Andrew Monroe- Principles, Ninjas, and Impromptu Psychology (#49)

[00:00:20] Daniel: Hi guys. And welcome back to dead by tomorrow. This is not your normal intro host because your normal intro host Andrew Monroe is going to be the subject of the podcast. Today. We're going to be interviewing Andrew. We're going to be finding out all of his deepest, darkest secrets. Hopefully we can get on to slip up and admit something that he didn't want to on a recording so that we can hold it over him forever. But in reality, I'm really excited to just turn the microphone, so to speak onto Andrew, dive in a little bit more on some of his mindsets, some of his decision-making, maybe some fun stuff along the way. So like when we did the interview with me, obviously you guys know Andrew, we've been doing this podcast for a while, written a book. Maybe you'll learn something A little bit new. So Andrew, welcome onto your podcast. How's your day going?

[00:01:17] Andrew: Um, I'm thrilled to be here. Thanks for inviting me. It's been a good day. my family is in town for. A little early, but we went and got coffee this morning. Just some last minute Christmas shopping over at target because it is not a weekend. If we do not go to target. And I just got to an apex probably 10 minutes ago.

[00:01:39] Andrew: So that nice and Yeah, it's been day.

[00:01:43] Daniel: Yeah, that, that sounds like a great day. Well, to, to kick us off, I'm not going to start super, super deep with our questions. I'm not going to give you a softball to begin in. Part of that is because we're going to do a little experiment experiments too, too strong of a word, butI, I want to start out talking a little bit about just um, identities because. I'm curious as we go through some other questions and stuff that's, you know, a little bit lighter. If, if some of what you identify as identity has kind of shaped some of those, those little things. So maybe it'll be an interesting one for you to even listen back to, and maybe identify some things that you hadn't before. So without further ado, what would you say is, is your most core identity or some of your most core identity characteristics?

[00:02:40] Andrew: That is a tough one. So I'm going to keep it with three and we're going to start with words because I think words are a little bit easier to work with. So. Valor. I'm sure a lot of, people have heard it. It's kind of an interesting, the definition is probably not what a lot of people think. And to me, that's kind of one of the words that I kind of shaped my life around is trying to be full of valor. And I'm sure there's a better way to use that noun, but basically to me, being courageous is a big. I guess And so it doesn't necessarily mean I do intelligent things. If, if the opportunity arises to do something that I'm afraid of or that challenges me I kinda lean into it. So that's one of the words we'll we'll go with two more. One is magic. the second or third, depending on how you're counting right now would probably be pinash. So pinash is Cyrano de Bergerac was the introduction to that word. And I love that book and I love the concept. He was also a guy that really dug into valor. So magic is kind of a silly one, but I think it's a fun word to me.

[00:03:53] Andrew: Magic is. kind of this core feature of my personality, or at least a desired core personality that I try and bring creativity and challenge, you know, people's preconceived notions and I know that's not the definition of magic, but that's kind of what I think about my head is magic is the sense of wonder and tilt in your perspective.

[00:04:14] Andrew: So that creative way to look at different things, bring a little magic. So there's magic and just it's a sense of style, kind of a bold in your face aggressive style. And I kind of dig that so that's one of the things I try and go for is maybe not exactly going against the grain, but definitely being sure follow my own path and not falling for. What might be considered mainstream or the standard. Now there's nothing wrong with doing something mainstream but punish reminds me not to do something because it's mainstream too. If I want to go that route, need to be sure that's who, you know, that matches up with my values. Not because everybody else is doing So Does that cover uh some core identities so that help start this off.

[00:04:57] Daniel: Yeah, for sure. and so when you think about valor magic and pinash are those characteristics that you came out of the womb having, are those things that you sort of cultivated and grown over the years? Are those things that others have spoken into you, you know, where, where is some of the story to those identities?

[00:05:26] Andrew: definitely on the side of the fence of nurture. I think there are some things that are definitely natural or even genetically inclined and a lot of people but when it comes to your personality and your principles and your values, obviously to me, that is, that is purely nurture. So they were definitely learned. I think a lot of it came with reading far many books. Um and it also Had to do with the people I grew up with uh you know, how my family interacted with me uh what people kind spoken to existence me up until this day have shaped me. it's, it's definitely a nurture people have. Either subconsciously or consciously influenced in me.

[00:06:08] Daniel: I, I think nurture is huge. I think some of the nature can store. Be there, there can

[00:06:16] Daniel: be a little bit of that sort of starting point that maybe

[00:06:20] Daniel: maybe causes people to nurture certain things or you to nurture certain things in yourself. And then

[00:06:25] Daniel: it, it becomes more. But sometimes there are things that maybe naturally we weren't that great at, but you just

[00:06:30] Daniel: see somebody and you're like, wow, that's amazing.

[00:06:32] Daniel: I want to, you know, have more valor in my

[00:06:36] Daniel: life or panache or whatever it is And then that nurture can, can really take over. And so again, thinking through some of those is there something maybe within the past week where you know, you made that decision with one of those three things in mind of all I've got this path in front of me.

[00:06:56] Daniel: What do I do? going to default to the choice that demonstrates or whatever.

[00:07:03] Andrew: I wish I had in the last week and much, a much more meaningful. So to say, answer for this. But the first thing that jumps to mind is I got some new paints. they are, these indigo slug priest pants. and I'm saying that probably completely wrong. But they are these pants that look kind of goofy.

[00:07:24] Andrew: And they're like this weird mix between sweat pants and like work pants almost. It's like an upgraded, sweat panic, I should say. And they're, they have a goofy design and Shalome does not like them, but I love them. They are this bold very unique pattern, this like deep indigo blue with all these like blues and whites traced in between It They're kind of loud. They're not like loud, like printed on the sides kind of pants, but they are, they're definitely a bold color and a bold pattern for uh, for me. So that was one of the things where the pinash comes in, where I'm like really leaning into these sweat pants that I've been wearing.

[00:08:07] Andrew: A lot this week, actually, because it's been cold and they're warm and they just, I think they look like a blast and I have not had great feedback on them, but I'm still digging them.

[00:08:18] Daniel: No, I think that's, that's a really good example. I mean, the whole between the core identity I feel is that they show

[00:08:27] Daniel: up all of the little things And maybe you had a major life decision happened within the past week, but that's probably not a normal normal week for any of us.

[00:08:37] Andrew: things where, you know the way you do small stuff, you know, if you're brave enough to wear the goofy sweat pants or too bold shirt, or, know to dress an elevated style compared to the rest of the community you're in, or, you know, maybe it's the other direction.

[00:08:53] Andrew: I know you rock this Uh Daniel's not afraid to wear. Very basic clothing to just about any event. And that is actually something I suck it, you know, this is formal dining, I'm wearing something formal and lacked the bravery there to wear a t-shirt to it. But um the way you do the little things translate into the big stuff You know you make those big life choices. If you're not used to, you know, leaning into your personality, it's easier to do what is expected of you or what other people think should do instead of which you probably know is the actual choice you should make.

[00:09:26] Daniel: Yeah. And

[00:09:27] Daniel: I think something that. Happens to a lot of us is we have moments of

[00:09:33] Daniel: sort of identity crisis where for whatever reason, one of our

[00:09:38] Daniel: things that we felt was core to who we are, get stripped away for one, one reason or the other. I mean, it, it

[00:09:46] Daniel: could be,

[00:09:47] Daniel: I know a lot of

[00:09:47] Daniel: people put a lot of

[00:09:48] Daniel: identity in work.

[00:09:49] Daniel: And so obviously losing a

[00:09:50] Daniel: job can really cause you to lose out on a Porter part of your

[00:09:53] Daniel: core identity um, for you, you know, maybe it's a situation where you

[00:09:59] Daniel: want to act and valor, but

[00:10:00] Daniel: you are just petrified in fear of a decision in front of you. And no matter how much you try to rewire your brain, like

[00:10:09] Daniel: that drives your decision making.

[00:10:10] Daniel: And I think that can be, you

[00:10:11] Daniel: know, a blow

[00:10:12] Daniel: to some of your identity. So is there

[00:10:15] Daniel: a scenario where you feel like that's come up where you've had to cope with that and work through something like.

[00:10:22] Andrew: I'll give you one that I'm still dealing with actually. And I still haven't figured out if I made the right choice from her. so this is not necessarily, I for sure. It was like, oh, I didn't. Choose the valor or I didn't choose pinash, but it goes in with valor.

[00:10:38] Andrew: And basically it was a year. ago, a little less than a year ago. My father came to me And was like, Hey, I need you to come back to work for me and everything I'd heard, you know, about pursuing your own dreams. And that kind of thing was like, Hey, people are going to send, offers your way. They're going to have all these great sending opportunities. Be strong enough To stay the path. and for me, I ended up taking the offer and going back to help my dad with his business and do all that kind of jazz. And so that cost me a lot on my sort of say passions that I was pursuing and what I'd kinda quit planes, internet to chase down. It was financially pretty beneficial. and I still learned plenty of stuff, got some new skills throughout the year. And I still got to work on some other passions like this podcast And there's other aspects of my life. That's still gained from that But in the end, the reason first place um I didn't really get to pursue my writing career and that. marketing agency that I really wanted to spin up. to me, it was almost, it was almost like a took the coward's way out because there was either the uncertain future with uncertain amounts of money, or there was a certain future where I already knew kind of how that process has worked and how to make things better. And there was definitive financial incentive that I knew, okay, I'm going to make this much money. So to me, it still bugs me that I took that option. At the same time. Sometimes you got to cut your losses or you going to take a break. We've talked about that. I think it was just the last episode where you have to say no to certain opportunities to better the people around you, better yourself and, you know, come back down the road to try and really pursue them. So that's kind of what I'm hoping happens But right now I still don't know I don't know if I took the coward's path or not, which bugs me.

[00:12:29] Daniel: Well, and this is the second time that you've gone to work for your dad, right?

[00:12:36] Andrew: Yes.

[00:12:36] Daniel: So, well, well, I mean, I, I am curious though, having made that decision quite twice and now being a year into the second one, I don't, you just said maybe you don't have it all figured out yet, but I am curious if there is still this question, mark of, was it counter to identity or is it a situation where maybe, maybe there's other motivations, some other identities that played into that?

[00:13:05] Daniel: The, you know, that, that is something that I feel like it's. Analyzing cause that is a big life decision. so like you said, it could be a situation of just leaning into the, oh, the unknown is scary. Maybe it

[00:13:18] Daniel: sort of a decision that was based on cowardice. Maybe, maybe that is the case, or maybe it was, you know, a situation where you were trying to be strategic about, the

[00:13:30] Daniel: path that is in front of you and and just, know, thinking about, you know how you still could ultimately flip this into being something that, was a valor or Parnassus decision or, you know third option could be that there is another aspect of your identity that trumped those other ones at the time, which you know, could be I, I, don't know. I don't know what that could be. You know, it, it just, kind of depends on you thought through And making that decision. So. I expect you to have it all figured out in the next 30 seconds.

[00:14:03] Andrew: Well, so like anything in real life, it's almost never as cut and dry as we try And present certain choices on our podcast. And in this know some of the major factors that came into influence what I was doing. Uh, first, uh, this is going to sound maybe a, little ridiculous. Um, Really really, really, really can't say no to somebody asking for, help.

[00:14:26] Andrew: If someone's like, Hey Andrew, can you help me with this? I go, I just, my little hero complex from reading too many fantasy novels or watching too many action movies, whatever it is kicks in. And it's, it is near impossible for me to say no. And if I do say no to somebody asking for help, I just feel awful.

[00:14:44] Andrew: It eats me up. Forever. Oh, it's terrible. so that was the first factor was my dad presented like, Hey, I need help. And that is really hard for me to say, And the second factor was he offered me a lot of money. And part of what I was trying to do requires a, You know, you need to be financially solid for, or be able to float yourself for, awhile and having an additional funds would help with that. So that. was another factor on the same vein. I had been doing the self-employed thing for a year, and it. had been a very rough year uh, made almost no money doing it. Um, COVID hit roughly 30 days after, after I started. So my timing was really off and it made it very difficult to start up sort of say new business. And I had told myself. you get this year. and if at the end of the year, you haven't at least started generating some form of a steady income. Um, You've got to go do something else. And this is where it gets a little dicey, you know, COVID did not just last months or six months, we were still long into it And you know, that that was a year. ago and we're still rolling with So I, in part of it, I feel like I didn't get a fair shot at trying to say. But that said, I hit that in mark and I was dealing with these self promise of, Hey, months to deal with life And if you can't it into gear in 12 months, you're not hard enough and you need to go find something less risky.

[00:16:14] Andrew: And at the same time that's when my dad came asked him for help Offering lots of money. So uh there's a mix of those factors. Um Along with it.

[00:16:23] Andrew: we had a expiration date on the help. We agreed to basically a year. It started in February, February 1st. So. At the end of January, technically my year's up.

[00:16:34] Andrew: And then I need to decide what I'm going to do there if we're going to keep going forward or if if I need to do something else. part of me was saying okay I can go do this thing. going to help in a lot of different ways, both me and other people. And then I can still come back around and try again. Thinking COVID would have been long, long gone by that point. So we'll see. there's, there's all

[00:16:56] Daniel: Yeah.

[00:16:56] Andrew: and there's plenty of other stuff, you know, there's relationships, there's, there's this stuff. What I'm trying to say though, is lot of really good positive reasons that I want to do it Um but that doesn't change that there was a lot of fear in the unknown as well. more than likely helped influence me going towards or gravitating towards certain positive aspects of that path. I took.

[00:17:17] Andrew: It's never cut or

[00:17:18] Daniel: Yeah, well, and, and what I see from some of that decision and, full disclosure, you know, I have no degrees in psychology. I can't even claim to be Brita and be like, you know, psychology student or anything like that. But I'm glad that you that you brought up the fact that you really struggled to say no to somebody that needs help, because if I were to come on And say, all right, Andrew, what are some of the

[00:17:51] Andrew: Yeah.

[00:17:51] Daniel: that I see as core

[00:17:52] Daniel: identities? I feel like that's of the ones I would put really high up there that you're somebody that really wants to. Um, come through for other people, You really want to, with friends, with your family, be that person that's really reliable, really trustworthy. And somebody that

[00:18:10] Daniel: you know is a go-to type of person.

[00:18:11] Daniel: I'd, I'd put that very high on

[00:18:15] Daniel: on your identities. And so to me, I F I feel like with

[00:18:19] Daniel: that decision, and we talked through

[00:18:21] Daniel: it together a fair bit at the time,

[00:18:24] Daniel: I feel like there was a little bit of this clash of that desire that you do have that I think is a really big part of your personality, but then also kind of seeing that, making that decision might be in contrast to some of the other things that are parts of your personality and parts that you really want to feed into, you know, being the uh, especially kind of the pinash side of things and kind of blazing your own trail.

[00:18:48] Daniel: So you had a little bit of this sort of conflict in either decision, you made kind of what. Partially true to you, but also partially not true to you. and I think those are some of the really tough decisions to work through, but I think he did it well

[00:19:03] Andrew: Yeah, I don't really know how to describe the follow through kind of thing, but I kind of lump it under the valor side of life. Because to me it's kind of a doing things that you don't want to do because as much as I need to help people, I almost never actually want to, which is no offense to anyone.

[00:19:21] Andrew: It's just a, Hey, can you help me move? I don't, I don't actually want to get up, go help somebody move things right.

[00:19:29] Andrew: Yeah, go my way. Like that's,

[00:19:31] Andrew: it's a chunk of

[00:19:31] Andrew: time. It's not something I actually want to do. It's just something

[00:19:33] Andrew: that like, part of me is like, oh, you have to do

[00:19:35] Andrew: this because that's, that's part of that valor kind of thing.

[00:19:38] Andrew: At least that's,

[00:19:39] Andrew: how I see it. So I appreciate the recognition on, I appreciate the kind words.

[00:19:43] Daniel: Yeah, of course. Okay. I want to jump into a little bit more of a fun question now. Even though, think that's some serious implications.

[00:19:54] Daniel: I actually asked this of Hillary the other day and we had a long conversation about it. So if you were in a situation you could travel back in time, 10 years all the knowledge that you have right now, but you lose 10 years from your overall life expectancy, or you can jump forward

[00:20:14] Andrew: Man. I want to hear how this conversation went for you and Hillary at some point. Cause that sounds like it must have been fun to me. This is easy. I would a hundred percent do that. 10 years forward, $5 million in the bank and an extra 10 healthy. And here's why, let me, let me give my rationale I burned at the stake, if I'm answering this wrong.

[00:20:34] Andrew: So first is to me, one the more important. Aspects there like that's your most important currency. So giving up 10 years kind of an like, Hey, 10 years ago, you can go invest in Bitcoin and have hundreds of of dollars or dollars if you are smart.

[00:20:54] Andrew: That's what you're saying is you trade out 10 years for billions of And on one hand that's not a trade. And people I do would take that trade, but $5 million. And an additional 10 years of life is more important to me than $10 million. And along with that, you never know happen in 10 years.

[00:21:16] Andrew: That might get me much closer to us having better health and longevity techniques. I know that's something that a lot of modern medicines working on. And the goal is maybe not like extending our lives. You know, far have heard numbers like we're aiming for, you know, average life expectancy to be 130 years know 50, 60 years.

[00:21:38] Andrew: would be cool, the problem they want to fix is they want you to have good 130 years or a hundred years. They don't want you to be hitting. 75 85, 95, and basically losing half your mind, half your mobility or more so to me, getting that extra 10 years gets me that much closer to having a much better, you know, last quarter of life and $5 million is all you really need.

[00:22:05] Andrew: Honestly. If you go through a $5 million in the stock market, you're living off of basically a hundred thousand dollars worth

[00:22:10] Andrew: of dividends a year, and that's awesome. And the money is going to keep growing. And especially if you're talking

[00:22:16] Andrew: about another 40. Assuming no economic crisis. You're good to

[00:22:19] Andrew: go.

[00:22:20] Andrew: So that's why I go that direction.

[00:22:22] Daniel: Yeah, I think, I think that's fair. The only thing that would keep me from saying

[00:22:27] Andrew: Yeah.

[00:22:27] Daniel: hundred percent, yes. Even though I probably would make the same decision the fact that you're, you're basically missing the next 10 years. Whatever happens over the next 10 years, you're you're effectively asleep for, and that's kinda hard because in this trade off, you. Like for me, if I think about, wow, I don't see ages one through 11 for Riley. That'd be, that'd be pretty hard. But then I guess I have to think the other way of, okay. If I went back in time, 10 years, yes. I don't, I don't miss anything. I get to relive some things that were pretty fun. Maybe make some better decisions.

[00:23:06] Daniel: But then I miss 10 years at the end, like later on in Riley's life and grandchildren and some of those types of things. So that's kind of, that's what I think about is what am I, missing out on in terms of life? Because either direction you're right. Like basically money-wise, you'll be okay if you went back in time, like you'll really be okay if you're smart with money. so

[00:23:30] Andrew: Yeah,

[00:23:31] Andrew: It's been a while, 10 years for the. Well, that was, that was kinda my guests because you, and I think very similarly, so I assumed you were probably going to do the same thing I did. And generally it seems like the women in our lives think drastically different than, than we do. And it could at least in my case, I bet if I go national. I would almost guarantee she'd do the go backwards in time.

[00:23:53] Andrew: And I just assumed that Hillary would probably be the same way where I think she just, she thinks differently than you do. I, I see it. And this is one of those things that definitely would be how certain people, like I there's just this personality divide of these people do this thing because it's a guaranteed money and No, FOMO basically.

[00:24:11] Andrew: Versus. I'm I'm basically gambling and you like to gamble as well. And our women do not gamble. And that's, what it is. We're gambling on a better outcome down the road than a Sherwin. Cause going back in time, that's a sure win and you lose something at the end, but it's a sure win going forward. 5 million is nice, but

[00:24:30] Andrew: maybe,

[00:24:31] Andrew: maybe the American dollar is not worth

[00:24:32] Andrew: much in 10 years, So, and you know, maybe you're completely out of your skill set.

[00:24:37] Andrew: So it's, it's a gamble

[00:24:38] Andrew: going forward. So this is definitely like a gambler's dilemma.

[00:24:41] Daniel: Yeah. No, that's, that's totally fair. And so I figured you would going forward 10 years, cause I know you, and you talked a little bit about medical advancements, but one thing I'm curious about, because I

[00:24:54] Daniel: think amongst our friend group, you have the more you more than anybody, else's kind of at different tech enhancements that are coming and are excited about it.

[00:25:02] Daniel: So what future tech would you be most excited about and kind of has come to fruition in that next 10 years or in your expanded lifetime that you'd have in that city?

[00:25:15] Andrew: So obviously the longevity uh, health stuff. I think that that is something that we aren't really. Unless you're in the right kind of areas of life. That's not necessarily when anybody's talking about it, where a bunch of advancements are being made. And it's because they're not really big. It's not like we have cured cancer, which is big.

[00:25:35] Andrew: But the thing is, is we're making all these really, really small, incremental steps all over the place. And by kind of chipping away at the health system as a whole and by health system, I mean, Or our human understanding of what makes us tick and what keeps us alive and what kills us. We're slowly chipping away at death, I guess you can say.

[00:25:57] Andrew: And It's these tiny, tiny little chips, just like a, a Mason with marble a stone sculptor. And they're just these little tiny, tiny things And it's, it's not as big as these big booms that we expect from technology. It's like, like the internet has been reinvented. making all these small changes. And I think those going to add up over time. 10 20 years down the road. We're just going to be really good at keeping people alive in a positive way I honestly think that we don't keep in a positive way. Most of the time there's a lot of stuff where we do

[00:26:31] Andrew: something really well really good for someone that 50 years ago, we couldn't.

[00:26:36] Andrew: And I think going forward, we're going to actually have not only are we going to be saving lives, but we're going to be increasing life quality right now, a lot of saving lives comes with a decrease in life quality sometimes to an unacceptable degree in my mind. So I think that's going to get fixed. We might not actually live longer, but I think we're going to have higher quality lives in less COVID 27 wipes us.

[00:26:59] Andrew: So. That's one thing I think wearables are going to get really interesting. I'm hoping. So I love the idea of an AR integration kind of glasses thing, where you ditch the cell phones. And we have basically Google lenses perfected and we've got AR overlays and just a whole, a whole slew of small day-to-day tasks that.

[00:27:26] Andrew: Either made a lot more simple or a lot better, and there's going to be some trade-offs. Um, We talked about this just the other day, a little bit. I think there's going to be some really big issues with people disconnecting and we're going to start getting, we already rely on technology whole lot. I think some people is going to be such a crutch that if their, their lenses break their glasses of smart glasses that I think are.

[00:27:49] Andrew: If they break or if they lose internet technology or maybe they don't leave their city because they lose internet while they're driving or they're flying. I think that could become a problem. But in general, a lot of stuff like, cooking and manual skills that, you know, able to follow YouTube video at the same time you're doing it And it's overlaid in AR over what doing. think that's going to really some of stuff for people I'm pretty excited for Part of the health thing I hope for this still completely Saifai, really hoping for some banana machines that we can replacing or at least supplementing our immune system with

[00:28:30] Andrew: where things like cancer are going to be eliminated because we're going to have smarter than our immune system

[00:28:35] Andrew: technology just run around in our

[00:28:37] Andrew: bloodstream, taking care of us. So, that'd be pretty cool. I could go on all day, but we'll stop there.

[00:28:42] Daniel: Yeah. It's things that they can like, it can be very cool. They can also be a dark side to it, So, yeah, I think it'll be really interesting to see what few years look like. And some that I have to try to remind myself of is some of the more childlike wonder I had when I was younger about some of that stuff and not being super pessimistic about it, which I tend to be more so getting older.

[00:29:09] Andrew: Yeah, Imagine 20 years ago when, if you would have thought about technology and someone was like, Hey, and down the road, we're going to have the ability to do virtual meetings with people, no metaphor stuff. And you're going to have these goggles that lets you see and interact with people with haptic feedback, the whole nine yards as if you were in person with someone, you can do it from anywhere in your home.

[00:29:34] Andrew: We would have been blown away and now it's here. We're like, well, I dunno if I like that. The headset's expensive. It's not perfect. The graphics aren't great. You know, we have all of our complaints. I don't even have one. I don't have like an Oculus quest or, you know, whatever they've got going on, but virtual reality headsets, I don't have one in it's such cool technology that I would have thought was amazing 20 years ago.

[00:29:57] Andrew: And it was completely. Completely off the radar for most people like that was the future. We are we have All the technology to do cool stuff virtual reality. And we're just kind of okay with it now. So heck we have drones you fly around and we have personal drones that you around They're unbelievably expensive and FAA the FAA is fan. But, you know, those are just hurdles. Technically, if we had the money and the drive, we go get ourselves little, you know, wars, speed, racer And that is cool. just don't look

[00:30:32] Andrew: as sharp we want them not as affordable we want And they're not as easy to drive hope they were So, yeah, you.

[00:30:40] Daniel: Yeah, for sure. All right. I'm going to pivot a little bit. I think I'm going to, save some of the I do like a lightning round at.

[00:30:48] Daniel: the end with some fun questions, but I, I am very curious to hear your answer to this question because it's something that I think about fairly often. So I would imagine you have to, but what is something you would say that you're better than 99% of the population at

[00:31:08] Andrew: it's funny. You bring that I was actually talking about that at.

[00:31:12] Andrew: work the other day. Because I think everyone believes that there's they have And I'm like well, the thing they hold on to gives them hope. Like, well, I might be having this or might be having a bad day at work blah, blah, blah.

[00:31:25] Andrew: But I'm probably the best person at this thing. And it, it might be something little like doing dishes or making tamales or whatever it everybody has something that they think that they're in like that top 1% of population. And so with that, that knowledge, know I'm not an exception, which means I also know not actually the top of anything for anyone, but if I was to say, what is my leading strength being in that higher population?

[00:31:57] Andrew: Like, what am I edging people out on? It probably the ability to, to into something kind of like. don't know the proper term for it, but being able to follow through on a challenging task it either be that, or it would be my cross dimensional problem solving skills being able to take a lot of disparate information and it into something.

[00:32:25] Andrew: That creates a solution. And sometimes those solutions are completely unnecessary, that is something I, think pretty well at, which is either, you know, working through a problem or coming up with solutions for problems that

[00:32:37] Andrew: are original and you know, pretty special.

[00:32:42] Andrew: I like to think what would yours

[00:32:44] Andrew: be?

[00:32:44] Daniel: I, I struggled to nail down a particular thing that the, so would you describe as as a cross dimensional problem solving, I would probably call a transformational thinking just based on some brain health class things that I've done. Cause they describe, wrote and wrote problem solving as basically, if you are needing to write a better computer program, then. you get better at it by like learning other computer programs. And you just, all you focus on is computer programming versus the transformational problem solving transformational thinking would say, okay, thinking about computer programming, but then. I was with my kid and I watched how they approached this thing. And it kind of reminded me of the problem that I have on this, you know, writing this language.

[00:33:32] Daniel: And I try to apply that and you come up with a different solution. Is the idea behind that. I think that's something I'm fairly good at as well. Because all the time in all sorts of random situations, I will be, you know, watching a show or I'll be, you know, at church or I'll be doing and something completely unrelated will make me think of something else, like a problem I, have. And I feel like it kind of unlocks us, oh, I should try this different, weird, random approach. And it seems so I I would say I'm right there with you on that. the only other one that I would say that maybe. Maybe I tend to do better than the average person is. It's just, I guess is probably the easiest way to describe it I feel like in the work setting I do a fairly good job of helping to explain what our problems are, what needs to happen, explaining why that needs to happen. Kind of getting people on board with that, dialoguing it through and just, you know, break something down for them.

[00:34:40] Daniel: And the real secret to that is just always using food metaphors because everybody relates to them.

[00:34:45] Andrew: That's good. And I can see that it's totally, you.

[00:34:49] Andrew: That's some good. Self-awareness

[00:34:50] Daniel: Yeah. Yeah. But like you said, I know if I was the best at any of those things, then I probably wouldn't be doing this podcast to our audience of just a million people. It'd be, you know, billions of people, obviously.

[00:35:10] Andrew: absolutely.

[00:35:11] Daniel: All right. We are

[00:35:13] Daniel: To the part of our podcast where I'm going to do a little bit of a lightning round in terms of questions. I don't think we've done it with a guest before. but I think you're up to the challenge. four questions answer fairly quickly

[00:35:26] Daniel: because we're running

[00:35:27] Daniel: low on time.

[00:35:28] Andrew: best. I'm a little

[00:35:32] Daniel: one

[00:35:32] Andrew: sometimes. So we

[00:35:33] Andrew: got this.

[00:35:34] Daniel: I'll start playing the Oscar music if needed. All right. First one is Shalome and Jasper are both

[00:35:40] Daniel: hanging from a cliff. You have the strength to pull both of them up, but if you do that, there's a 5% chance that you lose one of them. You don't know which one you would lose, or you can choose to save just one of them with 100% certainty.

[00:35:57] Daniel: Who do you pick or what do you pick?

[00:35:59] Andrew: Okay. let me make this lightening style story. This actually came up this morning. I, was talking about John wick being a masterpiece and how it's just amazing. And everybody should kill everyone involved with hurting their dog. Shalome a hundred percent said that she would sacrifice me for Jasper, not even thinking twice about it.

[00:36:17] Andrew: On the other hand, though, this was this morning, we were driving to the coffee shop. That's great. But I would unfortunately as much of a gambler as I am I would always choose the human over a dog. So I would take the a hundred percent chance of saving, saving Shalome over

[00:36:32] Andrew: Jasper, which would be unfortunate for me because then she would have. Positively

[00:36:37] Andrew: murder me right after, so

[00:36:39] Andrew: I would die, but unfortunately I would choose human as much as I love Jasper,

[00:36:44] Daniel: Okay. No, I, I think that's probably the most technically correct answer. I'm going to pose, I'm going to pose, the same question to you, but instead of Shalome and Jasper, it's the existence of donuts And coffee.

[00:36:59] Andrew: Ooh, you know what? I'll roll the dice on that one. I saved both. of them at the same time. I'm not, I'm not, I'm not being part of fate on that one. I'll let fate decide which one leaves my life.

[00:37:09] Daniel: I mean, there's, there's a 95% chance that you get to keep both.

[00:37:13] Daniel: So

[00:37:14] Andrew: Yeah, that's something I'm worth I'm okay with gambling on. I'm okay with gambling on just about everything. I just probably would not gamble on a dog against a human life.

[00:37:22] Andrew:

[00:37:22] Andrew: But I would do John wick things was the discussion this basically about, you know, whether it's okay to people and also the the train dilemma, the one-person versus the multi-tiered. And I was like, I would absolutely choose to kill the one person if it saves the group. And she's like, well, what if it's me?

[00:37:39] Andrew: I was like, Oh, yeah, totally

[00:37:40] Andrew: say you over the group. She's like, what if he didn't know it was me? And I was like, that's fine. I'd kill you because I would logically have to go with that. And I find out someone

[00:37:47] Andrew: puts you there and I have to go kill them. She's like, well, you're not allowed to kill people.

[00:37:50] Andrew: It's like this situation. I would like if John wick with a dog, I'd do it for humans too. She didn't like my answer.

[00:37:56] Daniel: Oh, I think that's a great answer. All right. How about this one? So would you have rather have been born a child star? So think like a that you've been wildly for most of your life. So if you've ever seen searching for sugar, man. that's, that's the premise of that

[00:38:13] Daniel: movie and it's a real story.

[00:38:14] Andrew: I have not seen I guess I need to go look into it.

[00:38:18] Andrew: So my gut answer

[00:38:19] Andrew: is I'd want to be the child star. Oh yeah. Give me.

[00:38:21] Daniel: Oh, I was to, yeah, I'll briefly explain. So for sugar, man. There's this dude who was a musician. I think he was in like Detroit or something like that. And the, like the seventies, it was before the internet he was not a great musician in terms of States.

[00:38:39] Daniel: Like just didn't blow up. Wasn't super popular. I think he had to basically stick with his day job of being a construction worker. But in South Africa was as popular as like the rolling stones and the Beatles, like same level of popularity and similar. And I think it was like New Zealand. so he finds out way after when he's much older that he is just hugely famous and these other countries.

[00:39:04] Daniel: So it's, it's pretty entertaining. It's worth checking out

[00:39:07] Andrew: So that is something that is special about technology now is now you'd find out, like if you were a musician, you did your thing and you get a big following in another country, like, oh, that's easy and it's not too hard to get your content in front of them. 2030 years ago, nine possible. There's actually multiple people in the Amarillo and I'll send you some, you know what, shout out to them a sad Zillow's one of them it's a local Amarillo rapper and has almost no Amarillo following huge and other places in the world.

[00:39:32] Andrew: And he's really, really talented very little local following and massive non Amarilla following. It's kinda cool. So there's a couple of people like that name or who actually, but that's wild. To answer your question, I would say. I want to, I would like the child star because to me that's like, Hey, do you know Harry Potter?

[00:39:49] Andrew: And that cast they're doing great, freaking great. At our age, like they are, they get to do they want You know Radcliffe just picks weird fun movies he wants to be a part of because he's never going to need money again. That sounds like a great trait to me that said, if I do, you know, a bit of a risk analysis, It seems like 90% of these child stars get completely jacked up.

[00:40:11] Andrew: And I don't know if I would So,

[00:40:14] Andrew: I'm going to go with the since I already childhood thing. I like who I am as a I would like to randomly be and famous more hopefully my writing or maybe the like

[00:40:25] Andrew: that.

[00:40:26] Daniel: Yeah, make it the podcast, then that way I get

[00:40:28] Daniel: to be a part of it with you.

[00:40:29] Andrew: Yeah, come on this gravy train Let's go

[00:40:31] Andrew: to Argentina.

[00:40:33] Daniel: Okay. in the season of Christmas, our last two questions are. If somebody was to basically, it's a wonderful life from your life, like vanish and have never existed in your life. Who is the person that you feel like would have the most impact would change your life the most? If all of a sudden they had not been a part of it?

[00:40:57] Andrew: Wow. That's tough. If I'm allowed

[00:41:02] Andrew: to not sacrifice any of my close friends or family, I'm going to say Sanderson or maybe Rothfus. Cause you know, those are very influential writers to me oh my God, Toki, no Lord of the

[00:41:11] Andrew: rings. But I th I know that's not the spirit of the question, so nevermind. Let me actually backtrack.

[00:41:15] Daniel: No, no, no. You, you can go that route. Cause I'm going to flip the question and, you know, as, as much as it's going to hurt you to hear this, I don't think Sandra says life is going to change. If you weren't a part of it.

[00:41:26] Andrew: You would not even notice his cells in Amarillo would maybe drop by like 15 or 20 people, but that's about it. He wouldn't even know his regional publisher might be like, huh, that's weird. We had a very tiny blip lost about a hundred dollars. I that's tough, you know, right now I'd probably say Shalome because she's probably where I spend the most time.

[00:41:46] Andrew: She is who you know, if you take my day or week or months and dice it.

[00:41:52] Andrew: in whatever way you want, she's going to probably have 80% of my day in terms of communication and time spent together and impact everything like that. If you take my life on a much broader scale you know, roll all the way out for the full 30 years.

[00:42:05] Andrew: And the swarm has only been in the last couple you know, you could basically pick a. Some key figures from my friend group, you know, Daniel obviously would be included in this elementary school friends had different effects. My parents would probably be pretty big because I would probably be a superhero if I was an orphan, but, you know, thanks mom and dad for living, but that would probably have a drastic difference in my life is, you know, not having either one of them in some form or fashion for the flip, since I'm trying to keep this quick on the lightning round.

[00:42:31] Andrew: It would probably be again Shalome if we're talking immediate timelines if he is spinning out a little bit further I would probably get. One of my immediate family members either my parents or one of my siblings probably just Matthew. I think, I think my sisters would not notice one way or another.

[00:42:47] Andrew: I'd probably be a lot happier or at least have less trauma from their childhood. Well, sorry guys. But you know, my parents probably if I had to choose between the two of them, probably my dad would have more,

[00:42:59] Andrew: he'd be more effective if I vanished and my mom would be in terms of.

[00:43:02] Andrew: Where he's at in life. I think my mom would be more emotional about it, but that might just be sexism coming through on me. I don't know.

[00:43:11] Daniel: Well, yeah, I mean, you do help your run your dad's business. So that's a tangible impact.

[00:43:20] Andrew: He would at least have a lot less hair.

[00:43:22] Andrew: Now. I know this is my lightning round, but did you, when you,

[00:43:25] Andrew: were forming these. Come up with anybody besides Hillary

[00:43:28] Andrew: Riley.

[00:43:28] Daniel: I think the most obvious answer potentially parents Although in reality, I, I think it would probably be one of my siblings more so than my parents. If we're talking long-term life impacts because, um, You know, obviously my parents helped to mold and shape me, and I think there was some molding and shaping that happens, you know, going that direction as well. But I think if we're talking about who would have the most impact on like whose life would change the most probably death or Christie is my guess.

[00:44:04] Andrew: I think, I think Christie might fall on the same campus. My

[00:44:07] Andrew: sister's.

[00:44:08] Daniel: No, there there are deep bonds there that nobody, nobody knows

[00:44:13] Andrew: Oh, my goodness. Oh, did y'all catch something on fire? I didn't tell any of us.

[00:44:18] Daniel: no, no, no. That's, it's just that we sometimes text each other in Spanish. That's what it is.

[00:44:24] Andrew: SI SI.

[00:44:25] Daniel: Okay, well, you've succeeded through the lightening round. So that means you've earned your right to story time. You knew it was coming, even though I knew it was coming, I still struggled to come up with a story, but is there anything in particular that you want to share with the audience that has not come up in a previous podcast?

[00:44:44] Andrew: You know what? Yes, because this came up a couple of weeks ago. There's a lot of stories that involve Daniel and I, that somehow have not made it into this podcast. Despite other people who've been on the podcast?

[00:44:55] Andrew: being involved in them. There's also plenty of stories where we've flirted with danger, which sounds very romantic and exciting.

[00:45:03] Andrew: And it mostly was just us being that at making decisions and climbing things we shouldn't, but none of those stories are what's going to make it the other day. I was telling this, and this happens at my office a lot, this is not the story. This is a story about the story for the moment. Periodically at the office, something will come up and I forget about how other people perceive you.

[00:45:26] Andrew: And this goes for all of you listening. This is everyone we know people do not see you the way you see yourself and they don't know about your past or where you come from, that kind of stuff. And so in my mind, I'm an interesting guy. I think I'm cool and interesting. Okay. Maybe not cool, but I think I'm interesting.

[00:45:40] Andrew: I've got some to Nash and I've got some magic. I have a lot of stories to tell them a lot of history, semi rich history for my age. But most people don't think about that. I realized that because they just work with me or they just run into me at the coffee shop or whatever it is, the baristas they don't know about Daniel and climbing things and, you know, red rocks or some of the crazy stuff for Denver, all the different. So this stuff will come up at the office specifically. There's a whole group of girls that work in our customer support relations team, and they all just think I'm just, you know, this guy that is their boss and he just kinda sits there and. Plays around with his laptop, with his stomach is about kind of thing.

[00:46:23] Andrew: And then I'm just kind of a average Joe kind of guy, I guess. So things will pop out every once in a while, they'll mention something they'll ask about something. I'll have some advice relating to one thing or another. So when they found out about the fight clubs that we used to have, that blew their minds, when they find out about the tattoos I have for whatever reason that really blew their minds all these different things kind of. Throw them for a trip. So one of those stories that came up, this is actually the baristas, not the girls at the office. It was day of the ninja, December 5th, which was roughly 20 days ago. And I'd forgotten, this is the first year that I like truly forgot about a day of the ninja until we were going to the coffee shop.

[00:47:02] Andrew: I just left the gym, picked up Shalome and getting our palace. And I was like, holy crap. It's December 5th. That's my. Like one of my favorites, why I love the fifth, November 5th, December 5th, or to my favorite non holiday days of the year, because remember if it's in November and then December is today.

[00:47:21] Andrew: So I used to celebrate December 5th, a little more. Aggressively then is recommended or is or necessary because I'm pretty sure it was just a burger chain who made this holiday up. And we from the very first I remember was asking ninja.

[00:47:39] Andrew: So. One of these December, the Fitz, and I was telling Shalome this and it just, it blew her mind. And while I was telling her, I was one of the baristas was listening. You could just see they're like, who this man? This is not the guy who comes in and spends too much money on coffee. is he? Like, is happening here? I am being punked. The story we are in high we're a little bit faster and more agile at least I am now. Daniel is actually still there, I think, but we dress up as an entrance and this was a three-part experience of bad decisions for that The first part, we went to the mall dressed as ninjas and mind you, we're not that old.

[00:48:18] Andrew: This was post nine 11 and the mall security is on point. I still don't know where they came from, how they saw us coming so fast, but we didn't get past the four year in the mall before we had security on us kicking us out. I mean, it was embarrassing and we tried all of the fast talking we could, but dudes with masks in 2022, there's probably would have actually gotten better 20, 21.

[00:48:40] Andrew: But in 2008, was a big no-no. So we got our asses kicked out real quick So the mall was best buy. And we're like, well, that was really anti-climatic. We had like six guys dressed as ninjas we saw like one child got to recognize our ninja NES ninja ESC selves before. Soon to best buy and best buy.

[00:49:00] Andrew: We ha we saw lots of people. Lots of people commented on it. We got some weird played some guitar hero. blast. was a time. We did our thing. We wandered around, enjoyed ourselves and we and we're like, wow, why can't everybody be like best buy and back to best buy.

[00:49:17] Andrew: Don't worry. Remember that it had no idea anything was going And then later that night we. Went to the skate park, almost gotten multiple fights because I guess that's what you do when you see a dude in a ninja outfit is you want to fight them. Everybody ended up being cool in the end, but it was this little touch and go what were trying park or at the skate park.

[00:49:36] Andrew: And then one of the weirdest things we did was had a minivan we got one of those curb stops that you have at parking lots. I have rebar going through them. They go into the ground and they stop your car. If you far forward, they're very heavy, like hundreds and hundreds of pounds of heavy somehow.

[00:49:54] Andrew: 2 3, 4 of us. able into this minivan and paper to someone's yard ninjas and drops to this parking and a toilet in their yard. And what's interesting about that is traditional family. Can't move a parking stop out of their yard. got guy in the house, generally that. You know, as a dad and he could maybe do a little work, but it was heavy enough that most of the girls in the house can't move it. And this was the case with this house. So we actually had to go tell them to stop calling the police and let us remove it for them because they thought that it was something more ridiculous than we thought it was.

[00:50:26] Andrew: So we took care of that. Now, mind you, this was December the fifth, December 6th. I think it was a Monday. I go back to school and one of our friends that was. Associated with those, but didn't do the ninja thing and didn't quite keep up with our day-to-day shenanigans is telling us because he works at best buy about the terrorists that came to best buy yesterday and all the police that showed up after we left and how they had like four undercover.

[00:50:51] Andrew: Cops tailing us and everybody's freaking out. And the whole place basically shut down. And we basically ruined his day because it went wild and they lost their minds and it was, they were on high alert for terrorist all day. It was. It was a big problem at best buy. And he told us this and we're like, God, that was us.

[00:51:13] Andrew: His name was Micah. And that was us. And he's like, no, we're like, yeah, we're just being ninjas. He's like, oh my goodness. We had like corporate on the line, they had police coming. They had a plan to take y'all down. We were like inches away from

[00:51:29] Andrew: going to jail and we had no idea. So that is my story that

[00:51:34] Andrew: doesn't ever seem to come up in casual conversation that did come up the other day and blew the barista in Swami's mind.

[00:51:40] Daniel: I about half of that story, which is of, I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing, it just goes to show how unaware we were of the impacts of our actions.

[00:51:56] Andrew: It was a fun day, though. It was a fun day.

[00:51:58] Daniel: Oh, it was, it was a blast. I, I definitely do it now, but I'm glad that we did it then.

[00:52:06] Daniel: Glad we did it for the story.

[00:52:08] Andrew: a slightly more trigger. Happy, undercover cop. Might've taken us out. Good times.

[00:52:13] Daniel: Oh man. That's a great story. So is your challenge to be more ninja, like, and to go and get best buy your business because of all of the, uh, terrorist activities that we incited as children.

[00:52:32] Andrew: As much as I would like to recommend that to people as a challenge. I don't think That's a good idea. Instead, let me lean into something we talked about earlier, you talked about. The that 1%, what do you think you are better that than most of the world? I want people to think about that. And one recognize that you probably aren't the best person in the world at that thing you think you are, but that is okay.

[00:52:54] Andrew: And it's really important to lean

[00:52:56] Andrew: into that skill. If you have something like that,

[00:52:58] Andrew: that's what you should be building up. That's what

[00:53:00] Andrew: you should be working on. So figure out what that is and make a plan on how to improve it. That's my challenge for you guys.

[00:53:06] Daniel: I love it. That's a great challenge. I will be doing the same. Let's be honest. I already do that every day. So, nevermind. I'm not going to do your challenge. I already do your challenge all the time.

[00:53:21] Andrew: I don't know how to take that

[00:53:22] Daniel: No, it's a good thing. I promise. Well, thank you

[00:53:26] Andrew: out of your mouth.

[00:53:27] Daniel: Oh man. for coming by your podcast, Andrew, our podcast, uh, it was very fun to turn the table on you to get to ask some of these questions. Um, and you know, I think we did a good job of starting pretty serious and getting pretty goofy by the end. I mean, closing out with, uh, running around best buy as ninjas.

[00:53:50] Daniel: You can't get much goofier than

[00:53:51] Daniel: that.

[00:53:53] Andrew: No, I

[00:53:54] Andrew: am worried about Shalome murdering me if she

[00:53:56] Andrew: listens to this one though, because I don't think she wants the world to know how little, I mean to her compared to Jasper.

[00:54:01] Daniel: Yeah, you, you kind of did the double there because you dropped that and then you said I would the option to 100% saved Alami. So you, you really painted yourself as the hero in the relationship.

[00:54:13] Andrew:

[00:54:13] Andrew: Well, a hero does what a hero does and usually that's what Andrew did. That's my motto.

[00:54:19] Daniel: Yes. Living with valor. All right, everybody. We appreciate you taking the time

[00:54:25] Daniel: to listen. This is dead by tomorrow. We hope that you have a Merry Christmas and a happy new year. Whenever you're listening to this, if you're listening to it in July. Well, you know, Christmas is halfway here, so it still applies. But thanks for coming by. We appreciate you all.[00:00:20] Daniel: Hi guys. And welcome back to dead by tomorrow. This is not your normal intro host because your normal intro host Andrew Monroe is going to be the subject of the podcast. Today. We're going to be interviewing Andrew. We're going to be finding out all of his deepest, darkest secrets. Hopefully we can get on to slip up and admit something that he didn't want to on a recording so that we can hold it over him forever. But in reality, I'm really excited to just turn the microphone, so to speak onto Andrew, dive in a little bit more on some of his mindsets, some of his decision-making, maybe some fun stuff along the way. So like when we did the interview with me, obviously you guys know Andrew, we've been doing this podcast for a while, written a book. Maybe you'll learn something A little bit new. So Andrew, welcome onto your podcast. How's your day going?

[00:01:17] Andrew: Um, I'm thrilled to be here. Thanks for inviting me. It's been a good day. my family is in town for. A little early, but we went and got coffee this morning. Just some last minute Christmas shopping over at target because it is not a weekend. If we do not go to target. And I just got to an apex probably 10 minutes ago.

[00:01:39] Andrew: So that nice and Yeah, it's been day.

[00:01:43] Daniel: Yeah, that, that sounds like a great day. Well, to, to kick us off, I'm not going to start super, super deep with our questions. I'm not going to give you a softball to begin in. Part of that is because we're going to do a little experiment experiments too, too strong of a word, butI, I want to start out talking a little bit about just um, identities because. I'm curious as we go through some other questions and stuff that's, you know, a little bit lighter. If, if some of what you identify as identity has kind of shaped some of those, those little things. So maybe it'll be an interesting one for you to even listen back to, and maybe identify some things that you hadn't before. So without further ado, what would you say is, is your most core identity or some of your most core identity characteristics?

[00:02:40] Andrew: That is a tough one. So I'm going to keep it with three and we're going to start with words because I think words are a little bit easier to work with. So. Valor. I'm sure a lot of, people have heard it. It's kind of an interesting, the definition is probably not what a lot of people think. And to me, that's kind of one of the words that I kind of shaped my life around is trying to be full of valor. And I'm sure there's a better way to use that noun, but basically to me, being courageous is a big. I guess And so it doesn't necessarily mean I do intelligent things. If, if the opportunity arises to do something that I'm afraid of or that challenges me I kinda lean into it. So that's one of the words we'll we'll go with two more. One is magic. the second or third, depending on how you're counting right now would probably be pinash. So pinash is Cyrano de Bergerac was the introduction to that word. And I love that book and I love the concept. He was also a guy that really dug into valor. So magic is kind of a silly one, but I think it's a fun word to me.

[00:03:53] Andrew: Magic is. kind of this core feature of my personality, or at least a desired core personality that I try and bring creativity and challenge, you know, people's preconceived notions and I know that's not the definition of magic, but that's kind of what I think about my head is magic is the sense of wonder and tilt in your perspective.

[00:04:14] Andrew: So that creative way to look at different things, bring a little magic. So there's magic and just it's a sense of style, kind of a bold in your face aggressive style. And I kind of dig that so that's one of the things I try and go for is maybe not exactly going against the grain, but definitely being sure follow my own path and not falling for. What might be considered mainstream or the standard. Now there's nothing wrong with doing something mainstream but punish reminds me not to do something because it's mainstream too. If I want to go that route, need to be sure that's who, you know, that matches up with my values. Not because everybody else is doing So Does that cover uh some core identities so that help start this off.

[00:04:57] Daniel: Yeah, for sure. and so when you think about valor magic and pinash are those characteristics that you came out of the womb having, are those things that you sort of cultivated and grown over the years? Are those things that others have spoken into you, you know, where, where is some of the story to those identities?

[00:05:26] Andrew: definitely on the side of the fence of nurture. I think there are some things that are definitely natural or even genetically inclined and a lot of people but when it comes to your personality and your principles and your values, obviously to me, that is, that is purely nurture. So they were definitely learned. I think a lot of it came with reading far many books. Um and it also Had to do with the people I grew up with uh you know, how my family interacted with me uh what people kind spoken to existence me up until this day have shaped me. it's, it's definitely a nurture people have. Either subconsciously or consciously influenced in me.

[00:06:08] Daniel: I, I think nurture is huge. I think some of the nature can store. Be there, there can

[00:06:16] Daniel: be a little bit of that sort of starting point that maybe

[00:06:20] Daniel: maybe causes people to nurture certain things or you to nurture certain things in yourself. And then

[00:06:25] Daniel: it, it becomes more. But sometimes there are things that maybe naturally we weren't that great at, but you just

[00:06:30] Daniel: see somebody and you're like, wow, that's amazing.

[00:06:32] Daniel: I want to, you know, have more valor in my

[00:06:36] Daniel: life or panache or whatever it is And then that nurture can, can really take over. And so again, thinking through some of those is there something maybe within the past week where you know, you made that decision with one of those three things in mind of all I've got this path in front of me.

[00:06:56] Daniel: What do I do? going to default to the choice that demonstrates or whatever.

[00:07:03] Andrew: I wish I had in the last week and much, a much more meaningful. So to say, answer for this. But the first thing that jumps to mind is I got some new paints. they are, these indigo slug priest pants. and I'm saying that probably completely wrong. But they are these pants that look kind of goofy.

[00:07:24] Andrew: And they're like this weird mix between sweat pants and like work pants almost. It's like an upgraded, sweat panic, I should say. And they're, they have a goofy design and Shalome does not like them, but I love them. They are this bold very unique pattern, this like deep indigo blue with all these like blues and whites traced in between It They're kind of loud. They're not like loud, like printed on the sides kind of pants, but they are, they're definitely a bold color and a bold pattern for uh, for me. So that was one of the things where the pinash comes in, where I'm like really leaning into these sweat pants that I've been wearing.

[00:08:07] Andrew: A lot this week, actually, because it's been cold and they're warm and they just, I think they look like a blast and I have not had great feedback on them, but I'm still digging them.

[00:08:18] Daniel: No, I think that's, that's a really good example. I mean, the whole between the core identity I feel is that they show

[00:08:27] Daniel: up all of the little things And maybe you had a major life decision happened within the past week, but that's probably not a normal normal week for any of us.

[00:08:37] Andrew: things where, you know the way you do small stuff, you know, if you're brave enough to wear the goofy sweat pants or too bold shirt, or, know to dress an elevated style compared to the rest of the community you're in, or, you know, maybe it's the other direction.

[00:08:53] Andrew: I know you rock this Uh Daniel's not afraid to wear. Very basic clothing to just about any event. And that is actually something I suck it, you know, this is formal dining, I'm wearing something formal and lacked the bravery there to wear a t-shirt to it. But um the way you do the little things translate into the big stuff You know you make those big life choices. If you're not used to, you know, leaning into your personality, it's easier to do what is expected of you or what other people think should do instead of which you probably know is the actual choice you should make.

[00:09:26] Daniel: Yeah. And

[00:09:27] Daniel: I think something that. Happens to a lot of us is we have moments of

[00:09:33] Daniel: sort of identity crisis where for whatever reason, one of our

[00:09:38] Daniel: things that we felt was core to who we are, get stripped away for one, one reason or the other. I mean, it, it

[00:09:46] Daniel: could be,

[00:09:47] Daniel: I know a lot of

[00:09:47] Daniel: people put a lot of

[00:09:48] Daniel: identity in work.

[00:09:49] Daniel: And so obviously losing a

[00:09:50] Daniel: job can really cause you to lose out on a Porter part of your

[00:09:53] Daniel: core identity um, for you, you know, maybe it's a situation where you

[00:09:59] Daniel: want to act and valor, but

[00:10:00] Daniel: you are just petrified in fear of a decision in front of you. And no matter how much you try to rewire your brain, like

[00:10:09] Daniel: that drives your decision making.

[00:10:10] Daniel: And I think that can be, you

[00:10:11] Daniel: know, a blow

[00:10:12] Daniel: to some of your identity. So is there

[00:10:15] Daniel: a scenario where you feel like that's come up where you've had to cope with that and work through something like.

[00:10:22] Andrew: I'll give you one that I'm still dealing with actually. And I still haven't figured out if I made the right choice from her. so this is not necessarily, I for sure. It was like, oh, I didn't. Choose the valor or I didn't choose pinash, but it goes in with valor.

[00:10:38] Andrew: And basically it was a year. ago, a little less than a year ago. My father came to me And was like, Hey, I need you to come back to work for me and everything I'd heard, you know, about pursuing your own dreams. And that kind of thing was like, Hey, people are going to send, offers your way. They're going to have all these great sending opportunities. Be strong enough To stay the path. and for me, I ended up taking the offer and going back to help my dad with his business and do all that kind of jazz. And so that cost me a lot on my sort of say passions that I was pursuing and what I'd kinda quit planes, internet to chase down. It was financially pretty beneficial. and I still learned plenty of stuff, got some new skills throughout the year. And I still got to work on some other passions like this podcast And there's other aspects of my life. That's still gained from that But in the end, the reason first place um I didn't really get to pursue my writing career and that. marketing agency that I really wanted to spin up. to me, it was almost, it was almost like a took the coward's way out because there was either the uncertain future with uncertain amounts of money, or there was a certain future where I already knew kind of how that process has worked and how to make things better. And there was definitive financial incentive that I knew, okay, I'm going to make this much money. So to me, it still bugs me that I took that option. At the same time. Sometimes you got to cut your losses or you going to take a break. We've talked about that. I think it was just the last episode where you have to say no to certain opportunities to better the people around you, better yourself and, you know, come back down the road to try and really pursue them. So that's kind of what I'm hoping happens But right now I still don't know I don't know if I took the coward's path or not, which bugs me.

[00:12:29] Daniel: Well, and this is the second time that you've gone to work for your dad, right?

[00:12:36] Andrew: Yes.

[00:12:36] Daniel: So, well, well, I mean, I, I am curious though, having made that decision quite twice and now being a year into the second one, I don't, you just said maybe you don't have it all figured out yet, but I am curious if there is still this question, mark of, was it counter to identity or is it a situation where maybe, maybe there's other motivations, some other identities that played into that?

[00:13:05] Daniel: The, you know, that, that is something that I feel like it's. Analyzing cause that is a big life decision. so like you said, it could be a situation of just leaning into the, oh, the unknown is scary. Maybe it

[00:13:18] Daniel: sort of a decision that was based on cowardice. Maybe, maybe that is the case, or maybe it was, you know, a situation where you were trying to be strategic about, the

[00:13:30] Daniel: path that is in front of you and and just, know, thinking about, you know how you still could ultimately flip this into being something that, was a valor or Parnassus decision or, you know third option could be that there is another aspect of your identity that trumped those other ones at the time, which you know, could be I, I, don't know. I don't know what that could be. You know, it, it just, kind of depends on you thought through And making that decision. So. I expect you to have it all figured out in the next 30 seconds.

[00:14:03] Andrew: Well, so like anything in real life, it's almost never as cut and dry as we try And present certain choices on our podcast. And in this know some of the major factors that came into influence what I was doing. Uh, first, uh, this is going to sound maybe a, little ridiculous. Um, Really really, really, really can't say no to somebody asking for, help.

[00:14:26] Andrew: If someone's like, Hey Andrew, can you help me with this? I go, I just, my little hero complex from reading too many fantasy novels or watching too many action movies, whatever it is kicks in. And it's, it is near impossible for me to say no. And if I do say no to somebody asking for help, I just feel awful.

[00:14:44] Andrew: It eats me up. Forever. Oh, it's terrible. so that was the first factor was my dad presented like, Hey, I need help. And that is really hard for me to say, And the second factor was he offered me a lot of money. And part of what I was trying to do requires a, You know, you need to be financially solid for, or be able to float yourself for, awhile and having an additional funds would help with that. So that. was another factor on the same vein. I had been doing the self-employed thing for a year, and it. had been a very rough year uh, made almost no money doing it. Um, COVID hit roughly 30 days after, after I started. So my timing was really off and it made it very difficult to start up sort of say new business. And I had told myself. you get this year. and if at the end of the year, you haven't at least started generating some form of a steady income. Um, You've got to go do something else. And this is where it gets a little dicey, you know, COVID did not just last months or six months, we were still long into it And you know, that that was a year. ago and we're still rolling with So I, in part of it, I feel like I didn't get a fair shot at trying to say. But that said, I hit that in mark and I was dealing with these self promise of, Hey, months to deal with life And if you can't it into gear in 12 months, you're not hard enough and you need to go find something less risky.

[00:16:14] Andrew: And at the same time that's when my dad came asked him for help Offering lots of money. So uh there's a mix of those factors. Um Along with it.

[00:16:23] Andrew: we had a expiration date on the help. We agreed to basically a year. It started in February, February 1st. So. At the end of January, technically my year's up.

[00:16:34] Andrew: And then I need to decide what I'm going to do there if we're going to keep going forward or if if I need to do something else. part of me was saying okay I can go do this thing. going to help in a lot of different ways, both me and other people. And then I can still come back around and try again. Thinking COVID would have been long, long gone by that point. So we'll see. there's, there's all

[00:16:56] Daniel: Yeah.

[00:16:56] Andrew: and there's plenty of other stuff, you know, there's relationships, there's, there's this stuff. What I'm trying to say though, is lot of really good positive reasons that I want to do it Um but that doesn't change that there was a lot of fear in the unknown as well. more than likely helped influence me going towards or gravitating towards certain positive aspects of that path. I took.

[00:17:17] Andrew: It's never cut or

[00:17:18] Daniel: Yeah, well, and, and what I see from some of that decision and, full disclosure, you know, I have no degrees in psychology. I can't even claim to be Brita and be like, you know, psychology student or anything like that. But I'm glad that you that you brought up the fact that you really struggled to say no to somebody that needs help, because if I were to come on And say, all right, Andrew, what are some of the

[00:17:51] Andrew: Yeah.

[00:17:51] Daniel: that I see as core

[00:17:52] Daniel: identities? I feel like that's of the ones I would put really high up there that you're somebody that really wants to. Um, come through for other people, You really want to, with friends, with your family, be that person that's really reliable, really trustworthy. And somebody that

[00:18:10] Daniel: you know is a go-to type of person.

[00:18:11] Daniel: I'd, I'd put that very high on

[00:18:15] Daniel: on your identities. And so to me, I F I feel like with

[00:18:19] Daniel: that decision, and we talked through

[00:18:21] Daniel: it together a fair bit at the time,

[00:18:24] Daniel: I feel like there was a little bit of this clash of that desire that you do have that I think is a really big part of your personality, but then also kind of seeing that, making that decision might be in contrast to some of the other things that are parts of your personality and parts that you really want to feed into, you know, being the uh, especially kind of the pinash side of things and kind of blazing your own trail.

[00:18:48] Daniel: So you had a little bit of this sort of conflict in either decision, you made kind of what. Partially true to you, but also partially not true to you. and I think those are some of the really tough decisions to work through, but I think he did it well

[00:19:03] Andrew: Yeah, I don't really know how to describe the follow through kind of thing, but I kind of lump it under the valor side of life. Because to me it's kind of a doing things that you don't want to do because as much as I need to help people, I almost never actually want to, which is no offense to anyone.

[00:19:21] Andrew: It's just a, Hey, can you help me move? I don't, I don't actually want to get up, go help somebody move things right.

[00:19:29] Andrew: Yeah, go my way. Like that's,

[00:19:31] Andrew: it's a chunk of

[00:19:31] Andrew: time. It's not something I actually want to do. It's just something

[00:19:33] Andrew: that like, part of me is like, oh, you have to do

[00:19:35] Andrew: this because that's, that's part of that valor kind of thing.

[00:19:38] Andrew: At least that's,

[00:19:39] Andrew: how I see it. So I appreciate the recognition on, I appreciate the kind words.

[00:19:43] Daniel: Yeah, of course. Okay. I want to jump into a little bit more of a fun question now. Even though, think that's some serious implications.

[00:19:54] Daniel: I actually asked this of Hillary the other day and we had a long conversation about it. So if you were in a situation you could travel back in time, 10 years all the knowledge that you have right now, but you lose 10 years from your overall life expectancy, or you can jump forward

[00:20:14] Andrew: Man. I want to hear how this conversation went for you and Hillary at some point. Cause that sounds like it must have been fun to me. This is easy. I would a hundred percent do that. 10 years forward, $5 million in the bank and an extra 10 healthy. And here's why, let me, let me give my rationale I burned at the stake, if I'm answering this wrong.

[00:20:34] Andrew: So first is to me, one the more important. Aspects there like that's your most important currency. So giving up 10 years kind of an like, Hey, 10 years ago, you can go invest in Bitcoin and have hundreds of of dollars or dollars if you are smart.

[00:20:54] Andrew: That's what you're saying is you trade out 10 years for billions of And on one hand that's not a trade. And people I do would take that trade, but $5 million. And an additional 10 years of life is more important to me than $10 million. And along with that, you never know happen in 10 years.

[00:21:16] Andrew: That might get me much closer to us having better health and longevity techniques. I know that's something that a lot of modern medicines working on. And the goal is maybe not like extending our lives. You know, far have heard numbers like we're aiming for, you know, average life expectancy to be 130 years know 50, 60 years.

[00:21:38] Andrew: would be cool, the problem they want to fix is they want you to have good 130 years or a hundred years. They don't want you to be hitting. 75 85, 95, and basically losing half your mind, half your mobility or more so to me, getting that extra 10 years gets me that much closer to having a much better, you know, last quarter of life and $5 million is all you really need.

[00:22:05] Andrew: Honestly. If you go through a $5 million in the stock market, you're living off of basically a hundred thousand dollars worth

[00:22:10] Andrew: of dividends a year, and that's awesome. And the money is going to keep growing. And especially if you're talking

[00:22:16] Andrew: about another 40. Assuming no economic crisis. You're good to

[00:22:19] Andrew: go.

[00:22:20] Andrew: So that's why I go that direction.

[00:22:22] Daniel: Yeah, I think, I think that's fair. The only thing that would keep me from saying

[00:22:27] Andrew: Yeah.

[00:22:27] Daniel: hundred percent, yes. Even though I probably would make the same decision the fact that you're, you're basically missing the next 10 years. Whatever happens over the next 10 years, you're you're effectively asleep for, and that's kinda hard because in this trade off, you. Like for me, if I think about, wow, I don't see ages one through 11 for Riley. That'd be, that'd be pretty hard. But then I guess I have to think the other way of, okay. If I went back in time, 10 years, yes. I don't, I don't miss anything. I get to relive some things that were pretty fun. Maybe make some better decisions.

[00:23:06] Daniel: But then I miss 10 years at the end, like later on in Riley's life and grandchildren and some of those types of things. So that's kind of, that's what I think about is what am I, missing out on in terms of life? Because either direction you're right. Like basically money-wise, you'll be okay if you went back in time, like you'll really be okay if you're smart with money. so

[00:23:30] Andrew: Yeah,

[00:23:31] Andrew: It's been a while, 10 years for the. Well, that was, that was kinda my guests because you, and I think very similarly, so I assumed you were probably going to do the same thing I did. And generally it seems like the women in our lives think drastically different than, than we do. And it could at least in my case, I bet if I go national. I would almost guarantee she'd do the go backwards in time.

[00:23:53] Andrew: And I just assumed that Hillary would probably be the same way where I think she just, she thinks differently than you do. I, I see it. And this is one of those things that definitely would be how certain people, like I there's just this personality divide of these people do this thing because it's a guaranteed money and No, FOMO basically.

[00:24:11] Andrew: Versus. I'm I'm basically gambling and you like to gamble as well. And our women do not gamble. And that's, what it is. We're gambling on a better outcome down the road than a Sherwin. Cause going back in time, that's a sure win and you lose something at the end, but it's a sure win going forward. 5 million is nice, but

[00:24:30] Andrew: maybe,

[00:24:31] Andrew: maybe the American dollar is not worth

[00:24:32] Andrew: much in 10 years, So, and you know, maybe you're completely out of your skill set.

[00:24:37] Andrew: So it's, it's a gamble

[00:24:38] Andrew: going forward. So this is definitely like a gambler's dilemma.

[00:24:41] Daniel: Yeah. No, that's, that's totally fair. And so I figured you would going forward 10 years, cause I know you, and you talked a little bit about medical advancements, but one thing I'm curious about, because I

[00:24:54] Daniel: think amongst our friend group, you have the more you more than anybody, else's kind of at different tech enhancements that are coming and are excited about it.

[00:25:02] Daniel: So what future tech would you be most excited about and kind of has come to fruition in that next 10 years or in your expanded lifetime that you'd have in that city?

[00:25:15] Andrew: So obviously the longevity uh, health stuff. I think that that is something that we aren't really. Unless you're in the right kind of areas of life. That's not necessarily when anybody's talking about it, where a bunch of advancements are being made. And it's because they're not really big. It's not like we have cured cancer, which is big.

[00:25:35] Andrew: But the thing is, is we're making all these really, really small, incremental steps all over the place. And by kind of chipping away at the health system as a whole and by health system, I mean, Or our human understanding of what makes us tick and what keeps us alive and what kills us. We're slowly chipping away at death, I guess you can say.

[00:25:57] Andrew: And It's these tiny, tiny little chips, just like a, a Mason with marble a stone sculptor. And they're just these little tiny, tiny things And it's, it's not as big as these big booms that we expect from technology. It's like, like the internet has been reinvented. making all these small changes. And I think those going to add up over time. 10 20 years down the road. We're just going to be really good at keeping people alive in a positive way I honestly think that we don't keep in a positive way. Most of the time there's a lot of stuff where we do

[00:26:31] Andrew: something really well really good for someone that 50 years ago, we couldn't.

[00:26:36] Andrew: And I think going forward, we're going to actually have not only are we going to be saving lives, but we're going to be increasing life quality right now, a lot of saving lives comes with a decrease in life quality sometimes to an unacceptable degree in my mind. So I think that's going to get fixed. We might not actually live longer, but I think we're going to have higher quality lives in less COVID 27 wipes us.

[00:26:59] Andrew: So. That's one thing I think wearables are going to get really interesting. I'm hoping. So I love the idea of an AR integration kind of glasses thing, where you ditch the cell phones. And we have basically Google lenses perfected and we've got AR overlays and just a whole, a whole slew of small day-to-day tasks that.

[00:27:26] Andrew: Either made a lot more simple or a lot better, and there's going to be some trade-offs. Um, We talked about this just the other day, a little bit. I think there's going to be some really big issues with people disconnecting and we're going to start getting, we already rely on technology whole lot. I think some people is going to be such a crutch that if their, their lenses break their glasses of smart glasses that I think are.

[00:27:49] Andrew: If they break or if they lose internet technology or maybe they don't leave their city because they lose internet while they're driving or they're flying. I think that could become a problem. But in general, a lot of stuff like, cooking and manual skills that, you know, able to follow YouTube video at the same time you're doing it And it's overlaid in AR over what doing. think that's going to really some of stuff for people I'm pretty excited for Part of the health thing I hope for this still completely Saifai, really hoping for some banana machines that we can replacing or at least supplementing our immune system with

[00:28:30] Andrew: where things like cancer are going to be eliminated because we're going to have smarter than our immune system

[00:28:35] Andrew: technology just run around in our

[00:28:37] Andrew: bloodstream, taking care of us. So, that'd be pretty cool. I could go on all day, but we'll stop there.

[00:28:42] Daniel: Yeah. It's things that they can like, it can be very cool. They can also be a dark side to it, So, yeah, I think it'll be really interesting to see what few years look like. And some that I have to try to remind myself of is some of the more childlike wonder I had when I was younger about some of that stuff and not being super pessimistic about it, which I tend to be more so getting older.

[00:29:09] Andrew: Yeah, Imagine 20 years ago when, if you would have thought about technology and someone was like, Hey, and down the road, we're going to have the ability to do virtual meetings with people, no metaphor stuff. And you're going to have these goggles that lets you see and interact with people with haptic feedback, the whole nine yards as if you were in person with someone, you can do it from anywhere in your home.

[00:29:34] Andrew: We would have been blown away and now it's here. We're like, well, I dunno if I like that. The headset's expensive. It's not perfect. The graphics aren't great. You know, we have all of our complaints. I don't even have one. I don't have like an Oculus quest or, you know, whatever they've got going on, but virtual reality headsets, I don't have one in it's such cool technology that I would have thought was amazing 20 years ago.

[00:29:57] Andrew: And it was completely. Completely off the radar for most people like that was the future. We are we have All the technology to do cool stuff virtual reality. And we're just kind of okay with it now. So heck we have drones you fly around and we have personal drones that you around They're unbelievably expensive and FAA the FAA is fan. But, you know, those are just hurdles. Technically, if we had the money and the drive, we go get ourselves little, you know, wars, speed, racer And that is cool. just don't look

[00:30:32] Andrew: as sharp we want them not as affordable we want And they're not as easy to drive hope they were So, yeah, you.

[00:30:40] Daniel: Yeah, for sure. All right. I'm going to pivot a little bit. I think I'm going to, save some of the I do like a lightning round at.

[00:30:48] Daniel: the end with some fun questions, but I, I am very curious to hear your answer to this question because it's something that I think about fairly often. So I would imagine you have to, but what is something you would say that you're better than 99% of the population at

[00:31:08] Andrew: it's funny. You bring that I was actually talking about that at.

[00:31:12] Andrew: work the other day. Because I think everyone believes that there's they have And I'm like well, the thing they hold on to gives them hope. Like, well, I might be having this or might be having a bad day at work blah, blah, blah.

[00:31:25] Andrew: But I'm probably the best person at this thing. And it, it might be something little like doing dishes or making tamales or whatever it everybody has something that they think that they're in like that top 1% of population. And so with that, that knowledge, know I'm not an exception, which means I also know not actually the top of anything for anyone, but if I was to say, what is my leading strength being in that higher population?

[00:31:57] Andrew: Like, what am I edging people out on? It probably the ability to, to into something kind of like. don't know the proper term for it, but being able to follow through on a challenging task it either be that, or it would be my cross dimensional problem solving skills being able to take a lot of disparate information and it into something.

[00:32:25] Andrew: That creates a solution. And sometimes those solutions are completely unnecessary, that is something I, think pretty well at, which is either, you know, working through a problem or coming up with solutions for problems that

[00:32:37] Andrew: are original and you know, pretty special.

[00:32:42] Andrew: I like to think what would yours

[00:32:44] Andrew: be?

[00:32:44] Daniel: I, I struggled to nail down a particular thing that the, so would you describe as as a cross dimensional problem solving, I would probably call a transformational thinking just based on some brain health class things that I've done. Cause they describe, wrote and wrote problem solving as basically, if you are needing to write a better computer program, then. you get better at it by like learning other computer programs. And you just, all you focus on is computer programming versus the transformational problem solving transformational thinking would say, okay, thinking about computer programming, but then. I was with my kid and I watched how they approached this thing. And it kind of reminded me of the problem that I have on this, you know, writing this language.

[00:33:32] Daniel: And I try to apply that and you come up with a different solution. Is the idea behind that. I think that's something I'm fairly good at as well. Because all the time in all sorts of random situations, I will be, you know, watching a show or I'll be, you know, at church or I'll be doing and something completely unrelated will make me think of something else, like a problem I, have. And I feel like it kind of unlocks us, oh, I should try this different, weird, random approach. And it seems so I I would say I'm right there with you on that. the only other one that I would say that maybe. Maybe I tend to do better than the average person is. It's just, I guess is probably the easiest way to describe it I feel like in the work setting I do a fairly good job of helping to explain what our problems are, what needs to happen, explaining why that needs to happen. Kind of getting people on board with that, dialoguing it through and just, you know, break something down for them.

[00:34:40] Daniel: And the real secret to that is just always using food metaphors because everybody relates to them.

[00:34:45] Andrew: That's good. And I can see that it's totally, you.

[00:34:49] Andrew: That's some good. Self-awareness

[00:34:50] Daniel: Yeah. Yeah. But like you said, I know if I was the best at any of those things, then I probably wouldn't be doing this podcast to our audience of just a million people. It'd be, you know, billions of people, obviously.

[00:35:10] Andrew: absolutely.

[00:35:11] Daniel: All right. We are

[00:35:13] Daniel: To the part of our podcast where I'm going to do a little bit of a lightning round in terms of questions. I don't think we've done it with a guest before. but I think you're up to the challenge. four questions answer fairly quickly

[00:35:26] Daniel: because we're running

[00:35:27] Daniel: low on time.

[00:35:28] Andrew: best. I'm a little

[00:35:32] Daniel: one

[00:35:32] Andrew: sometimes. So we

[00:35:33] Andrew: got this.

[00:35:34] Daniel: I'll start playing the Oscar music if needed. All right. First one is Shalome and Jasper are both

[00:35:40] Daniel: hanging from a cliff. You have the strength to pull both of them up, but if you do that, there's a 5% chance that you lose one of them. You don't know which one you would lose, or you can choose to save just one of them with 100% certainty.

[00:35:57] Daniel: Who do you pick or what do you pick?

[00:35:59] Andrew: Okay. let me make this lightening style story. This actually came up this morning. I, was talking about John wick being a masterpiece and how it's just amazing. And everybody should kill everyone involved with hurting their dog. Shalome a hundred percent said that she would sacrifice me for Jasper, not even thinking twice about it.

[00:36:17] Andrew: On the other hand, though, this was this morning, we were driving to the coffee shop. That's great. But I would unfortunately as much of a gambler as I am I would always choose the human over a dog. So I would take the a hundred percent chance of saving, saving Shalome over

[00:36:32] Andrew: Jasper, which would be unfortunate for me because then she would have. Positively

[00:36:37] Andrew: murder me right after, so

[00:36:39] Andrew: I would die, but unfortunately I would choose human as much as I love Jasper,

[00:36:44] Daniel: Okay. No, I, I think that's probably the most technically correct answer. I'm going to pose, I'm going to pose, the same question to you, but instead of Shalome and Jasper, it's the existence of donuts And coffee.

[00:36:59] Andrew: Ooh, you know what? I'll roll the dice on that one. I saved both. of them at the same time. I'm not, I'm not, I'm not being part of fate on that one. I'll let fate decide which one leaves my life.

[00:37:09] Daniel: I mean, there's, there's a 95% chance that you get to keep both.

[00:37:13] Daniel: So

[00:37:14] Andrew: Yeah, that's something I'm worth I'm okay with gambling on. I'm okay with gambling on just about everything. I just probably would not gamble on a dog against a human life.

[00:37:22] Andrew:

[00:37:22] Andrew: But I would do John wick things was the discussion this basically about, you know, whether it's okay to people and also the the train dilemma, the one-person versus the multi-tiered. And I was like, I would absolutely choose to kill the one person if it saves the group. And she's like, well, what if it's me?

[00:37:39] Andrew: I was like, Oh, yeah, totally

[00:37:40] Andrew: say you over the group. She's like, what if he didn't know it was me? And I was like, that's fine. I'd kill you because I would logically have to go with that. And I find out someone

[00:37:47] Andrew: puts you there and I have to go kill them. She's like, well, you're not allowed to kill people.

[00:37:50] Andrew: It's like this situation. I would like if John wick with a dog, I'd do it for humans too. She didn't like my answer.

[00:37:56] Daniel: Oh, I think that's a great answer. All right. How about this one? So would you have rather have been born a child star? So think like a that you've been wildly for most of your life. So if you've ever seen searching for sugar, man. that's, that's the premise of that

[00:38:13] Daniel: movie and it's a real story.

[00:38:14] Andrew: I have not seen I guess I need to go look into it.

[00:38:18] Andrew: So my gut answer

[00:38:19] Andrew: is I'd want to be the child star. Oh yeah. Give me.

[00:38:21] Daniel: Oh, I was to, yeah, I'll briefly explain. So for sugar, man. There's this dude who was a musician. I think he was in like Detroit or something like that. And the, like the seventies, it was before the internet he was not a great musician in terms of States.

[00:38:39] Daniel: Like just didn't blow up. Wasn't super popular. I think he had to basically stick with his day job of being a construction worker. But in South Africa was as popular as like the rolling stones and the Beatles, like same level of popularity and similar. And I think it was like New Zealand. so he finds out way after when he's much older that he is just hugely famous and these other countries.

[00:39:04] Daniel: So it's, it's pretty entertaining. It's worth checking out

[00:39:07] Andrew: So that is something that is special about technology now is now you'd find out, like if you were a musician, you did your thing and you get a big following in another country, like, oh, that's easy and it's not too hard to get your content in front of them. 2030 years ago, nine possible. There's actually multiple people in the Amarillo and I'll send you some, you know what, shout out to them a sad Zillow's one of them it's a local Amarillo rapper and has almost no Amarillo following huge and other places in the world.

[00:39:32] Andrew: And he's really, really talented very little local following and massive non Amarilla following. It's kinda cool. So there's a couple of people like that name or who actually, but that's wild. To answer your question, I would say. I want to, I would like the child star because to me that's like, Hey, do you know Harry Potter?

[00:39:49] Andrew: And that cast they're doing great, freaking great. At our age, like they are, they get to do they want You know Radcliffe just picks weird fun movies he wants to be a part of because he's never going to need money again. That sounds like a great trait to me that said, if I do, you know, a bit of a risk analysis, It seems like 90% of these child stars get completely jacked up.

[00:40:11] Andrew: And I don't know if I would So,

[00:40:14] Andrew: I'm going to go with the since I already childhood thing. I like who I am as a I would like to randomly be and famous more hopefully my writing or maybe the like

[00:40:25] Andrew: that.

[00:40:26] Daniel: Yeah, make it the podcast, then that way I get

[00:40:28] Daniel: to be a part of it with you.

[00:40:29] Andrew: Yeah, come on this gravy train Let's go

[00:40:31] Andrew: to Argentina.

[00:40:33] Daniel: Okay. in the season of Christmas, our last two questions are. If somebody was to basically, it's a wonderful life from your life, like vanish and have never existed in your life. Who is the person that you feel like would have the most impact would change your life the most? If all of a sudden they had not been a part of it?

[00:40:57] Andrew: Wow. That's tough. If I'm allowed

[00:41:02] Andrew: to not sacrifice any of my close friends or family, I'm going to say Sanderson or maybe Rothfus. Cause you know, those are very influential writers to me oh my God, Toki, no Lord of the

[00:41:11] Andrew: rings. But I th I know that's not the spirit of the question, so nevermind. Let me actually backtrack.

[00:41:15] Daniel: No, no, no. You, you can go that route. Cause I'm going to flip the question and, you know, as, as much as it's going to hurt you to hear this, I don't think Sandra says life is going to change. If you weren't a part of it.

[00:41:26] Andrew: You would not even notice his cells in Amarillo would maybe drop by like 15 or 20 people, but that's about it. He wouldn't even know his regional publisher might be like, huh, that's weird. We had a very tiny blip lost about a hundred dollars. I that's tough, you know, right now I'd probably say Shalome because she's probably where I spend the most time.

[00:41:46] Andrew: She is who you know, if you take my day or week or months and dice it.

[00:41:52] Andrew: in whatever way you want, she's going to probably have 80% of my day in terms of communication and time spent together and impact everything like that. If you take my life on a much broader scale you know, roll all the way out for the full 30 years.

[00:42:05] Andrew: And the swarm has only been in the last couple you know, you could basically pick a. Some key figures from my friend group, you know, Daniel obviously would be included in this elementary school friends had different effects. My parents would probably be pretty big because I would probably be a superhero if I was an orphan, but, you know, thanks mom and dad for living, but that would probably have a drastic difference in my life is, you know, not having either one of them in some form or fashion for the flip, since I'm trying to keep this quick on the lightning round.

[00:42:31] Andrew: It would probably be again Shalome if we're talking immediate timelines if he is spinning out a little bit further I would probably get. One of my immediate family members either my parents or one of my siblings probably just Matthew. I think, I think my sisters would not notice one way or another.

[00:42:47] Andrew: I'd probably be a lot happier or at least have less trauma from their childhood. Well, sorry guys. But you know, my parents probably if I had to choose between the two of them, probably my dad would have more,

[00:42:59] Andrew: he'd be more effective if I vanished and my mom would be in terms of.

[00:43:02] Andrew: Where he's at in life. I think my mom would be more emotional about it, but that might just be sexism coming through on me. I don't know.

[00:43:11] Daniel: Well, yeah, I mean, you do help your run your dad's business. So that's a tangible impact.

[00:43:20] Andrew: He would at least have a lot less hair.

[00:43:22] Andrew: Now. I know this is my lightning round, but did you, when you,

[00:43:25] Andrew: were forming these. Come up with anybody besides Hillary

[00:43:28] Andrew: Riley.

[00:43:28] Daniel: I think the most obvious answer potentially parents Although in reality, I, I think it would probably be one of my siblings more so than my parents. If we're talking long-term life impacts because, um, You know, obviously my parents helped to mold and shape me, and I think there was some molding and shaping that happens, you know, going that direction as well. But I think if we're talking about who would have the most impact on like whose life would change the most probably death or Christie is my guess.

[00:44:04] Andrew: I think, I think Christie might fall on the same campus. My

[00:44:07] Andrew: sister's.

[00:44:08] Daniel: No, there there are deep bonds there that nobody, nobody knows

[00:44:13] Andrew: Oh, my goodness. Oh, did y'all catch something on fire? I didn't tell any of us.

[00:44:18] Daniel: no, no, no. That's, it's just that we sometimes text each other in Spanish. That's what it is.

[00:44:24] Andrew: SI SI.

[00:44:25] Daniel: Okay, well, you've succeeded through the lightening round. So that means you've earned your right to story time. You knew it was coming, even though I knew it was coming, I still struggled to come up with a story, but is there anything in particular that you want to share with the audience that has not come up in a previous podcast?

[00:44:44] Andrew: You know what? Yes, because this came up a couple of weeks ago. There's a lot of stories that involve Daniel and I, that somehow have not made it into this podcast. Despite other people who've been on the podcast?

[00:44:55] Andrew: being involved in them. There's also plenty of stories where we've flirted with danger, which sounds very romantic and exciting.

[00:45:03] Andrew: And it mostly was just us being that at making decisions and climbing things we shouldn't, but none of those stories are what's going to make it the other day. I was telling this, and this happens at my office a lot, this is not the story. This is a story about the story for the moment. Periodically at the office, something will come up and I forget about how other people perceive you.

[00:45:26] Andrew: And this goes for all of you listening. This is everyone we know people do not see you the way you see yourself and they don't know about your past or where you come from, that kind of stuff. And so in my mind, I'm an interesting guy. I think I'm cool and interesting. Okay. Maybe not cool, but I think I'm interesting.

[00:45:40] Andrew: I've got some to Nash and I've got some magic. I have a lot of stories to tell them a lot of history, semi rich history for my age. But most people don't think about that. I realized that because they just work with me or they just run into me at the coffee shop or whatever it is, the baristas they don't know about Daniel and climbing things and, you know, red rocks or some of the crazy stuff for Denver, all the different. So this stuff will come up at the office specifically. There's a whole group of girls that work in our customer support relations team, and they all just think I'm just, you know, this guy that is their boss and he just kinda sits there and. Plays around with his laptop, with his stomach is about kind of thing.

[00:46:23] Andrew: And then I'm just kind of a average Joe kind of guy, I guess. So things will pop out every once in a while, they'll mention something they'll ask about something. I'll have some advice relating to one thing or another. So when they found out about the fight clubs that we used to have, that blew their minds, when they find out about the tattoos I have for whatever reason that really blew their minds all these different things kind of. Throw them for a trip. So one of those stories that came up, this is actually the baristas, not the girls at the office. It was day of the ninja, December 5th, which was roughly 20 days ago. And I'd forgotten, this is the first year that I like truly forgot about a day of the ninja until we were going to the coffee shop.

[00:47:02] Andrew: I just left the gym, picked up Shalome and getting our palace. And I was like, holy crap. It's December 5th. That's my. Like one of my favorites, why I love the fifth, November 5th, December 5th, or to my favorite non holiday days of the year, because remember if it's in November and then December is today.

[00:47:21] Andrew: So I used to celebrate December 5th, a little more. Aggressively then is recommended or is or necessary because I'm pretty sure it was just a burger chain who made this holiday up. And we from the very first I remember was asking ninja.

[00:47:39] Andrew: So. One of these December, the Fitz, and I was telling Shalome this and it just, it blew her mind. And while I was telling her, I was one of the baristas was listening. You could just see they're like, who this man? This is not the guy who comes in and spends too much money on coffee. is he? Like, is happening here? I am being punked. The story we are in high we're a little bit faster and more agile at least I am now. Daniel is actually still there, I think, but we dress up as an entrance and this was a three-part experience of bad decisions for that The first part, we went to the mall dressed as ninjas and mind you, we're not that old.

[00:48:18] Andrew: This was post nine 11 and the mall security is on point. I still don't know where they came from, how they saw us coming so fast, but we didn't get past the four year in the mall before we had security on us kicking us out. I mean, it was embarrassing and we tried all of the fast talking we could, but dudes with masks in 2022, there's probably would have actually gotten better 20, 21.

[00:48:40] Andrew: But in 2008, was a big no-no. So we got our asses kicked out real quick So the mall was best buy. And we're like, well, that was really anti-climatic. We had like six guys dressed as ninjas we saw like one child got to recognize our ninja NES ninja ESC selves before. Soon to best buy and best buy.

[00:49:00] Andrew: We ha we saw lots of people. Lots of people commented on it. We got some weird played some guitar hero. blast. was a time. We did our thing. We wandered around, enjoyed ourselves and we and we're like, wow, why can't everybody be like best buy and back to best buy.

[00:49:17] Andrew: Don't worry. Remember that it had no idea anything was going And then later that night we. Went to the skate park, almost gotten multiple fights because I guess that's what you do when you see a dude in a ninja outfit is you want to fight them. Everybody ended up being cool in the end, but it was this little touch and go what were trying park or at the skate park.

[00:49:36] Andrew: And then one of the weirdest things we did was had a minivan we got one of those curb stops that you have at parking lots. I have rebar going through them. They go into the ground and they stop your car. If you far forward, they're very heavy, like hundreds and hundreds of pounds of heavy somehow.

[00:49:54] Andrew: 2 3, 4 of us. able into this minivan and paper to someone's yard ninjas and drops to this parking and a toilet in their yard. And what's interesting about that is traditional family. Can't move a parking stop out of their yard. got guy in the house, generally that. You know, as a dad and he could maybe do a little work, but it was heavy enough that most of the girls in the house can't move it. And this was the case with this house. So we actually had to go tell them to stop calling the police and let us remove it for them because they thought that it was something more ridiculous than we thought it was.

[00:50:26] Andrew: So we took care of that. Now, mind you, this was December the fifth, December 6th. I think it was a Monday. I go back to school and one of our friends that was. Associated with those, but didn't do the ninja thing and didn't quite keep up with our day-to-day shenanigans is telling us because he works at best buy about the terrorists that came to best buy yesterday and all the police that showed up after we left and how they had like four undercover.

[00:50:51] Andrew: Cops tailing us and everybody's freaking out. And the whole place basically shut down. And we basically ruined his day because it went wild and they lost their minds and it was, they were on high alert for terrorist all day. It was. It was a big problem at best buy. And he told us this and we're like, God, that was us.

[00:51:13] Andrew: His name was Micah. And that was us. And he's like, no, we're like, yeah, we're just being ninjas. He's like, oh my goodness. We had like corporate on the line, they had police coming. They had a plan to take y'all down. We were like inches away from

[00:51:29] Andrew: going to jail and we had no idea. So that is my story that

[00:51:34] Andrew: doesn't ever seem to come up in casual conversation that did come up the other day and blew the barista in Swami's mind.

[00:51:40] Daniel: I about half of that story, which is of, I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing, it just goes to show how unaware we were of the impacts of our actions.

[00:51:56] Andrew: It was a fun day, though. It was a fun day.

[00:51:58] Daniel: Oh, it was, it was a blast. I, I definitely do it now, but I'm glad that we did it then.

[00:52:06] Daniel: Glad we did it for the story.

[00:52:08] Andrew: a slightly more trigger. Happy, undercover cop. Might've taken us out. Good times.

[00:52:13] Daniel: Oh man. That's a great story. So is your challenge to be more ninja, like, and to go and get best buy your business because of all of the, uh, terrorist activities that we incited as children.

[00:52:32] Andrew: As much as I would like to recommend that to people as a challenge. I don't think That's a good idea. Instead, let me lean into something we talked about earlier, you talked about. The that 1%, what do you think you are better that than most of the world? I want people to think about that. And one recognize that you probably aren't the best person in the world at that thing you think you are, but that is okay.

[00:52:54] Andrew: And it's really important to lean

[00:52:56] Andrew: into that skill. If you have something like that,

[00:52:58] Andrew: that's what you should be building up. That's what

[00:53:00] Andrew: you should be working on. So figure out what that is and make a plan on how to improve it. That's my challenge for you guys.

[00:53:06] Daniel: I love it. That's a great challenge. I will be doing the same. Let's be honest. I already do that every day. So, nevermind. I'm not going to do your challenge. I already do your challenge all the time.

[00:53:21] Andrew: I don't know how to take that

[00:53:22] Daniel: No, it's a good thing. I promise. Well, thank you

[00:53:26] Andrew: out of your mouth.

[00:53:27] Daniel: Oh man. for coming by your podcast, Andrew, our podcast, uh, it was very fun to turn the table on you to get to ask some of these questions. Um, and you know, I think we did a good job of starting pretty serious and getting pretty goofy by the end. I mean, closing out with, uh, running around best buy as ninjas.

[00:53:50] Daniel: You can't get much goofier than

[00:53:51] Daniel: that.

[00:53:53] Andrew: No, I

[00:53:54] Andrew: am worried about Shalome murdering me if she

[00:53:56] Andrew: listens to this one though, because I don't think she wants the world to know how little, I mean to her compared to Jasper.

[00:54:01] Daniel: Yeah, you, you kind of did the double there because you dropped that and then you said I would the option to 100% saved Alami. So you, you really painted yourself as the hero in the relationship.

[00:54:13] Andrew:

[00:54:13] Andrew: Well, a hero does what a hero does and usually that's what Andrew did. That's my motto.

[00:54:19] Daniel: Yes. Living with valor. All right, everybody. We appreciate you taking the time

[00:54:25] Daniel: to listen. This is dead by tomorrow. We hope that you have a Merry Christmas and a happy new year. Whenever you're listening to this, if you're listening to it in July. Well, you know, Christmas is halfway here, so it still applies. But thanks for coming by. We appreciate you all.

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