 All right. So this is a Pick Jury's Brain Call with Scott Moran. We've known each other for a while. Scott is a co-conspirator in Open Global Mind and sent me a lovely, lovely, the kind of email, like if you think it's an honor to help humans figure out what to do with their life energy, and I fall in that camp, then the email that Scott sent me like a couple of days ago was just fantastic and perfect. And so this is a call to sort of focus on what was in that message and where you were aiming and try to help you steer and aim and think creatively about how you spend the rest of your life energy. And I'll ask you to sort of maybe go back into it in a second, but I recently heard of and installed a mental health app called 29K. It's at 29K.org. And the number 29K is just the average number of days a human has on earth. And I was like, oh, that's a really good name. That's like how to remind you of like the preciousness of our time together and all of that. And also I'll say as caveat in, as we can enter this conversation, I am no expert on maximizing the usefulness of everyday I have on earth. One of my problems is figuring the same thing out. So I'm hoping we sort of figure this out in some sense together. Yeah. So, and I'm happy to dive into a bunch of things that you wrote, but anything you'd like to sort of think about, talk about, put on the table as we start. Well, this will not be my first conversation like this. It's kind of a theme having conversations like this with like thinkers, people who are interested in helping others provide frameworks on what you want to be when you grow up sort of thing. The other thing about it that I've noticed is once I put this on a calendar, the next several days gets me closer to an answer is I'm trying to prepare and think about it and that kind of thing. So I'm 56, I'm noticing that I'm more aware of the 29K than I have been. And perhaps that's because I've been able to say, no, not this. Whereas normally I'm, oh yes, and, and, and, and, and now I've been able to be a little more aware that no, I can't do all of those. And that then takes me down the path of, okay, well, if I can't do all of them, which ones can I do? And then it turns into which ones must I do? And, you know, and then, so, so that's kind of the general framework that I've been, it's an echo of all conversations that I've had before. And what I'm realizing that I'm trying to come to grips with is I make stuff. And I make stuff because I'm curious and I want to package it up and put it into a, I don't know, put it into something that's, that makes sense for me. Okay, I've made this little reminder poster of this idea I heard about. I think this is really interesting. And now that I made it, I look at it and I think, huh, well, I'm part of this little group that might like this. So then I share it with them. And more often than not, I get good feedback, which is one of the reasons that I continue to do it. It's not the primary motivator, but it's not, well, it's not the impetus. The impetus is, oh, this is interesting. Hmm, wow, the more I look at this, this is really interesting. Oh, this fits my rules. It's an 80-20 solution. It's not a deep dive into every corner of complexity. It has parts that can be combined in different ways. So if I identify the key parts and you get those, not only do you have 80-20 for what you're looking at, but you also have ways that you can recombine it. And that sort of thing. And they tend to be, learn once, use many, like, oh, okay, if I learn this, I can apply it in lots of different ways. And so that drives me to say, oh, these are really interesting things. I see people struggling, but mostly I see myself wanting to integrate these things I've learned or something that sounds interesting to me. And then I have this thing when I'm done. And okay, well, what do I do with this? Okay, well, I don't know. So here, you know, I share with people. And what's one of the other themes that I've just noticed, we'll tack this on. So themes of what those products tend to be, I've already described. Themes of who they're for is something I'm realizing. I would classify myself as an introverted thinker. I enjoy ideas, I enjoy talking about ideas with other people. That's how I like to be most socially is discussing ideas. And I would use to say that I hate to say this, but this is just the truth. The things I make are who I spend the most time with. So I'm perfectly happy going down a rabbit hole for all day, you know, trying to sort out an idea. Anyway, so I realized, well, maybe who I'm making this for is other people like me, people who are novices in a field who want to get to a, not to a high level, but to get to a comfort level where they understand the basic tools of system thinking or the basic tools of how to make a presentation or, you know, whatever it happens to be. And they are people who are a little more introverted, a little more in ideas, frameworks. A lot of it is solo stuff, things that you can use with other people but that you develop yourself so that when you're in a situation, you now have a tool or many tools, ideally, that's kind of what I've built over 30 years, 25 years, is all these little tools because I'm a little awkward in social situations and I feel way more confident when I feel like, oh, I have all these things I could potentially contribute. And so that's exciting to me. And the last thing that I'll offer up is now there's a bunch of different categories that these fall in frameworks, toys, tools for students, things like that. But what I've noticed in the part that I really started to come to terms with over the last several days was I keep asking people how to monetize this. I keep asking people if I should monetize this. Now I'm asking myself like, why is that? And the answer that I came to was, well, I've built 25 years worth of stuff and I have other things that I'm deep in right now that are valuable. Okay, well, what does that mean? It means it's useful for other people but does that mean that I'm missing an opportunity here that's just kind of a duh? Well, of course you should be having a pay-to-play model on this or no, that ties you up with a commitment and an obligation and now you have to develop a community and a sales funnel and do your market and all this other stuff. And it's like, no, this is not what I wanna do. And so I guess at this point, I'll throw out pinball machines. I'll throw out the pinball metaphor that happened in the last couple of days. I am very fortunate to have had decent education to grow up in a situation where I wasn't struggling. I've struggled before, but never in any significantly serious way. So this is a problem of overabundance in a sense, but trying to think where I'm, oh, I know. So I will, the next 10, 15, 20, whatever years, I'm not worried about generating enough income. What I'm worried about from the pinball side is that you can get 100,000 points, but you can also get a bonus multiplier, which is two X, five X, and it's like, I scored the same, I made the same shots. I did the same stuff, but now my points are twice or five times. And I think, okay, well, all of these things here, I have spent the last 25 years being fine with not selling them, part of me trying to, but not really, because I guess I would have done it. That's kind of what I'm trying to come to grips with. And so is that where I need to go? Is it just accept, hey, you know what, just keep making these things and maybe one of them, someone's gonna say, hey, I wanna turn this into something. And there it goes, or just enjoy this as a lifelong hobby and go forward with that. Because on the income side, I have a very good partnership with a very good friend and that provides enough to get by, we're kind of developing a, it's a printing business. I do the design work, he does all the printing and production work and I basically am a contractor in a sense, but we're friends and partners and nothing formal, but I trust him 100%. And it's growing. Okay, well, that's something that I can hitch my wagon to. I grabbed a freelance gig a couple of months ago and I realized very quickly that it was probably a bad idea because now I had three legs. I had, okay, this thing with my friend that I'm investing in, I had this freelance short-term thing and then I had these other things that were always kind of subconscious back in my mind. And I could work on them, like whenever the mood struck, you know, oh, wow, you know what? I really need to do this thing. And I would dive into it, but I didn't have to. It was just, it had percolated long enough and then it popped up and said, hey, work on me today. And the freelance thing turned into, wow, context switching all the time. Now I'm working on the main thing, that is generating income. But then when I need to jump over to this little hourly other thing, it's like, okay, it's all these new people, it's different systems, it's different vendors, everything is different. And I get my head wrapped around it. And what I realized was that I was, now that was my subconscious. And I didn't care for it. And so I'm still in the middle of that. And so I'm getting ready to, you know, have that conversation again to say, I'm not sure that this is for me. Oh, if you can hear that bell, the 15 minute, it'll go off every 15. Oh, good. Is that to remind you to stay on task? Or what is it? Or is it just a grandfather clock? I turned it on for this call, just because I will go off in the weeds. And that 15 minutes felt like an interesting scene. And scene. Love that. Love that. Okay. It's like a Takodoro. Yeah. It's a Pomodoro for conversation. Right, right. I like it. Yeah, it's the first time I've used it. But I found it in one of my little sound makers and it's just one minute, five minute, 10, 15. And I thought, well, let's try, let's put that on because what I noticed when I had it on was that I could choose to switch tasks or choose to not, you know, just remind me, oh wow, that little email that you wrote, you're still working on it. It's end, you know, and move on to the next one. So anyway, that's kind of the framework for this. And so I'm, I guess I'm, that's, I think that's pretty good for now. Cool. Very tiny thing before moving into some of the things you said. I've seen you in this background, in this setting for multiple times and I only just figured out because I knew you do pinball art that on one side of you are pinball machines. And on the other side, those are actually sort of decks or whatever you call them of pinball games, right? Yes, these are, this is the main product that we have been developing and we're doing other things now, but the gist of it is pinball machines that we're helping are 20 to 30 years old and it's a stainless steel ball bearing rolling around on ink. Just wears it off. Yeah, exactly. You know, they don't make any more of these. So, well, they're making new ones, but they're, the old ones, that's just what you have. And so we've created a product that helps preserve the fun for decades more, we hope. Love that. So let me screen share for a second because as you might expect, I created a thought for this call. So there's a pictures being called with you and I connected it up to pinball art and pinballs, which is where I realized, oh my God, in the background, those are pinball machines, et cetera. Did you know that Fiorello LaGuardia got pinball banned because he saw that it was eating all of kids' time? No, did not know that. Just the tiny side note. Yeah, no, we knew that it was gambling for a while. Yeah. Oh, interesting. So a couple of different things occurred to me and one was I created sort of finding your upward spiral and I was like, what if you created activity boxes for kids? I was just like, what because you're constantly creative because you're constantly inventing stuff and I think you really like doing stuff for young people. What if you were the heart of a sort of subscription system for those kinds of things? And that I found my way around to different kinds of subscriptions to monthly surprises. And then I found my way to Birchbox and I realized that Katya Boschal and Haley Barnard, the founders of billionaires that's completely ate their lives. This is a big deal. I'm like, well, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Like is there a way you could create a very small scale thing like this, for example, that where the surprises actually build where they're modular and reusable, where now that you, so you've got this thing over here and if you need it later, we'll send it to you as a backfill or a backup kit. But then you can use it in new ways or different kinds of ways. Because I think like a piece of what it feels to me and like turn me back toward what rings for you. But it feels to me like one of the things you love about systems thinking is kind of this systematizing modularizing slice among the chaos of what systems do. That there's kind of systems thinking is about all kinds of forces and you're playing. But if you can snipe some of them, label and represent them well and connect them to others in a way that's functional, educational, useful, something like that, that's really good. And that helps people think. And I think one of your skills and life goals is helping other people think critically and figure things out. And there's like a joy of figuring things out and figure sort of prominently for me and you. Let me offer an addition to the theme that might be helpful. Something I realized pretty late in life was that my first child was the first child of all of my friends. My wedding was the first wedding I'd ever attended. The college. Oh, wow. It was the first wedding you'd ever been to. When I went to college, that was the first college campus that I'd ever been on, et cetera. I had never been to my, to a corporate workplace before. I was, you know, before I had my first job there. And it was just this realization that, wow, all these things would have been, when you're packing to go camping, you make horrible mistakes. And the second time you pack, you're not just a little better. You're like mostly there. And then every time after that, you can incrementally change it. And I feel like that's sort of the case with a lot of things. Your first experience teaches you so much and what I sensed is like, wow, I'm a pretty good teacher to beginners. And one of the reasons is I know, I know what's important to know now. And what's, what can wait? What can wait until later? And I realized that, you know, a lot of that was based on my inexperience in a lot of situations. Like I just didn't know. And I had sort of wished like, wow, all these things I'm learning. I had just known that ahead of time. It would have made such a difference. Like, you know, this is a really big decision right now. You're not gonna know that for 15 years, but this decision is critical. And so yes, I agree with you in the systems thinking side of things that it's the reason I was drawn to the work of the Cabrera's and I'm interacting with them almost daily now. And the reason is that the way they teach it is literally for anyone. It's not for policy changers and, you know, massive organizations and, you know, global complex problems. It's like, how do I improve the way we get the kids out the door in the morning? You know, I mean, it's right down to the basic level. And it scales up. But what's fascinating to me is I'm always on the lookout for the things that work and work kind of every time. You know, it's not just the one thing in the one situation which you can collect millions of little tips and tricks on. I like it. It's reliable, yeah. Yeah, yeah. It's the ones that really apply across domain. So this is fascinating looking at the things that you've come to this idea of activity boxes for kids that stack. I think that's a really fascinating thing. Yeah, I had a wonderful set of conversations with a woman over in the UK. She and her husband were neuro-scientists and she had seen my wooden toy and she said, we would like to use that as a way to teach other concepts. And so various things happened. We didn't take that anywhere further but we did have multiple conversations on it. It's just a really interesting idea. And so I could see how the things I have could stack if they were in the hands of one person over time. And can we, is there, let's just as an exercise, fold that back on the Cabrera research and DSRP and some of the frameworks that come out of their work. Yep. Because a narrow way of looking at that is that, hey, maybe the Cabrera's would love to have a venture into education for young humans. I don't know if they've already done that but maybe they'd be really interested and you could just say, hey, I'll go do that as a venture and I'm saying this gingerly because I think you're trying to avoid one thing, eating your entire life and becoming the, well, now we need a business plan and a logo and all of that kind of stuff. But I know that you have this passion for systems thinking and that their flavor, their take on systems thinking really, really rings your bell. So I'm trying to figure out, can you carry that into young people in a way that sits in their world persistently over time and builds? So- And can that even be like an educational venture without saying that in some sense? I have, so they developed, so very quickly, they had the theory, Derek had the theory, Laura had the translational research so how to make it practical and they went and took his theory which they were teaching to grad students and took it into elementary school classrooms for 10 years and said, can we do this? And they came out with, yes they can and the end result was a book called Thinking at Every Desk. So yes, that's aligned with what they're doing and they play in both levels. They teach at West Point, they teach at Cornell, they also have, their stuff is systems thinking daily which is the most mundane problems, just use it every day. So that's really interesting and my strategy, if it is a strategy, again, it's always curiosity, Led. I noticed that if I just kept my little systems thinking social network open, I was happy. That was plenty of social media for me, which is in this one area. And over time, I've continued to build a reputation in that group as exactly what I've described. Newbies come in, I'm the one who, I'm a good person to ask about certain things that are like, how do I get started with this? And I've developed a little bit of cloud in that area which is really, wasn't the intention, it's just kind of what happened. I'm enjoying it. And what I'm kind of doing is just playing in that space. I don't know if formalizing it is, right now they're, I'm being asked to test, can you test this little set of classes, mini classes of me and things like that? Yeah, yeah, sure I can. And I don't know, I don't know where it's going to go. And I don't know if there's any formal plan there, but it's something that I definitely enjoy. And I have these books that I'm writing, systems thinking kids books, and those are for really young ones. Those are definitely elementary school. I'm enjoying that. And... Small, small tangent, but please. Some of these kids that go out are basically just flat pack kids. They're either flat pack, really thin plywood that is die cut into pieces that you pop out and build a dinosaur or a lawn mower or whatever, or they're die cut paper that you punch out and make dioramas or dolls or whatever. But the die cut side of this seems like it minimizes shipping costs, maximizes flexibility and other sorts of things. And... That's what I build all day. I mean, obviously, like anything printed or cut or produced in a, like if you would go to a high end printing shop, and I can print on plastic, I can print on, we can cut, we have a laser cutter, so those sorts of things I can make. And you're saying that, like for example, I was goofing around on the lake, and it's like, oh, here's my DSRP mobile. I've got distinctions. I've got systems, I've got relationships and I've got perspectives. And it's like, okay, well, there's one. You know, that's just like, there's only one of these. I made it for fun. It took me a couple hours and it's done. So like, all right. Now what, you know? Well, and so I think you and I share this like curiosity thing, like really, really strongly. We're both extremely curious people. You're probably more of a maker than I am. I think you've turned things into material objects a bunch. That's just because, well, my degree is in graphic design. Yeah. I stumbled into the maker space simply because of my, because of that. So it's, and I like words, I like writing. And so the combination of those two things, you know, I can make things that seem magical to other people. It's like, well, that's just because I have some design skill and I can write. I am not electronics genius. So I'm not, you know, any of that stuff. I just make visuals and they look like, they look good because, you know, that's what I do. But it's, they're funny because I remember some of my friends in college had went into careers that were much more, I'll just use the word lucrative or impactful or anything, but they didn't have anything you could show. And my career is very showy, you know? It's like, oh, look at all the things I made, you know? So like, look, here's the thing. Here's an object. Yeah. I love that. And a piece of what I'm trying to think of is since that comes easily to you and you're very generative that way, is there a way to pick up the pieces that you've been making and turn them into passive income streams as part of a kid's subscription kit set or something completely different? But is there a way that you could even just take a short video of things that you've done and post them on Instagram and see who's subscribed and things like that just to see what's out. I mean, certainly easy enough to test the market in some sense, but I'm kind of playing with names. Like, could you be the guide for curious system makers or something like that where you bring kids of a particular age group that your favorite, favorite age group along and it's funny. One of my inspirations here are the vlog brothers, Hank and John Green. Do you any familiar with them? You probably know them. One of them is a composer, the other one writes novels, The Fault in Your Stars is one of the novels that got turned into a movie that one of these brothers did, but they started out just as like very early YouTube celebrities. I learned about them because a friend's daughter came and joined one of our meetings and told us about nerdfighteria, nerdfighting. And nerdfighteria is not fighting nerds. It's nerds fighting world sock. Yeah, I've heard about, okay, I'm familiar with that. Yeah, and so Hank and John Green now put, I don't accountless really good videos now about science and literature and they're almost like their own Khan Academy off to the side, but they kind of, they focus on helping tweens and teens sort things out and make sense of the world and live better lives and all of that. It's just, it's lovely. But in the middle of doing that, they invented a bunch of things like nerdfighteria and DFTBA, do you know what DFTBA means? Oh, DFTBA. Don't forget to be awesome. And so things like that just pop out of their community and they're memorable and you're like, wow, okay. Yeah, this is really interesting. And also, since you're kind of an introvert, maybe it's not Google or Flag to Carry to be the leader of this, but maybe you find something like Vlogbrothers or somewhere else and you expand their offer into the spaces that you're good at, I don't know. But you know, you have a gig right now that causes you to do a massive cranial context switch every time you have to sit down and start doing their work, right? Whole new set of software and relationships and tools and the thing. You almost have to like replace your head, plop in the other head to do this work. And could you replace that work with a project that pays as much, but is like really, really nicely aligned with everything else that you're doing in your curiosity and your instincts? The only thing about that is that I have those and I have multiple ones of those, they just don't pay anything. And that's, I don't know if that changes it qualitatively or if it is just something that I've been hesitant to dive into. It's like, what's the difference between having this done and having this done in a way that other people could buy? And I think, okay, I don't know. Maybe it completely changes it and it turns into birch box in a negative way. Or maybe it doesn't change it at all. And it actually, why didn't I do this 15 years ago? Cause now I have all these people who are like, yeah, yeah, yeah, this is great. And I don't feel like a shrub for marketing because they're saying, no, this is great. I want more of it. So somebody in the spirit of testing the market and figuring things out, somebody sent me a link to five minute logos, which is a Tumblr account. Yeah, it was me. Oh, that was you. Okay, good. I'm like, wait, where'd that come from? It's a brilliant idea. Yeah. And it's like, okay, so what could you do this like that? Well, I do it already. I just don't charge for it. And it's also, it's not in such a tight niche. Yeah. You know, he doesn't do five minute headlines. You know, he just does five minute logos, right? And so that's one of the things that I'm hesitant to constrain. Simply because what I'm finding is that the older I get, the more these things enhance each other. You know, I'm finding that it's not turning into these, like it continues to go like that. It's like all these things, it's more like this, you know? Totally hear ya. Yeah. And I'm drawn to things like, don't forget to be awesome and nerdfighteria and that sort of stuff. I've made a play pledge, you know, play every day. You know, it's just a thing, you know? All right, there's my play pledge. You know, it has the play bowel, you know, which is, you know, that's, it's a universally understood thing that every mammal does, you know? And my, about the introversion side, this connects in here. I volunteered to be a hockey coach a number of years ago and I did that for, geez, was it eight years maybe? Something like that? I don't know. And my approach was always on the ones who were on the cusp of learning how to just get competent. You know, they weren't the ones who were going for the varsity first line. They were the ones who were trying to go from, this is hard to this is fun. And that's just, that lit my fire. I loved seeing that. And one of the things was, you know, I just noticed that my optimism, it's like, I have 100% confidence you can do this and that comes through. And I think that's part of my brand, if you will, you know, is that I've tested it, I've tried it. I've worked really hard to pick just these five, all these 45 over here, you don't have to worry about. Just these five, trust me, if you just do this and I'm going to help you get from I can't to I can. And then you're going to see if you can on those five. Wow, now you're playing hockey. Look at that, you know. Exactly. And I think you're having a similar problem to what I have, which is, these are labors of love for you. Like you really love doing this, it comes naturally and you enjoy doing it. And you're afraid of what would happen if you monetized it because if you suddenly turn something into a subscription, on the one hand, if it takes off and becomes really successful, you become a prisoner to it. On the other hand, it changes the nature of the interactions because now it's pay for play or whatever, which is different. And I totally, that resonates strongly with me as well. But I'm trying to figure out how might you take these things that you're just gifted at doing and make subscription services out there. And you don't need a whole bunch of people paying you a subscription like on sub-stack or something like that, except with images and projects. But you don't need a whole bunch of people paying you something to equal the money you're getting for your third gig right now. Yeah, yeah. I think you're right there. That's one of the things I'm afraid of. I have had situations where I was at working a regular job because I've been consistently in that space and I was doing lunch and learns. And then the lunch and learns, people started to tell other people, hey, you need to do this, and it started to grow. And now I couldn't just take a long lunch and go do this and I stopped doing it just completely. Because I thought this is getting popular and that's a problem that I can't address right now. And I couldn't address it because I couldn't leave. It wasn't big enough for me to leave. It was, yeah, labor's the love for sure. And I think like, do you have any context on this? So, I think 100 years ago or 200 years ago, all the way back, things have been very maybe similar. So many things have changed in the last even 50 years where I can actually have a global market, right? Okay, so on the flip side of that, most people through most time have just had hobbies and things that they did. They made one toy for their grandchild, which I did. And then their next thought was not, how can I kickstart this? Right, right. Yeah. It was just, they just did that. And that's my on the fence struggle is like, okay, it's okay to offer that up because people would love it. What does that, is that, am I then just gonna let them down? Cause it's like, okay, well, I started doing this. I just can't anymore. I don't want to make any more of those. You know, I like with the wooden toy, like, okay, well, if there was somebody who wanted to make them and gave me, you know, 5%, okay, that's great. I don't even know what that means, but it's like, yeah. All right, let's do that. Cause I don't want to make them, you know, that's not what, I don't want to build a bunch of toys. Yeah. I want to figure them out. So this may be inspiring to you. It's really crazy sounding to me, but very inspirational. George Carlin threw out his material every year. He insisted on like inventing new comedy and he just got better. Louis C.K. for better or worse, who got himself stuck in Me Too in terrible ways, but did the same thing inspired by George Carlin. I appreciate Louis C.K.'s humor. Kind of humor too, yeah, Me Too. So what I'm kind of saying by this is, what if the thing that we, me as a potential subscriber, customer, backer of your venture, was realized that periodically, you're just going to take a left turn and you're going to shift and do something else and that something else is going to follow your interests and passions. And because I know your intentions and your direction, I'll be like, and it's going to be cool. And so that would give you the breathing space to just follow something until it peters out on its own or until you know you've explored it and then pick up the next thing that you know is interesting and useful and do that for a while. But still, and then second thought and not charge your buddies and your close intimates for this project or the stuff that you do, but rather take the work products of your passion and your friends and your community, which remains free and then charge someone else for them. Throw them over the fence into a place where they get a lot more exposure, a lot more people get to benefit from them. I mean, the Play Pledge page you showed me, does that page exist online? Yeah. Okay, cool, I will find it because... Yeah, I just, because what I realized was that when I first made my website, which was, I don't even know if it was five years ago, maybe it wasn't more than that. Yeah. It was because I realized that I was sending emails to individuals, a very one-on-one communicator. And I would say, hey, here's this Play Pledge thing that I came up with, no, no, no, no. You know, and then I find somebody else and I'd go look at my email, I'd copy it, I'd paste it and I'd send it to another person. And I thought, it'd be really nice if I could just send a link and that maybe other people might stumble on them. And then what I realized is, okay, wait a minute, everybody I send the Play Pledge to might be interested in think inside the box, the creative model, but they'd never know about it because, right, and so, and then I just put it all on my site and I don't do anything with it other than put it on the site. Right, exactly. You know, now I can share a link. Okay, there, there's the Play Pledge. And I just Googled it, it was the second result for me in the Google search. The first one was the genius of Play Play Pledge. Don't know what that one is. So here you are. And then I added it to my brain under more better. And under play is essential to well-being, which I should connect to well-being. What I realized, I just have learned some stuff about Piaget and how his work was how play is how we develop our morality as we're growing up. Because you realize that fair play is a thing and you learn that by playing with others. And it's just really interesting. I just lost you. I'm gonna stop the recording for a minute. Good idea. Okay, now we're back after a little bit. So let me finish the rat story. I don't know how far we got. So when rats play, they do rough and tumble play and they kind of pin each other. And the big rat always wins, can win because it's bigger and stronger. And what Piaget discovered was that the little rat initiates the play. And if the big rat doesn't let the little rat win 30% of the time, the little rat will stop inviting the big rat to play. Now the big rat doesn't have the benefit of the play. And so it's a mutual thing. And it's a morality of fair plays actually built in to the circuits. And you can see it with a dog and the dog will play rougher or gentler with, it doesn't have to be taught that. It just, it knows that, well, I guess it's taught in the sense that it plays too rough and then there's a little yelp and okay, well, that's too far. And it's just fascinating to me, but understanding those kinds of things, I think play is just, well, it's just critical. It's like, when you look at the little hierarchy of needs which I'm not sure I totally bought into. I'm not a big fan of it, yeah. Yeah, but what I've noticed is at the top of the hierarchies of almost everyone I know is playing. And it's like, well, really? Well, I thought it was money and power. It's like, yeah, well, what are they doing with all that? It's so they have leisure time so they can play. They get a bigger boat or they get a bigger, like it's not that you get a bigger building. It's like, most people are like, okay, I'm gonna get something to, I'm gonna get a faster car. I'm gonna get a, people play in all kinds of different ways, but to me it feels like that's what people are ultimately trying to go after. And I think it's just make things, I don't know, I'm a big prevalent on the top. And what you just said factors strongly in this conversation for me, because I'm trying to figure out what could you assemble that has multi-purpose, but that feels like play, that keeps you in that state of play with people you really love to play with, right? How do we find a combo of activities which then let you just keep doing that without eating your time? I mean, a friend of mine started the company that's pretty well known around the world. He tried 15 different business models and we had dinner like 15 years ago where he said, Jerry, I'm a prisoner of my company. I have to give this seminar like 200 times a year. And if it's not me at the front of the room, nobody shows up to the seminar. And none of the other revenue streams generate enough lift that I can kind of hand this over and retire out. And I was like, I don't want that. Yeah. Right? Yeah. And I am fortunate. And I said this at the beginning and I'll repeat it again that I'm not in a position of, oh, I'm losing my house. I need to make these products work. And I understand every day that I'm lucky, that I'm not in that situation. And so this is just more like, I'm gonna keep doing these things because they're my ping pong balls underwater. I can't hold them down. They just, they'll pop up on their own. And if I'm gonna do that, should I bother trying to come up with a model that you're describing, which sounds really interesting. So the model we're talking about would be very easy to prototype. Like there's 15 different subscription platforms. You could pick one, you could, and I wouldn't go with an advertising-based platform where you need to get a massive audience because that suddenly plots you into a completely different place. I would fall into some place where you have kind of, it's sort of like what Substack is doing, but I'm not sure Substack or Ghost are right for you. But Substack is cool because for most Substack writers, you can subscribe to them without paying them or you can pay them. And if you pay them, they've got some extra goodies that sort of come behind the paywall in some sense. And it's really simple. It's easy to understand. The platform supports the repeated broadcast of stuff to the audience that's busy signing up. And again, it wouldn't take a lot of people signing up to what you're generating for you to equal or exceed one of your revenue streams. And I think it would take less time in some sense and you would avoid the context switching. So the question I'm drawn to is what keeps you from experimenting with that border zone of, okay, I'm gonna take some of these best things that I've done and then put them into behind some kind of subscription. Okay, well subscription to me. Well, on the good side, if I'm gonna post them somewhere, I'll post them there. And that's kind of my, the thing that initiated all of this was like, well, if I'm already doing this stuff, am I just being stupid here and missing out on a bunch of people who would say, please, I'll pay for this because I want it. And I'd like you to be able to generate more. Yeah, subscription to me means regular, timed, consistent deliverables. And I don't know how these subscription platforms work. And that makes me wonder, like, okay, because I can't predict these things happen. And the one thing that is consistent is when I am on one, I don't, I lose my sense of time. Like I'm just, it's the middle of the winter and I'm out using the saw next to the car, and I don't care that it's cold. I'm on a mission to get this thing done. And it's the same way in negative ways as well. If I have money-driven projects from my real work, I'll set it aside because I feel like this thing is just, it's here and it's asking me to play with it. And I have to have to do it. I mean, I'll wake up at five in the morning because I have this thing I want to get done. And so it's that the subscription side of it is, it's like that feels, it feels like the typical social media marketing kind of cadence, okay, well, you need to have your blog post every day and you need to have all this, right? And I do have a continuous output, but it is all over the place kind of. Yeah. So what you're saying about consistent, fresh content, et cetera, et cetera, like in caps and in quotes is true of a particular approach toward media, social media and building audiences and all of that. And it's probably very true if you're trying to build a mass audience and you're trying to like go bake or go home or whatever. Yeah, that is not my goal. And it may not be true of a quirky, yet fascinating stream of interesting stuff. So that's the first thing. But the second thing is, if you look at the things you have lying on the table already, you could queue those up and very likely have a stream of interesting things to do for a year or two. I have a feeling that you've got enough things around in particular if you spent a month on a thing and said, here's a different way of thinking about it or using it. Hey, here's a systems thinking approach to it. Hey, we went out and played and here's a video of what we did, whatever. But if you sort of stood around an artifact that's in the stream here and played with it, that would work great. So, and that would take the pressure off of doing something new now for the next monthly episode, which is due on Tuesday, right? Which is the thing I think you and I both don't like and are trying to avoid. Yeah, yeah, there's the pressure of doing it and then it becomes, I get my own way. Yeah, I hear you. It's like now it has to be good. Which is silly because the feedback I get says that the other stuff is good. Yeah, and you have personal quality standards that mean it's gonna be good. So set that one aside, right? Yeah, set that worry aside. But it's gotta be better for me to post it for pay. You know, that kind of stuff. It actually doesn't, yeah, exactly. So is there a way to explore that space or to help you get past that? Because it feels like you have some own internal mental barriers that keep you from posting to the public for pay under whatever framework or platform it might be. And there's plenty to choose from. But there's something in your head is keeping you from trying that. One of them is these things are really simple. And I know they're simple on the side of complexity, which is the value. But it's hard for me like, well, yeah, it's just these things here. Well, that seems pretty simple. You know, at least that's the way I think about it. That's one challenge. And then the idea of finished, you know, this is something that's like a finished model or something like that is... So to build on what that means to me, maybe your rhythm is instead of, hey, here's a simple thing I finished and good luck with you. And then here's another simple thing I finished and good luck to you. Instead of that, what your rhythm could be is I'm going to tell a story right now about how this thing showed up that looks pretty simple. And you record yourself telling the story in whatever form you want with friends and some hot coffee or by yourself or what, I don't know. But the first piece is the introduction about this is how messy it was at the start. And this is what some of the thinking I went through and then it showed up as this thing. Then here's the thing. And then there's this post script. There's this epilogue that says, by the way, this thing's kind of half finished. It's first, it's a component in these other things. And here's how it connects to this and this and this and this. But then also here are the open questions that left in my head. And here's how it's in some sense incomplete in a way that you can help me complete or whatever. And so instead of dropping completed objects you're actually telling stories around them and leaving open questions and things like that. And it becomes this rhythm that people get used to. It's like, oh, okay, good. So now we're done with the Mobile for DSRP. So now we're starting a new thread and a new journey and a new story into a different thing that's going to show up. And by the way, when Dickens and others were writing their books a lot of these things were serialized in magazines and the early magazines. And people were dying for the next month because there'd be a cliffhanger at the end of the first chapter, the first delivery. And a lot of these writers were busy writing the book as the magazine went to press. So there's some pressure but some excitement and some like serialization is a good thing. Like it creates a dramatic arc. It creates a background where you can do all kinds of cool stuff. Yeah. Oh. So, and I'm noticing you're looking down and not at me very much. No, I'm writing notes. Okay, good, good. Cause I'm worried that I'm like adding pressure that you don't want or don't need. I'm trying to like just really be helpful and listening with care to what has passion for you where your life energy feels like it is and also what your natural gifts are, which are plentiful and fun and always. Like when you make things, they're full of joy. They're just like little joy gifts. And that's great, but they're also not joy gifts. Like, hey, look, I carved an ivory elephant. But rather, hey, look, here's a component of systems thinking and here's how it might help you in the world and all that. Cool. I think you are, you have the idea that they're joy gifts in the best way. I think they're, it's sappy, but it's a little flame. And it's like, here, here, I can light your candle. You know, that's what it feels like to me is it's like, it's not just an object I want you to buy. It's a thing I want you to know because, wow, this could really, this, look at how happy this made me understanding that thing. This is the best kind of learning. And I hate the words teaching in education and school. So for me, it's so much about learning. But you're like a great coach, teacher, exposer, fellow student of life. And you're exposed to stuff that matters and you're busy translating into simple stuff that makes it more accessible, more useful. Like, that's just awesome. Yeah, that last sentence is that, yeah, that last sentence is, that's it. Yeah. Yeah, it's defense against the dark arts in the real way. Since, because for me, if I know these things, I can go into an environment that feels, well, I go into fewer and fewer environments where I feel like, oh, I don't know what I'm gonna possibly do here. I've never been here before. Now, with all these things I've grabbed, it's like, oh, I can walk in there and know that I can handle it. And this is the phrase I've been, I don't know if I coined it or not, but competence builds confidence. And what I noticed is that, especially in my hockey coaching, it was like, as soon as you learn a skill, then you're more confident. It's not about, oh, you can do it. Oh, I believe in you. You know, that's a good environment to have, but actually learning a skill, even a tiny one creates confidence and that stacks. You learn more things and that's where you now have the ability to go off and do new things, enter the realm of chaos and not be afraid and come back with something great. So, all right, I've gone over our little hour here. Well, I'm unclear how long these sessions should be because should they be 60 minutes, 90 minutes? I don't know. We're friends, so I would stay on for a really long time except I had a call with Pete Book to catch up. We have a standing call. By the way, there's a confidence, competence loop by Kevin Eichenberry, which Googles first when I Google for competence builds confidence. And I'll add that to my brain. And then I'm gonna shoot a short video of my reflections from our conversation and send you that after. So, what's in your head or what's in your heart or what was this helpful? What did it open any new questions? Did it turn over new soil? Because you've been working on this for a long time. I feel like this is a very nice but constant quest in your mind. Yeah, well, and you know about my thinking skills for kids that started a little while ago which then turned into a grid of stuff which then sitting out on a picnic table with a pair of scissors turned into a card deck. And what it was was a way to take all of my things that I had been working on and they all like they integrated. System thinking was the last piece. Because it was thoughts, what is the nature of the thought which was the systems thinking, then there was memory. There was creativity. So design thinking and scientific process and all that sort of stuff. Games, which is the play portion, stories, the narrative portion. And then there's an experiential like how is perception work, attention, perception balance, et cetera. And then at the top is you, the unique bundle of potential that we all are. And what I thought was like, this makes my whole life make sense. My whole curiosity pursuit life. Well, we'll say that. All of the things that I was going after, it's like it puts them all into one thing. And it's a structure that makes sense. And you can enter it at any point and it's, I don't know, it's about a hundred cards. And they all, you can mix and match them but there is kind of a framework for it and how they belong, at least in my mind. And I think, you know what, this is like my magnum opus. Like this was, it just happened. And now I think, okay, now, like... Are the cards in the world? Can I buy a deck? Well, you can't, but you know. I mean, I'm sure you made a deck of cards, but... Yeah, there they are. You can turn this into a thing because people could buy. I have a small collection of decks of cards. I do too. Yeah. I realized that was that I had a collection of decks of cards which made me thought, oh, I like decks of cards. Yeah. You know, they're just nice because they're modular. And they, you know... What do you call these? So it went through a number of iterations and they were, they were the cogs. And you put them all together and become a metacog. And it was, you know, it was all these thinking tools. And they were basically the cogs of thinking. And then I went on to the latest iteration of it was take the word symphony and replace the last two letters with me as in I, like me, symphony. And it is the harmonious way to essentially, you know, think, save, create, and compose the unique symphony of your life. And it's the multi-pattern style. And the symphony just made sense to me because it's multi-layered. It's happening over time. You know, you go through it once. It's all, it's just, I don't know, but it's still a name that I struggled with. But then I think, well, who cares if it's just for me? You know, it's just, that makes sense to me. And if you're gonna put these out for other people to buy, then they need a simple name that works, that resonates somehow. And that's it's own little explorations. It's own little task. But I like that. And... I have a lot of Google wax, by the way. I have a lot of words that came out of it. That's cool. And there's also like people like Alanda Bhutan who does the School of Life. And there are now lots of people online doing philosophy manuals, how to live your life advice, et cetera, et cetera. But again, you're really not interested in, I don't think you're interested in mass market at all. I think you're really interested in finding the niche you really love. And that's kind of more tribe and less audience. And if you treat them as tribe and co-inhabitants in this journey to understand how to live better, there's no reason you can't make a living doing that and not feel like, oh my God, I need fresh content tomorrow. Yeah. Yeah, the people that I thought were most relevant to this were independent schools and homeschoolers. Mm-hmm. Oh my God. Yeah, because of the way the framework works. It's like, I am not one, as you know, I'm not one who's gonna tell you how you should live your life. Mm-hmm. But I think that there's tools that help you figure that out on your own. Like you can use these, if you understand systems thinking, I don't care what system you think about, but now you can. Exactly. So here's a query I have open, which is, and I haven't put this in my brain yet, so I roll when we're done talking, but I'm a member of ASD, the Alliance for Self-Directed Education. And under lockdown, I was pretty sure when lockdown first happened that a self-directed learning or unschooling or homeschooling, whatever you call it, would just explode. Sure. Would explode like Zoom exploded. Yeah. It has not. It has not at all. Yeah, parents are busy. Well, no, but parents are looking for great things to do with and for their kids. And if terrific unschooling resources were showing up, they would have shared them out, they would have done, they would have, like I think there would have been tremendous energy to apply them because otherwise the kids were at home trying to figure out, okay, what time do we have to be on for work class and what's on your syllabus, which is in a stupid PDF file from the teacher or something, right? It's like, okay, do you want more misery and a system that's trying to replicate itself online or can we create some new environment? And a thing I'd love to know is, I'm willing to bet that there's a couple of unschooling initiatives that have gotten a lot of traction during lockdown. I just don't know about them. I'd love to know what they are and if they have platforms and if you'd like to join some of that because there might be some really, really fun energy in those crowds and they might have enough people that it works, that it works as a community, as a tribe of learners. And that would be really fun to figure out. So I'll do a little bit of searching, but I think that would be a thing you would enjoy doing as well. Yes, I think you hit on something that is interesting to me. You can set up your site that is here's your platform, here's my symphony platform. And everything on the site is that. And then I'm responsible for all the mail lists and all the other stuff that goes with it. Or you have this system where someone else has developed this platform and it's like teachable or it's like anything like that where they're looking for people to be part of the, to create things that go on there. And they're not, like if I don't do it for two months, it doesn't matter because there's a bunch of other people who are doing it. And that's an idea that is interesting. And I don't know why I didn't, why, I've been considering it, but I don't know why I haven't actually made, maybe it's the formality of a class. It's interesting. These platform choices make a difference. Like, Substack versus Khan Academy versus Vlog Brothers and what they do. And I don't know how most of them work. I mean, I don't know how the Vlog Brothers make money. And I think they're doing fine because the brothers are published authors and make movies and other sorts of things. But somewhere in there, there's a lot of work that they're doing. They produce excellent media and large quantities of it. So it's amazing. So there we are. Yeah, there we are. Thank you. Thank you for this. I'll send you a summary afterward. Welcome to open this conversation up again as we go. But it's been really fun. Thank you. I think the biggest takeaways for me were this subscription idea, which then whatever that looks like, I don't know if that's the right word, but that it creates a channel to deliver the things that I've been interested in and I've been making to a group of people who are interested in them for no other reason than the same reasons that I am. Alignment of passions. Yeah. Alignment of passions and where those passions are really serving, there are lots of parents out there who'd like their kids to grow up as good critical thinkers. That's like a big deal. Yeah. And you're just perfectly equipped to be a thinking partner on that journey. Yeah, especially because I really want to focus on this thing here instead of, okay, if you take my 40 week class in critical thinking skills. Exactly. I was like. Please God. Yeah, that's not it. And so finding, like you said, the platform is critical. Yeah. Where bite size and stackable. That's me, it was very intriguing. And elaborated. Like, don't think of the bite size as just the object, but there's a story that explains how the object came to being. There's questions the object leaves in the world. There's what Joe Bob did and Sally did with the object. There's a whole bunch of stuff around each object that makes it richer, more interesting, more useful, a better learning experience. Yes. And that fits with what's happening in my own life as I work with these tools and start to see how they integrate. Yeah. So. That makes sense to me. Thank you, Jerry. Cool. Thank you. This has been beautiful. I really appreciate it. Well, I'm the receiver here. So thank you. Until soon. All right. Thanks. Bye bye.