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Why is it that people in seemingly great places — good careers or relationships, leave to pursue ‘more’?
In 2015, Alan Gertner was working his dream job at Google. Growing up, Alan was the type of kid who preferred computer camp to sports camp, and at only 30 years old was an executive at Google, living in Singapore. He’d dedicated his 20’s to winning at work and realized he wanted the next chapter to be different – so he left.
He went on to start a company in the cannabis industry, Tokyo Smoke, which he eventually sold to Canopy Growth Corporation for a reported $250M. But his systematic process to do the self-work required to figure out what to do next was key to his success. Alan shares that process, and more on the first episode of our new series Hustle & Grit.
The Ivey Entrepreneur Podcast is sponsored by Connie Clerici, QS ’08, and Closing the Gap Healthcare Group, Inc.
Transcript
You're listening to the Ivey entrepreneur podcast from the Pierre L. Morrissette Institute for Entrepreneurship at the Ivey Business School. In this series Ivey entrepreneur, and Ivey faculty member Eric Janssen will anchor the session
Eric Janssen
Alan, thanks so much for coming in good to get to hang out with you again.
Alan Gertner
Yeah, thanks for having me.
Eric Janssen
Always good to have you at the school. I wanted to spend a little bit of time so this is part of our hustle and grit series. And I wanted to spend a lot of time today on motivation. You've got such an interesting and winding story. But I wanted to actually start with, there's an article in the, I believe was the Toronto Star from 2017. And you were quoted a whole bunch and the title of the article was the problem with reaching your career goal. Can you paint us a picture for where were you at when you were call it 25 or 30 years old? Pick an interesting time in your life? Where were you at?
Alan Gertner
Yeah, I can I can reflect and, and relate to being 30 very closely. I'm 35 now. And I remember being 30. I was living in Singapore. I've been working for Google for just made just over a handful of years. Google wasn't a lot of ways my dream job. I went to computer camp as a kid. And again, I'm 35. So going to computer camp as a kid at that time was not cool, right? This was a scenario that I remember my parents actively trying to limit the amount of time I went to computer camp, they're like, okay, we'll trade you like two weeks that computer camp for four weeks of baseball camp, like I love this stuff. And I got this job at Google google.com slash jobs apply for a job got this job at the time I moved from New York to San Francisco, in San Francisco, couple years, moved to Singapore, then I was in Singapore. And at the time, I was running a business unit for Google. And this was all I could ever ask for. I had this job with prestige, I made more money than I ever really imagined I would make, had a team have to work in multiple offices, I got to be in this far flung place. All these really amazing things. And I remember sitting down with my boss, my mentor at the time, and talking to him about what was next. And thinking a lot about really my next promotion. Because, at least for me, a lot of what I was always motivated by, why I was getting up in the bed that I got to bed every morning was to get promoted, get promoted, make more money, lather, rinse, repeat. So I was having this conversation with my mentor and talking about the next promotion. And like, I remember very vividly explained to him why I wanted to get promoted. Asked me like why do you care so much. When we really got down to it, I said that I wanted to get promoted, really like to beat other people to that goal line. And if I didn't beat the other people that go online, it was irrelevant to me. And when we reflected back on how I was feeling in my past promotions, what I realized was, really, every time that I got to that goal line, I felt nothing. And I was so excited, so passionate, so focused on getting that place. And then all of a sudden, absence, all of a sudden, I was in limbo again. And I had to create this new goal, this new external focus this new external stimuli to drive towards. And ultimately, at 30, I was tired of doing it. What I realized was, this hamster wheel I was on wasn't getting me anywhere at all, I was just gonna do the same thing over and over again forever. And so it started me on this journey to try to figure out what truly made my life meaningful. Because if I had focused my entire 20s, on trying to win at work, can I focus my 30s on trying to win at life? And what would that mean? So I remember everything about sitting down and having that chat. And it set me on the journey that I'm still working on today.
Eric Janssen
And did your boss at the time, did he encourage you to explore that? was he thinking, shoot, I can't lose this guy? Or was he thinking?
Alan Gertner
Oh, it's so funny. So I like I remember also very distinctly, talking to my boss, my boss's boss, talking to colleagues about my decision to quit when I decided I was going to quit. So I was working at Google. I went and did a project in Ghana. When I came back to Singapore, and I quit my job. And when I talked to my boss's boss, I'll explain this even better way. There was basically a direct relationship between how supportive you were and how old you were. So the older the person was, the more supportive they were of me going on this journey. They were immediately understanding. Oh, you want to try to figure out what would make your life meaning. You want to try to take a break and take a step back and look at all this growth. Great, we're happy to offer you more money, we're happy to give you a different title. But if that's what you want to do, go do that. But when I would talk to my peers, or people who were sort of fresher into Google, or talk to people who I didn't work with, but were maybe my friends in life, a lot of them had a harder time understanding it. Because we had all had this same focus, we'd all had the same perspective, we'd all had these goggles on, that made us made us think of life in a certain way. So why would you ever leave this job with this money in this place? Why would you do that? So it's so funny to think back to how universal it was, that those who I looked up to, and those who I respected those who were older, and they really, and truly, were all okay, and supportive of this journey that was gonna go on.
Eric Janssen
And do you find that was everybody else in your peer group also, in a similar place, were there's some people that had sort of got to this place and figured this out earlier was everybody just sort of heads down, I want to win at work.
Alan Gertner
A lot of people figured this out way quicker than I did. I don't know if they went through the same journey, it might have just been an eight for them. It might have been discovered, they made her there. But even now, I can reflect on my friends who maybe went and became schema, right and live in a ski town and work in a ski resort. And they seem, they've always seemed happier, like they have lives that are more meaningful than some of my contemporaries who've been grinding away at work. Sometimes, I would tell myself, and I think lots of us do this, but I would tell myself, there was only one true path. There's only one story here that makes sense. And that story is the story, I believe my own life. Good work, work hard, journey on, when I started to look around, you know, is clear that there was so much more going on. But it was hard to look around for a lot of that time, right? Because I'm basically climbing this mountain. And so in stage one, when you look around, you don't really see anything, it's not till you get to the top, you can really look around and and see that there are other people on higher peaks. There are other people who've taken totally different journeys, there are other people just where you are. And they didn't take the same route at all. So it took me a long time to figure out that there were other paths, and that maybe the mountain that was climbing was wrong mountain in the first place.
Eric Janssen
So that led you to a trip to Ghana?
Alan Gertner
Right. So I went to Ghana, it was actually the last project I did at Google. Okay. So I was lucky to get to go on secondment there. And we worked on a project to deploy internet infrastructure in Ghana, Google, in its infinite wisdom, looked at the Canadian market thought hey, real opportunity for us to do something here. And one thing we can do is deploy fiber cables. So we went around, Gannon helped people understand how they could use Google and YouTube and all of these things to make their lives better, because now they were going to have this high speed internet. And while I was was there, I had a couple moments that really pushed me over the edge in my decision making to leave Google. And one of them was we're on the way this Voodoo ceremony. So it was me and a couple other Google employees Googlers, who were in Ghana, and we talked about things we could do while we're there. And really only two of us, maybe the 20 Googlers, who were there had any interest in this Buddhist ceremony. So we found a guide, gotten his car drove out to the bush. And the British ceremony itself was cool, right, a whole different story for a whole nother time. But the thing that was impactful that has stuck with me is talking to the guide about my life, saying that I was feeling unmoored from my goals that I was going to quit Google, this guy just couldn't believe this, right. But I asked him, What motivated him in life? Why does he get up and be a guide every day? And why does he get up and do what he does? He told me that for him, his focus has always been about either doing something that he loves, or doing something for the people that he loves. This idea really stuck with me work on something that you love or work on something to support the people that you love. And it's not necessarily the principles that everyone should orient their life around, or that I should orient around. But it was the summation of a journey that was so different than mine. That's not how I focused my life at all. Right? I was going to win at work. What do I care about the other stuff. So to hear someone's such someone's thoughtful, concise statement about how they live their life, it really helped drive me to try to figure out this new path.
Eric Janssen
So you're starting to piece these things together. There was something some sort of discomfort that you were feeling at Google, you met this guide and you're starting to say, here's a principle or an idea that gravitates were you capturing these anywhere? Or was it just like I'm gonna park this thought, I'm gonna park this idea or in your mind where you're like, Oh, this is a foundation. thing that is going to be the basis of something. I don't know what yet, how are you organizing that info?
Alan Gertner
Yeah, I've always been a very fastidious note taker. I try my absolute best, whether enabled by technology or not to write down everything and anything that is interesting to me. And so I've always done that. And as I've gotten older, I've gotten also a lot better at journaling and trying to do more free writing, because I think it's a nice opportunity to to reflect. So at this time, I was really just writing stuff down. But I was still unsure of where I was going to go I, you know, I was the youngest person in my job is back at Google and in the world, right? So it was part of me was still dragging me to this place of Okay, well, I should just, I should really just keep on this journey. What happened was, I got back to Singapore, I decided I would quit. And then as I was thinking about this new journey, I would go on, and keep in mind, I quit with no plan. And this never really made sense to me, that I would look forward to this idea of quitting and then going in line on a beach, absence of stimuli, the absence of things to do, that didn't feel like the path of the dream or the vision that I had, right, because this dream and his vision was to figure out what would make my life more meaningful. And so for me, after I quit, I started to do a lot of reading and started to try to assemble some tools that would help me figure this out what would make my life more meaningful.
Eric Janssen
And this was after you quit?
Alan Gertner
This was after I quit. So I quit without this plan, I quit thinking that I'll figure this out. One thing I've always told myself, this is, for better for worse, is that I'll figure it out. So I quit. Now that I'll figure it out. I packed up my bag like packing up my bags in Singapore, because it can't stay in Singapore. I'm not from Singapore. So quitting is also the expiration of my visa packet in my bags in Singapore and decided on this journey that is ahead of me. And I wanted some structure, I wanted some rubric, I wanted some way to be able to evaluate my life going forward. Because I wouldn't have the same consistent inputs like I had before. But I needed some way to sort through this information. And so as someone who went to Ivey, who was a management consultant who worked at a tech company for too long, I thought, I'm sure a spreadsheet will help me solve this problem. So I built this big spreadsheet. And this spreadsheet was my way to reflect on my happiness, and the meaning of my life. And so I tried to track everything that happened to me every day, I'd get up in the morning, and have some tea, and do some meditation. And I reflect on my past day. How happy was I? how meaningful was my day? And I'd score myself out of 10. Who did I talk to? What are they talking about? What was the weather like? What did I do? Try to write all these things down. And I went out and live this life that I hadn't otherwise got to live because I'd been working. So I got the chance to go and be a backcountry ski tour guide in Japan, I'd love Skeens, one of those moments where I feel in flow, or I feel like my life has meaning. I got to ski. My friends and I we bought a 20 year old Toyota and we drove from London to Mongolia. I got to go do all this stuff. And all this time, I'm filling in a spreadsheet every morning, filling it out. And after not that long, I started to discover a pattern. And it taught me two principles that were the guiding light of the next phase of my life. And these two things, I don't think they're necessarily so regulatory. But they were important for me to see in the mirror to see that they were true for me. One of those things was that my life is more fulfilling. I am happier if I am part of or building a community. And as I said, this is I think in some ways, a pretty obvious thing. There's lots of studies around human happiness, that say one of the most fundamental inputs to your happiness is time with your friends time with your family time with loved ones social time. And I've spent my life trying to win work. So after I left Ivey, I lived in New York, I live in San Francisco, I lived in Singapore, I lived in Bangkok, Tokyo and I live in God doesn't sound like necessarily the trappings of a person who optimized for community. So I know community is important to me. The second thing I learned was that my life is more fulfilling, more meaningful. If I take on a big challenge, or to steal from Google's parlance if I take on a moonshot, if I focus my energy, I'm trying to imagine a world that I want to live in, as opposed to the world I live in today. And this isn't necessarily 5% better or 10%. Better. It's not about running a marathon faster than I typically would run a marathon. It's instead about some large scale, hard thing about pushing a boulder up a hill. If I focus my energy on those kinds of things, my life feels more fulfilling. It feels like I'm making a difference. And so I had these two anchors. Now, I want to be part of a builder community. And I want to take on a moonshot.
Eric Janssen
And those two came out of all of the new experiences and a lot of the tracking that you did, did you see somehow through the patterns or your data that the days that you were happiness had happiest had something to do with those things?
Alan Gertner
Yes, like, I remember, when we were schemes, I'm working as a backcountry ski tour guide, we lose a group, and we're in the forest, in the middle of nowhere in Japan, and we lose a group of people, like not a good scenario, right. And if it's not otherwise, abundantly clear, I don't speak Japanese. So, other than alerting the nearby staff that we've lost a group, it's not a lot I can do is the key interpreter, I didn't lose my group. To be fair, we lost a group. So we define this group, myself and three, four other guides, and we're doing our absolute best hunter and trying to call them obviously, we can't get a hold of them there with a guide. So we know they're at least with somebody. And we ended up you know, sitting in this big parameter of searching a forest. It's 5pm at 6pm and 7pm. And skin Japan is cold, right, your minus 20 minus 30. sun is going down is not a it's not a good luck. Finally, we get ahold of the guideline, crackling phone call. We have this big printed map out, we're looking at the topography of the area, we're pretty sure where he's gonna pop out of this gully turns out, they went into this gully that they obviously can't get out of. So a couple of us get in a car, we drive an hour and a half away, start climbing up this hill hoping that they're going to come out of this gully and we find them. And we find them at 9pm. So wholly stressful, terrifying, uncomfortable situation, include, get everyone together, going up, have a nice dinner, maybe have some warm ramen and drink some beers and reflect on the day and promise that we'll never lose them again. But when I woke up the next day, and I filled out my my spreadsheet, what I noticed was as silly as this might sound, my life felt very meaningful. In that moment, I got the chance to participate in something that was truly hard to participate in something that was about community about this group of people that I spent weeks with that I cared about to work with guys, we work together as a team to do all this stuff. So this says, small anecdote of the kind of story that led to a score being higher one day, and so I would see these patterns when these things would happen. And because I also took notes, right, it was a journal and a spreadsheet, it was easy to start to see these inputs that drove this feeling this desire for community, this desire to take on a big challenge.
Eric Janssen
But had you not given yourself the time to reflect in the space to actually live those experiences? I mean, you maybe you did experience, do things like that before?
Alan Gertner
Yeah
Eric Janssen
But hadn't given yourself the space or time to reflect on it. So only by giving yourself the headspace to do that. Were you actually having these these insights or these realizations.
Alan Gertner
I think that's true. And I think it was important for me, given my makeup, to be able to see it in the mirror. As I said earlier, it's one thing for me to read a business book or a book about improving my life that tells me these two things, as I suspect there are lots of other people that have come to that insight and many more. What was truly helpful for me, was to be confronted with that. And I was confronted with this idea that these are the things, I have an obvious choice here. I can I can take this information that I've been writing down while I've been living my life and do something about it, or I can not
Eric Janssen
Right. It's like an extreme version of these strength assessments that the US will have or you can sit down in your office and say like, what brings me energy? What drains me energy? What am I good at? What am I not good at? I do that every year, I look at my calendar. And I look at what were the things that I did either meetings that I take, what traveling did I do? And looking at them, I can almost get them an emotional response to like, Oh, I remember when I got on that flight into that, like I need to do less of that this year.
Alan Gertner
So just to jump in really quick. One thing I've been working on since I I left my job in this past February 2019. Was this idea of the full body. Yes. It's actually the full body f Yes. But I'm not gonna swear. So the full body Yes. Right. And so this idea of full body so the reason I bring it up is I think it relates very well to that feeling you're expressing right of like, Oh, he's like, I that was just And not a good experience. So I think sometimes for me in my life, I've always looked at things with my brain first, I want to look at these problems and the scenario that I'm in and reflect back with my brain. And that's only really one part of how our body thinks we have neurons in our gut. And our heart is it plays a hugely meaningful role in the way that we think and the way that we act. So this idea of the full body, yes, is trying to reflect on and trying to tap into understanding how your gut reacts to things, and how your heart reacts to things. Because that feeling like oh, that's not a head feeling, right? Your posture even changes when you make that make that feeling. And so better understanding this full body, yes, has been very important in this next journey that I'm on, to try to understand, okay, what really gives me energy, I can have some basic principles in place. But I want to understand what gives me energy. And I think, to go through that exercise, in my estimation, for me, at this point in my journey, it's not just about my head, that's sort of been the next part of my understanding of myself. It's actually about my head's about my hearts, about my guts, but my whole self, and trying to figure out how to see the signals from I got in my heart, because I feel like I've been trained only to see the signals from my head.
Eric Janssen
So we haven't even talked about where it led you. You probably typically start some of these conversations with previous roles and what you've most recently done, but I wanted to dig into how you made that transition. Because you've done some phenomenal things since leaving Google, but the, to do that self work, to put yourself in a position to go without really knowing what the next thing was. I mean, frankly, a lot of the other guests that we have on, there's stories of how they mitigated the risk, how they started as a side hustle, one foot in one world, one foot in the other, or they mitigated the risk by finding the right founding partner, and de risking the team. Those are all people much smarter than I am, I suspect yours is totally, totally different. So just re emphasizing to me, like, gosh, everybody's journey is just so totally different.
Alan Gertner
For sure, though, I will say, part of my understanding of my life, is that everything I will ever go through, someone else has already gone. I mean, every feeling I'll have, and every success I'll have and every failure, someone else has gone through that. And it's been very important for me to try to find those people and try to read and learn from all the experiences that have happened before me.
Eric Janssen
So you ended up doing that self work, I'm paraphrasing hugely, because I know there's a massive part of the story here, but you ended up in the cannabis space. There's a massive story in between that a lot of other people have touched on in previous interviews. So Google, Alan Gertner. And you'll you'll see the full story. But the story of founding a really you had this bold, you created this vision. And I love the way that you phrase it to me in the past was you envisioned a world where cannabis was going to be it was going to grow. There was an opportunity or a moment in the Canada seized, thank goodness, at least for now. You knew that retail was going to be a part of it. You knew that brand was going to be a part of it. And so you positioned yourself nice and early as a brand in the space and went on to found a company called Tokyo Smoke. When did you you sold it to canopy?
Alan Gertner
So we sold it to canopy deal close September 2018. So basically a year now.
Eric Janssen
Okay, so sold it for healthy some B it went on to become the chief retail officer of canopy growth Corporation. Yeah. And then you left. Yeah. Well, can you help me understand again, because this is like, okay, Alan has done his exploring. He knows what's important. He's done this self work. And now it's like, but surely now there's smooth sailing and everything. He'll just be the head of retail of the biggest cannabis company in this exploding industry. And yet a few months in you ended up leaving, so it it didn't surprise me, but helped me understand that thought process for why you left again?
Alan Gertner
Worth acknowledging I've been very lucky on this journey. We had a specific thesis of our business and we worked very hard, but a lot of things fell our way. In September, canopy closed on buying our business and canopy as sort of mentioned as the largest cannabis company in the world who this company that Canada birth was just truly unbelievable upwards at some point of a 30 $40 billion company. We were incredibly lucky to be part of that business. I was became the chief retail officer and spent just over half a year working there. I think a big Part of why I left was going through a similar process of reflecting that I went through a couple years ago, a couple exercises that were very helpful for me, not so dissimilar from the wisdom I've got from a mentor in the past, or the spreadsheet that I had built to start to focus my direction. One of the things I remember doing in the past couple of months, was sitting down the spreadsheet again, and reflecting on the past five years of my life, how I feel today, and how I want to feel in five years. And if you imagine that there are 10 2012, in a number of parts, that are drivers, to the makeup of a person, maybe it's your emotional energy, or your spiritual energy, maybe it's your financial independence, your living environment. And you score those things. Oh, I scored these things out of 10. I clue like scores on a 10, and spreadsheets. So I scored all these things, I scored all these in five years ago, before I went on this journey. I scored all these things. today. This is you know, in January, this past year, maybe December last year, and I scored all these things five years now. And each time I'm writing to try to explain the difference, right? Why scoring from eight? Why do I remember my financial independence feeling like an eight, five years ago, what was funny about going through that exercise was you add all those things up. So let's imagine is 10 things at a 10. So the scores out of 100, my score went down relative to five years ago, what couldn't I sort of couldn't even believe it. But part of why that was a very useful exercise for me was in recognizing things that I knew was that maybe my financial independence went from an eight to a nine. It's not like I felt constrained in the first place. I've never wanted to buy a Ferrari anyways, these are not the drivers of my happiness and my motivation. And there's so many studies out there that say money beyond a certain level inhibits your happiness anyway. In these other things, maybe my emotional energy, my score had gone way down, because I had got back into the routine of trying to went away. But I did, we built this business, I put my head down and I worked my superpower, or, or place the superpower that I'm most in touch with is that I have no FOMO I, as a person put me in a dark room gave me a project to work on. I'm there. And so that three, four years it disappeared. Because I worked. And I was focused on our vision, I was focused on purpose, I believed in our purpose, maybe unlike before I had this purpose that I believed in. And we were truly doing this thing I believed in this big challenge that was about community I believed in him. But when it came down to it, I still ignored the seven other parts of my person or eight other parts or 20, other parts or whatever it was. And so my score was down. And looking at that I again had this moment, well, I have a choice here, I can do something about this or I can not. And unlike, in some ways, other parts of my life, I have no excuses. Now, I've ticked those boxes that I wanted to tick. Now I put that money in my pocket. And so I have to really, in In this scenario, I have to really, really look at myself in the mirror and say, I'm not gonna do anything about this. Just because I don't want to. That's just not who I am. So that was another chance to go on a journey of discovery, to try to figure out who, who I want to be for the rest of my life, or at least the next phase of my life and to do the work.
Eric Janssen
So you've been through this transition a few times huge transitions? Yeah. For you say, money wasn't a huge motivator. You've never there's like this level of enough. And then you get strong enough. And then anything more, you said it went from an eight to a nine. So it didn't really change anything.
Alan Gertner
No, totally. And I don't think that's unique to me at all. Yeah. The you know, the one of one of the most amazing things about being part of Ivey graduated from this place is, you know, the world is your oyster in some ways. And I think very quickly, you discover that all of these challenges that you thought were ahead of you in terms of making your life work. A lot of them you achieve pretty quickly.
Eric Janssen
Yeah. So what work do you recommend 20 somethings do now? or What advice do you have? Because it is it? You know what, for the first 10 years, you just need to put your head down and do the work first? Or is it do the self work before you put your head down and do the work?
Alan Gertner
Yeah, good question. One, I generally don't have any advice because I don't know. Right. And as I said earlier, and I truly believe it. I have worked hard but I also got very, very lucky. What I can say is the self reflection, understanding yourself and being willing to look yourself in the mirror and acknowledge your flaws. Acknowledge the parts about you that you don't like the part you do like. One way or another, you're stuck with yourself. So you can layer on all these distractions, which I have been someone who has done, I've layered all of these goals on top of myself. So I could focus on those goals and not focus on me. And in, in my journey, those problems that suffering, it's gotten harder to deal with not easier as I've gotten older. And so it's I'm incredibly grateful that I get to go through this journey now, because there are lots of people who go through this journey when they retire. I'm grateful I get to do this now. But I also will recognize for myself, hopefully, this is helpful for others. I don't think I needed to not have a job to quit any of those things to go through this journey. There are lots of bite sized ways to do reflection, to do the work, to understand yourself to work through that suffering that exists with all of us that I could have done along the way as opposed to having to having to confront such an abrupt change. I'm lucky with the journey I've been on. Very happy to be in the place I am. But I recognize that I could have done those things that maybe would have made my journey different.
Eric Janssen
Yeah, I like that. You recognize in the beginning. don't forget who said it, but never speak from advice only speak from experience. So I greatly appreciate that you're bringing your own experience that it's hard to do have generic advice. In closing here, is there anything? What are you focused on now? Do you know what's next? You've done some of this, you've done the self work? Do you know what's next in the chapter? Or is it still TBD?
Alan Gertner
Yeah, I have one I recognize I have lots of cell 40 left to do. Okay, I think that will be a journey, I will be on my whole life. In terms of what's next for me. I admit I don't I don't know exactly yet. What I've started to narrow in on is a bit of a better understanding of what my purpose is, I don't know if this will be the purpose of my whole life. But my purpose today, and I've started to refine this idea with time, that what a big part of what drives me. And the difference I think I can make given who I am, is that I want to help bring a new perspective or bring perspective to people's lives. That's a big part of why I was always excited about working at Google. And this company that really could bring information, bring ideas, to people all over the world, to try to help democratize information in a way that could and did change the world. Part of why I love working in cannabis was it's an incredibly safe and cheap doorway to a new perspective. Not saying it's perfectly safe, but relative. And as I've gotten older, and I have more time, one of the things that gives me energy, understanding the world of meditation, and sound baths, and holotropic breathing, and all of these things that fascinate me, a big part of why they give me energy they fascinate me is because I think they can help us understand ourselves in the world better. And I think in some ways more than any other time. We live in a time where we are becoming more myopic. And if I can try to bring perspective to people to the world in some way, and I would be honored for that to be the purpose of the next phase of my life.
Eric Janssen
That's great. Well, I want to thank you for sitting down and spending the time and if you've got a filter now for the things that you say Heck yes to the fact that you made the trip in and are sitting here to have this conversation means that it's important to you and it's really important to me, so I appreciate you making the time.
Alan Gertner
It's my pleasure. Thanks for having me.
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