Radical Authenticity Over Marketing Tricks

`1:20:00`

you know? Like a young... — Say more. — I don't know. I think I probably resented things for some reason. I was sort of... I had a chip on my shoulder. I mean, maybe that was good. Like, you've got to prove yourself when you're new into something, and you're young, and you're breaking in, and people don't think you're any good at what you do. The only time I'm ever competitive is when someone slights me. Otherwise, I'm not competitive. So for whatever reason, if someone's like, "You can't do that," or, "You guys aren't good enough," or... I remember this... Actually, early on in my career when I was a web designer, before I made software, I just designed websites, I submitted a website design to an award thing, and I'm trying to remember what... It might have been called the High Five Award or something. I can't quite remember what it was, and I can't remember the guy's name right now. Dave Siegel, actually, was his name. I do remember now.

`1:20:47`

Back in the day, getting an award from Dave Siegel, I think, was his name, was a big deal in the design community. So I submitted a design, and he wrote me back saying, "You suck." Literally, "You suck. Find another day job." And I loved that. I loved that. That was like... I loved that. I love when someone says you can't do something, that you're not good at something, you know. Maybe this comes from being, like, I'm 5'7", and I'm pretty good at basketball, and you walk on the court, and people don't think you're very good. You know, I love that kind of stuff, right? So, that just fired me up. So as far as finding confidence, I think I probably had a lot of that early on, where people were like,

`1:21:33`

"You're just one guy. How could you do this?" Or, "How could you do that?" Or, "You don't know what you're doing. You don't have a degree in this." That kind of fired me up for a while, but there's a point where you want... This is, again, to the point of, kind of like, you want to sort of launch, and then you want to find a place to settle, where you kind of just, I think, come into your own at a certain point. And I think I probably did that in my forties. I'm 51 now. So I think in my forties, I probably came into my own actually, settled into my own. Had some psychedelic experiences, which helped as well. — Did you? — Yeah. — John Mackey... I don't know if it was in the episode, I can't remember. — Yeah. — But this guy keeps trying to get me to do psychedelics. I think we talked about it at the end. — Yeah. — I was like, "I'm not doing psychedelics." What did you do? — Why not? — I... — Let's turn this interview around. — Let's go. It's a conversation.

`1:22:19`

You can do whatever you want. — Yeah. — I think me and you both bond over... Like, there are some positive things. Obviously, the tech industry and the Bay Area and San Francisco have created great companies and great products and stuff, but there's also a lot of just wacko shit, and a lot of them are... — Sure. — There's just too much drug use, in my opinion. I don't do drugs. — Yeah. — And I like the way my mind is, and I don't want it to change. — Yep. — And yeah, and I'm very resistant to doing drugs, because I've also had, like.. My cousin died of a heroin overdose. My dad did drugs his whole life. He went to jail for selling drugs. — Yeah. — I've never seen somebody high on cocaine make a great decision. — Yeah, yeah. — So it's like, we carry all the stuff that we experienced earlier,

`1:23:05`

and I'm like, "Well, what's the opposite of that?" — Yeah. — The opposite of that is not doing drugs. So, I'll just not do drugs. — Yeah. I'm not here to convince you to do drugs. — No, no, go for it. — For me, the experience was very... Okay, as I think I mentioned earlier, my favorite thing in life is to have an insight, and so psychedelics for me were an avalanche of insights, and that was fascinating to know, that my mind could see things and understand things in ways I didn't know were possible. I could see, like... This will not make any sense, but maybe people who've done this will understand. You think of an idea, and I never thought an idea was like a three-dimensional object that I could turn around and see from the other side. Not like a different perspective on an idea, but literally, I could