford. So then we go back we go back to my ghost protocol. This is where this is so fun. Okay? You know, this is so fun. I have this like ghost protocol thing that I can boot up like these experts, and then they can help me fill in the gap. And then what I’m working on is this like interpretation of some of these things. And like, you know, this is my own like

I’m not, you know, necessarily publishing or selling this. This is like my own framework for navigating a lot of concepts. And so this is another thing, too, is like, okay, well, I need to first understand and identify the areas in which I need to accumulate knowledge. And then, okay, once I know, like there’s marketing that happens. So you have step one is market, like what’s my market? Step two is business planning, you know. Step three is offer creations. This is something Hermozy talks about, right? And then once you have an offer, right?

Then you create a product. And the product is not just like a code website real quick. Product is defining the product, the specifications, the features, the value to support the offer, right? And then once you have that product, you build that roadmap and you enforce this like and create this army of engineers, AI agents, and real tech people to build the thing to get to MVP1. Then once you have that, you know, you move into content marketing strategies. Like how do we build content that speaks to our avatars, that help.

Like our videos go viral, so people want our product and they you know they start to use us, you know. And we can take advantage of that, you know, organic marketing through content creation, right? And then, you know, how do we build an audience? Like that’s the reach, you know, so the content is the messaging, and then the audience is who we’re shooting that message out at, you know. And so then then how do we how do we maximize revenue generation so so that we can provide value to people and measure that and you know, and then and then how do we optimize our operations?

So that like we deliver consistently, we reduce, you know, the founders’ dependencies, we build teams and organizations. And I’ve worked with so many talented people in this in this area. Like I have a old former colleague that became my boss and has moved on and does doing great things, and I learned so many amazing things about her from leading projects and development and coordinating people. You know, and then Jocko stuff, you know, he explains some extremely powerful concepts about like,

Getting people to buy in and really invest in the ideas, right? And that’s what a dynamic leader does. Is it’s like you create this plan, you build this vision, you build this scaffold of like structure of ideas, then you find smart people and you trust them, then you empower them so that they’re invested. Like that was one of the things that about the software company that I I really loved. I was I worked directly with the founders of the software company, and they were just brilliant and very inspiring people.

And like what I what really was made a big thing for me is like they trusted what I told them. Cause I s established myself as someone that knew and I never overcommitted and I was always very clear when I didn’t have the right information. So like that’s this goes back to that goes back to the Henry Ford thing. So Henry Ford had that bell, right? So at the corporation, the software company I worked at.

I was one of the bells, I was one of the experts that the CEO would ring and he would shoot me an email, hey, I want to go over this idea. And I would had a very deep knowledge of interactive application development. That was my specialty. So like I was the one in charge of building McDonald’s Monopoly campaigns. I was the one that designed games for Disney. I was the one that built the Coors Light Rewards app. You know, I and he knew that I knew what I was talking about. And I he knew that when I said I didn’t know, it was real. Like he didn’t think I was just bullshit again. And so

Like just like Henry Ford, he would ring the bell or send me an email or hit me up on Teams and I would come into his office and we would whiteboard out some ideas and I would give him my expert opinion. You know, and like that only happened because I was constantly investing in my education. I was constantly learning. Like I started as a front end engineer, just front end engineer, you know, bottom of the totem pole as far as the front end team goes.

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And then I started to identify things we needed to do, and I was like, man, this is where we need to go. This is the way the industry’s working. This is the newest tech. So I invested my time there. And I became the expert in what HTML5 animation and JavaScript applications and interactive mobile first. This is right when the f first iPhone was coming out. So then I, you know, quickly established myself as someone that A, knew what he was talking about, never overpromised anything, delivered on time every time, and made sure that the project managers had their shit done.

Like I recognized that project management was one of the hardest jobs in the company because they were trusting other people to get the work done and they were trying to keep everyone on track and the deadlines met, but they were really literally powerless to get the actual typing done. And so like I every day I would before I left, I was I would check in with my PM and I would make a point to say, Hey, what do you need? Do you are you do you have everything you need today? And they would say, actually, you know what, we gotta get this tested, that this other person was is wasn’t able to get this done. And I would be like, All right, I’m gonna help you right now.

And I wouldn’t leave until they had what they needed. And that translated into that project manager telling their VP, which told the CEO, that this guy knows what he’s doing, he gets the job done, and he’s always reliable and can be counted on. And then I built my reputation on that. And then I became that expert that, you know, the CEO would ring the bell and I would show up. And then eventually I got hired, I got promoted to associate interactive director because I was making these critical decisions.

And then I was given some responsibility. And then eventually I was made director of the department. And then eventually, you know, I kept producing, kept producing, kept like going home on weekends, building tools, building ideas, doing training internally, investing in the team. And I was doing the stuff that that Jocko talked about in his books. I was putting that into practice. You know, I was listening to what he said. Where is Jocko? I don’t know where Jocko went. I was doing what Jocko said. And I was l trying to be a leader of men and and I was trying to inspire my t my team, and I was

When I became a manager, it was no longer about me being important. It was no longer about me being special. It was about how do I get my team to take on hard projects and challenges and then pr really praise them and get everyone to recognize that work. You know, how that’s how you get amazing jobs and teams to work together. It’s no longer about you as a manager. Like you’re not important anymore. Like you’re in sp in in charge of making the people on your team really value, you know, feel that value that they’ve contributed.

And then make them feel inspired and give them this this the t the tools they need. You know, the I would recommend all these books to my team. You know, and like Tim Ferris, the the ideas I learned from him, you know, how to organize my time, how to chunk my time so that I’m getting everything done quickly. Like every day, my f the beginning of my day is extremely productive. And I wake up at 4 a.m. so I’m not be disturbed. No one messes with me before work. You know, 4 a.m. to nine a.m., peace, quiet, ti no one, no one messes with me.

9 a.m. clients start calling, I have meetings. So I use that time to get everything I need to done, or all of my agents started working. And then nine to nine to five is as I I guess have meetings. And I try to do my meetings after one. And I try to limit how often I’m checking emails and getting interrupted. And I have automated cues to to prioritize things. And then my my buddy Eric was a super big fan of what’s called as the Eisenhower matrix. You know, and the Eisenhower Eisenhower was general during World War II.

And he had this way of triaging tasks. And I think you should check it out. It’s called the Eisenhower Matrix. And it’s and Eric taught me how to do this. It’s like, so the top left, so it’s a quadrant system. And it’s like Eisenhower matrix, top left, important but and urgent. Those are the things you gotta do right away. Jocko would agree with this. If you said, hey Jocko, what do you think about the Eisenhower matrix? He’d be like, good. That’s how he would say it.

Good. Spencer, good. You know? And then the thing we have to worry about next is like it’s not urgent, but it’s important. You know, it’s important on this part, and it’s not urgent, but we need to schedule that. When is it gonna get done? Okay, tomorrow nine a.m. on it. No no no no no what does Jacko say? Good. No no issue there. Yeah, get it done. so then we do it now. Good. Get that urgent, important, good.

You know, this is bad Jocko, sorry Jocko. and then we have not urgent and important, we schedule that, and then what we not important, right? Not important, and it’s not urgent. It’s urgent, but it’s not important. That’s the distinction there. So urgent but not important, so we delegate that, right? So that’s where you call in your team. You’re like, hey, I have this thing, it is I it’s important to get done. I don’t

have the time right now or capacity to do it, can you take this off my plate? And you know, I have on my team, I always like had the my go-to guys and they or girls, I had a team of like I had a team, guys, girls, and like two that really were my number one, you know, for everything, for handling extra stuff that I couldn’t handle. So I would learn to delegate. And this is something I still struggle with, is is properly delegating things. But like that’s a key thing here. And then the ones that are not urgent, tasks that are not urgent and also like not important, just freaking get rid of them.

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If they’re not urgent and they’re not important, they’re probably not something you need to worry waste your time on, right? And then there was another thing. this is another system for handling time tracking and time management. So one of the things Tim Merrit Tim Tim Ferris talked about as being like one of the core critical things is he talked about this is cool. Get organized HQ. Hi Laura. she’s just

Kick and butt taking names with the bullet journal. So the bullet journal is a really cool framework for time management. And it’s a paper pen journal. And you’re thinking, paper and pen, how rudimentary, right? But it’s it’s a gr I use a lot of paper pen and paper journals, but it’s like a system for you know helping you track tasks, carry them over, set like a timeline. And it’s these are all frameworks that

Build that skill and capacity to manage time. And then when you start to like unlock your capacity to manage time, you start to become this, you know, where is my we’re s we’re so we’re we’re implementing, we’re learning systems, we’re learning systems-based thinking, you know, and now we can become the expert that Henry Ford or the CEO is reaching out to, right? And and then once so I’m trying to lay the groundwork for systems-based thinking.

processes and the value in understanding these things because once you start to use AI, I had a conversation with a guy building this thing and he got a workable concept up and he’s like, I think I can go to market with this. But it unlocked this he’s he’s at this point where he’s about to unlock this thing called this idea that like you don’t know what you don’t know. And there’s it’s the Dunn and Kruger dun this is like Dunn Dun and Kruger effect. My friend Jason Kelly

He told me about this back in the day. He’s a goofball. But he’s the Dunnen Kruger effect is cognitive bias, where people with low ability and low expertise and low experience in a specific domain greatly overestimate their competence. And so what that means is if you don’t know enough about something, like you don’t even realize how much you don’t know. And then you’re making decisions based on this limited amount of knowledge. And so there’s another story, too. My dad had a

guru guy that we used to talk about at this Cygnetics, this like company that he worked at. And

he he talked about this guy, he’s like this wizard that everyone went to for all the knowledge, right? And the guy’s he described his keyboard as being so dirty. Like the guy would eat he would eat fast food and they would type. And this is back in the 80s, clickety-clack keyboards, probably. And they were building integrated circuits, they were designing things, it was an engineering place. And this guy was the wizard guru of all things. And I never met him, but I always imagined.

you know, what his cubicle looked like or whatever. And I like eight, eight or eight to like ten, twelve years old at the time when I’m t hearing this story. And my dad’s like he told me, ’cause I he was talk my dad was talking to him, and he’s like, Scott, I know this much about this much. And my dad was blown away. And he was like, How can this guy who everyone thinks is the wizard of all things, know this much about all this much? You know, and that’s Dun and Kruger effect. That’s

you know, what his cubicle looked like or whatever. And I was like eight, eight or eight to like ten, twelve years old at the time when I’m hearing this story. And my dad’s like he told me, ’cause I he was talk my dad was talking to him, and he’s like, Scott, I know this much about this much. And my dad was blown away. And he was like, How can this guy who everyone thinks is the wizard of all things, know this much about all this much? You know, and that’s done in Kruger effect. That’s

Cognitive bias. And it’s basically not having a great enough understanding to realize you don’t know anything. And like, like here’s the graph, right? So, no. What am I doing? Yeah. So Dun and Kruger effect, it’s like confidence is high, and then you’re like your level of confidence, you know, is low, but your confidence is very high, so you have this peak of ignorance. And then then you start to

Like hit this wall, and you’re like, wait a minute, as you gain more competence across the right, you know, like as you gain confidence, you’re like, holy shit, like I really know nothing about this. And this is where a black belt sits when he gets his black belt ro like ripped. You know, I have a I have a black belt in Brazilian jiu-jitsu. All it has done for me is helped me realize I know nothing about jujitsu. And I feel like a white belt again. Because once you realize and you start to get better and better and more and more competent, you’re

Confidence in you, how much you know, goes way down, and that’s when you start to actually make better decisions. Because you look realize that, you know, on this slope of entitlement, that’s funny. And then when you reach true expert knowledge stage, it’s very rare, but like you on along the way you realize that holy crap, like I’m an expert, like I’ve reached this true expert knowledge layer in a few different subjects, and all that has done is

confidence in you, how much you know goes way down, and that’s when you start to actually make better decisions. Because you look realize that, you know, on this slope of entitlement, that’s funny. And then when you reach true expert knowledge stage, it’s very rare, but like you on along the way you realize that holy crap, like I’m an expert, like I’ve reached this true expert knowledge layer in a few different subjects, and all that has done is

Put me in my own box. You know, like it has given me this sense of like I have l reached of pr like I’m not saying all product development, but the engineering aspects of architecturing of of architecting enterprise grade solutions. I’m gonna I’m gonna put myself there. Like I I I can I can safely say I’ve reached an a true expert subs in a subset of that. I’m not claiming I’m an expert at all of it at all. What it’s done though.

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Is it’s unlocked this achievement unlocked. You realize you don’t know anything. And that you realize that you need experts in all of these different areas. So that’s what it’s it’s given me. Is this like once I realize that I don’t know anything, even about the areas that I kind of think I’ve up gone up the scope of entitlement on, right? I’ve realized that holy shit, like I need experts. And then it’s like you run into, I feel like this is a

This is a common thing that’s happening right now. Is people start to reach out and they realize, whoa, agents can fill in the gaps, you know, and an agent can fill in the gaps for me. And this in many ways that’s true. You know, like in many ways that is true. But like, how do you trust what the agent’s giving you if you don’t actually talk to a true expert in that field? So, like, I want to find, you know, like I want to go back and I want to find.

I want to find people that have gone on this, you know, Dun and Kruger cognitive bias exercise, and they’ve become the people that know this much about this much. And then they they like have gone on this roller coaster and they’ve gotten their black belt and realize they know nothing. And then they they continue to work and they’ve reached this slope of entitlement. I’ve never heard that term before. That’s funny. But like anyway, they’ve reached this true expert knowledge and they’re able to calmly.

sit with this confidence that they know enough about us an area to say that. You know, like you can tell when someone’s bullshitting you and it’s usually because they claim they know everything about something. But typically the people that have gone through this process to reach a level of expertise are very clear about what they don’t know. They’re like, I have no that’s the guy he’s like, I know this much about this much. The guru of the whole like integrated circuit company in back in the 80s, building high-tech stuff. And I know this much about this much. So like

I know this much about this much in one little box, right? And then I’m looking to supplement that with this knowledge from Fable V UltraCode from Anthropic.

And then I’m building these complex plans. And like at least I’m resting with this I understanding that I know this much about this much in one small little piece of the big puzzle. And so my challenge to you, after I’ve I feel like hopefully you’ve

And then I’m building these complex plants. And like at least I’m resting with this understanding that I know this much about this much in one small little piece of the big puzzle. And so my challenge to you, after I’ve I feel like hopefully you’ve

stuck with me long enough to for the takeaway. The takeaway is you need to get people that have reached that level of of confident expertise, that they will be very clear clear with you that they don’t know stuff.

and that you can sit and trust them. And then you can build all these plans, but then when you are ready to kind of like make take action that is has some serious consequences, there’s a saying that I love that George Joe Rogan says on his podcast. He says, he says, Jiu Jitsu

And that you can sit and trust them, and then you can build all these plans, but then when you are ready to kind of like make take action that is has some serious consequences, there’s a saying that I love that George Joe Rogan says on his podcast. He says, he says, jujitsu

is you know problem solving with dire physical consequences. And like until you’ve achieved a certain amount of

Is you know problem solving with dire physical consequences. And like until you’ve achieved a certain amount of

expertise in Brazilian jiu-jitsu, that sentence isn’t gonna resonate. But for me it does. Because I’m looking to solve problems in jiu-jitsu, and the consequence is my arm could get broken or I could get choked unconscious. So like I love that idea, but like you are operating.

in a sandbox where there are you know experts out there that have the knowledge you need and you can build these plans and you can get yourself 90% of the way there. But they all have dire

In a sandbox where there are, you know, experts out there that have the knowledge you need, and you can build these plans and you can get yourself 90% of the way there, but they all have dire

physical consequences for the wrong decisions. And until you’re able to get to your like until you’re, you know, like this is the greatest part of this story, you know, is, and this is like what I love about you should listen to Think and Grow Rich. This will really, really hit hit home when you do.

Henry Ford had a vision, he had a very clear definiteness of purpose, he clearly wrote down his goals, and then he had persistent continuous action, which is what

Henry Ford talks about persistent continuous action towards the attainment of his goals. Then he built a team of experts around him. And then and this is where there’s a trap right now. People think that the experts are are coming through in AI and they’re not. The experts are real people

Henry Ford talks about. Persistent continuous action towards the attainment of his goals. Then he built a team of experts around him. And then and this is where there’s a trap right now. People think that the experts are are coming through in AI and they’re not. The experts are real people.

that have reached that level of confidence to admit they don’t know anything, and then can give you opinions that you can then use to make decisions.

And then the decisions you make will not have dire physical consequences. Because like there, you know, it’s it’s could be that, you know, we could be saying it a different way here, where it’s like

Jiu-jitsu is problem solving with dire physical consequences. Well, how about this? You know, the things I do in this stage here, business planning, have could potentially have dire financial consequences, right? And then that’s the kind of the thing, right? Physical could be an aspect of that if you lose, if if the company loses its shit. And there’s like, this is where you know, getting embedded in a company and like learning every

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thing you can about all the different parts of the company so you at least have this like understanding of their process, right? That was one thing that was super valuable at work about working for a software agency and company. Is like I was embedded in a in we had all these different departments across the entire stack. We did the whole thing. They executed this whole thing and built it and did it in a way that they could exit the with private equity. Like it is the so

What I’m claiming, the receipt that I’m bringing to this conversation is not that I know all these things. The receipt is the evidence I’m presenting to you is I spent enough time interacting with experts in each of these domains that I know when someone’s bullshitting me at least. That’s important. So so like back to the Henry Ford thing. You know, like Henry Ford he knew enough so that he knew it if someone was bullshitting him. Like he had probably had a pretty good

people bullshit detector. Like Henry Ford is like, yeah, Al Capone? yeah, I I think I can carry to I think I can create a vehicle that can move 2,000 bricks. I don’t know why you want to move bricks, but I’ll get it on my my best people on it. He holds on. He rings his bell. And then the Spencer of 1908 shows up. What do you need, Henry? I’m the expert I but we’re really, really you know, working hard to get good at

The the physics of springs. That’s my area of expertise. Spring mechanics of the nineteen twenties. That’s my knowledge area. And Ford’s like we Al Capone called me, he’s a big client. And he needs to move bricks. I don’t understand why he’s getting into the brick business, but he needs to move bricks from you know many different areas. We need to build a chassis capable of moving two thousand pounds of bricks. And I’d be like, well.

I don’t know right off the top of my head, but I’m gonna go back and I’m gonna talk to the team and let’s find out what kind of springs and chassis and different things we need to accommodate that amount of weight, and then I’ll get back to you and I’ll bring you a report. And Ford’s like, I’m thinking if eighth grade educated Ford’s like, Spencer, I trust you. You know, you go and do the thing. And then I go back to my team of mechanical engineers and I’m you know, and I’m like, dude, the boss wants us to move bricks. Like we all know that.

We all know Papone they don’t why do ha I don’t even think they had phones. why we all know the p Capone’s not moving bricks. Ba that me and the guys are j we’re like drinking booze or whatever, it’s prohibition and like we got our booze from Capone’s network or whatever. And we’re like, yeah, let’s make sure we can get this next Ford model to move bricks so that we can make sure the cost of our bootlegged liquor comes like this is the anyway. Fun times. There’s a great show, Boardwalk Empire, you should watch it.

We all know Popone they don’t why do they ha I don’t even think they had phones. why we all know that P Capone’s not moving bricks. That me and the guys are j we’re like drinking booze or whatever, it’s prohibition and like we got our booze from Capone’s network or whatever. And we’re like, yeah, let’s make sure we can get this next Ford model to move bricks so that we can make sure the cost of our bootlegged liquor comes like this is the anyway. Fun times. There’s a great show, Boardwalk Empire, you should watch it.

anyway, back to the story. I think that I’ve illustrated my point here. The point is you can trust AI to a point. You can use it as a tool. You know, it’s a sophisticated pencil, it can do things under strict controls, it can be very valuable, but you still need to address actual experts in the field in each of these different areas. So, like maybe step one is you define your goal.

You know, step two is you create your idea and your product, and then you like create your draft, and then you start to go fish it farm it out, starting this stage one. Do is there a market? How do I who who can I talk to that’ll help me establish this? You know, okay, I need to make a business plan. Who do I know that’s an expert in this? Let me make one that I’m gonna give I’m gonna hey, can you look at this and tell me if this is solid? Like I know a guy in Tempe, this guy John, that runs a company called Anton Sport, and you know, he’s an expert at

At T-shirt manufacturing on high scale. He does all of ASU stuff. I built, I built a bunch of his websites back when I was doing contracting. Like if I needed to talk through some, like if I needed to scale up an operation of manufacturing, he’s a dude I would talk to, you know, like I would reach out to him. And then I would run my plans against it. And he could tell me off the bat, like, hey, I ran into an issue like that. We were trying to scale up. It was hard to get enough team to un run the equipment and stuff. So you should do this and it’ll save you a lot of effort and time. And I’d be like, dude, thank you, John.

at t-shirt manufacturing on high scale. He does all of ASU stuff. I built I built a bunch of his websites back when I was doing contracting. Like if I needed to talk through some, like if I needed to scale up an operation of manufacturing, he’s a dude I would talk to, you know, like I would reach out to him. And then I would run my plans against it. And he could tell me off the bat, like, hey, I ran into an issue like that. We were trying to scale up. It was hard to get enough team to un run the equipment and stuff. So you should do this and it’ll save you a lot of effort and time. And I’d be like, dude, thank you, John.

You know, and then like if I’m looking at my offer, you know, like what is the offer I’m selling? Like how do I pr convey and and express the value in a way that’ll help like actually motivate someone to do it? I’m gonna talk to my friend. This Eric’s an expert in this. He’s a storyteller, he’s an expert storyteller, he’s a published author. He tells he has amazing stuff, he’s very creative, and it’s all about understanding the the customer and like what how do you tell the story of your product, right? Then when we move into actually building it.

Product development, like I’m gonna find someone that’s an expert in project management that can help me adequately estimate the effort and time it takes to accomplish something of high quality. And then I have that plan. Then I can go to an expert that’s an expert in software engineering and application architecture, and I can say, How do we, you know, can you work with my my project management and product development lead to really get this locked in so it’s a it’s a plan that we can work through?

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And I’ll be yeah, I mean I have enough knowledge in that area, and I know how to find the knowledge that we need to fill in any gaps. And then we create that part of the plan. And then when you start building that, now you have to like you could start building that, and then you could probably start working on your content strategy and audience and how your outreach and all of that’s all those systems are gonna work while you’re developing your product. You could probably do those concurrently. But then once that product launches, you’re throwing advertising out there, you’re testing your market, you’re in you’re enabling a sales team.

Now you’re focusing on some cr critical things here is like how do you convert the demand into like durable revenue and prove that? Like, and then how do you like I was building some fun thought experiments on building some visualization around like how do you design a SaaS and then with your end goal of being a hundred million dollar exit? You know, like if you’re gonna build an AI platform and then you wanna demonstrate its total serviceable market and then demonstrate a a revenue increases over two or three years.

to a point where you can walk into an ad back private equity company who’s just like thirsty for AI stuff. How do you build that story of here’s my team, here’s the product, here’s what we’ve got, here’s the vision in the roadmap. And if you buy me now for a hundred million, I’ll stay on and get this across the line. And people are doing that anyway. I’m not trying to like talk through like or guarantee results here, but this is that’s the process. You don’t skip steps, you know, like

to a point where you can walk into an back private equity company who’s just like thirsty for AI stuff. How do you build that story of here’s my team, here’s the product, here’s what we’ve got, here’s the vision in the roadmap. And if you buy me now for a hundred million, I’ll stay on and get this across the line. And people are doing that anyway. I’m not trying to like talk through like or guarantee results here, but this is that’s the process. You don’t skip steps, you know, like

You don’t just run off and start making money. You have to build and get your audience and everything dialed in and then and then operations is critical. Once you have this customers and you have a lot of people, how are you making sure that you’ve got customer success and you’re measuring feedback and support and you’re taking that data and feeding it back into the new products you’re developing? So there’s a cycle, you know.

And I can’t believe I just ranted for 54 minutes, but like I love this stuff and I love thinking through it. And I and you know, I’ve I’ve always been such a fan and admirer of you know all these great people that spend time thinking about these problems. You know, like Tim Ferris, definitely check out his books and you know Jocko, check his stuff out, and definitely Josh Waitskin’s The Art of Learning, the audiobook’s really good.

but these are all things that in bullet journal, go get some bullet journal. Like, and read Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. I mean, that’s honestly, if you start anywhere, you and that’s the story that that’s where the story comes from. think and Grow Rich, Napoleon Hill. So I’ve I had the there’s a couple different versions. The reason that this you know there’s new ones is because he wrote this in

This is the twenty-first century revised and updated. So he wrote this and I have the original. And some of the examples are funny because they’re like talking about you’re you wanna buy a loaf of bread for five cents, a nickel. And it’s like that doesn’t translate to you know, like it’s funny because it was written. I gotta like find the story of this because there’s gotta be like dig into this. The once you read like it’s a great story, like

This is the 21st century revised and updated. So he wrote this and I have the original. And some of the examples are funny because they’re like talking about you’re you wanna buy a loaf of bread for five cents, a nickel. And it’s like that doesn’t translate to you know, like it’s funny because it was written. I gotta like find the story of this because there’s gotta be like dig into this. The once you read like it’s a great story, like.

And it’s almost like fiction. You know, it’s it reads like fiction, but it was real. Like he he met Rockefeller, you know, like

So the the core premise of the book is the he he argues that thoughts can be transformed into physical reality and wealth through intense desire, faith, and persistence. And that’s like you’re like, holy shit, that’s not what Spencer’s talking about, but it is. And then it’s like Hill claimed the book was inspired by a a prompt from a steel magnet, Andrew Carnegie, through modern historians, well, modern historians debate his biographical claims, but the idea was that he, you know.

came up with this thirteen steps. You know, you have to have desire, faith, and then there’s this principle called auto suggestion, which is this idea that the thoughts we think consistently, the words we speak, translate down into the depths of our mind and drive us at a very deep level. And this is just like some deep shit here. But what is happening at when you start to get through these is you need to a attain acquire specialized knowledge. And it’s not necessarily your own, it’s knowing how to get it. And that was what I was just talking through.

Came up with this 13 steps. You know, you have to have desire, faith, and then there’s this principle called auto-suggestion, which is this idea that the thoughts we think consistently, the words we speak, translate down into the depths of our mind and drive us at a very deep level. And this is just like some deep shit here. But what is happening at when you start to get through these is you need to attain acquire specialized knowledge, and it’s not necessarily your own, it’s knowing how to get it. And that was what I was just talking through.

You have to have imagination and have like a group of people, their minds producing more together. You have to have organized planning. So that’s where product development and project management and operations come from. You have to have decision mastering, you know, the mastery of procrastination. This is one thing that for me it hits hard because like I can build stuff all day long. And I can’t I have a weird form of procrastination where I just like don’t stop building the thing because I’m like, I keep adding reasons why I don’t release it. And it’s just like a

Inner thing that I have to work through is like it’s not that it needs more features. It’s that I’m afraid it’s gonna be fail it’s gonna be a failure. So why I’m afraid to actually put in front of people. And so like he talks about this, and then you know, persistent continuous action. This is this is critical. Like it doesn’t like it’s it’s sustained effort necessary to induce the faith that you’ll be successful. Like this is the thing that’s critical, and this is another area where I think Tim Ferris and he talks about stoicism, and he talks about

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You know, this idea that we have to overcome things. And Ryan Holiday, check him out. He’s he tells stories aro about Stoicism, told through the stories of great people. Stoic philosophy is pretty simple. it boils down to understanding that we don’t get to control what happens to us, but we get to control how we respond, and we get to choose to overcome obstacles. And there’s a lot more to it, obviously, I’m simplifying it, but like you have to.

you know, this idea that we have to overcome things. And Ryan Holiday, check him out. He’s he tells stories aro about Stoicism, told through the stories of great people. Stoic p philosophy is pretty simple. it boils down to understanding that we don’t get to control what happens to us, but we get to control how we respond and we get to choose to overcome obstacles. And there’s a lot more to it, obviously I’m simplifying it, but like you have to

exercise persistent continuous action and part of Napoleon Hill’s books he talks about this you know I’ve and I actually went through these exercises and I’ve gone through and written the goals down and I’ve read the statements to myself every day and I’ve I was going through such a hard period of my life I actually found a goal binder that I made and every one of those goals almost every one of those goals I had achieved ten years later and it was like it brought me to tears because I remember who I was then.

exercise persistent continuous action. And part of Napoleon Hill’s books, he talks about this. You know, I and I actually went through these exercises and I’ve gone through and written the goals down and I’ve read the statements to myself every day. And I’ve I was going through such a hard p period of my life, I actually found a goal binder that I made. And every one of those goals, almost every one of those goals, I had achieved ten years later. And it was like it brought me to tears because I remember wha who I was then.

And w I was a very broken person at that time in my life. And this book gave me like the courage to continue to push and fail. I had to fail a lot, and I realized that failure is the path to success. And failure is inevitable. You’re gonna face it, right? And persistent, continuous action, married by faith that you will get to your goal is how you become successful.

He profiled all these important people that had put this into practice. And Henry Ford was one of them. And persistent continuous action, the power of the mastermind, which is combining the efforts of a group of harmonious minds. Powerful concepts. Now it’s like he even talked through, you know, the mystery of like, well, this is an interesting channeling of creative energy, what he called the mastery of sex transmutation. And this is a very interesting concept. People have this innate.

Need to create life. And it’s usually a driver of procreation, right? But it’s the idea that you can harness that energy and turn it into the creation of anything, not just a human life. Powerful concept. And the subconscious mind, the l the connection between thought and universal intelligence, this is where it really gets powerful. Like the brain is a broadcasting and receiving station for thought.

Need to create life. And it’s usually a driver of of procreation, right? But it’s the idea that you can harness that energy and turn it into the creation of anything, not just a human life. Powerful concept. And the subconscious mind, the l the connection between thought and universal intelligence, this is where it really gets powerful. Like the brain is a broadcasting and receiving station for thought.

Deepak Chopra talks about this. And this is where it gets really powerful if you really kind of like dive into these concepts. Is like we are human, we are humans experiencing three-dimensional reality, but we’re actually spiritual beings experiencing this plane of existence. So we have a connection to the divine source. And I don’t want to necessarily get make this like a philosophical or theological thing.

This is in you know, I believe this. You know, I believe that there’s more going on, and I believe that through prayer and faith, th I can ask for help and I can receive help.

Sorry. I can receive help from a greater thing, a greater source of power, a higher power, a creator.

I’ve experienced a lot of hard things in my life and you know

I’m not ashamed of the emotions I’m feeling right now because I have the receipts to back up the traumatic things I’ve endured.

And I’ve been trying to find a good way to tell these stories because like, you know, there was a period in my life where I was on this upward trajectory and you know I I w I was this little child and I was so full of expl wonder. I was literally Tim Ferris as like a th five year old kid. You know, and then

You know, I I was very blessed to be born into a very f you know, loving family and

And then, you know, live in an environment in a time when that n that curiosity could be fostered into this intense sense of wonder.

And then you know, live in an environment in a time when that n that curiosity could be fostered into this intense sense of wonder.

And then, you know, 1988, I get my first computer, I learn to break it quickly, and my dad teaches me to fix it. And that was the beginning of my life with technology. And this love and this passion I have for troubleshooting and like tinkering. And like, why does it work the way that it does? Taking apart my mom’s appliances. Like my mom came home and there was little vacuum cleaners in parts, pieces, all the screws, and I’m she’s losing her mind, and I’m like, I’ll put it back together, mom, don’t worry. And I did.

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And I was like seven years old, you know. And then that intensity was in you know channeled into computers and I was introduced as to martial arts when I was a kid, and then

And I started karate, and that was that gave my mind a sense of structure and connection between my physical body and this intense curiosity that I had. And it gave me a sense of discipline and structure that was very, very powerful in my formative years. And then when I was twelve, I had a brown belt, but we moved to U Arizona. We moved from Utah to Arizona. And

You know, I had to put that dream on hold, this dream of being a black belt. And then I, you know, I s I was the new kid in ju going to junior high at Occamal Middle School. I was this geeky kid from Utah that didn’t fit in. You know, none of my clothes were right. I felt very different. I was I liked all the weird things that no one really cared about. The funny thing is, this the way the universe works is

You know, th they put you, they they have a you know, Akamal I show us my first day, I’m a transfer from a new school. So they have a kid, you know, they call a kid down and they say, Hey, you know, can you can you can you show this guy around his first day? You know, and like the universe really was just like, Let me give you the perfect person to do this. Because it was this kid, Jared, and we be instantly just kind of became best friends, and he was a nerd like me.

This is just crazy. Out of this whole school, there’s probably like five kids that are into computers at the level that I was, and he was one of them. The first co I still remember the first conversation we had.

was about we were standing in the lunchroom and we were talking about the latest, like he had recorded the latest episode of Star Trek The Next Generation. His dad had a really nice five Dolby 5.1 surround sound system, and Jared was complaining that he was making the argument, and this is me in seventh grade at Akima, and Jared’s saying, I think that when you VHS tape record a Star Trek The Next Generation, that’s

Audio fidelity doesn’t translate. I feel like it’s garbage. So this was his I remember this is the first conversation we were having at lunch. And many years later, I remember Jared lived not too far from me, and he he invited me over and he showed me Top Gun, the new one or no, the original opening scene of Top Gun. And he had this Dolby 7.1 speak. Like he had grown up and become the a dad. You know, he was he was his dad now in this house, and he had built this Dolby 7.1 surround system. And he remember he put on

He put on the opening scene of Top Gun when they’re about to and it’s like building up that tension and it’s about to launch that fighter jet off the carrier and then it like hits and it’s highway to the danger zone. And like it I gotta hand it to Jared. He had put the system together to to really make that like feel like you were in the movie theater. And I’m sure the new one was probably just killer on whatever he saw it on. But anyway, so Jared was like.

We became really good friends and we used to we would play video games and we would ride our bikes to school and I was part of this like nerd crew and that was where I belonged. And then, you know, high school comes around the first mini-year of high school, I meet this guy, George Alper, and he was my English teacher, and he knew that I he learned that I was a geeky nerd kid. And George was like, Hey, Spence, I have this program. I have a program I’m starting, and it’s

It’s a TV production class and it’s digital yearbook and we’re we’ve got all the latest tech and we’re gonna have these like a lab full of computers and he’s like you should jump in and do my program and I was like sign me up so that we first year at Accamall I was actually first year at Desert Vista freshman year, I was actually at Accamall still because the school hadn’t even been built. So I signed up for the classes, started learning about Photoshop and learning 3D animation, and I like

This is back before the YouTube was around, you had to use big books, and I was like just diving in and I made this decision. I was like, I want to be the best at this. Like I was like, this is my purpose. Like all of the things I love about computers can now be used to create things. So like people are creators, you know, they taught to talk about being a creator. Like I was a creator in 1994, when digital photos and cameras were just coming online. This is before the internet. So in 1996, I made my first web page using front page HTML.

This is before like people are not even understanding what the internet is. They’re like using the phone book to find businesses. And then, you know, I went through all those programs and I I just ended up becoming so good at the things that I knew more about 3D animation and some of these tools that than George did. So I ended up teaching the kids. Like I would literally lead the class. And as a junior and senior, I was t teaching the TV production class. And then George was able to help me get some work. He knew a photographer, spectrum photography.

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On Chandler Boulevard, and he got me a gig where I would scan in these old like photos and I would restore them. And I was doing digital restoration, photo restoration while I was in high school. And then I ended up working for Kinkos and I worked through some other tech different tech companies. I worked at Comp USA selling computers, and you know, I had a job making cheesesteaks. And I’ve always been someone that like wherever I would go, I would I would become a leader and then I would become a manager, and that’s like just my pattern. That’s what I did. But it was it was it was just this intense desire to be.

really good at what I did. And then, you know, I s I right out of high school I got actually a gig with Microsoft doing what it was I was on the the what was called the Microsoft Windows 2000 Rapid Deployment Team. And we actually I’m skipping a lot of stuff, but Windows 2000 rapid deployment team. I wonder if there’s rapid deployment team. I wonder if this is a real thing. I had a t-shirt and everything. Or no, I had a collar shirt. Okay.

This is what this I did, I was contracting for this. So Windows 2000 Rapid Deployment Program, often led by figures like Microsoft’s lead project project manager, was an initiative designed to help large corporations and enterprises streamline. I was at general dynamics and there’s like classified networks, and I was hired to like help upgrade their computers. So it was like really cool. And you know, I was I was running around this massive cube farms and like these high-end up security centers and stuff, and like upgrading their machines. And then after that, I

I actually s you know the there was series of jobs. I ended up taking a job doing I’m skipping a lot of stuff here, but I took a job doing sales at 24 Hour Fitness, the gym. So I was a sales I was 24 Hour Fitness, I was a sales counselor, so I sold gym memberships. And 24 hour fitness, I was a sales counselor, I learned sales. This is where I learned Tommy Hopkins. This is literally the reason I’m telling you this video, is I’m building some sales systems around what he taught me.

Actually, you know, the there a series of jobs. I ended up taking a job doing I’m skipping a lot of stuff here. But I took a job doing sales at 24 Hour Fitness, the gym. So I was a sales, I 24 Hour Fitness, I was a sales counselor. So I sold gym memberships. And 24 hour fitness, I was sales counselor, I learned sales. This is where I learned Tommy Hopkins. This is literally the reason I’m telling you this video, is I’m building some sales systems around what he taught me.

I went through official Tommy Hopkins sales training. And then I looked took those me and my friend Ross, we actually met this owner of this software company and we closed him on a deal. We closed him on an expensive three-year contract membership. We did the classic manager’s takeover. And I came in and we closed him and stuff. And the guy was so impressed he offered us jobs at a software company doing sales. So I ended up moving from a software company doing sales to a or from 24-hour fitness doing sales to a software company.

And then worked at the software company and it was like security software patch management, and I learned a lot about that, and I learned about a lot about corporate sales. And then I quit that because I met someone, I met a group of people that were starting a s a start a startup called Hibern. And Hibern was a really cool idea. Hi Burn Incorporated. I wonder if you can still I wonder if there’s anything out there. So Hibern Inc., let’s see. I don’t know, like I don’t think anything.

yeah, here it is. So Hibern Inc. Historical, a past corporate entity associated with instant media and CD production. So Hibern Incorporated was this idea that this guy Eric came up with, and I don’t know if it was his original idea, but he started a company to do it. Was this before Spotify, this is before streaming, this is before Apple Music, all of those things. MP3s were just barely starting to come online. We were still doing CDs back then. So this is like the late 90s, early 2000s.

yeah, here it is. So Hibern Inc. historical, a past corporate entity associated with instant media and CD production. So Hibern Incorporated was this idea that this guy Eric came up with, and I don’t know if it was his original idea, but he started a company to do it. Was this before Spotify, this is before streaming, this is before Apple Music, all of those things. MP3s were just barely starting to come online. We were still doing CDs back then. So this is like the late 90s, early 2000s.

So the idea was we go to the concert and we mic split the stage and we run a split between all of the mics and stuff that are leading to the main house speakers. And we were in the back and we had a Pro Tools rig with all of the audio input from the stage, and we did sound checks and things to get everything dialed in. And then we did a coup some of the we did went to the Marquee Theater a few times, we recorded the man, the format.

The our job was to record it live, do a live mix mix down as as good as we could do it, one take, no no retries. And then we got that live recording, this live bootleg, and we would burn it to CDs, and as you’re walking out the door, we’re selling you a CD of the show you just saw. It’s it was an amazing idea. So I was hired. I I got the I met the I met the the

The girlfriend, the the founder’s girlfriend was the office manager at this dentist office I went to, and she and I were talking, and I told her she somehow learned I was a nerd, and she introduced me to their team, and they needed a tech guy to come in and design these big towers. And I designed these like this four-foot-tall mobile burning unit, which had 48 CD burners run by two servers. I had the Linux like burn software built by my my brother-in-law, who’s an expert in Linux.

The girlfriend, the founder’s girlfriend was the office manager at this dentist office I went to, and she and I were talking, and I told her she somehow learned I was a nerd, and she introduced me to their team, and they needed a tech guy to come in and design these big towers. And I designed these like this four-foot-tall mobile burning unit, which had 48 CD burners run by two servers. I had the Linux like burn software built by my my my brother-in-law, who’s an expert in Linux.

I designed the hardware and had like custom laser CNC trays to like mount this thing and put it on road kit so we can move it around. It was ridiculous. We it was super fun and it was a very amazing experience. And I we went to Florida and we went to the Winter Music Festival and everyone was like just crazy about this idea, right? Clear Channel actually started doing it. They started a similar offering and they had a tour bus that followed followed around

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KISS and also it was like

Joule, I think they had two different ones they were doing, we were actually doing it on the road. And then we actually got to go see them when they were here to on the KISS tour, and we got to see their stuff because they wanted the tech that we built. They wanted this mobile burning unit, which was we were advertising as the latest and greatest innovative technology that allowed you to burn 48 CDs at once. So then that company ended up failing because it was a chaotic startup mess. But it was like so such valuable experience for me.

Joule, I think they had two different ones they were doing. We were actually doing it on the road. And then we actually got to go see them when they were here to on the KISS tour, and we got to see their stuff because they wanted the tech that we built. They wanted this mobile burning unit, which was we were advertising as the latest and greatest innovative technology that allowed you to burn 48 CDs at once. So then that company ended up failing because you know it was it was a chaotic startup mess. But it was like so such a valuable experience for me.

And so like I ended up keeping a lot, you know, we got this like $40,000 loan from an investor, and I was the only one servicing the debt on that. And I was actually generating I ended up pivoting and like burning creating CDs. So I ended up becoming like this weird like CD manufacturer. I was building demo CDs for people, and I was I started a company called Phoenix Duplication. And this was I was doing web development and disk duplication. People could hire me. And then

It was amazing. So like I

And then okay, at the time so I’m still like working to kind of hustle and make this work. And so I needed more money. So a friend of mine and a couple of my really close friends were starting a service company called Metro Home Services. And so they they said, Hey Spence, like we need help with the office stuff, dispatch, marketing, website, all the things. We’re and we’re the techs, we’re gonna be running like service calls, but we need someone to sit in the office and manage the operations. So this was a perfect gig for me because I could build I could

And then okay, at the time, so I’m still like working to kind of hustle and make this work. And so I needed more money. So a friend of mine and a couple of my really close friends were starting a service company called Metro Home Services. And so they they said, Hey Spence, like we need help with the office stuff, dispatch, marketing, website, all the things. We’re and we’re the techs, we’re gonna be running the service calls, but we need someone to sit in the office and manage the operations. So this was a perfect gig for me, because I could build I could

Build my website stuff, do my web development contracting, I could do the CD duplication using the equipment from Hibern, generating revenue. Then I had enough consistent money from them and I managed the operations. I did dispatch marketing, I did the scheduling, I tracked all the stuff, I did all the logistics. And then I also there was another electrical company that I also started taking over ownership or like management of. So I I was like managing two service companies.

3D duplicate or a CD duplication business and an online web. So I was hustling. You know, I’m 24. You know, this is when I was 24, I was hustling, making money, being my own boss, like doing my own thing. And then I became ended up becoming partners with this home service company. One of the partners had to leave because of some family issues, and he didn’t want to be in the business anymore. So I took over half ownership just because I was, you know, still I was heavily invested myself.

I and then I so it wasn’t ever a plan for me to stay in that long term. And so I

I sold my half of the business. Okay. And I sold my half of the business and I had a I exited with like 50,000 bucks. And I’m like 25. So I’m 25 years old. This is in 2005. And I have like enough money to start launching my own thing, you know? And

It was like I’m sitting on the launch pad, you know, and I’m about to take off. And sky’s the limit, you know. And so I start like I’m I’m also like kind of like not necessarily taking the best care of myself. And I’m smoking a lot of weed at the time, like a lot, like every day. And I was like drinking a lot, I was in a really s like rocky, stressful relationship. And

You know, it was it I was it was interesting as a at one point in like junior high, I think like eighth grade graduation, I was voted most likely to become the next Bill Gates. That was like in the yearbook. And then like I go establish myself as this tech guy, and like, you know, everyone’s like, You’re gonna be a Bill Gates, you’re gonna start a big company, and I’ve always had this vision, this goal for myself, right? And

You know, it was i I was it was interesting as a at one point in like junior high, I think like eighth grade graduation, I was voted most likely to become the next Bill Gates. That was like in the yearbook. And then like I go establish myself as this tech guy and like you know, everyone’s like, You’re gonna be a Bill Gates, you’re gonna start a big company. And I’ve always had this vision, this goal for myself, right? And

It’s hard hard for me to talk about. And I I don’t talk about it much, but it’s a very big part of who I am because you need to understand the trajectory of where I was when this happened to me to understand the magnitude of what I experienced.

When I was 25, I had this big chunk of cash for which is a lot 50 grand in 1990 or 2005 is decent amount of money for a 25-year-old. And I’m like making all these plans and I’m working harder and harder and I’m burning. I’m lit I’m reading, thinking grow rich, I’m setting all these plans, I have all these goals, I’m like spinning up, and I was just getting so intense, so intense that my mind couldn’t keep up anymore.

When I was twenty-five, I had this big chunk of cash for which is a lot 50 grand in 1990 or 2005 is a decent amount of money for for a 25-year-old. And I’m like making all these plans and I’m working harder and harder and I’m burning. I’m lit I’m reading, thinking grow rich. I’m setting all these plans. I have all these goals. I’m like spinning up. And I was just getting so intense, so intense that my mind couldn’t keep up anymore.

And

You know, I didn’t know this at the time, but

This is how I found out that I have, you know, what was at the time a diagnosis of bipolar disorder. yeah, it’s hard to talk about. It was very s very, very traumatizing for me. I basically spun up to a point where I was so manic that I lost touch with reality and I experienced all the classic signs of and s and and s things that could lead people to.

1:18:49

coming to the conclusion that I had it was in the in the throes of a manic episode. Delusions of grandeur, you know, psychosis, like full on. And it was a very tr rocky time for me and

Luckily, I have an amazing family that was able to catch me when when I fell really hard. And I it was a period that was very, very difficult. And I’m I’m gonna go into that more, and I I really want to explore that. But

I lost everything, you know, and I lost all the money from the startup, I lost, you know, my freedom. I actually the only way that I could get help was my family had to call the police and have me arrested.

I lost everything. You know, I I lost all the money from the startup. I lost, you know, my freedom. I actually the only way that I could get help was my family had to call the police and have me arrested.

And it was a d domestic disturbance, domestic kind of thing, and it was a tool that they were able to use to get me the care that I needed. And you know, my mom was told, because she was the one that called the police and reported it, so she was the defendant in the case, and she was told that I would be taken to desert like to the behavioral health center to to get help. So this was a strategy that she was advised to use.

And it was a dis domestic disturbance, domestic kind of thing, and it was a tool that they were able to use to get me the care that I needed. And you know, my mom was told, ’cause she was the one that called the police and reported it, so she was the defendant in the case, and she was told that I would be taken to desert like to the behavioral health center to to get help. So this was a strategy that she was advised to use.

When it got to the point where I was a literally a danger to myself and others. And that’s a hard term because it gets thrown around a lot, but like it was true. And my behavior, my my agitation, my intense desire to do all these things was just unmanageable. And I lost touch with reality. And

So I was I was arrested, taken to desert or I was taken to Buc Lower Buckeye jail. And I let me see if I can it’s probably be better just to

so I was taken to Lord Buckeye jail and booked. I didn’t understand why. I didn’t I didn’t understand what was happening to me. And I was put into the horseshoe for processing. I was put in the stripes, the pink boxers and the and the and I was handcuffed and I was ankle cuffed, and they he put a chain

There was a chain connecting them.

And they put a leather strap around my waist. And th I I felt like it was a movie, like what is happening to me?

I didn’t understand why I was there. The world didn’t make sense to me.

And I don’t know how to describe what that feels like when

The world that you think you know is being challenged by everyone. And now you’ve you’re you’re in handcuffs. And it was the only thing my family could do to get me the help that I needed. And I was twenty-five, there was nothing else. You can’t just make someone go in if they don’t want to go in.

So I was in the jail for about three weeks. I was eventually put into the psych ward and they started me on medication. and it was the beginning of my treatment. So my introduction to the psychiatric mental health system was done via incarceration.

It wasn’t a gentle, I think I you sh I should go, you know, see someone and talk about things. It was, you have to do this, and you have no choice. And we’re taking your freedoms away. And you’re all of those dreams that you had are gone.

And this leading up to this, the leading up to this traumatic kind of entry into the psychiatric, you know, mental health world was you’re almost gonna lose your life and you’re gonna go on this like.

psychotic adventure and give away all your money and possessions and think that you’re a god and be delusional. And then you’re gonna be such a danger to yourself and everyone around you that you’re the police are gonna be t called so that you can be taken somewhere.

to be safe, you know, that and then

To be safe, you know, that and then

It’s gonna take a while for you to understand how that what that means.

And eventually I was r I I was processed through and and the being processed through the psych facility in Lower Buckeye Jail is not a fun thing. I was by myself in a cell twenty-three hours out of the day. I had one hour where I could get out and walk around and take a shower, then I was back in the cell and I had one magazine that I read over and over and over again. And my family couldn’t come see me because they were the defendants in the case.

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So the my mother who was just terrified for my own health and safety and is the reason why I needed to get help, couldn’t even come and visit me.

Some the my mother who was just terrified for my own health and safety and is the reason why I needed to get help, couldn’t even come and visit me.

My friends did. I had some friends come in, and there was a TV and I could see them, and I’m I don’t understand the world. And I didn’t understand why I was there. I have this vision, this grandiose world that I’m creating. I’m gonna be the Bill Gates. Why is everyone telling me that I’m crazy? And they’re not saying it, but they’re saying it.

My friends did. I had some friends come in and there was a TV and I could see them and I’m I don’t understand the world. And I didn’t understand why I was there. I have this vision, this grandiose world that I’m creating. I’m gonna be the Bill Gates. Why is everyone telling me that I’m crazy? And they’re not saying it, but they’re saying it.

Eventually the judge ordered me to be transferred to Desert Vista Behavioral Health Center, which is kind of funny because this Desert Vista is the high school I went to. And we always used to joke around about how there’s also a mental hospital named Desert Vista. I got to stay there. And and it was an interesting place. And this is where I s began my journey. And when I first read, well, I didn’t really officially hear the diagnosis, but I of course I’m still Spencer and my mind’s starting to

you know, to be I still am the who I was. And I of course I’m like, give me the literature on all the medications you’re injecting me with. So I was getting injected with Haldol, which is a very powerful, you know, medication used f for rapid treatment of psychosis and mental health. And then I was medicated with geodon, which is an antipsychotic. And then I was put on depico, which is a mood stabilizer. It’s also used as an antiepileptic. And of course I’m like, give me the literature. Print it out for me, please.

And on the paper is where I r first read the words bipolar, schizophrenia.

And these were words that

were now being used to describe my mind. And it was like and then the doc i I’m being evaluated, my blood’s being drawn, they’re dialing in my levels to make sure this this these medications are not damaging my liver. The the the the this the cr the the rubric of evaluation to get me to the place where I they were

were now being used to describe my mind. And it was like, and then the doc the I’m being evaluated, my blood’s being drawn, they’re dialing in my levels to make sure this this these medications are not damaging my liver. The the the the this the cr the the rubric of evaluation to get me to the place where I they were

feeling comfortable with me leaving was

Feeling comfortable with me leaving was

conversational observations of my behavior, my understanding of concepts and self, and a cocktail of medication that they honestly don’t really understand how it works. But it does kind of, I guess, work for, you know, it worked for what they think it does, but the the mechanisms underneath are still. The diagnostics DSM4.

diagnostics and statistics manual for diagnosing mental health conditions.

Diagnostics and Statistics Manual for Diagnosing Mental Health Conditions

is a recommendation on rubric for judging behaviors of individuals. And it’s up to the experts in the psychiatry industry to use that observation in combination with medication to help you manage someone’s mental state. And I got to experience that. Was in the Desert Vista Behavioral Health Center for three weeks. My family was able to come see me.

Is a recommendation on rubric for judging behaviors of individuals. And it’s up to the experts in the psychiatry industry to use that observation in combination with medication to help you manage someone’s mental state. And I got to experience that. Was in the Desert Vista Behavioral Health Center for three weeks. My family was able to come see me,

And they made me a photo book.

and they made me a photo book.

with like pictures and letters and telling me how much they love me and

I was starting to finally understand that, you know, the world that I knew

was starting to finally understand that, you know, the world that I knew

needed to be I don’t know, I guess I I guess I needed to reattach to the world from a consciousness connection to reality perspective and

Medication started working. I felt like a zombie. I felt like I was moving through jelly. I felt like the entire I felt like I was wearing a a a a a a big suit of cement helping making it very difficult to move through the world. And I’ve this I felt like I can’t even describe it. Like my consciousness was trying to reattach to my body.

And over time

I became more grounded in who I was and the delusions of grandeur, the psychosis symptoms started to abate. And like check on my AI army.

And I was released into the care of my mother. And I was also fate, I also went while I was at Deservista, they have they actually so the beautiful thing about Deser Vista is they have an attached court with a judge so that crazy people can go through their court system and not have to travel any. It’s very convenient. So I went through and I did a public defender assigned to me. She was very kind. And I remember the staff at the facility.

And was released into the care of my mother. And I was also fate. I also went while I was at Deservista, they have they actually so the beautiful thing about Deser Vista is they have an attached court with a judge so the crazy people can go through their court system and not have to travel any it’s very convenient. So I went through and I did I had a public defender assigned to me, she was very kind. And I remember the staff at the facility.

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you know, were very kind. And I was, you know, I I made I got to meet a just a a lot of people in very hard times. Like they a psychiatric facility like this is like a revolving door of people going through some of the worst things of their life. And like I had I remember I had a guy that was in there for a mandatory seventy-two-hour hold because he was suicidal. And

I got to talk to a lot of these people and as like, you know, as my mania like mania is an interesting thing because it’s it amplifies areas of your personality. It also kind of creates these delusions and it’s like you’re still you, but you’re in this weird amplified state, and it’s not something that’s easy to explain. Some people I have a friend that was also bipolar and he wanted to be in mania because it actually made him super productive. And there’s this borderline edge where it can be.

I got to talk to a lot these people and as like, you know, as my mania like mania is an interesting thing because it’s it amplifies areas of your personality. It also kind of creates these delusions and it’s like you’re still you, but you’re in this weird amplified state, and it’s not something that’s easy to explain. Some people I have a friend that was also bipolar and he wanted to be in mania because it actually made him super productive. And there’s this borderline edge where it can be.

but it’s also like you gotta be really careful. So the way I kind of explain it after years and years of being involved with this thing is that I have a deep capacity for feeling. And it goes in both directions. So in I can feel intense sadness and depths of depression that are hard to describe. And simultaneously, not at the same time, but like I’m talking about full range here.

There are times where I get so excited and so full of energy and purpose that it is pushing on this borderline, this red line. So it’s a Ferrari of red line. And if I stay in that Ferrari of red line too long, it gets the everything blows up, and that’s what happened. And I didn’t know it at the time. But also, what I didn’t know was I have genetic markers for cannabis.

induced psychosis. And this is something that the let me see if I can get one-handed. So cannabis induced psychosis is real thing. Cannabis induced psychosis is a temporary mental health condition where heavy marijuana use or THC triggers a loss of touch with reality. And I believe this is what I experienced. But I didn’t know it at the time until many, many years later when I had my I had my DNA done on the, you know,

23andMe. And then I was listening to a podcast by Dr. Rhonda Patrick. She was on Joe Rogan. She has a company called Found My Fitness. anyway. They do genetic, they do additional genetic marker I d I testing and and really cool stuff. So I exported all of my 23andMe data, my whole crona my whole genome, you know, so so I can then clone myself and the 23andMe people can clone me, but whatever. Like I

took that and I uploaded it to the site and the report indicated that I had several, not just one, I had multiple genetic markers that increased my risk of cannabis-induced psychosis. And I believe this is a contributor. I think it was a my my uncle is a pharmacist and he talks about constellation of factors. So there’s never just one thing typically that causes something to happen. There’s a constellation of things.

This is what I I experienced. And it was hard to describe the fear that I’ve been living with, which is that this could happen again.

This is what I I experienced and it was hard to describe the fear that I’ve been living with, which is that this could happen again.

This idea that I can get so excited about something and be so into it that it could cause me to lose touch with reality again. And it’s something that I’ve worked very hard to understand. And the only way I can really describe it is I’ve got a Brazil I’ve got a black belt in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, but I have spent twice that amount of time.

And at least twice that amount of effort and energy and understanding my own mind. So I would I would I would c go be going back to the whole Dun and Krueger part of you know, you don’t know what you don’t know thing, is like I don’t I am have reached that level of comfortable confidence in my own sense of mental health. I’ve been under I was under treatment for ten years. You know, at least ten years. I so I was I I was I didn’t have insurance, so I qualified for

And at least twice that amount of effort and energy in understanding my own mind. So I would I would I would c go be going back to the whole Dun and Krueger part of, you know, you don’t know what you don’t know thing, is like I don’t I am have reached that level of comfortable confidence in my own sense of mental health. I’ve been under I was under treatment for ten years. You know, at least ten years. I so I was I I was I didn’t have insurance, so I qualified for

Qualified for access and I got state insurance. And then also I was classified by the state of Arizona as severely mentally ill, which is the highest level of disability classification you can get for mental health.

Qualified for access and I got state insurance and then also I was classified by the state of Arizona as severely mentally ill, which is the highest level of disability classification you can get for mental health.

But this unlocked actually a ser a set of a whole bunch of different services that I was able to qualify for. And some of those were root voc what was something called vocational rehabilitation. So vocational rehabilitation is a government an air state of Arizona program to help people experiencing difficult times through V because of disabilities to like access funds to help them.

But this unlocked actually a set of a whole bunch of different services that I was able to qualify for. And some of those were voc what was something called vocational rehabilitation. So vocational rehabilitation is a government, an air state of Arizona program to help people experiencing difficult times through because of disabilities to like access funds to help them.

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you know, with education and things to help them get a job. So I got out of the I got released from Desert Vista and I was living with my family and all of my s possessions and things, like my apartment had to be think my family had to go get everything and put it in boxes and like they were they rallied around me and I’m very lucky. I would be dead if they weren’t weren’t around. I would have I w I don’t think I would have survived this. And I’m very fortunate and I feel very blessed that I have such a amazing family that was able to see me through this time.

but my mom always said and she was she’s always been through this with me to to help me get through this, but she told me one day and she said, Spencer, you have to pull yourself up by your bootstraps and you have to be the one that helps you get through this. And that’s it’s this ki it’s this strange kind of like tough love, but it’s it was always from a place of pure love from her and and it was something I needed and

It my mind and my desire to build and become a great creator and and unlike build something of great value never went away.

But just like my my dream of being a black belt when I was twelve had to be put on hold. My dreams of building billion dollar companies and being the next Bill Gates, even though I don’t like Bill Gates that much now, had to be put on hold. And I lost everything and I it was a big hit to my ego. It was a big hit to my sense of self. I was living I was sleeping on a cot in my dad’s apartment.

Twenty-five. I turned I was I was in the jail and when I was twenty-five and I I turned twenty-six at the end of the year and I had nothing. I had lost the fifty grand that I had made from that company that I sold and I had no I still had my f you know, I my family has always been there and but it’s like all of the things that I had built my identity around were gone. And it it’s like if you’re especially I think for men, like we have to build things and we have to have this

Twenty-five. I turned tw I was I was in the jail and when I was twenty-five and I I turned twenty-six at the end of the year and I had nothing. I had lost the fifty grand that I had made from that company that I sold and I had no I still had my f you know, I my family has always been there and but it’s like all of the things that I had built my identity around were gone. And it it’s like if you’re especially I think for men, like we have to build things and we have to have this

sense of purpose to feel useful and we have build a value around how useful and things we can provide for others and it had shattered completely. When I was in the hospital, I wasn’t eating much because of mania and reduced, you know, reduced appetite and not sleeping, all these things are are part of mania. So I had dropped weight down to 160 pounds. I was I had long hair. It was a picture of me in the ho like when they transferred me to the hospital.

that I still have. And in the first year being put on medication, side effects of the medications increased appetite and weight gain. So I went from 160 pounds up to 240 pounds and it was it was weight that was not healthy weight and I was eating junk food and and I wasn’t really focused on really feeling good. I wasn’t focused on healing my body. I was focused on just surviving.

I was I was at the bare minimum threshold of coming out of a s of significant crisis.

I remember

sitting and journaling and trying to make sense of the world and

I just I knew, you know, I didn’t want to be this thing that this bipolar thing. Columbine had just happened, the world was talking about it. Everyone was saying, you know, they’re bipolar and people are throwing that term around. And now it’s been squarely placed on my shoulders as a label. And I wrote down in my journal, I said,

I will not make this diagnosis in my identity.

I will not make this diagnosis my identity

I will not make this diagnosis my identity.

And I will not let it define who I am and I will pull myself up by my bootstraps and I was fortunate enough to have a family there to support me and help me get through it and I started to soldier forward.

You know, I got a I I went started going to school. I got a job or I got into school. I got qualified through the behavioral health system. The I went through a couple of different programs. I went through a mental health jail diversions program, which was something my public defender was able to help me with because it was my case was not criminal. My case was the judge in the in the court system understood that my case was a tool to get me the help that I needed. And it was not

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a criminal case. It was not it was not that. And so they they had a program f called mental health jail diversion. And I had to go, I had very strict rules. I had to go I had to get urine analysis. I had to not be on drugs. I had to I had to attend group meetings a lot. I did a lot of group meetings. And I remember one of them I was there at Value Options, which is you know behavioral health provider for the state of Arizona and

My dad was sitting there with me and there was a guy giving a presentation, speaking to the group. And this group I’m sitting there looking around and it’s people, you know, a lot of homeless people, a lot of you know, a lot of people that are having a hard time managing their mental health and it’s causing them significant problems in their life. And some of them were living on the streets and I actually did live on the streets for I slept behind a dumpster. I did there there was points that depths of what I experienced are

Hard to talk about. But I’m sitting there after the hospital, and I’m sitting there next to my dad, and my dad says, he he kind of leans over to me and he says, Spencer, that guy up there, he’s he’s mentally ill too. He’s high functioning. He’s like, you can be high functioning too. And this was the first time I heard this term, high functioning, applied to mental health. And high functioning means that you have mental health issues, but you’re

Able to maintain a job. You’re able to just be able to function in the world. That’s the bar I was looking at. The bar I was looking up to, trying to become, was being functional enough to maintain my own life. And

You know that I didn’t realize it at the time, but that was a very powerful thing for my dad to say.

You know, I was I was just sitting there in my own depths of despair at that point. But looking back on it, you know, I’ve worked really, really hard over the last twenty years. You know, it’s been twenty years now. You know, it’s two thousand twenty it’s twenty twenty six, so that was twenty years ago. I’ve spent a ridiculous amount of time and energy trying to understand my own mental health and be I I have become

What to everyone around me and everyone that knows me, I am probably the most high-functioning mental health person they’ve ever met, and they probably don’t even know that I am mental health or mentally ill. And it was never something like I never wanted it to be a factor in my life. I was a joc I was something that I learned and pro and then heard on Jocko and was like, yeah, no issue, non-issue for me. That’s what I decided then. I decided that.

I will not make this diagnosis a d my identity. You know, I won’t let it be something I use as a tool to not do the best thing I can do. And so I got it I went through air conditioning school, it was 240 pounds, I was really unhealthy, and you know, I finished school, I did well, it was what I needed at the time.

I will not make this diagnosis a da my identity. You know, I won’t let it be something I use as a tool to not do the best thing I can do. And so I got it, I went through air conditioning school, it was 240 pounds, I was really unhealthy, and you know, I finished school, I did well, it was what I needed at the time.

I needed something to work towards. And my mom would give me rides to the school. I was down by the airport. And a lot of the times it was like fast food and I was just smoking a lot of cigarettes. I was I started smoking cigarettes when I was like fourteen. And I’ve always had like a I’ve always I’m still I’m wearing a nicotine patch right now. I’ve had a relationship with nicotine since I was a kid and I was just smoking a lot of cigarettes and I remember I remember one day I was just I was having a hard day and I I was just it was in my dad’s condo and I was

Sleeping in this little I was I didn’t even have a bedroom. I was sleeping, you know, on the landing where he had some space he could put a mattress and I was just I was just feeling everything and it was like I was breaking apart and my dad was like, What do need right now? And I was like, I he’s What do you need? What what can I do? What can I you know? He was he was did his best, you know, and and I he’s like, Do you need cigarettes? What what can I do to help you in this moment? And like, I was like, Yeah, can I

Can you buy me a pack of cigarettes ’cause I was like falling apart.

Can you buy me a pack of cigarettes? ’Cause I was like falling apart.

Spent a lot time reading books. when I was going to school, I got a job.

Got a job.

at a hotel doing engineering and that was an interesting job. I was w I was the guy that, you know, would unplug the toilet, you know, and I was maintaining all the rooms and making sure they were, you know, mechanically at sound and I ha I spent a lot of time my by myself and

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I I read a lot of books. It was it and I had an all-access pass to the hotel. It was tw it was the Crown Plaza down on Washington, big like 12-story hotel. And I fixed the air conditioners and I helped the engineering manager like, you know, rewire stuff. And then I graduated school and I got a job doing air conditioning. And I I I was finally like I got a I was I ended up moving into my sister Ashley’s house.

I I read a lot of books. It was it and I had an all access pass to the hotel. It was a tw it was a Crown Plaza down on Washington, big like twelve story hotel. And I fixed the air conditioners and I helped the engineering manager like, you know, rewire stuff and and I graduated school and I got a job doing air conditioning. And I I I was finally like I got a tr I was I ended up moving into my sister Ashley’s house.

I was renting a room and I was starting a I got a job again. I got a job doing air conditioning. I had my own truck. I was a air conditioning technician. I wasn’t very good at it. I’m really mechanically o oriented, but the an air H T V A C in Arizona, I got a hands off. He hats off to you guys. It’s such a hard job. 180 degrees in the attics, you know. And

But I do hold an H V A C universal certification. I could do an AC if I wanted to. I know how to rewire a house. I’m very mechanically op I love mechanical things, just as much as I love electrical things. And I’m fascinated by stuff. And this gave my mind something to chew on while I was really trying to just come back to reality. And I w I made it through the mental health jail diversions. It was like a whole year of group classes and sitting in these like d really s

dark environments and I was going to get my blood labs done every month and then every three months and then every six months and I remember, you know, I have my sense of humor’s coming back, but I’m also just like feeling like I’m a sludge opera feeling and like it was impossible to f to get comfortable in bed at night. I I would lay there and I it’s hard to describe it, but it did it just felt like my consciousness was r trying to reattach to my body. And

The court case was dismissed, my record was expunged, and now I’m 26 and I’m putting my life back together. And I only lasted I only lasted about a year doing AC. And then I finally was like, you know what, I want to get back into building websites and tech. And I also, you know, my nickname at the air conditioning company was Fire Fire Department.

the

the my boss and all the guys affectionately called me fire department because I made some dumb mistakes and I caused like one motor to smoke in someone’s attic once and the fire department came and that was my n nickname. I I just didn’t I wasn’t invested in that career and I I didn’t do my best there, but I it was a it was a necessary step to get me towards moving forward again. It was a part of that whole like pull yourself up by your bootstraps thing that my mom was telling me and

my boss and all the guys affectionately called me fire department because I made some dumb mistakes and I caused like one motor to smoke in someone’s attic once and the fire department came and that was my n nickname. I I just didn’t I wasn’t invested in that career and I I didn’t do my best there, but I it was a it was a necessary step to get me towards moving forward again. It was a part of that whole like pull yourself up by your bootstraps thing that my mom was telling me. And

I also started no it’s nice I started doing started doing web development and it’s I was literally running ads on Craigslist, five hundred bucks, set you up a WordPress site, and I grew that from there into a company called Really Fast Websites where I really I help people build e-commerce. I had a big I I ended up making a name for myself for being reliable in an industry where the story was I had a web guy, but now he just disappeared. And I I realized that like

I also started no it’s nice. I started doing started doing web development and it’s I was literally running ads on Craigslist, five hundred bucks, set you up a WordPress site, and I grew that from there into a company called Really Fast Websites where I really I help people build e-commerce. I had a big I I ended up making a name for myself for being reliable in an industry where the story was I had a web guy, but now he just disappeared. And I I realized that like

If I was just consistent and available I would do well and that happened and so and eventually I started to network more and I ended up doing white label work for two or three different, you know, marketing agencies and I was I was the guy that built their website. So they would sell a marketing package and I would build their websites. And then 2009 happens, economy slows down. And

economy slows down and I needed work. I was I star I met a girl. She actually was a friend of our family’s. We knew her through church. And her mom reached out to me on Facebook and she’s like, My daughter needs a website. And we met up for coffee, and then I asked her out, and we I never ended up building her a website. Which is kind of a joke that we had. but she had a daughter.

I was five years old and and we kind of just like became this family and I felt this intense sense of purpose and we you know moved in together and my identity started to become this, you know, I was broken once, but now I’m back and I’m building things and I’m now a father to a child that I wasn’t really mine, but it was she was, you know.

My daughter that I could raise, and I kinda built this identity around being the sav’jur.

my daughter that I could raise and I I kind of built this identity around being the saviour.

And we were together for fourteen years and we were married seven, or still married technically.

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A lot happened during that time. But I got a job at a software company and that’s when, you know, loop back to the beginning of the story here.

I was starting to get my life back together. I starting to build a career and really trying to work and I s you know, I had, you know, been rebuilding and managing my mental health and taking the depict and doing the doctor’s appointments and

becoming a high producer again and like but I what I ha I didn’t really realize was that this like mantra of you know I will not make this my identity ended up becoming an identity of its own.

becoming high producer again and like but I what I ha I didn’t really realize was that this like mantra of you know I will not make this my identity ended up becoming an identity of its own.

And I was still very broken and like r dealing with that traumatic experience and also dealing with that sense of failure and also living with this intense amount of fear. Fear that it could happen again. You know, fear that fear that if I didn’t, you know, take the meds and if I didn’t like t you know, watch the stress and get to sleep that it would happen again. And I think living in that state of fear and and then also not addressing

The trauma that I had endured, it led me to, you know, s kind of like forming an identity that made me prioritize the wrong things. And I feel like the things that made me successful were a byproduct of me trying to prove to the world that I wasn’t broken. And I’ve gone through in the last like five years or so, I’ve been going through a very

transformational analysis of my entire life and really trying to take the time to understand who I was during all of these like my friend Eric would say these these story arcs that describe Spencer. And part of that journey was actually using AI to like create a memoir of my life. And my girlfriend

talks about she has this podcast that she loves and it’s it’s the Nine Lives podcast by Cassia. And Nine Lives

Podcast. It’s a pretty good podcast, Cassia Tierney. She suffers from she also deals with mental health and she’s you know this is her healing journey and her story. And the her nine lives are like these nine versions of her that

It’s a pretty good podcast. Cassia Tierney, she suffers from she also deals with mental health. And she’s, you know, this is her healing journey and her story. And that her nine lives are like these nine versions of her that

really helped her understand who she was so she could forgive, forgive herself. And so, like, this is a podcast that I would listen to with Haley, and you know, and then I went to Peru. I w I have some friends that run a company called Becoming Ome.

Becoming Ohm. And these Becoming Ohm is a company that my friends, David and Cordy, they facilitate healing through psychedelic work. And so I joined their mindful microdosing program. And then I went through that, and then that’s mindful microdosing is this idea that you use psilocybin.

magic mushrooms in a very small amount to microdose to help like

your brain increases neuroplasticity and you end up working through trauma that is hard to unlock. I definitely rec if you’re dealing with you know some difficult things, these guys are really good. W they have nice groups and it’s very c it’s a very structured container for doing therapeutic work with psychedelics in a can in a very structured fashion. So like

I don’t know if I necessarily need to get into my experience with psychedelics, but I have a very

I have a very extensive experience in and with psychedelics. but as part of this my when I you know, I separated from my wife, I was going through a lot of grief. I was dealing with a lot of grief.

grieving the relationship ending. grieving people that I had lost. I lost a I’ve lost a lot of people in my life. I’ve been supporting people going through grief. I experienced some very difficult things raising my stepdaughter. Then I’m not gonna go into the details, it’s not necessarily my story to tell, but

I feel like my mission in this life right now has been to show up for others because I’ve been able to get through some extremely difficult things myself. And I’m uniquely qualified for this. but it’s not because I chose this. You know, it’s

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it’s because like

It’s because like

I I do feel like there was this conversation that happened before I was born. And I’ve always imagined, you know, this conversation happening and God was like Spencer

I’m gonna I’m gonna give you many gifts and I’m gonna send you to a loving home, but I’m gonna challenge you hard.

And my challenge to you is to endure the hard things and learn from it to help others. And I feel like that’s been the mantra of my life. The mantra of my life has been

Learn something, master it, and turn it around and teach it to others. And I’ve done this when I was a kid, and I’ve done this when I was in c junior high, and I have this site that I like or been using called well, I’ve a a project called Auchi Origami. And Auchi origami is my Instagram name and it’s the my name for my jujitsu stuff, and it’s a pl it’s a joke on the

Learn something, master it, turn it around and teach it to others. And I’ve done this when I was a kid, and I’ve done this when I was in c junior high, and I have this site that I like or been using called well, I have a a project called Auchi Origami. And Auchi origami is my Instagram name and it’s the my name for my jujitsu stuff and it’s a pl it’s a joke on the

J the the Japanese terms applied to jujitsu that are kinda come down from the judo lineage. And like there’s one called Ashigorami, which is like I even know what it is. We’ll see if we can maybe Google it. Ashigurami.

Ashigorami BJJ is a single-leg entanglement position. And like John Donaher talks about this a lot. You know, it’s like John Donaher only uses the jujitsu terms and stuff. Anyway, Ashigorami, and then I was like, it’s kind of like Auchi Origami. And then that I love auch I origami, so the origami name’s stuck. So Auchi origami is a project that I’m putting together that let

Ashigorami BJJ is a single-leg t entanglement position. And like John Donaher talks about this a lot. You know, it’s like John Donaher only uses the jujitsu terms and stuff. Anyway, Ashigorami, and then I was like, it’s kind of like Auchi origami. And then that I love auch I love origami, so the origami name’s stuck. So Auchi origami is a project that I’m putting together that

me see if I can find it.

Let me see if I can find it.

It’s a

So Auchi origami is my f a a framework of concepts.

That I have been working on putting together that help me understand and map my own mind. And it’s a it’s a framework and a system for journaling, because I do a lot of journaling. And it’s like a self-it’s basically like a framework for like picking the thing you should think about. Like I use it.

in my own journaling and it has different categories and it just basically asks you to cho tell like where are you on the scale of different things. And let me see if I have the actual thing here. So like I I made this diagram and you know I’m a systems-based thinker, I like to think things through, and I’m like this is a thing that I’ve used to like kind of like pick pick where I should focus my thoughts. And like I I again I know you’re probably like

Spencer delusions of grandeur, you know, hey, get the like bored out and everything. But like this is a roadmap that I’ve used to like diagnose my own mind based upon like the 20 years of psych psychiatric can care that I’ve gone through, but also this significant amount of of you know counseling and therapy and traditional talk therapy, cognitive behavioral therapy, all these things. And like

what I’ve learned over the years is that we typically can align, we find like at there’s this idea, well, I didn’t come up with this idea, but there’s this thing called the Greek or Roman, what is it, the Greek the four pillars of happiness. Okay. And I I don’t remember where I first heard of hear about this. It might be Ryan Holliday. Five pillars of happiness.

It’s it’s like old Greek philosophy. Four pillars of happiness. So four pillars of happiness, popularized by Harvard professor. I’ve never heard of this guy, but it’s a retelling of an old s thing, which is basically that in life, there’s typically three areas where we have to focus our energy. And one of them is so they break down into three things: health, wealth, and love. And it’s kind of funny because like

It’s it’s a old Greek philosophy. Four pillars of happiness. So four pillars of happiness, popularized by Harvard professor. I’ve never heard of this guy, but it’s a retelling of an old s thing, which is basically that in life, there’s typically three areas where we have to focus our energy. And one of them is so they break down into three things: health, wealth, and love. And it’s kind of funny because like

Mm all marketing campaigns are about identifying pain in one of these three categories or a combination of both. So like typically you know we have we have when we have to work to align them. So like let’s say just as for example, like on this scale that I’ve created, you have health. So if you if you’re here and you’re right in the middle, you’re you’re just baseline, no critical, no issues, whatever. And you move to the left, you end up with illness.

2:00:38

And then if you keep going over to the left, you’re in crisis. This is where I was, you know. This is where I was when I was in the mental health hospital. It’s like as far to the left as you could possibly be on the health line, you know. Wealth also. Yeah, I gave away all my positions, I lost everything. So I’m in this like l if you’re thinking about the kind of like Eisenhower and he had his like Eisenhower matrix, you can think about this as the Auchi origami Spencer matrix.

Like you’ve entered my matrix here. And this is not probably I think to yourself, is he back? Is he back in the mania? Not no, I feel very calm. I’ve been, you know, very excited, but anyway, with with a serious significant amount of confidence and comfort of confidence in my own s mental health, I have reached the cognitive dissonance, you know, clearing phase of the Dun and Krueger thing. Anyway.

So, health-wise, if you’re in the left side, this is an area you probably want to focus on. Because if you’re in crisis, you can’t focus on your career. You can’t focus on your self-love or your relationships with other people. Like if you are here in the Eisenhower-Spencer alignment matrix, all you can do is get yourself healthy enough to function. This is this is this crisis part is me sitting next to my dad when he was saying,

you could someday be high functional. You know, you could also be high functional. So like, you know, I c clawed my way back to just being having an illness to managing my mental health and le putting it right in the middle here. And then now I’m I’m I’ve been moving and focusing on this relationship to this strong body, strong mind concept, which is the stronger your body, the stronger your mind. And this is something I learned by listening to the Rogan podcast. He had a he had a

A guest on, I forget his name. He was Polish. And he I’ll find him right now because he said so a really good quote, which is, you know, hard choices, easy life. Hard choices. And I’m probably gonna need to edit this. Hard choice hard choices, this is okay. gre j yeah, Jersey Gregorick. I heard him on pod on Rogan, then I went and bought his book.

Guest on, I forget his name. He was Polish. And he I’ll find him right now because he said so a really good quote, which is you know, hard choices, easy life. Hard choices. And I’m probably gonna need to edit this. Hard choice hard choices, this is okay. gre j yeah, Jersey Gregorick. I heard him on pod on Rogan, then I went and bought his book.

Jersey Gregoric says, hard choices, easy life. You know, easy choices, hard life. Okay? And so one of the things that I’ve learned, you know, over the years in this health category is that you have to make hard choices and so that you can prioritize your fitness and health so that you don’t go into crisis mode. This is what I’ve learned through receipts that I can demonstrate. Is the healthier I am, the stronger my mind is.

The healthier that my body is, the better my mind works. And then you move along the right side of the axis. So right in the here is is a center. So my I’ve got a baseline level of health. And then now, you know, I can I can focus on physical fitness. And then what I call it like the ultimate touching layer on the right side is radiance. And we don’t stay here very much.

Fitness is where you’re most of the time if you’re healthy, you’re working out, but you’re gonna hit these moments where you feel this radiance that you have to you unlock because you’re like in your peak flow state, you’re running your high rocks race, you’re in your you’re in the jujitsu tournament. This is where you touch radiance, but you don’t really live here. You you kind of like go to fitness and you come back and you sit on radiance, right? So now health-wise, when you’re in this at least baseline mode, you can unlock the next category, which is

The other two really open up once you’re at least level baseline level of healthiness. Because if you are in crisis mode and you’re suffering a healthy crazy amount of illness, you may not even be able to work. Like I couldn’t even work. Like I was taken out of the workforce. There’s n like work was not an option. I had to get my I had to get this medication and things back in order to even begin to unlock the next two sti stages. Like health and wealth were the next thing. So like or well health unlocked my ability to get a job again.

The other two really open up once you’re at least a level baseline level of healthiness. Because if you are in crisis mode and you’re suffering a healthy crazy amount of illness, you may not even be able to work. Like I couldn’t even work. Like I was taken out of the workforce. There’s n like work was not an option. I had to get my I had to get this medication and things back in order to even begin to unlock the next two stick stages. Like health and wealth were the next thing. So like or well health unlocked my ability to get a job again.

And then it also helped me start to build up confidence and love for myself again. Like I didn’t love myself. Like this Spencer sitting next to his dad thinking about how maybe someday he can be high functioning enough to actually produce like just be f a functional human. I didn’t love myself there. And it’s been hard because I’ve worked really hard to like ga regain a baseline level of health. I was two hundred and forty pounds. You know, I was not healthy. I was just smoking cigarettes and barely and I finally was able to start

Getting to a place where I was still probably here, you know? And then I was able to unlock a little bit of function towards building up a normal job and just being able to support myself as a human, as a 26-year-old. And then this these next two categories are really tough. So the the go the idea behind this is not you’re always in one spot. You’re constantly judging how do I feel in all of these three categories. Okay, am I at least healthy enough that I can focus on my work?

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Am I at least healthy enough that I can focus on my relationships and my self-love, the relationship I have to myself? If the answer is no, then I gotta focus on getting out of crisis and illness and just baseline health. Then I can actually unlock the next level of fitness, stronger mind, strong body, strong mind. And I started to build this connection between these. And then I can touch on radiance and feel that wow, this connection. This what I learned was,

and being heavily medicated, I realized that my consciousness, my experience, my

And being heavily medicated, I realized that my consciousness, my experience, my

my reality that I’m experiencing right now was becoming was coming through a filter which was my own body. And f and Napoleon Hill talks about this. Like he talks about where is it? So Napoleon Hill talks about us experiencing this reality and the dominating thoughts of our mind eventually represent themselves in outward physical action and create the

My reality that I’m experiencing right now was becoming was coming through a filter which was my own body. And and Napoleon Hill talks about this. Like he talks about where is it? So Napoleon Hill talks about us experiencing this reality and the dominating thoughts of our mind eventually represent themselves in outward physical action and create the

reality we experience. So I was living in the depths of

and then coming through a very heavily medicated phase of just being able to experience reality again. Like the it’s I I I don’t know how to describe that to someone. Like and I feel like a lot of people are sitting in this right now and I it breaks my heart. And I’ve I’ve seen videos of people that have been on SSRIs since they were kids and they can’t come off of them.

And they they’re experiencing this reality through a body that’s being shaped by chemicals. And

how do you explain that? How do you walk them through this? Okay, the the body that you’re experiencing is literally helping your consciousness experience the reality you’re sitting in right now. And the stronger this body is, the healthier it is, the purer the reception of the divine experience you’re gonna see. So, like these are strong concepts.

How do you explain that? How do you walk them through this? Okay, the the body that you’re experiencing is literally helping your consciousness experience the reality you’re sitting in right now. And the stronger this body is, the healthier it is, the purer the reception of the divine experience you’re gonna see. So, like, these are strong concepts.

And this is a simplification of a lot of these books that I’ve read. And it’s a it’s like my own, like, imagine that Alex Hermosy.

system of marketing. This is the Spencer Thornock system of understanding and diagnosing yourself from a met from a whole perspective, everything. Health, wealth, and love. And I didn’t make that up. That’s coming from old Greek and Roman philosophy. That’s the pillars of happiness. But what I’m what I’m proposing here is the idea that.

when you have a baseline level of health, wealth and self-love and you’re moving towards the right side, which is the love category, the way this works is

When you have a baseline level of health, wealth, and self-love, and you’re moving towards the right side, which is the love category, the way this works is

this whole axis is split across two ranges of emotion: fear and love. And love is the top right, ultimate place we can be. This is love is the ultimate expression of our divine purpose. The fear side is hell on earth.

This whole axis is split across two ranges of emotion: fear and love. And love is the top right ultimate place we can be. This is love is the ultimate expression of our divine purpose. The fear side is hell on earth.

The fear side is us experiencing a reality that is so painful to live in.

that all we’re experiencing a level of hopelessness that is it’s feels like it’s un unbearable to escape. And I’m I’m making the case that with enough work and perseverance and applying some of the principles from thinking grow rich and all these different things is you can come up with your own system for alignment.

That all we’re ex experiencing a level of hopelessness that is is feels like it’s un unbearable to escape. And I’m I’m making the case that with enough work and perseverance and applying some of the principles from think and grow rich and all these different things is you can come up with your own system for alignment.

Alignment is an understanding that I have to work on health, wealth, and self-love.

in order to always be in alignment with this. When you can do that, it unlocks a new phase, a new ability. It unlocks purpose. And purpose only comes when you have alignment between for the work you’re doing in those three categories. So like

In order to always be in alignment with this. When you can do that, it unlocks a new phase, a new ability. It unlocks purpose. And purpose only comes when you have alignment between for the work you’re doing in those three categories. So like

if this the way that this works is like you only have so much energy to give. And I there’s a really good book called

If this the way that this works is like you only have so much energy to give. And I there’s a really good book called

What’s it called?

It is Willpower. Yeah. There’s a book called Willpower. I recommend checking it out.

It is willpower. Yeah. There’s a book called Willpower. I recommend checking it out.

Book. Willpower book. Yeah. no, I don’t think that’s the one. Anyway, I’ll have to find it. I’m sorry. But the idea is we have the willpower is a is a muscle and we only have so much of it right now. So like at any given moment, you only have so much energy you can give. And so if you give all of your energy to your job, like all you care about is your work, like that’s all you care about, the other areas will suffer.

Willpower book. Yeah. no, I don’t think that’s the one. Anyway, I’ll have to find it. I’m sorry. But the idea is we ha the willpower is is a muscle and we only have so much of it right now. So like at any given moment, you only have so much energy you can give. And so if you give all of your energy to your job, like all you care about is your work, like that’s all you care about, the other areas will suffer.

Like if I put all of my energy into wealth and I’m like really killing it here, but I don’t take care of my body and I don’t take care of my relationships, I might really kill it and I may get to this like abundance and legacy stage, but that’ll probably end up with me dying alone in a room somewhere, suffering from a chronic illness that was preventable, and then ultimately I’m in this like, you know, like the reality is you need to work on all three all at the same time. You know, like you have to be able to work on your health.

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your wealth and your self-love. This is not me making this stuff up. This is old school stuff. What I’m saying is when you have that in alignment, and this is what I’ve noticed in my own life, is I can focus on now my purpose. And purpose is what unlocks like true happiness. And purpose is your connection to consciousness. And when you’re when you have this deep sense of purpose, and I’m not talking about like, I have a family, my ki I live for my kids. It’s like that is a cop out for me sometimes. Like

Especially for men, your purpose should be s like s building something great, this legacy that you can leave behind. And in a done in a healthy way, you know, like but it’s built on love. Like when we unlock purpose, we can move into the happiness and bliss phase. And these are bliss is something you don’t just sit in bliss, like you’re not the Buddha. Like you can’t be Buddha. Buddha was like just pure bliss, key this transcended consciousness, all the things.

We are trying to stay in the love so that when we build things, it’s done from a place of healed wounds and we can actually give out of service. And this is something that I really had to struggle with because what was happening in my own life was I was being a top performer and I was proving that I was not broken. That was all I was doing. Like it was driving me to levels of success that were hard to measure. Like I was starting a front-end engineer, killing it.

Became a director, all this stuff because I was trying to prove to the world that I’m not broken. And that’s what I’ve learned in the last like five years, dealing with some of this harder stuff. Like I went down to Peru with my friends David and Cordy, and I went and I did I sat with some powerful psychedelic medicine called ayahuasca. And what that did was it took me to a place where I was like unable to.

Hide from things that were buried very deeply in my own mind. And it was able to help me connect to like old past memories and themes that were in my life. And they were, it was able to extract and say, this is what you need to look at. It wasn’t like quick fix. I ended up, it was like me pushing through darkness, trying to figure out how to connect with my own reality again. It was like that was able to remove some barriers so that I was able to move back into understanding just.

hide from things that were buried very deeply in my own mind. And it was able to help me connect to like old past memories and themes that were in my life. And they were, it was able to extract and say, this is what you need to look at. It wasn’t like quick fix. I ended up, it was like me n pushing through darkness, trying to figure out how to connect with my own reality again. It was like that was able to remove some barriers so that I was able to move back into understanding just

how I

How do I

what is it that I need to be healthy? Like, what is the roadmap that I need to follow right now? I’m a high performer. I’m on many levels on paper, I’m very successful. But I’m feeling this sense of fear, I’m feeling this self disgust. I’m like feeling this sense of brokenness. And I’m reconciling it against people telling me how awesome I am. Like I let I was leader of teams, a black belt and jujitsu, you know, like physically healthy.

What is it that I need to be healthy? Like, what is the roadmap that I need to follow right now? I’m a high performer. I’m on on many levels on paper, I’m very successful. But I’m I’m feeling this sense of fear. I’m feeling this self-disgust. I’m like feeling this sense of brokenness. And I’m d reconciling it against people telling me how awesome I am. Like I let I was leader of teams of black belt and jujitsu. You know, like physically healthy,

killing it, doing all the

Killing it, doing all the

doing the HIROX races, all these things. And then I’m like not seeing that version of myself because I feel like so the whole thing about me saying, I’m not gonna make this my identity, I I did. I ended up making it an identity. The identity was prove to everyone that you’re not broken. Prove to the world that you’re a high performer. Prove to the world that you’re not this hurt little child. And that’s what it was. This this this journey was, shit.

Doing the HIROX races, all these things. And then I’m like not seeing that version of myself because I feel like so the whole thing about me saying, I’m not gonna make this my identity, I I did. I ended up making it an identity. The identity was prove to everyone that you’re not broken. Prove to the world that you’re a high performer. Prove to the world that you’re not this hurt little child. And that’s what it was. This this this journey was, shit,

that little child.

That little child,

that little boy inside of me was very broken. And it happened when I was very little. And it was just, it wasn’t necessarily anyone’s fault. It was the the it was the hurt that I sat alone with. And if you if you’ve ever like you should go definitely go read Gaber Mate, and I sorry if I don’t say your name right. He wrote some books, and one of them is called The Myth of Normal.

That little boy inside of me was very broken. And it happened when I was very little. And it was just, it wasn’t necessarily anyone’s fault. It was the the it was the hurt that I sat alone with. And if you if you’ve ever like you should definitely go read Gaber Mate, and I sorry if I don’t say your name right. He wrote some books, and one of them is called The Myth of Normal.

And it talks about

childhood trauma. And we all experience it. And sometimes it’s people’s fault, and sometimes it’s not. Sometimes it’s our just our interpretation of sitting alone with with hurt, you know, being a being a child and not understanding the world. And then being hurt by people that are supposed to love us, and then us we create these stories around that. And then there’s a book that I really love called The Four Agreements.

Childhood trauma, and we all experience it. And sometimes it’s people’s fault, and sometimes it’s not. Sometimes it’s our just our interpretation of sitting alone with with hurt, you know, being an being a child and not understanding the world, and then being hurt by people that are supposed to love us, and then us we create these stories around that. And then there’s a book that I really love called The Four Agreements.

By Dr. or Don Miguel Ruiz, and this is like old school, like I for it’s Toltec wisdom. And the Toltecs are descendants of the Mayans, and this is comes from an area near Mexico where the Mayans were. And it’s it’s a very simple but powerful book, and it talks about those four tenets. Be impeccable with your word. You know, the words that you speak to yourself and others, they have impact. Like that little boy that it

That little boy that got hurt and when he was a little kid, it was because of words. Those words translated into stories that I told myself as I was growing up and shaped me doing things and making choices that led me to feel even more pain. And then it’s like, don’t take anything personally, and this is something we do a lot. And it’s like I was interpreting the world through the lens of this hurt little child. And I was just taking peep things personally, and the the things people were doing in my life, I was applying my own meaning to that.

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You know, I was I something would happen and it was just there they were just being innocent, and I took that as some sort of a attack on me. And then don’t make assumptions. I was just so these are simple principles, and I really love this book. But one of them’s like, do your best, you know, like in the end, all you can do is do your best. And that’s what leads me back to like this map. You know, s all this takes it sounds seems complicated, but at the end of the day, it’s you start with, How do I feel? You know, am I feeling healthy?

D am I working towards something that I care about with my job? Do I have enough to support my family? Do I have enough to meet my needs? And then how how’s my relationship with myself? And I know that sounds meta f you know, woo wooey woo-ee, but it’s like if you’re facing fear because you don’t have confidence, like I I faced a lot of fear because it’s like I’m afraid of many things. And I was s this this fear column was driving a lot of my own decisions.

Am I working towards something that I care about with my job? Do I have enough to support my family? Do have enough to meet my needs? And then how how’s my relationship with myself? And I know that sounds meta f you know, woo wooey woo-ee, but it’s like if you’re facing fear because you don’t have confidence, like I I faced a lot of fear because it’s like I’m afraid of many things. And I was s this this fear column was driving a lot of my own decisions.

It was stopping me from being successful. It was f I was putting so much energy into how can I prove to the world that I’m not broken? You know, how can I prove to the world that, you know, I’m past this horrible thing that I endured? And, you know, when I had to realize was, and that, you know, powerful psychedelics helped me with this, but also traditional talk therapy and then taking my medications and like the healthier my body was, it it helped me like understand that like

I could then focus on other things, but that part of that health is your relationship to yourself, the self-love. And if we’re if we’re like in living in fear, we’re gonna be our life is full of control and denial. And like Chopra talks about this. I like I don’t know, people some people have mis wishy-washy views of Chopra, but he has a book called The Seven Logic Laws of Spiritual Success. And it’s just

Traditions that talk about connection to purpose, Dharma, this idea that we all have this thing that’s that we’re supposed to do. And so, anyway, this is something that like I started this off with agentic systems and building things and having this ability to unlock all this power, right? But what that’s all built on top of is this like mission that I’ve been on to understand myself. And like

I’ve gone to great depths to do this. And I’ve I’ve built this like I’ve built a memoir using AI, and I I wanna do a course on this, but I’ve built a memoir that breaks down my entire life. And I went through a series, I to first I ingested my entire like manual notes and journals, and then I ingested all of the different things across my entire life, and I built this.

extremely detailed and accurate timeline of every event that I’ve ever experienced. This is the level of depth that I’ve gone to to understand how fucked up I am. Sorry. But it’s I walk through and it’s I’ve been building it into a book and I’m not going to produce it and release it in the form that it is because it’s not technically all of my words yet. It’s me trying to make sense of my little blonde spent’s time. It’s it’s

Me trying to understand the karate kid Spence that was in Kempo karate and punched a kid because he was messing with his sister. You know, and then I also experienced intense shame as a young kid. And this is hard for me to talk about, but I was living in I was living in as a sense of fear, and my nervous system couldn’t relax, and it caused me to wet the bed, and I wet the bed until I was 13 years old. And I had to hide it.

And it made me feel ashamed, deep sense of shame. And but this was also the driver for me to prove to everyone that I’m not broken. There’s a lay, there are layers that I’ve uncovered through self-reflection, psychedelic work, traditional therapy, and systems based learning that are I’ve talked about from the beginning that have led me to this.

pretty clear understanding of who I was through all of these times. Through Geek Spence when he was hanging out with Jared to Hacker Spence, who was in high school, trying to prove to everyone that he was, you know, smart enough and be it killing it and and everyone was saying he was gonna be you know, I was featured in a Windows release video for Microsoft Windows ninety eight. I did the Mo Motorola contract. I was killing it, going through hippie Spence days. I I w I was w throwing raves with my friends. I was p do making flyers like

l you know, learning d going on adventures to like learning how to be a salesperson, then hitting that s start up spense days, and then hitting this hard wall, this hard crash, losing my freedom, being committed, and then going through the rebuilding phases, you know, of my life. And this is like the entire story. I I adopted a new identity as I I bought bought a motorcycle and just loved it. It was a way for me to connect with my dad and my brother and it was this

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First symbol that I was able to produce after this catastrophe I had endured. And then I, you know, I ended up moving into an area of intense grief. And during that time I found jujitsu. I lost a lot of friends. I’ve lost a friend to an opioid overdose. I lost a friend to a, you know, a motorcycle wreck. And I’ve endured a lot of loss. My my stepfather passed away unexpectedly right before my wife and I were married.

a month before our wedding. He he had hip surgery so that he could walk her down the aisle. And then he threw a clot and died. And a month before our wedding my you know, my wife lost her husband her father. And then, you know, I he was like a second father to me. I knew him for seven years. And then, you know, I found X Jiu Jitsu and it helped me get through some very hard things.

And then, you know, I I I ke I just kept working hard. I moved up at the software company. I I worked h really hard and but I ultimately ended up realizing that I was too broken and still needing to fix myself, that it my wife and I were very broken.

separately and together we were not help healthy for each other. So I had to make a very hard choice to separate and then, you

You know, that unlocked this period of discovery that I’m in now, which is the space cowboy era,

know, that unlocked this period of discovery that I’m in now, which is the space cowboy era.

which is this recent four or five years where I started my own software company. I’ve been contracting for companies building Fortune 500 stuff. I’ve been a CTO of a company building an entire gig wage platform now and building AI systems, but I’ve been dedicating a ridiculous amount of time to developing an understanding of who I am.

Which is this recent four or five years where I started my own software company. I’ve been contracting for companies building Fortune 500 stuff. I’ve been a CTO of a company building an entire gig wage platform now and building AI systems, but I’ve been dedicating a ridiculous amount of time to developing an understanding of who I am.

And I’ve gone down to to Peru twice. And then the second round of ayahuasca, I was able to make peace with some very impact very important things, especially the people that I’ve lost.

And I’ve gone down to to Peru twice. And in the second round of ayahuasca, I was able to make peace with some very very important things, especially with people that I’ve lost.

And my grief has transformed from grief into love. And I’ve made peace with letting go of a lot of painful things. You know, and I I feel like I’m in this era of healing. But it’s a healing that I’ve been doing alone.

And it’s a healing that I don’t really share with too many people and

I feel like the people that know me in my life, they know this high performer, black belt, builder of systems, but I’m working to try and integrate the two together to be able to talk through these stories be and especially in a time when I feel like everyone’s dealing with some sort of mental health thing and everyone needs some sort of

evidence that they can look to to that it can be okay. You know, and this is where I wanna be authentic. I wanna marry the two versions of myself and like really work on

evidence that they can look to to that it can be okay, you know, and this is where I want to be authentic. I want to marry the two versions of myself and like really work on

being grounded in who I am, you know, and then eventually be build myself into something where I can be a father and I can be a healed individual and I can help a child navigate. They who I I when I was when I was 26 in my twenties

Before the beginning of my relationship with my ex-wife, I got a vasectomy because I decided I was too broken to have kids. I was like, I’m mentally, I was meant, this is where I was, mental. I was still dealing with this identity of being broken. My my arm has a biohazard tattoo because I felt like my blood was biohazardous.

Before the beginning of my relationship with my ex-ex-wife, I got a vasectomy because I decided I was too broken to have kids. I was like, I’m mentally, I was meant, this is where I was, mental. I was still dealing with this identity of being broken. My my arm has a biohazard tattoo because I felt like my blood was biohazardous.

Like my body is a my tattoos are all a story of a journey that I’ve been on, which is this reconciliation between the broken person I feel like I am and this high performing person that everyone sees. And anyway, like what is the takeaway here?

systems based learning, learning about yourself is just as much as learning about business or learning about being successful. You have to balance things. And I’m working on this, it’s been very hard still. Balancing the the focus, the energy between health, wealth and love. And like being the present with my partner and being healthy enough to focus on building a legacy and moving into this

being able to be of service. So once I have this relationship to myself, now that I can unlock this new capability, which is being s of service, because I was, I’ve always been of someone that has been able to be, you know, of service, but I wasn’t doing it in a healthy way. It was all, let me help you so that, you know, I can prove to you that I’m not broken. It was service out of it was service out of fear.

I was trying to control the world around me by being this helpful person. And I was I’ve suffered a lot of like people pleasing and imposter syndrome and all these things. These things came from fear.

As well as I was doing on all outs outward appearances, inside of me I was living in intense fear. Fear of being in that hopeless place again. When I lost my sanity and I had to I lost my freedom, fearing that you know people were gonna find out that I was broken, fee people were gonna find out that I was damaged. So how can I prove to the world that I’m not? You know, like I was living in this intense amount of fear. And when you’re living in fear.

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you’re you’re living your own personal hell on earth. And the only way we can fight back against that is to look at all of the different aspects of health, wealth, love, purpose. And not tricking ourselves into thinking that you know it’s like

it’s hard. You have to be able to f actually diagnose these things like through troubleshooting. Like your brain is a computer. You know, that’s I’ve I’ve got a whole series of videos I’m gonna do on this.

It’s hard. You have to be able to actually diagnose these things like through troubleshooting. Like your brain is a computer. You know, that’s I’ve I’ve got a whole series of videos I’m gonna do on this.

But our brain is running software programs and we can diagnose them. And the way the tools you use to do that are pen and paper on you know, writing things on a piece of paper. How am I doing today? Where do I fall in this alignment spectrum is what I call it. Like, do I feel capable enough and healthy enough in order to help focus on my

work and then so I can you know heal my own wounds and stop trying to control the people around me and live in denial of this. Like it’s denial is one of the hardest things because

I feel like denial on the far left of this self-worth, self-love scale, it is the thing that holds people back from really feeling love and building relationships. People that don’t love themselves are control, right? They try to control everyone around them. They’re the narcissists, they’re the ones that make it everyone else’s

fault. They’re the ones that are living in denial of the fact that they hate themselves. So they don’t want anyone else to feel love. And

They’re the ones that are living in denial of the fact that they hate themselves. They don’t want anyone else to feel love.

It’s once you start to understand some of these concepts and you

it’s once you start to understand some of these concepts and you

start to feel this roadmap and you start to like this is where you start to recognize people in your life that you can start to feel that I want to be like them. That the and it’s you know there’s still that outward appearance versus inward appearance but you can hear it in people’s voices when they talk about healing themselves and dealing with that, doing this hard work.

You know, everyone has wounds, everyone has these deep creases, you know, everyone has folds, and that’s

You know, everyone has wounds. Everyone has these deep creases. You know, everyone has folds. And that’s the

The whole metaphor of the Auchi origami thing is this idea that we part this blank piece of paper and then you fold it, and that’s an experience that adds a crease to your life. And then over time you have to unfold these the paper to really take a look at where where did you, you know, what what happened? You know, like and and the love, you know, it’s it takes

whole metaphor of the Auchi origami thing. Is this s idea that we part this blank piece of paper and then you fold it. And that’s a experience that cr adds a crease to your life. And then over time you have to unfold these the paper to really take a look at where where did you you know what what happened? You know, like and and the love you know, it’s it takes

There’s just something I love and this guy Danny down in Pru told me this. But he said that

there’s something I love, and this guy Danny down in Pru told me this. But he said that.

to forgive someone you have to understand them. And there’s this tradition in Hawaii. It’s a Hawaiian name I can’t say. But

To forgive someone you have to understand them. And there’s this tradition in Hawaii.

It’s this idea that in order for this forgiveness process to work, you have to be able to understand. So to forgive, you must understand, and that’s what set me on this journey of defining these periods in my life and really diving into what I felt then. Who was I? Like what was I experiencing? What did I worry about? What was my life like? What was love like to me then? And how can I understand that person then? How can I

understand them enough to forgive myself? And this is like

understand them enough to forgive myself. And this is like

this whole thing is a a series of letters to myself. It’s a series of letters that I wrote to myself in order to forgive myself for the things that I’ve been holding mys hold you know, things that I’ve been punishing myself for. And, you know

This whole thing is a a series of letters to myself. It’s a series of letters that I wrote to myself in order to forgive myself for the things that I’ve been holding myself hold you know, things that I’ve been punishing myself for. And, you know

Don Miguel Ruiz talks about this in his book. He says that there’s a a judge inside of all of us that punishes ourselves over and over and over again. Like we’re the only animal on the planet that punishes ourselves over and over again for a mistake. We’re our own worst punisher. And there’s like my one of my friends is a massage therapist, and she told me once that like punishment is for the,

it’s not for the dis there’s punishment and discipline.

It’s not for the dis it’s there’s punishment and discipline,

and discipline is for the disciple, and it’s a it’s a form of correction out of love, and then there’s punishment, which is for the per benefit of the punisher. So, like inside of us, this fear category is what causes us to punish ourselves over and over and over again and rake ourselves over the coal to this to the point where we can’t we are in hopelessness, we’re in crisis, we’re in poverty and denial. And then if we can truly reconcile that.

And discipline is for the disciple, and it’s a it’s a form of correction out of love. And then there’s punishment, which is for the for the per benefit of the punisher. So, like inside of us, this fear category is what causes us to punish ourselves over and over and over again and rake ourselves over the coal to this to the point where we can’t we are in hopelessness, we’re in crisis, we’re in poverty and denial. And then if we can truly reconcile that.

Then we can move into this love category where we are exercising discipline over our own self. We are only able to do that when we’re healthy. And I’m not saying just physically healthy. I’m saying all of this. Health, wealth, self-love unlocks the ability for you to have purpose and align your consciousness with that purpose, which unlocks this massive amount of happiness and bliss. You can’t be

in happiness and bliss and have a sense of purpose if you’re just stuck in hopelessness and fear. You know, and these are concepts that are the thread of many frameworks, love and fear.

In happiness and bliss and have a sense of purpose if you’re just stuck in hopelessness and fear. You know, and these are concepts that are the thread of many frameworks: love and fear.

It all comes down to either one of those. And you when you break it all down, this vertical spectrum here, it talks about mindset.

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So either being fixed, which is like this idea that we can’t change, that comes from fear. Or this idea that we can grow with enough work. That comes from loving ourselves. Or values. You know, do we do we what do we do? Do we consume? Or do we create?

And and is it done in a sense out of a place of love?

And and is it done in a sense out of a place of love? Like, these

These are ways you can kind of just say, hey, how do I feel right now? Am I just sitting around consuming things because I’m like trying to satisfy some sort of fear? Or am I actually like feeling so much power and love that I want to create things for others that might help them? It’s a way to ask yourself diagnostic questions. These questions guide your thoughts. This is not a locked-in thing.

are ways you can kind of just say, hey, how do I feel right now? Am I just sitting around consuming things because I’m like trying to satisfy some sort of fear? Or am I actually like feeling so much power and love that I want to create things for others that might help them? It’s a way to ask yourself diagnostic questions. These questions guide your thoughts. This is not a locked-in thing.

At any given day, you’re gonna be all over the place. Right now I’m very jazzed about what I’m building, but it’s sucking the energy out of my health and my love categories. I’m so fired up for what I’m building that it’s causing me to like wake up at 2 a.m. and not get back to sleep, and then I feel s I feel tired all the time. I’m I’m very tired right now. And my my relationships are suffering because they’re not getting the attention that they deserve. So this is me. Where do I stand right now? And honestly, like

This video and talking through it is helping me because I need to put this computer down. I need to s I need to close the lid and go sit in the backyard or take the dogs for a walk or spend time with my girlfriend and like actually be present with her. And these are only things that you can really kind of start to work on when you’re aware of them. This is the the this is the Dunnen Krueger of self-evaluation. It’s like you don’t know what you don’t know.

And a lot of people think they’re fine, and they’re not. They’re out on outward, on all the outward measures, you’re fine. You’re successful, you have the but inside you’re living in fear, you hate yourself, it’s causing you to want to control people. Your actions are communicating a different story. And I’m about to burn out my phone here, but there’s this great book. Brian Holliday talks about his one of his stories he tells in one of his books about stoicism, about Jimmy Carter.

And Carter wanted to have his life and his beliefs be evident in everything he did. And I don’t know much about Jimmy Carter, but I do love this concept. He wanted to, he wanted it to be auditable through proof that his convictions that he believed were real. What does that mean?

That means that if he if if there was if he was brought on trial in front of Congress for his beliefs and they hired the best investigators in the world and they secretly followed him for two years, what would that report look like? Did he actually

embody the things he believed?

Embody the things he believed.

Like, and this were these were his religious and his faith faithful condic for convictions. Because we can say all day long that we’re a Christian, and we can say that we’re all day long that we believe these things. But if we were put in we were hauled in front of Congress and they brought out this, they brought the FBI and the NSA and all the tech and things that they do to monitor people, and they said, This is what you did over the last two years, you are not a Christian.

Like and this were these were his religious and his faith faithful condic for convictions. Because we can say all day long that we’re a Christian and we can say that we’re all day long that we believe these things. But if we were put in we were hauled in front of Congress and they brought out this they brought the FBI and the NSA and all the tech and things that they do to monitor people, and they said, This is what you did over the last two years, you are not a Christian.

How would you feel? Like the evidence is our actions. And like, it’s not just the actions and the things we we pretend, it’s the things we think about and the things we do when no one’s looking. And I was like blown away by this concept. And I was like, this only comes from the love side of the things. Like, because if you’re living in denial and you’re in this fear category, you don’t care. You’re gonna do whatever you can to produce and just project the image.

That everyone thinks, but like the people that are close to you when they’re interviewed, you know, when they’re when they’re brought into the people closest to you, when they’re brought in to that trial, that that trial of your existence, and they’re deposed under oath, and they can’t lie, what are they gonna say? That’s gonna be the real barometer of what you really believe.

And that’s trying like the measure I’m trying to hold myself to right now. And not only that, but the I’m building these systems that can think now. So, how do I define rules and morals and guiding light principles? And I’m applying like computer science principles to this, but it’s been something I’ve also been doing in my own life. How do I define my morals? What do I really believe?

And that comes from self-reflection, and that comes from journaling, and it comes from just sitting with a blank page and asking yourself the question, how do I feel about this right now? In this moment right now, which one of the three things do I need to focus on? Am I healthy? You know, am is my am I able to provide for myself, my family, and the ones I love? Do I have this sense of self and connection to myself? And I’ve have I worked on addressing some of the issues that are holding me back.

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From really getting into being able to be truly of service and then really move into this very far right level, which is acceptance. Like the far right level of self-love is once you’ve got this level of self-love where you have abundance of love, you can now move into service. Like I wasn’t in this, I was not there. I was serving from a place of control. I was broken. I was serving out of this need to make myself.

feel better about myself. Not I was I it was a it was a transaction that I people didn’t even know they were making with me. And then I would punish them when they weren’t reciprocating. It was that was the literal definition of people pleasing. And and there’s another term, and my battery’s about to die.

That’s gonna have to limit the length of this. But there’s a term, there’s this idea that I’m gonna leave you with, which is this idea of covert contracts. And this guy wrote this book called No More Mr. Nice Guy, and it’s about people pleasing, and it’s and it hit me hard because it was and it it t explained my own father, which was he had he did not express his expectations, and then he punished me when I didn’t meet them.

I was gonna have to limit the length of this. But there’s a term, there’s this idea that I’m gonna leave you with, which is this idea of covert contracts. And this guy wrote that wrote this book called No More Mr. Nice Guy, and it’s people pleasing, and it’s and it hit me hard because it was and it it t explained my own father, which was he had he did not express his expectations, and then he punished me when I didn’t meet them.

So as a child, I felt like, how can I live up to this? How can I get his respect? How can I he would punish me for expectations that he never even expressed, and then he he taught me how to do that when I was a kid. Then I grew up and I did that to my own my own wife and stepdaughter. And there I punished everyone around me for not meeting expectations that I was not even advocating for myself. And that was not.

the service that I was trying to give, and now I’m trying to reconcile that. I’m trying to move to a place where I understand myself enough that I can put boundaries in place to truly serve others. And unlock this consciousness peri you know this this alignment between the three so that when I meet someone I can genuinely help them. And also protect my own sanity. All right. Yeah I’m gonna I’ll if you want to know more

You can just Google Spencer Thornock and Spencer Thornock, how awesome is this guy? Dot com. I love you. If you stuck around this long, I just you know, there are things there knowledge is out there, but you have to you have to want to help look inside too, and that’s that’s the takeaway.

I love you guys. So at the end I’m gonna sign off with

the the the Hawaiian tradition of self of forgiveness and understanding, which is this. I love you, I forgive you. Or it’s it’s it goes, it’s I shouldn’t even quote of let me I’m trying to find the thing, but like it goes, I’m s I’m sorry, I love you, I forgive you, and thank you. It’s like something like that. So anyway, I’ll probably need to figure that out.

But anyway, I love you guys. Bye.